a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness ahuvia, a., biswas-diener, r., frey, b. s., haybron, d. m., helliwell, j. f., mcmahon, d. m., ricard, m., & thin, n. (2011). felicitators. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 193-194. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.1 john f. helliwell university of british columbia john.helliwell@ubc.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 193 editorial felicitators introduction this symposium is the result of our efforts to collect and present what we know about the creation and distribution of happiness. our aim is to help shift the focus of wellbeing research from the ‘i’ to the ‘we’ by celebrating people and places, ideas and institutions, that have made and can make the world a happier place. we call them ‘felicitators’ – producers of happiness. this has echoes of bentham’s felicific calculus, and reminds us that gnh, the gross national happiness concept, is rendered in brazil as fib, felicidad interna bruta. our unusual partnership is thanks to jean timsit, who two years ago invited a range of happiness researchers to pool their diverse skills and interests to expand and enrich what is known and can be used to improve lives. we are enormously grateful for his initiative and continued support. in january 2010, in the course of project discussions in tulum (mexico), we fell upon two ideas at once. the first was to use particular stories and examples as a way of assembling and explaining important results. the second was to encourage the spread of wellbeing by celebrating felicitators, and especially those whose ideas and actions have broad or universal applicability. we think that our eight papers, created collaboratively and gathered together in this symposium, are ideally placed in the international journal of wellbeing, whose mission, like ours, is to develop and freely exchange ideas that deserve and need to cross geographic and disciplinary borders. we will not attempt to stitch our papers too tightly together, or to claim any sort of completeness. we opted for examples, and examples are what you get. what, you might ask, following the alphabetical order of our names, could dr seuss, maria montessori, bruder klaus, central park, singapore prisons, moses, the dalai lama and music have in common? read on and see. you may, like us, be surprised to see how many common themes there are, and how very specific examples can open up very large discussions. authors aaron ahuvia university of michigan robert biswas-diener portland state university bruno s. frey university of zurich and university of warwick daniel m. haybron saint louis university felicitators: introduction ahuvia, biswas-diener, frey, haybron, helliwell, mcmahon, ricard, & thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 194 john f. helliwell canadian institute for advanced research and university of british columbia john.helliwell@ubc.ca darrin m. mcmahon florida state university matthieu ricard shechen monastery and mind and life institute neil thin university of edinburgh grenville-cleave, b. (2012). review of positive psychologists on positive psychology, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 146–149. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.17 bridget grenville-cleave workmad ltd bridget@workmad.co.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 146 book review positive psychologists on positive psychology aaron jarden, ed., amazon digital services, 2012 asin: b007ixu1ry, 136pp, us$2.99 also published as aaron jarden, ed., international journal of wellbeing, 2012 doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2, 79pp review by bridget grenville-cleave abstract: this 130-page e-book, positive psychologists on positive psychology by aaron jarden, explores topics that all positive psychologists, experienced or novice, researcher or practitioner, will find interesting. it’s original, engaging and enjoyable, plus it provides plenty of inside information. the concept is very straightforward—transcripts of thirteen personal interviews with a variety of positive psychology experts on their favourite topic. but don’t let that simplicity fool you—at the same time this book will challenge your understanding of what positive psychology is, how to apply it, and how the field is developing. keywords: positive psychology, aaron jarden, interviews, wellbeing, well-being 1. introduction this 130-page e-book, positive psychologists on positive psychology by aaron jarden, explores topics that all positive psychologists, experienced or novice, researcher or practitioner, will find interesting. not only does the book provide answers to basic questions, such as ‚what is positive psychology?‛, it also addresses more challenging ones, such as:  when, where and how did positive psychology develop? (the answer to this one is a great lesson in how to do change management effectively, by the way).  who is doing cutting edge positive psychology research?  where is the field heading in the next five years?  what kinds of positive psychology research are being applied in the real world? 2. the usual suspects? the book consists of the transcripts of interviews which aaron jarden carried out with thirteen positive psychologists between july and october 2011, one chapter per person. if you’re not well versed in positive psychology, you will not have heard of all of them. in my view, that’s not a weakness but a great strength—it gives us diversity and breadth we wouldn’t otherwise http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology grenville-cleave www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 147 have and (if i can paraphrase todd kashdan) it’s important because there’s a great deal more to positive psychology than what you usually hear about in media-friendly sound bites about positive emotions, strengths, and gratitude. in alphabetical order, the positive psychologists featured are: ilona boniwell, mihaly csikszentmihalyi, ed diener, barbara fredrickson, todd kashdan, alex linley, sonja lyubomirsky, nic marks, ryan niemiec, acacia parks, denise quinlan, michael steger, robert vallerand. 3. the author dr aaron jarden is a senior lecturer in psychology at the open polytechnic of new zealand and president of the new zealand association of positive psychology (nzapp).1 he is also lead investigator of the international wellbeing study,2 co-editor of the international journal of wellbeing3 and director of grow international.4 aaron describes his goal as ‚complete understanding of human wellbeing, why it is as it is, and how it can be improved.‛ given this pedigree, i’m sure i’m not the only reader who wishes he’d provided answers to the questions he posed the other positive psychologists in the book. 4. the audience positive psychologists on positive psychology has been written primarily for those who are new to positive psychology or are thinking of entering the field. it is a great resource for that purpose. hearing what positive psychology means to the experts who are right there, working at the coal face every day, is invaluable. but even if you’re a relatively old hand in the positive psychology world, this book has much to offer. you get a lot of personal insights which you wouldn’t otherwise hear. the book is well balanced—the downsides are spelled out too, not just the age-old perception of positive psychology being too pollyanna-ish. it also includes emerging concerns about research being applied too quickly, and even misapplied. acacia parks suggests testing the effectiveness of positive psychology books written for the general public against non-science based ‘quackery’ such as the secret. all this is useful material for those of us who’ve been working in the field on an applied basis. 5. common questions what are the distinctive features of positive psychology? a simple question for experts to answer, you might think! we get three different types of response. some refer to the importance of positive psychology’s scientific grounding, and its focus on the positive and on optimal human functioning. others refer to a clear split between research and application. the third group answers in terms of specific positive psychology content, such as strengths and positive emotions. if you’re an experienced positive psychologist, how would you answer this question? what are some of the most valid criticisms of positive psychology? in the early days of positive psychology our old friend, optimism, took most of the flak. now the loudest criticisms focus on the speed and manner in which positive psychology is making its way into practice, 1 http://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/. 2 http://www.wellbeingstudy.com/. 3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/. 4 http://www.growhq.com/. http://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ http://www.wellbeingstudy.com/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/index http://www.growhq.com/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology grenville-cleave www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 148 and the way it’s communicated. nic marks, alex linley, todd kashdan and acacia parks refer to these concerns. according to acacia parks, ‚…in some ways we’re not as careful as we could be about the sound bites we release into the ether, or about maintaining the integrity of those sound bites so that they are accurate‛. nic marks supports this: ‚there have been far too many claims made far too quickly about certain interventions. …we need to be able to communicate things better…‛. a further criticism concerns cultural applicability. nic marks disputes any claim that positive psychology interventions are universally applicable. todd kashdan goes deeper and refers to the overriding importance of the situational context of research and applications. whilst there’s a lot to be learned from positive psychology’s strengths, there is much we can learn from its weaknesses. what are some of positive psychology’s achievements? there’s consistency here in the thrust of responses. they revolve around how positive psychology is communicated and disseminated. for example, mihaly csikszentmihalyi mentions getting the subject of positive human activity to be taken seriously, and creating a vocabulary for it; sonja lyubomirsky talks about gaining traction within the wider field of psychology; michael steger about gaining traction in other disciplines; whilst barbara fredrickson refers to getting positive psychology on the public radar. what is evident from reading this book is that the positive psychology field is so much wider than strengths and positive emotions, although these tend to dominate because they make good sound bites. the book suggests that we need to work harder to raise awareness about the importance to wellbeing of other, less glamorous, topics such as meaning, mindfulness, self-regulation, and time perspectives. 6. why you should read this book the aim of the book is to enrich our understanding of positive psychology as it currently stands. it succeeds very well, but it does much, much more. it provides the inside track on what positive psychology experts really think about positive psychology; where positive psychology is going next; what the hot topics for the next five years are; who the upcoming positive psychology researchers to watch are; and it also gives valuable advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers and practitioners. if that wasn’t enough, you get to hear from the horse’s mouth about new developments, such as the direction of the international positive psychology association (ippa)5 from the new president, robert vallerand, and the university of east london’s mapp program6 from the course director, ilona boniwell. if you want to find out more then you’re going to have to read the book! 7. recommendation this book is original, it’s a quick and easy read, it provides inside information but at the same time challenges your understanding of what positive psychology is, how to apply it and how it’s developing. the concept is very straightforward—transcripts of thirteen personal interviews with an assortment of positive psychology experts on their favourite topic—but don’t let that simplicity fool you. 5 http://www.ippanetwork.org/. 6 http://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/specs/positivepsychology/. http://www.ippanetwork.org/ http://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/specs/positivepsychology/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology grenville-cleave www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 the only real downside is that the book (like most others in the field) is biased in favour of a traditional western perspective. all of those interviewed are from, have been educated in, or work primarily in, the usa, canada, the uk, and new zealand. it’s true that the cultural weakness of positive psychology as it stands is raised several times. i wonder whether the presence of more european and eastern researchers and practitioners would have enhanced the book. while you’d expect a lot of agreement amongst the positive psychologists featured in the book, there’s sufficient diversity in the knowledge and opinions to ensure that you can’t just take everything as read. you have to assess it yourself, assimilate it and make up your own mind. that, i think, is the power of a good book. this one gives you a foundation on which to craft your own positive psychology path. i wish it had been available when i did my mapp program in 2007. i highly recommend it. author bridget granville-cleave workmad ltd bridget@workmad.co.uk aames c., m. (2012). a scientific exploration of happiness: a review of the science in exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science, international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 288-291. doi: 10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.10 matthew aames c. university of colorado matthew.cucchiaro@colorado.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 288 book review a scientific exploration of happiness: a review of the science in exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science sissela bok, yale university press, 2010, isbn: 978-0-300-1329-7 (cloth), 224pp sissela bok, yale university press, 2011, isbn: 978-0-300-17810-4 (paper), 224pp review by matthew aames c. abstract: exploring happiness covers the vast terrain of happiness research from aristotle to brain science. but despite what the subtitle suggests, by far the greater part of the book concerns the remarks of various literary and historical figures on the concept while too few pages are reserved for the scientific findings that have surfaced in recent decades. this interesting read shines at times, most notably when it compares arm-chair theories from the distant past with modern scientific findings, but it leaves much to be desired from a perspective of scientific interest. keywords: happiness, satisfaction, science, measurement, psychology 1. introduction happiness: it is what americans report thinking about at least once a day (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999), and what they reportedly confess to valuing even more than going to heaven (king & napa, 1998). perhaps unsurprisingly then, a course on the topic attracted 855 students in one semester at harvard, making it the most popular class at the university (lambert, 2007). and it’s not just harvard. the hundreds of happiness courses to have sprouted up in just the last decade suggest that students all over the world are in demand of a different kind of science class: the science of happiness. exploring happiness is one of a long and growing list of books released recently, aimed at meeting the high demand for enlightenment on the subject of happiness. as the title suggests, author sissela bok explores the vast terrain of happiness research from aristotle to brain science. she does this with clarity and eloquent prose throughout. but despite what the subtitle suggests, by far the greater part of the book concerns the remarks of various literary and historical figures on the concept while too few pages are reserved for the scientific findings that have surfaced in recent decades. even so, exploring happiness manages to (briefly) cover each of the major bases that social and neuro-science explores: how happy people are, what makes them happy, and what does not produce as much happiness as people tend to think. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ a scientific exploration of happiness aames c. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 289 2. are people generally happy? one of the most intriguing aspects of exploring happiness is the juxtaposition between what past thinkers have theorized and what scientists have more recently found. a nice example of this is found in chapter 7 where sigmund freud and bertrand russell speculate that most people are unhappy, if not greatly so (they do disagree over whether people can become happy). research, however, shows that most people, even in developing countries, report being happy above neutral levels. the settlement of this dispute will clearly depend on the nature of happiness itself. 3. what is happiness? exploring happiness includes a representative array of the various happiness definitions to have been penned over the many centuries, from aristotle’s account to the more ordinary usages of today. bok cites the definition of the economist, richard layard, as one of the more contemporary views of this latter kind about the nature of happiness. layard states that happiness is “…feeling good – enjoying life and wanting the feeling to be maintained” (layard, 2005, p. 12; quoted in bok, p. 39). bok does not address concerns nor does she express opinions regarding the various proposed definitions of happiness. thus, if one is looking for an argument which singles out the correct theory of happiness, from the recitation of what bok considers “discordant definitions” (p. 35), one will be sorely disappointed. according to bok, doing this is “needlessly restrictive” (p. 45). while the enterprise which bok undertakes concerns the exploration of happiness, this raises the question: how, then, can reliable measurements be made, if what we are measuring is not uniform? 4. happiness measured according to chapter 5 on measurement, most people think that one can be happy in multiple ways, including in the moment (“instant utility”), as well as being satisfied with one’s life (or certain aspects of it). researchers have latched on to these two definitions, which require differences in measurement. one means of measuring the latter is the satisfaction with life scale. exploring happiness does not relay the test-retest reliability of such surveys but bok correctly reports that the respondents’ answers are sometimes compared to their family and friends’ responses about the subjects’ satisfaction. bok does not attempt to give credence to such studies nor does she report that such surveys tend to “converge with informant and spouse reports” (van boven, 2003, p. 1196). this omission is disappointing from the perspective of a scientific analysis of the research on happiness, as it fails to even attempt to investigate the veracity of these measures. bok rightly gives attention to much more recent, and significant, methods of measuring one’s happiness as well: the experience sampling method and the day reconstruction method. bok, however, neglects to inform the reader of the significance of the paradigm shift in the way more recent research into happiness is conducted. prior to these research methods, which aim to capture happiness levels that people are currently experiencing (or have very recently experienced), happiness studies consisted almost exclusively of attempts to measure satisfaction levels. one important finding from these new methods is that what makes people satisfied does not always make them feel pleasure or positive affect (kahneman & riis, 2005, p. 287-288). this finding may have serious implications for, among other things, some of the a scientific exploration of happiness aames c. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 290 decisions we make in life (should we pursue the things that are more pleasurable or the things that make us more satisfied, when we have the choice?). one area in which exploring happiness shines most is in its illumination on brain imaging studies and their uses. the shift in focus on how a person feels at any one time, rather than the satisfaction one reports, is what makes these happiness studies candidates for brain imaging research. bok explains that scientists document the rate of blood flow, using fmri studies, in various parts of the brain so that they can learn whether expressions of pleasure or pain stimulate particular brain areas. research shows that positive emotions are associated with more activity in the left pre-frontal cortex. the detailing of brain imaging studies in chapter 2, and the reporting that the left pre-frontal brain activity of buddhist monks is far more active compared to that of non-meditators, is noteworthy. unfortunately, it is especially noteworthy due to the fact that this is one of the only parts of exploring happiness that delves into the brain science of wellbeing. bok demonstrates an understanding of some of the important work that neuro-scientists perform related to happiness measurements, but she neglects to provide her reader with more than a taste of this stimulating and groundbreaking research. 5. can people become lastingly happier? exploring happiness provides a compelling look into the aspects of human biology that limit the level of increased happiness one can hope to experience long term. it describes the hereditary limitations on happiness and the strong link between sources of pleasure and our adapting to those sources: a change marked by a return to our normal state. the idea that we adapt to any ups and downs in circumstances is referred to by psychologists as the hedonic treadmill. the book mentions one of the most well known pieces of evidence for the treadmill. studies of both lottery winners and paraplegics show that they are not substantially happier or unhappier after a surprisingly short period of time than the non-wealthy and non-paralyzed, respectively. bok balances these studies with criticisms of them, reporting that there is conflicting research as well as a charge that the studies have insufficient sample sizes. chapter 7 of exploring happiness succeeds in highlighting the fascinating findings from psychology that one has around 40% control over one’s own happiness. the research states that about 50% of one’s happiness is in the hands of genetics and that a meager 10% is the product of one’s circumstances (wealth, material goods, etc.). the book explains that wealth tends to contribute to happiness, but the effects are often not large (e.g., many people on the forbes list of millionaires are reportedly unsatisfied). the 40% that is within one’s control and that does not seem to succumb to adaptation (at least to any great degree) includes exercise, practicing gratitude, and work that engages one. strong social relationships, unsurprisingly, are claimed to be the most important investment in one’s happiness. bok is careful to point out that the findings are averages and do not necessarily apply equally to everyone; and furthermore, that these positive interventions have not been tested over the long term. 6. conclusion this interesting read shines at times, such as when illuminating various theories on happiness over time and connecting the vast terrain on the topic, but it is wanting overall from a perspective of scientific interest. exploring happiness likely appeals most to a niche audience of those who have an interest in learning about the immense history on the subject from the perspective of mostly literary figures and who lack a need for much critical analysis. a scientific exploration of happiness aames c. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 291 author matthew aames c. university of colorado matthew.cucchiaro@colorado.edu references kahneman, d. & riis, j. (2005). living, and thinking about it: two perspectives on life. the science of well being. eds. felicia huppert, nick baylis & barry keverne. oxford university press, oxford, uk. king, l. a. & napa, c. k. (1998). what makes a life good? journal of personality and social psychology, 75, 156-165. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.1.156 lambert, c. (jan.-feb. 2007). the science of happiness: psychology explores humans at their best. harvard magazine. http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/01/the-science-of-happiness.html layard, r. (2005). happiness: lessons from a new science. the penguin group, new york, ny. lyubomirsky, s. & lepper, h. (1999). a measure of subjective happiness: preliminary reliability and construct validation. social indicators research, 46(2), 137-155. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1006824100041 van boven, l. (2003). to do or to have? that is the question. journal of personality and social psychology, 85(6), 1193-1202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1193 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.1.156 http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/01/the-science-of-happiness.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1006824100041 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1193 a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness suikkanen, j. (2019). the advice models of happiness: a response to feldman. international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 8-13. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.837 jussi suikkanen university of birmingham jussiphil@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 8 article the advice models of happiness: a response to feldman jussi suikkanen abstract: in his critical notice entitled “an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness?” focusing on my article that was previously published in this journal, fred feldman raises an important objection to a suggestion i made about how to best formulate the whole life satisfaction theories of happiness. according to my proposal, happiness is a matter of whether an idealised version of you would judge that your actual life corresponds to the life-plan, which he or she has constructed for you on the basis of your cares and concerns. feldman argues that either the idealised version will include in the relevant life-plan only actions that are possible for you to do or he or she will also include actions and outcomes that are not available for you in the real world. he then uses examples to argue that both of these alternatives have implausible consequences. in response to this objection, i argue that what is included in the relevant life-plan depends on what you most fundamentally desire and that this constraint is enough to deal with feldman’s new cases. keywords: happiness, whole life satisfaction, fred feldman, conditional fallacy 1. introduction it seems clear that happy people are satisfied with their lives – they must surely appreciate how well their lives are going. there is a long philosophical tradition of developing this simple observation into a full-blown theory of happiness.1 according to the resulting “whole life satisfaction” theories (hereafter “wls theories”), being happy is, in some way to be specified further, a matter of judging that your life compares well with your life-plan and especially a matter of feeling satisfied as a consequence. in an earlier article and in his recent book on happiness, fred feldman makes a powerful objection to the wls theories that challenges their very fundamental structure (feldman, 2008, 2010, ch. 5). it has the form of a dilemma. the objection begins from the idea that either we have to accept an actualist or a hypotheticalist version of the wls theories. it then argues that, whichever way we choose, we are led to implausible conclusions concerning how happy different agents are. the most basic actualist versions of the wls theories make the happiness of a person depend on an actual judgment which that person must make about how well her life is going compared to her life-plan. the problem here, however, is that many of us are so immersed in our daily activities that we have little time to form any life-plans or consider how well our actual lives would compare to them. yet we do not want to claim that we are necessarily for this reason unhappy. 1 for a list of references, see suikkanen (2011, p. 150 fn. 6). advice models of happiness suikkanen 9 to avoid this problem, the wls theorists could suggest that perhaps our happiness is instead a function of how well we would judge our lives compared to our life-plans if we were to form such plans and considered how well our lives matched those plans. yet, feldman’s insight is that these kinds of hypotheticalist accounts are flawed too. a spontaneous person who is forced to form life-plans and compare her new reflective life to it in the counterfactual condition is likely to judge that her life is now not going according to her plan, as she had no intention to form life-plans or engage in self-reflection in the first place. the point of my previous article in this journal (suikkanen, 2011) was to investigate whether the wls theories could be structured in a way that would enable them to avoid the previous dilemma. my diagnosis of feldman’s wonderful objection was that it revealed that the hypotheticalist wls accounts commit the so-called conditional fallacy.2 these views attempt to capture happiness in terms of subjunctive conditionals: what you would judge, if you were in certain circumstances. however, putting you into the relevant counterfactual conditions changes your life in the relevant respects, and so the judgments you make about your own life in those circumstances have little relevance with respect to how happy you are in your actual life. at this point, i noticed that similar conditional fallacies have recently been committed elsewhere in ethics, for example, in the debates concerning practical reasons where it has been suggested that we should understand reasons in terms of what we would desire if we were fully rational.3 the lesson of these debates has been that this doesn’t work: making you fully rational changes your situation in a way that makes your desires in that new situation irrelevant to the reasons you actually have in the real world where you are not as rational (smith, 1995, p. 111). these analogical debates gave me hope. in that context, michael smith has found a way of avoiding the conditional fallacy. in order to give an account of what reasons you actually have, smith (1995, sec. 1) formulated a distinct evaluating perspective from which an idealised version of you has certain desires with regards to what the real version of you is to do in the evaluated actual world where you remain the same. in this case, the idealising changes made to the desires of your idealised version cannot change the features of the evaluated actual situation and so the conditional fallacy is avoided. i used a similar strategy to construct a new structure for the wls views that could enable the resulting views to avoid the conditional fallacy horn of feldman’s dilemma (suikkanen, 2011, secs 5-6). this strategy relied on drawing the distinction between the actual person in the real world whose happiness is being evaluated and the idealised version of this person who is a theoretical construct responsible for forming an ideal life-plan on the basis of the person’s cares and concerns, and making a judgment of how well that person’s real life conforms to the hypothetical life-plan. this enables the wls views to avoid the problem of the happiness of spontaneous people, as the individuals who are happily immersed in their activities can continue to do just that. all the view requires is that their evaluating version comes to judge that there is a match between the life-plan they construct out of the real person’s cares and concerns and the real person’s actual life. these kinds of advice model versions of the wls theories then have the right structure to avoid feldman’s powerful objection that seemed fatal to the more traditional wls theories. i still think that this is exactly right, and nothing in feldman’s critical notice gives me reason to think otherwise (see feldman, 2019). the objection he puts forward does not challenge the idea that the advice model views have the right structure to avoid his previous 2 this type of fallacy was first made famous by shope (1978). 3 see, e.g., brandt (1979, ch. 1). advice models of happiness suikkanen 10 objections to the hypotheticalist versions of the wls theories. in fact, as we will see below, feldman’s new objections do not even turn on the advice model structure, as similar objections can be made to all versions of the wls theories. i also want to emphasise that, in the original article, i presented the advice model only as a flexible framework in which different versions that have different extensions can be formulated (suikkanen, 2011, sec. 6.1). in this respect, i was inspired by the recent debates about consequentialism in which it has been suggested that different versions of consequentialism share the same structure even if they can come to very different conclusions about which actions are right as a result of adopting different theories of value.4 in the same spirit, i thought that different versions of the advice model wls theory, which have different extensions, can be formulated by specifying the idealised version of the person whose happiness is being evaluated in different ways. perhaps i was not clear enough about this in my original article. this is shown by the fact that feldman’s objections make certain substantial assumptions about how exactly i would specify the idealised evaluator and the resulting version of the advice model. it was, however, never my intention to be so ambitious in my article. i assumed that finding out which version of the advice model turns out to be true should be done at a later stage by relying on the reflective equilibrium method.5 we could begin from certain intuitive assumptions, according to which the idealised evaluator has a more coherent version of the evaluated person’s set of desires, goals, intentions, cares and concerns, and he or she is also perhaps more informed. i thought that we can then compare the consequences of this basic view’s verdicts of which agents are happy to our own intuitions about different cases. if we find conflicts between the two, we can then both go back to re-evaluate our views of the idealised evaluator and also finetune our intuitions about the cases until we reach a reflective equilibrium. it is then fortunate that exactly the kind of cases which feldman’s describes in his critical notice allow us to apply the previous method and thus learn more about the advice model and happiness. in these cases, feldman specifies agents who are intuitively either happy or unhappy. his intention is to present these cases as ones in which my advice model version of the wls theory comes to wrong conclusions. however, the way i understand these cases is that they enable us to get a sense of how we should best understand the idealised evaluator. i will conclude this response to feldman by illustrating how this works. 2. feldman’s new cases consider smoky first (feldman 2019, sec. 3): smoky smoked like a chimney for many years. eventually it caught up with him and his health has been ruined. now, as he lies on his deathbed at t, smoky is miserable. he does best to cope with his fatal illness, but he cannot undo the mistakes of his youth… he is miserable. he deeply regrets the now unalterable errors of his past. if we are to have a plausible version of the advice model, it better not entail that smoky is happy. feldman, however, seems to suggest that my view will entail that he is. one reason for this is that feldman assumes that the relevant life-plan created by smoky+ will consist only 4 for an overview of these consequentializing debates, see portmore (2009). 5 see rawls (1971, 19-21 and 46-51). advice models of happiness suikkanen 11 of actions which smoky can do in his present situation. in that case, smoky+ might well judge that smoky’s life is going according to his life-plan. this, however, never was a part of the view. i took the idea of life-plans from john kekes’s brilliant 1982 article “happiness.” as kekes puts it, a “life-plan is the hierarchical ordering of the first-order wants” (kekes, 1982, p. 364). according to this view, we have firstorder desires for different outcomes – for our lives to have different general qualities. we then have to decide what role these wants are to have in our lives – we must make a commitment. these decisions then together amount to a life-plan that orders one’s cares and concerns in terms of their importance. this is what also happens when an actual individual constructs a life-plan and what i assumed likewise happens when the ideal versions of us construct lifeplans for us on the basis of the first-order desires they have inherited from us. at this point, i believe we can assume that some of the fundamental wants the real smoky has are health, long life, and taking part in the activities that he likes but cannot do when ill. so, if smoky+ constructs a life-plan for smoky by ordering all his wants in terms of how much they matter to smoky, that life-plan will presumably give a central place to having those very things which smoky deeply cares about. because of this, smoky+ is unlikely to judge that smoky’s life matches well with his life-plan, and so it looks like there are versions of the advice model that come to the correct conclusions about this case. feldman’s next case is the following (feldman, 2019, sec. 4): luckless… was born with a congenital condition that has made his life miserable. suppose luckless has done his best to cope with it, but to no avail. … but of course he is not [outstandingly happy]. in this case too, feldman suggests that the advice model theories will imply in an objectionable way that miserable luckless is outstandingly happy. this is because he speculates that, when luckless+ makes a life-plan for luckless, he will probably leave the unalterable components of luckless’s actual life in place, and so the ideal life-plan for luckless will contain all the misfortunes of his actual life. this is why luckless’s life will compare well with the ideal lifeplan and so the view will deem him happy. here i do not believe that plausible versions of the advice model will have this consequence, for the same reasons as in smoky’s case. i assume that many of luckless’s most fundamental and deepest wants, cares and concerns have to do with living a life free of pain, being able to do things that he knows he would enjoy and so on. this is because a very good explanation of why luckless feels so miserable is that he cannot get what he most desires. if these are luckless’s most fundamental wants, then presumably they will play an essential role in the life-plan which luckless+ constructs for him. this is why i believe luckless+ would not come to judge that luckless’s life is going according to his life-plan and so there are versions of the advice model that agree with feldman about what we should say about this case too. feldman argues, however, that the previous response makes the advice model unable to deal with his final case, mr. chipper (feldman, 2019, sec. 4): suppose mr. chipper wants to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. suppose he knows that he has always been healthy, wealthy, and wise. suppose, as a result, that he is satisfied with his life as a whole. mr. chipper might like to be healthier, wealthier, and wiser … [b]ut he knows that in virtue of his extraordinary health, advice models of happiness suikkanen 12 wealth, and wisdom, no improvement in these areas is possible. he is as healthy, wealthy, and wise as a person could be… he is very happy. feldman claims that the advice model cannot lead to this conclusion because in the previous example luckless+ includes things in luckless’s life-plan that are not possible for him to obtain. so, feldman suggests that mr. chipper+ will have to do the same. he too will form a life-plan for mr. chipper that will include taking the imaginary supplements that make him even more healthy, making the imaginary investments that make him amazingly wealthy, and taking the brain enhancing pills that make him even wiser. on the basis of this life-plan, mr. chipper+ will then come to judge that mr. chipper’s life is not going according to plan. this would make him an unhappy person, according to the advice model, which he is not. here the challenge is to explain in a principled way why mr. chipper+ would not include these impossible actions in mr. chipper’s life-plan. this explanation must also still enable us to continue to claim that luckless’s life-plan will include things that he just cannot obtain. this challenge does not seem too difficult to me. if we consider luckless, it is intuitive that many of his most fundamental and deepest actual cares and concerns are directed at living a pain-free life and also a life that allows him to take part in many of the important human activities that are not currently available for him. it is then plausible to think that luckless+ takes the fundamentality and centrality of these cares and concerns into account in formulating the life-plan for luckless. yet, the way in which feldman describes mr. chipper makes it clear that his most fundamental cares and concerns have absolutely nothing to do with being even healthier, wealthier, and wiser. as feldman puts it, mr. chipper merely “might like to be healthier, wealthier and wiser” (feldman, 2019, sec. 4). if these desires are in this way mere wishes or peripheral fleeting desires, then it’s not clear to me that they would play a role in mr. chipper+’s hypothetical life-plan for mr. chipper. this is exactly because the whole point of the life-plan is to structure mr. chipper’s actual wants in terms of how central a role they play in his psychological make-up. as a result, mr. chipper+ would not judge that mr. chipper’s life is not going according to his life-plan merely because these further wishes are not satisfied in his actual life.6 this makes me think that the solution to these new cases does not really have anything to do with whether the idealised agents should only include possible actions and outcomes in the life-plans or also things which the actual agents cannot do or achieve. rather, the life-plans are better understood in terms of what kind of outcomes the agents themselves want most – what kind of generic qualities the agents fundamentally want their lives to have. and, as the last two examples show, it is important to emphasise the fact that, when the ideal versions of the evaluated agents make life-plans for those agents, they will take into account how central a role the different cares and concerns out of which the life-plans are constructed play in the agents’ psychologies. furthermore, the ideal versions of the agents will also, in judging how 6 it could be objected that a version of mr. chipper could actually ultimately desire more health, wealth, and wisdom than he currently has and what he believes is achievable for him. in this case, his ideal version might include these seemingly impossible goods in his life-plan and judge that the actual life of mr. chipper does not match up to that plan. in this case, the proposed view would entail that this version of mr. chipper is unhappy. however, given that the ultimate desires of this mr. chipper are frustrated, and he is aware of this, this sounds like a plausible conclusion to draw. of course, it is true that many agents tend to desire less those things that they believe are impossible for them to achieve (but this is not always the case – see smoky’s case above). this seems to fit the way in which many empirical life satisfaction studies have found evidence of adaptation (see, e.g., luhmann et al. (2012)). advice models of happiness suikkanen 13 well an agent’s life matches up to her life-plan, focus on whether the agent’s life satisfies her core cares and concerns. if the more peripheral elements of the agent’s motivational set are left unsatisfied, this will not make the agent’s ideal version judge that the agent’s life is not going according to her life-plan.7 it seems to me that this is all we need to say in order to defend the advice model against feldman’s new challenge. despite this, i am still extremely thankful for feldman’s new cases, as they have helped us to get closer to how we should understand the ideal versions of the agents in the advice model and what their role is. author jussi suikkanen university of birmingham jussiphil@gmail.com publishing timeline received 15 january 2019 accepted 17 january 2019 published 9 july 2019 references brandt, r.b. (1979). a theory of the good and the right. oxford: oxford university press. feldman, f. (2008). whole life satisfaction concepts of happiness. theoria, 74, 219-238. feldman, f. (2010). what is this thing called happiness? oxford, england: oxford university press. feldman, f. (2019). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness? international journal of wellbeing, 9(1), 1-7. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.762 kekes, j. (1982). happiness. mind, 91(363), 358-376. luhmann, m., hofmann, w., eid, m., & lucas, r. e. (2012). subjective well-being and adaptation to life events: a meta-analysis on differences between cognitive and affective well-being. journal of personality and social psychology, 102(3), 592-615. portmore, d. (2009). consequentializing. philosophy compass, 4(2), 329-347. rawls, j. (1971). a theory of justice. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. shope, r. (1978). the conditional fallacy in contemporary philosophy. the journal of philosophy, 75(8), 397413. smith, m. (1995). internal reasons. philosophy and phenomenological research, 55(1), 109-131. suikkanen, j. (2011). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 149-166. 7 of course, this still leaves open many interesting questions about the proposal. for example, we can construct different versions of the view by varying exactly which fundamental desires should be taken into account by the ideal version of the agent. some agents change their fundamental desires, and so the question is whether their ideal versions should, in the construction of the life-plan, only take into account their actual version’s current desires, or, rather, some set of the ultimate desires both before and after the change. views that take a different stand on this issue will disagree about which agents are happy. the hope would be to use the kind of reflective equilibrium methodology illustrated here to discover what the most plausible version of the view is in this respect too. but carrying out this work will have to be left for another occasion. trust and wellbeing lambert, n. m., gwinn, a. m., fincham, f. d., & stillman, t. f. (2011). feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality. international journal of wellbeing, 1(3), 307-314. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i3.1 nathaniel m. lambert brigham young university natemlambert@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 307 article feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality nathaniel m. lambert · a. marlea gwinn · frank d. fincham · tyler f. stillman abstract: people frequently speak of being tired, and chemicals like caffeine are consumed to make people feel energetic. how might one increase a sense of energy without resorting to substances? in three studies we document how sharing positive experiences with others makes people feel more energetic. study 1 (n = 197) showed a relationship between naturally occurring sharing of positive events and vitality, such that the more often participants shared positive events at time 1 the more vitality they reported three weeks later (controlling for initial levels of vitality). in study 2 (n = 188) participants who shared a positive event (versus not sharing an event) reported higher levels of vitality. study 3 (n = 96) showed that participants who shared a positive event with a partner (as opposed to engaging in a mildly positive interaction with their partner) reported higher vitality than did control participants. implications of the research are discussed. keywords: vitality, sharing experiences, capitalization, energy 1. introduction approximately 400 billion cups of coffee were sold in 2009 (coffee statistics report, 2010). it is reasonable to assume that people do not feel as energetic as they would like to feel and that this accounts, in part, for the high level of consumption. vitality is defined as having physical and mental energy (ryan et al., 2010) or an enthusiasm and excitement for life. vitality is related to several indicators of physical and mental health. in terms of physical benefits, vitality is negatively associated with coronary heart disease (kubzansky & thurston, 2007), sleep disturbance and somatic illnesses (stewart, hays, & ware, 1992), and headaches (ryan & frederick, 1997). with regard to mental health, higher vitality is associated with increased selfactualization (sense that you are fulfilling your potential), self-esteem, and self-determination (degree to which one’s behavior is self-motivated) (ryan & frederick, 1997), greater autonomy (ability to act freely and independently) (deci & ryan, 1991), greater motivation (ryan & frederick, 1997), perception that one’s problems in life are less severe (thayer, 1987) and less depression (de negri & moretti, 1971). given these implications for physical and mental health, it is important to identify factors that may contribute to or enhance vitality. one likely candidate is sharing positive experiences. 2. sharing positive experiences sharing positive experiences is correlated with higher degrees of positive affect and life satisfaction (gable, reis, impett, & asher, 2004) and people share their daily positive experiences between 60% and 80% of the time (gable et al., 2004). although people share feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality lambert, gwinn, fincham, & stillman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 308 positive experiences quite frequently, little is known about the effects on mental health of such sharing. labott, ahleman, wolever, and martin (1990) found that when participants watched a happy video their immune system showed heightened activity, but only if they were instructed to express their emotions. this study suggests that the act of sharing a positive emotio n with another person has benefits above and beyond simply experiencing the positive event. another study found that sharing a positive event is correlated with heightened memory of that particular event (gable et al., 2004). it could be that as positive events are more easily remembered, they will be able to continue to have positive effects (later positive affect and coping). though a positive response should be partly due to the positivity of the actual event, langston (1994) found that sharing a positive event generated unique positive affect that went beyond the affect elicited from the valence of the positive event alone. 3. why sharing should translate into vitality we propose that sharing a positive experience with another person may translate into vitality for a few reasons. first, the feeling of relatedness (feeling significant and connected) engendered during an interchange should boost vitality in the same way that social relatedness has been positively related to vitality (gagne, ryan, & bargmann, 2003; howell & hill, 2009; reis, sheldon, gable, roscoe, & ryan, 2000). second, sharing positive experiences is a joint endeavour between the sharer and the listener, which has the potential to produce an effect on vitality that is greater than what might have occurred without the joint effort. during the sharing of a positive experience the sharer recruits the listener to perform a specific function—to assist in completing his/her appraisal of the experience and to validate the experience. for instance, imagine that sue shares her good news of receiving praise from her boss and eli replies, “that’s great! that should help you get that raise you’ve been hoping for.” eli’s acknowledgement of the potential positive implications of the event for sue’s future makes the impact of her positive experience more salient and may generate additional positive implications of the event that had not previously crossed her mind. finally, sharing something positive has the potential to boost the mood of the listener and thus the person sharing may gain excitement and energy by making someone else feel positively. for example, if tyler tells his wife deborah about increasing his sales during the month, this may have implications for deborah and would likely make her genuinely happy. seeing her pleasure is likely to make tyler more excited about his accomplishment and enhance his vitality. 4. overview of studies in three studies we tested whether sharing a positive experience increases vitality (energy, or enthusiasm for life) for the person who shared. study 1 tested whether people who shared positive experiences more frequently demonstrate greater vitality three weeks after sharing than do those who are disinclined to share positive experiences, controlling for initial vitality. study 2 examined the hypothesis that sharing a positive event leads to greater vitality than simply experiencing it. participants wrote about something good that happened to them in the past two weeks. then, half of the participants were randomly assigned to both share this event with a relationship partner and complete the dependent measure, while the other half simply completed the dependent measure. feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality lambert, gwinn, fincham, & stillman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 309 study 3 sought to clarify the findings in study 2 by ruling out an alternative explanation that the interaction with a partner, rather than specifically sharing the positive event, is what provided a lift in vitality. taken together, the following studies provide evidence for a relationship between sharing positive experiences and feeling vitality. 5. study 1 the objective of study 1 was to test the relationship between sharing positive experiences and vitality. we hypothesized that participants who shared their positive experiences more frequently at time 1 would have higher levels of vitality at time 2, three weeks later, after controlling for initial vitality. 5.1 method 5.1.1 participants participants were 196 undergraduate students (162 women) who agreed to participate in exchange for extra credit. participants ranged in age from 18 to 41 with a median age of 19. 5.1.2 pre and post measures sharing positive experiences. we created a four-item measure that assessed the degree to which participants shared positive experiences with others. example questions included, “i am the type of person that loves to share it with others when something good happens to me,” and “i'm constantly telling people my good news.” choices ranged from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” the alpha at time 1 was .89. vitality. we used ryan and frederick’s (1997) seven-item scale to measure vitality. sample items include "i feel alive and vital”, “i look forward to each new day”, and “i feel energized”. items were rated using a 7-point likert scale (1 = “strongly disagree” to 7 = “strongly agree”). coefficient alpha at both time 1 and time 2 was .91. 5.2 results 5.2.1 attrition fifty-six participants failed to complete measures at time 2. to ensure that attrition did not affect the results, we compared time 1 scores of participants that dropped out with those who remained in the study. no differences between the groups was found for vitality, f (1, 251) = .49, p > .05. 5.2.2 sharing positive experiences and mental health: preand post-test results we used hierarchal regression analysis to determine whether initial sharing of positive news predicts later vitality when controlling for initial vitality scores and gender. given differences in communication styles between men and women, we controlled for gender. as predicted, greater tendency toward sharing of positive experiences at time 1 was associated with greater vitality scores four weeks later, controlling for initial vitality and gender (β = .21, p < .01). 5.3 discussion our hypothesis was supported inasmuch as the tendency to share positive experiences is positively related to changes in vitality over time. a limitation of the current study is that it is correlational and therefore causality cannot be confidently inferred. moreover, we are unable to feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality lambert, gwinn, fincham, & stillman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 310 determine whether the positive events themselves or the sharing of them increased vitality. finally, the alternative explanation that more energetic people have a higher tendency to share positive experiences needs to be ruled out. we address these limitations in the experimental studies that follow. 6. study 2 the objective of study 2 was to experimentally test the relationship between sharing positive experiences and vitality. our hypothesis was that the participants who shared a positive event will have higher levels of vitality as opposed to those who simply thought and wrote about a positive experience. 6.1 method 6.1.1 participants in an introductory undergraduate course, 188 participants (135 female) completed an online survey for extra credit. participants came to the lab with either a romantic partner or with a close friend. 6.1.2 measures vitality. we again used ryan and frederick’s (1997) measure of vitality (α = .90). positivity of the recalled event. participants recalled a positive event. to ensure that the positivity of the event was not driving findings, we included two items: “how positive was the event?” and “how memorable was this?” that were summed. the items correlated highly, r = .79. 6.2 procedure participants were instructed to “think of something good that happened to you in the past two weeks. please write a paragraph describing what happened in the space below.” they were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions, a no-treatment condition and a sharing experience condition. those in the control condition completed the vitality measure after writing about the positive experience. those in the sharing condition were taken into a separate room and were asked to share what they wrote about with their partner or friend. specifically, the participants were instructed to take “two minutes to share with your partner what happened and how you felt. once you have had a chance to share, please ring the bell.” they then completed the measure of vitality. 6.3 results a one-way analysis of variance revealed that participants in the sharing condition reported higher vitality (m = 5.05, sd = 1.13) than those in the control condition (m = 4.65, sd = 1.36), f (1, 184) = 4.98, p < .05, η2p = .03, after controlling for gender and positivity of the event. 6.4 discussion consistent with our hypothesis, sharing a positive experience caused an increase in positive emotion, relative to a control group who also recalled the positive experience but did not share it with someone. this study provides evidence that sharing a positive experience has a stronger impact on vitality as opposed to thinking about the positive experience; however, it does not rule out the possibility that any interaction with a partner might produce a similar effect. feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality lambert, gwinn, fincham, & stillman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 311 7. study 3 the objective of study 3 was to address an alternative explanation for study 2, namely that the higher levels of vitality of those who shared the positive experience were simply due to the interaction with a partner or friend. therefore, we added positive interaction as a control condition to more rigorously test whether sharing positive experiences increases vitality. we also added irritability as a control variable, given that such a feeling could come about during an interaction. our hypothesis was that the participants who share their positive event will have higher vitality than those who simply experienced a mildly positive interaction. 7.1 method 7.1.1 participants in an introductory course, 96 undergraduates (69 women) completed an online survey for extra credit. ages ranged from 18 to 24 with a median of 19. participants attended the session with either a romantic partner or with a close friend. 7.1.2 measures vitality. we again used ryan and frederick’s (1997) measure of vitality (α= .67). alertness. to ensure that a difference in level of alertness between conditions was not responsible for the observed effects, we controlled for it in the analysis. alertness was measured by one subtle item: “if you are paying attention, mark strongly agree.” irritability. to ensure that irritability towards one’s partner during the interaction was not driving the results, we controlled for it in the analysis. we measured irritability with the single item, “describe the extent you feel irritable” on a scale from “very slightly or not at all” to “extremely.” 7.2 procedure participants were instructed as follows: “please think of something good that happened to you in the past two weeks. please write a paragraph describing what happened.” participants were then randomly assigned to either a sharing positive experience condition or to a neutral interaction condition. 7.2 1 sharing of positive experience condition as before, participants were taken into a separate room and were asked to share what they wrote about with their partner. specifically, the participant was instructed to take “two minutes to share with your partner what happened and how you felt.” 7.2.2 neutral interaction condition: procedure this condition was developed to rule out the possibility that an interaction by itself could enhance vitality. participants were instructed to take “two minutes to share with your partner something he/she learned in class this week.” 7.3 results given differences in communication styles between men and women, we again controlled for gender. a one-way analysis of variance revealed that participants in the sharing positive experiences condition reported higher vitality scores (m = 4.38, sd = 1.15) than those in the feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality lambert, gwinn, fincham, & stillman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 312 neutral interaction condition (m = 4.00, sd = .64), f (1, 91) = 5.48, p < .05, η2p = .06 when controlling for feelings of irritation, alertness, and gender. 7.4 discussion consistent with our hypotheses, participants who shared their positive event had more vitality compared to those in the writing/reflecting group that also had an interaction unrelated to the positive experience. this study provides further evidence that sharing positive experiences can generate positive affect above and beyond both recalling a pleasant experience and having a mildly positive interaction unrelated to the positive experience. 8. general discussion in the current investigation, we found evidence for a non-pharmacological means of increasing physical and mental energy, namely, sharing positive experiences with others. in study 1, we found that the tendency to share positive experiences with someone else at time 1 predicted later vitality, controlling for baseline levels of vitality. study 2 showed that participants who shared a positive event with a close friend reported higher vitality than those who simply wrote about a positive event. in study 3, those assigned to share a positive experience with a partner demonstrated greater vitality than those who simply interacted with a partner. vitality is an important marker of psychological wellbeing, and feeling mentally and physically tired is generally considered unpleasant. indeed, persistent fatigue is considered an illness (chronic fatigue syndrome). the current work demonstrates that sharing positive experiences with others can combat feelings of lethargy. as such, this work fits with other studies documenting non pharmacological ways of increasing vitality, such as spending time in nature (ryan et al., 2010). 8.1 limitations and future directions a limitation of our research is that the samples studied were limited to college-aged participants and may not be representative of more mature relationships. thus, these findings should be replicated in a variety of age groups. another limitation of the current studies is that individuals who shared the positive event spent more time thinking about the event than those who simply wrote about the event or who interacted about something other than the event. such a potential confound should be ruled out in future studies. finally, the current studies did not assess how the reaction of the partner affected vitality. it seems plausible that the reaction of the partner may potentially moderate the effects of sharing and this should be examined by future research. in an era where technology is prevalent, there are now many different outlets for people to share their positive experiences. blogging has grown to become one of the most popular methods of online expression. though blogging has many uses, most americans use their blogs to express themselves or reflect on their day (lenhart & fox, 2006). a fruitful area for future research would be to examine whether sharing positive events through blogging has a similar effect on mental health outcomes to in-person sharing or, alternatively, to determine what differences might exist between sharing through the blogosphere and in-person sharing. however, the results of study 2 suggest that in-person sharing may have a stronger impact than simply writing about the event. nonetheless, when writing in a blog there could be an effect of sharing with the “imagined audience.” could the imagined audience have just as strong an effect as sharing in person? this question should be examined further. feeling tired? how sharing positive experiences can boost vitality lambert, gwinn, fincham, & stillman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 313 some initial research on blogging has found it to have positive effects on wellbeing and it has even been suggested as a form of therapy. for example, one study demonstrated that blogging improves social capital, which in turn has a positive effect on wellbeing (ko & kuo, 2009). relatedly, blogging has a positive effect on perceived social support, specifically social integration, reliable alliance, and friendship satisfaction (baker & moore, 2008). future research should build upon these initial findings, taking the results of the current study into account. 9. conclusion our research indicates that sharing positive events can increase vitality. the benefits go beyond simply having a positive experience or sharing a neutral experience: maximum vitality stems from a combination of both. the importance of increased vitality is emphasized by the documented association between higher energy and both physical and mental wellbeing. authors nathaniel m. lambert brigham young university natemlambert@gmail.com a. marlea gwinn the university of kentucky andreamarlea@gmail.com frank d. fincham florida state university ffincham@fsu.edu tyler f. stillman southern utah university tylerstillman@gmaill.com publishing timeline received 21 may 2011 accepted 27 august 2011 published 17 october 2011 references baker, j. r., & moore, s. m. 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(2000). daily well-being: the role of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. personality and social psychology bulletin, 26, 419–435. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167200266002 ryan, r. m., weinstein, n., bernstein, j., brown, k. w., mistretta, l., & gagne, m. (2010). vitalizing effects of being outdoors and in nature. journal of environmental psychology, 30, 159–168. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.10.009 ryan, r. m. & frederick, c. (1997). on energy, personality, and health: subjective vitality as a dynamic reflection of well-being. journal of personality, 65, 529–565. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.14676494.1997.tb00326.x stewart a. l., hays r. d., & ware j. e. (1992). health perceptions, energy, fatigue, and health distress measures. in a. l. stewart, j. e. ware & n. c. durham (eds.), measuring functioning and well-being: the medical outcomes study approach. london: duke university press, pp. 143–172. thayer, r. e. (1987). problem perception, optimism, and related states as a function of time of day (diurnal rhythm) and moderate exercise: two arousal systems in interaction. motivation and emotion, 11, 19–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00992211 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/714044203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.64.12.1393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167200266002 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.10.009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1997.tb00326.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1997.tb00326.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00992211 http://www.hqlo.com/sfx_links.asp?ui=1477-7525-7-22&bibl=b11 thin, n., tarragona, m., wong, p., jarden, r., bartholomaeus, j., & jarden, a. (2017). book review for international journal of wellbeing. estes, richard j., and m. joseph sirgy [eds] (2017) the pursuit of human well-being: the untold global history. dordrecht: springer. international journal of wellbeing, 7(1), 84-92. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i1.636 neil thin university of edinburgh n.thin@ed.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 article book review for international journal of wellbeing. estes, richard j., and m. joseph sirgy [eds] (2017) the pursuit of human well-being: the untold global history. dordrecht: springer neil thin · margarita tarragona · paul wong · rebecca jarden · jonathan bartholomaeus · aaron jarden1 1. synthetic overview it’s hard enough to summarise an individual’s diverse experiences of wellbeing coherently, let alone summarise a nation. it’s a whole lot harder to offer comprehensive coverage of objective and subjective wellbeing worldwide, and harder still to combine this with historical depth and detailed cultural analysis. this collection therefore wins the prize for being the most ambitious collection on wellbeing to date. this is an immensely important milestone in the global cultural history of wellbeing, and it will be a superb resource for anyone wanting a comprehensive global overview of philosophies, concepts, and socio-economic and political histories relating to wellbeing, as well as a rich source of basic information on contemporary objective and subjective indicators. the editors have done an excellent job in asking good questions and finding scholars who can answer them. many of the authors are from the regions they write about, and together they represent an impressive diversity of disciplines including social policy, sociology, history, political science, psychology, religious studies, cultural anthropology, and economics. the inclusive approach to sources has been particularly impressive, allowing wide-ranging use of humanities and popular culture that enriches the scope and depth of wellbeing research. the editors offer a humanistic and dynamic definition of wellbeing as ‘central to the process of becoming a more fully developed human being’ (p. 3). this presupposes certain uniquely human qualities such as spirituality and the quest for meaning as essential for both our humaneness and wellbeing. although it is in some respects refreshing to see various conceptual approaches to wellbeing in the different chapters, the collection might have been more coherent if the editors had promoted a stronger overarching conceptual framework. most chapters look at objective living standards, physical life outcomes and subjective experience. but distinctions between these aren’t always clarified, and there are frequent slips between information on resources and living conditions to information about people’s subjective attitudes towards these. from one paper to 1 neil thin (editorial overview and chapters 4,11,12,13); margarita tarragona (chapters 2,5,8,15,16); paul wong (chapters 1,3,6,10); aaron jarden (chapter 20); jonathan bartholomaeus (chapters 9,19); rebecca jarden (chapters 14,18). mailto:n.thin@ed.ac.uk http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 the next there is no predictability concerning the indicators used no consistent coverage of things like income, violence, peace, democracy, education, health, longevity, gender relations, hedonic wellbeing, or life satisfaction. in the introductory chapter, p.6, the editors say they asked contributors to assess gains over time in ‘personal and collective well-being’. this is an important but elusive distinction that has rarely been clarified in wellbeing scholarship. but there’s no robust analytical treatment of this distinction even in the introductory chapter, although they do discuss several interactive social factors such as benevolence, forgiveness and gratitude. in chapter two (michalos and weijers) there is interesting discussion of enlightenment (smith, rousseau, and jefferson) and views on the trade-offs between private and public happiness (pp.46-49). it might have been helpful if all authors had been encouraged to explore regional manifestations of this kind of distinction. more importantly, from the start the editors avoid any distinction between means, satisfaction with means, and ends a basic threefold distinction that ought to be fundamental to any plausible account of wellbeing. both the introductory chapter and several regional chapters seem wilfully to mingle information on conditions, processes, and outcomes. the editors assert that ‘health, education, income, and wealth distribution’ are ‘considered to be core elements of well-being’ (p.7). some things, of course, like health, knowledge, and happiness, have both intrinsic and ultimate value. however, it surely does not help our understanding of wellbeing to use terms like ‘economic wellbeing’ and ‘educational wellbeing’ which so clearly confuse wellbeing with the conditions and processes that may or may not lead to it. arguably, too, the collection as a whole could have paid more attention to aspects of human life that make the pursuit of wellbeing so challenging. just as medical research pays heed to the physically dangerous environment of bacteria, viruses, and toxins, so wellbeing scholars need to recognize subjective and objective sources of adversity. humans live in a dangerous environment full of objective natural and human-made threats and inevitable suffering, as well as generating mental responses that can make matters worse as well as better. although the editors declared that they approached the task of editing this volume without any assumption regarding the nature and conditions of wellbeing, their writing indicates otherwise. in fact, it is virtually impossible for anyone to talk about wellbeing without some implicit or explicit models of wellbeing. some of the chapters struggled to offer clear analytical insights into the factors that influence wellbeing, and concerning the culturally embedded experiences of wellbeing. the implicit initial premise is that huge regions most of which have colossal and culturally diverse populations are a useful unit of cultural analysis. although most chapters pay more detailed attention to subpopulations, the overall the impression is that regional generalisation is assumed to provide an interesting antidote to universalistic treatments of wellbeing. yet perhaps the more interesting forms of cultural contrasts and distinctiveness are to be found in quite different kinds of cultural unit: countries; ethnic groups; interest groups; leisure clubs; gender; age; religious minorities; businesses; and the cultural attitudes and social processes associated with sports and academic disciplines. several authors have in effect adopted a posture of principled non-evaluation: they offer richly detailed descriptions and analyses of the cultural patterns in conceptualisations of wellbeing and prescriptions for good behaviour, without attempting to comment evaluatively on whether these have made people’s lives go well or badly. we learn a lot about how some people (mainly elite literati) have thought about wellbeing and virtue around the world in various eras, but we learn very little about the implications of that thinking for how people actually pursue wellbeing, or how well they live. book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 forgivably, given the scope and ambition of the collection, there is also some quirky structuring and sequencing. the introduction is followed by three regional chapters, then one on islam, and then bafflingly a chapter on measurement followed by ten more regional chapters with two more thematic chapters before the conclusions. there’s no obvious rationale for the selection of the three thematic chapters, and it’s disappointing that there’s no overall treatment of the wellbeing of special categories of people such as children or old people. equally strange is the idea of having two chapters on south asia in separate parts of the book (the earlier one is on ‘india’ but covers south asian history), and putting seven chapters in between the one on subsaharan africa and the one on north africa. instead of emulating this odd procession, we’ll tell you first about the three theoretical chapters, then the three thematic chapters, and the rest is about the regional chapters. 2. theoretical chapters estes attributes four basic elements of wellbeing ‘peace, personal satisfaction, happiness, and wellbeing’ to ‘personal reflection and interpersonal exchanges.’ a humanistic approach of this sort might also have included other contributors to wellbeing such as personal development, character education, and self-transcendence as other. it is not clear, however, that estes’ emphasis on the ‘here and now’ is warranted. numerous wellbeing scholars have noted that valuable aspects of wellbeing may be oriented mainly to the past or to the future. in chapter 6, on wellbeing measurement, authors sirgy, estes, and selian argue that good historical information is available but that quantitative data are more limited. the global wellbeing measures often lack a component of meaning, which has been shown to be central to wellbeing. some data have indicated that people in poor countries report a stronger sense of meaning. a complete picture of wellbeing needs to provide both subjective and objective measures of the dark side of human existence. considering war-ravaged countries and the refugee crisis, such overwhelming evils and miseries makes it very difficult for people to experience wellbeing. it will take considerable fortitude and endurance to maintain human dignity. the objective misery indexes can include suicide rate, clinical depression prevalence rate, incarceration and execution data, pollution index, poverty rate, discrimination level, violence data, etc. the subjective misery indexes can include self-rating on stress levels, depression, anxiety, and perceived stress. the wellbeing data can be best interpreted in terms of misery index. death attitudes are importantly related to wellbeing. spiritual wellbeing is another component that deserves consideration. a complete model of wellbeing can be obtained by using a regression model that employs both positive and negative objective conditions to predict psychological wellbeing. this represents a mature happiness, which is more stable and more enduring because it is based on the reality of suffering. the final overview chapter reviews patterns in national and regional wellbeing findings reported throughout the book, in particular in parts iii and iv. this highlights the ambition of this book’s comprehensive treatment of wellbeing, noting major national, regional, and international changes: (1) philosophical advances in wellbeing; (2) global advances in population; (3) global advances in health; (4) global advances in education; (5) global advances in income and poverty reduction; (6) global advances in social welfare, in particular, the steadily increasing levels of income security provided to the world’s growing population via income security programs and other publicly and privately financed social initiatives; and (7) global advances in subjective wellbeing. book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 while these components relate to wellbeing, this last theme on subjective wellbeing is where most of the fruit of the chapter lies. as a wide-ranging summary of many of the pertinent points described in previous chapters, this chapter also provides concluding commentary about the major changes in wellbeing experienced by the majority of people residing in various regions of the world. 3. thematic non-regional chapters there are three chapters organized around cultural themes (islam, women, and technology). awkwardly, there is no sign of any rationale for choosing just these three. the imbalance between the very comprehensive coverage of the regional chapters and the meagre and tokenistic coverage of wellbeing themes is arguably an important weakness in the collection. the potential diversity of thematic chapters could have been limitless, but the structure of the collection would have made a lot more sense if they had either solicited a much more diverse set of thematic chapters, or else simply addressed crosscutting themes within the overview and regional chapters. the chapter on islam is the only one to focus on the wellbeing implications of a specific religious tradition, although several of the regional chapters have something to say about religions. one quarter of the world’s population is islamic (a proportion that is rapidly growing) and islam doesn’t fit into any one part of the world, although the same could be said of all major world religions. mohsen joshanloo argues that in islamic beliefs and philosophy, wellbeing is not defined in terms of subjective states or emotion. instead, to live well is to obey strict religious precepts that help solve the conflict between the innate tendency for good and the “devilish” aspects that all human beings have. tackling the contemporary and historical complexity and diversity of islam, he notes that traditional muslim philosophers were influenced by greek thought and valued rationality as the way to understand god, whereas sufis believe that only though the heart can human beings contact god. despite their diversity, islamic notions of wellbeing are all tied to religious regimes prescribed in the qu’ran. in chapter 18, elizabeth eckermann sets out to document the ‘global progress of women’, offering a narrative of the gradual improvement in women’s wellbeing across history. the historical development of international goals for gender equality and empowerment of women, and of measures of women’s wellbeing, has been very diverse. key events of this historical journey are illustrated in a timeline extending from 300 bce to 2015. the international coverage of this chapter includes key events in india, france, new zealand, bhutan, egypt, and kuwait. these events highlighted challenges and opportunities for improving women’s wellbeing, and influenced gendered understandings of individual and collective wellbeing. for example, matrilineal societies, such as the minangkabau in sumatra and the mosuo from southwest china, are explored in relation to their impact on the status of women. the chapter is an engaging and informative narrative drawing strength from historical visionary advocates of change, exploration of historical landmarks, and the worthy quest to document women’s refusal to accept the status quo. chapter 19, on technology, is subtitled ‘transformative market phenomena over time’. authors audrey n. selian and lee mcknight thereby announce the economistic emphasis of their approach. they discuss the empirical, philosophical, socioeconomic and developmental facets of technology and their impact on the evolution of wellbeing. the chapter proposes that there is a strong correlation or reciprocal relationship between the creation, utilization and dissemination of technology, all of which are linked to human development and therefore wellbeing. the authors use the human development index (hdi) metrics of life expectancy, book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 literacy, school enrolment, and income to operationalise the concept of wellbeing. they provide strong and clear arguments for the positive influence of technological progress on wellbeing throughout history. a well balanced discussion is presented as it is acknowledged that technology and innovation can have both positive and negative influences on human development and wellbeing. this chapter will be beneficial for anyone looking to understand how technology shapes human experience. 4. regional chapters the bulk of the collection (14 chapters) focuses on regional histories. in their chapter on western historical traditions of wellbeing, alex michalos and daniel weijers offer a thorough and engaging examination of the concept of human wellbeing and its pursuit in the western world from the 8th century bce until today. they present the views on wellbeing of ancient greek philosophers like plato, aristotle and epicure; the religious perspective on what is a good life, particularly within christianity; the enlightenment, utilitarianism, and the pursuit of meaningful goals; and, most recently, the debate about wellbeing as a public policy issue. they examine the roles of virtues, pleasure, harmony with oneself and society, wealth and power, spirituality and public good as important elements of western conceptions of wellbeing that have had different salience at various points in history. particularly helpful is their integration of the subjective and the objective dimensions of the quality of life, offering a conceptual matrix to understand wellbeing and they invite us to be aware of the risks of both the ‘fool´s heaven’ (having a positive perception of negative objective conditions) and a ‘fool´s hell’ (failing to appreciate a positive objective quality of life). chapter 3 on east asia, by shawn arthur and victor h. mair, has some significant weaknesses. for example, it misses some important recent references, and there is a rather questionable description of wellbeing in china without any supporting evidence (p. 60). a great deal of research has demonstrated that self-determination is essential for wellbeing, but corruption in china is notorious. according to the recent human freedom index, china ranks near the bottom, and human rights organisations continue to find evidence of continuing abuse in china. the second chapter on east asia, chapter 10 by takashi inoguchi and richard j. estes, paints a somewhat rosy picture of this region, considering the oppressive regimes in north korea and china, and the lack of freedom and self-determination of their people. there is enough objective evidence to question whether people in north korea and china actually experience ‘high levels of self-assessed wellbeing’. poverty, trauma, and human rights violation all affect wellbeing, especially in north korea. another concern is the lack of critique regarding self-rating scales in cross-cultural comparisons and the possibility of response biases due to cultural factors or due to perceptions of public surveys among people living under despotic governments. also, some of the graphs (e.g. fig. 10.22) are difficult to read. the africa chapter, by valerie møller and benjamin roberts, is unsurprisingly the most contemporaneous, as the historical records for africa are meagre and shallow compared with most other parts of the world. they emphasise that given the persistence of widespread poverty in this region, wellbeing assessment continues to focus on basic needs. in terms of self-reported life satisfaction, africa is by far the unhappiest part of the world, with few sub-saharan countries scoring above the midpoint. nonetheless, self-reported ‘affect balance’ reports (positive versus negative emotional experience) are overall positive for africa, begging the question (not discussed in this chapter) of whether africans are affectively optimistic and evaluatively pessimistic, or whether they just understand the life satisfaction scale differently. since they also book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 note that africa is ‘one of the most religious regions of the world’ (p.195), it is also possible that religious belief generate optimism at the same time as religious conflicts (endemic in many parts of africa) generate pessimism. be that as it may, in terms of sheer survival the authors note the spectacular and rapid gains in african longevity with life expectancy doubling in a couple of generations, despite prevalent warfare and epidemics such as hiv/aids. in the 21 countries of the middle east and north africa, according to authors habib tiliouine and mohammed meziane, there is great cultural and developmental variety. exploring the region’s complex history the authors also note the complexities of the present situation, since many countries experience persistent conflicts. sadly, most of the countries of the region are unstable and their social conditions are deteriorating. as shown on the “misery index”, several are experiencing collective misery, and they show low levels of happiness in the world happiness report. they also have high scores on the negative experience index, that measures levels of sadness, stress, anger, physical pain, and worry. there is widespread corruption and low levels of trust in institutions. despite these disturbing figures, the authors point out that the region has made important gains in some objective quality of life indicators, such as life expectancy and education, and they are hopeful that the rest of the world can contribute to the positive social changes that are occurring in this region. the india chapter, by anthropologist isabelle clark-decés and sanskrit scholar frederick smith, covers classical and modern periods and some of this concerns the whole south asia region. they note the persistent ‘cultural conservatism’ that has survived several turbulent periods, and trace the rich diversity of contemporary wellbeing discourse back to sophisticated ancient sanskrit texts on wellbeing and virtue. but they also quite rightly note that elite scholarly discourses on ‘prescriptive well-being’ in hinduism and buddhism never tell us much about the everyday experienced wellbeing of ordinary people. for example, it is not how much people’s lived experiences were actually influenced by the very strong textual association between wellbeing and theories of afterlife and rebirth, or by the theoretical division of the life course into behaviourally coded stages. as for islamic populations, however, the authors to assume that as was also asserted in the chapter on islam the pursuit of wellbeing is understood in terms of obedience to religious prescriptions. this fits well with the regional cultural theme of relativity which is discussed: the proper pursuit of wellbeing is relative to ‘the time and place of one’s birth, place of habitation, occupation, life stage, karma, dharma, and so on’ (p.98). the second south asia chapter, by economists vijay kumar shrotryia and krishna mazumdar, weirdly comes seven chapters later and the two chapters don’t refer to one another. actually the two chapters are very different the earlier one being on cultural history and this one being about contemporary socio-economic and demographic processes. like many other chapters, this offers a wealth of basic descriptive detail not all of which is specifically linked to any arguments about wellbeing. once wellbeing is introduced, half-way through the chapter, the authors follow the editors in defining health, education, income, and subjective wellbeing as wellbeing ‘domains’, hence neglecting the important distinction between means and ends that ought surelyto be central to any account of wellbeing. the overall argument, however, convincingly shows that the whole region faces common patterns and challenges for any wellbeing strategy: the combination of lower fertility rates and better health are producing a rapidly aging population which a weak health care infrastructure struggles to cope with, and there is a huge cohort of young working-age people with poor employment prospects who lack social security provision. in their chapter on latin america, mariano rojas and josé garcía vega state that what defines latin america is a shared set of values about wellbeing. the two economists give us a detailed book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 account of the history of the region and its objective quality of life, illustrated by provide impressive data on the development of latin america. for example, in 1900 life expectancy was 29 in brazil and 25 in mexico, the two most populous latin-american countries, while the average life expectancy in latin america today is 74. there have also been large improvements in literacy and medical care. despite these changes, latin america continues to be a very unequal region, where violence, corruption and crime are all too frequent. interestingly, the subjective wellbeing of people in latin america is “outstandingly good”, both in terms of positive emotions and life satisfaction. rojas and garcía vega attribute this to the importance of close human relationships and the centrality of the family, and they argue that public policy should be sensitive to this and promote wellbeing with a social focus that is congruent with these values. chapter 9, by estes, land, michalos, phillips, and sirgy (academics in the fields of social policy, sociology, applied philosophy and marketing research) investigates the development of wellbeing in north america, particularly since the end of world war 2. they begin by defining wellbeing as consisting of economic, health, educational, and subjective elements. economic, health and educational factors are commonly thought of as contributing to wellbeing and not, in and of themselves, elements of wellbeing however. using these three factors as indicators of wellbeing highlights the still disparate intraand inter-disciplinary understandings of personal wellbeing. the extensive historical context provided succeeds in establishing the main theme of the chapter; the historic and continuing inequality of wellbeing amongst ethnic minorities (black african slaves, native americans) and women. the comparison of wellbeing amongst subpopulations provides insight into how north american people perceive wellbeing. overall, a comprehensive overview of the history of north american wellbeing within an economic and social development framework is provided. it is a valued resource for understanding what drives wellbeing and how it has evolved in one of the world’s most developed nations. the chapter on south-east asia by mahar mangahas and edilberto de jesus offers a detailed and unavoidably complex but instructive account of the different wellbeing implications of various phases and varieties of colonial influence. the general picture that emerges is that despite horrific violence and bullying associated with pacification, de-colonization, and state-making, the region’s wellbeing was greatly enhanced over the longer term through peace-making, economic growth, public health planning, and provision of education and health services. education, for example, although sometimes treated as an instrument of colonial domination, was often promoted explicitly for the sake of wellbeing. they provide a good overview of indicators relating to contemporary wellbeing, and emphasise that as in most parts of the world, one of the best prospects for improved aggregate wellbeing will be to promote inclusive growth and reduced inequality. chapter 13 on europe, by wolfgang glatzer and jürgen kohl, is the most contemporary and the most statistically comprehensive chapter of the collection. the overall message is that european history, being uniquely rich in statistical evidence, most clearly illustrates the increasing policy relevance of subjectivity as societies achieve political, material, and socioeconomic progress. whereas history is replete with evidence of events and processes that we can be sure caused mass misery, since the end of world war ii europe has been increasingly confident of democratic rights, peace, and healthy life expectancy. and in contradiction of the current pervasive tide of cultural pessimism and anti-modernism, they provide clear evidence that most europeans do not report being lonely, and that loneliness is lowest in northern and western parts of europe. one of their most interestingly provocative points, although not very clearly expressed (p.449), is that critics who associate the promotion of ‘life satisfaction’ with selfish hedonism should bear in mind that it is quite likely that most people include empathic book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 interest in other people when they evaluate their own lives. this begs an important question that they don’t raise, and which challenges their mainly statistical approach: assuming that it matters a great deal how people interpret and respond to survey questions, how can we ever hope to make sense of statistical surveys about wellbeing without a much bigger effort to conduct and synthesise qualitative research that complements the number-crunching? in chapter 14 on oceania, by robert cummins and tanja capic provide a historical overview and discussion of the economic, health, educational and subjective wellbeing dimensions of the people of oceania’s three largest countries, namely australia, new zealand, and papua new guinea. the main overall story is one of illbeing before colonization, which worsened during and after colonization until things began to improve after world war 2. one contentious claim is that persistent disparities in wellbeing are likely to be made worse by continuing ‘success’ in modernization (p.457). they don’t explain this belief by specifying which inequalities are getting worse, and yet this kind of specification ought to lie at the heart of the assessment and analysis of wellbeing. several claims are unsubstantiated, some statistics are dated, and there are occasional typos, but they do provide some hard facts in relation to the wellbeing of indigenous populations. chapter 15 on the ‘transition’ countries of the former soviet union, by economists carol graham and aurite werman, looks at what happens to wellbeing when countries move from repressive regimes and planned economies to more democratic government and free markets. the answer is not as clear as many of us might have expected. this is a particularly complex task because, as the authors note, these countries had very different histories before they became communist states: some had been part of europe and had long experience in market economies and democracy, while others had been rural or nomadic societies. what happened to these countries after the dissolution of the soviet union was in large part predicted by this previous history, with eastern europe faring better, but they have all had to pay a price in wellbeing during their transitions to democracy and free market economies. in general, subjective wellbeing has followed a v-shaped trajectory over the years: dropping dramatically right after the transition began and partially recovering from around 2005 on, with marked differences between age cohorts (with younger people and those who are better off people adapt better that their older and poorer counterparts). interestingly, these countries in transition don´t show clear signs of the “democracy bonus” on wellbeing that characterizes other democratic countries. birger poppel’s chapter on arctic peoples is 37 pages long, of which only around 10% to 20% is concerned with psychological wellbeing. the rest of the chapter is an excellent overview of the history and development of the artic region, which does provide context for the psychological wellbeing focus of the last few pages. if you are interested in how the artic is defined and delimited (e.g., depending on definition this can range from 4 million to 10 million inhabitants) or various issues to do with social, economic, health or climate change, this is a very good resource. regarding wellbeing however, this chapter suggests that little quality information is available (i.e., a lack of comparable official statistics across regions), but does outline the main results of the current surveys. the general conclusion from current data is as would be expected; indigenous peoples of the arctic still engage in subsistence activities, suffer from a range of illhealth and ill-being (e.g., high mortality rates, high youth suicide rates), and their psychological wellbeing is lower than non-indigenous populations. as a distinct positive this is the first review available of artic people’s wellbeing. book review thin, tarragona, wong, jarden, bartholomaeus, & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 5. concluding comments as an extremely ambitious collection offering encyclopedic coverage of historical and contemporary information relevant to wellbeing worldwide, this is impressive. it will be a useful resource to those who can afford springer’s prices like some other publishers, they are no longer able to price their books at a level within the budget of most individuals and small libraries. either as a dip-in resource, or as an information-rich read for those who really want to get a sense of global historical and geo-political patterns of wellbeing, it will make significant contributions to wellbeing scholarship. authors neil thin university of edinburgh n.thin@ed.ac.uk margarita tarragona positivamente & grupo campos elíseos paul wong saybrook university, trent university and tyndale university college rebecca j. jarden auckland university of technology jonathan bartholomaeus south australian health and medical research institute aaron jarden flinders university & south australian health and medical research institute publishing timeline received 9 june 2017 accepted 9 june 2017 published 9 june 2017 mailto:n.thin@ed.ac.uk schwekendiek, d., & park, h.. (2020). the biological standard of living in early south korea: physical wellbeing based on body mass indices, 1940s to 1950s. international journal of wellbeing, 10(1), 54-66. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i1.764 daniel schwekendiek sungkyunkwan university danjosch@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 54 the biological standard of living in early south korea: physical well-being based on body mass indices, 1940s to 1950s daniel schwekendiek · heejin park abstract: this study fills a gap in the literature on the physical well-being of humans by employing bmi measurements of 89 koreans measured from the early 1940s to mid-1950s. this period is of special historical concern since it coincides with the end of world war ii, during which japan utilized the korean peninsula as a supply base for its war efforts, the disruptive american occupation period of korea (1945-1948), the destructive korean war (1950-1953), and the chaotic early years after the war. this study draws on records of employees from a large korean bank. bmi values were lower in the latter period, indicating that living standards must have declined after the korean war. while the war destroyed korea’s economy, relief aid prevented a total collapse during war times. however, international massive grain programs such as pl 480 had not yet been implemented in the mid-1950s, leaving people vulnerable directly after the war. anthropometric comparisons with historical populations in the united states as well as with pre-modern to contemporary koreans are made in a latter section of this paper. keywords: korea, asia, human wellbeing, standard of living, economic history, anthropometry 1. introduction over the last few decades, the concept of “biological standard of living” has been established in the literature on human well-being (komlos and baten 1998; komlos and kriwy 2003; koepke and baten 2005; baten and blum 2012). in addition to income, the biological standard of living focuses on health and nutritional improvements in populations, thereby encompassing biological components of human welfare and economic development. the biological standard of living is typically proxied by demographic and anthropometric indicators such as morbidity, life expectancy, and frequently height (steckel 1995; steckel 2009). previous research on the biological standard of living in korea has focused on height trends of the pre-modern joseon dynasty (pak 2011; shin, oh et al. 2012; lewis, jun et al. 2013), colonial korea (kimura 1993; choi and schwekendiek 2009; kim and park 2011), as well as south korea (schwekendiek and jun 2010), and north korea (pak 2004; schwekendiek 2008a; schwekendiek 2008b). article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 55 findings related to the height of korean men can be summarized as follows. while the mean height of people in underdeveloped north korea stagnated during the second half of the twentieth century (pak, 2004; pak et al., 2011), their counterparts living in developed south korea experienced a secular trend in height during the same period (schwekendiek and jun, 2010). south koreans were even found to be the tallest among east asians as a result of healthy and wealthy living conditions in combination with animal protein programs initiated by the government (schwekendiek and jun, 2010). heights of the lowest class (kim and park, 2011) as well as the lower to middle class in early colonial korea (choi and schwekendiek, 2009) slightly improved by 2 cm, which might be attributed to japanese agricultural, health, and sanitation reforms. the height of korean men born in the joseon dynasty was estimated at 161 cm based on osteometric reconstructions using modern japanese skeleton references (shin et al., 2012). however, the mean height of men was estimated at 164 cm based on ‘broad’ mongoloid skeleton references (pak, 2011). based on data measured from living males, the height of joseon dynasty korean men born from the mid-sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries was estimated at 166 cm (lewis et al., 2013), indicating that east asians enjoyed similar biological living standards as frenchmen at that time. while biological living standards in contemporary and pre-modern korea have been well studied, there has been no report on the critical interwar period in korea, which lasted from world war ii (1939-1945) to the korean war (1950-1953). this interwar period is of special historical concern since it coincides with the end of world war ii, during which japan utilized the korean peninsula as a supply base for its war efforts, the disruptive american occupation period of korea (1945-1948), the destructive korean war (1950-1953), and the chaotic early years after the war. the purpose of this paper is to shed light on the biological standard of living in interwar korea (and the immediate years before and thereafter), as this was a very critical period characterized by crises, wars, macroeconomic shock, corruption and, in short, chaos. previous studies focused on koreans born in the early colonial period of the 1910s to 1920s (choi and schwekendiek, 2009; kim and park, 2011), whereas studies on contemporary south koreans focused on those born as early as the mid-1950s (schwekendiek and jun, 2010). therefore, this paper fills a gap in the literature while offering a unique opportunity to study living standards under extreme conditions. indeed, after japan raided pearl harbor in 1941, living conditions noticeably deteriorated in colonial korea as the japanese fully mobilized for war against the united states. mineral, agricultural, and other vital resources were increasingly removed by the japanese, putting koreans under more pressure to survive. a korean experiencing colonization (kang 2001:16) remembers japanese strict rule as follows: grass and tree bark, and this is literally what we lived on … we also picked up acorns from the mountain in the autumn and ate them during the winter. these we had to soak for many days to get rid of the acrid smell and the caustic chemicals. yes, we really did live like that. of all the households in the village … only about five or six were still eating grains of any kinds. the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 56 since the japanese held all key positions in colonial korea and also refrained from training korean engineers and technicians, koreans were not able to repair and operate cars and machines on their own, which hampered agricultural and industrial production. after japan lost the war, the allies placed korea under a temporary northern and southern trusteeship (1945-1948). while the soviet union installed a korean puppet regime in the north, southern korea was ruled by an american military government. the provisional division of the korean peninsula into two halves posed large challenges for policy planners in both occupied zones. while the industrial north was cut-off from food production, the agricultural south was cut-off from stable energy supplies as well as fertilizers produced in the north, thereby hampering food production in the south. interestingly, the two germanys, which were also divided around that time through the outbreak of the cold war, faced a similar structural problem after division (giersch, paqué et al. 1992; steiner 2010). to make things worse, after japanese colonization, millions of koreans returned from japan, manchuria (now china), and sakhalin island (now russia) or fled from the communist north to the south, all of which dramatically increased food demand in korea and aggravated the situation. as noted by a foreign observer at that time (nahm 1993:227): [the] situation is getting worse. there is rampant inflation. consumer goods and coal are virtually nonexistent. food distribution is inequitable … transportation equipment is breaking down. unemployment is rising to dangerous proportions … hunger is rapidly spreading and will presently result in starvation in many areas by mid summer. in light of soviet-american antagonism after world war ii, separate elections were held in both occupied korean zones, which in turn led to formal establishment of the republic of korea (widely known as south korea) and the democratic people’s republic of korea (widely known as north korea) in 1948. in 1950, the cold war escalated into an armed war when north korea invaded south korea in order to take control of the entire peninsula. only the u.s.-led un intervention prevented defeat of the south but not without extremely devastating effects. in fact, the death toll among the civilian population exceeded that of the vietnam war (cumings, 2010). the united states, having complete air dominance, dropped more bombs on korea than on japan during world war ii in order to minimize american casualties, which resulted in major costs to the korean civilian population and local infrastructure. an american soldier fighting in korea (eargle 1952: 28) wrote in his diary the following: close to fifty-five tons of explosive were used during strike and pilots described one span of railroad bridge as ‘dumped and demolished’ after a two thousand pound bomb hit. one span of the highway bridge was knocked flat. some korean cities were literally “removed from the map” (cumings 2004: 19) due to the massive carpet bombings by the american military. as a result, food provisions further deteriorated and became irregular during the war. a korean remembers everyday life during the war as follows (kim 1989: 37): the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 57 rice was hard to come by then: none of the stores were open … we bought potatoes and barley and ate that, mixed with a little rice. people were making stew from zucchini leaves and whatever vegetables they could get, boiling them with some barley in lots of water. the korean war ended in an armistice in 1953, and a demilitarized zone (dmz) close to the original dividing line (i.e. 38th parallel) of the two occupied koreas was established. yet, living standards did not improve after the korean war. japanese exploitation during colonization, structural distortions after liberation, the artificial division of the peninsula into two koreas, and the korean war altogether led to rampant corruption and spread of black markets in the south (lie 1998:32). unlike socialist north korea, which installed a food rationing system for ideological reasons (i.e. a public distribution system), people in the capitalist south were fighting a battle of survival of the fittest, where individuals bribing government officials were altering the odds in their favor (lie 1998:33). access to scarce resources such as food and medicine were primarily subject to bribery after the war. due to extreme poverty, many officials barely made a living with their salary, thus becoming inevitably susceptible to bribery (lie 1998:33). entering a vicious circle of corruption and low economic growth, living standards of average koreans were not good even a decade after the war. a south korean remembers as follows (kim and yu 1997:37): when i was growing up in korea in the 1960s, life was very difficult. we were very regimented … i faced a lot of economic hardships. we did not always have enough to eat. sometimes all of my family members had to share one egg. dissatisfied with the chaotic and corrupt government, the south korean military launched a coup in 1961. as commonly known, the military government then rigorously advanced south korea into the world’s fastest growing economy of the second half of the twentieth century (maddison 2001) and eventually to an oecd nation by the 1990s, which is beyond the scope of this paper. 2. data this study employs data from the joseon siksan eunhaeng, which is today called the korean development bank (kdb). the joseon siksan eunhaeng (literally, “korean increasing property bank”) was established in 1918 under japanese colonization and was the largest bank in colonial korea, managing 41% of capital transactions, 28% of saving transactions, and 55% of loan transactions at that time. the joseon siksan eunhaeng changed its name to hanguk saneop eunhaeng (literally, “korean industrial bank”) after the korean war, and its many branches can still be seen all over south korea. in colonial times, employment at the korean increasing property bank was highly competitive and a highly desired job position. only one out of 30 candidates was selected, and there were two ways to land a job at the bank. first, high school or university graduates could apply for a job. particularly, university education was strictly regulated by the japanese, such that apparently only children of rich or influential korean parents could attend such institutions and thus apply for a job at the bank. secondly, people with respective career experience were recruited regardless of their educational status. however, as certain mathematical, reading, and writing skills were required the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 58 in the banking industry, non-privileged koreans were effectively barred from applying at the bank. therefore, the present data only represent the upper socioeconomic stratum of interwar korea. nevertheless, records on white-collar workers have been used in previous studies despite the fact that the data are commonly drawn from an upper socioeconomic stratum of a given population. for instance, gill (1998) analyzed height data on south koreans employed by the korean medical health insurance corporation. since they were government employees (mostly working as teachers in public schools), they were considered to be members of the mid-upper class. morgan (2004) analyzed the height of chinese men born during the period from 1880-1930 and working in state-run enterprises, mainly the chinese national railways and the post and telegraph administration. these employees were deemed to be a somewhat higher socioeconomic class (on account of their education and employment in government posts). 3. analysis successful applicants were physically examined in hospitals for their anthropometric measurements. further background data such as gender, age, residence, education, and so forth were recorded. table 1 shows all variables taken from records employed in this study. the total sample size was 89. bmi (weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters) was used as a proxy of biological living standards. since bmi can be used for both men and women, both sexes were combined. mean bmi was 22 units (table 1). men were strikingly over-represented in the current sample (91%). it is unsurprising that fewer women were employed by the bank since white collar jobs require the ability to read and write. traditionally, females had significantly higher illiteracy rates than men due to confucian gender discrimination. as an illustration, only 16% of korean males were illiterate as opposed to 40% of korean females in 1960 (mcginn et al., 1980). since the un world health organization recommends using bmi for adults aged 20 or over, all teenage workers were excluded from the analysis. the mean age of individuals in this sample is 24, with a minimum age of 20 and maximum age of 38. the mean measurement year is 1948, with a minimum year of 1941 and maximum year of 1956. most individuals (58%) were residing in southern korea (jeolla province, jeju island, gyeongsang province), followed by central korea (chungcheong province, gangwon province), the capital seoul, and northern korea (pyongan province). a majority (74%) had a high school or higher education (high school degree or tertiary educational degree), as opposed to 26% with a lower education (primary or secondary degree only). in comparison, only 18% of koreans were enrolled in high school and 3% in college in 1955 (mcginn, snodgrass et al. 1980). about 65% of individuals in this sample specified that their fathers were farmers (or working in farming-related business). in comparison, about 85% of the korean labor force was employed in agriculture in 1910 (jun 2012), indicating that the parents of individuals in the sample were more often of higher socioeconomic status as opposed to commoners. moreover, due to numerous missing values, the subsample size substantially drops from 89 to 37 individuals. we therefore limit our analysis of bmi values to measurement year and region. the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 59 table 1: descriptive statistics variables n percent min max mean sd bmi 89 17.5 34.0 21.5 2.4 current age in years 89 20.0 38.0 23.6 4.2 measurement year 89 1936 1956 1948 3.9 gender male 81 91 gender female 8 9 subtotal 89 100 northern korea 2 2 central korea 26 29 southern korea 52 58 current residence seoul 9 10 subtotal 89 100 lower education 22 26 high school or higher education 62 74 total 84 100 father farmer 24 64.9 father non-farmer 13 35.1 subtotal 37 100 bmi is taken as an indicator of biological living standards, with higher values indicating better living conditions. bmi is stratified by measurement period and residence at time of measurement, and the values are plotted in figure 1. our analysis reveals that individuals measured in the post-war period (1954-1956) had the lowest bmi values across all measurement periods. as an explanation, it is likely that international the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 60 relief aid was delivered during the korean war, but massive and permanent grain imports only started in 1956 in the form of u.s. loans under the public law 480 (pl 480) program (figure 2). figure 1: bmi by time of measurement and residence at time of measurement for illustration purposes, south korea imported about 1,633,000 metric tons of grain from 1956 to 1960, 3,442,000 metric tons of grain from 1961 to 1965, and 4,426,000 metric tons of grains from 1966 to 1970s (kim and joo 1982:32). most of these grains were given by the u.s. as a form of development aid to its allies during the cold war. in fact, south korea became one of the major beneficiaries of the program since the u.s. heavily invested into the south to prevent its collapse and contain the communist north. hence, individuals measured in the immediate post-war period from 1954 to 1956 were obviously cut-off from relief aid and thus unable to benefit from the massive and permanent pl 480 program. the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 61 figure 2: grain imports to south korea source: kim and joo (1982:32). individuals measured in the interwar period (1946 to 1949) had a relatively high mean bmi. for instance, among residents in seoul and southern korea, bmi peaked during the observed period. individuals measured during the critical japanese war mobilization period (1941-1945) did not fare too poorly, during which time korea was increasingly made a supply base for japan’s war efforts against the u.s. and its allies. it is possible that japan’s war mobilization did not strongly impact the korean peninsula, although further studies are needed to confirm this. indeed, mean height slightly improved in the early years of japanese colonization (choi and schwekendiek 2009; kim and park 2011), suggesting that biological living standards did not decline under colonial rule. expectedly, the korean war (1950-1953) negatively affected the biological living condition of koreans, although the post-korean war period was, as discussed, much more detrimental. another likely reason why the disruptive korean war did not affect the sample was that the bank employees were shielded from starvation during the war due to their better networks and resources. as put by an average korean housewife who barely escaped from the north korean troops all the way from the capital seoul to the port city of pusan in the southern tip of the peninsula during the war (kim 1989:39): i had earlier vowed to myself that no matter how badly off i was, i would never seek out small uncle [father's younger brother], because he had told us that he had no way to leave seoul. we found out later that he had gone to pusan in a truck sponsored by the bank where he worked. he took with him not only his entire family but even all his home furnishings. now, with my [starving] child almost dead, there was nothing i could do but go to the bank branch in pusan to find uncle, who was surprised and a little embarrassed to see me. he took me to the place where he was staying with his family: it was a huge house, big enough to hold many families. the floors were heated and the people were cooking and eating almost normally, very unlike refugees. the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 62 given the low sample size, let alone the extremely low subsample sizes by region, one has to take the analysis with caution. overall, one gets the impression that biological living standards first slightly improved during the occupation period, declined during the war period, and reached a trough in the post-war period. moreover, bmi values were consistently larger in the capital seoul compared to the other regions, perhaps due to better access to black markets and official food distribution centers. 4. comparison of findings how does the present sample compare to other historical populations? table 2 provides a bmi comparison with nineteenth century white american males, whereas table 3 references present data on males measured in pre-modern korea, colonial korea, and contemporary south korea. table 2: bmi status of interwar koreans according to united nations who classifications of bmi in comparative perspective with nineteenth century white americans target group underweight in % normal weight in % overweight in % total in % nineteenth century white americans (age 20s-30s) 2.3 81.6 16.1 100 early twentieth century koreans (age 20s-30s) 5.6 87.6 6.7 100 notes: overweight rates include obesity rates. source: this study and carson (2011). while most studies on biological standard of living have focused on height due to its availability over the centuries, only a few historical studies have made use of bmi data. carson (2011) analyzed the bmis of nineteenth century american prisoners, whereas komlos and brabec (2012) focused on nineteenth to early twentieth century american military recruits. only carson (2011) reported detailed bmi data, allowing a comparison with the present sample (table 2). however, bmi was reported according to international nutritional classifications. the bmi cut-offs for underweight, normal weight, and overweight individuals according to the un world health organization are as follows: underweight = bmi below 18.50, normal weight = bmi 18.50 to 24.99, and overweight (including obesity) = bmi 25.00 or higher. table 2 shows that interwar koreans were slightly more underweight (6%) than white americans (2%) in the nineteenth century. since americans in that sample were from the lower stratum (prisoners) and koreans in the current sample from the upper stratum (bank employees), underweight gaps between average koreans and americans were probably much larger. since bmi comparisons with other historical populations are difficult to make due to lack of data, table 3 adds the results of previous studies on korean height and weight. mean height of interwar koreans was 167 cm, indicating a minor improvement compared to joseon dynasty korea (166 cm) and colonial korea (166 cm). however, since interwar koreans were from the upper socioeconomic stratum, joseon dynasty koreans from the lower and middle strata (unfree ‘slaves’ the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 63 and commoners), and those from colonial korea from the middle and lower strata (political prisoners), one should take this comparison with caution. korean government employees (mostly teachers) born in 1954 had a final height of 169 cm, but they were also from the upper social stratum since their mean income was 50% higher than average (gill, 1998). however, koreans in the present sample (167 cm), who were born from the 1900s to 1930s, were somewhat shorter than korean government employees born some 25 years later (169 cm). whether or not the bank employees in the current sample or government employees born in 1954 were of higher socioeconomic status cannot be determined. lastly, comparison with a national sample of south koreans born in the 1970s revealed that contemporary people are strikingly taller (173 cm) and heavier (70 kg) as well as have a higher bmi (24 units) than interwar koreans (167 cm, 60 kg, 22 bmi units, respectively). table 3: bmi, height, and weight status of interwar koreans in comparative perspective with premodern, colonial, and contemporary koreans general historical period sample measurement period birth period anthropometrics mean bmi mean height in cm mean weight in kg joseon dynasty korea (1392 to 1910) militia recruits (males aged 2040) 1590s to 1720s mid sixteenth to early eighteenth century n/a 165.69 n/a colonial korea (1910 to 1945) political prisoners (males aged 2040) 1910s to 1940s 1890s to 1910s n/a 164.46 n/a occupied korea (1945 to 1948) and korean war (1950 to 1953) bank employees (males aged 2030s), this study 1930s to 1950s 1900s to 1930s 21.50 167.07 59.98 republic of korea (1948 to present) a: government employees (males aged 2040) 1994 1950s to 1970s n/a 169.27 (in 1954) n/a the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 64 b: national random sample (males aged 2529) 2002-2003 1970s 23.56 172.50 70.10 notes: the bmi of national random sample was calculated based on reported mean height and weight. source: this study and lewis et al. (2013:261), choi and schwekendiek (2009:260), schwekendiek and jun (2010), korean agency for technology and standards (2004:90, 120). 5. conclusion in summation, the biological standard of living in korea has been widely studied since the korean peninsula offers a rare opportunity to investigate the effects of colonialism, capitalism, and communism. however, previous studies have focused on joseon dynasty korea, colonial korea, south korea, and north korea by employing human height measurements. the present study fills a gap in the literature by employing bmi measurements of interwar koreans measured from the early 1940s to mid-1950s. this period is of special historical concern since it coincides with the end of world war ii, during which japan utilized the korean peninsula as a supply base, the chaotic foreign occupation period of korea (1945-1948), the korean war (1950-1953), and the early years after the war. this study is based on records of employees from a large korean bank, most of whom were of upper socioeconomic status. bmi values reached a trough in the latter period, indicating that biological living standards must have declined after the war. while the war destroyed korea’s economy, relief aid prevented the total collapse during war times. however, international massive grain programs such as the pl 480 program were still not implemented, leaving people vulnerable directly after the war. unexpectedly, bmi values were the highest during the chaotic occupation period. most individuals were probably shielded from economic depression at that time due to their higher socioeconomic status. the latter result is broadly in line with a study on final height of germans born during world war i (blum 2013), suggesting that wealthier individuals were more likely to purchase food on the black market. acknowledgements this work was supported by the ministry of education of the republic of korea and the national research foundation of korea (nrf-2018s1a6a3a01023515). the authors would like to thank seong-min paek for his assistance to compile the data. we also thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions to improve this paper. authors daniel schwekendiek sungkyunkwan university danjosch@skku.edu heejin park the biological standard of living in early south korea schwekendiek & park 65 kyungpook national university publishing timeline received 28 august 2018 accepted 14 october 2019 published 1 february 2020 references baten, j. and m. blum (2012). 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(2010). the plans that failed: an economic history of the gdr. new york and oxford, berghan books. table 1: descriptive statistics figure 1: bmi by time of measurement and residence at time of measurement figure 2: grain imports to south korea table 2: bmi status of interwar koreans according to united nations who classifications of bmi in comparative perspective with nineteenth century white americans table 3: bmi, height, and weight status of interwar koreans in comparative perspective with pre-modern, colonial, and contemporary koreans mise, t.-r., & busseri, m.a. (2020). the full life revisited: examining hedonia and eudaimonia as general orientations, motives for activities, and experiences of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 10(4), 74-86. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.951 michael a. busseri brock university, canada mbusseri@brocku.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 article the full life revisited: examining hedonia and eudaimonia as general orientations, motives for activities, and experiences of wellbeing taysa-rhea mise · michael a. busseri abstract: we examined the concepts of hedonia and eudaimonia with respect to general orientations to life, motives for activities, and experiences of wellbeing among young canadian adults (n = 325; m age = 19.10, sd = 2.18; 87% female). within concepts, moderate positive correlations were observed across facets of hedonia and eudaimonia. between concepts, correlations were strongest for wellbeing and weakest for motives. unique predictive associations of eudaimonic general orientations and motives for daily activities were found for both types of wellbeing. in support of the ‘full life’ hypothesis the highest levels of each form of wellbeing were found among individuals characterized by high (top 33%) levels of hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motivations for recent activities. findings support distinguishing between hedonia and eudaimonia as related but independent concepts, and provide new insights concerning hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motivations for activities in characterizing the full life. keywords: hedonia, eudaimonia, orientations, motives, wellbeing 1. introduction psychological research on the concept of ‘wellbeing’ typically focuses on experiences of ‘hedonia’ – usually studied in terms of satisfaction and enjoyment of one’s life, or ‘eudaimonia’ – which encompasses various aspects of positive functioning, including personal growth, authenticity, and meaning in life (ryan & deci, 2001; waterman, 1993). hedonia and eudaimonia apply not just to experiences of wellbeing, but also to how individuals generally orient their lives and their motives for the activities in which they engage (huta & waterman, 2014; peterson, park, & seligman, 2005). understanding the similarities and differences between these concepts is a central issue in research on positive psychology. to advance this issue, the present study examined associations between hedonia and eudaimonia with respect to general orientations to life, motives for daily activities, and experiences of wellbeing. furthermore, we evaluated the combined and unique predictive effects of hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for activities on hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. psychological research on wellbeing is dominated by two traditions: hedonia and eudaimonia (ryan & deci 2001; waterman, 1993). hedonic wellbeing is most often assessed as ‘subjective wellbeing’ (diener, 1984) and is typically studied based on three components: a subjective appraisal of satisfaction with one’s life overall, the presence of positive affect, and the absence of negative affect (busseri & sadava, 2011; diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999). various operationalizations of eudaimonic wellbeing have been proposed (huta & waterman, 2014), but it is often studied with respect to indicators of positive functioning including: positive about:blank hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 relationships, personal growth, life purpose, mastery, autonomy, and self-acceptance (ryff, 1989); as well as experiences of meaning, authenticity, and personal expressiveness (waterman, schwartz, zamboanga, et al., 2010). although conceptually distinct, self-report measures of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing are typically strongly and positively correlated (gallagher, lopez, & preacher, 2009; joshanloo, 2016; keyes, shmotkin, & ryff, 2002) leading some to question the validity (or value) of differentiating these two forms of wellbeing (kashdan, biswasdiener, & king, 2008). nonetheless, there remains strong interest in understanding the similarities and differences between hedonia and eudaimonia (huta & waterman, 2014), not only in terms of experiences of wellbeing, but also with respect to how individuals live their lives (ryan & huta, 2009), including their general orientations to life (peterson et al., 2005) and motives for personal activities (huta & ryan, 2010). general orientations refer to individuals’ underlying motives and goals for their lives, and are important contributors to wellbeing (diener & lucas 1999; peterson et al., 2005; ryan & deci 2001). although such tendencies guide behavior, situational constraints and immediate needs may also impact decisions concerning daily activities. thus, attention has been given to the types of motives that individuals pursue in their daily activities. whereas hedonically oriented individuals seek regular pleasure and enjoyment, eudaimonically oriented individuals seek meaningful and authentic experiences to becoming their best selves (huta & waterman, 2014; peterson et al., 2005). in contrast to the strong positive correlation typically observed between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, hedonia and eudaimonia as motives for activities may share considerably less overlap (huta, 2013; huta & waterman, 2014). furthermore, hedonic and eudaimonic motives may be related to similar as well as distinct aspects of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing (asano, tsukamoto, igarashi, & huta, 2018; huta, 2016; huta, pelletier, baxtor, & thompson, 2012; huta & ryan, 2010). in particular, some studies suggest that whereas hedonic motives may be linked with various aspects of hedonic wellbeing, such motives may not be uniquely related to indicators of eudaimonic wellbeing, controlling for eudaimonic motives. such findings suggest that hedonic motives such as seeking pleasure may be uniquely aligned with (or predictive of) hedonic wellbeing, rather than supportive of eudaimonic aspects of wellbeing such as personal growth and authenticity. in addition, whereas eudaimonic motives may be linked with eudaimonic wellbeing, such motives may not be uniquely related to hedonic wellbeing, controlling for eudaimonic motives (e.g. mcgregor & little, 1998; steger, kashdan, & oishi, 2008). such findings suggest that eudaimonic motives such as seeking meaning and purpose in one’s life may be uniquely aligned with (or predictive of) eudaimonic wellbeing, rather than supportive of hedonic aspects of wellbeing such as enjoyment and pleasure. other research suggests that eudaimonic motives for activities may contribute uniquely to both forms of wellbeing (e.g., huta et al., 2012). it is possible, therefore, that seeking meaning and excellence in one’s activities facilitates personal growth and authentic living as well as satisfaction and enjoyment (huta & waterman, 2014; waterman, 1993, waterman, schwartz, & conti, 2008). if so, hedonic and eudaimonic motives may work in complimentary, rather than opposing ways to promote a wide range of positive life outcomes (huta & waterman, 2014; ryan & huta, 2009). in support of this ‘full life’ notion (seligman, 2002), some studies suggest that the most positive outcomes (including wellbeing, psychological functioning, and academic success) are found among individuals reporting higher levels of both hedonic and eudaimonic orientations or motives. importantly, research on the full life has focused either on general orientations to life (peterson et al., 2005; schueller & seligman, 2010) or motives for activities (huta & ryan, 2010; kryza-lacombe, tanzini, & o’neill, 2019), but not both. yet to be determined is how hedonic hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 and eudaimonic general orientations towards one’s life are related to hedonic and eudaimonic motives for activities, and how each of these relates to hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. 1.2 the present study in this study our aim was to further the understanding of hedonia and eudaimonia with respect to individuals’ general orientations towards their lives, motives for daily activities, and overall wellbeing. we predicted positive associations between each facet of hedonia (i.e., general orientations, motives for daily activities, wellbeing) and between each facet of eudaimonia. we also expected positive associations between each corresponding facet of hedonia and eudaimonia (e.g., hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations), but that such linkages would be stronger with respect to wellbeing than daily activity motives (huta & waterman, 2014). to inform the combined and unique predictive effects, we also examined general orientations and motives for daily activities as joint predictors of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, expecting positive correlations between each predictor and both forms of wellbeing (huta, 2016). we also expected the unique predictive effects of hedonic orientations and motives for activities to be limited to hedonic (rather than eudaimonic) wellbeing, whereas eudaimonic orientations and motives would uniquely contribute to the prediction of both forms of wellbeing (huta et al., 2012). finally, we evaluated the full life hypothesis (huta & ryan, 2010; peterson et al., 2005) based on consideration of general orientations and motives for daily activities. we expected that the highest levels of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing would be found among individuals characterized by high levels of hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and high levels of hedonic and eudaimonic motives for daily activities. 2. method 2.1 participants and procedure canadian undergraduate students from brock university, canada (n = 334; m age = 19.14, sd = 2.22; 87% female; academic majors included psychology, 31%, child and youth studies, 17%, and education, 11%) completed a questionnaire in small-group settings in return for course credit. nine participants were removed due to incomplete data (i.e., less than 50% of the data for at least one of the analysis variables described below). the final analysis sample thus comprised 325 participants (m age = 19.10, sd = 2.18; 87% female). 2.2 measures 2.2.1 hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for daily activities the hedonic and eudaimonic motives for activities was developed by huta and ryan (2010) to assess individuals’ motives for their activities, using the following prompt: “to what extent do you typically approach your activities with the following intentions, whether or not you actually achieve your aim?”. the nine-item scale comprises five hedonic (e.g., “seeking pleasure”) and four eudaimonic (e.g., “seeking to use the best in yourself”) items, each rated on a seven-point scale (1 = not at all and 7 = very much). wording for all nine items is provided in huta & ryan (2010, table 1). ratings for the hedonic and eudaimonic items are averaged separately. this scale was modified for the present purpose to measure the extent to which individuals (1) had a general orientation toward hedonic and eudaimonic aims in life, and (2) had hedonic and eudaimonic motives for their recent daily lives. to do so, participants completed the scale twice, the first time in response to the following prompt: “in general, how important is each of the following to you in your life?” ratings were averaged separately for the hedonic and eudaimonic hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 items (αs = .75 and .74) such that higher scores indicated stronger hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations toward one’s life, respectively. on a separate page, participants completed the scale a second time in response to the following prompt: “during the past week, to what degree did you approach your activities with each of the following intentions, whether or not you actually achieved your aim?” ratings were averaged such that higher scores indicated stronger hedonic and eudaimonic motives for recent daily activities, respectively (αs = .80 and .78). 2.2.2 hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing the satisfaction with life scale (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) was used to measure global life satisfaction. participants indicated the extent to which they agree with five statements on a seven-point likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, to 7 = strongly agree). ratings were averaged across items such that higher scores indicated greater satisfaction with life (α = .86). the scale of positive and negative experience (diener, wirtz, tov, et al., 2010) was used to measure the frequency of an individual’s positive and negative affective experiences over the past four weeks. the scale contains six items related to positive feelings and six items related to negative feelings. answers are indicated by a self-rating on a five-point likert scale (1 = very rarely or never, to 5 = very often or always). ratings were averaged, such that higher scores indicated more frequent positive and negative affective experiences respectively (αs = .83 and .83). the 18-item scales of psychological wellbeing (spwb, ryff, 1989; ryff & keyes 1995) was used as a global measure of six dimensions of psychological wellbeing: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. responses were indicated on a six-point likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree) with eight of the items reverse-coded. ratings were averaged across all 18 items, such that higher scores represented greater psychological wellbeing (α = .78). in addition, the 21-item questionnaire for eudaimonic wellbeing (qewb, waterman et al., 2010) was used as a general measure of six categories of eudaimonia: self-discovery, development of one’s potential, purpose and meaning, effort in pursuit of excellence, intense engagement, and enjoyment of personally expressive activities. responses were indicated on a five-point likert scale (0 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree) with seven of the items reverse-coded. ratings were averaged across all 21 items such that higher scores indicated greater eudaimonic wellbeing (α = .78). 3. results descriptive statistics for the study measures are shown in table 1 (below). 3.1 hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing in a preliminary analysis, confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the structure of the five wellbeing indicators. a one-factor model was tested in which all five indicators were specified as loading onto a single latent factor (latent factor variance was fixed to 1; all loadings were freely estimated). the overall fit for this model was poor (χ2 = 76.71, df = 5, p < .001; cfi = .87, srmr = .07, rmsea = .21) owing to a large residual correlation between the pwb and qewb scale scores. a second model was tested comprising two correlated latent factors in which life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect loaded onto a latent hedonic wellbeing factor, whereas the spwb and qewb loaded onto a latent eudaimonic wellbeing factor (variances for each factor were fixed to 1, loadings on each factor were freely estimated). this model provided excellent fit (χ2 = 3.59, df = 4, p = .465; cfi > .99, srmr = .01, rmsea < .01). thus, prior to hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 subsequent analysis, a composite hedonic wellbeing score was computed by standardizing the life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect (reverse-scored) values, then averaging the three measures and standardizing the resulting composite score. a composite eudaimonic wellbeing variable was computed by standardizing the two scale scores, averaging the two measures, and standardizing the resulting composite score. table 1. means, standard deviations, and correlations among study variables variable m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. general orientation-hedonic 5.59 0.80 - 2. general orientation-eudaimonic 5.87 0.78 .44* - 3. activity motives-hedonic 5.04 1.09 .47* .08 - 4. activity motives-eudaimonic 4.79 1.19 .15* .41* .19* - 5. satisfaction with life 4.33 1.19 .05 .14* .16* .25* - 6. positive affect 3.78 0.57 .19* .26* .21* .24* .55* - 7. negative affect 2.65 0.73 -.05 -.12* -.04 -.12* -.47* -.59* - 8. spwb 4.47 0.56 .17* .43* .06 .29* .47* .50* -.45* - 9. qewb 2.65 0.43 .14* .45* -.04 .43* .35* .39* -.31* .64* - 10. composite hwb 0.00 1.00 .12* .21* .17* .25* .81* .86* -.82* .57* .42* - 11. composite ewb 0.00 1.00 .17* .48* .03 .40* .45* .49* -.42* .91* .91* .54* - note. n = 325. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing score. qewb = questionnaire of eudaimonic wellbeing score. hwb = hedonic wellbeing. ewb = eudaimonic wellbeing. * p < .05. 3.2 correlations between hedonia and eudaimonia positive correlations were observed among the three aspects of hedonia (general orientations, motives for daily activities, and wellbeing); these correlations were stronger between general orientations and daily motives than between either of these scores and wellbeing. positive correlations were also observed among the three aspects of eudaimonia, with comparable magnitudes among general orientations, daily motives, and wellbeing. positive correlations also were observed between each corresponding pair of hedonic/eudaimonic concepts. the strongest correlation was found between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing; the weakest association was found between hedonic and eudaimonic motives for daily activities. 3.3 general orientations and motives for daily activities predicting wellbeing consistent with predictions, hedonic wellbeing was positively correlated with each of the general orientation and motives for recent activities measures; eudaimonic wellbeing was also positively correlated with each of these variables except hedonic motives for daily activities. to evaluate the combined and unique predictive effects of the general orientation and motives for daily activities scores on each form of wellbeing, we ran two multiple regression models. in these models, hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing scores were regressed simultaneously onto the hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 hedonic and eudaimonic general orientation and motives for daily activities. results are shown in table 2. the regression model explained 9% of the variance in hedonic wellbeing (r = .30, p < .001), and three of the four predictors were uniquely significant, in that higher hedonic wellbeing was uniquely predicted by stronger eudaimonic orientation, as well as stronger hedonic and eudaimonic motives for daily activities. the regression model explained 29% of the variance in eudaimonic wellbeing (r = .54, p < .001), and two of the four predictors were significant, in that higher eudaimonic wellbeing was uniquely predicted by stronger eudaimonic general orientations and eudaimonic motives for daily activities. table 2. regression of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing on hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for recent activities hedonic wellbeing eudaimonic wellbeing predictor b se p β b se p β general orientation-hedonic -.04 .09 .614 -.04 -.03 .08 .713 -.02 general orientation-eudaimonic .19 .09 .028 .15 .51 .08 <.001 .40 activity motives-hedonic .13 .06 .028 .14 -.04 .05 .476 -.04 activity motives-eudaimonic .14 .05 .006 .17 .21 .04 <.001 .25 note. n = 325. unstandardized (b) regression coefficients, standard errors (se), p values, and standardized (β) regression coefficients are shown by predictor (row variable) for hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing (column variable). 3.4 testing the full life hypothesis for each participant, the number of hedonic and eudaimonic general orientation and motives for daily activity scores falling into the top 33% of each distribution was counted. this ‘full life’ count (ranging from 0 to 4) was treated as a categorical independent variable in two between-subjects anovas with composite hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing scores as dependent variables. main effects were significant for both hedonic wellbeing (f(4,320) = 6.75, p < .001, η2 = .08) and eudaimonic wellbeing (f(4,320) = 15.06, p < .001, η2 = .16). as shown in figure 1 (below), higher levels of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing were found among individuals characterized by high levels of two or more of the hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for daily activities. follow-up pairwise comparisons indicated that individuals with a full life count of 2, 3, or 4 were characterized by significantly higher wellbeing than the other two groups. at the other extreme, the lowest levels of wellbeing were found among individuals not characterized by high levels on any of the hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for daily activities. follow-up pairwise comparisons indicated that individuals with a full life count of 0 were characterized by significantly lower wellbeing than each of the other groups. 4. discussion 4.1 associations between hedonia and eudaimonia within hedonic and eudaimonic concepts, general orientations and motives for recent activities were positively but moderately correlated, suggesting that individuals who oriented their lives hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 figure 1. standardized mean levels of wellbeing (y-axis) by full life count (x-axis) for hedonic (panel a) and eudaimonic (panel b) wellbeing. note. 95% confidence intervals are shown for each mean. ns = 84, 83, 85, 49, and 24, respectively, for full life counts of 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. toward generally seeking pleasure (for example) tended to report recently pursuing daily activities for similar reasons. although such findings may have resulted from the use of the same set of items to assess general orientation and motives for activities, these results may also suggest that hedonic and eudaimonic motives for daily activities provide some insight into individuals’ general orientations (as hypothesized by huta & ryan, 2010). yet such correspondence was not very strong, indicating that at least some individuals were engaging in recent daily activities for reasons that were inconsistent with their hedonic or eudaimonic orientations. these patterns are consonant with the separation between general motivation orientations and motive states proposed in other motivation research (carver & white, 1994; deci & ryan, 2008; elliot & thrash, 2010). the present findings thus support the value of examining general orientations and motives for daily activities as unique aspects of hedonia and eudaimonia. -0.80 -0.60 -0.40 -0.20 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 0 1 2 3 4 -0.80 -0.60 -0.40 -0.20 0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 0 1 2 3 4 a b hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 also noteworthy, associations between hedonia and eudaimonia were generally stronger for wellbeing than between motives for recent activities. such findings provide further indication that the separation between hedonia and eudaimonia may be clearer with respect to motives for daily activities than for experiences of wellbeing (huta & waterman, 2014). yet there was also evidence of an empirical distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. specifically, measures of the three components of subjective wellbeing (life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect) loaded strongly onto a latent factor which was correlated with, but separate from the two scales measuring various aspects of eudaimonic wellbeing. these findings indicate that the five wellbeing measures were not reducible to a single factor and thus support the separability of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, an issue which continues to be debated (e.g., disabato et al., 2016; huta, 2016). 4.2 predicting hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing further informing this debate, the present findings provide novel insights concerning similarities and differences between the two types of wellbeing based on their associations with hedonic and eudaimonic orientations and motivations for activities. importantly, the relative independence of hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for daily activities raises the possibility that they may have unique psychological significance. noteworthy in this regard were results from the regression models predicting hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. higher levels of both types of wellbeing were uniquely predicted by the degree to which individuals reported approaching their lives in eudaimonic ways (i.e., seeking excellence and authenticity) and engaging in recent daily activities for eudaimonic reasons. in addition, greater hedonic wellbeing was uniquely predicted by the degree to which individuals reported seeking enjoyment from their recent daily activities. previous research has demonstrated unique links between hedonic and eudaimonic motives or activities with corresponding experiences of wellbeing (e.g., mcgregor & little, 1998; steger et al., 2008). the present findings extend this work by revealing aspects of general orientations and motives for activities that have independent connections to each type of wellbeing. one interpretation is that a stronger eudaimonic orientation to one’s life and daily activities are important precursors to a wide range of wellbeing experiences, including positive experiences (e.g., satisfaction and enjoyment of one’s life) and positive functioning (e.g., authenticity, excellence, and meaning). hedonic motives for daily activities, in contrast, may set the stage for more immediate hedonic wellbeing experiences, but have little unique bearing on an enhanced sense of purpose and self-expressiveness (huta & ryan, 2010). furthermore, hedonic general orientation was not uniquely predictive of either form of wellbeing. such findings may suggest that of the two general orientations, generally seeking pleasure and enjoyment in one’s life is not uniquely conducive to wellbeing. yet other research has indicated unique links between both hedonic and eudaimonic orientations to life and various indicators of wellbeing (e.g., peterson et al., 2005; schueller & seligman, 2010). no previous studies have examined hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for activities as joint predictors in the same study. consequently, the present findings might suggest that a hedonic orientation may simply be the most redundant of the various orientations and motives for activities that we examined. differences in the unique predictors of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing might also reflect an asymmetry in the measurement of wellbeing. specifically, hedonic wellbeing indicators are more heavily-valenced cognitive-affective reactions to one’s life than the indicators of eudaimonic wellbeing, which primarily reflect experiences of flourishing and positive ways of functioning (huta & waterman, hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 2014). further research is needed to examine these possibilities before conclusions can be drawn concerning the unique predictive associations involving the individual aspects of hedonia or eudaimonia. 4.3 the full life various facets of hedonia and eudaimonic may also be conceptualized as complementary, rather than opposing or competing, parts of a broader system of wellbeing (huta & waterman, 2014; ryan & huta, 2009). such a system may function to allow individuals to view their lives as manageable (if not enjoyable) and meaningful, even in the face of adversity and threat (shmotkin, 2005). previous studies examining the full life hypothesis have found the highest levels of wellbeing among individuals characterized by higher levels of hedonic and eudaimonic orientations to their lives (peterson et al., 2005; schueller & seligman, 2010) or above-average levels of both hedonic and eudaimonic motives for activities (huta & ryan, 2010; kryza-lacombe et al., 2019). the present study extends this research by showing that the highest (vs. lowest) levels of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing were found in individuals characterized by high (top 33%) levels of all four (rather than no) types of general orientation and motives for recent activities. seeking both hedonia and eudaimonia in general and through one’s daily activities, therefore, may promote a wider range of positive outcomes (including positive experiences, feelings, and functioning) than orienting one’s life and daily activities toward either pleasure and satisfaction or authenticity and meaning. we speculate that such complementarity has benefits in terms of the psychological coherence experienced when one’s motives for daily activities are congruent with core aspects of the self, including one’s general orientation to life (huta & waterman, 2014; mcgregor & little, 1998). nonetheless, comparably high levels of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing were also found among individuals characterized by high levels of at least two of the general orientations and activity motives. such findings suggest that positive wellbeing outcomes may require only, or be supported by even a ‘partially full’, rather than a completely full life – a finding that may have practical significance given that it likely represents a more realistic goal for many individuals. future studies should seek to replicate this particular finding, however, and also further inform the significance of various combinations of hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and activity motives. 4.4 limitations and future directions in addition to the caveats discussed above, we note that future research is needed to examine the reliability and generalizability of our findings beyond the present sample of younger (primarily female) adults from canada. additional testing with more diverse samples of participants, including with respect to age, health status, and other sociodemographic factors relevant to hedonic and eudaimonic orientations, motives, and wellbeing would be valuable. given differences between western and eastern conceptualizations of happiness and wellbeing (joshanloo, 2014), cross-cultural testing is also critical. also noteworthy, the present predictive results did not inform the underlying mechanism(s). one possibility is that general orientations and motives for daily activities are connected to wellbeing via the types of daily activities in which one engages and resulting experiences of hedonia and eudaimonia in such activities (e.g., henderson, knight, & richardson, 2013; steger et al., 2008). such activities may also lead to greater hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing by satisfying basic psychological needs (ryan & deci, 2001). further studies are needed to assess hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 such potential mediating factors. we further note that such interpretations assume a causal direction flowing from general orientation and motives for daily activities to wellbeing. additional research employing a longitudinal design (e.g., huta & ryan, 2010) is needed to test these dynamics. we also note that some evidence suggests that hedonic and eudaimonic motives may comprise three, rather than two, factors (asano et al., 2018; bujacz et al., 2014). in future research it may thus be valuable to consider whether such distinctions are also relevant to general orientations and motives for recent daily activities, and their connections to wellbeing. furthermore, the motives scale from which the measures employed in the present work were modified (i.e., huta & ryan, 2010) does not assess the motivation to avoid negative outcomes (e.g., pain, distress). as a result, the extent to which this scale fully captures the key components of hedonia (huta & waterman, 2014) is unclear. further work is needed, therefore, to determine how results concerning the issues addressed in the present work may differ if hedonic orientations and motives for activities are assessed in terms of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. in addition, because the general orientations and motives for daily activities scales employed the same set of items, it may have artificially inflated the correlation between corresponding hedonic and eudaimonic scale scores. in future research, it would be valuable to use an alternative measure of general orientation such as the orientations to happiness measure (peterson et al., 2005) in order to provide additional information concerning the associations between hedonic and eudaimonic general orientation and motives for activities. finally, beyond the theoretical and scientific implications of the present findings, practical relevance also needs to be tested. in particular, the applied meaningfulness of the distinctions examined in the present work (i.e., hedonia vs. eudaimonia with respect to general orientations, motives for daily activities, experiences of wellbeing; pursuit of one versus multiple types of hedonic and eudaimonic activities) needs to be determined though, for example, intervention studies and qualitative analysis aimed at informing the implications of the present findings for the lives of individuals. 5. summary and conclusions hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing were identified as related but distinct factors. general orientations and motives for recent activities were related but separable, both within and between hedonic and eudaimonic concepts. eudaimonic (more so than hedonic) general orientations and motives for daily activities were uniquely associated with both forms of wellbeing. yet, consistent with the full life notion, both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing were highest among individuals characterized by high levels of hedonic and eudaimonic general orientations and motives for daily activities. we conclude, therefore, that studying hedonia and eudaimonia as related but distinct concepts provide valuable new insights, not only with respect to experiences of wellbeing, but also in terms of individuals’ general orientations to their lives and motives for their daily activities. acknowledgements this work was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. hedonia and eudaimonia mise & busseri www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 authors taysa-rhea mise brock university michael a. busseri brock university mbusseri@brocku.ca publishing timeline received 17 july 2019 revised submission received 18 march 2020 accepted 18 august 2020 published 30 september 2020 references asano, r., tsukamoto, s., igarashi, t., & huta, v. 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(2010). the questionnaire for eudaimonic well-being: psychometric properties, demographic comparisons, and evidence of validity. journal of positive psychology, 5, 4161. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760903435208 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.03.004 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-006-9020-7 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760903435208 ivtzan, i., gardner, h. e., & smailova, z., (2011). mindfulness meditation and curiosity: the contributing factors to wellbeing and the process of closing the self-discrepancy gap. international journal of wellbeing, 1(3), 316-327. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i3.2 itai ivtzan university college london itaiivtzan@awarenessisfreedom.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 316 article mindfulness meditation and curiosity: the contributing factors to wellbeing and the process of closing the self-discrepancy gap itai ivtzan · hannah e. gardner · zhanar smailova abstract: actual/ideal self-discrepancy is the measurable difference between an individual’s beliefs about who they think they are (actual self) and their image of the person they would ideally like to be (ideal self). when the self-discrepancy gap is small, higher psychological wellbeing exists. mindfulness meditation, by means of greater awareness of the continuous fluctuation of thought from one point to another, has been shown to increase self-acceptance, which can lead to minimizing self-discrepancy. additionally, curiosity is an important third factor in motivating the change required to reduce self-discrepancy. this study hypothesises that mindfulness meditation reduces actual-ideal self-discrepancy. additionally, it hypothesises that higher trait curiosity will lead to a larger reduction in self-discrepancy. one hundred and twenty participants took part in a mindfulness meditation course. before and after this, participants completed a selves questionnaire and the curiosity and exploration inventory. the findings confirm that mindfulness meditation can effectively reduce the gap between actual/ideal self attributes. in addition, curiosity is an influencing factor in making the largest changes in selfdiscrepancy after meditation. keywords: mindfulness meditation, curiosity, actual-self, ideal-self, self-discrepancy, positive psychology 1. introduction 1.1 self-concept self-concept is an innate drive to define ourselves based on our evaluation of how our behaviour compares with the behaviour of others, and the judgments of others about our own behaviour (sebastian, burnett, & blakemore, 2008). self-concept is our self-identity, a schema consisting of an organised collection of beliefs and feelings. in other words, self-concept provides a framework that determines how we process information about ourselves, including our motives, emotional states, self-evaluations, and abilities (back, schmukle, & egloff, 2009). self-concept is dynamic, as it responds to time alterations, challenges in the environment, and proactively motivates an individual towards change (gordon & gergen, 1968; markus & wurf, 1987). markus and nurius (1986) suggested that at any given time a self-concept is open to change in response to new experiences. in order to change our self-concept, various selfrepresentations exist which can serve as incentives or deterrents for our future behaviour (markus & nurius, 1986). self discrepancy theory (sdt; higgins, 1987) describes three selfconceptions: one that represents the ‘actual’ self, which is the representation of the attributes an individual possesses, and is often what is meant by self-concept (e.g., erikson, 1963; lynch, la http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ mindfulness meditation and curiosity ivtzan, gardner, & smailova www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 317 guardia, & ryan, 2009; mcdaniel & grice, 2007); one that represents an ‘ideal’ self, or the attributes an individual would ideally possess; and one that represents an ‘ought’ self, or characteristics the individual feels they should possess as their duty or obligation (radu & loué, 2008; higgins, 1989). a discrepancy can exist between any two self-concepts. if a person possesses an actual versus ideal discrepancy, their current state of attributes does not match their ideal state. when we believe a negative event will occur, anxiety is felt; if we believe a positive event will never occur, depressive affect is felt (higgins, bond, klein, & strauman, 1986; woodman & hemmings, 2008; scott & o’hara, 1993). longitudinal studies have found that an actual/ideal discrepancy is associated with later depressive symptoms, as the positive ideal leads to disappointment; actual/ought discrepancy is associated with social anxiety, as responsibilities can lead to worry over future events going wrong (strauman & higgins, 1988). various other researchers have also found evidence that a felt discrepancy between the actual self and what one hopes to be can lead to disappointment and dissatisfaction (e.g., boldero & francis, 2000; bruch, rivet, & laurenti, 2000; fairbrother & moretti, 1998). furthermore, accessibility to this discrepancy, through focusing on a potential or real negative event, can lead to heightened negative emotions (scheier & carver, 1977; higgins, bond, klein, & strauman, 1986). therefore, given the psychological distress caused by a discrepancy of the actual and ideal self, an individual is motivated to reduce the gap between their ideal and actual self. 1.2 meditation as a way of minimising self-discrepancy self-discrepancy occurs from false expectations – a prospect of something good which fails to happen – or the prospect of something threatening happening. meditation can be used to reduce the self-discrepancy gap. this is because meditation techniques aim to focus attention in a non-analytical way and attempt not to dwell on discursive, ruminating thought (moore & malinowski, 2009; shapiro, 1982). the present study uses mindfulness meditation, which involves individuals directly participating in each moment as it occurs with as much awareness as possible (ivtzan, 2008; zeidan, johnson, diamond, david, & goolkasian, 2010). mindfulness meditation is more specifically called ‚insight meditation‛ in buddhist traditions, or vipassanna, which in sanskrit means ‚to see clearly.‛ ‚mindfulness‛ refers to orienting one’s self to the present moment. definitions commonly emphasize maintaining an awareness of one’s immediate experience, as opposed to being distracted by the past or future, or being engaged in avoidance of one’s experience. mindfulness meditation is a formal discipline that attempts to create greater awareness and therefore foster greater insight in the practitioner. to support these definitions, teasdale and his colleagues (2002) offer a model of mindfulness meditation which allows the practitioner to engage with and interrupt negative thinking (that otherwise might contribute to psychological distress) in a healthy way. la toree (2003) discusses the benefits of mindfulness meditation in relation to the emotional benefits of self growth. her explanation is based on the idea that overwhelming emotions are better able to be accepted and processed because an individual is able to accept and own these feelings and experience them with a sense of safety provided by the experience. hundreds of empirical studies have been carried out on the range of effects of meditation (e.g. jain et al, 2007; murphy, donovan, & taylor, 1999). the practice of meditation has been used in psychotherapy, for promoting general wellbeing, as well as for the treatment of anxiety, addictions and pain management (marlatt & kristeller, 1999; rubin, 1996; kabat-zinn et al., mindfulness meditation and curiosity ivtzan, gardner, & smailova www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 318 1992). the link which explains the reasons behind the positive effects of meditation on wellbeing, however, is largely unexplored. 1.3 meditation and the self-concept one important benefit of meditation is the improvement of the self-concept and of selfacceptance (jimenez, niles, & park, 2010; turnbull & norris, 1982). this is underlined in a study by easterlin and cardena (1998) which reveals that more experienced ‘meditators’ were more likely to report a higher sense of ‚acceptance‛ towards their self-concept when under stress. in a study by turnbull and norris (1982) data were collected from participants before and after starting the regular practice of tm (transcendental meditation). results indicated that meditators began to perceive their actual selves as increasingly similar to their ideal and social selves (as they are envisaged by others), and that they developed a more strongly defined concept of their actual selves that involved increased self-acceptance. although mindfulness meditation is reported as having a powerful impact on the participant’s attitude towards himself and others (e.g., kabat-zinn, 1990) only a few studies have dealt with its influence on the self-concept (crane et al., 2008). as discussed by crane et al. (2008), there are two other links between mindfulness meditation and self-discrepancy. the first is that instead of trying to change and experience conflict through cognitive processing, mindfulness meditation invites practitioners to observe their thoughts in an open, accepting, and non-judgmental way. by doing this, mindfulness meditation protects the practitioner against over-engagement with their potential self-discrepancy and therefore reduces the accessibility of self-discrepancy in challenging experiences. the second is that practitioners focus on self-acceptance and self-kindness whilst removing the need to change. this attitude encourages them to re-evaluate problematic or perfectionist goals thus reducing levels of selfdiscrepancy. over time, the practice of mindfulness increases dispositional openness, through receptivity and curiosity (costa & mccrae, 1987). 1.4 trait curiosity leading to personal growth mindfulness is characterised by what is often referred to as ‘beginners mind’; being aware and interested in seemingly mundane and established environments. it is unsurprising, therefore, that both everyday mindfulness and mindfulness meditation practice are highly correlated to the personality trait openness to experience (baer, smith, hopkins, krietemeyer, & toney, 2006; ivtzan & conneely, 2009; lau et al., 2006; brown & ryan, 2003; thompson & waltz, 2007), which is strongly associated with trait curiosity (kashdan & steger, 2007). trait curiosity involves recognition, pursuit, and intense desire to investigate novel, challenging, or puzzling phenomena (kashdan, rose, & fincham, 2004; izard, 1977). two factors encapsulate the trait: exploration and absorption (kashdan, rose & fincham, 2004). by intentionally seeking new and challenging experiences, individuals can stretch or expand their knowledge, skills, and goal-directed efforts (e.g., ainley, hidi, & berndorff, 2002; fredrickson, 1998). additionally, curious people are able to engage for prolonged periods because the search for knowledge is in itself enjoyable (kashdan & steger, 2007), as are the thoughts about what remains to be discovered (bryant & veroff, 2007; wilson, centerbar, kermer, & gilbert, 2005). because of these characteristics, curiosity is linked to greater wellbeing in a number of different ways (e.g., naylor, 1981; park, peterson, & seligman, 2004). firstly, physical health is associated with curiosity, with those who are more curious aged 60-86 being more likely to be alive after five years, even after accounting for age, smoker status, and various diseases (swan & carmelli, 1996). secondly, curious people report more satisfying social interactions and mindfulness meditation and curiosity ivtzan, gardner, & smailova www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 319 relationships, and their partners describe them as interested and responsive (burpee & langer, 2005; kashdan & roberts, 2004). less curious people often rely on stereotypes, and avoid uncertainty by rejecting those who fail to conform (sorrentino, holmes, hanna, & sharp, 1995). finally, of the 24 via character strengths, curiosity was one of the most strongly linked to global life satisfaction, work satisfaction, living a pleasurable life, living an engaging life, and living a meaningful life (brdar & kashdan, 2009; park, peterson, & seligman, 2004; shimai, otake, park, peterson, & seligman, 2006). a higher propensity to seek out novel and challenging events leads to participation in growth-oriented behaviours such as meditation, from which meaning in life, personal growth and wellbeing derive. trait curiosity is important in relation to this study in two ways. firstly, it may be directly related to attempting to practice meditation, and being open to the positive changing effects of meditation. secondly, curiosity may be directly linked to a reducing self-discrepancy. this is because minimising a self-discrepancy gap requires motivation to alter one’s thought processes and/or behaviour. curiosity is a personality trait which is highly correlated with intrinsic motivation to cognate (cacioppo, petty, feinstein, jarvis, & blair, 1996), and motivation altering behaviours (reiss, 2004). 1.5 the present study despite promising findings on the effects of mindfulness meditation on wellbeing (carboy & baer, 2008; hjelle, 1974), further research is required to test the effectiveness of a mindfulnessbased intervention on self-discrepancy reduction. the current study expanded upon previous research by examining the potential benefits of a curiosity trait to cultivate mindfulness, a link not previously addressed. the first hypothesis was that mindfulness meditation would reduce a self-discrepancy gap between an actual and ideal self, because it encourages a nonjudgemental acceptance of the self. the second hypothesis was that the higher the individual’s trait curiosity, the more helpful the mindfulness meditation would be, as shown in a larger reduction in the self-discrepancy gap. this is because curiosity motivates an individual to change behaviour, and increases openness to the positive effects of meditation. 2. method 2.1 participants the sample consisted of 120 meditators attending a meditation workshop weekend in the ‚osho leela‛ meditation centre in gillingham, uk. of the 120 participants, 73% were female and 27% were male. participant ages ranged from 16-to-61 years (m = 36, sd = 15). 2.2 measures participants provided relevant demographics and completed the following measures to assess curiosity levels and their self-discrepancy score: curiosity and exploration inventory (cei; kashdan, rose, & fincham, 2004). the cei is a selfreporting instrument which assesses individual differences in the recognition and pursuit of novel and challenging experiences. it uses a seven-item likert-type scale with two factors. the first is exploration, which refers to striving for novel and challenging experiences (e.g., ‚i would describe myself as someone who actively seeks as much information as i can in a new situation‛). the second is absorption, which refers to the tendency to deeply engage in activities (e.g., ‚when i am participating in an activity, i tend to get so involved that i lose track of time‛). mindfulness meditation and curiosity ivtzan, gardner, & smailova www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 320 selves questionnaire (higgins, klein, & strauman, 1985). the selves questionnaire was used to measure participants’ level of self-discrepancy between actual and ideal selves. participants generated lists of up to 10 adjectives for each domain of the self: a) actual self, ‚your belief of the attributes and characteristics you currently possess‛ and b) ideal self, ‚your beliefs of attributes and characteristics you would ideally like to possess: that is the type of person you desire to be‛. participants were asked to generate the lists from their own standpoints. a two stage process (higgins, 1987) was used to quantify the discrepancy between the actual selfconcept and the ideal self-guide. the first stage involved a comparison of attributes in the actual self-concept to the attributes in the ideal self-guide using webster's new world thesaurus (laird, 2002). four types of attribute-pair relationships were calculated: (1) synonymous attributes that were found in the list of synonyms associated with the word, and were given a two-point weighting to the participant’s score, were classed as matches; (2) attributes that were not found in the list of synonyms in the dictionary but were associated with one of the words in the list were classed as mismatches of extent. these attributes were given a one-point weighting. (3) attributes that were antonyms were classed as mismatches; (4) attribute comparisons that yielded neither synonyms nor antonyms were considered nonmatches. nonmatches were not included in the calculation of self-discrepancy scores. in the next stage the magnitude of discrepancy was quantified. discrepancy scores were calculated by subtracting the total number of matches from the total number of mismatches, with true mismatches (attributes that were found in the list of antonyms in the dictionary) weighted twice as much as synonymous mismatches (attributes that were not found in the list of antonyms in the dictionary but were associated with one of the words in the list) and matches. 2.3 procedure the meditation workshop emphasised the need for spiritual development and used a variety of exercises as a way of experiencing mindfulness meditation. the workshop was intensive and lasted three days, throughout which participants learned mindfulness meditation in different environmental settings (e.g. walking outside in the garden or sitting still with eyes clo sed in a room). at the beginning of the workshop, participants were briefed and asked to fill in the two questionnaires. they completed the curiosity and exploration inventory (kashdan, rose, & fincham, 2004) and then filled in the selves questionnaire (higgins, klein, & strauman, 1985). at the end of the workshop they were asked to fill in the selves questionnaire again in order to measure their level of self-concept after the course. 3. results a two-stage process (higgins, 1987) was used to quantify the discrepancy between the actual self-concept and the ideal self-guide for each participant before and after meditation, as shown in figure 1 (below). mindfulness meditation and curiosity ivtzan, gardner, & smailova www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 321 figure 1: discrepancy scores for the first 20 participants before and after meditation table 1 shows that self-discrepancy mean scores after meditation (m = 7.70) decreased in comparison with scores before the intervention (m = 11.00). table 1: means, standard deviations and range of the discrepancy scores preand postmeditation n range mean sd minimum maximum pre-meditation 120 7.00 18.00 11.00 3.06 post-meditation 120 .00 11.00 7.70 3.11 the first hypothesis was that there would be a decrease in real-ideal discrepancy as a result of meditation practice. to test the difference in self-discrepancies preand post-meditation, a paired samples t-test was computed. the difference between scores pre(m = 11.00, sd = 3.06) and post-meditation (m = 7.70, sd = 3.11) was statistically significant: t(19) = 3.18, p < .005. curiosity scores, using the curiosity and exploration inventory (cei), were calculated for each participant. cei results indicated a higher than average level of curiosity in all participants (m = 5.09; sd = 0.72). to test the assumption of the second hypothesis, pearson product moment correlation coefficients were computed between cei scores and change in selfmindfulness meditation and curiosity ivtzan, gardner, & smailova www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 322 discrepancy scores. there was a statistically significant relationship (r = .69, p < .001) showing that a reduction in self-discrepancy scores is associated with a higher curiosity level.1 4. discussion 4.1review of findings this study aimed to analyse the association between meditation and a reduction in a discrepancy between ‘actual’ and ‘ideal’ selves. additionally, it aimed to explore the process by which meditation is most effective, by analysing the effect of a third variable in this process; trait curiosity. the first hypothesis was that there would be a decrease in real-ideal discrepancy as a result of mindfulness meditation practice. the study found that the practice of meditation had a salutary influence on a subject’s psychological state as measured by the selves questionnaire. an analysis of the profiles showed that after meditation the gap between participants ideal and actual selves reduced compared to before meditation. therefore, participants practising mindfulness meditation moved towards a psychological state to which they were aspiring when learning the technique. another purpose of the study was to test whether the changing scores in the actual-ideal discrepancies are positively correlated with levels of trait curiosity. the results reveal that the correlation was significant, suggesting that there is a relationship between curiosity and the psychological process of closing the gap between their actual-ideal self-concepts. in addition, a higher than average level of curiosity in all participants may suggest that people who are attracted to meditation and events that encourage personal growth and meaning in life, in general, are initially more curious than those who are not. thus, the results suggest that trait curiosity predicts wellbeing by leading to minimising the level of discrepancy between the actual and ideal selves. the results of this study indicate that mindfulness meditation leads to a psychological transformation from which participants feel more comfortable with themselves (lykins & baer, 2009). furthermore, meditating individuals might become accepting towards their self -concept and their self-representations, and as they experience relative peace, their vulnerability to dejection-related emotions reduces (woodman & hemmings, 2008; scott & o’hara, 1993). in a study by shapiro, schwartz, and bonner (1998), mindfulness based stress reduction (mbsr) was offered to medical and pre-medical students. this study included reduced self-reports of overall psychological distress including depression, reduced self-reports of anxiety and increased scores of empathy levels. the current study suggests that this process may at least partly depend on a decrease in self-discrepancy. the current study, therefore, encourages the understanding of mindfulness meditation as an important intervention tool leading to psychological wellbeing. any health practitioner might benefit from understanding mindfulness meditation as a potential intervention which might allow clients and patients a more coherent sense of self which is accompanied with a deeper feeling of acceptance. the findings that curiosity is (1) an important factor in how successful mindfulness meditation is in reducing self-discrepancy, and (2) higher in the meditators overall, suggests that curiosity is crucial to providing a sense of life direction and purpose. findings are also in line with tomkins’ (1962) conclusion that curiosity has a distinct function of motivating the exploration of the self and the world, and thus expanding knowledge and skills. finally, the 1 it should be noted that the veracity of this surprisingly strong result has been questioned since the publication of this article. the authors maintain that the result is legitimate, but they were unable to obtain the original data that could have verified this result. mindfulness meditation and curiosity ivtzan, gardner, & smailova www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 323 results of this investigation are consistent with the behavioural congruence model (côté & moskowitz, 1998), which states that people high in trait curiosity tend to extract greater meaning and satisfaction from life. the present research focused on the consequences of mindfulness meditation for wellbeing, but future research could explore a number of related avenues. firstly, a longitudinal study would allow the discovery of whether meditation can alter trait curiosity. assessing individuals over a significant time would additionally analyse long-term benefits of mindfulness training on self-discrepancy. secondly, personality traits such as neuroticism may negatively impact on the effect of meditation. finally, we are as yet unclear about the positive effect of personality traits paired with meditation on other factors which influence wellbeing and selfand other-acceptance. therefore, extended research beyond this paper would greatly develop our limited understanding of the interplay of mindfulness meditation and personality on wellbeing. this study advocates that mindfulness meditation can effectively reduce the gap between actual and ideal self attributes, leading to potential greater wellbeing. in addition, curiosity may act as a tool for searching and obtaining engagement with personally meaningful activities which might be beneficial to wellbeing. both internal factors (e.g. curiosity) and external factors (e.g. accessibility of meditation) interplay to produce higher psychological wellbeing. authors itai ivtzan university college london itaiivtzan@awarenessisfreedom.com hannah e. gardner university college london h.gardner@psych.york.ac.uk zhanar smailova university college london z.smailova@ucl.ac.uk publishing timeline received 30 july 2011 accepted 25 september 2011 published 25 october 2011 updated 14 february 2013 references ainley, m., hidi, s., & berndorff, d. 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(2010). mindfulness meditation improves cognition: evidence of brief mental training. consciousness and cognition, 19, 597-605. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014 dodge, r., daly, a., huyton, j., & sanders, l. (2012). the challenge of defining wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 222-235. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i3.4 rachel dodge cardiff metropolitan university radodge@cardiffmet.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 222 article the challenge of defining wellbeing rachel dodge · annette p. daly · jan huyton · lalage d. sanders abstract: wellbeing is a growing area of research, yet the question of how it should be defined remains unanswered. this multi-disciplinary review explores past attempts to define wellbeing and provides an overview of the main theoretical perspectives, from the work of aristotle to the present day. the article argues that many attempts at expressing its nature have focused purely on dimensions of wellbeing, rather than on definition. among these theoretical perspectives, we highlight the pertinence of dynamic equilibrium theory of wellbeing (headey & wearing, 1989), the effect of life challenges on homeostasis (cummins, 2010) and the lifespan model of development (hendry & kloep, 2002). consequently, we conclude that it would be appropriate for a new definition of wellbeing to centre on a state of equilibrium or balance that can be affected by life events or challenges. the article closes by proposing this new definition, which we believe to be simple, universal in application, optimistic and a basis for measurement. this definition conveys the multi-faceted nature of wellbeing and can help individuals and policy makers move forward in their understanding of this popular term. keywords: definition, equilibrium, challenges, resources 1. introduction research in wellbeing has been growing in recent decades (e.g., diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; kahneman, diener, & schwarz, 1999; keyes, schmotkin, & ryff, 2002; stratham & chase, 2010; seligman, 2011). however, very early on in the research ryff and keyes (1995) identified that ‚the absence of theory-based formulations of well-being is puzzling‛ (pp. 719–720). the question of how wellbeing should be defined (or spelt) still remains largely unresolved, which ‚has given rise to blurred and overly broad definitions of wellbeing‛ (forgeard, jayawickreme, kern, & seligman 2011, p. 81). this deficit can be traced back as far as ryff (1989a), who believed that ‚there has been particular neglect < *in+ the task of defining the essential features of psychological wellbeing‛ (p. 1069). indeed, thomas (2009) argued that wellbeing is ‚intangible, difficult to define and even harder to measure‛ (p. 11). a theme that will run through this paper is the difference between the ‘description’ of a construct and its ‘definition’. as interest in the measurement of wellbeing grows, there is a greater necessity to be clear about what is being measured, and how the resulting data should be interpreted, in order to undertake a fair and valid assessment. therefore, any new definition must go beyond an account or description of wellbeing itself, and be able to make a clear and definite statement of the exact meaning of the term. consequently, the aim of this paper is to propose a definition of what constitutes wellbeing: ‚a complex, multi-faceted construct that has continued to elude researchers’ attempts to define and measure‛ (pollard & lee, 2003, p. 60). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 223 2. the historical background to wellbeing research knowing the historical background to the study of wellbeing is necessary to the definition of wellbeing. two approaches emerged: the hedonic tradition, which accentuated constructs such as happiness, positive affect, low negative affect, and satisfaction with life (e.g., bradburn, 1969; diener, 1984; kahneman, diener, & schwarz, 1999; lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999); and the eudaimonic tradition, which highlighted positive psychological functioning and human development (e.g., rogers, 1961; ryff, 1989a; 1989b; waterman, 1993). however, despite the differences in approach, most researchers now believe that wellbeing is a multi-dimensional construct (e.g., diener, 2009; michaelson, abdallah, steuer, thompson, & marks, 2009; stiglitz, sen, & fitoussi 2009). consequently, the diversity of dimensions has created a ‚confusing and contradictory research base‛ (pollard and lee, 2003, p. 2). an early attempt to define wellbeing was bradburn’s (1969) classic research on psychological wellbeing. his work marked a move away from the diagnosis of psychiatric cases to the study of psychological reactions of ordinary people in their daily lives. his discussion stemmed from his interest in how individuals coped with the daily difficulties that they faced. bradburn highlighted how psychological wellbeing (which he also referred to as happiness) was the variable that ‚stands out as being of primary importance‛ (p. 6). he linked this to aristotle’s idea of eudaimonia, which is now more commonly translated as wellbeing. aristotle believed this to be the overarching goal of all human actions. the majority of bradburn’s research focused on the distinction between positive and negative affect. his model specified that: an individual will be high in psychological well-being in the degree to which he has an excess of positive over negative affect and will be low in well-being in the degree to which negative affect predominates over positive (bradburn, 1969, p. 9) 3. what constitutes wellbeing? although ryff (1989a) criticised bradburn’s work for not defining the basic structure of psychological wellbeing, an emphasis on positive and negative affect has been central to the work of diener and suh (1997). they believed that: subjective well-being consists of three interrelated components: life satisfaction, pleasant affect, and unpleasant affect. affect refers to pleasant and unpleasant moods and emotions, whereas life satisfaction refers to a cognitive sense of satisfaction with life (diener & suh, 1997, p. 200) headey and colleagues (headey, holmstrom, & wearing, 1984a; 1984b; headey, 2006) picked up on the need for positive and negative affects to be seen as distinct dimensions, rather than opposite ends of the same continuum (bradburn, 1969) as they are ‚only moderately negatively correlated‛ (headey, 2006, p. 2). this was more recently supported by lee and ogozoglu (2007) and singh and duggal jha (2008). ryff’s early work (ryff, 1989a) identified aspects that constitute wellbeing: autonomy; environmental mastery; positive relationships with others; purpose in life; realisation of potential and self-acceptance. more recent research has placed different emphases on what wellbeing is: ability to fulfil goals (foresight mental capital and wellbeing project, 2008); happiness (pollard & lee, 2003) and life satisfaction (diener & suh, 1997; seligman, 2002a). however, again, this highlights the problem that researchers have focused on dimensions or descriptions of wellbeing rather than on definitions (christopher, 1999). the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 224 over 30 years ago, shin and johnson (1978) seemed to move closer to defining wellbeing by stating that it is ‚a global assessment of a person’s quality of life according to his own chosen criteria‛ (p. 478) and this judgement is still reflected in today’s literature (zikmund, 2003; rees, goswami, & bradshaw 2010; stratham & chase, 2010). but what, exactly, is ‚quality of life‛? the world health organization defined quality of life as: an individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns. it is a broad ranging concept affected in a complex way by the person’s physical health, psychological state, personal beliefs, social relationships and their relationship to salient features of their environment (world health organization, 1997) this emphasis on achieving goals reflects the work of emerson (1985) and felce and perry (1995), who believed that wellbeing stems from individuals’ perception of their current situation and their aspirations. however, a problem with the term ‘quality of life’ is that it is used interchangeably with ‘wellbeing’ in a variety of disciplines. many believe that this has made the task of defining wellbeing ‚conceptually muddy‛ (morrow & mayall, 2009, p. 221). however, stratham and chase (2010) argue that the term wellbeing has enabled psychologists to ‘de-medicalise’ (p. 5) the concept of health. consequently, it is now possible to consider quality of life separately from ideas of illness. this neatly reflects the seminal work of herzlich (1973), who placed great emphasis on the attitude of the individual towards health, very like the current emphasis of wellbeing research using subjective wellbeing measures. herzlich explained how health can be viewed in both a positive and negative light. firstly, it can be seen as an ‚absence of illness‛ (p. 53). indeed, she discussed how individuals might not notice health until something affects it. on the other hand, herzlich proposed that health can be seen in a positive light ‚as a presence of which one is fully aware because of one’s feelings of freedom and of bodily and functional well-being‛ (p. 53). another useful point made by herzlich is how important it is to define ‚what constitutes normality‛ (p. 55). however, she admitted that normality was very difficult to evaluate. this difficulty of reaching a definition of normality also reflects the current problem of attempting to define wellbeing. herzlich believed just identifying an ‚absence of illness‛ was inadequate in terms of defining normality. furthermore, she suggested that ‚some writers have insisted that it may be futile to try to treat health as a single concept‛ (p. 55). this view is reflected in a recent article by forgeard and colleagues (2011), who propose that: some researchers have preferred to ignore the multifaceted nature of wellbeing and equate it with one construct (often life satisfaction), leading to the unfortunate omission of other important aspects of wellbeing (p. 81) consequently, it seems that a narrow emphasis on quality of life cannot adequately help us to define wellbeing. indeed, it would seem that quality of life appears to be a dimension of wellbeing rather than an all-embracing definition. the focus on positive functioning that has attracted increased attention in the past few years (duckworth, steen, & seligman, 2005; linley & joseph, 2004; linley, joseph, harrington, & wood, 2006) dates back to william james' writings on healthy mindedness (james, 1902), and spans nearly 60 years to the work of rogers (1961), who discussed wellbeing in terms of ‚the good life‛ (p. 186). he believed that each individual strived towards becoming a ‚fully functioning person‛ who is open to experience, is trusting in his/her own organism, and leads the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 225 an increasingly existential life (rogers, 1961, p. 187–189). his work has partly influenced the work of ryff and singer (2008) in their development of core dimensions of psychological wellbeing (pwb): self-acceptance; purpose in life; environmental mastery; positive relationships; personal growth; and autonomy. an interesting development is the way in which this area of wellbeing has impacted on clinical psychology. joseph and wood (2010) have called for clinical psychology to adopt measures of positive functioning. this is because they believe that psychiatry has adopted a restricted view of wellbeing, seeing it as ‚an absence of distress and dysfunction‛ (p. 831). therefore, the adoption of positive function would naturally broaden the field. they also believe that there is a possibility that this new slant on measurement will allow for prediction and treatment of distress and dysfunction. research in this area has been undertaken by keyes (2002; 2005), who views mental health as a syndrome of wellbeing symptoms. he believes that mental health is created ‚when an individual exhibits a high level on at least one symptom of hedonia and just over half the symptoms of eudaimonia, i.e., positive functioning in life‛ (keyes, 2009, p. 15). in his 2002 research, keyes asked youths to report the frequency of three symptoms of emotional wellbeing, four symptoms of psychological wellbeing and five symptoms of social wellbeing. keyes made a ‚diagnosis of flourishing‛ if the individual displayed a third of the emotional symptoms, four of the psychological symptoms and five of the nine symptoms of positive flourishing ‚almost every day‛ or ‚every day‛ in the past thirty days. the work of keyes has led to the use of the terms ‘flourishing’ and ‘languishing’ as scientific concepts, rather than as philosophical ideals, as they had been previously presented (e.g., griffin, 1986; sumner, 1996; hurthouse, 1999; nussbaum, 2000). keyes’ work had a direct influence on the formulation of ‚a well-being manifesto for a flourishing society‛ by shah and marks (2004). this rather uplifting and encouraging document highlights that one of the key aims of any democratic government should be ‚to promote the good life: a flourishing society, where citizens are happy, healthy, capable and engaged – in other words with high levels of well-being‛ (p. 2). the manifesto goes on to clarify what shah and marks consider wellbeing to be: well-being is more than just happiness. as well as feeling satisfied and happy, well-being means developing as a person, being fulfilled, and making a contribution to the community (2004, p. 2) unfortunately, again, this appears to be more of a description of wellbeing rather than a definition. the term ‘flourishing’ has now become synonymous with the positive psychology movement. indeed, gable and haidt (2005) explain that ‚positive psychology is the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions‛ (p. 104). in a systematic examination of literature, alkire (2002) noted 39 varying endeavours between 1938 and 2000 to define a ‘flourishing’ life. the undeniable leader of the positive psychology movement is martin seligman. on the first day of his presidency of the american psychological society (apa) in 1998 he stated that: i realized that my profession was half-baked. it wasn't enough for us to nullify disabling conditions and get to zero. we needed to ask, what are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? how do we get from zero to plus five? (seligman, 1998, cited in wallis, 2005, online) the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 226 more than ten years on, seligman has recently published his latest book entitled flourish (seligman, 2011), in which he outlines his new ‘dynamic’ concept of wellbeing, which moves away from theories based purely on happiness. the rationale behind this welcome departure from a now rather over-used term is because, according to seligman (2011), the notion of ‘happiness’ is an awkward construct that hides the true, complex, nature of human flourishing. he clearly states the rationale behind this change in direction: i used to think that the topic of positive psychology was happiness< i now think that the topic of positive psychology is well-being, that the gold standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing. (seligman, 2011, p. 13) flourish discusses his theory with great clarity, but in terms of resolving the debate on defining wellbeing, it is disappointing. his 24-page chapter entitled ‘what is well-being?’ fails to achieve its aim. in fact, seligman states: well-being theory denies that the topic of positive psychology is a real thing; rather the topic is a construct – well-being – which in turn has several measurable elements, each a real thing, each contributing to well-being, but none defining well-being. (2011, p. 15) instead, his new theory of wellbeing concentrates, yet again, on elements of wellbeing which he believes are a set of building blocks for a flourishing life: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (perma). at this stage, the pursuit of a definition of wellbeing may appear bleak. however, we disagree with seligman that wellbeing is a construct. this would imply that wellbeing is ‚not presently observable or objectively measurable but is assumed to exist because it < gives rise to measurable phenomena‛ (reber, 1995, p. 157). from the discussion so far, this obviously is not true. instead, it is proposed that wellbeing should be considered to be a state – ‚a condition of a system in which the essential qualities are relatively stable‛ (reber, 1995, p. 750). 4. equilibrium a theory that supports reber’s proposal is the dynamic equilibrium theory of wellbeing (now more often referred to as set-point theory). this was originally proposed 23 years ago by headey and wearing (1989) and suggested links between personality, life events, wellbeing and illbeing. the theory built on the work of brickman and campbell (1971), who had previously demonstrated that individuals tend to return to a baseline of happiness even after major life events. headey and wearing continued to research their model (1991; 1992) and believed that ‚for most people, most of the time, subjective well-being is fairly stable. this is because stock levels, psychic income flows and subjective well-being are in dynamic equilibrium‛ (1991, p. 49). this emphasis on equilibrium is not new and reflects, yet again, the work of herzlich (1973). her research emphasised that individuals saw equilibrium not only as a norm but also as a state that they would like to ‚attain or keep‛ (p. 59). interestingly, in contrast to headey and wearing’s idea that most individuals have stable wellbeing, herzlich’s interviewees saw it as a rare occurrence. however, herzlich noted how often equilibrium was referred to by her participants and that it had a wide variety of applications. she found that the word ‚expresses a whole area of individual experience. it serves, in a way as a distillation of the language of health‛ (p. 59). she went further to fully explain what equilibrium is, in terms of health: the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 227 concretely, equilibrium comprises the following themes: physical well-being, plenty of physical resources; absence of fatigue; psychological well-being and evenness of temper; freedom of movement and effectiveness in action; good relations with other people. (herzlich, 1973, p. 60) the continued aim of headey and wearing’s research has been to ‚understand how people cope with change and how their levels of well-being are affected‛ (1992, p. 6). they propose that a change in wellbeing occurs only when, due to external forces, ‚a person deviates from his or her equilibrium pattern of events‛ (1992, p. 93). consequently, headey and wearing propose a definition of wellbeing in which wellbeing is shown ‚as depending on prior equilibrium levels of wellbeing and of life events, and also on recent events‛ (1992, p. 95). this reflects their framework for analysing subjective wellbeing (swb), which considers the relationship between stocks and flows: figure 1. headey & wearing’s (1991) stocks and flows framework (p. 56) in this model, headey and wearing proposed that differences between individuals in terms of swb are due to ‘stable stocks’ (otherwise known as stable personal characteristics). ‚as a result of stable stocks each person has a level of subjective wellbeing which represents his/her own ‚normal‛ equilibrium level‛ (1991, p. 57). stocks are drawn upon to deal with specific life experiences (‘flows’) so that satisfaction is enhanced and distress is diminished. consequently, ‚it is more appropriate to regard subjective well-being as a fluctuating state rather than a stable trait‛ (p. 56). the theory has received much empirical investigation (ormel & schaufeli, 1991; ormel & wohlfaryh, 1991; suh, diener, & fujita, 1996). suh and colleagues (1996) tested the dynamic equilibrium theory by tracking 222 psychology students (aged 20–21) during a transitional period of their life (which was their college graduation) and examined the effect of this life event on their swb and the time it took these participants to adjust (to return to their state of equilibrium). their findings supported the dynamic equilibrium model by demonstrating that social background  sex  age  socio-economic status personality  extraversion  neuroticism  openness social network  intimate attachments  friendship network favourable events which yield satisfaction (income gains) adverse events which yield distress (income loss) life satisfaction positive affect negative affect stocks flows/psychic income subjective wellbeing the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 228 ‚only recent life events influence swb and that the impact of magnitude drops quickly afterward‛ (p. 1095). consequently, in trying to define wellbeing, it is justified to consider the state of equilibrium as central. 5. challenges a more recent extension of this theory has been explored by cummins (2010). now the term ‘equilibrium’ has been replaced by ‘homeostasis’; and the term ‘life events’ with the term ‘challenge’: figure 2. cummins’ changing levels of swb cummins’ theory focuses on the strength of a challenge and how this affects the level of swb. this includes a derived set-point range (70 to 80 points) that was determined by previous research undertaken by cummins (1995; 1998). the emphasis of the model is the role of homeostasis in defending the set point of swb. the model may be a little confusing and complex at first glance. however, it tries to demonstrate different phases denoted by the letters ‘a’ to ‘c’.  when an individual experiences no challenge, swb stays at the set-point.  when an individual experiences mild challenge, the level of swb will vary slightly within the set-point range (phase a)  phase b signifies where swb is prevented from decreasing below the set point, due to the strong homeostatic defence.  phase c signifies a situation where the challenge is too strong for homeostasis to manage. swb would now fall sharply. consequently, it would seem appropriate that any definition of wellbeing centres on a state of equilibrium or balance that can be affected by life events or challenges. set homeostasis point defensive range challenging conditions 80 70 a b c upper threshold lower threshold strong homeostatic defense lower threshold swb very strong challenge 50 no challenge strength of challenging agent the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 229 6. resources linked to challenges is the idea that each individual develops relevant skills or resources to cope with the trials they face. this balanced rationale between skills and challenges has been central to mihaly csikszentmihalyi’s (1975) concept of ‘flow’ – ‚the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter‛ (2002, p. 4), which in turn leads to happiness. the original model assumed that enjoyment would happen when the strength of challenge and skills were both very low as well as when they were both high, as demonstrated in the following diagram: figure 3. demonstration of the relationship between challenges and skills (csikszentmihalyi, 2002, p. 74) ∞ (high) c h a ll e n g e s (low) 0 0 (low) skills (high) ∞ however the new model predicts flow only when challenges and skills are relatively in balance (csikszentmihalyi, 2002, p. 252). hendry and kloep’s (2002) lifespan model of development also explores the interaction between life challenges and personal resources. their theory is based on five key principles: 1) to stimulate development, individuals need challenge. 2) successful solving of the challenge leads to development. 3) if a challenge is not solved, this will lead to problems in meeting future challenges. 4) the process of solving challenges is ‚an interactional, dialectical process‛ (p. 16) that leads to changes in the individual and/or the environment and accordingly stimulates development. 5) individuals will have differing levels of resources to meet the challenges. although this theory is not directly linked to wellbeing, it reflects dynamic equilibrium theory in terms of challenges that an individual faces and in terms of how wellbeing is a fluctuating state. it also links to cummins’ idea of a homeostasis defensive range in terms of the resource pool that hendry and kloep discuss. 7. a new definition of wellbeing the concept of wellbeing is undeniably complex, considering the aspects previously discussed. this paper has highlighted the difficulty that researchers have had with defining wellbeing but it has also recognised that previous research has been driven by dimensions and descriptions rather than definitions. in order to move closer to a new definition of wellbeing, therefore, this paper has focused on three key areas: the idea of a set point for wellbeing; the inevitability of anxiety flow channel a3 a4 a1 a2 boredom the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 230 equilibrium/homeostasis; and the fluctuating state between challenges and resources. consequently, we would like to propose a new definition of wellbeing as the balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced: figure 4. definition of wellbeing the see-saw represents the drive of an individual to return to a set-point for wellbeing (brickman and campbell, 1971; headey and wearing 1989, 1991, 1992) as well as the individual’s need for equilibrium or homeostasis (herzlich, 1973; cummins, 2010). now, however, the stocks and flows of headey and wearing (1992) have been replaced by the resources and challenges of hendry and kloep (2002) and are the elements that can affect the individual’s equilibrium; tipping the see-saw from side to side, supporting csikszentmihalyi’s (2002) updated concept of ‘flow’. this works just as kloep, hendry and saunders (2009) described: each time an individual meets a challenge, the system of challenges and resources comes into a state of imbalance, as the individual is forced to adapt his or her resources to meet this particular challenge (p. 337). in essence, stable wellbeing is when individuals have the psychological, social and physical resources they need to meet a particular psychological, social and/or physical challenge. when individuals have more challenges than resources, the see-saw dips, along with their wellbeing, and vice-versa. the definition supports headey and wearing’s (1992) aim to ‚understand how people cope with change and how their levels of well-being are affected‛ (p. 6). however, the proposed definition contradicts cummins’ idea of swb being static when the individual is not challenged. instead, we would argue, in line with hendry and kloep’s theory, that a lack of challenge will lead to ‚stagnation‛ (hendry & kloep, 2002), which will also affect the balance of the see-saw. the dynamic nature of the definition also reflects the viewpoint of nic marks, of the new economics foundation. he recently spoke of his interpretation of wellbeing on bbc radio 4’s reasons to be cheerful: wellbeing is not a beach you go and lie on. it’s a sort of dynamic dance and there’s movement in that all the time and actually it’s the functuality of that movement which actually is true levels of wellbeing (nic marks, radio 4, 7 january 2012) 8. the considered strengths of the new definition the authors of the current paper advocate that the vigour and freshness of this new proposed definition embraces a number of strengths: simplicity, universal application, optimism and basis for measurement. challenges psychological social physical wellbeing resources psychological social physical the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 231 8.1 simplicity firstly, the simple, yet precise nature of the definition answers forgeard and colleagues’ (2011) plea to move away from ‚broad definitions‛ (p. 81). as much as we are indebted to the work of headey and wearing (1992) and cummins (2010), each of their models was complex and difficult to follow at first glance. wellbeing has become a term used by the lay person, and is not just for the consideration of academics. consequently, the authors believe that we have a duty to communicate what wellbeing is, in a clear and effective manner. indeed, lilienfeld (2012) talks in a forthright manner about the public’s scepticism in regard to psychology and explains that we should be ready to communicate effectively when we ‚dare to venture outside of the hallowed halls of academia or our therapy offices to that foreign land called the ‘real world’<‛ (p. 1). consequently, we believe that the definition will be accessible in this forum. 8.2 universal application secondly, a true asset of the definition is its universal nature. the definition can be applied to all individuals regardless of age, culture and gender. however, this universal nature does not reflect ‚a pronounced increase in the popularity of reductionist explanations of human behaviour‛ (lilienfeld, 2012, p. 120) that has existed during the past several decades. instead, it allows for the notion that each individual has a unique resource pool which ‚determines whether or not a task an individual meets turns out to be a routine chore, a challenge < or a risk‛ (hendry & kloep, 2002, p. 24). 8.3 optimism the definition also reflects the current emphasis on positive psychology. it views individuals ‚as decision makers, with choices, preferences, and the possibility of becoming masterful, efficacious‛ (seligman, 2002b, p. 3). in a similar vein, csikszentmihalyi (2002) makes it clear that ‚happiness is not something that just happens < *it+ is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person‛ (p. 2). this puts the pursuit of wellbeing in the hands of individuals by teaching them that they can increase their resources or challenges to maintain a sense of equilibrium. as well as reflecting this new direction in psychology, it also echoes current trends within the national health service in the uk with the expert patient programme (epp) that was launched in 2002. this programme supports the idea of self-management: ‚whatever we do to make the most of our lives by coping with our difficulties and making the most of what we have‛ (martyn, 2002, p. 4). 8.4 basis for measurement finally, the proposed definition answers a number of the concerns expressed at the start of this paper. with wellbeing becoming tangible (thomas, 2009, p. 11) and operationalised, measurement becomes easier. this would extend the qualitative work undertaken by hendry and kloep (2002) on resources and challenges with the potential for developing a quantitative measure of wellbeing based on these two aspects and adds to the theoretical ideas already reviewed in this paper. the authors have already used the definition to develop a new wellbeing questionnaire that is currently being applied in a further education setting. this questionnaire was developed through focus groups that explored the challenges faced by students aged 16-18, and the level of resources they felt they currently had to deal confidently with these challenges. the questionnaire is helping students to identify for themselves what resources need further the challenge of defining wellbeing dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 232 development in order to maintain a stable level of wellbeing and it will be supported by a newly designed pastoral programme. although our current research is being undertaken in an educational location, if our proposed definition is accepted as a valid definition of wellbeing the questionnaire could easily be adapted and applied across a wide range of settings. to conclude, the publishing of this definition is timely given the intention of the uk government to implement measures of wellbeing for the uk as a whole. indeed, the office of national statistics recently opened a discussion paper on domains and measures of national wellbeing (beaumont, 2011). the paper states that the question of individual wellbeing ‚is an area which the national debate showed was important to people‛ (beaumont, 2011, p. 4) and which has consequently been placed at the heart of the national wellbeing framework. we believe that using the proposed definition of wellbeing could aid the measurement of national wellbeing and further the understanding of wellbeing as a whole. authors rachel dodge cardiff metropolitan university radodge@cardiffmet.ac.uk annette p. daly cardiff metropolitan university jan huyton cardiff metropolitan university lalage d. sanders cardiff metropolitan university publishing timeline received 14 january 2012 accepted 22 april 2012 published 29 august 2012 references alkire, s. 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(2020). measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport: validation of the eudaimonic wellbeing in sport scale. international journal of wellbeing, 10(1), 93-106. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i1.776 despina kouali the university of western ontario dkouali@uwo.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) 93 measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport: validation of the eudaimonic wellbeing in sport scale despina kouali · craig hall · paige pope abstract: the purpose of this study was to create and validate a sport-specific eudaimonic wellbeing measure (ewbss; eudaimonic wellbeing in sport scale) and included three phases. in phase 1, an initial pool of 19 items was developed and five items were selected by five experts to represent eudaimonic wellbeing in sport (ewbss). four hundred athletes (mage = 24.32, sd = 6.69) from various individual and team sports participated in phase 2. factorial validity and reliability scores were examined using confirmatory factor analysis and alpha coefficient calculations. results indicated initial evidence for both factorial validity and internal consistency of the ewbss. in phase 3, further psychometric testing of the ewbss with two independent samples (i.e., competitive and recreational athletes) ensued. the findings provided further evidence of sound validity and reliability scores of the ewbss in competitive athletes. partial support for the psychometric properties of the ewbss was provided in recreational athletes. as the validation of an instrument is an ongoing process, more research is needed to further evaluate the validity of the ewbss. keywords: eudaimonic wellbeing, validity, motivation, sport introduction within the literature, mental wellbeing has been viewed and used interchangeably with various terms such as quality of life, happiness, life satisfaction, vitality, and self-esteem (e.g., verkooijen, van hove, & dik, 2012). it is widely accepted that wellbeing has been derived from two distinct philosophical traditions: the hedonic view, which focuses on the pursuit of pleasure and pain avoidance, and the eudaimonic view, which focuses on living a meaningful life and self-realization (ryan & deci, 2001). while the hedonic perspective is perceived as to what constitutes a good life and targets specific outcomes, the eudaimonic perspective targets the content of an individual’s life together with the processes of a life well-lived (ryan, huta, & deci, 2008). based on the hedonic approach which was initiated from the greek philosopher aristippus, wellbeing refers to maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain to achieve human happiness (as a positive subjective state) and is assessed through subjective wellbeing (swb; diener, 1984). swb incorporates both cognitive (i.e., life satisfaction) and affective (i.e., presence of positive affect and article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 94 absence of negative affect, summarized as happiness) components and emphasizes individuals’ own evaluation whether a good life is being lived (i.e., subjective assessement of life; diener, 2000). initiating from aristotle’s philosophy, the eudaimonic approach emphasizes living well and reaching human potential and defines wellbeing in terms of the level to which an individual is fully functioning (ryan & deci, 2001; ryan & huta, 2009). based on this approach, wellbeing is operationalized as a set of wellness (i.e., the process of living well) aspects, such as vitality (ryan & deci, 2001; ryan et al., 2008). ryan and deci (2001), the originators of self-determination theory (sdt; deci & ryan, 1985a) introduced the term of eudaimonic wellbeing (ewb) in a review regarding the two traditions and defined it as a construct that refers to optimal experience and psychological functioning. sdt, as a theory about human motivation and personality, was developed by incorporating aspects from aristotle’s views about eudaimonia (ryan et al., 2008). ryan and colleagues, described eudaimonia as living well with specific characteristics: pursuing intrinsic goals, behaving autonomously, being mindful, and satisfying basic psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness). based on this view, ewb is portrayed as an outcome of eudaimonic living. accordingly, for optimal wellbeing, the fulfillment of the basic psychological needs of autonomy (i.e., sense of volition and choice), competence (i.e., sense of efficacy and mastery), and relatedness (i.e., sense of closeness to others) is required. specifically, when the psychological needs are completely satisfied, an individual’s motivation is self-determined (i.e., the pursuit of an activity by an individual because it is inherently enjoyable), resulting in enhanced wellbeing (e.g., high subjective vitality, growth; ryan & deci, 2000). in contrast, when the needs are thwarted, wellbeing is diminished (e.g., low subjective vitality, impaired functioning; bartholomew, ntoumanis, ryan, & thogersen-ntoumani, 2011). although the two approaches namely, hedonia and eudaimonia serve distinct roles in different forms of wellbeing (i.e., swb and ewb), there is evidence of considerable overlap (e.g., huta & ryan, 2010; waterman, schwartz, & conti, 2008). for instance, when an individual experiences eudaimonic living, he/she will also experience hedonic pleasure and enjoyment. sdt researchers have used a diverse set of wellness elements to operationalize ewb (ryan & deci, 2001). for example, the general causality orientation scale (deci & ryan, 1985b) has been used to assess motivational (i.e., autonomous) orientations, while the aspiration index (kasser & ryan, 1993) has been used to measure intrinsic goals or aspirations (i.e., relationships, personal growth, and community contributions). additionally, the subjective vitality scale (ryan & frederick, 1997) has been used to assess the degree to which an individual feels vital, energized, and alive, the mindful attention and awareness scale (brown & ryan, 2003) to measure awareness of and attention to what is occurring at the moment, and the basic psychological needs scale (gagné, 2003) to assess the extent to which a person feels satisfied by the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. employing a diverse set of wellness elements to operationalize ewb can be problematic as it adds burden to participants due to the sheer number of items, and there is potential of overlap in the operationalization of the elements included. wellbeing in sport individual’s wellbeing is influenced by different life domains (e.g., work, family). in a review regarding work settings, the specific life context was indicated to be critical for an individual’s perceived overall wellbeing (page & vella-brodrick, 2009). thus, context-specific wellbeing measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 95 measures targeting specific life domains may provide more detailed and precise information for peoples’ wellbeing (daniels, 2000). research in sport has underlined that sport engagement is associated with optimal levels of wellbeing and other positive outcomes (e.g., verner-filion, vallerand, amiot, & mocanu, 2017). however, negative experiences in sport may also occur with athletes often facing challenges and obstacles that have a detrimental influence on their physical and psychosocial health, and diminishing their wellbeing (bartholomew et al., 2011). several studies examining wellbeing in athletes have either neglected to provide a definition of the construct, used different labels to describe the construct resulting in conceptual ambiguity, or failed to distinguish between general wellbeing and wellbeing specific to the sport context (for a review see lundqvist, 2011). given that different factors may influence wellbeing in sport compared to wellbeing in general, assessing sport-specific wellbeing is warranted. global measurement tools that have been used to assess swb in athletes (e.g., golby & wood, 2016; kipp & weiss, 2015) are the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) and the positive and negative affect schedule (panas; watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988), which primarily address hedonic wellbeing. in regards to the eudaimonic approach, the scales of psychological well-being (spwb; ryff, 1989) has been employed with athletes to assess ewb on a global level (e.g., ferguson, kowalski, mack, & sabiston, 2014; lundqvist & raglin, 2015). for example, lundqvist and raglin (2015) used the 18-item version of spwb to examine the effects of basic need satisfaction, motivational climate, and personality on elite active orienteers’ wellbeing. additionally, ferguson, kowalski, mack, and sabiston (2014) explored self-compassion and wellbeing in young women athletes by employing the 84-item version of the spwb, and baltzell and akhtar (2014) investigated the effectiveness of a mindful meditation training intervention on wellbeing of women soccer players by assessing the 54-item version of the spwb. the subjective vitality scale (svs; ryan & frederick, 1997) is another ewb measurement tool that has been utilized to assess athletes’ subjective vitality, a perceived dimension of wellbeing. although many studies have employed svs, it does not incorporate all the components of ewb (e.g., adie, duda, & ntoumanis, 2012; mack et al., 2011). as a result, the lack of an instrument for measuring athletes’ wellbeing in the sport context has been noted as a caveat in the literature (lundqvist, 2011). lundqvist (2011) has underlined the importance of developing a sport-specific wellbeing instrument in examining how the competitive environment influences athletes’ wellbeing. a sport-specific wellbeing measure might be valuable in better understanding athletes’ wellbeing by examining potential relationships with other variables that either enhance or diminish wellbeing. considering the gap within the sport literature in measuring wellbeing in sport, the purpose of the present study was to create and validate a sport-specific ewb measure. our instrument was grounded in sdt and based on the ewb literature (e.g., ryan et al., 2008). phase 1 the purpose of phase 1 was to develop a pool of items that might best represent ewb in sport. recently, kouali, hall, and pope (2018) adapted an existing eudaimonic wellbeing global instrument (i.e., scales of psychological well-being; ryff, 1989) for the sport context, and examined the content and factorial validity of this adapted three-factor instrument. based on their results, they determined that ewb in sport is likely best represented as a unidimensional construct. measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 96 method participants. a panel of five experts (nmales = 3, nfemales = 2) participated in the study. all participants were academic researchers working at different universities in canada and who had published articles related to sdt and ewb within the sport context and were currently conducting research on either/both areas. procedure. ethical approval was granted by the institutional research ethics board. the 19 items originally developed by kouali et al. (2018) served as the basis for the new sport-specific ewb measure. two investigators re-assessed the technical qualities (i.e., length, readability, and clarity) and the item-content validity (i.e., the extent to which the content of each item is relevant to measure the construct; lynn, 1986) of these items. after finalizing the items by making alterations (i.e., rewording and deleting phrases from items), the investigators contacted five experts via email to determine their willingness and availability to participate in the study. all experts agreed to provide their feedback on the set of items. each expert first read the definition of the construct and then selected the items that best represent ewb in sport. a comment box was also provided so the experts could explain any of their answers or make any comments. the panel of experts sent back their answers in a document that was attached in the email invitation. results and discussion based on the percentage of consensus among experts’ responses, each item was retained or removed from the item list. of the 19 items, 80% agreement was found for five items, 60% for four items, 40% for five items, and 20% for three items. also, two items were not selected by any expert. generally, there are basic guidelines that researchers should follow regarding the items that identify a construct (devellis, 2012). devellis suggested that the initial pool of items should be three or four times larger than the number of items that will be included in the final scale. each item should be simple, parsimonious, clearly phrased, and concise, while double or triple barreled, negatively worded or reversed score items should be avoided (hinkin, tracey, & enz, 1997). in terms of the appropriate number of items that should represent a scale, costello and osborne (2005) suggested that five or more items should indicate a solid factor, whereas hinkin et al. recommended four to six items for the development of a quality scale. furthermore, when a scale is short it helps to reduce the burden on respondents compared to a longer scale (devellis, 2012). therefore, the five items with the highest level of agreement (80%) were retained to represent ewb in sport (table 1) termed the eudaimonic wellbeing in sport scale (ewbss) and to be further examined in the next phase (phase 2). phase 2 the purpose of phase 2 was to test the ewbss by examining the factorial validity and reliability of the instrument. method participants. four hundred (nmales = 299; nfemales = 101) competitive athletes (mage = 24.32, sd = 6.69) from 25 different team and individual sports (47% indicated engaging in soccer) participated in the study. athletes played at varsity (n = 34), regional (n = 20), provincial (n = 293), national (n = 23), and international (n = 20) levels. on average, the athletes practiced 11.54 hours per week (sd = measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 97 4.07) and had been participating in their sport for 12.16 years (sd = 5.71). participants reported that they were at the pre-season stage (n = 269), early season stage (n = 46), middle season stage (n = 22), late season stage (n = 12), and off-season stage (n = 51), while 97% indicated currently having a coach. in terms of athletes’ ethnicity, the majority described themselves as caucasian (n = 364). measures. demographics. the demographic questionnaire included information about age, gender, ethnicity, major sport, years of participation in respective sport, hours practiced per week, competitive level, stage of competitive season of major sport, and if they currently had a coach or not. table 1 descriptive statistics, factor loadings, and error terms of the eudaimonic well-being in sport scale items m sd skewness kurtosis fl er as an athlete, i feel that i continue to learn more about myself. 5.12/5.26/4.92 0.98/0.78/0.96 -1.2/-0.95/-1.38 1.63/1.11/3.18 0.56/0.57/0.54 0.65/0.41/0.65 i have a sense of direction in sport. 4.9/5.19/4.92 1/0.87/0.95 -1.25/-1.06/-1.29 2.4/1.32/2.87 0.69/0.63/0.56 0.53/0.45/0.62 my goals in sport have been a source of satisfaction. 5.07/5.17/5.16 0.97/0.88/0.84 -1.18/-1.93/-1.33 1.71/1.49/2.83 0.71/0.74/0.83 0.47/0.34/0.22 in general, i feel positive about myself as an athlete. 5/5.16/5.07 0.96/0.80/0.80 -1.9/-0.98/-0.70 1.59/1.39/0.83 0.53/0.81/0.91 0.66/0.22/0.11 i like most aspects of myself as an athlete. 5.02/5.17/5.04 1.02/0.90/0.90 -1.36/-1.68/-1.37 2.42/4.34/3.67 0.53/0.66/.051 0.75/0.46/0.60 note. m = mean; sd = standard deviation; fl = factor loading; er = error term. values presented before the first slash (/) refer to athletes' scores on the corresponding statistic in phase 2. the values presented before the measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 98 second slash represent competitive athletes' scores from phase 3, whereas the values presented after the second slash represent recreational athletes' scores also from phase 3. eudaimonic wellbeing. the eudaimonic wellbeing in sport scale (ewbss) was used to measure athletes’ wellbeing. the ewbss consists of five items (e.g., “as an athlete, i feel that i continue to learn more about myself”; see table 1). athletes were asked to circle the number that best describes their present agreement or disagreement with each item using a six-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). procedure. once approval was granted by the institutional research ethics board, one of the investigators identified coaches’ contact information via official websites of varsity teams and contacted them via email in order to receive permission to contact their athletes. after receiving permission from coaches to approach their athletes, the investigator contacted the athletes before or after their practice, explaining to them briefly the purpose of the study and providing them a letter of information. the athletes who agreed to participate, completed the corresponding paper and pencil (without the presence of the coaches) or online questionnaire. an email script with the questionnaire link was sent to the participants that wished to complete the survey online. completion of the questionnaire indicated athletes' consent to participate. data analysis. after screening the data for outliers, missing and incomplete data, the factorial validity of the ewbss was examined with confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) using amos 24.0 software (arbuckle, 2016). the goodness-of-fit of the hypothesized model was tested using four indices suggested by kline (2005): the chisquare statistic (χ2), the comparative fit index (cfi), the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), and the standardized root mean residual (srmr). hu and bentler (1999) for cfi recommended that values above .95 indicate an excellent fit, while more recently marsh, hau, and wen (2004) suggested that values greater than .90 indicate a good fit. additionally, rmsea values equal or less than .06 are desired, while srmr values less than .08 denote acceptable fit (hu & bentler, 1999). cronbach alpha coefficient was also calculated for the ewbss. results and discussion the descriptive statistics of the final five items are presented in table 1, including the mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis scores. additionally, the scale showed acceptable internal consistency (α = .74). moreover, the factor loading scores and error term scores for the final five items are also provided in table 1. the cfa model with the five items representing the ewbss revealed an excellent fit to the data (χ2 (5) = 7.55, p = .18; cfi = .99; rmsea = .04; srmr = .02). therefore, initial support for the factorial validity and reliability of the ewbss was provided when it was tested on a large sample with competitive level athletes. however, further validation of the five items was needed. phase 3 the purpose of this phase was to further test the psychometric properties of the ewbss. accordingly, factorial validity, nomological validity, convergent validity, and reliability of ewbss were evaluated with two independent samples, competitive athletes and recreational athletes. while it is widely accepted that physical activity and sport participation is associated with psychological benefits including enhanced wellbeing (e.g., adie et al., 2012), there is evidence showing that there are differences in wellbeing between the various levels of the competitors. for example, chatzisarantis and hagger (2007) examined the effect of recreational and competitive sport participation on the wellbeing of uk athletes and found that recreational athletes reported higher levels of both swb and ewb compared with competitive athletes. in another study with australian women (eime, harvey, brown, & payne, 2010), club sport participants demonstrated higher levels of swb than participants measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 99 engaging in gym activities or walking. while the ewbss was designed to be suitable for any sport level, in the present phase competitive athletes and recreational athletes were examined separately to determine if the ewbss was equally appropriate for both groups. the nomological and convergent validity were examined in relation to constructs of sdt. following lonsdale, hodge, and rose’s (2008) approach providing evidence regarding the nomological validity of the behavioral regulation in sport questionnaire (brsq) with elite and non-elite athletes, nomological validity was measured in relation to the six types of motivation based on sdt (ryan & deci, 2000). the sdt framework postulates that different types of motivation lie on a continuum relative to self-determination and internalization (ryan & deci, 2000). specifically, intrinsic motivation (participation in an activity by an individual for its own sake), integrated regulation (engagement in a behavior because it is an important part of individual’s identity), and identified regulation (engagement in a behavior because it is highly valued) are characterized as autonomous types of motivation. introjected regulation (engaging in an activity in order to avoid guilt or anxiety or to maintain the feeling of worth), external regulation (the desire to obtain an award, social recognition, or avoid punishment) are characterized as controlled types of motivation, and amotivation is a lack of intention to engage in a behavior (ryan & deci, 2000). accordingly, sdt posits that autonomous types of motivation are positively associated with ewb, whereas controlled types of motivation and amotivation are negatively associated with ewb (ryan & deci, 2000). to evaluate convergent validity, the association between ewbss and svs was tested. svs has been broadly used in sport psychology studies (e.g., mack et al., 2011) to measure subjective vitality as a dynamic aspect of ewb, as well as an outcome of eudaimonic living (ryan et al., 2008). it was hypothesized that a) evidence of the factorial validity and reliability of ewbss would be provided, b) autonomous types of motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, integrated regulation, and identified regulation) would be positively related to ewbss, while controlled types of motivation (i.e., introjected regulation and external regulation) and amotivation would be negatively related to ewbss (nomological validity), and c) ewbss would be strongly correlated with svs (convergent validity). method participants. the two samples consisted of 139 (nmales = 46; nfemales = 93) competitive athletes (mage = 19.76, sd = 1.44) from 21 individual and team sports (35.3% indicated engaging in track and field), and 104 (nmales = 48; nfemales = 56) recreational athletes (mage = 20.46, sd = 2.43) from 22 individual and team sports (25% indicated playing soccer). the majority of the competitive athletes played at varsity level (n = 108) and were at the early season stage (n = 79), whereas the majority of recreational athletes were at the off-season stage (n = 40). on average, the competitive athletes practiced 12.06 hours (sd = 4.89) and had been participating in their sport for 9.64 years (sd = 4.91). the recreational athletes practiced less hours per week (m = 5.13, sd = 3.29) and reported that they had been participating in their sport on average for 9.74 years (sd = 4.56). most of the participants from both samples described themselves as caucasian (ncompetitive = 123; nrecreational = 70). additionally, 97.5% of competitive athletes and only 32.7% of recreational athletes indicated currently having a coach/instructor. measures. demographics. the same demographic questionnaire used in phase 2 was employed. eudaimonic wellbeing. the ewbss was used to measure athletes’ wellbeing as in phase 2. motivation. the behavioral regulation in sport questionnaire (brsq; lonsdale et al., 2008) was used to assess athletes’ motivation by indicating the reasons they participate in their sport and responding on a sevenpoint likert scale from 1 (not at all true) to 7 (very true). the 24-item questionnaire includes six subscales: intrinsic motivation (e.g., “because it’s fun”), integrated regulation (e.g., “because it’s an opportunity to just be who i am”), identified regulation (e.g., “because i value the benefits of my sport”), introjected regulation (e.g., “because i measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 100 would feel guilty if i quit”), external regulation (e.g., “in order to satisfy people who want me to play”), and amotivation (e.g., “but i question why i continue”). supportive evidence regarding the reliability and factorial validity of the brsq has been reported in four studies conducted by lonsdale and colleagues (2008) and the brsq has been effectively employed in a number of studies (e.g., lonsdale & hodge, 2011). subjective vitality. the six-item version of subjective vitality scale (svs; ryan & frederick, 1997) was used to assess the degree to which participants feel vital, energized, and alive in their life as athletes. the items (e.g., “i feel alive and vital”) are answered on a seven-point likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all true) to 7 (very true). the reliability and validity of the scale has been supported by previous research (e.g., bostic, rubio, & hood, 2000). procedure. approval for the study was granted by the institutional research ethics board. after receiving permission from instructors teaching university kinesiology courses, one of the investigators contacted students (at the end of the class) explaining to them briefly the purpose of the study. a letter of information and the questionnaire were then administered to them using a paper and pencil format. by completing the questionnaire implicit consent was obtained to participate in the study. the instructors were not present during class recruitment and data collection. data analysis. descriptive statistics and cronbach alpha coefficient scores of both samples’ responses were calculated for all the examined variables. similar to phase 2, the factorial validity of the ewbss scores for each sample was examined with cfa, and the goodness-of-fit of the hypothesized model was tested using the same indices (χ2, cfi, rmsea, and srmr). bivariate correlations (pearson correlation) were also computed to test patterns of association between the constructs. results descriptive statistics, scale reliabilities, and cfa. the descriptive statistics and cronbach alpha coefficient scores of competitive and recreational athletes’ responses for all variables are presented in table 2 and table 3. on average, both competitive and recreational athletes scored above the midpoint for the ewbss, svs, and autonomous types of motivation subscales. participants’ responses from both samples were on average below the midpoint for the non-autonomous types of motivation subscales. all the examined variables had acceptable levels of internal consistency with alphas ranging from .76 to .90 with the exception of the identified regulation subscale for the recreational athletes which indicated a poor level of reliability (α = .59). while the results for this variable are reported, the findings that include identified regulation for recreational athletes must be interpreted with caution. similar to phase 2, the mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, factor loading, and error term scores for all items are presented in table 1. for the sample with competitive athletes, fit index scores reflected adequate fit with the exception of one index (rmsea) which did not reach the cutoff criterion (χ2 (5) = 27.21, p < .001; cfi = .90; rmsea = .18; srmr = .06). for the sample with recreational athletes, the cfa model representing the ewbss revealed a much poorer fit to the data (χ2 (5) = 27.28, p < .001; cfi = .88; rmsea = .21; srmr = .08). measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 101 nomological and convergent validity. the bivariate correlations between all the variables are also presented in table 2 and table 3. competitive and recreational athletes’ autonomous types of motivation were positively associated with ewb. negative relationships were found between the controlled types of motivation (including amotivation) and ewb in competitive athletes, whereas only amotivation was found to be negatively associated with ewb in recreational athletes. positive correlations were found between ewbss scores and svs scores of both competitive and recreational athletes. discussion the results from this phase provided further evidence supporting the factorial validity of the ewbss, but primarily for competitive athletes. support was provided for the nomological validity of the ewbss with competitive athletes, but only partial support for nomological validity was found with recreational athletes as table 2 descriptive statistics, reliability coefficients, and bivariate correlations between study variables for competitive athletes from phase 3 variables m sd scale range α 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. intrinsic motivation 6.13 0.92 1-7 .90 2. integrated regulation 5.60 1.08 1-7 .81 .59** 3. identified regulation 5.94 0.90 1-7 .76 .49** .61** 4. introjected regulation 3.43 1.64 1-7 .88 -.25** -.04 -.10 5. external regulation 2.45 1.32 1-7 .86 -.23** -.10 -.12 .60** 6. amotivation 2.35 1.28 1-7 .86 -.50** -.30** -.26** .54** .56** 7. subjective vitality 4.85 1.05 1-7 .85 .44** .45** .32** -.15 -.08 -.23** 8. eudaimonic well-being 5.19 0.64 1-6 .81 .49** .45** .45** -.34** -.31** -.44** .59** note. m = mean; sd = standard deviation; α = cronbach alpha coefficient; ** p < .01. table 3 descriptive statistics, reliability coefficients, and bivariate correlations between study variables for recreational athletes from phase 3 variables m sd scale range α 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1.intrinsic motivation 6.50 0.65 1-7 .78 2. integrated regulation 5.33 1.10 1-7 .80 .46** 3. identified regulation 5.72 0.85 1-7 .59 .36** .54** 4. introjected regulation 2.81 1.35 1-7 .78 -.27** -.10 .07 5. external regulation 2.16 1.11 1-7 .82 -.36** -.00 .07 .57** 6. amotivation 1.91 1.00 1-7 .83 -.52** -.12 -.09 .65** .65** 7. subjective vitality 5.06 0.90 1-7 .80 .27** .28** .42** -.13 -.07 -.16 8. eudaimonic well-being 5.02 0.67 1-6 .80 .49** .59** .52** -.14 -.15 -.31** .46** note. m = mean; sd = standard deviation; α = cronbach alpha coefficient; ** p < .01. measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 102 introjected regulation and external regulation were non-significantly correlated with the ewbss. as was expected, ewb as assessed by the ewbss was significantly related to subjective vitality, which provided support for the convergent validity of the ewbss with both athlete samples. the findings from this phase also provided support for the reliability of the ewbss with both competitive and recreational athletes. general discussion research in sport has examined athletes’ ewb demonstrating positive relationships between sport participation, autonomous motivation, and wellbeing (e.g., adie et al., 2012). however, a notable limitation of this research is the absence of a sport specific measure of ewb. the first purpose of this research was to create an initial pool of items that capture wellbeing based on the eudaimonic perspective. grounded in sdt, the initial 19 items were reduced to five items based on the feedback provided by five expert judges. the second purpose of the present research was to examine the factorial validity and reliability of the fiveitem ewbss. thus, the new instrument was tested on a large sample with high level competitive athletes. the findings provided initial support for the factorial validity and reliability of the ewbss. given the ewbss was a new instrument, further validation of the five-item structure with other samples was imperative. accordingly, the factorial validity and reliability of the instrument were re-examined with a sample of competitive athletes and a sample of recreational athletes, and further psychometric testing of nomological and convergent validity was conducted. supportive evidence concerning the different types of validity and internal consistency of the ewbss was found in the sample of competitive athletes, while only partial support for the psychometric properties of ewbss was found with recreational athletes. in an attempt to understand why the ewbss was more applicable to competitive athletes than recreational athletes, we asked participants from both samples to tell us in their opinion how applicable they felt that the ewbss items are for themselves and their lives as athletes. pelliccia et al. (2005) defined competitive athletes as individuals who participate in systematic training on a regular basis and compete in official sporting events, whereas recreational athletes were described as individuals who engage in sport activities without requiring consistent training. while the competitive athletes thought all items of the instrument were applicable to them, the recreational athletes commented that items 2 and 5 are not really suitable for their level of play. it seems that for the individuals that participate in sport primarily to experience enjoyment (i.e., intrinsic motivation), which is characteristic of recreational athletes, they lack specific goals or direction in sport (item 2) or they have goals that are not directly related to their sport (e.g., to be physically fit, to have meaningful relationships; chatzisarantis & hagger, 2007). furthermore, as recreational athletes do not have a very strong athletic identity (lamont-mills & christensen, 2006), aspects of themselves are not identified by their sport (item 5). therefore, based on the nature of the items, ewbss appears to be more suitable for competitive athletes. our research is not without limitations. we only classified athletes as competitive and recreational. in addition to confirming the differences between competitive and recreational athletes in responding to ewbss, it would be worthwhile to examine the instrument with other levels of competitive athletes (e.g., masters athletes, high school athletes) in order to determine if this instrument is appropriate for all competitive athletes. additionally, it would be worthwhile for scholars to compare various samples of athletes (e.g., individual versus team sports, different age groups, male versus female athletes) and determine if they exhibit differences in their wellbeing levels. in this research we only considered the nomological and convergent validity of the ewbss. given the validation of an instrument is an ongoing process, more research is needed to examine other types of validity such as discriminant, predictive, and concurrent validity. the test-retest reliability of the instrument also needs to be investigated. measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 103 the ewbss was developed to represent eudaimonic aspects as indicators of optimal functioning and experience in the sport context. however, recently ryan and deci (2017) used the term of thriving to describe full functioning by including two main components: a eudaimonic component (i.e., vitality) and a performance component (i.e., exercise of one's human capacities). similarly, brown and colleagues (brown, arnold, reid, & roberts, 2018; brown, arnold, standage, & fletcher, 2017) investigated thriving in sport and suggested that the experience of thriving incorporates some similar characteristics with the experience of ewb and eudaimonic living (which align with sdt) combined with aspects of athletic performance. more specifically, thriving was described as the experience of both a high-level of wellbeing and a perceived high-level of performance following adversity or successful events. therefore, future research should consider incorporating the dimension of subjective performance together with the ewbss in order to capture a more holistic view of being fully functioning in sport, instead of using separate measures to assess wellbeing and performance (brown et al., 2017). previous studies have assessed ewb in sport by employing a global measure of wellbeing (e.g., spwb) or by employing multiple measures to assess various aspects of ewb (e.g., subjective vitality, awareness). our attempt to provide a measure that is relatively short and easy to administer, while still encompassing the main components of ewb in sport, should encourage researchers to use the new instrument in order to further examine and understand athletes’ wellbeing. researchers in future studies should investigate whether athletes’ wellbeing varies with athletes’ characteristics (e.g., age, gender, sport, stage of the competitive season, and cultural background). future research should also examine the relationship between the ewbss and other constructs of sdt (e.g., basic psychological needs) to see if the findings are consistent with tenets of sdt. the findings from the present study have implications for coaches and practitioners working with athletes. as the ewbss is a relatively straight forward instrument that reduces the burden on athletes, it can be easily administered multiple times throughout the season. therefore, practitioners can design interventions that may enhance athletes’ wellbeing and effectively assess these interventions employing the ewbss. authors despina kouali the university of western ontario dkouali@uwo.ca craig hall the university of western ontario paige pope university of lethbridge publishing timeline received 3 october 2018 accepted 14 october 2019 published 1 february 2020 measuring eudaimonic wellbeing in sport kouali, hall, & pope 104 references adie, j. w., duda, j. l., & ntoumanis, n. 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(2012). differences in the association of subjective wellbeing measures with health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions among residents of an eastern cape township. international journal of wellbeing, 2(1), 54–67. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i1.4 jane m. cramm erasmus university cramm@bmg.eur.nl copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 article differences in the association of subjective wellbeing measures with health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions among residents of an eastern cape township jane m. cramm · anna p. nieboer abstract: objective: the use of variably self-reported measures of wellbeing may produce differing outcomes. this study examined the differences in association with health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions (marital status, social capital) of two widely used cognitive subjective wellbeing measurements: cantril’s ladder and diener’s five-item satisfaction with life scale. methods: a stratified sampling design was used to collect data from representative households in the 20 neighborhoods of rhini, a deprived suburb of grahamstown in the eastern cape province of south africa. correlation and stepwise multiple regression analyses investigated differences in the associations between wellbeing and health, demographics, socioeconomic status, and social conditions determined by the three measurements. results: we found that the multiple-item satisfaction with life scale elicited more discriminating responses that took into account a broader range of life domains. this scale reported more significant relationships between subjective wellbeing and health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions. cantril’s ladder produced a narrower range of career-like comparisons. the direction of association between measures of wellbeing and socioeconomic characteristics never changed according to the measures used. conclusions: policy-makers, researchers, and practitioners using these instruments should be aware of the differences between singleand multiple-item wellbeing measures, and recognize that the choice of instrument will affect the life domains found to be associated with wellbeing. keywords: wellbeing, measurement, social indicators, socioeconomic, satisfaction with life scale 1. introduction the study of subjective wellbeing (swb) is growing exponentially (kahneman, 1999). swb is ‚a broad category of phenomena that includes people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction‛; it thus differs from happiness, although the terms are often used synonymously (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999: 277). questions concerning swb are increasingly included in population surveys, reflecting the emergence of a new science of swb. scholars in a wide range of disciplines have recently attempted to define, measure, and analyze swb in various contexts (hoorn, 2007). some researchers have brought attention to the importance of the analytical and empirical separation of various forms of swb (diener, kahneman, tov, & arora, 2010; lucas, diener, & suh, 1996). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 measures of swb are obtained through self-reporting: respondents are asked to evaluate their lives as a whole or some aspect thereof. kahneman (1999) described a major distinction between global evaluative judgments and people’s cumulative feelings of pleasure and displeasure. specifically, reported swb consists of two distinctive components (diener 1994: 106): an affective component, which refers to the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect, and a cognitive component. the affective component is a hedonic evaluation guided by emotions and feelings, whereas the cognitive component is an information-based appraisal of one’s life with respect to an envisioned ‚ideal‛ life. a global measure of ‚life satisfaction‛ taken at a single point in time may be more heavily weighted with judgment and cognition, whereas reported happiness may be more saturated with affect. swb measures with an affective component ascertain how often an individual reports experiencing positive or negative affect (such as smiling or crying). in contrast, life satisfaction is more broadly measured: an individual’s satisfaction with life is assessed in general and in various life domains (e.g., health, employment, income, social conditions) (diener, 1994). this distinction implicitly requires the researcher to collect separate measurements of affective experience and life satisfaction, and to conduct separate analyses of their determinants. most discussion of the need for swb measures has focused on cognitive/judgmental life evaluations, rather than affective measures, because they are considered to be direct measures of overall swb. these measures are sufficiently reliable to allow multiple individual responses to be averaged, providing summary measures of swb in neighborhoods, cities, regions, and countries, and across population sub-groups. changes in the balance of swb made visible by regular reporting are likely to guide the thinking of policy-makers and those affected by policy implementation. swb measures allow an improved understanding of the elements that lead to a better life and clearer insights into the links between policies and swb. diener and colleagues (2010) investigated swb measures at both ends of the cognitionaffect continuum and found that different measures led to different outcomes. affect-oriented questions were typically less related to income than were cognitive questions. a variety of measurement techniques may be employed to assess swb on the cognitive side of the continuum, which may also produce differing outcomes. this study therefore compared two widely used measures at the cognitive side of the continuum. cantril’s ladder and diener’s satisfaction with life scale (swls) are two of the most commonly used cognitive swb measures (bartels & boonsma, 2009; bjørnskov, 2010; kashdan, 2004). they differ in the framing of satisfaction questions and the anchoring of responses. cantril’s technique asks respondents to rate satisfaction with life on a scale anchored by selfidentified minimum and maximum values. it solves the problem of evaluating absolute satisfaction on a closed scale by anchoring answers within an individual’s conception of their best possible life. in other words, the question prompts an individual evaluation of the respondent’s position in his/her life relative to where s/he would ideally like to be (larsen & mckibban, 2008; stutzer, 2004). the use of a ladder technique may thus infuse respondents’ answers with aspirations for and expectations of the future to a greater degree than is the case with the use of the swls. the respondent’s relative ranking of himself/herself on this ladder may indirectly reflect differences in his/her access to scarce resources (e.g., income) more than it addresses differences in social conditions. we thus hypothesize that these two cognitive swb measures will correlate differentially with known swb indicators. cantril’s ladder and diener’s swls also differ methodologically. early measures of swb, such as cantril’s ladder, were often single-item instruments. more complex, multiple-item measures of swb and life satisfaction are often desirable. the multiple items in diener’s swls differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 solicit responses from individuals about the extent to which they agree or disagree with statements designed specifically to capture satisfaction with life (pavot & diener, 1993). nevertheless, single-item measures have dominated large-scale surveys, many of which have relied on general and simple life satisfaction questions, such as cantril’s ladder (blanchflower & oswald, 2004). although these simpler single-item instruments have been proven to be reliable and valid swb measurements (pavot & diener, 1993), their reliability is typically lower than that of multiple-item measures. although some research has indicated that multiple-item life satisfaction scales provide a more structured frame of reference than single-item questions, the presence and degree of associations between health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions measured by these swb instruments are currently unknown. using multiple-item measures of swb, the swls is expected to identify a more broadly conceived wellbeing containing a larger variety of indicators than single-item swb measurements. we therefore additionally hypothesize that the more complex, multiple-item swls will lead to identification of a broader range of swb indicators than will cantril’s ladder. this study thus used cantril’s ladder and diener’s five-item swls to investigate whether these two widely used cognitive swb measures lead to different associations with known swb indicators. our primary aims were to determine whether the two swb measures showed the associations expected based on previous research, whether they performed differently, and whether differences in the strength of associations with conditions known to affect swb (e.g., health, socioeconomic status, social conditions) could be identified. the study used data gathered in rhini, a small township of grahamstown, in the eastern cape province of south africa. this community is characterized by poverty, unemployment, and low income levels (cramm & nieboer, 2011a; cramm, koolman, & nieboer, 2011; cramm & nieboer, 2011b; møller & erstad, 2007; møller, erstad, & zani, 2009). rhini has a mean swb score of 4.6 on the 10-point cantril’s ladder (møller, 2007), which is substantially lower than that reported for the whole nation of south africa (5.7; marks, abdallah, simms, & thompson, 2006). the population of rhini can serve as a case study for policy makers and development organizations aiming to improve the swb outcomes of people living in economicallyand health-deprived regions, such as the eastern cape (noble, barnes, wright, & roberts, 2010). 2. methods 2.1 participants and sampling this study applied a neighborhood-level stratified sampling design that randomly selected households in proportion to the total number of households in each of rhini’s 20 neighborhoods. moving systematically through the neighborhood from a randomly defined starting point, the researchers selected every tenth household for inclusion in the sample. this method ensured that all households in all neighborhoods of rhini stood an equal chance of being included in the survey. eligible respondents were identified in each target household; they were at least 18 years of age and had resided in rhini for at least six months of the past year. one respondent per target household was selected using a kish grid to ensure that all eligible persons in the household stood an equal chance of being included in the survey. the respondent was then interviewed and swb was assessed using both measures. if this person was not available, arrangements were made to conduct the interview at a later time. up to four attempts were made to interview selected respondents. an interview was obtained in 1,020 of the 1,042 (97.9%) targeted households. reasons for not achieving an interview included not finding the respondent at differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 home after four visits to the household, old age or poor health, and disinterest or unwillingness. staff from development research africa, a well-known organization experienced in undertaking national probability-based samples in deep rural and urban areas, administered the questionnaires. the interviewers gathered demographic information about the participants, such as gender, age, health status, education level, living arrangements, and employment, in addition to the swb measures. a detailed description of this study population can be found in møller (2007, 2008) and research of møller and colleagues (2011), cramm, møller, finkenflügel, & nieboer (2010), cramm, van exel, møller, & finkenflügel (2010), and cramm, møller, & nieboer (2010a, b). 2.2 subjective wellbeing measurements cantril’s ladder was the framed single-item measure of swb used to assess respondents’ satisfaction with life. respondents were asked to rate their lives in comparison to the best and worst possible lives they could imagine, on a scale of zero (worst possible life) to ten (best possible life) (cantril, 1965). respondents were asked, ‚on which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?‛ the swls was the structured multiple-item measurement used to assess respondents’ satisfaction with life. this instrument consists of five items (‚in most ways my life is close to my ideal‛; ‚the conditions of my life are excellent‛; ‚i am satisfied with my life‛; ‚so far i have gotten the important things i want in life‛; ‚if i could live my life over, i would change almost nothing‛) to which respondents rated their level of agreement on a five-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = neither agree/disagree; 4 = agree; 5 = strongly agree) (pavot & diener, 1993). cronbach’s α for the swls used in this study was 0.88, indicating that the scale was reliable. multiple items provide a more discriminating response scale than single-item swb measurements. for example, a measure containing three items (i) with seven-point response scales (r) has 343 (ri) unique response patterns and 19 possible total scores (i × r – [i – 1]) (bergkvist & rossiter, 2007). the relatively large number of total scores makes it possible to ‚make relatively fine distinctions among people‛ (churchill, 1979: 66) or to categorize people into a large number of groups (bernstein, 1994: 67). a multiple-item predictive measure should thus show an increased association with the outcome measure; that is, it should exhibit higher predictive validity. the multiple-item swls has been shown to have favorable psychometric properties, including high internal consistency, temporal reliability (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffen, 1985a), internal reliability (cronbach’s α = 0.87), and test-retest correlations (2-month stability coefficient = 0.82; diener, horwitz, & emmons, 1985b). 2.3 indicators of subjective wellbeing (self-reported) health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions have been identified as potential indicators of swb (ahuvia & friedman, 1998; andrews & withey, 1976; campbell, converse, & rodgers, 1976; clark & oswald, 1994; cramm et al., 2010a; diener et al., 1985a). studies have consistently found a high positive correlation between swb and health (diener & biswas-diener, 2002; diener & scollon, 2003; dolan, peasgood, & white, 2008; frey & stutzer, 2002; hoorn, 2007). individuals reporting higher levels of swb tend to live longer than those with lower swb outcomes. good health is probably both a cause and an effect of high swb levels (diener & biswas-diener, 2002). differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 this study measured self-rated health, which is considered a valid and robust measure of general health status (idler & benyamanini 1997; mossey & shapiro 1982; wen, browning, & cagney, 2003). a large body of evidence has demonstrated that self-reported health assessment has high predictive validity for mortality, physical disability, and chronic disease status. furthermore, self-assessed health is a stronger predictor of mortality than physician-assessed health (idler & benyamanini, 1997; idler & kasl, 1995; mossey & shapiro, 1982). as a measure of health status, it captures personally experienced physical problems that may impair swb (wen et al., 2003). respondents were asked, ‚how would you describe your health these days?‛ respondents could rate their level of agreement on a five-point scale (1 = very poor; 2 = poor; 3 = average; 4 = good; 5 = very good). much early research focused on the relationship between swb and socioeconomic factors, such as education, employment, and income (diener & biswas-diener, 2002). evidence for the impact of education on swb has been mixed. some researchers (diener & scollon, 2003; frey & stutzer, 2002) have suggested a positive relationship, whereas a study conducted with an english population (clark & oswald, 1994) found a negative impact that may be due to changing aspirations and the creation of expectations for a higher income. it remains unknown whether such findings are applicable to more deprived populations. education is closely correlated with income, occupational status, and social class; these factors have likely influenced the results of these studies. unemployment shows a consistently negative association with swb that has been suggested to have severe long-term negative impacts (clark & oswald, 1994; hoorn, 2007). extensive research on the relationship between income and swb has revealed that individuals with high incomes have better swb outcomes than those with low incomes (cramm et al., 2010b; diener & biswas-diener, 2002; easterlin 1974; fahey, whelan, & maitre, 2005; keck & krause 2007). this study assessed income by asking respondents their average monthly household income (in south african rand: 0-100; 101-200; 201-500; 501-750; 751-1,000; 1,001-1,500; 1,5012,000; 2,001-3,000; 3,001-4,000; 4,001-5,000; 5,001-6,000; 6,001-7,000; 7,001 or higher). to assess education, respondents were asked to state their highest educational level (none or some primary; some secondary; completed secondary and/or postsecondary). social conditions also affect swb. most married people report higher levels of swb than do single people (diener & scollon, 2003; frey & stutzer, 2002; hoorn, 2007). social capital is also increasingly acknowledged to be an important social determinant of swb (bjørnskov, 2003, 2005; easterlin, 2000; grootaert, 2002; haggerty et al., 2001; wilkinson & pickett, 2006; yip, sybramanian, mitchell, lee, wang, & kawachi, 2007). this factor is defined as ‚the set of cooperative relationships between social actors that facilitate collective actions‛ (requena, 2003: 331). the core components of social capital are civic engagement and mutual trust among community members. social capital shelters people from the harmful effects of unemployment and poverty (camfield & skevington, 2008; cramm et al., 2010b; winkelman, 2009). people with friendly, helpful, and trustworthy neighbors tend to report higher levels of swb than those who are more solitary (wilkinson & pickett, 2006). marks, abdallah, simms, & thompson’s (2006) investigation of the correlation between social capital and swb also indicated a relationship between greater social capital and higher life satisfaction. we assessed social capital with three items (‚people in this neighborhood are friendly‛; ‚people in this neighborhood help each other without having to be asked‛; ‚people in this neighborhood trust their neighbors‛) to which respondents rated their level of agreement on a four-point scale (1 = very dissatisfied; 2 = dissatisfied; 3 = satisfied; 4 = very satisfied). the cronbach’s α of this scale was 0.87. the questionnaire further probed factors previously differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 implicated as potential predictors of swb, such as unemployment (yes/no) and marital status (married/living together; single/divorced/widowed). 2.4 statistical analysis descriptive statistics are reported as mean values and standard deviations (sds). correlation analyses were performed to detect significant associations between the two cognitive swb measures and the domains of health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions. regression analyses were performed to identify any life domains that predicted responses to each of the measures, and to examine the differences in swb scores obtained with the two measures. we tested the equality of the covariance matrices with the null hypothesis that the observed matrices of the swls and cantril’s ladder would be equal. all statistical analyses were performed with statistical package for the social sciences (spss) software (ver. 17, spss inc., chicago, il, usa). 3. results table 1 provides descriptive summary statistics (mean ± sd) for the dependent and independent variables of swb. one-third (33%) of the respondents were married and the others were single, widowed, or separated/divorced. thirty-five percent of respondents had no formal schooling or had received only primary education. forty percent had received some secondary education and 25% had matriculated and/or received postsecondary education. sixty-two percent of the respondents were unemployed. table 1. descriptive statistics for the variables used in the correlation and multiple regression analyses (n = 1020). mean sd min max cantril’s ladder 4.63 2.07 0.00 10.00 satisfaction with life scale 2.62 0.86 1.00 5.00 health 3.55 1.01 1.00 5.00 income 1,250 2.13 0,000 >7,001 social capital 2.97 0.54 1.00 4.00 table 2 shows the univariate effects of health, unemployment, education, income, marital status, and social capital on swb scores obtained with cantril’s ladder and the swls. we found that health, unemployment, education, income, and social capital were associated with cantril’s ladder scores (all p ≤ 0.001), followed by marital status (p ≤ 0.05). all independent variables were associated with the swls (all p ≤ 0.001). the direction of association between measures of wellbeing and socioeconomic characteristics never changed according to the measures used. differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 table 2. correlations between independent variables and subjective wellbeing (n = 1020). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 patient 1. health 2. unemployment -0.26*** 3. education 0.39*** -0.22*** 4. income 0.11*** -0.50*** 0.22*** 5. married -0.03 -0.12*** -0.06 0.08* 6. social capital 0.08* -0.02 -0.03 0.01 0.02 7. cantril’s ladder 0.11*** -0.21*** 0.10*** 0.26*** 0.08*** 0.08* 8. diener’s satisfaction with life scale 0.17*** -0.15*** 0.13*** 0.17*** 0.13*** 0.16*** 0.41*** notes: *p ≤ 0.05; **p ≤ 0.01; ***p ≤ 0.001. regression analysis revealed that unemployment was weakly associated with swb determined by cantril’s ladder, and showed no association with swb determined by the swls (table 3). the observed covariance matrices of the two instruments were equal. comparison of the swls and cantril’s ladder showed strong associations between swb and income (both p ≤ 0.001); analysis of covariance matrix equality revealed that the relative strength of this association did not differ significantly between measures (cantril’s ladder: β = 0.20; swls: β = 0.13). table 3. comparison of scores produced by the cognitive wellbeing measurements in the domains of health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions. cantril’s ladder (β) satisfaction with life scale (β) health 0.05 0.12*** unemployment -0.08* -0.03 education 0.03 0.06 income 0.20*** 0.13*** married 0.06 0.12*** social capital 0.07* 0.15*** adjusted r² for equation 0.11 0.12 notes: *p ≤ 0.05; **p ≤ 0.01; ***p ≤ 0.001. further comparison revealed additional differences in the results obtained with the two instruments. swls scores indicated that health was significantly related to swb (β = 0.12; p ≤ 0.001), whereas cantril’s ladder scores did not. moreover, analysis of covariance matrix differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 equality showed that the relative strength of indicators differed significantly between measures (p ≤ 0.001) for this variable. the results for social capital and marital status also differed between measures. cantril’s ladder scores indicated a weak association between swb and social capital (β = 0.07; p ≤ 0.05) and no association with marital status; swls scores indicated the strongest associations with these social domains of swb (marital status: β = 0.12, p ≤ 0.001; social capital: β = 0.15, p ≤ 0.001). the test for the equality of the covariance matrices showed that the relative strength of both indicators differed significantly between measures (marital status: p ≤ 0.05; social capital: p ≤ 0.001). neither measure found education to be significantly related to swb in this poor community. in the univariate analyses described above, however, education was significantly related to swb by both measures. we found no difference in the instruments’ explained level of variance (cantril’s ladder: β = 0.11; swls: β = 0.12). 4. discussion this study investigated whether two widely used cognitive/judgmental measures of swb (cantril’s ladder and diener’s swls) were differentially associated with the life domains of health, socioeconomic status, and social conditions. we hypothesized that cognitive swb measures correlated differentially with known swb indicators, postulating that a more complex, multiple-item swls would lead to the identification of a broader range of swb domains than would a single-item measure (cantril’s ladder). as expected, the employment of different measurement techniques to assess swb produced differing outcomes. our first hypothesis, that these two cognitive swb measures correlate differentially with known swb indicators, can be confirmed. these findings are important for policy-makers who seek to evaluate policies based on swb outcomes over time. although cantril’s ladder did not find health to be associated significantly with swb, multivariate analyses of swls results did find such an association. moreover, the relative strength of health differed significantly between measures. unemployment was significantly associated with swb as measured by cantril’s ladder, but not as measured by the swls. these findings indicate that data produced by the administration of slightly different questions, or of similar questions asked under slightly different conditions, can differ substantially. the difference between ‚life satisfaction domains‛ and ‚best possible life‛ led to significantly different responses. the two cognitive swb measures thus tapped into two different concepts of satisfaction. this difference may be due to the cognitive processes that occurred during the administration of these instruments. cantril’s technique asks respondents to rate satisfaction with life on a scale anchored by self-identified aspirations and ideals (larsen & mckibban, 2008; stutzer, 2004), which may elicit more aspirational responses. the aspirations and expectations of the poor residents of rhini are related to income, employment, and social capital, all of which are particularly scarce in this township. health, education, and marriage appear to be less influential in shaping their future expectations. people may consider these resources to be more stable over time, and although their control over income, employment, and social capital is likely to be limited, their aspirations to improve their socioeconomic and social conditions explain the variation in swb levels among respondents. the framework defined by the best and worst possible lives may trigger career-like comparisons in which income and employment are more important than, for example, health. the relationship between swb and unemployment differs strikingly between measures. cantril’s ladder found a strong significant association between swb and unemployment, whereas the swls found no significant association. unemployment is widely considered to differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 generate negative externalities. higher unemployment rates lead the employed to feel less secure about keeping their job in the future, while the unemployed suffer from worse prospects of finding a new job. in addition to these negative effects, however, the unemployed may experience a counteracting positive impact termed the ‚social norm effect of unemployment‛: one’s own unemployment may be easier to bear when more people suffer the same fate (kessler turner, j., & house, 1988; cohn, 1978). this may be due to the reduced stigmatization of unemployment in such situations. for example, kessler and colleagues (1988) found that the unemployed established social contacts more easily when others in the local area were also unemployed. cohn (1978) found that unemployed persons’ satisfaction with self was lower when unemployment could not be attributed to an external cause, such as generally high unemployment rates in a region. clark (2003) found that the swb of the unemployed rose with the regional unemployment rate, even at the household level; people reported higher swb scores when they were not the only unemployed person in the household. similar results have been found for the united kingdom (shields & wheatley price, 2005), australia (shields, wheatley price, & wooden, 2008), south africa (powdthavee, 2007), and switzerland (stutzer & lalive, 2004). our findings suggest that social norms were a more important component of responses produced with the swls than of those elicited by cantril’s ladder. the swls appears to be more susceptible to the wider context of social norms within the community than cantril’s ladder. it incorporates factors such as high unemployment, which results in less social disapproval, and other sources of swb, such as a partner who provides social approval. for this reason, social domain indicators appeared to be more important in the swls results than in those obtained with cantril’s ladder. the relative strengths of marriage and social capital were also significantly higher when measured by the swls. when a respondent is asked to consider multiple aspects of life, social norms and social approval, such as behavioral confirmation and affection, may become more important in his/her consideration of swb. consequently, health, social capital, and marriage are visible as important swb indicators in the results of multiple-item instruments. in contrast, asking a respondent about the ‘‘best possible life’’ using cantril’s ladder may elicit a response based more on (economic) status than on social norms. the swls questions asked respondents to consider a broader scope of life satisfaction than did cantril's ladder. whereas cantril's ladder triggers career-like comparisons focused mainly on income and employment, the swls produced responses indicating significant relationships with a larger variety of domains, such as health, socioeconomic status, social conditions, and swb. thus, we can also confirm our second hypothesis, that a more complex multiple-item swb measure would identify a broader range of swb indicators than a single-item swb measure. although we expected that the multiple-item swls would show higher predictive validity, the two swb measures showed equal degrees of explained variance. some limitations must be considered when interpreting our study findings. given the location of our study in the community of rhini, our results may apply only to similarly economically deprived regions. within-nation comparisons typically result in small but significant correlations between income and swb. in studies using large population samples, diener and oishi (2000) compared 19 nations, finding a mean correlation coefficient of 0.13, and lachman and weaver (1998) found similar results in a study of the united states (0.18). in our study, the mean correlation coefficients measured with the swls (0.17) and cantril’s ladder (0.26) differed significantly (p ≤ 0.05). income has been found to be relatively more important for swb in economically deprived regions, such as the community of rhini (diener, sandvik, differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 seidlitz, & diener, 1993). neither measure found education to be a strong determinant of swb in the rhini sample. because the majority of respondents (75%) had received none or only some primary or secondary education, these results likely reflect the deprived situation of the community as a whole. another limitation of the study’s community-level location is the relatively low explained variance. as with previous studies (ahuvia & friedman, 1998; diener & biswas-diener, 2002), we found that factors such as income, employment, education, and marital status accounted for only a small amount of variance in swb. although previous research defined six broad groups of swb determinants (personality, contextual and situational, demographic, institutional, environmental, and economic factors; hoorn, 2007), we included only health, demographics, socioeconomic status, and social conditions in the present study. exclusion of the other determinants may in part have caused the relatively low explained variance. further, objective indicators are often not strongly associated with swb, because of substitution processes and buffer effects. people are resourceful in substituting across different life-domains and different forms of wellbeing (nieboer & lindenberg, 2002). cantril’s ladder and the swls use direct questions of wellbeing focusing on very general dimensions of wellbeing, which has its disadvantages. direct wellbeing questions are criticized because individuals are biased by their present state and what they remember at that moment (kahneman, 1999; nieboer, lindenberg, boomsma, & van bruggen, 2005). one can try to identify the major dimensions of swb and ask questions that refer to activities and experiences related to these dimensions avoiding direct questions on wellbeing (nieboer et al., 2005) and opening up possibilities to pinpoint alternative means for the realization of swb. these alternative means help us say something about which means are more essential (i.e., less substitutable) than others (diener & lucas, 2000). 5. conclusion this research has provided preliminary insight into the issues that may emerge with the use of different self-reported cognitive measures of swb. the direction of association between measures of wellbeing and socioeconomic characteristics never changes according to the measures used. however, our findings revealed that the multiple-item swls provided a more discriminating response scale that took into account a broader scope of life domains and found the most significant relations between swb and health, demographics, socioeconomic status, and social conditions. cantril’s ladder elicited responses with a narrower focus characterized mainly by career-like comparisons. since many other researchers have found swb to be associated with health, it is striking that multivariate analysis of the cantril’s ladder data found no such association. further longitudinal studies, including those conducted in less-deprived communities, are necessary to confirm our findings. researchers and practitioners using these measures should be aware of the differences between singleand multiple-item swb measurements and recognize that the choice of swb instrument will affect the relationships found between life domains and swb. acknowledgments this research project was funded by the south africa netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad). the views expressed in the paper are those of the authors. the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors jane m. cramm differences in the association of subjective well-being measures cramm & nieboer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 erasmus university (ibmg) cramm@bmg.eur.nl anna p. nieboer erasmus university (ibmg) nieboer@bmg.eur.nl publishing timeline received 16 december 2011 accepted 13 march 2012 published 29 april 2012 references ahuvia, a. c., & friedman, d. 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(2012). happiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 277-283. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.8 sissela bok harvard university sbok@hsph.harvard.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 277 invited article happiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge sissela bok abstract: can the study of philosophy lead to happiness—whether after death, as socrates claimed, in plato’s dialogue ‚the phaedo‛, or while one is still alive, as epicurus, the roman stoics, and other ancient thinkers maintained? in his dialogue ‚hermotimus or on philosophical schools‛, the second-century satirist lucian of samosata cast a skeptical eye on all such teachings. how can students know which of the many paths to happiness and wisdom to choose, which guide to trust? might signing on with any one teacher be a waste of time? what if some are charlatans who not only fail to provide a path to happiness but actually mislead and profiteer from their hapless charges? i argue that lucian’s cautionary attitude is equally useful today for anyone confronted with the profusion of courses, books and websites offering help in finding or ‘choosing’ happiness. i would now wish to include his irreverent voice among the many that i found helpful in writing exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science. but i would hope to invite him, in turn, to go beyond his skeptical approach and reach also for the sympathetic understanding of different experiences and perspectives needed to deepen one’s understanding of happiness. keywords: happiness, philosophers, skepticism, morality, empathy, resilience.    socrates: those who are found to have excelled in holy living are freed from these regions within the earth [hades] and are released as if from prisons; they mount upward into their pure abode and dwell upon the earth. and of these, all who have duly purified themselves by philosophy live henceforth altogether without bodies, and pass to still more beautiful abodes. – plato , ‚the phaedo‛1 cerberus: when socrates had peeped into the chasm [of hades], and seen the darkness, and i had bitten him and dragged him by the foot, because he was still slowed down by the hemlock, he shrieked like an infant, and cried for his children, and went frantic. < then [when he could see that his fate was inescapable] he put on a bold front, pretending he would be glad to accept what 1 plato, ‚phaedo‛ in plato, vol. i, euthypro, apology, crito, phaedo, phaedrus, tr. harold north fowler (loeb classical library, harvard university press, 1971), 391. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ happiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge bok www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 278 was quite inevitable, all to win the admiration of the onlookers. – lucian, dialogues of the dead2 can the study of philosophy lead to happiness—whether after death, as socrates claimed, in plato’s dialogue ‚the phaedo‛, or while one is still alive, as epicurus, the roman stoics, and other ancient thinkers maintained? true, teachers in the different schools proposed incompatible visions of happiness to students and followers; this only showed how important it was not to be led astray by erroneous doctrines. by contrast, lucian of samosata cast a skeptical eye on all such hopes in works such as his dialogues of the dead or philosophers for sale. an itinerant lecturer, born in syria around ad 125, lucian presented satires and dialogues in public performances throughout the roman empire. he delighted in needling philosophers for their high-flown discourse, which masked what he saw as the hypocrisy with which they could enlist the gullible in their schools. many in lucian’s audiences were highly educated and thoroughly familiar with greek mythology and schools of philosophy. the scathing familiarity with which he portrayed philosophers and the adepts who slavishly imbibed their views could seem disrespectful to traditionalists even as they admired the humor and the elegant brevity of his writings. it is hard to exaggerate the contrast that lucian’s listeners must have found between his evocation of socrates’ distraught arrival in the gloomy realm of the dead and plato’s famous account of his high hopes for a blissful existence in afterlife in the company of gods and the noblest of humans. lucian knew the competing philosophical schools well, having spent several years in athens in his youth. he may have traveled there in a spirit of inquiry—a self-taught man from the provinces seeking answers in the legendary city, still the intellectual center of the western world, where plato and aristotle and epicurus had once taught, and where their successors, along with pythagoreans, stoics, and others held forth to students of all ages. but lucian had found precious little agreement on questions about the pursuit of happiness, the nature of virtue, and how best to lead one’s life to link the two. he had looked in vain for wisdom and guidance, whether in the gatherings where stoic philosophers taught under the covered porticos near the academy that plato had founded; among the platonists discoursing in that academy; listening to aristotle’s successors in the lyceum; puzzling over mystical teachings by pythagoreans and mystics; or visiting the world-famous garden that epicurus had created hundreds of years before, still piously maintained by epicureans who resided there. it would be only natural for someone coming from the provinces to athens and witnessing the disputes among teachers of philosophy to feel bewildered at first. how, confronted with such incompatible doctrines, can one know which path to happiness and wisdom to choose, which guide to trust? might signing on with any one teacher be a waste of time? what if some are charlatans who not only fail to provide a path to happiness but actually mislead and profiteer from their hapless charges? these are the questions that lucian raises in his dialogue ‚hermotimus, or on philosophical schools‛—questions as important for students of happiness in our time as in his. 3 in this 2 lucian, ‚dialogues of the dead” in lucian, tr. m. d. macleod, vol. vii (loeb classical library, harvard university press, 1961), dialogue 4, 21. 3 lucian, ‚hermotimus or on philosophical schools,‛ in c. d. n. costa, tr., lucian: selected dialogues (oxford university press, 2005), 88-9. see also ‚hermotimes or concerning the sects,‛ tr. a. m. harmon, in lucian (loeb classical library, harvard university press, 1915), vol. v, 260-415; and a recent french translation by jean-paul dumont, hermotime: ou comment choisir sa philosophie (presses universitaires de france, 1993). i have drawn on all happiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge bok www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 279 dialogue, lycinus, a stand-in for lucian himself, challenges an old man, exhausted from twenty years spent as the disciple of a stoic teacher, yet still hoping to attain the heights where he has been told he will find happiness, virtue, and wisdom. when lycinus suggests that the goal must surely be in sight after such long efforts, hermotimus wistfully admits that, so far, he has nothing to show for his exertions. why, then, should he have continued studying philosophy for so long? hermotimus answers that he must persevere: ‚philosophy is unattainable even if you spend a long time over it unless you keep your gaze fixed intently on it; and the stakes are high—whether to perish miserably among the populace or to win happiness through philosophy.‛4 but with the stakes so high and the journey so long and arduous, it must be crucial to know that one has signed on with the right guide. why choose one path rather than another? after all, stoics were far from the only teachers holding out promises of happiness to those who studied their doctrines. lycinus presses hermotimus to explain how he came to choose to follow his stoic teacher in the first place, given that platonists, epicureans, peripatetics, pythagoreans, and others were also inviting followers: when you first began to study philosophy, and there were many doors open to you, you passed by the others and came to the stoic door which you entered on your way to virtue, believing it was the one true door which opened up the straight path, while the others led to blind alleys. what made you believe this? what signs guided you?5 all the reasons that hermotimus advances—that he saw most people taking the stoics’ path, that the stoic teachers inspired him with hope for finding the happiness he sought, that many said they were manly and understood everything, that he admired watching them, with their dignified way of walking, their neat dress and thoughtful expressions—lycinus promptly demolishes. suppose, he asks, that he himself had chosen the path hermotimus had taken, trusting him as a friend, only to find that some god had brought back to life plato, pythagoras, aristotle and other thinkers. what if they asked him to explain his reasons for esteeming the stoics more highly than them, ‚not giving us a chance to speak and not testing any of our claims‛? merely to answer that his friend hermotimus had told him to choose the stoics would be worthless, in the absence of carefully comparing the arguments and deciding what is true and what is false. but such comparisons would take a great deal of time, if carefully entered into. they would preclude merely deciding on the stoics’ path, as hermotimus had done. hermotimus agrees that such comparisons would ordinarily be indispensable; it is just that, in this case, the stoics speak the truth. if someone tells you that two plus two makes five, this would be false ‚even if countless platos and pythagorases say so.‛ in the same way, one can learn the truth from the stoics without checking other creeds. well, counters lycinus, but does he not have to admit that all the philosophers who disagree about philosophical issues do agree that two and two makes four; but that comparing conflicting arguments and conclusions is precisely what he has to accept as necessary before deciding on one and only one path to happiness? and yet, devoting enough time to the philosophical schools might take more than a three translations in quoting this dialogue. all three titles combine to convey the meaning of the greek ‚haireseon‛ which carries meanings of ‚sects,‛ ‚schools‛ and also ‚choices.‛ choosing among the sects or schools could involve, as in this dialogue, choosing a philosophy. 4lucian, ‚hermotimus or on philosophical schools,‛ in c. d. n. costa, tr., lucian: selected dialogues (oxford university press, 2005), 88. 5 ibid., 94. happiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge bok www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 280 lifetime, lycinus facetiously adds: even if one were to restrict the number of schools to ten and devote twenty years to learning the doctrines of each, it would add up to two hundred years. when hermotimus is driven to reply that he simply cannot give adequate reasons for his choice, he has to consider, once again, the questions lycinus first put to him: why is he still carrying on with his philosophical studies, day after exhausting day? might he in fact be wasting his life in a fruitless quest? barking up the wrong tree? distraught, he finally agrees: ‚i am grieving for all the time i’ve been fool enough to waste, and, what’s more, the high fees my labors have cost me.‛6 he thanks lycinas for having pulled him out when he was being whirled about by a rough and turbid torrent, abandoning himself to being carried along by the stream. from a true believer, he has turned into a doubter of all faiths. he hates not just his teacher, not just stoicism, but all philosophical creeds. ‚and if i ever again, even unintentionally, meet a philosopher as i am walking on the road, i’ll turn around and avoid him like a mad dog.‛ the hermotimus dialogue expresses the perplexity many experience when meeting up with individuals fervently convinced of extraordinarily different and often incompatible philosophical views; and in turn with teachers and gurus promoting disparate paths to virtue, wisdom, and happiness. the experience of wonderment for outsiders at coming face to face with multiple belief systems promising insight and happiness after often lengthy studies has rarely been more tellingly conveyed. how, given so many avenues to hoped-for happiness, do people end up pursuing this or that particular doctrine? as lycinus explained to hermotimes, it would be folly simply to embark on any one path with any one teacher or doctrine, before comparing the arguments made by each. lucian’s skeptical challenges to the competing philosophical sects and his critique of hypocrisy and greed among those offering guidance to the gullible resonated in later ages. erasmus praised him as ‚the adamantine persecutor of all superstition‛ even as martin luther, among protestants, and roman catholic inquisitors alike excoriated him for his irreverent treatment of deities, heroes, and philosophers. lucian’s cautionary attitude might be equally useful today for anyone confronted with the profusion of courses, books and websites offering help in finding or ‚choosing‛ happiness. why not, he might ask those seeking paths to happiness, much as lycinus advised hermotimus, stop to compare the various approaches to happiness and scrutinize the evidence their sponsors offer? why not probe, also, any vested interest some of the latter may have in enlisting as many followers as possible? i took special pleasure, while writing exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science, in exploring different lines of study as if i were in the company of individuals engaged in the same pursuits. i would now wish to include lucian among the many that i found helpful in that regard. he might well be fascinated by the rich scientific resources now becoming available for happiness studies, in fields such as psychology, economics, health care, genetics, and the brain sciences. his skeptical questioning of claims about happiness is as needed today as in his time; but i would hope to invite him, in turn, to reach also for that sympathetic understanding of different experiences and perspectives needed to deepen one’s understanding of happiness. in my book, i aimed to bring together the striking new results from research by natural and social scientists with long-standing traditions of reflection by philosophers, religious thinkers, historians, poets, and others about happiness. lucian’s irreverent attitude toward the latter 6 ibid., 127. happiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge bok www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 281 would have served as one more challenge in the effort to draw on both the past and the present, spanning the various disciplines. taken together, these disciplines can contribute to a fuller, deeper understanding of the scope of happiness, even as some among them can challenge and point to shallowness, tunnel vision, or errors in others. examining divergent conceptions of happiness side by side, i suggested, would allow us both to fathom their richness and to weigh the clashing arguments about what contributes to it or detracts from it, how it might be defined and measured, and how it relates to income, say, or to temperament, sociability, marriage, or religious faith. against this background, i wanted to consider perennial moral issues about how we should lead our lives and how we should treat one another. what are the wisest steps to take in the pursuit of happiness? what moral considerations should set limits to such pursuits? what else should matter in human lives aside from happiness? these issues are no different from those debated by the thinkers lucian had studied in athens and met during his peregrinations; but some are now more sharply etched in the light of new information and the advent of modern media: how should we weigh our own happiness against that of others in a world where we are aware, as never before, of extremes of misery and opulence? how might we best take into account what we are learning about the effects of our individual and collective choices on the prospects for the wellbeing of future generations? bypassing such issues makes it all the easier to give short shrift to assumptions that form the subtext to even the most innocuous-seeming views of happiness. these assumptions, familiar in philosophy and political science, concern power—power exerted or defended against, whether in families, communities, or political and religious institutions. often unspoken, these assumptions are about who has the right to pursue his or her own happiness, who does and does not deserve happiness, and whether the happiness of some may require the exclusion or exploitation of others. they resonate in debates over authority and obedience, control and resistance, duties and rights, allegiance and independence. today, conflicts over them are playing out on a far larger stage than ever before, reaching billions of individuals across the globe, their fortunes affected by global economic shifts beyond their control, their hopes fanned by mass media promotion of methods for achieving happiness in daily life or for finding the path to eternal bliss. to refocus attention on the moral dimensions of the pursuit of happiness, i asked, throughout my book, what i call ‚yes but‛ questions in the face of claims that a particular action or personality trait or belief or way of life will bring greater happiness. some of these questions are of an empirical nature, requesting evidence to support the claims or voicing caution in the face of their frequently cheery, upbeat appeal. others are of a moral nature, asking whether it would be right to seek the kind of happiness held out as desirable or to enjoy it, once it was achieved. will pursuing such happiness involve us in deceit? will it require that we break a promise? is it cruel, unjust, exploitative? does it call for us to blind ourselves to needs we would otherwise feel duty-bound to address? stepping back to ask such questions creates space for reflection, for seeking to perceive more fully and to deliberate more attentively in the face of the many conflicting claims about what happiness is and how it should be pursued—precisely the approach that lucian proposed to hermotimes. i likened efforts to achieve such understanding to the journeys undertaken in the myths and folk tales by young persons setting out to seek their fortune. they have no assurance of success, no assurance that happiness is owed to them. they have to traverse unknown regions, encounter seductive lures, take high-stakes risks, sometimes come back empty-handed. they must find the right balance between empathy and resilience—between fellow-feeling and selfhappiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge bok www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 282 protection—as they learn to perceive the humanity and the urgent needs of many a strangelooking creature, while remaining wary of all who claim to know the one and only path to happiness. just as the seekers in myths and folk tales need more than a little luck in order not to emerge empty-handed, so does anyone exploring the role of happiness. even as those seekers benefit from combining sympathetic understanding with a dose of healthy skepticism, so do those who venture into the jungle of claims and counterclaims about happiness, especially when they meet up with conflicting appeals by religious, political, and other authorities to set aside all misgivings and place faith in their dictates. finding the right balance between empathy and resilience matters as much for the study of happiness as for those engaged in its pursuit. resilience, unless it is accompanied by empathy, helps shut out full awareness of the needs of others. a measure of individual resilience is necessary for sheer survival; but people also need empathy to thrive in the company of others, beginning with families. both resilience and empathy are present in rudimentary form early in human life at the neurological level. both can be nurtured, strengthened, or on the contrary neglected, stunted, even completely eroded through misfortune and abuse. and the erosion of one can debilitate the other: those who become more fearful, say after witnessing or enduring violence, can adapt by become less caring, sometimes taking vicarious or active pleasure in maiming and killing—exhibiting a form of what i have called, elsewhere, ‚learned pitilessness.‛7 the more i have had a chance to study the clashing views about happiness and the passionate advocacy the subject can inspire, the more intrigued i have become with the voices of the thinkers who have embarked on a similar study. in listening to them, i have been struck by the difference between persons so sure of their convictions that they block off all dialogue, at times attempt to silence all critics, and those who, like lucian, relish dialogues with friends and adversaries, present and past—and who, in so doing, invite the rest of us to strive to reach beyond our own limited perspectives. author sissela bok harvard university sbok@hsph.harvard.edu publishing timeline received 25 april 2012 accepted 30 april 2012 published 29 august 2012 references plato (1971). ‚phaedo‛ in plato (1971) plato, vol.1:, euthypro, apology, crito, phaedo, phaedrus (h.n. fowler, trans.). loeb classical library, harvard university press. lucian (1961). ‚dialogues of the dead‛, in lucian (1961) lucian: vol. vii (m.d. macleod, trans.). loeb classical library, harvard university press. lucian (2005). ‚hermotimus or on philosophical schools,‛ in lucian (2005) lucian: selected dialogues (c. d. n. costa, trans.). oxford university press. 7 see my mayhem: violence as public entertainment (perseus books, 1998); and ‚violence, free speech, and the media,‛ in perspectives on crime and justice: 1998-1999 lecture series (national institute of justice, 1999), 51-72. happiness studies in ancient greece? a 2nd century skeptic’s challenge bok www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 283 lucian (1915). ‚hermotimes or concerning the sects,‛ in lucian (1915) lucian: vol. v (a. m. harmon, trans.). loeb classical library, harvard university press. lucian (1993). hermotime: ou comment choisir sa philosophie (j-p. dumont, trans.). presses universitaires de france. bok, s. (1998). mayhem: violence as public entertainment. perseus books. bok, s. (1999). ‚violence, free speech, and the media,‛ in national institute of justice (ed.) (1999) perspectives on crime and justice: 1998-1999 lecture series. national institute of justice. bok, s. (2010). exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science. yale university press. wang, f., tian, c., & qin, w. (2020). the impact of epidemic infectious diseases on the wellbeing of migrant workers: a systematic review. international journal of wellbeing, 10(3), 7-25. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1301 fei wang case western reserve university, u.s.a. fxw125@case.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 the impact of epidemic infectious diseases on the wellbeing of migrant workers: a systematic review fei wang · chao tian · weidi qin abstract: background: the covid-19 outbreak poses challenges to people across the world and puts marginalized populations in an even more precarious position. migrant workers, with their marginal socio-legal status in host countries, are especially vulnerable during the pandemic. the wellbeing of migrant workers, specifically low-wage laborers, is greatly compromised. objectives: this study aims to systematically review the existing literature on how epidemic infectious diseases affect the wellbeing of migrant workers and what are the interventions to improve their wellbeing. method: following the prisma guideline, studies on migrant workers’ wellbeing or interventions to improve wellbeing during five major epidemic infectious diseases (i.e., covid19, sars, ebola, h1n1, mers) were searched. eleven electronic databases were used: cochrane library, who global research covid-19 database, apa psycinfo, cinahl plus, eric, medline, social index, pubmed, proquest, social care online and eppi-mapper. in total, 17 articles that met the criteria were included. an assessment guide was developed to examine the quality of the studies. results: overall, the studies consistently show that major epidemic outbreaks negatively affect the physical, financial, psychological and social wellbeing of migrant workers. migrant workers face a wide range of challenges such as risks of contagion, job insecurity, psychological distress, and discrimination. factors associated with migrant workers’ marginal socio-economic status were attributed to these challenges. several interventions were discussed including increased access to vaccinations, health screening at the border, promotion of hygiene strategies, and financial assistance in medical fees. discussion: the findings highlight the need for a greater public awareness and stronger response to migrant workers’ wellbeing during an epidemic outbreak. implications to practice and research were discussed. this review calls for more open-access data to advance research on migrant workers, and evidence-based interventions with a long-term effect. keywords: migrant worker, wellbeing, intervention, epidemic infectious disease article about:blank epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 8 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org practice implications based on the findings and gaps in the existing studies, the present review provides important implications for practice with and research on migrant workers during epidemic outbreaks. • given that limited interventions regarding psychological wellbeing were identified in the studies, practitioners should focus their efforts in developing and tailoring interventions that can improve the psychological wellbeing of migrant workers during epidemic outbreaks. in view of the difficulty in providing in-person support due to social distancing, new interventions that involve technology should be considered, such as online counseling or online support groups. • practitioners can disseminate evidence-based information on the cause and transmission of the disease using social media, combating rumors and misinformation that could lead to xenophobia against migrant workers. furthermore, through sharing migrant workers’ stories and voices, practitioners can raise the public awareness to migrant workers’ challenges and advocate for migrant-inclusive response measures. • interventions that address the long-term impact of epidemics on migrant workers should be developed. migrant workers face the risks of unemployment and deportation due to economic downturn post-outbreak. governments should register migrant workers to the official unemployment record, conduct a demand and supply analysis in different industries, and relocate migrant workers to the industries where there is a labor shortage. • more evidence-based research is needed to examine the effectiveness of interventions for migrant workers during epidemics. this could be supported by increasing data accessibility. specifically, the international organization for migration can collaborate with research institutes and ngos to develop a migrant worker data sharing platform. the data will not only boost migrant worker research, but also provide evidence for service delivery and policy development in preparation for future epidemics. introduction the outbreak of a new coronavirus (covid-19) has spread internationally since the initial report of cases by the wuhan municipal health commission, china on 31 december 2019 (who, 2020). it was declared a pandemic by the world health organization on march 11th 2020 and has as of june 2020 seen over 5 million confirmed cases and over 356,000 related deaths worldwide (john hopkins university & medicine, 2020). it has become evident that the pandemic will have a long-lasting and substantial influence on people’s wellbeing, far beyond physical health. although there is an increasing body of research on the wellbeing of vulnerable populations in the covid-19 pandemic such as healthcare workers and older adults, little attention has been paid to migrant workers. migrant workers (used interchangeably with “migrants”), are defined as “foreigners admitted by the receiving state for the specific purpose of exercising an economic activity remunerated from within the receiving country” (united nation statistical division, 1998, p.14). the life of migrant workers often consists of multiple layers of precarity as a result of their marginal socio-legal status and labor market position, and limited rights in the host country (baey & yeoh, 2018). during the covid-19 pandemic, this precarity has risen to an unprecedented level. of the 164 million international migrant workers worldwide, 95% reside in the five who regions in which covid-19 cases have been confirmed (liem, wang, wariyanti, latkin, & hall, 2020). some countries (e.g., singapore, india) have seen a surge in covid-19 cases among migrant workers. the wellbeing of migrant workers, specifically unskilled laborers, is greatly epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 9 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org compromised. with the effect of travel bans, many are not able to travel home. they have been stranded at public transit and risk being exposed to the virus (erizanu, 2020). migrant workers who work in essential critical infrastructure (e.g., healthcare, deliveries, and agriculture) continue working through the pandemic, which increases their risk of being infected. in addition, migrant workers in the hardest-hit industries (e.g., tourism, construction, and accommodation and food services) experience financial strain due to possible loss of employment following the pandemic, more so than native-born workers (world bank, 2020). these crises are exacerbated by a series of social factors such as language barriers, limited social contacts, and being unjustly discriminated against for spreading the covid-19 virus (guadagno, 2020), which could trigger negative emotions and ultimately affect mental health. in the wellbeing literature, although there is no consensus around a single definition of wellbeing, a general agreement is that at minimum, wellbeing includes a positive judgment of one’s life, the presence of positive emotions, and the absence of negative emotions (the u.s. centers for disease control and prevention, 2018). in addition, scholars generally acknowledge that wellbeing is a multi-faceted concept, with several important aspects identified across disciplines such as physical, financial, psychological, and social (diener & biswas-diener, 2008; kobau et al., 2013; andrews & withey, 1976; frey & stutzer, 2002). several theories highlight the interrelationships between socioeconomic status, resources, and wellbeing, all of which help explain why migrant workers are particularly vulnerable during the pandemic. hobfoll’s conservative of resource theory (1989) suggests that people strive to retain, protect and build resources in order to maintain their wellbeing. however, because resources are not distributed equally across different socioeconomic statuses, those with a low socioeconomic status are most vulnerable to a depletion of resources (hobfoll, 1989). furthermore, they are more likely to be caught in loss spirals because they lack resources to prevent the further loss of other resources (menaghan, 1983). fisher (2019) expanded on hobfoll’s idea and developed the public wellbeing theory. he suggests that well-being is largely dependent on the objective nature of the situation as well as people’s subjective evaluation. therefore, the inequalities in well-being are both shaped by the social conditions people are exposed to, specifically by differences in socioeconomic status, and negative evaluations people receive from the society (fisher, 2019). for migrant workers, their vulnerability lies in low socio-economic status and disproportionate exposure to social discrimination. during this pandemic, the existing social inequities have been exacerbated, leaving them with limited resources or no resources to meet the challenges and maintain their well-being. study objectives despite seemingly apparent anecdotal evidence as to the negative impact on migrant workers’ well-being, few studies, if any, have examined this impact. this study aims to fill the research gap by addressing the following questions: 1. what are the impacts of major epidemic infectious diseases on migrant workers’ wellbeing? 2. what community and population-level interventions have been taken to improve the well-being of migrant workers following an epidemic outbreak? methods a systematic review was conducted to address the research questions above. to the best of our knowledge, there are no prior systematic reviews specifically focus on migrant workers during the covid-19 pandemic. reviews that included the previous epidemic outbreaks are epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 10 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org minimal (wilson et al., 2018). the sweeping impact of covid-19 calls for an urgent response. a systematic review is an efficient approach to synthesize available research evidence and deliver it to healthcare providers, researchers, policymakers, and the general public. furthermore, by critically examining existing interventions, this review will help inform new interventions to meet the challenges posed by the current pandemic as well as epidemics in the future. type of study the inclusion criteria for study types were intervention study, observational studies using cross-sectional or longitudinal designs, mixed-methods studies, qualitative studies, descriptive, correlational studies or case studies, theoretical or position paper, editorial, commentary, systematic reviews, and practice guideline. anecdotal accounts and news articles were excluded. study subjects the subjects for the review were unskilled migrant workers – a group which is especially vulnerable during epidemics due to low socioeconomic status and limited resources. we adopted the un definition of migrant workers (see introduction; united nation statistical division, 1998). we also included internal migrant workers people who move within their own country of residence for the purpose of employment (international organization for migration, 2005). this inclusion is justified by the significant number of internal migrant workers across the world (international organization for migration, 2020). like international migrant workers, internal migrant workers also experience the challenges such as discrimination and difficulties in integration (jane, 2016; qiu, 2011). search strategy the following 11 electronic databases were used to search literature: cochrane library, who global research covid19 database, apa psycinfo, cinahl plus, eric, medline, social index, pubmed, proquest, social care online and eppi-mapper. articles were searched from 2000 to 2020. the rationale for the time range is that it includes the major epidemic infectious diseases in the 21st century. these diseases are middle east respiratory syndrome (mers), influenza a virus subtype h1n1 (h1n1), severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars), ebola virus disease, and coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19). because the review focuses on emerging infectious diseases, that is, one that appears for the first time in a population or rapidly increases in incidence or geographic range (world health organization, 2014), studies looking at seasonal influenza were excluded. the search string used for the database was: (migrant workers or foreign workers or internal migrant workers or domestic helpers) and/or (interventions) and (psychological or physical or economic or social) and (covid-19 or sars or ebola or h1n1 or mers) the search string was conducted in the field of title and abstract and was consistent across the databases. anecdotal accounts or news articles resulting from the searches were filtered out in the databases. data management all identified citations were imported to mendeley, a bibliographic reference management tool, and de-duplicated. a table was created as a data extraction form to record 4 parts: study epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 11 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org information, initial screening, eligibility decisions and quality assessment (see appendix i). the de-duplicated citations in mendeley were imported to the data extraction form for coding. selection of studies two coders screened the titles and abstracts of articles for initial screening and completed the data extraction form independently. articles about unskilled migrant workers and major epidemic infectious diseases were included for the full-text review. a study was also included for full-text review if its title and abstract were insufficient to determine its inclusion. disagreements on initial screening were resolved by a third coder. after initial screening, two coders reviewed the full-text of the articles independently to determine their eligibility. an article is considered eligible if it is about (1) the wellbeing of migrant workers or (2) the interventions to improve the wellbeing of migrant workers. disagreements on eligibility decisions were resolved by a third coder. final decision on eligibility and reasons for exclusion of studies were documented on the data extraction form. assessment of quality after identifying the eligible studies, the coders further assessed the quality of these studies using a checklist (see appendix ii) adapted from joanna briggs institute checklist for prevalence studies and qualitative studies (joanna briggs institute, 2017). the checklist comprised 9 items such as use of clearly defined participants, scientifically valid sampling technique, and the scope of wellbeing and interventions discussed. two coders independently rated the items in the checklist, and marked as yes (1), no (0), or “uncertain” on the assessment form. any items marked as “uncertain” were rated by the third coder. studies scoring 1-3 were defined as low quality, 4-6 as medium quality, and 7-9 as high quality. studies were not excluded on the basis of their quality score to increase transparency and to ensure all available evidence in this area was reported. results the study selection process and reasons for exclusion followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (prisma), as illustrated in figure 1. epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 12 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the impact of epidemic infectious diseases on the well-being of migrant workers figure 1. preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (prisma) flow diagram. records identified through cochrane library (31), who global research covid19 database (13), search across multiple databases (apa psycinfo, cinahl plus, eric, medline, social index; 18), pubmed (27), proquest (988), social care online (309) and eppi-mapper (162) total (n = 1548) records excluded (n = 1460) with reasons: not about migrant workers (n = 756) not about the major epidemic/pandemic infectious diseases (i.e. mers, sars, h1n1, ebola and covid-19) (n = 704) full-text articles assessed for eligibility (n = 60) studies included in the systematic review (n = 17) full-text articles excluded (n = 43) reasons for exclusion: not about the well-being of migrant workers or the intervention to improve the well-being of migrant workers (n = 43) id e n ti fi ca ti o n records screened (n = 1520) s cr e e n in g e li g ib il it y in cl u d e d records after duplicates removed (n = 1520) epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 13 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org in total, 1548 studies were identified through database searching; 17 studies met the inclusion criteria and were further analyzed for the present review. the characteristics and main findings of these studies are presented in table 1. table 1. study characteristics and main findings author (year) & study type target populati on & country epidemic types type of wellbeing discussed interventions summary of findings quality of study1 the lancet (2020) commentary migrants & refugees global covid-19 physical physical ● challenges in accessing essential supplies and medical care due to migratory status 2 bhopal (2020) commentary migrants u.k. covid-19 physical social physical ● difficulty applying precautions due to poor living environment ● limited access to healthcare services due to migratory status social ● lack of trust in the government and employer ● lack of legal rights ● cultural and language barriers in understanding public health information ● high risk of becoming victims of social discrimination 2 lin et al. (2015) commentary migrant workers china ebola social yes social ● racial discrimination and stigma against african migrant workers who lived in china during the ebola outbreak interventions ● temperature monitoring ● immigration border health screening ● location tracing 3 rothstein & coughlin (2019) commentary migrants u.s. infectious diseases (e.g. sars) physical social physical ● limited access to healthcare services due to migratory status social ● lack of trust in the government and employer ● fear of being arrested or deported if work with healthcare authority ● fear of being separated from their families during quarantine 6 1 the quality of the studies is measured using an 9-item checklist adapted from joanna briggs institute checklist for prevalence studies and qualitative studies (joanna briggs institute, 2017). studies scoring 1-3 are defined as low quality, 4-6 as medium quality, and 7-9 as high quality. epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 14 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org macpherson et al. (2007) commentary migrants global infectious diseases (e,g. sars) physical yes physical ● migrants face challenges in accessing healthcare services due to a lack of integrated migration and health policies. intervention ● collaboration between neighboring countries at the border; health screening at the border 6 5 steege et al. (2019) commentary migrant workers u.s. influenza (e.g. h1n1) physical social psychologi cal financial yes physical ● poor living environment, difficulty complying with social distancing and precautionary measures social ● limited access to public health information due to cultural/language barriers and low literacy psychological ● stress caused by social, employment, and financial status during the epidemic financial & physical ● concerned about jobs over health ● limited use of healthcare services due to financial difficulties ● limited access to television, radio, telephones, and the internet for information intervention ● increase migrant workers’ access to vaccinations 7 hickey et al. (2014). quantitative study migrants thailand h1n1 social physical yes social ● migrant workers do not have proper attitude to the precautions due to cultural and linguistic barriers intervention ● non-pharmaceutical interventions (npis) such as personal hygiene, cough etiquette, social distancing, and border measures 7 hutchins et al. (2009) commentary migrant workers u.s. influenza (e.g. h1n1) physical social financial yes physical ● poor living environment, ● lack of access to healthcare service due to their migratory status social ● poor awareness to public health information due to cultural/language barriers financial ● worry about losing jobs rather than being infected with the disease intervention ● a multi-agency intervention model 6 kluge et al. (2009) commentary migrant workers global covid-19 physical social financial physical ● crowded living environment, difficulty complying with social distancing and precautionary measures 4 epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 15 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org social ● limited awareness to public health information in the host country due to cultural/language barriers financial & physical ● worry about being unemployed and losing income ● limited use of healthcare services due to financial difficulties biao (2003) qualitative study migrant workers china sars social financial physical yes social ● lack of trust in the government and employer ● virus outbreak led to mass mobilization of migrant workers, which increased the spread of the virus financial & physical ● migrant workers were less concerned about their health, more concerned about their job due to their unstable employment status ● continue working during the outbreak in order to support the family and pay off collateral loan intervention ● a multi-agency intervention model 9 schochspana et al. (2010) qualitative study migrant workers mexico h1n1 physical social financial physical ● high rates of pre-existing medical conditions ● poor living conditions lead to difficulty taking precautions social ● limited access to public health information due to cultural/language barriers and low literacy ● lack of social support ● fear of being deported ● social discrimination and stigmatization financial & physical ● worry about being unemployed ● limited use of healthcare services due to financial difficulties 7 onoma (2017) commentary migrants senegal ebola social social ● racial discrimination and stigmatization 3 liem et al. (2020) commentary migrant workers global covid-19 psychologi cal social psychological ● migrant workers suffer from mental health issues (e.g., depression) due to their limited social resources social • stigmatization • limited access to public health information and are easily affected by misinformation due to cultural/language barriers and low literacy 4 epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 16 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org ding (2014) theoretical paper migrant workers china & north america sars & h1n1 physical financial psychologi cal yes physical ● poor living conditions result in difficulty in practicing precautions financial & physical ● worry about being losing jobs ● limited use of healthcare services due to financial difficulties psychological ● stress and anxiety during the epidemic outbreaks due to uncertainty about the future interventions • quarantine • a multi-agency intervention model • special government fund for migrant workers with sars • employers were required to continue paying wages to workers even though their work was suspended during the outbreak 7 daniels (2020) commentary migrants venezuel a covid-19 physical social yes physical ● lack of food and medical supplies ● limited access to healthcare services due to migratory status social ● social discrimination and stigmatization interventions • quarantine • border control • cross border permission for migrant workers who need ongoing treatment in the host country 4 picum (2020) commentary migrants europe covid 19 physical social financial physical ● limited access to healthcare services due to migratory status social ● limited social support financial ● worry about losing jobs 5 overall, a majority of the studies adopted a global perspective (n = 4) whereas others were conducted across a wide range of countries and regions, including the u.s. (n = 3), china (n = 3), europe (n = 2), the u.k. (n = 1), mexico (n = 1), senegal (n = 1), venezuela (n = 1) and thailand (n = 1). the studies are mostly commentaries while only a few are empirical studies (n = 4). with regards to the disease type, the majority of the studies focused on covid-19 (n= 7), followed by sars (n = 4) and h1n1 (n = 4), and ebola (n = 2). the overall quality of the studies is medium, with an average score of 5.06. compared to studies on other epidemics, covid-19 related articles are of lower quality (covid-19 = 3.71; other epidemics = 6). 1. wellbeing overall, all 17 studies discussed the negative impact of epidemic infectious diseases on the wellbeing of migrant workers. while the majority of the studies focus on physical, social and financial wellbeing, only a few studies have examined psychological wellbeing. nonetheless, the epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 17 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org negative impact of epidemics is consistently described across studies focusing on different aspects of wellbeing. physical wellbeing twelve studies focused on migrant workers’ physical wellbeing. manual laborers who live in crowded environments are most vulnerable to diseases due to difficulty complying with social distancing and precautionary measures (ding, 2014; steege, baron, davis, torres-kilgore, & sweeney, 2019; bhopal, 2020; hutchins, truman, merlin, & redd, 2009; kluge, jakab, bartovic, danna, & severoni, 2009; schoch-spana, bouri, rambhia, & norwood, 2010; eupha, 2020). in addition, studies show that migrant workers do not have full-access to healthcare services due to their migratory status (daniels, 2020; bhopal, 2020; rothstein & coughlin, 2019; picum, 2020; hutchins et al., 2009; the lancet, 2020; macpherson, gushulak, & macdonald, 2007). social wellbeing fourteen articles focused on social wellbeing. migrant workers received limited social support during epidemics (picum, 2020; schoch-spana et al., 2010). also, migrant workers’ lack of trust in their employers and the government could hinder them from seeking help from either party (bhopal, 2020; rothstein & coughlin, 2019; biao, 2003; eupha, 2020). furthermore, social discrimination and cultural stigma targeting migrant workers could create barriers for them to access resources during epidemic outbreaks (lin, hall, khoe, & bodomo, 2015; liem et al., 2020; daniels, 2020; bhopal, 2020; schoch-spana et al., 2010; onoma, 2017). in addition, migrant workers may be easily affected by misinformation about diseases due to language and cultural barriers in the host country (liem et al., 2020). furthermore, linguistic barriers in understanding public health information could result in poor awareness to disease control regulations (steege et al., 2019; kluge et al., 2020; hickey, gagnon, & jitthai, 2014; bhopal, 2020; hutchins et al., 2009; eupha, 2020). financial wellbeing seven studies found that epidemic outbreaks cause economic disruptions, creating a financial burden on migrant workers. migrant workers often limit their use of healthcare services when they are sick due to financial difficulties (ding, 2014; steege et al., 2019; kluge et al., 2020; schochspana et al; 2010). during an outbreak, migrant workers were concerned about their jobs over health (biao, 2003; steege et al., 2019; hutchins et al., 2019; kluge et al., 2020; schoch-spana et al; 2010; ding, 2014; picum, 2020). many chose to continue working in order to support their families or pay off collateral loans (biao, 2003). psychological wellbeing only 4 articles discussed the psychological wellbeing of migrant workers. studies show that migrant workers suffer from stress, depression and anxiety during an epidemic outbreak, given a wide range of challenges they face such as limited access to proper medical treatment, unemployment, and uncertainty about the future (steege et al., 2019; liem et al., 2020; ding, 2014). in addition, undocumented migrant workers live in constant fear of being deported if they work with healthcare authority (rothstein & coughlin, 2019). they also worry about being separated from their families in the host country during quarantine (rothstein & coughlin , 2019). 2. intervention eight studies discussed interventions to improve the physical or financial wellbeing of migrant workers. no interventions regarding psychological or social wellbeing were identified in these studies. epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 18 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the measures to promote physical wellbeing include quarantine, increased access to vaccinations, health screenings at the border, and promotion of hygiene strategies (daniels, 2020; hickey et al., 2014; steege et al., 2019; lin et al., 2015; macpherson et al., 2007). of these interventions, only one is covid-19 related (daniels, 2020) whereas others are about sars, h1n1 or ebola. furthermore, the covid-19 study focuses on specific strategies such as strengthening border control but allowing migrant workers who need ongoing medical attention (e.g. dialysis) to continue their treatment in their host country (daniels, 2020). compared to this covid-19 study, studies on other epidemics identified interventions that are more systematic. for example, studies on sars (biao, 2003; ding, 2014) and h1n1 (ding, 2014; hutchins et al., 2014) introduced a multi-agency intervention framework, which details the responsibilities of disease control in government organizations, healthcare institutions, public transportation, and employers of migrant workers. only one study has discussed the interventions to address the financial issue of migrant workers. in view of migrant workers’ unstable financial status and possible income loss during the sars outbreak, special government funds were set up in china to pay for migrant workers’ treatment fee (ding, 2014). in addition to this, employers were required to continue paying wages to migrant workers even though work had been suspended during the outbreak (ding, 2014). discussion this study represents one of the first to review the impact of major epidemics (including the covid-19 pandemic) on the wellbeing of unskilled migrant workers. overall, our findings consistently show that epidemic diseases have a negative impact on migrant workers, creating health risks, job insecurity, distress, and social discrimination. these findings are in line with an existing systematic review on migrants and refugees (wilson et al., 2018). in discussing the wellbeing of migrant workers, the majority of the studies have taken different social factors into account (e.g., living condition, migratory status, linguistic and cultural barriers), which further elaborate on the wellbeing theories about how pre-existing socio-structural inequity affects one’s wellbeing. our findings reviewed and analyzed migrant workers’ experiences during epidemic outbreaks in 13 countries/regions. each country/region has its own socio-demographics, disease situations, and social policies that could uniquely contribute to migrant workers’ experiences. therefore, cautions should be taken when interpreting these findings. nonetheless, the negative impact of epidemics on migrant workers’ wellbeing found across different countries suggests a global challenge that requires action from countries across the world. despite the consistent findings across the studies, several research gaps are identified. compared to studies on physical, financial and social aspects of wellbeing, studies examining psychological wellbeing were limited. the multi-faceted nature of wellbeing suggests that each aspect of wellbeing has different impacts on an individual and each aspect interacts with the other (kiefer, 2008). limiting the discussion on psychological wellbeing will not only provide a biased view of migrant workers’ experiences, but also underestimate its impact on migrant workers, such as their physical health and social engagement. fewer studies have focused on interventions. furthermore, these studies mainly discussed interventions with an immediate effect (e.g., health screening and vaccination) while ignoring the approaches to assist migrant workers in the long run. one of the major issues that may have a long-lasting effect on migrant workers is unemployment. research on disasters and natural hazards shows that economic downturn often occurs following an epidemic outbreak. an epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 19 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org epidemic outbreak decreases people’s demand for services due to fear of contagion, leading to closed businesses and loss of job in most sectors (e.g., retail, travel, insurance; lee & mckibbin, 2004). it is expected that the covid-19 pandemic will wipe out equivalent to 195 million fulltime workers globally in the second quarter of 2020 (international labour organization, 2020). migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to job loss due to their lack of social protection and citizenship entitlements, and the temporary nature of their jobs (berntsen, 2016). many migrant workers are the main breadwinners of their families and have been sending remittances home. being jobless will create greater financial hardship for their families. further, because migrants’ rights to residence are tied to their employers, losing their jobs renders them vulnerable to deportation (banki, 2013). currently, there is a lack of official unemployment record for migrant workers across the countries. the most useful statistics available was reported by international labour organization (2020), which estimated that the relative poverty rate for informal workers (i.e., no employer’s contribution to social security, no paid sick leave or annual leave) and their families will increase by 34% globally due to the pandemic. therefore, what migrant workers need is not only healthcare interventions to survive the disease, but assistance to survive in the labor market post-pandemic. the effectiveness of the interventions was largely unknown in these studies. as one of the guiding principles in the cdc field epidemiologic manual (hadler, varma, vugia, & goodman, 2018), developing evidence-based interventions helps to determine the feasibility of implementing an intervention in the population and provides evidence to improve the response to future outbreaks. the current pandemic has demonstrated its sweeping impact in the world through its unpredictable nature of outbursts, the rapid spread of the virus, and the large number of people affected. using the components of the existing evidence-based interventions could improve the efficiency of the response to such a pandemic in the future. in addition to the research gaps, some methodological limitations were identified in these studies. only a few empirical studies were found on this subject, possibly due to the limited open-access data and pressure of time following an epidemic outbreak (hadler et al., 2018). among the empirical research, the majority utilized non-probability sampling, rendering the study subject to self-selection bias. one exception was hickey et al (2014)’s study, which used random sampling to strengthen the external validity. in addition, there is a limitation associated with cross-sectional design employed by the quantitative study (hickey et al., 2014) because the temporal precedence between the variables was unclear and no causal links can be drawn from the study. the research gaps and methodological limitations are also reflected in the quality assessment of this review as the majority of the studies were rated as medium quality. implication to practice and research the substantial findings relating to the physical wellbeing of migrant workers reinforce the need for a universal health coverage during healthcare emergencies. as outlined in the sustainable development goals (who, 2017), a universal health coverage includes benefits such as access to essential healthcare services and affordable medicines and vaccines. these benefits are crucial to migrant workers, considering the health disparities they experience in the host country. the lack of long-term intervention in the studies calls for an approach that looks beyond an episode of disease and addresses its long-lasting impact on the society. as the covid-19 pandemic persists, the issue of unemployment will continue to be a major challenge for migrant workers. the traditional approach is to deport migrant workers to their home countries. this not only deprives them of means of living, but also creates labor shortages once the economy epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 20 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org starts to recover in the host country, especially in essential critical infrastructure. one possible solution is to register migrant workers in the government's unemployment record, conduct a demand and supply analysis, and relocate migrant workers to the industries where there is a labor shortage. in addition, the findings suggest that the psychological needs of migrant workers have been overlooked during the epidemics. it is important for practitioners (e.g. social workers, counselors) to step in. given the difficulty of providing in-person support due to social distancing, new interventions that involve technology should be considered. for example, with the “cyber social work” strategy, the singapore government has set up computers in migrant workers’ dormitories for them to attend counseling sessions. migrant workers can also use the computer to obtain covid-19 information through an online translation portal. in view of the increasing discrimination against the migrant workers amid the epidemics, practitioners can disseminate evidence-based information on the cause and transmission of the disease using social media, combating rumors and misinformation. furthermore, through sharing migrant workers’ stories and voices during an epidemic outbreak, practitioners can raise the public awareness to migrant workers’ challenges and advocate for migrant-inclusive response measures. in terms of research implications, more evidence-based research is needed to examine migrant workers’ wellbeing during epidemic outbreaks. for example, quantitative research can be conducted to compare the mental health outcomes between migrant workers and nonmigrant workers in the same country. using a longitudinal study design, researchers can follow up with migrant workers post-outbreak to understand how their wellbeing is affected in the long run. also, in order to gain a better insight into the effectiveness of an intervention, researchers can examine the changes in the wellbeing of migrant workers pre-and postintervention. these research agendas can be better achieved with more open-access data. specifically, an international data sharing platform designated to migrant worker research could be established. currently, there are several covid-19 open data sharing portals (e.g., figshare, crowdfight covid-19). building upon the existing efforts, the international organization for migration can collaborate with research institutes and ngos to develop an international migrant worker data sharing network. the data will not only boost migrant worker research, but also provide evidence for service delivery and policy development in preparation for future epidemics. authors fei wang case western reserve university, u.s.a. fxw125@case.edu chao tian ng teng fong general hospital, singapore weidi qin case western reserve university, u.s.a. publishing timeline received 15 june 2020 accepted 21 july 2020 published 13 august 2020 epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 21 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org references andrews, f. m., & withey, s. b. 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(2020). refugee and migrant health in the covid-19 response. the lancet, 395(10232), 1237–1239. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30791-1 kobau, r., bann, c., lewis, m., zack, m. m., boardman, a. m., boyd, r., lim, k. c., holder, t., hoff, a. k., luncheon, c., thompson, w., horner-johnson, w., & lucas, r. e. (2013). mental, social, and physical well-being in new hampshire, oregon, and washington, 2010 behavioral risk factor surveillance system: implications for public health research and practice related to healthy people 2020 foundation health measures on well-being. population health metrics, 11(1), 19. https://doi.org/10.1186/1478-7954-11-19 lee, j. w., & mckibbin, w. j. (2004). estimating the global economic costs of sars. in learning from sars: preparing for the next disease outbreak: workshop summary (p. 92). washington, dc: national academies press. liem, a., wang, c., wariyanti, y., latkin, c. a., & hall, b. j. (2020). the neglected health of international migrant workers in the covid-19 epidemic. the lancet psychiatry, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/s2215-0366(20)30076-6 lin, l., hall, b. j., khoe, l. c., & bodomo, a. b. (2015). ebola outbreak: from the perspective of african migrants in china. american journal of public health, 105(5), 5. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2015.302649 macpherson, d. w., gushulak, b. d., & macdonald, l. (2007). health and foreign policy: influences of migration and population mobility. bulletin of the world health organization, 85(3), 200–206. https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.06.036962 menaghan, e. g, (1983). individual coping efforts: moderators of the relationship between life stress and mental health outcomes. in h. b. kaplan (ed.), psychosocial stress: trends in theory and research (pp.157-191). new york: academic press. onoma, a. k. (2017). the making of dangerous communities: the “peul-fouta” in ebola-weary senegal. africa spectrum, 52(2), 29–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/000203971705200202 picum. (platform for international cooperation on undocumented migrants; 2020). the covid-19 pandemic: we need urgent measures to protect people and mend the cracks in our health, social protection and migration systems. https://picum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/covid-19statement-march-2020.pdf qiu, p., caine, e., yang, y., chen, q., li, j., & ma, x. (2011). depression and associated factors in internal migrant workers in china. journal of affective disorders, 134(1-3), 198–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.05.043 rothstein, m. a., & coughlin, c. n. (2019). ensuring compliance with quarantine by undocumented immigrants and other vulnerable groups: public health versus politics. american journal of public health, 109(9), 1179–1183. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2019.305201 schoch-spana, m., bouri, n., rambhia, k. j., & norwood, a. (2010). stigma, health disparities, and the 2009 h1n1 influenza pandemic: how to protect latino farmworkers in future health emergencies. biosecurity and bioterrorism, 8(3), 243–254. https://doi.org/10.1089/bsp.2010.0021 steege, a. l., baron, s., davis, s., torres-kilgore, j., & sweeney, m. h. (2009). pandemic influenza and farmworkers: the effects of employment, social, and economic factors. american journal of public health, 99(suppl. 2), 308–316. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2009.161091 https://www.iom.int/wmr https://joannabriggs.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/jbi_critical_appraisal-checklist_for_prevalence_studies2017_0.pdf https://joannabriggs.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/jbi_critical_appraisal-checklist_for_prevalence_studies2017_0.pdf https://joannabriggs.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/jbi_critical_appraisal-checklist_for_qualitative_research2017_0.pdf https://joannabriggs.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/jbi_critical_appraisal-checklist_for_qualitative_research2017_0.pdf https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map https://doi.org/10.1016/s2215-0366(20)30076-6 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2015.302649 https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.06.036962 https://doi.org/10.1177/000203971705200202 https://picum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/covid-19-statement-march-2020.pdf https://picum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/covid-19-statement-march-2020.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.05.043 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2019.305201 https://doi.org/10.1089/bsp.2010.0021 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2009.161091 epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 23 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the lancet. (2020). covid-19 will not leave behind refugees and migrants. the lancet, 395(10230), 1090. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30758-3 the u.s. centers for disease control and prevention. (2018). the well-being concepts. https://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/wellbeing.htm united nations statistics division. (1998). recommendations on statistics of international migration, revision 1. united nations. https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesm/seriesm_58rev1e.pdf wilson, l., rubens-augustson, t., murphy, m., jardine, c., crowcroft, n., hui, c., & wilson, k. (2018). barriers to immunization among newcomers: a systematic review. vaccine, 36(8), 1055–1062. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.01.025 world bank (2020). covid-19 crisis through a migration lens. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/989721587512418006/pdf/covid-19-crisisthrough-a-migration-lens.pdf world health organization. (2014). a brief guide to emerging infectious diseases and zoonoses. who regional office for south-east asia. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/204722 world health organization. (2017). sustainable development goals 3: ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages. https://www.who.int/sdg/targets/en/ world health organization. (2020). who timeline covid-19. https://www.who.int/newsroom/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19 https://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/wellbeing.htm https://unstats.un.org/unsd/publication/seriesm/seriesm_58rev1e.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.01.025 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/989721587512418006/pdf/covid-19-crisis-through-a-migration-lens.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/989721587512418006/pdf/covid-19-crisis-through-a-migration-lens.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/204722 https://www.who.int/sdg/targets/en/ https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19 epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 24 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org appendix i data extraction form for screening part a: study information part b: initial screening part c: eligibility decisions part d: assessment of study quality a1. ref id a2. title and author (s) a3. date of extraction a4. type of study [1] intervention [2] observational (quantitative): cross-sectional, longitudinal [3] mixed method [4] qualitative [5] descriptive, correlational or case studies [6] theoretical or position paper, editorial or commentary [7] systematic review on the wellbeing of migrant workers or related interventions during the major epidemic infectious diseases (stop, code as harvest on c1) [8] practice guideline [if can't tell, retrieve full text] b1. is this paper about migrant workers/foreign workers/internal migrant workers/domestic helpers? [1] yes [2] no (stop, code as excluded on c1) [if can't tell, retrieve full text] b2. is this paper about the epidemic infectious diseases during the past 20 years [i.e. covid19, sars, h1n1, mers, ebola]? [1] yes [2] no (stop, code as excluded on c1) [if can't tell, retrieve full text] c1. is this paper about the wellbeing of migrant workers, or the intervention to improve the wellbeing of migrant workers? [1] yes [2] no (stop, code as excluded on c1) c2. paper status: [1] excluded [2] included [3] harvest [4] full text n/a c3. if excluded, what was the reason? list the question number that determines the study should be excluded [choose from part b or c] d1. overall score of the study epidemic infectious diseases and well-being of migrant workers wang, tian, & qin 25 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org appendix ii guideline for assessing the quality of the included studies reviewer: date: author: year: ref no. 1. were study participants sampled in an appropriate way? (yes/no/uncertain) 2. were the study subjects clearly defined for the coder to identify their eligibility of the current review? (yes/no/uncertain) 3. did all study subjects meet the eligibility of the current review (e.g. all unskilled migrant workers versus a combination of unskilled and skilled professionals) (yes/no/uncertain) 4. was there appropriate statistical analysis? (yes/no/uncertain) 5. was the study about the well-being of migrant workers and intervention for improving the well-being? (yes/no/uncertain) 6. did the study discuss more than one aspect of well-being of migrant workers? (yes/no/uncertain) 7. did the study propose specific steps or protocol for the intervention? (yes/no/uncertain) 8. did the study assess the effectiveness of the intervention? (yes/no/uncertain) 9. did the study discuss the implication of the intervention for future epidemic infectious diseases? (yes/no/uncertain) total score _____ *yes = 1 no = 0 uncertain: the third reviewer to review and then give a score quality (low/medium/high) *low 0 – 3 medium 4 – 6 high 7 – 9 a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness morse, j. l., o’donnell, m. b., walberg, a. r., & dik, b. j. (2019). meaning interventions in schools: strategies for supporting healthy development and wellbeing in the lives of youth. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 43-58. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i4.983 jessica l. morse colorado state university jessica.morse@colostate.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) 43 article meaning interventions in schools: strategies for supporting healthy development and wellbeing in the lives of youth jessica l. morse · maeve b. o’donnell · arissa r. walberg · bryan j. dik abstract: human beings inherently make meaning of the world, interpreting themselves in context and utilizing these representations to determine what to think, how to feel, and in what way to act. developing meaning in life appears to be a highly nuanced, personal journey and yet, research suggests that those who experience their lives as meaningful enjoy multiple physical and psychological benefits and are protected from various health risks. beyond establishing a firm sense that life is meaningful, studies suggest that people of all ages who can ‘make meaning’ of their experiences, especially difficult experiences, may be protected from developing some mental and physical health concerns. childhood and adolescence may be pivotal periods for the development of this well-being resource, and school offers an especially promising context for fostering meaning. yet, there have been few articles that have explored how meaning and meaning-making can be woven into the school day. the current article attempts to address this gap in the literature by defining meaning and meaning-making, discussing the relevance of meaning from a developmental framework, and offering suggestions for applications for teachers and providers during the school day. keywords: meaning in life, health, eudaimonic wellbeing, positive psychology introduction schools provide opportunities for students to acquire knowledge, develop effective thinking skills, problem-solve, and build relationships with peers, teachers, and mentors. yet when parents are asked to consider what is most important for a child’s future, they often provide answers beyond critical-thinking and analytical skills, knowledge, and relationships. they want their children’s lives to be healthy, happy, and meaningful (seligman et al., 2009). in this vein, positive psychology urges a “more open and appreciative perspective regarding human potential, motives, and capacities” (sheldon & king, 2001, p. 216). school may provide an ideal context for engaging students in activities that leverage their strengths to promote personal growth and well-being, yet few empirical studies or theoretical papers have provided specific recommendations about how this can be accomplished during the school day. this paper addresses this gap in the literature by describing the importance of meaning across meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 44 development, highlighting school as an important context for meaning, and providing recommendations for actionable strategies for fostering meaning in school settings. meaning in life and well-being meaning in life is considered to reflect an individual’s subjective, global sense about the nature of her or his existence. people have a sense that life is meaningful when they experience purpose, significance, and coherence (steger, frazier, oishi, kaler, 2006; steger & martela, 2016). purpose refers to an overarching, personally relevant aim for one’s life, significance is the sense that one’s life matters, and coherence refers to one’s understanding of what one’s life means (steger, 2009). meaning is thus defined as the degree to which people make sense of how they fit in the world, perceive their life as having an overarching mission or goal, and feel as though their life, or contributions, matter (steger, 2009). scholars typically distinguish between search for meaning, defined as the extent to which people are looking for meaning, and presence of meaning, or the extent to which people’s lives feel meaningful (steger et al., 2006). whereas presence of meaning is widely accepted as a key indicator of psychological health, search for meaning in the absence of experiencing meaning has been associated with increased risk for mental health concerns and impaired well-being (steger et al., 2006). meaning has often been considered a facet of well-being, and yet, teasing apart contributing factors to well-being can often prove difficult. one example is the relationship between meaning and happiness. although meaning and happiness are often paired as facets of well-being, there are conceptual differences between them. whereas meaning has primarily been conceptualized from a eudaimonic perspective, happiness has largely been considered hedonic in nature (ryan & deci, 2001). the hedonic tradition targets the pursuit of sensation and pleasure while eudaimonic perspectives focus on living consistently with the true self, with less emphasis on subjective well-being (ryan & deci, 2001). happiness has been defined in multiple ways—from a fleeting emotional state to feelings of accomplishment—and as a subjective judgment by which people assess their quality of life favorably (veenhoven, 1991; delle fave, brdar, freire, vella-brodrick, & wissing, 2011). positive emotions and life satisfaction have dominated the hedonic tradition (diener et al., 1985; diener, 2000; pavot & diener, 2008). seligman and colleagues suggest that happiness per se should not be the target of intervention due to its fleeting nature, but rather pleasure, engagement, and meaning are sustainable pathways to more frequent experiences of happiness (seligman, 2004; peterson & seligman, 2004). indeed, engagement and meaning account for the majority of variance in predicting happiness (peterson et al., 2005; vella-brodrick et al., 2009; gander, proyer, & ruch, 2016; but see kashdan, biswas-diener & king, 2008, and king, hicks, krull, & del-gaiso, 2006, for an alternative perspective). although happiness and meaning are related, focusing on meaning and meaning-related activities may provide benefit beyond exclusively targeting happiness, subjective well-being, or pleasantness. experiencing meaning in life is associated with several facets of psychological wellbeing and physical health. for example, meaning is linked to positive affect (coffey, wraylake, mashek, & branand, 2014), self-acceptance (steger, kashdan, sullivan, & lorentz, 2008), motivation (bailey & phillips, 2016), and relatedness (coffey et al., 2014). meaning also predicts improved physical health and longevity (roepke, jayawickreme, & riffle, 2014), which is meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 45 partially explained by engagement in health-promoting behaviors and avoidance of healthrisking behaviors (e.g., brassai, piko, & steger, 2011). thus, people who experience their lives as meaningful tend also to report high levels of psychological well-being and physical health. people who have a steady sense that life is meaningful may also cope more effectively with stressful life events. when individuals’ global sense that life is meaningful is discrepant from their appraised meaning of a stressful situation, they tend to engage in meaning-making processes focused on resolving the discrepancy (park, 2010). these processes are varied and nuanced, but they include cognitive and emotional processing of the event motivated by a desire to make sense of it. as a result of this meaning-making process, a person may feel like they have made sense of the situation: accepting it, growing from it, experiencing an identify shift, changing their beliefs about the world, and/or restoring their sense of meaning in life. as a hypothetical example, consider jared, a 15 year-old high school sophomore who experiences the sudden death of his father in a car accident. because jared believed the world was stable and predictable, the meaning of this highly stressful event could be highly discrepant with his global meaning framework. according to park’s (2010) meaning-making model, jared would engage in processes to understand and make meaning of the tragic loss. jared may eventually accept his father’s death, and even perceive it as an opportunity for growth (“this means that i have to step up and help care for my siblings”). alternatively, he may change his global beliefs (“the world is harsh and cruel") in ways that negatively impact his well-being. this model provides a framework from which to understand diverse experiences in responding to unexpected events that require adjusting previous conceptions of who we are, what we believe, and how we go about our lives. research reveals that many people experience highly stressful events during childhood. in a large-scale survey that assessed adverse childhood experiences (aces), more than half of participants reported at least one stressful event, such as experiencing psychological, physical or sexual abuse, witnessing violence, or living with people at high-risk for causing instability in the home or harm (e.g., substance abusers, mentally ill or suicidal, or previously imprisoned; felitti et al., 1998). as adults, people who reported aces had significantly higher incidence of disease and were at increased risk of engaging in health-risking behaviors (e.g., smoking). however, adults who reported strength in meaning-making were protected to a significant extent from the negative impact of aces on their health and well-being as adults (banyard, hamby, & grych, 2017). although we cannot presume from this study that adults who are good at making meaning of difficult events were necessarily able to do so in childhood, it seems reasonable to conclude that the presence of meaning-making abilities in adulthood resulted from the development and fine-tuning of these capabilities throughout childhood and adolescence. thus, providing opportunities for youth to engage in meaning-making and explore meaning in a supportive environment may buffer against the deleterious effects of stressful childhood experiences on adulthood health. meaning in childhood and adolescence whereas there is a vast body of research on meaning in adolescents and young adults, research on children’s experiences of meaning in life is just beginning to grow with the recent development of tools to adequately measure meaning in this population. in the past, little meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 46 research focused on assessing meaning in childhood due to the assumption that children lack the abstract thinking capacity and reflective mechanisms to support meaning processes (e.g., piaget, 1952). however, evidence suggests that children as young as 8 years old can think abstractly (davydov & kilpatrick, 1990) and that young children can understand and express aspects of meaning (e.g., beliefs about the world, the self, and how the self interacts in the world, i.e., “self-in-world”; park & folkman, 1997). the “why?” questions so heavily prevalent in childhood may reflect this curiosity about how the world works, who they are, and if what they do matters. thus, the comprehension and mattering aspects of meaning are arguably especially important in childhood. qualitative research reveals that children can describe their experiences and sense of meaning (e.g., kang, kim, song, & kim, 2013; salter & stallard, 2004) and make meaning from negative experiences (orvell, kross, & gelman, 2018). recently, researchers developed and validated a measure to assess the presence and sources of meaning in the lives of children (mil-cq; shoshani & russo-netzer, 2017). using this scale, researchers have found children who report high levels of meaning also report high levels of life satisfaction and positive affectivity (shoshani et al., 2017). others have found that children’s self-reported meaning is positively associated with their overall well-being (st. john, 2017). furthermore, research on the effects of positive psychology interventions for preschool through middle-school suggest that children are aware of meaning and can increase their sense of meaning, as we review shortly. thus, evidence is accumulating to suggest that meaning is a crucial component of children’s well-being, and that meaning can be measured and fostered among children. far more evidence suggests that meaning is important in adolescence. research with adolescents suggests meaning is associated with key positive psychological indicators such as subjective well-being (burrow, o’dell, & hill, 2010), life satisfaction (bronk, lapsey, talib, & finch, 2009) and resiliency (bernard, 1991; masten & reed, 2002). the importance of meaning during adolescence is unsurprising given its relevance to development and identity formation (schwartz, côte, & arnett, 2005; burrow & o’dell, 2010). theorists such as erikson (1968) described adolescence as a time of self-exploration and self-discovery, and substantial research demonstrates that establishing meaning is central to healthy identity development (e.g., damon, menon, & bronk, 2003; burrow, o’dell, & hill, 2010; kiang & fulignu, 2010). emmons (1999) suggested that meaning also influences adolescents’ aspirations and life trajectories. that is, establishing meaning in life involves sensemaking and identifying an overarching purpose from which smaller goals are set in order to pursue that purpose. research is beginning to identify the specific pathways through which meaning in life may facilitate optimal youth development. meaning in life involves understanding one’s personal fit in the world, which aids in feeling connected to life in general and to specific life domains. for youth, the role of student ordinarily is central to their identity, yet without a coherent sense of global meaning, it may prove difficult to envision how their education links to a long-term sense of purpose and significance. indeed, youth who do not identify their lives as meaningful are less motivated by academic achievement (damon, 2009), whereas higher levels of purpose predict better academic performance (martin sanz, rodrigo, garcia, & pastrana, 2017). adolescents who report higher levels of meaning also report greater intrinsic motivation and better academic performance (bailey & phillips, 2016). meaning in life also meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 47 appears to play a significant role in feeling connected to school and various career-related outcomes. in a sample of 9th graders in hong kong, presence of meaning positively predicted participants’ feelings of connectedness to school, career curiosity, and career confidence (yuen & yau, 2015). thus, experiencing a sense of purpose or meaning may enhance engagement and performance in school and promote feelings of confidence and future efficacy, which likely reinforces positive identity development and optimal growth. although a sense of purpose may result in positive outcomes, it is relatively common for adolescents to lack a clear sense of direction. bronk and colleagues (2009) described many youth as “drifting,” defined as a lack of engagement in purposeful goals and low levels of intention. conversely, youth who engage in higher levels of exploration (perhaps motivated by a stronger search for meaning) are more likely to report higher purpose commitment as they get older (burrow, o’dell, & hill 2010). in fact, in the sample of chinese students described above, high levels of searching for meaning were also positively associated with career curiosity, confidence, and connectedness to school. thus, a motivation to find meaning and a willingness or openness toward vocational and identity exploration can promote growth. it would not be surprising to find that meaning in life and exploration facilitate one another in a mutually causal loop for adolescents. encouraging youth to engage in exploration in order to find meaning will likely help them form stronger identities and take a more active approach to their future goals (e.g., lawford & ramey, 2015). beyond academic achievement and engagement, meaning in life is tied to healthier lifestyle choices as well as better psychological and physical health among adolescents. adolescents who report high levels of meaning in life are less likely to use substances or engage in other risky behaviors (aloise-young, hennigan, & leong, 2001; brassai, piko, & steger, 2010). beyond behavioral choices, youth who report presence of meaning in life endorse better psychological health (french & joseph, 2009; schochet, dadds, ham, & montague, 2006; brouzos, vassilopoulos, & boumpouli, 2016; vela et al., 2015), whereas youth who report low levels of meaning also report poorer mental health and psychosocial adjustment (shek, 1992). similarly, adolescents who report high levels of purpose also endorse greater life satisfaction and emotional well-being (burrow et al., 2010; kiang & fuligni, 2010; king et al., 2006), hope (feldman & snyder, 2005), and agency (schwartz, côte, & arnett, 2005). meaning in life may also augment other psychological resources in reducing risk for psychopathology. for example, in a sample of filipino high school students, presence of meaning mediated the effects of grit in reducing depression (datu, king, & valdez, 2018). in sum, research suggests that meaning in life plays an important role in adolescents’ current and future physical and emotional health. theoretical assertions and research results also support the role of meaning as a protective factor for adolescents who are struggling or facing difficult life circumstances. in other words, meaning in life may protect or buffer against the influence of known risk factors for later psychopathology. for example, machell, disabato, and kashdan (2015) found that adolescents living in poverty were less likely to engage in antisocial behaviors if they reported having a sense of purpose. research also supports the role of meaning in reducing risk for suicidal ideation and behavior. meaning in life has been found to predict decreased suicidal ideation over an 8-week period of time (kleiman & beaver, 2013), reduced severity of suicidal ideation (tan, et al., 2017) and decreased lifetime odds of experiencing suicidal ideation and meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 48 suicide attempts (kleiman, adams, kashdan, & riskind, 2013). likewise, meaning in life has been found to moderate the relationship between mental health status and suicidal ideation such that children and adolescents who report less meaning are more likely to experience suicidal ideation when they report poor mental health (tan et al., 2017). similarly, meaning in life has been found to play a moderating role between bully victimization and subsequent suicidal ideation among 6th-12th grade boys and to mediate the relationship between bully victimization and suicidal ideation among 6th-12th grade girls (henry et al., 2013). in essence, meaning may be a protective factor for adolescent boys who are bullied, while decreases in meaning may explain the relationship between bullying and suicidal ideation for girls. finally, research also suggests that meaning in life may moderate the relationship between trauma history and psychological distress including symptoms of depression (krause, 2007; owens, steger, whitesell, & herrera, 2009) and ptsd (craig et al., 2013; owens et al., 2009). in a sample of adults with a history of trauma, participants with a strong sense of meaning in life reported lower levels of depression compared to those with a weak or average sense of meaning (krause, 2007). similarly, among samples of college students with a history of trauma, both well-being (triplett, et al., 2012) and posttraumatic growth (kashdan & kane, 2011) have been shown to correlate positively with meaning in life. shortly after the september 11th terrorist attacks in the united states, students with high levels of meaning in life reported posttraumatic growth, while those with low meaning in life experienced higher levels of posttraumatic distress (steger, frazier, & zacchanini, 2008). although research has not yet examined the role of meaning for trauma victims during adolescence, it is plausible that the same patterns found among adults and college students would be present for an adolescent sample, pointing to the adaptive role of meaning in life in coping with substantial challenges. to summarize, building and maintaining a sense of meaning in life offers substantial advantages for youth and adolescents across many life domains. this points to the need to introduce interventions and strategies that foster meaning. positive psychology in schools school mental health systems are generally not equipped to sufficiently prevent and treat the plethora of mental health concerns experienced by students (stephan, sugai, lever, & connors, 2015). positive psychological interventions in schools, however, are easily delivered by teachers and other school professionals and may supplement treatment for those experiencing mental health concerns and serve as a preventative measure for those who are not. research on positive youth development suggests that strength-based approaches that focus on developing competencies (e.g., resilience, social skills, emotional regulation, a positive sense of identity) yield significant benefits that extend beyond addressing problem behaviors (catalano et al., 2004; larson, 2000; rashid, 2015). positive psychology interventions for adults have been found to decrease depressive symptoms even without a direct focus on doing so (seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005), suggesting that such interventions may be well-suited for building strengths among all students while also assisting those experiencing mental health concerns. recent research on “positive education” interventions has focused on the effects of programs that combine traditional academic skills with competencies that foster well-being (seligman et al., 2009). the most studied positive education program to date is the penn meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 49 resiliency program (prp), which targets cognitive-behavioral and social skills for older elementary and middle school students in a structured format. evidence suggests that prp participation is related to reduced hopelessness, fewer behavioral problems, and less anxiety among students (seligman et al., 2009). furthermore, a recent meta-analysis reported that the prp appeared to reduce and prevent depressive symptoms (brunwasser, gillham & kim, 2009). another curriculum, the positive psychology programme, focuses on character strength development for 9th grade students in the united states. although depression and anxiety were not impacted, students who participated in this program reported increased enjoyment and engagement in school. furthermore, teachers (who were blind to intervention assignments) reported that character strengths related to learning (e.g., creativity) increased among participating students (seligman et al., 2009). another school-based positive psychology intervention, the maytiv program (shoshani & slone, 2017; shoshani, steinmetz, & kanat-maymon, 2016), has been implemented in israeli preschools and middle schools. the program focused on enhancing students’ well-being, school engagement, and school achievement through eight components, including meaning (based on the perma framework; seligman, 2011). the maytiv program sought to enhance students’ sense of meaning through content directed at developing character strengths, mindfulness, and focus (shoshani et al., 2016). results of longitudinal randomized control trials indicate that preschoolers who took part in the program demonstrated more positive learning behaviors and increases in well-being, and middle school children who partook reported more positive emotions, better peer relations, greater emotional and cognitive engagement, and higher grade point average scores than did students in control conditions (shoshani, et al., 2016, 2017). to summarize, research on positive education conducted to date suggests that such interventions can reduce depressive symptoms and may promulgate a more positive attitude toward school. future research is needed to identify the “critical ingredients” of such interventions, addressing the question of which specific positive psychology constructs offer the most benefit for students. future intervention work also needs to propose interventions that serve as an adjunct to already established routines in school, as it is not reasonable to expect that schools would want to or have the resources available to implement a positive psychology curriculum in addition to the regular curriculum. based on the review of literature in the present paper, it is proposed that meaning in life may be one of the key ingredients in promoting well-being for students and can be plausibly implemented in schools. therefore, the subsequent sections focus on 1) current meaning interventions and 2) proposed meaning interventions that can be implemented by teachers and other school professionals. meaning in life interventions to date, meaning intervention research has followed two primary paths. the first path can be described as studies that investigate meaning as a mediator for another primary outcome of interest. for example, one study found that meaning increased as a result of substance abuse treatment (flora & stalikas, 2012), which supports meaning as a subsidiary outcome. the second path includes studies designed with the goal of enhancing meaning as the outcome of meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 50 interest in its own right. for example, a study of college students who were assigned to take pictures of meaningful aspects of their lives experienced their lives as more meaningful as a result (steger, shim, barenz, & shin, 2013). recent efforts have used randomized control trial methodology as well, as in the case of meaning-centered group psychotherapy for cancer patients, which was found to significantly improve patients’ sense of meaning relative to a control group (breitbart et al., 2010). to summarize, available evidence suggests that meaning is indeed malleable and that focused interventions can enhance meaning. however, although purpose interventions have been piloted (e.g., dik, steger, gibson & peisner, 2012), comprehensive meaning interventions remain untested in school-aged populations. steger and martela (2016) defined meaning as the extent to which one understands oneself (i.e., comprehension), pursues goal-directed avenues in the world based on this understanding (i.e., purpose), and feels that one’s existence is important (i.e., mattering). this definition lends itself well to interventions tailored to children and adolescents as activities can be designed to focus on developing each of the three components, recognizing also that interventions directed at purpose, for example, may also impact one’s sense of mattering. to enhance comprehension of the self, activities that promote self-exploration, evaluation of strengths, exploration of values, and what things/people/ideas are meaningful to them may be beneficial. fostering comprehension of the self may be especially beneficial for youth who experience low self-esteem, who over-identify with one aspect of their identity (e.g., “an athlete”), who do not have a well-developed sense of identity, or who are undergoing a critical transition or making a big decision (e.g., puberty, college decision making). to foster a sense of purpose, effective intervention strategies may encourage action, such as assigning students tasks that align with their purpose and interests, encouraging them to engage with the outside world in concrete ways. for example, a student with a heart for animal welfare may volunteer for the humane society or start a neighborhood pet-sitting service. meaning also can be considered a reflexive process, such that feedback from engaging with their purpose(s) may help students to understand themselves better. youth who might particularly benefit from interventions focused on developing purpose include those who feel unmotivated, lack efficacy, or experience depression and students who struggle in traditional school domains but thrive in creative, artistic, athletic, or other activities. finally, to tap into mattering, interventions may focus on helping students identify times when they feel that they matter or are important, times when they feel connected to others through the work they do or interactions they have, or times when they feel what they are doing may make a positive impact on their communities. mattering-focused interventions may be especially critical for youth who are depressed, feel socially isolated, experience bullying or teasing, receive minimal attention at home, or experience low self-esteem. table 1 provides suggestions for schoolbased activities that teachers of children and adolescents can employ in the classroom to promote meaning. previously researched and novel interventions are presented below: table 1. school-based meaning activities comprehension purpose mattering childhood 1, 2, 4, 16 6, 7, 8 14 adolescence 3, 4, 5, 16 9, 10, 11 12, 13 meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 51 1. point out strengths when a student is participating in activities, including how a student uses strengths to accomplish a task or to help another student. this may expand students’ perceptions of their strengths, enhance self-understanding, and improve selfesteem and self-efficacy. for example: “hannah, i noticed that you were frustrated at first with these math problems, but you were able to use your strength of perseverance to finish the task.” (park & peterson, 2008) 2. point out student values by identifying how a student uses a value to make a choice or to help another student. this may expand students’ understanding of what is important to them, encouraging thoughtful decision-making and perspective-taking and perhaps reducing impulsivity. for example: “charlie, i saw that you were deciding between working with the legos or spending time with steve. you chose to play with legos. it seems like it was important to you to be building in that moment.” (park & peterson, 2008) 3. ask students to complete a strengths test whereby they respond to a series of questions related to their strengths. ask them to come prepared with their reactions to the survey, including strengths that made sense for them and if they were surprised by anything as related to the survey. this may expand students’ knowledge of their strengths, enhance self-understanding and reflective abilities, and improve self-esteem by allowing them to see themselves at their best. for a list of strengths, visit www.viacharacter.org (peterson & seligman, 2004) 4. ask students to take pictures of aspects of their life that they find meaningful. ask students to choose 1-2 pictures that they would share with the class (steger et al., 2013.). this activity may encourage planning, reflective skills, social connectedness, and a deeper understanding of what is important to them and why. 5. ask students to choose a song that they find meaningful. play a portion of the song in class and ask the student to elaborate on what makes this song meaningful to them. this activity allows for creativity and use of reflective skills and may promote social connectedness and a deeper understanding of what is important to them and why. 6. take students on a field trip and encourage them to do something that fits with an area of strength. for example, if the class goes to a nursing home, encourage students to choose ways to be helpful based on skills or competencies they possess (seligman, 2004). this activity may promote students’ sense of purpose by providing opportunities for them to enact their strengths and act consistently with their values. 7. encourage students to ask their parents/caregivers about times when they have exhibited their strengths. encourage students to ask their parents/caregivers about other ways to use their strengths. consider making this a homework assignment. this activity may expand students’ understanding of themselves through feedback from others and may encourage flexibility in self-views as well as expansiveness in potential ways to express strengths. 8. encourage students to ask their parents/caregivers about times when they have exhibited their values. encourage students to ask their parents/caregivers about other ways to use their values. consider making this a homework assignment. this activity may expand students’ understanding of themselves through feedback from others and http://www.viacharacter.org/ http://www.viacharacter.org/ meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 52 may encourage flexibility in self-views as well as expansiveness in potential ways to employ values. 9. provide experiential homework, whereby students choose one strength and engage in an activity that demonstrates this strength. ask students to come back to school prepared to share their experience. this activity encourages active engagement that may provide students with a sense of efficacy, enhance their sense of purpose, clarify who they are and what they care about, and potentially feel connected to others and motivated to continue engaging in activities that utilize strengths. 10. provide experiential homework, whereby students choose one value and engage in an activity that demonstrates this value. ask students to come back to school prepared to share their experience. this activity encourages active engagement that may provide students with a sense of efficacy, enhance their sense of purpose, clarify who they are and what they care about, and potentially feel connected to others and motivated to continue engaging in activities that align with their values. 11. ask students to tell a story about a time when they used a strength/value. if this is difficult, begin by inviting students to identify strengths/values they admire in movie characters or books (niemiec, & wedding, 2013). this activity provides youth with an opportunity to reflect on times when they or others are at their best. this may enhance self-esteem and self-efficacy and may encourage action in engaging with strengths and values. 12. encourage students to keep a “why i matter” journal to document ways they made a difference in the lives of others. encourage students to evaluate their responses and determine if there are themes in their responses. research suggests that reflective journaling promotes self-examination, self-discovery, understanding of the self in the context of the world, critical thinking skills, as well as positive behavior changes and use of coping skills (e.g., kelley, cunningham, & branscome, 2015). reflective writing on the topic of “why i matter” may specifically promote students’ sense of meaning and understanding of what contributes to their sense of mattering. 13. encourage students to keep a “connectedness” journal. each day students can write about a time when they felt most fully themselves and/or times when they most felt connected to other people or to their environment. reflective writing on the topic of connectedness may promote students’ sense of social well-being, self-and-other knowledge, and their overall sense of the ways in which connectedness promotes a sense of meaningfulness. 14. encourage students to ask their parents/caregivers for feedback about ways they see their child making a difference in the world. students can ask parents/caregivers to share stories about times the student did something that mattered or made a difference in the lives of others. this activity may expand students’ understanding of themselves through feedback from others and may encourage flexibility in self-views and may provide an experience of feeling recognized and of value to others. 15. ask students to write about the most difficult circumstance that occurred during the last week. provide time to reflect on how they can make meaning from their experience (e.g., acceptance, change in identity, change in global meaning, etc.). reflective writing meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 53 about difficult experiences with a focus on how to make meaning of the experience may provide students opportunities to examine difficult experiences from a meaning-making lens that enables them to develop an understanding of how they typically make sense of difficult events, and perhaps develop alternative ways of making sense that promote growth and well-being. 16. encourage students to write down “three good things” that occurred each day and reflect. research suggests that gratitude journaling (e.g., “three good things”) enhances students’ sense of meaning and their engagement in the classroom (e.g., flinchbaugh, moore, chang, & may, 2012). summary and conclusion despite our theoretical and empirical assertions that fostering meaning in schools would be beneficial for youth, it is likely that schools will experience barriers to implementation of positive psychology interventions (white, 2016). the stringent, standardized requirements of many public school systems in the united states may make it difficult for schools to acquire the approvals and resources necessary to train school personnel and effectively implement interventions. although many positive psychology interventions do require extensive training and rigorous standardization, the activities contained in this article were designed to be brief and accessible and build on the foundational knowledge teachers possess in implementing and debriefing activities. buy-in from teachers, parents, communities, and policy makers is critical in the efficacy of any intervention. thus, psychoeducation about the nature, purpose, and benefits of integrating positive psychology interventions in the classroom is crucial in securing support. ideally, a member of the school personnel would champion the efforts and serve as the primary resource for dissemination of knowledge and problem-solving as concerns arise (sánchez et al., 2014). although barriers to implementing meaning-focused interventions are inevitable, schools are environments with abounding intellectual, social, and structural resources with which to help youth understand what makes their lives meaningful. risks to youth and adolescent health are a concern that has garnered worldwide attention. positive psychological interventions designed to promote human flourishing may be a critical piece in addressing youth health needs and to provide opportunities for students to flourish even in the midst of difficult life circumstances. broadly speaking, positive psychological interventions in schools demonstrate compelling results, including reductions in depressive symptomatology and increases in academic strengths and engagement. as research attempts to identify those facets of well-being most important for intervention, meaning in life appears to impact several domains of children’s and adolescent’s health, including mental wellbeing and physical health, perhaps through the promotion of positive behavior and the reduction of health risk behavior. meaning is also highly relevant to the school setting as youth tend to perform poorly and are at higher risk for dropping out of school when they do not perceive of school as meaningful. easy-to-implement and accessible interventions in schools that help promote domain-specific meaning (e.g., school) and global meaning may serve as an antidote to the emotional and behavioral risks to which youth are particularly prone and promote optimal psychological and identity development. meaning interventions in schools morse, o’donnell, walberg & dik 54 authors jessica l. morse colorado state university jessica.morse@colostate.edu maeve b. o’donnell colorado state university & university of washington arissa r. walberg community health of central washington bryan j. dik colorado state university publishing timeline received 14 may 2019 accepted 23 september 2019 published 26 september 2019 references aloise-young, p. a., hennigan, k. m., & leong, c. w. 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(2016). what happiness science can learn from john stuart mill. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 164-179. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i1.464 willem van der deijl erasmus university rotterdam vanderdeijl@ese.eur.nl copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 164 article what happiness science can learn from john stuart mill willem van der deijl abstract: many researchers studying subjective wellbeing (swb) understand swb as a concept that is close to bentham’s notion of happiness. this conception of happiness is philosophically controversial, because it treats pleasure as a homogenous experience. i analyze an important deviation from bentham in john stuart mill’s utilitarianism and its relevance for swb research: qualitative differences in pleasurable experiences. i argue that in cases where lives involving qualitatively different experiences are compared, mill’s qualitative perspective is incompatible with an important assumption in the swb literature: that happiness can be meaningfully rated by people on a scale. i illustrate the problem by means of the question of whether becoming a parent makes people happier. i analyze whether the problem can be avoided on alternative views of happiness, but argue that on all plausible accounts of happiness, the problem persists. i conclude that the problem it poses for self-reported happiness is genuine and should be acknowledged by swb researchers. i end by discussing the ways in which this conclusion can help the study of happiness move forward. keywords: happiness, measurement, pleasure, john stuart mill, jeremy bentham, subjective wellbeing it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. and if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. the other party to the comparison knows both sides. john stuart mill, utilitarianism 1. introduction: happiness and subjective wellbeing “taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?” (european social survey). if you answer this question – on a scale from 0-10 – with a high number, and you answer it faithfully, is your life going well for you? this question, and variations thereof, is the key measurement instrument defining the concept of subjective wellbeing (swb) – a popular approach to the measurement of wellbeing in the social sciences. not every swb researcher would answer the question with a clear “yes,” but many believe that swb can capture happiness, and that happiness is, in the very least, an important part of wellbeing (e.g. kesebir & diener, 2008)1. many researchers seem to understand swb as a concept that is close to bentham’s notion of happiness (see fleurbaey & blanchet, 2013). in fact, explicit references to bentham’s philosophy are not at all rare in the swb literature (e.g. kahneman, wakker, & sarin, 1997; kahneman et al., 2004; veenhoven, 2010; dolan & metcalfe, 2012). the particular conception of happiness that social scientists use is closely connected with the question of how 1 by “wellbeing” i mean prudential value: how well a life is going for the person whose life it is (sumner 1996, 20). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 165 – if at all – happiness can be measured. on bentham’s hedonistic perspective, measuring happiness by means of asking people about their experiences seems a straightforward methodology. bentham understands happiness as a unidimensional quality of experience. on this view, it seems plausible that people are able to recognize and evaluate their own happiness. nevertheless, bentham’s hedonism is quite controversial in philosophy for its treatment of pleasure (e.g. nussbaum, 2004; cf. tännsjö, 2007). much criticism of the swb approach about the measurement of happiness or wellbeing seems to have focused on the unsatisfactory features of the hedonist conception of happiness underlying the approach in one way or another (o’neill, 2006; nussbaum, 2008; sen, 2008; raibley, 2012; fleurbaey & blanchet, 2013; stewart, 2014; crespo & mesurado, 2014). in a critical essay of the hedonistic foundation of positive psychology, martha nussbaum writes: “modern psychology follows bentham. indeed, kahneman explicitly traces his own conception of ‘hedonic flow’ to bentham (see, for example, kahneman and krueger 2006, p. 4). and yet, is bentham correct?” (2008, s82). nussbaum certainly believes that bentham was not, and represents many fellow philosophers in this. one way in which hedonism can be made more acceptable to those who oppose the view is by moving towards a qualified version of hedonism, such as john stuart mill’s view on happiness (mill, 1871; see e.g. sen, 2006; nussbaum 2008). mill retained bentham’s view that happiness is constituted by pleasure, but departed from bentham by suggesting that pleasures – that is, pleasurable experiences2 – do not only differ in terms of duration and intensity3, but also differ qualitatively. because mill’s view on happiness seems more plausible to critics by virtue of its more nuanced treatment of pleasure, his view on happiness is sometimes proposed as a more attractive alternative (e.g. nussbaum, 2008). by virtue of its more nuanced treatment of pleasure, mill’s account seems to provide a more attractive and plausible basis to serve as a foundation for the study of happiness. however, mill’s view also makes happiness more difficult to measure. as i will argue, there is a perspective in mill’s view on happiness that problematizes the orthodoxy within the swb literature to use self-reports as measures of happiness, particularly in cases where qualitatively different lives are compared. in this essay, i will analyze this perspective and its relevance for swb research. i illustrate the problem mill’s perspective poses with the example of swb research on the happiness of parents compared to the childless. i argue that the perspective does not rely on a metaphysically demanding interpretation of mill’s qualitative hedonism, but is based on a simple and plausible assumption about the quality of experience. while on some conceptions of happiness it may seem plausible that people have the ability to evaluate their happiness independently of the kind of experiences they have already had, i argue that mill’s rejection of this idea is convincing and compatible with a variety of views on happiness. hence, it raises serious doubts that swb can capture happiness in a satisfactory fashion, particularly in cases where lives with qualitatively different experiences are compared. sections 2 and 3 are preliminaries. in section 2, a necessary condition for measuring happiness by means of self-reported swb measures is discussed, and in section 3, mill’s qualitative perspective on pleasure is presented. section 4 presents the main argument: mill’s qualitative perspective on happiness is plausible, but creates doubt it can be measured by self reports. section 5 discusses the example of swb research on the effect of parenting on happiness. objections and the relevance of mill’s perspective for alternative views on the 2 i follow schmidt-petri (2006) here in making a distinction between “a pleasure” and “pleasure” in mill. 3 to bentham, pleasures – meaning pleasurable experiences – also differ in other categories that seem to be less central here: certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and extent. lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 166 nature of happiness are discussed in sections 6 and 7 respectively. in section 8, i discuss the relationship between this argument and another objection to swb: the adaptation problem. section 9 concludes and discusses implications for future happiness research. 2. measuring swb there is a large variety of swb research. nevertheless, we can say that swb roughly comes in two types of constructs, which are sometimes considered to be similar in meaning, and sometimes considered to be different views on what swb should capture: life satisfaction and happiness (e.g. veenhoven, 2010; hansen, 2012). on the benthamite view, swb captures pleasurable – or enjoyable4 – experiences in life, and many swb researchers would see an evaluation of enjoyable experiences in life to be a very similar exercise to evaluating satisfaction with life5 (e.g. mackerron, 2012). however, some researchers do take life satisfaction to be an altogether different conception of happiness (see haybron, 2007b for a discussion), and thereby deviate from the benthamite underpinnings i have thus far described. it is also common to understand life satisfaction as a whole different concept from happiness altogether. for the purposes of simplicity, i will focus my attention on swb research that aims to capture a hedonistic notion of happiness. however, in section 6 i will address some of the implications of the argument for research aimed at capturing life satisfaction conceptions of happiness as well. the study of subjective wellbeing is not necessarily committed to the view that subjective wellbeing is a sufficiently good measure of wellbeing simpliciter, though many authors are (see, angner 2010). what the field of study is committed to is the view that subjective experiences, or attitudes towards life, can be meaningfully rated on a scale with a reasonably limited amount of error6 (e.g. ferrer-i-carbonell, 2002). this does not imply that someone with a higher self-reported happiness rating is necessarily happier than someone with a lower rating (see angner, 2013); people may be imperfect in their judgment. people may make mistakes. however, in order for swb to capture happiness, it is required that these errors occur randomly – in other words, that they are not structural. the precise formulation of this requirement may depend on the kind of comparison of swb that is made. but consider, for example, that we want to compare two different groups. a significant share of one group may be overly-optimistic about their subjective wellbeing, such that two equally happy people would rate their happiness differently, due to such optimism. for example, if educated people tend to interpret a happiness scale differently than others, we may draw the wrong conclusions about the effect of education on happiness. in that case, swb would be an unsatisfactory measure of happiness. more generally, in order to draw conclusions from self-reported swb data on happiness, errors of this sort – reporting errors – need to be random. we can formulate this as follows: ratability: in order for a self-reported measure of subjective wellbeing to be meaningful, people need to be able to rate their subjective wellbeing – be it 4 bentham uses the word “pleasure,” but modern formulations of hedonism often replace “pleasurable” by “enjoyable” (crisp, 2006) to de-emphasize the connotation with bodily pleasures. i will use the two terms interchangeably throughout the article. 5 ruut veenhoven, for instance, writes: “satisfaction is also the subjective experience jeremy bentham had in mind”. 6 george mackerron, for instance, writes: “swb data consist, more or less by definition, of the aggregated selfreports of individuals—what people say about themselves when asked” (2012, 708). lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 167 happiness or life satisfaction – such that reporting errors do not occur structurally. in other words, different people – or, alternatively, people over time – may evaluate the same level of happiness differently, but these deviations should not have any relevant structural patterns. 3. mill and qualitative hedonism hedonism is the view that happiness is constituted by the balance of pleasurable experience over painful experience. hedonism as a theory of wellbeing additionally holds that wellbeing is constituted by happiness. this latter view is particularly controversial in philosophy7, but as a view about happiness, hedonism is quite popular (see haybron, 2005). bentham, as well as mill, held both views of hedonism, but for the present purpose we will focus on hedonism as a view on the nature of happiness. while both hedonists, mill’s view deviates from bentham with respect to the nature of pleasure. bentham’s view on happiness is characterized by the idea that pleasure is a homogenous sensation which is shared by all pleasurable experiences (sumner, 1996; nussbaum, 2004; 2008; crisp, 2006). this feature is central to its appeal to happiness researchers. if pleasure is, indeed, a homogenous sensation, it seems plausible that it can be readily detected, and, consequently, rated by people. moreover, the homogeneity of bentham’s view on pleasure seems to play an important role in its liberalism with respect to pleasure, such as illustrated in his well-known view that there is nothing particularly better about poetry compared to pushpin. nevertheless, there are two problems with bentham’s account of happiness as constituted by homogenous sensation. firstly, bentham’s homogenous hedonism is vulnerable to the problem that there are certain experiences that we would call enjoyable that feel very different from typical enjoyable experiences – for example, enjoyment from masochism, or from running a marathon. but there are also less trivial examples, such as fred feldman’s (2010) example of a woman who gives birth. while she is feeling ecstatic about holding her newborn in her arms, she is also in deep physical pain. what these examples show is that pleasure does not seem to share any specific phenomenological trait. another problem for a homogenous view of pleasure is that on that view, any pleasurable experience can be equated with a certain amount of another pleasurable experience to produce the same amount of pleasure. in other words, while someone who likes poetry may find it more enjoyable than pushpin, as long as she enjoys pushpin as well, at some point a large amount of pushpin will be more enjoyable than some amount of poetry. this can lead to deeply counterintuitive conclusions. one well-known counter-example illustrating this problem is the example of the long oyster life (crisp, 2006). while an oyster may only experience some pleasure, a very long oyster life would have to be more pleasurable than a human life that lasts eighty years. if it is not, the life of the oyster can be extended, such that at some point, the pleasure enjoyed in the oyster’s life must compensate for the more intense pleasure of a human life. many find the conclusion that the very long life of an oyster is more enjoyable than a normal human life counter-intuitive. 7 the most widely discussed argument against this view is the experience machine objection, originally formulated by robert nozick (1974; cf. kawall, 1999; silverstein, 2000; weijers, 2011; see weijers & schouten, 2013 for a contemporary discussion). the argument is based on the following example: consider a machine which you could plug in that would create a virtual world for you in which you would have the most amazing experiences. someone in this machine would have incredibly pleasurable experiences, and would be happy, but, nozick argues, would not lead an enviable life. lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 168 these problems for bentham’s account resonate in some of the criticism on the conceptual framework employed by swb researchers. nussbaum, for instance, writes: “the apparent fact that pleasures differ in quality, that the pleasure of steak eating is quite different from the pleasure of listening to mahler’s tenth, bothered bentham not at all; he does not discuss such examples” (2008, s83; see crespo & mesurado, 2014 for similar worries). mill was aware of such criticisms of hedonism – in particular, by the problem that any pleasure can be compensated for by some amount of another pleasure – and addresses them in utilitarianism. mill believed that many classical hedonist theories were able to deal with such objections to some extent by arguing that mental pleasures were better than bodily pleasures in terms of “permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc.” (mill, 1871, 56). however, mill believed that such solutions were not sufficiently able to distinguish higher and lower experiences, such as that of a human life, and that of an oyster. mill argued that there is a difference in kind between some pleasures in life: “it would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone” (56). intuitively, there is something very attractive about mill’s account of happiness. the experience of climbing kilimanjaro does not only differ from a day of playing board games in the amount and intensity of pleasure involved, the experience also seems qualitatively different. in a recent defense, roger crisp (2006) argues that what all such different enjoyable experiences share is that they are enjoyable, but that apart from that, they may all feel different. there are different interpretations of how mill’s view should be made more precise. while it is clear that mill believed that some pleasures were qualitatively different from others, there is a variety of views on why that is. in particular, there is much debate about the question of whether mill’s qualitative hedonism implies that a pleasure of a certain quality is preferred to any amount of pleasures of a lower quality. in other words, are qualitatively different pleasures lexicographically ordered? in utilitarianism, mill attempts to clarify his meaning of qualitative difference by reference to competent judges: “if one of two [pleasures] is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.”(1871, 56) on the classical view of interpreting mill – the lexicographical view – the passage is read as explaining a lexicographical difference between qualitatively different pleasures (riley, 2003; see booher, 2007). on this view, the pleasure experienced from higher pleasures can never be compensated by any amount of lower pleasures. this view is wedded to the idea that pleasurable experiences are intrinsically different from each other with respect to the pleasure they produce (schmidt-petri, 2006). on the lexicographical view, either higher pleasures feel infinitely better, or they simply are infinitely more pleasurable than lower pleasures for other reasons. jonathan riley (1999; 2003) defends the view. the view is controversial because it begs the question of what it is about pleasures that makes them qualitatively different. surely some experiences feel different in kind, but why would we assume that some are of such a higher quality that they are lexicographically ordered with respect to pleasure? reading poetry does not really seem to feel infinitely more pleasurable than pushpin. however, if poetry is infinitely better despite it not feeling infinitely better, the view seems to deviate from hedonism (scarre, 1997). riley (1999) argues that some experiences do indeed feel infinitely more pleasurable than lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 169 others. while such a defense is internally consistent, it relies heavily on the existence of an infinite difference of pleasure in felt experiences, a view that is highly contestable. a second reading – the epistemological view – is provided by christoph schmidt-petri (2003; 2006; but also booher, 2007; crisp, 2006; see also saunders, 2011 for a discussion). in his view, mill’s qualitatively different pleasures need not imply that the higher pleasures are preferred to any amount of lower pleasures. a higher pleasure is definitely a lot more pleasurable than a lower one, but that does not mean that their difference in pleasure needs to be considered lexicographic. in schmidt-petri’s account, mill’s passage suggests that if competent judges prefer one pleasure over an infinite amount of another pleasure, they are justified in ascribing a difference in quality between the pleasurable experiences, but it need not imply that any qualitative difference means that the experiences are infinitely more – or less – pleasurable. schmidt-petri understands mill’s passage as making an epistemological point: people who have not experienced higher pleasures are not able to appreciate them and compare them to lower pleasures. some enjoyable experiences last equally long, and are equally intense as other experiences, but nevertheless produce more pleasure. the only way to learn whether this is the case is to experience both and judge. in short, while there are two radically different interpretations of mill’s views on qualitative differences in pleasure, both views consider a person who has not experienced a certain pleasure to be in a disadvantaged position to evaluate it. we can call this the qualitative view of pleasure, or more generally, the qualitative view of experiences (qve). qve: there are differences in the quality of experiences, and the variety of qualities of experience we have had influences the way we evaluate them. two experiences that are of a different quality can only be fully evaluated by someone who has experienced both8. a person who has not fully experienced higher pleasures may believe her life is happy. but, as the addendum to mill’s famous passage cited in the epigraph illustrates: mill believes that a person who has only experienced lower pleasures is in a bad position to make a comparison of happiness between the higher and lower pleasures. for mill, this has an important implication for people’s own perceptions of their happiness, or for the importance of their sense of satisfaction. mill argues: “whoever supposes that … the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior, confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content” (57). a person can be content, feel satisfied, and believe herself to be happy, but when this is based on having pleasurable experiences of a low quality, her happiness may not weigh up against the higher quality experiences of a person who does not feel quite as satisfied, and does not believe herself to be happy. mill’s language may be archaic and elitist. but consider the example of someone who has never been in a committed relationship. she may believe it to be dull and restrictive, and be perfectly satisfied with the situation as it is. mill’s perspective indicates that it may happen that – if being in a committed relationship is a higher pleasure for her – after being in such a relationship, she learns that it is much more enjoyable than not being in one. she may, after learning this, be equally satisfied, or even less satisfied, but this need not imply that it is less 8 this need not imply that people cannot make justified guesses about other people’s happiness. we may be justified in judging people in deprived circumstances to be unhappy, without having experienced it. our imaginative powers are likely to be roughly reliable, especially if it comes to obvious misery. however, the qve implies that when we experience something new, it changes how we evaluate our own happiness. lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 170 enjoyable. according to mill’s perspective that i want to defend here, such experiences can alter the way we evaluate our own happiness. 4. mill’s qualitative perspective and swb qve, if correct, poses a problem for ratability, in case lives are compared that are constituted by qualitatively different experiences. if correct, a person who believes herself to be unhappy may, in fact, be happier than a person who perceives herself as happy. in other words, if we use people’s own perception as a basis for judging happiness, people who have experienced few high pleasures would be judged overly optimistically. in order to meet ratability, people should not evaluate their current experiences differently purely on the basis of what they have experienced in the past. in order to meet ratability, the judgment of “very happy” for someone who has experienced few higher pleasures should correspond to the level of happiness of someone who has experienced a lot of higher pleasures and also judges herself to be “very happy”. however, if qve is true, their judgments have different consequences for happiness, and they cannot be considered equally happy. this consequence is particularly clear on a lexicographical interpretation of qualities. in order to see this, consider the following objection to ratability from a lexicographical perspective: 1) there are lexicographical differences in the quality of experiences, such that some pleasurable experiences are lexicographically more pleasurable than others. 2) because of this lexicographical difference, the difference between higher and lower pleasures can only be evaluated by those who have experienced both. (the lexicographical version of the quality view of experiences (qve i)). 3) those who have experienced only lower pleasurable experiences are not able to evaluate the value of higher pleasurable experiences in the same way as those who have experienced both. 4) in order for self-reported swb research to meet ratability, different subjects – or, depending on the research question, subjects over time – need to be able to evaluate the same pleasures in the same way. 5) subjects who have experienced only the lower pleasures cannot evaluate higher pleasures in the same way as people who have experienced both. 6) swb does not meet the ratability requirement. on this objection, a qualitative hedonist would not accept that differences in swb correspond to differences in happiness if there are qualitative differences in the experiences they have had. this may not be so surprising, nor may it be bothersome to an swb researcher. the lexicographical interpretation of mill’s view may be more acceptable to people who are critical of bentham, but may not be an attractive position for swb researchers. after all, arguably, mill’s conception of higher and lower pleasures seems somewhat elitist: favoring some activities – typically those that people of higher classes would like – over others, on seemingly arbitrary grounds. some swb researchers have taken an explicit liberal stance on this issue. if a person playing simple video games says he is happy, a researcher should accept this person’s judgment. there is no reason to overrule it because the researcher finds this person’s judgment implausible. martin binder calls the liberal character of swb an attractive normative feature of lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 171 swb, as it avoids the danger of paternalism (binder, 2014)9. swb researchers may reject the lexicographical account and ignore the lexicographical qve objection, because its first premise (1) is rejected. much of the work in the lexicographical qve objection is done by the first two premises. however, on an epistemological interpretation of mill’s view, qve still follows, even if premises (1) and (2) are false. the beginning of the argument – the epistemological formulation of the qve objection – would then be as follows: 1*) there are differences in the quality of experiences, such that knowing how long and intense a certain pleasurable experience is, is not sufficient to evaluate how pleasurable it is. 2*) because differences in quality of experiences can only be known after they have been experienced, the difference between two qualitatively different experiences can only be evaluated by those who have experienced both (the epistemological version of the qualitative view of experience (qve e)). the argument would continue in the same way as the lexicographical version of the objection. on this reading, a person who spends her days playing simple computer games (a modern variant of pushpin, perhaps) would be satisfied, and may believe herself to be very happy, but could only know if her life is happier than that of a poet, or scientist, when she has, in fact, experienced the life of a scientist or poet. as a poet or scientist has probably known the experience of playing a computer game, they are in a better position to evaluate both lives. the experiences are clearly different in kind. knowing what it is like to spend your days playing computer games probably puts you in the position to evaluate how the pleasure of playing one hour compares to playing two hours. these are differences in quantity. however, it does not put you in the position to evaluate how the pleasure of playing video games compares to finishing a beautiful poem. this view of qualitative difference in pleasure comes with fewer problematic commitments than the lexicographical view. we need not presuppose that the pleasure of finishing a beautiful poem is infinitely, or lexicographically more pleasurable than playing computer games, in order to appreciate that the pleasures are different epistemically: experiencing one pleasure tells you little about experiencing the other. qve is thus not committed to an elitist view that certain kinds of experiences are infinitely more enjoyable, despite them not feeling as such. at the same time, it is not committed to identify every person who says she is happy as indeed being happy, because it illustrates that people may have a perception of their own happiness that is contingent on their past experiences. to sum up: mill provides an account of happiness in which happiness is constituted by pleasure that seems richer and more plausible than bentham’s account of happiness that is often cited in the swb literature. however, mill’s qualitative view and his perspective on happiness evaluation (qve) clash with a fundamental assumption in current swb research: ratability. while one reading of mill’s view comes with its own difficulties, qve can be formulated so that it relies only on a very commonsensical assumption that mill stresses: some experiences can only be compared to others by those who have experienced both (1* and 2*). 9 as discussed above, within philosophical discourse there is also some debate about whether qualitative hedonism in its lexicographical interpretation is a coherent and plausible position to hold (scarre 1997; cf feldman 1995; riley 1999). lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 172 5. example: children and happiness the literature on swb is expansive and various. it is not fair to make general statements regarding the neglect of the qualitative perspective in pleasurable experiences in the literature. however, one example in which the qualitative perspective seems particularly relevant, but has not been sufficiently recognized, is the study of major life changes, in particular, that of becoming a parent. perhaps surprisingly, the literature seems in agreement that the average effect of becoming a parent on happiness is negative or close to zero. in a review of the literature, thomas hansen (2012) describes a common “folk view” on parenting – that it makes parents happier – but argues that the empirical evidence points in the opposite direction. people generally do not become happier from having children, if we accept the evidence from swb research. others are milder in their judgment of the evidence, and report that happiness may be positively affected by having children, but only “under the right conditions” (angeles, 2009). does this count as sound evidence that becoming a parent does not make us (or most people) happier? on mill’s qualitative view this is problematic. having children and not having children are qualitatively very different experiences. in fact, the two are so different, that it is hard to imagine what it is like to have children until we have them. this is exactly the point made in a recent article by laurie paul entitled “what you can’t expect when you’re expecting”. in her view, having children is an epistemically transformative experience: at least in the normal case, one has a uniquely new experience when one has one’s first child. before someone becomes a parent, she has never experienced the unique state of seeing and touching her newborn child. she has never experienced the full compendium of the extremely intense series of beliefs, emotions, physical exhaustion and emotional intensity that attends the carrying, birth, presentation, and care of her very own child, and hence she does not know what it is like to have these experiences. (2015, 8) some empirical evidence supports the claim that parents do not have clearly worse experiences in general, but have different experiences. parents may experience more stress and less pleasurable moments, also when they are with their children, but nevertheless find their activities more rewarding and find more meaning in them (white & dolan, 2009; nelson et al., 2013). if paul is correct in her judgment that having children is an experience that we cannot evaluate until we have experienced it, having children and not having children are qualitatively different experiences in the qve sense. consequently, on mill’s qve, asking people about their satisfaction or their rated happiness will not be informative about which of the two experiences produces more happiness. based on the widespread view that children do make us happier, hansen describes the finding that parents are not happy as paradoxical. however, on mill’s perspective, the conclusion that there is a paradox does not follow10. a possible way forward to judging the effect of parenting on happiness on mill’s account would be to give evidential priority to the opinion of parents, perhaps by asking whether they believe their experiences have improved, or if they would want their old life back. after all, the parents seem to be the “competent judges,” having experienced both a childless life and a life 10 qve does not imply that the common belief about parenting and happiness is correct. it merely implies that in cases where qualitatively different lives are compared, drawing conclusions about happiness on the basis of people’s self-assessment is problematic. lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 173 with children. there is little scientific study that follows this, and it would deviate significantly from standard swb methodology11. 6. objections to the qve objection there are a number of possible objections to the claim that happiness is constituted by a combination of qualitatively different experiences whose contribution to happiness can only be judged after they have been experienced, and the problem i have argued this poses for swb research. a first objection may be that while ratability is often assumed in swb studies, when more sophisticated statistical methods are used, the assumption can be relaxed without altering the results of swb studies. this would be wrong. an influential paper about statistical methodology in swb research is ada ferrer-i-carbonell and paul frijters’s (2004) often-cited methodological contribution that derives important conclusions from germany’s socioeconomic panel (gsoep) on minimal assumptions about the structure of subjective wellbeing reports. their statistical methodology assumes that people’s satisfaction reports have an individually fixed ordinal relationship to an underlying function (in their case, welfare). in other words, it does not assume that my 7 on a life satisfaction scale is equal to yours, but it does assume that my 7 this year is higher than my 6 last year. this statistical methodology is significant in reducing the measurement requirements of happiness or satisfaction data greatly. however, it still implies that if a person’s swb score improves, so does her actual happiness, or wellbeing (see also ferrer-i-carbonell, 2002). on qve, this assumption would be problematic in instances where people go through new experiences that alter their perspective. the problem goes deeper than statistical methodology. if qve is correct, a person may evaluate happiness in a different manner now, than after having experienced something new. this goes to the heart of swb research: a person rating her happiness lower than before may not be less happy. a second objection may be that any view that presupposes that there are qualitatively better and worse pleasures is problematically paternalistic, even if these qualities are understood in a non-lexicographical way. this is probably a good objection against some of mill’s examples, such as his view that poetry is better than pushpin. presupposing such hierarchies on no clear evidential ground may be considered paternalistic. nevertheless, these views should be separated from the more abstract view that there are differences in quality between pleasures. mill might have been wrong about the former – poetry may not be better than pushpin – but right about the latter – qualitative differences do exist. pushpin may be of higher quality than poetry. the quality of specific experiences could even differ between different people. for me pushpin may be qualitatively better, while for others poetry may be better than pushpin. the qve is thus not based on the view that certain specific pleasures are of a higher quality, but only that there are qualitative differences between pleasures that make the comparison between them difficult if both have not been experienced. 7. alternative views on happiness both mill’s and bentham’s conceptions of happiness are based on the view that happiness is constituted by pleasure. a possible defense of the qve objection can be that it does not go 11 an assumption of such a methodology would be that a childless life is similar to that of the life of parents up to the moment they have children, and that having a child does not bias a person’s judgment about happiness. these assumptions may be false. if that would be so, it could turn out that the question of whether parents are happier than non-parents would not be empirically answerable. lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 174 through on alternative conceptions of happiness. however, what is important about the second formulation of the qve objection is that it seems compatible with a number of different views on what constitutes happiness. without subscribing to the view that some experiences feel infinitely more pleasurable than others, or are lexicographically more pleasurable, despite people not feeling infinitely more pleasure, it seems plausible that some experiences are harder to compare to others without having experienced both. premises a* and b* in the argument are not based on a particular conception on happiness, but could apply to all conceptions of happiness that acknowledge that some form of experienced happiness can only be compared to others once they have been experienced. in order to avoid the problem qve poses for ratability, swb would require a conceptual view of happiness that would avoid having to commit to such qualitative differences in experiences12. one alternative to hedonism is the view that happiness consists of an attitude towards your life: the life satisfaction view (e.g. sumner, 1996) – a view that is popular among swb researchers (see haybron, 2007b). mill seems to reject the view that attitudes are ultimately the constituents of happiness, as can be read in the distinction between happiness and contentment that he employs. nevertheless, prima facie, it seems that an attitude view of happiness may avoid the epistemic formulation of the objection. if a person’s attitude towards life is all that matters to her happiness, why would it matter whether an attitude is based on higher or lower quality experiences? while this objection stands, it does point towards a counter-intuitive conclusion of the life satisfaction view of happiness. consider the same person from our earlier example who spends most of her time playing computer games. this person may have a good attitude towards her life. she likes her life as it is. however, at some point, she gets a purposeful job at which she flourishes, which changes her life in many ways. in the newly-gained perspective she feels that her old attitude towards the gaming life had been inappropriate, and feels that while she has similarly positive attitudes towards her new life now as she did in the past, she is now happier. on a strict interpretation of the life satisfaction view she would have to be mistaken. after all, if her attitude towards her life is roughly the same over time, then so would be her happiness. she cannot be wrong about the attitude she had in the past. this would seem highly counterintuitive. if we would accept that attitudes can contribute differently towards happiness depending on their appropriateness, it would be conceptually possible that she is correct. however, we have now made the life satisfaction view of happiness vulnerable to qve: the qualities of the experiences we have had can now affect the way we evaluate comparisons between different experiences, or different lives we lead. in other words, there are qualitative differences between experiences that are sufficient for qve e. another recently developed view maintains that happiness is an emotional state quality (haybron, 2005). according to daniel haybron, happiness is not an experiential state, but describes our emotional state. we may be under stress, but not experience stress. in these cases, we are less happy than we would be if we were not under stress, but it is not due to a difference in pleasure. does qvee still pose a problem to swb on this conception of happiness? on a first look it might not. if our emotional state were independent of our experience, we 12 the epistemic version of the qve objection to ratability could even apply to a benthamite conception of happiness, once it is acknowledged that while pleasure may be unidimensional, pleasurable experiences are not, and that experiencing one pleasurable experience may alter your attitude towards others. on this view, pushpin and poetry may result in the same output – pleasure – but in order to know which of the two produces more, they need to be experienced. lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 175 could see that the way we compare two emotional states would not depend on the qualities of the types of experiences that we have had. on the other hand, if we do evaluate our own emotional state, we are surely guided by our own experiences. haybron himself is skeptical about our ability to know how happy we are on the grounds that we often fail to appreciate our emotional state (haybron, 2007a). in his view, there are reasons to question ratability, independent of qve. however, some of his reasons come close to mill’s perspective. in an example, haybron describes a person, glen, who has lived in the city for years under severe stress, but always had the impression he was happy. but now he moves back to the rural town where he grew up. the stress falls from his shoulders and he now realizes that his life in the city was not so happy after all. what this person experienced seems to be easily described in terms of qvee. glen experiences a new kind of experience – even though it is in some ways similar to his childhood, and he re-learns appreciating it: living a peaceful stressless life in the countryside. he now can fully appreciate the difference between two experiences: living a stressful life in the city, and a stressless one the countryside, and judges the countryside life to be superior in quality. 8. qve objection and adaptation the qve is by no means the first philosophical objection against the identification of swb with happiness. in particular, the qve objection seems to have some similarity to the adaptation argument introduced by amartya sen (sen, 1985; see qizilbash, 2006). both objections are based on a discrepancy between satisfaction, or people’s own perception of their happiness, and their actual happiness. mozaffar qizilbash reads in the passages from utilitarianism cited above the same view that sen expresses when he discusses examples of people in deprived circumstances who nevertheless believe themselves to be happy, but clearly do not lead highquality lives. moreover, qizilbash believes mill’s view addresses sen’s adaptation concerns. while i believe adaptation and mill’s qve address similar concerns, the points are different and qve is more general. originally, adaptation was formulated as a problem regarding people who changed their preferences due to the unavailability of a preferred option, which is a narrow and specific problem. moreover, the term “adaptation” itself seems to suggest that it applies only after a change in desires, preferences, or ability to be happy. qve need not involve such change. a person may have low aspirations, and be content with low pleasures, only because that person has never had the experience of higher pleasure. if anyone adapts, in mill’s examples, it is the person who learns to appreciate the higher pleasures. for mill, examples of people who are content with little do not illustrate that they have adapted, but they illustrate that they have not fully developed their desires. the qve objection to swb is thus more general. consider, for instance, the example of the gamer discussed above. in the example, the gamer is both satisfied and needs not to have adapted aspirations. however, as i argued, on mill’s account there is still a difference in happiness between her life as a gamer and her later life as a person with a successful career. in brief, the adaptation problem illustrates a problem with the satisfied that have decreased their aspirations; the qve objection illustrates a problem with the satisfied that have never developed their aspirations. there is another important difference in relevance to the current literature between the two problems. while the adaptation argument has been argued to be empirically falsified, as people do not, in fact, adapt to deprived circumstances (e.g. helliwell & barrington-leigh, 2010), the same could not be said for the qve objection. lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 176 9. conclusion and discussion in this essay i have presented and assessed a perspective found in mill’s utilitarianism that illustrates a problem for taking self-reported swb as sufficient evidence for happiness, in particular, in cases that involve qualitatively different experiences. while the argument is inspired by mill’s qualitative view on hedonism, it is broadly compatible with a variety of plausible views on happiness. i have argued that the problem is based on plausible foundations. out of the currently most prominent views on happiness, only on some benthamite and life satisfaction views of happiness can the charge be avoided. however, given the charges of superficiality that have been raised against such views, we should wonder if happiness is still a prudentially interesting concept if we accept them. the argument presented in this essay presents a problem for the measurement of happiness by means of swb, in particular, in contexts involving happiness comparisons on the basis of swb between qualitatively different experiences. nevertheless, my aim in this paper is not to criticize the swb project as a whole. happiness is an important feature of our lives – arguably the most important feature. it deserves to be treated in its full depth, but it also deserves to be studied. the qve objection indicates a limit of swb research. there are important ways in which the qve objection can help swb move forward. firstly, there is a large variety of cases in which the rating of the enjoyment of experiences is not affected by the qve objection. a straightforward example is the question of whether watching television or going to the cinema is more enjoyable to a certain group of people. the qve objection does not seem to apply to the usage of swb research for answering this question. in so far as watching television and going to the cinema are qualitatively different, the differences can be appreciated by those who have experienced both. the qve objection thus helps to clarify which questions can and which questions cannot be answered by means of swb methodology. by doing so, the qve objection does not only indicate problems for swb research, but also provides a stronger foundation for applications of swb to which the qve objection does not apply. another way in which the qve may be helpful relates to the large number of puzzles and paradoxes that are characteristic of the swb literature (e.g. deaton & stone, 2013). just like in the case of parenting discussed above, the qve objection may help explain certain paradoxical results. lastly, i hope the qve will inspire new empirical ways to research happiness. following mill, people with a rich experiential basis could be an important source of knowledge about happiness. as haybron’s example of glen illustrates, studying how people experience transitions between qualitatively different lives may be an important source of information about how happy different lives are. it may be that qualitatively different experiences should be addressed by means of different research methodologies. happiness is a complex concept, and studying it will never be easy. however, awareness of the limitations of existing methods will ultimately bring the field of study forward. acknowledgments i would like to thank constanze binder, philippe verreault-julien and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. i presented a version of the article in the eipe phd seminar in rotterdam, 21 september 2015. i would like to thank the audience for helpful feedback. author willem van der deijl erasmus university rotterdam vanderdeijl@ese.eur.nl lessons from john stuart mill van der deijl www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 177 publishing timeline received 17 august 2015 accepted 18 december 2015 published 14 may 2016 references angeles, l. 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(2019). motivational orientations to mindfulness and wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 9(1), 1-19. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i1.725 hanna suh university at buffalo, state university of new york hannasuh@buffalo.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 article motivational orientations to mindfulness and wellbeing hanna suh abstract: adopting self-determination theory as a guiding framework, this cross-sectional study examined how motivational orientations (perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns) relate to mindfulness, core self-evaluation, and outcomes of life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. a total of 273 college students responded to measures of perfectionism, mindfulness, core self-evaluation, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. results supported that mindfulness and core self-evaluation sequentially mediated the associations between perfectionistic concerns and outcomes, but the hypothesized serial mediation model was not supported for perfectionistic strivings. findings suggest that decentering with awareness may build positive self-evaluation and thus mitigate the effects of perfectionistic concerns on life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. on the other hand, not mindfulness but positive self-evaluation alone functions as a binder in the association between perfectionistic strivings and outcome variables. this study concludes that perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns, each positioned to reflect autonomous motivational orientations and controlled motivational orientations, relate to wellbeing with or without the role of mindfulness. keywords: mindfulness · perfectionism · motivational orientations · wellbeing 1. introduction amidst the surge in interest regarding mindfulness, one line of research focuses on understanding possible mechanisms through which the effects of mindfulness lead to wellbeing (e.g., sauer, walach, & kolhs, 2011; schutte & malouff, 2011). the definition of mindfulness is met with little consensus, but ivtzan and hart (2016) provide a useful way of delineating different historical and theoretical backgrounds upon which mindfulness is defined. specifically, ivtzan and hart (2016) note that the western definition of mindfulness from langer and colleagues investigates mindfulness as a “cognitive mode” grounded in a person’s disposition (langer, 1994). according to this definition, mindfulness refers to one selfregulating consciousness by directing attention to an external stimuli and engaging with the external stimuli in a creative way. in other words, this definition of mindfulness emphasizes paying effortful attention to an external stimulus (e.g., experiences) and also emphasizes a new engagement pattern. on the other hand, the eastern definition of mindfulness is derived from motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 2 meditative practices guiding kabat-zinn’s definition that emphasizes awareness, attention, and remembering. this definition emphasizes having metacognitive skills with acceptance as an indicator of presence of mindfulness. ivtzan and hart (2016) summarize the difference between these two definitions of mindfulness by stating that: “the western approach describes mindfulness as an effortful attentive-creative mode of awareness, where one engages closely with an external experience of environment. the eastern approach, on the other hand, depicts mindfulness as a metacognitive mode, in which one attends to internal or external experiences in a manner that paradoxically involves an intimate engagement with the experience, and at the same time an ability to disidentify oneself from the cognitions and emotions that the experiences provokes” (p. 20). clarifying the definition of mindfulness is important because it has implications for understanding its pathways to wellbeing, although these two definitions of mindfulness appear to have been used interchangeably in the literature. theoretically, the associations between mindfulness and wellbeing can be explained within the framework of self-determination theory (sdt; brown & ryan, 2003; ryan & deci, 2017). sdt posits that mindfulness allows for “clarity and freshness that can liberate people from automatic responses and foster more selfendorsed behavior” (p. 271, ryan & deci, 2017). in other words, mindfulness facilitates a more thorough observation of internal and external experiences by creating a “space” for reflective and autonomous regulation of actions. with high mindfulness, individuals act more autonomously, which then affects emotional wellbeing (brown & ryan, 2003). brown and ryan (2003) indicate this process as a “healthy regulation” in which a person is focused on abiding by their values, needs, and true demands of situations through mindfulness. such healthy regulation is linked to autonomous functioning (weinstein & ryan, 2011). studies conducted on mindfulness within the framework of sdt appears to adhere to the eastern definition of mindfulness, although mindfulness measures that reflect the western definition of mindfulness (e.g., mindfulness attention and awareness scale; maas) also seem to have been used in these studies (e.g., brown & ryan, 2003). indeed, the maas was developed to reflect the eastern definition of mindfulness. notwithstanding some theoretical and conceptual differences, this study chose to use the maas to reflect mindfulness, given its original usage within the sdt framework. consistent with theoretical propositions, empirical findings show positive links between mindfulness and wellbeing. numerous studies have now established links between mindfulness and wellbeing (e.g., for a review, see khoury et al., 2013). studies that examine mechanisms through which mindfulness exerts its effects on wellbeing appear to focus on selfreferent processing (e.g., self-esteem, self-efficacy). for example, mindfulness is associated with self-esteem (brown & ryan, 2003; thompson & waltz, 2008), and some find that mindfulness influences self-esteem (pepping, o’donovan, & davis, 2013). in explaining the link from mindfulness to self-esteem, pepping, o’donovan, and davis (2013) explained that being nonreactive, aware, and non-judgmental toward arising negative thoughts about the self prevents negative evaluations becoming a true reality. a construct that encompasses both self-esteem and self-efficacy, along with two other components (emotional stability, locus of control), is core self-evaluation. defined as having positive view of oneself and confidence in one’s own motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 3 abilities, core self-evaluation is linked to wellbeing (judge, erez, bono, & thoresen, 2003). one way in which a high core self-evaluation level allows experiencing high satisfaction in life is by letting individuals set goals that are self-concordant (judge, bono, erez, & locke, 2005), perhaps clarified through greater mindfulness. extended to include outcome variables reflective of wellbeing, kong, wang, and zhao (2014) found that the extent to which one positively evaluates oneself fully mediates the association between trait mindfulness and life satisfaction. at the same time, individual differences in the propensity towards healthy and unhealthy regulation will likely influence mindfulness, core self-evaluation, and wellbeing. one factor that is relevant is motivational causality orientations. causality orientations theory (cot) is one of six mini-theories within sdt and outlines individual differences in motivational styles (ryan & deci, 2017). specifically, causality orientations refer to “motivational sets or characteristic ways of perceiving and organizing motivationally relevant perception and information” (p. 217, ryan & deci, 2017) and indicate that there are individual differences in orienting towards the environment (e.g., social context) and individuals’ own motivations (e.g., personal needs, values). in the orientation towards contexts, autonomous motivational orientation indicates taking contexts as a source of information and being directed by choice and self-determination. controlled motivational orientation indicates interpreting the environment as controlling and being directed by external rewards and social pressures (ryan & deci, 2017). in orienting to individuals’ own motivations, autonomous motivational orientation reflects the degree to which people tend to be attuned to inner needs, interests, and values, and the controlled motivational orientation taps onto the degree to which people tend to refer to external cues and controls in the environment to guide their behaviors. accordingly, individuals functioning upon autonomous motivational orientation are inclined towards using inner anchors (e.g., values, needs) as guidance towards behaviors. on the other hand, those who function upon controlled motivational orientation are sensitive to, and their behaviors are largely dictated by, “external demands, rewards, threats and self-esteem contingencies” (p. 665, ryan & deci, 2008). these motivational causality orientations are linked to how individuals self-regulate. following the organismic integration theory (oit), another one of six minitheories of sdt, high autonomous motivational orientation is associated with identified and integrated styles of regulation, while high controlled motivational orientation is associated with preoccupation with external judgments and contingencies, which then regulate behaviors (e.g., introjected regulation). a recent meta-analysis by howard, gagné, and bureau (2017) again concluded that motivation falls along the continuum of self-determination, wherein autonomous motivational orientation is reflective of integrated or identified regulations, while controlled motivational orientation is reflective of introjected regulation and external regulation. not surprisingly, motivational orientations differentially influence wellbeing. for example, gillet, lafreniѐre, vallerand, huart, and fouquereau (2012) found that autonomous motivational orientation was positively correlated with positive affect, whereas controlled motivational orientation was negatively associated with affect among university students. similarly, in an experimental study with college students, nix, ryan, manly and deci (1999) found that individuals assigned to an autonomous motivation condition (self-directed motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 4 condition) showed a vitality level that was maintained; however, those who were assigned to the controlled motivation condition (other-directed condition) showed a drop in vitality level. interestingly, there was no difference between conditions for happiness levels. expanding to employee wellbeing in work settings, slemp, kern, patrick, and ryan (2018) found through their meta-analysis that autonomous work motivation is strongly and positively correlated with leader autonomy support (supervisor behaviors that facilitate self-determined motivation in employees) but leader autonomy support was uncorrelated with controlled work motivation. leadership autonomy support was, in turn, associated with hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing respectively (ρ = .46 [ci .39, .53], ρ = .40 [ci .29, .52]). in sum, results that show the linkages of autonomous motivational orientations and controlled motivational orientations to wellbeing seem to be mixed, and this inconsistency could be clarified through exploring perhaps divergent pathways between motivational orientations and wellbeing. the relations between motivational orientations and mindfulness is also unclear. two plausible relations may exist. first, motivational orientations may facilitate mindfulness. if one is driven by self-concordant values and needs (i.e., autonomous orientation), this may lead to clearer attention and awareness of present moment experiences, ultimately leading to positive self-evaluation and wellbeing. similarly, if one is driven by external demands, rewards, and self-contingencies (i.e., controlled orientation), such preoccupation may also thwart being able to pay attention to present moment experiences because meeting the demands and contingencies are of utmost priority. such preoccupation can then negatively influence one’s self-evaluation and wellbeing. second, mindfulness may influence motivational orientations. for instance, heightened awareness may allow one to orient towards certain motivations, needs, and values. based on theoretical propositions of sdt and empirical findings, this study proposes that motivational orientations should be considered when examining the link between mindfulness and wellbeing. specifically, this study posits that mindfulness and core selfevaluation will sequentially mediate the association between motivational orientations and wellbeing. this proposition is informed by brown and ryan (2003), as they note: “the effect of mindfulness lies not necessarily in creating psychological experiences … but in allowing for choicefulness in whether to endorse or veto the directives that consciousness brings to awareness” (p. 118). in other words, mindfulness may function as a carrier to an already established tendency toward self-regulation, guided by autonomous or controlled motivations. according to olesen (2011), motivational orientations can be conceived as characteristic adaptations, following the delineation proposed by mcadams and pals (2006). perfectionism is a multidimensional personality disposition that is relatively stable over time and distinguishable from dispositional personality traits (rice, ashby, & slaney, 2007; stoeber & otto, 2006) that may reflect distinctive motivational orientations. composed of two dimensions, perfectionistic strivings refer to setting high performance expectations while not experiencing discrepancy as to meeting such self-set expectations, whereas perfectionistic concerns refer to similarly setting high bars for one’s performance while also constantly feeling inadequate at meeting such standards (stoeber & otto, 2006). bolstering this contention, stoeber, damian and madigan (2018) recently argued that different motivational qualities may characterize motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 5 perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. specifically, perfectionistic strivings generally showed positive relations with autonomous motivation (e.g., harvey et al., 2015), whereas perfectionistic concerns primarily showed positive relations with controlled motivation (e.g., miquelon, vallerand, grouzet, & cardinal, 2005). the adaptiveness and maladaptiveness of perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns have largely been witnessed through their associations with criterion variables, and results appear rather mixed. although perfectionistic strivings are often considered an “adaptive/healthy” component of perfectionism, and perfectionistic concerns are often referred to as a “maladaptive/unhealthy” aspect of perfectionism (e.g., dunkley, mandel, & ma, 2014), a growing number of studies finds both dimensions of perfectionism as risk factors to psychological distress (smith et al., 2016; smith et al., 2017). following the adaptive and maladaptive qualities and implications of perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns may or may not mirror the generally adaptive or maladaptive nature of and implications of autonomous and controlled motivations. perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns are associated with mindfulness and core self-evaluation. across studies, perfectionistic strivings were either not significantly associated or significantly negatively associated with mindfulness (r = -.27, p < .01), whereas perfectionistic concerns were strongly negatively associated with mindfulness (rs ranged from .47 to -.58, all ps < .01) (argus & thompson, 2007; short & mazmanian, 2013; wimberley, mintz, & suh, 2016). the findings on the association with mindfulness appear rather inconsistent for perfectionistic strivings, but consistent for perfectionistic concerns. the association between perfectionism and core self-evaluation does not appear to be assessed, but given that core selfevaluation is reflective of self-esteem, self-efficacy, neuroticism, and locus of control (judge et al., 2003), findings that examined the associations between perfectionism and self-esteem (selfefficacy) can suggest directionality of associations (e.g., grzegorek, slaney, franze, & rice, 2004; stoeber, hutchfield, & wood, 2008). the present study extending kong et al. (2014) in two ways, this study first considers the role of a relevant yet unexamined covariate of motivational orientations (perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns) in the associations between mindfulness, core self-evaluation, and life satisfaction. second, this study expands outcome variables of interest by including depression and anxiety as indicators of psychological distress. serial mediation models in which mindfulness (m1) and self-evaluation (m2) mediate the relation between perfectionism (x) and outcomes (y) were tested. serial multiple mediation models were run with bootstrapped indirect effects to test the following hypotheses: h1a (h1b, h1c): perfectionistic strivings will be indirectly associated with life satisfaction (depression, anxiety), serially mediated by mindfulness and core self-evaluation. h2a (h2b, h2c): perfectionistic concerns will be indirectly associated with life satisfaction (depression, anxiety), serially mediated by mindfulness and core self-evaluation. 2. method 2.1 participants and procedure motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 6 a total of 273 college students (211 female, 58 male, 1 transgender, and 1 declined to answer, 2 did not report) from a large public university participated. participants were recruited from an undergraduate psychology research participant pool and several psychology courses, in exchange for research credit or extra credit. for extra credit, recruitment advertisement emails were sent to course instructors for distribution consideration. initially, a total of 303 individuals logged onto the survey link; one indicated “disagree” at the informed consent stage, 26 agreed at the informed consent stage but did not proceed further, and three did not complete the survey and thus were excluded. full final participant demographic information appears in table 1. questionnaires were presented online in a random order, using an online software, qualtrics. the study took approximately 30 minutes to complete and was approved by the university institutional review board. participants were recruited over two school semesters (spring and summer semesters of 2014), within approximately 7 months. table 1. sample characteristics (n = 273) age mean = 19.56 (sd = 2.72) gender female (n = 211) male (n = 58) transgender (n = 1) declined to answer (n = 1) did not report (n = 2) race/ethnicity white or european american (56.4%) asian or asian american (14.3%) hispanic/latino/a (12.8%) black or african-american (7.7%) multicultural (3.7%) native american (0.7%) pacific islander (0.4%) other (3.3%) did not report (0.7%) academic classification first-year students (42.9%) sophomore (25.6%) junior (19.0%) senior (10.6%) did not report (0.4%) 2.2 measures perfectionism. the almost perfect scale-revised (aps-r; slaney et al., 2001) was used to assess perfectionistic strivings (seven items) and perfectionistic concerns (12 items). sample items include, “i have high expectations for myself,” and “i often feel frustrated because i can’t meet my goals,” for perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns respectively. participants responded to a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree), with higher scores indicating greater perfectionistic tendencies. internal consistency was sound for perfectionistic strivings (.82) and perfectionistic concerns (.92) among college students (grzegorek et al., 2004), motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 7 and validity was evidenced (rice & ashby, 2007). internal consistency was .92 for perfectionistic strivings and .97 for perfectionistic concerns in the present study. mindfulness. the mindfulness attention and awareness scale (maas; brown & ryan, 2003) was used to assess trait mindfulness that refers to an open or receptive awareness and attention to what is taking place in the present. sample items include, “i find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present,” and “i find myself doing things without paying attention.” composed of 15 items, participants respond to a 6-point scale (1 = almost always, 6 = almost never), higher scores indicating higher levels of mindfulness. internal consistency was sound, with .86 among college students (allan, bott, & suh, 2015). brown and ryan (2003) supported the convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity of the maas. internal consistency was .94 in the present study. core self-evaluation. the core self-evaluation scale (cses; judge et al., 2003) was used to assess one’s appraisal of their worthiness, effectiveness and capability. the cses is composed of 12 items tapping into self-esteem, self-efficacy, emotional stability, and locus of control, and it is generally suggested to use the items to indicate a uni-dimensional factor (judge et al., 2003). sample items include, “i am confident i get the success i deserve in life,” and “i determine what will happen in my life.” participants respond to a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree), with higher scores indicating greater self-evaluation. internal consistency ranged from .83 to .87 among college students, and validity was supported (judge et al., 2003). internal consistency was .96 for the total score in this study. satisfaction with life. the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) is a 5-item measure that was used to assess perceived general satisfaction with life as an aspect of subjective wellbeing (pavot & diener, 2008). participants respond to a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree), with higher scores indicating greater levels of life satisfaction. sample items include, “i am satisfied with my life,” and “if i could live my life over, i would change almost nothing.” internal consistency of the measure among college students was .84 (steger, frazier, oishi, & kaler, 2006), and convergent validity was supported (pavot & diener, 2008). internal consistency was .98 in the present study. depression. the center for epidemiological studies – depression (ces-d; radloff, 1977) was used to assess symptoms of depression. sample items include, “i thought my life had been a failure” and “i was bothered by things that usually don’t bother me.” composed of 20 items, participants responded using a 4-point scale (0 = rarely or none of the time, 3 = most or all of the time), with higher scores indicating higher levels of depressive symptomatology. following several recommendations (e.g., edwards, cheavens, heiy, & cukrowicz, 2010), 15 items from the original 20 items were used to create a single indicator of depression. good internal consistency was evidenced (.87) among a large adult sample (edwards, cheavens, heiy, & cukrowicz, 2010), and convergent and discriminant validity of the original measure was supported (radloff, 1977). internal consistency of 15 items was .95 in the present study. anxiety. the self-rating anxiety scale (sras; zung, 1971) was used to assess symptoms of anxiety. sample items include, “i get upset easily or feel panicky” and “i feel more nervous and anxious than usual.” the scale is composed of 20 items, and participants are asked to respond using a 4-point scale (1 = none or a little of time, 4 = most of all of the time), with higher scores indicating higher levels of anxiety. olatunji, deacon, abramowitz, and tolin (2006) reported motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 8 adequate internal consistency of .81 among college students, and validity was evidenced (e.g., tanaka-matsumi & kameoka, 1986). internal consistency was .99 in the present study. 3. results this study first tested whether mindfulness and core self-evaluation sequentially mediate the influence of perfectionism on wellbeing. serial meditation analyses (process model 6) were conducted with 10,000 bootstrapped samples (hayes, 2013). all variables were z-transformed in order to compare effect sizes, but raw score descriptive statistics are reported in table 2. table 3 summarizes path coefficients, standard errors, and model summary information of these models. table 2. descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, correlation) variable mean sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. perfectionistic striving 40.88 6.19 2. perfectionistic concerns 48.74 15.42 .08 3. mindfulness 55.62 11.90 .03 -.38** 4. core self-evaluation 40.73 7.28 .16** -.66** .37** 5. life satisfaction 24.06 6.23 .18** -.37** .19** .60** 6. depression 12.62 8.39 -.01 .49** -.27** -.57** -.33** 7. anxiety 37.58 8.85 -.05 .52** -.33** -.58** -.39** .67** note. **p < .01. table 3. regression coefficients, standard errors, and model summary of the serial multiple mediator model consequent m1 (mindfulness) m2 (self-evaluation) y (life satisfaction) antecedent coeff. se p coeff. se p coeff. se p x(perfectionistic strivings) a1 .031 .061 .610 a2 .158 .056 .005 c’ .079 .049 .109 m1 (mindfulness) d21 .363 .056 <.001 b1 -.030 .052 .568 m2 (self-evaluation) b2 .601 .053 <.001 constant .001 .061 .992 .005 .056 .923 -.003 .048 .957 r2 = .001 r2 =.161 r2 = .370 f(1,270) = .261, p = .610 f(2,269) = 25.786, p <.001 f(3,268) = 52.403, p <.001 m1 (mindfulness) m2 (self-evaluation) y (depression) coeff. se p coeff. se p coeff. se p x (perfectionistic strivings) a1 .030 .061 .617 a2 .152 .056 .007 c’ .081 .051 .108 m1 (mindfulness) d21 .364 .056 <.001 b1 -.065 .054 .227 m2 (self-evaluation) b2 -.556 .054 <.001 constant .000 .061 1.000 .000 .056 1.000 .000 .050 1.000 r2 = .001 r2 = .158 r2 = .332 f(1,271) = .251, p = f(2,270) = 25.426, p f(3,269) = 44.564, p motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 9 .617 <.001 <.001 m1 (mindfulness) m2 (self-evaluation) y (anxiety) coeff. se p coeff. se p coeff. se p x (perfectionistic strivings) a1 .027 .061 .658 a2 .149 .056 .008 c’ .041 .050 .409 m1 (mindfulness) d21 .358 .056 <.001 b1 -.136 .053 .011 m2 (self-evaluation) b2 -.534 .054 <.001 constant .006 .061 .925 .004 .063 .950 .004 .049 .938 r2 = .001 r2 = .154 r2 = .349 f(1,270) = .196, p = .658 f(2,269) = 24.433, p <.001 f(3,268) = 47.803, p <.001 m1 (mindfulness) m2 (self-evaluation) y (life satisfaction) coeff. se p coeff. se p coeff. se p x (perfectionistic concerns) a1 -.381 .057 <.001 a2 -.606 .049 <.001 c’ .036 .066 .587 m1 (mindfulness) d21 .141 .049 .004 b1 -.027 .053 .612 m2 (self-evaluation) b2 .637 .066 <.001 constant -.003 .056 .946 .000 .045 .999 -.003 .049 .954 r2 = .143 r2 = .447 r2 = .364 f (1,270) = 44.949, p < .001 f (2,269) = 108.734, p <.001 f (3,268) = 51.207, p <.001 m1 (mindfulness) m2 (self-evaluation) y (depression) coeff. se p coeff. se p coeff. se p x (perfectionistic concerns) a1 -.376 .056 <.001 a2 -.606 .049 <.001 c’ .205 .067 .002 m1 (mindfulness) d21 .141 .049 .004 b1 -.036 .054 .503 m2 (self-evaluation) b2 -.419 .066 <.001 constant .000 .056 1.000 .000 .045 1.000 .000 .049 1.000 r2 = .141 r2 = .451 r2 =.348 f(1,271) = 44.510, p <.001 f(2,270) = 110.755, p <.001 f(3,269) = 47.958, p <.001 m1 (mindfulness) m2 (self-evaluation) y (anxiety) coeff. se p coeff. se p coeff. se p x (perfectionistic concerns) a1 -.372 .056 <.001 a2 -.605 .049 <.001 c’ .225 .065 .001 m1 (mindfulness) d21 .136 .049 .006 b1 -.102 .053 .055 m2 (self-evaluation) b2 -.391 .065 <.001 constant .005 .056 .935 .004 .045 .940 .004 .048 .940 r2 = .139 r2 = .448 r2 = .375 f(1,270) = 43.589, p <.001 f(2,269) = 109.251, p <.001 f(3,268) = 53.510, p <.001 motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 10 3.1 perfectionistic strivings and outcome variables the total effect of perfectionistic strivings (c) on life satisfaction was significant (β = .180, t = 2.998, p = .003), but the total effect, removing the effect of the mediators (c’), was not significant (β = .079, t = 1.606, p = .109). the total indirect effect that sums all specific indirect effects was significant at a point estimate of .101 (95% ci = .032 to .173). the specific indirect effect through mindfulness only was not significant (a1b1 = -.001; 95% ci = -.016 to .003), but the specific indirect effect through self-evaluation only was significant (a2b2 = .095, 95% ci = .033 to .165). the serial multiple mediation model, with the specific indirect effect of perfectionistic strivings on life satisfaction through both mindfulness and self-evaluation, was not significant (a1b2d21 = .007, 95% ci = -.019 to .035), indicating that perfectionistic strivings do not affect life satisfaction serially through first mindfulness and then through core self-evaluation. see figure 1 below. the total effect of perfectionistic strivings (c) on depression was not significant (β = .011, t = -.180, p = .858), and the total effect, removing the effect of the mediators (c’), was not significant (β = .081, t = 1.611, p = .108). the total indirect effect that sums all specific indirect effects was significant at a point estimate of -.092 (95% ci = -.172 to -.024). the specific indirect effect through mindfulness only was not significant (a1b1 = -.002; 95% ci = -.023 to .005) but the specific indirect effect through self-evaluation only was significant (a2b2 = -.084, 95% ci = -.156 to -.028). the serial multiple mediation model, with the specific indirect effect of perfectionistic strivings on depression through both mindfulness and self-evaluation, was not significant (a1b2d21 = -.006, 95% ci = -.034 to .015), indicating that perfectionistic strivings do not affect depression serially, through first mindfulness, and then through core self-evaluation. see figure 2 below. results on anxiety appeared similar to that of depression. the total effect of perfectionistic strivings (c) on anxiety was not significant (β = -.047, t = -.778, p = .437), and the total effect, removing the effect of the mediators (c’), was not significant (β = .041, t = 0.826, p = .409). the total indirect effect that sums all specific indirect effects was significant at a point estimate of -.088 (95% ci = -.171 to -.019). the specific indirect effect through mindfulness only was not significant (a1b1 = -.004; 95% ci = -.026 to .011), but the specific indirect effect through self-evaluation only was significant (a2b2 = -.080, 95% ci = -.147 to -.025). the serial multiple mediation model, with the specific indirect effect of perfectionistic strivings on depression through both mindfulness and self-evaluation, was not significant (a1b2d21 = -.005, 95% ci = -.032 to .015), indicating that perfectionistic strivings do not affect anxiety serially, through first mindfulness, and then through core self-evaluation. see figure 3 below. 3.2 perfectionistic concerns and outcome variables it was tested whether mindfulness and self-evaluation sequentially mediate the influence of perfectionistic concerns on outcomes (h2a, h2b, h2c). the total effect of perfectionistic concerns (c) on life satisfaction was significant (β = -.373, t = -6.562, p < .001), but the total effect removing the effect of the mediators (c’) was not significant (β = .036, t = 0.543, p = .587). the total indirect effect that sums all specific indirect effects was significant at a point estimate of -.409 (95% ci = -.539 to -.296). the specific indirect effect through mindfulness only was not significant (a1b1 = .010; 95% ci = -.029 to .056), but the specific indirect effect through self-evaluation only was motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 11 significant (a2b2 = -.385, 95% ci = -.516 to -.279). the serial multiple mediation model, with the specific indirect effect of perfectionistic concerns on life satisfaction through both mindfulness and self-evaluation, was significant (a1b2d21 = -.034, 95% ci = -.070 to -.007), indicating that the serial mediation model of perfectionistic concerns predicting life satisfaction sequentially through mindfulness and core self-evaluation was supported. see figure 4 below. the total effect of perfectionistic concerns (c) on depression was significant (β = .494, t = 9.361, p < .001), and the total effect, removing the effect of the mediators (c’), was significant as well (β = .205, t = 3.076, p = .002). the total indirect effect that sums all specific indirect effects was significant at a point estimate of .289 (95% ci = .186 to .395). the specific indirect effect through mindfulness only was not significant (a1b1 = .014; 95% ci = -.026 to .067), but the specific indirect effect through self-evaluation only was significant (a2b2 = .254, 95% ci = .157 to .353). the serial multiple mediation model, with the specific indirect effect of perfectionistic concerns on depression through both mindfulness and self-evaluation, was significant (a1b2d21 = .022, 95% ci = .006 to .049), indicating that the serial mediation model of perfectionistic concerns predicting depression sequentially through mindfulness and core self-evaluation was supported. see figure 5 below. the total effect of perfectionistic concerns (c) on anxiety was significant (β = .519, t = 9.991, p < .001), and the total effect, removing the effect of the mediators (c’), was significant as well (β = .225, t = 3.444, p = .001). the total indirect effect that sums all specific indirect effects was significant at a point estimate of .294 (95% ci = .191 to .409). the specific indirect effect through mindfulness only was not significant (a1b1 = .038; 95% ci = -.002 to .093), but the specific indirect effect through self-evaluation only was significant (a2b2 = .237, 95% ci = .142 to .346). the serial multiple mediation model, with the specific indirect effect of perfectionistic concerns on anxiety through both mindfulness and self-evaluation, was significant (a1b2d21 = .020, 95% ci = .004 to .045), indicating that the serial mediation model of perfectionistic concerns predicting anxiety sequentially through mindfulness and core self-evaluation was supported. see figure 6 below. motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 12 perfectionistic strivings mindfulness core self-evaluation life satisfaction perfectionistic strivings mindfulness core self-evaluation depression a1 = .030 a2 = .152** d21 = .364*** b1 = -.065 b2 = -.556*** c’ = .081 total indirect = -.092† (ci = -.172, -.024) figure 3. model 1: serial multiple mediation model of perfectionistic strivings on life satisfaction, with m1 as mindfulness and m2 as core self-evaluation †95% ci of the estimate indicates a significant total indirect effect. note. ***p < .001, **p < .01. –> significant path; > non-significant path. figure 2. model 2: serial multiple mediation model of perfectionistic strivings on depression, with m1 as mindfulness and m2 as core self-evaluation †95% ci of the estimate indicates a significant total indirect effect. note. ***p < .001, **p < .01. –> significant path; > non-significant path. perfectionistic strivings mindfulness core self-evaluation anxiety a1 = .027 a2 = .149** d21 = .358*** b1 = -.136* b2 = -.534*** c’ = .041 total indirect = -.088† (ci = -.171, -.019) c’ = .079 total indirect = .101† (ci = .032, .173) figure 1. model 3: serial multiple mediation model of perfectionistic strivings on anxiety, with m1 as mindfulness and m2 as core self-evaluation †95% ci of the estimate indicates a significant total indirect effect. note. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05. –> significant path; > non-significant path. a1 = .031 d21 = .363*** b2 = .601*** a2 = .158** b1 = -.030 motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 13 perfectionistic concerns mindfulness core self-evaluation life satisfaction a1 = -.381*** a2 = -.606*** d21 = .141** b1 = -.027 b2 = .637*** c’ = .036 total indirect = -.409† (ci = -.539, -.296) figure 4. model 4: serial multiple mediation model of perfectionistic concerns on life satisfaction, with m1 as mindfulness and m2 as core self-evaluation †95% ci of the estimate indicates a significant total indirect effect. note. ***p < .001, **p < .01. –> significant path; > non-significant path. perfectionistic concerns mindfulness core self-evaluation depression a1 = -.376*** a2 = -.606*** d21 = .141** b1 = -.036 b2 = -.419*** c’ = 205** total indirect = .289† (ci = .186, .395) figure 5. model 5: serial multiple mediation model of perfectionistic concerns on depression, with m1 as mindfulness and m2 as core self-evaluation †95% ci of the estimate indicates a significant total indirect effect. note. ***p < .001, **p < .01. –> significant path; > non-significant path. perfectionistic concerns mindfulness core self-evaluation anxiety a1 = -.372*** a2 = -.605*** d21 = .136** b1 = -.102 b2 = -.391*** c’ = 225** total indirect = .294† (ci = .191, .409) figure 6. model 6: serial multiple mediation model of perfectionistic concerns on anxiety, with m1 as mindfulness and m2 as core self-evaluation †95% ci of the estimate indicates a significant total indirect effect. note. ***p < .001, **p < .01. –> significant path; > non-significant path. motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 14 4. discussion this study examined whether the relation between motivational orientations (perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns) and wellbeing is sequentially mediated by mindfulness and core self-evaluation. all three hypotheses on perfectionistic strivings (h1a, h1b, and h1c) were not supported, rejecting sequential mediation models with life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety. first, in understanding the total (c) and direct effects (c’), perfectionistic strivings were positively correlated with life satisfaction (c = .180, p = .003), but this relationship was no longer significant once multiple mediators were included in the model (c’ = .079, p = .109). perfectionistic strivings with depression and anxiety were not significantly correlated respectively (c = -.011, p = .858; c = -.047, p = .437), and even when mediators were included respectively (c’ = .081, p = .108; c’ = .041, p = .409). in other words, perfectionistic strivings alone are not a risk factor to depression and anxiety, whereas perfectionistic strivings alone can facilitate experiences of life satisfaction. this result aligns well with the adaptive conceptualization of perfectionistic strivings (stoeber & otto, 2006), and to conceptualizing perfectionistic strivings as reflective of autonomous motivational orientation, given that autonomous motivational orientation is linked to greater wellbeing. based on sdt, autonomous orientation is an important precedent to psychological health (ryan & deci, 2017). regarding specific indirect effects, perfectionistic strivings influenced life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety indirectly through positive appraisal of one’s worthiness, effectiveness, and capabilities in the expected directions. in other words, one’s striving for excellence grounded in inner needs, values, and goals may guide one to favorably perceive and assess oneself, which subsequently leads to wellbeing and low distress. this finding again suggests that perfectionistic strivings is an “adaptive” characteristic that orients and energizes people to approach and achieve self-set expectations and goals (stoeber, damian, & madigan, 2018). interestingly, mindfulness did not mediate the effects perfectionistic strivings had on either core self-evaluation or outcome variables. it is unclear what this finding points at, other than acknowledging that when individuals are driven by autonomous motivational orientation, they are being driven via internalized regulation with clear values and intrinsic motivations, which might already be sufficient to be linked to core self-evaluation and outcomes. as for perfectionistic concerns, all three hypotheses (h2a, h2b, and h2c) were supported. first, perfectionistic concerns were negatively correlated with life satisfaction, but this relationship was no longer significant once multiple mediators were included. perfectionistic concerns significantly positively correlated to depression and anxiety both with and without mediators. second, examination of direct effects of perfectionistic concerns on outcome variables showed that striving for excellence in the presence of self-doubt was associated with low life satisfaction and with high depression and anxiety, even controlling for the effects of mediators. this finding is consistent with propositions arguing perfectionistic concerns as a risk factor to depression and anxiety (egan, wade, & shafran, 2011). this result also supports positioning perfectionistic concerns as reflective of controlled motivational orientation from sdt. sdt argues that individuals guided by controlled motivation are sensitive to failure cues and negative feedback, while behaviors are likely driven motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 15 by introjected demands; this culminates in lifestyles or activities that are thwarting basic needs, which then predict “antagonist outcomes” (deci & ryan, 2012). thus, individuals driven by controlled motivation set high expectations out of fear of failure, while constantly monitoring personal inadequacies. consequently, this hinders them from meeting basic needs of autonomy and competence, and hence put them at greater risk for poor wellbeing. regarding indirect effects, perfectionistic concerns influenced outcome variables sequentially via mindfulness and core self-evaluation. thus, those with a tendency to be critical and preoccupied with perceived inadequacies have inhibited experiences of paying scant attention to internal and external processes, and those who had a low mindful tendency perceived themselves to be not worthy and capable. core self-evaluation was positively related to depression and anxiety and inversely related to life satisfaction. indeed, many studies note that a brooding ruminative responsive style is linked to poor psychological health (o’connor, o’connor, & marshall, 2007; olson & kwon, 2007). moreover, when one is preoccupied with locating personal inadequacies, paying attention to a full range of thoughts and emotions, even those that are positive attributes and success experiences, is hindered, leaving less margin for favorable self-evaluation. in sum, if motivational orientation is propelled by external demands, rewards, and self-contingencies, and such orientation has been continuously reinforced, one becomes incapable of being attentive and aware of present moment experiences, given that meeting demands and contingencies are of utmost priority. for instance, shapiro, carlson, astin, and freedman (2006) note that mindfulness is composed of attention, intention, and attitude, and suggest that “intentionally cultivating nonjudgmental attention leads to connection, which leads to self-regulation and ultimately to greater order and health” (p. 380). this process through which controlled motivation leads to low mindfulness, which then leads to poor core self-evaluation, also may reflect introjected regulation in sdt. schultz and ryan (2015) note that introjected regulation is aimed at getting selfand othercontingent approval to avoid guilt, while building self-esteem through ego-enhancement, and that the consequence of introjected regulation is stress and low wellbeing. thus, controlled motivational orientation in the absence of mindfulness boosts negative self-evaluative emotions (e.g., guilt, shame), which then tarnishes evaluating oneself favorably. the consequence is poor psychological health. in sum, this study suggests that there are different pathways between motivational orientations and wellbeing that should be considered. specifically, efforts to build wellbeing among those with perfectionistic strivings can focus on relating the positive effects of perfectionistic strivings to building a “healthy self,” as reflected in higher scores in core selfevaluation. on the other hand, deleterious effects of perfectionistic concerns on wellbeing can be attenuated by increasing mindfulness as a way to weaken its path to negatively influencing core self-evaluation and wellbeing. limitations this study has several limitations. first, this was a cross-sectional study, and hence causality cannot be inferred. future studies should verify the direction and effects of identified relations. second, the sample was composed of college students only, limiting the generalizability of motivational orientations to mindfulness suh 16 current findings. future studies could examine whether similar patterns of results are evidenced in other age groups or non-college attending peers. this is especially relevant, given a recent review by curran and hill (2017) that reported a continuous increase in perfectionism levels over the past 26 years among college students, referring to the hyper-competitive nature of the context in which they are embedded. comparing college students’ and non-college attending peers’ perfectionism levels can give hints at whether and to what extent the competitive context is a university culture, or a new societal culture. unfortunately, we could not locate any studies that directly compared perfectionism levels of college students and. noncollege attending peers. third, the measure that was used to assess mindfulness in the current study does not fully capture the non-judgment, or self-acceptance component, of mindfulness (bishop et al., 2004). utilizing measures that reflect both aspects more explicitly would be beneficial (e.g., the five facet mindfulness questionnaire), which reflects the eastern-based mindfulness conceptualization (ivtzan & hart, 2016). in particular, in light of suggestions made by hart, ivtzan, and hart (2013), comparing the role of mindfulness in the self-regulation process with two lineages of mindfulness measures (eastern-based mindfulness to reflect “meditative mindfulness” vs. western-based to reflect “creative mindfulness”) could be the next step of research that can point to the validity of using these two distinct operationalizations of mindfulness, and assessing any similarities or differences of mindfulness relating to self-regulation. despite these limitations, this study supports one mechanism through which motivational orientations affect outcomes, and future studies should explore whether this model holds for various samples utilizing other measures that reflect motivational orientations or mindfulness. for instance, given that perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns are only one possible indicator of motivational orientations, examining how other indicators of motivational orientations relate to mindfulness, core self-evaluation, and outcomes would be beneficial. it might be also useful to explore whether motivational orientations relate differently to mindfulness influencing other wellbeing indicators that reflect eudaimonic wellbeing (e.g., meaning in life). author hanna suh university at buffalo, state university of new york hannasuh@buffalo.edu publishing timeline received 14 march 2018 accepted 12 november 2018 published 3 april 2018 references allan, b. a., bott, e. m., & suh, h. 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(1971). a rating instrument for anxiety disorders. psychosomatics, 12(6), 371-379. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0033-3182(71)71479-0 fors connolly, f., johansson sevä, i., & gärling, t. (2020). how does time pressure influence emotional wellbeing?: investigating the roles of domain satisfaction and neuroticism among small-business owners. international journal of wellbeing, 10(2), 71-88. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.805 tommy gärling 71 university of gothenburg tommy.garling@psy.gu.se copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org how does time pressure influence emotional wellbeing? investigating the roles of domain satisfaction and neuroticism among small-business owners filip fors connolly · ingemar johansson sevä · tommy gärling abstract: emotional wellbeing is related to the balance of positive and negative emotions associated with activities at work and in free time. we conjecture that time pressure is a factor reducing positive emotions and amplifying negative emotions, such that it has a negative relationship to emotional wellbeing. we found this to be the case in two studies based on survey data derived from samples of small-business owners in sweden. in study 1, the relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing is negative for small-business owners as well as for employed wage earners, although at work the former group experience both higher time pressure and higher emotional wellbeing than the latter. no differences in free time between the groups are observed. study 2 provides support for the hypothesis that, both at work and in free time, domain satisfaction partially mediates the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. supporting two additional hypotheses, the results indicate that neuroticism has a direct negative relationship with emotional wellbeing, and also an indirect relationship with emotional wellbeing mediated by time pressure, and furthermore moderates the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. keywords: time pressure, emotional wellbeing, domain satisfaction, neuroticism, small-business owners 1. introduction in contemporary western societies, people are frequently over-committed such that they experience time pressure. although positively correlated with literal time scarcity, time pressure is not experienced unless people are actually aware of time limits, resulting in the experience of having too much to do in too little time (e.g., strazdins et al., 2011). several experimental laboratory studies demonstrate that time pressure has harmful consequences for work performance (for a review, see proctor and van zandt, 2018). negative effects of time pressure are also observed in free time. leiter and durup (1996) found that long work hours impair performance of household tasks and caring duties. in further support, a cross-national survey (haller et al. 2013) showed that a majority of people feel “rushed” even in free time. in affluent consumer societies, people face many competing opportunities that are attractive and affordable. it appears difficult then to not over-commit oneself article about:blank time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 (goodin et al., 2005). for instance, shopping is almost becoming a compulsion for many people (manolis & roberts, 2012), to such an extent that it presumably infringes on time for other activities. in previous studies, subjective wellbeing is often conceptualized as having two components: a cognitive judgment of satisfaction with life; and affective experiences of positive versus negative emotions (busseri & sadava, 2011; diener & suh, 1997; tov, 2018). the latter component is frequently referred to as emotional wellbeing, whereby of interest is the balance of the frequency (or duration) and intensity of experiences of positive and negative emotions (diener et al., 1985; kahneman, 1999). emotional wellbeing may be lowered by factors that reduce positive emotions and amplify negative emotions such as, for instance, worries for economic hardship (mani et al., 2013), poor sleep quality (kahneman & krueger, 2006), or long work commutes (novaco & gonzales, 2009). 1.1 time pressure and emotional wellbeing in this paper we investigate the relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. two previous studies have demonstrated a negative relationship between these two factors (gärling et al., 2016; ng et al., 2009). from a public health perspective, it is important to further investigate this negative relationship, since morbidity and mortality are found to increase with prolonged low emotional well-being (diener & chan, 2011). from a policy perspective, in terms of looking for improvements at both the individual and societal levels, it is worth considering how time pressure may be alleviated by changing life circumstances (e.g. reducing work hours), as well as how coping with time pressure should be supported (e.g. providing restorative opportunities). to inform policy, it is therefore important to investigate (1) whether time pressure has a negative relationship to emotional wellbeing, (2) whether the relationship is related to life circumstances at work and in free time, and (3) whether there are differences between individuals and occupational groups. a meta-analysis by klug and maier (2013) found that goal progress is positively related to emotional wellbeing. conversely, impediments to goal progress may therefore have a negative relationship to emotional wellbeing. gärling et al. (2014) proposed a conceptual model positing that time pressure is negatively related to emotional wellbeing by impeding progress of work, family, and free time goals associated with everyday routines. an empirical study by gärling et al. (2016) supported this conceptual model, showing that the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing is mediated by impediments to goal progress. based on this 2016 study, here we investigate whether the relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing is mediated by domain satisfaction, and specifically satisfaction with work and free time. since previous research has shown that domain satisfaction is related to goal progress (lent et al. 2005), this mediation is theoretically plausible. a first hypothesis that we test in this paper is therefore whether a negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing is mediated by domain satisfaction. self-reported stress symptoms were found by gärling et al. (2016) to be a parallel mediator of the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. this finding suggests that unsuccessful coping with time pressure may result in time stress, with characteristic changes in physiology, cognitions, feelings, and behavior (e.g., hill rice, 2012). we therefore raise the question of whether time pressure is stronger, or possibly more frequently experienced as time stress, by less emotionally stable people. individuals scoring high on the big-five personality trait neuroticism are more likely to experience anxiety, worry, fear, anger, and depressed mood (costa & mccrae, 1985). they have furthermore been found to be more prone towards more negative perceptions of ambiguous and threatening stimuli (lommen et al., 2010). in line with these findings, we conjecture time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 that individuals high in neuroticism are likely to report higher time pressure than individuals low in neuroticism. no previous research has demonstrated this, but several studies have shown that neuroticism is negatively related to emotional wellbeing (e.g. steel et al., 2008). combining this finding with the possibility that time pressure is negatively related to emotional wellbeing, our second hypothesis is that time pressure mediates the relationship between neuroticism and emotional wellbeing. previous research has shown that neuroticism is related to emotional responsiveness to negative events (suls, 2001). for instance, hutchinson and williams (2007) found that individuals who score high on neuroticism respond more strongly to daily hassles than individuals who score low on neuroticism, thus resulting in a stronger positive relationship between daily hassles and depression for these individuals. we argue that time pressure is an important component of daily hassles. byrne et al. (2015) found that individuals high in neuroticism performed worse in a decisionmaking task than individuals low in neuroticism when confronted with both social pressure and time pressure. an explanation of why neuroticism moderates the relationship between stressful events and emotional distress may be that maladaptive coping strategies are adopted. for instance, highneuroticism individuals tend to use emotion-focused instead of problem-focused coping more frequently than low-neuroticism individuals do (hutchinson & williams, 2007). our third hypothesis is that neuroticism moderates the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. 1.2. vulnerability of occupational groups individuals strongly engaged at work, perhaps in combination with demanding family obligations, are likely to have little free time for recreational activities that otherwise reduce time stress and increase emotional wellbeing (trougakos et al., 2008). a lack of resources for recreation would reduce the capability to cope with time pressure, thus making people vulnerable to time stress. stress is in turn negatively related to emotional wellbeing (ng et al., 2009). a key component of recreation activities is to psychologically maintain a distance from work and other demands that otherwise depletes mental resources and aggravates negative feelings (sonnentag, 2012). psychologically being away from work is commonly regarded as an affordance of the home, but work frequently performed at home diminishes the latter’s recreation potential (hartig et al., 2003). some occupational groups may be more vulnerable than other groups to time pressure and stress. according to previous research, one such potential group is small-business owners, whom we investigate in this study. even though small-business owners display relatively high job autonomy, job satisfaction and life satisfaction, owning small businesses has been described as a “double-edged sword” (prottas & thompson 2006). compared to employed wage earners, small-business owners work longer hours (parasuraman & simmers, 2001), experience more work-family conflict (johansson sevä & öun, 2015), and face higher demands at work (nordenmark et al., 2012; prottas & thompson, 2006). small-business owners may therefore experience higher time pressure and lower emotional wellbeing than employed wage earners. it is also possible that, even in their free time, they may experience higher time pressure and lower emotional wellbeing if time pressure at work has a negative spill-over effect. 1.3 overview of studies time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 in study 1 we use a survey of a representative sample of the adult swedish population to examine whether small-business owners experience higher time pressure than employed wage earners at work and in free time, and whether the relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing is negative. in another larger sample of small-business owners, we test in study 2 our three hypotheses of mediators and moderators of the relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. also in this study we measure time pressure and emotional wellbeing experienced at work and in free time. 2. study 1 the aim of study 1 is to investigate whether small-business owners at work and in free time experience higher time pressure than regular employed wage earners. we also provide an initial analysis of the relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing that we then examine more closely in study 2. 2.1 sample and procedure we used data from one of the society, opinion, and media’s (som) annual surveys of random samples of the swedish population. in total 3,400 residents, in the age span 16 to 85 years, were randomly drawn from the swedish national registry. the survey was then distributed to these individuals by mail in the fall of 2016. the net response rate was 52% (arkhede et al., 2017). the sample did not meaningfully differ from the swedish population with respect to sex, education, and region. we only include in the following analysis participants who answered the questions about time pressure and emotional wellbeing at work and in free time. for our analysis we therefore retained 850 participants, 63 of whom reported that they were small-business owners, and 787 who reported that they were employed wage earners. 2.2 measures 2.2.1 time pressure we used separate measures of time pressure at work and in free time. participants rated their degree of agreement to two statements using a 4-point scale with the response categories “agree completely”, “agree somewhat”, “do not agree”, and “do not agree at all”. the at-work statement was “i frequently feel that i don't have enough time to complete my job assignments”, and the infree-time statement “i frequently feel that i don't have enough time to do what i want in my free time”. 2.2.2 emotional wellbeing we also used separate measures of emotional wellbeing at work and in free time. to measure emotional wellbeing at work, participants were asked “if you think about your job during the past days, how would say that you felt?”, and to measure emotional wellbeing in free time “if you think about your free time during the past days, how would say that you felt?” answers to both questions were recorded on an 11-point numerical scale with the endpoints “in a very bad mood” (0) and (10) “in a very good mood”. time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 2.3 results table 1 shows means, standard deviations, and skewness of the ratings of time pressure and emotional wellbeing. as may be seen, small-business owners experienced significantly higher time pressure at work than the employed wage earners, t(104.23) = 3.18, p = .002, d=0.34, and at work emotional wellbeing is also higher for small-business owners than for employed wage earners, t(102.85) = 3.01, p = .003, d=.38. in free time there are no significant differences between the two groups. the product moment correlations between time pressure and emotional wellbeing are negative at work (r = -.19, p=.089, for the small-business owners; r = -.17, p<.001, for the employed wage earners), and negative but weaker in free time (r = -.07, p=.508, for the small-business owners; r = -.11, p=.001, for the employed wage earners). 2.4 discussion although the results of study 1 are only suggestive because of the single-item measures of time pressure and emotional well-being, they confirm that time pressure at work is indeed higher at work for small-business owners than for employed wage earners. this is consistent with the results of previous studies showing that small-business owners work longer hours than employed wage earners (parasuraman & simmers, 2001), and face higher work demands (nordenmark et al., 2012; table 1. means (m), standard deviations (sd) and skewness (skew) of ratings of time pressure and emotional well-being at work and in free time made by small-business owners and employed wage earners (study 1). time pressure emotional wellbeing at work in free time at work in free time group n m (sd) skew m (sd) skew m (sd) skew m (sd) skew small-business owners 63 3.13 (0.90) -0.67 3.01 (0.90) -0.64 7.60 (2.20) -1.25 7.44 (2.12) -1.01 employed wage earners 787 2.80 (0.96) -0.28 2.99 (0.93) -0.57 6.85 (2.27) -0.81 7.47 (2.05) -0.97 prottas & thompson, 2006). however, the difference in time pressure was only observed at work and not in free time. hence, our results do not show spill-over effects from higher time pressure at work to free time, which is unexpected given that previous research has documented that many smallbusiness owners experience high work-family conflict (johansson sevä & öun, 2015; prottas & thompson 2006). another expected finding is that for both small-business owners and employed wage earners, and both at work and in free time, there is a negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. we also found that at work, although not in free time, emotional wellbeing is higher for small-business owners than for employed wage earners. this is in line with previous research (binder & coad, 2016) showing that work satisfaction is higher among self-employed workers, whereas satisfaction with free time does not differ. a possible explanation is that other positive factors influence small-business owners’ satisfaction and emotional wellbeing at work, such time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 as work autonomy (lange, 2012). this may also explain the paradoxical finding that small-business owners experience both higher time pressure and higher emotional wellbeing than wage earners. 3. study 2 in study 2 we used survey data from a larger sample of small-business owners in sweden to estimate regression models (see figure 1) corresponding to our three hypotheses. model 1 posits that experience of time pressure is negatively related to domain satisfaction and therefore to emotional figure 1. models of the relationships between neuroticism, emotional well-being, time pressure, and domain satisfaction tested in study 2. wellbeing. model 2 holds that neuroticism is negatively related to time pressure and therefore to emotional wellbeing. model 3 posits that neuroticism moderates the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. 3.1 sample and procedure participants were recruited from an internet panel consisting of 4,323 small business owners in sweden. we expected and obtained a sample size equal to the previous study by gärling et al. (2016), in which the data analyses had an acceptable statistical power. in response to an invitational email, 1,208 participants agreed to participate corresponding to a response rate of 27.9%. they were asked to complete an online survey including 109 questions. we decided in advance which of these questions to be used to construct the measures (described below). in the analyses we retained 1,102 participants who answered all these questions. a majority were men (814 or 73.0%), aged between 45 and 64 years old (988 or 89.7%), and cohabiting with a partner (931 or 85.9%). time pressure emotional well-being domain satisfaction model 1 time pressure emotional well-being domain satisfaction neuroticism model 3 neuroticism time pressure model 2 emotional well-being time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 3.2 measures 3.2.1 neuroticism all big-five personality traits were measured with the mini-ipip scale (donnellan et al. 2006). participants were asked to rate agreement or disagreement to four statements for each trait (e.g. “have frequent mood swings”). response alternatives ranged from 1 (“disagree strongly”) to 5 (“agree strongly”). an index of neuroticism was constructed by first reverse-coding the positive items (e.g. ”am relaxed most of the time”), and then averaging the four items to an index. although we only planned to use neuroticism, we correlated the measures of all the big-five personality traits with the measure of time pressure (described next). in addition to neuroticism, only conscientiousness had a significant correlation with time pressure at work (r = -.17, p<.001) and in free time (r=-.13, p<.001). 3.2.2 time pressure we constructed separate measures of time pressure at work and in free time by adapting the overall self-report measure used in gärling et al. (2016). the measure of time pressure at work was obtained from agreement ratings on 7-point scales, ranging from 1 (“disagree strongly”) to 7 (“agree strongly”), in response to the statements: “i frequently feel that i don't have enough time to complete my job assignments”; “at my job, i frequently feel i need to hurry to be in time”; and ”i frequently feel rushed due to insufficient time at work”. the parallel statements of time pressure in free time were: “i frequently feel that i don't have enough time to do what i want to do in my free time”; “during my free time, i frequently feel i need to hurry to be on time”; and “i frequently feel rushed due to insufficient time during my free time”. indexes were constructed by averaging the ratings of the statements about time pressure at work and the ratings of time pressure in free time. time pressure at work was strongly correlated with time pressure in free time (r = .71, p < .001), and the reported number of hours worked per week was positively correlated with both time pressure at work (r = .44, p < .001) and time pressure in free time (r = .36, p < .001). 3.2.3 domain satisfaction domain satisfaction at work was measured using three items capturing satisfaction with work as a small business owner. ratings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction were made of the “business as a whole”, “revenue”, and “profitability”, using a seven-point scale ranging from 0 (“very dissatisfied”) to 6 (“very satisfied”). an index of domain satisfaction was constructed by averaging these ratings. to obtain an index of domain satisfaction in free time, the average was calculated of participants’ ratings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with “free time”, “family or close relationships,” and “friends” using the same scale. 3.2.4 emotional wellbeing a measure of emotional wellbeing was obtained from retrospective ratings of how frequently different emotions had been experienced the last month, at work and in free time respectively. six unipolar adjective scales were used, with seven steps ranging from 0 (never) to 6 (very often). the adjectives were taken from the swedish core affect scale (västfjäll et al., 2002), which is based on russell’s (1980, 2003) theory of core affects varying in the two orthogonal dimensions of valence and activation. each scale was defined by three adjectives. the adjectives were either: high in valence time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 (glad, pleased, happy) or low in valence (sad, displeased, depressed) for a neutral activation; high in both valence and activation (engaged, interested, optimistic) or low in both valence and activation (indifferent, bored, pessimistic); and high in valence and low in activation (serene, calm, relaxed) or low in valence and high in activation (tense, anxious, nervous). an index of emotional wellbeing at work was obtained by first averaging the ratings of the positive-valence adjectives and the reversecoded ratings of the negative-valence adjectives, then transforming the averages to a scale from -6 (maximally negative) to 6 (maximally positive) through 0 (neutral). an index of emotional wellbeing in free time was obtained in the same way. 3.3 results in order to test our three hypotheses, the variables (see descriptives in table 2) were inputted to ols linear regression analyses, followed by mediation analyses with process version 2.16.2 for spss (hayes, 2013) to test the statistical significance of indirect effects. in table 3 we show that the first requirement of mediation analyses is fulfilled (zhao et al., 2010), in that the regressions of time pressure on domain satisfaction and emotional wellbeing, and the regressions of neuroticism on time pressure and emotional wellbeing, all have significant coefficients with the expected signs. 3.3.1 model 1 our first hypothesis was that domain satisfaction mediates the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. table 4 shows the results of regressions of emotional wellbeing on domain satisfaction, controlling for the direct effect of time pressure on emotional wellbeing. the indirect effect of time pressure through domain satisfaction is significant, as shown by bias-corrected time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 t a b le 2 . m e a n s (m ), s ta n d a rd d e v ia ti o n s (s d ), s k e w n e ss ( s k e w ), c ro n b a c h ´s  s, a n d p ro d u c t m o m e n t c o rr e la ti o n s b e tw e e n i n d e x e s a t w o rk a n d i n f re e t im e ( s tu d y 2 ). a t w o rk in f re e t im e v a ri a b le m (s d ) s k e w  e w b n t p m (s d ) s k e w  e w b n t p e m o ti o n a l w e ll b e in g ( e w b ) 2 .7 9 ( 1 .7 8 ) 0 .6 7 . 8 2 2 .9 9 ( 1 .8 9 ) 0 .8 2 . 7 4 n e u ro ti c is m ( n ) 2 .9 9 ( 1 .1 0 ) 0 .3 4 . 6 8 -. 5 9 2 .9 9 ( 1 .1 0 ) 0 .3 4 . 6 8 -. 5 7 t im e p re ss u re ( t p ) 4 .0 6 ( 1 .5 9 ) 0 .0 8 . 8 9 -. 3 9 . 3 7 3 .6 2 ( 1 .5 8 ) 0 .1 0 . 8 7 -. 4 6 . 3 6 d o m a in s a ti sf a c ti o n 4 .8 9 ( 1 .2 8 ) 0 .5 2 . 8 2 . 4 2 -. 2 4 -. 1 7 5 .5 3 ( 1 .0 5 ) 0 .9 5 . 7 4 . 6 0 -. 3 4 -. 3 3 t a b le 3 . u n st a n d a rd iz e d c o e ff ic ie n ts ( b ), s ta n d a rd e rr o rs ( s e ), a n d t s ta ti st ic s a t w o rk a n d i n f re e t im e f ro m r e g re ss io n s o f ti m e p re ss u re o n d o m a in s a ti sf a c ti o n a n d e m o ti o n a l w e ll b e in g , a n d r e g re ss io n s o f n e u ro ti c is m o n t im e p re ss u re a n d e m o ti o n a l w e ll b e in g ( s tu d y 2 ). t im e p re ss u re d o m a in s a ti sf a c ti o n e m o ti o n a l w e ll -b e in g b s e t p r2 b s e t p r2 b s e t p r2 a t w o rk t im e p re ss u re -0 .1 4 0 .0 2 -5 .7 6 < .0 0 1 .0 3 -0 .4 4 0 .0 3 -1 4 .2 0 < .0 0 1 .1 6 n e u ro ti c is m 0 .5 4 0 .0 4 1 3 .1 4 < .0 0 1 .1 4 -0 .9 7 0 .0 4 -2 4 .2 7 < .0 0 1 .3 5 in f re e t im e t im e p re ss u re -0 .2 2 0 .0 2 -1 1 .8 6 < .0 0 1 .1 1 -0 .5 5 0 .0 3 -1 7 .1 8 < .0 0 1 .2 1 n e u ro ti c is m 0 .5 2 0 .0 4 1 2 .7 4 < .0 0 1 .1 3 -0 .9 9 0 .0 4 -2 3 .0 3 < .0 0 1 .3 3 time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 table 4. unstandardized regression coefficients (b), standard errors (se), and t statistics at work and in free time from regressions of emotional well-being on domain satisfaction controlling for time pressure (study 2). at work in free time b se t p b se t p constant 1.86 0.23 7.98 <.001 -0.74 0.30 -2.99 .013 time pressure -0.37 0.03 -12.79 <.001 -0.35 0.03 -12.09 <.001 domain satisfaction 0.50 0.04 13.87 <.001 0.90 0.04 20.82 <.001 adj r2=.28; f=214.62 adj r2=.44; f=422.43 95% confidence intervals (ci) calculated for 2,000 bootstrap replications (-0.07, 95% ci[-0.10, -0.04] at work; -0.20, 95% ci[-0.25, -0.16] in free time). a partial mediation is indicated since the direct effect of time pressure is significant. 3.3.2 model 2 according to our second hypothesis, time pressure is expected to mediate the relationship between neuroticism and emotional wellbeing. the regression of emotional wellbeing on time pressure reported in table 5 shows that the coefficient associated with time pressure is significant when controlling for the direct effect of neuroticism on emotional wellbeing. as shown by bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals calculated for 2,000 bootstrap replications, the indirect effect on emotional wellbeing of neuroticism through time pressure is significant (-0.12, 95% ci[-0.16, -0.09] at work; -0.18, 95% ci[-0.23, -0.14] in free time). the direct effect of neuroticism on emotional wellbeing remains significant, thus indicating a partial mediation. table 5. unstandardized regression coefficients (b), standard errors (se), and t statistics at work and in free time from regressions of emotional well-being on time pressure controlling for neuroticism (study 2). at work in free time b se t p b se t p constant 6.25 0.14 49.03 <.001 6.68 0.14 46.65 <.001 neuroticism -0.84 0.04 -20.25 <.001 -0.81 0.04 -18.59 <.001 time pressure -0.23 0.03 -8.01 <.001 -0.35 0.03 -11.72 <.001 adj r2=.35; f=343.47 adj r2=.40; f=366.71 time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 3.3.3 model 3 as shown by bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals calculated for 2,000 bootstrap replications, the indirect relationship between emotional wellbeing and neuroticism through time pressure is significant, both at work (-0.05, 95% ci[-0.08, -0.03]) and in free time (-0.16, 95% ci[-0.20, -0.13]). in table 6, neuroticism is furthermore shown to significantly moderate the direct effect of time pressure on emotional wellbeing. time pressure has stronger direct relationships with emotional wellbeing at high levels of neuroticism (+1 sd=4.08), both at work (b=-.26, se=.037, p<.001) and in free time (b=-.30, se=.035, p <.001). the relationship is weaker at low levels of neuroticism (-1 sd=1.90), both at work (b=-.15, se=.035, p <.001) and in free time (b = -.16, se = .036, p <.001). the moderation by neuroticism of the relationship between time pressure and emotional well-being is displayed graphically in figure 2, with the x-axis representing percentile ranks of neuroticism, and the y-axis the effect of time pressure on emotional wellbeing. as can been seen, the strength of the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing increases with neuroticism. 3.4 discussion our main findings for both work and free time are consistent with the proposed hypotheses. firstly, time pressure is negatively related to emotional wellbeing, both directly and also indirectly through domain satisfaction. secondly, neuroticism is negatively related to emotional wellbeing in three ways: directly; indirectly through time pressure; and by moderating the direct negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing. we interpret the mediation by domain satisfaction of the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing to be consistent with the results of gärling et al. (2016) and the conceptual model proposed by gärling et al. (2014). in gärling et al. (2016), a direct measure of goal progress was used. this posited that satisfaction should increase with the outcomes of progress table 6. unstandardized regression coefficients (b), standard errors (se), and t statistics at work and in free time from regressions of emotional well-being on the interaction between neuroticism and time pressure controlling for neuroticism, time pressure, and domain satisfaction (study 2). at work in free time b se t p b se t p constant 3.35 0.35 9.57 <.001 0.91 0.38 2.39 .017 neuroticism -.053 0.10 -5.07 <.001 -0.37 0.09 -4.15 <.001 time pressure -0.05 0.07 -0.65 .513 -0.03 0.07 -.44 .661 domain satisfaction 0.39 0.03 12.03 <.001 0.74 0.04 18.29 <.001 neuroticism x time pressure -0.05 0.02 -2.36 .018 -0.07 0.02 -3.07 .002 adj r2=.46; f=233.12 adj r2=.54; f=327.56 time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 figure 2. moderation by neuroticism of the relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing in study 2. (the x-axis represents percentile ranks of neuroticism and the y-axis the effect of time pressure on emotional well-being.) toward different goals (e.g., business revenue, close social relations), and therefore domain satisfaction would become an aggregated indirect measure of goal progress (lent et al. 2005). the results may hence be considered to be a conceptual replication of the results of gärling et al. (2016) that strengthens the theoretical position of gärling et al. (2014). the mediation by domain satisfaction here was partial, as goal progress was in gärling et al. (2016). in the previous study, a parallel mediator was self-reported stress symptoms. this suggested that, at least for some people or for most people in many situations, time pressure has stress effects. in line with this, we found that neuroticism strengthened the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing, both at work and in free time. our aim was not to investigate explanations for this interaction. still, we note that a possible explanation is that individuals high in neuroticism use maladaptive strategies to cope with time pressure, for instance, by using emotionfocused coping strategies instead of problem-focused strategies (hutchinson & williams, 2007). future research should investigate potential explanations of the interaction between neuroticism and time pressure on emotional wellbeing. confirming previous research (e.g. steel et al. 2008), we found a negative relationship between neuroticism and emotional wellbeing. this relationship was only partially explained by time pressure, suggesting other potential mediators, such as loneliness, poor sleep quality, and low social status, all of which have been shown to decrease emotional wellbeing (anderson et al., 2012; kahneman & krueger, 2006; steptoe 2008) and have a higher prevalence in high-neuroticism than low-neuroticism individuals (anderson et al., 2001; hintsanen et al., 2014; saklofske & yackulic, 1989). neuroticism may also reduce emotional wellbeing independently of situational factors, since individuals high in neuroticism appear to have a higher set-point for negative emotions than individuals low in neuroticism (ormel et al., 2012). 4. general discussion -0.35 -0.3 -0.25 -0.2 -0.15 -0.1 -0.05 0 10th 25th 50th 75th 90th time pressure at work time pressure in free time time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 study 1 showed that, in a representative sample of the adult swedish population, there is a negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing, both at work and in free time. the study also showed that time pressure at work was higher among small-business owners than employed wage earners. the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional wellbeing was replicated in study 2 for a larger sample of small business owners. these findings are consistent with the results of two previous studies of swedish wage earners (gärling et al., 2016). although the use of single-item measures of time pressure and emotional wellbeing in study 1 is a limitation, study 2 used reliable multi-item measures, yielding similar results. whether the results generalize to other populations and contexts should be addressed in future research. the relationship between time pressure and emotional well-being may differ depending on culturally-influenced value orientations, such as whether these orientations emphasize materialistic or non-materialistic values (see delhey, 2010). since the swedish culture emphasizes relatively non-materialistic values, and therefore the importance of leisure time over work, the relationships may differ for people in other countries with other value orientations. in more materialistic cultures, for instance, people in general are more likely to prioritize work over leisure time, which likely increases the negative effect of time pressure on emotional wellbeing, since such values imply that work goals should be relatively more important than goals pursued in free time. in order to implement policies that aim at reducing the negative effects of time pressure on emotional wellbeing, it is important to understand which factors mediate and moderate their relationship. study 2 demonstrated the mediating role of domain satisfaction, and the mediatingmoderating roles of the big-5 personality trait neuroticism. both findings clarify and extend the results of gärling et al. (2016), namely that goal progress and self-reported stress symptoms are parallel mediators of the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional well-being. mediational analyses of the type of cross-sectional data we analyzed have however been criticized (e.g., maxwell & cole, 2007; maxwell et al., 2011) for providing biased estimates of mediation parameters based on time-lagged measurements. according to our hypotheses, at an individual level, changes in time pressure precede and cause changes in domain satisfaction (interpreted as an indicator of progress toward different goals), which in turn precede and cause changes in emotional wellbeing. these influences are assumed to be short-term but to occur repeatedly. in individuals high in neuroticism, the influences may be more frequent than in individuals low in neuroticism. in the survey, we measured time pressure, domain satisfaction, and emotional wellbeing by means of retrospective self-reports. if our measures then reflect invariant correlations repeated across time, our data should not be open to the suggested criticism. in the absence of longitudinal or experimental data, there are still limitations in terms of inferring the causal directions implied by the models we have tested. thoemmes (2015) argued that causal inferences are justified if verified by other experimental or longitudinal research. we therefore note that studies have demonstrated positive effects on emotional wellbeing of training in time management (macleod et al., 2008), and that in the meta-analysis of klug and maier (2013), experimental studies are included that permit inferences that the relationship between goal progress and emotional wellbeing is causal. furthermore, in a review of time-lagged observations, schimmack (2008) concludes that the reverse direction of the influence of emotional wellbeing on domain satisfaction is weak or absent. neuroticism is generally found to be substantially inherited and therefore stable (mccrae et al. 2011), thus negating a reverse causal direction of the relationship between neuroticism and the strength of the response to changes in time pressure. time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 our proposed mediational-moderator models are not compared to alternative models. doing this is a practice not recommended (kline, 2015; thoemmes, 2015). the models are tests of the hypotheses we proposed, and we conclude that the hypotheses are not refuted by the results. this does not preclude additional research aimed at developing theory and refining the hypotheses. one avenue for such research is to distinguish positive from negative emotions. the value of doing this is supported by a recent meta-analysis showing that accumulated neuropsychological evidence favors the theoretical position that positive and negative emotions are not end-points of a bipolar continuum (lindquist et al., 2015). it is recognized that time pressure has both positive and negative effects (garhammer, 2002). a question that may be asked is therefore whether positive effects of time pressure –– such as mobilization of mental resources, sharpened attention, and improved achievement –– are accompanied by positive emotions. although it was not our aim to answer this question, it seems worthwhile to try to do so in future research. we have demonstrated that both time pressure and emotional wellbeing are higher for smallbusiness owners than employed wage earners, whereas the relationship with emotional wellbeing remains negative. however, our results also showed that this relationship does not pertain equally to all small-business owners, since neuroticism strengthens the negative relationship between time pressure and emotional well-being. a possible interpretation is that high-neuroticism individuals are more susceptible to time stress than low-neuroticism individuals. another worthwhile purpose would be to investigate in future research how and why time pressure results in time stress. the fact that small-business owners experience both high levels of time pressure and high emotional well-being suggests that owning a small business has both positive and negative consequences (prottas & thompson, 2006). if policy makers want to stimulate small-business ownership, they need to recognize the negative relationship between small-business owners’ time pressure and emotional experiences. one possibility would be to offer training programs, providing small-businesses owners with adequate strategies for coping with the stressful conditions associated with owning a small business (e.g. macleod et al., 2008). another possibility is to make changes to decrease the work load, for instance, by providing administrative support. if nothing is done, the disadvantages associated with owning a business may hinder the development of small-businesses in society, which in turn would have negative consequences for economic growth and job creation. we finish by arguing that the negative relationship between time pressure and wellbeing is likely to exist in many other occupational groups in western societies (haller et al., 2013). this also needs to be investigated and documented. whether the relationship is always mediated-moderated by the factors identified in the current studies is an open question. acknowledgements the data collection was funded by the swedish federation of business owners. we thank rené bongard who conducted the data collection and andré hansla for advice about the mediational-moderation analyses. we thank three reviewers for valuable comments. compliance with ethical standards we have followed ethical standards in conducting the survey including request of informed consent, permitting voluntarily withdrawal at any point of the survey, and anonymizing data records. none of the authors have any conflict of interest. time pressure and emotional wellbeing fors connolly, johansson sevä, & gärling www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 authors filip fors connolly umeå university ingemar johansson sevä umeå university tommy gärling university of gothenburg tommy.garling@psy.gu.se publishing timeline received 27 november 2018 accepted 4 february 2020 published 1 june 2020 references anderson, c., john, o. p., keltner, d., & kring, a. m. 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(2017). a cross-state comparison of measures of subjective wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 7(1), 65-83. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i1.561 younghwan song union college songy@union.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 article a cross-state comparison of measures of subjective wellbeing younghwan song abstract: using data drawn from the 2010 american time use survey well-being module, this study examines the relationship between three measures of subjective wellbeing based on timeuse data and an objective measure of wellbeing. whereas the measures of affect—net affect and the u-index—are uncorrelated with the objective quality-of-life ranking of the 50 states in the united states, the measure of meaningfulness shows a significant correlation with objective ranking. the reason for the significant correlation between the measure of meaningfulness and the objective measure of wellbeing is because, when engaged in similar activities, people living in states with better quality of life felt, after controlling for their individual characteristics, their lives to be more meaningful than those living in states with poor amenities, not because time use varies substantially by state. keywords: time use, subjective wellbeing, u-index, net affect, meaningfulness 1. introduction recently, economists and policy makers have increased their interest in measures of subjective wellbeing (di tella & macculloch, 2006; dolan & metcalfe, 2012; frey & stutzer, 2002; stiglitz, sen, & fitoussi, 2009). for example, stiglitz et al. (2009) pointed out that quality of life depends on multi-dimensions—material living standards, health, education, personal activities, political voice and governance, social connections and relationships, environment, and personal/economic security—but many of these dimensions are not included in conventional income measures, and hence they suggested employing both objective and subjective measures to get information about people’s wellbeing. recently, in addition to the often-used measure of global life satisfaction, various other measures of subjective wellbeing, such as net affect and the u-index, have been developed. because one of the main reasons economists and policy makers are interested in measures of subjective wellbeing is to better monitor progress in quality of life beyond simple measures of income and to better guide public policy, it is important to examine how well various measures of subjective wellbeing reflect the objective differences in quality of life, so that policy makers can develop better and more appropriate policies to improve wellbeing in society. using the 2010 american time use survey well-being module, this paper contributes to the literature by examining the relationship between the three measures of subjective wellbeing based on time-use data—net affect, the u-index, and meaningfulness—and the objective qualityof-life ranking of the 50 states in the united states. specifically, by employing these measures of subjective wellbeing based on time diary data, this paper expands and also improves on the analysis of oswald and wu (2010) that first provided evidence for a significant association http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 between global life satisfaction and the quality-of-life rankings at the state level in the us. first of all, in addition to global life satisfaction, these new measures of subjective wellbeing potentially offer more and different ways to examine various dimensions of quality of life. second, because these measures of subjective wellbeing are based on moment-to-moment feelings, they can overcome the limitations of the measure of global life satisfaction, which is based on a single survey question and thus likely to be affected by contexts and moods at the time of the survey. third, because these measures of subjective wellbeing are based on time diary data, they allow us to disentangle the sources of their variation: differences in time use and/or differences in feelings for the same activity. the results show that whereas the measures of affect—net affect and the u-index—are uncorrelated with the objective measure of wellbeing, the measure of meaningfulness has a significant correlation with the objective ranking. the reason for the significant correlation between the measure of meaningfulness and the objective measure of wellbeing is because, when engaged in similar activities, people living in states with better quality of life felt their lives to be more meaningful than those living in states with poor amenities, not because time use varies substantially by state. interestingly, the differences in meaningfulness by state-level of quality of life are found for just three groups of activities: work, shopping, and leisure. the remainder of the paper is organized as follows. in section 2, i summarize the literature on various measures of subjective wellbeing. section 3 describes the data and methodology. in section 4, i present the empirical results and discuss the findings. finally section 5 provides concluding remarks. 2. literature review an often-used measure of subjective wellbeing is based on a single survey question regarding global life satisfaction, such as, “in general, how satisfied are you with your life?” in the behavioral risk factor surveillance system (brfss). the four valid responses to the question— very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied—are ordinal but can be treated in a cardinal way by assigning 1 to 4, where “very satisfied” is assigned 4 (oswald & wu, 2010). however, it is well known that reports of subjective wellbeing based on a single question on global life satisfaction do not reflect stable inner states of wellbeing: they are, rather, judgments that individuals form on the spot and thus are influenced by contexts and moods, and neglect the duration of the life episode (schwarz & strack, 1999). as a way to overcome these problems, kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, and stone (2004a) suggested collecting moment-tomoment feelings by using the day reconstruction method (drm). in the drm, respondents first fill out a detailed time diary of the previous day and then provide numerical responses. for example, the drm uses a scale from 0 to 6 about how they felt during each episode on selected affect dimensions, such as happy, warm/friendly, enjoying myself, frustrated/annoyed, depressed/blue, hassled/pushed around, angry/hostile, worried/anxious, and criticized/put down. though the drm involves a retrospective report on an emotional state, kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, and stone (2004b) showed that the drm achieves accurate recall: the diurnal patterns of affect and tiredness from the drm match those from the more expensive experience sampling method, which collects information on respondents’ experiences in real time through an electronic diary. kahneman et al. (2004a) defined net affect as the average of positive emotion less the negative ones for each episode, and suggested the population average of duration-weighted net affect as a new measure of national wellbeing. one common problem with both global life satisfaction and net affect is that respondents may interpret and use the response categories differently, making interpersonal comparison measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 difficult. as an alternative measure of subjective wellbeing, kahneman and krueger (2006) and krueger, kahneman, schkade, schwarz, and stone (2009) proposed the u-index, which is based on an individual’s time-use data and measures the percentage of time the respondent spends in an unpleasant situation. an episode is classified as unpleasant if the highest rating on any negative affect dimension is strictly greater than the ratings of positive affect dimensions. therefore, even if different respondents interpret and use the response categories differently, the u-index still allows for interpersonal comparison, as long as each individual uses the same response categories for both negative and positive affect dimensions. while global life satisfaction represents a respondent’s assessment of how well one’s life desires and goals are satisfied, both the u-index and net affect represent a respondent’s assessment of moment-to-moment positive and negative affect dimensions and the use of time in activities with various affect dimensions during a short period, usually a day. because of these differences, global life satisfaction is moderately correlated (0.38) with daily net affect at the individual level (kahneman et al., 2004b, p. 1779). similarly, knabe, rätzel, schöb, and weimann (2010) found that, at the individual level, the correlation of the self-reported general life satisfaction with the two measures of experienced utility—net affect, and the u-index—are weaker (around 0.36 in absolute values) than that between the u-index and net affect (around 0.73 in absolute values). furthermore, the measure of global life satisfaction and the u-index may even portray different pictures regarding the wellbeing of the same people. for example, in an international comparison of 810 women in columbus, usa and 820 women in rennes, france, krueger, kahneman, schkade, et al. (2009) and krueger, kahneman, fischler, et al. (2009) showed that whereas american women are more satisfied with their lives than french women, the u-index is lower among french women than among american women, which means that french women spend less of their time engaged in unpleasant activities than american women. knabe et al. (2010) found that although the employed are more satisfied with their lives than the unemployed, the two measures of experienced utility—net affect and the u-index—do not differ between the two groups because the unemployed can compensate for having more negative affect for similar activities by using the time the employed are at work on more enjoyable activities. based on the idea of the u-index, krueger, kahneman, schkade, et al. (2009) suggested the development of national time accounting (nta) as a complement to the national income and product accounts, and nta can be used to compare the wellbeing of groups of individuals, countries, and eras. to facilitate nta, they have recommended adding a module on affective experience to the american time use survey (atus). loewenstein (2009), however, argued that the u-index, by categorizing an activity simply as either pleasant or unpleasant, discards useful information to allow for interpersonal comparability. he suggested that the module should also ask if a particular activity was a “valuable use of time,” because the u-index measures the quality of a person’s life in terms of happiness only, but individuals might have different criteria for what makes their own life worthwhile. similarly, white and dolan (2009) showed that, in addition to affect, thoughts—measured as responses to the statements “i feel the activities in this episode were worthwhile and meaningful/were useful to other people/helped me achieve important goals”—also influence subjective wellbeing. for example, some activities with relatively low scores of positive feelings, such as work and time with children, are nonetheless rewarding and contribute to overall subjective satisfaction. as a result, the module added to the 2010 atus includes affect questions as well as a question on the meaningfulness of the activity. oswald and wu (2010) are the first to provide evidence that the measure of global life satisfaction from the brfss contains objective information about the quality of lives across the measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 50 states in the united states. using a sample of 1.2 million individuals drawn from the 20052008 brfss, they first estimated the state dummies in a subjective wellbeing regression analysis, where the cardinal coding of the responses to the question on global life satisfaction is the dependent variable, and various respondents’ characteristics are the independent variables. they then showed that these state dummies are substantially correlated (-0.598) with the stateby-state quality-of-life rankings in the united states from gabriel, mattey, and wascher (2003), generated by the compensating-differentials approach based on objective state-level indicators, such as precipitation; humidity; heating degree days; cooling degree days; wind speed; sunshine; coast; inland water; federal land; visitors to national parks; visitors to state parks; number of hazardous waste sites; environmental regulation leniency; commuting time; violent crime rate; air quality-ozone; air quality-carbon monoxide; student-teacher ratio; state and local taxes on property, income and sales and other; and state and local expenditures on higher education, public welfare, highways, and corrections. relying on the concept of a compensating differential, that is, pecuniary differences across geographic locations for wages, housing, and other costs of living should compensate for the differences in non-pecuniary characteristics that affect quality of life, gabriel et al. (2003) estimated the weights for these indicators in three price equations (wages, housing, and non-housing cost of living). then the weighted average of these indicators determined their quality-of-life rankings. table a1 in the appendix shows the state-by-state quality-of-life rankings from gabriel et al. (2003). applying the same approach as oswald and wu (2010) to data drawn from the 2010 american time use survey well-being (atus wb) module, the first data source based on a large, nationally representative sample of the us population that links self-reported wellbeing information to individuals’ activities and time-use patterns, this paper examines the relationship between the three measures of subjective wellbeing based on time-use data—net affect, the uindex, and meaningfulness—and the objective quality-of-life ranking of the 50 states in the united states from gabriel et al. (2003).1 by doing so, one can observe how well these measures of experienced utility reflect the objective differences in the quality of human lives across states. this paper also analyzes whether the variations across states in the three measures of subjective wellbeing based on time use come from the variations in activities and time-use patterns and/or from the variations in self-reported wellbeing for the same activity. 3. data and methodology the atus is a time-use survey based on a nationally representative sample of the us population and has been conducted continuously since 2003 by the us census bureau. the atus sample is drawn from households that have completed their final interview with the current population survey (cps), a monthly survey of almost 60,000 households that is the primary source of information on the labor force characteristics of the us population. two to five months after the last cps interview, one individual aged 15 or older from each selected household was randomly chosen to participate in the atus. respondents were asked to sequentially report their own activities on a 24-hour, pre-assigned day of the week (the diary day), starting at 4:00 a.m. on the day before the interview and ending at 4:00 a.m. on the day of the interview. the diary days of the atus are inclusive of all days in a year: weekdays, weekends, and holidays, except 1 although the state-by-state quality-of-life ranking from gabriel et al. (2003) is computed using data for the year 1990, this paper still uses this ranking because it seems to be the most recent estimate in the literature. though the ranking is likely to have changed since 1990, it seems to be relatively stable over time. for example, according to the author’s calculation, the spearman’s rank correlation of the state-by-state quality-of-rankings reported in gabriel et al. (2003, pp. 635-636) between 1981 and 1990 is 0.88 and is statistically significant at 1% level. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 thanksgiving day and christmas day. all atus data were collected using computer-assisted telephone interviewing. in the 2010 atus, a well-being (wb) module was added to capture how people felt during three randomly selected activities reported by each respondent. the selected activity must be at least 5 minutes in duration and the following activities and responses were not selected: sleeping (0101xx), grooming (0102xx), personal activities (0103xx), don’t know/can’t remember (500106), and refusal/none of your business (500105).2 for each selected activity, respondents were asked seven questions: five affect questions (pain, sadness, stress, happiness and tiredness) 3 , one question about how meaningful the activity was, and one question about whether the respondent was interacting with anyone during the activity. for the five affect questions and the one question about how meaningful the activity was, the respondent was asked to use a scale from 0 to 6, where a 0 means he/she did not experience the feeling at all and a 6 means the feeling was very strong.4 after excluding the episodes with missing responses or activity codes, and respondents below the age of 18 and those from dc, this paper used 35,356 episodes of activities from 12,164 respondents in the 2010 atus wb module.5 3.1 u-index using the responses available in the atus wb module, i have constructed three measures of wellbeing: the u-index, net affect, and meaningfulness. following kahneman and krueger (2006), and krueger, kahneman, schkade et al. (2009), an episode is classified as unpleasant if the highest rating on any of the three negative affect dimensions (pain, sadness, and stress) is strictly greater than the rating of the positive affect dimension (happiness). then the u-index for state j, 𝑈𝑗, can be constructed as the weighted average of these classifications over the episodes from the respondents in the state. specifically, 𝑈𝑗 = ∑ ∑ 𝑤𝑖𝑘𝑗𝑈𝑖𝑘𝑗𝑘𝑖 ∑ ∑ 𝑤𝑖𝑘𝑗𝑘𝑖 (1) where i denotes the respondent, k denotes the sampled activity, 𝑈𝑖𝑘𝑗 denotes an indicator variable for an episode k being unpleasant for respondent i in state j, and 𝑤𝑖𝑘𝑗denotes the wb module activity weight (wufnactwtc) attached to activity k for respondent i in state j. the weights account for both i) differences between activities in the fraction of time spent in eligible activities and ii) differences between persons in the probability of having a specific eligible activity selected due to variation in the number of eligible activities. in the end, this u-index is an estimate for the fraction of time the individuals in the state spend in an unpleasant situation. 2 in parentheses are the atus activity codes. 3 the order of the five affect questions was randomly determined for each respondent. 4 the atus wb module data files also contain four general health questions: general health status (excellent, very good, good, fair, and poor); whether the respondent was told he/she has hypertension by a doctor in the last five years; whether the respondent took any pain medication on the diary day; and how well rested the respondent felt on the diary day. a small number of atus respondents (431 out of 13,260) who do not meet the following criteria are not counted in the wb module: i) answer at least four of the seven questions about the activity for at least one of the three activities selected, and ii) answer at least one of the final four general health questions. 5 the number of episodes per state, excluding dc, is 707.1 on average, with the maximum of 3,650 for california and the minimum of 54 for alaska. in addition to alaska, the following four states have fewer than 100 episodes: delaware (92), north dakota (89), vermont (81), and wyoming (60). measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 even though the u-index is based on cardinal responses, it relies only on an ordinal ranking of the feelings in each activity.6 3.2 net affect and meaningfulness net affect for each episode (kahneman et al., 2004a) is defined as the difference between the positive emotion (happiness) and the average of the negative ones (pain, sadness, and stress) for the episode. similar to equation 1, net affect for each state is defined as the weighted average of net affect over the activities from the respondents in the state. in a similar fashion, meaningfulness has been constructed for each state as the weighted average of the responses to the question about how meaningful the episode was over the episodes from the respondents in the state. 3.3 regression residuals the focus here is not on the simple differences in these wellbeing measures across various people from different states, but, rather, on the differences due to socio-economic, institutional and geographic characteristics of states, after excluding other differences among the respondents. hence, using each of these three unweighted measures of wellbeing for each episode (for example, 𝑈𝑖𝑘𝑗 for the u-index) as the dependent variable, i first estimated episode regression controlling for the following respondents’ characteristics: age and its square; a female dummy; five dummies for respondents’ race/ethnicity (black, hispanic, asian, native american, and other; the reference group being white); four education dummies (some high school, high school, some college, and college or more; the reference group is less than some high school education); two marital-status dummies (married and partnered; the reference group being single); three employment-status dummies (self-employed, unemployed, and not in the labor force; the reference group being employed); a dummy for interacting with anyone; eight dummies for family income during the last 12 months ($10,000-$19,999, $20,000-$34,999, $35,000-$49,999, $50,000-$74,999, $75,000$99,999, $100,000-$149,999, $150,000 and over, and family income missing; the reference group being less than $10,000); a holiday dummy; six dummies for the days of the week (the reference group is sunday); and eleven month dummies. table a2 in the appendix shows the unweighted descriptive statistics of most of these variables. then, similar to equation 1, the residuals from these regressions are weighted to produce state-level average residuals. because i need to get comparable residuals for all three measures of subjective wellbeing, i have used ordinary least squares for all regressions, instead of using different estimation methods, such as logit or ordered logit, depending on whether the dependent variable is a dummy variable (unpleasantness) or an ordered category between 0 and 6 (meaningfulness). 3.4 global life satisfaction similar to oswald and wu (2010), i have also calculated the state-level average life satisfaction from the 2010 brfss so that i can compare the magnitude of the correlations between various measures of subjective wellbeing and the qualify-of-life rankings. the brfss is a large healthrelated telephone survey that collects data from more than 400,000 us residents 18 years and 6 this assumes that an individual uses that same scale for both negative and positive affect dimensions. however, layard (2009) pointed out that it is difficult to compare the reported numbers for negative and positive feelings, and, as a result, the process increases measurement errors and loses much of the information, compared to other cardinal measures. for example, even if two people have the same true value of unobserved feelings, a more optimistic person may over-report positive feelings and underreport negative feelings compared to the other person. then the u-index may not be the same for the two people. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 older each year regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services. since 2005, the question on global life satisfaction has been included in the brfss. using a sample of 409,583 individuals drawn from the 2010 brfss, i regressed the individual level global life satisfaction, treating it a cardinal way, to the same set of individual control variables as oswald and wu (2010), except the state dummies.7 then i have calculated the state-level average life satisfaction from the regression residuals. obtaining state-level life satisfaction by including state dummies, as oswald and wu (2010) did, is more or less the same as obtaining them by averaging the individual-level residuals by state.8 i have adopted this method of averaging the residuals because, as described in the prior section, i have already used the same method for all measures of subjective wellbeing from the atus wb module. for the measures of subjective wellbeing from the atus wb module, the unit of analysis in the regression is an episode, not an individual, and the episode-level residuals from the regressions have to be weighted to produce state-level average residuals, which is not possible when statelevel dummies are used instead. 4. results to control for the differences in individual characteristics, as described in the prior section, i first estimated the episode-level regressions using each of the unweighted measures of subjective wellbeing for each episode as the dependent variables (unpleasantness, net affect, and meaningfulness). table 1 below shows the coefficients from these ordinary least squares regressions. because three episodes of activities have been selected for each respondent, the error terms of these episode-level regressions are unlikely to be independent at the respondent level. therefore, the standard errors have been adjusted for clustering by respondent.9 because the dependent variables in this paper are the unweighted measures of subjective wellbeing for each episode, while those in the related literature are the weighted measures of subjective wellbeing by individual, it is not easy to directly compare the regression results in table 1 below to those in the literature. nevertheless, the findings that unpleasantness increases with age at a decreasing rate and net affect decreases with age at an increasing rate in columns 1 and 2 of table 1 below are similar to those found in krueger (2007, p. 207) with the u-index, and knabe et al. (2010, p. 882) for net affect. in column 3, meaningfulness of an episode also increases with age but at a decreasing rate. different from the result in krueger (2007) with the u-index, women have higher unpleasantness per episode than men, shown in column 1. however, women feel more meaningfulness than men, as shown in column 3. while unpleasantness and net affect do not significantly vary by education (see columns 1 and 2), more educated people have lower meaningfulness (see column 3). 7 a few minor differences between oswald and wu (2010) and my brfss sample are i) they have excluded those above the age of 85; and ii) they have excluded those with income missing. the results are weighted by using the final weight (_finalwt) from the brfss. 8 the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient between the state-level life satisfaction based on state dummies and the state-level average life satisfaction from the regression residuals is 0.9988. when there are no controls in the regression, the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient between the two is 1. 9 alternatively, i have also employed multilevel modeling (demidenko 2004; robson & pavelin 2016) to address the issue of clustering at the individual level. in this paper, however, only the results based on ols regressions with clustered standard errors are reported because i) for some cases, multilevel models have failed to converge in maximum likelihood estimation, and ii) when the results are available for both ols regressions with clustered standard errors and multilevel models, they are very similar. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 table 1a. coefficients of episode regressions coefficient (1) (2) (3) unpleasantness net affect meaningfulness age -0.010*** -0.083*** -0.029*** (0.001) *** (0.007) *** (0.005) *** age squared (/100) -0.010*** -0.088*** -0.017*** (0.001) *** (0.007) *** (0.005) *** female -0.019*** -0.019*** -0.188*** (0.005) *** (0.038) *** (0.028) *** black -0.022*** -0.367*** -0.530*** (0.008) *** (0.060) *** (0.042) *** asian -0.003*** -0.053*** -0.283*** (0.014) *** (0.106) *** (0.080) *** hispanic -0.004*** -0.180*** -0.408*** (0.009) *** (0.062) *** (0.044) *** native american -0.043*** -0.432** -0.527*** (0.030) *** (0.230) *** (0.159) *** other -0.062*** -0.140*** -0.215*** (0.028) *** (0.199) *** (0.122) *** some high school -0.006*** -0.115*** -0.040*** (0.018) *** (0.144) *** (0.091) *** high school -0.012*** -0.192*** -0.067*** (0.017) *** (0.131) *** (0.081) *** some college -0.000*** -0.096*** -0.159*** (0.017) *** (0.131) *** (0.082) *** college or more -0.014*** -0.115*** -0.361*** (0.017) *** (0.132) *** (0.083) *** married -0.044*** -0.445*** -0.276*** (0.006) *** (0.043) *** (0.031) *** partner -0.012*** -0.107*** -0.112*** (0.014) *** (0.102) *** (0.079) *** self-employed -0.008*** -0.091*** -0.120*** (0.010) *** (0.071) *** (0.050) *** unemployed -0.043*** -0.360*** -0.125*** (0.012) *** --(0.085) *** (0.060) *** not in labor force -0.037*** -0.293*** -0.124*** (0.007) *** (0.053) *** (0.038) *** interacting with anyone -0.026*** -0.411*** -0.667*** (0.004) *** (0.030) *** (0.024) *** family income missing -0.069*** -0.348*** -0.148*** (0.018) *** (0.132) *** (0.091) *** family income $10,000-$19,999 -0.026*** -0.111*** -0.072*** (0.015) *** (0.107) *** (0.071) *** family income $20,000-$34,999 -0.051*** -0.243*** -0.110*** (0.014) *** (0.099) *** (0.067) *** family income $35,000-$49,999 -0.073*** -0.426*** -0.193*** (0.014) *** (0.102) *** (0.070) *** measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 table 1b. coefficients of episode regressions coefficient (1) (2) (3) unpleasantness net affect meaningfulness family income $50,000-$74,999 -0.077*** -0.402*** -0.162*** (0.014) *** (0.099) *** (0.069) *** family income $75,000-$99,999 -0.069*** -0.374*** -0.174*** (0.015) *** (0.105) *** (0.073) *** family income $100,000-$149,999 -0.077*** -0.453*** -0.249*** (0.015) *** (0.105) *** (0.075) *** family income $150,000 and over -0.082*** -0.429*** -0.356*** (0.016) *** (0.110) *** (0.080) *** holiday -0.067*** -0.512*** -0.361*** (0.015) *** (0.126) *** (0.095) *** monday -0.049*** -0.403*** -0.030*** (0.010) *** (0.071) *** (0.050) *** tuesday -0.035*** -0.309*** -0.022*** (0.010) *** (0.068) *** (0.050) *** wednesday -0.049*** -0.430*** -0.059*** (0.010) *** (0.068) *** (0.049) *** thursday -0.042*** -0.320*** -0.013*** (0.010) *** (0.068) *** (0.051) *** friday -0.027*** -0.285*** -0.048*** (0.009) *** (0.069) *** (0.050) *** saturday -0.010*** -0.060*** -0.001*** (0.007) *** (0.052) *** (0.038) *** constant -0.014*** -4.390*** -2.899*** (0.030) *** (0.224) *** (0.160) *** number of observations 35,356*** 35,356*** -35,356*** r-squared 0.023*** 0.038*** -0.060*** note: robust standard errors are in parentheses. the regressions also include 11 month dummies. * statistically significant at the .10 level; ** statistically significant at the .05 level; *** statistically significant at the .01 level. consistent with knabe et al. (2010, p. 878), the coefficients on those who were unemployed (in columns 1 through 3) show that the unemployed experienced more unpleasantness, had lower net affect and felt less meaningfulness per episode than the employed. finally, an episode in which respondents interacted with someone usually felt less unpleasant, had more net affect and felt more meaningful. kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, and stone (2006) found a weak relationship between income and experienced affect. they explained that such a weak relationship could be because of hedonic adaptation—as people make more money, their aspirations quickly rise at the same time, resulting in no permanent gain in experienced affect—or because as income increases, although people experience more positive affect per episode by increasing consumption of material goods, people shift their time use toward activities that are associated with higher tension and stress, such as work and commuting. in table 1 above, on the contrary, higher income, relative to the reference group of family income less than $10,000, decreases unpleasantness per episode in column 1 and increases net affect in column 2. the main reason measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 for this difference between table 1 and the findings of kahneman et al. (2006) could be because the dependent variables in table 1 above are unweighted measures of subjective wellbeing for each episode, and the amount of time spent on each episode is not yet considered. nevertheless, the findings in table 1 above are still consistent with the second explanation by kahneman et al. (2006), that, as income increases, people at least experience more positive affect per episode. however, the fact that higher income is associated with feelings of less meaningfulness for each episode in column 3 seems to be at odds with both explanations and merits further research.10 finally, the coefficients on the days of the week shown in columns 1 and 2 indicate that measures of positive affect decrease during weekdays compared with the weekend. however, column 3 shows that there is no change in meaningfulness between weekdays and weekends. table 2 shows the correlations among the state-level measures of subjective wellbeing obtained from the residuals of the above regressions. table 2. spearman’s rank correlation among state-level measures of wellbeing, controlling for individual characteristics u-index net affect meaningfulness life satisfaction ranking u-index 1*** net affect -0.775*** 1** meaningfulness -0.340*** 0.357** 1*** life satisfaction -0.183*** 0.120** --0.125***** 1*** ranking -0.066*** -0.144* -0.424*** -0.486*** 1 note: only 50 states, excluding dc, are included because the quality-of-life ranking does not include dc. * statistically significant at the .10 level; ** statistically significant at the .05 level; *** statistically significant at the .01 level. because the quality-of-life rankings are an ordinal measure, i have reported the spearman’s rank correlation coefficients. 11 table 2 above illustrates that while the u-index and net affect are negatively and significantly correlated between the two, neither of them is significantly correlated with the quality-of-life rankings, although the signs of the correlation coefficients are in the right direction: positive for the u-index and negative for net affect. this is because in the quality-of-life rankings, the number 1 corresponds to the highest ranking of quality of life and the number 50 corresponds to the lowest ranking of quality of life. meaningfulness is significantly and negatively correlated with the u-index, -.340, but significantly and positively correlated with net affect, 0.357 at the state level, suggesting that those states with higher values of meaningfulness also tend to report, if anything, higher values for positive affect dimensions. more importantly, meaningfulness has a significant and negative correlation with the objective quality-of-life rankings. in the last row of table 2 above, the absolute value of the spearman’s rank correlation coefficient between the two is 0.424, which in behavioral science is between a medium association, 0.3, and a large association, 0.5, according to cohen’s rule of thumb (cohen, 1988). this supports the notion that the measure of meaningfulness reflects state-level differences in quality of life, and those states with higher quality of life tend to also have, if anything, higher values of meaningfulness. in table 2 above, the small value of correlation between 10 using country-level data, oishi and diener (2014) also found that meaning in life was higher in poor nations than wealthy nations. but they attributed this to the fact that people in poor nations were more religious than those in wealthy nations. 11 though unreported, the pearson product-moment correlation coefficients show more or less the same pattern as the spearman’s rank correlation coefficients in all tables. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 meaningfulness and life satisfaction, 0.125, indicates that these two are substantially different measures of subjective wellbeing. finally, life satisfaction, obtained from the residuals of the regression described in section 3.4, has a correlation coefficient of around -0.486 with the qualityof-life rankings, which is smaller than the value of -0.598 found in oswald and wu (2010).12 overall, the results in table 2 above show that only meaningfulness and life satisfaction are significantly correlated with the quality-of-life rankings. as shown in equation 1, the three measures of state-level subjective wellbeing based on time use are averages of regression residual measures of affect or meaningfulness, using the weight based on activities and episode duration. therefore, the variations across states in the three measures of subjective wellbeing based on time use could come from two sources: i) variations in activities and the duration of the activities, and ii) variations in affect and meaningfulness for the same episode, controlling for respondents’ characteristics.13 in an effort to discover the main source of the correlation between meaningfulness and the quality-of-life rankings found in table 2 above, i have created two counterfactuals. first, to control for the differences in the activities, i have included 305 detailed activity dummies to the regressions. also, to remove the effect of episode duration, i have divided the activity weight by the duration, because the activity weight variable in the atus wb module, wufnactwtc, already contains the duration of the selected episode. second, to control for variations in affect and meaningfulness residuals for the same episode among individuals, i assigned the overall average regression residuals of affect and meaningfulness to the same activity, while keeping the activities and duration unchanged. table 3 shows that when only the differences in time use are controlled for, while keeping the variations in affect and meaningfulness unchanged, the correlation coefficient between meaningfulness and the objective rankings becomes -0.363, somewhat smaller than the value in table 2 above, but still statistically significant.14 table 3. spearman’s rank correlation among state-level measures of wellbeing, controlling for individual characteristics, activities, and duration u-index net affect meaningfulness life satisfaction ranking u-index 1*** net affect -0.739*** -1** meaningfulness -0.310*** -0.290** 1*** life satisfaction -0.196*** -0.047** -0.195*** 1*** ranking -0.032*** -0.087** -0.363*** -0.486*** 1 note: only 50 states, excluding dc, are included because the quality-of-life ranking does not include dc. * statistically significant at the .10 level; ** statistically significant at the .05 level; *** statistically significant at the .01 level. in table 4 below, however, when only the variations in affect and meaningfulness residuals across individuals are removed, by using the overall average value of regression residuals of affect and meaningfulness, while keeping the activities and duration unchanged, the correlation 12 when the state-level life satisfaction based on state dummies is used instead of the state-level average life satisfaction from the regression residuals, the correlation coefficient with the quality-of-of life rankings is -0.484. 13 this is similar to the analysis of knabe et al. (2010), who decomposed the difference in the experienced utility between unemployed and employed persons into two components: a saddening effect (differences in affect) and a time-composition effect (differences in time use). 14 because no such counterfactuals are possible, the state-level measures of average life satisfaction in tables 3 and 4 above are the same as in table 2 above. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 coefficient between meaningfulness and the objective rankings, -0.202, decreases by about half of that in table 2 above, and becomes insignificant. table 4. spearman’s rank correlation among state-level measures of wellbeing, controlling for individual characteristics, with the same affect and meaningfulness residuals for the same episode u-index net affect meaningfulness life satisfaction ranking u-index 1*** net affect -0.961*** 1 meaningfulness -0.153*** -0.089 -1 life satisfaction -0.161*** -0.227 -0.142 -1*** ranking -0.102*** -0.053 -0.202 -0.486*** 1 note: only 50 states, excluding dc, are included because the quality-of-life ranking does not include dc. * statistically significant at the .10 level; ** statistically significant at the .05 level; *** statistically significant at the .01 level. these results in tables 3 and 4 above indicate that controlling for respondents’ characteristics, those people living in states with better amenities tend to provide higher values for meaningfulness for similar activities than those living in states with poor amenities, but there is not much variation in time use across states.15 given these findings, it would be interesting to examine whether better amenities tend to be associated with higher levels of subjective wellbeing, in particular, meaningfulness, for all activities across the board or for a few select activities only.16 based on the 17 first-tier major activity codes available in the atus, table 5 below shows how various measures of subjective wellbeing by activity are correlated with the quality-of-life rankings, after controlling for individual characteristics. in table 5 below, furthermore, i have also examined the spearman’s rank correlation coefficients between each of the direct responses to the four affect questions (pain, sadness, stress, and happiness) and the quality-of-life rankings. this is to investigate if the lack of correlation between the u-index/net affect and the quality-of-life rankings is because the u-index and net affect are transformations of the direct responses, and, as a result, may have measurement errors or lose valuable information available in the direct responses (layard, 2009; loewenstein, 2009). in column 1 of table 5 below, the number of observed episodes for each tier 1 activity category varies from 15 for “10 government services & civic obligations” to 8,432 for “18 traveling.” due to the small number of observed episodes, the regression and correlation analysis results are not available in table 5 below for “09 household services” and “10 government services & civic obligations.” 15 considering the findings in the literature that net state in-migration is an increasing function of positive quality-oflife factors (cebula and alexander, 2006), it is possible that the reason why people living in states with better quality of life tend to provide higher values for meaningfulness for similar activities is because of selective migration: those people who value meaningfulness are more likely to live in or move to those states with better quality of life. 16 i am very grateful to one of the reviewers for suggesting this analysis. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 table 5. spearman’s rank correlation between state ranking and state-level measures of wellbeing, by activity, controlling for individual characteristics tier 1 time-use code & activities (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) no. of episodes no. of states u-index net affect meaning -fulness pain** sadness stress happiness 01 personal care activities 205 41 -0.005*** -0.155** -0.233*** -0.107** -0.100** -0.044 -0.143*** 02 household activities 6,534 50 -0.051*** -0.100** -0.010*** -0.079** --0.003** -0.089 -0.243*** 03 caring for household members 1,969 50 -0.491*** -0.282** -0.112*** -0.140** -0.184** -0.102 -0.277*** 04 caring for non-household members 362 47 -0.114*** -0.058** -0.027*** -0.030** -0.031** -0.081 -0.037*** 05 work & work-related activities 2,511 50 -0.153*** -0.223** -0.347*** -0.055** -0.073** -0.053 -0.367*** 06 education 175 39 -0.006*** -0.192** -0.081*** -0.069** -0.151** -0.211 -0.164*** 07 consumer purchase 1,424 50 -0.103*** -0.250** -0.410*** -0.006** -0.063** -0.038 -0.372*** 08 professional & personal care services 210 39 -0.173*** -0.081** -0.118*** -0.088** -0.004** -0.015 -0.056*** 09 household services 29 na -na*** -na** -na*** -na** na** -na -na*** 10 government services & civic obligations 15 na -na*** -na** -na*** -na** na** -na -na*** 11 eating & drinking 5,468 50 -0.158*** -0.095** -0.118*** -0.136** -0.194** -0.038 -0.144*** 12 socializing, relaxing, and leisure 6,389 50 -0.209*** -0.177** -0.346*** -0.343** -0.252** -0.163 -0.167*** 13 sports, exercise, & recreation 571 49 -0.160*** -0.130** -0.042*** -0.022** -0.325** -0.136 -0.063*** 14 religious and spiritual activities 427 46 -0.133*** -0.118** -0.226*** -0.138** -0.142** -0.124 -0.105*** 15 volunteer activities 272 44 -0.041*** -0.161** -0.104*** -0.109** -0.246** -0.167 -0.179*** 16 telephone calls 363 47 -0.080*** -0.001** -0.233*** -0.051** -0.076** -0.036 -0.010*** 18 traveling 8,432 50 -0.148*** -0.081** -0.184*** -0.254** -0.011** -0.119 -0.121*** all activities 35,356 50 -0.066*** -0.144** -0.424*** -0.146** -0.095** -0.047 -0.188*** note: results are not available for 09 household services and 10 government services & civic obligations due to the small number of observed activities. * statistically significant at the .10 level; ** statistically significant at the .05 level; *** statistically significant at the .01 level. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 even among the 15 remaining categories of activities for which the regression and correlation analysis results are available in table 5 above, column 2 shows that only seven of them with the number of episodes greater than 1,000 cover all 50 states.17 except for sadness for “13 sports, exercise, & recreation” in column 7, none of the remaining eight categories of activities with the number of episodes fewer than 1,000 are statistically significant, perhaps due to the small number of observed episodes. there are a few interesting things to note in table 5 above. first, the last row of table 5 above shows that the correlation coefficients with the quality-of-life rankings are 0.146 for pain, 0.095 for sadness, 0.047 for stress, and -0.188 for happiness, and none of them are statistically significant. these results indicate that, in addition to the u-index and net affect, even the direct responses to the affect questions are not significantly correlated with the quality-of-life rankings. second, it seems that better amenities tend to improve the meaningfulness of a few select activities only. in column 5 for meaningfulness, out of the seven categories of activities with the number of episodes greater than 1,000, only three of them are significantly correlated with the quality-of-life rankings: -0.347 for “05 work & work-related activities,” -0.410 for “07 consumer purchase,” and -0.346 for “12 socializing, relaxing, and leisure.”18 since the major activities with the two largest numbers of observed episodes—“18 traveling” with 8,432 episodes and “02 household activities” with 6,534—are not statistically significant, it is not the number of episodes that is behind the significant results. third, even among other measures of subjective wellbeing that failed to show significant associations, when all activities are considered with the qualityof-life rankings, some of them display significant associations at the major activity level. for example, both the u-index and net affect based on “03 caring for household members” are significantly correlated with the quality-of-life rankings, and so is the measure of pain based on “12 socializing, relaxing, and leisure” in column 6. interestingly, similar to the results in column 5 for meaningfulness, two measures of happiness based on “05 work & work-related activities” and “07 consumer purchase” are also significantly correlated with the quality-of-life rankings. these results suggest that although some of the measures of subjective wellbeing might not be informative indicators of the overall quality of life in all activities, they could still serve as useful gauges of the quality of life for some specific major activities. for example, the u-index and net affect could be used to measure the quality of life when caring for household members, and happiness could be used to measure the quality of life for work and shopping. 5. discussion in an effort to examine how well various measures of subjective wellbeing reflect the objective differences in quality of life, this paper has analyzed the relationship between the three measures of subjective wellbeing based on the 2010 atus wb module—net affect, the u-index and meaningfulness—and the objective quality-of-life ranking of the 50 states in the united states. the results show that whereas the u-index and net affect are uncorrelated with the objective quality-of-life ranking of the 50 states in the united states, the measure of meaningfulness shows a significant correlation with the objective ranking. the reason for such a correlation between meaningfulness and the objective ranking is because people living in states with better quality of 17 these seven activities—“02 household activities,” “03 caring for household members,” “05 work & work-related activities,” “07 consumer purchase,” “11 eating & drinking,” “12 socializing, relaxing, and leisure,” and “18 traveling”—account for 93% (32,727 episodes) of the total number of episodes of 35,356. 18 “12 socializing, relaxing, and leisure” includes socializing and communicating with others; attending or hosting social events; relaxing and leisure, such as watching television, playing games, and reading for personal interest; and arts and entertainment other than sports. measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 life felt, controlling for their characteristics, more meaningfulness when engaged in similar activities than those living in states with poor amenities, not because time use varies substantially across states. further analysis discovers that better amenities are associated with higher levels of meaningfulness for three select activities only: work, shopping, and leisure. these empirical results certainly raise a few interesting questions. the first is whether the absence of significant correlation between the u-index and the quality-of-life ranking and between net affect and the quality-of-life ranking is because the u-index and net affect are relying on three randomly selected activities from a single day, which might be insufficient to provide enough information on respondents’ subjective wellbeing. however, the fact that meaningfulness, another measure based on the same three randomly selected activities from a single day, is well correlated with the quality-of-life ranking, shows that those activities in the atus wb module provide enough information on respondents’ subjective wellbeing. the u-index and net affect both measure the presence of pleasure and the absence of displeasure, which corresponds to affective (or hedonistic) views of subjective wellbeing, while meaningfulness and life satisfaction measure a cognitive state or a positive attitude towards one’s life, which corresponds to cognitive (or attitudinal) views of subjective wellbeing (angner, 2010; brülde, 2007). then the difference in correlations found in this paper might be because of the fact that both the u-index and net affect are rather affective (or hedonistic) measures of subjective wellbeing, while both meaningfulness and life satisfaction are rather cognitive (or attitudinal) measures. however, further research is needed to understand why there are such differences, depending on the nature of subjective wellbeing measured. krueger, kahneman, schkade, et al. (2009) suggested development of nta based on the uindex to compare the wellbeing of groups of individuals, countries, and eras. however, the finding in this paper that, except for caring for household members, the u-index is not correlated with the objective differences in the quality of human lives across states, raises concerns about using it to monitor progress in overall quality of life beyond simple measures of income. between the two cognitive measures of subjective wellbeing found to be correlated with the objective quality-of-life ranking, meaningfulness, unlike the measure of global life satisfaction, is not likely to be influenced by contexts and moods, and also takes the duration of the life episode into account. in this sense, meaningfulness seems to be a better and reliable indicator of subjective wellbeing. this is the first study that has used the newly available 2010 atus wb module to examine the external validity of the measures of subjective wellbeing in the united states. because the findings in this paper are based only on us data, they might not generalize to other countries. as more and more countries collect data on time use and subjective wellbeing, it would be fruitful to examine whether the same pattern of correlation is observed between the measures of subjective wellbeing and objective differences in quality of life. authors younghwan song union college songy@union.edu publishing timeline received 2 september 2016 accepted 21 april 2017 published 9 june 2017 measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 references angner, e. 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(2009). accounting for the richness of daily activities. psychological science, 20(8), 1000-1008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02392.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797613507286 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1180606 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/stiglitzreport.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02392.x measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 appendix table a1. quality-of-life ranks by state, 1990 state quality-of-life rank state quality-of-life rank alabama 26 montana -4 alaska 23 nebraska 16 arizona 20 nevada 29 arkansas -3 new hampshire 43 california 42 new jersey 47 colorado 34 new mexico 14 connecticut 32 new york 50 delaware 30 north carolina 17 florida 10 north dakota -6 georgia 36 ohio 33 hawaii 38 oklahoma 21 idaho -5 oregon 22 illinois 48 pennsylvania 35 indiana 44 rhode island 12 iowa 15 south carolina 18 kansas 19 south dakota -2 kentucky 24 tennessee 28 louisiana -8 texas 25 maine -9 utah 39 maryland 45 vermont 13 massachusetts 27 virginia 31 michigan 49 washington 41 minnesota 46 west virginia 11 mississippi -7 wisconsin 37 missouri 40 wyoming -1 source: table 3 of gabriel, mattey, and wascher (2003, pp. 635-636). measures of subjective wellbeing song www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 table a2. descriptive statistics of individuals, unweighted variables mean minimum maximum unpleasant 00.157 -0 1 net affect 03.340 -6 6 meaningful 04.280 -0 6 age 48.020 18 85 female 00.564 -0 1 white 00.666 -0 1 black 00.142 -0 1 asian 00.033 -01 hispanic 00.141 -0 1 native american 00.007 -0 1 other 00.012 -0 1 less than some high school 00.037 -0 1 some high school 00.082 -0 1 high school 00.267 -0 1 some college 00.285 -0 1 college or more 00.328 -0 1 married 00.509 -0 1 partner 00.034 -0 1 single 00.458 -0 1 self-employed 00.073 -0 1 unemployed 00.064 -01 not in labor force 00.309 -0 1 employed 00.553 -0 1 interacting with anyone 00.555 -0 1 family income missing 00.042 -0 1 family income less than $10,000 00.068 -0 1 family income $10,000-$19,999 00.117 -0 1 family income $20,000-$34,999 00.174 -01 family income $35,000-$49,999 00.134 -0 1 family income $50,000-$74,999 00.180 -0 1 family income $75,000-$99,999 00.111 -0 1 family income $100,000-$149,999 00.101 -0 1 family income $150,000 and over 00.071 -0-1 holiday 00.016 -0 1 sunday 00.259 -0 1 monday 00.097 -01 tuesday 00.103 -0 1 wednesday 00.102 -0 1 thursday 00.098 -0 1 friday 00.098 -0 1 saturday 00.242 -0 1 number of observations 12,164 trust and wellbeing gokcen, n., hefferon, k., & attree, e., (2012). university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ in british higher education: an inductive content analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 2(1), 1–21. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i1.1 nesrin gokcen university of east london n.gokcen@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ in british higher education: an inductive content analysis nesrin gokcen · kate hefferon · elizabeth attree abstract: the potential to flourish as a student has emerged as a topic of debate amid the current period of economic transition in british higher education (he). the present study sought to explore the concept of ‘flourishing’ as it is constructed by students in british he. an open-ended questionnaire was distributed to 222 students across two post-1992 (former polytechnic) british universities to elicit written qualitative data on their understandings of ‘flourishing’ and ‘flourishing at university’, and of their characterisations of ‘flourishing’ and ‘non-flourishing’ students. data was content analysed using an inductive approach. prominent categories emerging from the data sets constructed ‘flourishing’ primarily as self-actualisation (personal growth, potential realisation) and success. however, engagement (both academic and social) emerged as a significant facet of ‘flourishing at university’. the ‘flourishing student’ was characterised as academically and socially engaged, committed to learning, and oriented towards personal growth. conversely, the ‘non-flourishing’ student emerged as having a general sense of lacking, a disengaged attitude towards academic work, and a lazy/withdrawn outlook. results provide inductively derived support for four components of wellbeing theory – positive emotions, engagement, relationships, and achievement (seligman, 2011) and allow generic understandings of ‘flourishing’ to be contextualised within a he setting. further implications of the study and suggestions for future research are discussed with regard to the findings. keywords: flourishing, higher education, wellbeing, university students, content analysis 1. introduction to ‘flourish’ is defined by the concise oxford dictionary (1964) as to ‚grow vigorously; thrive, prosper, be successful; be in one’s prime‛ (p. 467). the word derives from the latin flor, meaning flower, coming from the proto-indo-european *bhlo – to bloom. metaphorically, too, flourishing can be likened to the blooming of flowers: the phenomenon signifies fulfilment of an organism’s inherent nature, cultivating its own wellbeing and also that of others in an ecological or social system. colloquial use of the term ‘flourishing’ tends to centre on ideas of realising one’s potential (spiritually, developmentally, economically, etc.), succeeding, achieving, or making some significant contribution to society. one of the first appearances of flourishing in philosophical thought was in aristotle’s virtue ethics, which focused on collective flourishing as an ideal state of society in which citizens fulfil their inherent nature to act virtuously (aristotle, 350 bc/2000; hill, 1999). the idea of flourishing as a collective phenomenon has also been evident in marxist philosophy, in which a reorganisation of society is called for that better facilitates citizens’ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 virtuous conduct, leading to widespread flourishing in society (leopold, 2007; marx, 1959/1988). more recently, there has been a change of focus from collective to individual flourishing, and from studying flourishing philosophically to empirically (seligman, 1999). positive psychological perspectives on flourishing have generally moved from happinessor life satisfaction-oriented theories (e.g. seligman, 2002) to models of total wellbeing or global flourishing (forgeard, jayawickreme, kern, & seligman, 2011; seligman, 2011). earlier approaches to wellbeing have focused on psychological need satisfaction as a key requirement for positive human functioning or psychological health (e.g. deci & ryan, 1985; ryff, 1989). later accounts have assimilated these approaches into positive psychological understandings of flourishing or wellbeing (e.g. deci & ryan, 2008a, 2008b; ryan, huta, & deci, 2008; ryff & singer, 2006). mental health perspectives on flourishing (particularly keyes, 2002) assert that flourishing is a form of positive mental health distinct from the mere absence of mental illness, with the majority of individuals falling somewhere in the middle of the flourishing-languishing mental health continuum (keyes, 2005, 2006, 2007a, 2007b). recent cross-national studies of european populations have confirmed that flourishing is a construct distinct from subjective wellbeing, both with regard to its multidimensionality and to the generally low rate of co-occurrence of flourishing and indicators of subjective wellbeing such as life satisfaction (huppert & so, 2009, 2011). more recently, global wellbeing perspectives on flourishing have built on both need satisfaction and mental health approaches to produce models of complete optimal functioning of the individual (seligman, 2011; vittersø, 2009). wellbeing theory is perhaps comprehensive in bringing together the current known facets of flourishing in its ‘perma’ model, which incorporates positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement (seligman, 2011). existing approaches to flourishing, particularly within positive psychology, tend to adopt a consistently positivist epistemology (bauer & perciful, 2009). although this has enabled scientific understandings of flourishing to be developed, it does not enable subjective understandings of flourishing to be acknowledged or incorporated into existing theories of wellbeing. consequently, little is known about the ways flourishing may be conceptualised by individuals. it is well documented (e.g. krippendorf, 2004; miller & hoogstra, 1992; vygotsky, 1986) that individuals’ use of language and vocabulary in relation to concepts is essentially a manifestation of their interpretations of sociocultural constructions of such concepts. given this, it cannot initially be assumed that empirically derived theories of wellbeing necessarily account for the experience and sociocultural construction of flourishing in a comprehensive sense. research to date has not addressed flourishing in specific life domains, perhaps with the exceptions of work (fredrickson, 2003; losada, 1999; losada & heaphy, 2004) and marriage (gottman, 1994), with the majority focusing on global flourishing (catalino & fredrickson 2011; diener, personal communication, 2 november 2010; huppert & so, 2011; seligman, 2011). higher education presents a relevant domain in which flourishing merits further research, particularly in the context of ongoing reductions in public funding in a variety of academic subject areas and an increased focus on ‘value for money’ in he (browne et al., 2010). such economic change appears to have come with a rise in consumerist attitudes in students as well documented in north america (delucchi & korgen, 2002; fairchild et al., 2007) and, to a lesser extent, the united kingdom (kaye, bickle, & birtwistle, 2006; naidoo & jamieson, 2005). development of an inductively derived understanding of ‘flourishing’ specific to the subuniversity students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 population of individuals who are learners in he will conceivably make a number of contributions to both educational practice and positive psychology. firstly, positive psychological perspectives on flourishing may be broadened by lay conceptualisations of the construct, allowing a more comprehensive, socially grounded understanding of students’ potential to flourish. secondly, by understanding students’ conceptualisations of ‘flourishing’ and ‘non-flourishing’ students, recommendations may be developed as to how educationalists can contribute to the flourishing of their students. finally, an inductively derived understanding of flourishing may be used to support future research investigating the relationships between a range of contemporary issues in he (e.g. student consumerism, instrumental learning) and students’ potential to flourish. the present study employed an inductive content analysis to develop a conceptualisation of flourishing from the perspective of students in british he, where reductions in public funding and increases in tuition fees in 2010-12 have initiated debate about how students may flourish in the context of significant economic change. specifically, we adopted three research questions: 1) how do students in british he understand ‘flourishing’? 2) how do they understand ‘flourishing at university’? 3) how do they characterise ‘flourishing’ and ‘non-flourishing’ students? 2. method 2.1 participants we used a sample of 222 students enrolled on a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses (including psychology, engineering, computing, management and sports therapy) across three campuses of two post-1992 (former polytechnic) british universities in the southeast of the uk. the students (95 males, 92 females, 35 data withheld) were recruited in lectures and seminars through personal affiliation with lecturers. their ages ranged from 18 to 52 (213 valid cases, m=25.9, sd=7.77). although students were not asked to identify their ethnic background, they were recruited from institutions known to be inclusive of ethnically diverse student populations (business in the community, 2010). of the 185 students who reported their mode of study, 156 (84.3%) identified themselves as studying full time. 2.2 questionnaire format a one-page questionnaire was developed for the purpose of data collection from students (see appendix a). the questionnaire included two open-ended questions (what does ‘flourishing’ mean? what does it mean to flourish at university?) and two prompts (please list the characteristics of a student who is flourishing at university / please list the characteristics of a student who is not flourishing at university). thus, the questionnaire elicited four separate data sets; one in response to each item. demographic data was entered at the top of the questionnaire.1 2.3 coding strategy data sets obtained in response to each questionnaire item were analysed separately. in all data sets, a single inductive coding strategy was used as opposed to traditional deductive analysis. 1 the raw data can be seen in the supplementary file for this article. university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 first, comments in each data set were read through by the first author to gain insight into the range of keywords used. ‘keywords’ were defined as any word or phrase used to convey a substantial idea within a comment (hsieh & shannon, 2005). however, in order for the analysis to remain grounded in the data, this meant virtually all words were taken into account, leaving only prepositions (e.g. in, on) and some pronouns (e.g. he, she) excluded. all keywords were counted. individual keyword frequencies ranged from one to 148 across all questionnaire sections. keywords were then arranged into clusters within their respective data sets based upon consideration of two indicators: semantic and contextual (see figure 1). semantic indicators referred to the popular or colloquial meanings of keywords. contextual indicators referred to the social, cultural, or political context(s) in which keywords were used in individual comments. in combination, consideration of semantic and contextual indicators allowed all keywords to be grouped into meaningful clusters. these constituted our ‘concepts’. figure 1. exemplification of the coding strategy with the keyword ‘grow keyword: grow (growing, growth) ‘personal growth’ this concept was conceived as a group of ideas relating to general growth, development and progress in personal domains such as personality, skills acquisition and learning. the concept also included keywords such as develop, progress, excel, better and improve ‘self-actualisation’’ axial coding used to merge ‘personal growth’ with 2 related concepts: ‘personal expansion’ (expand, bigger, increase) and ‘personal potential realisation’ (thriving, potential, actualisation). semantic indicators: colloquial meanings center on expanding, developing, maturing contextual indicators: comments included phrases such as growing as a person, personal growth and development, to grow to your full potential following this, a form of axial coding was employed in which concepts were coded together to form over-arching categories. the ‘coding together’ of concepts was once again based upon consideration of semantic and contextual similarity between concepts (krippendorf, 2004; see figure 1). reliability of the coding procedure was confirmed in an independent audit conducted by the second author. 3. results data in our sample’s understandings of ‘flourishing’ generally centred on ideas of self actualisation and success, with secondary categories focusing on the individual/personal nature of flourishing and on positive affect. engagement with academic work and with the social university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 learning environment was a significant category emerging from the data on ‘flourishing at university’, although ideas of success and wellbeing were also prominent. the ‘flourishing’ student was generally constructed as behaviourally and attitudinally engaged, committed to learning and as having vitality and an orientation towards personal growth, while the ‘nonflourishing’ student was portrayed as having a general sense of ‘lacking’, and as being disengaged, lazy, withdrawn, struggling, and unwilling to strive for progress. an overview of the main categories emerging from our data is presented in figure 2. figure 2. overview of categories emerging from inductive content analysis of 4 written data sets elicited from 222 students ‘flourishing’ self-actualisation success individual/personal phenomenon positive affect data set 1 ‘flourishing at university’ academic/social engagement success wellbeing data set 2 ‘flourishing student’ engaged committed to learning vitality, personal growth data set 3 ‘non-flourishing student’ disengaged lacking lazy/ withdrawn/ struggling absence of striving/ vitality data set 4 note: prominent categories (those mentioned by 50% or more of our sample) are given in bold. several contradictions also emerged from our data which concerned an introversionextraversion paradox in flourishing, individual vs. collective flourishing, and whether an individual’s flourishing is determined by intrinsic or extrinsic parameters. university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 3.1 data set 1: ‘what does ‘flourishing’ mean?’ 3.1.1 self-actualisation the category of self-actualisation emerged from references to personal expansion, growth, and potential realisation (summarised in table 1). these were mentioned by 80% of the sample (219 valid comments). thirteen per cent of comments referred to increases in size (keywords included increase, expand, bigger) in the context of personal expansion of skills, knowledge, or life view. relating to this, 69% of comments mentioned some form of personal growth with a specific emphasis on growth in quality rather than size (e.g. development, progress, better). finally, 23% of comments referred to personal potential realisation, encompassing ideas about striving to reach personal potential, thriving, and blossoming (e.g. blooming, blossoming, prospering). table 1. concept and category codebook for data set 1 category overview keyword examples text examples 3.1.1 selfactualisation personal expansion personal growth personal potential realisation mentions of increases in size (expansion). mentions of getting better, developing or improving (growth). mentions of reaching or striving for some higher potential (potential realisation). expand increase greater improve develop grow progress excel prosper thriving potential blooming ‚to allow for an expansion of knowledge and experience.‛ (p. 243) ‚to grow into something bigger and better.‛ (p. 214) ‚grow and develop in a healthy way.‛ (p. 192). ‚it is a term associated with growth and getting better<‛ (p. 157) ‚growing, extending, to thrive.‛ (p. 76). ‚<something growing, flowering, blooming.‛ (p. 46) ‚grow and develop<in every sense possible.‛ (p. 38) 3.1.2 success ambition doing well academic success mentions of being ambitious or successful, mastering skills, and hitting targets or aims. mentions of ‘doing well’ or being good/the best at something. mentions of success in academic settings, including passing exams or doing well in assignments. mentions of successful learning or knowledge acquisition. success ambitious achieve goals skill ability well best education course grades understand learning knowledge ‚to do well in something.‛ (p. 5) ‚<doing well<and achieving.‛ (p. 10) ‚<to achieve and meet goals.‛ (p. 39) ‚the most success that you could have.‛ (p. 62) ‚<in university flourishing would mean getting the optimum skills required under course of study.‛ (p. 82) ‚means to ‚do well‛, ‚succeed‛<‛ (p. 92) ‚<complete all coursework and exams and pass with good grades.‛ (p. 143) university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 table 1. concept and category codebook for data set 1 (cont.) category overview keyword examples text examples 3.1.3 flourishing as a personal or individual phenomenon mentions of flourishing as an individual rather than as a group, community, or society. mentions of, or emphasis on, flourishing as an intrinsic or personal state or phenomenon which occurs within an individual. person personal individual your yourself one oneself someone ‚gaining<what the individual wants/desire*s+<‛ (p. 4) ‚expanding personal knowledge for personal growth.‛ (p. 7) ‚<the state that the individual is fulfilling their potential<growing as an individual.‛ (p. 16) ‚growing in your knowledge of the world and your personality; knowing more about yourself<‛ (p. 25) ‚to better yourself through self development and to progress into a ‘new you’<‛ (p. 222) 3.1.4 positive affect mentions of general positive affect, including happiness, enjoyment, etc. mentions of hedonic wellbeing. mentions of openness or vitality in an emotional context. fulfilment happy satisfaction caring lively enjoy feel outgoing enthusiasm open ‚<being happy.‛ (p. 8) ‚to pursue happiness.‛ (p. 17) ‚<alive<generally happy and settles in what one is doing<be open to challenges.‛ (p. 233) ‚to make the most of your fulfilment during times of happiness.‛ (p. 88) 3.1.2 success we identified 64% (219 valid comments) of comments making some reference to popular or conventional ideas about success, such as achieving goals or doing well in activities (see table 1). this category emerged from three concepts relating to ambition, doing well, and academic success. thirty-eight per cent of comments referred to ideas about ambition (e.g. challenge, goals, production, skill) both in education and in general life. twenty-three per cent made reference to doing well. this was distinguished from the first concept, ambition, by its focus on successful outcomes (doing an activity well, meeting expectations, being above average) rather than behaviours that lead to such outcomes (e.g. acquiring skills, overcoming adversity). academic success was mentioned by 22% of the sample. this concept included references to academia (education, course, grades) and achieving academic success. the concept also included keywords such as knowledge, insight and understanding which were used to characterise flourishing as intrinsic or personal learning. 3.1.3 a personal or individual phenomenon thirty-five per cent of comments related to flourishing as a personal or individual phenomenon (219 valid comments; see table 1). given the theoretical distinctions between collective flourishing (as conceptualised in moral philosophical and marxist perspectives, leopold, 2007) and individual flourishing (‘individualist’ perspectives focusing on the flourishing of individuals rather than communities, e.g. diener et al., 2010), we classified references to personal or individual flourishing as a separate category. this included references to the ‘individual’ or ‘personal’ success or development which highlighted flourishing as occurring within an individual rather than among individuals. the category also included pronouns (you, university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 yourself, one, someone) which were used in contexts highlighting an ‘individual’ nature of flourishing. 3.1.4 flourishing as positive affect the category of positive affect emerged from a range of comments mentioning happiness, satisfaction, enjoyment, and other keywords denoting hedonic wellbeing (219 valid comments; table 1). twenty-three per cent of comments identified positive affect as either wholly or partially constituting flourishing. keywords in this category related to positive emotions (happy, content, satisfied) as well as the personal experience of emotions (sense, feel, affected). in addition to these, some keywords also related to positive moods (lively, creative, enjoy), used in contexts that indicated short-term moods rather than longer-term emotional experiences such as life satisfaction. 3.2 data set 2: ‘what does it mean to flourish at university?’ 3.2.1 academic and social engagement the category of academic and social engagement emerged from a range of comments relating to being successful and learning at university, and being socially engaged with others in the university environment (see table 2). these were mentioned by the majority of the sample (92%; 217 valid comments). we identified three concepts within this category: ‘academic success’, ‘learning’, and ‘social engagement’. academic success was mentioned by two thirds (67%) of students, including general success in one’s chosen course or subject of study, achieving good grades, and doing well in exams and other forms of assessments. fifty-three per cent of comments mentioned learning as a form of flourishing. our ‘learning’ concept drew on keywords that related to acquisition of knowledge and understanding that leads to positive personal development rather than extrinsic success such as good grades. a third concept in this category was social engagement (mentioned in 28% of comments). this included ideas relating to social involvement with others at university (staff, friends, interact, converse) and participation in social events (activities, meeting). 3.2.2 success this category related to popular or conventional ideas about success such as goal achievement, summarised in table 2. two thirds (66%) of comments referred to success (217 valid comments). we developed this category from a group of comments that mentioned success in contexts similar to our ‘success’ category (3.1.2) in data set 1. the category also included two concepts previously identified – ‘ambition’ and ‘doing well’. thirty-six per cent of comments mentioned ‘ambition’ (keywords included challenge, skill, goals, success) often without any explicit reference to academia. forty-two per cent of comments also made references to ‘doing well’ (well, good, best, top) in the context of ‘wellness’ or the process of doing well in life domains such as education. 3.2.3 wellbeing we identified 56% of comments that made reference to wellbeing (217 valid comments). this category was composed of two concepts (table 2). a major concept, ‘personal growth’ (mentioned in 44% of comments), was similar to the ‘self-actualisation’ concept (1.1) identified university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 in data set 1 (keywords included grow, potential, progress). fifteen per cent of comments referred to a second concept, ‘enjoyment’. this concept emerged from a group of keywords relating to enjoyment of life, engagement or general enthusiasm (e.g. happy, enjoy, interest, fulfilment). table 2. concept and category codebook for data set 2 category overview keyword examples text examples 3.2.1 academic and social engagement academic success academic learning social engagement mentions of being successful at university by meeting extrinsic criteria (e.g. passing exams, etc.). mentions of personal learning and/or self development by gaining knowledge. mentions of being socially engaged with university life. grades exam assignment course career education learning knowledge work social friends interact staff activities ‚<having a good social network of uni friends.‛ (p. 4) ‚constantly bettering<grades<being engaged<with your course, interested in what you are doing – to the point that you feel uplifted/enlightened when you study.‛ (p. 8) ‚<to understand the topic you are studying.‛ (p. 11) ‚to get good grades and work hard, someone who asks questions and gets involved in different activities.‛ (p. 50) ‚<obtaining good grades at the university. also means<personal interaction skills<‛ (p. 94) ‚learn at a higher level.‛ (p. 137) 3.2.2 success ambition doing well mentions of conventional success, often without explicit reference to academia. mentions of being ambitious (taking challenges, hitting targets, etc.). mentions of doing well or being good at something. skill goal success challenge opportunity well best top good expectations ‚to be able to develop skill set required to function successfully<‛ (p. 23) ‚to do well<‛ (p. 30) ‚do well and perform above the level you expect or are expected.‛ (p. 99) ‚it means to use the opportunity that you have<‛ (p. 120) ‚successful or active.‛ (p. 131) ‚to be a successful student<‛ (p. 153) 3.2.3 wellbeing personal growth enjoyment mentions of personal growth, progress, or realisation of personal potential. mentions of enjoyment and feeling good. grow progress potential improve better excel enjoy happy enthusiasm feel positive interest confidence ‚<to be happy and satisfied<‛ (p. 250) ‚<enjoying experience<‛ (p. 1) ‚to enjoy your studies.‛ (p. 2) ‚ability to progress through your coursework<‛ (p. 148) ‚<to be progressing<‛ (p. 156) ‚become better and better.‛ (p. 164) ‚to develop as a student and a researcher<‛ (p. 216) ‚to grow academically as well as personally‛ (p. 232) university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 3.3 data set 3: ‘please list the characteristics of a student who is flourishing at university.’ 3.3.1 academic and social engagement eighty-two per cent (216 valid comments) of comments in this data set made some reference to the ‘flourishing student’ as being academically and socially engaged with university life (see table 3). we identified two concepts within this category. seventy-three per cent of comments referred to ‘academic engagement’, including behaviours such as attending class and obtaining good grades, and intrinsic learning such as gaining knowledge. ‘social engagement’ was identified as a characteristic of a flourishing student by one third (34%) of students. this encompassed ideas such as maintaining positive relationships with staff and classmates, being friendly and outgoing, and respecting others (keywords included relationship, sociable, communication, interacts). table3. concept and category codebook for data set 3 category overview keyword examples text examples 3.3.1 academic and social engagement success socialising mentions of being successful or succeeding at university. mentions of being socially active at university or engaging with others at university. study grades attend class lecture good exams sociable students relationships participate interact friendly respect communication ‚<gaining good/great marks, getting coursework in on time.‛ (p. 4) ‚passing all examinations and coursework; participates in social activities.‛ (p. 14) ‚attend the class regularly<enjoy the time in uni/the time attend the class; be part of the communities offered by university.‛ (p. 24) ‚better grades; bigger network of social friends & colleague[s]; someone who is more vocal in lectures<‛ (p. 33) ‚absorbed in coursework/study.‛ (p. 46) ‚socially supported.‛ (p. 54) 3.3.2 commitment to learning diligence openness mentions of being diligent, serious about studies and committed. mentions of being focused/organised. mentions of being open to learning, curious, willing and intrinsically receptive to new ideas and knowledge. diligent discipline focus work realistic serious willing open curious inquisitive learning creative questioning ‚hard working; determined; focus<‛ (p. 6) ‚someone who takes her *sic+ degree seriously.‛ (p. 28) ‚<work properly.‛ (p. 80) ‚<determined, clever.‛ (p. 89) ‚<openness, willing to learn/ask questions<‛ (p. 233) ‚<openness to experience<‛ (p. 232) ‚<curious, interested<not afraid to look stupid asking questions.‛ (p. 236) ‚<enthusiastic in their particular course.‛ (p. 173) university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 table3. concept and category codebook for data set 3 (cont.) category overview keyword examples text examples 3.3.3 vitality and personal growth mentions of being engaged with life or specific life domains. mentions of being confident and self-motivated. mentions of progress, improving, getting better. confident motivated engaged happy optimistic progress develop grow thriving excel potential better ‚happy, motivated, engaged.‛ (p. 1) ‚self-motivators.‛ (p. 2) ‚happy to be there.‛ (p. 12) ‚confidence, happy<‛ (p. 39) ‚<engages in curriculum activities.‛ (p. 88) ‚<student who always thinking to make study better.‛ (p. 152) ‚personally satisfied and developing<‛ (p. 237) ‚<someone that does their best to grow and flourish<‛ (p. 28) 3.3.2 commitment to learning our coding process identified 61% of comments that made reference to a series of desirable student characteristics regarding commitment to learning (216 valid comments; see table 3). these appeared as both intrinsic characteristics and overt behaviours. we identified two interrelated concepts within this category. ‘diligence’ was mentioned by 47% of students. this concept emerged from a group of keywords relating to ‘introverted’ or ‘closed’ ideas (e.g. intelligent, determined, disciplined, hard worker) which characterised flourishing students as serious, studious and generally diligent in their academic work. twenty-seven per cent of comments made reference to ‘openness to learning’, our second concept. this was conceived as a group of ideas relating to willingness and enthusiasm for learning (‘willing to learn’ was a recurring comment), interest, curiosity and inquisitiveness. 3.3.3 vitality and personal growth forty-eight per cent of comments referred to vitality and personal growth (216 valid comments; table 3). this category strongly resembled the ideas about self-actualisation and wellbeing that emerged in data sets 1 and 2. within the category, however, a larger proportion (37%) of comments made reference to the concept of ‘vitality’, which included a range of ideas relating to self-motivation, confidence, optimism and engagement with academic studies and university life. although the concept also included enjoyment, it was labelled ‘vitality’ due to greater emphasis (reference frequency) on self-motivation and confidence than on positive affect (enjoyment, contentment, etc.). eighteen per cent of comments referred to personal growth (improve, develop, progress) in contexts similar to self-actualisation in data sets 1 and 2. 3.4 data set 4: ‘please list the characteristics of a student who is not flourishing at university.’ 3.4.1 negation and lacking fifty-seven per cent of comments used keywords such as no, not, and lacking when commenting on the ‘non-flourishing’ student (214 valid comments; see table 4). these were consistently used before keywords with positive connotations, suggesting that non-flourishing may be at least partially the ‘opposite’ of flourishing. moreover, the comments in this category appeared university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 to construct the ‘non-flourishing’ student as one who is simply not flourishing or who does not possess the characteristics of the ‘flourishing’ student. table 4. concept and category codebook for data set 4 category overview keyword examples text examples 3.4.1 negation and lacking mentions of negativity, ‘not’ doing/being. mentions of lacking particular behaviours or attributes. no not negative lack ‚not very disciplined.‛ (p. 5) ‚not motivated, not willing<‛ (p. 6) ‚lack of confidence<‛ (p. 34) ‚<don’t care about study.‛ (p. 83) ‚<non participation at classes.‛ (p. 153) 3.4.2 disengagement from academic work and learning mentions of negative/undesirable student behaviours, especially failure to engage with traditional academic commitments such as lectures, etc. mentions of unwillingness to try or to put in effort to learn. late not on time absent poor grades study deadline attend ‚does not attend class and pass examinations and assignments<‛ (p. 14) ‚someone struggling to meet deadlines<‛ (p. 18) ‚a student that struggles to understand elements of the courses and fails to do sufficient background study<‛ (p. 35) ‚gets bad grades or sometimes average scores or below average<‛ (p. 92) 3.4.3 laziness, struggle and social withdrawal mentions of being lazy in relation to academic work. mentions of feeling lost and struggling with work/learning. mentions of being or feeling socially isolated. mentions of negative affect. lazy lost struggle depressed withdrawn stress disorganised confused mess shy hopeless pessimist sad recluse ‚pessimistic<helpless<‛ (p. 19) ‚sad, discontentment<‛ (p. 29) ‚grumpy, isolated.‛ (p. 102) ‚laziness, procrastination<‛ (p. 132) ‚disorganised, miserable, sad, lackadaisical.‛ (p. 156) ‚a recluse<‛ (p. 156) ‚lazy, disorganised<‛ (p. 249) 3.4.4 absence of striving and vitality mentions of what ‘not flourishing’ is not, i.e. references to keywords used in question 3 comments, commonly qualified with ‘no’, ‘not’ etc. mentions of lacking motivation, interest, or something to hope or strive for. mentions of not trying or wanting. mentions of being the ‘opposite’ of flourishing. goal aim knowledge motivated interest effort success confident achieve progress improve potential ‚<someone who does worse than their expectations/potential<someone who does not<achieve their goals.‛ (p. 45) ‚a student who doesn’t care.‛ (p. 47) ‚no interest, no noticeable improvement.‛ (p. 44) ‚<does not want to learn<‛ (p. 127) ‚<not friendly and happy, not interested<‛ (p. 130 ‚<not confident.‛ (p. 184) ‚<those *who+ don’t have a goal<‛ (p. 240) university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 3.4.2 disengagement from academic work and learning ‘disengagement’ was not a keyword used in any of the comments. we selected this as a label because virtually all comments in the category stated, or implied, that students’ failure to engage with academic commitments came about from an intrinsic lack of interest, effort or willingness rather than external factors, as seen in table 4. fifty-three per cent of comments characterised a non-flourishing student as being behaviourally disengaged from traditional academic commitments such as attending lectures and completing examinations and coursework (214 valid comments). our sample expressed this disengagement as skipping lectures, failing to meet deadlines, obtaining poor grades, or generally failing to be involved with academic work and learning. 3.4.3 laziness, struggle, and social withdrawal fifty-two per cent of comments mentioned laziness, struggle, and social withdrawal (214 valid comments; table 4). this category encompassed a range of keywords (predominantly adjectives) characterising non-flourishing as being lazy in relation to doing academic work, struggling to understand subjects, and general negative affect (e.g. unhappy, depressed, sad) in relation to being socially withdrawn or reclusive. in particular, lazy (laziness) was the most frequently mentioned keyword, cited by one quarter (25%) of the sample. this category portrayed the non-flourishing student as possessing a range of undesirable personal qualities, both as a student (lazy, disorganised, procrastinate, bored) and in socio-emotional terms (shy, hopeless, isolated, discouraged). 3.4.4 absence of striving and vitality forty-two per cent of comments explained non-flourishing in terms of what it is not (214 valid comments). this category brought together most keywords appearing in categories from our first three data sets, particularly ‘self-actualisation’ and ‘success’ categories (e.g. goal, interest, willing, confident, achieve, progress, etc.), summarised in table 4. here, the non-flourishing student was characterised as either lacking personal goals or failing to achieve them, being uninterested or unwilling in relation to academic learning, and lacking motivation to learn, improve, or progress. keywords in this category almost always appeared with negation and lacking keywords (no, not, lack) to denote a general absence of ‘flourishing’ behaviours and characteristics. 3.5 contradictions and variations our data sets included three minorities of comments that could not be coded into the emergent categories, yet we felt these were important in answering our research questions. the first of these concerned the idea of extraversion/introversion in flourishing. comments mentioning the social aspects of flourishing overwhelmingly mentioned extraversion (making friends, participating in activities, asking questions) and social engagement as constituting the flourishing student. however, two comments in data set 3 identified flourishing students as inherently introverted. for example, one participant wrote ‚…nerdy, unsociable perhaps…loners, people who prefer books to people.‛ (participant 2, data set 3). this is in contradiction to much of the current literature, which tends to support a characterisation of flourishing emphasising social participation and engagement (keyes, 2002). in this case, the relationship of flourishing university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 with introversion may have some relation to balancing academic work with social life, wherein flourishing to a high degree in academia may be at the detriment of social life. a second minority of comments (nine comments in data sets 1 and 2) mentioned collective flourishing as opposed to individual flourishing. these made reference to larger groups such as the student body, communities, or society when defining flourishing. participants defining flourishing in collective terms also tended to define flourishing at university in collective terms. one participant wrote: the word flourishing means a steady boom in a society or community. it also means a steady consistent rise of slope in a graphical manner. flourishing therefore is a steady consistent rise of a particular thing or development in society. (participant 49, data set 2). the same participant continued, ‚to flourish [at] university…is a steady consisten[cy] of student attendance in the university community with the aim of achieving positive result…in the university community or society.‛ comments referring to collective flourishing align with aristotelian and marxist perspectives, which posited that flourishing can occur only in societies in which citizens act in accordance with their true (virtuous) nature and not in individuals alone (leopold, 2007). a final issue concerned whether flourishing is determined intrinsically or extrinsically. the majority of our data referred to intrinsic determination, or the idea that flourishing is determined by personal determination, deliberation, or effort. however, five comments in data sets 1 and 2 stated flourishing is enabled by extrinsic factors, such as social support or other favourable conditions [e.g. ‚to excel and do well in something due to favourable conditions.‛ (participant 179, data set 1)]. this contradiction remains largely open given that flourishing seems likely to be a balance of both eudaimonic (i.e. intrinsically determined) and hedonic (extrinsically determined) wellbeing. 4. discussion major ideas about ‘flourishing’ in the present data sets emerged as self-actualisation and success. this finding may lend inductively derived support for the 2-component structure of flourishing proposed by vittersø (2009). according to this model, individuals flourish in a self perpetuating positive cycle of achievement (success) and striving (for the realisation of potential, or of self-actualising experiences). however, the emergence of additional categories in our ‘flourishing’ data set, such as positive affect, indicate that flourishing is a multidimensional construct as far as it was defined by the present sample. findings of the present study largely map onto the perma model of flourishing proposed by seligman (2011). categories such as positive affect, engagement (academic; discussed below), engagement (social), and success readily correspond with the model’s positive emotions, engagement, relationships and achievement facets, respectively (see figure 3). university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 figure 3. the correspondence of categories emerging from the present data sets to seligman’s (2011) perma model of flourishing positive emotions engagement relationships meaning achievement positive affect engagement (academic) engagement (social) ? success seligman’s (2011) perma model of flourishing categories emerging from the data sets of the present study although the role of ‘meaning’ in the present data is less clearly defined, the emergence of conceptual categories covering a range of cognitive, psychological and behavioural domains of wellbeing lends itself to a multidimensional conceptualisation of flourishing which incorporates both empirically and inductively derived components. the emergence of engagement (both academic and social) in our ‘flourishing at university’ data poses at least two questions regarding the construction of ‘flourishing’ in he settings. firstly, it is unclear whether the types of engagement (both behavioural and attitudinal) mentioned by students in our sample constitute a facet of flourishing unique to a he setting, or are instead a type of flourishing in themselves. reschly and colleagues (reschly, huebner, appleton, & antaramian, 2008) have previously found associations between positive emotions and engagement in adolescents within a secondary school setting. this association was partially mediated by adaptive coping, supporting fredrickson’s (2004, 2005, 2009) broadenand-build theory of positive emotions. the association between ‘engagement’ (appleton, christenson, kim, & reschly, 2006) and what could be considered a state of flourishing (the ‘upward spirals’ of fredrickson’s theory) indicate that engagement is a distinct phenomenon from flourishing. however, more research is needed to investigate the dynamics of the engagement-flourishing relationship, particularly in he settings where the role of flourishing is less clear than in compulsory-level education (e.g. gilman, huebner, & furlong, 2009). the second question posed by the emergence of ‘engagement’ in our data concerns which sub-types of engagement are most necessary to facilitate flourishing in a he setting. participants in the present sample commonly mentioned behavioural (e.g. attending class, meeting coursework deadlines) and psychological (e.g. interacting with peers, participating in social learning activities) sub-types in our ‘academic and social engagement’ category, although the emergence of additional categories such as academic ‘success’ and ‘commitment to learning’, which indicated achievement and positive attitudinal orientation towards studies, suggest that all four types of engagement, including academic and cognitive (appleton et al., 2006), are relevant to students’ potential to flourish in higher education. previous studies have shown a general decrease in engagement-related factors (such as curiosity or interest in university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 learning) in adolescents transitioning from primary to secondary school settings (reported in shah & marks, 2004), suggesting that some young people may go on to arrive in he with low levels of engagement. it is less clear how engagement may change for students of other age groups who do not come to he directly from compulsory-level education. therefore, the issue of engagement, particularly the prevalence of its sub-types and their relative importance for flourishing, is a key domain for future research in the engagement-flourishing link to explore. the structure of characterisations of the ‘flourishing’ and ‘non-flourishing’ student in our latter two data sets resemble keyes’ (2002) mental health continuum, which proposes flourishing is a state of complete positive mental health as opposed to languishing, a state of ineffective functioning insufficiently severe to be diagnosed as mental illness. in the present sample, students’ understandings of the ‘flourishing’ student tended to centre on academic and behavioural engagement and on positive attitudes towards learning (interest, curiosity, focus, diligence). conversely, the ‘non-flourishing’ student was generally constructed as behaviourally and academically disengaged from studies and lacking all or most of the characteristics possessed by the ‘flourishing’ student. although ‘non-flourishing’ necessarily entailed a general absence of the characteristics of ‘flourishing’, it appeared to have additional characteristics (emerging in the ‘laziness, struggle, and social withdrawal’ category) that made it distinct from merely the opposite of ‘flourishing’ for our sample. this suggests that not to flourish in he is not merely to lack a state of flourishing, but to possess a range of ineffective functioning characteristics resembling a state of ‘languishing’ (keyes, 2002), including behavioural characteristics such as being distracted from academic work by other activities and attitudinal qualities such as a ‘lazy’ outlook on learning. related studies have found that students often attribute academic outcomes (such as success or ‘unsuccess’) to intrinsically determined factors such as self-motivation or laziness (lebedina-manzoni, 2004) and that student wellbeing parameters such as flow are statistically associated with low levels of such intrinsic factors as motivation (lee, 2005) and student effort (killen, 1994). the area of ‘flourishing’ and ‘non-flourishing’ students in he settings is one that merits further research, particularly with respect to assessing the way ‘flourishing’ and ‘non-flourishing’ student profiles relate to each other and whether ‘non-flourishing’ may be conceptualised as distinct from the ‘opposite’ of flourishing on the basis of characteristics such as laziness and disengagement. in addition to addressing the above questions raised by this study, future research in the area of flourishing in higher education may develop the student conceptualisation of ‘flourishing’ further by using data from a wider sample of students. the use of a sample composed of students enrolled only in post-1992 (former polytechnic) universities creates some difficulty in generalising our findings to the wider british he sector. for example, differences in academic culture and greater emphases on either teaching or research in pre-1992 institutions (‘traditional’ universities) may influence the conceptualisation of ‘flourishing’ in students within such institutions (e.g. russell group, 1994 group, university alliance, and million+ institutions). greater student success in terms of research output and publication at research-oriented institutions (cooper & turpin, 2007) may be implicated in different conceptualisations of what constitutes flourishing at university and flourishing students. flourishing may also be conceptualised differently among undergraduate students compared with postgraduate students, and among postgraduate taught students compared with postgraduate research students, given the different emphases that are placed on learning set university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 curricula and creating original knowledge. the conceptualisation of ‘flourishing’ among academics or tutors in the he sector may also carry differences from that among the student body, for example in terms of engagement or participation (fritschner, 2000). the construction of flourishing among these distinct groups may be another area of future exploration. in the context of higher education, extrinsically measured success (e.g. passing exams) continues to form the traditional (formative) basis of academic work and progress. however, the emergence of factors such as self-actualisation, engagement, and positive affect as important facets of flourishing for students may call for a new focus on the purposes and valued outcomes of he that goes beyond extrinsically measured success and a ‘value for money’ orientation. although flourishing is a complex phenomenon that cannot be measured by any singular means, developing a he culture in which flourishing is recognised as necessary in both the means and ends of education may be a way forward in ensuring students’ potential to flourish is preserved and facilitated in the present period of economic transition. authors nesrin gokcen university of east london n.gokcen@uel.ac.uk kate hefferon university of east london k.hefferon@uel.ac.uk elizabeth attree university of east london e.a.attree@uel.ac.uk publishing timeline received 8 december 2011 accepted 14 december 2011 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(2009). positive psychology is about flourishing, but what is flourishing about? invited paper presented at the first world congress on positive psychology, philadelphia, pa, 18-21 june. vygotsky, l. s. (1986). thought and language. cambridge, ma: mit press. university students’ constructions of ‘flourishing’ gokcen, hefferon, & attree www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 appendix a study questionnaire age: gender: male / female course: mode of study: full time / part time instructions: please write down your answers to the items below. there are no right or wrong answers. what does ‘flourishing’ mean? what does it mean to flourish at university? please list the characteristics of a student who is flourishing at university. please list the characteristics of a student who is not flourishing at university. kashdan, t. b., mcknight, p. e., disabato, d. j., kelso, k. c., lauber, m., & goodman, f. r. (2020). sexual assault: exploring real-time consequences the next day and in subsequent days. international journal of wellbeing, 10(4), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.1319 todd kashdan george mason university tkashdan@gmu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article sexual assault: exploring real-time consequences the next day and in subsequent days todd kashdan · david j. disabato · patrick e. mcknight · kerry c. kelso marla lauber · fallon r. goodman abstract: approximately 15-20% of adult women in the united states have been sexually assaulted. given the high prevalence of sexual assault, it becomes increasingly important to understand immediate responses to sexual assault. a lack of information prior to sexual assaults contributes to a literature that is unable to showcase the presence and amount of change. a tendency to rely on comparisons between people, instead of the collection of multiple moments of a single person over time, will continue to point toward imprecise, statistical “average” reactions to sexual assaults. prior methodological approaches lead to broad overgeneralizations about sexual assault survivors that may undermine their unique experiences in the aftermath of an assault. the present study extends the existing literature with access to unprecedented data gathered on the days before and immediately after someone survived a sexual assault. to our knowledge, there are no studies capturing prior functioning and near immediate psychological reactions of sexual assault survivors. in the present study, each night over the course of three weeks, we asked college students (n = 186) to report on their sexual activity and well-being. six women and one man reported being sexually assaulted at least once. we examined psychological experiences on the days before and after sexual assaults (including negative and positive affect, social anxiety, self-esteem, emotion expressive suppression, and cognitive reappraisal). to examine sexual assault reactions, we used various descriptive approaches. our results suggest that before and after being assaulted, survivors showed no consistent response in subjective well-being. we failed to find a prototypical psychological profile. despite the small sample, our results raise important questions and offer future hypotheses about individual differences in responses to sexual assault. keywords: rape, sexual assault, well-being, wellbeing, emotion regulation, social anxiety, resilience 1. introduction one out of five american women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime and nearly two million women are sexually assaulted each year (breiding et al., 2014; waechter & ma, 2015). the impact of sexual assault appears to be both widespread and enduring. however, our knowledge is primarily limited to information gathered from survivors long after the trauma occurred and/or studies that do not capture pre-assault functioning. the sexual assault literature has been dominated by cross-sectional methods from which scientists repeatedly uncovered a link between a history of sexual trauma and current psychological problems. with this about:blank sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 methodological approach, temporal precedence cannot be established. using longitudinal investigations, scientists gain a better understanding of sexual assault’s effects on survivors. of the longitudinal research available, all but one study (frazier, conlon, & glaser, 2001) collected data from survivors at monthly and yearly intervals following the trauma. while this approach can delineate longer term patterns of mental health symptoms, well-being, and impairment (e.g., dworkin, ullman, stappenbeck, brill, & kaysen, 2018; naragon-gainey, simpson, moore, varra, & kaysen, 2012), there are unanswered questions about the impact of sexual assault in the immediate aftermath. remarkably, one study assessed survivors as soon as two weeks post-assault (frazier, conlon, & glaser, 2001), although this study did not capture pre-assault functioning. daily diary studies can help scientists disentangle short-term perturbations and resilience trajectories from disorder to recovery (bonanno, 2013; steenkamp et al., 2012; steenkamp, litz, dickstein, salters-pedneault, & hofmann, 2013). to best understand how people respond to trauma, researchers need to capture survivors’ psychological state prior to the trauma. research on resilience has increasingly moved away from identifying a resilient “personality” or “trait” and instead conceptualized resilience as an interaction between a person’s resources/strengths and the events they experience that is sensitive to context (bonanno & diminich, 2013; norris, stevens, pfefferbaum, wyche, & pfefferbaum, 2008; shiner & masten, 2012). in this way, resilience to trauma is a process, not a capacity—a person is resilient when despite the presence of a negative life event/trauma there is no sustainable decline in their well-being (goodman, disabato, kashdan, & machell, 2017) researchers who study traumatic events that occur at random such as natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents, and sexual assaults are limited to capitalizing on existing, ongoing studies that include sufficient and relevant data before and after the event. to our knowledge, only two studies assessed people prior to and after being sexually assaulted (carey, norris, durney, shepardon, & carey, 2018; krahé & berger, 2017). as such, we expanded our review to include research that captured preand post-functioning following other types of traumatic events to help understand trajectories following sexual assault. recent theoretical models suggest there is remarkable heterogeneity following traumatic events. of the many possible trajectories of functioning post-trauma, an increasing amount of evidence suggests that the most common trajectory is resilience. westphal and bonanno (2007) describe resilience as “continu[ing] to be able to fulfill personal and interpersonal demands even in the face of considerable adversity” (p. 420). a number of longitudinal studies of combat related trauma support this claim. in one study of 120 united states soldiers deployed on a peacekeeping mission to kosovo, 84% displayed a resilient response post-deployment (dickstein, suvak, litz, & adler, 2010); a study of 366 danish soldiers deployed to afghanistan found a similar postdeployment resilience trajectory rate of 70% (bersten et al., 2012; see also andersen, karstoft, bertelsen, & madsen, 2014); and a study of united states marines deployed to afghanistan found a resilient trajectory rate of 79% (nash et al., 2015). in contrast to a resilience narrative, infurna and luthar (2018) suggest recovery is the most common reaction to traumatic events — where survivors report high levels of initial distress that decline over time until survivors return to baseline functioning. independent of the debate as to whether recovery or resilience dominates, attention has also been given to post-traumatic growth, where traumatic events are followed by positive life changes from a greater sense of appreciation for what one has to the presence of healthy, supportive relationships to a recognition of pre-existing, inadequately tested, psychological strength (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996; see jayawickreme & blackie [2014] for a review). others have described adaptive posttrauma changes as “psychological improvement”—characterized by decreases in mental health http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 symptoms rather than changes in personality. for example, in a study of female survivors of the 2007 virginia tech university shooting, 13.2% reported an improvement in anxiety symptoms and 7.4% an improvement in depression symptoms one year after the event (mancini, littleton, & grills, 2016). while these perspectives on recovery, resilience, and growth describe what occurs in the aftermath of trauma in general, are they applicable to sexual assault? research conflicts as to whether resilience and posttraumatic growth are typical responses to sexual trauma. beginning at one-month post-assault, researchers identified recovery from significant distress as the modal reaction to sexual trauma (steenkamp et al., 2012). perhaps, after experiencing sexual assault, survivors are more likely to experience intense, immediate distress that dissipates over time. a review of 17 articles found that 25-67% of sexual assault survivors reported some form of post-traumatic growth, including heightened concern for others in similar situations, improved relationships with family members, and a greater appreciation for life (ulloa, guzman, salazar, & cala, 2016). one study found that positive life changes as soon as 2 weeks post-assault predicted subsequent psychological growth 12 months later (frazier, conlon, & glaser, 2001). in other studies, survivors reported increased levels of depression, anxiety, disordered sleeping and eating, substance use problems, and suicidality following assault (dworkin, menon, bystrynski, & allen, 2017; thurston, chang, matthews, von känel, & koenen, 2018). prevalence estimates suggest that anywhere from 17-65% of survivors develop posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd; campbell, dworkin, & cabral, 2009). at the very least, prior findings illustrate a variety of responses to sexual assault, including fluctuations in positive and negative outcomes. given the pervasiveness of sexual assault and the varied impact on survivors, it becomes increasingly important to understand immediate responses to sexual assault. lack of information prior to sexual assaults contributes to the presence of variable-centric rather than person-centric research (kashdan & mcknight, 2011). as long as studies focus on between-person data, and not the multiple moments of events and reactions to them by a single person over time, the literature will continue to point toward an imprecise, statistical “average” sexual assault reaction. this methodological approach risks leading to broad overgeneralizations about sexual assault survivors that may undermine their unique experiences in the aftermath of an assault. the present study extends the existing literature with access to unprecedented data gathered on the days before and immediately after someone survived a sexual assault. these data allow for close examination of individual behavioral changes in response to a sexual assault. we also conducted a comparison of sexual assault survivors with non-assaulted peers using a variety of daily measures of individual difference spanning psychological suffering and well-being. specifically, we included positive and negative affect to capture the affective components of subjective well-being (diener, 1984); meaning in life to assess for changes in one’s interpretation of their place in the world; self-esteem to assess for changes in beliefs about the self; and social anxiety to assess for changes in worries about other people’s perceptions. thus, our measures capture a variety of intrapersonal and interpersonal processes that may be relevant in the aftermath of assault. before proceeding, we need to clarify our intentions regarding the use of data collected prior to the onset of sexual assaults. due to the size of our sample, the present study is descriptive, rather than predictive (rozin, 2001). consistent with literature suggesting a number of different trajectories—resilience or otherwise—following a trauma, we anticipated that upon closely inspecting individuals in the days surrounding sexual assault, a heterogeneous range of responses would emerge. regardless of emotional disturbances recorded prior to the assaults, our findings should not be interpreted as placing any responsibility on survivors. to the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 contrary, our intention in analyzing well-being prior to the assault is to understand resilience to trauma. this approach is similar to research on resilience to unexpected traumas (e.g., terrorist attacks; fredrickson, tugade, waugh, & larkin, 2003) and consistent with a process-based operationalization of resilience (e.g., goodman, disabato, kashdan, & machell, 2017). we hope that these descriptive results shed light on the complexity of human reactions to sexual assault. 2. method 2.1 participants data were collected from 186 university students (133 women, 40 men, 13 with missing data). age range of the initial sample ranged from 18 to 63 years old (m = 24.02, sd = 9.26), the racial/ethnic composition was 57.2% white, 13.8% latino/hispanic, 11.8% asian, 7.2% african american, 2% middle eastern, 0.7% native american, and 7.2% other, and the majority (94%) identified as heterosexual with 2.6% as homosexual, 2.6% as bisexual, and one person indicating “other”. in our sample, 63.8% indicated being in a monogamous romantic relationship. we arrived at a final sample of seven participants (six women, one man) who indicated being subjected to nonconsensual sex at least once during their respective daily diary assessment period confirmed with a close data inspection (see results section). our first selection criterion was based solely on whether the participant indicated non-consensual sex during the course of the three week study. our second criterion focused on whether there is evidence that they misinterpreted what non-consensual sex meant in our survey. that is, is there evidence that they did something sexual but not with a partner such as pornography, strip clubs, masturbating, etc on each day that they endorsed non-consensual sex? these criteria are detailed in table 1. table 1. details on each participant endorsing at least one sexual assault during the daily diary assessment period random id final sample? available evidence 1 y on day 14 of the study, she reported non-consensual sex. 2 y on day 2 of the study, she reported non-consensual sex. on the same day, she reported an additional consensual experience. 3 y on day 10 of the study, she reported non-consensual sex. 4 y on day 29 of the study, she reported non-consensual sex. 5 y on day 17 of the study, she reported non-consensual sex. 6 y on day 19 of the study, he reported non-consensual sex. 7 y on day 1 of the study, she reported non-consensual sex. on the same day, she reported having an additional consensual sexual experience. 8 no in the baseline sexual history questionnaire, she reported having two ongoing, regular sex partners. in the daily diary portion of the study, she reported non-consensual sex on days 10, 11, 17, 18, 20, and 21. we examined free-text responses to episodes that led her to feel angry on days she endorsed non-consensual sex. her responses included: “still haven’t finished overdue history paper”, “nothing”, “nothing at all”, “today was fabulous!!!!”, “i got in a fistfight with laura and my eye hurts”, and “today was absolutely perfect”. because of the presence of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 diametrically opposed responses on the same day, multiple times, we believe the data are invalid and removed her from the final sample. 9 no in the baseline sexual history questionnaire, he claimed to be abstaining from sex due to his and his family’s values. he reports satisfaction with the (lack of) sex in his life (a rating of 6 on a 7-point scale). he reports having consensual sex on the first days 1 and 2 of the study, and nonconsensual sex on days 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 19, and 20. because of this atypical profile, we examined follow-up questions on days he reported being sexually assaulted. on days 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 19, and 20, he reported masturbating alone and feeling satisfied when masturbating (ratings ranged from 4-6 on a 7-point scale). he reported having sex with another person on days 1 and 2 but not on days when he endorsed both masturbation and non-consensual sex. we believe he mistakenly endorsed non-consensual sex when masturbating alone because this act does not require anyone’s consent. we believe the data are invalid and removed him from the final sample. 10 no in the baseline sexual history questionnaire, he claimed to be abstaining from sex. on day 16 of the study, he reported non-consensual sex. on the same day 16 he also reported watching internet pornography and masturbating alone and feeling satisfied when masturbating (rating of 5 on a 7-point likert scale). while believe he mistakenly endorsed nonconsensual sex when masturbating alone because this act does not require the consent of any party. he reported having sex with another person on day 1 but not on the days when he endorsed both selfstimulation and non-consensual sexual activity. we believe the data are invalid and removed him from the final sample. 11 no in the baseline sexual history questionnaire, he claimed to be abstaining from sex due to religious reasons. on day 21 of the study, he reported non-consensual sex. on the same day 21 he also reported going to a strip club and paying for sex. we believe he mistakenly endorsed nonconsensual sex when paying for sex at the strip club believing that sex workers are not asked to give consent. he did not report sexual activity on any other day during the assessment period. we believe the data are invalid and removed them from the final sample. note. due to the sensitive nature of this topic and the possibility that results are misinterpreted, we were meticulous in ensuring full confidence that our final sample of participants endorsed a sexual assault. this specific study was reviewed and approved by the human subject institutional review board at george mason university before the study began (approval number #4511). 2.2 procedure we recruited participants through campus flyers, online advertisements, and an online portal for student seeking to participate in research through the psychology department. participants were informed during the consent process that the purpose of the study was to better understand how people experience emotions, sexuality activities, and daily life events. upon completion of the daily diary portion, participants received raffle tickets for one of ten $25 gift certificates. participants completed a 1.5-hour introductory session where they provided baseline demographic and personality data as well as learned how to complete the daily online survey. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 the primary investigator (tbk) guided participants (in small groups) through the definitions of each item, provided a handbook on each item’s definition, and gave them a dedicated website to access training instructions or details. next, he showed each participant how the daily diary data would be stored such that, after discarding the link to their email address, their responses would be anonymous. finally, he informed participants about research showing certain response biases (e.g., women tend to underreport and men tend to overreport sexual activity) and the importance of honest, accurate recording. participants completed surveys online via a secure website devoted to the study before going to sleep each night for three weeks (21 consecutive days). the site included definitions of all study constructs (as previously explained in their baseline training session). to ensure at least two weekends of data, several participants who did not complete surveys during the scheduled weekends that fell during their respective 21-day diary period were asked to record an extra weekend of data. therefore, several participants had a sequence of days that extended beyond 21 (e.g., 30 days). researchers sent weekly reminder emails emphasizing compliance, confidentiality, and the time-and-date stamping of online entries. participants provided an average of 20.75 days of data (sd = 4.91). only four participants provided fewer than 20 valid reports. 2.3 global measures relationship status and quality. participants responded to whether they are in a committed romantic relationship (yes or no). to measure relationship longevity, we asked, “how long have you been involved in your romantic relationship?” if in a romantic relationship, participants completed the single-item inclusion of other in the self scale (ios; aron, aron, & smollan, 1992). to best represent feelings of closeness to romantic partners, participants selected one of seven pairs of circles with increasing degrees of overlap, ranging from no contact (1) to almost complete overlap (7). this scale possesses acceptable construct validity, with moderate to large positive correlations with longer measures of relationship functioning (e.g., aron, melinat, aron, vallone, & bator, 1997). trait measures. participants completed the social interaction anxiety scale (mattick & clarke, 1998) which measures general tendencies to fear and avoid social interactions due to scrutiny concerns. scale scores reliably discriminate people with social anxiety disorder from other anxiety disorders, and are sensitive to treatment (e.g., brown et al., 1997). participants completed the 21-item beck depression inventory-second edition (bdi-ii; beck, steer, & brown, 1996), which assesses the severity of depression symptoms. the bdi-ii can reliability distinguish people with and without mood disorders (e.g., sprinkle et al., 2002). the positive and negative affect schedule (panas; watson, clark & tellegen, 1988) consists of two 10-item subscales there were used to ask participants to report on their general positive (e.g., “proud”) and negative affect (e.g., “ashamed”), respectively. prior research has demonstrated that panas scores are reliable and valid (e.g., watson et al., 1988). participants completed the 9-item acceptance and action questionnaire (aaq; hayes et al., 2004), a self-report measure of the unwillingness to tolerate or experience unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and memories. prior research provides evidence for the validity of this scale in predicting the onset of emotional disturbances (e.g., chawla & ostafin, 2007). 2.4 daily measures sexual assault. at the end of each day, participants responded if they had non-consensual sex today with a binary response option (yes or no). during the face-to-face training session, they http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 were informed this referred to any non-consensual sexual act, including unwanted oral, anal or vaginal intercourse, or unwanted touching on any intimate area of a person’s body by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object. sexual activity. each day, participants responded whether they had sex (yes or no); and could report up to six sexual episodes per day. for each sexual episode, they recorded the type of sex had (passionate kissing, oral sex, penetration), feelings of pleasure (1=none to 9=very much), and intimacy (using the inclusion of other in the self scale with a prompt to “indicate the picture below which best describes how close and connected you felt to your partner during sex”). daily affect. items from the positive and negative affect schedule (panas; watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988) used to assess daily mood included four positive emotions (i.e., enthusiastic, happy, satisfied, excited) and four negative emotions (i.e., embarrassed, disappointed, anxious, sad). participants rated “how well each adjective described their mood today” from 1 = not at all to 7 = very much. daily meaning in life. participants were asked, “how meaningful did you feel your life was today”, a modified item from the meaning in life questionnaire (steger, fraizer, oishi, & kaler, 2006). participants responded using a likert scale from 1=not at all to 7=very much. this singular item of daily meaning has demonstrated acceptable validity (e.g., kashdan & steger, 2007; steger & kashdan, 2013). daily self-esteem. we measured daily self-esteem with two items adapted from the rosenberg self-esteem scale (rosenberg, 1965) to reflect daily experiences (“today . . . i felt like i had many good qualities”, “today . . . on the whole, i was satisfied with myself”). participants responded to items using a likert scale from 1=not at all to 7=very much. these items demonstrated acceptable validity in prior daily diary studies (e.g., kashdan & mcknight, 2013; nezlek & plesko, 2001). daily social anxiety. participants answered three questions about social anxiety during the day (i.e., “i worried about what other people thought of me”, “i was afraid that others did not approve of me”, and “i was worried that i would say or do the wrong things”) using a 7-point scale from 1 = not at all to 7 = very much (kashdan & steger, 2006). prior work demonstrated the validity of this scale in people with and without social anxiety disorder (kashdan et al., 2013). daily emotion regulation. participants answered five questions, adapted from the emotion regulation questionnaire (gross & john, 2003). three items captured use of emotion suppression strategies (“i keep my emotions to myself”, “when i am feeling positive emotions, i am careful not to express them”, and “when i am feeling negative emotions, i make sure not to express them”) and two items captured use of cognitive reappraisal (“when i want to feel more positive emotion (such as joy or amusement), i change what i’m thinking about” and “when i want to feel less negative emotion (such as sadness or anger), i change what i’m thinking about”) (as used in kashdan & steger, 2006). participants responded using a likert scale from 1=not at all to 7=very much. prior work has found support for the validity of these scales (e.g., blalock, kashdan, & farmer, 2016). 2.5 data analytic plan we treated the data as if we had seven individual n of 1 studies. in so doing, we were able to look carefully at the idiographic nature of participant responses to daily measures over time. we computed percent of maximum possible scores (pomp; cohen, cohen, aiken & west, 1999) for each of the six outcomes for all participants. these scores provide a comparable metric between measures (sechrest, mcknight & mcknight, 1996). next, we plotted the individual trajectories of each participant for each outcome to illustrate the change from pre to post sexual assault. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 due to the nature of small n studies and the limits to null-hypothesis significance testing (i.e., power), we opted for methods well-established within the psychometric community (dudek, 1979; nunally, 1978). we supplemented individual trajectories with an estimate of the standard error of measurement (sem) for each outcome. sem is an estimate of the reliable difference in the scale score that can be expected given the test-retest reliability. values outside two sems are traditionally considered beyond the range of plausible true scores. because this is an exploratory study, we opted to interpret scores + 1 sem as a useful criterion. we estimated sem by calculating the intraclass correlation (icc) for each measure using the entire dataset. the icc was then used as the reliability estimate over time (rxx) and, as a result, could be used to estimate the sem (sem = sd*sqrt(1-rxx)). we considered changes outside one standard error of measurement to be noteworthy whereas changes within that range were expected simply due to scale score unreliability observed in the general, non-assaulted sample. our use of these metrics merely provide a heuristic for evaluating scores between and within participants not a definitive statement about the reliability of change or any statistical significance. finally, we resisted any specific hypothesis testing due to the small sample size and limited a priori hypotheses. we considered all analyses descriptive and exploratory and used these findings to generate hypotheses for future research. 3. results 3.1 descriptive data eleven participants endorsed at least one sexual assault episode but four were omitted due to questionable response patterns (see table 1). we found seven participants who met our inclusion criteria and clearly endorsed sexual assault. the final seven participants (six women, one man) ranged in age from 18 to 22, each identified as heterosexual, five endorsed being in a current romantic relationship (relationship duration ranged from six months to five years), and in terms of race/ethnicity, four were white, two were african-american, and one was hispanic/latina. 3.2 normalizing values of measures we examined each sexual assault survivor’s individual difference pomp scores. as a point of comparison, we present the empirical percentiles of survivor’s pomp scores in comparison to the rest of the sample who reported no sexual assaults (excluding the four omitted participants mentioned above). essentially, the subsample with no sexual assaults was treated as a normative comparison. we present the means and standard deviations of the comparison sample in table 2 (below). 3.3 standard error of measurement we estimated the standard error of measurement (sem) for all six outcome measures and established bounds around the pre-event mean for sexual assault survivors as the range of importance when evaluating changes observed over time. values that fell outside that band of +/1 sem could be viewed as meaningful – at least with respect to the reliability of the measures. the sem values are in table 2. 3.4 person-level functioning we estimated individual trajectories for six outcomes that share some common variance but not enough to warrant any data reduction model. the results of the graphical analyses (see figures http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 1, 2, and 3) and inferences to be drawn are limited – particularly since statistical power is low and causal generalization may be questionable. table 2: descriptive statistics of daily diary outcomes of sexual assault survivors outcome pre-event mean icc sem positive affect 52.47 0.44 16.54 negative affect 30.66 0.36 13.89 self-esteem 72.00 0.50 13.88 expressive suppression 0.57 14.69 cognitive reappraisal 0.64 17.23 social anxiety 0.50 16.50 note. icc = intra-class correlations. sem = standard error of measurement. means were from sexual assault survivors. icc values were computed based upon values observed from the non-assaulted participants only. values were computed from estimating the variance components from a linear mixed-effects model and using the ratio of variances from a null model. the exact procedures are detailed in raudenbush and bryk (2002). there were few clear patterns observed prior to the event (i.e., sexual assault) nor afterwards for any of the six outcomes. only a few observations fell outside one standard error of measurement and, as indicated in figures 1 through 3 (below), most of the data from the identified survivors fell around the grand mean observed from the entire sample. these results indicate that few individual responses were outside what was reported by the non-assaulted sample. notable exceptions were evident in participant 3 who reported high negative affect and social anxiety outside the range of one standard error of measurement immediately after sexual assault before returning to the sample mean. interestingly, participant 3’s reduction in negative affect and social anxiety converged with a rapid increase in emotional expressive suppression. participant 2 reported high levels of social anxiety outside the range of one standard error of measurement throughout the post sexual assault assessment period, along with periodic low levels of positive affect and self-esteem outside the range of one standard error of measurement. 3.5 normative comparison we computed the pooled change process over the 30 days for all non-assaulted participants and provided a reference line (including standard error) in each figure. the included reference line represents the counter-factual to the cases of sexual assault. for all six outcomes, the change over 30 days for these non-assaulted participants were negligible. while the outcomes for these participants produced noteworthy effects – at least for negative and positive affect, self-esteem, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 suppression, and social anxiety none of these changes were larger than one standard error of measurement. figure 1. trajectory of daily negative affect and social anxiety before and after sexual assaults figure 2. trajectory of daily positive affect and self-esteem before and after sexual assaults http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 figure 3. trajectory of daily emotion regulation strategies before and after sexual assaults 3.6 sexual assault vs. normative group in all cases, sexually assaulted participants deviated from the normative comparison group prior to the event. the variability of response between sexually assaulted survivors was quite high but all variance fell within one standard error of measurement. 4. discussion sexual assault is common in society, with national samples of women leading to estimations of a lifetime prevalence rate of approximately one in five (breiding et al., 2014; waechter & ma, 2015). amplifying the societal problem of sexual assault are myths and scripts held about incidents of unwanted, forced sex. when asked to visualize a sexual assault, participants reported, on average, that they expected women to feel. extreme negative emotions afterward, including shame, depression, and a loss of self-esteem (on a rating scale from [1] not at all to [7] completely, each rating was above 6.0; littleton & axsom, 2003). studies of first line responders (e.g., police officers, detectives) show that survivors tend to be dissatisfied with the inappropriate questions, assumptions, and lack of empathy by interviewers (e.g., jordan, 2004). for instance, others often view the behavior of a sexual assault survivor as atypical/strange when failing to show overt signs of distress. as a result, other people view them as less credible and attribute more blame to them (e.g., kaufmann, drevland, wessel, overskeid, & magnussen, 2003; winkel & koppelaar, 1991). taken together, prior research and societal trends warrant scientific research on how people respond in the immediate aftermath of being sexually assaulted and dispel myths about what a prototypical response “should” look like. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 our research is unlike other published studies. we provided comprehensive within-person data on seven sexual assault survivors with a comparison to a non-assaulted group measured during the same time frame. at first glance, readers might be disinterested because of the small sample size. we ask readers to reconsider the importance of descriptive studies with hard-tocapture samples (rozin, 2001). before generating predictions about how people respond to sexual assault, it behooves scientists to begin with exploratory, descriptive data. in our study, we had unprecedented information on subjective well-being on days preceding and days following sexual assault. the only reason we could collect these data is that we included a question about non-consensual sex in a 21-day experience sampling study (kashdan et al., 2014; kashdan, adams, savostyanova, mcknight & nezlek, 2011; kashdan, goodman, stiksma, milius, & mcknight, 2018). when data are available to capture the temporal course of traumatic events (see fredrickson, tugade, waugh, & larkin, 2003 for an examination of 46 people before to after the terrorist attacks on september 11, 2001), a small sample becomes meaningful, especially if the goal is to provide knowledge to spearhead future research. to ensure high-quality data, the principal investigator (tbk) (1) met with every participant to explain the anonymity of sexual data reporting, (2) showed participants how responses would appear in the database to research personnel (i.e., rows of data without identifying information), (3) provided definitions of each construct including non-consensual sex, and (4) reviewed existing research that shows women’s tendency to underreport and men’s tendency to overreport sexual activity. this labor-intensive strategy prior to data collection reduces self-presentation concerns and increases the quality of information provided for a stigmatized topic such as sexual activity. we offer these details to provide behavioral evidence of the integrity of the data presented on seven sexual assault survivors. we were interested in one question: how do people’s psychological functioning change immediately following sexual assault? with daily data from seven sexual assault survivors, we found that on average, prior to being assaulted, people experienced a decline in well-being. there was no discernible pattern across sexual assault survivors. in the days immediately after the sexual assault, several survivors showed a rapid decline in well-being, others showed little to no change, and others show a slight increase in well-being. how can we make sense of the various reactions to surviving sexual assault? our study is not able to provide the answers and thus, provide several hypotheses for future research to test. 1. how sexual assault survivors cope in the short-term often includes strategies that are generally deemed maladaptive such as avoidance, suppression, dissociation, and exaggerated self-enhancement (e.g., bonanno, 2005; ozer, best, lipsey, & weiss, 2003). protecting yourself defensively with exaggerated self-enhancement and positive illusions is may be more important in the immediate aftermath of trauma than making accurate self-assessments. the world does not stop after being assaulted. survivors might still have to deal with the stressors and responsibilities of daily life: childcare, paid work, schooling, friends, family, romantic partners, and/or home maintenance as well as potentially interact with their assaulters. attempts to avoid, suppress, or dissociate at the time of the sexual assault are common and relatively effective for surviving the ordeal. in the immediate and short-term these functional survival strategies could lead to the artificial and faulty conclusion that sexual assault increases well-being. emotion regulation research suggests that strategies aimed to disengage from current distress may provide short-term reprieve that ultimately comes at the expense of longer-term psychological functioning (aldao, nolen-hoeksema, & schweizer, 2010). more work is needed on the strategies deployed by sexual assault survivors from prior to being assaulted, during the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 assault, and the temporal course afterwards—including a detailed analysis of when strategies are and are not functional, and in what ways do sexual assault survivors rigidly stick to strategies long beyond their functional value. 2. any short-term increase in well-being in sexual assault survivors being studied might reflect posttraumatic growth. the value of descriptive data is illustrating the wide range of complexities in human behavior that are often overlooked when focusing on sample means. extreme events might lead to extreme changes. we might assume sexual assault only leads to extreme adverse changes. yet, in the immediate aftermath of sexual assault, a survivor can discover how much care and validation friends, family, and romantic partners offer, or a recognition of strengths that are deployed in challenging circumstances (such as courage, perseverance, or forgiveness) (e.g., elderton, berry, & chan, 2017; ulloa, guzman, salazar, & cala, 2016). at first pass, the idea of posttraumatic growth might seem invalidating or dismissive of the pain caused by a trauma. to the contrary, posttraumatic growth offers a hopeful perspective on trauma by suggesting that trauma survivors may gain something positive from the trauma despite or because of the pain it caused. this hypothesis of “strength through suffering” is akin to the redemptive value of suffering found in many religious teachings. janoff-bulman (2004) reported that one sexual assault survivor shared with her, “i feel much stronger now ... part of that rape was to dominate and humiliate me, and he didn't succeed at that. i came through with my integrity-i got through those months of hell.” in a small subset of survivors, posttraumatic growth following sexual assault might emerge rapidly. 3. on a descriptive level, some sexual assault survivors appear to show signs of declining well-being prior to the sexual assault. questions arise as to whether people with compromised well-being are at increased risk of being the target of predators. there is evidence that sexual abusers are more likely to seek out potential victims according to psychological markers of vulnerability including low self-worth, loneliness, and emotional disturbances (e.g., wolak, finkelhor, mitchell, & ybarra, 2010). to be very clear and explicit: by no means are we attributing any blame to sexual assault survivors. instead, we point out a research question as to whether a dynamic decline in well-being is noticeable to sexual predators and used to target specific individuals. markers of low energy, insufficient social resources, and unsatisfied psychological needs might signal vulnerability that sexual predators aim to prey upon. more work is needed from the lens of existing and potential sexual assault perpetrators to understand who they pick out, who they dismiss as targets, and why. this knowledge can assist prevention and intervention efforts. we know that people are more likely to be assaulted by someone they know (jones, wynn, kroeze, dunnuck, & rossman, 2004). it is possible that the downward trend of well-being prior to being assaulted is the result of grooming by an abusive romantic partner (or family member, friend, neighbor, or colleague). 4. our work also raises issues about measurement. while all participants received the same training on the definition of terms, their rating and meaning system might have changed in the aftermath of sexual assault. in the absence of cognitive interviews or think aloud paradigms (e.g., davison, navarre, & vogel, 1995), we simply do not know whether their definition of low, medium, and high positive affect, self-esteem, and other well-being features changed. we might hypothesize that for some survivors, a contrast effect emerged such that the threshold for experiencing a good or even exceptional day lowered after an incident of sexual assault. we cannot assume that the measures operate the same http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 if a person changes in the aftermath of sexual assault. perhaps our data suggesting a slight increase in well-being after sexual assault is a measurement artifact. future research would benefit from mixed-method designs that incorporate qualitative data collection, which can help illuminate the meaning of participant’s quantitative responses. our results are provocative, if only because of the transparency of the temporal sequence of what seven people experienced in days leading up to a sexual assault and their responses afterwards. in the absence of a larger sample size assessing coping strategies deployed and whether attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and personality changed, we are left with questions on the heterogeneity of sexual assault survivors. it is important to add an interpretative caveat that we did not followup with survivors directly about the sexual assault after it happened (e.g., how survivors felt about the assault) or in the long-term. as with most studies of traumatic events, our interpretations are limited to data about processes that are assumed to be related to sexual assault, but in the absence of direct questions about the assault, cannot be guaranteed. questions remain as to how survivors’ daily well-being operates weeks later and the percentage that show recovery versus resilience (e.g., bonanno, 2013; steenkamp et al., 2012). in sum, our data are descriptive, not predictive. future work would benefit from a wide range of potential moderators including the degree of sexual interaction during the assault or non-consensual sex, whether the perpetrator was known and if so what type of relationship existed, and the context of the event (e.g., psychological coercion, physical incapacitation from alcohol or drugs, threat or use of physical force). with respect to survivors who displayed minimal immediate distress, it would be valuable to collect (informant) data from individuals close to the survivor (e.g., parent, romantic partner, friend, roommate) and compare these trajectories to how survivors of assaults report their well-being. a larger sample will allow for such examinations of whether there are meaningful person and situational variables that influence well-being trajectories. despite the small sample, the results have conceptual and policy relevant implications by questioning the idea of a prototypical profile of survivors. some survivors in our sample reported being emotionally distraught, others reported no discernible change in emotional disturbances and well-being, whereas others’ reports suggested they outwardly appeared to be healthy— which for some, might be the result of effectively deployed avoidance strategies to cope with the sexual assault and maintain a semblance of day-to-day functioning. we hope these data initiate new research and help end judgments rendered on sexual assault survivors based on whatever psychological state emerges when discussing the incident, a day, week, month, or years later. as with any stressor, people will likely experience and display diverse responses to sexual assault. by moving beyond explorations of mean/average reactions, researchers can refine existing conceptual models of survivors for practitioners and policy makers. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors todd b. kashdan george mason university tkashdan@gmu.edu patrick e. mcknight george mason university http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sexual assault kashdan, mcknight, disabato, kelso, lauber, & goodman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 david j. disabato george mason university kerry c. kelso george mason university marla lauber george mason university fallon r. goodman george mason university publishing timeline received 22 june 2020 accepted 5 july 2020 published 1 october 2020 references alper, n. o., & wassall, g. h. 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(2017). the influence of gender and cultural values on savoring in korean undergraduates. international journal of wellbeing, 7(2), 43-63. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i2.598 soyeon kim loyola university chicago skim29@luc.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 article the influence of gender and cultural values on savoring in korean undergraduates soyeon kim · fred b. bryant abstract: the present study investigated antecedents of savoring beliefs and responses in a sample of south korean college students. historically, korea has been strongly influenced by chinese confucianism, which emphasizes not only gender-role differentiation and patriarchal norms, but also the dampening of emotions as a culturally appropriate style of positive emotional regulation. we hypothesized that korean females, relative to males, would reject traditional asian cultural values in order to gain more empowerment, and would, as a result, report a greater capacity to savor positive experience. confirming the hypotheses, korean women, compared to men, reported stronger disagreement with traditional asian values, greater overall savoring ability, greater capacity for cognitive elaboration, and less use of dampening and greater use of amplifying as savoring responses to positive events. path analyses supported our hypothesized mediational model in which korean women, relative to men, more strongly rejected traditional asian values, which predicted less dampening (but only marginally greater amplifying). we conclude that among young korean adults: (a) savoring is a relevant concept; (b) traditional asian values tend to promote dampening of positive emotions; and (c) women more strongly reject traditional cultural values, tend to engage in less dampening and greater amplifying, and perceive greater savoring capacity, relative to men. keywords: savoring, gender, confucianism, cross-cultural 1. introduction although the field of psychology has traditionally focused on psychological distress and psychopathology (bryant, 2003), the fast-growing field of positive psychology (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000) has integrated positive mental health and wellbeing to gain a more comprehensive understanding of adaptive human functioning. paralleling the process of coping, through which people regulate the adverse consequences of distress, savoring has been recognized as a process through which people attend to positive experiences and engage in thoughts and behaviors that regulate positive feelings that arise from these experiences (bryant, 1989; bryant, 2003; bryant, chadwick, & kluwe, 2011; bryant & veroff, 2007). in the present study, we investigate the influence of gender and traditional asian values on savoring among young korean adults. 1.1 savoring bryant and veroff (2007) described savoring as reflecting people’s capacities to attend to and appreciate positive life experiences, and to regulate positive feelings in response to positive events. in other words, savoring processes can amplify or dampen the intensity of positive mailto:skim29@luc.edu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 emotions, and can extend or shorten the duration of enjoyment derived from positive events. in explicating the concept of savoring, bryant and veroff (2007) distinguished savoring beliefs (i.e., self-evaluations of one’s ability to regulate positive experience) from savoring responses (i.e., thoughts and behaviors in which people engage in reaction to positive experiences, and which regulate levels of consequent positive emotion, including happiness). prospective longitudinal research indicates that savoring responses predict one’s level of happiness in daily life (jose, lim, & bryant, 2012). developing and validating the savoring beliefs inventory (sbi) as a measure of perceived ability to savor positive experiences, bryant (2003) demonstrated that people hold savoring beliefs with respect to three temporal orientations reflecting the ability to derive enjoyment in the present by (a) anticipating future positive events before these events happen, (b) savoring the moment using specific cognitive and behavioral savoring strategies while positive events are unfolding, and (c) reminiscing about past positive events after these events have occurred. using the sbi in american samples, bryant (2003) found that, compared to men, women feel more capable of enjoying positive outcomes in all three temporal domains—that is, by anticipating upcoming positive events, savoring the moment, and reminiscing about positive memories. these gender differences in savoring beliefs have been found in a variety of western countries, including the united states, canada, and australia (bryant & veroff, 2007). developing and validating the ways of savoring checklist (wosc), which measures thoughts and behaviors in response to positive events, bryant and veroff (2007) identified ten different savoring subscales (i.e., sharing with others, memory building, self-congratulation, comparing, sensory-perceptual sharpening, absorption, behavioral expression, temporal awareness, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking). yet, the positive psychology literature currently lacks systematic research on savoring beliefs and savoring responses in asian cultures in general and in korean samples in particular. 1.2 savoring in asian cultures traditionally, collectivist asian cultures have emphasized dampening of positive emotions, in contrast to individualistic western cultures that have emphasized amplifying of positive emotions (miyamoto & ma, 2011). east asian individuals may seek to diminish the inner experience and outward display of positive and negative emotion due to cultural scripts involving dialectical beliefs, i.e., that reality is constantly changing—misery becomes happiness, and happiness becomes misery—and the balanced “middle way” is best (miyamoto & ma, 2011). within this cultural context, korean individuals may tend to respond to positive events with what have been termed “kill-joy” thoughts (beck, 1975; bryant & veroff, 2007) that dampen positive emotions in western samples. along these lines, cross-cultural research on the relationship between savoring and fear of happiness (joshanloo, lepshokova, panyusheva, natalia, poon, yeung et al., 2014) also indicates that people who believe happiness leads to negative consequences tend to engage in higher levels of dampening to regulate positive emotions. in a related vein, studying the relationship between emotional display rules and individualism versus collectivism among more than 5,000 respondents in 32 countries, matsumoto, yoo, fontaine, anguas-wong, ariola, ataca et al. (2008) found that collectivist countries had lower expressivity norms for positive emotions, compared to individualistic countries. likewise, miyamoto and ma (2011) concluded that cultural scripts shape emotion regulation in japan, such that japanese are less inclined than americans to amplify positive emotions. considered together, this relevant research suggests that dampening responses may be more prevalent than amplifying responses in korean samples. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 1.3 gender differences in emotional experiences and savoring in comparing the emotions of men and women, grossman and wood (1993) have used social role theory to explain observed gender differences in emotional experience. in general, research has demonstrated that women report more intense emotions than men and are more likely to seek out and express emotional experiences (eagly & wood, 1982). these gender differences in emotion may be a consequence of traditional sex roles, such as the caretaker role of women. for example, relative to men, women may show greater emotional sensitivity and expressiveness because women’s traditional caretaker role required emotion-related skills, which are associated with beliefs and expectations that women should be more responsive to their own and others’ emotions (eagly & wood, 1982). thus, gender differences in emotional experiences may have arisen from differential social beliefs and expectations regarding male and female roles (grossman & wood, 1993). 1.4 confucianism and savoring in korean culture traditional asian values may have a particularly strong influence in korean culture. according to kalton (1994), “it is almost a commonplace in east asian studies” that korea is and was “the ‘most confucian’ of east asian societies” (p. 239). the last and longest-lived chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910) prided itself on adherence to confucian norms, which dictated propriety and harmonious attachment to self and others (joshanloo, 2014) and allowed korean women to have status and authority only within the domestic arena (deuchler, 1993). although south korea has over the past few decades experienced “conflict between traditional values and the confucian heritage on the one hand and western influence through economic and social changes on the other” (park & cho, 1995, p. 132), sociologists have argued that confucian values continue to exert a stronger influence on south korean culture than on other east asian cultures. what implications does the particularly strong influence of confucian values on south korean culture have for the ways of savoring among south koreans as opposed to other east asians? we might expect south koreans to be especially predisposed to conceive of savoring in ways that are consistent with the confucian notion of propriety and the dampening of emotions. thus, we hypothesized that in a korean sample, traditional asian values would predict a savoring style of greater dampening. because rejecting traditional asian values does not necessarily imply greater endorsing of western values, we also expected that rejecting traditional asian values would predict lower levels of dampening but not necessarily higher levels of western-style amplifying of positive emotions. 1.5 gender and cultural values in korea although social psychologists have argued that patriarchal social structure is not a universal tendency (wood & eagly, 2002), research has suggested that men generally have more social power than women across many cultures (rosaldo & lamphere, 1974). throughout its long history, chinese confucianism, which emphasizes strict gender-role differentiation and patriarchal social norms, has influenced many asian countries (kim, 1997). as a result, traditional korean cultural values have also been embedded in these gender-differentiated confucian norms, and historically, it was typical for korean families to prefer sons over daughters (deuchler, 1993). over time, however, education and globalization may alter such historical customs. according to stacki and monkman’s (2003) process model of empowerment and change, education generally facilitates changes in the status quo and promotes gender equity. women influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 have traditionally been denied access to higher education in traditional korean society, as was historically the case in western societies. as a result of the pervasive influence of globalization, western values have increasingly challenged traditional korean values, especially among younger generations. contrary to traditional korean values, western values accentuate individual achievement and independence and emphasize gender equity. living in an era of conflict between traditional and new westernized values, korean males and females may differentially react by either accepting or rejecting traditional values. for example, korean females relative to korean males may be more likely to reject traditional asian values because korean females might gain more from the empowerment that rejecting these values provides, whereas korean males derive greater power from the status quo within the context of korean traditional values. based on this reasoning, we hypothesized an integrative path model in which korean females (relative to males) would more strongly reject traditional asian values, which would predict lower levels of dampening for females. 1.6 the purpose of the current study this study aims to compare males’ and females’ savoring beliefs and savoring responses in korean culture. although bryant and veroff’s (2007) book on savoring was translated into korean in 2010 (kwon, lim, & ha, 2010), the concept of savoring is new to korean culture and has not been studied among korean samples. because the notion of savoring has been conceptualized and investigated largely within western culture, it is important to understand koreans’ savoring beliefs and savoring responses from a korean cultural perspective, framed in terms of traditional asian cultural values. hypothesis 1. we hypothesized that korean women, compared to korean men, would more strongly reject traditional asian values, as assessed by a korean version of the asian values scale (kim, atkinson, & yang, 1999). hypothesis 2. we hypothesized that korean women would endorse stronger savoring beliefs (i.e., a greater savoring capacity) than would korean men. hypothesis 3. we hypothesized that korean women, compared to korean men, would report less dampening and greater amplifying in response to positive events. hypothesis 4. we hypothesized an indirect effect linking gender to asian values, and asian values to savoring responses. in particular, we predicted a two-path mediational effect in which korean females (relative to males) would more strongly reject traditional asian values, which in turn would predict lower levels of dampening in response to positive events. 2. method 2.1 participants survey data were collected from 296 korean participants in summer 2012 in seoul, south korea. however, survey data for only 288 respondents were analyzed, due to missing data for 2.7% of the sample. participants were undergraduate students of four different korean universities, and data collection at these various universities was approved by the irb at loyola university chicago. participants were recruited from two large public and two large private universities in the metropolitan area of seoul, south korea. participants provided informed consent and had to be at least 18 years of age to take part in the research. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 2.2 procedures to check the equivalence of meaning in cross-cultural translation, we adopted a back-translation method (brislin, 1970), through which all of the original english measures were translated into korean by the bilingual researcher (sk) and then back-translated to english afterward by a second bilingual korean person. during data collection, the researcher obtained completed informed consent forms at the beginning of the study, and asked participants to fill out the survey questionnaire either in class or later at the library. participants were informed that the survey was anonymous and their survey responses would remain confidential. in exchange for voluntary participation in the study, a free ballpoint pen was offered to each participant. at the end of the study, the researcher debriefed participants and described the research hypotheses. 2.3 measures cultural values. the asian values scale (avs; kim, atkinson, & yang, 1999) was used to assess cultural values associated with korean respondents’ ethnic and cultural beliefs, including conformity to norms, family recognition through achievement, emotional self-control, collectivism, humility, and filial piety. the avs consists of 36 statements to which respondents indicate their level of agreement, using a seven-point scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree. research supports the internal consistency and test -retest reliability of the avs, as well as its structural and construct validity as a measure of traditional asian cultural values (kim et al., 1999; kim, yang, atkinson, wolfe, & hong, 2001). savoring beliefs. the savoring beliefs inventory (sbi; bryant, 2003) was used to measure individuals’ perceived capacity to savor positive experience in terms of their ability to derive enjoyment through anticipating future positive events, appreciating positive events in the moment, and reminiscing about past positive events. the sbi consists of 24 statements that respondents rate in terms of how true these statements are for them personally, using a sevenpoint scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree. eight sbi items assess futurefocused savoring through anticipation, eight items assess present-focused savoring of the moment, and eight items assess past-focused savoring through reminiscence, and within each temporal domain, half of the items reflect the endorsement of savoring ability, and half reflect the rejection of savoring ability (bryant, 2003). strong evidence supports the sbi’s internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as its structural, construct, and criterion validity as a measure of savoring capacity across a wide age range (bryant, 2003; bryant & veroff, 2007). savoring responses. the ways of savoring checklist (wosc; bryant & veroff, 2007) was used to measure participants’ savoring responses. the 56 closed-ended wosc items assess cognitive and behavioral responses to a recent positive event of the respondent’s choice. respondents rate each savoring response in terms of the degree to which it applies to what they thought and did during the positive event, using a seven-point scale ranging from (1) definitely doesn’t apply, to (4) applies somewhat, to (7) definitely applies. the wosc provides 10 subscale scores reflecting different types of cognitive and behavioral savoring strategies people use to regulate good feelings during positive experiences: sharing with others, memory building, selfcongratulation, sensory-perceptual sharpening, comparing, absorption, behavioral expression, temporal awareness, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking. there is evidence to support the internal consistency reliability of the wosc, as well as its structural, construct, and prospective criterion validity as a measure of savoring responses to positive events (bryant & veroff, 2007; jose et al., 2012; smith & bryant, 2012, 2017). influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 2.4 establishing item sets although the field of psychology is largely based on western traditions that emphasize liberal individualism (joshanloo, 2014), theories grounded in western perspectives are not necessarily generalizable to eastern cultures (uchida & kitayama, 2009). whereas easterners’ emotional experiences tend to emphasize interdependence, collectivism, and harmonious relationships with others, westerners’ emotional experiences typically reflect a greater emphasis on independence and individualism (uchida, norasakkunkit, & kitayama, 2004). because korea is an east asian culture, koreans may report savoring beliefs and may savor positive experiences in ways that differ from those of westerners. for this reason, we chose to construct measurement models of savoring beliefs and savoring responses based on exploratory factor analyses of our korean data, rather than simply adopting measurement structures developed using western samples. 3. results 3.1 constructing composite subscales to develop composite measures of factors underlying responses to each self-report instrument that were appropriate for the korean sample, we used principal axis factoring (paf) with promax rotation to allow latent factors to be correlated and maximize the common variance that the factors explained (thompson, 2004). horn’s (1965) parallel analysis, which is considered the optimal method for determining the most appropriate number of underlying factors (dinno, 2009), was used to identify the underlying structures and subscales for each self-report instrument. in particular, we used paran, a plug-in of the visual statistics system (young, valero-mora, & friendly, 2006), to conduct nonparametric monte carlo parallel analysis of responses to each instrument by generating 1,000 random data sets each with n = 288, based on multivariate permutations of the sample data. in interpreting factors and constructing composite subscales, we retained items with loadings > .40 (matsunaga, 2010). asian values scale. from paf with promax rotation and the parallel analysis, four factors were extracted for the set of 36 items constituting the asian values scale. however, based on recommendations in the factor analysis literature (velicer & fava, 1998), we decided to drop the third and fourth factors on which only two items loaded > .40, and we thus analyzed only the first two paf factors (see table 1 below). the first factor, labeled “conformity to collectivist social norms,” consisted of eight items (cronbach’s α = .76), e.g., “one should think about one’s group before oneself.” the second factor, labeled “rejection of traditional asian values,” was composed of seven items (α = .75), e.g., “one should be able to question a person in an authority position.” savoring beliefs inventory. rather than adopting the sbi subscales developed using western samples, we sought to identify sbi dimensions that were relevant for korean respondents. the results of paf with promax rotation suggested that three reliable factors underlie responses to the 24 items constituting the korean version of the savoring beliefs inventory (sbi; bryant, 2003), as also reported in table 1, and the parallel analysis confirmed the appropriateness of retaining three factors. the first factor, labeled “endorsement of savoring,” consisted of 12 items—e.g., “i enjoy looking back on happy times from my past,” “i know how to make the most of a good time,” “before a good thing happens, i look forward to it in ways that give me pleasure in the present”—reflecting the belief that one can amplify positive emotional experiences through retrospective, concurrent, or prospective savoring (α = .87). influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 table 1a. results of separate, exploratory principal axis factor analyses with promax rotation for the asian value scale, savoring beliefs inventory, and ways of savoring checklist (n = 288) asian values scale (avs) items item factor loadings factor 1 factor 2 1. conformity to collectivist social norms: avoid bringing displeasure to ancestors follow familial and social expectations should not make waves do not disgrace family reputation should think about group before oneself regard individual achievements as family's achievements do not leave parents in retirement homes do not deviate from familial and social norms 2. rejection of traditional asian values: one doesn't have to focus on studies young people can confront their elders elders may not have more wisdom than young people educational and career achievements are not the top priority parents' love should be openly expressed family's reputation is not the primary concern one should be able to question an authority figure percentage of variance eigenvalue 4-.75 -4.67 -4.54 -4.53 -4.52 -4.44 -4.43 -4.42 -4.01 4-.09 -4.02 4-.08 -4.23 -4.17 4-.07 14.43 45.20 4-.15 4-.19 4-.00 4-.40 4-.26 4-.14 4-.07 -4.23 -4.60 -4.58 -4.58 -4.57 -4.53 -4.44 4-.42 11.55 44.16 influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 table 1b. results of separate, exploratory principal axis factor analyses with promax rotation for the asian value scale, savoring beliefs inventory, and ways of savoring checklist (n = 288) savoring beliefs inventory (sbi) items item factor loadings factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 1. endorsement of savoring: make myself feel good by remembering pleasant events like to store memories of fun times enjoy looking back on happy times know how to make the most of a good time easy to rekindle the joy from pleasant memories feel good by imagining happy moment before it happens make my enjoyment of a happy time last longer enjoy pleasant events in my mind before they occur feel fully able to appreciate good things easy for me to enjoy myself get pleasure by looking forward to good things feel the joy of anticipation 2. rejection of cognitive elaboration: thinking about past good times is a waste of time once a fun time is over, do not think about it don't like to look back at good times can't capture the joy of happy moments hard to enjoy myself anticipating upcoming good events is a waste of time 3. rejection of positive affective consequences: reminiscing about pleasant memories makes me sad don't enjoy things as much as i should hard for me to hang onto a good feeling anticipating a pleasant event makes me uncomfortable percentage of variance eigenvalue -.74 .71 .64 .62 .60 .56 .56 .55 .55 .51 .44 .44 .00 .04 -.25 .02 -.04 .00 .09 -.05 -.07 .05 28.29 6.79 13-.11 13-.33 13-.18 13-.05 13-.10 13-.14 13-.04 13-.25 13-.21 13-.21 13-.22 13-.24 13-.73 13-.72 13-.67 13-.50 13-.48 13-.40 13-.05 13-.18 13-.16 13-.21 -13.32 1-3.20 1-.08 1-.21 1-.31 1-.21 1-.11 1-.07 1-.11 1-.02 1-.05 1--.27 1-.28 1-.04 -1.18 1-.03 1-.12 1-.25 1-.36 1-.19 1-.67 1-.64 1-.61 1-.47 -8.11 -1.95 influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 table 1c. results of separate, exploratory principal axis factor analyses with promax rotation for the asian value scale, savoring beliefs inventory, and ways of savoring checklist (n = 288) the ways of savoring checklist (wosc) items item factor loadings factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 factor 4 factor 5 factor 6 1. broadband dampening: withdrew my feelings thought the positive event wasn't as good as i'd hoped for thought something that made me feel guilty reminded myself of other places i should be focused on the future thought about other problems i still had to face reminded myself the positive event would be over soon told myself why i didn't deserve this positive event compared myself to others tried to speed up and move more quickly 2. broadband amplifying: thought about what a triumph the positive event was gave thanks for my good fortune reminded myself how lucky i was reminded myself what a relief it was told myself how proud i was thought about what a lucky person i am to have good things told myself how impressed others must be 3. awareness of temporal fleetingness & memory building: reminded myself that i must enjoy it now thought about how fast the time was passing reminded myself that nothing lasts forever tried to memorize my surroundings thought about how things might never be this good again reminded myself how transient this moment was thought about what a good time i was having took photographs with a camera took mental photographs -.72 -.70 -.67 -.66 -.56 -.54 -.51 -.49 -.46 -.45 -.10 -.07 -.13 -.19 -.17 -.09 -.29 -.09 -.22 -.08 -.03 -.14 -.07 -.16 -.13 -.23 -.06 -.34 -.05 -.13 -.17 -.06 -.09 -.13 -.20 -.16 -.74 -.68 -.64 -.55 -.54 -.49 -.48 -.18 -.07 -.03 -.23 -.27 -.01 -.27 -.22 -.32 -.10 -.03 -.03 -.02 -.02 -.19 -.40 -.04 -.18 -.20 -.05 -.09 -.06 -.08 -.16 -.05 -.09 -.71 -.66 -.65 -.49 -.48 -.44 -.43 -.43 -.41 -.09 .19 -.18 -.05 -.00 -.21 -.03 -.09 -.19 -.13 -.08 -.15 -.10 -.03 -.03 -.15 -.05 -.05 -.01 -.07 -.03 -.04 -.20 -.11 -.12 -.00 -.01 -.03 -.03 -.11 -.02 -.02 -.11 -.03 -.01 -.02 -.08 -.03 -.12 -.07 -.02 -.10 -.18 -.03 -.12 -.06 -.04 -.01 -.01 -.01 -.16 -.20 -.03 -.11 -.06 -.06 -.07 -.09 -.06 -.01 -.15 -.05 -.12 -.17 -.11 -.06 -.16 -.01 -.03 -.00 -.17 -.08 -.10 -.09 -.07 -.05 -.12 -.02 influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 table 1d. results of separate, exploratory principal axis factor analyses with promax rotation for the asian value scale, savoring beliefs inventory, and ways of savoring checklist (n = 288) the ways of savoring checklist (wosc) items item factor loadings 2factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 factor 4 factor 5 factor 6 4. sensory-perceptual sharpening & absorption: tried to focus on certain sensory properties thought only about the present relaxed to try to become more absorbed in the event blocked out distractions tried to take in every sensory property of the event took in the moment tried to become more alert tried not to look too far ahead tried to slow down 5. behavioral expression: made verbal expressions of excitement touched myself made other verbal sounds of appreciation showed physical expressions of energy 6. sharing with others: thought about sharing this later with others looked for others to share this with talked to others about this good feeling percentage of variance eigenvalue -23.19 23-.19 23-.29 -23.18 23-.15 -23.06 -23.31 -23.20 -23.29 23-.04 -23.07 -23.00 -23.11 -23.11 23-.02 23-.06 -23.27 -13.03 2-.22 -2.03 -2.09 -2.05 -2.04 -2.25 -2.23 2-.25 -2.07 2-.03 2-.01 2-.04 2-.04 2-.04 2-.01 2-.23 -8.52 -4.77 2-.07 -2.01 -2.18 -2.09 -2.03 -2.05 2-.19 2-.01 -2.10 -2.04 2-.09 2-.12 2-.18 2-.08 2-.03 2-.01 -4.91 -2.75 2-.62 2-.62 2-.56 2-.56 2-.51 2-.48 2-.43 2-.41 2-.41 2-.02 2-.08 2-.11 -2.20 2-.06 2-.09 2-.13 -4.37 -2.45 -2.21 -2.10 2-.04 2-.05 2-.05 2-.03 2-.04 2-.09 2-.13 2-.87 2-.85 2-.68 2-.63 2-.14 2-.00 2-.20 3.73 2.09 2-.01 2-.01 2-.06 2-.23 2-.37 2-.11 2-.02 2-.03 2-.02 2-.08 2-.04 2-.11 2-.06 2-.94 2-.77 2-.50 3.05 1.71 note: factor loadings > .40 (matsunaga, 2010) are bolded. because avs factors 3 and 4 and wosc factor 7 had only two items with loadings > .40, they were excluded from the analyses and omitted from this table (see velicer & fava, 1998). due to copyright restric tions, the items in this table have been paraphrased from the original wording so as to convey item content without reporting exact verbatim wording. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 the second factor, labeled “rejection of cognitive elaboration,” contained six items—e.g., “for me, once a fun time is over and gone, it's best not to think about it,” “i can't seem to capture the joy of happy moments,” “for me, anticipating what upcoming good events will be like is basically a waste of time”—reflecting the rejection of cognitive elaboration as a way to savor positive experiences in the past, present, or future (α = .83). the third factor, labeled “rejection of positive affective consequences,” included four items—e.g., “when i reminisce about pleasant memories, i often start to feel sad or disappointed,” “it's hard for me to hang onto a good feeling for very long,” “when i think about a pleasant event before it happens, i often start to feel uneasy or uncomfortable”—reflecting the belief that one can amplify or prolong positive feelings in relation to the past, present, or future (α = .73). the ways of savoring checklist. rather than adopting the wosc subscales developed using western samples, we sought to identify ways of savoring that were applicable to korean respondents. both paf with promax rotation and the parallel analysis revealed that seven dominant factors underlie responses to the 56 items constituting the korean version of the wosc. however, the seventh factor consisted of only two items with loadings > .40, and thus was excluded from our analyses (see velicer & fava, 1998). as also seen in table 1, the first factor, “broadband dampening,” consisted of ten items—e.g., “i withdrew and inhibited my feelings”— reflecting kill-joy thinking as a general dampening strategy in response to positive events (α = .84). the second factor, “broadband amplifying,” included seven items—e.g., “i reminded myself how lucky i was to have this good thing happen to me”—reflecting cognitive savoring responses that serve to amplify positive emotions (α = .81). the third factor, labeled “awareness of temporal fleetingness and memory building,” included nine items—e.g., “i thought how i wished this moment could last—reminded myself how i must enjoy it now because it would soon be over”—reflecting perceptions of the scarcity of time during positive events and the active encoding of positive situational details to preserve these experiences for later recall (α = .83). the fourth factor, labeled “sensory-perceptual sharpening and absorption,” consisted of nine items—e.g., “i tried to take in every sensory property of the event (sights, sounds, smells, etc.)”—reflecting active efforts to block out distracting stimuli in order to become more fully engrossed in the moment (α = .83). the fifth factor, labeled “behavioral expression,” included four items—e.g., “i jumped up and down, ran around or showed other physical expressions of energy”—reflecting the physical display of positive emotions (α = .83). the sixth factor, labeled “sharing with others,” consisted of three items—e.g., “i thought about sharing the memory of this later with other people”—reflecting spontaneous communication of positive emotions to other people (α = .79). 3.2 descriptive statistics table 2 reports the results of descriptive analyses (n = 288), including variable means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations. correlations between specific subscales provide evidence concerning the convergent validity of these particular measures. for instance, the first sbi subscale, “endorsement of savoring beliefs,” is significantly and positively correlated with the second wosc subscale, “amplification of positive emotional experiences,” r = .44, p < .001, as would be expected if both subscales in fact reflect tendencies to intensify and prolong positive emotional experiences. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 table 2. intercorrelations and descriptive statistics for sbi subscales, wosc subscales, avs subscales, and gender (n = 288) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. sbi1 endorsement of savoring -5.87 2. sbi2 rejection of cognitive elaboration 5-.31 -5.83 3. sbi3 rejection of positive affective consequences 5-.28 -5.50 -5.73 4. wosc1 broadband dampening 5-.02 -5.59 -5.47 -5.84 5. wosc2 broadband amplifying 5-.44 -5.01 -5.05 -5.34 -5.81 6. wosc3 awareness of temporal fleetingness & memory building 5-.33 -5.01 -5.25 -5.37 -5.51 -5.83 7. wosc4 sensory-perceptual sharpening & absorption 5-.40 -5.23 -5.12 -5.46 -5.53 -5.55 -5.83 8. wosc5 behavioral expression 5-.16 -5.01 5-.08 -5.28 -5.35 -5.35 -5.36 -5.83 9. wosc6 sharing with others 5-.31 5-.14 5-.01 -5.05 -5.35 -5.31 -5.16 -5.37 -5.79 10. avs1 conformity to collectivist social norms 5-.07 -5.19 5-.02 -5.18 -5.07 -5.05 -5.08 5-.16 5-.10 -5.76 11. avs2 rejection of traditional asian values 5-.13 5-.45 5-.12 5-.32 5-.05 5-.02 5-.17 -5.01 -5.15 5-.27 5-.75 12. gender 5-.15 5-.35 5-.02 5-.16 -5.17 -5.16 5-.03 -5.10 -5.20 5-.26 5-.25 mean -5.05 -2.58 -3.45 -3.04 -4.51 -4.48 -3.98 -4.13 -5.12 -3.85 -5.24 sd 5-.91 -1.15 -1.25 -1.14 -1.21 -1.25 -1.17 -1.62 -1.39 5-.96 -5.87 note: sbi = savoring beliefs inventory. wosc = ways of savoring checklist. avs = asian values scale. sd = standard deviation. all subscale scores were constructed by averaging scores for constituent items. |rs| = .116 are significant at two-tailed p = .05. |rs| = .152 are significant at two-tailed p = .01. |rs| = .193 are significant at two-tailed p = .001. gender (0 = male, 1 = female). cronbach’s alpha for each subscale is tabled in the diagonal. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 in addition, there is a strong negative correlation between the first sbi subscale, “endorsement of savoring beliefs,” and the first wosc subscale, “dampening of positive emotional experiences,” r = -.59, p < .001, as would be expected if these subscales actually reflect what they are presumed to measure. 3.3 hypothesis testing hypothesis 1: gender differences in asian values. as hypothesized, korean women scored higher on the rejection of traditional asian values subscale of the avs than did korean men, t(286) = 4.44, p < .001, cohen’s d = 0.53, r = .25. on the other hand, korean men scored higher on the conformity to collectivist social norms subscale of the avs than did korean women, t(286) = 4.54, p < .001, d = 0.54, r = .26. hypothesis 2: gender differences in savoring beliefs. supporting the second hypothesis, korean women scored higher on the endorsement of savoring beliefs subscale of the sbi than did korean men, t(286) = 2.54, p < .05, d = 0.30, r = .15, whereas korean men scored higher on the rejection of cognitive elaboration subscale of the sbi than did korean women, t(286) = 6.28, p < .001, d = 0.79, r = .37. contrary to hypothesis 2, however, there was no significant gender difference on the sbi subscale assessing rejection of positive affective consequences, t(286) = 0.28, p = .78, d = 0.03, r = .02. hypothesis 3: gender differences in savoring responses. consistent with hypothesis 3, korean men reported higher levels of wosc broadband dampening than did korean women, t(286) = 2.63, p < .01, d = 0.33, r = .16; and korean women, in contrast, reported a greater use of wosc broadband amplifying than did korean men, t(286) = 2.99, p < .01, d = 0.35, r = .17. along with the broadband amplifying strategies, two narrowband amplifying strategies revealed the same hypothesized pattern of gender differences. specifically, korean women, compared to korean men, reported greater use of the wosc savoring strategies of: (1) awareness of temporal fleetingness and memory-building, t(286) = 2.65, p < .01, d = 0.31, r = .15; and (2) sharing with others, t(286) = 3.45, p < .01, d = 0.41, r = .20. contrary to hypothesis 3, no significant gender differences emerged for the other two narrowband wosc amplifying strategies: (1) sensory-perceptual sharpening and absorption, t(286) = 0.46, p = .65, d = 0.05, r = .03; and (2) behavioral expression, t(286) = 1.77, p < .08, d = 0.21, r = .10 (see table 3). hypothesis 4: indirect effects of asian values on savoring responses. to estimate the hypothesized mediational effect, we employed the preacher and hayes (2008) spss bootstrap macro program using bias-corrected bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples, as well as a normal-theory sobel test of the significance of the indirect effect (see table 4). as hypothesized, korean participants’ cultural values mediated the influence of gender differences on savoring responses. in particular, participants’ rejection of traditional asian values significantly mediated the effects of gender on dampening (see figure 1 below), which represents the most dominant and culturally appropriate savoring response among korean participants: estimated indirect effect = -0.17, se = 0.05, z = 3.38, p < .001, bias corrected 95% ci [-0.31, -0.08]. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 table 3. gender comparison of mean levels of asian values, savoring beliefs, and savoring responses dependent measures males (n = 134) females (n = 154) inferential statistical tests m sd m sd t df p cohen's d effectsize r asian value scale (avs) subscales: conformity to collectivist social norms 4.11 1.00 3.61 0.86 4.54 286† <.001 0.54 .26 rejection of traditional asian values 5.00 0.90 5.45 0.79 4.44 286† <.001 0.53 .25 savoring beliefs inventory (sbi) subscales: endorsement of savoring 4.91 0.85 5.18 0.95 2.54 286† <.012 0.30 .15 rejection of cognitive elaboration 3.01 1.19 2.20 0.96 6.28 286† <.001 0.79 .37 rejection of positive affective consequences 3.48 1.26 3.44 1.24 0.28 286† <.783 0.03 .02 ways of savoring checklist (wosc) subscales: broadband dampening 3.23 1.25 2.88 1.00 2.63 286† <.009 0.33 .16 broadband amplifying 4.29 1.21 4.71 1.18 2.99 286† <.003 0.35 .17 awareness of temporal fleetingness & memory-building 4.27 1.23 4.66 1.23 2.65 286† <.009 0.31 .15 sensory-perceptual sharpening & absorption 4.01 1.26 3.95 1.08 0.46 286† <.647 0.05 .03 behavioral expression 3.95 1.58 4.28 1.63 1.77 286† <.078 0.21 .10 sharing with others 4.82 1.44 5.38 1.30 3.45 286† <.001 0.41 .20 note: †gender comparisons for the sbi rejection of cognitive elaboration and wosc broadband dampening subscales were analyzed using welch's t-test, rather than student's t-test, because of significant gender differences in the variances of these two dependent measures. m = mean. sd = standard deviation. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 table 4. conformity to collectivist social norms and rejection of traditional asian values as mediators of the effect of gender on savoring responses (n=288) mediator: conformity to collectivist social norms indirect (mediated) effect savoring responses coefficients bootstrapped bc 95% ci a b c point estimate se β z lower upper broadband dampening -.50*** .18* -.26 -.09 .04 -.04 2.23* -.19 -.03 broadband amplifying -.50*** .15* .50*** -.07 .04 -.03 1.82 -.17 -.01 awareness of temporal fleetingness & memory-building -.50*** .12 .45** -.06 .04 -.02 1.50 -.16 .01 sensory-perceptual sharpening & absorption -.50*** .10 -.01 -.05 .04 -.02 1.28 -.14 .03 behavioral expression -.50*** -.24* .22 .12 .06 .04 2.12* .02 .25 sharing with others -.50*** -.07 .52** .03 .04 .01 0.79 -.06 .14 mediator: rejection of traditional asian values indirect (mediated) effect savoring responses coefficients bootstrapped bc 95% ci a b c point estimate se β z lower upper broadband dampening .44*** -.39*** -.18 -.17 .05 -.08 3.38*** -.31 -.08 broadband amplifying .44*** -.14† -.48** -.06 .04 -.03 1.55 -.16 -.01 awareness of temporal fleetingness & memory-building .44*** -.09 -.42** -.04 .04 -.02 1.01 -.14 -.04 sensory-perceptual sharpening & absorption .44*** -.24** -.04 -.11 .04 -.05 2.47* -.22 -.03 behavioral expression .44*** -.03 -.35† -.01 .05 -.01 0.22 -.13 -.10 sharing with others .44*** .18† -.48** -.08 .05 -.03 1.71 -.01 -.19 note: †p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. a = unstandardized path coefficient using gender (0 = male, 1 = female) to predict the mediator. b = unstandardized path coefficient using the mediator to predict savoring responses. c = unstandardized path coefficient using gender to predict savoring responses when the mediator is included in the path model. se = standard error. β = standardized indirect effect. bc = bias corrected, using 5,000 bootstrap resamples. ci = confidence int erval. in some cases, the product of the tabled values of coefficients a and b diverges slightly from the tabled value of the point estimate of the indirect effect due to rounding error. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 figure 1. mediation model for associations between gender and broadband dampening as mediated by rejection of traditional asian values (n = 288) estimated indirect effect = -.17; bc 95% ci [-.31, -.08] -.35** (-.18ns) gender .44*** rejection of traditional -.39*** broadband asian values dampening ns not statistically significant. ** p < .01. *** p < .001. note: values displayed above pathways are standardized regression coefficients. the first value above the pathway linking gender to broadband dampening represents the standardized regression coefficient when ignoring the mediator, whereas the value in parentheses represents the standardized regression coefficient when controlling for the mediator. bc: bias corrected; 5,000 bootstrap samples. ci = confidence interval. gender was coded as male = 0 and female = 1. gender explained 6% of the variance in rejection of traditional asian values, which in turn explained 11% of the variance in broadband dampening. rejection of traditional asian values mediated 49% of the total effect of gender on dampening. on the other hand, although the results for hypothesis 3 above highlighted significant gender differences in the use of amplifying strategies (see table 3), tests of indirect effects revealed that the rejection of traditional asian values was only marginally associated with greater amplifying (β = -.03, p < .10) and did not significantly mediate the influence of gender on amplifying (see table 4). 4. discussion relevant to the fields of positive psychology and cross-cultural psychology, the current study enhances our understanding of the relationships among gender, cultural values, and savoring in korea. savoring beliefs and responses are core constructs in the field of psychology (bryant & veroff, 2007), but are novel conceptual frameworks within korean culture. given the absence of research on koreans’ experiences of savoring, our results contribute to an underst anding of how culture influences the ways in which individuals approach positive events and regulate their positive emotions in response to these events. paralleling eagly and wood’s (1999) work on gender differences in emotional experience, bryant and veroff (2007) reported gender differences among western samples in savoring responses to positive events, whereby males are more likely to use kill-joy thinking, a dampening strategy, and females are more likely to endorse cognitive and behavioral amplifying strategies. replicating findings from these western samples, the present korean sample showed the same pattern of gender differences in broadband dampening and amplifying responses. korean women, relative to men, reported greater savoring ability, and used less dampening and more amplifying of emotional responses in reaction to positive events. moreover, our findings suggest that females’ greater rejection of traditional asian values at least partially underlies the gender difference in the dampening of positive emotion that exists within korean culture. the present study illuminates several important conclusions with respect to the influence of culture on savoring. in particular, our results indicate that cultural values shape (a) personal beliefs about savoring capacity and (b) the specific savoring strategies individuals use in response to positive events. influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 what implications do these research results have for understanding cross-cultural differences in response to positive emotions? first, our results support the notion that traditional asian values place less emphasis on the pursuit and attainment of happiness, as has been highlighted in prior cross-cultural research on positive emotions (e.g., eid & diener, 2001; joshanloo & weijers, 2014; kitayama, mesquita, & karasawa, 2006). our findings are also consistent with the view that aversion to happiness is shaped by cultural norms (joshanloo & weijers, 2014). in particular, dampening responses in reaction to pleasant events tend to reduce and curtail happiness (jose et al., 2012). thus, rejecting traditional cultural values evidently leads korean women to respond to positive events in ways that are less antagonistic toward positive feelings. concerning the rejection of traditional asian values, theorists have argued that the influence of confucian norms is destined to decline as globalization increases (see rozman, 2002). along these lines, we can speculate that the gender differences in dampening that we have observed among koreans may well disappear over time, if males eventually become less traditional in their values, as females appear to be. in fact, research has documented a similar pattern of sociohistorical change in the meaning of subjective wellbeing in the united states between the 1950s and 1970s, as men shifted away from a traditional emphasis on career toward an emphasis on family as a basis for gauging quality of life, and became more similar to women in the structure of their self-evaluations (bryant & veroff, 1982). our findings indicate that korean males dampen positive emotions in response to pleasant events more strongly than do korean females, even after accounting for differences in the degree to which they endorse traditional asian values. specifically, level of belief in traditional asia n values explains roughly half of the relationship between gender and dampening in our korean sample. thus, about half of the total effect of gender on dampening is mediated by other factors besides traditional asian values. in interpreting the observed gender differences in savoring beliefs and savoring responses, it is important to distinguish between inner cognitive and emotional experience and the outward expression of inner experience (brody & hall, 1993). the literature on emotion suggests that gender differences (i.e., females stronger than males) are generally more pronounced for emotional expression than for inner experience. furthermore, within the expressivity domain, males tend to express emotions primarily in terms of physiological reactions and overt behavior, whereas females more often express emotions through verbal communication and nonverbal expressions that reflect a more conscious awareness of emotion (brody & hall, 1993). thus, women may be more aware of emotional reactions and more willing and able to express them, relative to men (bryant, yarnold, & grimm, 1996). furthermore, the gender differences we have found in savoring beliefs and savoring responses may simply reflect a gender difference in response styles rather than a difference in inner experience. for example, women may be more likely than men to make public affirmations of positive emotions of greater variety and intensity, due to gender-based emotional display rules (lafrance & banaji, 1992). although korean respondents understood and could relate to the western paradigm of savoring beliefs and responses, they also showed a distinct pattern of responses with respect to savoring, compared to the patterns observed in research with american participants (bryant & veroff, 2007). korean women rejected traditional cultural values more strongly than did korean men. although this rejection of traditional values mediated the relationship between being female and engaging in less eastern-style dampening in response to positive events, it did not mediate the relationship between being female and engaging in greater western-style amplifying in response to positive events. this pattern of results indicates that despite females’ greater influence of gender and culture on savoring kim & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 rejection of traditional cultural values, culture continues to shape their savoring responses in ways that remain normatively appropriate in korean society—specifically, the rejection of traditional asian values was not associated with great amplifying of positive emotions. the present study also contributes to the research literature on cross-cultural positive psychology through the development and preliminary validation of korean versions of the savoring beliefs inventory and the ways of savoring checklist. in the current study, it was vital to translate english-language materials into the korean language by the process of backtranslation, in order to resolve conceptual discrepancies or ambiguities of cross-cultural translation and thereby ensure the construct validity of the dependent measures (brislin, 1970). the availability of these measurement tools should facilitate future research, not only investigating the dynamics of savoring in the context of korean culture, but also comparing savoring beliefs and processes more directly across korean and western cultures. several limitations to the present study suggest potentially fruitful directions for future research. first, we used only self-reported measures of cultural values, savoring beliefs, and responses. for example, the ways of savoring checklist (bryant & veroff, 2007) was used to assess savoring responses, some of which reflect behavioral reactions to actual life events. there might, however, be discrepancies between self-reported behaviors and observable behavioral responses to such events. future researchers should develop and use behavioral measures of savoring responses, in order to overcome this limitation. the present study also relied on measures of savoring beliefs and responses that were originally developed using western samples (bryant, 2003; bryant & veroff, 2007) to assess these constructs in a korean sample. although this assessment approach yielded a set of reliable composite measures that partially resembled those found in western samples, it did not allow us to measure savoring beliefs and responses that are unique to korean culture. future research has much to gain potentially from developing measures of savoring beliefs and responses that are specific to korean culture, rather than adopting measures of these constructs that are grounded in the perspectives of western culture. in particular, whereas the ways of savoring checklist includes items reflecting only a single dimension of cognitive dampening (i.e., “killjoy thinking”), there may well be multiple dimensions of positive emotional dampening, e.g., distraction, fault-finding, externalization, suppression (quoidbach, berry, hansenne, & mikolajczak, 2010), that koreans use to dampen positive emotions in response to positive events. assessing savoring responses that are specific to korean culture might facilitate a clearer and more in-depth understanding of the dynamics of savoring among koreans. another important limitation to our research conclusions involves our use of exploratory factor analysis to develop subscales assessing asian values, savoring beliefs, and ways of savoring without a separate replication. clearly, future factor analytic studies should examine these subscales using larger, independent samples. in addition, the current study used a cross-sectional research design that is inherently correlational in nature. future work might adopt a longitudinal design to study relationships among key study variables over time and examine the relationship between savoring and subjective wellbeing prospectively. along these lines, daily diary methods (jose et al., 2012) and experience-sampling procedures (bryant et al., 2011) may prove valuable in clarifying the influence of savoring strategies on both momentary positive affect and longer-term life quality. although we measured the degree to which participants endorsed traditional asian values, it should be noted that we did not assess the degree to which participants endorsed western values. future research might include separate measures of western cultural values 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(2006). visual statistics: seeing data with dynamic interactive graphics. hoboken, nj: wiley and sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118165409 https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.5 https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v3i1.1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58763-9_8 https://doi.org/10.1037/10694-000 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-004-8785-9 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015634 https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989x.3.2.231 https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.699 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118165409 ackerman, c. e., warren, m. a., & donaldson, s. i., (2018). scaling the heights of positive psychology: a systematic review of measurement scales. international journal of wellbeing, 8(2), 1-21. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i2.734 courtney e. ackerman claremont graduate university courtney.e.ackerman@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article scaling the heights of positive psychology: a systematic review of measurement scales courtney e. ackerman · meg a. warren · stewart i. donaldson abstract: the volume of empirical research on positive psychology topics has grown substantially over the past two decades. this review examines how constructs in positive psychology have been operationalized, measured, validated, cited, and applied to build the science. based on an archive of 972 empirical articles linked to positive psychology, this review found that 762 articles used at least one measurement scale; 312 measures were created or adapted. findings reveal a wide range of scales being used to measure a variety of constructs, including scales on both life-enhancing and life-depleting constructs. key characteristics such as journals, constructs, and scale development and validation information are discussed. there are some reliability analyses and validations occurring within the field, but the creation of new measures far outpaces the validation of existing measures. weaknesses such as multiple operationalizations may be rooted in inadequate discourse and synthesis. we call for further cross-pollination for a more scientifically robust scholarship in positive psychology. keywords: positive psychology, wellbeing, happiness, measurement, self-report measure, systematic review 1. introduction since the inception of positive psychology in 1998 as a formal area of investigation and lens through which to view psychological phenomena, the empirical research on desirable end states and virtuous traits has grown rapidly. the scientific research in positive psychology has drawn increased attention and research each year (donaldson, dollwet, & rao, 2015), and has become deeply engaged in the study of subjective wellbeing (diener, 2013), self-determination (gagné & deci, 2014), positive emotions (tugade, shiota, & kirby, 2014), character strengths (peterson & seligman, 2004), and positive youth development (ciocanel, power, eriksen, & gillings, 2017), among others. in a relatively short period of time, positive psychology has expanded to fields beyond psychology and into interdisciplinary areas of research (e.g., education, public health, political science, neuroscience, and management), influencing a broad range of human pursuits (donaldson, csikszentmihalyi, & nakamura, 2011). despite the rapid growth in research and scholarship, the perceptions of positive psychology as unscientific self-help and popular press psychology have persisted over time (anderson, 2012; cabanas & huertas, 2014; ruark, 2009; woodstock, 2005), as a result of which the scientific foundation of positive psychology is often called into question. therefore, it is useful to review how constructs in positive psychology have been operationalized, measured, validated, cited, and used to build the science. to this end, we review almost two decades of published research associated with positive psychology through the lens of its measurement. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 through this review, we offer an overview of the sociology of positive psychological science and the history of how positive psychologists have created and used self-report measures. as positive psychology has inspired empirical research across psychological subdisciplines, there is considerable attention given to the development and measurement of positive constructs and the study of relationships between them in various contexts. some reviews have synthesized measurement scales used to assess specific constructs (e.g., youth life satisfaction: proctor, linley, & maltby, 2009; post-traumatic growth: joseph & linley, 2008), in specific areas of application (e.g., psychotherapy: smock, 2012; dementia research: stoner, orrell, & spector, 2015), and in specific contexts (e.g., among racial and ethnic groups: chang, downey, hirsch, & lin, 2016; in india: singh, junnarkar, & kaur, 2016). in particular, several reviews focus on wellbeing (e.g., cooke, melchert, & connor, 2016; lindert, bain, kubzansky & stein, 2015; linton, dieppe, & medina-lara, 2016; tsang, wong, & lo, 2012). the current review is intended to push beyond specific topics such as wellbeing and capture a much broader swath of the many constructs associated with positive psychology. in the current article, we draw from a well-established archive (last update 2014) of english language empirical literature in positive psychology published over 17 years (donaldson, et al., 2015; rao & donaldson, 2015; rao, donaldson, & doiron, 2015). using this archive, we map the generativity in the domains and journals that have published the most used self-report measurement scales, constructs that have been the most measured and cited, development of new scales, validation of existing scales, and operationalizations of popular constructs. 2. method 2.1 procedure an archive of peer-reviewed articles published between 1998 and 2014 was used to identify measures developed and used in positive psychology since the inception of the field. since it often takes a few years for measures to become established and used in the literature, we follow up on the most popular scales published in these years with a google scholar citation count up to september 2018. this offers an estimate of use and growth in interest in each of the most popular measures. this archive was developed in 2014 and updated in 2015 to capture articles published from 1998-2014. previous versions of this archive have been used in past reviews (e.g., donaldson et al., 2015; rao & donaldson, 2015; rao et al., 2015); however, the current review involves unique analyses not conducted before. the articles in this archive are english-language peer-reviewed articles collected using the search term “positive psychology” (in quotation marks, with no boolean operators) in five electronic databases: academic search premier, business source premier, eric, psycinfo, and psycarticles. thus, the archive consists of 1,628 peerreviewed articles that the authors explicitly linked to positive psychology. within this archive, the current review screened out non-empirical articles. this yielded a dataset of 972 empirical articles linked to positive psychology. of these 972 empirical articles, 762 utilized at least one measurement scale. the 210 articles excluded from the dataset for this review include: 88 articles that utilized interviews, 37 that relied on archival data, 21 that reported observational data, 18 that used simulations in their experiments, 13 that reported the results of focus groups, and five that analyzed biological or physiological data, along with 28 articles that analyzed other types of data. this review was conducted in accordance with prisma guidelines for systematic reviews (moher, liberati, tetzlaff, & altman, 2009). see figure 1 below for the prisma flowchart for this study. measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 figure 1. prisma flow chart outlining the methods used to create the dataset note: this figure outlines the methods used to narrow down the archive to the final dataset used in this review. 2.2 coding the original coding for the archive involved an examination of the title, journal, abstract, method, results, and discussion, and articles were coded for: (1) disciplinary domains, (2) journal, (3) data collection methods/study design, and (4) measures used. the inter-rater reliability was calculated as the percentage of coder agreement, which resulted in 90.1% agreement across all articles and coding categories (for further information, see donaldson et al., 2015). for this review, additional coding was conducted on the 762 empirical articles that use measurement scales to identify: (5) scale developers, (6) year of development, (7) construct measured, and (8) scale validation information. this additional coding was conducted by the first author, who participated in coding the original archive. as this additional coding focused on objective information and did not involve subjective categorization, the use of multiple coders was not required. one exception was the categorization of a scale as “positive.” for this purpose, the first two authors discussed any scales whose categorization was questionable, and such a scale was categorized as positive only after full consensus was achieved. 2.3 analysis while a range of measures were employed in the dataset, including physiological (e.g., tracking eye movements or heart rate) and observational measurements (e.g., frequency of engagement with others), preliminary analysis revealed a predominant use of self-report (or other-report) measurement scales—78% of empirical articles used some type of self-report measurement scale, with 68% using only self-report measurements. approximately 13% of empirical articles relied on focus groups or interviews, 5% used archival data, 4% used an observational method, 1% used biological measures, and the rest used some other type of measure (grades, responses to simulations, writing analysis, etc.). therefore, we contend that an analysis of measurement scales offers a strong representation of measurement in the field. consequently, the current review focused on self-report measurement scales. 1,628 articles included in original archive (1998 – 2014) (1998 – 2014) 972 empirical articles reviewed for use of measurement scales in this study 762 empirical articles that used measurement scales 210 articles removed that did not use at least one measurement scale, including: • interviews (n=88) • archival data (n=37) • observational data (n=21) • simulations (n=18) • focus groups (n=13) • biological/physiological data (n=5) • other (n=28) 656 records excluded (not empirical) measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 overall, 1,279 established scales were cited in the dataset, along with 310 scales newly created or adapted from existing scales. these scales were examined in terms of domain, constructs, positive scales, adapted or created scales, scale validation, and operationalization of popular constructs. domains. as positive psychology research stems from various sub-disciplines of psychology, the measures cited were coded for the domain of origin, defined as the discipline of the journal within which a scale was originally published. the domains included social, cognitive, developmental, organizational, personality, counseling, clinical, school/educational, pediatric, and applied psychology. constructs. we examined the constructs measured in each scale to identify those that had attracted the most scholarly attention. in cases where the scale name was ambiguous as to the construct being measured, we: 1) reviewed the article(s) that cited the scale for further information, 2) cross-referenced the primary source of scale development to ascertain what the scale was designed to measure, and 3) examined other articles in which the scale was used to identify the specific construct being measured. positive scales. the first step was to determine whether a scale fit with the definition of positive psychology. scales were determined to be aligned with positive psychology if they measured “valued subjective experiences” and states like wellbeing, satisfaction, hope, optimism, flow, and happiness; individual traits like the capacity for love, courage, perseverance, forgiveness, spirituality, and wisdom; or institutional features like responsibility, altruism, organizational citizenship, tolerance, and work ethic (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 5). in other words, scales were considered positive if they measured a construct that is life-giving, that encourages greater wellbeing, or that promotes flourishing (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). to identify the most cited1 positive scales, we calculated the total number of times each scale was employed in a study. (some articles have multiple studies.) in addition, information on scale construction and validity, and the structure of the scale was obtained through examination of the original scale development articles, and subsequent validations or updates, if any. citations outside of the dataset. a google scholar citation analysis was conducted in september 2018 to determine how often the most popular measurement articles from the dataset until 2014 were cited and whether they had gained traction outside of the dataset more recently. google scholar citations represent the number of times the scale’s source article was cited, rather than the number of times the scale was used. in contrast, our citation analysis based on the dataset counts how many times a scale was actually utilized to measure a construct in an empirical study. thus, the review from the dataset offers a conservative estimate of the popularity of a measurement (assessed through actual use), whereas the google scholar citation analysis offers a sense of the broader impact of the measurement article. adapted and newly developed scales. to assess the number of scales adapted, we coded information on the researchers who adapted the scale for use in their study and identified the aspects that were adapted. we relied on each article’s methods to determine whether a scale was adapted or developed. a scale was considered to be newly developed if it was newly 1 when a measure is referred to as “used” or “cited,” we mean that the measure was utilized in the article as a measurement tool, rather than merely mentioned. we do not count it as a “citation” if an article that published the scale was referenced, but the scale was not used in the study. measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 created or deviated considerably from the scale it was inspired by. for example, if the new scale was intended to measure a different construct than the original scale (e.g., compassion versus empathy), it was coded as a newly developed scale. scales were considered to be adapted if the item wording was altered to fit a specific population or setting or if other minor changes were made. in each case, we recorded the source of the scale cited, items used from the other scale, and author(s). scale validation. to examine the extent to which scales are validated in well-developed programs of research, we recorded any validation studies or reliability analyses found in the dataset and noted the number of times the validation or reliability of a scale was a focus of the article. these instances were considered scale validations only if “validation” was explicitly mentioned by the authors and data on the reliability or validity of the scale were presented. while most articles that develop and introduce a new scale also undertake and report preliminary validation, we limited our definition of a scale validation to additional validation research conducted outside of the initial scale development. for example, a standalone study of a scale’s validity and reliability conducted after the scale was developed would count as a scale validation article. similarly, studies that use previously developed scales and report some psychometric information such as internal validity, but do not undertake scale validation to assess the scale itself, such as factor analysis, construct validation, etc. are not considered validation studies for the purpose of this review. we also conducted a search for scale validations and reliability analyses undertaken outside of the positive psychology dataset. a sample of scales was selected from the dataset to compare the number of validation studies within the dataset with the number of validations outside of the dataset. we searched for validation studies on google scholar using the scale name and the search terms “validate” and/or “validation.” multiple operationalizations. as an exploratory investigation and supplementary analysis, we reviewed the most popular constructs for the existence of multiple operationalizations, that is, the existence of more than one distinct definition of the same construct, which can result in different ways of measuring that construct. we noted any instances of significant differences in construct definition or operationalizations. 3. results the dataset of 972 empirical articles yielded 762 articles that used measurement scales in their methods, which became the basis for all further analyses. findings revealed that a total of 1,279 measures were cited, and 310 measures were newly created or adapted from established scales. for a full list of the measures and citations archived in this dataset, please visit https://works.bepress.com/meg-warren/33/. nearly 73% (n = 932) of established measures and 89% (n = 275) of newly created or adapted measures were cited only once in this dataset, only 14% (n = 176) of established measures and 9% (n = 27) of newly created or adapted measures were cited twice in this dataset, while 5% (n = 58) and 1% (n = 3) of the established and newly created or adapted measures were cited three times, respectively. the following sections summarize the key characteristics of the measurement literature. 3.1 domains the disciplinary domains that were the most generative in terms of positive psychology measurement were assessed by examining the journals in which the articles were published. the journals which published the top 25 most cited measures are presented in table 1 below. the top-ranking journal of personality and social psychology was the most popular outlet, such https://works.bepress.com/meg-warren/33/ measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 that more positive psychology scale development articles were published here than in any other journal. table 1. domains that publish positive psychology measures domain count journals social psychology 12 journal of personality and social psychology, journal of personality, journal of personality assessment, self and identity, social psychology quarterly clinical psychology 4 assessment, journal of clinical psychology, journal of mental health, journal of traumatic stress applied psychology/ management 2 journal of counseling psychology, personnel psychology multidisciplinary 2 american psychologist, psychological reports social sciences, general 2 social indicators research educational psychology 1 school psychology international pediatric psychology 1 journal of pediatric psychology positive psychology 1 journal of happiness studies as another method to triangulate the disciplinary influences/domains that underlie the scales, the departmental affiliations of the first authors were examined. out of the 25 most cited scales, 22 first authors were based in psychology departments (i.e., clinical, educational, health, and school psychology), two in sociology, and one in management. these affiliations map on to the journals in which the articles were published. 3.2 constructs findings reveal that a wide range of constructs has been studied in research linked to positive psychology, including constructs that are inherently positive (such as wellbeing and happiness) as well as those with pathological undertones (such as depression and anxiety). unsurprisingly, wellbeing is one of the most cited constructs, with 39 scales measuring some form of wellbeing, although pathology-focused scales were also used extensively in the dataset articles (see table 2 below). for instance, 36 scales of depression were used in the dataset, which is equal to the number of happiness (including subjective wellbeing) scales used. the 10 most cited scales in the dataset measured constructs that were evenly split between pathologyfocused and positive psychological constructs. furthermore, the frequent use of scales on constructs such as post-traumatic growth and coping suggests that the study of positive responses to adverse situations is also an important undertaking in positive psychology. it should be noted that in this review, we use the terminology used by the original developers to identify the construct measured. we do not impose a categorization if it was not intended by the original developers. this strategy, however, also implies that there is likely some gray area in these counts. in cases where a scale measured multiple constructs (e.g., happiness and depression), the scale was counted in both groups (e.g., as both a happiness scale and a depression scale). measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 table 2a. most cited constructs in cited scales construct sub-construct (if any) number of scales representative scales wellbeing general wellbeing 39 spwb (ryff, 1989) happiness/subjective wellbeing 36 ahi (seligman, steen, park & peterson, 2005) life satisfaction 13 swls (diener et al., 1985) total 88 - emotions and mood general emotions/all emotions 31 feq (fordyce, 1988) mood 12 poms (mcnair, lorr, & doppleman, 1971) specifically positive emotions 5 dpes (shiota, keltner, & john 2006) total 48 - personality non-big five 28 eysenck i6 junior questionnaire (eysenck & eysenck, 1975) big five 15 bfi/bfi-44 (john, donahue, & kentle, 1991) total 43 - depression 36 ces-d (locke & putnam, 1971; radloff, 1977) self-esteem and selfefficacy self-esteem 17 rse (rosenberg, 1965) self-efficacy 14 gses (sherer, maddux, merdandante, prentice-dunn, jacobs, & rogers 1982) total 31 - spirituality, religiosity, & faith spirituality 18 bmmrs (fetzer institute & national institute on aging working group, 1999) religiosity & faith 11 rci-10 (worthington et al., 2003) total 29 - physical/general health 28 sf-8 (ware, kosinksi, dewey, & gandek 2001) anxiety 26 dass (lovibond & lovibond, 1995) stress (not including post-traumatic stress) 24 pss (cohen, kamarck, & mermelstein 1983) affect 23 panas (watson et al., 1988) post-traumatic stress/post-traumatic growth 23 ptgi (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996) meaning/purpose 22 mlq (steger et al., 2006) strengths 22 via-is (peterson et al., 2005) relationships 21 ecr (brennan, clark, & shaver, 1998) measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 table 2b. most cited constructs in cited scales construct number of scales representative scales coping 20 b-cope (carver, 1997) social support 18 isel (cohen & hoberman, 1983) identity/identification 16 dids (luyckx et al., 2008) values 14 svs (schwartz, 1992) resilience 13 ers (block & kremen, 1996) work/job satisfaction 13 jaws (van katwyk, fox, spector, & kelloway,2000) hope 12 adhs (snyder et al., 1991) optimism/life orientation 12 lot-r (scheier et al., 1994) flow 10 flow scale (csikszentmihalyi, 1990) quality of life 10 qoli (frisch, cornell, villanueva, & retzlaff, 1992) mental health 10 ghq (goldberg & hillier, 1979) another observation is that scales with a focus on the individual, such as individual wellbeing, depression, and health, were used frequently in the dataset articles, while scales measuring interpersonal processes and relational or collective constructs, such as relationship quality and social support, were used less often. thus, the critique of the individualistic bent of positive psychology (christopher & hickinbottom, 2008) seems to be supported. 3.3 positive scales a summary of the most cited positive scales in the dataset is shown in table 3 below. as noted earlier, measures were identified as positive if they measured traits, states, experiences, or institutional features that were “positive,” as defined by seligman and csikszentmihalyi (2000). nearly half (47%) of the measures cited in the dataset articles met this definition. unsurprisingly, measures of happiness and wellbeing are the most cited positive measures, with three of the most popular scales measuring wellbeing or subjective happiness, and another scale measuring positive and/or negative affect. it is important to note that the second most popular positive measure also assesses negative events or emotions (i.e., panas). 3.4 citations outside of the dataset an analysis of articles from google scholar (see table 3) was conducted to examine the extent to which most cited measures from the dataset were cited outside of the dataset. these results demonstrate that some of positive psychology’s most measured constructs are also of interest to those who publish outside of positive psychology. for instance, diener and colleagues’ satisfaction with life scale (1985) was the most cited scale in the database, with 210 citations, and also boasted an impressive 20,766 citations on google scholar; however, analysis also indicated that the popularity of the scales within positive psychology does not always mirror the popularity of these scales outside of positive psychology. for example, the values in action inventory of strengths (via-is; peterson & seligman, 2004; peterson & park, 2009) matched snyder and colleagues’ (1991) hope scale in use within the positive psychology measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 dataset, but the via was cited 7,186 times according to google scholar, versus the hope scale with 3,507 citations. table 3. most cited positive measurement scales measure development dataset citations google scholar citations construct source of development satisfaction with life scale (swls1) diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985 210 20,766 wellbeing journal of personality assessment positive and negative affect schedule (panas)2 watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988 150 30,091 positive and negative affect journal of personality and social psychology life orientation test-revised (lotr) scheier et al., 1994 69 5,775 optimism journal of personality and social psychology rosenberg selfesteem scale (ses)1 rosenberg, 1965 51 34,716 self-esteem (book) psychological wellbeing scales (pwbs) ryff, 1989 50 10,525 well-being journal of personality and social psychology hope scale/adult dispositional hope scale (adhs) 1 2 snyder et al., 1991 46 3,507 hope journal of personality and social psychology values in action inventory of strengths (via-is) 1 2 peterson & seligman, 2004; peterson & park, 2009 45 7,186 character strengths n/a gratitude questionnaire-6 (gq-6) mccullough, emmons, & tsang, 2002 42 2,189 gratitude, grateful disposition journal of personality and social psychology subjective happiness scale (shs) 1 lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999 39 2,643 happiness social indicators research meaning in life questionnaire (mlq) steger, frazier, oishi, & kaler, 2006 32 2,207 meaning journal of counseling psychology 1indicates that there are alternate versions and translations cited in the dataset that are not included in these counts. 2indicates that the scale has been validated in a separate study beyond its initial development. note: the center for epidemiological studies depression scale (ces-d; locke & putnam, 1971) was the third most used scale (tied with the lot-r, described below) with 69 citations, although this was the exception in the mostlypositive list. measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 figure 2. citations per year for the most popular positive scales published before 1998 note: this figure displays the number of citations per year since the scale’s development for each of the five most popular scales in positive psychology created before its inception in 1998. panas (1988) satisfaction with life scale (1985) life orientation test-revised (1994) psychological well-being scale (1989) hope scale (1991) foundation of positive psychology measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 although these findings can provide an interesting look into topics that are popular in the general psychological literature but not within positive psychology and vice versa, what is useful to note is that four of the most prominent positive scales were published before positive psychology was formally established as a sub-discipline of psychology: the satisfaction with life scale by diener and colleagues was published in 1985, the life orientation test-revised by scheier and colleagues was published in 1994, the psychological well-being scale by ryff was published in 1989, and the hope scale by snyder and colleagues was published in 1991. a comparison of the citations before and after 1998 (when the positive psychology movement began) shows a marked increase in citations per year starting in the early 2000s. while some of this may be attributed to maturation effects, the positive psychology movement may have played a role in the growth of popularity of the scales. see figure 2 for a visualization of citations for these scales over time, preand post-formal establishment of positive psychology as a sub-field of psychology. 3.5 adapted and newly developed scales examination of new scale creation and adaptation can provide insight into the growth of measurement in the field, areas that are lacking in validated measurement instruments, and scales frequently adapted to fit various populations or contexts. in all, 310 scales cited in the dataset were found to be adapted or developed in the articles. these were evenly split between adapted (n = 155) and newly developed (n = 155). in this set of scales, the majority (n = 275) were cited only once, with 27 scales receiving two citations, and only three scales receiving three citations. many of the scales cited more than once were only cited multiple times on account of these scales being used by the original authors in subsequent studies. table 4. most popular constructs in newly developed and adapted scales construct sub-construct (if any) scales developed scales adapted wellbeing general wellbeing 9 2 happiness/swb/joy 6 3 life satisfaction 3 2 total 18 7 emotions and mood emotions* 10 4 mood 6 4 total 16 8 affect 3 5 goal setting/striving 3 2 optimism/life orientation 4 7 engagement 1 7 hope 2 4 meaning 4 4 spirituality/spiritual development 5 1 elevation 3 2 trust 0 5 strengths 3 4 *this category includes only general emotions measures, not measures of a specific emotion like happiness or anger. measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 3.6 constructs studied the most popular constructs for new scale development and adaptation are depicted in table 4. as with the existing scales, we refer to the terminology used by the original developers to identify the construct measured. the analyses also revealed several new scale developments and a broad range of constructs measured, both indicative of the increasing maturity of the field and greater attention to context. although wellbeing has received much attention within and outside positive psychology, and many established scales already exist, findings revealed nine new scales created to measure different types of wellbeing in specific contexts (e.g., wellbeing at work, student wellbeing). the development of new scales customized for particular contexts indicates a growing interest in going beyond basic measurement of subjective wellbeing and focusing on more nuanced application. in a similar vein, previously established measures of engagement were not among the most popular positive psychology scales, but these have spurred several new adaptations and creations focused on application in new contexts. table 5. reliability and validity analysis within the dataset type subtype number of studies* reliability internal consistency 21 test-retest reliability 5 composite reliability 1 validity construct 11 convergent 8 discriminant 7 predictive 4 incremental 3 criterion 2 concurrent 2 cross-cultural 1 treatment 1 factor structure confirmatory factor analysis 25 exploratory factor analysis 15 structural equation modeling 5 invariance 5 categorical factor analysis 1 joint modeling 1 meta-analysis 1 principal components analysis 1 temporal stability 1 *the total number of articles describing reliability/validity analysis was 38. measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 table 6. explicit validation of a sample of scales from the most popular constructs scale construct number of validations* post-traumatic growth inventory (ptgi; tedeschi & calhoun, 1996) post-traumatic growth 13 profile of mood states (poms; mcnair, lorr, & doppleman, 1971) mood 12 personal growth initiative scale (pgis; robitschek, 1998) growth 8 (1) general self-efficacy scale (gses; sherer et al, 1982) self-efficacy 7 via inventory of strengths (peterson & seligman, 2004; peterson & park, 2009) strengths 7 (3) student life satisfaction scale (slss; huebner, 1991) life satisfaction 6 quality of life inventory (qoli; frisch, cornell, villanueva, & retzlaff, 1992) quality of life 5 (1) gratitude questionnaire (gq-6; mccullough, emmons, & tsang, 2002) gratitude 3 (3) hope scale (snyder et al., 1991) hope 3 (2) gratitude, resentment, and appreciation test, short form (grat-short form; watkins, woodward, stone, & kolts, 2003) gratitude 2 (1) purpose in life test (pil; crumbaugh & maholick, 1964) purpose / meaning 2 steen happiness index (shi; seligman, steen, park, & peterson 2005) happiness 2 stress-related growth scale (srgs; park, cohen, & murch, 1996) post-traumatic growth 2 strengthspotting scale (linley, garcea, hill, minhas, trenier, & willars, 2010) strengths 2 b-cope (carver, 1997) coping 1 dispositional positive emotion scale (dpes; shiota, keltner, & john, 2006) positive emotion 1 (1) orientation to happiness scale (peterson, park & seligman, 2005) happiness 1 (1) positive youth development measure (lerner et al., 2005) positive youth development 1 (1) social well-being scale (swbs; keyes, 1998) wellbeing 1 schwartz value survey (svs; schwartz, 1992) values 1 strengths use scale (sus; govindji & linley, 2007) strengths 1 (1) *counted using google scholar. note: numbers in parentheses indicate the number of times a scale was explicitly validated in later studies in the dataset. 3.7 scale validation and reliability analysis some researchers have argued that a relative dearth of scale validation may indicate that the field is lacking cohesion, while the presence of many validation studies could signal that the field is more mature (romano, 2001). we examined whether the scales had been the subject of measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 further reliability analysis or explicitly validated by a study after the initial scale development, and, if so, how many times validation or reliability studies appeared in the dataset. we used the keywords “reliability” and/or “validity” to screen for articles that offer additional validation information and reviewed these articles in depth to determine whether any original reliability or validity analysis had been conducted. a total of 38 scales used in the dataset articles were also validated in later articles. thirty-five (92%) of these scales had one validation study each, the hope scale (snyder et al., 1991) was validated twice, and the via-is (peterson, park, & seligman, 2005) and the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6, mccullough, emmons, & tsang, 2002) were each validated in three separate studies. we reviewed each of the 38 articles in which the authors conducted further reliability or validity analysis on these scales. the results are found in table 5. twenty-three used some kind of reliability analysis, 27 conducted analysis on the validity of the measure, and 34 tested the factor structure of the measure. the results of our search for scale validations outside of the dataset showed that, as expected, slightly more scale validation and reliability studies were found outside of the dataset for topics with broad interest (e.g., personal growth initiative scale; robitschek, 1998), while the validations in the dataset corresponded with those found in google scholar for explicitly positive topics (e.g., gratitude: mccullough et al., 2002; orientation to happiness scale: peterson et al., 2005; see table 6 for more information). 3.8 multiple operationalizations the presence of multiple operationalizations (i.e., more than one definition of a concept, resulting in multiple ways to measure it) can lead to confusion in practice and may indicate a lack of cohesion in the field. findings revealed two core positive psychology concepts that are caught in this quagmire—hope and wellbeing. 3.8.1 hope seven different measurement systems of hope were identified in the positive psychological literature. snyder’s conceptualization of hope was the definition most often used or adapted (e.g., sympson, 1999) to measure the presence of hope, although not exclusively. this definition divides hope into two components: agency, which refers to motivation and belief in one’s ability to attain one’s goals, and pathways, which concerns the planning of ways to meet these goals (snyder et al., 1991). the hope index of pacico and colleagues (2013) utilizes staats’ definition of hope (staats & stassen, 1985), i.e., an interaction between one’s wishes and expectations, including an affective component (wishing for positive future events), and a cognitive component (appraisal of the extent to which one these future positive events are likely to occur). the hunter opinions and personal expectations scale (hopes; nunn & thompson, 1996) conceptualizes hope as a unidimensional construct that reaches through seven domains: mastery or control, meaning and purpose of life, perceived future interpersonal support, perceived future self-worth, planning (or investing in the future), motivation and sense drive, and reality appreciation. further, the via also includes a subscale measuring hope, which is defined as “expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it” or “believing that a good future is something that can be brought about” (park, peterson, & seligman, 2004). see table 7 below for definitions and scale items. measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 table 7. the many conceptualizations of hope scale construct scale definition representative items dispositional hope adult dispositional hope scale (snyder et al., 1991) defined as a two-component cognitive set composed of agency (goal-directed determination) and pathways (planning of ways to meet goals). agency: ‘i energetically pursue my goals;’ ‘i’ve been pretty successful in life.’ pathways: ‘i can think of many ways to get out of a jam;’ ‘there are lots of ways around any problem.’ state dispositional hope state hope scale (snyder et al.,1996) same as above, but more focused on the present (closer to state instead of trait). agency: ‘at the present time, i am energetically pursuing my goals.’ pathways: ‘there are lots of ways around any problem that i am facing now.’ hope domain specific hope scale-revised (sympson, 1999) same definition as snyder in his adult dispositional hope scale, but limited to specific domains: social, academic, family, romantic relationships, occupation, and leisure activities. social: ‘i actively pursue friendships.’ academics: ‘i energetically pursue my school work.’ romantic relationships: ‘i can usually get a date when i set my mind to it.’ goal-specific hope goal-specific hope scale (feldman et al., 2009) feldman and colleagues use the same conceptualization of hope as snyder’s adult dispositional hope scale, but limit the hope measured to specific goals. agency: ‘i energetically pursue this goal.’ pathways: ‘i can think of many ways to achieve this goal.’ cognitive hope hope index, brazilian version (pacico et al., 2013) staats (author of original hope index) defined hope as an interaction between an individual’s wishes and their expectations. hope consists of an affective and a cognitive component; the affective component involves wishing or expecting for a future good or pleasurable event, while the cognitive component refers to the expectations that this future event is likely to occur. ‘to be more competent;’ ‘to have good health;’ ‘other people to be more helpful.’ global personal hopefulness (gph) hunter opinions and personal expectations scale (nunn & thompson., 1996) hope is a unidimensional construct that consists of seven domains: mastery or control, meaning and purpose of life, perceived future interpersonal support, perceived future self-worth, planning (investing in the future), motivation and sense drive, reality appreciation. ‘i generally look forward to new activities and phases in my life;’ ‘i am the sort of person who believes that life is full of meaning;’ ‘i believe that i can handle most of the difficulties that i might have to face.’ hope via-is (peterson et al., 2005) hope as optimism, futuremindedness, future-orientation; defined as expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it, and believing that a good future is something that can be brought about. ‘despite challenges, i always remain hopeful about the future.’ measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 table 8. wellbeing: a construct with many operationalizations scale construct scales definitions representative items mental wellbeing/positive mental health warwickedinburgh mental wellbeing scale (tennant et al., 2007) positive mental health: ‘foundation for wellbeing and effective functioning for both the individual and the community… [state] which allows individuals to realize their abilities, cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and make a contribution to their community.’ ‘i’ve been feeling optimistic about the future;’ ‘i’ve been feeling loved;’ ‘i’ve been feeling cheerful;’ all answered in the score of the last two weeks. psychological wellbeing psychological wellbeing scales/scale of psychological wellbeing (ryff, 1989; ryff & keyes, 1995) multifaceted definition that involves positive psychological functioning, six dimensions (self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth). self-acceptance item: ‘i like most aspects of my personality;’ pro item: ‘people would describe me as a giving person, willing to share my time with others;’ autonomy item: ‘i have confidence in my opinions, even if they are contrary to the general consensus.’ life satisfaction (or global life satisfaction) satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 1985) ‘a global assessment of a person’s quality of life according to his chosen criteria’ (p. 478). ‘in most ways my life is close to my ideal’; ‘if i could live my life over, i would change almost nothing.’ student’s life satisfaction scale (huebner, 1991) global life satisfaction: ‘a general evaluation of the quality of an individual’s life that is over and above judgments of specific domains’ (p. 232). ‘i like the way things are going for me;’ ‘i feel good about what’s happening to me;’ ‘my life is better than most kids.’ subjective wellbeing/happiness subjective happiness scale (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999) ‘a global, subjective assessment of whether one is a happy or unhappy person’ (p. 139). ‘in general i consider myself: not a very happy person [1] … a very happy person [7]’; ‘compared with most of my peers, i consider myself: less happy [1] … more happy [7]’ affect balance scale (bradburn, 1969) based on positive affect vs. negative affect. ‘during the past few weeks, did you ever feel… particularly excited or interested in something?’ ‘…pleased about having accomplished something?’ ‘…upset because someone criticized you?’ 3.8.2 wellbeing wellbeing is perhaps the positive psychological construct with the most conceptualizations, and it has been defined and operationalized in numerous ways. in this analysis, five separate definitions of wellbeing and 39 scales were assessed. the common foundation of some of the prominent definitions is a positive perspective on mental health, in that mental health or measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 wellbeing is viewed as a positive psychological state rather than the absence of mental illness. for example, the warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale (tennant et al., 2007) bases wellbeing on hedonic and eudaimonic aspects of mental health, rather than a lack of depression or disease. one exception is the affect balance scale (bradburn, 1969) that measures both positive and negative affect. another common characteristic is the breadth of wellbeing; ryff’s (1989) and ryff’s and keyes’ (1995) scale consists of six dimensions of psychological functioning, while the swls (diener et al., 1985), student’s life satisfaction scale (huebner, 1991), and the subjective happiness scale (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999) measure wellbeing as a broad construct that supersedes satisfaction in any single life domain, and assess wellbeing on the individual’s own criteria. as other researchers have noted, there is no universal definition of wellbeing, let alone a universal scale to measure wellbeing, as it is interpreted and studied variously in the context of relationships, life satisfaction, health, meaning, and spirituality (lindert et al., 2015). due to the multiple definitions and measurement styles, it is difficult to assess whether any measurement taps into the same facet as another. for representative items and definitions, please see table 8. 4. discussion the current review offers an overview of the measurement scales used in positive psychology. this review suggests that, as a budding area of scholarship, positive psychology has made promising strides. the most fundamental positive constructs and the scales used to measure them seem to be well-established, both within and outside of the dataset. there is also evidence of high generativity in terms of the recent development of a range of constructs and measures, and prolific growth in application (e.g., via adaptations of scales in new contexts). our results show that positive psychology research is conducted with a wide range of constructs beyond wellbeing and positive traits, and while it most often engages positive phenomena, it is not averse to considering suffering and adversity. the most frequently measured and studied topics in positive psychology are not the stereotypical happiness and positivity, but topics such as meaning, purpose, character strengths, values, positive relationships, social support, gratitude, spirituality, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. finally, our findings suggest that there is some attention afforded to negative phenomena. five of the 10 most frequently measured constructs are related to depression, anxiety, and stress. the popularity of negative phenomena was surprising, although these measures may have been used for a variety of reasons (e.g., validation studies, evaluating the effectiveness of a positive psychology intervention). many studies examine both positive as well as negative phenomena in the same study (e.g., reducing depression and increasing wellbeing). further, some of the most popular positive measures focus on positive responses to adverse situations, such as coping, resilience, and post-traumatic growth. thus, findings indicate that a portion of the literature associated with positive psychology is paying some attention to negative phenomena. 5. limitations and future directions while this review makes a unique contribution in examining measurement scales associated with positive psychology, it is important to view the findings in light of its limitations. limiting the literature search to those that included the term “positive psychology” excludes articles that engage positive phenomena but did not make explicit mention of the term. as such, this is a restricted sample of the literature associated with positive psychology. another limitation is that restriction to english-language articles underestimates contributions from measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 non-english speaking countries and is therefore complicit with publication bias for western phenomena. finally, the dataset reviews articles published from 1998 to 2014, leaving a significant gap between the last year covered by the dataset and the current year. however, as we noted earlier, there is typically a several-year delay between the time of publication and the time when measures are actually used in the literature. thus, the current review focuses on those that have existed for several years, allowing the scales to establish some degree of merit. the findings indicate that there are some concerns related to multiple operationalization of key constructs, which we believe is a symptom of a larger issue. we expected to find some degree of multiple operationalization in the positive psychological literature, due to the presence of several sub-disciplinary influences (e.g., social, organizational psychology), and the complexity involved in defining and measuring some constructs. happiness, for instance, is difficult to define, and scholars have differing perspectives on how to most accurately measure it (waterman, 2008). one reason for this occurrence might be that a construct is of interest in multiple fields, each of which has its own epistemological biases, and there is inadequate discourse across disciplines. another possible cause of multiple operationalization is researchers within the same field carving out their own theoretical niches. regardless, while this is not necessarily a problem within a particular field, multiple operationalizations can pose difficulties in the interdisciplinary scholarship often necessary to solve multi-faceted, largescale social issues. this problem also poses the question: are all of the various definitions truly capturing the same construct? it would be fruitful for scholars to engage in greater crosspollination and exchange of knowledge across sub-disciplinary boundaries on similar constructs to reduce redundancy where possible. further, while there is a surge of new scale development, at this time, a large proportion of scales (89% of all scales cited) are cited only once or twice and validated even less. in addition to a need for more validation undertakings, this also suggests inadequate discourse. greater integration and dialogue can facilitate researchers’ use of existing scales rather than the creation of new ones for each study. therefore, we recommend more organized interdisciplinary investigations around common interests and more dialogue across disciplines, and we call for more funding opportunities and publication outlets that can facilitate interdisciplinary discourse. 6. conclusion the field of positive psychology aims to promote a science of thriving and improve the quality of human life, among other aspirations (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). as an organized area of inquiry, positive psychology has gained widespread interest and momentum across disciplines. this article attempts to generate greater discourse, bringing to light the many measurement scales that have been published and used in research. the recent proliferation of scales may be in part due to the current lack of discourse in positive psychology, as many scholars are as yet unaware of the existing scales that have already been developed (in addition to pet theories that scholars hold). of course, this may also be a sign of healthy development in the field, as researchers push the boundaries of positive constructs and approach the constructs from varied perspectives. regardless, as a rapidly growing field, the many measurements can be unwieldy and confusing, and this review helps map the scales and highlight existing contributions. this prolific growth has brought renewed vigour and attention to the study of positive phenomena, as well as a range of perspectives, methodologies, and procedures for the study and measurement of positive constructs. this review offers new insight into the characteristics measurement in positive psychology ackerman, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 of positive psychological research, its scope, and major contributions in measurement. we conclude with a call for more discussion and exchange across disciplinary boundaries as the next step in realizing the field’s full potential for growth. deep integration and research across contexts emerging from interdisciplinary collaborative efforts are vital to the growth of a robust science of human flourishing. 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(2005). vying constructions of reality: religion, science, and 'positive thinking' in self-help literature. journal of media and religion, 4(3), 155-178. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328415jmr0403_3 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.4.719 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.6.1063 https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.5 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3631-3 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.2.321 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00319312 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80 https://doi.org/10.1159/000439044 https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-5-63 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2011.01355.x https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760802303002 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328415jmr0403_3 jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., lomas, t., & adiguzel, g. (2019). pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarında etik i̇lkeler (sürüm 1.0: turkish). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-33. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1435 guideline version 1.0, 28th september 2020 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 special issue pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarında etik i̇lkeler aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas · gulten adiguzel http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 2 . i̇çindekiler giriş notları……..………………………………………………………………………………. 4 giriş……………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarında profesyonel kuruluşlar ve etik ilkeler……………… 4 kılavuz gereksinimi………………………………………………………………………… 5 kılavuzlar kimler içindir?..........................................................................................................5 kılavuzların geçiciliği…….………………………….………………………………………. 5 anahtar terimler……………………………………………………………………………… 6 bölüm bir: değerler, güçlü yönler ve i̇lkeler ………………………………………………. 8 pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcılarının değerleri………………………….………………. 9 pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcılarının güçlü yönleri ………………………………………… 10 pozitif psikoloji uygulamasında etik ilkeler ………..……………………………………. 10 bölüm i̇ki: pratikte etik i̇lkelerin uygulanması ……………………………………….…… 14 üç önemli konu……………….…………………………………………………………….. 14 etik karar verme…………………………………………………………………………….. 14 çalışma hususları…….……………………………………………………………………... 14 danışanlardaki değişimler…………………………………………………………………. 15 uygulamanın kullanıldığı ortamdaki değişimler……………………………………. 15 mevcut duygusal durum ve iyi-oluş düzeyi ……………………………………………... 16 kaçınma……………………………………………………………………………………….. 16 güç farklılıkları………………………………………………………………………………. 16 aşırı güç kullanımı………………………………………………………………………… 16 pratik zeka…………………………………………………………………………………….. 17 dayanıklılığı sürdürme ve tükenmişliğe karşı tamponlama ………………….……... 17 eğitim ve yeterlilik beyanı …………………………………………………………….…... 17 kültürel bağlamın önemine saygı duyma ………………………………………………. 18 etik i̇kilemleri çözümleme adım adım kılavuz ……….……….………………………. 19 öz değerlendirme kılavuzu …………………………………………………………………... 20 bölüm üç: etik uygulama vakaları…………………………………………………………. 21 örnek vaka 1: kültürel– pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarının kültürel duyarlılıkla yapılması…………………………………………………………………………………….. 21 örnek vaka 2: koçluk değişen koşullarda danışanlara koçluk yapmak ……………. 22 örnek vaka 3: klinik – travma ile çalışmak …………………………………………. 22 ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 3 örnek vaka 4: organizasyonelverileri yanlış sunma baskısı.………………………. 23 örnek vaka 5: danışmanlık dengesiz bir ilişkide "isteksiz" katılımcıları motive etmek…...………………………………………………………………………………... 24 örnek vaka 6: eğitim –mevcut uygulama ile isteklerin bastırıldığı yerlerde iyi-oluş programları uygulamak.…………………………………………………………… ……….25 i̇lgili yönergeler……………………………………………………………..……………….. 26 teşekkür …………………………………………………………………………………….. 27 pozitif psikoloji uygulaması etik i̇lkelerine i̇mzayı i̇lk atanlar …………………………. 28 referanslar……………………………………………………………………………………….. 30 i̇lave kaynak………………………………………………………………………………. …..… 31 bildiri: bu kılavuz, aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache ve tim lomas tarafından yürütülen işbirlikçi ve bağımsız bir çalışma grubunun sonucudur. yönergeler herhangi bir kuruluş veya dernekten bağımsızdır; ancak, bu ilk yinelemenin geliştirilmesinde ve iyileştirilmesinde çok sayıda taraf yer almıştır. yazarların amacı, işlevselliklerinin derinliğini ve genişliğini daha da güçlendirmek için iki yıllık bir döngüdeki yönergeleri güncellemektir ve bizler aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au adresine sizlerden geri bildirim almaktan memnuniyet duyarız. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 4 giriş notları giriş pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcıları (ppu) dahil olmak üzere tüm insanların yanılabilir, savunmasız ve kusurlu olmaları sebebi ile etik mükemmellik, belki de, ütopik bir idealdir. sürekli genişleyen siber yaşam, düzensiz iklim değişikliği, mülteci krizleri, gelişen kimlikler ve artan ekonomik kutuplaşma gibi çağdaş yaşamın karmaşıklıkları, insani savunmasızlığı arttırmaktadır. özellikle refahı yeniden sağlama veya geliştirme amacına yönelik olan psikolojik hizmetler, birbiriyle yarışan öncelikler ve etik ikilemler olmadan kolayca sunulamaz. hiçbir etik kural, standart ve hatta tüzükler, insani karmaşıklıkları tam olarak kapsayamaz. yine de, özellikle genel olarak refahı artırmayı amaçlayan pozitif psikolojik uygulamaları kullandığımızda, bir dizi geniş tabanlı değerler, kişisel güçlü yönler ve ilkeler, bizi daha etik karar vermeye yönlendirebilir. bu kılavuz, pozitif psikoloji uygulaması için a) değerleri, b) güçlü yönleri ve c) ilkeleri içerir. "yönergelerin" genellikle bağlam ve yargı alanına göre değişiklik gösterecek daha geniş çerçeveler içinde yer aldığını belirtmek önemlidir. örneğin, yönergeler, şekil 1'de gösterildiği gibi kuralcı bir hiyerarşinin en altında yer alabilir: şekil 1. yönergeler ve daha geniş çerçeveler bu nedenle, yönergeleri diğer ilgili çerçevelerle birlikte dikkate almak önemlidir. buna ek olarak, bir kişi veya kuruluş "pozitif psikoloji uygulaması" yönergelerine uyarak bunları onaylayabilirken, bazı ülkelerde ve yargı alanlarında kendinize "pozitif psikolog" demeniz yasa dışı olabilir – lütfen bulunduğunuz yerin kısıtlama ve gerekliliklerinin farkında olun. pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarında profesyonel kuruluşlar ve etik ilkeler bir uygulayıcının ilgili bir meslek kuruluşunun üyesi olduğu durumlarda (örneğin, amerikan psikoloji derneği, avustralya psikoloji toplumu, uluslararası koçluk federasyonu gibi), ilk ve en önemli şey kuruluşun standartları, kuralları veya yönergeleri uygulamalar hakkında bilgi verecektir. uygulayıcıların, psikoloji veya ilgili alanlarda uygulama konusunda yeterli eğitim, öğretim ve deneyime sahip bir akreditasyon kurumunun (örneğin, psikologlar koleji) üyesi olmaları durumunda, kurallara, standartlara, düzenlemelere, statülere, ve kendi yetki alanlarında psikoloji uygulama prosedürlerine aşina olmaları beklenmektedir. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 5 burada tanıtılan pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarında etik ilkeler, bu tür mevcut yargı / mesleki kod ve yönergelerin yerini almak için değil, bunları arttırmak için tasarlanmıştır. bu nedenle, bu kılavuzlar aynı zamanda bir meslek kuruluşuyla ilişkisi olmayan veya ona bağlı olmayan uygulayıcılar için de bir temel sağlamaktadır. kılavuz gereksinimi neden bir dizi etik kural var? bu yönergeler, pozitif psikoloji (pp) alanında bilimsel olarak açıklanarak ve kanıta dayalı uygulamaya bağlılık göstererek etik uygulamayı geliştirmeyi hedeflemektedirler. sağlık bilimine (makul) sadakati sürdürme arzusunu aşılamayı ve uygulayıcılar için potansiyel faydaların sunulması ve pazarlanması için gerekli yönergeleri dikkate almalarını amaçlamaktadırlar. kılavuzlar, pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcılarına ve diğerlerine pozitif psikolojinin etik uygulamasının ne olduğu konusunda daha net bir anlayış geliştirmeye çalışmaktadır. bu tür kılavuzların yardımıyla, pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcılarının aşağıdaki gibi hususlara bağlılık göstermeleri beklenmektedir:1 a) araştırmayı yakından incelemek ve uygulamalarını bilimi temel alarak oluşturmak; b) devamlı öğrenme ve mesleki gelişim yoluyla bilgilerini sürekli güncellemek; c) pozitif psikoloji uygulamları ile ilgili bilgi sınırlarının yanı sıra belirli uygulamaların ve iyi-oluş programlarının potansiyel fayda ve zararlarını dikkatli ve doğru bir şekilde dile getirmek; ve d) hizmet sunumu sırasında danışanların refahını ve refahındaki olumlu ve olumsuz değişiklikleri gözlemlemek. kılavuz kimler içindir? bu kılavuzların amacı, pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcılarına optimal etik uygulamasını mümkün kılmak ve bunu yaparken yararlı (başkalarına iyilik yapmak için) ve zararlı olmayan (başkalarına olası zararı önlemek için) bir şekilde davranmaktır. bu nedenle, bu kılavuzlar, pozitif psikoloji uygulaması sağlayan veya uygulamalarında pozitif psikoloji alanındaki bilgileri kullanan profesyoneller (örneğin, psikologlar) ve diğerleri (örneğin, öğrenciler veya hiçbir ilişkisi olmayanlar) içindir. bu, pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarının nasıl kullanılacağına veya uygulanacağına ilişkin bir kılavuz değildir. kılavuzların geçiciliği mevcut yönergelerin (sürüm 1.0, 19 temmuz 2019) geçici olduğunu ve kilit paydaşlarla yinelemeli bir danışma süreci aracılığıyla her iki yılda bir sürekli revizyona tabi olduğunu belirtmekteyiz. bu düzenleme, kılavuzlarda yer alan yönergelerin bağlamsal değişikliklere duyarlı olmasını ve sürekli gelişen yerel ve küresel temaları yansıtmasını sağlamaktır. bu bağlamda, burada ana hatlarıyla belirtilen yönergeler hakkında geri bildirim almaktan her zaman memnuniyet duyarız. sadece i̇ngilizce konuşulan ülkelerin, ve bunların çoğu batı ülkesi, bu kılavuzların gelişimini etkilediğini ve bu nedenle kılavuzların bunlarla sınırlı olduğunu belirtmek de önemlidir. ne var ki, bu kılavuz sürüm numarasıyla tanımlanan, yaşayan ve büyüyen bir belge olduğundan, gelecekteki sürümlerin i̇ngilizce konuşulmayan ve batılı olmayan ülkelerden de gelen kural ve yönergeleri içereceği umulmaktadır. 1 bu tür taahhütleri göstermek için burada dört örnek seçtik, ancak bu listenin daha uzun olabileceğini unutmayın. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 6 anahtar terimler danışan uygulayıcılar danışanlarla çalışır. "danışan", bir birey, çift, aile, grup, organizasyon, sponsor veya diğer tanımlanabilir sosyal birim gibi herhangi bir hizmetin alıcısına atıfta bulunmak için kullanılan genel bir terimdir. kurallara karşı yönergeler bir kuralın genellikle yasal veya diğer uygulanabilir sonuçları vardır, fakat yönergeler genellikle "düzenlenmeyen" veya "denetlenmeyen" en iyi uygulamaları önerir. yönergeler, doğaları gereği, koşulların çeşitli ve karmaşık olduğunu ve yönergelerin genellikle uygulayıcıların pratik bilgeliği deneyim ve sağduyunun bir kombinasyonu uygulamasını gerektirdiğini ifade eder. pozitif psikoloji (pp) pp: pozitif psikoloji. pp'yi kavramsallaştırmanın ve tanımlamanın birçok yolu vardır, ancak çoğu işlemselleştirme, onu genellikle "mutluluk", "esenlik", "büyüyen" ve "gelişen" gibi kapsayıcı yapıların bilimsel çalışması olarak adlandırır. örneğin, lomas, hefferon ve ivtzan (2015, s. 1347) pp'yi "refahı iyileştirme bilimi ve uygulaması" olarak tanımlar. buna bağlı olarak, pozitif psikoloji uygulamaları da dahil olmak üzere gerçek dünya ortamlarında pp'nin uygulaması olarak değerlendirilebilecek "uygulamalı pozitif psikoloji" kavramı vardır. pozitif psikoloji uygulamaları (ppu) ppu: pozitif psikoloji uygulamaları. literatürde "pozitif psikoloji uygulamaları" ile "pozitif psikolojik uygulamalar" arasında bir ayrım vardır taslak ve açıklama için bkz. hone, jarden ve schofield (2015). burada, psikolojik refahı artırmayı amaçlayan, birçok disiplindeki (pozitif psikolojiye ek olarak psikolojinin diğer alt alanlarından) tüm faaliyetleri kapsayan daha geniş bir pozitif psikolojik uygulama kavramını ele alıyoruz. pozitif psikolojik uygulamalarının popüler bir tanımı da şudur: "pozitif psikolojik uygulama, olumlu duyguları, davranışları ve / veya düşünceleri teşvik eder, böylece bir bireyin veya grubun refahını artırır" (schueller, kashdan ve parks, 2014, s. 92). pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcıları (ppu) ppu: pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcıları. uygulayıcılar, uygulamaya yönelik gerekli eğitimi (psikoterapi, danışmanlık, koçluk gibi) tamamlarlar ve saygın bir eğitimci ile pp'ye yönelik eğitim alırlar. böylece bilimsel araştırma sürecinin ve uygulamalı pozitif psikoloji uygulamasının anlaşılmasına olanak tanırlar. (örneğin, ppu’lar)2 güçlü yanlar genel olarak, etik yönergeler ve kurallar, belirli bir alandaki düşünce liderleri tarafından seçilen belirli kişisel özellikleri benimser. yönergeler için, deneysel olarak kanıtlanmış ve kültürler arası onaylanmış karakter güçlerinin bir modeli olan karakter güçleri ve erdemleri’ni (kge: peterson 2 kim kendine pp uygulayıcısı diyebilir? henüz, ihtiyaç duyulan eğitim veya yeterlilik miktarı ve seviyesi konusunda net bir sınırlama yoktur. örneğin, 2 günlük bir kursa, 6 aylık akredite bir sertifika programına veya 2 yıllık uygulamalı pozitif psikoloji programına katılan bir kişi pp uygulayıcısı olarak kabul edilebilir mi? ek olarak, denetimli uygulama (örneğin, eşli gözlem ve bire bir denetim) ve çevrimiçi başvuru idealdir. bu alandaki meslek kuruluşlarından uygun eğitim ve denetime ilişkin daha fazla rehberliğe ihtiyaç vardır (ve aslında, bu tür konular zaten ilgili taraflarca değerlendirilmekte ve ele alınmaktadır). ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 7 ve seligman, 2004) kullandık (mcgrath, 2014). kge'ne göre, karakter güçleri, kendi içlerinde değer verilen ve belirli etkili sonuçlara yol açması gerekli olmayan evrensel özellikler olarak tanımlanır.karakter güçleri, davranışsal özellikler olarak, bir kişinin kendi ve başkalarının refahı için sorumlu ve etik şekillerde davranmasını kolaylaştırır ve yönlendirirler. karakterin güçlü yönleri genellikle bir kişinin kim olduğunu (yani karakterini) ve değerler, bir kişinin neye tabiı olduğunu (yani, ilkelerini ve eylemlerini) yansıtır. uygulayıcı "uygulayıcı" terimi genel olarak pp ile ilgili hizmetlerin sağlanmasından sorumlu olan herhangi bir kişiyi belirtmek için kullanılmaktadır. “uygulayıcı”, danışman, psikoterapist, akıl sağlığı uzmanı, koç, eğitmen, akıl hocası veya eğitimci gibi (bunlarla sınırlı olmamakla birlikte) rolü (leri) üstlenen herkesi kapsar3 ilkeler i̇lkeler, dikkati önemli etik sorumluluklara çeker (yönlendirir). eylemler belirli ilkelerden oluşur. değerler değerler, bireylerin sahip olduğu ve arzu edilen amaçlar için (yani, dünya ve dünyanın nasıl olması gerektiği hakkında daha geniş ideolojiler) grupların paylaştığı inançlardır. değerler belirli durumların ötesine geçer, eylemleri nasıl seçtiğimize ve başkalarını ve kendimizi nasıl değerlendirdiğimize rehberlik eder ve göreceli önem sırasına gore düzenlenir (schwartz, 2006). değerler, bir ilke olarak ifade edildiğinde kesin bir şekilde tanımlanan ve eylem odaklı hale gelen genel bir etik bağlılığını ifade etmenin önemli bir yolunu temsil edebilir. bir başka deyişle, değerler ilkeleri belirler ve etkiler. toplumsal anlamda, bu kılavuzda belirtilen değerler, yazarların pp topluluğu içinde geniş bir şekilde paylaşıldığını belirttikleri değerlerdir. 3 bu kılavuzda yer alan değerler ve ilkeler, refah araştırmacıları için de aynı şekilde geçerli olabilir, ve burada araştırmacılar bir anlamda danışanlara benzer kabul edilebilecek konular üzerinde çalışan uygulamacılar olarak kabul edilebilirler. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 8 bölüm bir: değerler, güçlü yönler ve i̇lkeler pozitif psikoloji uygulamasında etik yönergeler aşağıdaki değerleri, güçlü yönleri ve ilkeleri içerir. hem değerler hem de güçlü yönler, tablo 1'de gösterildiği gibi etik ilkelerin oluşumunu destekler. tablo 1 pozitif psikoloji uygulamasının değerleri, güçlü yönleri ve i̇lkeleri değerler4 güçlü yönler5 i̇lkeler 1. danışanların ve diğerlerinin güvenliğini korumak. 1. dürüstlük. 1. fayda/zarar vermemek 2. bireysel sıkıntı ve ıstırabı hafifletmek. 2. doğruluk. 2. sorumluluk. 3. uygulayıcı-danışan ilişkilerinin bütünlüğünü sağlamak. 3. sosyal zeka. 3. i̇nsan hakları ve haysiyetine saygı. 4. i̇nsan deneyimi ve kültürünün çeşitliliğine saygı duymak. 4. takım çalışması. 4. güvenirlilik. 5. i̇lgili kişi veya kişiler için bir anlam ifade eden benlik duygusu geliştirmek. 5. nezaket. 5. adalet. 6. mesleki bilginin ve uygulanmasının kalitesini arttırmak. 6. sağduyu. 6. özerklik. 7. i̇nsanlar arasındaki ilişkilerin kalitesini arttırmak. 7. öngörü.. 8. kişisel etkinliği arttırmak. 8. yargı. 9. danışmanlık, psikoterapi ve koçluk hizmetlerinin adil ve yeterli bir şekilde sağlanması içi çaba göstermek. 9. oto-kontrol. 10. azim. 11. cesaret. 4 değerlerimiz, diğer benzer yönergelere göre seçilmiştir ve bu nedenle, değerlerin çoğu farklı kategorilerde yer alabilir. örneğin, adalet bir değer olarak ya da bir ilke olarak algılanabilir. güvenilirlik bir güç (dürüstlük), bir değer ya da bir ilke olarak algılanabilir. bu yapıların çoğu bu şekilde tartışılabilir. kılavuz yazarlarına göre değerler, algılanan öneme göre de sıralanmıştır. 5 1-7 olarak gösterilen güçlü yönler benzer 10etik kurallarında ne kadar sıklıkla belirtildiklerine ve vurgulandıklarına gore sıralandılar, (örneğin, britanya danışmanlık ve psikoterapi derneği'nin danışmanlık ve psikoterapide iyi uygulama etik çerçevesi). güçlü yönler 8-1’i yazarlar altı ilkeyi korumada önemli gördüler. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 9 bunlara ek olarak: • hemen hemen tüm kurallar bir dizi kişisel özellik ve nitelik gerektirirken, bu kurallar güçlü yönlere ve gözlemlenebilir davranışlara odaklanır. • değerler, güçlü yönler ve ilkeler listesi çok kapsamlı değildir, daha ziyade şu anda uygulamaya en uygun olarak algılanana yönelik bir ilk girişimdir. kılavuzlar zaman içinde yinelemeli olarak uyum sağladıkça ve pp topluluğu arasında konuya dair tartışmalar devam ettikçe sözkonusu öğelerin gelişmesi beklenmektedir. • değerler, güçlü yönler ve ilkeler listesi kuralcı da değildir. • literatürde açık bir şekilde belirtilen ve bilimsel anlamda güvenilir bir güçlü yönler modeli (eylemdeki değerler çerçevesi) seçildi. pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcılarının değerleri ppu'ların temel değerleri bir takım vaatler içerir; • danışanların ve diğerlerinin güvenliğini korumak. bu, bir danışanın kendi hizmetlerine nasıl tepki verdiğine dair sürekli bir farkındalık sağlamayı ve ayrıca kişinin kapasite ve uzmanlık sınırlarının farkında olmayı içerir (bir danışanın başka sektörlerden profesyonel yardım almaya ihtiyaç duyabileceğini veya çevredekilerin tehlikede olup olmadığını anlamak). • kişisel sıkıntı ve ıstırabı hafifletmek (kişinin uzmanlık sınırları içinde olduğu sürece). bu, çeşitli profesyonel bağlamlarda (terapi, koçluk, sağlık gibi) hizmet arayan bireylerin sıkıntısını azaltmak için pozitif psikoloji uygulamaların bağlamsal olarak ilgili yollarla kullanılması anlamına gelir. • uygulayıcı-danışan ilişkisinin bütünlüğünü sağlamak. bu, kişisel sınırlara saygı göstermeyi ve gizlilik ve mahremiyet gibi profesyonel uygulamalara bağlılığı sürdürmeyi içerir. • i̇nsan deneyim ve kültür çeşitliliğini takdir etmek. bu, bir danışana "herkese uyan (herkes için uygun olan)" bir sistem uygulamak değil, bunun yerine, insanların benzersiz gelişim yollarının çeşitliliğine, bağlamsal ve kültürel geçmişlerine saygı duymak ve dahası bunlar için onları övmek (yüceltmek) anlamına gelir. • i̇lgili kişi (ler) için anlamlı olan bir benlik duygusu geliştirmek. bu, bireyin sadece kendisi için tatmin edici değil, aynı zamanda daha iyi olan şeylere de katkıda bulunan hedefler geliştirdiği ve peşinden gittiği anlamına gelir. • mesleki bilgi ve uygulamasının kalitesini arttırmak. bu, literatürde yer alan tüm gelişmeleri takip etmek için elinden gelenin en iyisini yapmak ve bu alandaki gelişmeler hakkında güncel bilgi sahibi olmak anlamına gelir. • i̇nsanlar arasındaki ilişki kalitesini arttırmak. bu, insanların kaçınılmaz olarak sosyal ilişkiler ve ağlar içinde yer aldığını kabul etmek ve kişinin bu bağları mümkün olduğunca geliştirmesine yardımcı olmaya çalışmak anlamına gelir. • kişisel etkinliği arttırmak. bu, danışanın yaşadıkları dünyada ve kendilerini içinde buldukları herhangi bir benzersiz durumda daha etkin çalışmasına yardımcı olmak için çabalamak anlamına gelir. • pp hizmetlerinin adil ve yeterli şekilde sağlanması için çabalamak. bu, ulaşılması zor nüfuslar için de hizmetlerin sağlanmasını veya mümkün olduğunda, daha az imkana sahip kişilerin hizmetlerden yararlanmaya devam edebileceği bir fiyatlandırma yapısının savunulmasını içerebilir. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 10 pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcılarının güçlü yönleri uygulayıcının kişisel güçlü yönleri, uygulayıcı / danışan ilişkisi üzerinde etkisi olduğu için oldukça önemlidir. hizmet sunumunda hayati önem taşıdığı düşünülen birçok güçlü yön, iyi kişisel nitelikler olarak kabul edilir. tüm uygulayıcıların bu güçlü yönlere sahip olduğunu öngörmek uygun değildir, çünkü bu kişisel güçlü yönlerin ilgili kişide derin bir şekilde kökleşmesi ve harici bir otoritenin gerektirdiklerinden ziyade kişisel bağlılıktan doğması ve gelişmesi esastır. temel yönergelerce benimsenen ilke ve değerlerin tematik analizi (i̇lgili yönergeler bölümüne bakın), etik uygulamayı ve karar vermeyi kolaylaştırmak için aşağıdaki güçlü karakter yönlerinin varsayıldığını göstermiştir: • dürüstlük: doğruyu söylemek; kendini özgün bir şekilde tanıtmak ve samimi davranmak; kendini olduğundan farklı göstermemek; başkasının duygu ve eylemleri için sorumluluk almak. • adil olmak: tüm insanlara adalet ve doğruluk kavramlarına göre aynı şekilde davranmak; kişisel duyguların başkaları hakkında karar vermede öne geçmesine izin vermemek; herkese eşit şans vermek. • sosyal zeka: diğer insanların güdü ve duygularının farkında olmak; farklı sosyal durumlara uyum sağlamak için ne yapılması gerektiğini bilmek; başkalarını rahatlatmak için ne yapılacağını bilmek. • takım çalışması: bir grubun veya ekibin üyesi olarak iyi çalışmak; gruba sadık olmak; kendi payına düşeni yapmak. • i̇yilik: başkaları için iyilik ve hayır yapmak; onlara yardım etmek; onlarla ilgilenmek. • tedbirli olmak: kişinin seçimleri konusunda dikkatli olmak; aşırı risk almamak; sonradan pişman olunabilecek şeyleri söylememek veya yapmamak. • bakış açısı: başkalarına akıllıca öğüt verebilmek; kendine ve diğer insanlara anlamlı gelen bir şekilde dünyaya farkli biçimlerde bakma yollarına sahip olmak. • yargı: her şeyi derinlemesine düşünmek ve her yönden incelemek; hemen sonuca varmamak; karar vermek için yalnızca somut kanıtlara güvenmek; başkasının fikrini değiştirme yeteneğine sahip olmak. • öz denetim: kişinin his ve eylemlerini düzenlemek; disiplinli olmak; kişinin arzu ve duygularını kontrol etmek. • azim: proje ne olursa olsun, başladığı işi bitirmek için çok çalışmak: bir işi zamanında “elden çıkarmak”; çalışırken dikkatinin dağılmasına izin vermemekı; görevleri tamamlarken tatmin olmak. • cesaret: tehdit, meydan okuma, zorluk ya da acıdan kaçmayan cesur bir kişi olmak; muhalefet olsa bile doğru olanı dile getirmek; kişinin inanç ve görüşlerine göre hareket etmek. pozitif psikoloji uygulamasında etik ilkeler aşağıda açıklanan altı etik ilkenin her birine, bu ilkeye göre geliştirilmiş iyi uygulama örnekleri eşlik etmektedir. bu ilkelerden biri veya daha fazlası tarafından, diğerlerinden herhangi bir çelişki olmaksızın güçlü bir şekilde desteklenen etik kararlar, güçlü bir ahlaki mantığa (gerekçeye) sahip olarak kabul edilebilir. ancak, uygulayıcılar çok büyük olasılıkla tüm uygulanabilir ilkeleri uzlaştırmanın imkansız olduğu ve ilkeler arasında seçim yapmanın gerekli olabileceği durumlarla karşılaşabileceklerdir. bir karar veya davranış biçimi, sadece tartışmalı olduğu için ya da diğer uygulayıcılar benzer koşullarda farklı sonuçlara ulaşabileceği için etik ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 11 dışı olacak anlamına gelmez. bir uygulayıcının yükümlülüğü, tüm ilgili koşulları makul ölçüde mümkün olduğunca en dikkatli şekilde değerlendirmek ve alınan kararlardan uygun şekilde sorumlu olmaktır. faydalı olmak/zarar vermemek faydalı olmak, danışanın ve uygulayıcının refahını sağlama vaadini içerir. faydali olma ilkesi, profesyonel değerlendirmeye dayalı olarak danışanın çıkarına en uygun şekilde hareket etmek anlamına gelir. dikkatini kesinlikle kişinin yetkinlik sınırları için çalışmaya ve yeterli eğitim veya deneyime dayalı hizmet vermeye yönlendirir. danışanın çıkarlarına en iyi şekilde ulaşılmasını sağlamak, en iyi mevcut yollarla uygulama ve sonuçların (örneğin sağlık) sistematik olarak izlenmesini gerektirir. bilimsel araştırma ve sistematik düşüncenin uygulamaya ışık tutmasının önemli olduğu düşünülmektedir. rol ve şartlara bağlı olarak, genellikle sağlanan hizmetlerin kalitesini artırmak için adımlar atma ve sürekli mesleki gelişim ile uygulamayı güncellemeyi taahhüt etme yükümlülüğü vardır. yaş, toyluk, anlayış eksikliği, sıkıntı veya diğer önemli kişisel kısıtlamalar nedeniyle özerklik kapasitesi azalmış danışanlarla çalışırken, bir danışanın çıkarlarına en uygun şekilde hareket etme yükümlülüğü çok önemli hale gelebilir. diğer yandan zarar vermeme (zararsızlık) ise danışana zarar vermekten kaçınma taahhüdünü içerir. bu prensibi benimseyen uygulayıcılar: • cinsel, maddi, duygusal veya herhangi bir şekilde danışan istismarından kaçınırlar; • yetersizlikten (yani pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarının uygun şekilde uygulanmasından, örneğin neyin kimin için çalıştığını bilmek gibi) ve yanlış uygulamadan kaçınırlar; • hastalık, kişisel koşullar veya intoksikasyon nedeniyle uygun olmadıklarında hizmet sağlamazlar. uygulayıcının, zarar kaçınılmaz veya kasıtsız olsa bile danışana verilen herhangi bir zararı hafifletmeye çalışmak konusunda etik sorumluluğu vardır. uygun olan durumlarda, uygulayıcının başkalarının yetersizliğine veya yanlış uygulamasına karşı çıkma konusunda kişiselve profesyonel sorumlulukları vardır. ayrıca, uygulayıcıların mesleği veya pp'nin itibarını zedeleyecek risklerle ilgili olarak herhangi bir soruşturmaya ve / veya açıkça tanınan bir kurum / makam tarafından verilen hükümlere katkıda bulunma sorumlulukları vardır. bilinçli yardımseverlik pp uygulaması refahı artırır. bu amaca ulaşmak için, bu ilkeyi benimseyen pp ugulayıcıları, birlikte çalıştıkları kişilerin refahı için çaba gösterirler ve kendileri için pp uygulayıcılar rolünü yapılandıran sosyal ve kurumsal gücü kabul ederler. temelde birlikte çalıştıkları kişilerin refahını korumak birincil sorumluluklarıdır. bireylerin, ailelerin, grupların veya toplulukların savunmasız bir konumda olabileceğini kabul ederler. ayrıca uzmanlık sınırlarını (bilgi eksikliği dahil) bilirler ve gerektiğinde diğer uzmanlara başvururlar; sorumluluk kabul ederler ve verdikleri hizmetin sonucu olarak ortaya çıkan her türlü zararı düzeltirler. pp uygulayıcılarının ayrıca kendi alanlarındaki ampirik ve teorik gelişmelere aktif ve devam eden bir ilgi göstermesi gerekmekte ve pp uygulamalrında kanıt timeline dayanan güncel bilgileri sürdürmelerini sağlamaları beklenmektedir. i̇nsan haklarına ve haysiyetine saygı birleşmiş milletler i̇nsan hakları evrensel beyannamesi uyarınca, kişilerin haysiyetine ve haklarına saygı şunu gerektirir: her bir kişi ve diğer tüm insanlar kendi haklarıyla değerlidir, sahip oldukları haklar kabul ve saygı görür ve onlara saygı gösterilir ve insanlığın bir parçası ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 12 olarak onurlandırılır. bu ilkeyi benimseyen uygulayıcılar, kültürel ve sosyal çeşitliliğe duyarlılığı gerektiren saygıyı gösterirler. bu, kültürleri, milliyetleri, etnik kökenleri, renkleri, ırkları, dinleri, cinsiyetleri, medeni durumları, cinsel yönelimleri, fiziksel veya zihinsel yetenekleri, yaşları, sosyo-ekonomik durumları ve / veya diğer kişisel özellikleri, koşul veya durumları ile ilişkilendirilen kişiler arasındaki farklılıkların tanınmasını içerir. butür farklılıklar kişinin ayrılmaz bir parçasıdır ve buna saygı duyulmalıdır. güvenilirlik güvenilir olmak (sadakat), uygulayıcıya duyulan güveni onurlandırmayı içerir. güvenilirlik, etik sorunları anlamak ve çözmek için temel kabul edilir. bu ilkeyi benimseyen uygulayıcılar: • kendilerine duyulan güvene uygun hareket ederler; • danışanlarının makul ve karşılanabilir beklentilere sahip olmalarını sağlamaya çalışırlar; • yapilan anlaşma ve verilen sözleri yerine getirirler; • gizliliği danışanın güveninden kaynaklanan bir yükümlülük olarak kabul ederler; • danşanlara ilişkin gizli bilgilerin ifşasını -zorunlu ifşa etme haricinde, başlangıçta belirlenen amaçlarla sınırlandırırlar (örneğin, bir kişi yargı önünde ise kanun gereği böyle bir ifşa gerekebilir). adalet adalet, tüm danışanlara adil ve tarafsız davranmayı ve yeterli hizmetlerin sağlanmasını içerir. adalet ilkesi, bu ilkeyi benimseyen uygulayıcıların tüm danışanlar için adil olmalarını ve onların insan haklarına ve haysiyetlerine saygı duymalarını gerektirir. yasal gereklilik ve yükümlülükleri bilinçli bir şekilde değerlendirmeye ve de yasal ve etik yükümlülükler arasındaki olası çatışmalara karşı tetikte olmaya dikkat çeker. hizmetlerin dağıtımında adalet, danışanlar için hizmet sunumunu ve hizmetlerin danışanlar arasında dağılımını tarafsız olarak belirleme yeteneğini gerektirir. adalet taahhüdü, insanlar arasındaki farklılıklara saygı duyma; fırsat ve sonuç eşitliğine bağlı olma ve kişilere veya gruplara karşı kişisel veya sosyal özelliklerine dayalı ayrımcılıktan kaçınma becerisini gerektirir. başka bir deyişle adalet, belirli özelliklere (örneğin cinsiyet veya yaş) dayalı haksız ayrımcılığın yapılmamasını gerektirir. uygulayıcılar, potansiyel danışanların ihtiyaçlarına uygun ve ulaşılabilir hizmetlerin adil bir şekilde sunulmasını sağlamak için çabalamakla yükümlüdür. özerklik özerklik, danışanın kendi kendini yönetme hakkına saygı duymayı içerir. bu ilke, hizmetlerin sağlanması ve yaşamın her anında bir danışanın kendi kendini yönetme yeteneğini geliştirmesinin önemini vurgular. özerklik ilkesi, yararlı sosyal amaçlar için bile danışanların kendi iradelerine karşı manipüle edilmesine karşı çıkar. danışanlarının özerkliğine saygı duyan uygulayıcılar: • sunulan hizmetlerden önce verilen herhangi bir reklam veya bilginin doğruluğunu sağlar; • ilişki boyunca doğru bilgilendirme sonucu özgürce verilmiş danışan onayını alır; • önerilen hizmetlere gönüllü katılımın değerini vurgular; • danışanın herhangi bir taahhüdünden önce açık bir sözleşme yapar ve ilişki boyunca bu sözleşmenin şartlarını gözden geçirir; • mahremiyeti korur; • gizliliği korur; ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 13 • ilgili kişinin rızasına bağlı olarak, gizli bilgilerin ifşasını geleneksel olarak yapar; • danışanı, öngörülebilir çıkar çatışmaları konusunda daha önceden veya bu tür çatışmalar ortaya çıktıktan hemen sonra mümkün olan en kısa sürede bilgilendirir. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 14 bölüm i̇ki: pratikte etik i̇lkelerin uygulanması bu bölüm, etik yönergelerin bağlamsal uygulaması için birkaç yönerge ve örnek içermektedir. i̇çerik, pratikte etik karar vermeyi çözmek ve desteklemek için yararlı araçlar ve bir öz değerlendirme kılavuzu sağlarken, düşünmeyi de derinleştirmek için tasarlanmıştır. üç önemli konu belirli herhangi bir pp uygulamasını kullanmadan önce, en iyi uygulamanın temel taşı olan aşağıdaki üç önemli faktör incelenmeli ve değerlendirilmelidir (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. pp uygulaması, duruma uygun bir eşleşme midir? bu, ilgili literatür ve güvenilir kaynaklardan yayınlanmış kanıtlar gözden geçirilerek doğrulanabilir. örneğin, memnuniyet sağlayacak belirli bir ppu uygulanmadan önce, söz konusu ppu’nun danışan için umut verici bir teknik olduğunu gösteren yayınlanmış mevcut kanıtların olup olmadığı kontrol edilmelidir. 2. ppu, danışanın ihtiyaçları ile eşleşiyor mu? 3. bir ppu’nun etkinlilk ve geçerliliği nasıl değerlendirilecek? başka bir deyişle, ppu’nun etkinliğini belirlemek için hangi spesifik sonuç tanımlanabilir ve geçerli bir şekilde değerlendirilebilir? etik karar verme: etik karar verme; etik ilkeler ve ilgili bir mesleğin yönergeleri hakkında yeterli bilgiye sahip olmakla, başkalarının erdemli etik davranışlarının farkında olmakla ve karar vermede kişisel güçlü yanların kullanılmasıyla desteklenebilir. bilgi: bu kılavuzların birincil kullanıcılarının – yani, psikoloji veya ilgili alanlarda yeterli eğitim, öğretim ve deneyime sahip pp uygulayıcıların–söz konusu etik kılavuzları ve meslekleri ve de mesleki konumlarıyla ilgili herhangi bir etik kılavuzu bilmelerini ve bunları açıklayabilmelerini bekliyoruz. çoğu yargı alanı, uygulayıcıların ilgili kurallara, standartlara, düzenlemelere, statülere ve prosedürlere aşina olması gerektiğini vurgulamaktadır. davranış: etik davranış, özellikle pp uygulaması yaparken, sadece bilişsel bilgi kaynaklı olamaz. etik davranış, kolektif davranışlar ve uygulamalarla yakından bağlantılı olmalıdır. profesyonel çevrenizde etik uygulamaları modelleyen bireyleri tanımlayabilir misiniz? alçakgönüllülüklerinden dolayı meslektaşlarınız bu tür uygulamaları açıkça vurgulamasalar da, meslektaşlarınıza veya daha geniş bir profesyonel topluluğa (bölgesel veya uluslararası kuruluş), alanınızın etik standartlarına nasıl uyduklarını açıkça sormanız teşvik edilir. i̇yi uygulamalarla ilgili vaka verisi toplamak, kişinin kendi davranışına göre düşünümsellik açısından faydalı olacaktır. yeterli vaka birikimiyle, büyük ihtimalle çok başarılı örnekler ortaya çıkacaktır. i̇deal olarak uygulayıcılar, diğer uygulayıcıların bu verileri zenginleştirme fırsatına sahip olduğu erişilebilir bir veri merkezi oluşturacaktır. etik karar vermede güçlü yönleri kullanma: güçlü yönler, etik karar vermede çeşitli şekillerde yardımcı olabilir. mesela, güçlü yön örneklerini belirlemek mevcut etik karar verme sürecine yardımcı olabilir. etik davranışın örneği olan ve rol model olarak sunulan bir meslektaş bulun. belirli bir etik ikilem veya durumla nasıl başa çıktıklarını veya daha genel olarak meslektaşları ve danışanlarla günlük etkileşimlerde modellemeye değer ve karar vermeye yardımcı olacak hangi belirli güçlü yönleri içerdiklerini düşünün. çalışma hususları danışanlarla çalışırken, önemli etik sonuçları doğurabilecek dikkate alınması gereken çeşitli hususlar vardır. özellikle, danışanlardaki değişiklikleri, pp uygulayıcılarının ve danışanların ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 15 kendilerini buldukları ortamlardaki değişiklikleri, danışanların ve uygulayıcıların mevcut duygusal durumu ve refah düzeyini, danışanların kaçınma eğilimini, ilişkideki güç farklılıklarını, güçlü yönlerin aşırı kullanımını, pratik bilgeliği, eğitim ve yeterlilik durumunu ve değişen kültürel bağlamların önemini dikkate almak uygundur. bu yönlerin dikkate alınması, bazı kasıtsız ve hoş olmayan sonuçların hafifletilmesine, öngörülmesine veya önlenmesine yardımcı olabilir. danışanlarda ki değişimler herhangi bir psikolojik hizmet sunarken, tedavi veya müdahale süresince danışanların psikolojik sağlığını gözlemlemek önemlidir. pp uygulamasının kanıtlanmış etkinliğine rağmen bazı danşanlar kötüleşmektedir. semptomlar birçok nedenden dolayı kötüye gidebilir ve bu da danışanları savunmasız hale getirir. danışan, bilgiyi uygulayıcıyla paylaşmayabilir çünkü bu konu ile ilgili utanç duyabilir, korkabilir veya refahını artırmak için çalışan uygulayıcıyı hayal kırıklığına uğratmaktan çekinebilir. çoğu zaman, uygulamaların temel odak noktası semptomların iyileştirilmesi değil, daha çok refahın teşvik edilmesidir. pp uygulamalarını bu değişikliklere göre ayarlamak kadar, danışanların yaşamlarındaki değişen koşulları izlemek de önemlidir. örneğin, danşan bir ayrılık yaşarsa veya işini kaybederse, uygulayıcının bu değişiklikleri ele alması ve etkilerini değerlendirebilmesi önemlidir. uygulayıcılar, devam eden uygulamaya bir süreliğine ara vermeye ve yaklaşımı sunulan ve devam eden ihtiyaçlara göre ayarlamaya veya uygunsa başka bir yardımcı profesyonele başvurmaya hazırlıklı olmalıdır. bunun yapılmaması karşılıklı bağı olumsuz etkileyebilir ve bu tamir edilemez sonuçlar doğurabilir. uygulamanın kullanıldığı ortamdaki değişimler danışanlarda ki değişimlerin ele alınmasına ek olarak, hem danışanların hem de uygulayıcıların içerisinde bulundukları ortamı dikkate almak önemlidir. örnek olarak, aynı zamanda bir klinisyen olan bir uygulayıcıyı ele alalım. çağdaş klinisyenler, kanıta dayalı tedavi programlarının eksikliği, kültürel yeterlilik eksikliği ve yaşamlarının birçok alanı etkilenen hastaların kronik ve karmaşık ihtiyaçları gibi zorluklarla dolu oldukça karmaşık, hızlı tempolu ve baskı altındaki ortamlarda çalışmaktadır. .bu zorluklar göz önüne alındığında, şu danışanları bir düşünün: • işlerini kaybetmiş veya önemli bir anlaşmayı kaçırmış olanlar veya yalnızca takıma uymadıkları için hak ettikleri bir terfiyi alamamış olanlar; • yakın zamanda ciddi bir sağlık sorunu teşhis edilmiş olanlar; • partnerlerinin ihaneti veya diğer kötü muamelelleri ile karşı karşıya kalmış olanlar, • bir ayrımcılık vakası yaşıyor olanlar; • sel veya orman yangını gibi yıkıcı çevresel olaylara veya kıtlık gibi küresel sorunlara maruz kalmış olanlar. bu zorlukların danışanları nasıl etkileyebileceğini düşünün ve tedavilerini buna gore şekillendirin. bu vakalar, kişinin uyumlu olduğu mesleğin düzenlemeleri ve standartlarını göz önünde bulundururken, farklı şekillerde ele alınması gereken çeşitli farklı konuları ortaya koymaktadır. bu nedenle, uygulayıcıların pp uygulaması sunduklarında, danışanlar ve çevreleri hakkında ve koşullarındaki son veya mevcut değişiklikler hakkında bilgi edinmeleri önemlidir. uygulayıcıların kendi çalışma ortamlarındaki zorlukların da farkında olmaları gerekir. bu, hizmet yöntemlerinde değişiklikler getirebilecek yönetim değişikliklerini içerebilir örneğin, yeni bir yönetici belirli pp uygulamalarını onaylayabilir veya bunlara karşı çıkabilir veya başka bir tedavi yaklaşımını tercih edebilir (nöro-linguistik programlama, farkındalığa dayalı ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 16 terapiler, kabullenme bağlılıkterapisi gibi). bu değişikliklerin, etik bir bakış açısı da dahil olmak üzere, pp uygulamaları üzerinde doğrudan veya dolaylı etkileri olabilir. mevcut duygusal durum ve iyi-oluş düzeyi pp uygulamaları sunarken, danışanlardaki değişiklikleri, mevcut duygusal durumlarını ve sağlık düzeylerini değerlendirmek önemlidir. pp uygulayıcılarının kendi uzmanlık ve eğitim kapsamları dahilinde uygulama yapması önemlidir. psikopatoloji ile ilgili sorunlar (depresyon, anksiyete, travma) ile başvuran danışanlar için, uygulayıcı nitelikli ve deneyimli bir yardımcı uzmana başvurmalıdır. danışan-uygulayıcı ilişkisi başlangıcında bu tür sorunlar mevcut değilse, uygulayıcının bu tür sorunların danışan uygulamayı alırken ortaya çıkabileceği konusunda dikkatli olması ve yeterince nitelikli bir yardımcı uzmana başvurmaya hazır olması gerekir. i̇deal olarak, uygulayıcı, böyle bir durumda uygulama için en uygun zamanlamanın ne olabileceğini belirlemek için danışanla konuşur ve meslektaşları ve ilgili uzmanlara danışır. kaçınma kaçınma, insanların olumsuz duygularla baş etmek için kullandıkları en yaygın mekanizmalardan biridir. sağlıklı bir psikolojik yaşam, tüm duygusal spektrumun farkında olup uyarlanabilir bir şekilde kullanılmasını gerektirir. pp uygulamalarını isteyen bazı danışanlar, rahatsızlıkları nedeniyle daha derin olumsuz duygulardan kaçınabilir ve olumsuz duygularını giderecek veya onları uzak tutacakları umuduyla pp uygulamaları talep edebilirler. olumsuz duygu kaynaklarına örnek olarak, acı bir ayrılık veya boşanma anıları, güvenilen bir arkadaşın ihaneti, ayrımcılığın kurbanı olduğu için kızgınlık ve kırgınlık ve bir kişi veya kurum tarafından haksız veya önyargılı bir şekilde muamele görme sayılabilir. kaçınma durumunu değerlendirmenin bir yolu, açıkça tartışılmamasına rağmen konuşmalarda tekrar ortaya çıkan olumsuz duygulara dikkati yoğunlaştırmaktır. (yani, danışanları oldukça rahatsız eden ancak açıkça tartışılmayan duygular). pp uygulamaları, olumlu duyguların ve güçlü karakterlerin olumsuz durumları iyileştirip onarabileceğine dair artan kanıtlarla yeni bir çığır açıyor olsa da (rashid ve seligman, 2018), bu yalnızca olumsuz durumlar tedaviye anlamlı bir şekilde entegre edildiğinde geçerlidir. danışanlar veya uygulayıcılar güçlü olumsuz duygulardan kaçınırlarsa, tedavinin etkinliği tehlikeye atılabilir. güç farklılıkları bir uygulayıcı ve bir danışanı içeren herhangi bir psikolojik etkileşimin en önemli özelliklerinden biri, ilişkinin doğasında bulunan güç dinamikleri ve özellikle güç farklılığıdır. terapistler, danışmanlar, sosyal hizmet uzmanları ve diğer benzer profesyoneller genellikle bu ayrımın farkındadır. bu nedenle, danışanların reçeteli hizmetlerin yalnızca pasif alıcıları gibi hissetmediği, güvenli, yargılayıcı olmayan, gizli ve hoş bir alan yaratmaya çalışırlar. danışan ve uygulayıcı arasında ki etkileşim öylesine güçlüdür ki uygulayıcılar kaçınılmaz bir şekilde uzman olarak algılanırlar. danışanlar, onlara uygulama sunma konusunda en gelişmiş bilgi, eğitim ve deneyime sahip olarak bakma eğilimindedir. bu nedenle, güç farkı her zaman vardır. uygulayıcı, bu farklılığın bilincinde olmalı ve danışanın veya uygulayıcının güç farkından etkilenebilecek bir karar vermek zorunda kalabileceği durumlardan kaçınmalıdır. aşırı güç kullanımı bazı güce dayalı uygulamaların çok az veya aşırı kullanılması mevcut zorlukları daha da kötüleştirebilir. örneğin, çeşitli koçluk konularında, danışanlara daha sağduyulu olmalarını ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 17 önermek, bazılarının daha endişeli veya kararsız olmasına neden olabilir. ne zaman ve kimi affedeceklerini düşünmeden affetmeyi uygulayan danışanlar, kontrol edilmediği veya hesaba katılmadığı takdirde başkalarına zarar verebilecek kusurları gözden kaçırabilir. yaratıcılığı gereğinden fazla kullanan danışanlar, eşitliği ve fırsat eşitliğini teşvik eden normlara veya kurallara uymayı zor bulabilirler. çalıştıkları kurumlarda adil kararlar vermeyi taahhüt eden danışanlar, aynı yerde var olan karşıt gerçeklerle uzlaşmakta zorlanabilir (örneğin, oldukça eğitimli ve bilgili bir kişinin nasıl akılsız kararlar verebileceğiyle uzlaşmak gibi). pratik zeka uygulayıcıların, filozof aristoteles'in "phronesis" dediği şeye, yani bu yönergeleri uygulamak için pratik zekaya ihtiyaçları vardır. örneğin, mükemmel bir iş ilişkisinin olduğu ve aynı zamanda işlerinde çok iyi ilerleme kaydetmiş üst düzey bir yönetici ile çalışan bir uygulayıcı düşünün. fakat, uygulayıcı söz konusu yöneticinin etik olmayan davranışlarda bulunduğunu fark eder. uygulayıcı aralarında ki sağlam ilişkiyi korumalı mı yoksa ilişkiyi riske atarak kişiyle yüzleşmeli mi? bu durum için tek bir kılavuz yeterli olmayabilir. uygulayıcının durumu yorumlaması ve çelişen durumları dengelemesi gerekir. bu gibi durumlarda, pratik zeka hem birikimli deneyimlerden hem de etik akıl yürütme konusunda tavsiyelerde bulunabilen ve destek olabilen meslektaşlarla kurulan iyi ilişkisel bağlardan oluşur. dayanıklılığı sürdürme ve tükenmişliğe karşı tamponlama bazı pp yapıları, uygulayıcı tükenmişliğine karşı tampon görevi görebilir. olumlu duygular (umut, huzur, neşe, ilgi ve şaşkınlık gibi), bir uygulayıcının tükenmişlik belirtileri (duygusal tükenme) gibi zayıf noktalarına karşı tampon görevi görebilecek olan dikkat, bilişsel ve davranışsal kaynaklarını genişletebilir. farkındalık gibi kişisel uygulamalar da bu konuda yardımcı olabilir. kişilerarası güçlü yönler (örneğin, sosyal zeka, nezaket, sevgi, mizah, amaç ve anlam duygusu ve takım çalışması), kendine yabancılaşma (kişinin düşüncelerinin ve duygularının gerçek dışı göründüğü veya kendisine ait olmadığı bir durum) gibi zorluklarla başa çıkmaya yardımcı olabilir. benzer şekilde, sahip olunan bir amaç ve anlam duygusu, kendine yabancılaşma duygusunu yeniden oluşturabilir. eğitim ve yeterlilik beyanı uygulayıcılar, belirli psikolojik koşullara, belirli gruplara (örneğin, çocuklarla çalışma, diğer kültürlerle çalışma, grup çalışması) ve belirli pp uygulamalarına ilişkin yeterliliklerinin sınırlarını beyan etmelidirler. mesela, bir uygulayıcı yetişkinlerin güçlü yönlerini değerlendirme konusunda deneyimli olurken, çocukların veya ergenlerin güçlü yönlerini değerlendirme konusunda deneyimsiz olabilir. dahası, hizmet sunumu devam ettikçe, uygulayıcının daha yüzeysel olarak deneyimli veya kalifiye olduğu alanlara geçebilir. örneğin, bir uygulayıcı çocuklara, ergenlere ve yetişkinlere hizmet sağlama konusunda deneyimli ve vasıflı olabilirken, bu tür hizmetleri, bir sevk veya daha fazla destek yapılarının gerekli olabileceği bir aile ortamı bağlamında sunma konusunda deneyimli veya vasıflı olmayabilir. buna ek olarak, uygulayıcılar, uygulama sunumlarının dayandığı eğitim ve ilgili deneyimi açıkça belirtmelidir. örneğin, bir uygulayıcı, bir haftalık yüz yüze eğitimi içeren altı aylık bir sertifika programını tamamlar ve kalan kurs çevrimiçi olarak tamamlanır. bu sertifika, belediye, bölge veya ilde ruhsat veren bir makam tarafından tanınmaz. uygulayıcının web sitesinde "sertifikalı pozitif psikoloji uygulayıcısı" olduğu belirtilmektedir. bundan başka profesyonel uygulama kimlik bilgileri yoktur. bu etik midir? danışanlarınıza mesleki eğitiminizin, ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 18 uygulamanızın ve çalışma unvanınızın ötesindeki kimlik bilgilerinizin niteliği, kapsamı ve sınırları hakkında açıkça bilgi vermeniz önemlidir. kültürel bağlamın önemine saygı duyma etik karar verme yalnızca farkındalığa, bilgiye veya bilişsel anlayışa dayanmamalıdır. kararlar aynı zamanda en uygun ve ilgili en iyi kanıtları ve kültürel bağlamın koşullarını yansıtmalıdır. pp uygulamaları sunumunda kültürel bağlam kritik bir konudur, çünkü neyin normal, iyi veya uyarlanabilir olduğunun kavramsallaştırılması, kaygı veya ikilemin ortaya çıktığı kültür ve sosyal bağlam içinde arzu edilen şekilde benimsenen değerlerle şekillenir. bunlara ek olarak, kültürler ve sosyal normlar, belirli duyguların nasıl kabul edildiğine, ifade edildiğine veya güçlendirildiğine göre farklılık gösterir. bu nedenle, etik pp uygulamasına yönelik yönergelerin bu tür kanıtlara dayandırılması önemlidir. burada sunulan etik ilkeler, kültürel bağlamı kapsayacak kadar geniştir, ancak yine de bireysel farklılıkları ve ihtiyaçları karşılayacak incelikler içerir. kültürel ve bireysel faktörler de dahil olmak üzere kanıtların bu entegrasyonu kolay olabilir veya kolayca elde edilebilir. böyle bir entegrasyon, etik anlamda mükemmel bir yol, süreç veya sonuç sağlamasa da, bireyler etik mükemmellik için çabalarken, kolektif zeka, karşılaşılan vakalarda yönlerini belirlemelerine yardımcı olur. yeni bir çığır açılır, yeni yollardan geçilir ve sonunda mükemmelliğe ulaşılır. bu nedenle, bu yönergelere sahip olmak, bir kişinin düşünce ve eylemlerini sağlama almak için çok önemlidir. bu kılavuzlar aynı zamanda kişinin eylemlerinin etik mükemmelliğe ne ölçüde yakın veya mükemmellikten ne ölçüde uzak olduğunu değerlendirme amacına da hizmet eder. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 19 etik i̇kilemleri çözümleme adım adım kılavuz etik ikilemlerden tamamen uzak olmak imkansız olsa da, pek çok diğer kaynakla birlikte büyük ölçüde psikolojide etik (koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998) kitabından uyarlanan aşağıdaki adımlar, bir uygulayıcının doğru ve güçlü etik kararlar almasına yardımcı olacaktır: • yargı bölgenizdeki ilgili lisans veren kurum tarafından şart koşulan tüm tüzükler, düzenlemeler ile mesleki uygulama, davranış ve yönergelere ilişkin standartlara uygun olarak pratik yapın. bu tür bilgiler, bir uygulayıcının etik ikilemleri aşmasına yardımcı olacaktır. • benzer bir olayın kişiden kişiye nasıl farklılık gösterebileceğine dair doğru bir algı geliştirin. konunun ciddi sonuçları olan etik ikilemler oluşturup oluşturmadığını, güvenilir ve tarafsız birine danışın. meslektaşlarınızla, algıladığınız şeyin etik bir ihlal olup olmadığını, sadece mesleki olumsuz hareketler mi yoksa kendine veya topluma zarar veren bir durum mu olup olmadığını görmek için fikir alışverişi yapın. • önceden yayınlanmış ilgili kılavuzları, kuralları ve standartları gözden geçirin. bunları doğru bir şekilde yorumladığınızdan emin olun ve gerekirse tavsiye alın. yazılı kılavuzlar bazen soyuttur ve çok net değildir ve fazlasıyla öznel yorumlama içerir. • mümkün olan tüm ilgili ve en iyi bilgileri toplayın. bilgilerdeki mevcut boşlukları tespit edin ve gerçekleri ve sorunları belgeleyin. • tüm bilgileri düşünme sürecinize entegre edin ve iyi bilgilendirilmiş, açık fikirli ve uygulayıcının potansiyel eksikliklerini ortaya koymaktan korkmayan birine danışın. • bu kılavuzda yer alan altı etik ilkenin nasıl uygulandığını değerlendirin (yani, fayda / zarar vermeme, bilinçli yardımseverlik, insanların hak ve haysiyetine saygı, güvenilirlik, adalet, özerklik). örneğin, dahil olan herkesin haklarını, sorumluluklarını ve zayıf noktalarını değerlendirin. • çeşitli çözümler için beyin fırtınası yapın ve her birini mümkün olduğunca objektif bir şekilde değerlendirin. • en doğru ve sağlam etik kararı vermenizde hangi güçlü karakter yönünün size yardımcı olabileceğini düşünün. daha derin adalet, dürüstlük veya nezaket duygunuza yönelebilir misiniz? belki de cesaretiniz sizi "doğru olanı yapmaya" teşvik etmek için gereklidir? etik kararların, tek başına tek bir gücün ya da “çok kullanılan” bir gücün kullanılmasını değil, birden çok karakter gücünün en uygun şekilde ve beraberce kullanılmasını gerektirdiğini unutmayın (niemiec, 2018). • yaptığınız eyleminizin veya eylemsizliğinizin sonucunu gözünüzde canlandırın. • karar vermeden önce bunun sizin ve dahil olan diğer herkesin üzerinde nasıl bir etkisi olacağı ve sistematik çıkarımlarının neler olabileceği üzerine düşünün. ayrıca kararınıza bağlı kalmanız için ne tür bir desteğe ihtiyacınız olabileceğini düşünün. • aldığınız kararı, kararınızın ruhunu gerçekten yansıtan somut eylemlere dönüştürün. bir dizi eylem kararınızı dile getirebilir. kararınızı doğru ve geçerli bir şekilde ifade eden, ölçülebilir, arzu edilen sonuçlarla bağlantılı ve doğrudan dahil olmayanlar için en az rahatsızlık veya zarara neden olan eylemleri seçin. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 20 öz değerlendirme kılavuzu aşağıdaki bölüm, uygulayıcıların üzerinde düşünmesi gereken en iyi uygulamayı desteklemek için etik ikilemlerden kaçınmaya yardımcı olacak soruları özetlemektedir. pp uygulama uyumu: herşeyden önemlisi, mevcut en iyi kanıtlara dayalı olarak, belirli bir pp uyglamasının (örneğin, şükran günlüğü, belirli güçlü yönleri kullanan, affetme alıştırması) sorunları, koşulları ve tedavisi sunulan danışanlar için uygun olup olmadığına karar verin. pp uygulama zamanlaması: pp uygulamasının ne zaman uygun olduğuna karar vermek için hangi adımları atacaksınız: 1) vereceğiniz hizmetin başlangıcında, 2) uygulama zaten başlamışken? hangi koşullarda eşzamanlı veya alternatif bir hizmet veya tedaviyi düşünürdünüz? kişinin kendi ruh sağlığının bilinci: kendi ruh sağlığınızın ne kadar farkındasınız? bir uygulayıcı olmak, sizi klinik bir vakaya doğru ilerleyebilecek akıl hastalığı semptomlarından korumaya yetmez. danışanlarınıza en iyi şekilde hizmet verebilmek adına kendi akıl sağlığınız için rutin olarak hangi adımları veya eylemleri gerçekleştiriyorsunuz? kendi sağlığınıza dikkat ederken zaman ve kaynak eksikliği, iyi olduğunuzu hissetme veya buna inanma ve zihinsel sağlığınızla ilgilenebilecek uygun ve ilgili profesyonellere erişim gibi hangi engellerle karşılaşıyorsunuz? zorunlu raporlama: pp uygulamalarına oldukça iyi yanıt verebilen ancak yine de örneğin çocuk ve ya yaşlı istismarını, cinsel istismarı veya birisinin güvenliğine yönelik yakın tehditi içerebilecek bir olayı (yakın zamanda veya geçmişte) veya devam eden bir durumu bildirmesi durumunda gizlilik isteyen bir danışana pp uygularken ne kadar rahat hissediyorsunuz? herhangi bir kuruluşun kural veya yönergeleri altında çalışmıyorsanız, bunu rapor etmek için yasal bir zorunluluğunuz var mı? abartma ve genelleme: bir konferansta pp uygulamaları konusunda oldukça istekli görünen ve sizi sundukları bir seminere katılmaya davet eden biriyle tanışıyorsunuz. oldukça aşina olduğunuz birkaç çalışma üzerine olan bu seminere katılıyorsunuz. çalışmaların sonuçları, uygulamaları ve genelleştirilebilirliğinin abartılı bir şekilde sunulduğunu görüyorsunuz. katılımcıların çoğu sunumu “hayatlarını değiştirebilecek bir deneyim” olarak görüyor ve bulgulara inanıyor gibi görünüyor. siz ne yapardınız? böyle bir durumda davranışınıza rehberlik etmesi için “etik ikilemleri çözümleme” bölümündeki adımları kullanabilir misiniz? ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 21 bölüm üç: etik uygulama vakaları aşağıdaki verilen vakalar, uygulamada ortaya çıkabilecek ve bu etik kılavuzdaki ilkelere uygun etik bileşeni olan örneklerdir. 4 örnek vaka 1: kültürel– pozitif psikoloji uygulamalarının kültürel duyarlılıkla yapılması etik kararlar, kültürel bağlam koşullarında mevcut en iyi kanıtları yansıtmalıdır. aşağıdaki olayı (vignette) düşünün. suzanne, doğu asya kültür geçmişi olan bir kadın danışanla çalışan avustralyalı bir uygulayıcıdır. danışan kendini geliştirmek ve aile ilişkilerini korumak ister. suzanne olası en i̇yi kendi kendine egzersiz yöntemini kullanmayı tercih eder. suzanne uygulama boyunca danışana rehberlik etmek için tüm adımları izler. her nasılsa, önemli kişisel gelişim sağlamasına rağmen, danışan ailesiyle olan ilişkilerinin bozulduğunu bildirir. bu nedenle, tekrarlanan internet ölçülerinde danışanın refahında önemli bir gelişme tespit edilmemiştir. bu senaryoda ki en önemli çıkarım, kültürden kültüre değişen benlik kavramının dikkate alınmasıdır. suzanne, genellikle batı ile ilişkilendirilen, kişisel gelişimi ve yeni ve büyük ölçüde bireysel girişimleri kapsayan bir kişisel gelişim kavramını takip ediyor. doğu (ve çoğu batılı olmayan) kültürlerinde kişisel gelişimin ilişkilere yatırım yapmaya, sosyal etkileşimi geliştirmeye ve aile, grup ve kabile geleneklerini korumaya katkıda bulunmaya göreceli olarak daha fazla vurgu yaptığı düşünülmektedir. çoğu kentsel metropolde artan kültürel çeşitliliğe rağmen, bazı tipik kültürel farklılıklar çoğu zaman hala varlığını sürdürmektedir. bu farklılıklardan yapılacak çıkarım, bu senaryoda ki danışanın, ailesine fayda sağlamak veya onlarla daha derinlemesine bir ilişki kurmak için güçlü karakter yönlerini nasıl kullanabileceğini anlamaktan faydalanabileceğidir. suzanne, danışanının en iyi içsel niteliklerini ötekinin yararına olan ilişki kurma mekanizmalarına dönüştürmeyi öğrendiği ve aile üyelerine kendi en iyi nitelikleri için değer vermeye ve farkında olmaya öncelik vermeyi öğrendiği güçlü yönlerini diğerlerine-yönelt ya da karakter güçlü yönleri takdir et ‘te ki ( niemiec, 2018) karakter gücü uygulamalarını kullanabilir. önemli başkaları tarafından desteklenen kişisel gelişimin, derinlemesine ve sürekli artan bir refah getirebileceği de söz konusu olabilir. ne var ki; yakın aile üyelerini içeren birbirine bağlı bir kültürde, kişisel gelişim uzun bir süre boyunca daha karmaşık etkileşimleri yönetmeyi de gerektirir. buna karşılık, bireysel güçlü yönleri geliştirmeye veya yeni bir girişimde bulunmaya odaklanan en i̇yi ben etkinliği nispeten daha kısa bir süre gerektirebilir. bu nedenle, pp uygulayıcılarının kendi uygulamalarının kültürel olarak en iyi şekilde nasıl uyarlanabileceğini düşünmeleri gereklidir. aşağıdaki etik yönler, yukarıdaki durumla ilgili örneklerdir: • bilinçli yardımseverlik – pp uygulayıcı, danışanının mevcut durumu ve geçmişinin özelliklerini hesaba katarak ilgilenmeye çalışmalıdır. • fayda / zarar vermeme – pp uygulayıcının görevi zarar vermemektir. • i̇nsan hakları ve haysiyetine saygı pp uygulayıcının kültürler arası dinamiklere duyarlı olma ve danışanının mevcut bakış açısına ve ihtiyaçlarına saygı gösterme sorumluluğu vardır. 4 bu vakaları sağlayan kişilere teşşkür ederiz: vakalar 1 ve 3 tayyab rashid, vaka 2 annalize roache, vaka 4 stewart donaldson, vaka 5 matthew iasiello ve vaka 6 denise quinlan. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 22 örnek vaka 2: koçluk değişen koşullarda danışanlara koçluk yapmak etik ikilemler beklenmedik bir şekilde ortaya çıkabilir ve hizmet sunumunda bir ayarlama gerektirebilir. aşağıdaki olayı düşünün. amanda koçluk eğitimi almak istedi çünkü hayatta yön ve anlam eksikliği hissediyordu. önceleri kariyer gelişimine çok önem vermişti, ancak şimdi hayata dair daha dengeli bir yaklaşım aramaya ihtiyacı olduğunu hissediyordu ve dahası, hayatta daha fazlasını başaramadığı için (kariyer geliştirme dışında) üzgün ve yenik hissediyordu. i̇lk seansta, finans yönetimi (bir ev satın almayı desteklemek için), kişisel gelişim ve artan eğlence ve sosyal zamanı içeren odaklanmak istediği birkaç alan belirledi. mevcut işinin oldukça zorlayıcı olduğunu ve gelecekte bir değişiklik yapmak isteyeceğini söyledi, ancak bu koçluk için mevcut bir odak noktası değildi. hedeflerin oluşturulduğu ve aksiyon adımlarının netleştirildiği ilk iki seansta, önemli ölçüde ilerleme kaydediliyor, koçluk iyi ilerliyordu. ancak dördüncü seansın başında amanda iş durumunun aniden kötüleştiğini ve hemen yeni bir iş bulduğu için istifa ettiğini açıkladı. i̇stifası pek iyi karşılanmamıştı ve amanda, işyerinde tedirgin ve son derece duygusal hissediyordu; ayrıca işyerinde tamamlaması gereken hâlâ dört haftası vardı. yöneticisinin istifasına gösterdiği tepki ile tetiklenen bir takım duygularına işaret ederek ergenliğinde yüzleştiği benzer duygusal anılarını gündeme getiriyor. bu aşamada koçun oto-kontrol gücünü sürdürmesi ve amanda’nın stres faktörlerinin yükselmesi nedeniyle dürtüsel bir öneride bulunmaması zorunluydu. bu nokta koç, amanda'nın yakın gelecekte nasıl ilerlemek istediğini kontrol etmek için merakın gücünü kullanabilir ve seansta / seanslarda odaklanmayı değiştirme konusunda açık olabilir. koçluk uygulamasının amanda’nın mevcut ihtiyaçları için güvenli ve uygun bir mekanizma olup olmadığını belirlemek için onun duygusal tepkisinin doğasını anlamak da önemli olabilir. koç belirli bir seans için amanda ile sözleşme yapmış olsa da, danışanın durumundaki değişiklikler ileriye dönük en uygun yola dair bilgi vermelidir. aşağıdaki etik yönler, yukarıdaki durumla ilgili örneklerdir: • bilinçli yardımseverlik koçun birincil sorumluluğu amanda'nın refahını korumak ve uzmanlıklarının sınırlarını tanımak için nezaket ve adaleti kullanmaktır. • özerklik burada koç, amanda’nın yaşamın her alanında kendi kendini yönetme becerisini geliştirmeye ve karşılıklı ilişkileri süresince sözleşmelerinin şartlarını yeniden gözden geçirmeye / değerlendirmeye odaklanabilir. • fayda / zarar vermeme amanda'nın çıkarına en uygun şekilde hareket eden ve profesyonel değerlendirmeye bağlı olan koç, kesinlikle kendi yeterlilik sınırları dahilinde çalışmanın farkında olmalı ve yeterli eğitim ve deneyime dayalı hizmet sunmalıdır. örnek vaka 3: klinik – travma ile çalışmak travma yaşayan çoğu birey, özellikle bir pp uygulaması üzerinde çalışıyorsa, kültürel açıdan birçok farklı şekilde bunalmış hale gelir. travmalarıyla bağlantılı olabilecek şekillerde düşünmekten, hatırlamaktan veya davranmaktan kaçınmak için kapsamlı mekanizmalar geliştirebilirler. pp uygulaması sunarken, bu tür travmaları (tarihsel ve / veya güncel) değerlendirmek ve incelemek önemlidir. uzmanlığı varsa uygulayıcı bu duruma konuyu önemsizleştirmeden veya reddetmeden müdahale etmeli, uzmanlığı yok ise zamanında iligililere yönlendirmelidir. danışanın, pp uygulaması sürecindeyken travmasının ortaya çıkma ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 23 ihtimaline karşı uygulayıcının da tetikte olması gerekir. uygulayıcı, böyle bir durumda pp uygulaması konusunda uygun bir zamanlamanın ne olabileceğini belirlemek için danışan ile bu konuyu tartışmalı ve meslektaşları ve ilgili uzmanlara danışmalıdır. aşağıdaki olayı düşünün. 21 yaşındaki salma uzun bir fiziksel, duygusal ve cinsel istismara maruz kalma geçmişine sahiptir. kalıcı depresyon duyguları için hizmet aramaktadır. terapistin hayatındaki travmatik olayları açıkça sormasını beklemektedir. fakat bunun yerine, kendisine mevcut veya geçmiş travma hakkında hiçbir soru içermeyen kısa bir anket verilir. danışmanlık seanslarında salma, danışmandan hoşlanmadığını fark eder ve travmasının ayrıntılarını açıklamamayı seçer. bu nedenle, tedavisi yüzeysel olarak etkili kalır ve altı ay içinde kendisine yeni bir tedavi turu verilir. yukarıda verilen durum da görüldüğü gibi, (bunu yapmak büyük bir hassasiyet ve klinik eğitim gerektirse de) travma hakkında açıkça soru sormak önemlidir. i̇lişkinin samimiyetine bağlı olarak, bazı danışanlar açıkça konu ile ilgili sorular soracak ve tavsiye, öneri, başa çıkma stratejileri veya kültürel olarak uygun kaynaklar arayışına girecektir. pp uygulaması devam ederken ve yakın veya uzak tarihli bir travmanın etkileri hala göz önündeyken, uygulayıcının danışanın ihtiyaçlarını karşılayacak şekilde yanıt vermesi önemlidir. i̇lk ve en önemlisi, uygulayıcı söz konusu durumla başa çıkmada yeterince nitelikli, eğitimli ve deneyimli olmalıdır. uygulayıcılar, hizmet vermeye devam edip etmeyeceklerini periyodik olarak kontrol ederek alçakgönüllü ve sağduyulu / tedbirli yönlerini düzenli olarak ortaya koymalıdırlar veya tam tersine, danışanın ihtiyacı veya talep etmesi durumunda, önerileri, becerileri ve stratejileri sunma konusunda daha spesifik uzmanlığa sahip biriyle devam etmesinin daha iyi olup olmayacağını kontrol etmelidirler. aşağıdaki etik yönler, yukarıdaki durumla ilgili örneklerdir: • bilinçli yardımseverlik – pp uygulayıcının, salma ile kendi durumunun ve geçmişinin özelliklerini göz önünde bulunduracak şekilde ilgilenme sorumluluğu vardır. • fayda / zarar vermeme pp uygulayıcının hem salma'ya daha fazla zarar vermeme hem de onun iyiliğini arttırma sorumluluğu vardır. örnek vaka 4: organizasyonelverileri yanlış sunma baskısı pek çok olumlu çalışma ve organizasyon uygulamaları, etkinliklerini belirlemek adına değerlendirilir. danışanlar bulguları kabul etmediğinde ve uygulayıcılara değerlendirme verilerini sunmamaları veya yanlış sunmaları için baskı uyguladığında beklenmedik bir şekilde etik ikilemler ortaya çıkabilir. aşağıdaki olayı düşünün ve dürüstlük / doğruluk, bakış açısı / bilgelik, liderlik ve tevazu dahil olmak üzere pek çok karakter gücünün ne kadar az kullanıldığına dikkat edin. xyz şirketi, çalışanların moralini ve performansını iyileştirmek için bir pp uygulayıcısı tuttu. uygulayıcı, şirket liderliğine danışarak, çalışanın psikolojik sermayesini (umut, etkinlik, dayanıklılık ve iyimserlik) artırmak için bir eğitim programı sunmaya karar verdi. değerlendirme verileri, çalışanların eğitimi sevdiğini ve gelecekte daha olumlu psikolojik eğitimler istediklerini gösterdi. ne var ki, değerlendirme verileri, eğitime katılmak üzere rastgele seçilen çalışanlar ile karşılaştırma grubundakiler arasında umut, etkinlik, dayanıklılık, iyimserlik, moral veya performans seviyelerinde önemli farklılıklar olmadığını ortaya koydu. xyz şirketinin liderleri, çalışanları eğitimden keyif aldıkları için o kadar memnun oldular ki, cesaret kırıcı değerlendirme sonuçlarını görmelerini istemediler. bunun yerine, uygulayıcıdan eğitimin çok başarılı olduğunu ve gelecekte çalışanlara aynı doğrultuda daha fazla eğitim verileceğini bildirmesini talep ettiler. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 24 aşağıdaki etik yönler, yukarıdaki durumla ilgili örneklerdir: • özerklik burada uygulayıcının görevini yerine getirme özerkliği elinden alınmaktadır. • fayda / zarar vermeme fayda, danışanın iyiliğini teşvik etme taahhüdü içerir ve şirketin liderleri tarafından desteklenen bu tür bir aldatma, çalışanların yararına değildir. ek olarak, yararlı bir şekilde hareket etmek, yeterli eğitim veya deneyime dayalı hizmetler sağlamayı gerektirir. • güvenilirlik burada uygulayıcıdan, çalışanların uygulayıcıya duydukları güveni onurlandırmayan bir şekilde, pp uygulamasının etkililiğini abartması ve genellemesi istenmektedir. örnek vaka 5: danışmanlık dengesiz bir ilişkide "isteksiz" katılımcıları motive etmek çoğu zaman, bir müdahaleye en dirençli olanlar en çok fayda sağlayabileceklerdir. pp uygulayıcıları, bir danışanı manipülasyon olmaksızın, kendi menfaatleri için bir uygulamaya katılmaya teşvik veya ikna etmeye çalışırken zor bir durumla karşılaşırlar. aşağıdaki olayı düşünün. bir gençlik ajansında vaka yöneticisi olan abbie'nin, pp grubu uygulama çalışmasına katılmayı reddeden bir danışanı var. uygulamanın yöneticisi, abbie'den danışanını alıştırmalara katılmaya teşvik etmesini ve uygulamanın faydaları konusunda ikna etmesini istedi. abbie, uygulamanın danışanı için büyük ölçüde faydalı olacağı konusunda meslektaşı ile aynı fikirde. abbie, danışanının tutum ve davranışlarının sıklıkla yardımcı olabilecek uygulamalardan dışlanmasına neden olduğunun bilincindedir ve danışanının katılıma yönelik tutumlarını zorlamaya karar verir. abbie, danışanı ile güvene dayalı bir danışman ilişkisi geliştirmiştir ve uygulamayı danışanına körü körüne "satarak" veya gerçekleşmeyecek sözler vererek dürüstlüğünden ödün vermek ve danışanın güvenine ihanet etmek istememektedir. bunun yerine, uygulamayı destekleyen kanıtları mütevazı bir şekilde anlatır ve katılımın zarar ve faydalarını tartmak için danışanı ile birlikte çalışır. danışanına uygulamaya katılmanın artıları ve eksileri ile sahip olduğu güçlü yanlarının grup ortamında nasıl kullanılabileceği hakkında merak içeren sorular sorar. sonrasında, abbie danışanını katılımın zararlı taraflarını en aza indirecek stratejileri belirlemesi için destekler ve beraber uygulamanın kendisinin ve danışanının güçlü yönlerinin grup düzenlemesinden önce kullandığı düşük yoğunluklu modelini uygularlar. abbie, danışanının uygulamaya katılmaktan fayda sağlayacağından emindir ve danışanının bir kez daha katılımdan dışlanmasını istememektedir. aynı şekilde, danışanının güvenine veya özerkliğine ihanet etmek istememektedir. abbie, danışanına meydan okumak ve yeni deneyimlere maruz kalmasına yardımcı olmak istemektedir, ancak etik olmayan manipülasyonun katılımcısı için olumsuz sonuçlara yol açabileceğinden ve zor kazanılmış ilişkilerinin kalitesine zarar verebileceğinden korkmaktadır. abbie, katılımın faydalarını aşırı övmek veya abartmak yerine, danışanının uygulamaya yönelik tutumunu anlamaya çalışır, bilişsel önyargılara meydan okur ve vaka yönetimi oturumunun güvenliğinde eğitimin faydalarını göstermek için fırsatlar yaratır. aşağıdaki etik yönler, yukarıdaki durumla ilgili örneklerdir: • adalet – pp uygulayıcısının, danışanların belirli bir özelliğe dayalı uygulamalardan dışlanmamasını sağlama sorumluluğu vardır. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 25 • güvenilirlik – pp uygulayıcısı, danışanını tutum ve inançlarını değerlendirmeye teşvik etmek için güvene dayalı ilişkilerini kullanır, ancak bu güvene ihanet etmez. • özerklik – pp uygulayıcısı, danışanının iradesine saygı duyar ve onu manipüle etmekten çekinir. örnek vaka 6: eğitim –mevcut uygulama ile isteklerin bastırıldığı yerlerde iyi-oluş programları uygulamak pek çok okul refah programlarını uygulamak ister. ancak bunu, öğrenci refahı endişesinden, okul içinde zorbalık gibi zorlukları ele almaya ve hali hazırda güçlü olan uygulamaları geliştirmeye kadar pek çok nedenlerden dolay isterler. ayrıca, okul refahı programına sahip olmak, bazı okullar için bir pazarlama fırsatı ve diğerleri arasında bir fark olarak da görülebilir. aşağıdaki olayı düşünün. müdür tarafından bir okul personelinden bir sağlık stratejisi ve yönetim kurulu tarafından benimsenmesi için bir plan geliştirmesi ve ardından temel unsurların hızlı bir şekilde yaygınlaştırılması istenir. müdür, aday ebeveynlere, çocuklarının müfredatta yer alan iyioluş eğitiminden yararlanacağını söylemek ister. bu alandaki personel için çok az mesleki gelişim içermesine rağmen, öğretmenlerin hepsine iyi-olusu öğretmek için sorumluluklar verildi. birçok personel stresliydi ve çoğu bu eğitim ve beraberinde getirdiği ek iş yükü için hazırlıksız olduğunu düşünüyordu. personele iyi-olus eğitimi için yarım günlük bir mesleki gelişim oturumu düzenleyecek bir danışman getirildi. personelden bazıları, danışmana, yeteri kadar donanımlı olmadıkları ve bu alanda hiç bir temelleri olmadığı için öğrencilerine zarar verebileceklerinden endişe duyduklarını ifade ettiler. buna ek olarak, danışman okulun iyi-olus konusundaki çalışmalarını destekleyen pazarlamasını da gördü (ör. okulu, personel ve öğrenciler için bütünsel iyi-olusu desteklemek ve her karşılaşmada iyi-olus olarak tanımlamak). danışman, okulun öğrenciler ve personel arasındaki ilişkileri sarsan cezalandırıcı bir disiplin politikası kullanmaya devam ettiğinin ve yapıcı uygulamalar ve affetmenin iyi-olus yararlarına ilişkin bilimsel kanıtlarını görmezden geldiğinin farkındaydı. refah programının uygulanmasından sorumlu tutulan orta düzey bir öğretmen, danışmana bu konular ile ilgili bilgi verdi. bu öğretmen okul liderliği ile ilgili sorunları gündeme getirmek konusunda isteksizdi çünkü daha önce benzer kaygıları dile getirirken bu grup tarafından tehdit edilip korkutulmuştu. o sırada, okula olan bağlılıkları sorgulanmaya başlandı ve öğretmen olarak devam etmeye uygun olup olmadıkları sorgulandı. aşağıdaki etik yönler, yukarıdaki durumla ilgili örneklerdir: • fayda / zarar vermeme – pp uygulayıcısının, iyi-olusu sarsan okul uygulamalarının farkında olması halinde, bir okulu kesin surette eleştirisiz bir şekilde "refah okulu" olarak onaylamama sorumluluğu vardır. • özerklik öğretmen, kendi yargı veya değerleri ile çelişen bir bakış açısı veya pozisyonu benimsemeye zorlanmamalıdır. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 26 i̇lgili yönergeler aşağıdaki yönergeler (belirli bir alana göre düzenlenmiş ve alanda alfabetik olarak sıralanmıştır) bu uygulama yönergelerinin geliştirilmesine yardımcı olmuştur: psikolojik: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). hemşirelik: • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). koçluk: • international – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 27 teşekkür alfabetik olarak listelenen aşağıdaki kişiler, önemli ölçüde katkıda bulunmuşlar ve bu kılavuzların taslaklarının hazırlanması sürecinde bilgi ve geri bildirim sağlamıştır: • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 28 pozitif psikoloji uygulaması etik i̇lkelerine i̇mzayı i̇lk atanlar klavuzlari ilk imzalama tarihi imzalanan versiyon kurulus ve organizasyon ismi ve websitesi logo 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • via institute on character • http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-psychology-andcoaching-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/psychology,-social-work-andcommunityservices/postgraduate/master-of-appliedpositive-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa • https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluation-center/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia • https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience • www.nziwr.co.nz 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • humanship • www.humanshiplb.org 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • iranian positive psychology congress 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society • http://jphp.jp/ ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 29 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology • https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india • http://nppassociation.org/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • german society for positive psychology • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 30 yazarlar aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas university of east london, united kingdom adiguzel gulten university of east london, united kingdom çeviri notu bu kılavuzlar geri çevrilmedi; sadece ileri çeviri yapıldı. yayınlanma tarihi published 28 september 2020 referanslar barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & adiguzel 31 i̇lave kaynak han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. enhancing quality of life through the lens of green spaces: a systematic review approach mensah, c. a., andres, l., perera, u., & roji, a. (2016). enhancing quality of life through the lens of green spaces: a systematic review approach. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 142-163. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i1.445 collins adjei mensah university of cape coast, ghana collinsadjeimensah@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 142 article enhancing quality of life through the lens of green spaces: a systematic review approach collins adjei mensah · lauren andres · upuli perera · ayanda roji abstract: improving citizens’ quality of life is a stated priority of many governments in both the global north and south. however, efforts to achieve this often focus on socio-economic measures, with limited attention to the contributions of environmental variables such as green spaces. this paper sought to bridge this knowledge gap by tracing the linkages between green spaces and quality of life, and how these connections can inform policy development in order to assist governments to achieve positive outcomes for quality of life. the paper took a theoretical approach by utilising the systematic review method. in all, 452 publications were included in this review, and rigorous content analysis was employed to retrieve relevant data. green spaces were found to provide various social, economic, and environmental benefits, which in turn improve physical, psychological, emotional, social, and material wellbeing of individuals and thus enhance quality of life. it is therefore strongly recommended that conservation of green spaces should be integrated into national health, environmental and socio-economic policies in order to promote effective utilisation of green spaces to enhance citizens’ overall quality of life. keywords: quality of life, green spaces, economic, social, environment 1. introduction the term “quality of life” has been used vigorously across many disciplines, ranging from environmental and health sciences to social sciences. this is due to its complex nature embracing diverse elements that influence human livelihood. the phrase “quality of life” first became popular after the second world war when it was used to signify “good life,” which centred more on issues such as health, employment, housing, the environment, and visual arts (holmes, 2005; campbell, 1977). the broad nature of this concept has resulted in different scholars adopting differing definitions and investigating it from different perspectives. for example, from the perspective of social sciences, the effects of different variables such as leisure, wealth, security, employment, housing, education, family ties, cultural values, and community involvement on quality of life have been highly researched (galloway, 2006). from the domain of health sciences, matters of life expectancy, psychological wellbeing, prevalence of diseases, personal growth, access to healthcare and their relationship with quality of life have also strongly been emphasised (bakas et al., 2012; moons et al., 2006). in the environmental sciences, pollution, waste management, and climate change are among the major issues that have been assessed in relation to quality of life (albouy et al., 2013; land use consultants, 2011; baud et al., 2001). these differing perspectives illustrate the extent to which quality of life can be influenced by different variables. however, one area which has not received much research scrutiny is the influence of natural environments or green spaces on quality of life. despite the general enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 143 acknowledgement of green spaces as an important environmental asset which plays a vital role in human life (wolch et al., 2014; ernstson, 2012; saraev, 2012), there is a paucity of research linking green spaces and quality of life, and describing the various contributions that such spaces provide to enhance quality of life. for the purposes of this review, green spaces are defined as all natural and semi-natural spaces (particularly in urban areas) that are primarily covered by vegetation which are available for human usage. examples include parks, gardens, woodlands, trees, forests, allotments, and wetlands. the aim of this paper is to systematically review the existing literature to trace the connections between green spaces and quality of life. furthermore, it aims at analysing the relationships between green spaces and quality of life from social, environmental, and economic perspectives in order to understand the various ways in which green spaces provide value for human life. the review also seeks to inform policy makers of the relevance of green spaces to human life and the need to give priority to green spaces in policies affecting the quality of life of the general public. for the remainder of this paper, the constituent features that make up the construct of quality of life are discussed in detail to provide a strong theoretical background. following this, analyses of how green spaces enhance various features of quality of life are examined from social, environmental, and economic perspectives. the paper concludes with key ideas and policy implications of the study’s findings to serve as major lessons for future efforts to improve quality of life through the conservation and promotion of green spaces. 2. conceptualising quality of life and green spaces the term “quality of life” has been subjected to varied definitions and interpretations by different scholars. according to the world health organisation (who), quality of life is “an individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live, and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns” (the whoqol group, 1995: 1405). meeberg (1993: 34) described quality of life as “an acceptable state of physical, mental, social and emotional health as determined by the individual referred to”. in the views of cella and nowinski (2002), quality of life focuses on one’s physical, functional, social, and emotional wellbeing but not external contributors such as the environment and work influences. additionally, harvey (1993) views quality of life to be closely connected with how a person carries out his or her daily routine and the relationship between his or her environment, choices, and behaviour. these views have resulted in no common agreed definition for “quality of life,” but, rather, have influenced different sets of elements to underlie quality of life. apart from the above broad definitions, “quality of life” has been classified to be influenced by some factors or composed of specific elements. felce (1996) classified quality of life as being influenced by six broad elements: physical, material, emotional, social, productive, and rights/civic wellbeing. similarly, a study by hagerty et al. (2001) found quality of life to be influenced by seven main domains: health, material wellbeing, social inclusion, work and productive activity, emotional wellbeing, personal safety, and relationship with family and friends. this structure is largely consistent with the who’s categorisation of quality of life into six components: physical wellbeing, environmental wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, social relations, level of independence, and spiritual wellbeing (who, 1997). wellbeing in this context refers to the state of being happy, healthy and comfortable with life (galloway et al., 2006). in addition to this, a comprehensive assessment of quality of life by schalock and enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 verdugo (2002) based on 2455 articles found quality of life to be underpinned by eight core domains as shown in table 1 below (galloway et al., 2006). table 1. core components of quality of life core domains of quality of life indicators 1. emotional wellbeing contentment, self-concept, lack of stress 2. interpersonal relations interactions, relationships, support 3. material wellbeing financial status, employment, housing 4. personal development education, personal competence, performance 5. physical wellbeing health, leisure, activities of daily living 6. self determination autonomy/personal control, goals and personal values, choices 7. social inclusion community integration and participation, community roles, social support 8. rights human and civil rights source: galloway et al. (2006) these different views have led to differing ways of conceptualising quality of life. for example, lindstrom (1994), relying more on public health and hierarchical approach modelled quality of life on four spheres: global, external, interpersonal, and personal. these spheres are closely connected to each other and designed to serve all manner of people, thus earning the name universal quality of life model (table 2 below). table 2. universal quality of life model spheres dimensions (objective & subjective) examples global: ecological, societal and political resources 1. micro environment physical environment, respect for human rights, equity, resource allocation. 2. culture 3. human rights 4. welfare polices external: social and economic resources 1. work education, employment, economy, standard of housing. satisfaction with these conditions. 2. income 3. housing interpersonal: resources in social relations and support 1. family structure size of family, friends, intimate relationships, support from neighbours and society. satisfaction with above. 2. intimate friends 3. extended social support personal: personal resources 1. physical growth, activity, selfesteem and basic mood, meaning of life. 2. mental 3. spiritual source: lindstrom (1994) this model starts with the personal sphere representing physical, mental and spiritual dimensions of human beings which are experienced in the context of social relationships and enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 145 support (the interpersonal sphere) (lindstrom & eriksson, 2010). the outcome of this has socio-economic effects (external sphere) and global influences such as a society and its culture in a geophysical context (global sphere). building on lindstrom’s (1994) model, felce and perry (1995) further conceptualised quality of life not to have a hierarchical approach but rather to result from dynamic interaction between objective life conditions, subjective feelings of wellbeing, and personal values and aspirations. these three elements are capable of changing independently due to external influences such as peers, material inheritance, age and maturation, employment, and other social, economic, and political variables (figure 1 below). figure 1. model of quality of life source: felce and perry (1995) objective life conditions physical wellbeing material wellbeing social wellbeing development and activity emotional wellbeing subjective feeling of wellbeing satisfaction with: physical wellbeing material wellbeing social wellbeing development and activity emotional wellbeing personal values and aspirations importance of: physical wellbeing material wellbeing social wellbeing development and activity emotional wellbeing overall assessment of wellbeing (quality of life) quality of life external influences enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 146 in addition to this, ventegodt et al. (2003) conceptualised quality of life as a spectrum (integrated model) ranging from subjective to objective dimensions, with existential elements placed in the middle to connect both the subjective and objective facets (figure 2 below). the existential elements in this context represent the depth of one’s life. with reference to this model, “wellbeing” and “objective factors (such as cultural norms)” are superficial in nature because they are at the outer edges of the model and deal with an individual’s limited ability to adapt to a given culture, whilst “satisfaction with life” and “fulfilment of needs” elements are concerned with the deeper aspects of one’s life. “happiness” and “realisation of life potential” encompass a person’s deepest existence and nature as a human being, with the “meaning in life” and “biological order” components (order and disharmony in the biological information system) dealing with one’s innermost being. figure 2. integrative model of quality of life source: ventegodt et al. (2003) if we attempt to assimilate the various components or elements of quality of life that have been identified in the literature reviewed above, it can be deduced that quality of life has both subjective and objective dimensions (moons et al., 2006; susniene & jurkauskas, 2009; muldoon et al., 1998; felce, 1997; testa & simonson, 1996). the subjective dimension deals with individuals’ level of satisfaction with their personal lifestyle (ventegodt et al., 2003; albrecht & devlieger, 1999; felce & perry, 1995). it relates to one’s personal circumstances and is achieved through a person’s evaluation of the extent to which he/she is content with life. the objective existential quality of life m e a n in g i n l if e h a p p in e ss s a ti sf a c ti o n w it h l if e w e ll b e in g subjective quality of life b io lo g ic a l o rd e r objective quality of life f u lfilm e n t o f n e e d s o b je c tiv e fa c to rs (s u c h a s c u ltu ra l n o rm s) r e a lisa tio n o f life p o te n tia l enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 147 dimension relates to how a person’s life is perceived by the outside world (moons et al., 2006). it is concerned with fulfilling the societal and cultural demands for material wealth, social status, and physical wellbeing. this objective dimension concentrates on observable, external life conditions of a person influenced by the culture or environment in which one finds him or herself. critics have raised concerns about the lack of consistent definitions for many of the proposed constituents of quality of life such as happiness, satisfaction in life, spiritual wellbeing, and emotional wellbeing (holmes, 2005; skevington et al., 2004; bowling, 1995; rosenberg, 1995). due to their subjective nature and variations among different cultures in terms of the expectations and acceptable standards that operate in a particular community, universally applicable definitions for these traits remain elusive. in sum, quality of life can be said to be a construct involving both subjective and objective aspects of an individual’s lifestyle which constitute physical, social, emotional, psychological, and material wellbeing. hence, to achieve a better quality of life, one’s physical, social, emotional, psychological, and material wellbeing has to be improved at an appreciable level. physical wellbeing is the “ability to be fully engaged, on a regular basis, in all developmentally appropriate activities” (cole, 2006:1). emotional wellbeing covers the capacity to understand and regulate emotions in a healthy and adaptive way, whilst psychological wellbeing signifies how happy or content a person feels with life (felce & perry, 1995). social wellbeing, on the other hand, refers to healthy interpersonal relations with family and community members, and material wellbeing focuses on the acquisition of material things that enable one to act meaningfully to pursue his/her goals and enjoy life (felce & perry, 1995). 2.1 the concept of green spaces although there are multiple definitions of “green spaces” in the literature, the term is used to broadly cover those physical environments with some degree of vegetation cover. fratini and marone (2011) used the term “green spaces” to describe areas that are naturally or artificially covered with vegetation. fam et al. (2008) define green spaces as all vegetative spaces, including all areas that have trees, shrubs, and grasses. according to baycan-levent et al. (2002), green spaces are public or private urban areas, primarily covered by vegetation which are directly or indirectly available to users, whereas dunnett et al. (2002) use the term to refer to lands that are made up mainly of unsealed, permeable, “soft” surfaces such as soil, grass, shrubs, forests, parks, gardens, wetlands, and trees which are privately or publicly accessible or managed. cilliers (2013), dwelling on the works of tzoulas et al. (2007) and sandstrom (2002), used the term “green spaces” to refer to entire green infrastructure which covers a network of all natural, semi-natural and artificial ecological systems found at all spatial scales within a given area. swanwick et al. (2003), in their description of the urban environment, provide a framework which includes green spaces as a component of this environment. according to them, the whole land in an urban area can be broadly divided into two: buildings and external environment (figure 3). the external environment contains both green and grey spaces. the grey spaces represent the hard land surfaces, covered mostly by concrete, tarmac or asphalt, with examples being town squares, plazas, esplanades, and roads. those aspects of the grey spaces used for specific functions such as roads, pavements, and car parks are classified as functional grey spaces, whilst those planned basically for public enjoyment, such as town squares, plazas, and esplanades are termed civic grey spaces. according to swanwick et al. (2003) and dunnett et al. (2002), green spaces cover soft land surfaces and can be in the form of a liner feature (e.g. trees along transport routes), semi-natural (wetlands, woodland), functional enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 148 grey space buildings external environment urban area functional civic green space amenity functional semi natural linear public open space open space + public access (allotments, churchyards, school grounds), and amenity (parks and gardens) features. both green and grey spaces together constitute urban open spaces, with those having public access classified as public open spaces. figure 3. conceptualisation of green spaces source: swanwick et al. (2003) it can therefore be inferred from the above descriptions that green spaces are chiefly defined by the availability of green vegetation and therefore cover all spaces or land that have some form of vegetation, either natural or artificial, for human usage. 3. materials and methods the paper is a systematic review of published scholarly works on green spaces and quality of life. the broad nature of the study and the need to gather enough evidence to trace the linkages between green spaces and quality of life made this approach the appropriate choice. the systematic review approach entails the usage of an explicit approach to search, appraise and synthesise available literature to satisfy the aim of the topic under study (victor, 2008; akobeng, 2005). it organises all theoretical and empirical works that fit pre-specified criteria to answer a specific research question. the robust and comprehensive nature of the systematic review helped the study avoid bias in the analysis of results, allowed a wide range of data to be enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 assimilated, and provided more accurate and reliable conclusions, since the data utilised had already been tested in other studies (victor, 2008; akobeng, 2005). books, journals, conference papers, and reports that were related to the topic under study were included in the review. in accordance with the work of uman (2011), victor (2008), coren and fisher (2006) and khan et al. (2003), the following processes were undertaken to retrieve data from secondary sources and analyse them for presentation. 1) formulating a question to guide the review: this stage dealt with framing a question to capture the main problem and purpose of the study. it was done to make the review well-structured and focus on the topic under study. the broad question posed to underlie the review was as follows: in what ways do green spaces enhance quality of life? further to this broad question, sub-questions were formulated to guide the selection of publications for the study. these sub-questions were:  what benefits are derived from green spaces?  how do such benefits improve or enhance various features or elements of quality of life? figure 4 below provides a flow chart illustrating the nature of the review question and its underlying structure for inclusion in the study. figure 4. review question and its underlying structure 2) identifying relevant publications on the topic under study: much effort was made to gather many relevant publications for the study. the following databases were searched to identify studies on green spaces and quality of life: science direct, social science research network, google scholar, thomson reuters, directory of open access journals (doaj), jstor, ingenta connect, web of science, and scopus. various internet engines such as google, yahoo, bing and ask.com were also elements: parks, gardens, trees, forests, woodlands etc. usage connections or linkages between benefits of green spaces and features of quality of life green spaces benefits social environment economic quality of life physical wellbeing social wellbeing emotional wellbeing psychological wellbeing material wellbeing enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 150 searched for further materials. this electronic search was supplemented with a manual search for additional hard copy materials from the university of birmingham (uk) library. a total of 1,428 publications or studies were found, but review of these publications and their relevance to the review questions as formulated above reduced this to 639 publications to be considered for the study. 3) assessing the quality of selected publications: after identifying the specific publications for inclusion in the study, their level of quality was assessed according to the six quality assessment criteria as described by bowler et al (2010). much emphasis was also given to peer-reviewed works. this resulted in 452 publications being selected for final inclusion in the study. 4) analysis and synthesis of evidence: rigorous content analysis was performed on the final selected publications. the various findings from these studies were then collated and analysed to serve as the findings of the study. table 3 below summarises the key findings that were obtained on the interrelationship between green spaces and quality of life. enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 151 table 3. a summary of ideas on the linkages between green spaces and quality of life benefits of green spaces connection with quality of life strength environmental enhances local climate ameliorate local climate to protect human beings from harsh weather conditions and related physical problems – physical wellbeing. strong improves air quality minimise the effects of air pollution on human health – physical wellbeing. strong conserves biodiversity provide a range of ecosystem services for human survival –physical and psychological wellbeing. strong social perspective leisure & recreation create happiness to support physical and psychological wellbeing. strong child development support physical and emotional development of children. strong health benefits ameliorate problems such as stress, depression, obesity, and diseases associated with physical inactivity to enhance physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing. strong social cohesion create avenues for different outdoor social functions that promote high sense of belongingness and social inclusion. support social wellbeing. strong national heritage & culture promote high sense of cultural identity and social connectedness which enhance social, and psychological wellbeing. strong education information and research on natural and environmental process. these support social and psychological wellbeing. strong crime control minimise psychological precursors to violence and increase surveillance of properties around them. support psychological wellbeing. strong human rights promote environmental justice (equity or fair access to environmental resources) to enhance psychological wellbeing. moderate economic job opportunities income to acquire basic needs and other material things to enhance human livelihood – physical and material wellbeing. strong revenue to governments financial support to governments to aid infrastructural development for human welfare – physical wellbeing. moderate attracts business & tourism help individuals to engage in different economic activities to earn a living – physical and material wellbeing. moderate minimises health expenses help to save money on health problems – physical and psychological wellbeing. low enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 4. linkages between quality of life and green spaces this section of the paper presents the general findings of the study. it explores the associations between green spaces and quality of life from social, economic and environmental perspectives. it outlines evidence demonstrating the important contributions of green spaces to human livelihood and how such contributions enhance quality of life in general. much emphasis was given to green spaces in urban areas, referred to as “urban green spaces”. 4.1 social perspective green spaces provide a venue for leisure and recreational activities, which are associated with enhanced quality of life. jim and chen (2006) claim that the recreational and amenity benefit of urban green spaces is one of the most predominant social benefits that people derive from using urban green spaces. lloyd and auld (2002) found various happiness enhancing leisure activities such as observing nature, merrymaking, relaxing, and sporting activities to strongly depend on resources such as green spaces. observations in china by xi-zhang (2009) and jim and chen (2006) revealed that many urban residents use green spaces for recreational activities such as relaxing, playing with children, walking pets, exploring, and observing wildlife. manlun (2003) found the majority of middle and low income earners in countries in both the global north and south using parks and public gardens as spaces for socialising, relaxing, exercise, and enjoying the natural environment. a study by harnik (2004) showed that in the usa over 12 million people and 25 million people visit lincoln park in chicago and the central park in new york respectively for various reasons, with recreational activities being the dominant purpose. the green spaces in these instances serve as a natural resource that provides a setting for various recreational activities which have a positive effect on individuals’ happiness and therefore enhance quality of life (ventegodt et al., 2003; lloyd & auld, 2002). aside providing an environmental setting for leisure and recreation, green spaces improve quality of life by providing opportunities to enhance the physical and emotional development of individuals, especially children (lowman, 2006). a study by the association for childhood education international found that playing in parks and other green spaces helps the development of children’s muscle strength, co-ordination, language, cognitive thinking, and reasoning abilities (isenberg & quisenberry, 2002). it has further been revealed that observing green spaces such as forests gives children opportunities to enhance their analytical and strategic thinking, and improve their cognitive development (cornell et al., 2001). this promotes improved quality of life for children through supporting their healthy physical development. in addition, green spaces contribute positively to improve the physical and mental health of individuals, which enhances quality of life in several ways. research has shown that exposure to green spaces improves psychological wellbeing (ernstson, 2012; barton & pretty, 2010; maas et al., 2009), alleviates stress (woo et al., 2009), and reduces some mental disorders in children such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (louv, 2005; taylor et al., 2001). the use of urban green spaces for physical activities such as walking, jogging, playing football, and other sporting activities helps to address the problem of obesity and also plays a role in preventing diseases such as cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal diseases, stroke, and cancer (cjc consulting, 2005). studies have revealed that the usage of parks by the elderly for physical activities is associated with increased fitness, decreased incidence of chronic age-related diseases, and increased life span (milligan et al., 2004; takano et al., 2003). these benefits enhance quality of life by supporting the physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing of individuals. enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 in the area of education, sorensen et al. (1997) found that green spaces such as botanical gardens, natural trails, and zoos provide a venue for educating people about different forms of flora and fauna, and offer opportunities for individuals and families to learn about the environment and natural processes. conner (2005) stressed that different forms of urban green spaces used for research activities in universities, and scientific and industrial research organisations help to examine a wide range of biophysical, economic, and cultural issues related to the natural environment. fam et al. (2008) gave an example of the educational benefits of green spaces by citing the museum of economic botany in the adelaide botanical gardens, which has been used for several studies relating to the natural environment. in this way, green spaces can support both formal and informal education, which are variables that contribute to an individual’s overall quality of life (lindstrom & eriksson, 2010; lindstrom, 1994). an association has also been established between access to green spaces and enhancement of social interaction, inclusion, and cohesion. a study by cohen et al. (2008) concluded that there is a positive association between neighbourhood parks and the likelihood of residents interacting positively. green spaces such as community parks and gardens provide an environment where different categories of people, including those who are frequently excluded from social interaction, such as the disabled or the elderly, can socialise (fan et al., 2011). this helps to promote social inclusion and cohesion. moreover, kim and kaplan (2004) indicated that green spaces and other natural features play an important role in attaching and connecting people to the area they live in and their local community. social connectedness promoted by green spaces helps individuals to develop a sense of belonging and good interpersonal relationships with others that supports social wellbeing, which is one of the domains of quality of life. on a larger scale, green spaces can contribute to the conservation of national heritage and culture, and thus have impact on the community’s quality of life. according to the urban green space (ugs) taskforce (2002), some urban green spaces provide venues for many national and cultural ceremonies, such as local festivals, musical interludes, civic celebrations, and other cultural events. in addition, urban green spaces sometimes contain historic and cultural artefacts such as burial grounds, monuments, fountains, and pavilions, which help to preserve culture and national heritage (bop consulting, 2012; ugs taskforce, 2002). studies on culture and quality of life have found that engagement in cultural activities enhances one’s cultural identity, community participation, sense of purpose, social connectedness, and empowerment (galloway, 2006; coffman, 2002). by providing venues for cultural activities and national traditions to be celebrated, green spaces support the social, emotional and psychological wellbeing of both individuals and communities, and thus enhance quality of life. green spaces also have an acknowledged role in supporting human rights, particularly environmental justice (equitable access to environmental resources). the connection between green spaces and environmental justice hinges on the even distribution of green spaces in an area, facilitating equitable access to the natural environment (kabischa & haase, 2014; wolch et al., 2014; sister et al., 2010). in this case, even distribution of green spaces in communities enhances environmental justice, as it helps all people, irrespective of their status, gender, race, and ethnicity, to have fair access to natural vegetation and enjoy the qualities of nature. conversely, uneven distribution of green spaces may contribute to environmental injustice (davis et al., 2012; dai, 2011; jennings et al, 2012). therefore, green spaces supporting environmental justice help to enhance quality of life, as it protects individuals’ right to enjoy a clean and healthy environment. a positive relationship between green spaces and crime enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 control is also observed. studies show that property crime and vandalism rates are lower in properties which have green spaces (parks, gardens, lawns, and well-spaced trees) around them (donovan & prestemon, 2012; lorenzo & wims, 2004; kuo & sullivan, 2001). it is proposed that the use of green spaces for various recreational activities may mitigate psychological precursors to crime and violence. furthermore, the public use of green spaces may increase surveillance on nearby properties and make such properties less easily targeted by burglars (kuo & sullivan, 2001). 4.2 environmental perspective from an environmental perspective, green spaces were found to offer several benefits in providing a healthy environment, which further supports quality of life. green spaces were observed to contribute positively in regulating local urban climate (konijnendijk et al., 2013; fam et al., 2008; kottmeier et al., 2007). the presence of many non-permeable surfaces in urban areas such as asphalt, pavement, and concrete increases the absorption of solar radiation and causes an increase in surface temperature. the heat from such hard surfaces is then radiated back, which contributes to an increase in local temperature around built-up areas known as the “urban heat island” effect. different studies show that conserving many urban green spaces helps decrease absorption of solar radiation from the land surface and increase evapotranspiration, which has the effect of cooling down urban temperatures and consequently modifying the climate in these areas (konijnendijk et al., 2013; alexandri & jones, 2008; fam et al., 2008; kottmeier et al., 2007; mcpherson & muchnick, 2005; gomez et al., 2004). this assists in controlling many heat related problems, such as the easy spread of infectious diseases, skin problems, and deaths associated with excessive heat (especially those connected to cardiovascular and respiratory disease, particularly among elderly people) (who, 2014). improving urban air quality is another major positive environmental contribution of urban green spaces to quality of life (konijnendijk et al., 2013; getter & rowe, 2006; nowak et al., 2006). a study conducted in an urban area where most of the buildings had green vegetation on their roofs showed considerable reduction of sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide in that area (getter & rowe, 2006). a modelling experiment carried out in 48 states in the usa by nowak et al. (2006) indicated that the atmospheric levels of pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and sulphur dioxide could be reduced by the presence of many urban trees. this shows that the presence of such green spaces helps to intercept the movement of some pollutants and consequently minimise the rate of air pollution. parks also act as major “carbon sinks” which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (davies et al., 2012; paoletti et al., 2011; kordowski & kuttler, 2010). hence, the availability of many green spaces such as parks, trees and forests helps to minimise the effects of air pollution on human health. the preservation of biodiversity of both plants and animals by green spaces supports the individual’s quality of life from a different perspective. studies on the urban environment have shown that different forms of urban green spaces contain significant amounts of biodiversity (alvey, 2006; cornelis & hermy, 2004; godefroid & koedam, 2003; jim & liu, 2001). about 1,300 species of flora in rich quantities were found in some green spaces around the city centre of rome by bonnes et al. (2004). cornelis and hermy (2004) in a survey of 15 parks in urban areas in flanders (belgium) concluded that those parks contain about 30%, 50% and 60% of all wild plants, birds and amphibians in flanders respectively. a study undertaken in the uk revealed that golf courses have a high volume of tree species and provide a habitat for many species of birds (tanner & gange, 2005). the biodiversity conserved by green spaces helps to protect many organisms such as fungi, bacteria, inserts, and plants, which form vital parts of enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 many ecosystems on which human beings depend for their survival. among the services provided by ecosystems for human survival are the production of food, water, and medicine; support for nutrient cycles and crop pollination, and regulation of floods and erosion. 4.3 economic perspective in the economic realm, green spaces provide employment opportunities and therefore income for many individuals. sorenson et al. (1997) found urban greening projects to be often labourintensive and to provide both temporary jobs (soil preparation, planting, etc.) as well as more permanent jobs (maintenance, management, etc.). the turf grass industry in australia, which provides turf grass to be grown on many urban parks, employs around 80,000 people in different capacities (aldous, 2005). a study by blue sky green space (2011) revealed that there are over 50,000 people who are directly employed within public parks and gardens in the uk, and many others who are employed in industries associated with green spaces, such as the manufacture of park-based equipment and products. in africa, a study by djibril et al. (2012) found a total of 335 people employed under the department in charge of managing urban green spaces in abidjan (cote d’lvoire). as at june 2014, johannesburg city parks and zoo engaged the services of 1,689 employees to work in different capacities to manage the green spaces in johannesburg, south africa (johannesburg city parks and zoo, 2014). these employment opportunities created by green spaces contribute to the economic stability of communities by providing income for individuals within the community to acquire both basic and material needs for living. green spaces also generate revenue for governments, which aids in the provision of infrastructural developments such as roads, schools, electricity, and health facilities (hospitals and clinics) to support the wellbeing of the citizenry. this is realised through the increase in property values of properties around green spaces, as such properties with higher values pay higher property rates/taxes, which contribute to local government funds. a study in oregon concluded that houses that were close to natural park areas had higher prices than those that were further away (lutzenhiser & netusil, 2001). similar findings were made in a study of three towns in the netherlands (emmen, apeldoorn and leiden), where houses sited near parks had higher property values than those located further away from them (luttik, 2000). this high property value is found to increase government revenue and thus support different government projects. for example, in ontario (usa), a statistical analysis of the data of two neighbourhoods showed that the property values of houses around green spaces increased substantially and this helped the government to have an increase in property tax revenue of about 8% (crompton, 1999). a similar trend was found in a study in philadelphia (usa). in this case, the overall increase in tax revenue that the government received as a result of the increase in property value of houses close to green spaces was more than $18 million (the trust for public land, 2008). these generated revenues enable governments to invest in infrastructure projects and many economic development initiatives which may further improve the welfare of the general public. further economic benefits of green spaces were found in increased business activities around these spaces. studies have shown that well-planned and maintained green spaces can help to improve an area’s image and attract businesses, customers, employees, and different services which create a good business environment and boost local business investment (saraev, 2012; land use consultants, 2004; doe & the association of town centre management, 1997). in addition, it was noted that the creation of green spaces such as community forests, botanical gardens, and zoos, and the greening of community centres enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 attracts tourists, whose spending generates income for local businesses (saraev, 2012; aiello et al., 2010). in this respect, green spaces provide an environmental context in which local businesses can thrive. these local businesses provide goods and services to the local community and a source of income and financial security for both their owners and employees, and thus contribute to improving quality of life of many individuals. it has also been proposed that the health-promoting effect of green spaces is sufficient to result in savings in healthcare costs on a national basis. for example, a study by blue sky green space (2011) in the uk found that the health benefits provided by the increased physical activity opportunities in regents park could result in estimated annual savings of £3.1 million in healthcare costs to the national government and further annual savings of £463,000 to the national health service. a survey in sacramento city, california (usa) reported medical savings of about $19,872,000 in 2007 due to active engagement of the residents in the city’s parks for various physical activities (the trust for public land, 2009). such savings on health at the national level help governments to get additional income to invest in their economies to improve the livelihood of the general public. at the individual level, it helps people to obtain extra money to acquire more material things for their lives (material wellbeing), which is an important element of quality of life (galloway et al., 2006; felce & perry, 1995). focusing on the benefits of green spaces, the united nations environment programme (unep; 2011) has constructed a model illustrating the connections between the social, economic, and environmental benefits of green spaces and quality of life (figure 5). this model was based on the 2005 millennium ecosystem assessment report. the environmental benefits of green spaces in this model include provision of a range of ecosystem services such as food, clean water, carbon sequestration, and controlling erosion. the economic benefits include providing employment opportunities and supporting local businesses, whilst the social benefits focus on supporting the housing, health and recreational needs of the people. these benefits improve human wellbeing or quality of life, as shown in figure 5 below. figure 5. linkages between green spaces and quality of life source: adapted from unep (2011) natural environment (env’tal sustainability) green spaces ecosystem services social inequitable economic security leads to social dysfunction the poor suffer the most when ecosystem services are lost economic human wellbeing (including health, security, basic material for a good life, freedom of choice and human rights) loss of ecosystem functions affects the economy, while lack of economic security can lead to accelerated loss of ecosystem enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 157 5. policy implications the findings outlined above lead to several recommendations that should inform government policies in order to improve citizens’ quality of life. the myriad social, economic, and environmental benefits of green spaces and their consequent effects on quality of life make these spaces an important consideration in the formulation of government policies and strategies on sustainable development. sustainable development broadly involves the maintenance of environmental resources (environment pillar); addressing the social needs of people to improve their welfare (social pillar); and ensuring efficient use and allocation of resources to achieve economic growth (economic pillar) to improve the quality of life of people. green spaces, therefore, through their numerous benefits, help to achieve these pillars of sustainable development. this makes it imperative for green spaces to be prioritised in all policies on sustainable development. furthermore, there is a need to consider the conservation and promotion of green spaces in the formulation of public health policies. evidence from the literature showed that the availability of green spaces in a given area provides many health benefits to the general public. therefore, including the provision of green spaces in existing public health programmes may help to address common public health problems such as physical inactivity, depression, stress, and obesity. economic modelling indicates that this would enable national health agencies and governments to save significant amounts of money in the provision of healthcare services. green spaces should also be given consideration as a resource supportive of education. studies show that children learn a lot through the forms of play activities which take place in green spaces, such as parks and gardens (lowman, 2006; isenberg & quisenberry, 2002). such play activities have positive effects on physical development, cognitive development, muscle strength, co-ordination, language, and the strategic and analytical thinking of children. in view of this, outdoor playing activities in green spaces can be viewed as supportive of many of the aims of the traditional educational curriculum for children. pursuing environmental safety strategies, together with the conservation of green spaces, serves as another important policy direction. such initiatives will provide a strong policy framework to achieve healthy and safe environments in which to enjoy the environmental benefits provided by green spaces, such as low air pollution, good local climate, improved air quality, and low crime rates to enhance human security. the economic contributions of green spaces, such as offering employment opportunities, generating revenue, attracting business activities and tourism development make their recognition in the formulation of economic policies also important. acknowledgement of the economic benefits associated with green spaces will assist with the formulation of policies that foster local business growth and community level economic development. 6. conclusion green spaces provide social, environmental, and economic benefits which both directly and indirectly enhance an individual’s quality of life. they help to improve physical, psychological, emotional, social and material wellbeing which underlie several models of quality of life. in order for local and national governing bodies to promote a high level of quality of life amongst their constituents, green spaces should be recognised as important resources, and policies instituted must promote and conserve such spaces. at the local level, this could be achieved through various planning instruments such as community action plans, development plans, and city by-laws giving priority to the conservation of green spaces. at the national level, enhancing quality of life through green spaces mensah, andres, perera, & roji www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 158 governments and policy makers should consider green spaces in national policies and strategies on health, environment, education, and social welfare. authors collins adjei mensah university of cape coast collinsadjeimensah@gmail.com lauren andres university of birmingham upuli perera university of birmingham ayanda roji johannesburg city parks and zoo publishing timeline received 23 june 2015 accepted 10 february 2016 published 14 may 2016 references aiello, d., cheung, n., chow, a., cofie-godwin, k., kwon, n., lee, s. h., … wantz, e. 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(2021). a global history of happiness. international journal of wellbeing, 11(4), 68-87. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i4.1457 tim lomas harvard university lololomas@googlemail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 article a global history of happiness tim lomas · brendan w. case · flynn j. cratty · tyler j. vanderweele abstract: happiness is an increasingly prominent topic of interest across numerous academic fields. however, the literature can sometimes imply it is predominantly a modern concern. relatedly, critics have argued that contemporary scholarship on happiness is western-centric, yet in so doing can appear to suggest that happiness is mainly a western preoccupation. however, taking an expansive view of happiness – defining it broadly as a desirable mental experience – one can appreciate that versions of this phenomenon have been of interest to humans across cultures and throughout history. to articulate this perspective, this paper offers a brief overview of 14 different eras, spanning a range of global regions, in each case highlighting concepts and concerns that bear some close resemblance to happiness. in so doing, the paper encourages a deeper and more inclusive understanding of this vital topic. keywords: happiness; wellbeing; history; cross-cultural 1. introduction in the modern era, arguably few phenomena are as valued or sought after as happiness. indeed, variants of this state have been a prominent human concern throughout recorded history. of course, most cultures did not call the experience in question ‘happiness.’ this term only emerged in english in the early 16th century – preceded by the adjective ‘happy’ in the late 14th – both of which implied being lucky and favoured by fortune (mcmahon, 2006). such meanings are reflected in their etymological roots in the old norse hap, which similarly underpins terms like happenstance. it was then not until around the 1590s that happiness began to take on its current character of generically signifying – on our expansive reading of the concept – a desirable mental experience. thus, ‘happiness’ is a relatively modern creation, and an english language one at that. however, one could argue that most – perhaps even all – human cultures appear to have taken some interest in psychological states resembling those broadly denoted by the term happiness. but one would not necessarily appreciate this point from reading much of the contemporary scholarship on this topic. some of the literature gives the impression that happiness is mainly or even exclusively a modern concern (ahmed, 2007). relatedly, critics have argued that modern scholarship on happiness is western-centric, influenced in particular by the values and traditions of the united states (becker & marecek, 2008), and in so doing can also imply that happiness is mainly a western preoccupation. while these critiques have their merit, this paper proposes we ought not to take those lines of thought too far, and that psychological states which are at least somewhat comparable to modern notions of happiness have been of interest throughout global history. to that end, the paper offers a brief overview of ideas relating to happiness – and wellbeing about:blank a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 more broadly – from 14 historical eras, from all corners of the globe. in so doing, we are heeding the recent call from muthukrishna et al. (2021) to understand and approach psychology as a “historical science,” in which “traces of past human cognition accessible through historical texts and artifacts can serve as a valuable, and almost completely unutilized, source of psychological data” (p.717). the ideas featured here vary in how close they are to some modern conceptions of happiness (such as hedonic states of positive affect). however, if one takes an expansive enough view of the topic – as we do, as elucidated in an expansive definition of happiness discussed in the next section – then all the ideas below are at least somewhat relevant. as such, to contextualise and ground the narrative, we shall briefly review how the term happiness tends to be deployed in contemporary scientific discourse. this will set the parameters for the discussion, and indicate the wide scope of the psychological terrain that may be relevant here. we will then touch upon 13 previous eras, beginning at the dawn of civilisation and culminating in the modern age. 2. scientific perspectives in considering modern uses of the term happiness, it is first worth situating it relative to kindred concepts. the following is a basic set of orienting definitions that, though not the only way of configuring the territory, is congruent with most of the relevant literature. we can start by considering wellbeing, which most scholars regard as an overarching and all-encompassing concept that includes happiness (de chavez et al., 2005). broadly speaking, wellbeing can be defined as including all the manifold ways in which human beings can be, do, and live well. there are many ways of conceptualising and subdividing this complex terrain, but one intuitive approach is to differentiate between physical and mental wellbeing, which map onto the nearuniversal mind-body distinction, however that is variously conceptualized (durkheim, 2013; henrich, 2020). we might then also include social wellbeing, as reflected in the who’s (1948) definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.” finally, some scholars have also argued for recognizing spiritual wellbeing (larson, 1996; cloninger et al., 2010; vanderweele et al., 2021). we can then introduce further nuance by viewing all forms of wellbeing as arrayed upon a spectrum between a negative and a positive pole – a metaphor developed by proponents of fields like positive psychology as a way of highlighting their relevance and value (and bringing renewed focus to the positive pole of mental wellbeing). let us now incorporate two additional concepts, illness and health, denoting the negative territory of each spectrum as illness, and the positive territory as health. so, we can speak of physical illness and health, mental illness and health, and even social or spiritual illness and health (although these latter usages are less common). the metaphor is imperfect: all four dimensions are in themselves multidimensional (e.g., there are numerous forms or aspects of mental illness and health), and people may be regarded as being concurrently situated at various points along all these various internal spectra, doing poorly on some and better on others. indeed, regarding mental wellbeing, the ‘dual continua’ model suggests that mental illness and health are better treated as disconnected – physiologically, functionally, experientially – and that people can experience aspects of illness and health at the same time (keyes, 2002). nevertheless, it is a useful guiding image for now. with respect to all dimensions, wellbeing can be seen as the relative absence of illness, and/or relative presence of health. there is, naturally and rightly, often a strong focus on the negative territory of the spectra, on curing or at least ameliorating illness. this is the prerogative of fields such as medicine and physiotherapy for physical illness, psychiatry and psychotherapy for mental illness, social work for aspects of social illness, and certain aspects of theology and religion for spiritual illness. these fields do often aim to push people into positive territory, but broadly http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 speaking prioritise getting people towards at least the relative neutrality of ‘zero’ (i.e., absence of illness). this aim is reflected in sigmund freud’s famous remark that the goal of psychotherapy was realistically limited mainly to turning “hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness” (breuer & freud, 1955, p.308). bringing people to ‘zero’ is of course laudable. but crucially, absence of illness does not necessarily entail the substantive and active presence of health. this is where the spectrum metaphor asserts its value. a person might be relatively free of physical or mental illness, and in that sense not suffering in negative territory. however, this does not mean they are necessarily flourishing in positive territory. instead, they may just be languishing around ‘zero’ – not ill per se, but not excelling physically or mentally either (keyes, 2007). thus, there is increasing interest in exploring the positive territory of these spectra. with physical wellbeing, this means not only striving towards the absence of illness and disease, but also accentuating the positive dimensions of physical health (farrelly, 2021). this might include, for instance, helping people to develop a nutritious health-promoting diet and cultivate good patterns of behaviour and exercise. similarly, social wellbeing is the focus of some aspects of public policy, education, and community organizing, which include efforts to improve society. spiritual wellbeing is the prerogative of theology, religion, philosophy, and spiritual practices. and, most relevantly here, there is ever-more attention paid to the positive territory of the mental spectrum – not only to reducing illness, but the presence of positive mental health – as driven by fields like positive psychology. here is where happiness re-enters the conversation. essentially, much of the positive mental territory could be deemed the realm of happiness, which one might define simply and also expansively as a desirable mental experience (or, alternatively, as a satisfying experience of living well). to further clarify: ‘desirable’ means that this mental experience is generally perceived as being coveted, pursued, valued, and appreciated (although some forms of happiness may not meet all these criteria for all people), or is recognized as such upon experience; ‘mental’ is used expansively to encompass the full range of psychological processes and subjective experiences (including emotions and beliefs but also dispositions, such as the virtues); and ‘experience’ refers to a condition or mode of being that is not permanent, but which can vary widely in duration (from a fleeting emotion lasting seconds to a durable way of being that could even last for years). recent decades have seen a surge of scholarship exploring this positive terrain of happiness, beginning in earnest in the 1930s. initially, although fields like psychology were interested in mental wellbeing, they mostly focused on the ‘negative’ illness-centred half of the continuum – with important exceptions such as william james's (1902) interest in religious experiences – as reflected in freud’s aforementioned remark. but around the 1930s onwards, a new wave of scholars emerged, influenced by humanism, who advocated for a renewed focus on the positive potential of humankind. foremost among these were rogers (1951) and maslow (1962), widely regarded as twin founders of humanistic psychology (with rogers’ ‘person-centred’ therapeutic approach and maslow’s research into human motivational hierarchies). they explicitly regarded their work as a counterpart to the deficit-based focus of clinicians like freud. as maslow influentially wrote (establishing the continua metaphor itself), “it is as if freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half.” which brings us back to our central focus here. for this ‘healthy half’ refers to the positive territory of the mental wellbeing spectrum, the broad sweep of terrain encompassed by the label ‘happiness’ (in the expansive way this term is being used here). in the decades since, scientific research and theory on happiness has steadily accumulated. most scholarship has focused on two main ‘types’ of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. this distinction has a long pedigree, often traced back to aristotle (1999), as elucidated further below. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 hedonic happiness is essentially about feeling good. the dominant construct here is ‘subjective wellbeing’ (diener et al., 1985), generally seen as comprising two main dimensions: cognitive (feeling good about one’s life, i.e., life satisfaction); and affective (feeling good in one’s life, i.e., positive emotions). by contrast, eudaimonia pertains more to self-development, and includes notions like the cultivation of character, the pursuit of truth and knowledge, and a commitment to ethical practice and improvement (ryff, 1989). these are not the only potential forms of happiness though, and scholars have proposed expanding this taxonomy in various ways. for example, wong (2011) noted that spiritual experiences tend to be absent from conceptualizations of hedonia and eudaimonia, yet are highly valued by many people. as such, he proposed the notion of ‘chaironic’ happiness – based on the greek chairo, which denotes states such as gladness, joy, and bliss, but also grace and blessing – defining it as “feeling blessed and fortunate because of a sense of awe, gratitude, and oneness with nature or god” (p.70). this would naturally overlap with the idea of spiritual wellbeing, yet there may be value in differentiating them: spiritual wellbeing could denote the relationship a person has with phenomena deemed sacred, whereas chaironic happiness depicts an experiential state. so, even while hedonic and eudaimonic forms of happiness dominate modern research, these do not exhaust its potential forms, and as the field evolves so too will its constructs and conceptualizations of happiness. having looked at the main approaches to happiness in current scientific discourse and set some rough parameters for what we mean by this central term, the paper now explores various perspectives on happiness in earlier eras. these cultures may not have used terms for which ‘happiness’ is the closest english equivalent. but it is generally accepted that people in all times and places have enquired into questions of wellbeing, namely, how best to be, do, and live well (mcmahon, 2006). in many cases, for example, societies have been concerned with elucidating conditions of natural laws to which individuals should conform in order to experience prosperity and wellbeing. then, more specifically, people have also widely delved into the topic of happiness, insofar as we use this term generically and expansively to speak broadly of a desirable mental experience. in that respect, here we consider a selection of philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions, showing how these have developed ideas and approaches pertaining to happiness (and wellbeing more broadly). of course, the coverage cannot even come close to being exhaustive, given the brief nature of this paper. but it will suffice to indicate the breadth and depth of thinking worldwide around these issues. to give some structure to the narrative, we’ll survey the terrain in a rough chronological order, beginning with some of the earliest recorded civilizations, and culminating in the modern era. 3. indigenous perspectives among the earliest recorded cultures are those indigenous to australia, to which humans are generally thought to have first migrated from africa some 50,000 years ago, and thereafter developed a rich and complex culture. forms of rock art, for instance, have been definitively dated to 26,000 bce, with other examples potentially far older (david et al., 2013). throughout this long developmental arc, ideas and insights pertaining to happiness began to emerge. a powerful example is the nexus of thought and practice encompassed by the term aljerrenge. this signifies the complex cultural–religious belief system of the arrente, though other aboriginal peoples possess comparable knowledge systems under other names (e.g., djugurba among the warlpiri) (munn, 1973, p.23). it is sometimes rendered in english as ‘dreamtime’ or ‘the dreaming,’ terms coined by anthropologist william stanner (2009) in the 1950s. his coinages have been criticised by some for being a mistranslation or at least a non-ideal rendering of the original terms (swain, 1993, p.21), even if his respect for these concepts and the cultures that http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 originated them has been widely recognised. however, his intent seems to have been to highlight the epistemological significance of dreams as a means of acquiring knowledge, including receiving guidance from ancestors. in any case, above all, concepts like aljerre-nge appear to denote holistic, all-encompassing ways of experiencing and perceiving all forms of life as interconnected. stanner also coined the term ‘everywhen’ for this mode of understanding, encompassing past, present, and future. no mere synonym for ‘timeless’ or ‘eternal,’ it acknowledges the ongoing relevance of the primordial ancestral beings and powers that shaped the world (skerritt et al., 2016). moreover, it is not simply an ‘origin myth’: everywhen is a vibrant, complex, living reality. aboriginal peoples past and present engage with this reality – also frequently described as ‘the law’ – for guidance about how they should best live, from their relationship with the land to their personal interactions (bellah, 2011, p.150). “its basic connotation,” writes anthropologist m.j. meggitt, “is of an established and morally-right order of behaviour…from which there should be no divergence” (quoted in bellah, 2011, p.150). although as modern western scholars we may not be able to fully understand and appreciate the complex nuances and lived realities of paradigms like aljerre-nge – and are naturally wary of anachronistically imposing our concepts upon cultures that are remote from us in time and space – we may nevertheless be able to tentatively see its relevance to happiness, at least insofar as the expansive way we are deploying this term. after all, it is a vision of how humans ought to best live in the world, including a holistic appreciation of the interconnectedness of life and respect for ancestral tradition. as such, this vision falls within the purview of our conception of happiness – and certainly its more profound or elevated forms – since within it are contained ideas and values in relation to desirable mental experiences (e.g., of personal alignment with a cosmic order or law). as such, concepts like aljerre-nge could arguably be regarded as one of our oldest extant perspectives on happiness. 4. egyptian perspectives while ideas and practices potentially pertaining to happiness were forming among the peoples indigenous to australia, comparable developments were taking place in africa. indeed, as the birthplace of humankind, there we find traces of markers of cultural evolution dating back hundreds of thousands of years. in west turkana in kenya, for example, there is evidence of tools made by early hominid species that may be 3.3 million years old (harmand et al., 2015). homo sapiens are then thought to have emerged around 200,000 years ago, although newer discoveries in morocco suggest it may have even been 300,000 (hublin et al., 2017). thereafter, our evolution is tentatively marked by various developmental milestones, leading to the incremental creation of human culture. for instance, evidence of ‘modern’ tools by the san hunter-gatherers of south africa have been found dating to 44,000 bce (d’errico et al., 2012). within this gradual emergence of culture, we see the development of abstract thought, including ideas relating to happiness. africa is of course a vast continent, home to many peoples and societies, so it does not make sense to refer generically to a monolithic ‘african culture.’ so, by way of example, we might highlight the achievements of egypt in particular, this being one of the first recorded civilizations – a complex society characterised by urban development and the creation of symbolic communication and artefacts – dating back as early as 5,500 bce, and coalescing around 3,100 bce with the formation of the first early dynasty (wilkinson, 2002). among the innovations attributed to egyptian culture are conceptual breakthroughs that touch upon happiness, broadly construed. for instance, the egyptians developed a complex mythic structure that included symbolic representations of principles that were beginning to be http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 recognised as vital to happiness. particularly important here is maat, the daughter of the sun god re, and goddess of truth, justice, balance, and harmony (ferguson, 2016). in the book of the dead (ca. 1550 bce), individuals are depicted as having to face a final judgment (this being the earliest known development of this concept), in which their innermost character would be weighed in the balance against maat (budge, 1895). this ritual underscored the importance of cultivating happiness in the present – particularly forms we might today associate with eudaimonia – and stressed its link with post-mortem forms that are more hedonic in character. maat’s importance in part related to the need for the emerging society to manage the competing needs of diverse peoples, made possible through people being exhorted to follow the principles she personified. in that respect, her influence became interwoven throughout egyptian culture, including through processes such as ritual and art (martin, 2008). 5. mesopotamian perspectives roughly around the time the egyptian civilization was forming, similar developments were taking place in mesopotamia. from this ‘cradle’ were born many of our oldest and greatest empires, including those of assyria, akkad, and babylon. from initial forays into agriculture starting around 10,000 bce, by around 4,000 bce many world-shaping accomplishments had taken place, from monumental architecture to innovations in metallurgy and writing (algaze, 2009). indeed, from this region hails the oldest surviving work of literature in the world, dated around 2100 bce, the epic of gilgamesh (george, 2002). this tale illuminates the concerns of our forebears, which are all-too familiar to us (ray, 1996). it speaks to existential concerns that remain of paramount importance today, including the sweetness and fragility of friendship (epitomized in the bond between gilgamesh and the wild enkidu, who is slain by the gods), and the human fear of death and longing for transcendence (dramatized in gilgamesh’s futile quest to learn the secret of immortality from utnapashtim, equivalent to the biblical noah). gilgamesh is tempted by worldly pleasure – “make each of your days a delight,” he is advised by an inn-keeper at the gates of the underworld, “bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling, let music and dancing fill your house” (cited in riley, 2014, p.31) – and eventually returns to uruk to pursue the quasi-immortality of political glory. the epic’s deepest message, however, is that “man’s days are numbered; whatever he may do, he is but wind” (george, 2002, tablet ii, l. 234-35). gilgamesh thus represents one of the earliest surviving narrative meditations on how to shelter some small portion of happiness from the slings and arrows of fortune. 6. chinese perspectives also laying claim to be one of the oldest civilizations, and certainly the longest continuous one, is china, whose founding xia dynasty emerged circa 2070 bce. throughout its rich history, it has generated many philosophies and ideas that directly pertain to happiness. by way of example, consider the school of thought known as taoism. while its origins lie in unrecorded antiquity, its more immediate roots can be traced to the i ching (or ‘book of changes’). arising out of shamanic practices involving the consultation of oracles, this crystallised in written form around the time of king wen (circa 1150 bce). divination practices typically involved generating hexagrams – 64 permutations of six broken and unbroken lines – and interpreting the result, for which the text emerged as a guide. central to the process is that hexagrams represent not states being but of becoming; the focal point is the ‘moving’ lines (any that are dynamic or ‘unstable,’ which thus herald the shift to a different hexagram). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 as such, the overarching principle of the i ching is change – paradoxically, the one immutable law in the universe. as wilhelm (1950) wrote in introducing his translation, “he who has perceived the meaning of change fixes his attention no longer on transitory individual things but on the immutable, eternal law at work in all change.” here we find the origin of taoism, for this law is known as “the tao, the course of things, the principle of the one in the many.” moreover, the i ching not only recognised the ubiquity of change, it also identified the dynamic through which it occurs: the dialectical interaction between opposites, which eventually became symbolised by the yin-yang motif (fang, 2012). the overarching message of taoism is that deep experiential understanding of the dialectics of the tao is the path to deep happiness. more specifically, lu (2001) suggests that early texts referred to states such as fu qi – this being “the closest equivalent of happiness in chinese ancient thoughts” (p.408) – which encompasses a sense of living virtuously and well. guidance on aligning with the tao animates the tao te ching, a canonical text attributed to a sage named lao tzu, who possibly lived at some point between the sixth and third centuries bce (though his existence is disputed). for instance, as expressed in verse 47, “mastery of the world is achieved by letting things take their natural course.” in that sense, taoism endorses principles such as wuwei, which translates as non-action, but which essentially means perceiving, acquiescing to, and aligning oneself with the organic currents and patterns of life (slingerland, 2007). such ideas have proved very impactful – with scholars like suzuki (1959) suggesting a taoist influence on zen buddhism for instance (although this claim is not universally supported) – and remain so to this day (lomas et al., 2017). 7. vedantic perspectives as taoism was gradually emerging in china, comparable developments were underway in the indian subcontinent. there we see world-shaping achievements such as the vedas, foundational texts of what is now referred to as hinduism, which took shape between 1500 and 500 bce. the four vedas (rigveda, yajurveda, samaveda, and atharvaveda) include prayers and mantras, ritual instructions and commentaries, and – in their concluding upaniṣads – philosophical and spiritual reflection. one way or another, all four vedas have some relevance to happiness. for instance, much reference is made to ānanda, a form of intense happiness often translated as ‘bliss’ (gispert-sauch, 1977). ānanda can also denote an experiential ‘release’ (mokṣa) from saṃsāra – the round of birth, death, and rebirth – into nirvāṇa (collins, 2010). although a complex concept, the latter depicts a zenith of psychospiritual attainment – also common to traditions like buddhism, jainism, and sikhism – whether this is understood in traditional terms as liberation from the round of rebirth, or simply as the attainment of true insight and lasting peace in this present life (ho, 1995). furthermore, in some texts, brahman – the ultimate reality, at once immanent to and transcendent of the sensible finite world – is even identified as “bliss” itself, as in the brihadaranyaka upaniṣad (easwaran, 2007, 4.1.32) or the tejobindu upaniṣad, where brahman is named “beingconsciousness-bliss” (saccidananda) (hattangadi, 2015, 3.39). such states are not merely intellectualised concepts; a central feature in the vedas (and comparable texts) is how to actually attain them: “the mantra is the bow,” the muṇḍaka upaniṣad says, “the aspirant is the arrow, and the lord the target” (easwaran, 2007, 2.2.4). the upaniṣads in particular focus on achieving experiential union between ātman – something like an inner self, spirit, or soul, an unchanging essence beneath the contingent flux of personality – and brahman. the experiential union of these is captured by the identity statement tat tvam asi (that art thou), although there are different perspectives as to its nature (gupta & wilcox, 1984). for http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 instance, the “non-dual” (advaita) vedanta so closely identified ātman and brahman as to verge on pantheism, whereas the “qualified non-dual” (viśiṣṭādvaita) vedanta instead endorsed a kind of “panentheism” in which brahman still transcends ātman (radhakrishnan and moore, 1967, pp.506-508). the vedas – and subsequent teachings – then elucidate various paths for attaining the soughtafter states of bliss or liberation. consider, for instance yoga, which featured in the rigveda and upaniṣads before finding more complete expression in teachings like the sutras of patanjali (circa 2nd century bce). this is an overarching label for a nexus of psychospiritual practices, of which there are numerous branches, with each constituting a different ‘path’ to liberation, including: hatha (physical practice); rāja (meditation); mantra (vocalised sound); guru (dedication); karma (service); bhakti (devotion); jñana (study); and tantra (esoteric insight). it is testament to the power of these ideas and techniques that they continue to be practised to this day, and indeed have become adopted and adapted globally (raina & singh, 2018). 8. judaic perspectives meanwhile, as the vedas were slowly coming into being, a similarly epochal and still-influential set of teachings were emerging to the west: the tanakh, or ‘hebrew bible,’ the canonical collection of jewish scripture. this includes the torah (the pentateuch, or five books of moses), nevi-im (books of the prophets), and ketuvim (the ‘writings,’ including the psalms and wisdom literature). as with most such foundational texts, details of its authorship are uncertain and much debated (levinson, 2003). with the torah, for instance, rabbinic tradition holds that moses – who may have lived in the 13th century bce – ‘received’ this from god upon mount sinai, and thereafter committed it to writing. however, modern scholarship suggests it may have been assembled over centuries before finally being committed to its canonical version around the 5th century bce (koorevaar, 2010). historicity aside, these have been among the most important texts in history, and have much to offer vis-à-vis our central topic. for instance, the torah contains one of humankind’s oldest codified moral frameworks: the aseret ha-dibrot (also known as the decalogue, or the ten commandments). although preceded by examples such as the code of hammurabi – from the mesopotamian babylonian empire, written around the 17th century bce (wright, 2009) – it is arguably the most influential ethical code in the world, influencing multiple religions, and continuing to shape mindsets in the twenty-first century. each commandment is a mitzvah (law or precept) that the jewish people were obliged to follow, with exhortations to worship one god, honour one’s parents, and respect the sabbath, along with proscriptions against idolatry, blasphemy, killing, adultery, theft, dishonesty, and covetousness. these were then augmented by many further mitzvot throughout the torah – as many as 613, according to common reckoning (eisenberg, 2005). together these laws are a codification of wisdom, a guide for how people should best live. in that respect, they offer a meaningful perspective on happiness – mainly in a more eudaimonic sense – that continues to hold relevance today. indeed, the tanakh identifies potential linkages and even interdependencies between eudaimonic and hedonic forms of happiness that foreshadow some modern scholarship in this arena (e.g., kashdan et al., 2008). it stresses for example that the torah’s objective goodness (which pertains to eudaimonia) should equally be a source of subjective delight (which aligns more with hedonia): “the ordinances of the lord are true, and righteous altogether,” writes the psalmist; “more to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (ps. 19:9-10). in this same spirit, moses ben maimon (aka maimonides), the pre-eminent jewish theologian of the middle ages, wrote: “the joy [simḥah] http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 which a person expresses in doing a mitzvah, and in the love of god that he commanded through them, is a great act of worship” (cited in fishbane, 1998, p.158). ultimately, however, a life shaped by god’s law is envisioned not only to be one of joy, but also of ‘shalom.’ this multi-faceted term sometimes suggests personal ‘peace’ (cf. ps. 119:22), but at points also denotes the “harmony” of all creatures with one another and with god, and so rather than hedonia or even eudaimonia may align more closely with notions such as chaironic happiness: “you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace (shalom); the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (isa. 55:12). 9. persian perspectives while human reflection on the nature of reality and of the good life stretch back into the mists of pre-history, there appears to have been a qualitative collective shift between the eighth and third centuries bce (boy, 2015). this wasn’t precipitated by an individual genius or even region. in multiple places – from china to india to greece – profound and unprecedented cognitive and philosophical revolutions seemed to have occurred somewhat in parallel. karl jaspers (1949) called this the achsenzeit – the axial age – to signify that it marked a pivotal moment in our history. one strand of this revolution is found in persia, with the epochal zarathustra – otherwise known as zoroaster – who possibly lived in the seventh or sixth century bce (grenet, 2015). one of the most influential thinkers of his (and any) time, his teachings coalesced into a belief system that continues to attract adherents, making it one of the oldest extant religions (stausberg, 2008). in contrast to the polytheism of many cultures at the time, he was one of the first thinkers to develop the notion of a supreme divinity, which he named ahura mazdā (‘lord of wisdom’) and acclaimed as the originator of truth, order, and justice. but this was not straightforward monotheism. possibly uniquely among the world’s great religions – excepting certain schismatic schools within them – zoroastrianism combines belief in a supreme deity with a form of cosmic dualism (boyd & donald, 1979). that is, ahura mazdā is envisioned as engaged in a primordial struggle with his antithesis, angra mainyu, an equally powerful god of darkness and chaos. this is believed to eventually resolve into a monotheistic eschatology (a theology of ultimate destiny), when ahura mazdā finally triumphs. however, this outcome is not guaranteed in zoroastrian teachings, at least not within our human timeframe; forces of strife and chaos remain ever present and must be held at bay until they are finally overcome. so, here again we find a vision pertaining to happiness – particularly its more eudaimonic forms perhaps – albeit one clothed in mythology. for zoroastrianism holds that humans are active participants in this cosmic struggle, with a responsibility to join ahura mazdā’s battle by cultivating wisdom and undertaking good deeds. indeed, this association of happiness with moral and personal development is found across the traditions and teachings of this era, as the next few examples illustrate (as indeed do the previous ones). 10. buddhist perspectives among the luminaries of the axial age, few are as celebrated and influential as siddhartha gautama, better known by the honorific buddha, meaning ‘enlightened one.’ gautama is generally believed to have been born in lumbini, in present-day nepal, possibly around 480 bce (although it may have been earlier; coningham et al., 2013). as with many traditions, our understanding of the origins of buddhism is limited by a lack of historicity in source documents. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 nevertheless, the mythologised narrative describes gautama living a sheltered life until age 29, when a series of existential encounters with illness and death compelled him to pursue a religious path dedicated to exploring the human condition (kumar, 2002). living in a context shaped by the vedas, he initially spent five years engaged in ascetic yoga practices. however, he eventually deemed such self-mortification unhelpful, and resolved to pursue a ‘middle path’ (e.g., between indulgence and asceticism). the narrative holds that he committed to meditating until he had attained nirvāṇa, and sat beneath a tree for 49 days until he achieved his epochal breakthrough. he then spent the next 45 years formulating and disseminating his insights, known by the term dharma, a term which can imply laws of nature. fundamentally, these teachings focus on questions of happiness, at least in its deeper senses (i.e., experiences pertaining to forms like eudaimonic and chaironic happiness, and possibly even forms that have yet to be operationalized by modern psychology). at the core of the dharma is the so-called four noble truths. the first is that life is pervaded by duḥkha, a term often translated as suffering, but perhaps better rendered as dissatisfaction (since buddhism recognises that there are joys in life, but that even these are rarely ‘perfect’). however, this insight is tempered by the second truth, which is that the cause of duḥkha can be identified, being mainly attributed to people’s tendency towards craving and attachment. moreover, having understood these causes, the third truth offers the redemptive hope that duḥkha can be alleviated. the fourth truth then offers a roadmap to this alleviation: the noble eightfold path. the path is a prescription for ‘right living,’ including the development of wisdom (right vision and conception), ethical conduct (right speech, conduct, and livelihood), and meditation (right effort, mindfulness, and concentration). advancing even a short way along this path is regarded as likely to improve one’s wellbeing (lomas, 2017a). in the nearer term, doing so is thought to facilitate suḥkha (the antonym of duḥkha), which potentially aligns with some notions of hedonia. however, buddhism also holds a promise of a qualitatively different form of happiness, regarded as ultimate goal of the path – which the buddha, and many people since, are reported to have attained – namely the liberation of nirvāṇa (collins, 2010). as we saw above, vedic religions typically interpret this liberation in terms of the union between the true self (ātman) and ultimate reality (brahman). buddhists however have generally taught instead that suffering arises precisely from our tendency to reify fleeting constellations of thought and desire as a unified self, which vainly grasps after impossible kinds of permanence. the insistence that true happiness comes only from seeing that all is “empty” (śunyata) of “intrinsic nature” (svabhava), and so “without a self“ (ānatman) is one feature unifying the otherwise highly diverse traditions of buddhist thought and practice (collins, 1990, pp.87-146; jones, 2021, pp.4-10). 11. hellenistic perspectives of all the eras and traditions in this brief tour of historical perspectives, arguably none has had greater influence on contemporary thinking than hellenistic greece during the axial age. even today many of its key figures remain household names, whose teachings remain a foundation of numerous aspects of modern life. this influence is evident in that many concepts and practices still bear the etymological imprint of their greek roots, from democracy (power of the people) to philosophy (love of wisdom). among this vast corpus of thought, greek thinkers had much to say about happiness; indeed, contributions from this era are relatively well heralded and discussed in contemporary academic literature, so we will keep this section comparatively short. among these world-shaping figures, the person with arguably the strongest influence on contemporary thinking around happiness is aristotle (1999), who taught that it was the highest http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 good because it alone was an end in itself. however, he was careful to distinguish between hedonia and eudaimonia, as noted above. he was disparaging of both hedonia and the masses who were preoccupied with such ‘base’ pleasures, complaining that such people were “slavish in their tastes,” living a “life suitable to beasts” (nicomachean ethics, 1096a 15-20). by contrast, eudaimonia refers etymologically to having a good daimon: a guiding spirit, or perhaps from a modern perspective, one’s conscience. in that respect, it reflects ‘deeper’ forms of happiness arising through self-cultivation, being defined by aristotle as the “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” (nicomachean ethics, 1098a 16-17). of course, these concepts are far from the only contribution of this era to our central topic. consider for instance stoicism, the school of philosophy founded by zeno of citium around 300 bce, which is notable for its insistence that ‘virtue’ (i.e., a good character) is all that is needed for (eudaimonic) happiness. among its later adherents is the roman seneca (1992), whose works include de vita beata, often rendered as ‘on the happy life.’ this includes aphorisms such as “the happy man is content with his present lot, no matter what it is” (cited in mcmahon, 2006, p.55). his fellow philosopher epictetus (2004) took this line of thought to its extreme, claiming it was possible to be “sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy” (cited in russell, 2013, p.219). despite their insistence on the centrality of virtue for happiness, the stoics also emphasized that virtue produces the supremely desirable subjective state of an ‘untroubled mind’ (ataraxia), a lucid, tranquil happiness involving an imperturbable detachment from the vicissitudes of life. this perspective too finds its champions and adherents to the present day (becker, 2017) – as indeed do many other perspectives and philosophies from this era, for which the select few ideas mentioned here necessarily stand in as exemplars. 12. christian perspectives “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (matthew 5:3-11). so begins one of the most famous texts in history, the sermon on the mount, an oration which is often regarded as the zenith of jesus’ teachings, the very “essence of christianity” (quarles, 2011). after exalting those who mourn, those who hunger for righteousness, the meek and the merciful, he promises: “blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see god. blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of god. blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” as with the other traditions here, christianity had much to say regarding our central topic. consider, for instance, the poetically repeated central word of jesus’ sermon, ‘blessed.’ in the early greek of the new testament, this pivotal term was makários, which became the english ‘blessed’ via a circuitous route leading through latin (beatus), old french (beatitude), and finally proto-germanic (blodison – meaning to consecrate, originally with blood, as evident in its etymology). nonetheless, in the old greek translations of the hebrew bible, makários consistently rendered the hebrew ‘ashrey,’ a term closely associated with ‘shalom,’ and which is explained as “true happiness and flourishing within the gracious covenant god has given” (pennington, 2017, p.43, cf. ps. 1:1, 40:4). as such, an equally suitable – perhaps even preferable – opening for the beatitudes might in fact be “happy,” or even, “flourishing are the pure in heart…” (mcmahon, 2006; pennington, 2017, pp.41-44). of course, this is no mere pleasure, but the deepest – or alternatively the highest – happiness possible, and which is attainable – like the stoic ataraxia – even in the midst of great material want or physical suffering. here we strike again a crucial theme of this paper: the limitations of language, and the fact that ‘happiness’ can encompass many emotional states, from the banal to the sublime, which moreover may not always be easy to accurately express in a given tongue http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 such as english (lomas, 2018). of course, granular terms like ‘blessed’ can help to indicate its more profound forms. in this sense did thomas carlyle write, “there is something higher than happiness, and that is blessedness” (cited in mcmahon, 2004, p.9). however, it would arguably be better to expand our conception of happiness itself, doing so in a way that can encompass notions like blessedness (and indeed, this movement towards conceptual expansion is central to our paper, as elucidated at the start). semantics aside, jesus’s message was revolutionary. many prevailing ideas on happiness (e.g., in the roman world) positioned it either as determined by fate (and so outside of people’s control), or as only amenable to influence by a limited group of people (e.g., wealthy men with the power to arrange their lives in an agreeable manner) (mcmahon, 2006). by contrast, jesus not only preached that happiness could be attained by the poor and the persecuted, even more radically, he suggested such people were more blessed than the rich and powerful, a redemptive idea which continues to shape the present. indeed, the new testament ends with a vision of jesus ruling over a new heaven and new earth in which there is no more crying or mourning or pain. this redemptive vision still inspires billions of people to this very day. 13. islamic perspectives a central debate within christianity was whether the blessed state described by jesus was attainable on earth in some form, or only in the afterlife. we find similar considerations in the last of the great monotheistic traditions to emerge, islam, which originated in mecca in the 7th century ce. it was there that the prophet muhammad was born in 570, and nearby received a series of revelations from allah (god) via the angel gabriel, the recitation and transcription of which became the quran. now it has the second-highest number of adherents worldwide of any tradition – after christianity – estimated at nearly 2 billion, with the quran among the most influential texts ever written. and among its teachings are in-depth commentaries on our central topic. for instance, the quran differentiates forms of happiness, including mut’a and sa’adah. the former refers to mere sensual pleasure, akin to the hedonism disparaged by aristotle, and similarly looked down upon as a relatively crude earthly satisfaction (abde & salih, 2015). that said, in considering the farah (joys) available in this life, the quran does distinguish negative ‘blameworthy’ joy (celebrating “the life of this world”; 13.26) from positive ‘praiseworthy’ joy (rejoicing “in the bounty of god and his grace”; 10:58). in any case, in contrast to mut’a, sa’adah is valorised as a superlative, even ultimate happiness, one only experienced in the afterlife and only accessible to believers. in that respect, considerable attention is paid in the quran to the nature of the afterlife, painting beautiful detailed images of jannah (often translated as heaven or paradise) (kamil & yunos, 2015). this is portrayed as a beautiful garden of bliss, featuring many different regions and levels – access to which depends upon people’s conduct in life. however, these evocations of paradise do not mean islamic perspectives on happiness are predominantly otherworldly or only focused on the afterlife. relating to considerations such as praiseworthy joys, islamic teachings devote considerable effort to elucidating what a good life on earth involves, articulating the kinds of beliefs and practices that are thought to lead to desirable mental states. this includes valorising character development, involving the cultivation of virtues, such as temperance, modesty, and self-restraint (dahlsgaard et al., 2005). in that respect, one can find parallels with classical greek notions of eudaimonia, as outlined above. indeed, both greek and islamic scholars contributed to the burgeoning vision of humanity that took shape in the renaissance. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 14. renaissance perspectives medieval europe suffered regularly from wars, invasions, and epidemic diseases. few would have disagreed with the future pope innocent iii (1161-1216; 1969) when he wrote “all [people’s] days are full of toil and hardship. rich or poor, master or slave, married or single, good and bad alike—all suffer worldly torments and are tormented by worldly vexations.” of course, this was not the whole story of the thousand-year period. in addition to suffering, medieval society was typified by raucous festivals like carnival and immense creativity in theology, business, and the arts. medieval europeans founded the first universities, laid the groundwork for the modern nation-state, and presided over the expansion of the european economy through trade. that these years of creativity and change are still remembered as the ‘dark ages’ is largely due to the mythmaking of renaissance thinkers like petrarch (1304-1374), who mourned the lost glories of rome, as well as later interpreters of the period like jacob burkhardt (1818-1897; 1990). since civilization never died in medieval europe, the renaissance was not a complete ‘rebirth’ as the name implies. still, the renaissance did introduce new energies to european intellectual culture, including innovative ideas and practices relating to happiness (lomas & lomas, 2018). beginning with petrarch, increasing numbers of learned men—and even some privileged women—began to use the classical and christian past in novel ways. they cultivated linguistic skills that allowed them to read broadly in ancient texts, using the knowledge they gained for both aesthetic and practical ends. renaissance humanists found in the speeches of cicero a model of persuasion that they hoped could eliminate the need for war. they founded schools designed to teach virtue in addition to beautiful latin. and they sought to push the catholic church toward consistency with the teachings of christ. all these endeavors were designed to promote human flourishing as humanists understood it. by the beginning of the sixteenth century, humanists were using the newly invented printing press to reach a growing audience interested such topics. the great dutch humanist, desiderius erasmus (1466-1536) playfully asked in his praise of folly (1509/1989) whether the foolish weren’t ultimately happier than the wise. in his popular satire, the goddess folly claimed credit for the continuation of human society generally; who, for example, would ever get married or have children if it weren’t for folly’s intervention? ultimately, erasmus’ satirical book concluded that christian virtue was superior to all. the greatest fool was christ himself who forgave his enemies and gave his life on the cross. erasmus dedicated the praise of folly to his close friend, thomas more (1478-1535). indeed, the latin title, moriae encomium, was a pun on more’s name. more was similarly invested in the question of happiness. his imaginative utopia (1516/1965) broke new ground by imaging a nation that was organized in such a way as to best promote the happiness of its residents. the resulting island of utopia was envisaged as surpassing europe by eliminating warfare, poverty, and even the legal profession. the name ‘utopia’ could mean either ‘no place’ or ‘good place,’ but there was no reason to think it was necessarily an impossible place. more thus inaugurated a tradition of thinking about imaginary worlds as a means of improving the actual one – thereby ideally promoting real, tangible happiness in people’s lived realities – a goal which took on even greater salience and prominence during the enlightenment. 15. enlightenment perspectives european thinking about happiness took another turn during the enlightenment, although the philosophes of the era did borrow one trick from their renaissance forebears: imagining the past as a period of darkness, misery, and superstition. in his celebrated essay, “what is enlightenment?” (1784/1983), immanuel kant (1724-1804) defined the enlightenment as the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 throwing off of intellectual and religious authorities. no longer would the wise be bound by tradition which obscured more than illuminated. the motto of the enlightenment was “sapere aude!” or “dare to know!” but dare to know what? kant’s philosophy is today notorious for its abstraction, but enlightenment thinkers were deeply impressed by the practical accomplishments of scientists and political reformers. the enlightenment was as much about living as it was about reasoning. in recent years, some historians have summed up the whole enlightenment as a commitment to “human betterment” (robertson, 2005, p.28), or an attempt to “understand humanity – and the world in which humans live – in order to promote happiness” (robertson, 2021, p.37). even if this overstates the case, there can be no doubt that discussions of happiness took on a new prominence during the enlightenment. however, that does not mean that enlightenment thinkers agreed about the best way to pursue it. jean-jacques rousseau (1712-1778) assumed that the desire for happiness was universal. he thought that misery was occasioned by social competition, and so deemed a return to the simplicity of the natural state necessary for flourishing. he believed this could be possible by following the sentimental, self-directed philosophy of education described in his best-selling novel, émile (1762/2009). voltaire (1694-1778) was too attached to worldly comforts to seek happiness in rustic simplicity, but he was no less committed to pursuing it. his “story of a good brahmin” described the plight of an indian philosopher who was so subtle in his reasoning that he wasn’t sure he knew anything at all; he was miserable and wondered if he wouldn’t be better off being like his simple-minded neighbor who was happy in her religion and never bothered herself with difficult metaphysical questions. the narrator agrees that the key question is how to be happy, asking “what does it matter whether one has brains or not?” voltaire’s long-term lover, the marquise du châtelet, was a formidable philosopher in her own right. after a painful breakup with voltaire, she authored her discourse on happiness (1748/2009). in typical enlightenment fashion, she thought happiness required liberation from the prejudices of the past. more positively, happiness could be found in pleasure. she wrote, “the only point of living is to experience agreeable sensations and feelings; and the stronger the agreeable feelings are, the happier one is” (p.350). in châtelet’s view, women of high station should look for happiness mainly in good food and fashionable society. the enlightenment pursuit of happiness was not as decisive a break with the past as has often been supposed. for instance, historians increasingly acknowledge that the mainstream of the age included thought that was profoundly religious (sorkin, 2008; michalos & weijers, 2017). for every convinced atheist, there were many rational christians who remembered that earthly happiness could never compare to the heavenly variety. the two editors of the great encyclopédie project, denis diderot (1713-1784) and jean le rond d’alembert (1717-1783), were atheists. however, the lesser-known jean pestre (1723-1821) – author of the article on ‘happiness’ in the encyclopédie – was a clergyman who wanted to defend the christian faith using the language of nature and reason. religious differences aside, diderot and d’alembert would have agreed with pestre when he wrote, “all men are united in the desire to be happy. nature has made happiness a law to all of us.” happiness was not merely a goal of the enlightenment. it was also a right, or at least the pursuit of it was, as thomas jefferson penned in the declaration of independence. the pursuit of happiness could even be an obligation. the philosopher francis hutcheson (1694-1746) thought that moral philosophy was essentially the study of happiness. he argued, “the best action is the one that procures the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers” (1725/2002, p.515). hutcheson would lay the groundwork for utilitarianism which would later receive its classic formulations http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 in the work of jeremy bentham (1879/1996) and john stuart mill. mill stated the foundational principle of utilitarianism was that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse” (1859/2015). utilitarianism would exercise a profound influence on contemporary scientific constructs relating to happiness, such as subjective wellbeing. 16. conclusion this paper has made the case that happiness – defined expansively as a desirable mental experience – has been a perennial concern across the world. each of the civilizations and movements we have considered has taken distinct interest in the forms of life, from states of mind and character to modes of action, in which people rightly take satisfaction, if not always ‘pleasure’ in the hedonic sense. in some cases, different forms of happiness are contrasted, and there are exhortations to pursue one form over another – often a form closely tied to an understanding of what constitutes true human wellbeing. but that tie between human wellbeing and some forms of happiness is fairly consistent throughout the traditions. in short, people throughout history and around the world have valued and pursued desirable mental experiences – the mental phenomena arising from the experience of living well – i.e., happiness, broadly construed. this perspective is a counterbalance to some of the contemporary literature on the topic, which can sometimes imply that it is essentially only a modern and/or western concern. to articulate this view, this paper offered a brief overview of 14 different eras in human history, highlighting concepts and concerns that bear some resemblance to happiness as conceived today. some are closer to more conventional contemporary interpretations of happiness than others. for instance, a narrower conceptualisation of this term might associate it mainly with hedonic happiness, and particularly high arousal forms of positive affect, such as joy or euphoria (lomas, 2017b). in that respect, ideas like simḥah in judaism (often rendered as ‘joy’) are relatively close conceptually. other items may be slightly further from such notions, such as the taoist concept of wu-wei or the stoic concept of ataraxia, which may align more with concepts such as ‘flow’ in constituting a more cognitive (i.e., attention driven) form of happiness. in that respect, this paper has been overt in seeking to present an expansive notion of happiness. of course, it was necessarily selective; an exhaustive summary of all relevant ideas and traditions is far beyond the scope of one academic paper. nevertheless, even offering a partial narrative of these historical currents is a valuable exercise, helping us to better understand and contextualise this most valuable of topics. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors tim lomas the human flourishing program, harvard university lololomas@googlemail.com brendan w. case the human flourishing program, harvard university flynn j. cratty the human flourishing program, harvard university http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a global history of happiness lomas, case, cratty & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 tyler j. vanderweele department of epidemiology, harvard t. h. chan school of public health the human flourishing program, harvard university authors’ contributions lomas conceived and wrote an initial draft of the paper. case and cratty contributed substantive revisions and additions to particular sections. vanderweele provided a high-level overarching review, and refined certain definitions and formulations. all authors then checked and honed the completed text. acknowledgments the authors thank their colleagues and collaborators who in various ways contributed to the development of the perspectives and ideas expressed in this paper. publishing timeline received 16 october 2020 revised version received 15 september 2021 accepted 24 september 2021 published 30 september 2021 references abde, a. n. y., & salih, k. 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(2016). posttraumatic growth during unemployment: a qualitative examination of distress and positive transformation. journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 117-141. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i1.441 lea waters the university of melbourne l.waters@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 article posttraumatic growth during unemployment: a qualitative examination of distress and positive transformation lea waters · gabriel strauss abstract: this qualitative study explored the presence of growth, distress, deliberate rumination (a type of positive rumination as opposed to intrusive rumination) and dialectical thinking in a sample of unemployed people. semi-structured interviews with 22 unemployed people were analyzed using deductive thematic analysis. fryer’s (1992) agency-restriction theory and jahoda’s (1988) latent deprivation theory were used to examine distress, whereas tedeschi and calhoun’s (2004a) posttraumatic growth theory and latack and dozier’s career growth model (1986) were used to analyze growth. as a result of dealing with the challenges of unemployment, participants became connected with their inner strengths, experienced gratitude for their supportive relationships, felt compassion for other unemployed people and became open to new career pathways. deliberate rumination and dialectical thinking appeared to promote posttraumatic growth. this study applied a positive psychology approach to unemployment and examined the relevance of posttraumatic growth within the context of job loss. the paper suggests ways in which unemployment counseling can adopt the dual aims of ameliorating distress and fostering growth. keywords: unemployment, posttraumatic growth, positive psychology, deliberate rumination, dialectical thinking, wellbeing 1. introduction this paper aims to alert researchers and counselors working with unemployed people to the possibility of positive outcomes of job loss in addition to the well-evidenced negative outcomes. understanding both distress and growth as outcomes of unemployment will offer new directions for developing job loss assistance programs and career counseling practices. we used a positive psychology approach in this qualitative study to help us uncover the potential positive outcomes of unemployment. positive psychology seeks to examine “strengths, virtues, beneficial conditions, and processes that contribute to well-being” (rusk & waters, 2015, p. 207). in the current study we explored whether two positive processes—deliberate rumination and dialectical thinking—support growth during unemployment. we examined growth along the five dimensions of tedeschi and calhoun’s (1996) posttraumatic growth (ptg) model: improved relationships, new possibilities, a greater appreciation of life, an increased sense of personal strength, and spiritual development. in adopting a positive psychology approach, we are aware that a criticism of the field is that its focus on the positive may invalidate or hide negative experiences (oliver, 2005). in this study, mailto:l.waters@unimelb.edu.au http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 we therefore adopted recent calls to follow a non-dualistic approach and recognize that positive and negative outcomes can co-exist (lomas & ivtzan, 2015; wong, 2011). in held’s (2004) critique of positive psychology, she found evidence of a “second-wave message” (p. 18) in positive psychology that calls for a better understanding of the interplay between positives and negatives in creating human flourishing. we are part of this second-wave message and seek to examine the interplay between positive and negative states activated by job loss. we explore two processes— deliberate rumination and dialectical thinking—that have both negative and positive aspects to them, but ultimately lead to positive outcomes by promoting clarity and self-awareness (cann, calhoun, tedeschi, triplett, vishnevsky, & lindstrom, 2011). in establishing the field of positive psychology, seligman (2002) argued that positive psychology research must be firmly anchored in the scientific method. he placed experimental-control studies with randomized assignment as the “gold standard” of science and stressed that positive psychology research needs to be “replicable, cumulative, and objective” (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2001, p. 91). this approach has been important in providing empirical ways to measure positive concepts that were previously fuzzy (e.g., hope, empathy, gratitude). however, positive psychology has also been criticized for its reductionistic approach (rathunde, 2001; rennie, 2012; resnick, warmoth, & serlin, 2001). although quantitative designs can allow us to examine causal relationships and large-scale trends, they run the risk of airbrushing important differences experienced by individuals. qualitative approaches offer positive psychology researchers a window into the intricate stories and contours of experience for individuals. as such, there have been calls for positive psychology to adopt a greater range of epistemological methodologies to complement the empiricist approach (rennie, 2012; hefferon, ashfield, waters, & synard, forthcoming). in the current study, we used a qualitative method to uncover the interplay between positive and negative processes and outcomes during unemployment and gain a deeper understanding of individual experiences of job loss. 2. unemployment as a source of trauma research has consistently shown unemployment to be a highly traumatic event, characterized by feelings of shock, loss, and extreme distress (cottle, 2003; darity & goldsmith, 1996; gabriel, gray, & goregaokar, 2010; madonia, 1983; paul & moser, 2009; schneer, 1993; wanberg, 2012). garrett-peters (2009) argues that unemployment can create a sense of rupture in identity that assaults the deepest aspect of self. indeed, some people equate job termination with identity termination (taplin & lacy, 2002). joelson and walhquist (1987) described unemployment as “an acute psychological crisis” (p. 180). others have found that unemployment can lead to suicidal ideation (blakely, collings, & atkinson, 2003), parasuicide (platt & hawton, 2000), and, at the extreme, completed suicide (wanberg, 2012). there are two well-accepted theories about the causes of distress during unemployment: (a) fryer’s financial-restriction theory and (b) jahoda’s latent deprivation theory. fryer (1992) argued that individuals strive for meaningful purpose related to their goals and values, and that psychological distress results from the restriction of personal agency due to the financial strain of unemployment. individuals with less money have increased difficulty in creating personally satisfying lifestyles, leading to greater psychological distress (fryer & payne, 1984). numerous studies support this model by demonstrating that financial strain significantly predicts psychological distress (creed & macintyre, 2001; creed, muller, & machin, 2001; mckee-ryan, song, wanberg, & kinicki, 2005). jahoda (1981; 1988) suggested that employment offers “latent benefits” apart from providing income and that distress arises when these latent benefits are removed due to job loss. posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 employment provides an activity around which time may be structured, contact with people other than an individual’s immediate family, a sense of purpose that transcends one’s selfdirected interests, and an aspect of our identity. jahoda also argued that employment creates a sense of enforced activity, as most jobs require people to engage in tasks and responsibilities outside of their normal range of behavior. her latent deprivation theory therefore attributes psychological distress to the deprivation of five latent functions that are necessary for wellbeing: time structure, social contact, identity, collective purpose, and enforced activity (jahoda, 1981; 1988). over two decades of research now support this theory (carson, winefield, waters, & kerr, 2003; creed & macinture, 2001; creed et al., 2001), demonstrating how limited access to these benefits leads to increased psychological distress (janlert & hammarström, 2009; muller, creed, waters, & machin, 2005; muller, goddard, creed, johnson, & waters, 2006; sverko, galic, maslić seršić, & galesic, 2008; waters & muller, 2003). these studies have directed researchers and practitioners to focus on identifying the negative consequences of unemployment to reduce the “unemployment blues” (tobias, 1994, p. 1931). such research has typically attempted to reduce depression (moorhouse & caltabiano, 2007), decrease deprivation (waters & moore, 2002), mitigate grief and despair, (archer & rhodes, 1993), and repair damage to self-concept (fraccaroli, leblanc, & hajjar, 1994; garrett-peters, 2009). the current study builds on this body of research, but also extends it by informing researchers and practitioners of processes and methods that may promote growth (and not just mitigate distress) during unemployment. 3. unemployment as a source for growth although the field has systematically studied the negative aspects of unemployment since the 1930s (jahoda, lazarsfeld, & zeisel, 1933), only a small number of studies have investigated its positive outcomes. indeed, waters, briscoe, and hall’s (2013) bibliometric analysis of all peerreviewed journal articles published on the topic of unemployment from 1980–2012 (475 articles across 19 databases) found a positive-negative ratio of 1:33. they concluded that “much of the research into unemployment has focused on what people lose during unemployment rather than what people can gain” (p. 19). with the exception of fraher and gabriel (2014), the bulk of studies that focus on positive outcomes were published a considerable time ago (see latack & dozier, 1986; jones 1989; eby & buch, 1995; zikic & klehe, 2006; zikic, & richardson, 2007). there is, therefore, a clear need for more contemporary research on the positive and growth-oriented outcomes of unemployment. in the current study, we explored the potential positive outcomes of unemployment by applying ptg theory (tedeschi & calhoun, 1995; tedeschi, park, & calhoun, 1998). o’leary and ickovics (1995) describe ptg as the experience of positive change triggered through trauma and adversity. similarly, tedeschi and calhoun (2004a) define ptg as “the experience of positive change that occurs as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life crises” (p. 1). tedeschi and calhoun (1996) and taku, cann, calhoun and tedeschi (2008) identified a five-factor model of ptg: improved relationships, new possibilities, a greater appreciation of life, an increased sense of personal strength, and spiritual development. it is important to note that ptg results from the individual’s desire to make meaning of the trauma, rather than from the trauma itself (tedeschi & calhoun, 1995; 2004b). the formation of meaning is triggered by the fact that the event calls into question a person’s deeply-held assumptions about how the world operates (janoff-bulman, 1989; 2006). for example, if you were a high-performing, loyal employee, then you might believe that you had job security. these assumptions allow the individual to operate with clarity and predictability (gluhoski & posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 wortman, 1996). after these assumptions fail to hold, a person can engage in rebuilding new worldviews. cann et al. (2011) assert that ptg arises from the process of attempting to understand the event and rebuild one’s core beliefs, which presents “the opportunity for realizing growth” (p. 137). ptg has been reported by people following major accidents, life-threatening illness, natural disasters, combat experience, and bereavement (hefferon, grealy & mutrie, 2009; tedeschi & mcnally, 2011). hefferon et al. (2009) argued that different types of trauma may induce different growth responses. in this study, we explore the responses of ptg in a sample of unemployed people. in the psychinfo database, we only found three prior studies that explored the unemployment-ptg link (berger, 2015; lamela, figueiredo, bastos, & martins, 2015; nuttmanshwartz, & gadot, 2012). however, in all three articles, the authors simply listed unemployment as a trigger for ptg (along with other potential triggers). to date, no empirical research has examined whether there is evidence of ptg during unemployment. although the specific ptg construct has not been studied in the context of unemployment, a small body of evidence in the 1980s and 1990s found that unemployment can be a time of growth. for instance, latack and dozier (1986) found that in certain conditions, unemployment leads to positive career transitions. they focused on career growth, which they defined as the situation where the transition from job loss to reemployment provides new, and sometimes more, opportunities for career success. the results of eby and buch (1995) support that of latack and dozier (1986) and found that some people used involuntary job loss as a trigger to find new career opportunities and experience career growth. jones (1989) established that some people experience a more general type of growth following unemployment if they use it as a positive opportunity to change their life direction. in the 2000s, zikic and klehe (2006) showed that those people who used unemployment as a time for examining self-identity and alternative career options obtained high-quality reemployment. some participants found that job loss turned out to be a “blessing in disguise” (zikic & klehe, 2006, p. 391). a year later, zikic and richardson’s (2007) study challenged the widely-held view of job loss as a negative experience by presenting evidence of job loss as a positive trigger for career exploration. in their qualitative study of white-collar managers who had been made redundant, they found that participants used unemployment as a time to explore their values and interests and to obtain a deeper understanding of themselves. they then used this deeper self-understanding to shape their next career move. the type of reflection studied by zikic and richardson was akin to cann et al.’s (2011) deliberate rumination (a process we will consider in the next section) in that it was voluntary and purposive. the positive reflective process of these unemployed managers allowed them to assign meaning to their experience of unemployment and look for future career paths that would lead to self-fulfillment. more recently, waters et al. (2013) found evidence of career growth following unemployment for those people who have the core career values of freedom and growth, and who approach their careers in self-directed and values-driven ways. in addition, fraher and gabriel (2014) studied the importance of narratives in predicting whether people stayed traumatized by unemployment or were able to grow. the authors identified two narratives in jobless people: 1) stuck or 2) moving on. people with a “stuck narrative” had an unresolved sense of sadness, frustration, and desperation about their unemployment. they saw job loss as a wound and felt powerless. those with a “moving on” narrative had “worked through the trauma” (p. 934) and had made sense of their experience. they used reflection in voluntary ways to make meaning of posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 their experience, retrain, take on new work, and adopt new work patterns. these people reported that they had regained control over their life and their identity. although these seven papers all suggest that growth is a possible outcome following the trauma of unemployment, none of the studies examined growth within the prg framework. five of the studies focused specifically on career growth. jones viewed growth in a general sense and fraher and gabriel considered both career growth and identity growth. as such, it is currently unclear whether unemployment triggers growth in the five domains of ptg: improved relationships, new possibilities, a greater appreciation of life, an increased sense of personal strength, and spiritual development. 4. two processes that may foster post-traumatic growth during unemployment 4.1 dialectical thinking and deliberate rumination ptg theory suggests that unemployment counselors can not only reduce distress but can also help clients explore the possibility of growth. one way counselors can attempt this is by encouraging individuals to deploy dialectical thinking. dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues and experiences from multiple perspectives and to reconcile opposing forces and information (basseches, 1980). rather than thinking unemployment is all bad (e.g., career suicide) or all good (e.g., permanent vacation), dialectical thinking helps a person to resolve two seemingly contradictory positions into a meaningful, more reasonable experience where the person can accommodate both the bad and good aspects of unemployment (e.g., it’s bad because of financial pressure but it’s good that i get to spend more time with my family). wong’s (2011) writings in positive psychology support the idea of dialectical thinking as a positive process, suggesting that people benefit from finding ways to make meaning of “the complex interactions between the negatives and positives in order to optimize positive outcomes” (p. 69). such a dialectical approach is also discussed by cann et al. (2011), who recognize that a traumatic event can both disrupt and strengthen a person’s way of thinking. emmon’s (2007) notion of “adversity transferred into opportunity” also supports this idea (p. 6). finally, tedeschi and mcnally (2011) suggested that dialectical thinking and the appreciation of paradoxes are effective elements in fostering ptg. specifically, they encourage people to see: how loss and gain are not mutually exclusive, how the aftermath of traumatic events may require support from others yet at the same time individual strength, how one has some control but must also accept the lack of control, how grief can coincide with gratitude, and vulnerability with strength. (p. 22) in addition to dialectical thinking, cann et al. (2011) propose that another key element in assisting ptg is deliberate rumination, a form of voluntary and purposeful reflection that seeks to try and understand negative events and their implications. according to cann et al. (2011), “[t]he term rumination has acquired a negative connotation in recent years, particularly in the clinical literature on depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd), where the word has been used by some to mean only self-focused negative thinking about symptoms” (p. 138). however, several researchers have challenged the idea that rumination is only a negative process. for example, treynor, gonzalez, and nolen-hoeksema (2003) found two distinct types of rumination: brooding and reflective pondering. brooding is a negative form of “thinking anxiously and thinking gloomily,” whereas reflective pondering is a more positive form of rumination that involves reflecting and pondering in ways that attempt to deal with and overcome problems and difficulties. while brooding is a passive rumination process in which individuals focus on and lament their current situation (or compare it with some unachieved posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 standard), reflective pondering is a “purposeful turning inward to engage in cognitive problemsolving to alleviate one’s depressive symptoms” (treynor et al., 2003, p. 256). similarly, cann et al. (2011) identified two types of rumination: intrusive rumination and deliberate rumination. they argue that although both types of rumination involve recurrent thinking triggered by a challenging experience, the two types of rumination diverge in very important ways and lead to very different mental health outcomes. according to cann et al. (2011), intrusive rumination involves invasive, undesired, negative thoughts that are commonly associated with symptoms of distress. in contrast, deliberate rumination involves a more controlled focus, wherein the individual uses reminiscing, anticipating, and problem-solving to make sense of the experience and move forward in a positive direction. whereas intrusive rumination is an unsolicited invasion, individuals voluntarily engage in deliberate rumination. cann et al. (2011) therefore argue that “not all forms of rumination are detrimental” (p. 138). indeed, deliberate rumination has been found to predict increased ptg (calhoun, cann, tedeschi, & mcmillan, 2000). two other studies on employment have found evidence of these more positive forms of rumination. for example, zikic and colleagues (zikic & klehe, 2006; zikic & richardson, 2007) found that unemployed participants who engaged in voluntary and purposeful self-reflection and career-reflection (i.e., made sense of their joblessness through deliberate rumination) subsequently obtained high-quality reemployment. using a more formalized mechanism for self-reflection, spera, buhrfeind, and pennebaker (1994) invited unemployed men to engage in a five-day expressive writing program where participants were encouraged to write about their job loss experiences, express their emotions, and reflect on life changes that had occurred as a result of unemployment. compared to two control groups (who were asked to write about their plans for the next day or who did not engage in any writing), the expressive writing group had significantly higher rates of reemployment three months later, and this difference continued over the eight-month duration of the study. spera et al. (1994) proposed that expressive writing “helps the traumatized person attain a perspective on the experience” (p. 722), because putting words to the experience helps people organize and give meaning to the job loss, which prompts closure and allows them to move on. expressive writing is a form of voluntary and purposeful reflection that seeks to understand events and their implications and is therefore aligned with deliberate rumination, which is also voluntary, purposeful, reflective, and meaning making. these results suggest that unemployed people may benefit by participating in programs that allow for dialectical thinking and encourage deliberate rumination. however, before unemployment assistance programs can be redesigned to more systematically promote positive outcomes, further research is required to investigate whether these two processes—dialectical thinking and deliberate rumination—help people to grow through unemployment. in the current study, two theoretical frameworks were examined using a deductive qualitative method (braun & clarke, 2006) to better understand growth during unemployment: latack and dozier’s (1986) career growth model, and tedeschi and calhoun’s (1995; 1996) ptg theory (improved relationships, new possibilities for one's life, a greater appreciation for life, a greater sense of personal strength and spiritual development). we analyze these positive experiences against the backdrop of the distress caused by unemployment, so that the positive outcomes of ptg can be understood within the context of the trauma itself. 5. method we cannot assume that ptg is uniform in people who lose their jobs or that it operates in the same way as it does for other sources of trauma. for instance, hefferon et al. (2009) suggested posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 that the five dimensions of ptg may manifest differently for various types of trauma, such that growth resulting from cancer may be different to growth resulting from the death of a spouse, which again differs from the outcome of an accident. therefore, we used a qualitative methodology to look for participant-defined meanings given to the lived experience of ptg for these unemployed participants, rather than to test the causes and effects of ptg during unemployment. 5.1 participants criterion sampling, a subset of purposeful sampling, was used to recruit 22 unemployed people for a semi-structured interview. participants were all job seekers who were clients with centrelink, an australian government body that provides welfare and unemployment benefits.1 by only recruiting people who were receiving unemployment benefits, we ensured that participants were experiencing similar financial situations. advertisements for the study were left on the front counter of job search agencies, and participants elected to be interviewed. all participants were paid aud20 for a one-hour interview. the sample consisted of 10 males and 12 females. thirteen of the participants lived in the city of melbourne and nine lived in regional/rural areas of victoria, australia. professions included teaching, nursing, public service, real estate, artist, vet assistant, it, farmhand, and landscaping. participants were aged between 21–67 years (mage = 34.66; range 21-67). respondents reported a variety of education levels: 73% had finished high school, 21% had completed university, and 33% had obtained a tafe (technical and further education, e.g., trade) qualification. 2 participants had been unemployed for an average of 7.3 months. 5.2 interview procedure semi-structured interviews took place at job search centers across four metropolitan and three rural locations. interviews were audio-recorded via an mp3 player and were later transcribed into word files by a research assistant. the interviews covered three broad areas: (a) the negative experiences encountered by each participant as a result of being unemployed, (b) the participant’s views on their career as well as plans for the future, and (c) whether the participant felt they had learnt something/grown because of being unemployed. 5.3 data analysis deductive thematic analysis (dta) (braun & clarke, 2006) was used. dta is “a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (braun & clarke, 2006, p. 6). the process involves identifying themes through an iterative process of reading and rereading the data to find patterns (daly, kellehear, & gliksman, 1997), using a top-down framework (boyatzis, 1998). we followed an essentialist/realistic approach and manually coded the data by looking for semantic themes that emerged from the explicit/surface meanings of the words provided by participants. 1the australian government provides welfare payments to unemployed people in the form of a “basic living” allowance. therefore, only those who do not have enough money to pay for the basic necessities of life (e.g., rent, food, bills) are eligible to receive federal assistance. the receipt and amount of federal assistance given by the australian government to unemployed people is determined by their assets, savings, and debts. if the unemployed individual is married or in a de facto relationship, then their partner’s income, assets, savings, and debts are also taken into account. 2these figures do not add up to 100% because, in australia, people can complete high school and then go on to tafe, or they can go on to tafe without completing high school. posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 6. results following this methodology, we analyzed all interview text for evidence of the four main themes of distress, growth, deliberate rumination, and dialectical thinking. the major themes and subthemes are outlined in table 1 below. 6.1 theme 1: distress table 2 below contains representative quotes from interview participants that illustrate the distress that they were experiencing due to unemployment. financial strain and deprivation were evident in all five domains; however, there appeared to be minimal deprivation of collective purpose and enforced activity. many participants also discussed the depression they had experienced as a result of becoming unemployed. even those participants who reported that they began their unemployment optimistically said that depression eventually set in. this depression was coupled with a lessened sense of self-worth as a result of losing employment. job loss was a referent for evaluating their self-identity and place in the community. the constant job rejections fueled a sense of depression, as did the lack of time structure, and a feeling that time had become meaningless, as they had no real way to contribute to society. interviewees reported that, with unemployment, came the loss of social contacts, and for some it led to negative changes in relationships. they also discussed how the loss of identity, particularly feelings of shame, led them to socially isolate themselves. participants described their experiences through a number of negative metaphors. these included “professional graveyard,” “battle ground,” “catch-22,” “career death,” “a black hole,” “no man’s land” and “a jinx.” in summary, there was convincing evidence that the study participants were experiencing distress as a result of unemployment. the key aspects of distress discussed by participants were depression and financial strain, along with deprivation of time structure, social contact and identity. 6.2 theme 2: growth table 3 below presents representative quotes relating to the career growth model and ptg theory. there was evidence of both career growth and ptg, with participants’ reflections aligning with the dimensions described by the five-factor model of ptg (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996; taku, cann, calhoun, & tedeschi, 2008): improved relationships, new possibilities, a greater appreciation of life, an increased sense of personal strength, and spiritual development. the theme of improved relationships was mentioned the most out of the five dimensions, with typical comments such as, “i do appreciate having more time to spend with friends, and also not being so tired from work all the time means i have energy for my kids,” and, “i feel very privileged that i have people that care and support me.” these comments can be placed in four sub-themes: (a) more time to be with the people they cared about, (b) others providing social support, (c) more energy to focus on other people, and (d) increased gratitude for the people in one’s life. the theme of seeking out and identifying new possibilities was also very strongly represented in the current sample, specifically with respect to seeking out new career possibilities. the results align with latack and dozier’s (1986) and zikic and klehe’s (2006) findings that unemployment can provide a career break that allows people to change their career direction. posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 table 1. themes and sub-themes analyzed and identified in the qualitative data distress growth deliberate rumination dialectical thinking deprivation of identity improved relationships and gratitude consciously engaging in selfreflection the co-existence of loss and gain in relation to self-identity deprivation of shared contact and social relationships new possibilities for one's life and career growth awareness of vulnerability and feelings of injustice job vulnerability paradoxically leading to career ownership deprivation of a feeling of collective purpose a greater appreciation of life deprivation of enforced activity a greater sense of personal strength deprivation of time structure spiritual development and heightened compassion for unemployed people financial strain depression posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 table 2. evidence of distress in study participants distress sub-theme 1: deprivation of identity “after a while you start to question your own self-worth. like, maybe all those companies who turn me down are onto something.” “it’s just knock-back and knock-backs shattering your confidence.” “it’s like you lose this core part of who you are. someone takes it away from you without your permission.” “unemployment has such a stigma feel to it.” sub-theme 2: deprivation of shared contact and social relationships “yeah, well, ‘cause at some stages when you’re unemployed and you’re just holding on to these little rooms of thought, like you really can’t take people also looking down on you and saying, ‘oh you should get a job,’ and it’s like, i know that i’m trying, yeah, that’s pretty hard, so you sort of have to separate yourself from those people or otherwise it just goes down from there.” “because i live and worked in the same area, i make sure that i am not around the supermarket at 5 o’clock because i just can’t cope with seeing the engineers, the admin officers etc.” “i’ve started to avoid my friends because i don’t want their pity. i can’t afford to go out with them anyway.” “it’s changed a lot of relationships i’ve had this year too… i got unemployed and i am looked down upon and kind of turned away from a bit.” “from the unemployment i found that the people that are employed and working fulltime jobs won’t even give you the time of day most of the time, just ‘cause you’re unemployed. conversation starters like ‘what do you do’? or ‘what have you been doing’? and you’re just like. ‘i’ve just been looking for work,’ and people just go, ‘oh, yeah, just looking for work,’ and they don’t really realize, the interviews, the resumes, the sends-offs the call-ups, all that kind of stuff is stressful when you don’t have a job.” sub-theme 3: deprivation of a feeling of collective purpose “i’ve been a company man all my life. now i feel like i am in no man’s land. i am a nobody.” “it’s terrible feeling when you not contributing to society but sponging off it instead.” sub-theme 4: deprivation of enforced activity “when you work you’ve got too much to do and it’s stressful. but having nothing to do is also stressful.” “i’ve got a brain and it’s terrible if you’ve got a brain and you can’t use it… it’s soul destroying.” “the boredom is mind-numbing. just having nothing to do with my time. i go stir crazy.” sub-theme 5: deprivation of time structure “you know you don’t have to wake up in the morning. nobody’s expecting you anywhere.” “i got into this habit of sleeping in late and that, which are things that i wouldn’t normally do if i was employed. just sort of getting into a cycle of staying up late, sleeping in late, even just getting out of that cycle of looking properly for jobs, and just getting like a little bit depressed and not really focusing on my interests or anything.” posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 “when you’re unemployed you can stay up and watch tv and go to bed at 2am if you want, and at the same time you get into a sort of a habit, you know, it gets you out of sync with the world”. sub-theme 6: financial strain “the grinding poverty, the never-ending poverty, is bound to take you down. you know, you’re bound to never see any way out of it. i don’t see any way out of this poverty unless i get help from the government.” “it gets a lot tougher without work. that would probably be the biggest thing. it’s just… ‘cause what you get from the government, you know, you just scrape through with bills and that.” “it’s frightening having so little money. it rips your whole security away from underneath you.” sub-theme 7: depression “i have periods where, you know, i get really down. all unemployed people have down days. sometimes it gets me down because i feel like i am not getting anywhere. sometimes it feels really hard.” “the other day, i spent the day in bed. i just couldn’t cope anymore. i just didn’t want to go to any interviews.” “i was optimistic at first but then after a while i started to feel disappointed, perhaps a little bit depressed but feeling really sorry for myself.” “it’s like i am in a black hole when i am without work. it’s so depressing.” posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 table 3a. evidence of growth in study participants growth sub-theme 1: improved relationships and gratitude “my son and i have had time with each other that we wouldn’t have otherwise had. we’ve been working on the house together and it has brought us closer together doing this joint project. i guess this is a blessing of being unemployed. i have time to build a relationship with my son, who is an adult now. “i do appreciate having more time to spend with friends, and also not being so tired from work all the time means i have energy for my kids.” “i feel very privileged that i have people that care and support me.” “you need your friends and family. being unemployed has made me realize just how important my relationships are. you really see your friends in a new light.” “i am so grateful for my husband during this time. he must be stressed because i’m not earning a wage but he hasn’t mentioned money at all. he is super supportive of me and it’s made me see how much he loves me for ‘me’ and not for what i do professionally.” sub-theme 2: new possibilities for one’s life and career growth “i met a lot of people along this year who were also unemployed who were getting really depressed and down on themselves for being unemployed who did not have anything to hold onto and remind themselves of. helping them out and saying, ‘i’m unemployed too and i know what it’s like,’ and just being able to be there for people and help out most of the people definitely has made me think i’ll train to become a social worker.” “i’ve always wanted to move into a career in it and now i think it is time to make this move.” “it’s helped me to decide to go back to study and move into the aged-care sector.” sub-theme 3: a greater appreciation of life “i appreciate the smaller moments now. watering the garden. little mundane jobs like ironing are enjoyable.” sub-theme 4: a greater sense of personal strength “well, i’ve learned a few things. i’ve learned more of my personality. if anything, i’m more of a quiet person than what most people used to think. i’m also realizing i am stronger than i thought. i’ve had to persevere at a lot of different options since leaving school. it has tested me.” “i can control what happens to me instead of letting other people tell me where i should go. take a bit of control and have a go.” “from now on i don’t want to have to compromise my happiness and i want to be able to feel good about going to work too, to feel good about the people i work with, and i want to have the knowledge that they enjoy working with me as well.” “i don’t need a job to be somebody. my confidence should not rest on whether i work or who i work for.” “i have learnt that i need to create my own career.” posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 table 3b. evidence of growth in study participants growth sub-theme 5: spiritual development “i used to think success was doing well in your job and being rewarded financially, of course, but now i have opened up to new ideas of success. it’s more about finding meaning in your life, whether that is through your job or other ways.” “i am sad to admit that i used to think of unemployed people as ‘slackards’ but now i realize that this is not the case. most people don’t choose to be unemployed, and i am working harder now trying to find a job than when i was working.” “being unemployed has given me a real sense of compassion for people with no choice in this situation.” “i’ve realized that we don’t always have control over our employment and i am no longer judgmental of people in the unemployment line.” “anyone can end up in this situation. there were some people there, they were asking people to introduce themselves whatever, and there were a couple of people there who were actually professionals. there was a guy there who was a really good musician. i knew about this band… he wasn’t an idiot, but anyone can end up in that situation.” “i send my heart out to anyone who is unemployed. it takes such an emotional toll, and you, you know, you have to be strong to survive it.” posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 the third domain of posttraumatic recognition of personal strength also emerged through participants who reported that they had developed a greater sense of personal strength and selfdetermination. a few people also commented that they have a greater focus on making choices that lead to their own happiness (rather than pleasing others) and are less concerned about other people’s opinions in relation to spirituality, study participants discussed a newfound compassion for other unemployed people. participants who were previously judgmental of unemployment, who thought that it was somehow an easy experience or was opted into by choice, had expanded their perspective of the situation. they realized that unemployed people are not lazy, that reemployment/finding a new job requires a lot of effort, and that unemployment is often not within one’s own control. in summary, there was evidence that the study participants experienced career growth across all five domains of ptg during unemployment. to this point, the data has been presented according to established dimensions of the four theories put forward in the introduction of this paper: fryer’s (1992) financial-restriction theory, jahoda’s (1981; 1988) latent deprivation theory, latack and dozier’s (1986) career growth model, and tedeschi and calhoun’s (2004a) ptg theory. however, the experience of ptg is one where trauma and growth co-exist, and, indeed, where trauma is transformed into growth. wong (2011) argues that negative experiences can motivate us toward positive change. the next stage of our analysis therefore aimed to identify evidence for two processes that allowed participants to transform distress into growth—dialectical thinking and deliberate rumination. 6.3 theme 3: dialectical thinking data analysis revealed evidence of dialectical thinking, comprising two sub-themes: (a) the coexistence of loss and gain in relation to self-identity, and (b) job vulnerability paradoxically leading to career ownership. although the experience of unemployment challenged participants’ sense of self-worth, through this challenge they also reported benefits such as greater clarity about their motivations/key drivers, the courage to allow oneself to change career path, a sense of strength and resilience, and a new method of self-reflection. having one’s assumptions of a fair and loyal employer dismantled was difficult for some participants. however, it caused them to open themselves up to new work experiences. two people made the decision to set up their own businesses, two people decided to pursue a career in art, four people decided to retrain themselves, and a number of others were considering new career pathways. these participants all felt that they would ultimately be happier with a new career than their previous jobs. however, they only explored these new possibilities after the painful process of giving up the assumption that employers would take care of them. even among those participants who did not choose to change career direction, many spoke of no longer being shackled to an employer, and instead taking on a new, more independent, selfgoverned approach to their career. 6.4 theme 4: deliberate rumination deliberate rumination, a voluntary, reflective type of rumination, was evident among study participants. deliberate rumination is a process of “seeking meaning or more global understanding of the self” (cann et al., 2011, p. 139). posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 table 4. evidence of dialectical thinking in study participants dialectical thinking sub-theme 1: the co-existence of loss and gain in relation to self-identity “leaving my job was a very, very hard thing to do. i was terrified but it was very cathartic too because occasionally you have to terrify yourself to death to actually move on psychologically, i think so... you just have to have that whole upheaval and you think, ‘well, i can do that,’ so if i can do that, why wouldn’t i do that?” “being unemployed, even though i was busy, having to go to centrelink and saying, ‘yes, yes,’ [to job interviews] wasn’t what i call fun but it did clarify my key drivers for me. i have a better sense of what i will and will not do now.” “it made me realize i am stronger than i think and stronger than they think because ‘getting through’ unemployment is much tougher than ‘getting through’ the daily grind of work.” “i had to let go of the old me, and that was painful, but now i am ready to start fresh and i feel that if it had not been for losing my job, i would not have been forced to think anew.” “it’s a weird experience because you lose money and you lose that feeling of being important and it makes you feel like crap, but then, after a while you realize you still have plenty of good things left in your life and some of those good things have only resurfaced because you’ve had time to notice them.” sub-theme 2: job vulnerability paradoxically leading to career ownership “if i had been employed i wouldn’t have even tried probably to start my own business… i went for company b when company a got rid of me. then i went back to company a and thought, ‘well, i can help you in the future with what i have learnt.’ … then they got rid of me and i thought, ‘bang! i can do this myself.’” “no one wants to be unemployed but it makes you think about your life and reflect and say it is time to take charge of my own career.” “being without work at that point was kinda good ‘cause it gave me time to host the exhibition. unemployment let me express myself with art. like, there was an article written about me in one of the magazines. it was a new experience for me.” posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 table 5a. evidence of deliberate rumination in study participants deliberate rumination sub-theme 1: consciously engaging in self-reflection “i have to be aware of this, this is a conscious effort for me to understand myself and my values, but sometimes the only way to do this is to stop doing it and then these little epiphanies happen.” “i read a lot, i do a lot in my journal, i do a lot of noticing, a lot of reflecting and writing really exerts pressure on me.” “i think it’s about redefining myself. i think it’s an opportunity to continue to redefine myself and who i am. so therefore i need to know ‘who i am’. so it’s been a double challenge and i think for someone like me that doesn’t have children, i have the luxury to focus on what i am about but it’s a hard one too.” “it’s brought me greater clarity of self.” “unless you branch off and explore, like, and go off and dream about other jobs, other avenues in life that might make you feel good about yourself because you might get something else happen, as in, like, success or not.” “that was a soul-searching exercise for six months.” “you’ve got as much time as you like to be able to sit down and think about who you are and where you want to go.” sub-theme 2: the co-existence of loss and gain “leaving my job was a very, very hard thing to do. i was terrified but it was very cathartic too because occasionally you have to terrify yourself to death to actually move on psychologically i think so...you just have to have that whole upheaval and you think, ‘well, i can do that,’ so if i can do that, why couldn’t i do that?” “being unemployed, even though i was busy, having to go to centrelink and saying, ‘yes, yes,’ [to job interviews] wasn’t what i call fun but it did clarify my key drivers for me. i have a better sense of what i will and will not do now.” “it made me realize i am stronger than i think and stronger than they think because ‘getting through’ unemployment is much tougher than ‘getting through’ the daily grind of work.” “ i had to let go of the old me, and that was painful, but now i am ready to start fresh and i feel that if it had not been for losing my job, i would not have been forced to think anew.” “it’s a weird experience because you lose money and you lose that feeling of being important and it makes you feel like crap, but then, after a while you realize you still have plenty of good things left in your life and some of those good things have only resurfaced because you’ve had time to notice them.” posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 table 5b. evidence of deliberate rumination in study participants deliberate rumination sub-theme 4: awareness of vulnerability and feelings of injustice “i have always been a trusting person but now i know you can’t trust anyone. recruiters say they’ll call you back and they don’t. i have realized how little control i have over the whole job hunting process.” “i used to feel safe. now i don’t anymore.” “when my company downsized they got rid of all the long standing employees. so much for rewarding company loyalty! the young ones can easily get another job but it’s us older people that will find it hard to get new work. it seems very unjust what they did to us. i thought we had a relationship but in the end i was just another number.” “then i email them back asking how and why i can improve my resume and letter of application. i get emails back saying, “i honestly don’t know. i didn’t read your resume or application.” “we got 80 responses and i had to come to a decision within 3 days.” makes me feel great! i have no idea what i am doing or wonder why the hell i am even applying because it just feels like a lottery. she said she just picked 4 random people and chose one out of those 4. it feels very much like i am not being heard again. it feels like it’s all a luck game not a skills thing, which bothers me.” “i gave up my spare time, i came in on holidays, i missed my kid’s school plays because i thought i would be rewarded in the end. turns out i was kidding myself or maybe they were kidding me because it turns out my reward was a pink slip.” posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 in the current study, participants talked about their attempts to understand their experiences, the reactions of others, the employee-employer relationship, and who they were more globally when they did not have their professional identity. their comments reveal how unemployment had prompted them to think more deeply about their relationships, their career pathways, their lives, and their identity. a number also talked about how being unemployed had given them the time and opportunity to become more self-reflective. when analyzing the interview transcripts, we found that deliberate reflection reaped a number of positive benefits, including greater self-clarity, a stronger desire to find work that would lead to happiness, and a feeling of self-control. 7. discussion calhoun and tedeschi (2001) describe ptg as “the gains that result from the struggle with loss” (p. 158). in the current study, the topic of inquiry was job loss. the results showed that job loss led to other losses, including loss of income, time structure, identity, social contact, close relationships, purpose, routine, and career safety. this loss was connected to depression and shame. these results are consistent with a large body of literature showing that unemployment is a traumatic experience (mckee-ryan et al., 2005; wanberg, 2012). therefore, it is clear that careers counselors need to assist unemployed people to understand and alleviate their distress. however, careers counselors can also explore the possibility of assisting their unemployed clients to grow from the distress. the results demonstrated that unemployment is associated with ptg, with participants reporting improved relationships, new life possibilities (particularly new career options), and a greater sense of personal strength from overcoming the challenges that unemployment had presented. these findings are consistent with a growing body of literature that shows that people can find benefits following other life challenges (hefferon et al., 2009; tedeschi & calhoun, 1996; taku et al., 2008). we found a small amount of evidence of growth in spirituality and appreciation of life. as one participant stated, “no one wants to be unemployed but it makes you think about your life and reflect and say it’s time to take charge of my own career.” many said that they had a newfound compassion for other people who experience unemployment. this suggests that their perspective on job loss and the plight of others had changed, and may indicate a shift in understanding that underpins spirituality. importantly, the results showed that experiences of distress and potential growth co -occur and are not mutually exclusive. the present study supports the conclusion that “the presence of growth does not necessarily signal an end to pain or distress, and usually it is not accompanied by a perspective that views the crisis, loss, or trauma itself as desirable” (tedeschi & calhoun, 2004a, p. 7; see also baker, kelly, calhoun, cann, & tedeschi, 2008). this idea was captured by one participant’s statement that “it’s been the worst experience and the best all mixed up into one.” as illustrated in table 2 above, unemployment is undoubtedly a traumatic experience. but because this study did not limit its focus to unemployment trauma, we have learned that participants then reformed themselves into more confident and self-reliant people. indeed, participants expressed somewhat paradoxical views on self, careers and relationships, and this dialectical thinking appeared to support their growth. for instance, they identified the goodness in some relationships, but also discussed the shame that other people made them feel. they talked about losing their identity through unemployment, as well as how this loss allowed them to think differently about themselves. participants also found acceptance of career vulnerability to be a trigger for more self-reliance. these findings support tedeschi and mcnally’s (2011) argument that dialectical thinking aids the process of ptg. posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 the process of growth was also aided by participants’ ability to engage in deliberate rumination, a style of positive rumination that attempts to understand the event, rebuild beliefs, and use the crisis as an opportunity for growth. again, they drew upon informative metaphors to describe their experience of unemployment. unemployment was likened to a “pilgrimage,” an “opportunity,” “setting a compass for my life,” “a gift,” “a transformational time,” “a window,” “a blessing,” and a time of “soul-searching.” for some, unemployment was a time for redefining who they were, what career they wanted to pursue, what measures they would use to determine success, and the importance of happiness and control in one’s life. our findings also bolster the arguments of cann et al. (2011) about how deliberate rumination is a helpful process in allowing people to make meaning of their trauma. deliberate rumination allowed people to challenge their previously held beliefs of self-worth and of a just world. importantly, the rupture of these beliefs enabled people to rebuild themselves, forming a new reality in which they felt more awakened and better prepared for their future career. 7.1 methodological considerations and future suggestions the conclusions of this study need to be considered against our methodology. the deductive design adopted in this study means that we commenced with theory—general abstractions about what constitutes distress during unemployment and what could constitute growth—to look at whether unemployed people in our study experienced the duality of distress and growth (braun & clarke, 2006). hyde (2000) argued that the adoption of formal deductive procedures represents “an important step for assuring conviction in qualitative research findings” (p. 84) because it allows researchers to assess the validity of the concepts and their relationships. alternatively, data that disconfirm the relationships can provide an opportunity for theory refinement (also see yin, 1994). the deductive approach allowed us to provide evidence for the dual existence of distress and growth in our sample and to identify specific dimensions of ptg. however, starting our analysis with an a-priori theory may have blinded us to other findings in the data. therefore, after looking for our theory-imposed themes, we also identified another more inductive theme related to the nature of wellbeing identified by participants. specifically, when participants spoke about moments of wellbeing during unemployment, they drew an intuitive distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. participants mentioned hedonic experiences such as feeling good, being happy, or experiencing pleasure, such as sleeping in, working in the garden, or cooking a nice meal. participants distinguished these wellbeing experiences from more eudaimonic pursuits that extended beyond pleasure towards deeper outcomes such as self-awareness and meaningful relationships. although interviewees linked this later conceptualization of wellbeing to ptg, it is also possible that hedonic moments, while not necessarily leading to growth, could help diminish distress in the moment. this latter point is currently speculative, but represents a promising future research direction (see synard & gazzola, in press). now that this qualitative study has shown that ptg theory has relevance during unemployment, future researchers can conduct quantitative, survey-based research that applies the ptg inventory (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996) to large samples of jobless people. this type of research will aid in the generalizability and utility of ptg theory during unemployment. researchers can study the influence of individual variables that may promote growth during unemployment, such as explanatory style, resilience, grit, and mastery, together with ecological variables such as social support, income assistance, and labor market opportunities. they could also investigate whether unemployment triggers all five growth domains to a similar extent, or posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 if only certain domains are more likely to show growth, as was found in the current study. longitudinal research is also needed to examine how growth does, or does not, unfold over time. finally, it would be of value to examine the extent to which growth during unemployment predicts reemployment success. 7.2 practical implications many unemployment assistance programs focus on minimizing distress. the present findings suggest that a more nuanced approach is needed and that the distress experienced during unemployment, if reflected on in a deliberate and volitional way to cope with and make sense of the experience, can be a source of growth. wong (2011) states that: the challenge for psychologists is to help people achieve the optimal level of well-being in spite of the difficulties and pains they are going through. the psychology of well-being needs to focus more on the positive potential of transcending and transforming negative emotions. (p. 75) practitioners could guide people through the process of deliberate rumination by encouraging self-reflection through techniques such as emotional expression exercises, mental imagery, and mindfulness. unemployment counselors could offer a structured series of questions for expressive writing around tedeschi and mcnally’s (2011) recent five-part model for enhancing growth. that is, unemployed participants can be encouraged to write, a process that assists in: (a) understanding the trauma, (b) fostering emotional regulation, (c) engaging in constructive self-disclosure, (d) creating a narrative with the five ptg dimensions, and (e) developing robust life principles to cope with challenges. practitioners could also develop a strengths approach by using peterson and seligman’s (2004) character strengths framework as tool when working with unemployed clients. by adopting a well-validated framework, counselors can guide clients through a strength-based appraisal, helping people to more clearly and systematically explore how their strengths can be used to overcome the negative experiences (e.g., financial strain, lack of routine) and make the most of the positive experiences during unemployment (e.g., more time and energy to devote to relationships, openness to new career pathways). the recommendation for a strength-based approach is based on evidence in the current study that the stress and challenges of unemployment connected participants to their inner strengths. often they were unaware of these while previously employed. our finding is consistent with peterson, park, pole, d’andrea, and seligman’s (2008) evidence of a positive relationship between the number of life challenges experienced and the cultivation of character strengths. this also confirms linley and joseph’s (2004) argument that the experience and survival of trauma teaches life lessons capable of shaping strength in character. practitioners might also promote ptg by helping clients to cultivate positive emotions. gratitude and compassion were two prominent positive emotions reported by participants. following frederickson’s (2001) broaden and build theory, careers counselors can seek to cultivate their clients’ positive emotions, helping them to find reasons to feel positive at the time of consultation, as well as developing these feelings into broader coping techniques (fredrickson & joiner, 2002). other positive emotions evident in our sample included pride in the discovery of inner strengths, as well as love for people in the participants’ support networks. positive emotions are known to enhance one’s coping resources, relational resources and problem solving abilities—all of which would be helpful during unemployment (fredrickson & joiner, 2002). 8. conclusion posttraumatic growth during unemployment waters & strauss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 this preliminary study investigated how people experience distress and growth during unemployment, and whether there was evidence for the idea that this distress can be a trigger for growth. we found that positive gains can be made, despite the negative situation of unemployment, opening up the possibility of further research and practice that adopts a positive psychology approach to unemployment. the current findings pave the way for future research and interventions that focus on how we can harness and transform trauma into growth in unemployed people. authors lea waters the university of melbourne l.waters@unimelb.edu.au gabriel strauss the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 9 june 2015 accepted 22 february 2016 published 14 may 2016 references archer, j., & rhodes, v. 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hewitt & flett, 1991; stoeber, 2017). this differs from early conceptualisations which portrayed perfectionism as one-dimensional, it being a tendency to hold excessively high standards for oneself (flett, hewitt & dyck, 1989; pirot, 1986). this negative view was supported by evidence from clinical populations, suggesting perfectionism was concurrent with personality disorders and psychopathologies (druss & silverman, 1979; hewitt & dyck, 1986; pirot, 1986). however, such findings are unsurprising, given the measures in use were intended to evaluate perfectionism’s maladaptive dimensions (e.g. the burns perfectionism scale; burns, 1980; the eating disorders inventory perfectionism subscale; garner, olmstead & polivy, 1983). with the development of more comprehensive measures (frost et al., 1990; hewitt & flett, 1991, 2004) and evidence from non-clinical populations (e.g. gaudreau & verner-filion, 2012; kanten & yesıltas, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 2015; stoeber & rambow, 2007; suh, gnilka & rice, 2017), there is now evidence in favour of an adaptive form of perfectionism. that said, the debate continues as to whether perfectionism undermines or supports flourishing (flett & hewitt, 2015; stoeber & corr, 2016), a term used to describe high levels of subjective wellbeing arising from functioning well across multiple psychosocial domains (butler & kern, 2016; hone, jarden, schofield & duncan, 2014).1 1.1 the dimensions of perfectionism the notion of perfectionism having two faces is far from novel, with hamachek (1978) 40 years ago proposing the existence of “normal” and “neurotic” perfectionism. however, it was not until the 1990s that two groups of researchers introduced the contemporary theory of multidimensional perfectionism, recognising that the construct can comprise both intrapersonal and interpersonal elements (frost et al., 1990; hewitt & flett, 1991). frost et al. (1990) identified six perfectionism dimensions: excessive concern over making mistakes, high personal standards, perception of high parental expectations, perception of high parental criticism, doubting the quality of one’s actions and preference for order and organisation. more concisely, hewitt and flett (1991) identified just three forms: self-oriented (sop), other-oriented (oop) and socially prescribed perfectionism (spp). best distinguished by whom the perfectionistic behaviour is directed at/attributed to, sop is characterised by perfectionistic behaviour directed towards the self, such as setting high standards for oneself (hewitt & flett, 1991, 2004). other-oriented perfectionism involves the expectations an individual has about the abilities of others, such as setting unrealistic standards for people around them and placing importance on others being perfect (hewitt & flett, 1991). lastly, spp describes the need to meet expectations imposed by others: the belief that others have high expectations of them and will be satisfied only when perfectionism is obtained (hewitt & flett, 1991, 2004). 1.2 adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism although the differences between frost et al. (1990) and hewitt and flett’s (1991, 2004) models of perfectionism are apparent, there is evidence they share the same underlying dimensions, with several authors having derived two-factor solutions (bieling, israeli & antony, 2004; cox, enns & clara, 2002; dunkley, zuroff & blankstein, 2003; frost, heimberg, holt, mattia & neubauer, 1993; stoeber & otto, 2006). according to this two-factor theory, perfectionism can be split into two superordinate dimensions. concern over mistakes, parental expectations and concerns, doubts over actions and spp load on to a maladaptive form of perfectionism coined “perfectionistic concerns,” whereas personal standards, organisation, sop and oop load on to an adaptive form of perfectionism referred to as “perfectionistic strivings” (stoeber & otto, 2006). furthermore, stoeber and otto’s (2006) seminal review concluded perfectionistic concerns were consistently associated with higher levels of negative affect and depression. moreover, perfectionistic strivings were associated with higher levels of extraversion and conscientiousness (traits associated with positive affect and meaning in life; lightsey et al., 2014; lucas, le & dyrenforth, 2008), higher levels of subjective wellbeing and lower levels of attachment avoidance, anxiety and suicidal ideation (stoeber & otto, 2006). as such, the opposing relationships these two superordinate dimensions have with positive and negative characteristics suggest that perfectionistic concerns would contraindicate flourishing, whereas perfectionistic strivings would enhance it. 1 the terms “flourishing” and “wellbeing” will be used interchangeably from hereon in. perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 1.3 perfectionism and wellbeing indeed, the past decade has seen numerous studies reporting perfectionistic strivings to be associated with a multitude of positive attributes such as higher levels of engagement, meaning in life, positive affect, vitality and life satisfaction (gaudreau & verner-filion, 2012; kanten & yesıltas, 2015; stoeber & rambow, 2007) which theoretically would enhance subjective wellbeing. however, the traditional view that perfectionism in general is wholly detrimental perseveres. flett and hewitt (2015), two of the forefathers of contemporary perfectionism theory, still advocate for the management of perfectionism to promote flourishing, stating that “the cost of perfectionism often outweighs the benefits such that perfectionism is far from synonymous with mental health and wellbeing” (p. 46). their staunch position presents a challenge for evidence and theory that suggests perfectionism is not always associated with deleterious outcomes (gaudreau & verner-filion, 2012; kanten & yesıltas, 2015; stoeber & otto, 2006; stoeber & rambow, 2007). however, at the time of flett and hewitt’s (2015) publication, no empirical studies had directly investigated the relationship between perfectionism and flourishing. as such, whilst there was evidence to support perfectionistic strivings being associated with positive characteristics (e.g. gaudreau & verner-filion, 2012; stoeber & otto, 2006; stoeber & rambow, 2007), which one could postulate would support flourishing, there was no verifiable published evidence with which to solidly dispute flett and hewitt’s (2015) claims. to this end, stoeber and corr (2016) published the first empirical paper on perfectionism and flourishing, investigating in a student sample whether perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings (stoeber & otto, 2006) showed different relationships with flourishing. using spp and sop as indicators of perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings respectively, perfectionism explained a medium-large percentage of the variance in flourishing (17.8%), suggesting it is an important personality trait to consider when accounting for individual differences in wellbeing. moreover, spp showed a negative relationship with flourishing, and sop a positive one, providing further evidence for the two-factor theory. interestingly, however, oop did not significantly contribute to their regression model. although oop is under researched in comparison to its counterparts (stoeber, 2014, 2015), a possible explanation for this may lie in oop’s positive relationship with the dark triad (smith et al., 2017; stoeber, 2014; stoeber, sherry & nealis, 2015), a term used to describe narcissism, machiavellianism and subclinical psychopathy: three socially aversive, yet non-pathological personality constructs (paulhus & williams, 2002). furthermore, oop has been reported to have positive associations with reduced interest in prosocial and intimacy goals, uncaring traits and an individualistic orientation (stoeber, 2014, 2015). as a result, oop has been coined a “dark” form of perfectionism, with stoeber (2014) suggesting it should no longer be considered an indicator of perfectionistic strivings, leading several papers to now exclude it from their definitions of adaptive perfectionism (stoeber & damian, 2016; stoeber & gaudreau, 2017). 1.4 the difficulty of defining wellbeing nevertheless, whilst stoeber and corr’s (2016) findings are salient and provide a starting point for investigation, the study had its limitations. first, the use of the flourishing scale (diener et al., 2010) is problematic. although reported as having good internal consistency (cronbach’s alpha .87 to .91; diener et al., 2010; hone, jarden & schofield, 2014), the issue remains that flourishing has different theoretical and conceptual definitions (hone et al., 2014). as such, each conceptual model may show different relationships with the three forms of perfectionism. furthermore, it is unclear if these multiple models capture distinct or similar types of wellbeing perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 (goodman, disabato, kashdan & kaufmann, 2018). for example, some models focus on hedonic wellbeing (e.g. bradburn, 1969), defined in terms of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance; others, eudaimonic wellbeing (e.g. ryff 1989), which focuses on meaning and being fully-engaged in life; and yet others use a blend of the two (butler & kern, 2016; disabato, goodman, kashdan, short & jarden, 2016; huppert & so, 2013; ryan & deci, 2001). to illustrate, ryff’s (1989) model of psychological wellbeing has six dimensions (autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and selfacceptance), whereas the conceptualisation of diener et al. (2010) focuses on psychosocial prosperity and has eight dimensions (purpose/meaning, positive relationships, engagement, social contribution, competence, self-respect, optimism and social relationships). in contrast, seligman’s (2011) perma model proposes that wellbeing is comprised of five measurable elements (positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment). conversely, huppert and so (2013) define flourishing as a combination of feeling good and functioning effectively, with 10 components (positive relationships, engagement, meaning, selfesteem, positive emotion, competence, optimism, emotional stability, vitality and resilience), and rusk and waters (2015) have recently introduced a five-factor model (attention and awareness, comprehension and coping, emotions, goals and habits, and virtues and relationships). clearly, these models share similar components; however, some elements are unique to specific models such as autonomy and optimism (diener et al., 2010; ryff, 1989). this is a problem for researchers, as use of one conceptual model may neglect the contribution of a component that another model claims is a key element of wellbeing. as such, inclusion or exclusion of a component could alter the outcome of findings and lead to equivocal results. it therefore remains a matter for empirical investigation to determine if stoeber and corr's (2016) findings remain congruent when using different conceptual models of flourishing. this considered, the problem with stoeber and corr’s (2016) use of the eight-item flourishing scale (diener et al., 2010) becomes clear. with only one item to measure each component of flourishing, the scale’s brevity does not allow a comprehensive assessment of each element of flourishing, and, as such, is only suitable for use as a brief indicator of flourishing. 1.5 the perma model of the conceptualisations discussed, the perma model (seligman, 2011) most closely follows the law of parsimony, providing a definition of flourishing that encompasses elements of other models and has a mix of hedonic and eudaimonic elements. for example, positive emotion is a hedonic element encompassing pleasure, ecstasy, comfort and warmth (seligman, 2011), also found in the huppert and so (2013), and rusk and waters (2015) models. engagement focuses largely on flow: complete absorption in an activity where individuals are fully involved in the moment (nakamura & csikszentmihalyi, 2014; seligman, 2011), also found in diener et al. (2010) and huppert and so’s (2013) models. relationships is an element found in many models (e.g. diener et al., 2010; huppert & so, 2013; rusk & waters, 2015; ryff, 1989) and refers to positive relationships with other people and the belief that the absence of them is detrimental to wellbeing (seligman, 2011). meaning is a eudaimonic element best explained as belonging to and serving something bigger than oneself (seligman, 2011), also found in diener et al. (2010), huppert and so (2013) and ryff’s (1989) models. finally, accomplishment is also found in multiple models (e.g. diener et al., 2010; huppert & so, 2013; rusk & waters, 2015; ryff, 1989) and refers to people pursuing success and working towards goals for their own sake (butler & kern, 2016; seligman, 2011). furthermore, the perma model (seligman, 2011) has a validated corresponding measure: the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016), which is a 23-item measure with three items per perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 perma element and eight filler items for health, negative emotion, loneliness and overall happiness. despite its youth, it has demonstrated internal and cross-time consistency, convergent and divergent validity, and internal consistency of .70 to .88 across the subscales (butler & kern, 2016; iasiello, bartholomaeus, jarden & kelly, 2017), indicating it is a reliable measure (field, 2013). moreover, goodman et al. (2018) found a latent correlation of .98 between the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016) and subjective wellbeing, suggesting that the perma elements are an exceptional indicator of subjective wellbeing and that the perma model (seligman, 2011) is not a distinct type of wellbeing, rather a synonymous measure of it. 1.6 the present study to this end, and given the dearth of studies examining perfectionism and flourishing, this provided a clear rationale for the present study to examine the relationship between perfectionism and flourishing using the perma model (seligman, 2011). as the goal was to test the relationships between variables, a cross-sectional correlational design using enter method multiple regressions was deemed most appropriate. specifically, the aim was to investigate whether sop, oop and spp have different relationships with each perma element. despite its age, the tripartite model and its corresponding measure (the multidimensional perfectionism scale [mps]; hewitt & flett, 2004) remains one of the most widely used tools in perfectionism research (e.g. cox & hill, 2018; flett, nepon, hewitt & fitzgerald, 2016; stoeber, madigan, damian, esposito & lombardo, 2017). with excellent psychometric properties: evidence of testretest reliability, convergent and discriminant validity and internal consistency ranging from .74 to .90 across the three forms of perfectionism (see hewitt & flett, 2004), use of the mps for the present study was well justified. although the present study was the first to examine the relationship between perfectionism and flourishing using the perma model (seligman, 2011), and as such was exploratory in nature, a number of hypotheses could be formed based on previous studies examining the relationship between perfectionism and positive and negative characteristics. in keeping with stoeber and corr's findings (2016), and evidence suggesting sop is an adaptive form of perfectionism and an indicator of perfectionistic strivings (bieling et al., 2004; frost et al., 1993; stoeber & otto, 2006), sop was expected to show a positive relationship with all perma elements. conversely, as evidence suggests spp is a maladaptive form of perfectionism and an indicator of perfectionistic concerns (bieling et al., 2004; frost et al., 1993; stoeber & corr, 2016; stoeber & otto, 2006), it was expected to show a negative relationship with all perma elements. as for oop, given this form of perfectionism is less well researched (stoeber, 2014, 2015), expectations were less defined. however, as oop is associated with reduced interest in prosocial and intimacy goals (stoeber, 2014), oop was expected to have a negative affinity with the “relationships” element. as for the other perma elements, in line with the findings of stoeber and corr (2016) and reports that oop should no longer be considered an indicator of perfectionistic strivings (stoeber, 2014), oop was expected to have no significant relationships with the remaining perma elements. perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 2. method 2.1 design a cross-sectional correlational design was used. the predictor variables were the three forms of perfectionism: sop, oop and spp, as assessed by the mps (hewitt & flett, 2004). the outcome variables were the five perma elements: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment and overall wellbeing, as measured by the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016).2 2.2 participants participants were required to be ≥ 18 years old (no upper age limit and no other exclusion criteria). first and second-year undergraduate psychology students were recruited through northumbria university’s participation pool, with one sona reward point granted in return for taking part. (sona is an online platform where researchers can recruit undergraduate psychology students to participate in studies in return for course credit.) no other incentives, financial or otherwise, were offered or given. final-year undergraduate psychology students and members of the public were recruited via an email with a link to the survey inviting participation. of 102 survey responses, 10 were incomplete, thus excluded from analysis. of complete responses (n = 92, 12 males, 79 females, one gender fluid), ages ranged from 18 to 67 (m age = 24.99 years, sd = 11.10). thirty-four participants reported being single, 43 in a romantic relationship (31 not cohabiting, 13 cohabiting), 11 were married, two were widowed, one was in polyamorous relationships. regarding ethnicity, 81 participants identified as white british and six identified as another white background. two identified as chinese and a further two selected multiple categories. one participant could not be categorised. as for work status, 10 reported working full-time, six working part-time, 57 were full-time students, one was a part-time student and two were retired. a further 16 fell into two categories: 13 were full-time students working part-time, one was a full-time student retired from employment, one was working full-time alongside a “bank job,” and one was working full-time and a full-time student. 2.3 materials the three-part survey was created through the qualtrics online survey platform. forced responses were enabled for all questions, bar demographics for scoring purposes. first, participants were asked to provide age, gender, relationship and occupational status and ethnic background. ethnic background questions were derived from the office for national statistics recommended harmonised ethnic group questions for use in surveys in england (office for national statistics, 2017). questions were multiple choice with open-ended questions included to allow elaboration, e.g. “what do you identify your gender as?”, options being: “male,” “female,” “prefer not to say” and “other; please state in the box provided.” perfectionism. second, the mps (hewitt & flett, 2004) was used to measure perfectionism. this 45-item scale has 15 questions for each form of perfectionism: sop, oop and spp, e.g. “i seldom feel the need to be perfect,” “others will like me even if i don’t excel at everything.” items were rated on a scale from 1 to 7 with the end points labelled (disagree to agree). items were presented on a likert-like scale and participants asked to read each item and decide whether 2 health, negative emotion, loneliness and happiness items were included, as per butler and kern’s (2016) recommendations, however, as the focus of the present study was the perma elements, these subscales were not included as outcome variables in the subsequent regression analyses. perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 they agreed/disagreed, and to what extent. selecting 1 indicated strong disagreement, 7 indicated strong agreement, and feeling neutral/undecided was indicated by selecting 4. high sop scores evidenced perfectionistic behaviour that relates/is directed to the self (hewitt & flett, 2004). similarly, high oop scores evidenced perfectionistic behaviour that relates/is directed to others, and high spp scores indicated a perception that other people have perfectionistic standards/expectations for their behaviour (hewitt & flett, 2004). hewitt and flett (2004) have reported internal consistency estimates (cronbach’s alpha) ranging from .84 to .90 for sop, 7.4 to .83 for oop and .80 to .87 for spp, demonstrating acceptable to excellent reliability (field, 2013) with comparable values from clinical and community samples. flourishing. third, the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016) was used to measure flourishing. this 23-item measure has three items per perma element and a further eight filler items: three each for negative emotion and health, and singular items for happiness and loneliness, e.g. “how often do you become absorbed in what you are doing?”, “in general, how often do you feel positive?” overall wellbeing is calculated as the mean of the perma elements and happiness items. items were rated on a scale from 0 to 10 with the end points labelled (e.g. never to always, not at all to completely). items were presented on a likert-like scale and participants were asked to read each question and select the point on the scale that they felt best described them. low scores indicated feeling low levels of an element; the higher the score, the more of the element the participant felt they possessed. the perma-profiler has been reported to have acceptable to excellent reliability, with internal consistency (cronbach’s alpha) levels of .88 for positive emotion, .72 for engagement, .82 for relationships, .90 for meaning, .79 for accomplishment, .71 for negative emotion, .92 for health and .94 for overall wellbeing (butler & kern, 2016; field, 2013). 2.4 procedure the study received ethical approval from northumbria university’s ethics committee. an information sheet provided participants with a brief background regarding perfectionism, and stated the study’s purpose. the information sheet assured participants that all answers would be anonymous, confidential, and stored securely, and provided details on how to withdraw, and rewards for taking part (i.e. sona points), and the researcher’s contact details, should further information be required. it was highlighted that slight discomfort may be experienced when answering questions relating to wellbeing, and if potential participants felt that this may be applicable to them, not to participate, as all questions had to be answered for scoring purposes. participants were required to tick a consent box before proceeding, to confirm that: 1) they understood the nature of the study, 2) they were free to withdraw at any time without reason or prejudice, and 3) the data provided would remain confidential. after giving informed consent, participants entered a unique code word which would identify their data and allow deletion should they wish to withdraw. on completion, participants were thanked and shown a debrief sheet providing a more detailed explanation of the purpose of the project. contact details were restated, and a reminder given that participants could withdraw any time within a month of completion by contacting the researcher. the total preand postsurvey procedure took approximately 10 minutes. 3. results 3.1 treatment of data perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 all descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated using spss version 24. as seen in table 1, descriptive statistics and cronbach’s alpha were calculated for all subscales as a measure of internal consistency.3 all alpha levels were > .70, indicating good reliability (field, 2013), except for engagement (α = .53, corrected item-total correlations > .30). that said, scores with alphas < .70 remain useful for research purposes (nunnally & bernstein, 1994), therefore engagement was retained for further analysis. table 1. descriptive statistics and internal consistency for mps (hewitt & flett, 2004) and perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016) subscales (n = 92) m sd min score max score cronbach’s α perfectionism sop 73.25 16.52 35.00 105.00 .91 oop 54.85 11.67 30.00 82.00 .77 spp 58.29 15.71 22.00 95.00 .89 perma positive emotion 5.88 2.24 0.00 9.33 .92 engagement 6.88 1.64 2.67 10.00 .53 relationships 6.96 2.26 1.33 10.00 .87 meaning 6.24 2.26 0.00 10.00 .87 accomplishment 6.46 1.81 1.00 9.33 .81 health 5.78 2.42 0.00 10.00 .90 negative emotion 5.37 1.96 1.33 9.33 .72 loneliness 4.84 3.27 0.00 10.00 happiness 6.12 2.43 0.00 10.00 overall wellbeing 6.46 1.80 1.25 9.50 .95 3.2 analytic strategy to assess the relationships between the three forms of perfectionism and the perma elements, including overall wellbeing, two analytic strategies were implemented. first, bivariate correlations were computed between all variables. second, six enter method multiple regressions were conducted to predict each perma element and overall wellbeing using the three forms of perfectionism as predictors. data from hewitt and flett’s (2004) community sample showed men scored significantly higher than women only for the oop subscale; however, the effect was small, accounting for 3 cronbach’s alpha could not be calculated for the loneliness and happiness subscales, as they are single item measures. perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 only .7% of the variance. similarly, age has been reported to affect only spp (hewitt & flett, 2004), with scores decreasing as age increased; however, again this effect was small. as such, given only 13% of the participants identified as male and the majority of participants (75%) fell between the ages of 18-24, neither gender nor age was controlled for in the subsequent analyses. 3.3 bivariate correlations bivariate pearson’s correlations were run between all variables, using an alpha level of .05 (see table 2 below). as per cohen’s (1992) effect size guidelines and in line with previous findings (hewitt & flett, 2004), sop displayed a medium significant positive correlation with oop and a large significant positive correlation with spp; however, contrary to expectations, oop and spp were not significantly correlated. as seen in table 2, contrary to expectations, sop was not significantly correlated with any outcome variables. however, given sop displayed medium/large significant correlations with spp and oop, this indicates there was significant overlap between them. in other words, those with higher levels of one form of perfectionism tended to have higher levels of the other forms of perfectionism as well. as such, this may have resulted in some significant relationships being suppressed and others being inflated, as has been previously reported by hill, huelsman and araujo (2010), and stoeber, harvey, almeida and lyons (2013). unexpectedly, oop displayed medium significant positive correlations with meaning and accomplishment, and a small-medium significant positive correlation with overall wellbeing. socially prescribed perfectionism, on the other hand, showed medium-large significant positive correlations with negative emotion and loneliness. in line with expectations, spp also displayed large significant negative correlations with positive emotion, relationships and overall wellbeing, medium-large significant negative correlations with happiness, and medium significant negative correlations with engagement, meaning, accomplishment and health. 3.4 multiple regression analyses next, six enter method multiple regressions were conducted to predict each perma element and overall wellbeing from sop, oop and spp (coefficients and 95% confidence intervals for the unstandardised coefficient values are seen in table 3 below). to satisfy the assumptions of multiple regression, visual inspection of scatterplots confirmed the relationships between the predictors and outcome variables were linear. as variance inflation factor scores were < 10 (myers, 1990) and tolerance scores were > 0.2 (menard, 1995) for all models, the assumption of no multi-collinearity was met. the durbin-watson statistic showed the values of the residuals were independent, as the values for all models were close to 2 (field, 2013). scatterplots of the standardised residuals versus standardised predicted values did not funnel out for any of the models, suggesting the assumption of homoscedasticity had been met (field, 2013). probability-plots were approximately linear, suggesting that the assumption of normality of the residuals was met for the positive emotion, engagement, meaning and overall wellbeing models, but may have been violated for the relationships and accomplishment models. however, as only extreme deviations are likely to have a significant impact, the results likely remain valid. finally, for all models, cook’s distance values were < 1, suggesting there were no influential cases biasing any of the models (field, 2013). perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 3.4.1 positive emotion the model, with the three predictors, reached significance and was able to account for 32.7% of the variance in positive emotion (r² = .327, f(3,88) = 14.27, p< .001). as seen in table 3, spp (β = -.63; t(88) = -6.39, p< .001) and sop (β = .26; t(88) = 2.50, p = .014) both made significant contributions to the regression, meaning positive emotion was predicted by sop and spp. other-oriented perfectionism (β = .11; t(88) = 1.21, p = .230), however, did not make a significant contribution. 3.4.2 engagement the model reached significance, accounting for 17.1% of the variance in engagement (r² = .171, f(3,88) = 6.04, p = .001). socially prescribed perfectionism (β = -.43; t(88) = -3.89, p< .001) and sop (β = .33; t(88) = 2.89, p = .005) both made significant contributions to the regression, meaning engagement was predicted by sop and spp. again, oop (β = .06; t(88) = .60, p = .549) did not make a significant contribution to the regression. 3.4.3 relationships the model reached significance, accounting for 36% of the variance in relationships (r² = .360, f(3,88) = 16.52, p< .001). socially prescribed perfectionism (β = -.65; t(88) = -6.69, p<. 001) was the only predictor to make a significant contribution to the regression, meaning positive relationships were negatively predicted by spp. neither sop (β = .15; t(88) = 1.49, p = .14) nor oop (β = .14; t(88) = 1.60, p = .113) made significant contributions. 3.4.4 meaning the model reached significance, accounting for 22.5% of the variance in meaning (r² = .225, f(3,88) = 8.52, p< .001). all three forms of perfectionism made significant contributions to the regression: spp (β = -.45; t(88) = -4.25, p< .001), sop (β = .25; t(88) = 2.20, p = .030), oop (β = .23; t(88) = 2.34, p = .022), indicating that meaning was predicted by spp, sop and oop. 3.4.5 accomplishment the model reached significance, accounting for 29.3% of the variance in accomplishment (r² = .293, f(3,88) = 12.14, p<. 001). again, all three forms of perfectionism made significant contributions to the regression: spp (β = -.50; t(88) = -4.95, p<. 001), oop (β = .29; t(88) = 3.00, p = .004), sop (β = .27; t(88) = 2.51, p = .014), meaning that accomplishment was predicted by spp, oop and sop. perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 table 2. bivariate pearson’s correlations for mps (hewitt & flett, 2004) and perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016) subscales variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 perfectionism 1. sop 2. oop .33** 3. spp .47*** .13 perma 4. positive emotion -.001 .12 -.50*** 5. engagement .15 .12 -.26* .66*** 6. relationships -.11 .11 -.56*** .80*** .53*** 7. meaning .11 .26* -.31** .79*** .63*** .70*** 8. accomplishment .13 .31** -.34** .73** .55*** .66*** .81*** 9. health .00 .06 -.36*** .61*** .42*** .50*** .61*** .56*** 10. negative emotion .06 -.05 .43*** -.64*** -.36** -.47*** -.43*** -.39*** -.49*** 11. loneliness .08 .006 .39*** -.64*** -.29** -.64*** -.50*** -.41*** -.38*** .56*** 12. happiness .09 .19 -.41*** .93*** .63*** .76*** .80*** .75*** .66*** -.60*** -.66*** 13. overall wellbeing .06 .21* -.46*** .93*** .75*** .86*** .91*** .86*** .64*** -.54*** -.60*** .92*** note: n = 92, *p<.05, **p<.01, **p<.001. perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 table 3. summary of enter method multiple regression analyses for sop, oop and spp predicting perma elements and overall wellbeing unstandardised coefficients standardised coefficient 95% confidence interval for b model predictor b se β lower bound upper bound positive emotion sop 0.04 0.01 .26* 0.007 0.06 oop 0.02 0.02 .11 -0.01 0.06 spp -0.09 0.01 -.63*** -0.12 -0.06 engagement sop 0.03 0.01 .33** 0.01 0.06 oop 0.009 0.01 .06 -0.02 0.04 spp -0.05 0.01 -.43*** -0.07 -0.02 relationships sop 0.02 0.01 .15 -0.007 0.05 oop 0.03 0.02 .14 -0.007 0.06 spp -0.09 0.01 -.65*** -0.12 -0.07 meaning sop 0.03 0.02 .25* 0.003 0.06 oop 0.05 0.02 .23* 0.007 0.08 spp -0.07 0.02 -.45*** -0.10 -0.04 accomplishment sop 0.03 0.01 .27* 0.006 0.05 oop 0.04 0.02 .29** 0.02 0.07 spp -0.06 0.01 -.50*** -0.08 -0.04 overall wellbeing sop 0.03 0.01 .29** 0.009 0.05 oop 0.03 0.01 .19* 0.002 0.06 spp -0.07 0.01 -.62*** -0.09 -0.05 note: n = 92, se = standard error, *p<.05, **p<.01, **p<.001. 3.4.6 overall wellbeing the model reached significance, accounting for 34.3% of the variance in overall wellbeing (r² = .343, f(3,88) = 15.31, p< .001). again, all three forms of perfectionism made significant contributions to the regression: spp (β = -.62; t(88) = -6.34, p< .001), sop (β = .29; t(88) = 2.79, p = .006), oop (β = .19; t(88) = 2.10, p = .039), indicating that overall wellbeing was predicted by spp, sop and oop. in summary, the results showed that perfectionism explained a substantial amount of variance in all perma elements and overall wellbeing. all models reached significance at the .05 alpha level. socially prescribed perfectionism was a significant negative contributor to all models. in contrast, sop significantly positively contributed to all models, bar the relationships model, and oop significantly positively contributed to the meaning, accomplishment and overall wellbeing models. 4. discussion 4.1 the present findings the aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the tripartite model of perfectionism (hewitt & flett, 1991, 2004) and the perma model of flourishing (seligman, 2011), specifically, whether the three forms of perfectionism showed different relationships with each perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 perma element. self-oriented perfectionism was expected to show a positive relationship with all perma elements, spp a negative relationship with all perma elements and oop to show a negative affinity with the “relationships” element but otherwise have no significant relationships with the remaining perma elements. as expected, results showed perfectionism accounted for a large portion of variance in all perma elements, confirming perfectionism is a salient personality trait to consider when explaining individual differences in wellbeing. supporting the hypotheses, those with higher levels of spp reported lower levels of all perma elements. additionally, spp was the only predictor to significantly contribute to all models, suggesting it has the strongest influence on flourishing of the forms of perfectionism measured. expectations were partially met for sop, with it being a positive predictor of positive emotion, engagement, meaning, accomplishment and overall wellbeing, although, contrary to expectations, it was not a significant predictor of positive relationships. self-oriented perfectionism was also the second largest contributor to all models (bar relationships), suggesting it influences flourishing, albeit to a lesser extent than spp. however, contrary to expectations, participants with higher levels of oop reported higher levels of meaning, accomplishment and overall wellbeing. other-oriented perfectionism was the smallest contributor to these models, indicating that out of the three forms of perfectionism, it has the least (although still significant) influence on flourishing. 4.2 confirming two-factor theory with regards to sop and spp, the present results replicate stoeber and corr’s (2016) findings and are consistent with research identifying spp and sop as maladaptive and adaptive forms of perfectionism respectively, confirming their place as indicators of perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings (bieling et al., 2004; frost et al., 1993; stoeber & otto, 2006). the findings partially confirm flett and hewitt’s (2015) assertion that perfectionism can undermine flourishing; however, crucially, neither stoeber and corr (2016), nor the present study, claimed that all forms of perfectionism would be/are beneficial. rather, both emphasised that different forms of perfectionism would have different (i.e. positive or negative) relationships with flourishing and the perma elements that comprise it. as such, whilst the present findings do support the idea that perfectionism can undermine wellbeing, they show that only spp impedes flourishing and that sop enhances it, challenging flett and hewitt’s (2015) view that perfectionism, in general, undermines flourishing. importantly, however, the present findings explain almost double the amount of variance in overall flourishing compared to stoeber and corr’s (2016) results. this confirms the present study’s earlier contention that using different conceptual models of flourishing would likely lead to different findings. moreover, this emphasises the importance of looking at the relationship each individual element of flourishing has with each form of perfectionism. 4.3 adaptive perfectionism and perma that said, the results with regards to sop must be interpreted with caution. although sop was a positive predictor of four out of five perma elements, this is inconsistent with the nonsignificant correlations between sop and these perma elements. this raises the possibility that sop may have acted as a suppressor variable (a variable that increased the predictive validity of another variable[s] in the regression, through suppression of irrelevant variance in them; conger, 1974; tabachnick & fidell, 2014). similar findings have been reported by hill et al. (2010) and stoeber et al. (2013), who consequently conducted multiple regression analyses controlling for overlap between the different forms of perfectionism. however, this approach was not perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 warranted here, given the exploratory nature of the work, and, on balance, such methods are discouraged, indeed, the most notable critique being that the construct the predictor variable represents can change once the shared variance with other predictor variables is removed (hill, 2014, 2017; lynam, hoyle & newman, 2006). that said, some perfectionism researchers remain highly vocal about the need for overlap between the forms of perfectionism to be controlled for. both stoeber and otto (2006) and stoeber and gaudreau (2017) have reported that perfectionistic strivings (represented by sop in the current study) have stronger relationships with positive attributes when the overlap with perfectionistic concerns (represented by spp) is controlled for. as such, not controlling for overlap may not only explain why sop had no significant positive correlations with the perma elements, it could also explain why sop did not make a significant contribution the relationships model. additionally, not statistically controlling for overlap may explain why oop was not a significant negative predictor of positive relationships. however, perhaps this result should not be entirely surprising, as the literature regarding oop and relationships is equivocal. for example, haring, hewitt and flett (2003) reported that whilst oop in wives was associated with marital problems, the same association was not found for husbands. similarly, hewitt, flett and mikail (1995) found spouses’ reports of marital adjustment and oop was only related in some cases, dependant on the role the spouse had in the relationship. this suggests that oop’s effect on interpersonal relationships is dependent on numerous factors, and, as such, simply measuring oop on its own may not be enough of a reliable indicator to predict feelings of satisfaction in interpersonal relationships. 4.4 oop and perma that discussed, the most notable finding was that oop was a significant positive predictor of overall wellbeing. this differs from stoeber and corr’s (2016) results, who found no significant relationship between oop and flourishing. furthermore, the findings are the antithesis of stoeber’s (2014) claim that oop should be removed as an indicator of perfectionistic strivings, an adaptive form of perfectionism. an explanation for the findings may lie in examining the personality traits associated with oop. for example, conscientiousness (the ability to control impulses, be goal directed and plan and delay gratification; roberts, jackson, fayard, edmonds & meints, 2009) is positively correlated with oop (hewitt & flett, 2004) and has been reported to have a moderating effect on oop, bringing out its “bright side” through encouraging engagement in greater interpersonal citizenship behaviours (shoss, callison & witt, 2015). therefore, oop being adaptive or maladaptive may depend on how it interacts in combination with other personality traits within an individual. to this end, although not measured in the present study, the current sample may have had other personality traits at levels to exert a modifying effect, offering an explanation for the present findings. 4.5 oop, narcissism and wellbeing additionally, oop’s positive relationship with the dark triad, particularly narcissism (smith et al., 2017; stoeber, 2014; stoeber et al., 2015), may explicate oop’s positive relationship with overall wellbeing. for example, narcissism is a construct comprised of grandiosity, entitlement, dominance and superiority (paulhus & williams, 2002), which previous studies have reported as being beneficial to subjective wellbeing. rose (2002) reported that overt narcissists (a grandiose sense of self, ignorance of others’ needs and demanding of attention; wink, 1991) had higher selfesteem, happiness and life satisfaction compared to covert narcissists (characterised by feelings of inferiority, hypersensitivity and dissatisfaction; wink, 1991). furthermore, sedikides, rudich, perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 gregg, kumashiro and rusbult (2004) found that high scores on the narcissistic personality inventory (npi; raskin & terry, 1988) were inversely related to dispositional depression and sadness and positively related to subjective wellbeing. additionally, ackerman et al. (2011) found a three-factor solution for the npi (raskin & terry, 1988): leadership/authority, grandiose exhibitionism and entitlement/exploitativeness. leadership/authority was linked to adaptive outcomes, whereas the other factors were linked to maladaptive outcomes. this indicates that narcissism, being maladaptive, is likely dependent on which are the dominant facets. a further consideration is that narcissism has been reported to be more positively correlated with life satisfaction in emerging adults (≤ 25 years old; hill & roberts, 2012). as such, given the mean age of participants in the current study was 25, the present sample may have been more likely to experience positive outcomes from any narcissistic traits than would have been found in an older sample. furthermore, this positive association with narcissism (smith et al., 2017; stoeber, 2014; stoeber et al., 2015) may also explain oop being a significant positive predictor of meaning. several authors have identified narcissism as playing a part in inner emptiness, a state of low positive affect and feeling a lack of purpose or substance (zerach, 2016). this can be conceptualised as the opposite of meaning: defined as belonging to and serving something bigger than oneself (seligman, 2011; zondag, 2005). however, it is again important to consider the different types of narcissism, as covert narcissists are more likely to report experiencing a sense of meaningless in life and the negative affect of emptiness than overt narcissists (wink & donahue, 1997; zerach, 2016; zondag, van halen & wojtkowiak, 2009). this is consistent with the idea that overt and covert narcissism are at opposite ends of an adjustment continuum – overt narcissism as adaptive and covert narcissism as maladaptive (watson, hickman & morris, 1996; zondag, 2013). as such, although not measured in the present study, the current sample may have had higher levels of overt narcissism, which could account for those high in oop reporting feeling that their lives had more meaning. 4.6 oop, machiavellianism, and wellbeing additionally, oop’s positive relationship with the dark triad (smith et al., 2017; stoeber, 2014; stoeber et al., 2015) may also account for oop being a significant positive predictor of accomplishment, as dark triad traits have been reported to coincide with success in the workplace. for example, zettler and solga (2013) reported that machiavellianism (a manipulative personality trait; paulhaus & williams, 2002) was related to job performance in an inverted u-shaped manner, there being an optimal amount of machiavellianism for succeeding, but too much machiavellianism being detrimental. similarly, spurk, keller and hirschi (2016) found that narcissism was positively related to job salary, and machiavellianism to leadership positions and career satisfaction. this suggests that dark triad traits are indicators of career success, with hirschi and jaensch (2015) proposing those high in these traits have a more active and confident approach, which may account for their success. indeed, this suggestion fits with other personality correlates of oop such as self/personal control, self-efficacy and assertiveness (hewitt & flett, 2004), all of which have been reported to boost career success (ames, 2009; duckwork & gross, 2014; lisbona, palaci, salanova & frese, 2018). as such, it seems likely those high in oop may have other personality traits that lend to them being high achievers, therefore accounting for them reporting a greater sense of accomplishment. in respect to this, future researchers may wish to consider conducting a series of moderation analyses, with overt and covert narcissism as dichotomous moderators, to predict accomplishment, meaning and wellbeing from oop. to the best of current knowledge, this has not yet been investigated, and perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 would explore whether the relationships between oop and these outcome variables do indeed differ, depending on narcissism subtype. 4.7 the pygmalion effect however, another possible explanation for oop predicting accomplishment may be the pygmalion effect, a type of self-fulfilling prophecy where a person (perceiver) raises their expectations of those around them (targets), which results in the targets’ performance being boosted (collins, 2011; duffy, field & shirley, 2011; eden, 1992). first described in an educational context (rosenthal & jacobson, 1968) the effect has also been reported in occupational settings (duan, li, xu & wu, 2017; eden, 1992), suggesting it is a universal phenomenon. furthermore, as leadership/authority is thought to be a dimension of narcissism (ackerman., 2011), it may be that those high in oop tend to take on authoritative roles in their social circle, akin to a teacher or manager, where the pygmalion effect is typically reported (duan et al., 2017; eden, 1992). consequently, those around the individual high in oop may improve their performance, in line with the expectations of the person high in oop. indeed, a similar effect has been reported in a sporting context, with oop (team-oriented perfectionism) positively predicting team performance, the idea being that putting perfectionistic standards on other team members drives the group to better performance (hill, stoeber, brown & appleton, 2014). theoretically, this could elicit feelings of accomplishment in the individual high in oop, especially if they feel part of a successful group, which would enhance any narcissistic need for grandiosity, dominance and superiority (paulhus & williams, 2002). alternatively, if those high in oop feel they have influenced/improved another’s performance, they may feel responsible for the target’s success and consequently feel a sense of accomplishment. 4.8 limitations the present study had its limitations; firstly, the sample was predominantly female (86%), and, as such, results may not be representative across genders. secondly, a large portion of the sample were university students (72%). although a convenient sampling methodology, to fully understand the relationship between perfectionism and flourishing, it will be important for future studies to examine this in a sample from the general population. it is also worth considering the survey layout and the impact of having demographic and mps (hewitt & flett, 2004) questions prior to the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016). according to the organisation for economic co-operation and development’s (oecd) guidelines on measuring subjective wellbeing (2013), wellbeing items should come immediately after questions that establish eligibility to participate, to reduce question order effects and ensure any contextual effects are consistent across surveys. as such, it is possible that individual differences highlighted by the preceding questionnaires may have influenced participant responses on the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016). future studies may wish to place wellbeing items at the start of surveys to manage this effect. the study also used a correlational cross-sectional study design; therefore, whilst perfectionism was predictive of flourishing, this should not be interpreted as causation and cannot address directionality. as such, the next step for future researchers will be to investigate whether perfectionism predicts longitudinal changes in flourishing. a further consideration is that the perma model of wellbeing (seligman, 2011) may not be appropriate for other cultures and backgrounds. typically, western countries such as the united kingdom (where the present study was conducted) favour hedonism as a way of pursuing happiness, whereas eastern countries favour eudaimonism (joshanloo, 2014). furthermore, the importance of wellbeing perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 indicators such as happiness varies across cultures, with western cultures viewing happiness as paramount and positive, and eastern cultures viewing happiness as transient, with uncertainty regarding whether it is good (oshi & gilbert, 2016). as such, the present findings may not be applicable to eastern cultures, and it will be important for wellbeing researchers in their respective countries to investigate how applicable the perma model (seligman, 2011) is as a measure of how their citizens flourish. finally, in respect to sop possibly having acted as a suppressor variable, future studies will need to replicate the findings before firm conclusions can be drawn regarding the relationship between sop and wellbeing. despite the practice of partialling out variance being criticised (hill, 2014, 2017; lynam et al., 2006), it would be wise for future researchers to control for any overlap between forms of perfectionism when conducting correlations and multiple regressions. present findings considered, such practices will likely be necessary to accurately show the relationships between the different forms of perfectionism and any outcome variables. lastly, it would be remiss not to comment on the poor cronbach’s alpha for the engagement subscale, which was considerably lower than the generally accepted cut-off (<.70; field, 2013). this is not the first time this subscale has been found to have poor internal consistency. indeed, closer inspection of butler and kern’s (2016) original paper reveals several samples used to test the internal consistency of the perma-profiler fell below .70 for this domain, the only subscale to do so. iasiello et al. (2017) have also commented on its low internal consistency, and, comparable to the present study’s findings, goodman et al. (2018) found the engagement subscale to have an alpha level of .58. all considered, this suggests that the subscale may not reliably measure engagement, a point for future researchers to consider before choosing this scale and when interpreting the current results. future studies may wish to build on the present findings by investigating the relationship between flourishing and other models of perfectionism, such as the 2x2 model (gaudreau & thompson, 2010), which, rather than focussing on perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns, addresses different within-person combinations of each subtype. additionally, researchers should consider using different indicators of perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns (stoeber & otto, 2006), such as items from the perfectionism inventory (hill et al., 2004), the almost perfect scale-revised (slaney, rice, mobley, trippi & ashby, 2001) or the big three perfectionism scale (smith, saklofske, stoeber & sherry, 2016), to see if the present findings are concordant when using alternative measures. 4.9 conclusions to conclude, the present findings make a significant contribution to the extant literature on perfectionism and flourishing, being the first to investigate the relationship between perfectionism and the perma model of wellbeing (seligman, 2011). the findings extend the literature by indicating that all three forms of perfectionism are significant predictors of flourishing, explaining a large amount of variance, with sop and oop being conducive to flourishing and spp undermining it. furthermore, the present findings highlight the importance of examining the relationships each element of flourishing has with each form of perfectionism. moreover, the results challenge the view that perfectionism in general undermines flourishing, and emphasises the importance of looking at perfectionism as a multidimensional trait. the findings support the notion that oop represents a form of perfectionistic strivings (bieling et al., 2004; frost et al., 1993; stoeber & otto, 2006), supportive of meaning, accomplishment and overall wellbeing, and counter stoeber’s (2014) position that it embodies a “dark” form of perfectionism. as previously stated, oop is commonly ignored in terms of its clinical relevance (stoeber, 2015; perfectionism and perma birch, riby, & mcgann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 stoeber & otto, 2006). however, the present findings clearly indicate that oop warrants increased research attention to challenge the view that this “dark” form of perfectionism (stoeber, 2014, 2015) has no effect on flourishing. authors hope a. birch northumbria university leigh m. riby northumbria university deborah mcgann northumbria university deborah.mcgann@northumbria.ac.uk publishing timeline received 20 june 2018 accepted 31 october 2018 published 3 april 2019 references ackerman, r. a., witt, e. a., donnellan, m. b., trzesniewski, k. h., robins, r. w., & kashy, d. a. 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(2020). does team psychological capital predict team outcomes at work? international journal of wellbeing, 10(1), 1-25. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i1.923 lea waters university of melbourne l.waters@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 does team psychological capital predict team outcomes at work? lea waters · gabriel strauss · anit somech · nick haslam · denise dussert abstract: this study is situated in the paradigms of positive organizational scholarship (pos) and positive organizational behaviour (pob). it draws upon the theoretical mechanisms of social learning and emotional contagion to suggest that psychological capital may spread through work teams to impact team outcomes such as performance, innovation, and organizational citizenship behavior (ocb). the degree to which team psychological capital (tpsycap) mediated the relationship between leader psychological capital (lpsycap) and team outcomes was also tested (n = 94 teams; n = 94 leaders; n = 550 employees). using structural equation modelling, lpsycap and tpsycap were both related to team-level organizational citizenship behavior, team performance, and team innovation. however, the relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap was not significant. these findings support the positioning of psychological capital as an important resource for optimal team functioning but also suggest that workplaces cannot expect that leaders, through their own psychological capital alone, can create team-level psychological capital. instead, the current research suggests that other organizational initiatives and experiences are needed to enhance lpsycap. the results contribute to a better understanding of pos and pob in general and, specifically, to the recently emerging construct of team psychological capital. keywords: psychological capital, teams, leadership, positive organizational behavior, positive psychology introduction workplace teams are social groups whose members interact interdependently to achieve shared goals (devine, clayton, philips, dunford, & melner, 1999; salas, cooke, & rosen, 2008). teams are now commonplace within organizations across diverse sectors (tannenbaum, mathieu, salas, & cohen, 2012; west, patera & carsten, 2009), making research into how teams operate an important area of inquiry. leadership is one factor that plays an important role in team functioning (al rahbi, khalizani & mehmood, 2017; bandura, 1997; dechurch, hiller, murase, doty & salas, 2010). zaccaro, blair, peterson and zazanis (1995) argue that the central role of leadership is “fusing a capable team from disparate individuals and building perceptions among individual members of their combined and collective abilities” (p. 317). one way that leadership may impact on team outcomes is through the influence of a leader’s psychological capital (psycap), described as a positive psychological state of development (luthans, avolio, avey, & norman, 2007) that is characterized by having high levels of hero: hope, (self-)efficacy, resilience, and optimism article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 2 (luthans, youseff, & avolio, 2007a). the psycap of leaders has been shown to influence the psycap of his/her followers (chen, 2015; chen, wen, kong, niu & hau, 2017), but to date, research has not investigated if leader psychological capital (lpsycap) is associated with team-level psychological capital (tpsycap) and team outcomes. the current study extends research on psychological capital by examining the relationship between lpsycap, tpsycap, and three team-level outcomes: team performance, team innovation, and team organizational citizenship behavior (ocb). the degree to which tpsycap mediates the relationship between lpsycap and the three team outcomes will also be examined. psychological capital conceptualised as a higher-order construct, psycap represents the shared variance of four constructs: hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism (avey, luthans, & jensen, 2009; avey, luthans, & youssef, 2010; luthans, avolio, avey, & norman, 2007). taken from the work of snyder et al. (1991), hope is defined as a “motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of successful (1) agency (goal-directed energy) and (2) pathways (planning to meet goals)” (p. 287). drawing from the work of bandura (1997), self-efficacy is defined as a person’s “conviction (or confidence) about his or her abilities to mobilise the motivation, cognitive resources, or courses of action needed to successfully execute a specific task within a given context” (stadjkovic, luthans, & slocum, 1998, p. 66). masten and reed (2002) defined resilience as “a class of phenomena characterized by patterns of positive adaptation in the context of significant adversity or risk” (p. 74). similarly, luthans (2002) defines resilience as the “capacity to rebound or bounce back from adversity, conflict, failure, or even positive events, progress, and increased responsibility” (p. 702). the definition of optimism is taken both from the work of scheier and carver (1985) and of seligman (1990). scheier and carver (1985) conceptualised optimism as a positive future expectation. seligman (1990) defined optimism as an explanatory or attributional style. an optimistic person attributes negative events to external, temporary, and situation-specific causes, and positive events to personal, permanent, and pervasive causes. williams, kern and waters (2016) describe psycap as a ‘resource bank’ that enables adaptive responses to challenges, builds successful performance, and fosters high wellbeing. indeed, research has consistently shown the benefits to individuals who have, or develop, their psycap in multiple life domains, including relationships, physical health, and work (hobfoll, 2002; lyubomirsky, sheldon & schkade, 2005). in the workplace, psycap has also been found to be a particularly useful resource (paterson, luthans, & jeung, 2014). hsu, wang, chen and dahlgaard-park (2014) posit that the heightened sense of agency experienced with high psycap motivates employees to show stronger persistence towards goals, have higher task accomplishment, and remain optimistic when facing setbacks. williams, kern and waters (2015) showed that psycap was a significant predictor of work happiness in teachers and school staff (e.g., administrative staff, it staff, support staff) and that this relationship persisted over time (williams, kern & waters, 2017). psycap has been empirically linked to a number of other desirable employee outcomes such as higher job satisfaction (luthans, avolio, avey, & norman 2007; abbas, raja, darr, & bouckenooghe, 2014), organizational commitment (jensen and luthans, 2006), psychological wellbeing (avey, luthans & youssef, 2010), team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 3 thriving (paterson et al., 2014), job performance (abbas et al., 2014), and job embeddedness (sun, zhao, yang, & fan, 2012) across industries such as telecommunication, banks, nursing, and textile manufacturing. importantly, research shows that an individual’s level of psycap can be increased through psycap workplace training programs (luthans, avey, & patera, 2008; williams et al., 2016). in addition to training, another factor that shapes an employee’s psycap is the psycap of the leader (lpsycap). for example, avey and colleagues found that the psycap of managers was positively related to followers’ psycap in two separate experimental studies examining engineers and senior employees (avey, avolio & luthans, 2011; avey, richmond, & nixon, 2012). in teams of matched leader–followers (n = 60 leaders/n = 319 employees) at a telecommunications company chen (2015) found that leaders’ psycap was a significant predictor of follower psycap together with followers’ job engagement. similarly, walumbwa, peterson, avolio, and hartnell (2010) showed that the psychological capital of police lieutenants was positively related to the psychological capital of their followers. finally, chen et al. (2017) found a relationship between lpsycap and follower psycap in their study across three financial companies. psycap as a group-level construct although psycap was initially conceptualized as an individual resource, recent work suggests it can also be a group phenomenon. indeed, each of the hero constructs forming psycap have been shown to be applicable at the collective level. for example, braithwaite (2004) defines collective hope as “hope that is genuinely and critically shared by a group” (p. 7), and bar tel (2001) suggests that hope can be a collective emotion, orientation, and action. benet, aden, broome, mitchell, and rigdon (2010) assert that “resilience may be viewed as much as a social factor (existing in teams or groups) as an individual trait” (p. 225). likewise, west, patera, and carsten (2009) investigated resilience at the team level, defining it as the team’s capacity to bounce back from failure, setbacks, and threats to wellbeing. they found a significant, positive relationship between team resilience and team satisfaction, as well as a significant, negative relationship between team resilience and team conflict. other researchers have shown that team resilience is linked to team performance and adaptive team responses (carmeli, friedman & tishler, 2013; salanova, llorens, cifre, & martínez, 2012). in bandura’s (1997b) work on self-efficacy he proposed that it was not only an individual state but also a collective property, suggesting that “collective efficacy represents a group’s shared belief in its conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainments” (p. 477). similarly, prussia and kinicki (1996) defined collective efficacy as “perceptions regarding a team’s capability to perform in a particular situation” (p. 188). collective efficacy has been found to be a predictor of group performance in sporting teams (spink, 1990; watson, chemers & preiser, 2001), high school teams (hodges & carron, 1992), as well as in undergraduate students engaging in brainstorming tasks and model construction (prussia & kinicki, 1996; silver & bufanio, 1996). finally, optimism has also been conceptualised as moving beyond the individual with anglin, mckenny and short (2018) defining collective optimism as “the shared, positive expectations about future outcomes” (p. 390). research shows that collective optimism influences executives’ willingness to make strategic acquisitions (gao, 2010), consumer behavior (ludvigson, 2004), and new venture creation for entrepreneurs (anglin et al., 2018), and is team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 4 positively related to satisfaction, resilience, and cohesion in undergraduate work teams (west et al., 2009). as discussed above, pycap is conceptualised as a higher-order construct that represents the shared variance of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. hence, while research shows that each of the individual elements of psycap can be conceptualized at the collective level, dawkins, martin, scott, and sanderson (2015) also suggest that psycap itself (i.e., the shared variance of each of the four elements) can be experienced at the collective level. dawkins et al. (2015) drew on the principle of social contagion to explain how psycap becomes a collective state through its spread from person to person (i.e., social networks) (christakis & fowler, 2013) and via imitation (bandura, ross, & ross, 1961; ogunlade, 1979). heled, somech, and waters (2016) suggest that collective psycap occurs via the mechanism of shared mental models, reasoning that, over time, teams develop common ideas and understandings about how they operate (i.e., how to organize their knowledge, tasks, capabilities and goals) and who they are (i.e., we are a loyal team, we are a creative team, we are a competitive team). in line with this, heled et al. (2016) suggested that shared mental models can be formed about the degree to which the team sees itself as hopeful, efficacious, resilient, and optimistic. heled et al.’s (2016) theory of shared mental models is consistent with peterson and zhang’s (2011) definition of collective psycap as “the team’s shared (italics added) positive appraisal of their circumstances and probability for success under those circumstances based on their combined motivated effort and perseverance” (p. 134). it also aligns with the definition of collective psycap put forward by dawkins et al. (2015) as “a sense of sharedness among team members regarding their perceptions of psycap” (p. 929). interestingly, dawkins and her colleagues (2105) propose that there is more than one type of collective psycap and propose five distinct forms: summated psycap, assimilated psycap, team psycap, psycap strength, and team psycap strength. the focus of the current study is team psychological capital (tpsycap). tpsycap differs from individual and other forms of collective psycap because it accommodates the fact that individual team members may have low psycap yet still perceive the psycap of their team to be high (chan, 1998), or have high individual psycap but be in a team that has a shared perception of low collective capital. tpsycap is measured using a referent shift composition model that asks members of the team about the perceived psycap they see in the team as a whole. within-team agreement is then examined, and if there is sufficient consistency, scores are aggregated to yield a single team-level value. several studies have supported the empirical coherence of such measures of tpsycap (clappsmith, vogelgesang, & avey, 2009; walumbwa et al., 2010; west, patera, & carsten, 2009). give the recency of the tpsycap construct, empirical research is still in its infancy, but the small amount that has been conducted shows that tpsycap, like individual psycap, is beneficial in workplaces. heled et al. (2016) found a significant relationship between tpsycap, employee job satisfaction, and team level organizational citizenship behavior (ocb). mathe-soulek, scott-halsell, kim, and krawczyk (2014) found that it significantly predicted service quality, customer satisfaction, and unit revenues across 67 food retail chain stores. although limited, the nascent research on tpsycap indicates that it is a workplace asset worth cultivating. thus, the question arises, how can tpsycap be fostered? team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 5 does leader psycap influence tpsycap? as outlined above, several studies have demonstrated the influence of leaders’ psycap (lpsycap) on their followers’ individual psycap (avey, avolio & luthans, 2011; avey, richmond & nixon, 2012; chen, 2015; chen, et al., 2017). to date the relationship between a leader’s psychological capital and tpsycap has not been examined, but the recent research interest on psycap as a collective asset, together with the preliminary findings that tpsycap fosters positive workplace outcomes, makes the relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap a promising area of inquiry. in the current study we hypothesize that the psycap of a leader will significantly influence a team’s shared positive appraisal of their circumstances and probability for success (i.e., tpsycap), and we posit two mechanisms through which the lpsycap-tpsycap relationship is likely to occur: social learning and emotional contagion. according to bandura’s (1977a, b) social learning theory, individuals learn by attending to and observing the behavior of others, especially credible role models. in organizations, leaders generally have higher status and power than their followers and, thus, are influential models for their employees (walumbwa et al., 2010). as such, leaders’ hopeful, optimistic, resilient, and selfefficacious behaviors may potentially be observed and modelled by team members. team-level psycap occurs when there are consistent perceptions across team members of the psychological capital demonstrated by their teammates. since each team member models the same leader’s psychological capital, it is likely that the level of psychological capital across members becomes aligned over time. this consistency among individual team members’ psycap is likely to lead to agreement among team members on the shared psycap of the team, thus leading to team-level psycap that is similar to that of the leader. emotional contagion may also play a role in the transferal of psycap from leaders to teams. emotional contagion refers to “the process by which the emotions expressed by one individual are ‘caught’ by another” (bono & ilies, 2006, p. 320). this occurs because people tend to mimic others’ public displays of mood, which then leads them to experience corresponding emotions (hatfield, cacioppo, & rapson, 1994). sy, cote, and saavedra (2005) argued that this effect is particularly strong between leaders and team members because team members are likely to attend to leaders’ mood cues due to the latter’s elevated position in the power hierarchy. in line with this, sy et al. (2005) found that leaders’ emotions impact the affective tone of their followers. while the psycap components of self-efficacy and resilience are primarily cognitive resources, hope and optimism have affective qualities that make them susceptible to contagion (bono & ilies, 2006; norman, luthans, & luthans, 2005). contagion between leader’s and team members’ hope and optimism may in turn influence teams’ higher order psycap because the components of psycap have synergies and causal pathways between them. that is, if a team member has increased optimism and hope, it will likely lead to increased resilience and self-efficacy, and in turn, a global increase in psycap (avey, reichard, luthans & mhatre, 2011). as the contagion effect from leader to team members is likely to affect team members similarly, team members may develop and express similar levels of hope and optimism, and thus the other two elements of psycap. this is likely to then lead to agreement among team members on the team’s level of psycap, highlighting that team-level psycap is related to the leader’s psycap. hypothesis 1. lpsycap will be positively related to tpsycap. team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 6 the relationship between team psychological capital and team outcomes the success of workplace teams has been shown to lead to many desired organizational outcomes such as productivity, profits, sales, customer retention, employee recruitment and retention (denison, 1990; harter, schmidt & hayes, 2002; ostroff, 1992). thus, research examining the factors that foster positive team outcomes is important. tpsycap has been shown to be a factor that fosters positive teams. here again though, the research is new and only three studies have been conducted, albeit showing positive findings. heled et al. (2016) found a relationship between tpsycap and ocb in school teams. in the banking industry, walumbwa et al. (2011) showed that tpsycap was positively related to team performance. within the retail industry, clapp-smith et al. (2009) found that tpsycap was related to financial performance of teams. given the need for replicability in organization science (tsang & kwan, 1999), more research is needed to confirm the tpsycap-ocb and tpsycap-team performance link. the current study investigates these relationships of tpsycap with ocb and performance, and also adds a third team outcome, that of innovation (see figure 1). figure 1 proposed theoretical model of the mediated effects of principal psycap on slts’ performance, innovation, and ocb. ocb. organisational citizenship behavior represents “behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization” (organ, 1988, p. 4). as with tpsycap, team-level ocb refers to characteristic levels of ocb within groups (vigoda-gadot, beeri, birman-shemesh, & somech, 2007). support for the relationship between psycap and ocb is drawn from the wellestablished social-psychological finding that people with high levels of positive affect are more team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 7 likely to help others than are those in negative or neutral moods (isen & baron, 1991). people in positive moods are more likely to engage in ocbs such as helping coworkers, engaging in organization-sponsored volunteer work, or supporting newcomers to the group. in addition to helping behaviors, george and brief (1992) suggested that positive affect can also lead to other extrarole behaviors, such as protecting organizations, making constructive suggestions, and spreading goodwill. researchers have found a similar relationship between group affective tone and group ocb (chen, lam, naumann, & schaubroeck, 2005; george, 1990). as such, the positive relationship between affect and ocb has been found to operate at both the individual and group levels. team performance. there are two mechanisms through which tpsycap may influence team performance: agentic capacity and team processes. at the core of tpsycap is an agentic capacity representing the group’s belief of success based on efficacy (luthans et al., 2006). luthans et al. (2011) explained that this agentic capacity can be manifested in terms of a broader range of hope pathways to achieve goals (e.g., snyder, 2000). agentic capacity can also enable the perseverance and ability of teams to resiliently bounce back from setbacks (e.g., masten & reed, 2002), because agency influences the degree to which people and groups feel their actions will create change (brown & westaway, 2011; list & pettit, 2011). optimistic outlooks can broaden problem-solving (e.g., seligman, 1990), and efficacy can heighten desire for success and confidence that the group has what it takes to achieve its goals (e.g., bandura, 1997). in sum, tpsycap is expected to improve team performance by facilitating stronger motivational forces to successfully accomplish goals and tasks. tpsycap may also impact team performance by improving team processes. initial evidence suggests that it is positively associated with team coordination, cooperation, and cohesion and may be negatively associated with conflict. west, patera, and carsten (2009) investigated how team optimism, efficacy, and resilience (but not hope), as individual constructs, each related to team coordination, cooperation, cohesion, and conflict. the results were mixed: optimism, resilience, and efficacy each related to cooperation but not to conflict, and only team optimism related to coordination and cohesion. however, a combined measure of team optimism, efficacy, and resilience was positively related to coordination, cooperation, and cohesion, and negatively related to conflict, implying that psycap may be related to several team processes, most especially the communication, co-ordinational and relational process. as identified in the team literature, these processes are related to team performance (west, patera & carston, 2009). for example, meta-analysis findings reveal a negative relationship between team conflict (task and relational) and team performance, showing an effect size of -.23. various reasons exist for this, including the fact that conflict creates disharmony amongst team member, depletes/spends important resources such as time and emotions, makes team members feel unsafe, and encourages individuals to place their own goals above those of the larger team (de dreu & weingart, 2003). in relation to the team process of cohesion, tekleab, quigley and tesluk’s (2009) longitudinal research found that team cohesion was positively related to team performance, team satisfaction, and team viability. this may be because cohesion is a force that keep group members together (andrews, kacmar, blakely, & bucklew, 2008), and helps them remain united in the pursuit of their objectives (tekleab et al., 2009). when it comes to the team process of cooperation, research shows that teams high on cooperation emphasize equality, group accomplishments (as opposed to individual accomplishments), teamwork, information sharing, and helping behavior, all of which team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 8 foster team performance. finally, the team process of coordination is a significant predictor of work team performance, because it allows the team to create and share knowledge in a consistent and timely manner (bowers, salas, prince & brannick, 1992). team innovation. the third team outcome variable we link to tpsycap is team innovation. innovation represents the generation and implementation of new ideas (amabile, 1996). within organizations, new ideas are generally proposed and implemented by teams, so identifying teamlevel predictors of innovation is important (hülsheger, anderson, & salgado, 2009). researchers have shown that individual psycap is positively related to reported individual innovation (luthans et al., 2011), creativity (sweetman, luthans, avey, & luthans, 2011), and originality (avey et al., 2012), but researchers have not yet examined these relationships at the team level. hypothesis 2. tpsycap will be positively related to team ocb, performance, and innovation. relationships between lpsycap, tpsycap and team outcomes the final component of our model pertains to the mechanism through which lpsycap influences team outcomes. thus far, it has been hypothesized that lpsycap is positively related to tpsycap (through social learning and emotional contagion), which will, in turn, positively influence team outcomes (through positive affect, prosocial relationships, agentic capacity, and team processes). it follows that lpsycap should have an indirect positive effect on team performance, innovation, and ocb. at the individual level, studies have supported a lpsycap-followerpsycap link for outcomes such as engagement (a related construct to ocb) (xu, liu & chung, 2017), performance (walumbwa et al., 2010), and creativity (a related construct to innovation) (avey et al., 2012). at the group level, there are no studies examining the mediating role of tpsycap in the relationship between lpsycap and team outcomes. instead we must turn to related leadership constructs to hypothesize the ‘lpsyccap tpyscap team outcomes’ link. for example, authentic leadership has been shown to impact team ocb and performance (walumbwa et.al., 2011), as well as cynicism and tolerance to workplace incivility (megeirhi, kilic, avci, afsar & abubakar, 2018), through tpsycap. these findings may indicate that tpsycap might also mediate the relationship between lpsycap and team outcomes, given that leaders’ levels of psycap have been found to be antecedent to their authentic leadership behaviors (jensen & luthans, 2006). leader humility has also been shown to facilitate the development of collective tpsycap, which leads to higher team task allocation effectiveness and, thus, stronger performance (rego et al., 2017) hypothesis 3. lpsycap will be positively related to team ocb, performance, and innovation. hypothesis 4. tpsycap will mediate the relationship between lpsycap and team ocb, performance, and innovation. method sample principals and their senior leadership teams (slts) – including human resource managers, finance managers, information technology managers, assistant principals and curriculum leaders – were recruited through the private and public school systems in australia. recruitment occurred through email using lists provided by school governing bodies, and through advertising via professional team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 9 education associations. to be included, slts needed to consist of two or more members (excluding the principal), and have 60% or more of the team participating in the research (within-team participation rates averaged between 55% and 57% in the organizational literature; nesterkin & ganster, 2015). after excluding teams with inadequate participation rates, the sample size was 94 teams, comprising 456 team members reporting to 94 principals (total n = 550). table 1 summarizes the sample’s characteristics. table 11 sample characteristics average range sd slt members age (years) 46 24–64 10.01 tenure (years) 3 0–19 2.83 proportion female (%) 71 team members per slt 4.9 2–14 2.18 within-team participation rate (%) 85 60–100 0.15 principals age (years) 52 33–64 6.65 tenure (years) 5 0–19 4.03 proportion female (%) 52 frequency of principal-team meetings (% of teams) daily 10 biweekly 5 weekly 52 fortnightly 27 monthly 6 the study of psycap in schools is of critical importance given the twenty-first century school reform agenda and the centrality of school leadership to school performance and improvement (datnow & castellano, 2001; leithwood & sun, 2012). the school reform agenda has also created a marked shift towards team-based work structures in schools that now have more decision-making authority than ever before (cranston & ehrich, 2009). the team-based organizational re-structuring of schools dramatically heightens the importance of understanding the potential effects of a principals’ psycap on leadership teams’ psycap and related outcomes. recognizing the newly emerging importance and prevalence of slts in schools, several researchers have highlighted the importance of investigating factors that influence slt functioning (cranston & ehrich, 2005; wallace, 2001). as 1 sample characteristics are based on 94 teams comprised of 456 team members reporting to 94 principals. team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 10 such, the current study investigates the role of leader (principal) and team psycap in slt functioning. procedure participants were contacted via an email that explained the purpose of the study and contained a link to a secure online survey. principals completed survey measures soliciting self-ratings of psycap and ratings of performance, innovation, and ocb of slts. at the end of the survey, principals nominated the members of their slts to participate in the study by providing names and email addresses. an automatic email was then generated on behalf of the researchers and sent to slt members inviting them to complete measures of tpsycap. in total, 166 principals participated (participation % rate is unknown because the study was advertised). principals nominated a total of 796 team members, 556 of whom participated (70% participation rate). this study was approved by the university of melbourne’s human research ethics committee. participants were informed of the details of the study using a plain language statement and gave their written consent to participate. participants were free to withdraw at any time. once the data was matched (principal to school team), the data were de-identified for the purposes of analyses. data were stored electronically in a secure site. upon completion of the study, a final report was lodged with the university of melbourne’s human research ethics committee to confirm that all ethical procedures were adhered to. all procedures in this study were enacted according to the ethics approval granted by the university and complied with the national statement on ethical conduct in human research. measures measures completed by principals. leader psycap was measured with the 12-item psychological capital questionnaire (pcq-12; luthans, avolio & avey, 2007). the items were descriptive, first-person statements and asked principals to rate their own psycap. sample items include “i can think of many ways to reach my current work goals” (hope) and “i can get through difficult times at work because i’ve experienced difficulty before” (resilience). response anchors for this scale and all others were 1 (strongly disagree) and 6 (strongly agree). maximum score was 72. cronbach’s alpha was .81, showing strong reliability for this survey in the current sample. team performance was measured using a modified version of the 7-item scale by williams and anderson (1991). principals were asked to rate the degree to which members of their leadership team met the formal requirements of their jobs. the following is an example item from this scale: “members of this team adequately complete their assigned duties” (α = .88). team ocb was measured using a modified version of the 14-item scale by williams and anderson (1991). the scale was modified by shifting the referent from individual employees to the team as a whole. principals rated the degree to which members of their leadership team engaged in ocb. the following is an example item from this scale: “members of the leadership team help others who have heavy workloads” (α = .87). team innovation was measured using a 4-item, team-level scale developed by drach-zahavy and somech (2001). this scale is a version of the innovation scale by west and wallace (1991) that team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 11 has been modified for use with teachers. the scale asked principals to rate the degree to which members of their leadership team had initiated changes in each of four job areas: work objectives, 2) working methods, 3) teaching methods, and 4) development of skills. the following is an example item from this scale: “members of the leadership team initiate new procedures and methods” (α = .90). measures completed by slt members. team psychological capital was measured using the revised psychological capital questionnaire, which is designed to evaluate the team’s collective psycap (mathe-soulek et al., 2014). each participant rated their team’s psycap based on two items for each of the hero dimensions. this referent shift approach (chan, 1998) was also used by west et al. (2009) in their assessment of team efficacy, resilience, and optimism. the following is a sample item from this scale: “members of the leadership team think of many ways to reach work goals” (hope) (individual-level α = .86, team-level α = .92). levels of measurement klein and colleagues (klein, dansereau & hall, 1994; klein & kozlowski, 2000) have emphasized the importance of measuring a construct at the same level that it is conceptualized. in this study, there was one measure per team of lpsycap, tpsycap, team performance, team innovation, and team ocb. tpsycap was conceptualized at the team level but measured at the individual level (i.e., each team member rated the team’s psycap), and, thus, aggregation was required. to assess the appropriateness of aggregating individual scores to the team-level, three measures are generally used: icc(1), icc(2) and rwg (lebreton & senter, 2008). in this study, icc(1) was .22, f(93,362) = 2.36, p < .001, and average rwg was .91, justifying aggregation to the team level. icc(2) was .58, below the recommended value of .70 (klein & kozlowski, 2000). as low icc(2) values are likely to attenuate relationships observed at the group level (bliese, 1998), results presented using the aggregated measure of tpsycap should be interpreted as conservative. given the acceptable levels of icc(1) and rwg, and noting the potential for attenuation due to low icc(2), individual measures of tpsycap were aggregated to the team level. analytic procedures structural equation modelling (sem) using mplus 6.12 was used to test hypotheses. sem was chosen because it allows for simultaneous estimation of all regression coefficients, which provides the best balance between power and type i error rates, particularly for mediation analyses (mackinnon, lockwood, hoffman, west, & sheets, 2002). the 2-step approach by anderson and gerbing (1988) was applied by first examining the measurement model and subsequently assessing alternative structural models for evaluating hypothesized relationships. use of sem in this study necessitated the use of multi-item parcels to retain an acceptable sample-size-to-indicator ratio (bentler & chou, 1987). principal psycap and slt psycap were each divided into four parcels, aligned to the resources of hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism. performance was divided into three parcels (two parcels of two items and one parcel of three items), and ocb was divided into four parcels (two parcels of three items and two parcels of four items). team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 12 results descriptive statistics and preliminary data analysis table 2 provides the descriptive statistics for all scales. correlational analysis found that leader’s psycap was significantly related to team innovation and organizational citizenship behavior but unrelated to team performance and team psycap. the shared psycap of the team was significantly correlated with all three team outcomes. table 22 descriptive statistics and spearman rank-order correlations of scales scale mean sd 1 2 3 4 5 1. leader psycap 5.24 .47 (.81) 2. team psycap 4.97 .43 -.05 (.92) 3. team performance 5.34 .63 .15 .41*** (.88) 4. team innovation 5.16 .71 .39*** .36*** .56*** (.90) 5. team ocb 5.37 .51 027** .46*** .65*** .69*** (.87) model specification measurement model. the measurement model (cfa1) had generally acceptable fit to the data: χ2(142) = 204.02, p = <.001, χ2/df = 1.44, cfi = .94, rmsea = .07, srmr = .06. though rmsea, srmr, and χ2/df were within the acceptable range, cfi was below the generally accepted cutoff of .95 (kline, 2011). modification indices were examined to determine potential improvements to the model. results from the mplus output suggested two theoretically plausible modifications: addition of covariances between two of the performance-indicator parcels, and addition of covariances between two of the innovation indicators. a satorra-bentler (satorra & bentler, 2001) scaled chisquare difference test indicated that the modified model fit the data significantly better (td[2] = 17.45, p < .001), and all fit indices met the required cutoff criteria: χ2(140) = 180.727, p <.05, χ2/df = 1.29, cfi = .96, rmsea = .06, srmr = .06. the modified measurement model (cfa2) was therefore used to estimate the structural model. structural model. following anderson and gerbing’s (1988) recommendations, alternative structural models that were theoretically plausible were examined before testing hypotheses. the base model (m1) was the fully mediated model, in which tpsycap fully accounts for the associations between lpsycap and team outcomes. the base model was then re-specified as a partially mediated model (m2; see figure 1) by adding pathways between lpsycap and team performance, team innovation, and team ocb. a satorra-bentler scaled chi-square difference test (satorra & bentler, 2001) revealed that the fit of m2 was significantly better than was the fit of m1 (td[3] = 17.04, p < .001). the partially mediated model (m2) was therefore considered the superior model and was selected for hypothesis testing. the fit measures for all tested models are included in table 3. 2 correlations and internal reliabilities (cronbach’s α) are based on n = 94 teams. scale reliabilities appear on the diagonal in parentheses. **p < .01 (two-tailed test), ***p < .001 (two-tailed test). team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 13 table 33 model fit indices of measurement models and structural models model df χ² rmsea srmr cfi cfa1 142 204.02 .07 .06 .94 cfa2 140 180.73 .06 .06 .96 m1 143 201.22 .07 .11 .95 m2 140 180.73 .06 .06 .96 hypothesis testing sem results for m2 are displayed in figure 2: χ2(140) = 180.727, p = <.05, χ2/df = 1.29, cfi = .96, rmsea = .06, srmr = .06. results indicated a nonsignificant relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap (β = -.04, ns). thus, hypothesis one was not supported. the second hypothesis predicted that tpsycap would be related to team ocb, team performance, and team innovation. as shown in figure 2, tpsycap was significantly related to all three measures of team outcomes: team ocb (β = .50, p < .001), team performance (β = .50, p < .001), and team innovation (β = .37, p < .001). thus, hypothesis two was supported. figure 2 estimated path coefficients for the chosen structural model (m2)4 hypothesis three that lpsycap would be positively related to team ocb, team performance, team innovation and team ocb – was supported (see figure 2). lpsycap was significantly related to team 3 cfa1 and cfa2 are measurement models. m1 and m2 are structural models. 4 parameters are standardized mlm estimates. **p < .01 (two-tailed), ***p < .001 (two-tailed) team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 14 ocb (β = .45, p < .001), team performance (β= .25, p < .01), team innovation (β = .53, p < .001), and team ocb (β = .45, p < .001). the fourth hypothesis stated that tpsycap would mediate the relationship between lpsycap and team outcomes. however, this hypothesis could not be tested as it did not meet the requirements of mediation, owing to the fact that the independent variable (lpsycap) was not significantly related to the mediating variable (tpsycap) (preacher & hayes, 2004). assessment of potential covariates as a final step in the analysis, the impact of the covariates of leader gender, meeting frequency (coded as 1 = daily to 5 = monthly), and average team tenure on path coefficients was examined. fisher’s z-tests indicated that the size of the path coefficients did not significantly differ (all zs, ns) when controlling for the potential covariates, indicating that the model was not affected by these covariates. discussion the field of pob aims to build theory and research on positive aspects of individual, team, and organizational performance (turner, barling, & zacharatos, 2002). psycap has been a topic of considerable interest within this field (bakker & schaufeli, 2008; luthans, avolio, avey, & norman 2007), and while much has been published about the effects of psycap on individual employee performance and wellbeing (donaldson & ko, 2010), comparatively little is known about team-level psycap. the current study, thus, makes an important contribution to the field of pob by focusing on psycap as a team construct, and by using a mediated model to consider factors that might promote tpsycap (particularly lpsycap), as well as examining a range of team-level outcomes that might arise from tpsycap (i.e., performance, innovation, and ocb). the relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap in relation to our examination of factors that might promote tpsycap, we hypothesized that lpsycap would be a significant contributor. we based this hypothesis on past research showing a significant leader-to-follower psycap relationship (klein et al., 1994), and by using the theoretical explanations of modelling and contagion effects to lift this up to the team-level. however, in the current study, the leader-follower psycap relationship was not significant at the team level. this result is inconsistent with other studies showing that leadership more strongly affects team-level outcomes than individual-level outcomes. for example, researchers have shown that leadership more strongly affects collective efficacy than individual efficacy, and team performance more than individual performance (chen & bliese, 2002; degroot, kiker, & cross, 2000). it is worth noting that the nonsignificant relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap remained when controlling for leader gender, team tenure, and meeting frequency. moreover, although the low icc (2) of team-level psycap had the potential to attenuate relationships, the negligible path coefficient (β = -.01) suggested that non-significance was not due to attenuation. given the lack of prior research of tpsycap, we do not have strong evidence at the team level to support or contradict the current finding. however, it is worth considering if the results of this study may be methodologically driven due to the fact that we asked leaders to self-rate their team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 15 levels of psycap. we followed the precedent of prior studies of psycap who use leader self-ratings (e.g., walumbwa et al., 2010), but it is possible that the self-rated psycap of the principals did not accurately reflect the way their slts perceived that principal’s psycap. according to bandura (1986), it is the observers’ perceptions of stimuli that determine what will be modelled, as opposed to the model’s perceptions of him/herself. if the school principal’s self-rating were discordant with the way the team saw them, this may have weakened the statistical relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap. this idea warrants further attention, and future researchers may choose to have team members rate their leader’s psycap together with the leader conducting a self-rating. the relationship between tpsycap, lpsycap, and team outcomes turning our attention to the team-level outcomes of tpsycap, a significant relationship was found between tpsycap and performance, ocb, and innovation, suggesting that building up the shared efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience of work teams is an effective goal for organizations to pursue. the results of this study replicated the relationship between tpsycap with team performance and ocb found in samples of retailers (clapp-smith et al., 2009) and bankers (walumbwa et al., 2011), and in one other educational sample (heled et al., 2016). in the current schools, slts who had high levels of shared psycap had higher team outcomes. prior research has shown that the components of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism in a team lead to increased motivation to put effort into successfully accomplishing goals and tasks (avey, reichard et al., 2011) and this could be the underlying mechanism explaining the current finding. psycap may also increase team outcomes by impacting team processes, such as coordination, cooperation, cohesion, and conflict (west et al., 2009). now that the relationship has been identified between tpsycap and team outcomes, future researchers could turn their attention to exploring the underlying mechanisms. in addition to team outcomes being predicted by tpsycap, the current study also found that team outcomes were directly positively associated with lpsycap. in thinking about what sits underneath this relationship, we speculate that leaders with high hope and resilience may assist their teams to navigate roadblocks and bounce back from setbacks, thus contributing to team outcomes. moreover, the increased confidence of optimistic and self-efficacious leaders in their teams’ abilities to implement innovative change and achieve performance targets may influence their teams to act accordingly. finally, given the positive relationship between individual psycap and ocb (avey, reichard et al., 2011), and the finding that followers tend to enact behaviors that their leaders emphasize (schneider, ehrhart, mayer, saltz & niles-jolly, 2005), leaders with higher psycap may engage in and model increased ocb. as such, leaders with high psycap may facilitate improved team performance, innovation, and ocb independently of an effect on tpsycap. contrary to our prediction in hypothesis four, tpsycap did not mediate the relationship between lpsycap and team outcomes. this is because, as outlined above, there was no direct relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap. the current finding suggests that organisations seeking to build tpsycap need to be cautious in over-relying on the leader to cultivate tpsycap, and instead might be wiser to explore other channels of cultivating tpsycap, such as tpsycap training and interventions (luthans, avey, avolio, norman, & combs, 2006; luthans et al., 2008; williams et al., 2016). team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 16 practical implications, study limitations and future research to date, workplace psycap interventions have been tailored at the individual level (see luthans, avey, & patera, 2008; williams et al., 2016), but the current findings open up an interesting pathway for the design of team-level interventions that foster a shared perception of tpsycap. these interventions would be designed to encourage common mental models across group members about the team’s level of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. two such interventions might include a reflected ‘best team’ appreciative inquiry exercise, and a ‘hero heroes’ exercise. the design of a reflected ‘best team’ intervention could adapt the reflected best self-exercise (morgan roberts, dutton, spreitzer, heaphy, & quinn, 2005) to the team level, and use the appreciative inquiry (ai) principles of collaboration and inquiry (cooperrider, 2012) to invite team members to reflect on a time when the team was at its best. following the ai method, these reflections would be used to determine the positive core of the team, which could be analyzed for evidence of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. research has shown that reflection on past team performance shapes a sense of collective self-efficacy (riggs & knight, 1994; watson et al., 2001). moreover, ludema, wilmot, and srivasta (1997) recommend that when organizations create opportunities for reflection and dialogue to affirm the best (and most promising) aspects of the workplace, this creates “organizational hope” (p. 1015). their suggestion for “textured vocabularies of hope” (p.1016) can be explicitly woven into the reflected ‘best team’ intervention which is designed to bolster shared mental models of tpsycap. the design of a ‘hero heroes’ exercise would ask team members to identify and observe other work teams they have identified as being high on hero (hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism) in other words, their tpsycap heroes. this idea for an intervention is based on the research into vicarious experiences, and what happens when we observe and copy people whose thoughts, emotions, and actions are those we seek to develop. bandura (1986) theorized that vicarious experience is a powerful influence on efficacy development. at the group level, winett, leckliter, and chinn (1985) found a significant relationship between group modeling and group effectiveness. similarly, the ‘vicarious experience’ group of participants in prussia and kinicki’s (1996) study who watched a video of a high-quality team engaging in brainstorming, reported a significant positive link between this vicarious experience and their sense of collective self-efficacy with their teams. in nursing, mcallistar and mckinnon (2009) suggest that nurses develop resilience through observing their colleagues and, as such, hospitals and teaching universities need to create opportunities for resilience development through internships, work integrated learning, and other work experiences. the evidence outlined above can be used to suggest that an intervention which encourages teams to identify and observe other teams who are high on hero may be an effective way to boost their own tpsycap. when considering the design of the interventions above, platforming off the current results, the limitations of this study must be recognized. for example, the lack of relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap may be specific to schools, and this raises one of the limitations of the current study. it may be that leaders in other industries or work settings have a stronger impact on tpsycap if the teams operate more closely in the way tasks are completed and/or the physical proximity in which they work. school leadership teams are typically situated in separate offices (sometimes in different areas of the school), and don’t have the same degree of daily task interdependence as other team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 17 industries such as manufacturing or retail. as such, the conclusions drawn above could be considered as sector-specific, and we must be careful not to over-generalize. additionally, the fact that this study was conducted in australia may make the results ungeneralizable to school systems in other countries and, especially, school leadership teams in non-western societies. the caution not to over-generalize also applies to several methodological limitations that must be kept in mind when considering the findings of the current study. the study is correlational, and as such, causal inferences cannot be drawn from the results. further, there is a risk of commonsource bias for lpsycap and ratings of team outcomes (podsakoff, mackenzie, & podsakoff, 2012) as they were both rated by the school principals. it is possible that those principals with high psycap themselves may have provided upwardly-biased ratings of the teams, on account of their own high levels of optimism and efficacy. indeed, it has been proposed that both optimism and positive affect are associated with attentional bias for positively valenced stimuli (bower, 1994; segerstrom, 2001). future researchers are encouraged to re-test these relationships using different sources of lpsycap and team outcomes in order to reduce the effects of common source bias (podsakoff, mackenzie, lee, & podsakoff, 2003). future researchers might also consider potential moderating factors of the relationship between lpsycap and tpsycap, such as the leader’s personality and years in leadership, the levels of agency and autonomy granted to the school leader and leadership team by the district board, as well as the school’s type (public/private; primary/secondary) and socioeconomic status. a strength of this study lies in the multi-source design used where teams rated their own tpsycap independently of the ratings of team performance. another strength lies in the large sample size compared to previous tpsycap studies (n = 94 teams, n = 550 team members), the use of psychometrically valid measures, and the extension from prior industries studied into the education sector. to date, the effects of leaders’ psycap have been tested in samples such as engineers, policeman, and senior business people (avey, avolio & luthans, 2011; avey et al., 2012; walumbwa et al., 2010). conclusion the current study was interested in exploring psycap at the team level and investigating whether tpsycap predicts team outcomes. this referent shift provides an evolution of the psycap literature, which has predominantly focused on psycap within individuals. situated within the pos and pob fields, the current study suggest that tpsycap is an important team-level resource at work. more particularly, the study indicates that school leadership teams benefit when they build up shared hero (hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism). we encourage ongoing research into the antecedents and outcomes of team-level psycap across multiple sectors. authors lea waters centre for positive psychology university of melbourne l.waters@unimelb.edu.au gabriel strauss team psychological capital waters, strauss, somech, haslam & dussert 18 university of melbourne strauss@gmail.com anit somech educational and leadership policy unit university of haifa anits@edu.haifa.ac.il nick haslam school of psychological sciences university of melbourne hhaslam@unimelb.edu.au denise dussert university of melbourne d.dussert77@gmail.com publishing timeline received 30 may 2019 accepted 30 november 2019 published 1 february 2020 references abbas, m., raja, u., darr, w., & bouckenooghe, d. 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(1995). collective efficacy. in j. e. maddux (ed.), selfefficacy, adaptation, and adjustment: theory, research, and application(pp. 305-328). new york, ny: plenum press. sinclair, e., hart, r., & lomas, t. (2020). can positivity be counterproductive when suffering domestic abuse?: a narrative review. international journal of wellbeing, 10(1), 26-53. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i1.754 rona hart university of east london r.hart@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) 26 can positivity be counterproductive when suffering domestic abuse?: a narrative review ellen sinclair · rona hart · tim lomas abstract: positive psychology has been criticized for making people feel pressured to remain positive irrespective of circumstances. this narrative review specifically investigates the relationship between positive attitudes and denial in the context of domestic abuse, in order to examine whether there is research evidence to support the critique on the adverse upshots of positivity. the search yielded 29 studies. overall the literature suggests that misdirected or overgeneralized positivity exacerbates harm and abuse: an optimistic bias can put victims in danger; empathy, hope, acceptance and resilience are associated with refraining to leave abusive relationships; and forgiveness increases the likelihood of further transgressions. we therefore argue that scholars and practitioners need demonstrate care in promoting positivity, since it can be detrimental within a toxic context. keywords: domestic abuse, positivity, denial, narrative review introduction can a positive outlook promote denial or inaction in the context of hardship or abuse? the objective of this narrative review is to explore the empirical literature and inquire whether there is research evidence to suggest a that a positive outlook may lead to denial or inaction in the context of domestic abuse (da). this review therefore asks whether a positive outlook (defined as encompassing constructs such as optimism, hope, gratitude, forgiveness, resilience, self-regulation, acceptance or empathy) can impede individuals from determining whether they are experiencing da, and if this diminishes victims’ capacity to engage appropriate coping strategies, or impacts their tendency to remain or leave the abusive relationship. this will raise a wider question about the risks entailed in unconditional positive orientation when it occurs within the context of hardship or abuse. the risks of positivity the positivity movement, advanced by the self-help industry since the early 20th century, has been growing in popularity. these ideas became an area of academic interest in the late nineties with the emergence of positive psychology (pp) (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). one of the cornerstones of the positivity movement, which is well established in pp, is that psychological wellbeing is largely within an individual’s control. lyubomirsky (2001, 2013) suggests that happiness (subjective wellbeing) is on average only ten percent dependent on external article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 27 circumstances, with a much larger percentage within one’s own power to change by altering their thinking and behavioral patterns. these ideas are attractive since they empower people to create their best possible experience of life. however, they also place pressure on individuals by implying that they are responsible for their own happiness; if their experience of life depends on their perception of the situation they are in, rather than an outcome of particular circumstances, it follows that if they are not happy, then the responsibility or ‘blame’ lies with them. bohart and greening (2001) warn against the misuse of pp ‘to blame the victim for not having the proper optimistic attitude to achieve self-improvement in the face of massive social oppression’ (p. 81). coyne and tennen (2010) voice a concern about the pressure that is generated when the media broadcasts farfetched claims about the power of positivity (such as its impact on illness recovery or longevity), which could be particularly harmful in the context of terminal illness (coyne, tennen & ranchor, 2010). likewise, held (2002) describes the pressure to be positive or happy as a distinctive cultural feature in north america. in acknowledging the influence of culture, she labels it as the ‘tyranny of positivity’. she also observes that the pressure to be happy and optimistic under challenging circumstances can in effect diminish happiness. it can also drive people to ignore or deny negative emotions such as sadness or anger therefore hampering their capacity to evaluate life circumstances realistically (held, 2001). while we refrain from this type of hard-edged judgement, we would concur with the view that there are certainly pressures towards being positive in many western societies (and beyond), and that these have the potential to place burdens on people in the ways outlined above. however, this critique of positive psychology is rarely backed by research evidence that can demonstrate the dangers of positivity in particular circumstances. this narrative review aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the correlation between a positive attitude and denial or inaction in the context of relational hardship, specifically da. the context: domestic abuse close relationships are one of the most significant factors that affect wellbeing, and the happiest people are those in close loving relationships (diener & seligman, 2002). good relationships correlate with mental health as well as physical health (holt-lunstad & smith, 2012). understanding this connection and identifying ways to enable relationships to be at their most fulfilling has been a growing area of interest within pp, with studies showing that couples who increase their gratitude (mikulincer, shaver & slav, 2006), forgiveness (fincham, 2015) or hope (lavy & littman-ovadia, 2011) find that it benefits their relationship, and their wellbeing improves as a result. this theory is appealing to those who find themselves in unsatisfactory relationships since it offers the promise that improvement is within their own power. domestic abuse (da) is defined by the uk government as: “any incident of controlling, coercive, threatening behavior, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. this can encompass, but is not limited to the following types of abuse: psychological, physical, sexual, financial, emotional. controlling behavior is a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploring their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 28 regulating their everyday behavior. coercive behavior is an act or pattern of acts of assaults, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish or frighten their victim.” (strickland & allan, 2017: p. 4) da affects 26.3% of women in england and wales (strickland & allan, 2017) and a third of all women worldwide (women un, 2014). women are more likely than men to experience da, though it affects those from all genders, races, religious backgrounds and social classes (strickland & allan, 2017). however, the extent of the problem remains largely unacknowledged by society, as it is a crime that takes place behind closed doors and is therefore easy to ignore. often victims themselves will not recognize that they are experiencing abuse, and may downplay the seriousness of their situation (walker, 2016). abuse often starts with psychological manipulation which can be subtle, but tends to escalate over time (natarajan, 2017) both in severity and frequency, and in some cases results in murder: two women are killed by their intimate partner every week in the uk (ons, 2016). the danger of death is higher still, since one in four victims of da attempts suicide (sansone, chu, & wiederman, 2007). an abusive relationship is not consciously accepted by victims, however they may become accustomed to the escalating abuse, and therefore view their situation as normal. this can be explained by the hedonic adaptation theory (diener, lucas & napa-scollon, 2009) which is a mechanism that reduces the emotional impact of events that happen habitually. the frog in boiling water parable is also relevant here – if a live frog is dropped into a pan of boiling water, it would immediately jump out. however, if the frog is put into a pan of cool water which is gradually brought to the boil, the frog will stay in the water and be boiled to death. psychological abuse is difficult to identify as it does not leave marks in the way physical abuse does. abusers often deny their actions, insinuating that the victim imagined the abuse. this is known as ‘gaslighting’ (dorpat, 2006) and is particularly toxic as it makes victims doubt their own perceptions. consequently, after unknowingly enduring da, many victims suffer its symptoms without recognizing the cause. these symptoms include low mood, low energy, poor self-image, self-worth or confidence, and inability to think clearly (dillon, hussain, loxton, & rahman, 2013; devries, et al., 2013; lagdon, armour, & stringer, 2014). these symptoms can be easily misdiagnosed as mental illness, including anxiety (dutton & painter, 1993), depression (chang, kahle & hirsch, 2015; chang, kahle, yu & hirsch, 2014; o’leary, 1999; sackett & saunders, 1999) and posttraumatic stress disorder (enns, campbell & courtois, 1997.; woods, 2000; pimlott-kubiak & cortina, 2003), and hence victims of da are often prescribed anti-depressants as treatment. however, this does not solve the root problem and only leads to a more compliant victim. da was brought to the public attention by the feminist movement in the 1970’s (wendt, 2016). it centers on power imbalance causing some people to feel entitled to treat others who are less powerful than themselves disrespectfully and at times unlawfully. gender differences in physical strength and economic advantage impact power dynamics. the fact that da has been an ongoing problem throughout history suggests that gender inequality, the balance of power, and society’s continued tolerance of this crime, has yet to be redressed. positive psychology interventions and domestic abuse positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 29 pp proposes that one’s psychological wellbeing is largely within their own control (lyubomirsky, 2013). a victim of da who buys into this belief may choose to treat their symptoms by adopting positive psychology interventions (ppis) in an attempt to elevate their wellbeing (fredrickson, 2001, 2009). many ppis can be used as mood boosting strategies even in clinical populations (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009; ruini, 2017; layous, chancellor & lyubomirsky, 2014). these interventions promise to benefit optimal wellbeing by retraining the mind into more positive habits. for example, gratitude, forgiveness, benefit finding and acts of kindness interventions (emmons, 2007; mccullough & van oyen witvliet, 2002; affleck & tennen, 1996; otake, shimai, tanaka-matsumi, otsui & fredrickson, 2006) can be particularly appealing for people who find themselves in difficult relationships. however, for da victims, thinking themselves happy, is similar to taking antidepressants – it does not solve the problem of their toxic relationship, which can only be resolved by employing solution-focused strategies (lazarus, 2003) to end the abuse. the abusers themselves can end the abuse by changing their attitude and behavior significantly, but sadly the likelihood of such behavior change is statistically very low (day, chung, o’leary & carson, 2009). failing to acknowledge and address the actual problem, and treating the symptoms, whether through medication or ppis, only serves to pacify the victim who will then go on to suffer further cycles of escalating abuse. mcnulty (2010a) discovered that positive processes – such as positive expectations, attributions and behaviors, which are beneficial in healthy relationships, can be damaging in troubled relationships. for example, a spouse is disappointed when a disagreeable partner fails to live up to positive expectations, therefore it is more beneficial for wellbeing to expect disagreeable behavior and avoid disappointment. this follows the logic of defensive pessimism (norem & chang, 2002) which involves mental preparation for challenging situations. mcnulty and fincham (2012) however demonstrated the importance of context for the success of ppis: in their research on positive attitudes and wellbeing among newly married couples, they found that forgiveness promoted wellbeing in healthy relationships, but it was detrimental in unhealthy relationships. strikingly, the study demonstrated that positivity increased the likelihood of the abuse reoccurring, as the abuser interprets the victim’s forgiveness as tacit permission for continued abuse. these findings suggest that positivity may in effect aggravate da. held (2002) voices concern that positivity can promote self-deception by creating a pleasant illusion of oneself and one’s reality, and warns that this bubble can be burst by external events. indeed, optimism has a dark side which berlant (2011) describes as cruel because it can prompt people to endure violence and despair by providing the illusion of imminent improvement. peterson (2000) argues that optimism can obscure reality therefore it is not always appropriate, and can backfire when the situation is not in one’s control. the optimistic bias (sharot, 2011) is a universally observed cognitive bias that prompts individuals to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes and underestimate the possibility of experiencing adverse events. this happens in spite of provision of information detailing risk statistics (sharot, korn & dolan, 2011). this bias is understandable as it would be unhelpful to live in constant fear. applying the principle of optimistic bias within the context of intimate relationships would mean favoring the belief that relationships are healthy and fulfilling, while ignoring the risk that they could be toxic or dangerous. realism in place of unrealistic optimism, would enable a clearer positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 30 assessment of a relationship’s status as healthy or unhealthy, however this only seems possible at the cost of trust. intimate relationships require a degree of trust, and suspicion does not foster closeness (murray et al., 2013). impulsive trust is a cognitive bias (norris & zweigenhaft, 1999) which induces blind faith in a relationship’s merit, as the alternative is not appealing to contemplate. this can explain why da victims may display trust that their abusers have good intentions. the trust a victim has towards their abuser is further illustrated by the phenomenon of stockholm syndrome (cantor & price, 2007) where a traumatized person develops a strong bond with their abuser. this happens when the abuser occasionally shows apparent compassion, e.g. a kidnapper giving their prisoner food. in contrast to the cruelty, any gesture of kindness is amplified and received with excessive gratitude. stockholm syndrome is interpreted as a coping mechanism (speckhard et al., 2005) that enables a victim to survive their ordeal, although to an outsider this gratitude appears misplaced. da tends to occur in a repeating cycle (walker, 2016): abuse – reconciliation – calm – tension building – abuse. in the periods of reconciliation and calm a victim often has positive feelings towards their abuser. the stockholm syndrome and the cycle of abuse help explain why da victims often appear content with their situation because they are grateful for the intermittent good times. gratitude and forgiveness are generally beneficial in close relationships (lambert & fincham, 2011), but the caveat is that they are healthy relationships (mcnulty & fincham, 2012). however, as it is difficult for a da victim to discern the reality of their situation, they may attempt to improve their relationship by being more grateful, optimistic, empathetic and forgiving. sadly, rather than facilitating positive change, this effort may fuel denial of their emotions, as well as denial of the da and prolong their exposure to abuse. the current study this review aims to raise awareness of da within the discipline of pp, demonstrating the need for ethical consideration when advocating ppis to the general public, as this will likely include individuals unwittingly suffering from da. pp currently views da as a ‘clinical’ concern which belongs in the domain of clinical psychology. however, due to its prevalence, da is not merely a minority issue. furthermore, as da victims are often unconscious of their reality, they may be attracted to ppis which promise to improve wellbeing and relationship satisfaction. particularly alluring are ppis employing gratitude, acceptance, optimism, hope, empathy and forgiveness which can cause inadvertent harm in the context of da. such ppis could be considered avoidant coping in this context as they fail to acknowledge and address the problem itself. furthermore, if symptoms of da are mistaken for mental dysfunction for which the victim is treated, this not only fails to tackle the problem itself but it wrongly places the ‘blame’ on the victim. although da is an important issue, there is little literature on the subject within pp. therefore, this study aims to raise awareness of the specific problems faced by da victims who may employ a variety of coping mechanisms which fall under the umbrella of positivity, and demonstrate that it is imperative that ppis are not used without applying ethical considerations of the context in which they are applied. the research question posed is: can positivity be counterproductive when suffering da? this question can be extrapolated to further circumstances positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 31 of adversity, inequality or exploitation where positivity may also be disadvantageous. this question was explored by means of a narrative review, as the next section elucidates. method narrative reviews over recent years, narrative reviews have become an increasingly popular tool for exploring and summarizing the literature on a given topic. in that respect, it is seen as having strengths that a more conventional systematic review lacks (and vice versa): for instance, whereas the latter by nature have more formalized and clearly-delineated search parameters, they may be less suited to tracking ‘the development of a scientific principle or clinical concept,’ with a risk that the ‘narrative thread could be lost in the restrictive rules’ mandated by such a review (ferrari, 2015, p.230). in such instances, a narrative review may be more appropriate, as this affords more flexibility and freedom in appraising a given body of literature, while still maintaining the commitment to methodological comprehensiveness and analytical rigor that makes systematic reviews so valuable. indeed, narrative reviews have already been used successfully in the context of analyzing da, with ali and naylor (2013) exploring feminist, social, and ecological explanations for its causation. similarly, in the present case, although a systematic review was initially considered as an approach, ultimately a narrative review was deemed more appropriate. this meant for example that although the search was conducted by using a pre-defined set of keywords, the researchers had latitude in how they assessed the nature of the paper (e.g., in terms of whether it did indeed focus on da and positivity), and hence whether it was included in the analysis, and in what way it was interpreted and analyzed. search strategy the aim of this review was to find studies that indicate a correlation between ‘positivity’ and ‘denial of da’. for this purpose, a literature search was conducted using three electronic databases: psychinfo, social care online and science direct. these were selected because they span a variety of academic disciplines including psychology and social work. the search took place in 2018 and was updated in april 2019. data items positivity in the context of this review ‘positivity’ was defined as the presence of an attitude or outlook which is generally considered to be beneficial in promoting wellbeing and improving interpersonal relationships: such as optimism, hope, acceptance, forgiveness, resilience, self-regulation, gratitude and empathy. denial of da the phenomenon of ‘denial of da’ is defined for the purpose of this review as failing to properly acknowledge or address a real risk of da in terms of the absence of suitable problem-solving action. ‘denial’ represents the criticism of positivity for creating a false reality based on over-optimism or self-deception (held, 2002; jopling, 1996). the review judged studies as demonstrating this phenomenon if they showed the presence of an unrealistic risk assessment regarding da and/or failing to take appropriate action to address da in one’s own personal life – particularly when this positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 32 was despite provision of evidence to suggest a significant risk, or despite witnessing or withstanding behaviors considered to be unhealthy within the context of an intimate relationship. as da follows the pattern of escalating over time, smaller acts of aggression are precursors to da. the phenomenon of ‘domestic abuse’ follows the home office definition (strickland & allan, 2017: p. 4) which outlines in detail the context and behaviors which legally constitute da. keywords the keywords chosen for the literature search were: ‘domestic abuse’; ‘domestic violence’; ‘intimate partner violence’; ‘spousal abuse’; ‘psychological abuse’; and ‘emotional abuse’. the keywords representing ‘positivity’ were selected because of their association with wellbeing as well as the belief that such attitudes improve interpersonal relationships. these were: ‘optimism’; ‘hope’; ‘acceptance’; ‘forgiveness’; ‘resilience’; ‘self regulation’; ‘gratitude’; and ‘empathy’. eligibility criteria this review considered studies using a broad range of participants who were required to be above the age of 13 (participants above this age were judged to be sufficiently mature to consider the risk of da). participants could be of any gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race or social class. the study was particularly interested in participants who were da victims or survivors. to clarify, ‘victims’ of da refers to a person who is experiencing da. other participants of interest were couples, as this review recognized the potential for da in relationships where aggressive behavior was observed. other participants of interest were individuals contemplating their risk of experiencing da. study selection and data collection the search systematically worked through each of the combination of keywords, in order to find quantitative studies which used a correlational research designs (reporting on correlations between variables or regression analyses). all other types of research designs were excluded from the review. each of the eligible papers was read carefully and its data was extracted and entered into a table (see table 1 next page) which included: details of the participants sampled in the study; the measures used to collect the data; and a summary of the findings. positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 33 table 1 the correlates of positivity and denial in da in the literature paper participants measures results chapin & coleman (2009) n = 378 hospital staff attending da training usa. average age 32, 85% female, 97% white. optimistic bias (weinstein 1980) experience with da (carlson & worden, 2005) attitude towards da (carlson & worden, 2005) prior knowledge on da (developed for study) prevalence of da in community (participants’ estimation) staff perceived that they were less at risk than others in their age group of becoming victims of da despite training on the prevalence of da. chapin & coleman (2012) n =601 american teenagers aged 1316, 54% female, 85% white. optimistic bias (weinstein 1980) self-esteem (rosenberg, 1979) experience of da (carlson & worden, 2005) prior knowledge on da (developed for study) media influence on others are on oneself (developed for study) teenagers demonstrated a optimistic bias, believing they were less likely than others to become victims of violence by partner, despite some reporting first-hand experience with violence. chapin & coleman (2014) n =176 american teenagers aged 1315, 52% female, 95% white. optimistic bias (weinstein 1980) health belief model (developed for study) perceived media reality measures the perceived realism of tv shows on da (developed for study) teenagers demonstrated a believe that they are less likely than others to become victims of family violence. optimistic bias increased both as perceived severity of violence increased, and as perceived media reality increased. chang et al., (2014) n = 101 adults (28% male) usa mean age of 42. 93% of participants were white. domestic abuse: hits scale (sherin et al, 1998). forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others scales (mauger et al., 1992) suicide behaviors questionnaire–revised (sbq-r) (osman et al., 2001) 33.3% reported experiencing domestic abuse at a fairly frequent rate, and 32.4% reported suicidal thoughts or behaviors at a high frequency. da was associated with suicide behavior. forgiveness of self and of others were significantly and negatively associated with suicide behavior. chang et al., (2018) n= 101 adults (29 males, 72 females) from primary care clinic in southeast united states hits a four-item self-report measure that assesses frequency of partner abuse (developed for study) hope scale (snyder et al., 1991) hope is not always a protective factor against suicidal behaviors for da victims. specific analyses indicated that having more hope may increase risk for suicidal behaviors when an positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 34 suicidal behaviors questionnaire–revised (osman et al., 2001) individual has experienced greater amounts of da. faramarzi et al., (2005) n = 274 iranian women, married, aged 20+, 17.9% pregnant. abuse assessment screening form (developed for study) abuse definition form (developed for study) abuse attitude form (developed for study) women with positive attitude to male dominance accepted physical and emotional abuse from their partner more readily than those with a negative attitude toward it. the strongest predictor of physical abuse was the women’s attitude to male dominance. fincham & beach (2002) – study 1 n = 88, 44 british couples in the first year of marriage. husbands average age 30 and wives 28. specific aggression scale (o’leary & curly, 1986) marital adjustment test (locke & wallace, 1959) positive and negative dimensions of forgiveness positive action tendency (forgiving partner) and negative tendency (retaliating) (developed for study) husbands reported greater psychological aggression towards a non-retaliating. forgiveness has neither purely a positive nor negative impact in relationships, it can be either. psychological aggression was found to decrease wellbeing. fincham & beach (2002) – study 2 n =132, 66 british couples. husbands average age 32 and wives 30. specific aggression scale (o’leary & curly, 1986) marital adjustment test (locke & wallace, 1959) communication patterns questionnaire (futris et al., 2010) forgiveness (developed for study) actively forgiving was related to constructive discussion of marital problems. not retaliating) predicted reports of further psychological aggression. gilbert & gordon (2017) n = 121 usa women in 9 da shelters. average age 34, 82% white. conflict tactics scale (straus, 1979) silencing the self scale (jack, 1991) acts of forgiveness scale (drinnon, 2001) commitment inventory (stanley & markman, 1992) denial of injury was positively correlated with commitment, as well as with levels of forgiveness. the higher a woman’s commitment, the more likely she would deny the severity of her injury, which makes her more likely to forgive her partner. gordon et al. (2004) n = 121 women in da shelters. average age 34. 56% married to/in committed commitment inventory (stanley & markman, 1992) conflict tactics scale (straus, 1979) women who are more forgiving of their partner (less ruminative about the abuse, less resentful / bitter) are more likely to report intending to return to them. positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 35 relationship with/still seeing perpetrator. acts of forgiveness scale (drinnon, 2001) domestic violence attributions (developed for study) the intent to return questionnaire (developed for study) katerndahl et al. (2015) n = 200 women with history of physical da. religious coping: cope (carver et al., 1989) bioipsychosociospiritual inventory (katerndahl & oyiriaru, 2007) health care utilization form (katerndahl & reulini, 1997) herth hope scale (1992) appraisal dimension scale (vitaliano, 1985) duke social support and stress scale (duke, 1986) use of spiritual resources had variable effect on da victims, however religious coping was associated with refraining from leaving the relationship. lahav et al. (2019) n = 520 male combat veterans and 171 of their female spouses, average age 51 8-year longitudinal study conflict tactics scale (straus, 1979) family forgiveness scale (pollard et al., 1998) forgiveness was a protective factor among spouses experiencing low level abuse, but its effect was nonsignificant among those who suffered higher levels of abuse. luchies et al., (2010a, 2010b) study 1 n = 144, 72 usa couples in first 6 months of marriage. 5-year longitudinal study transgression narrative test of forgivingness (berry et al., 2001) agreeableness (goldberg, 1999) rosenberg self-esteem scale (1965a) for individuals scoring high on forgiveness whose spouse was low in agreeableness, greater forgiveness predicted their diminished selfrespect. luchies et al. (2010a, 2010b) study 2 n = 49 usa undergraduates. average age 20, 55% women, 61% white. forgiveness manipulation (karremans et al., 2003) self-respect and self-concept clarity (developed for study). forgiving without receiving amends caused significantly diminished selfconcept clarity. luchies et al. (2010a, 2010b) study 3 n = 247 usa undergraduates. average age 19, 57% women, 61% white. hypothetical betrayal (boon & sulsky, 1997) selfrespect and self-concept clarity (developed for study) anticipated self-respect and selfconcept clarity following forgiveness of a perpetrator depended on them making amends. positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 36 luchies et al. (2010a, 2010b) study 4 n = 58 usa undergraduates. average age 18, 55% women, 76% white. dating for average 13 months. 6-month study, biweekly yes/no questionnaire developed for study measuring: self-respect and self-concept clarity partner transgressions betrayal distress forgiveness amends forgiving a partner who made weak amends for a highly distressing betrayal was associated with diminished self-respect and selfconcept clarity. martin et al. (2000) n = 70, women in da shelter. average age 27, 77% black. in relationship with batterer for average 5 years. participants asked to assess likelihood that most battered women return to the batterer at some point, as well as rating the likelihood of themselves returning to their batterer nearly all the battered women perceived the possibility they would return to the batter as unlikely, but perceived most battered women as being at a greater risk mason & pulvirenti (2013) n = 18 representatives from refugee support services qualitative study, interviews on the topic of resilience among refugees experiencing da communities ‘paper over’ the issue of da in an act of collective resilience in order to save face. this prevents individuals from seeking support outside their community. mcnulty (2008) n = 142, 72 newlywed couples. husbands average age 30, with average 14 years of education. wives average age 24, with average 15 years of education. 2-year longitudinal study. quality marriage index (norton, 1983) transgression narrative test of forgivingness (berry et al., 2001) conflict tactics survey (straus, 1979) spouses with partners who rarely behaved negatively tended to remain more satisfied over time if they were more forgiving, but spouses with partners who frequently behaved negatively experienced steeper declines in satisfaction when they were more forgiving. mcnulty (2010b) n = 170, 135 newlywed couples. husbands average age 26, with 16 years of education. wives average age 24 with 18 years of education. 91% white. 7-day diary study. measurements devised for study: negative behavior selfassessment. forgiveness. partner transgression severity. forgiving a partner’s negative behavior once was associated with an increased probability that the partner would repeat the negative behavior. positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 37 mcnulty (2011) n = 144, 72 newlywed usa couples. husbands average age 25 with 14 years of education, 93% white. wives average age 24 with 15 years of education, 96% white. 4-year longitudinal study. transgression narrative test of forgivingness (berry et al., 2001) conflict tactics scale (straus, 1979) quality marriage index (norton, 1983) partners of forgiving spouses reported perpetrating acts of physical and psychological aggression against their partners which remained stable during 4 years of marriage. partners of less forgiving spouses reported decrease in acts of physical and psychological aggression over 4 years. mcnulty & russell (2016) – study 1 n = 382 usa dating individuals. average age 31, 52% women, current relationship average 6 years. tendency to forgive scale (brown, 2003) agreeableness (goldberg, 1999) quality marriage index (norton, 1983) participants wrote about a behavior which ‘upsets or even hurts’ their partner and provided numerical estimate of times they would ‘engage in this behavior over next month.’ partner forgiveness led to a reduction of subsequent offending among more agreeable people but increased subsequent offending among less agreeable people. forgiving a less agreeable partner was detrimental to the relationship. mcnulty & russell (2016) – study 2 n = 88, 44 couples dating for average 12 months. men average age 19, women average age 18. 91% white. agreeableness (goldberg, 1999) forgiveness manipulation (fazio et al., 1995) in which the words ‘forgive’ and ‘grudge’ appeared. relatively disagreeable people increase transgressions against a partner they perceive as forgiving, but decrease transgressions against a partner who was less forgiving. mcnulty & russell (2016) – study 3 n = 270, 135 usa newlywed couples. husbands average age 26 with average 16 years of education. wives average age 24 with average 16 years of education. 92% white. 4-year longitudinal study. agreeableness (goldberg, 1999) transgression narrative test of forgivingness (berry et al., 2001) conflict tactics scale (straus, 1979) narcissistic personality inventory (raskin & terry, 1988) compassionate love scale (sprecher & fehr, 2005) the success of a spouse’s forgiveness depends on their partner’s levels of agreeableness. agreeable partners corrected their negative behavior when forgiven but disagreeable partners did not. positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 38 mcnulty & russell (2016) – study 4 n= 140, 70 newlywed couples husbands average age 33; 55% with bachelor’s degree, 28% with graduate degree. wives average age 31; 69% bachelor’s degree, and 29% graduate degree. 74.4% white. agreeableness (goldberg, 1999) transgressions (developed for study) anger of partner (developed for study) motivation to refrain from transgressions (developed for study) commitment (rusbult et al., 1998) relatively agreeable partners perpetrated fewer transgressions against more forgiving spouses, whereas relatively disagreeable partners perpetrated more transgressions against more forgiving spouses. meadows et al. (2005) n = 200 black usa women aged 18–59 who had experienced physical or nonphysical da. 2 groups: (1) women who presented to the hospital following nonfatal suicide attempt (attempters, n = 100) (2) women with no history of suicidal behavior (controls, n = 100) suicide attempt status (meadows et al., 2005) herth hope index (1992) spiritual well-being scale (paloutzian & ellison, 1982) self-efficacy scale for battered women (varvaro & palmer, 1993) preliminary strategic approach to coping scale (hobfoll et al., 1994) social support behaviors scale (vaux et al., 1987) effectiveness of obtaining resources scale (sullivan et al., 1992) seven protective factors against suicide attempts are positively related to one another; hope, spiritual wellbeing, self-efficacy, coping, social support from family members, social support from friends, effectiveness of obtaining resources. da victims with high levels of these seven protective factors were less likely to attempt suicide. neff & geers (2013) n = 122, 61 couples. husbands average age 26 with average 16 years of education. wives average age 24 with 16 years of education. 64% christian, 85% white. 1-year longitudinal study quality of marriage index (norton, 1983) marital problems inventory (geiss & o’leary, 1981) life orientation test (scheier & carver, 1985) rosenberg self-esteem scale (1965a) eysenck personality questionnaire (1978) dispositional optimism is more adaptive for marital wellbeing than relationship-focused optimism which appeared to be detrimental to the relationship. spouses who deny or resist relationship conflicts also miss the opportunity for those conflicts to bring about positive change. positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 39 tsang & stanford (2007) n = 207 couples in which male was convicted of da. 132 women and 75 male partners. women aged 18-71, 61% black. men aged 19-71, 69% black. relationship duration ranged from 5 months – 33 years. personality assessment inventory (morey, 1991) interpersonal reactivity index (davis & oathout, 1987) transgression-related interpersonal motivations inventory (mccullough et al., 1998) intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation scales (allport & ross, 1967) quest religious orientation scale (batson & schoenrade, 1991) empathy and religiousness in women was positively related to forgiveness. the extent that the offender was seen as accountable for violence was mediated by the woman’s state empathy. zhang et al. (2012) n = 215 pregnant chinese women most measures were developed for the study: abuse assessment screen attitude of acceptance toward violence history of witnessing violence concern over the newborn's health/gender social support from family and friends coping style eysenck personality questionnaire (1994) rosenberg self-esteem scale (1965b) edinburgh postpartum depression scale (cox et al., 1987). higher prevalence of postnatal depression was found among women who had been abused during pregnancy than among those who had not. an attitude of acceptance towards violence was positively correlated with postnatal depression. risk of bias as befitting a narrative review (rather than a systematic review), this review does not claim to be a complete and exhaustive review of the literature on this subject, since that is not within its remit. rather it sought to find sufficient evidence in the literature to allow a rigorous examination of the relevant literature and to answer the research question with confidence. the types of participants in the studies varied, which is a factor that entails a risk of bias, however a broad sample is advantageous if findings are consistent across a variety of participants. although some of the measurement tools were used across multiple studies, there was a variety of tools used, and many studies included assessment tools that were created specifically for that study. positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 40 therefore, while it is not feasible to compare the studies like-for-like, the studies build a picture of the phenomenon by approaching it from different angles. a common trend can be identified despite the differences in methods. when documenting the findings in the table, care was taken to remain faithful to the researchers’ view of their results without adding additional interpretations. this was to mitigate potential bias in only finding results which affirmatively answered the research question. the table provides a clear overview of the scope of this review and the aggregate of its findings. results the keyword search yielded titles of 22 relevant papers including a total of 29 studies. details of these studies are outlined in table 1 above, which provides an overview of the patterns and tendencies found. the similarities in the findings across the studies build a coherent picture of the ways in which positivity functions in the context of da. optimism optimistic bias is clearly shown to skew an individual’s assessment of their own risk of da, despite provision of information regarding the statistical risk of da as chapin and coleman (2009, 2012, 2014) demonstrate in their studies. the hospital staff who were given training on da and the statistical risk that it poses, failed to absorb the information, and directly after training reported believing they were less at risk of da than the general population (chapin & coleman, 2009). likewise, teenage participants believed they were less at risk of experiencing da than others, despite some of them reporting having had first-hand experience of violence (chapin & coleman, 2012). strikingly, when the risk of da was described as more serious and violent, the perceived risk diminished further (chapin & coleman, 2014). when testing optimistic bias with da survivors in a da shelter, the same trend was observed (martin et al., 2000). despite comprehending the risk of returning to their abusers, these survivors believed they were at lower risk of returning to their abusive partners than others. optimism directed specifically towards relationships was shown to be unhelpful (neff & geers, 2013) since it entails denial of problems and failure to employ effective problem solving. however, this study also found that a broader form of optimism, one that was based on the reality of a situation rather than wishful thinking, could benefit relationships as it would enable problems to be worked on and overcome. forgiveness the evocative titles ‘the doormat effect’ (luchies et al., 2010a; 2010b) and ‘forgive and forget, or forgive and regret?’ (mcnulty & russell, 2016) strongly communicate the finding that forgiveness is not always beneficial within troubled marriages. the evidence suggests that the benefits of forgiveness in close relationships is context dependent – particularly on the agreeableness of the forgiven partner. in their studies, mcnulty and russell (2016) found that forgiving an agreeable partner benefitted the relationship and led to fewer transgressions over time. however, forgiving a less agreeable partner was detrimental to the relationship and led to continued abuse. mcnulty (2010b) observed a similar finding where forgiveness has resulted in increased likelihood of the partner reoffending and increased aggression towards their spouses (mcnulty, 2011), whereas positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 41 partners who were not forgiven decreased their aggression towards their spouses. lahav et al., (2019) demonstrate that forgiveness loses its protective factor the higher the level da experienced. while forgiveness is generally seen as a positive outcome, it has limitations as noted in fincham and beach’s (2002) studies. the authors observed that spouses displaying the ‘negative aspect of forgiveness’ (not holding their partner accountable) appeared to give tacit consent to partners to perpetrate further psychological aggression towards them. their second study, however suggested that the ‘positive aspect of forgiveness’ (actively forgiving partners) led to the possibility of constructive conversations and problem solving within the relationship. however, when a spouse does not receive a positive response to their act of forgiveness, it takes a toll on their wellbeing. this was observed in mcnulty’s (2008) study which showed that among spouses whose partners frequently behaved negatively, forgiveness was associated with a decline in their wellbeing. a similar effect was measured by luchies et al. (2010a; 2010b) who showed that if a spouse forgives a partner who is low in agreeableness, their self-respect diminishes over time – hence the ‘doormat effect’ – as the spouse begins to feel devalued and hence unable to retaliate against recurring transgressions. however, the same study showed that forgiving an agreeable partner increased selfrespect over time. acceptance acceptance within the context of da was shown to be generally detrimental and disempowering. acceptance of a partner’s violence increased the likelihood of a person staying in the relationship and tolerating this behavior (faramarzi et al., 2005). furthermore, acceptance of da was correlated with higher instances of depression among da victims (zhang et al., 2012) showing that the act of acceptance in contrast to complaining or railing against one’s unfortunate circumstances, does not improve wellbeing. resilience mason and pulvirenti (2013) expose contradictions in how resilience functions and demonstrates its multidimensional nature; collective resilience vs. individual resilience. often these dimensions can be at odds with each other. the study shows how the collective resilience of communities works to ‘paper over’ or downplay the problem of da. this is an act of control over the individual to discourage them from seeking help outside their community which carries the perceived risk of shame for the entire community. the individual is coerced into relying on their own community as the only source of support and resilience which exacerbates abuse. empathy positivity was observed to be detrimental to da victims and survivors, specifically regarding the risk of remaining with/returning to their abuser. victims of physical forms of da were shown to display greater denial of injury the more they were committed to their relationship (gilbert & gordon, 2017). women in da shelters with a positive attitude (less rumination) were more likely to return to the offending partners (gordon et al., 2004). furthermore, religious coping – featuring forgiveness, empathy and hope – within the context of da was associated with refraining from leaving the abusive relationship (katerndahl et al., 2005). empathy and religiousness in da victims positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 42 was related to forgiving the abuser (tsang & stanford, 2007). specifically, a victim’s empathy mediated how they viewed their antagonist, eliciting greater sympathy towards them and the reasons behind their violent behavior. however, meadows et al. (2005) demonstrated that positivity can benefit da victims by protecting them from suicide. the study showed that a positive outlook (hope, spiritual wellbeing, and self-efficacy) was correlated with social support, as well as with obtaining resources needed to leave an abusive relationship. these findings suggest that a positive outlook within the context of da – when coupled with social support – appears to guard against suicide. however, these findings are challenged by chang et al. (2014, 2018) who found that forgiveness and hope were associated with suicide ideation and attempt. discussion although positivity is beneficial in improving the quality of healthy relationships, there is ample evidence that within the context of troubled relationships a positive outlook can be unhelpful if not detrimental. risk assessment positivity appears to promote denial of da in terms of risk assessment (chapin & coleman, 2009, 2012, 2014). this phenomenon was found in those experiencing abuse (martin et al., 2000; gordon et al., 2004; gilbert & gordon, 2017; faramarzi et al., 2005) which means that they were more likely to remain with their abuser. this is worrying because da follows the pattern of escalating over time (bland & ariel, 2015), and therefore the more time spent in an abusive situation, the greater the danger. spiritual bypassing the two studies which found a correlation between religiousness and refraining to leave an abusive relationship (katerndahl et al., 2005; tsang & stanford, 2007) demonstrate the principle of ‘spiritual bypassing’ (cashwell et al., 2007). this mechanism attempts to heal problems at a spiritual level while ignoring practical considerations, therefore bypassing difficult emotions or tasks. a similar phenomenon is found in self-delusional positivity (jopling, 1996) which cocoons people in an artificially sunny reality. this discourages people from changing unsatisfactory conditions as they put-up with them for longer than they would with a more realistic outlook (berlant, 2011). both spiritual bypassing and self-delusional positive thinking can be seen as avoidant-coping strategies because they entail seeking refuge from problems in belief systems. this may give the illusion of empowerment, when in fact escaping reality is disempowering (jopling, 1996) since energy is siphoned from action-based problem-solving in the outside world, into the internal work of adjusting one’s perceptions and suppressing undesirable emotions. the crux of the problem with positivity is that it is often over-simplified and presented as an end in itself. for positivity to function optimally it needs to employ mind-set adjustment in tandem with practical problem-solving strategies. this is evidenced in the findings of meadows et al. (2005) showing that a positive attitude together with the practical element of social support protects da victims from suicide attempts. neff and geers (2013) also allude to this practical element of positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 43 positivity, showing that although relationship-focused optimism was detrimental, a broader optimism which encompasses the wider reality of the situation does appear to be advantageous for working through marital problems. in the case of da this could involve the realistic optimistic view that bringing an unhealthy relationship to an end would increase wellbeing. fincham and beach (2002) also show that a positive attitude needs to be coupled with action as their ‘positive dimension of forgiveness’ involved actively working on marital problems, in contrast to the ‘negative dimension’ which was passive. the doormat effect the review found a significant number of studies that show that forgiving a disagreeable partner increases the likelihood that they will transgress again (mcnulty 2010b, 2011; mcnulty & russell, 2016; fincham & beach, 2002). this is particularly poignant to da as incidents reoccur in a cycle of abuse (walker, 2016) which keeps repeating until the cycle is broken. the effect of acting positively towards a partner but failing to get a positive response was shown to be detrimental to wellbeing (mcnulty, 2008; luchies et al., 2010a, 2010b; zhang et al., 2012; chang et al., 2015). particularly compelling are the findings of luchies et al. (2010a, 2010b) which show that forgiving a partner who continues to transgress leads to declining self-respect and loss of self-concept. this is consistent with symptoms of da victims who suffer from loss of self as a result of being unseen and emotionally neglected (kauffman, 2011) which is psychological damage that requires extensive therapy to correct. these findings (luchies et al., 2010a; 2010b) demonstrate how unreciprocated positivity can contribute to loss of self-concept. da awareness da is a social problem, and tacit group tolerance of da hinders victims from finding the requisite support (mason & pulvirenti, 2013) so addressing this is a vital step in tackling the problem. an informed perspective seeks to raise consciousness of da as a societal issue (wendt, 2016). this lessens shame and self-blame making it easier for victims to confront the problem and seek help. continued efforts to raise awareness of da, and of signs distinguishing healthy from unhealthy relationships is vital, but may take generations for society to assimilate. in the current social climate, many will inevitably continue to experience da. once abuse escalates to a point that it can no longer be excused, victims steeped in self-delusional positivity are liable find their ‘bubble’ of protective self-deception burst (held, 2002) which although devastating, heralds the start of recovery. an event that shatters personal assumptions invites them to be reviewed, providing the opportunity to form a richer set of beliefs. this phenomenon is known as post traumatic growth (calhoun & tedeschi, 2010) where trauma invites the possibility of positive change and improved wellbeing. providing that they are not re-victimized, da survivors have been shown to display post traumatic growth following a year of recovery (valdez & lilly, 2015). the irony is that da provides the circumstances for self-development by awakening victims from a naïve positivity into a more enriching, authentic positivity. limitations of study positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 44 as this is a narrative review it did not include a formal analysis of quality as per the qatqs process used in systematic reviews. however, this review is important as it adds to the body of research exploring the importance of context for the success of ppis, and highlights some of the challenges in distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate contexts. the review was limited to certain types of positivity as the keywords curtailed the number of papers discovered. in particular the search omitted investigation into the potential for trust to have negative consequences in close relationships, and to question whether it is possible for intimate relationships to exist without trust. this review also found no studies measuring the correlation between gratitude and denial of da, but this is suggested in literature linking stockholm syndrome with da (cantor & price, 2007) as it assumes misplaced gratitude towards an abuser. nor did the search find any research into the pitfalls of self-regulation within the context of abusive relationships. this indicates specific gaps in the research for future studies to explore. second wave pp the review affirmatively answers the research question and shows that the pressure to be positive can harm victims of da. positivity must not be confused with ‘putting up with’ unhealthy situations. sometimes it is rational, justified and adaptive to complain or retaliate (held, 2001) especially given that suppressing emotions can result in illness by compromising the body’s immune system (pennebaker, 1997). second wave pp (lomas & ivtzan, 2015) argues that although pp is primarily concerned with positive outcomes, it is possible for positive-valenced emotions and processes to hinder wellbeing (as in the case of the present study), and conversely for negatively-valenced emotions and processes – such as boredom (lomas, 2017), sadness (lomas, 2018), or anger (lomas, 2019) – to promote wellbeing. this emerging area of research within pp is a welcome addition, since it allows the entire spectrum of human emotion – including anger and sadness – to be accepted rather than ignored, therefore addressing the critique of pp as promoting the tyranny of positivity (held, 2002). conclusion the pressure to be positive can cause damage in particular contexts as it may discourage people from facing the reality of their situation. this results in denial both of the reality of difficult circumstances as well as the accompanying emotions, therefore forced-positivity can be an avoidant coping mechanism. pp needs to take into account the dangers of applying ppis within unsuitable contexts, assessing potential risks and understanding the restrictions on what positivity can remedy. there is a danger that problems may be minimized by categorizing them as merely requiring a change of perception. the positivity movement has gathered momentum in this direction, with many buying into the idea of the power of positivity. self-help books within the pp arena can often allude to the promise of achieving a charmed life by changing one’s mental attitude (even if the research literature on which these books are based is more nuanced). the appeal of such an undemanding solution is similar to the promise of financial security by purchasing a scratch-card, and no one is more tempted by this seductive offer than the vulnerable. in light of this exploitation of vulnerable people, even if unintentional, pp needs to use its position as expert adviser in order to influence the maturation of positivity and domestic abuse sinclair, hart & lomas 45 the positivity movement. pp should attempt to temper the current social pressure to be positive by imbuing it with reality and a greater sense of responsibility to its end users. this can be achieved by carrying out further research into the downsides of ppis when applied in the context of harmful situations. greater care 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(2012). reiew of exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 284-287. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.9 richard d. parry agnes scott college rparry@agnesscott.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 284 book review exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science sissela bok, yale university press, 2010, isbn: 978-0-300-1329-7 (cloth), 224pp sissela bok, yale university press, 2011, isbn: 978-0-300-17810-4 (paper), 224pp review by richard d. parry exploring happiness does what its title indicates by covering a wide range. sissela bok’s first aim is to bring together “the striking new findings of natural and social scientists with longstanding traditions of reflection by philosophers, religious thinkers, historians, poets, and so many others.” (p. 3). throughout, she offers sketches of various positions in such a way as to encourage the reader to compare and contrast; rather than giving much in the way of detailed suggestions for putting the pieces together, she emphasizes the value of competing theories and insights. the second aim is to reflect on the relation between happiness, understood as an individual pursuit, and morality, i.e., the way we treat others. the latter effort offers one important counter-weight to the dangers of spending too much time absorbed in one’s own welfare; but it also introduces one of the most complicating factors in the whole attempt to think about happiness. the book is aimed at an informed but general audience. treating such an important but elusive topic as happiness at this level is, of course, commendable. and bok delivers a lot of clear and readable prose that informs us of a wide and deep company of thinkers. we find not only philosophers but also writers from other disciplines. it appears that a lot of our cultural luminaries could not keep themselves from offering their own reflections on happiness. not only does she present them for our appreciation but also she does a good job of pointing up the interesting ways in which they differ from one another, not only in content but also in approach. we go from descriptions of experiences of happiness to theories about the concept, to contemporary research on what people in general report about their own happiness. along the way, we are given helpful, if not altogether surprising, advice about respecting, while being appropriately skeptical about, the various perspectives. one can imagine the general reader being delighted to find all this material in one place, marshalled for her appreciation. and for the specialist, there is great value in having one’s disciplinary horizons opened a bit. while a reviewer should respect the constraints that such an undertaking imposes, there is, nevertheless, room for reflection and dialectic. one of the most important issues that bok touches on is the relation between happiness as experience and happiness as an objective state. she begins with some descriptions of those exalted states so often held to be paradigm cases of happiness. in doing so, she feeds into what most contemporary people believe about happiness; it is to be identified with a certain kind of feeling. in english, if you ask someone if she is happy, the answer will usually involve a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science parry www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 285 reference to one’s feelings. one might described her current emotional state or the way she feels about her life in general. answers like these are not, of course, wrong in themselves. however, they risk reducing happiness to states of positive feeling. bok, then, raises the obvious objection to such reductionism with robert nozick’s famous experience machine. if they were given a choice between being hooked up to a machine that provided a consistent diet of pleasant feeling and living a real life, with its ups and downs, most people would choose the latter. the point is not the number of people who would choose the lived-life; rather the argument shows that there is a conceptual difference between experiences of pleasure, or positive emotion, and happiness. if there were no difference, the choice would not make any sense. since there is a difference between the subjective feeling of happiness and the objective state on which the feelings are based, one might say that there is an inside and an outside to happiness. this issue is more than a conceptual puzzle. it touches on one of the most important issues that socrates, plato, and aristotle ever raised. if happiness is an objective state about which we can be wrong, then living a life in which we never attain that state, because of ignorance, is a tragedy. nothing is more important than one’s happiness not because it is some positive emotional state but because it is the best possible state that one can achieve. according to the ancients, this state is what we would call a psychological one. lest, at this point, we fall back into a hedonist conception of psychological state, we need to recognize that these thinkers were trying to describe something like an olympic athlete of the soul—one whose psychological powers, e.g., reasoning and emotion, are fully developed and in perfect sync with one another. then whatever he did—fighting in battle, ruling the city, treating fellow citizens, scientific investigation—would be splendid. while they called this state arête, sometimes translated as virtue, it is not reducible to moral virtue, although it certainly implies it. the most appropriate translation of arête is excellence. this identification of happiness with psychological excellence has another powerful implication. it forges the link between happiness and morality. in doing so, the ancients were trying to address the problem that some immoral people appear to be happy. they are happy not just in their external circumstance, i.e., prosperous; but they lead lives filled with pleasure and satisfaction. they can even be said to have satisfied all their major life goals. plato, especially, is consumed by this problem. his answer depends on the idea of psychological excellence. the backbone of this argument is that the excellent functioning of the soul would manifest itself as morally virtuous activity, i.e., as justice, courage, and moderation. that one would be pleased with this activity is important; but it is not central to the argument that linked psychological excellence and moral virtue. that the evil tyrant felt satisfied with his life only meant that he was deceived about the disarray in his soul. sound or not, this is an argument aimed directly at the usual objection that some evil people enjoy a positive emotional life, are happy in the sense that they feel happy. although she recognizes the distinction, unfortunately bok does not clearly demarcate the subjective from the objective side of happiness. those who labor in these vineyards sometimes make the distinction between happiness as a subjective feeling and happiness as an objective state of wellbeing, or flourishing. perhaps in a book for the general reader that level of analysis is not appropriate. still, without it, we are left with the impression that happiness is really a feeling. throughout the rest of the book we keep running into descriptions of happiness as an emotion, as a pleasure, as a positive feeling. the overarching problem of the book, then, becomes, given that happiness is basically a subjective feeling, how can we reconcile this feeling with objective constraints. this weakness undermines the second aim announced for the exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science parry www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 286 book, the problem of the relation between happiness and morality. if happiness is basically a positive feeling, there is no escaping the fact that some scoundrels are happy. as a consequence, bok’s treatment of it effectively ends in chapter iii with her overview of kant’s separation of happiness and morality, the latter described as the rational being’s consciousness of the pleasantness of life. she leaves us with the somewhat disappointing conclusion that recent research shows some correlation between altruism and subjective wellbeing. to her credit, bok tries to do justice to the religious thinking on the topic of happiness, much of it dependent on the afterlife. since she does little to explain the idea—understandably perhaps—these sections can speak only to people already with a religious understanding. however, she does give us a juicy clue. as she points out, aquinas makes a distinction between happiness as felicitas and as beatudo, the former possible in earthly existence and the latter available only in heaven. another reading would have taken this opportunity to offer some plausibility to the happiness of the afterlife. felicitas can be translated as happiness and beatudo as blessedness. in ancient greek thought, they meant roughly the same thing. aquinas distinguishes them along a natural/supernatural axis. felicitas covers, more or less, the kind of happiness that aristotle would call virtuous activity of the soul; but beatudo is the vision of god, i.e., the beatific vision, the kind of seeing that makes one blessed. it has resonance with aristotle’s other account of happiness as virtue, i.e., contemplation of eternal truths. from these clues we arrive at a notion of an afterlife as a heightened state of awareness which transcends the ordinary categories of time and space. this result fits nicely with bok’s citations of other religious thinkers who identify eternal happiness with contemplation. in the chapter on measurement, bok brings to bear much of what she has to say about psychological and sociological research on happiness. one type of investigation involves imaging, to identify the areas of the brain associated with self-reported positive and negative emotional states. the other uses surveys of large populations about their self-reported states of happiness. she points out that both offer some interesting data that sometimes confirm and other times disconfirm what earlier thinkers have said about happiness. she only touches on the brain research, as offering important empirical data about the pervasiveness of pleasure and pain throughout other mental states. she devotes more attention to the social science research about happiness. social psychologists have devised questionnaires that gather data on self-reports of satisfaction with one’s life. these studies have provided very interesting results for anyone approaching the topic of happiness. however, bok points out their limitations as the basis for a science of happiness. for instance, there is the direction of causation. if most married people report being satisfied with their lives, it is not clear whether marriage causes the satisfaction or people who are generally satisfied with their lives are more likely to get married. she also touches on the cultural bias that can result in a difference in response between, for example, americans and europeans. the issue of cultural bias suggests a more profound problem. since so much of the research relies on self-reporting, we are left with a great skeptical gap. just because large numbers of people within a culture report satisfaction with their lives, or report having positive feelings on doing the same activity, it does not follow that they are happy. only if one assumes that happiness is the same thing as a state of positive feeling—as much of this research seems to—can one arrive at this conclusion. bok helpfully refers the reader to thinkers who have explored the relation between social science research and philosophy, such as anthony appiah, owen flanagan, and daniel haybron. finally, bok treats of the fascinating problem about happiness illusion. there are famous cases in which individuals profess to be happy, in the sense of feeling happy, when their objective state would not be counted as happiness by anyone observing them. the problem has exploring happiness: from aristotle to brain science parry www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 287 many guises, from naïve ignorance to false consciousness. on the one hand, there are those who argue that happiness cannot be based on illusion; no matter how upbeat, pleased, or satisfied one might be, the facts must fit with whatever she claims. on the other, there are those who argue that happiness is to be identified with one’s positive emotional state, whatever the facts may be. bok cites madame du châtelet as someone who argues for the appropriateness of illusions that contribute to one’s happiness. in her own life, she held tenaciously to the belief that voltaire’s love for her was continuing. when she could no longer maintain that illusion, she turned to gambling. she argued that the hope of winning and the fear of losing could be managed as parts of an elaborate illusion—like the opera—as long as one could keep the gambling under control. since, in fact, she did not keep it under control, bok suggests her life shows the weakness of her argument. even so, the basic issue is not settled. while illusions of happiness can be self-destructive, as long as the illusion holds, those dedicated to the idea that happiness is a positive state of feeling can discount the self-destruction as collateral damage. bok’s argument works only for those who already accept the difference between illusion and happiness. this valuable book presents us with a lot of rich material for thought. bok manages extremely well the difficult task of arranging divergent views so that they provoke the reader to further dialectic and continued exploration. it is certainly a welcome contribution to recent work in the study of happiness. author richard d. parry agnes scott college rparry@agnesscott.edu personal or interpersonal construal of happiness uchida, y., & ogihara, y. (2012). personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective. international journal of wellbeing, 2(4), 354-369. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i4.5 yukiko uchida kyoto university yukikou@educ.kyoto-u.ac.jp copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 354 article personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective yukiko uchida · yuji ogihara abstract: cultural psychological research reveals considerable variation in how people construe happiness and experience subjective wellbeing. this paper identified substantial cultural differences in (1) meanings of happiness, (2) predictors of happiness, and (3) how social changes such as globalization are related to happiness. in european-american cultural contexts, happiness is construed as including experience of a highly desirable and positive emotional state defined in terms of a high arousal state such as excitement and a sense of personal achievement. moreover, individual happiness is best predicted by personal goal attainment and high selfesteem or self-efficacy. in contrast, in east asian cultural contexts (i.e., those found in japan), happiness is construed as including experience of both positive and negative emotional state. happiness is defined in terms of experiencing a low arousal state such as calmness and interpersonal connectedness and harmony. furthermore, individual happiness is best predicted by relationship harmony and emotional support from others. while people maintain traditional cultural norms, some societies and organizations are under pressure from globalization and this might affect happiness. we examined how cultural change affects wellbeing, especially focusing on current japanese contexts where individuals have experienced an increasing shift toward individualism and have experienced a large national disaster. cultural psychological perspectives regarding happiness provide important contributions to psychological science and society at large. keywords: cultural construal of happiness, culture, happiness, achievement orientation, relationship orientation, individualism 1. subjective wellbeing and “cultural construal of happiness” what are the most important factors when evaluating our happiness? several aspects of our experience are related to happiness, such as family, jobs, friendships, recreation, education and environment. among these factors, that which is most important for the happiness of a particular individual can vary, given that happiness is a subjective state; what constitutes ‘happiness’ can be different for different individuals. for example, some people might define happiness in terms of their economic situation, while some might focus more on interpersonal relationships. likewise, some might seek happiness through job achievement, while others seek happiness through positive relationships with others. in addition to individual differences, there are also sizable cross-cultural differences in defining happiness. for the current paper, we define this kind of lay theory (lay definition) of happiness as being ‚cultural construal of happiness.‛ we use this definition given that theories of happiness are shared within a culture and constructed through socio-cultural experiences, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 355 such as education (e.g., by parents and schools) and exposure to cultural products (e.g., television, newspapers, books, and so on). cultural psychology investigates psychological processes (i.e., cognition, emotion, and motivation) under the assumption that these processes are socio-culturally constructed (bruner, 1990; kitayama, duffy, & uchida, 2007; markus & kitayama, 1991; shweder, 1991). this perspective is different from traditional psychological studies, which define psychological phenomena as universal entities. rather, as shweder (1991) suggested that culture and psyche make each other up, cultural psychology assumes that the human mind is designed to be socioculturally constructed. from this perspective, culture is defined as a set of symbolic resources, such as social practices, cultural mandates, and institutions, which are shared and historically transmitted within a community (adams & markus, 2004; kitayama et al., 2007; kitayama, park, sevincer, karasawa, & uskul, 2009). we will review cross-cultural evidence revealing differences in (1) meanings of happiness, (2) predictors of happiness, and (3) how social change, such as the pressure of globalization and the impact of a natural disaster, affects happiness. we will examine the third point by focusing on the case of japan. 2. why do we need to know the cultural construal of happiness? there is a growing body of recent research on happiness. the oecd (organization for economic cooperation and development), as well as certain countries, has attempted to measure subjective wellbeing and happiness. this, in part, is due to national and societal shifts in goals related to economic satisfaction toward subjective life satisfaction. this trend is related to declines in economic development among many industrialized societies. economists have pointed out that both gdp and per capita gdp do not fully predict subjective wellbeing, as once suggested by the easterlin paradox (easterlin, 1973). on the one hand, economic growth supports life quality and increases opportunities for individual decision-making and free choice (fisher & boer, 2011). on the other hand, economic growth invites stress for individuals and difficulty with environmental sustainability. therefore, indices of economic growth are not sufficient for the measurement of physiological and psychological wellbeing within nations, especially when we try to obtain implications for policy makers. recent scientific research on subjective wellbeing and happiness (i.e., diener & suh, 2000; oishi, 2012) has shown that several societies have adopted psychological factors such as wellbeing, happiness, and life satisfaction as indicators of national success. the oecd published a report titled ‚how’s life‛ in 2011. this initiative was based on research into 11 aspects of life that are supposed to contribute to the wellbeing of people around the world. the oecd attempted to develop a standardized measure of subjective wellbeing that could be used for policy design and evaluation across several nations. approaches that take greater account of indigenous factors have also emerged. among these, bhutan’s gnh (gross national happiness) index attracted attention both from industrialized and developing countries, since the happiness of bhutanese individuals is quite high given their economic situation. the gnh index contains multidimensional measurements that reflect bhutan’s cultural and religious ideas and orientations. measurements are related not only to subjective wellbeing and happiness but also to more collective and societal factors, such as community vitality, ecological resilience, and good governance (center for bhutan studies, 2012). personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 356 while the oecd’s approach is more widespread and attempts to compare each society in order to investigate which aspects contribute to ‚happier‛ societies, the approaches employed such as in bhutan also attempt to investigate specific factors important in predicting happiness within each society, based on their own cultural environment. in both cases (cross-cultural comparisons and indigenous investigations), we should consider cultural concepts of happiness, given that subjective evaluations of happiness are mostly influenced by cultural meanings and values within each nation. recognition of this point is crucial to avoid simplified arguments like ‚which country is happier than others‛ which neglect differences in important cultural values. for example, in japan and korea, raw scores of happiness and life satisfaction scales are relatively lower than in other industrialized societies (diener, diener, & diener, 1995). some researchers argue that the system in japanese society such as implicit and explicit rules of the workplaces has negative impacts on subjective wellbeing due to ‚collectivism‛ and ‚weakness of individualism.‛ these arguments are partly true, but this ‚pessimistic and critical view‛ tends to ignore the cultural meanings of happiness. in addition, cross-cultural ‚standardized‛ scales are sometimes invalid when used in some cultures. for instance, diener et al.’s satisfaction with life scale (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) is widely used, but it measures european-american ideas of happiness, which are based upon personal achievement and attainment; indeed, it has been suggested that the scores of that scale reported by japanese respondents are low since personal achievement is not a central focus for japanese individuals in regards to wellbeing (e.g., oishi, 2010). cultural psychological research results imply that people in east asian cultural contexts evaluate their current state of happiness by taking ups and downs in life as a whole into account (ji, nisbett, & su, 2001). therefore, if people recognize that their current state is not good enough, but expect it to be improved in the future, their current ‚unhappiness‛ is not very negative. in addition, in japan, where interdependent orientation is salient, being outstandingly happier than others is taken as disharmonious within relationships (uchida & kitayama, 2009). to reflect upon this point, japanese wellbeing indicators should include questions on ‚future level of happiness,‛ ‚ideal level of happiness,‛ and ‚interdependent happiness‛ (hitokoto & uchida, 2012). approaches based on cultural psychological perspectives are necessary, and researchers should focus more on the cultural construal of happiness. we will review research evidence on the cultural construal of happiness (table 1 below). cultural psychological theories have suggested that the japanese model of the self is based on interdependence (markus & kitayama, 1991; 2010) whereby social relationships are more salient. in contrast, the european-american model of the self is defined in terms of independence, whereby individual freedom and personal rights are more salient. consistent with these cultural models of the self, sizable cultural differences in happiness and subjective wellbeing emerge (see review; uchida, norasakkunkit, & kitayama, 2004). 3. cross-cultural differences in the meaning of happiness 3.1 cultural background, thinking styles, and the idea of happiness recent cross-cultural evidence suggests there are cultural variations in happiness and subjective wellbeing. it is likely that what constitutes the ‚good‛ and ‚valuable‛ in life varies substantially across cultures. the cultural construal of happiness is grounded in historically nurtured ideologies and religious ideas. as a consequence, we might expect considerable crosspersonal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 357 cultural variations in the meaning of happiness and quality of life (kitayama & markus, 2000). in european-american cultural contexts, happiness is defined as a positive emotional state that is typically construed as a state contingent on both personal achievement and maximized positivity of personal attributes (myers & diener, 1995). negative features of the self, including negative emotional states, are perceived to be a hindrance to happiness. furthermore, a sense of happiness is based on the incremental model; positive situations are considered to invite more positive outcomes. individuals within these cultures are motivated to maximize the experience of positive affect. therefore, individuals are highly motivated to find and affirm the positivity within themselves or their life circumstances. only recently has the negative side of seeking happiness been shown to invite loneliness (mauss, savino, anderson, weisbuch, tamir, & laudenslager, 2012) and unhappiness (mauss, tamir, anderson, & savino, 2011) within these cultural contexts. table 1: evidence of the cultural construal of happiness culture view of happiness meaning of happiness socio-economic factors, social change european– american culture positive incremental high arousal individual achievement orientation  autonomy  agency  personal achievement  self-esteem freedom of choice high social mobility east asian culture contains negative dialectical low arousal relationship orientation  interdependent happiness  ordinariness  relationship harmony  relational goal  social support controversial effect of individualism under globalization there are several reasons why people in european-american cultural contexts seek happiness more than do people in other cultural contexts. relational mobility is one leading factor (falk, heine, yuki, & takemura, 2009; oishi, lun, & sherman, 2007; oishi, 2010; yuki et al., 2007). relational mobility assumes that the person is within a socio-economic situation, such as a relational market, and that personal choices are an inalienable right. for example, yuki et al. (2007) defined relational mobility as the amount of ‚choice‛ afforded in interpersonal relationships. they suggested that people with high relational mobility (i.e., people in the united states) have a fair amount of opportunity to establish new relationships; therefore, they do not tend to insist on a given relationship but rather seek more favorable relational opportunities. based on this mechanism, people in a society with high social mobility are expected to discover their positive internal resources, such as high self-esteem, to obtain better opportunities. in addition to the socio-economic environment, religious and ethical ideas are also related to views of happiness. for example, there are close ties between the european-american view personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 358 of happiness and the protestant worldview. max weber (1920) pointed out that capitalist societies and individualism are associated with the protestant worldview. according to this worldview, individuals are predestined to be ‘‘selected’’ or ‘‘doomed’’ (weber, 1920). the belief in predestination generates a strong desire to affirm the worthiness of the self through hard work and to obtain positive outcomes, and, thus, as being ‘‘selected’’ by god. affirmation of personal worthiness, such as feeling happiness, might serve as an effective buffer against anxiety (negative prospect of the self); thus, there is a high motivation to seek happiness. in contrast, in east asian cultures, balance among social relationships is important. this might be related to the socioeconomic environment. for instance, the society that is derived from an agricultural economy in japan or china requires collective cooperation in order to maintain important ‚public goods‛, such as the water supply system. in addition, agricultural communities have low social mobility in general. yuki et al. (2007) suggest that the cost of isolation from a given society is greater for east asian, low-social-mobility contexts as compared to european-american, high-social-mobility contexts. thus, the motivation for maintaining group and relationship harmony is more salient in east asian societies than is the motivation for maximizing individual goals. furthermore, the asian cultural construal of happiness is related to certain strands of ideas revealed in confucianism, taoism, and buddhism. all these ideologies and worldviews emphasize a holistic or dialectical world order where everything is assumed to be connected with everything else (kitayama & markus, 1999; peng & nisbett, 1999). positive and negative aspects can coexist, and the total amount of positivity and negativity in one’s life can be seen as equal. what is good or bad personally is often a cause for opposite social consequences. therefore, japanese individuals evaluate their current situation from a more transcendental point of view. based on the different background between asian cultures and european-american cultures, several studies have suggested that, within european-american cultures, positivity and negativity are often seen as contradictory while they are seen as complementary among east asian cultures. for example, bagozzi, wong, and yi (1999) measured the reported intensity of pleasant and unpleasant emotions and observed that these two types of emotion were negatively correlated in the united states, whereas they were positively correlated in china and korea (see also kitayama, markus, & kurokawa, 2000). similar findings have been revealed in recent studies examining cross-cultural differences in the experience of emotion. furthermore, miyamoto, uchida, and ellsworth (2010) found that japanese individuals experience mixed (positive and negative) emotions more often when in a happy situation than do americans. additionally, this dialectic emotional experience positively predicts physical health among japanese (miyamoto & ryff, 2011). the notion of dialecticism vs. bipolar emotional experiences might be related to cognitive aspects, namely changes in prediction and motivation. with regard to cognitive aspects, ji et al. (2001) presented chinese and american participants with graphs representing either a linear or nonlinear trend, and asked participants to indicate which graph might best represent the change in their happiness over the lifespan. chinese respondents were more likely to choose a nonlinear graph while americans were more likely to choose a linear graph. in addition, participants were shown several points of a trend within a graph (e.g., economic performance in january and february) and then asked to predict what would happen next. the results showed that chinese participants predicted more deviations from the initially presented trend compared to american participants. the chinese exhibited a style of cognition referred to as ‚dialectic thinking,‛ which has been found to be more prevalent among east asians relative to americans over several studies. personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 359 few studies have investigated the cultural construal of happiness from a basic analysis of the meaning of ‚happiness‛ but uchida and kitayama (2009) used a systematic approach to explore individuals’ knowledge of happiness and unhappiness in the united states and japan. their results suggested that americans believe happiness is a relatively enduring positive state that should be pursued personally, whereas japanese are likely to believe that happiness is a relatively positive, transitory interpersonal moment and, yet, that it is also fraught with numerous negative consequences. in the first part of uchida and kitayama’s study, both american and japanese participants were asked to describe up to five features, effects, or consequences of happiness. after describing these features, participants were asked to rate each feature in terms of general desirability. results showed that over 98% of american descriptions were reported as positive, whereas only 67% of japanese descriptions were reported as positive. in the second part of their study, a large number of features collected in the first part of the study were printed on separate index cards. a stack of cards was then presented to a new group of participants from each culture (i.e., meanings of happiness obtained in the united states were shown to american participants only). these participants were asked to sort the cards according to perceived similarities of the descriptions. on the basis of this data, the likelihood of each pair of descriptions being classified into the same category was calculated. this likelihood (an index of perceived similarities among the features of happiness) was used to compute a multidimensional scaling solution. in both cultures, three types of descriptions were commonly observed: general hedonic states (e.g., joy, excitement, and positive attitude), personal achievement (e.g., getting a good grade, getting a job) and interpersonal harmony (e.g., getting along with others, having a party for a friend). in addition to these cultural similarities, two other clusters of negative features of happiness were obtained from the japanese group. one such negative feature of happiness was transcendental reappraisal, which included avoidance (e.g., letting people avoid reality), nihilism (e.g., not lasting long), and transcendental realization (e.g., difficult to identify). the other cluster was social disruption, which included negative social consequences (e.g., envy and jealousy from others) and inattention (e.g., failing to pay enough attention to one’s surroundings). these negative clusters were largely absent within the american sample. uchida (2011) also observed that people within japanese cultural contexts are more likely to think of negative features as valid aspects of happiness when judging features of happiness obtained from uchida and kitayama (2009). furthermore, they showed that this japanese holistic view is associated with a holistic worldview within certain cognitive states (choi, koo, & choi, 2007) regardless of their current subjective state of happiness. 3.2 arousal and happiness: cultural valuation tsai and colleagues have proposed the ‚affect valuation theory‛, which suggests that each cultural context has an ‚ideal affect‛ (how people want to feel) and ‚actual affect‛ (how they actually feel). tsai, knutson, and fung (2006) suggest that culture influences ideal affect more than it influences actual affect. for instance, americans value high-arousal positive affect (e.g., excitement) more than do hong kong chinese individuals, who place greater value on lowarousal positive affect (e.g., calmness). ideal affect is learned through the family and education and transmitted from generation to generation. an analysis of bestseller picture books for children in the united states and in taiwan shows best-selling u.s. picture books have protagonists with larger smiles than are present in taiwanese bestsellers, and the actions those characters are depicted as taking are more reflective of ‚high-arousal‛ emotions than are the personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 360 actions characters in the taiwanese picture books are depicted as taking. picture books in taiwan and japan show calmer images with the depiction of ‚low-arousal‛ emotions (tsai, louie, chen, & uchida, 2007; see also oyama et al., 2008). tsai and colleagues examined the way in which children were differentially affected by these varying emotional displays within picture books. after exposure to a high-arousal picture book, american children were more likely to recognize ‚large smile‛ facial expressions as ‚happy‛ than after exposure to a lowarousal picture book (tsai, louie et al., 2007, study 2). 4. predictors of happiness: personal goal attainment vs. relationship orientation if cultural construal of happiness differs across cultures, the predictor of happiness should also differ. in this section, we focus on difference between predictors of happiness in cultures oriented to individual achievement and those oriented to relationships. individuals within independent cultural contexts (markus & kitayama, 1991) are motivated to maximize the experience of positive affect and are motivated to seek happiness by autonomous agency. in contrast, within east asian cultural contexts, happiness tends to be defined in terms of interpersonal connectedness or balance between the self and others (see uchida, norasakkunkit, & kitayama, 2004 for a review). the examination of the axis between ‚personal achievement orientation‛ and ‚relationship orientation‛ is valid and several crosscultural studies have been conducted using this approach. ryff and colleagues proposed the concept of eudaimonic wellbeing, measured with six scales assessing psychological wellbeing (ryff, 1989; ryff & keyes, 1995). eudaimonic wellbeing includes autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, self-acceptance, positive relations with others, and purpose in life. these aspects, except for ‚positive relations with others,‛ are based on the independence and autonomy of the self. in addition, within european-american cultural contexts, the factor that tends to be the most correlated with happiness is self-esteem (campbell, 1981; diener & diener, 1995; diener et al., 1985). likewise, accomplishing personal goals predicts positive emotional states. for example, taylor and brown (1988) argued that the perception of one’s positivity and effectiveness, even when it is illusory, can contribute to mental health. other similar factors such as achievement of independent goals (emmons, 1986, 1991; oishi & diener, 2001) and positive but non-relational emotional experiences (kitayama, mesquita, & karasawa, 2006) are strong predictors of happiness, subjective wellbeing, and life satisfaction within european-american cultural contexts. in contrast, interpersonal factors, such as adapting to social norms and fulfilling relational obligations, tend to increase life satisfaction among people within east asian cultural contexts. other factors, such as attainment of interpersonal goals over personal goals (oishi & diener, 2001), positive relational emotional experiences (kitayama et al., 2006), receiving emotional support (uchida, kitayama, mesquita, reyes, & morling, 2008), fulfilling relational norms (suh, diener, oishi, & triandis, 1998), and relational harmony (kwan, bond, & singelis, 1997), are highly predictive of happiness and wellbeing among asians. in addition, in east asian contexts, the significance of self-esteem is questionable. diener and diener (1995) investigated 31 countries and found that self-esteem is more strongly correlated with subjective wellbeing in individualistic (e.g., european-american) cultures than in collectivistic (e.g., east asian) cultures. social relationships are also important within european-american cultures. for example, perceived availability of support provides a variety of beneficial effects on health and wellbeing (e.g., cohen & wills, 1985; uchino, cacioppo, & kiecolt-glaser, 1996). studies of personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 361 emotional support using european-american samples describe effects of support as they relate to self-esteem. in line with a strong emphasis on self-esteem, individuals within europeanamerican cultures see social relationships as important because they affirm a sense of positive self-worth or self-esteem (leary, tambor, terdal, & downs, 1995). on the other hand, if support fails to maintain self-esteem (i.e., feeling too dependent on others), support’s effect on happiness tends to deteriorate. indeed, some studies in the united states show that perceived emotional support sometimes fails to provide positive effects on wellbeing and health (bolger & amarel, 2007; bolger, foster, vinokur, & ng, 1996; bolger, zuckerman, & kessler 2000; fisher, nadler, & whitcher-alagna, 1982; seidman, shrout, & bolger, 2006). fisher et al. (1982) reviewed a series of studies and found that recipients of support often experience negative consequences, such as feelings of failure and dependency. similarly, invisible support might work better since it has not been shown to be harmful to self-esteem (bolger & amarel, 2007). in sum, it is likely that within european-american cultural contexts, emotional support, such as encouragement, compassion, and sympathy often provides ambivalent meanings; this might signify both worthiness of the self and weakness of the self. as a consequence, emotional support might contribute to happiness only to the extent that support does not threaten selfesteem. indeed, uchida and colleagues (2008) found that in two different asian cultures (japan and the philippines) both self-esteem and perceived emotional support were equally predictive of happiness (see table 2). however, in the american sample, once self-esteem was controlled, the effect of emotional support on happiness vanished, and self-esteem was the only remaining predictor of happiness in the u.s. sample. with respect to patient quality of life, ikeda and colleagues (2011) suggested that perceived emotional support is quite effective for japanese diabetic patients’ higher compliance with treatment protocols for coping with their disease. however, the effect of emotional support was found to be weaker among american diabetic patients, who are focusing on their competence to cope with the disease. table 2: regression coefficients of emotional support to happiness (uchida, et al., 2008). japan (n = 256) philippines (n = 243) u.s. (n = 160) support → happiness 0.42*** 0.39*** 0.25** support → happiness (self-esteem controlled) 0.35*** 0.30*** 0.08 **p < .01, ***p < .001 5. happiness and globalization: the effect of individualism it has been suggested that increasing wealth might be influential to individual wellbeing insofar as it allows individuals to have greater autonomy and freedom in their daily life. thus, wealth likely affects happiness only through its effect on individual autonomy and freedom of choice (fisher & boer, 2011; inglehart, foa, peterson, & welzel, 2008). this point, suggesting a relationship between individualism and wellbeing, places importance on individual freedom. as some studies have suggested, the effect of individual freedom on wellbeing might be seen across cultures. from a meta-theoretical standpoint, personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 362 however, this framework has been influenced by the ‚independence‛ model of the cultural construal of happiness shared in european-american contexts. for example, if we used a measure such as interdependent happiness (hitokoto & uchida, 2012), based on relationshiporiented happiness or dialectical happiness, the correlation between individualism and happiness would be questionable. 5.1. wellbeing and deviation from the cultural mainstream most cultural psychological research has examined mainstream behaviors or emotions within cultures. however, culture itself is not a static ‚object‛; rather, it is a dynamic system that inherently contains individual variance within a culture. thus, some people display behaviors that are not consistent with mainstream cultural values. previous research has suggested that seeking goals that are consistent with mainstream cultural values increases wellbeing (e.g., oishi & diener, 2001; uchida et al., 2008). for example, seeking relationship harmony within east asian cultures and seeking individual achievement within european-american cultures increases happiness, respectively. will seeking goals that are not consistent with mainstream cultural values (i.e., seeking individual achievement in east asian cultural contexts) decrease wellbeing? ogihara and uchida (2010) examined this issue in order to see the periphery of culture, which is not cultural mainstream. in this study, a questionnaire study with college students in japan and the united states was conducted. students in both countries were asked to evaluate the extent to which they focused on achievement orientation and relationship orientation, using the contingencies of self-worth scale (crocker, luhtanen, cooper, & bouvrette, 2003; uchida, 2008). results indicated that, for japanese participants, achievement orientation significantly decreased wellbeing, whereas relationship orientation did not predict wellbeing. on the other hand, relationship orientation significantly decreased wellbeing in the u.s. sample, whereas achievement orientation did not predict wellbeing. these results showed that deviation from the cultural mainstream decreased wellbeing (ogihara & uchida, 2010). individualism has spread throughout japan due to globalization (toivonen, norasakkunkit, & uchida, 2011), both at the personal and at the macro levels. at the personal level, for instance, average family size has decreased, the divorce rate has increased, and the importance of independence during child socialization has increased. this indicates that japanese individuals have become more individualistic in some respects (hamamura, 2012). in addition, at the macro level, for example, the system of individualism has been employed in many companies (i.e., individual achievement-based evaluation; joe, 2004; takahashi, 2010). as a consequence, people in japan are faced with achievement-oriented situations more often than before. such cultural shifts might decrease happiness in japan. to examine this hypothesis, ogihara and uchida (2012) conducted an experimental study in which japanese undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (achievement-oriented condition, relationship-oriented condition, or control condition). they were asked to imagine and describe a situation in which they were in a workplace where their worth would be determined by their personal achievement (achievement-oriented condition) or the quality of their relationships with others (relationship-orientated condition). participants in the control condition were asked to imagine and describe a workplace setting without any specific instructions. next, participants reported their wellbeing under that imagined situation. results indicated that participants in the achievement-oriented condition reported lower wellbeing than did participants in the control condition. there was no difference in wellbeing between the relationship and control conditions. personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 363 why did achievement orientation decrease subjective wellbeing? we recently observed that interpersonal relationships might deteriorate when japanese seek individualism. for example, in the survey study (ogihara & uchida, 2010), the number of close friends mediated the negative effect of achievement orientation on subjective wellbeing, which means that those who were highly achievement-oriented had fewer close friends and thus they reduced happiness. similarly in the experimental study (ogihara & uchida, 2012), the amount of social support expected to be obtained mediated the negative effect of achievement orientation on subjective wellbeing. in sum, achievement orientation (both at the individual and institutional level) makes it difficult for japanese individuals to build and maintain good relationships with others; this can lead to decreased wellbeing. interestingly, we did not find this negative relationship between individualism and happiness in a sample of u.s. participants. these findings are consistent with an argument presented by kitayama (2010, 2012). he suggests that individualism in japan might be qualitatively different from individualism in the united states, that is, individualism in japan is more likely to be interpreted as ‚doing something alone by himself/herself,‛ thus individualism in japan has connotations of ‚egoism‛ or ‚social isolation.‛ kitayama (2012) also introduced the description by a famous historical author, souseki natsume (1867-1916), who pointed out that individualism was interpreted as egoism in 1914, a hundred years ago. this interpretation still exists in the current japanese situation. such ‚egoistic independence‛ leads to social isolation (kitayama, 2012). in a society where independence of the self is salient, such as european-american cultures, the system of individualism prevails and works well within each institution or organization. within that culture, competitiveness and relational mobility are quite high, and people pay attention to individual ability and respect personal strategies and uniqueness. therefore, individuals are independent from each other but still actively build and maintain interpersonal relationships. in contrast, in a society where the interdependent self is salient, such as japanese culture, the system of individualism is interpreted as a situation in which one has become isolated from interpersonal relationships. japanese individuals tend to think that they would have to cut off relationships with others in order to be independent and to achieve individualism. a number of japanese individuals might have attempted to do this under the pressure of globalization. however, happiness in japan is still strongly related to interpersonal relationships, given that implicit and basic cultural norms are still interdependent. the speed of system change within a society and the psychological change within an individual are inconsistent. even though globalization has affected japanese society, traditional japanese cultural values of interdependence still exist. the discrepancy between explicit norms (global standards) and implicit norms (traditional standards) might lead to decreases in happiness among japanese individuals (kitayama, 2010). so far we have argued the case of japan as an example of a country that is under pressure from globalization, but similar examples might be found within other asian cultural contexts that are also experiencing the shifting of cultural norms towards european-american ideas of happiness. 6. changing happiness after national disasters japan experienced the great east japan earthquake on march 11, 2011. it was an exceptionally severe disaster, certainly the worst in recent memory. both the earthquake itself and the tsunami brought disaster on a massive scale throughout the region. more than 15,800 people died, and around 3,700 people are still missing as of may 2012. uchida, takahashi, and kawahara (2011) examined how the great east japan earthquake has affected the happiness of young people in japan outside of the afflicted area. a large longitudinal survey (n = 10,744) personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 364 was conducted before the earthquake (december 2010) and another after it (march 2011). people who were thinking about the earthquake while completing the second survey (te group: 40% of the sample) were happier after the earthquake than before, showing that reflecting on the earthquake had prompted them to reevaluate their definition of happiness. they also experienced temporary negative emotional reactions more frequently after the earthquake than before. in contrast, those who were not thinking about the earthquake while answering the survey (nte group: approximately 48% of the sample) did not record a change in their level of happiness and actually felt less happiness, even before the earthquake, than did the te group. it seems that the te group were more likely to change their definition of happiness after the earthquake, and this reevaluation of their values might have prompted them to become more satisfied with their current life conditions. those who had felt less general happiness before the earthquake were less likely to reflect upon the earthquake and tended not to change their definitions of happiness. the two different reactions (te vs. nte) among japanese young adults might reflect recent conflicts between traditional cultural values and new ideas of individualism. the te group might be more likely to have traditional values whereas the nte group might be more likely to have new ‚individualistic‛ ideas. the current japanese model of happiness might also include these two dichotomous patterns. 7. future direction for research on happiness from a cultural psychological point of view we have reviewed several studies on happiness based on the cultural construal of happiness. at an abstract level, conceptions of happiness can be seen as universal in terms of satisfaction with one’s accomplishments and relationships; however, the degree to which each of these factors is emphasized and predicts happiness can vary substantially from culture to culture. furthermore, connotations of happiness also differ, such as incremental views of happiness observed in european-american cultures and dialectic views of happiness observed among east asian cultures. such cultural differences are found not only at the individual psychological level but also at the macro level, such as within societal systems, institutions, and among scientific metatheories. based on these cultural differences, situational/environmental factors (such as globalization and national disaster) can also affect views of happiness differently within society. we have to illustrate not only cross-cultural differences but also illustrate cultural/societal changes over time within nations or communities. further research on happiness across cultures will have an impact on people’s societal wellbeing. from a cultural psychological point of view, we have to point out several ‚cautions‛ for cross-cultural comparisons. first, regarding response biases (i.e., asians prefer to use a middle point but americans prefer to use an extreme point on a likert scale; chen, lee, & stevenson, 1995) and the reference group effect (i.e., people judge themselves based on surrounding others; individual judgment in each nation varies with their ‚reference point‛; heine, lehman, peng, & greenholtz, 2002), we have to be careful with simple mean score comparisons (e.g., heine et al., 2002). second, as set-point theory suggested (see diener, lucas, & scollon, 2006), each individual has a different set-point of wellbeing regarding his or her individual life experiences. inglehart and klingemann (2000) have also suggested that there have been large stable differences of the life satisfaction among various societies for at least 20 years, for each culture has a normal set-point (baseline) of wellbeing based on historical experience. again, these set-point differences make it harder to interpret mean cultural comparisons. third, and more importantly, we have to consider that ‚optimal happiness‛ personal or interpersonal construal of happiness: a cultural psychological perspective uchida & ogihara www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 365 varies substantially across cultures. for example, life satisfaction scales, or ladder scales, which are frequently used in cross-cultural studies, are based on the concept of wellbeing as being based on individual achievement. thus, there is an inherent bias that is embedded in these measures. therefore, individuals within asian cultures are sometimes judged to be ‚less healthy‛ and ‚more emotionally distressed‛ than american or european samples (e.g., norasakkunkit & kalick, 2002). instead of simple mean score comparisons and using ‚happiness rankings,‛ investigating the meaning of happiness within each cultural context would be more productive. in addition, using several indices, including measures that reflect cultural construals of happiness in a given culture, would be helpful. we believe that cultural psychological perspectives will contribute to our understanding of wellbeing across a variety of cultural contexts. authors yukiko uchida kyoto university yukikou@educ.kyoto-u.ac.jp yuji ogihara kyoto university publishing timeline received 30 may 2012 accepted 28 august 2012 published 13 december 2012 references adams, g., & markus, h. r. 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(2019). assessing and understanding hospitality: the brief hospitality scale. international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 14-26. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.839 robert biswas-diener noba robert@nobaproject.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 14 article assessing and understanding hospitality: the brief hospitality scale robert biswas-diener · kostadin kushlev · rong su · fallon goodman · todd b. kashdan · ed diener abstract: although hospitality is a valued social and cultural phenomenon, it has been largely overlooked in the psychology research literature. our studies are designed to advance the understanding of hospitality by creating a brief measure of it that can be used across cultures. in study 1, we employed a large sample of americans to create and begin validation of a measure of hospitality: the brief hospitality scale, or bhs. in all nations and both studies, the scale had a single strong factor and high internal consistency. in study 2, we administered the measure to respondents from 11 nations and found that people in some countries (e.g., iran) are significantly more hospitable than people in others (e.g., singapore). the strongest personality correlates of hospitality were those associated with social characteristics such as extraversion, agreeableness, and feelings of group belonging. the very strongest association with hospitality was the ability to see the perspective of others. thus, hospitality represents more than simple sociability, and seems to rest on feelings of togetherness with others, concern for their wellbeing, and positive feelings toward them. we found in both studies that hospitality is associated with higher levels of wellbeing, for example, optimism, psychosocial flourishing, and positive affect. keywords: hospitality, personality, subjective wellbeing, perspective taking, positive psychology measurement 1. introduction hospitality is ubiquitous in daily life. whenever we have friends over for dinner, host an old classmate for a few days, or throw a barbeque for neighbors, we engage in hospitable behavior. though such large and small social occasions likely play a role in the maintenance of social relationships and the development of community, hospitality has been largely overlooked by scholars of psychology in general, and wellbeing scholars in particular. in this initial exploration of hospitality, we create a measure of hospitality, examine its correlates to gain a better understanding of it, and assess its variation across cultures. while social behavior is an essential factor in subjective wellbeing (diener & seligman, 2002; epley & schroeder, 2014; kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, & stone, 2004; reis, sheldon, gable, roscoe, & ryan, 2000; sandstrom & dunn, 2014), hospitality does not appear in the indexes of three widely used textbooks in positive psychology (baumgardner & crothers, mailto:robert@nobaproject.com hospitality biswas-diener et al. 15 2009; peterson, 2006; snyder, lopez, & pedrotti, 2011), or among the 55 chapters collected in the second edition of the handbook of positive psychology (snyder & lopez, 2002). similarly, hospitality is not listed among the 24-character strengths of the values in action survey (peterson & seligman, 2004), often regarded as central elements of psychological wellbeing. beyond positive psychology, hospitality does not even appear in the indexes of popular introductory psychology textbooks. as rozin (2006) has pointed out, however, behavioral scientists need to focus more on important behaviors that characterize everyday life. this certainly applies to the topic of hospitality, which exists across cultures, economic status, and throughout history. like happiness and empathy, hospitality may be a concept with nuanced and diverse definitions. the oxford english dictionary defines hospitality as “friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests or strangers” and also as “cordiality, warmth, congeniality, sociability and generosity.” these two definitions suggest the complexity of the concept. on the one hand, hospitality is viewed in behavioral terms. it is a transaction between a host and a guest in which the former shares personal resources with the latter. for example, a host provides dinner or entertainment for a guest. on the other hand, as suggested by the second definition, hospitality is also viewed as an attitude. in this case, it is understood to be a quality of personality: an attitude of welcoming. there are two hallmark features of hospitality. the first is the physical location of the pro-social interaction. in the case of hospitality, sharing—broadly defined—happens within the context of the host’s home (“home” here could mean office, house, or other locations that constitute the host’s—but not the guest’s—territory). that is, the host welcomes the guest into the host’s territory, where the sharing occurs. as such, hospitality is a face-to-face (whether virtual or physical) phenomenon that does not allow for anonymity in the relationship. the face-to-face aspect of hospitality is non-trivial because it relates to the second hallmark feature: the social and emotional tenor of the transaction, namely, hospitality is concerned with fostering a relaxed and positive tone. historically, strangers, travelers, and even enemies enjoyed occasional hospitality governed by formal rules. for example, hávamál, “the sayings of the vikings,” provides a historical example of the specifics of hospitality with an emphasis on positivity: the newcomer needs fire / his knees are numb. / a man who has made his way over mountains needs food and fresh linen. . . . a guest needs giving water / fine towels and friendliness. / a cheerful word / a chance to speak / kindness and concern. (jónasson, 1992, pp. 20-21). it should be noted that hospitality—in the lay understanding of the concept—is also distinct from related concepts, such as generosity, even though both concepts fall under the broad umbrella of “pro-social behavior.” generosity is a relatively liberal attitude toward the giving of one’s own resources, including money and possessions. generosity is distinct from hospitality in that it can include anonymous transactions (for example, donating money to aid organizations). in addition, generosity has no element of welcome. purchasing a theater ticket for a friend who forgot her wallet, for instance, is generous but not—by definition—hospitable. further, it is possible that hospitality does not always include the giving of one’s resources on a permanent basis. for example, a person who invites her neighbors over after their house is flooded provides temporary shelter. these commonsense understandings of hospitality suggest hospitality biswas-diener et al. 16 that it is a distinct, albeit multi-faceted, aspect of pro-social behavior. research on this topic can help us further disentangle and understand hospitality. when researchers have examined the concept of hospitality, it has largely been within the scope of the hospitality industry. this industry includes businesses such as hotels and restaurants that provide food, shelter, and—to some degree—entertainment of guests. it should be noted, however, that the hospitality industry is fundamentally inadequate to define or describe hospitality as it occurs in everyday life. this is because the hospitality industry treats hospitality as a financial transaction. that is, the hospitality industry promotes a welcoming attitude and a focus on guest satisfaction—both psychological concepts—but it is motivated primarily by guest loyalty, and, by extension, profit (walker, 2009). as such, the welcoming attitude and helpful behaviors of people in the hospitality industry may not reflect noncommercial hospitality. that said, research from the hospitality industry might provide some insights into this phenomenon. this can be seen, for example, in the concept of “service orientation” (hogan, hogan, & busch, 1984; dienhart, gregoire, downey, & knight, 1992). service orientation is broadly defined as a disposition toward helpfulness and cooperation, but specifically in the context of customer service, such as restaurant interactions. customer service bears a passing similarity to the concerns of hosts interested in welcoming guests. pezzotti (2011) argues, however, that there are subtle but important distinctions between hospitality and service. he associates the words “warm,” “friendly,” “listening,” “respect,” and “security” with hospitality and “scripted,” “standards,” “products,” and “anticipation” with service. he points out the ways in which service is artificial and oriented toward pleasing customers, while hospitality is organic and oriented toward social connection. thus, while existing research has yielded important applied insights for the hospitality industry, a large gap remains in our basic understanding of the psychological process of individual hospitality as it occurs in everyday life. although psychologists have studied cooperation, altruism, generosity, and related concepts, there is neither a robust literature on hospitality nor established theories or models. 2. the current research in this article, we have three primary goals: (1) create a valid brief measure of hospitality, (2) explore its associations with personality and wellbeing, and (3) use it as an instrument to explore differences between people from nations across the globe. overall, we hope that this initial exploration of the concept of hospitality will bring the topic of hospitality to the attention of behavioral researchers, who will build on our work by further refining understanding the role of hospitality in social life. we began with a pilot study with open-ended responses, in which we gained initial insights into the content and facets of hospitality by polling two separate samples: one sample focusing on experiences related to being a host (n = 105; 74% female) and a second one focusing on experiences related to being a guest (n = 65; 75% female). across the two samples, participants came from 15 diverse countries (e.g., the united states, turkey, portugal, india), allowing us to identify possible societal and cultural aspects of the hospitality experience. based on these survey responses, we created an initial pool of 68 hospitality items, which we later reduced to 23 items. from the 23 items we selected four that formed a single factor, and yet tapped into somewhat different aspects (e.g., enjoyment, self-perception) of hospitality – the brief hospitality scale (bhs; see study 1 below). we explored the bhs by its associations with personality, culture, and wellbeing in a large sample of americans (study 1) and in an international sample of individuals across 11 hospitality biswas-diener et al. 17 countries (study 2). we predicted strong positive association between hospitality and socially relevant personality traits such as extroversion and agreeableness, helping to establish the convergent validity of the scale. as an additional factor that should be particularly highly associated with hospitality, we assessed perspective taking (hodges & biswas-diener, 2007), which has been linked to empathic concern and altruistic behavior (batson, early, & salvarani, 1997). in contrast to the social personality traits, conscientiousness, openness, and neuroticism should display weaker associations with hospitality—indicating the discriminant validity of the scale. further, as social behavior plays a key role in promoting subjective wellbeing (e.g., diener & seligman, 2002; reis et al., 2000), hospitality should predict higher wellbeing. finally, we further examined the bhs by assessing individuals from various nations in study 2’s international sample. though not using a validated scale of hospitality, a survey of 18,135 expatriates asked to report how welcome they felt in various countries suggests that hospitality varies substantially across nations (internations, 2018); a valid measure of hospitality should, therefore, be able to reveal such cultural differences. 3. study 1: measure creation the primary purpose of this study was to create a hospitality scale that includes affective and attitudinal items to measure hospitality. each item was constructed as a statement that respondents responded to by indicating their amount of relative agreement using a 1 (total disagreement) to 7 (total agreement) likert scale, with 4 indicating a neutral middle point. it was our aim to create an initial measure of the construct of hospitality while also examining this concept in relation to other psychological variables of interest, including wellbeing and personality. 3.1 method participants. participants (n = 1,623; 50% female) were recruited online through qualtrics data collection services, allowing us to collect data from a diverse sample of people living in the united states. the respondents’ ages ranged from 18 to 70 years old (m = 48.62, sd = 12.89). the participants represented a wide range of work backgrounds, including trades, professions, students, retirees, and non-workers. measures. we created an initial pool of 68 items that attempted to capture diverse aspects of hospitality, including diverse feelings and beliefs about it. for example, we were curious about the extent to which people enjoy hospitality, see it as a moral undertaking, and see it as an obligation. responses to each item were answered on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). our original intent was to create a general hospitality scale with distinct subscales, but factor analyses of the items revealed no clear-cut simple and understandable structure beyond a single strong first factor. the four items we ultimately chose for the brief hospitality scale were selected based on the following criteria: a) unidimensionality, b) strong alpha coefficients, c) the inclusion of diverse psychological aspects of hospitality (enjoyment, self-esteem, naturalness, and identity), and d) experiences that would be general across nations. in addition to the hospitality items, participants responded to the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985; pavot & diener, 1993). respondents also completed the scale of positive and negative experience—a validated measure of positive and negative affect (spane; diener, et al., 2009). participants also responded to the mini-ipip—a short measure of big 5 personality traits that shows both adequate psychometric properties and hospitality biswas-diener et al. 18 convergence with other widely used measures of personality (donnellan, oswald, baird, & lucas, 2006). we also included four items related to perspective taking. perspective taking is the cognitive aspect of empathy, and is related to a person’s ability to see the world from another person’s perspective (hodges & biswas-diener, 2007). finally, we assessed the income, education, age, and gender of our participants. 3.2 results we factor analyzed the full set of items and selected items that loaded highly on the first factor but assessed somewhat different content. after identifying four items as promising, we subjected them to a principal components analysis, as well as a scale reliability analysis (cronbach’s alpha). there was a strong single factor (strictly speaking, a single component, as we employed a principal components analysis), with no second factors having an eigenvalue even approaching 1.0. the individual item loadings are shown in table 1. a maximum likelihood factor analysis produced virtually identical conclusions, with one very strong factor and no other factor approaching one. the cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .87, with all interitem correlations exceeding .60. table 1. principal component loadings and cronbach’s alpha of the bhs items study 1 study 2 i enjoy hosting .87 .84 i feel good about myself when hosting .88 .87 being hospitable comes easily to me .84 .91 i see myself as hospitable .83 .91 the scale is scored by summing the four items. the four-item brief hospitality scale (bhs) is shown in appendix 1. scale scores can vary from 4 to 28 (the sum of four items that can range from 1 to 7 each). in table 1, we present the weightings for the four items in both studies, derived from the principal components analysis. it should be noted that when the maximum likelihood factor analysis was employed, virtually the same weights were derived. as can be seen, all four items weighted highly on the single dimension, and were of similar magnitude. the means and standard deviations for the scale for all respondents in study 1, as well as for demographic groups, are shown in table 2. the scale scores were negatively skewed (-.51), with only a few individuals scoring very low, but relatively more individuals scoring high on hospitality. as can be seen, the scale scores averaged about 19.5, meaning a score of about 5 per item, or “slightly agree.” as can also be seen, the various demographic groups did not vary dramatically from each other in hospitality. the only significant difference between groups was that women were more hospitable than men, t (1592) = 5.40, p < .001). hospitality biswas-diener et al. 19 table 2. descriptive statistics for the four-item brief hospitality scale for the usa __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ valid n mean standard deviation entire sample 1602 19.5 5.0 women 801 20.1 5.0 men 793 18.8 4.9 married 894 19.6 5.0 not married 698 19.2 5.0 young (18-35) 314 19.5 4.8 middle-aged (36-54) 630 19.1 5.0 senior (55-70) 587 19.7 5.1 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ correlations with other measures. the correlations between the bhs and demographic, personality traits, and wellbeing are shown in table 3. providing evidence of convergent validity, hospitality was highly correlated with social dimensions of personality, such as extraversion and agreeableness, and very highly with perspective taking. hospitality was also significantly associated with each form of subjective wellbeing. hospitality was seen as good and moral in the usa. the mean response to “hospitable people are good people” was 4.96, and to “it is morally right to be hospitable” was 5.15. thus, there was agreement that hospitality is desirable, but it was only mild agreement, not rising to a strong imperative. table 3. correlations of hospitality with personality, wellbeing, and demographic variables study 1 study 2 five factor personality traits extroversion .45 .49 agreeableness .50 .40 conscientiousness .25 .19 neuroticism -.26 .-.25 openness .20 .14 perspective taking .69 wellbeing life satisfaction .31 .40 positive affect .44 .41 negative affect -.20 -.27 optimism .44 flourishing scale .43 social thriving social support .34 help community .48 trust .35 respected .37 lonely -.26 belonging .43 note: all correlations p < .001 hospitality biswas-diener et al. 20 in order to further test the validity of the bhs, we asked about four specific and concrete hospitable behaviors, in order to see if our scale could predict them. in table 4, we show the correlations between the bhs and these four behavioral items. the table reveals moderate to strong correlations between bhs scores and hospitable behaviors. table 4. bhs scores correlated with four hospitable behaviors study 1 study 2 i regularly play host to my family members .53 .53 i have hosted a stranger at a dinner party .45 .39 i have recently had a guest spend the night in my home .40 .39 i host a dinner or a party where i live at least once a month .35 .51 note: all correlations are significant at p < .001 3.3 discussion in study 1, we created a four-item scale of hospitality that forms a single factor with very high internal reliability. the scale correlates substantially with perspective taking, as well as with extroversion and agreeableness. thus, the scale correlates with individual differences in personality related to sociability and being able to get along well with others. furthermore, high hospitality was correlated with higher subjective wellbeing, including life satisfaction. the association with positive affect was notably higher than with negative affect. 4. study 2: cross-cultural hospitality though study 1 relied on a broad sample of americans, the conclusions may not generalize beyond the united states. in study 2, we address this concern by using samples from 11 different nations and five continents. these samples allowed us to explore cross-national differences. 4.1 methods participants. respondents from 11 nations were recruited to participate through qualtrics data collection services, n = 2,145 (52% female). across nations, the average age of the respondents was m = 37.66 years old, sd = 1.80. we selected these nations because their societies represent a wide range of historical, cultural, and geopolitical regions and influences. measures. participants responded to the bhs questions related to personality and wellbeing, and questions about their social quality of life. the 18 social items covered a wide range of social wellbeing dimensions including social support, trusting others, and feeling respected. the respondents also answered items assessing subjective wellbeing (optimism, life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect). finally, participants responded to the flourishing scale (fs; diener et al., 2009). the fs is a short composite scale measuring an array of wellbeing variables including self-esteem, purpose, and mastery. it has been shown to have high reliability and high convergence with other wellbeing measures (diener et al., 2009). means, standard deviations, and cronbach’s alphas are shown for each of the 11 nations in table 5. hospitality biswas-diener et al. 21 table 5. descriptive statistics for 11 nations, and scale reliability nation n mean sd cronbach’s alpha argentina 204 20.8 5.3 .87 australia 194 18.4 5.7 .92 china 205 20.6 5.1 .94 germany 199 20.4 5.5 .89 india 196 21.0 5.4 .92 iran 149 23.5 3.8 .84 mexico 196 20.8 5.4 .86 russia 198 19.4 6.0 .94 singapore 196 16.8 5.3 .91 spain 202 19.7 4.6 .81 turkey 195 20.7 6.1 .94 4.2 results the factor loadings for the four items for study 2 are shown in table 1. there was a single strong factor (component) with an eigenvalue above 1. overall, the four items demonstrated excellent internal consistency,  = .95, as in study 1. when maximum likelihood factor analysis was applied to the data instead of principal components, the results were identical – with only one very strong factor in each nation, and no others approaching an eigenvalue of 1. the correlations of general hospitality with personality and wellbeing are shown in table 3. as can be seen, hospitality again was strongly associated with extroversion and agreeableness. for social wellbeing, hospitality was most strongly correlated with belonging and helping one’s community. finally, hospitality was very strongly related to positive forms of wellbeing – life satisfaction, positive affect, optimism, and flourishing, and modestly associated inversely with negative affect. we next explored patterns of differences between nations in hospitality. assuming that national and cultural differences in hospitality exist, a measure of hospitality with good validity should be able to assess such differences. a visual inspection of the data indicates that some nations, such as iran, score substantially higher on hospitality than other nations, such as singapore. hospitality biswas-diener et al. 22 table 6. percentile norms for the brief hospitality scale for the usa (study 1) and 11 other nations (study 2) note: scores range from 4 through 28. nation numbers indicate the percentage of people at or below that bhs score in each nation. in table 6, we provide norms for hospitality for each of the 12 nations included in both studies, as well as norms for the entire sample of 12 nations. the differences between mean levels of hospitality are reflected in these norms. for instance, a score of 16 on the bhs would be only the 6th percentile in iran, but the 52nd percentile in singapore. similarly, a score of 20 would be the 23rd percentile in iran, but the 63rd percentile in australia. overall, nations differed significantly (f (10,2124) = 17.77, p < .001) in hospitality. in terms of specific comparisons between nations, as analyzed by bonferroni comparisons, the results can be summarized as: iran was significantly higher than all other nations (p < .001), and singapore and australia were significantly lower (p < .01) than most other nations, but not each other. bhs score u s a a rg e n tin a a u stra lia c h in a g e rm a n y in d ia m e x ico r u ssia s in g a p o re s p a in t u rk e y ira n all 12 nations 4 1 2 3 1 3 1 2 2 2 1 2 0 1 5 1 3 4 1 3 2 2 3 3 2 2 0 2 6 2 3 4 2 5 2 3 3 4 2 2 0 2 7 2 3 5 3 6 3 4 4 5 3 3 0 3 8 3 3 6 3 6 3 4 8 7 3 5 0 4 9 4 4 8 4 7 4 4 9 8 3 6 0 5 10 5 4 10 4 7 5 6 11 12 4 9 0 6 11 6 4 13 5 8 7 6 13 16 4 12 0 7 12 8 6 16 7 9 8 7 17 20 5 13 1 9 13 10 8 17 8 11 10 9 18 23 9 16 2 11 14 13 10 21 12 12 13 11 20 29 11 18 3 14 15 18 14 25 15 14 15 15 23 38 18 18 4 18 16 30 19 37 20 19 20 21 27 52 26 25 6 27 17 36 24 43 25 22 24 25 33 57 30 28 7 32 18 42 32 49 30 27 27 29 39 65 36 30 13 38 19 47 35 52 36 35 32 34 46 69 44 35 16 43 20 55 43 63 48 45 42 41 52 74 55 42 23 52 21 63 50 69 53 52 46 50 58 80 61 43 28 58 22 69 59 73 58 60 53 54 62 84 68 49 34 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people in the 11 nations believe that hospitality is good and moral. in every nation and across the 11 nations hospitality was rated above the neutral point of 4 for both “it is morally right to be hospitable” and “hospitable people are good people.” these numbers were, however, notably higher in nations such as iran (6.47 and 6.11) than in nations such as australia (4.94 and 4.73) and singapore (4.57 and 4.35). thus, hospitality is universally seen as desirable, but the strength of this varies across nations. it appears that hospitality is lower in nations where it is less valued. 5. general discussion the current study offers an initial exploration into the experience of hospitality. this is a common social phenomenon that has, until now, been conspicuously absent from psychological research attention. our investigation aimed to better understand a variety of psychological components of hospitality, including identity (a sense of self as hospitable), affect (enjoying hospitality), effort (whether it comes easily), and self-esteem (hospitality makes one feel good about oneself). we created a brief measure of hospitality and administered it in 12 nations. to create the bhs measure of hospitality, we began with a pilot study into people’s experiences of being guests and of being hosts. we used these insights to create an item pool aimed at capturing the various aspects of hospitality. next, we used a diverse sample of more than 1,000 americans to create and test a four-item measure that shows robust psychometric properties. the scale was unidimensional and had a strong cronbach’s alpha in all 12 nations, and we later used it to collect additional cross-national data. we used the bhs to examine common personality predictors, including the five factor model and perspective taking. of the five factors, extroversion was the strongest predictor of overall hospitality. it may be that extroverts are particularly suited to the social aspects of hospitality (grobelna, 2015). as expected, perspective taking was also very strongly associated with overall hospitality. it may be that the ability to “put one’s self in another person’s shoes” is a psychological skill that makes hospitality easier and more effective. further investigation of the ways that individual differences affect hospitality is highly recommended to future researchers. the brief hospitality scale was also used to investigate cross-national differences in hospitality. first, we collected data from diverse samples from geographically distinct countries and found that hospitality differs from society to society. indeed, while the idea that hospitality is a virtuous action seemed to be a cultural universal, we found mean rates and distributions of hospitality to differ from nation to nation. middle-eastern nations (such as iran and turkey) hospitality biswas-diener et al. 24 and latin countries (such as mexico and argentina) reported the highest rates of hospitality. we also found that norms help interpret these scores by revealing how high a score is compared to other individuals in that nation, as well as contrasted against the norms for the other nations. although we found differences in this preliminary study, we acknowledge that we know too little, at present, to meaningfully draw conclusions about cultural factors that might influence these differences. it is possible, for example, that the low scores found in singapore reflect unique cultural factors such as a lower value placed on hospitality, the potential impact of reputation concerns on hospitality, the influence of collectivism, or some other factor. more research is needed to better understand and explain cultural differences where they occur. it is very informative that hospitality is so consistently associated with all forms of wellbeing – social wellbeing, subjective wellbeing, and general flourishing. it may be that hospitality contributes to wellbeing, or that it follows from it, and it is possible that the influence is bi-directional. it is also informative that hospitality is seen in generally positive ways across diverse cultures, and yet is most strongly associated with specific personality characteristics. the direction of causal influence and cultural variation in hospitality are both fruitful areas for future research. an important task for future research will be to explore whether hospitality raises wellbeing, or whether people high in wellbeing simply tend to be more hospitable, or both. alternately, a person’s social feelings in general could influence both wellbeing and hospitality. because the associations with flourishing and wellbeing on the one hand, and hospitality on the other, were so robust, and found across very diverse cultures, this link is important to understand. we particularly hope that future researchers will investigate the conceptual boundaries of hospitality. it will be interesting and useful to better understand how hospitality relates to generosity, altruism, organizational citizenship, conflict resolution and other social concepts. ultimately, our hope is that our results alert scholars to the importance of hospitality, as well as to a tool to study it. authors robert biswas-diener noba robert@nobaproject.com kostadin kushlev georgetown university rong su university of iowa fallon goodman george mason university todd kashdan george mason university hospitality biswas-diener et al. 25 ed diener university of virginia, university of utah and the gallup organization publishing timeline received 16 january 2019 accepted 2 may 2019 published 9 july 2019 references batson, c. d., early, s., & salvarani, g. (1997). perspective taking: imagining how another feels versus imaging how you would feel. personality and social psychology bulletin, 23(7), 751-758. baumgardner, s. r., & crothers, m. k. (2009). positive psychology. upper saddle river, nj: prentice hall/pearson education. diener, e., & seligman, m. e. p. (2002). very happy people. psychological science, 13(1), 81-84. http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00415 diener, e., wirtz, d., tov, w., kim-prieto, c., choi, d., oishi, s., & biswas-diener, r. (2009). new measures of well-being: flourishing and positive and negative feelings. social indicators research, 39, 247-266. diener, e. d., emmons, r. a., larsen, r. j., & griffin, s. (1985). the satisfaction with life scale. journal of personality assessment, 49(1), 71-75. dienhart, j. r., gregoire, m. b., downey, r. g., & knight, p. k. 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(2011). the essence of hospitality and service. in m. c. sturman, j. b. corgel & r. verma (eds.), the cornell school of hotel administration on hospitality: cutting edge thinking and practice (pp. 518). hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons. hospitality biswas-diener et al. 26 reis, h. t., sheldon, k. m., gable, s. l., roscoe, j., & ryan, r. m. (2000). daily well-being: the role of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. personality and social psychology bulletin, 26(4), 419-435. http://doi.org/10.1177/0146167200266002 rozin, p. (2006). domain denigration and process preferences in academic psychology. perspectives on psychological science, 1(4), 365-376. sandstrom, g. m., & dunn, e. w. (2014). social interactions and well-being: the surprising power of weak ties. personality and social psychology bulletin, 40(7), 910-922. http://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214529799 snyder, c. r., & lopez, s. j. (2002). handbook of positive psychology. new york, ny: oxford university press. snyder, c. r., lopez, s. j., & pedrotti, j. t. (2011). positive psychology: the scientific and practical explorations of human strengths (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. walker, j. r. (2009). introduction to hospitality. london, england: pearson. appendix 1 the brief hospitality scale please answer openly and honestly to each question using the scale provided to indicate the amount you agree or disagree with each statement below: 7 strongly agree 6 agree 5 slightly agree 4 neither agree nor disagree 3 slightly disagree 2 disagree 1 strongly disagree 1. ____ i enjoy hosting others. 2. ____ when i host others, i feel good about myself. 3. ____ being hospitable is something that comes easily to me. 4. ____ i am a very hospitable person. * the authors of this scale grant permission for its use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes so long as attribution to the authors is made. jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., lomas, t., heekerens, j. b., & dreisörner, a. (2019). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: german). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-36. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.993 richtlinen version 1.0, 19. juli 2019 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au urheberrechte gehören den autoren 1 special issue ethische richtlinien für die positiv-psychologische praxis aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas · johannes heekerens · aljoscha dreisörner http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 2 . inhaltsverzeichnis vorbemerkungen..………………………………………………………………………………. 4 einleitung.……………………………………………………………………………………. 4 berufsverbände und ethische richtlinien für die positive-psychologische praxis……. 4 ziele der richtlinien….……………………………………………………………………… 5 für wen sind die richtlinien?.................................................................................................. 5 vorläufiger charakter der richtlinien..……………………………………………………. 5 zentrale begriffe……………………………………………………………………………… 6 abschnitt eins: werte, stärken, and prinzipien…..…………………………………………. 8 werte positiv-psychologischer praxis …………………….…………….………………… 9 ethische prinzipien positiv-psychologischer praxis …………….………………………. 10 abschnitt zwei: anwendungen der ethischen richtlinien in der praxis.………………… 13 drei wichtige überlegungen……………………………………………………………….. 13 ethische entscheidungsfindung.…………………………………………………………... 13 überlegungen zur beraterischen arbeit..……..…………………………………………... 14 veränderungen bei klienten..………………………………………………………………. 14 veränderungen im umfeld………….……………………………………………………… 14 aktuelle emotionale verfassung und wohlbefinden…..………………………………... 15 vermeidung………………………………………………………………………………….. 15 machtgefälle……...…………………………………………………………………………... 15 übermäßiger einsatz von stärken.………………………………………………………… 16 praktische weisheit………………………………………………………………………….. 16 resilient bleiben und burnout verhindern…………...………………………………….... 16 nachweis des ausbildungshintergrunds und der fachlichen kompetenz..…………... 16 würdigung des kulturellen kontextes …………………………………………………… 17 ethische dilemmata lösen – eine schritt für schritt anleitung.……………………………. 18 anleitung zur selbsteinschätzung...…………………………………………………………... 19 abschnitt drei: fallbeispiele ethischer praxis…..……………………………………………. 20 fallbeispiel 1: kultur kultursensible anwendung von ppi……..…………………….. 20 fallbeispiel 2: coaching coachees in sich verändernden umständen.……………… 20 fallbeispiel 3: klinik arbeit mit traumata…………………………………………..…. 21 fallbeispiel 4: unternehmen druck daten falsch auszulegen.………………….……. 22 ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 3 fallbeispiel 5: mentoring motivation „unwilliger” teilnehmer in einer ungleichen beziehung.…………………………………………………………….…………………... 23 fallbeispiel 6: bildung durchführung von programmen zur steigerung von wohlbefinden wenn bestehende praktiken dieser absicht entgegenstehen..……… 24 relevante richtlinien.………………………………………………………………………….. 26 danksagung……….……………………………………………………………………………. 27 erste unterzeichner der ethischen richtlinien für die positiv-psychologische praxis……. 28 literaturverzeichnis…………………………………………………………………………….. 29 literaturhinweise..……………………………………………………………………………… 29 erklärung: diese richtlinien sind das ergebnis einer unabhängigen arbeitsgruppe, die von aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache und tim lomas geleitet wurde. die deutsche übersetzung stammt von johannes heekerens und aljoscha dreisörner. die richtlinien sind nicht innerhalb einer organisation oder eines berufsverbandes entstanden und von diesen unabhängig. allerdings wurden unterschiedliche akteure in die entwicklung und verbesserung dieser ersten version einbezogen. die autoren haben die absicht, die richtlinien alle zwei jahre zu aktualisieren, um deren tiefe und anwendungsumfang zu verbessern. feedback nimmt aaron jarden (aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au) gerne entgegen. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 4 vorbemerkungen einleitung ethische perfektion ist wahrscheinlich ein utopisches ideal, auch deshalb, weil menschen, inklusive der praktiker positiver psychologie (ppp), fehlbar, verletzlich und unvollkommen sind. die komplexität gegenwärtigen lebens, das geprägt ist von digitalen welten, unberechenbaren klimaveränderungen, flüchtlingskrisen, sich entfaltender identitäten und zunehmender wirtschaftlicher polarisierung, verschärft menschliche vulnerabilitäten. psychologische dienstleistungen, insbesondere solche deren explizites ziel die wiederherstellung oder förderung von wohlbefinden ist, werden nicht in der abwesenheit konkurrierender interessen und ethischer dilemmata angeboten. keine einzelne zusammenstellung von ethischen richtlinien, standards, oder gar statuten kann dem spektrum menschlicher komplexität vollständig gerecht werden. eine zusammenstellung breit abgestützter werte, persönlicher stärken und prinzipen kann uns trotz allem orientierung bieten, wie wir ethischere entscheidungen treffen können, insbesondere wenn wir positivpsychologischer interventionen (ppi) anwenden, deren allgemeines ziel die förderung von wohlbefinden ist. diese richtlinien enthalten a) werte, b) stärken und c) prinzipen für die positiv-psychologische praxis. es ist wichtig, sich in erinnerung zu rufen, dass richtlinien üblicherweise in weitere regelwerte eingebettet sind, die sich je nach situation und rechtsprechung unterscheiden können. beispielsweise könnten richtlinien den untersten teil einer präskriptiven hierarchie bilden (siehe abbildung 1): abbildung 1. richtlinien und weitere regelwerke. deshalb ist es wichtig, die richtlinien zusammen mit anderen regelwerken zu betrachten. einzelpersonen oder organisationen mögen sich auf diese richtlinien für die „positivpsychologische praxis“ beziehen und sie befürworten, jedoch kann es laut der rechtsprechungen mancher länder illegal sein, sich als „positiver psychologe“ zu bezeichnen – bitte seien sie sich der für sie geltenden lokalen beschränkungen und vorgaben im klaren.1 1 anmerkung des übersetzers: in deutschland ist „psychologe“ eine geschützte berufsbezeichnung, die ein abgeschlossenes diplom oder einen masterabschluss in psychologie erfordert. von einem „positiven psychologen“ kann erwartet werden, dass es sich um einen psychologen mit spezialisierung im bereich positive psychologie handelt. ob ein titelschutz für “positive psychologen” besteht, kann vom einzelfall abhängen und juristische entscheidungen bleiben abzuwarten. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 5 berufsverbände und ethische richtlinien für die positive-psychologische praxis wenn ein praktiker mitglied eines relevanten berufsverbandes ist (z.b., amerikanische psychologische gesellschaft, deutsche gesellschaft für psychologie, international coach federation) hat er zunächst und vor allem deren standards, deren kodex oder deren richtlinien für das berufspraktische handeln heranzuziehen. wir erwarten, dass praktiker, die durch ein genehmigungsoder qualifikationsgremiums (z.b., dem college of psychologists) legitimiert sind, über ausreichend ausbildung, training und erfahrung in der psychologischen praxis oder einem angrenzenden berufsfeld verfügen, sowie dass sie mit den regeln, standards, regularien, statuten und abläufen psychologischer praxis entsprechend der für sie geltenden rechtsprechung vertraut sind. die hier vorgestellten ethischen richtlinien für die positiv-psychologische praxis sind entwickelt worden, um existierende rechtsund berufsordnungen und richtlinien zu ergänzen, nicht zu ersetzen. als solche stellen diese richtlinie auch eine erste orientierung für praktiker dar, die keinem berufsverband angehören. ziele der richtlinien warum braucht es eine zusammenstellung ethischer richtlinien? ziel dieser richtlinien ist, die ethische praxis durch eine verpflichtung zu wissenschaftlich informierten und evidenzbasierten verfahren aus der positiven psychologie (pp) zu verbessern. ihre absicht ist, dafür zu werben, eine (angemessene) treue zur wissenschaft des wohlbefindens beizubehalten und insbesondere praktiker dafür zu sensibilisieren, diese treue bei der selbstdarstellung und dem marketing möglicher vorteile zu berücksichtigen. die richtlinien versuchen bei ppp und anderen ein klareres verständnis darüber zu befördern, was ethisch informierte praxis in der positiven psychologie bedeutet. mit unterstützung solcher richtlinien wird von ppp erwartet, sich zu folgendem zu bekennen:2 a) sich genau mit der forschung auseinanderzusetzen und die eigene praxis auf eine wissenschaftsbasis zu stellen; b) ihr wissen durch fortlaufendes lernen und berufliche weiterbildung kontinuierlich weiterzuentwickeln; c) sorgfältig und genau die grenzen des aktuellen wissens in bezug auf ppi zu vermitteln, ebenso wie die möglichen vorteile und fallstricke spezifischer ppi und programme zur steigerung des wohlbefindens; und d) das wohlbefinden von klienten, sowie positive und negative veränderungen im wohlbefinden während der leistungserbringung zu überwachen. für wen sind diese richtlinien? der zweck dieser richtlinien ist, optimales ethisches verhalten von ppp zu ermöglichen und dadurch anderen menschen gutes zu tun und sie vor möglichem schaden zu bewahren. als solche sind diese richtlinien für experten (z.b., psychologen) und andere (z.b., studierende oder solche ohne berufszugehörigkeit) gedacht, die ppi einsetzen oder wissen aus dem bereich der positiven psychologie in ihrer arbeit zur anwendung bringen. diese richtlinien sind keine anleitung für die anwendung bestimmter ppi. 2 wir haben vier beispiele zur veranschaulichung ausgewählt. die liste könnte erweitert warden. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 6 vorläufiger charakter der richtlinien wir weisen darauf hin, dass die aktuellen richtlinien (version 1.0, 19. juli 2019) vorläufig sind und alle zwei jahre durch einen sich wiederholenden beratenden prozess mit wichtigen interessensvertretern überarbeitet werden. diese regelmäßigkeit der überarbeitung der richtlinien dient dazu, auf kontextabhängige veränderungen reagieren zu können und sich stätig weiterentwickelnde lokale und globale themen zu berücksichtigen. in diesem sinne heißen wir rückmeldungen zu den hier beschriebenen richtlinien jederzeit willkommen. es ist wichtig zu verstehen, dass nur englischsprachige, zumeist westliche länder die entwicklung dieser richtlinien beeinflusst haben und die richtlinien entsprechend begrenzt sind. weil dies ein lebendiges und wachsendes dokument ist, das durch eine versionsnummer identifiziert ist, bleibt allerdings für zukünftige versionen zu hoffen, dass einflüsse von kodizes und richtlinien aus nicht-englischsprachigen und nicht-westlichen ländern aufgenommen werden. zentrale begriffe klient praktiker arbeiten mit klienten. „klient“ ist eine allgemeine bezeichnung für die empfänger jeglicher dienstleistungen, zu denen (jedoch nicht ausschließlich) einzelpersonen, paare, familien, gruppen, organisationen, sponsoren, oder andere bestimmbare soziale einheiten gehören. kodizes vs. richtlinien ein kodex hat üblicherweise rechtliche oder andere vollstreckbare auswirkungen, wohingegen richtlinien best practices empfehlen, die für gewöhnlich nicht reguliert oder überwacht werden. richtlinien unterstellen ihrem wesen nach, dass situationen sich unterscheiden und komplex sind und dass das befolgen der richtlinien oftmals voraussetzt, dass praktiker praktische weisheit anwenden – eine kombination aus erfahrung und gesundem menschenverstand. pp pp: positive psychologie. es gibt viele unterschiedliche konzeptualisierungen und definitionen für pp, aber die meisten verstehen sie als die wissenschaftliche erforschung und förderung von übergreifenden konstrukten wie „glück“, „wohlbefinden“ und „persönlicher entwicklung“. beispielsweise definieren lomas, hefferon und ivtzan (2015, s. 1347) pp als “the science and practice of improving wellbeing.”3 in diesem zusammenhang gibt es auch den begriff der „angewandten positiven psychologie“, welcher einfach als die anwendung der pp in realen situationen zu verstehen ist, welche ppi einschließt. ppi ppi: positiv-psychologische interventionen. in der literatur wird eine trennung vorgenommen zwischen „positive psychologie interventionen“ und „positiv-psychologischen interventionen“ – für eine überblick und erläuterung siehe hone, jarden und schofield (2015). hier berücksichtigen wir den breiter gefassten begriff positiv-psychologischen interventionen, der alle aktivitäten aus vielen disziplinen (z.b. aus anderen teilgebieten der psychologie zusätzlich zur positiven psychologie) umfasst, deren ziel die steigerung psychologischen 3 übersetzt in etwa „die wissenschaft und praxis zur förderung von wohlbefinden“. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 7 wohlbefindens ist. eine verbreitete definition für positiv-psychologische interventionen ist: “a positive psychological intervention promotes positive emotions, behaviours, and/or thoughts, thereby increasing the wellbeing of an individual or group”4 (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, p. 92). ppp ppp: praktiker der positiven psychologie. ein praktiker, der einschlägig ausgebildet ist (z.b. durch psychotherapie, beratung oder coaching) und ein spezifisches pp training bei einem seriösen weiterbildungsanbieter absolviert hat, welches ein verständnis des wissenschaftlichen forschungsprozesses und seiner anwendungen in der bereitstellung von angewandter positiver psychologie (z.b., ppi) ermöglicht.5 stärken allgemein gesprochen machen sich richtlinien und kodizes für bestimmte persönlichkeitsmerkmale stark, die vordenker des jeweiligen felds willkürlich ausgewählt haben. diesen richtlinien legten wir die character strengths and virtues (csv: peterson & seligman, 2004) zugrunde, ein empirisch validiertes und kulturübergreifend bestätigtes modell von charakterstärken (mcgrath, 2014). die csv definieren charakterstärken als universelle persönlichkeitseigenschaften, die für sich genommen wertvoll sind und nicht notwendigerweise instrumentellen zielen dienen. vielmehr handelt es sich um verhaltenswirksame persönlichkeitseigenschaften, die eine person darin unterstützen und dazu anleiten, ihr verhalten in verantwortungsvoller und ethischer art und weise im sinne des eigenen wohlergehens und des wohlergehens anderer auszurichten. charakterstärken drücken, vereinfacht gesagt, aus, wer eine person ist (bzw. deren charakter) und werte drücken aus, was sich eine person verpflichtet fühlt (bzw. deren prinzipien und handlungen). praktiker der ausdruck „praktiker” wird allgemein verwendet für eine person, die verantwortung für die bereitstellung einer der pp verwandten dienstleistung trägt. „praktiker“ beinhaltet jeden, der eine rolle oder rollen wie berater, psychotherapeut, psychosoziale fachkraft, coach, trainer, mentor oder erzieher innehat, ist allerdings nicht auf diese beschränkt.6 prinzipien prinzipien richten aufmerksamkeit auf wichtige ethische verantwortlichkeiten aus. handlungen foglen auf basis bestimmter prinzipien. 4 übersetzt in etwa „eine positiv-psychologische intervention fördert positive emotionen, verhaltensweisen, und/oder gedanken, wodurch das wohlbefinden einer einzelperson oder einer gruppe erhöht wird.“ 5 wer kann sich als ppp bezeichnen? zurzeit gibt es keine klare grenze in bezug auf das notwendige ausmaß, trainingsniveau oder qualifikationslevel. beispielsweise könnte sich jemand nach einem zweitägigen kurs, einer sechsmonatigen akkreditierten zertifizierung oder einem zweijährigen masterprogramm in angewandter positiver psychologie als ppp bezeichnen? außerdem sind supervidierte praxis (z.b., peeroder einzelsupervision) und onlineberatung zu empfehlen. weitere erläuterungen von den einschlägigen berufsverbänden zu angemessenem training und supervision sind notwendig (und tatsächlich werden diese themen bereits von relevanten akteuren berücksichtig und angegangen). 6 der ethos und die prinzipien, die in diesen richtlinien enthalten sind, könnten gleichermaßen auf wohlbefindensforscher angewandt werden, weil forscher in dem sinne als praktiker verstanden werden können, als dass sie mit teilnehmern arbeiten, die ähnlich wie klienten betrachtet werden können. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 8 werte werte sind glaubenssätze in bezug auf erwünschte ergebnisse, die von einzelpersonen verinnerlicht und durch gruppen geteilt werden (bzw., weitgefasste anschauungen über die welt und wie sie sein sollte). werte sind situationsübergreifend, beeinflussen welche handlungen wir wählen und wie wir andere und uns selbst bewerten; sie sind nach ihrer relativen wichtigkeit geordnet (schwartz, 2006). werte können ein wichtiger ausdruck einer allgemeinen ethischen verpflichtung sein, die, wenn sie als prinzip formuliert wird, eine genauere definition und handlungsorientierung erhält. in anderen worten, werte informieren prinzipien. in diesem sinne sind die werte, welche in diesen richtlinien zum ausdruck kommen, jene, welche die autoren als allgemein in der gemeinschaft der pp geteilt ansehen. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 9 abschnitt eins: werte, stärken und prinzipien die ethischen richtlinien für die positiv-psychologische praxis beinhalten die folgenden werte, stärken und prinzipien. sowohl werte als auch stärken unterstützen die umsetzung ethischer prinzipien, wie in tabelle 1 dargestellt. tabelle 1 werte, stärken und prinzipien der positiv-psychologischen praxis werte7 stärken8 prinzipien 1. den schutz von klienten und anderen gewährleisten. 1. ehrlichkeit. 1. wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung. 2. persönliche not und leiden lindern. 2. fairness. 2. verantwortungsvolle fürsorge. 3. die integrität der praktikerklient beziehung sicherstellen. 3. soziale intelligenz. 3. achtung der rechte und würde des menschen. 4. die unterschiedlichkeit menschlicher erfahrungen und kulturen würdigen. 4. teamwork. 4. vertrauenswürdigkeit. 5. förderung eines selbstverständnisses, das bedeutungsvoll für die betreffende(n) person(en) ist. 5. freundlichkeit. 5. gerechtigkeit. 6. die qualität professionellen wissens und seiner anwendung erhöhen. 6. vorsicht. 6. autonomie. 7. die beziehungsqualität zwischen menschen erhöhen. 7. weitsicht. 8. persönliche wirksamkeit erhöhen. 8. urteilsvermögen. 9. sich einsetzen für die faire und adäquate bereitstellung von beratung, psychotherapie und coaching. 9. selbstkontrolle. 10. ausdauer. 11. mut. 7 unsere werte wurden auf basis ähnlicher richtlinien ausgewählt und aus diesem grund können viele der werte unterschiedlichen kategorien zugeordnet werden. beispielsweise könnte gerechtigkeit als wert oder als prinzip verstanden werden. vertrauenswürdigkeit könnte als stärke (ehrlichkeit), als wert oder als prinzip verstanden werden. viele dieser konstrukte wurden in diesem sinne diskutiert. die werte wurden außerdem von den autoren dieser richtlinien gemäß ihrer relativen wichtigkeit geordnet. 8 stärken 17 sind danach geordnet, wie häufig sie in 10 ähnlichen ethikkodizes (z.b., dem ethischen rahmenwerk der britischen gesellschaft für beratung und psychotherapie) genannt werden. stärken 8-11 wurden hinzugefügt, weil die autoren sie für wichtig erachteten, um die sechs prinzipien zu wahren. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 10 außerdem: • fast alle kodizes legen eine reihe von persönlichkeitsmerkmalen und persönlichen qualitäten fest, wohingegen diese richtlinien auf stärken und beobachtbares verhalten fokussieren. • die listen der werte, stärken und prinzipien sind in keiner weise erschöpfend, sondern vielmehr ein erster versuch zu formulieren, was zurzeit als am zweckdienlichsten für die praxis erachtet wird. wenn diese richtlinien iterativ über die zeit angepasst werden, begleitet von einer entsprechenden debatte innerhalb der gemeinschaft der pp, ist anzunehmen, dass sich die bestandteile ebenfalls weiterentwickeln. • die listen der werte, stärken und prinzipien ist außerdem nicht bindend. • ein stärkenmodell (das values in action9 rahmenmodell) wurde ausgewählt, weil es das in der literatur am meisten verbreitetste war und auf solider wissenschaft beruht. werte von positiv-psychologischen praktikern die grundlegenden werte von ppp beinhalten eine verpflichtung zu: • den schutz von klienten und anderen gewährleisten. dies beinhaltet eine stetige und wachsame aufmerksamkeit in bezug darauf, wie ein klient auf die eigenen dienstleistungen reagiert. außerdem bedeutet es, die grenzen der eigenen kapazität und expertise zu kennen (und in diesem sinne zu erkennen, wann ein klient professionelle hilfe aus anderen bereichen benötigt oder ob eine gefahr für die öffentlichkeit besteht). • persönliche not und leiden lindern (falls in den grenzen der eigenen expertise). damit ist gemeint, ppi in situativ relevanter art und weise anzuwenden, um leiden von einzelpersonen zu lindern, die dienstleistungen in verschiedenen professionellen kontexten (z.b. therapie, coaching, gesundheit) in anspruch nehmen. • die integrität der praktiker-klient beziehung sicherstellen. dies beinhaltet respekt vor persönlichen grenzen und eine verpflichtung zu professionellen praktiken wie datenschutz und vertraulichkeit. • die unterschiedlichkeit menschlicher erfahrungen und kulturen würdigen. damit ist gemeint, in der arbeit mit klienten nicht nach dem gießkannenprinzip oder „one-size-fitsall“ vorzugehen, sondern die unterschiedlichkeit der einzigartigen entwicklungswege von menschen, sowie kontextuelle und kulturelle hintergründe, zu respektieren und diese unterschiede sogar zu zelebrieren. • förderung eines selbstverständnisses, das bedeutungsvoll für die betreffende(n) person(en) ist. damit ist gemeint, dass der einzelne ziele entwickelt und verfolgt, die nicht nur für ihn selbst erfüllend sind, sondern auch zum gemeinwohl beitragen. • die qualität professionellen wissens und seiner anwendung erhöhen. damit ist gemeint, das individuell möglichste zu tun, um entwicklungen in der literatur rechnung zu tragen und über fortschritte auf dem laufenden zu bleiben. • die beziehungsqualität zwischen menschen erhöhen. damit ist gemeint, anzuerkennen, dass menschen unvermeidlich in sozialen beziehungen und netzwerken eingebunden sind, sowie danach zu streben, diese bindungen so weit wie möglich zu verbessern. • persönliche wirksamkeit erhöhen. damit ist gemeint, danach zu streben, klienten dabei zu unterstützen, effektiver in der welt und in den einzigartigen situationen, in denen sie sich wiederfinden, zu handeln. 9 anm. d. ü.: wörtlich übersetzt „werte in aktion“. gemeint ist, dass die behandelten stärken werten zugeordnet sind, die wiederum in handlungen zum ausdruck kommen. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 11 • sich einsetzen für die faire und adäquate bereitstellung von beratung, psychotherapie und coaching. dies könnte das einstehen für dienstleistungen für schwer zu erreichenden populationen beinhalten, oder, falls möglich, eine preisstruktur anzubieten, die auch menschen mit weniger mitteln ermöglicht von leistungen zu profitieren. stärken positiv-psychologischer praktiker die persönlichen stärken der praktiker sind wichtig, weil sie einen einfluss auf die praktikerklient beziehung haben. viele der stärken, die als wichtig für die bereitstellung positivpsychologischer leistungen erachtet werden sind gute persönliche qualitäten. es ist unangemessen vorzuschreiben, dass alle praktiker diese stärken besitzen, weil es grundlegend ist, dass diese persönlichen stärken tief in der betreffenden person verankert und aus persönlichem einsatz heraus entwickelt werden und nicht etwa, weil dies den anforderungen einer externen autorität entspricht. eine thematische analyse der prinzipien und werte, die von wichtigen richtlinien (siehe relevante richtlinien) unterstützt werden, zeigte, dass von den folgenden charakterstärken angenommen werden kann, dass sie ethisches verhalten und ethischer entscheidungsfindung begünstigen: • ehrlichkeit: die wahrheit sagen; sich selbst in aufrechter art und weise darstellen, sowie in ehrlicher absicht handeln; auf täuschung verzichten; verantwortung für die eigenen gefühle und handlungen übernehmen. • fairness: alle menschen im geiste von fairness und gerechtigkeit gleich zu behandeln; eigene gefühle nicht entscheidungen über andere verzerren lassen; jedem eine faire chance geben. • soziale intelligenz: sich der motive und gefühle anderer personen bewusst sein; wissen, was in verschiedenen sozialen situationen zu tun ist: wissen, was zu tun ist, um andere zu beruhigen. • teamwork: gut als mitglied einer gruppe oder eines teams arbeiten; der gruppe loyal sein; seinen anteil übernehmen. • freundlichkeit: anderen gefallen und wohltaten tun; ihnen helfen; sie versorgen. • vorsicht: entscheidungen, die einen selbst betreffen mit sorgfalt treffen; keine unnötigen risiken eingehen; nichts sagen oder tun, was man später bereuen könnte. • weitsicht: in der lage sein, anderen weisen rat zu erteilen; mit sichtweisen auf die welt ausgestattet sein, die für einen selbst und andere sinn ergeben. • urteilsvermögen: dinge durchdenken und sie von allen seiten her betrachten; keine voreiligen schlüsse ziehen; entscheidungen auf eine solide evidenzbasis stellen; die fähigkeit haben, die eigene meinung ändern zu können. • selbstkontrolle: regulieren, wie man sich fühlt und was man tut; diszipliniert sein; eigene innere impulse und emotionen kontrollieren. • ausdauer: hart arbeiten, um rechtzeitig zu beenden, was man angefangen hat, unabhängig vom projekt; sich bei der arbeit nicht ablenken lassen; befriedigung aus erledigten aufgaben ziehen. • mut: eine mutige person sein, die nicht vor bedrohung, herausforderung, schwierigkeit oder schmerz zurückschrickt; vertreten was richtig ist, selbst wenn es widerstand gibt; den eigenen überzeugungen entsprechend handeln. ethische prinzipien für die positiv-psychologische praxis jedes der sechs unten beschriebenen prinzipien ist durch ein beispiel guter praxis ergänzt, das in erwiderung auf das prinzip entwickelt wurde. ethische entscheidungen, die stark von ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 12 einem oder mehreren prinzipien gestützt werden, ohne widersprüche durch andere, können als starke moralische intuitionen verstanden werden. nichtsdestotrotz werden praktiker vermutlich umständen begegnen, in denen es unmöglich ist, alle anwendbaren prinzipien in einklang zu bringen und in denen eine wahl zwischen den prinzipien erforderlich sein kann. eine entscheidung oder eine handlungsweise wird nicht notwendigerweise dadurch unethisch, dass sie umstritten ist oder weil andere praktiker zu unterschiedlichen schlüssen in derselben situation gekommen wären. die verantwortung eines praktikers ist es, alle relevanten umstände so sorgfältig wie es vernünftigerweise erwartet werden kann in betracht zu ziehen und für die getroffenen entscheidungen in angemessen art und weise verantwortung zu übernehmen. wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung wohltätigkeit beinhaltet eine verpflichtung zur förderung des wohlbefindens des klienten und des praktikers. das prinzip der wohltätigkeit meint, basierend auf einer professionellen beurteilung im besten interesse des klienten zu handeln. es fokussiert darauf, strikt in den grenzen der eigenen kompetenz zu arbeiten und dienstleistungen auf der basis von adäquatem training oder entsprechender erfahrung anzubieten. sicherzustellen, dass die besten interessen des klienten erfüllt werden, setzt eine systematische kontrolle der eigenen vorgehensweise und der ergebnisse (z.b., wohlbefinden) auf basis der besten zur verfügung stehenden mittel voraus. es wird als wichtig erachtet, dass wissenschaftliche forschung und systematische reflexion die eigene praxis informieren. je nach rolle und kontext gibt es üblicherweise eine pflicht, maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um die qualität der angebotenen leistungen zu verbessern und die eigenen praxis durch kontinuierliche berufliche weiterbildung auf den neuesten stand zu bringen. eine pflicht, im besten interesse eines klienten zu handeln, wird dann besonders entscheidend, wenn die arbeit mit klienten stattfindet, deren autonomie aufgrund von alter, unreife, fehlendem verständnis, bedrängnis, oder anderen bedeutsamen persönlichen einschränkungen vermindert ist. schadensvermeidung, auf der anderen seite, beinhaltet eine verpflichtung klienten vor leid zu bewahren. praktiker, die dieses prinzip übernehmen: • vermeiden sexuelle, finanzielle, emotionale oder irgendeine andere form der ausbeutung von klienten; • vermeiden inkompetenz (z.b., angemessene anwendung von ppi, bzw., wissen, was für wen wirkt) und fehlverhalten; • bieten keine leistungen an, wenn sie aufgrund von krankheit, persönlicher umstände oder intoxikation dazu nicht in der lage sind. der praktiker hat eine ethische verantwortung, sich darum zu bemühen, jeglichen schaden der einem klienten zugefügt wurde, zu lindern, auch dann, wenn der schaden unvermeidlich oder unbeabsichtigt war. praktiker haben persönliche und berufliche verpflichtungen, die inkompetenz oder das fehlverhalten anderer, wo angebracht, zur sprache zu bringen. sie sind auch verpflichtet, zu jeglichen untersuchungen und/oder urteilsfindungen von einer in angemessener art und weise anerkannten einrichtung oder autorität beizutragen, die professionelles verhalten betreffen, dass dem eines einigermaßen kompetenten praktikers nicht entspricht und/oder das risiko birgt, die profession der pp zu diskreditieren. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 13 verantwortungsvolle fürsorge die positiv-psychologische praxis fördert wohlbefinden. in der verfolgung dieses ziels zeigen ppp, die dieses prinzip übernehmen, ein aktives interesse am wohlergehen derer, mit denen sie arbeiten und erkennen die sozialen und institutionellen kräfte an, die ihre rolle als ppp regelt. sie tragen zu allererst die verantwortung dafür, das wohlergehen derer, mit denen sie arbeiten, zu schützen. sie erkennen an, dass einzelpersonen, familien, gruppen oder gemeinschaften in einer ungeschützten lage sein können. sie erkennen die grenzen ihrer expertise (inklusive der abwesenheit von wissen) an und verweisen auf andere spezialisten, wann immer notwendig. außerdem übernehmen sie verantwortung und korrigieren jeglichen schaden, der als ergebnis einer ihrer dienstleistungen entstanden ist. von ppp wird auch erwartet, dass sie ein aktives und kontinuierliches interesse an den empirischen und theoretischen entwicklungen ihres feldes zeigen, um sicherzustellen, dass ihr wissen auf dem neuesten stand der evidenz in bezug auf die ppi, die sie anwenden, bleibt. achtung der rechte und würde des menschen im einklang mit der erklärung der menschenrechte der vereinten nationen setzt der respekt gegenüber den rechten und der würde des menschen voraus, dass jede person und alle völker für sich genommen positiv bewertet werden, ihre rechte anerkannt und respektiert werden und ihnen respekt zuteil, sowie würde als bestandteil ihrer gemeinsamen menschlichkeit gewährt wird. praktiker, die dieses prinzip umsetzen, zeigen respekt, was eine sensibilität gegenüber kultureller und sozialer vielfalt voraussetzt. dies beinhaltet die anerkennung von unterschieden zwischen personen in bezug auf ihre kultur, nationalität, ethnie, hautfarbe, abstammung, religion, geschlecht, beziehungsstatus, sexuelle orientierung, physische oder geistige fähigkeiten, altern, sozio-ökonomischer status, und/oder einem anderen persönlichen merkmal, zustand, oder status. solche unterschiede sind ein integraler teil von personen und sollten als solche respektiert werden. vertrauenswürdigkeit vertrauenswürdig zu sein (authentizität) bedeutet, das vertrauen, welches dem praktiker zu teil wird, zu würdigen. vertrauenswürdigkeit wird als grundlage für das verständnis und die lösung ethischer fragen betrachtet. praktiker, die dieses prinzip anwenden: • handeln entsprechend dieses ihnen entgegengebrachten vertrauens; • bemühen sich, sicherzustellen, dass die bei klienten geweckten erwartungen mit angemessener wahrscheinlichkeit erfüllt werden können; • halten ihre absprachen und versprechen ein; • betrachten vertraulichkeit als eine pflicht, die sich aus dem vertrauen des klienten ergibt; • beschränken die weitergabe vertraulicher informationen, die klienten betreffen, auf das notwendigste, um den zweck zu erfüllen, aufgrund dessen sie ursprünglich geteilt wurden mit ausnahme zwingender offenlegung (z.b. durch ein gesetz). gerechtigkeit gerechtigkeit beinhaltet die faire und unparteiische behandlung aller klienten und die erbringung angemessener leistungen. das prinzip der gerechtigkeit verlangt, dass praktiker, die dieses prinzip anwenden, gerecht und fair gegenüber allen kunden sind und deren menschenrechte und würde achten. es lenkt die aufmerksamkeit darauf, alle rechtlichen anforderungen und verpflichtungen gewissenhaft zu prüfen und auf mögliche konflikte ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 14 zwischen rechtlichen und ethischen verpflichtungen zu achten. gerechtigkeit bei der verteilung von leistungen erfordert die fähigkeit, die erbringung von leistungen für klienten und die verteilung von leistungen zwischen klienten unvoreingenommen zu gestalten. eine verpflichtung zur fairness erfordert die fähigkeit, unterschiede zwischen menschen anzuerkennen und sich für chancenund ergebnisgleichheit einzusetzen, sowie eine diskriminierung von menschen oder gruppen aufgrund persönlicher oder sozialer merkmale zu vermeiden. mit anderen worten, gerechtigkeit bedeutet, dass unfaire diskriminierung aufgrund bestimmter merkmale (z.b. geschlecht oder alter) nicht stattfindet. praktiker haben die pflicht, sich um eine faire erbringung von leistungen zu bemühen, diese zugänglich zu machen und den bedürfnissen potenzieller klienten entsprechend zu gestalten. autonomie autonomie bedeutet, das recht des klienten auf selbstbestimmung zu achten. dieses prinzip verdeutlicht die wichtigkeit, die fähigkeit eines klienten zur eigenverantwortung in bezug auf die bereitgestellten leistungen, sowie in alle anderen lebensbereiche zu entwickeln. das prinzip der autonomie steht der manipulation von klienten gegen ihren willen entgegen, auch wenn diese sozialen zwecken dient. praktiker, die die autonomie ihrer kunden respektieren: • gewährleisten, dass jegliche werbung oder informationen, die vor der erbringung von leistungen angeboten werden, richtig sind; • holen sich während der gesamten dauer der professionellen beziehung die zustimmung des klienten ein, welche frei und auf der basis angemessener informationen erteilt wird; • betonen, dass die teilnahme an den angebotenen leistungen freiwillig ist; • treffen explizite vereinbarungen bevor leistungen erbracht werden und überprüfen diese vereinbarungen während der gesamten dauer der professionellen beziehung; • schützen die privatsphäre ihrer klienten; • wahren vertraulichkeit; • machen die weitergabe vertraulicher informationen in aller regel von der zustimmung der betreffenden person abhängig; • informieren klienten vorab über vorhersehbare interessenskonflikte, spätestens jedoch sobald diese offensichtlich werden. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 15 abschnitt zwei: anwendung der ethischen richtlinien in der praxis dieser abschnitt enthält mehrere leitfäden und beispiele für die kontextabhängige anwendung der vorliegenden ethischen richtlinien. die beiträge sollen zum denken anregen und gleichzeitig nützliche hilfestellungen und einen leitfaden zur selbsteinschätzung bieten, um ethische entscheidungsprozesse in der praxis zu unterstützen. drei wichtige überlegungen vor der anwendung spezifischer ppi sollten die folgenden drei aspekte, welche die grundlage für eine gute praxis bilden, geprüft und betrachtet werden (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. passt die ppi zur vorliegenden situation? dies kann durch die lektüre einschlägiger literatur und veröffentlichter erkenntnisse aus zuverlässigen quellen festgestellt werden. bevor beispielsweise eine bestimmte ppi zur förderung von dankbarkeit angewendet wird, sollte überprüft werden, ob es veröffentlichte evidenz gibt, die zeigt, dass diese spezifische ppi eine erfolgversprechende methode für den jeweiligen klienten ist. 2. stimmt die ppi mit den aktuellen bedürfnissen des klienten überein? 3. wie wird die wirksamkeit einer ppi evaluiert? mit anderen worten, welches spezifische ergebnis kann identifiziert und valide gemessen werden, um die wirksamkeit der ppi zu überprüfen? ethische entscheidungsfindung ethische entscheidungsfindung kann unterstützt werden durch ausreichende kenntnis dieser ethischen richtlinien und der richtlinien verwandter berufsstände, das bewusstmachen tugendhaften und ethischen verhaltens anderer, sowie den einsatz persönlicher stärken bei der entscheidungsfindung. wissen: wir gehen davon aus, dass die hauptsächlichen nutzer dieser richtlinien nämlich ppp mit entsprechender ausbildung und erfahrung in der ausübung psychologischer oder verwandter tätigkeiten mit diesen ethischen richtlinien und allen ihren berufsstand betreffenden ethischen richtlinien vertraut sind. in den meisten ländern ist gesetzlich vorgeschrieben, dass praktiker mit einschlägigen regeln, normen, vorschriften, statuten und verfahren vertraut sein müssen. verhalten: ethisches verhalten, insbesondere bei der durchführung von ppi, kann nicht nur aus wissen entstehen. ethisches verhalten sollte eng mit gesellschaftlichen vorgängen und praktiken verbunden sein. welche personen in ihrem beruflichen umfeld leben ethisches verhalten vor? obwohl ihre kollegen solche verhaltensweisen möglicherweise nicht direkt zur sprache bringen, was an deren bescheidenheit liegen mag, möchten wir sie ermutigen, explizit zu fragen, wie ihre kollegen und ihre (regionale oder internationale) fachgemeinschaft ethische standards einhalten. das zusammenstellen eines fallrepositoriums für gute praxis wird nützlich sein, um das eigene verhalten zu reflektieren. bei einer ausreichenden anzahl von fällen werden vermutlich illustrationen für erstklassige arbeit zu finden sein. im idealfall schaffen praktiker eine zugängliche plattform, die auch anderen praktikern die möglichkeit bietet, beiträge zu veröffentlichen. stärken einsetzen, um ethische entscheidungen zu treffen: stärken können auf verschiedene weise bei der ethischen entscheidungsfindung hilfreich sein. beispielsweise kann die identifizierung von stärkenvorbildern bei aktuellen ethischen entscheidungsfindung helfen. finden sie einen ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 16 kollegen, der als vorbild für ethisches verhalten dient. überlegen sie, wie er mit einem bestimmten ethischen dilemma oder einer bestimmten situation umgegangen ist, oder ganz allgemein, welche spezifischen stärken, die es wert sind, modelliert zu werden und die bei der entscheidungsfindung helfen, er im täglichen umgang mit kollegen und klienten verkörpert. überlegungen zur beraterischen arbeit es gibt eine vielzahl von überlegungen, die bei der zusammenarbeit mit klienten zu beachten sind, welche unmittelbare und wichtige ethische implikationen haben können. insbesondere sind zu berücksichtigen: veränderungen bei klienten, veränderungen im umfeld, in dem sich ppp und klienten befinden, die aktuelle emotionale verfassung und das wohlbefinden von klienten und ppp, die tendenz der klienten zur vermeidung, machtgefälle in der professionellen beziehung, übermäßiger einsatz von stärken, praktische weisheit, nachweis des ausbildungshintergrunds und der fachlichen kompetenz, sowie die würdigung des kulturellen kontexts. die berücksichtigung dieser aspekte kann helfen, unbeabsichtigte und unerwünschte folgen abzuschwächen, zu antizipieren oder zu verhindern. veränderungen bei klienten bei der erbringung psychologischer dienstleistungen ist es wichtig, das psychologische wohlbefinden der klienten während der behandlung oder intervention zu beobachten. bei einige klienten sinkt das wohlbefinden trotz der nachgewiesenen wirksamkeit von ppi. die beschwerden können sich aus einer vielzahl von gründen verschlimmern, was die anfälligkeit von klienten erhöht. klienten können diese informationen nicht immer an den praktiker weitergeben, vielleicht weil sie sich schämen, ängstigen oder befürchten, den praktiker zu enttäuschen, der an der steigerung ihres wohlbefindens arbeitet. meistens liegt der explizite fokus von ppi nicht auf der linderung von beschwerden, sondern auf der förderung von wohlbefinden. die beobachtung sich ändernder umstände im leben der kunden ist wichtig, ebenso wie die anpassung von ppi an diese veränderungen. wenn der kunde beispielsweise eine trennung erfährt oder seinen job verliert, ist es wichtig, dass der praktiker diese herausforderungen angehen und ihre auswirkungen bewerten kann. praktiker sollten in der lage sein, eine laufende ppi auszusetzen und die vorgehensweise so anzupassen, dass sie den aktuellen bedürfnissen von klienten entspricht oder gegebenenfalls auf eine andere psychosoziale fachkraft verweisen. bei nichtbeachtung kann sich dies nachteilig auf die allianz zwischen praktiker und klient auswirken, was unter umständen nicht wieder rückgängig zu machen ist. veränderungen im umfeld zusätzlich zur berücksichtigung von individuellen veränderungen bei klienten ist es wichtig, das umfeld zu berücksichtigen, in dem sowohl klienten als auch praktiker eingebunden sind. nehmen wir einen ppp, der auch kliniker ist, als beispiel. heutzutage arbeiten kliniker in einem hochkomplexen, schnelllebigen und durch druck gekennzeichneten umfeld, das durch schwierigkeiten wie den mangel an evidenzbasierten behandlungsangeboten, mangelnder kultureller kompetenz, sowie chronischer und komplexer bedürfnisse von patienten, die sich auf mehrere bereiche ihres lebens auswirken, gekennzeichnet ist. vor dem hintergrund dieser herausforderungen, stellen sie sich klienten vor, die: • ihren arbeitsplatz oder wichtige aufträge verloren haben oder für eine verdiente beförderung nicht berücksichtigt werden, nur weil sie nicht zum team passen; • kürzlich mit einer schweren erkrankung diagnostiziert wurden; ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 17 • mit betrug oder anderen formen der misshandlung durch ihren partner zu tun haben; • diskriminierung erleben; • zerstörerischen umwelteinflüssen wie überschwemmungen oder waldbränden oder globalen problemen wie hungersnöten ausgesetzt sind. überlegen sie, wie sich diese herausforderungen sich auf klienten auswirken und die arbeit mit ihnen beeinflussen können. diese fälle werfen eine vielzahl verschiedener fragen auf, die auf unterschiedliche weise betrachtet und angegangen werden müssen, und zwar unter berücksichtigung der regularien und standards des berufstandes, dem der praktiker angehört. daher ist es wichtig, dass ppp, wenn sie ppi anbieten, über ihre kunden und auch über deren umfeld bescheid wissen, sowie über aktuelle veränderungen der umstände auf dem laufenden bleiben. praktiker müssen sich auch der herausforderungen in ihrem eigenen arbeitsumfeld bewusst sein. dies können administrative veränderungen sein, die eine anpassung der art und weise der leistungserbringung erfordern beispielsweise kann ein neuer vorgesetzter bestimmte ppi befürworten oder ablehnen oder einen anderen behandlungsansatz bevorzugen (z.b. auf achtsamkeit basierende verfahren, acceptance commitment therapy). die änderungen können direkte oder indirekte auswirkungen auf die anwendung von ppi haben, auch aus ethischer perspektive. aktuelle emotionale verfassung und wohlbefinden wenn ppi angeboten werden, ist es wichtig, veränderungen beim klienten, sowie deren aktuellen emotionale verfassung und wohlbefinden zu messen. es ist wichtig, dass ppp in den grenzen ihrer expertise und ausbildung praktizieren. klienten mit psychopathologischen problemen (z. b. depressionen, angstzustände, traumata) sollten von ppp an eine entsprechend qualifizierte und erfahrene fachkraft verwiesen werden10. wenn solche probleme zu beginn der arbeitsbeziehungen nicht vorliegen, muss der ppp erkennen, wenn solche probleme auftreten, während der kunde eine ppi durchläuft, und sich sofort an eine ausreichend qualifizierte fachkraft wenden. im idealfall bespricht der praktiker mit dem klienten, sowie kollegen und entsprechenden experten, unter welchen umständen eine begonnene ppi fortgesetzt werden kann. vermeidung vermeidung ist eine der häufigsten schutzmaßnahmen, die menschen nutzen, um mit negativen emotionen umgehen. ein psychologisch gesundes leben bedeutet, das gesamte spektrum an emotionen bewusst und adaptiv zu nutzen. einige klienten, die ppi wünschen, könnten bestrebt sein, tieferliegende negative emotionen zu vermeiden und ppi in der hoffnung anwenden, dass sie unangenehme gefühlszustände zerstreuen oder in schach halten. beispiele für quellen negativer emotionen sind erinnerungen an eine bittere trennung oder scheidung, verrat durch einen ansonsten verlässlichen freund, groll, opfer von diskriminierung geworden zu sein und ungerecht oder voreingenommen von einer person oder institution behandelt worden zu sein. eine möglichkeit, das ausmaß von vermeidung zu beurteilen, besteht darin, auf negative emotionen zu achten, die wiederholt angesprochen werden, obwohl sie nicht explizit diskutiert werden (d.h., emotionen, die kunden nachhaltig belasten und dennoch nicht bewusst thematisiert werden). 10 anm. d. ü.: in deutschland ist dies in der regel ein psychologischer psychotherapeut oder ein facharzt für psychiatrie und psychotherapie. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 18 obwohl neue überlegungen und zunehmend belastbare evidenz zeigen, dass ppi, positive emotionen und charakterstärken negative befindlichkeiten lindern und beheben können (rashid & seligman, 2018), kann dies nur erreicht werden, wenn negative befindlichkeiten sinnvoll in die behandlung integriert werden. wenn starke negative emotionen von klienten oder praktikern vermieden werden, kann die wirksamkeit der behandlung beeinträchtigt sein. machtgefälle eines der wesentlichen merkmale jeder psychologischen zusammenarbeit zwischen einem praktiker und einem klienten ist die der beziehung innewohnende machtdynamik, und insbesondere das machtgefälle. therapeuten, berater, sozialarbeiter und andere solche fachleute sind sich dieser unterschiede in der regel bewusst. deshalb sind sie bestrebt, einen sicheren, wertfreien, vertraulichen und einladenden raum zu schaffen, in dem sich klienten nicht wie passive empfänger von verordneten leistungen fühlen. nichtsdestotrotz ist die art der wechselbeziehung zwischen praktiker und klienten so, dass der praktiker zwangsläufig als experte wahrgenommen wird. klienten neigen dazu, zu ihnen aufzuschauen, da sie mit aktuellem wissen, training und erfahrung bei der erbringung von ppi ausgestattet sind. daher ist das machtgefälle immer vorhanden. der praktiker muss sich diesem unterschied bewusst sein und sollte alle situationen vermeiden, in denen der klient oder praktiker eine entscheidung treffen müssen, die durch das machtgefälle beeinflusst sein könnte. übermäßiger einsatz von stärken die unteroder übertriebene anwendung einiger stärkebasierter methoden kann bestehende schwierigkeiten verschärfen. in verschiedenen coachingkontexten beispielsweise kann der vorschlag, dass kunden vorsichtiger sein sollten, dazu führen, dass einige von ihnen ängstlicher oder unentschlossener werden. klienten, die vergeben, ohne darüber nachzudenken, wann und wem sie vergeben wollen, können vergehen übersehen, die, wenn sie nicht geahndet oder verfolgt werden, anderen schaden zufügen können. klienten, die übermäßig kreativ sind, können es schwierig finden, normen oder regeln einzuhalten, die gerechtigkeit und chancengleichheit fördern. klienten, die sich für faire entscheidungen an ihrem arbeitsplatz einsetzen, können probleme damit bekommen, widersprüchliche tatsachen in einklang zu bringen (z.b., die frage, wie eine gut ausgebildete und gut informierte person unkluge entscheidungen treffen kann). praktische weisheit praktiker brauchen, um diese richtlinien anzuwenden, das, was der philosoph aristoteles "phronesis" nannte, d.h. praktische weisheit. nehmen wir zum beispiel einen praktiker, der mit einer hohen führungskraft zusammenarbeitet, mit der er eine ausgezeichnete beziehung aufgebaut hat und die in ihrer arbeit sehr gute fortschritte macht. allerdings stellt der praktiker fest, dass die führungskraft in unethisches verhalten verwickelt ist. soll der praktiker die stabile beziehung erhalten oder die person konfrontieren und die beziehung riskieren? eine einzelne zusammenstellung von richtlinien ist möglicherweise nicht ausreichend, um diese frage zu beantworten. der praktiker muss die situation deuten und widersprüchliche motive in ein ausgewogenes verhältnis setzen. in solchen fällen basiert praktische weisheit sowohl auf gesammelter erfahrung als auch auf guten beziehungen zu kollegen, die bei ethischen fragen beraten und helfen können. resilient blieben und burnout verhindern ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 19 eine reihe von pp-konstrukten kann praktiker vor burnout schützen. positive emotionen (z.b. hoffnung, gelassenheit, freude, interesse und ehrfurcht) können die aufmerksamkeits-, kognitionsund verhaltensbezogene ressourcen von praktikern aufwerten, die als puffer gegen anfälligkeiten wie burnout-symptome (z.b. emotionale erschöpfung) fungieren können. persönliche gewohnheiten wie achtsamkeit können in dieser hinsicht ebenfalls helfen. zwischenmenschliche stärken (z.b. soziale intelligenz, freundlichkeit, liebe, humor, lebenssinn und teamarbeit) können helfen, herausforderungen wie depersonalisierung (ein zustand, in dem die eigenen gedanken und gefühle unwirklich oder als nicht zu einem selbst gehörend erscheinen) zu bewältigen. ebenso kann das erleben von lebenssinn und -bedeutung individuelle gefühle von depersonalisierung kurieren. nachweis des ausbildungshintergrunds und der fachlichen kompetenz praktiker sollten die grenzen ihrer kompetenz in bezug auf spezifische psychologische umstände, spezifische zielgruppen (z.b., arbeit mit kindern, andere kulturen, gruppenarbeit) und spezifische ppi darlegen. beispielsweise kann ein praktiker erfahrung in der beurteilung von stärken bei erwachsenen haben, jedoch nicht mit der beurteilung der stärken von kindern oder jugendlichen. darüber hinaus kann es passieren, dass der praktiker sich im laufe der erbringung von leistungen in bereiche begibt, in denen er nur oberflächlich erfahren oder qualifiziert ist. so kann beispielsweise ein praktiker zwar erfahren und qualifiziert sein, um leistungen für kinder, jugendliche und erwachsene zu erbringen, aber nicht ausreichend erfahren oder qualifiziert, diese leistungen im rahmen einer familie anzubieten; in diesem fall können eine überweisung oder weitere unterstützende strukturen erforderlich sein. darüber hinaus sollten praktiker den ausbildungshintergrund und die einschlägige erfahrung angeben, auf denen ihre berufsausübung beruht. zum beispiel absolviert ein praktiker einen sechsmonatigen zertifikatslehrgang, der eine einwöchige präsenzphase beinhaltet und ansonsten online absolviert wird. das zertifikat wird von einer regionalen oder kommunalen genehmigungsbehörde nicht anerkannt. auf der website des praktikers steht, dass er ein "zertifizierter anwender der positiven psychologie" sei. er hat keine anderen beruflichen qualifikationen. ist das ethisch einwandfrei? es ist wichtig, ihre kunden ausdrücklich über art, umfang und grenzen ihrer beruflichen ausbildung, praxis und qualifikation auch über ihren berufstitel hinaus zu informieren. würdigung des kulturellen kontextes ethische entscheidungsfindung sollte nicht nur auf sensibilität, wissen oder kognitivem verständnis basieren. die entscheidungen sollten auch die besten verfügbaren und relevanten erkenntnisse und die umstände des kulturellen kontextes berücksichtigen. der kulturelle kontext ist bei der durchführung von ppi von entscheidender bedeutung, denn die definition dessen, was als normal, gut oder adaptiv begriffen wird, ist von werten abhängig, die von der kultur und dem sozialen kontext, in dem sich das anliegen oder dilemma manifestiert, abhängen. darüber hinaus unterscheiden sich kulturen und soziale normen darin, wie bestimmte emotionen akzeptiert, ausgedrückt oder verstärkt werden. daher ist es wichtig, dass die richtlinien für eine ethische praxis von ppi auf solchen erkenntnissen beruhen. die hier vorgestellten ethischen richtlinien sind umfassend genug, um dem kulturellen kontext rechnung zu tragen, aber gleichzeitig hinreichend detailliert, um individuelle unterschiede und bedürfnisse zu berücksichtigen. die integration von erkenntnissen, einschließlich kultureller und individueller faktoren, kann einfach oder leicht zugänglich sein. obwohl eine ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 20 solche integration möglicherweise nicht dazu geeignet ist, einzelpersonen, die nach ethischer exzellenz streben, den perfekten weg, prozess oder das perfekte ergebnis vorzugeben, so kann die kollektive weisheit ihnen dennoch dabei helfen, fälle, mit denen sie zu tun haben, einzuordnen. so kann nach und nach exzellenz erreicht werden. diese richtlinien sind wichtig, um dem denken und handeln von personen eine orientierung zu bieten. diese richtlinien dienen auch dazu, zu beurteilen, wie stark das eigene handeln ethischer exzellenz entspricht. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 21 ethische dilemmata lösen – eine schrittweise anleitung obwohl es unmöglich ist, sich vollständig immun gegen ethische dilemmata zu machen, werden die folgenden schritte, die weitgehend der ethics in psychology (koocher & keithspiegel, 1998) entnommen sind, zusätzlich zu anderen informationsquellen, fundierte ethische entscheidungen in der praxis erleichtern: • praktizieren sie in einklang mit allen gesetzen, vorschriften und standards in bezug auf ihre berufsausübung und halten sie verhaltensempfehlungen und richtlinien ein, die von entsprechend autorisierten einrichtungen oder behörden in ihrer region festgelegt werden. diese informationen helfen praktikern dabei, ethische dilemmata zu meistern. • erarbeiten sie sich eine genaue vorstellung darüber, wie sich das gleiche ereignis von einzelfall zu einzelfall unterschiedlich darstellen kann. beraten sie sich mit jemandem, der ihnen vertraut und der unbefangen ist und klären sie, ob der vorliegende sachverhalt ein ethisches dilemma mit schwerwiegenden folgen darstellt. besprechen sie mit kollegen, ob das, was sie wahrnehmen, eine ethische verfehlung, nur schlechte berufsetikette oder eine situation ist, die einzelnen oder der öffentlichkeit schaden. • nehmen sie einsicht in bereits veröffentlichte relevante richtlinien, regeln und standards. vergewissern sie sich, dass sie diese richtig interpretieren und lassen sie sich bei bedarf beraten. schriftliche richtlinien sind bisweilen abstrakt und unklar, mit viel raum für eigene interpretationen. • sammeln sie alle relevanten und hochwertigen informationen, die sie finden können. identifizieren sie bestehende wissenslücken und dokumentieren sie fakten und bedenken. • beziehen sie alle diese informationen in ihren überlegungsprozess ein und sprechen sie mit jemandem, der gut informiert und aufgeschlossen ist und sich nicht scheut, auf die potenziellen versäumnisse eines praktikers hinzuweisen. • überlegen sie, wie die sechs ethischen grundsätze dieser richtlinien anzuwenden sind (d.h. wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung, verantwortungsvolle fürsorge, achtung der rechte und würde des menschen, vertrauenswürdigkeit, gerechtigkeit, autonomie). beurteilen sie, zum beispiel, welche rechte, verantwortlichkeiten und anfälligkeiten alle beteiligten haben. • erarbeiten sie mehrere lösungsansätze und bewerten sie diese so objektiv wie möglich. • überlegen sie, welche charakterstärken ihnen helfen könnten, die beste ethische entscheidung zu treffen. könnten sie sich an ihren sinn für fairness, ehrlichkeit oder freundlichkeit wenden? vielleicht ist ihr mut nötig, um sich zu motivieren, "das richtige zu tun"? denken sie daran, dass ethische entscheidungen den klug kombinierten einsatz mehrerer charakterstärken erfordern, nicht nur eine stärke für sich allein oder eine stärke, die dafür "viel genutzt" wird (niemiec, 2018). • stellen sie sich das ergebnis ihrer handlung vor und überlegen sie auch, was passieren könnte, wenn sie nicht handeln. • überlegen sie, bevor sie eine entscheidung treffen, welche auswirkungen diese entscheidung auf sie und alle anderen beteiligten haben wird und welche systemischen auswirkungen sich ergeben könnten. denken sie auch darüber nach, welche art von unterstützung sie benötigen, um sich an ihre entscheidung zu halten. • setzen sie die entscheidung in konkrete handlungen um, die dem geist ihrer entscheidung tatsächlich entsprechen. sie können ihre entscheidung durch eine ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 22 vielzahl von handlungen umsetzen. wählen sie handlungen aus, die ihrer entscheidung genau und glaubwürdig entsprechen, messbar sind, mit den gewünschten ergebnissen zusammenhängen und die geringstmögliche belastung oder beeinträchtigung für nicht direkt beteiligte mit sich bringen. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 23 anleitung zur selbsteinschätzung der folgende abschnitt erläutert fragen, die praktiker zum nachdenken anregen und die dazu beitragen sollen, ethische dilemmata durch die verwendung bewährter verfahren zu vermeiden. ppi passung: entscheiden sie zuallererst und anhand der besten verfügbaren evidenz, ob eine bestimmte ppi (z.b. dankbarkeitstagebuch, verwendung bestimmter stärken) zum klienten, sowie seinen problemen, lebensumständen und seiner behandlungsmotivation passt. ppi timing: welche schritte werden sie unternehmen, um zu entscheiden, wann die ppi zweckmäßig ist: 1) zu beginn der zusammenarbeit und 2) während die ppi bereits angefangen hat? unter welchen umständen würden sie eine zusätzliche oder alternative intervention oder behandlung in betracht ziehen? sensibilität für die eigene psychische gesundheit: wie bewusst sind sie sich ihres eigenen psychischen gesundheitszustandes? die tatsache, dass sie psychosoziale dienstleistungen anbieten, macht sie nicht immun gegen symptome psychischer erkrankungen oder zuständen, die eine klinische diagnose erfüllen können. welche maßnahmen oder handlungen ergreifen sie regelmäßig, um ihre eigene psychische gesundheit zu erhalten, um ihre klienten bestmöglich betreuen zu können? welche hindernisse gibt es bei der selbstfürsorge, z.b. mangelnde zeit und ressourcen, das gefühl oder der glaube, dass es ihnen gut geht oder der zugang zu qualifizierten fachleuten, die sich um ihre psychische gesundheit kümmern können? offenbarungspflicht: wie wohl fühlen sie sich dabei, aktiv gegen einen klienten vorzugehen, der möglicherweise gut auf ppi reagiert, aber vertraulichkeit wünscht in bezug auf einen versehentlich berichteten vorfall (kürzlich oder in der vergangenheit) oder eine aktuelle situation, die beispielsweise den missbrauch von kindern oder älteren menschen, sexuellen missbrauch oder eine unmittelbare bedrohung für die sicherheit von personen betrifft? wenn sie nicht nach dem kodex oder den richtlinien einer fachgesellschaft praktizieren, haben sie eine gesetzliche anzeigepflicht?11 übertreibung und generalisierung: sie treffen auf einer konferenz jemanden, der von ppi begeistert ist und der sie zu einem workshop einlädt, den er anbietet. sie besuchen den workshop, der auf einigen wenigen studien aufbaut, die ihnen gut vertraut sind. die ergebnisse, anwendungsmöglichkeiten und die verallgemeinerbarkeit der ergebnisse der studien werden übertrieben dargestellt. die meisten teilnehmer finden die präsentation "transformativ" und scheinen die ergebnisse zu glauben. was würden sie tun? können sie die schritte im abschnitt "ethische dilemmata lösen" nutzen, um ihr verhalten in einer solchen situation zu lenken? 11 anm. d. ü.: in deutschland haben psychologische psychotherapeuten eine offenbarungsbzw. anzeigepflicht, wenn sie von bevorstehenden straftaten wir mord, totschlag, geiselnahme, usw. erfahren. bereits begangene straftaten unterliegen der schweigepflicht. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 24 abschnitt drei: fallbeispiele ethischer praxis die folgenden fallbeispiele sind illustrationen von situationen, die in der praxis auftreten können und die eine ethische komponente enthalten, die für die prinzipien dieser ethischen richtlinien relevant ist.12 fallbeispiel 1: kultur kultursensible anwendung von ppi ethische entscheidungen sollten die besten verfügbaren erkenntnisse gegeben der umstände des jeweiligen kulturellen kontextes berücksichtigen. stellen sie sich den folgenden fall vor. suzanne ist eine australische praktikerin, die mit einer klientin mit ostasiatischem kulturellem hintergrund arbeitet. die klientin wünscht sich eine persönliche weiterentwicklung und den fortbestand ihrer familiären beziehungen. suzanne entscheidet sich für die best possible self exercise13. suzanne führt die klientin durch alle schritte der übung. obwohl die klientin erhebliche persönliche fortschritte gemacht hat, berichtet sie, dass die beziehungen mit ihrer familie stumpf geworden sind. aus diesem grund wird bei wiederholten online-messungen keine signifikante verbesserung des wohlbefindens der klientin festgestellt. ein wichtiger aspekt dieses falls ist die berücksichtigung des konzepts des selbst, das sich von kultur zu kultur unterscheidet. suzanne verfolgt ein konzept der entwicklung des selbst, das oftmals in westlichen kulturkreisen zu finden ist und das persönliche weiterentwicklung, sowie neue und weitgehend selbstbestimmte unternehmungen beinhaltet. im gegensatz dazu fokussiert selbstentwicklung in östlichen (und in den meisten nicht-westlichen) kulturkreisen stärker auf investitionen in beziehungen, die verbesserung sozialer interaktionen und den eigenen beitrag zur erhaltung von familien-, gruppenund stammestraditionen. trotz zunehmender kultureller vielfalt in den meisten urbanen metropolen bleiben wesentliche kulturelle unterschiede oftmals bestehen. eine wichtige schlussfolgerung aus diesen unterschieden ist, dass die klientin im vorliegenden fall davon profitieren könnte, zu verstehen, wie sie ihre charakterstärken nutzen kann, um das wohl ihrer familie zu fördern oder familiäre beziehungen zu vertiefen. suzanne kann die charakterstärkeninterventionen turn your strengths other-oriented oder character strengths appreciation14 (niemiec, 2018) nutzen, in denen die klientin lernt, ihre stärken für den aufbau von beziehungen zu nutzen und die eine möglichkeit bieten, stärken bei familienmitgliedern zu erkennen und zu wertschätzen. es könnte auch sein, dass selbstentwicklung, die von bedeutenden anderen unterstützt wird, zu einer deutlichen und nachhaltigen steigerung des wohlbefindens führt. in einer interdependenten kultur erfordert selbstentwicklung, an der wahrscheinlich enge familienmitglieder beteiligt sind, allerdings auch die gestaltung komplexerer wechselwirkungen über einen längeren zeitraum. im gegensatz dazu kann die best version of me15 intervention, die sich auf die verbesserung der individuellen stärken oder das ergreifen 12 wir bedanken uns für die bereitstellung der fallbeispiele: fallbeispiele 1 & 3 tayyab rashid, fallbeispiel 2 annalise roache, fallbeispiel 4 stewart donaldson, fallbeispiel 5 matthew iasiello, and fallbeispiel 6 denise quinlan. 13 anm. d. ü.: wörtlich übersetzt „bestmögliches selbst übung“. bei der intervention werden klienten gebeten sich ihre bestmögliche zukunft vorzustellen. 14 anm. d. ü.: wörtlich übersetzt „mach deine stärken auf-andere-ausgerichtet“ und „wertschätzen von charakterstärken“ 15 anm. d. ü.: wörtlich übersetzt „beste version meiner selbst“ ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 25 einer neuen initiative konzentriert, eine verhältnismäßig kurze zeit in anspruch nehmen. daher ist es von entscheidender bedeutung, dass ppp überlegen, wie sie ihre methoden am sinnvollsten kulturell anpassen können. beispielsweise sind die folgenden ethischen prinzipien für den oben beschriebenen fall relevant: • verantwortungsvolle fürsorge – der ppp muss versuchen, die besonderheiten der situation des klienten und dessen kulturellen hintergrund zu berücksichtigen. • wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung – der ppp obliegt die pflicht, keinen schaden anzurichten. • achtung der rechte und würde des menschen– der ppp trägt verantwortung, sensibel für interkulturelle gegebenheiten zu sein, sowie die perspektive und die bedürfnisse des klienten zu respektieren fallbeispiel 2: coaching coachees in sich verändernden umständen ethische dilemmata können sich unerwartet stellen und eine anpassung der angebotenen leistungen erfordern. stellen sie sich den folgenden fall vor. amanda begann mit dem coaching, weil sie einen mangel an orientierung und sinn im leben empfand. früher legte sie viel wert auf das vorantreiben ihrer karriere, jedoch hatte sie inzwischen den wunsch nach einem ausgeglicheneren lebensstil entwickelt und war außerdem traurig und enttäuscht, bisher nicht mehr im leben (außerhalb ihrer beruflichen entwicklung) erreicht zu haben. in der ersten sitzung nannte sie mehrere bereiche, auf die sie sich konzentrieren wollte, darunter vermögensplanung (um ein haus zu kaufen), persönliche entwicklung und die priorisierung von freizeit und geselligkeit. sie erwähnte, dass ihr aktueller job herausfordernd sei und dass sie in zukunft auch eine berufliche veränderung anstrebe, dies allerdings kein aktuelles thema für das coaching sei. in den ersten beiden sitzungen, die der formulierung von zielen und der klärung von handlungsschritten dienten, konnten für die klientin wichtige fortschritte erzielt werden und das coaching entwickelte sich insgesamt positiv. zu beginn der vierten sitzung erklärte amanda jedoch, dass sich ihre arbeitssituation abrupt verschlechtert habe und sie gekündigt habe, nachdem sie bereits einen neuen job gefunden hatte. die kündigung war nicht gut aufgenommen worden und amanda fühlte sich verunsichert und emotional an ihrem arbeitsplatz, wo sie noch vier wochen verbringen musste, bis ihre kündigung wirksam würde. sie erklärte, dass die reaktion ihres vorgesetzten auf ihre kündigung erinnerungen an ähnliche emotionale konfrontationen aus ihrer jugendzeit hervorgerufen hatte. in dieser phase war es für den coach unverzichtbar, seine fähigkeit zur selbstregulierung zu nutzen und keinen impulsiven vorschlag zu machen, jetzt da amandas stresslevel anstieg. stattdessen könnte der coach die stärke seiner neugierde nutzen, um herauszufinden, wie amanda in naher zukunft weiterzumachen gedenkt und offen sein für eine veränderung des thematischen schwerpunkts der sitzungen. es mag auch wichtig sein, die bedeutung von amandas emotionaler reaktion zu verstehen, um zu entscheiden, ob coaching ein sicherer und geeigneter ansatz für ihre aktuellen bedürfnisse ist. obwohl der coach mit amanda eine bestimmte anzahl von sitzungen vereinbart haben mag, geben veränderungen in der situation des klienten den richtigen weg vor. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 26 beispielsweise sind die folgenden ethischen prinzipien für den oben beschriebenen fall relevant: • verantwortungsvolle fürsorge – die hautverantwortung, die dem coach zufällt, ist, seine freundlichkeit und fairness zu nutzen, um das wohlergehen von amanda zu schützen und die grenzen seiner expertise zu erkennen. • autonomie – in diesem fall könnte sich der coach darauf konzentrieren, amandas fähigkeit zur selbststeuerung in bezug auf den coachingprozess und allen aspekten ihres lebens zu entwickeln und die bedingungen ihrer zusammenarbeit während des gesamten prozesses zu überprüfen und anzupassen. • wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung – der coach, der im besten interesse von amanda und auf der grundlage einer professionellen einschätzung handelt, sollte sich bewusst sein, dass er strikt innerhalb der grenzen seiner kompetenz arbeitet und nur leistungen erbringt, für die er eine angemessene ausbildung und einschlägige erfahrung mitbringt. fallbeispiel 3: klinik arbeit mit traumata viele menschen, die ein akutes traumatisches erlebnis haben, sind zunächst einmal überwältigt. dies kann sich auf viele kulturell unterschiedliche arten zeigen, insbesondere dann, wenn klienten gerade in einer ppi involviert sind. dabei kann es sein, dass klienten komplexe strategien entwickeln, um zu vermeiden, an das trauma zu denken oder sich auf eine art und weise zu verhalten, die mit dem trauma in zusammenhang steht. bei der planung von ppi ist es wichtig, ein solches trauma (biografisch und/oder aktuell) zu bemerken und richtig einzuschätzen. der praktiker sollte, falls er über die nötige expertise verfügt, intervenieren, ohne das trauma zu verharmlosen oder zu ignorieren und falls ihm die entsprechende expertise fehlt, rechtzeitig eine überweisung vornehmen. der praktiker muss auch darauf achten, ob traumata auftauchen, während der klient an einer ppi teilnimmt. der praktiker muss mit dem klienten abstimmen und nach beratung mit kollegen und anderen experten entscheiden, wann eine begonnene ppi fortgesetzt werden kann. stellen sie sich den folgenden fall vor. salma, 21, ist lange zeit körperlich, emotional und sexuell missbraucht worden. sie sucht hilfe, um mit ihren anhaltenden gefühlen von depressionen zurechtzukommen. sie erwartet, dass der therapeut explizit nach den traumatischen ereignissen in ihrem leben fragen wird. stattdessen erhält sie einen kurzen erhebungsbogen, der keine fragen zu aktuellen oder vergangenen traumata enthält. in den beratungsgesprächen selbst stellt salma fest, dass sie den therapeuten nicht mag und beschließt, die einzelheiten ihrer traumatischen erfahrungen nicht preiszugeben. so bleibt die behandlung nur oberflächlich wirksam. nach sechs monaten bekommt salma eine neue therapie verschrieben. wie dieser fall zeigt, ist es wichtig, explizit nach vorhandenen traumata zu fragen (obwohl dies eine hohe sensibilität und möglicherweise auch eine klinische ausbildung erfordert). abhängig von der beziehung werden einige klienten traumata von selbst ansprechen und nach ratschlägen, vorschlägen, bewältigungsstrategien oder kulturell angemessenen unterstützungsmöglichkeiten fragen. es ist wichtig, dass der praktiker den bedürfnissen des klienten entsprechend reagiert, wenn während der anwendung einer ppi traumatische erlebnisse aktiviert werden. zuallererst sollten praktiker ausreichend qualifiziert, ausgebildet ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 27 und erfahren sein, um mit solchen situationen umzugehen. praktiker sollten ihre stärken von bescheidenheit und vorsicht regelmäßig nutzen und stetig überprüfen, ob sie weiterhin leistungen erbringen sollten, oder umgekehrt, ob der klient bei jemandem mit spezifischerer expertise bei der bereitstellung von vorschlägen sowie der entwicklung von fähigkeiten und strategien zum umgang mit traumata, besser aufgehoben wäre. beispielsweise sind die folgenden ethischen prinzipien für den oben beschriebenen fall relevant: • verantwortungsvolle fürsorge der ppp hat die verantwortung, salma in einer weise zu betreuen, die den besonderheiten ihrer situation und ihres hintergrunds gerecht wird. • wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung – der ppp hat sowohl die pflicht, salma keinen weiteren schaden zuzufügen, als auch ihr wohlbefinden zu fördern. fallbeispiel 4: im unternehmenskontext druck daten falsch auszulegen viele positive arbeitsund organisationsmaßnahmen werden evaluiert, um ihre wirksamkeit zu ermitteln. ethische dilemmata können unerwartet auftreten, wenn klienten befunde nicht akzeptieren und druck ausüben, bestimmte ergebnisse verschwinden zu lassen oder falsch darzustellen. stellen sie sich den folgenden fall vor und geben sie darauf acht, wie eine ganze reihe von charakterstärken ungenutzt bleibt, unter anderem ehrlichkeit/integrität, weitblick/weisheit, führung und bescheidenheit. die firma xyz stellte einen anwender der pp ein, um die moral und leistung der mitarbeiter zu steigern. in absprache mit der unternehmensleitung beschloss der praktiker, ein trainingsprogramm zur erhöhung des psychologischen kapitals der mitarbeiter (hoffnung, selbstwirksamkeit, resilienz und optimismus) durchzuführen. die evaluationsergebnisse zeigen, dass die mitarbeiter das training liebten und sich in zukunft mehr positiv-psychologische schulungen wünschten. die ergebnisse zeigen jedoch auch, dass es keine signifikanten unterschiede in bezug auf hoffnung, selbstwirksamkeit, resilienz, optimismus, moral oder leistung zwischen mitarbeitern, die zufällig für die teilnahme am training ausgewählt wurden, und solchen in einer vergleichsgruppe gab. die leiter der firma xyz waren so erfreut, dass ihre mitarbeiter die schulung genossen, dass sie nicht wollten, dass diese die entmutigenden evaluationsergebnisse sehen. stattdessen baten sie den praktiker zu berichten, dass das training ein großer erfolg war und dass in zukunft mehr schulungen zu solchen themen für die mitarbeiter angeboten würden. beispielsweise sind die folgenden ethischen prinzipien für den oben beschriebenen fall relevant: • autonomie – hier wird dem praktizierenden die handlungsautonomie genommen. • wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung wohltätigkeit bedeutet eine verpflichtung zur förderung des wohlergehens des klienten und das von den führungskräften des unternehmens befürwortete maß an täuschung liegt nicht im besten interesse der mitarbeiter. darüber hinaus erfordert wohltätiges handeln die erbringung von leistungen, die auf einer angemessenen ausbildung oder entsprechender berufserfahrung basieren. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 28 • vertrauenswürdigkeit – der praktiker wird aufgefordert, die wirksamkeit der ppi zu übertreiben und zu verallgemeinern, was das vertrauen der mitarbeiter in den praktiker missachtet. fallbeispiel 5: mentoring motivation „unwilliger“ teilnehmer in einer ungleichen beziehung oftmals sind diejenigen, die sich einer intervention am vehementesten widersetzten, diejenigen, die am meisten davon profitieren könnten. ppp sehen sich mit einer kniffligen situation konfrontiert, wenn sie versuchen, einen klienten zu motivieren oder zu überzeugen, an einer für ihn vorteilhaften intervention teilzunehmen, ohne ihn dabei zu manipulieren. stellen sie sich folgenden fall vor. abbie, eine case managerin in einer jugendeinrichtung, hat einen klienten, der sich weigert, an den übungen einer positiv-psychologischen gruppenintervention teilzunehmen. der leiter der intervention bat abbie, ihren klienten zu motivieren, an den übungen teilzunehmen und ihn von den vorteilen der intervention zu überzeugen. abbie stimmt mit ihrem kollegen darin überein, dass die intervention für den klienten von großem nutzen wäre. abbie ist sich bewusst, dass die einstellungen und das verhalten ihres klienten oft dazu führen, dass er von maßnahmen ausgeschlossen wird, die wahrscheinlich für ihn hilfreich wären, und beschließt, die haltung ihres klienten zur teilnahme zu hinterfragen. abbie hat eine vertrauensvolle, unterstützende beziehung zum klienten entwickelt und ist nicht bereit, ihre integrität zu kompromittieren und das vertrauen des klienten zu missbrauchen, indem sie die intervention blind an den teilnehmer „verkauft“ oder versprechungen macht, die nicht eingehalten werden können. vielmehr beschreibt sie bescheiden die belege, die die intervention stützen, und arbeitet mit ihrem klienten zusammen, um die kosten und den nutzen einer teilnahme abzuwägen. sie stellt ihrem klienten neugierig fragen über das für und wider der teilnahme an der intervention und wie die signaturstärken ihres klienten im umfeld der gruppe genutzt werden könnten. abbie unterstützt ihren klienten dabei, strategien zur minimierung der nachteile der teilnahme zu entwickeln und vor der teilnahme üben die beiden sowohl eine abgespeckte variante der intervention als auch, wie der klient seine stärken in der gruppe einsetzen könnte. abbie ist sich sicher, dass ihr kunde von der teilnahme an der intervention profitieren wird und möchte nicht, dass ihr klient wieder von der teilnahme ausgeschlossen wird. ebenso wenig will sie das vertrauen oder die autonomie ihres klienten verraten. abbie will ihren klienten herausfordern und ihm helfen, neue erfahrungen zu machen, befürchtet aber, dass unethische beeinflussung ihrerseits negative folgen für ihren klienten haben und letztlich die qualität ihrer hart erarbeiteten beziehung beeinträchtigen könnte. anstatt die vorteile der teilnahme überzubewerten oder diese zu übertreiben, arbeitet abbie daran, die einstellung des kunden zur intervention zu verstehen, verzerrte überzeugungen in frage zu stellen und möglichkeiten zu schaffen, die vorteile des trainings im geschützten raum der gemeinsamen sitzungen zu simulieren. beispielsweise sind die folgenden ethischen prinzipien für den oben beschriebenen fall relevant: • gerechtigkeit – der ppp ist dafür verantwortlich, dass klienten nicht aufgrund individueller besonderheiten von interventionen ausgeschlossen werden. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 29 • vertrauenswürdigkeit – der ppp nutzt die vertrauensvolle beziehung zum klienten, um den klienten zu ermutigen, seine einstellungen und überzeugungen zu überprüfen, verrät aber dessen vertrauen nicht. • autonomie – der ppp respektiert den willen seines kunden und ist zögerlich, ihn zu manipulieren. fallbeispiel 6: bildung durchführung von programmen zur steigerung von wohlbefinden, wenn bestehende praktiken dieser absicht entgegenstehen viele schulen wollen programme zur förderung von wohlbefinden einführen16. sie können dies jedoch aus einer vielzahl von gründen tun, inklusive der sorge um das wohlbefinden der schüler, die bewältigung von herausforderungen wie mobbing in der schule oder der verbesserung bereits bestehender förderprogramme. darüber hinaus kann ein programm zur förderung von wohlbefinden an manchen schulen auch eine werbemaßnahme sein, die insbesondere für privaten schulen ein alleinstellungsmerkmal sein kann. stellen sie sich den folgenden fall vor. ein lehrer wurde vom schulleiter gebeten, eine strategie zur förderung des wohlbefindens der schüler zu entwickeln und einen plan für die verabschiedung durch den schulrat zu erstellen und anschließend eine schnelle einführung der wichtigsten bestandteile zu organisieren. der schulleiter wollte potenziellen kunden sagen, dass ihre kinder von einem speziellen unterricht zum thema wohlbefinden, der im lehrplan integriert sei, profitieren würden. den lehrkräften wurde die verantwortung für den glücksunterricht übertragen, obwohl viele sich mit diesem bereich kaum auskannten. viele lehrkräfte waren entsprechend gestresst und fühlten sich auf diesen unterricht und die damit verbundene zusätzliche arbeitsbelastung unzureichend vorbereitet. ein berater wurde hinzugezogen, um eine halbtägige weiterbildung zur verbesserung des wohlbefindens der lehrkräfte durchzuführen. einige mitarbeiter äußerten sich dem berater gegenüber besorgt, dass sie ihren schülern möglicherweise schaden würden, da sie im bereich der wohlbefindensförderung schlecht ausgebildet seien und keine vorkenntnisse darin hätten. außerdem hatte der berater gesehen, dass die schule damit wirbt, wohlbefinden im unterricht zu fördern (z.b., wird die schule als ort beschrieben, der ein umfassendes wohlbefinden bei lehrern und schülern fördert, und zwar bei jeder gelegenheit). weiterhin ist dem berater bekannt, dass die schule nach wie vor durch strafen diszipliniert, die guten beziehungen zwischen lehrern und schülern im wege steht. der lehrer, der für die umsetzung des glücksunterrichts verantwortlich gemacht wurde, hat den berater über diese problematik informiert. der lehrer zögert, die probleme mit der schulleitung zu besprechen, nachdem er zuvor von der gruppe eingeschüchtert wurde, als er ähnliche bedenken äußerte. damals wurde seine loyalität der schule gegenüber in frage gestellt und seine eignung, als lehrer weiterzuarbeiten, in frage gestellt. beispielsweise sind die folgenden ethischen prinzipien für den oben beschriebenen fall relevant: 16 anm. d. ü.: dies stimmt insbesondere für neuseeland, wo denise qinlan, von der das fallbeispiel stammt, hauptsächlich arbeitet. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 30 • wohltätigkeit/schadensvermeidung – der ppp hat die pflicht, eine schule nicht unkritisch als „wohlbefindensschule“ zu bestätigen, wenn er sich schulischer praktiken bewusst ist, die das wohlbefinden der schüler und lehrer beeinträchtigen. • autonomie – der lehrer sollte sich nicht gezwungen fühlen, eine perspektive oder position einzunehmen, die im widerspruch zu seinem eigenen urteil oder seinen eigenen werten steht. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 31 relevante richtlinien die folgenden richtlinien (nach fachgebieten geordnet und alphabetisch sortiert) wurden als grundlage für die entwicklung dieser richtlinien verwendet: psychologie: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). pflege: • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). • united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • international – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 32 danksagung die folgenden personen, die alphabetisch aufgelistet sind, haben einen wesentlichen beitrag zur erstellung dieser richtlinien geleistet, sowie anregungen und verbesserungsvorschläge gemacht: • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 33 erste unterzeichner der ethischen richtlinien für die positiv-psychologische praxis datum der ersten unterzeichnung version name und website der gesellschaft oder des verbandes logo 19. juli 2019 1.0 • via institute on character • http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19. juli 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19. juli 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-psychology-andcoaching-psychology 19. juli 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/psychology,-social-work-andcommunityservices/postgraduate/master-of-appliedpositive-psychology 19. juli 2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa • https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluation-center/ 19. juli 2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia • https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19. juli 2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19. juli 2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience • www.nziwr.co.nz 19. juli 2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive psychology 19. juli 2019 1.0 • humanship • www.humanshiplb.org 19. juli 2019 1.0 • iranian positive psychology congress 19. juli 2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society • http://jphp.jp/ ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 34 19. juli 2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology • https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ 19. juli 2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19. juli 2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india • http://nppassociation.org/ 19. juli 2019 1.0 • deutsche gesellschaft für positive psychologie (dgpp) • https://www.dgpp-online.de/ 19. juli 2019 1.0 • deutschsprachiger dachverband für positive psychologie (dach-pp) • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ ethische richtlinien jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, heekerens & dreisörner 35 autoren aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas university of east london, united kingdom übersetzer johannes heekerens freie universität berlin, deutschland johannes.heekerens@fu-berlin.de aljoscha dreisörner goethe-universität frankfurt am main, deutschland dreisoerner@psych.uni-frankfurt.de timeline für die veröffentlichung veröffentlicht am 19. juli 2019 deutsche übersetzung am inhaltsverzeichnis barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. 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(2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. williams, p., kern, m. l., & waters, l. (2016). inside-out-outside-in: a dual approach process model to developing work happiness. international journal of wellbeing, 6(2), 30-56. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i2.489 paige williams the university of melbourne paige.williams@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 article inside-out-outside-in: a dual approach process model to developing work happiness paige williams · margaret l. kern · lea waters abstract: this conceptual paper presents the inside-out-outside-in (io-oi) model, a dual process positive systems science approach to developing work happiness. the model suggests that work happiness of employees is influenced by individual level personal resources developed through positive employee development and positive attitudes (inside-out factors), and social resources developed at the organizational level through positive strategies and positive organizational culture (outside-in factors). the model further specifies three processes that connect outside-in and inside-out factors (attitude re-evaluation, selective exposure and confirmation bias), and a series of feedback loops that support upward spirals of positive development at the individual and organizational levels. we suggest ways in which the io-oi model can be used and tested. the io-oi model integrates the fields of attitudes, positive organizational scholarship, and positive organizational behavior, and provides a foundation for understanding how to best foster positive attitudes, create virtuous organizations and foster employee work happiness. keywords: work happiness, attitudes, psychological capital, organizational virtuousness, selective exposure, confirmation bias 1. introduction positive psychology (pp) scientifically studies flourishing in individuals, groups, and institutions (gable & haidt, 2005). much of the early research in the field was concerned with applications of pp to individuals, mostly in clinical domains (rusk & waters, 2013). a recent peer-reviewed literature analysis of the field (donaldson et al., 2014) found that this imbalance is being addressed, with more recent publications using school and work contexts in addition to clinical settings, with some focus on group level interventions. however, it is still the case that comparatively less pp research has adopted a systems approach (kern, sioukou, oades & spong, 2016) or been conducted in the workplace (cameron & spreitzer, 2011). this is despite the call in seligman and csikszentmihalyi’s (2000) foundational article for pp to be used to promote “positive institutions” (p. 5). positive psychology has been criticized for ignoring the influence of organizational processes and the larger context through its focus on the individual (kern et al., 2016; linley, joseph, harrington & wood, 2006; waters, 2011). this has led to calls in the literature for a more systems perspective to be taken in the application of positive psychology (waters, 2011). the emerging field of positive systems science responds to this call and combines the strength-based lens of positive psychology with the holistic lens of systems science (kern et al., 2016). emerging research into the application of positive psychology at work has been pursued in two complementary fields: positive organizational scholarship (pos) and positive http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 organizational behavior (pob). pos is defined as “the study of especially positive outcomes, processes, and attributes of organizations,” such as organizational virtues and peak performance (cameron, dutton, & quinn, 2003, p. 4). pob focuses upon human resource strengths and psychological capacities, such as hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience (luthans, avolio, avey, & norman, 2007; luthans & church, 2002). whereas pos typically examines organizational (macro) phenomena in a positive light, pob is concerned with the cultivation of positive psychological (micro) states. recently, youssef and luthans (2011) called for a greater integration between these two fields so that leaders can gain a more thorough understanding of how to support individual and organizational growth in ways that are mutually beneficial. the current paper adopts a positive systems science perspective and integrates the fields of pos and pob by presenting the inside-out-outside-in (io-oi) model a process model that extends sloan’s (1987) dual intervention approach of organizational-level factors combined with individual-level factors to mutually support the development of employee wellbeing. more specifically, the new model presented in this paper suggests that: 1) particular positive attitudes provide employees with individual resources that support their work happiness, 2) virtuous organizational culture provides social and job resources that support work happiness, 3) individual level factors interact with organizational level factors, such that the positive attitudes of organization members enable them to recognize more of the virtues present in their workplace environment and make the most of the organization resources available, thus positively impacting their levels of work happiness, and 4) a number of feedback loops support these processes as self-sustaining positive energy systems. positive attitudes of employees are changed both by organizational culture and individual focused approaches to building work happiness, and a mutually reinforcing association exists between them. this paper fills a number of gaps in the extant literature. in examining the influence of individual-level attitudes and organizational-level culture, this paper responds to calls for positive psychology interventions to integrate across levels of analysis and also to understand the influence that the social-environmental context has over individual attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions (linley et al., 2006). in considering inside and outside aspects of the full system, the io-oi model answers the call to adopt a systems approach to developing wellbeing in organizations (waters, 2011). further, by identifying attitude development and explaining the associated processes involved, this paper responds to lyubomirsky and layous’s (2013) call for researchers to understand more about the underlying mechanisms of pp interventions. we do this specifically within the context of positive psychology at work. 2. employee happiness in today’s information and knowledge-driven society, an organization’s people are critical to its innovation and performance, and, as such, provide a source of strategic competitive advantage (bartlett & ghoshal, 2002; lorange, 2005). in this context, employee wellbeing is recognized as an important outcome for organizations to develop in order to access the full capacity of their human capital (van de voorde, paauwe, & van veldhoven, 2012). wellbeing at work has been defined in a number of ways, including the presence of positive experiences and absence of negative experiences (cotton & hart, 2003), workplace affect and job satisfaction (page & vellabrodrick, 2009), happiness within the workplace (fisher, 2010), and more broadly as a “summative concept that characterises the quality of working life” (schulte & vainio, 2010). the current model focuses specifically on happiness, which lyubomirsky (2007) defines as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” (p. 32). although the terms “wellbeing” and “happiness” a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 are used interchangeably by some researchers (e.g., kristjanssen, 2014), others argue that they are distinct yet related phenomenon (kashdan, biswas-diener & king, 2009). recent developments in wellbeing theory recognize that wellbeing is a complex multidimensional construct that includes both hedonic and eudemonic elements (ryan & deci, 2001; ryff & singer, 2008) and is influenced by individual and contextual factors. for example, diener et al. (2010) define wellbeing as a psychosocial construct that includes having rewarding and positive relationships, feeling competent and confident, and believing that life is meaningful and purposeful. keyes (2002) proposes that wellbeing comprises three elements: (1) emotional wellbeing through the presence of positive emotions about oneself and one’s life, (2) social wellbeing through feeling connected and valued by others, and (3) psychological wellbeing through functioning well. seligman (2011) suggests that there are five components to wellbeing: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. whilst the measurement of wellbeing is criticized for being haphazard (hone, jarden, scholfield & duncan, 2014), indicators of wellbeing can include both subjective and objective measures (for example, life expectancy), and may include assessments of behaviors and relationships as well as thoughts and feelings (e.g., the flourishing scale, diener et al., 2010; perma-p profiler, butler & kern, 2015; european social survey, huppert & so, 2013). definitions of happiness vary considerably (kesebir & diener, 2008). typically referred to as “subjective wellbeing” (swb), it is broadly defined as “the extent to which people feel and think that their life is going well” (richard & diener, 2009, p. 75). schimmack (2008) defines swb as preference-realization in that it is an indicator of the degree of realization of all an individual’s preferences. page & vella-brodrick (2009) suggest that swb is a positive state of mind associated with an individual’s whole life experience, and kashdan, biswas-diener & king (2009) propose that it is an individual’s “internal state that represents a variety of subjective evaluations about the quality of one’s life, broadly defined” (p. 221). it is generally accepted that swb comprises two correlated factors: 1) a cognitive evaluation of satisfaction with life, and 2) affect balance, or the frequent experience of positive emotions and infrequent experience of negative emotions (diener, sandvik & pavot, 1991; diener et al., 1999; schimmack, 2008). measures of swb are inherently subjective and generally focus on positive thoughts and feelings to assess overall satisfaction with life (e.g., satisfaction with life scale, diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985; positive and negative affect schedule, watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988). however, evidence suggests that elements of wellbeing being not directly assessed by swb measures, (for example, relationships) strongly influence how people assess their quality of life and therefore also their levels of subjective wellbeing (huppert & so, 2013). fisher’s (2010) model of wellbeing at work proposes a multidimensional construct – “work happiness” – that includes (a) engagement with the work itself, (b) satisfaction with the job, and (c) feelings of affective commitment to the organization as a whole. for our purposes here, we use this model of work happiness to operationalize the broader construct of workplace wellbeing, while recognizing that numerous other dimensions of wellbeing could be included. fisher (2010) argues that current workplace wellbeing measures such as job satisfaction (locke, 1976), positive affect (fisher, 1997), and thriving and vigor (spreitzer & sonensheim, 2004) by themselves are too narrow, but together provide a better indicator of employee functioning. together, these factors access different elements of general wellbeing theory, capturing positive emotions through job satisfaction, achievement and flow through work engagement, and relationships through affective commitment. by presenting work happiness as a higher-order construct that comprises the unique and shared variance of these three factors, fisher suggests that workplace leaders can move beyond boosting each of the variables a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 individually and capitalize on the synergistic effects that occur when the three variables come together as a whole. this enables more sustainable ways to promote work wellbeing, for if an employee is low on one aspect of work happiness (e.g., engagement) but has high levels of the other elements (e.g., satisfaction and commitment) they can still achieve work happiness. it also enables leaders to adopt a more parsimonious approach to creating the conditions for work wellbeing. although fisher’s model has not been fully validated, williams, kern, and waters (2015) found some empirical support for it. further, each of the elements in the model has a conceptual and theoretical evidence base. work engagement comprises cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements in relation to an individual’s performance of their job role (schaufeli & bakker, 2003). engaged employees have influence over events in their lives through their energy and self efficacy, they create their own positive feedback through their positive attitude and activity level, and consider work to be fun (bakker & demerouti, 2008; gorgievski, bakker, & schaufeli, 2010). job satisfaction involves being content with one’s job (judge & kammeyer-mueller, 2012). it includes both cognitive and affective elements, and results from an internal process of evaluating individual job facets or characteristics in a positive light. evidence suggests that high levels of job satisfaction relate to job performance, and psychological and physical health (faragher, cass, & cooper, 2005; judge, thoresen, bono, & patton, 2001). affective organizational commitment is an organization member’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization (meyer & allen, 1984). high levels of affective commitment have been related to better job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, and lower absenteeism and intentions to quit (meyer, stanley, hersocvitch, & topolnitsky, 2002). engagement, satisfaction, and commitment have generally been conceptualized as attitudes towards work. for example, a person feels they are satisfied with their job when considering the way in which their manager provides feedback and support. this requires them to think about aspects of their work in order to form the attitude, i.e., their work is the object of thought. below, we propose that employees also have attitudes at work, such as hopeful, optimistic, resilient or confident attitudes. moreover, we suggest that when employees experience positive attitudes at work, this leads them to have more positive attitudes towards their work. for example, an employee with an optimistic attitude at work may feel a greater sense of affective commitment to the organization because they expect that the future will go well. 3. developing workplace happiness there is increasing evidence to suggest that optimal levels of wellbeing are associated with desirable outcomes for employees and organizations. wellbeing in employees has been related to their levels of engagement, organizational citizenship behaviors, and overall career success (e.g., boehm & lyubomirsky, 2008; harter, schmidt, & keyes, 2003; lepine, erex, & jonson, 2002). for organizations, employee wellbeing is linked with customer satisfaction, productivity, presenteeism, effort at work, lower voluntary turnover, and fewer absenteeism /sick days (e.g., giardini & frese, 2008; keyes, 2005; sears et al., 2013; wright & bonett, 2007). organizations which boost employee wellbeing receive a positive return on investment through reduced absenteeism and compensation claims (pricewaterhousecoopers, 2014). further, there is a growing expectation from employees that organizations will take an active role in supporting their wellbeing, and this has become an important point of competitive advantage for organizations in the employment market (martin et al., 2005). as such, it is in the interest of organizations to intentionally support employee wellbeing. a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 organizational change literature suggests that change – such as shifting a workplace to support employee wellbeing – can be considered “top-down” if initiated from the top of the organization through planned changes (lewin, 1946), or “bottom-up” if initiated from the bottom of the organization through emergent changes (burnes, 1996, 2004). further, sloan and gruman (1988) suggest that organizational-level factors, such as climate, influence outcomes and participation in workplace wellbeing programs as much as individual-level characteristics of employees such as gender and personality (see figure 1.) as such, sloane (1987) proposes that a dual approach that addresses both organizational and individual factors is required for interventions aiming to foster employee wellbeing at work. figure 1. a dual approach to supporting employee participation in workplace health promotion programs (sloan & gruman, 1988) based on this, the io-oi conceptual model builds on both top-down organizational level and bottom-up individual level factors that influence employee wellbeing at work. however, we suggest that the current language is limiting. for example, an organization-wide training program about gratitude in the workplace may be offered to employees. this is considered a “top-down organizational level” change initiative. as a result of the training, employees may develop new attitudes and behaviors (individual level) that positively influence their workplace climate (organizational level). a work team may then decide to create a gratitude wall in their workspace or begin their weekly team meetings with gratitude stories, thus changing the physical environment and processes in the workplace through “bottom-up employee level” initiatives. thus, while the original training initiative was top-down and aimed at the organizational level, the outcomes and initiatives have been at the individual and group level, and are considered bottom-up. we believe a more accurate way of describing these factors is by positing that work happiness is influenced by factors “outside” of the employee and factors “inside” the employee. we define outside factors as those that are in the broader work environment that influence an employee’s experience of work, such as the organizational culture, work climate, job characteristics, managers/supervisors, colleagues, and physical work environment. we define inside factors as those that influence an employee’s experience of work and that cannot be separated from the individual, such as values, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors. organizational factors e.g., climate employee participation in workplace health promotion programs individual factors e.g., gender, age a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 figure 2. the inside-out-outside-in (io-oi) model: a dual approach process model to developing happiness at work heliotropic effect buffering effect learning-induced change context-induced change selective exposure confirmation bias feedback loop (c) feedback loop (a) positive attitudes e.g., • hope • optimism • self-efficacy • resilience positive employee development e.g., • training • mentoring • job shadowing positive culture e.g., • forgiveness • trust • integrity • optimism • compassion amplifying effect employee work happiness • org. commitment • job satisfaction • work engagement feedback loop (b) feedback loop (d) proposition 5 proposition 4 proposition 2 positive organizational strategies + practices 1. positive climate e.g., articulate abundance vision 2. positive relationships e.g., keep a gratitude journal 3. positive communication e.g., give negative feedback positively 4. positive meaning e.g., set ‘everest’ goals irm of evaluation proposition 6 inside-out individual-level factors outside in organizational-level factors joining mechanism behaviour-induced change a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 thus, it is the locus of change being targeted by an intervention to develop work happiness that determines whether an organization is taking an “outside-in” or “inside-out” approach. for example, an initiative such as an employee coaching program is an inside-out approach, as the locus of change is the employee’s mindset, thoughts, feelings and behaviors. an initiative such as an employee starting a gratitude board is an outside-in approach, as the locus of change is in the work environment. we also suggest that factors outside and inside the employee will have a mutually influencing relationship. thus, both an “outside-in” and an “inside-out” approach will individually and synergistically impact work happiness (i.e., attitudes of engagement, satisfaction and commitment toward the organization) and may be initiated from the top-down or bottom-up. figure 2 shows the full io-oi model and depicts the interrelationships proposed between an outside-in approach of developing job and social resources through virtuous organizational culture and an inside-out approach of developing personal resources through fostering positive attitudes in employees. the model also presents a number of important feedback loops that support the io-oi model as a self-sustaining positive energy system. using the outcome of interest – work happiness – as the start point, the remainder of this paper unpacks the io-oi model via six propositions. we first explain the outside-in organizational level factors (propositions 1 and 2) and then move to the inside-out individual level influences (propositions 3 and 4). finally, we explain the joining mechanisms between inside-out and outside-in processes (proposition 5) and their influence on work happiness (proposition 6). 3.1 outside-in 3.1.1 organization culture and work happiness proposition 1: employee work happiness is supported through organizational social resources provided through a culture of virtuousness. growing evidence indicates that organizational culture has a critical influence on employee wellbeing (chang & lu, 2007; hartel & ashkanasy, 2011). organizational culture can be defined as the unique pattern of shared values, beliefs, and assumptions of employees about an organization learned through past experiences that is manifest through observable artifacts, espoused values, collective behaviors and shared beliefs (schein, 1980). for example, in a workplace with a culture of safety, safe work procedure signs are displayed in the workplace (observable artifacts). formal organization communication such as newsletters and annual reports provide metrics such as the number of days without a safety incident (espoused values). safety is frequently the direct topic of conversations in the workplace and underlies many others (shared beliefs). and through their individual job roles, everyone in the organization is working to achieve exemplary standards of safety across all aspects of the organization (collective behaviors). organizational culture can range from being hostile and destructive to flourishing internally and externally. organizations with constructive culture orientations promote social support, participation, teamwork, constructive interpersonal relations, and self-actualization, whereas destructive culture orientations foster competition, oppositional relational styles, and avoidance (cooke & roussea, 1988). constructive cultures are best espoused by a virtuous culture, in which “employees collectively behave in ways that are consistent with the best of the human condition and the highest aspirations of human kind” (cameron & winn, 2012, p. 235). virtues at the individual level are considered to be positive traits that represent the best of the human condition – such as hope, optimism, kindness and curiosity – which are valued across a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 time and culture (peterson & seligman, 2004). extending virtues to the organizational level, cameron, bright, and caza (2004) suggested a five-factor model of organizational virtuousness comprised of 1) organizational forgiveness, through which mistakes are quickly forgiven and used as opportunities for learning; 2) organizational trust, in the courtesy, consideration and respect enacted in the organization and the mutual trust between peers and leaders; 3) organizational integrity, demonstrated by the honesty, trustworthiness and honor that pervade the organization; 4) organizational optimism, in the belief of organizational members that they will succeed in doing well even in the face of challenges; and 5) organizational compassion, through the common acts of compassion and concern that show that people care about each other. a culture of organizational virtuousness is one that embodies these five values of forgiveness, trust, integrity, optimism, and compassion at the organizational level (rather than within individual employees). as one type of workplace culture, organizational virtuousness (ov) manifests through observable artifacts, espoused values, shared beliefs, and collective behaviors. for example, virtues-based practices such as gratitude boards (to support compassion and optimism) or leaders beginning meetings with a “what went well” exercise (to support optimism and trust) provide observable artifacts of a virtuous culture. such practices also provide opportunities to foster virtues throughout the organization as a shared set of values is espoused. other elements of culture, such as shared beliefs and collective behaviors, may be influenced by embedding virtues in organizational behaviors and leadership, engaging in strengths-based performance conversations, and infusing virtues into training, development and coaching (bouskila-yam & kluger, 2011; cameron et al., 2011). a virtues-infused culture may also provide job and social resources that influence the quality of relationship within organizations, such that employee work happiness increases. for example, a workplace culture in which leaders are optimistic about the future, compassionate in their communication, and forgiving when needed, may help develop supportive leader-worker relations and a supportive work community. leaders with high levels of gratitude may be more likely to enact the company’s recognition and reward programs, thus enhancing employee happiness. a culture in which there are high levels of integrity and trust between colleagues will enable regular and transparent feedback. evidence suggests that social resources within organizations, such as support from colleagues, newcomer socialization and perceived organizational support, relationships with co-workers and supervisors, and leadership enacted with consideration, are antecedents to work happiness (bakker & demerouti, 2008; judge & kammeyer-mueller, 2012). 3.1.2 positive organization strategies and virtuous organization culture proposition 2: positive strategies and practices increase the presence of virtues within the organization through heliotropic, amplifying, and buffering effects. working backwards from organizational virtuousness to positive organizational strategies (see figure 2), we suggest that cameron’s (2013) positive organizational strategies framework may be used by leaders to systematically and strategically support a more virtuous work culture. the framework encourages leaders to put in place four positive strategies: 1) positive climate: create a culture of abundance, by building the collective capacities of organization members; 2) positive relationships: develop positive energy networks that unlock capacity and resources within individuals and the organization to perform, create, and persist; 3) positive communication: deliver negative feedback positively so that relationships build and are strengthened; and 4) a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 positive meaning: set everest goals, which represent the peak achievement for an organization with a moral purpose and meaning. each strategy has specific positive practices designed to develop more collective virtues and influence the attainment of a positive culture (cameron, 2013). for example, under the positive climate strategy of creating a culture of abundance, leaders can engage in the specific positive practices of articulating a positive vision and generating commitment. under the positive relationships strategy of developing positive networks, activities can include mapping positive energy networks and keeping a gratitude journal. to enact the positive communication strategy, when delivering feedback, leaders can focus on problems, rather than personal attributes, and role model honesty and genuineness. finally, in the positive meaning strategy of setting everest goals, positive practices include using smart (specific, measureable, achievable, realistic, timely) goal attributes and identifying “abundance gaps” by determining what signifies positively deviant performance (i.e., that which is significantly above the norm, in comparison to current performance). three sub-processes have been proposed to explain the relationship between positive organizational strategies and virtuousness in the organization culture. the first is the heliotropic effect, defined as the instinct in all living systems to move towards positive energy and away from negative energy (cameron at al., 2011). for example, in setting everest goals, organizational members are asked to focus on affirming practices that create positive, life-giving energy at work. collective efforts to achieve everest goals bring to life virtues such as optimism for the future, trust in colleagues to fulfill their commitment to the goal, and forgiveness when plans go astray. the second sub-process is the amplification effect, which suggests that positive strategies and practices create self-reinforcing positive spirals through increasing positive emotions, social capital, and pro-social behaviors that lead to the development of a virtues-based culture (cameron et al., 2004). for example, cameron and plews (2012) provided a case study of the implementation of positive practices at prudential real estate and relocation (prer). ceo jim mallozzi asked his senior management team to identify three things that they valued about three other members of the team and tell those people about them. in doing this, the group articulated the attributes, capacities, and strengths of the people in the room, generating the belief that they could succeed in doing well even in the face of the current business challenges. they turned this belief into action by inviting individuals to share a current business problem that they were trying to solve, and the rest of the group offered ideas and support to help solve it. this, in turn, increased optimism in the group, which was expanded through the rest of the organization as the ideas were put into action and members saw the business benefit of their thinking. thus the virtue of optimism was amplified through the adoption of positive practices that lead to selfreinforcing positive spirals and cultural change, as these virtues were spread into the culture of the organization through beliefs, behaviors, values, and artifacts. the third sub-process is the buffering effect, in which positive strategies and practices provide buffering effects to the organization by increasing resiliency, solidarity and a sense of efficacy (cameron, bright & caza, 2004; cameron et al., 2011) that support a virtues-based culture. for example, in a study by cameron et al. (2004) of approaches to downsizing, they identified that southwest airlines adopted positive strategies and practices in the economic aftermath of the u.s. terrorist attacks on september 11, 2001. by continuing an un-matched industry record of not downsizing, southwest airlines ceo jim parker publicly announced that the company was prepared to suffer financial damage to protect their peoples’ jobs. this was an explicit and public commitment to employees, demonstrating the virtues of integrity and optimism. these positive practices led to trust and forgiveness from the staff, an increased sense of security, and easier a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 union negotiations that further reinforced the virtues and resulted in better objective performance (e.g., productivity, stock value) and perceived performance (e.g., staff turnover) in the mid to long term. 3.1.3 discussion in sum, factors outside of the employee such as organizational culture and positive practices influence their levels of work happiness. it is suggested that a virtuous culture provides job and social resources that support employee work happiness, and that leaders may use specific positive strategies and practices to develop a culture of virtuousness. while the outside-in approach to work happiness is important, we argue that it is necessary but not sufficient, for three reasons. first, past research shows that organizational approaches to cultural change are slow (cameron, 2008). second, organization level culture change initiatives are open to a wide variability in delivery, uptake, and commitment from management and employees (todnem by, 2005). whilst some leaders may support the practices, others may not, thereby under-mining efforts to reach a “tipping point” in the collective behaviors within the organization. third, positive practices are external to the employee; they do not require internal re-evaluation of attitudes (defined as beliefs, feelings and/or behaviors) and could be viewed as “just another policy initiative”. beyond these three difficulties in cultural change, we also believe that, even when cultural change is successful and a virtuous culture is developed, this still may not lead to work happiness. we propose that it is not simply the presence of virtues that matters, but that to benefit happiness, employees need to notice and evaluate the virtues present in the culture. for example, a team with a positive culture might still have members who fail to see the virtues around them, and resist or even impede positive practices such that the presence of virtues has no impact on their happiness. 3.2 inside-out we now move to the lower half of the io-oi model (figure 2), to look at the inside-out factors that influence work happiness. earlier we proposed factors “outside” the employee such as organizational job and social resources support work happiness. evidence suggests that beyond the outside factors described in part 1, there are also factors within the employee that influence happiness, such as attitudes, positive affect, and core-self evaluations (e.g., hobfoll et al., 2003; judge & kammeyer-mueller, 2012). 3.2.1 employee attitudes one factor that influences an individual’s capacity to evaluate the presence of virtues in the workplace culture is their attitudes. attitudes can be defined as “an evaluation of an object of thought” (bohner & dickel, 2011, p. 392). one function of attitudes is to help us navigate our environment effectively and efficiently by removing the need to evaluate and make decisions about each new object encountered (katz, 1960). attitudes help assimilate new knowledge and have been found to help categorize objects, and support decision-making ease and decisionmaking quality (e.g., katz, 1960; azjen, 2001; blascovich et al., 1993; fazio et al., 1992; smith et al., 1996). further, positive attitudes towards work (such as satisfaction, engagement and commitment) have been found to influence outcomes such as intention to quit, in role and extra role performance, client satisfaction, proactivity, adaptability, and creativity (mobley, rothbard, & patil, 2012). a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 historically a tripartite view of attitudes held that they are formed and manifest through three components – beliefs, feelings, and behaviors (eagly & chaiken, 1993) and that all three components must be present and consistent for the attitude to exist (rosenberg & hovland, 1960). research by zanna and rempel (1988) re-examined these assumptions and proposed a more nuanced view, in that attitudes can be established and enacted through any of the three pathways. the cognitive pathway to attitude formation is driven by an individual’s beliefs about whether an attitude object is (un)desirable or will lead to (un)desirable outcomes. the expectancy-value model (fishbein & ajzen, 1975) is an example of this approach. it proposes that an attitude towards an object is formed by estimating the probability that the object has particular attributes, and multiplying this by the value the individual places on it to give an “expectancy value”. by totaling all of the “expected-values,” the individual arrives at an overall attitude towards the object. the affective pathway depends upon how an attitude object makes us feel. there are three primary ways through which this may occur. first, in operant conditioning, attitudes that lead to positive (negative) outcomes are more (less) likely to be repeated (e.g., hildum & brown, 1956). second, in classical conditioning, attitudes are formed non-consciously through an individual attending to differences between attitude objects in their environment and making associations between them. for example, an attitude object such as a brand of clothing might be paired with another object such as young attractive models, resulting in a positive affective response and the formation of a positive attitude about that object. third, in exposure, greater contact with an attitude object makes it more accessible to perception and increases liking for it (zajonc, 1968). the behavioral route to attitude formation arises when one has had experience with an attitude object without clear feelings or beliefs, and attitudes can be inferred by the individual attitude holder from their past behavior (bem, 1967; fazio & olson, 2007). for example, an individual may have voluntarily attended a workplace training session without being clear or conscious of their beliefs and/or feelings about it, but in retrospect can reason that they have a positive attitude towards their own development and training generally. this integrative view of the cognitive, affective and behavioral elements of attitudes is supported in the mode (motivation and opportunity as determinants) model, in which attitudes are understood to be associations between an evaluation and an object stored in memory, and these associations can be based on cognitive, affective and/or behavioral knowledge from which a “summary” evaluation is reached (fazio, 1990; fazio 2000). 3.2.2 positive employee attitudes and work happiness proposition 3: employee work happiness is supported through individual personal resources provided by positive attitudes. the attitudes of organization members assist them to evaluate the behaviors of colleagues and managers, as well as organization policies, their job role, and the organization as a whole. they also influence member thoughts, feelings, and behaviors whilst at work. attitudes were defined earlier as “an evaluation of an object of thought,” thus we define a positive attitude as “a positive evaluation of an object of thought”. as we explain below, the development of specific positive attitudes is likely to increase personal resources, such as the frequency of positive affect, positive core-self evaluations linked to resiliency, and an individual’s sense of their ability to successfully control their environment, and, in doing so, develop member work happiness. in the positive organizational literature, psychological capital (psycap) has been identified as a foundational evidence-based framework that leaders can use to develop the positive a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 psychological capacities of organization members (luthans, youssef, & avolio, 2006). psycap is defined as “an individual’s positive psychological state of development” (luthans, youssef, & avolio, 2007, p. 3) and comprises four elements: hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism, which have been shown to lead to higher performance outcomes in the workplace (luthans, avey, avolio, & peterson, 2010). psycap has traditionally been considered a “resource bank” that enables successful performance and response to challenges or events, and that supports people to flourish, and to have success in multiple life domains, including work, relationships, and their health (hobfall, 2002; lyubomirsky, 2005). however, we propose that in addition to its function as a resource bank, psycap can also be conceptualized as a positive attitude. we do this for five reasons. first, the mechanisms that are proposed to underlie the synergy between the elements of psycap (luthans et al., 2010) also reflect the ways in which attitudes are formed, influenced and manifested, i.e., through an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. second, the cognitive, affective and conative processes through which it is proposed that psycap influences wellbeing (youssef-morgan & luthans, 2014) mirror the influence and manifestation of attitudes in thoughts, feelings and behaviors. third, the suggestion that psycap fosters “the formation of positive appraisals of past, present and future events” (youssef-morgan & luthans, 2014, p. 185) suggests that not only is psycap a resource but that it is also an attitude, and, more specifically, a positive attitude, because in either conceptualization – as a resource or an attitude – it involves an evaluation of an object of thought in the form of a positive appraisal. fourthly, the argument of psycap as “state-like” and manageable and open to development (youssef-morgan & luthans, 2014), mirrors those of attitudes, which are also believed to be open to development (cunningham et al., 2007). finally, the implicit psycap scale (harms & luthans, 2012) which measures less conscious levels of psycap, suggests that it is a construct that can be understood as an attitude, given that attitudes have an implicit aspect to them. as such, we operationalize positive attitudes here as psycap. the four attitudes of psycap have been found to be open to development and impacted through work-based interventions (youssef & luthans, 2007), suggesting that it is a valid model for leaders wanting to create effective employee change. for example, luthans, avey, avolio, and petersen (2010) tested a psycap intervention with 80 managers. the two-hour intervention comprised a series of targeted exercises designed to develop each of the four psycap sub-factors, and integrative reflective exercises to enable understanding an operationalization of the higherorder psycap construct. psycap scores increased, and their self-rated and manager-rated performance also significantly increased. the four positive psycap attitudes may also be built upon through workplace triggers such as the positive strategies and practices mentioned earlier (cameron, 2013), and in doing so, develop individual personal resources. for example, the positive practice of providing negative feedback in a positive way requires a leader to have efficacy in their communication skills (positive core-self evaluations) and optimism in the expectation that their desired outcomes will be achieved through the discussion (positive affect). it requires the organization member receiving the feedback to have a resilient attitude to failure, and hopeful, optimistic attitudes to overcoming the problem and improving their performance (positive affect and positive core-self evaluations). thus, positive psycap attitudes may provide both organization members and leaders with personal resources that enable and support their work happiness. we therefore propose that the psycap framework can support organizations to develop four specific positive attitudes: hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience. a hopeful attitude is one in which organization members have high levels of agency (goal-directed energy) and can a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 generate pathways and planning to meet their goals (snyder et al., 1991). an optimistic attitude involves a positive future expectation (scheier & carver, 1985). self-efficacious attitudes comprise an individual’s confidence in their motivation, skills, and cognitive resources to successfully meet the demands made of them (stadjkovic, luthans, & slocum, 1998). an attitude of resilience is characterized by the ability to “bounce back” from challenging situations (masten & reed, 2002). 3.2.3 fostering positive attitudes proposition 4: positive employee development (e.g., training, mentoring, job shadowing) fosters positive attitudes by triggering learning-induced, behavior-induced, and contextinduced attitude change. the formation of attitudes is considered a critical adaptive capacity. of equal importance is that attitudes can be changed in light of new information and experiences (bodenhausen & gawronski, 2013). three theories are proposed regarding the mechanisms involved in attitude change to explain the link between positive employee development and positive attitudes: learning-based; behavior-induced and context-induced (bodenhausen & gawronski, 2013). first, learning-based theories involve cognition and affect, and suggest that learning new information about an attitude object (cognition), paired with a positive emotional response (affect), drives observed attitude change. learning can be propositional, in that new information is proposed about an attitude object, or it can be associative, such that new “pairings” of associations between attitude objects are made. classical conditioning theory (pavlov, 1927/1960) suggests that the acquisition of new information about an object leads to attitude change, further, that new links can be established between attitude objects in memory based on co-occurrences between objects and events (baeyens et al., 1992). for example, a part-time employee may need to attend a first-aid training workshop that is being run outside of their normal working hours. as such, their attitude towards attending the workshop is negative and their attitude about the organization is that part-time employees are not valued or considered. they then learn that a second workshop has been organized at a time that is convenient for part-time employees, and that part-time employees will have first refusal to attend this workshop (new information). as a result, the employee’s attitude towards the workshop becomes more positive, as does their association between their current organization and part-time employees. second, behavior-induced attitude change examines the influence of an individual’s behavior on the evaluation of an attitude object. for example, an employee may attend a training workshop because it is compulsory, and the act of attending engenders positive attitudes towards the workshop. cognitive dissonance theory suggests that inconsistencies between cognitions and behaviors motivate an individual to find consonance, which, if it cannot be found through external factors, will lead to a change in attitudes (festinger, 1962). bem’s (1967) selfperception theory assumes that individuals make inferences about their attitudes from their past behavior. for example, if they attended a non-compulsory workshop, they are likely to conclude that, “if i attended the training workshop without an external justification, then i must hold an internal attitudinal reason for doing so.” third, context-induced attitude change recognizes the significant influence that contextual cues can have in object evaluation. an individual may have extensive and diverse knowledge about many attitude objects; it is unlikely that all of this will be accessed at the point of evaluation, and the specific knowledge subset that is activated, based on contextual cues, may lead to very different evaluations (tourangeau & rasinski, 1988). for example, an employee is considering whether to attend a training workshop. through a conversation with a colleague, a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 they are prompted to consider the benefits they will gain from it, rather than the work that they could be doing during that time instead (contextual cue). cognitive dissonance theory suggests that their attitude may become more positive toward the workshop because they will need to resolve the dissonance created by focusing on the benefits of the training in the conversation. in summary, a number of mechanisms are shown to be involved in attitude change: learning processes stimulate change in beliefs and feelings through the acquisition of new information or associations about an attitude object, an individual’s behavior can lead to a re-evaluation of attitudes, and the context of an attitude evaluation can influence different knowledge subsets being accessed, resulting in varied evaluations about the same attitude object. any one of these processes may result in changes to cognition (beliefs), affect (feelings), and/or behavior. we propose that engaging organizational members in positive development such as training, mentoring, and/or job shadowing can aid the development of positive attitudes by impacting one or more of these three attitude change mechanisms. for example, a psycap training program might provide contextual cues that focus employees on their attitude. as part of the training, an employee may set a goal of completing a gratitude journal every day for two weeks (behavioral change). by noticing positive aspects of their work environment (cognitive change) for which they feel grateful (affective change), positive attitude changes occur, as the employee develops an “attitude of gratitude.” 3.3 connecting inside-out and outside-in factors we have explored organizational factors that support work happiness (outside-in) such as virtuous organizational culture, and internal factors that influence work happiness (inside-out), such as positive employee development and positive attitudes. we now consider three mechanisms that may link the inside-out and outside-in factors: 1) the iterative reprocessing of evaluations (proposition 5), 2) selective exposure, and 3) confirmation bias (proposition 6). 3.3.1 the iterative reprocessing model proposition 5: individual attitudes iteratively combine with evaluations of the organization environment in either a positive way that supports work happiness, or a negative way that hinders work happiness. we suggest that the iterative reprocessing model (irm; cunningham & zelazo, 2007; van bavel, xiao, & cunningham; 2012), provides a lens for understanding how a virtuous culture (outside) influences employee positive attitudes (inside). according to the irm, an attitude object (e.g., a new company policy) triggers an evaluative cycle through which lower-order, automatic (or implicit) stored evaluations influence and are influenced by higher-order, reflective (or explicit) real-time processes. this leads to a dynamic evaluation of the attitude object that combines associations stored in memory with current information to create a positive or negative attitude toward that object. as such, any single evaluation represents the current processing state of a greater evaluative system, which is influenced by those elements of the stored attitude that are currently active and by the level of reflective processing that takes place. as illustrated in figure 3, each iterative cycle of evaluation is influenced by new contextual or motivational information, which creates a new evaluation of the attitude object that takes into account finer attitude-object detail, the context, and/or current goals. a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 figure 3. the iterative cycle of evaluation (adapted from cunningham & zelazo, 2007) for example, consider the scenario where an employee has a pressing project deadline. their stored attitude associated with deadlines is that all deadlines are stressful. however, this may be altered in this specific instance if the department manager adds extra staff and resources to the project. the actions of the manager lead to the attitude-object relationship becoming more specific, and the employee’s stored attitude that deadlines are stressful becomes more nuanced for this specific deadline, which has become less stressful. hence, while our automatic, stored (implicit) attitudes help us to make quick assessments, these attitudes are dynamic and can be altered when the context or goals change, through the influence of reflective (explicit) real-time processes. the number of times an attitude object goes through the iterative process depends on personal and situational variables such as cognitive ability, motivation, and opportunity (fazio, 1990). thus, evaluations may be formed very quickly and remain stable for a time, or they may go through many iterative cycles over a long period of time and be continually altered and updated. increasing reflective processes in individuals enables the more nuanced and/or goal congruent evaluations needed to navigate complex environments, self-regulate and appraise abstract concepts such as virtues in the organization culture (van bavel, xiao, & cunningham, 2012). we propose that employee development to foster specific positive attitudes can trigger a positive iterative evaluation cycle by providing new motivational information with which members can re-evaluate their stored attitudes. in parallel, virtues in the organizational culture enabled through positive practices may provide new contextual information that keep virtuous cues in their organizational environment (ov) as the active process. thus a positive cycle of evaluation and attitude change may result, as positive individual attitudes are fostered through positive employee development and motivation, and are supported and reinforced by positive context cues in the organizational environment (ov). we propose that this ongoing positive spiral may, in turn, lead to higher levels of employee work happiness. equally, we surmise that the irm can work in a negative cycle, such that when positive attitudes (psycap) are not time stored attitudes evaluation 1 evaluation 2 stimulus 1 stimulus 2 stimulus n evaluation n contextual information/ motivational factors contextual information/ motivational factors contextual information/ motivational factors http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0cacqjrw&url=http://edtechnow.net/2013/02/25/conversation/&ei=-6rvvfsik4g1mawi-4kiag&bvm=bv.94911696,d.dgy&psig=afqjcnebwxn_pe4jg2xuhutd7tiupyvi2 http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0cacqjrw&url=http://edtechnow.net/2013/02/25/conversation/&ei=-6rvvfsik4g1mawi-4kiag&bvm=bv.94911696,d.dgy&psig=afqjcnebwxn_pe4jg2xuhutd7tiupyvi2 a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 supported and reinforced by positive context cues in the organizational culture (ov), employee work happiness decreases. as an example, employees may have a new manager transfer from another department. team members may have heard negative rumors about the manager, such that they have a negative attitude towards the manager. although the manager does positive and constructive actions during the first week, the employees observe one situation where she becomes frustrated, which reinforces a negative attitude about the manager. an employee might feel dissatisfied with the manager, disengaged with their work, and less committed to the organization as a whole. however, over the next few weeks, the manager acts in many virtuous ways, which causes dissonance between the team members’ initial negative evaluation and the reality of her management style. this triggers an evaluative iteration within the team members to resolve the conflict between their stored evaluation and the virtuous behavior being shown by the manager. in doing so, the evaluative cycle provides the opportunity for the relationships to develop more positively. as attitudes shift, affect improves, ultimately increasing team members’ work happiness. 3.3.2 selective exposure and the confirmation bias proposition 6: selective exposure and confirmation biases allow employees with positive attitudes to notice and evaluate practices and virtues present in the organization environment in a more positive light, resulting in greater work happiness. inner attitudes and outer aspects of the organization are further connected by what an individual subconsciously and consciously gives attention to. selective exposure is the phenomenon whereby people focus on information in their environment that is congruent with and confirms their current attitudes (klapper, 1960). it has been found to have influence in a wide range of contexts, including attitudes to media use (stroud, 2007) and decision making (fischer et al., 2010), and is acknowledged as being relevant to organizations (kastenmuller et al., 2010). klapper (1960) suggests that selective exposure comprises three processes: 1) selective exposure, in which people avoid communication that is opposite to their existing attitude; 2) selective perception, in which, when confronted with material that opposes their viewpoint, people either do not perceive it or they make it fit for their existing opinion; and 3) selective retention, in which people simply forget attitude-incongruent information. for example, imagine the previous situation with the new manager; team members with positive attitudes are less likely to join in the negative gossip about the manager (selective exposure), they will explain away the incident of frustration as being a “one-off” (selective perception) or they may forget that it happened at all (selective retention). individuals may also actively seek out, remember and assign more weight or validity to information that supports their current attitude. this is known as confirmation bias and refers to “unwitting selectivity in the acquisition and use of evidence” (nickerson, 1998, p. 175). confirmation biases have been shown to be pervasive across a variety of contexts, including politics (tuchman, 1984), science (hergovich, schott, & burger, 2010), and law (pennington & hastie, 1993). a number of theories are proposed to explain confirmation bias, including the desire to believe information that is more pleasing or the “pollyanna” principle (matlin & stang, 1978), limits to individual information-processing capacity i.e., the ability to consider only one option at a time (doherty & mynatt, 1986), and positive-test strategy or positivity bias, in which individuals find it easier to process confirmatory rather than opposing information (heider (1958). as an example and to continue the scenario above, the information that the team members have taken in about the new manager through the processes of selective exposure (i.e., the a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 manager’s virtuous behavior) may be recalled more easily, assigned more weight and given higher levels of validity than the negative rumors. this will confirm their earlier evaluation that she is a good manager, and in doing so, increase team members’ work happiness. the processes of selective exposure and confirmation bias thus impact what an employee sees, pays attention to and interprets in their environment. it is likely that employees with positive attitudes have greater accessibility to spotting the virtuous behaviors of others and the positive practices put in place by an organization because these features of the work environment are attitude-congruent (selective exposure), and seem valid (confirmation bias). figure 4 demonstrates the interactive loop that in theory stems from positive employee development. however, this loop does not just occur during employee development. rather, the loops are likely to continue to occur over time as selective exposure and confirmation bias influence the attention and weight people give to virtue opportunities present in an organization over time (e.g., positive practices and other displays of virtue). figure 4. the processes and outcomes of positive development on employee attitudes and evaluation of virtues in the organization culture returning to the example of the new manager, the team members focused on the positive behaviors (selective exposure), which confirmed their desire for positive change (confirmation bias). by consistently implementing virtuous behaviors, the manager further develops the team members’ positive attitudes through learning and context change; consequently, team members confirmation bias selective exposure behaviour induced change learning induced change notices virtues in environment positive attitude makes positive evaluation positive employee development context induced change a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 are more likely to attend to positive aspects in the environment and behave in ways that are attitude congruent, thus contributing to the positive environment. this creates a positive energy feedback loop in which the virtues-based organization environment and increasingly positive individual attitudes are mutually supportive and reinforcing over time. 3.3.3 connecting the pieces coming full circle, the complete io-oi model (figure 2) details the six propositions proposed in this paper. the model depicts the interrelationships between the inside-out approach of developing individual resources through positive attitudes, and the outside-in approach of developing social resources through virtuous organizational culture. early evidence suggests that both approaches enable and support the development of work happiness independently and synergistically (williams, kern, & waters, 2015). figure 2 also shows a number of feedback loops that create and sustain upward spirals of positive development and support the io-oi model as a self-sustaining positive energy system. the development of higher levels of work happiness is experienced as greater satisfaction, commitment, and engagement of members, thus increasing their awareness and receptivity to positive practices (feedback loop (a)), their enactment of congruent behaviors that support a virtuous culture (feedback loop (b)), their motivation to engage in positive development (feedback loop (c)), and positive attitudes such as psycap (feedback loop (d)). thus the process of developing work happiness can be an iterative cycle that unfolds in a dynamic fashion over time and is mutually affected by inside-out and outside-in influences and feedback loops. the io-oi model suggests an iterative process for developing positive attitudes within individuals, but how does this benefit an organization? we suggest that by increasing positive attitudes in many members, collective change may occur. when a critical mass is reached, there is greater capacity for virtuousness across the whole system. the io-oi model suggests that this may arise in a number of ways. first, as people develop positive attitudes such as hope, optimism, resilience, and efficacy, they will be more open to seeing virtuousness in the organization culture because it is attitude congruent. as such, through the processes of selective exposure and confirmation bias, they perceive more virtuousness in others and evaluate other people’s behaviors from a virtues perspective. haidt’s (2000) elevation proposition suggests that when we perceive virtuous behavior in others, we are motivated/elevated to behave virtuously ourselves. hence, by seeing more virtues in others, organization members may behave more virtuously themselves. second, fowler and christakis’ (2008) contagion theory suggests that emotions and behaviors are spread through social networks. as employee positive attitudes are manifest through positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, they may positively influence colleagues to feel and behave in a similar way. 4. future research: testing the model we have suggested a theoretical model that links inside-out and outside-in factors, with a series of six propositions. these need to be empirically tested. a number of fruitful research questions can be addressed using the io-oi model. for instance: 1) how are inside-out and outside-in interventions most effectively introduced – all at once or over time to allow integration into attitudes? 2) are there factors about the existing culture that influence the success of the io-oi model (e.g., a constructive culture orientation versus a destructive culture orientation)? 3) how might the cultural context influence the processes described in the model? 4) are there certain types of leaders who are best to lead the io-oi development process? should organizations which want to develop work happiness and a virtuous culture recruit people with high psycap? a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 the answers to these questions will help to inform organizations of the best approach to follow when developing employee work happiness using a dual intervention approach. multiple approaches can be used to test the model and propositions. it would be of interest to understand how differences in taking an outside-in (positive practices and virtuous culture) or inside-out (positive employee development and positive attitudes) approach impacts work happiness, and how different phasing and timing of these two approaches affects employee wellbeing outcomes. organizations with multiple departments or business units within the same parent culture would provide a valuable setting to undertake such comparative tests, with one unit using an inside-out and the other using an outside-in approach. it would also be beneficial to test the io-oi model within a variety of organizational contexts (e.g., a not-for-profit organization such as a school and a profit-driven industry such as a merchant bank). longitudinal studies of the io-oi model may help to uncover the potential time-lag between implementing specific interventions and changes in levels of work happiness. for example, cameron et al. (2011) assessed the extent to which positive practices affected organization performance over time and which practices had the most predictive power across 29 nursing units. longitudinal designs also provide a time-perspective to the reciprocal loop between the development of positive attitudes and positive practices, which will help organizations understand the frequency with which they need to positively trigger employees’ re-evaluative cycle through the workplace environment to sustain employee wellbeing. attitudes can be challenging to measure, but these inherent challenges can be overcome through creative and varied approaches to measurement. use of everyday experience methods such as the daily diary (bolger, davis, & rafaeli, 2003) and experience sampling method (esm, hektner, schmidt, & cziksentmihayli, 2007) will help minimize retrospection bias (reis, gable, & mancini, 2014), and will allow researchers to test the io-oi model through everyday behaviors that occur in the natural workplace setting. the data from such methods will provide a valuable detailed picture of employees’ experience of the work environment, their attitudes at work, and the individual and context factors that influence them (tennen, suls, & affleck, 1991). interpretation-based measures of attitudes such as sentence completion tasks and projective vignettes may be useful to access less conscious, implicit attitudes. these measures are effective in assessing complex social beliefs (such as perception of virtues) and motivational constructs (such as work happiness engagement, satisfaction and commitment) (uhlmann et al., 2012) that are part of the io-oi model. organizations can collect meaningful performance outcomes for the department/unit/organization as a way to assess the usefulness of adopting the io-oi model. studies have shown that performance indicators such as employee turnover, organizational climate, financial performance, sales performance, client/customer satisfaction, psychological wellbeing, group performance, organizational citizenship behaviors and trust, are influenced by constructs within the io-oi model and are of interest to organizations wanting to improve their effectiveness and performance (avey, luthans, smith, & palmer, 2010; avey, wernsing, & luthans, 2008; cameron et al., 2011; youssef & luthans, 2007). these measures could be taken prior to and after the interventions (e.g., training, mentoring, the use of specific positive practices) and could be analyzed via panel data analysis and latent growth modeling. 5. conclusion gavin and mason (2004) argue that “to achieve the good life people must work in good organizations” (p. 387). the current paper has suggested that a dual approach involving both outside-in interventions and inside-out interventions may be most effective in creating positive a dual approach model to work happiness williams, kern, & waters www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 institutions and flourishing individuals within them. adopting a positive systems science perspective, the io-oi model outlines the interrelationships and processes through which insideout and outside-in factors positively influence employee work happiness, and suggests three processes that may explain the interaction between outside-in and inside-out approaches. further, the model proposes a number of feedback loops that enable upward spirals of positive development at the individual and organizational level, and support the model as a self sustaining positive energy system embedded in a workplace context. the io-oi model integrates the fields of attitudes, positive organizational scholarship, and positive organizational behavior. further, the model explains one way in which individual personal resources such as positive affect and core-self-evaluation interact with organizational job and social resources such as colleague support and supervisor feedback to create pathways for organizations to develop and sustain the wellbeing of its members. as such, the io-oi model addresses the current imbalance in positive psychology that has focused more individual positive psychology interventions than a whole-of-system approach and on individual wellbeing applications than on workplace interventions. we hope that through the io-oi model, workplace practitioners can further understand the importance of adopting both inside-out and outside-in approaches when fostering employee work happiness. authors paige williams the university of melbourne paige.williams@unimelb.edu.au margaret l. kern the university of melbourne lea waters the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 14 december 2015 accepted 21 june 2016 published 14 september 2016 references ajzen, i. 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(2017). a glowing footprint: developing an index of wellbeing for low to middle income countries. international journal of wellbeing, 7(2), 1-27. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i2.503 susan j. elliott university of waterloo elliotts@uwaterloo.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article a glowing footprint: developing an index of wellbeing for low to middle income countries susan j. elliott · jenna dixon · elijah bisung · joseph kangmennaang abstract: our world faces unprecedented, intense and rapid change. as such, it is difficult to fathom how we might monitor related impacts on the wellbeing of population(s) affected. in the past, the world has typically relied upon measures of economic health or wellbeing such as gross domestic product (gdp). as the world ends its commitment to the millennium development goals (mdgs), and embarks on a commitment to the sustainable development goals, questions about where we as a global society should continue our investments in wellbeing and efforts to measure those outcomes are now up for debate. these questions are particularly poignant for those populations most vulnerable to change: low to middle income countries (lmics). this paper reviews existing “beyond gdp” measures of population wellbeing as a foundation for developing a truly global index of wellbeing (glowing) that can be used by lmics to document change, and measure the impact of policy, across space and over time. the paper describes a proposed index of wellbeing that is simple, meaningful, and built on the use of available secondary data at the ecological level. it is built on the foundation of the innovative canadian index of wellbeing, and hinges on plans for a proof of concept in east africa followed by a scaling up, all of which is founded on the twin pillars of capacity building and empowerment. keywords: wellbeing, beyond gdp, glowing, measurement tools, low and middle income countries, capacity building 1. understanding how the world works we live in a world faced by unprecedented change (deaton 2013; gallup world poll, 2015; world economic forum, 2015). according to klaus schwab, ceo of the world economic forum (2015: iii): in the coming decade … our lives will be even more intensely shaped by transformative forces than are under way already. the effects of climate change are accelerating and the uncertainty about the global geopolitical context and the effects it will have on international collaboration will remain. at the same time, societies are increasingly under pressure from economic, political and social development including rising income inequality. indeed, in the most recent annual assessment of global risks, the world economic forum uses a global risks perception survey, administered to over 900 stakeholders, to produce metrics to measure both likelihood and impact of a range of global risks (figure 1). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 figure 1. the global risks landscape (world economic forum, 2015) these risks are organized by category (economic, geopolitical, environmental, societal and technological) and situated on the graph according to the intersecting constructs of perceived likelihood and perceived impact. according to the data, the top ten risks over the next decade are as follows (table 1): indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 table 1. the likelihood and impact of the top ten global risks likelihood impact 1 interstate conflict water crises 2 extreme weather events spread of infectious diseases 3 failure of national governance weapons of mass destruction 4 state collapse or crisis interstate conflict 5 under & unemployment failure of climate change adaptation 6 natural catastrophe energy price shock 7 failure of climate change adaptation critical information infrastructure breakdown 8 water crises fiscal crises 9 data fraud or theft under & unemployment 10 cyber attacks biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse in the face of such intense and rapid change, it is difficult to fathom how we might monitor related impacts on the wellbeing of population(s) affected. in the past, the world has typically relied upon measures of economic health or wellbeing such as gross domestic product (gdp). as the world ends its commitment to the millennium development goals, and embarks on a commitment to the sustainable development goals (www.sustainabledevelopment.un.org/), questions about where we as a global society should continue our investments in wellbeing and efforts to measure those outcomes are now up for debate. these questions are most poignant for those populations most vulnerable to change: low to middle income countries (lmics). to date, this has proven a significant challenge (tiliouine et al., 2006). this paper discusses the limitations of using gdp-type tools in measuring the wellbeing of populations, reviews the recent development of alternative measures, and suggests a metric going forward – the global index of wellbeing (glowing), based upon the canadian index of wellbeing (see appendix a), that can be used to measure the impacts of rapid change – economic, climatic, demographic, health, cultural, social – strongest felt by low to middle income countries. the paper then describes the research agenda for the development, piloting and scale up of glowing. 1.1 measuring how the world works: gdp as a measure of population wellbeing? gdp represents the market value of all goods produced within a country over a period of time, based on the simple assumption that the higher the gdp, the better off the population of the country that produced said goods. the concept was developed by simon kuznets for a us congress report in 1934 (kuznets, 1934), and, subsequent to the bretton woods conference in 1944, became the measure of a country’s economic health (that is, for all un member states) (costanza et al., 2009). interestingly, however, even simon kuznets was aware of the limitations of gdp: economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. and no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. the welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income… (kuznets, 1934, pp. 6-7). indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 approximately 30 years later, robert f. kennedy (1968) shared similar sentiments: … the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. it does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials … it measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile … to illustrate, if we measure the progress of countries solely by growth in wealth and consumer spending, we might conclude that many countries are indeed doing well – but there’s more to wellbeing than wealth (smits & steendijk, 2015). however, if we broaden our measurement of progress to include social and economic inequalities; environmental, cultural, and governance issues that perhaps matter more to citizens, then our results might be quite different. for example, the canadian index of wellbeing illustrates that canada experienced impressive growth in gdp between 1994 and 2010; concomitantly, however, canadians’ confidence in their federal parliament, as well as voter turnout in federal elections, were at their lowest (canadian index of wellbeing, 2012). treating gdp as a measure of economic wellbeing can, for a number of reasons, provide misleading indications about how well-off people are. first, non-market values and benefits such as volunteer work are often excluded from gdp calculations, though they form an important part of how well society fares. second, it fails to account for depletion of natural resources or the state of the natural environment. third, it is difficult to capture inequalities in the distribution of wealth, resources and opportunities in society. finally, gdp does not distinguish between economic productions that are beneficial to societal wellbeing and those that are harmful: too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things … gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. it counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. it counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl (kennedy, 1968). the notion of questioning the validity of gdp for measuring global progress is not new (see the insightful commentary by costanza and colleagues (2014) in nature as the concept applies to the development of the sustainable development goals). the key issue is: what do we do about it? in response, many countries are beginning to explore alternative mechanisms to measure the wellbeing of national populations. indeed, the istanbul world forum (27-30 june, 2007) concluded with international organizations (including the european commission, organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd), organization of the islamic conference, united nations, united nations development program (undp), world bank and many more) all affirming in a declaration their commitment to measuring and fostering the progress of societies in all dimensions, with the ultimate goal of improving policy making, democracy and citizen wellbeing.1 this does not entail throwing the baby out with the bath water; rather, it moves us toward a broader depth of understanding and breadth of knowledge for policy makers to make evidence-informed decisions, centered on what matters most to the citizens of the nation and the sustainability of our common future (canadian index of wellbeing, 2012; stiglitz, sen & fitoussi, 2009). 1 a copy of this declaration can be found at http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/38883774.pdf indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 1.2 toward a definition of wellbeing although the phrase “wellbeing” is widely used both in the literature and in common speech, there is no commonly agreed upon definition for the term (matthews, 2012). it has often been used interchangeably with “quality of life,” “happiness” and “life satisfaction” (hall et al., 2010; matthews, 2012), and these definitions are underpinned by diverse philosophical and competing traditions of inquiry ranging from the behavioral, social, economic, and health sciences (wiseman & brasher, 2008; hall et al., 2010). further, some have eschewed formal definitions for a list of key characteristics. for example, the oecd (2011) argues that defining wellbeing must focus on four key pillars: 1) the wellbeing of people in each country, rather than on the macro-economic conditions of economies; 2) the wellbeing of different groups of the population, in addition to average conditions; 3) wellbeing achievements, measured by outcome indicators, as opposed to wellbeing drivers measured by input or output indicators; and, 4) objective and subjective aspects of people’s wellbeing, as both living conditions and their appreciation by individuals are important. as we will see below, a number of global initiatives have adopted wellbeing as an outcome worth measuring and have variously informed its development through existing frameworks or through a consultative approach, in which the components, dimensions or domains of wellbeing are developed through citizen consultation, dialogues and/or political processes (hall et al., 2010; kroll, 2011). regardless of the route, we see a great deal of similarity in the cross-cutting themes used in these measurement tools: issues of material living conditions, quality of life and socioeconomic performance, and sustainability of natural systems are some examples. from our perspective, we feel – going forward – that simplicity is and should be a key characteristic of the definition and measurement of wellbeing; if it is not simple, people will not understand it nor will it be measureable. as such, our proposed global index of wellbeing (glowing) adopts angus deaton’s notion of wellbeing: i use the term wellbeing to refer to all of the things that are good for a person, that make for a good life. wellbeing includes material wellbeing, such as income and wealth; physical and psychological wellbeing, represented by health and happiness; and education and the ability to participate in civil society through democracy and the rule of law (2013: 24). we add to this the context within which wellbeing happens, for example, the characteristics of the physical and built environments, and the level of vitality attached to one’s community. indeed, others have shown repeatedly how important context is to our understanding of the wellbeing of populations (matthews, 2012). further, we intend to employ a fully consultative mechanism for informing the domains and indicators for measurement used within glowing; more on this below. 2. progress in measuring wellbeing prior to embarking upon the development of yet another “index of wellbeing,” it behoved the researchers to undertake a systematic environmental scan of existing measures, reviewed in this section. twenty-three “beyond gdp” measures of wellbeing (see appendix b) were selected, based on three primary inclusion criteria. first, measures had to be focused on societal level wellbeing (that is to say, made some attempt to discuss how society as a whole is doing, not indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 solely focused on individuals 2 ), second, measures had to be conducted at the national or international scale, and third, measures had to have some empirical grounding. the resulting measures identified are categorized below (table 2). table 2. a classification of existing wellbeing measures classification meaning gdp gross domestic product (or gross national product) gdp+ gdp plus other basic indices (e.g., education, health) gdp++ gdp+ plus broader economic welfare indicators that combine wealth distribution adjustments, and natural, social, and human capital adjustments objective wellbeing derived from a broad range of domains and indices that rely on objective measures of wellbeing typically sourced from secondary data sources subjective wellbeing derived from domains and indices that require an individual to reflect on and evaluate their overall wellbeing, happiness or life satisfaction; these indices are typically based on the collection of primary data note: two measures (state of the usa key national indicator system & gallup-healthways well-being index, uk) were deemed to be either incomplete or too early in their development to be assessed and therefore not included in the analysis. adapted from vemuri & costanza, 2006. since the intent of this exercise is to evaluate measures that look “beyond gdp,” we have not included measures that would fit exclusively into the “gdp” category; rather, it remains as a point of reference. in some cases, the measure did not fit neatly within a single category and was therefore coded as belonging to primary and secondary (a/b) categories. with this, we end up with seven separate clusters (appendix b). in addition to providing key aspects regarding each measurement tool (scale, type, year of first publication, domains, indicators, data sources, countries applied), we assess the usefulness of these existing tools in developing an index of wellbeing that can be used in lmics to measure the impacts of rapid change (economic, demographic, environmental, health, social, cultural) on population wellbeing. as a quick summary, we see – at the international level – the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) and the united nations development program (undp) have been the major stakeholder organizations leading efforts toward measuring global wellbeing and social progress. since 2007, the oecd has been leading international wellbeing initiatives and supporting processes towards measuring wellbeing in their member countries. prior to the oecd’s wellbeing initiatives, the undp launched (1990) the human development report, together with the human development index (see appendix a), with the single goal of putting people at the centre of economic growth and development in terms of debate, policy, advocacy and decision-making. the human development index, along with other indices such 2 though not the concern of our review, there is a large body of literature that focuses on individual wellbeing and the inputs that determine individual wellbeing. for example, the highly cited work of helliwell & putnam (2004) finds that an individual’s income, family-level social capital, marital status, religious beliefs, etc. all influence how that individual perceives their wellbeing. thus, individuals within a society are expected to have varying levels of wellbeing, and we are left with a poor understanding of how this reflects on society as a whole. indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 as the multidimensional poverty index (mpi), the gender inequality index (gii) and the inequality adjusted human development index (ihdi) (see appendix a), continue to influence many regional and country focused un reports and initiatives on development and progress. at the regional level, the european union has been the only body with a clear initiative aimed at measuring progress “beyond gdp” in its member countries. in 2007, the european commission, together with other stakeholders including the european parliament, the club of rome and the oecd, held a high-level conference on “beyond gdp” to shed light on the most appropriate indices for measuring progress, and how best to integrate such indices into public policy and decision making (kroll, 2011). further to this conference, the commission in 2009 issued a roadmap with key actions to improve indicators of progress in ways that meet citizens’ concerns, as well as address global challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change, resource management and depletion, human health and quality of life. several countries have since launched similar progress and wellbeing related initiatives. there are common approaches in terms of how countries develop their thematic areas, frameworks for measuring – as well as reporting – the wellbeing and progress of citizens. most notable examples include the canadian index of wellbeing (ciw), measures of australia’s progress, the new zealand social report, the taiwan national well-being index, and the uk measures of national well-being (see appendix a). further, bhutan has often been cited for leading the way in terms of measuring the wellbeing and happiness of its citizens. bhutan’s gross national happiness index (see appendix a) was introduced in 1972 as an alternative method of measuring progress, and it has since been a central philosophy in the country’s development process. 2.1 limitations of “beyond gdp” measures in principle, all the “beyond gdp” approaches report some information about the wellbeing of populations, albeit with some limitations. first, the gdp+ and gdp++ measures make adjustments to gdp only to reflect other common aspirations of society and social outcomes (e.g., health, education, natural resource depletion, etc.). though these measures mark some kind of progress from gdp as an index of wellbeing, their foundations are rooted in wealth and capital as key indicators of wellbeing. two gdp ++ measures that move a step away by excluding gdp as an indicator of wellbeing (the gender inequality index and the multidimensional poverty index) are also limited to gender inequalities and individual deprivations that affect human development. notwithstanding the limitations of these measures, reporting them in addition to other wellbeing measures gives a more comprehensive story about how populations are faring, especially given the ease with which they can be incorporated into national statistical systems. a second set of wellbeing measures are those based on subjective wellbeing or a combination of subjective and objective measures of wellbeing. these measures focus on subjective wellbeing as experienced by individuals (or a combination of subjective experiences and objective output indicators of wellbeing) and how that experience informs the society as a whole. examples of purely subjective measures include the australian unity wellbeing index and the world happiness report (see appendix a). these have been criticized for producing differing outcomes, depending upon the measurement instrument chosen (cramm & nieboer, 2012). aside from narrowly focusing on happiness and subjective feelings to measure wellbeing, these measures rely on primary data or sources such as the gallup world poll that are not consistently collected in lmics. their application and relevance for timely policy making therefore remain limited in resource-poor settings, especially at sub-national levels. further, objective/subjective indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 and subjective/objective measures offer some opportunities to address the limitations of purely subjective measures, and are strongly supported by some mainstream wellbeing researchers (see, for example, la placa et al., 2013) but remain conceptually difficult for policy application in lmics for two reasons. the first relates simply to the cost and complexity of collecting primary data in lmics; thus glowing will be built – as is the canadian index of wellbeing – on the sole use of objective indicators. secondly, there is empirical evidence that subjective wellbeing has a direct impact across a broad range of objective wellbeing and life outcomes such as health, productivity and education (de neve et al., 2013). the value of subjective measures of wellbeing for policy making thus lies primarily with empirically determining objective outcomes that emanate from happiness/life satisfaction/flourishing in different cultural contexts. subjective indicators of wellbeing may be important for evaluation of policy measures (kroll, 2011) but remain difficult to apply in lmics due to data constraints and complex social and economic challenges that face populations in these countries. a third group of measures that are useful for the lmic context are objective measures of wellbeing. these include the australian national development index (andi), the measures of australia’s progress (map), the new zealand social report (nzsr), the oecd better life index (bli), the sustainable society index (ssi), the well-being of nations (wbn) and the social progress index (spi). however, measures such as the ssi and the wbn are centered on sustainable development and the wellbeing of ecosystems and the environment, which limits their focus as compared to the other objective wellbeing measures. though these “environmentally focused” measures remain helpful for assessing the state of the environment and progress towards sustainable development in countries, moving beyond gdp requires thinking broadly about what matters to individuals and the opportunities available for people to express their full capabilities. further, the sustainable society index includes gdp per capita as an indicator in the final index, which draws it closer to other gdp ++ measures. with the limitations discussed above, we consider the broad frameworks used to develop the following country specific measures – the canadian index of wellbeing, the australian national development index (currently under development), the measures of australia’s progress and the new zealand social report – as appropriate for lmics for two primary reasons. first, they largely use domains and indicators that people value as important for their daily life beyond gdp: domains and indicators developed based on broad consultations among major stakeholders and citizen groups. the final indices thus become relevant for local policy making and highlight important gaps in the wellbeing of citizens and other identifiable populations (such as indigenous peoples) in these countries. for example, unlike the social progress index that uses the same domains and indicators for all countries, the map and the nzsr are developed to suit the aspirations and what matters to australian and new zealand citizens respectively. thus, an important step in developing wellbeing measures for any lmic is to use a set of indicators to measure what people value as important for their daily life, and the environments in which they live, grow and work. this consideration is currently missing in the social progress index, as researchers and citizens in lmics have little input into the domains and indicators used to measure their wellbeing. second, the country specific measures rely on secondary data that is readily available without any significant extra burden or sampling issues that arise in the case of primary data. with regard to lmics, our proposed global index – glowing – could and should rely on secondary data from national statistics offices, relevant ministries and other publicly available databanks from un agencies, the world bank, multiple indicator cluster surveys, and regional agencies such the african development bank and the african union. indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 3. preparing to define and measure wellbeing in an lmic context while there is growing recognition for wellbeing of societies to be measured, issues about how it should be defined and measured remain unresolved and contested (mcallister, 2005; forgeard et al., 2011, allin & hand, 2014). also of critical importance is the question of whether the constituents of these alternative measurements represent what really matters to people in their specific contexts (matthews, 2012; allin & hand, 2014). going forward, the logical next step is to ground the truth of glowing in a proof of concept. as such, we have begun a pilot of glowing in east africa with a trans-disciplinary team of researchers that includes geographers, economists, epidemiologists, ethicists and psychologists. the east africa community (http://www.au.int/en/recs/eac) is poised to develop economically and is experiencing rapid environmental, social, cultural, and health changes as a result. kenya’s gdp has virtually doubled between 1990 and 2012. the lake victoria basin commission is doing well to document the impacts of these changes (http://www.lvbcom.org) and is keen to partner in the development of measures of the impacts of growth and change. working with partners on the ground in kenya and other parts of east africa, we have discerned through reconnaissance that it is feasible to develop socially, culturally, and geographically relevant indicators across the existing domains (appendix c), but this must be done in consultation with local partners, using a mixed-methods approach (matthews, 2012). in this regard, a team of researchers will conduct key informant interviews with policy makers and focus group discussions with communities to understand what wellbeing means in their specific contexts and the indicators that can be used to capture its essence (trewin & hall, 2005). this will enable us to, first of all, state, define or at least describe what wellbeing is, before exploring how best to measure it, a process that may require several iterations (allin & hand, 2014). it also involves interacting with politicians, civil society, media, individuals, communities and special interest groups within lmics, all of whom may have an interest in how wellbeing is defined and measured. this will be done through focus group discussions, key informant interviews and stakeholders’ conferences that will bring policy makers, development practitioners and citizens to interact. through this, we will begin to be able to “measure what matters” and reach agreements about what we are measuring and what the measurement procedures are (allin & hand, 2014). including citizens in the entire process will ensure transparency and strengthen their capacity to influence the goals of their societies through public debates and consensus building about wellbeing and its indicators (istanbul world forum, 2007; allin & hand, 2014). this is echoed in both the istanbul declaration (2007) as well as the report by stiglitz et al. (2009). these reports encourage communities to consider for themselves what progress means, and also highlight areas of significant change or inadequate knowledge (istanbul declaration, 2007: stiglitz et al., 2009). thus, people have to be actively involved and given the opportunity in shaping their own destiny (sen, 1999). in essence, what really matters are the capabilities of people, the extent of their opportunity set and of their freedom to choose the life that they deem valuable, and desire for themselves (sen, 1999; stiglitz et al., 2009; nussbaum, 2011). such a participatory processes will enable ordinary citizens to influence what matters most to them through consultation, debates and consensus building through the tools of dignity, self-respect, adequate attention to indigenous knowledge, and common sense. it will also imbibe in citizens a sense of duty and responsibility towards improving wellbeing. citizen participation will empower communities to combine resources-leveraging on their social capital to safeguard their communities and to improve the indicators that contribute to wellbeing. it will also enhance the confidence, capability and resolve of communities to demand accountability indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 from their local representatives, as well as district, municipal and national leaders. the participation of stakeholders, including local people and communities, in the design and development of a measure of wellbeing will ensure that glowing meets local needs and is transparent, empowering, sustainable and effective. moreover, grassroots participation will bring issues of social justice and emancipation into focus, which may lead to empowerment or conscientization of individuals and communities. citizen engagement is useful for capturing user needs and requirements of wellbeing, such as whether measures of wellbeing are necessary in the context of lmics and what the measures will be used for, as well as who will use them (allin & hand, 2014). media and political engagement is also necessary to ensure a wide acceptance of these measures, and for national statistical and planning offices to buy into them. the main objective in undertaking these processes is to recognize the way people see things rather than seek to identify the way things are (allin & hand, 2014). these engagements and consultations are also necessary to identify partners and collaborators to actively define, measure and ensure the sustainability of wellbeing. this will involve consensus building rather than full agreement, ensuring transparency all through the process. the second process of capturing what matters will be done through an environmental scan of government policy documents, media stories and parliamentary hansards or political party manifestoes. these sources shape what wellbeing means in particular country, even though much detailed work will be needed to move from these data sources to a more comprehensive and actionable specification based on what matters to people (allin & hand, 2014). we anticipate wellbeing will be multidimensional and may have a number of domains. once the proof of concept has been assessed and the indicators identified, we will undertake comparative analyses in other parts of africa (west and south) and then head to the caribbean to assess the reliability and validity of the tool in a substantially different context. in so doing, a critical task will be to identify key indicators that highlight the ways in which life and wellbeing are getting better or worse with regards to poverty, access to basic services and environmental sustainability. further, an important recommendation of the stiglitz-sen-fitoussi commission is the need for indicators to highlight inequalities in individual experiences. this is important, as progress depends both on the average conditions in society, as well as inequalities in people’s conditions (stiglitz et al., 2013). thus, glowing will highlight how individual communities, regions and groups within these countries are faring. further, while it is important to highlight inequalities across domains, certain inequalities may be mutually reinforcing (income and gender), and as such, their combined effect must be assessed. since the effects of societal characteristics cannot be ignored in the empirical analysis and measurement of wellbeing, giving due consideration to the interactions between individual and societal characteristics in constructing indicators and measurements is an important area for consideration. further, exploration of the inter-connections and relationships among indicators within and outside the same domain through targeted in-depth qualitative studies remains important for the canadian index of wellbeing and will form a central aspect of glowing. as noted by stiglitz et al. (2009), some of the most important policy questions for quality of life (and wellbeing) relate to how achievements or failures in one area or domain affect others, and how developments in various domains are related to improvements in people’s incomes. answering these questions will require the use of sophisticated methodologies and tools, coupled with improved data and a rigorous conceptual framework. indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 3.1 using the canadian index of wellbeing framework for glowing the framework of the canadian index of wellbeing (appendix c), recognized as a global leader at the forefront of wellbeing initiatives (canadian index of wellbeing, 2011), remains attractive and particularly useful among the other national objective wellbeing measures for application to lmics for a number of reasons. first, though all the national objective wellbeing measures use multiple domains to provide a holistic picture of wellbeing, there are significant differences in how these domains and their indicators are presented. while the canadian index of wellbeing aggregates domains and their indicators into a composite index, others, such as the measures of australia’s progress and the new zealand social report, are presented in the form of a “dashboard” that reflects diverse domains/indicators and their performances as a visual spread. there are those who would strongly support the dashboard model of presenting wellbeing measures (forgeard et al., 2011; matthews, 2012); however, as others have noted, (stiglitz et al., 2009; kroll, 2011), a common advantage of a composite index is the ability to provide information on wellbeing with a single value, which can easily be communicated, interpreted, and compared across space and time. the wellbeing of a society can thus easily be compared over time. whether wellbeing is presented as a dashboard or index, the decision of what to include is paramount, that is, incorporating indices that reflect the society, and striking a balance between information and parsimony. that this will exclude some aspects of a society’s aspiration, or include unimportant ones, remains a challenge. moreover, the domains and indicators of wellbeing are not static but continue to change, as more becomes known about society’s aspirations, how to measure them, and more sources of data become available (canadian index of wellbeing, 2011). furthermore, compiling social, economic and environmental indicators into a single measure involves making decisions on appropriate weights. these decisions are value laden and difficult to justify. the ciw argues that the absence of such a clear justification is enough reason to treat all indicators equally at the present time (canadian index of wellbeing, 2012). as progress is made on measuring wellbeing on both national and international fronts, sufficient reason for different weights may become apparent as new knowledge and greater understanding of the relationships among indicators, domains and thematic areas is developed (canadian index of wellbeing, 2012). using a composite index within glowing will facilitate comparison between wellbeing vis-à-vis gdp performance in any chosen lmic – or group of countries in a region (e.g. the east african region) – over a period of time, as well as give a comprehensive picture of performance on each indicator and domain over time, across space, and in the face of global environmental change, broadly defined. while we agree that making a choice between an index and dashboard is subordinate to the establishment of a broad statistical system that captures as many relevant dimensions of wellbeing as possible in any country (stiglitz et al., 2009), the usefulness of a single headline composite index vis-a-vis gdp as a communication instrument to policy makers cannot be ignored (kroll, 2011). another strength of the canadian index of wellbeing is that its framework, domains and indicators were created through combined efforts of national and international organizations, experts, community groups and citizens after several years of extensive consultation and research. many of the country level initiatives have a great deal of public involvement and stakeholder participation and there are significant similarities in the ways political leaders, experts, community groups and civil society organizations have combined efforts, with extensive public consultations, dialogues and national roundtables to achieve some form of general consensus on wellbeing domains/indicators, their measurement and monitoring. however, there are some notable differences regarding who leads the process of measuring and reporting. for indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 example, the canadian index of wellbeing and australian national development index are both led by collaborations between universities and ngos, while national statistics offices and agencies lead other initiatives such as the measures of australia’s progress, the new zealand social progress report, and the uk index of wellbeing. arguably, there are issues of legitimacy and citizen acceptance associated with government institutions (i.e. national statistics offices) leading the process of measuring wellbeing in some jurisdictions (kroll, 2011). further, the extent and depth of citizen participation and engagement, and the ability of indicators to adequately reflect citizen aspirations may also influence legitimacy and acceptance of reporting. as in the case of many lmics where governance issues remain an ongoing challenge, it is important to adapt the canadian index of wellbeing approach where local researchers and experts use publicly available data to report the wellbeing of citizens. as noted by noll (2011), many of the principles and approaches suggested by social indicators researchers have been incorporated into statistical information systems of international agencies and national statistical offices which can provide aggregate level information to other bodies and research institutions interested in measuring and monitoring wellbeing and social progress. finally, in developing glowing, two important global initiatives and their core dimensions remain central and form the overarching perspective for developing country level domains. these are 1) the oecd’s better life initiative core domains: quality of life, material living conditions, and sustainability, and 2) the stiglitz-sen-fitoussi commission core domains: revised economic indicators, quality of life and sustainability. though specific country level domains and indicators differ from country to country in order to reflect different cultural aspirations, identity and differences in data availability, the framework behind the canadian index of wellbeing and its domains/indicators broadly reflects these recommendations and guidelines. as mentioned earlier, the oecd (2011) proposed two important focus areas for constructing domains that serve as a guide for other initiatives. the first is that economic indicators should focus on the wellbeing of people, rather than on the macro-economic conditions in a country. for example, efforts should focus on measuring and reporting progress in incomes, jobs, and living standards (as in the case of the canadian index of wellbeing) instead of standard indicators of macro-economic performance such as gdp, productivity, innovation, and extraction. second, wellbeing should be measured by outcome indicators, as opposed to input indicators, that only measure drivers of wellbeing. for example, instead of using spending or investment in education, the canadian index of wellbeing uses indicators such as childcare spaces, student to educator ratio in public schools, basic knowledge and skills, and high school and university completion to measure progress in education (canadian index of wellbeing, 2012). 4. conclusion – the way forward this paper has made the case for a need for a composite measure of wellbeing useful in lmics as they face unprecedented global environmental change (broadly defined) over the next decade and beyond. in so doing, we have provided a (brief) overview of contemporary progress in wellbeing initiatives with potential use in lmics, along with their associated strengths and limitations, highlighting the strengths of the canadian index of wellbeing as a model for adaptation to measure wellbeing in lmics. though questions around progress in wellbeing visà-vis gdp growth have assumed global importance, it is obvious that most of the country initiatives are based in high income countries. the time to transfer them from their comfort zone to lmics – where wellbeing also matters and populations are most vulnerable to the impacts of indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 global environmental change – is long overdue. this becomes especially important as lmics enter the post-mdg world. a major prerequisite for measuring both objective and subjective wellbeing is to build the capacity of official statistical agencies to meet the demand for data. these sets of data, including data in areas related to economic performance and environmental sustainability, are needed in high, middle and low-income countries in order to build comprehensive and comparable measures of wellbeing for policy-making. looking into the future, measuring a complex and multifaceted concept such as wellbeing is not an end in itself but a means for informed policy making. thus, the challenge is not only how to create and share knowledge about how communities, groups, and countries are flourishing, thriving, and using their capabilities to achieve their full human potential, but how such knowledge is used to create healthy, just, and sustainable communities and nations (wiseman & brasher, 2008; krishnakumar & nogales, 2015; hone et al., 2014). as the world struggles to pin down the sustainable development goals and their measures, we learn from the recent addis ababa action agenda (aaaa, 2015), that it’s all about building capacity in lmics – through the incentivization of science, investment in education, and knowledge sharing – in order to make good decisions to support strong and healthy global populations (the lancet, 2015). as matthews (2012: 99) points out: “following stiglitz’s advice, scientists can help governments ‘do the right thing’ by assisting them in measuring the right thing.” authors susan j. elliott university of waterloo elliotts@uwaterloo.ca jenna dixon university of waterloo elijah bisung university of waterloo joseph kangmennaang university of waterloo publishing timeline received 19 january 2017 accepted 3 july 2017 published 25 november 2017 references addis ababa action agenda. 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(2005). measures of australia’s progress a case study of a national report based on key economic, social and environment indicators. in oecd (ed.), statistics, knowledge and policy: key indicators to inform decision making (pp. 88-103). paris: france, oecd publishing. vemuri, a. w., & costanza, r. (2006). the role of human, social, built, and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level: toward a national well-being index (nwi). ecological economics, 58(1), 119-133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.02.008 wiseman, j., & brasher, k. (2008). community well-being in an unwell world: trends, challenges, and possibilities. journal of public health policy, 29, 353-366. https://doi.org/10.1057/jphp.2008.16 world economic forum. (2015). global risks 2015. geneva, switzerland: author. appendix a: websites adjusted net savings (ans) http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/environment/exteei/0,,cont entmdk:20502388~menupk:1187778~pagepk:210058~pipk:210062~thesitepk:408050,00.ht ml australian national development index (andi) http://www.andi.org.au/ australian unity well-being index http://www.australianunity.com.au/about-us/well-being canadian index of well-being (ciw) https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-well-being/ gallup-healthways well-being index (uk) http://well-being.healthways.com/overviewuk.asp gallup-healthways well-being index (usa) http://www.healthways.com/solution/default.aspx?id=1125 gender inequality index (gii) http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/gii gross national happiness (gnh) http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/articles/ happy planet index (hpi) http://www.happyplanetindex.org/about/ human development index http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi inequality adjusted hdi (ihdi) http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ihdi measures of australia’s progress http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1370.0 multidimensional poverty index (mpi) http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/mpi new zealand social report http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/documents/the-social-report2010.pdf oecd better life index (bli) http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ social progress index http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi state of the usa key national indicator system (knis) http://www.gao.gov/assets/320/317346.pdf sustainable society index (ssi) http://www.ssfindex.com/ssi/framework/ taiwan national well-being index http://eng.stat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xitem=33831&ctnode=3274 the genuine progress indicator (gpi) http://genuineprogress.net/genuine-progress-indicator/ http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171766_287415.pdf https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0683-x http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/118025/118123/fitoussi+commission+report https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-004-2012-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.02.008 https://doi.org/10.1057/jphp.2008.16 http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/environment/exteei/0,,contentmdk:20502388%7emenupk:1187778%7epagepk:210058%7epipk:210062%7ethesitepk:408050,00.html http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/environment/exteei/0,,contentmdk:20502388%7emenupk:1187778%7epagepk:210058%7epipk:210062%7ethesitepk:408050,00.html http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/environment/exteei/0,,contentmdk:20502388%7emenupk:1187778%7epagepk:210058%7epipk:210062%7ethesitepk:408050,00.html http://www.andi.org.au/ http://www.australianunity.com.au/about-us/wellbeing https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing/ http://wellbeing.healthways.com/overviewuk.asp http://www.healthways.com/solution/default.aspx?id=1125 http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/gii http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/articles/ http://www.happyplanetindex.org/about/ http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ihdi http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1370.0 http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/mpi http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/documents/the-social-report-2010.pdf http://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/documents/the-social-report-2010.pdf http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi http://www.gao.gov/assets/320/317346.pdf http://www.ssfindex.com/ssi/framework/ http://eng.stat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xitem=33831&ctnode=3274 http://genuineprogress.net/genuine-progress-indicator/ indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 uk index of well-being https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringn ationalwellbeing/localauthorityupdate2015to2016 wellbeing of nations http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/cesic-wellbeing-of-nations world happiness report http://unsdsn.org/resources/publications/world-happiness-report2013/ world values survey http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/localauthorityupdate2015to2016 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/localauthorityupdate2015to2016 http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/cesic-wellbeing-of-nations http://unsdsn.org/resources/publications/world-happiness-report-2013/ http://unsdsn.org/resources/publications/world-happiness-report-2013/ http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 appendix b: wellbeing measures3 measures of wellbeing description type4 domains and indicators application gdp+ measures of wellbeing 1. human development index (hdi) scale: international year: 1990 data: secondary the hdi was created by undp as a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living. the hdi is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions. index health • life expectancy at birth knowledge • mean years of schooling • expected years of schooling standard of living • gni per capita (ppp $) 187 countries were included in the 2013 index 2. inclusive wealth index (iwi) scale: international year: 2012 data: secondary the iwi is joint initiative of the united nations university international human dimensions programme (unu-ihdp) and the united nations environment programme (unep) in collaboration with the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco). it is based on the assumption that other key inputs are important components of the productive base of the economy, such as natural capital, human capital and social capital. index domains: • manufactured • capital human capital • natural capital 20 countries with different levels of income 3 indicators for most wellbeing measures are not included in order to tighten the matrix. please refer to relevant websites in appendix a for comprehensive lists of indicators for each wellbeing measure. 4 measures that utilize an index approach present results as a single numerical value, while measures that utilize a dashboard approach present a spread of results simultaneously (i.e. does not integrate domains). indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 measures of wellbeing description type domains and indicators application gdp++ measures of wellbeing 1.adjusted net savings (ans) scale: international year: 2011 data source: secondary ans measures the true difference between production and consumption, taking into account investments in human capital, depreciation of fixed capital, depletion of natural resources, and damages caused by pollution. index adjusted net savings = gross savings – consumption of fixed capital + education expenditures – energy depletion, mineral depletion, net forest depletion, and particulate emissions and carbon dioxide damage 150 countries 2. the genuine progress indicator (gpi) scale: sub-national, national, international year: 1995 data source: secondary the gpi uses the same personal consumption data as gdp but makes deductions to account for income inequality and costs of crime, environmental degradation, and loss of leisure and additions to account for the services from consumer durables and public infrastructure as well as the benefits of volunteering and housework. index the gpi has 3 domains and 26 indicators domains: • economy • social • environment australia, austria, canada, chile, germany, italy, the netherlands, scotland, sweden, and the united kingdom 3. inequality adjusted human development index (ihdi) scale: international year: 2010 data source: secondary the ihdi is the hdi adjusted for inequalities in the distribution of achievements in each of the three dimensions of the hdi (health, education and income). the ihdi will be equal to the hdi value when there is no inequality, but falls below the hdi value as inequality rises. index the same hdi domains (with adjustment for inequality) are used in calculating the ihdi 145 countries indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 measures of wellbeing description type domains and indicators application 4. gender inequality index (gii) scale: international year: 2011 data source: secondary the gii shows loss in potential human development due to inequality between female and male achievements in three dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment and the labour market. index health • maternal mortality ratio • adolescent fertility rate empowerment • female and male population with at least secondary education • female and male shares of parliamentary seats labour market • female and male labour force participation rates the 2012 human development report contains the gii for 186 countries 5. multidimensional poverty index (mpi) scale: international year: 2010 data source: secondary the mpi identifies multiple deprivations at the individual level in education, health and standard of living that affect human development. index health • nutrition • child mortality education • years of schooling • children enrolled standard of living • cooking fuel • toilet • water • electricity • floor • assets 91 countries indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 measures of wellbeing description type domains and indicators application objective wellbeing measures 1. australian national development index (andi) scale: national year: in progress data source: primary andi is guided by a conceptual framework that shifts the focus solely from the economy to include critical domains of people’s lives that lead to enhanced wellbeing. the andi composite index is a single number that moves up or down, giving a quick snapshot of whether the overall quality of life of australians is getting better or worse. index andi is based on 12 domains with 12 headline indicators, each measuring specific factors directly contributing to wellbeing domains: • children and young people’s wellbeing • community and regional life • culture, recreation and leisure • governance and democracy • economic life and prosperity • education, knowledge and creativity • environment and sustainability • justice, fairness and human rights • health • indigenous wellbeing • work and work-life balance • subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction australia 2. measures of australia’s progress (map) scale: sub-national, national year: 2002 data source: secondary the map is published by the australian statistical service and provides evidence about whether life in australia is getting better. dashboard map based on 4 domains and 26 themes and headline indicators domains: • society • economy • environment • governance australia indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 measures of wellbeing description type domains and indicators application 3. new zealand social report (nzsr) scale : sub-national, national year: 2001 data source: secondary data and surveys the report shows how people are faring in new zealand over time and how social outcomes vary for different groups (women, minorities, and indigenous people) in the population. dashboard the 2010 nzsr was based on 10 domains and 43 indicators domains: health, education, standard of living, safety, leisure and recreation, cultural identity, paid work, life satisfaction, social connectedness, civil and political rights new zealand 4. oecd better life index (bli) scale: international year: 2011 data source: secondary and gallup polls this is an initiative of the oecd that measures people’s material conditions and quality of life in the member countries. index the 2014 oecd’s bli has 10 domains and 24 indicators domains: housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance 34 countries of the oecd plus other “key partners” such as brazil and russia 5. sustainable society index (ssi) scale: international year: 2006 data source: secondary the ssi was developed by the sustainable society foundation, a non-profit organization based in the netherlands, with the objective of stimulating and assisting societies in their development towards sustainability. index the 2012 ssi comprises 3 levels: 3 wellbeing dimensions (economic wellbeing, environmental wellbeing, human wellbeing), 7 categories, 21 indicators 151 countries 6. wellbeing of nations (wbn) scale: international year authored: 2001 data: secondary the wellbeing of nations portion of the compendium of environmental sustainability indicator collections contains a subset of 123 variables assembled from the wellbeing of nations, which assesses human and ecosystem wellbeing. the data are distributed by the columbia university center for international earth science information network (ciesin). dashboard the wbn is comprised of 2 equally weighted indices (human well-being index and ecosystem well-being index) with 9 domains each and 58 indicators in total 180 countries grouped into 14 regions indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 measures of wellbeing description type domains and indicators application 7. social progress index (spi) scale: international year: 2012 data source: secondary the spi was developed by the social progress imperative, a nongovernmental organization in the usa. it offers a framework for measuring the multiple dimensions of social progress and benchmarking success over a period of time. index the spi is based on 3 social progress dimensions. each dimension, in turn, has the 4 components and each component is made of between 3 and 6 indicators dimensions: • basic needs • foundations of wellbeing • opportunity 132 countries are included in the 2014 spi 8. canadian index of wellbeing (ciw) scale: national year: 2011 data: secondary the first ciw was published in 2012 by the university of waterloo. index the ciw has 8 domains and 64 indicators domains: community vitality, democratic engagement, education, environment, healthy populations, leisure and culture, living standards, and time use canada objective/subjective measures of wellbeing 1.uk index of well-being scale: national year: 2012 data source: surveys and secondary the uk index of well-being is headed by the office of national statistic which has released 2 “life in the uk” reports that highlight snapshots of the uk’s wellbeing. index the uk index of wellbeing is based on 10 domains and 41 indicators domains: personal wellbeing, relationships, health, what we do, where we live, personal finance, economy, education and skills, governance, natural environment united kingdom indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 measures of wellbeing description type domains and indicators application 2. gross national happiness (gnh) scale: national year: 1972 data source: survey the gnh considers happiness as multidimensional – not measured only by subjective wellbeing and “not focused narrowly on happiness that begins and ends with oneself and is concerned for and with oneself.” gnh has often been explained by its four pillars: good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation, and environmental conservation. index gnh has 9 domains and 33 indicators domains: psychological wellbeing, standard of living, good governance, health, education, community vitality, cultural diversity and resilience, time use, ecological diversity and resilience bhutan 3. taiwan national well-being index scale : national year: 2012 data source: primary and secondary the taiwan national well-being index is based on the oecd’s better life index (bli) but also runs a parallel set of indicators that are domestic in focus. index based on oecd’s bli domains but has 38 local indicators taiwan 4.gallup-healthways well-being index (usa) scale: national (usa) year: 2008 data source: primary the analysis is based on data from the gallup-healthways well-being index, a definitive measure and empirical database of real-time changes in wellbeing throughout the world. index the gallup-healthways well-being index is calculated from 6 indices: life evaluation index, emotional health index, physical health index, the healthy behavior index, work environment index, and basic access index. each of these indices is based on several indicators usa http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/psychological-well-being/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/standard-of-living-and-happiness/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/good-governance-and-gross-national-happiness/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/health/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/education/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/community-vitality/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/cultural-diversity-and-resilience-2/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/time-use-and-happiness-2/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/time-use-and-happiness-2/ http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/9-domains/ecological-diversity-and-resilience/ indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 measures of wellbeing description type domains and indicators application subjective wellbeing /objective wellbeing 1. happy planet index (hpi) scale: international year: 2006 data source: secondary and gallup polls the hpi was created by nic marks, founder of the centre for wellbeing at nef (the new economics foundation) and uses data from the hdi and the ecological footprint by the world wildlife fund together with other primary data. index the hpi is constructed from 3 indices: experienced wellbeing, life expectancy and ecological footprint the 2012 hpi report ranks 151 countries 2. national well-being index scale: international year: 2006 data source: world values survey and other secondary sources based on vemuri & costanza, 2006, which “aims to combine data on national levels of mean subjective wellbeing (swb) with data on objective measures of built, human, social, and natural capital in order to better explain the determinants of national swb.” index domains: social capital, natural capital, subjective wellbeing 56 countries included in the regression model, 172 countries included in the life satisfaction values subjective wellbeing 1. australian unity well-being index scale: sub-national, national year: 2001 data source: surveys the australian unity well-being index regularly measures the “subjective wellbeing” of the australian population by asking people to rate their satisfaction with aspects of their lives. index the personal wellbeing index is created based on responses to questions about: • personal health • personal relationships • safety • standard of living • achievement in life • feeling part of the community • future security australia 2. world happiness report scale: international year: 2012 data source: gallup world survey the whr is published by the sustainable development solutions network (sdsn). indices the whr has 3 elements: positive affect, negative affect and happiness (yesterday) with several indicators the 2013 report covers 150 countries indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 appendix c: canadian index of wellbeing framework the ciw, recognized as a global leader at the forefront of wellbeing international movements and efforts to measure progress in society, has eight domains and 64 indicators. the ciw tracks alternative measures of wellbeing over time in relation to economic progress in canada. the ciw has published two national reports, with many provincial and municipal initiatives in progress. framework source: canadian index of wellbeing, 2012:13 indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 domains and indicators community vitality education health standard of living 1) property crime rate per 100,000 population 2) % reporting participation in organized activities 3) % who provide unpaid help to others on their own 4) % reporting very or somewhat strong sense of belonging to a community 5) % who feel safe walking alone after dark 6) violent crime rate per 100,000 population 7) % with 6 or more close friends 8) % who feel that most or many people can be trusted 1) ratio of childcare spaces to children aged 0 to 5 years of age 2) % of 35-65-year-olds with a university degree 3) % of pisa scores explained by socioeconomic background 4) ratio of students to educators in public schools 5) % of 20-34-year-olds in population completing high school 6) % of children doing well on five developmental domains 7) average of five social and emotion competence scores for 12-13-year-olds 8) basic knowledge and skills index for 1315-year-olds 1) % of daily or occasional smokers among 12-19-year-olds 2) % of adults getting influenza immunizations 3) % rating patient health services as excellent or good 4) life expectancy at birth 5) % with self reported diabetes 6) % self rated health as excellent or very good 7) average remaining years expect to be lived in good health, hale +15 8) % with probable depression 1) % of persons in low income jobs 2) % of labour force with long-term unemployment 3) after-tax median income of economic families 4) % of labour force employed 5) royal bank of canada housing affordability index 6) scaled value of centre for the study of living standards (csls) economic security index 7) ratio of top to bottom quintile of economic families after tax 8) cibc index of employment quality democratic engagement environment leisure and culture time use 1) % that are not interested in politics at all 2) % of women in parliament 3) % reporting being very/fairly satisfied with the way democracy works in canada 4) % that strongly agree it is every citizen’s duty to vote in federal elections 5) ratio of registered to eligible voters 1) primary energy production 2) water yield in southern canada 3) viable metal reserves index 4) canadian living planet index 5) ecological footprint 6) absolute greenhouse gas emissions 7) ground level ozone (population weighted in ppb) 1) average monthly frequency of participation in physical activity over 15 minutes 2) average number of nights away per trip in past year on vacations or 80km from home 3) average visitation per site in past year to all national parks and national historic sites 1) % of labour force participants working more than 50 hours per week 2) % of individuals working for pay with flexible work hours 3) % of 65 years and older reporting annual formal volunteering activities 4) % 3-5-year-olds read to daily by parents 5) mean workday commute time for individuals working for pay indices of wellbeing elliott, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 democratic engagement environment leisure and culture time use 6) net official development aid as a percentage of gross national income 7) % of voter turnout at federal elections 8) % with a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in federal parliament 8) marine trophic index 4) average number of hours in past year spent volunteering for culture and recreation organizations 5) average % of time spent on previous day in social leisure activities 6) average attendance per performance in past year at all performing arts 7) average % of time spend on previous day in arts and culture activities 8) expenditure in past year on culture and recreation as a % of total expenditure 6) % of 65 years and older reporting daily active leisure activities 7) % of 20-64-year-olds giving unpaid care to seniors 8) % of 20-64-year-olds reporting high levels of time pressure 1.1 measuring how the world works: gdp as a measure of population wellbeing? 1.2 toward a definition of wellbeing 2.1 limitations of “beyond gdp” measures 3.1 using the canadian index of wellbeing framework for glowing stevanovic, n., hoare, e., mckenzie, v., & o'connor, m. (2017). sustaining the use of positive education coping skills to meet the challenges of the emerging adulthood period. international journal of wellbeing, 7(3), 39-55. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i3.640 nina stevanovic university of melbourne n.stevanovic0302@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 article sustaining the use of positive education coping skills to meet the challenges of the emerging adulthood period nina stevanovic · erin hoare · vicki mckenzie · meredith o'connor abstract: the positive education approach is a whole-school program implemented in primary and secondary school settings that aims to equip students with effective coping skills. during the transition to adulthood (often termed “emerging adulthood”), young people encounter a variety of challenges and are expected to draw on their own resources to cope. the current qualitative study aimed to provide initial insights into whether young people exposed to positive education training at school continue to use these coping strategies during emerging adulthood, when they have left the school setting. twenty-one graduates (9 male, 12 female, 18 – 19 years old) of a victorian independent school who had received four years of explicit positive education training completed semi-structured interviews via telephone. the interviews focused on the challenges the participants encountered after leaving school, skills they used to cope with those challenges, and factors that affected their use of positive education skills. qualitative analysis showed that all participants were using skills that are taught within positive education to some extent, once they had left the secondary school setting. young people identified a range of barriers and enablers to their continued use of these skills beyond the school setting. the findings suggest that positive education training may be helpful in preparing young people for the challenges of the emerging adulthood period. however, further program development is needed to promote the sustained use of these skills. keywords: positive education, emerging adulthood, qualitative study 1. introduction as young people develop from adolescence into the early stages of adulthood, the institutional structures around them are reduced and parental influences start to become less significant. as a result, young people are increasingly required to draw on their own resources to cope (côté, 2006). while this brings many new freedoms, it also brings about new challenges (harlow, mitchell, fitts, & saxon, 1999). for some young people, this can be overwhelming, and rates of diagnosable mental disorders during the period of transition between childhood and adulthood can reach 50% (mcgorry, 2013). positive education (pe) is a recently developed approach that seeks to promote positive mental health in adolescence (norrish, williams, o'connor, & robinson, 2013), and may provide an opportunity to upskill adolescents in preparation for this challenging transition. pe has been implemented as a whole-school approach, including individual, community and leadership level initiatives, aiming to teach young people strategies and skills to improve their wellbeing and resilience. pe aims to both benefit young people at that time and in preparation for challenges they are likely to encounter once they leave school (o'connor et al., 2014). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 while evaluations of pe are promising in terms of its short-term benefits (waters, 2012), there is currently a dearth of information about how pe skills permeate beyond the school setting, and whether use of these skills is sustained into adulthood. the current study presents a small-scale initiative to provide some insights into how pe skills might be used during emerging adulthood to facilitate the young adult’s effective coping. 1.1 challenges and opportunities in the emerging adulthood period a significant societal shift observed over the past few decades in many western industrialised countries is the later achievement of traditional adult milestones. for example, in australia, the average age of marriage and birth of first child has increased by over seven years over the past four decades (australian bureau of statistics, 2016; hayes, qu, weston, & gray, 2010). the concept of “emerging adulthood” (ea) has been used to describe this prolongation of the transition from adolescence to adulthood (arnett, 2000). usually applied to the period from 1825 years, this period is characterised by significant developments in identity, autonomy, responsibility for oneself, and financial independence. during this time, many young people enter tertiary education, but others travel or enter the workforce, with the result that emerging adults have a very heterogeneous demographic profile. during ea, young people move from the relatively structured and contained role at school to a relative lack of structure or institutional support, where new pathways may be forged as new opportunities and experiences arise (masten, obradović, & burt, 2006; schulenberg, sameroff, & cicchetti, 2004). while for some this provides the opportunity to change direction towards a more positive course, for others this presents a potentially overwhelming challenge (arnett, 2006; schulenberg & zarrett, 2006). consistent with this, relatively high incidences of problem outcomes are observed in this stage of life. for example, emerging adults have a higher incidence of depression than other age groups (kessler & walters, 1998). looking to opportunities for intervention to promote strong mental health outcomes prior to young people entering the ea period is vital, in order to allow young people to build strong capacities and skills so that they are ready and equipped to tackle the challenges of the ea period (eccles, templeton, barber, & stone, 2003). in this regard, primary and secondary schools are uniquely placed to deliver positive mental health interventions to wide populations (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009), in order to promote healthy developmental pathways into ea. 1.2 positive education school-based positive education programs provide one such approach to developing skills prior to the ea period. pe is a framework that proposes that skills for positive adaptation and resilience can be explicitly taught and developed within educational settings, in both primary and secondary schools (norrish et al., 2013). this focus on wellbeing within schools is designed to supplement traditional academic learning (seligman et al., 2009), and to provide students with wellbeing skills that remain valuable over the life course. geelong grammar school (ggs) is an independent, anglican, co-educational, boarding and day school located across four campuses in victoria, australia. in 2008, following a six-month invited visit from professor martin seligman, alongside other international experts, ggs developed and implemented pe as a whole-school approach (norrish, et al., 2013). the approach is based on six broad and interrelated wellbeing domains including: positive emotion, engagement, accomplishment, purpose, relationships and health, underpinned by a focus on character strengths. the character strengths are defined as ubiquitous personality traits with positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 moral value, and harnessing and fostering such strengths is assumed to allow an individual to flourish and function optimally. the whole-school approach incorporates the wellbeing domains into the school at multilevels, referred to in its catch-line as the four processes of learn it, live it, teach it, embed it. the learn it process is sharing opportunities as a whole-school community to understand and engage with the science of wellbeing. staff participate in multi-day training programs to introduce pe, and to develop their application and potential to use skills day-to-day in their personal and professional lives. additional “top-up” workshops are available for all staff to maintain and further understand their practice of pe. the live it process refers to enacting evidence-based wellbeing practices in an individual’s unique way in their own lives. staff are encouraged to become authentic role models for the students through living the skills taught within pe. for example, staff are encouraged to harness their character strengths in difficult situations, actively practise mindfulness and gratitude, foster strong positive relationships with family, friends and colleagues, nurture a healthy lifestyle, and contribute to meaningful communities and projects. it is expected that by endeavouring to live by the principles of pos ed, an individual’s own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others will be supported. the teach it process refers to providing students with dedicated time to discover and explore each of the key domains of wellbeing. students from years 5 through year 10 attend regular timetabled lessons in pe, which cover a range of skills, knowledge and mindsets pertaining to the components of the ggs model for pe. originally based on the penn resiliency program (brunwasser, gillham, & kim, 2009) and the strath haven program (seligman et al., 2009), the pe classes include topics such as: active constructive responding, optimism, mindfulness, perspective of challenges, creativity, and involvement in community service. a full list of components and skills taught in the ggs model of pe has been published elsewhere (norrish et al., 2013; o’connor & cameron, 2017). the embed it process refers to the adopting of long-term school-wide policies and practices which support and nurture wellbeing within individuals and within the community. examples of such changes include character strengths being central to assemblies or chapel services, visual displays of gratitude, and random acts of kindness. efforts to engage all relevant stakeholders in the school community, such as through offering residential training programs in pe, further support the whole-school approach in embedding pe. whilst the ggs model has been developed based on a growing body of evidence for how to best promote flourishing, some important considerations remain, relating to the long-term effectiveness of the program. a three-year quasi-experimental longitudinal study of ggs students and other australian school students has recently been completed, which will assist in assessing the effectiveness of pe over time. given that the pe model aims to provide students with skills to support wellbeing across the lifespan, the impact of pe beyond school years is of considerable interest. several studies have found support for pe interventions aimed at improving wellbeing in the short term (vella-brodrick, rickard, & chin, 2014). however, there is a need for research to determine the extent to which skills are sustained over the longer term or their relevance to the specific challenges of students when they leave the school. 1.3 sustaining behavioural change over time while there is not yet evidence specifically on the sustained use of coping strategies in relation to pe, insights from other areas of research do, however, suggest that maintaining health behaviour change over time is challenging. for example, evidence from public health literature positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 suggests that while the antecedents and health consequences of non-communicable diseases are well-known, interventions leading to sustained health behavioural change to prevent such diseases have shown limited effectiveness (world health organization, 2014). despite challenges, there is evidence to suggest specific factors increase the likelihood of sustained behavioural change. a synthesis of research completed by the national institutes of health and the health maintenance consortium summarised the evidence for sustaining behavioural change in relation to a broad range of health and wellbeing outcomes (ory, lee smith, mier, & wernicke, 2010). empirical findings found the strongest effects in terms of behavioural change are usually observed in the one or two years closest to the active intervention, and this was particularly strong with additional maintenance treatment or intervention boosters. sustained behavioural change was observed in interventions that included environmental or organisational level changes, and also those that leveraged naturally occurring intervention opportunities. 1.4 the current study to fully capitalise on the potential of pe, it is important to investigate the extent to which positive education skills continue to be used by students after experiencing the program during their school years and the factors that may contribute to their sustainability. the current study aimed to address the following research questions: 1) what key challenges did participants report facing during their first years after leaving school? 2) did recently graduated students use positive education skills to cope with challenges that arose in emerging adulthood? if so, which skills did they use? 3) what factors were reported to a) impede or b) promote the use of positive education skills during the post-school transition? 2. methods 2.1 design the study was a qualitative exploratory study designed to examine the extent to which pe skills were used in ea. outcomes were measured during 2015 through semi-structured interviews via telephone. a phenomenological approach was adopted to obtain rich information regarding pe skill use through participant descriptions of lived experiences. this study received ethics approval from the melbourne graduate school of education human ethics committee. 2.2 participants 117 geelong grammar school graduates were invited to participate in the study. twenty-six participants responded to the invitation, 21 individuals consented to participate (12 females, nine males), and the remaining five were unable to participate due to time constraints. demographic data of participants is illustrated in table 1. participants ranged from 18 to 19 years old and all had graduated within 12 months prior to the interview. nineteen participants indicated that they were enrolled in tertiary studies. approximately half of the participants were residing within college accommodation (48%), one-third were residing within the family home (33%), and 19% were renting in independent accommodation. geelong grammar graduates enrolled after 2012 were excluded from the study (7%) to ensure that all participants had been exposed to explicit teaching in pe. exclusion criteria were also applied to participants for whom contact details were not available (9%). positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 table 1. participant demographic data demographic factors n % age 18 9 43 19 12 57 gender male 9 43 female 12 57 vocational status tertiary studies 19 90 other 2 10 residential status family home 7 33 college 10 48 renting 4 19 2.3 measures a semi-structured interview schedule containing five demographic questions and 10 open-ended interview questions was developed for use in the current study. demographic questions pertained to participant gender, age, living arrangements, vocational status and years enrolled at ggs. the open-ended questions focused on participant use of pe skills after secondary school (table 2). a script was used for each interview and all participants received a reminder of the key pe skills targeted by the ggs curriculum at the commencement of the interview. table 2. interview schedule pertaining to participant use of positive education skills interview questions 1. can you tell me your thoughts overall on how helpful positive education skills have been during these last few months since finishing school? can you give me a specific example of when you used that skill? 2. what has encouraged you to use positive education skills since finishing high school? 3. what has got in the way of using positive education skills since finishing school? 4. tell me about the main challenges you’ve encountered since leaving high school. have any positive education skills mentioned before or any others helped you to tackle this issue? 5. are there any strategies apart from those you learned in positive education that have been helping you to cope with these challenges? for example, are you involved in yoga, meditation, wellbeing workshops and so on? 6. have you engaged in extracurricular activities since finishing high school? what are they? 7. how have positive education skills contributed to your engagement in extracurricular activities since leaving school? 8. have you engaged in any activities that have helped to improve your physical health since finishing high school? physical health includes physical strength, flexibility, endurance, nutrient intake or high-quality sleep. 9. how have positive education skills contributed to your physical health since finishing high school? 10. can you think of any helpful positive education supports that schools could offer to young people once they’ve graduated? for example, things like online resources. positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 2.4 procedure participant contact details were obtained with permission from ggs. participants were contacted via email and were provided with a consent form and plain language statement outlining the research aims, significance, procedures and confidentiality protocol. participants were informed that the study aimed to investigate whether former ggs students use pe skills after secondary school. participants indicated via email their desire to participate and indicated a suitable time to conduct a telephone interview. participants who did not respond to the initial email were contacted for a second time via email to confirm their attitude to follow-up regarding participation interest. informed consent was obtained from each participant via verbal agreement and all participants were interviewed using the same semi-structured interview format. upon completion of the interview, all participants were provided with an opportunity to receive a $40 gift voucher for the local shopping centre to compensate for their time. all interviews were conducted by one researcher (ns) via telephone. the duration of the telephone interviews was approximately 20 – 35 minutes per participant and was determined by the volume of information provided by the participant. all interviews were audiotaped with the participant’s permission and participants were assured of confidentiality. 2.5 data analysis data was analysed via an inductive thematic approach, commonly used in qualitative research. thematic analysis is the process of identifying, analysing and interpreting patterns within data (braun & clarke, 2006) and allows for an in-depth search for themes and patterns across an entire data set. the thematic approach does not require pre-existing theoretical frameworks to guide the data and is flexible in allowing for a relatively objective process in analysis. the inductive method of analysis means that the themes are strongly linked to the data without trying to fit the data into the researcher’s analytic preconceptions, thus minimising bias (braun & clarke, 2006). each interview was transcribed verbatim (ns) in order to establish familiarisation with the data. initial ideas, thoughts and observations regarding commonalities and insights were noted. the software program nvivo was used to code and classify sections of the text that appeared relevant and contributed to meeting the research aims. as the interviews were semi-structured and some participant responses ambiguous, the codes were established by one researcher, primarily due to having in-depth knowledge of the subject matter (campbell, quincy, osserman, & pedersen, 2013). data that corresponded to specific codes was analysed and categorised into overarching themes, and mind maps were developed to further understand the connections between codes and themes. finally, research aims were addressed by formulating a detailed analysis of the extracted themes. 3. results there were three main themes extracted from the data. these were: 1) challenges encountered after leaving school, 2) coping strategies used to mitigate challenges and 3) factors that were attributed to the way in which pe skills were used. 3.1 key challenges encountered during emerging adulthood the three key challenges that participants reported most frequently encountering after leaving school were: changing friendships, academic expectations and reduced structure. in relation to positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 changing friendships, participants identified difficulty in establishing new friendships but also in maintaining old friendships. the challenge of establishing new friendships was primarily associated with daunting thoughts about the task of forming friendships (e.g., “there’s a lot of that nervousness, like, oh, what if i don’t make friends or meet people?” “i often get scared that i’m losing some of my friends”). furthermore, uncertainty about the changes in academic expectations as well as an increase in difficulty and volume of set tasks appeared challenging for the participants (e.g., “difficulty of work is much higher than at high school,” “i found it [university] quite a shock because it feels like there’s not much work and you’re on top of it but there’s actually a lot of content that you need to be up with”). alongside challenges associated with tertiary education, participants also identified a lack of structure and guidance as a challenge that primarily coincided with an increase in autonomy. freedom to make their own decisions and establish a routine appeared daunting (e.g., “coming out of that [school] and doing my course [by] correspondence means i can do pretty much what i want when i want, which is both good and daunting because you have to set your own goals and stick to them”). 3.2 positive education coping strategies used to mitigate challenges although the vast majority of participants reported using pe skills to some extent, the majority of participants (71%) indicated that they used the skills without explicitly thinking of them as deriving from the pe program at school (figure 1). figure 1. percentage of participants reporting use of specific pe skills positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 some recognised that they had been using the skills unconsciously (e.g., “i think that it has been subconscious in structuring my life but i do think it has been reasonably helpful in that sense, even though i haven’t been explicitly thinking about different elements of pos ed”). however, others had difficulty identifying specific learning from pe. for example, the majority of participants had difficulty differentiating between the influence of pe, ggs, and their own personalities in the use of coping strategies (e.g., “things that we learnt in pe were things that my parents always taught me. so i think, yes, i do use them but i don’t think it’s necessarily due to being at geelong grammar”). the majority of participants identified use of the skill of putting into perspective, and avoiding thinking traps (figure 1), echoing the resilience taught within the pe model (norrish et al., 2013). resilience in the ggs model refers to the capacity to adapt and develop when faced with challenges (masten, 2001; norrish et al., 2013). avoidance of thinking traps appeared to be a precursor to being able to employ effective coping strategies, such as putting things into perspective. for example, participants appeared to identify negative thoughts but were able to avoid rumination and catastrophising by perceiving a variety of positive perspectives, although they did not tend to explicitly recognise that they were using pe skills to mitigate the challenges (e.g., “like putting things into perspective just like little things at the time. it’s like this is so hard doing this at uni but it’s like one day of this and you’ll be fine”). furthermore, the participants often used the skill of putting things into perspective in response to experiences of conflict with peers and in mitigating university challenges. for example, the participants reported attempting to understand others’ perspectives and looking for positives within difficult situations (e.g., “more recently it was what my results were going to be like for uni but that was all. fear of the unknown and fear of what could happen. even then i wasn’t that stressed because i knew that everything would work out. it wasn’t life or death”), whereas avoidance of thinking traps was associated with an awareness of negative emotional states and avoidance of ruminating and catastrophising (e.g., “i’ve always been an optimistic character and living on my own you don’t really want to spiral down into a negative mindset where everything you do and think is negative, so, yeah, i guess that’s pretty important”). participants also reported using strategies such as optimism and gratitude that reflect the positive emotions component within the pe model (norrish et al., 2013; o’connor & cameron, 2017). positive emotion reflects students’ capacities to anticipate, initiate, experience, prolong, and build positive emotional experiences (norrish et al., 2013). gratitude refers to acts or displays of appreciation toward others, and optimism refers to hopefulness and confidence about future successes. optimism also appeared to assist participants to put things into perspective and avoid thinking traps. for example, participants who reported employing strategies to perceive challenges from a variety of perspectives, tended to employ strategies such as looking to the positives within a negative situation, and, in turn, were able to avoid thinking traps. in addition, participant use of optimism related to persistence and perseverance in tasks despite experiences of challenges (e.g., “so i had to keep at it and keep thinking it’s a good opportunity and everything will work out to get through the first few months at uni”). furthermore, the participants were able to explicitly state their use of gratitude and clearly identify how they used the skill (e.g., “well, since i finished school, i started doing project 365. i don’t know if you know what that is but that’s when you take a photo every day of something you’re grateful for. so i did that the day after i finished school because i wanted to keep something up and i wanted to make sure i’m doing something interesting every day and being aware of what i’m grateful for, every day”). positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 the majority of participants made reference to mindfulness, however, only a portion of the participants reported using the skill to mitigate challenges (figure 1). furthermore, participants who mentioned mindfulness appeared to either have positive or negative perceptions of mindfulness. of the portion of participants who exhibited positive perceptions of mindfulness, the majority reported explicitly employing meditation as a strategy to relax and settle their thoughts (e.g., “the school would hold meditation sessions every now and then for year 12s to take their minds of all the stress of exams and take a break from reality and so i’ve been doing that a few times a week during the last month or so, which i think has really helped me”). 3.3 factors affecting use of positive education skills 3.3.1 facilitating factors participants identified several facilitating factors that contributed to their use of pe skills postsecondary school. these primarily included correspondence with values and the influence of secondary school teachers (figure 2). figure 2. percentage of participants and specific encouraging factors identified correspondence with values. participants who identified pe skills as corresponding with their values reported that pe was in line with either familial or personal values. for example, parental beliefs regarding the efficacy of pe appeared to influence participant valuing of pe skills. in addition, participants appeared to value pe skills if they perceived them to be effective coping mechanisms and ways in which they had previously “approached” challenging situations (e.g., “probably my mum, seeing as she is on board with all that pos ed sort of stuff as well,” “reinforcement of the way i sort of saw things anyway”). influence of teachers. teacher influence also contributed to an establishment of positive associations with pe skills. hence, participants perceived teacher encouragement to use pe skills in secondary school as helpful in continuing to use the skills post-secondary school (e.g., “i think positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 the teachers definitely endorsed the pos ed and through that, it kind of radiated through the whole system. which is good. like i never practiced in the mediation side as much or i didn’t constantly really think about pe, it just kind of happened naturally through the teachers and the whole community”). 3.3.2 impeding factors the majority of participants identified several impeding factors that affected their use of pe skills after secondary school. these primarily included lack of perceived relevance, non-valuing skills, lack of understanding of purpose, lack of external reinforcement, and the theoretical rather than experiential method of teaching (figure 3). figure 3. percentage of participants and specific impeding factors identified lack of perceived relevance to current challenges. the majority of participants perceived that pe skills were more relevant during secondary school, primarily due to tailoring the skills to mitigate study challenges. thus, participants reported difficulty in applying and generalising skills to mitigate challenges encountered after secondary school (e.g., “i just feel like it was also very tailored to study habits, the way they taught pe,” “most of the examples and the way we talked through pe at school relates very much to what you’re doing at school. it makes sense to understanding how it works but learning to apply school outside of that environment can sometimes be more difficult)”. non-valuing of skills. furthermore, the majority of participants specifically reported having either negative or positive perceptions of mindfulness, with almost half of the overall sample reporting that they were not using mindfulness as a strategy to mitigate challenges. this was primarily due to a lack of correspondence with personal values (e.g., “i just don’t really like the positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 quietness and people directing me in the breathing in the muscle relaxation. i’m just deterred from it and i don’t know why”). lack of understanding of the purpose of positive education. some participants felt that pe was vastly encouraged during secondary school but they appeared to lack understanding of the purpose of pe skills. lack of understanding of the purpose of pe also appeared to relate to a lack of perceived importance of pe skills (e.g., “i guess some of the things felt like a waste of time, like i didn’t have time to do them,” “i just thought it was a waste of time and i didn’t really ummm get involved much when i was at school”). lack of external reinforcement. another impeding factor in the use of pe skills appeared to be the lack of cues to remind participants to use pe skills, and encouragement to do so from external sources such as teachers. lack of external reinforcement was primarily identified as an impeding factor for skills that are not being utilised by the participants (e.g., “not having constant reminders of the skills or how to use them is probably the biggest challenge,” “i just think it’s based around the situation. i guess you have to have something that triggers it. i guess not being at school and people at school, you forget about it a bit and it’s not exactly there”). theoretical rather than experiential method of teaching. the participants indicated that they preferred experiential tasks as opposed to learning about theory. they also indicated that their perceptions of the relevance of pe skills were affected by their perceptions of the practicality and applicability of the skills (e.g., “i didn’t find that it was practical enough or hands-on enough for me to use the skills. that’s why i think that i found the meditation interesting because we actually did that ourselves, whereas the rest was textbook teaching and we were lectured about that stuff and it was removed and not as interactive as it could have been”). 3.3.3 feedback regarding useful positive education resources. the majority of participants indicated a desire for resources to be available once they had left school to assist in maintaining pe skills and employing skills to mitigate challenges. some commonly identified ideas for resources included: establishment of websites, pe newsletters, applications for mobile telephones, and interactive workshops. 4. discussion this study adopted a phenomenological approach to examine the degree to which recently graduated students from geelong grammar school used positive education skills, including which skills are predominately used and in what contexts, and to investigate the factors that impede or promote the use of skills. the current study found participants reported experiencing challenges commonly identified in the ea period (e.g., changes in social networks, academic expectations, and a reduction in institutional structure and guidance) (arnett, 2000) and that they were using pe skills to some extent to cope. young people identified a range of barriers and enablers to their continued use of these skills beyond the school setting, and these findings hold importance for the further development of pe in relation to the sustainability from adolescence into ea. the findings are representative of a small cohort of respondents, but do provide useful reflections on the way the impact of the program over time can be considered and evaluated. challenges faced during emerging adulthood. the respondents raised challenges of changing friendships, academic expectations, and reduced structure, which aligns with previous findings in both australia and the us. emerging adults experience significant changes in their environmental contexts (e.g., changes in living arrangements, relocation, transition into tertiary institutions), as well as greater autonomy and opportunities to interact with a variety of peers (arnett, 2000). additionally, toward the end of secondary school, adolescents are likely to exert positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 increased effort to produce quality work in order to attain entry into desired tertiary education. consequently, acceptance into a desired tertiary course may be perceived as a major accomplishment for many young people (vuong, brown-welty, & tracz, 2010). young people are thus likely to continue to perceive academic success as important during the ea period, and are likely to experience environmental transitions. strategies used to mitigate challenges. given the challenges that derive from the life-stage issues for this group as they transitioned out of secondary school, use of effective coping strategies could mediate the impact of such stressors (mahmoud, staten, hall, & lennie, 2012) and promote resilience. the findings of the current study indicated that pe skills could be useful during ea but many barriers were identified to the continuous use of skills. the participants reported use of resilience skills, and reappraising strategies (i.e., putting things into perspective) once negative emotions began to surface. it has been proposed that strategies that aim to reappraise rather than suppress events that are perceived as challenging may be more beneficial in assisting people to cope more effectively, as they are able to directly focus on resolving the problem (tugade & fredrickson, 2006). facilitating factors. valuing of skills and the positive influences of external sources were identified by the participants as salient in contributing to their motivation to use pe skills to meet challenges during the transition to ea. valuing of skills primarily appeared to be a function of the correspondence between pe skills and personal characteristics (e.g., coping styles). this finding is worth noting, as coping tends to be more effective when the strategies acquired are part of an individual’s personal coping style (moos & holahan, 2003). hence, when the acquired coping skills align with a person’s beliefs and values, individuals are more likely to perceive themselves as efficacious in applying the coping strategies and are more likely to perceive merit in using the coping skills (moos & holahan, 2003). in addition, positive experiences of using pe skills to cope effectively seemed to further strengthen participant self-efficacy in using the skills to mitigate challenges. moos and holahan (2003) described this process in terms of a conceptual framework, whereby environmental systems (challenges and resources) and personal systems (coping styles and self-efficacy beliefs) interact with previous experiences of coping to facilitate the execution of coping skills to mitigate challenges and improve wellbeing. furthermore, the findings also indicated that participants were motivated to use pe skills due to the influence of teachers who endorsed pe in secondary school. the participants expressed that they had established positive relationships with these teachers and indicated that they were positive role models. hence, it is likely that the participants also perceived their teachers as models of resilience and coping rather than merely people who delivered pe content. johnson, taasoobshirazi, kestler, and cordova (2014) found that teachers who were perceived as positive role models of resilience in secondary school were more influential on college students’ associations and motivation to employ coping strategies to improve their resilience and wellbeing. additionally, positive relationships with teachers may have facilitated the establishment of self-efficacy through constant reinforcement of pe skills and perceptions of effective employment of pe skills by the teachers. impeding factors. the findings indicated that the participants had difficulty generalising some pe skills to new challenges they encountered after secondary school. it is possible that the participants may have perceived some pe skills as effective in similar circumstances as those encountered during secondary school (e.g., studying) but that their self-efficacy to implement skills diminished once the types of challenges they experienced changed (eccles & wigfield, 2002). self-efficacy is derived from the expectation that one has the ability to perform necessary skills and that certain behaviours will lead to certain outcomes (eccles & wigfield, 2002). in this positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 instance, the participants perceived that they had the ability to acquire skills from pe but lacked confidence in applying such skills to mitigate challenges encountered in ea. this lack of perceived generalisability of skills is likely to affect young people’s persistence in using the skills to mitigate challenges beyond secondary school (eccles & wigfield, 2002). additionally, in some cases, lack of valuing of skills led to the cessation of using some pe skills to mitigate challenges in ea. interestingly, many participants identified mindfulness as an unhelpful strategy in dealing with these challenges. there may be several reasons for this finding. in some cases, the participants tended to perceive mindfulness strategies as novel and different to their natural coping styles, hence their lack of value placed on mindfulness may have stemmed from an incongruence with personal values and characteristics (moos & holahan, 2003). also, mindfulness is a skill that requires explicit and constant practice for a prolonged period of time before it is automatised and the benefits are achieved (hyland, 2015). considering that the participants reported mainly using skills that are likely to have produced immediate alleviation of negative emotions (e.g., putting things into perspective, and positive thinking), they may have perceived mindfulness as ineffective, as the benefits were unlikely to have been attained immediately. hence, lack of correspondence with personal characteristics and lack of attainment of immediate benefits may have affected participant valuing and persistence to use mindfulness strategies. furthermore, the participants reported lack of external encouragement as another impeding factor in continuing to use some pe skills to mitigate challenges in ea. this indicates that the use of some pe skills was extrinsically motivated. for example, verbal encouragement from teachers contributed to participant compliance to use pe skills in secondary school. however, once compliance to use the skills was no longer required and verbal encouragement ceased, the participants discontinued their use of pe skills. although it is possible to sustain motivation extrinsically, if the function of the extrinsic motivation is to exert compliance, or to gain praise or rewards, the individual will likely cease their use of skills once the extrinsic motivator is removed (ryan & deci, 2000a). additionally, a lack of understanding of the importance and purpose of skills may further exacerbate demotivation to use the skills, particularly once the external motivator is removed (ryan, 1995). hence, when the meaning and the purpose of a behaviour is understood, it may become internalised, causing a motivational shift to occur (ryan & deci, 2000b). the participants also identified that the method of teaching (e.g., theoretical rather than experiential) of pe skills in secondary school was a factor in their motivation to use the skills in ea. in experiential learning, the learner is able to experience, reflect, think and act repetitively within a learning context (kolb & kolb, 2008). people can use their experiences to assist them in formulating conceptualisations of the learning tasks and to directly guide their behaviour. for example, freire (1993) argued for “problem posing education” in which students are engrossed in the here and now experiences of their lives whereby critical reflection and action are encouraged to improve their lives. it is interesting, however, that a large portion of participants did not tend to value mindfulness in which opportunity was provided for experiential learning. hence, in order for experiential learning to be effective, it is likely that the skills also need to be valued. 4.1 strengths and limitations the current study offers valuable insight into the coping mechanisms of young people as they transition into the ea period and face new challenges. the qualitative nature of the current study allowed for extraction of rich information regarding pe skill use and enabled thorough analyses positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 of the data. as the concepts and themes under investigation were not pre-determined, the participants were able to openly reflect on their experiences of pe skill use after secondary school. furthermore, the findings from the current study reflect lived experiences and real life situations in which education had an impact on their development. the semi-structured, open-ended nature of the interview questions also assisted participants to elaborate on their answers in detail. although the current study demonstrated several strengths, it is not without limitations. firstly, it was difficult to generalise the findings to a wider population, as the sample of participants was small and represented young people from a niche, highly resourced boarding school setting. however, as the focus of the study was to investigate the use of pe skills in coping with new challenges encountered in ea, it was essential to select a sample from a school that delivers well-established explicit teaching in pe. the methodology involved contacting the participants via email and it was of the participant’s volition to establish contact regarding their interest in participating. hence, the study is likely to have attracted individuals who were willing to reflect on their use of pe skills and who may be transitioning more adaptively into the ea period and possibly experiencing fewer challenges. additionally, the study may have attracted participants who exhibited either highly positive or highly negative views of pe. responses may not have been reflective of typical experiences of pe and the findings here may have been affected by biases. importantly, the goal of this research was to provide insights into how pe programs can be further developed to promote sustainability of skill use, and both “best case” and “worst case” scenarios are relevant to this aim. 4.2 future directions the current study has provided valuable findings and initial insight into a topic with a limited research base. as such, hypotheses have been generated that future research may investigate in larger-scale quantitative studies, to contribute to a body of literature regarding the ways in which emerging adults utilise coping strategies acquired through wellbeing programs in schools. for example, it may be beneficial for future research to consider the effects of personality and personal characteristics in the use of pe skills in ea. it may be expected that personality characteristics, such as excessive worry and proneness to focus on negative emotions, may mean that those people appraise challenges as highly threatening and may perceive to have limited resources to cope effectively (grant & langan-fox, 2006), whereas people who generally tend to have a positive outlook and predominantly experience positive emotions may perceive events as challenges and believe they have sufficient coping resources to mitigate the challenges, which links to the findings of this study. the study indicates that pe programs could look to focus on assessing personal coping styles to utilise existing abilities, teaching staff as positive role models, self-efficacy to build confidence in using pe skills beyond school years, fostering intrinsic motivation, and experiential learning techniques. finally, participants responded favourably to ongoing access to resources, and the school might make resources available through online channels (e.g., websites, social media), as recommended by participants, and also given internet use is highly ubiquitous among this age group. 4.3 conclusions overall, the current study contributed to informing the ways in which young people who are transitioning through the ea period utilise pe skills to mitigate challenges. the current study findings indicated that young people tend to use pe skills that have been acquired in secondary school, mainly as a function of valuing the skills and due to the positive influences of others. positive education in emerging adulthood stevanovic, hoare, mckenzie, & o'connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 however, the participants indicated that a range of other pe skills are not being utilised, mainly due to difficulties in generalising the skills and applying them to new challenges, not giving high value to the skills, having limited understanding of the purpose of some skills, insufficient external reinforcers, and a perceived lack of engaging teaching methods. hence, there is evidence from the study that coping strategies learned in pe could be relevant beyond secondary school, but the challenge remains of how to leverage this potential. these findings are valuable in guiding future research to investigate individual differences in successful use of positive education programs and in particular its capacity to continue to support students once they have completed their studies. acknowledgements thank you to the geelong grammar school graduates who generously contributed their time and insights to this project. conflict of interest statement meredith o’connor and erin hoare were employees of geelong grammar school during this research project (mo) and drafting of publication (eh). authors nina stevanovic university of melbourne n.stevanovic0302@gmail.com erin hoare geelong grammar school vicki mckenzie university of melbourne meredith o'connor university of melbourne publishing timeline received 29 june 2017 accepted 8 november 2017 published 12 december 2017 references arnett, j. j. 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(2012). an interview with dan haybron. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 271-276. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.7 dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 271 expert insight an interview with dan haybron saint louis university interview by dan weijers 21 june 2012 1. what got you interested in wellbeing research? the immediate trigger was encountering the literature on irrationality by folks like kahneman and tversky, along with the fascinating studies on the instability of wellbeing judgments by schwartz, strack and others, and finally the subjective wellbeing research being done by ed diener and many others. all this stuff was obviously important, somehow. the question was exactly how it was important. how does this work bear on traditional views about happiness and wellbeing, and living well more broadly? not really knowing where it would lead me, but convinced it was worth pursuing, i followed my instincts and wound up with a dissertation on it. from a longer-term perspective, it was really these sorts of issues that got me into philosophy in the first place. i grew up moving between radically different environments—an american suburb and an island village—and observing how different our quality of life was, and even our personalities. i became convinced at a pretty early age—maybe ten, eleven—that our way of life is basically insane. (by “our” i mean the dominant way of life in the united states, among other places.) when the film koyaanisqatsi, a hopi title meaning “life out of balance,” came out i thought, “well, there you go.” it pretty well summed up the way i’d felt for a good time. in college, i set out to study anthropology or political science to think about what a smarter civilization might look like. but the really interesting questions turned out to be philosophical, and so i studied philosophy, forgetting until some time in graduate school what had gotten me into it in the first place. i never really framed my concerns in terms of happiness, but my graduate studies got me thinking that was a pretty large part of the picture: we are pursuing happiness in an immensely inefficient, ineffective, unbalanced and destructive way, and we’d better rethink the way we’re going about it if we wish to survive, much less be happy. lately i’ve been thinking that meaning is another large part of what got me into this business. the sorts of offbeat places that have inspired me, like that island, the remote corners of northern california, or new orleans, hold a deep appeal for a lot of people quite apart from whether people are really happier there: there’s something that seems very real, and human, about such places. you feel like you’re really connecting with things of genuine worth—other people, nature, music, human excellence. now while this sense of meaning seems important in itself, i think it’s also a major contributor to happiness: it’s hard to be very happy if you don’t have any firm sense of connecting with value in your life. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ interview with dan haybron weijers www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 272 2. what do you take "wellbeing" to mean? i use the term in the standard philosophical sense, as a rough synonym for flourishing, eudaimonia, or welfare: a term for doing well, or having your life go well for you. it’s about what benefits us, makes us better off. many people use “happiness” for this notion, which does fit with some contemporary english uses. but most happiness research today, and most popular discussions in the media, reserve “happiness” for a narrower, purely psychological notion. that’s how i understand the concept or meaning of “wellbeing”. as for my substantive conception of wellbeing—that is, what actually constitutes a benefit for a person—i incline toward a eudaimonistic theory along very roughly millian lines. on this sort of view, wellbeing consists in self-fulfilment. this in turn consists in the fulfilment of both our rational and emotional natures: succeeding in relation to the commitments that shape one’s identity, and being authentically happy, respectively. (and happiness in turn i understand as emotional wellbeing, basically the opposite of anxiety and depression.) i’d probably add, as secondary components of wellbeing, health and pleasure: fulfilments of our bodily and animal natures. i’m presently trying to come up with something a little more definitive, but the job is pretty hard and i’m not certain any single notion of wellbeing can do all the necessary work. a huge problem is figuring out how to say anything plausible about the value of pleasure that coheres with a credible account of the other things that seem to matter. pleasure’s value just seems so unlike that of anything else. it’s almost enough to make one a hedonist. 3. why is wellbeing research important? first, it’s essential to understanding who we are. second, those of us affluent enough to read things like this have way more than enough resources to achieve a high quality of life, and yet we arguably aren’t doing such a hot job of it. we need to figure out how to live more sensibly. third, and most importantly, we need to figure out how all of us can achieve a reasonable level of wellbeing efficiently, without laying waste to the planet. 4. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding to date? in my view, that some distinctly unaffluent peoples enjoy in many ways a very high quality of life. robert biswas-diener et al. did a terrific study of the maasai, inughuit and amish suggesting as much, and a number of not-so-wealthy latin american countries consistently do very well in studies of wellbeing. actually, hard data on the question are pretty thin, both because of a lack of research on the question—not many studies of subjective wellbeing among hunter-gatherers!—and because we don’t know how reliable the measures are across different cultures. so i’m not sure this is so much a “finding” as a fairly obvious point to anyone acquainted with a moderately wide range of human societies. i mean, socrates was poor by today’s standards, but no one doubts that he had a pretty good life. be that as it may, it helps a lot to have any data at all on the question, and the “obvious point” is nonetheless easily forgotten. in general, the study of “positive outliers” like these is extremely important for understanding (a) what human beings actually need to flourish and (b) what sorts of social arrangements can succeed at promoting human wellbeing. the point isn’t to become huntergatherers, subsistence farmers, fishermen or whatever. (though it might be good to know something about quality of life in such communities when choosing development policies for them and sending them off to work in sweatshops.) in fact a great part of the value of studying interview with dan haybron weijers www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 273 radically different social forms is precisely because they’re so far removed from our own situation. the greater the variation in our research populations, the better we’ll understand which variables fundamentally matter for human beings, as opposed to those that simply reflect contemporary living arrangements among the western middle class. of course, we might also get a few ideas about our own lifeways from studying other cultures, even if living very much like them is out of the question. i don’t want to live like a hunter-gatherer, but i look at the things some hunter societies seem to have going for them, like raising children in a profoundly supportive and secure social environment. and i think maybe this tells us something about what people need, since a lot of those kids seem to be quite happy and healthy, though they live at pretty much the zero point of what we call development. (yes, they’re much more likely to die prematurely; the point is just that their lives have something going for them.) and maybe, in light of that, some of our own communities start looking more desirable. parts of charleston or copenhagen or even st. louis, for instance, where homes may not sport huge lawns or basement movie theaters but people enjoy a lot more affection and social support. and maybe don’t care so much about the theaters, because they’ve got someone to talk to. in general, not to study wellbeing across a wide range of human societies is simply crazy— rather like the recent healthcare debate in the united states, which transpired with essentially no attention paid to the example of basically every other civilized country on the planet. we had a treasure trove of information about different ways of making healthcare accessible to all, and mostly ignored it. wellbeing research today is, it seems to me, making a similar mistake, though there are some notable exceptions, like the biswas-diener et al. study. 5. what is the most important application of wellbeing research to our lives? it is plain that individuals can do many things to make themselves happier, and i’ve learned a good deal from stoic and buddhist thought, among others, about how individuals can reduce the unpleasantness in their lives. but the most important action, i think, is at the collective, social, and environmental level: how happy we are depends strongly on how we live, and our lifestyles in turn depend largely on the prevailing way of life in our communities. relationships are crucial for wellbeing; but you can’t just make people give you rewarding social interactions. you need cooperative friends and a functioning community for that. a reasonable pace of life is also important; but again, that’s not something you decide entirely on your own. we don’t make up the work week on our own, and we don’t decide how much time we’re expected to spend schlepping our kids around to activities invented to substitute for the fact that they don’t have any friends to play with in the neighborhood. 6. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding from your research? i’m a philosopher, so i don’t have “findings” so much as “stuff i make up.” but among the things of that sort, i suppose my arguments for the importance of emotional wellbeing— happiness, in my view—and the surprising unimportance of life satisfaction seem like pretty plausible candidates. (i don’t doubt the significance of how people see their lives going for them; i just think life satisfaction is a deeply problematic gauge of that.) i’d be delighted if empirical researchers were to start measuring emotional wellbeing in a more serious way, and if they developed better ways of assessing how people see their lives going than global life satisfaction reports, which i think are useful but often very misleading. interview with dan haybron weijers www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 274 7. what are you working on right now? a book on wellbeing policy and another on philosophical theories of wellbeing and the good life. i’m hoping to soon delve into the neuroscience of affect so i can develop my account of happiness in greater detail. i’m also doing some empirical work on lay thinking about happiness and wellbeing; that would give me some genuine “findings” to talk about. finally, i’m just finishing up a semipopular introduction to happiness for oxford, and since i accidentally wrote an extra book’s worth of material for that, i expect to follow it with another one on the collective, sustainable pursuit of happiness. 8. what do you think the next big thing in wellbeing research will be? three things come to mind. first, improving measures of wellbeing, including burying once and for all primitive instruments like simply asking people “how happy are you?” as serious measures of wellbeing. (that question in particular is best avoided, since it’s a paradigm of ambiguity, and different participants will think you’re after different kinds of information. as well, single-item measures require people to sum up a huge amount of information on the spot, and so are easily skewed by various biases.) i’m especially hopeful that wellbeing researchers will employ more sophisticated instruments for assessing emotional wellbeing, including tools drawn from the vast mental health literature. second, a more vigorous engagement with crosscultural issues, both for the reasons noted earlier and because they can help sharpen the limitations of current measures, hopefully encouraging the development of better ones. as well, a huge proportion of human intellectual and cultural diversity is disappearing almost overnight, between things like the introduction of television, globalization, and now climate change. we need to learn what we can about different ways of life and different ways of thinking about the human condition before we’re left with little more than college kids and minor variations on the theme to study. third, i see a growing appreciation of the importance of context for human wellbeing: the pursuit of happiness is not mainly an individual affair, but depends heavily on the local culture and physical environment, and other contextual influences. it’s much like diet: there’s a reason, or rather a blizzard of reasons, why a missourian is much more likely to be obese than an italian. the latter live in an environment that makes healthy eating come naturally, while we missourians live in a place that makes good health a constant battle of willpower. yes, one can be happy, or skinny, just about anyplace. but it’s going to be a lot harder in some places than others, and we need to figure out how to make the places we live friendlier to wellbeing. 9. what are the main benefits of interdisciplinary research on wellbeing? wellbeing spans just about every domain of human life, implicating our biology and physical environs as well, not to mention both our individual and societal conditions and choices. and it is an emotionally charged subject demanding clarity of thought, though our concepts for dealing with it are impoverished, hazy and confused. there’s no single discipline with natural authority over the subject: we need to bring the resources of perhaps most academic fields to bear on it. and we need broadly educated, interdisciplinary thinkers, renaissance women and men, to do it. as we appear to be unravelling the planetary ecosystem in our present pursuit of happiness, there may be few more pressing demands for the academy than to undertake the interdisciplinary study of wellbeing. or we could spend—how many billions?—to build another particle accelerator so physicists can get a peek at the next turtle down. (“more turtles! interview with dan haybron weijers www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 275 we need a bigger machine!”) not to knock physics—my father was a physicist, and i love reading about the field—but i think our research funding priorities are seriously out of whack. 10. what would the ideal census question on wellbeing be and why? i’m not sure i could pick a single question for all countries, since the most pressing wellbeing concerns vary. stress is a big problem in the us, but maybe not so much in some poorer countries where lots of people may have too little to do. in general, i’d want a question that bypasses people’s defense mechanisms, offering a socially acceptable way of dispensing negative information where it exists. and that information should be relatively diagnostic of people’s general emotional condition. looking at the us and western europe, for instance, we might check for level of agreement with some improbably positive statement, like: “most of the time, i feel relaxed and carefree.” there’s no shame in admitting you’re not carefree—compare saying you’re unhappy—so participants might be more willing to put themselves lower on the scale. i also like that this sort of question doesn’t tempt us to leap to rash conclusions about whether people are doing well or not. this is a big problem with most life satisfaction and happiness instruments: if we hear that people say they’re “happy” or “satisfied,” it’s fairly natural to infer that they’re happy, and probably doing well. but rarely do the measures give us any sound basis for drawing such inferences. what the measures are good for, at present, is telling us who’s doing better or worse in weighty respects, which is the most important information anyway. but for now, we don’t really have reliable ways of determining whether or not people are actually happy, or thriving or doing well. so beware studies purporting to show that some proportion of people are happy. absent some very questionable assumptions, they probably have no idea. 11. is there anything else you would like to comment on? earlier i mentioned my youthful views about the less than sane character of mainstream living. some folks might have been a little puzzled about that, so it may be worth clarifying what i had in mind. this is roughly how “mainland” living, as we called it, seemed to me: you pass your childhood in institutions, your adulthood in servitude; you do as you’re told. it is a life of busyness, constant motion. head down, much of your threescore and ten passes you by without your even noticing it, still less remembering it. most of this scurrying about is concerned with trivial, made-up issues, like collecting stuff you don’t need, and more stuff to store it in. you spend the majority of your time in the company of strangers, and social intercourse largely takes the form of sanitized quasi-commercial transactions. (you wouldn’t dare poke fun at your interlocutor’s botched haircut.) you see friends once or twice a week, rounding up. you compensate by further focusing your attentions on the aforementioned collection of stuff. you are stressed, tense, and worry a lot, as you recognize once a year when plopping down on the beach for your week-long vacation. well, you sort of recognize it, but since you’ve never known relaxation you don’t realize that you never really did decompress, even on holiday. it doesn’t help that so many of your waking hours are spent amidst varying degrees of ugliness, almost wholly deprived of the beauty and satisfactions of the natural world. you don’t suffer, exactly, but neither do you get much joy or fulfilment out of living. for the most part, you’re just passing through. i’m painting with a very broad brush, of course, but that’s more or less how i saw it. and still sort of do, though i’ve softened a bit on these things, given that all ways of life involve tradeoffs, and it isn’t clear how much we can have the many blessings of modern life without interview with dan haybron weijers www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 276 the negatives. while i’ve focused on the negatives here, the positives have always been pretty apparent too. you have to be pretty lucky just to have the luxury of arguing about this stuff, and that i certainly am. every society has its own litany of problems you could recite, and suburban life sure beats grinding poverty. so what concerns me is not that we have terrible lives; we don’t. it’s the sheer waste. we’re the richest people who ever lived and we can’t even pay the bills, much less build ourselves decent communities and workplaces, or do something for our poorer neighbors so they don’t expire for stupid reasons like diarrhoea. really, how much more do we need? couldn’t we do a little better? the fact that things were a lot worse a couple hundred years ago—probably not one of the better times to be alive, incidentally—doesn’t inspire me very much. for some reason any criticism of our way of doing things, any suggestion that good ideas might be found among people who don’t own a lot of dishwashers, tends to elicit charges of soft-minded romanticism, as if one wants to dismantle civilization and return to some imagined eden. i don’t really get that. we’re not the best in every way, are we? so why not leave off the triumphalist posturing and get down to thinking about how we might improve, and what we might learn from others? even some of those who live a bit further down on the dishwasher index. yes we’re wonderful, and it’s good to remind ourselves of that once in a while. but we’re also kind of crazy. at any rate, all the things i described a moment ago are optional: there are places where life is nothing like that. and it’s hard to believe that loneliness and hypertension are unavoidable byproducts of antibiotics, furnaces, and the beatles. so i’ve been interested in how we can combine the best features of some very different ways of living. among other things. author dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz references biswas-diener, r., vittersø, j., & diener, e. (2005). most people are pretty happy, but there is cultural variation: the inughuit, the amish, and the maasai. the journal of happiness studies, 6/3, 205-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-5683-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-5683-8 sato, i., jose, p. e., & conner, t. s. (2017). savoring mediates the effect of nature on positive affect. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 18-33. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i1.621 tamlin s. conner university of otago tconner@psy.otago.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 article savoring mediates the effect of nature on positive affect izuru sato · paul e. jose · tamlin s. conner abstract: the more time people spend in nature, the happier they feel. but how consistent is this link, and what mechanisms might account for this beneficial effect of nature on wellbeing? the aim of the present study was to test one potential mechanism linking nature to wellbeing—the ability to savor experiences. participants (n = 60, 70% female, aged 18 to 34, university students) were randomly assigned to take a daily 20-minute walk in a natural or urban environment for seven consecutive days. each night, they completed a daily diary report about their experiences that day, including the amount and types of their savoring during the walk (i.e., absorption and intensification of experiences), savoring after the walk (i.e., expression of gratitude and sharing their experiences with others) all adapted from the ways of savoring checklist (bryant & veroff, 2007), and their daily feelings of positive affect (pa) and negative affect (na), adapted from the affective circumplex (barrett & russell, 1998). path analyses using multi-level structural equation modeling (msem) found that the composite measure of daily savoring significantly mediated the effect of nature on pa, controlling for na and physical activity. daily exposure to nature contributed to greater daily savoring, which predicted higher daily pa. additional analyses showed that absorption and intensification of experiences in nature and sharing nature experiences with others were the key components of savoring, which may help to explain why people feel happier as a result of spending time in nature. keywords: emotion regulation, savoring, nature, wellbeing, positive affect, msem, diary study 1. savoring mediates the effect of nature on positive affect there is growing awareness of the psychological benefits of interacting in natural environments like gardens, forests, parks, and green spaces. these benefits include reduced stress (grahn & stigsdotter, 2003; pasanen, neuvonen, & korpela, 2017), lower fatigue (korpela, ylen, tyrvainen, & silvennoinen, 2010; stigsdotter et al., 2010), better mood (passmore & howell, 2014), and greater happiness (mackerron & mourato, 2013). although initial research focused on the relationship between nature and reduced ill-being (e.g., reductions in stress; grahn & stigsdotter, 2003), contemporary research has found even stronger relationships between nature and heightened wellbeing, in particular, improvements in positive affect (pa) (e.g., barton & pretty, 2010; bowler, buyung-ali, knight, & pullin, 2010; bratman, daily, levy, & gross, 2015; frumkin, 2001; hartig, evans, jamner, davis, & garling, 2003; kuo, 2015; mcmahan & estes, 2015; maller, townsend, pryor, brown, & st leger, 2006). in fact, a meta-analysis of studies comparing the effects of exposure to natural environments versus exposure to urban or built environments showed a much stronger effect of natural environments on pa (average r = 0.31; 95% ci 0.24, 0.37) than na (average r = -0.12; 95% ci -0.17, -0.07) (mcmahan & estes, 2015). what is the mechanism by which experiences with nature improve pa? previous research has focused mainly on the role of cognitive factors to explain the beneficial effects of nature. for http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 example, attention restoration theory (art) (kaplan & kaplan, 1989; kaplan, 1995) posits that natural environments possess certain visual and acoustic features that evoke the experiences of “fascination” whereby our attention is drawn to interesting stimuli that engage attention without overloading attentional capability (berto, 2005; kaplan, 1995). in everyday life, conscious effort is required to attend to many stimuli and tasks at once, which can eventually tax attentional resources. evidence shows that fascinating stimuli in nature can provide the mental opportunity to restore depleted attentional resources, and, as a result, induce positive emotions in people (e.g., berto, 2014; berto, 2005; kaplan & kaplan, 1989; sato & conner, 2013). this may be due to the fractal features of objects in natural environments (e.g., trees/flowers/plants), which are particularly relaxing (van den berg, joye, & koole, 2016) and visually/aesthetically preferred (spehar, clifford, newell, & taylor, 2003; spehar & taylor, 2013). in addition, it has been suggested that natural environments evoke a type of perceptual fluency that can promote pa (joye & van den berg, 2011). however, mechanisms related to positive emotion regulation, such as savoring, might also explain the beneficial effects of experiencing nature on pa. savoring is the process by which individuals actively use strategies to enhance and prolong positive experiences (e.g., bryant & veroff, 2007; quoidbach, berry, hansenne, & mikolajczak, 2010). savoring involves various strategies that people can use during or after positive experiences such as 1) being in the present moment (experiential absorption), 2) intensifying one’s experiences by focusing on them (sensory-perceptual sharpening), 3) gratitude making (counting blessings), and 4) sharing these experiences with others (sharing with others) (bryant, chadwick, & kluwe, 2011; bryant & veroff, 2007; jose, lim, & bryant, 2012). through these four broad savoring strategies, people can derive greater positive affect from everyday events and experiences (jose et al., 2012). for example, jose and colleagues tracked the daily experiences of young adults (n = 101) for 30 days and found that daily positive events were associated with daily happiness, and that daily savoring accounted for the link between positive events and happiness (jose et al., 2012). unlike the stress-coping process, which deals with negative emotion regulation (lazarus & folkman, 1984), savoring puts a special focus on positive coping, which emphasizes various strategies to enhance positive experiences (bryant & veroff, 2007). past research has shown that savoring as a form of positive coping is effective at enhancing pleasurable feelings (bryant et al., 2011; bryant & smith, 2015; gentzler, palmer, & ramsey, 2015; quoidbach et al., 2010; quoidbach, mikolajczak, & gross, 2015). savoring strategies fit within larger process models of emotion regulation (gross & thompson, 2007; quoidbach et al., 2015). as shown in table 1 below, these models typically recognize five stages of emotion regulation: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation (gross, 2015; gross & thompson, 2007). strategies in each stage have the potential to intensify, dampen, or maintain positive emotion (gross, 2015; quoidbach et al., 2015). savoring strategies such as experiential absorption and sensory-perceptual sharpening are both forms of attentional deployment, where attention is deployed strategically to maximize positive emotions. counting blessings is a form of cognitive change, which involves a cognitive reappraisal to appreciate positive experiences. sharing the experiences with others is a form of response modulation, which involves behavioral activation to make the best of positive experiences. savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 table 1. how savoring fits into the process model of positive emotion regulation (adapted from bryant & veroff, 2007; quoidbach et al., 2015) the five stages of positive emotion regulation situation selection situation modification attentional deployment cognitive change response modulation savoring experiential absorption; sensoryperceptual sharpening counting blessings sharing with others example decide to go to a park walk around the best spots possible in the park immerse yourself in the walking experience; focus on the park’s natural features find the positive aspects of the nature experience share with others/express the joy in this article, we propose that the context of natural environments might stimulate the enactment of savoring strategies more so than urban environments, which could help account for the nature-pa link documented by other researchers. natural environments are perceived as more favorable places than urban ones (korpela, hartig, kaiser, & fuhrer, 2001) and so people might be more likely to try to savor their experiences as a form of positive coping in natural environments. natural environments are thought to stimulate humans’ evolved tendencies towards “biophilia,” which is posited as an innate affiliative tendency to seek out natural environments and features that provide an advantageous evolutionary ecological niche (kellert & wilson, 1995; wilson, 1984). being in nature might trigger various savoring strategies implemented to satisfy and prolong this affiliative tendency, which could, in turn, result in increased positive affect. we are aware of only two studies linking experiences with nature to a form of savoring (johnsen & rydstedt, 2013; richardson & sheffield, 2017). in johnsen and rydstedt’s (2013) laboratory study, participants (n = 473) were presented with photos of natural and urban environments, then rated the degree to which they would seek out each environment if they were happy. on average, participants reported that they would want to seek out natural but not urban environments when they felt happy. thus, seeking nature could be considered a situation selection strategy to savor and prolong their positive state. in richardson and sheffield’s (2017) field experiment (n = 92), savoring of nature was manipulated by asking half of the participants to “write three good things in nature that you noticed today” for five days, which is equivalent to counting blessings. control participants noted three factual things for the same amount of time. those who were asked to write about good things in nature (versus factual things) showed improvements in connectedness to nature, which predicted some improvements in mental health as measured by the 12-item general health questionnaire (goldberg & hillier, 1979). although the findings of richardson and sheffield (2017) suggest that a brief manipulation to promote savoring of nature is beneficial, it does not establish whether people would naturally savor their time in nature on their own volition. the question remains whether experiences in nature promote the key specific savoring strategies that occur when people experience nature (such as savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 experiential absorption and sensory-perceptual sharpening) or after people experience nature (like counting blessings, and sharing the experience with others), and whether these savoring strategies account for the improvements in pa. thus, our study was designed to fill this gap by testing whether natural (versus urban) environments are more likely to promote daily savoring strategies, and whether daily savoring mediates the expected beneficial effect of nature on pa. 1.1 the present study we employed a week-long experimental daily diary study in which participants were randomly assigned to take a daily 20-minute walk in either a natural or an urban setting, and to report nightly their various experiences of savoring, and to rate their level of positive and negative affect and amount of physical activity engaged in outside of the assigned walk. negative affect (na) and extra physical activity were used as control variables in analyses. analyses examined if daily savoring mediated the effect of natural (vs. urban) environments on daily pa. as an exploratory analysis, we also tested what types of savoring might function as mediators. 2. method 2.1 design this daily experimental design included both betweenand within-subjects components. the between-subjects component was the experimental manipulation (daily nature walk versus daily urban walk as control). the within-subjects component included the variables assessed in the daily diary survey completed each evening across the seven days (i.e., savoring, pa, na, physical activity). 2.2 participants participants were 60 young adults (18 males and 42 females) with a mean age of 21.72 (sd = 3.76; range 18 – 34) who were students at the university of otago in dunedin, new zealand. an additional two participants started the study but were excluded from analysis (one participant dropped out because of sickness during the experiment; one participant completed fewer than four diary records). participants identified as european (73.3%), asian (20.0%), or another ethnicity (6.7%). participants were recruited for the “daily walk study” conducted in dunedin, new zealand between february and april 2015, which corresponded to the end of summer and the beginning of fall. participants were required to have nightly access to internet via smartphone or computer (n = 0 excluded). participants were reimbursed with research credits if recruited through the university of otago psychology department’s experimental participation program (n = 34, 57%) or with $20 if recruited through flyers/word of mouth (n = 26, 43%). 2.3 procedure each participant attended an initial individual briefing session on campus where the study procedures were explained and the informed consent was read and signed. participants were then asked to fill out an initial online questionnaire, either immediately using their smartphone, or later that night on their computer. this initial questionnaire contained demographic questions (i.e., age, gender, ethnic background) followed by written instructions for their randomly assigned condition. participants in the nature condition were instructed to take a daily 20-minute walk alone in the dunedin botanic gardens beginning the next day for seven days. the dunedin botanic gardens is a 75-acre (30.4 hectare) space located within walking distance to the university and central shopping/business district. the grounds are beautifully cultivated with over 6,800 savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 plant species including native new zealand trees, grasses, and flowers, among other plants from around the world. there are paved and unpaved walking paths winding through both flat and hilly terrain. participants in the urban condition were instructed to take a daily 20-minute walk alone in an adjacent urban environment (along george street in the central shopping/business district) beginning the next day for seven days. george street is a busy 1.2 mile (2 km) street full of shops and restaurants that is located within walking distance to the university. the street has sidewalks for pedestrians and is open to cars and buses (18.6 mph max speed / 30km max speed). participants were allowed to take their daily walk whenever they saw fit during the daytime period. each evening during the intervention week, participants were prompted via email to fill out an online daily diary survey using either their smartphone or computer. the email reminder was sent at 7pm; the survey was available for participants to complete until midnight. in the survey, participants indicated if they completed their walk that day (yes/no), and answered questions regarding their experiences from the day (i.e., savoring, pa, and na, physical activity). after repeating the daily procedure for seven consecutive days, participants were individually debriefed about the study aims and reimbursed for their participation. 2.4 daily measures savoring. participants’ experiences of savoring were measured using the four-item “momentary savoring” scale (jose et al., 2012), which was taken from a subset of items from bryant and veroff’s (2007) ways of savoring checklist. the four items were: 1) “i thought only about the present – got absorbed in the moment” (experiential absorption), 2) “i tried to intensify the moment by focusing on it” (sensory-perceptual sharpening), 3) “i felt grateful for the pleasant event(s)” (counting blessings), and 4) “i tried to share the positive aspects with another person” (sharing with others). participants rated items 1 (experiential absorption) and 2 (sensoryperceptual sharpening) with regards to how they felt during the walk. participants also rated items 3 (counting blessings) and 4 (sharing with others) with regards to how they felt after the walk. each of the four items was rated using a five-point likert scale (1 = not at all, 5 = extremely). three variables were created from these items: an overall savoring variable (mean of all four items), a savoring during the walk variable (mean of experiential absorption and sensory-perceptual sharpening), and a savoring after the walk variable (mean of counting blessings and sharing with others). see table 2 below for measure reliabilities. positive and negative affect. participants’ affective experiences were measured using three items for positive affect (pa) (enthusiastic, happy, relaxed) and three items for negative affect (na) (angry, anxious, sad). these items captured a range of high to low intensities from the affective circumplex (barrett & russell, 1998). participants were asked to rate how they felt “that day” on each of the six items using a five-point likert scale (1 = not at all, 5 = extremely). responses to the three positive affect and the three negative affect items were averaged for a measure of positive affect (pa) and negative affect (na). see table 2 below for measure reliabilities. na was used as a control variable to isolate the effects of natural environments on pa. we used na as a control variable rather than creating a composite measure such as net pa (pa minus na) because our prior research found that nature interventions change pa independently from na (sato & conner, 2013). subtracting na from pa could potentially obscure the patterns for pa. daily physical activity. as an additional control measure, a measure of daily physical activity (aside from the assigned walk) was included in the daily diary. participants were asked to freely report “how many minutes did you spend doing vigorous and moderate physical activities besides the walk today?” savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 3. results 3.1 psychometrics and descriptive statistics most participants completed all seven daily diary entries (99% response rate; m = 6.92; sd = 0.38; range 5 to 7). they reported taking their walk on almost all days (walking 413 out of 420 requested days; 98% compliance). of the 60 participants, 30 participants were randomized into the nature group, and 30 participants were randomized into the urban group. chi-square tests revealed that both gender and ethnicity were equally distributed across the two groups (gender γ2 (1, 60) = 0.32; p = .57; ethnicity γ2 (2, 60) = 0.42; p = .81). diary response rates were also similar between the two groups (t (418) = 1.14, p = .25). the reliabilities of each daily measure were estimated at both levels (between-person and within-daily) using the method recommended by geldhof, preacher, and zyphur (2014). a multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (mcfa) approach was used to estimate betweenand within-level cronbach’s alpha (α) separately by using mcfa model parameters directly. multilevel α was computed in mplus software version 7.31 (muthén & muthén, 2012). the reliability estimates indicated that the item reliabilities were good at the between-person level, ranging from .823 to .944, and were lower but still acceptable at the within-person level, ranging from .555 to .716. the observed reliability at both levels indicated that it was appropriate to use these measures in both the betweenand within-person analyses. see table 2 below for complete item descriptive statistics and reliabilities across levels. table 2. descriptive statistics and multilevel reliability estimates for the daily measures reliability estimate daily variable m sd min 0max (between) (within) savoring 02.72 00.86 1.04 004.89 .944 .716 positive affect 03.16 00.56 1.57 004.43 .883 .691 negative affect 01.77 00.49 1.00 003.24 .823 .555 physical activity 28.78 22.93 0.00 111.43 n/a n/a note. m = mean, sd = standard deviation, min = minimum, max = maximum table 2 also presents the descriptive statistics for the aggregated daily variables. daily pa yielded a higher mean than na, which is typical. all variables showed sufficient variability and range. table 3 below presents the zero order correlations among the experimental conditions and the aggregated daily measured variables. the nature (vs. urban) condition was associated with greater savoring. as expected, participants in the nature condition reported higher average levels of savoring compared to participants in the urban condition. contrary to our expectation, however, we found no significant association between the nature condition and pa (total effect r =.083, p =.528). other physical activity was not significantly associated with any of the other variables. savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 table 3. correlations between the experimental conditions and aggregated daily variables condition nature = 1 urban = 0 savoring positive affect negative affect condition a ‒ savoring -360** ‒ positive affect -.083** -.587** ‒ negative affect -.078** -.021** -.265* ‒ physical activity -.003** -.027** -.150* -.138 note. n = 60. * p < .05; ** p < .01. 3.2 multi-level mediation analysis the unique feature of this daily experimental design required special consideration when analyzing mediation within nested data sets (multiple reports nested within individuals). as figure 1 shows, the independent variable (x – nature vs. urban) was manipulated at the betweenperson level (level 2) whereas the mediator (m – savoring) and outcome variable (y – pa) were assessed at the within-person daily level (level 1). figure 1. multi-level mediation model framework (2-1-1 model with a random level-1 effect); adapted from preacher et al. (2011). note. x = independent variable, m = mediator variable, y = outcome variable. pa = positive affect x: nature between-level m: savoring y: pa mediator outcome ab bb c`b m: savoring y: pa within-level bw (observed variables) independent savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 this type of structure is called a “2-1-1 design” (preacher, zyphur, & zhang, 2010). in a 2-1-1 design, x (nature) varied only between people (individuals assigned to the nature group) whereas both m (savoring) and y (pa) varied at both the betweenand within-person levels. this design specifies that people will differ from each other in their average levels of m (savoring) and y (pa), and individuals will differ across time at the within-person level in m (savoring) and y (pa). these sources of variance needed to be taken into account appropriately. to address this issue, multi-level structural equation modeling (msem) was conducted for estimating indirect effects (preacher, zhang, & zyphur, 2011; preacher et al., 2010), instead of using baron and kenny’s stepwise method (baron & kenny, 1986; card, 2012; jose, 2013) with a sobel test (sobel, 1982). specifically, we used mplus software version 7.31 (muthén & muthén, 2012) to test whether savoring mediated the relationship between nature and pa for participants in the nature (versus urban) condition, controlling for na and physical activity. although there was no total effect of nature on pa overall (total effect r =.083, ns, as above), the recent literature on mediation analyses has indicated that the total effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable is no longer required when computing all steps simultaneously, and each constituent path is significant (independent variable to mediation variable (a path); and mediation variable to dependent variable (b path)) (mackinnon & fairchild, 2009; preacher, 2015). computationally, the multilevel mediational model was defined as a 2-1-1 model in which the predictor (“nature” coded as 1 vs. “urban” coded as 0) was assessed at level 2 (betweenperson level), whereas the potential mediator (savoring) and outcome (pa) were assessed at level 1 (within-person daily level). the equation for this particular multilevel mediation model is as follows: level 1: savoringi j = βsavoring j + εi j equation 1 pai j = βp a j + bw j savoring + εi j equation 2 level 2: β𝑆𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑗 = γ𝑆𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔+𝑎nature𝑗 + μβ𝑆𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑗 equation 3 β𝑃𝐴𝑗 = γ𝑃𝐴 + 𝑐′nature𝑗 + b𝑏β𝑆𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑗 + μβ𝑃𝐴𝑗 equation 4 𝑏𝑤𝑗 = 𝑏𝑤 + μ𝑏𝑤𝑗 equation 5 for these equations, the level 1 model is an intercept for savoring (eq. 1) and an intercept for pa plus a within-person effect of savoring on pa (eq. 2). the level 2 model estimates a random savoring intercept from nature (a mean difference, path a) (eq. 3), a random pa intercept from level 2 nature (an adjusted mean difference and the direct effect of nature, path c'), and the savoring intercept for level 2, unit j (a between-person effect of savoring on pa, path bbetw) (eq. 4), and allows the within-daily effect of savoring on pa to vary between person (path bwith) (eq. 5). following the method recommended by preacher et al. (2010), a monte carlo procedure was used to estimate multilevel indirect effects in the 2-1-1 model. we predicted a positive indirect effect of nature on pa through savoring. results from the multilevel mediational model showed that, as predicted, daily savoring significantly mediated the pathway between the nature condition and pa. this result is demonstrated by the indirect effect being significant and the 95% confidence intervals (ci) of that effect not spanning zero. this effect remained significant even after controlling for daily physical activity and na (see table 4 for pathway coefficients). savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 table 4. unstandardized path coefficients and 95% confidence intervals for indirect effects of the multilevel mediation model predictor mediator outcome path a path b indirect effect 95% ci (lower) (upper) nature vs. urban savoring positive affect .677** 1.008** .682** .456 .908 note. the path a coefficient represents the path between the predictor and mediator, and the path b coefficient represents the path between the mediator and the outcome. the indirect effect coefficient represents the effect of the predictor on the outcome via the mediator (a*b). the 95% confidence interval (ci) represents the lower and upper boundaries of the estimated indirect effect of the predictor on the outcome via the mediator. ** p < .01. (significant effects are bolded.) additional mediational analyses were conducted, separating the savoring construct into savoring during the walk (experiential absorption and sensory-perceptual sharpening), and savoring after the walk (counting blessings and sharing with others) to determine whether savoring during or after the walk was the stronger predictor of pa. as figure 2 shows, when both forms of savoring were included in the model, only savoring after the walk survived as a mediator of the nature-pa link (β = 0.803, p = .04). figure 2. multiple mediation analysis testing savoring during the walk and savoring after the walk separately note. unstandardized path/correlation coefficient; * p < .05; ** p < .01. interestingly, savoring during the walk was negatively associated with pa, albeit nonsignificantly (β = -0.387, p = .33). although this pattern could indicate a paradoxical effect whereby greater absorption and focus within natural environments might dampen positive feelings, it could indicate that savoring during the walk is ineffective at increasing pa without additional savoring after the walk. in fact, when the temporal sequencing of savoring was taken into account (savoring during the walk predicting savoring after the walk) in the form of a double mediation (see jose, 2013), both forms of savoring were found to be important. figure 3 presents nature (vs. urban) savoring during positive affect -0.387 0.483** 0.498* 0.725** savoring after 0.803* savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 this temporally-refined path model in which savoring during the nature walk predicted greater savoring after the walk, which, in turn, predicted higher pa. figure 3. double mediation path model, taking into account the temporal sequence of nature (vs. urban) walking predicting savoring during the walk, then savoring after the walk, which predicted pa note. unstandardized path/correlation coefficient; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. this multilevel path model showed good to excellent fit with the data: a comparative fit index (cfi) = 0.957, tucker–lewis index (tli) = 0.911, root-mean-square error of approximation (rmsea) = 0.067, standardized root mean square residual (srmr) for between = 0.055, srmr for within = 0.031 (kline, 2011). figure 4. multiple mediator analysis separating the four savoring items (all four mediators entered simultaneously) note. unstandardized path/correlation coefficient; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. lastly, in order to probe the mediation further, we conducted a multilevel mediational analysis with all four savoring items entered simultaneously (experiential absorption, sensory-perceptual sharpening, sharing with others, and counting blessings) to examine the relative importance of these four items for the link between nature and pa. as figure 4 above shows, three of the savoring items (experiential absorption, sensory-perceptual sharpening, sharing with others) survived as significant mediators of the nature-pa path (β = 0.254, p < 0.001; β = 0.188, p = 0.012; nature (vs. urban) 0.526* 1.069*** 0.379*** savoring during positive affect savoring after nature (vs. urban) experiential absorption positive affect sensory-perceptual sharpening counting blessings 0.254*** 0.129** 0.422* 0.611* 0.596* sharing with others 0.799*** 0.188* 0.013 savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 β = 0.129, p = 0.002, respectively) 1 . it is noteworthy that counting blessings was no longer significantly associated with pa when all items were entered simultaneously (β = -0.013, p = 0.827), even though it predicted greater pa when combined with sharing with others in the previous analysis. 4. discussion how does the experience of nature improve wellbeing? our results suggest that savoring is a key element to understanding why people feel happier after spending time in nature. people who were randomly assigned to walk 20 minutes in nature (versus 20 minutes in an urban environment) reported significantly increased savoring behaviors, which, in turn, predicted increased feelings of positive affect. of the four individual savoring items, experiential absorption, sensory-perceptual sharpening, and sharing with others stood out as the strongest mediators of the nature to pa link. these results suggest that increased pa is most strongly tied to absorbing oneself in nature, trying to intensify experiences in nature, and sharing the positive aspects of nature experiences with other people. these findings could be interpreted to suggest that nature may promote an “inner savoring tendency” which has an enhancing effect on positive emotion. natural environments not only provide an opportunity for experiencing happiness per se, but they could also evoke processes of prolonging this experience. according to the principles of biophilia (wilson, 1984), evolutionary influences over the millennia might have predisposed human interactions with nature to have an adaptive and positive value for human survival. although this may sound highly speculative, it might be possible that evolution could have selected for processes in the human mind that not only enhance pleasure while in nature, but also encourage a return to nature through behavioral strategies for prolonging and maximizing pleasure, which is the very definition of savoring (bryant & veroff, 2007). as this study demonstrated, natural environments, more than urban environments, seemed to evoke a tendency towards all four types of savoring strategies, including greater perceptual engagement (experiential absorption/sensory-perceptual sharpening), counting blessings, and sharing with others. urban environments evoked no savoring strategies. this study did not find a significant total effect of nature on pa (r =.083, as shown in table 3 above). this finding is not consistent with the bulk of prior research, which regularly finds that exposure to nature increases pa (e.g., mcmahan & estes, 2015). for example, past research that has shown that viewing nature images results in increased pa in lab settings (van den berg, koole, & van der wulp, 2003), that proximity to nature results in higher pa (stigsdotter et al., 2010), and that walking in natural environments results in more pa than walking in urban environments (hartig et al., 2003). moreover, a recent meta-analysis found stronger links between nature interventions on changes in pa than na (mcmahan & estes, 2015). the inconsistency with previous studies may be due to the way pa was measured in the present study. in our study, pa was measured at the end of the day, not the moment when participants finished the walk. this methodological choice was a limitation. nonetheless, this limitation was addressed by applying appropriately sophisticated tools for testing mediation that did not require a significant total effect and by focusing the pathway of influence (i.e., indirect effect). another possible reason for the non-significant total effect of nature on pa could be the specific items used to measure pa: excited, happy, and relaxed. there may have been too few items or 1 all four savoring items were correlated with each other moderately to strongly (within the range of .446 to .642, all significant). savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 the items were not tapping the right type of positive affect. perhaps if we had used the positive and negative affect schedule (panas) (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988), which taps positive activation, this would have resulted in significant findings. future research should take care when selecting the appropriate outcome measure. this study also found no unique effect of gratitude (counting blessings) on improvements in pa. although walking in nature increased feelings of gratitude (“i felt grateful for the event”), these feelings did not mediate the link to pa. this finding is inconsistent with prior research on gratitude, which is one of the key positive psychology intervention strategies shown to effectively increase wellbeing (bolier et al., 2013). moreover, in the brief intervention by richardson and sheffield (2017), participants randomly assigned to write about blessings in nature showed benefits to mental health. this inconsistency might be due to the fact that counting blessings was very highly correlated with the other savoring strategies (i.e., rs 0.466 to 0.563), so when entered simultaneously with the other savoring strategies, counting blessings was no longer a significant predictor of pa. it is also possible that nature influences pa through more primitive and perceptual forms of savoring (i.e., experiential absorption and perceptual sharpening), as opposed to more sophisticated cognitive forms of savoring (i.e., counting blessings); however, we are not confident with this interpretation, since the double mediation path model of figure 3 above suggested that primitive and perceptual forms of savoring during the walk only predicted positive affect through effects on savoring after the walk. further investigation is needed to clarify the issue. the study had several limitations. as mentioned above, one limitation is that the pa measure was taken only at the end of the day, and with a relatively wide timeframe (how they felt “that day”). thus, pa reflected a summary judgment of participants’ entire day. this timeframe may have introduced more error and less sensitivity, making it harder to detect the exact temporal relationship between the predictor (savoring) and the outcome (pa). similarly, people were asked to retrospect on their experiences of savoring “during the walk” at the end of the day, which would be less accurate than asking immediately after the walk. however, according to parkinson and his colleagues (parkinson, briner, reynolds, & totterdell, 1995), end-of-day retrospective reports are reasonably accurate, suggesting that memory bias in this study was tolerable. further studies need to address these temporal measurement issues, possibly using experience sampling methods to track the dynamics of real-time experiences throughout the day, taking care not to disrupt attention during the nature walk, which could take people out of the moment. another limitation was the relatively small sample size (n = 60). although sample sizes of 60 are common in daily diary designs (e.g., n=54 (affleck, tennen, urrows, & higgins, 1992); n= 70 (rost et al., 2016)), it is possible that our sample size was somewhat underpowered. we conducted a post-hoc power analysis for multi-level research by using the optimal design software (raudenbush, spybrook, congdon, liu, & martinez, 2011) and found our study needed 74 people to detect a small effect size of .25 with .80 power. thus, a larger sample would have potentially improved sensitivity to detect smaller effects in the data. for example, with more participants, the nature (vs. urban) condition might have yielded a significant total effect on pa. 5. conclusion the most important finding of this study was the discovery of savoring as an emotion regulation strategy that mediated the effect of natural environments on positive affect. this finding suggests that nature can enrich humans’ everyday emotional lives via its effect on emotional savoring, in particular, strategies such as absorbing and intensifying experiences in nature, and sharing nature experiences with others. importantly, through an experimental design, we showed these savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 inner savoring tendencies are evoked in natural environments, not urban environments, which suggests an important connection between nature and positive emotion regulation. authors izuru sato university of otago paul e. jose victoria university of wellington tamlin s. conner university of otago tconner@psy.otago.ac.nz publishing timeline 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(2010). health promoting outdoor environments: associations between green space, and health, health-related quality of life and stress based on a danish national representative survey. scandinavian journal of public health, 38(4), 411-417. https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494810367468 https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dai032 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.994224 https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167295214003 https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916517720261 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015258 https://doi.org/10.1080/10705511.2011.557329 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020141 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.03.048 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038648 https://doi.org/10.1080/21711976.2016.1267136 https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000582 https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2013.0026 https://doi.org/10.2307/270723 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0097-8493(03)00154-7 https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494810367468 savoring in nature sato, jose & conner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 van den berg, a. e., joye, y., & koole, s. l. (2016). why viewing nature is more fascinating and restorative than viewing buildings: a closer look at perceived complexity. urban forestry & urban greening, 20, 397-401. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.10.011 van den berg, a. e., koole, s. l., & van der wulp, n. y. (2003). environmental preference and restoration: (how) are they related? journal of environmental psychology, 23(2), 135-146. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0272-4944(02)00111-1 watson, d., clark, l. a., & tellegen, a. (1988). development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the panas scales. journal of personality and social psychology, 54(6), 1063-1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 wilson, e. (1984). biophilia: the human bond with other species. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.10.011 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0272-4944(02)00111-1 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness helliwell, j. f., & wang, s. (2011). trust and wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 42-78. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.9 john f. helliwell university of british columbia john.helliwell@ubc.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 article trust and wellbeing john f. helliwell · shun wang abstract: this paper presents new evidence linking trust and subjective wellbeing, based primarily on data from the gallup world poll and cycle 17 of the canadian general social survey (gss17). because several of the general explanations for subjective wellbeing examined here show large and significant linkages to both household income and various measures of trust, it is possible to estimate income-equivalent compensating differentials for different types of trust. measures of trust studied include general social trust, trust in management, trust in coworkers, trust in neighbours, and trust in police. in addition, some canadian surveys and the gallup world poll ask respondents to estimate the chances that a lost wallet would be returned to them if found by different individuals, including neighbours, police and strangers. our results reveal strong linkages between several trust measures and subjective well-being, as well as strong linkages between social trust and two major global causes of death—suicides and traffic fatalities. this suggests the value of learning more about how trust can be built and maintained, or repaired where it has been damaged. we therefore use data from the canadian gss17 to analyze personal and neighbourhood characteristics, including education, migration history, and mobility, that help explain differences in trust levels among individuals. finally, by combining data from new dropped-wallet field experiments with survey answers about the expected return of a dropped wallet, we show that wallets are far more likely to be returned, even by strangers in large cities, than people expect. keywords: wellbeing, gallup world poll, field experiment, social capital, life satisfaction, subjective well-being, social trust, workplace trust, neighbourhood trust 1. introduction humans are social beings, and trust is widely seen as an essential element in any social setting. without trust, people are loath to reach out, and to make the social connections that underpin any collaborative action. for trust to be durable, it needs to be justified by trustworthy behaviours of those being trusted. many recent studies of the causes and consequences of trust have been linked to the parallel study of social capital, since trust has been seen sometimes as a proxy measure of social capital, or alternatively as a consequence or correlate of high levels of social capital. like social capital, trust can be narrow or encompassing, be identified by type and purpose, be affected by geographic, social and cultural distance, and take more time to build than to destroy. many studies of the possible benefits of trust have focussed on economic growth (algan and cahuc 2010, berggren et al. 2008, beugelsdijk 2006, beugelsdijk et al. 2004, dincer and uslaner 2010, fukayama 1995, helliwell and putnam 1995, helliwell 1996, knack and keefer 1997, knack 2001, zak and knack 2001) and institutional development (aghion et al. 2010, bergh and bjørnskov 2009, bjørnskov 2010a, knack 2002), with some attention paid also to trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 health (kawachi et al. 1997, kawachi et al. 2007, yip et al. 2007). in this paper we take a broader focus by looking at the linkages between trust and subjective wellbeing. we use various measures of subjective wellbeing as though they are measures of utility, and then search for the consequences of trust as they might flow indirectly through economic success and physical health, as well as more directly to individual evaluations of the quality of life. the economic and social determinants of subjective wellbeing have received much attention in recent studies (alesina et al. 2004, blanchflower 2009, deaton 2008, easterlin 2001, ferrer-i-carbonell 2005, helliwell and putnam 2004, helliwell et al. 2010). however, the links between trust and subjective wellbeing are relatively unexplored. bjørnskov (2003) shows that there is significant correlation between social trust and life satisfaction in country-level regressions, and similarly, bjørnskov (2008) finds significant links in us state-level regressions. however, ram (2010) finds only a fragile role for social trust in country-level regressions for life satisfaction. individual-level regressions all tend to support the existence of strong links between trust and measures of subjective wellbeing. chang (2009) shows that the level of social trust is positively associated with happiness using data from a survey in taiwan. yip et al. (2007) also find evidence of strong linkages between trust and life satisfaction using data collected in rural china. helliwell (2003), helliwell and putnam (2004) and helliwell et al. (2009) give similar results using large samples of data from the world values surveys (wvs), the us benchmark survey (usbs) and canadian equality, security and community survey (esc). this paper aims to re-examine the links between various measures of trust and subjective wellbeing using both multi-country and canadian survey data. we first present our new results for the wellbeing consequences of dropped-wallet responses from the gallup world poll (gwp) 2006, followed by life satisfaction equations based on the canadian general social survey (gss) cycle 17, which has a number of different trust measures.1 our results show that several different dimensions and types of trust provide strong supports for wellbeing above and beyond their more frequently studied contributions to economic efficiency. these new results are then compared, in summary form, with some previous estimates of the linkages between trust and wellbeing. we also consider evidence about the influence of trust on other wellbeing outcomes, such as suicide and traffic fatalities. although causal links between trust and subjective wellbeing are hard to establish conclusively in our regressions, the stability of trust across generations supports our conjecture that the main causal effect runs from trust to subjective wellbeing. recent empirical studies on social trust show that trust can be transmitted across many generations and therefore is fairly stable over time. algan and cahuc (2010) and bjørnskov (2006) show that national-level social trust is remarkably stable over time. durante (2009) argues that historical climate conditions (between the 16th and the 18th century) in europe largely shaped contemporary trust. nunn and wantchekon (2009) argue that the low trust in contemporary africa can be traced back to the slave trade. uslanner (2002) shows that trust does not vary much over time in the united states. uslaner (2008) shows that the social trust of descendants of us immigrants is significantly associated with social trust levels in the country of origin, while soroka et al. (2006), milroy (2009) and this paper show the same thing for immigrants to canada. we then show that the quality of social connections matters a lot to the maintenance of trust using the rich social context details in the canadian gss17 survey. in ways that validate the trust measures and theories of trust formation, general factors matter most for the 1 summary statistics and detailed descriptions of the variables for both the gallup word poll 2006 and the canadian general social survey cycle 17 are included in the appendix. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 determination of social trust, while neighbourhood characteristics matter most for neighbourhood trust. for example, the effects of individual-level and census-tract-level measures of education are strongly supportive of social trust, as are the respondent’s memberships in social organizations, and the level of social trust in the country where the respondent was born. the paper is organized as follows. section 2 discusses the measurement of trust and subjective wellbeing. section 3 presents the empirical estimation of the effects of various trust measures on subjective wellbeing. section 4 gives some evidence about the influence of trust on other wellbeing outcomes such as suicide and traffic fatalities. section 5 examines the factors supporting different types of trust to validate the trust measure. section 6 reveals large and widespread divergences between perceived and actual trustworthiness, and assesses the likely consequences for subjective wellbeing. section 7 concludes the paper. 2. measuring trust and subjective wellbeing the measures of trust we consider include individual assessments about whether other people can generally be trusted (the ‘social trust’ question), individual assessments of the trustworthiness of their neighbours, co-workers and managers, and responses to very specific questions about whether a lost wallet is judged likely to be returned if found by a variety of different individuals, including neighbours, police and strangers. the survey method has been commonly used to measure trust. although sometimes doubted because of their subjective nature, these assessments have been shown to be consistent both with laboratory (naef and schupp 2009) and field (knack 2001) experiments. morrone et al. (2009) argue that there might be some preference for the wallet questions, since their meaning is very explicit, thereby reducing the possibilities for disagreement about what the respondents are evaluating2. the introduction of wallet questions into surveys was spurred by experiments conducted by reader’s digest europe, and reported in that magazine in april 1996 (and subsequently discussed in the economist, june 22, 1996). these experiments involved dropping 10 cashbearing wallets in each of 20 cities in 14 western european countries, and in each of a dozen us cities. the data on the frequency of wallet returns were later used by knack (2001) to provide some behavioural validation for the use of answers to the frequently-asked question of interpersonal trust: ‚in general, do you think that most people can be trusted, or, alternatively, that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people‛. knack (2001) found that at the national level the actual frequency of return of the experimentally dropped wallets was correlated at the 0.65 (p<0.01) level with national average responses to the general social or interpersonal trust question, as measured in the world values survey3. while this provides strong validation for the meaningfulness of international differences in survey responses to social trust questions, it also suggests a way of adding more specific trust questions to surveys. hence when the canadian esc survey was being designed in 2000, we included not just the standard questions on interpersonal and institutional trust, but also some specific hypothetical questions about the likelihood of the respondent’s lost wallet (containing identification and 2 uslaner (2002, 2005) and morrone et al. (2009) provide helpful surveys of different ways of measuring trust, and of various debates about the meaning of such measures. 3 knack notes that this high correlation ‚cannot be explained away by attributing high-trust attitudes and walletreturning behaviour to higher per-capita incomes: the partial correlation between trust and returned wallets, controlling for per capita income, is even higher than the simple correlation‛ (knack 2001, p. 184). trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 $200) being returned if found by, alternatively, a neighbour, a clerk in a nearby store, a police officer, or a stranger. some of the same wallet return questions were subsequently also included in the larger statistics canada gss17 in 2003 and in more than 80 country surveys of the gallup world poll in 2006. soroka et al. (2006) compare the wallet and general trust data from the esc survey, and we shall report later in this paper some similar comparisons based on the gss17 data. we shall also combine the gss17 wallet answers with some recent droppedwallet experiments in toronto to provide a first-ever level comparison between expected and actual trust-worthiness. for the gallup world poll, it is not possible to compare the wallet and general trust answers from the same respondents, as the wallet questions were asked only in 2006, and the general trust questions were first asked in 2009. where direct comparisons are possible, they generally serve to validate the use of both specific and general trust measures. the measures that relate to specific geographic areas tend to respond to the characteristics of that neighbourhood. the high correlation between actual wallet returns and the answers to the social trust questions when averaged on a national basis (knack 2001) suggests that answers to general interpersonal trust questions are based on experience within the respondent’s own nation. we shall show later that when people migrate from one country to another there is a carry-over of social trust answers from country of emigration to country of immigration, with even some evidence of carry-forward into the next generation. but this footprint is much less where the questions are more closely related to specific events in the country of immigration, such as whether wallets would be returned if found by neighbours or police. table 1-a and 1-b (p. 62) present the correlation matrix of various trust measures in gwp 2006 and canadian gss17 respectively. all the trust measures are highly correlated in both surveys. we shall subsequently see that each of the separate measures is most amenable to explanation by closely related features of the social context—e.g. neighbourhood trust explained by neighbourhood characteristics—giving us that much more confidence in the validity of the trust measures individually and as a group. our main measures of wellbeing are overall life satisfaction in canadian gss17 and the cantril ladder in the gallup world poll. the life satisfaction question is ‚please rate your feelings about certain areas of your life, using a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means ‘very dissatisfied’ and 10 means ‘very satisfied’. how do you feel about your life as a whole right now?‛ the cantril ladder question is ‚please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible. if the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?‛ this is necessary because the gallup world poll does not yet have a sample of country surveys asking both about life satisfaction and measure of trust. bjørnskov (2010b) and helliwell (2008) found systematic national-level differences between early waves of the cantril ladder used in gwp and life satisfaction in wvs. this led to the inclusion of a satisfaction with life question into the gwp to permit these differences to be better understood. using life satisfaction and cantril ladder answers from the same respondents, helliwell et al. (2010) show that while life satisfaction responses are higher and have a differently-shaped distribution than those for the cantril ladder, the two alternative measures nonetheless provide consistent evaluations of the relative importance of economic and social factors. this supports comparisons of results across surveys, especially results generated from individual-level regressions. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 3. trust makes lives better in this section we present some new evidence about the effects of trust on wellbeing4. we start with results based on data from the gallup world poll, explaining the links between subjective wellbeing and the expected frequency of wallet returns if found, alternatively, by neighbours, by police, and by strangers. we then consider evidence from the gss17, which asked the general interpersonal and neighbourhood trust questions, a question about the level of trust among workplace colleagues, and also about the likelihood of wallets being returned if found by police, neighbours, strangers, and by a clerk in a nearby store. this range of trust assessments will help us to see more clearly how the specific and general questions are related to each other. finally, we shall relate this new evidence to earlier results about the wellbeing effects of different sorts of specific and general trust. the 2006 wave of the gallup world poll included wallet trust questions in 86 national surveys. for 79 countries we have wallet data and full slates of the other data used in estimating the general life evaluation model in helliwell et al. (2010). there are interesting international differences in the patterns of answers to the wallet return questions. in the oecd countries, the expectation of wallet return if found by police is even higher than if found by neighbours, 91% vs. 89%. in the rest of the global sample, the situation is reversed, with 51% expecting wallets to be returned by police, compared to 61% by neighbours. as already suggested by these figures, trust or distrust in police is more shared among citizens of the same country than is trust in neighbours or trust in strangers. thus, as we show in figure 1 (p. 73), the international share of the variance of the global sample of individual answers to the police question is almost twice as high as for the likelihood of lost wallets being returned by neighbours, and is more than twice as high as for strangers. it should be noted at the outset that return of a lost wallet requires more than just honesty or absence of corruption, and much more than simply the assurance that people will do what they say they will do. it requires the wallet finder to reach out and perform a deliberate act of other-regarding kindness, one that can be foreseen to take time and trouble in order to reduce the loss of another. there is little chance of any personal gain for the finder, beyond the possible gratitude of the wallet owner and the pleasure received from being kind to others. yet in both copenhagen and oslo, all ten of the reader’s digest dropped wallets were returned to their owners, and the average across all the western european cities was about two-thirds. in the gallup data, which are based on nationally representative (rather than purely urban, as in the reader’s digest experiments) samples in mainly non-oecd countries, the numbers of respondents expecting return of their wallets if found by police, neighbours and strangers are 56%, 64% and 17%, respectively5. each of the four panels of table 2 (pp. 63-66) contains six alternative equations for subjective wellbeing. the first panel refers to neighbours, the second to police, the third to strangers, and the fourth to each individual’s average answer to the three different wallet questions. moving across the columns in each part of table 2, equation (1) is the basic equation, 4 the range of relevant measures of subjective well-being, their validity, and their policy relevance are discussed in detail in diener et al. (2009). 5 in the whole sample of more than 79,000 responses to the gallup wallet question, the expected average rate of return was about 0.08 lower for respondents living in cities rather than rural areas, with town dwellers in between. the gallup sample of countries asked the wallet question unfortunately has only 9 oecd countries, with only four countries appearing in both the gallup data and the reader’s digest experiments. the simple correlation between the two measures of wallet return (gallup expected and reader’s digest actual) is as high as that found by knack for the wvs trust data, but the sample is too small for the correlation to be statistically significant. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 including the individual-level determinants also used in helliwell et al. (2010) with the addition of answers to the question relating to whether or not a wallet was thought likely to be returned if found by a neighbour. the coefficient on the wallet-neighbour variables is 0.179, implying a 0.179 higher individual life evaluation, on a 0 to 10 scale, if a lost wallet is thought likely to be returned if found by a neighbour. equation (2) includes the same wallet question, but adds the individual’s assessment of the generality of corruption in business and government in his or her country. since there is interdependence between these two assessments6, the addition of the more general corruption evaluation slightly lowers the coefficient on the wallet variable, to 0.157. adding regional fixed effects in equation (3) tightens the fit of the equation slightly, and makes another small reduction in the wallet coefficient, reflecting the fact that there are systematic regional differences in the assessed likelihood of wallet return. equations (4) to (6) repeat equations (1) to (3), but in each case add a measure of net affect, to provide some idea of how robust the wallet responses are to the inclusion of a variable likely to capture personality differences among individuals and short-term factors that might affect both mood and life evaluations. as found earlier in helliwell (2008, table 4), adding separate measures of individual-level positive and negative affect significantly increases the explanatory power of the equation (with positive affect having a larger impact than does the absence of negative affect7), but has fairly small effects on the size and significance of other variables. this is because life circumstances, including such variables as family income and the climate of trust in which people live, have much greater impacts on life evaluations than on moods, making life evaluations a preferred vehicle for assessing the relative importance of various life circumstances. the other panels of table 2 repeat the same equations, but use different wallet variables. the second and third panels use respondents’ assessments of the likelihood of their lost wallets being returned if found by police officers or by strangers, respectively. the fourth panel uses the average of the three assessments. there is a fairly uniform pattern apparent when moving from panel to panel, and this pattern applies to each of the six alternative equations. the wellbeing effects of expected wallet return are slightly larger and more significant for police than for neighbours, and for either than for strangers. however, the most striking change happens when we move to the fourth panel, where the three measures are averaged. the coefficient on the average is much larger and more securely estimated than on any of the three component measures. the coefficients on the three component variables range from 0.159 for stranger to 0.218 for police (from equation (1) in each of the first three panels of table 2). by contrast, the coefficient is 0.359 for the average variable. that the coefficient should be larger for the combined variable is eminently reasonable, since there is no telling who might be the finder of a lost wallet, and one’s sense of security is surely higher when the likelihood of return is high regardless of who the finder might be. the individual measures no doubt have other links to subjective wellbeing. for example, whether a wallet would be returned by a neighbour has implications about the likely helpfulness of neighbours in other circumstances, with the same being true for police and strangers. thus when we turn, as we now do, to consider the income-equivalence of belief in the likelihood of wallet return, we should be thinking not just 6 for the global sample of individual-level responses, the simple correlation between the overall measure of wallet return (the average of the neighbour, police and stranger responses) and the assessment of corruption (the average of each individual’s zero or one answers as to the prevalence of corruption of business and of government in their country is -0.25). 7 this is consistent with the experimental results of cohen and pressman (2006) showing that the links between moods and resistance to the common cold are larger and more significant for positive than for negative affect. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 of how much a wallet is worth to us, in either material or psychological terms, but of a whole range of occasions when neighbours, police and strangers might be able and willing to be of assistance. to get an idea of the income-equivalent value of living in a society where wallets are expected to be returned, we can simply divide the wallet-trust coefficient by that of household income. using the combined wallet measure from equation (1) in the fourth panel of table 2, the compensating differential is 0.628 (=0.359/0.571). this is a large effect, especially if we compare countries with very different climates of trust. for example, to live in a country like norway (mean expected wallet return is 0.80, actual reader’s digest experimental return in oslo 100%) rather than one like tanzania (mean expected wallet return is 0.27) implies a life evaluation higher by 0.19 points on the ten-point scale, equivalent to an increase of 0.33 in the log of household income, representing an increase of almost 40% in the level of household income. in table 3 (pp. 67-68) we present our estimates of the life satisfaction effects of several different measures of trust using the gss17 data. the first equation includes three separate measures of trust, each of which takes a large and highly significant coefficient. this is so despite the inclusion of a large number of other individual and contextual effects, including several measures of social capital that might be expected to positively affect both trust and wellbeing. the gss17 data contain a number of measures of the size and quality of each respondent’s own social connections, as well as a number of census-based contextual variables. table 3 shows that french-speaking respondents have a significantly higher life satisfaction for a given trust level, but not if the trust variables are removed. this reflects much lower measured trust among francophones, with the implied negative effects of this lower average being offset by the coefficient shown in the table. relative to unmarried respondents living alone, those who are married or living as married are significantly happier, by about one-third of a point, while those who are separated, divorced or widowed are significantly less happy, by about one-quarter of a point. age effects are, as usually found in wellbeing studies (blanchflower and oswald 2008), represented by very significant negative effects on age and positive effects on age-squared, with an implied low point of the u-shape in life satisfaction at about age 50. the gender effect, for given levels of the economic and social variables, favours females by about 0.13 of a point, although this effect becomes smaller when the model is expanded, as shown in the right-hand side of table 3, to include measures of one’s feelings of belonging in one’s community, province and nation. the gss17 asks about each respondent’s typical labour force status over the previous 12 months. those who answer ‘unemployed’ have systematically lower life satisfaction above and beyond those effects flowing through the implied changes in household income. being unemployed is associated with life satisfaction being lower by two-thirds of a point on a tenpoint scale, far more than the effects of moving from the bottom to the top decile of the income distribution, although not as large as the combined effects of the various trust measures. the education variables have scant direct linkages to subjective wellbeing, except for a negative effect of the highest level in the base equation. as we shall see later, this is because there is a strong positive linkage from tertiary education to trust measures, and especially for the social trust variable. the equations also control for income, which is positively related to the level of education. these results suggest that the wellbeing effects of education are largely mediated by income and trust. all equations in the table include two variables that tap into basic elements of personality, as captured by the respondent’s feeling of control and capacity to implement change. these trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 variables are both strongly and positively related to life satisfaction, and should serve to reduce the likelihood of a positive bias on trust effects flowing from individual-level personality traits influencing both trust assessments and life satisfaction. respondents are asked to estimate the number of close friends and relatives they have, and each of the response categories is shown separately for friends and family. there is a strong dose-response relation in both cases. moving from each friends category to the next higher one adds about 0.1 to life satisfaction, with the size of the family effect being about 50% larger. there is some evidence of diminishing returns as circles of family and friends grow in size, since the number of additional friends or relatives involved grows with each move from one category to the next. other tests not shown in the table show that the extra life satisfaction, measured in points, from having more friends and relatives is constant for an equal proportionate increase in the number of friends and family, with some evidence of diminishing and even negative marginal effects for very large families. the significant positive coefficients on the see-friends and see-relatives variables show that the frequency of visits with family and friends, especially the latter, adds significantly to life satisfaction, above and beyond the benefits of having these support networks in place. membership measures of social capital have no direct effects on life satisfaction, beyond a positive effect of religious memberships in the basic equation. this is in an equation that already controls for the respondent’s friendships and trust assessments. we shall show later that both religious and non-religious memberships have strong positive effects on trust, suggesting that the wellbeing benefits of social networks, insofar as they are represented by memberships, are mediated by trust. there follow seven census-tract measures of the social context. none have significant effects on life satisfaction, so they will be described when we present our trust equations, as several of the census contextual variables come strongly into play at that time. the second and third equations add an increasing number of measures of identity, as represented by each respondent’s feelings of belonging to their local community, their province, and to canada as a whole. each of these identities matters significantly, with no evidence that having one identity detracts from the life satisfaction benefits of the others8. the fourth equation adds two additional trust measures: trust in co-workers and confidence in police. both are highly significant, with trust in co-workers being the single most significant of all of the trust measures9. the fifth and final equation in table 3 adds a second gss measure of trust in neighbours. because this final equation now includes two measures of neighbourhood trust, we can see that the more general of the two neighbourhood trust questions appears to subsume the answers to the wallet-found-by-neighbour measure, since the latter variable is no longer significant. finally, we note that when we include all of our directional trust measures (for co-workers, neighbours and police) the general social trust variable drops out. we think that this validates both types of measure. the social trust measure, which is very important on its own, is an umbrella supported by equally significant and collectively more informative evaluations about trust in different domains of life. 8 to check for interactions, we prepared a variable that takes the value of 1.0 for respondents who are very attached to their community, their province, and to canada as a whole. the variable takes an insignificant positive coefficient, implying that one can add additional nested or encompassing identities without reducing the life satisfaction benefits of other identities. thus there is no sense in which local, provincial and national attachments compete with one another in terms of what they contribute to life satisfaction. 9 a variety of workplace trust results, from both canada and the united states, are analyzed in more detail in helliwell and huang (2008, 2010) and helliwell et al. (2009). trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 to summarize our key results on the value of trust, and to facilitate their comparison with results from earlier studies, table 4 (pp. 69-70) shows estimates of income-equivalent values (often referred to as compensating differentials, as in helliwell and huang (2010)) for a number of trust measures. these include the results from the wallet-return measures used in equation (1) of table 2 and several measures of trust used in equation (5) of table 3, as well as from other samples of canadian and united states data. in all cases the compensating differentials of trust are seen to be very large. 4. trust saves lives although life evaluations provide a critically important way to assess the importance of trust, they cannot provide the whole story. beyond life evaluations lies life itself, and a range of studies have shown several channels through which trust improves health and saves lives. the mortality studies dovetail with and reinforce the evidence based on life evaluations. the dovetailing is obvious, since the life evaluations measure only the wellbeing of survivors, picking up mortality effects indirectly, via the loss of loved ones and expectations about what the future may hold in store. the direct mortality estimates thus fill in an important gap. the reinforcement comes about because many who may initially be doubtful about the value and meaning of subjective life evaluations may be convinced if the same variables that explain subjective life evaluations have consistent consequences for fatalities. for example, those who are willing to make inferences about utility only from what people do (the ‘revealed preference’ methodology), and not from what they say, cannot fail to accept suicide as evidence of individual choices with real consequences, even though of the most final and unfortunate sort. indeed, our studies of the links between social capital and suicide were undertaken to help answer the inevitable sceptical question from almost any audience, especially one of economists, asking how the high measures of subjective wellbeing in, e.g., sweden, could be reconciled with what were presumed to be very high suicide rates there. the answer, as reported in helliwell (2007), was obtained by using cross-national data to fit exactly comparable models for national averages for life satisfaction and for suicide rates. these models fit the cross-national data for global samples very well, with the same small set of variables explaining 60% and 81% of the cross-national variance of suicide and life satisfaction, respectively (helliwell 2007, p. 485). although the same variables appear in both equations, the coefficients differ, in just the way that theory and previous studies would suggest, with religion, social connections and divorce all having larger coefficients in the suicide equation, and the quality of government being more important for subjective wellbeing. interpersonal trust, as measured by the national average response to the social trust question, had equally large effects in both equations. sweden, which is explained very well by both equations, is nearer to the top of the wellbeing ranking than near the bottom of the suicide rankings because of its relatively high divorce rates, the relatively low importance of religion, and relatively high quality of government. these parallel results for suicide and subjective wellbeing are buttressed by large prospective studies in finland showing that males near the bottom of the life satisfaction scale were 25 times more likely to commit suicide over the following ten years than were other males of the same age (koivumaa-honkanen et al. 2001). the suicide results can be used to assess the life-saving potential for social trust, since international differences in the average answers to the social trust question play an important role in explaining international differences in suicide rates. among the countries covered by the three world values survey waves used for the suicide study, the average suicide rate is about trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 16.4 per 100,000 of population. the basic suicide equation in helliwell (2007, table 1) explains 58% of the variance of 117 average suicide rates drawn from different years in 50 countries around the world using only four key variables: social trust, membership in community organizations, strength of religious belief, and the divorce rate. the first three variables act to reduce suicide, while higher divorce rates are associated with higher suicide rates. the effects of social trust are large and statistically significant. moving 10% of the population from generally untrusting to generally trusting, a shift of 0.1 on the 0 to 1.0 scale for the social trust variable, or less than one standard deviation for the sample data, would be predicted to lead to a 2.3 (=0.1*23) drop in the suicide rate, more than 10% of its average value. in russia, with a population of roughly 150 million, this would translate into 3,600 lives saved each year. the idea that traffic fatalities, which are about as frequent as suicides, could be linked to social capital, and to trust in particular, occurred to helliwell when reading an article in le monde by a. grebjine. the article, which appeared during the course of an oecd meeting of social capital experts, attributed the much higher traffic fatality rates in france than in norway (about twice as high) to a greater norwegian adherence to a broader social contract. since the proportion of norwegians who think that others can be trusted is two to three times higher than in france, this raises the possibility that there might be a broader systematic relation between social trust and traffic fatalities. the test was done using the same equation and sample as was used for suicide, and both trust and memberships had highly significant roles in explaining international differences in traffic fatality rates (helliwell 2007, table vi). when the traffic fatality equation was extended to include some traditional determinants, including incomes and vehicle use, and the time trend toward safer cars and safer roads, the trust effect rose slightly, to almost exactly the same value as in the suicide equation. this was not simply due to the special circumstances of norway and france, as the results were essentially unchanged if these countries were removed. since traffic fatality and suicide rates are roughly equal, as are the trust effects in the two equations, changes in social trust have the same potential for saving lives in both cases. in particular, if social trust in france were as high as in norway, the french traffic fatality rate, according to the equation, would be reduced by more than half, taking it down to the norwegian level10. these are big effects, whether seen nationally or globally, where suicide and traffic fatalities are roughly tied as the tenth leading cause of death. 5. building and maintaining trust since trust has been shown to be closely linked to wellbeing, it is a natural next step to investigate how trust might be built and maintained (alesina and la ferrara 2002). although we do not have data sufficient to support study of the dynamics of trust, the cross-sectional surveys can at least give some idea of the circumstances that accompany high and low levels of trust, even if the direction and strength of the causal linkages remain to be unpacked. the canadian gss17 data are more useful for this purpose than the gallup world poll, since the gss17 includes many more individual-level measures of social capital and social connections, and its geo-coding permits us to include many census-based measures of the social context in which the respondents live. table 5 (pp. 71-72) shows equations for the individual-level responses to six different trust questions asked in the gss17. the first column is for the general interpersonal social trust 10 nagler (2009) also finds that a parallel result applies when he explains interstate differences in traffic fatalities within the united states. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 question, and column 2 models trust in co-workers. columns 3 and 4 model the answers to the gss general questions about trust in neighbours and strangers, respectively. columns 5 and 6 show equations examining answers about the likelihood of a lost wallet containing $200 to be returned if found by a neighbour or a stranger, respectively. we use the same independent variables in all equations, but we have strong prior expectations about their likely relative importance in different equations. for example, we would expect variables measuring the strength and length of an individual’s attachment to his or her neighbourhood to have much stronger effects in the equations explaining trust in neighbours. this is indeed the case, as the variables measuring number of years in the neighbourhood, census-tract average mobility, and census-tract population density all have much greater effects in columns 3 and 5, which refer specifically to trust in neighbours. the first variable in each equation (imported trust) tests for an effect found earlier by rice and feldman (1997) using us gss data, and by soroka et al. (2006) using canadian esc data. the variable measures the average level of social trust in the respondent’s country of birth (using data from the world values survey) less the average canadian value for the same world values survey trust measure. the coefficient on the variable thus measures the footprint of the trust level in the respondent’s country of birth. if the coefficient were 1.0, then immigrants would implicitly be answering the gss trust question based on their experiences in their country of birth. the gss results show a first-generation footprint of almost two-thirds in the social trust equation, with much smaller values for the more directional trust measures, and no effect at all for the wallet questions. milroy (2009) found some evidence of this footprint decaying with years since immigration. she also tested the corresponding second-generation variable for those who were born in canada with one or more immigrant parents. this effect was smaller and less significant in all cases, thus supporting the presumption that the social trust question is taken to refer to the surroundings one knows, with the imprinted effects from one’s earlier environment fading with the number of years one lives in canada11. similarly, the effect is less where the question is very specific, and closely related to everyday life in canada, such as when the respondent is asked about what would happen if they lost their wallet in their canadian neighbourhood. the level of social trust among french-speakers is significantly lower than for other respondents, by almost one-quarter. the effect is very much smaller for all of the more specific trust measures than for general trust. longpré (2009) finds that the lower social trust is concentrated among those francophones living in census tracts with a high proportion of catholics, and among quebec-resident francophones who identify strongly with canada. she suggests that the former result might be a footprint of the long church domination of quebec society. the latter effect could reflect a situation where the emergence of secessionist views in quebec poses especial identity risks, and diminished social trust, among those quebec francophones who feel the greatest sense of belonging to canada, since the possibility of secession poses for them the greatest problems. but, as longpré argues, these results need more unpacking. turning to demography, the married are significantly more trusting than the rest of the population, with no significant differences among the remaining groups. all trust measures appear to increase with age, although this effect is not statistically significant for expected wallet return by neighbours. workplace trust and trust in strangers appear to decrease with 11 in her gss17 equation for social trust, she finds a coefficient of 0.736 (p<0.001) on imported trust, compared to 0.320 (p<0.05) for parental trust. this confirms the declining-effects pattern first documented in soroka et al. (2006). trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 age-squared, which implies an inverted u-shape for these two trust measures. women are significantly less trusting (than are men) of co-workers, strangers, and wallet return by a neighbour. they are also less likely to give positive answers to the compound social trust question, probably because of the compound nature of the question. an earlier us gss split the two parts of the question, and it was found (helliwell and putnam 2007, p.15) that women were more trusting than men when asked merely if other people can be trusted, but were also more likely to be cautious, and agree that ‘you can’t be too careful when dealing with people’. the differences in the sources of different types of trust become even more apparent when mobility is assessed. the individual-level mobility variable measures the number of years that the individual has lived in the same neighbourhood, measured as a fraction of five years, since ‘five or more’ is at the top of the response scale. staying rooted in the same neighbourhood for a longer period, at least up to five years, is associated with higher assessed values of all types of trust. as expected, the effects are three times larger for neighbourhood trust than they are for trust in other domains. the links between social trust and education, especially tertiary education, are positive and large at both the individual and census tract levels. this appears to be an almost universal finding in trust equations (helliwell and putnam 2007), providing one of the strongest pieces of evidence for positive external effects of increasing education levels. the next two variables measure each respondent’s memberships in religious and nonreligious groups. religious memberships have significant positive effects (p<0.001) for all sorts of trust, and other memberships have equally significant effects for all but trust in neighbours and co-workers. the effects of both types of memberships are largest in the social trust equation12, where they are significantly greater for other memberships. we found in the gss life satisfaction equations that there were strong effects from several different sorts of trust, but no direct effects from memberships. the combination of the life satisfaction and trust equations suggests a strong effect from memberships to life satisfaction, apparently entirely mediated by several types of trust. this causal interpretation has been called into question by others (e.g. uslaner 2002) who would argue that the causal linkage is more likely to flow from trust to engagement rather than from engagement to trust, as we argue. while we would certainly agree that there may be a positive effect running from trust to engagement, we are convinced by the experimental evidence that manipulates engagement and finds significant changes in estimates of social trust. see, for example, the field experiments of gyarmati et al. (2008) and lab experiments running back over fifty years, from deutsch (1958) through scores of other controlled experiments. meta-analyses of these results from sally (1958) to balliet (2010) show that subjects who have communicated with each other are far more likely to display trust in subsequent experiments, with face-to-face communications having effect sizes twice as large as written or electronic communications. these controlled experiments, where causal direction is not at issue, are very compatible with our gss17 results showing that memberships, network size and frequency of face-to-face contacts all have positive dose-response linkages with trust assessments. the final two individual-level variables are intended to control for aspects of each individual’s personality and circumstances. they are strongly significant, and are intended to limit the risks that other variables should be picking up individual-level personality differences 12 stolle (1998), using german and swedish data, finds a similar positive relation between association memberships and social trust, plus evidence that there is a positive feedback loop, with those who are initially more trusting being more likely to join groups, while those who have been in a group for a few years have significantly higher trust than new members, with some fall-off indicated also for long-time members. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 that might otherwise bias the effects being measured elsewhere in the equation. household income does not appear in the trust equations, since it was found to have no significant effects. we turn now to consider community-level effects. the level of trust, and especially of neighbourhood trust, depends not only on the characteristics and life circumstances of each individual, but also on those of people living around them. to separate these two sorts of effect requires the sort of two-level modelling that we show in table 3, with separate accounting of individual-level and community-level variables, and with errors clustered at the level of the census tract, which is our primary measure of the local community context. putnam (2007) uses precisely the same analytical structure to show that several community-level variables13 have important effects on neighbourhood trust. we have a number of the same variables, and find strong contextual effects especially for neighbourhood trust. for general social trust, we find strong contextual effects only for education (echoing the earlier results of helliwell and putnam 2007, and others 14 ), and for the census tract’s population share of visible minorities. for neighbourhood trust, as would be expected, the range of significant contextual variables is larger. the results confirm theoretical expectations that trust takes time to build and maintain, with this process being more difficult in communities with fast rates of turnover. for example, both census-tract population density and population mobility strongly reduce the level of neighbourhood trust. the census tract share of visible minorities has a negative effect for all the trust measures15. 6. comparing actual and expected trustworthiness the toronto star (zlomislic 2009) recently replicated the reader’s digest dropped-wallet experiments that inspired the subsequent canadian gss and gallup world poll survey questions. this makes possible a direct comparison between actual trustworthiness, as measured by the actual frequency of wallet return, with expected trustworthiness, as measured by survey responses about the likelihood of a lost wallet being returned. respondents are asked about the expected trustworthiness of different hypothetical wallet-finders. as we have shown earlier in the paper, there are large differences among countries, and among cities, in survey responses about the likelihood of a lost wallet being returned. the forecasts also depend on who is stipulated as finding the wallet. expectation of more likely wallet return was shown to 13 ranked in order of their importance, in terms of standardized beta coefficients, the top community contextual variables putnam found, in the explanation of trust in neighbours, were: census tract poverty rate, county level nonviolent crimes rate, census tract herfindahl index of ethnic homogeneity, census tract population density, census tract population mobility, census tract percent renters and census tract percent with a bachelor’s degree or more (putnam 2007, p. 152). 14 the implied community-level linkage running from education to trust (obtained by summing the individual-level and contextual effects) may be less securely established across nations, as argued by bjørnskov (2006). our two-level results using data from a single country are less open to the risks of reverse causation than are studies based on national average data, although it is still natural to expect that societies or communities marked by high mutual trust are more likely to be inclined to provide public goods and services, including especially health and education. 15 there were no effects found for the immigrant share in the census tract, beyond whatever effect that migration would have on census tract levels of mobility and diversity. our results for income diversity match those of putnam, while those for ethnic diversity match those of kazemipur (2006) rather than those of putnam. however, it is likely that the percent of the population who are visible minorities (many of whom are recent migrants, and come from many different cultures) is representing the same effect that putnam found with his ethnic diversity measure. milroy’s analysis of social trust in gss17 shows no negative effect from visible minority share, but does not include the herfindahl diversity index, and thus what we find as offsetting effects from diversity and visible minority share are shown implicitly by her equation as an insignificant net effect. more detailed analysis of these effects is perhaps better done with the canadian ethnic diversity survey, which has a larger sample and more details about each respondent’s migration and ethnic background. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 be tightly linked with subjective wellbeing. we argued at the beginning of the paper that these swb-supporting feelings of trust will be sustainable in the longer term only if they are in turn based on credible evidence of trustworthy behaviour (see also putnam 2000, 135-6). trust eventually crumbles in the face of untrustworthy behaviour, and has been shown to be hard to rebuild. on the other hand, a climate of unsubstantiated distrust is needlessly destructive of wellbeing, leading people to draw back and ‘hunker down’ (as emphasized by putnam 2007), thereby losing opportunities for wellbeing-enhancing social interactions. thus it is valuable to be able to see if experience supports trust judgments. such evidence is hard to come by, since it is almost impossible to find matching data on expected and actual trustworthiness. fortunately, the recent wallet experiments in toronto enabled an accurate matching, and hence permit a direct comparison of the actual frequency of returned wallets to the estimates made by gss respondents living in the same community. all of the returned wallets were found by strangers (since the identical dropped wallets, containing money, bank cards, a personal letter and an emergency telephone number, all belonged to the same fictitious individual), so their frequency of return can be compared directly with the gss survey responses of the likelihood of a lost wallet being returned if found by a stranger. as shown in figure 2 (p. 73), torontonians are far more altruistic than they think each other to be. the forecast frequency for return of a lost wallet found by a stranger in toronto was 25%, while in fact 16 of the 20 wallets were returned, for an 80% return rate. there were many survey respondents, and a small number of wallets dropped, so the 95% confidence region shown by the vertical bar is much tighter for the survey than for the actual number of wallets returned16. nonetheless, a t-test of the difference in means has a value of 8.0, suggesting that there is less than one chance in a hundred billion that the two means are the same. the difference is large as well as significant—more than three times as many wallets were returned than was forecast by the survey respondents17. this significant underestimation of the trustworthiness of others, as confirmed by many experiments (e.g. ashraf et al. 2006, fetchenhauer and dunning 2009) also has parallels in crime statistics 18 . for example, comparable criminal victimization surveys take place in many countries, wherein, among many other questions, respondents are asked whether they have been victims of attempted or actual burglary in the previous year, and also how likely they think themselves to be burglarized in the next year. the average among 30 countries for attempted or completed actual burglaries was 3.5% (about half of which were attempts; van dijk et al. 2007, p. 69). by contrast, the average fraction of respondents who thought they were 16 the asymmetry of the error bar for the experimental data is a consequence of the underlying binomial distribution. 17 there are some practical complications with the experiments that might qualify these conclusions slightly. on the one hand, wallets were apparently returned by second finders in two cases. one previous finder tried unsuccessfully to use the bank card, but left the cash intact before dropping the wallet again beside the unco-operating bank machine. the other first finder apparently took the cash and returned the wallet to the ground. the four unreturned wallets may have never been found by anyone. if we adjust the data to treat the two first finders as untrustworthy, and assume that all four of the never-returned wallets were found but not returned, then we have the most conservative way of treating the data, as 16 returned wallets out of 22. but the difference of means is still very significant (t=7.27), with less than one chance in a billion of the two means being the same. 18 fetchenhauer and dunning (2009) also show, fortunately, that although people lose subjective well-being by their low trust estimates, they somewhat mitigate the adverse social consequences by being more trusting of others than self-interested calculations would suggest they should be, in the light of their estimates of the trustworthiness of others. since the survey trust measures used in this paper are basically the perceived trustworthiness of others (fehr et al. 2003, sapienza et al. 2007), they do not directly capture the unconditional kindness behaviour found by ashraf et al. (2006). trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 likely or very likely to be burglarized over the following year was 29% (van dijk et al. 2007, p. 128). what are the likely causes and consequences of these large and widespread divergences between actual and expected trustworthiness? it is plausible that media and other reports of bad events lead to over-estimation of their likely frequency. we are not studying here the widely noted distinction between risk of crime and fear of crime (e.g. rountree and land 1996), but between perceived and actual incidence of crime, or, in our lost-wallet case, between the perceived and actual likelihood of altruistic behaviour. what are the likely wellbeing consequences of such a gap? first, it is important to know whether it is the perceived or actual likelihood of behaviour that influences wellbeing. we have already shown that the perceived likelihood of wallet return is strongly linked to subjective wellbeing. but we do not know whether trustworthiness affects subjective wellbeing only through trust perceptions, or by some other channels. we do not have enough wallet data to assess this possibility, but we can ask, using the international victimization survey data, whether actual or perceived rates of incidence for burglaries are correlated with international differences in subjective wellbeing. we find, for the 28 countries that have world values survey life satisfaction data and both estimates of burglary frequency, that the simple cross-country correlation between life satisfaction and burglaries is zero for the sum of actual and attempted burglaries and -0.37 (p=0.05) between life satisfaction and the average perception of future burglary risk19. thus it would appear that it is perceived rather than actual trustworthiness that is directly linked to subjective wellbeing. if this is confirmed more broadly, it suggests that substantial, and essentially costless, increases in subjective wellbeing could be obtained if people were better informed, and hence more optimistic, about the trustworthiness of others. there may also be a virtuous circle, whereby greater confidence in the norms of wallet return and other altruistic acts would encourage people to engage more freely with others, and to raise the standards for their own behaviour, because such norms are heavily dependent on the expected behaviour of others. 7. conclusions we have confirmed that trust and wellbeing are tightly linked. our new results show that those who feel themselves to be living in a trustworthy environment have much higher levels of subjective wellbeing. worldwide, using the data from the gallup world poll, those who think their lost wallet would be returned if found by a neighbour or the police value their lives more than 7% higher than do those who do not think their wallets would be returned.20 this is about the same increase in subjective wellbeing that would be associated with an increase of household income of about two-thirds. although causal links between trust and subjective wellbeing cannot be identified by our regressions, evidence on the stability of trust across generations, and results showing that experimental administration of oxytocin (kosfeld 2005) increased trusting behaviour, but did not alter evaluations of the trustworthiness of others, combine to give us some confidence that substantial causal effects run from trust to subjective wellbeing (since our trust variables are all estimates of the trustworthiness of others). caution is needed in interpreting the size of the estimated effects, since bi-directional positive effects are to be expected. 19 we also find that the link between perceived risk of burglaries and swl is entirely mediated by social trust, as the partial correlation between burglary risk and swl is zero once social trust is taken into account. 20 the percentage is based on the coefficient on the combined wallet response in equation (1) of table 3-d, divided by the global average value of the responses to the cantril ladder, then converted to percentage form. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 in the canadian data, which include a larger number of trust questions, the wellbeing effects of living in a high-trust environment are even greater. having high trust in co-workers, which we find to be the largest of all the specific directional trust measures, is associated with 7.6% higher life satisfaction. this is followed by trust in neighbours (5%), confidence in police (3%), and a belief that a stranger would return the lost wallet (2.5%). since these effects are all estimated at the same time (as shown in equation 5 of table 3, and converted to percentage form in relation to sample-average satisfaction with life), we can calculate how much higher life satisfaction is for those who have high levels of trust in all these life domains. the answer is more than 18%. even these large combined effects may not be the whole story, since the equations used for these calculations also include several key measures of belonging, some of which are clearly based on, and are contributing to, levels of trust within the community. for example, someone who feels a strong sense of belonging to their community is estimated to be 11% more satisfied with his or her life. as shown in the various panels of table 4, these effects are all very large when measured in terms of the income changes that would produce the same consequences for subjective wellbeing. since trust is so directly and strongly linked to subjective wellbeing, in addition to supporting many other economic and social activities that also affect wellbeing directly, it is important to consider what contributes to building and maintaining trust. survey data and experiments alike suggest that trust is built on a base of shared positive experience, and is nurtured by continued connections. we find, using the rich social context details of the canadian gss17, that the quality of social connections matters a lot to the maintenance of trust. in ways that validate the trust measures and theories of trust formation, general factors matter most for the determination of social trust, while neighbourhood characteristics matter most for neighbourhood trust. for example, the effects of individual-level and census-tract-level measures of education are strongly supportive of social trust, as are the respondent’s memberships in social organizations, and the level of social trust in the country where the respondent was born. for neighbourhood trust, by contrast, what matters most is how long the respondent has lived in his or her neighbourhood, and how easy it is to meet and interact with neighbours in friendly ways. thus respondents who live in census tracts where the population is dense and highly mobile are less likely to trust their neighbours, or to judge that neighbours would be likely to return each other’s lost wallets. similarly, a feeling of belonging to one’s community is more strongly associated with neighbourhood trust, while a sense of belonging to canada is more strongly associated with general social trust. community-level and national belonging are significantly related to all types of trust, with the effect sizes varying in the theoretically expected ways. overall, our results reveal sufficiently strong linkages between trust and wellbeing to support much more study of how trust can be built and maintained, or repaired when it has been damaged. our more tentative analysis of the factors supporting different types of trust suggests that more attention should be paid to creating the time and spaces for social connections to flower. since more and more people are living in large urban areas with mobile and sometimes rootless populations, it is ever more important to design and manage urban areas in ways that foster levels of engagement that support mutual trust and hence wellbeing. finally, our comparison of the actual and expected frequencies of wallet return suggests that people are unrealistically pessimistic about the trustworthiness of others. this presumably remediable pessimism is likely to lead to lower subjective wellbeing, and to stand in the way of trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 the expanded social interactions that are so important in building and maintaining a trustworthy social fabric. acknowledgements we are grateful for invaluable access to the gallup world poll and for access to the canadian gss17 data through the ubc research data centre supported by statistics canada. this paper is part of the ‘social interactions, identity and well-being’ research program of the canadian institute for advanced research, and is supported also by grants from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. we are grateful for this support, for the research collaboration of chris 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(2009) ‘we dropped 20 wallets around the gta. good news. most came back’ toronto star april 25: a1. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2580354 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1043463195007001004 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.08.027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfn058 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0297.00609 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 tables table 1-a: correlation matrix for trust measures in gwp 2006 expected wallet return by neighbours expected wallet return by police expected wallet return by strangers average of the three wallet measures expected wallet return by neighbours 1.000 expected wallet return by police 0.494*** 1.000 (0.000) expected wallet return by strangers 0.262*** 0.290*** 1.000 (0.000) (0.000) average of the three wallet measures 0.800*** 0.814*** 0.634*** 1.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) p-values in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 table 1-b: correlation matrix for trust measures in canadian gss17 general trust expected wallet return by neighbours expected wallet return by strangers trust in neighbours trust in coworkers confidence in police general trust 1.000 expected wallet return by neighbours 0.244*** 1.000 (0.000) expected wallet return by strangers 0.266*** 0.348*** 1.000 (0.000) (0.000) trust in neighbours 0.362*** 0.481*** 0.233*** 1.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) trust in co-workers 0.348*** 0.253*** 0.186*** 0.485*** 1.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) confidence in police 0.154*** 0.180*** 0.109*** 0.214*** 0.189*** 1.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) p-values in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 table 2-a: wellbeing equations, gallup world poll 2006 dependent variables: cantril ladder (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) log of hh income 0.578*** 0.575*** 0.469*** 0.559*** 0.557*** 0.442*** (0.036) (0.036) (0.036) (0.035) (0.036) (0.035) expected wallet return by neighbours 0.179** 0.157** 0.150** 0.152** 0.127* 0.117* (0.058) (0.053) (0.048) (0.054) (0.050) (0.045) female 0.089** 0.104** 0.100** 0.110*** 0.121*** 0.116*** (0.028) (0.031) (0.030) (0.029) (0.032) (0.032) married or as married 0.055 0.043 0.107** 0.032 0.028 0.081* (0.041) (0.041) (0.038) (0.040) (0.041) (0.037) separated, divorced or widowed -0.031 -0.014 -0.033 -0.026 -0.014 -0.042 (0.063) (0.067) (0.066) (0.065) (0.069) (0.068) age -0.027*** -0.028*** -0.032*** -0.022** -0.023*** -0.027*** (0.006) (0.007) (0.007) (0.006) (0.00667) (0.007) age squared divided by 100 0.025*** 0.026*** 0.028*** 0.021** 0.022** 0.024*** (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.006) (0.007) (0.007) life choice freedom 0.443*** 0.418*** 0.354*** 0.393*** 0.374*** 0.310*** (0.056) (0.052) (0.046) (0.055) (0.054) (0.047) friends to count on 0.531*** 0.556*** 0.494*** 0.447*** 0.478*** 0.412*** (0.051) (0.053) (0.045) (0.049) (0.050) (0.043) not enough money for food -0.705*** -0.673*** -0.642*** -0.607*** -0.586*** -0.546*** (0.048) (0.051) (0.047) (0.046) (0.049) (0.043) donation 0.332*** 0.307*** 0.218*** 0.290*** 0.277*** 0.188*** (0.059) (0.054) (0.044) (0.056) (0.052) (0.043) volunteering 0.065 0.042 0.052 0.045 0.027 0.035 (0.043) (0.045) (0.041) (0.041) (0.043) (0.040) helped strangers 0.142** 0.148** 0.130** 0.138** 0.147** 0.137** (0.044) (0.044) (0.041) (0.043) (0.044) (0.042) importance of religion in life -0.070 -0.058 -0.037 -0.109 -0.096 -0.061 (0.086) (0.081) (0.065) (0.085) (0.079) (0.063) church attendance -0.015 -0.012 0.019 -0.037 -0.032 0.008 (0.053) (0.054) (0.051) (0.049) (0.051) (0.048) perception of corruption -0.392*** -0.283*** -0.344** -0.238** (0.105) (0.073) (0.105) (0.070) net affect 0.570*** 0.551*** 0.552*** (0.045) (0.048) (0.045) constant 5.879*** 6.192*** 7.162*** 5.672*** 5.963*** 6.878*** (0.200) (0.236) (0.171) (0.198) (0.234) (0.170) region dummies no no yes no no yes number of obs. 57042 48597 48597 53563 46018 46018 r-squared 0.262 0.268 0.292 0.277 0.281 0.305 standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 table 2-b: wellbeing equations, gallup world poll 2006 dependent variables: cantril ladder (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) log of hh income 0.570*** 0.569*** 0.460*** 0.551*** 0.552*** 0.434*** (0.037) (0.037) (0.037) (0.036) (0.037) (0.035) expected wallet return by police 0.218** 0.177** 0.163** 0.196** 0.156** 0.138** (0.065) (0.060) (0.049) (0.063) (0.058) (0.048) female 0.080** 0.096** 0.091** 0.099*** 0.112*** 0.106** (0.028) (0.031) (0.030) (0.029) (0.032) (0.032) married or as married 0.052 0.045 0.108** 0.028 0.028 0.082* (0.041) (0.041) (0.038) (0.041) (0.041) (0.037) separated, divorced or widowed -0.017 0.005 -0.027 -0.013 0.007 -0.035 (0.063) (0.068) (0.065) (0.066) (0.071) (0.068) age -0.026*** -0.026*** -0.030*** -0.020** -0.022** -0.026*** (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) age squared divided by 100 0.024** 0.024** 0.025*** 0.019** 0.021** 0.021** (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) life choice freedom 0.426*** 0.405*** 0.340*** 0.383*** 0.366*** 0.302*** (0.056) (0.055) (0.049) (0.056) (0.056) (0.050) friends to count on 0.556*** 0.578*** 0.514*** 0.471*** 0.496*** 0.428*** (0.054) (0.058) (0.048) (0.050) (0.053) (0.045) not enough money for food -0.713*** -0.692*** -0.657*** -0.607*** -0.596*** -0.554*** (0.052) (0.054) (0.052) (0.049) (0.051) (0.047) donation 0.323*** 0.297*** 0.207*** 0.281*** 0.268*** 0.179*** (0.059) (0.055) (0.046) (0.056) (0.053) (0.045) volunteering 0.068 0.048 0.058 0.054 0.038 0.0454 (0.045) (0.047) (0.043) (0.042) (0.044) (0.041) helped strangers 0.125** 0.138** 0.123** 0.119** 0.134** 0.125** (0.045) (0.045) (0.042) (0.045) (0.046) (0.044) importance of religion in life -0.080 -0.076 -0.052 -0.119 -0.113 -0.077 (0.084) (0.081) (0.067) (0.0822) (0.0779) (0.0640) church attendance -0.011 -0.005 0.034 -0.033 -0.026 0.022 (0.052) (0.055) (0.052) (0.049) (0.052) (0.049) perception of corruption -0.365*** -0.266** -0.315** -0.221** (0.105) (0.078) (0.104) (0.075) net affect 0.565*** 0.547*** 0.551*** (0.047) (0.051) (0.048) constant 5.853*** 6.160*** 7.116*** 5.632*** 5.921*** 6.824*** (0.201) (0.240) (0.176) (0.200) (0.240) (0.177) region dummies no no yes no no yes number of obs. 53431 45806 45806 50228 43393 43393 r-squared 0.265 0.272 0.295 0.279 0.284 0.308 standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 table 2-c: wellbeing equations, gallup world poll 2006 dependent variables: cantril ladder (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) log of hh income 0.579*** 0.577*** 0.473*** 0.562*** 0.561*** 0.447*** (0.036) (0.036) (0.037) (0.036) (0.036) (0.035) expected wallet return by strangers 0.159* 0.110+ 0.084 0.144* 0.094 0.074 (0.070) (0.065) (0.050) (0.068) (0.063) (0.050) female 0.098** 0.113*** 0.110*** 0.116*** 0.129*** 0.124*** (0.029) (0.032) (0.031) (0.030) (0.033) (0.033) married or as married 0.036 0.027 0.091* 0.017 0.015 0.068+ (0.041) (0.041) (0.039) (0.041) (0.041) (0.037) separated, divorced or widowed -0.007 0.011 -0.008 0.002 0.0116 -0.019 (0.069) (0.073) (0.068) (0.071) (0.075) (0.071) age -0.025*** -0.026*** -0.031*** -0.020** -0.022** -0.026*** (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) age squared divided by 100 0.023** 0.023** 0.026*** 0.018* 0.021** 0.022** (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) life choice freedom 0.448*** 0.430*** 0.362*** 0.394*** 0.380*** 0.311*** (0.054) (0.052) (0.045) (0.056) (0.054) (0.048) friends to count on 0.557*** 0.576*** 0.510*** 0.466*** 0.485*** 0.416*** (0.053) (0.055) (0.046) (0.051) (0.053) (0.044) not enough money for food -0.696*** -0.668*** -0.635*** -0.593*** -0.575*** -0.534*** (0.049) (0.050) (0.047) (0.045) (0.047) (0.042) donation 0.321*** 0.294*** 0.206*** 0.280*** 0.265*** 0.175*** (0.058) (0.055) (0.044) (0.056) (0.053) (0.042) volunteering 0.048 0.036 0.047 0.030 0.024 0.033 (0.041) (0.044) (0.040) (0.039) (0.042) (0.039) helped strangers 0.143** 0.151** 0.131** 0.135** 0.147** 0.134** (0.044) (0.045) (0.041) (0.044) (0.045) (0.043) importance of religion in life -0.085 -0.071 -0.051 -0.119 -0.106 -0.072 (0.087) (0.082) (0.065) (0.086) (0.081) (0.063) church attendance -0.006 -0.011 0.022 -0.027 -0.028 0.013 (0.051) (0.053) (0.051) (0.048) (0.050) (0.048) perception of corruption -0.403*** -0.291*** -0.354*** -0.245*** (0.101) (0.069) (0.100) (0.065) net affect 0.563*** 0.547*** 0.549*** (0.047) (0.050) (0.048) constant 5.934*** 6.269*** 7.294*** 5.725*** 6.046*** 7.017*** (0.205) (0.236) (0.164) (0.204) (0.235) (0.164) region dummies no no yes no no yes number of obs. 50813 44048 44048 48002 41875 41875 r-squared 0.256 0.264 0.288 0.271 0.277 0.301 standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 table 2-d: wellbeing equations, gallup world poll 2006 dependent variables: cantril ladder (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) log of hh income 0.571*** 0.570*** 0.458*** 0.554*** 0.555*** 0.434*** (0.038) (0.038) (0.038) (0.037) (0.038) (0.036) average of the three wallet measures 0.359** 0.292** 0.258*** 0.320** 0.251** 0.215** (0.106) (0.092) (0.072) (0.101) (0.089) (0.070) female 0.085** 0.102** 0.096** 0.101** 0.116*** 0.110** (0.029) (0.032) (0.031) (0.031) (0.033) (0.033) married or as married 0.041 0.034 0.092* 0.024 0.023 0.072+ (0.041) (0.041) (0.038) (0.042) (0.041) (0.038) separated, divorced or widowed 0.002 0.031 0.002 0.012 0.034 -0.005 (0.070) (0.074) (0.071) (0.073) (0.077) (0.074) age -0.024** -0.025** -0.030*** -0.019* -0.020** -0.025** (0.007) (0.008) (0.008) (0.007) (0.0076) (0.008) age squared divided by 100 0.022** 0.022** 0.025** 0.017* 0.019* 0.021** (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.007) (0.008) (0.008) life choice freedom 0.425*** 0.407*** 0.339*** 0.378*** 0.364*** 0.296*** (0.059) (0.057) (0.051) (0.059) (0.059) (0.053) friends to count on 0.542*** 0.561*** 0.492*** 0.466*** 0.486*** 0.414*** (0.055) (0.056) (0.048) (0.053) (0.055) (0.046) not enough money for food -0.696*** -0.672*** -0.634*** -0.596*** -0.582*** -0.538*** (0.052) (0.052) (0.051) (0.049) (0.050) (0.046) donation 0.300*** 0.281*** 0.186*** 0.259*** 0.250*** 0.155*** (0.058) (0.055) (0.044) (0.056) (0.054) (0.042) volunteering 0.050 0.039 0.046 0.038 0.034 0.038 (0.043) (0.046) (0.042) (0.041) (0.044) (0.041) helped strangers 0.121* 0.130** 0.114* 0.115* 0.126** 0.118* (0.046) (0.046) (0.044) (0.046) (0.047) (0.045) importance of religion in life -0.080 -0.077 -0.046 -0.115 -0.112 -0.069 (0.085) (0.081) (0.066) (0.083) (0.078) (0.063) church attendance -0.011 -0.008 0.031 -0.027 -0.024 0.024 (0.053) (0.055) (0.052) (0.050) (0.052) (0.050) perception of corruption -0.359*** -0.251*** -0.320** -0.215** (0.101) (0.070) (0.101) (0.067) net affect 0.539*** 0.527*** 0.531*** (0.047) (0.051) (0.049) constant 5.818*** 6.133*** 7.157*** 5.607*** 5.910*** 6.892*** (0.220) (0.252) (0.185) (0.217) (0.250) (0.184) region dummies no no yes no no yes number of obs. 45630 39980 39980 43336 38168 38168 r-squared 0.266 0.272 0.298 0.279 0.284 0.309 standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 table 3: life satisfaction equations, canadian gss17 dependent variables: life satisfaction (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) log of hh income 0.174*** 0.178*** 0.179*** 0.170*** 0.166*** (0.021) (0.022) (0.021) (0.022) (0.022) expected wallet return by neighbours 0.285*** 0.185*** 0.172*** 0.104* 0.043 (0.045) (0.044) (0.045) (0.046) (0.050) expected wallet return by strangers 0.268*** 0.237*** 0.237*** 0.206*** 0.203*** (0.047) (0.049) (0.050) (0.051) (0.050) general trust 0.100*** 0.075** 0.067* -0.035 -0.063* (0.029) (0.028) (0.028) (0.028) (0.029) french as the first language 0.283*** 0.222*** 0.301*** 0.267*** 0.274*** (0.040) (0.040) (0.039) (0.038) (0.038) married or as married 0.344*** 0.305*** 0.305*** 0.298*** 0.295*** (0.037) (0.036) (0.035) (0.035) (0.035) separated, divorced or widowed -0.246*** -0.252*** -0.259*** -0.269*** -0.276*** (0.056) (0.057) (0.056) (0.056) (0.058) age -0.070*** -0.069*** -0.070*** -0.076*** -0.075*** (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) (0.005) age squared divided by 100 0.070*** 0.067*** 0.068*** 0.075*** 0.074*** (0.005) (0.006) (0.005) (0.006) (0.006) female 0.125*** 0.113*** 0.115*** 0.107*** 0.110*** (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) unemployed -0.647*** -0.619*** -0.613*** -0.572*** -0.567*** (0.099) (0.101) (0.101) (0.101) (0.103) high school education -0.025 -0.004 0.002 -0.003 -0.002 (0.052) (0.050) (0.050) (0.049) (0.050) started college or university -0.099* -0.051 -0.045 -0.049 -0.048 (0.043) (0.043) (0.042) (0.040) (0.040) university degree -0.189*** -0.127** -0.124** -0.134** -0.134** (0.046) (0.045) (0.045) (0.045) (0.045) religious group membership 0.091** 0.039 0.044 0.041 0.045 (0.034) (0.034) (0.034) (0.033) (0.033) non-religious group membership 0.010 -0.019 -0.018 -0.019 -0.018 (0.029) (0.028) (0.028) (0.028) (0.028) years living in the neighbourhood 0.137** 0.054 0.062 0.044 0.023 (0.045) (0.045) (0.045) (0.044) (0.045) sense of control over things 0.271*** 0.265*** 0.265*** 0.255*** 0.250*** (0.049) (0.048) (0.048) (0.048) (0.048) ability to change things in life 0.709*** 0.700*** 0.687*** 0.656*** 0.660*** (0.072) (0.075) (0.075) (0.074) (0.074) number of close friends: 1 or 2 0.110 0.110 0.117 0.109 0.110 (0.083) (0.084) (0.083) (0.082) (0.082) number of close friends: 3 to 5 0.241** 0.219* 0.224** 0.199* 0.190* (0.087) (0.087) (0.086) (0.081) (0.082) number of close friends: 6 to 10 0.329*** 0.269** 0.273** 0.238** 0.226** (0.092) (0.094) (0.092) (0.085) (0.087) number of close friends: 11 to 20 0.382*** 0.301** 0.303** 0.263** 0.254** (0.103) (0.103) (0.100) (0.093) (0.094) number of close 0.432** 0.282* 0.295* 0.235+ 0.218 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 friends: over 20 (0.148) (0.141) (0.138) (0.132) (0.133) frequency of seeing close friends 0.161*** 0.108*** 0.110*** 0.096*** 0.097*** (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) number of close relatives: 1 or 2 0.381*** 0.332*** 0.335*** 0.316*** 0.323*** (0.081) (0.082) (0.082) (0.082) (0.083) number of close relatives: 3 to 5 0.526*** 0.460*** 0.459*** 0.427*** 0.436*** (0.076) (0.078) (0.078) (0.078) (0.079) number of close relatives: 6 to 10 0.618*** 0.524*** 0.520*** 0.481*** 0.489*** (0.079) (0.080) (0.080) (0.080) (0.081) number of close relatives: 11 to 20 0.700*** 0.603*** 0.596*** 0.547*** 0.555*** (0.091) (0.088) (0.088) (0.088) (0.089) number of close relatives: over 20 0.658*** 0.524*** 0.521*** 0.495*** 0.499*** (0.112) (0.108) (0.108) (0.107) (0.108) frequency of seeing close relatives 0.096*** 0.066* 0.068** 0.069** 0.074** (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) (0.026) variables at the census tract level population density -0.473 -0.526 -0.520 -0.514 -0.495 (0.345) (0.342) (0.341) (0.334) (0.333) proportion of high school graduates -0.010 0.117 0.114 0.110 0.095 (0.150) (0.162) (0.158) (0.158) (0.166) proportion of people moved in last 5 years -0.026 -0.078 -0.099 -0.142 -0.103 (0.128) (0.126) (0.126) (0.125) (0.126) median income -0.001 -0.002 -0.006 -0.010 -0.018 (0.016) (0.016) (0.016) (0.018) (0.019) income diversity -0.197 -0.214 -0.211 -0.184 -0.169 (0.161) (0.163) (0.162) (0.161) (0.164) herfindahl index for ethnic diversity 0.068 0.034 0.046 0.040 0.034 (0.062) (0.055) (0.057) (0.056) (0.056) proportion of visible minorities 0.063 0.042 0.033 0.050 0.080 (0.098) (0.096) (0.096) (0.096) (0.096) sense of belonging to the community 0.872*** 0.850*** 0.815*** 0.781*** (0.057) (0.057) (0.055) (0.056) sense of belonging to the province 0.484*** 0.316*** 0.269*** 0.274*** (0.054) (0.058) (0.058) (0.058) sense of belonging to canada 0.423*** 0.377*** 0.366*** (0.065) (0.069) (0.070) trust in co-workers 0.784*** 0.683*** (0.077) (0.076) not answered ‘trust in co-workers’ question 0.407*** 0.329*** (0.072) (0.075) confidence in police 0.389*** 0.361*** (0.057) (0.058) trust in neighbours 0.336*** (0.071) constant 5.449*** 4.887*** 4.717*** 4.412*** 4.405*** (0.265) (0.261) (0.259) (0.271) (0.272) r-squared 0.129 0.167 0.171 0.187 0.188 number of obs. 15505 15235 15190 15114 14896 standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 table 4-a: compensating differentials of trust in gwp 2006 a expected wallet return by neighbours expected wallet return by police expected wallet return by strangers average of the three wallet measures coefficient of the log of household income 0.58*** (0.036) 0.57*** (0.037) 0.58*** (0.036) 0.57*** (0.038) coefficient of trust 0.18** (0.058) 0.22*** (0.065) 0.16* (0.070) 0.36*** (0.106) compensating differential 0.31** (0.10) 0.38** (0.12) 0.28* (0.12) 0.63** (0.19) 95% confidence interval [0.10, 0.51] [0.15, 0.62] [0.04, 0.51] [0.25, 1.00] standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 table 4-b: compensating differentials of trust in gss17 b expected wallet return by neighbours trust in neighbours expected wallet return by strangers trust in coworkers confidence in police coefficient of the log of household income 0.17*** (0.022) 0.17*** (0.022) 0.17*** (0.022) 0.17*** (0.022) 0.17*** (0.022) coefficient of trust 0.10*** (0.046) 0.34*** (0.071) 0.20*** (0.050) 0.68*** (0.076) 0.36*** (0.058) compensating differential 0.61*** (0.30) 2.03*** (0.47) 1.22*** (0.30) 4.12*** (0.47) 2.18*** (0.47) 95% confidence interval [0.028, 1.20] [1.11, 2.94] [0.63, 1.82] [3.21, 5.03] [1.27, 3.09] standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 table 4-c: compensating differentials of trust in esc2 c expected wallet return by neighbours trust in management expected wallet return by police coefficient of the log of personal income 0.19*** (0.039) 0.19*** (0.039) 0.19*** (0.039) coefficient of trust 0.23*** (0.063) 0.19*** (0.025) 0.16+ (0.098) compensating differential 1.21*** (0.34) 0.97*** (0.24) 0.84 (0.64) 95% confidence interval [0.54, 1.88] [0.50, 1.44] [-0.41, 2.09] standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 table 4-d: compensating differentials of trust in usbs 2000/01 d trust in neighbours trust in co-workers trust in police coefficient of the log of household income 0.096*** (0.022) 0.096*** (0.022) 0.096*** (0.022) coefficient of trust 0.25*** (0.048) 0.093*** (0.011) 0.35*** (0.040) compensating differential 2.60*** (0.30) 0.97*** (0.26) 3.64*** (0.26) 95% confidence interval [2.01, 3.09] [0.46, 1.48] [3.13, 4.14] standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 notes for table 4 a. the results are generated from the gallup world poll 2006 using the cantril self-anchoring striving scale on a 0 to 10 scale. compensating differentials of trust are calculated based on model (1) in table 2. b. the results are generated from the canadian gss17 using life satisfaction on a 0 to 10 scale. expected wallet return by neighbours and by strangers originally on a 1-3 point scale is converted to 0 to trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 1.0 range. trust in neighbours is the answer to the question ‚how much do you trust people in your neighbourhood?‛. it is originally on a 1-5 point scale, but is converted to 0 to 1.0 range. trust in coworker which is originally on a 1-5 point scale is standardized with zero mean and a standard deviation of one. confidence in police which is originally on a 1-4 point scale is also converted to 0 to 1.0 range. compensating differentials of trust in neighbours are calculated based on model (5) in table 3. compensating differentials of other trust measures are calculated based on model (4) in table 3. c. the results are calculated based on the table 2 in helliwell et al. (2009), in which ordered probit models are used to perform regressions. life satisfaction is on a 1-10 point scale. trust in management, which is originally on a 1-10 point scale, is standardized with zero mean and a standard deviation of one. expected wallet return by neighbours and by police, which is a 3 point scale, is standardized with zero mean and a standard deviation of one. the regressions only use data on working population in which the self-employed are excluded. the coefficients of correlation between trust and income are assumed to be zero to simplify the calculation. d. the results are calculated based on table 2 in helliwell et al. (2009), in which ordered probit models are used to perform regressions. happiness is on a 1-4 point scale; trust in co-workers, which is originally on a 1-4 point scale, is standardized with zero mean and a standard deviation of one. trust in neighbours and trust in police are both on a 0-1 point scale. the regressions only use data on working population in which the self-employed might be included since the us benchmark survey does not provide information on self-employment status. the coefficients of correlation between trust and income are assumed to be zero to simplify the calculation. trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 table 5: trust equations, canadian gss17 dependent variables general trust trust in coworkers trust in neighbours trust in strangers expected wallet return by neighbours expected wallet return by strangers (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) imported trust 0.743*** 0.002 0.169** 0.183*** -0.081 -0.032 (0.106) (0.065) (0.055) (0.054) (0.077) (0.071) immigrant 0.074*** -0.014 0.012 -0.007 -0.009 0.003 (0.015) (0.010) (0.007) (0.008) (0.013) (0.010) french as the first language -0.192*** -0.020** -0.043*** -0.056*** -0.036*** -0.098*** (0.011) (0.008) (0.006) (0.007) (0.008) (0.007) married or as married 0.027* -0.007 0.039*** -0.003 0.072*** 0.018* (0.012) (0.007) (0.007) (0.006) (0.009) (0.007) separated, divorced or widowed -0.013 0.006 0.003 -0.020** 0.008 -0.001 (0.015) (0.009) (0.007) (0.007) (0.010) (0.009) age 0.003* 0.017*** 0.002* 0.006*** 0.001 0.003*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) age squared divided by 100 -0.001 -0.028*** 0.001+ -0.003*** 0.002+ -0.001+ (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) female -0.020* -0.060*** 0.003 -0.026*** -0.015** 0.008 (0.009) (0.008) (0.004) (0.004) (0.006) (0.005) high school education 0.038** 0.017+ 0.008 0.042*** 0.019+ 0.028*** (0.014) (0.010) (0.007) (0.007) (0.011) (0.008) started college or university 0.079*** 0.044*** 0.014* 0.072*** 0.041*** 0.043*** (0.015) (0.009) (0.006) (0.006) (0.008) (0.007) university degree 0.155*** 0.081*** 0.036*** 0.124*** 0.078*** 0.078*** (0.015) (0.009) (0.007) (0.007) (0.009) (0.009) religious group membership 0.031** 0.004 0.006 0.023*** 0.024*** 0.025*** (0.012) (0.008) (0.005) (0.006) (0.007) (0.007) non-religious group membership 0.043*** 0.032*** 0.004 0.020*** 0.018** 0.016** (0.008) (0.005) (0.004) (0.005) (0.006) (0.005) years living in the neighbourhood 0.030* 0.051*** 0.091*** 0.017* 0.135*** 0.003 (0.014) (0.009) (0.007) (0.007) (0.010) (0.009) sense of control over things 0.080*** 0.034*** 0.017* 0.047*** 0.037** 0.049*** (0.014) (0.010) (0.007) (0.008) (0.013) (0.009) ability to change things in life 0.112*** 0.075*** 0.029** 0.074*** 0.030+ 0.030* (0.019) (0.012) (0.010) (0.012) (0.018) (0.012) number of close friends: 1 or 2 0.039 0.015 0.048*** 0.018 0.011 0.006 (0.028) (0.019) (0.013) (0.012) (0.017) (0.014) number of close friends: 3 to 5 0.113*** 0.060** 0.071*** 0.042*** 0.044** 0.021+ (0.026) (0.022) (0.012) (0.012) (0.015) (0.012) number of close friends: 6 to 10 0.164*** 0.070*** 0.086*** 0.063*** 0.051** 0.029* (0.025) (0.021) (0.013) (0.013) (0.016) (0.013) number of close friends: 11 to 20 0.173*** 0.088*** 0.099*** 0.074*** 0.066*** 0.037* (0.028) (0.023) (0.014) (0.015) (0.020) (0.017) number of close friends: over 20 0.173*** 0.118*** 0.118*** 0.055** 0.071** 0.021 (0.035) (0.025) (0.018) (0.020) (0.024) (0.025) frequency of seeing close friends 0.002 0.017** 0.004 0.005 -0.006 -0.005 (0.008) (0.005) (0.004) (0.004) (0.006) (0.005) trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 number of close relatives: 1 or 2 0.024 0.028* 0.010 0.003 0.008 0.004 (0.019) (0.012) (0.011) (0.011) (0.014) (0.014) number of close relatives: 3 to 5 0.061** 0.058*** 0.038*** 0.029** 0.039** 0.021 (0.019) (0.012) (0.010) (0.010) (0.014) (0.015) number of close relatives: 6 to 10 0.074*** 0.054*** 0.043*** 0.036*** 0.039* 0.030* (0.020) (0.012) (0.012) (0.010) (0.017) (0.014) number of close relatives: 11 to 20 0.083*** 0.085*** 0.043*** 0.040*** 0.051** 0.035* (0.023) (0.015) (0.012) (0.012) (0.017) (0.017) number of close relatives: over 20 0.055* 0.047* 0.034+ 0.015 0.032 0.018 (0.028) (0.018) (0.018) (0.015) (0.023) (0.021) frequency of seeing close relatives -0.002 -0.018*** -0.001 -0.009* 0.013* 0.011* (0.008) (0.005) (0.004) (0.004) (0.006) (0.005) variables at census tract level population density -0.069 0.011 -0.342*** -0.048 -0.736*** -0.150+ (0.130) (0.080) (0.082) (0.076) (0.130) (0.082) proportion of high school graduates 0.288*** 0.024 0.141*** 0.146*** 0.231*** 0.112*** (0.045) (0.029) (0.024) (0.025) (0.033) (0.027) proportion of people moved in last 5 years -0.033 0.025 -0.128*** -0.016 -0.247*** -0.045* (0.043) (0.025) (0.019) (0.019) (0.030) (0.023) median income -0.006 0.000 0.005* 0.002 0.002 0.001 (0.005) (0.002) (0.003) (0.003) (0.006) (0.004) income diversity -0.094+ 0.047 0.040 -0.080** 0.096** -0.011 (0.054) (0.033) (0.026) (0.027) (0.037) (0.033) herfindahl index for ethnic diversity -0.019 -0.002 0.004 0.003 0.011 -0.022 (0.015) (0.012) (0.008) (0.008) (0.016) (0.015) proportion of visible minorities -0.092** -0.078*** -0.139*** -0.086*** -0.225*** -0.080*** (0.032) (0.021) (0.016) (0.017) (0.024) (0.021) sense of belonging to the community 0.077*** 0.052* 0.133*** 0.041*** 0.138*** 0.034*** (0.016) (0.021) (0.011) (0.009) (0.012) (0.010) sense of belonging to the province 0.027 0.036** 0.023* 0.013 0.015 0.025* (0.018) (0.011) (0.011) (0.009) (0.013) (0.012) sense of belonging to canada 0.076*** 0.013 0.049*** 0.030** 0.046** 0.042*** (0.019) (0.014) (0.009) (0.009) (0.015) (0.011) no data for census tract id 0.059*** 0.014** 0.045*** 0.038*** 0.085*** 0.044*** (0.007) (0.005) (0.004) (0.004) (0.006) (0.005) constant -0.423*** 0.079+ 0.124*** -0.232*** 0.152** -0.092* (0.064) (0.041) (0.034) (0.034) (0.047) (0.041) r-squared 0.129 0.294 0.207 0.135 0.187 0.086 number of obs. 17174 17404 17007 16997 16987 16641 standard errors in brackets；+ p<0.10, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 figures figure 1: international shares of variance (gallup world poll 2006) figure 2: likelihood of lost wallet being returned trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 appendix appendix table 1-a: summary statistics, gallup world poll 2006 variable number of obs. mean standard deviation cantril ladder 136955 5.358 2.237 expected wallet return by neighbours 81065 0.644 0.479 expected wallet return by police 74903 0.566 0.496 expected wallet return by strangers 71164 0.166 0.372 average of the three wallet measures 62306 0.431 0.347 log of hh income 99584 -2.045 1.944 married or as married 138666 0.515 0.5 separated, divorced or widowed 138666 0.049 0.216 age 138060 38.783 17.03 age squared divided by 100 138060 17.941 15.288 female 138640 0.511 0.5 life choice freedom 123789 0.73 0.444 friends to count on 132858 0.84 0.367 not enough money for food 97918 0 0.443 donation 97198 0.283 0.45 volunteering 98116 0.224 0.417 helped strangers 97479 0.432 0.495 importance of religion in life 129087 0.707 0.455 church attendance 130658 0.452 0.498 perception of corruption 102095 0.761 0.383 net affect 114626 0.400 0.490 appendix table 1-b: detailed descriptions of variables, gallup world poll 2006 variable descriptions cantril ladder please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible. if the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time? expected wallet return by neighbours in the city or area where you live, imagine that you lost your wallet or something holding your identification or address and it was found by someone else. do you think your wallet (or your valuables) would be returned to you if it were found by neighbours? expected wallet return by police in the city or area where you live, imagine that you lost your wallet or something holding your identification or address and it was found by someone else. do you think your wallet (or your valuables) would be returned to you if it were found by the police? expected wallet return by strangers in the city or area where you live, imagine that you lost your wallet or something holding your identification or address and it was found by someone else. do you think your wallet (or your valuables) would be returned to you if it were found by trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 strangers? married or as married dummy variable equal to 1 if respondent is married or as married separated, divorced or widowed dummy variable equal to 1 if respondent is separated, divorced, or widowed life choice freedom in (county of interview), are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life? friends to count on if you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not? not enough money for food residual of regressing the response to the question ‚have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?‛ on the log of household income donation have you in the past month donated money to a charity? volunteering have you in the past month volunteered your time to an organization? helped strangers have you in the past month helped a stranger or someone you did not know who needed help? importance of religion in life is religion an important part of your daily life? perception have you attended a place of worship or religious service within the last seven days? perception of corruption average of the following two responses: 1) is corruption widespread within businesses located in (county of interview), or not? 2) is corruption widespread throughout the government in (county of interview), or not? net affect positive affect – negative affect. positive affect is the average of gallup wp63-67, and negative affect is the average of wp70, and wp72-75. questions: did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? (wp63) were you proud of something you did yesterday? (wp64) did you learn or do something interesting yesterday? (wp65) did you have good tasting food to eat yesterday? (wp66) did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday? enjoyment (wp67), worry (wp69), sadness (wp70), boredom (wp72), depression (wp73), anger (wp74), shame (wp75). trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 appendix table 2-a: summary statistics, canadian gss17 variable number of obs. mean standard deviation satisfaction with life 24452 7.903 1.642 general trust 23861 0.553 0.497 expected wallet return by neighbours 23348 0.651 0.361 expected wallet return by strangers 22641 0.228 0.299 trust in neighbours 23387 0.682 0.266 trust in strangers 23323 0.308 0.265 trust in co-workers 17103 0.711 0.243 confidence in police 23804 0.734 0.242 imported trust 22798 0.377 0.052 immigrant 24568 0.218 0.413 french as the first language 24931 0.216 0.412 age 24951 43.942 17.940 age squared divided by 100 24951 22.527 17.353 female 24951 0.508 0.500 years living in the neighbourhood 24547 3.915 1.625 high school education 24517 0.142 0.349 started college or university 24517 0.416 0.493 university degree 24517 0.212 0.409 sense of control over things 23409 0.603 0.292 ability to change things in life 23318 0.682 0.244 number of close friends: 1 or 2 24721 0.235 0.424 number of close friends: 3 to 5 24721 0.400 0.490 number of close friends: 6 to 10 24721 0.214 0.410 number of close friends: 11 to 20 24721 0.067 0.250 number of close friends: over 20 24721 0.022 0.145 number of close relatives: 1 or 2 24673 0.238 0.426 number of close relatives: 3 to 5 24673 0.354 0.478 number of close relatives: 6 to 10 24673 0.221 0.415 number of close relatives: 11 to 20 24673 0.087 0.282 number of close relatives: over 20 24673 0.034 0.182 frequency of seeing close friends 23415 0.590 0.492 frequency of seeing close relatives 24867 0.382 0.486 religious group membership 24728 0.168 0.374 non-religious group membership 24738 0.578 0.494 variables at census tract level population density 24368 0.024 0.036 proportion of high school graduates 24940 0.588 0.130 proportion of people moved in last 5 years 24474 0.412 0.131 median income 24951 0.437 1.022 income diversity 24368 0.271 0.102 herfindahl index for ethnic diversity 23001 0.339 0.242 proportion of visible minorities 24407 0.131 0.182 sense of belonging to the community 24417 0.601 0.283 sense of belonging to the province 24313 0.695 0.272 sense of belonging to canada 24570 0.784 0.269 trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 appendix table 2-b: detailed descriptions of variables, canadian gss17 variable descriptions satisfaction with life please rate your feelings about certain areas of your life, using a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means ‚very dissatisfied‛ and 10 means ‚very satisfied‛. how do you feel about your life as a whole right now? general trust generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or, that you cannot be too careful in dealing with people? trust=1, careful=0. expected wallet return by neighbours if you lost a wallet or purse that contained two hundred dollars, how likely is it to be returned with the money in it if it was found by someone who lives close by? scaled max=1.0 in regressions expected wallet return by strangers if you lost a wallet or purse that contained two hundred dollars, how likely is it to be returned with the money in it if it was found by a complete stranger? trust in co-workers using a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means ‚cannot be trusted at all‛ and 5 means ‚can be trusted a lot‛, how much do you trust people you work with or go to school with? scaled max=1.0 in regressions not answered ‘trust in coworkers’ question dummy variable equals to 1 if respondents do not answer the questions on trust in co-workers trust in neighbours using a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means ‚cannot be trusted at all‛ and 5 means ‚can be trusted a lot‛, how much do you trust people in your neighbourhood? scaled max=1.0 in regressions trust in strangers using a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means ‚cannot be trusted at all‛ and 5 means ‚can be trusted a lot‛, how much do you trust strangers? scaled max=1.0 in regressions confidence in police how much confidence do you have in the police? scaled max=1.0 in regressions imported trust imported trust (average level of trust in immigrant’s country of origin minus corresponding canadian value) immigrant dummy variable equals to 1 if respondent is an immigrant french as the first language dummy variable equals to 1 if the first language of respondent is french married or as married dummy variable equals to 1 if respondent is married or as married separated, divorced or widowed dummy variable equals to 1 if respondent is separated, divorced, or widowed unemployed dummy variable equals to 1 if respondent is unemployed frequency of seeing close friends the frequency of seeing close friends in the last month frequency of seeing close relatives the frequency of seeing close relatives in the last month trust and wellbeing helliwell & wang www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 religious group membership dummy variable equals to 1 if respondent belongs to a religious group non-religious group membership dummy variable equals to 1 if respondent belongs to a nonreligious or non-ethnic group sense of belonging to the community scaled max=1.0 in regressions sense of belonging to the province scaled max=1.0 in regressions sense of belonging to canada scaled max=1.0 in regressions klussman, k., nichols, a. l., langer, j., & curtin, n. (2020). connection and disconnection as predictors of mental health and wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 10(2), 89-100. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.855 kristine klussman connection lab kristine@connectionlab.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 89 connection and disconnection as predictors of mental health and wellbeing kristine klussman · austin lee nichols · julia langer · nicola curtin abstract: despite the established literature on connection to others, and burgeoning research on selfconnection, researchers have paid little attention to the equivalent experiences of disconnection that people can experience in their everyday lives. the current research examined connection and disconnection from oneself and others. specifically, across two studies, participants listed up to twenty words or phrases that they experienced related to each form of (dis)connection. study 1 focused on how these affected participants’ mental health (i.e. anxiety and depression), while study 2 examined positive forms of wellbeing (i.e., flourishing and life satisfaction). results suggested that increased mental health was most strongly related to a greater experience of connection to others. flourishing also increased as one’s experience of other-connection increased. by contrast, poorer wellbeing was related to a greater experience of disconnection from others. finally, life satisfaction decreased when participants experienced greater self-disconnection. in all, these findings provide an initial test of and support for the continued examination of various forms of both connection and disconnection. keywords: self-connection, connection, disconnection, wellbeing, mental health introduction support abounds for the importance of connecting with others (brown, nesse, vinokur, & smith, 2003; chu, saucier, & hafner, 2010; tronick, 2005). in addition, self-connection, a new concept in positive psychology, has also begun to receive support (klussman, curtin, langer, & nichols, 2020; klussman, nichols, curtin, & langer, 2020a; 2020b). in particular, significant and consistent relationships have emerged between it and several health and wellbeing indicators, including mindfulness, meaning in life, and positive affect. however, connection is just one of the things that people may experience when interacting with themselves and others. similarly, despite significant research focused on forms of disconnection (e.g., loneliness; eisenberger, 2011), sparse evidence exists for the effect of self-disconnection on health and wellbeing. this study attempts to build on and extend past research by comprehensively examining the relationships between health, wellbeing, and self/other (dis)connection. connection to others research highlights the importance of being connected to others (tronick, 2005). connection to others, often referred to in the literature as social support or belonging, includes factors such article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 as the provision or reception of resources to help people cope with stress, including physical aid, emotional support, and/or knowledge dissemination (cohen, 2004). baumeister and leary (1995) assert that belonging is a fundamental human motivation. relatedly, heintzleman (2018) suggests that wellbeing arises from the fulfillment of basic psychological needs, including relatedness to others. as such, current operationalizations of connection in the literature suggest that it is both important and a significant predictor of wellbeing. both the giving of social support (altruism) and the reception of it often result in greater wellbeing and positive health outcomes (brown, 2003; tronick, 2005). in a longitudinal study of older couples, brown (2003) found that those who provided tangible and/or emotional support reduced their risk of mortality by almost 50%. a recent meta-analysis also supported the relationship between perception of social support and wellbeing (chu, saucier, & hafner, 2013). combined with other research aimed at increasing wellbeing, the evidence seems strong that those receiving social support experience increased wellbeing throughout the lifespan (e.g., abby, abramis, & caplan, 1985; chu, saucier, & hafner, 2013; cohen, 2004). disconnection from others in theory, disconnection should involve a lack of these factors listed above (i.e., the opposite of connection). however, as is the case with positive and negative affect (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1984; 1988) and approach/avoidance tendencies (carver, & white, 1994), we propose that connection and disconnection are orthogonal constructs that independently affect a variety of outcomes. for example, disconnection from others, often operationalized as loneliness or social isolation, has some of the same neurobiological underpinnings as physical pain and can impact both physical and emotional health (eisenberger, 2011). disconnection from others also often results in poorer health, adjustment, and wellbeing outcomes (baumeister & leary 1995). without connection to others, infants and toddlers become distressed, and in extreme circumstances, can develop physical and mental disorders due to a lack of human connection (tronick, 2005). in older adults, feelings of loneliness or disconnection from friends and neighbors lead to decreased morale (lee & ishii-kuntz, 1987). furthermore, a meta-analysis found that humans, when faced with rejection, will prioritize gaining back control of a situation, even if that means acting anti-socially (gerber & wheeler, 2009). in fact, levula, wilson and harré (2016) assert that social isolation is the biggest predictor of mental health outcomes across the lifespan. clearly, disconnection from others is a negative experience in people’s lives and leads to several negative outcomes. it also appears that these outcomes are quite different from those resulting from connection to others. self-connection there is a clear and meaningful distinction between the self and others (vorauer & kumhyr, 2001). in general, people respond differently to the same stimuli simply based on their current frame of reference (junghaenel et al., 2018). consequently, self-other ratings are often different simply due to whether the respondent is looking internally or externally (atwater & yammarino, 1997). biological research also suggests that distinct parts of the brain activate depending on whom one is currently focused (david et al., 2006). therefore, at least for people with an independent self-construal –– as is common in western societies –– the results of focusing on oneself versus others should differ significantly (markus & kitayama, 1991). this highlights the importance of looking at connection and disconnection as they refer to the self in addition to connection and disconnection from others. connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 past research has discussed self-connection as a combination of three components: (1) awareness of oneself; (2) acceptance of oneself based on this awareness; and (3) alignment of one’s behavior with this awareness (see klussman, nichols, et al., 2020a). awareness of the self can be thought of as understanding how one feels, thinks, and behaves, and what one’s values, goals, and priorities are. self-acceptance is an unconditional acceptance of these things one knows about the self. self-alignment occurs when there is congruence between one’s internal self and external behaviors. to date, research supports the relationship between self-connection and wellbeing (klussman, curtin, et al., 2020; klussman, nichols, et al., 2020a; 2020b). recent research supports this conceptualization and suggests that it is related to, but distinct from, popular psychological concepts such as mindfulness and authenticity (klussman, nichols, et al., 2020a). however, whereas mindfulness is often characterized as the non-judgmental awareness of one’s internal states and experiences (bishop et al., 2004; carlson, 2013), and authenticity as consistency between what others think of a person and his/her behavior (barrett-lennard, 1998), self-connection uniquely requires awareness and acceptance of the self combined with acting in alignment with that self. without the acceptance of the self, one can be aware of who one is and act in alignment with that but continue to feel dissatisfied with one’s existence (klussman, nichols, et al., 2020a). self-disconnection research has indicated that self-alienation is associated with mental distress and other negative wellbeing outcomes (wood, linley, maltby, baliousis, & joseph, 2008) and produces feelings of discomfort and disconnection (burks, & robbins, 2012). in particular, self-disconnection has recently been operationalized as a lack of at least one of the three components described above, i.e., selfawareness, self-acceptance, and/or self-alignment (klussman, langer, nichols, & curtin, 2020a; 2020b). preliminary qualitative evidence highlights the ease with which even self-proclaimed selfconnected people experience times of self-disconnection and the psychological distress that accompanies it (klussman, langer, et al., 2020a). this research also suggests that being disconnected from the self is a relatively common experience, even among those who are highly self-connected (klussman, langer, et al., 2020a; 2020b). despite this, relatively few studies have examined the impact of being self-disconnected. the first component is lacking self-awareness. people often struggle with understanding how and why they make the decisions they do (hofree & winkielman, 2012; vazire & carlson, 2010). research shows that humans lack insight into how they feel and that introspection often leads to incorrect conclusions (wilson, 2004). in many instances, others are more adept at predicting how we will react than we ourselves are (vazire & mehl, 2008; vazire, 2010). although not much is known about the effects of this lack of self-awareness, recent research suggests negative effects for personality development (sheldon, 2014). lacking self-acceptance has also received relatively little consideration in the literature. however, one can conceptualize this as similar to self-hatred, at its most extreme. in addition, the combination of being highly unaware and unaccepting may be thought of as similar to symptoms of dissociation thus resulting in a host of negative outcomes (edge, 2004; serlin, 2011). finally, researchers have found that, when one's behavior does not align with one’s internal selves, the result is an experience of mental distress and discomfort (burks & robbins, 2012; wood et al., 2008). this may stem from the earliest theories of cognitive dissonance and lead to many negative internal outcomes (festinger, 1962). connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 current research in all, while researchers have independently examined the concepts of self and other connection and disconnection, to varying degrees, researchers have not yet examined these concepts together as they relate to mental health and wellbeing. the current research sought to expand our knowledge of connection by examining self-connection and other-connection along with their disconnection counterparts. in particular, we sought to understand how these various constructs affect both mental health and wellbeing. regarding mental health, we examined anxiety and depression, both being factors that relate to connection and which should, therefore, be important for other forms of connection and disconnection (kawachi & berkman, 2001; klussman, nichols, et al., 2020b). due to the consistent support for relationships between connection and wellbeing, we also examined flourishing and life satisfaction as outcomes. of note, these represent distinct types of wellbeing—eudaimonia and hedonia, respectively (disabato, goodman, kashdan, short & jarden, 2016). in addition to representing overall wellbeing, these constructs also relate to various other positive outcomes. for example, strine and colleagues (2008) found that increased life satisfaction was associated with decreased health risk factors, such as smoking and heavy drinking, and increased health related quality of life. similarly, keyes (2007) found that increased flourishing was associated with increased psychological and physical health. therefore, it is safe to say that both forms of wellbeing are important and have implications for various aspects of a person’s overall health. in all, this study seeks to understand if there are relationships between selfand other (dis)connection, wellbeing, and mental health. we predicted that an increased experience of both selfand other-connection would result in more positive and less negative outcomes, while an increased experience of the equivalent forms of disconnection would result in less positive and more negative outcomes. although we did not have any guidance to hypothesize how the effects of each experience would differ, we expected that the effects of connection and disconnection would be independent from each other. study 1 study 1 aimed to understand how self and other connection and disconnection relates to mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety. to examine our hypotheses, we recruited a convenience sample and asked them to report on their experience of each form of (dis)connection, followed by having them complete measures aimed at understanding their current mental health. method participants through personal contacts of those working in our lab, we recruited a total of 50 participants who completed the entire online questionnaire. on average, participants were 33.38 years old (sd = 12.35), mostly white/caucasian (78%), female (78%) and living in urban areas (56%). procedure once participants signed up and provided informed consent, they completed our online questionnaire. as part of the main task of the study, we asked participants to list up to 20 words or phrases that come to mind when they think of being self-connected, other-connected, selfdisconnected, and other-disconnected. for self-connection, we provided the following instructions, “please list the words or phrases that come to mind when you reflect on what it means, or feels like, to be connected to yourself.” to do so, they filled in up to 20 boxes following the question, “when i connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 experience deep connection to myself, i am or i experience: . . . ”. similarly, to measure otherconnection, we provided these instructions, “please list the words or phrases that come to mind when you reflect on what it means, or feels like, to be deeply connected to other people.” and participants answered this question, “when i am deeply connected to other people, i am or i experience: . . . ”. participants then turned to disconnection, again reporting up to 20 words or phrases for both self-disconnection and other-disconnection. specifically, “deeply connected” was replaced with “disconnected” in the above instructions and questions. following this task, participants answered a variety of questions, including those related to both anxiety and depression. we assessed anxiety and depression using the four-item version of kroenke, spitzer, and williams’ patient health questionnaire for depression and anxiety (phq-4; 2001). participants rated each item –– two for anxiety and two for depression –– on a four-point scale (e.g., “feeling nervous anxious or on edge”: 1= not at all; 4 = nearly every day). higher scores reflect higher levels of depression or anxiety respectively (manxiety = 1.88, sdanxiety = 1.51, αanxiety = .81; mdepression = 1.38, sddepression = 1.68, αdepression = .88). participants then answered demographic questions. results we began our analysis by creating our connection and disconnection-related variables from the task participants completed. to calculate our measure of self-connection, we examined the selfconnection task and counted the number of boxes in which participants entered a word or phrase (m = 6.22, sd = 4.41). we then did the same thing for self-disconnection (m = 5.34, sd = 4.36), otherconnection (m = 7.80, sd = 4.78), and other-disconnection (m = 6.94, sd = 4.33). as conceptualized, these numbers represent the degree to which participants experience each construct. we next performed four linear regression analyses—one for each type of (dis)connection (i.e., self or other) on each dependent variable (i.e., anxiety or depression). we first regressed anxiety simultaneously on self-connection and self-disconnection. neither connection to self (β = -.30, p = .33) nor disconnection from self (β = .13, p = .68) resulted in a significant relationship with anxiety. by contrast, a similar regression with other-connection and other-disconnection, entered simultaneously, resulted in a significant effect of connection to others (β = -.62, p = .02) but not disconnection from others (β = .31, p = .22). a similar set of analyses resulted in almost identical effects on depression. the only significant effect was that of connection to others (β = -.54, p = .04). all other effects were nonsignificant (all βs < .42, ps > .11). discussion findings from study 1 suggest that neither one’s connection to oneself, disconnection from oneself, nor one’s disconnection from others, seem to relate to levels of anxiety or depression. however, the more that participants experienced connection to others, the lower their ratings of anxiety and depression. that is, it seems that an increased experience of connection to others uniquely relates to decreases in both anxiety and depression. however, self-connection did not appear to affect these negative mental health outcomes. similarly, disconnection from oneself nor from others related to anxiety or depression. in all, this suggests that one’s mental health is most benefited from experiencing connection to others. we further explore these effects in the context of wellbeing next. study 2 study 1 suggested that only connection to others relates significantly to a person’s mental health. to further examine our hypotheses, study 2 sought to extend these findings to a person’s overall connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 wellbeing. using a similar procedure, we recruited an online sample of participants and examined how (dis)connection related to their flourishing and life-satisfaction. overall, we sought to understand how self and other (dis)connection affects aspects of wellbeing and if these effects are distinct for each form of (dis)connection. method participants we recruited us residents from amazon’s mechanical turk. a total of 101 participants completed the entire online questionnaire. on average, participants were 35.05 years old (sd = 9.91), mostly white/caucasian (81%), female (55%), and living in suburban areas (55%). procedure the procedure was almost identical to that in study 1. once participants signed up and provided informed consent, they completed the online questionnaire. participants first listed up to 20 words or phrases that come to mind when they think of being self-connected, other-connected, self-disconnected, and other-disconnected. following this task, participants answered a variety of questions, including those related to wellbeing. following these measures, participants answered demographic questions. measures flourishing. we used diener and colleagues’ (2010) flourishing scale as our indicator of eudaimonic wellbeing. participants rated how much they agreed with seven statements on a sevenpoint scale (e.g., “i am a good person and live a good life”: 1= strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree). the original scale has 8 items, but one item (“people respect me”) was left out of our survey due to a transcription error. higher scores indicated greater flourishing (m = 5.13, sd = 1.41, α = .96). life satisfaction. we measured life satisfaction, as our indicator of hedonic wellbeing, with the single-item measure validated by cheung and lucas (2014). it asks participants to respond to the following question on a four-point scale, “in general, how satisfied are you with your life?” (1 = very satisfied; 4 = very dissatisfied). we reverse-coded the item so that higher values represented higher life satisfaction (m = 2.79, sd = 0.92). results similar to study 1, we first computed our connection and disconnection-related variables. to calculate our measure of self-connection, we examined the self-connection task and counted the number of boxes in which participants entered a word or phrase (m = 5.69, sd = 3.25). we then did the same thing for self-disconnection (m = 4.74, sd = 2.87), other-connection (m = 7.17, sd = 3.41), and other-disconnection (m = 5.30, sd = 2.66). we next performed linear regression analyses for each type of (dis)connection (i.e., self or other) on each dependent variable (i.e., flourishing or life satisfaction). when entered as simultaneous predictors, neither connection to self (β = .06, p = .62) nor disconnection from self (β = -.21, p = .10) significantly predicted flourishing. by contrast, a similar regression with otherconnection and other-disconnection, entered simultaneously, resulted in significant effects of both connection to others (β = .29, p = .05) and disconnection from others (β = -.41, p < .01). a similar set of analyses examined these effects on life satisfaction. although connection to oneself did not seem to predict life satisfaction (β = .13, p = .29), one’s experience of disconnection from oneself did (β = -.34, p < .01). similarly, disconnection from others significantly predicted lower life satisfaction (β = -.34, p = .02) while connection to others did not (β = .20, p = .18). connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 discussion the results of study 2 suggest that it is one’s experience of connection to and disconnection from others that most strongly relates to flourishing. the experience of self-connection and disconnection did not seem to relate to levels of flourishing. by contrast, it appeared that disconnection was the key to understanding a person’s life satisfaction. both selfand other-disconnection related to lower life satisfaction. as predicted, this suggests that connection and disconnection are independent concepts that result in different outcomes. furthermore, being connected or disconnected from the self versus from others is experienced differently and uniquely impacts aspects of one’s wellbeing. general discussion the purpose of the current research was to examine how the experience of connection and disconnection affects one’s mental health and wellbeing. further, we wanted to understand how disconnection from self differs from disconnection from others in predicting these outcomes. to this end, we conducted two studies, one focusing on mental health and one on positive wellbeing, to determine how (dis)connection manifests in these ways. study 1 suggested that it is experiencing connection to others that matters most to mental health, and that people who experience more otherconnection are less anxious and depressed. study 2 similarly found that an increased experience of connection to others increased eudaimonic wellbeing (i.e., flourishing). uniquely, self-disconnection also related significantly to flourishing. furthermore, only disconnection from self and others, and not connection, related to hedonic wellbeing (i.e., life satisfaction). implications our results suggest differing avenues for increasing distinct types of mental health and wellbeing. researchers and practitioners alike may best promote mental health by finding ways to increase social support. hedonic wellbeing may, on the other hand, show the greatest improvement by developing ways of decreasing both selfand other-disconnection. finally, people may best address eudaimonic wellbeing by increasing connection to others and decreasing disconnection from oneself. with this in mind, future studies should investigate how to diminish both selfand otherdisconnection in ways that uniquely address both health and wellbeing, while increasing other connection to increase mental health. in all, it appears that connecting with oneself and others, while avoiding disconnection from each, is vital to a happy, healthy life. past research has already examined the relationship between self and other connection and various health and wellbeing indicators (kawachi & berkman, 2001; klussman, nichols, et al., 2020b). the current research is some of the first to extend the idea of connection to disconnection from both self and others. our findings suggest that self and other connection and disconnection may be distinct processes affecting health and wellbeing. much like the study of positive and negative affect (watson et al., 1988), connection and disconnection may be thought of as orthogonal constructs that share similarities but are importantly distinct processes with separate predictors and outcomes. this research, therefore, provides initial evidence that both connection to and disconnection from oneself and others are important, distinct, and require further investigation. given the large effect sizes resulting from the current research, this is likely to be a promising avenue for future research (geerling & diener, 2018). one especially promising implication can be applied to both a personal improvement practice as well as in clinical settings. in both contexts, it is valuable to understand what forms of connection or disconnection may lead to the desired mental health or wellbeing outcomes. for connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 example, if people desire improvement in life satisfaction, they can focus on ways to decrease the disconnection they experience from themselves and others and engage in actions that will ideally decrease this disconnection. likewise, clinicians could help patients through this process by identifying the cause(s) of that disconnection and working with the patient to both internally and externally reduce it. however, if increased mental health is the goal, one should focus on increasing connection to others. in this case, clinicians would want to identify ways to help patients connect with others and help them through that process. limitations and future research one limitation of the current study was its cross-sectional nature. instead of manipulating who completed which task or priming them with one form of (dis)connection, we simply asked all participants, in both studies, to report on their experience of all four types of connection and disconnection. the resulting data were correlational in nature. additionally, the samples were demographically similar and relatively small. future research would be wise to use larger, diverse samples and experimental designs to further examine these relationships and to determine if, in fact, it is (dis)connection that causes these outcomes or if these “outcomes” result in (dis)connection. once researchers have confidence in the directionality and strength of these relationships, future research is needed to find ways to increase connection and decrease disconnection. one way that practitioners may promote these types of connection and avoid disconnection could be the wellresearched modality of daily diaries, as these can help people to reflect on moments of connection and disconnection in their daily lives and promote intentional change (ullrich, & lutgendorf, 2002; miller, 2014). another potentially interesting intervention, targeting both self and other connection, would be the use of group meditation. doing this in a group setting that fosters discussion of participants “true selves” and promotes intentional change would reflect what many therapeutic groups aim to accomplish and may reap the same benefits of connection (huntly, araya, & salisbury, 2012; sloan, feinstein, gallagher, beck, & keane, 2013). future research should also consider the finding that other-connection may be beneficial for health outcomes, especially since this has long been supported by previous research (brown, 2003; tronick, 2005; eisenberger, 2011). the development of interventions promoting other-connection and social support can further increase people’s health while decreasing the risk of negative health outcomes. another interesting line of research would be to study the interactions between perceptions of connection to others and connection to the self. does the increase of one increase the perception of the other? is there a relationship between those who perceive themselves as self-connected and their perceptions of connections to others? does increasing one form of connection or disconnection affect the other forms of (dis)connection? the answers to these questions will likely help guide research and practice in this area, and are among just some of the many avenues that future research may pursue. importantly, disconnection appears to predict distinct outcomes from connection. research should more thoroughly investigate the effects of self and other disconnection to identify ways people might also avoid experiences of disconnection. previous research has qualitatively examined what prevents people from connecting to themselves (klussman, langer, et al., 2020b) and to others (smyth, harries, & dorer, 2011), finding both internal and external barriers. it would be beneficial to examine these findings together to see if the overlap provides a point of intervention that would allow practitioners to simultaneously decrease both self and other disconnection. connection and disconnection klussman, nichols, langer, & curtin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 finally, future development of the measurement of these concepts is important. this study measured connection and disconnection by asking participants to list words that represented their experience of feeling connected or disconnected from themselves and others. we then summed these and used them in our analyses to represent connection and disconnection scores. future research would benefit from validated measures of connection and disconnection for both the self and others. research into other-connection has often used scales such as the social provisions scale (cutrona, & russell, 1987) and the norbeck social support questionnaire (norbeck, lindsey, & carrieri, 1983). similarly, the ucla loneliness questionnaire is a common and validated measure of disconnection from others (russell, peplau, & ferguson, 1978). however, there is not yet a validated measure of self-connection or disconnection. as the present research suggests, connection and disconnection may be distinct constructs, so having measures of each construct would be useful for understanding and investigating these concepts further (klussman, nichols, et al., 2020a). conclusion the current research examined various forms of both connection and disconnection. connection to others significantly predicted anxiety, depression, and flourishing. similarly, those who experienced more disconnection from others had lower flourishing and life satisfaction while those experiencing more disconnection from themselves experienced lower life satisfaction. these results suggest that all forms of connection and disconnection are important and require further study. in all, it appears that simply being connected to oneself and others leads to important gains in both mental health and wellbeing. authors kristine klussman connection lab kristine@connectionlab.com austin lee nichols connection lab julia langer connection lab nicola curtin connection lab publishing timeline received 14 february 2019 accepted 10 february 2020 published 1 june 2020 references abbey, a., abramis, d. j., & caplan, r. d. 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(2017). “time to reflect”: enhancing the self-efficacy of secondary school wellbeing personnel in recognising and responding to mental health needs of students. international journal of wellbeing, 7(1), 40-64. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i1.484 carsten schley orygen youth health carsten.schley@orygen.org.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 article “time to reflect”: enhancing the self-efficacy of secondary school wellbeing personnel in recognising and responding to mental health needs of students carsten schley · lisa mckay-brown · judy ring · katherine monson · jo robinson · leanne crothers · joanne moore abstract: “time to reflect” (ttr) is an innovative five-session professional development program for secondary school wellbeing personnel working with students between the ages of 12 and 18. ttr is jointly designed and delivered by an educational and a youth mental health specialist service. the program provides education on a range of mental health related topics and offers participants an opportunity to reflect on their current practices. the primary aim of this study was to evaluate whether the ttr program increases perceived competence and confidence of participants in recognising and responding to the mental health needs of students. the secondary aim was to assess changes in the use of reflection and its perceived benefits for professional practice. participants completed a self-assessment questionnaire at three time points: prior to the first session, after the final session, and three months after completion of the program. one hundred and thirty-five school wellbeing personnel from a variety of state, independent, and catholic secondary schools participated. following completion of the program, participants reported significantly greater confidence and competence in helping students with mental health problems, with this level of change being maintained at the three-month post-training assessment. the majority of participants reported positive changes in their use of reflection, and consequent benefits to their professional practice. the findings from this study suggest that the ttr program promoted the self-efficacy of participants in responding to the mental health needs of students, and that regular reflective practice may be an effective and beneficial model for continued professional learning and development in schools. keywords: mental health, school wellbeing, professional development, reflective practice 1. background mental health problems in secondary school-aged students are very common (aihw, 2007/2011), and school wellbeing personnel are often the first point of call for young people seeking assistance (graham et al., 2011; walter, gouze & lim, 2006). yet many school wellbeing staff members do not have specific mental health training or the support (e.g. regular supervision) to equip them with the necessary skills to appropriately assist these students (partridge, 2012). apart from social workers and psychologists working in schools, school wellbeing personnel can include teachers in the role of head of house, pastoral workers, year level or welfare coordinators, along with nurses, and youth workers. many of these practitioners have not had specific training in recognising and managing student mental health concerns (rothi et al., 2008; trudgen & lawn, 2011; walter et al., 2006). specifically, this may include understanding and managing risk mailto:carsten.schley@orygen.org.au http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3. student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 around youth suicide (crawford & caltabiano, 2009; koller & bertel, 2006), identifying students with internalising problems (vieira et al., 2014) and getting appropriate help for students (koller & bertel, 2006), particularly those with more challenging mental health needs. carlson and kees (2013) also report that school counsellors were generally less comfortable working with students with a diagnosed mental illness. trudgen and lawn (2011) found that teachers working as year level coordinators or head of house were no more likely to have increased knowledge of youth mental health problems than the general teaching group, despite their role as referral points for concern. additionally, wellbeing personnel sit with the tension of providing for the health and wellbeing needs of students within an organisation focused on the provision of education (hopkins, 2014) and achieving academic results. partridge (2012) identified that school staff frequently report challenges to their own wellbeing when managing the mental health needs of their students, and that offering assistance to meet staff members’ own wellbeing needs can enhance their ability to look after the wellbeing needs of their students. individual staff wellbeing issues commonly involve: a sense of isolation (graham et al., 2011); a struggle to meet the demands of their role (carlson & kees, 2013); lack of confidence (walter et al., 2006); feelings of incompetence, frustration and helplessness (rothi et al., 2008); and psychological distress (borntrager et al., 2012). the “time to reflect” (ttr) training program was developed with the aim of promoting the perceived competence and confidence of school wellbeing personnel in recognising and responding to the mental health needs of their students. ttr was jointly conceived and developed by travancore school and orygen youth health (oyh) in 2004. orygen youth health is a publicly funded youth mental health service based in melbourne, australia. it has a specialised youth mental health clinical service and an integrated training and communications program. travancore school is a victorian department of education and training special education setting, offering a unique educational service to support the learning needs of young people with significant mental health difficulties. the school works with both orygen youth health and the royal children’s hospital mental health. the ttr partnership between oyh and travancore school was founded on the desire to bring together knowledge in youth mental health and expertise in the education of young people with mental health issues. calls for mental health services to work more closely with schools are common (weist et al., 2012), but successful organisational structures upon which to build such collaborative relationships are less evident. partnerships between the educational and mental health sectors have been known to lead to improvements in wellbeing for students and school communities (pettitt, 2003). however, challenges to the development of collaborative partnerships can include a lack of knowledge of mental health issues and systems within schools, combined with a lack of understanding of the education system amongst mental health professionals (rothi et al., 2008). the delivery of training in mental health for the education sector would ideally take into account these challenges and draw from successful partnerships across sectors. the ttr program aimed to ensure inclusion of the content most relevant to wellbeing personnel, and also to deliver content in an acceptable and meaningful way to this school-based audience. the ttr program was the result of a true interdisciplinary collaboration between an education service and a mental health service. consistent with the model described by bronstein (2003), orygen youth health and travancore school collaborated to achieve goals that would not be possible for one service working alone. student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 1.1 why “time to reflect”? “reflection” (on action) is a method that supports professional learning (e.g. atkins and murphy, 1993; boud, keogh & walker, 1985; schön, 1987), with its benefits widely recognised and promoted (e.g. larrivee, 2000; mann, gordon & macleod, 2009). hillkirk, tome and wandress (1989, cited in srivastava et al., 2015) define reflection as a “conscious and intentional examination of the behaviour, ideas and feelings generated by a learning experience with the purpose of increasing the experience’s usefulness to the learner” (p.153). by including a reflective practice framework in the ttr program, as shown in figure 1, the course developers aimed to support participants to critically appraise work practices and to stimulate new ideas about how to enhance their skills in responding to the mental health needs of students. the reflective component of the ttr program specifically aimed to: 1) provide a model to structure reflection. the “reflective practice model” underlying the ttr training series was adapted from the work of gibbs (1988) who proposed a “circular process (model) of reflection” (figure 1). this model was selected, as it encourages an individual not only to “objectively” describe a situation (i.e. what they did exactly) but also to evaluate their personal responses at the time (i.e. what they were thinking and feeling). 2) build in opportunities to practice and refine reflective skills (lee & barnett, 1994) because allocating time for professional collaboration and reflection has been linked to improved effectiveness (bronstein, 2003). 3) encourage a move from “reactive” to “proactive” practice. the culture in schools often encourages a quick solution to problems rather than the development of a deeper understanding of the issues (korthagen & vasalos, 2006); in other words, committing to a belief without reflection can prevent a deeper understanding (carroll & gilbert, 2011). figure 1. reflective model used in ttr (adaptation from gibbs, 1988) student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 4) reduce the isolation of wellbeing workers in managing complex student issues through regular reflection with colleagues. the level of secondary traumatic stress reported in school personnel is comparable to that of social workers and has been shown to benefit from explicit peer support activities (borntrager et al., 2012; partridge, 2012). 5) give attention to the role of feelings and emotions in understanding one’s own behaviours (carroll & gilbert, 2011; korthagen & vasalos, 2006) and to understand the link between personal perceptions and behavioural responses (larrivee, 2000). emotional containment can provide the platform for new understanding and reduced anxiety (partridge, 2012). 6) move beyond a problem-centred focus to being able to explore new possibilities (korthagen & vasalos, 2006), including seeing the positives within seemingly negative events (larrivee, 2000). 7) give opportunities to recognise good practice, build on strengths and develop confidence. lee and barnett (1994) highlight that the benefits gained from new understandings and perspectives are shared between active participants and reflective partners in their role of reflective questioner and active listener. 8) to reduce stress/distress by focusing on what is possible. the course developers anticipated that reflection on personal responses would allow ttr participants to make more sense of a complex situation and come to a conclusion of what else could be or could have been done, or what other paths could have been taken. 1.2 ttr training program the ttr training program comprised five training sessions delivered fortnightly over 10 weeks. this delivery schedule was designed so that participants could participate in independent reflective practice between sessions. all training sessions were of three hours duration and included three parts: 1) education in relation to one or more specific mental health topics, 2) small or large group discussion and/or group activities, and 3) an opportunity for participants to “reflect” upon their current practices (table 1 below). the mental health topics included in the course were selected based on requests for professional development or consultation made by school welfare staff in contact with either travancore school or oyh. group discussion and activities were aimed at exploring existing understanding and knowledge of participants in relation to the mental health topic(s), and to practice or refine professional skills (e.g. in how to engage a student in conversation about their deliberate self-harm). the objective of “reflection” has been described above. achieving deep understanding in adult learning has been characterised by specific adult learning methods (dunst, trivette & hanby, 2010). these include a planning phase that introduces and illustrates materials, knowledge or practice; the application phase that includes practise and evaluation of materials, knowledge or practice; and deep understanding, where reflection and mastery of the learning takes place (dunst, trivette & hanby, 2010). all sessions included a range of activities and resources (e.g. video vignettes, worksheets, information sheets, links to online resources) that used these adult learning methods to support engagement and learning outcomes for participants. a reflective practice session between pairs of workshop participants (“reflective partners”) was also scheduled after each training session to promote the development of reflective practice skills in between sessions, and to consolidate a reciprocal support structure between workshop participants, which could endure following completion of the workshop. student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 table 1a. session outline of ‘time to reflect’ (ttr) training series session 1 session 2 session 3 session 4 session 5 introduction & overview (30 min.) • pre-evaluation (20 min.) • history of ttr • course outline/session outline • activity: participant introduction • activity: defining roles at schools reflection on previous session & session outline (10 min.) reflection on previous session & session outline (10 min.) reflection on previous session & session outline (10 min.) reflection on previous session & session outline (10 min.) reflective practice (intro) (30 min.) • concept definition & models • activity: “reflection in your school” – review of existing experiences & processes • introduction to “reflective model” (gibbs, 1989) • facilitator demonstration • benefits/challenges of/with reflection engagement (65 min.) • what is engagement? • engaging young people: key areas • video vignette/activity: “engaging students at your school” youth suicide/deliberate self-harm (dsh) (70 min.) • facts, terms, common myths, “continuum of risk” • recognising risk & how to ask about suicide • video vignette/activity: risk assessment • responding to suicide risk in the school context • definition, prevalence of dsh • video vignette/activity: “what reasons for dsh can you identify?” challenging behaviours (65 min.) • what are challenging behaviours? • activity: “why are challenging behaviours difficult to work with?” • possible mental illness diagnoses underlying challenging behaviours • a different theoretical understanding of challenging behaviours eating disorders (55 min.) • definitions & prevalence • signs of eating disorders • video vignette/activity: “what signs of disordered eating can you identify?” • causes: bio-psycho-social model • treatment & support options (for schools) morning tea break (15 min.) student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 table 1b. session outline of ‘time to reflect’ (ttr) training series session 1 session 2 session 3 session 4 session 5 youth depression (40 min.) • signs & symptoms • incidence/prevalence • impact of depression • therapies for depression • practical support strategies • video vignette/activity: “how would you respond to ‘glen’ at your school?” anxiety (40 min.) • what is anxiety? • prevalence • when is anxiety a problem? • overview of anxiety disorders • diagnosing an anxiety disorder • therapies & practical strategies deliberate self-harm (40 min.) • how to ask & respond to dsh • management of dsh at school • personal response & selfcare challenging behaviours (cont) (35 min.) • ways of working with challenging behaviours • video vignette/activity: “the relationship.” what contributes to effective behaviour management? • developing a positive behaviour plan • management issues specifically for schools psychosis/partnerships with mental health services (20 min.) • what is psychosis? • early warning signs for psychosis • school responses & strategies for supporting students with psychosis • referral to tertiary mental health services & secondary consultation • post-evaluation (20 min.) reflective practice session (in pairs) & large group discussion/review (35 min.) individual reflective journaling (“in relation to today’s session, what will you keep, stop and start doing in your work?”) (5 min.) scheduling of in-between session reflection (5 min.) resources, conclusion & wrap-up (10 min.) three-month follow-up evaluation student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 1.3 the present study a systematic evaluation of the ttr training package was conducted between 2009 and 2013. the primary aim of this study was to explore whether the ttr training program would improve the perceived “competence” and “confidence” of participants in regards to the following key interest areas: 1) recognition of mental health problems in young people 2) helping students with a mental health problem (e.g. counselling and/or referral options) 3) assessment of self-harm/suicide risk 4) knowledge of appropriate interventions for mental health problems 5) talking to parents about mental health problems. secondly, this study aimed to assess the possible benefits that adopting a “reflective approach” may have for the professional practice of participants. 2. methods 2.1 research design and measures this study adopted a single group pre-test/post-test/maintenance design. participants completed a self-assessment questionnaire at three time points (see appendix 1): prior to the first session (t1), following the final session (t2), and three months after completing the program (t3). the questionnaire comprised the following measures: measure of change in perceived “competence” and “confidence.” participants were asked to assess their own competence (perceived ability/skill) and confidence (perceived certainty of ability/skill) in relation to the study’s key interest areas, using a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). for example, questions assessing competence included: “how skilled do you feel in your ability to recognise mental health problems in young people?” or “how skilled do you feel in assessing for risk of suicide or deliberate self-harm in young people?” questions targeting perceived confidence included: “how confident do you feel in your ability to respond to students with a mental health problem?” or “how confident do you feel discussing mental health problems with parents of students at your school?” participants were instructed to complete these self-assessments based on their level of perceived competence or confidence at the time of the rating. recognition of mental health disorders. the mental health disorders symptom check (mhdsc) section of the questionnaire was developed by the study authors in order to assess participants’ understanding of the signs and symptoms of the mental disorders that were discussed during the course. the mhdsc comprises a list of 29 “symptoms” corresponding to the criteria for major depression, generalised anxiety disorder, anorexia and bulimia nervosa, and schizophrenia, described in the dsm-iv-r (american psychiatric association, 1994). participants were asked to identify those symptoms that they thought were indicative of each of four mental health disorders: depression, anxiety, eating disorder and psychosis (see appendix 1, section 5). the outcome measure of this questionnaire was the number of correct responses at each time point. perceived benefits of “reflective practice.” to determine possible (perceived) benefits of reflective practice, participants were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements in relation to a number of previously published “benefits” of reflective practice (larrivee, 2000; mann et al., 2009; atkins & murphy, 1993/1994). for example, participants were asked to what extent they thought that reflective practice could help with stimulating new ideas about how to enhance student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 skills and practice (atkins & murphy, 1994), or moving from “reactive” to more “proactive” practice (korthagen & vasalos, 2006) using a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). using the same scale, participants also had to indicate how skilled they felt at reflecting on their professional practice, and how useful reflective practice was in their work. additionally, participants were asked to quantify the time (in minutes) they allowed for reflection in a regular working week. professional practice change. the post-training (t2) and three-month follow-up (t3) questionnaire included two additional qualitative questions aimed at assessing potential changes to the participants’ professional practice and their use of reflection. participants were asked whether they had changed their practice and their use of reflection in any way since attending the training, and if so, to describe how. conversely, if no change had occurred, participants were prompted to describe what may have prevented changes. in the t3 evaluation, participants were also asked whether they had been able to maintain any potential changes over the past three months (if applicable). 2.2 statistical analysis data analyses were dependent on the measures used in each section of the questionnaires. descriptive analysis was used for demographic data. changes in ratings of “competence/confidence” and responses to the mhdsc were analysed by using the friedman test for subjects who had data in all of the time points concerned. this test was used to ascertain whether there were differences in the scores for the participants over three time points with a dependent variable that is ordinal. post-hoc analysis comparing pairs of time points was conducted using the wilcoxon signed ranks test with a bonferroni adjusted p-value of 0.016. this is an appropriate non-parametric post-hoc test to use when measuring differences in scores of the participants at two time points. further analysis of the mhdsc used the mann-whitney u test to ascertain if there was any difference in responses between teachers and allied health professionals. to ascertain the level of agreement around the helpfulness of reflective practice, the cochrane’s q test was used to measure change across all three time points. 2.3 setting and sample a total of nine ttr workshops were run during the study period (two each during 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013, and one during 2011). recruitment of participants for all workshops occurred through local school welfare networks, web-based advertising and email correspondence to schools in the catchment area. participants were self-selected, with numbers for each workshop group capped at 15. groups were not matched for any demographics, including gender, age, professional background or primary roles in schools. training courses were conducted at the two ttr partner organisations and were all jointly facilitated by a mental health clinician from oyh and a specialist teacher from travancore school. during the study period, a total of four oyh clinicians and two travancore teachers were involved in the running of training courses. consistency in the delivery of the programs was maintained by continued joint program review and adherence to implementation and training guidelines (travancore school & orygen youth health, 2013). student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 3. results and discussion 3.1 participant characteristics a total of 135 school welfare staff from state, independent, and catholic secondary schools in the north-western area of melbourne participated in ttr training sessions during the study period (table 2 below). table 2. characteristics of ttr participants percentage responses 2009 (n=25) 2010 (n=25) 2011 (n=33) 2012 (n=13) 2013 (n=34) total (n=105) schools state ** 92.0 097.0 76.9 79.4 87.6 independent ** 00.0 003.0 00.0 11.8 04.8 catholic ** 08.0 000.0 23.1 00.0 04.8 tafe ** 00.0 000.0 00.0 05.9 01.9 tertiary ** 00.0 000.0 00.0 02.9 01.0 primary roles teacher ** 16.0 021.1 46.2 35.3 24.8 school counsellor ** 00.0 000.0 07.7 00.0 01.0 school nurse ** 00.0 000.0 07.7 00.0 01.0 student welfare coordinator ** 28.0 024.2 38.5 23.5 26.7 school psychologist ** 40.0 033.3 00.0 11.8 23.8 principal class ** 04.0 003.0 00.0 08.8 04.8 youth worker ** 00.0 006.1 00.0 11.8 05.7 social worker ** 12.0 021.2 00.0 05.9 11.4 other ** 00.0 000.0 00.0 02.9 01.0 gender male 031.0 20.0 000.0 15.4 08.8 14.2 female 069.0 80.0 100.0 84.6 91.2 85.8 age 40 or less ** 58.3 071.9 76.9 55.9 64.1 41 50 ** 16.7 015.6 07.7 23.5 17.5 51 60 ** 25.0 012.5 15.4 20.6 18.4 previous training on recognising or managing mental illness? yes 044.8 76.0 072.7 76.9 76.5 68.7 no 055.4 24.0 027.3 23.1 23.5 31.3 previous training undertaken by profession (not including subjects taken as part of tertiary training)? teacher ** 33.3 076.9 72.7 52.2 57.6 allied health ** 30.8 030.0 50.0 63.6 39.1 previous training in reflection? yes 000.0 20.0 031.2 30.8 32.4 22.6 no 100.0 80.0 068.8 69.2 67.6 77.4 don’t know ** 00.0 000.0 07.7 03.2 02.0 ** information not collected the most common primary roles of participants were student welfare coordinator (26.7%), teacher (24.8%), and school psychologist (23.8%). significantly more female welfare staff participated than males (ratio 6:1). whilst on average more than three-quarters of participants (with exception of the cohort in 2009) reported that they did have previous mental health specific student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 training, teaching staff (58.5%) were slightly more likely to have attended additional training in mental health since completing tertiary education when compared with allied health staff (42.7%). even fewer participants reported training during their pre-service preparation (table 2). less than one quarter had previous training specific to reflection/reflective practice prior to commencing ttr. 3.1 changes in perceived “competence” and “confidence” significant changes in the reported perceived “competence” of participants were observed between the first (t1) and final (t2) sessions of the ttr training program in relation to three of the five key interest areas (table 3 below). table 3. changes in percentages of participants who perceive themselves to be “competent” in relation to the study interest areas (a-e) across three time points: prior to the initial session (t1), at completion of the training (t2), and at three months following the final session (t3) percentage “competent”* t1 vs t2 vs t3 p-value (n=78) t1 vs t2 p-value (n=113) t1 vs t3 p-value (n=84) t1 (n=135) t2 (n=113) t3 (n=84) a. in recognising mental health problems in young people 42.4 84.1 85.7 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 b. in helping a student with a mental health problem 28.4 68.1 73.8 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 c. in assessing for risk of suicide or deliberate self-harm in young people 34.3 72.6 77.4 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 d. in knowing about appropriate interventions for mental health problems 26.3 67.3 69.9 <0.001 <0.464 <0.001 e. in discussing mental health problems with parents of young people 35.3 71.7 79.8 <0.001 <0.341 <0.001 *percentage “competent”: percentage of participants who chose the options “quite a bit” to “extremely” able in the questions. the areas that did not show evidence of change between t1 and t2 included knowing about appropriate interventions for mental health problems and discussing mental health problems with the parents of young people; however, this changed between t1 and t3 where there was evidence of difference. possible reasons for this might be the continued use of reflective practice beyond the initial training and the opportunity to use this process to explore different interventions and ways to communicate with parents. these suggested reasons are supported by the findings discussed in the section below, where participants noted that reflection allowed them to look at situations in a different way and develop strategies to support students. respectively, “confidence” ratings were found to be significantly higher for all five key interest areas at the end of the ttr program and were maintained at t3 (table 4 below). at the three month follow-up (t3), “competence” and “confidence” self-assessments were found to be student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 maintained or increased across all five key interest areas, compared to the beginning of the training (t1). table 4. changes in percentages of participants who perceive themselves to be “confident” in relation to the study interest areas (a-e) across three time points: prior to the initial session (t1), at completion of the training (t2), and at three months following the final session (t3) percentage “confident”* t1 vs t2 vs t3 p-value (n=78) t1 vs t2 p-value (n=113) t1 vs t3 p-value (n=84) t1 (n=135) t2 (n=113) t3 (n=84) a. in recognising mental health problems in young people 40.6 82.4 84.7 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 b. in helping a student with a mental health problem 27.8 68.5 74.1 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 c. in assessing for risk of suicide or deliberate self-harm in young people 26.3 70.4 75.3 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 d. in knowing about appropriate interventions for mental health problems 27.8 77.8 78.6 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 e. in discussing mental health problems with parents of young people 33.6 72.2 71.4 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 *percentage “confident”: percentage of participants who chose the options “quite a bit” to “extremely” confident in the questions. 3.2 recognition of mental health disorders there was no evidence of change in the knowledge of participants in the recognition of mental health disorders, with the exception of psychosis, from t1 to t2 (= 3.64 vs �̅� = 4.03, p = 0.015). while there was a slight increase in correct responses between t1 and t2 for all disorders, this increase was not maintained at t3. for the mental health disorders of depression, anxiety and eating disorders, the majority of participants (89%) scored 75% or more of the responses correctly at t1. this suggests a good level of initial knowledge, and this ceiling effect may explain the lack of improvement at t2 and t3. comparative analysis of the teacher and allied health groups was also completed. differences were found between teachers and allied health participants in relation to correct responses at t1 for eating disorders (p = 0.03, mann-whitney u = 1045.50, z = 2.11) and t3 for eating disorders (p = 0.03, mann-whitney u = 493.50, z = 2.17), with allied health staff, on average, achieving more correct responses. it is important to note that this measure was researcher developed, and, while it may have ecological validity, results need to interpreted with caution. also, these results are likely to be affected by the participant’s caseload and mental health treatment experience with different disorders. 3.3 perceived benefits of “reflective practice” participants reported an increased skill level in their ability to reflect on their professional practice from t1 to t2 (p <0.001, x2(2) = 21.123) and agreed that after the training they made additional time available for reflective practice in their work (p = 0.002, x2(2) = 12.760). at t2 and student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 t3 participants were asked, “overall, how useful do you think is reflective practice to your work?” at t2, 88% of participants noted that reflective practice was “quite a bit” or “extremely” useful. this increased to 92% of participants at t3. participants were also asked to what extent they agreed that reflective practice helped with stimulating new ideas, utilising strengths, moving from reactive to proactive practice, celebrating success and feeling more connected and supported in their work. at t1, there were high levels of agreement from participants that reflective practice helped with stimulating new ideas about how to enhance skills and practice (88.8%), utilising their strengths more effectively (90%) and making them feel more connected and supported in their work across the three time points (85.1%). responses with an increased level of agreement over the period of training included: moving from reactive to proactive practice (x2(2) = 10.294, p = 0.006) and providing participants with an opportunity to celebrate their own successes (x2(2) = 11.673, p = 0.003). this suggests that while participants came to training with some preconceived ideas about the use reflective practice, training participation highlighted additional benefits of reflective practice. 3.4 changes to professional practice and reflection upon completion of the ttr series, participants were asked to comment on changes they had made to their use of reflection, their professional practice, and barriers to reflection. changes in the use of reflective practice noted by participants fell into three main categories: 1) reflective practice becoming part of everyday work. this is illustrated by comments such as, “i try to make time to reflect at the end of the day with a colleague and it has also made me realize the positive things that i do as well,” and “[t]here wasn’t an opportunity previously to engage in reflection, but i have now been reflecting with my partner from the course,” and “i have been more conscious of incorporating reflection into my daily routine and try to spend more time, albeit at home, reflecting on what’s working well and not so well with students.” these comments suggest that participants find reflective practice useful and have modified the approach in a way that works for them. 2) improvements in professional skills and practice. participants’ comments that support this include, “i am more confident in completing risk assessments for children i know have a history of suicidal thoughts,” and “[i] do a self-questionnaire [with students] and discuss mental health symptoms and investigate responses.” 3) use of reflection to understand mental health needs of students and as a new work practice. this is illustrated by comments including, “[i] feel more comfortable sitting with complex issues – don’t feel the need to come up with immediate solutions,” and “i have made time to reflect on my practice with someone outside of school.” participants also commented on accessing support in their use of referrals to other agencies, such as “i believe i am now asking many more questions of the students and getting better and more detailed info [sic] them making more appropriate referrals,” and finding relevant resources, for example, “i search for information from reliable websites, such as beyondblue and oyh.” participants also noted that reflection had allowed them to look at situations in a different way and develop strategies to support students. for example, “i have a few students who i have found challenging and difficult to engage. i dedicated time to reflecting on what about them/the case i found challenging, as well as my comfort level in getting creative with students to get them engaged,” and “i am trying at the end of each week to reflect on the week; what happened; ask student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 whether i handled situations well and what i could do differently.” lastly, participants identified devoting more time to using reflective practice. this was evident in comments such as, “i began to increase the amount of time of reflection,” and “[w]e make more time available to reflect; placed greater importance on it,” and “[m]ore reflective practice – celebrating success rather than just focusing on negative experiences.” as with any change process, there are barriers to implementing and committing to the change. the two main barriers noted by participants included 1) finding the time to reflect, due to their own work role and school priorities, and 2) conflicting work priorities. comments that highlight the issue of time as a barrier for reflection included: “time. there are approx [sic] 1000 students in this school. the wellbeing team doesn’t see all of them, but we do see many, usually on an ongoing basis. there are days when there is not enough time to write case notes and do planning for next year. unfortunately, something has to give and it was the personal reflection.” conflicting priorities to making time for reflection were identified in statements including: “[t]he main obstacle is the school being under pressure in other areas and support staff having to be elsewhere.” 4. conclusions this study investigated whether participation in the “time to reflect” (ttr) training program would enhance the self-efficacy of secondary school wellbeing personnel in recognising and responding to the mental health needs of students. prior to commencing the course, fewer than half the participants perceived themselves as competent and confident in relation to the study interest areas. the areas where participants felt least competent and confident were in helping a student with mental health problems, assessing the risk of suicide or deliberate self-harm, and knowing appropriate interventions for mental health problems. after participating in ttr, results indicated that school wellbeing personnel felt significantly more competent and confident in recognising mental health problems in young people, helping students with a mental health problem, assessing risk of self-harm and suicide, knowing about appropriate interventions for mental health problems, and in talking to parents about mental health problems. the majority of participants reported making changes to their use of reflection as a result of attending ttr. these changes included reflection becoming part of everyday practice, and reflection being used to consider alternative ways of working with students. participants also noted that continued reflective practice had benefits for their work in the form of improved professional skills, better use of referral to outside agencies and an increased ability to understand the needs of students who exhibited mental health needs. participants also agreed that reflective practice was helpful in promoting a sense of proactivity in their work, and that reflection could be used as a means of celebrating success. whether there is a relationship between reported practice change and use of reflection cannot be answered by this study. however, based on previous research into the relationship between reflection and professional practice, we propose that there might have been a positive association between increased awareness and use of reflection and the continued development of professional practice (e.g. bronstein, 2003). schools can be frontline agencies in supporting the early recognition of mental health disorders in students. mental health education and training is a declared priority area for workforce development in australian schools (department of health and ageing, 2009; department of human services, 2009) with evidence showing that training of school personnel student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 can lead to more effective supports for students with mental health disorders (cooper & cefai, 2013). rothi and leavey (2006) noted that teachers want professional development courses to improve basic recognition skills and that training should focus on mental health in the educational environment and not attempt to create mental health professionals out of teachers. given the encouraging outcomes of this study, the ttr program might be ideally suited to meet this objective. the co-facilitated approach to delivering ttr was an important part of the process. hernandez and blazer (2006, cited in cooper & cefai, 2013) note that it is important for both educational and health professionals to reflect on the ways in which they can combine their efforts. despite previous experiences (rothi et al., 2008; sedlak, 1997) the ttr program has demonstrated that an educational and mental health service can work together successfully to achieve a shared goal. 5. limitations and future outlook as the focus of this study was the evaluation of a training program, it did not have a control group, and results therefore need to be interpreted with caution. participant attrition in responses at t2 and t3 also affected conclusions that could be drawn. as, following completion of the course, participants did not perceive themselves significantly more competent in knowing about “appropriate interventions for mental health problems” or “discussing mental health problems with the parents of young people,” future training sessions could be modified to place additional emphasis on the development of skill in these areas. for example, more specific examples for how to talk to parents about mental health issues could be provided during each session and/or additional skill practice could be included between training sessions (e.g. participants could be asked to conduct a parent education session and reflect upon their performance). similarly, there could be a greater focus on teaching participants about mental health interventions and requesting homework assignments to be completed in between sessions (e.g. for participants to read articles about interventions). however, any changes to the course would need to factor in the existing time commitments of school wellbeing staff so that these are not perceived as burdensome. perhaps a useful way to assess how the training course could be modified is to ask participants at completion of the series how their learning outcomes could have been further improved and make changes in line with their recommendations. further research is required to explore what elements of ttr are most strongly associated with changes in reported self-efficacy and professional practice, specifically in relation to the potential influence of reflective practice. this study is also not able to clarify whether greater self-efficacy and reported practice change actually translate to better outcomes for students. a randomised controlled trial would be ideal to validate present findings. further research in this area would also benefit from the use of validated measures to assess participant knowledge of mental health symptoms and the use of reflective practice. in terms of ways forward, this study provides initial evidence that the ttr program promotes competence and confidence of student wellbeing personnel in recognising and responding to the mental health needs of students, and that regular reflective practice may have benefits for continued professional development. the study also reiterates the importance of mental health and education services working together to achieve positive outcomes in training school wellbeing staff to identify and support students with mental health disorders. compliance with ethical standards student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 all procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. acknowledgments this study was generously supported by the block family research grant (private donation). we would also like to acknowledge the contributions by heather miller, cassie redlich, hok pan yuen, annie bruxner and georgie cox to the program development and evaluation. authors carsten schley orygen youth health carsten.schley@orygen.org.au lisa mckay-brown melbourne graduate school of education judy ring travancore school katherine monson orygen youth health jo robinson orygen youth health leanne crothers orygen youth health joanne moore travancore school publishing timeline received 17 november 2015 accepted 30 january 2017 published 9 june 2017 references australian institute of health and welfare (2007). young australians: their health and wellbeing (cat. no. phe 87). canberra, australia: australian institute of health and welfare. australian institute of health and welfare (2011). young australians: their health and wellbeing (cat. no. phe 140). canberra, australia: australian institute of health and welfare. american psychiatric association (1994). diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). washington, dc: author. atkins, s., & murphy, k. 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(2015). reflections: an approach to comprehensive learning in medical education. national journal of physiology, pharmacy & pharmacology, 5(2), 153-156. https://doi.org/10.5455/njppp.2015.5.061220141 trudgen, m., & lawn, s. (2011). what is the threshold of teachers’ recognition and report of concerns about anxiety and depression in students? an exploratory study with teachers of adolescents in regional australia. australian journal of guidance and counselling, 21(3), 126-141. https://doi.org/10.1375/ajgc.21.2.126 vieira, m., gadelha, a., moriyama, t., bressan, r., & bordin, i. (2014). evaluating the effectiveness of a training program that builds teachers’ capability to identify and appropriately refer middle and high school students with mental health problems in brazil: an exploratory study. bmc public health, 14, 210. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-210 walter, h., gouze, k., & lim, k. (2006). teachers’ beliefs about mental health needs in inner city elementary schools. journal of the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, 45(1), 61-68. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.chi.0000187243.17824.6c weist, m., mellin, e., chambers, k., lever, n., haber, d., & blaber, c. (2012). challenges to collaboration in school mental health and strategies for overcoming them. journal of school health, 82(2), 97-105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2011.00672.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.09.011 https://doi.org/10.1037/h0080238 https://doi.org/10.5455/njppp.2015.5.061220141 https://doi.org/10.1375/ajgc.21.2.126 https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-210 https://doi.org/10.1097/01.chi.0000187243.17824.6c https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2011.00672.x student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 appendix 1: ttr self-assessment questionnaire example shown was used at time point one (baseline). orygen youth health research centre ‘time to reflect’ course evaluation questionnaire 1 thank you for taking the time to complete the following questionnaire. your responses will help us ensure that the training we are providing is achieving its aims. please be as honest as you can in your responses and remember any information that you give to us will remain confidential. the questionnaire should take about 15 minutes to complete. student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 name: id (office use) section 1: demographic information 1. primary roles (tick as many as apply) class teacher  1 student welfare coordinator  2 school nurse  3 principal class  4 education support worker/teacher’s assistant  5 year level coordinator  6 other  7 please specify: _________________ 2. what is your highest professional qualification? 3. sector: state / independent / catholic/other – please specify: _______________________ 4. gender male  1 female  2 5. date of birth 6. why are you interested in doing this course? ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 7. have you received previous training on recognising or managing mental illness? yes  1 no  2 if yes, please specify__________________________________________________________________ student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 8. have you received previous training on reflection/reflective practice? yes  1 no  2 if yes, please specify__________________________________________________________________ section 2. your ability to help someone with a mental health problem or deliberate selfharm a) how skilled do you feel in your ability to recognise mental health problems in young people? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 b) how skilled do you feel in helping a student with a mental health problem? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 c) how skilled do you feel in assessing for risk of suicide or deliberate self-harm in young people? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 d) how knowledgeable do you feel about appropriate interventions for mental health problems (e.g. supportive counselling, cognitive behaviour therapy)? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 e) how skilled do you feel discussing mental health problems with parents of young people at your school? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 f) how well do you think your school is able to respond to & meet the needs of students with a mental health problem? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 section 3. your confidence in helping someone with a mental health problem or deliberate self-harm a) how confident do you feel in your ability to recognise mental health problems in students? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 b) how confident do you feel in helping someone with a mental health problem? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 c) how confident do you feel in assessing for risk of suicide or deliberate self-harm in students? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 d) how confident do you feel in your ability to respond to students with a mental health problem? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 e) how confident do you feel discussing mental health problems with parents of students at your school? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 section 4: reflection/reflective practice “reflection” is the ability to review our skills and knowledge in a constructive manner, thus leaving us with ideas about how to enhance our skills and practice (atkins, 1991). a) how skilled do you feel you are at reflecting on your professional practice? not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 b) to what extent do you agree that reflective practice can help with: stimulating new ideas about how to enhance your skills and practice? strongly disagree  1 disagree  2 uncertain  3 agree  4 strongly agree  5 utilising your strengths more effectively? strongly disagree  1 disagree  2 uncertain  3 agree  4 strongly agree  5 student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 ‘moving’ you from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’ practice? strongly disagree  1 disagree  2 uncertain  3 agree  4 strongly agree  5 providing you with an opportunity to celebrate your successes? strongly disagree  1 disagree  2 uncertain  3 agree  4 strongly agree  5 making you feel more connected and supported in your work? strongly disagree  1 disagree  2 uncertain  3 agree  4 strongly agree  5 c) to what extent do you agree that you make time for reflection in your work? strongly disagree  1 disagree  2 uncertain  3 agree  4 strongly agree  5 d) how much time do you allow for reflection in a regular working week? please specify e) overall, how useful do you think is reflective practice to your work? n/a  0 not at all  1 a little bit  2 moderately  3 quite a bit  4 extremely  5 f) which of the following questions are reflective questions? tick as many as you think apply.  1. what exactly happened?  8. where can i access resources?  2. what mental health disorder might the client present with?  9. what did i learn about the ways that i work?  3. what was i thinking and feeling?  10. wait and see what happens next time?  4. what was good/not so good about the way i did things?  11. what else could i have done in this situation?  5. what do i say to the parents?  12. how do i solve this problem?  6. how do i fit it all in?  13. who to refer this to?  7. what would i do differently next time?  14. how to stop this behaviour from happening again? student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 section 5: recognition of mental health problems mental health disorders symptom check please place a cross next to all symptoms that you think correspond to the relevant disorder. the same symptom can be selected for more than one disorder. symptoms are based on the dsm-iv-r criteria for major depression, generalised anxiety, anorexia and bulimia nervosa and schizophrenia. depression (11 items) anxiety (8 items) eating disorder (9 items) psychosis (7 items) appetite changes binge eating delusions false beliefs that are not part of the person's culture and do not change. e.g. believing that others can hear your thoughts denial of seriousness of low body weight depressed/sad mood difficulty concentrating or difficulty making decisions difficulty controlling anxiety or worry disorganised thinking – trouble organising or connecting thoughts in a logical way. dissatisfaction with body shape and weight distorted perception of body weight or shape excessive anxiety or worry fatigue, tired all the time fear of becoming fat feeling wound-up, tense or restless feelings of worthlessness or excessive/inappropriate guilt flat affect (person talks with a dull monotonous voice with no emotion) hallucinations seeing, hearing, smelling, or feeling things that no one else can see, hear, smell, or feel. inappropriate compensatory behaviour (self-induced vomiting, laxative abuse, excessive exercise) irritability lack of ability to begin and sustain planned activities loss of interest or pleasure in most activities recurrent suicidal thoughts student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 refusal to maintain minimum healthy body weight for age. significant tension in muscles sleep disturbance speaking little even when forced to interact talking or moving more slowly/quickly than normal undue influence of weight weight changes subscale score /11 /8 /9 /7 depression (11 items) anxiety (8 items) eating disorder (9 items) psychosis (7 items) section 6: practice questions when presented with a young person who displays symptoms of mental illness… 1) do you routinely screen students for suicide risk? yes  1 no  2 2) do you use management plans for students who display symptoms of mental illness, self-harm or suicide risk? yes  1 no  2 3) does your school have clear guidelines on the management of mental health problems among students? yes  1 no  2 4) have you been able to assist in the development of clear guidelines regarding the management of mental health problems among students in your school? yes  1 no  2 section 7: your experience of mental health problems we would like to know a bit about your experience of mental health problems in order to help us analyse this survey. 8.1 to your knowledge have any of the students in your school ever experienced: a) a mental health problem? yes  1 no  2 don’t know  3 student mental health schley, mckay-brown, ring, monson, robinson, crothers, & moore www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 b) deliberate self-harm? yes  1 no  2 don’t know  3 8.2 have you had any personal experience of either a mental health problem or deliberate selfharm (i.e. yourself or a close friend or family member)? yes  1 no  2 don’t know  3 you have finished thank you!! mcintyre, l. & rondeau, k. (2013). understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh can enhance wellbeing and target development efforts. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 82-97. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i1.5 lynn mcintyre university of calgary lmcintyr@ucalgary.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 article understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh can enhance wellbeing and target development efforts lynn mcintyre · krista rondeau abstract: much development research is focused on deprivations as well as contextual factors that limit individuals’ freedoms and choices to lead the lives they value; however, less attention is paid to ‚the ends‛ or ‚the good life‛ and how these can inform development efforts. this paper examines the aspirations of 43 ultra-poor female heads of household living in urban and rural bangladesh within the context of wellbeing, i.e., the lives they value, in order to better understand how they could be assisted through development efforts. all women in our study articulated conceptions of personal wellbeing that were linked to their children and with the aim of conducting themselves as good mothers and honourable women. physical and emotional hardship and the sacrifice of personal aspirations, happiness, nutrition, and health were required to establish children, who might in turn care for them in their old age; still, achieving these modest goals was difficult and resulted in constant worry or ‚tension.‛ given the life these women value, social programs and policies that aim to support ultra-poor women who have children must consider how they can provide assistance that will benefit women directly without asking them to withhold assistance from their children. keywords: wellbeing, well-being, capability approach, bangladesh, ultra-poor women, whole person development 1. introduction human development is defined as ‚an expansion of real freedoms of people to pursue lives that they value and have reason to value‛ (klugman, 2010, p. 85). based on sen’s capability approach (cf. robeyns, 2005), much development research is focused on deprivations such as lack of income, shelter, health, education, as well as contextual factors that ultimately limit individuals’ freedoms and choices—capabilities—to lead the lives they have reason to value (camfield, crivello, & woodhead, 2009; clark, 2002; mcgregor, 2004). development theorists such as nussbaum and sen, who favour this approach, argue that focusing on capabilities avoids the paternalistic imposition of any particular notion of ‚the good life‛ (robeyns, 2006, p. 353) and allows for a range of possible ways of living (robeyns, 2006). nonetheless, nussbaum (2000) has called for a consideration of the functioning of each person – ‚the principle of each person as end‛ (p. 56). indeed, by sen’s (1999) own assertion, ‚it is the ends that make development important *emphasis added+‛ (p. 3). thus, research that focuses on the nature of the good life and ends may inform development efforts that aim to improve wellbeing, in particular for the least well-off (nussbaum, 2000, p. 56). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 values and goals, i.e., aspirations, are a language used to discuss wellbeing, including subjective perspectives and material/objective indicators (appadurai, 2004; camfield et al., 2009; white, 2010a) and these terms provide an articulation of what the capability literature refers to as the good life or the ends.1 wellbeing considers what people have or do not have, what people can do or cannot do, what people think or feel (wellbeing research in developing countries, n.d.), and ‚it places the person, in their relationships and surroundings, at the centre‛ by considering what people value and aspire to (camfield et al., 2009, p. 8). typically, multidimensional wellbeing research, while exploring its objective, subjective, and relationship dimensions, continues to focus primarily on ‚how people think and feel about what they have and do‛ (mcgregor, mckay, & velazco, 2007, pp. 110-111), rather than on the things they aspire to or value (camfield et al., 2009). for example, biswas-diener and diener (2001) measured the life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing of 84 slum dwellers in calcutta and found that while participants found some satisfaction with social relationships, overall they were neutral or slightly dissatisfied, which ‚suggests that poverty is a condition to which people do not completely adapt‛ (p. 342). in an attempt to generate a multidimensional understanding of people’s lives that might inform development efforts, international development and poverty researchers have made concerted efforts to include subjective experiences and meanings of wellbeing as aspirational ends (camfield et al., 2009). building on a long history of wellbeing research (camfield et al., 2009), the economic and social research council research group on wellbeing in developing countries (esrc-wed) has sought to enhance development efforts through a theoretical and empirical focus on wellbeing that considers both objective and subjective local perspectives of wellbeing that are embedded within the environment in which individuals live (cf. gough & mcgregor, 2007).2 mcgregor (2004) argues that alongside deprivations, poor men, women, and children are ‚active agents trying to construct a good life for themselves and others close to them‛ (p. 346), and thus it is important to understand ‚the local vision of what must be done to achieve wellbeing in specific contexts‛ (gough & mcgregor, 2007, p. 15). thus, classic development initiatives (e.g., education programs, microcredit, etc.) that view ultra-poor women (those living on less than $1.25 usd per day) as natural candidates because they lack income, food security, health, and education (see alkire, 2010) may fail because they do not account for women’s personal aspirations and conceptualization of wellbeing within the context of their daily lives (gough, 2004; ibrahim, 2011; mcgregor, 2004). 1.1 whole person development the women whose experiences form the basis of this research represent a group that is especially vulnerable due to gender inequalities and poverty (commission on social determinants of health, 2008; moss, 2002), and therefore feature prominently in international development initiatives, such as the millennium development goals. nonetheless, they are still not being reached in any significant way by current social programs and policies in bangladesh (ahmed, petzold, kabir, & tomson, 2006; halder & mosley, 2004; kabeer, 2004; matin, sulaiman, & rabbani, 2008; rahman & hossain, 1995; walker & matin, 2006).3 we contend that 1 while it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a detailed review of capabilities, functionings, aspirations, and wellbeing, this can be found in ibrahim (2011). 2 further information on the wellbeing in developing countries research can be found at http://www.welldev.org.uk/research/research.htm. 3 in fact, the women in our study and local ngo workers were largely unaware of each other, especially in urban settings. further details can be found in mcintyre, rondeau, kirkpatrick, hatfield, islam, & huda (2011). understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 in order to leverage improvements from current development programming and policy and ultimately improve the lives of the women who are the intended recipients, an understanding of the population for whom assistance is sought is vital. nussbaum (2000) has similarly suggested that consideration of ‚the special problems women face because of sex‛ is required to confront issues of poverty and development (p. 4). through the capability approach, sen has challenged development agencies, governments, practitioners, and policymakers to move beyond utilitarian individualism and consider the role of social capital and social infrastructures (e.g., education, transportation, public health) in enabling self-realization (douglas & ney, 1998). more recently, the wellbeing literature has called for an extension of the capability approach, i.e., a ‚theory of the person‛ (douglas & ney, 1998, p. 79), where people are seen as both ‚social beings‛ and ‚whole persons‛ (gough & mcgregor, 2007, p. 324). enabling people to achieve wellbeing becomes a key humanitarian ingredient to development by reconciling macro-level development tools and instruments with local understanding of poverty and wellbeing. a discussion of aspirations and wellbeing provides an opportunity to recognize women’s intrinsic value as individuals since: ‚it is through the capacity to aspire that the exercises of voices by the poor will be extended‛ (appadurai, 2004, p. 83). further, this discussion can identify key leverage points that can then be used to make small but meaningful adjustments to services, programs, and policies for ultra-poor women. in other words, attending to women as whole persons—as ‚ends in their own right‛ (nussbaum, 2000, p. 6)—through ‚a strategy that proposes small adjustments to services, programs and policies based on leverage points identified through in-depth narratives<with vulnerable populations.‛ (mcintyre et al., 2011, p. 975). we have termed this approach whole person development (mcintyre et al., 2011) and suggest that targeting numerous leverage points simultaneously could lead to sustainable improvements in the lives of the women that enable a life worth living. 1.2 purpose of this study inspired by urgings to consider a wider range of dimensions regarding poverty for improved academic understanding and policy thinking (ibrahim, 2011; mcgregor et al., 2007, p. 108), we wondered whether the theoretical orientation of wellbeing research and a consideration of the whole person development approach would permit a more textured understanding of the development needs of ultra-poor women who are heads of household in bangladesh (commonly thought to be ‚unreachable‛) through a deeper examination of their aspirations. individuals are best able to speak to aspirations and conceptualizations of wellbeing (chambers, 1997) by providing an account of ‚life as seen from below‛ (wikan, 1985, p. 8; see also ibrahim, 2011). indeed, ethnography and grounded methodologies have been proposed as important ways to understand ‚people-centred ‘aspirations-enhancing’ development policy‛ (ibrahim, 2011, p. 3) and an ideal way of determining wellbeing (camfield et al., 2009; see also geertz, 1973). using narratives from an ethnographic study of 43 ultra-poor female heads of household living in urban and rural bangladesh (mcintyre et al., 2011), the purpose of this paper is to examine ultra-poor women’s conceptualizations of wellbeing in order to better understand how women could be assisted through development efforts. 2. research methods ethical approval for this study was received from the conjoint health research ethics board at the university of calgary and the bangladesh medical research council. the study’s recruitment and data collection methods have been described in detail in a previous understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 publication (mcintyre et al., 2011). briefly, this study comprised 43 ultra-poor women heads of household, defined as the sole financial earner in the household regardless of the presence of other adults. all participants had dependent children and some (n = 11) supported dependent, often disabled or infirm, husbands. participants were first selected on the basis of occupation (garment work, rural or urban petty trading, subsistence agriculture, or indigenous day labour). once satisfying the financial and dependent children criteria for inclusion described above, purposive sampling sought women of different age groups who had been heads of household for different lengths of time and who were migrants or long-time residents of the area. armed with these criteria, trained recruiters sought out potential participants by travelling on foot and visiting their homes during off-work hours. brac (a local nongovernmental organization) community health workers recruited garment workers and urban traders; two study collaborators recruited rural traders and agriculturalists; and two indigenous persons recruited garo informal workers. 4 participants included 10 garment workers and 7 petty traders living in korail basti (a dhaka slum), 5 petty traders and 11 agricultural workers from rural ghorasal, and 10 indigenous garo women who were precariously employed in the informal sector, living in the remote villages of askipara and rangapara near the indian border. this diverse sample was chosen so as to generate ‚a rich variation in the experience of poverty‛ (biswas-diener & diener, 2001, p. 333). in january and february, 2008, each woman participated in a single individual face-to-face semi-structured ethnographic interview regarding the daily food routine. women were asked to describe a typical day, from the time they woke up until they went to bed. they were also asked to reflect on what they did in an average day to manage food and meals for themselves and their families, including strategies for acquiring food, sources of food, meal planning, food preparation, and consumption practices, and what assistance would be required to help them do so. probes were used as required for clarification or additional information. interviews were held in a private location with female interviewers and trained translators, and the interviews were digitally audio-recorded. additional sociodemographic and anthropometric data were collected, and a summary of these results can be found in table 1 (below). interviews underwent multi-stage translation. briefly, the recorded interviews were translated into english by bilingual bangladeshi university instructors and a garo translator. translated texts were then checked for accuracy against audio-recordings by a bilingual bangladeshi-canadian student. a complete description of the translation process can be found in mcintyre et al. (2011). 2.1 analysis the analytical framework used for this study was conventional qualitative content analysis, an inductive strategy where: categories and names for categories < flow from the data *and+ researchers immerse themselves in the data to allow new insights to emerge. < knowledge generated < is based on participants’ unique perspectives and grounded in the actual data. (hsieh & shannon, 2005, pp. 1279-1280; see also graneheim & lundman, 2004). 4 see bal (2007a; 2007b) for a socio-cultural and politico-historical overview of the garo. understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 table 1. selected sociodemographic characteristics of participants, n = 43 variable description occupational group n garment worker (gw) 10 rural petty trader (rpt) 5 urban petty trader (upt) 7 subsistence agriculturalist (sa) 11 informal worker (garo) 10 head of household status n (%) abandoned 15 (34.9) divorced 2 (4.7) widow 13 (30.2) disabled husband 11 (25.6) left husband 2 (4.7) time as head of householda years range 0.5 – 10 average 4.9 agea years range 20 – 65 average age 34.4 religion n (%) muslim 30 (69.8) hindu 3 (7.0) christian 10 (23.3) education n (%) none 30 (69.8) some (unspecified) 3 (7.0) primary level (class 1-5) 7 (16.3) secondary level (class 6-10) 3 (7.0) home ownership n (%) tenant 21 (48.8) ownera 22 (51.1) rentb taka/month range 250 – 1000 average 623 garden n for domestic consumption 8 for sale 4 animals n for domestic consumption 0 for sale 16 children years average age of childrenc 10.5 average number, range (gw, rpt, upt, sa) 2.2, 1 – 4 average number, range (garo) 4.4, 1 – 9 average number, range (all) 2.7, 1 – 9 number of households where children were unable to attend school due to financial reasons n = 19 (44.2%) a information missing from five participants. when a range was given, the mid-point was used to calculate the average length of time as head of household. b information missing from six participants. c information missing from 14 children. understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 the initial analysis of women’s narratives revealed their typical day to be repetitive and demanding, characterized by domestic chores, childcare, employment and overtime, and sleep: getting up from bed i have to clean up my dishes, sweep my floor. after that i have to cook and feed my kid. then i have to go to my shop and sit there < coming home [at 10pm] i feed my children. i also take some food and go to bed to take rest. (chandra, urban trader) seeking to determine how their typical day extends to the notion of wellbeing and a good life, fragments of text where women mentioned hopes, dreams, ‚feeling good,‛ aspirations, and future wellbeing were sought and analyzed to reveal a story that went beyond a discussion of their immediate survival needs (see mcintyre et al., 2011). the most vulnerable are typically without voice and representation, and are often unable to provide an answer when asked directly what specific type of assistance is needed and how it should be provided (and this was the case for the women in our study). this indirect method of determining conceptions of wellbeing is helpful in avoiding some of the problems of direct probing on wellbeing using openor closed-questioning, e.g., the inability to imagine the good life, restricting responses to predetermined categories at the expense of other potentially important information, the advancement of political interests, a desire to please the researcher or avoid embarrassment and distress, etc. (see clark, 2002, pp. 102-104). this method also allows for the emergence of culturally embedded indicators of wellbeing that may not be apparent with the use of a research instrument designed from a theoretical tradition that ‚may be, in some respects, quite the wrong ones for the assessment [of the lives of women+‛ (nussbaum, 2000, pp. 39-40). coding was conducted using the qualitative research software nvivo (qsr international, 2010) alongside analytical techniques used in conventional qualitative content analysis such as immersion/crystallization (borkan, 1999), comparison within and across cases (bryman, 2004), reflectivity (ben-ari & enosh, 2010), thematic network analysis (attride-stirling, 2001), and peer debriefing (lincoln & guba, 1985). in order to ensure the credibility of our results (borkan, 1999; bryman, 2004; hsieh & shannon, 2005; silverman, 2006), results were shared with 39 of 43 participants in march, 2009 through six returning results sessions. in addition to sharing results, these sessions allowed the research team to ascertain whether the participants were in agreement with the findings. fieldnotes were taken and these complemented the textual data from interview transcripts. 3. findings we have previously shown how qualitative inquiry about the daily food routine can provide insight into the lived experience of poverty and food insecurity, including an understanding of contextual constraints on women’s ability to earn an income and care for their family (e.g., gendered norms, lack of education, corruption, limited access to healthcare, etc.) (mcintyre et al., 2011). in the following section, we extend women’s narrative of survival and chronicle their aspirations for wellbeing, revealing that these are primarily constructed through a daily and constant preoccupation with the establishment of their children alongside the desire to maintain their reputation and their honour as mother and woman. these aspirations represented hope for future wellbeing, care, and survival that women believed was within their limited realm of influence and capabilities. however, women faced difficulty in achieving even these modest aspirations and thus expressed constant worry or ‚tension‛ regarding their inability to achieve even meagre elements of wellbeing. we explore and contrast these constructs below. understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 3.1 women’s aspirations and construction of wellbeing overall, women’s aspirations as persons were extremely limited. certainly, all women sought access to basic needs, such as shelter, food, and healthcare. some women were able to evoke dreams such as remarriage or the return of their estranged husband (‚my husband hasn’t divorced me yet; he may accept me anytime again. i hope for that; i have no other intention.‛ [komali, garment worker]); the ability to adequately provide for their families and save for the future; or simply ‚to sleep soundly on a comfortable bed‛ (joyeeta, rural trader). however, most women were unable to articulate distinct, personal aspirations and frequently described feeling hopeless and without a future of their own: ‚i had hope for *the+ future but now i am passing my days somehow‛ (dali, agriculturalist). while women’s hopelessness and lack of aspirations were poignant, and certainly a reflection of the deep vulnerability in which they live (mcintyre et al., 2011), further exploration of the contention that the lives of people who are poor would be unbearable if they were unable to articulate and achieve even a modest conception of wellbeing (e.g., gough & mcgregor, 2007; kahneman, diener, & schwarz, 1999) was warranted. 3.1.1 social and spiritual wellbeing white (2010b) notes that religion and spirituality can offer social rehabilitation to those experiencing loss of social status. indeed, women described a good life as one where they met social and spiritual expectations to be a good mother and an honourable woman through hard work and self-sacrifice: ‚i don’t see *any dream+ about me; i *dream+ about my child. whatever dream i had about me has been demolished. < i have only one dream; that is, i will bring up my kid properly‛ (chumi, garment worker). thus, women censored personal dreams like remarriage so that they could be respected by their children, the community, and for many, allah or god. this self-censoring is in line with the expectation that women support the needs of others over their own (nussbaum, 2000). komali (garment worker), who has a one-year old son, explained: i won’t marry again because if i marry again people in the society will speak ill of me. i have a child; when he will grow up he will not look at me with honour, will not tolerate me; he’ll think badly of me. chira (urban trader) proffered, ‚i have only one daughter, what will i do? i have to live only for her. otherwise, i could have got married again; then i could have got a family life again.‛ unlike the married adolescent girls studied by rashid (2006), who expressed that children were a way to ensure economic security even after a marriage breakdown, the women in this study did not report receiving any kind of support, financial or otherwise, from their children’s fathers and the responsibility for their children’s wellbeing appeared to rest entirely on them. most of all, women feared they would be required to abandon their children if they were to remarry, which was based on the expectation that husbands would not want to take care of children who were not their own. the extent of this practice in bangladesh, and among the ultra-poor in particular, is unknown, as we could not identify documentation of this practice in the literature; however, all of the women in this study who discussed remarriage were fearful of having to abandon their children and the impact it would have on their children’s wellbeing. 3.1.2 achieving wellbeing through their children women’s aspirations were closely bound to their children: ‚i am a simple person; i work to get my meal. you give my kids knowledge, wisdom, you give me good days in future‛ (panchali, understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 agriculturalist). women reported ‚feeling good‛ and being ‚without grief‛ when they were able to earn enough money to provide adequate and appropriate food to their children and enjoy a meal together. dipika (garo) explained, ‚i am poor, but i feel good *when we eat together].‛ and bhavani (agriculturalist) explained: as i work in rich people’s house i can watch what the rich people feed their children. i wish i could do that! this is my dream. i also want to make my children study in a good school. this is all that i want. my children are the centre of all my dreams. i don’t want anything else. i don’t want to wear costly sari *traditional clothing+ *or+ costly shoes. i don’t want to eat good food. i just want to give my children good education. thus, women were driven in their typical day by a strong desire to ‚establish‛ their children by providing adequate food and clothing, attending to their education and healthcare needs, and securing dowry or the equivalent, and they endured arduous employment as well as selfsacrifice in order to do so.5 indeed, women worked long and difficult hours in often physically demanding jobs to ensure that their income would not be disrupted (mcintyre et al., 2011). many women reported that they continued to work despite illness or physical exhaustion because if they did not, they would forgo income and consequently be unable to run their family and establish their children (mcintyre et al., 2011). hoping to shield their children from a similar fate, women were preoccupied with ensuring their children received adequate education so that they would be able to work in a ‚good‛ job and earn sufficient income to ‚stand on their own.‛ nabanita (rural trader) explained: i will make [my son] study even if i have to endure more hardship or have to spare my meal. if i can make him continue his study he will be established in the long run. i don't want him to suffer from the difficulties that i am going through now. in addition, educating their daughters was believed to be important for securing a good marriage, sometimes without the need to pay a dowry, and if unsuccessful, would permit financial independence: ‚if children get more education then they can choose their own partner and they won’t have to worry about dowry‛ (labonya, garment worker). ensuring that both daughters and sons received proper education was noted as particularly important—‚the poor have many children; they go up step by step if they are provided with some education‛ (orpita, garment worker). while women strongly believed that establishing their children was their responsibility as mothers, they were also hopeful that their efforts would not be without future gain. promita (agriculturalist) soberly explained, ‚i am bringing *my son+ up by doing hardships now. if i am alive, my son will work to feed me. if i die, he’ll at least bury me. we have our hope with the kids.‛ we saw evidence that children accepted this expectation: i told *my daughter+, ‚you have read enough, you don’t need to study anymore. work for your living now.‛ she replied, ‚i would work to feed you. please, endure some hardship to help me continue my study. then i would do some good job and make your meal.‛ (panchali, agriculturalist) to summarize, women described a good life as one that permits them to maintain their reputation and honour by establishing their children through hardship and sacrifice. through this, they hoped to secure a future for themselves, where their children would provide care for 5 although the garo were not required to pay a dowry, a marriage feast was required of the family of the bride. understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 their mothers when work was no longer possible. similar findings have been reported by wikan (1985), whose study of poor families in cairo between 1969 and 1982 revealed that women directed significant efforts to educating their children, who would be able to acquire employment in offices and factories, rather than as domestics. furthermore, women also anticipated support from their children in later life (wikan, 1985). these aspirations developed within the context of material constraints, limited opportunities in accessing the labour market, gendered social norms, and an inadequate support system (mcintyre et al., 2011). the following section further explores aspirations and conceptualizations of wellbeing by examining the conditions and circumstances that thwart women from living a good life. 3.2 tensions: a quiet desperation although women articulated conceptualizations of wellbeing, their sense of a good life was overtaken by pervasive feelings of hopelessness—a quiet desperation. research by avotri and walters (1999) revealed a similar form of distress among ghanaian women who described ‚worrying *and thinking+ too much‛ (p. 1132) as an important occupational health hazard. the precariousness of their situation was evident as women reported that it affected their ability to sleep and eat. liarae (garment worker) explained: ‚i’m worried about this. how will i manage my food for four people with such a small salary if i want to save money to help [my daughters get+ married?‛ certainly, the resources upon which women drew to manage their family and establish their children were limited, resulting in significant vulnerability to even minor disruptions (see also mcintyre et al., 2011). for example, when garment worker devangi’s rent increased along with the cost of food, she could no longer pay for childcare (200 taka [$3 usd] per month) and her son had to stay home alone while she was at work. many women were unable to send their children to school because they could not afford the cost of uniforms and ancillary fees; further, some children were needed at home to care for younger siblings, while others were fed at places of work. joyeeta (rural trader) shared, ‚i can’t send my son to school because he works in tea stall *and is fed two meals a day by the employer+.‛ in contrast to the expectation that older children would support their mothers, a number of women with working children described a collapse of their hope to be cared for by their children, thereby thwarting women’s ability to achieve the conceptualization of wellbeing described above: *my son+ can’t bear his own expenses. he has to give the house-rent and buy his food. he gets very low payment. he gets less than 3,000 taka. with this money he can hardly meet his own needs; how will he give me money? (vijaya, garo) as a result of this quiet desperation, women commonly reported feeling constant mental anguish, which they called tension, from the time they woke up until they went to bed, with the latter being most often a time for reflection and worry: [when i am alone] i contemplate on [things, like] that my kids do not suffer problems as i [have] suffered in my life [and] that their fate is not like mine. these thoughts come to my mind. i try to feel a little better. i pray to allah, ‚don’t make my kids’ fate like mine, so that they don’t have to live in hardship.‛ < i can’t sleep well at night for these types of tensions. i feel bad. i try to console myself. then i stay lying on the bed. (jayashri, agriculturalist) at times, this tension prevented women from working and earning an income to run their family. chumi (garment worker) explained, ‚i am mentally weak. why? because of my kids. suppose if something very bad happens to my life; where will my kid get shelter then? < i understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 miss office for the pain.‛ the garo women, who typically had more children, minimal opportunities for employment, little to no land, and poor access to healthcare and education for their children were most vulnerable and consequently most sombre: there are so many tensions. we don’t have our own house as well as land. < i don’t have rice. < in the rainy season i get drenched working in the field. returning home, i get wet again as the thatched roof of my house is broken. how will i find peace? < i feel so panicked; my heartbeats go faster. people may die if they keep on thinking this way. they may get peace only after their death. i keep thinking of these things, too. (rani, garo) while their faith and belief in fate helped temper women’s anxiety and tension over their desperate situations somewhat (‚allah helps us pass our days *when we feel anxious+‛ *bani, urban trader+), the shame women felt regarding their condition was palpable: ‚i cover my whole body with burka keeping my eyes exposed only while i go out of my house so that none can recognize me because i feel ashamed of my poor condition‛ (bhavani, subsistence agriculturalist). upon hearing that the research team would share the findings with government representatives, brinda (agriculturalist) exclaimed: if the government could provide a house and even if i would die under the wrecks of my own house along with my kids after such laborious work, i would be grateful to allah [crying]. her emotional response shows how painful it was to even contemplate a better life. suicide was the most extreme reaction to tensions and was mentioned by three women. it would be disingenuous, however, to attribute women’s anguish, ‚forms of distress that are linked with the material and social circumstances of [women’s+ lives‛ (avotri & walters, 1999, p. 1125), to symptoms of depression or poor mental health given the deep vulnerability in which they lived their lives. i think about how i can put my home in order, how to bring up my kids and so on. < when these thoughts come to my mind, i don’t know what to do. then i wish i could die by taking poison. but again i think if i die who will take care of my kids then. when i think about these facts i can’t sleep the whole night. when i worry too much i can’t take my food. and i feel sick then. (rekha, garo) 4. discussion ‚i am human being; i am a mother. what will i say? i have no other identity‛ (bhavani, agriculturalist). in seeking to understand what wellbeing and a good life means to ultra-poor women, it is evident that women prioritize their children above themselves and aspire primarily to be good mothers and honourable women. while the notion of maternal sacrifice, especially among the poor, is well-described (dasgupta, 1995), our findings add to this literature by demonstrating how ultra-poor women endure physical and emotional hardship and sacrifice their own personal aspirations, happiness, nutrition, and health in order to care for and establish their children. in so doing, they maintain their reputation as an honourable woman and a good mother (i.e., one who sacrifices for her children) and thus hope that their children, both male and female, will, to the best of their abilities, care for them in their old age. for the ultra-poor women in this study, being an honourable woman and good mother surfaced as one of the only facets of their lives they could control, especially within the patriarchal constraints of bangladeshi society. women report drawing considerable comfort from their spirituality in times of stress, whether they were muslim, hindu, or christian, which understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 stands in contrast to discourse that emphasizes religion, and islam in particular, as disempowering (white, 2010b). although an in-depth exploration of the role of religion and spirituality in women’s lives is beyond the scope of this paper, attention to its role as a refuge in times of distress and powerlessness lends support to recent scholarship that rejects the notion that religion is simply ‚the antithesis to ‘women’s empowerment’‛ and instead aims to understand religious actors on their terms (white, 2010b, p. 358). as deeb (2006) succinctly noted: ‚*faith+ is a very real thing in and of itself, located in practices, discourse, inner and outer states, relationships, and effects in the world‛ (p. 40). all women in our study articulated conceptions of personal wellbeing that were inextricably linked to their children, and personal fulfilment acquired by remaining honourable was contingent primarily on their behaviours as mothers rather than as individuals. it seems that women tend to view themselves not as ‚ends in their own right,‛ (nussbaum, 2000, p. 6), but instead ‚as mere instruments of the ends of others – reproducers, caregivers, sexual outlets, agents of a family’s general prosperity‛ (nussbaum, 2000, p. 2). again and again, women demonstrated in their interviews and through their narratives that they rarely do anything to improve their wellbeing as individuals: food given in recognition of their participation in the study was given to their children, and charity received during eid or other occasions was used almost exclusively to buy food and clothing for their children. thus, while women manage to more or less get through their days, driven by the desire to establish their children today and secure their wellbeing in the future, this is contingent on a deeply ingrained social expectation of self-sacrifice, which is ‚a far cry from activities that would promote her own well-being‛ (dasgupta, 1995, p. 59). douglas and ney (1998) have pointed out that: expectations that women or the old should place their own well-being, or even their survival, after that of the family are internalized to such an extent that the liberal criteria of injustice are not applicable: these people are neither forced nor do they necessarily dislike their social responsibilities. well-being is not necessarily synonymous with fulfilment of private desires. (pp. 69-70) thus, if the goal is to enhance development efforts for ultra-poor women through an in-depth examination of their aspirations and perceptions of wellbeing, should we rely on these accounts if they are conceptualized within deeply ingrained social expectations of self-sacrifice? as nussbaum (2000) accurately explains, even when women appear to be satisfied with such customs [i.e., female deference+ we should probe more deeply. women’s development groups typically encounter resistance initially, because women are afraid that change will make things worse. (pp. 42-43) the esrc-wed group has acknowledged that tensions exist with regards to resources, capabilities, and opportunities that enable goals beyond what is possible at the local level (gough, 2004). in presenting and exploring ultra-poor women’s daily aspirations, i.e., focusing on ‚what is positive and desirable *at a local level+ < rather than what is lacking or negative *at a universal level+‛ (wellbeing & poverty pathways, 2011, p. 2), we do not intend to imply that ultra-poor women would not require and personally benefit from access to basic needs such as healthcare, autonomy, security, and even increased income, which are commonly cited in the understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 development literature (see for example, doyal & gough, 1991).6 certainly, these women are so poor that any untied financial assistance would go a long way in alleviating much of their insecurity (for more on this, see mcintyre et al., 2011). as clark (2002) reminds us, ‚the success of economic development does ultimately have to be judged in terms of its consequences for human beings‛ (p. 6). thus, understanding women’s aspirations and the local context in which they live their lives will help to determine how to best allocate program resources and efforts to ultimately positively impact their wellbeing. nussbaum (2000), as well as wood (2003), have argued that social policy, rather than being applied universally, must be designed to meet the specific needs of those for whom the policy is intended. this point is further developed by white and ellison (2007, p. 163), who question the effectiveness of adult education programs, which are common in development, when those who receive the training do not have an opportunity to put this learning into practice in their daily lives, a point that actually surfaced in women’s narratives when the most highly educated woman in the study explained: ‚is *class+ six really enough? that’s not a lot...also i have never managed in exams to get other skills‛ (lili, garo). from our findings, what is needed most for this group of ultra-poor women to achieve a good life is employment opportunities that respect basic labour standards and that would enable women to earn an income that can provide for the household’s basic needs; accessible, quality schooling and childcare for their children; basic affordable healthcare; and an end to corruption (e.g., dowry, bribing, etc.) (mcintyre et al., 2011). only once these are achieved or perceived as within their reach can women’s focus turn inward to their personal wants, desires, and aspirations. these might be as modest as joyeeta’s observation that other women had blankets and beds (‚i see people *who have+ quilts and mattresses < that one day i will sleep very comfortably in my bed is my only dream‛) to women, once ‘lifted out of poverty,’ focusing on their own education, tackling new business opportunities, or even leisurely pursuits, i.e., things that bring joy and satisfaction to their lives. when we situate our findings (see also mcintyre et al., 2011; mcintyre & munro, 2013; watterson, mcintyre, & rondeau, in press) within the context of whole person development, numerous leverage points for addressing the wellbeing of ultra-poor women who are heads of household emerge. given women’s propensity to put their children’s needs before their own, social programs and policies that aim to assist women who have children must consider how they can provide assistance that will benefit women directly without asking them to withhold assistance from their children. for example, food relief and feeding programs for women delivered at their homes and at their place of work and the elimination of bureaucratic and corrupt barriers that reduce household income would directly benefit women and subsequently enable them to care for their children and participate more fully in their family life. to increase their income, petty traders require small bursaries that are not bound by the high interest rates of microcredit schemes to increase their sales volumes; garment workers who languish in sub-contractor shops deserve protection of their labour rights, the opportunity to pursue job advancement, and employment in better workplaces that are part of the formal economy where such rights are monitored and work-related training may occur; and women agriculturalists who function as share-croppers require grants and low-interest loans to fund 6 nussbaum (2000) has succinctly argued that, ‚*it+ is one thing to say that we need local knowledge to understand the problems women face, or to direct our attention to some aspects of human life that middle-class people tend to take for granted. it is quite another matter to claim that certain very general values such as the dignity of the person, the integrity of the body, basic political rights and liberties, basic economic opportunities, and so forth, are not appropriate norms to be used in assessing women’s lives in developing countries.‛ (p. 41) understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 their crops, similar to the agricultural subsidies offered to the farm owners from whom they lease the land (see watterson et al., in press). finally, education or training that would typically be delivered in livelihood programs (e.g., financial and entrepreneurial skills) could be delivered to women in ways that would complement rather than compete with their employment and income generation activities. in addition, small adjustments or modifications to development initiatives and programs that already exist can be made to more effectively address the wellbeing of ultra-poor women who are heads of household. for example, group-based development initiatives (e.g., women’s cooperative programs or self-help groups) that aim to address poverty and enhance economic wellbeing of women must ‚examine and understand the performance of these forms of group entrepreneurship from a social point of view in order to locate them within a broader social and policy context‛ (torri, 2012, p. 59). that is best achieved by considering the views and interest of the women themselves. power struggles, illiteracy, overdependence on leaders, gender roles outside the group, social pressures from other group participants, and the financing of activities with low economic return are some reasons that group-based initiatives have failed ultra-poor women (torri, 2012). the investigation and facilitation of different group configurations that might naturally occur among ultra-poor women (e.g., by occupation, age, number of children, location of residence) and less restrictive rules and instruments might lead to the creation of cooperatives that are more useful and effective for the delivery of development initiatives. microcredit programs, often touted as an exemplar in assisting ultra-poor women, would be of greater utility if they were adapted to the specific needs of such women. walker and matin (2006) have suggested that programs such as challenging the frontiers of poverty reduction/targeting the ultrapoor (cfpr/tup) should consider reviewing the terms of their savings rules so that funds can be legitimately used towards unmet needs, rather than only for business-related purchases. pretes (2002) has argued that microequity financing (i.e., shares or profit are not expected by investors) of development initiatives through the provision of startup funds for the very poor are preferable to microcredit programs. thus, a graduated system might be considered: women who are not credit worthy would first be eligible for a living and basic needs stipend in addition to a bursary that could be used to invest in their business, increase profits, and generate additional income. the additional income could allow such women to then graduate to a loan-based program. such a system would have a significant impact on the women’s ability to meet basic needs and aspirations, with the ultimate goal of achieving their modest conceptualizations of wellbeing. finally, the development of monitoring systems for non-governmental organizations and government social safety-net programs that would permit the identification of who is not accessing these programs would be an important step in understanding the adjustments that are needed to enhance access to such programs by this population group. 5. conclusion in 2000, nussbaum asserted, ‚women, in short, lack essential support for leading lives that are fully human‛ (p. 4), and this remains the case for millions of women living in conditions similar to those of our participants. the burgeoning body of research on happiness, subjective wellbeing, and hedonic psychology (e.g., kahneman et al., 1999) and the direct measurement of values, aspirations, and happiness/unhappiness (camfield et al., 2009) suggest that it is not so farfetched to consider living less desperate lives as an outcome of development activities. in other words, efforts could be directed towards localized visions of wellbeing, which are often more understanding the aspirations of ultra-poor women in bangladesh mcintyre & rondeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 moderate and thus more attainable than global aspirations, but which nonetheless have the potential to significantly improve the wellbeing of many. although policymakers may be more familiar and comfortable with aggregate statistics to support development (camfield et al., 2009), a reconstruction of development to consider wellbeing and a whole person development approach demonstrates that there are in fact many ways to intervene and effect meaningful improvements in the lives of ultra-poor women. authors lynn mcintyre university of calgary lmcintyr@ucalgary.ca krista rondeau university of calgary publishing timeline 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(2011). positive psychology cinemeducation: a review of happy. international journal of wellbeing, 1(3), 328-334. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i3.3 ryan m. niemiec via institute on character ryan@viacharacter.org copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 328 film review positive psychology cinemeducation: a review of happy happy, a feature length documentary film directed by roko belic, 2011 review by ryan m. niemiec abstract: the documentary film, happy, offers educators and practitioners a unique opportunity to provide a novel learning experience for students and clients. the film integrates meaningful stories and expert interviews with quality filmmaking to offer viewers knowledge, entertainment, and engagement. cinematic elevation, the process by which a viewer observes virtuous behavior, feels physiological sensations of inspiration, and is consequently motivated to do good or to be a better person (e.g., copying the strengths of the film’s characters) is particularly at play in happy. where there are gaps in the film’s scope of the field of happiness, wellbeing, and positive psychology, suggestions are made for the viewer to overcome these and maximize the potential to derive benefit from the film. keywords: happiness, character strengths, elevation, wellbeing, movies/films, cinemeducation, cinematherapy 1. introduction it has been said that happiness is less about the destination and more about the journey. when we look at research in positive psychology, the decades of happiness research prior to positive psychology’s initiation in the late 1990s, and the millennia during which scholars, philosophers, theologians, and educators have written about the topic, we come to understand this truth in a deeper way. but what is this journey really about? what are the ingredients of a happy life that is well-lived? a cinematic response to these questions is offered in the independent film, happy, directed by roko belic, which takes a contemporary lens on happiness, integrating age-old wisdom, dynamic storytelling, beautiful cinematography, and interviews with leading scientists and the general public. the film offers wisdom from well-known figures in positive psychology, e.g., mihaly csikszentmihalyi, richard davidson, ed diener, daniel gilbert, and sonja lyubomirsky, as well as equally stellar researchers such as tim kasser and p. read montague. tid-bits of happiness research abound and those new to positive psychology will be particularly fascinated by the country of bhutan’s establishment of a gross national happiness index; denmark as being the happiest country; and the frequently reported happiness pie chart, a heuristic that summarizes research noting that 40% of the variance of happiness, on average, is attributable to intentional activities people might engage in (lyubomirsky, 2007). then there are the lesser-known tid-bits the film offers, such as how the island of okinawa, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychology cinemeducation niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 329 japan, has a higher concentration of centenarians (those living to age 100 or more) than anywhere else in the world, or the finding that religious fundamentalists are less happy people. it should be noted that happy is among a stream of positive psychology documentaries that have recently emerged, including how happy can you be? (2005), a norwegian film that interviews similar figures (e.g., diener, lyubomirsky) along one woman’s journey to discover the best strategies for boosting happiness; this film merges descriptive science and prescriptive messages accordingly. similarly, the recent pbs documentary series, this emotional life (2010), hosted by gilbert, also explores positive psychology themes with the intention of making the science more easily understood to viewers. while all three are on solid ground in educating the viewer, happy is probably the most entertaining in its approach. 2. stories that educate what is most captivating in the film is not the empirical evidence that is shared; rather it is the stories, which bring the findings of positive psychology to life. each story comes with an instructive message for the viewer, sometimes containing an emotional jolt. in addition, each story presents an opportunity for cinemeducation – which refers to the use of film for educational purposes – (alexander & waxman, 2000) or cinematherapy (berg-cross, jennings, & baruch, 1990; wedding & niemiec, 2003) in that instructors and practitioners can use these segments as a springboard to build rapport, discuss relevant research/practices with their students/clients, and provide insights in a novel way. here are a few of the standout stories and their educational message: melissa moody: story of a woman who was run over by a truck which crushed her face. this serious trauma led to 30 facial surgeries, her husband leaving her, total disability for nine-anda-half years, and subsequent recall of early sexual abuse she had repressed. melissa became angry that she was still alive and began to contemplate suicide. the driving force that kept her persevering and hoping for a better tomorrow was the thought of wanting to be there for her children ‚today.‛ that attitude helped her recover, find love again, and re-discover herself. she states she is happier, more grounded, more grateful, and more self-aware and connected to who she is because of the trauma that happened to her. she advises that happiness is a choice, which of course is a trite message that is true to the degree that some variance of our happiness depends on the activities we consciously engage in, but that amount of control varies from person to person. melissa’s segment is an opportunity for the educator to speak on this topic of intentional choice and happiness (lyubomirsky, 2007) as well as the emerging literature on posttraumatic growth (helgeson, reynolds, & tomich, 2006; tedeschi & calhoun, 2004). anne bechsgaard: anne’s story revolves around her life transition to a co-housing facility in denmark, which is a community of 20 families that share space, friendship, and support for one another. she describes how her finding this community for herself and her children to live in was nothing short of transformational. anne’s segment is an opportunity for educators to have conversations with students and clients about the value of community, social support, and positive relationships (diener & seligman, 2002) roy blanchard: roy’s story is set in the louisiana bayou, in which he spends his time roving the swamps and celebrating with his family and neighbors over piles of crawfish he has captured. he explains how when he gets upset, he watches the birds and ‚listens to the stillness‛ of the bayou. roy’s segment is an opportunity for educators and practitioners to discuss the value of mindfulness (bishop et al., 2004) – which roy shows at both the good times positive psychology cinemeducation niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 330 and the difficult times – as well as to show character strengths, such as appreciation of beauty, love, and teamwork, in action. 3. an opportunity for cinematic elevation there’s another story that is so directly inspirational that, similar to the stories mentioned earlier, it may elicit the emotion of elevation in the viewer. ‘elevation’ is a recently coined term that refers to the experience of observing an act of moral goodness that leads to physiologic sensations of tingling in the body and warming in the chest, and then motivates the observer to do good or to be a better person (haidt, 2003). the application of this emotion to the film-going experience, in which a movie character’s expression of virtue and strength of character elicits the corresponding physiology as well as a motivation to emulate the character or to help others, is cinematic elevation (niemiec & wedding, 2008). one segment of happy concerns michael pritchard, a comedian/educator who speaks to students in high schools. he intersperses age-appropriate humor with poignant messages to help students improve their lives, treat each other more altruistically, and build a stronger school community. pritchard repeatedly asks students to come to the front of the gym and – in front of the school – share their fears and express their emotions about what it is like to be picked on, bullied, or viewed as different. remarkably, no doubt due to pritchard’s charisma, students come forth. they share deeply and they cry. with clever timing and social intelligence, pritchard enthusiastically praises each child for their courage in standing up in front of the school. interestingly, and perhaps unknown to pritchard, research indicates that labelling acts of courage has been found to be an effective approach for boosting this character strength (hannah, sweeney, & lester, 2007). the students in the audience cheer wildly for the brave students, even hoisting one of them on their shoulders as they leave the gym. a viewer would be hard-pressed not to feel motivated to be more prosocial after viewing this scene. considering each of these stories, it is in this vein that the film shines and belic – just 40 years old – proves himself again to be a young master at telling stories through the medium of film. previously, he told the story of paul pena in genghis blues (1999) with great success. that film was his directorial debut and an academy award nominee for best documentary feature. pena, a blind, depressed, san francisco blues singer, taught himself the rare art of tuvan throat-singing after first hearing it on a russian radio broadcast. belic and his film crew decided to follow pena to the remote country of mongolia to film his performance in a throatsinging competition. the viewer cannot help but feel inspired by pena’s charisma, courage, and perseverance in overcoming various physical and psychological obstacles, and his ability to forge connections with a culture (that he cannot see) that is virtually unknown to western society. this film is likely to cinematically elevate viewers to follow their own passion no matter how obscure, to stay true to their values and strengths, to practice perseverance and bravery, and to live life lightheartedly with zest and playfulness. 4. happy as a tool for practitioners the literature on happiness and wellbeing has established a number of links and correlations between happiness, wellbeing, and those outcomes that people care about most. when i am asked to name what i perceive to be the clinically relevant areas that are most impactful for practitioners and educators, i cite three general areas: 1) find ways to help your client tap deeper into meaning (kashdan & steger, 2007; steger, oishi, & kashdan, 2009). positive psychology cinemeducation niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 331 2) help clients to prioritize the development of positive, close relationships (diener & seligman, 2002; gable, reis, impett, & asher, 2004; peterson, 2006). 3) work with clients to discover, explore, and apply their character strengths in order to engage fully in their life, work, relationships, and goals (among children and youth: madden, green, & grant, 2011; park & peterson, 2006a; park & peterson, 2006b. among adults: linley, nielsen, gillett, & biswas-diener, 2010; littmanovadia & davidovitch, 2010; littman-ovadia & steger, 2010; seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005). happy directly taps the first two pathways in a stellar form, but the viewer is left to work for the third. while strengths like gratitude and kindness receive brief attention, it is surprising that the words ‚strengths‛ or ‚character strengths‛ are not mentioned even once in the film. this is a misstep, considering character strengths have been viewed by many as the backbone of positive psychology, the core ingredients or pathways to happiness and to wellbeing (seligman, 2002; park, peterson, & seligman, 2004). one of the largest projects in positive psychology to date was the creation of the via classification of 24 character strengths, which is viewed as a common language for describing one’s best qualities (peterson & seligman, 2004). several studies have linked the practice of using one’s highest character strengths – often called signature strengths – with greater levels of happiness/wellbeing (linley et al., 2010; mitchell, stanimirovic, klein, & vella-brodrick, 2009; mongrain & anselmo, 2009; rust, diessner, & reade, 2009; peterson & peterson, 2009; seligman et al., 2005). this omission notwithstanding, the film is dynamic enough that the educator instructing students, the practitioner guiding a client, and the savvy viewer can use the film as an opportunity for learning about strengths, albeit indirectly. to this end, my suggestion is to practice strengths-spotting (linley, 2008), in which the viewer looks for the character strengths that emerge in the individuals interviewed in the film. a student might have fun with the task of attempting to spot each of the 24 via character strengths during the 75 minutes. a related approach is to review the stories mentioned earlier and the others in the film and practice spotting the character strengths of each individual and connecting the strength with particular actions and outcomes. each story is a clear portrayal of character strengths in action. these initial exercises can act as a springboard for the student or client to then turn their strength ‚goggles‛ inward and identify, explore, and embrace their own strengths and link them with personal goals. 5. debunking misconceptions belic is effective and instructive in using the medium of film to bring benefit to the field of positive psychology. often, positive psychology suffers from mistaken identity in which hasty conclusions are made about the field being nothing but ‚happiology,‛ that it is unscientific and soft, or that its approach is simply ‚old wine in a new bottle.‛ belic helps to debunk such misconceptions in a number of cinematic ways. after the film opens with a flurry of happiness images along with energetic, non-diegetic sound, the camera unexpectedly turns to a kolkata slum in india. the viewer is introduced to manoj singh, a poor rickshaw driver who works grueling hours with unfavorable treatment by customers for pay that only sometimes is enough to buy food for his family, yet manoj’s face, attitude, and behavior emanate a genuine happiness. he is a role model to the world. the narrator then shares that manoj scores as high as the average american on happiness measures (measured by one of the most utilized happiness instruments in the world, the satisfaction with life scale: diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin,1985). manoj explains that seeing the joy on his child’s face when he returns from positive psychology cinemeducation niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 332 work, feeling gratitude for what he does have, and connecting with his neighbors and friends are some of the ingredients of his happiness. this segment is a foreshadowing of an important message: an authentic happiness can be found in anyone, whether those who are the most poor (indian rickshaw driver), those who are the most remote geographically (the bushmen of the kalahari desert in namibia), or those separated from the mainstream (living in the swamps of louisiana). belic furthers this message with more contrasts. rather than simply showing people in a one-dimensional caricature of happiness, he shows the nuances and deep suffering of some, and the balance and happiness that is found among the vicissitudes of life, e.g., exhibiting both the ‚workaholic‛ quality of japan’s culture as well as the community engagement and social cooperation found on japan’s island of okinawa. meanwhile, belic is cognizant of the viewer’s emotions and works to juxtapose stories that are likely to induce sadness and empathy (e.g., an example of a man who works himself to death) followed by a story likely to motivate the viewer (e.g., an inspiring story of the country of bhutan). while happy should not be seen as an all-inclusive coverage of happiness, it is a good primer, and will be of most interest to professors and practitioners interested in helping their students and clients garner a deeper understanding of happiness. students and clients, in turn, will experience an education on happiness that is entertaining and engaging. i believe that positive psychology’s substantive themes, and often inspiring findings, mixed in with the entertaining medium of film is a win-win learning platform, especially in terms of educating students, assisting clients, and connecting communities together. my colleague, danny wedding, and i believe so strongly in this that we wrote a book on the topic (niemiec & wedding, 2008), and no doubt belic’s film will make it into the next edition because it certainly meets the criteria for a positive psychology film (niemiec, 2007). in the end, belic has provided viewers with a great vehicle for infusing joy into their journey of positive psychology cinemeducation. author ryan m. niemiec via institute on character ryan@viacharacter.org publishing timeline received 4 september 2011 accepted 4 september 2011 published 17 october 2011 references alexander, m., & waxman, d. 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(2002). very happy people. psychological science, 13, 81–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00415 gable, s. l., reis, h. t., impett, e. a., & asher, e. r. (2004). what do you do when things go right? the intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. journal of personality and social psychology, 87, 228–245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.2.228 haidt, j. (2003). elevation and the positive psychology of morality. in c. l. m. keyes & j. haidt (eds.), flourishing: positive psychology and the life well-lived (pp. 275–289). washington, d.c.: american psychological association. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10594-012 hannah, s. t., sweeney, p. j., & lester, p. b. (2007). toward a courageous mindset: the subjective act and experience of courage. journal of positive psychology, 2(2), 129–135. helgeson, v. s., reynolds, k. a., & tomich, p. l. 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(2010). effects of congruence and character-strength deployment on work adjustment and well-being. international journal of business and social science, 1(3), 138–146. littman-ovadia, h., & steger, m. (2010). character strengths and well-being among volunteers and employees: toward an integrative model. journal of positive psychology, 5(6), 419–430. lyubomirsky, s. (2007). the how of happiness: a scientific approach to getting the life you want. new york: penguin. madden, w., green, s., & grant, a. m. (2011). a pilot study evaluating strengths-based coaching for primary school students: enhancing engagement and hope. international coaching psychology review, 6(1), 71–83. mitchell, j., stanimirovic, r., klein, b., & vella-brodrick, d. (2009). a randomised controlled trial of a self-guided internet intervention promoting well-being. computers in human behavior, 25, 749–760. mongrain, m., & anselmo, t. (2009). promise of positive interventions: replication of seligman et al., 2005. paper presented at american psychological association conference on august 6, 2009. niemiec, r. m. (2007, september 19). what is a positive psychology film? [review of the motion picture the pursuit of happyness]. psyccritiques – contemporary psychology: apa review of books, 52 (no. 38). article 18. retrieved december 15, 2007. niemiec, r. m., & wedding, d. (2008). positive psychology at the movies: using films to build virtues and character strengths. cambridge, ma: hogrefe. park, n., & peterson, c. (2006a). character strengths and happiness among young children: content analysis of parental descriptions. journal of happiness studies, 7, 323–341. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-3648-6 park, n., & peterson, c. (2006b). moral competence and character strengths among adolescents: the development and validation of the values in action inventory of strengths for youth. journal of adolescence, 29, 891–905. park, n., peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). strengths of character and well-being. journal of social & clinical psychology, 23, 603–619. peterson, c. (2006). positive psychology primer (pp. 249-274). new york: oxford university press. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york: oxford university press. peterson, t. d., & peterson, e. w. (2009). stemming the tide of law student depression: what law schools need to learn from the science of positive psychology. yale journal of health policy, law, and ethics, 9(2), 358–359. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00415 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.2.228 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10594-012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.74.5.797 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.74.5.797 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11031-007-9068-7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11031-007-9068-7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-3648-6 positive psychology cinemeducation niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 334 rust, t., diessner, r., & reade, l. (2009). strengths only or strengths and relative weaknesses? a preliminary study. journal of psychology, 143(5), 465–476. seligman, m. e. p. (2002). authentic happiness: using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. new york: free press. seligman, m. e. p., steen, t. a., park, n., & peterson, c. (2005). positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. american psychologist, 60, 410–421. steger, m. f., oishi, s., & kashdan, t. b. (2009). meaning in life across the life span: levels and correlates of meaning in life from emerging adulthood to older adulthood. journal of positive psychology, 4, 43– 52. tedeschi, r. g., & calhoun, l. g. (2004). posttraumatic growth: conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. psychological inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01 wedding, d., & niemiec, r. m. (2003). the clinical use of films in psychotherapy. journal of clinical psychology, 59(2), 207–216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.10142 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.10142 a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness feldman, f. (2019). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness? international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 1-7. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.762 fred feldman university of massachusetts at amherst ffeldman@philos.umass.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 article an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness? fred feldman abstract: philosophers and others have been captivated by the idea that happiness may be understood to be “satisfaction with life as a whole.” for a person to be happy, according to this idea, is for that person to be satisfied with his or her life as a whole. the view has been developed in a variety of forms, but has been subjected to serious objection in every form. in a paper published in volume 1, number 1 of the international journal of wellbeing, jussi suikkanen presented what he took to be a new and improved form of whole life satisfactionism. he tried to show that in his formulation, the theory overcomes objections that i have presented elsewhere. in the present paper, after describing the context in which suikkanen’s proposal appears, i present what i take to be the central point of suikkanen’s work. i mention some obscurities. i try to show no matter how these obscurities are resolved, the proposed view is still open to objections similar to ones already in the literature. keywords: life satisfaction, whole life satisfaction, theory, happiness 1. background going back at least to tatarkiewicz’s magnificent 1962 work1, philosophers and others have been captivated by the idea that happiness may be understood to be “satisfaction with life as a whole.” for a person to be happy, according to this idea, is for that person to be satisfied with his or her life as a whole. the view has been developed in a variety of forms. a simple actualist version of whole life satisfactionism (or “wls”) would say that a person is happy at a time if and only if he actually judges at that time that his whole life is satisfactory. in this stark form, the theory is seriously implausible. an unreflective person could be very happy at a selected time, but at the same time not be thinking about his whole life and not be making any judgments about it. indeed, a person could lead a long and by all intuitive accounts happy life without ever making any judgment about his life as a whole. some advocates of wls have endorsed versions of the view that do not require actual judgments of satisfactoriness. they maintain that a merely hypothetical, or counterfactual judgment is sufficient. a simple hypotheticalist version wls would say that a person is happy 1 analysis of happiness (1976) władysław tatarkiewicz; translated from the polish by edward rothert, danuta zielińska, vol. 3 in the melbourne international philosophy series (melbourne, australia: university of melbourne). originally published as o szczesciui (warsau: pwn/polish scientific publishers, 1962). whole life satisfaction feldman 2 at a time if and only if she is like this at that time; if she were to consider her whole life, she would judge that it has been satisfactory. this may seem to overcome the difficulty of the unreflective happy person. perhaps we can say that if the unreflective happy person were to reflect on his life as a whole, he would judge it to be satisfactory. that explains how he can be happy, even though he never actually thinks about his life as a whole. but a hypotheticalist version of wls goes wrong in related cases with slightly different stipulations. suppose timmy is an unreflective party animal. he is happy leading a life filled with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. his happiness depends essentially on the fact that he never thinks about “deep questions” such as the question whether his life as a whole has been worthwhile. if he were to think about it, he would be dismayed and would judge that his life has been a waste. he’s, in fact, happy, but if he were to make a judgment about his life as a whole, he would not judge it to have been satisfactory2. 2. suikkanen’s approach in a recent paper in this journal, suikkanen argues for what he describes as an “improved version of the wls theory of happiness.”3 apparently alluding to the so-called “ideal observer theory,”4 suikkanen distinguishes between the actual subject whose level of happiness the theory is intended to assess, and an idealized version of the subject. the idealized version of the subject is assumed to be rational and well informed. he knows a lot about the preferences and activities of the real-world subject. the theory does not assume that the real-world subject makes any judgment about his own real-world life. nor does it assume that the idealized version of the subject makes any judgment about his ideal life. instead, the idealized version of the subject is called upon to make a judgment about the degree of similarity between the actual life of his actual-world counterpart and an ideal life that can be imagined for him. following suikkanen, let’s call the real-world subject “s.” suikkanen’s theory is intended to give an account of s’s level of happiness in the real (or “evaluated”) world5. suikkanen calls the idealized counterpart “s+.” s+, knowing the important facts about s’s values etc., and also knowing the important facts about what goes on in s’s life, constructs an “ideal life-plan” for s. presumably the idea here is that the ideal life-plan would include an account of behavior for s; presumably, s+ chooses behaviors such that, if s were to engage in them, doing so would help to make s happiest, given his preferences and values. the core of suikkanen’s theory is this: s’s level of happiness in the real world is determined by the quality of the fit between the life that s actually lives in the evaluated world, and the life as described by the ideal life-plan that s+ constructs for s. suikkanen states (p. 157) the theory as follows: 2 i presented this and other examples that suikkanen discusses in my (2010) what is this thing called happiness? pp. 83-88, as well as in “whole life satisfaction concepts of happiness,” theoria, 74, (2008), 219-238. 3 suikkanen, j. (2011) “an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness,” international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 149-166. parenthetical page references that follow are all to this work. 4 discussed by roderick firth and many others back in the 1950s. 5 more precisely, the theory is intended to give an account of s’s level of happiness at a selected time, t. to make things simpler here, i will, for the most part, suppress the time relativization. i think this decision on my part will not affect the argument. whole life satisfaction feldman 3 a person, s, is happy(g)6 to degree n at time t if and only if: 1) there is a certain life that s has lived up to t in the evaluated circumstances, and 2) if, at t, an idealized version of s, s+, were to form an ideal life-plan for s’s life, and 3) if, at t, s+ were to form a moderately detailed conception of how s’s life in the evaluated circumstances has transpired so far, then, 4) at t, s+ would judge that s’s actual life matches s+’s ideal life-plan for s to degree n. 3. some details this is just the bare bones of a theory. to fill it in, we must have a clearer conception of the knowledge, values, and motivations of the idealized version of s. we also would need a clear account of the constraints, if any, that restrict s+’s choice of life-plan. otherwise, it will be impossible to determine what sort of ideal life-plan s+ will construct for s. if we cannot determine the details of the ideal life-plan, it will be similarly impossible to determine whether s’s real life corresponds closely to that life-plan or whether instead it diverges. in other words, without some details about the idealized version of s, the theory does not yield any conclusion about how happy s is. suikkanen makes use of some ideas derived from michael smith’s work when he introduces the concept of the idealized version of the subject. he mentions that smith had said that the ideal version (as used in his theory about desirability) would be “fully rational” (157). in addition, the ideal version is supposed to have “all relevant information” (156). at the outset, it appears that suikkanen means to incorporate these features into his conception of the idealized version of the subject. when suikkanen first describes the differences between the actual version of a subject and the idealized version of that subject, he uses an example involving a person identified as “ann.” her idealized version is “ann+.” suikkanen says that in addition to being fully rational and well informed, ann+ shares ann’s likes and dislikes. she also knows what ann wants and values during different stages of her life. on the basis of this information, ann+ can formulate an ideal life-plan for ann. if ann’s actual life went according to this plan, she would be engaged in activities that she likes and her desires would be satisfied (p. 157). it appears, then, that the idealized version of a subject can be constructed in this way: first we start with the actual subject, complete with her actual likes and dislikes, preferences and values. then, while leaving these fixed, we change her epistemic state. we make her “fully rational” and in possession of “all relevant information.” we then imagine that the idealized version, 6 at the beginning of his paper, suikkanen sketches a distinction between three conceptions of happiness. these are the phenomenological sense (“happiness(p)”), the global sense (“happiness(g)”), and the welfare or prudential value sense (“happiness(w)”). much could be said about suikkanen’s claims about these three concepts. but since i think his view is intended to be taken as a view simply about happiness understood in the most familiar sense, i shall suppress this reference to the three-way distinction. the curious reader is encouraged to study the relevant passages. whole life satisfaction feldman 4 armed with these conative and intellectual features, forms an ideal life-plan for the real-world version of the subject7. the level of happiness of the real-world subject is determined by the extent to which her real-world life corresponds to the life as described by the ideal life-plan. the closer the correspondence, the greater the level of happiness. if understood in this simple way, the requirements placed on the ideal counterpart would turn out in some cases to be impossible to satisfy. consider a confused smoker (call him “smoky”) who desperately wants to light up his next cigarette, but who also wants to avoid doing anything that will endanger his health. smoky refuses to accept the overwhelming evidence that smoking is a serious health risk. now try to imagine this smoker’s ideal variant, smoky+. smoky+ is stipulated to have all of smoky’s desires and preferences, but unlike smoky, smoky+ is also stipulated to have all relevant information and to have coherent preferences. obviously, there is a problem here. either smoky+ lacks the desire to smoke, or he lacks the desire to avoid risking his health, or he lacks the knowledge that smoking is a risk to health, or he lacks rationality. the stipulated combination of conative and epistemic features is impossible. in later passages in his paper, suikkanen hints at some versions of the theory that do not require the ideal counterpart to have all of the real-world subject’s conative attitudes (pp. 15960). in one variant, all that is required is that the idealized version have the largest collection of these attitudes compatible with being fully knowledgeable and rational. in another version, what’s required is that the idealized counterpart have a maximally large subset of the realworld subject’s conative attitudes weighted somehow for centrality8. suikkanen seems to be saying something like this in this passage: … one could stipulate a+ to have an informed and coherent version of a’s set of conative attitudes. we could then consider what kind of life-plan a+ would form for a on the basis of that idealised set. the resulting theory would claim that a happy(g) life needs to be a desirable life in smith’s sense (p. 160). suikkanen provides a brief account of his reasons for thinking that this theory gives the correct results in the case of timmy9. as suikkanen puts it: … we first imagine a more rational version of timmy who knows timmy’s likes and dislikes (and his desires, values, and the like). because of this knowledge, the idealised timmy (timmy+) can come to believe that the best life-plan for timmy in the real world just is to live spontaneously. any selfreflection from his actual counterpart would merely be counterproductive. for this reason, the life -plan which timmy+ would have for timmy would not contain any such reflection. 7 in the final section of this paper, i raise some questions about the details of the ideal life-plan. for now, these details remain a bit vague. 8 each of these formulations seems to presuppose that there will be just one ideal life-plan for the subject. i cannot see what could justify this assumption. perhaps in some cases, there will be several different ways in which the subject’s preferences could be made coherent; perhaps none of them is uniquely “best.” in that case, there could be conflicting answers to the question of whether the subject is happy. 9 as discussed above in the 4th paragraph. whole life satisfaction feldman 5 according to the ideal life-plan then, timmy should not think about his life. rather, to follow this plan, timmy should simply continue to take part in the activities he enjoys. timmy+ can therefore come to judge that timmy’s actual life meets the standards of the ideal life-plan he has for timmy. as a result, this view can provide the right intuitive conclusion according to which timmy is happy(g) in real life (p. 158). 4. a puzzle for suikkanen’s view there are several questions that might be raised concerning suikkanen’s theory10, but i want to focus here on one that i find especially problematic. as i see it, a crucial feature of the theory remains obscure. this concerns the life-plan that s+ is called upon to construct for s. what puzzles me is the question of whether the life-plan is supposed to be in any sense “possible” for s. can s+ dream up a life-plan that would be completely impossible for s? or must the plan describe actions that are – or previously were – live options for s? so far as i can tell, suikkanen does not make his answer to this question explicit. since every option i can think of is in one way or another problematic, it may be helpful to consider the possibilities. i will focus on three main options. 1. we might assume that the ideal life-plan for s has to describe a life that is, as of the time when we are evaluating s’s level of happiness, still possible for s. by “still possible” here, i mean to indicate that s would still have it in his power, as of the time at which s’s level of happiness is being evaluated, to make his life conform to the description provided by the lifeplan. this conception of possibility will lead to problems in any case in which a person is unhappy due to factors no longer under his control. to see this in a stark example, suppose smoky smoked like a chimney for many years. eventually it caught up with him and his health has been ruined. now, as he lies on his deathbed at t, smoky is miserable. he does his best to cope with his fatal illness, but he cannot undo the mistakes of his youth. suppose that when smoky+ formulates a life-plan for smoky, he is required to formulate a plan that will still be possible for smoky. given the restriction to life-plans that are still possible for smoky, it would appear that every life-plan would have to include the lifetime of smoking that actually brought smoky to his unhappy current state. every still possible plan would include having had this unfortunate habit. a comparison of life according to the best of these life-plans with smoky’s actual life would be easy: the lives would be pretty much the same. as a result, the implication of the theory would be clear, and clearly not as an advocate of the theory would intend. under this interpretation, the theory implies that since his actual life 10 for example, why does suikkanen stipulate that the idealized person who constructs the ideal life-plan for s must be a counterpart of the actual person? wouldn’t any appropriately motivated and knowledgeable plan-constructor do as well? furthermore, it appears that nothing in the theory implies that anyone is, or would be, satisfied with any whole life. so far as i can tell, whole life satisfaction plays no role in the theory. instead, the crucial role is played by degrees of similarity between the subject’s actual life and a life-plan constructed by a rational and well informed observer. so why does suikkanen describe his view as a form of whole life satisfactionism? whole life satisfaction feldman 6 corresponds so closely to the life described in the ideal life-plan, smoky is very happy at t. but of course this is wrong. he is miserable. he deeply regrets the now unalterable errors of his past. 2. we might consider the idea that the life-plan has to describe a life that contains activities that were, at suitable times before the activities took place, genuine options for the real-world subject. so even if some of these activities are no long available to that subject at the time of evaluation, they were previously available to him. if a robust form of determinism is true, and, in fact, all of a subject’s behavior was settled and unalterable prior to the fact, then aside from the actions he in fact performed, no subject ever has any “genuine options.” in this case, when a subject’s ideal counterpart formulates a life-plan for his real-world counterpart, it will have to describe the subject’s actual life. the implication then is clear: there is no interesting difference between any subject’s actual life and the life described in the life-plan. the theory then implies that everyone is maximally happy. this is deeply implausible. even if determinism is not, in general, true, the problem described here would still arise in any case in which a subject’s misery is due to factors that were never under his control. consider, for example, a subject, luckless, who was born with a congenital condition that has made his life miserable. suppose luckless has done his best to cope with it, but to no avail. if we assume that when luckless+ constructs the ideal life-plan for luckless, luckless+ has to leave unalterable components of the actual life in place, the result should be clear: the ideal life-plan will contain all the misfortune of the actual life. in these respects, the actual life will look very much like the life as described by the ideal life-plan. as a result, the theory implies that the miserable luckless is outstandingly happy. but of course he is not. 3. perhaps it will appear that we should consider the idea that when a subject’s idealized counterpart formulates a life-plan for that subject, he is permitted to describe a way of life that contains behaviors that never were possible for that subject. then, when describing the ideal life-plan for luckless, luckless+ can include happy activities that luckless would have enjoyed if he had not been born with a congenital defect. as a result, there will be a wide divergence between luckless’s actual (and miserable) life, and the happier life described in the ideal lifeplan. the theory would then declare (correctly) that luckless is not happy. but if we allow the ideal life-plan to include actions that were never possible for the subject, the theory will go wrong in any case in which a subject is actually quite happy but could have been happier if he had been able to do the impossible. suppose mr. chipper wants to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. suppose he knows that he has always been healthy, wealthy, and wise. suppose, as a result, that he is satisfied with his life as a whole. mr. chipper might like to be healthier, wealthier, and wiser than he in fact is. but he knows that in virtue of his extraordinary health, wealth, and wisdom, no improvement in these areas is possible. he is as healthy, wealthy, and wise as a person could be. he is perfectly content with the life he has actually gotten. he finds it satisfactory largely because he takes it to be about as good a life as he could have lived. he smiles and laughs; he views the whole life satisfaction feldman 7 idea of being impossibly healthy, wealthy, and wise as nothing more than an irrelevant pipe dream. but if mr. chipper+ is allowed to include the impossible in the ideal life-plan for mr. chipper, he could include impossible behaviors, such as taking imaginary supplements that would make him amazingly healthy, making imaginary investment decisions that would make him amazingly wealthy, taking brain enhancing pills that would make him amazingly wise. in this case, mr. chipper’s actual life is quite unlike the life described in the ideal lifeplan. the theory then implies that he is not happy. but as the case has been stipulated, he is very happy. careful scrutiny of suikkanen’s paper leaves me unable to determine how he intends to answer this question about the possibility of life-plans. so far as i can tell, suikkanen never specifies whether life-plans have to be “still possible,” or whether they must contain behaviors that were “possible at the time,” or whether they can contain behaviors that are and always have been impossible for the subject whose level of happiness is being evaluated. it seems to me that however we settle this puzzle, the theory goes wrong. 5. conclusions in general, i am dubious about whole life satisfaction theories of happiness. objections have been given all the way back to the time of tatarkiewicz. it appears to me that the version offered by suikkanen is not an improvement over versions of the theory that are already in the literature. acknowledgements i am grateful to miles tucker, chris heathwood, owen mcleod, and brad skow for helpful suggestions concerning earlier drafts of this comment. author fred feldman university of massachusetts at amherst ffeldman@philos.umass.edu publishing timeline received 21 august 2018 accepted 9 december 2018 published 9 july 2019 mctiernan, k., gullon-scott, f. & dudley, r. (2020). an exploration of strength use and its relationship with life satisfaction, positive self-beliefs and paranoid ideation. international journal of wellbeing, 10(2), 53-70. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.883 kara mctiernan newcastle university cntw nhs foundation trust karamctiernan@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 article an exploration of strength use and its relationship with life satisfaction, positive self-beliefs and paranoid ideation kara mctiernan · fiona gullon-scott · robert dudley abstract: paranoid ideation is often preceded by negative interactions impacting on peoples’ sense of self and wellbeing. the national health service in the united kingdom is promoting wellbeing but there is a paucity of research. the authentic happiness theory and a strength intervention were drawn upon in a preliminary investigation of the relationships between strength-use, wellbeing and paranoia. in a cross-sectional study, students (n=531) completed measures of strength-use, wellbeing, self-beliefs and paranoia. pearson’s correlations, hierarchical multiple regression analysis, moderation analysis and mediation analysis were used to analyse the data. strength-use was positively associated with life satisfaction and positive self-beliefs. there was a negative correlation between life satisfaction and paranoia, and higher positive self-beliefs were associated with lower paranoia. paranoid ideation significantly predicted lower life satisfaction after controlling other symptoms of psychosis. strength-use moderated the relationship between paranoia and life satisfaction. as hypothesised life satisfaction and positive self-beliefs mediated the relationship between strength-use and paranoia. the findings support delivering strength-use interventions to harness clients’ wellbeing. keywords: positive psychology, strength-use, wellbeing, life satisfaction, positive cognitions, paranoid ideation 1. introduction. mental illness and mental health are related but separate entities (payton, 2009). the absence of a mental health difficultly does not necessarily equate with the presence of wellbeing (keyes & martin, 2017). similarly, clients with severe mental health difficulties and enduring physical health conditions can work towards and attain a sense of wellbeing (barskova & oesterreich, 2009; tse et al., 2016). mental health services currently offer psychotherapies that largely target the alleviation of distress. however, to achieve the service vision of recovery and enhancing peoples’ wellbeing (tai et al., 2009) it is necessary to implement psychological models of wellbeing. 1.1. positive psychology. positive psychology is the scientific investigation of positive: subjective experiences, individual traits and institutions (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). this paradigm includes the study of wellbeing and it has the corresponding theoretical underpinning and interventions about:blank strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 (seligman, 2002). this strength-based approach aligns with the humanist orientation of attending to the whole person, providing unconditional positive regard and supporting growth (hefferon & boniwell, 2011). clinicians actively foster mental health by drawing on positive psychology interventions (ppis) to elicit and build positive emotions, cognitions and behaviours (meyer et al., 2012). this facilitates the creation of a lasting repertoire of internal resources that enables coping in times of difficulty whilst indirectly reducing symptomology (magyar-moe, 2009). ppis target wellbeing and focus on an individual’s strengths as opposed to symptoms. ppis are therefore transdiagnostic and can also be utilized by individuals not attending clinical services (seligman, rashid & parks, 2006). 1.2. positive psychology, subjective wellbeing and depression. one strand of positive psychology research investigates the relationship between subjective wellbeing (i.e. happiness) and people’s strengths. the authentic happiness theory (seligman, 2002) stipulates that positive emotion (the pleasant life), engagement (the engaged life) and meaning (the meaningful life) generate subjective wellbeing which in turn indirectly reduces a range of mental health difficulties, including depression. a consensus has emerged that subjective wellbeing consists of high positive affect, low negative affect and life satisfaction (diener et al., 2017). ppis, including the identification and the use of strengths are designed to activate the processes that result in subjective wellbeing. peterson and seligman (2004) have identified twenty-four strengths that are personal traits. govindji and linley (2007) view strengths as natural capabilities that individuals strive to use and that enable authentic expression that is invigorating. thus, if a strength is present, the individual experiences a rejuvenating release of energy following its use (peterson, 2006). peterson proffers that mental health difficulties stem from the opposite, or the absence of, or the excess use of strengths and consequently a strength-based framework is a viable alternative to the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (seligman, 2015). seligman et al. (2005) investigated the ‘identifying your strengths’ and ‘using your strengths’ ppis in a non-clinical sample over one week (n=411). the interventions led to higher levels of happiness and lower levels of depression compared to the control participants. these results were largely confirmed in replication studies by gander et al. (2013) (n=622) and mongrain and anselmo-matthews (2012) (n=344). however, the latter study, did not find a difference between the ppi and the control in reducing depression, albeit the control also induced positive cognition. the connection between strength-based ppis, subjective wellbeing and depression is further evidenced in non-clinical studies. the use of strengths increases positive affect (wood et al., 2011), is associated with greater life satisfaction (douglass & duffy, 2015) and reduces depression (proyer et al., 2015). clinically, ppis were initially facilitated with clients with clinical depression, increasing positive affect (pietrowsky & mitkutta, 2012) and reducing depression (seligman et al., 2006). it is suggested that ppis may have clinical utility for clients with other presentations with reduced positive affect, including psychosis (dunn, 2017). 1.3. psychosis, subjective wellbeing and strength-based ppis. psychosis is a multifaceted experience that is characterised by a loss of touch with reality and it encompasses positive, negative and depressive symptoms (sax et al., 1996). psychosis is often a distressing and a debilitating experience (barr, ormrod & dudley, 2015) that impacts on a person’s self-concept, confidence, hopes (connell et al., 2015) self-esteem, social roles (braehler & schwannauer, 2012) and it can result in a feeling of having lost oneself (lester et al., 2011). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 perhaps unsurprisingly, clients with psychosis have low levels of subjective wellbeing (broyd, jolley & johns, 2016). to date, psychological interventions for psychosis have tended to be symptom based but are somewhat limited in their effectiveness. for instance, cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis (cbtp) has moderate benefit (turner et al., 2014; bighelli et al., 2018). to address this lack of efficacy, cbtp models have broadened to include strength-based formulations and interventions (kuyken, padesky & dudley, 2009). beck, himelstein and grant (2019) also contend that there may be therapeutic gain in activating the positive schemata of clients with psychosis. it is suggested that strength-based positive psychotherapy, an approach that does not directly target symptoms, may contribute to enhancing the mental health of clients with psychosis (hutton, 2016). this approach aligns with the concept of recovery and of attending to strengths, empowering clients, developing personal resources, reconnecting with one’s sense of self and facilitating the emergence of a positive identity regardless of whether or not psychological difficulties persist (higgins & mcbennett, 2007). it also involves providing a therapeutic space that does not centre on psychosis. the emerging evidence indicates that strength-based ppis improve the wellbeing of clients with psychosis and reduce depression (brownell et al., 2015; sims et al., 2015; schrank et al., 2016). however, schrank et al. (2016) did not find that ppis differed from the control across all wellbeing measures. hall and tarrier (2003) also demonstrated that eliciting and increasing clients’ personal qualities improved self-esteem and significantly reduced positive symptoms, negative symptoms and general psychopathology. thus, there is some evidence that ppis may have a beneficial impact on wellbeing, depression, positive symptoms and negative symptoms of individuals with psychosis. however, the impact of strength-based interventions with clients with specific features of psychosis is not established. a strength-based approach may be suitable for clients with paranoid ideation. 1.4. strength-based ppis and paranoid ideation. paranoid ideation can be preceded by negative interpersonal processes including victimization (jack & egan, 2018) and shame (matos, pinto, gouveia & gilbert, 2014) that can impact on the person’s sense of self (sousa et al., 2015). freeman et al. (2005) emphasize that the crux of paranoia is that people engage in negative self-evaluations and feel vulnerable and socially inferior to powerful harmful others. the severity of the threat from others increases along the paranoia hierarchy, whereby persecutory delusions are the severest form of paranoia (freeman et al., 2005). the threat anticipation model (freeman et al., 2002) sets out that persecutory delusions arise from multiple factors including previous experiences, precipitating events, maladaptive responses and cognitive biases that interact to influence how an individual interprets situations. other models (bentall, kinderman & kaney, 1994) delineate that the external focus on others prevents negative thoughts about the self from reaching consciousness. this negative sense of self in paranoia is evidenced (tiernan, tracey & shannon, 2014). however, there is added complexity considering that fifty percent of clients with persecutory delusions also experience depression (vorontsova, garety & freeman, 2013), which is also associated with negative self-beliefs (bradley & mathews, 1983). nevertheless, smith et al. (2006) found that negative self-evaluative beliefs were associated with persecutory delusions after controlling for depression and low self-esteem. moreover, the activation of negative self-beliefs precedes and maintains positive symptoms (jaya, ascone & lincon, 2017). research by giester, josephs and swann (1996) underscores that the presence of negative self-beliefs can result in biased selfdeprecating cognitive processes that can impede the individual from engaging in positive selfhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 evaluations. this includes individuals with psychosis not acknowledging personal strengths (sims et al., 2015). there is also a negative correlation between non-clinical paranoia and selfkindness (mills et al., 2007) and between clinical paranoid ideation and life satisfaction (mankiewicz, gresswell & turner, 2013). furthermore, clients with clinical paranoia present with low levels of self-compassion and positive self-schemas (collett et al., 2016). this suggests that there is a negative evaluation of one’s self and others and an absence of positive cognition inherent in paranoid ideation. ellett and chadwick (2007) found that the generation of positive self-cognitions reduced non-clinical paranoia. similarly, atherton et al. (2016) reported that reinforcing personal characteristics reduced non-clinical paranoia. in adapting positive psychology theory and ppis to paranoid ideation, freeman et al. (2014) postulated that strengthbased ppis would generate positive cognitions, reduce negative self-cognitions and thereby indirectly reduce paranoid ideation. freeman et al. (2014) piloted a cbt and strength-based ppi for clinical paranoia, under the premise of developing client’s confidence (n=30). the intervention led to significant improvements in wellbeing (d=1.16), positive self-beliefs (d=1.00), depression (d=0.68), a small non-significant reduction in negative self-beliefs (d=0.24) and a moderate non-significant reduction in paranoia (d=0.59). meyer et al. (2012) also piloted a strength-based ppi with clients with schizophrenia that increased wellbeing and significantly reduced paranoia (n=16). there may therefore be merit in delivering strength-based ppis to clients with paranoid ideation. however, it is unknown whether the benefits from the positive psychotherapy studies are specific to paranoid ideation or whether it is a result of a beneficial impact in fostering wellbeing or positive self-beliefs or influencing other difficulties such as depression. 1.5. the present study. the current study aimed to investigate the relationships between strength-use, life satisfaction, positive self-beliefs and paranoid ideation in a non-clinical sample. in part this is to replicate previous findings but then in this context it explores the specific relationship between paranoia and wellbeing, and it examines in what ways strengths and positive beliefs may relate to paranoia. in keeping with previous research, it was expected that there would be a positive correlation between strengths-use and life satisfaction and between strengths-use and positive self-beliefs. also replicating previous findings, it was expected that there would be a negative correlation between life satisfaction and paranoid ideation and between positive self-beliefs and paranoid ideation. it was hypothesised that paranoid ideation would be specifically associated with low life satisfaction, after accounting for other contributory factors. additionally, it was proposed that strength-use would moderate the relationship between paranoid ideation and life satisfaction. finally, it was hypothesised that life satisfaction and positive self-beliefs would mediate the relationship between strength-use and paranoid ideation. 2. method. 2.1. participants. a single group cross sectional design was utilised. it was a requirement for participants (n=531) to be at least eighteen years of age, university students, literate and fluent in english. 2.2. measures. strength use scale (sus) (govindji & linley, 2007): this is a fourteen item self-report measure of strength-use over the past month. items (e.g. i am regularly able to do what i do best) are rated http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 on a four-point scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (4) strongly agree. previous research reported a cronbach alpha of .87 (rankin, 2015). satisfaction with life scale swls (diener et al, 1985): this is a five item self-report measure of one’s cognitive judgement of life over the past month. items (e.g. i am satisfied with my life) are rated on a seven-point likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree. the instrument has a reported cronbach alpha of 0.87 (diener et al., 1985). positive and negative affect schedule (panas) (watson, clark & tellegan, 1988): this is a twenty item self-report measure of positive affect (pa) and negative affect (na) over the past month. items are rated on a five-point likert scale ranging from (1) not at all to (5) all of the time. the instrument has acceptable psychometric properties with cronbach alphas of .89 for the pa scale and .85 for the na scale (crawford & henry, 2004). green paranoid thoughts scales gpts (green, freeman, kuipers et al., 2008): this is a thirty-two item self-report measure of paranoid ideation over the past month. it consists of a social reference subscale (e.g. i spend time thinking about friends gossiping about me) and a social persecution subscale (e.g. certain individuals have had it in for me). items are rated on a five-point likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (totally). the instrument has a cronbach alpha of .95 (green et al., 2008). brief core schema scales bcss (fowler et al., 2006): this is a twenty-four item self-report measure comprising of a; negative self-belief subscale (e.g. i am unloved), positive self-belief subscale (e.g. i am valuable) negative beliefs about others subscale (e.g. other people are hostile) and positive beliefs about others (e.g. other people are good) subscale. endorsed items are rated on a four-point likert scale ranging from (1) believe it slightly to (4) believe it totally. the research reports cronbach alphas of .86 for the negative self-scale, .78 for the positive self-scale, .88 for the positive other subscale and .88 for the negative other subscale (fowler et al., 2006). community assessment of psychic experience cape-42 (van os, verdoux & hanssen, 1999): this is a forty two item self-report measure of psychic experiences consisting of a positive dimension (e.g. do you ever feel as if people seem to drop hints about you or say things with a double meaning?), a negative dimension (e.g. do you ever feel that you are not a very animated person?) and a depressive dimension (e.g. do you ever feel sad?). endorsed items are rated on a fourpoint likert scale ranging from (1) not distressed to (4) very distressed. in order to account for partial non-responses, a weighted score is calculated per dimension which is the sum score per dimension divided by the number of items filled in by the participant. previous studies report cronbach alphas of .84 for the positive dimension, .81 for the negative dimension and .76 for the depressive dimension (mark & toulopoulou, 2016). 2.3. procedure. the research was approved by the newcastle university ethics committee. participants were recruited between september 2017 and january 2018 and were provided with; an information sheet, a consent sheet, a demographic sheet, the measures and a debriefing sheet. the information sheet set out that participation involved completing questionnaires designed to explore: strengths, life satisfaction, paranoid ideation, mood and self-beliefs. participants identified their strengths with the brief strengths test (bst) (peterson, 2004) prior to completing the measures. the questionnaires were completed either online or in person and the participants received either course credits or they were entered into a prize draw. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 2.4. statistical analysis. the data was analysed using spss (version 24, ibm corp, armonk, new york, america) and process software (version 2.15, hayes, 2012). pearson's correlations explored the relationships between the variables. hierarchical multiple regression analysis investigated if paranoid ideation specifically predicted life satisfaction. the hayes moderation model 1 (hayes, 2013) considered whether the use of strengths moderated the relationship between paranoid ideation and life satisfaction. the hayes mediation model 4 (hayes, 2013) explored the postulations of the authentic happiness theory (seligman, 2002) and a strength-based ppi for paranoid ideation (freeman et al., 2014). hence, the indirect impact of life satisfaction and positive self-beliefs on the relationship between strength-use and paranoid ideation was investigated. there is no published literature investigating the relationship between these variables. the sample size for hierarchical multiple regression was calculated via the www.danielsoper.com website. a small to medium effect size was set for calculating power (0.04). there were seven predictors in set a and one in set b, the alpha level was .05, and the power .80, therefore a sample size of n=201 was necessary. in terms of missing data, a mean item score was assigned in instances where a participant had less than ten percent of the data missing on any of the scales. there was less than five percent missing on most of the measures, however for the cape (van os verdoux & hanssen, 1999) there were two hundred and twelve cases missing on the positive dimension, one hundred and ninety six items missing on the negative dimension and one hundred and seventy one cases missing on the depressive dimension. missing data was excluded on an analysis by analysis (pairwise basis). seven extreme outliers (i.e. scores three standard deviations from the mean) were detected in the dataset, four in the negative self-belief bcss subscale (fowler et al., 2006) and one case in each of the cape subscales (van os verdoux & hanssen, 1999). the outliers were retained. the skewness, kurtosis and the kolomogorove-smirnov values indicated a violation of the assumption of normality, yet the impact of this reduces in larger samples (lumley, diehr, emerson & chen, 2002). 3. results 3.1. descriptive statistics. the demographics of the sample are illustrated in table 1. the majority of the sample were; aged between 18-21 years, single, white and undergraduate students. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 table 1: demographic of the sample (n=531) variable university students n (%) gender male 164 (30.90) female 367 (69.10) age 18-21 442 (83.20) 22-39 89 (16.80) 40-100 0 (0) relationship status single 442 (83.20) cohabiting 21 (4.00) married 14 (2.60) other 54 (10.20) ethnicity white 429 (80.80) black 11 (2.10) asian 67 (12.60) other 24 (4.50) student status undergraduate 449 (84.60) postgraduate 82 (15.40) faculty humanities and social science 216 (40.70) medical science 212 (39.90) science, agriculture and engineering 103 (19.40) data collected online 250 (47.08) in person 281 (52.92) note: the demographic divisions align with categories provided by the higher education statistics agency (2018) and by newcastle university (2018). the range scores, means, standard deviations and cronbach’s alphas of the measures are detailed in table 2 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 table 2: the range scores, mean scores, standard deviations and cronbach’s alphas. measure reported range norm mean (sd) reported mean (sd) α sus 16-56 44.66 (5.70) 40.68 (6.48) .90 swls 5-35 23.50 (6.43) 24.50(6.13) .86 panas pa 10-50 32.0 (7.00) 33.44 (6.90) .84 panas na 10-50 19.50 (7.00) 24.11(7.65) .86 total gpts 32-143 48.8 (18.70) 58.68(21.10) .95 gpts sp 16-74 22.1(9.20) 24.66(11.20) .94 gpts sr 16-72 26.8 (10.40) 34.08 (12.07) .91 bcss psb 0-24 10.20 (4.23) 12.44 (5.60) .81 bcss nsb 0-22 3.55 (3.55) 2.70 (3.82) .90 cape pd 0.67-7 1.42(0.26) 2.01(0.72) .89 cape nd 0.89-5 1.62(0.37) 2.03(0.60) .90 cape dd 1-6 1.72 (0.40) 2.40 (0.72) .84 note: sus=strength use scale; swls =satisfaction with life scale; panas pa= positive and negative affect schedule positive affect; panas na= positive and negative affect schedule, negative affect; bcss psb= brief core schema scale, positive self belief; bcss nsb= brief core schema scale, negative self belief; total gpts= green paranoid thoughts scales; gpts sp= green paranoid thoughts social persecution; gpts sr= green paranoid thoughts social reference; cape pa= community assessment of psychic experience, positive dimension; cape nd= community assessment of psychic experience, negative dimension; cape dd= community assessment of psychic experience, depressive dimension. the mean scores on the sus, swls, panas-pa, bcss and cape were broadly consistent with the findings of previous studies (watson et al., 1988; fowler et al., 2006; pavot & diener, 2009; pfeifer et al., 2009; rankin, 2015). the level of negative affect was higher than previous samples (watson et al., 1988). the paranoid ideation score was also above other non-clinical norms, yet below the clinical cut off score of 101 (green et al., 2008). 3.2. pearson’s correlations. pearson’s correlations explored the relationships between strength-use, life satisfaction, positive self-beliefs, paranoid ideation and other measures. as illustrated in table 3, there were positive correlations between strengths-use and life satisfaction and between strengths-use and positive self-beliefs. similarly, there was a negative correlation between life satisfaction and paranoid ideation and between positive self-beliefs and paranoid ideation. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 table 3. pearson correlations for all measures. 3.3. hierarchical multiple regression. a hierarchical multiple regression examined if paranoid ideation specifically accounted for lower life satisfaction after controlling for other variables. as depicted in table 4, age and gender did not significantly account for variance in life satisfaction. the addition of strength-use, in block 2 increased the total variance explained by the model as a whole to 15% (r2 =.15, f (3, 303) = 17.67, p < .01). positive, negative and depressive dimensions were subsequently entered in block 3 and accounted for 17 % of the variance in life satisfaction (r2= .17, f (6, 300) =10.25, p<.01). strength-use remained the only variable to make a unique statistically significant contribution (beta = .32, p < .01). to increase specificity to investigating the predictive value of paranoia on life satisfaction, paranoid ideation was entered into the model in a fourth block that added paranoia after all previous variables. the total model accounted for 24% of the variance in life satisfaction (r2 =.24, f (7, 299) = 13.81, p < .01). in this instance both strength-use (beta=.36, p<.01) and paranoid ideation (beta= -.08, p<.01) made a significant contribution. the tolerance values of the model were greater than .05, the vif values were less than 10 and the durban watson test was 1.86. this indicated no issues with multicollinearity or autocorrelation. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 table 4: hierarchical multiple regression predicting life satisfaction. predictor variables r2 adjusted r2 r2 f b std. error β t sig. block 1 .00 -.01 .00 .30 age .12 .96 .01 .13 .90 gender -.59 .76 -.06 -.78 .44 block 2 strength use .15 .14 .15 17.67* .36 .05 .39 7.23 .00 block 3 .17 .15 .02 10.25* positive symptoms -.98 .52 -.12 -1.91 .06 negative symptoms -.47 .67 -.05 -.69 .49 depressive symptoms -.18 .54 -.02 -.34 .73 block 4 paranoid ideation .24 .23 .07 13.81* -.08 .02 -.29 -5.42 .00 * significant p<.01 3.4. moderation analysis. moderation analysis found that strength-use moderated the relationship between paranoid ideation and life satisfaction. figure 1: simple slopes equation of the regression of life satisfaction on paranoid ideation at three levels of strength-use. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 the linear model of predictors of life satisfaction is outlined in table 5. this illustrates that strength-use moderated the relationship between paranoid ideation and life satisfaction, b = .00 (.00, .01). table 5: linear model of predictors of life satisfaction. b se b t p constant 26.57 (18.30, 34.84) 4.21 6.31 <.01 paranoid ideation -.25 (-.37, -.12) .06 -3.87 <.01 strength use .08 (-.12, .27) .10 .75 .46 paranoid ideation x strength use .00 (.00, .00) .00 2.55 .01 note: r2 =.24. figure 1 illustrates the simple slopes equation of the regression of life satisfaction on paranoid ideation at three levels of strength-use. under lower levels of paranoid ideation there was a small difference in life satisfaction depending on strength-use. however, as paranoid ideation increased participants with higher levels of strength-use reported greater levels of life satisfaction. 3.5. mediation analysis. mediation analysis investigated the indirect impact of life satisfaction and positive selfbeliefs on the relationship between strength-use and paranoid ideation. thereby investigating the mechanism by which strengths-use may reduce paranoid ideation. mediation analysis was conducted based on 5,000 bootstrapped samples using bias corrected and accelerated 95% confidence intervals (cis). as portrayed in figure 2, strength-use had a significant, direct path to paranoid ideation (b= -.16 se=.14, p<.01) and life satisfaction (b=.38 se=.038, p<.01). life satisfaction had a significant direct path to paranoid ideation (b= -.35 se=.14, p<.01). when life satisfaction was entered into the model, strength-use had a reduction with paranoid ideation and the reduction in this relation was significant (se=.09 ci= -.61, -.27) and statistically different from zero, demonstrated by a 95% bias corrected bootstrap confidence interval that does not include zero. thus, life satisfaction mediated the relationship between strength-use and paranoid ideation. the indirect effect was -.42. the total model was significant (r2=.13, f (2, 520) = 37.08, p<.01) and explained 13% of the variance in paranoid ideation. in a second analysis, detailed in figure 3, strength-use also had a significant direct path to positive self-beliefs (b=.50, se=.03, p<.01). there was a direct path from positive self-beliefs to paranoid ideation (b= -.24, se=.17 p<.01). when positive self-beliefs was entered into the second model, strength-use had a reduction with paranoid ideation and the reduction in this relation was significant (se=.10 ci= -.55, -.18) and statistically different from zero, demonstrated by a 95% http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval that does not include zero. therefore, positive selfbeliefs mediated the relationship between strength-use and paranoid ideation. the indirect effect was -.35. the total model was significant (r2=.06, f (2, 485) = 16.01, p<.01 and explained 6% of the variance in paranoid ideation. .381. figure 2: mediation analysis with paranoid ideation as the outcome measure in a non-clinical sample. figure 3: mediation analysis with paranoid ideation as the outcome measure in a non-clinical sample. 4. discussion 4.1. summary of the main findings. this study investigated the relationships between strength-use, life satisfaction, positive selfbeliefs and paranoid ideation. all of the hypotheses were supported. strength-use was positively life satisfaction strength-use β = -.04, p<.01 β=.38, p <.01 paranoid ideation β= -.34, p <.01 direct effect β= -.12 p=.43 indirect effect β= -.42 (ci -.61, -.26) positive selfbeliefs β=.50, p<.01 strength-use β= -.06, p<.01 paranoid ideation β= -.22, p<.01 direct effect β= -.18, p= .28 indirect effect β= -.35 (cl -.55, -.18) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 associated with greater life satisfaction, which echoes the findings of douglass and duffy (2015). similarly, there was the expected negative correlation between life satisfaction and paranoid ideation, which reiterates the findings of mankiewicz, gresswell and turner (2013). positive selfbeliefs were negatively associated with paranoid ideation, which corresponds with the findings of mills et al. (2007) and collett et al. (2016). as hypothesized, paranoid ideation negatively predicted life satisfaction after controlling for other positive, negative and depressive symptoms of psychosis. this suggests that there is specificity in paranoid ideation reducing life satisfaction. the use of strengths was found to moderate the relationship between paranoid ideation and life satisfaction. the postulations of the authentic happiness theory (seligman, 2002) and a strengthbased ppi for paranoid ideation (freeman et al., 2014) were subsequently explored via mediation analysis. life satisfaction did mediate the relationship between strength-use and paranoid ideation and the total model accounted for a significant variance in paranoid ideation. this finding is consistent with the authentic happiness theory (seligman, 2002) and the work of meyer et al. (2012) which found that strength-based ppis increased wellbeing and decreased paranoid ideation. strengths-use also predicted positive self-cognitions, which in turn meditated the relationship between strength-use and paranoid ideation. the total model accounted for a significant variance in paranoid ideation. this aligns with the findings of freeman et al. (2014). it is noteworthy that strength-use was a greater predictor of positive self-beliefs compared to positive self-beliefs negatively predicting paranoid ideation. this aligns with the primary function of ppis which is to engage individuals in adaptive psychological processes that enhance wellbeing. 4.2. strengths and limitations of the research. in considering the strengths of the study, it implemented non-clinical measures that were specific to strength-use, life satisfaction, positive self-beliefs, features of psychosis and paranoid ideation. the sample size was also large, allowing for robust associations to be investigated. the limitations of the research include, that a cross sectional design was utilized that does not enable a causal link to be established between the constructs and it also does not control for extraneous variables (maxwell & cole, 2007). additionally, participants were primed to identify their strengths with the bst (peterson, 2004), which aligns with the character strengths as delineated by peterson and seligman (2004), prior to completing the sus (govindji & linley, 2007). however, the influence of the first measure on the second measure is only assumed. another limitation is the recruitment of a non-clinical sample, whereby the level of paranoid ideation was lower than that of a clinical population thereby limiting the generalisability of the findings. it is also noteworthy that the analysis revealed a significant association between the use of strength and positive affect. however, a detailed analysis of this aspect of wellbeing was beyond the scope of the current paper. 4.3. clinical implications and conclusion. the findings provide additional evidence of the association between strength-use and life satisfaction. this has clinical implications in offering strength-based interventions under the premise of harnessing clients’ wellbeing. the association between strength-use and positive selfbeliefs warrants further research, particularly in light of the absence of positive self-cognitions in paranoid ideation. the research found specificity in paranoid ideation reducing life satisfaction. this provides a rationale for offering strength-based interventions to clients with paranoid ideation. moreover, the use of strengths moderated the relationship between paranoid ideation http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ strength use, wellbeing, paranoid ideation mctiernan, gullon-scott & dudley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 and life satisfaction, which supports the use of this particular ppi. in considering the theoretical underpinnings of the study, the results support both the authentic happiness theory (seligman, 2002) and the postulations of a strength-based ppi for paranoid ideation (freeman et al., 2014). the findings indicate that the use of strengths may activate other forms of positive cognitions other than life satisfaction. however, in order to accurately test these models, further work with clients presenting with clinical paranoid ideation is clearly required. one approach could be to facilitate clients to use personal strengths and to complete measures of strength, wellbeing and paranoia pre and post intervention. positive psychotherapy entails, facilitating clients to become conscious of a personal strength prior to its use and setting out or completing the associated behaviour in sessions (rashid, 2015). a longitudinal design would also establish a temporal precedence to clarify the relationship between the constructs. however, overall the preliminary findings indicate that ppis may benefit individuals with paranoid ideation in addition to clients with depression. it therefore offers preliminary evidence that strength-based interventions could contribute to the mental health of clients with paranoid ideation attending mental health services. authors kara mctiernan newcastle university cumbria, northumberland, tyne and wear nhs foundation trust karamctiernan@gmail.com fiona gullon-scott newcastle university robert dudley newcastle university cumbria, northumberland, tyne and wear nhs foundation trust publishing timeline received 24 march 2019 accepted 10 march 2020 published 1 june 2020 references atherton, s., antley, a., evans, n., cernis, e., lister, r., dunn, g., & freeman, d. 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(2020). covid-19, gender inequality, and the responsibility of the state. international journal of wellbeing, 10(3), 77-93. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1305 nikki fortier syracuse university nfortier@syr.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 article covid-19, gender inequality, and the responsibility of the state nikki fortier abstract: previous research has shown that women are disproportionately negatively affected by a variety of socio-economic hardships, many of which covid-19 is making worse. in particular, because of gender roles, and because women’s jobs tend to be given lower priority than men’s (since they are more likely to be part-time, lower-income, and less secure), women assume the obligations of increased caregiving needs at a much higher rate. this unfairly renders women especially susceptible to shortand long-term economic insecurity and decreases in wellbeing. single-parent households, the majority of which are headed by single mothers, face even greater risks. these vulnerabilities are further compounded along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, class, and geography. drawing upon the philosophical literature on political responsibility and structural injustice (specifically, the work of iris marion young), i argue that while the state may not have had either foresight into, or control over, the disproportionate effect the pandemic would have on women, it can nonetheless be held responsible for mitigating these effects. in order to do so, it must first recognize the ways in which women have been affected by the outbreak. specifically, policies must take into account the unpaid labor of care that falls on women. moreover, given that this labor is particularly vital during a global health pandemic, the state ought to immediately prioritize the value of this work by providing financial stimuli directly to families, requiring employers to provide both sick leave and parental leave for at least as long as schools and daycares are inoperational, and providing subsidized emergency childcare. keywords: gender inequality, wellbeing, political responsibility, structural injustice, covid-19 about:blank covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 78 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org practice implications 1) elimination of “workfare” policies because many lone-parents are forced to leave the formal labor market in order to address the drastic increase in childcare needs resulting from the closures of schools and daycares, workfare policies, which force people to work in the formal market in order to receive welfare benefits, unfairly discriminate against single-parents, the majority of whom are mothers. 2) provision of emergency childcare many parents who rely on a regular income to make ends meet, but especially singlemothers, need emergency, subsidized childcare in order to remain employed. 3) implementation of paid parental leave paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers prevents parents from having to choose between providing an income for their families and childcare for their children. providing paternity leave has also been shown to have long-term effects on the division of care work. 4) facilitate transitions to part-time work women are far more likely to reduce their paid labor in order to meet increases in childcare obligations. in order to soften the blow to their economic security and wellbeing, states should legally mandate employment benefits for part-time employees, and provide training for employers on how to implement flexible schedules and requirements. 5) closure of the gender wage gap as long as women earn less than men, women’s jobs will be more disposable than men’s. taking steps toward closing the gender wage gap will help prevent women from assuming a disproportionate burden during economic crises. introduction previous research shows that women are disproportionately negatively affected by a variety of socio-economic hardships worldwide (pearce, 1978; assassi, 2009; gill & roberts, 2011; langer et al., 2015), many of which covid-19 is making worse (ewing-nelson, 2020). there is good reason to think that the pandemic is devastating for gender equality, and particularly devastating for women’s wellbeing. economists alon et al. (2020) convincingly argue that although in previous economic crises, men’s employment has been more at risk, several unique factors of this pandemic make women’s employment more vulnerable. in practice, it has so far been the case that women have lost the majority of jobs due to covid-19 (iwpr, 2020). in canada, for instance, 5% of women between the ages of 25-54, but only 2% of men of the same age, have lost their jobs due to coronavirus (johnson, 2020). women are not only being laid off at higher rates than men; they are also sacrificing their jobs to meet the increased childcare obligations at a higher rate. as schools and daycares shut down, childcare work shifts from the paid economy to the unpaid one. women already do far more unpaid care work (of both children and adults) and have less free time than men (mattingly & bianchi, 2003; sayer, 2005; bettio et al., 2006; esquivel et al., 2008; budlender, 2010; schoonbroodt, 2018), and any increase in care needs will be disproportionately assumed by women (alon et al., covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 79 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2020).1 women tend to bear the burden of this shift both because of social norms regarding who assumes caregiver roles (floro et al., 2009; signorelli et al., 2012; wenham et al., 2020), and because women’s jobs tend to be given lower priority since, in almost all economies, they are more likely to have part-time, lower-income, and less secure jobs, with less bargaining power than men (kim, 2000; truong, 2000; carr & alter-chen, 2002; antonopoulos, 2008; dejardin & owens, 2009; floro et al., 2009; sirimanne, 2009; boniol et al, 2019; johnson, 2020). it is also worth noting that people with low-wage jobs are less likely to have adequate health insurance, sick leave, access to childcare, and other benefits that protect higher-wage workers from covid-19 exposures (poteat et al., 2020). intersectional oppressions should not be ignored here: black americans, for example, are more likely to have low-wage essential service jobs, and thereby assume more risk of both contracting covid-19, and of dying from it (yancy, 2020).2 or, for instance, because homeless populations live in congregate living settings both formally (in shelters, for example) and informally (in, for example, encampments and abandoned buildings), and among people who may not have access to regular hygiene resources, they are more likely to contract coronavirus (tsai & wilson, 2020). consider too a study by kizilirmak and memis (2009) which shows that women’s (and not men’s) responsibilities for care work (and, presumably, any increase in care work needs) intensifies along with the depth of their poverty. the most vulnerable people in our societies are those most at risk. the increase in unpaid care work is one of the most significant ways that this crisis will harm women, both directly and indirectly. assuming an unfair share of the burden of unpaid care work produced by our responses to covid-19 harms women directly because of its effect on mental wellbeing. there is no question that taking on excessive role responsibilities (either in the household, in the workplace, or both) has detrimental effects on psychological wellbeing (fox & nickols, 1983; gore & mangione, 1983; lowe and northcott 1988; nelson & burke, 2002). caregiving responsibilities, in particular, are associated with increased psychological distress (anthony-bergstone et al., 1988; george & gwyther, 1986; hoyert & seltzer, 1992; schulz & williamson, 1991; strawbridge et al., 1997; pinquart & sörensen, 2003). it is also worth noting that women experience greater psychological distress in their roles as caregivers than do men (miller & cafasso, 1992; yee & schulz, 2000). when caregiving needs increase, some will move from full-time to part-time work, while some will stop working altogether (lilly et al., 2007; hess et al., 2015; hess et al. 2020). women are far more likely than men to move into part-time work (hegewisch & lacarte, 2019), and to stop working altogether (alon et al., 2020) in order to meet their care obligations. women who move into part-time work will very likely face a disproportionate psychological burden stemming from work-family conflict, which has been shown to have a negative effect on mental health (allen et al., 2000; frone, 2000; frone et al., 1997; grzywacz & bass, 2003) and on general wellbeing (grant-vallone & donaldson, 2001; moen & yu, 2000). similarly, women, singleparents, and caregivers are more likely than others to rush in order to meet their obligations, 1 some prefer the term “social reproduction” to “care work” (see kofman, 2012, p. 144). throughout this paper, by “care work”, i am referring to (1) biological reproduction, along with the labor required to maintain a healthy family life (including the affective and emotional burdens that it involves); (2) unpaid production of goods and services (including time volunteered in one’s community); and (3) the maintaining and reproduction of culture and ideology which works to stabilize and/or challenge social relations (hoskyns & rai 2007, p. 300, cited in rai et al., 2014, p. 87). 2 see bibbins-domingo (2020), hooper et al. (2020), mcleod et al. (2020), poteat (2020), and yancy (2020) for other ways in which people of color and ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by covid19. covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 80 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org which is also associated with greater work-family conflict (strazdins et al., 2016). both rushing and time-poverty have been shown to negatively impact health (teuchmann et al., 1999; spinney & millward, 2010; offer & schneider, 2011; strazdins et al., 2016). there is also good reason to think that women will feel the effects of moving into part-time work long after the pandemic ends. women who transition to part-time work for just one year before moving back to full-time earn up to 10% less, even 15 years later (antonopoulos, 2008, p. 25). women who exit the paid labor market in order to meet the increase in care obligations also face significant reductions in wellbeing. unsurprisingly, unemployment and financial strain are cited as causes for increased levels of stress, insecurity, and social exclusion, as well as poorer mental wellbeing (nordenmark & strandh 1999; giuntoli et al., 2011; giuntoli et al., 2015; hiswåls et al., 2017), all of which have been shown to be strongly correlated with decreased health and subjective wellbeing (duxbury & higgins, 2001; burke, 2002; verkuyten, 2008). both men and women in the u.k., for example, have lower life satisfaction when they are involuntarily out of the labor market (della giusta et al., 2011). there is also evidence that individual earnings impact one’s bargaining power within the household, which in turn decreases her wellbeing because of its effects on self-esteem and respect (kabeer 2002; pollak 2005; seguino, 2006; floro & pichetpongsa, 2010). along similar lines, some studies show that a person’s happiness, lifesatisfaction, or general wellbeing increases with greater economic freedom (gehring, 2013; ovaska & takashima, 2006; verme, 2009; welzel & inglehart, 2010, cited in lambert et al., 2020). moreover, women whose employment is affected by economic crises return to their pre-crisis work levels more slowly than men (smith, 2009; ilo, 2010), longer durations of unemployment are associated with increased negative emotions and poorer wellbeing (hiswåls et al., 2017). at least one study found that people who remain unemployed for more than a year do not return to the wellbeing level they had before they lost their job (lucas et al. 2004). single-parent households (just under 70% of which, in the u.s., are headed by single mothers, according to the u.s. census bureau, 2019) face even greater risks. single mothers are forced to choose between having an income and providing childcare. between february and may of 2020, unemployment of single mothers in the u.s. more than tripled, moving from 4.1% to 15.9% (u.s. bureau of labor statistics, 2020). before the pandemic, single mothers were already more likely to live in more severe poverty, for a longer duration than other groups (madruga, 2006, cited in landero hernández et al., 2009). these risks are further compounded along the dimensions of race and ethnicity. in the u.s., more than half (55.5%) of all black families with children and 36.9 percent of native american families with children are headed by a single mother (shaw et al. 2020). in addition, quarantine measures and stay-at-home orders are having devastating effects on people who endure domestic violence, the majority of whom are women (boserup, 2020). isolation coupled with additional economic and family stressors are conspiring to create unprecedented global increases in domestic violence, with fewer resources available for those affected by it (usher et al., 2020; van gelder et al. 2020). the social connection model of political responsibility once we identify the ways in which women are disproportionately disadvantaged by covid19, we need to address the question of what to do about it, and of who is responsible for so doing. i argue that, while everyone has an obligation to address this injustice, the state bears the greatest covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 81 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org responsibility for so doing.3 the account of responsibility upon which i rely does not hold that a person or an entity is responsible for addressing an injustice because they are blameworthy or liable for that injustice. to mount my argument, i instead employ the influential social connection model of political responsibility put forth by iris marion young (1990; 2000; 2003; 2004; 2006; 2011).4 this model aims not to hold responsible all and only those who have played some causal role in bringing about an injustice, but to account for the moral requirement to address largescale structural injustices. structural injustice occurs as a consequence of social processes that put certain groups of people “...under a systematic threat of domination or deprivation of the means to develop and exercise their capacities...” (young 2006, p. 114). it is crucial to note that whether some state of affairs constitutes a structural injustice does not depend on whether anyone intended any wrongness or injustice; it instead depends only on whether the effect of social practices and processes is the systematic subjugation of a particular group. knowing that the effect of covid-19 is that women are systematically disadvantaged in a number of respects is sufficient to know that the pandemic has resulted in structural injustice. if we cannot look backwards to assess blame or liability, how do we determine who is responsible for addressing the gender inequality exacerbated by the pandemic? following young (2000; 2003; 2004; 2006; 2011), anthony giddens (1984), and onora o’neill (1985; 1996), i appeal to the fact that structural injustice is not a stagnant state of affairs, but an ongoing process that people collectively reproduce by their actions and assumptions. what distinguishes it from cases in which an institution knowingly enacts repressive policies is that structural injustice occurs as the cumulative result of agents acting in pursuit of their uncoordinated goals and interests within the bounds of perfectly acceptable norms and institutional rules (young, 2011, p.52). in so acting, these agents (likely unknowingly) reproduce the structures that give rise to the injustice. o’neill (1996, ch.3) argues that we all have moral obligations to others with whom we share a societal structure; in particular, those whose actions we assume as preconditions for our own actions.5 for instance, when i buy bread from a grocery store, i assume and rely on the fact that farmers, manufacturers, food inspectors, transporters, and vendors will all have done certain actions that reliably enable me to safely, cheaply, and conveniently buy bread. young (2000, p.242) writes, wherever people act within a set of institutions that connect them to one another by commerce, communications, or consequences of policies, such that systemic interdependencies generate benefits and burdens that would not exist without these institutional relationships, then the people within that set of interdependent institutions stand in relations of justice. 3 my own view is that we are all morally obligated to address injustices, regardless of our connection to them, but for those who are unconvinced, my argument provides reason to think that states have special obligations to do so. 4 the distinction between the backward-looking “liability model” of responsibility (one which focuses on fault, blame, and liability) and the forward-looking political responsibility is derived from hannah arendnt’s work (arendt 1987; 2000). 5 charles beitz (1979) and thomas pogge (1992) make similar arguments in order to ground our transnational obligations of justice. meena krishnamurthy (2013) argues not that our connections to one another ground our political obligations of justice, but that they ground political solidarity, which is integral to justice (and, in particular, integral to achieving justice in our responses to a pandemic). covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 82 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org she then suggests that the demands of political responsibility are distributed among responsible parties according to who is most powerful and most capable of enacting effective change (young, 2004, pp.385-7; 2006, pp.126-30; 2011, pp.146-7). the social connection model of political responsibility is particularly well-suited to address gender inequality, especially the inequality exacerbated by covid-19. first, there is no question that, even in the best of times, we are all connected to women as a social group by systematic interdependencies, and are thereby all obligated to work toward addressing structural injustices on the basis of gender (rai et al., 2014). as feminist and gender-aware theorists have long been pointing out, though women’s domestic, reproductive, and care work is largely unpaid and unrecognized, it is absolutely essential to a healthy (both global and national) economy (çağatay & özler, 1995; budlender, 2007; heckmann & masterov, 2007; heckman, 2008; harper et al., 2009; for examples of ways in which policy-makers fail to consider the importance of women’s work, see heymann, 2006). we all depend on the unrecognized work of women both intranationally and internationally.6 the idea that the state’s dependence on women’s unpaid labor generates obligations is not new. economist nancy folbre (1994, 2001) argues that because women do the work required to maintain and reproduce a healthy pool of labor on which the state depends, the state has a responsibility to address the systemic inequality of women. our interconnectedness and dependency on the work of women is even more salient, though, as it relates to the additional gender inequality caused by the pandemic. it is well-recognized that the work of women acts as a shock-absorber in times of economic crisis (elson, 1991, 2002, 2014; palmer, 1991; gonzález de la rocha, 1994; çağatay & özler, 1995; elson & çağatay, 2000; bezanson, 2006; björkman, 2006; sulaiman et al., 2009; razavi & staab, 2012; rai et al., 2014; harman, 2016). as a society, we thereby assume this work from women in our response to the pandemic. if we accept the thought that we have a political responsibility to correct injustices borne by those whose actions we assume and upon which we depend, it is indisputable that we are all morally obligated to work toward alleviating the structural injustices that women face; particularly those that are made worse by covid-19. though our reliance on women in our response to the pandemic means that we all have a moral obligation to act to address the exacerbation of gender inequality, the fact that the state is far more capable of enacting meaningful change than individuals means that the state bears the greatest responsibility to do so. as individuals, we have the collective power to pressure our governments and, to some extent, other governments, to make policies that address this injustice, and we should do everything we can to exercise that power. governmental intervention is the only way we can begin to address such sweeping structural injustices. policies for the wellbeing of women single-mothers are one of the groups hit hardest by the effects of the pandemic, and, as a result, we need to prioritize policies that will address their most pressing needs. schools and daycares have shut down, and millions of single-mothers have been forced to choose between having an income and providing their children with essential care. first, for states that have “workfare” policies in place (which require recipients of welfare to work in order to receive benefits), 6 for example, because women in the west are increasingly becoming employed in the formal sector, there is a corresponding increase in demand for paid care work; a demand that is largely met by women of color and ethnic minority from poorer regions of the world who are often exploited for such work (heyzer et al., 1994, parreñas, 2001; williams, 2001, 2018; bettio et al., 2006; williams & gavanas, 2008; see also glenn, 1992; heymann, 2006). covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 83 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org eliminating them must be a priority (peck, 2001). second, there is evidence that access to and use of publicly-funded childcare results in significant increases in subjective wellbeing for women who were previously constrained by the lack of childcare supply (schmitz, 2020). accordingly, governments must provide high-quality childcare to all families. doing so is especially vital for the wellbeing of single-parents as it will allow them to maintain the family’s only source of income. to the same end, employers should be required to provide caregivers with emergency paid family leave. states should also prioritize direct payments to single-parents who have already been forced into unemployment. aside from the obvious contribution to wellbeing associated with the ability to meet one’s basic needs, some evidence suggests that generous unemployment benefits such as these offset the psychological distress associated with unemployment (di tella et al., 2003). in households with both a mother and a father, the provision of emergency paid family leave would not only allow mothers an opportunity to remain employed (thus avoiding the long-term negative impacts on wellbeing that are associated with unemployment), but it would also encourage fathers to meet more of the increased demand for care work. in fact, there is evidence that having parental leave available to fathers may have long-term effects on the division of household and childcare labor (nepomnyaschy & waldfogel, 2007; patnaik, 2019; tanaka & waldfogel, 2007; huerta et al., 2013; almqvist & duvander, 2014; bünning, 2015; farré & gonzález, 2019). because women are far more likely to reduce their paid work in response to the increased need for childcare, the state needs to increase the benefits that employers are required to provide for part-time employees, including the provision of paid sick leave, parental leave, and health insurance (shaw et al., 2020). we should also look for additional ways to accommodate women’s increased need for part-time work. some researchers suggest that implementing organizational training that teaches employers how to provide more job flexibility (in terms of allowing employees to make their own hours and of providing the option of working from home) would substantially benefit employees who have caregiving responsibilities by reducing stress and psychological distress (kassek et al., 2019). while policies like these are crucial in the short-term to alleviate some of the unfair burden that covid-19 forces women to assume, larger-scale economic reform is necessary to address gender inequality in the long-term (antonopoulos, 2008), and to prevent future economic crises from disproportionately affecting women. one of the first things we need to do for long-term improvement on gender equality is to formally value unpaid women’s work (hoskyns & rai 2007; folbre, 2012). this not only acknowledges the value of unpaid care work, but also allows and encourages policy-makers to take it into account in their deliberations. it is widely recognized that if policies are to address gender inequality as it relates to the disproportionate burden of care that women assume worldwide, they must provide for care services, paid leaves, and flexible working hours (daly & rake, 2003; gornick & meyers, 2003; bettio & plantenga, 2004; leitner & wroblewski, 2006; lewis, 2006, craig & mullan, 2010; ghodsee, 2018). governments should implement permanent policies that are designed to encourage an equal distribution of unpaid work among men and women. these can include policies that ...limit the maximum number of weekly employment hours, require fathers to take paternity leave, offer extended job leaves with partial coverage of wages for parents of young children, reduce differences between full-time and part-time work in terms of pay and access to benefits, provide family allowances, and base social security or covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 84 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org pension credits on caregiving instead of marriage to a wage earner, appear to reduce the economic penalties associated with caregiving and lessen time pressures associated with juggling paid and unpaid work responsibilities (sayer, 2005, p. 298). finally, we all need to continue to work towards closing the gender wage gap. as long as it makes economic sense for women’s paid labor, rather than men’s, to decrease during economic crises like the one caused by the pandemic, it will be the case that women assume more of the unpaid caregiving duties, causing them to have reduced economic freedom and bargaining power, and thus reduced wellbeing (hess, et al., 2020). on top of protecting women from unemployment resulting from future economic crises, there is good reason to think that eliminating the wage gap would increase subjective wellbeing (oishi et al., 2011; oishi & diener, 2014). covid-19 exacerbates existing gender inequality in a way that cannot be ignored. while it is imperative to enact policies that alleviate the needs created by the pandemic, we ought not stop there. we need to treat this as an opportunity to get clear not only about the inequalities and injustices that women face worldwide, but also on what tangible things our institutions can do to address them. the goal should not just be to help women survive covid-19, but to create a world in which they can flourish. this crisis provides us with valuable context in which to explore the complex interactions between macroeconomic conditions, legislative policies, intersectional oppressions, wellbeing, and gender belief systems. the relationship between state policies and gender dynamics is especially pertinent to women’s wellbeing because of the state’s unique ability to enact legislation to catalyze meaningful change. policies, or the lack thereof, can contribute to shaping cultural norms and beliefs, and can have intergenerational, long-lasting implications (cooke & baxter, 2010). the hope is that the implementation of the long-term policies recommended above will help reshape gender norms, particularly as they relate to care work, so as to create a more equal society. even if the only thing that changed were our cultural and societal gender norms surrounding care work, we could reasonably expect a significant effect on women’s wellbeing and liberty. if there were no gendered expectations about who would assume care work, there would be, among other things, fewer single mothers, a less significant wage gap, and a more equal division of unpaid labor. the less that women are compelled to assume unpaid care work, the more they are free to participate in labor that accords with their desires, values, and interests. governments’ failures to enact legislative intervention that promotes gender equality needs to be seen not as respecting personal liberty, but as a choice to maintain a society that we know is actively repressive of and harmful to women. continued research is required on the specifics, logistics and efficacy of policies that aim to address gender inequality. in particular, there is a dire need for more wellbeing research that moves beyond an individualistic approach to the promotion of women’s wellbeing (and of wellbeing in general). governmental and social institutions are uniquely well-positioned not only epistemically, but also in their ability to have significant impacts on the wellbeing of their populations. accordingly, more researchers need to broaden their perspectives on what is possible and reasonable to expect from those institutions as it relates to the promotion of the wellbeing of marginalized populations. more research is necessary to adequately understand the impact of different policies on people along the dimensions of gender, race, ability, sexual orientation, geography, and class. we should be sure to avoid adopting a monolithic view of women: we cannot expect a one-size-fits-all approach to adequately address the diverse needs of diverse populations. one study, for instance, found that availability of flexible work arrangements was associated with higher job satisfaction and less work-family conflict in north america, australia, new zealand, and great britain, but not in latin american and asian covid-19, gender inequality, and the state fortier 85 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org countries (masuda et al., 2012). the concerns of women differ along the dimensions previously mentioned, and our policies should be created with this in mind. we also need to be ready and willing to adapt our response to the pandemic as our understanding of its repercussions evolves. the effects of the pandemic on women’s wellbeing is still unfolding, and as such, monitoring its impact is an ongoing project. the effects explored in this article should in no way be taken to be exhaustive. conclusion women are disproportionately negatively affected by the response to covid-19. the effects of this unfair burden may be devastating and long-lasting for millions of women. though we are all obligated to do what we can to address this structural injustice, the state bears the greatest obligation because it is uniquely positioned to effectuate meaningful change. in the short-term, it should prioritize implementing urgent legislation that will help those most at risk. in the longterm, policy-makers need to create effective interventions that reduce gender inequality. one of the most promising ways that they can do so is by designing policies that aim to change cultural norms and gendered expectations regarding care work. these policies should equalize the division of unpaid care work in order to not only prevent future economic crises from exacerbating the onerous injustices that women face worldwide, but to also create a society in which women can flourish. as citizens, we need to hold our social institutions accountable for promoting the wellbeing of marginalized groups, and to learn to expect more from them. acknowledgments for their helpful feedback, i would like to thank nicole dular, david sobel, ben bradley, brian fortier, deb raven, and especially david pizarro. authors nikki fortier syracuse university nfortier@syr.edu publishing timeline received 30 august 2018 accepted 16 november 2019 published 13 august 2020 references allen, t.d., herst, d.e.l., bruck, c.s., sutton m. 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(2006). responsibility and global justice: a social connection model. social philosophy and policy foundation 23(1), 102-130. young, i.m. (2011). responsibility for justice. new york, usa: oxford university press. gazal, b., duncan, s., jarden, a., & hinckson, e. (2019). a prototype analysis of new zealand adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 1-25. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i4.975 gazal bharara auckland university of technology gazal.bharara@aut.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 a prototype analysis of new zealand adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal bharara · scott duncan · aaron jarden · erica hinckson abstract: this research investigated new zealand adolescents’ (aged 11 to 13, n = 361) perceptions of wellbeing from a prototype perspective. specifically, three studies examined what constitutes and promotes wellbeing, whether adolescents’ perspectives are aligned with adults’ conceptualizations and academic models of wellbeing, whether socioeconomic status influences adolescents’ conceptualization, and whether wellbeing is prototypically organized. results showed that wellbeing is prototypically organized as some components are more central to the concept of wellbeing and others more peripheral. contrary to lay adults’ conceptualizations and popular wellbeing models, adolescents consider enjoyment/having fun, feeling safe, and being kind/helpful as central components of wellbeing, and sense of satisfaction as a peripheral component of wellbeing. furthermore, low socio-economic status adolescents consider comfort/being wealthy, being focused, good physical health, good values, and success/achievements as more central for wellbeing than highsocioeconomic status adolescents. consistent with the current literature, positive family relationships, positive friendships, and physical activity/sport were the most frequently reported pathways to wellbeing among adolescents. overall, researchers and practitioners should consider adolescents’ understanding of wellbeing in the development of wellbeing assessments and interventions. keywords: adolescents, prototype analysis, wellbeing, well-being, perspectives, components introduction over the last decades adolescent wellbeing has received increasing attention at macro and micro levels (andresen, bradshaw, & kosher, 2019; rees & dinisman, 2015). the united nations (1989) has declared wellbeing is a basic right for adolescents and that their views must be obtained in all matters that affect them. both national and international governments as well as adolescent wellbeing scientists have emphasized the importance of greater participation of adolescents in conceptualizing wellbeing and considering adolescents’ conceptions in wellbeing models, programs, and policies (ben-arieh, 2005; ben-arieh, casas, frønes, & korbin, 2014; bourke & geldens, 2007; casas, 2011; education review office, 2013, 2015b; education services australia, n.d.; fattore, mason, & watson, 2007; ministry of youth development, 2004). a lack in consensus over the conceptualizations of wellbeing is a potential impediment to the progress, as well as the precision, of wellbeing science. researchers conceptualize wellbeing in partly distinct ways (hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan, 2014) and perceptions of adolescents are likely to differ to adults’ (fattore et al., 2007; gilman & huebner, 2003). such differences in perspectives among researchers, adults and adolescents about wellbeing conceptualizations has significant article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 2 implications for assessment and intervention (ben-arieh et al., 2014; bourke & geldens, 2007; casas, 2011; chaplin, 2009; fattore et al., 2007). for example, school or positive education1 interventions have often been unsuccessful potentially due to disparities between experts’ and adolescents’ notions (bott et al., 2017; cook, kilgus, & burns, 2018). understanding adolescents’ meaning and sources of wellbeing is therefore a critical question worthy of empirical investigation. although adolescents are willing and capable to contribute (andresen et al., 2019; fattore et al., 2007; sarriera & bedin, 2017), extant wellbeing research has traditionally shown a bias towards adults. there is an inadequate understanding of what constitutes and promotes wellbeing for adolescents. wellbeing has been defined as individuals’ evaluations and perceptions of the quality of their lives (keyes, 2013), yet researchers have usually disregarded or discounted adolescents’ perceptions regarding their own wellbeing (casas, 2011). there are limited studies on adolescents’ wellbeing, particularly in comparison to the extensive literature available on adults (ben-arieh, 2005; blaskova & mclellan, 2017; camfield, streuli, & woodhead, 2010; casas, 2011). while there have been some emerging research efforts at obtaining adolescents’ views of wellbeing in developed countries (rees & dinisman, 2015), to date, no study has examined wellbeing conceptions of 11to 13-year-olds in new zealand. in addition, the scant empirical research in other countries is largely qualitative in nature (chaplin, 2009; crivello, camfield, & woodhead, 2009; fattore et al., 2007). due to the absence of quantitative evaluation of adolescents’ wellbeing perspectives, it is unknown how the components of wellbeing may be arranged in adolescents’ perception (i.e., which components are the most or least significant). whether adolescents’ components of wellbeing vary as a function of socioeconomic status is also yet to be investigated empirically. for the first time in new zealand, the current study primarily aims to investigate the components of and pathways to wellbeing as per the perceptions of adolescents (aged 11 to 13) from lowand high-socioeconomic status utilizing a mixed-method approach. the readers will have a better understanding of how adolescents’ notions are similar to or different than adults’ and researchers’ conceptions of wellbeing. since adolescents are advisers of research work, understanding their perspectives may enable us to develop more accurate components of our assessment measures and frameworks of our cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. understanding adolescents’ conceptions may also help to enhance the overall precision, acceptability, and effectiveness of wellbeing interventions targeting this population. we will first address the existing literature regarding academic and lay perceptions of wellbeing. research on conceptualizations and definitions of wellbeing. the concept of wellbeing is elusive. presently there is no global or agreed upon definition of wellbeing (baker, green, & falecki, 2017; diener & seligman, 2004). several definitions of wellbeing exist in the academic literature (diener, scollon, & lucas, 2003; hone et al., 2014) that differ, in part, due to the variations in researchers’ philosophical tradition. researchers have theorised wellbeing as having components of the hedonic approach, comprising positive emotions towards one’s life (i.e., happiness, life satisfaction, and affect equilibrium), the eudaimonic approach, comprising 1 positive education means imparting wellbeing education in schools alongside academic education. adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 3 positive psychological and social functioning, and the current holistic approach that integrates emotional/subjective, psychological, and social wellbeing (keyes, 2013; norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson, 2013). informed by these approaches, many academic models of wellbeing have been proposed that denote different conceptualizations of wellbeing (diener et al., 2010; durie, 1985; keyes, 2005; renshaw et al., 2014; ryff, 1989; ryff & keyes, 1995; seligman, 2011; westerhof & keyes, 2010). for example, some components listed in keyes (2005) model, namely social growth, positive affect, and personal growth, do not feature in diener et al.’s (2010) model. similarly, seligman (2011) identified five components of wellbeing in his perma model (positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, and accomplishment), whereas huppert and so (2013) proposed 10 components of wellbeing (including positive relationships, positive emotions, self-esteem and emotional stability). one model of 12 positive psychology building blocks for adolescents, on the other hand, is composed of four core components of belief-in-self, belief-in-others, emotional competence, and engaged living (renshaw et al., 2014). compounding such academic disagreements, making a choice among wellbeing models may present educators, psychologists, and researchers with a dilemma. there have been empirical attempts to define wellbeing with greater accuracy by examining lay conceptions of wellbeing (anderson & graham, 2016; chaplin, 2009; fattore et al., 2007; hone, schofield, & jarden, 2015; soutter, o’steen, & gilmore, 2012). research on the lay conceptualizations of wellbeing has been conducted with affluent caucasian adults or late adolescents (hone et al., 2015; soutter et al., 2012). hone et al. (2015) demonstrated that new zealand adults conceptualize wellbeing as good mental health, physical health, good relationships, work-life balance, and feeling valued. while the methodology of this study was systematic, the sample was predominantly european. soutter et al. (2012) found that having resources, being independent, relating well with teachers, functioning effectively in assessment-related activities, and striving towards scoring credits were reported as the most important for 17to 21-year-olds’ understanding of wellbeing. more recently there has been a growth in qualitative studies on perceptions of children and adolescents (rees & dinisman, 2015). in their study, anderson and graham (2016) asked 6to 18year-olds to rank two pre-defined concepts of wellbeing. although the authors found support for recognition and participation as important components, the study was limited by their chosen methodology as the survey format restricted choice to two academic concepts of wellbeing, and a free-response format was not employed to capture adolescents’ views. chaplin (2009) used an interview method and identified sports, hobbies, achievements, material things, and pets and people as what constitutes and promotes wellbeing of american adolescents (aged 8 to 18). another qualitative study by fattore et al. (2007) utilized task-oriented strategies to explore views of 8to 15year-olds in australia and reported themes of agency, feeling secure, and a positive sense of self, and concrete themes of relationships, material resources, home, and physical environment. these authors also highlighted the need to study variations in perceptions across socioeconomic groups. while the above studies were conducted in developed countries, crivello et al. (2009) examined children’s and adolescents’ wellbeing components in developing countries (e.g., ethiopia and peru), adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 4 some of which were being joyful, wearing clean clothes, and having electronic goods. overall, the literature signifies that wellbeing is a comprehensive concept characterized by several components that may vary as a function of a person’s experience, age, and country. in the current study we perceive adolescent wellbeing as a multidimensional concept that integrates psychological, social, schooling, physical, spiritual, and demographic components. in the next section we move beyond conceptualizations of wellbeing and review the research on pathways to wellbeing. pathways to wellbeing. less attention has been paid to obtaining views of adolescents about ways to enhance wellbeing and involving them in the creation of promotional models and programs of wellbeing (casas, 2011). in the context of wellbeing promotion of adolescents, the geelong grammar school’s whole-school positive education model is focused on fostering positive purpose, positive relationships, positive emotion, positive health, positive engagement, and positive accomplishment within the school (norrish, 2015). the strath haven positive psychology curriculum program aims to strengthen relationships, meaning, positive emotions, and character strengths (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009), while a 10-session wellbeing promotion program focuses upon building hope, strengths, gratitude, optimism, and kindness in schools (suldo & savage, 2016). public health messaging aimed to improving wellbeing has also come from government frameworks. for example, aked, marks, cordon, and thompson (2008) suggested five ways to wellbeing: taking notice, being active, connecting with others, learning, and giving. investigating pathways to wellbeing among new zealand lay adults hone et al. (2015) found physical activity, nurturing relationships, interests/hobbies, and eating healthily as the most frequently reported. an examination of new zealand adolescents’ perceptions of ways to improve wellbeing is warranted to add to the lack of existing empirical data on this topic, which could have meaningful theoretical implications and practical advantages for organizations and individuals working with adolescents. importance of adolescents’ wellbeing perceptions. adolescents’ understanding of wellbeing can inform the theory and application of wellbeing in schools. adolescents’ views may be useful in refining or validating researchers’ models of wellbeing and enhance the precision with which wellbeing is assessed (bourke & geldens, 2007). a greater understanding of adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing may also improve the efficacy of school interventions considering the “contextual fit” and “precision education” propositions (cook et al., 2018; horner, blitz, & ross, 2014). precision education supports the idea that the key components of interventions should be tailored to individuals’ needs and perceptions (cook et al., 2018). horner et al. (2014) defined contextual fit as the match between components of an intervention and the needs and perceptions of those who experience the intervention. how well a program is received or valued in a certain setting, or the social validity/acceptability of school interventions is likely to depend on the opinions of adolescents who are directly affected by the program (marchant, heath, & miramontes, 2012). it is potentially misleading for researchers to define adolescents’ wellbeing without considering adolescents’ viewpoints in defining wellbeing. the present study adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 5 attempts to address this gap by investigating adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing utilizing a prototype analysis methodology (rosch, 1975). a prototype analysis perspective. prototype analysis is a mixed-method approach that has been established as an effective method of analysis for natural language categories, such as happiness, fear (fehr & russell, 1984), gratitude (lambert, graham, & fincham, 2009), forgiveness (kearns & fincham, 2004), infidelity (weiser, lalasz, weigel, & evans, 2014), love and commitment (fehr, 1988), and wellbeing (hone et al., 2015; jarden, sandham, siegert, & koziol-mclain, 2018). this method assumes some components are more important or central to a concept, and others are less important or peripheral. in a prototype approach, thus, all components of a concept are not equally representative of that concept, contrary to a classical view where category membership is determined by necessary, sufficient, and fixed criteria (rosch, 1975). a prototype approach helps in identifying a “fuzzy collection” (lambert et al., 2009, p. 1195) of the central components of a concept (also called prototypes) rather than identifying critical components (lambert et al., 2009, p. 1195). for a comprehensive review of the strategy, read fehr (1988) and kearns and fincham (2004). driven primarily by this approach, this study has drawn inspiration from hone et al.’s (2015) research. they demonstrated that wellbeing is prototypically organized in a sample of new zealand teachers and lawyers. in addition, the current differences between different academic models of wellbeing indicates the components of wellbeing are not fixed (hone et al., 2015) and “the boundaries of the notion of well-being are elastic” (ben-arieh et al., 2014, p. 3). rosch (1975) listed two essential conditions of the prototype analysis method reflected in the current study: a) the participants should be able to list the features of the concept and reliably rate which components are more central to the concept, and b) the centrality rating of components should influence participants’ perceptions of the concept. the present study. the main research question of the study was: what are the perceptions of new zealand adolescents (aged 11 to 13 years) about the 1) components of wellbeing and 2) pathways to wellbeing? we also hypothesized that a) wellbeing will be prototypically organized in adolescents, and b) differing socioeconomic status will be associated with adolescents’ perceptions of the centrality of the components. we subsequently examined whether new zealand adolescents’ perceptions aligned with popular academic models and new zealand adults’ conceptualizations of wellbeing. method overview of studies. three studies were conducted to address the above aims. in study 1, participants listed the components and pathways regarding wellbeing in free-response format. in study 2, a different sample of participants rated the centrality (or importance) of the components generated in study 1. study 3 tested the hypothesis that central components of wellbeing were related more closely to adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 6 perceptions of wellbeing than the peripheral components on a third sample of adolescents. the effect of socioeconomic differences was examined in all three studies. recruitment process for all studies and ethical considerations. the recruitment process involved emailing schools in auckland, new zealand, with a study invitation. we used convenience sampling technique for recruitment though preference was given to the school type (state intermediate schools with years 7 and 8) and school socioeconomic decile. in new zealand, school decile is a key measure of the school students’ socioeconomic status. decile 1 draws the highest proportion of students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, whereas decile 10 draws the highest proportion of students from high-socioeconomic backgrounds (ministry of education, 2018). two state intermediate schools agreed to participate in the study: one decile 1 and the other decile 10. these schools were located in ethnically and socioeconomically diverse regions. the schools provided different classes for participant recruitment. from each class that was offered, we recruited only those students who assented to participate. there was no overlap in participants of the three studies, and the participants of all three studies were recruited from the same schools. the data for study 1 was collected between 7 may and 6 june 2017, for study 2 between 25 june and 28 june 2017, and for study 3 between 27 july and 31 july 2017. ethical approvals for all the procedures and materials were obtained from the auckland university of technology ethics committee. a meeting was held with the principals of participating schools to inform them about the study aims. the potential participants and their parents were given separate sheets informing them about the study’s aim, importance, and procedure 2 weeks prior to each study. the studies utilized anonymous surveys and involved minimal risk so parental consent was not sought; however, participants’ assent was taken electronically before each study. a registration system was used to collect participants’ demographic information and assent. participation in the study was by voluntary inclusion only and the parents could withdraw their children from participating in the study, or the students could leave on their own. university-branded pens were given to all the participants of each study as incentives. study 1: free listing and compilation of prototypic wellbeing components and pathways to wellbeing the aim of the first study was to compile a list of wellbeing components and aspects aimed at enhancing wellbeing. participants were first asked to list as many wellbeing components as they could think of. second, they were asked to list all the aspects they thought fostered their wellbeing (i.e., their pathways to wellbeing). both the questions utilized an open-ended response format. participants. the sample comprised 125 adolescents (65 boys and 60 girls) aged 11 (39%), 12 (55%) and 13 (6%) from year 7 (46%) and year 8 (54%) from two auckland schools. thirty-eight percent of participants were from a low-decile school (48 from decile 1) and 62% from a high-decile school (77 from decile 10). approximately 53% of the sample was new zealand european. the remaining participants adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 7 were māori (indigenous people, 11%), pacific islanders (18%), asian (7%), and african/middle eastern (4%). approximately 7% of participants indicated they were of mixed ethnicity. procedure. the survey was managed in-person by the researcher within school hours. participants followed a web link on their school computers to register for the survey and provided their demographic details and assent. those who submitted the registration form could subsequently access the electronic survey presented on the surveymonkey platform. they were given the following verbal, and then on-screen, instructions in their respective schools (adapted from fehr & russell, 1984, study 6; hone et al., 2015): this is a study on what young new zealanders of your age think of when they think of the word wellbeing. for example, if you were asked to list the components of fear, you might write: possible danger occurs, heart beats wildly, eyes open wider, the person runs as fast as they can. similarly, if you were asked to write the components of sadness, you might write: becoming quiet and lazy, crying. in the current study, we are not interested in fear or sadness, but in the characteristics of wellbeing. imagine that you are explaining the concept wellbeing to someone who does not know about wellbeing and answer the following question: what, in your opinion, are the components of wellbeing? there is no time limit. list as many as you can. after the participants answered the above question, they answered an additional question on the same screen: “what, in your opinion, enhances your wellbeing? specifically, which factors in your life or particularly at your home, school, and society help in improving your wellbeing?” analysis. a list of verbatim responses was prepared, only correcting for spelling. adhering to the coding procedure outlined in fehr (1988), two broad steps of analysis were undertaken, similar to prototype analysis research (fehr & russell, 1984; hone et al., 2015; kearns & fincham, 2004; lambert et al., 2009; weiser et al., 2014). note that these steps were assumed separately for components and pathways regarding wellbeing. the first step involved identifying and extracting monolexemic linguistic units which were distinct and easily recognizable, such as component responses “happy,” and “joyful” and pathway responses “family” and “pets.” when participants used a phrase, judgment was deemed necessary to decide whether a phrase conveyed one or multiple thoughts. for example, the responses “others don’t put you down” or “joy in basic luxury such as running water” were judged to convey one thought and noted as individual linguistic units, whereas the responses “completing something or doing something right” and “having help when needed and treated well by others” were judged to convey two thoughts and retained as distinct components. phrases were only separated in terms of meaning, the unit largely remained original. adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 8 the linguistic units preceded by attributive words, such as “lots of energy” were coded as a single item. for data organization, identical units were combined as one and their frequencies were noted. for example, all “games” responses were written only once in the list with the frequency besides them. an elaborate reading of the text with a combined usage of word-frequency tools (tools that identify the number of times each word occurs in the text) facilitated unit identification. as an outcome, a total of 551 component linguistic units were reduced to 203 after deleting duplicates, yielding an average of 4.40 components per participant (approximately 4.60 for high-decile school participants and 4.00 for low-decile school participants). for pathways, 565 linguistic units were reduced to 188 with each participant generating an average of 4.52 linguistic units (4.54 for lowdecile group and 4.50 for high-decile group). after mapping out the linguistic units and preparing separate lists for components and pathways, the units were allocated to a category. single unique words were formed into independent categories. for example, the linguistic unit “being happy” was allocated to the category “being happy.” items similar in grammatical form and conveying the same meaning were classified under one category. classifying similar units together aided in avoiding redundancy. for example, “being happy” and “happiness” were treated as a single component category. also, words with similar meaning such as “cheerful” and “joyful” were assigned to the same category of “being happy.” concerning pathways, “my pets,” “playing with my dog,” and “having animals” were categorized under the pathway category of “pet ownership and attachment.” responses such as “beach” and “rain and sunlight make me feel warm and cozy” were collapsed into the category “nature.” responses were classified verbatim to depict adolescents’ exact thoughts and maintain the authenticity of responses. for example, the unit “belief in your abilities” was categorized as “belief in your abilities.” responses such as “being loved” and “trying new things” were categorized as reported. besides following a conservative categorizing approach, a balance was maintained by combining similar units and keeping the non-similar ones separate. for instance, responses about pathways that included activities such as “dance,” “cooking,” and “reading” were headed under the category “hobbies/doing things that interest you.” although an activity dance may potentially enhance wellbeing, a broad categorizing approach was applied for locating key breadth strategies from an application point of view. however, instead of collapsing pathway responses such as “netflix,” “computer games,” and “watching movies” to the category of hobbies/doing things that interest you, a new category of “digital entertainment” was created. some components necessitated examination of the adjoining words in the response. for example, the unit “healthy” was judged to be a part of the category “good physical health” as it followed or preceded the words with a physical dimension such as “active and healthy” and “being healthy and fit.” we have published the raw data online so readers can examine our judgments (bharara, duncan, & jarden, 2018a, 2018b). since the participants were schoolchildren, an estimated 50% of linguistic units were either associated semantically or linguistically and were classed to the same component or pathway category. judgment calls were validated by the third and fourth authors of this study and any discrepancies were resolved through discussion. various responses were idiosyncratic, i.e., adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 9 mentioned by only one participant. any component category that was listed by less than 2% of the sample (39 components) was discarded from further analysis to reduce the burden on study 2 participants (who had to rank the centrality of these components). similarly, pathway categories listed by less than 2% of the sample (47) were excluded from further analysis (hone et al., 2015). results. table 1 shows the 26 components of wellbeing sorted by study 2 centrality ratings. the table displays the frequency of components (the number of times each component occurred in the text) and the participants’ listing percentage of the components. note that how frequently each component occurred in the text was different compared to the percentage of participants that mentioned a component. more than 70% of the sample listed being happy as a component of wellbeing, followed by being kind/helpful (35%), and good physical health (34%). being focused (2.4%), contentment/peace (3.2%), and being grateful (3.2%), were the least listed components. table 1 also depicts the percentage of participants that listed each component from lowand high-decile schools. both socioeconomic groups listed being happy as their most frequently reported component of wellbeing. while the low-decile school participants listed being kind/helpful second (56%), the component moved into third place for the high-decile school’s participants (22%). adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 10 table 1 study 1 wellbeing components arranged by study 2 centrality ratings study 1 listing percentage study 2 component frequency % low decile % high decile % total participants centrality rating sd (s) being happy 130 70.8 74.0 72.8 9.03 1.51 enjoyment/having fun 19 20.8 7.79 12.8 8.80 1.53 feeling good 22 14.7 19.5 17.6 8.65 1.48 feeling safe 20 10.4 13.0 12.0 8.63 1.76 good mental health 14 8.33 11.7 10.4 8.47 1.73 being kind/helpful 54 56.4 22.1 35.2 8.36 1.89 belief in your abilities 7 4.12 6.49 5.60 8.25 1.74 being respectful 19 27.0 5.19 13.6 8.23 1.93 being respected/encouraged 9 6.25 6.49 6.40 8.21 1.72 positive attitude/optimism 11 2.08 11.7 8.00 8.17 1.79 self-confidence 7 2.08 7.79 5.60 8.12 1.94 good values 5 2.08 3.90 3.20 8.07 2.04 being grateful 4 2.08 3.90 3.20 8.02 2.06 good relationships 26 12.5 13.0 12.8 7.95 2.29 excitement 18 12.5 15.6 14.4 7.95 1.96 good physical health 50 22.9 40.3 33.6 7.80 2.37 good temperament/behavior 21 16.7 14.3 15.2 7.77 2.00 success/achievements 7 4.12 6.49 5.60 7.75 2.27 feeling calm and relaxed 9 6.25 6.49 6.40 7.74 1.90 contentment/peace 4 0.00 5.19 3.20 7.70 1.92 sense of satisfaction 9 2.08 9.09 6.40 7.15 2.08 energetic 15 10.4 13.0 12.0 7.12 2.46 being focused 3 0.00 3.90 2.40 6.75 2.33 being expressive 6 4.12 5.19 4.80 6.57 2.34 comfort/being wealthy 8 2.08 7.79 5.60 6.11 2.99 absence of sadness 8 0.00 9.09 5.60 5.58 2.98 figure 1 shows a word cloud that illustrates the 37 pathway categories of wellbeing. the size of the text in the figure is based on the participants’ listing percentage. more than half of the adolescents thought that positive family relationships (60%) and positive friendships (55%) enhance their wellbeing. while 34% of the participants listed physical activity/sport, 30% listed hobbies/doing things that interest you as important pathways to wellbeing. other important pathways were nature (17%), digital entertainment (16%), pet ownership and attachment (14%), being kind/helpful (14%), socializing, and being around positive people (13% each). the mean of the participants’ listing adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 11 percentage was 10.8%. both socioeconomic groups frequently listed positive family relationships, positive friendships, and physical activity/sport as pathways to wellbeing. figure 1. adolescents’ pathways to wellbeing. discussion. many responses were reduced to a limited number of components and pathways comparable to the results of other prototype studies (hone et al., 2015; kearns & fincham, 2004; weiser et al., 2014). three components appeared most frequently in the text: being happy, being kind/helpful, and good physical health. only 5.6% of adolescents in the current study listed comfort/being wealthy as a component of wellbeing. these results are partially different to prior studies (chaplin, 2009; fattore et al., 2007). another important observation was adolescents’ listing of “feeling safe” in the present research, and in previous research (anderson & graham, 2016; fattore et al., 2007). components of wellbeing not discussed in the current academic models were evident, for example, being kind/helpful, good physical health, feeling safe, and enjoyment/having fun. the non-appearance of these components in academic models suggests that adolescents may have a different characterization of wellbeing. both socioeconomic groups frequently listed being happy, good physical health, and being kind/helpful as components of wellbeing. however, the listing percentages of some components varied. for example, the low-socioeconomic group mentioned good physical health considerably less than the high-socioeconomic group, whereas the high-socioeconomic group did not list enjoyment/having fun as much as the low-socioeconomic group. hence, some influence of socioeconomic status in the recall of wellbeing components was evident, which was further tested in study 2. adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 12 overall, the prototype of wellbeing includes beliefs, feelings, and actions. participants listed cognitive states, mindsets, and beliefs such as contentment/peace, belief in your abilities, and positive attitude/optimism. interestingly, actions were perceived as components of wellbeing such as being kind/helpful. emotive states and feelings were also listed by the participants such as being happy and feeling good. of importance is the holistic amalgamation of psychological, social, physical, spiritual, and demographic aspects in adolescents’ perception of wellbeing, similar to our understanding of the concept. this understanding is also comparable to durie’s (1985) māori model of wellbeing, te whare tapa whā, where he compares hauora (wellbeing) with four walls of a house (whare) comprising four dimensions namely taha tinana (physical health), taha hinengaro (mental health), taha wairua (spiritual health), and taha whanau (family). the most frequently listed pathway to wellbeing was positive family relationships, followed by positive friendships and physical activity/sport, all of which are social and physical components. these findings resonate with wellbeing models such as the geelong grammar school model (norrish et al., 2013), as well as previous research with adolescents on pathways to wellbeing (chaplin, 2009). the government frameworks that identify five ways to wellbeing (aked et al., 2008; mental health foundation of new zealand, 2018) are also reflected in the current study in the following ways: connect (similar to positive friendships and positive family relationships), give (similar to being kind/helpful), be active (similar to physical activity/sport), keep learning (similar to learning), and take notice (similar to nature). surprisingly, adolescents did not list some pathways to wellbeing (e.g., mindfulness and gratitude) that have been demonstrated to have a positive effect on wellbeing (norrish, 2015). this omission suggests adolescents were uninformed about these pathways in the current study, and they seemed to be more familiar with tangible pathways to wellbeing (e.g., sports, pets), which are clear-cut and straightforward to their understanding, rather than intangible pathways to wellbeing (e.g., mindfulness) which are abstract. study 2: centrality ratings of wellbeing components the objective of study 2 was to determine the centrality of study 1 components. if a concept possesses a prototypical structure, the individuals should not only be able to list the components of a concept but also rate how central or peripheral each component is to their concept of wellbeing with substantial agreement on these ratings. a different group of participants, thus, judged how important or unimportant each component previously identified in study 1 was to their own concept of wellbeing, and their judgments were examined for agreement. the impact of socioeconomic decile on wellbeing components’ centrality ratings was also examined. participants. the sample comprised 122 intermediate school students (65 boys and 57 girls) from year 7 (39%) and year 8 (61%), aged 11 (32%), 12 (57%) and 13 (11%) from two schools in auckland. thirty-four percent participated from a low-decile school (42) and 66% (80) from a high-decile school. approximately 56% were of european background, 13% were māori, and 12% were pacific islanders. some participants indicated that they were asian (7%) or african (2%). about 10% of participants reported that they were of mixed ethnic background (including māori european, pacific adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 13 māori or pacific european). the demographic characteristics of these participants were comparable to the study 1 sample. procedure. participants filled in the registration details and accessed the online survey. participants were given the following verbal and on-screen instructions within the school hours (adapted from hone et al., 2015): in a previous study, we asked students of your school level to list the components of wellbeing that came to their mind when they thought of the word wellbeing. on the next page, you will read the responses of the students in our earlier study in alphabetical order. after reading each one, please rate how important or less important you think each component is to your understanding of wellbeing by clicking a number between 0 (an extremely poor component of wellbeing) to 10 (an extremely good component of wellbeing). analysis. two measures provided evidence for the reliability of the means of ratings of 26 components. first, the intra-class correlation coefficient was calculated, which is equivalent to the mean of all possible split-half correlations of the 122 judges with respect to 26 components (icc = .910, p < .000, average measures), which showed excellent inter-rater reliability. second, the data matrix was flipped (26 components were treated as cases and 122 participants as items) which also indicated an exceptionally high internal consistency of the ratings (α = 0.96). spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was computed to examine the relationship between study 1 listing percentage and study 2 centrality ratings. a mann-whitney test was also conducted to examine whether school decile influenced the mean centrality ratings of the 26 components. results. table 1 shows the mean centrality ratings of the components in descending order. the correlation between centrality ratings in study 2 and participants’ listing percentage in study 1 was moderately positive (rs (rho)= 0.522, p < .01 one-tailed). nearly half of the components were listed frequently and given high centrality ratings (e.g., being happy), whereas some components that were frequently mentioned in study 1 received a relatively lower centrality rating in study 2 (e.g., good physical health). figure 2 shows a scatterplot graph illustrating the relationship between study 1 and study 2 component rankings. for example, feeling good was ranked third in study 2 but fourth in study 1. significant differences exist in mean centrality ratings of five components as a function of school decile. specifically, individuals in the low-socioeconomic group considered the following components as more central for wellbeing than the high-socioeconomic group: being focused (8.00, 7.00, p = 0.005 r = 0.260), comfort/wealthy (7.50, 6.00, p = 0.004, r = 0.260), good physical health (10.00, 8.00, p = 0.00100, r = 0.300), good values (10.00, 8.00, p = 0.005, r = 0.250), and success/achievements (9.00, 8.00, p = 0.004, r = 0.260). good physical health was associated with a medium effect size. the high adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 14 socioeconomic group did not consider any component more central than the low-socioeconomic group. figure 2. components’ ranking correlation between study 1 (listing phase) and study 2 (centrality phase) discussion. adolescents perceive some wellbeing components as more central than others, thereby fulfilling the first condition for ascertaining a concept’s prototypical structure. for example, feeling safe, enjoyment/having fun, and being kind/helpful received higher ratings than the components comfort/being wealthy and sense of satisfaction, which are less prototypical of wellbeing. while research has reported economic circumstances and material possessions as a key domain of wellbeing for american adolescents (chaplin, 2009; land, lamb, & mustillo, 2001) and australian adolescents (fattore, mason, & watson, 2009), it is noteworthy that possessing material things was less significant for our sample of new zealand adolescents, that is, comfort/being wealthy was observed to be a peripheral component. some disparities were apparent in study 1 and study 2 data that could be attributable to the distinct cognitive processes associated with listing and rating components (fehr, 1988). listing items requires different heuristics than rating a predetermined list, which is consistent with previous prototype research (kearns & fincham, 2004). finally, school decile significantly impacted the ratings of five components; however, the differences in perceptions were not significant for 21 components. thus, adolescents with different socioeconomic status mostly have parallel perceptions adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 15 about wellbeing components with unique variations regarding certain aspects, such as good physical health. study 3: impact of components’ centrality on perception of wellbeing the first two studies fulfilled the first condition of prototype analysis procedure. study 3 was a validation study conducted to test the second and final condition: does components’ centrality have an impact on participants’ perceptions of wellbeing? we hypothesized that (if wellbeing is prototypically organized) central components would be perceived as more representative of the concept of wellbeing than peripheral components. the interaction between school decile and component centrality on the perception of wellbeing was also tested. to address the aim, a different sample was presented with descriptions of two imaginary persons depicting the central and peripheral components of wellbeing identified in study 2. participants. participants were 114 new zealand adolescents (60 boys and 54 girls) from a low-decile (37%, 42) and high-decile (63%, 72) auckland intermediate school. approximately 41% of the participants were from year 7 and 59% from year 8. participants were of different ethnic backgrounds including māori (12%), pacific islander (17%) and new zealand european (55%), asian (11%), and african/middle eastern (2%). the remaining identified themselves as of mixed ethnicities (3%). age of the participants was 11 (28%), 12 (58%), and 13 (14%) years. this sample had similar demographic characteristics to the previous samples. procedure. in using central and peripheral components of wellbeing in writing the scenarios, a procedure of median split was applied to divide the study 2 centrality ratings into central and peripheral categories consistent with other prototype analysis studies. centrality ratings higher than 7.98 (median of the 26 ratings) were considered central, and ratings lower than this value were considered peripheral (see table 1). even though essential for the current study, the authors acknowledge that centrality is continuous and such demarcation is artificial (lambert et al., 2009). based on the median, the participants were presented with two imaginary scenarios describing central (sam’s scenario) and peripheral (laura’s scenario) components of wellbeing in a random manner. mean centrality scores of central and peripheral components were 8.38 and 7.22 respectively. sam’s wellbeing: sam is happy and feels good. he is known for his kindness and helpful nature. when he is at school, he believes in his abilities to accomplish his set goals. when he is not at school, he engages in fun activities that he likes for the sake of his enjoyment. in general, he feels emotionally and physically safe at his school and at his home. what’s more, his school counsellor recently informed him that he has good mental health. laura’s wellbeing: laura is energetic. she does not feel sad. being expressive by nature, she likes interacting with her classmates during class discussions. she experiences a adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 16 sense of satisfaction when she focuses on her school work. although she is from a wealthy family and leads a comfortable life, she finds contentment and peace in life’s small blessings. participants were instructed to rate how closely each scenario matched with their concept of wellbeing by clicking a number on an 11-point scale (0 = extremely poor match to 10 = extremely good match). analysis. a generalized linear mixed model was carried out to quantify the associations of centrality and centrality × decile with perceptions of wellbeing. since scale variables were utilized with the dependent variable being numeric, the probability distribution was normal. identity link function was used because the distribution was left-skewed. the analyses were conducted using ibm spss statistics 24.0. results. the central scenario (sam’s mean = 8.00) was rated higher than the peripheral scenario (laura’s mean = 7.26). the association between centrality and scenario selection was statistically significant (0.737; ci 0.324, 1.150; p = 0.001). the decile × centrality (central or peripheral) interaction was also significant (1.204; ci 0.116, 2.293; p = 0.030). in other words, the central scenario was more closely associated with the representation of wellbeing than the peripheral scenario. the association between the selection of the scenarios and component centrality was moderated by school decile. table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for the two scenarios. table 2 descriptive statistics for the imaginary wellbeing scenarios as per school decile school decile scenario n m sd md interquartile range high decile sam (central) 72 8.25 1.42 8.00 1 laura (peripheral) 72 7.07 1.92 7.00 3 low decile sam (central) 42 7.57 2.66 9.00 5 laura (peripheral) 42 7.60 2.27 7.50 4 discussion. our findings suggest that wellbeing is prototypically organized in adolescents. comparisons of the medians in table 2 also show that both lowand high-socioeconomic groups rated the central scenario higher than the peripheral scenario. because socioeconomic decile moderated the adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 17 relationship between selection of the scenario and centrality, it seems apparent that central components of wellbeing and decile-specific perceptions are not mutually exclusive. general discussion and implications this is one of the first studies to systematically determine 11to 13-year-olds’ perspectives of components and pathways regarding wellbeing via prototype analysis and examine the influence of socioeconomic decile on these perceptions. the findings may be a guide for those engaged in the assessment and promotion of adolescents’ wellbeing in schools. is wellbeing prototypically organized in adolescents? our study finds that wellbeing is prototypically organized in adolescents. participants could freely list and rate wellbeing components, and components’ centrality significantly affected the perception of wellbeing. hence, the research fulfilled the two conditions stated by rosch (1975) in demonstrating a concept’s prototype structure. this finding extends upon a body of work with new zealand workers that is evidence of the prototypical structure of wellbeing (hone et al., 2015; jarden et al., 2018). having a prototype structure of wellbeing suggests wellbeing assessment should take into regard a “fuzzy” (lambert et al., 2009, p. 1195) presence or absence of central components, instead of requiring components with necessary and sufficient criterion. do adolescents’ perceptions of wellbeing components correspond with academic models and new zealand adults’ conceptualizations? since wellbeing is prototypically structured, adolescents’ wellbeing conceptualizations include central components (e.g., being happy) and peripheral components (e.g., contentment/peace). it is noteworthy that adolescents’ perceptions of central components of wellbeing comprising being happy, enjoyment/having fun, feeling safe, and being kind/helpful are quite distinct compared to new zealand adults’ wellbeing perceptions of good physical health, work-life balance, feeling valued, and good relationships. this finding signifies that elements that are desirable for adults may potentially not be desirable for adolescents. therefore, wellbeing practitioners should be careful about the selection of elements of their assessment measures and interventions for adolescents (marchant et al., 2012). results were assessed to examine how the central components are aligned with commonly used academic models, which demonstrated partial alignment. adolescents’ prototype of wellbeing is wide ranging (including emotions, behaviors, and cognitive states), and wellbeing experts have also shown consensus over the multidimensional nature of wellbeing (huppert & so, 2013). regarding the components of wellbeing, however, some differences were observed. while some central components correspond to the researchers’ definitions of wellbeing, others are recognized by researchers as correlates of wellbeing rather than as components. for example, in terms of similarities components such as being happy and feeling good relate to the positive affect/emotion dimension included in academic models (huppert & so, 2013; keyes, 2005; seligman, 2011). in contrast components such as being kind/helpful do not appear as components in academic models but have been shown to correlate positively with wellbeing (e.g., layous, nelson, oberle, schonert adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 18 reichl, & lyubomirsky, 2012 studied kindness and wellbeing). likewise, there is no exclusive focus on components feeling safe and enjoyment/having fun in wellbeing models irrespective of their unique presence in government frameworks of wellbeing (canadian institute for health information, 2009; education review office, 2015a), and in empirical research with adolescents (fattore et al., 2007). adolescents also mentioned “being respected/encouraged” and “being respectful” as components of wellbeing in the current study, mirroring the results of anderson and graham (2016). the central component belief in your abilities is present in only one model of adolescent wellbeing (renshaw et al., 2014). overall, current models do not fully address what adolescents perceive to be wellbeing. some aspects normally observed in academic models such as meaning and purpose (diener et al., 2010; huppert & so, 2013; keyes, 2005; seligman, 2011) were not listed by adolescents, even using their own language and terminology. furthermore, while adolescents stated some behaviors as components of wellbeing (e.g., being kind and helpful and being respectful), most measures of wellbeing are cognitive and emotional, and hardly any ask about behaviors. therefore, we suggest formulating a broader definition of wellbeing customized to the adolescents’ perspectives, as outlined in this research, may be useful (comprising components omitted from academic models, such as enjoyment/having fun, feeling safe, being kind/helpful, being respected, and being respectful). by suggesting a broader definition we do not imply that experts disregard their own judgments. instead, we suggest adolescents’ perceptions of wellbeing identified in the current study may help inform researchers’ models, which may also clarify the understanding of the concept of wellbeing for researchers. how do adolescents’ perceptions of pathways to wellbeing correspond with current research and academic models? the most frequently listed pathways to wellbeing identified in this study build upon extant evidence. positive relationships, physical activity, engaging in hobbies, and being kind/helpful are indispensable aspects of the current wellbeing promotion models and programs (aked et al., 2008; norrish, 2015; suldo & savage, 2016). these results also correspond to the new zealand workers’ prototype research and research with adolescents (for a review see chaplin, 2009; hone et al., 2015). eating healthily and socializing activities are significant aspects of the positive health and relationships domains of the geelong grammar school positive education model (norrish, 2015) while the pathway pet ownership and attachment was also found in previous research (chaplin, 2009). interestingly, between 12 and 17% of 11to 13-year-olds listed nature, being around positive people, and digital entertainment as ways to improve wellbeing. government promotional wellbeing framework has given importance to some of these aspects such as nature (aked et al., 2008), whereas popular promotional models are less likely to emphasize the aspects pet ownership and attachment, nature, being around positive people, and digital entertainment. research suggests contact with nature, including bush-walks and enjoying a day at the beach, enhances mental wellbeing of adolescents (sarriera & bedin, 2017). research on effects of digital entertainment on adolescents in mixed. previous researchers have criticized the use of digital entertainment for adolescents; however, positive psychology researchers have focused on the beneficial effects of digital entertainment (e.g., exposure to programs depicting positive behaviors) on adolescents (de adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 19 leeuw & buijzen, 2016). similarly, owning pets is beneficial for wellbeing of adolescents (purewal et al., 2017). overall, the pathways digital entertainment, pet ownership and attachment, being around positive people, being kind/helpful, and nature represent useful targets for adolescents’ wellbeing promotion in the future. does socioeconomic status influence adolescents’ wellbeing perceptions? socioeconomic status influences adolescents’ perceptions of wellbeing. both groups showed similar perceptions in the listing phase. however, significant differences were observed in the perceptions in the rating phase. this result indicates wellbeing perceptions of adolescents with different socioeconomic standing are broadly similar, but differences exist in the value given to certain components. for example, the low-socioeconomic group considered five components (including comfort/being wealthy, and success/achievements) of 26 as more important for wellbeing than the high-socioeconomic group. differences in ratings may have surfaced due to adolescents’ diverse socioeconomic status, culture, or overall culture of the school. additionally, socioeconomic status moderated the relationship between centrality and perception of wellbeing. consequently, socioeconomic groups’ unique perceptions should be combined with adolescents’ general perceptions in understanding their idea of wellbeing. other insights and implications the examination of adolescents’ freely listed responses identified interesting insights regarding their understanding of wellbeing. firstly, 98% of adolescents listed components relevant to the field of wellbeing and only 2% did not respond or listed aspects unrelated to the concept of wellbeing (as conceputalized by academic researchers). this study demonstrates adolescents’ awareness of the concept of wellbeing—specifically, a considerable number of components (551) and pathways to wellbeing (565) were listed. adolescents mentioned relatively tangible pathways such as family, peers, sports, and pets rather than abstract constructs such as mindfulness. while norrish (2015) explains the lack of consideration of internal dimensions as adolescents’ occasional “narrow thinking” and their focus on “material possessions” (p. 47), the present study shows adolescents’ appreciation of deeper aspects such as nature and being kind/helpful. it is possible that adolescents are engaged in mindful activities but cannot give a name to the mental state due to lack of instruction. similarly, adolescents listed 14 more pathways than components demonstrating a greater awareness of the ways to foster wellbeing than of the concept of wellbeing. whether that awareness is due to adolescents’ interest and curiosity in enhancing wellbeing is largely unknown. possibly, the notion of a component is more abstract than practical ways to foster wellbeing. awareness reasons could vary, but some effortless awareness at an intuitive level of recognition is evident. such “intuitive recognition” of the concept “may not be perfect, even though essential before testing or clarifying” (cloninger, 2004, p. 8) meaning of the concept. further empirical research is required to support the notion of intuitive understanding of wellbeing among adolescents. secondly, adolescents demonstrated some overlapping perceptions of the aspects that research suggests define and improve wellbeing. certain components of wellbeing were also listed as adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 20 pathways to wellbeing such as good physical health. the pathway-component overlap suggests that adolescents are either confused about the ideas of attribute and promotion to detect differentiation between the two, or they suppose a relation between aspects that define versus improve wellbeing. the second assumption has some empirical support (chaplin, 2009). the results show components mentioned dually varied in frequency. for example, good physical health was listed frequently as a component but less frequently as a pathway. the variation in frequency might theoretically point to the possibility that adolescents are rather perceptive in discerning the difference between two intricate concepts. they listed a variety of responses that are characteristic of pathways and components (i.e., some of their pathways were incongruent with their own conception of wellbeing); however, they also showed some overlap. thus, in schools, educators may consider promoting the central components of wellbeing not mentioned as pathways (e.g., gratitude). finally, adolescents’ perceptions of wellbeing vary broadly. though it is noticeable that some components and pathways were collectively stated by a high percentage of adolescents, no component or pathway of wellbeing was mentioned universally. the variability in responses reflects the distinctive characteristics or experiences influencing wellbeing perceptions. hence, in the future, it will be valuable to consider adolescents’ unique worldview together with the commonly perceived aspects of wellbeing. parallel to the unesco (2004) curriculum differentiation approach where a curriculum is modified to match the learning needs of an individual, assessment measures and positive education practices ought to be personalized to fit wellbeing perceptions of adolescents, to pave the way for more precision in application of wellbeing (cook et al., 2018; horner et al., 2014). limitations and future directions an open-ended survey was utilized for collecting qualitative data from many individuals at the same time. it is possible the writing ability of some participants affected the length and quality of their responses. nevertheless, the researcher ensured participants understood the questions and participants were also free to ask for clarification. secondly, the findings are limited by the subjective opinions of participants and researchers. for example, the coding of responses was subjective, and how one individual perceives a component of wellbeing may differ from another individual. thirdly, the effect of ethnicity on adolescents’ wellbeing perceptions could not be examined. an important direction for future research, therefore, is to investigate how adolescents’ awareness of wellbeing differ across culture. finally, we recognize that the sample size of low-decile group was relatively smaller than the high-decile group in all three studies (e.g., study 1 n = 48 for low-decile group and n = 77 for high-decile group) which may have potentially underrepresented lowsocioeconomic individuals’ views. taking the sample size into account, future research could assess low-socioeconomic group perceptions using a larger sample. the literature on adolescents’ perceptions of wellbeing is relatively inadequate and recent. the present study provides preliminary evidence about the variation in adolescents’ prototype of wellbeing as a function of socioeconomic status. it is essential that further research examines the stability of adolescents’ perspectives of wellbeing across countries and also investigates changes over time. as fehr (1988) posited, it is likely that the prototypic features of a concept may vary with different populations, but the prototypical structure of a concept remains. another useful direction adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 21 for future research would be to study adolescents’ perceptions of components of wellbeing (e.g., enjoyment) and the extent to which adolescents’ prototype of wellbeing matches with an individual’s representation of wellbeing. conclusion this study contributes to an under-investigated area of adolescents’ wellbeing. adolescents’ perceptions of wellbeing components are partially aligned with popular academic models, but also different to adults’ perceptions. therefore, a broader definition of wellbeing is warranted, tailored to the adolescents’ prototypical wellbeing representation (specifically incorporating the components enjoyment/having fun, feeling safe, and being kind/helpful). besides adolescents’ three most listed pathways to wellbeing (positive family relationships, positive friendships, and physical activity/sport), researchers may include activities around nature, digital entertainment, pets, kindness, and positive people in their promotional models. it is imperative that practitioners and researchers consider adolescents’ perceptions in designing assessment measures and wellbeing programs, especially accommodating perspectives exclusive to different socioeconomic groups. acknowledgements the authors are extremely grateful to the participants and school staff who made this research possible. thanks also goes to dr lucy hone for her careful review and editing of the manuscript. authors gazal bharara auckland university of technology scott duncan auckland university of technology aaron jarden university of melbourne erica hinckson auckland university of technology publishing timeline received 9 april 2019 accepted 22 september 2019 published 26 september 2019 adolescents’ conceptualizations of wellbeing gazal, duncan, jarden & hinckson 22 references aked, j., marks, n., cordon, c., & thompson, s. 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(2010). mental illness and mental health: the two continua model across the lifespan. journal of adult development, 17(2), 110–119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10804-009-9082-y kahrilas, i. j., smith, j., silton, r., & bryant, f. (2020). savoring the moment: a link between affectivity and depression. international journal of wellbeing, 10(2), 19-36. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.779 ian j. kahrilas loyola university chicago ikahrilas@luc.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 article savoring the moment: a link between affectivity and depression ian j. kahrilas · jennifer l. smith · rebecca l. silton · fred b. bryant abstract: objective: positive affectivity (pa; disposition to experience positive moods) and negative affectivity (na; disposition to experience negative moods) may be risk factors for depression. low pa may impair positive emotion regulation (savoring), potentially exacerbating depression. understanding the mechanisms in which temporal domains of savoring influence the relationship between affectivity and depression may help advance depression treatments. method: 1,618 participants (1,243 females; 70.0% caucasian, 19.1% asian, 4.5% african american, 0.9% pacific islander, 0.7% american indian or alaskan native, 4.9% biracial) ages 17 40 (m = 18.99, sd = 1.33) completed questionnaires. an exploratory path analysis was run with pa and na as exogenous variables, savoring domains as mediators, and depression the outcome. results: pa and na were associated with depression and all three savoring temporal domains. momentary savoring distinctly mediated the relationship between both pa and na and depression. limitations: the data are self-report and cross-sectional, precluding causal inference. post-hoc power analysis indicated that the present study was underpowered. the use of a college sample primarily comprised of caucasian women limits generalizability. conclusions: affectivity was associated with the temporal domains of savoring and indirectly associated with depression via momentary savoring. all temporal domains of savoring may bolster pa and mitigate na. momentary savoring may reduce depression symptoms in individuals with low pa and high na. keywords: positive affectivity, negative affectivity, savoring, positive emotion regulation, depression 1. introduction affective theories of mood and anxiety disorders have posited that low positive affectivity is a specific risk factor for depression (clark & watson, 1991; lewinsohn & graf, 1973; watson, clark, et al., 1995; watson, weber, et al., 1995), whereas high negative affectivity may be a more general indicator of distress that is observed across depression and anxiety disorders, as well as other psychopathology types (watson & clark, 1984). positive affectivity reflects a tendency to experience intense and frequent episodes of pleasant moods (watson, 2009), while negative affectivity refers to a tendency to experience negative moods (watson & clark, 1984). positive and negative affectivity are theorized to represent stable individual differences indicative of an individual’s disposition to experience positive and negative affect (i.e., transient emotional experiences) respectively. to this extent, positive affectivity and negative affectivity are closely associated with highly stable personality traits such as extraversion and neuroticism, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 correspondingly (costa & mccrae, 1980; warr et al., 1983). while certain major life events (e.g., unemployment, disability) are associated with long-term changes in subjective well-being, others (e.g., marriage, widowhood, divorce) only have short-term effects with a tendency to revert back to baseline levels of positive affectivity following these major events (lucas, 2007; suh et al., 1996; watson, 2009). with regard to depression, the frequency of positive life events is not fully explanatory of depression symptoms (needles & abramson, 1990). rather, the relationship between positive events and depression symptomatology is likely modulated by individual differences ranging from cognitive style (needles & abramson, 1990) to neurobiological factors (watson, 2009) that influence the interpretation and/or experience of positive events. related, research has indicated that emotional inertia (i.e., degree to which one’s affective state is predicted by a previous affective state) may be a risk factor for future development of mood disorders (koval et al., 2012; kuppens et al., 2010). research has also concurrently indicated that affective instability is related to depression symptoms (e.g., thompson et al., 2012). seeking to reconcile these findings, research utilizing experience sampling and controlled laboratory methods found that more resistant negative emotion, specifically, was related to depression while positive emotion continues to fluctuate (koval et al., 2013). while research has explored the role of negative emotion regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal, acceptance, problem solving; aldao et al., 2010) in the context of depression, the same cannot be said about positive emotion regulation (silton et al., 2020). characterizing specific positive emotion regulation strategies that mediate the relationship between affectivity and depression could inform treatment and intervention approaches to depression. emotion regulation and depression the connection between negative emotion regulation and depression is well established (gross, 1998; gross & muñoz, 1995; joormann & gotlib, 2010; joormann & vanderlind, 2014; nolenhoeksema et al., 1993). individuals with depression are more likely to engage in maladaptive regulation strategies such as rumination, expressive suppression, and catastrophizing and less likely to utilize adaptive strategies like reappraisal and self-disclosure compared to individuals without depression (garnefski & kraaij, 2007; gross & john, 2003; joormann & gotlib, 2010). more recently, research has begun to examine the influence of positive emotion regulation on depression symptoms (feldman et al., 2008; nelis et al., 2015; raes et al., 2012; werner-seidler et al., 2013). beck (1979) theorized that dampening positive emotions intensifies and perpetuates depression. accordingly, greater dampening of positive affect is prospectively associated with increased depression symptoms three and five months later (raes et al., 2012). other research has shown that those with depression tend to be apprehensive about experiencing positive affect and thus engage in maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as dampening positive affect (werner-seidler et al., 2013). furthermore, werner-seidler et al. (2013) showed that depression symptoms are inversely related to strategies implemented to amplify positive affect and depression. in sum, although research is beginning to establish that those with depression tend to engage in maladaptive positive emotion regulation strategies that reduce positive emotion (carl et al., 2013; garnefski & kraaij, 2007; gross & john, 2003; silton et al., 2020), there has been less focus on identifying strategies that may successfully enhance positive emotion in individuals who are at risk for depression. as such, the present study evaluates the hypothesis that savoring may ameliorate depression symptoms. savoring responses and savoring beliefs savoring refers to an awareness of positive experiences and the use of positive emotion savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 regulation strategies to enhance and extend positive feelings that are derived from those experiences (bryant, 1989, 2003; bryant, chadwick, & kluwe, 2011; bryant & veroff, 2007; smith & bryant, 2017). people initiate savoring responses in reaction to a positive event or affect as a way to maintain, intensify, or prolong positive experience (bryant & veroff, 2007). the original conceptual formulation of savoring (bryant & veroff, 2007) is predicated on the theory that people typically engage in savoring responses in reaction to positive events or affect, which people regulate through cognitive or behavioral strategies. chronically low levels of positive affectivity would be expected to reduce savoring responses, which over time would lower selfevaluations of savoring ability. while savoring, one may anticipate the enjoyments of future positive experiences, focus on ongoing positive experiences as they occur, or reminisce about past positive experiences. regardless of the temporal focus, savoring processes regulate positive emotions in the present moment. in contrast to savoring responses, savoring beliefs are self-perceptions of one’s capacity to savor (bryant, 2003). although related to ways in which people regulate positive feelings in response to positive events, savoring beliefs are dispositional tendencies that are distinct from specific savoring strategies in which people engage. stronger savoring beliefs are associated with lower levels of depression symptoms (bryant, 2003; eisner et al., 2009; hou et al., 2016; ramsey & gentzler, 2014; smith & hollinger-smith, 2015). examining the correlations between savoring beliefs and depression in two separate samples, bryant (2003) found a significant negative correlation between savoring the moment and depression in both samples, a significant negative correlation between positive reminiscence and depression in one of the samples, and no correlation between positive anticipation and depression in either sample. in another study, savoring the moment, but not anticipation, was also identified as a unique predictor of lifetime depression symptoms (carver & johnson, 2009). these results suggest that the capacity to savor ongoing positive experiences as they occur may have the strongest relationship with level of depression symptoms. furthermore, those endorsing higher levels of savoring beliefs report similar experiences as those endorsing high levels of positive affectivity—namely, intense and frequent episodes of positive affect (bryant & veroff, 2007; watson, 2009). savoring and positive affect savoring strategies that amplify positive emotions are associated with greater frequency of positive affect (gentzler et al., 2013; quoidbach et al., 2010; smith et al., 2014). as an example, college students who reminisced for one week using either memorabilia or cognitive imagery reported greater increases in frequency of happy feelings compared to participants in a control condition (bryant et al., 2005). in addition, a present-focused savoring strategy, mindfully photographing beautiful or meaningful subjects, led to more positive moods compared to photographing neutral subjects (kurtz, 2015). research has also found that greater savoring beliefs are associated with higher intensity of positive affect and less negative affect (bryant, 2003; smith & hollinger-smith, 2013). across two separate samples, people who reported stronger savoring beliefs also tended to report higher levels of personality traits associated with increased positive affect, such as intensity of happy feelings, self-esteem, frequent happy feelings, and less frequent unhappy feelings (bryant, 2003). using experience sampling methodology, jose, lim, and bryant (2012) found that momentary savoring mediated the relationship between daily positive events and momentary happiness, and this effect was stronger for people with higher trait levels of amplifying (i.e., broad types of savoring strategies) and weaker for people with higher trait levels of dampening. research has also shown that a combination of low capacity to savor the moment and experiencing less positive events is most strongly associated with lower savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 positive affect and less life satisfaction (hurley & kwon, 2013; jose et al., 2012). collectively, these studies illustrate that higher savoring capacity results in greater frequency and intensity of positive affect, which is representative of elevated positive affectivity. however, while this research has investigated the relationship between savoring beliefs and trait-like attributes such as intensity and frequency of affect and increased self-esteem, previous research has not explicitly examined the relationship between trait affectivity and savoring beliefs within the context of depression. the present study evaluates savoring as a positive emotion regulation strategy that may modify low positive affectivity and thus reduce depression symptoms. the focus of the present study a variety of interventions have been developed that focus on each of the three temporal domains of savoring (i.e., reminiscing, savoring the moment, and anticipating) in an effort to boost happiness (smith et al., 2014). for example, cultivating the ability to imagine future positive events can enhance anticipating (quoidbach et al., 2009), taking mindful photographs aids in momentary savoring (kurtz, 2015), and increasing awareness of recent positive events serves to bolster reminiscing (seligman et al., 2005). thus, if savoring mediates the relationship between affectivity and depression, it may be an effective and modifiable target for bolstering positive affectivity and reducing depression symptoms. common treatments for depression, including cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt) and antidepressant medication (price & drevets, 2010), leave considerable room for improvement that may be fulfilled by focusing on enhancing pa. these treatments predominantly focus on ameliorating distorted thought patterns and neurotransmitter systems pertaining to negative emotions (argyropoulos & nutt, 2013; beck, 1979). approximately 45-65% of those with depression undergoing cbt do not achieve remission (derubeis et al., 2005; dimidjian et al., 2006). the importance of enhancing pa is corroborated by the fact that patient definitions of depression recovery equally emphasize repair of pa and na (demyttenaere et al., 2015). further, dunn and colleagues (2019) conducted two separate studies investigating the efficacy of therapeutic and pharmacological approaches to treating depression and mitigating high na and pa. results indicated that na and pa were both uniquely related to depression and that current treatments (cbt, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, tricyclic antidepressants, and monoamine oxidase inhibitors) improve na, but do little to bolster pa (dunn et al., 2019). this is despite the fact that reductions in pa were more marked than elevated na in the samples tested, indicating that pa may be a more pressing intervention target (dunn et al., 2019). novel treatments have theorized that increased use of dampening appraisals may be a psychological mechanism of reduced pa (dunn et al., 2018). this implicates positive emotion regulation and savoring, which is underscored by literature illustrating that greater savoring beliefs are correlated with lower levels of depressive symptoms (bryant, 2003; eisner et al., 2009; hou et al., 2016; ramsey & gentzler, 2014; smith & hollingersmith, 2015). a more thorough understanding of the mechanisms of pa and savoring may pave the way for improving depression treatments. the present study characterizes the relationship between affectivity, savoring beliefs, and depression symptomatology. we evaluated the following hypotheses: 1) replicating past research, positive affectivity will be negatively associated with depression symptoms and negative affectivity will be positively associated with depression symptoms, 2) positive affectivity will be positively associated with all three temporal domains of savoring and negative affectivity will be negatively associated with all three temporal domains of savoring, 3) savoring the moment will be distinctly associated with depression, and 4) savoring the moment will savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 distinctly mediate the relationship between affectivity and depression. despite the present study’s focus on pa, mitigating na remains an important factor to address in depression with research demonstrating that both are independently related to depression symptoms (dunn et al., 2019). additionally, given the negative associations that exist between stable negative traits and savoring (e.g., neuroticism; bryant, 2003), na was included as an exogenous variable in the exploratory path analysis. further, including na facilitates the analysis of pa and na’s unique relationship with depression via the temporal domains of savoring by statistically controlling for the effects of the other. because anxiety and depression symptoms frequently co-occur (american psychiatric association, 2013; clark, 1989; mineka et al., 1998), we accounted for the effects of anxiety by including measures of anxious arousal (somatic) and anxious apprehension (worry) symptoms (sharp et al., 2015) in our analyses. additionally, research suggests that worry spans temporal domains and is associated with rumination about past events and hopelessness regarding the future (andrews & borkovec, 1988; macleod & byrne, 1996) as well as procrastination (stöber & joormann, 2001), each of which may overlap with the temporal domains of savoring. further, since research indicates that females tend to report greater savoring capacity than do males (bryant & veroff, 2007), gender was included as a covariate. the present study utilized a parallel mediation model with cross-sectional data. some researchers have advocated against this practice since correlational data do not afford causal interpretation (maxwell et al., 2011). alternatively, hayes (2018) advocated for a more relaxed stance: “we should not let the limitations of our data collection efforts constrain the tools we bring to the task of trying to understand what our data might be telling us about the processes we are studying” (p. 18). many researchers share this sentiment as indicated by their use of mediation analyses with cross-sectional data (blashill et al., 2010; gaunt & scott, 2014; goodin et al., 2009; kung et al., 2016; lee et al., 2014; li et al., 2011; osborne et al., 2015; pollack et al., 2012; rees & freeman, 2009; smith et al., 2016; thai et al., 2016; thomas & bowker, 2015; torres & taknint, 2015; webb et al., 2016). thus, the present study utilized cross-sectional mediation analyses while recognizing its preclusion of causal inference. method participants participants (n = 2,482) were recruited from introductory psychology courses. participants received course credit for completion of an online survey. case wise deletion was used to omit participants (n = 864) that had missing responses to any questionnaires used in the present study. the final sample of 1,618 participants (n = 375 males, n = 1,243 females) ranged in age from 17 40 (m = 18.99 years, sd = 1.33) and was 70.0% caucasian, 19.1% asian, 4.5% black or african american, 0.9% native hawaiian or other pacific islander, 0.7% american indian or alaskan native, and 4.9% biracial; 11.4% reported that they were hispanic/latinx and 88.6% were not hispanic/latinx. the study was approved by the university’s institutional review board, and informed consent was provided to all participants prior to beginning the survey. questionnaire measures savoring capacity. we administered the savoring beliefs inventory (bryant, 2003) to assess participants’ savoring capacity. the sbi measures the perception of one’s ability to feel pleasure through anticipating positive experiences, savoring positive moments as they occur, and reminiscing about past positive events (bryant & veroff, 2007). the sbi was analyzed as three eight-item subscales pertaining to temporal forms of savoring: anticipating (e.g., “before a good thing happens, i look forward to it in ways that give me pleasure in the present.”), savoring the savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 moment (e.g., “i know how to make the most of a good time.”), and reminiscing (e.g., “i enjoy looking back on happy times from my past.”). items are rated on a seven-point likert scale from “1” (strongly disagree) to “7” (strongly agree). the three temporal subscales of the sbi were originally conceived as separate, intercorrelated measures of individuals’ characteristic capacities to savor. test-retest reliability assessments provide cross-cultural evidence for the stability of the sbi subscales (bryant, 2003; kawakubo et al., 2019). prospective research testing predictive validity found that participants’ sbi scores predicted ability to anticipate, momentarily savor, or reminisce upon winter break three months later (bryant, 2003). this empirical evidence collectively supports the conclusion that the three sbi subscales reflect stable traits that manifest themselves in predictable forms of behavioral and emotion experience over time. bryant (2003) found moderate to high internal consistency across all three subscales. the present study replicated these findings (anticipating, ω = .87; savoring the moment, ω = .85; and reminiscing, ω = .86). depression severity. to evaluate depression severity, the nine-item patient health questionnaire (phq-9; kroenke et al., 2001) was administered. phq-9 items are scored from “0” (not at all) to “3” (nearly every day) and are based on the depression criteria from the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition. internal consistency of the phq-9 in the present study (ω = .87) was consistent with past research (kroenke et al., 2001). affectivity and anxiety symptoms. to assess for positive and negative affectivity as well as anxiety, the 39-item mood and anxiety symptoms questionnaire (watson, clark, et al., 1995; watson, weber, et al., 1995) was administered. the masq was analyzed as three separate subscales: the eight-item negative affectivity (na) scale (masq-na8; e.g., “felt withdrawn from other people”), the 14-item positive affectivity (pa) scale (masq-pa14; e.g., “felt cheerful”), and the 17-item anxious arousal scale (masq-aa; e.g., “startled easily”). previous literature has supported these oblique factors in two independent samples of individuals at-risk for depression and anxiety (kendall et al., 2015; nitschke et al., 2001). participants rated their affectivity and anxiety symptoms using a five-point likert scale from “1” (not at all) to “5” (extremely). consistent with previous research (bredemeier et al., 2010), the masq scales demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency(masq-na8, ω = .80; masq-pa14, ω = .94; and masq-aa, ω = .88). worry. the 16-item penn state worry questionnaire (meyer et al., 1990) was used to assess for the trait of worrying. pswq items are rated on a five-point likert scale from “1” (not at all typical) to “5” (very typical). meyer and colleagues (1990) found a high degree of internal consistency in the pswq, and the present study found good consistency (ω = .87). results depression severity to provide clinically relevant descriptive information regarding depression severity in the sample, participants were categorized into five depression severity groups based on established phq-9 cutoff scores: minimal (1-4), mild (5-9), moderate (10-14), moderately severe (15-19), and severe (20-27; kroenke et al., 2001). group means, standard deviations, and reliability coefficients of primary variables of interest (pa, na, and savoring the moment) were calculated for each of the depression severity groups (see table 1). pairwise t-test comparisons with holm correction were conducted to assess mean differences between each depression group for pa, na, and savoring the moment. analyses indicated significant differences between all groups for all variables except for the difference in mean pa between moderately severe and severe depression groups. savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 table 1 descriptive statistics among positive and negative affectivity and savoring the moment for each depression severity group note. holm corrected pairwise t-tests indicated significant differences between each depression group for all variables except between moderately severe and severe groups for pa. sd = standard deviation, ω = mcdonald’s omega. correlations among study variables pearson correlations were computed among the primary study variables (see table 2). as expected, pa was positively associated with all temporal domains of savoring. na, depression, and anxious arousal were negatively associated with all temporal savoring domains. all correlations were statistically significant. table 2 correlations among affectivity, temporal domains of savoring, depression severity, and anxious arousal measures (n = 1,618). 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1. anticipating 2. savoring the moment .68 3. reminiscing .75 .72 4. positive affectivity .45 .59 .46 5. negative affectivity -.36 -.55 -.40 -.40 6. anxious arousal -.28 -.31 -.28 -.08 .58 7. depression -.34 -.51 -.36 -.42 .74 .54 8. worry -.12 -.32 -.16 -.20 .46 .35 .46 positive affectivity, negative affectivity, and anxious arousal as predictors of depression the tripartite model posits that depression and anxiety have specific relations with three affective dimensions: pa, na, and anxious arousal (watson, clark, et al., 1995; watson, weber, et al., 1995). given the present study’s focus on pa and depression, we wanted to confirm the unique relation between each of these dimensions and depression symptoms in the present sample. per the tripartite model, we anticipated that low levels of pa and high levels of na would be savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 positively associated with depression symptoms, and that anxious arousal would be unrelated to depression symptoms. multiple regression analyses were conducted with pa, na, and anxious arousal as predictors and depressions with no covariates. diverging from the specific association between pa and depression proposed by clark and watson (1991, 1995), results from the test sample indicated that each of the predictors were uniquely associated with depression. na [b = .52, β = .55, t(1614) = 25.47, p < .001] was the strongest predictor of depression, followed by anxious arousal [b = .11, β = .21, t(1614) = 10.38, p < .001], and lastly pa [b = -.09, β = -.19, t(1614) = -10.55, p < .001]. mediation analyses path analyses were run in r (r core team, 2019) using the lavaan package (rosseel, 2012) to assess the indirect effects of pa and na on depression via three temporal domains of savoring capacity while accounting for the variance associated with gender, worry, and anxious arousal (see figure 1). exogenous variables (pa and na) were allowed to correlate with one another, as were the residual variances of each of the temporal domains of savoring. maximum likelihood estimation was used to estimate path coefficients, and bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals based on 10,000 bootstrap samples were used to estimate indirect effects of temporal domains of savoring between affectivity and depression. the fully saturated model contained 45 free parameters with zero degrees of freedom, resulting in perfect goodness of fit indices. results (see figure 1 and table 3) showed that pa was associated with anticipating (standardized: a1 = .41, unstandardized: a1 = .30, p < .001), savoring the moment (standardized: a2 = .46, unstandardized: a2 = .36, p < .001), and reminiscing (standardized: a3 = .39, unstandardized: a3 = .28 , p < .001). there were significant associations between na and anticipating (standardized: ai = -.11, unstandardized: ai = -.16, p < .001), savoring the moment (standardized: aii = -.29, unstandardized: aii = -.44, p < .001), and reminiscing (standardized: aiii = -.16, unstandardized: aiii = -.23, p < .001). further, savoring the moment was related to lower depression severity (standardized: b2 = -.07, unstandardized: b2 = -.04, p = .024), while anticipating and reminiscing were not. bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals (based on 10,000 bootstrap samples; see table 3) for the indirect effects of temporal domains of savoring between pa and depression did not include zero for savoring the moment (95% ci [-.028, -.002], a2b2 = -.01) but did include zero for anticipating (95% ci [-.009, .012], a1b1 = .00) and reminiscing (95% ci [-.009, .013], a3b3 = .00). similarly, bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals for the indirect effects of temporal domains of savoring between na and depression did not include zero for savoring the moment (95% ci [.003, .035], aiib2 = .02) but did include zero for anticipating (95% ci [-.007, .005], aib1 = .00) and reminiscing (95% ci [-.011, .007], aiiib3 = .00). notably, there is a negative indirect effect between pa and depression via savoring the moment with a positive relationship between pa and savoring the moment. this signifies that the positive association between pa and momentary savoring results in reduced depression scores that accounts for a portion of the significant negative relationship between pa and depression (standardized: c’pa = -.16, unstandardized: c’pa = -.08, p < .001). the direct effect of na on depression was also significant (standardized: c’na = .49, unstandardized: c’na = .02, p < .001). savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 figure 1. standardized structural diagram of path model with three mediators: anticipating, savoring the moment, and reminiscing (n = 1,618). the diagram shows a) the effect of positive and negative affectivity on depression severity and b) the direct and indirect pathways associating affectivity with temporal domains of savoring and depression. sex, worry, and anxious arousal were included as covariates in the model, but were omitted from the figure to streamline presentation. positive and negative affectivity were allowed to correlate with each other and with the three covariates, which were also allowed to intercorrelate. these intercorrelations were omitted from the path diagram to streamline presentation. the residual variances in the mediators and in depression were also estimated parameters in the structural model. these residual variances were also omitted from the path diagram to streamline presentation. table 3 unstandardized path coefficients from the structural equation model using positive and negative affectivity to predict depression with savoring subscales as mediators (n = 1,618). the structural model included three covariates (sex, worry, and anxious arousal) as exogenous independent variables, each of which had direct effects on the three mediators and depression. note. se = standard error, pa = positive affectivity, na = negative affectivity, ant = anticipating, mom = savoring the moment, rem = reminiscing, dep = depression, wor = worry, anx = anxious arousal. the symbols appearing to the left of the direct effects (e.g., a1) savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 refer to the labeled paths in figure 2. the symbols to the left of each indirect effect coefficient represent the products of each of the constituent direct effects that compose each indirect effect. for example, symbol a1b1 represents the product of the direct effect of pa on ant (i.e., a1) and the direct effect of ant on dep (i.e., b1), or (a1)(b1). discussion the present study examined the relationship between affectivity (pa and na) and depression symptoms via the future-, present-, and past-focused temporal domains of savoring beliefs (i.e., self-reported capacity to savor by anticipating, savor the moment, and savor by reminiscing, respectively). as predicted, results showed that pa and na were associated with all three temporal domains of savoring. savoring the moment distinctly mediated the relationship between affectivity and depression; whereas, the other temporal domains did not mediate this relationship. replicating past research, we also found a relationship between affectivity and depression symptoms (chorpita, 2002; clark & watson, 1991; dunn et al., 2019; khazanov & ruscio, 2016; watson, clark, et al., 1995; watson, clark, & carey, 1988; watson, weber, et al., 1995). of note, we found that the effect size for the bivariate relationship between na and depression (i.e., 55% shared variance) was roughly three times larger than the effect size for the relationship between pa and depression (i.e., 18% shared variance); but given that na is theorized to be a common factor shared among depression and anxiety (watson, clark, et al., 1995; watson, weber, et al., 1995), higher na may also be increased due to co-occurring anxiety symptoms. these findings are similar to results from a meta-analysis suggesting that low positive emotionality creates an inherent vulnerability to depression, but perhaps to a lesser degree than previously surmised (khazanov & ruscio, 2016). while findings from the present study imply that structured interventions aimed at enhancing any of the three temporal domains of savoring may serve to attenuate levels of na and bolster levels of pa and well-being, only savoring the moment is likely to reduce depression symptoms. this latter finding is consistent with previous research showing that momentary savoring capacity has a stronger negative association with depressive symptoms than do reminiscing and anticipating (bryant, 2003; carver & johnson, 2009). together, these findings indicate that developing interventions to promote savoring the moment may be effective in reducing depression. when partitioned by pre-established depression severity cutoff-scores (kroenke et al., 2001), the majority of the sample fell into minimal and mild depression groups, with significantly fewer participants in the moderate to severe groups. this result is consistent with a previous study conducted by kroenke and colleagues (2001) that categorized a sample of 580 adult participants into groups based on phq-9 depression cut-off scores. it is also critical to note that 444 participants (27.4%) of the total present sample likely meet clinical criteria for a depression diagnosis as indicated by scoring 10 or higher on the phq-9 (kroenke et al., 2001). additionally, pairwise comparisons indicate that as participants increase in depression severity, levels of pa and capacity to savor the moment decrease while na increases. this supports a dimensional conceptualization of the relationship between depression symptoms and individual difference factors, the present study indicates that a gradual decrease in pa/savoring the moment and increase in na accompany a rise in depression severity. the present study expands on previous research that has investigated the relationship between positive emotion regulation and depression by assessing beliefs about positive emotion regulation, specifically savoring, across past, present, and future temporal domains. as such, these findings suggest that savoring the moment, as opposed to reminiscing or anticipating, may savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 be instrumental in bolstering pa and reducing na to ameliorate depression symptoms. this conclusion is further supported by positive psychological interventions that include training in momentary savoring strategies to reduce depression (hurley & kwon, 2013; mcmakin et al., 2011; smith & hanni, 2019). in particular, a savoring-based intervention that instructed female college students with symptoms of dysphoria to make positive self-attributions for recent positive events was effective in reducing depression symptoms and sustaining positive affect following positive events (mcmakin et al., 2011). in another study, participants who received training in the use of strategies for savoring the moment, such as memory building and expressing positive emotions, displayed lower depression and lower negative affect after two weeks compared to a control group (hurley & kwon, 2013). while interventions targeting reminiscing and anticipating may serve to increase pa and decrease na, patients presenting with depression may require more specific treatment focused on savoring the present moment compared to a non-clinical sample. supporting this notion, increased attention to positive stimuli is likely one mechanism through which savoring influences depression symptoms (carl et al., 2013). although it should be noted that savoring and mindfulness are not analogous (bryant & veroff, 2007), the importance of moment-to-moment awareness in treating depression is corroborated by mindfulness-based interventions (gu et al., 2015). limitations the present study has several limitations. first, the present results are based solely on self-report measures. although self-report data are often inordinately criticized (chan, 2009), such measures are not without problems. self-report methods are prone to exaggeration or underreporting, both of which may be caused by social desirability bias, or a tendency to present oneself favorably (fisher, 1993). while the phq-9 is frequently used to screen for depression and track treatment outcomes in research studies and clinical settings, the present study did not implement clinical interviews to validate the self-report data. future research in this area might consider using a clinical interview to confirm depression diagnoses. however, the phq-9 allows for a dimensional conceptualization of depression symptoms, which is likely to be more consistent with the range of affective and cognitive experiences that co-vary with depression symptoms (levin et al., 2007). second, the present study is limited by its cross-sectional design, which precludes unequivocal conclusions about cause and effect. to overcome this limitation, future research should aim to extend the present findings using a longitudinal, randomized control trial (rct) design to evaluate the impact of various savoring interventions designed to specifically target each of the three temporal domains in a sample of participants with low levels of pa and depression. in addition, more research is needed to understand the extent to which mindfulnessbased interventions that focus on developing moment-to-moment awareness also indirectly enhance positive emotion regulation and savoring the moment, or whether interventions specifically designed to enhance savoring of positive events in the moment effectively reduce depression. additionally, all subscales (anticipating, savoring the moment, reminiscing) measure one’s capacity to generate positive feelings in the moment while focusing on either past, present, or future positive experiences (bryant & veroff, 2007). studies utilizing experience sampling methods (e.g., koval et al., 2013) offer stronger conclusions regarding temporal fluctuations of emotion and depression symptoms. the presence of multicollinearity, or tautological logic, can be argued due to the high correlation between na and depression in the present sample and the fact that depressed mood (na) forms a central construct of depression. other researchers analyzing the association savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 between affectivity (measured with the masq) and depression concluded that tautological logic did not compromise their analyses (dunn et al., 2019). additionally, the constructs of na and depression are theoretically distinct despite being related. na is conceptualized as a general indicator of distress observed across depression, anxiety, and other psychopathology types (watson & clark, 1984). it is conceptually disparate from positive emotions; one with high na does not necessarily also lack joy, excitement, or enthusiasm, which are hallmarks of depression (watson & clark, 1984). nitschke and colleagues (2001) corroborated this conceptualization via factor analysis, illustrating that the masq-na subscale overlaps with anxiety and depression factors. other research indicates that the masq-pa scale is a superior means of screening for depression compared to the masq-na scale, further suggesting that na is conceptually distinct from depression (bredemeier et al., 2010). the phq-9, on the other hand, was designed to map onto criteria for major depressive disorder diagnosis in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (kroenke & spitzer, 2002). as such, the phq-9 was formulated for use in clinical settings with robust diagnostic sensitivity (kroenke & spitzer, 2002; kroenke, spitzer, & williams, 2001). nonetheless, further clarification on the overlap between affectivity and depression are grounds for future research. finally, a post-hoc power analysis—using the bmem package (zhang, 2014), specifying 1,000 monte carlo simulations, each with 1,000 bootstrap samples—indicated that the present sample provided less than optimal statistical power. in particular, our present sample (n = 1,618) yielded 60.5% power to detect a significant indirect effect of savoring the moment between pa/na and depression via bootstrapping. further analyses indicated that a sample size of 2,700 is required in order to reach 80% power for these indirect effects. this latter finding underscores the fact that researchers need to recruit large sample sizes to detect significant effects in complex mediation models. conclusion this is one of the first studies to examine the degree to which the three temporal domains of savoring mediate the relationship between affectivity and depression symptoms. interventions that focus on bolstering any of the temporal domains of savoring may benefit those with low pa or high na. however, enhancing momentary savoring may be the critical temporal domain to consider adapting as an intervention to ameliorate depression. overall, our results suggest that interventions targeting positive emotion regulation may have considerable benefit for clinical and non-clinical populations. in advancing this research, rct methodology should be implemented to confirm causality and benefit among individuals with depression disorders. acknowledgments the authors thank the anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful feedback was instrumental in improving the quality of this manuscript. authors ian j. kahrilas loyola university chicago ikahrilas@luc.edu jennifer l. smith mather institute, usa rebecca l. silton savoring the moment kahrilas, smith, silton, & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 loyola university chicago fred b. bryant loyola university chicago publishing timeline received 10 october 2018 accepted 29 march 2020 published 1 june 2020 references adler, a., & seligman, m. e. p. 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(2019). beyond resilience to thriving: optimizing child wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 59-78. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i4.987 tracy r. gleason wellesley college tgleason@wellesley.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) 59 beyond resilience to thriving: optimizing child wellbeing tracy r. gleason · darcia narvaez abstract: research in child wellbeing often assesses the effects of particular disadvantages or focuses on children’s resilience in adverse circumstances. in contrast, considering developmental optimization in early childhood, and what is necessary to foster it, informs the study of child wellbeing in the socioemotional domain. in the program of research reviewed here, we consider the kinds of early experiences that promote wellbeing, defined as optimal physiological and emotional regulation that enables a flexible sociomoral orientation to others. this work suggests that practices consistent with the evolved developmental niche (edn), or the developmental system that likely characterized human caregiving over the course of evolution, facilitate development of the physiological and psychological systems of regulation that enable optimal wellbeing in the domain of sociomoral functioning. aspects of edn-consistent care provide a cohesive environmental context for development, but different facets of such care correspond to different outcomes related to socioemotional development. overall, parental positive attitudes toward and provision of edn-consistent care are associated with an orientation toward others that is prosocial, flexible, and engaged. these findings have emerged in samples in the us, europe, and china, and suggest that the edn might provide a useful framework for conceptualizing developmental optimization, for consideration of the important facets of early childhood care and education, and for fostering child wellbeing. keywords: wellbeing, early childhood, evolved developmental niche, parenting, evolution, child development introduction historically, research into child wellbeing has had “an oddly pathogenic approach” (amerijckx & humblet, 2014, p. 404), focusing on health, family, social, and economic problems (e.g., obesity, divorce, abuse, poverty) and considering wellbeing as a lack of such problems. other researchers have pointed to children’s capacity to overcome early or structural adversity to reach positive cognitive and social outcomes, such as absence of psychopathology and competence with peers or schooling (e.g., masten, best, & garmezy, 1990). while this research has documented many children’s remarkable resilience, positive outcomes are not synonymous with wellbeing. moreover, generalizing from experiences of resilient children encourages a perspective on wellbeing that suggests that treatment of young children is minimally influential on developmental outcomes (e.g., lancy, 2015). article beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 60 neurobiological and clinical studies suggest otherwise. for example, a lack of responsive care in the early years can lead to depressed affect (karrass & walden, 2005) and a maladaptive stress response that lasts a lifetime, barring significant intervention (gunnar, larson, hertsgaard, harris, & broderson, 1992; lupien, mcewen, gunnar, & heim, 2009). wellbeing thus involves more than survival and resilience. specifically, the root of the term “health” is the same root for whole, hale and holy, meaning “complete, uninjured, sound” (sanders, 2009, p. 50). if wellbeing includes health as a component, then traumatized individuals, even if resilient and recovering from adversity, are technically not exhibiting wellbeing. a comprehensive view of children’s social and emotional wellbeing must include not just interventions for undoing the effects of early adversity, but provision of the contexts and supports that help children thrive. our goal is thus to reconsider resilience and wellbeing from the perspective of these contexts to illustrate the components of early experience that might foster optimal development. child wellbeing defining child wellbeing positive psychologists have defined wellbeing among adults as living “within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience” (fredrickson & losada, 2005, p. 678). by including goodness and generativity, this definition suggests that part of wellbeing is an outward focus on the condition of others, a sociomoral perspective of engagement, participation, and care. likewise, the criteria for assessing wellbeing in childhood should include thriving in multiple dimensions, including the physical and social/emotional (amerijckx & humblet, 2014). wellbeing thus entails well-functioning emotional, psychological, and social capacities based in appropriate physiological and emotional regulation (gleason & narvaez, 2014). these capacities allow for an orientation toward others that includes an ability to respond with warmth in situationally appropriate ways. this definition has two implications for moral development. first, rather than only reactive morality (e.g., obedience), child wellbeing includes proactive morality (e.g., voluntary helping), which involves empathy, cooperation, attention to the wellbeing of others, and sensitivity to how actions might influence others. proactive morality is an indicator that a child has benefitted from a positive, supportive developmental context (e.g., kochanska, 2002). second, wellbeing in childhood and beyond is built on appropriate physiological, emotional, behavioral, and social regulation. theoretically, well-functioning self-regulatory capacities equate to optimal functioning. such capacities thus afford the ability to focus on others and be concerned for their wellbeing. this emphasis on social wellbeing distinguishes our definition from a notion of wellbeing that focuses on child survival, resilience, or minimally adequate care with no reference to the role of the self in society. child wellbeing and self-regulation self-regulation is a fundamental goal of development. it has been studied in various domains and can be laid out chronologically over the course of maturation. first, physiological regulation emerges, including internal biological mechanisms such as breathing and digestion. these are beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 61 functions a baby must learn to do independently of the mother’s body. additional physiological regulatory systems are established postnatally, such as the stress response and various endocrine systems (carter & porges, 2013; lupien et al., 2009). emotion regulation develops over many years as the capacity to modify the intensity and duration of emotions (calkins & hill, 2007; thompson, 2011). with age and experience, the child develops attentional regulation, the capacity to maintain on-task focus (see calkins & fox, 2002; fogel, 1993; posner & rothbart, 1998; tucker, derryberry, & luu, 2000). lastly, behavior regulation includes impulse control, stopping and starting action, and other capacities reliant on executive functions (goldberg, 2002). all of these forms of regulation are developed with the help of caregivers, who initially do much of the work of physical and psychological regulation but gradually withdraw their support as the child becomes able to self-regulate. in early life, the actual physical presence and mutually responsive relationships with caregivers foster the neurobiological foundations of self-regulation (kochanska, 2002; schore, 2003a, 2003b). as the child develops, regulatory approaches that depend upon cognition (e.g., verbal advice) can be used by caregivers to guide the child in monitoring and shaping behavior. neuroscience provides insight into how early experience might influence self-regulation. specifically, human neonates are characterized by neurological immaturity. the majority of brain size and functioning is grown and shaped postnatally by early experiences, which in humans are largely social (narvaez, panksepp, schore, & gleason, 2013). consequently, human infants require an “external womb” experience, provided by caregivers, as they develop capacities to regulate temperature, the sleep/wake cycle, and arousal levels (montagu, 1968; moore et al., 2009; spangler, schieche, ilg, maier & ackerman, 1994). a child whose hormonal states are not kept in balance by sensitive caregiving during rapid brain growth in the early years shows permanent changes to neurobiological functioning (for reviews, see lanius, vermetten & pain, 2010). thus, self-regulatory capacities come about in the context of social relationships as the child matures through multiple sensitive periods (narvaez, panksepp et al., 2013). these studies suggest that the early years significantly influence lifelong capacities for self-regulation and the capacities upon which self-regulation relies, such as sociality and moral socialization. given the role of self-regulation in children’s (and later adults’) ability to thrive— including sociomoral engagement with others—we have been investigating the early experiences and developmental contexts associated with child wellbeing. the basis of this work rests in the fact that human infants, as neurologically-immature, social mammals, require the cooperation of adults to meet their innate needs. indeed, sociality and cooperation are key adaptations that emerged over the course of evolution (hrdy, 2009). as adults provide for the needs of infants and young children, they nurture the children’s capacities for cooperation, biosocially constructing them through experience and fostering sociomoral wellbeing. this process occurs within our species-specific developmental system called the evolved developmental niche. fostering wellbeing in early childhood the evolved developmental niche beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 62 according to developmental systems theory, a comprehensive evolutionary theory, humans inherit many things from their ancestors beyond genes, from culture to ecologies to a developmental system for raising the young (oyama, 1985; oyama, griffiths & gray, 2001). this system is referred to as humanity’s evolved developmental niche (edn). every animal species has an edn for its young that corresponds to the maturational needs of offspring. humans are no exception, and we adapted the social mammalian nest that emerged over 30 million years ago for our unique needs. the human edn is particularly intensive due to the immaturity of our offspring at birth, which was necessitated by the smaller pelvis and narrower birth canal resulting from humanity’s move to bipedalism. full-term newborns look like fetuses of other animals until about 18 months of age (trevathan, 2011). although we cannot know for certain the early experiences and developmental contexts of our ancestors over the course of evolution— and likely they varied significantly—anthropologists have suggested that small-band huntergatherer communities, nomadic foragers, represent the type of society in which humanity spent 99% of its genus history. hewlett and lamb (2005) summarized the experiences of young children in these societies: [y]oung children in foraging cultures are nursed frequently; held, touched, or kept near others almost constantly; frequently cared for by individuals other than their mothers (fathers and grandmothers, in particular) though seldom by older siblings; experience prompt responses to their fusses and cries; and enjoy multiage play groups in early childhood (p. 15). in our work, we have focused on these experiences, particularly responsiveness, touch, social support/alloparenting (caregiving shared among multiple adults), and play. the characteristics of these practices in hunter-gatherer communities and research findings relating these practices to children’s physiological and psychological health provide the basis for our hypotheses connecting children’s early experiences to their social and emotional wellbeing, particularly in the sociomoral domain. responsiveness. in nomadic foraging societies, babies and young children spend most of their time in the arms of caregivers. babies rarely cry, and when they do, adults respond immediately (konner, 2005; morelli, ivey henry & foerster, 2014). the baby’s cry irritates adults and may have evolved to do so to elicit care and avoid alerting predators (trevathan, 2011). the baby’s needs, like breastfeeding or suckling, are met on request. babies are kept calm and content through attentive care. in attentive early care, the child and caregiver form a “relational communication system” in which optimal levels of physiological arousal and co-coordinated action are maintained (evans & porter, 2009; fogel, 2000; fogel & branco, 1997). extensive experience of synchrony and reparation of asynchrony facilitate the child’s capacities for self-control and foster secure attachment (feldman, greenbaum, & yirmiya, 1999; schore, 2013; tronick, 2007). responsive care is considered fundamental to the development of a secure attachment style (as opposed to an insecure or disorganized style) (sroufe, 1996). responsive care also shapes a healthy stress response (lupien et al., 2009). many capacities that develop in the first months and years, like beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 63 the attachment system and vagus nerve function, are dependent on the postnatal time period for right hemisphere directed development of self-regulation and sociality (schore, 2003a, 2003b; schore & schore, 2008). touch. ever since the work of harry harlow (1986) pointed to the importance of the physical presence of the mother, touch has been examined in various ways. animal models indicate that caregiver touch has epigenetic effects during sensitive periods, affecting lifelong self-regulation (meaney, 2001). human studies indicate that infant massage promotes physiological regulation longitudinally (feldman, weller, sirota, & eidelman, 2002) and health over the long term for premature infants (see field, diego, & hernandez-reif, 2010, for a review). in infancy, caregiver touch and close presence at night are associated with healthy regulatory processes through endocrine modulation, reduction of stress hormones and proper vagal system functioning (carter & porges, 2013; field et al., 2010; mckenna et al., 1994). social support/alloparenting. in hunter-gatherer communities, mothers and infants receive nearly constant social support. initially, mothers are steady companions of babies but with development, young children spend more than half the time with other responsive caregivers (hewlett & lamb, 2005; morelli et al., 2014). in fact, our species evolved to raise children through “cooperative breeding” (hrdy, 2009), with mothers supported at birth, postnatally, and beyond. in the long term, mothers who feel socially supported have children with fewer behavior problems and greater social skills (mcconnell, breitkreuz, & savage, 2011). for the child, alloparenting has several known advantages, including providing opportunities for engaging in beneficial social interactions and the development of flexible social skills and social openness (hrdy, 2009; koverola et al., 2005). in studies of resilience in adverse conditions, nonparental adult relations are a protective factor for children of all ages (masten et al., 1990). multiple adult caregivers are correlated with more effective parenting, lowering the risk of social, emotional, and cognitive problems even into adulthood (amato, 2005). play. children in nomadic foraging communities spend most of their time in the natural world with multi-age playmates in self-directed social play. engaging in such free play has multiple benefits (flanders, herman, & paquette, 2013; gray, 2013; pellegrini & pellegrini, 2013). in the roles and challenges they voluntarily take on, children practice impulse control and responding to the unexpected. in early childhood, free play allows children to imagine and explore different social roles and situations where they can learn from trial and error and invent new solutions, heightening their problem solving and creativity. social pretend play provides a way to practice cooperation, negotiation, and compromise (doyle & connolly, 1989; howe, petrakos, & rinaldi, 1998). fantasy and rough-and-tumble play require intricate interactions with others and are correlated with emotion regulation in early to middle childhood (lillard et al., 2013; pellegrini & smith, 1998). in middle childhood, children learn self-assertion, sensitivity, sharing and consensual decision-making, as well as how to deal with social conflict. children who experience more unsupervised social play tend to show more self-control, including less aggression. experiments show that depriving children of play for short periods compromises attention and leads to longer and more intense engagement in play subsequently (pellegrini & smith, 1998). even in adolescence and adulthood, non-competitive play provides a forum for fostering cooperation among group members (gray, 2014). beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 64 by examining these components in relation to children’s developmental outcomes, we have conducted a program of research exploring whether early experiences consistent with the edn provide a developmental context that fosters children’s sociomoral wellbeing. in general, our work has been guided by the hypothesis that developmental optimization is associated with edn-consistent practices, and that wellbeing is a function of such optimal early experience. theoretically, such early care provides the set of experiences that maximize physical, emotional, attentional, and behavioral regulation, providing the child with the neuropsychological resources for sociomoral engagement with others. such engagement can be measured through the child’s regulatory capacities (e.g., executive function, cooperation) and through maternal reports of typical behavior that translate into measures of the child’s development of conscience. triune ethics meta-theory (narvaez, 2008, 2014) describes how self-regulatory processes are integral to sociomoral functioning. these are represented in implicit social cognitive systems that are activated in social situations. when regulatory systems are less than optimal, stress response patterns can be activated in relational encounters (attack/oppose, withdraw, dissociate). when neurobiological systems are well constructed, with sociality nourished in early life, relationally attuned patterns are activated in social encounters (e.g., engagement, social imagination). theoretically, these patterns become dispositional, providing the individual with a default response to moral situations that is either stressed and defensive or engaged and prosocial. in adult studies, these dispositions correlate in expected directions with measures of sociomoral capacities like empathy and perspective taking (e.g., narvaez, 2018; narvaez, wang, & cheng, 2016). edn-consistent care and child wellbeing our approach to empirically testing child wellbeing has been guided by two theoretical ideas. first, we conceptualize early care consistent with the edn as providing a nurturing environment that optimizes development and promotes wellbeing by cultivating healthy physiological and psychological systems. one way in which children’s wellbeing is manifested through these systems is in their behavior, specifically through a) prosociality, b) an engaged and imaginative sociomoral orientation toward others, and c) absence of psychopathology. second, while we expected that edn-consistent care overall would promote positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes, we also theorized that each component of edn-consistent care, such as touch or responsiveness, might have differential associations with child outcomes. much in the way that different vitamins and minerals support specific aspects of physiological functioning, various aspects of edn-consistent care might have specific implications for particular child outcomes. in an attempt to test these hypotheses (gleason, narvaez, cheng, wang, & brooks, 2016), we conducted a study in which we examined the extent to which the caregiving practices associated with the edn constitute a holistic, nurturing environment. specifically, we wondered whether mothers of preschoolers who held positive attitudes toward responsiveness would likewise be those mothers who endorsed caregiving that included copious positive touch, extensive play with peers, and alloparenting. this hypothesis was supported in our study, as all beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 65 of these variables were highly correlated (rs > .5, ps < .001). confirmatory factor analysis also supported the idea of these components forming a latent construct of nurturing parenting, meaning that mothers who endorsed these views tended to see their own responsive care in a socio-environmental context that also included valuable contributions from peers through play, and from other adults through nurturing. this view of early development is consistent with work that moves beyond the mother-child relationship to recognize and acknowledge the role of other important individuals in the child’s life, including peers. for example, extensive work relates sociomoral outcomes such as empathy and conscience to sensitive parenting and the emotional climate of the mother-child relationship (e.g., kochanska, 2002), but additional research highlights the ways in which the peer group affects moral thinking and behavior, particularly later in childhood (e.g., kruger, 1992; walker, hennig, & krettenauer, 2000). we were also interested in the extent to which maternal endorsement of edn-consistent care would be related to children’s early psychosocial health and sociomoral development, hypothesizing that nurturing parenting would relate to children’s sociomoral flourishing, a latent variable composed of happiness, social consideration, social attunement, social imagination, and empathy, measured via maternal report using validated scales. we also tested whether nurturing parenting attitudes would relate to ill-being, a latent variable comprised by maternal reports of validated measures of social withdrawal, depression, anxiety, and wellbeing (negatively), or antisocial behavior, which was made up of social opposition, social distrust, and misbehavior (all models controlled for income). all of these hypotheses were supported, meaning that sociomoral flourishing and psychological wellbeing were positively correlated with maternal endorsement of nurturing parenting. this connection is significant for two reasons. first, while parental warmth has long been associated with internalization of morality and avoidance of misbehavior (hoffman, 1970), our measures included mothers’ attitudes toward play and alloparenting in the conceptualization of nurturing parenting, not just aspects of warmth such as responsiveness and positive touch. second, while attitudes do not always translate into behavior, the high consistency among the parenting attitudes measured raises their predictive validity for behavior (holden & buck, 2002). the findings seem consistent with the idea that endorsement of edn-consistent attitudes is connected with positive sociomoral and psychological outcomes, possibly through parental behaviors and/or the creation of a nurturing environment that fosters wellbeing. we also explored the differential connections between components of the edn and the various child outcomes related to wellbeing in a sample of chinese mothers (n = 383) of preschool children (narvaez, wang et al., 2013). in this study, we queried mothers about both their attitudes and behaviors toward nurturing parenting, including the edn components listed above as well as extensive breastfeeding, nearly constant touch, multiple adult caregivers (i.e., alloparenting), family cohesion, co-sleeping, playful interactions, and natural childbirth (hewlett & lamb, 2005). we looked at the effects of these practices on child outcomes related to sociomoral development: inhibitory control and self-regulation, empathy, and conscience development, including guilt after wrongdoing and concern for others. much as in our other study, we found significant but differential positive relationships between many of our predictors and outcomes. beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 66 the connections between parenting practices and outcomes highlighted the particular importance of responsiveness, play behavior, and touch, as these practices related most strongly to children’s sociomoral outcomes (see table 1). table 1 regression coefficient estimates (and effect sizes) for edn variables by child outcomes behavior regulation conscience edn variables inhibitory control self-regulation empathy guilt concern maternal responsivity .266*** (.038) .033 (.001) .362*** (.082) .156* (.014) .423*** (.071) breastfeeding length (mos.) .015* (.023) .005 (.017) -.008 (.012) .016* (.017) .019* (.021) touch behavior in infancy .180** (.021) .126* (.017) .290*** (.065) .033 (.609) .195* (.018) touch behavior now .326*** (.051) .150* (.017) .293*** (.047) .130 (.009) .420*** (.061) family cohesion attitudes .256*** (.046) .060 (.004) .224*** (.040) .132* (.011) .315*** (.052) play with mother .255*** (.033) .163*** (.021) .225** (.029) .072 (.001) .246** (.022) play with other adults .113* (.016) .112** (.021) .116* (.021) .080 (.006) .127* (.016) note: edn = evolved developmental niche. mos. = months. all analyses were run using maternal education and household income as covariates. effect sizes were computed using cohen’s (1988) method for variables and covariates. by convention, effect sizes of .02, .15, and .35 are small, medium, and large, respectively. excerpted from “the evolved developmental niche and child sociomoral outcomes in chinese 3year-olds,” by d. narvaez, l. wang, t. gleason, y. cheng, j. lefever, and l. deng, 2013, european journal of developmental psychology, 10, p. 116. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. however, singular links between practices and child outcomes suggested significant complexity in the system. for example, play and positive attitudes toward family cohesion related to children’s empathy, but breastfeeding did not. breastfeeding did, however, correlate with aspects of sociomoral development that involved self-control, specifically, our measures of inhibitory control and conscience. these links, which remained small but significant even after controlling for maternal responsivity, fit with a theoretical model that connects early parenting with the organization of physiological and psychological systems that support children’s moral functioning. certainly, the extensive work on children’s resilience (e.g., masten et al., 1990) argues against the idea that missing one of the edn components, such as positive touch or breastfeeding, will compromise a child’s outcomes, but the findings of this study suggest that optimal child wellbeing might be a function of the combined facets of edn-consistent care. the general consistency that we found in our studies of maternal attitudes in the us and attitudes and behavior in china prompted two developments: a) we created a measure that could function as a checklist of the child’s recent experience of edn-consistent care in the past week, beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 67 and b) we further explored the nature of the relationships between the edn and sociomoral outcomes in multiple cultures (narvaez et al., 2019). we created the evolved developmental niche provision report (ednpr), a 6-item checklist of edn-consistent parenting practices adapted from an adult measure of childhood experiences of edn-consistent care. items addressed provision of positive/negative touch, indoor/outdoor free play, and family togetherness inside/outside the home. this composite was connected to parent reports of three latent variables: preschool children’s moral socialization (internalized conduct, inhibitory control, concern after wrongdoing, and empathy), sociality (social attunement, social enjoyment, and social imagination, as well as consideration, thriving, and happiness), and social maladaptation (social opposition, distrust, and withdrawal, along with anxiety, depression, and misbehavior), each of which was assessed using validated maternal report measures. we controlled for parent age, education, income, child gender, and parental responsiveness. we tested these structural equation models in the us (n = 574), china (n = 382), and switzerland (n = 96). although the results from the swiss sample were somewhat equivocal owing to the small sample size, the general pattern of results was consistent with our other studies. scores on the ednpr correlated with sociality, in particular, in all three samples (us: b = .22, p < .001; china: b = .13, p = .03; swiss: b = .51, p < .001) and above and beyond the effects of the other covariates, including responsiveness. these findings are consistent with the notion that provision of ednconsistent care provides a social environment in which children develop a positive orientation toward others, characterized by enjoyment of social interaction, pleasure in the company of others, and capacities to get along. this emotional climate is also consistent with that described by anthropologists in nomadic foraging communities (hewlett & lamb, 2005; konner, 2005). scores on the ednpr also related to moral socialization, but only in the us and china and with small effect sizes (us: b = .17, p = .005; china: b = .14, p = .02; swiss: b = .20, p = .11). our interpretation of these results is that edn-consistent care and moral socialization are related, but pale in comparison to connections to responsive parenting. as moral socialization relates to selfregulatory processes and the development of empathy, these child outcomes may correlate more highly with the sensitivity and responsivity that parents demonstrate in their interactions with their children, rather than the edn-consistent components of touch, play, and family togetherness measured by the ednpr. similarly, relations between ednpr scores and social maladaptation were only significant in the us sample (us: b = -.11, p = .02; china: b = -.02, p = .80; swiss: b = .01, p = .99), suggesting that the absence of the elements of edn-consistent care measured by the ednpr is not necessarily related to dysregulation. but as noted, ednpr did connect to sociality, an aspect of optimal development, in all three samples. edn-consistent care might thus help explain the difference between adequate care (i.e., care that reduces psychopathology, misbehavior, and a protectionist stance toward social interaction) and actual thriving. as our definition of wellbeing moves beyond simply the absence of maladaptation, edn-consistent care is thus theoretically an important part of developmental optimization and thus of wellbeing itself. in a separate study (narvaez, gleason, et al., 2013), we used an existing longitudinal data set of families at risk for neglect (n = 682) to investigate whether maternal responsivity, beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 68 breastfeeding initiation, touch, and maternal social support (as a proxy for alloparenting) were tied over time to a relevant set of child outcomes available in the data set, including children’s behavior problems, measures of cognitive development, and prosociality (cooperation and social engagement). this data set provided an important step forward for our work, as it afforded analysis of child outcomes based not just on parental report, but on observations and measures of children’s behavior. data were used from interviews that took place during the mothers’ last trimester of pregnancy and when their infants were 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months old, and included both maternal report and observations of mother-child interaction and of the home. children were also tested using standardized iq and language tests at 24 and 36 months. we hypothesized that maternal responsiveness would have the greatest implications for all child outcomes given its centrality to mother-child dyadic functioning, and that these associations would emerge early in infancy. we expected breastfeeding initiation to predict better cognitive development and lower behavior problems, touch (as a buffer against stress) to support prosociality and lower behavior problems, and maternal social support to relate positively to both prosociality and cognitive development as well as negatively to behavior problems. in our analyses, we controlled for maternal age/education and income-to-needs ratio. the models we developed to describe this multivariate, longitudinal data set revealed patterns consistent with our theoretical framework and information on how relations between our variables changed over time (see table 2). for example, children’s prosociality was strongly predicted by early maternal responsivity, as well as by positive changes in responsivity over time. high early responsivity also predicted lower behavior problems in preschool and cognitive development at age two. although cognitive development at age three was not predicted by early responsiveness, a greater increase in responsivity predicted cognitive scores at this age. because of the many associations between maternal responsivity and child outcomes in prior research we controlled for it as we looked at the other edn-consistent caregiving behaviors. many associations remained, lending support to the idea that each component of edn-consistent care might contribute differentially to child wellbeing, either by affecting different outcomes or by affecting them at different times. for example, high rates of positive touch early in development predicted both higher cognitive ability and lower behavior problems in preschool. in contrast, initiation of breastfeeding predicted prosociality in toddlerhood (at 18 months) and fewer behavior problems at age two. social support, as a proxy for alloparenting, positively predicted prosociality and cognitive ability in toddlerhood and negatively predicted behavior problems at age two. overall, the findings of this study supported the conclusions that a) children’s wellbeing might be best supported by the combined presence of edn-consistent caregiving practices, and b) often edn-consistent patterns are established early. however, the relations between predictors and outcomes varied over time, suggesting that the positive effects of some early practices might not be immediately apparent. beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 69 table 2 model results for effects of edn variables on child outcomes edn component child outcome coefficients model fit maternal responsivity at 4 mos. at 4 mos. change (4-30 mos.) prosociality 18 mos. prosociality 30 mos. prosociality 30 mos. .44* .21* .40* χ²(26, n = 583) = 29.29, p = .30, cfi = .963, rmsea = .053 at 4 mos. at 4 mos. change (4-30 mos.) behavior problems 24 mos. behavior problems 36 mos. behavior problems 36 mos. -.20* -.07* -.04 χ²(26, n = 583) = 17.51, p = .89, cfi = .986, rmsea = .035 at 4 mos. at 4 mos. change (4-30 mos.) cognitive ability 24 mos. cognitive ability 36 mos. cognitive ability 36 mos. .33* -.04 .16* χ²(47, n = 583) = 44.55, p = .53, cfi = .966, rmsea = .049 breastfeedinga (0 = no, 1 = yes) prosociality 18 mos. .10* χ²(20, n = 583) = 26.84, p = .14, cfi = .963, rmsea = .059 behavior problems 24 mos. -.15* χ²(20, n = 583) = 14.59, p = .80, cfi = .983, rmsea = .039 toucha at 4 mos. at 4 mos. change (4-30 mos.) behavior problems 24 mos. behavior problems 36 mos. behavior problems 36 mos. -.03 -.17* -.03 χ² (59, n =583) = 79.52, p = .04, cfi = .933, rmsea = .057 at 4 mos. at 4 mos. change (4-30 mos.) cognitive ability 24 mos. cognitive ability 36 mos. cognitive ability 36 mos. -.11* .23* -.06 χ²(87, n = 583) = 109.24, p = .06, cfi = .933, rmsea = .056 social supporta prosociality 18 mos. prosociality 30 mos. .27* .11* χ²(41, n = 583) = 59.05, p = .03, cfi = .934, rmsea = .062 behavior problems 24 mos. -.24* χ²(29, n = 583) = 20.80, p = .87, cfi = .980, rmsea = .037 cognitive ability 24 mos. .15* χ²(39, n = 583) = 33.10, p = .74, cfi = .976, rmsea = .040 note. edn = evolved developmental niche. mos. = months. coefficients are standardized. all results listed are controlling for demographic covariates (income/needs ratio and mother’s age/education group). adapted from “the evolved development niche: longitudinal effects of caregiving practices on early childhood psychosocial development,” by d. narvaez, t. gleason, l. wang, j. brooks, j. burke lefever, y. cheng, and the centers for the prevention of child neglect, 2013, early childhood research quarterly, 28, p. 766. aresults are controlling for maternal responsivity in addition to demographic covariates. *p < .05. beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 70 the idea that the components of edn-consistent care contribute differentially to child outcomes prompted us to look more closely at relations between a few of those components, specifically touch (narvaez et al., in press) and play (gleason et al., 2019), and their relations to aspects of sociomoral development and wellbeing. we chose touch for several reasons, not the least of which is that, as described above, absence of touch is considered a stressor in mammals (sapolsky, 2004), and because nurturing physical touch promotes healthy physiological development in social mammals, including humans (field et al., 2010). physiology, in turn, is related to wellbeing and psychosocial functioning (feldman, gordon, & zagoory-sharon, 2011). we thus hypothesized that sociomoral wellbeing would be at least in part a function of early experiences of touch. our examination of touch included three studies. in the first, we found that the attitudes toward touch of mothers of preschoolers (n = 156) were positively correlated with children’s social thriving (i.e., an engaged sociomoral orientation and sociomoral capacities such as empathy; b = .66, p < .01) and negatively correlated with antisocial behavior (b = -.32, p < .01). similarly, our longitudinal examination using the existing dataset of at-risk mothers demonstrated moderate to strong relationships between behavioral regulation at 18 months and concurrent positive touch (r = .15, p =.03) and lack of negative touch (r = .24, p < .001) and positive correlations between low corporal punishment and sociomoral outcomes, such as social engagement (r = .22, p =.002) and cooperation (r = .28, p <.001), at 30 months. lastly, a study with adults (n = 607) revealed significant connections between retrospective reports of childhood touch and adult moral orientation (i.e., social engagement, opposition, and withdrawal), mediated by attachment security, mental health (anxiety and depression), and moral capacities (e.g., empathy). in short, across these disparate studies, more affectionate touch and less negative touch were positively associated with wellbeing and with development of moral capacities and an engaged moral orientation. like some of our earlier work, our examination of play included models that we tested in two samples, in the us and in china (gleason et al., 2019). our particular interest in play as affording wellbeing and sociomoral development arose from the myriad research connecting play to relevant social skills in early childhood, such as emotion regulation (lindsey & colwell, 2013), delay of gratification (cemore & herwig, 2005), and cooperation and sharing (woolf, 2011). we reasoned that as arbiters of children’s play, mothers’ positive attitudes toward children’s play and reports of children’s play behavior might mediate the relation between mothers’ memories of their own childhood play experiences and children’s social thriving, moral socialization, and social maladaptation. the results of our analyses suggested connections particularly between maternal history and children’s social thriving in both samples, mediated by mothers’ attitudes toward play and reports of their children’s play behaviors. similarly, mothers’ attitudes mediated the relation between maternal history and children’s moral socialization. play attitudes and reports of play behavior, however, did not mediate between maternal history and children’s social maladaptation. in other words, this component of the edn seems to play a significant role in mediating mothers’ childhood experiences and children’s prosocial orientation, and to a weaker extent children’s moral self-regulation. the fact that social thriving was predicted by maternal play attitudes and child play behavior suggests play’s importance for optimal wellbeing. in beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 71 contrast, the lack of mediation for social maladaptation emphasizes the role of edn components other than play as contributors to children’s physical and psychological health. implications and future directions research describing childrearing environments as “good enough” (hoghughi & speight, 1998; ryan, martin, & brooks-gunn, 2006; winnicott, 1957), “average” (baumrind, 1993), and even “positive” (von suchodoletz, trommsdorff, & heikamp, 2011), or that documents the resilience of children growing up in dangerous, abusive, neglectful, or otherwise compromised environments, is not the same as research focusing on child wellbeing. substandard environments are relatively easy to identify based on the presence of factors that clearly undermine, if not threaten, children’s development. adequate parenting, although less well defined, was once centered on caregiving that was neither overtly problematic nor provided by someone with a clear psychiatric illness—rather low standards (winnicott, 1957). more recent variations have raised the bar, including components like clear limits, unconditional love, and secure base provision (hoghughi & speight, 1998), and sometimes caregivers with a background in child development, good mental health, and a commitment to parenting (mrazek, 2013). child wellbeing might have a higher bar yet. moving the goal of child wellbeing toward developmental optimization has promise for improving the lives of children (amerijckx & humblet, 2014). whereas a focus on eliminating serious compromises to development such as abuse, neglect, and poverty is critical, true wellbeing refers not just to the eradication of threats to physical and psychological health, but to practices and developmental contexts that allow children to flourish, reach their full potential, and engage with others in flexible and imaginative ways. as such, wellbeing will be fostered not just within the individual, but within the family and community as well. the research reviewed above suggests that closer adherence to edn practices might provide a context that will facilitate the development of the psychological and physiological systems that maximize child wellbeing. of course, our work has limitations; for example, it is limited to early childhood, largely crosssectional, a lot of it relies on maternal or retrospective reports, and it primarily focuses on samples from the us. these issues could be usefully addressed in future research. in particular, the relationship between edn-consistent care and cultural variations in parenting needs further exploration. although our research has examined edn-consistent care primarily within the context of the mother-child dyad, our findings have implications for the care of young children generally. in a world where many parents work outside the home, stellar child care becomes a critical component of wellbeing. as such, child care and early education programs might be evaluated based on the extent to which they adhere to edn-consistent care. such a process was undertaken by kurth and narvaez (2018), who evaluated and compared different approaches to early child care predominant in the usa in order to assess their provision of edn-consistent care. the approaches included (1) developmentally appropriate practice (national association for the education of young children, 2009); (2) the child wellbeing framework (mcmullen & mccormick, 2016); (3) resources for infant educarers (rie; gerber, 1998, with additional material beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 72 cited from carlisle solomon 2013; lansbury 2014); (4) montessori (montessori, 1966); and (5) reggio emilia (edwards, gandini, & forman 2012). each program was assessed according to how much they supported aspects of the edn: breastfeeding, responsiveness, positive touch, multiple familiar adult caregivers and free play. they were also compared on the extent to which they emphasized a positive climate, provided social and emotional support, and fostered selfregulation, sympathy, and compassion. although all approaches emphasized child wellbeing in their own ways, reggio emilia was the most comprehensive in providing edn-consistent care, followed by rie and montessori. these variations suggest that further investigation into the developmental trajectories of children whose experiences both in and outside the home might illuminate the significance of edn-consistent care to children’s outcomes, particularly those related to socioemotional development and sociomoral orientation. preliminary evidence also suggests that early edn-consistent care might support healthy psychological and moral functioning in adolescence and adulthood. for example, a few adult studies of retrospective reports of edn-related childhood experiences have found correlations with adult mental health and morality (narvaez, 2018; narvaez et al., 2016). although again, an absence of psychopathology is not equivalent with wellbeing, the connections found are in the right direction, and the tie between edn-consistent care and adult morality supports the idea that early experiences coordinate health, sociomoral engagement, and the formation of ideology, as has been suggested by others (e.g., tomkins, 1965). the physiological, emotional and behavioral regulation development that the edn supports might also contribute to the goal regulation that is evident in adolescent and adult moral flourishing (bundick, yeager, king, & damon, 2010). however, future work will need to consider the myriad developmental trajectories that lead from early childhood to adulthood; idiosyncratic variations within culture or as a function of disabilities might have implications for the role of edn-consistent care in moral development. conclusion amerijckx and humblet (2014) advocated a more positive, multi-dimensional approach to child wellbeing, a recommendation that we endeavor to follow in our work. as baumrind (1993) pointed out, the absence of disadvantage in a caregiving environment is not equivalent to a developmental context of thriving. the wellbeing of children might be supported by raising the standards to include and facilitate edn-consistent care. these practices seem to foster an engagement with others that might facilitate not just healthy interpersonal relations, but support for community. such a focus is the basis for a mature moral ideology centered on the public good. widespread education is needed to increase understanding of children’s basic needs and edn provision, as part of basic human rights. recently, advocates have been emphasizing the first 1000 days of life (from conception to the end of the second year) as the most important time period for establishing foundations and trajectories for good health and overall wellbeing (schwarzenberg, georgieff, & aap committee on nutrition, 2018). based on the research reviewed here, the 1000 days emphasis on nutrition is a good start, but addressing and fulfilling the edn might be central to promoting wellbeing in infants and young children. beyond resilience to thriving gleason & narvaez 73 authors tracy r. gleason wellesley college tgleason@wellesley.edu darcia narvaez university of notre dame publishing timeline received 14 may 2019 accepted 23 september 2019 published 26 september 2019 references amato, p. 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(2011). everyone playing in class: a group play provision for enhancing the emotional wellbeing of children in school. british journal of special education, 38(4), 178-190. white, m. a., & kern, m. l., (2018). positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 1-17. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i1.588 mathew alan white university of adelaide mathew.white@adelaide.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery mathew white · margaret l. kern abstract: over the past decade, positive education has emerged as a rapidly growing arm of positive psychology that has attracted both interest and critique. through a case study, we show that positive education can positively impact students, teachers, and others within the educational community, but success is not immediate nor imminent. we suggest that successful positive education programs blend evidence-based learning from the science of positive psychology, best practices in learning and teaching, whole school strategy, and evaluation, and consider pedagogy, philosophical assumptions, and the school’s culture. positive education must be studied, applied, and managed responsibly, as there is also potential that attempts are ineffective or do harm. finally, we consider implications for training, teaching, and professional practice. positive education has made significant progress, but future research and application will benefit from a unified theoretical framework that adequately incorporates educational knowledge and pedagogical practice. keywords: positive education, positive psychology, wellbeing science, professional practice, culture change, critical perspective 1. introduction over the past two decades, there has been exponential growth in the research and practice of positive psychology across a range of fields, including organizations, healthcare, and public policy, following the publication of seligman and csikszentmihalyi’s (2000) introduction to the field. the application to education – positive education – has attracted considerable attention from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. for example, a growing number of schools have adopted a scientific approach to wellbeing (mccallum & price, 2010; mccallum & price, 2012; mccallum & price, 2015; mccallum & price, 2017; rusk & waters, 2013; rusk & waters 2015; seligman, 2011; seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009; slemp et al., 2017; waters, 2011; white & murray, 2015; white et al., 2017;). training programs are available around the world. research, application, and advocacy is further supported through national and international organizations such as the international positive psychology association’s education division (www.ippanetwork.org/divisions/education), the positive education schools association (www.pesa.edu.au) and the international positive education network (www.ipen-network.com). while this growth is promising, it has also been met with various critiques, both within academia (e.g., ciarrochi, atkins, hayes, sahdra & parker, 2016; kristjánsson, 2012; suissa, 2008; white, 2016) and beyond. rhetoric can run ahead of the science, and the growing number of available programs, while providing important resources to schools, can also cause http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ https://www.ippanetwork.org/divisions/education https://www.pesa.edu.au/ http://www.ipen-network.com/ positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 confusion as to which ones should or should not be followed. from our experience, as schools juggle the many demands of curriculum, time, and resources, positive education is often conceived as a specific program which requires school leaders to choose between education for academic success or for wellbeing. as teachers, schools, and educational systems consider the ideas of positive education, it is essential to recognize the role of pedagogical practice. for example, critical interrogation is needed around: the cacophony of unaccredited wellbeing trainers and self-styled wellbeing centres, returns on time and investment, the choice of educational programs within the schools, and understanding the relationship between wellbeing and academic mastery. importantly, activity is not the same as impact. when done well, positive education has the potential to profoundly shape and impact the lives of future generations. but if pedagogy is ignored, then positive education will become yet another failed change initiative. we argue that the time has come for the discourse on the pedagogy of positive education to become more sophisticated, with emphasis on educating the whole person – learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery. in this article, we first briefly revisit what positive education is and why it matters. we present a case study showing the impact that it can have. we illustrate that a positive education program can be successful, but also bring numerous challenges. finally, we consider implications for training, teaching, and practice. 2. positive education positive education has been defined in various ways, but most definitions stem from the paper by seligman et al. (2009) which defined it as “education for both traditional skills and for happiness” (p. 293). the international positive education network (ipen, www.ipennetwork.com) suggests that positive education is a double helix with intertwined strands of equal importance – academics and character or wellbeing. based on a review of 150 journal articles, chapters, and books published over the past nine years, white and murray (2015) argued that positive education is an umbrella term that is used to describe empirically validated interventions and programs from positive psychology that have an impact on student wellbeing. at its core, positive education builds on the science of positive psychology, a perspective and approach that has existed across millennia, and represents philosophies, theories, research, and applications that are preventative and strengths based in nature, and aim to understand and cultivate optimal human function. what has taken positive psychology from the philosophical and theological domains to an established field is its emphasis on incorporating scientific approaches (ambler, anstey, mccall, & white, 2017; charry & kostis, 2017; kristjánsson, 2013; white et al., 2017). indeed, if positive education is to differentiate itself from other areas, it is essential that this empiricism is at the heart of research and practice, demonstrating substantial impact on student development. however, alongside empiricism, a clear valuing of the practical application by educators is needed. while definitions of positive education are appealing at a theoretical level, they leave little guidance for teacher practice. what are skills for happiness? what does it mean to have wellbeing and character intertwined with academics? if the scientific approaches of positive education are to be integrated, then complete integration of data with decision-making and professional practice is needed (hattie, 2016). http://www.ipen-network.com/ http://www.ipen-network.com/ positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 3. why positive education matters educators face numerous competing challenges, including: falling literacy and numeracy rates, absenteeism, school engagement and retention. why should schools make room for positive education? based on relevant literature over the past 10 years (e.g., boniwell, 2012; brunzell et al, 2015; brunzell, stokes & waters, 2016a; brunzell, stokes & waters, 2016b; brunzell, stokes & waters, 2018; david, boniwell, & ayers, 2013; furlong, gilman, & huebner, 2014; gilman, huebner, & furlong, 2008; noble, wyatt, mcgrath, roffey & rowling, 2008; roffey, 2012, 2016; slemp et al., 2017; waters, 2015; waters, 2017; waters et al., 2017; white, 2010, 2013; white et al., 2017), we suggest that there are six reasons for embedding positive education within educational systems: philosophical, psychological, social, cognitive, economic, and cultural. 3.1 philosophical wellbeing and virtue ethics have a rich philosophical history, grounded primarily in the aristotelian vision of eudemonia (arthur, kristjánsson, harrison, sanderse, & wright, 2016; carr, arthur, & kristjánsson, 2017; kristjánsson, 2007, 2015). as is commonly noted throughout the wellbeing literature, in the aristotelian perspective, wellbeing is understood as an outcome of a pathway towards a flourishing life. however, an often-overlooked element of aristotle’s writings is the pursuit of wellbeing not only for its own sake, but as a citizen of the “polis” or city-state of classical greece (nicomachean ethics, t. irwin, trans, 1985). hence, the inspiration of what it means to be a good citizen, live well within a community, develop good character and be free was strongly associated with the formation of the early city-states of ancient greece. aristotle’s understanding of citizenship has long influenced western democracy throughout the world, with the assumption that if we are to be fully human, we must be active citizens helping to create a flourishing state. thus, a focus on wellbeing is not only about how individual students feel, but also, as suggested by the positive youth development literature and character education (e.g., kern, park, peterson, & romer, 2017; white & murray, 2015), their journey towards becoming contributing members of society. 3.2 psychological high rates of mental illness and suicide in developed countries globally have raised awareness of the need to better understand and support student mental health (ipen, 2017). the world health organization (2017) indicates that mental illness is the greatest cause of disability for young people worldwide. by age 25, one in four young people will have experienced at least one occurrence of severe mental illness (slade, johnston, oakley browne, andrews, & whiteford, 2009; world health organization, 2017). suicide and accidents are the main causes of death for young people age 16 to 25. the australian institute of health and welfare (2011) reports that in an average year 12 classroom, one young person has attempted suicide, and an unknown number of others have thought about it. today’s five-year-old will emerge and graduate in 2030 -the same year that the world health organization predicts that depression will create the highest level of disability of any mental or physical disorder (world health organization, 2001). if such trends continue, many of the brightest and most innovative youth will not make it to adulthood or will enter adulthood crippled by chronic disorder. the earlier that a young person experiences mental illness, the greater the risk of extended disability, repeated incidences, and numerous negative life outcomes, including dropping out of school, unemployment, delinquency, poor social relationships, and physical and mental health problems (kessler & bromet, 2013). keyes (2014) argued, “it’s often said that the youth is positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 the nation’s future. if this is true, then there is too much mental illness to look forward to in the future.” schools act as a first line of defence against mental illness, with a capacity to prevent or lessen the impact of mental illness (kern, waters, adler, & white, 2015; white & kern, 2017). 3.3 social human beings have a deep-seated need to relate with others and feel a sense of belonging (e.g., allen & kern, 2017; baumeister & leary, 1995; deci & ryan, 2008; mcclelland, 1987; vallerand, 1997). systematic reviews identify that a sense of belonging strongly impacts academic, psychological, social, and behavioral outcomes (allen & kern, 2017, allen, kern, vellabrodrick, hattie, & waters, 2018). the presence or absence of and the quality of social relationships impact psychological and physical health, and length of life (tay, tan, diener, & gonzalez, 2012; taylor, 2011). relationships are also dynamic. they are influenced by the interrelationships of two or more individuals, including the qualities of each person, their commitment to the relationship, their communication styles, and each person’s needs, goals, standards, and expectations (finkel, simpson, & eastwick, 2017). any applications of happiness need to recognize how important social connection and prosocial behaviors are for wellbeing (helliwell & aknin, 2018). childhood and adolescence are primary periods when social connections beyond the family develop (allen & kern, 2017). peers and friendships are pivotal to how the individual thinks and feels about him or herself (quinn & oldmeadow, 2012). and teachers have considerable influence on the academic, social, and emotional outcomes of students under their care, for better or for worse (e.g., allen & kern, 2017; anderman, 2002; crouch, keys, & mcmahon, 2014; hattie, 2009; wang & eccles, 2012). over the past few decades, the socializing role of schools has become increasingly important, as modern society has become increasingly mobile, traditional family structures have shifted, and technology is changing communication patterns (hayes, weston, qu & gray, 2010). further, social skills form a core part of the most valued characteristics of the 21st-century workplace (foundation for young australians, 2016, 2017; hanover research, 2011). social and emotional learning programs that specifically target social skills can help young people understand and manage their emotions, develop positive relationships with others, make responsible decisions, and possibly perform better academically (durlak, weissberg, dymnicki, taylor, & schellinger, 2011). 3.4 cognitive one of the biggest challenges that schools are facing is how to engage students in their learning. school engagement has been defined in a myriad of ways, but generally includes behavioral, psychological, and cognitive aspects (appleton, christenson, & furlong, 2008). it includes feeling a part of the school, being interested in learning, paying attention, and participating in school activities, versus being bored, disinterested in learning, and uninvolved at school. disengaged students are at increased risk for skipping class, dropping out, and a variety of anti-social behaviors (e.g., cook, dodge, gifford, & schulting, 2017). in a review of studies considering the impact of positive psychology interventions in school, waters (2011) found that school engagement and retention can be enhanced through positive psychology interventions. for example, mindfulness interventions have been shown to increase attention, memory performance, and problem-solving in young adults, (creswall, 2017), and school-based interventions have demonstrated improvements in cognitive positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 performance, stress, resilience, and emotional problems (zenner, herrnleben-kurz, & walach, 2014). 3.5 economic the cost on national economies each year for mental illnesses is substantial (world health organization, 2017). an australian report estimated that the cost of australia’s mental illness is a$3.27 billion per year (degney et al., 2012). the annual cost of suicide for australia equates to a$17.5 billion. beyond direct costs, there is also the number of productive life years lost due to disability or early mortality. these significant figures illustrate the cost and the impact of youth mental health on national economies. preventative approaches often cost more up front but create substantial savings in the long term. if we can prevent even some youth from mental illness and save lives, then it means substantial economic benefits in the future. 3.6 cultural culture has been defined as the specific practices of a group or a particular orientation (e.g., individualism versus collectivism) for interpreting and making sense of experiences and situations (oyserman, 2017). culture is both stable and dynamic, as norms, values, traditions, and more are passed down through generations and evolve. through globalization, different cultures are increasingly being brought together, at times peaceably, at other times violently. schools have their own cultures, implicitly and explicitly establishing and reinforcing norms and expectations, and creating a lens for young people to understand and experience their world (hviid & villadsen, 2014). the design of the school, classroom environment, how teachers treat students, and the language used on campus impact how students think about themselves and how they interpret and make sense of their world (allen & kern, 2017). hattie (2016) identified the need to make schools an inviting learning environment as one of the core factors needed to reboot the australian education system. culture either naturally arises or is purposefully created (white & murray, 2015). positive education aims to explicitly and implicitly shift school cultures in ways that empower students to develop a positive lens for experiencing the world (white et al., 2017). 4. positive education in practice positive education can involve explicit teachings and lessons (i.e., a taught curriculum), and/or implicitly through aspects of the school culture (i.e., a caught curriculum). the taught curriculum involves the purposeful application of positive psychology within scheduled class time. this may entail a clear scope and sequence that is developmentally appropriate, lessons which are culturally sensitive, a dedicated team of teachers who can respond and adapt to student feedback, and a focus on long-term goals in the delivery of positive education lessons. this approach primarily takes the ideas and findings from positive psychology and blends them with practical curricula. there are a growing number of empirically informed and scientifically structured wellbeing programs that develop scope and sequence of skills to young people (e.g., boniwell & ryan, 2012; mcgrath & noble, 2011, seligman et al., 2009; see slemp et al., 2017 for a review). the caught curriculum reflects the overall culture, feeling, or tone of a school (white, 2016). it appears in the language used, how staff and students interact with one another, and implicit norms of the school. a benefit of the caught curriculum is that it interferes less with already established and crowded curricula (white, 2014, 2016; white & murray, 2015; white & waters, positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 2015a, 2015b). decision makers are already challenged to manage overcrowded curricula, with primary focus on numeracy and literacy. wellbeing is seen either as a marginalized topic or as a marketing tool, along with co-curricular “extras” for schools to differentiate themselves from competitors (hattie, 2016). incorporating positive education into the culture without specific lessons offers the possibility of emphasizing wellbeing without taking time away from learning. however, relegating positive education to the caught curriculum also risks further marginalizing wellbeing, as it is seen as an added extra, rather than being a core part of education. it is essential that there is not only a clear culture of wellbeing promoted within a school but also clear support for wellbeing within the classrooms themselves. while there are benefits and disadvantages to both approaches, we believe that the greatest benefit will arise from the combination of caught and taught approaches. still, studies are needed to determine the extent to which the taught versus the caught curriculum should be emphasized, and the extent to which this varies based on the existing needs and culture of the school. 5. evidence for positive education: a case study a growing number of schools around the world show early signs of having successfully implemented positive education. a review of schools and programs is beyond our scope here; instead, we focus on evidence and lessons learned from one school – st. peter’s college – adelaide, australia. st. peter's college is an all boys’ k-12 school in south australia. founded in 1847, it is one of the leading independent schools of australia. st. peter’s college has graduated three nobel laureates, ten australian premiers and 42 rhodes scholars. it has over 1,448 students, all boys, from 3-year-olds to 18-year-olds. it has a staff of 250 people, and its school’s vision is “to be a world-class school where all boys flourish” (st. peter’s college, 2015). our focus here is not on what the school has done, which has already been well documented (alford & white, 2015; kern, waters, white, & adler, 2014; kern, waters, adler, & white, 2015; mccall, waters, & white, 2015; waters, white, wang, & murray, 2015; white & murray, 2015; white, vrodos, & mcneil, 2015; white & waters, 2015a, 2015b; waters, white, & murray, 2012), but rather, on lessons learned through its challenges and successes. that is, our focus is on the impact of the introduction of wellbeing programs, rather than the activity of these programs. 5.1 incorporating positive education at st. peter's college adelaide a school's strategic plan sets measurable outcomes that determine the whole school structure, provide evidence for the success of efforts, and are reported to the school community. at st. peter's college, wellbeing was added to the school's strategic plan in 2011. the plan was further revised in 2016, resulting in four primary objectives: 1) to be a safe, inclusive, supportive, and respectful learning and working environment for all members of the school community. 2) to teach, build, and embed personal and competencies for wellbeing across the school. 3) to ensure all staff, regardless of whether they are teaching or support staff, embrace student wellbeing as essential to their role and responsibilities. 4) to advance st. peter's college as an international center of excellence for best practice and wellbeing by leading educational debate and sharing learning with others. positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 since 2011, staff have received training in resilience from the staff at the university of pennsylvania’s center for positive psychology, 12 staff members have graduated from the university of melbourne’s graduate school of education’s professional certificate in positive education, and one has graduated from the master of applied positive psychology program at the university of melbourne. aiming for a whole school approach to wellbeing, the focus on wellbeing has been gradually incorporated throughout the school’s ecosystem. the school has adopted very clear leadership and vision around wellbeing, in alignment with governance, strategy, and management. staff receive training and opportunities to develop their wellbeing. all students have now received multiple scientifically-informed programs, (i.e., the taught curriculum). wellbeing has been incorporated into sports, leadership, and co-curricular activities (i.e., the caught curriculum). the school is also committed to sharing knowledge with parents, the local community, educators, academics, and policy makers. 5.2 the impact of positive education on st. peter's college adelaide wellbeing assessment and program evaluation have occurred since 2011. the assessments suggest that students have benefitted from positive education, with at-risk students benefitting the most. wellbeing data has informed programming and has helped school teams to discuss the links between strength of character and academic mastery. the data provide early indications that the culture of the school is shifting. many students at the school perceived positive education as a beneficial addition to their schooling experience. we asked students a number of subjective questions about their experiences at school, including how their knowledge and understanding of the significance of wellbeing resilience has changed, and their understanding of the significance of their friends’ wellbeing and resilience. as seen in table 1 (below), in both 2014 and 2016, the majority of junior school students had a good understanding of the significance of the wellbeing and resilience for themselves and their friends, with over 90% reporting some understanding. by 2016, they perceived that positive education helped them to be a better student and to have better relationships with family and friends. senior school students perceived wellbeing and resilience as less significant and saw fewer links with positive education. still, over a quarter believed that positive education helped them in their academic, social, and family roles. one student noted: “although it may not have helped me personally i think that if people concentrated in class more of [sic] what is going on, they could benefit from it.” second, students at risk for lower academic, behavioral, and psychosocial outcomes have seemingly benefited from the focus on wellbeing. using wellbeing and academic data collected in 2011 and 2014, we compared high-performing students (i.e., a to a+ range) with lowerperforming students (b and c range), based on average grades. high-performing students were generally satisfied overall with life, reported feeling engaged with school and connected with peers, and saw themselves as being gritty, determined to achieve their goals, and high in perseverance. in contrast, lower-performing students felt less engaged and connected with school. notably, both the 2014 and 2016 surveys indicated that these lower-performing boys perceived that they benefitted and were learning more from the positive education programs than the high-performing students. third, the focus on wellbeing, combined with embedding wellbeing assessment, has helped inform programming and pastoral care. for example, in 2011, a merit system was introduced, which documents what students do well. these positive actions are communicated via an email positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 generated to the student, the parents, and the student’s mentor at the school. the school has seen an exponential rise in the number of merits received, as well as a steady decline in the number of behaviors and concerns from years 7 to 12 which have been reported by school staff. table 1. student subjective perspectives of positive education, 2014 and 2016 reports to what extent has positive education helped you… 2014 2016 junior school n = 209 senior school n = 506 junior school n = 161 senior school n = 773 somewhat very much somewhat very much somewhat very much somewhat very much understand the significance of wellbeing and resilience? 95% 64% 79% 46% 93% 71% 80% 44% understand the significance of your friends’ wellbeing and resilience? 93% 62% 83% 46% 95% 75% 83% 51% understand the significance of your strengths? 92% 60% 83% 50% 91% 73% 82% 47% understand the significance of your friends’ strengths? 93% 63% 81% 44% 90% 75% 83% 49% become a better student? 78% 48% 50% 21% 87% 57% 58% 26% have better relationships with your family? 73% 41% 47% 19% 83% 50% 56% 24% have better relationships with your friends? 73% 48% 48% 20% 87% 58% 58% 27% having the data on hand also stimulated conversations within school pastoral care teams, and between students and their mentors. programming was determined in part by the needs identified at different year levels. the data also made it clear that wellbeing and academic performance were not mutually exclusive. as shown in figure 1 (below), students who demonstrated high levels of perseverance, growth mindset, grit, and school engagement also performed better academically and were rated more positively by their teachers regarding cooperation, effort, and organization, with correlations being stronger over time. this does not imply that wellbeing causes good academic performance, but rather suggests that positive education may be simultaneously beneficial to wellbeing and academic performance. finally, there are early indications that the culture of the school has shifted. students were much more likely to report mental health difficulties in 2016 than in 2011. one student aptly noted: “this school has positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 changed significantly in the last 10-15 years due to this positive wellbeing program and it has created a more inclusive and richer culture at saints.” figure 1. correlations between wellbeing and academic performance, 2012-2014 engagement perseverance optimism connected happiness overall wellbeing cooperation 2012 ++ + + effort 2012 + organization 2012 + gpa 2012 + + cooperation 2013 + ++ + ++ ++ effort 2013 + ++ ++ ++ organization 2013 ++ + ++ ++ gpa 2013 ++ ++ + ++ cooperation 2014 + ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ effort 2014 ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ organization 2014 + ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ gpa 2014 ++ + = p < .05, ++ = p < .01 6. the challenge of applying positive psychology within education we suggested that philosophically, psychologically, socially, cognitively, economically, and culturally, a case can be made for positive education. successes at schools such as st. peter’s college provide early evidence that positive education can be beneficial. a growing number of reports from other schools similarly point to the potentials for positive education (e.g., adler, 2017; ipen, 2017; noble & mcgrath, 2015; norrish, 2015; white et al., 2017). however, the question remains as to the extent to which these programs integrate positive psychology with education, rather than simply imposing the ideas of positive psychology on schools. researchers in positive psychology have successfully developed a variety of interventions to help improve individual wellbeing, but applying simple interventions within the complexity of educational settings is a challenging task. some of the common misconceptions about change within education are that it is linear, constructive, and always a good thing (white, 2016). the reality is that change is often messy and disorganized, with growth in unexpected areas, and numerous unintentional consequences (kern, siokou, spong, & oades, 2017). the rapid growth of positive psychology and its applications in different fields is clearly evident (donaldson, dollwet, & rao, 2015; rusk & waters, 2013). however, we would suggest that decision-makers can learn from elmore (1996) and his work on the impact of innovation and change within education, and the impact on professional practice for teachers. elmore argued: the closer an innovation gets to the core of schooling, the less likely it is that it will influence teaching and learning on a large scale. the corollary of this positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 proposition, of course, is that innovations that are distant from the core will be more readily adopted on a large scale (p. 4). elmore’s learnings on the professional practice and innovation within education systems are a timely reminder for the exceptional exponential growth of positive education. the movement seems to have struck a chord for many teachers and professional educators, which suggests that innovation for wellbeing within schools lies deeply at the heart of what it actually means to learn and to teach (kristjánsson, 2012). nevertheless, when elmore’s rationale is applied, it is likely that, as the ideas of positive education are scaled, the more challenging it will become to successfully implement those ideas. to implement positive education successfully, there are numerous factors that schools must wrestle with and mitigate (white, 2016): 1) financial implications of incorporating positive education into the taught and caught curriculum. early investment is often needed, with the return on investment not apparent until years later. 2) making the case for all stakeholders that wellbeing is not a marginal topic when compared with other areas such as numeracy and literacy. 3) the tendency for education systems to be able to consider either-or thinking (i.e., it is either wellbeing or academics rather than wellbeing and academics). 4) the growth of maverick providers in the field, where individuals are setting up questionable programs and questionable training products with varied or no evidence whatsoever of long-term impacts. 5) the over-reliance on “science,” following the scientific method and a reductionist approach to research, and the under-reliance on philosophy and educational best practices. 6) traditional forms of governance that take place within many school systems and schools that are primarily focused on negative or deficit-based thinking. 7) rhetoric suggesting that positive education provides a silver bullet for the problems of education, which is disregarded when it indubitably is not. 8) substantial socioeconomic and cultural challenges between and within schools. decision makers are continually challenged to maintain financial sustainability and demonstrate returns on financial investments. in many instances, they are looking at shortterm measures such as high stakes testing and overlooking the long-term strategies needed to support optimal development. positive education is further challenged by over-reaching claims, which can be criticized as simply rebranding education to gain a competitive edge (hutchinson, 2017; kenway, 2013). when positive education is proposed to solve a myriad of challenges within education itself, including illiteracy, disengagement, and even mental illness, then the program is bound for failure. too often, the ideas and interventions of positive psychology sound as if they can be replicated immediately in other settings. wellbeing takes place within schools, classrooms, staff rooms, and within parent bodies, which are all impacted by specific cultural settings. based on our experience and understanding of both research and education, we suggest that if these different perspectives and stakeholders are ignored, then the introduction of wellbeing will be just another “fad,” or a slick marketing campaign for a school to adopt to reinvent itself, which will fail to stick amidst the reality of the pressures and challenges within a school. positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 7. implications for professional practice these challenges have several implications for professional training and teaching practice. with the development and exponential demand at the grassroots level within schools for wellbeingrelated learning, there is a need to upskill teachers, staff, and school leaders with not only understanding about and activities related to positive education, but also the reality of the challenges that exist. the rising rates of mental illness suggest that many teachers are now faced with not only being an educator, but also must deal with the psychosocial issues that students bring to the classroom. the implication is that pre-service teacher education and ongoing professional development for staff should equip educators with an accurate and timely understanding of what it means to manage both their own wellbeing and that of their students. a growing number of taught programs, such as bounceback! (mcgrath & noble, 2011), the penn resilience training (brunwasser, gillham & kim, 2009), kids matter (department of health, australian government, 2018), and happy classrooms (centre for education innovation, 2015) have been developed, which is an encouraging sign. but as the number of programs increases, it can be confusing as to which program(s) should be chosen. it is important that schools consider the fit of the program to their needs, making modifications when appropriate, while carefully documenting changes made and their impact of the program. clear attention should be paid to teacher practice, avoiding over-reliance on curriculum alone. while positive education can have benefits, it is not a silver bullet, and it is not a quick-fix solution. in addition, with the significant number of “maverick providers” (white, 2016), there is a need for some degree of caution, skepticism, and, potentially, regulation. professional leadership is responsible to make relevant decisions about how to operationalize wellbeing programs within a school, and how to select training opportunities that uphold scientific rigor. care needs to be taken in how the change process is introduced and managed within the school. leaders also need to take care of their wellbeing in order to adequately enable wellbeing in those they lead. in addition, school boards of directors need to be educated as to why wellbeing matters as an operational goal (white, 2014). we suggest that such bodies should hold schools accountable for supporting the wellbeing of all members of the educational community, and have the responsibility to support well-designed, evidencebased efforts within the school. the challenge of creating positive change should be acknowledged. while boards should require evidence for positive education efforts, this needs to be tempered by an acknowledgement that the greatest impacts of supporting positive education may not be seen for many years. finally, to move the field of positive education forward, we suggest that researchers and practitioners need to work closely together, considering how the concepts of positive psychology translate within the complexities of different school environments. this should be underpinned by robust measurement, which incorporates both quantitative and qualitative data to support program development and evaluation. 7. conclusion positive education has considerable potential, but must be studied, applied, and managed in a responsible manner. when successful, a growing body of literature suggests that positive education programs do have a positive impact on the way that many students know and understand themselves, their peers, and their families. evidence suggests that positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery white & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 students who are at risk learn and benefit from positive education. wellbeing data helps school teams conceptually link between wellbeing concepts and academic mastery, and can inform practice within the school. however, a unified theoretical framework of positive education is needed, which adequately brings together positive psychology with educational knowledge and pedagogical practice, acknowledges the challenges of change within the educational environment, and stresses the importance of evaluation. only then can the field adequately put forward positive education as the heart of a new approach to pedagogy (white et al., 2017). acknowledgments we dedicate this work to jennifer h. white (1938-2018) and ronald m. kern (1945-2015). authors mathew alan white university of adelaide mathew.white@adelaide.edu margaret l. kern university of melbourne publishing timeline received 11 january 2017 accepted 15 april 2018 published 13 july 2018 references adler, a. 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(2020). ‘find a sport and carry on’: posttraumatic growth and achievement in british paralympic athletes. international journal of wellbeing, 10(1), 67-92. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i1.765 hanna kampman university of east london h.m.k.kampman@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) 67 article ‘find a sport and carry on’: posttraumatic growth and achievement in british paralympic athletes hanna kampman · kate hefferon abstract: background: the negative aftermath of acquired disability has been studied rigorously. the research on achievement and success after an acquired disability is still in its infancy, and more research is needed on the positive psychological outcomes that may arise as a result of surviving and dealing with trauma. objective: this study aimed to provide an in-depth account of the experience of acquired disability, engagement in elite sport and posttraumatic growth in paralympic athletes. method: three self-selected athletes (two females, one male) from great britain's 2012 paralympic team were interviewed using semi-structured techniques. the interviews were recorded, and the data was transcribed. data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (ipa). results: the study identified that for these athletes, sport was a fundamental route to experiencing posttraumatic growth (ptg). sport was perceived to be a platform of recovery, camaraderie, achievements and the basis for a new identity as an athlete. furthermore, the team was seen as a resource, creating a safe environment in which to learn new skills, share practical ideas and promote a sense of equality. additionally, the role of the body in facilitating ptg was central to these individuals’ experiences. considerations of these findings as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. keywords: acquired disability, paralympic athlete, posttraumatic growth, sports, body introduction the aim of this study was to provide an in-depth account of the experience of engaging in elite sport after acquiring a physical impairment that led to disability. particularly, this study focused on exploring the experience of posttraumatic growth (ptg) in paralympic athletes who participated in what was the largest paralympic games in london 2012. this niche population of top-level athletes was recruited to elicit rich, meaningful data about these athletes’ lived experiences. alongside researching challenges, this study aimed to understand individuals who were reporting positive psychological and physical changes due to their experience of dealing with the aftermath of physical impairment. thus, interviewing elite athletes, who have competed at one of the most prestigious and respected competitions in their field, can bring valuable insight into the experience of ptg within the sporting context. this contribution to the area of sport and posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 68 positive psychology has implications for rehabilitation practices as well as the facilitation of peak performance in elite sports. furthermore, the study will bring much needed knowledge around the role of the body within ptg following acquired disabilities. literature review from a historical perspective, ‘disability has not been conceptualized within the context of strengths and positive attributes’ (wehmeyer, 2014, p. 3). more specifically, research on acquired disability has traditionally taken a pathological approach to examine the way it affects an individual, with depression cited as one of the most researched psychological states (elliott & kennedy, 2004; lucas, 2007a, 2007b). a severe injury, such as acquired disability, can be seen as a traumatic stressor, and can lead to significant disruption in one’s life and psychological wellbeing (desmond, coffey, gallagher, maclachlan, wegener and o’keeffe, 2012; vanlandewijck & thompson, 2011). subsequently, an individual must deal with changes in the functionality of their physical self, or even losing a body part(s), potentially leading to changes in one’s body and self-image (desmond et al., 2012; sparkes & smith, 2013). various other corporeal changes may also occur, such as losing physical comfort, changes in mobility, and lacking vitality. furthermore, the capability to carry out various activities might be challenged or become no longer possible (marini & stebnicki, 2012; vanlandewijck & thompson, 2011). in addition to these personal and physical changes, an individual’s social position may be challenged (wright, 1983), such that people with acquired disabilities may be ‘looked upon, identified, judged and represented primarily through their bodies, which are perceived in popular consciousness to be imperfect, incomplete and inadequate’ (hargreaves, 2001, p. 185). for this very reason, physical trauma can be distressing, as it challenges not only the person's perception of themselves but additionally how others perceive them (vanlandewijck & thompson, 2011; wright, 1983). indeed, charmaz (1995a) suggests that visible (physical) disability can produce a ‘master status’ and ‘master identity’ (p. 277) for the individual, overpowering every other status or identity that the person possesses (charmaz, 1995a; charmaz, 1995b). although the majority of the trauma research in this area has been devoted to understanding how one copes with the negative physical and psychological consequences of physical trauma (ivtzan, lomas, hefferon & worth, 2015; wehmeyer, 2014), recent research has started to look beyond coping and survival, to focus more on the positive outcomes that individuals may report after surviving a trauma (dunn, uswatte, elliot, lastres & beard, 2014; dunn, uswatte, & elliott, 2009; griffiths & kennedy, 2012; joseph, 2012; kampman, hefferon, wilson & beale, 2015; tedeschi & calhoun, 1996; 2004; tedeschi, park, & calhoun, 1998; tedeschi, shakespeare-finch, taku, & calhoun, 2018). broadly termed within the psychological literature as ‘adversarial growth’ (joseph & linley, 2004; ivtzan et al., 2015), arguably the most dominant construct studied within this literature is posttraumatic growth (ptg), which is defined as ‘the experience of positive change that the individual experiences as a result of the struggle with a traumatic event’ (calhoun & tedeschi, 2013, p. 6). posttraumatic growth is positioned as both a process and outcome, with differing perspectives regarding what types of changes these may be (e.g. from cognitive to behavioural) (tedeschi, shakespeare-finch, taku & calhoun, 2018; hobfoll, hall, canetti-nisim, galea, johnson & palmieri, 2007). the main model of ptg posits that growth typically manifests in five different domains: enhanced appreciation for life, increased posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 69 interpersonal relationships, feeling a sense of personal strength, finding new possibilities and spiritual/existential development (tedeschi, cann, taku, senol-durak, & calhoun, 2017). overall, the experience of ptg is personal and while some individuals may experience it across one or all five domains, others might not experience ptg at all (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996; tedeschi & calhoun, 2004; tedeschi et al., 1998). additionally, ptg can often co-exist with distress and is not a signifier that one is necessarily "happy". over the past decade, the research area into ptg has grown, and work continues to explore the intricacies, caveats and contradictions regarding this construct (please see ivtzan et al., 2015; jayawickreme & blackie, 2014). one topic area that has been argued to have received limited attention within the main theories and models of ptg is that of corporeality; the role of the body as both part of the process and as a ptg outcome (hefferon, grealy & mutrie, 2008; 2009; 2010; hefferon, 2012; 2013). building on earlier philosophical work of merleau-ponty (2003), frank (1995/2013) and leder (1990), and deriving from qualitative work with illness populations (hefferon et al., 2008; 2009; 2010), hefferon (2012; 2013) proposed that the body was an integral part of the ptg process within traumas where the body has been threatened, damaged or altered (hefferon, 2009; 2010). extending this into acquired disability, kampman, hefferon, wilson and beale (2015) found that the post-traumatic growth experiences of people who had been severely injured had trauma-specific elements as well as unique corporeal features due to the ‘direct and substantial impact on the body' (p.292). the proposition that different trauma types and contexts may result in different ptg processes aligns with current researchers who are exploring the nuances that trauma dynamics can influence on the ptg journey (shakespeare-finch & armstrong, 2010; karanci, et al., 2012; kira, aboumediene, ashby, odenat, mohanesh & alamia, 2013; kılıç, magruder & koryürek, 2016; shuwiekh, kira & ashby, 2018; chopko, palmieri & adams, 2018; wu, kaminga, dai, deng, wang, pan & liu, 2019). thus, the working theory of corporeal ptg (c-ptg) (hefferon, 2012) posits that physical trauma, where the body is permanently affected, either by an internal or external transgressor, can lead to a heightened corporeal awareness, bringing attention to the corporeal self. indeed, the body is a known reminder of our mortality (e.g. mortality salient environment; grabe, cook, routledge, anderson & arndt, 2005; goldenberg et al., 2001; cordova, 2008) and thus engaging with this enhanced corporeal existential awareness can prompt an individual to renegotiate this new corporeal bodyself relationship. this new relationship with the body may also lead to examples of actionfocused growth (hobfall et al., 2007) via positive changes in health behaviours such as self-care activities (e.g. listen to the body; be kinder to the body) and the uptake of physical activity and sport. recent research has offered preliminary supportive evidence for the working theory of cptg within breast cancer survivors (gorven & du plessis, 2018) and extended current ptg measurement tools for the inclusion of more corporeal elements of the ptg process (physical ptg scale; walsh, groarke, morrison, durkan, rogers & sullivan, 2018; walsh, morrison, conway, rogers, sullivan & groarke, 2018). to date, the role of the body in the ptg process and as outcome has focused primarily within illness populations and has not yet been explored within acquired disability. adapted sport and society the body especially the sporting body is indeed central to the study of paralympians. depauw (1997) stated that ‘it is important to understand our attitudes towards the body and our view of the body because this view will define how we view disability and posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 70 people with disabilities’ (p.420). individuals with impairments are often defined within the medical model of disability, where the ‘issue’ of impairment or disability is located ‘within the individual’ (oliver 1996, as cited in hargreaves, 2001, p.178). this implies that problems, whether psychological or functional, arise from the impairment itself. this view is challenged by the social model of disability which argues that these problems are located within society (hargreaves, 2001; howe, 2011), arguing that it is society that fails to support the needs of individuals with impairments or disabilities. this model shifts the thinking away from the idea that something is wrong with one’s body and asks the question ‘what is wrong with society’? and aims to tackle ‘disabling social, environmental and attitudinal barriers’ (hargreaves, 2001, p.179). adapted sport can be one example of this, where the disabling social, environmental and attitudinal barriers are partly removed to enable a level playing field and access to participation (howe, 2011). however, this environment is not without its problems (caddick & smith, 2014) and the issues of classification based on the level of impairment rather than functionality are currently debated1. the original idea of the international paralympic movement was to promote social reintegration (brittain, 2010). the term ‘paralympic' is often incorrectly thought to refer to paraplegia. however, it refers to greek preposition ‘para', meaning ‘next to' or ‘parallel to' olympic games (brittain, 2010). today, the paralympic games are the second largest sporting event in the world after the olympics, and adapted sports, in general, are gaining political attention and receiving more recognition from the media (brittain, 2010; vanlandewijck & thompson, 2011). for example, the invictus games, which is a multisport event for veterans and service members who have endured illnesses and injuries, was given 12 hours of coverage by bbc in the uk, suggesting that the interest for these events is on the rise (shirazipour, meehan & latimer-cheung, 2017). furthermore, there are several additional national and international competitions such as disability world cups and championships, special olympic world games, deaflympics, ibsa world championship and games, parapan american games, asian para game and paralympic world cup (disability sport, 2014), evidencing the significant need and opportunity to understand the role of elite sports in these athletes’ lives. physical activity, psychological wellbeing and growth in general, the evidence supporting the positive association between physical activity and psychological well-being is growing (acevedo, 2012; biddle, mutrie & gorely, 2015; fox, biddle, & boutcher, 2001; taylor et al., 2004; wankel & berger, 1990; faulkner, hefferon & mutrie, 2015). although physical activity is not currently mentioned in any of the main academic models of wellbeing (please see lambert, d'cruz, schlatter & barron, 2016 for review), decades of research has consistently shown that participating in physical activity has been associated among the general population with improved 1 these discussions are beyond the scope of this paper, however, it is important to note in order to keep a critical eye towards sport participation overall (caddick & smith, 2014). posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 71 mood, reduction of stress levels, as well as improved positive self-concept, and these benefits might even be higher in clinical populations (penedo & dahn, 2005; wankel & berger, 1990; biddle, mutrie & gorely, 2015). there is further evidence that exercise can enhance body image, self-confidence and self-efficacy as well as overall psychological well-being (alleva, martijn, van breukelen, jansen, & karos, 2015; menzel & levine, 2011; martin ginis, bassett-gunter, & conlin, 2012; ryff & keyes, 1995). conversely, inactivity is strongly correlated with psychological issues such as stress, anxiety and depression (faulkner & taylor, 2005; lambert et al., 2016). furthermore, engaging in physical activity has been linked to the facilitation and as an outcome of posttraumatic growth for those that have experienced physical trauma (sabiston, mcdonough & crocker, 2007; hefferon et al., 2008; 2009; 2010; hefferon, 2012; 2018a; kampman et al., 2015; crawford, gayman & tracey, 2014; day, 2013; day & wadey, 2016). more specifically, day (2013) found that sport helped athletes to recognise possibilities in their lives, accept limitations and noted heightened sense of responsibility around their choices in life as well as higher levels of meaning. crawford et al. (2014) also interviewed athletes who had acquired spinal cord injury (sci). in this population, sport was reported as an essential part to process their injury and identity. athletes conveyed appreciating life more as well as gaining clarity and perspective. they also reported not taking things for granted anymore. other benefits included: finding new skills, increased problem-solving skills and mental toughness as well as being less judgemental. additionally, day and wadey (2016) found that according to the two male athletes interviewed, high levels of sport provided mastery experiences, enhanced relationships, enhanced corporeal understanding and improved life philosophies. more recently, hammer and colleagues (2019) interviewed 14 purposefully sampled triathlon athletes reporting ptg and found that sport provided meaningful social benefits and a sense of community. specifically, through sports, individuals gained friendships, opportunities to learn from others, a sense of empowerment and control as well as competence (hammer, podlog, wadey, galli, forber-pratt, newton, hall & greviskes, 2019). due to the potential that sport and exercise appear to have in facilitating psychological growth following adversity and trauma, this study aimed to investigate the experience of posttraumatic growth and the transition from amateur to elite level athletics, following acquired disability, offering unique insight into how acquired disability led to engagement and training in elite sports and eventually the 2012 paralympics in london. the study also aimed to understand the role of societal influences on the growth process and identity as an elite athlete. furthermore, the study aims to give voice to an underrepresented participant pool, a unique set of elite athletes at the very highest level of the adapted sports participation, who have not been adequately represented in the posttraumatic growth research thus far. finally, as researchers have also called for more embodied approaches to understanding growth following adversity within the context of sport (day & wadey, 2017) this study aimed to understand of the role of the body in posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 72 the process and as an outcome of ptg, following acquired disability as this topic has primarily been explored within illness populations. methods methodological paradigm to date, there has been a dearth of qualitative research within posttraumatic growth and positive psychological inquiry (hefferon, ashfield, synard & waters, 2017; hefferon, 2018b; tedeschi et al., 2018). this study thus aimed to explore the topic of posttraumatic growth, within british paralympic athletes, beyond the quantitative designs typically employed by the research area. more specifically, interpretative phenomenological analysis (ipa) was chosen as its in-depth exploratory nature enables researchers the ability to study meaning in individual’s experience, particularly meaning of injury (or illness) in one’s life (reid, flowers, & larkin, 2005; smith, larkin, & flowers, 2009; smith, 2017). ipa is typically used when the participant pool is very niche and hard to reach, due to access issues as well as restricted inclusion criteria. furthermore, ipa was deemed an appropriate approach for this particular study as its theoretical origins are in phenomenological philosophy thus respecting the role of the body in perception and human experience (carman, 2000; smith et al., 2009). for example, merleau-ponty (2003) claimed that people know the world through their bodies, such that consciousness and the perceiving body are intertwined, not separate entities (carman, 2000). in this specific study, the body is central to these individuals’ stories, and thus ipa was an ideal methodology to study the meaning of the body in the experiences of these individuals. participants the study inclusion criteria stipulated that athletes must have experienced previous trauma with severe physical injury or illness after birth and participated in the 2012 paralympics in london. the participants were three paralympic athletes (two females and one male) who had self-identified as having experienced posttraumatic growth. all had been involved with team sports for 2-3 years, were under 35 years old and single at the time of the interviews. disability levels varied from below-knee amputations to severe injury to a limb. these injuries had happened 4-7 years prior to the interviews. the inclusion criteria stipulated that time since their injury had to be more than 1 year when participating in the study. due to ipa’s in-depth exploratory nature, three to six participants has been deemed an optimal range to perform an ipa analysis of the participants’ experiences (smith et al. 2009). the use of a small sample of three participants is valid in this study for several reasons. first of all, the number adheres to the methodology’s underlying philosophical assumptions of idiography; utilising a small, homogeneous sample to produce rich, meaningful data about a persons lived experience (smith, 2017). these small, idiographic sample sizes are argued to contribute to research in several ways: to investigate areas of research that have not yet been explored; to access difficult to reach participants whose posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 73 voices have not yet been represented in the literature and to compare and contrast these samples experiences in light of the existing research (smith et al., 2009). larger samples would essentially violate the philosophical assumptions that underpin ipa and arguably lower the quality and impact of the data produced (smith, 2011). ipa advocates quality not quantity, with preferences for usage within case studies (n=1) (for papers with similar sample sizes, please see eatough & smith, 2006; bramley & eatough, 2005; nizza, smith & kirkham, 2018; hartie & smith, 2016; perridge, hefferon, lomas & ivtzan, 2017). although published pieces tend range from single case studies to larger samples (>10) (see smith, 2011 for a review of quality in published ipa studies), utilising a number of 3-6 should provide ‘meaningful points of similarity and differences between participants but not so many that one is in danger of being overwhelmed by the amount of data generated’ (smith et al., 2009, p.51). in addition, the larger the sample, the less detailed one can be in the analyses, with smaller samples producing a more detailed individual case analyses and then group analyses, privileging the individual throughout. following on from this, writing up an ipa piece presents issues when employing larger sample sizes as individual voices can get lost from the results due to too many participants and not enough space to do the data justice (smith, 2011). finally, the data produced can arguably offer ‘theoretical transferability’ which argues that, ‘the specifics are unique, but they are hung on what is shared and communal’ (smith et al., 2009, p. 38). in sum, ipa, and its idiographic approach, can offer positive psychologists the opportunity to explore the phenomena that we are interested in at a very intricate and in-depth level (smith, 2017). procedure ethical approval was granted from the university of east london. additionally, the paralympic team’s psychologist reviewed the research proposal and granted approval to proceed. the invitation and information sheet were sent to potential participants via the help of the development officer in england in the participants’ respective sports. three athletes agreed to be interviewed and met in a public place to conduct the interviews. athletes were asked to read the information sheet and sign the consent forms which described the purpose of this research, individuals right to withdraw from the study at any time, and further information regarding the data handling after the interviews. the participants took part in one semi-structured interview, which used open-ended questions that were designed to bring further understanding to the research question while allowing the participants to take the interview to the direction that was important and central to their experience. interviews lasted from 35 minutes to 65 minutes, after which participants were debriefed. data analysis the analysis was conducted using ipa to understand and make sense of the individual’s subjective experience. ipa is an interpretative approach; thus, the interviews were conducted, transcribed and analysed by the 1st author to ensure in-depth examination and understanding of each participant's experiences. the process of ipa asks the posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 74 researcher to transcribe, read and re-read the transcription after which the initial exploratory coding is performed. the researcher noted descriptive, linguistic and conceptual elements within the transcripts. once this had been completed, the researcher started to look for emergent themes. themes were then grouped and searched for connections between the themes. this rigorous process was repeated with all the transcriptions after which the researcher started to search for connections between the themes across the participants to form master themes that describe these individuals’ experiences most. to ensure validity and rigour within the analytic process, the 1st author engaged in regular discussions with the second author (an expert in both ipa and ptg) regarding theme development.2 results and discussion three master themes emerged from the analysis all with several subthemes that yielded the experience of ptg and were voiced among all the participants (see table 1). however, this experience was a journey where distress and posttraumatic growth coexisted. in addition to the original trauma, it was the dealing with the aftermath of the trauma that was perceived to promote ptg. the three main themes included: 1) seeing opportunities instead of disabilities, 2) sport was, sport is & sport will be, and 3) the journey of the wounded body (see table 1). these themes will be discussed in the following section and connected to extracts from the transcripts. overall, the analysis revealed a raw description of the lives of these individuals, without hiding the apparent obstacles that came with the acquired disability, whilst also showing the nature of thriving with an acquired disability. table 1. master themes and subordinate themes and prevalence master themes subordinate themes prevalence 1. seeing opportunities instead of disabilities 1.1 merging the old life into the new one 3/3 1.2 trauma and amputation enabling opportunities 2/3 1.3 paralympics 2012 changing the attitudes 3/3 2. sport was, sport is & sport will be 2.1 "i am an athlete" 3/3 2.2 team as a resource 3/3 2.3 being equal ~ feeling equal 2/3 3. the journey of the wounded body 3.1 frustration towards the new body, missing the old body 3/3 3.2 rediscovering the body 3/3 3.3 appreciating the new body 3/3 2 please see ‘assessing validity’ section within the conclusion for further elaboration on how quality was adhered to throughout the study. posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 75 1. seeing opportunities instead of disabilities among all the participants, it was clear that their disability was just one aspect of their life, and did not define their life altogether. in general, there was a very strong experience among the participants to ‘get on with things’ after the acquired disability. all of the athletes pointed out several positive aspects in their life that they believed would not have happened if the trauma had not occurred, such as new opportunities relating to disability, appreciating life more, becoming an athlete and participating in the paralympics. these are all well-documented aspects of ptg in the literature (joseph, 2012; tedeschi & calhoun, 2004; tedeschi et al., 1998). 1.1 merging the old life into the new one all of the participants here had to give up some aspects of their lives due to the trauma, and some had to change the direction of their life altogether (e.g. losing a job, hobby). nevertheless, all of them found ways to incorporate their old life in some way into the new one; and often it was through sports. here anthony describes how he wanted to do something familiar from his life before the accident: “i did a lot of sport before. i just wanted to do sports again, so it’s just a sort of return... not returning to what i used to do, but doing the same sort of thing, so it’s like carrying on you know in the same sort of thing.” (anthony) and again, to further emphasise this, anthony says: “yeah, i think it was just because i’ve always done it. you know, since i was a kid i always played sports you know football, swimming, rugby. when i was a kid. as i got older all i did was play rugby and ever since i can remember it was you know training two or three times a week, going to the gym you know, playing on a weekend and i’ve always done it. i just wanted to do that again, so just you know, get back to training doing something just because i've done it before. i don't think it necessarily was important what sport it was it was just-just the fact that i've done it before and i wanted to do –do it again.” (anthony) anthony’s reasoning for doing sports again implies that it was important for him to find and do something familiar amongst all the changes. he seems to be illustrating the significance of sports in his life by saying that it was ‘all he did’. this strong description illuminates the role that sports appear to have in his life, giving the sense that without sports there would be nothing left to do; ‘all would be gone’. merging the old life into the new one through searching for new opportunities was an essential aspect of the ptg journey for these individuals. similar findings have been reported in other qualitative studies as well as the positive psychological outcomes that can emerge by the continuation of pursuing one’s goals and values despite the effects of the injury (dunn et al., 2009; griffiths & kennedy, 2012). these finding also support the posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 76 previous finding from day (2013) where sport helped athletes with disabilities to connect their pre-trauma life to the existing one, thus creating meaning. furthermore, crawford et al. (2014) found that having goals in sport connected to motivation and were a source of self-confidence for athletes with spinal cord injury. 1.2 trauma and amputation enabling possibilities despite also describing some of the negative life-altering repercussions of their acquired disability, all of the athletes addressed different positive opportunities that they perceived as directly resulting from their experience with trauma, thus further showing the presence of ptg in these athletes’ lives. “i think i’ve never would have had this opportunity, i never would have been competing at this level, had i not had the accident and that’s something that really opened things up for me and like gave me a lot of opportunities [um] yeah. there are lots of things i’ve been able to do because of the accident, that i would have not been able to do yeah, it kind of opened doors in that respect.” (becky) “if it hadn’t happened, i wouldn’t get to go to the paralympics -i got to do do a lot of things since i lost my [appendages], that i would have not been able to do before, but at the same time you know, there are things that i used to do before that i would love to do again.”(anthony) becky perceives that she is competing at such a high level because of her accident. she keeps mentioning the actual event – the accident itself – as the reason, indicating that it was the disability resulting from the accident that produced these particular opportunities. similarly, anthony echoes this connection, such that he perceived that losing the [appendages] (e.g. amputation) enabled the new opportunities in his life. thus, these participants’ narrative emphasis on the actual impairment as the catalyst for the positive change is at odds with the general ptg position that ptg stems as a result of the struggle and not the event itself (tedeschi et al., 2018). furthermore, the participants accounts seem to place the body, at the centre of their experience, making the body a key element in facilitating their ptg. finally, even though these athletes were athletic prior to their impairment, they all stated that they became more focused and sports-oriented after the trauma. this demonstrates corporeal-based action-focused growth in the behavioural achievement of moving from amateur to elite sporting positions as well as increased prioritisation on positive health behaviour changes (physical activity) (hobfall et al., 2007). taking a behavioural perspective of ptg has been cited as a way of adding to our understanding of the ptg field and can ‘add validity’ to the research area (tedeschi et al., 2018; shakespeare-finch & barrington, 2012, p. 433). additionally, among these athletes, there seemed to be new awareness and appreciation of the sport in their lives as becky describes below: posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 77 "getting to compete at the paralympic level is something that (um) i mean i was very athletic as a youngster, but i wasn't driven into one specific particular sport. it's like when i was sixteen, seventeen i played so many sports. i wasn't brilliant at one, i was just very good at a lot, so like i wasn't driven to go to like olympics do you know what i mean whereas the paralympics, getting into [her sport] i loved that sport and it is a sport that i can do, so i had a drive for that one sport that i could do and i never would have gone – i was always very sporty – but i think i would have not gone down that path of sport as in that big of a deal in my life, i mean i would have not been a professional sports player or anything like that.” (becky) thus, in this specific population, the positive change following adversity is deemed to be achieving elite levels of athletic ability and high competition levelsuch that they are surpassing previous levels of sports functioning by competing at the paralympic games. they attribute their trauma and the subsequent struggle as the catalyst for pushing them to become even better athletes than they were before the traumatic event occurred (calhoun, tedeschi, cann & hanks, 2010). 1.3 the paralympics 2012changing attitudes acquired disability as a trauma signifies a massive change in a person’s social position; identity as a social phenomenon becomes apparent as ‘individuals are perceived by themselves and others as different’ (hogan, 1999, p. 80). these three athletes noticed an attitude change in the paralympics 2012 as if the world had become more accepting towards disability sports. there was a sense of the games being parallel to the olympics, being respected as athletes, and in some ways treated as superior because they had to overcome tremendous obstacles and they still competed at such a high level. for these athletes, the event itself was at the centre of their experience of ptg: “i think the thing that always stuck with me, was just the general public, how much they got into it -they were just so into the paralympic games. i don’t know if that was the ticketing and people could afford to go to the paralympic games, so that was their chosen thing to do or…[stops the sentence] – i don’t know if it was the advertising or ticketing or what made that happen, but it’s, you think like you think back to beijing, and they were shipping schools in to try to make it look busy on tv and yet we were selling out every day. it’s [laughs] it’s, something has changed somewhere, it's either the british concept of disabled sports or the world is changed, and it's more accepting now.” (caroline) although caroline questioned the reasons behind people’s attendance and the sold out stadiums, there is hope at the end of her sentence that the world is more accepting, which reveals the perceived need for the change. similarly, becky also felt supported at the paralympics 2012 and furthermore, noted its possible superior nature compared to olympics. she seems to express a sense of pride in being a paralympian: posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 78 “it was quite a unique experience and i am really glad that the paralympics got as much support this time around as the olympics ‘cause i don’t think in the years before it has had the same support, but i think this time it really kind of actually the paralympics sport is just as amazing if not better than the olympic sport because of what people have gone through like accident’s or born with disabilities and they are still competing at a high level.” (becky) and later… "i felt really lifted by the crowd [um] and like yeah it really, really amazed me just like seeing the whole the you know the uk coming to support (um) athletes, and that's the important stuff, they didn't come to support disabled athletes they came to support athletes, and when you were there you didn't feel disabled - nobody was disabled, everybody was just so that you needed to compete in your sport, and when you are [competing], that disability isn’t there the same way when you’re off doing normal day things (um) yeah it was just incredible.” (becky) becky exhibited tremendous joy that the paralympics were supported as much as the olympics this time, for her it seemed to be vital that they were seen as athletes rather than disabled athletes. this uncovers the desire to be considered as a person first, rather than through the overpowering identity of ‘disabled’. furthermore, the experience of being admired and respected was an important experience for these athletes. this is a novel finding, as previous paralympics had not been as successful as the london 2012, where many events were oversubscribed for the first time in paralympic history (william, 2011). the olympic games has always been more popular in various ways (money, audience, tv coverage, et cetera), however, for the first time in 2012, the paralympics received an audience attendance close to olympics. thus, the attitude change that these athletes sensed could reflect a more significant shift in society, a step forward for social equality (depauw, 1997). 2. the sport was, sport is & sport will be all of the participants perceived that sport had always been an integral part of their lives and it was clear it would always be. sport appeared to be the overarching aspect in these athletes' lives; reaching from life before the trauma to life as it was now and all the way to future goals. sport was the platform of recovery, camaraderie, achievements and the base for their new identity as an athlete, bringing a sense of transcendence and equality into their lives; in sum, sport was an essential element of their experience and journey of ptg. 2.1 i am an athlete visible (physical) disability tends to produce an overpowering ‘disabled identity' for the individual, shadowing other roles and identities that the person possesses (charmaz, posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 79 1995a;b). however, sport provided another identity for these individualsthat of an athlete. for these three, it was clear that the acquired disability was not the sole reason for their career and success in sports and should not be considered so. their identity as athletes was related to the way they approached the job as individuals and athletes. “it’s not you don’t sit there and worry about it [disability] and think you know every time you achieve something it’s you know related to your disability or anything it’s just you know you just want to be considered ‘cause you’re an athlete – you know your disability has got you into the sport that you do but after that it’s – it’s not you know it’s inconsequential it doesn’t matter to the end goal or to the position you know, that you’re in and in the sport that you are in the paralympics and all that.” (anthony) anthony appears to describe frustration towards the disability status following him everywhere. he wants to be considered as an athlete, which reveals that the role of being disabled often overpowers other roles. he appears to want people to understand that being an athlete at this level takes more than a disability. however, he does seem to perceive benefitting mentally from dealing with the aftermath of the trauma of acquired disability and found it helpful in sports: “i think from the sporting point of view as well ‘cause a lot disabled athletes have done you know – you know done stuff like you know had to learn to walk again or faced a lot of random challenges and stuff and you’re quite strong mentally - you can deal with you know setbacks and defeats and all that sort of thing i think a lot easier.” (anthony) and further… yeah, i definitely think there is a mental toughness that comes with it you know the side of disability that doesn’t get appreciated outside of sports.” (anthony) anthony's description gives a unique insight into positive consequences perceived as resulting from trauma. the feelings of pressure and disappointment are part of sports participation. thus, learning effective coping skills for athletes is vital (weinberg & gould, 2011). mental toughness, according to loehr (1995), is ‘the ability to consistently perform towards the upper range of your talent and skills regardless of competitive circumstances’ (p.5). this skill is considered desirable in a sporting environment, and has only recently been explored within the paralympic athletics setting (powell & myers, 2017). in the first exploratory qualitative design to explore the conceptualisation and development of mental toughness in paralympians, powells and myers (2017) found that experiencing physical and mental challenges can help ‘adaptive development of personal characteristics’ (p.15), and argued that more was needed to explore this construct, especially within acquired disability. from the data presented here, it appeared that the athletes perceived gaining mental toughness through their traumatic posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 80 experience, which may have created an advantage from going through something that is generally considered solely a negative experience. the development of positive change attributed to the struggle of impairment is more in line with ptg theory (tedeschi et al., 2018) and develops the narrative discussed in theme 1.2. 2.2 the team as a resource team sport was an essential part of the athletes’ life. the team appeared to create surroundings that enabled these individuals to be their authentic selves. there was a strong sense of omnipresent humour that was an integral part of the team culture, and it almost appeared as a unique language that was a privilege of the insiders. furthermore, similarities between previous experiences seemed to create a unique platform for cohesiveness; as a team, they were almost an extended family, a unit that offered anything from support to sharing practical ideas related to the injury. becky reflects here: “there is that kind of, you know, it’s ok to laugh if that kind of thing happens [if somebody falls] every now and again and like just kind of make a joke about it and it’s ok within that kind of safe environment. like you would be pretty pissed off if somebody on the street laughed at you [laughing] – the people [in the team] are not going to make you feel like an idiot for falling over or make you feel uncomfortable that you fall over sometimes and i mean that can be quite nice so you know it’s kind of ok to fall over, it’s ok that, you know, you need a bit help to get back [up] – it's that comradeship, and you're around it [the team] so much as well you've become like a second family, you just kind of all surround each other (um) and you know after a while it’s just easier to say things to people when you are around them all the time, yeah it just makes you feel more comfortable within yourself and we all do it for each other as well, just take the mickey out of each other.” (becky) and anthony also notes… “you know, ‘find a sport and carry on’; you know it’s great the fact that most – most of the guys here are amputees, everybody has been through the same things, so whether it’s you know, ‘why did you get that [fitting]?’, ‘what kind of [fitting] is that?’ to you know dealing with limb fittings and that sort of things, you know it’s quite good to chat to the people not so much for the support, but for like ideas and things, because somebody else has been through the same thing, it’s good in that way as well.” (anthony) this social support evident in the team culture was perceived to foster ptg for these athletes, and the literature supports this finding (tedeschi et al., 1998; hefferon et al., 2008; sabiston et al., 2007). additionally, for strong team cohesion, social support is vital (weinberg & gould, 2011). thus, athletes that have such a unique sameness of experiences could have significant advantages compared to teams where such a posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 81 connection is not readily evident. indeed a team has its distinctive features compared to other groups, one of them being its collective identity (weinberg & gould, 2011). as a team, athletes with disabilities already possess a common ground and similarity of experiences and thus elements of effective team climate, e.g. social support, proximity, distinctiveness, fairness and similarity (cartwright & zander, 1968; eys & kim, 2017; weinberg & gould, 2011). 2.3 being equal ~ feeling equal the sporting environment itself seemed to have another essential meaning for the athletes as they all voiced a sense of equality relating to sports. sport offered a setting where it was possible to compete at an equal level, thus the same set of skills were required from everybody whether you were non-disabled or had a disability. furthermore, the athletes described situations where the disability was considered beneficial while playing the game. here anthony describes the importance of an even match situation, where everybody has the same baseline for the game, same opportunities to win and lose: “i think it helps as well, the fact that you can’t use your [appendages], everybody is in the same boat. whether you’re missing one [appendage], two [appendage], or you still got both, you still got to move, you know, in a similar kind of way, so everybody is in the same boat, so it’s good in that way.” (anthony) he then continues to explain how the disability can be an advantage: “it’s still the same sort of skill set you’ll need, whether you are disabled or ablebodied. so anyway that’s quite helpful because like when we play, a lot of the time some of the guys that we play against, you know, have no disability, so we find that actually, in some positions, having no [appendages] actually helps -if you got any [appendages] they get in the way a bit, and it's hard to move -so it's strange like in some ways it's an advantage in our game, you know, in certain positions -it's quite a strange quite a strange thing you know in sport, that being more disabled is an advantage. it's quite good, quite helpful.” (anthony) anthony's description of the disability as an advantage illuminates this perspective of different abilities, showing that the non-norm can be superior. the idea of different abilities connects to a common issue with disability being based on the medical model where ability is defined in relation to the non-disabled norm (brittain, 2010; depauw & gavron, 1995). 3. the journey of the wounded body the acquired disability as an unexpected and permanent disability was an enormous trauma for these individuals and a disturbance of their body and self-image. these posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 82 athletes’ had to re-evaluate the role of the body in their identities. creating a new relationship with their body was a key facilitator of psychological well-being and positive identity, thus an essential route to growth. these athletes described in their interviews a journey of ptg through their bodies, however, this journey was not linear; it was more complex, and the memory of the old body cohabited the new, changed body, thus being a constant reminder of the fragility and vulnerability of the physical self and yet also a source of appreciation for it. 3.1 frustration towards the new body, missing the old body there was a common theme among the athletes where they described being frustrated towards their new, changed body and how it did not work as it used to. these frustrations related quite often to the physical skills they had before the impairment. however, now in this new physical existence, they were struggling with some of these skills, which used to feel effortless and automatic. caroline describes here a conflict between her mind and her body. the memory of the old body and how it used to work was lingering in her mind, almost not accepting that the body was not listening to her and doing what she knows it can do: “i was just so frustrated and angry with myself, that i just slowly turned away from sports. i kept it out of my life to keep the frustration and anger away -it was more knowing that you can do it, but physically not being able to do it, it’s the frustrating bit for me.” (caroline) the frustration frequently paired with memories of the body when it was at its best and even beyond, thus further contributing to the gap between old and new physical abilities, as becky portrays here: “‘cause i was kind of like, i liked running around and climbing trees and doing sports and stuff like that, so i was a very active child, so i fell out of trees and stuff all my own fault at the time and i like broke my arm and stuff like that, so i went through various injuries when i was growing up, and i didn't mind being injured, but i wanted to get back out and do things, and this is kind of like that now, i don’t mind that the injury happened so much, but now i am bothered about the fact that it is restricting me so much with things that i want to do.” (becky) here becky describes a ‘super body’ of sorts that was falling off trees and on the move every hour of every day. this strong description illustrates how she remembers the old body was effortless, strong and recovered from anything and she was almost frustrated that the body that she used to know was not healing as before. further, anthony notes: “well, i admit it’s quite frustrating anytime you try something new, that you can’t do it instantly, it’s a quite an annoying feeling … but i think you know... posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 83 the fact that you’re doing a sport, you know, not just because you want to –well you do want to – but you're doing a new sport because you can't do the old one and especially the fact that you got to think is quite frustrating.” (anthony) the frustration that anthony is describing illustrates how he had been accustomed to using his body without thinking, almost as the body used to be automatic, effortless, and this frustration has is a common account from athletes who have been injured (sparkes & smith, 2013). however, this new situation forced him to take notice of his corporeal self. anthony’s description illustrates how humans tend to live their lives without really noticing the body; it is often ‘taken for granted’ (frank, 1995/2013; leder, 1990). this heightened corporeal awareness paired with negotiating a new relationship with the physical self has been reported in previous studies (smith & sparkes, 2013) and connects to the preliminary stages and experiences discussed within the working theory of corporeal ptg (hefferon et al., 2009; 2010; hefferon, 2012; 2013). 3.2 rediscovering the body following this frustration, the athletes went on to describe experiences where they recognised that their ‘new body’ was actually more capable than their original posttrauma assumptions. learning new skills with their new body was an essential part of rediscovering their body’s abilities, reconnecting them to their corporeal self and thus an important route to ptg. “it [learning new skills] makes me feel good, yeah i know it’s good to learn how to use things in a different way. like you can still use your body differently, that’s good ‘cause (um) there is not so much that you learn to use differently, but you know yeah it is – it is quite nice to learn things differently and think ‘oh actually i can still play this, or i can still do that even though i have this disability’.” (becky) becky was still discovering new and different abilities of her bodysome of these abilities that she thought she had lost. becky had started to reconnect with her new body. similarly, caroline contemplated the differences and similarities of the sport she previously played and the adapted version of it. she recognised that she needed to learn new skills in order to be able to excel in this new form of the sport: “i looked at the two sports’ and thought that they are very different. there are different components to them. so, i would have to learn new skills, and hopefully, that would take the frustration away and hopefully i had some kind of skill base there so that i could play (um). so, i came into it quite quickly and (um) caught up the people that had been playing about six months more than me very quickly.” (caroline) posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 84 here caroline has found her way back to sports after almost removing it entirely from her life because of the frustration that she felt towards her new body (see 3.1). learning new skills with her changed body removed the frustration, and she started to exhibit some pride in how quickly she learned her new sport. this rediscovering of the body’s abilities and assets (focus on functionality), via the participation in sport/physical activity, was an important aspect in these athletes' experiences of ptg and again supports hefferons (2012) corporeal growth’s concept of creating a ‘new relationship with the body’ (hefferon et al., 2008; 2009; 2010) and the reconnection of the body-self (sparkes & smith, 2013). 3.3 appreciating the new body for these athletes, the body that had once been and at times still was – a source of frustration and a reminder of what was lost, also became a reminder of what they still had and even a source of accomplishments. appreciation for the body that was before taken for granted and automatic (see 3.1) came from the realisation that it was breakable as well as capable of learning new skills (3.2) and in some ways, the wounded body became a symbol of relief and survival. "i have more respect for it [the body] it is breakable [laughing] -– i don't think respect is the right – right word, but i can't think of another word -so i think i just have a better understanding of what my body can achieve and i try and push for centimetres rather than metres now.” (caroline) caroline here recounts how she was now able to understand her body and its limits, which was not always evident in her interaction with her previous physical self. there was also an element of looking at what her body can (capabilities) do versus its limitations, ‘pushing for centimetres rather than metres’. she continues later on as to why she does not want to cover up the wounded part of her body: “it’s not for me to have it covered up, i – i don’t care, it’s if you could understand how much pain i was in for ten years, and just generally being grumpy and horrible, having that [pointing to the prosthesis] to me is a good thing. i’m not in pain and now i can live my life, so i don’t care what it looks like [laughing] it could be really hideous and i still wouldn’t care.” (caroline) for caroline, the prosthesis is a positive thing, a sort of patch of honour. anthony also describes this “relief”, and that the amputation was a positive thing for him, allowing him to move on and start living; “weirdly having my [appendages] cut off was a relief because it’s, you know, they had to go and do fix operations, and it was cutting things off and putting things back on, […] and it was painful as well -seems quite strange that having posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 85 your [appendages] cut off was actually a good thing. because, you know, it allowed me to move on -as soon as you get fitted with prosthetics, there is not a lot you can’t do you know -it was a means to an end rather than just sort of you know ‘oh my [appendages] are gone!’ it’s just ‘oh you know, just take a false [appendage] on and let's just get on with stuff’.” (anthony) ultimately, for these athletes, the body was a constant, tangible reminder of what they have gone through, and thus an infinite source of appreciation of the body and life itself. the role of the body in reminding us of our mortality is a large area of research (frank, 1995/2013; 1998; lykins et al. 2007; vail et al., 2012; burke, martens & faucher, 2010). however, the links to the body, trauma, and mortality salience has only recently been linked to positive growth and transformation following trauma (hefferon et al., 2010; gorven & du plessis, 2018; vail et al., 2012; cozzolino, 2006). corporeal ptg posits that when an individual has undergone a physical trauma where the body has been permanently damaged or altered by an internal or external transgressor (thereby creating a permanent mortality salient environment), there may be unique processes and outcomes that the individual must go through in order to survive and eventually grow (hefferon et al., 2008; 2009; 2010; hefferon, 2012; 2013; 2018). conclusion this study aimed to provide an in-depth account of the experience of posttraumatic growth in paralympic athletes. this study accessed a unique and difficult to reach sample of athletes with disabilities who participated in the 2012 london paralympics. the study found that elite sport was a fundamental route to experiencing ptg as well as an outcome in itself. it was part of the recovery, the foundation for camaraderie and a new identity as an athlete. furthermore, sport was a source of achievement and future goals. additionally, the team was seen as a resource, creating a safe environment in which to learn new skills and share practical ideas. these surroundings promoted a sense of equality among athletes. this knowledge contributes to the areas of sport and positive psychology by providing these unique insights to a niche population of elite athletes and their experience of posttraumatic growth. the role of the body in facilitating ptg was another key finding in this study, thus providing further support for future exploration of embodied experiences within the ptg process and outcomes. the athletes experienced heightened corporeal awareness following their trauma, leading to a new relationship with their corporeal self. although the wounded body was indeed frustrating to deal with after the trauma, the athletes found that rediscovering their physical and athletic capabilities through sport (albeit a different one) gave them a sense of psychological strength or “mental toughness” as per their account. they learned to appreciate their bodies more and the limitations and capabilities they possessed. the body was thus a reminder and an essential route to appreciating life and a sense of personal strength. the role of the body in ptg has only posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 86 recently started to gain recognition in ptg research and thus this study contributes to a knowledge area that it is still in its infancy. these finding are impactful considering how central the body is for both athletes and individuals with physical impairment (allencollinson, 2009; 2017). the body and the corporeal experience was at the core of these athletes physical performance and the trauma of physical impairment. the findings from these elite athletes can have implications for rehabilitation processes and the facilitation of peak performance within elite athletics. for example, the results strongly support the inclusion of body functionality focused interventions in the aftermath of physical trauma, focusing on acceptance, locating strengths and appreciation of the body (alleva et al., 2018). although physical activity has already been studied as a facilitator of ptg following physical trauma (hefferon et al., 2008; sabiston et al., 2007), this study suggests that elite structured sports may provide additional positive psychological outcomes beyond physical activity (day, 2013). future research could reflect upon the potential differences between the team (elite and leisure) and solo sports as many facets of sports, including belonging to a team, learning new skills and participating in a safe environment and experiencing personal achievements in sports, were perceived to be a route to recovery following trauma. furthermore, researchers should ensure to encapsulate the entirety of the sport experience, including the distressing and sometimes pressurised environments the sporting context can create, in order to understand its impact from a holistic perspective (caddick & smith, 2014; day & wadey, 2016; 2017). finally, as there is currently discussion within the field regarding the construct and methodological designs utilised to understand ptg (see jayawickreme & blackie, 2014), we support the call for more critical explorations into ptg and sport participation (howells & fletcher, 2016; day & wadey, 2017). researchers are encouraged to employ more longitudinal, mixed method inquiry, as well as exploration across varying trauma types (e.g. direct or indirect) and contexts (e.g., acute, repeated, chronic, cumulative, physical), in addition to more embodied behavioural (action-focused) ptg perspectives. considerations: assessing validity as qualitative research cannot be held to the traditional quantitative modes of quality assessment (e.g. replicability, etc.), there are several relatively agreed upon qualitative quality control criteria in which we can assess the validity of this study (yardley, 2015; 2017): a) sensitivity to context (e.g. to participants experiences and environment; to the data by limiting deductive categorization, etc.); b) commitment and rigor (e.g. displaying in-depth knowledge regarding the area, the process and the methodology chosen; adhering to methodological principles; engaging in in-depth analyses); c) transparency and coherence (e.g. readers can see how the final data set was produced and the connections between themes, quotes presented and any interpretation offered); and d) impact and importance (e.g. ‘useful’ knowledge is produced… ‘whether in terms of posttraumatic growth and achievement in paralympic athletes kampman & hefferon 87 practical utility, generating hypotheses, or even changing how we think about the world’ (yardley, 2017, p. 296). the current research adhered to the aforementioned quality criteria by: being aware of the participants context, as athletes with acquired disabilities, and conducting all interviews through the collaboration with team coaches as well within the familiar gym environment. commitment and rigor were adhered to via the building of in-depth knowledge in the literature area, the choice of an appropriate methodology chosen based on research question, dearth of extant literature in topic area and participant pool. furthermore, there was adherence to ipa as a methodology (versus a method) from question formulation through to write up; and an in-depth and detailed analyses, in which the 1st author engaged in regular discussions with the second author regarding theme development. finally, throughout the entire research process, the 1st author engaged in reflexive practice via the use of a diary and note taking (gough, 2017). transparency and coherence are provided through the detailed methods section presented here (so as readers can understand the process) as well as clear presentation of the themes, quotes provided, and interpretation offered. in terms of impact of importance, the authors feel this research not only gives voice to a participant pool that has not adequately been represented in the literature, it offers first-hand account of the theory of posttraumatic growth within paralympic elite athletes and furthers development of the working theory of corporeal posttraumatic growth in acquired disability, an area worth exploring within traumas where the body has been physically altered by an internal or external transgressor. we encourage researchers to examine more embodied perspectives of ptg through various methodological approaches and populations who have experienced physical illness and injury (walsh et al., 2018). authors hanna kampman university of east london h.m.k.kampman@uel.ac.uk kate hefferon university of east london k.hefferon@uel.ac.uk publishing timeline received 30 august 2018 accepted 16 november 2019 published 1 february 2020 references acevedo, e. o. 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(2011). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 2(1), 34–53. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i1.3 iolanda costa galinha universidade autónoma de lisboa iolandag@yahoo.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 article cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing iolanda costa galinha · josé luís pais-ribeiro abstract: the article analyses the prediction of cognitive, affective and contextual factors to subjective wellbeing (swb). four different components of swb were used in order to identify its different predictors. a sample of 303 adult students was collected and reassessed over a twomonth interval. seven instruments were used to measure: global subjective wellbeing; satisfaction with life in domains; positive and negative state affect; positive and negative trait affect; standards of comparison; depression, anxiety and stress; life events; and sociodemographic variables. results indicated that global swb is predicted by satisfaction with life in domains, and positive and negative state affect. the cognitive dimension of swb is predicted by depression, comparison standards, state and trait affect, and several contextual variables. the affective dimension of swb is predicted by trait affect, depression, anxiety, and the contextual variable of educational status. results also indicated that intrapersonal variables are the main predictors of swb, however contextual variables are also significant predictors. each component of swb (global, cognitive & affective) shows different predictors, stressing the importance of analysing and reporting separately the results of each component. among the predictors of swb over a two-month interval, state affective variables and contextual variables lose prediction power, while trait affective and cognitive variables gain prediction power. keywords: subjective wellbeing; satisfaction with life; positive and negative affect; predictors 1. introduction one of the main goals of scientific research in the field of subjective wellbeing (swb) has been to identify the main predictors of human happiness. in the preceding decades, researchers have tried to address the question regarding the main associates of swb through different approaches: bottom up (emphasising the importance of contextual factors), top down (emphasising the importance of intrapersonal factors), and integrative (emphasising the dynamic contribution of intrapersonal & contextual factors, see figure 1). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 figure 1. representation of bottom up, top down and integrative theoretical models of swb, respectively however, most studies have not analysed the impact of the different factors combined, and therefore have not determined the relative contribution of each factor to swb. researchers defended the importance of analysing several predictors of swb together, in order to identify the contribution of each above and beyond the others (diener & biswas-diener, 2000). in this study we contribute to the literature by identifying the relative contribution of several cognitive, affective and contextual factors to swb. the aim of the present study is to identify which perspective – bottom up, top down or integrative – is best supported. secondly, several studies on the associates of swb have used only one measure of swb, sometimes representing only one dimension of the concept (i.e., cognitive or affective). several authors have suggested that different measures of swb have different predictors, and have defended the importance of using several measures of swb in order to fully understand the phenomenon (diener, 2000; 2006; schwarz & strack, 1999; sirgy, 2002). in this study we use several measures of swb – global, specific, cognitive and affective – and identify the main predictors of each measure. thirdly, most studies on the predictors of swb are cross-sectional. longitudinal studies are rare (diener & ryan, 2009) and are most frequently developed in six-month. some studies have shown differences in the impact of the predictors of swb in a present context, as well as within a six-month interval. some studies indicate that contextual factors may be better predictors of swb in the present, while intrapersonal trait factors may be important predictors of medium and long-term swb (suh, diener & fujita, 1996). could these differences be observed in shorter temporal intervals? in this study we contribute to the literature with data about the factors that best predict swb in the present, and the factors that best predict swb over a short-term interval of two months. subjective wellbeing is accepted to be a broad concept, to have a cognitive and an affective dimension, separated and moderately correlated. the construct includes variables such as satisfaction with life as a whole or in specific domains, and positive affect and negative affect (arthaud-day, rode, mooney & near, 2005; diener & ryan, 2009; galinha & paisribeiro, 2008). the concept of swb can be assessed through different dimensions – cognitive and affective – and different levels of analysis – global and specific – depending on the instruments used; see table 1 (diener, 2006; sirgy, 2002). swb intrapersonal factors factors contextual intrapersonal factors contextual factors swb cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 table 1: levels of analysis of subjective wellbeing cognitive affective global global life satisfaction global happiness specific satisfaction with life in domains positive state affect negative state affect the study of the associates of swb has been developed in three major stages with different characteristics and objectives (diener & biswas-diener, 2000). a bottom up perspective influenced the first stage of studies on swb. these studies mainly analysed the impact of contextual factors in the swb of individuals. the main purpose of this stage was to identify the socio-demographic characteristics of happy people. from the bottom up perspective there is a major influence of external life circumstances (e.g. material conditions; life events; sociopolitical contexts) on the subjective experience of individuals. according to this perspective, adverse circumstances affect swb (brief, butcher, george, & link, 1993; feist, bodner, jacobs, miles, & tan, 1995). however, one of the main findings of this phase was that contextual factors are not the most powerful in explaining the variability of swb. in most studies, contextual factors such as socio-demographic variables and life events show only weak or short-term impacts in swb. some exceptions are also reported indicating that in some circumstances, contextual factors may have a strong and long-term impact on the swb of individuals: a) when life conditions decline below a minimum level of satisfaction of human needs (veenhoven, 1996); b) when some life events such as marriage and long-term unemployment are experienced (helliwell, barrington-leigh, harris, & huang, 2009; lucas, clark, georgellis, & diener, 2004); and c) when systematic differences in swb are observed between poor and rich countries, showing the poorer countries as the least happy in the world (farid & lazarus, 2008; inglehart & klingemann, 2000). in the second stage of research about the predictors of swb there was a development of theoretical models and an emphasis on analysing the contribution of intrapersonal factors to swb, such as temperament, social comparison, the goal-achievement gap and adaptation (diener & biswas-diener, 2000). a top down perspective influenced the studies of swb in this stage. studies tested the hypothesis that the intrapersonal (affective & cognitive) characteristics of individuals determine their swb (brief et al., 1993; feist et al., 1995). theories postulated that two persons in the same circumstances can evaluate their swb in different ways. results indicated that intrapersonal variables are stronger determinants of swb than contextual factors (see diener & ryan, 2009; diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999 for a review). the top down perspective received support from empirical studies throughout the last few decades, placing personality and positive predisposition as main predictors of swb (see lucas, 2008 for a review). headey and wearing (1992), however, questioned the validity of both bottom up and top down models per se and pointed out limitations in both. they suggested that both contextual and intrapersonal factors have an impact on swb. nevertheless, after a period of time the impact of contextual factors (e.g. life events) on swb decreases and individuals return to their original level of swb, as determined by intrapersonal factors (e.g. personality). classical and current studies support this rationale and show that through the effect of time, people adapt to cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 the impact of major life events and socio-demographic changes (bonanno, moskowitz, papa, & folkman, 2005; lowenstein & frederick, 1999; silver & wortman, 1980). suh, diener and fujita (1996) concluded that life events and personality differ in the duration of their effects on swb. life events produce a short-term effect (three to six months on average) and personality produces a long-term effect (at least two years) in the variability of swb. however, as stated before, recent studies suggest that some life events (e.g., death of a spouse) produce permanent changes that have a long-term impact on the swb of individuals and some authors have defended the view that the set point theory may have to be revised (headey, 2008). finally, feist et al. (1995) tested both top down and bottom up models of swb in a structural equation modelling analysis and concluded that both contributed to explain swb, but that neither was shown to have a significantly better fit than the other. in the third stage of research on the predictors of swb there was a trend of integrating several lines of research into holistic models as a way of understanding the dynamic interaction between several factors of swb. the integrative perspective defends that swb is influenced by multiple variables – the individual’s emotional state, past events, the expectations of the future and social comparisons – in a dynamic interaction (suh, diener, oishi, & triandis, 1998; schwarz & strack, 1999). in this stage, the main objectives of studies consist of understanding the psychological processes inherent to the different measures of swb (diener & biswasdiener, 2000). several authors have defended the importance of using separate measures of the cognitive, as well as the affective, dimensions of swb in order to identify different predictors of swb (diener, 2000; 2006). other authors have defended the importance of using separate measures of the positive and negative affective components of swb because they are independent and yield different relationships with several variables (diener, 2000; 2006; fredrickson, 2006). others yet have defended the importance of analysing several levels of measures of swb – global and specific – in order to identify swb’s different predictors (schwarz & strack, 1999; sirgy, 2002). a few empirical studies show that the different components of swb have different associates (jones, rapport, hanks, lichtenberg, & telmet, 2003; jovanovic, 2011); that the cognitive dimension of swb is more closely associated with the contextual variables, and that the affective dimension is more closely associated with personality variables (schimmack, schupp & wagner, 2008). positive and negative affect show distinct yet complementary functions. high negative affect is associated with the restriction and focus of thoughts and actions; while, positive affect is associated with the broadening of thoughts and actions, allowing the building of long-term personal resources and it also optimizes health (folkman & moskowitz, 2000; fredrickson, 2006; fredrickson & branigan, 2005). empirical studies on the predictors of the different levels of measurement of swb (global or specific) show that global measures correlate less with contextual factors than with specific measures such as satisfaction of life in domains (diener, 1999). global measures of swb show more stability over time and specific measures are more diagnostic, providing understanding about the causes of total swb (sirgy, 2002; diener, 2006). global measures of swb require the demanding task of considering satisfaction with several aspects of life resumed in one answer. because this is a complex task, people may choose to answer in a simpler way, based on their affective state at the moment they are answering the questionnaire. thus, satisfaction with life as a whole would be more influenced by the affective state of the individual, while satisfaction with life in domains reports would be more influenced by intra and inter-individual comparisons (schwarz & strack, 1999). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 the results of diener, napa-scollon, oishi, dzokoto and suh (2000), using both specific and global measures of swb, reflected mainly bottom up and top down influences, respectively. examining the factors that are associated with the different levels of measurement of swb, the authors found that global measures of swb are more influenced by intrapersonal characteristics, such as individual predisposition. according to diener and biswas-diener (2000), these findings can bring a new understanding of the processes inherent to the variability of swb. using several levels of self-reporting measures of swb simultaneously, we can better understand these processes. in this study we have three main objectives. the first objective is to analyse the relative contribution of several factors to swb: intrapersonal (cognitive & affective) and contextual (see figure 1). figure 1: representation of the relationships between subjective wellbeing measures and cognitive, affective and contextual variables we want to answer the question: which factors contribute above and beyond the other factors to the variability of swb? we expect that in a conjoint analysis, the intrapersonal factors are the best predictors of swb. would the contextual factors show a significant contribution to swb? the second objective of the study is to analyse the best predictors of the different measures of swb – global and specific. we want to answer the question: do global and specific measures of swb have different predictors? according to the previous literature, global measures are best predicted by affective factors, while specific measures may reflect actual experiences of individuals and be more diagnostic about the causes of swb. the third objective of the study is to analyse the effect of time in the contribution of intrapersonal and contextual factors to swb. which variables in the present best predict swb in the near future? previous studies indicate that contextual variables lose prediction power over time, while personality variables gain prediction power within a six-month interval. can we observe the same pattern in a shorter time interval? 2. method 2.1 participants we administered the questionnaires to 303 portuguese adults (professional trainees 39.2%, university students 60.8%) and repeated the application over a two-month interval. at time ii, 245 questionnaires were collected, with a retention rate of 80.9%. the participants were subjective wellbeing global satisfaction + happiness satisfaction with life domains positive state affect negative state affect cognitive factors satisfaction life domains comparison standards affective factors positive state/trait affect negative state/trait affect anxiety/depression/stress contextual factors life events socio-demographic variables cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 between 20 and 58 years old; 81.1% were young adults (20 to 40 years old) and 67% were women. in terms of years of education, 25.5% of the participants completed 4 to 9 years of education, 22.5% completed 10 to 12 years, and 42.2% completed 13 to 17 years. the participants in the study volunteered, were not paid, and were informed of the confidentiality and anonymity of their answers in accordance with the ethical standards of the american psychological association (apa). 2.2 materials 2.2.1 global subjective wellbeing global subjective wellbeing was measured by global happiness and global satisfaction single items. we selected the global happiness item used by the gallup organization of the american institute for public opinion – “in general, how happy would you say you are?” for the global satisfaction item, we selected the item used in the eurobarometer: “on the whole, how satisfied are you with your life?”. we opted for a seven-point scale in order to discriminate minor differences in the levels of subjective wellbeing, from: (1) "extremely unhappy/dissatisfied"; to (7) "extremely happy/satisfied” (andrews & robinson, 1991). global happiness and global satisfaction are considered two different measures of global swb. although happiness and satisfaction represent, respectively, a more affective or cognitive dimension, in fact, neither of the two are pure markers of each dimension (andrews & robinson, 1991). however, the principal components analysis showed that the two items were measuring the same construct; therefore we decided to use the mean of both indicators as a measure of global swb (see table 2). in this study, global happiness mean was 5.06 (sd = .97) and global satisfaction mean was 4.82 (sd = 1.03). the two items together yielded a chronbach’s alpha of .80. the test-retest correlation of global swb over a two-month interval was moderate (.54). 2.2.2 satisfaction with life in domains satisfaction with life in domains was measured by the quality of life index (ferrans & powers, 1985). the quality of life index is a specific multi-item cognitive measure of swb that measures the satisfaction and importance of 31 life domains (e.g. family, work, health, financial conditions), using a six-point scale: (1) “very dissatisfied” to (6) “very satisfied”; (1) “very unimportant” to (6) “very important”. we used a narrow (at present) time reference. results reflect the overall quality of life, considering satisfaction and the importance attributed to each life domain in four subscales: health and functioning; family; social and economic; and psychological and spiritual. previous studies have supported the psychometric qualities of this scale: construct validity (ferrans & powers, 1985); convergent validity with other life satisfaction scales (anderson & ferrans, 1997); and internal consistency with a cronbach’s alpha between .89 and .95 (canaval, gonzalez, martinez-schallmoser, tovar, & valencia, 2000). in our study, we used the global indicator of quality of life, a variable which is computed by summing all the items of the scale in a total score. the internal consistency of the total scale was .91 (time i) and .93 (time ii). the test-retest correlation over a two-month interval was moderate (.65). 2.2.3 positive and negative state affect positive and negative state affect was measured by the positive and negative affect schedule (panas) (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988, portuguese version from galinha & pais-ribeiro, cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 2005). the panas asks how the individual feels, in the present, regarding ten positive and ten negative specific emotions using a five-point scale, from: (1) "very slightly or not at all" to (5) "extremely". the panas is one of the most widely used affect scales and was validated in several countries, showing high stability and internal consistency (watson et al., 1988). however, studies are not consensual about the panas’ factor-structure and about the relationship between the pa and na. some results have indicated a two-factor structure of panas (crawford & henry, 2004) and others indicated a three-factor structure (gaudreau, sanchez & blondin, 2006). some results have indicated an independent relationship between pa and na (crocker, 1997) and others indicated a correlated relationship (green & salovey, 1999). anyway, the authors of the scale have also found small significant correlations between pa and na and proposed that pa and na are tendencially, although not absolutely, independent (watson et al., 1988). the portuguese validation revealed good internal consistency with a cronbach’s alpha of .86 for positive affect, and .89 for negative affect, and showed the tendency for independence between the two scales (r = -.10, p = .05). in the present study, the scale showed good internal consistency with a cronbach’s alpha of .87 and .88 for negative state affect (time i & time ii). cronbach’s alpha for positive state affect was .82 and .89 (time i and time ii). the test-retest correlation over a two-month interval was moderate being .64 for positive affect, and .52 for negative affect. 2.2.4 positive and negative trait affect we also used the panas as a trait affect measure, with a different time instruction: "indicate to what extent you generally feel this way, that is, how you feel on average?". the authors of the scale stated that the stability coefficients of the general version of the panas are sufficient to be able to use it as a trait affect measure (watson, et al, 1988; watson & clark, 1997). in the present study the scale showed good internal consistency, with a cronbach’s alpha of .88 and .91 for negative trait affect (time i & time ii), and .82 and .86 for positive trait affect.(time i & time ii). the test-retest correlation over a two-month interval for positive trait affect (.65) and for negative trait affect (.63) was moderate. 2.2.5 standards of comparison standards of comparison (telic, social and temporal comparison) was measured by three global items extracted from the satisfaction and happiness questionnaire (shq) (michalos, 1980). the shq evaluates the satisfaction and standards of comparison of 12 specific domains of life. the three standards of comparison items evaluate the goal-achievement gap (telic comparison), peers’ comparison (social comparison), and the previous best comparison (temporal comparison). the items ask, “considering your life as a whole, how would you evaluate it, comparing it with: a) your goals and ambitions?; b) the average of the people of your age?; c) the best moment of your life in the past?”. answer options are on a five-point scale from (1) “far below..”; to (5) “far above ..”; with an extra option, (6) “no opinion”. the arithmetic mean of these three global comparison items constitutes the standards of comparison variable used in this study. we could not find psychometric studies of the satisfaction and happiness questionnaire. in our study this variable showed a weak internal consistency with a cronbach’s alpha of .59 (time i) and .68 (time ii). the test-retest correlation over a two-month interval was moderate (.56). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 2.2.6 anxiety, depression and stress anxiety, depression and stress was measured by escala de ansiedade, depressão e stress – ads 21 (pais-ribeiro, honrado, & leal, 2004), the portuguese version of the depression anxiety and stress scale 21 (dass-21; lovibond & lovibond, 1995). the dass-21 was developed according to the tripartite model of anxiety and depression (clark & watson, 1991). each variable is measured using seven items. respondents are asked, “in what way did each sentence apply to you during the past month”, and used a four-point scale to respond: (0) “did not apply to me at all” to (3) “applied to me very much, or most of the time”. the internal consistency (cronbach’s alpha) of the portuguese version was α = .85 for the sub-scale of depression, α = .74 for the sub-scale of anxiety and α = .81 for the sub-scale of stress (paisribeiro, et al., 2004). in our study the scale had good internal consistency; between α = .81 and α = .90 across the three subscales in both data sets. the test-retest correlation over a two-month interval was moderate for depression (.53), anxiety (.60) and stress (.48). 2.2.7 life events balance life events balance (i.e. the difference between positive and negative life events) was measured by the inventory eve (ferreri, vacher, tawil, & alby, 1987). the eve questionnaire includes a list of 32 events grouped in five categories of life domains: family; professional; social; marital (relationships); and health. each category of events has an additional item (other); the individual may fill out an item that is not contemplated in the list. the list proposes to evaluate the events that normatively occur in the life cycle of an adult, excluding catastrophic events, daily hassles or events that might be confused with symptoms. the impact of the events is evaluated by the individuals according to their personal vulnerability to the events. in our study we used a different response scale; a four-point scale: (1) “very positive impact”; to (4) “very negative impact”. we summed all the events that were considered to have a positive impact into one score, and all the events that were considered to have a negative impact into another score. then we subtracted the second score from the first and obtained a balance of the life events score. in our study, the mean of the balance of life events was m = 0 (se = .17); the maximum negative value was -8 and the maximum positive was 8. the median was mdn = 0 and the mode was 1. the skewness of the distribution was .01, se =.14 and the kurtosis was .08, se =.28, indicating normality in the distribution of the results. 2.2.8 socio-demographic variables a group of socio-demographic variables was included to characterize the individuals in our sample and to identify their objective life circumstances: gender; age; years of education; years of professional training; marital status; employment status; nationality; household income; household members; leisure time; and religious activities time. we also assessed health status by questioning individuals about chronic diseases diagnosed, physical impairment and health perception. 2.3 procedure with the institutions’ and the teachers’ permission, we approached participants in classrooms at the end of lessons. we invited the students to participate in a study about peoples’ emotions. the students who volunteered answered the questionnaires in the classroom. the researcher was present to answer any questions and supplied an e-mail address for further contact. in order to match the questionnaires from time i and time ii, we requested participants write a cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 password on a separate sheet. time ii data collection was carried out two months later, at which point participants answered questionnaires that were matched to the previous ones through the passwords they supplied. 3. results 3.1 preliminary analysis we began our data analysis by performing a principal components analysis (pca), with direct oblimin rotation because it is expected that the factors are correlated. we did not define a number of components to extract but retained all factors whose eigenvalues were superior to 1. results separated three components: a) one negative affective (including negative state and negative trait affect, anxiety, stress and depression); b) one positive affective (including positive state and positive trait affect); and c) one cognitive (including global satisfaction with life, global happiness, satisfaction with life in domains, and social comparison). results indicated good main and secondary loadings, indicating good convergent and discriminant validity between the variables in the study; see table 2. table 2: principal components analysis with direct oblimin rotation of the cognitive and affective measures of the study components 1 2 3 global happiness (a) .02 .82 .07 global satisfaction (c) -.04 .86 .06 satisfaction with life in domains (c) -.18 .69 -.13 state positive affect (a) .05 .06 -.87 state negative affect (a) .74 -.21 -.16 trait positive affect (a) -.05 -.03 -.90 trait negative affect (a) .68 -.14 .02 standards of comparison (c) .07 .70 -.14 depression (a) .68 -.20 .21 anxiety (a) .93 .18 .02 stress (a) .91 .09 -.01 note: (a) affective measures; (c) cognitive measures. factor loadings >.40 are in boldface. the keiser-meyer-olkin test yielded a .82 value, indicating that the partial correlations among variables are strong enough to provide an adequate pca. the bartlett’s test of sphericity yielded a χ255=1210.18 p < .0001, indicating that the correlation matrix is not an identity matrix and that the factor model is appropriate. in the next step we performed a correlation analysis between the variables in the study and obtained low to moderate correlations, indicating discriminant validity and avoiding the problem of multicollinearity. the highest correlation found was .61, not surprisingly between state affect and trait affect variables. the socio-demographic variables were subjected to dummy variable coding as described by tabachnick and fidel (2001). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 3.1.1 predictors of swb we performed a regression analysis using the stepwise method. each of the swb variables in the study was introduced as a dependent variable (global subjective wellbeing; satisfaction with life in domains; positive state affect; negative state affect). as independent variables, we introduced intrapersonal cognitive variables (such as satisfaction with life in domains, standards of comparison), intrapersonal affective variables (such as positive and negative state affect, positive and negative trait affect, depression, anxiety, stress) and contextual variables (such as life events balance, socio-demographic variables). the predictors of global swb were satisfaction with life in domains, negative state affect and positive state affect, explaining 34% of global swb variance (table 3). thus, the predictors of global swb were intrapersonal factors (cognitive & affective). excluded were all contextual factors, affective trait and mood variables. table 3: regression analysis (stepwise) for the predictors of global subjective wellbeing model 3 bi se b 95% ci constant satisfaction with life in domains negative state affect positive state affect 2.96*** .10*** -.31** .17* .48 .02 .12 .09 [2.01, 3.91] [.06, .13] [-.54, -.08] [.01, .34] r2 .35 f 25.24*** δr2 .34 note. ci = confidence interval. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. i beta unstandardized coefficients of the last stepwise model of variables entered in the regression. the predictors of satisfaction with life in domains – a cognitive and specific measure of swb – were depression, standards of comparison, life events balance, positive state affect, sociodemographic variables (gender being a man; income reporting higher levels; education reporting fewer years of education; living with children reporting living with fewer children; health perception reporting not being ill) and negative trait affect, explaining 58% of swb variance (table 4). thus, the predictors of the cognitive and specific measure of swb were intrapersonal factors (affective & cognitive) and contextual factors (life events & life circumstances). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 table 4: regression analysis (stepwise) for the predictors of satisfaction with life in domains model 10 b se b 95% ci constant 17.40*** 1.95 [13.54, 21.27] depression -1.90*** .47 [-2.83, -.97] standards of comparison 1.03*** .27 [.48, 1.58] life events balance .20** .07 [.05, .35] positive state affect .96** .30 [.35, 1.56] health perception 2.55** .88 [.80, 4.28] gender -1.29** .41 [-2.09, -.47] income .58** .16 [.25, .90] years of education -.21** .05 [-.32, -.08] negative trait affect -.99* .39 [-1.75, -.21] nr children live with -.61* .26 [-1.12, -.09] r2 .61 f 21.05*** δr2 .58 note. dummy variable coding: sex 0 female; 1 male; health perception – 0 ill; 1 not ill. ci = confidence interval. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. i beta unstandardized coefficients of the last stepwise model, of variables entered in the regression. the predictors of the positive state affect – an affective and specific measure of swb – were the positive trait affect, one socio-demographic variable (educational status being at university predicts lower positive affect than being in professional training) and negative trait affect, explaining 42% of its variance (table 5). the predictors of positive affect were intrapersonal affective factors and one contextual factor. excluded were other contextual variables, cognitive, state affective and mood variables. table 5: regression analysis (stepwise) for the predictors of positive state affect model 3 b se b 95% ci constant -.25 .48 [-1.19, .69] positive trait affect 1.02*** .11 [.80, 1.25] education status -.24** .09 [-.42, -.07] negative trait affect -.19* .08 [-.35, -.04] r2 .43 f 35.60*** δr2 .42 note. dummy variable coding: education status – 0 professional trainee; 1 university student. ci = confidence interval. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. i beta unstandardized coefficients of the last stepwise model, of variables entered in the regression. cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 negative state affect – an affective and specific measure of swb – was predicted by depression, negative trait affect, anxiety, positive state affect and satisfaction with life in domains, explaining 45% of its variance (table 6). the predictors of negative affect were exclusively intrapersonal factors: affective and cognitive. table 6: regression analysis (stepwise) for the predictors of negative state affect model 5 b se b 95% ci constant .86* .34 [.18, 1.54] depression .26** .09 [.07, .45] negative trait affect .25*** .07 [.12, .38] anxiety .28** .09 [.10, .46] positive state affect .12* .05 [.02, .22] satisfaction with life in domains -.02* .01 [-.05, -.00] r2 .47 f 24.59*** δr2 .45 note. ci = confidence interval. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. i beta unstandardized coefficients of the last stepwise model, of variables entered in the regression. results suggest that swb was mainly predicted by intrapersonal factors. among the intrapersonal factors, the affective factors were the most important in predicting swb: mood (particularly depression); affective trait and affective state variables. however, contextual factors also significantly contribute to swb, beyond the intrapersonal factors. 3.1.2 predictors of global or specific measures of swb the main difference between the global and specific measures of swb was that the global measure was firstly predicted by a cognitive factor while the specific measures were all firstly predicted by affective factors. furthermore, specific measures were predicted by contextual factors, particularly the cognitive dimension, while the global measure was not predicted by contextual factors. 3.1.3 predictors of swb over a two-month interval in order to identify which variables in the present are predictors of swb two months later, a regression analysis was performed using the stepwise method. we introduced the cognitive, affective and contextual variables measured in time i as independent variables, and the four swb variables, and the four swb variables measured in time ii as dependent variables. results indicated that the variables in time i that predicted global swb over a two-month interval were satisfaction with life in domains, standards of comparison, and negative trait affect, explaining 39% of its variance (table 7). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 table 7: regression analysis (stepwise) predicting global subjective wellbeing over a two-month interval model 3 b se b 95% ci constant 3.37*** .51 [2.36, 4.39] satisfaction with life in domains .06** .02 [.02, .10] standards of comparison .28*** .07 [.14, .43] negative trait affect -.27* .10 [-.47, -.06] r2 .41 f 25.71*** δr2 .39 note. ci = confidence interval. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. i beta unstandardized coefficients of the last stepwise model, of variables entered in the regression. the variables at time i that predicted satisfaction with life in domains two months later were depression, standards of comparison, negative trait affect, health perception (the fact that the individual reports not feeling ill at the time), and nationality (being portuguese instead of foreigner), explaining 38% of its variance (table 8). table 8: regression analysis (stepwise) predicting satisfaction with life in domains over a two-month interval model 5 b se b 95% ci constant 17.07*** 2.42 [12.26, 21.87] depression -1.54* .68 [-2.90, -.19] standards of comparison 1.09** .35 [.39, 1.79] negative trait affect -1.80*** .50 [-2.78, -.81] health perception 2.80* 1.19 [.44, 5.16] nationality 3.32* 1.43 [.50, 6.15] r2 .41 f 15.57*** δr2 .39 note. dummy variable coding: nationality – 0 foreigner; portuguese; health perception – 0 ill; 1 not ill.*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. i beta unstandardized coefficients of the last stepwise model, of variables entered in the regression. the predictors of the positive state affect, two months later, were positive trait affect, satisfaction with life in domains, and one socio-demographic variable (employment status: being unemployed was a predictor of lower positive affect), explaining 32% of its variance (table 9). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 table 9: regression analysis (stepwise) predicting positive state affect over a two-month interval model 3 b se b 95% ci constant -1.07 .57 [-2.20, .06] positive trait affect .85*** .15 [.55, 1.15] satisfaction with life in domains .06** .02 [.02, .09] employment status -.29* .13 [-.54, -.02] r2 .35 f 19.91*** δr2 .33 note. dummy variable coding: employment status – 0 unemployed; 1 employed. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. i beta unstandardized coefficients of the last stepwise model, of variables entered in the regression. depression was the only predictor of negative state affect over a two-month interval (model 1 b=.49, seb = .12; r2 = .12; δr2 = .12; f= 16.08; p<.0001), ics [.25, .73], explaining 11% of the variance. we observed that the first predictor of each swb variable at time i was the same at time ii (e.g. satisfaction with life in domains was the first predictor of global swb at time i and at time ii). however, among the secondary predictors we observed differences. mood and affective trait variables showed higher predictive power of swb over a two-month interval. the affective state variables were no longer among the predictors of swb, and the contextual factors lost their prediction power, even more so, over a two-month interval. 4. discussion 4.1 the main predictors of swb our first objective was to identify the main predictors of swb. to that end, we analysed the conjoint contribution of intrapersonal factors (cognitive & affective variables), and contextual factors (life events balance & socio-demographic variables) in order to explain several components of swb. the predictors of global swb were exclusively intrapersonal factors: satisfaction with life in domains, negative state affect and positive state affect. contextual variables and other affective variables, such as mood and trait affect, were not significant predictors of global swb. this result supports previous research which places intrapersonal factors among the main predictors of swb. concerning the cognitive dimension of swb, depression was its first predictor, followed by comparison standards. other researchers have found equivalent results, concluding that satisfaction with life: a) involves a cognitive process but also an affective process (veenhoven, 1996); b) that it is a function of the comparison between life achievements and the personal standards of the individual (schwarz & strack, 1999); and c) that it is promoted by the individuals mainly to prevent depression (sirgy, 2002). among the predictors of this dimension of swb, we observed mood, cognitive variables, affective state and trait variables and a significant contribution of several contextual variables. this measure of swb showed more contextual influences than any other measure, confirming previous results that contextual variables are associated more with satisfaction with life when measured in domains rather than through global measures (diener, 1999; schimmack, schupp & wagner, 2008; sirgy, 2002). cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 we agree that several components of swb correlate in different ways with contextual variables (schwarz & strack, 1999). concerning the affective dimensions of swb, results showed a main association with affective trait and mood variables. the contribution of affective trait factors to the affective dimension of swb is not surprising, since, in our study, state and trait affect were measured with the same instrument (panas), using a different temporal frame (watson et al., 1988). however, we also observed the contribution of depression, a mood factor, in predicting negative state affect. several previous studies showed the important contribution of depression to swb variables (cummins, gullone & lau, 2002; diener & seligman, 2002), strongly suggesting that swb is an indicator of the absence of depression. in our results, depression was also the first predictor of the cognitive dimension of swb, constituting one of the main predictors of the swb variables in our study. only one contextual variable was predictive of positive state affect and none was predictive of negative state affect. regarding the theoretical models of swb, a broad examination of our results indicates that the main predictors of swb were intrapersonal (cognitive and affective). as expected, the contextual factors were not the best predictors of swb. the results support the top down theoretical models of swb (brief et al., 1993). however, the results also showed that the contextual variables significantly predicted swb, particularly its cognitive dimension. therefore, we cannot state that one of the models is better. feist et al. (1995) also tested the bottom up and top down models and concluded that neither was better than the other. to discuss the contribution of the contextual variables to swb we must consider the characteristics of our sample. the sample in our study, as samples in most studies of swb, has a medium socio-economic status, and is thus unlikely to experience deficits in basic human needs. as discussed in previous research (inglehart & klingemann, 2000; veenhoven, 1996), these samples are not adequate to show the impact of the contextual variables on swb. contextual variables became very important to the swb of individuals when basic needs are not fulfilled (veenhoven, 1996). considering these elements, we cannot state that contextual variables are not important predictors of swb. we argue that our results preferably support the integrative theoretical model of swb, because all orders of factors cognitive, affective and contextual -, significantly contribute to swb, supporting the multidimensionality of predictors, as argued by mccullough, huebner, and laughlin (2000). furthermore, the integrative model presupposes that the contribution of the predictors to swb is dynamic, depending on other factors such as the characteristics of the sample, the variables being assessed, and the time frame used. 4.2 the predictors of global and specific measures of swb considering global swb, measured by global happiness and global satisfaction, we expected that it would be firstly predicted by affective state or trait factors. according to schwarz and strack (1999), global swb measures are complex because they ask of the individual the task of evaluating every life domain and combine it in a global answer. confronted with that demanding task, global measures of swb may not reflect a systematic and accurate evaluation of all aspects of life. rather, people may respond in accordance with their affective state in the moment of the assessment. in turn, specific measures are probably more influenced by intra and inter comparison processes, since they supply the information to be compared (e.g. specific life domains) as well as the evaluation criteria (e.g. response options). results obtained by diener et al. (2000) also showed that global measures of swb tend to be predicted by broad cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 indicators and positive predisposition factors, while specific measures may reflect actual experiences and be more diagnostic on the causes of global swb. our results only partially support previous research. in fact, the specific measures were more accurately predicted by the actual experiences of the individuals (such as life events and socio-demographic variables), while global swb was not predicted by contextual variables. this result supports previous findings that global measures reflect more top down influences while specific measures of swb reflect more bottom up influences. our results also show that comparison standards were a significant predictor of the specific measure of swb, supporting the hypothesis that specific measures are more influenced by intra and inter comparison processes, and are more diagnostic, providing information about the causes of swb (diener et al., 2000; schwarz & strack, 1999). however, our results do not support the hypothesis that global swb is mainly influenced by the affective state and trait of the individuals. the affective variables did not prove to be the best predictors of the global swb. in fact, gobal swb first predictor was a cognitive variable (satisfaction with life in domains). we should note that the global swb questions were placed at the beginning of the questionnaire, so that the satisfaction with life in domain questions would not influence the global answers. the differences between our results and the ones from diener et al. (2000) may be explained by the different measures used in both studies. as global measures of swb, diener et al. (2000) employed three life satisfaction domains (e.g. education, recreation, and oneself), similar to the ones we used as specific measures. as global measures, we used global life satisfaction and global happiness. as specific measures, diener et al. (2000) used specific aspects of each life domain (e.g., satisfaction with books & with teachers), while we used 31 life satisfaction domains (e.g., education, recreation, oneself, income). we conclude that further study may be useful to understand the different dynamics of answering questions regarding global and specific measures of swb. 4.3 predictors of swb over a two-month interval an important result of our study relates to the effect of time in the prediction power of several factors in the swb of individuals. we observe differences from the predictors of global swb between time i and time ii of data collection. the predictors of global swb measured in time ii were satisfaction with life in domains, comparison standards and negative trait affect. over a two-month interval the affective state variables were no longer predictors of swb and the cognitive and affective trait variables became more predictive of swb in the future. the first predictor of satisfaction with life in time ii, as in time i, was depression. however, state affective variables were no longer predictors of satisfaction with life in time ii, trait affective variables maintained their predictive power and the contextual variables showed less predictive power. results support the idea that contextual factors have a short-term effect, while trait variables have a long-term effect in swb, as argued previously (headey & wearing, 1992; suh, diener & fujita, 1996). the predictors of positive and negative affect at time ii were mood and trait affective variables, although satisfaction with life in domains and employment were also predictors. employment is, in fact, one of the contextual variables that shows a consistent and long-term association with swb (lucas, et al., 2004). concluding our discussion of the predictors of swb over a two-month interval, we observed that affective state variables and contextual variables lost predictive power and that affective trait variables increased their predictive power. these results stress the importance of cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 analysing the predictors of swb in different moments in time, because the factors that predict swb in the present may not be relevant to predict swb in the future. one of the limitations of our study was the use of two instruments that were not previously validated in the portuguese language, specifically, the measures of satisfaction with life in domains and social comparison. at the time it was not possible to find parsimonious instruments validated in the portuguese language to measure the above constructs; available instruments were too long for use in a global questionnaire such as this one. therefore we opted for more parsimonious instruments, although not validated. yet, as reported, the psychometric qualities of these instruments yielded adequate values of internal consistency, reliability and convergent and discriminant validity; except for a rather low chronbach alpha of the social comparison variable. another limitation of the study is related to the gender and age bias of our sample, constituted mostly of women and young adults. furthermore, we only sampled a two month interval period; results may not be generalized for longer periods of time. concluding our results, the intrapersonal factors (cognitive & affective) were the main predictors of swb, particularly the affective, depression, state and trait affect. contextual variables such as life events balance and socio-demographic variables also showed significant prediction of swb, particularly of the cognitive dimension. the different dimensions and levels of measurement of swb showed different predictors, indicating that they are distinct and that the findings for one may not generalize to the others (diener, 2000; 2006; schimmack, schupp, & wagner, 2008). for further study it would be important to include measures of the three dimensions of the concept: satisfaction with life, positive affect and negative affect. however, if that proves not possible, then it would be essential to clearly report which measures of swb were used, and to what dimension the results refer. finally, our results also showed that time has an effect in the predictors of swb. even in a short temporal interval of two months, contextual and state affect variables lost predictive power, while trait affect variables gained predictive power. considering our results, we agree with the integrative perspective which emphasises the contribution of multiple factors to swb in a dynamic interaction. this means that depending on the characteristics of the samples, of the measures used and of the time frame in which measurement occurs, the contribution of each factor to swb can change. further study should continue to explore the relationships between these factors. we consider these results important in understanding the processes and dynamics of swb. by understanding the relationship between different predictors, different measures and the time variable, it is possible to better intervene and to more reasonably anticipate the results of intervention programs over time. acknowledgements we are grateful for financial support from the portuguese foundation for the sciences and technologies bpd/26479/2006. authors iolanda costa galinha universidade autónoma de lisboa iolandag@yahoo.com josé luís pais ribeiro universidade do porto. cognitive, affective and contextual predictors of subjective wellbeing galinha & pais-ribeiro www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 jlpr@netcabo.pt publishing timeline received 25 july 2011 accepted 4 december 2011 published 29 april 212 references anderson, j., & ferrans, c. 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(2016). operationalizing the role of trust for student wellbeing, learning and achievement. international journal of wellbeing, 6(2), 57-79. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i2.467 jacqueline p. leighton university of alberta jacqueline.leighton@ualberta.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 article operationalizing the role of trust for student wellbeing, learning and achievement jacqueline p. leighton · paolina seitz · man-wai chu · maria clara bustos gomez abstract: this paper provides an argument regarding the importance of relational trust between students and teachers during the learning process. establishing this trust is expected to foster student wellbeing and lead to openness to learn and increased innovativeness. however, there is a relative dearth of theoretical and empirical literature on behaviors to establish relational trust (bryk & schneider, 2002; tschannen-moran & hoy, 1997), and how these behaviors can be expected to lead to wellbeing and academic achievement. the learning errors and formative feedback (leaff) model is proposed to organize key aspects of the theoretical literature as they might relate to measurable ways in which trust can be promoted with specific words and actions in the classroom to enhance learning. based on the leaff model, a framework is designed to operationalize facets of trust to help teachers develop trusting relationships with their students. however, the potential effects of these facets need to be empirically tested in future studies to secure optimal learning outcomes. keywords: pedagogical alliance, leaff model, student achievement, student wellbeing, trust 1. introduction public education over the past several decades has been criticized for failing to maintain standards and even improve the learning outcomes of students. a reading of the literature on school reform does not only indicate failures related to students’ behavioral outcomes but also points repeatedly to underlying social-emotional factors associated with this lackluster performance. contributing factors include weakened trust, and low levels of collaboration and mutual respect in the classroom between students and teachers (maeroff, 1993; royal & rossi, 1997; sergiovanni, 1992). trust, in particular, is a core component of successful collaboration, respect and learning in schools but there is lack of understanding of what trust entails and its implementation within learning environments such as the classroom (lee, 2005). part of the challenge with understanding what is meant by trust in the classroom is that trust, as a construct, has many angles or components and is therefore difficult to define (hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999). although, intuitively, people can identify trusting and non-trusting relationships, formally identifying the components or facets of trusting relationships and implementing these facets is more challenging. harvey and drolet (1994, p. 18) state it well: “trust is much like love we know it when we see it, but we are not sure what creates it.” we propose that the student-teacher trust relationship is a critical part of the learning process, as it fosters student wellbeing, leading to openness to learn and experimenting with ideas. learning is an emotional, social, and profoundly collaborative process (leighton, chu, & seitz, 2013). without trust it is difficult to imagine students and teachers collaborating towards mutual http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 learning goals. learning that is high-level and innovative must be grounded within a trusting student-teacher relationship for students to feel a sense of wellbeing – that is, the experience of safety, ability to take risks, expressing new ideas, making mistakes in the process of acquiring newly learned knowledge and skills, and developing the confidence and self-efficacy to accept feedback from teachers. indeed, it is often reported that schools that have made significant learning gains show the presence of mutual wellbeing, based on positive and trusting relationships within a learning community (sebring & bryk, 2000). more specifically, in schools where trust and cooperation exist, students report a greater sense of safety, with teachers caring about them, and consequently demonstrate greater academic achievement (sebring & bryk, 2000). our aim in this paper is to propose the learning errors and formative feedback (leaff) model as a way to organize key aspects of the theoretical literature on trust and student learning. based on the leaff model, a framework is designed to operationalize facets of trust to help teachers – with specific words and actions – develop trusting relationships with their students. it is our expectation that operationalizing these facets will lead to empirical work to test their effects. therefore, this paper is distinct from other publications (e.g., moore, 2009; watson & ecken, 2003) that might provide a general listing of “things to do or consider” to achieve trust in the classroom without elaborating on specific behaviors to implement and the need to test these recommended practices. although these publications have a place in the literature, they do not provide an analytical lens with which to examine trust – as a measured construct – and how it can begin to be empirically implemented and thus studied in the classroom. further, this paper is distinct from other work that has focused on trust between school officials or professionals (e.g., hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999; hoy, 2002), as our goal is to examine the role of trust between students and teachers in the classroom in the creation of student wellbeing for learning and achievement. although there are studies that address the trusting relationships between teachers and parents, teachers and teachers, and teachers and principals, few studies focus on the relationship between students and teachers (hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999). in fact, in trust in schools: a core resource for improvement, bryk and schneider (2002) point out that relational trust in schools is an undervalued and understudied topic. meier (1995) indicates that explaining how and why some schools succeed in establishing relational trust among students and teachers is a neglected topic. the rest of the paper is focused on providing a targeted review of the relevant literature related to the construct of trust, identifying its key facets in its relationship to wellbeing for learning and achievement, including assessment activities in the classroom, and showing how it may be behaviorally operationalized in the classroom. further, we present a framework that specifies for teachers the words and actions that reflect facets of trust and can be expected to generate a sense of wellbeing to enhance learning and achievement in students. the paper is divided as follows: section 1 presents a targeted review of the educational and psychological literature on trust, including key facets, and why it is viewed as an essential ingredient in student wellbeing for learning and achievement. section 2 outlines the leaff model and describes how trusting student-teacher relationships are the antecedent to the creation of student wellbeing for learning and achievement, including uptake of formative feedback, and assessment performance. in this second section, specifically, we explain the logical connections between the environment in which learning takes place and the mental models students build of their learning environment as they actively decide on their actions for learning. section 3 builds on the literature review and the leaff model by presenting a working definition of trust and organizing key theoretical and empirical findings into a framework of how an instructor (teacher) role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 might use words and actions to create trust, and student wellbeing for learning and achievement. in this third section, we focus on the role of communication as central to building trust, and the importance of congruency among words and actions. section 4 presents a discussion and conclusion with areas of focus for future empirical research. 2. trust as a precursor to student wellbeing for learning and achievement definitions of trust abound in the popular and social scientific research literature. according to the merriam-webster online dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary), trust can be defined as the “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” some definitions even include metaphorical perspectives, for example, conceptualizing trust as a type of glue that holds relationships together (bennis & nanus, 1985; rosen & brown, 1996). bennis and nanus (1985, p. 43) define, trust as “the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.” the message conveyed in these descriptions is that trust is essential for effective relationships. further, it is through trust that people bond together to create meaningful interactions and overall wellbeing. more explicitly, maister, green and galford (2000, p. 26) state that: “trust is about reciprocity: you help me and i’ll help you.” however, although popular or metaphorical definitions are lyrical and attractive to consider, they are not helpful in facilitating a systematic understanding of a construct, as they often explain the construct (e.g., trust) with other, equally difficult to define constructs (e.g., strength and ability). for example, the merrian-webster definition includes terms such as reliance, character, ability and strength and even the maister et al. (2000, p. 26) definition involves reciprocity. but these definitions do not necessarily specify measurable aspects for any of these terms. even educational and psychological definitions of trust are not always helpful in furthering our understanding of a multi-faceted construct such as trust. for example, deutsch (1973) defined trust as the confidence that one will find what is desired from another rather than what is feared. rotter (1980) expanded on this definition by stating that trust is the expectation that another’s word, promise, or statement can be relied upon – which can help create a sense of wellbeing. the challenge with these definitions is that they may be overly narrow. although trust is viewed as a fundamental element of positive relationships and is considered essential in a learning environment (deutsch, 1958; kosfeld, heinrichs, zak, fischbacher, & fehr, 2005), operational definitions for how to establish and measure trust in learning environments are lacking. what is needed, then, is a definition of trust that breaks it down into more basic facets that can, in turn, be operationalized and empirically measured. one does find approximations of such a definition in the social scientific literature. for example, defining trust as a judgment that expected behaviors and actions will be executed successfully by individuals according to some criteria begins to approximate the precision of what is needed to understand trust more concretely. the purpose of this section is to provide a targeted review of the educational and psychological literature on trust in order to offer a definition that guides establishing trust for student wellbeing, learning and achievement in classroom or educational settings. thus, this section does not provide a comprehensive treatment of trust but focuses on reviewing relevant literature pertaining to defining and building trust for student wellbeing for learning and achievement. trust is a multi-part construct and therefore difficult to define and operationalize (simpson, 2007). nonetheless it is considered vital in the process of creating meaningful human relationships. according to bowlby (1969) trust may be the most important element in the development and maintenance of healthy and happy relationships, ultimately leading to the development and maintenance of wellbeing. bryk and schneider (2002) used the term “relational http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 trust” to describe the interactions that take place in school settings. bryk and schneider (2002) state that relational trust is developed through ongoing daily interactions as everyone works together to improve learning. they view trust as a dynamic concept that is based on many factors, including respect, personal regard, competence, and personal integrity (bryk & schneider, 2002). these factors are interdependent and help create the conditions for both personal and collective wellbeing, where school officials can rely on each other to fulfill their responsibilities. satisfaction results when the groups have a shared understanding of their roles and believe each other to be acting with good intentions (bryk & schneider, 2002). the development of relational trust is also based on several other factors, including the personalities of each staff member, shared values, moods, school processes, and the stage of the relationship (tschannen-moran, 2004). the development of relational trust among the adults in a school community is essential to student learning and achievement (barth, 2001; bryk & schneider, 2002; hoy and tschannen-moran, 2003). although in some cases trust may be initially and easily established (e.g., in therapeutic settings, see horvath, 2000), it is not always easily obtained nor given, and it must be maintained on an ongoing basis (meier, 2002). in one of the few recent and comprehensive reviews on trust, hoy and tschannen-moran (1999; see also hoy & tschannen-moran, 2003; tschannen-moran, 2004) examined the conditions associated with establishing trust. they found that a common condition for establishing trust is the willingness for individuals to risk vulnerability, that is, for two individuals to perceive that the other is willing to take a chance in losing something. in addition, in studying people or groups where trust is identified as present, hoy and tschannen-moran (2003; see also hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999) identified five facets of trusting relationships that are independent but yet interrelated and reciprocally supportive: (1) benevolence, (2) reliability, (3) competence, (4) honesty, and (5) openness. although hoy and tschannen-moran (2003) focused their research on the facets and impact of trust on school culture, and less so on student learning and achievement, their findings reflect what might be needed in trusting human relationships generally. for example, hoy and tschannen-moran (1999) explained that the first facet, benevolence, involves two parts: a consideration for the needs of the other person or group, and a willingness to support their interests. the second facet, reliability, involves positive behaviors that are consistent and predictable. the third facet, competence, refers to the skills and abilities needed to accomplish a task successfully. the fourth facet, honesty, involves the commitment to be accurate and congruent in words and actions, and to follow through on promises. further to this fourth facet, acknowledgement of errors is a major part of showing congruency in words and actions. finally, the fifth facet, openness, includes transparency about decisions made by means of explanation, collaboration, and timely communication (hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999; tschannen-moran, 2004). additional evidence has been found in support of these five facets (geist, 2002; hoy, gage & tarter, 2006; kochanek, 2005; and tschannen-moran & hoy, 2000). trusting relationships consistently reveal a constellation of features. for example, showing vulnerability or the willingness to reveal personal weakness seems to play an important role in trusting relationships. according to another recent review on trust, burke, sims, lazzara and salas (2007) identified the following components of trusting relationships: (1) a willingness to be vulnerable (see also mayer & davis, 1999), (2) positive expectations that mutual interests will be protected and promoted (see also dirks, 2000; mayer, davis, & schoorman, 1995), and (3) a positive assessment of others’ intentions, sincerity, motivations, character, reliability and integrity (see also butler, 1991; mayer & davis, 1999). baier (1994) also points out that people who are trusted often demonstrate vulnerability or show their limitations, and may place role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 something or someone they care about in someone else’s care. the willingness to accept weakness and susceptibility evolves over the course of a relationship through repeated actions and a history of mutual reciprocity. trust has also been identified as a device that may facilitate coordination within social organizations. in relation to the classroom, teachers and students can be viewed as a type of social organization whose goal is to work productively in a predictable and safe environment, where cooperation is necessary for optimal learning and achievement. in particular, misztal (1996) identifies three functions of trust in social organizations. first, “trust is a device for coping with the contingency and arbitrariness of social reality” (p. 96-97). second, “trust is a mechanism for sustaining the predictability and regularity of the collective order” (p. 96). third, “trust is a device for coping with the freedom of others, and functions to foster cooperation” (p. 99). one can imagine how these functions could facilitate student wellbeing for learning and achievement. in a related study, goddard (2003) included trust as a component of social capital for aiding academic achievement in elementary school students. goddard collected survey data from a large sample of 2,429 students and 444 teachers in 45 elementary schools to examine social capital among students, teachers, and parents. goddard (2003) also collected data on the values that promote academic success. the analyses showed that relational trust supported the improvement of student learning and achievement. specifically, the study showed that trusting student-teacher (i.e., teachers in this school trust their students) and teacher-parent relationships (i.e., teachers in this school trust the parents) have the potential to help students achieve academic success (see also goddard, hoy, & woolfolk hoy, 2000; goddard, tschannen-moran, & hoy, 2001). however, student trust towards teachers was not measured. sebring and bryk (2000) suggested that cooperative working relationships in schools “[require] a strong base of social trust among teachers, between teachers and parents, between teachers and the principal, and between teachers and students” (p.442). we propose that one way in which trust promotes learning and achievement is through student wellbeing. there is also evidence that trust is associated with the strategies school leaders implement to establish strong relationships with their constituents. studies of trust in schools distinguish between principal-teacher relationships, teacher-teacher relationships, and the relationships that teachers have with parents and students (goddard, 2003; hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999; tschannen-moran, 2004). tschannen-moran (2004) considered ways in which the presence of trust helps principals and teachers feel confident to collaborate and share decision-making responsibilities. she illustrated the attitudes and behaviors that school administrators and teacher staff members described as important for trusting relationships, for example, individuals sharing a vision, modeling, coaching, managing, and mediating. for each of these actions, tschannen-moran (2004) indicated that trusted leaders pay close attention to sending a congruent message through words and actions. for example, in modeling, school leaders use words that match their actions, so if punctuality is described as valuable, then the school leader shows consideration for being punctual. in coaching, school leaders recognize and demonstrate active listening. in addition, in her book, building trust for better schools, kochanek (2005) suggests a developmental approach to school leaders who aim to build trust; for example, finding ways to communicate a vision, promoting low-risk exchanges through small group interactions, using interactions to build a sense of wellbeing (to ease feelings of vulnerability), and then creating opportunities for higher-risk interactions that lead to positive outcomes. through these repeated exchanges, kochanek claims that staff members build confidence in themselves and others that results in greater trusting relationships. role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 although kochanek (2005) recommends specific strategies for leaders who aim to build trust in their schools, these strategies do not necessarily extend to teachers and students. there is generally a lack of empirical, evidence-based recommendations for creating trusting studentteacher relationships, and also for repairing school environments already plagued by a lack of trust (louis, 2008; see also tschannen-moran & hoy, 1997). when trust is identified in the educational research literature, it is mainly presented and discussed as a keystone of effective management. this is understandable, as trust facilitates social organization, as described previously. according to anderson and narus (1990), groups which already have a low level of trust reveal weak methods of communication, less cooperation, and more conflict in their environments (see also cook, hardin, & levi, 2005). as groups work together in principled ways to consider, debate, and decide on objectives in a positive way, they can learn to better communicate, cooperate, and produce outcomes that lead to overall group success (limas, 2003). although rotter (1967) states that trusting others to be honest and congruent in their words and actions is an important variable in creating conditions for learning, defining trust and identifying specific ways to build trusting student-teacher relationships has been challenging. however, trust between students and teachers needs to be operationalized, otherwise it is impossible to take measures to instantiate and evaluate it in classrooms. it is unlikely that teachers can be successful in achieving their overall academic mission, that is, fostering a love of learning, positive relationships, productive communication, improved decision-making, collaboration and openness (tschannen-moran, 2004), without practices aimed at achieving trust with students. although trust is described as the backbone of cooperation, necessary for social organization, and the foundation for human wellbeing, again, little empirical work has been conducted to clarify its definition, role in the learning process, how it can be implemented with specific words and actions in the classroom, and ultimately evaluated. in the next section, the leaff model is used to elaborate on the connections between students’ trust for their teachers, impressions of their learning environments and the mental models they are likely to generate that reflect their wellbeing and anticipated learning pathways. following this second section, we offer a definition of trust and a framework of strategies for implementing trust in learning environments for further empirical study. 3. the learning errors and formative feedback (leaff) model: a pedagogical alliance of trust for student wellbeing this section describes the leaff model shown in figure 1 below. for a comprehensive introduction and explanation of the model, the reader is referred to leighton et al. (2013). the leaff model was developed from a review and synthesis of the emotional, psychological, and social factors that underlie successful learning, achievement and instruction (e.g., black & wiliam, 2009, boekaerts & corno, 2005; frijda & mesquita, 1995; kluger & denisi, 1996; leighton, 2009; leighton & gierl, 2007, 2011; shute, 2008). in this paper, we highlight key aspects of the model, and, specifically, the foundational role that trust plays in a pedagogical alliance teachers create with students. in this alliance, the trust bond between teachers and students provides a foundation to build learning environments where students feel a sense of wellbeing, especially in revealing their learning errors, mistakes or misconceptions as they aim to meaningfully learn complex skills. according to the leaff model, the comfort students have with recognizing and sharing what they do not understand is the key, because the fear of mistakes and appearing “stupid” can be a profound roadblock for learning, seeking help and being receptive to feedback. the leaff model recognizes the importance of the teacher’s words and actions in creating an environment where students experience wellbeing. this type of setting role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 also influences the development of students’ mental models of learning. there are three distinct parts in the leaff model: the instructional climate, students’ mental models of learning, that is, the affective and cognitive aspects of the classroom environment, and students’ academic performance. figure 1. the learning errors and formative feedback (leaff) model 3.1 instructional climate/environment as shown in figure 2 below, the first part of the leaff model is most pertinent to the present paper, as it focuses on the instructional climate or environment in the classroom. in this first part of the model, the teacher’s words and actions can build trust, or not, with students, thus fostering either a positive or negative learning environment. depending on the learning environment role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 created, students are expected to experience varying levels of overall wellbeing for learning, which have implications for specific student behaviors, including achievement. figure 2. first part of leaff model – instructional content for example, in a learning environment that promotes a sense of wellbeing in students, students are expected to feel secure taking risks, to make mistakes as they learn without fear of being labeled, and show receptivity for formative feedback. in an environment that does not promote wellbeing, students are expected to feel insecure taking risks, make mistakes as they learn, and show resistance to formative feedback. the existence of trusting student-teacher relationships – a pedagogical alliance – is a key part of positive learning environments where students experience wellbeing and successfully learn. in order to develop trusting student-teacher relationships, the leaff model includes specific recommendations that involve explicit verbal and physical communication strategies. in particular, during instruction, teachers should verbally identify the pedagogical value of making errors as part of the learning process, and explain that it is through the understanding and correction of these errors, that student-learning gaps are addressed, leading to higher-order thinking and the advancement of learning. further, teachers should show students the types of common errors that are often made as students acquire knowledge and skills in a particular content domain. teachers should also demonstrate to students that teacher-led attempts to correct errors are not always successful, and repeated attempts are necessary for success. in fact, teachers should discuss the types of errors they once made as novices when they were first learning the content. discussing learning errors as a strategy for promoting student wellbeing is based on two facets of trust – openness and honesty (see hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999; tschannen-moran, 2004). having open and honest conversations about learning errors is expected to lead students to feel relaxed about showing teachers what they do not know or what they are struggling to understand. as a result, students and teachers can feel more at ease showing vulnerability in a relationship where seeking and providing support, respectively, for learning is contingent on mutual understanding of the complexity of the learning process (see burke et al., 2007; mayer & davis, 1999). this pedagogical alliance between students and teachers involves a foundation of trust for students to show what is not understood and for teachers to help students with how to learn it. additional strategies that are expected to build trust are presented in the next section (wellbeing within the learning environment: a framework for defining and operationalizing trust). in addition to talking about the pedagogical value of learning errors, teachers could also instruction explicit discussion of learning process, origins and value of errors/failure; maintenance of real learning via formative feedback little or no explicit discussion of learning process, origins and value of errors/failure (default); maintenance of shallow learning via feckless feedback ------role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 tackle topics on the role of effort and motivation in helping students gain a deeper understanding and comfort with the many factors that influence learning. these discussions would not be expected to take place only at the beginning of a lesson plan or before assessments but during other key points in time – such as when formative feedback is administered based on interim (formative) assessment performance, and also after summative assessments. although teachers generally agree that making mistakes is a natural part of learning, and even understand the mistakes their students might make, there is often no explicit discussion about helping students see the value of these mistakes as opportunities for enhancing the learning process (see leighton et al., 2013). in addition, teachers may not be cognizant of how to initiate these conversations or how to help formally establish an atmosphere of openness and honesty (leighton et al., 2013) where trust can be cultivated and student wellbeing can take root. students’ attitudes and beliefs need to be addressed directly and overtly in the classroom in order to positively influence their feelings within the learning environment (boekaerts & corno, 2005; bransford, brown & cocking, 2000; lajoie, 2008). for example, boekaerts and corno (2005) indicate that student participation in classroom activities is influenced by teacher practices. these practices can bolster or undermine students’ sense of wellbeing for learning. 3.2 mental models of learning the second part of the leaff model, shown in figure 3 below, focuses on the perceptions or mental models students create in response to their learning environments. figure 3. second part of leaff model – mental models of learning (including cognition and emotion) according to johnson-laird (2004), who has gathered significant evidence on mental models, individuals base their reasoning, problem solving and behaviors on the representations or “models” they generate of the world around them. it is expected that students base their attitudes, beliefs, and actions about learning, in part, upon the models they generate of what they mental model of learning environment alongside information processing of instructional lesson (knowledge and skills) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------emotional evaluation of learning environment — is it safe? yes or no yes — learning environment is safe mastery goals and display of learning errors no — learning environment is unsafe performance goals and avoidance of learning errors performance on any kind of assessment is more transparent performance on any kind of assessment is more opaque formative feedback increasing instructional relevance and uptake for student feckless feedback decreasing instructional relevance and uptake for student role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 observe and hear in their classroom environments (leighton & sternberg, 2012). as illustrated in the middle box of figure 3 above, mental models include two parts – a cognitive part related to the knowledge and skills learned in the instructional environment, and an affective part related to their sense of wellbeing within that environment (leighton & sternberg, 2012). for example, on the cognitive front, a student who observes a teacher repeatedly assign math homework may add to his or her mental model the idea that math requires practicing skills. in addition, on the affective front, a student who observes a teacher constantly praise a student by saying “you always get the right answer” may develop a mental model where praise arises only from perfect responses. associating praise from teachers only with “right answers” could lead to an excessive focus on performance, and a lack of wellbeing from feeling the pressure to avoid mistakes even in the early phases of learning complex skills. likewise, a student who witnesses a teacher dismiss or not take personal ownership for instructional gaffes or mistakes may conclude that mistakes are denied, depending on who makes them or when they occur. frijda and mesquitta (1995) explain that almost all environmental events are judged to be emotionally relevant or irrelevant, positive or damaging to a particular purpose or concern. a teacher who deliberately attempts to create a pedagogical alliance with students, namely, a safe classroom environment, by ensuring trusting student-teacher relationships, can be expected to shape students’ mental models in positive ways, increase overall wellbeing, and, thus, their engagement for learning. in a safe classroom environment, students would be expected to make more mistakes initially, as they learn content material, because they are likely to feel relaxed to try things out and experiment in front of the teacher. within a safe learning environment, students’ wellbeing would be expected to lead to greater uptake of formative feedback about their performances, more innovative problem-solving strategies and greater mastery orientations toward learning. kluger and denisi (1996) and shute (2008) suggest that in order for feedback to be formative, the student must trust the teacher who delivers the information and be willing to accept and utilize the feedback. in contrast, students who emotionally evaluate the instructional context to be unsafe would be expected to act in opposite ways to students who judge the instructional context to be safe. that is, students would be expected to avoid making mistakes, as they would not want to be vulnerable in front of a teacher who is punitive about errors. further, in an unsafe learning environment, students would be expected to develop performance orientations toward learning rather than mastery orientations, and be less willing to risk innovative thinking and problem solving. if students experience trepidation (lack of wellbeing) to show a teacher what they know or do not know, they may fail to believe that a teacher’s feedback about their performance is accurate. in their meta-analysis of the role of feedback on performance, harris and rosenthal (1985) showed that the climate created for feedback had a greater effect on student performance than the quantity of feedback provided. 3.3. learning and achievement performance the third part of the leaff model, shown in figure 4 below, focuses on student performance. specifically, this third part indicates that students are more likely to be transparent in showing what they know or do not know on assignments and assessments when they feel a sense of wellbeing within their learning environment. when this occurs, student performance is expected to yield superior information to teachers of actual learning levels. if students view their performance on assessments, especially formative assessments, as opportunities to freely show what they do not know and receive help, they are more likely to be receptive to formative feedback as a tool for improving learning. conversely, again based on the leaff model but needing empirical testing, when students feel a lack of wellbeing within their learning role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 environment, and unsafe to show their misunderstandings on assignments and assessments, they are less likely to receive accurate formative feedback. this hesitance to be receptive to formative feedback is expected to occur if students fail to believe the assignment or assessment measured what they were struggling to learn. figure 4. third part of leaff model – performance and predictions in addition, several predictions are described in leighton et al. (2013) about students’ performance when they develop mental models that include a sense of wellbeing for learning: students will initially make more learning errors on formative assessments; students will show more creativity, ingenuity, and higher-order thinking as they encounter challenging, new material and as they learn the material; students will demonstrate higher intrinsic motivation in the content area; and, over time, students will make fewer errors on summative assessments. the opposite is expected of students who develop mental models that reflect a lack of wellbeing for learning, irrespective of the strength of their mental models in terms of understanding cognitive performance on any kind of assessment is more transparent performance on any kind of assessment is more opaque 1. more errors on first-order assessments (formative and cognitive diagnostic) 2. greater student innovation and experimentation 3. higher level thinking skills 4. higher interest and motivation 5. fewer errors on second, third-order assessments (interim & summative) 1. fewer errors on first-order assessments (formative and cognitive diagnostic) 2. lesser student innovation and experimentation 3. lower level thinking skills 4. lower interest and motivation 5. more errors on second, third-order assessments (interim & summative) % o f l e a rn in g e rr o rs predicted knowledge and skill misunderstandings over time % o f l e a rn in g e rr o rs predicted knowledge and skill misunderstandings over time role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 skills. the leaff model indicates that the most important input variable to student learning and assessment is the trust between student and teacher (i.e., pedagogical alliance) and the subsequent feeling of wellbeing that is then generated within that safe learning environment. thus, trust is expected to be a key part of developing and maintaining wellbeing within this environment (e.g., see hoy & tschannen-moran, 2003; see the section in this paper: trust as a precursor to student wellbeing for learning). without trust, the mental models students create would be expected to pair the absence of wellbeing with learning, and direct them to avoid showing what they truly know (or do not know) for fear of making mistakes. further, by not feeling at ease in demonstrating honest struggles with learning, students are unlikely to trust the accuracy of the feedback delivered to them, based on their performance on assessments. therefore, the question we address in the next section is how to best define and operationalize trust in order to systematically and empirically study and enhance student wellbeing for learning. 4. wellbeing within the learning environment: a framework for defining and operationalizing trust based on the previous two sections of this paper, this section provides a working definition of trust and operationalizes the construct into active strategies that teachers can implement in order to create student wellbeing in the classroom environment. as mentioned previously, trust is a complex construct (hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999, mayer et al., 1995) with descriptions of trust often including individual perception, vulnerability, and congruency of words and action (communication). further, hoy and tschannen (1999) assert that trusting relationships involve five facets: benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty and openness. although all five facets are considered important, their individual levels of influence on the creation of a trusting relationship may vary depending on the needs of the student. in this paper we propose the following working definition of trust based on the targeted review of the educational and psychological literature, and specifically hoy and tschannen’s (1999) five facets: trust is experienced when an individual perceives benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness in another individual; these facets are communicated in relationships often through timely congruency of words and actions. although this definition of trust includes additional constructs or latent variables (e.g., benevolence, reliability), we operationalize the definition into more basic and potentially measurable word and actions (strategies) as shown in the theoretical framework in table 1 below. the framework illustrates measurable behaviors that require testing and verification with empirical studies (see leighton & bustos gomez, 2014 for an empirical demonstration). an important feature of operationalizing trust is identifying ways to communicate with words and actions. although teachers recognize that communication is an important element in the creation of student wellbeing for learning, few are explicitly aware of the impact of communication on their ability to build trust (charles, 1999). brown (2005) indicates trust begins to develop between students and teachers when teachers establish appropriate and explicit methods of communication with each student in the classroom. communication is defined as the interaction between teachers and students before, during, and after class, and is the basis for the development of a classroom climate that includes reciprocal respect between students and teachers. in addition, this communication must be perceived as congruent (brown, 2005). role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 table 1a. a theoretical framework for beginning to operationalize trust and create a pedagogical alliance facet of trust (latent variable) positive behaviors, actions, and/or words to implement negative behaviors, actions, and/or words to avoid 1. benevolence – a consideration for the needs of the other person or group, and a willingness to support their interests getting to know students in terms of their strengths and weaknesses by asking them questions in a mindful and nonthreatening (kind) manner such as with the following stem: all students learn in different ways. i’m curious to know about your feelings and thoughts on something. what do you think about this material? example questions can include the following:  what content material they find difficult to understand or easy to understand and why;  what they find ambiguous about content material as they complete assignments or homework;  what they enjoy about school and learning and why;  how they think they can best achieve their goals and where they realized this about their learning;  how they feel about formative and summative assessments and why;  how they feel about receiving feedback about their work;  what time they have to focus on learning content material outside of school;  what activities they enjoy inside and outside of school and why. making “know-it-all” statements suggesting you already know students’ strengths and weaknesses, including how they think and feel about a topic is not recommended because it does not properly include the learner in his or her learning. the following examples provide statements that should therefore be avoided:  i know why you didn’t complete the assignment/homework; you find this difficult – don’t you?  sure you know this – that’s right, you always know the answers to questions (sarcasm);  you know, you really need to stop wasting time and work harder because you are going to fail this course and it may be what you deserve (verbal put down);  this is the way we always do things here – you hand in your homework and if you don’t, you get a zero (no explanation; arbitrary rules);  i am not going to listen anymore because none of what you’re saying makes sense (negative responses);  why can’t you be more like fred (or sally) who works hard and is a high achiever (comparisons and favoritism)? role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 table 1b. a theoretical framework for beginning to operationalize trust and create a pedagogical alliance facet of trust (latent variable) positive behaviors, actions, and/or words to implement negative behaviors, actions, and/or words to avoid 2. reliability – positive behaviors/words that are consistent and predictable depending on the teacher to come through with what is needed or agreed upon; consistent follow-through with commitments by showing students that you remember their questions, needs for clarification, and requests for assistance. examples of demonstrating reliability include statements such as the following:  here is the information for the question you asked for a couple of days ago. i’m sorry it took me a couple of days to get back to you;  let’s clarify what is needed for this lesson so that we are all on the same page and there are no misinterpretations;  please help me understand the kind of information you think would be helpful in learning this concept (skill, idea);  the test that you are about to complete reflects the concepts and skills that we have talked about and learned in class. if you don’t agree, please let me know after class. demonstrating inconsistency and apathy – either explicitly or implicitly – is to be avoided. the following statements are examples of potential responses that likely reflect problems prioritizing a student’s needs and follow through:  i’m sorry i’m so late with this information but i forgot you needed it… can you still use it given that it is so late?  i forgot and i’m not prepared to answer your question (or help you learn the material);  i am disorganized with my papers. where did i leave my responses to your questions?  i recognize that i am changing things from what is stated in the course outline (syllabus) but i think what we are doing now is more important….;  i am sorry for returning this assignment late with my feedback. i got busy with other things;  that is a great question but i can’t answer it right now because we need to move on to the next assignment. role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 table 1c. a theoretical framework for beginning to operationalize trust and create a pedagogical alliance facet of trust (latent variable) positive behaviors, actions, and/or words to implement negative behaviors, actions, and/or words to avoid 3. competence – skills and abilities needed to accomplish a task successfully having the explicit, demonstrable knowledge and skills necessary to perform the role of teacher. furthermore, having the softer skills associated with character, integrity, and authenticity that enables the effective use of domain knowledge and skills for a teacher to be effective. example actions that indicate teachers possess competence in necessary skills include:  spending time during the day to find out how students learn (asking questions and observing), what difficulties they are having, and designing lessons and tasks that correspond to students’ styles;  showing understanding of the content material, attempts to make instruction interesting (experimenting with delivery), and not being afraid to acknowledge what is not known (demonstrate to students that an expert sometimes also makes learning errors);  showing positive and constructive attitude towards learning and in light of students’ questions – using statements such as that is a great question… or that is a great answer but not for this question…;  knowing how to develop lesson plans and participating in professional development;  providing kind, high-quality feedback that is specific and formative in indicating what the student needs to do to achieve the next level of expertise and developing a plan with the student to help the student achieve the next level;  providing constant opportunities for students to take part in learning and demonstrations of learning – such as let’s try to show what we have learned in this new area…;  managing classroom environment to be positive, respectful, and constructive. demonstrating continued ineffectiveness or lack of understanding via actions, and not addressing lack of knowledge or skill in teaching. continued ineffectiveness sends a message to students that the teacher does not care to improve and thus may not care about their learning. example behaviors that demonstrate ineffectiveness can include:  not knowing how to answer students’ questions about content material and not following up the next day with answers (e.g., i’m not sure why you don’t understand this; and i’m not sure how to help anymore);  lacking professionalism with inappropriate use of grammar, voice, and treatment of students at all times in and out of school settings (e.g., using sarcasm to tease a student about being late for class but never for recess);  appearing confused in the middle of a lesson and then not owning up to the reason for confusion;  providing unclear instructions for assignments or assessments, not clarifying comprehensively when students ask questions;  creating assessments that students perceive as unfair and not discussing or explaining rationale for assessment;  providing excessive information during lesson and not demonstrating sensitivity to students’ learning states. role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 table 1d. a theoretical framework for beginning to operationalize trust and create a pedagogical alliance facet of trust (latent variable) positive behaviors, actions, and/or words to implement negative behaviors, actions, and/or words to avoid 4. honesty – commitment to be truthful and to follow through on promises; acknowledgement of errors and demonstrating congruency between what is intended, said and done showing character, integrity, and authenticity, and demonstrating congruency in intentions, words, and actions. honesty also entails accepting responsibility for mistakes or events that have gone awry because of teacher’s words or actions. examples of showing honesty include:  admitting when a mistake has been made during a lesson or some other activity and indicating a willingness to correct it;  admitting when something (knowledge or skill) is not known, being willing and able to find out the answer, and getting back to a student in a timely manner;  creating assessments that correspond to what is being taught in the classroom and not surprising students;  being able to laugh at oneself during moments of not knowing, making a mistake or when a student points out a mistake;  modeling nature of learning by thinking out loud in front of students in a clear way so that students see and hear how an expert frames knowledge and skills, and observe the recursive ways in which learning takes place;  explaining to students during lessons and discussion that errors and mistakes are a part of the learning process;  allowing students equal opportunity and time to participate in class discussions, answer questions, commenting on ideas;  ensuring that promises made to students are kept – whether it is in terms of finding out information or doing something for a lesson plan. lacking congruency in intentions, words and actions indicate to students that teachers are not reliable and therefore may not be trustworthy; unpredictability can lead to teachers being viewed as dishonest. examples of actions to avoid include:  discussing the naturalness of making errors in the learning process but then not acknowledging errors if they are committed during teaching;  failing to keep promises – telling a student that you will find the answer to a question raised during a lesson and then forgetting to find the answer;  being incongruent in intentions, words, and actions – talking about the importance of fair testing and administering assessments that measure material not covered in class. role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 table 1e. a theoretical framework for beginning to operationalize trust and create a pedagogical alliance facet of trust (latent variable) positive behaviors, actions, and/or words to implement negative behaviors, actions, and/or words to avoid 5. openness – being transparent about the decisions made by being collaborative and providing timely communication being willing and able to share relevant information with students so that transparency is achieved. examples of words and actions that demonstrate openness include:  providing a rationale or reason for disciplining a student clearly so that a student understands the precise connection between behavior and consequence (e.g., i need to ask you to move from this table because this environment is not helping you concentrate on the task);”  stating and explaining expectations for how to behave in class and what is to be learned in the curriculum (e.g., today we are going to learn how to add fractions and why adding fractions seems tricky at first);  providing explanations when students are behaving in disappointing ways and changing expectations to improve performance;  consulting with parents, following up and bringing them into discussions about student learning;  being explicit (clear) about expectations for learning outcomes and content that will be included on formal tests;  requesting anonymous feedback from students about classroom instruction and being open to acting on constructive ideas;  listening to students when they have concerns and questions, and being inclusive of ideas about learning and direction of classroom instruction. avoiding opportunities to be open and lacking openness sends the message to students that something inappropriate may be occurring and that the teacher may not have their best interests at heart. examples of words and actions that indicate lack of openness include the following:  using unclear or vague language to communicate learning outcomes (course objectives) – saying “today we are going to learn about fractions” is too vague and needs to be more explicit about specific concepts and skills that will be tackled;  administering tests and not explaining to students the objective of tests and results;  being unwilling to consider alternative methods for presenting concepts (differentiated instruction) and content material, being closed to feedback or student opinions without explanation. role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 teachers engage in congruent communication with students when their words and actions are aligned (brown, 2005). although brown (2005) also indicates that teachers’ intentions must be aligned to words and actions, intentions can only be observed and judged as congruent through words and actions. teachers can facilitate congruency in communication by actively listening to students if they claim that they listen to students, matching their body language and facial expressions to their verbal messages, responding to students with empathy when appropriate, and avoiding communication roadblocks (charles, 1999). in particular, active listening and body language techniques include eye contact, facing the student during dialogue, acknowledging student talking by nodding, rephrasing to check for understanding, and not interrupting the student while he or she is talking (e.g., empathic listening; see horvath, 2000). roadblocks that can undermine teachers’ efforts for congruent communication include comments that are negative and tend to put students down, for example, questions such as “did you mess up again?” or moralizing statements such as “who says that life is fair?” can discourage communication and can send students the message that their teachers are really not interested in what they say or feel. englander (1986) called these comments “low respect” responses that impose the teachers’ own values and solutions on students. congruent communication can help instantiate the facets of trust in a classroom (baier, 1986; parsons, 1960) for student wellbeing. in addition to congruent communication, thweatt and mccroskey (1998) suggest that teachers who respond to students’ needs in a timely manner can positively impact students’ views about the trustworthiness of their teachers. all these positive actions begin to set the stage to build what we call a pedagogical alliance or trust bond between students and teachers. in contrast, teachers who fail to respond to students’ needs in a timely manner negatively impact trustworthiness. thweatt and mccroskey (1998) also suggest that communication techniques that mirror the instructional foci in the classroom are beneficial to building desired levels of trust. for example, creating a supportive rapport (e.g., encouraging students to not lose confidence when they get the wrong answer) when instructing students can help them learn to see the teacher as someone who has their best interest in mind. further, it is important to recognize that teacher-student relationships are continuous, with interactions occurring on a daily basis. this relational continuity serves as an incentive to behave in trustworthy ways and to reap the benefits of trusting relationships (hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999). the proposed framework shown in table 1 above shows the five facets outlined by hoy and tschannen-moran (1999) in the first column. the facets are comprehensive and supported by additional research in the social sciences (e.g., schoorman, mayer, & davis, 2007). although some have suggested that trust may have as few as three facets or as many as ten (butler, 1991; bryk & schneider, 2002), the five facets outlined in hoy and tschannen-moran align with additional research on effective and congruent communication techniques conducive to building a pedagogical alliance or trust bond in the classroom. these five facets are latent variables that need to be operationalized with measurable words and actions. the second column outlines behavioral examples – the words and actions – that we consider to operationalize the latent variables. the third column outlines examples of words and actions that are opposite to those listed in the second column; these words and actions are expected to create obstacles to building trust in the classroom (i.e., pedagogical alliance). as shown in table 1 above, one of the first facets for creating trusting relationships involves benevolence. in the second column, specific behaviors are listed for demonstrating benevolence, in particular, the importance of asking questions and getting to know students, taking time to listen, expressing an interest in understanding their perspective, and interacting with students. along with lesson plans, teachers could build specific opportunities for asking questions to find role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 out about students’ perspectives about the material, including what they find irrelevant or difficult. these moments of asking questions create opportunities for open dialog that may help students see their teachers as caring individuals interested in students’ perspectives and provide channels for deeper learning. additional facets of table 1 above can be interpreted in a similar manner. implementing words and actions that operationalize trust should be done continuously during formal and informal time spent with students. for example, demonstrating the second facet of reliability can be done formally when a new lesson is introduced and students raise questions that require follow-up, based on further investigation (e.g., “that is a great question that i cannot answer at this very moment but let me find out the answer and get back to you”). reliability can also be demonstrated when reviewing assessment results with students. in these situations, if a teacher is helping to explain a missed concept and fails, coming back to the concept and attempting to explain it again using new methods is instrumental (e.g., “i am finding that this approach is not working well to help explain division of fractions, so let me find another way and we’ll try again tomorrow”). the guiding mandate for teachers who wish to convey reliability is to show students that they can be relied on to listen to students’ questions, needs for clarification, and requests for assistance, even if traditional methods fail and new methods must be sought. as another example, demonstrating the fourth facet, honesty, can be done at the beginning of a new lesson. honesty can be modeled by discussing the value of making learning errors in the acquisition of new knowledge and skills (e.g., “i am going to tell you a secret – mistakes are a natural part of learning something new…”). honesty can also be woven into the feedback provided to students about their mistakes as they attempt to conquer new concepts (e.g., “see this mistake right here – this is an important mistake to make; you should feel proud of this mistake, as it indicates that you have grasped a high-level concept that you are trying to overgeneralize… but incorrectly”). 4. discussion and conclusion in this paper we proposed that student wellbeing for learning and achievement is promoted by the construct of trust between student and teacher, and its operationalization within a classroom environment. we called this trust bond the pedagogical alliance. trust was identified as the key element in building student-teacher relationships in order to support meaningful, innovative student learning. we began this paper by providing a targeted review of the literature indicating that trust is a multi-faceted construct. five facets of trusting relationships were highlighted – benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness – as discussed in the work of hoy and tschannen-moran (1999). we offered ways to operationalize these five facets (see table 1 above) in order to make explicit the words and actions that can be implemented in order to build trust in student-teacher relationships and then measure their effects. the role of congruent communication was also explained as central to building and operationalizing trust. the current research literature discusses the importance of trusting relationships among the adults in the school community. but there is a significant shortfall in the discussion of trusting relationships between students and teachers in classrooms, especially in terms of how specifically to build trust. although the five facets of trust (hoy & tschannen-moran, 1999) are grounded in the research literature, these five facets require further understanding and empirical testing. for example, research is needed to examine the extent to which the five facets of trust – when operationalized into behaviors and learning interventions – actually build trust in the classroom (however, see leighton & bustos gomez, 2014 for empirical work). we need to gain a better understanding of how congruent communication influences the five facets of role of trust for wellbeing, learning and achievement leighton, seitz, chu, & gomez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness. to begin to formalize ways in which we can help teachers and students develop trusting relationships for student wellbeing, a framework that operationalized the five facets of trust was outlined in table 1 above. this framework is designed to help teachers implement the five facets of trust in their classroom with students. if trust is assumed to be a prerequisite condition for student wellbeing for learning and achievement, as we have articulated it is, then being able to operationalize these five facets of trusting relationships to build a pedagogical alliance is necessary to evaluate their role in learning and assessment processes occurring in the classroom. our next goal is to conduct empirical studies that test the effects of these five facets of trusting relationships for creating safe environments where learning and assessment practices are maximized for student wellbeing and academic success. acknowledgments preparation of this paper was supported by a grant to the first author from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc grant no. 410-2011-0811). grantees undertaking such projects are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. this paper, therefore, does not necessarily represent the positions or the policies of the canadian government, and no official endorsement should be inferred. questions related to this paper should be directed to the first author by contacting jacqueline.leighton@ualberta.ca. authors jacqueline p. leighton university of alberta jacqueline.leighton@ualberta.ca paolina seitz st. mary's university man-wai chu university of calgary maria clara bustos gomez colegio gimnasio los pinares publishing timeline received 10 septmeber 2015 accepted 24 april 2016 published 14 september 2016 references anderson, j. c., & narus, j. a. 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(2020). job security and the promotion of workers’ wellbeing in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic: a study with canadian workers one to two weeks after the initiation of social distancing measures. international journal of wellbeing, 10(3),58-76. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1321 tyler pacheco wilfrid laurier university tpacheco@wlu.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 article job security and the promotion of workers’ wellbeing in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic: a study with canadian workers one to two weeks after the initiation of social distancing measures tyler pacheco · simon coulombe · christine khalil · sophie meunier · marina doucerain · emilie auger · emily cox abstract: background: due to the current coronavirus (covid-19) crisis, workplaces have had to make significant alterations in the way they conduct business. this, in addition to the current financial instability, may put workers at risk of experiencing job insecurity and, in turn, lower wellbeing. job insecurity is a key determinant of wellbeing, but little is known on how it is impacted by public health crises, and more specifically how it relates to workers’ positive and negative wellbeing in the midst of a pandemic. research is lacking on resilience levers that workplace interventions should target to support wellbeing in times of insecurity. objective: framed from a multidisciplinary perspective (public health, positive and organizational psychology), the study explores (1) workers’ job (in)security during the covid-19 pandemic one to two weeks after social distancing measures were implemented by canadian governments, (2) how job (in)security relates to wellbeing during the pandemic, and (3) the potential positive effects of workplace-related resilience levers. method: 1,073 canadian workers working full-/part-time or who were temporarily laid off completed an online survey, including measures of wellbeing at work or in general, job security and potential resilience levers (workplace disaster preparedness, policy, social capital). results: multiple regression findings highlight that marginalized workers (e.g., women, migrants, people facing financial hardships) reported lower job security, and having temporarily lost one’s job was negatively associated with job security. low job security was related to lower scores across measures of wellbeing. distress was high in the sample. workplace disaster preparedness, policy and social capital were associated with higher wellbeing. the effects of these resilience levers tended to be stronger at higher job security levels. discussion: recommendations include a systemic, collaborative approach that includes policies fostering job security as well as resilience-promoting interventions in the workplace to protect/increase the wellbeing of workers during covid-19. keywords: covid-19, coronavirus, wellbeing, workplace, job security, resilience, canada about:blank job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 59 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org practice implications • systemic changes are needed to support communities (e.g., women, migrants) who are often marginalized in the workplace, and who are now experiencing a higher degree of job insecurity during covid-19. • establishing ways of improving job security and reassuring workers about employment stability could increase the effectiveness of workplace interventions to foster workers’ resilience in the context of covid-19. • multidisciplinary effort between experts, decision-makers and professionals from diverse fields is recommended in order to support the holistic wellbeing of workers. introduction the coronavirus (covid-19) crisis has resulted in challenges for workers’ job security (carter & may, 2020; sanchez et al., 2020; statistics canada, 2020b). in canada, governments have established policies to contain the pandemic’s outbreak, and these policies are inadvertently impacting labour market activities (statistics canada, 2020b). data from the march labour force survey revealed that millions of canadians suffered job loss or a reduction in their usual work hours, creating concerns related to continued job security (statistics canada, 2020b). the role of job (in)security in the wellbeing of workers during pandemics and similar crises has been overlooked in the literature. furthermore, little guidance is available on how resilience levers (i.e., supervision, support and policies; organizational preparedness to the crisis) may promote worker’s wellbeing in the context of the covid-19 crisis. this study seeks to address these gaps. literature review job security refers to “employee’s expectations about the stability and longevity of their job in an organization” (lu et al., 2017, p. 30). research shows that natural disasters and public health crises impose negative economic impacts (qin & jiang, 2011; mastroianni, 2009). following the wenchaun earthquake in china, private enterprises suffered major economic damage (qin & jiang, 2011). data from survivors of the earthquake revealed that their sense of job insecurity significantly increased (qin & jiang, 2011). during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) crisis, workers in toronto suffered economic costs associated with social isolation measures (i.e., quarantine), including layoffs and loss of income (gupta et al., 2005). in light of the current covid-19 crisis, there has been global fears related to a potential economic recession (nicola et al., 2020). negative economic impacts (e.g., disruptions in supply chains, loss of income, layoffs) are already evident in several industries, including primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. researchers have suggested that job insecurity is a potential stressor experienced during the covid-19 crisis, which could lead to decreased wellbeing (holmes et al., 2020; zhou et al., 2020; wilson et al., 2020). job insecurity has indeed consistently been associated with decreased wellbeing in previous literature (witte, 2010). from a public health perspective, job (in)security is considered to be a key determinant of wellbeing1 (blacker et al., 2020; wilkinson & marmot, 2003). job insecurity 1we recognize that terms such as health, mental health, wellbeing and quality of life are used somewhat interchangeably (keyes, 2006; tennant et al., 2007; veenhoven, 2000). while the phrase “determinants of health” rather than “of wellbeing” is often used in the public health literature, we privilege the term wellbeing in the present article in order to adopt a more multidimensional focus aligned with conceptualizing wellbeing as “the integration of a person’s physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social characteristics” (law, steinwender, & leclair, 1998, p. 83). although not all these aspects of wellbeing could be measured in our study, from a theoretical standpoint, we adhere to such a holistic view on the nature of human wellbeing. job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 60 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org negatively affects wellbeing because of financial instability and the threat to many social benefits derived from work (e.g., social status, social network) (fullerton, mccollum, dixon, & freeman, 2020; jahoda, 1982; selenko & batnic, 2013). job insecurity may also lead to increased dissatisfaction with work as well as absenteeism (qin & jiang, 2011). according to trends from the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) outbreak, marginalized people may experience the most job insecurity during a pandemic (van wagner, 2018). for example, three chinatowns in toronto experienced the greatest economic challenges during the sars outbreak due to stigma arising from fear that the virus was spreading in these communities, leading others to avoid these areas (van wagner, 2018). in the same context, job insecurity was common amongst low-income workers with limited job protection rights, such as those working in the hospitality industry (rothstein & coughlin, 2019; van wagner, 2018). a recent survey on covid-19 showed that lgbtq americans may be facing more economic hardships (i.e., job loss, wage reduction) compared to the general population (mckay et al., 2020). these studies are in line with the literature reviewed by landsbergis, grzywacz and lamontagne (2014) which highlights that women, people from lower socio-economic status, and migrants tend to be more at risk for higher job insecurity, thereby contributing to wellbeing disparities. given the novel nature of covid-19, limited research has been published on the impacts of job (in)security on workers’ wellbeing, especially during the crisis’ early stages when people were adjusting to numerous life changes while becoming aware of the threat to their job security. inspired by positive (keyes, 2002, 2005) and organizational psychology (fisher, 2014) literature, we define wellbeing as a “broad category that encompasses a number of workplace factors” (harter, schmidt, & keyes, p. 206), encompassing both the presence of positive functioning, and the absence of negative functioning. example indicators associated with workers’ wellbeing (or lack thereof) include distress, mental health symptoms and how these affect work performance (i.e., presenteeism, cooper & dewe, 2008). indicators can also include positive perceptions of actualizing one’s potential or thriving at work (dagenais-desmarais & savoie, 2012). wellbeing at work and wellbeing in life more generally influence each other, underlining the importance of considering workers’ wellbeing holistically (steel, schmidt, bosco, & uggerslev, 2019). this is crucial in the current covid-19 context where the frontiers between work and home have been blurred by increased pressures to work remotely (jones, 2020). in challenging workplace conditions, some workers may show resilience, i.e., “ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving that can allow for recuperative functioning” (mclarnon & rothstein, 2013 p. 65). workers are nested within multilevel systems (bone, 2015) and as such, resilience is not only dependent on individuals, but also on environmental opportunities and resources. to our knowledge, research has not examined the organizational resilience factors that may buffer the negative effects of the covid-19 crisis on wellbeing. it is essential to identify resilience factors that managers, employers and public health leaders could leverage in the recovery phase of the covid-19 crisis, as well as in preparation for future crises. we consider three resilience levers: 1) workplace disaster preparedness: according to the world health organization (who), employers should draft emergency plans in the workplace to “effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from the impacts of likely, imminent, emerging, or current emergencies.” (who, 2017, p. 14). this may involve anticipating emergencies and training employees on emergency response protocols (perry et al., 2001, p. 1-7), or providing information about leave policies, telecommuting options, and wage compensation plans (benson & dix, 2009; see also fung et al., 2008). a recent literature job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 61 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org review suggests that maintaining communication in organizations may help buffer the negative effects of the covid-19 pandemic on worker wellbeing (hamouche, 2020). 2) supportive workplace policies: during the sars epidemic, job protection policies in ontario, canada, such as income-replacement legislations helped reduce job insecurity, thereby improving workers’ wellbeing (rothstein & coughlin, 2019). studies have recommended resilience programs to educate workers on coping with pandemicassociated stressors (aiello et al., 2010; maunder et al., 2010). this aligns with the demonstrated benefit of facilitating access to wellness programs and providing benefit packages (attridge, 2012). such programs may be especially useful for people with limited financial means for out-of-pocket counselling. 3) social capital: this refers to positive relations with colleagues and supervisors, characterized by trust and reciprocity, and it is associated positively with workers’ health and wellbeing (kouvonen et al., 2006). personal social capital in a community context was associated with positive impacts on wellbeing for individuals self-isolating at home during the covid-19 pandemic (xiao et al., 2020); however, no research was found on social capital specific to the workplace in the current context. the objectives of this study are to investigate (1) diverse workers’ sense of job (in)security during the covid-19 pandemic between one and two weeks after social distancing measures were implemented, (2) how job (in)security relates to wellbeing during the pandemic, and (3) the potential positive effects of workplace-related resilience levers. methods participants the sample consists of 1,122 adults living in canada, working at least 20 hours per week at the time of the study (or were working at least 20 hours per week prior to the covid-19 crisis), and able to understand and speak english. given the study’s focus on current job stability, 49 participants were not included in the analysis as they were not working at the time of the survey and would not be regaining the same job they had before covid-19. of the final sample used in the presented article’s analysis, most workers resided in ontario (47.7%) and were working fulltime (71.4%) at the time of the study. the sample included numerous workers from marginalized groups identifying as: non-heterosexual (i.e., minority sexual orientation, 21.3%), gender nonbinary (2.3%), transgender (1.2%), living with a disability (17.3%), people of colour (9.0%), and/or not born in canada (14.6%). a full breakdown of the demographics regarding the final sample can be found in table 1. job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 62 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 1. characteristics of workers surveyed (n=1073). variables frequency (n) percentage (%) missing: n(%) age in years 39.66 ± 12.09 (mean ± sd) gender identity women men non-binary 794 246 25 74.0 22.9 2.3 8(0.7) sexual orientation heterosexual minority sexual orientation 823 229 76.7 21.3 21(2.0) diagnosed or living with a disability yes no 186 872 17.3 81.3 15(1.4) identifies as transgender yes no 13 1049 1.2 97.8 11(1.0) identifies as a person of colour yes no 97 957 9.0 89.2 19(1.8) residing province/territory alberta british columbia manitoba new brunswick newfoundland and labrador northwest territories nova scotia nunavut ontario prince edward island quebec saskatchewan yukon 119 144 47 41 21 2 82 0 512 3 56 42 3 11.1 13.4 4.4 3.8 2.0 0.2 7.6 0.0 47.7 0.3 5.2 3.9 0.3 1(0.1) born in canada yes no 916 157 85.4 14.6 0(0.0) highest achieved educational level did not graduate from high school high school graduate some college/trade school college/trade school graduate some university university (bachelor’s degree) university (graduate or professional degree) 17 92 75 227 100 363 198 1.6 8.6 7.0 21.2 9.3 33.8 18.5 1(0.1) number of people living in household 2.48 ± 1.23 (mean ± sd) (continued on next page) job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 63 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org variables frequency (n) percentage (%) missing: n(%) household income situation (okechukwu, el ayadi, tamers, sabbath, & berkman, 2012) comfortable with extra enough but no extra have to cut back cannot make ends meet 381 407 134 40 35.5 37.9 12.5 3.7 111(10.3) employment status during covid-19 (more than one could be selected) employed full-time (30+ hours/week) employed part-time (10-29 hours/week) laid off temporarily (contract on hold and/or return is expected to the same employment after the crisis is resolved) 766 124 201 71.4 11.6 18.7 0(0.0) industry of employment (workplace safety and insurance board, 2018) agriculture automotive chemicals/processinga construction education electrical food forestrya health care manufacturing mining municipal services primary metalsa pulp & paper services transportation other 11 21 1 25 134 4 83 1 212 55 6 25 1 0 138 34 402 1.0 2.0 0.1 2.3 12.5 0.4 7.7 0.1 19.8 5.1 0.6 2.3 0.1 0.0 12.9 3.2 37.5 0(0.0) athese categories were merged with “other” for the regression analysis. procedure the study was approved by the wilfrid laurier university’s research ethics board (reb #6497). participants were recruited through paid and unpaid facebook advertisements and a panel of workers was also assembled by qualtrics. participants who met the inclusion criteria were directed to qualtrics’ secure platform to share their experiences one to two weeks after distancing measures were instated, i.e., between march 20th and 29th, 2020. the survey included several attention check questions to ensure fraudulent responders were screened out of the final sample. after completing the survey, those recruited through facebook were given the option to enter a raffle for multiple $50 dollar e-gift cards. members of the panel were compensated through rewards offered by their panel company. measures job security seven items with the highest factorial loading from kraimer, wayne, liden, and sparrowe’s (2005) job security perceptions scale were used. the items (e.g., “i will be able to keep my present job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 64 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org job as long as i wish.”) are answered on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (α=.86). wellbeing outcomes troublesome symptoms at work and impaired productivity. this was measured using lam, michalak, and yatham’s (2009) employment absence and productivity scale consisting of two subscales assessing troublesome symptoms workers may experience and impairment to their productivity over the past week. the seven items (e.g., “low energy or motivation,” “getting less work done”) are measured on a five-item scale ranging from 0% (none of the time) to 100% (all of the time) (α=.87 and .84, for each subscale respectively). thriving at work. the five items from dagenais-desmarais and savoie’s (2011) thriving at work subscale of the index of psychological well-being at work (ipwbw) scale was used. the items are measured on a six-point scale ranging from 0 (disagree) to 5 (completely agree) (α=.95). workers are asked to reflect on these statements (e.g., “i like my job,” “i find my job exciting”) in the context of the last four weeks. psychological distress. kroenke, spitzer, williams, and löwe’s (2009) patient health questionnaire-4 (phq-4) was used to assess the level of anxiety and depression experienced in the last week. the measure has four items (e.g., “feeling down, depressed or hopeless”) which are answered on a four-item scale ranging from 0 (none of the time) to 3 (all the time) (α=.90). resilience levers workplace disaster preparedness. chikoto, sadiq, and fordyce’s (2012) engagement in disaster preparedness activities questionnaire was used, which assesses whether workplaces have engaged in several disaster preparation activities. although these activities were not in preparation for covid-19 specifically, general disaster preparedness may have had an impact when covid-19 arose. this includes ten questions (e.g., “attended disaster/crisis meetings/training courses outside your organization”) measured by “yes” (1) or “no” (0) responses which were then summed (α=.87). these questions were only asked of participants who were recruited through facebook, as the panel survey had to be shorter in length. workplace policy. one item within the guarding minds at work’s psychological support subscale (psr1) was used, which focused on employers offering services or benefits that address mental health (centre for applied research in mental health and addiction, 2018). this was measured on a four-item scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). social capital at work. the eight items (e.g., “we trust our supervisor,” “people feel understood and accepted by each other.”) of kouvonen et al.’s (2006) social capital at work scale is measured on a five-item scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) (α=.94). the survey also included questions to measure the demographics in table 1. data analysis descriptive statistics and univariate correlation analysis were examined using the spss software (v.27, ibm corp., 2020). the following inferential analyses were conducted in the mplus software (v.7.31, muthén & muthén, 2012-2015). for objective 1, a multiple linear regression was conducted, including demographics and work-related variables as independent variables and job security as the dependent variable. for objectives 2 and 3, several multiple linear regression models were tested. each model included job security as an independent variable, a different resilience lever, and the interaction term between these two variables. job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 65 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org every model was repeated four times, each time with a different wellbeing outcome. in cases with significant or marginally significant interaction effects, simple slopes (i.e., their biascorrected bootstrap [n=10,000] confidence intervals) were examined for the effect of the resilience lever on the wellbeing outcome at the average job security level, and at one standard deviation below and above the mean of job security. all models for objectives 2 and 3 controlled for personal and work demographics. results table 2 presents the descriptives and univariate correlations between the study’s variables. workplace disaster preparedness and workplace policy had larger numbers of missing values. the full information maximum likelihood approach implemented in mplus is recognized as one of the best available means to reduce biases related to missing values (enders, 2010). to reduce biases as much as possible, auxiliary variables (e.g., measure of stress also included in the survey; cohen, kamarck, & mermelstein, 1983) were added when possible in mplus2 (enders, 2010). the total number of participants included in the analysis varied from one analysis to another (n=855-1032) because work-related wellbeing variables only applied to participants who were working full-time or part-time, while psychological distress also applied to those temporarily laid off due to covid-19. in addition, cases with missing values (less than 4% of applicable cases) on categorical independent variables (e.g., binary demographic variables) could not be considered in the analysis due to their incompatibility with the integration of auxiliary variables in mplus. table 2. descriptive statistics and correlations between workers’ job security, wellbeing variables and resilience levers (n=1073). variable 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1. job security wellbeing 2. troublesome symptoms at worka -.180 3. impaired productivity at worka -.182 .781 4. thriving at work .270 -.328 -.270 5. psychological distress -.237 .700 .548 -.231 resilience levers 6. workplace disaster preparednessb .228 -.188 -.193 .218 -.178 7. workplace policy .323 -.255 -.238 .362 -.277 -.304 8. social capital at work .211 -.266 -.225 .493 -.168 -.251 .356 % missing 2.33 0.56 0.56 0.65 0 17.19 8.48 1.58 m 4.35 2.42 1.99 3.23 2.46 2.63 2.82 3.67 sd 1.36 1.06 .97 1.45 .97 2.88 1.09 .91 theoretical minimum 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 theoretical maximum 7 5 5 5 3 10 4 5 skewness -0.22 0.45 1.10 -0.66 0.17 -0.96 -0.48 -0.66 kurtosis -0.48 -0.76 0.73 -0.58 -1.20 -0.15 -1.07 0.17 note. correlations between all measures were found to be significant at p≤.001. athese questions were only asked if the participant was working either fullor part-time (n=887). bthese questions were only asked to participants recruited through facebook (n=669). 2 auxiliary variables for missing values were not included when calculating the bootstrapped confidence intervals of the simple slopes given that the mplus software does not allow for the inclusion of such auxiliary variables when requesting bootstrapping. job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 66 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org as seen in table 3, workers who have temporarily lost their employment due to covid-19 perceived significantly lower levels of job security. this was also the case for women (compared to men), people born outside of canada, those facing higher levels of financial hardship before the crisis, and those employed in the manufacturing sector. in contrast, those employed in health care perceived higher job security. table 3. regression of job security on personal and work-related demographic variables (n=1032). predictor b β age 0.01t .05 gender women vs. men -0.37*** -.12 non-binary vs. men -0.51t -.06 transgender identity -0.33 -.03 sexual minority -0.15 -.05 living with a disability -0.04 -.01 born outside of canada -0.40*** -.11 level of education -0.01 -.01 number of children in the household 0.05 .03 having temporarily lost their job due to the covid-19 crisis -0.73*** -.21 financial hardship before the covid-19 crisis -0.19*** -.12 sector of employmenta agriculture -0.21 -.02 automotive -0.37 -.04 construction -0.40 -.05 education -0.11 -.03 electrical -0.88 -.04 food -0.37t -.07 health care 0.61*** .18 manufacturing -0.47* -.08 mining -0.58 -.03 municipal services 0.30 .03 services -0.17 -.04 transportation -0.29 -.04 other -0.31* -.11 note. r2=.19. apeople could select more than one employment sector. each sector was coded as binary (no vs. yes). given that people selected more than one sector, no reference category was used in the analysis. ***p≤.001, **p≤.01, *p≤.05, tp≤.10 table 4 shows the results of multiple regression analyses for the relationships between job security and wellbeing outcomes. higher job security was related to lower troublesome symptoms, impaired productivity, and psychological distress, as well as to higher thriving at work, when controlling for personal and work-related demographics. job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 67 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 4. regression of job wellbeing outcome variables on job security, resilience levers and their interactions. troublesome symptoms at work (n=855) impaired productivity at work (n=855) thriving at work (n=855) distress (n=1032) b 95% ci β b 95% ci β b 95% ci β b 95% ci β model 1 job security -0.09** -0.137, -0.032 -.11 -0.07** -0.121, -0.020 -.10 0.21*** 0.137, 0.284 .19 -0.11*** -0.153, -0.066 -.16 disaster preparedness -0.44** -0.770, -0.117 -.13 -0.43** -0.730, -0.129 -.13 0.55* 0.119, 0.973 .11 -0.27t -0.546, 0.011 -.08 interaction -0.12 -0.350, 0.116 -.05 -0.19t -0.407, 0.022 -.08 0.05 -0.255, 0.353 .01 -0.13 -0.317, 0.054 -.06 r2 .21 .16 .17 .20 model 2 job security -0.07** -0.127, -0.020 -.09 -0.06* -0.113, -0.010 -.08 0.14*** 0.065, 0.209 .12 -0.09*** -0.135, -0.047 -.13 workplace policy -0.15*** -0.212, -0.078 -.15 -0.14*** -0.204, -0.075 -.15 0.44*** 0.345, 0.526 .32 -0.13*** -0.189, -0.080 -.16 interaction -0.07** -0.112, -0.019 -.09 -0.06* -0.103, -0.012 -.09 0.00 -0.064, 0.063 .00 -0.06** -0.092, -0.019 -.09 r2 .21 .16 .24 .21 model 3 job security -0.06* -0.112, -0.009 -.08 -0.05* -0.104, -0.003 -.07 0.13*** 0.064, 0.197 .12 -0.10*** -0.143, -0.055 -.14 social capital at work -0.29*** -0.358, -0.214 -.25 -0.24*** -0.306, -0.168 -.22 0.71*** 0.622, 0.806 .45 -0.12*** -0.182, -0.062 -.12 interaction -0.06* -0.111, -0.010 -.07 -0.07** -0.116, -0.018 -.09 0.02 -0.041, 0.088 .02 -0.05* -0.086, -0.005 -.06 r2 .24 .18 .34 .20 note. 95% ci refers to the 95% confidence interval of the unstandardized estimates. the results were obtained controlling for: age, gender, identifying as transgender, sexual minority, living with disabilities, born outside of canada, level of education, number of children in the household and financial hardship before the covid-19 crisis. for the distress-related analysis, having temporarily lost your job due to the covid-19 crisis was also included as a control. ***p≤.001, **p≤.01, *p≤.05, tp≤.10. as shown in table 4, the main effects of workplace disaster preparedness were significant and negative on troublesome symptoms and impaired productivity, and positive on thriving at work. its effect was marginally significant and negative on distress. further, for impaired productivity, the interaction effect between workplace disaster preparedness and job security was marginally significant. the main effects of both workplace policy and social capital at work were significant and negative on troublesome symptoms, impaired productivity and distress, and significant and positive on thriving at work. the interaction effects of these two resilience levers with job security were significant on all wellbeing outcomes, except thriving at work. job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 68 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 5. simple slopes of the effect of resilience levers on wellbeing outcomes at multiple levels of job security. troublesome symptoms at work (n=855) impaired productivity at work (n=855) thriving at work (n=855) distress (n=1032) b 95% ci b 95% ci b 95% ci b 95% ci model 1: simple slope of disaster preparedness at... interaction effect not significant interaction effect not significant interaction effect not significant -1 sd of job security -0.08 -0.458, 0.291 m of job security -0.39 -0.663, -0.114 +1 sd job security -0.70 -1.054, -0.340 model 2: simple slope of workplace policy at... interaction effect not significant -1 sd of job security -0.06 -0.156, 0.025 -0.07 -0.161, 0.014 -0.06 -0.137, 0.013 m of job security -0.15 -0.222, -0.077 -0.15 -0.221, -0.076 -0.14 -0.194, -0.079 +1 sd job security -0.24 -0.340, -0.129 -0.22 -0.339, -0.111 -0.21 -0.291, -0.131 model 3: simple slope of workplace social capital at work at... interaction effect not significant -1 sd of job security -0.21 -0.316, -0.109 -0.15 -0.256, -0.047 -0.06 -0.140, 0.020 m of job security -0.29 -0.371, -0.214 -0.24 -0.321, -0.161 -0.12 -0.185, -0.057 +1 sd job security -0.37 -0.482, -0.261 -0.33 -0.444, -0.217 -0.18 -0.276, -0.095 note. 95% ci refers to the 95% bias-corrected bootstrap (n=10,000) confidence interval of the unstandardized estimates. the results were obtained controlling for: age, gender, identifying as transgender, sexual minority, living with disabilities, born outside of canada, level of education, number of children in the household and financial hardship before the covid-19 crisis. for the distress-related analysis, having temporarily lost your job due to the covid-19 crisis was also included as a control. ***p≤.001, **p≤.01, *p≤.05. as shown in table 5, the simple slopes of 1) workplace disaster preparedness on impaired productivity, 2) workplace policy on troublesome symptoms, impaired productivity and distress, and 3) workplace social capital on distress, were all significant only at moderate and high levels of job security. the simple slopes of workplace social capital on troublesome symptoms and on impaired productivity were significant at the three levels of job security; however, the estimates suggest that the effects were larger when job security was higher. discussion job security is not only associated with lower negative wellbeing during the covid-19 crisis, but it also seems to foster the actualization of one’s potential at work. sample means on the wellbeing variables were relatively moderate, except for distress, for which the average was between the highest and second highest point on the scale. this is consistent with statistics canada’s (2020a) findings indicating that among 46,000 canadians survey participants, 52% reported that their mental health has worsened since the beginning of social distancing. in contrast, impacts of the crisis on positive wellbeing (e.g., thriving at work) may be delayed; it is possible the measurement scale of positive wellbeing was not sensitive enough to change, given its focus was on the last four weeks while the crisis had amplified only two weeks before data collection. on average, the levels of job security seemed to be only moderate, i.e., at the neutral point on the measurement scale. a study in china has underlined the negative impacts of media exposure job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 69 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org during the covid-19 pandemic (gao et al., 2020); along these lines, participants in our sample may have been exposed to media content related to job loss, which may have contributed to feelings of insecurity. participants who were temporarily laid off due to covid-19 also reported lower job security, which indicates that their sense of job security might have been fragilized by unemployment even if they expected to regain their employment after the crisis. aligned with previous research (see review by landsbergis et al., 2014), groups usually found to experience inequities (i.e., with lower income, newcomers) reported lower levels of job security, which could lead to further disparities in wellbeing. these findings are consistent with van wagner’s (2018) study which exemplified how marginalized workers (e.g., people of chinese or southeast asian descent, undocumented workers, and immigrants), experienced a higher degree of job insecurity during the sars outbreak in toronto, canada. the covid-19 crisis is likely leading to a series of compounding stressors faced by marginalized groups. job insecurity, shown to be associated with lower wellbeing more generally (witte, 2010), is only one of the multiple stressors threatening their wellbeing. in addition, marginalized workers’ wellbeing is also likely negatively impacted (as it is the case for other people too) by the fear of contracting the covid-19 virus (holmes et al., 2020; zhou et al., 2020). furthermore, marginalized workers from some subgroups (i.e., newcomers) may be experiencing negative effects of racism and xenophobia. many people of east asian descent have reported experiences of increased racism and xenophobia during the current covid-19 crisis (balvaneda, roemer, hayes-skelton, yang, & ying, n.d.). in a study that analyzed the topics discussed on a social media platform twitter during the pandemic, increased racism was among the most prevalent topics, including postings referring to rude comments and dirty looks against people of east asian descent (abd-alrazaq et al., 2020). as both racism and xenophobia are associated with poorer physical and mental wellbeing (paradies et al., 2015; suleman, garber, & rutkow, 2018), migrant workers from east asian descent, in particular, may face long-term wellbeing consequences that persist after the pandemic. to address these multiple stressors, it is evident that many longer-term systematic changes must occur both within society and the workplace. ensuring job security is one of the ways stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, employers) can support the wellbeing of marginalized workers by providing a stable occupational and economical foundation that can help them cope with the other stressors experienced during the current crisis. findings suggest that the considered resilience levers are beneficial in the workplace as they were overall associated with better wellbeing outcomes, consistently with previous literature (attridge, 2012, hamouche, 2020, kouvonen et al., 2006). it is useful to consider these levers on a continuum that straddle the diverse workplace wellbeing interventions approaches (lamontagne et al., 2014, 2019), from promotion (social capital increase) and prevention (organizational disaster preparedness), to treatment of wellbeing issues (employee assistance programs). the effects of resilience levers were stronger and more consistent at moderate and high job security levels. it may be the case that in the current context, the lives of workers with lower job security is impacted by the crisis to such a degree that these resilience levers are not powerful enough. another interpretation is that for resilience levers to be beneficial, lower order, safety needs must first be met, in concordance with maslow’s (1943) work. in addition to the existing financial assistance provided by the canadian government to workers impacted by covid-19 (i.e., canada emergency response benefit [cerb]), several measures can be taken to increase the job security of workers. this may involve implementing policies that protect workers who miss work due to reasons related to covid-19 (e.g., experiencing symptoms or undergoing job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 70 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the process of testing for covid-19). these policies may include, for example, providing sickness benefits and a job-protected leave of absence (office of the premier, 2020). beyond the importance of promoting job security, our findings also point to the usefulness of interventions focused on optimizing social capital, workplace disaster preparedness, and workplace policy. social media could be utilized to potentially increase social capital through peer-to-peer communication (erikson, 2011). for instance, workers would have a platform to discuss their concerns and experiences, as well as to share knowledge and resources related to the pandemic. this may serve as a way to validate workers’ feelings and to help them feel more connected with other workers during pandemic times. improved communication in the workplace has been associated with enhanced social capital (meng et al., 2019). from that perspective, employers should utilize social media and other tools (i.e., online meeting platforms) to improve communication with their workers, specifically about the impacts of the crisis on the status of their current and future employment (sinclair et al., 2020); such open communication could contribute to social capital, while also reducing feelings of job insecurity. a study on the mental health impacts of the sars outbreak in toronto using a sample from the general population (but including a large proportion of health care workers) suggests that long periods of quarantine could lead to developing post-traumatic stress symptoms (hawryluck et al., 2004). thus, as part of the workplace disaster preparedness plan for future pandemics, it is important for workplaces to be equipped with or to provide employees with access to traumafocused counselling resources. in addition, employers should provide ongoing training to managers and supervisors on supporting employees who experience mental health challenges in safely continuing their work or returning to work when they are ready if they need to take a leave. finally, adequate benefit plans, including free access to appropriate treatments (e.g., telehealth services), may help reduce mental health-related absenteeism, poor performance, and concerns about job security (cooper & dewe, 2008; zhou et al., 2020). limitations the findings are based on a convenience sample and are not representative of all canadian workers, including specifically those in precarious forms of employment. definite conclusions cannot be made related to the directionality of the relationships found. the recency of the crisis may have influenced our findings, and time may allow workers to develop resilience. in addition, the brief scales used in the survey and some variables’ missing data may have impacted the findings. while the study provides evidence of elevated levels of job insecurity among minority or marginalized workers in the context of the covid-19 crisis, this finding needs to be replicated and deepened by using larger samples or by oversampling multiple minority/marginalized subgroup of the population, given the relatively small representation of some of these workers in the current study. larger representation of marginalized groups would allow for future analysis to be conducted to better understand similarities and differences between the wellbeing of these groups in the context of pandemics, and to consider the intersectional effects (bauer & scheim, 2029) of belonging to multiple marginalized groups. conclusion the results show the importance of considering systemic changes to better support the job security of workers during a pandemic, especially to address the needs of marginalized groups (e.g., women, migrants). workplace leaders are encouraged to communicate with their workers to foster trust (ugboro, 2016) and reassure them that their jobs are secure (vineburgh, gifford, job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 71 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org ursano, fullerton, & benedek, 2007). without employment security as a stable base, workplacerelated interventions targeting work resilience levers may not reach an optimal impact. as such, interventions targeting organizational disaster preparedness, policy and social capital need to be considered as part of broader systemic efforts (bone, 2015). the current times are stressful and dire for all of us, but as shown in the study, the situation is even harder for marginalized individuals, which were already facing unfair negative living and working conditions to start with. unfortunately, most of the practical recommendations that have emerged so far from positive psychology and related fields of research and intervention have focused on individualor small group-focused interventions that do not address the systemic (e.g., economic, political, socio-cultural) causes of lower wellbeing levels experienced by these individuals (see martínez & di martino, 2018; prilleltensky, 2018). as prilltelentsky eloquently stated (2018, p. xxi), “in the absence of fair and just conditions, the potential benefits of positive psychology will remain within the province of the privileged”. the global, unprecedented nature of the current covid-19 crisis calls for global changes in our way of thinking about and promoting the wellbeing of workers as well as other people so we better serve the public interest and achieve a greater societal impact. by better centring the needs of the most marginalized segments of the population, we can partner with them to develop and test interventions that serve the purpose of providing them fairer and life-enhancing work and living conditions. addressing large scale social conditions such as job insecurity, public health crises and systemic xenophobia is not necessarily "in the traditional wheelhouse” of psychologists, human resource managers and employers. thus, we hope the current crisis and its profound societal impacts will serve as a catalyst to further the collaboration across disciplines and stakeholders. as exemplified by our multidisciplinary framework, the collaboration between public health policymakers, occupational health professionals, workplace leaders, psychologists and political decision-makers may be valuable to help address the complex systemic issues of workers’ wellbeing during covid-19. collaboration is important to comprehensively support the wellbeing of workers, including that of people who risk their wellbeing to keep our countries safe and provide us with essential services in these times. author’s note we would like to acknowledge and thank the workers who, despite the hardships they have experienced during the covid-19 pandemic, took part in our study so that we may aid in understanding how to better support canadian workers during times of crises. furthermore, we would also like to thank our research assistants (ashley gooderham, isabel zagazeta, and jessica foster) and sarah ranco for their help at different stages of this study. this research was financially supported by wilfrid laurier university and the social science and humanities research council of canada's general research fund. authors tyler pacheco wilfrid laurier university tpacheco@wlu.ca simon coulombe wilfrid laurier university job security and workers’ wellbeing amidst the covid-19 pandemic pacheco, coulombe, khalil, meunier, doucerain, auger, & cox 72 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org christine khalil wilfrid laurier university sophie meunier université du québec à montréal marina doucerain université du québec à montréal emilie auger university of waterloo emily cox wilfrid laurier university publishing timeline received 22 june 2020 accepted 28 july 2020 published 13 august 2020 references abd-alrazaq, a., alhuwail, d., househ, m., hamdi, m., & shah, z. 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(2016). italian translation and validation of the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6). international journal of wellbeing, 6(2), 80-92. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i2.492 andrea caputo department of dynamic and clinical psychology sapienza university of rome andrea.caputo@uniroma1.it copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 article italian translation and validation of the gq-6 andrea caputo abstract: this paper aims at translating the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) into italian and at investigating its validity and reliability in this context. in a web-based survey, 204 adult participants (m age = 28.96; sd = 10.27) completed the italian version of the gq-6, as well as subjective happiness, life satisfaction, loneliness, and social desirability questionnaires. exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a one-factor solution explaining 46.16% of the variance of the original items and an acceptable cronbach’s alpha equal to .745. the italian version of the gq-6 was, as expected, positively correlated with subjective happiness, life satisfaction and social desirability and was negatively associated with loneliness, which supported its construct validity. the italian version of the gq-6 also showed a discriminant validity relative to other positive affects and a good criterion validity in differentiating both believers and non believers and high and low envious people. keywords: gratitude, happiness, life satisfaction, loneliness, social desirability 1. introduction recent literature has highlighted the influence of the experience and expression of gratitude on individual emotional, social, and physical wellbeing (emmons & mccullough, 2003; froh et al., 2008; watkins, woodward, stone, & kolts, 2003). indeed, the grateful disposition has been found to be positively associated with many quality of life related measures, such as happiness (watkins et al., 2003), optimism (chen, chen, kee, & tsai, 2009), subjective wellbeing (emmons & mccullough, 2003; mccullough, emmons, & tsang, 2002; thomas & watkins, 2003; watkins et al., 2003; wood, froh, & geraghty, 2010) and positive affect (emmons & mccullough, 2003; mccullough et al., 2002; thomas & watkins, 2003; watkins et al., 2003). on the contrary, negative associations have been detected between the grateful disposition and depression (thomas & watkins, 2003; watkins et al., 2003), negative affect (thomas & watkins, 2003), and aggression (watkins et al., 2003). in addition, dispositional gratitude seems to represent a possible protective factor in healthcare (jans-beken, lataster, leontjevas, & jacobs, 2015) because many of its correlates have a relevant role in cardiovascular disease (suinn, 2001), hypertension (shapiro & goldstein, 1982) and immune system dysfunction (graham, christian, & kiecolt-glaser, 2006). the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6; mccullough et al., 2002) is one of the most commonly used self-report measures of dispositional gratitude in recent research. the gq-6 has been reported to be a unidimensional measure with good psychometric properties (mccullough et al., 2002). indeed, confirmatory factor analyses specifying a one-factor congeneric measurement model typically yield goodness-of-fit indexes that are typically considered to be within acceptable ranges. in addition, inter-item consistency cronbach’s alpha estimates have ranged from .76 to .84 (mccullough et al., 2002). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 although the gq-6 has been translated and used in different western and asian countries (e.g., chen et al., 2009; jans-beken et al., 2015; yüksel & oğuz duran, 2012), no measure of gratitude has been validated in the italian literature to date. therefore, this paper aims at translating the gq-6 into italian and at investigating its validity and reliability in this context for use in both research and clinical practice. 2. method 2.1 translation of gq-6 into italian for the translation of the gq-6 into italian, a four-step methodology was used (sousa & rojjanasrirat, 2011):  forward translation: two translators with a good command over english and a linguistics expert each independently translated the original inventory from english to italian.  reconciliation: the translators and the linguist compared the forward versions with the original inventory and reconciled their differences.  back translation: a professional translator with a good command over both italian and english translated the reconciled version from italian back to english.  comparison: as a last step, the original and back-translated versions were reevaluated. the back-translation was compared with the original instrument to determine whether there were any differences between the english and italian versions in meaning and concept coherence. after the necessary corrections, the instrument assumed its final target language version. this approach provided concept and language equivalence; therefore, an agreement on the instrument’s final translation was achieved. 2.2 content validity after the translation process was completed, experts assessed the italian version’s content validity. three psychologists were asked to assess the items’ content, meaning, and comprehensibility, using terms proposed as inappropriate; appropriate to some extent item should be revised; appropriate minor changes required; and quite appropriate (mckenzie, wood, kotecki, clark, & brey, 1999). the assessments appropriate minor changes required and quite appropriate were accepted as appropriate overall, and content validity ratio (cvr) was calculated accordingly (lawshe, 1975). 2.3 face validity to test face validity and comprehensibility of the instrument, gq-6 was pre-tested through participation by 10 volunteer participants. these volunteers evaluated gq-6 items for readability, comprehensibility, sentence length, and clarity of meaning, to ready the instrument for implementation. after pre-testing, no changes to the content of the italian version were required. the final version is shown in table 1 below. gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 table 1. list of the items of the gq-6 item no. original version statement italian version statement item 1 i have so much in life to be thankful for. ho così tanto nella vita di cui essere riconoscente. item 2 if i had to list everything that i felt grateful for, it would be a very long list. se dovessi elencare tutto ciò per cui ho provato gratitudine, farei un elenco molto lungo. item 3 when i look at the world, i don’t see much to be grateful for. quando guardo il mondo, non vedo molte cose di cui essere grato. item 4 i am grateful to a wide variety of people. sono grato a un gran numero di persone. item 5 as i get older i find myself more able to appreciate the people, events, and situations that have been part of my life history. con l'avanzare dell'età mi sento più in grado di apprezzare persone, eventi e situazioni che hanno fatto parte della storia della mia vita. item 6 long amounts of time can go by before i feel grateful to something or someone. può passare molto tempo prima che io mi senta grato verso qualcosa o qualcuno. note: items score on a 7-point likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). items 3 and 6 are reverse scored. 2.4 participants a convenience sample of 204 participants was recruited (163 women and 41 men) whose mean age was 28.96 (sd = 10.27). a questionnaire was administered which included sociodemographic information and gratitude, loneliness, social desirability, subjective happiness and life satisfaction measures. participants were guaranteed anonymity. for the present study, 100% of the respondents filled in the complete questionnaire without missing data. the sample size was considered acceptable because one common rule of thumb is to ensure a person-to-item ratio of 10:1. 2.5 measures 2.5.1 dispositional gratitude the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6; mccullough et al., 2002) is a six-item 7-point likert-type scale, with alternatives ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”). a total score is derived from the sum of all items, ranging from 6 to 42, with higher scores reflecting higher levels of gratitude. items on the gq-6 assess four facets of gratitude: (1) intensity, which refers to feeling more intensely grateful than would someone less disposed toward gratitude, (2) frequency, which refers to feeling grateful many times each day, (3) span, which refers to the number of life circumstances for which a person feels grateful during a given time, and (4) density, which refers to the number of persons to whom one feels grateful for a single positive outcome. 2.5.2 loneliness the three-item loneliness scale, developed by hughes, waite, hawkley and cacioppo (2004) from the revised ucla loneliness scale, was used to assess loneliness, consisting of feelings of isolation, disconnectedness, and not belonging. the response categories were coded 1 (hardly ever), 2 (some of the time), and 3 (often) on a 3-point scale. each person’s responses to the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 questions are summed, with higher scores indicating greater loneliness. for the purpose of this study, the three items were derived from the italian version of the revised ucla loneliness scale (solano & coda, 1994). the three-item scale showed a good internal consistency (α = .844). 2.5.3 social desirability the italian adaptation (manganelli rattazzi, canova, & marcorin, 2000) of the short nine-item version of the marlowe-crowne social desirability scale (mc-sds) was used to measure social desirability. participants were requested to respond to each item on a 7-point scale. a total score is derived from the sum of all items, ranging from 7 to 63. higher scores indicate higher levels of social desirability. internal consistency was sufficient (α = .604). the relatively low cronbach’s alpha seems to be in agreement with other studies using the italian short version of the mc-sds (maino & aceti, 1997; manganelli rattazzi et al., 2000). 2.5.4 subjective happiness the subjective happiness scale (shs) (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999) is a widely used four-item scale, measuring global subjective happiness. the scale required participants to use absolute ratings to characterize themselves as happy or unhappy individuals on a 7-point likert scale, and also asked to what extent they identify themselves with the description of “happy” or “unhappy” individuals. the score was calculated as the mean of items, ranging from 1 to 7. higher scores mean greater perceived happiness. the italian version of the scale was used (duncan & grazzani-gavazzi, 2004) and showed a cronbach’s alpha of .843. 2.5.5 life satisfaction as a measure of global life satisfaction, a three-item scale was specifically developed and used for the purpose of the study. subjects had to rate how much they were satisfied with three dimensions respectively, regarding socio-economic status, general health status, and lifestyle and conditions, using a 10-point agreement scale. the score was calculated as the sum of items, ranging from 3 to 30. higher scores mean better life satisfaction. the scale showed good psychometric properties, with a cronbach’s alpha of .769 and a one-factor solution explaining 68.70% of the overall variance. 2.6 procedure a web-based survey was promoted via social media (forums, blogs, social networks) which was aimed at studying the relationship between subjective wellbeing and other related psychological constructs. it was conducted according to online survey design, development, and implementation guidelines suggested by andrews, nonnecke, and preece (2003). an online survey was chosen because of its widespread use for quality of life, health-related and wellbeing research (vereecken & maes, 2006) and its easy access to geographically diverse respondent groups across the national context (evans & mathur, 2005). in addition, the validity and reliability of internet research for subjective wellbeing surveys were demonstrated to be comparable to those of the paper-based versions (howell, rodzon, kurai, & sanchez, 2010). http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/826/html#r44 http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/826/html#r45 http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/826/html#r41 http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/826/html#r15 gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 2.7 statistical analyses 2.7.1 testing assumptions distributional properties of the scale were inspected to examine the normality of the total scores. skewness and kurtosis values between 2 and +2 were assumed to indicate an acceptable range to prove normal univariate distribution (george & mallery, 2010). 2.7.2 construct validity to test construct validity, the total sample (n = 204) was divided into two groups by using the odd–even split method: group a (n = 102) and group b (n = 102). group a was used for exploratory factor analysis (efa) to establish the factor structure, and group b was used for confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) to confirm the gq-6 factor structures found in group a. efa with a maximum likelihood (ml) was performed to extract underlying common variance among items loaded on their respective factors. in this regard, several researchers and statistical practitioners advocate the use of ml over other methods because of its sensitivity to model misspecification, because less sensitivity to model misspecification can lead to higher type ii error rates (olsson, foss, troye, & howell, 2000). each item was included in a specific factor if there was a minimal factor loading of 0.3, while to determine how many factors should be retained, two main criteria were used (fabrigar, wegener, maccallum, & strahan, 1999):  the kaiser criterion to select those factors that have an eigenvalue >1. because this criterion could misrepresent the most appropriate number of factors, we also calculated confidence intervals (cis) for the eigenvalues;  parallel analysis, a method based on the generation of random variables, to determine the number of factors to retain. in this procedure, eigenvalues extracted from experimental data (i.e., values forming a standard scree plot) are plotted against those extracted from randomly generated data. components with eigenvalues exceeding those extracted from the random data are considered for retention. for this study, 100 randomly generated data sets equal in size to the experimental data were constructed. to assess the sampling adequacy, a kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) measure was conducted. a kmo is considered good when the outcome is between 0.7 0.8, and excellent when between 0.8 0.9 (hutcheson & sofroniou, 1999). anti-image correlations of > 0.5 were regarded acceptable (field, 2013). in relation to cfa on the second sub-sample, different components of fit were evaluated (hu & bentler, 1995). indeed, it is generally recommended that multiple measures be considered to highlight different aspects of fit (tanaka, 1993). the 2 ratio (2/degrees of freedom [df ]) was used to evaluate stand-alone models. this index tends to be less sensitive to sample size, and values less than 3 (or in some instances 5) are often taken to indicate acceptable models (kline, 2010). we also evaluated model fit using the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), standardized root mean square residual (srmr), confirmatory fit index (cfi; bentler, 1990), tucker–lewis index (tli), akaike information criterion (aic; akaike, 1987), and bayesian information criterion (bic; schwarz, 1978). smaller 2, aic, and bic values correspond to better fitting models (schumacker & lomax, 2010). as hu and bentler (1999) indicated, rmsea values up to .05 indicate good fit, between .06 and .08 indicate adequate fit, and >.10 indicate poor fit; srmr values below .08 are indicative of a good fit; cfi and tli values greater than .90 are generally indicative of acceptable model fit. gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 2.7.3 convergent/divergent validity evidence for convergent and divergent construct validity was evaluated by examining pearson’s correlations between the gq-6 and the other measures. based on previous studies on gq-6, it was hypothesized that it should be positively correlated with life satisfaction and subjective happiness, as well as with social desirability tendencies (mccullough et al., 2002). on the contrary, it was expected to be negatively associated with loneliness because people who report greater levels of gratitude also tend to show less subjective feelings of loneliness (breen, kashdan, lenser, & fincham, 2010; caputo, 2015). 2.7.4 discriminant validity we proceeded to distinguish our measure of the grateful disposition from related but distinct constructs concerning positive emotions, such as life satisfaction and subjective happiness. for each of these tests of discriminant validity, we estimated a one-factor solution specifying a single latent construct underlying the items on the gq-6 and each of the other respective scales. second, we estimated a two-factor solution specifying that the items on the gq-6 and each of the other respective scales loaded on distinct but correlated latent variables. if the addition of a second latent variable to account for the covariances among both sets of items led to an improvement in model fit (i.e., if the two-factor model was superior to the one-factor model), we could conclude that both constructs are necessary for describing the two sets of items, and thus, that the two constructs are reasonably distinctive. 2.7.5 criterion validity criterion validity was evaluated by using an independent-samples t test to compare different groups based on two concurrent measures: religiousness and envy (mccullough et al., 2002). with regard to religiousness, the believers group was expected to be higher in gq-6 score than the non-believers one because grateful people are more likely to cite religious or spiritual causes as responsible for the positive life events that they experience. with regard to envy, a single item derived from the social desirability scale was used which stated, “sometimes i have been envious of others’ fortune.” the participants group that reported envious feelings above the median was expected to score lower on gq-6 compared to the group below it. 2.7.6 reliability the final version of the gq-6 was examined to assess the reliability of test scores. internal consistency is measured by cronbach’s alpha correlation coefficient. internal consistency is considered excellent when cronbach’s alpha is greater than .9, good when it ranges between .8 and .9, acceptable between .7 and .8, questionable between .6 and .7, and poor when it is lower than .6. 2.7.7 supplementary analyses the total score of the gq-6 was used to test potential differences by gender (independentsamples t test) and age. given the relatively low mean age of our sample, we performed both a correlation analysis (pearson’s r) and independent-samples t test comparing younger (aged 1829) and older (aged >29) adults. 3. results in table 2 below, socio-demographic variables of our sample are reported. http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/826/html#t1 gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 table 2. socio-demographic variables of the sample (n=204) categorical variables n % gender male 41 20.10 female 163 79.90 marital/relationship status married-cohabitant 64 31.37 in a relationship 60 29.41 single 80 39.22 employment status employed 85 41.67 unemployed 33 16.17 others* 86 42.16 italian territorial area north 94 46.10 centre 60 29.40 south and islands 50 24.50 religiousness believers 125 61.27 non believers 79 38.73 continuous variables m sd age 28.96 10.27 education (years) 13.44 03.49 * others include homemakers, students or retired. table 3 below presents descriptive statistics and indexes of skewness and kurtosis for each item of the scale. no missing data were present. based on these results, it could be concluded that normality assumptions were tenable because values for skewness and kurtosis between -2 and +2 are considered acceptable in order to prove normal univariate distribution (george & mallery, 2010). table 3. distributional indexes of the items item no. range m se sd skewness kurtosis item 1 1-7 4.72 .13 1.80 -.64 0-.70 item 2 1-7 4.42 .12 1.68 -.17 0-.93 item 3 1-7 4.12 .13 1.93 -.05 -1.30 item 4 1-7 3.65 .12 1.74 -.10 -1.08 item 5 1-7 4.78 .13 1.84 -.54 0-.76 item 6 1-7 3.95 .13 1.92 -.05 -1.28 note: sd = standard deviation; se = standard error. an efa was used to test the dimensionality of the gq-6 from a randomly chosen half of the sample (n = 102), and the remaining responses were saved for a cfa. in the initial efa, one factor with an eigenvalue greater than 1.0 was extracted, which accounted for 46.16% of the variance of the original items. parallel analysis confirmed that one factor should be retained because only the first eigenvalue (equal to 2.60) from our actual data set exceeded the 95th percentile of gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 eigenvalues derived from random data sets (ci = 1.89, 3.31). therefore, the results of this efa were not rotated. the kmo of 0.76 verified the sampling adequacy for the efa. anti-image correlation values for individual items were all > 0.70, which is well above the acceptable limit of 0.50. as shown in table 4 below, overall factor loadings were satisfactory (from -.34 to .89), while communalities ranged from .40 to .82. item 6 had the lowest communality, which consequently led to the low level of its factor loading, despite it being above the threshold of .30. table 4. loading for exploratory factor analysis item no. loadings communalities item 1 -.89 .82 item 2 -.88 .78 item 3 -.54 .44 item 4 -.52 .47 item 5 -.60 .62 item 6 -.34 .40 note: extraction method-maximum likelihood to test the hypothetical structure of the scale extracted from efa, a cfa with ml estimation was used on the second half of the sample (n = 102). because of the low factor loading of item 6, we performed two cfas, considering also a five-item solution, which, according to previous studies (chen et al., 2009; froh et al., 2011; yüksel & oğuz duran, 2012), seems to fit data better. the cfa confirmed the one-factor solution of the scale and better fit indexes were revealed for the item 6 one, as shown in table 5 below. table 5. goodness-of-fit indexes factor solution 2 df 2/df rmsea [90% ci] aic bic cfi tli srmr six items 11.398 9 1.27 0.051 [0.000, 0.130] 2,366.682 2,413.754 0.980 0.967 0.049 five items 07.950 5 1.59 0.076 [0.000, 0.171] 1,955.054 1,994.281 0.974 0.948 0.043 note: rmsea = root mean square error of approximation; ci = confidence interval; aic = akaike information criterion; bic = bayesian information criterion; cfi = comparative fit index; tli = tucker– lewis index; srmr = standardized root mean square residual. the total score of the gq-6 was then used for subsequent validity and reliability analyses on the total sample (n = 204). consistenly with the theoretical framework, positive correlations with subjective happiness, life satisfaction and social desirability were detected; on the contrary, gq6 was negatively associated with loneliness (table 6 below). gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 table 6. correlations between gq-6 total score and other measures pearson’s correlation p value subjective happiness -.569 <.001 life satisfaction -.448 <.001 loneliness social desirability -.411 -.291 <.001 <.001 as expected, discriminant validity analyses showed better fit indexes of the two-factor solutions combining the gratitude items with both the life satisfaction and subjective happiness ones respectively (table 7 below). table 7. goodness-of-fit indexes for discriminant validity model 2 df 2/df rmsea [90% ci] aic bic cfi tli srmr life satisfaction one-factor solution 156.838 27 5.81 0.154 [0.131, 0.178] 7,108.855 7,198.311 0.765 0.687 0.083 two-factor solution 045.425 26 1.75 0.061 [0.029, 0.089] 6,999.442 7,092.211 0.965 0.951 0.046 subjective happiness one-factor solution 200.598 35 5.73 0.153 [0.133, 0.174] 7,559.086 7,658.483 0.800 0.743 0.082 two-factor solution 081.071 34 2.38 0.083 [0.060, 0.106] 7,441.559 7,544.269 0.943 0.925 0.055 we can thus conclude that gratitude is a reasonably distinctive theoretical construct from the other ones, despite it being highly correlated with both the life satisfaction (r = .54, p <. 001) and subjective happiness (r = .70, p < .001) latent factors. then criterion-related validity was also confirmed. the believers group reported higher gratitude (m = 26.60; sd = 6.64) than the non-believers one (m = 23.84; sd = 7.84); t(201) = 2.69, p = .008. in addition, the participants who reported fewer envious feelings than their counterparts (based on the median value of the overall sample) scored higher in gratitude (m = 26.76, sd = 7.09) compared to the participants who reported greater envy (m = 22.74, sd = 6.86); t(140) = 3.43, p = .001. in regard to internal consistency, cronbach’s alpha for the scale was acceptable, with a value of .745. the entire scale presented a mean of 25.49 and a standard deviation of 7.33 units. the inter-item correlation was on average .335 and the item-total correlation ranged from .404 to .698, with the exception of item 6, which showed a lower value (.288), and, if deleted, led to a slight alpha improvement up to .763. however, it was not eliminated because of the results from the previous cfa. the independent-samples t test did not show any difference in gq-6 scores by gender (m = 24.93; sd = 6.92 for males and m = 25.67; sd = 7.33 for females); t(201)=.558, p=.557. despite a gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 positive correlation with age being found (r=.146, p<.05), no statistically significant difference was detected between younger (18-29 aged, m = 25.02; sd = 7.51) and older (>29 aged, m = 26.27; sd = 6.79) adults; t(201) = 1.21, p = .228. 4. discussion the purpose of the present study was to translate the gq-6 for use with the italian population. overall, this study replicated the main findings obtained in previous research with regard to the psychometric properties of the scale. our results confirm a one-factor solution explaining 46.16% of the variance of the original items and an acceptable cronbach’s alpha estimate equal to .745. as revealed in previous studies (chen et al., 2009; froh et al., 2011; yüksel & oğuz duran, 2012), item 6 showed a relatively low factor loading compared with other gq-6 items. in this regard, chen et al. (2009) explained the misfit of item 6 as due to the lack of diverse life experiences in their sample; while froh et al. (2011) reported its inappropriateness for young people, since this item is too abstract and difficult for this group to understand. however, the cfa conducted on the factor solution including only the first five items indicated worse fit, therefore the original six-item version was retained. with regard to convergent measures, our results confirm high correlations with life satisfaction, subjective happiness and social desirability consistently with the theoretical framework (mccullough et al., 2002). indeed, the appreciation for the good things in one’s life may lead grateful people to avoid taking benefits for granted and help sustain their happiness and life satisfaction over time (mccullough et al., 2002). instead, social desirability may lead to report pro-social and altruistic dispositions (such as gratitude) which are culturally agreeable (lyubomirsky, sheldon, & schkade, 2005; wood, froh, & geraghty, 2010). discriminant validity analyses show that grateful disposition is a reasonably distinctive theoretical construct from other positive affects, i.e., life satisfaction and subjective happiness. instead, a negative correlation has been found with loneliness as a negative emotion (breen et al., 2010; caputo, 2015) consistently with the conception of gratitude as “indispensable in the life of one individual who will face isolation and loneliness if the capacity to feel grateful is impaired” (emmons & mccullough, 2004, p. 2010). then, criterion validity with regard to concurrent measures showed that gq-6 is able to discriminate between the believers and non-believers groups, as well as between more and less envious people. indeed, gratitude has been demonstrated to be associated with higher spiritual transcendence (diessner & lewis, 2007), religiousness and spirituality (mccullough et al., 2002). those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities such as prayer and the reading of religious material are more likely to score high on the gq-6. more grateful people also tend to have higher scores on measures of spirituality that tap a belief in the interconnectedness of all life and a commitment to and responsibility to others (mccullough et al., 2002). besides, they are less envious of wealthy persons because they are more prosocial and tend to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons (mccullough et al., 2002). no gender differences in gratitude were detected, despite previous work which suggests that women might possess an advantage over men in experiencing and benefiting from gratitude (kashdan, mishra, breen, & froh, 2009; schwartz & rubel, 2005; timmers, fischer, & manstead, 1998). previous research revealed that levels of gratitude vary with age (mcadams & bauer, 2004), in detail, older adults may be more prone to viewing gratitude as a positive, rewarding, essential experience compared with younger adults (kashdan et al., 2009). in this regard, our results show a modest correlation with age, which disappears when comparing younger (aged up to 29) and older (aged more than 29) adult groups, though it could depend on our relatively young sample, which does not have enough age-related variability. based on the summary of means and standard deviations for gq-6 scores http://www.psychologicabelgica.com/articles/10.5334/pb.bd/#b22 gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) caputo www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 across several studies, our italian sample reported a lower mean score. this could depend on the nature of the online survey because positive emotions scores tend to be lower in online questionnaires compared with face-to-face interviews (peck, olsen, & devore, 2011), mostly due to the reduced socially desirable responding in computer testing formats (dwight & feigelson, 2000). further surveys could be thus carried out in face-to-face settings in order to understand whether the lower gratitude in our sample is due to the specific testing format or is related to the italian cultural context. in conclusion, the results of the current study indicated that the gq-6 possessed a good reliability and construct, convergent/divergent, discriminant and criterion validity, thus replicating and extending previous studies. therefore, gq-6 can be used to assess the grateful disposition in an italian speaking sample and may be potentially useful in both research and clinical practice in the future. author andrea caputo sapienza university of rome andrea.caputo@uniroma1.it publishing timeline received 22 december 2015 accepted 25 june 2016 published 14 september 2016 references akaike, h. 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(2017). learn it, live it, teach it, embed it: implementing a whole school approach to foster positive mental health and wellbeing through positive education. international journal of wellbeing, 7(3), 56-71. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i3.645 erin hoare geelong grammar school erin.j.hoare@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 article learn it, live it, teach it, embed it: implementing a whole school approach to foster positive mental health and wellbeing through positive education erin hoare · david bott · justin robinson abstract: schools provide unique environments for the implementation of interventions to support the mental health and wellbeing of young people. while promising as an intervention setting, the school system is inherently complex, and any successful intervention or programme must account for, and adapt to, such complexity. whole-school approaches that comprise multicomponents and promote collaborative and collective action across the school system appear promising for accounting for these complexities. this paper reports the updated implementation processes of one whole-school approach, the geelong grammar school applied model for positive education, for fostering positive mental health and wellbeing among the school community. drawing upon existing frameworks and from successes observed in the fields of social and emotional learning, mental health prevention, and health promotion, adapted to meet the goals of positive education, we propose four interconnecting, cyclical processes; learn it, live it, teach it, embed it. in combination, these processes assist schools in designing and reviewing ongoing implementation. this study extends the literature to date by synthesising organisational, systems change, education, and anecdotal evidence to identify barriers to implementation and subsequent outcomes of missed, or poorly executed processes. while schools will be unique in factors such as context, specific needs, and available resources, it is envisaged that reporting these processes and potential barriers to success may assist schools with their own future implementation endeavours. keywords: positive education, student wellbeing, implementation science 1. introduction there is consensus that optimal mental health should be pursued through both reducing/eliminating psychopathology, and through maximising positive wellbeing [1]. childhood and adolescence is a critical time for acquiring key skills to support positive mental health and to prevent against mental health problems that may precede mental health disorders [2]. it is known that the first onset of mental disorder usually occurs in childhood or adolescence, however, effective treatment is not usually received until many years later [3, 4]. this age period offers optimal opportunity to promote positive mental health that may support healthy emotional development into adulthood. schools provide unique environments for the implementation of interventions to support mental health and wellbeing of young people, given the opportunity for large population reach and due to pre-existing structures for interventions to occur. a school ‘system’ is used to refer to the interdependent components with varied functions that interact to produce outcomes in http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 educational settings [5]. while promising as an intervention setting, the school system is inherently complex, and any successful intervention or programme must account for, and adapt to, such complexity [5-7]. whole-school approaches that comprise multi-components and promote collaborative and collective action across the school system appear promising for accounting for these complexities. this paper reports on the implementation framework of one whole-school approach to fostering positive mental health and wellbeing through positive education. broadly, positive education refers to the application of positive psychology in educational contexts to promote positive mental health, allowing students, staff and the wider school community to flourish [810]. the geelong grammar school applied model for positive education (ggs model) (described in detail elsewhere [8] and in sub-sections below) is a structured framework developed to promote positive mental health within a school community through positive education. the ggs model adopts a whole-school approach and aims to incorporate the complexity of the school setting by implementing the positive education philosophy across multiple levels (e.g., students, staff, policies, school ethos) in the school community. the model is based on martin seligman’s perma model of wellbeing [10], updated to include positive health (further described below). subsequent developments of the model have previously been described [8, 11, 12], as have initial findings referring to student [13], staff [14] and parent [15] emotional health and wellbeing outcomes. this current study builds on the existing literature by specifically reporting the updated implementation processes of the model, which were developed based on practice wisdom, and successes observed in the mental disorder prevention field [16], social and emotional learning [17] and other fields [18, 19]. this implementation framework comprises four, cyclical, interconnecting processes: learn it, live it, teach it and embed it. the reporting of processes will further build implementation science in the school-based mental health promotion field, which is currently lacking [20]. while an individual school will be unique in context, specific needs, available resources and other key factors, it is envisaged that reporting these processes and potential barriers to success will assist schools with their own future implementation endeavours. the overall purpose of this study is to report the implementation framework of one wholeschool approach to positive education. this study also aims to describe the potential barriers to success based on both practical/anecdotal experience, and informed by the wider school-based, organisational and implementation literature. specifically, this study aims to: 1) describe the development and content of each implementation process of the ggs model in the context of the relevant evidence base, in particular, three widely adopted frameworks from mental health [16], social and emotional learning [17], and health promotion fields [21]; 2) examine identified barriers to implementation and subsequent outcomes of missed or poorly executed processes, and; 3) describe implications for practice and propose areas for future research in implementation of positive education. 2. positive education positive education (pos ed) aims to foster character strengths (individual positive traits that are widely valued), resilience (the ability to healthily respond to adversity), wellbeing and abilities in the educational setting, providing opportunity for individuals to flourish [22]. pos ed is an implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 overarching term used for the theories, programmes and approaches that aim to foster positive wellbeing and adaptive functioning in school settings [23]. as described by slemp et al. [23], pos ed has gained rapid momentum in australia and abroad to meet the need for fostering positive wellbeing and protecting against mental health problems during adolescence. while rapid momentum has led to large-scale initiation of programmes, the exact limitations of pos ed are yet to be universally defined, and many complementary and intersecting approaches exist. pos ed broadly includes psychosocial skills, including managing emotions, goal setting, and building resilience, in addition to broader concepts such as meaning, purpose and physical health. the earliest and most widely implemented programme was initiated at an independent victorian school, geelong grammar school (ggs) during a six-month visit by professor martin seligman and colleagues. ggs is an anglican co-educational boarding and day school with approximately 1,500 students from pre-school to secondary. there are also defining characteristics of ggs, such as a high level of resources, which are considered in the generalisation of the approach to other settings. figure 1. the geelong grammar school applied model of positive education (implementation processes outer level, highlighted grey), originally published in norrish et al. [8] implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 the school, through ongoing contact with seligman, introduced six key domains of wellbeing bearing similar domains to seligman’s perma model, which assumes that wellbeing consists of distinct, teachable elements that individuals universally pursue in living a good life, or as ggs refer to, flourish. the constituent components of ‘wellbeing’ adopted in the school comprised positive emotions, positive engagement, positive relationships, positive meaning and positive accomplishment [10]. the school also included positive health, given the known connections between physical and mental wellbeing. a broad range of initiatives are delivered at ggs to promote the six domains of wellbeing considered central to allowing an individual to flourish, and the initiatives continue to grow and evolve in response to continuous evaluation and new evidence emerging in the field. underpinning all efforts is a focus on character strengths, being traits that are universally recognised and morally valued and have been shown relevant in enhancing children’s development and wellbeing [8, 24]. the geelong grammar school applied framework for positive education (henceforth referred to as the ggs model) was developed over five years and subsequently published in 2013, providing one of the earliest frameworks in the pos ed field [8]. further developments since this publication (e.g., the inclusion of live it) forms the rationale for the current study. the model depicted in figure 1 above was based on the original framework article, and since updated to demonstrate the cyclical nature of the processes and interconnections across levels. 3. whole-school approaches whole-school approaches, being multi-component, collective and collaborative action in the school community, provide optimal opportunity for creating sustained positive change, as opposed to uni-dimensional, standalone programmes [25-27]. the world health organization (who) described a whole-school approach as holistic with clearly defined policies, processes, activities and structures that aim to support the overall desired outcome, whilst engaging students, teachers, parents and the wider school community members [21]. the benefits of a whole-school approach include targeting multiple internal and external influences, and incorporating individual, classroom and organisational levels to achieve desired outcomes. effectiveness of such approaches has been demonstrated for mental health and wellbeing outcomes [16, 28, 29], social and emotional learning skills [27], health and lifestyle-related and obesity prevention interventions [30], and problemand risk-behavioural studies [31, 32]. while the potential beneficial outcomes of whole-school approaches are well-documented, there is a dearth in evidence relating to implementation processes of such interventions. this is particularly the case in positive education, an evidence gap previously identified in the literature [23, 33, 34]. a systematic review of 12 school-based positive psychology interventions found that programmes aiming to foster positive emotions (e.g., hope, gratitude, serenity), resilience and character strengths, were related to improved student relationships, wellbeing and academic performance [34]. a limitation reported in this systematic review was that interventions had been delivered in isolated classrooms or through pastoral care, and that wide-reaching and sustainable outcomes should be explored through school-wide approaches. in order to achieve comprehensive understanding of the processes leading to observed successes, and for wider adoption of such interventions across schools, further research and reporting is needed relating to implementation of such approaches. in the broader mental health and wellbeing field, there has been a growth in whole-school approaches and in implementation science of such approaches. the australian school-based mindmatters is a national mental health programme that provides a framework to promote mental health and wellbeing in secondary schools [16] and was originally developed based on implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 the world health organization hps framework (henceforth referred to as the hps framework) [19]. the hps framework is a whole-school approach emphasising multi-levels (policy and environment through to individual level factors) within a school system. the framework identifies areas for practice and implementation within schools for achieving health outcomes, and includes three key interconnecting areas: (i) curriculum, teaching and learning, (ii) school organisation, ethos and environment, and (iii) partnerships and services. adopting this approach, the mindmatters programme aims to leverage on existing practice and builds on a school’s unique strengths, whilst providing the individual and school-level opportunities to integrate change into the school system. whilst the psychopathological focus of the mindmatters programme is distinct to the goals of pos ed, the implementation processes and the underpinning hps framework provided important foundations for the approach reported in this current study. closely aligned to pos ed is social and emotional learning (sel), which refers to the process of providing young people opportunities to acquire social-emotional competencies (e.g., self and social awareness, relationships skills, responsible decision making) to thrive. in response to agreement among researchers and practitioners that introducing and maintaining effective sel practices is through whole-school approaches, and from growing popularity and large recent expansion of such programmes, the collaborative for academic, social and emotional learning (casel) developed the theory of action tool to guide implementation (henceforth referred to as casel framework) [35]. the tool aims to provide guidelines and activities to allow integration of sel within a school, and identify the input required for sustainability. the theory of action proposes that a shared vision of sel is required among stakeholders within a school, the needs and existing resources are identified, ongoing and embedded professional learning is provided for teachers, evidence-based practices are incorporated into everyday school operations, and continuous improvement is conducted. processes of the casel framework, in addition to previously described frameworks, were used to inform the development of the current proposed framework, adapted and tailored for pos ed. 4. learn it, live it, teach it, embed it initially highlighted by seligman et al. [20] in reference to early ggs pos ed programmes, a narration of illustrative anecdotal evidence was categorised into teaching, embedding and living [22]. teaching referred to the explicit pos ed classes scheduled as a component of the school curriculum, in which students learnt elements of positive psychology, including resilience, character strengths, positive emotions and relationships, and active and constructive responding. embedding referred to the active inclusion of pos ed concepts in the wider school community, such as in other academic subjects, in sporting activities, and through pastoral care. living referred to the active enabling of pos ed in the day-to-day life of students, building upon the explicit lessons and elements of pos ed embedded throughout the school. this early work, further extended by the ggs model, as described above and demonstrated in figure 1, served as the foundations for the implementation framework of pos ed in the school. this framework is now comprised of four interconnecting cyclical processes: learn it, live it, teach it, embed it, and, in combination, assists the school to design and review ongoing implementation (figure 1). this section details each of the implementation processes, with a description of evidence base supporting its inclusion in the whole-school approach. in short, learn it refers to the sharing of opportunities as a whole-school community to understand and engage with the science of wellbeing. live it is enacting evidence-based wellbeing practices in an individual’s unique way in their own lives. teach it is providing students with dedicated time to discover and explore each of the key domains of wellbeing. embed it is adopting long-term, school-wide policies and implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 practices which support and nurture wellbeing within individuals and within the community. it is noted that this framework is designed for schools that have already made the decision and commitment to implement pos ed as a whole-school approach, and it is critical to recognise that each process should be considered relative to their unique context and culture. 4.1 learn it it is proposed that the natural starting point for the school community is to share opportunities as a whole-school community to understand and engage with the science of wellbeing. at ggs, as described in the introductory sections, these comprise positive emotions, engagement, accomplishment, purpose, relationships, and health, underpinned by a focus on character strengths. it is a condition of ggs employment that all new staff (teaching and non-teaching) complete a four-day residential training course to discover and explore elements of personal wellbeing, to learn the foundations of positive psychology, and to develop an understanding of and gain personal experience in the six domains of the ggs model. training courses are also offered to parents of students, to be introduced to pos ed that is intended to directly enhance their own wellbeing, and indirectly enhance the wellbeing of their children, family and friends. providing training to staff and parents allows a common language to be shared, and also supports a sense of connection with the school. the opportunity to provide positive education training for all staff may not be feasible for some schools and there are possibilities to enhance learning opportunities without formal training. for example, schools might build staff capacity (e.g., select staff to undertake additional study in pos ed) to facilitate and deliver in-house training sessions on aspects of pos ed. school leadership committees might research wellbeing frameworks and audit existing wellbeing structures to find suitable approaches for their school. staff might be provided with resources to introduce key concepts of positive education, and such resources might be cost efficient, such as internet sources, readings, and one-off presentations from leaders in the field. specific case studies of resources extended to the wider school community include through school newsletters and other communications, informing school community members of the key concepts and purpose of pos ed. schools may establish or strengthen networks with local organisations with whom wellbeing-based learning opportunities can be exchanged. the learn it component of the implementation model echoes the curriculum, teaching and learning component of the hps framework, which aims to make use of existing resources, to share resources and learning opportunities. this process aims to provide individuals with the knowledge foundations to support their own wellbeing, and to provide the latest relevant evidence and practice to fulfil teachers’ implicit obligation to support and nurture student wellbeing. educational and developmental resource availability is also a core feature of the mindmatters programme, and mirrors casel’s theory of action activities: engaging stakeholders, assessing resources and needs, and designing and implementing professional development systems and supports. consistent across implementation frameworks, and reflected in each of the model processes reported here, is the need to assess the unique needs of a school and ensure that implementation initiatives are tailored to be context-specific to individual schools. while formal training in pos ed for staff and parents is an example of how learn it can be actioned, cost-effective learning opportunities can also emerge from an explicit audit of a school’s existing structures and resources for professional development. implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 4.2 live it it is assumed that wellbeing is a deeply personal subject, and, much like assessing school specific needs, individuals are also encouraged to tailor activities to their preferred style and situation. in the ggs context, live it refers to the day-to-day individual application of the tenets of pos ed. for example, ggs staff are encouraged to harness character strengths in difficult situations, actively practice mindfulness and gratitude, foster strong positive relationships with family, friends and colleagues, nurture a healthy lifestyle, and contribute to meaningful communities and projects. it is expected that by endeavouring to live by the principles of pos ed, an individual’s own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others will be supported. all school community members can be encouraged to be open and proactive in building their own wellbeing, through trialling different practices, living by their values and developing skills associated with wellbeing. an example of how live it can be actioned in a school community might include deliberate cultural wellbeing practices, such as practicing mindfulness at the commencement of each lesson. students might explore, trial and share wellbeing strategies, and staff might explore evidence-based teaching strategies to support student wellbeing and learning, such as process praise to foster a growth mindset. it is encouraged that student partnerships are developed to input in initial design and subsequent development of pos ed, so that implementation processes are both student and staff informed. the live it component is supported by evidence from the sel field, which proposes that student outcomes are strongly influenced by teachers’ social and emotional competence and wellbeing [36]. the casel framework outlines that adults should model the traits which they hope to foster within schools, so that they become leaders in embodying the changes they hope to inspire. similarly, the hps framework describes staff health promotion and role modelling as key factors driving success in a whole-school approach to fostering positive health. live it also reflects the partnerships and services component of hps framework, which aims to encourage involvement of parents, staff and students in the development and refinement of initiatives to achieve health goals. while learning the key tenets that are critical in implementing pos ed, the live it component allows individuals to become authentic role models. pos ed concepts become genuine and experiential for school community members, through which sustainable change is more likely to occur. 4.3 teach it the teaching of pos ed refers to the implicit and explicit learning of key ideas and concepts relating to positive wellbeing, and providing students the opportunity to practice the skills and mindsets to allow them to flourish. at ggs, teach it is actioned through explicit learning in timetabled pos ed lessons , originally based on the penn resilience program [37] and the strath haven program [38]. the programmes have been integrated and updated to reflect the skills and knowledge specific to the ggs model [8]. although pos ed lessons are only formally timetabled from years 5 through to year 10, explicit content delivery occurs in younger year levels and commences in ggs’s three-year-old kindergarten, where students are taught, for example, about ‘green-light thinking’ – representing the concept of growth mindset. the explicit programme covers modules found within each domain of the ggs model (for a full topic list, see appendix). in addition, all students are exposed to explicit teaching through pos ed focus days or through formal pastoral care sessions. students are actively involved in the development and delivery of such focus days, and this demonstrates the interconnections of the implementation processes with student partnerships, reflecting the live it domain. implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 as described by slemp et al. [23], a growing range of standalone pos ed curricula exist, broadly relating to: resiliency, hope, engagement, relationships, optimism, strengths, exercise and health. the available standalone curricula provide the opportunity for schools to identify which pos ed processes meet their unique needs. it is, however, recommended that a curriculum should be underpinned by an overall conceptual framework to successfully implement a wholeschool approach for pos ed, further explained in the embed it section below. as an initial starting point, sequenced curriculum might involve trialling new or tailoring existing dedicated wellbeing lessons and activities, and allocating time and resources for delivery of explicit pos ed teaching. implicit teaching refers to identifying pre-existing curriculum areas, in contrast to dedicated wellbeing lessons, into which pos ed concepts can be incorporated. at ggs, pos ed is implicitly taught through a broad range of subjects, allowing the linking of pos ed concepts to traditional academic objectives. for example, in mathematics, when students are first introduced to statistics, dweck’s growth and fixed mindsets survey is used to calculate average and distribution for the class [39]. in literature, when studying texts and media, characters are examined in relation to how their emotions affect behaviour and perceptions. class interactions are encouraged to promote a sense of gratitude, and there is a focus on effective feedback, such as process praise. the goal is for implicit teaching to integrate wellbeing to complement the explicit delivery of pos ed. the teach it component corresponds closely to the curriculum, teaching and learning in the hps framework, which emphasises the need for utilising educational resources, integrating the learning areas across the curriculum, and ensuring that curriculum programmes and teaching resources account for all students’ learning styles and needs. these processes of the framework are reflected in the mindmatters programme, which recommends introducing explicit lessons pertaining to resilience, but emphasises that the curriculum should be part of a wider wholeschool approach. the casel framework aims to develop learning standards and assessments in relation to sel, and to adopt evidence-based sel programmes to support skill development among students. overall, the teach it component allows a common language for the discussion and understanding of key pos ed competencies, and utilises resources for building a school environment that fosters learning and engagement. 4.4 embed it the goal of embed it is to support an integrated approach to pos ed across the many facets of school life, by ensuring congruence in what is being taught and what is being practiced. at ggs, the school aims to adopt pos ed as a philosophy that underpins the school culture. the processes comprising embed it include collecting wellbeing metrics to assist in refining and developing pos ed, updating organisational and student policies to align with the principles of wellbeing, and identifying and connecting all services with the school that support student welfare and wellbeing. at ggs, the school’s discipline policy was updated to the ‘kindness, forgiveness and reparation policy.’ a school diary serves as explicit documentation around relationship management based on the concepts of kindness and forgiveness, strengths-based and appreciative inquiry underpins the staff development programmes, and written communication with parents incorporates key tenets of pos ed. complementary school-wide processes that align with pos ed assist in embedding and sustaining a culture of wellbeing across the school community. integrating school-wide policies and activities to foster wellbeing, as reported in the casel framework, supports the goal of creating seamless integration, coherence and efficiency across implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 the school community. the hps framework describes school organisation, ethos and environment as a key area for practice, with examples such as developing, implementing and reviewing school guidelines and policies, integrating health services, and using inclusive language in the school community and correspondence. finally, mindmatters describes using wellbeing data for planning and successful implementation, and provides resources for building a positive whole-school community. organisational literature emphasises the need for targeting both micro levels (e.g., explicit pos ed lessons to provide the opportunity for students with the skills and competencies to support their own individual wellbeing) and macro levels (e.g., school leadership committing to reviewing and updating policies to mirror the tenets of pos ed) for sustainable change to occur [40, 41]. school leadership support, for example, enables the distribution of resources (both personnel and financial) to be allocated to the overall programmes and can therefore strengthen implementation and sustainability. the embed it component captures the macro level initiatives in a school, and, in combination with the other processes, represent a critical process for successful and sustainable implementation. 5. key practice issues the proposed implementation framework stems from successes observed in existing sel and broader health-related models, in addition to a consistent evidence base for whole-school approaches. it is expected that schools are likely to face barriers to successful implementation and it may be unrealistic to assume immediate compliance. each implementation component does, however, hold unique benefits to achieving a whole-school approach to pos ed. we propose that the ordering of learn it, live it, teach it, embed it is a logical approach for school implementation. the sequence proposes that schools should first provide opportunities for the adults in the school community to learn about the science of wellbeing, then provide time and an environment which enables staff to put into practice and live the key tenets, then prioritise time within the curriculum for students to be taught the skills and knowledge of wellbeing, and finally, to gain maximum benefit, ensure the lens of wellbeing is applied sensitively to each facet of the school. while we propose the above ordering, we also encourage schools to identify their unique needs and existing opportunities, and this may, in turn, affect the implementation process. for example, school policies and leadership commitment to change to support wellbeing may occur prior to any explicit teaching of pos ed being introduced into the curriculum. there are, however, expected outcomes of overlooked or poorly executed processes of the implementation framework. drawing upon practice wisdom, in addition to organisational [42], systems [43], and educational change [44, 45] literature, potential barriers and likely outcomes of overlooked processes are reported in table 1 below. the purpose of this section is to allow preparation of strategies to prevent such outcomes, and recognition of common issues if unintended outcomes occur. as previously highlighted, each school will be unique in context and needs, and the issues and potential outcomes that may occur may also be unique. as such, the scenarios described here are examples of potential outcomes, and do not reflect an exhaustive list. unintended or unexpected consequences may signal that an implementation component was missed or may require strengthening. for example, if school community members are confused about pos ed, there may need to be a review of the learning of the key tenets of the field. rosenberg and mosca identified organisation members’ attitudes and disposition toward change, fear of the unknown, and lack of understanding of intentions, to be the three most frequently reported reasons for resistance to organisational change [42]. implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 table 1. processes of change, common issues and potential outcomes of overlooked or poorly executed (indicated by a strikethrough and bolding) processes processes of change common issues potential outcomes learn live teach embed lack of understanding and knowledge apathy confusion anxiety learn live teach embed perceived hypocrisy frustration resentment resistance learn live teach embed missed opportunities misunderstood forgotten not prioritised learn live teach embed independent rather than integrated efforts dejected ineffective loneliness learn live teach embed positive whole-school change common language authentic delivery community awareness and support thornton et al. described personal mastery as a necessary function for successful change, and that poor outcomes are often observed when major initiatives are implemented into classrooms without sufficient training or support [44]. factors to lessen resistance might include developing systematic procedures to improve individuals’ capacity, developing appropriate communications and employee involvement initiatives, all of which translate to the learn it process in our proposed framework. if staff or students become frustrated with or resentful about pos ed, there may be discrepancy between the ideal and actual practice. thornton et al. [42] described that organisations and schools can help or hinder successful implementation, depending on the extent to which community members discuss, identify and are in agreement of the goals and vision of the change [44]. ball outlined that the development of a school analysis must consider the experiences, views and interpretations of the school community members to truly account for their practical concerns and interests [43]. overlooking these experiences may contribute to resistance to change, and further efforts might be directed towards tailoring to the unique needs of a school community, encouraging student and staff agency, and thus supporting the goals of live it in the model of pos ed. planning and implementation may have been removed from the school leadership agenda, and this may signal the school has not adequately prioritised the teaching of pos ed. thornton et al. outlined that significant institutional change requires high levels of resource co-ordination, and continuous reviewing and realignment [44]. resource co-ordination may include identifying pre-existing curriculum areas in which pos ed could be implemented, and this process within the teach it component is highly recommended as a priority for schools, particularly when time and resources do not allow the delivery of explicit pos ed classes. as described by rowe and stewart, increased student participation in the school environment is observed when students have a sense of ownership in the curriculum [45], and further attempts to build student partnerships through teach it may be targeted if pos ed appears misunderstood or forgotten. implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 independent rather than integrated efforts would suggest pos ed is yet to be embedded into the school system. thornton et al. [42] describe that significant organisational change requires continuous reassessment and realignment, and that schools endeavouring change require development of effective and systematic feedback. whole-school approaches demonstrate effectiveness when initiatives are embedded into the organisational processes and align with the school values and culture [46]. if there are individuals within a school working in pos ed in isolation, this may point to the school reviewing how service, policies and practices align to the goals and aims of pos ed, and partnerships could be strengthened. 6. directions for future work rigorous outcome evaluation is currently underway, exploring the impact of pos ed on the wider school community at ggs. it is expected that this piece will advance the literature relating to the effectiveness of key pos ed tenets in supporting individuals to flourish, and subsequently provide insight into the effectiveness of the overall implementation approach. while this current piece outlined the implementation processes of the ggs model and discussed the potential outcomes based on organisational, systems thinking and school-based literature, it is acknowledged that this is one proposed model in a rapidly growing and very broad field. it is expected that this model will be further enhanced with the accompanying implementation tool, the geelong grammar school positive education road map, which comprehensively describes each respective sub-processes for live it, learn it, teach it, embed it (forthcoming). it is envisaged that the road map will further assist schools in implementing pos ed and allow tracking of progress for each component. furthermore, research is planned to pilot the implementation tool at other participating schools at varied stages of their pos ed journey, to allow continuous improvement through formative evaluation. a notable limitation of our proposed implementation framework is that information pertaining to cost-effectiveness is not yet included. future research is planned to examine the impact of implementing pos ed based on financial, opportunity, time, and other resource costing, through which further formative evaluation can occur. 7. conclusion this paper reports the implementation framework of a whole-school approach to fostering positive mental health and wellbeing through positive education. drawing upon the successes observed in mental health prevention, social and emotional learning, and health promotion fields, our framework proposes that sustainable pos ed is implemented through: sharing opportunities to learn and engage in the science of wellbeing, enacting evidence-based wellbeing practices in unique and authentic ways, providing students with dedicated time to discover and explore wellbeing, and developing school-wide policies and practices to support wellbeing over time. while there is no definitive, prescribed temporal ordering of the implementation processes, we propose that unexpected or unintended outcomes may result from overlooked or poorly executed processes and that common issues and possible outcomes should be considered throughout implementation. this current framework will be enhanced through formative evaluation, following implementation across schools at various stages of their pos ed ‘journey,’ and through the geelong grammar school road map for positive education (forthcoming), which will propose specific sub-processes to further depict our implementation approach. the application of positive psychology in educational contexts provides exciting and promising opportunities in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of individuals and entire school communities. it is critical that the processes by which schools implement positive implementing positive education hoare, bott, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 education are evidence based, and that barriers and enablers to success are widely reported to further develop the field. it is our hope that learn it, live it, teach it, embed it, and the surrounding evidence synthesised in this study, may assist schools with their own whole-school implementation endeavours, and, ultimately, support individuals and school communities to flourish. authors erin hoare geelong grammar school erin.j.hoare@gmail.com david bott geelong grammar school justin robinson geelong grammar school publishing timeline received 12 july 2017 accepted 23 october 2017 published 12 december 2017 references 1. keyes, c.l., mental health in adolescence: is america's youth flourishing? 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(2016). engaging parents in positive education: results from a pilot program. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 150-168. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.443 karina dubroja the university of melbourne karina.dubroja@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 150 article engaging parents in positive education: results from a pilot program karina dubroja · meredith o’connor · vicki mckenzie abstract: positive education aims to contribute to the optimal functioning of students, staff, and school communities. parents play a vital role in school communities, and finding effective ways to engage parents with positive education is therefore critical. this small-scale pilot study aimed to provide preliminary insights into the impact of a 3-day intensive positive education program for parents, which focused on teaching positive psychology strategies, such as gratitude and use of character strengths, to the parent population. a mixed methodology non-randomized control group design was used to assess preto post-intervention change in 24 intervention participants and 16 waitlist control participants. an online survey assessed parents’ mental health and wellbeing, knowledge and use of character strengths, feelings of connection with the school, and beliefs about child wellbeing. results revealed significant increases in parental wellbeing and parent-school connection among the intervention participants, as compared to controls. qualitative results indicated that parents also perceived a positive impact on their communication with their child. overall, the study findings provide promising preliminary evidence for the benefits of strategically engaging parents in positive education. replication is now needed in further larger-scale studies. keywords: positive education, parent-school relationship, school community; whole-school approach 1. introduction positive education is a whole-school mental health promotion strategy that aims to cultivate wellbeing in students, staff and the school community (norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson, 2013). parents are important stakeholders in school communities that have yet to be strategically targeted within positive education. this is despite emerging evidence suggesting that the wellbeing of parents and their children are interrelated (hoy, suldo, & mendez, 2013; park & peterson, 2006), and that students tend to benefit when parents feel a strong connection to their child’s school (siddall, huebner, & jiang, 2013; suldo, mcmahan, chappel, & loker, 2012). engaging parents in positive education could therefore be a promising extension of mental health promotion efforts within school communities. one approach that has been piloted is to provide parents with the opportunity to attend intensive training in positive psychology interventions (ppis), which have been previously validated in adult samples (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). as applied to parents, training in and subsequent use of ppis may provide a means of reinforcing student learning by allowing for additional role modelling and consistent language across the home and school settings. this study aimed to provide preliminary insights from a small sample into the impact of parent http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 151 training in ppis, in order to inform: 1) further development of strategies to meaningfully engage parents in positive education programs, and 2) future larger-scale evaluation efforts. 1. positive education the last few decades have seen a growing recognition of the need for schools to focus on the growth of the whole child, including social, emotional and moral aspects, in addition to traditional academic learning (waters, 2011; white, 2011). while traditional academic learning is important, children’s wellbeing is also essential for positive school functioning and is a highly valued outcome by children, parents, and school communities (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009). the role of student wellbeing is now recognised in the australian national curriculum for schools, which asserts that personal and social capability is the basis for learning and participating in society (australian curriculum assessment and reporting authority, 2013). as well as supporting student learning, preventative mental health strategies may also provide an indirect means of addressing the alarmingly high rates of mental health difficulties experienced by australian children and young people (kvalsvig, o’connor, redmond, & goldfeld, 2014). responding to this increased interest in student wellbeing, positive education seeks to combine positive psychology principles with best practice teaching and educational paradigms to promote optimal development and wellbeing in the school community (norrish et al., 2013). approaches to implementing positive education programs differ, but generally include explicit and implicit teaching in combination with school-wide practices targeting domains such as emotional regulation, engagement, accomplishment of meaningful goals, purpose through contribution to the community, social skills for healthy relationships, and health promoting behaviours (norrish et al., 2013). following this defintion, the current paper considers an individual to have a high level of wellbeing when they are thriving in these domains. as a wholeschool approach, staff are also trained in using positive education skills, and positive education principles are integrated through organizational structures and policies. research to date, though limited, suggests that positive education programs may yield benefits to student wellbeing (norrish & o’connor, 2015; shoshani & steinmetz, 2013; vella-brodrick, rickard, & chin, 2014). 2. the role of parents in promoting student wellbeing alongside schools, the family environment is another major influence on the psychosocial development of children and adolescents (bronfenbrenner, 1979). an established evidence base has shown the importance of positive parenting styles to child and adolescent wellbeing (ehrmantrout, allen, leve, davis, & sheeber, 2011; jaser et al., 2005; o’connor et al., 2011; viner et al., 2012). in particular, warm, supportive and accepting parenting behaviours are associated with elevated life satisfaction (ma & huebner, 2008; schwarz et al., 2011), and continued wellbeing into adulthood (huppert, abbott, ploubidis, richards, & kuh, 2010). in contrast, research has demonstrated associations between harsh and rejecting parenting behaviours and elevated depression and anxiety (betts, gullone, & allen, 2009; bruce et al., 2006; crosby, drazdowski, & ginsburg, 2013; knappe, beesdo-baum, fehm, lieb, & wittchen, 2012). recent work also suggests associations between parent and child wellbeing. for example, hoy, suldo and mendez’s (2013) study of 148 children (aged 9-11) and their parents (137 mothers, 109 fathers) showed that maternal gratitude predicted child gratitude, and children’s life satisfaction was positively correlated with both maternal and paternal life satisfaction. casas and colleagues (2012) similarly found a significant albeit modest relationship between parental and child wellbeing. while the correlational nature of these findings prevents causal inferences, they engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 are suggestive of a familial transmission of wellbeing from parent to child. enhancing parents’ wellbeing may therefore provide an indirect means of impacting student wellbeing. as well as parents’ relationships with their children, their relationship with the school may also carry implications for their child’s wellbeing. epstein’s (1995) model of overlapping spheres of influence emphasises that schools, families, and communities are most effective when they work in partnership with common values. the partnership acts collaboratively to support a child’s learning and wellbeing (epstein, 2011). supporting this, siddal, huebner, and jiang’s (2013) study of 597 adolescents found that family-school interactions predicted adolescents’ life satisfaction. in other words, parental involvement at school was a consistent predictor of student wellbeing (suldo et al., 2012), as well as being strongly associated with their life satisfaction (danielsen, samdal, hetland, & wold, 2009). positive education is therefore likely to be most effective if all key stakeholders, including parents, are engaged with positive education practices, creating a common language and cultural norms across the school community (norrish et al., 2013). 3. positive education for parents program geelong grammar school (ggs) is an independent, anglican, co-educational, boarding and day school. it is located across four campuses in victoria, australia, with over 1,500 students. in 2008, during a 6-month visit by professor martin seligman and with extensive support from a team of international experts, ggs began applying positive psychology as a whole-school approach (norrish et al., 2013). in 2013, this was extended to the parent population through the development of a multi-component program for parents implemented at the school over an intensive 3-day period. this residential positive education program included a range of ppis demonstrated in previous research to be effective in improving adults’ positive mental health outcomes (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). components of the program are summarised in table 1 below. the program aimed to: (1) increase parents own understanding of wellbeing and equip them with skills to flourish, (2) allow parents and the school to develop a consistent language around wellbeing, and (3) create an opportunity to enhance the parent-school relationship by building connections with staff at the school. 4. the current study positive education programs have shown promising results in improving the wellbeing of children and adolescents (shoshani & steinmetz, 2013), but to date have only engaged with parents in a limited way. the links between parent and child wellbeing and the apparent effectiveness of positive psychology interventions in adults (duckworth, steen, & seligman, 2005; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009), suggest that parents could benefit from ppis, and this may have further implications for student wellbeing. the aim of the current study was to provide preliminary insights from a small sample into the impact of the ggs positive education for parents program (see table 1 below). it was hypothesised that compared to a waitlist control group, parents participating in the program would report higher levels of wellbeing and lower levels of psychological distress, improved knowledge and use of character strengths, and more positive perceptions of their relationship with their child’s school. once parents had the opportunity to apply skills learned in the course, it was additionally hypothesised that they would report stronger connections with their children and increased child wellbeing. engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 table 1a. components of the positive education for parents program session content example activity introduction: what is flourishing? introduction to positive psychology, character strengths, and six wellbeing domains targeted through the program: emotional regulation, engagement, accomplishment of meaningful goals, purpose through contribution to the community, social skills for healthy relationships, and health promoting behaviours discussion with partner regarding character strength use and future development informed by their results on the values in action (via) survey (www.authentichappiness.org) mindfulness introduction to mindfulness, awareness and meditation guided mindfulness meditation and reflection on this experience positive accomplishment discussion of ways to provide effective feedback focused on effort rather than outcome (“growth mindset”; yeager & dweck, 2012) role play providing praise focused on effort and personal development rather than outcome; reflected on own fixed or growth mindsets for different domains and activities in their lives positive emotions discussion of the benefits of frequent displays of positive emotions such as love and gratitude began a “blessings journal” (emmons & mccullough, 2003) where small or large positive events for which an individual is grateful are chronicled positive relationships exploring the importance of meaningful relationships to wellbeing and the role of active constructive responding (acr; gable, reis, impett, & asher, 2004), attachment styles, and nurturing character strengths that cultivate positive relationships role played ways to respond to others’ good news in order to deepen and broaden experience (acr) and reflected on the experience positive engagement exploring the state of flow as pathway to optimal performance and optimal enjoyment considered how one may move an activity into a state of flow by addressing the perceived skill vs challenge balance engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 table 1b. components of the positive education for parents program session content example activity positive purpose exploring what provides a sense of meaning and purpose in one’s life and prioritizing the most important activities considered key life roles and listed ways they currently give to others through their actions in these various roles positive health explore the role of resilience and optimism in cultivating flourishing, as well as physical health-promoting behaviours such as sleep and nutrition identified unhelpful thinking patterns, and exploring evidence for unhelpful thoughts character strengths exploration of character strengths and identifying novel opportunities to use strengths in daily life (seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005) discussed creative ways their signature strengths could be used to overcome a challenge power of habit exploration of habit as a challenge and opportunity in making sustainable changes to wellbeing explored the use of technology to assist forming and maintaining priority habits conclusion summary of course content and reflection on participant’s experience reflected on plans for implementation of new skills in daily life engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 5. method 6.1 design this study used a quasi-experimental design in a small sample to compare differences between scores in an intervention and a waitlist control group. outcomes were measured at preintervention (baseline, time 1), post intervention (time 2), and 2 months following the program (time 3), via online surveys. open-ended questions were also included in the survey to produce a more comprehensive understanding of program effects (bamberger, rugh, & mabry, 2011). 6.2 participants participants were 40 parents of children at ggs, including 24 in the intervention group and 16 in the waitlist control group (see table 2 below for sample characteristics). of the 62 parents invited to participate via email, the co-operation rate for the intervention and control participants was 86% and 50% respectively. the level of education attainment was higher in this sample than the australian average, reflecting the school demographic. at baseline the intervention and control groups did not significantly differ on any of the demographic or outcome variables (see table 2 below); suggesting that the control group provides a reasonable point of comparison. 6.3 measures measures included scales of parent mental health, character strengths, parent-school connection, and child outcomes. measures were chosen on the basis of previous evidence of sound validity and reliability, as well as congruence with the underlying conceptual framework, as detailed by norrish et al. (2013). parent mental health. parental wellbeing was measured with the mental health continuum short form (mhc-sf; keyes et al., 2008), comprising 14 items across three subscales: emotional wellbeing (e.g., “how often did you feel interested in life?”), psychological wellbeing (e.g., “how often did you feel that you had warm and trusting relationships with others?”), and social wellbeing (e.g., “how often did you feel that people are basically good?”). participants rated the frequency of each item in the past month on a 6-point likert scale (never, once or twice a month, about once a week, two or three times a week, almost every day, every day). the three subscales were subsequently combined to provide an overall score (α=. 92). parental distress was assessed using the kessler psychological distress scale (k-10; kessler et al., 2002). the scale contains 10 items (α=.86) that ask participants about their level of anxiety and depressive symptoms in the past month (e.g., “in the last four weeks how often did you feel hopeless?”). the response categories for each of the 10 items range from 1 (all of the time) to 5 (none of the time). character strengths. the strengths knowledge scale consists of eight items measuring participants recognition of their strengths on a 7-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (govindji & linley, 2007). examples of items include, “i know the things i am good at doing” (α=.87). the strengths use scale (govindji & linley, 2007) comprises 14 items (α=.96) to assess use of strengths in individuals’ day-to-day lives (e.g., “using my strengths is something i am familiar with”). responses are indicated on a 7-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 table 2. baseline characteristics according to condition variables intervention (n=22) control (n=11) test statistic demographic characteristics gender 2=.15 male 31.8% 09.1% female 68.2% 90.9% age 2=.19 30-39 0% 09.1% 40-49 59.1% 36.4% 50-59 36.4% 36.4% 60+ 0% 09.1% missing data 04.5% 09.1% highest education level 2=.13 did not complete high school 0% 0% graduated from high school 0% 0% diploma 04.5% 0% advanced diploma/ associate degree 09.1% 36.4% bachelor’s degree 72.7% 36.4% postgraduate degree 09.1% 18.2% missing data 04.5% 09.1% outcome variables (m (sd)) parent mental health parental wellbeing 47.65 (13.24) 50.27 (8.14) t(31)=-.60, p=.550 parental distress 16.65 (5.00) 15.27 (5.06) t(31)=.74, p=.460 character strengths knowledge of character strengths 42.24 (3.96) 40.45 (8.80) t(31)=.81, p=.42-0 character strengths use 068.59 (15.34) 66.64 (16.19) t(31)=.34, p=.74-0 parent relationship with school parent-school connection 20.64 (3.33) 20.45 (3.88) t(31)=.14, p=.890 child outcomes child strengths 08.23 (1.90) 07.91 (1.81) t(31)=.46, p=.650 child difficulties 07.16 (5.37) 9.57 (6.86) t(31)=-1.11, p=.28 parent-child relationship 09.18 (4.02) 9.18 (1.72) t(31)=.00, p=1.00 parents’ connection to school. items assessing parent-school connection were drawn from the positive school community subscale of the parent questionnaire, a kidsmatter devised scale used to measure parents’ perceptions about their child’s school (slee et al., 2009). participants indicate their level of agreement with five statements about the school (e.g., “the school encourages caring relationships between staff and families” (α=.91). response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 157 child outcomes. child wellbeing and distress were measured according to parent reports on the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (sdq; goodman, 1997). the sdq is a 25-item survey that comprises five scales with five items each, answered on a 3-point likert scale ranging from 0 (not true) to 2 (certainly true). the total difficulty score was combined (α=.84) and included items from the conduct problems, hyperactivity, emotional symptoms and peer problems scales. prosocial behaviour has been demonstrated to be an important behavioural indicator of positive mental health in childhood (goldfeld, kvalsvig, incledon, o’connor, & mensah, 2014; kvalsvig et al., 2014), and hence the prosocial behaviour scale (α=.71) was used as a measure of child wellbeing, with items including, “in the last 6 months how often was your child kind to younger children?” (goodman, 1997). to assess the warmth of the parent-child relationship, participants responded to a five-item (e.g., “most of the time, how well do you get along with your child?”) adapted subscale from the parenting questionnaire devised by the australian temperament project (prior, sanson, smart, & oberklaid, 2000), with ratings made on a 5-point likert scale that varied, depending on the item (α=.81; prior et al., 2000). open-ended questions. to elicit qualitative insights, participants were prompted with open questions that varied at each time point. the intervention group was asked about their motivations for attending the program at baseline. immediately following the program, they were asked about their behaviour change intentions as well as what impact they felt this experience would have on family life. at 2-month follow-up, intervention parents were asked about the maintenance of any changes they had made, and what factors had facilitated sustained change. control parents were asked about what schools could do to further engage parents with positive education. 6.4 procedure in 2013, ggs developed a multi-component program for parents implemented at the school over an intensive 3-day period (from friday evening to sunday afternoon, with the intention of allowing working parents to more easily take part). this evaluation study focuses on the program conducted in july 2014 (third run). four staff members with extensive practical experience in implementing positive education interventions facilitated the program. the program emphasized the importance of wellbeing and devoting time to building the skills for meaningful and fulfilling lives (see table 1 above for a summary of course content). skills were taught in plenary sessions and reinforced in small group breakout sessions that included interactive activities requiring participants to practise skills, collaborate with a partner and contribute to group discussions. at the end of each topic, participants received a short debriefing and were asked to list ways the material could be applied to their personal lives. data was collected using surveymonkey, an online survey platform. parents eligible for the study, including those who were enrolled in the program (intervention group) and those who had indicated interest but were unable to attend on the scheduled dates (waitlist control group), were sent an email invitation to participate. participants who consented were then directed to the 25-minute online survey at pre-program, post-program and 2-month follow-up. waitlist participants completed the surveys at the same time as the intervention group. data collection occurred over the period 16 june to 5 september 2014. parents in the waitlist control condition had the opportunity to participate in a subsequent run of the program beginning after the study period. the program was implemented by the school as part of their usual practice, with no input from the evaluators. this allowed the research team to maintain an objective distance and estimate the effectiveness of the program as routinely implemented. this methodology was engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 158 approved by the melbourne graduate school of education human research ethics committee (id number 1341289). 6.5 data analysis spss version 21.0 was used to conduct all analyses. in preliminary data cleaning, two outliers were recoded on strength knowledge so that they did not exert undue influence on the results (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). the extent to which the program produced the expected outcomes was investigated by comparing the intervention and waitlist control group scores on the outcome variables, using 2 (condition) by 3 (time) mixed methods anovas. of primary interest was whether the anovas showed a significant interaction effect between time (pre, post, follow-up) and condition (intervention versus control). the huynh-feldt correction was used to interpret findings for strengths knowledge and parental wellbeing, given the violation of the sphericity assumption (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). to control for inflated rates of type i error, the sidak correction was used for simple comparisons. it should be noted, that given the small sample size, the results from these analyses are best considered as preliminary insights that require replication in future large-scale work. missing data arose where participants did not respond to the surveys at time 2 and/or time 3. reasons for non-completion of surveys included participants unable to be contacted, and unavailability due to some data collection occurring during the school holidays. participants were excluded from the analyses if they provided baseline data only (2 intervention and 5 control; see table 3 below), leading to a final sample of n=22 intervention and n=11 control participants. to reduce potential sampling bias and reduction of statistical power, the expectation-maximisation method (raghunathan, 2004) was used to impute missing data for remaining participants. these analyses were also run using complete case analyses and regression replacement. findings were consistent across these approaches and would not change study conclusions, suggesting that the choice of imputation did not have an undue influence on the findings. table 3. response to each wave of the survey for intervention and control participants participants time 1 n (%) time 2 n (%) time 3 n (%) control 16 (100) 10 (62.5) 10 (62.5) intervention 24 (100) 21 (87.5) 20 (83.0) qualitative analysis was conducted on responses to the open-ended questions in order to measure parents’ perceptions of the positive education program, both as a means to enrich understanding of the program impact and to understand how participants experienced the program. thematic analysis was used, based on the method proposed by braun and clark (2006), which provides an account of the data, through the process of extracting common themes and drawing meaning from the written responses in a way that contributes to the understanding of the event. responses were analysed and coded according to their meaning, and common themes were extracted. engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 159 table 4. descriptive statistics and anova results variable control m(sd) intervention m(sd) main effect between subjects effect interaction effect t1 t2 t3 t1 t2 t3 parental wellbeing 50.27 (8.14) 49.55 (11.66) 47.73 (14.93) 47.65 (13.24) 51.86 (11.18) 54.57 (9.53) f(1, 21)=.86, p=.42, p2=.03 f(1, 21)=.34, p=.57, p2=.01 f (1, 21)=.3.59, p=.04, p2=.10 parental distress 15.27 (5.06) 15.24 (4.54) 15.73 (5.57) 16.65 (5.0) 15.03 (3.99) 13.57 (2.20) f(1, 21)=.1.62, p=.21, p2=.05 f(1, 21)=.06, p=.81, p2=.00 f(1, 21)=.2.89, p=.06, p2=.09 knowledge of character strengths 40.45 (8.80) 39.96 (9.30) 44.09 (6.52) 42.24 (3.96) 43.10 (6.25) 44.48 (3.79) f(1, 21)=.2.60, p=.09, p2=.08 f(1, 21)=.1.32, p=.26, p2=.04 f(1, 21)=.45, p=.61, p2=.01 character strengths use 66.64 (16.19) 67.24 (17.30) 72.64 (16.73) 68.59 (15.34) 73.29 (14.36) 77.05 (12.06) f(1, 21)=.3.04, p=.06, p2=.09 f(1, 21)=.92, p=.35, p2=.03 f(1, 21)=.24, p=.79, p2=.00 parent-school connection 20.45 (3.88) 19.67 (4.02) 19.90 (4.11) 20.64 (3.33) 22.20 (2.36) 21.40 (2.63) f(1, 21)=.55, p=.59, p2=.02 f(1, 21)=1.60, p=.27, p2=.05 f(1, 21)=4.71, p=.01, p2=.13 parent-child connection 15.82 (1.72) 15.71 (2.83) 16.09 (2.39) 15.81 (4.02) 15.76 (3.82) 16.18 (3.79) f(1, 21)=.73, p=.48, p2=.02 f(1, 21)=.00, p=.97, p2=.00 f(1, 21)=.01, p=.99, p2=.00 child strength 07.91 (1.81) 8.10 (1.45) 8.93 (1.50) 8.23 (1.90) 7.96 (1.89) 8.03 (1.98) f(1, 21)=.1.88, p=.16, p2=.06 f(1, 21)=.16, p=.69, p2=.01 f(1, 21)=.2.90, p=.06, p2=.09 child difficulty 9.57 (6.86) 7.34 (6.72) 8.13 (5.54) 7.16 (5.37) 6.85 (5.98) 5.81 (4.47) f(1, 21)=.2.50, p=.09, p2=.08 f(1, 21)=.38, p=.03*, p2=.03 f(1, 21)=.1.24, p=.30, p2=.08 engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 160 intervention; time 1; 47.65 intervention; time 2; 51.86 intervention; time 3; 54.57 control; time 1; 50.27 control; time 2; 49.55 control; time 3; 47.73 p a re n ta l w e ll b e in g time point intervention control 6. results 7.1 quantitative evaluation intervention and control participants did not significantly differ on outcomes measured at baseline (table 2 above). levels of some outcomes were already high at baseline; for example, mean levels of child strengths were m=8.23 for the intervention and m=7.91 for the control group, out of a possible 10. this suggests that the control group may be used as a point of comparison, although, as discussed in a later section, the sample size and ceiling effects should be considered. correlations between the outcome variables (not shown) ranged from weak to moderate, and were strongest between character strengths knowledge and use (r = .69, p < .001) and parent-child warmth and child wellbeing (r = .69, p < .001). the extent to which the positive education program for parents produced the hypothesised outcomes was investigated by comparing the intervention and control group scores at each time point on the outcome variables. the results of anovas revealed significant interaction effects for parental wellbeing and parent-school connection, suggesting that there were measurable differences between the intervention and control group from preto post-intervention on these outcomes (see table 4 above). no significant interaction effects were observed in relation to knowledge or use of character strengths, parental distress, warmth of the parent-child relationship, or parents’ perceptions of their child’s strengths and difficulties. a significant group by time interaction was observed for parental wellbeing (table 4 above). simple comparisons showed that compared to pre-intervention, participants in the intervention group had significantly higher mean wellbeing at post-intervention (f(1, 21)=9.73, p=.01, p2=.32), and also at 2-month follow-up (f(1, 21)=9.34, p=.01, p2=.31), as illustrated in figure 1 below. these findings suggest that parental wellbeing tended to increase as a function of participating in the intervention. figure 1. change over time in parental wellbeing according to condition type. error bars show one standard deviation. engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 161 intervention; time 1; 20.64 intervention; time 2; 22.2 intervention; time 3; 21.4 control; time 1; 20.45 control; time 2; 19.67 control; time 3; 19.9 p a re n tsc h o o l co n n e ct io n time point intervention control a significant group by time interaction for parent-school connection was also observed (see table 4 above). simple comparisons demonstrated significant improvements in parent-school connection at post-intervention compared to pre-intervention (f(1, 21)=13.25, p=.01, p2=.39), with a medium-sized effect. however, as displayed in figure 2 below, by the 2-month follow-up, parents who participated in the positive education program did not have a significantly higher mean than at pre-test (f(1, 21)=2.61, p=.12, p2=.11). figure 2. change over time in parent-school connection according to condition. error bars show one standard deviation. 7.2 qualitative themes in the analysis of written parent responses to open-ended questions in the survey at each time point, three consistent themes were evident. increased understanding of positive education. 20 out of 23 parents who participated in the program reported on the survey that they developed a greater understanding of positive education through this experience, for example, “... it certainly deepened my understanding of the concepts being presented to the children and my ability to support these concepts through my parenting in the home.” at pre-intervention, parents reported that a key reason for attending the program was to increase their knowledge of positive education, and to learn how to apply these skills at home with their children. at post-intervention, parents reported that they had learned new concepts and skills (such as mindfulness, keeping a gratitude journal), and at 2month follow-up most parents reported that they had incorporated at least one of these strategies into their daily lives (e.g., “i find myself looking out for those [active constructive responding] moments and opportunities to share a moment of closeness”). shared language around wellbeing. at post-intervention, 12 out of 23 parents reported that the knowledge obtained from the program helped to develop a shared language around wellbeing with their children (e.g., “…i now have the same [positive education] language as her. it can be funny sometimes but mostly we enhance each other’s understanding of a situation…”). parents reported that their explicit knowledge of course content provided stimulus for conversation with their children; for example, “…better shared understanding and key concepts and words to work with in supporting the school program.” parents indicated that the program gave them a engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 162 language to discuss wellbeing in a collaborative way, and provided terminology to reinforce the school’s teachings, which in turn increased communication with their children. for example, following the program one parent reported, “i can tune in to how he may respond, based on the information that i know he has absorbed and may be working with.” additionally, parents believed that the program’s content, specifically, acr, process praise and maintaining positive emotion, enhanced the quality of their communication with their children. parent-school connection. reinforcing the quantitative findings, 18 out of 23 parents reported a greater sense of connection to the school and more positive perceptions of their place within the school community following the program. seventy-eight percent of parents described viewing the school more positively and feeling greater appreciation of their place in the school community (e.g., “deepened my sense of being part of a community”). parents reported that the program built positive relationships with school staff (e.g., “engagement with the teachers has opened up a whole new world”). finally, 10 parents in the control condition provided ideas regarding other possible ways to engage parents with positive education, including online reading material, attending their child’s positive education class, providing examples of how to use positive education at home, and including positive education on school reports. 7. discussion this small-scale study examined the impact of a positive education program for parents implemented within a whole-school positive education framework. while further research is needed to replicate findings in larger samples, the data revealed measurable increases in levels of wellbeing and connectedness to the school for those parents who participated in the program, compared to a waitlist control group. overall, these findings provide promising preliminary indications of the potential benefits of engaging parents in positive education, as well as suggesting opportunities for program development. in particular, sustaining change is a challenge in many programs and appears to be an important consideration for further program development. future larger-scale evaluation appears warranted. participation in the positive education for parents program was associated with increased levels of wellbeing at post-intervention, which was sustained at 2-month follow-up. previous research with adults has demonstrated that positive psychology interventions can be effective in producing improvements in wellbeing (lyubomirsky, sheldon, & schkade, 2005), and these findings suggest that ppis may be just as relevant for parents as for other key stakeholders in the school community. a sustained improvement in parental wellbeing is an important outcome in its own right, but is particularly important, given the proximal influence that parents have on their child’s development (bronfenbrenner, 1979), and the links between parental wellbeing and child wellbeing (ehrmantrout et al., 2011; ma & huebner, 2008). parents also reported a greater sense of connection to the school immediately following the program, compared with the parents in the control group, however, this was not maintained at follow-up. there are a number of possible explanations for this. it may be that the school’s efforts to include parents gave a greater sense of being valued within the school community, or it may be that increasing parent understanding of the program allowed parents to feel more connected to and use the conceptual language of the school program more effectively (shoshani & steinmetz, 2013; suldo et al., 2012). in particular, qualitative data indicated that parents experienced high-quality parent-teacher and parent-parent interactions during the program, characterised by respect, trust and reciprocity, and developed a shared understanding about the importance of positive education for themselves and their children. this positive effect on the engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 163 parent-school relationship was no longer evident at 2-month follow-up, indicating that there may be a need for further ongoing opportunities for parents to be engaged and involved to sustain this change (epstein, 2011; suldo et al., 2012). the lack of significant effects observed in relation to other outcomes also warrants consideration. it is difficult to rule out whether the lack of significant effects observed in relation to the other outcome measures was due to the lack of actual effects, or the small sample size which limited the capacity to detect them. it is interesting to note that while no quantitative improvement in the warmth of the parent-child relationship was observed, parents’ qualitative reports at 2-month follow-up indicated that they believed participation in the program lead to higher quality interactions and communication with their children, suggesting that the parentchild relationship may have changed, but in different ways than those measured quantitatively. parents in the intervention group additionally did not report improvements in children’s strengths and difficulties; it is possible that the new practices implemented by parents may take longer than the current 2-month follow-up period before their children can reap the benefits, and a longer term follow-up should be considered in future evaluation efforts. alternately, ways in which these skills can be utilised in the family setting may need to be directly addressed in the program to achieve changes on these outcomes. the lack of observed increases in strength knowledge or strength use is in line with research that suggests it may be necessary to move beyond an “identify and use” approach to a “strengths development” approach, which involves learning what character strengths to use and how often, when given specific situational or social influences (biswas-diener, kashdan, & minhas, 2011). 8.1 strengths and limitations several aspects of the design of this study are worth considering replicating in future larger-scale evaluation efforts. the mixed method design combines quantitative data to measure program outcomes and qualitative data to understand participant experiences of the program. the use of a waitlist control group strengthened the likelihood that both groups would be similar on measured and non-measured variables. as such, the control group provided an important point of comparison; indeed, it was observed that the control group’s scores varied on a number of outcome variables over time, indicating the importance of creating a well-matched control group in future research. despite these strengths, results should nevertheless be interpreted as preliminary, with the study being best conceptualised as a preliminary investigation that can inform future larger-scale evaluation efforts. the small sample size provided limited power to detect effects, and, as such, future research with a larger sample is needed, to reduce the probability of type 1 and 2 error. in addition, the sample used in this study was fairly homogenous, involving parents from one high socioeconomic status school only, and included a small group of parents that may have had particular characteristics that led them to nominate for the program. care should therefore be taken in extrapolating the findings, and future work would benefit from a larger sample from a number of diverse school settings, with a broader set of measures to be applied to multiple informants, such as students and teachers. finally, a longer follow-up period would allow for greater likelihood of detecting flow-on effects for student wellbeing, if these are occurring. 8.2 future directions results of this evaluation provide preliminary evidence that positive education could be associated with benefits for parents’ wellbeing and their connection to their child’s school, suggesting that further larger-scale evaluation efforts are worthwhile. a number of ways in engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 164 which the current findings could usefully inform the design of future investigations have been suggested. in addition, future evaluation efforts may benefit from comparing a number of possible training models: this program was run as an intensive workshop, but further research may reveal other potential implementation strategies that could be used for parents with busy work and childcare commitments, such as weekly evening sessions across a school term. adopting a more sustained approach in comparison to an intensive format has demonstrated greater efficacy in previous research, as participants have more time to learn and implement new skills (froh et al., 2014). these preliminary results also indicate a number of potential areas for further program development. no program effects were observed in relation to child outcomes, which may be more likely to occur if the program’s content specifically addresses the links between parent and child wellbeing, including explicit instruction of how parents can apply the positive education content and their newly acquired skills to enhance family functioning and set goals to build family strengths (suldo & fefer, 2013). to assist parents in maintaining desired changes, schools could run booster sessions where parents who have attended the positive education program could interact with staff to discuss their achievements and obstacles (suldo et al., 2012). positive education programs for parents are likely to be of most benefit to the school community if parent uptake in the program is high. only a small proportion of parents across the full school community took up the opportunity to engage in the program, which is consistent with reports of other school-based programs targeting children’s health and development (axford, lehtonen, kaoukji, tobin, & berry, 2012; garcia-dominic et al., 2010; heinrichs, bertram, kuschel, & hahlweg, 2005). to ensure that parents perceive participation in positive education programs as useful, promotion of the program should capture parents’ main motivations for participating. in this group, qualitative findings suggest that parents were seeking increased understanding of positive education in order to provide greater support to their children. 8. conclusions interest in positive education as a framework for promoting wellbeing within school communities is growing. however, there has been limited research to guide effective engagement of the parent population with positive education. this small-scale study provides valuable preliminary insights into the impact of one potential avenue of involving parents, focusing on an intensive workshop where parents learn about and apply previously validated positive psychology interventions. the results revealed observable changes in parents’ wellbeing and their feelings of connectedness to the school following participation in the positive education for parents program. these preliminary findings suggest that further larger-scale evaluation efforts will be useful to establish the most effective ways to purposefully and strategically engage parents in whole-school positive education programs. acknowledgements we wish to sincerely thank all parents who generously contributed their time and insights to this project. we are also grateful to key staff at geelong grammar school who assisted in facilitating the program evaluation, including justin robinson and janis coffey. conflict of interest statement meredith o’connor is an employee of geelong grammar school. engaging parents in positive education dubroja, o’connor, & mckenzie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 165 authors karina dubroja the university of melbourne karina.dubroja@gmail.com meredith o’connor the university of melbourne vicki mckenzie the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 20 july 2015 accepted 21 july 2016 published 14 october 2016 references australian curriculum assessment and reporting authority. 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(2019). the role of physiological and subjective measures of emotion regulation in predicting adolescent wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 66-89. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.730 lucy morrish the university of melbourne morrishl@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 66 article the role of physiological and subjective measures of emotion regulation in predicting adolescent wellbeing lucy morrish · tan chyuan chin · nikki rikard · peta sigley-taylor · dianne vella-brodrick abstract: emotion regulation (er) is a key contributor to psychosocial adjustment in adolescence, while er deficits contribute to psychological distress and dysfunction. to date, research with adolescents has examined a limited subset of er processes, often in relation to mental ill-health. this study examined associations between multiple er measures and wellbeing in a normative sample of 119 adolescents (mage = 15.73). er was measured using self-report and physiological (rsa) indices. multiple measures of positive and negative functioning were examined. after controlling for covariates, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that self-reported er predicted resilience, perseverance, connectedness, and happiness; and fewer depression and anxiety symptoms. higher tonic rsa predicted resilience and perseverance. effect sizes were small to moderate. theoretical and practical implications are discussed. keywords: adolescence, emotion regulation, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, mental health, positive youth development, resilience, wellbeing 1. introduction adolescence is a period marked by vast emotional change, and the capacity for adaptive emotion regulation (er) contributes to the successful transition into adulthood (silk, steinberg, & morris, 2003). during adolescence, the capacity to successfully regulate emotional experiences facilitates the building and maintenance of social relationships (halligan et al., 2013), bolsters positive affect (tugade & fredrickson, 2007), and promotes academic achievement (ivcevic & brackett, 2014). conversely, the absence of adaptive er skills and the development of maladaptive er strategies contribute to psychological distress and dysfunction (see meta-analytic reviews by aldao, nolen-hoeksema, and schweizer; graziano & derefinko, 2013). er can, therefore, be regarded as a key feature of positive youth development, and of the wellbeing spectrum more broadly (keyes, 2005). er is defined as the ability to manage, modify, and respond to emotional experiences in a contextually appropriate manner (thompson, 1994). a multidimensional construct, er involves a variety of physiological, cognitive, and behavioral processes that emerge as particularly relevant during adolescence development (steinberg, 2016). mid-adolescence, for example, involves a developmental window characterized by maturational disparity between the prefrontal cortex and limbic system, leading to a period in which emotionand rewarddriven behavior dominates rational decision making (casey, jones, & hare, 2008). er is measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 67 thought to be a prerequisite to effective impulse control, delayed gratification, and goaldirected behavior, and modulates emotion-driven urges (davidson, putnam, & larson, 2000; ochsner & gross, 2005; steinberg, 2016). further, er can buffer against the impact of early childhood experiences, biological and socio-cultural changes associated with puberty, and adverse environmental conditions on adolescent wellbeing (see beauchaine 2015, for a review). in contrast to the protective role of adaptive er processes, er disruption occurs when an individual’s response to emotional arousal loses flexibility or is unresponsive to contextual demands (cole, martin, & dennis, 2004). once a dysregulatory pattern is established, it becomes maladaptive and may sustain or promote mental ill-health (berking & wupperman, 2012). as such, limited access to adaptive er strategies and use of maladaptive strategies impairs wellbeing and contributes to the development of numerous forms of psychological distress and disorder (see meta-analytic reviews by aldao et al., 2010; graziano & derefinko, 2013). to date, the majority of er research with young people has focused on its relation to psychological dysfunction. this is certainly warranted, given that adolescence is a period of risk for the onset of mental distress and ill-health, and deficits of er represent a common feature of numerous mental disorders (aldao et al., 2010). however, emerging theory suggests that processes of er also contribute to positive psychological functioning in adolescent (morrish, rickard, chin, & vella-brodrick, 2018) and adult samples (quoidbach, mikolajczak, & gross, 2015), and despite these investigative inroads, empirical investigation of the role of er to a broad range of measures of positive functioning in young people remains under explored. this represents a clear gap in our current understanding and fails to acknowledge the full spectrum of mental health, which includes distinct dimensions of positive and negative functioning (westerhof & keyes, 2010). 1.1 emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing consistent with contemporary definitions of wellbeing as the combination of feeling good and functioning well (huppert, 2009), wellbeing involves positive functioning across a range of biopsychosocial domains. the perma model (seligman, 2011) identifies five interrelated facets, including positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning or purpose in life, and accomplishment. in principle, the same er processes that protect against the development of mental ill-health can also be utilized to promote positive psychological functioning, and perma specifically, in young people. to elaborate, adaptive er involves harnessing one’s physiological and cognitive resources in order to (i) select an appropriate strategy to influence one’s affective experience and actions, and (ii) promote goal-attainment in emotionally charged situations (gratz & roemer, 2004). these abilities become particularly important in the face of setbacks, challenges, or competing goals (ivcevic & brackett, 2014). by engaging one’s adaptive resources, processes of er likely play a driving role in the realization and maintenance of psychological health (desteno, gross, & kubzansky, 2013). for example, the use of adaptive cognitive er strategies, including reappraisal, savoring, and gratitude, have all been found to enhance positive affect, while physiological measures linked to er capacity (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhthymia) correlate with measures of trait positive affect and greater measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 68 stability of positive affect in young adult samples (fredrickson, tugade, waugh, & larkin, 2003; koval et al., 2013; oveis et al., 2009; quoidbach, berry, hasenne, & mikolajczak, 2010; tugade & fredrickson, 2007; wang, lü, & qin, 2013). furthermore, in a sample of 210 undergraduate students (mean age = 21), gross and john (2003) found that reappraisal strategy use was positively associated six domains of wellbeing (ryff & keyes, 1995), including environmental mastery, autonomy, personal growth, self-acceptance, and positive relations with others, as well as measures of optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. conversely, a putatively maladaptive cognitive er strategy, expressive suppression, was inversely related to these domains. such findings demonstrate a link between at least two specific er strategies and wellbeing, however, there remains a clear need to move beyond “the usual suspects” of reappraisal and suppression, and extend current knowledge by considering the relationship of a more comprehensive range of er capabilities to positive functioning (gratz, weiss, & tull, 2015). 1.2 emotion regulation: a mixed-model approach given the multidimensional nature of er, which involves both cognitive and physiological components, comprehensive assessment of its relationship to adolescent wellbeing requires a mixed-method approach (beauchaine & thayer, 2015), which, in addition to self-report, includes physiological measures of neural and cardiovascular processes underlying er (desteno, gross, & kubzanski, 2013; thayer, åhs, fredrikson, sollers iii, & wager, 2012). typically, research with adolescent samples has involved only one method of measuring er (adrian, zeman, & veits, 2011). this approach is problematic, as it limits cross-study comparisons and provides a partial understanding of the relationship of er to mental health, and specifically, to positive aspects of psychological functioning that remain largely unexplored in mixed-method designs. cognitive er strategies, assessed via self-report, are most often represented in the literature and refer to the ways individuals think about their emotions to make sense of, manage, and respond appropriately to them (garnefski, kraaij, & spinhoven, 2001). however, physiological indices of er – thought to reflect an individual’s capacity to engage in adaptive er processes (thayer et al., 2012) – are increasingly examined, and involve changes in neurocognitive and autonomic nervous system functioning associated with emotional experience and regulation. 1.3 capturing physiological processes of emotion regulation: respiratory sinus arrhthymia a number of physiological indices of er are available to psychological researchers (e.g., electroencephalogram, functional magnetic resonance imaging, cortisol assays), of which respiratory sinus arrhthymia (rsa) is the most commonly cited measure in research with adolescents (beauchaine, 2015). rsa is a measure of beat-to-beat intervals in heart rate that occur in synchrony with respiration, which reflects changes in the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic influences on the heart (thayer et al., 2012). rsa provides an index of autonomic influence on prefrontal cortical activity and executive functioning, and, as such, represents a non-invasive measure of er capacity (thayer, hansen, saus-rose, & johnsen, measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 69 2009). more specifically, rsa is thought to represent an individual’s physiological capacity to appropriately and flexibly meet environmental demands (li et al., 2009; rickard & vellabrodrick, 2014). tonic rsa (i.e., taken at rest) is thought to represent a global measure of er capacity, with higher values indicating a greater general aptitude for er (appelhans & leucken, 2006). lower values, conversely, are predictive of mental ill-health (beauchaine & thayer, 2015). as an overall measure of regulatory capacity, tonic rsa may represent, for example, how successfully the body mobilizes cognitive and metabolic resources during times of stress (e.g., during a class presentation) and engages in restorative functions and reducing energy expenditure when environmental demands decrease (e.g., once the presentation is completed). the use of tonic rsa to assess er capacity, in this regard, can be likened to the measurement of muscle mass as a proxy for overall body strength. importantly, tonic rsa supports efficient cognitive er processes, and thus contributes to effective er above and beyond the use of er capacities captured via self-report alone (hildebrandt, mccall, engen, & singer, 2016). more specifically, rsa is thought to facilitate effective cognitive processing of emotional experiences by enhancing executive functioning and impulse inhibition (thayer et al., 2012; park, van bavel, vasey, & thayer, 2012). thus, individual differences in rsa may reflect differences in the capacity to inhibit unhelpful responses to emotional stimuli and engage in more adaptive processes, which, in turn, is likely to promote differentiated and appropriately-matched responses to environmental stressors (lang, bradley, & cuthbert, 1990; thayer & lane, 2009. moreover, assessment of rsa can bypass the reporting biases associated with self-report and is considered an objective measure of er capacity (appelhans & leucken, 2006; walker, pfingst, carnevali, sgoifo, & nalivaiko, 2017). in young adults, measures of rsa are found to be inversely related to self-reported er difficulties (williams et al., 2015) and markers of mental ill-health (beauchaine, 2015). notably, lower resting rsa is primarily linked to mental distress in young people diagnosed with or at high-risk of developing mental disorders (see review by beauchaine, 2015). rsa may also protect against the detrimental effects of stress and enhance positive psychological functioning, with research of vulnerable youth finding that individuals with higher tonic rsa displayed greater resilience in the face of stress, and were rated as more popular with peers (kim & cicchetti, 2010). research with adult samples has also linked higher tonic rsa to increased recovery from stress (souza et al., 2007; souza et al., 2013). the ability to effectively regulate emotions and inhibit unhelpful impulses also contributes to successful social functioning, and rsa has been linked to social connectedness (geisler, kubiak, siewert, & weber, 2013) in adults, in children (patriquin, lorenzi, scarpa & bell, 2014), and in adolescents with autistic spectrum disorders (patriquin, scarpa, friedman, & porges, 2013). it remains unclear, however, whether the buffering effect of higher tonic rsa against mental ill-health extends to nonclinical and community-based adolescent samples, and how rsa relates to a broader range of markers of positive psychological functioning in adolescent groups, for example, engagement, perseverance, and optimism. measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 70 1.4 the current study the current study aimed to address the aforementioned gaps in the literature by examining the cross-sectional relationship between er and wellbeing in a healthy adolescent sample. both positive and negative functioning are central to understanding resilience, wellbeing, and mental health in adolescent samples (rickard, chin, & vella-brodrick, 2016). therefore, to reflect the full spectrum of mental health (keyes, 2005; westerhoff & keyes, 2010), the relationship between er and numerous measures of positive functioning and mental distress was examined. consistent with best-practice recommendations (beauchaine, 2015), a multimethod approach was used to measure er by including both self-reported er and rsa. the evaluation of self-reported er provides access to the conscious strategies and unobservable processes typically used by individuals in the face of emotional experiences – that is, “top down” processes linked to er. the inclusion of rsa, on the other hand, provides an objective, physiological measure marker of er (appelhans & leucken, 20006; thayer et al., 2012). rsa circumvents a number of potential limitations of self-report (e.g., response biases, limited insight, motivational level), while also capturing “bottom-up” cortical and subcortical processes supporting the flexible, effective regulation of emotion (park, et al., 2012). two empirical studies that have examined the association between rsa and other vagally-mediated measures of heart rate variability and self-reported er found inverse correlations of small to medium magnitude between rsa and scales of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale (ders), suggesting that, although related, each measure captures unique variance of the er construct (visted et al., 2017; williams et al., 2015). it is yet to be determined which components of er – cognitive appraisals about the er capabilities or underlying physiological processes – are most relevant to domains of adolescent wellbeing. thus, the incorporation of both methods extends previous research that has focused primarily on self-reported er processes in youth, and aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of the relationship of er processes to adolescent functioning. understanding the relative contribution of rsa and self-reported er to adolescent wellbeing may inform the development of targeted er interventions to enhance specific domains of wellbeing in young people. it was predicted that er capacity, as measured by lower self-reported er difficulties and higher tonic rsa, would be positively related to resilience and domains of wellbeing thought to support optimal psychological functioning (i.e., flourishing) in adulthood, including engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness (kern, benson, steinberg, & steinberg, 2016). second, it was predicted that er capacity, as measured by lower selfreported difficulties and higher tonic rsa, would be negatively related to symptoms of depression and anxiety. 2. method 2.1 participants participants were 187 secondary school students enrolled in years 10 and 11 at one of five victorian schools (two government, three independent), randomly selected to complete the er assessments from a larger sample of approximately 600 students participating in a school-based measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 71 evaluation of adolescent wellbeing. of the initial sample, 65 did not complete the full assessment (i.e., rsa monitoring, wellbeing and er questionnaires). reasons for incomplete data included absence from school on the day of testing, internet dropout while completing online wellbeing surveys, or withdrawing from participation prior to completing all assessments. this resulted in a final sample of 119 students (52% female, 87% australian, age range 14–18, m age = 15.73, sd = 0.87). 2.2 procedure informed consent was provided by both students and their guardians prior to participation. wellbeing data were collected via an online assessment battery, which participants of the larger study completed as part of scheduled wellbeing classes at their respective schools. er data was collected within a 2-week timeframe of the online assessment, and involved students individually presenting to a low-stimulus experimental room throughout the school day (8.30am–4pm). participants were provided details of the testing procedure, and verbally provided informed consent. to assess tonic rsa, electrocardiography (ecg) and respiration data were recorded by a trained experimenter using an integrated computer system and software package (nexxus-10, mind media, 2004-2006). following rsa recording, participants then completed a self-report battery of er questionnaires. the total duration for data collection was approximately 20 minutes per participant. 2.3 materials respiratory sinus arrhythmia (rsa). rsa occurs within the frequency of respiration (0.15–0.40 hz), is considered a relatively stable measure of vagally-mediated heart rate variability (hrv, li et al, 2009; thayer & sternberg, 2010), and is an appropriate hrv measure for short-term recordings of 5 minutes (task force of the european society of cardiology, 1996). to monitor rsa, researchers applied disposable electrodes in a standard lead 2 bipolar configuration, approximately 1cm below the clavicle and on the lower ribcage (berntson, quigley, & lozano, 2007). respiration rate and rhythm were monitored via a sensor positioned around the lower abdomen. a neutral breathing pacer program was used to standardize breathing rate and rhythm, and was set at the recommended rate of 9 (< 10) breaths per minute in order to yield maximum r-r interval power (brown, beightol, koh, & eckberg, 1993). given the potential for paced breathing to contribute to stress-related changes in rsa as a result of increased mental effort (berntson et al., 1997), instructions were provided to participants to “try and breathe along with this pacer, however, if it feels difficult or unnatural, just breathe at a consistent, relaxed pace that feels right to you” (kobayashi, 2009). electrocardiography (ecg) and respiration data were then recorded at a sampling rate of 1000hz by an integrated system and software package (nexxus-10, mind media, 2004-2006). as recommended for rsa assessments of short duration, 5 minutes of continuous recording was obtained while participants remained in a still, seated position (quintana, alvares, & heathers, 2016; task force of the european society of cardiology, 1996). rsa monitoring software was concealed measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 72 from the participant during the recording, to avoid potentially confounding effects, including increased sympathetic arousal, distraction, or interference of respiration or heart rate via biofeedback processes. self-reported emotion regulation strategies the difficulties in emotion regulation scale (ders; gratz & roemer, 2004) includes 36 items and six subscales designed to assess perceived difficulties in er relating to a) awareness and understanding of emotions, b) acceptance of emotions, c) the ability to engage in goaldirected behavior when experiencing negative emotions, and d) access to effective er strategies. items are scored on a five-point likert scale ranging from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always), with higher scores representing greater er difficulties (example item “when i’m upset, i have difficulty controlling my behavior”). the six subscales represent specific problems with er, including lack of emotional clarity (clarity; α = .82); lack of emotional awareness (awareness; α = .81); difficulties controlling impulsive behaviors when distressed (impulses; α = .89); non-acceptance of emotional responses (non acceptance; α = .94); and limited access to effective emotion regulation strategies (strategies; α = .91). these subscales are then summed to calculate a total score (ders total). the ders has been validated for use in adolescent samples aged between 12 to 17 years (neumann, van lier, gratz, & koot, 2010), and the ders total demonstrated good internal consistency in the current study (α = .85). psychological wellbeing. the epoch measure of adolescent well-being (epoch; kern, benson, steinberg, & steinberg, 2016) is a 20-item, multidimensional self-report measure of adolescent wellbeing that assesses five positive psychological characteristics thought to foster flourishing (i.e., optimal psychological functioning) in adulthood (seligman, 2011). items are rated on a five-point likert scale, from 1 (almost never/not at all like me) to 5 (almost always/very much like me), and each scale is computed as the average of its four respective items. these scales measure engagement with valued activities (engagement; α = .78; e.g., “i get completely absorbed in what i am doing”); persistence in the face of challenges or to achieve goals (perseverance; α = .81; e.g., “i finish whatever i begin”); optimism (optimism; α = .86; e.g., “i am optimistic about my future”); connectedness to peers and loved ones (connectedness; α = .88; e.g., “there are people in my life who really care about me”); and subjective feelings of happiness (happiness; α = .90; e.g., “i feel happy”). the epoch has been validated for use in adolescents aged between 10 and 18 years in australia and the united states. each scale has acceptable psychometric properties, including construct and discriminant validity (kern, et al., 2016), and had acceptable internal consistency in the current sample (α = .78 .90). resilience the connor-davidson resilience scale (cd-risc; campbell-sills & stein, 2007) is a selfreport measure that conceptualizes resilience as positive adaptation following stress or adversity. it comprises 10 items (e.g., “i believe i can achieve my goals even if there are obstacles”), each of which is rated on a five-point scale ranging from 0 to 4. scores range from 0 to 40, with higher scores reflecting greater resilience. the scale demonstrates excellent psychometric measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 73 properties in late adolescent populations (m age = 18.8; campbell-sills & stein, 2007). in the current study, it showed excellent internal consistency (α = .90). mental distress the phq-4 (löwe et al., 2010) is a four-item self-report screening tool used to detect the presence of core symptoms of depression and anxiety (e.g., “in the past two weeks, how often have you been bothered by feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge?”). items are measured on a five-point likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 4 (nearly every day), with higher scores indicating the presence of greater mental distress. scores on each scale range from 0 to 6, with scores of 3 or above indicating the likely presence of depression or anxiety. the phq-4 has been validated for use in the general population aged 11 years and over (kroenke, spitzer, williams & löwe, 2009). in the current study, the depression subscale demonstrated borderline internal consistency (α = .68), while the anxiety subscale showed good internal consistency (α = .83). 3. data analyses rsa data were generated and pre-processed using the nexus software package (mind media, 2004-2006). the first 60 seconds of the 5-minute rsa recording was excluded from analysis, to ensure participants were settled and sufficiently relaxed. a time series of heart rate interbeat intervals (ibis) were then generated. raw ibis were then screened for artifact using the following criteria: (1) ibis were between 500 and 1500 ms, and 2) ibis differing by more than 25% from the previous ibi were considered an artifact and removed from analyses and replaced with interpolated data (ibi[n] = (ibi[n-1] + ibi)/2); mind media, 2004-2006). the mean percentage of artifact removed from each participant was 3.6 seconds of data (sd = 5.90). the remaining 4 minutes of data were then processed in full, and rsa values (i.e., hrv in the highfrequency band of 0.15 -0.40 hz) were extracted. rsa data was then log transformed to better approximate a normal distribution and meet assumptions of linear regression (ellis, sollers iii, edelstein, & thayer, 2008). rsa and self-report data were entered into spss for all statistical analyses (version 23, ibm chicago, il, usa). four randomly missing items on the ders and cd-risc questionnaires were substituted by the item mean score, rounded to a discrete value, before subscale and total scores were calculated for each participant as per scale-developer’s instructions (gratz & roemer, 2004). two participants provided ders scores ± 2 standard deviations from the mean, which were imputed using the winsor method (item mean + (3 x sd)). no outliers were detected in epoch, cd-risc, phq-4 subscales or hrv data. to identify potential confounds previously documented in the literature, including age, gender, ethnicity, and ses, independent t-tests were conducted with the variables of interest (currie et al., 2009; nolen-hoeksema & girgus, 1994; martinez & dukes, 1997). no significant differences (p > .05) were found for gender or ethnicity on any of the examined measures of wellbeing, mental distress, or er. therefore, gender was not controlled for in subsequent analyses. as two of the privately funded schools were boarding schools, and two schools (one public, one private) shared a postcode, postcode-generated ses was considered to be an inappropriate measure of social privilege in the current sample. instead, school funding type measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 74 (public or private) was used as an index of ses. significant between-group differences were found for school type on measures of mental distress, including phq-4 anxiety (t (117) = 4.64, p <.001), phq-4 depression (t (117) = 4.96, p <.001), as well as rsa (t (117) = 2.80, p <.01). pearson’s bivariate correlations showed significant relationships between age and variables including phq anxiety (r = -.453, p <.001), phq-4 depression (r = -.399, p <.001), and rsa (r = -.259, p <.01). thus, age and school were statistically controlled for in all analyses. a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses were then conducted to assess the relationship between er (rsa and self-reported ders total) and each of the wellbeing variables. step 1 included the covariates of age and school type. step 2 included the cognitive and physiological er variables (i.e., ders total and rsa, respectively). due to expected multicolinearity, independent regression analyses were run for each epoch scale. all performed tests were two-tailed and analysed at a significance level of p < .05. 4. results descriptive statistics for er, wellbeing, and demographic characteristics are presented in table 1. results are presented for the total sample, and stratified according to gender. table 1. descriptive statistics for emotion regulation, wellbeing & mental distress variables, and demographic characteristics variable total (n = 119) m ± sd females (n = 62) m ± sd males (n = 57) m ± sd ders total score 76.08 ± 24.51 79.16 ± 28.94 72.74 ± 18.22 rsa 3.52 ± 0.50 3.54 ± 0.55 3.50 ± 0.45 epoch engagement 17.35 ± 4.32 16.90 ± 4.47 17.84 ± 4.13 epoch perseverance 16.97 ± 4.33 16.76 ± 4.49 17.19 ± 4.18 epoch optimism 17.64 ± 4.87 17.11 ± 5.11 18.23 ± 4.56 epoch connectedness 19.81 ± 4.27 20.26 ± 4.36 19.31 ± 4.15 epoch happiness 19.29 ± 4.80 19.26 ± 5.01 19.33 ± 4.59 cd resilience 36.85 ± 7.77 36.18 ± 8.03 37.58 ± 7.47 phq depression 2.60 ± 1.87 2.68 ± 2.06 2.51 ± 1.66 phq anxiety 2.69 ± 1.98 2.81 ± 2.25 2.56 ± 1.64 age (years) 15.73 ± 0.87 15.82 ± 0.95 15.63 ± 0.77 table 1 depicts the mean and standard deviation values on emotion regulation, wellbeing, and mental distress measures for the full sample, and stratified according to gender. ders = difficulties in emotion regulation scale; rsa = log-transformed rsa; epoch = epoch measure of adolescent wellbeing; cd resilience = connor-davidson resilience scale; phq = patient health questionnaire 4-item version measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 75 results of bivariate correlations showed a significant positive relationship between rsa and the epoch scale perseverance (r = 0.24, p < .05) and cd-risc resilience (r = 0.21, p < .05). as predicted, significant negative relationships were found between ders total scores (representing greater er difficulties) and cd-risc resilience (r = -0.36, p < .01), and all epoch scales. significant positive relationships were found between ders total scores and mental distress, as measured by phq-4 depression (r = 0.46, p < .01) and phq-4 anxiety (r = 0.40, p < .01). a non-significant correlation was found between hrv and ders total score (r = 0.05, p >.05). a correlation matrix of er, wellbeing, and mental distress variables is presented in table 2. table 2. correlation matrix of emotion regulation, wellbeing, and mental distress variables (n = 119) measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ders total score (1) rsa (2) .05 epoch engagement (3) -.29** .11 epoch perseverance (4) -.36** .24* .77** epoch optimism (5) -.40** .09 .82** .80** epoch connectedness (6) -.23* .13 .55** .63** .71** epoch happiness (7) -.33** .14 .74** .68** .87** .75** cd resilience (8) -.36** .21* .61** .61** .68** .43** .59** phq depression (9) .46** .11 -.35** -.42** -.42** -.38** -.41** -.27** phq anxiety (10) .40** .10 -.19* -.28** -.28** -.21* -.29** -.30** .75** * p <.05 ** p <.01 table 2 shows bivariate (pearson’s r) correlation coefficients between emotion regulation, wellbeing, and mental distress variables. statistically significant coefficients are presented in bold font. ders = difficulties in emotion regulation scale; rsa = log-transformed rsa; epoch = epoch measure of adolescent well-being; cd resilience = connor-davidson resilience scale; phq = patient health questionnaire 4-item version. multiple hierarchical regression analyses showed that after controlling for age and school type, ders total scores were significantly and negatively associated with all measures of wellbeing measures, consistent with our hypotheses. in relation to physiological er, rsa was positively related to both epoch perseverance and cd-risc resilience. semi-partial correlations squared (sr2) revealed small to medium effect sizes for each significant predictor, which independently accounted for between 5% and 16% of the variance in wellbeing outcomes. a summary of the full hierarchical regression models in which both the ders total score and rsa predicted wellbeing is presented in tables 3a and 3b. measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 76 table 3a. hierarchical multiple regression models examining emotion regulation variables and wellbeing hierarchical regression step epoch engagement b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper model 1 age 0.02 0.01 0.04 .97 -1.26 1.31 -.05 .00 school -0.66 -0.08 -0.58 .56 -2.89 1.57 -.07 .00 r2 = .01 (p = .73) model 2 age 0.08 0.02 0.13 .90 -1.16 1.32 -.05 .00 school -0.50 -0.06 -0.46 .65 -2.65 1.65 -.07 .00 ders total -0.05 -0.30 -3.32 .001 -0.08 -0.02 -.29 .09 rsa 1.00 0.12 1.26 .21 -0.57 2.57 .11 .01 r2 change = .10 (p = .003) hierarchical regression step epoch perseverance b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper model 1 age -0.10 -.02 0.15 .88 -1.21 1.19 .06 .00 school -0.45 -.05 0.40 .69 -2.69 1.79 .07 .00 r2 = .01 (p =.77) model 2 age 0.06 .01 0.10 .92 -1.12 1.24 .06 .00 school -0.13 -.01 0.12 .90 -2.17 1.92 .07 .00 ders total -0.07 -.37 4.36 .000 -0.95 -0.04 .36 .13 rsa 2.18 .25 2.88 .005 0.68 3.67 .24 .06 r2 change = .11 (p =.000) hierarchical regression step epoch optimism b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper model 1 age 0.07 0.01 0.09 .93 -1.37 1.50 -.08 .00 school -1.28 -0.13 -1.02 .31 -3.78 1.22 -.12 .01 r2 = .02 (p =.41) model 2 age 0.09 0.02 0.13 .90 -1.24 1.42 -.08 .00 school -1.14 -0.12 -0.98 .33 -3.44 1.17 -.12 .01 ders total -0.08 -0.41 -4.78 .000 -0.11 -0.05 -.40 .16 rsa 0.80 0.08 0.94 .35 -0.88 2.49 .09 .01 r2 change = .17 (p =.000) hierarchical regression step epoch connectedness b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper model 1 age -0.38 -0.08 -0.60 .53 -1.64 0.88 -.13 .00 school -0.68 -0.08 -0.61 .54 -2.86 1.51 -.13 .00 r2 = .02 (p =.30) model 2 age -0.32 -0.07 -0.52 .61 -1.56 0.92 -.13 .00 school -0.54 -0.06 -0.50 .62 -2.68 1.61 -.13 .00 ders total -0.04 -0.23 -2.60 .01 -0.07 -0.01 -.23 .05 rsa 0.90 0.11 1.14 .26 -0.67 2.47 .13 .01 r2 change = .06 (p <.02) measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 77 table 3b. hierarchical multiple regression models examining emotion regulation variables and wellbeing hierarchical regression step epoch happiness b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper model 1 age 0.09 0.02 0.12 .91 -1.33 1.50 -.10 0.00 school -1.55 -0.16 -1.25 .21 -4.00 0.90 -.15 0.01 r2 = .02 (p =.26) model 2 age 0.16 0.03 0.23 .82 -1.18 1.50 -.10 0.00 school -1.36 -0.14 -1.16 .25 -3.68 0.97 -.15 0.01 ders total -0.07 -0.34 -3.87 .000 -0.10 -0.03 -.33 0.11 rsa 1.24 0.13 1.44 .15 -0.46 2.94 .14 0.02 r2 change = .12 (p =.000) hierarchical regression step cd resilience b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper model 1 age 3.19 0.36 2.83 .005 0.96 5.42 .12 .06 school -5.13 0.33 2.62 .01 -9.00 -1.26 .08 .06 r2 = .07 (p =.01) model 2 age 3.48 0.39 3.41 .001 1.46 5.50 .12 .08 school -4.54 0.29 2.57 .01 -8.05 -1.03 .08 .04 ders total -0.12 -0.37 -4.57 .000 -0.17 -0.07 -.36 .14 rsa 3.97 0.26 3.06 .003 1.40 6.53 .21 .06 r2 change = .19 (p =.001) significant relationships between emotion regulation and measures of wellbeing are presented in bold font. ders total = difficulties in emotion regulation scale total score; rsa = log-transformed rsa; epoch = epoch measure of adolescent wellbeing; cd resilience = connor-davidson resilience scale; phq = patient health questionnaire 4-item version. as predicted, multiple hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after controlling for age and school type, ders total scores were significantly and positively related to mental distress, as measured by phq4 depression and anxiety subscales. semi-partial correlations squared (sr2) revealed medium effect sizes for self-reported er (i.e., ders total), which independently explained 21% of the variance in depression symptoms, and 15% of the variance in anxiety symptoms. rsa did not significantly predict symptoms of depression or anxiety. a summary of these analyses is presented in table 4. measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 78 table 4. hierarchical multiple regression models examining emotion regulation variables and mental distress hierarchical regression step phq depression b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper block 1 age -0.45 -0.21 -1.79 .08 -0.95 0.05 -.40 .02 school -1.01 -0.27 -2.30 .02 -1.88 -0.14 -.42 .04 r2 = .196 (p =.000) block 2 age -0.439 -0.204 -1.99 .05 -0.88 -0.002 -.40 .02 school -1.040 -0.278 -2.72 .008 -1.80 -0.28 -.42 .04 ders total 0.035 0.457 6.32 .000 0.02 0.05 .46 .21 rsa -0.128 -0.034 -0.46 .65 -0.68 0.43 .11 .00 r2 change = .21 (p =.000) hierarchical regression step phq anxiety b β t p 95% ci for r sr2 lower upper block 1 age -0.79 -0.35 -3.00 .003 -1.31 -0.27 -.45 .06 school -0.59 -0.15 -1.30 .20 -1.50 0.31 -.40 .01 r2 = .22 (p =.000) block 2 age -0.78 -0.35 -3.27 .001 -1.26 -0.31 -.45 .06 school -0.63 -0.16 -1.52 .13 -1.46 0.19 -.40 .01 ders total 0.03 0.39 5.26 .000 0.02 0.04 .40 .15 rsa -0.19 -0.05 -0.05 .54 -0.79 0.42 .10 .00 r2 change = .15 (p =.000) significant relationships between emotion regulation and measures of mental distress are presented in bold font. ders total = difficulties in emotion regulation scale total score, rsa = log-transformed rsa; phq = patient health questionnaire 5. discussion this study examined the relationship between physiological and self-reported markers of er and multiple measures of positive psychological functioning and mental distress in a normative adolescent sample. specifically, we sought to clarify the strength and direction of relationships between er using subjective and objective indices and dimensions of wellbeing, resilience, and symptoms of depression and anxiety. 5.1 emotion regulation and positive psychological functioning it was hypothesized that er capacity, as measured by lower self-reported er difficulties and higher tonic rsa, would be positively related to resilience and domains of wellbeing, including engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness. as predicted, er capacity significantly predicted numerous measures of wellbeing after controlling for the effects of age and school type, with small to medium effect sizes. lower scores on the ders total, indicative of poorer er capacity, were inversely related to resilience and the wellbeing domains of perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness. in addition, after controlling for the effects of age and school, significant positive relationships were found between rsa and resilience and perseverance. to our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between multiple measures of er and wellbeing in a normative, school-based, adolescent sample. measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 79 results of this study indicate that er is meaningfully related to aspects of positive psychological functioning in young people, with self-reported er predictive of a broader range of wellbeing domains than rsa and with larger effect sizes. while previous research shows that deficits of er contribute to mental distress and dysfunction, the current findings indicate that more adaptive er profiles may also contribute to wellbeing in young people. indeed, a selection of longitudinal research with adolescent and young adult samples supports this position and shows that er capacity contributes to improvements in positive affect (i.e., happiness; yeung, wong, & lok, 2011) and peer acceptance (i.e., connectedness; kim & cicchetti, 2010). similarly, an adaptive, self-reported er (positive refocusing) was found to mediate the relationship between optimism and subjective wellbeing (yeung, ho, & mak, 2015), while improvements in life satisfaction were found over a 9-month period in students displaying an adaptive cognitive coping style compared to those displaying less adaptive coping (vella-brodrick, rickard, & chin, 2014). further, er strategies, including positive reappraisal (i.e., thinking about a challenging situation in a more positive manner) and attentional deployment (i.e., attending to non-threatening aspects of a situation) have been found to help individuals cope with a range of stressors across interpersonal and performance domains (ivcevic & brackett, 2014; libbrecht, lievens, carette, & côté, 2014; troy & mauss, 2011). the current findings build upon past findings examining limited er strategies by demonstrating that a broader suite of er abilities, i.e., the ability to identify, select, and employ cognitive er strategies, facilitates resilience and wellbeing in the face of stress and setbacks. in addition to self-reported er capacity, a novel contribution of this study is its examination of the relationship between an objective er measure, rsa, and a comprehensive suite of measures of positive psychological functioning in young people. previous examination of rsa specifically with adolescent samples has focused predominantly on negative aspects of functioning, such as mental illhealth (beauchaine, 2015), antisocial behaviour (beauchaine, gatzke-kopp, & mead, 2007), and self-harm (weilgus, aldrich, mezulis, & crowell, 2016). although there is increasing support for the role of rsa in social connectedness (patriquin et al., 2014; partiquin et al., 2013) and positive affect (kok & fredrickson, 2010; oveis et al., 2009), it has not previously been examined in relation to additional wellbeing domains outlined by the perma model. the current research thus contributes to existing literature outlining the relationship between rsa and wellbeing, and supports theory positing that higher tonic rsa can facilitate the flexible engagement of er processes (appelhans & leucken, 2006; beauchaine & thayer, 2015). our results demonstrate significant positive relationships between resting rsa and self-reported resilience and perseverance. resilience measures an individual’s capacity for adaptive functioning following stress or adversity (campbell-sills & stein, 2007), whereas perseverance is characterized by tenacity in the face of challenges (kern et al., 2016). both abilities are supported by efficient corticalsubcortical integration, as reflected by high tonic rsa. to elaborate, rsa is thought to reflect output of the inhibitory cortico-subcortical neurocircuit of the central autonomic nervous system, which includes the brainstem, amygdala, insula, cingulate cortex, and prefrontal cortex (davidson, jackson, & kalin, 2000; kemp & quintana, 2013). this neurocircuit is involved in the regulation of visceral responses to emotional stimuli, a process that recruits executive functions such as the selection and implementation of appropriate cognitive er strategies (thayer & lane, 2000, 2009). resilience and perseverance are similar in that they involve adaptive functioning despite persistent or repeated exposure to emotionally challenging experiences, therefore, a strong capacity to regulate underlying physiological arousal may be particularly important in cultivating these domains of positive functioning. interventions designed to enhance rsa, such as cultivating mindfulness (chambers, gullone, & allen, 2009), bio-feedback training measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 80 (mccraty & zayas, 2014), and enhancing physical fitness (routledge, campbell, mcfetridge-durdle, & bacon, 2010), may be beneficial in bolstering resilience and perseverance in adolescent groups. consistent with this hypothesis, er capacity can facilitate approach-behaviours in response to environmental stressors, such as persevering on a difficult homework assignment or managing ongoing interpersonal difficulties with teachers, peers, or parents (troy & mauss, 2011). in the context of a broader body of positive psychological research, resilience and perseverance appear conceptually similar to the construct of grit, defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals (duckworth, peterson, matthews, & kelly, 2007). results of a recent meta-analysis revealed that one facet of grit, perseverance of effort, predicts academic success after controlling for conscientiousness, a personality trait characterised by directedness and a will to achieve (credé, tynan, & harms, 2016; mccrae & costa, 1987). further, it has been proposed that er processes associated with rsa (e.g., the ability to inhibit strong emotional impulses), may share common underlying mechanisms with grit (duckworth & gross, 2014). together, these findings shed light on the role of both physiological and cognitive er processes in resilience and perseverance in school-age adolescents, and provide a promising direction to bolster resilience in young people, for example, via explicit teaching of cognitive er strategies or modifying rsa via structured training (e.g., mccraty & zayas, 2014). 5.2 emotion regulation and mental distress in relation to mental distress, we found moderate inverse relationships between self-reported er capacity and depression and anxiety symptoms, after controlling for age and school type. mental illhealth broadly involves the experience of one or more unpleasant emotions (e.g., sadness, fear) that is either too intense or endured for too long to be adaptive (beauchaine et al., 2007). difficulties identifying emotional distress, the belief that emotions are unchangeable, and the absence of adaptive er strategies all represent er difficulties that contribute to mental distress and disorder (de castella et al., 2013; hatzenbuehler, mclaughlin, & nol-hoeksema, 2008). unsurprisingly, deficits of er are regarded as a transdiagnostic risk factor for the development of mental ill-health in both adults and adolescents (aldao et al., 2010; mclaughlin, hatzenbuehler, mennin, & nolen-hoeksema, 2011). results of the current study show that moderate relationships between er difficulties and mental distress exist even in a healthy, normative sample of young people (see also garnefski, kraaij, & van etten, 2005; garnefski, legerstee, kraaij, van den kommer, & teerds, 2002; silk, et al., 2003). based on these findings, it appears that mental health promotion for young people would benefit from including a greater emphasis on er skills training, for example, increasing one’s ability to acknowledge, identify, and actively modify difficult emotional experiences. these skills can be effectively taught in relatively brief training programs (berking et al., 2008), and may be built into existing mental health interventions accessible to a broad adolescent population, such as school-based social emotional learning programs (hamilton & hamilton, 2009). 5.3 covariance of self-reported er and rsa the experience and regulation of emotion is thought to involve coordinated responses across subjective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological measures (marsh, beauchaine & williams, 2008). results of the current study revealed negligible covariance between subjective reports of er capacity and rsa (r = .05), suggesting that each measure captures distinct processes contributing to er. these findings differ from previous research that reported significant, inverse, small to medium sized correlations between er difficulties and a tonic measure of rsa in young adult samples in norway (visted et al., 2017) and the usa (williams et al., 2015). further research is needed to explore differences between the examined measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 81 samples that may have contributed to these disparate results, such as the age of participants. broader examination of the literature reveals that low covariance between experiential and physiological measures of emotion and related processes is commonly cited (bonnano & keltner, 2004; evers et al., 2014), leading some researchers to conclude that the correlation between emotional response systems is weak in the absence of intense emotional experiences or very specific contexts (crowell et al., 2014; mauss, levenson, mccarter, wilhelm, & gross, 2005). for example, evers et al. (2014) draw upon the dual process framework, which proposes that psychological responses comprise two largely independent processes – one automatic (e.g., physiological processes) and one reflective (e.g., subjective, experiential processes) – and demonstrate that low coherence exists between automatic (e.g., rsa) and reflective measures (e.g., self-report). such findings reinforce the importance of adopting a multi-method approach to er research in order to capture a range of er processes, while also bringing into question the appropriateness of comparing research that has measured er with considerably different measures. (for a discussion of this issue, see cole et al., 2004; naragon-gainey et al., 2017.) as this study involved cross-sectional data taken at a particular point in the school year, it cannot be determined whether the identified associations between er and wellbeing represent stable relationships or if er capacity plays a causal role in the development of adolescent wellbeing. this is a notable limitation. further, longitudinal research is required to clarify whether er capacity contributes to differences in wellbeing outcomes over time. due to the small sample, which predominantly comprised australian-born adolescents from english-speaking backgrounds, the generalizability of our findings to other adolescent groups is restricted. certain factors thought to influence rsa could not be statistically controlled for in this study. these include variation in the time that rsa was assessed (i.e., at different times throughout the school day), body mass index, and possible caffeine, nicotine, or medication use by participants (quintana & heathers, 2014). it is likely that the use of a school sample limited potential variation on a number of these variables (e.g., caffeine and nicotine intake), however, results should be interpreted with these caveats in mind. finally, the potential influence of common error variance in explaining the relationship between the self-report scales examined in this study, specifically between er and wellbeing, may have contributed to the current findings and must be considered. despite these limitations, results of the current study position er, and, in particular, self-reported er strategies, as an important contributor to wellbeing in youth. cultivating a young person’s repertoire of adaptive er skills and strategies may be a promising target for interventions aiming to enhance wellbeing in adolescent populations, including treatments that seek to reduce symptoms of mental distress (morrish et al., 2018). our findings may be of particular relevance to school-based socialemotional literacy platforms, which represent early intervention programs seeking to enhance psychological health within a school cohort of students. furthermore, the moderate correlations found between self-reported er and epoch wellbeing domains suggest that youth-focused interventions seeking to enhance wellbeing might be further enhanced by including a greater focus on adaptive er strategies (see also lü, wang, & liu, 2013; weytens, luminet, verhofstadt, & mikolajczak, 2014). due to their association with both physiological and self-reported er, the current findings suggest that cultivating young people’s er capacity – both via physiological markers and self-reported strategy use – may provide a particularly valuable supplement to intervention programs seeking to bolster resilience and perseverance in the face of stress (souza et al., 2013; troy & mauss, 2011). these qualities are key to positive psychological functioning, and foster success across key challenges of adolescence, including academic performance and navigating important life transitions (zolkoski & bullock, 2012). future research should explore the predictive value of specific er skills and strategies to wellbeing, occurring across the various stages of the emotion-generation cycle (see ochsner et al., 2009; ochsner & gross, measures of emotion regulation and adolescent wellbeing morris et al. 82 2005). experimental designs that examine the impact of enhancing student’s cognitive and physiological er capacity on wellbeing outcomes are also recommended. in sum, the current study provides clear support for the relevance of self-reported, cognitive er capacity to young people’s wellbeing and mental distress. it also adds uniquely to the existing literature by evidencing the contribution of rsa, a physiological marker of er capacity, to both resilience and perseverance in a healthy youth sample. recognising the relevance of both self-reported and physiological er processes to positive psychological functioning in adolescents broadens the scope for er-oriented interventions, which may be used to complement and enhance existing preventative and early intervention treatment approaches that aim to bolster adolescent wellbeing and encourage flourishing throughout adulthood. authors lucy morrish centre for positive psychology, graduate school of education, the university of melbourne morrishl@unimelb.edu.au tan chyuan chin centre for positive psychology, graduate school of education, the university of melbourne nikki rickard centre for positive psychology, graduate school of education, the university of melbourne school of psychological sciences, monash university peta sigley-taylor centre for positive psychology, graduate school of education, the university of melbourne dianne anne vella-brodrick centre for positive psychology, graduate school of education, the university of melbourne acknowledgements this work was supported by the australian research council under grant number lp130100357. the authors would like to acknowledge dr. paul badcock and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback during the production of this manuscript. publishing timeline received 18 may 2018 accepted 9 december 2018 published 9 july references adrian, m., zeman, j., & veits, g. 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(2015). flourishing in nature: a review o f the benefits o f c onnecting with nature and its applic atio n as a wellbeing interventio n. interna tional journal of wellbeing, 5(4), 1-16. do i:10.5502/ijw.v5i4.449 co lin a. capaldi carleto n university c o lin_capaldi@c arleto n.ca co py rig ht belo ng s to the autho r(s) www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 1 arti cle flourishing in nature: a review of the benefits of connecting with nature and its application as a wellbeing intervention colin a. capaldi · holli-anne passmor e · elizabeth k. nisbet · john m. zelenski · raelyne l. dopko abstract: from the increasing number of people living in urban areas to the continued degradation of the natural environment, many of us appear to be physically and psychologically disconnected from nature. w e consider the theoretical explanations and present evidence for why this state of affairs might result in suboptimal levels of hedonic and eudaimonic w ellbeing by review ing the large body of research on the mental health benefits of connecting w ith nature. the advantages of contact w ith nature as a potential w ellbeing intervention are discussed, and examples of how this research is being applied to reconnect individuals to nature and improve w ellbeing are given. w e conclude by considering the limitations of, and proposing future directions for, research in this area. overall, evidence suggests that connecting w ith nature is one path to flourishing in life. keywords: nature, nature connectedness, flourishing, subjective w ellbeing, hedonic w ellbeing, eudaimonic w ellbeing, human-nature 1. intr oduction from ancient chinese healers to western writers such as henry david thoreau, the belief that connecting with the natural world improves wellbeing repeatedly appears throughout recorded human history (selhub & logan, 2012). despite the durability of this belief over time and across cultures, numerous trends suggest that many are ignoring this time-tested wisdom, and are disconnected, both physically and psychologically, from nature. 1 since 1950, the percentage of the world’s population living in a relatively nature-impoverished urban milieu, versus the nature-rich surroundings of rural life, has almost doubled from 30% to 54%, and is as high as 82% in north america (united nations, 2014). the shift to urban living is expected to continue and become even more pronounced as the twenty-first century progresses. in financially wealthy, industrialized nations, less than 10% of each day, on average, is spent outdoors (evans 1 for the purpose of this a rticle , our conceptualiza tion of “na ture” is simila r to the de finition outline d in ha rtig, mitche ll, de vrie s, & frumkin (2014). spe cifica lly, we de fine na ture broadly a s e nvironments a nd physical fe atures of nonhuma n origins , ra nging from pla nts to non-built la ndsca pe s. this conceptualiza tion corresponds we ll with how na ture is commonly ope rationalize d by re searchers; it is a lso in line with la y conce ptions of wha t cons titutes na ture (vining, me rrick, & price , 2008; cf. de scola & pá lsson, 1996). w e belie ve tha t this conceptualiza tion offers a re pre sentative vie w of the lite ra ture on this topic, ye t include s va ria tion tha t might be pa rsed more pre cisely in future work. i t is importa nt to note tha t nonhuma n a nima ls fa ll unde r the umbre lla of some conceptualiza tions of na ture , but will not be focuse d on in this re vie w (se e amiot & ba stia n, 2014 ins te a d). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 2 & mccoy, 1998; mackerron & mourato, 2013; matz et al., 2014) and per capita participation in nature-based recreation is declining (pergams & zaradic, 2008). children are spending less time outdoors (louv, 2005), opting for large amounts of screen time instead (rideout, foehr, & roberts, 2010). emblematic of the modern popularity of electronic media over nature-based recreation (pergams & zaradic, 2006), children seem to be better at identifying pokémon than common wildlife species (balmford, clegg, coulson, & taylor, 2002). simultaneously, the necessary behavior change required to address and mitigate environmental issues such as climate change remains largely unactualized, and the health of the natural environment continues to deteriorate due to human (in)action (intergovernmental panel on climate change, 2014). in sum, many people are not as connected to nature as they could be and this has implications, not only for the wellbeing of the environment, but also for the wellbeing of individuals. in fact, there is growing evidence that supports the age-old belief that connecting with nature promotes flourishing (i.e., enhanced hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing) and positive mental health. without regular contact with nature, however, people may be missing out on some of these psychological benefits. we examine two related, but distinct, aspects of the human-nature experience—nature contact and nature connectedness—and how they relate to and promote flourishing. nature contact involves interacting with the natural world, such as being immersed in a natural environment, being around natural elements indoors (e.g., plants), or being exposed to virtual representations of nature (e.g., viewing photographs or videos of natural landscapes). contact with nature can be relatively brief, intermittent, or regular. nature connectedness, however, refers to one’s subjective sense of connection with the natural world. although typically conceived of as an individual difference (see tam, 20 13), nature connectedness can also be measured as a state; it can fluctuate in the short-term depending on situational context. individuals who are more connected to nature spend more time outdoors (mayer & frantz, 2004; nisbet, zelenski, & murphy, 2009; tam, 2013), and nature contact often increases momentary feelings of connectedness (mayer, frantz, bruehlman-senecal, & dolliver, 2009; nisbet, 2013, 2014; nisbet & zelenski, 2011). in this review, we also discuss the advantages of contact with nature as a potential wellbeing intervention, and how research from this area is being applied to connect individuals with nature to improve wellbeing. we then consider the gaps in the literature, and outline future research directions and implications. 2. why is nature beneficial to w ellbeing? theoretical explanations three major theories address the question of why connecting with nature is beneficial to our wellbeing: biophilia, attention restoration, and stress reduction. the biophilia hypothesis posits that our ancestors’ wellbeing and survival depended on connecting with nature (i.e., for finding food and water, navigating, and predicting time or future weather conditions, etc.; k ellert & wilson, 1993). humans have begun living in urban environments only recently (wilson, 1984); therefore, the need to connect with nature likely remains an innate part of who we are. although evolutionary concepts like biophilia are difficult to test, suggestive evidence comes from studies that find preferences for nature scenes over built environments (dopko, zelenski, & nisbet, 2014; hartig, böök, garvill, olsson, & gärling, 1996; kaplan & kaplan, 1989; kaplan, kaplan, & wendt, 1972; ulrich, 1981; van den berg, koole, & van der wulp, 2003), and attraction to nature being evidenced across diverse cultures (e.g., ulrich, 1993; newell, 1997) and at very young ages (e.g., kahn, 1997). a multitude of studies, discussed below, also suggest that satisfying our need to connect with nature boosts wellbeing. flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 3 attention restoration theory (kaplan & kaplan, 1989) provides another explanation for nature’s beneficial effects.2 this theory distinguishes between directed attention (which is used for executive functions and involves prolonged focus and effort) and involuntary attention (which is effortless yet demanding). directed attention is a limited resource that becomes fatigued after extended use and, when depleted, may lead to negative emotional states (e.g., irritability) and declines in cognitive performance. natural environments seem particularly restorative: they provide an opportunity to get away, contain fascinating rich stimuli that effortlessly engage our involuntary attention, and allow us to act without the need to constantly monitor our behavior (kaplan & kaplan, 1989). numerous empirical studies report improvements in concentration, directed attention (berman, jonides, & kaplan, 2008; berto, 2005; hartig, evans, jamner, davis, & gärling, 2003; van den berg et al., 2003), and emotional functioning (discussed below) after contact with nature. finally, stress-reduction theory (ulrich et al., 1991) maintains that exposure to certain (unthreatening) natural environments that were evolutionarily beneficial for wellbeing and survival automatically elicits a variety of stress-reducing psychophysiological responses. compared to built environments, nature can decrease arousal and perceived stress levels (ulrich, 1979, 1981; ulrich et al., 1991), and promote psychophysiological stress recovery (e.g., decrease blood pressure) after attentional abilities are fatigued (hartig et al., 2003). moreover, access to nearby nature can buffer against stress (stigsdotter et al., 2010; van herzele & de vries, 2012; van den berg, maas, verheij, & groenewegen, 2010; ulrich, 1981). researchers in japan have tested how specific elements of nature, such as wood or the sound of running water, influence the human stress response. several decades of evidence suggests that contact with nature can lower pulse rates, reduce cortisol levels, and improve immune functioning (tsunetsugu, park, & miyazaki, 2010; cf. bowler, buyung-ali, knight, & pullin, 2010). beyond the idiosyncrasies of each theory, their implications are similar: connecting with nature should support human wellbeing and functioning. next, we provide a comprehensive review of the empirical research that has tested this hypothesis. 3. nature and hedonic wellbeing researchers have investigated the shortand long-term effects of contact with nature on hedonic wellbeing, and the association between hedonic wellbeing and nature connectedness. hedonic wellbeing, which is also referred to as subjective or emotional wellbeing, consists of high levels of positive emotions, low levels of negative emotions, and a sense of satisfaction with one’s life (diener, 2009; keyes, 2002). in essence, hedonic wellbeing is the feeling good component of wellbeing (keyes & annas, 2009). numerous studies have shown that brief contact with nature promotes positive emotional states. for instance, relatively brief walks in natural, versus urban/indoor, environments can lead to significant boosts in mood (mayer et al., 2009; nisbet & zelenski, 2011), even for those diagnosed with mood disorders (berman et al., 2012). a recent meta-analysis of 32 randomized controlled studies with over 2,000 participants corroborates this; contact with nature results in moderate, significant increases in positive affect, as well as small, but significant, decreases in negative affect (mcmahan & estes, 2015). similar findings are reported in other systematic 2 more re cently, stephen a nd ra chel ka pla n ha ve de veloped a bro a der framework ca lle d the reasonable pe rson mode l tha t focuse s on how e nvironmental fa ctors ca n influe nce cognition, be havio ur, a nd we llbe ing by supporting huma n informa tiona l ne eds (see ka pla n, 2000; ka pla n & ba su, 2015; ka pla n & ka pla n, 2003, 2009). although it is not a s commonly cited in the na ture –we llbe ing lite rature a s the other three theories, the reasonable pe rson model ca n a lso he lp e xpla in na ture ’s wide -ra nging beneficial e ffects on huma n flourishing. flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 4 reviews on the health benefits of nature (bowler et al., 2010) and the effect of “green exercise” on mental wellbeing (thompson-coon et al., 2011). additional support comes from an experience sampling study of 20,000 residents of the united kingdom (mackerron & mourato, 2013). even after controlling for a variety of confounding variables (e.g., weather, social company, type of activity, day of the week), people were happier when in natural environments than when in urban ones. technologically mediated or virtual exposure to nature (e.g., viewing images or videos) is also generally associated with enhanced hedonic wellbeing (see velarde, fry, & tviet, 2007). when virtual exposure to nature is compared to actual contact with nature, however, real nature experiences provide a greater mood boost (kahn, severson, & ruckert, 2009; mayer et al., 2009; mcmahan & estes, 2015). thus, while browsing nature photographs or watching a nature documentary is likely to improve mood, getting outdoors and connecting directly with nature may be optimal for maximizing happiness. given the positive hedonic outcomes, one may question why people are not spending time in nature (evans & mccoy, 1998; mackerron & mourato, 2013; matz et al., 2014). one explanation for this disconnect is that nature’s effects on wellbeing are underappreciated. although people often overestimate the impact of emotional experiences (i.e., people make affective forecasting errors; wilson & gilbert, 2005), the reverse may be true for contact with nature. in experiments testing anticipated and actual experiences, nisbet and zelenski (2011) found that, on average, people tend to underestimate the mood benefits of brief contact with nature. this prediction error may be leading people to choose less healthy activities, resulting in missed opportunities to foster positive mental health and a greater connectedness with nature. relatively less attention has been given to examining the longer-term effects of nature exposure on hedonic wellbeing. there is, however, some evidence that repeated contact with nature leads to improved emotional functioning and greater life satisfaction. a survey of 3,000 finnish participants found that those who reported spending more of their leisure time engaged in nature-based recreational activities had higher emotional wellbeing than those who reported spending less of their free time in nature (korpela, borodulin, neuvonen, paronen, & tyrväinen, 2014). a series of large-scale european studies based on data from national surveys has investigated the influence of nearby green space on wellbeing and mental health (de vries, verheij, groenewegen, & spreeuwenberg, 2003; maas et al., 2009; van den berg et al., 2010; white, alcock, wheeler, & depledge, 2013). these studies consistently find that living in an area with more green space is associated with less mental distress than living in an area wit h less green space. moreover, in a longitudinal study that had over 10,000 u.k. residents (white et al., 2013), living in a greener urban area was associated with greater life satisfaction. thus, it appears that having access to nature near one’s home can provide a buffer against mental distress and promote a sense of satisfaction with one’s life (cf. huynh, craig, janssen, & pickett, 2013 for an exception). studies that ask participants to connect with nature have found similar results. for example, after a two-week intervention, participants randomly assigned to increase their time in nature reported higher net-positive affect compared to participants in a control condition (passmore & howell, 2014). similar improvements were reported by canadians participating in the david suzuki foundation’s month-long 30x30 nature challenge (nisbet, 2013, 2014), which is described in more detail below. richardson, hallam, and lumber (2015) had participants write about three good things they had noticed in nature for a five-day period. positive feelings elicited by nature was one of the common themes identified in the writings. overall, these studies support the notion that repeatedly connecting with nature is associated with enhanced hedonic wellbeing. flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 5 beyond contact with nature, trait connectedness with nature is also associated with increased hedonic wellbeing. a recent meta-analysis of 30 samples containing over 8,500 participants found a significant relationship between nature connectedness and happiness indicators such as positive affect and life satisfaction (capaldi, dopko, & zelenski, 2014). connectedness may motivate people to seek nature contact, due to the reinforcing mental health benefits these experiences provide. nature connectedness has also been linked with psychological resilience, which is key in managing stress and maintaining positive mental health (ingulli & lindbloom, 2013). in sum, a plethora of research shows that connecting with nature is associated with improved emotional functioning and satisfaction with life. 4. nature and eudaimonic wellbeing although more research has focused on the link between nature and hedonia, some work has also explored nature’s influence on broader aspects of wellbeing. often loosely gathered under the term “eudaimonia”, constructs such as meaning, autonomy, vitality, and feelings of transcendence represent additional components of mental health beyond merely feeling good. eudaimonia has been described as the functioning well component of wellbeing (keyes & annas, 2009). contact with nature and nature relatedness has been linked with several indicators of eudaimonic wellbeing. for example, feeling that one’s life is meaningful correlates positively with nature connectedness (e.g., cervinka, roderer, & hefler, 2012; nisbet, zelenski, & murphy, 2011). furthermore, experiences in natural environments are an important source of meaning for adults of all ages (fegg, kramer, l’hoste, & borasio, 2008; o’connor & chamberlain, 1996; reker & woo, 2011; schnell, 2009; steger et al., 2013), including clinical populations (e.g., berger & mcleod, 2006; granerud & eriksson, 2014). empirical evidence links exposure to nature with increased autonomy, the ability to freely choose one’s actions—an important part of eudaimonic wellbeing. in experimental research, the more immersed participants were in nature photographs, the more autonomous they felt (weinstein, przybylski, & ryan, 2009). experiences in nature also appear to provide the freedom to be one’s authentic self. mayer et al. (2009) found that participants who were randomly assigned to take a walk in nature reported significantly reduced public self-awareness. in qualitative research, adults who had spent time in the wilderness reported that what made their experiences especially meaningful was the fact that “there was virtually no reason to be anyone but themselves” (fredrickson & anderson, 1999, p. 30). research from the outdoor education and experiential learning literature describes similar benefits of wilderness and nature immersion experiences on autonomy and other measures of psychological wellbeing like personal growth, self-esteem, self-regulation, and social competency (e.g., norton & watt, 2014; passarelli, hall, & anderson, 2010; ray & jakubec, 2014). the experience of vitality—fully feeling alive and energized (ryan & frederick, 1997)— appears to be enhanced by connecting with nature. when research participants tracked their daily activities, greater vitality was associated with activities involving nature, regardless of physical exercise and social companionship levels (ryan et al., 2010). an increase in vitality was even reported by participants who merely imagined themselves in an outdoor setting. in experimental studies, participants randomly assigned to walk in nature reported greater vitality than those who walked indoors (nisbet & zelenski, 2011; ryan et al., 2010). finally, meta-analytic results show that those with a stronger connection with nature th an others tend to report a greater sense of vitality (capaldi et al., 2014). flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 6 the elevating feelings of awe and inspiration, connection to a greater whole, and spiritual exaltation—the transcendent aspects of eudaimonic wellbeing—have been linked with nature as well. the sights and sounds of nature are some of the most common elicitors of awe (keltner & haidt, 2003; shiota, keltner, & mossman, 2007; terhaar, 2009), particularly fractal patterns found in trees, clouds, rain, and birdsongs (forsythe & sheehy, 2011; richards, 2001). indeed, panoramic photographs of nature have been described as the “prototypical awe elicitor” (s hiota et al., 2007, p. 951), and even mundane images of nature can lead to increased feelings of awe (joye & bolderdijk, 2014). briefly viewing either unspectacular or awesome photographs of nature can make people feel more connected to others, more caring, and more spiritual (joye & bolderdijk, 2014). several other studies provide empirical support for a close relationship between spirituality and nature (diessner, solom, frost, parsons, & davidson, 2008; leary, tipsord, & tate, 2008; saraglou, buxant, & tilquin, 2008; vining et al., 2008). even imagined experiences in nature can evoke intense feelings of awe and connectedness, as well as the feeling of being in the presence of something greater than oneself (shiota et al., 2007). thus far, we have primarily focused on the individual benefits of connecting with nature. however, just as conceptions of flourishing and mental health are incomplete without considering the social context (keyes, 1998; world health organization, 2006), so is a discussion of nature’s benefits without considering social aspects of wellbeing. research shows that the amount of neighborhood green space is correlated with stronger social ties reported among neighbors and greater prosocial activity in the neighborhood (kuo, 2003; kuo, sullivan, coley, & brunson, 1998; sommer, 2003; sullivan, kuo, & depooter, 2004). the prosocial effect of exposure to nature has also been demonstrated in experimental studies using videos or photographs (joye & bolderdijk, 2014; zelenski, dopko, & capaldi, 2015), a plant-filled room (weinstein et al., 2009), or after immersion in a forested urban park (guéguen & stefan, 2014). the widespread social norm of giving flowers to others is also suggestive of nature’s ability to foster positive relations. indeed, evidence from experimental studies demonstrates that participants primed with flowers are more likely to help strangers (guéguen, meineri, & stefan, 2012), give money to others (raihani & bshary, 2012; stefan & guéguen, 2014; stillman & hensley, 1980), act gregariously (haviland-jones, rosario, wilson, & mcguire, 2005), and feel attracted to someone they have just met (guéguen, 2011 , 2012). trait nature connectedness is positively associated with humanitarianism (nisbet et al., 2009), social wellbeing (howell, dopko, passmore, & buro, 2011; howell, passmore, & buro, 2013), kindness (leary et al., 2008), empathic concern (zhang, piff, iyer, koleva, & keltner, 2014), altruistic concern (schultz, 2001), and perspective taking (schultz, 2001). 5. contact with nature as a wellbeing intervention despite the abundance of research demonstrating the beneficial effects that nature has on our cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing, nature-based interventions are understudied and underutilized as a mental health strategy. this is surprising, given that research suggests interventions connecting people with nature could bring a plethora of positive changes across multiple domains of functioning. furthermore, the effect of contact with nature on wellbeing does not appear to depend on trait connectedness (e.g., passmore & howell, 2014) or gender (e.g., mcmahan & estes, 2015). willingness and adherence appear to be other advantages of this type of intervention; individuals who participate in nature-based interventions report high levels of intrinsic motivation and spend a considerable amount of time flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 7 in nature (nisbet, 2013, 2014; passmore & howell, 2014).3 additionally, connecting with nature is a relatively easy and likely cost-effective intervention. in the majority of the research reviewed, participants were exposed to ordinary, everyday natural environments accessible to most people. those with limited access to nearby nature could benefit (albeit to a lesser extent) from viewing photographs or videos of nature. existing research also suggests that the wellbeing boosts from nature contact can be achieved fairly quickly. finally, preliminary evidence suggests that repeated contact with nature produces larger increases in wellbeing than other interventions commonly cited in the positive psychology literature (passmore & howell, 2014). although some therapists are incorporating nature into their practice (e.g., berger & mcleod, 2006; burns, 1998; buzzell & chalquist, 2009; hasbach, 2012), relatively few programs or interventions appear to be capitalizing on nature as a positive mental health strategy. nevertheless, some notable exceptions are described below. 6. contact with nature interventions one of the largest programs under empirical study is the david suzuki foundation’s 30x30 nature challenge. this campaign, which began in 2012, is an annual month -long intervention encouraging canadians to spend 30 minutes per day in nature during the month of may. in general, participants double their weekly contact with nature, and report significant reductions in stress, and significant improvements in mood and vitality (nisbet, 2013, 2014). trait nature connectedness also increases significantly after the intervention, such that the greater the changes in connectedness, the greater the improvements in wellbeing. another notable nature-based intervention is the canadian mental health association’s mood walks initiative. aimed at promoting physical activity, mental health, and social connection, mood walks trains mental health organizations across ontario and supports them in launching nature hike programs for older adults dealing with serious mental illn esses. partnering with conservation ontario and hike ontario, over 20 mental health agencies participated in 2014. preliminary results echo those found in the literature, with participants reporting significantly greater happiness and energy levels, as well as decreased anxiety, following the walks (mood walks, 2015). mental health, in general, also improved significantly preto post-intervention. recognizing the importance of connecting children with nature, forest and nature s chools (fns) have become increasingly popular in many countries around the world (mcclean, 2015). in contrast to the conventional model of childhood education that takes place almost exclusively indoors, children in fns spend much of their school day immersed in nature. the philosoph y behind this approach tends to emphasize, in addition to regular nature contact, child-directed, inquiryand play-based learning where the educator acts more as a facilitator than an authoritative teacher (forest school canada, 2014). while this approach to education has just recently caught on in north america, there are already hundreds of fns operating in europe (westwood, 2013). importantly, research suggests that fns can have a positive influence on children across multiple domains of functioning (e.g., o’brien & murray, 2007).4 some political leaders are actively trying to encourage greater nature contact among their citizens. for instance, the then canadian prime minister stephen harper announced that almost $10 million would be allocated to connect urban canadians to nature (cbc news, 2014) and 3 ca ution should be ta ke n whe n inte rpre ting nisbe t (2013, 2014) howe ve r, a s only se lf-selected individua ls pa rticipa te d in the 30x30 na ture cha lle nge. ne vertheless, the pa rticipa tion of thousa nds of individua ls without a ny ince ntive a rguably supports the notion of intrins ic motiva tion. 4 se e gill (2014) for a re vie w of the be ne fits of na ture contact for childre n. flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 8 president barack obama is offering fourth grade students and their families free admission to national parks for a year as part of his every kid in a park initiative (the white house, office of the press secretary, 2015). as the evidence and public awareness of nature’s benefits grow, the use of nature-based interventions will likely continue to expand. there are, however, some important caveats, areas for improvement, and unanswered questions in this research area that deserve mention. 7. moving for ward in nature the research and theory reviewed here provide reasons to be optimistic about the salubrious effects of nature contact and nature connectedness. nonetheless, some difficult questions and important research gaps remain. researchers in this area generally use pleasant nature as stimuli and neglect some of the more unpleasant aspects that may not be beneficial to human wellbeing (e.g., mosquitoes or forest fires). with so many possible operationalizations, researchers must be cautious with making broad conclusions about nature when testing only a few aspects of it. in experimental studies, appropriate control conditions need to be selected: a task made difficult without widely accepted or explicitly stated definitions of nature itself. some research has already suggested that particularly beautiful, awesome, or immersive nature experiences provide additional benefits over more mundane nature stimuli (joye & bolderdijk, 2014; weinstein et al., 2009; zhang et al., 2014), though other work does not seem to rely on using particularly extraordinary exemplars of nature. beyond obviously phobic natural stimuli (e.g., snakes), untamed wilderness may generate anxiety or thoughts of death, at least for some (koole & van den berg, 2005). nevertheless, a recent meta-analysis found that tamed vs. untamed nature did not moderate the effect of exposure to nature on positive emotions (mcmahan & estes, 2015), and hinds and sparks (2011) noted that normally “negative” emotions of loneliness, isolation, and anxiety appear to be experienced more positively in natural environments. in general, this is an area ripe for future research. such research might better define the particular kinds of nature that are most beneficial (e.g., water vs. forests; white et al., 2010), examine lowlevel visual features of nature (e.g., hue diversity; berman et al., 2014), or vary the medium (video vs. actual) or sensory channel (sounds vs. images) of exposure to nature. there is also much to learn about moderators at the level of individual differences and immediate context. similar issues emerge when it comes to using nature or representations of nature as part of interventions designed to boost wellbeing. what kind of nature will work best? what is the ideal dose? how long do the effects last? will optimal results require a good fit among the particular intervention method, the kind of nature, and the personal characteristics of the target (cf., lyubomirsky & layous, 2013)? attention should also be directed towards defining appropriate control groups when testing interventions. much stronger support for the theoretical links between nature and wellbeing will be provided by intervention studies that have strong, active control groups, perhaps even comparing nature interventions to other established methods (e.g., positive psychology exercises). to date, most nature intervention research has not met the gold standard of broad sampling, random assignment, strong control groups, and longitudinal data collection. with generally promising results accumulating, we hope these more rigorous tests will happen soon. our review has focused on encouraging results, and these are largely what are found in the published literature. however, psychology, like other scientific fields, is increasingly concerned about publication bias and false positives. file drawers are likely filled with less supportive findings, and we suspect few researchers are actively working to contradict claims about nature’s benefits. nonetheless, there are reasons to remain optimistic. for example, publication status flourishing in na ture ca pa ldi, pa ssmore, nisbet, zelenski, & dopko www.internatio naljo urnalo fwellbeing .o rg 9 does not moderate the relationship between nature connectedness and subjective wellbeing (capaldi et al., 2014). additionally, researchers sometimes find unexpected beneficial effec ts of nature (e.g., when exposure to videos of natural environments was used as a control condition, in comparison to cognitive training; borness, proudfoot, crawford, & valenzuela, 2013). nevertheless, future meta-analyses should employ newer techniques that estimate and correct for publication bias (e.g., simonsohn, nelson, & simmons, 2014). the strongest evidence for nature’s benefits—like other claims in psychological science—will require research that is transparent and has strong pre-registered methods. nature is certainly not a cure for every ailment and mental health issue. even so, the evidence suggests that exposure to nature is a health and wellbeing promotion strategy that is underutilized (and perhaps unknown) by mental healthcare providers. many people have access to some form of urban park, if not community garden, conservation area, or nature in their backyard. for the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, nature interventions may offer opportunities to enhance mood, reduce stress, and promote wellbeing, at relatively low cost. overall, evidence suggests that connecting with nature is a promising path to flourishing in life. authors colin a. capaldi carleton university colin_capaldi@carleton.ca holli-anne passmore university of british columbia elizabeth k. nisbet trent university john m. zelenski carleton university raelyne l. dopko carleton university publishing timeline received 7 july 2015 accepted 28 october 2015 published 18 december 2015 references amiot, c. e., & bastian, b. 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(2020). winter is coming: wintertime mindset and wellbeing in norway. international journal of wellbeing, 10(4), 35-54. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.935 kari leibowitz stanford university kaleibowitz@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 article winter is coming: wintertime mindset and wellbeing in norway kari leibowitz · joar vittersø abstract: previous research of the effect of winter on wellbeing has yielded contradictory findings. while there is evidence that the lack of sunlight in wintertime can lead to seasonal depression and negative emotions, many individuals are able to thrive during the winter. what might determine whether the darkness of winter leads to poor psychological outcomes? to investigate whether or not mindset contributes to wintertime wellbeing, we assessed wintertime mindset via a wintertime mindset scale measuring attitudes towards winter. a survey of 238 respondents from southern norway, northern norway, and the arctic island of svalbard identified correlations between positive wintertime mindset and measures of wellbeing, including life satisfaction and positive emotions. latitude and wintertime mindset were also correlated, with more northern residents, who experience significantly more darkness and somewhat colder temperatures during the winter, holding more positive wintertime mindsets, and wintertime mindset statistically mediating the relationship between location and wellbeing. these results suggest that mindset is a previously overlooked factor of seasonal wellbeing, especially in places where the winter darkness is more extreme. implications of these findings and suggestions for further research are discussed. keywords: mindset, wellbeing, seasonal affective disorder, winter, arctic, latitude 1. introduction dark is bad and light is good. this assumption is not only documented in metaphor theory (e.g., lakoff & johnson, 1999) and what most people believe when it comes to the association between sunshine and happiness (schkade & kahneman, 1998; watson, 2000), but is also reflected in our language. someone who is cheerful has a “sunny” disposition, while depressing thoughts are described as “dark.” as the darkest time of the year, winter is often subject to the negative categorization associated with darkness. when the weather is “bad,” which usually means cold, dark, and wet, people are more likely to write negative posts on social media (coviello et al., 2014), and, across north america, city-wide initiatives are springing up to help citizens battle the winter blues (theobold, 2015). based on prevailing negative beliefs about winter and research on wintertime depression, people may assume that those living at extreme latitudes with dark winters must suffer through the winter months (beecher et al., 2016; denissen, butalid, penke, & van aken, 2008; liu, liu, & yu, 2015; schkade & kahneman, 1998; young, meaden, fogg, cherin, & eastman, 1997). the belief that winter is a dreadful time of year may have been inadvertently strengthened by psychological science on winter. the vast majority of psychological research on winter concerns the ways winter can be particularly harmful to mental health and wellbeing (rosenthal, sack, about:blank wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 gillin, & et al., 1984). the american psychological association has asserted that lack of exposure to the sun increases depressive symptoms, especially during the winter season (beecher et al., 2016). seasonal affective disorder, first described by rosenthal and colleagues in 1984 (sad; rosenthal et al., 1984), is characterized by a recurrent pattern of seasonal depression, which most often occurs in the winter. since rosenthal and colleagues first described seasonal affective disorder (sad; rosenthal et al., 1984), the idea of wintertime depression has become embedded in the public perception of winter, inspiring pop culture (such as an episode of nbc’s 30 rock,) and a slew of books and articles about the topic (including a seasonal affective disorder for dummies book). a critical component of seasonal affective disorder is the idea that the relative lack of sunshine of the winter months contributes to seasonal depression (rosenthal et al., 1984). in rosenthal’s initial study, patients saw the alleviation of depressive symptoms after undergoing artificial light therapy to supplement the amount of light patients were exposed to during the winter (rosenthal et al., 1984). based on this evidence, rosenthal and his colleagues posited the ‘latitude hypothesis’: the hypothesis that as latitude increases, so too should rates of sad, such that populations living far north (or south) of the equator, who experience little to no direct sunlight in the winter, should be more prone to sad. this hypothesis has been supported by other research on psychological issues in winter in the u.s. (molin, mellerup, bolwig, scheike, & dam, 1996; rosen et al., 1990) as well as other work on the effects of light therapy on depression (gordijn, 't mannetje, & meesters, 2012; najjar et al., 2014). yet other research contradicts the latitude hypothesis. several studies conducted in the arctic and sub-arctic of norway, at extreme latitudes that receive little to no sunlight in the winter, find that people living in these locations do not have higher rates of seasonal affective disorder than those living at lower latitudes (brancaleoni, nikitenkova, grassi, & hansen, 2009; johnsen, wynn, & bratlid, 2012). for example, a study comparing students in tromsø, norway, located north of the arctic circle, with students living in italy found no evidence to support the hypothesis that the prevalence of seasonal affective disorder was related to the amount of daylight and latitude of living (brancaleoni et al., 2009). further, after reviewing 20 retrospective studies examining seasonal mood variation, magnusson concluded that “the effect of latitude is probably small” (magnusson, 2000). finally, an analysis of almost 9000 residents in tromsø failed to find any significant seasonal variation in levels of self-reported mental distress (johnsen et al., 2012). based on this evidence, the authors concluded that, for the majority of adults, winter’s negative impact on mental health is more of a popular myth than a scientific fact (johnsen et al., 2012, p. 5). this seems to be especially true for those living at extreme latitudes in northern norway. this is not to say that people living at these latitudes are unaffected by the extreme shifts in daylight that occur between the winter ‘polar night’ period – in which, in tromsø, the sun does not rise over the horizon for two full months – and the summer ‘midnight sun’ period, during which time the sun remains above the horizon for two months. there is evidence to suggest that these extreme changes in light influence sleep, energy, and mood (haggag, eklund, linaker, & götestam, 1990; hansen, lund, & smith-sivertsen, 1998; johnsen et al., 2012). these studies have found that residents of tromsø are more tired in the winter (haggag et al., 1990) and have more sleep problems (hansen et al., 1998; johnsen et al., 2012). however, these disturbances are typically subclinical, and not as extreme as would be supposed by the latitude hypothesis of seasonal affective disorder (haggag et al., 1990; rosenthal et al., 1984). at high latitudes, behavioral changes with the seasons are considered normal and adaptive. in general, residents of the high north sleep more and have less energy during the dark period, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 but this is viewed as a normal yearly cycle, rather than pathology associated with depression (hansen et al., 1998). many of the studies that discuss the theoretical relationship between seasonal affective disorder and latitude fail to take into account the adaptive ways residents in the high north, and elsewhere, shift their behavior as the seasons change. somehow, the residents of the high north must find a way to accept and work with the extreme winter, rather than against it. throughout the world, millions of people each year make it through winters of varying severity without developing seasonal affective disorder. what is it that allows some people to thrive during even the coldest, darkest winters, while others experience debilitating seasonal affective disorder? research suggests objective weather has little to no effect on well-being (denissen et al., 2008; keller et al., 2005; watson, 2000). denissen and colleagues found large variability in the effect of weather on individuals’ moods, and that this variability was largest for the amount of daily sunlight (denissen et al., 2008). indeed, this study found that while the shortening daylight may lead to a strong depression in mood for some people, it can also lead to an equally strong boost in mood for others, indicating that the subjective experience of daylight has a far greater influence on individuals’ moods than objective hours of daylight (denissen et al., 2008). this work suggests that more important than the actual influence of weather on mood is one’s psychological interpretation of the weather. hence, the present study seeks to explain the contradictory findings regarding the effect of winter on wellbeing by investigating how adaptation to long and dark winters may be influenced by a particular mentality that we refer to as wintertime mindset. by examining mindset as a potential factor that captures what people believe about winter and, subsequently, how winter affects them, we hope to understand what can be learned from residents of the high north about how to thrive during the winter. mindsets are selective viewpoints that help us simplify and organize complex information, and they include things like our thoughts, beliefs, and expectations. recent literature on the concept of mindset suggests that mindsets play a role in many aspects of human functioning, including health and wellness (blackwell, trzesniewski, & dweck, 2007; conner, boles, markus, eberhardt, & crum, 2019; crum, corbin, brownell, & salovey, 2011; crum & langer, 2007; crum, leibowitz, & verghese, 2017; crum, salovey, & achor, 2013; dweck, 2006, 2008; howe et al., 2019; zahrt & crum, 2020). mindsets help individuals quickly make sense of information by orienting an individual toward a specific framework to understand a situation or environment (crum et al., 2013). this, in turn, helps individuals respond in subjectively appropriate ways. mindsets influence our lives in a variety of ways, most notably by guiding our behavior. for example, those with a negative mindset towards aging have been shown to take fewer proactive measures towards healthy aging, such as engaging in physical exercise and visiting a physician (levy & myers, 2004). and, in a study examining mindsets towards stress, those who held the mindset that stress is performance-enhancing demonstrated a stronger desire to receive potentially helpful feedback to improve their performance in a stressful situation (crum et al., 2013). an important distinction here is that individuals’ experiences were not driven by an objective reality of their circumstances, such as amount or type of stress. rather, meaningful outcomes were driven by participants’ beliefs and expectations about those circumstances. as such, mindsets can powerfully shape outcomes in absence of an objective truth – while stress may, in truth, be a paradox that can be both good or bad for our performance, a critical factor in determining the impact of stress may be people’s mindsets about stress (crum et al., 2013). like stress, winter is a paradox, full of opportunities for joy (cozy nights spent with loved ones, the serenity of fresh snowfall) and opportunities for despair (cleaning the ice off your car windshield, trudging home in the sleet). with the concept of mindset, we can begin to imagine http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 mindset about winter as a factor that might account for conflicting evidence regarding the influence of winter on wellbeing. a long, dark winter may not be objectively good or bad for mental health and wellbeing. rather, individuals’ subjective experiences and interpretations of wintertime may determine winter’s influence on wellbeing. the compelling literature regarding mindsets’ influence over a wide range of behavioral and physical outcomes inspired us to ask: is mindset toward winter related to seasonal wellbeing? we suggest that studies concentrating only on mental distress and seasonal affective disorder in the high north have overlooked the many positive aspects of winter that allow people all over the world to enjoy the season. wintertime mindset may thus be a factor that encourages positive wintertime mental health. in this context, wintertime mindset can be understood as how one thinks about and relates to the winter. mindsets elicit cognitive schemas, so a wintertime mindset is comprised of what comes to mind when someone thinks about winter: what do you expect winter will be like? does winter represent a time of year with many things to look forward to (a positive wintertime mindset) or a time of year with many things to dread (a negative wintertime mindset). of course, like any season, the truth is that winter is both – there are things about winter that can be wonderful, and others that can be miserable. but since mindsets represent a subjective way of viewing the world, they often take the form of mental shortcuts that give an overall impression of a situation or thing. someone with a positive wintertime mindset might have associations with winter as a beautiful or cozy time of year, full of unique opportunities for activities they enjoy, such as skiing or spending nights in front of a fire. conversely, someone with a negative wintertime mindset might associate winter with freezing darkness, and see winter as a time of year when they are limited – forced to stay inside to avoid the cold. we hypothesize that wintertime mindsets influence individuals’ interpretation of wintertime events. individuals with a positive wintertime mindset might attune more to the beauty of the snow and refreshing bite of the air when outside; individuals with a negative wintertime mindset might attune to the fact that snow means shoveling driveways and sidewalks and that the bitter air numbs their faces. in this way, individuals with different wintertime mindsets might view the same objective event – a recent snowfall – in two completely different ways. this selective interpretation of winter is then likely to influence individuals’ reported wellbeing during winter. importantly, these mindsets are not an assessment of the true nature of winter. in truth, winter, like any season, has both positives and negatives. fewer hours of sunlight a day can be both an opportunity for sitting by the fire and also lead one to feel sluggish. snow can be both a beautiful opportunity for skiing and necessitate shoveling one’s driveway and cleaning off one’s car before going to work in the morning. the power of mindset lies in the somewhat selective interpretation and filtering of information that can lead to beneficial outcomes in the face of a paradoxical reality. we hypothesize that a positive wintertime mindset is at least partly responsible for the ability of people living in the high north in scandinavia to thrive during the darkness of winter. it is our hope that, by identifying the relationship between these mindsets and wintertime wellbeing, we can add a new element to the current discourse on seasonal wellbeing. this work thus has the potential to spark future research that helps us build a positive psychological framework of seasonal wellbeing. 1.1 the present study: wintertime mindset in norway the present study is a first attempt at understanding the relationship between winter darkness, mindset, and wellbeing. norway provides a unique opportunity for studying the psychological effects of extreme conditions of light and dark. this study sought to examine wellbeing in http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 relation to the dark period in northern norway by comparing residents living in the oslo area in southern norway (oslo is located at 59 n), the tromsø area in northern norway (69 n), and in longyearbyen in the norwegian arctic archipelago of svalbard (78 n). (see figure 1). figure 1. (a) map of europe with oslo, tromsø, and longyearbyen highlighted (b) world map with oslo, tromsø, and longyearbyen highlighted (a) (b) during the darkest time of the year, from november to january, southern norway (oslo) receives about 6 hours of direct sunlight a day. northern norway (tromsø, in troms county), which experiences the polar night period, receives no direct sunlight from mid-november to midhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 january, but has anywhere from 2 to 5 hours of civil twilight each day, as the sun skirts just below the horizon. in svalbard, the polar night period is 4 months and for two months the region experiences no light, including twilight. see figure 2 for an example of relative daylight between the regions at the end of january. figure 2. sunrise, sunset, and civil twilight times in oslo, tromsø, and svalbard on 27 january, 2015, the approximate midpoint of the study period tromsø is significantly farther north than oslo (1148 kilometers): for reference, the distance from oslo to tromsø is approximately equal to the distance from miami to new york in the united states (figure 1). however, tromsø is on the gulf stream, so the extreme difference in latitude is not matched by a difference in winter temperatures. in fact, the average winter temperature is similar in both oslo and tromsø: around -4°c (25°f). due to the similarity in climate between tromsø and southern norway, it is particularly appropriate to conduct wintertime studies of how light, or lack thereof, influences psychological wellbeing by comparing these regions. southern norway provides a baseline for comparison with northern norway, as these areas are similar not only in regards to winter temperature, but also in terms of culture and quality of life. thus, the average amount of direct daylight in midwinter is one of the most significant environmental differences between these regions. svalbard experiences a much more extreme winter. in addition to receiving no light whatsoever for two months, average winter temperatures hover around -16°c (3°f). because of its extreme location, residents of svalbard tend to live there for only a few years at a time, and are much more self-selecting than those living in oslo and tromsø. as such, investigating wintertime mindsets in svalbard provides insight into a more extreme winter sample differing from the other regions in light, temperature, and population. 1.2 research questions the prevailing attitude of adaptability and ‘leaning in’ to the winter in tromsø inspired our first research question: are there certain mindsets that contribute to wintertime wellbeing in northern http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 norway? as a first step towards answering this question, we developed and conducted an initial validation of a ‘wintertime mindset’ scale. our second research question asks: is wintertime mindset associated with measures of wellbeing? we approached both research questions by surveying respondents living in southern norway, northern norway, and svalbard about their wellbeing and mindset in the middle of winter (in january, at the end of the polar night in tromsø and during the polar night in svalbard). in doing so, we identified relationships between wintertime mindset and wellbeing. we hope the identification of such relationships will spawn further research in this area, in order to better understand mindsets that may promote wintertime flourishing. this paper describes the wintertime mindset scale and provides evidence for the relationship between wintertime mindset and wintertime wellbeing in the high north. 2. method 2.1 participants the gross sample comprised 1,500 randomly selected persons from a register of all physical mail (i.e. letters sent in envelopes) addresses in three geographic areas in in norway—the capital (oslo), the county of troms (which contains the city tromsø), and svalbard (primarily the town of longyearbyen). a total of 238 responses were returned, yielding a response rate of 15.9%. previous research suggests this response rate is common (e.g., pew research center, 2012). a one-variable chi-square test showed that response rates did not differ between the three locations, χ2 = 0.37, p = .833. the mean age of the sample was 46.18 years (sd = 12.48), as calculated from weighed mid-values of eight age categories. males comprised 45% of the sample, and 93% were born in norway to norwegian parents. the sample was almost evenly split between respondents living in southern norway (32.9%), respondents living in northern norway (31.9%), and respondents living in svalbard (35.2%). 2.2 recruitment respondents were invited to participate in our survey via letters mailed to a random sample of the population in the three afore-mentioned regions of norway. we employed the ‘bring’ mailing company to send 500 letters to potential subjects in southern norway, 500 to northern norway (excluding svalbard), and 500 to svalbard. the letter contained a message inviting participants to take part in our survey and the link to our online survey. letters were sent out on january 5 in 2015, and participants completed surveys between january 16 and february 7. january 16 to february 7 spans the last week of the polar night to the first two weeks with the return of the sun in northern norway, and is a time in which svalbard experiences almost no light each day. see figure 2 for an example of relative daylight between the regions on january 27, 2015, the approximate midpoint of our study period. as incentive, subjects were told that they would be entered into a lottery to win one of five gift certificates worth 1000 nok each (~125 u.s. dollars). as an additional incentive, both to attract participants to complete surveys and to keep participants engaged during the course of the survey, feedback on certain measures was provided throughout the survey. participants were informed of their raw score relative to the total possible score for the mental health continuum, the wintertime mindset scale, and the satisfaction with life scale. these raw scores were referred to as participants’ ‘flourishing,’ ‘positive winter mindset,’ and ‘satisfaction with life’ scores, respectively. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 all surveys and accompanying information were delivered in norwegian, with the option for participants to switch to english located on the website. 2.3 measures 2.3.1 subjective wellbeing (swb) we created a composite swb scale comprising three subscales: life satisfaction, positive emotions, and negative emotions as detailed below. the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) was used to measure participants’ life satisfaction. participants rated how much they agreed or disagreed (scale: 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree) with five statements pertaining to life satisfaction. the total score was the mean of all five responses (producing a range of 1-7). cronbach’s alpha (α) for the swls was .93. positive emotions were measured with three items from the basic emotions trait test (bett; vittersø, dyrdal, & røysamb, 2005). the items were pleasure, satisfaction, and happiness, and the instructions asked how often participants felt each of these emotions in their everyday lives, with response options running from 1 (never) to 7 (all the time). cronbach’s alpha for the positive emotion subscale was .88. negative emotions were also measured with three items from the basic emotions trait test (bett; vittersø et al., 2005). the items were anger, sadness, and fear, and the instructions again asked how often participants felt each of these emotions in their everyday lives, with response options running from 1 (never) to 7 (all the time). cronbach’s alpha for the negative emotion subscale was .60, reflecting low internal stability, and indicating risks of underestimating the effect sizes in subsequent analyses. however, the average inter-item correlation for the composite score was .33, which may be regarded as sufficient (bollen & lennox, 1991). moreover, we also ran separate analyses for each of the three negative emotion items and none of these differed from analyses using the composite score in terms of significance. since only the reliable part of item variances are utilized in the latent variable models, the cronbach’s alphas are irrelevant for those analyses. a confirmatory factor analyses with swb as the common factor and the items from the swls, positive emotions and negative emotions additionally loading on three independent, nested factors was estimated. the structure of the model is depicted in figure 3 (below). the factor model fitted the data well: χ2 (30, n = 226) = 49.47 (p = .033), cfi = .99, rmsea = .05 (ci = .01 .07). for further details about nested factor models like the one fitted for swb in the present paper, please see gustafsson and åberg-bengtsson (2010). 2.3.2 wintertime mindset to assess how positively or negatively participants viewed and related to the wintertime, we developed the wintertime mindset scale (wms). themes for the scale were identified through discussions with norweigan and foreign residents of tromsø, including members of the psychology department at the university of tromsø. these discussions were meant to make explicit some of the implicit associations residents of tromsø have with winter and to understand how people living in the high north experience, understand, and relate to the winter there. based on these conversations, the structure of the wms was then loosely modeled after the stress mindset measure general (smm g; crum, et al., 2013). the stress mindset measure captures global interpretations about the nature of stress through items such as “the experience of stress is negative and should be avoided,” and “the effects of stress are positive and should be utilized” http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 (crum, et al., 2013). likewise, the wintertime mindset scale was developed to capture two different mindsets about winter: the mindset that winter is dreadful (“i find the winter months dark and depressing”) and the mindset that winter is delightful (“there are many things to enjoy about the winter”). unlike the items in other mindset scales such as the stress mindset measure, the items in the wms also capture mindset through individual’s personal relationships to winter (“i love the coziness of the winter months”) in addition to broader interpretations about the nature of winter (“winter is an especially beautiful time of year”). figure 3. factor model of subjective wellbeing (swb) with nested factors accounting for unique variance attributed to the subscales of satisfaction with life scale (swls), positive emotions (posem) and negative emotions (negem) note. numbers in parentheses represent the amount of explained variance of each item. 10 items were initially developed for the wms: 5 positive items and 5 negative items. after review, it was determined that the item ‘winter is my least favorite season’ would be changed to ‘winter is my favorite season’ to be less cognitively demanding for respondents, resulting in a scale with 6 positive items and 4 negative items. the order of the items was randomized for participants taking the survey. participants rated how much they agreed or disagreed (scale: 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) with each item, and the total score was the mean of all ten items (α = .91). an exploratory factor analysis (efa) suggested that a one factor model could account for the correlations among the ten wms items (eigenvalues for the three largest components were 5.50, 1.05 and 0.74, respectively). the factor loadings from the one-factor efa are presented in table 1. a one factor model was submitted to a confirmatory factor analyses (cfa), yielding mediocre http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 indication of fit (cf. table 1 for the goodness-of-fit details). after adding a nested factor for the negatively worded items, and freeing up two error terms to correlate, we arrived at the model depicted in figure 4. this model had acceptable goodness-of fit, χ2 (29, n = 227) = 68.31, p < .001, cfi = .97, rmsea = .07 (ci = .05 .10). table 1. goodness-of-fit measures for the structural equations models model χ2 df p cfi rmsea ci subjective well-being1 111.05 41 <0.001 .96 .09 .07 .11 wtm single factor 163.49 35 <0.001 .90 .13 .11 .15 wtm with nested factor2 68.31 29 <0.001 .97 .07 .05 .10 first full sem 102.50 45 <0.001 .95 .08 .06 .10 second full sem 276.02 179 <0.001 .97 .05 .04 .06 note. n = 226; 1cf. figure 1; 2this model also allowed the errors terms from two pairs of items to correlate as shown in figure 2; wtm = wintertime mindset; χ2 = chi square; df = degrees of freedom; cfi = comparative fit index; rmsea = root mean square error of approximation; ci = 90% confidence interval for the rmsea. figure 4. factor model of the wintertime mindset scale, with a nested factor accounting for negatively worded items, and correlated errors 2.3.3 location location was a variable coded 1 for oslo, 2 for troms, and 3 for svalbard. when used in linear regression models, the location variable was dummy-coded with oslo as the reference category. 2.4 statistical analyses the data was analyzed using ibm spss version 25, and mplus version 8.0 (muthén & muthén, 2018). first, using spss, the means, standard deviation, skewness, pearson’s product-moment correlations and factor loadings for the study variables were analyzed. next, four one-way analyses of variance (anova) were conducted, with location (oslo, troms and svalbard) as the independent variable, and wintertime mindset, life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect as dependent variables. bonferroni adjusted post-hoc comparisons were made. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 the confirmatory factor models (figures 3 and 4) were analyzed in mplus, as was the structural equation model (sem) with mediation (figure 5). we used model 4 in hayes (2017) as our mediator template, although with two mediating variables rather than one. location was taken as the independent variable, although it is conceivable to think that people move to a location as a result of their wellbeing or wintertime mindset. however, given the cross-sectional nature of our data, we did not test that possibility. model fit was evaluated using chi-square, comparative fit index (cfi), and the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea). a rmsea lower than .08 combined with a cfi higher than .95 are considered acceptable (e.g., (hooper, coughlan, & mullen, 2008; hu & bentler, 1999). 3. results the items and descriptive statistics for the wintertime mindset scale (wms) are reported in table 2. the wms correlated positively with location, r(211) = .36, p < .001, indicating that the further north participants lived, the more positive their mindset towards winter. figure 5 and table 3 show detailed analyses of the relationships between wms and living location. these analyses revealed that participants living in svalbard had the highest wms score in this sample (msvalbard = 4.01, sdsvalbard = 0.59), which was significantly higher than the means for both oslo (moslo = 3.34, sdoslo = 0.81), bonferroni adjusted 95% ci [0.37 — 0.96], and troms (mtroms = 3.58, sdtroms = 0.80), bonferroni adjusted 95% ci [0.13 — -0.73]. this association is further investigated in the mediation analyses reported below. the overall anova model explained 13% of the variance in wms scores (partial η2 = .13), with f(2, 210) = 15.18, p < .001. none of the wellbeing measures differed across latitudes (all ps > .200, cf. table 3). figure 5. means for the wintertime mindset scale (wms) in the three study locations note. error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 table 2. means, standard deviations (sd), skewness (sk), and factor loadings from an exploratory principal axes factor analysis for the 10 wintertime mindset items item mean sd sk factor 1 winter is an especially beautiful time of year 3.87 0.96 -0.61 .81 2 i dislike the winter time (r) 1.99 1.09 0.85 -.85 3 i enjoy doing many things i only do during the winter 3.69 1.17 -0.59 .76 4 i find the winter months dark and depressing (r) 2.11 1.04 0.63 -.78 5 i love the coziness of the winter months 3.76 0.98 -0.63 .62 6 i am much more tired during the winter (r) 2.99 1.17 -0.05 -.58 7 there are many things to enjoy about the winter 3.97 0.97 -1.01 .76 8 in the winter, i often don't feel like doing anything at all (r) 2.32 1.15 0.53 -.57 9 i like the soft light we have during the winter months 3.75 1.07 -0.77 .58 10 winter is my favorite season 2.56 1.15 0.36 .75 note. (r) indicates negative items that are reverse coded when taking the mean of the scale overall. n (listwise) = 227. table 3. means (m), standard deviations (sd), f-values (for the row mean differences), and sample sizes (n) for the wintertime mindset scale (wms), satisfaction with life scale (swls); positive emotion (posem), negative emotions (negem) oslo (n = 70) troms (n = 68) svalbard (n = 75) all (n = 213) m sd m sd m sd m sd f wms 3.34a 0.81 3.58 a 0.80 4.01 b 0.59 3.65 0.79 15.18 *** swls 4.44 1.49 4.63 1.48 4.79 1.19 4.62 1.39 1.14 posem 4.84 1.05 5.00 1.08 5.16 1.05 5.00 1.06 1.62 negem 2.91 0.82 2.96 0.92 2.80 0.87 2.89 0.87 0.57 note. *** = p < .001; row means with different superscripts are significantly different from each other (p < .05, bonferroni adjusted). 3.1 structural equation models as suggested in the anova results above, the wms means for oslo and troms were not significantly different from each other. an independent t-test checking the difference between oslo and troms returned a t(136) = 1.75, p = .082. however, when the wms was specified as a latent variable, as depicted in figure 4, and regressed on two dummy coded location variables, both troms and svalbard came out with significantly higher wms scores than oslo. the unstandardized regression coefficients (b) were: btroms = .27, se = 0.14, p(211) = .043; bsvalbard = .81, se = 0.14, p (211) < .001. these numbers indicate that an average resident in troms scores .27 points higher on the wms than an average resident in oslo. the residents in svalbard score .80 points higher than those in oslo. the negative nested wms was unrelated to location (ps > .387). the next sem analysis is a regression analysis with location as a manifest, independent variable, wms and wmsneg as latent mediating variables, and swb as a latent dependent variable. the structures of the swb and wms factor models are illustrated in figures 1 and 2, respectively. the regression model with mediation is depicted in figure 6 and yielded the following goodness-of-fit measures: χ2 (179, n = 213) = 276.02 (p < .001), cfi = .97, rmsea = .05 (ci = .04 .06). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 figure 6. the full structural equation model of the effect of location on subjective wellbeing (swb), life satisfaction (swls), positive emotions (posem), negative emotions (negem), mediated through wintertime mindset (wms and wmsneg) note. higher values for location represent living further north. dotted lines are non-significant paths. full lines are significant paths:§ = p < .10; * = p < .05; *** = p < .001. the model demonstrates that how far north people live indirectly influenced their level of swb through their wintertime mindset. participants living further north showed higher levels of wms, with a standardized regression coefficient (β) equal to .42, p(211) < .001. wms had, in turn, an effect on swb, β = .46, p(211) < .001. a sobel test showed that the indirect effect from location through wms on swb was significant, β = .19, p(211) < .001. the model showed no evidence that latitude had an impact on swb independent of its effect on wms, β = -.05, p(211) = .495. for further details about the approach used here, please see (hayes, 2017). the negative element of wms did not mediate the relationship between location and swb, and the direct effect was a nonsignificant β = -.02, p(211) = .362. wms negativity had a direct effect on swb, however β = -.18, p(211) = .044. finally, a direct effect from wms on positive emotion was significant β = .22, p(211) = .020. none of the other nested swb factors were significantly associated with the wms factors or location. 4. discussion the present study sought to understand whether wintertime mindset is a variable influencing the relationship between a lack of sunlight in winter and wellbeing, using norway as a case study. our first research question asked if there are certain mindsets that contribute to wintertime wellbeing in northern norway. this question led to the development of the wintertime mindset scale to assess mindsets about winter. by assessing perspectives of winter as a time of year with many things to enjoy, such as winter activities, beauty, soft light, and coziness, this construct highlights some of the associations residents of norway may have with the winter and provides a way of measuring positive psychological associations with winter for the first time. our second research question asked whether wintertime mindset is associated with measures of wellbeing. our results indicate that positive wintertime mindset is associated with subjective wellbeing in norway, with positive wintertime mindset correlating with life satisfaction and positive emotions and negatively correlating with negative emotions. we also found that wintertime mindset statistically mediated the effect of location on subjective wellbeing. this suggests that wintertime mindset may be a previously overlooked variable influencing the wellbeing of residents living in the high north during the winter, and that http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 wintertime mindset becomes more important with increases in latitude. for those with a more positive wintertime mindset, living further north is associated with an increase in subjective wellbeing. there have been no previous studies describing how attitudes or mindsets towards winter influence wintertime wellbeing. our results reflect the common sentiment in tromsø that winter has many positive aspects to be enjoyed, rather than a time of year that is dark and depressing. this positive mindset may contribute to the lack of seasonal depression and wintertime mental distress found at this latitude in other studies, although more research is needed to test this directly (brancaleoni et al., 2009; johnsen et al., 2012; rosen et al., 1990). additionally, we found that positive wintertime mindset was significantly correlated with latitude, with those living farther north having a more positive wintertime mindset. with its extreme northern location and lifestyle, svalbard is almost certainly home to a self-selecting sample: people living in svalbard rarely live there for their entire lives. instead, residents of svalbard usually live there for several months or years at a time. however, tromsø is not necessarily home to a self-selecting sample. while as a mean-score variable the wms did not discriminate significantly between oslo and tromsø, when we used a latent wms variable the differences in mean scores between the two locations became significant. due to the increased reliability of the latter analysis, our results suggest that there is indeed a significant difference in how positively residents of oslo and tromsø experience the winter. due to the similarity in temperature between oslo and tromsø, amount of wintertime daylight received is one of the main environmental differences between these locations. located at roughly the same latitude as anchorage, alaska, residents of oslo still experience particularly dark and cold winters by the standards of many parts of the world, but it appears that they do not experience these winters as positively as their compatriots in the north. as such, mindset may be a previously overlooked factor that mediates the relationship between climate or weather and subjective wellbeing. the concept of wintertime mindset may be particularly useful in explaining the contradictory findings surrounding the effect of weather and climate on emotions. while some studies suggest that the darkness that accompanies winter can lead to depressed mood and seasonal affective disorder (e.g., connolly, 2013; feddersen, metcalfe, & wooden, 2016; mackerron & mourato, 2013), other studies find no such outcomes (e.g., buscha, 2016; kämpfer & mutz, 2013; lucas & lawless, 2013). our results suggest that there may be a psychological variable – mindset – that influences the relationship between climate and wellbeing. by orienting individuals’ attention to and interpretation of the positive or negative aspects of winter, our results suggest that this subjective perception of winter may be a greater predictor of winter wellbeing than weather or amount of daylight. particularly as we move farther north, into more extreme winter weather and darkness, mindset seems to be an important factor in determining wellbeing outcomes. while our study provides evidence that wintertime mindset and wellbeing are associated, we cannot make claims about the causal direction of this relationship based on our current, crosssectional study. it is possible that having a positive wintertime mindset causes one to enjoy winter more and spend more time outside enjoying the winter, thus leading to greater life satisfaction and positive emotions. however, it is also possible that being generally satisfied with life could cause one to have a more positive wintertime mindset. future studies are needed to determine the causal relationship between seasonal mindset and wellbeing. this could be investigated by designing an intervention to promote positive wintertime mindset (see crum et al., 2013, for an example of mindset intervention) and assessing subsequent outcomes on emotions and life satisfaction to determine whether developing a more positive wintertime mindset directly increases seasonal wellbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 observations in tromsø also suggest that it is easier to embody a positive wintertime mindset when those around you also have a positive wintertime mindset. living in an area where everyone is enjoying the winter makes a positive wintertime mindset more easily attainable than living in a community where it is the norm to complain about winter weather. with this in mind, studies examining ‘mindset contagion’ and wintertime norms should investigate whether or not a group mindset oriented towards positive wintertime feeling can spread among social groups. research on wintertime mindset could also be combined with anthropological or sociological research on localized culture surrounding winter. there are many reasons why wintertime mindset might be more positive in northern norway than elsewhere. besides having some of the most breathtaking natural landscapes in the world and being home to stunning displays of the aurora borealis, spending time outdoors in all seasons is an important part of norwegian culture. this culture, which includes an appreciation for winter recreation such as cross-country skiing, may be particularly conducive to a positive wintertime mindset. by looking to norway as an example of a place that does winter well, we hoped to extrapolate insights that could be used to promote wintertime flourishing worldwide. by identifying wintertime mindset as an important factor influencing wellbeing for residents of northern norway, we have uncovered a psychological approach to winter that may be exported from norway to improve winter wellbeing elsewhere. to examine whether the relationship between wintertime mindset and wellbeing is unique to norway, cross-cultural studies on wintertime mindset should be conducted. this study sought to identify what might contribute to winter wellbeing. in doing so, we hope to move the conversation on the psychology of winter away from focusing only on seasonal affective disorder and how winter can be detrimental to mental health towards a more positive and holistic understanding of the effects of winter on wellbeing. while the items about energy and mood included in the wms and the negative emotions covered in the bett do approximate the categories used by rosenthal et al. (1984) to diagnose seasonal affective disorder, the current study assessed a relatively brief number of constructs, and so future studies may wish to include specific measures pertaining to sad or mental distress to further confirm the proposed inverse relationship between wintertime mindset and wintertime depression. furthermore, while the goal of the present study was to provide a counter-perspective to existing psychological research on winter, which focuses largely on seasonal affective disorder, future research may wish to incorporate mindsets about other seasons and seasonal variation to extend this work further. our findings suggest that wintertime mindset is a previously overlooked factor in the discussion of the psychological effects of winter, particularly in extreme climates. yet mindset is not the only factor contributing to wintertime wellbeing and lack of seasonal depression in northern norway, and future research should examine other individual and social variables that contribute to wintertime wellbeing in norway. likewise, we want to be careful not to suggest that clinical seasonal affective disorder is purely a result of poor wintertime mindset and that those suffering from this condition can just ‘snap out of it’ or cure themselves by adjusting their mindset. rather, we suggest that this study provides evidence that positive wintertime mindset has a role to play in wintertime wellbeing, and that mindset could be an important addition to the theoretical and practical discussion of seasonal wellness. this study was made possible by a u.s.-norway fulbright grant, during which time we spent ten months (august-may) collaborating on this research at the arctic university of tromsø. given our response rate we cannot be sure that our sample is representative of the populations of the three selected locations. however, a response rate of 15% is common (e.g., pew research center, 2012). moreover, recent studies suggest that samples reflecting a response rate of 15% or http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 lower are often remarkably similar to those with greater response rates (e.g., hellevik, 2015; singer, 2006). this study would also have been strengthened by a second dissemination of the survey during the summer months so that summer and winter responses could be compared. it is possible that there was a response bias in our survey, as those who were the most willing to respond to a survey given in midwinter might also be more likely to have a positive wintertime mindset. future research should assess the effect of wintertime mindset longitudinally, and additional measures, such as those measuring optimism or mindfulness, should be examined in comparison to wintertime mindset. this study is the first to present the concept of wintertime mindset. in doing so, we hope to shift the dialogue around the psychology of winter to include the positive way winter may positively influence mental health and wellbeing. our research suggests that wintertime mindset may be a previously overlooked factor influencing winter wellbeing, and represents a potential avenue for improving the wintertime wellbeing of people around the world. to residents of northern norway, our results may not be surprising. rather than finding the wintertime dark and depressing, those living in the high north often find ways to appreciate the unique joys of winter. our research indicates that this positive mindset towards winter is strongly associated with wintertime wellbeing, including satisfaction with life and positive emotions. we hope that the introduction of the concept of wintertime mindset, coupled with our data, will add a positive dimension to the discussion of wintertime mental health and illness, encouraging individuals and communities to strive not only to be free of wintertime depression, but to pursue wintertime flourishing as well. increased understanding of the ways wintertime mindset influences seasonal wellbeing could lead to interventions designed to prevent wintertime depression and promote seasonal wellbeing in a variety of winter climates. this study raises many questions for further investigation, and we hope that our present work will spark future research about wintertime mindset. acknowledgements we thank the u.s.-norway fulbright foundation and the department of psychology at the university of tromsø for financial and logistical support. we also thank thor-eirik eriksen, ida solhaug, max könig, fern wickson, robert yaffe, and alia crum for their intellectual guidance, and camilla griffiths and sean zion for their comments on this article. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors kari leibowitz stanford university kaleibowitz@gmail.com joar vittersø university of tromsø publishing timeline received 18 june 2019 accepted 19 april 2020 published 30 september 2020 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 references beecher, m. e., eggett, d., erekson, d., rees, l. b., bingham, j., klundt, j., . . . boardman, r. d. 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(2020). effects of physical activity recommendations on mindset, behavior and perceived health. preventive medicine reports, 17, 101027. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2019.101027 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1984.01790120076010 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00066 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00066 https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfl034 https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843x.106.4.554 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2019.101027 wintertime mindset and wellbeing leibowitz & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 appendix a items and instructions for the wintertime mindset scale (wms) please rate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements. 1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree 3 = neither agree nor disagree 4 = agree 5 = strongly agree 1. winter is an especially beautiful time of year. 2. i dislike the winter time. (r) 3. i enjoy doing many things i only do during the winter. 4. i find the winter months dark and depressing. (r) 5. i love the coziness of the winter months. 6. i am much more tired during the winter. (r) 7. there are many things to enjoy about the winter. 8. in the winter, i often don’t feel like doing anything at all. (r) 9. i like the soft light we have during the winter months. 10. winter is my favorite season. (r) indicates items that should be reverse scored when taking the overall mean for the scale. to use the wintertime mindset scale, please contact the authors at kaleibowitz@gmail.com and joar.vitterso@uit.no. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ gennings, e. k., brown, h. j., & hewlett, d. (2021). constructing a definition: adolescent wellbeing from the perspective of the child and expert. international journal of wellbeing, 11(1), 69-88. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i1.1461 ellie k. gennings university of winchester ellie.gennings@winchester.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 article constructing a definition: adolescent wellbeing from the perspective of the child and expert ellie k. gennings · hazel j. brown · denise hewlett abstract: background: adolescent’s wellbeing is gaining increasing attention, with it being part of the united nations sustainable goals (united nations, 2019 [online]). the question regarding what adolescent’s wellbeing is, however, has received no rigorous answer (alexandrova, 2017), even though it is regarded as a fundamental measure of learning and growing as a human being (stevens & jarden, 2019). understanding what wellbeing means to adolescents is vital and an under-researched area (dunlop-bennett et al., 2019) which has implications for the development and validation of tools to measure their wellbeing. construct definition development literature highlights that experts, in addition to the relevant population, need to be consulted about the subject area to form a representative and valid definition (podsakoff et al., 2016). method: two groups were invited to interview with the aim to understand their conspetulisations of wellbeing. group 1 consisted of both expert practitioners and researchers from different disciplines in the field of wellbeing (n = 8) and group 2 were young people aged 11-16 (n = 41). conclusion: any definition needs to be reflective of the multi-faceted nature of wellbeing. findings revealed three themes: holism, positive feelings, and external influences. based on these findings a definition of wellbeing was formed. these conclusions should be used to underpin research with adolescents and the development of a measure of young people’s wellbeing. keywords: adolescent; expert; wellbeing; well-being; definition 1. introduction there are numerous descriptions of wellbeing within academic literature (tabor & yull., 2018; pouw & mcgregor., 2014; dodge, daly, huyton & sanders, 2012; diener, lucas, suh & smith, 1999) however, it is still cited by scholars that wellbeing is ‘elusive’ (bharara, duncan, jarden & hinckson, 2019) and ‘ill-defined’ (bourke & geldens, 2007). this may be due to the prevailing conclusion that wellbeing is broad and multidimensional (hone, schofield & jarden, 2015). contributions to academic literature debating the definition and measurement of adolescent’s wellbeing however remain frequent (andresen, bradshaw, & kosher, 2019; bharara et al, 2019; shoshani, 2019; blaskova & mclellan, 2018). these definitions and descriptions are often developed by adults for adults, developed by adults for adolescents or adolescents’ conceptions are explored but no explicit definition is concluded (see figure 1 below). adolescents’ perceptions are likely to differ from adults (gillett-swan, 2014) therefore findings from adult based research cannot be applied to adolescents (bharara et al. 2019). manning-morton (2013), for example, reported that adolescent’s wellbeing is influenced by spaces to be in and play in, childcare, parental leave, and quality of housing. this does not reflect adult’s wellbeing as they about:blank adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 are often not dependent on others for care, housing quality or spaces to play in due to their independence (tabor & stockley, 2018). understanding young people's conceptualisation of wellbeing is therefore worthy of investigation (bharara et al., 2019). figure 1. suggested definitions of wellbeing it is imperative to be concerned with every individual’s wellbeing for the benefit of society and not just for adults or vulnerable populations (mclellan & steward, 2015; rees, goswami & bradshaw., 2010). as mental health issues for young people increase (nhs digital, 2018 [online]), so does interest in improving wellbeing, particularly when young people are considered (gillettswan, 2014). it is subsequently important to understand what wellbeing means and therefore what is being improved (bourke & geldens, 2007). high quality relevant data about young people’s lives can only be collected if they are involved (bharara et al., 2019; lundy, mcevoy & byrne, 2011). lees et al. (2017) argues that young people have the right to have their views respected and thus they should be included in research. this is often not the case due to doubts in their maturity and literacy skills to participate meaningfully (lundy et al., 2011). while adolescent’s views should be included into research about them, lundy, mcevoy and byrne, (2011) suggest this is done in due weight and should not prevail on every issue. mackenzie et al (2011) suggests consulting experts in addition to the relevant population when conceptualising a construct. experts should therefore be consulted first and findings from this stage used to inform the inclusion of adolescents in research. consulting experts first helps provide further understanding of data collected with young people, as expert’s views enable insight and understanding into underlying responses from children (lundy et al., 20011). when adolescents have been involved in conceptualising wellbeing, results are often descriptions or lists of what impacts their wellbeing (thomas, graham, powell & fitzgerald 2016; navarro et al., 2015; gilett-swan, 2014; bourke & geldens, or the sake of clarity, the holistic vie w of well being incorporating both wb sub e ctive we ll be ing and wb psychological we ll be ing will simply be de scribe d as psychological we ll be ing ( wb) in this pape r (p. 17 ). the balance point be twe e n an individual s re source pool and the challenges faced (p.2 0). a broad cate gory of phe nome na that include s pe ople s e motional re sponse s, domain satisfactions, and global udgments of life satisfaction we de ne wb as a gene ral are a of scie nti c inte re st rathe r than a single spe ci c construct (p. 09). e rsonal we ll be ing is base d on pe ople s vie ws of the ir own individual we ll be ing. ersonal well being measures are grounded in individuals pre fe re nce s and take account of what ma e rs to pe ople by allowing the m to de cide what is important whe n the y re spond to que stions (p.11). a state of be ing with othe rs and the natural environment that arises where human needs are me t, whe re individuals and social groups can act me aningfully to pursue the ir goals, and whe re the y are satis e d with the ir way of life (p.1 ). ocial we ll be ing is the appraisal of one s circumstance and functioning in socie ty (p.122) ealisation of childre n s rights and the ful lme nt of the opportunity for e ve ry child to be all she or he can be (p. ) xplore d vie ws young pe ople had re garding de te rminants of we ll be ing roduce d a list of constructs which in ue nce we ll be ing xplored young people s conspe tulisations of we ll be ing xplore d young pe ople s conspetulisations of we ll be ing xplore d young pe ople s conspe tulisations of we ll be ing e rce ive d e n oyme nt and ful lme nt with one s life as a whole (p. ) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 2007; gabhainn & sixsmith, 2005). these are valuable contributions to the discussion of adolescent wellbeing however, to measure wellbeing reliably and validly, measures need to be underpinned by an explicit definition of wellbeing (mackenzie, podsakoff & podsakoff, 2011). the purpose of this study is to conceptualise adolescent’s wellbeing by consulting with experts in the subject area, from differing disciplines, and young people aged 11 to 16. this is to encapsulate wellbeing’s multidimensional nature and to support the development of a measure of wellbeing. measures cannot be validated without an explicit definition of wellbeing; therefore, it is imperative a definition is derived from relevant research and underpinned by concept definition literature (podsakoff, mackenzie & podsakoff, 2016). 2. methodology 2.1 participants two groups of participants took part in the study (n = 49), group 1 consisted of eight wellbeing experts (4 = female, 4 = male) and group 2 consisted of 41 young people. all participants were residents of great britain. group 1 was contacted directly and were only contacted if they had been working or researching in the field of wellbeing for ≥ years. articipants, in group 1, were from a range of backgrounds including psychology, therapy, health geography, physiology, paediatrics, workplace wellbeing, social work and learning disability nursing, to gather a holistic understanding of wellbeing. group 2 were not contacted directly about participation but gatekeepers to this population were. the gatekeeper acted as an intermediary by passing on information about the study to parents and their children. gatekeepers who had access to children aged 11-16 were identified and contacted, such as, school teachers and sports club organisers. individuals who expressed interest in participation for group 2 were only included if they were between the ages of 11 to 16 and were at secondary school. participants came from 10 different secondary schools across the south coast of england. table one summarises participant demographics. table 1. group 2 participant demographics m f school year group 7 8 9 10 11 total 18 23 9 10 11 10 1 note. abbreviations: m (male), f (female). uk school year group age breakdown: 7 = 1112 years old; 8 = 12-13 years old; 9 = 13-14 years old; 10 = 14-15 years old; 11 = 15-16 years old. 2.2 protocol institutional level ethical approval was gained and written informed consent was obtained from each participant before data was collected, including parents written informed consent for group 2. the information sheet for adolescents obtained a flesch reading ease score of 64.6, which is considered standard and at secondary school level (spadaro, robinson & smith 1980). 2.2.1 group 1 participants in group 1 were sent an invitation to interview via e-mail and an explanation as to why they had been invited. after expressions of interest the interviews were arranged. interviews were conducted individually by the same researcher. six of the interviews were conducted face to face, one via skype and one via a phone call. participants were informed about http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 the presence of a dictaphone (yamaha pocketrak c24 portable recorder) used to record the interview which was then transcribed. the interviewer followed a semi structured interview guide to allow for flexibility with follow up questions (bowling, 2014). a deductive approach was undertaken to develop the interview guide as it was informed by a review of literature which highlighted key discussion points including: the differentiation between wellbeing, happiness and life satisfaction; whether wellbeing is context specific and the significance of basic needs to achieve wellbeing. 2.2.2 group 2 after the completion of analysis from group 1’s interviews, gatekeepers (including sports clubs and secondary schools) of the young people recruited in group 2 received an email containing the information sheet and invitation for participation. arrangements were made for the interviews via the gatekeeper. participants also received the information sheet and consent forms that were subsequently signed by both them and their parent/guardian. participation in the study was voluntary. a focus group style was chosen to provide an insight and narrative into the attitudes, perceptions and opinions of adolescents (gibson, 2007), they were conducted in groups of three to four with a maximum of a two-year age gap between the oldest and youngest participant to help aid discussion (gibson, 2007). overall, 11 focus groups were conducted. the interview guide from group 1 was adapted based on the analysis of results and used to inform the focus groups with young people. the focus group was semi-structured and included one activity where participants, in pairs, had to rank 11 cards in order of importance to their wellbeing (see figure 2). the content of the activity was derived from a review of literature. each card was a determinant of wellbeing with items such as ‘xbox’ representing hedonic pleasure, ‘having goals and challenges’ representing eudaimonia and ‘food and shelter’ representing basic needs. the activity was designed to encourage discussion around topics prevalent within wellbeing literature. during the interview, participants split into groups of two and were given a set of 11 cards. they were asked to rank figure 2. ranking cards them in order of importance and once complete, they explained their order and why they decided to place cards higher and lower in the rank. lundy et al (2011) suggests that a ranking activity is an age-appropriate exercise for adolescents which increases their engagement in research. participants were also asked if they would add anything else to the list of cards which they http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 perceived as important for their wellbeing. the purpose of the ranking activity was to understand if young people held the same importance over these topics as adults and to aid discussion. 3. data analysis 3.1 group 1 following each interview full transcripts were developed. thematic analysis was used to identify themes within the data. thematic analysis was chosen because it is flexible, has theoretical freedom and organises and describes a data set in rich detail (maguire & delahunt, 2017). an inductive approach was taken so themes were strongly linked to the data. braun and clarke’s (2006) six-phase framework for thematic analysis was used. 3.2 group 2 the same data analysis process was conducted for group 2’s data including full transcriptions, thematic analysis and, although the final themes were the same, an inductive approach to developing coding and identifying first order themes was undertaken. descriptive statistics were produced for the ranking data, identifying the average ranking position of each ranking card. 3.3 results – expert’s conceptualisations of wellbeing results from group 1 were organised into three themes: holism, positive feelings and external influences. wellbeing was conceptualised as multifaceted and these different facets are interconnected and impact each other, resulting in the theme ‘holism’. it is often concluded within literature that wellbeing is a broad, multi-faceted and complex construct (lijadi, 2018; boyko, coulton, sabbagh-gomez, cooper, 2017; dodge et al., 2012; ryan and deci., 2011 & spence, powell, self, 2011). this broad interpretation provides a rationale for an evidence-based definition of wellbeing to combat its ambiguity. while discussing what contributes to wellbeing, participants discussed that it is an internal feeling which is linked to happiness and flourishing, leading to the conclusion that wellbeing is only concerned with positive feelings, hence the theme ‘positive feelings’. dodge et al. (2012) supports the notion that wellbeing is only concerned with positive affect as they argue that positive and negative affect are two separate dimensions. in addition, both clarke et al (2011) and tennant et al (2007) only included positively worded items in their measure of wellbeing showing that adolescents must also perceive wellbeing as a positive construct. topics discussed within the theme ‘positive feelings’ were wellbeing’s intrinsic nature, its close relationship to flourishing and the importance of how an individual perceives their heath and its influence on wellbeing. the theme ‘external influences’ was developed as many external events were shown to influence an individual’s wellbeing. these included the importance of having connections, absence of loneliness, the influence of life experience on values and priorities, the context in which we evaluate our wellbeing and the importance of obtaining basic needs. table 2 (below) is a thematic diagram of results which show codes and first order themes. 3.4 results – adolescent’s conceptualisations of wellbeing the analysis for group 2 resulted in the first order themes being organised into the same overarching themes as group 1 entitled, holism, positive feelings, and external influences. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 table 2. thematic diagram of e ’ conceptualisations of wellbeing direct quotes codes first order themes final themes • wellbeing is an overarching construct that encompasses a number of different elements that matter in people’s lives • it is a vague concept that it is difficult to get a hand on holistic broad multidimensional ambiguous multidimensional holism • feeling healthy within yourself and feeling at ease with your own body and with your place in the world around you • it is about someone being in charge and in control of their own health internal balance control individual intrinsic positive feelings • wellbeing to me is about someone really flourishing in life so they are happy, they have good connections which may be to family, friends, pets or connected in the community so they are not isolated • people who are in work generally report better wellbeing than people out of work flourishing purpose *flourishing • huge number of the things that contribute to wellbeing, contribute to happiness • happiness is a kind of state which you attain every now and then. you are happy. whereas wellbeing is more of a kind of constant state hedonia happiness short-term emotion desires • you could argue that someone might have a medical diagnosis can have very high wellbeing • people with underlying health conditions can still experience good wellbeing. people without them may not experience good wellbeing. they are not cause and effect with each other health evaluation control health • for me it is the absolute core that relationships, quality relationships • isolation... just general connections and relationships, i think. having a sense of control in your life connections social interaction isolation purpose connections external influences • i think it is relatively situation specific and so for both of those reasons, wellbeing will necessarily change over time • some people who do not have a fixed abode, they are sofa surfing and we may think their situation is extremely difficult and how are they managing. but their wellbeing can be high, they could have lots of satisfaction and gain from other things in their life. context situation specific influence environment context • every pound does not buy you an equal amount of happiness indefinitely so there comes a point at which increases in income don’t actually buy you increases in happiness but at the bottom it definitely makes a difference • to the real basics of food and shelter, yes. i think it would be difficult to achieve wellbeing without those basic needs diet money health physical activity basic needs • things that make children feel good are probably going to be different to things that make older people feel good and like they are doing well • i think there is as much less external [with old age], it is a more internally defined thing...i have less bother about what other people think regarding what i wear for example development fluid with age priorities *life experience • wellbeing is about the experience of what it is to feel good with your life • it is about how we experience our lives overall but also about the day to day and moment to moment moods and feelings that we experience experiential experience note. * indicates themes which were predominantly different between the two groups. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 wellbeing is perceived as multidimensional within the context of adults (huppert & so, 2013) and adolescents (dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell, anthony, 2019). wellbeing was also used interchangeably with other concepts, such as happiness and life satisfaction (kelly, 2018; bowling, 2017; goodman, disabato, kashdan & kauffman, 2018; dodge et al., 2012), because of its multidimensional nature. indings from adolescent’s support this, hence the theme ‘holism’. in line with group 1, adolescents also identified that wellbeing is an internal, personal construct and physiological health is irrelevant but perception of one’s own health is important to wellbeing. adolescents also discussed how determination to set and achieve goals was important to their wellbeing. having something to work towards and achieving made them feel good and enhanced their sense of wellbeing, resulting in the theme ‘positive feelings’. external influences, in alignment with academic literature (alexandrova, 2017) and findings from group 1, includes adolescents understanding that basic needs are important to enable survival however, excesses of money and material goods were agreed to have a limited, if not no, impact on wellbeing. participants also discussed the importance of social interactions and both the physical and social family environment as this led to feelings of support and safety which contributed to their sense of wellbeing. perceptions of others about them also influenced their sense of wellbeing as participants described being heavily influenced by their peers’ judgements of themselves. table 3 (below) shows a thematic diagram of finings and figure 3 shows the reversed average ranking order of each card. figure 3. reversed average score for cards in ranking activity 4. discussion there were four key differences identified through the thematic analysis of transcripts between the conceptualisations of adults and adolescents, supporting the need for a definition of wellbeing specific to young people. young people highlighted the impact of other’s udgments and the importance of family for their wellbeing and experts identified positive feelings beyond happiness and the influence of life experience on wellbeing. these four key differences will be discussed in the following sections. mental health happiness physical health family relationships food and shelter friendships feeling comfortable goals and challenges money new clothes new xbox reversed average rating it e m s http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 table 3. thematic diagram of a ’ conceptualisations of wellbeing direct quotes codes first order themes final themes • hysical health, food and shelter and happiness… they kind of all just link together in the way that like when you do exercise it makes you feel happy • i think it is like the main thing you should focus on… you can’t have one without the other. you can’t have good physical health without good mental health or good mental health without good physical health interaction between influences on wellbeing interlinked holism • you’ve got like your overall wellbeing but then you have like… if you break it down you have the wellbeing that you would have at school like during lessons and in break and kind of like then the wellbeing you have at athletics like how you’re training how you feel and like how it is going? happiness interchangeable • wellbeing is kind of how you’re feeling and what you feel is very personal to you • it is different to every single person unique individual personal positive feelings • if you aren’t physically healthy, you won’t feel good • making sure you’re ok whether that is physically or mentally feeling ok physical health mental health mind set happiness care health • having a set target for you to achieve is good because it gives you a fixed mindset on what you want • i think it helps with your motivation to get things done purpose goals focus of attention motivation to achieve determination • family relations and friendships anyone needs because otherwise you would feel a bit lonely • if you have good relationships with your parents and that they could improve your happiness as you can always talk to them about stuff. loneliness mood lifting hobbies connections interactions other’s state social interactions external influences • it doesn’t matter if you don’t have any dads or you have two. you still need family relationships and friendships and happiness to truly thrive to any extent • i also think the environment of where you are also helps coz like quite a degrading place would give you bad wellbeing because it could promote bad actions and bad wellbeing. say somewhere is full of happy people and in an all-round good place could kind of make you live better and have a good wellbeing family set up permanent comfort encouragement parents home environment physical home siblings *upbringing & parental dependence • when you’re at school you could have like an anxiety because you think people will judge you if you get something wrong in class or if you aren’t the best at sports, people better than you will judge you or not want you on their team so • it depends on how serious the situation is really… it could be something that sticks with you and then you could think ‘oh am i really this?’ or whatever and then it ust like puts you down self confidence self-acceptance mind set judgement being yourself fitting in social media opinions *fitting in & judgement • like an xbox you don’t really need it but you can have it ust for like, to be a nice thing when you’re sad maybe • i don’t think you need loads of money but ust some to support you and that nice can be essential limited effect material goods note. * indicates themes which were predominantly different between the two groups. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 4.1. self-acceptance and judgement adolescent’s wellbeing was greatly influenced by acceptance of others and having resilience to cope with judgements placed on them. participants frequently identified that having selfconfidence and being resilient was an important determinant of wellbeing; ‘being mentally resilient and i guess not listening to people who think that they can like tell you bad stuff’. it could be suggested that many of them lacked self-resilience as they often discussed the impact of other people's opinions about them; when you’re at school you could have like an anxiety because you think people will judge you if you get something wrong in class or if you aren’t the best at sports, people better than you will judge you or not want you on their team at school you try and put a brave face on for everyone at times but at home it is different and no one is there to watch you adults appeared less self-conscious of other’s opinions and udgements of themselves. one expert commented; i have a different perspective on how i think about it [wellbeing] compared to how i did…. i have less bother about what other people think regarding what i wear for example. i remember when my kids had to have seen the right thing before they talked to their friends at school. so, for them to feel ok they need to be accepted by peers, fitting in and all of that is much, much stronger. when you’re older there is a little more about life on my terms ear of udgment by others is not apparent in models of wellbeing such as yff’s six-factor model of wellbeing (ryff & keyes, 1995) and perma (seligman, 2004), or discussed in its underpinning theory. this suggests that young people have a different understanding of the concept wellbeing in comparison to adults. children place value on friendships to fulfil needs of belonging, to feel capable, respected and accepted (foley et al., 2012). one expert described adults as ‘selfcontained’ and highlighted that this is the biggest difference between adults and children, who are more dependent on others due to their life experience. foley and colleagues (2012) interviewed children with disabilities about their perceptions of wellbeing, it was concluded that their sample perceived friends who did not support a feeling of acceptance and belonging were ‘barriers to a good life’ (p.328). it was also evident within this study that acceptance from peers was important for young people to feel comfortable, ‘if people accept you for being you then you are more likely to be more comfortable’. this evidence provides support for having a specific definition of young people’s wellbeing. 4.2 the impact of family young people frequently discussed the importance of their parents in making them feel well. as the ranking data suggests, family relationships are more important than friendships. this was explained in interviews through the loyalty's participants had to their family and the permanent nature of family. dunlop-bennett et al. (2019) also found that amoan children valued ‘spending time with family’ and ‘having family around’ more than ‘hanging out with friends’ (p.109). urthermore, ‘spending time with family’ was the only thing identified by their entire sample, highlighting its importance. the ranking data (figure 3 above) shows that, on average, young people ranked family relationships fourth out of the 11 cards regarding its importance to achieving a good level of wellbeing. family relationships were regarded as important, but not as important as other constructs like mental health. an explanation for the difference in value could be due to the age difference in samples (8 years old vs 11-16 years old), and the younger children in dunlop-bennett and colleagues (2019) research being more dependent on their family. bharara http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 et al. (2019) studied a similar age group and explored new zealanders’ (aged 11-13-years) conspetulisations of wellbeing and identified similar findings whereby 60% of their sample valued family relationships in relation to their wellbeing needs. adult’s did not discuss the role of parents regarding wellbeing. as individuals mature, they become less dependent, meaning reliance on others, such as parents, lessens. one expert however, highlighted the importance of home. good quality housing provides comfort, safety and a feeling of connection to the community which, maslow considers as the one of the most important biological and physiological needs as it is part of the first level in his model (maslow, 1943). feelings of comfort, safety and connection were attributed to parents, not housing, by young people. 4.3 feelings beyond happiness adults were able to identify positive feelings beyond happiness such as flourishing, and the importance of that to wellbeing. bowling (2017) states that there is ongoing confusion and overlap between similar constructs to wellbeing, like happiness and flourishing, which few authors distinguish between. group 1 discussed the term flourishing in relation to wellbeing; wellbeing to me is about someone really flourishing in life we think of wellbeing as being about flourishing and doing well across all the different aspects of your life this supports smith and reid (2017), goodman et al. (2018), humberstone (2015), mclellan and steward (2015), dodge et al. (2012) and ryan and deci (2001) who have also discussed the term flourishing in relation to wellbeing. dodge et al. (2012) stated that it is a synonym of positive psychology. flourishing was described by one expert as; i think flourishing is about happiness, contentment and agency. of course, for different people it will mean different things. for different people, flourishing will relate to stability, financial stability and employment stability and those sorts of things but i wouldn’t want to constrain it too much because some people don’t desire that stability and absolutely flourish in their lives without between 1938 and 2000, there have been 39 varying definitions of flourishing (dodge et al., 2012), highlighting its complexity. young people may not have the emotional literacy to identify what it feels like to flourish. although, during focus groups they did describe determination and scenarios which could be labelled as flourishing, for example; having something to look towards and sometimes people, who struggle with their wellbeing or mental health is because they cannot see the clear path and having that can just guide you in some way having a set target for you to achieve is good because it gives you a fixed mindset on what you want having goals because that can make you happy when you achieve them these comments allude to the young people wanting to have a purpose in life and achievement of their purpose being linked to feeling good. having purpose and feeling good when achieving something are qualities of flourishing. lijadi (2018) and mclellan and steward (2015) discuss the positive influence of education on flourishing. the opportunity for, and quality of, different experiences, like education, can range across cultures, location, and economic status. these experiences are needed though to stimulate positive feelings which ultimately influence http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 wellbeing. huppert and so (2013) concluded that features of flourishing included meaning, selfesteem and optimism, which are all identifiable factors in the quotations. 4.4 life experience experts identified that, with age, the experiences and values an individual has are likely to change. an example of differences in priorities may be young people valuing friendships, adults valuing their career path and elderly individuals valuing their health. each individual would gain satisfaction from achieving their priority which ultimately influences the level of wellbeing they have. young people did not discuss how age can change priorities or how age can impact their conceptualisations of wellbeing. one expert, while reflecting on their own life and commented on what gave them a good sense of wellbeing; if i think about my own personal experience, ten years ago i was wanting to go out with friends, and the christmas rota… i used to be horrified at the thought of working on new year and i’d rather work christmas so i could have new year off so i could go out with friends and socialise. now, i’d quite happily stay in new year and spend christmas with my nana and my mum this is a real-life example of an individual’s values and priorities changing as they get older. age is linked to life experiences, social norms, and priorities because they change as age increases. age itself does not influence wellbeing but the changes in experiences, social norms and priorities do. age is the agent for this change. this links to blanchflower and oswald’s (200 ) work as they presented wellbeing as a u-shape over a life cycle. their explanation for this is that mental distress reaches a maximum in middle age as happiness and life satisfaction are decreased (blanchflower & oswald, 2008). these two factors are portrayed by blanchflower and oswald (2008) as constructs which have greatest influence on wellbeing, although wellbeing has not been clearly defined within the article. blanchflower and oswald’s (200 ) conclusions could explain why there is wealth of research around adult’s wellbeing and several measures of wellbeing which focus on the adult population, not on the younger population. this finding supports the rationale of this paper, arguing that there is need for a definition of young people’s wellbeing, developed by young people. 5. common discussion points the following sections discuss topics which both experts and adolescent identified as influencing factors on wellbeing. topics fit within the two broad themes positive feelings and external influences. 5.1 positive feelings and their impact on wellbeing 5.1.1. internal nature of wellbeing wellbeing was conceptualised by experts as a personal feeling, ‘ eeling healthy within yourself and feeling at ease with your own body and with your place in the world around you’. it is described as something individuals have ownership of, and this feeling of control contributes to a greater sense of wellbeing, supporting the notion that wellbeing is subjective (pouw & mcgregor, 2014; dodge et al., 2012; waterman et al., 2010). adolescent’s identified that wellbeing is also personal and unique to everyone, ‘i guess you’re ust yourself… it is different to every single person’. individual differences are something prevalent throughout wellbeing literature (pouw & mcgregor, 2014). the definition of wellbeing therefore must allow for the notion that http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 specific influences on wellbeing will be unique to everyone. stevens and jarden (2019) state that wellbeing has core similarities between individuals. one adolescent stated; even if, i prefer listening to one genre of music to my friend, we still both ultimately listen to music… even if i have one method of dealing with it, the needs are ultimately come down to the same thing this supports stevens and jarden (2019) as it shows that although influences on wellbeing are unique to individuals, there are core similarities between people, providing support that the definition of wellbeing needs to be all encompassing. moreover, bharara et al. (2019) applied a prototype analysis to their exploration of adolescent’s wellbeing. a prototype analysis assumes that some components are more central and important to a concept, and others are considered peripheral as they are still important, but less so than the central (rosch, 1975). this reinforces tevens and jarden’s (2019) conclusion that wellbeing has core similarities, but it allows for individual differences whereby some components and of determinants of wellbeing are more important to some individuals. 5.1.2 physical health, mental health and wellbeing feeling healthy was considered important for wellbeing for both adolescents and experts. the word ‘health’ to adolescents meant a mixture of physical health, mental health and feeling generally ok, which table 3 (above) shows. although feeling good was deemed beneficial for wellbeing, one adolescent commented ‘you could be severely disabled but as long as you’re mentally healthy it can help you get through’ which highlights that good mental health is more important for wellbeing than good physical health. experts often referred to an individual’s evaluation of their health, not their actual health. control was an important aspect when evaluating one’s own health; it is about someone being in charge and in control of their own health… someone can have a diagnosis of mental or physical [ill-] health but still have really high and thriving wellbeing compared to someone with no diagnosis but very low wellbeing this was a common discussion point within both groups interviews which is linked to mindset. the argument that anyone can have a high level of wellbeing no matter what their health condition is, is supported by tudor’s (199 ) dual-continuum model of mental health seen in figure 4 (below). this also highlights that individuals with perfect health can have poor wellbeing. figure 4 (below) reiterates the point that wellbeing is not concerned with individual’s actual health, but their own internal evaluation and perception of their health. the value of healthperception over physical health was also evident in the ranking activity, where mental health was given, on average, the highest-ranking position, in comparison with all other cards. physical health ranked on average third overall (see figure 3 above). specific interventions to improve health like mindfulness were not discussed by adolescents, even though there is evidence to suggest mindfulness can improve adolescent’s wellbeing ( anger, thierry, dor ee, 2019). bharara et al. (2019) suggests that young people are uninformed about such interventions and have a greater understanding of more visible pathways to enhance wellbeing. findings showed that visible pathways such as family, friends and hobbies were often linked to improving mental and physical health, supporting bharara et al. (2019). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 figure 4. the dual-continuum model of mental health (tudor, 1996: adapted) 5.1.3 determination to achieve although determination could be linked to flourishing, adolescents described goal setting as the tool which made them feel determined. flourishing for experts was about having purpose and feeling good when achieving. determination resulted in young people having a focus and being motivated to achieve: if you don’t have anything to kind of like, lead you forward then i guess um… it gives you something to work towards… i think it helps with your motivation to get things done. goal setting is theoretically underpinned by motivation and one of its purposes is to direct attention (lunenburg, 2011). having a goal to achieve links to feeling a sense of purpose which is central to a eudaimonic philosophy (boyko et al., 2017; waterman et al., 2010). this is also reflected in elgiman’s (2004) ma model of wellbeing as the ‘a’ stands for ‘achievement’, where having optimism to achieve, and achievement itself is considered a key determinant of good wellbeing. although having goals to generate individual’s determination is important to wellbeing, the results from the ranking activity showed that on average goals and challenges were not ranked highly by adolescents, as they were ranked overall as eighth (see figure 3 above). 5.2 external influences and their impact on wellbeing 5.2.1 connections to others relationships with others is a prevalent topic in wellbeing literature, where its influence on wellbeing is acknowledged (foley et al., 2012; putnam, 2001; ryan & deci, 2001). adolescents felt being around others who were considered friends or family as important for wellbeing. experts stated that connections are imperative for wellbeing because humans need to feel loved and cared for. this finding is supported by maslow’s (194 ) hierarchy of needs as the third level in this model is ‘belongingness and love needs’. this level includes social connections and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 relationships as a basic need which contributes to self-actualisation. ryan and deci (2001) included relationships as a basic need for all humans and seligman (2012, p.20) also comments; when was the last time you laughed uproariously? the last time you felt indescribable joy? the last time you sensed a profound meaning and purpose? the last time you felt enormously proud of an accomplishment? even without knowing the particulars of these highpoints in your life, i know their form: all of them took place with other people this statement implies that humans rely on connections with others to feel many different positive emotions. without these connections, individuals can feel isolated. literature about isolation and loneliness shows that it has a large association with negative mental and physical health (courtin & knapp, 2017), which has been shown in literature to be detrimental for wellbeing (courtin & knapp, 2017). adolescents highlighted that happiness can be transmitted from one individual to another; ‘if someone else is in a bad state of mind it can sometimes rub off on other people’. imply being around positive people is seen to be beneficial for wellbeing due to the influence of others’ mood on one's self and vice versa (povey, 2015). this finding is supported by bharara et al. (2019) who found that more than half of their sample valued positive friendships and family relationships as enhancers of wellbeing. social interactions are part of wellbeing models like perma ( eligman, 2004) and the united kingdom’s -ways to wellbeing (government office for science, 2008 [online]). hobbies were also discussed by adolescents as they provided the opportunity for young people to socially interact with others, have purpose and provided a distraction. the examples of hobbies discussed were sports, train spotting, drama and music (see table 3 above). feeling a sense of purpose within a eudaimonic philosophy greatly contributes to a feeling of wellbeing (deci & ryan, 2008). sport featured most and was often linked to the physical and psychological health benefits of participation and being outside but, more importantly the social interaction it promoted. mata et al. (2012) has shown young people gain a sense of belonging from being part of clubs at school which contributes to them having purpose (lijadi, 2018; mclellan & steward, 2015). sport clubs had a bigger impact on sense of belonging than academic, music, creative, language and agricultural clubs. these findings were linked to suicide rates and mata et al. (2012) concluded that extracurricular activities make a good intervention to decrease adolescent suicide risk. 5.2.2 context and wellbeing experts conceptualised wellbeing as being context specific and adolescents referred to context by detailing how different environments, such as school and sports clubs, can impact overall wellbeing. kelly (2018) also argues that wellbeing is contextual to the status of a population or an individual regarding illness and what strategies these individuals or populations have for maintaining good physical, psychological and spiritual wellness. headey and wearing (1992) however conclude that wellbeing is ‘fairly stable’. in addition, a eudaimonic philosophy states that wellbeing is developed over time with personal growth and development (boyko et al., 2017; waterman et al., 2010). this suggests that it is mood which changes in context, not wellbeing. in support, alexandrova, (2017) argues that wellbeing is something which is selfevaluated meaning that the individual is the subject of that context, thus it is not context specific to the individual. other's evaluations of a different individual's wellbeing can be context specific though. or example, a doctor’s evaluation of wellbeing will be in a different context to a friend’s http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 evaluation. environments such as school are concluded to be determinants of young people’s wellbeing rather than contexts which wellbeing can change in. 5.2.3 basic needs and material goods economic status can influence the experiences, quality of life and wellbeing an individual can have (gardner & oswald, 2007). this was identified by both experts and adolescents. the importance of satisfying human wants however is arguably not important for wellbeing as wants are often concerned with short term, hedonic pleasure (herath & ekanayake, 2017). in alignment with academic literature (alexandrova, 2017), young people understood that money and material goods are important to enable survival however, excesses of money and material goods were agreed to have a limited, if not no, impact on wellbeing. during the ranking activity material goods (new clothes and xbox) and money were consistently ranked as least impactful on wellbeing (see figure 3 above). alexandrova (2017) also explains that the influence of money is relative to the individual and their overall income as individuals spend money within their means. 6. limitations during interviews one of the initial questions was ‘what does the word wellbeing mean to you?’. occasionally, participants from group 2 stated they did not know. interviewing these young people about wellbeing then posed a challenge as the idea was to understand their views and opinions about a topic which they disclosed they did not know about. the interviewer did not comment on this to avoid biasing the interviewees opinions, also to not influence their own openminded approach to the topic. once these interviewees heard their peers discuss wellbeing, they contributed more during the interview. with the findings showing wellbeing was used interchangeably with happiness, this could explain the initial lack of understanding; alternatively, participants may have just been initially shy. this also infers not all young people are receiving education about wellbeing. a potential explanation for this is that because wellbeing is ambiguous, it makes it difficult to educate others about what it is and its importance. this provides support for the need of clarification regarding what young people’s wellbeing is. future studies should also adopt a focus group method when interviewing young people, as it enabled some participants to gain understanding on the topic and therefore, make meaningful contributions. 7. conclusion the need for a definition of adolescent’s wellbeing has been highlighted in literature (bharara et al, 2019). findings have been organised into three themes, holism, positive feelings, external influences. although there are similarities between expert’s and adolescent’s conceptualisations of wellbeing, there are some key differences. this supports the rationale for the creation of an explicit definition of young people’s wellbeing. individual differences within the same population must also be considered as they were discussed in relation to wellbeing in every interview. this is reflected in literature where some authors have used the term ‘sub ective wellbeing’ (goodman et al., 201 ; mansfield et al., 201 ; testoni, mansfield & dolan., 201 ; white et al., 2017; ees et al., 2010; diener et al., 1999) as an alternative to ‘wellbeing’. all social research using human participants, including the measurement of health, can be criticised for subjectivity and individual differences (bowling, 2017). this is not unique to wellbeing. the definition of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ adolescent wellbeing gennings, brown, & hewlett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 wellbeing therefore needs to be open to individual differences which the two broad themes ‘positive feelings’ and ‘external influences’ accommodate, tackling wellbeing’s ambiguity. adolescent’s wellbeing is multi-faceted and influenced by both positive feelings, such as happiness and evaluation of health, and external influences, such as connections and judgements. individual differences will influence the values placed on external influences of wellbeing. this makes defining a ‘normal’ level of wellbeing difficult (dodge et al., 2012). in conclusion, adolescent’s wellbeing is defined as: a multifaceted perception of an interaction between an individual’s positive feelings and external influences this definition is broad to encapsulate individual differences, but sill sets a parameter for what wellbeing is. ‘ erception’ relates to what the individual perceives of themselves. the term ‘interaction’ has been chosen to show that both positive feelings and external influences impact and affect each other. external influences and positive feelings alone do not define wellbeing but contribute to it, the interaction between external influences and positive feelings define an individual’s level of wellbeing. this interaction is continuous and how an individual perceives this interaction defines their level of wellbeing. an example within the context of this study is that the external influence ‘social interaction’ and the positive feeling ‘determination’ will both impact each other. if one is feeling determined, this may impact their social connection to others vice versa. the perception an individual has over this interaction defines their wellbeing. the proposed definition is based on adolescent’s conceptualisations of wellbeing, supported by a sample of expert’s conceptualisations. this definition should only be applied to the population of british adolescents aged 11 to 16 as this is where it was developed. future research should consult with different populations to make a definition of wellbeing specific to the population. acknowledgments with thanks to all those involved within the research and the schools and sports clubs who made it possible. authors ellie k. gennings university of winchester ellie.gennings@winchester.ac.uk hazel j. brown university of winchester denise hewlett university of winchester publishing timeline received 20 october 2020 revised version received 22 january 2021 accepted 24 january 2021 published 31 january 2021 references alexandrova, a. 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(2019). the crossroads of magic and wellbeing: a review of wellbeing-focused magic programs, empirical studies, and conceivable theories international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 4165. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.740 steven bagienski goldsmith university of london stevebagienski@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 41 article the crossroads of magic and wellbeing: a review of wellbeing-focused magic programs, empirical studies, and conceivable theories steven bagienski · gustav kuhn abstract: in recent years, magicians and scientists have begun collaborating to gain insight into various psychological functions. however, one underexplored area is the use of magic tricks to enhance wellbeing. several past and current magic programs have been used to enhance cognitive, emotional, social, and physical wellbeing. the application of these wellbeing-focused magic programs ranges from physical and psychological therapies to gang prevention, hospitals and classrooms. a few have been empirically investigated and additional studies have also explored the wellbeing value of magic. these studies are reviewed in light of a proposed hierarchical model based on how magic was applied. overall, methodologies need improvement but distinctions between levels of the hierarchy can still be observed and are discussed. furthermore, the positive effects on wellbeing can also be organised into interrelated physical, cognitive, social, and affective components that reflect existing theoretical frameworks on wellbeing. to conclude, possible mechanisms and theoretical frameworks based on more established psychological theories are discussed in order to help guide future research. keywords: awe, broaden-and-build, curiosity, creativity, positive emotions, social skills, motivation, motor skills, magic tricks 1. introduction magic is one of the most enduring forms of entertainment, and for thousands of years magicians have enchanted their audiences with their illusions. in recent years, magicians and scientists have started to collaborate in an attempt to develop a science of magic (kuhn, amlani, & rensink, 2008; rensink & kuhn, 2015a; rensink & kuhn, 2015b). this new approach has predominantly focused on magicians’ deceptive methods and the emotional experiences magic evokes, in order to explore a wide range of psychological functions (kuhn et al., 2008; macknik et al., 2008; thomas, didierjean, maquestiaux, & gygax, 2015). however, magic may also offer a valuable tool to enhance people’s wellbeing in a wide range of areas. in recent years, several programs have been established that use magic to enhance both mental and physical wellbeing, but much of this work has been poorly documented and few connections have been drawn between these different approaches. thus, the aim of this paper is to provide an up-to-date review of approaches that use magic to improve wellbeing and review them in light of the available empirical research. moreover, we provide a novel progressive hierarchy that organises current research and intervention programs, which will hopefully prove useful as a framework for future research on magic and perhaps extend to many different fields, since magic draws upon expertise http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 42 from a wide range of domains (rissanen, pitkänen, juvonen, kuhn, & hakkarainen, 2014). while there are likely some similarities with recent advances from other arts and wellbeing research (fancourt, 2017), we hope this hierarchy proves particularly useful as a framework for future research on understanding these magic-based approaches to wellbeing and ultimately the most befitting applications. the relationship to wellbeing can be partly understood by looking at the magical experience. magic deals with fundamental psychological principles such as consciousness, belief, and free will (kuhn et al., 2008; macknik et al., 2008; rensink & kuhn, 2015a; thomas et al., 2015), yet the experience remains poorly understood. however, in recent years, interdisciplinary endeavours have started to uncover some key factors. analyses from magicians (ortiz, 1994), philosophers (leddington, 2016), historians (lamont, 2017), psychologists (rensink & kuhn, 2015a; rensink & kuhn, 2015b; vidler & levine, 1981) and neuroscientists (parris, kuhn, mizon, benattayallah, & hodgson, 2009) all highlight one common explanation: magic elicits a conflict between what we believe to have experienced, and what we believe to be possible. this experience mirrors both harris’s (1994) work on child reactions to causal violations and berlyne’s (1954) distinction between epistemic and perceptual curiosity. the curiosity that naturally arises from this dissonance is particularly relevant to affective and cognitive domains of wellbeing. the affective components of the experience have also been described as a particular type of wonder (lamont, 2017; rensink & kuhn, 2015a), as pleasant, humorous, and highly memorable, due to intense curiosity (leddington, 2016), and as surprise being a major component of the curiosity (parris et al., 2009; vidler & levine, 1981). therefore, since knowledge-seeking positive emotions seem to be involved, watching magic tricks may enhance wellbeing via cognitive and affective domains. we will now shed light on some of these approaches, before discussing the empirical evaluations and theoretical frameworks. 2. wellbeing-focused magic programs there are currently many magic-based wellbeing programs implemented throughout health care. open heart magic, for instance, uses magic as a means to console and empower hospitalised children by performing and teaching interactive close-up magic at bedsides so children can perform for family and staff (hart & walton, 2010). this approach focuses on humour for its healing benefits, whereas the interactive nature makes it practical. similarly, academics have written on how this interactive component could inform medical practitioners about building rapport (kneebone, 2017), gaining trust, enhancing likeability, and becoming aware of nonverbal signals affecting patients’ decisions (sokol, 2008). in rehabilitation, we also find programs that employ magic in physical therapy. rehabracadabra, for instance, delivers workshops to occupational therapists on how to use magic tricks in physical therapy, with the aim of motivating clients, treating disorders, and constructing innovative, client-centred treatments (fisher, 2016). similarly, healing of magic is an american occupational therapy association approved program that teaches therapists tricks to use in their practice (see harte & spencer, 2014, for hand therapy analyses of the tricks). the program claims to facilitate daily living by improving attention, perception, cognition, motor skills, proprioception, speech, and psychosocial skills (spencer, n.d.). david copperfield’s project magic also uses magic tricks as rehabilitative tools for physical, psychological, and social disabilities (copperfield, 2013). similarly, breathe magic motivates children with hemiplegia (a neuromuscular condition causing partial paralysis) to engage in intensive physical therapy by teaching them magic (breathe magic, n.d.). rather than solely training therapists, however, crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 43 breathe magic utilises magicians who work alongside therapists to incorporate therapeutic movements directly into the tricks. magic has also been used in prison rehab as a psychological therapy for addictions and maladaptive behaviour. gareth foreman’s course combines magic with cognitive behavioural therapy (foreman, 2016) to help disengaged prisoners to actively participate in therapy. for example, the therapist first performs a magic trick, after which they brainstorm solutions for the trick. this approach garners interest, acts as an ice breaker, and helps them identify strengths that can be used in more lawful ways of problem solving. other combinations of magic with psychological therapy include school counselling (bowman, 1986) and psychotherapy with children (stehouwer, 1983). in a similar vein, magic has been employed for societal wellbeing via gang and crime prevention. streets of growth is a charity that used street magic to gain trust with adolescents who are susceptible to a destructive future in gangs, drugs, and crime (“darren way,” 2017; “streets of growth,” 2017). the rationale is that individuals who are easily lured toward destructive lifestyles are also attracted to magic because both involve showing off and gaining credibility amongst a group through deception. thus, the charity states that street magic can offer a valuable tool to connect with these youngsters and begin the process of building long-term relationships that lead to more promising futures for them. finally, magic has been applied in schools, especially for disabled students (see figure 1 below). hocus focus is a curriculum designed to motivate students with learning difficulties by utilising magic tricks, which teachers incorporate into their lessons. the program states that the magic creates curiosity and enhances self-esteem by giving students skills that their non-disabled peers cannot perform (spencer, 2011), which mirrors frith and walker’s (1983) rationale of teaching magic to empower handicapped students. others have suggested that magic would also be useful for teaching science (österblom et al., 2015) and psychology (solomon, 1980) to nondisabled students. figure 1. rationales and applications of using magic tricks in education. whilst several active programs use magic to enhance wellbeing, only a few have been empirically evaluated (green et al., 2013; kwong & cullen, 2007; spencer, 2012; sui & sui, 2007), and few connections have been made between approaches. the focus of this paper now turns to evidence in support of using magic to enhance wellbeing from an empirical and theoretical perspective, whilst providing a new framework to categorise the various approaches. crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 44 3. overview of empirical studies despite the prevalence of active magic programs and suggestions from academics, the empirical evidence for using magic tricks to enhance wellbeing is still very young. to date, there has only been one review on the topic, but this was limited to health-care applications, found only eight empirical studies, presumed humour to be the only relevant positive emotion, and was mostly descriptive, offering little theoretical insight (lam, lam, & chawla, 2017). we propose a more general approach and will discuss research on magic and wellbeing progressively, using the hierarchical model depicted (see figure 2 below), with each level acting as a foundation for the next. figure 2. progressive hierarchy stages for wellbeing effects of magic. for example, witnessing a magic trick is required before learning its secret. discovering the secret is required before one can perform magic. and performing experience is needed before one can teach with magic by integrating meaningful lessons or messages into the performance. thus, this review begins with studies on witnessing magic (without revealing secrets) and builds to ones where participants use magic tricks to teach (see table 1 below for details on samples, measures and effect sizes for the studies).1 this final stage pertains to the effects on the individual teaching with magic. this progressive structure also suggests that the wellbeing effects from higher levels build upon and retain the effects from lower levels. finally, to better understand distinctions between levels, these wellbeing effects are broadly organised into affective, cognitive, physical and social domains. 1 details of the systematic processes used to collate empirical studies can be found in the supplementary material. bagienski, s., & kuhn, g. (2019). the crossroads of magic and wellbeing: a review of wellbeing-focused magic programs, empirical studies, and conceivable theories international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 41-65. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.740 steven bagienski goldsmith university of london stevebagienski@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 41 table 1 summary of the quantitative measures used, types of analyses, and effect sizes in each study reference sample size & type quantitative measures analyses statistical results with effect sizes (if applicable) witnessing magic labrocca & piacentini (2015) n = 100 three to twelve-yearolds oucher scale (beyer, denyes, villarruel, 1992) to categorise if they felt venepuncture pain fisher’s exact test p = 0.0163, *φ = 0.261 lustig (1994) n = 266 self-selected students 5-point likert items assessing aids knowledge and self-efficacy in prevention behaviours before and after magic show t-tests on likert items knowledge items: mosquitoes (p < .001, *d = 0.383) donate blood (p = .005, *d = .319) look sick (p = .007, *d = .304) latex condom (p < .001, *d = .319) take off condoms (p = 0.446, n.s.) self-efficacy items: refuse sex (p = .003, .*d = 340) buy condoms (p = .524, n.s.) put on condoms (p < .001, *d = .319) take off condoms (p = .446, n.s.) moss, irons, boland (2017) n = 224 participants crowdsourced from www.microworkers.com need for cognition scale (cacioppo, petty, kao, 1984) engagement via absorption subscale of schoolwork engagement inventory one-way ancovas controlling for age, sex, and education need for cognition: f(3, 217) = 2.74, p = .044, η2 = .0014. engagement: 45 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.microworkers.com/ crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 46 (salmela-aro, upadaya, 2012) comprehension test of tutorial material (6-item true/false) f(3, 217) = 2.86, p = .038, η2 = .0041. comprehension f(3, 217) < 1, p = .441, η2 = .0011. . peretz & gluck (2005) n = 70 three to six-year-olds with strong-willed behaviour time to dental chair ability to take dental radiographs t-test for time to chair chi-square for radiographs time to dental chair (p = .001, *d = .864) radiographs (p = .0013, *φ = 0.261) . subbotsky (2010) experiment 1: children n1 = 28 4-yr-olds n2 = 28 6-yr-olds (p = .009) n3 = 28 9-yr-olds (p = .0002) experiment 2: adults n = 32 college students experiment 3: adults n = 34 college students experiment 4: adults n = 33 college students curiosity measured as proportion of participants who wanted to explore a magical vs counter intuitive non-magical effect, with varying levels of risk response frequencies of whether or not participant acknowledged the possibility of true magic in what they saw fisher’s exact tests experiment 1: children 4-yr-olds (p = .0007, *φ = 0.658) 6-yr-olds (p = .009, *φ = 0.512) 9-yr-olds (p = .0002, *φ = 0.722) experiment 2: adults college students (p = .003, *φ = 0.529) experiment 3: adults higher risk (p = .017, *φ = 0.417) highest risk (p = .08, n.s.) experiment 4: adults zero risk (p = .48, n.s.) possibility of magic (p < .001, *φ = 1.215) . subbotsky, hysted, jones (2010) experiment 1 n1 = 25 4-yr-olds n2 = 27 6-yr-olds experiment 2 n1 = 32 6-yr-old children n2 = 32 8-yr-old children thinking creatively in action and movement test (torrance, 1981) blinded ratings of originality and non-reality for drawings of non-existent objects two-way anovas with summarised scores for fluency, originality, and imagination as dvs t-tests for drawings experiment 1, main effects of film: fluency (f1,48 = 14.14, p < .001; η2 = 0.2) originality (f1,48 = 21.11, p < .001; η2 = 0.3) imagination (f1,48 = 73.66, p < .001; η2 = 0.6) experiment 1, drawings by 6-yr-olds originality score (p < .001; d = 2.2) non-reality score (p < .001; d = 2.8) crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 47 magical thinking questionnaire (bolton, dearsley, madronal-luque, baron-cohen, 2002) two-way anova for magical thinking scores experiment 2, main effects of film fluency (f1,60 = 14.95, p < .001; η2 = 0.21) originality (f1,60 = 22.63, p < .001; η2 = 0.27) imagination (f1,60 = 21.82, p < .001; η2 = 0.27) experiment 2, drawings by 6-yr-olds originality score (p < .01, d = 1.5) non-reality score (p < .05, d = 0.7) experiment 2, drawings by 8-yr-olds no significant effects in all experiments, no significant effects for: interaction effects magical thinking scores vagnoli, caprilli, robiglio, messeri (2005) n = 40 italian children modified yale preoperative anxiety scale (kain et al., 1997) for child anxiety state-trait anxiety inventory (spielberger, 1983) for parent anxiety self evaluation forms for clowns one-way anovas repeated-measures anovas pearson correlation coefficients child anxiety during anaesthesia induction **(f1,38 = 14.896; p = .001, *η2 = .282) control group anxiety increase **(f1,19 = 21.253; p = .001, *η2 = .999 ) clown group correlation for child anxiety between waiting & induction room (r = 0.93; p < .001) correlation of self-evaluations with child anxiety waiting room (r = 0.83; p < .001) induction room (r = .77; p < .001) no other significant correlations or effects with parent anxiety crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 48 discovering magic secrets danek, fraps, von müller, grothe, öllinger. (2014) n = 42 adults ratings on 5 dimensions of insight moments experienced repeated measures anova pairwise post hoc comparisons of highest (happiness) and lowest (impasse) rated dimensions main effect of insight dimension **(f4,41 = 16.43, p< .01, η2 = .268) post hoc comparisons: happiness higher than all other dimensions (p < .05) impasse lower than all other dimensions (p < .05) hilas & politis (2014) n = 77 students (34 students in control semester, 33 in semester with new teaching approach) 5-point likert items in course evaluation surveys t-tests between semesters t-tests between average of all other courses within department **between semesters ( p = 1.43e-05, *d = .456) **between courses ( p = 7.25e-08, *d = .586) performing magic ezell & klein-ezell (2003) n = 26 children with disabilities self image domain of student self concept scale (gresham, elliott, evansfernandez, 1993) t-test comparing means before and after intervention increase after intervention (p < .001, d = .875) green et al. (2013) n = 22 hemiplegic children assisting hand assessment (holmefur, aarts, krumlinde-sundholm, 2009) children’s hand experience questionnaire (sköld, hermansson, krumlinde‐ sundholm, eliasson, 2011) repeated measures anova assisting hand assessment: (f2,19 = 8.87, p = .002, η2 = .48) children’s hand-use experience questionnaire: (f2,19=12.93, p < .001, η2 = .58) crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 49 no significant interaction effects . kwong & cullen (2007) n = 5 euroqol eq-5d health questionnaire (euroqol group, 2005) rosenberg self-esteem scale (rosenberg, 1979) rand 36-item short-form health survey (ware & sherbourne, 1992) t-tests before and after intervention euroqol eq-5d (p = 0.20, n.s.) rosenberg self-esteem scale (p = 0.20, n.s.) rand health survey subscales: energy/fatigue (p = .02, *d = 1.436) no significant changes for all other subscales levin (2006) n = 6 resident adolescents in psychiatric hospital rosenberg self-esteem scale (rosenberg, 1979) n/a n/a significance testing not calculated . lyons & menolotto (1990) affect and meaning of magic via response frequencies after the intervention only n/a n/a significance testing not calculated spencer (2012)* n = 32 to 44 students hocus focus self-efficacy scale rosenberg self-esteem scale not reported; only a visual graph of means reported n/a significance levels and means not explicitly reported . sui & sui (2007) n = 40 schizophrenic and depressed patients chinese general selfefficacy scale (chiu & tsang, 2004) personal well-being index (cummins, eckersley, pallant, van vugt, misajon, 2003) t-tests on overall score before and after intervention t-tests on individual items of scales self-efficacy (n.s. for overall score) question on identifying multiple solutions: (p < .05, *d = .698) personal wellbeing index (p < .05, *d = 0.370) question on interpersonal relationships: (p < .05, *d = .482) crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 50 note: for lustig (1994), no standard deviations were reported, so effect size was calculated using degrees of freedom and t-statistic. an estimate of the t-statistic was obtained by using the quantile function in r statistical software. the abbreviation “n.s.” indicates “not significant.” * where effect sizes were not reported, we have manually calculated effect size from given data, if possible. ** these degrees of freedom or f statistics differ from what was reported in the original paper due to either typos or a likely misinterpretation of the analysis method used by the authors, which was confirmed via correspondence with the authors. purdue pegboard test (desrosiers, hebert, bravo, dutil, 1995) question on society integration: (p < .05, *d = .554) purdue pegboard left hand (p < .05, *d = .198) right hand (p < .05, *d = .142) both hands (p < .05, *d = .604) teaching with magic papalaskari et al. (2006) n/a purely qualitative measures from focus groups and exit surveys n/a no quantitative measures papalaskari et al. (2007) n/a purely qualitative measures from focus groups and exit surveys n/a no quantitative measures spencer (2012)* n/a purely qualitative measures from teacher notes & surveys n/a no quantitative measures bagienski, s., & kuhn, g. (2019). the crossroads of magic and wellbeing: a review of wellbeing-focused magic programs, empirical studies, and conceivable theories international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 4165. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.740 steven bagienski goldsmith university of london stevebagienski@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 41 3.1 witnessing magic the first level of the hierarchy is the simple act of witnessing a magic performance. we will now discuss and evaluate the empirical evidence for effects of witnessing magic, which include both affective and cognitive components of wellbeing, predominantly as creativity, heightened curiosity and the ways this curiosity has been applied. enhanced curiosity in response to impossible events was observed in a series of empirical experiments where magical explanations to an anomalous event (the disappearance or destruction of an object) elicited more curiosity than those without a magical explanation, for both children and adults (subbotsky, 2010). effect sizes were large (see table 1) and the curiosity to explore the anomalous event was influenced by the amount of associated risk. similarly, harris (1994) reviewed studies of children’s reactions to unexpected, impossible events (e.g. magic tricks), concluding that whilst surprise is an element, it is only one part of an evolving reaction that ultimately leads to efforts in explaining the impossible event. this drive to acquire knowledge is also a defining feature of berlyne’s (1954) theory of epistemic curiosity, and reflects the curiosity framework of kashdan et al. (2018), namely, the dimensions of joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity (drive to solve problems), and stress tolerance (willingness to embrace distress from mysterious events). thus, feeling intensely curious appears to be a predominant response to witnessing magic. this curiosity from magic has also been applied as a pain or behavioural management tool, where tricks are used as a distraction therapy. for example, labrocca and piacentini (2015) showed that distracting children with magic tricks can reduce venepuncture pain. another study in the hospital setting entailed clowns performing tricks for children to reduce pre-operation anxiety (vagnoli et al., 2005) in the waiting room and during anaesthesia. researchers and staff found this entertainment to indeed relieve children’s anxiety, but staff felt it may not be practical, due to the clowns’ interference with operating room procedures. magic as a distraction technique has also been used by dentists to deal with difficult to manage, strong-willed children (peretz & gluck, 2005). the experiment showed that magic tricks yielded significant improvements in the amount of time taken to enter the dental chair, the number of successful radiographs taken, and cooperativeness of children when compared to traditional “tell-show-do” techniques. the researchers did not investigate why it was effective but suggested that magic caused children to perceive the dentist as a playful and approachable ally, thus reducing anxiety at the core of the troublesome behaviour. while enhanced curiosity appears to be characteristic of watching magic, this curiosity might be localised to the content within the trick itself, so care must be taken to ensure it does not distract from the intended focus, such as a teacher’s lesson. moss et al. (2017) investigated this effect by measuring (1) engagement during a lecture video, (2) motivation to think effortfully about an upcoming task (need for cognition), and (3) comprehension of the lecture content after participants first watched magic or circus videos, or did not watch videos. results (see table 1) indicated that not revealing the trick's secret decreased motivation to think effortfully but did not affect the comprehension test scores. the decreased motivation for effortful thinking was consistent with their hypothesis that ruminating on how the trick was done would distract from subsequent learning. furthermore, engagement decreased when participants viewed the magic, which the authors attributed to the contrast of an interesting magic trick to less interesting lecture material. therefore, while witnessing magic can enhance curiosity, it may not transfer to 51 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 52 subsequent teachings, and a better approach may be embedding lessons directly into the trick’s performance. there is also evidence suggesting that witnessing magical content may enhance cognition through creativity. subbotsky, hysted, and jones (2010) showed children films with either magical or non-magical content and found higher scores on creativity tests for participants who watched the magical scenes (see table 1). while witnessing magical content and witnessing magic tricks are not identical (lamont, 2017; leddington, 2016), they do, however, share the same component of watching impossible events. if this impossible event is responsible for enhancing creativity, we would therefore expect this effect to also transfer over to magic tricks. watching magic tricks has also been applied to public health in the form of an aids themed magic show for teenage students (lustig, 1994), which was shown to increase self-efficacy for condom usage, aids knowledge, and the ability to refuse sex with small to medium effect sizes (see table 1). however, since questionnaires were administered immediately after the show, we know little about its long-term impact. in sum, witnessing magic may prove beneficial in enhancing cognitive wellbeing through increased creativity, perhaps affective wellbeing through self-efficacy, and both affective and cognitive wellbeing through increased curiosity. this intense curiosity appears to be prevalent in witnessing magic, which has been used as a distraction to manage perceived pain (labrocca & piacentini, 2015), anxiety (vagnoli et al., 2005) or troublesome behaviour stemming from anxiety (peretz & gluck, 2005). when this attention-grabbing aspect is used to teach, however, it does not necessarily transfer to subsequent information presented, especially if secrets are withheld. 3.2 discovering magic secrets the act of discovering secret knowledge, as in a magic trick, may also enhance affective wellbeing. danek et al. (2014) used magic tricks to investigate insight experiences. participants repeatedly watched magic tricks until they figured out the secret, and both quantitative affective measures and qualitative self-reports were administered. the qualitative measures showed themes of physiological arousal, cognitive aspects related to problem solving, and emotional aspects related to happiness, tension-release, or pride. of the quantitative variables, happiness (as measured via analogue scales between “unpleasant” and “pleasant”) was the most characteristic of these insight experiences. since this happiness came from problem solving, it may enhance both affective and cognitive wellbeing during the magic learning process, but future studies are needed to clarify how this differs from simply being told secrets, with no active effort to discover secrets. a more applied study used magic tricks to teach material in a computer science course (hilas & politis, 2014). the new teaching approach incorporated mathematical magic tricks, games, and drama as part of a new curriculum. they used a “mind-reading” trick where students mentally chose a number that the instructor could reliably reveal, with seemingly little information. students were encouraged to discover how it worked, culminating with the instructor describing how the trick’s secret utilised a computer science principle. using a prior semester as the control, results showed significant increases in course evaluation scores (measuring positive affect as enthusiasm, interest, and motivation) with a medium effect size, raising it to the highest rated course in the department. while the inclusion of drama and games confounds effects from the magic trick, it is likely that at least some of the positive affect arose from discovering the secret to the magic trick (see danek et al., 2014). crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 53 overall, discovering secrets of magic may increase wellbeing through happiness, exhibited as pride or tension-release (danek et al., 2014). this distinction builds upon the review by lam et al. (2017) which highlighted humour as the predominant affective component. the study by danek et al. (2014), however, clearly shows that humour is not the only affective component, because videos were devoid of humour, yet still enhanced happiness. as noted earlier, this encouragement to figure out magic tricks was also a focus of foreman’s (2016) cognitivebehavioural therapy program and of hilas and politis’s (2014) new teaching approach, which showed increased positive affect in course evaluation surveys. while more research would help clarify the wellbeing effects of discovering secrets of magic, the available evidence suggests an impact on cognitive and affective wellbeing when discovering secrets of magic. 3.3 performing magic most of the empirical studies on magic and wellbeing involve teaching participants to perform magic. as will now be seen, higher wellbeing is observed in affective, cognitive, physical, and social domains in these studies. the first is an empirical evaluation of the aforementioned breathe magic program, which delivers intensive physical therapy through magic lessons during a 2-week summer camp (green et al., 2013). researchers measured hand-use of hemiplegic children and found improvements with a large effect size in independently performing bimanual tasks with the hemiplegic hand at both the end of camp and a 3-month follow-up. subsequent data collected by breathe magic suggests that these improvements were also maintained at 6-month follow-up assessments (breathe magic, n.d.). beyond physical wellbeing, researchers also observed positive feedback from the children and noted the importance of the communal context. meanwhile, the healing of magic program was investigated in two studies. the first involved 11 acquired brain injury patients (kwong & cullen, 2007) who were taught magic using the healing of magic manual and were interviewed about the program. only five completed the quantitative questionnaires on quality of life, self-esteem, and general health, with results only showing significant improvement for items measuring participants’ energy and fatigue levels. however, it is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions due to the small sample size. the second study utilising the healing of magic program involved mentally ill patients (sui & sui, 2007). hospital staff were trained on the therapeutic use of magic tricks, which they taught to patients. researchers used a within-subject design to measure personal wellbeing, selfefficacy, and various motor skills. as outlined in table 1, results showed small to medium effect sizes for personal wellbeing and motor skills. although the overall score for the self-efficacy scale was non-significant, one particular question that did change significantly reflected divergent thinking, as also seen in the prior study on witnessing magic (subbotsky et al., 2010). interestingly, the personal wellbeing scores were also driven by questions about social skills instead of curiosity. interviews also revealed that patients felt motivated and engaged, and experienced many positive emotions. taken altogether, motor skill improvements were attributed to consistent physical practice, whereas affective benefits appeared to be socially and cognitively driven. another study in the psychiatric setting entailed psychotic patients learning and practicing tricks, culminating in a final performance (lyons & menolotto, 1990). researchers measured patients’ affective perceptions and perceived benefits from the magic, with the highest rated crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 54 affective item describing magic as “sociable.” for the perceived benefits, the highest rated items were that it helped patients relax, learn something new, and feel worthwhile. however, the study had no statistical analyses, no pre-intervention measures, and a small, perhaps biased sample of only self-selected patients interested in magic. furthermore, their illnesses may have created inaccurate responses. despite the flawed methodology, however, it is interesting that affective measures showed sociability, mirroring results from sui & sui’s (2007) study. this social component of performing magic may be a reasonable focus for future experiments on psychiatric samples. one final study in the psychiatric setting involved a sample of pre-adolescent boys (levin, 2006). again, participants learned, practiced, and performed magic tricks. pre and post invention measures were taken, with results indicating numerical increases in self-esteem, and decreases in interpersonal boundary violations and timeouts. however, no confidence levels or significance tests were calculated, likely due to the small sample, thus warranting replication attempts with larger samples. in the educational setting, ezell and klein-ezell (2003) conducted an experiment with mentally and physically disabled elementary school students. students were taught various magic tricks by older university students whose lessons followed frith and walker’s (1983) guidelines on teaching magic to handicapped children. these university students provided encouragement, helped the children practice, and measured their self-confidence. when both felt confident, children were given opportunities to perform for younger students and non-disabled peers. results showed significant increases in self-confidence with a large effect size, which was attributed to magic giving the children an exclusive skill that their non-disabled peers lacked. in summary, this study provides some evidence that performing magic can increase affective wellbeing in disabled students. a more comprehensive study in the educational setting utilised the aforementioned hocus focus curriculum (spencer, 2012) with disabled students in three separate schools. an array of measurements was taken, which included interviews, journals, the rosenberg (1979) self-esteem scale and the hocus focus self-efficacy scale, which were taken before, midway through, and after the course. teachers also completed student observations, kept anecdotal records, were interviewed about their experience, and filled out questionnaires. questionnaires varied, based on what the specific school wanted to improve, such as cognitive ability, social behaviours, frustration tolerance, or self-advocacy skills. qualitative results from both teacherand student-reported measures reflected improvements in affective, social, and cognitive wellbeing. affective wellbeing was observed in themes of enhanced self-determination, self-esteem, motivation, and other positive behaviours. social wellbeing was observed as better rapport with students, better leadership and social skills, positive peer relationships, more participation, and students mentoring each other. cognitive wellbeing was observed as improvements in engagement, concentration, memory, ability to follow directions, and curiosity (as already seen in witnessing magic). however, the social skill improvements were seen only in the schools that included the performing aspects, thus suggesting that social wellbeing only emerges from performing magic. overall, spencer’s study (2012) provides good qualitative evidence for using magic to enhance wellbeing in affective, social, and cognitive domains for a diverse sample of disabled students. unfortunately, the quantitative evidence was only reported in a visual graph and only for one school. further limitations include inconsistent methodologies between schools and no crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 55 statistical significance testing, mirroring shortcomings in two of the psychiatric studies (levin, 2006; lyons & menolotto, 1990). in summary, social and motor skill benefits emerge when participants perform magic, while also retaining some affective and cognitive benefits from witnessing magic and discovering its secrets. many different approaches have been used, but only a few studies (green et al., 2013; ezell & klein-ezell, 2003; sui & sui, 2007) had reasonable quantitative methodologies. this is not to say that the ample qualitative evidence (e.g. spencer, 2012) is to be disregarded, but rather, that initial evidence shows enough positive effects to warrant further research. 3.4 teaching with magic only a few empirical studies investigated the wellbeing effect on the teacher when implementing magic. first were the teacher interviews from spencer’s study (spencer, 2012), which revealed that teachers felt more confident and effective at teaching, as well as more job satisfaction from both their own personal growth and the personal growth they contributed to within their students. the second study utilised a 2-week summer camp designed to attract and retain student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers (papalaskari et al., 2006; papalaskari et al., 2007). for the first week, older children were trained to mentor younger apprentices by learning science, theatre, magical illusions, and problem solving. these skills were used to create educational performances that centred around a harry potter inspired, “american school of magic” theme. during the second week, these young mentors used their performances to teach science to apprentices, which embedded scientific explanations directly into the tricks. results from exit surveys and focus groups showed that mentors gained a deeper appreciation for science, theatre, and teaching careers, while both mentors and apprentices found it to be entertaining, exciting, and intensely enjoyable. since these interviews were purely qualitative and only taken after the intervention, methodology was rather weak and it was difficult to draw firm conclusions. nevertheless, one similarity we see in both of these approaches is a deeper appreciation of teaching, perhaps from witnessing the positive impact they had on their students. 4. discussion applications for magic to enhance wellbeing in physical, affective, cognitive, and social domains are evident throughout both active programs and emerging empirical studies. these domains reflect some physical health outcomes in addition to the elements of wellbeing from seligman’s (2011, pp 16-25) wellbeing theory, namely, positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment (perma). we propose a progressive hierarchical model of magic and wellbeing that progresses from watching magic to teaching with magic. this model reveals unique benefits emerging at each stage, with at least some benefits retained and accumulated when moving up the hierarchy (figure 2), namely, divergent creativity (sui & sui, 2007; subbotsky et al., 2010) and qualitative evidence on the similar constructs of pride (danek et al., 2014), self-confidence (ezell & klein-ezell, 2003), and self-esteem (spencer, 2012). in the first stage of witnessing magic, positive emotions and engagement are exhibited as curiosity, interest, and its application as a distraction therapy. in the next stage, positive emotions and accomplishment are seen as happiness stemming from pride and tension-release when secrets are discovered. additional improvements in social and motor skills only emerge once participants reach the stage of performing magic, which reflects relationships and perhaps more crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 56 accomplishment in terms of the perma framework (seligman, 2011). one distinction between stages is that the use of magic as a curiosity-inspired distraction tool helps manage difficult children with inflated self-esteem, whereas learning to perform magic helps uplift children with low self-esteem. only two studies investigated effects of teaching with magic where the only distinct benefit from prior stages was a deeper appreciation for teaching, which may reflect meaning in the perma framework (seligman, 2011) because the teachers saw the positive impact contributed to their students. figure 3. magic and wellbeing hierarchy, highlighting the unique benefits that emerge in each stage in addition to those from lower stages. these observations are not surprising, since elements of perma are moderately correlated (goodman, disabato, kashdan, & kauffman, 2018), but we do hypothesise magic to be particularly unique and useful in the high degree of curiosity it inspires, due to its secretive nature, and in its frequent reliance on both astute social skills and a broad spectrum of motor movements. however, future research is still required, since many studies lack scientific rigour, do not control for third variables (e.g. humour, learning a new skill) and few investigated mechanisms for how magic specifically affects the building blocks of wellbeing. additionally, it is not clear whether certain benefits are more applicable for certain samples. for example, many samples involved children or handicapped individuals. however, some of the higher quality studies indicate that the ability to inspire intense curiosity (subbotsky, 2010) and how that curiosity acts as a distraction (labrocca & piacentini, 2015; peretz & gluck, 2005; moss et al., 2017; vagnoli et al., 2005) are common in both healthy children and well-functioning adults who witness magic. additionally, different types of curious people (kashdan et al., 2018), might predict spectators who actively try to find the secret as opposed to those who watch passively. finally, different genres of magic may yield different responses. nevertheless, the current evidence will guide the remainder of this section, which discusses theoretical explanations that draw upon more established psychological research. one overarching feature emerging from the empirical studies is the ability of magic to create curiosity and capture people’s interest. this interest has been utilised in a range of domains, such as distraction therapies (labrocca & piacentini, 2015; peretz & gluck, 2005; vagnoli et al., 2005), teaching in schools (hilas & politis, 2014; spencer, 2012), and physical therapies (green et al., 2013) as an engaging and motivating tool. it is likely that these approaches create intrinsically motivated experiences, since fun and positive emotions are often present, which are intrinsically motivating and pursued for their own sake (jayawickreme, forgeard, & seligman, 2012). these experiences are also indicative of the joyous curiosity dimension in the curiosity framework of crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 57 kashdan et al. (2018), which relates to the joy of seeking out new knowledge and information. the other dimensions of curiosity might also be related, as discussed in the following sections, where different elements of wellbeing are considered, suggesting possible theoretical mechanisms at play in the hierarchy of magic and wellbeing. 4.1 witnessing magic as noted earlier, intense curiosity commonly results from witnessing magic. curiosity, however, is more than an intellectually engaging phenomenon: it is an emotion that is often associated with positive affect via pleasurable exploratory processes (csikszentmihályi, 1990; kashdan et al., 2018; kashdan, rose, & fincham, 2004). this pleasurable exploratory process seen in magic would be the joyous exploration dimension from kashdan et al.’s (2018) recent work where they consolidate the different perspectives in curiosity research into a scale that gave five distinct dimensions. their analysis indicated that this type had the second highest association with wellbeing measures. the dimension they found most associated with wellbeing is stress tolerance, which entails a willingness to embrace doubt or confusion that arises from unexpected or mysterious events. witnessing magic is an unexpected (parris et al., 2009) and mysterious event, yet these intense emotions are experienced in a safe and entertaining environment (leddington, 2017). thus, the enjoyment and wonder from magic might help condition people’s attitudes toward uncertainty and help them embrace this uncertainty. how to best use the curiosity from magic in learning environments is still unclear, but one important factor might be whether lessons are embedded either within the trick’s performance or within its secret, as suggested by moss et al. (2017). further evidence for this suggestion comes from gruber, gelman, & ranganath (2014), who showed that memory improved during states of high curiosity, and how students participate more when curious (park, tsukayama, goodwin, patrick, & duckworth, 2017). therefore, embedding lesson material within the presentation or explanation of a trick (rather than afterwards) could be a fruitful avenue for future research. another positive emotion that witnessing magic might elicit is awe. keltner and haidt’s (2003) framework of awe has two main components that are relevant to magic: a need to assimilate the experience into one’s current mental structures and a perceived sense of vastness. the need for assimilation results from the cognitive conflict that is at the core of the magical experience (lamont, 2017; leddington, 2016; rensink & kuhn, 2015a). the second condition of perceived vastness is also met, because, as a spectator watches an effective magic trick, every possible explanation that they imagine would be disproven (lamont, 2017; leddington, 2016; ortiz, 1994; rensink & kuhn, 2015a). because of this, they become aware of a vast number of possible explanations that must exist, including an unknown correct one that exceeds their current knowledge. thus, the spectator becomes cognisant of how limited their understanding truly is, even for very fundamental perceptions of our universe created by our senses. however, it is unclear whether this experience diminishes self-interest, as observed in other awe research (bai et al., 2017), or whether it offers a unique exception. one possibility is that magic tricks elicit an emotion that lies at the intersection of awe and curiosity, namely, that of wonder. this positive emotion of wonder would align with both (1) observations of emotional gradients between awe and curiosity (cowen & keltner, 2017), and (2) a theoretical framework by pritchard (billingsley, abedin, & chappell, 2018) suggesting that the distinction between awe and wonder is that wonder has a participatory element. meanwhile, positive emotions may also explain how creativity increases from witnessing magic (subbotsky et al., 2010). creativity involves both divergent thinking where multiple ideas crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 58 are generated, and convergent thinking where a selection from those ideas is made (fürst, ghisletta, & lubart, 2014). subbotsky et al.’s (2010) study on watching magical content focused only on divergent thinking, which aligns with the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (fredrickson, 1998). this theory argues that positive emotions exist in order to broaden mental resources and build them over time. in the case of witnessing magic, the positive emotion of curiosity would broaden by generating multiple imagined realities for a magical film (subbotsky et al., 2010) or by generating multiple imagined solutions for a magic trick, thus creating a motivation to explore (subbotsky, 2010). in both cases, curiosity comes from witnessing apparently impossible moments. 4.2 discovering the secret of magic the specific insight moment from discovering a trick’s secret was also associated with happiness, as measured by analogue scales ranging from “unpleasant” to “pleasant,” with qualitative reports showing that these positive feelings came from tension-release and pride (danek et al., 2014). this is consistent with literature on solving other types of insight problems (i.e. verbal, special, or mathematical puzzles), in that positive affect is a core characteristic of insight experiences (canestrari, branchini, bianchi, savardi, & burro, 2018; topolinski & reber, 2010). hilas & politis (2014) also explicitly instructed participants to discover the secret, and while the effect of this encouragement is still unclear, the urge to discover the secret might naturally be motivated by the curiosity from watching magic tricks, regardless of instruction. once the secret is discovered, an insight experience occurs, with the emotion of pride and a sense of accomplishment that seems to emerge at this stage. this pride, along with the initial curiosity, may then create desire in replicating the trick oneself, thus motivating the learning and performing of the trick. 4.3 performing magic one of the most apparent uses for learning and performing magic is to increase physical wellbeing through developing motor skills in physical therapy. magicians use sleight of hand and carefully controlled body language to achieve the necessary deception for the magical effect. the sleights involve ultra-fine dextrous movements, whereas the magician’s misdirection via his gaze, gestures, or body angle involves larger bodily movements. because of this wide range of both fine and gross physical movements, the design of magic tricks can be effectively integrated with physical therapy exercises. however, there is likely more than just the physical movements that can explain the physical health outcomes. the art of magic is a form of entertainment, and therefore witnessing magic contains a great deal of positive emotions, which may play a role in two ways. firstly, these positive emotions would motivate individuals to carry out the monotonous tasks of physical therapy under the guise of fun and engaging magic lessons (presumably via curiosity, awe, or pride from insight experiences). secondly, once the learning begins, the positive emotions themselves may contribute to physical health. positive emotions have been linked to a wide range of beneficial physical health outcomes that may operate on fundamental physiological processes (diener, pressman, hunter, & delgadillo-chase, 2017). these include resistance to infectious disease (cohen, alper, doyle, treanor, & turner, 2006), reduced risk of heart disease (davidson, mostofsky, & whang, 2010; tindle et al., 2009) and lower all-cause mortality (xu & roberts, 2010). therefore, these beneficial physiological effects of positive emotions may also extend to physical therapy outcomes. if so, the presence of positive emotions when watching, learning, or performing magic tricks would further explain their effectiveness in enhancing crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 59 physical wellbeing via motor skills (green et al., 2013; spencer, 2012; sui & sui, 2007), and reducing venepuncture pain (labrocca & piacentini, 2015). additionally, performing magic up close could be a good fit for enhancing social relationships by utilising social skills that encourage positive relationships (spencer, 2012; sui & sui, 2007). two prominent features of positive relationships are the act of sharing good news and responding to it actively and constructively (gable, reis, impett, & asher, 2004; gable, gonzaga, & strachman, 2006). these active constructive responses are characterised by enthusiasm and encouraging the bearer of good news to relive that moment, thus capitalising on the associated positive emotions. these responses may account for why the improved relationship skills emerged only in studies teaching participants to perform magic. as previously noted, magic tricks elicit curiosity, especially if a magical causation is suggested (subbotsky, 2010). this curiosity reflects the constructive part of an active constructive response, where the person genuinely wants to learn more about the good news. in the case of magic, the “good news” is the ability to execute a trick successfully, which is shared by performing it. moreover, surprise is a strong candidate for the experience of watching magic tricks (harris, 1994; parris et al., 2009; vidler & levine, 1981). when this surprise is combined with positive affect, the resulting emotion resembles enthusiasm, which is the remaining part of an active constructive response. therefore, the nature of performing magic tricks is hypothesised to enhance social wellbeing by encouraging active constructive responses, which cultivate positive relationships (reis et al., 2010) and may partially explain the unique manner of how magical expertise is predominantly developed from informal social settings (rissanen et al., 2014). once these active-constructive responses are initiated, the close-up magician will surely see the emotional reaction of spectators, because the deception for magic tricks often requires making eye contact. eye contact also triggers mimicry of facial expressions between two individuals, which in turn creates a synergistic, embodied experience of the emotions (niedenthal, mermillod, maringer, & hess, 2010). therefore, the magician also experiences the spectator’s positive emotions, which then reverberates back and forth between performer and spectators throughout the performance, thus creating an upward spiral of positive emotions. as a result, a positive rapport occurs, which could ultimately grow into meaningful relationships, as positive emotions are crucial for their formation (waugh & fredrickson, 2006). the link between such relationships and lifetime psychological wellbeing is also well established (lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005), so one mechanism for performing magic to increase wellbeing is hypothesised to be the cultivation of social relationships. one important distinction, however, is that these social wellbeing improvements would presumably be stronger for small, live audiences where eye contact is less restricted, compared to video-recorded or larger stage performances. other benefits of performing were increases in pride, confidence and self-esteem (ezell, & klein-ezell, 2003; spencer, 2012; sui & sui, 2007), but there are limitations on understanding their source. for example, pride may arise from a successful performance, or from successfully guessing secrets to magic tricks, as in danek et al.’s (2014) study. it is also unclear whether these wellbeing benefits stem from practicing the tricks or performing them, since none of the studies controlled for this distinction. 4.4 teaching with magic one final, unclarified distinction is whether teaching with magic performances yields any unique benefits beyond those of performing magic. when children used magic to teach younger children, it resulted in deeper appreciation for the professions involved (papalaskari 2006; papalaskari, 2007). similarly, the qualitative data from teachers in spencer’s (2012) study indicated a deeper appreciation of teaching. in both instances, the participants contributed an crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 60 enjoyable learning experience to their students, which resembles the meaning element of the perma framework (seligman, 2011), because meaning in this framework is indicative of serving something greater than the self (i.e. the students). therefore, this meaningful appreciation of teaching might come from a noble sense of contribution rather than positive affect. while this may not necessarily be unique to magic, the added aspect of paying forward the benefits of witnessing magic to others nevertheless makes it a worthwhile line of future research. 5. conclusions and implications magic is an ancient entertainment form, and in the last decade we have witnessed growing scientific interest in understanding the experience of magic (leddington, 2016; lamont, 2017; rensink & kuhn, 2015a), as well as cognitive mechanisms that enable magicians to create these unique experiences (kuhn, caffaratti, teszka, rensink, 2014). the science of magic has started to build bridges between the scientific community and magicians’ applied psychological knowledge and experience. as seen in this review, magic has also been used to enhance wellbeing in physical, affective, cognitive, and social domains throughout both active programs and emerging empirical studies. in both, we observe the use of magic as a motivating tool. a common application for these programs is physical therapy, but other settings include schools, hospitals, psychological therapy, and lifestyle intervention. empirical studies show positive effects, but many have weak methodologies, warranting further research. despite the shortcomings, we have observed that witnessing magic enhances affective and cognitive wellbeing by inspiring intense curiosity and interest, which have been used as a distraction therapy. we believe that this ability to capture interest, along with feelings of awe, may be fundamental to the emotional experience of well-performed magic. this combination of curiosity and awe can be thought of as wonder. thus, magic would be ideal for future research avenues on the scientific study of wonder. the timing for such research is also opportune, considering the recent strides in measuring both curiosity (kashdan et al., 2018 ) and awe (yaden et al., 2018). the implications of such research in positive psychology interventions are large, as the first step is capturing interest so that individuals can fully focus on what matters. additionally, it is possible that the wellbeing benefits of curiosity and awe transfer to experiences of wonder. for curiosity, the dimensions most relevant might be joyous exploration, stress tolerance, or deprivation sensitivity, with the former two having strong associations with wellbeing (kashdan et al., 2018). for awe, some wellbeing benefits include increased prosocial behaviour (piff et al., 2015), enhanced attention (sung & yih, 2016), decreased aggressive behaviour (yang, yang, bao, liu, & passmore, 2016), and creative benefits (liberman, polack, hameiri, blumenfeld, 2012). other fruitful avenues in witnessing magic may include how individual differences in curiosity relate to the enjoyment of magic, as well as which factors in a performance lead to which types of curiosity. similarly, discovering secrets of magic was linked to wellbeing, as pleasant emotions from insight experiences. performing magic builds upon these effects by showcasing improvements in social and motor skills, while retaining at least some aspects from prior stages. thus, magic might be useful as an interesting and enjoyable type of social skills training for captivating team building experiences in the corporate space. finally, using magic to teach might cultivate a deep sense of meaning and appreciation for one’s teaching contributions. during each of these stages, there appears to be a sense of wellbeing, motivating progress toward the next stage. in this review, we offered a new framework that helps structure these different approaches, and also suggested some theoretical models that may account for the positive effects and potential hypotheses. crossroads of magic and wellbeing bagienski & kuhn 61 many avenues of magic and wellbeing are still largely unexplored. well-designed experiments will help greatly in clarifying the psychological mechanisms at play. moreover, we hope that the new theoretical insights in our understanding of magic will further help this process. characterising the emotional and social experiences of magic would provide an excellent foundation, since magic is commonly used as an enjoyable, motivating tool in social settings. this solid foundation could then be used to investigate its interactions with physical or cognitive wellbeing, and further clarify whether wellbeing emerges through processes such as positive emotions and active-constructive responding, or perhaps guide us to more unexpected mechanisms. in doing so, the existing wellbeing-focused magic programs can better capitalise on the most useful aspects of magic tricks, professional entertainers can gain better professional opportunities, and perhaps new, more effective and more inclusive approaches will be created that help both the disadvantaged and the general public to lead more meaningful, flourishing lives. authors steven e. bagienski goldsmiths, university of london, united kingdom stevebagienski@gmail.com gustav kuhn goldsmiths, university of london, united kingdom g.kuhn@gold.ac.uk publishing timeline received 18 may 2018 accepted 9 december 2018 published 9 july references bai, y., maruskin, l., chen, s., gordon, a., stellar, j., mcneil, g., . . . & keltner, d. 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(2011). an interview with barbara fredrickson, international journal of wellbeing, 1(3), 335-337. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i3.4 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 335 expert insight an interview with barbara fredrickson university of north carolina interview by aaron jarden 4 october 2011 1. what got you interested in wellbeing research? i first became interested in studying positive emotions simply because it was an uncharted intellectual frontier when i got into this game twenty years ago. this was back when i was a post-doc in the 1990s. there was an emerging science of emotion and almost everything that was written was about negative emotions, and that just seemed like, well, there must be something interesting about these positive emotions. so that’s what bought me there, it was sheer intellectual curiosity to look at what’s underneath these stones that have not been picked up. 2. what do you take "wellbeing" to mean? i would say wellbeing encompasses all aspects of health, psychological, physical and social, so it’s a very useful aggregate term to capture high functioning or functioning that can be qualified as satisfying or productive on all those different domains. 3. why is wellbeing research important? i think it’s critically important because what we know so far is that the things that predict wellbeing are not the same things that are predicting ill-being or health or disease. if we limited our understanding of wellbeing to just understanding what makes people sick or what leads to psychopathology we’d be missing out on quite a bit of understanding about human nature. wellbeing needs to be its own target of study because we are uncovering different predictors and different things that help maximise it. 4. what is the most important application of wellbeing research to our lives? i think it’s both policy and personal education: that, as individuals, if we share with the public or hear the things that predict and help shape wellbeing, then people can make different choices in their day and their life that can lead them towards wellbeing, since most people intuitively would prefer wellbeing over ill-being. the other very vital application is in terms of policy. can we reshape communities and institutional norms and cultural norms in ways that aren’t continuing to make people sick? 5. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding from your research? what i’m most excited about now is some hints that we are getting in the data that suggest that the particular fusion of the experience of positive emotions in connections with other people http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ interview with barbara fredrickson jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 336 seems to be driving a lot of the effects. one of the things that we have found is that when people experience positive emotions in their interactions with others, that is predicting improvements in health markers better than other types of social connections and better than other types of positive emotions. when positive emotions are experienced in social connections, that seems to be potentially accounting for the most physical health benefits. 6. what are you working on right now? we are working on a number of different things. one, we are trying to pursue this question of the importance of shared positive emotions more systematically. another thing that we are looking at is examining how positive emotions lead to changes in gene expression, so we are looking at the effects of positive emotions at a cellular level. we are especially targeting cells related to the immune system’s inflammation processes, so this could be one way that we understand the way it is that people’s emotional habits translate into wellbeing or ill-being through changes that occur at the cellular level, and that is something that we haven’t had access to do before. there are no other studies that i know of that are looking at this in a longitudinal, experimental way. we do a randomised study where one group is randomised into a condition where they learn how to self-generate positive emotions more often compared to another group which learns something totally different that’s not connected to positive emotions. we see and track changes in gene expression over one and two years after that to see how those different emotional trainings affect people at the cellular level in ways that prevent illness. 7. what do you think the next big thing in wellbeing research will be? we are going to get better and clearer data that help us understand how emotions and wellbeing are manifested in physical bodies, so that we are beginning to understand that emotions and wellbeing aren’t just opinions you have about your life. they’re deeply embodied in people’s physical responses and cellular structures in ways that allow us to see the substance behind these concepts that we think of as ephemeral and hard to capture. we are going to be able to capture them and give their physiological profile in much more detail and richness than we have in the past. we understand a lot about the physiological profile of stress, and that’s because there has been decades upon decades of work on that, and we are getting closer to that level with wellbeing. 8. what are the main benefits of interdisciplinary research on wellbeing? things that you just couldn’t come close to investigating without building interdisciplinary scientific teams. like the work that my research lab is now engaged in, looking at changes in gene expression, that is actually based on a project that’s happening across three different laboratories. there is my lab, that has the expertise in emotions and emotion induction and longitudinal experiments; and we are collaborating with another lab run by dr. karen grewen, where her expertise is in oxytocin and measuring and finding stable measures of that that we can look at over time; and we are also collaborating with dr. steve cole’s lab at ucla. he heads up their social genomics centre. so i don’t have to learn from the ground up how to do the social genomics or pieces of it looking at changes in gene expression; instead, i forged a collaboration with someone who has spent twenty years figuring that out, and then he does not have to learn the work on doing experimental interventions to get people to increase their daily doses of positive emotions, we’ve worked on that for a decade now and so we can join forces interview with barbara fredrickson jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 337 that way. interdisciplinary work is challenging, and it’s hard to build these teams in ways that are productive and have a mix of rewards, because sometimes people don’t know how to credit the work across the different people working on the team. but at one level all those concerns have to be set aside for something to get done, in order for us to get any further, because the kinds of question that we need to address right now demand something larger than one mind, so it demands that interdisciplinary joining of forces. 9. what would the ideal census question on wellbeing be and why? one that i favour is a format that asks you, “did you laugh yesterday?” so it doesn’t ask people to necessarily make a judgement about their life as a whole, but asks them about whether they experienced a particular emotion yesterday. it does not necessarily have to be laughter, it could be, “did you get to do interesting work yesterday?” or “did you feel respected yesterday?” i know the gallup world poll, based on daniel kanehman’s input based on his experience with the day reconstruction method, has moved towards that, and i think those more concrete measures of just what your life was like yesterday or today, depending on when you answered the question, can be very useful in getting to the heart of what wellbeing is comprised of, which, in my view, is emotions. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness ng, a., & vella-brodrick, d. (2019). towards a cross-disciplinary framework for promoting youth wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 26-42. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i4.999 amanda ng university of melbourne ng.a@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 26 article towards a cross-disciplinary framework for promoting youth wellbeing amanda ng · dianne a. vella-brodrick abstract: the youth wellbeing literature draws upon the fields of positive education, positive youth development, social and emotional learning, coaching and mentoring psychology and quality of life, collectively referred to as the youth wellbeing fives (ywb fives). despite their individual efforts to promote mental health and address mental health issues, no study to date has explored their collective contributions (intersections) towards this goal, nor has a framework been developed to understand the benefits of collaboration between youth wellbeing scholars from different fields. this paper develops a framework for promoting the cross-disciplinary study of youth wellbeing, and critically reviews the contributions of individual and collective ywb fives to enhancing the wellbeing of young people. given their complementary approaches and combined influence on successful interventions, we illuminate possibilities for intersections to exist among the ywb fives. insights gained have various research and practical applications; these include providing a rationale for future youth studies to empirically measure intersections among the ywb fives, and encouraging the development, delivery and evaluation of cross-disciplinary interventions to ensure widespread access to wellbeing services by all young people. keywords: youth; wellbeing; mental health; cross-disciplinarity introduction wellbeing is a state of 'feeling good', which includes notions of happiness, contentment and engagement; and 'functioning well', which encompasses concepts such as purpose, positive relationships and sense of control (huppert, 2009). although the goal of wellbeing applies to individuals across the lifespan, efforts to promote youth wellbeing (ywb) is particularly crucial given the prevalence of adolescent mental health issues (eckersley, 2011) and the role of thriving youth in building civil and productive societies (lerner, 2004). in line with this importance, considerable progress to advance ywb and its understanding has been made within five major research fields: positive education (pe) (oades, robinson, & green, 2011), positive youth development (pyd) (benson, scales, hamilton, & sesma, 2006), social and emotional learning (sel) (osher et al., 2016), coaching and mentoring psychology (camp) (van nieuwerburgh, 2012) and quality of life (qol) (wallander & koot, 2016) – collectively referred to hereinafter as the ‘youth wellbeing fives’ towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 27 (ywb fives). although these fields differ at the individual level, such as in terms of their target wellbeing dimensions and target setting (for details, see table 1), the ywb fives are united by the collective goal to promote ywb. thus one might expect scholars across ywb five fields to work together in pursuit of ywb, and for research across these fields to intersect within the broader ywb literature. table 1 overview of the youth wellbeing fives field primary emphasis/approach key wellbeing dimensions target population(s) target setting(s) pea promotion social, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, psychological and academic wellbeing individuals in school settings, including students (children and adolescents), school staff and school community members school, classroom, and other learning environments including tertiary institutions pydb promotion social, cognitive, psychological and civic wellbeing adolescents family, peer, school, neighbourhood, community and cultural contexts selc prevention social, emotional and cognitive wellbeing children and adolescents in school settings, although sel can also apply to the adults in young people’s lives school, classroom and other learning environments including afterschool settings campd promotion (coaching) prevention (mentoring) various depending on the intervention, including physical, social, emotional, cognitive, behavioural and academic wellbeing various including children, adolescents, adults, non-clinical and disadvantaged/at-risk populations various including community, workplace, school, afterschool and sports settings qole promotion (e.g., subjective wellbeing) prevention (e.g., health-related qol) physical, social, emotional, spiritual, material and productive wellbeing patient and general adult and child populations health care and general population settings note: primary emphasis/approach lists the primary and common strategies used, not exclusively, by the youth wellbeing fives. a positive education; b positive youth development; c social and emotional learning; d coaching and mentoring psychology; e quality of life. towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 28 two questions that arise from this perspective are (1) what are the benefits of crossdisciplinary collaboration for ywb?; and (2) "do the ywb fives collectively contribute (intersect) to promoting ywb?". this paper attempts to address these questions by first developing a framework for understanding the benefits of cross-disciplinary collaboration for enhancing ywb, and using this framework as a basis for exploring the potential intersections among the ywb fives. in doing so, we review key individual and collective contributions of the ywb five fields to the ywb literature. this paper is intended to provide a snapshot rather than a comprehensive analysis of their contributions, as the latter would require more attention than can be given in a single paper. we also focus on the aims of ywb to enhance wellbeing and promote mental health, though we acknowledge the prevention aims of the field to concurrently tackle issues of mental ill health. we maintain throughout that the ywb literature is inherently cross-disciplinary, thus efforts to promote ywb need to be informed by multiple fields and the unique perspectives they offer. the need for a cross-disciplinary framework despite potential for integrating multiple literatures on ywb (tolan, ross, arkin, godine, & clark, 2016), a framework for understanding the benefits of cross-disciplinary collaboration for ywb is still lacking. while there may be situations in which a singledisciplinary focus is preferred, such as when time constraints call for rapid knowledge accumulation within a specific domain, there are reasons why research should, at other times, favour a cross-disciplinary approach. this section presents a useful framework for understanding the advantages of approaching ywb scholarship from a cross-disciplinary perspective, which include but are not limited to: (1) capturing the complex nature of ywb, (2) solving the grand challenge of ywb promotion, (3) creating a shared language around ywb that unifies understanding of the phenomenon, and (4) improving the quality, impact and efficiency of ywb research. capturing the complex nature of youth wellbeing. youth wellbeing is complex concept involving multiple dimensions and numerous connections to other phenomena. evidence for its multidimensionality is found in its alignment with models such as perma, in which psychological wellbeing encompasses five core elements of positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment (kern, waters, adler, & white, 2015), and the sel framework proposed by the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning (casel) (2005), in which healthy youth development comprises multiple social, emotional and cognitive competencies. the complexity of ywb is additionally expressed in its diverse connections with other phenomena, including perceived health, risky behaviours, identity and purpose (hoyt, chase-lansdale, mcdade, & adam, 2012; sumner, burrow, & hill, 2015). given that expertise from different domains is required to make sense of complexity (vicens & bourne, 2007), we propose that integrating ywb research across multiple fields and harnessing their collective resources could help better understand ywb and support its promotion. solving the grand challenge of youth wellbeing promotion. cross-disciplinary collaboration is critical for solving complex, global issues in society, otherwise known as ‘grand challenges’ (o'rourke, crowley, & gonnerman, 2016). there are several criteria by which to towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 29 distinguish grand challenges: broad applicability, ability to manifest at different levels of scale, and the interest they attract in politically and financially supporting research in providing a solution (o'rourke et al., 2016). based on these criteria, indications in the literature suggest that the goal of promoting ywb is a grand challenge remaining to be solved. supporting the first criterion, ywb has potential applications in a number of contexts; for example, education (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009), youth development (olsson, mcgee, nada-raja, & williams, 2013) and biological contexts of genetics and heritability (gigantesco et al., 2011). fulfilling the second criterion, ywb operates at various levels of scale including biological, cultural and historical (lerner, 2004) and, as suggested by research on youth resilience, within a hierarchy of ecological systems ranging from the individual level through to broader microsystem and macrosystem levels (sapienza & masten, 2011). the third criterion of grand challenges is also satisfied by the ywb literature, as indicated by calls for greater policy coordination to monitor the global health of young people (patton et al., 2012) and governmental efforts to fund research on ywb (milnes et al., 2011). scholars within the youth studies literature have also documented the role of organisations with significant policy influence in measuring ywb (mcleod & wright, 2016). as crossdisciplinary collaboration is a necessary condition for solving grand challenges (o'rourke et al., 2016), we believe that meeting the grand challenge of ywb promotion would require leveraging the contributions of multiple fields focused on ywb; fields such as the ywb fives. creating a shared language around youth wellbeing. scholars who engage in authentic interactions with one another may develop a shared language that serves to promote their understanding of a given topic (jeffrey, 2003). from this perspective, encouraging ywb scholars from different fields to collaborate could result in the co-creation of a language with which to discuss and understand ywb among the group. using clear language that others can understand is key to success in cross-disciplinary relationships (knapp et al., 2015), whereas ambiguous and imprecise terminology easily lends itself to misunderstanding (lilienfeld et al., 2015). promoting successful cross-disciplinary collaboration among ywb scholars is thus central in this regard, not only when it comes to sending clear messages to the scholarly community but also to laypeople who may be unfamiliar with scientific and academic jargon. improving the quality, impact and efficiency of research. cross-disciplinary collaboration can improve the quality, impact and efficiency of research. studies have shown that highly interdisciplinary or integrated publications tend to score more favourably on measures of research quality and impact (franceschet & costantini, 2010; porter, garner, & crowl, 2012), and that scholarly collaboration can accelerate research by synthesising knowledge across diverse fields and increasing potential for fortuitous discoveries (hackett, parker, conz, rhoten, & parker, 2008). group diversity has also been observed to enhance productivity (barjak & robinson, 2008), although the crucial question may not be whether but under what conditions diverse efforts promote efficiency. coordination level (cummings & kiesler, 2007) and interpersonal skills (vicens & bourne, 2007), for instance, have been identified as important determinants of the benefits of cross-disciplinary collaboration for research efficiency. in the context of ywb research, these findings suggest that integrating the work of multiple fields focused on ywb can advance the literature by improving its research quality, impact and efficiency. towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 30 individual contributions of the youth wellbeing fives given the benefits of cross-disciplinary collaboration, we now turn our attention to considering pe, pyd, sel, camp and qol as candidates for exploring the intersections in ywb research. in this section, we review key theoretical and empirical contributions of the ywb fives to promoting ywb in turn. positive education. defined as education for both traditional skills and wellbeing (seligman et al., 2009), the field of pe seeks to promote positive mental health by grounding best-practice teaching methods in evidence-based principles of positive psychology (norrish, williams, o'connor, & robinson, 2013). as an indication of its success, pe targets and has been implemented across a range of learning environments including primary, secondary and tertiary-level institutions (jarden & jarden, 2015). theoretical contributions. foundational theories of positive psychology, including flow theory (nakamura & csikszentmihalyi, 2009), strengths theory (peterson & seligman, 2006) and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (fredrickson, 2001), have guided efforts in pe to improve ywb in various educational contexts (norrish & vella-brodrick, 2009; reschly, huebner, appleton, & antaramian, 2008). theoretical frameworks for promoting school-wide wellbeing have also emerged within the field of pe. geelong grammar school in australia, for instance, has developed an exemplar pe framework for promoting the wellbeing of school students, parents and staff across the domains of positive emotions, positive engagement, positive accomplishment, positive purpose, positive relationships and positive health (norrish et al., 2013). other noteworthy frameworks offered by pe include the positive educational practices framework, which draws upon positive psychology scholarship to support student wellbeing, and prosper, which identifies positivity, relationships, outcomes, strengths, purpose, engagement and resilience as key pathways to student flourishing (noble & mcgrath, 2008, 2015). empirical contributions. positive education interventions have shown to significantly improve ywb in a host of areas including self-esteem, self-acceptance, satisfaction, and positive and negative affect, with effects appearing stronger for particular youth groups such as those at risk (waters, 2017). furthermore, a randomised controlled evaluation of the strath haven positive psychology programme revealed increases in programme participants’ levels of school engagement and school enjoyment, relative to those who did not receive the programme (seligman et al., 2009). more recently, vella-brodrick, rickard, and chin (august 2014) evaluated the effectiveness of pe at geelong grammar school’s timbertop campus, and found compelling evidence that pe can benefit students’ mental wellbeing, foster a sense of student accomplishment and connection with others, and equip students with practical, positive strategies to effectively manage everyday life. a more comprehensive list of existing pe curricula has been compiled by slemp et al. (2017). positive youth development. the field of pyd, as defined by youth studies scholars, represents a shift in dominant conceptualisations of young people largely fueled by changing social and economic conditions over time (sukarieh & tannock, 2011). this shift sought to move away from viewing youth as ‘problems to be managed’ to ‘resources to be developed’ (roth & brooks-gunn, 2003). as a field of inquiry, pyd seeks to foster ywb by building upon towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 31 the positive individual and social assets possessed by adolescents that support their healthy development into adulthood (eccles & gootman, 2002). the field operates from an ecologicaldevelopmental perspective and targets multiple contexts in which youth are embedded, including family, peer, school, neighbourhood, and broader community and cultural contexts (benson et al., 2006). theoretical contributions. the field of pyd contributes a grand theory of youth development that integrates principles of human development, community organisation and development, and social and community change (benson et al., 2006). this theory emphasises the plastic nature of ywb and its potential to strengthen over time; it proposes that pyd is affected by the opportunities provided and made accessible to young people in their communities and that such person-context relations are subject to change across the life span. wellbeing also appears to be an important overarching theme across many pyd frameworks: the four essential elements, for example, links positive youth outcomes to experiences of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity, which can be measured using wellbeing indicators such as self-esteem and desirability to help others (kress, 2003). the five cs model, on the other hand, situates pyd within the broader context of wellbeing and posits that ywb can be assessed at any time by measuring the overall contributions of five key domains– competence, confidence, connection, character and caring, and more recently, contribution– to a young person’s development (lerner, 2004). empirical contributions. the most empirically supported pyd framework is the five cs (heck & subramaniam, 2009). researchers have found associations between pyd, as indicated by the five cs, and positive youth outcomes such as higher levels of civic identity and civic engagement, and decreased engagement in risky behaviours (bobek, zaff, li, & lerner, 2009; jelicic, bobek, phelps, lerner, & lerner, 2007). positive outcomes have been reported in evaluations of in-school and out-of-school pyd programmes (eichas et al., 2010; tebes et al., 2007), and further support for the contributions of pyd programming to ywb stems from a meta-analysis demonstrating significant improvements on measures of psychological adjustment (ciocanel, power, eriksen, & gillings, 2017). while more rigorous research is needed to confirm the effectiveness of pyd interventions (ciocanel et al., 2017), current findings generally support pyd programming as a promising strategy for promoting ywb outcomes (catalano, berglund, ryan, lonczak, & hawkins, 2004). social and emotional learning. social and emotional learning describes a universal process of acquiring the skills necessary for managing emotions, building relationships and solving problems effectively (casel 2005). grounded largely in preventive and resilience research, sel’s mission is to equip young people with the critical sel skills needed to bounce back from adversity (humphrey, 2013). sel instruction is relevant to all students including those at risk or exhibiting negative behaviours (zins & elias, 2007), and is therefore applicable to a range of student-centered environments such as schools, classrooms and afterschool settings. while students tend to be the primary recipients of sel programming, sel may also involve the adults in young people’s lives and include their parents and members of the wider community (humphrey, 2013). theoretical contributions. the field of sel offers several theoretical frameworks for organising strategies to support young people’s social and emotional development. these towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 32 include the integrated sel framework proposed by casel (2005), which identifies five interrelated competencies underpinning high-quality sel programming (self-awareness, selfmanagement, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making), and the framework of ‘safe’ practices, which describes four essential features of effective sel curricula (sequenced, active, focused and explicit) (durlak, weissberg, & pachan, 2010). kidsmatter in australia (littlefield, cavanagh, knapp, & o’grady, 2017) and the school theory of action (meyers et al., 2015) are other initiatives that have been designed to support young people’s mental health through sel. empirical contributions. the utility of systematic sel programming in fostering positive skills and wellbeing, and reducing negative youth outcomes, is well documented (greenberg et al., 2003; taylor, oberle, durlak, & weissberg, 2017). in a meta-analysis of findings from over 200 studies, students who received universal sel education showed greater improvements in mental health, social-emotional competence and problem behaviours compared to those who did not (durlak, weissberg, dymnicki, taylor, & schellinger, 2011). model sel interventions, such as promoting alternative thinking strategies and emotional literacy in the classroom, have been successfully implemented in schools and found to increase students’ social and emotional skills (elbertson, brackett, & weissberg, 2010). the effectiveness of sel has also been demonstrated in varying student populations and across different time periods, further attesting to the sel’s empirical contributions to promoting ywb (payton et al., 2008). coaching and mentoring psychology. coaching and mentoring are methodologies for improving wellbeing and performance in personal and professional life (passmore, peterson, & freire, 2016). although camp can be viewed as separate initiatives (passmore, 2007), they also share much common ground: both support individuals through times of transition and change, are associated with enhancing learning and development, and emphasise the importance of relationship quality in facilitator-client interactions (garvey, garvey, stokes, & megginson, 2018). depending on the specific intervention, camp may target diverse age groups (e.g., adults, young people), settings (e.g., clinical, non-clinical, workplace, school, community), and wellbeing domains (e.g., social, emotional, cognitive, psychological, physical, behavioural, academic) (parsloe & leedham, 2016; passmore et al., 2016). theoretical contributions. coaching and mentoring psychology contributes an understanding of how ywb can be targeted and promoted by drawing upon existing theories and developing new frameworks. within a positive psychology-based framework, for example, coaching may help individuals achieve greater levels of wellbeing by applying theories of flow, hope and character strengths to its practice (kauffman, 2006). based on learning theory, coaching can promote deep learning experiences by leading coachees through a process of knowledge discovery, realisation and integration (griffiths & campbell, 2009). within the context of mentoring, theories on young people’s social-emotional, cognitive and identity development appear central to understanding the impact of mentoring relationships on youth outcomes (rhodes, 2005). camp also develops new frameworks for structuring effective coaching and mentoring sessions that can be used with young people, including grow (whitmore, 2002) and the multiple mentor model (wright-harp & cole, 2008). empirical contributions. empirical evidence supports the efficacy of coaching and mentoring interventions in promoting ywb. positive changes in students’ levels of towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 33 engagement, hope, resilience and depressive symptoms in response to coaching have been documented (green, grant, & rynsaardt, 2007; madden, green, & grant, 2011), and improvements in self-efficacy and self-confidence among youth coaches have been reported following the delivery of a near-peer coaching programme (van nieuwerburgh & tong, 2013). moreover, compared to non-mentored youth, youth in longer-term mentoring relationships have shown to experience fewer behavioural problems, reduced levels of depression and social anxiety, and stronger coping skills (dewit, dubois, erdem, larose, & lipman, 2016). although the effects of mentoring on ywb have not been consistently shown across studies (e.g., heppen et al., 2017), specific programme practices and mentee characteristics appear to be important factors influencing the success of mentoring interventions (dubois, holloway, valentine, & cooper, 2002). additional evidence for the positive effects of mentoring on ywb is provided by dubois, portillo, rhodes, silverthorn, and valentine (2011). quality of life. as a unifying definition, qol is a combination of objective and subjective wellbeing in multiple life domains (e.g., physical, social, emotional/spiritual, material, productive) valued in one’s culture and time (wallander, schmitt, & koot, 2001). although qol research has largely focused on measuring adult qol, more recent advances have been made in developing instruments to measure youth qol, in both patient and general populations and settings (wallander & koot, 2016). these advances can be classified under three main approaches: health-related qol, subjective wellbeing and social indicators (for descriptions of these approaches, see wallander & koot, 2016). theoretical contributions. quality of life provides a theoretical basis for understanding the domains most central to qol and thus ywb. health-related qol instruments commonly measure concepts related to physical, psychological and social aspects of health (solans et al., 2008), and tools designed to assess subjective wellbeing have represented ywb in terms of life satisfaction, positive affect and meaning and purpose (e.g., promis; ravens-sieberer et al., 2014). whereas health-related qol and subjective wellbeing approaches tend to focus on subjective, individual-level indicators of ywb, social indicators seeks to provide more objective assessments at the national level that captures the impact of physical, psychological, cognitive, social and economic factors on qol (lippman, 2007). theoretical models illustrating the relationships between psychological and psychosocial factors and health-related life quality in youth people have also been proposed (e.g., gaspar et al., 2009). by providing insight into the individual and external factors comprising and affecting qol, the field of qol offers a broader, more contextual conceptualisation of ywb that distinguishes its work from other fields. empirical contributions. conducting empirical research on the wellbeing correlates of life quality and using qol instruments to track ywb status have been an important focus in the field. health-related qol has been associated with youth perceptions of life satisfaction, global self-esteem and health behaviours, and also with demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and socioeconomic status (gaspar et al., 2009; zullig, valois, huebner, & drane, 2005). as indicated by measures of subjective wellbeing and social indicators, other conditions that may influence ywb include living arrangement (dinisman, montserrat, & casas, 2012), chronic illness (sawyer, drew, yeo, & britto, 2007) and ecological factors such as economic stability and advancements in medicine (meadows, land, & lamb, 2005). towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 34 summary. the ywb fives each offer a unique vantage point from which to understand and promote ywb (see table 1). for example, pe is distinguished by its focus on promoting the psychological, cognitive, social, emotional and spiritual aspects of ywb in school settings, whereas sel prioritises building social, emotional and cognitive competencies in young people across both school and afterschool contexts. still others target their research to a broader audience; pyd applies school, afterschool and community arenas, qol produces research relevant to healthcare and general population settings, and camp is relevant to almost any youth setting in which positive change is desired. despite individual differences, our review thus far has shown that ywb promotion is a common objective shared by the ywb fives. to the extent that fields working towards shared objectives may have a strong incentive to collaborate, one might find evidence for intersections to exist among the ywb fives. the next section examines this possibility by reviewing evidence on their collective contributions to promoting ywb. collective contributions of the youth wellbeing fives the collective contributions of the ywb fives are supported by three main observations: (1) concepts pertinent to ywb overlap across the ywb fives, (2) the approaches offered by multiple ywb fives complement one another, and (3) the knowledge and expertise of multiple ywb fives can be integrated to strengthen ywb research and ywb as a construct more specifically. substantial overlap can be found across the ywb fives, as indicated by their discussions of many similar concepts related to ywb; for example, resilience (e.g., green et al., 2007; seligman et al., 2009), relationships (e.g., rhodes, 2005; waters, 2011), life satisfaction (e.g., proctor et al., 2011; zullig et al., 2005) and notions of competence and mastery (e.g., durlak et al., 2011; lerner, 2004). support for their collective contributions is also shown in their complementary approaches to ywb science. to illustrate, sel and pyd have a shared orientation towards strengths and adaptation as opposed to weaknesses and psychopathology (tolan et al., 2016), a perspective that also characterises the work of pe (norrish & vellabrodrick, 2009) and complements coaching practice in its delivery of successful interventions designed to foster ywb (e.g., green & norrish, 2013; madden et al., 2011). the fields of pe and qol also share similar, ‘comprehensive’ approaches to ywb, in which ywb is conceptualised as comprising both positive and negative components (wallander & koot, 2016; waters, 2017). research also suggests that harnessing the knowledge and expertise of multiple ywb fives can strengthen ywb research and ywb specifically. the finding that emotion regulation shapes the effects of pe participation on student wellbeing (morrish, rickard, chin, & vellabrodrick, 2017), for instance, illustrates the benefits of understanding sel for evaluating effective pe interventions. other findings, such as camp’s influence on promoting constructs consistent with positive psychology theory in young people (e.g., hope) (green et al., 2007), highlight the ability of collective approaches to advance ywb science by validating its key theoretical constructs. scholars have additionally proposed integrating the theoretical knowledge of pyd into mentoring programmes (silva & freire, 2014) and drawing upon pyd’s expertise to assist sel intervention delivery in schoolhouses (elias et al., 2015), while others have advocated combining camp and pe approaches to promote ywb (green, oades, & towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 35 robinson, 2012). some practical implications arising from these findings centre on the potential benefits of integrating frameworks drawn from different ywb five literatures, and implementing school wellbeing interventions that include features of different approaches. in this regard, schools embracing an existing positive education framework could adopt pyd principles to enhance their teaching curricula, or integrate camp techniques in positive psychology interventions to enhance program efficacy. discussion in developing a cross-disciplinary framework for promoting ywb, we presented the argument of moving beyond the boundaries of single fields given the potential for integrated approaches to achieve a greater understanding of ywb, solve the grand challenge of promoting ywb and maximise the quality, impact and efficiency of ywb research. in this review, we identified the ywb fives as five major fields driving the advancement of ywb and provided a snapshot of their individual and collective contributions to promoting ywb. taken together, the extant literature supports the unique and complementary ways in which the ywb fives contribute to the theoretical, conceptual and empirical underpinnings of ywb promotion. several limitations of this review should be considered. firstly, pe, pyd, sel, camp and qol were subjectively selected as fields central to promoting ywb. although outside the scope of the present paper, it would be useful for future youth studies to undertake a more systematic, objective approach to identifying the fields most central to ywb scholarship, such as by searching the literature for relevant articles and basing one’s selection of fields on measures such as frequency or quality of their publications. it should also be noted that, in recognising the centrality of the ywb fives to the ywb literature, by no means do we imply that the ywb literature draws exclusively from these fields. this paper started with five core fields however future work could include other fields and labels. thus it is important for researchers to remain vigilant of other areas gaining momentum in ywb literature; character education, for example, is one such field that could be considered a possible addition to the existing ywb fives. secondly, we acknowledge that our review largely summarised the evidence in favour of rather than against cross-disciplinary collaboration between the ywb fives. our reason for focusing on the former was that the collective contributions of the ywb fives to promoting ywb had not been well understood previously and represented a relatively new and uncharted territory to be explored. nonetheless, despite little attention paid to the challenges of crossdisciplinary integration, it is important to clarify that vertical growth – as in the case of conducting research into specific areas in depth – and horizontal growth – as in the case of synthesising knowledge across multiple fields to expand research to new fronts – are both equally important and should occur simultaneously to ensure the continuous and optimal development of scientific research. finally, our conclusions about the possibility of intersections to exist among the ywb fives were derived conceptually rather than empirically. although scholars have noted the relative lack of integration between fields focused on wellbeing (e.g., tolan et al., 2016), it remains to be statistically determined whether the ywb fives intersect, if at all, within the towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 36 actual literature. this limitation may be overcome by developing and gathering objective metrics designed to measure intersectionality. keeping in mind these limitations, our findings suggest that the ywb literature is inherently cross-disciplinary. thus efforts to promote ywb would benefit from looking at the breadth of evidence offered by multiple fields, such as the ywb fives, and drawing upon their expertise to paint a more complete picture of ywb. these insights yield important implications for future research and practice; they encourage future youth studies to more consciously move beyond considering how their work impacts research within their own fields, to considering how it may connect more broadly with the academic work of other related fields. insights gained from this review also provide a strong conceptual rationale for future scholars to empirically measure the levels of intersection – and thus collective contributions –among the ywb fives. another avenue to be explored in future research and practice is the development, delivery and evaluation of cross-disciplinary ywb interventions. cross-disciplinary interventions may play a vital role in providing young people with widespread access to wellbeing services, such as by incorporating features informed by multiple fields that enable the intervention to target a broader set of wellbeing constructs and apply to a wider audience and range of settings. accordingly, we encourage researchers, practitioners and other invested stakeholders to work together in implementing rigorous, cross-disciplinary interventions that consistently demonstrate positive youth outcomes. by embracing a cross-disciplinary approach, we can more effectively support the wellbeing of youth today and ensure that our generation of young people continues to flourish in everyday life. authors amanda ng university of melbourne ng.a@unimelb.edu.au dianne vella-brodrick university of melbourne publishing timeline received 14 may 2019 accepted 23 september 2019 published 26 september 2019 author note preliminary work on this paper was presented at a workshop during the 2016 positive education conference perth, perth college, wa australia 6050. the authors declare no financial benefit arising from this research, however would like to disclose a conflict of interest with associate professor aaron jarden and dr. gavin slemp from the international journal of wellbeing editorial team, who are colleagues of the authors and affiliated with the centre for positive psychology at the university of melbourne. towards a cross-disciplinary framework ng & vella-brodrick 37 references barjak, f., & robinson, s. 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(2005). adolescent health-related quality of life and perceived satisfaction with life. quality of life research, 14(6), 1573-1584. grégoire, s., bouffard, t., vezeau, c. (2012). personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 236-250. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.5 simon grégoire université du québec à montréal gregoire.simon@uqam.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 236 article personal goal setting as a mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing simon grégoire · thérèse bouffard · carole vezeau abstract: although the evidence suggesting a positive relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing is rapidly accumulating, the mechanisms by which this relationship operates remain unclear. this study explored the relationship between mindfulness, wellbeing and a selfregulatory process, namely personal goal setting. it was hypothesized that people reporting higher levels of mindfulness would strive for goals having a greater degree of autonomy, which would in turn have a beneficial impact on their wellbeing. university students (n = 114) completed questionnaires aimed at assessing their level of mindfulness and wellbeing. they were asked to identify five personal goals they were currently pursuing and indicate the reasons (extrinsic, introjected, identified or intrinsic) they were pursuing these goals. a bootstrapping analysis supports the mediating hypothesis and suggests that students who reported being more attentive and aware tended to be engaged in personal endeavours that were more autonomously motivated, which in turn appeared to foster their wellbeing. keywords: mindfulness, wellbeing, self-regulatory process, personal goals 1. introduction despite the growing evidence, from both correlational and field studies, of the beneficial impacts of mindfulness, there is a current debate over the nature of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing (baer, 2010; carmody, baer, lykins, & olendzki, 2009; coffey & hartman, 2008; coffey, hartman, & fredrickson, 2010). mindfulness has been defined in various ways in the literature. for example, brown and ryan (2003) define it as receptive attention to and awareness of present events and experience. according to bishop, et al. (2004), mindfulness refers to both the self-regulation of attention to one’s current experience and a particular orientation towards this experience, characterized by curiosity, openness, and acceptance. for kabat-zinn (2003), mindfulness involves intentionally paying sustained attention to one’s ongoing sensory, cognitive, and emotional experience, without elaborating upon or judging any part of this experience. as mentioned by several authors, the construct of mindfulness is subtle and somewhat elusive; defining it in operational terms is not an easy task (baer, walsh, & lykins, 2008). moreover, some have pointed out that there is a tendency in the literature to use the term ‘mindfulness’ to refer interchangeably to a state, a series of practices designed to achieve this state, or a type of meditation. such interchangeable use of ‘mindfulness’ sometimes causes confusion (chambers, gullone, & allen, 2009). for the sake of clarity, and in accordance with the definition proposed by brown and ryan (2003), the term ‘mindfulness’ is used in this paper to describe a state of consciousness which involves consciously attending to one’s moment-tohttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 237 moment experience and being aware of one’s inner and outer worlds, including thoughts, emotions, sensations, actions, or surroundings. the mindfulness attention awareness scale (maas) is among the most popular self-report instruments used to measure mindfulness (brown & ryan, 2003). the studies conducted to date using this scale indicate that mindfulness is correlated with various wellbeing and mental health indicators (brown, ryan, & creswell, 2007). for example, compared to individuals with low levels of mindfulness, those with higher levels report feeling less stressed, anxious, depressed or impulsive (argus & thompson, 2008; brown & ryan, 2003; jermann, et al., 2009; weinstein, brown, & ryan, 2009). they also report being more optimistic and more satisfied with their lives (brown & ryan, 2003). besides these correlation studies, other studies have assessed the impact of various mindfulness-based training programs on mental health, such as the mindfulness-based stress reduction program (mbsr) (kabat-zinn, 1982, 2003), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (mbct) (segal, williams, & teasdale, 2002), acceptance and commitment therapy (act) (hayes, strosahl, & wilson, 1999) and dialectical behavior therapy (dbt) (linehan, 1993). although they differ in various ways, these programs share some common characteristics and all include a form of mindfulness training. this training, such as, for instance, mindfulness meditation, aims to increase an individual’s capacity to cultivate attention and awareness. during meditation, an individual must consciously try to keep his attention focused on an object (e.g. one’s breath, emotions or sensations) in a receptive manner, without fixating on any particular part of this experience or engaging in any secondary processing. various studies have demonstrated that these programs are related to positive psychological and physical outcomes. the mbsr program has received the most attention to date (bishop, 2002). this program focuses on the cultivation of mindfulness through various activities (e.g. meditation, body scan and mindful yoga) and on the integration of this state into everyday life as a coping strategy for dealing with difficulties. it also includes group interaction, with participants sharing the challenges and achievements they have experienced upon integrating mindfulness into their lives. the program has proven to be efficacious for clinical populations with a variety of physical and mental health issues including chronic pain, cancer, heart disease, depression and anxiety (baer, 2003; grossman, niemann, schmidt, & walach, 2004; irving, dobkin, & park, 2009). it has also proven to be helpful for non-clinical populations (bishop, 2002; chiesa & serretti, 2009). for instance, it has helped reduce stress among nurses (cohen-katz, 2004; shapiro, astin, bishop, & cordova, 2005), therapists in training (shapiro, brown, & biegel, 2007) and university students (shapiro, oman, thoresen, plante, & flinders, 2008). similar to the mbsr program, mbct was developed especially for depressed individuals. studies on this program are promising and suggest that it significantly helps reduce the risk of relapse among these individuals (coelho, canter, & ernst, 2007). dbt was developed as a treatment for chronic suicidal and other self-injurious behaviors, which are often present in patients with severe borderline personality disorder. according to öst (2008), even though the studies realised so far in order to assess dbt efficacy still suffer from various methodological limitations, these studies are encouraging and suggest that the therapy helps reduce symptoms among borderline patients. recently, empirical studies have also focused on act. a recent review indicates that act is effective in various contexts (e.g. clinical and work settings) and for a wide variety of problems (e.g. depression, anxiety, phobia) (ruiz, 2010). personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 238 2. the nature of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing if mindfulness has shown beneficial effects on wellbeing, little is known about the mediators and moderators through which these effects take place (shapiro, carlson, astin, & freedman, 2006). wellbeing is a multidimensional construct that encompasses three main components (gallagher, lopez, & preacher, 2009). subjective wellbeing refers to the experience of high levels of pleasant emotions and moods, low levels of negative emotions and moods, and high life satisfaction (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985). psychological wellbeing relies on the assumption that individuals strive to function fully and realize their unique talents. it is made up of six components: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance (ryff & keyes, 1995). social wellbeing represents primarily public phenomena, focused on the social tasks (e.g., social acceptance) encountered by adults in their social lives (keyes, 1998). brown et al. (2007) maintain that mindfulness may facilitate wellbeing directly: by adding clarity and vividness to current experience and encouraging closer, moment-to-moment sensory contact with life, that is, without a dense filtering of experience through discriminatory thoughts (p. 219). furthermore, these authors maintain that this relationship may also operate indirectly through various self-regulatory mechanisms of action. according to them, mindfulness may foster successful self-regulation and thus have positive effects on wellbeing. the latest proposition offered by brown et al. (2007) recently received empirical support. for instance, some studies have indicated that the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing may be partially mediated by emotional processes (chambers, et al., 2009; gratz & tull, 2010). in fact, a strong relationship was found between mindfulness and the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies known to have beneficial impacts on wellbeing (feldman, hayes, kumar, greeson, & laurenceau, 2007; jimenez, niles, & park, 2010; roemer, et al., 2009). recent studies in neurobiology also suggest that mindfulness training may lead to functional and structural changes in the prefrontal cortex and the limbic systems, which are both involved in emotional regulation processes (frewen, et al., 2010). although the relationship between mindfulness, emotional processes and wellbeing is not yet fully understood, hayes and feldman (2004) argue that mindfulness training enhances emotion regulation abilities by changing an individual’s relationship with their emotions. with higher levels of mindfulness, an individual can genuinely experience and express his/her emotions without over-engagement (e.g. entanglement) or under-engagement (e.g. avoidance) with them, which in turn enhances the individual’s wellbeing. emotions are simply accepted as they are, without any attempt to control, avoid or cling to them. studies also suggest that the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing may be partially mediated by cognitive processes. for example, it has been shown that practicing mindfulness meditation helps reduce both thought rumination (jain, et al., 2007) and cognitive distortions (sears & kraus, 2009). it also facilitates cognitive defusion, that is, the ability to observe one’s thoughts and feelings as temporary events in the mind not requiring any particular response, rather than as reflections of the self that are necessarily true or important (sauer & baer, 2010). according to hayes and wilson (2003), this defusion process helps a person gain cognitive flexibility and adjust cognitive processing strategies to face new and unexpected conditions. it increases the range and adaptability of responses in the face of challenges and makes it possible to address these challenges consciously rather than merely automatically (see also moore & malinowski, 2009). personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 239 mindfulness may also facilitate wellbeing indirectly through the enhancement of goalsetting processes, although this idea has not yet been investigated. personal goal setting (e.g., launching a company) is a self-regulatory process that affects an individual’s behaviours i.e., choosing to pursue personal goals influences an individual’s actions. the type of goal an individual strives for also influences his wellbeing in several ways (little, salmela-aro, & phillips, 2007). for instance, people who are engaged in interpersonal goals (e.g. doing voluntary work at the community centre) tend to report higher subjective wellbeing than people who are engaged in intrapersonal or more self-oriented goals (e.g. jogging every night) (salmela-aro & little, 2007). people who are committed to personal endeavours that are manageable, meaningful and supported, generally report higher wellbeing than people who are engaged in goals that do not have these characteristics (little & chambers, 2000). the reasons people pursue goals also influence their wellbeing. ryan and connell (1989) proposed a continuum of reasons for acting, ranging from external to introjected (controlled) to identified to intrinsic (autonomous) reasons. according to self-determination theory (ryan & deci, 2000), autonomous goals (e.g., striving for personal growth or enjoyment) are inherently rewarding because they satisfy innate psychological needs such as relatedness, competence and autonomy. when people are autonomously motivated, they experience volition, or a selfendorsement of their actions (deci & ryan, 2008). in contrast, controlled goals (e.g., those that are pursued to please someone else or to gain fame) do not directly satisfy these psychological needs to the same extent; people tend to experience pressure to think, feel, or behave in particular ways (deci & ryan, 2008). several longitudinal studies have shown that the pursuit of autonomous goals is positively related to various wellbeing indicators whereas the pursuit of controlled goals is negatively related to these indicators (see sheldon & kasser, 2001). simply put, wellbeing levels improve when individuals are autonomous and feel volitional in pursuing their goals. are people who report higher levels of mindfulness more inclined to embark on personal endeavours for autonomous and self-determined reasons than people who report low mindfulness? according to deci and ryan (2008), the development of integrated, autonomous human functioning depends on awareness, suggesting that awareness may facilitate the selection of behaviours, actions and goals that are more consistent with one’s needs, values and interests (ryan & deci, 2000). brown and ryan (2003) state ‚...mindfulness may facilitate wellbeing through self-regulated activity and fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for autonomy..., competence, and relatedness‛ (p. 824). thus, attention and awareness may help individuals disengage from habits, reactivity and behavioural patterns, but also actions driven by external factors. moreover, attention and awareness may help individuals avoid controlled goals and be more inclined to strive for self-endorsed or freely chosen ones. in other words, mindfulness may favour the selection of self-determined, autonomous goals, which in turn may enhance wellbeing. although conceptually appealing, this idea has not yet been explored in depth. 3. the present study the purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between mindfulness, personal goal setting and wellbeing. it was hypothesized that individuals who reported high levels of mindfulness would be pursuing more autonomous goals (those that rely on intrinsic or identified motives), and that those individuals would also report high levels of wellbeing. personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 240 therefore, it was predicted that: h1) high levels of mindfulness are significantly related to higher levels of wellbeing. h2) high levels of mindfulness are significantly related to autonomous goals. h3) the relationship between high levels of mindfulness and high levels of wellbeing are mediated by autonomous personal goal setting. 3.1 method 3.1.1 participants and procedure one hundred and fourteen (114) university students volunteered to participate in the study. all participants were french-speaking and the majority were women (90%) and at the undergraduate level (90%). their ages ranged from 19 to 59 years (mean age = 26.82; sd = 7.44). participants filled out questionnaires about mindfulness, wellbeing and personal goals at their own pace during a collective session held during regular course time. 3.1.2 measures mindfulness was assessed using the maas (brown & ryan, 2003) validated in french by jermann, et al. (2009). maas was selected because the scale is short and has good psychometric validity (mackillop & anderson, 2007). this 15-item scale addresses cognitive, emotional, physical, interpersonal, and general domains in an indirect way (e.g. ‚i find myself doing things without paying attention‛). respondents must indicate how frequently they experience the situation described in each item using a 6-point likert scale ranging from 1 (almost always) to 6 (almost never). high scores reflect more present moment awareness. brown and ryan (2003) assumed that indirect items would be more ‚diagnostic‛ than direct claims of mindfulness since mindless states are more common than mindful states (brown & ryan, 2003, p. 825). therefore, people completing the maas are asked to rate how often they have experiences of mindlessness (e.g. acting on automatic pilot). the psychometric properties of the french version are similar to those reported for the original version by brown & ryan (2003). this version is based on a single factor model and has good internal consistency (α =.84). the indices of internal consistency for all instruments used in this study are reported in table 1. two wellbeing components were measured in this study. subjective wellbeing (swb) was measured with two widely employed assessment instruments, namely; the positive and negative affect schedule (panas) (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988) validated in french by gaudreau, sanchez, and blondin (2006) and the satisfaction with life scale (swls) (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) validated in french by blais, vallerand, pelletier, and brière (1989). the panas is a 20-item scale that measures positive and negative affects. it contains ten positive mood adjectives such as ‚proud‛ and ten negative mood adjectives such as ‚scared.‛ participants were asked to report the extent to which they had experienced these moods during the previous month using a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (very much). the swls is a 5-item scale that measures life satisfaction. it includes items such as ‚the conditions of my life have been excellent‛ and is based on a likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). in this study, swb was cast as a hierarchical construct spanning three primary components and conceptualized as a higher order latent factor (gallagher, et al., 2009). accordingly, a swb score was computed by summing positive affect and life satisfaction and subtracting negative affect (sheldon & hoon, 2007). psychological wellbeing (pwb) was measured with the french version of the scales of psychological well-being (lapierre & desroches, 1997; ryff & keyes, 1995). two sub-scales were personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 241 used in this study: the self acceptance scale (‚in general, i feel confident and positive about myself‛) and the purpose in life scale (‚i am an active person in carrying out the plans i set for myself‛). both sub-scales are based on a 6-point agreement likert scale and include 14 items each. a pwb score was created by summing purpose in life and self-acceptance scores. personal goals were measured using a methodology inspired by both little (1983) and sheldon and kasser (1995, 1998). participants were first asked to write down five important personal goals in which they were currently engaged and then to rate each of them with regard to the following dimensions, using a scale ranging from 0 to 10: external motivation. ‚sometimes, we pursue a goal because someone else wants us to or because we feel our situation obliges us to. a score of 10 indicates that you are engaged in this goal because someone else or your situation drives you to do so. a score of 0 indicates that you are not at all engaged in this goal for this reason.‛ introjected motivation. ‚sometimes, we pursue a goal because we think we would feel guilty, anxious or ashamed if we didn’t. a score of 10 indicates that you are engaged in this goal to avoid feeling guilty, anxious or ashamed. a score of 0 indicates that you are not at all engaged in this goal for this reason.‛ identified motivation. ‚sometimes, we pursue a goal because we really believe it is an important goal. a score of 10 indicates that you are engaged in this goal because you’re convinced it is important. a score of 0 indicates you are not at all engaged in this goal for this reason.‛ intrinsic motivation. ‚sometimes, we pursue a goal because of the fun and enjoyment it will bring. a score of 10 indicates that you are engaged in this goal because of the fun and enjoyment it brings you. a score of 0 indicates that you are not at all engaged in this goal for this reason.‛ according to sheldon and kasser (1998): ‚these four reasons represent a continuum of perceived locus of causality for action ranging from controlled and non-self-determined to autonomous and self-determined‛ (p.1322). as recommended by these authors, a selfdetermination score was first created for each goal by doubling the external and intrinsic scores (the two extremes of the continuum) and then subtracting the external and introjected scores from the identified and intrinsic scores (sheldon & kasser, 1995, 1998). thus, the following formula was used to calculate a self-determination score for each of the five goals: [(intrinsic motivation*2) + (identified motivation)] [(external motivation*2) + (introjected motivation)]. this procedure led to the creation of 5 self-determination scores for each participant. as the internal consistency of these scores was acceptable (see table 1.), an aggregate selfdetermination score was then computed for each participant by summing up the selfdetermination scores for their five goals. a high self-determination score indicates that a person is engaged in personal goals for autonomous and self-determined motives; a low score indicates that she or he is engaged in personal goals for controlled and non-self-determined motives. 4. results table 1 presents the descriptive statistics and indices of internal consistency for the scales included in this study. some variables were either positively skewed (for example the negative affects scale) or negatively skewed (the satisfaction with life scale), which is not surprising considering the non-clinical population under study. personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 242 table 1. descriptive statistics and internal consistency for all variables variables min max m sd α mindfulness 2.20 5.20 3.98 .55 .72 satisfaction with life 1.60 6.80 5.17 1.13 .85 positive affects 1.30 4.90 3.69 .67 .88 negative affects 1.00 4.10 2.19 .66 .84 purpose in life 2.93 6.00 4.90 .66 .81 self-acceptance 4.57 5.93 4.51 .97 .93 self-determination -23 150 69.72 42.74 .70 in order to test the first hypothesis, correlation coefficients were computed between mindfulness and all wellbeing indicators. mindfulness was positively correlated to both positive affects (r=.14, p> .001) and satisfaction with life (r=.28, p< .001) scores while negatively correlated to the negative affects score (r= -.40, p< .001). mindfulness was also positively correlated to purpose in life (r= .41, p< .001) and self-acceptance scores (r= .44, p< .001). the overall correlation coefficients between mindfulness and swb and pwb are presented in table 2. taken together, these results support hypothesis 1. as shown in table 2, mindfulness was also positively linked to the self-determination score (r= .44, p< .001), supporting hypothesis 2. table 2. pearson product moment correlation coefficients between mindfulness, wellbeing and self-determination variables 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. mindfulness 2. swb .38** 3. pwb .44** .77*** 4.self-determination .44*** .36*** .44*** note: * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 in order to test the third hypothesis, the baron and kenny’s (1986) causal step strategy was used based on paths described in figure 1. the effect of mindfulness on swb (path c: β = .575, p= .000) and pwb (path c: β = 1.050, p= .000) was significant. we found significant effect of mindfulness on self-determination (path a: β = 2.171, p= .000) and to a lesser extent for self-determination on swb (path b: β = .083. p= .023) and pwb (path b: β = .163, p= .003). the effect of mindfulness on swb (path c’: β = .393, p= .032) and pwb (path c’: β = .695, p= .010) was reduced but remains significant when the effect of selfdetermination was controlled. the significance of the indirect effect was tested with the bootstrapping methodology developed by preacher and hayes (2008). in essence, this nonparametric procedure is a computationally intensive method that involves repeatedly sampling from the data set and estimating the indirect effect in each resampled data set (preacher & hayes, 2008, p. 880). personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 243 figure 1. causal steps mediation test the bootstrapping sampling distributions of the indirect effects are empirically generated by taking a sample (with replacement) of size n from the entire data set and calculating the indirect effects in the resamples. point estimates and 95% confidence intervals are used to estimate for the indirect effects. point estimates are considered significant in the case zero is not contained in the 95% ci. table 3 presents the results of the bootstrapping analysis conducted to test the mediation effect of mindfulness on wellbeing variables through self-determination. table 3. mediation of the effect of mindfulness on subjective and psychological wellbeing through self-determination swb pwb point estimate bca 95% ci point estimate bca 95% ci lower upper lower upper self-determination .181 .043 .3981 .354 .151 .704 note: the maas was used as the predictor variable, the self-determination score was used as the mediator variable, swb and pwb scores were used as criteria variables. ci = confidence interval; bca = bias corrected and accelerated; 5,000 bootstrap samples. table 3 shows that the 0 is not included in the bias-corrected and accelerated confidence interval used in this analysis for any of the wellbeing scores. this result suggests that an indirect effect is significantly different from zero at p < .05 (two tailed) for swb and pwb and that self-determination partially mediates the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing. this suggests that individuals who report being more mindful tend to be engaged in personal endeavours that are more autonomously motivated, which in turn fosters their wellbeing. 5. discussion this study aimed to test the following three hypotheses: a) higher levels of mindfulness are significantly related to higher levels of wellbeing (h1); b) higher levels of mindfulness are significantly related to autonomous goals (h2); and c) the relationship between higher levels of c b c ’ a personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 244 mindfulness and higher levels of wellbeing are mediated by autonomous personal goal setting (h3). our findings confirmed that mindfulness was significantly correlated with both subjective and psychological wellbeing. this finding is coherent with the results obtained in other correlational studies involving both clinical and non-clinical samples (brown & ryan, 2003; coffey & hartman, 2008). as hypothesized, mindfulness was also related to the motives underpinning personal goals. a distinction was made in this study between autonomous (identified and intrinsic) and controlled (introjected and extrinsic) goals. participants with higher mindfulness scores reported more autonomous personal goals than those with lower mindfulness scores. this result supports previous research (brown & ryan, 2003; deci & ryan, 2008; ryan & deci, 2000) and suggests that mindfulness brings clarity to actions. it may help people choose personal goals that better serve their need for autonomy and self-determination. as brown, et al. (2007) argue: the receptively observant processing of internal and external information that characterizes mindfulness facilitates the healthy regulation of action through the provision of choice that is informed by abiding needs, values, and feelings and their fit with situational options and demands. that is, the fuller awareness afforded by mindfulness facilitates more flexible, adaptive responses to events, and helps to minimize automatic, habitual, or impulsive reactions (p.223). finally, our findings indicate that the motives underpinning personal goals act as a mediator in the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing. individuals who report being more attentive and aware tend to be engaged in personal endeavours that are more autonomously motivated, which in turn fosters their wellbeing. this suggests that in addition to emotion and cognition processes, goal-setting processes may also help explain the mechanisms by which mindfulness impacts on wellbeing. however, finding a statistically significant indirect effect that is supportive of mediation does not prove any causal pattern. further experimental studies are needed to explore causal patterns between mindfulness, personal goals and wellbeing. 6. implications for practice to our knowledge, this study is the first to have explored the relationship between mindfulness, wellbeing and goal setting. taken together, the results provide evidence that may support the integration of mindfulness interventions as a component of psychotherapy (didonna, 2008; germer, siegel, & fulton, 2005) and counselling sessions (stauffer, 2007). the results suggest that it may be especially beneficial to bring mindfulness into settings in which defining and clarifying personal life goals is important. by helping their clients cultivate their mindfulness, counsellors and therapists may assist them to select goals that are driven by autonomous motives rather than controlled ones. among the mindfulness-based training programs described above, act and dbt are the only ones where concrete steps are taken in order to simultaneously help clients cultivate their mindfulness and set self-concordant goals. the results of this study suggest that it might be extremely valuable to do so, especially with depressed or anxious individuals. as some authors suggest (segal, et al., 2002), when people feel anxious or depressed, they tend to act impulsively, automatically, or attempt to avoid difficult private experiences (mitmansgruber, beck, höfer, & schüßler, 2009). cultivating mindfulness may allow the awareness to set personal goals that are more self-concordant. personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 245 7. limitations and implications for research the present study has limitations. first, the sample was small and rather homogeneous (90% of students were females). moreover, a large proportion of the goals identified by students were either academic (e.g., complete my bachelor’s degree) or recreational (e.g., learn to play the guitar). a replication of this study with a larger and more heterogeneous sample in which people endorse different kinds of personal endeavours would make it to possible to test whether our findings can be generalized. moreover, this study was based on a correlation design. further research using experimental designs would certainly be beneficial in order to better understand the causal pattern between personal goal setting, mindfulness and wellbeing. finally, the conceptualization of wellbeing was narrow in this study. the indicators used were aimed at assessing two components, namely subjective and psychological wellbeing. as gallagher, et al. (2009) showed, wellbeing also relies on a social component. unfortunately, the latter was not measured in this study due to time constraints. in the future, it would be interesting to see if similar results could be obtained with social wellbeing indicators such as the one developed by keyes (1998). findings of this study suggest some promising areas of investigation for future research. for example, besides the maas, various scales have been developed in order to measure mindfulness: the freiburg mindfulness inventory (fmi; walach, buchheld, buttennmüller, kleinknecht, & schmidt, 2006), the cognitive and affective mindfulness scale (cams; feldman, et al., 2007), the kentucky inventory of mindfulness skills (kims; baer, smith, & allen, 2004) and the southampton mindfulness questionnaire (smq; chadwick, et al., 2008). according to work done by baer, smith, hopkins, krietemeyer, & toney (2006), these questionnaires encompass five distinct factors: act with awareness, non judging, non reactivity, describe and observe. the maas has been designed mainly to measure the act with awareness factor (brown & ryan, 2003). therefore, future studies might investigate whether or not the patterns of relationships presented here hold with other questionnaires aimed at assessing other factors of mindfulness identified by baer et al. (2006). future research could also be conducted on goals types. the types of goals students were engaged in (academic, professional, health, interpersonal, etc.) were analyzed for exploratory purposes but were not part of this study. to use sheldon and kasser’s (2001) words, we were interested in why people were pursuing their goals, rather than what types of goals they were pursuing. for example, is a person higher on mindfulness, more engaged in interpersonal (e.g., take care of one’s family members) or community projects (e.g., volunteer at greenpeace)? this might be an interesting area of investigation since various authors have suggested that mindfulness training might be associated with more compassion (gilbert, 2009) and ecologically responsible behaviour (brown & kasser, 2005). in summary, this study involving a non-clinical population provides empirical support for the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing and suggests that this relationship is partially mediated by personal goal setting. authors simon grégoire université du québec à montréal gregoire.simon@uqam.ca thérèse bouffard université du québec à montréal, montréal, qc. canada personal goal setting as mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and wellbeing grégoire, bouffard, & vezeau www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 246 carole vezeau université du québec à montréal, montréal, qc. canada publishing timeline received 7 december 2012 accepted 31 march 2012 published 29 august 2012 references argus, g., & thompson, m. 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(2012). mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings. international journal of wellbeing, 2(1), 22–33. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i1.2 ryan m. niemiec ryan@viacharacter.org copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 article mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings ryan m. niemiec abstract: the “five mindfulness trainings” of thich nhat hanh (1993) have been pursued and practiced by countless individuals over the years. the core of the trainings is mindful living, in which individuals apply heightened awareness to their relationships, health behaviors, and activities of daily life, while considering the impact of these on society. the via character strengths, found to be universally valued and endorsed across cultures and nations, can serve as pathways to pursue these mindfulness trainings. positive psychology interventions designed to enhance the synergy between character strengths and the mindfulness trainings are offered. key words: character strengths, mindfulness, thich nhat hanh, mindful living, positive psychology interventions    my actions are my only true belongings. –thich nhat hanh 1. introduction the wise, humble, and zestful monk, thich nhat hanh, has inspired countless individuals over the years with his teachings on mindfulness, peace, and compassion (kabat-zinn, 2005). many of his teachings are aligned with and parallel findings and ideas in positive psychology. one of his popular teachings is the “five mindfulness trainings”, which are a modern-day re-formulation of some of the buddha’s core teachings. the five mindfulness trainings are reverence for life, true happiness, true love, loving speech and deep listening, and nourishment and healing (nhat hanh, 1993; nhat hanh & cheung, 2010), and provide pathways to a life of greater joy, engagement, and meaning. indeed, these are not only a recipe for mindful living but present a striking vision for a global ethic. the potential impact of the trainings on individuals, relationships, and society is significant. consider a world in which more people, groups, and organizations bring careful intentionality to what they are doing, listen to one another with more compassion, and reflect more deeply on the impact of healthy and unhealthy choices on oneself and on others. for a full commentary on an earlier version of the trainings, see nhat hanh (1993), or for the most recent revision of the trainings (the version discussed in this article), see nhat hanh & cheung (2010).1 1 also available in brief online at: http://www.plumvillage.org/mindfulness-trainings/3-the-five-mindfulness-trainings.html. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.plumvillage.org/mindfulness-trainings/3-the-five-mindfulness-trainings.html http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 thich nhat hanh makes it clear that each of the five mindfulness trainings are ideas to work toward (i.e., trainings) rather than final ideals to achieve or commandments one must or should follow. he offers an apt metaphor of the north star, which can help to guide or direct individuals in a particular direction though one can never make it to the destination. the individual variance for how a person might go about the journey of practicing each training is significant; some individuals take a formal, systematic approach, delving into the trainings oneby-one in their personal study or through study with their mindfulness community, while others approach the trainings more informally, focusing on where their particular needs and interests are at present. but, what are the mechanisms that make the journey with the mindfulness trainings possible? what ingredients in ourselves can we turn to in order to manifest mindfulness and the five mindfulness trainings more strongly? one answer lies in our strengths of character. this paper draws some important connections between character strengths and the mindfulness trainings and offers practical suggestions rooted in the latest science that will help deepen one’s understanding and practice of mindfulness. 2. connecting character strengths with mindfulness about a decade ago, 55 scientists began an ambitious project that analyzed and studied the best thinking on human goodness, virtue, and strength across time, culture, religions, and nations. they reviewed hundreds of philosophical, religious, and various classic works on virtue that have been written over the last 2,500 years. the result of this three-year project—rooted in the science of positive psychology—was a universal classification of virtues and strengths of character (peterson & seligman, 2004). this via classification (see figure 1) of six virtues and 24 character strengths has become a “common language” for people around the world as it describes the psychological ingredients of what is best in human beings. these character strengths are viewed as “who we are” at our core—our essence. in the original work describing the via classification (peterson & seligman, 2004), the scientists allude to an immediate connection between character strengths and the five mindfulness trainings. they suggest that the first (reverence for life), second (true happiness, and fourth (loving speech and deep listening) mindfulness trainings connect closely with the humanity and justice strengths, and that the third (true love) and fifth (nourishment and healing) mindfulness trainings connect closely with the temperance and courage strengths. other researchers have defined the concept of mindfulness as containing two important ingredients that can be understood in terms of these character strengths (bishop et al., 2004; coffey, hartman, & fredrickson, 2010): one is the strength of self-regulation in that when we are mindful we are taking control of our attention, regulating it into the present moment; the other is the strength of curiosity in that when we are practicing mindfulness, our approach or attitude to the present moment is to be curious, open, and accepting of whatever is present (bishop et al., 2004). indeed the strength of curiosity functions to open us up to possibilities in the present moment and to help us move toward and mindfully approach all of the vicissitudes of life—the positive and beautiful as well as the challenging and upsetting (kashdan, 2009). mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 figure 1. via classification note: via classification is copyrighted material of via institute on character, 2004. used with permission. www.viacharacter.org. furthermore, duplication of this image requires permission from the via institute, and a reference to this article as the source of the image. it appears that mindfulness and character strengths can positively impact one another. increased amount of time spent using strengths has been found to correlate significantly (.26**) with mindfulness (jarden, jose, kashdan, simpson, mclachlan, & mackenzie, 2012). mindfulness can help an individual express their character strengths in a balanced way that is sensitive to the context and circumstance they are in (niemiec, rashid, & spinella, in press). on the other hand, character strengths such as curiosity can help bolster a person’s mindfulness practice, helping them overcome obstacles and barriers in maintaining a regular practice (niemiec, rashid, & spinella, in press). https://cassmail.anu.edu.au/owa/redir.aspx?c=c83d3fb429b34687a08999e2e1c57acc&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.viacharacter.org mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 3. thich nhat hanh: a true positive psychologist many of the teachings and publications of thich nhat hanh connect closely with principles of positive psychology and with principles relating to character strengths. 3.1 internal conditions for happiness one of the key themes of the mindfulness trainings is that individual wellbeing relies more upon internal conditions such as compassion, joy, and the pursuit of community, positive relationships, and personal growth than external conditions such as money, status, and image. as thich nhat hanh has often noted, we already have more than enough conditions to be happy (nhat hanh, 2009). he is referring to those internal conditions that we can turn to within ourselves in any present moment. this is consistent with happiness research findings that there are better outcomes for intrinsic goals (e.g., i want to have a closer relationship with my spouse) over extrinsic goals (e.g., i want to make more money; kasser, 2006). character strengths can be viewed as many of those important “internal conditions” that are already present in everyone and that are pivotal for setting intrinsic-oriented goals. 3.2 the middle way echoing the buddha, who spoke of practicing “the way,” thich nhat hanh (1998) emphasizes the application of diligence among extremes such as those of austerity and sensual pleasure, and emphasizes finding balance in one’s practice of the five mindfulness trainings rather than forcing oneself to be “perfect” or rigid in the application. similarly, aristotle (2000) articulated this as the “golden mean,” the balance between excess and deficiency with one’s life activities of working, learning, playing, loving, and serving; this balance then leads to the ultimate goal of personal happiness. in strengths psychology, this can be referred to as finding a balance between overuse and underuse of character strengths (biswas-diener, kashdan, & minhas, 2011; grant & schwartz, 2011; linley, 2008), e.g., for bravery, the middle way is the balance between recklessness and cowardice, while for curiosity it is the balance between nosiness and lack of interest. 3.3 watering the seeds all 24 character strengths matter. this important principle emphasizes how each strength is a capacity in individuals that can be developed with practice. thich nhat hanh (1998) describes the practice of “watering the seeds” of virtue and those wholesome, interior elements rather than unwholesome seeds of suffering and violence (e.g., watering kindness rather than anger). this is likened to the nourishing of any of the 24 character strengths’ “seeds” through deliberate intervention and mindful care. while all strengths matter, it might be that “watering” one’s highest strengths elicits the greatest benefit. research on signature strengths—those most authentic, natural, and energizing to the person—has revealed a strong connection with happiness (linley, nielsen, gillett, & biswas-diener, 2010; littman-ovadia & davidovitch, 2010; littman-ovadia & steger, 2010; madden, green, & grant, 2011; mitchell, stanimirovic, klein, & vella-brodrick, 2009; mongrain & anselmo, 2009; peterson & peterson, 2008; rust, diessner, & reade, 2009; seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005). mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 3.4 interbeing thich nhat hanh (1998) offers the word “interbeing” to refer to the mutual relationship and interconnection of things. also described as “interdependent co-arising,” this teaching is that causes and effects co-arise and *<+everything is a result of multiple causes and conditions. the egg is in the chicken, and the chicken is in the egg. chicken and egg arise in mutual dependence. neither is independent. (nhat hanh, 1998, p. 221) he offers the example of how we can gaze at a tree and see how a cloud, the rain, and the soil are part of the tree, because without the cloud, rain, and soil, there wouldn’t be a tree to grow. thus, there is “interbeing” among these elements. this teaching can be applied to the 24 character strengths in that all of the character strengths are linked with one another; the strengths do not function in isolation or independent of one another—the expression of one of these virtuous qualities likely affects the others to some degree. for example, when a person is offering deep forgiveness to another, they are also expressing perspective, bravery, kindness, spirituality, humility, and so forth. scientists have performed intercorrelation matrices on the via character strengths and naturally each strength correlates to some degree with the others. when focusing on a character strength in order to practice a mindfulness training, it is likely other character strengths are deployed or at least impacted. 4. using strengths to promote mindful living after a person becomes more aware of their character strengths, how might they use them to deepen their experience of the five mindfulness trainings? here are some practical ways that character strengths might impact, inform, and enhance one’s use of each mindfulness training. an attempt is made to offer science-based suggestions, but each should be viewed as a preliminary idea that warrants further scientific inquiry, especially in terms of its potential impact on the mindfulness training; each intervention is offered to help encourage and support the mindfulness practice of individuals and communities. 4.1 reverence for life the first mindfulness training, reverence for life, begins: aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, i am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and to learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals (nhat hanh & cheung, 2010, p. 210). it also encourages the cultivation of openness, non-discrimination, and nonattachment to views. this training directly invites individuals to increase their kindness/compassion strength to a level that moves the focus on oneself to a focus on others, namely all living beings. the strength of fairness appears to be an underlying principle for this training. those high in this character strength navigate their lives through principles of equity and justice for all. such an approach is the basis for a healthy, global community, which this mindfulness training emphasizes. 4.1.1 how might character strengths help in the practice of this training?  when one finds oneself gravitating toward dualistic or exclusiveness in thinking, call upon the judgment/critical thinking strength to consider multiple viewpoints (tetlock, mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 1986). combining this with the fairness strength can help one see all sides of an issue, and to find a sense of balance and a common, middle ground.  use the bravery strength to speak against acts of killing in the world, even those that appear benign such as deliberately stepping on a spider on the sidewalk. to mindlessly “squash” any form of life is to subtly rehearse a cognitive and behavior routine of apathy and disregard for living beings.  build the appreciation of beauty strength by training oneself to see beauty wherever one looks; keep a “beauty log” in which one regularly writes about the wonders of the life and beauty of plants, animals, and even the moral acts of beauty witnessed in others (diessner, rust, solom, frost, & parsons, 2006). 4.2 true happiness the second mindfulness training, true happiness, begins: aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, i am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting (nhat hanh & cheung, 2010, p. 210). it also encourages the individual to see a connection between one’s own happiness and suffering, and the happiness and suffering of others. this training emphasizes a focus on generosity and understanding, with less of a focus on external conditions that are superficial in nature, such as fame, wealth, and material possessions. while the thrust of this training speaks against straightforward, anti-societal behaviors such as stealing, oppression or exploitation of the less fortunate, there are subtle examples of this training to examine. for example, people can steal someone’s idea by not giving due credit, upstage someone at a business meeting (“stealing someone’s thunder”), or steal someone’s time by monopolizing a conversation. the impact of inaction—not helping those in real need and those being oppressed in society— deserves deep contemplation in the context of this training. 4.2.1 how might you use character strengths to practice this training?  the simplest answer is: give. giving, being generous, and volunteering are core components of the kindness character strength and when expressed have a positive impact on both the giver and the receiver (luks, 1991; post, 2005).  be grateful. the research surrounding the benefits of expressing the strength of gratitude is mounting. research shows that people who are grateful are often more communal, altruistic, happy, and less materialistic. gratitude also engenders a deep sense of appreciation for what one already has in life (emmons & mccullough, 2003; seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005).  teamwork and leadership: there are important benefits to taking a “we” approach as to an “i” approach (son, jackson, grove, & feltz, 2011), and indeed these two justiceoriented, civic strengths focus on what is best for the larger group. one can consider how these play a role on a small scale with a small project in one’s life, and then shift the focus to a wider audience. 4.3 true love the third mindfulness training, true love, begins: aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, i am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 individuals, couples, families, and society< cultivating loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness—which are the four basic elements of true love (nhat hanh & cheung, 2010, p. 211). the training calls for a mindful sexuality and a strong degree of commitment in our relationships. another aspect of this training involves protecting children from sexual abuse and whenever possible keeping the institution of “family” together. here, it is the perspective/wisdom strength that needs to be called forth to allow for the wider view of life and what is truly important. this involves calling forth both strengths of the heart and strengths of the mind in order to overcome desire, cravings, and drives that can lead to rash choices, superficial outcomes, and destruction of relationships. 4.3.1 how might you use character strengths to practice this training?  build the strength of prudence. prudence, sometimes called “cautious wisdom,” is an important strength to use when it comes to sexual desire. if one is uncertain about a relationship, one should use prudence to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. what are the costs and benefits of the action that is about to be taken? what are the costs and benefits of not taking the action? (rollnick & miller, 1995). in addition, one might use one’s heart-oriented strengths (e.g., curiosity) by asking for others’ feedback about one’s relationship partner and listening closely without judgment to the feedback.  when in doubt a general guideline is to be honest and authentic in all relationships. integrity involves allowing who one is at the core to be aligned with what one expresses to others at work, home, and socially. this strength of honesty/integrity usually requires the strength of bravery—as in being brave enough to share who one is—to face any sexual improprieties in one’s life (past or current), and/or to speak against any sexual misbehaviors witnessed against children, adolescents, or adults.  combat mindlessness with perspective and social intelligence. it’s easy to fall into automatic pilot in our relationships (segal, williams, & teasdale, 2002) with close others, therefore, it is important to periodically check in on ourselves with questions such as: how might i commit more in my relationships? is there anything i’ve been avoiding with anyone? applying this requires attending to the “golden mean” of strengths and virtues—using strengths at the right time, to the right degree, in the right situation. this requires a bigger picture perspective and the social intelligence strength—being aware of one’s own feelings, others’ feelings, and the social nuances of the context one is in (schwartz & sharpe, 2006).  embed a lovingkindness meditation into a current mindfulness practice. involving imaging, loving statements, and positive reminiscing, lovingkindness practice expands love and improves health on a personal level (cohn & fredrickson, 2010; salzberg, 1997), but it is likely there are further benefits extending to the fostering of healthy relationships. 4.4 loving speech and deep listening the fourth mindfulness training, loving speech and deep listening, begins: aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, i am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace (nhat hanh & cheung, 2010, p. 211). mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 this training invites a focus upon the practice of mindful speech and deep listening. no doubt compassion/kindness is a core strength used in these practices. curiosity is also important as research has found that being curious in social relationships can lead to stronger, more intimate relationships than those who don’t take an open, curious approach (kashdan, mcknight, fincham, & rose, 2011). 4.4.1 how might you use character strengths to practice this training?  learn to offer active-constructive responses when someone shares good news (gable, reis, impett, & asher, 2004). this involves a mix of the strengths of love (providing warmth and genuineness in the response), social intelligence (detecting the person is sharing something that’s important to them), and humility and self-regulation (to not have to share your good news too but to help the person who is sharing to savor in the moment). research has shown this type of responding is important for successful relationships and it is likely to improve mindful speech and deep listening.  learn to empathize when someone shares bad news or appears to be suffering (batson, chang, orr, & rowland, 2002). listen with eyes and ears of compassion: what might they be feeling? as one takes notice of what the other person is feeling, can their emotions be felt as well? if so, one can share this. compassion is to suffer with and to be with the person; it is a type of kindness strength that can be offered to loved ones. while listening, one might ask oneself, “where is the person coming from? what are they saying or trying to say? what is the essence or core message that they are expressing?” for example, a woman yelling at her husband for being late for a dinner date might be feeling—at her core—disrespected and unloved.  practice forgiveness when someone close brings one harm. this does not mean to forget their action, nor to condone what they have done, but to let go of one’s own suffering. research reveals that writing about the personal benefits that have resulted from someone’s harmful actions leads to greater forgiveness than writing about the trauma of the harmful act (mccullough, root, & cohen, 2006). the strength of forgiveness is closely linked and impacted by having an other-focused compassion in which one listens deeply to the suffering of others and considers the humanity of the offender (witvliet, knoll, hinman, & deyoung, 2010; witvliet, deyoung, hofelich, & deyoung, 2011). 4.5 nourishment and healing the fifth mindfulness training, nourishment and healing, begins: aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, i am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. (nhat hanh & cheung, 2010, p. 212) consuming goes beyond food and drink to the consumption of websites, movies, television programs, video games, books, magazines, and conversations. this training is about taking care of one’s whole self and being a mindful consumer. core to this training are the strengths of selfregulation and prudence. embedded in this mindful practice is the strength of perseverance, as the practice of not consuming alcohol or violent media images/messages is not just something to be done once or twice but is an ongoing practice requiring perseverance. this strength mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 involves overcoming obstacles that emerge and reframing them as growth opportunities (dweck, 2006). 4.5.1 how might you use character strengths to practice this training?  self-monitor daily healthy and unhealthy eating and drinking habits. create a detailed food and drink log. this self-regulation strategy is a key health habit. interestingly, research has found that the regular practice and improvement of one behavior involving self-regulation automatically improves other behaviors involving this strength. for example, improving one’s self-regulation with food improves one’s selfregulation in other areas, such as exercise, mindfulness, or even managing finances (baumeister, matthew, dewall, & oaten, 2006).  track the non-edible products that one’s consciousness consumes. set a watch alarm to beep one time per hour; when it beeps, take notice of what one’s consciousness is taking in—a television commercial, a radio program, a website, a video game, a personal conversation, a book, etc. ask oneself: is this product or experience right now having a positive or negative effect on my consciousness? what feelings and thoughts am i experiencing in the present moment in light of this current stimulus? this type of mindful consuming approach involves the use of many character strengths and can be applied to any form of media or art (e.g., niemiec & wedding, 2008).  set a health goal that is of personal value to you (sheldon & kasser, 1998). make the goal something reasonable that you can commit to 100%, even when the going gets tough. the character strengths most associated with goal-setting are hope, perseverance, and prudence. be prudent to select a goal that is reasonable, be perseverant when the going gets tough, and generate hopeful thoughts about your ability to achieve the goal and to develop alternate pathways to get there, if necessary. 5. conclusion for many people, a good first step is to learn which character strengths come most naturally and easily to them and which might require more effort to use. the via inventory of strengths (via-is) is a scientific measurement of strengths that can be taken for free online (via institute, 2012). when one receives the results, some may take an approach of working with their highest-ranking character strengths while others may turn to their lesser strengths and work to enhance them. yet another approach is to choose one character strength and explore how it interlocks closely with each of the mindfulness trainings. using kindness/compassion as an example: the first training emphasizes a global kindness, the second emphasizes kindness in the community, the third and fourth narrow the focus to interpersonal and intimate relationships, and the fifth brings the opportunity to the individual to focus on self-kindness. as alluded to earlier, the mindfulness trainings “inter-are” (nhat hanh, 1993)—to use one strength such as kindness with one mindfulness training is likely to impact and boost awareness and growth of the other four trainings. for researchers, there is a lot of territory to explore on this synergy between mindfulness and character strengths, especially within the light of the five mindfulness trainings. one area is the study of these trainings among experienced mindfulness practitioners in communities (meditation sanghas). there are hundreds of communities that pursue these trainings in the tradition of thich nhat hanh and further evaluating the variables and ingredients of these practices and their outcomes relative to the general public would be informative. mindful living: character strengths interventions as pathways for the five mindfulness trainings niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 for practitioners, this paper outlines a number of practical strategies that can be used to enhance both character strengths and the mindfulness elements pertaining to each training. practitioners might review the mindfulness trainings with their clients and have discussions with them as to where the client is strong and doing well, as well as those that the client is struggling with. the strategies that follow can act as a starting point for discussion or can be devised as a homework exercise for clients to advance their knowledge and practice of the given training. the suggestions offered here are merely the tip of an iceberg. while each of these suggestions has a base in science, they are all merely possibilities one might take in the direction of mindfulness and mindful living. many of the best ideas for how to use one’s strengths to enhance mindfulness will come directly from the individual. each individual has a unique constellation of character strengths and therefore should spend time exploring how they might bring the trainings closer to their hearts and minds, and integrate them deeply with who they are. as individuals cultivate their character strengths’ “seeds” to work toward the five mindfulness trainings, many will find this brings benefit to their family, to relationships, and to the larger community. that is something that really matters. authors ryan m. niemiec ryan@viacharacter.org publishing timeline received 10 december 2011 accepted 8 february 2012 published 29 april 2012 references: aristotle. 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(2021). developing an understanding of post traumatic growth: implications and application for research and intervention. international journal of wellbeing, 11(2), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i2.1415 sean a. o’connor the university of sydney sean.oconnor@sydney.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article developing an understanding of post traumatic growth: implications and application for research and intervention monica sanki · sean a. o'connor abstract: post traumatic growth (ptg) has been shown to occur following a range of traumatic experiences and interest in the construct has increased exponentially in recent years. through a systematic literature review, this paper explores ptg’s philosophical and theoretical foundations, reviews some of the controversies surrounding its definition, measurement, and characterisation, and seeks to elicit some common factors supporting its development. of particular interest are the potential applications and implications of these factors in broader contexts. ptg’s theoretical links to expert companionship, organismic valuing theory, and self determination theory, and the role of narrative in rebuilding personality, all indicate alignment with the philosophy and practice of positive psychology. while the study of this area is still evolving, this paper suggests there are many potential applications and implications of ptg. keywords: post traumatic growth; post traumatic stress; positive psychology; coaching; growth; personal development; intervention 1. introduction the concept of growth following trauma is a commonly held concept within the populous psyche (gorman, 2019; hooton, 2018) embedded historically throughout shared mythology, religion and cultural literature (joseph, 2011; tedeschi, shakespeare-finch, taku, & calhoun, 2018). philosophically, existentialism’s focus on individualist meaning making shape current understanding of ptg. growth and recovery are seemingly intertwined in our societal narrative of human evolution and yet there has been minimal investigation into factors enabling recovery from trauma with a view to growth and wellbeing. historically, psychology’s focus on the identification and codification of pathology has done little to improve prevention approaches (seligman, 2000; sheldon & king, 2001). more recently, positive psychology’s focus on ‘strength and virtue’ (seligman, 2000, p. 7), has shown strengths such as courage, optimism, work ethic, hope, honesty and capacity for flow can act as buffers against mental illness, supporting wellbeing (seligman, 2000). positive psychological research places emphasis on personal autonomy (peterson, maier, & seligman, 1993), evident in ptg. ptg was first coined by tedeschi and calhoun (1995), with early reports of ptg emerging in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. through a systematic literature review, this paper explores ptg’s philosophical and theoretical foundations, reviews some of the controversies surrounding its definition, measurement, and characterisation, and seeks to elicit some common factors about:blank post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 supporting its development. a discussion then follows proposing future research and implications for intervention. 1.1 post traumatic growth – philosophical and theoretical foundations the philosophical foundations of ptg are anchored in the proposition that positive human health requires the confrontation of negative life experiences (ryff & singer, 1998). this strikes directly at the paradoxical heart of the construct and represents a philosophical shift away from pathology to salutogenisis (tedeschi et al., 2018). early interest in ptg led to multiple attempts at definition. one theoretical concept central to ptg is that of shattered assumptions (janoffbulman, 1992), which acknowledges that an event can challenge the adaptive resources and world view of an individual (janoff-bulman, 1992). trauma, being highly subjective, means coping will be determined by a person’s attachment of meaning to the traumatic event (frankl, 1985). while there is no universally accepted definition of ptg (joseph, 2012; peterson, park, pole, d’andrea, & seligman, 2008), tedeschi and calhoun’s (1995) characterisation of ptg as a positive transformation following struggle with trauma or highly challenging circumstances, is widely relied upon (tedeschi & calhoun, 1995a). this definition focuses broadly on highly challenging life circumstances, separate from life stressors and hassles (tedeschi et al., 2018), moving away from definitions of post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) requiring life threatening experiences (5th edition; dsm-5). trauma is therefore defined as any scenario which is transformative in nature, challenging a person’s sense of self, sense making and assumptive worldview (janoff-bulman, 1992; joseph & linley, 2004; tedeschi et al., 2018). psychological change comes from the process of dealing with trauma, rather than its survival (tedeschi & calhoun, 1995b). this points to the process of some kind of reflective engagement with a traumatic experience that may be significant in supporting a positive developmental shift. importantly, the key is not a return to the pre-trauma state, but experiencing personally significant growth (tedeschi & calhoun, 2004). this has been evidenced through enhanced relationships; a deeper and more accurate sense of self; and perspective shift on life, meaning and personal values (joseph & linley, 2004; tedeschi & calhoun, 1995a). linley and joseph (2005) extend this view on ptg, taking an affective-cognitive organismic valuing approach. leveraging from a person-centred approach (rogers, 1951) and self determination theory (ryan & deci, 2000), organismic valuing proposes humans are driven towards growth and innately understand the requirements supportive of wellbeing (joseph & linley, 2005). in contrast, tedeschi and calhoun’s (1995) model, characterised by persistent cognitive processing, is argued to be aligned to the hedonic tradition of subjective wellbeing, and seeking out feelings of wellbeing (linley & joseph, 2005). linley and joseph’s (2005) thinking centres on eudaimonia and accounts for the motivations for change and the dynamic nature of the growth process (joseph & linley, 2005). it is thought that confronting trauma and selfrebuilding results in a more fully functioning and self-accepting individual, seeking to live a more purposeful and authentic life (joseph & linley, 2005). importantly, both theories recommend an expert companion to guide the trauma sufferer on their journey of cognitive restructuring and search for meaning (joseph, 2011; tedeschi et al., 2018), suggesting that guided reflection and observation are best placed to support development of self and encourage positive eudemonic and hedonic wellbeing. with a focus on the deeper transformation at the psychological wellbeing level, supporting the sufferer to listen and observe their own psychological experience is central to developing autonomy through recovery (joseph & linley, 2005). while distinguishing importantly that those still overwhelmed by distress will http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 not be ready for this stage of growth and require clinical support, the expert companion could be, but does not necessarily need to be, a traditional therapist, but someone who can provide a client centred approach to facilitate growth, including social workers, psychotherapists, coaches or pastoral counsellors (joseph, 2011; tedeschi et al., 2018). to support expert companionship, joseph (2011) developed the thrive model designed to facilitate ptg. this six stage model includes the steps of taking stock, harvesting hope, reauthoring, identifying then valuing change, finishing with expressing change in action (joseph, 2011), with this final stage triggering much theoretical debate. hobfoll et al.’s (2007) study identified the role of action in both evidencing and empowering ptg, stating that ptg can only truly be evidenced through action, directly challenging tedeschi and calhoun’s (1995) cognitive model (hobfoll et al., 2007). hobfoll et al., (2007) lean strongly on the writing of frankl (1985) with his focus on ‘right action and right conduct’ supporting his search for meaning and discovery of meaning in action (frankl, 1985). interestingly, ptg has received exponential focus in recent years. a psychinfo database search on 29 april 2019 using the keyword ‘posttraumatic growth’ revealed 1297 papers of which 819 have been published since 2014. intrigued by our understanding of the philosophical and theoretical foundations of ptg and the growing interest in the construct within the research community, we reviewed and analysed the existing literature to gain a deeper understanding of ptg’s current theoretical developments, factors and applications. 2. method 2.1 literature review the prisma statement (moher, liberati, tetzlaff, & altman, 2009) was consulted to guide both the data search and resource selection process of this literature review. initially a data search was conducted on the following databases using the term “posttraumatic growth”; psych info, business source ultimate, sydney university library database and google scholar. initially, the search focussed on building a resource base to provide an overview of current conceptualisation of the construct and key theorists. once this was established, searches focussed on identifying key meta-studies that furthered the development of the construct including factors and debates regarding theoretical approaches. from these meta-studies, individual case studies were identified that illustrated specific concepts or assisted in the development of the construct factors. finally contact was made with a practitioner active in the field of trauma in order to access unpublished data and perspectives. 2.2 categorisation and inclusion criteria in reviewing the studies and articles, the authors identified and organised the data into five key categories key theorists; factors; measures and definition; issues and controversy; and implications for intervention. some of these were then broken into subcategories, for instance, the factor category, in particular, consisted of a number of sub-categories including, coping, distress/growth, cognition/action, optimism and social support, cultural factors, resilience, rumination and impact of time amongst others. as the detailed review progressed, additional backward and forward searches were also undertaken to further illicit relevant materials. these materials were subjected to the same review process as detailed above. 2.3 studies included as a result of the process adopted in the data collection and classification stage, 132 out of the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 149 resources reviewed in detail, were included in the final literature review. this meant that the collection and collation of data in the previous two stages sufficiently identified material relevant to providing both an overview of the construct and the development of potential implications for intervention. table 1 provides an overview of the development of ptg theory via primary theorists and the key meta-studies as reviewed in this paper. table 1 summarised ptg theory research up to 2018. author key contributions to development of ptg construct janoff-bulmann 1992 defining assumption shattering events and their impacts tedeschi & calhoun 1995, 1996 original coining of the term posttraumatic growth linley & joseph 2004, 2005 review of the ptg literature to date and development of an affective-cognitive organismic valuing approach to ptg maerkle & zoellner 2004 janus face model of ptg – identification of the potentially illusory aspects of ptg. meta study hobfoll et al 2007 ptg as illusory, needs change expressed as action, not only a cognitive process prati & pietrantoni 2009 optimism, social support and coping strategies – meta study in ptg factors joseph 2011 book deeper articulation of the affective-cognitive organismic valuing approach and practical applications including thrive model jayawickreme & blackie 2014 meta study – ptg as positive personality change review of evidence and controversies tedeschi & calhoun ptg handbook 2004 and updated in 2018 with additional authors shakespeare-finch and taku two versions, originally published in 2004, then updated in 2018, comprehensive overview of the construct, measures, factors and variables 3. results of the materials retrieved in the initial searches, the majority are case studies documenting ptg of survivors of natural disaster, serious illness and violent crime. the remainder are devoted to various theorists seeking to explore and measure the construct and related meta studies and literature reviews. consistent with the evolving nature of ptg’s definition, the initial results revealed that the study and articulation of the exact nature, measures and elements of ptg is inconsistent (hobfoll et al., 2007). what does emerge though, are a set of common factors supporting ptg. while all of the factors identified in the research do not need to be in place for http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 ptg to evolve, they do indicate there are a group of essential key factors. 3.1 factors supporting ptg the existence of ptg does not mean that trauma is a precursor to personal growth. trauma is highly stressful, with each person responding differently, based on a multitude of variables (tedeschi & calhoun, 2004). each of the below are shown by research to support ptg, however individuals vary in their response to trauma, and so not all factors discussed are necessarily required in order to support ptg. 3.1.1 relationship between growth and distress variables such as the intensity, severity and duration of the trauma will impact the stress response. sadness and depression are common responses, as are guilt, anger and irritability (tedeschi & calhoun, 2004). these are usually accompanied by the commencement of distressing and dysfunctional thought patterns, including intrusive rumination (tedeschi & calhoun, 2004). our natural inclination is to try to alleviate such pain and distress. however the evidence reveals that in order to experience ptg, a level of distress is required (frazier, conlon, & glaser, 2001; hobfoll et al., 2007). across multiple breast cancer studies levels of ptg were higher across those who were more severely impacted by the disease and showed higher levels of distress (sumalla et al., 2009). similar results were found in survivors of the dresden bombings, where proximity related to higher levels of distress, and higher levels of growth (maercker & herrle, 2003). it is important to distinguish between the alleviation of distress, shown not to promote growth, and the experience of growth found to alleviate distress (frazier et al., 2001; joseph, 2011). this speaks to the core paradoxical nature of ptg, requiring both the experience and exploration of distress for developmental growth. while highly challenging, this process is seen as essential for growth (joseph, 2011; tedeschi et al., 2018). the relationship between growth and distress are coexistent (tedeschi et al., 2018) and do not sit at opposite ends of a continuum (joseph, 2011). while current pharmacological practices of treating post traumatic stress (pts) and ptsd focus on symptomatic alleviation for immediate short term mental recovery, more is needed to support potential longer term positive developmental growth that may arise from facing challenging experiences (joseph, 2011). indeed the experience of distress can exist in conjunction with feelings of wellbeing following ptg (joseph, 2011). 3.1.2 relationship between ptsd, pts and ptg given the links between growth and distress, what then of the relationship between ptg, pts and ptsd? to view ptsd as negative and ptg as positive along a single continuum of possible outcomes oversimplifies the constructs and fails to address the complex human response to trauma (tedeschi et al., 2018; westphal & bonanno, 2007). again, there are inconsistencies across studies. a stronger curvilinear relationship has been found where there is a relationship between levels of distress and ptg (helgeson et al., 2006). two studies in particular revealed a curvilinear relationship between distress level and growth, one a breast cancer study where those with stages 1 and iv reported lower levels of benefit finding than those with stage ii (lechner et al., 2003), and vietnam veterans who experienced the greater levels of benefit finding were those exposed to a moderate level of trauma distress, as opposed to low or high trauma exposure (fontana & rosenheck, 1998). these results were supported by shakespeare-finch and lurie-beck’s (2014) meta study which also found the curvilinear relationship was moderated by age and trauma type (shakespeare-finch & luriehttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 beck, 2014). for instance a more linear relationship was found amongst children (jin, xu, & liu, 2014; kilmer et al., 2009), and stronger relationships found in natural disasters as opposed to following sexual assault (shakespeare-finch & lurie-beck, 2014). the curvilinear relationship between the symptoms of ptsd and ptg suggests that there is a point beyond which the symptoms of ptsd become overwhelming and hamper the cognitive process of meaning making and growth (joseph, 2011). this curvilinear relationship also supports the basis that there cannot be ptg without some level of pts (joseph, 2011; shakespeare-finch & lurie-beck, 2014). it is therefore important to distinguish that while ptsd, pts and ptg are related as arising out of the same traumatic event, they are different processes. while working with the distress, guilt and intrusive rumination associated with ptsd, one can also start to work on the process of deliberate rumination and transformative change of integrating a new assumptive worldview (tedeschi et al., 2018). symptoms of ptsd, including post traumatic health deterioration, can coexist with the process and outcomes of ptg (maercker & herrle, 2003). 3.1.3 relationship between rumination, assimilation and accommodation rumination, a repetitive focus on distress, its causes and consequences (nolen-hoeksema, wisco, & lyubomirsky, 2008) has been traditionally thought of as a maladaptive response to stressful and emotional events, negatively impacting physical and mental wellbeing (garcia, duque, & cova, 2017; hughes, alloy, & cogswell, 2008). recent studies have indicated that rumination may be multidimensional and highlighted the importance of distinguishing between its different forms, with each having different characteristics and impacts (garcia et al., 2017; tanner, voon, hasking, & martin, 2013). brooding and reflection are two clear subtypes of rumination (treynor, gonzalez, & nolenhoeksema, 2003), with brooding characterised as a passive comparative exercise with maladaptive outcomes (treynor et al., 2003) and attentional bias to emotional and negative data (garcia et al., 2017), and reflection an adaptive cognitive problem solving process (treynor et al., 2003) with no negative attentional bias (garcia et al., 2017). calhoun and tedeschi (2006) further separate ruminative thoughts into automatic intrusive thoughts and deliberate rumination on an event’s meaning (calhoun & tedeschi, 2006). automatic intrusive thoughts have been associated with ptsd, and deliberate rumination to ptg (garcia et al., 2017). in fact, garcia et al.’s (2017) study demonstrated that deliberate reflective rumination is a predictor of ptg (garcia et al., 2017), building on prior clinical application of this proposition (waters & strauss, 2016). these factors are linked to the relationship between growth and distress. trauma survivors will experience a phase of intrusive rumination, where they are not in control of the thoughts and images that come back to them. this is a highly distressing phase that can last for weeks or months post trauma (joseph, 2011), however is essential as it represents the brain’s natural way of dealing with trauma, trying to ‘file’ away or process memories and experiences (joseph, 2011; van der kolk, 2015). this distressing phase represents the struggle between the processes of accommodation and assimilation (joseph, 2011). trauma brings a complete breakdown in an individual’s assumptive worldview, and with it the choice to continue to function as though those assumptions remain intact (assimilation) or acknowledging their breakdown and re-building new ones (accommodation) (joseph, 2011). it is proposed that ptg is the result of accommodation, of working with the experience of trauma to build something new (joseph, 2011). working with rumination as http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 reflection, as opposed to brooding, supports meaning making, building new ways of dealing with trauma and relating to the world (joseph, 2011). 3.1.4 social support and disclosure central to the process of accommodation is the role of self-disclosure to others about the trauma. the practice of disclosing one’s intrusive thoughts and feelings have been shown to support the shift towards deliberate and reflective rumination (tedeschi et al., 2018). self-disclosure can take many forms, including written stories, music or even dance or verbal recounts (tedeschi et al., 2018). the form of disclosure however is not as important as the role of the listener or recipient. the relationship of this factor to growth lies in the quality of social support. it is vital that the trauma sufferer feels heard and supported in order to truly benefit from the process of disclosure (tedeschi et al., 2018). family and friends are often not ideal, given the challenging nature and subject matter of the disclosure, where they will often react to alleviate discomfort. professional help that can truly accept and listen to the challenging experiences of the sufferer, provide support while balancing discomfort, engage in deliberate rumination and rebuild assumptive worldviews is better placed to support the process of developmental growth (joseph, 2011). 3.1.5 coping strategies interestingly, there is evidence that both approach based coping (helgeson et al., 2006; prati & pietrantoni, 2009) as well as avoidant based coping support higher levels of ptg (helgeson et al., 2006). trauma sufferers need brief and limited periods of avoidant coping such as denial, to allow distress relief, prior to the more overwhelming and confronting process of approach coping (kunz et al., 2018). a flexible approach to coping styles is required, providing important evidence that while approach oriented coping has been shown as most effective in supporting ptg in trauma populations (helgeson et al., 2006; prati & pietrantoni, 2009), it’s effectiveness can be enhanced by specific and limited use of avoidant coping, especially effective in the early stages post trauma (kunz et al., 2018). 3.1.6 impact of time both tedeschi and calhoun (1995) and joseph and linley (2005) theorise the transformative schematic changes inherent in the ptg process require time to unfold and evolve. empirically, the relationship between time and ptg is complex with the relative lack of longitudinal studies tracking ptg from time of trauma over many years. the dresden bombing study revealed ptg effects some 52 years post the event, however there is no study showing how growth manifested and evolved over this period (maercker & herrle, 2003). additionally, short term studies may not account for the individual trajectories of growth and fail to detect ptg that is yet to appear. there seems to be a relationship between distress level and benefit finding (helgeson et al., 2006), however those who did not score highly may merely take longer for ptg to manifest. indeed, this meta study showed those exposed to higher levels of distress revealed lower levels of benefit finding. other studies reveal between four to six different trajectories, indicating growth both increasing and then tapering off over time (tedeschi et al., 2018). 3.1.7 measures and evidence while a full review of measurement approaches is beyond the scope and purpose of this paper, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 it is important to identify themes that emerge relating to research and potential intervention approaches. a range of self-report scales have been developed since the 1990’s. these include the posttraumatic growth inventory (ptgi; tedeschi & calhoun, 1995, 1996), the stress-related growth scale (srgs; park et al., 1996), the revised stress-related growth scale (rsrgs; armeli et al., 2001), the changes in outlook questionnaire (cioq; joseph et al., 1993), and the thriving scale (ts; abraido-lanza et al., 1998). there is also the perceived benefit scales (pbs; mcmillen & fisher, 1998), and the psychological well-being posttraumatic changes questionnaire (pwb-ptcq; joseph, et al., 2012). these measures vary greatly in number of items and factors as well as defined areas of focus. the srgs and the rsrgs focus on factors such as resources and coping while the ptgi and the cioq focus on perspective shifts on experience. others focus more specifically on perception of change or benefit such as the pbs, while finally the pwb-ptcq focuses specifically on aspect of wellbeing post trauma. there is wide variation in the approach to measurement that significantly clouds the definition of ptg as a construct, severely limiting focused approaches to research and intervention. tedeschi et al (2018) argue that both the terminology and measurement of stress related growth, change in outlook, thriving and perceived benefits need to be distinguished from ptg (tedeschi et al., 2018). while these terms share growth following challenge or stress in common, none effectively address the nature of trauma as a challenge to core beliefs and the transformative journey of post trauma growth (tedeschi et al., 2018). it is therefore argued that using these scales are not relevant for the measurement of ptg and risk confusing constructs (tedeschi et al., 2018). the ptgi (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996) is the most commonly used (joseph & linley, 2004), widely validated (andysz, najder, merecz-kot, & wojcik, 2015; palmer, graca, & occhietti, 2012; yoshida et al., 2016), cross-culturally and across numerous languages (la cour, nielsen, andersen, & madsen, 2016; lamela, figueiredo, bastos, & martins, 2014; mack et al., 2015). additionally, it is the only measure that has validly provided data to allow comparison between experiences (middleton, 2016) and has spawned a number of variants (cann et al., 2010; hooper, marotta, & depuy, 2009; horswill, desgagne, parkerson, carleton, & asmundson, 2016; morris, wilson, & chambers, 2013). despite the ptgi’s apparent validity, widespread use and extension, there is controversy and lack of agreement as to its effectiveness (horswill et al., 2016). finally, inconsistencies in interpreting results show a divergent range of ptg prevalence, with one meta-study illustrating a range from 3% for bereavement to 98% for breast cancer survivors (linley & joseph, 2004). while some adopt a narrow approach requiring positive report on all factors, tedeschi et al., (2018) argue for a liberal approach, taking even one positive report on one of their ptgi factors, if significant enough in that person’s life, as sufficient evidence of ptg (tedeschi et al., 2018). the inconsistency of approach regarding the measurement and prevalence of ptg underlines a key issue and controversy regarding the factual reality of ptg as a construct. 4. discussion the ongoing inconsistencies regarding the study and reduction of ptg to agreed factors belies the perspective that they are all, in their contexts, correct. ptg is often confused with recovery, bringing connotations of the eventual removal of struggle and distress. the inconsistencies and debates plaguing ptg mean that a human centred approach is crucial for building a sound working theory of ptg. seeking a singular definitive approach in this complex human reaction to trauma is short sighted. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 4.1 is ptg real or illusory – issues and controversy the largely retrospective self-reported perception-based approach to measurement of ptg belies the question as to whether actual growth is assessed (frazier et al., 2009). while there is no doubt that self-reports of ptg can be genuine, there is a clear possibility of an illusory component (jayawickreme & blackie, 2014; nolen-hoeksema & davis, 2004). ascertaining self-reported ptg as actual or illusory growth is key to ptg research (boals & schuler, 2018). maintaining positive illusions has been shown to be important for psychological health, especially following traumatic circumstances (taylor, kemeny, reed, bower, & gruenewald, 2000). retrospective ptg self-reports could be easily attributed to coping and efforts to maintain a positive outlook during distress (taylor et al., 2000). those still distressed post trauma are assumed to report illusory ptg, often linked to selfprotective behaviours such as past derogations of the self (mcfarland & alvaro, 2000; westphal & bonanno, 2007), which is suggested help maintain positive illusions (mcfarland & alvaro, 2000). alternately, those no longer distressed post trauma are assumed to report actual growth, reflecting positive adaptation (boals & schuler, 2018). often, particularly in the experience of cancer, there is pressure to develop a positive attitude as a key to healing. this in turn can result in false expectations and increased pressure to remain positive, survive and also to thrive (sumalla, ochoa, & blanco, 2009), increasing the distinguishability between real and illusory ptg further. linley and joseph (2004) further identify both behavioural and physiological indicators that can influence ptg (linley & joseph, 2004). citing bloom’s (1998) work on the social transformation of trauma, they highlight the importance of social and political connection and attachment as antecedents to ptg (bloom, 1998), and the work of epel et al. (1998), who linked the incidence and speed of ptg to adaptive hormonal stress responses from repeated stress exposure (epel, mcewen, & ickovics, 1998). evidence of cultural differences in trauma and ptg (splevins, cohen, bowley, & joseph, 2010; zheng & gray, 2015) additionally complicate current understandings. studies of us trauma survivors show higher levels of ptg than those in australia (morris, shakespeare‐finch, rieck, & newbery, 2005), japan (taku & cann, 2014) and spain (steger, frazier, & zacchanini, 2008). this difference is attributed to social pressure in the us to seek positives to challenging events (zoellner, rabe, karl, & maercker, 2008). collective cultures such as japan and in the southern americas also show definite patterns of collective growth (tedeschi et al., 2018), raising again the question of illusory processes within ptg. exploring illusory ptg in more detail, helgeson et al.’s (2006) study highlights the difficulty in distinguishing this issue, and theorises that researchers may not be studying the same construct (helgeson, reynolds, & tomich, 2006). growth may be the result of a number of processes, whether actual change, coping, or cognitive manipulations which operate to relieve distress (helgeson et al., 2006). importantly, kunz et al.’s (2018) study showed that ptg could be seen as the result of flexible coping styles consisting of both avoidant and approach coping strategies (kunz, joseph, geyh, & peter, 2018). using avoidant coping, such as denial, sparingly provides psychological safety, allowing individual distress reduction, prior to embarking on the confronting approach coping strategies to build ptg (kunz et al., 2018). these studies align with tedeschi et al.’s (2018) proposition that distinguishes between the processes and the outcomes of ptg. elements that form potential illusory aspects of ptg, are in fact part of the process of ptg. immediately post trauma, people are still working within their traumatic exposure, characterised by struggle. illusory or self-protective factors work to assist through this distressing stage, but are essentially dominated by perceptions of ptg, and so any http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 notions of growth are not sustainable (tedeschi et al., 2018). however, once the process of ptg has run its full course, ptg as an outcome produces a different and more sustainable result (tedeschi et al., 2018). 4.2 the challenge of studying ptg 4.2.1 longitudinal studies trauma research is beset with logistic and ethical issues, with opportunities for pre/post trauma testing severely limited (norris, 1996). it is argued that only through longitudinal research that the predictors and process of ptg can be reliably understood allowing better principles to be developed and therefore scientifically valid conclusions to be drawn (joseph & linley, 2004). limited existing longitudinal studies are often limited to specific trauma, preventing their broader application (kunz et al., 2018). furthermore, ptg has been shown to manifest in multiple phases over time and shorter term longitudinal studies may not support a clear understanding of the evolution of ptg (tedeschi et al., 2018). 4.2.2 quantitative or qualitative? the intensely personal journey of ptg raises the question whether a single method quantitative analysis is valid (tedeschi et al., 2018). the difference between australia’s low mean ptgi scale (morris et al., 2005) compared to similar unites states studies (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996) simply provide a generalised understanding of ptg incidence across two populations. qualitative analysis is required to understand this data in more specific ways in order to develop insight into intervention and support approaches. additionally, qualitative study has brought the richness and diversity of cultural differences in ptg to the fore (weiss & berger, 2010). different cultures address and tackle the growth journey in unique ways, distinguishing universal and culture specific approaches to ptg (weiss & berger, 2010). for example, collective approaches focussing on duty to family, community and country have supported burmese refugee adjustment in australia (shakespeare-finch, schweitzer, king, & brough, 2014) and in african populations surviving and tolerating hardship were viewed as core to their cultural heritage rather than as signs of growth (copping & shakespeare-finch, 2013). these studies illustrate the important role qualitative data can play in understanding the nuances of ptg. 4.3 post traumatic growth implications for intervention and support with trauma the traditional domain of clinical interventions, spence and joseph (2107) rightly argue for caution, however theoretical and empirical evidence of ptg raise a number of potential opportunities for intervention and support. 4.3.1 expert companions a common theme across theorists is the importance of an expert companion to guide and facilitate the ptg journey (calhoun & tedeschi, 2013; joseph, 2011). as an expert, the emphasis is on facilitation and enablement, not the expert creation of growth, and as a companion the priority is to simply be present and non-judgmental (calhoun & tedeschi, 2013; middleton, 2016). rogers’ (1951) elements of empathy, genuineness and unconditional positive regard enable the expert companion to listen for underlying meanings, all required conditions to support effective therapeutic change (calhoun & tedeschi, 2013). the power of the expert companion in therapeutic environments should not be http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 underestimated (norcross & wampold, 2011). while there is evidence to support the power of talking therapies to build lasting change (jirek, 2017; rossouw, 2013), this is centred on the ‘person’ of the expert companion to engage and provide the right environment of trust and empathy to lay the foundations for change (rossouw, 2013). with a focus on seeking to understand and appreciate the experience of the client, the expert companion creates the necessary environment of safety for the exploration of the challenging emotional and cognitive exploration of trauma, shown to support the development of ptg. understanding that trauma has many pathways, the expert companion does not seek to direct the client towards an outcome, but rather supports deliberative rumination and re-appraisal of assumptions to develop an individual pathway for ptg (tedeschi & blevins, 2017). 4.3.2 action action in the context of ptg is key to delineating between aspects of illusory ptg and the process and outcome of ptg. while hobfoll et al., (2007) rely on action as evidence of ptg, tedeschi et al., (2018) see actions as the outcome of the ptg process. on both interpretations, there is alignment with the action methodology and outcome focus of coaching based approaches, taking change beyond the realm of cognitive shift, into evidence of positive action and behaviours that embed change sustainably. 4.3.3 narrative and reauthoring narrative and rebuilding of life story and its importance in personal growth is not new (drake, 2015), and while not the only factor supporting ptg, it is a core component to rebuilding shattered assumptions. working with narrative opens up the possibility of different interpretations of events and experiences (calhoun & tedeschi, 2013), allowing the development of a life narrative to support the accommodation of trauma, facilitating growth (jirek, 2017; joseph & linley, 2005). 4.3.4 working with suffering as a fertiliser for growth adult development is not linear and demands a person-centred approach to individually challenge. discontinuous change is also linked to ptg as is the cumulation of extreme emotion and challenge as the precursors of change (hayes, laurenceau, feldman, strauss, & cardaciotto, 2007). growth can be a painful process, understanding that ptg symptoms may need to get worse before a breakthrough emerges is closely aligned with developmental coaching which requires a crisis and unravelling of the self to open up the foundations for a perspective shift in order to move to a different level of reasoning and perception (cavanagh, 2016). on this basis, ptg could potentially be seen as a new route to flourishing (middleton, 2016). indeed ptg like effects have been recorded following voluntary exposure to challenging experiences such as space travel (suedfeld, legkaia, & brcic, 2010) and arctic exploration (kjærgaard, leon, venables, & fink, 2013). 4.3.5 working with pts and pathways post trauma trauma is idiosyncratic and manifests in many different ways (bonanno & mancini, 2012). awareness needs to be raised in the community that distress is a normal response following difficult events. engaging in struggle does not necessarily result in a lifetime ptsd diagnosis. there are a number of different pathways, whether a return to baseline state pre-trauma, growth or psychosis (seligman, 2018). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 a variety of therapeutic approaches could assist sufferers. coaching for instance could play a key role in helping clients understand the heterogeneity of responses to life’s difficulties, by focusing on the elements of pts that can facilitate growth, while always looking out for signs of when referral is needed. ptg, like any other form of change, is a feedback cycle of resolving the discrepancies between the pre and post assumptive worldview, a cycle of reflection and learning about the self (joseph, murphy, et al., 2012). on this basis, the elements of deliberate rumination, reflection and rebuilding of assumptive worlds are all within the scope of coaching and other supportive approaches. working with trauma can also be potentially beneficial for therapists personally, providing inspiration or even opening up the possibility for positive effects resulting from vicarious ptg (arnold, calhoun, tedeschi, & cann, 2005; hall, 2015). indeed, the rapp-ricciardi, garcia et al., (2018) study has shown that ptg, in conjunction with positive affect and increased locus of control, actually raises a leader’s receptivity to new knowledge and insights. 4.4 directions for future research this paper has sought to draw theoretical links between the outcomes of ptg studies with the practice of coaching and other therapeutic approaches to growth. there is little training for ptg in clinical practice, and virtually nothing supporting the development of potential expert companions. an affective-cognitive model has been developed for the mental health professional founded on the principle that pts as the generator of ptg (joseph, murphy, et al., 2012). the model takes the approach that pts is a normal response to trauma and works with cognitions, appraisals, intrusions and emotional state and coping behaviours, the clinician works through the cycle of processing of the trauma until a reconciliation of pre and post assumptive worldview is completed (joseph, murphy, et al., 2012). this model has been specifically proposed for clinicians, however, with the evolution of coaching psychology, could be used as a basis, in conjunction with joseph’s (2011) thrive model, for further research to develop an approach suitable for coaching and other growth-based approaches. figure 1 (below) illustrates aspects of both of these models integrated with other ptg factors, demonstrating the potential relationship between both ptg and pts through processes of accommodation and assimilation as potential pathways for intervention. 4.4.1 qualitative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to ptg evidence of positive transformational change post trauma combined with the difficulty in defining its agreed predictors and proven interventions has prompted a range of interdisciplinary research (birtles, 2018; tedeschi et al., 2018). seeking to understand the linkages and opportunities ptg presents within the broader therapeutic community and in particular the coaching environment should be included in such studies. almost all ptg research has been centred in mental health disciplines (tedeschi et al., 2018), and a broader study of the construct into the humanities and coaching is called for. given its nature, an interdisciplinary approach allows for the full nature of the construct and the multitude of approaches that can be adopted in working with it (tedeschi et al., 2018). of even more interest, is the emerging field of transdisciplinary research, fostering the creation of new approaches transcending disciplines to create a new holistic subdiscipline (tedeschi et al., 2018). this paper has sought to explore new ways of thinking and approaching ptg, looking at it through a different lens, to see what its elements can offer coaches and therapists in the context of struggle. while the struggles of the average coaching client may not meet an objective test of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 ‘trauma’, subjectively the struggle may be sufficient to shatter core assumptions to spark the rebuilding growth process. figure 1: an affective-cognitive and thrive model view of the process of pts and ptg note. this figure summaries the factors identified in the literature review associated with a traumatic event experience that potentially impacts whether assimilation or accommodation occurs in reconciliation of pre and post assumptive world views. aspects have been taken from both the thrive model (joseph, 2011) and the affective-cognitive approach to intervention (joseph, murphy et al., 2012) to suggest relationships to both pts and ptg. finally, as trauma and distress result in multiple pathways, research into the impact of naming conventions and links to development of a growth approach to trauma is warranted. medical pre-trauma cognitive and affective assets • assumptive world view • sense making • sense of self potential associated factors of assimilation • intrusive / automatic ruminative thought • reliance on protective factors illusory growth • excess avoidance coping strategies (e.g., denial) potential associated factors of accommodation • deliberate reflective rumination • professional social support • supported self-disclosure • early stage limited avoidance coping strategies • flexible approach based coping strategies • reappraisal of assumptions • narrative creation and reauthoring • positive change related action potential increased likelihood of distress or post traumatic stress potential increased likelihood of post traumatic growth working with suffering as fertiliser for growth traumatic event factors • shattering of pretrauma cognitive and affective factor • intensity, severity and duration • degree of meaning associated with event • degree of stress and distress http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ post traumatic growth sanki & o’connor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 diagnosis of ptsd implies a final destination in disorder, embeds a fixed mindset and closes off opportunities for growth and different ways of looking at the pathways and outcomes of trauma. the overreliance on the diagnosis of ptsd suggests that any exposure to a challenging event results in some form of post trauma stress condition. this contrasts with the evidence showing that only 8-12% of people exposed to profoundly traumatic experiences will in fact develop ptsd as defined in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th edition; dsm-5), of those most will recover within 6 – 12 months post trauma, and of the minority that continue to suffer, about half will respond to psychological treatment (spence & joseph, 2017). research into whether the medicalisation, naming conventions and terminology play a role in limiting or expanding a variety of pathways post trauma may prove beneficial in addressing this issue. if practitioners and researchers consider more carefully the range and type of impact that traumatic experiences can have on an individual, more opportunities may become available to support wellbeing recovery and growth for a broader range of effected populations. 5. conclusion our evolving understanding of the complex nature of transformational growth post trauma presents a key opportunity for supporting personal development and wellbeing enhancement. while traditionally the domain of ptsd and medicalised interventions, the heterogeneity of responses post trauma mean that the fostering of these pathways will potentially fall into the scope of positive psychologists, coaches and other appropriately qualified expert companions. while often not in the realm of profound trauma, our lives regularly present challenges that, in the personal subjective context, can negatively impact our wellbeing, shatter our assumptions about ourselves and potentially that of those around us. leveraging the learnings from ptg can strengthen and broaden approaches to fostering adult development and positive enhancement of individual wellbeing. learning to use life’s challenges as a source of growth is the ultimate expression of the original aims of positive psychology, in seeking to bring out the potential in all of us, regardless of the circumstances of our lives. authors monica sanki the university of sydney sean a. o’connor the university of sydney sean.oconnor@sydney.edu.au publishing timeline received 23 september 2020 revised version received 27 march 2021 accepted 4 april 2021 published 31 may 2021 references andysz, a., najder, a., merecz-kot, d., & wojcik, a. 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(2020). the maturing of positive psychology and the emerging pp 2.0: a book review of positive psychology (3rd ed.) by william compton and edward hoffman. international journal of wellbeing, 10(1), 107-117. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i1.885 paul wong trent university drpaulwong@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 107 article the maturing of positive psychology and the emergence of pp 2.0: a book review of positive psychology (3rd ed.) by william compton and edward hoffman paul t. p. wong abstract: compton and hoffman’s third edition of positive psychology: the science of happiness and flourishing is commended for advocating an inclusive positive psychology that not only honours the rich humanistic heritage and the major contributions from mainstream psychology, but also recognizes the two emerging trends within what has become known as pp 2.0. the first is the recognition that suffering and vulnerability provide the foundation for building a solid existential positive psychology of flourishing that can endure the inevitable vicissitudes of life. the second trend is the importance of indigenous positive psychology, especially eastern psychological systems that offer viable insights and hypotheses about the nature of the self and ultimate happiness. 1. introduction any book review reflects the reviewer’s own scholarship and perspective. i want to state right at the outset that my view on positive psychology (pp) has been shaped by my experience of suffering (see wong, 2019a), which demands a different kind of pp to that which characterises the mainstream of the field, and which has come to be known as second wave positive psychology (pp 2.0). therefore, it is inevitable that in this book review, my focus is on how this textbook relates to the important new developments in pp 2.0, which may offer effective ways to help people who are suffering survive and thrive. my hope that this review will expand the horizon for future pp research and intervention. the two authors of this textbook have a combined history of 80 years of research and teaching on positive mental health and wellbeing. this rich history is clearly reflected in the breadth and depth of their coverage, especially the older humanistic literature and the later developments in indigenous psychology as well as pp 2.0. about:blank book review of positive psychology wong 108 this new edition has 503 pages, in contrast to its earlier edition which had only 381 pages. with approximately 400 new references and many new topics, this textbook represents the most balanced and comprehensive treatment to date of the different trends under the umbrella of pp. it of course covers the traditional topics of introductory positive psychology (peterson, 2006; snyder, lopez & pedrotti, 2014). however, what makes compton & hoffman (2019) different from many other such books is its in-depth attempts to integrate research from the humanistic tradition. as they write, “today, the differences between positive psychology and humanistic psychology are diminishing” (p. 23). i too have argued that even the remaining differences in philosophical assumptions between the two schools will disappear once most scholars in pp accept the value of taking a more holistic and integrative approach towards complex human issues (wong & roy, 2017). 2. contribution to the positive psychology of suffering another uniqueness of the book is that compton and hoffman (2019) have devoted many of the pages to integrating the positive psychology of human suffering. more than a decade ago, snyder and lopez (2007) wrote in their seminal textbook on pp: “although we explore the positive, we emphasize that this half is no more the entire story than is the negative side. future psychologists must develop an inclusive approach that examine both the weakness and the strengths of people, as well as the stressors and the resources in the environment. that approach would be the most comprehensive and valid.” (p. 9) to a large degree, snyder and lopez’s (2007) wish has been realized in the present textbook by compton and hoffman. ivtzan, lomas, hefferon, and worth (2015) produced the first major textbook exploring the ‘dark’ side of life and its important role in our positive functioning and transformation as human beings. here compton and hoffman (2019) go a one step further by emphasizing the necessity of integrating human suffering as the basis for wellbeing, meaning, and resilience. for example, on page 172, they cite dunn’s (1961) research that high-level wellness depends on a combination of living a meaningful live and coping with challenging environments. similarly, after devoting many pages to posttraumatic growth, they cite kramer’s (2000) research on the wisdom of being open to both positive and negative experiences and grappling with difficult existential life issues, a process that helps transform negative experiences into life-affirming ones (p. 267). their coverage of the topic of suffering encompasses rollo may’s emphasis on existential anxiety and the power of the daimonic, frankl’s meaning of suffering, killam’s (2015) review of posttraumatic growth, cowen and kilmer’s (2002) article challenging the possibility of obtaining stable wellbeing by neglecting fear and death anxiety, and kaiser’s (2009) book questioning the desirability of focusing only on strengths. book review of positive psychology wong 109 they also introduce shmotkin’s (2005) comprehensive model which assumes that “we all encounter a potentially threatening world, our sense of subjective wellbeing is designed partially to help protect us from the impact of anxiety, worry, and fear.” (p. 382) it is worth noting that shmotkin’s theory was influenced by terror management theory’s postulate that we are affected by our unconscious fear of death. in spite of the above, pp has tended to be largely ambivalent towards suffering. on the one hand, many pp documents emphasize that the field does care about repairing what is wrong or broken with people. however, in practice, its research agenda and publications rarely test the possibility that human suffering can be a portal for happiness and strength. seligman (2003), for example, asked, “does suffering trump happiness?” by raising this question, he is of course acknowledging that people are naturally concerned about suffering. in response, without directly answering it, he wrote: “i am often asked two disturbing and profound questions about the place of happiness in a troubled world. in a world of war and hate and famine, how can i advocate that psychology investigate happiness? suffering has first call on our sympathy, on our dollars, and on our brainpower. only when these nightmares are stilled should we turn our attention to happiness.” however, one might say that seligman himself does not agree with the sentiment expressed in the paragraphs. he would seem to believe that just as clinical psychology can make people less unhappy, pp can make people happier, and these are separate endeavours, each worthy of their place in psychology (seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005). that said, more recently there have been efforts to bring a pp perspective to bear on clinical contexts, in the form of positive clinical psychology (peterson & seligman, 2003) or positive psychotherapy (rashid & seligman, 2018), aiming to apply strength-enhancing interventions in clinical populations. in that respect, seligman (2003) concludes: “but most of positive psychology is for all of us, troubled or untroubled, privileged or in privation, suffering or carefree. the pleasures of a good conversation, the strength of gratitude, the benefits of kindness or wisdom or spirituality or humility, the search for meaning and the antidote to "fidgeting until we die" are the birthrights of us all.” thus, seligman’s answer to human suffering appears to be to primarily focus on what makes us happy, thereby not only repairing what is damaged, but also bringing out what is good and right with all people, “suffering or free”. however, this assumption has not gone unchallenged. for instance, yakushko (2019) argues that the darker aspects of human existence – suffering and harm in its various forms – cannot necessarily be eradicated by focusing on the positive. in contrast, pp 2.0 may be considered the positive psychology of suffering; it takes suffering as the starting point or foundation of existence, and then explores how we can transform suffering book review of positive psychology wong 110 into wellbeing and strengths. according to this integrative view, a focus on positive emotions and traits, without addressing people’s inner demons and the dark side of life, is limited in its potential; it’s preferable to develop a dialectical approach of integrating negatives and positives in achieving optimal wellbeing. thus, the basic tenet of pp 2.0 is that flourishing can be achieved only through a foundational integration of human suffering. this reorientation is a fundamental shift in how pp is conceived and practised, hence it being marked as a new ‘wave’ within the field (wong, 2019). a similar perspective can also be found in fowers, richardson, and slife (2017). they provided compelling research evidence and case studies to support their dialectical view that the best pathway to flourishing is to embrace and integrate suffering as an essential part of our journey towards healing and personal growth. they presented their "breathless optimism" as a corrective for the current mainstreamof scholarship on pp. this of course does not mean we should glorify suffering. rather, we need to understand that suffering can imbue life with significance in many ways. it may trigger our search for meaning and meaning making, thus leading us to different priorities and paths. it may increase our compassion for others who suffer. finally, suffering often occurs in life domains of importance to us: “how can people thrive, given dependency, the complexity of life human limits, and unavoidable suffering? we have written this book to answer the question. how to flourish remain the theme of positive psychology, but there can be no adequate answer with addressing the question of how to integrate the unavoidable suffering. we show not only it is possible to flourish as imperfect beings, but also that human frailty actually central to living well.” (fowers et al., p. 3) this dialectical framework has guided all my research on wellbeing. examples include the positive psychology of transforming stress into competence and resilience (wong, wong, & scott, 2006); the positive psychology of transforming the terror of death into death acceptance and meaning in life (wong & tomer, 2011); the deep-and-wide hypothesis in giftedness and creativity (wong & worth, 2017); the positive psychology of transforming despair into tragic optimism (wong, 2009); and positive aging (wong, 1989). all these examples illustrate the power of positive interventions based on the dialectical mindset. at long last, compton and hoffman have addressed many of the above themes, which tended to be overlooked by the pp community when these topics were first introduced as new frontiers of the field. they also point how these insights can be found in various spiritual and wisdom traditions. for instance, a central concern of buddhist psychology is reducing suffering through mindful meditation as the pathway to ultimate happiness (hanh, 2017). christian psychology holds a similar approach of achieving happiness through resolving the problem of evils and suffering. similarly, modern psychologists, from frankl (1985) to peterson (2018), have found that a meaningful life is built on a foundation of suffering. personally, it has been through my book review of positive psychology wong 111 struggles to survive the horrors of japanese occupation, cancer, betrayal, discrimination, and the christian faith that i have discovered the power of pp 2.0. unfortunately, the concept of finding meaning, strength, and happiness through suffering is often still dismissed by some leading figures in the field. as a case in point, i have personally been frequently told that my view on suffering is "pessimistic and unscientific," and that empirical evidence is needed to support my claim that life is full of suffering. do we really need empirical evidence from psychology labs to prove that life is full of suffering, when suffering can be seen as a universal phenomenon experienced by every human being? such resistance to suffering hinders pp from exploring the new frontiers offered by the paradoxical and dialectical mindset, as illustrated by frankl’s concept of tragic optimism for instance (wong, 2009). therefore, it behooves all those in the field to ponder the wisdom of gandhi—“to rejoice in happiness is to invite misery. real happiness springs from sorrow and suffering”—that is the paradoxical truth of pp 2.0. authors of the present textbook deserve commendation for having included suffering as a legitimate topic for pp and repeatedly warning against doing research only on what is positive and desirable. my only critique is that it did not introduce flower et al.’s recent publication (2017), although it made several references to flower’s earlier work. 3. contribution to indigenous positive psychology in the words of compton and hoffman (2019): “among the frequent criticisms of positive psychology (and western psychology in general) has been that it over-relies on north american and european research participants. it is indeed clear that some research findings are attributed universal significances when they actually apply only within a specific culture at a specific historical moment.” (p. 391) they go on to document not only ethnic differences within the west, but also cultural differences between the east and west. compton and hoffman (2019) also point out: “when eastern psychological systems are understood properly, they offer viable insights on well-being, the nature of emotion, the elements of personality and how to change behavior in positive ways… a variety of hypotheses about the nature of the self and ultimate happiness are available from eastern psychology, and relatively few psychologists in the west attempt to tap into this valuable resource.” (p. 392) it is unscientific to dismiss eastern ideas and eastern indigenous psychology without giving these serious consideration. indeed, of the main tenets of pp 2.0 is the dialectical principle, which is associated with eastern philosophical traditions such as taoism. figure 1. a dialectical model of mature happiness. book review of positive psychology wong 112 from an asian philosophical perspective, everything exists in polarity. the dialectical principle of interaction between yin-yang, as shown in figure 1 and explained in wong (2011), is a seen as a universal principle underlying all phenomena, including mental health. this dialectical perspective is reflected in modern scholarship too, such as lomas and ivtzan’s (2016) dialectical analysis of wellbeing, peterson’s (2018) dialectical analysis of meaningful striving through having one foot in security and another foot in order, and wang, wong, yeh, and wang’s (2018) meaningful life and dialectical coping. similarly, the dialogue between pp 2.0 and buddhism is an example of how to integrate the east with the west (bliss and wisdom global website, 2017). wong’s (2012) dual-systems model crystalizes the practical wisdom of navigating an adaptive balance between the dynamic interactions of opposing forces to optimize wellbeing in different contexts. thus, depending on the situation, one needs to manage the tension of various dialectics, such as getting ahead vs. getting along, trust vs. distrust, engagement vs. disengagement, and happiness vs. sorrow. such dialectic thinking will contribute to one’s flexibility in adapting to life’s many challenges. the future of positive psychology compton and hoffman (2019) offer a broad and optimistic vision of a truly balanced, integrative pp: book review of positive psychology wong 113 “researchers in positive psychology will be kept busy for some time to come exploring personality, lived environments, the interpretation of life events, the various criteria for well-being, and interventions to enhance well-being in an era of new challenges and opportunities for humanity.” (p. 394) in terms of the future of pp, at least two important potential avenues of development are linked to pp 2.0: (a) the integration of negatives and positives and (b) the integration of mainstream and indigenous psychology. such an integrative pp will open new opportunities for research and interventions in the global wellbeing movement. other developmental paths include inclusivity and integration with regard to epistemology and methodology. for instance, reinforcing their appeal for an integrative pp, the authors of the textbook cite hefferon, ashfield, waters, and synard (2017): “we aspire towards more balanced, diverse and inclusive positive psychological research design where one approach is not privileged over the other. we further advocate for researchers to start exploring and engaging in reach across the epistemological spectrum as both quantitative and qualitative approaches can add a piece to the wellbeing/flourishing puzzle and have value in their own right.” (p. 217) similarly, citing kristjánsson (2010), compton and hoffman (2019, p. 391) emphasize that it is difficult to remove values completely from the scientific study of wellbeing. therefore, researchers who advocate positivist and naturalist values should not automatically dismiss research findings based on transcendental values. furthermore, they also suggest that pp needs to “specify more precisely what kinds of ideals for well-being or what types of happiness are being pursued through research. none of these issues should negate the scientific enterprise in any way.” ideally, science is the final arbitrator among alternative hypotheses. however, this has to be based on science as broadly defined. life is complicated, and people are complex. if we believe in the unity of human nature but also that there are different expressions in different cultures, we really need to broaden our approach to research as suggested by the authors: “although [science] brings a necessary and welcome addition to the study of wellbeing, science is a useful tool that may work best when used with other tools that examine the human condition. … the study of individual and group well-being is particularly suited to collaboration among a diversity of scientists, scholars, educators, and other practitioners around the world.” (compton & hoffman, 2019, p. 393-394) following rathunde (2001), they suggest that we go back to william james, john dewey, and abraham maslow. thus, what was old becomes new again through new theoretical lenses and book review of positive psychology wong 114 research methodologies. for example, pp 2.0 focuses on contributing factors, the dialectical processes of adaptation, and outcome measures of people’s wellbeing and optimism in their darkest hours. it fills a void in existential pp by drawing attention to the suffering masses. pp 2.0 also advocates research to measure the interactions between opposing forces and objective indexes of wellbeing in concrete contexts, including both normal circumstances and aversive situations. only empirical research will decide whether, in circumstances of adversity, pp 2.0’s approach of seeking the mature happiness of inner peace by engaging with weaknesses will compare to the efficacy of the conventional happiness-enhancing interventions of pp. research may also decide whether it is more effective for wellbeing to address vulnerabilities and one’s dark side, as advocated by pp 2.0, compared to the focus on positive emotions and positive traits as advocated by mainstream pp. nevertheless, scholarship is emerging that do give support to the pp 2.0 perspective, such as kaplan and kaiser’s book (2013) fear your strengths: what you are best at could be your biggest problem, and feldman and kravetz’s (2015) supersurvivors: the surprising link between suffering and success. likewise, a recent study by kaufman, yaden, hyde, and tsukayama (2019) showed the value of looking at both positive and negative personality traits in wellbeing. they found that the light triad scale (lts) predicted satisfaction and a wide range of growth-oriented outcomes, while the dark triad was negatively associated with life satisfaction and growth-oriented outcomes. future research will determine whether the dialectical mindset of accepting the dark side of life is more adaptive than the dichromatic mindset of avoiding it in promoting the mission of “positive, adaptive, healthy and admirable qualities of humanity” in different contexts (compton & hoffman, 2019, p. 394). conclusion compton and hoffman (2019) end the book with the life motto of compton’s mother, which in part says: throughout the coming years, may you have: enough happiness to keep you sweet, enough trials to keep you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to keep you happy, enough failure to keep you humble, enough success to keep you eager, enough friends to give you comfort, enough wealth to meet your needs, enough faith to banish depression, enough determinations to make each day better than yesterday. (pp. 394-395) book review of positive psychology wong 115 this list sounds like a perfect example of the good life from the perspective of pp 2.0—a life of moderation and balance through integrating negative and positive experiences. such a good life demands the responsibility to do the right thing each day, and the discipline to overcome adversities with the spiritual triad of faith, love, and meaning. in short, compton mother’s life is a demonstration that a good life is achievable only through successfully integrating opposing dialectical forces (wong, 2011). as compton and hoffman (2019, p. 410) put it: research findings from positive psychology are intended to supplement, not remotely to replace, what is known about human suffering, weakness, and disorder. the intent is to have a more complete and balanced scientific understanding of the human experience—the peaks, the valleys, and everything in between. we believe that a complete science and a complete practice of psychology would include an understanding of suffering and happiness, as well as their interaction, and validated interventions that both relieve suffering and increase happiness—two separable endeavors.” after 20 years of pp research, the present book shows us that by following the hegelian dialectical logic, clinical psychology (thesis) and positive psychology (antithesis) are moving into the stage of synthesis as evident in pp 2.0. thus, suffering and weakness can be seen as a foundation for building a solid existential pp of flourishing that can endure the inevitable vicissitudes of life. compton and hoffman’s (2019) book shows us that the most powerful tool in any psychologist’s toolbox is neither the skill to repair brokenness, nor the skill to increase strength, but the skill to transform brokenness into strength, thus integrating healing with flourishing. it has been a validating experience for me to read this textbook, because the authors happen to share the same orientation towards pp as myself. they not only honour the rich humanistic heritage and the major contributions from mainstream psychology, but also recognize the two emerging trends of pp 2.0, namely, the pp of suffering and indigenous pp. compton and hoffman’s sweeping, bold vision of inclusiveness, diversity, and integration for the future of pp show us how we can build a better life for the self and for society by confronting and transforming the dark side of life as the foundation for human flourishing. furthermore, it was written in a clear and easy to understand style, and also includes a personal exploration section for students to engage with the concepts in a personally meaningful way. as such, i highly recommend compton and hoffman’s (2019) book as a textbook for positive psychology. author paul wong trent university, peterborough, canada drpaulwong@gmail.com publishing timeline received 26 march 2019 accepted 13 january 2020 book review of positive psychology wong 116 published 1 february 2020 references bliss and wisdom global website. 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(2006). beyond stress and coping: the positive psychology of transformation. in p. t. p. wong, & l. c. j. wong (eds.), handbook of multicultural perspectives on stress and coping (pp. 1-26). new york, ny: springer. yakushko, o. (2019). scientific pollyannaism: from inquisition to positive psychology. cham, switzerland: palgrave macmillan. ivtzan, i., niemiec, r. m., & briscoe, c. (2016). a study investigating the effects of mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp) on wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 6(2), 1-13. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i2.557 itai ivtzan university of east london i.ivtzan@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article a study investigating the effects of mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp) on wellbeing itai ivtzan · ryan m. niemiec · charlie briscoe abstract: mindfulness practice and character strengths have been determined as being two separate positive psychology interventions (ppis). however, to date, no programme has researched and investigated the effects of combining these theoretically interlinked practices together, with the aim of enhancing wellbeing from a positive psychology perspective. the current controlled study was designed to establish the effectiveness of an 8-week online mindfulnessbased character strengths practice (mbsp) on wellbeing, for the general population. nineteen participants completed the mbsp programme, and 20 participants were placed in a nointervention control group. self-report questionnaires, including satisfaction with life scale, flourishing scale, positive psychotherapy inventory, and a signature strengths inventory scale, were used to evaluate the levels of wellbeing and flourishing preand post-intervention. wilcoxon signed-rank tests found that mbsp participants scored significantly higher in all four measures post-mbsp, whereas participants in the control group did not, with the only exception of a slight increase in satisfaction with life scores. the study found mbsp to be the first ppi programme aimed at the general population, which explicitly focuses on character strengths to elicit significant positive changes and increase levels of wellbeing. given our preliminary results, larger samples utilising randomised control trial methods should attempt to confirm these preliminary findings. the programme’s future is promising, since its application appears to have great potential to positively influence people’s lives, thus moving closer to the goal of increasing societal flourishing. keywords: mindfulness-based strengths practice, positive psychology intervention, mindfulness, character strengths 1. introduction within the field of positive psychology, the topics of mindfulness and character strengths have become two of the most significant resources for achieving optimal human functioning (niemiec, rashid, & spinella, 2012). either of these two elements is capable of being heightened individually (hart, ivtzan, & hart, 2013). however, despite theoretical and conceptual overlap (niemiec et al., 2012), these drivers of human flourishing (or eudaimonic wellbeing) have only ever been applied separately. consequently, there is great potential to create a ppi by intertwining these two elements with the aim of enhancing wellbeing, as opposed to more typical interventions in psychology which often aim at fixing or alleviating problems (sin & lyubomirsky, 2008). in response to this, niemiec (2014) has recently developed a ppi aimed at the general population, known as the mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 1.1 mindfulness the study of mindfulness within social sciences has increased significantly in recent years (cullen, 2011; sears, tirch, & denton, 2011). the practice of mindfulness is derived from ancient buddhist meditation, which used to be practised over 2,500 years ago; mindfulness meditation is also known as “insight meditation” (ivtzan, gardner, & smailova, 2011). this meditation is described as the experience of consciously attempting to focus attention on the present moment in a non-judgmental manner, where one attempts not to dwell on discursive, ruminating thoughts, and puts past and future thought distractions aside (shapiro, 1982). moreover, mindfulness is often equated interchangeably with practices to achieve such a state of nonjudgmental presence; however, mindfulness can be applied to any moment-to-moment experience, so much so that it has been described as a “way of being” (kabat-zinn, 1994). to date, a variety of programmes (or interventions) utilising mindfulness – known as mindfulness-based interventions (mbis) – have been developed, amidst a growing interest in this contemplative practice. for example, the most notable mindfulness programme, mindfulnessbased stress reduction programme (mbsr) (kabat-zinn, 1982, 2003), was the subject of a literature review of research papers from four of the largest peer-reviewed health science databases (ebsco, cinahl, psychline, and medline), which found mbsr to be an effective treatment for daily life stress and stress-related symptoms (praissman, 2008). apart from mbsr, further meta-analyses support the benefits of other general mindfulness interventions for reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression (fjorback, arendt, ørnbøl, fink, & walach, 2011; hofmann, sawyer, witt, & oh, 2010), including acceptance and commitment therapy (act) (hayes, strosahl, & wilson, 1999), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (mbct) (segal, et al., 2002) and dialectical behaviour therapy (dbt) (linehan, 1993). there are many more mbis out there, most existing with the aim of repairing physical and/or mental health conditions (cullen, 2011). ppis are defined as interventions with a clear goal and intention to increase positive variables (parks & biswas-diener, 2013). as such, most of the popular mbis do not fit the framework of ppis, as they aim at decreasing negative variables. therefore, a limitation with mbis is that, although positive effects on wellbeing have been found, their main focus tends to be primarily around the aim of alleviating problems and symptoms for specific issues, such as stress, anxiety, and depression, instead of promoting wellbeing for a broader population (goyal et al., 2014; lindsay & creswell, 2015). ivtzan et al (in press) offer an in-depth discussion of the meeting point between mindfulness and positive psychology, highlighting the fact that mindfulness is primarily used to alleviate deficiencies, while its potential to enhance positive variables is largely disregarded. interestingly, many positive associations have been found between mindfulness and wellbeing from a range of studies and populations, including: subjective wellbeing, positive affect, life satisfaction, psychological wellbeing, optimism, self-regulation, self-compassion, positive relationships, vitality, creativity, health, longevity and a range of cognitive skills (e.g., brown & kasser, 2005; baer, smith, & allen, 2004; keng, smoski, & robins, 2011; carson, carson, gil, & baucom, 2004). hence, what is missing are tested and validated mbi programmes that primarily focus on promoting wellbeing and flourishing, that is to say, mbis that could be defined as ppis, aimed at the general non-clinical population. 1.2 character strengths another influential positive psychology tool, and arguably the backbone of the field of positive psychology, is character strengths. a decade ago, peterson and seligman (2004) set out to establish a universal framework to describe and measure the strengths and virtues that exemplify mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 good character and human goodness. the result was the via (values-in-action) classification of strengths, a universally valid classification system devised of 24 character strengths categorised into a six-virtue categorisation: courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom (dahlsgaard, peterson, & seligman, 2005). the tool used to explore and measure these is the via classification, known as the via-is. these virtues have now become common language used to describe the psychological ingredients of what is best in people (niemiec, 2012). hence, the via classification is now contrasted to the traditional psychology classification systems, which have focused on illness and disease (e.g., dsm-v; american psychiatric association, 2013). the creation of the via-is has consequently become a popular tool among practitioners, therapists, and consultants. character strengths can be likened to trait-based personality types; however, they are slightly less stable, since they vary in degree within particular life domains, such as work and family (seligman & peterson, 2004). ultimately, character strengths are those unique human qualities, which all of us possess, that can be cultured and developed in consideration of the context one is in (biswas-diener, kashdan, & minhas, 2011). the understanding of character strengths is important for any individual because they define who we are – highlighting our authentic self, or, put differently, our unique “identity.” this is most clearly demonstrated by those character strengths which come most naturally to us – known as our “signature strengths.” a recent empirical review of research from the last 10 years examining character strengths (using the via classification system) has highlighted many associations between character strengths and positive outcomes (niemiec, 2013). for example, research has suggested a strong association between specific character strengths and satisfaction with life (swl), while a greater overall score of all 24 character strengths has been correlated with subjective wellbeing (swb) (ruch, huber, beermann, & proyer, 2007). furthermore, research has investigated which character strengths are associated with life satisfaction (brdar & kashdan, 2010), and which buffer us in times of poor physical and psychological wellness (peterson, park, & seligman, 2006). research by seligman, steen, park and peterson (2005), investigating original ppis, has demonstrated the positive benefits of signature strengths being used as an intervention. the study found that inviting people to use their signature strengths in new and different ways for a number of days led to significant increases in the levels of happiness, and decreases in depressive symptoms. these effects were sustained at a six-month follow-up, and the overall findings have been more recently supported (mongrain & anselmo-matthews, 2012). further research has confirmed that having character strength knowledge and using one’s signature strengths are associated with greater swb and psychological wellbeing (pwb) (govindji & linley, 2007; linley, nielsen, gillett, & biswas-diener, 2010). therefore, compared to the mindfulness literature, character strengths are being used as a ppi; however, there is yet to be a programme devoted to exploring character strengths in the general population to build components of human flourishing and wellbeing. 1.3 mindfulness and character strengths looking at how mindfulness and character strengths are connected, simply by exploring the definition of mindfulness in more detail, a strong relationship between the two clearly emerges (coffey, hartman, & fredrickson, 2010). bishop et al. (2004) define mindfulness through two core elements, which are based upon two character strengths. the first element of mindfulness describes the practice of attention focus, based upon the character strength of self-regulation for attending to the specific moment. the second element of mindfulness refers to the nonjudgmental quality of that focused attention, grounded on the strength of curiosity to allow for mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 an attitude of openness and acceptance. moreover, in the original via classification work (peterson & seligman, 2004), reference was given to mindfulness trainings and to the temperance and courage virtues (niemiec, 2012). research exploring the links between mindfulness and character strengths is rather limited. one study has found that the more time one spends using their character strengths, the greater levels of mindfulness one has (jarden et al., 2012). further research studies have found that the character strengths of creativity and judgment correlated with mindfulness (sugiura, 2004), and that hope/optimism increased as a result of mindfulness practice (carson et al., 2004). theoretically, little has been discussed about the overall integration and mutual impact of mindfulness and character strengths. baer (2009) proposed that mindfulness meditation could facilitate the cultivation of strengths and could increase wellbeing. another and more recent suggestion, speaking of this connection, describes how the five mindfulness trainings, reverence for life, true happiness, true love, loving speech and deep listening, and nourishment and health, of thich nhat hanh (nhat hanh, 1993; nhat hanh & cheung, 2010), can be connected with character strengths (see niemiec, 2012). niemiec (2012) examined each training, suggesting that character strengths could promote mindful living. for example, the training of loving speech and deep listening, underpinning and being used in conjunction with compassion/kindness, can deepen the experience of relationships. niemiec, rashid, and spinella (2012) have explained how these two elements of mindfulness and strengths have the potential for growth and self-improvement; they also highlighted more explicitly how a connection between them does exist. they argue that there is potential for integrating the two practices together to create a virtuous circle of positive impact or, as they allude to, an upward positive spiral (fredrickson, 2001). by this, they explain how mindfulness can help one to express their character strengths in a way that is balanced and is sensitive to the context they are in. also, they illustrate how character strengths can bolster an individual’s mindfulness practice by overcoming typical obstacles and distractions, thus enhancing mindfulness (niemiec, 2014). 1.4 mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp) merging the conceptual links of mindfulness and character strengths, niemiec (2014) developed the mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp), a programme designed to explicitly focus on what is best in people. the mbsp practice involves meditations, exercises, and discussions to encourage participants to enhance their engagement with life to increase levels of wellbeing (niemiec et al., 2013). the programme is built upon thich nhat hanh’s mindfulness work, which is based on mindful living (nhat hanh, 1993); on the other hand, it is grounded within the character strength research developed by seligman and peterson (2004). the unique aspect of mbsp is how mindfulness is combined with strengths, providing a unique synergy between these two forces of positive psychology (niemiec, 2013). in essence, mbsp operates from four universal assumptions of human beings (niemiec, 2014). firstly, individuals have the power to build their character strengths and mindfulness. secondly, people can use their mindfulness ability and their character strengths to deepen selfawareness, foster insight, build a life of meaning and purpose, form relationships, and reach their goals. thirdly, individuals who practise mbsp can use their core qualities in a more balanced and proficient manner. fourth and finally, applying character strengths to mindfulness practice and mindful living will encourage individuals to become more consistent, as well as enable them to reap more benefits from their mindfulness practice. mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 1.5 the present study despite promising pilot data for mbsp as a ppi (niemiec & lissing, 2016; niemiec, 2014), further research is required to test the effectiveness of the programme. the objective of the current study was to demonstrate that participants who completed the mbsp programme would have greater levels of wellbeing and flourishing than those in a no-intervention control group. the hypothesis was that participants in the mbsp group would show higher levels of wellbeing, as predicted by higher scores on the satisfaction with life scale (swls), flourishing scale (fs), the positive psychotherapy inventory, and the signature strengths inventory (ssi), compared to participants in the control group. 2. method 2.1 participants and design the study used a control design consisting of one experimental mbsp group and one nointervention control group. participants in the experimental condition (n = 19) completed the 8week programme and those in the control condition (n = 20) did not receive any intervention. all participants were recruited from the general adult population, with an inclusion criterion of 18 years and above. participants in the mbsp group were recruited online via the via institute’s website, which advertised the 8-week mbsp programme to the general public. the control group was also recruited from the general population, an opportunity sample, in the uk. the mean age of those in the mbsp group was 50.24 (sd = ± 6.97, range = 30 or 31-70), with seven (37%) male and 12 (63%) female participants. the mean age of participants in the control group was 49.30 (sd = ± 8.37, range = 25), with nine (45%) male and 11 (55%) female participants. ethical approval for the control group was gained from the university of east london’s research ethics committee, and the mbsp sample was ethically approved by the via institute. the leading practitioner of the mbsp was an experienced individual who had vast knowledge about mindfulness and character strengths. this person was also capable of safely guiding participants through personal exploration and potentially life-changing exercises. participants in the control group did not complete the mbsp but were offered a via me report (character strengths report offered by via institute, worth usd20) as a participation gift, and were also supplied with further information regarding the mbsp programme. all participants were over the age of 18 and were able to give full consent to answering the self-report measures online, where their anonymity was protected and their answers were kept confidential. all participants understood their right to withdraw throughout the research process, and during the study no ethical issues were raised. 2.2 measures four self-report measures were used to assess participants’ levels of happiness, flourishing, engagement and signature strengths use. satisfaction with life scale (swls: diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) is a five-item selfreport measure of global life satisfaction. participants respond on a 7-point likert scale (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) to each item (e.g., “i am satisfied with my life”). a higher overall score of the measure indicates a higher global life satisfaction. the swls has strong internal reliability (r =.87) and moderate temporal stability, as indicated by test-retest reliability (r =.82) (diener et al., 1985). the scale has been widely used and has demonstrated good psychometric properties across many studies (diener et al., 1985; diener, scollon, oishi, dzokoto, & suh, 2000). mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 flourishing scale (diener, lucas, schimmack, & helliwell, 2009) is an eight-item measure designed to assess participants’ self-perceived success in areas identified as important for psychological flourishing, including relationships, meaning, purpose, self-esteem, and optimism. this scale captures eudaimonic or psychological dimensions of wellbeing, such as the need for competence, relatedness, and self-acceptance (ryff, 1989; ryan & deci, 2001) which are essential for enabling optimal human functioning. each item is phrased in a positive direction and the answers are measured on a likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). a high score on the scale indicates respondents have a positive self-image in important areas of functioning (diener et al., 2010). the scale has a cronbach’s alpha of .86 and temporal stability over a 1-month period (r = .71., n = 261, p < .001) (diener et al., 2010). engagement is an important element relating to using one’s strengths to live a more absorbing life, and, ultimately, a flourishing life. this was measured using the positive psychotherapy inventory (rashid, 2008), which includes several questions on the pleasant life, the meaningful life, and the engaged life. for the purposes of this study, the seven items in relation to the engaged life were presented, where participants were asked to state how much they agreed with the statements on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 to 3. a total score for engagement was calculated from the seven questions relating to knowledge, activities, problem-solving, concentration, flow, management, and accomplishment. there are measures of strengths use in the literature (e.g., wood et al., 2011); however, none target the use of signature strengths (i.e., those character strengths most essential or central to who the person is). therefore, four questions on signature strengths use were used, courtesy of the via institute on character. this will be referred to as the signature strengths inventory (ssi), which has not been previously validated. these questions include: 1) signature strengths/flourishing link (i.e. “my greatest fulfilments in life occur when i express those parts of myself that are core to who i am”), 2) signature strengths – work (i.e. “my work is an expression of who i am at my core, not just something i do well”), 3) signature strengths – relationships (i.e. “my personal relationships give me the opportunity to express the best parts of myself”) 4) signature strengths – community (i.e. “my activities in my community are vehicles by which i express my best self”). participants scored on a 5-point likert scale from 1-5 (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”), where higher scores indicate greater use of their signature strengths. 2.3 procedure and apparatus two mbsp groups performed one after another, spaced over a period of a few months. participants selected their preferred programme date; the first group had nine participants and the second had 10. once the first mbsp group had finished its final weekly session, the second group began its first session. it should be stated that not all participants in the mbsp condition completed all eight sessions. of the 19 participants, 13 completed all eight sessions, five completed seven sessions, and one completed six sessions. all participants completed the short self-report questionnaires online via email at preintervention (baseline), and, after an 8-week period (post-intervention), participants were contacted again via email to re-complete the measures and to send them back by email to the researcher. the data collected included participants’ age, gender, and scores of the four selfreport measures: satisfaction with life, flourishing scale, engagement, and signature strengths use. it took an average of five minutes to complete all the self-report measures. the intervention programme for this study was executed online. there is growing evidence in support of online/web-based mindfulness interventions (krusche et al., 2012). studies using mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 online mindfulness interventions revealed a variety of benefits, including improvements to wellbeing (mak et al., 2015), resilience, and vigour (aikens et al., 2014), reduced stress, anxiety, and depression (cavanagh et al., 2013), and improved happiness, quality of life, and flourishing (feicht et al., 2013), compared to control groups. mbsp: participants in the mbsp condition logged in each week online, using a password, via the emindful platform, to connect to the practitioner and the other participants in the group session. the sessions each lasted two hours, consisting of a variety of exercises and practices, similar to other mindfulness-based programmes such as the mbsr, which is also available online. each of the sessions followed the same key structure, which included: an opening meditation, character strengths breathing space, dyads or group discussion reviewing the practice of mindfulness and strengths, a review of previous sessions (what went well) and set homework exercises, introduction to new material, an experiential mindfulness-based character strengths exercise, a virtue circle (or debrief) discussion, suggested homework exercises for the next session, and finally closing with a character strengths reflection. each session was built around a centerpiece exercise that was unique to that session. week 1: participants were invited to engage in a practical experience, where they approached an object (a raisin) as if they were encountering it for the very first time, an exercise pioneered by kabatzinn (1990). week 2: the group identified their unique character strengths by engaging with the via character strengths, as well as spotting strengths in stories. week 3: participants performed a statue meditation, whereby they experienced the application of integrating mindfulness and character strengths, learning about obstacles to mindfulness and how character strengths use could deepen the experience of mindfulness practice. week 4: the main exercise was a mindful walk, where participants gained insight into how mindfulness could be incorporated into daily life and how character strengths could be easily embedded into many daily activities. week 5: the session’s centerpiece was a loving-kindness meditation, which was followed by a strengthexploration meditation that demonstrated to the participants how specific character strengths could be targeted and built within meditation. week 6: participants engaged in a character strengths 360 review, whereby they were given awareness of their signature strengths, unrecognised strengths, weaker strengths, and strengths with potential to work on. using meditation, participants saw how they could reframe and manage any issues they might have had. week 7: using the best possible self-exercise, participants were able to see how the mbsp programme could guide future plans and goals. week 8: participants shared their best personal bits together, highlighting what they had learnt from the programme and the potential areas of growth they had experienced. 3. results to examine the effect of the 8-week mbsp programme, participants’ scores at baseline and after the 8-week period were inputted and analysed in an spss 20 software package. a kolomogorovsmirnov test of normality was conducted and histograms were produced, which found that there was no homogeneity of variance between the datasets from the two groups. therefore, the requirements for conducting parametric independent sample t-tests between the two conditions were not justified. owing to the skewed baseline data between the two conditions, only statistical comparisons could be made between preand post-intervention within the two groups. as a result, non-parametric wilcoxon signed-rank tests were conducted to test the hypothesis of whether the mbsp programme would increase wellbeing, engagement, and signature strengths use. mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 table 1. mindfulness-based strengths practice participants’ and control group participants’ wellbeing scores measure baseline post-test median int. quartile range median int. quartile range mbsp group swl 28.00 25.00-30.00 30.00 28.00-33.00 fs 49.00 47.00-51.00 51.50 49.50-55.00 engagement 17.00 14.00-19.00 18.00 16.00-20.25 ssi 17.00 15.00-18.00 18.00 18.00-19.00 no intervention group swl 26.50 19.50-29.00 28.00 21.00-29.00 fs 44.00 40.50-48.75 45.00 41.25-48.00 engagement 15.00 12.00-16.00 14.50 12.00-17.00 ssi 15.00 13.25-15.00 15.00 14.00-15.75 note. swls = satisfaction with life scale; fs = flourishing scale; engagement = the engagement section of the positive psychotherapy inventory; ssi = signature strengths inventory. table 1 above shows the median scores from the two sample groups on the four wellbeing measures at baseline and 8 weeks later. the mbsp group had an overall increase in the average scores for all four of the wellbeing measures. wilcoxon signed-rank tests demonstrating the exact one-tailed significance showed that the 8-week mbsp programme did elicit statistically significant changes and medium-to-large effect sizes in all four measures, including: swl scores from pre (median = 28.00) to post-intervention (median = 30.00), z = -2.54, p = .004, r = 0.41, fs scores from pre (median = 49.00) to post-intervention (median = 51.50), z = -2.64, p = .003, r = 0.62, engagement scores from pre (median = 17.00) to post-intervention (median = 18.00), z = -2.62, p = .003, r = 0.62, and ssi scores from pre (median = 17.00) to post (median = 18.00), z = 2.41, p = .008, r = 0.57. the significant differences between preand post-intervention measures and the large effect sizes suggest that the mbsp did elicit post-intervention positive impact on wellbeing, thus supporting the hypothesis that the mbsp programme would increase wellbeing. further analysis was conducted on the control group to see if there were any differences in preand post-intervention scores after the 8-week period. using wilcoxon signed-rank tests, it was found that for three out of the four measures there were no significant differences: fs scores from pre(median = 44.00) to post-intervention (median = 45.00), z = -1.00, p = .157, r = 0.22, engagement scores from pre(median = 15.00) to post-intervention (median = 14.50), z = -0.44 , p = .347, r = 0.10, ssi scores from pre(median = 15.00) to post-intervention (median = 15.00), z = .672, p = .275, r = 0.15. however, for swl, a significant difference was found between pre (median = 26.50) and post-intervention (median = 28.00), z = -2.05, p = .023, r = 0.50 measures. 4. discussion statistical analysis of the mbsp group has successfully shown a significant difference between participants’ scores at baseline, compared to post-programme scores. this indicates that the mbsp has a positive impact on wellbeing. however, the lack of homogeneity of variance between the two groups should be taken into consideration, and caution should be exercised when interpreting the results. participants in the control group did not have any statistical differences in three out of the four measures; however, this support is slightly hindered, since swl scores increased after the 8-week period. overall, the research findings support the hypothesis that the mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 mbsp programme does positively increase levels of wellbeing, including swl, flourishing, engagement, and signature strengths use, and is therefore applicable as a ppi for the general population. therefore, these initial findings do suggest relevance and positive implications for the potential of the mbsp to boost levels of flourishing. these findings will be examined in more detail, and will be followed by some limitations of the study and future research directions. this study offers initial suggestions that finding one’s character strengths through exercises, such as the character strengths 360, helps individuals to gain insight into their set of character strengths. by understanding which character strengths allow one to be their best (signature strengths) and also to raise awareness of those that they do not engage with regularly (wider strengths spotting), individuals’ wellbeing can be positively enhanced. additionally, by using mindfulness to identify the “golden mean,” namely, to which degree, and which potential combinations of character strengths could apply to appropriate situations (linley, 2008; niemiec, 2014), individuals become more savvy about living life to their full potential. overall, the online programme of mbsp drew positive effects, becoming the first mbi to utilise character strengths, and enabling participants to learn and engage with this language and practice to improve levels of wellbeing and flourishing. the study also supports the body of research on mindfulness which suggests that this practice is correlated with positive wellbeing effects (brown & kasser, 2005; shapiro et al., 2008; carson t al., 2004). however, this research has demonstrated that mbsp is the first validated mbi programme which utilises signature strengths to build positive outcomes, supporting the research that character strengths use does enhance wellbeing in the form of swl (linley et al., 2010; mongrain & anselmo-matthews, 2009; peterson & peterson, 2008; seligman et al., 2005). whilst the overall findings from the control group do enhance the suggestion that mbsp is a worthwhile and successful ppi, there are a number of limitations that would have to be taken into account. participants in the control group did increase in swl. however, there are reasons which could potentially explain this increase. firstly, swl, as a measure of happiness, is argued by some to be a less stable measure of assessment, whereby current moods and life circumstances may possibly change over a relatively short period of time (yardley & rice, 1991). however, this appears to be unlikely, since the current mood has been shown to have little to no effect on one’s overall judgment of life satisfaction (pavot & diener, 2008). moreover, the swls has displayed high levels of internal consistency in previous research (diener et al., 2000). a second potential reason is that the simple process of monitoring one’s happiness, namely, by completing a scale, may have acted as an intervention in itself, increasing participants’ scores on this swb measure. therefore, it is possible that control participants experienced a boost in subjective wellbeing because of these reasons. other limitations to consider include the lack of longitudinal data; future studies could test the programme’s impact at 1 month and 6 months following the programme’s end, to see whether or not the positive influence is maintained throughout time. one final limitation is the small sample size; future studies could follow up with a larger sample size that would make it easier to confirm the programme’s effect on wellbeing. to further examine the potential of mbsp as a wider intervention, the implementation of different scales into the research design would enable the examination of mbsp to help individuals deal with deficiencies and psychological distress. this is highlighted because the mbsp does also have a focus on helping individuals with these matters (not just ppi aims). one only has to examine session 6 of the mbsp programme to see that the exercises are aimed at resolving and managing difficulties as well (niemiec, 2014). therefore, mbsp could also be mindfulness-based strength practice ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 empirically tested to see if it can reliably lead to a decrease in these negative life components, as well as a boost in positive life components. while this study did not examine mechanisms of action, mbsp offers unique perspectives that warrant future investigation. this includes an evaluation of if and how mindfulness is able to enhance character strengths use (i.e., “mindful strengths use”), and if and how character strengths use, in turn, can enhance and enliven mindfulness (i.e., referred to as “strong mindfulness”) (niemiec, 2014). additional research should also examine the effects of mbsp over a longer timescale using larger sample sizes, possibly investigating different populations, such as schools and businesses, and using randomised control trials. authors itai ivtzan university of east london i.ivtzan@uel.ac.uk ryan m. niemiec via institute on character charlie briscoe 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(2012). integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives to more comprehensively understand wellbeing and pathways to wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 196-221. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i3.3 luke wayne henderson deakin university l.henderson@deakin.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 196 42 article integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives to more comprehensively understand wellbeing and pathways to wellbeing luke wayne henderson · tess knight abstract: recently, the disagreement that separates hedonic from eudaimonic philosophers has spread to the science of wellbeing. this has resulted in two opposing perspectives regarding both wellbeing concepts and proposed pathways to wellbeing. whilst contention continues, most contemporary psychologists now agree that hedonic and eudaimonic approaches each denote important aspects of wellbeing. this has led to integrated wellbeing conceptualisations, in which the combined presence of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing components is referred to as ‘flourishing’. in regard to the attainment of wellbeing, research simultaneously investigating hedonic and eudaimonic pathways suggests that a life rich in both types of pursuits is associated with the highest degree of wellbeing. despite this assertion, previously underemphasised methodological limitations question the validity of such claims. to further progress this important area of investigation, future research directions to ameliorate said limitations are explored. it is recommended that the past tendency to contrast and compare hedonia and eudaimonia be abandoned, and instead that the inherent value of both be recognised. time-use research methods are needed to cross-validate past findings obtained from cross-sectional research, which will make it possible to transition from purely descriptive conclusions to applied conclusions. keywords: pleasure, meaning, hedonia, eudaimonia, wellbeing, well-being, happiness, flourishing, pathways, positive psychology, integration 1. introduction how to achieve optimal psychological wellness has always been a fundamental enquiry regarding human life. despite this, psychological research over the past half century has focused almost exclusively on psychopathology (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). in more recent years, the emergence of positive psychology has lifted the taboo surrounding research into areas such as happiness and wellbeing, resulting in an abundance of research interest (linley, joseph, harrington, & wood, 2006). despite much interest, multiple and sometimes opposing perspectives have since been postulated regarding not only the constituents of wellbeing, but also ways in which one can optimise one’s personal experience of wellbeing. past dissent pertaining to the nature and pursuit of happiness and wellbeing resulted in the establishment of two opposing philosophical traditions: hedonia and eudaimonia (grinde, 2012). the hedonic perspective suggested that maximising one’s pleasurable moments was the pathway to happiness, whilst eudaimonic advocates argued that living a life of virtue, and actualising one’s inherent potentials was the way to wellbeing (delle fave, massimini, & bassi, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 197 2011b). these philosophical traditions have since been translated to contemporary psychology for the development of a science of wellbeing. this translation of philosophical ideas to psychological constructs has not been without contention, and the usefulness or even existence of such a distinction has recently been debated at length (kashdan, biswas-diener, & king, 2008; waterman, 2008). despite contention, eminent psychologists now appear to see the benefits of both hedonic and eudaimonic approaches, which has resulted in the emergence of integrated wellbeing conceptualisations (e.g. huppert & so, 2009), which use the term ‘flourishing’ to describe the combined presence of both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing concepts. such methodologies comprehensively capture both the nature of wellbeing, and the potential pathways to the attainment of wellbeing. whilst research utilising integrated methodologies remains in its infancy, emerging from the literature is the suggestion that a life rich in both hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits is associated with the greatest degree of wellbeing (huta & ryan, 2010). this article reviews the philosophical origins of the two traditions and delineates the various perspectives held by contemporary psychologists. possible conclusions and recommendations are made, namely for the continued pursuit of both hedonic and eudaimonic approaches with an emphasis on integration rather than comparison. research investigating eudaimonia and hedonia in parallel terms is then critically reviewed as such studies reflect a vital attempt to abandon dichotomous thinking, which makes it possible to observe the interrelationship between hedonia and eudaimonia. the implications and limitations of the reviewed studies are discussed, and future research directions aimed at ameliorating past methodological limitations are proposed to further progress this important research focus. 2. background 2.1 two philosophical traditions underlying this contemporary psychological debate are two ancient greek philosophical traditions: hedonia and eudaimonia (delle fave et al., 2011b). a detailed review of these philosophical underpinnings is beyond the scope of this paper; however, a brief review is necessary to lay the foundations for this contemporary discussion. the hedonic tradition can be traced back to philosophers such as aristippus, epicurus, bentham, locke, and hobbes (waterman, 2008). philosophers adopting the hedonic perspective generally equated wellbeing with the positive emotional states that accompany satisfaction of desire; therefore experiences of pleasure, carefreeness, and enjoyment were considered reflective of wellbeing (diener, 2009). hedonic philosophers believed that humans essentially desire to maximise their experience of pleasure and to minimise pain; pleasure and pain were seen as powerful indicators of good and bad and hence maximising pleasure was seen as a way of maximising the good in one’s life. hedonic philosophers traditionally took a ‘subjectivist’ position, in that the individual is considered to be in the best position to determine how well they are. the eudaimonic tradition is often contrasted with, and considered philosophically opposed to, the hedonic tradition (deci & ryan, 2008). the concept of eudaimonia was first explicated by aristotle (aristotle, 1985); however, it has also been linked to other ancient philosophers such as plato and zeno of citium (grinde, 2012). aristotle proclaimed that living a life of contemplation and virtue, in accordance with one’s inherent nature (i.e. living authentically, or in truth to one’s ‘daimon’) was the pathway to wellbeing (norton, 1976). aristotle defined acting virtuously as behaving in a way that is noble and is worthwhile for its own sake; often emphasising the virtues of justice, kindness, courage, and honesty. aristotle further suggested that developing one’s potentials in the pursuit of complex and meaningful (both to the integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 198 individual and society) goals was the hallmark of a good life (keyes & annas, 2009). he distinguished between pleasure and the good life, at times denigrating hedonism as a vulgar ideal, as he believed it made humans the slaves of desires. positive emotional experiences were not central to aristotle’s conception of a good life, though he did acknowledge that often the result of eudaimonic action was hedonic pleasure (kashdan et al., 2008). aristotle did not denigrate hedonic pleasure per se, but rather, the pursuit of hedonic pleasure purely for pleasure’s sake (waterman, 2008). aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia has predominantly been considered an objective approach, where a life is judged from the outside, according to whether it was a life of excellence and virtue (mcdowell, 1980). this approach represents a concern that hedonic happiness and satisfaction can result from reprehensible behaviour, and therefore subjective reports of happiness should not be considered a good indication of whether a life is well lived. as subjective pleasure can be experienced in many contexts (e.g. through the use of illicit drugs), positive subjective reports may not always be reflective of wellness.1 this would suggest that eudaimonic philosophers are more concerned with why someone is happy, rather than if someone is happy. 2.2 from philosophy to science philosophers and psychologists often inspire each other’s work, which has led to the attempted adaptation of the aforementioned philosophical approaches to the psychology of wellbeing (kahneman, diener, & schwarz, 1999; waterman, 1993). hedonic psychological approaches have generally considered wellbeing an internal state which represents a variety of subjective evaluations about the quality of one’s life, broadly defined (delle fave et al., 2011b). this conception generally translates to the construct of subjective wellbeing (swb), which has typically been considered to include an affective component, consisting of a preponderance of positive emotional experiences over negative emotional experiences, and a cognitive component, which refers to a personal judgment on the satisfaction one has with life as a whole, or with specific life domains, such as work or relationships (diener, 2009). at the activity or pathway level (i.e. wellbeing-promoting behaviours), hedonic approaches have typically emphasised the importance of engaging in pursuits that afford positive emotional experiences (such as pleasure, comfort, entertainment, and enjoyment) and that lead to the satisfaction of one’s desires (fredrickson, 2001; kahneman, 1999). an accumulative effect is assumed, whereby high degrees of wellbeing are experienced by satisfying one’s personal desires and increasing the frequency of one’s pleasurable moments (fredrickson, 2004). whilst there has been general consensus amongst hedonic psychologists about wellbeing indicators and pathways, there has been more ambiguity surrounding the translation of eudaimonia to psychology (kashdan et al., 2008). this has led to the emergence of a variety of theories and approaches, with personal growth and meaning in life often emphasised as core eudaimonic components (delle fave et al., 2011b). other constructs that have also been linked to the eudaimonic perspective include purpose, autonomy, competence, self-realization, mindfulness, self-acceptance, authenticity, values congruence, and social connectedness (baumeister & vohs, 2002; huta & ryan, 2010; ryan & deci, 2000). what becomes immediately apparent is that eudaimonia seems a more complex and elusive concept than hedonia. eudaimonic approaches also emphasise that wellbeing and happiness are on-going processes, not end states. despite this, like hedonia, eudaimonia has been considered at both the wellbeing and activity levels, with activities that are intrinsically motivated and afford 1 for a detailed review of the difficulties with both subjective and objective measures see tiberius and hall (2010). integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 199 development in oneself often emphasised as pathways to wellbeing (huta, 2012). hedonia and eudaimonia have, therefore, both been considered as ways of living/behaving, and more globally, as wellbeing types. 2.3 recent debate as previously alluded to, this translation of philosophical ideas to psychological constructs has not been without contention (ryan & deci, 2001). the costs and benefits of adopting these philosophical ideas within the science of wellbeing have recently been debated at length by many of the leading researchers in the field. although the goal of this article is not to add further commentary to this debate, it is necessary for the authors to summarise the main points in order to delineate their position. kashdan et al., (2008) began the conversation by suggesting that the philosophical distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia was unhelpful, unwarranted empirically, and potentially harmful. they levelled their argument primarily at the lack of scientific rigour which they believed has characterised eudaimonic approaches. they argued that the heterogeneity of proposed eudaimonic definitions and theories added an unnecessary layer of complexity, which interfered with scientific advancement. kashdan et al. stated that aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia was inappropriate for psychological science as it had inherent moral judgments, and was elitist, as it implied that eudaimonia was a state reserved for/achievable by only a select few (i.e. those with unique potentials). they further suggested that there was an implicit (and sometimes explicit) erroneous assumption that eudaimonic wellbeing was more objective, comprehensive, and morally valid than swb. kashdan et al. also expressed particular concern with the suggestion that eudaimonia was distinct from hedonia, and suggested that findings from research (see waterman, 1993) proposed as evidence that hedonia and eudaimonia were quantitatively distinct, could easily be interpreted as evidence that they are part of the same construct. they argued that as hedonic and eudaimonic measures were often found to share a high degree of variance, results should be interpreted as evidence that there are quantitative distinctions among a matrix of wellbeing dimensions, as opposed to two qualitatively different kinds of happiness and wellbeing. kashdan et al. argued for the abandonment of a hedonic and eudaimonic categorical dichotomy, and recommended instead that explicit reference be made to whatever construct is under investigation (e.g. meaning in life), rather than a general reference to the philosophical tradition that the construct might be aligned with (e.g. eudaimonia). waterman (2008) was first to respond, arguing that it was premature to consider abandoning eudaimonic approaches on the grounds of a lack of conceptual clarity. waterman highlighted that it was unsurprising that hedonic approaches enjoyed more scientific consensus, as they had been investigated for decades longer, and have a disproportionately larger body of research compared to eudaimonic approaches. waterman (2008) argued that having a variety of definitions was appropriate during early stages, and that those operational definitions that emerge which correspond adequately to conceptual meanings would be the ones that survive. waterman further suggested that a purely empirically-driven approach ignored the complexities of the wellbeing construct. ryan and huta (2009) agreed, suggesting that scientific rigour did not mean an absence of theory. they interpreted the current diversity within the wellbeing research focus as positive, and described the recent tension between hedonic and eudaimonic advocates as a generative, creative tension. in response to kashdan et al.’s (2008) concern with aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia, waterman (2008) argued that contemporary psychological approaches needed to consider contemporary eudaimonic philosophy, and that whilst aristotle may have adopted an objective integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 200 approach, current eudaimonic philosophers proposed that eudaimonia can be investigated as a subjective experience (see tiberius & hall, 2010). waterman’s conceptualisation of eudaimonia emphasises the importance of developing one’s potentials, and living in accordance with one’s daimon (i.e. one’s true self), and therefore, waterman has generally investigated eudaimonia at the activity level. other conceptualisations have emphasised the quality of one’s life as a whole (i.e. eudaimonic wellbeing); where hedonic wellbeing has emphasised the importance of feeling good, eudaimonic wellbeing has often been defined in terms of functioning well (keyes & annas, 2009; ryan & huta, 2009). ryan and huta expressed concern that if swb were to be the only indicator of wellness, then more happiness would equate to more wellness, which ignores both the source of happiness and the functioning of the individual. ryan and huta admitted that swb can be a good indicator of wellness, but only when considered in the context of the functions, values, and behaviours that engender it, which is to say, when it is considered in conjunction with eudaimonia. keyes and annas (2009) agreed that functioning was an important consideration, and whilst they admitted that feelings and functioning in life would often be consistent (i.e. overlapping), they cited evidence suggesting that they are not redundant, conceptually or empirically2 (keyes, 2006; keyes et al., 2008). delle fave and bassi (2009) added another element to this argument, suggesting that at times an individual may be healthy and functioning well, despite not feeling good in their life. one example they provided was when an individual is grieving the loss of someone, whereby a decrease in swb would be considered part of an entirely healthy process. furthermore, periods of uncertainty and adjustment are often associated with meaning-making and personal growth yet can also be associated with decreased swb (vittersø & søholt, 2011). these examples question whether swb alone is an adequate indicator of wellbeing, and suggest that eudaimonic approaches represent an important adjunct to swb. kashdan et al.’s (2008) suggestion that hedonia and eudaimonia are not distinct was also opposed by waterman (2008). waterman drew from his own research (waterman, 1993; waterman, schwartz, & conti, 2008), which found that whilst eudaimonic activities were highly associated with hedonic enjoyment, hedonic enjoyment was often found to arise in the absence of eudaimonia, and therefore they are distinct3. whilst waterman focused on the distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia at the activity level, keyes and annas (2009) argued that hedonia and eudaimonia are distinct at the wellbeing level. they referred to keyes’s complete mental health model as evidence; specifically, the comparison between individuals who have both high degrees of swb and of eudaimonic wellbeing (i.e. those considered to be ‚flourishing‛, which constituted 18% of the sample) and those that have only high degrees of swb (i.e. those considered to be moderately mentally healthy, which constituted 48.5% of the sample). these two groups were found to differ in meaningful ways; flourishing individuals experienced less impairment and were less of a burden on society than moderately mentally healthy individuals as measured by greater work productivity, decreased disability, decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, decreased rates of physical illness, decreased healthcare utilisation and superior psychosocial functioning. these meaningful differences supply direct support for the utility of the eudaimonic and hedonic distinction. keyes and annas concluded that not enough people are functioning well in a life about which they feel good, which provides a strong rationale for both the distinction between hedonia and 2 this research is discussed in more detail later in the article 3 this study is reviewed at length later in this article integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 201 eudaimonia, and for the development of empirically validated interventions aimed at increasing eudaimonia to promote flourishing. in response to kashdan et al.’s (2008) concern about the potential elitism inherent in eudaimonic approaches, waterman (2008) suggested that this argument again reflected a misunderstanding of contemporary eudaimonic philosophers. contemporary approaches deemphasise strivings for some particular excellent outcome, and instead emphasise the need to consider the individual, and the individual’s unique potentials. therefore, if a person is developing within themselves, and in accordance with their own unique potentials, they are considered to be experiencing eudaimonia. as such, everyone has the capacity to experience eudaimonia, not just a select few. waterman proposed that kashdan et al.’s concerns about eudaimonia being considered more morally valid than swb was a moot point from a scientific perspective, as what is ‚better‛ is a deontological claim, and therefore beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. it is clear from this brief review that there remains contention around the translation of philosophical perspectives to the science of wellbeing, and that this healthy debate is likely to continue. despite this, it is possible to postulate some conclusions. firstly, contemporary psychological approaches have clear and explicit links to the philosophical conceptions of hedonia and eudaimonia, and therefore we see no problem with the continued use of this terminology. secondly, it is apparent that there is a distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia, and a meaningful one at that. although both hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits may be highly related (i.e. an activity may be experienced as hedonic and eudaimonic), an activity can be experienced as hedonic in the absence of eudaimonia, and therefore they are distinct. furthermore, at the wellbeing level, a distinction between feelings about one’s life and functioning seems vitally important to a comprehensive understanding of the mental health continuum. thirdly, whilst eudaimonic advocates argue that swb is not an adequate indicator of wellbeing by itself, they do still value swb and hedonic approaches and consider them important dimensions of the overall wellbeing picture. this is an important point as it illustrates that despite past disagreement, contemporary psychologists recognise the strengths and value of both traditions. lastly, eudaimonic approaches are still very much in their developmental stages; however, they contribute meaningfully and importantly to a comprehensive understanding of wellbeing. despite this, eventually eudaimonic researchers will need to either come to a consensus, or better delineate the different perspectives into meaningful theories. 2.4 flourishing it is the common ground amongst the various aforementioned perspectives that appears most appealing and constructive. all agree that there is a need to continue to investigate a broad array of wellbeing and happiness sources and outcomes, from both the hedonic and eudaimonic traditions, and that this type of cross-fertilisation will increase our overall understanding of happiness and wellbeing. all agree that eudaimonia and hedonia should not be treated categorically, nor considered mutually exclusive, but rather that hedonia and eudaimonia operate in tandem, in a synergistic fashion. therefore, there should be flexibility in studying interrelationships among the constructs. all agree that there is as much worth in studying the complementarity of hedonic and eudaimonic models as in studying difference. finally, there is general consensus that a state characterised by both hedonic and eudaimonic sources and outcomes is most desirable. it is for these reasons that we now turn our attention towards integrated wellbeing conceptualisations. integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 202 various researchers have recently aimed to combine the two conceptualisations as a means of more comprehensively capturing wellbeing; the assumption being that both hedonia and eudaimonia denote important components of an overarching wellbeing construct. seligman, parks and steen (2004) were first to propose an integrated wellbeing theory termed authentic happiness theory, which suggested that the presence of positive emotion, meaning, and engagement were indicative of wellbeing. the dimensions of pleasure and of meaning in seligman et al.’s model have been equated with hedonia and eudaimonia respectively. the dimension of engagement has been equated with flow, which is a state characterised by intense absorption in one’s activities, where a person’s skill and the challenge of an activity are well matched, and both are high (csikszentmihalyi, 1997). as flow is often induced by activities that afford personal growth, a theoretical link has been proposed between flow and eudaimonia (waterman, 1993). despite this, an individual can experience flow whilst engaged in less virtuous and meaningful activities (e.g. flow is commonly experienced whilst playing video games, see hsu & lu, 2004), and therefore engagement should be considered distinct from, but related to, eudaimonia. more recently, seligman added the facets of achievement and relationships to his definition, and labelled the combined presence of all components ‘flourishing’ (seligman, 2011). seligman proposes that his new theory reconciles the differing perspectives regarding the conceptualisation and measurement of wellbeing by including both hedonic and eudaimonic aspects (forgeard, jayawickreme, kern, & seligman, 2011). although there is currently a lack of empirical support, seligman claims he is in the process of developing measures to investigate the validity of his flourishing theory of wellbeing (forgeard et al., 2011). keyes (2007) proposed a similar model of wellbeing, which suggests that flourishing includes ‚symptoms‛ of both hedonia and eudaimonia. keyes’s complete mental health model includes the facets of emotional wellbeing (i.e. swb) and positive functioning in life (i.e. eudaimonic wellbeing), which includes psychological wellbeing and social wellbeing. ‘flourishing’ is now often used (as it will be for the remainder of this article) to describe the desirable state whereby both hedonic and eudaimonic facets of wellbeing are simultaneously present within an individual (huppert & so, 2009). 2.5. pathways to wellbeing much of the research investigating pathways to wellbeing has subscribed to either the hedonic or the eudaimonic perspective, utilising a unilateral approach and studying that pathway in isolation (delle fave, brdar, freire, vella-brodrick, & wissing, 2011). findings from such research have supported the effectiveness of both hedonic (e.g. fredrickson, 2004) and eudaimonic (e.g. steger, kashdan, & oishi, 2008) pathways; however, it is noteworthy that in such research wellbeing has typically been conceptualised consistently with the philosophical perspective of the researcher. that is, an advocate of a eudaimonic approach investigating eudaimonic pathways to eudaimonic wellbeing (e.g. waterman et al., 2003), or an advocate of a hedonic approach investigating hedonic pathways to hedonic wellbeing (e.g. fredrickson, 2000). this unilateral approach has been increasingly criticised (see biswas-diener, kashdan, & king, 2009), as conclusions cannot be made in regard to the relative effect of hedonic pathways on eudaimonic wellbeing or eudaimonic pathways on hedonic wellbeing. it is now acknowledged that hedonia and eudaimonia are not mutually exclusive (waterman et al., 2008), and that eudaimonic pursuits can have positive influences on hedonic wellbeing, and vice versa (e.g. king, hicks, krull, & del gaiso, 2006). this recognition has led to more recent attempts to simultaneously investigate eudaimonic and hedonic pathways, which is where we now turn our attention. integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 203 3. integrated methodologies: a critical review this section will review and critically analyse research pertaining to hedonia and eudaimonia. whilst not a systematic review per se, the authors considered only those studies that assessed eudaimonia and hedonia in parallel terms. this inclusion criterion was applied because such studies reflect an attempt to integrate the investigation of the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives, which represents an emerging and important research direction. studies utilising such methodologies have been either conceptual in focus, or have been more concerned with how hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits influence overall wellbeing (i.e. pathways to wellbeing). conceptual research has attempted to add clarity to the constructs of hedonia and eudaimonia so as to better understand, define and operationalize them. pathways research has attempted to answer questions pertaining to how personal wellbeing is achieved through the engagement in hedonic and eudaimonic activities. this section will delineate these two research foci. 3.1 conceptual focus the first instance of the simultaneous investigation of hedonia and eudaimonia can be traced to waterman (1993). waterman investigated hedonia and eudaimonia as subjective states experienced whilst engaged in certain activities. his aim was to ascertain whether hedonia and eudaimonia were distinct experiences. he developed the personally expressive activities questionnaire (peaq), which required participants to select five activities of importance which they would use to communicate who they are and what they are like as a person. participants were then required to rate, on 7-point scales, how much they typically experienced eudaimonia (e.g. ‚this activity gives me my strongest feeling that this is who i really am‛, ‚when i engage in this activity i feel more intensely involved than i do in most other activities‛, etc.) and hedonia (‚this activity gives me my strongest sense of enjoyment‛, ‚this activity gives me my greatest pleasure‛) whilst engaged in their selected activities. consistent with waterman’s (1993) hypotheses, experiences of eudaimonia and hedonia were found to be highly related (correlations ranged from 0.71 to 0.86); however this relationship was found to be asymmetrical: activities that were experienced as eudaimonic but not hedonic were reported significantly less than activities that were experienced as hedonic but not eudaimonic. both eudaimonic and hedonic activities were accompanied by positive cognitive-affective states to a comparable degree. however, eudaimonic activities were found to be strongly associated with opportunities to develop one’s best potentials, investing a great deal of effort, having clear goals, feeling assertive, feeling challenged, having a high level of concentration, and knowing how well one was doing, whereas hedonic activities were strongly associated with feeling relaxed, excited, content, happy, losing track of time, and forgetting one's personal problems. from these findings waterman concluded that a distinction could reliably be drawn between the subjective states of eudaimonia and hedonia, the most important of which was that eudaimonia afforded opportunities for an individual to advance their personal potentials, whether in terms of skills and talents, purposes in living, or both. waterman and colleagues (waterman et al., 2008) have since replicated this study, with slight methodological adjustments. waterman et al. believed that prior conceptions of intrinsic motivation (i.e. activities that are enjoyed in-and-of-themselves) were inadequate, and argued that intrinsic motivation should be reserved for those activities that give rise to the development of one’s potential (i.e. eudaimonic activities). they proposed that activities where just hedonic enjoyment was experienced should be considered hedonically motivated, whilst activities where both hedonia and eudaimonia were experienced represented true intrinsically integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 204 motivated activities. again the peaq was used; however, two subjective conditions previously proposed as defining characteristics of intrinsic motivation were added: interest (deci & ryan, 1985) and the characteristics of flow (i.e. having clear goals, not feeling self-conscious, being in control, losing track of time, knowing you are doing well, intense concentration, forgetting personal problems, and being fully involved) as specified by csikszentmihalyi (1991). a further four variables, previously suggested as distinguishing intrinsically motivated activities from others were also included: self-determination (ryan, 1992), the balance of challenges and skills (csikszentmihalyi, 1988), self-realisation values (waterman, 1990), and the level of effort invested in the performance of the activity (waterman, 2005). findings were consistent with waterman’s (1993) previous study, in that the subjective experiences of hedonia and eudaimonia were highly correlated (>0.80), and an asymmetrical relationship was observed. when specifically comparing intrinsically motivated activities (i.e. those experienced as highly eudaimonic and hedonic) and hedonically motivated activities (i.e. those experienced as highly hedonic only), the former were found to be associated with higher scores on all four variables linked to self-realisation (i.e. balance of challenges and skills, selfrealisation values, level of effort, and importance) and were rated as higher on both interest and flow experiences. however, no difference was found for self-determination or frequency. despite not distinguishing intrinsically motivated activities from hedonically motivated activities, self-determination was found to be the strongest independent predictor of both types of subjective experiences (i.e. hedonic and eudaimonic). therefore, waterman concluded that self-determination is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for intrinsic motivation, which runs counter to previous theories (see ryan, 1992). waterman argued that as both hedonically motivated and intrinsically motivated activities are enjoyed in-and-of-themselves, it is not surprising that they did not differ in regard to self-determination (i.e. both are freely chosen). these findings extend on waterman’s (1993) early research by establishing differences between hedonia and eudaimonia specifically on a series of variables with documented relevance to intrinsic motivation. he argued that intrinsically motivated activities will be the more ‚durable and rewarding‛ pursuits (i.e. eudaimonic activities are better than hedonic activities). taken together, waterman’s findings suggest that hedonia and eudaimonia are highly related yet distinct subjective states, which are accompanied by predictable patterns of associated experiences. eudaimonic activities are characterised by a balance of challenge and skill, the investment of a high degree of effort, the experience of interest and flow, and are associated with opportunities to advance one’s personal potentials. by comparison, hedonic activities are associated with feeling relaxed, excited, content, happy, losing track of time, and forgetting one's personal problems. in line with proclamations from eudaimonic philosophy (see telfer, 1980), waterman interpreted the asymmetrical relationship observed between hedonia and eudaimonia as evidence that there are three, not four, conceivable categories of activities: (1) those that are experienced as both hedonic and eudaimonic (2) those that are experienced as hedonic but not eudaimonic, and (3) those that are experienced as neither hedonic nor eudaimonic. eudaimonic activities that were experienced as low in hedonia were argued therefore to be a ‚theoretical and empirical null‛. whilst both hedonia and eudaimonia are positive subjective states, waterman proposed that eudaimonia is preferable, as it affords opportunities for an individual to develop their potentials and is invariably accompanied by hedonia anyway. whilst waterman’s research represents an invaluable theory-driven investigation into the subjective states of hedonia and eudaimonia, some limitations need to be highlighted. firstly, as waterman investigated hedonia and eudaimonia at the activity level, conclusions regarding integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 205 the implications of engaging in hedonic and/or eudaimonic activities at a more global level are indiscernible and, as such, should not have been postulated. despite this, waterman concluded that eudaimonic pursuits are more ‚durable and rewarding‛ than others. it is entirely probable that the context in which the hedonic or eudaimonic activity is engaged in will highly influence whether it is ‚durable and rewarding‛. for example, an individual who has a day job which they experience primarily as eudaimonic might find it more rewarding to engage in more hedonic pursuits whilst not at work and these activities may constitute an important source of revitalisation and emotional regulation. therefore, we believe that proclaiming eudaimonic activities as more rewarding is misleading and untenable from waterman’s findings. many potential problems with the peaq represent further limitations of waterman’s research. firstly, many individuals may find it difficult, or even inappropriate, to define themselves by their activities; perhaps preferring to define themselves by their values or beliefs. secondly, the peaq may be susceptible to social desirability bias, as participants, to describe who they are, may choose activities which they perceive as socially favoured, despite these not accurately reflecting how they spend their time. this limitation is especially pertinent to waterman’s research as much of the data was collected in a group setting. lastly, the peaq may be susceptible to recall error, as participants are required to retrospectively consider what their typical experience of each activity is, rather than reflecting on a specific instance of engaging in that activity. it has been found that asking people to describe past events may lead to biased recollections that fit with a person’s life narrative but may be inconsistent with the frequency, intensity, stability, and value of moment-to-moment experiences (kashdan et al., 2008). furthermore, reporting about one’s typical experience of an activity disregards all contextual factors that may influence each specific experience of an activity (i.e. it ignores the likelihood that an individual’s experience of an activity may differ each time they engage in it, despite it being the same activity). furthermore, waterman et al.’s (2008) interpretation of the asymmetrical relationship as evidence that eudaimonic but not hedonic activities represent a theoretical and empirical null is questionable. when grouping activities as high and low in eudaimonia and hedonia, waterman et al. used an a priori cut score equivalent to an average item response of 6 on the 7 point scales, which they lauded as a ‚very stringent criterion for considering an activity to be high‛ (p. 58). indeed this constitutes a stringent criterion for an activity to be considered high; however, it simultaneously constitutes an extremely lax criterion for an activity to be considered low (i.e. any score below an average of 6 was considered low). if a stringent criterion was decided upon for considering an activity high, then you would expect an equally stringent criterion for considering an activity low (e.g. an average score of 2 or less). the utilised cut scores lack intuitive appeal and the rationale for such a decision was not explained. perhaps the category of activities experienced as eudaimonic and not hedonic represents a less likely category of activities; however, it seems extreme and premature to label this category of activities a ‚theoretical and empirical null‛. counter to waterman et al.’s (2008) proposition that eudaimonic pursuits are always accompanied by hedonic pleasure is recent research by vittersø and søholt (2011). vitttersø and colleagues have published a number of papers delineating the differences between eudaimonia and hedonia (e.g. vittersø, 2003; vittersø, oelmann, & wang, 2009; vittersø, søholt, hetland, thoresen, & røysamb, 2010), and although space does not permit an in-depth review of each, one of vittersø’s most recent investigations will be discussed. vittersø proposed that the subjective states of hedonia and eudaimonia serve distinct functions, with eudaimonia (which he operationalizes as feelings of interest and engagement) considered important whilst integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 206 pursuing complex goals and when conducting challenging activities, and hedonia (which he operationalizes as feelings of pleasure and satisfaction) considered important for the preservation of stability and for rewarding need fulfilment. like waterman et al., vittersø acknowledges that hedonia and eudaimonia will often be highly correlated (e.g. someone may be pleasantly engaged in an activity that is experienced as interesting and satisfactory); however, he challenges waterman et al.’s suggestion that eudaimonia is always accompanied by hedonia. vittersø proposes that personal growth processes are often unrelated to, and sometimes even negatively associated with, pleasant feeling states and overall life satisfaction. further, vittersø suggests that pleasure and satisfaction do not motivate effortful behaviour, but are more likely to occur subsequent to effortful behaviour. the crux of vittersø’s argument is that personal growth (which he proposes as a eudaimonic outcome variable) is linked with the emotion of interest (which he considers the hallmark of a eudaimonic activity), whilst life satisfaction (a hedonic outcome variable) is linked with the emotion of pleasure (a hallmark of a hedonic behaviour activity). to test this, vittersø and søholt (2011) had norwegian folk high school students complete measures of life satisfaction, personal growth, and both state and trait measures of the emotions of interest (three items: engagement, interest, and enthusiasm) and pleasure (three items: contentment, enjoyment, and happiness). all measures were completed on two separate occasions four months apart, except for the state emotion measure which was only completed at time one in a retrospective manner, whereby participants were required to rate their experience of pleasure and interest during an outdoor experience that occurred three weeks prior. as hypothesised, life satisfaction was found to correlate only modestly with personal growth (r < 0.30). a strong correlation was observed between both personal growth and interest as a trait emotion, and between life satisfaction and pleasure as a trait emotion at both time one (t1) and time two (t2). regression analyses were conducted with either pleasure or interest as the dependent variable, with life satisfaction being found to be the only significant predictor of pleasure, whilst personal growth was found to be the sole predictor of interest. path models were also used to estimate the longitudinal relationship between life satisfaction, personal growth, pleasure, and interest, with life satisfaction (t1) being found to predict trait pleasure (t2), whilst trait interest (t1) was found to predict personal growth (t2). as pleasure is a defining aspect of hedonic behaviour and life satisfaction is typically considered a hedonic wellbeing indicator, whilst interest is a defining aspect of eudaimonic behaviour and personal growth a eudaimonic wellbeing indicator, vittersø and søholt interpreted the results as evidence of a distinction between hedonia and eudaimonia (both at the activity level and at the wellbeing level). vittersø and søholt’s (2011) findings contest waterman et al.’s (2008) proposition that hedonic pleasures are always present during eudaimonic pursuits, and instead suggest that eudaimonic pursuits are often characterised by the emotional states of interest and engagement. despite this, vittersø and søholt operationalized hedonic and eudaimonic activities differently to waterman et al., which means direct comparisons between their findings cannot be made. vittersø and søholt’s study also had the inherent risk of recall error like waterman et al.’s, as participants were required to retrospectively reflect on how they felt at an earlier period. however, in vittersø and søholt’s study they were reflecting on a specific instance of activity engagement, which somewhat reduces the risk of recall error. the highly unique sample utilised (i.e. high school students at a school specialising in outdoor education) in vittersø and søholt’s study also limits the generalizability of their findings. integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 207 delle fave et al. (2011a) have also recently investigated hedonia and eudaimonia utilising a unique mixed method approach, containing both qualitative and quantitative methods. they aimed to evaluate whether the philosophical traditions of hedonia and eudaimonia were consistent with what lay people refer to when they speak of wellbeing and happiness. they were also interested in sampling a different population to what had been utilised in the majority of past wellbeing research (i.e. university undergraduate students). a purposefully selected sample from seven different countries (australia, croatia, germany, italy, portugal, spain, and south africa) included males and females living in urban areas, aged between 30 and 51. delle fave et al. were interested in mature people who were passing or had passed through some of the major life stages (e.g. formal education, settled into career, marriage and child bearing), as they believed that such individuals had a greater repertoire of experiences on which to evaluate their happiness and meaningfulness. participants were asked open-ended questions, requiring them to define what happiness meant to them and what things they found meaningful. they were then required to rate on two 7-point scales the degree of happiness and meaningfulness they associated with 11 different life domains (i.e. work, family, standard of living, interpersonal relationships, health, personal growth, spirituality/religion, society issues, community issues, leisure, and life in general). participants also completed the satisfaction with life scale (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985). participants were found typically to define happiness in terms of both the contents of happiness (internal dimensions) and the related contexts (situational dimensions). contextual definitions referred to the life domains participants associated with happiness. relational aspects were most prominent, with family and social relations accounting for over half the answers, whilst the domain of health followed as the third-ranked domain. these findings suggest that happiness stems predominantly from interpersonal bonds, mainly intimate relationships (with a partner and children in particular) but also from interactions with friends and significant others outside the family. the preponderance of references to relationships suggests that wellbeing has a relational core, which was unsurprising to delle fave et al. (2011a), as conceptualisations of wellbeing often emphasise the importance of social connectedness (e.g. keyes, 2007; ryff & keyes, 1995; seligman, 2011). answers referring to content emphasised the psychological structure and characteristics of happiness. both hedonic and eudaimonic aspects were referred to, with eudaimonic components being more prominent in participants’ answers. the most frequently cited content of happiness was harmony and balance (e.g. inner peace, self-acceptance, serenity, and a feeling of balance and evenness), with over 25% of participants’ answers referring to this. other components that have typically been considered eudaimonic included meaning, engagement, fulfilment, awareness, autonomy, achievement and optimism. when grouped together, eudaimonic references accounted for 38.9% of participants' definitions of happiness. hedonic aspects referred to included positive feelings/emotions and satisfaction, which were cited in 23.8% of the answers. as with contexts, the contents of happiness referred to by participants were consistent with many previous wellbeing conceptualisations (e.g. ryan & deci, 2000; ryff & keyes, 1995). these results, from qualitative research, suggest that the lay-person’s perspectives of happiness and wellbeing are relatively consistent with the hedonic and eudaimonic traditions. further, as participants defined happiness in terms of its contents and associated contexts, future wellbeing conceptualisations may benefit from adopting such a categorical system. quantitative findings basically confirmed qualitative results, with the domain of family being ranked highest in terms of its association with both happiness and meaningfulness, whilst the domains of health and interpersonal relations followed. although ratings of integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 208 meaningfulness and happiness were mostly congruent (i.e. domains associated with meaningfulness were generally also associated with happiness), some incongruences were observed, the most notable of which were within the work domain. whilst work was associated with a high degree of meaningfulness, it was ranked near the bottom in terms of happiness. this finding contrasts with the position of waterman et al. (2008), and suggests that meaning can be perceived and pursued in the absence of hedonic happiness. again however, delle fave et al. (2011a) operationalized eudaimonia differently to waterman et al., which restricts the possibility of drawing direct comparisons. surprisingly, happiness and meaningfulness ratings explained only 38% of the variance in life satisfaction, which suggests that 62% of life satisfaction is explained by other factors. delle fave et al. wondered if the difference in global and domain specific judgments may explain this finding, because when making global judgments people rely on multiple sources, and these sources are weighted differently (i.e. global judgments are generally not equal to the sum of domain specific judgments). delle fave et al. further pondered whether perhaps ratings of happiness and meaningfulness have participants reflect on more eudaimonic factors (as suggested by the qualitative responses), whilst ratings of life satisfaction have participants reflect on hedonic factors (e.g. desire satisfactions). as highlighted through the review of waterman and colleagues (waterman, 1993; waterman et al., 2008) and vittersø and søholt’s (2011) research, hedonia and eudaimonia show a positive relationship, but are distinct and independent constructs. delle fave et al.’s (2011a) research suggests that wellbeing is a multifaceted concept, and considering this, they strongly argued against unified wellbeing models which disregard the differences between eudaimonic and hedonic aspects. ratings of happiness, meaningfulness and life satisfaction varied, in that participants perceived their lives as predominantly meaningful and happy, but as satisfying to a lesser extent. this emphasises the need for jointly evaluating different aspects of wellbeing, and for giving proper relevance to the eudaimonic dimensions. delle fave et al. also found that a relatively overlooked dimension of wellbeing, namely harmony/balance, constitutes an important aspect of lay people’s conceptions of happiness. this suggests that the commonly held assumptions that more is better may be misleading in terms of happiness and wellbeing, and that perhaps achieving a balance between different needs, commitments and aspirations is more important. further research is necessary to better disentangle the wellbeing dimension of harmony and balance. whilst there were many strengths to delle fave et al.’s (2011a) investigation (e.g. mixed method approach, culturally diverse sample, etc.), this research was not without limitations. firstly, whilst the purposeful selection of the sample in relation to demographics represents a less-investigated population, it does mean that conclusions cannot be generalised outside of this narrow range. therefore, the plausible hypothesis that the relative importance of hedonia and eudaimonia changes across the life span remains unaddressed. it should also be noted that delle fave et al. developed single-item measures of meaning and happiness, which questions the validity and reliability of findings. future research should therefore attempt to utilise standardised measures of these constructs to more rigorously investigate the constructs of hedonia and eudaimonia. further, it was unclear from delle fave et al.’s procedure section how participants were asked to rate the domains in terms of meaningfulness and happiness. the way participants were asked to rate the domains greatly affects how results should be interpreted. for example, if participants were asked how meaningful a domain was to them, that would be a question about how much they value that domain; however, if they were asked the extent to which they experience a sense of meaning whilst engaged in activities associated with a certain domain, that would be a question about momentary eudaimonia, consistent with integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 209 the way waterman (1993) conceptualised eudaimonia. clearly detailing key methodology such as this is critical for assisting with interpretation and replication. together, waterman (1993), waterman et al.’s (2008), vittersø and søholt’s (2011), and delle fave et al.’s (2011a) research provides a strong argument that hedonia and eudaimonia are distinct, but highly related. whilst waterman proposed that eudaimonic pursuits are invariably accompanied by hedonia, vittersø and søholt and delle fave et al. suggest that eudaimonia is not always accompanied by hedonic enjoyment or pleasure. vittersø and søholt’s and delle fave et al.’s research further suggest that hedonia and eudaimonia are distinguishable at the wellbeing level. with a predominantly conceptual and theoretical focus, this research offers little insight into the broader wellbeing outcomes associated with hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits. therefore, research investigating eudaimonic and hedonic pathways to wellbeing will now be reviewed. 3.2 pathways to wellbeing peterson, park and seligman (2005) were the first to utilise an integrated methodology in the investigation of pathways to wellbeing. the crux of this pioneering research was the orientations to happiness (oth) scale. this questionnaire requires individuals to rate whether they typically approach life in search of meaning, pleasure, and/or engagement – these three orientations are not considered mutually exclusive (i.e. an individual can simultaneously be high on all three). this scale reflects seligman et al.’s (2004) authentic happiness theory, with two of the orientations, the pleasant life and the meaningful life, being equated with hedonia and eudaimonia respectively, whilst the engaged life has been equated with flow (park, peterson, & ruch, 2009). peterson et al. (2005) found that all three orientations were predictive of life satisfaction, thereby supporting the notion that either hedonic or eudaimonic pathways can lead to wellbeing when pursued in isolation. despite this, results suggested that an orientation toward meaning and engagement were more robust predictors of life satisfaction relative to pleasure. it was further found that the simultaneous pursuit of all three orientations, termed the full life, was associated with the highest degree of life satisfaction, suggesting that a life rich in both eudaimonic and hedonic pursuits is best. it is notable that this research has since been replicated with a variety of populations (e.g. students, teachers, the elderly) in over 27 nations, with results confirming the strong relationship between the full life and life satisfaction (chan, 2009; chen, tsai, & chen, 2010; park et al., 2009; ruch, harzer, proyer, park, & peterson, 2010; vella-brodrick, park, & peterson, 2009). despite peterson et al.’s (2005) research resulting in the development of an integrated model pertaining to pathways to wellbeing (i.e. the full life model), the retrospective crosssectional data collection method, which in this instance required participants to reflect globally on how they typically live, may have been subject to recall error and social desirability bias. this method of questioning asks participants to make cognitive judgements about how they typically live; the assumption being that these judgements will be accurate representations of what participants actually do. the accuracy of such global cognitive judgements has been questioned (gosling, john, craik, & robins, 1998), and provides limited information regarding how much the individual actually invests in a certain orientation. the oth questionnaire may be more a measure of attitudes than of behaviour, and it is well established in the literature that attitudes can be a poor predictor of actual behaviour (ajzen & fishbein, 2005). therefore, it is not discernible from peterson et al.’s research whether behaving in hedonic and/or eudaimonic ways is associated with life satisfaction, or whether holding hedonic and/or eudaimonic attitudes is. integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 210 peterson et al.’s (2005) findings that the orientations of engagement and meaning were better predictors of life satisfaction than pleasure runs counter to vittersø and søholt’s (2011) findings, which suggested that pleasure was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction than engagement and interest. in explanation of this inconsistency, vittersø and søholt questioned the validity of the oth scale, proposing that the orientations were not accurate measures of hedonia and eudaimonia. they cited research showing the pleasure orientation was found to correlate only weakly with other measures of pleasure, and the engagement orientation was found to be uncorrelated with measures of state engagement (vittersø, dyrdal, & røysamb, 2006). inherent within the oth scale appears to be a high risk of social desirability bias, as questions pertaining to the pleasure orientation seem to reflect impulsiveness (e.g. ‚life is too short to postpone the pleasures it can provide‛ and ‚i agree with this statement: life is short – eat dessert first") and appear considerably less desirable than all questions pertaining to both the meaning orientation (e.g. ‚my life serves a higher purpose‛ and ‚in choosing what to do, i always take into account whether it will benefit other people‛) and the engagement orientation (e.g. ‚i seek out situations that challenge my skills and abilities‛ and ‚i am rarely distracted by what is going on around me‛). this may have contributed to validity issues, as perhaps the pleasure orientation is more reflective of hedonism (i.e. the pursuit of pleasure as the ultimate good), rather than hedonia (the experience of happiness or pleasure). in any case, further validation is necessary before definitive conclusions can be made based on results from research utilising the oth scale. a final limitation of peterson et al.’s research is that life satisfaction was the only outcome measure utilized, thereby limiting possible conclusions regarding the effect of hedonia and eudaimonia on flourishing (i.e. on other dimensions of wellbeing). if multiple facets of wellbeing were measured – both hedonic and eudaimonic – it would be possible to delineate which orientation was associated with benefits in specific wellbeing dimensions. to rectify the limitation of using only life satisfaction as an outcome measure, schueller and seligman (2010) replicated peterson et al.’s (2005) study with a sample of 13,565 participants and the addition of multiple outcome measures. added scales included measures of momentary positive and negative affect, measures of more general/average levels of happiness, and the center for epidemiologic studies depression scale (ces-d). schueller and seligman also included measures of educational and occupational achievements, which they claimed to be ‚objective‛ measures of wellbeing. the inclusion of the ces-d in this research represents a step in the right direction as it allows for observations to be made about the relationship between hedonia and eudaimonia and psychological distress. not only is this reflective of the original goal of the positive psychology movement (i.e. to have a psychology that considers both the negative and positive aspects of the human experience; see linley et al., 2006), but it is also especially relevant to any interventions that have been developed (e.g. positive psychotherapy), or will be developed based on hedonic and eudaimonic research findings. positive psychotherapy was born out of peterson et al.’s findings. positive psychotherapy assesses clients for deficits in any of the three pathways and clients are encouraged to cultivate these areas (seligman, rashid, & parks, 2006). this technique has been used as a treatment for depression, despite no empirical association yet being established between the empty life and depression, or the full life and an absence of depression. although this seems to have occurred in the wrong direction (i.e. the intervention has been developed and utilised before the establishment of empirical associations between depression and the three orientations), the continued inclusion of measures of psychological distress in future investigations of eudaimonia and hedonia is of vital importance. integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 211 schueller and seligman’s (2010) findings were consistent with previous research utilising the oth scale, whereby all three pathways were found to individually correlate with life satisfaction. this finding was also observed across other measures, with all three pathways correlating positively with positive wellbeing measures (i.e. subjective happiness scale, positive affect on the panas, the fordyce emotions questionnaire, the authentic happiness inventory) and negatively with negative wellbeing measures (i.e. negative affect and ces-d). also consistent with previous findings was that the orientations of engagement and meaning were found to showed stronger associations with all outcome measures than was the pleasure orientation. through confirmatory factor analysis, schueller and seligman also discovered that the three pathways were reliably distinguishable, but that engagement and meaning had the most significant overlap. this finding lends further credence to waterman’s (1993), vittersø and søholt’s (2011), and delle fave et al.’s (2011a) suggestion that hedonia and eudaimonia are distinct, whilst the stronger association observed between engagement and meaning is consistent with previously proposed theoretical and empirical linkages between flow and eudaimonia (waterman, 1993). surprisingly, the pleasure orientation was less strongly associated with positive affect and happiness than the engagement and meaning orientation. furthermore, the pleasure orientation was found to be negatively associated with educational and occupational achievement, whilst the engagement and meaning orientations were both positively associated with these outcomes. schueller and seligman proposed that fredrickson’s (2004) broaden-andbuild theory of positive emotions might provide an explanation for these findings. the broaden-and-build theory suggests that resources and positive emotions relate to each other in a positive feedback loop, with increases in one leading to subsequent increases in the other. engagement was argued to result in people seeking out activities that challenge their skills, which helps them develop their talents and interests; whilst meaning was argued to help build social connections and provides purpose, which leads to the development of self-relevant goals. in contrast, the pursuit of pleasure was argued to often not lead to the development of any durable resources, as such pursuits provide only momentary short-lived improvements in mood. therefore, schueller and seligman argued that as the orientations of engagement and meaning are more conducive to the development of sustainable and rewarding resources than a pleasure orientation, it is understandable that those orientations were found to be more strongly associated with the experience of positive emotions and happiness and with educational and occupational achievements. adding further support for the full life model was the finding that high scores on all three orientations were associated with the greatest life satisfaction, positive affect, and general happiness, and that this effect was more than an additive combination of each pathway. this finding suggests that although the orientations of engagement and meaning may be more related to higher levels of wellbeing than the orientation of pleasure, a total absence of the pleasure orientation is detrimental to wellbeing. whilst the combined pursuit of all pathways was strongly associated with wellbeing benefits, it was not found to be predictive of lower levels of negative affect or depression. schueller and seligman (2010) argued that this was unsurprising, as the three pathways are considered approaches to happiness and not approaches to reducing negative emotions and psychopathology. this statement came as some surprise, as seligman has been highly involved in the development and promotion of positive psychotherapy, which suggests that depression can be treated through the pursuit of the three orientations. in contradiction to this, schueller and seligman argued that whilst seeking pleasure, engagement, and meaning may be important to increase wellbeing, it may not integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 212 necessarily be helpful for alleviating distress. from this research, schueller and seligman concluded that pleasure, engagement, and meaning are all pathways to wellbeing, but they do not contribute equally to wellbeing. as engagement and meaning are associated with the development of resources and the pursuit of long-term goals, it was argued that they are the pathways that are more conducive to long-term wellbeing benefits. schueller and seligman’s (2010) investigation makes a significant additional contribution to previous findings by elucidating the three pathways relationship with multiple outcome measures. the finding that the combined pursuit of all three pathways was most beneficial in all outcome measures also lends further credence to the full life model, and again suggests that a life rich in both hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits may be associated with flourishing. despite this, schueller and seligman, like waterman et al. (2008), argue that eudaimonic pursuits are better than hedonic pursuits at promoting long-term wellbeing. we see a risk in proclaiming one pathway as better, or more rewarding, than another in these early stages of enquiry. from the limited data obtained from cross-sectional research it seems premature to be making such claims, especially considering that such conclusions may be interpreted as cautions against hedonia. furthermore, the same limitations mentioned above regarding the validity of the oth scale apply here, and perhaps the finding that the pleasure orientation had weaker associations with positive affect and happiness than the engagement and meaning orientations further questions the validity of the oth. furthermore, rather than strengthening this investigation, we believe the addition of the ‚objective‛ wellbeing measures of educational and occupational achievement was a weakness of the investigation. whilst we recognise the inherent value of both education and occupation, it was the way these were operationalized that we disagree with. firstly, it was admitted that the sample was extremely biased in terms of education, with 89% having attended college, and 31% having completed post-college education. with such a homogeneous sample the value of including education as an outcome measure is questionable. furthermore, only formal education (i.e. high school, college, and post-college) was acknowledged, with other types of education (e.g. self-directed learning) not recognised. in terms of occupational achievement, the researchers ranked occupations based on the ‚skill level‛ of the profession, with the highest-ranked jobs being professionals such as chief executives, doctors, lawyers, dentists, and professors. we question the value in this categorical system, as surely job satisfaction or performance would be a more useful outcome measure than an arbitrary ranking system based on ‚skill level‛. we would argue that to be good in any job requires a high level of specialised skill in that field. we see a ranking system based on income or societal perspectives of what constitutes a ‚good‛ job (which appears to be what was done in this case) as more damaging than helpful to the science of wellbeing. steger et al. (2008) rectified many of the limitations associated with the data collection method in studies utilising the oth scale by having participants reflect on specific instances of hedonic or eudaimonic behaviour. despite concordantly investigating eudaimonia and hedonia, steger et al. treated hedonia and eudaimonia as mutually exclusive, in that pursuits were considered to be either one or the other. steger et al. conducted two daily diary studies, ranging from three weeks (study 1) to four weeks (study 2), in which participants were required to report how frequently they engaged in eudaimonic and hedonic behaviours each day. study 1 had participants report the frequency of engagement in 14 activities (seven hedonic and seven eudaimonic), which were considered by a group of five individuals who had experience in philosophy and psychology to be representative of prototypically eudaimonic and hedonic pursuits. participants also completed wellbeing questionnaires assessing life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, and meaning in life. the eudaimonic integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 213 behaviours were found to be more frequently engaged in (ratio of 3.5:1) than the hedonic behaviours and were also more strongly associated with wellbeing than hedonic behaviours in all wellbeing dimensions. furthermore, eudaimonic behaviours were found to lead to more meaning in life and life satisfaction the following day. considering the higher frequency of reported eudaimonic behaviours, and out of concern that the seven original hedonic behaviours may have led to a socially desirable response bias towards eudaimonic behaviours, steger et al. (2008) conducted study 2. they were concerned that perhaps the hedonic behaviours they included, or perhaps how the item responses were worded, may have led to the observed low frequency of reporting, and therefore they reworded three of the items (e.g. ‚had sex purely to get pleasure‛ was reworded ‚had sex with someone i do not love‛) and added five more hedonic behaviours they expected to be more frequently engaged in (e.g. ‚spent time listening to music‛). furthermore, steger et al. included a measure of social desirability in this study. scores of this scale were found to be uncorrelated with aggregated totals of eudaimonic or hedonic behaviour reporting, which was interpreted as evidence that participants had not responded in a socially desirable manner. other findings were consistent with study 1 in that eudaimonic behaviours had stronger associations with all wellbeing outcome measures than did hedonic behaviours. despite steger et al.’s (2008) findings suggesting that eudaimonic pathways may be a more effective way to attain personal wellbeing, a number of methodological flaws limit the validity of their findings and conclusions. steger et al. were determined to investigate the relative contribution of eudaimonic and hedonic activities on wellbeing, and therefore included activities which they considered to be pure representations of each type of activity. we do not consider this a worthy line of investigation for two reasons. firstly, the issue of context must again be highlighted. the relative contributions of hedonic and/or eudaimonic behaviours should be considered only in the context of an individual’s life as a whole. for example, an individual who lives a highly hedonic lifestyle may get wellbeing boosts from engaging in a eudaimonic activity, while a highly eudaimonic individual may need nothing more than a night of hedonic pleasures to boost their wellbeing. the frequency of only seven eudaimonic and seven hedonic activities (ten in the second study) were recorded, which provides limited information regarding what else the participants were doing, or the time period during which the individual may have engaged in a reported behaviour. a participant may have engaged in numerous hedonic or eudaimonic behaviours that were not represented on the list, or may have frequently reported engaging in an activity on the list, yet the time they spent engaged in this activity may have been insignificant. second, we disagree with the assumption that the behaviours chosen by the researchers were exclusively eudaimonic or hedonic, or that any activity will be universally experienced as hedonic or eudaimonic. the experience of any given activity is highly subjective, and therefore it is the individual who should rate whether an activity was experienced as hedonic or eudaimonic. we would argue that many of the ‚purely hedonic‛ activities on the list could be considered highly eudaimonic (e.g. listing to music, going for a long walk, going to a concert, etc.), and vice versa. further, it is questionable whether exclusively hedonic or eudaimonic behaviours even exist, especially considering the high degree of relatedness that has been observed between hedonia and eudaimonia (vittersø & søholt, 2011; waterman et al., 2008) more recently, huta and ryan (2010) conducted an investigation into the effect of eudaimonic and hedonic motives on multiple facets of wellbeing. both cross-sectional and experience sampling studies were conducted, utilising the hedonic and eudaimonic motives for activities scale, which requires participants to report their motives – either hedonic or integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 214 eudaimonic – for participation in an activity. they utilized an array of wellbeing outcome measures, including life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, carefreeness, meaning in life, vitality and elevating experiences (e.g. inspiration, deep appreciation, and self-transcendence). principal component analyses confirmed that eudaimonic and hedonic motives were empirically distinct, and moderately related (r = 0.36). it was found that hedonic motives were related more strongly to positive affect than eudaimonic motives; however, eudaimonic motives were related to positive affect at 3-month follow-up. hedonic motives were also found to be negatively related to negative affect, and showed an advantage over eudaimonic motives in this regard. hedonic motives were found to be more strongly related to carefreeness, whilst eudaimonic motives were more strongly associated with meaning and elevating experiences. eudaimonic and hedonic motives were equally associated with vitality and life satisfaction. notwithstanding these more intricate findings, overall results indicated that people whose lives were high in both eudaimonic and hedonic motives had the highest degree of wellbeing as reflected in all dimensions (i.e. they were found to be flourishing), than predominantly eudaimonically motivated individuals, predominantly hedonically motivated individuals, and those whose lives were low in both motives. huta and ryan concluded that these findings lend further credence to the full life model of wellbeing proposed by peterson et al (2005). huta and ryan’s (2010) study rectified several of the previously mentioned limitations of past research. the degree of eudaimonia and hedonia was rated by the participants and these were investigated in parallel terms, meaning any given motive for an activity could potentially be rated simultaneously high in eudaimonia and hedonia, or high in one or the other, or low in both. furthermore, the inclusion of an array of wellbeing outcome measures meant that the relative association between eudaimonia, hedonia and the different facets of flourishing could be investigated. finally, the experience-sampling method used by huta and ryan meant the risk of recall error and social desirability bias should have been reduced. results suggested that hedonic motives are more closely associated with immediate emotional regulation, as evidenced by the strong positive association observed between hedonic motives and positive affect and carefreeness and the negative correlation observed between hedonic motives and negative affect. there also appeared to be a temporal sequence between eudaimonic motives and positive affect, whereby eudaimonia resulted in positive affect boosts down the track (perhaps when goals are achieved), which is consistent with steger et al.’s (2008) and vittersø and søholt’s (2011) findings. despite these methodological improvements, huta and ryan (2010) distinguished eudaimonic and hedonic motives for participating in an activity from the individual’s actual experience of the activity. it could be argued that the experience of an activity would have much more influence on one’s overall wellbeing than an individual’s intentions for engaging in an activity (wirtz, kruger, napa scollon, & diener, 2003). it could be further argued that a person’s intentions for engaging in an activity may be unrelated or even negatively correlated with wellbeing. for example, one may engage in an activity with eudaimonic or hedonic motives only to be disappointed if the intended experience does not eventuate. furthermore, although the experience-sampling method utilised does potentially minimise recall error and social desirability bias, it does not capture comprehensive behavioural information. it is possible that participants may be continuously paged whilst engaged in insignificant activities, and not whilst engaged in significant activities. again, like in steger at al.’s (2008) and peterson et al.’s (2005) studies, the specifics about how much an individual invests in either hedonic or eudaimonic pathways is not discernible from the data obtained. integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 215 in combination, past research using integrated methodologies suggests that hedonia and eudaimonia are distinct subjective states that are associated with distinct wellbeing outcomes. hedonia at the activity level is characterised by experiences of pleasure and enjoyment, and has been strongly associated with experiences of satisfaction, positive affect and happiness at the wellbeing level. eudaimonia at the activity level is characterised by feelings of authenticity, engagement, and interest and has been associated with experiences of meaning and purpose in life and personal growth at the wellbeing level. associations have also been observed between eudaimonic motives and life satisfaction and positive affect, and a temporal sequence has been observed, whereby eudaimonic pursuits appear to lead to positive affective experiences later. these observations suggest that both hedonic and eudaimonic pathways are associated with wellbeing benefits when pursued in isolation. despite this, some research (e.g. peterson et al., 2005; steger et al., 2008; schueller & seligman, 2010) suggests that eudaimonic pathways are more robust predictors of wellbeing than hedonic pathways. however, the validity of such assertions is questionable due to methodological limitations. when considered together, rather than compared, a life that is rich in hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits – the full life – appears to most strongly predict flourishing; however, the limitations of past research means that definitive conclusions cannot yet be reached. such limitations include data collection methods that are susceptible to both social desirability bias and recall error; erroneous assumptions that activities are objectively eudaimonic or hedonic or that pursuits must be exclusively eudaimonic or hedonic; homogenous and unrepresentative samples; and the limited inclusion of only a few wellbeing outcome dimensions. 4. directions for future research the issues listed at the end of the previous paragraph remain to be addressed by future research efforts to further progress this important area of enquiry. while research into hedonia and eudaimonia remains in its infancy, research must focus on confirming or contesting what has thus far been postulated, whilst also refining methodologies to reach more practically relevant conclusions. currently, data suggest that if someone typically approaches life with, or has a high frequency of, randomized eudaimonic or hedonic motives, they will flourish; however, the practical utility of these assertions is questionable. instructing someone to live a life high in both eudaimonic and hedonic motives is a somewhat ambiguous and equivocal instruction. further, investigation into the practical details of the full life, such as whether a particular period of time spent engaged in eudaimonic or hedonic pursuits is associated with flourishing; the degree to which eudaimonic or hedonic components of activities are related to wellbeing; the relationship between hedonia and eudaimonia; and whether the relative need for hedonic or eudaimonic pursuits to optimize wellbeing differs across the life-span, remains essential. addressing such pragmatic questions will not only be useful in further establishing the validity of the model, but will also be informative for beginning the important transition from explaining and describing to applying and prescribing. considering that most past research has been cross-sectional and focused on subjective global self-perceptions, a research focus that includes a more complete behavioural analysis is now necessary. this type of data would be useful in further establishing the validity of the full life model, as behavioural data could be cross referenced with previously used measures (e.g. oth scale) to test construct validity. as experience-sampling has already been used to obtain a limited randomized sample of behaviours, future investigations should aim to obtain more comprehensive behavioural reports of how individuals actually spend their time and how the way in which individuals spend their time relates to wellbeing. if an individual is reporting the integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 216 activities they have actually taken part in (rather than making an unspecified global assessment about how they typically live) and their experience of those activities (as either hedonic or eudaimonic), the risk of recall error would be greatly reduced. combining time-use research methods, such as the day reconstruction method (kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, & stone, 2004), with hedonic and eudaimonic rating scales, such as the hema scale (huta & ryan, 2010), would make the collection of such data possible. whilst this research methodology may potentially be onerous for participants, online data collection methods or mobile phone reporting could mitigate the burden. this type of data is what is necessary to address the issue of context, which has been alluded to throughout this article. it is the authors’ belief that we need to move away from asking questions about whether hedonic or eudaimonic pursuits are better at promoting wellbeing. this only encourages unhelpful dichotomous thinking, and ignores the fact that hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits both play important roles in the promotion of wellbeing. rather than pitting hedonia and eudaimonia against each other, research should attempt to identify when a specific type of pursuit is indicated for the promotion of wellbeing. like many aspects of life, it is likely that too much hedonia or eudaimonia will be detrimental to wellbeing, and that optimal experiences of wellbeing will be associated with striking a balance between the two. the use of the label ‚full life‛ connotes that more is better, which is unlikely to be the case. perhaps the ‚balanced life‛ may be a more appropriate label (as was recently theoretically argued (see sirgy & wu, 2009)); however, further research is necessary to establish whether this is the case. if research finds that investing a certain amount of time in eudaimonic and hedonic pursuits is associated with flourishing, then a practical guideline could be established to help identify and rectify imbalances. time-use research methods are what will ultimately shed more light on this matter. a further benefit of focussing on specific instances of hedonic and eudaimonic behaviour rather than global self-assessments is that behaviours are malleable and therefore amenable to change, making them a good target for intervention. behavioural activation treatments, whereby an activity schedule is prescribed to a patient with depression, have been found to be highly effective treatments (dimidjian et al., 2006). as treatments aimed at increasing the general level of activity have been successful for relieving depression, the identification of eudaimonic and hedonic patterns associated with flourishing could make for targeted and effective interventions to enhance wellbeing. activating eudaimonic or hedonic behaviours may also assist in ameliorating symptoms of distress and/or psychopathology. although schueller and seligman’s (2010) research suggests that the full life is not associated with decreased depression, we believe that it is premature to conclude that interventions aimed at promoting hedonic and eudaimonic activation and balance will not be effective in relieving psychological distress. therefore, it is recommended that future investigations continue to include measures of psychopathology so that the relationship between distress and hedonia and eudaimonia can be further elucidated. the continued use of rating scales is also recommended to investigate how the intensity of the hedonic or eudaimonic components of an activity relates to wellbeing return (i.e. wellbeing benefits). it may be that engaging in mildly hedonic activity does not have the same wellbeing benefits as engaging in moderately or highly hedonic activity. by combining the intensity of a person’s hedonic or eudaimonic experience with the time they spent engaged in the respective pursuits, questions such as whether there is an interaction between the two or whether one mediates the other could be addressed. perhaps engaging in one hour of mildly hedonic activity is only slightly beneficial to wellbeing but as the degree of hedonia increases, the integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 217 amount of time engaged in that activity may decrease whilst maintaining the same mild benefit to wellbeing. the relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits themselves, and how this relationship influences wellbeing, also requires further investigation. whilst some research suggests that eudaimonic pursuits are always accompanied by hedonic pursuits (waterman et al., 2008), other research suggests that eudaimonia can be experienced in the absence of hedonia (delle fave et al., 2011a; vittersø & søholt, 2011). given such disagreement, further research is necessary to clarify that issue. the causal nature of this relationship also requires investigation. for instance, it has often been assumed that eudaimonic behaviours lead to hedonic enjoyment, yet the opposite has also been observed: hedonia has been shown to lead to eudaimonic outcomes (king et al., 2006), which suggests there may be a reciprocal relationship between hedonia and eudaimonia. furthermore, although it is intuitively appealing to assume that those activities that are experienced as both hedonic and eudaimonic would be associated with the greatest wellbeing benefits, this requires empirical support. if this assumption is empirically confirmed, then ways of identifying the activities an individual may experience as both hedonic and eudaimonic will be a useful line of investigation. lastly, past homogeneous samples means it is now necessary to incorporate an array of age groups and demographic factors to investigate whether the findings are consistent across a more diverse population. furthermore, there is merit in the investigation of pathways to wellbeing across the lifespan, since the relative importance of hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits may vary at different stages of life. it has been found that peoples’ conceptions of wellbeing change with age, and that although good relationships and the pursuit of enjoyable activities are consistently endorsed as important components of wellbeing across the lifespan, younger adults have a greater focus on self-knowledge, competence, and self-acceptance, while older adults focus more on positively coping with change (carstensen, 1998; erikson & erikson, 1997; ryff, 1989). considering these differences in the desires and needs associated with wellbeing, it is intuitive to think that younger and older adults would have differing pathways to flourishing. comparing the activity profile of stratified age ranges could help elucidate the differing needs of adults in relation to eudaimonic and hedonic activities. 5. conclusion the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives both contribute to a comprehensive understanding of wellbeing, and should therefore be integrated. findings from the limited research that has simultaneously investigated hedonia and eudaimonia suggests that they are distinct but highly related subjective experiences, and that both hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits can lead to wellbeing benefits; however it is also suggested that eudaimonic pursuits are associated with greater wellbeing benefits than are hedonic pursuits, and that a life rich in both hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits is associated with the greatest degree of wellbeing benefits. despite this, significant research limitations require rectification in order to establish the validity and accuracy of such conclusions. future research endeavours should abandon the past tendency to compare and contrast hedonia and eudaimonia so as to establish which is better. instead the inherent value of both hedonia and eudaimonia should be recognised and attempts should be made to investigate more comprehensively how these operate in the overall context of an individual’s life. future methodologies should move away from cross-sectional designs assessing global cognitive self-perceptions and instead should attempt to capture more accurately and comprehensively how participants actually live their lives (hedonically and/or eudaimonically) and how this relates to their wellbeing. findings from such research could not integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives henderson & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 218 only add construct validity to previous research, but would also make it possible to transition from purely descriptive conclusions to more applied and practically relevant conclusions, which could be informative in the development of interventions potentially useful for both the enhancement of wellbeing and the reduction of distress. authors luke wayne henderson deakin university l.henderson@deakin.edu.au tess knight deakin university publishing timeline received 18 january 2012 accepted 23 may 2012 published 29 august 2012 references ajzen, i., & fishbein, m. 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(2020). subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals during the sars-cov-2 outbreak: a quasiexperiment. international journal of wellbeing, 10(3), 26-38. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1313 matteo makowiecki italian society for health promotion matteomakowiecki@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 article subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals during the sars-cov-2 outbreak: a quasi-experiment matteo makowiecki · valentina ungaretti · marta arzilli leonardo urbani · matteo cecchi · michela maielli · sergio ardis abstract: italy was one of the strongest hit countries from the sars-cov-2 and the healthcare system was put under exceptional stress during the outbreak. the lockdown imposed on the population put the economy on hold and opened the way for a crisis that would have an impact on the healthcare system and the economy of the country. this study compares levels of subjective wellbeing among healthcare professionals before the outbreak and during the most critical moment of the lockdown, when italy was the first country in the world by number of infections. subjective wellbeing was measured with emotional wellbeing, job satisfaction, global happiness and satisfaction with life. each measure was compared before and during the outbreak as well as among different subgroups of respondents. a special attention was put on inequalities in professional level, gender and educational level as well as their effect on subjective wellbeing. the study finds that while emotional wellbeing had a slight decrease, other measures were untouched and job satisfaction even increased during the lockdown period. present wellbeing differences based in inequalities in professional and educational level were lifted once professionals were fighting the sars-cov-2 outbreak. this decrease in inequalities and increase in job satisfaction might be strongly related to a newfound trust in healthcare professionals, a high gratitude from the population and a feeling of accomplishment and meaning as described in the perma model. the findings of this study should help healthcare organizations to keep inequalities low as well as other organizations to apply those learnings in their structure. keywords: healthcare workers, subjective wellbeing, job satisfaction, sars-cov-2 about:blank subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 27 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org practice implications this study was undertaken during a difficult time for healthcare systems around the world, which at the same time provided unprecedented possibilities to explore different dimensions of subjective wellbeing for healthcare professionals and their changes during a health crisis. the findings that were obtained by comparing different subgroups of professionals can help both healthcare and other organisations in implementing ad-hoc programmes and policies to keep higher wellbeing and lower inequalities. first, we see that the level of job satisfaction for lower hierarchical positions in the hospital (that also have a lower income) reached the same level as the one of managers during the pandemic. this is due to the higher level of gratitude expressed by the population and leads us to advise any kind of organization to increase gratitude at all levels to have an equal job satisfaction. this can be done by fostering a tendency for gratitude to all members (sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2006) as well as by gratitude journaling and random acts of kindness (stegen & wankier, 2018). second, female professionals faced a higher decrease in emotional wellbeing because of a stronger increase in negative affects. the introduction of positive psychology in the workplace with effective interventions could mitigate the effect of negative affects and provide a general increase in the emotional wellbeing of the mostly hit individuals (kaplan et al., 2014). third, governments should base their policies to overcome the pandemic not only on gdp and economic indicators, but on different measures of wellbeing (adler & seligman, 2016). in particular, this study shows how an increased meaning and accomplishment in one’s work can lead to a higher wellbeing even during economic crises. the same can be said about positive emotions and positive relationships inside and outside of organizations, which can increase satisfaction with life and mitigate the effect of negative events. introduction on february 22nd, 2020, the first infection of sars-cov-2 was reported in the north of italy and the outbreak spread without control in the following days. by march 8th, the number of confirmed cases was 7.375 with 366 deaths. on this date, the first measure to limit the diffusion of the virus was approved by the government. nevertheless, it was a matter of weeks before italy became the first country in the world by number of positive cases and deaths. on march 23rd, the number of confirmed cases was 63.927 with 6.077 deaths and 7.432 recovered patients. on this day, a new measure ordered to stop production activities and the movement of people in the whole country with the exception of essential services. the italian economy was put on hold and the resulting drop in trade volumes gave start to an economic crisis that would follow the health crisis and businesses – forced to stop their activities for more than two months, started to fear insolvency in case no state aid was provided. several researchers have prospected a negative impact on wellbeing and mental health (montemurro, 2020; pappa et al., 2020) because of this unexpected crisis. however, media and society were looking positively at the role of healthcare professionals, showing gratitude in the form of articles depicting doctors and nurses as heroes as well as providing gifts to hospital personnel. to assess whether the outbreak indeed had an effect on the subjective wellbeing of healthcare professional and of what kind, we decided to identify a reliable model to measure subjective wellbeing and apply it to our two data sets. given that we collected data on the wellbeing of healthcare professionals for a study of the italian society for health promotion (sips) and we were collecting similar data in the outbreak period for some master theses, we decided to compare the two data sets for this study. a subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 28 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org comparison of wellbeing in two timeframes gave us the possibility to assess how wellbeing has changed during the lockdown and how it affected present inequalities between healthcare personnel. literature review the topic of subjective wellbeing has been thoroughly studied in the past decades and researchers were able to find out which demographic factors affect ones’ wellbeing (wilson, 1967) as well as how wellbeing can increase because of individual and psychological factors (diener et al., 1999). subjective wellbeing is also proposed by stiglitz et al. (2009) as an alternative measurement of quality of life, to take into account other factors than income. in particular, measurements of subjective wellbeing should take into account the meaning and personal goal of people, the presence of inequalities as well as the presence of positive emotions and the absence of negative emotions. a model to measure wellbeing was provided by seligman (2011) in his flourish work. according to his perma model, subjective wellbeing depends on five elements that contribute to one’s wellbeing, are pursued independently and can be defined and measured independently (khaw & kern, 2015). those elements are: positive emotions: happiness, pleasure and comfort. engagement: feeling of connection or interest in a given activity, organization or cause. relationships: feelings of integration in society and of having an own social network. meaning: having a purpose in life and that gives the feeling of working for something bigger than the self. accomplishment: actual progress in the work towards one’s goals. measurements of the perma model include the perma-profiler (kern & butler, 2016), which measures perma items and additional variables with a questionnaire composed of 15 plus eight items. in our study we measured positive and negative emotions as well as job satisfaction, which implies purpose on the job and can be connected to meaning (watanabe et al., 2018). relationships in italy have been studied by several researchers who found out that italian regions present high levels of social capital and low inequalities in income and health (sabatini, 2014). those factors lead to high levels of subjective wellbeing. the relationship between inequalities and wellbeing is still disputed and researchers documented contrasting results (schneider, 2016). one interesting distinction is that while high inequalities negatively affect wellbeing in western societies, those have a positive link in asian and south american countries. the presence of inequalities in income and gender is proven to lead to higher wellbeing in individuals who accept and justify those inequalities, while wellbeing is lower in individuals with a more egalitarian view who are exposed to those inequalities (napier et al., 2010; napier & jost, 2008) methodology measures the study was designed as cross-sectional and realized through an online survey that was repeated twice. the first survey was completed in 2018 and we assumed this time to represent the basic condition in the healthcare population. the second survey was completed in 2020 during the peak of the sars-cov-2 outbreak. the qualification of each participant was collected by asking a multiple-choice question inclusive of all professions foreseen by the italian national educational accreditation system. each participant was also asked for the beginning year of his subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 29 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org healthcare occupation as well as birth year, gender, italian region of residence and highest degree obtained. subjective well-being was measured with the scales recommended by the oecd (2013), translated and adapted in italian by the sips (ardis, 2014. [the promotion of wellbeing. measures for its evaluation]). the scales that we measured are: emotional wellbeing (ew), global happiness (gh) and satisfaction with life (swl). the first scale is composed of 10 items and evaluates emotional wellbeing (ew) experienced on the day before the survey’s completion. each item is evaluated on a likert scale that goes from 0, indicating the emotion was not experienced, to 10, indicating that the emotion was experienced for the whole time. the average of items with a positive connotation (enjoyment, calm, happy, “did you laugh a lot yesterday?”) represents the value for positive affect (pa). the average of items with negative connotation (worried, sadness, depressed, anger, stress, tired) represents the value for negative affect (na). emotional wellbeing is calculated as the average between positive and negative affects, after the scale position was reversed for negative affects. the score for each of the three dimensions varies from 0 to 10. we calculated cronbach’s alpha for the emotional wellbeing scale and got a value of 0,8639 in 2018 and 0,8307 in 2020, an acceptable value of internal coherence of the scale to perform a test. the second scale is single-item and measures global happiness (gh) on a likert scale from 0 (“no happy at all”) to 10 (“completely happy”). the third scale measures satisfaction with life (swl) on a likert scale from 0 (“not satisfied at all”) to 10 (“completely satisfied”), this measurement was adopted by istat (the national statistical institute in italy) for the annual satisfaction with life survey. job satisfaction (js) was evaluated with a single item and the question “at the moment, how satisfied are you with your job?” on a likert scale from 0 (not satisfied at all) to 10 (very satisfied). all questions were mandatory. procedure participants were contacted through various channels and ask to fill in an online form, for example by email for participants of an online course provided by sips in 2017. in the invitation, it was asked to forward the email to other healthcare professionals to obtain the snowball effect. the link was also shared on social media, making it not possible to assess the total number of people invited to the study. the first survey started on january 14th, 2018 and ended on may 29th, 2018. the second survey started on march 28th, 2020 and ended on april 27th. the form was completely anonymous and each participant was informed that sending the survey indicated a personal consent to participate in the study. analysis data was collected with jotform®, exported in an excel® worksheet and analysed with minitab 19®. measures from the 2018 sample were compared with the 2020 sample to look for differences in wellbeing levels during a stressful event. for correlations, the pearson coefficient was used and means comparisons were done with a t-test or anova analysis depending on each case. the level of statistical significance was fixed at a value of p≤0.02, as is usual in medicine studies in italy. population in 2018, 1047 answers were submitted (810 males and 237 females) while the respondents for 2020 were 616 (161 males and 455 females). the average age was of 45,9 years with a standard subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 30 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org deviation of 11,7 in 2018 and of 46,1 with a standard deviation of 12,3 in 2020. this doesn’t show a statistically significant difference. we divided italian regions into three macro-regions (north, centre and south). the respondents were divided by macro-regions as follows: 31,14% in the centre, 52,50% in the north and 26,36% in the south in 2018 and 61,36% in the centre, 27,11% in the north and 11,53% in the south in 2020. the population was also divided into managers/directors (m) and regular employees (nm) based on the contract they have with the italian public authority. in italy hospitals are mostly public and owned by the health ministry, that also prepares contracts for healthcare professionals. the contract used for physicians, pharmacists and biologists is a manager contract that requires higher qualifications and offers a higher income. nurses and technical staff, on the other hand, receive a regular contract with a lower salary. managers/directors participating in the survey were 240 (22,92%) in 2018 and 239 (38,80%) in 2020. data was analysed by comparing demographics as well as answers between the 2018 survey (t0) and the 2020 survey (t1). an overview of the demographic characteristics of both samples can be found in table 1. table 1. demographic characteristics characteristic t0 t1 n. % n. % gender female 810 77.4 455 73.9 male 237 22.6 161 26.1 macro-region north 445 42,5 167 27,1 centre 326 31,1 378 61,4 south 276 26,4 71 11,5 professional level manager 240 22,9 239 38,8 non-manager 807 77,1 377 61,2 educational level university degree 851 81,3 515 83,6 no university degree 196 18,7 101 16,4 age mean (ds) y 45,9 (11,7) 46,1 (12,3) years of work experience mean (ds) y 19,7 (12,2) 19,2 (12,7) total 1047 616 of the t1 population, 112 were working in a setting with sars-cov-2 patients while 504 were not. this represents a 18,18% of respondents being directly involved in treating patients affected subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 31 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org by the virus. age and years of work experience were not significantly different between the two groups. results of the variables we defined to measure subjective wellbeing, the ones that had a reduction in t1 were emotional wellbeing, which went from 5,65 to 5,26, and global happiness, which moved from 6,88 to 6,62. the change in emotional wellbeing was mainly based in a reduction of positive affect from 5,77 to 5,26, while negative affect had no significant change in t1. the decrease in global happiness was low but statistically significant (6,88 to 6,62). satisfaction with life presented no statistically significant difference between t0 and t1 while job satisfaction showed an increase during the lockdown period t1 (6,32 to 6,69). table 2. wellbeing dimensions in t0 and t1 variable mean (sd) t0 mean (sd) t1 p-value ew 5,65 (1,74) 5,26 (1,74) 0,000 pa 5,77 (2,00) 5,19 (2,19) 0,000 na 4,47 (2,14) 4,66 (2,17) 0,080 js 6,32 (2,41) 6,69 (2,28) 0,002 swl 6,95 (1,81) 6,84 (2,04) 0,304 gh 6,88 (1,80) 6,62 (2,16) 0,014 no statistically significant differences were found when comparing t1 variables between the subgroup working mainly with patients affected by the virus and the subgroup working with other patients. while comparing the relevant dimensions for managers and non-managers in t0, no statistically significant differences were found in ew, pa, na and swl. js and gh, on the other hand, were significantly lower in the nm subgroup. in t1, the measures with no difference between the two subgroups were ew, pa, na, swl and js. the only dimension with lower values for the nm subgroup was gh. this means that in t0 there were inequalities between managers and non-managers for both gh and js, while in t1 the inequality in js was not present anymore. subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 32 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 3. comparison for managers and non-managers m nm variable mean (ds) mean (ds) p-value ew t0 5,70 (1,71) 5,63 (1,76) 0,573 ew t1 5,35 (1,68) 5,21 (1,77) 0,326 pa t0 5,89 (2,07) 5,73 (1,98) 0,288 pa t1 5,18 (2,03) 5,20 (2,29) 0,907 na t0 4,49 (2,05) 4,47 (2,17) 0,908 na t1 4,48 (2,09) 4,78 (2,21) 0,090 js t0 6,75 (2,32) 6,20 (2,42) 0,002 js t1 6,78 (2,10) 6,63 (2,40) 0,410 swl t0 7,15 (1,83) 6,89 (1,80) 0,055 swl t1 7,06 (1,81) 6,71 (2,17) 0,028 gh t0 7,20 (1,73) 6,78 (1,82) 0,001 gh t1 6,89 (1,97) 6,45 (2,25) 0,012 in figure 1 it is possible to see how the levels of js had a significant increase in the nm subgroup and moved from 6,20 to 6,63. there was no significant change in the m subgroup. figure 1. job satisfaction and professional level comparison by gender all measures were compared between male and female respondents. females had a significantly lower level of ew, pa and js in t0 compared to males. this difference was present during the subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 33 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org virus outbreak as well. na, swl and gh showed no significant differences. as seen in table 4, the difference in swl became significant in t1 adding an additional difference between the subgroups. table 4. comparison between females and males f m variable mean (ds) mean (ds) p-value ew t0 5,58 (1,76) 5,89 (1,67) 0,011 ew t1 5,14 (1,75) 5,61 (1,64) 0,002 pa t0 5,65 (2,03) 6,16 (1,87) 0,000 pa t1 5,01 (2,23) 5,70 (2,00) 0,000 na t0 4,50(2,14) 4,37 (2,14) 0,421 na t1 4,73 (2,22) 4,48 (1,99) 0,184 js t0 6,20 (2,47) 6,74 (2,14) 0,001 js t1 6,52 (2,37) 7,18 (1,95) 0,001 swl t0 6,89 (1,83) 7,15 (1,74) 0,046 swl t1 6,71 (2,13) 7,23 (1,73) 0,002 gh t0 6,84 (1,82) 6,99 (1,76) 0,272 gh t1 6,53 (2,23) 6,87 (1,94) 0,071 comparison by educational level all measures were compared between respondents with a university degree (a) and with no university degree (b). ew, pa and swl were significantly lower in t0 for professionals with a university degree. other variables showed no significant differences. in t1 the differences in ew and pa remained significant, while the difference in swl was not significant anymore because of a decrease in the satisfaction with life of graduated professionals. subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 34 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 5. comparison by educational level a b variable mean (ds) mean (ds) p-value ew t0 5,71 (1,72) 5,37 (1,83) 0,019 ew t1 5,35 (1,74) 4,82 (1,66) 0,004 pa t0 5,85 (1,97) 5,40 (2,12) 0,007 pa t1 5,32 (2,16) 4,52 (2,23) 0,001 na t0 4,43 (2,13) 4,66 (2,17) 0,183 na t1 4,62 (2,17) 4,89 (2,15) 0,257 js t0 6,37 (2,38) 6,12 (2,53) 0,203 js t1 6,70 (2,28) 6,61 (2,32) 0,718 swl t0 7,02 (1,74) 6,62 (2,06) 0,012 swl t1 6,93 (1,97) 6,39 (2,34) 0,029 gh t0 6,94 (1,74) 6,61 (2,03) 0,036 gh t1 6,71 (2,12) 6,15 (2,30) 0,024 comparison by age and work experience age of healthcare workers did not show a significant correlation with the dimensions examined, except for a low negative correlation with pa (rho=-0,104, p=0,009). years of work experience showed no particular correlation with the dimensions of this study. correlations as expected, all emotional wellbeing dimensions were positively correlated to each other with the exception of negative affect, which was negatively correlated with all other dimensions. this could be seen in both t0 and t1 and is represented in the tables below. the p-value was set to p < 0,001. table 6. correlations in t0 ew t0 pa t0 na t0 js t0 swl t0 pa t0 0,830 na t0 -0,853 -0,418 js t0 0,538 0,500 -0,408 swl t0 0,609 0,636 -0,397 0,591 gh t0 0,626 0,641 -0,420 0,606 0,751 subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 35 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 7. correlations in t1 ew t1 pa t1 na t1 js t1 swl t1 pa t1 0,800 na t1 -0,794 -0,270 js t1 0,435 0,490 -0,201 swl t1 0,472 0,569 -0,181 0,655 gh t1 0,582 0,633 -0,292 0,620 0,711 discussion our study showed a slight decrease in emotional wellbeing and global happiness in the t1 group, but no significant change in satisfaction with life. the reason for this is that emotional wellbeing is influenced by positive and negative stimuli, while satisfaction with life represents a more stable type of cognitive wellbeing that is less influenced by external events (luhmann et al., 2012). the most evident and not obvious result of our study is an increase in job satisfaction during the lockdown, both for professionals working directly with sars-cov-2 patients and those who were not. job satisfaction increased mostly in subjects with a lower professional level and indirectly a lower income. because income stayed constant during the data collection period, those individuals might have found a higher meaning in their work or might have increased their job satisfaction because of an increased gratitude in their work. gratitude is proven to increase wellbeing and lower negative emotions on the workplace (di fabio et al., 2017). by dividing our data in different subgroups we could observe a lower level of emotional wellbeing in females and university graduates. this might be due to the fact that females are more sensitive to negative affect arising from problems at work and that university graduates fear their effort in getting a degree was not repaid with an adequate salary and work conditions. job satisfaction increased in professionals with a non-manager contract while it had no change in managers. this might be due to an increase in respect and trust in healthcare professionals (helliwell & wang, 2011) .this increase was independent from hierarchical levels in the hospital and gave the feeling that each one’s work is equally important. in individuals with a university degree, a slight decrease in satisfaction with life was found and this took them on the same level as professionals without a university degree. this removed the inequality between individuals with and without a degree, although due to a decrease in one of the subgroups. if we try to explain the changes in wellbeing for our sample with the perma-model, we should notice that while in the whole population relationships, income and accomplishment could have decreased, healthcare workers could keep the same levels of income and relationships as well as higher feeling of accomplishment. the attention for healthcare professionals in the media, which used to focus on the ineffectiveness of the state healthcare system and cases of mistakes in choosing treatments, switched to a completely new connotation showing those professionals as heroes fighting against a common enemy, and most newspapers used military vocabulary to describe this fight. according to frey (2011), “war is happiness” in the sense that increased trust, friendship and collaboration in the fight, as well as a feeling of “combat flow”, increase wellbeing of those subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 36 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org involved. this can be a partial explanation of the increased wellbeing dimensions for healthcare professionals. based on our findings, we suggest future research to give more importance to the factors that increase wellbeing in pandemics as well as crises. a wellbeing study could be repeated after one year to measure whether job satisfaction maintained the increase that we found or whether it went back to pre-lockdown levels. especially for healthcare workers, we find that these situations possibly increase some dimensions of wellbeing. this could be extended to other essential workers, or to professional groups that are particularly hit by other kinds of crises. policy makers should take into account wellbeing indicators when defining their response, and healthcare workers should be supported by the government through additional monetary benefits and gratitude measures. this was already the case in italy, where the government provided special bonuses to healthcare workers (after the data for this study was collected). however, those bonuses were contested by healthcare workers who didn’t consider them as adequate to the additional effort they were making and the additional risk they were taking. among the limits of this study it is needed to mention that income was not measured directly but assumed based on the kind of employment contract that each professional had with the hospital and this allowed us to approximate an income difference. wellbeing could also be influenced by other factors such as marital status and children, but we assumed those factors would not have a significant effect on our sample as it is relatively big for a study on wellbeing. however, this sample might be too small to represent the whole country. conclusion the sars-cov-2 outbreak was an unprecedented event that impacted the lives of several people, not only in the healthcare sector. when countries like italy went into a lockdown and hospitals started to face increasing numbers of patients, researchers were quick to assume healthcare workers’ wellbeing would be strongly hit (montemurro, 2020). while stress and anxiety were indeed found increased in the first studies on the wellbeing of healthcare workers (yuan et al., 2020), an increase in positive mood was also found. when collecting data for the second period and seeing the general mood of people working in italian hospitals, we were convinced the actual results would not be as obvious as thought. our study allowed to partly contradict the general expectation for a decrease in wellbeing levels by exploring in detail how each dimension changed and by showing that most of them had no change while some even increased. with those findings it is possible to identify what increased wellbeing and preserve this effect as well as search deeper into factors decreasing wellbeing in a situation of crisis. the effects on present inequalities gave us a feeling of decreasing inequalities and led us to suggest measures to maintain those effects in healthcare settings. the most interesting finding is that the effect of inequalities in professional levels and income on job satisfaction was mitigated by the increased gratitude and trust in all healthcare professions. this should be used as a basis to research how gratitude for the impact of one’s job can be shown to other professional groups to remove the effects of income inequalities on a larger scale. the effects on wellbeing that we measured can also be used as a basis for public policies that also take into account non-economic factors (adler & seligman, 2016). authors matteo makowiecki italian society for health promotion (sips) subjective wellbeing of italian healthcare professionals makowiecki, ungaretti, arzilli, urbani, cecchi, maielli, & ardis 37 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org matteomakowiecki@gmail.com valentina ungaretti independent researcher marta arzilli university of pisa leonardo urbani university of pisa matteo cecchi university of pisa michela maielli north-west tuscany local health authority sergio ardis university of pisa, north-west tuscany local health authority, national board of the italian society for health promotion (sips) publishing timeline received 16 june 2020 accepted 28 july 2020 published 13 august 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(2011). trust and wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v1i1.3 kaplan, s., bradley-geist, j. c., ahmad, a., anderson, a., hargrove, a. k., & lindsey, a. (2014). a test of two positive psychology interventions to increase employee well-being. journal of business and psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-013-9319-4 kern, m. l., & butler, j. (2016). the perma-profiler: a brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. international journal of wellbeing. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i3.1 khaw, d., & kern, m. l. (2015). a cross-cultural comparison of the perma model of well-being. undergraduate journal of psychology at berkeley. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781107415324.004 luhmann, m., hofmann, w., eid, m., & lucas, r. e. (2012). subjective well-being and adaptation to life events: a meta-analysis. journal of personality and social psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025948 montemurro, n. 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(2015). review of character strengths matter – how to live a full life, edited by shannon polly and kathryn britton. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 85-87. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.6 denise quinlan drdenisequinlan.com denise@drdenisequinlan.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 article review of character strengths matter – how to live a full life, edited by shannon polly and kathryn britton denise quinlan overview character strengths matter is a compilation volume of brief articles about each of the 24 character strengths of the values in action (via) classification of character strengths, plus a section on applying strengths in different contexts. the editors, shannon polly and kathryn britton, have two clear purposes for this book: to help readers learn about and use character strengths to live a ‘full life’ and to raise funds for the christopher peterson memorial fellowship at the university of pennsylvania. the premise for the book is that that using one’s character strengths in service of self and others across one’s life domains will contribute to a pleasant, engaged, and meaningful life. this is not a theoretical or research-focused book. dedicated to using strengths in daily life, this book provides a smorgasbord of stories, reflections, ideas and tips. its strength lies in the variety of the content and the playfulness of its approach. like any good smorgasbord, you aren’t likely to want everything that’s on offer – but you should be able to find something that’s novel, interesting and satisfying. who is strengths matter for? the book is a very readable compilation suitable for those who are not familiar with the strengths approach. it introduces the concept of strengths, outlines the development of the via classification, the benefits of using strengths, and a process for doing that. it is not intended as an overview of strengths research or practice, and would not stand alone as an introduction for someone wanting to introduce the strengths approach to a workplace or education setting. however, it might encourage them to read further. for those already familiar with the via, the chapters offer a series of individual perspectives on each strength, plus reflections on applying strengths in the workplace, with children and disadvantaged youth, and even on vacation. as it includes the contributions of over 50 authors, even those familiar with the via strengths are likely to find something new here. strengths awareness, exploration and action originally published online at positive psychology news (ppnd), the articles have been adapted for publication and the authors have added two features that provide continuity and interest. the inclusion of five actions to build each strength provides a unifying thread that is drawn through the book. these strengths building actions have a consistent perspective as they are all drawn from tayyab rashid’s online resource building your strengths. this helps to anchor what could otherwise be a very disparate set of voices. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ review of character strengths matter quinlan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 the other innovation that lifts the volume is the inclusion of poetry and prose that embodies each strength. the variety of pieces ensures that there will be something thought-provoking and meaningful for most readers (and a few that you might skip). shannon polly puts the case in the introduction for reading these passages aloud as a way of acting ‘as if’ we possess the strength being demonstrated. she challenges the reader to take on a role and explore it, and to ‘try on’ a new way of behaving. my initial response was similar to being asked to participate in the first interactive activity of a seminar – a reluctant, ‘do i have to’? my commitment to reviewing overcame reluctance however, and i can report that this was at times an engaging and moving activity (churchill and chief sitting bull’s speeches) and at other times i didn’t connect with the prose. however, i would still rate it a worthwhile activity. the world has a lot of ‘how to’ manuals designed to take us from a to b in the shortest space and time possible. i welcome a book that offers to be a companion on some interesting detours and doesn’t expect me to follow every suggestion. the book’s approach draws on ryan niemiec’s three step process for strengths development: awareness, exploration, and action. a curious reader can follow the links to complete the via survey online to build awareness of their strengths. each strength chapter offers exploration of a strength, and a brief section on applying strengths offers suggestions and warnings about using strengths in the workplace and other settings. the concept of signature strengths and suggestions for using them in a chapter by niemiec conclude the book. the strengths of this volume lie in the diversity of voices speaking about strengths, the novel approach of including poetry or prose readings for each strength, and the range of strategies suggested. chris peterson once told me that the problem with many academic reviewers was that they spent most of their time criticising what the researcher didn’t do, rather than focusing on what they chose to do and determining if they did that well. polly and britton have chosen to offer us an accessible and engaging volume that offers unique perspectives on strengths and how to develop them. they have done that well. theoretical and methodological concerns with how strengths are conceptualised and strengths interventions conducted and evaluated belong elsewhere. a further appeal of character strengths matter is that all proceeds of book sales will go to a positive psychology student scholarship fund in memory of chris peterson, leading positive psychology researcher, co-creator of the via classification, inspirational and humorous teacher, and one of the most widely liked and respected figures in the field of positive psychology. buy the book in honour of chris and enjoy the new perspectives it will provide. author denise quinlan drdenisequinlan.com denise@drdenisequinlan.com publishing timeline received 24 july 2015 accepted 25 july 2015 published 30 july 2015 review of character strengths matter quinlan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 references polly, s., & britton, k. h. (2015). character strengths matter – how to live a full life. usa, positive psychology news. 250 pp., us$18.95 + us$3.82 epub, isbn: 0692465642, ean-13: 978-0692465646. the development and longitudinal evaluation of a wellbeing programme: an organisation case study sutton, a., evans, m., davies, c., & lawson, c. (2016). the development and longitudinal evaluation of a wellbeing programme: an organisation case study. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 180-195. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i1.487 anna sutton manchester metropolitan university a.sutton@mmu.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 180 article the development and longitudinal evaluation of a wellbeing programme: an organisation case study anna sutton · maggi evans · carol davies · cathy lawson abstract: wellbeing programmes are often initiated in organisations based on an assumption that they will promote employee engagement and performance. but the specific elements of a wellbeing programme are rarely evaluated for their efficacy. this case study reports on the development and refinement of a wellbeing programme at a large multi-site european organisation, analysing the utility of wellbeing offerings and the impact of the programme on employee wellbeing over the course of five years. results from two internal surveys were analysed. the first, conducted at 18-month intervals between 2009 and 2014, evaluated employee engagement. the second, a tailored wellbeing survey conducted in 2014, measured employee wellbeing and perceptions of the individual wellbeing programme offerings. a number of key findings emerged: the wellbeing programme was highly regarded and reported to have a positive impact on employee engagement, some elements of the programme were better received than others, and there were significant differences in the wellbeing levels of different groups. regression analyses provide evidence for the need to take account of individual employees’ current levels of wellbeing when tailoring a wellbeing programme for them, with current wellbeing predicting up to 11% of the variance in preference for different elements of the programme. results highlight some of the complexities that organisations should be aware of when understanding employee wellbeing, including the effect of national culture, job grade and current wellbeing levels. this case study provides insight into the development of a wellbeing programme and evidence for its positive contribution to employee engagement. keywords: wellbeing, employee engagement, evaluation, workplace 1. introduction the world health organisation (2005) has called on organisations to promote employee wellbeing as part of good corporate practice, recognising that employee wellbeing has an impact on the wider society. this focus on work organisations as sources of wellbeing was prefigured by seligman and csikszentmihalyi’s (2000) call for the development of “positive institutions” which could, amongst other benefits, foster citizens’ wellbeing. building on this approach, schulte and vainio (2010) argue that the benefits of employee wellbeing go far beyond the employing organisation. in their model, workforce wellbeing improves the productivity of the individual worker and the organisation, and ultimately contributes to the productivity of the nation, thereby influencing the wellbeing of the population as a whole. they point out that individual wellbeing does not exist in a “vacuum” but is part of the social context. helliwell’s (2011) case study of the singapore prison service demonstrated this in dramatic fashion, illustrating the importance of the social context in promoting wellbeing in an organisation not traditionally associated with a concern for individual wellbeing. the case study reported here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 181 follows that theme of an organisation as an enabler of wellbeing, both for the employees in the organisation as well as their families. as schulte and vainio (2010) argue, the increase in organisational wellbeing may ultimately benefit wider society. far from being merely a benevolent ideal, investment in employee wellbeing at work has demonstrable and wide-ranging effects. wellbeing programmes are reported to reduce absenteeism and turnover, increase employee satisfaction and productivity, and enhance the company profile (pwc, 2008). one of the major impacts of wellbeing programmes is an increase in employee engagement (robertson, birch, & cooper, 2012). engagement is defined as a “positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind,” which characterises employees who are active, take initiative and seek out new challenges (schaufeli, salanova, gonzález-romá, & bakker, 2002), all of which can have substantial impacts on overall organisational performance. wellbeing programmes are therefore seen by many organisations as more than simply an effort to “look after employees”: they are key to any strategy for improving engagement and performance. a recent review of research on wellbeing initiatives showed that the most commonly-reported reasons for introducing these programmes were economic: as attempts to increase employee productivity or reduce absence (carmichael, fenton, pinilla roncancio, sadhra, & sing, 2016). but what elements of these often broadly defined wellbeing programmes are most effective? and how can an organisation ensure that it is offering a wellbeing programme that suits individual employees? in this case study, we report on the development and refinement of a wellbeing programme at a large multi-site european organisation. we consider both the perceived usefulness and value to the employees of individual wellbeing offerings and the impact of the programme on employee engagement over the course of several years. before describing the case in detail, we review the current literature on wellbeing at work, how “wellbeing” is best defined, how it can be promoted at work, the role of national and cultural differences in wellbeing, and, finally, the potential return on investment. 2. wellbeing and work “wellbeing” is a broad concept, and, as such, there is often debate over its definition. perhaps one of the most definitive explanations is provided by diener (2000) in a paper calling for national measures of happiness. he regards wellbeing as a subjective evaluation of life: the emotions we feel, the activities we engage in, the balance of pleasurable and painful experiences we have, and our general satisfaction with life. in workplace-based research, some authors opt for a narrow definition which equates wellbeing with job satisfaction (sousa-poza & sousa-poza, 2000), while others argue for a more holistic concept of the quality of working life (schulte & vainio, 2010). in a seminal review of the relationship between work, health and wellbeing, waddell and burton (2006) distinguished between health and wellbeing, noting that the former is still operationalised in terms of the absence of symptoms or illnesses, while the latter is a subjective state of satisfaction or happiness with one’s life. in line with diener’s general definition of wellbeing and the consensus in the occupational psychology literature, we use this broader definition here: seeing wellbeing as a broad concept encompassing our physical, psychological and social health as well as our levels of contentment with our health. in their review of the work and wellbeing literature, waddell and burton (2006) found that good work can promote wellbeing in several ways. for example, it provides workers and their families with the economic resources they need to ensure physical wellbeing and participation in society. work is also an important source of individual identity and social roles, and employment status has clear links with physical and mental health. in addition, being in work has been found to improve the quality of life of sick and disabled people. in contrast, evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 182 unemployment has strong causal links with poorer mental and physical health. these promising findings need to be understood in context, however, because the relationship between work and wellbeing is complex and two-way (vickerstaff, phillipson, & wilkie, 2012). while work can be beneficial for wellbeing, it can also have a negative impact. examples of this latter effect are when the work itself is physically hazardous or when workers suffer stress or trauma at work. promoting wellbeing at work then, should incorporate both risk reduction as well as wider health promotion. 3. individual and national differences in wellbeing in understanding the role of wellbeing at work, it is important to take account of individual and national differences. diener et al (2003) conducted a review of the relationships between personality, culture and subjective wellbeing and found strong evidence that wellbeing varies both between individuals and between countries. for example, individuals with higher extraversion and lower neuroticism had higher subjective wellbeing, though the direction of causality here is yet to be determined. besides an individual’s personality, age has also consistently been shown to have an effect on work wellbeing. this relationship is commonly described as having a u-shape: young workers report high wellbeing and this then tends to drop in the late 20s/early 30s, before climbing again (warr, 1992). this influence is not explained simply by seniority in the organisation, however: job level has complex relationships with wellbeing, seemingly increasing both job-related anxiety and enthusiasm. a large-scale analysis by wood (2008) found evidence that greater job control, such as is often found in higher-level jobs, is associated with higher wellbeing, while greater job demands are associated with lower wellbeing, and that increased job control can act as a buffer to the negative impact of demands. similarly to individual differences, both nations and ethnic groups within nations were found to differ in wellbeing (diener et al., 2003). key influences on these cultural differences included wealth (particularly important for wellbeing for poorer groups), self-enhancement differences between cultures, or a differential value ascribed to happiness itself (e.g., joshanloo & weijers, 2013). national differences in work wellbeing have also been identified, as, for example, in a study comparing 21 mainly european countries (sousa-poza & sousa-poza, 2000). this study identified the highest job satisfaction in denmark, with eastern european countries and japan reporting lower levels. interestingly, in all countries, the level of work wellbeing is reported to be quite high. these individual and cultural differences in wellbeing indicate two important issues for organisations to bear in mind when developing wellbeing programmes. first, some influences on wellbeing may well be out of the control of the organisation. for example, personality traits and demographic differences between people have been shown to have close relationships with subjective wellbeing (gonzález gutiérrez, jiménez, hernández, & puente, 2005). second, wellbeing programmes that can be tailored to the individual or cultural needs are likely to be more successful than a “one size fits all” approach. schueller (2012) demonstrated that different types of happiness-improving interventions were more effective for introverts than extroverts, indicating that person-activity fit is important in positive psychology interventions. being able to tailor wellbeing offerings dependent on the individual’s current level of wellbeing or nationality is likely to enhance return on investment: improving the wellbeing of those with both low and high wellbeing. we are able to address this issue of individual and national differences in this case study, as it includes several different european sites. evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 183 4. wellbeing provision at work and return on investment in a large-scale survey of uk employers, young and bhaumik (2011) investigated the importance that employers ascribed to worker wellbeing and the provisions that they made for their staff. they found that nine out of 10 employers believed they had a responsibility to promote their employees’ wellbeing and that there was a link between wellbeing and work, and only 18% believed that wellbeing initiatives did not provide a good return on investment. the top areas of “wellbeing” provision came under the headings of general benefits, provided by 70% or more of the organisations and including holidays and pensions, or traditional health and safety initiatives, provided by about half of the organisations and including training in injury prevention and workplace adjustments. in addition, the larger the organisation, the greater the number of initiatives to promote wellbeing they reported providing to staff. small organisations of up to 50 employees reported on average only three out of 20 initiatives, while large organisations (> 250 employees) reported an average of seven initiatives in the private sector and nine in the public sector. the return on investment for wellbeing programmes tends to be positive: a recent metaanalysis that considered study quality as a factor in estimating roi suggested an overall return of 1.38 on every us$ spent (baxter, sanderson, venn, blizzard, & palmer, 2014). however, this roi does vary dramatically among different organisations. in one report, for example, the benefit-cost ratio across different organisations ranged from 1 to 34 (pwc, 2008). while the factors contributing to good roi are complex, one issue that frequently arises is the need to plan the provision of different elements based on what the employees actually need or value (spence, 2015). too often, organisations adopt a haphazard approach to developing wellbeing programmes: investing in a wide range of initiatives without being sure which elements will be effective. in addition, there is rarely any consideration of which elements of a programme might be particularly beneficial for employees with different levels of wellbeing. instead, it is often hoped that a wellbeing programme will simply improve wellbeing across the board. having evidence of which elements might be particularly effective for employees with low or high wellbeing, however, would provide organisations with a better basis for their decisions. in reporting this case study, therefore, we have three main aims. first, we assess the impact of the wellbeing programme on employee engagement and the utility of individual elements. second, we evaluate the effect of nationality and job seniority on individual wellbeing. and third, we make recommendations for tailoring wellbeing initiatives towards employees with differing levels of wellbeing. 5. the case the bgl group (https://www.bglgroup.co.uk) is a major financial services company providing several different services, including insurance brands, comparison websites and legal services. it employs over 3,000 people on 11 sites (nine in the uk, one in the netherlands and one in france). the organisation has top-level commitment to supporting the wellbeing of its employees: the bgl group strategy explicitly states that corporate social responsibility (csr) and employee engagement targets are as important as profit and customer satisfaction. the wellbeing programme at bgl is promoted internally and externally as a fundamental part of the organisation’s overall strategy, being seen as an integral part of what makes bgl a unique and preferred employer. from the first inception of the wellbeing programme in 2009, it was agreed that supporting employee engagement was “the right thing to do” and it would inherently bring benefits to the organisation. beyond this, the organisation also promotes itself as a responsible evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 184 company with the motto “doing right by doing good” and working to improve not just its local community but also contributing to national and international projects to improve wellbeing. in this, the bgl group can be seen as promoting itself as a “positive institution” (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000): an enabler of employee and wider societal wellbeing. alongside this general commitment to investing in employee wellbeing, bgl considers it important to capture some information on the overall impact of the programme and its elements. following discussion amongst the executive team, it was agreed that increased employee engagement should be the primary measure, rather than any more specific return on investment calculation. accordingly, employee engagement was tracked through an annual survey, and further “take-up” and “satisfaction” feedback was sought on each element of the programme. this focus on engagement is consistent with the literature, where increased levels of engagement are frequently cited as an outcome of increased employee wellbeing (robertson, birch, & cooper, 2012). the programme represented a general wellbeing programme encompassing a wide range of activities (for example, free fruit, access to a gym, access to counselling services, health checks and support with healthier lifestyle choices). while many of these may be considered “wellness” rather than “wellbeing” elements, focusing as they do on the promotion of physical health, the programme overall was concerned with the holistic physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of the employees. we therefore use the term “wellbeing” rather than “wellness” in this paper. in the first couple of years after its launch, several different elements were added to the programme and subsequently bgl began to review and refine the programme, initiating a more planned approach to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding and diverse workforce. the programme has been developed over the course of five years and continues to be refined and adjusted, based on feedback from the employees. at the time of the survey reported here, a total of 15 individual elements were offered in the overall wellbeing programme, with a further 28 being considered for future inclusion (see appendix a). these elements ranged from the provision of free fruit to employees, through to subsidised appointments with an osteopath, to access to help with budgeting and financial organisation. also included in the broad wellbeing programme were legally-required elements such as provision of eyecare vouchers. while some elements were offered across all sites (e.g., free fruit) other elements varied significantly by site. for example, at one site there was an on-site gym, while other sites offered discounted membership to local gyms instead. having run the wellbeing programme for nearly five years, the organisation wanted to conduct a full review. there were three key themes that needed to be addressed, the first being an evaluation of the wellbeing programme’s effects and perceived value. what was the overall impact of the programme and which elements of the programme seemed to have the greatest impact? second was an assessment of the employees’ wellbeing needs. what were the health and wellbeing issues experienced by the employees and were there any significant differences between employee groups? third was a proposal for the future changes to the wellbeing programme. what did employees most want from the organisation in terms of support for wellbeing? in tandem with this, the organisation was keen to signal a subtle shift in the wellbeing provision. there was a concern that the offer had been somewhat “paternalistic” in approach, and, moving forward, they wanted a clearer focus on partnership, with a greater emphasis on employee involvement and personal responsibility. in the following sections, we report on the methodology used to gather and analyse that feedback, and the resultant recommendations that can be made for organisations considering implementing or changing their own wellbeing programmes. evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 185 6. method the case uses two sets of data: a general engagement survey and a tailored wellbeing survey. 6.1 engagement survey employee engagement was assessed as part of a 60-question internal survey covering a range of issues, such as employees’ views of their day-to-day work, their relationships with managers and co-workers and so on. the survey has been administered by peoplemetrics at 18-month intervals over a five-year period (2009-2014). it was accessed via the company’s intranet and launched with an email from the ceo, promoting the importance of the survey, encouraging employees to complete it and assuring them that responses would be anonymous. response rates are very good: the most recent survey (2014) had a response rate of 93% (3,053 employees invited and 2,840 responded). an overall engagement score is calculated from four behaviourally-based outcome items, measured on a five-point likert-type scale, from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”: retention: it would take a lot to get me to leave bgl. effort: being part of bgl motivates me to go beyond what is expected. advocacy: i recommend bgl as a great place to work. passion: i really like working for bgl. for each item, the percentage of employees who agree or strongly agree is noted. the overall engagement score is then calculated as the mean of these percentages. from 2010, employees were also asked a specific question about wellbeing. again scored on a five-point agreement scale, the item was worded as “bgl takes the wellbeing of employees seriously.” 6.2 tailored wellbeing survey in a separate survey, 1330 employees from 11 sites rated their personal wellbeing, the current wellbeing initiatives and their preferences for future initiatives. the survey was distributed online via internal email with internal communication to encourage people to take part. the survey was designed so that only services available at the respondent’s site were visible to them. this was especially important for the european sites, which had been recently acquired and did not yet have access to the full wellbeing programme.  employees rated their wellbeing on a scale of one to five in the following different areas: health, fitness, emotional wellbeing, perceived energy levels and quality of sleep. they were also asked to indicate whether this had changed over the last 12 months. o an overall wellbeing measure was created from the mean of these five items. (α = 0.82)  the current offerings in the wellbeing programme were evaluated by respondents on three criteria: o whether the respondent was aware of the offering o if aware, how much the respondent had made use of this element o and if used, to rate the value of the service on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = not at all useful; 2 = not useful; 3 = ok; 4 = useful; 5 = extremely useful)  finally, respondents were asked to indicate their preference for which of the elements should be included as the wellbeing programme developed in the future. in addition, demographic information was collected, including work site, country and job grade. the number of employees per individual site ranged from a minimum of four to a maximum of evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 186 449. for analyses involving the size of the site, sites were grouped into small (up to 50 employees), medium (51-200 employees) and large (>200 employees). the majority of employees (96%) were based at the nine uk sites, with 2% in france and 2% in the netherlands. job level was assessed according to four different levels: staff (62%), team leader (7%), manager/senior manager (27%) and associate director or above (4%). 7. results results from these two surveys were analysed to provide a picture of the wellbeing programme and its effects over time, as well as to make recommendations for further refinements. we report the results using the structure of the three main themes described above. 7.1 impact and perceived value of the wellbeing programme figure 1 below demonstrates that over the five-year period of the engagement survey, there was an increase in both employee engagement and the belief that the organisation takes the employees’ wellbeing seriously. figure 1: employee engagement in the tailored wellbeing survey, the five most well-known elements were: free fruit (98.9% aware), eyecare vouchers (88.1%), discounted gym membership (85%), osteopath appointments (84.6%) and “know your numbers,” an in-house health check programme (79%). respondents who indicated they knew about the element were then asked to indicate how often they used it. the highest usage rates (using the service “whenever possible”) were for free fruit (66%) and “know your numbers” (36%). eyecare vouchers, healthy eating options in the restaurant, discounted gym membership, at desk massage and private healthcare membership were used “whenever possible” by between 22 and 28% of respondents. meanwhile, the least used services were a second opinion medical referral scheme and a dental/hospital cash plan (both 6%), weight watchers meetings (9%) and organised lunchtime walks (12%). 40 50 60 70 80 90 2009 2010 2012 2014 % e m p lo y e e s engaged believe wellbeing is taken seriously evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 187 finally, those respondents who had used a service were asked to rate its usefulness or value to them. the mean value ratings for each element of the wellbeing programme are illustrated in table 1 below (1 = not at all useful to 5 = extremely useful). table 1: mean value ratings for wellbeing programme elements service mean value rating discounted gym membership 4.7 free fruit 4.6 at desk massage 4.6 eyecare vouchers 4.6 private healthcare 4.6 health screening 4.5 remedial sports massage 4.2 know your numbers (in-house health checks) 4.1 healthy eating options in restaurant 4.1 osteopath 4.0 employee assistance programme (telephone counselling) 3.9 organised lunchtime walking 3.8 dental/hospital cash plan 3.8 best doctors (second opinion medical referral) 3.5 weightwatchers site meetings 3.2 overall, the findings indicated that bgl was running a successful wellbeing programme, with high awareness and usage across much of the offer, and those who used the services tended to be very positive about them. some services had high awareness and were highly rated, but were used less, for example, the discounted gym membership, the eap, the osteopath and remedial sports massage. 7.2 employee wellbeing there is no benchmark data available to see how the bgl ratings compare with other organisations, however, moving forward there is an opportunity to use the figures to monitor changes within the bgl population and to link it to sickness absence data. key general findings were:  overall health was the highest rated of the wellbeing elements and a fifth of respondents reported that their health had improved in the preceding 12 months  there were lower scores for fitness, energy and sleep, and, across the five wellbeing elements, a small but significant minority (17%) of the respondents reported low ratings (1 or 2 out of 5).  sleep emerged as a concern across the organisation, with 27% of people scoring their sleep as a 1 or 2 and 25% stating it had got worse over the past 12 months. to investigate the effect of national site on wellbeing, a one-way anova was conducted on the overall wellbeing scores. there was a significant main effect of country (f (2, 1326) = 4.07, p< .05, ω2 < 0.01) on wellbeing. bonferroni post-hoc tests indicated that dutch employees (m = 3.78, sd = .76) had significantly higher wellbeing than british employees (m = 3.36, sd = .74), with a moderate effect size (d = .56). this difference is in line with previous research showing work wellbeing as higher in the netherlands than the uk (sousa-poza & sousa-poza, 2000). there evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 188 were no significant differences between france (m = 3.44, sd = .91) and either of the other countries. similarly, a one-way anova revealed a significant main effect of organisational size on employee wellbeing (f (2, 1327) = 9.62, p< .001, ω2 = 0.013). post-hoc tests demonstrated that employees on small sites had higher wellbeing (m = 3.70, sd = .81) than those at both medium (m = 3.30, sd = .73, d = .53) and large sites (m = 3.37, sd = .74, d = .44), both with moderate effect sizes. wellbeing showed a general trend of increased wellbeing with seniority (figure 2 below). a one-way anova revealed a significant main effect for seniority (f (3, 1326) = 9.7, p< .001, ω2 = 0.02), with bonferroni post-hoc tests indicating that directors (m = 3.65, sd = .62) had significantly higher wellbeing than staff (m = 3.30, sd = .79, d = .45) and team leaders (m = 3.28, sd = .77, d = .51), while managers (m = 3.51, sd = .64) had significantly higher wellbeing than staff (d = .28). figure 2: wellbeing and job seniority 7.3 future developments regression analyses were conducted to identify whether employees’ current levels of wellbeing influenced their preference for the inclusion of specific elements in the wellbeing programme in the future. here, we used the specific measures of wellbeing (physical health, fitness, emotional wellbeing, sleep and energy) as predictors, and the individual wellbeing elements as outcomes. level of wellbeing significantly predicted employees’ choice of programme element for 13 of the items. details of the model fit and significant predictors are shown in table 2 below. these analyses provide evidence for the need to take account of employees’ current levels of wellbeing when tailoring a wellbeing programme towards them, as wellbeing predicted between 1 and 11% of the variance in preference for different elements. figure 3 below helps to illustrate this by providing a visual summary of the types of programme elements that employees would like to see more of, predicted by their current wellbeing levels. 3 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4 staff team leader manager or senior manager associate director and above w e ll b e in g evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 189 table 2: regression analyses programme element r2 f (5, 1324) = predictors β organised team sports .03 09.03*** fitness -.18*** subsidised gym membership .01 03.67** fitness emotional -.08* -.09* weight management .05 12.43*** health fitness -.08* -.16*** anger management .02 04.16** fitness -.12** changing facilities .03 08.87*** fitness -.19*** stress management support .08 23.97*** energy emotional -.09* -.31*** quitting smoking help .01 03.08** health -.10** sleep clinic .11 32.25*** health sleep -.07* -.38*** managing anxiety .08 23.31*** emotional -.30*** at desk massage .01 02.70* fitness -.11** healthy lifestyle information .01 03.28** fitness -.07* help with energy levels .04 11.53*** energy sleep -.21*** -.12** help with fatigue .04 10.41*** energy sleep emotional -.15*** -.13*** -.08* * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, ***p<0.001 figure 3: current wellbeing as a predictor of preferences for future programme elements wellbeing low health •help with weight management and quitting smoking high fitness •more team sports, subsidised gym low sleep •help with fatigue, energy and sleep clinics high energy •help with stress management low emotional •help with stress management, anxiety and coping with change evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 190 8. discussion the study presents a rare insight into the planning, implementation and development of a complete wellbeing programme in a private, multi-site european organisation, with longitudinal measures demonstrating its impact over a five-year period. results over that period provide evidence for the positive impact of a wellbeing programme on employee engagement. additionally, the introduction of this wellbeing programme has encouraged employees’ belief that their organisation takes their wellbeing seriously. this in itself is a positive outcome for the organisation, indicating that the employees feel valued by their employer, before any impacts on wellbeing itself. analysis of the employee wellbeing ratings highlighted some important issues for the bgl group to be aware of as their programme develops. although overall wellbeing ratings were generally high, there was a significant minority of employees who reported lower ratings, and these can be expected to impact on health and absence in the longer term. of particular interest here is the concern expressed over sleep by a quarter of employees. given the high level of reported sleep difficulty, it was surprising that the sleep clinic element of the wellbeing programme did not gain greater support. it could be that respondents were not clear what was meant and feared having to sleep in a research laboratory rather than attending a workshop to discuss lifestyle or habit changes that could improve sleep. in this case, it may be that simply providing clearer information on this option, and encouragement for take-up could lead to an improvement in wellbeing for a substantial group of employees. for organisations planning to implement or improve a wellbeing programme, this finding highlights the importance of effective communication for the full benefits of wellbeing offerings to be experienced by employees. the results also illustrate some of the complexities that organisations need to be aware of when measuring and interpreting their employees’ wellbeing. first, it is important to take account of national differences in reported wellbeing when planning developments for a wellbeing programme. in this study, employees in the netherlands reported higher wellbeing than those in the uk, which is in line with previous research (sousa-poza & sousa-poza, 2000) that indicated that these national differences are at least partly explicable by differences in workrole inputs and outputs. in interpreting national differences in wellbeing, then, organisational decision-makers should be aware that uk employees are likely to report slightly lower levels of wellbeing than many other countries, and that this could well be independent of any wellbeing programme. second, it is worth noting how wellbeing in this organisation was related to the employee’s job grade, with wellbeing increasing with seniority. this contrasts with previous work which identified a complex relationship of job seniority and wellbeing, with seniority increasing both job-related enthusiasm and anxiety (warr, 1992). wood’s work (2008) indicates that this paradoxical effect may be due to an increase in both job control and job demands in senior positions. there are two possible explanations for the finding in this case study that seniority is associated solely with better wellbeing. the first is that the measure of wellbeing used here does not tap the anxiety-contentment axis of job related wellbeing (warr, 1990). an alternative explanation is that the bgl group may be supporting higher level managers well, counteracting the increased anxiety that is common at this level. while the exact mechanism underlying this achievement is not yet known, a possible explanation may be that it is the specific wellbeing offerings that are available solely to higher level managers (for example, access to private healthcare) that enable this increased wellbeing. for organisations wishing to provide tailored evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 191 wellbeing offerings to their employees, it is worth considering the extent to which their offerings may provide a buffer to the increased demands of senior jobs. finally, the results reported here can help organisations to develop a wellbeing programme which incorporates elements designed to appeal to employees with different levels of wellbeing. providing employees with a wellbeing programme which actually meets their needs is an essential step in ensuring that participation in the programme is increased (spence, 2015). rather than providing a one-size-fits-all wellbeing programme, this case study provides evidence that it is possible to provide elements tailored to specific needs. there are two potential applications of these findings. first, for organisations with limited funds, or those that wish to ensure that their wellbeing programme is targeting specific groups of employees, elements could be chosen which appeal specifically to that group. for example, a workforce that was found to be particularly low on emotional wellbeing would benefit from help in dealing with change, while a workforce reporting high levels of energy would appreciate help with stress management. alternatively, a wellbeing programme could be developed to include elements which address each of the five areas of wellbeing assessed in this case, allowing employees to engage in whichever offerings they felt would be beneficial. this latter approach ensures that there are offerings which are likely to appeal to a range of different employees, rather than unwittingly providing a wellbeing programme which would only appeal to employees with, say, low levels of emotional wellbeing. 8.1 limitations as with all case studies, the findings reported here are specific to a single organisation, and care should be taken when generalising to other organisations and industries. however, the detail which has been provided about the organisation itself will hopefully enable practitioners to draw conclusions about the applicability of these findings to their own organisations, while also providing clear illustrations of some of the challenges and opportunities in implementing wellbeing programmes. while we had information about levels of engagement in the organisation over the course of the programme implementation, the evaluation of the wellbeing programme currently lacks links to “harder” hr measures such as absence or turnover. other studies have demonstrated these links very well, however (pwc, 2008), and there is no reason to suppose they do not hold true for this case study too. finally, in considering the implementation of wellbeing programmes in other organisations, a note of caution should be raised. employee wellbeing is of central priority to the bgl group and is emphasised both in the organisation’s formal strategy and in its culture. an organisation which does not prioritise wellbeing to this extent may well find that results of a wellbeing programme would differ substantially. wellbeing programmes often build on an organisation’s traditional benefits or health and safety initiatives (young & bhaumik, 2011) rather than being developed from a theoretically sound understanding of the elements of wellbeing. this case study reports on the efficacy of one such “ad-hoc” approach but it would be interesting to compare this approach with a wellbeing programme that was developed from a comprehensive model, such as the five ways to wellbeing (aked, marks, cordon, & thompson, 2008). 8.2 impact the bgl group has used the results of these surveys to guide action at two levels: local and group. local teams are encouraged to discuss the results in focus groups and to understand evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 192 them more fully, specifically to decide what actions they can take in relation to various questions. each area also has a champion who helps to co-ordinate actions and help them happen. the champions meet as a collective across the group once a quarter to maintain momentum and share best practice. at group level, the focus is on the key issues from the survey that appear to be affecting most employees. with such high engagement scores, it can be a challenge not to get drawn into tiny things but still to respond in a way that improves employees’ engagement and wellbeing. with this in mind, a 52-week programme was created called “pulse little things,” that addressed some of these frustrations. these included better lighting in the car parks and more racks for bikes. there were also a few larger issues that appeared to be consistently being flagged, including dress code, flexible working and career development. these three topics were discussed by the board and solutions identified for each, which were then rolled out during the remainder of the year. in addition, the 18-month interval between surveys was considered to be too long a time to demonstrate the benefits of any initiatives and also keep to pace with changing opinions. the group therefore introduced quarterly “temperature checks” across a sample group. this provides indications of whether certain areas are improving, reducing or staying the same, so that the champions can keep abreast of developments throughout the year. bgl is pleased with the engagement level they have but wish to continue to improve, and have set a stretching target of 85% engagement by 2017. they are continuing to implement the various initiatives that have been promised (e.g., at desk massage for the legal services business, improved gym discounts for all sites, reviewing the catering offering to ensure that it aligns with a healthy balanced diet). the group is now considering in depth what they want on their engagement agenda, and is developing plans for how this can be achieved. 9. conclusion this case study has demonstrated three main points. first, it has evaluated the utility of individual elements of a wellbeing programme in a large multi-site organisation, identifying which of them are most appreciated by employees. second, it has illustrated the effect of a wellbeing programme on enhancing employee engagement. and finally, it has made recommendations for tailoring wellbeing programme elements to employees with differing levels of wellbeing. authors anna sutton manchester metropolitan university a.sutton@mmu.ac.uk maggi evans mosaic consulting carol davies national house building council cathy lawson bgl group evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 193 publishing timeline received 25 november 2015 accepted 11 april 2016 published 14 may 2016 references aked, j., marks, n., cordon, c., & thompson, s. 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(2012). work, health and wellbeing: the challenges of managing health at work. bristol, united kingdom: the policy press. http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/five-ways-to-well-being-the-evidence http://dx.doi.org/10.4278/ajhp.130731-lit-395 http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/2103/ http://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.34 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145056 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2004.09.015 http://dx.doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v1i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-013-9489-9 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/209547/hwwb-dwp-wellness-report-public.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/209547/hwwb-dwp-wellness-report-public.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01437731211216443 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1015630930326 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/psych.2012.312a172 http://dx.doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.3076 http://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1053-5357(00)00085-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v5i2.7 evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 194 waddell, g., & burton, a. k. 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(2011). health and well-being at work: a survey of employers. sheffield, united kingdom: department for work and pensions. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1990.tb00521.x http://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0882-7974.7.1.37 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2338.2007.00482.x evaluation of a wellbeing programme sutton, evans, davies, & lawson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 195 appendix a: complete list of the elements offered in the bgl wellbeing programme current elements in the wellbeing programme at desk massage (limited availability) dental/hospital cash plan discounted gym membership employee assistance programme eyecare vouchers free fruit health screening healthy eating options in restaurant know your numbers (in-house health checks) organised lunchtime walking osteopath private medical insurance remedial sports massage second opinion medical referral weightwatchers site meetings elements being considered for future inclusion in the programme aerobic exercise classes at work ageing alcohol abuse education anger management at desk massage (at all sites) building personal resilience changing facilities so it's easier to run/cycle to/from work coping with change driver fatigue drug abuse education energy fatigue health checks (blood pressure, weight, cholesterol, blood sugar) healthy back programme healthy eating programme healthy lifestyle managing anxiety organised team sports personal financial education quitting smoking help sleep clinic staying healthy on shift stress management support subsidised gym membership walking club weight management winter health (flu jabs, beating colds) work-life balance sjöberg, o, (2018). why some employees might thrive on job insecurity: human values as a moderating factor in the job insecurity wellbeing relationship. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 34-49. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i1.633 ola sjöberg stockholm university ola.sjoberg@sofi.su.se copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 article why some employees might thrive on job insecurity: human values as a moderating factor in the job insecurity wellbeing relationship ola sjöberg abstract: the purpose of this study is to analyse the extent to which human values moderate the impact of job insecurity on life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing. drawing upon conservation of resources theory, we argue that human values may affect both the relative importance of resources as well as the competency to successfully adjust to a changing work context. this theoretical framework leads to the expectation that individuals who are motivated by values emphasising variety seeking and taking on challenges in life will suffer less from job insecurity, whereas the wellbeing and life satisfaction of individuals with values motivating them to avoid uncertainty and resist change will be affected relatively more by job insecurity. empirical analyses, using data from 28 countries from two waves of the european social survey, are largely supportive of these hypotheses. keywords: wellbeing, human values, job insecurity 1. introduction job insecurity has been described as the disease of the 21st century. it has been argued that increasingly competitive world markets, automation, and recurring recessions mean that citizens of high-income countries, who used to live in a “20-year career and a gold watch” model, now live in a culture of perpetual job insecurity which acts as a powerful and chronic stressor in their lives (scott, 2004). a large body of research has documented that higher levels of subjective job insecurity are associated with lower psychological wellbeing and life satisfaction (for overviews, see de witte, 2005; de witte, pienaar & de cuyper, 2016; ferrie, westerlund, virtanen, vahtera, & kivimäki, 2008; griep et al., 2016). research has, in fact, shown that experiencing job insecurity can be as distressing as experiencing actual unemployment (de witte, 1999). there is, however, still limited knowledge about the mechanisms translating job insecurity into reduced wellbeing and life satisfaction. a central question in this context is why some people seem to be more or less unaffected by job insecurity, whereas it acts as a powerful stressor for other employees with similar “objective” characteristics in terms of, for example, education and tenure. a number of studies have therefore tried to identify factors that moderate the relationship between job insecurity and psychological wellbeing. employability (i.e., alternatives in the labour market) has been proposed as one such factor (silla, de cuyper, gracia, peiró, & de witte, 2009), psychological resources such as self-esteem and optimism (mäkikangas & kinnunen, 2003), and perceived control (ito & brotheridge, 2007) as others. the identification of such moderating factors is crucial for our theoretical understanding of job http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 insecurity, and ultimately also for the ability of organisations and society to deal adequately with it. in this study, it is proposed that human values are an important moderator in the relationship between subjective job insecurity and subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction. human values are deeply rooted abstract motivations that guide and justify attitudes, opinions, and actions (schwartz, 2006a). drawing upon hobfoll’s (1989) conservation of resources (cor) theory, which maintains that perceived threats to valued resources may lower people’s wellbeing, we argue that human values may affect both the relative importance of resources (“resource-importance appraisal”) as well as the competency to successfully adjust to a changing work context (“cognitive flexibility” and “adaptive orientation”). this theoretical framework leads to the expectation that individuals who are motivated by values emphasising variety seeking and taking on challenges in life will suffer less from job insecurity, whereas the wellbeing and life satisfaction of individuals having values motivating them to avoid uncertainty and to resist change will be affected relatively more by job insecurity. propositions derived from this theoretical framework are tested on data from 19 countries from the european social survey. 2. job insecurity, conservation of resources and human values the central assumption in the cor theory is that individuals “strive to obtain, retain, protect, and foster those things that they value” (hobfoll, 2001, p. 341).1 what people value – resources – are objects, personal characteristics, conditions or energies that are either valued in their own right, or are valued because they act as conduits to the achievement or protection of other valued resources (hobfoll, 2001, p. 339). psychological stress, possibly resulting in reduced wellbeing, will, according to the cor theory, occur in three instances: (i) when resources are under the threat of being lost, (ii) when individuals’ resources are actually lost, or (iii) where individuals fail to gain sufficient resources following significant resource investment (hobfoll, 1989). job insecurity means that valued resources are under the threat of being lost. these valued resources include both manifest (a salary) and latent (e.g., social networks, self-esteem, status, societal recognition, and a sense of contributing to a higher collective purpose) functions of work (jahoda, 1982). thus, if a person feels that the valued resources associated with having a job are threatened, he or she is likely to experience psychological strain and reduced wellbeing. when faced with the risk of losing valued resources, individuals may use different coping strategies (hobfoll, 1989, 2001). substitution is one such strategy, where resources that are under threat of being lost are substituted. people who face job insecurity may invest more in their out-of-work social networks to substitute for the potential loss of social support from work colleagues. another possible strategy is to strive to minimise the net loss of resources. facing job insecurity, people might try to minimise effort investment in work tasks and switch to activities that are less resource demanding. alternatively, people may try to defend existing resources by working harder in an attempt to influence firing decisions by management. of particular importance in this context is what hobfoll (1989, p. 519) termed reinterpretation as a strategy for coping with job insecurity. by reinterpreting threats as challenges, individuals shift the focus of attention to what might be gained instead of what 1 for other studies using the cor theory for analysing job insecurity, see e.g., de cuyper, mäkikangas, kinnunen, mauno & de witte, 2012; könig, debus, häusler, lendenmann & kleinmann, 2010; mauno, kinnunen & ruokolainen 2007. why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 might be lost in a particular situation. in the original formulation of the cor theory, hardiness was given as an example of a psychological resource that is beneficial for such individual adaptability. kobasa, maddi and courington (1981, p. 369) define hardiness as being composed of three elements: commitment – hardy persons are curious about life and view it as essentially meaningful, control – hardy persons tend to believe that they have the ability to influence the course of events, and challenge – hardy persons tend to believe that it is normal for life to change, and regard this as an important stimulus to development. focusing on individual psychological resources that may contribute to individual adaptability – the competence to successfully adjust to a changing work context – van dam (2013) has made a useful distinction between the two related aspects “cognitive flexibility” and “adaptive orientation.” “cognitive flexibility” refers to mental abilities relevant for adaptive responses, and especially the ability to consider new ideas and solutions and to alter the perception of situations (good, 2014). examples of such “mental abilities” are openness, novelty seeking, and creativity. such abilities are closely related to the notion of “reinterpretation” as a way of coping with the threat of resource loss. “adaptive orientation” is related to attitudes and beliefs concerning change, and entails attitudes and beliefs relevant for dealing with new or changing situations. over recent decades, a number of psychological resources – often referred to as psychological resilience (fletcher & sarkar, 2013) – have been proposed as contributing to positive adaptability when facing stressful events and for understanding why some people become overwhelmed by even minor adverse experiences, whereas others react positively to stressful events. examples of such psychological resources are self-efficacy and optimism. richardson (2002) has described resilience research as comprising three waves, in which resilience as a personal trait is the first wave, resilience as a process – how individuals acquire resilient qualities – is the second wave, and the third wave is research on resilience as identification of motivational forces within individuals or groups that enable them to grow through adversity. we propose that human values may be one fruitful way of thinking about such motivational forces. in this study, we use the conceptualisation of, and measurement approach to, human values developed by schwartz (2006a, 2006b, 2015). schwartz argues that the following common understanding of how to conceptualise human values has emerged in the last decades: firstly, values are linked to affect – when values that are central to us are threatened, we are filled with emotions. secondly, values refer to desirable goals that motivate action. thirdly, values serve as standards or criteria against which actions and events are evaluated. fourthly, values can be ranked according to their importance for individuals or groups, so that there exists a relatively stable system of value priorities. in real life situations, it is the relative importance of and trade-off among relevant values that guide attitudes, actions, and behaviours. lastly, values, unlike attitudes, transcend specific situations. schwartz has proposed that there are 10 motivationally distinct types of values that are recognised by the members of most societies. these values can be arranged in a circular structure that illustrates the conflicts and compatibilities between them (figure 1 below). values are dynamically related to each other, which implies that if one value is positively related to an attitude or behaviour, its adjacent values should also relate positively to that attitude or behaviour, while the opposing values in the circle should relate less positively or even negatively to the same attitude or behaviour. of special interest in this study are the value dimensions “stimulation” and “security.” individuals who are motivated by values included in the value dimension “stimulation” are why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 motivated by a desire to take on challenges in life, by seeking variety, creativity, and intellectual curiosity. these motivational forces are very similar to the concepts of “cognitive flexibility” and “adaptive orientation” discussed earlier. in contrast, individuals who are motivated by “security” values are motivated to avoid uncertainty by controlling relationships and resources and by resisting change. the pursuit of “security” values is likely to come into conflict with the pursuit of “stimulation” values: seeking stability of society, of relationships, and of self is likely to inhibit seeking novelty, challenge, and excitement. there is a strong correlation between age and “security” values, presumably because people become more committed to habitual patterns and more embedded in social networks as they grow older (schwartz et al., 2012). figure 1. human values (schwartz, p. 425) self-direction (i nde pe ndent thought a nd a ction) universalism (unde rsta nding/ tole ra nce/protection of pe ople a nd na ture ) benevolence (pre se rvation/ e nha ncement of we lfa re of pe ople close to one self) conformity (re s traint of a ctions like ly to ups e t/ha rm othe rs a nd viola te s ocia l norms ) t radition (re spe ct/commitment a nd a cce ptance of tra ditiona l customs and ide a s) security (sa fe ty/harmony/ sta bility of socie ty/ re la tions hips/self power (socia l s ta tus /prestige, control ove r pe ople /resources) achievement (pe rs onal s uccess through compe tence) hedonism (ple a s ure a nd s e ns uous gra tifica tion for one s elf) stimulation (excite me nt, nove lty, a nd cha lle nge in life ) besides its importance for “cognitive flexibility” and “adaptive orientation,” it is here also suggested that human values are important for the value individuals place on resources. morelli and cunningham (2012) have argued that what they call “resource-importance appraisal” is a critical but often overlooked aspect of the cor theory for understanding the reactions and strategies of individuals to both actual and potential loss of resources. how threatening the loss of a particular resource is experienced by an individual should be influenced by how valuable this resource is perceived to be. this makes intuitive sense, not why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 least in the context of job insecurity: it seems plausible that people who place a high value on stability and predictability in their lives will react more strongly to threats to the disruption of the employment relationship. thus, it is suggested here that human values may serve two important functions in the job insecurity wellbeing/life satisfaction relationship. firstly, since values contain a motivational component, they may act as a positive energy source to cope with a changing work environment. values serve as standards or criteria against which events are evaluated, and employees who are motivated by “stimulation” values – excitement, novelty and challenges in life – are more likely to reinterpret the threat of job loss as a challenge and to focus on what they might gain, instead of what they stand to lose in the event of job insecurity. it could even be argued that job insecurity may even be a positive stressor for people who are strongly motivated by “motivation” values. just as employment has a symbolic value in that it helps people to define for themselves and others who they are, the way people tackle job insecurity – as a challenge, rather than a threat – may have symbolic value in that it helps to define for people who they are. conversely, for individuals who are motivated by “security” values, the room for reinterpretation of job insecurity is much more limited. secondly, human values influence the value placed on a stable employment relationship (“resource-importance appraisal”). individuals who place a high value on safety, harmony and stability of society, of relationships, and of self will also perceive that they will lose more in the case of dismissal. in fact, what we are proposing is that the value dimension “stimulation,” primarily through its role in cognitive flexibility and adaptive orientation, and “security,” primarily through its role in “resource-importance appraisal,” will function as moderators in the relationship between job insecurity and wellbeing and life satisfaction. this is illustrated in figure 2 (below). although we have argued here that the value dimension “stimulation” primarily has importance for cognitive flexibility and adaptive orientation, whereas the value dimension “security” mainly has importance for resource-importance appraisal, it is crucial to recognise that these value dimensions, to an important extent, are mirror images of each other. thus, individuals or social groups that are emphasising “stimulation” values also tend, on average, to place less emphasis on “security” values (schwartz, 2003). the role of human values as moderating factors in the analysis of how job insecurity affects life satisfaction and wellbeing has, to our knowledge, not been considered before. the role of values for stress and wellbeing more generally has been the subject of a few studies, the most relevant for the present study being the one by bouckenooghe, buelens, fontaine, and vanderheyden (2005). drawing upon theories about growthand deficiency-related needs, they argue that “stimulation” and related values are growth-related and are likely to alleviate stress, whereas “security” and related values are deficiency-related and therefore should correlate in a positive way with stress. they also found substantial support for these hypotheses. also of relevance here is research showing that psychological resources such as locus of control are positively related to general wellbeing (ng, sorensen, & eby, 2006). why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 figure 2. theoretical model (+) values and cognitive adaptability (-) (-) values and resource-importance appraisal stimulation (seeking excitement, novelty, and challenge in life) job insecurity wellbeing life satistfaction security (seeking safety, harmony and stability of society, of relationships, and of self) 3. methods the data used in this study is the european social survey (ess) from 2004 and 2010. the ess data are suitable for addressing the research questions advanced in this study, since they contain information on human values, job insecurity, measures of subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction, and a rich set of background characteristics of participating respondents. unfortunately, the data does not contain information on respondents’ job satisfaction. the comparative nature of the data also makes it possible to take into account macro-level characteristics that have been shown to be of importance for job insecurity, subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction. the data used in this study are the result of representative population surveys using a standardised questionnaire carried out in 28 countries (at, be, bg, cy, cz, de, dk, ee, es, fi, fr, gb, el, hu, ie, is, it, lt, lu, nl, no, pl, pt, se, sk, si, tr and tr). the average response rate is 61.2%, ranging from 30.5% in germany in 2010 to 78.8% in greece in 2010. the dataset used is restricted to employed individuals aged between 25 and 60 years at the time of the survey. a weighting factor has been used in all analyses to correct for sample selection bias (european social survey, 2014). job insecurity is measured using the item: “using this card, please tell me how true each of the following statements is about your current job: my job is secure,” where possible answers are (1) “not at all true,” (2) “a little true,” (3) “quite true,” and (4) “very true.” following other studies using this variable (see, e.g., esser & olsen, 2012), this measure was dichotomised, and job insecurity is assumed to exist when respondents have answered “not at all true” or “a little true,” resulting in 35.7% of the respondents defined as experiencing job insecurity. why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 this study will use two different but related measures of subjective wellbeing: the who-3 scale and overall self-reported life satisfaction. the who-3 scale is designed to measure positive psychological wellbeing such as positive mood, vitality, and general interest (bech, 2004), and is measured with the following three items: “i am going to read out a list of statements about how you may have been feeling recently. for each statement, using this card, i would like you to say how often you have felt like this over the last two weeks: (i) ‘i have felt cheerful and in good spirits,’ (ii) ‘i have felt calm and relaxed,’ (iii) ‘i have felt active and vigorous,’” where possible answers are (1) “at no time,” (2) “some of the time,” (3) “less than half of the time,” (4) “more than half of the time,” (5) “most of the time,” and (6) “all of the time.” cronbach's alpha across the whole sample is 0.82. life satisfaction was measured using the following question: “all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?” where the response scale varies between 0 “extremely dissatisfied” and 10 “extremely satisfied.” the measurement of human values in the ess is based on the methodology of verbal portraits, where respondents are asked to compare themselves to portraits describing a person’s goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implicitly to the importance of a single value (schwartz, 2006b). the ess human scale is derived from the 40-item portrait values questionnaire (pvq) where two portraits operationalise each value (schwartz, 2003). the portraits forming the basis for the value dimensions “security” and “stimulation” that are the focus of this study are the following: now i will briefly describe some people. please listen to each description and tell me how much each person is or is not like you. security a. it is important to her/him to live in secure surroundings. she/he avoids anything that might endanger her/his safety. b. it is important to her/him that the government ensures her/his safety against all threats. she/he wants the state to be strong so it can defend its citizens. stimulation a. she/he likes surprises and is always looking for new things to do. she/he thinks it is important to do lots of different things in life. b. she/he looks for adventures and likes to take risks. she/he wants to have an exciting life. possible answers are (1) “not like me at all” (2) “not like me” (3) “a little like me” (4) “somewhat like me” (5) “like me” (6) “very much like me.” to assess value priorities and to correct for individual differences in the use of the response scale, each person’s responses were centred on his or her own mean score on all 21 items forming the 10 value dimensions, which converts absolute value scores into scores that indicate the relative importance of each value to the person (schwartz, 2003). why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 testing of the human value instruments in the ess indicates that it is difficult to discriminate between the adjacent values: conformity and tradition, universalism and benevolence, and power and achievement (davidov, schmidt, & schwartz, 2008). therefore, in the analyses where individual scores on other value dimensions are entered as control variables, these three pairs of values were combined, resulting in a total of seven value factors the hypothesis that human values (val) may moderate the relationship between job insecurity (insec) and wellbeing and life satisfaction will be tested using the so-called simple linear moderation model (hayes, 2013) (equation 1). 𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 = 𝛼 + 𝜐𝑗 + 𝛽1𝐼𝑁𝑆𝐸𝐶𝑖𝑗𝑡 + 𝛽2𝑉𝐴𝐿𝑖𝑗𝑡 + 𝛽3𝐼𝑁𝑆𝐸𝐶 ∗ 𝑉𝐴𝐿𝑖𝑗𝑡 + 𝛽4𝑋𝑖𝑗𝑡 + 𝛽5𝑍𝑗𝑡 + 𝜇𝑖𝑗𝑡 (1) where i = 1…n, j = 1…28, and t = 2004, 2010. the regression coefficient 𝛽3 captures the extent to which insec is conditional upon val. with the value dimension “security” in the model, we expect 𝛽3 to be negative: the more individuals are motivated by avoiding uncertainty and the more they resist change, the more negative will be the impact of job insecurity on wellbeing and life satisfaction. with the value dimension “stimulation” in the model, we expect 𝛽3 to be positive: the more individuals are motivated by a desire for taking on challenges in life and the more they seek variety, the more positive will be the impact of job insecurity on wellbeing and life satisfaction. all models also include vectors of control variables at the individual (𝑋𝑖𝑗𝑡 ) and country (𝑍𝑗𝑡 ) level, and an error term (𝜇𝑖𝑗𝑡 ). to the extent that subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction are related to unobserved differences between countries, the model also includes unit-fixed effects at the country level ( 𝛼 + 𝜐𝑗 , with 𝜐𝑗 estimated by n-1 country dummies) to account for this unobserved heterogeneity. all models also include a time fixed effect to allow for heterogeneity between the two survey waves. based on previous research, the following individual-level variables were included in all models to control for potential confounding: age, gender, education (years), household size, whether the respondent currently lives with a partner, form of work contract (limited or unlimited duration), working time, if the respondent lives with children, work demands, workrelated control and social support, career opportunities, work-related rewards and the social network of the respondents. answer categories to these variables can be found in table a1 (in appendix a). earlier research has indicated that a number of factors at the macro level also are of importance for assessing the incidence of subjective job insecurity and its relationship with subjective wellbeing (erlinghagen, 2008; sjöberg, 2010). all models therefore control for the social expenditure per capita (since access to sources of income during unemployment might influence the perceived economic consequences of losing one’s job), unemployment levels (since high unemployment levels increase the threat of unemployment for all), and gdp per capita (in an attempt to control for country-level differences in living standards). 4. results table 1 (below) reports the results from a series of regression models based on equation 2. only results for the variables of primary interest are reported, and results for the full set of individualand country-level variables can be found in table a1. why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 table 1. results fr om fixed-effects ols r egr essions w ith life satisfaction and subjective w ellbeing as dependent var iables. unstandar dised r egr ession coefficients w ith cluster -robust standar d er r or s life satisfaction subjective w ellbeing (w ho-3) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) job insecurity -0.239*** -0.193*** -0.199*** -0.214*** -0.155*** -0.147*** (0.041) (0.042) (0.042) (0.055) (0.051) (0.054) value dimensions security -0.053*** -0.010 -0.053*** -0.085*** -0.029 -0.085** (0.026) (0.023) (0.018) (0.036) (0.043) (0.036) stimulation 0.005 0.004 -0.017 0.172*** 0.171*** 0.136*** (0.017) (0.017) (0.018) (0.025) (0.025) (0.030) interactions job insecurity value dimensions job insecurity*security -0.134*** -0.172** (0.041) (0.060) job insecurity*stimulation 0.064** 0.107** (0.027) (0.046) constant 5.554** 5.524** 5.529** 9.757*** 9.718*** 9.716*** (0.979) (0.973) (0.984) (1.144) (1.136) (1.143) observations 24828 24828 24828 24831 24831 24831 r-squared 0.292 0.293 0.292 0.124 0.125 0.124 *** p<0.01; ** p<0.05; * p<0.1 throughout the different model specifications, the coefficient associated with job insecurity is negative and significant at the 1% level, indicating that job insecurity in itself is associated with lower levels of life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing. model 1, with life satisfaction as the dependent variable, indicates that the value dimension “security” is negatively correlated with life satisfaction (𝛽= -0.053, p<0.01), whereas there is no significant relationship between the value dimension “stimulation” and life satisfaction. excluding either one of these value dimensions from the model has no significant effect on the results. the coefficient associated with the interaction effect between job insecurity and the value dimension “security” (model 2) is negative (𝛽= -0.134, p<0.01), indicating that the more individuals in an insecure employment emphasise “security” values, the lower is their life satisfaction. model 3 indicates that also the value dimension “stimulation” is moderating the relationship between job insecurity and life satisfaction, but in the opposite direction as compared to the value dimension “security”: the coefficient associated with the interaction between job insecurity and the value dimension why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 “stimulation” is positive ( 𝛽 = 0.064, p<0.05). thus, individuals who score high on the “stimulation” value dimension tend to report higher levels of life satisfaction when faced with job insecurity. models with subjective wellbeing (who-3) as the dependent variable provide further support for the notion that “security” and “stimulation” values moderate the relationship between job insecurity and subjective wellbeing, but in opposite directions. according to model 5, individuals who emphasise “security” values also tend to report lower levels of subjective wellbeing when faced with job insecurity ( 𝛽 = -0.172, p<0.05), whereas individuals who emphasise “stimulation” values tend to report higher levels of subjective wellbeing in a situation when they evaluate their employment relationship as being insecure ( 𝛽 = 0.107, p<0.05). a number of sensitivity tests support the results from the models in table 1. to check for possible outliers, models 2, 3, 5 and 6 were re-estimated using a jack-knife procedure omitting first one country, then every possible combination of two countries. throughout these sensitivity tests, the coefficients associated with the interaction between job insecurity and the value dimension “security” with life satisfaction as the dependent variable (model 2) are negative, with over 97% of the coefficients being significant at the 1% level and the remaining being significant at the 5% level. the smallest coefficient (absolute value) is -0.102 (when lithuania is excluded, together with either poland, portugal or slovenia) and the largest coefficient is -0.170 (when the czech republic and germany are excluded). the same interactions with who-3 as the dependent variable (model 5) are also rather insensitive to the exclusion of countries: when one or any combination of two countries is excluded, all coefficients are significant on at least the 5% level, and 40% of the coefficients are significant at the 1% level. the smallest coefficient (absolute value) is -0.127 (when the czech republic and slovakia are excluded), and the largest coefficient is -0.218 (when greece is excluded). furthermore, all coefficients associated with the interaction between job insecurity and value dimension “stimulation” with life satisfaction as the dependent variable (model 3) are positive and significant on at least the 10% level, and 81% of the coefficients are significant at the 1% or 5% level. the largest coefficient is 0.081 (when ireland and poland are excluded), and the smallest coefficient is 0.038 (when lithuania and slovakia are excluded). however, sensitivity tests for the same interactions with who-3 as the dependent variable (model 6) show that five coefficients are not significant (when the czech republic is excluded, together with switzerland, denmark, france, great britain or slovakia). however, all these coefficients have a p-value below 0.12 and are thus close to being significant at the 10% level. the same sensitivity tests also indicate that six of the coefficients are significant at the 1% level (when belgium is excluded, together with the czech republic, lithuania, the netherlands, poland, and turkey, and when lithuania is excluded, together with portugal). sensitivity tests also indicate that including other value dimensions in the models has very little impact on the regression coefficients of interest. when any combination of up to four of the other value dimensions (i.e., self-direction, hedonism and the combined value dimensions conformity and tradition, universalism and benevolence, and power and achievement) are included in the models, no coefficient size associated with the interaction variables is differing by more than 8% and all coefficients are within the significance levels reported in table 1. finally, the models in table 1 can also be estimated using hierarchical (or multilevel) linear regression models with random (instead of fixed) effects at the country level. such models show very similar results to the models presented in table 1, with no coefficient size associated why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 with the interaction variables differing by more than 2% and all coefficients being within the significance levels reported in table 1. in a simple linear-additive regression, the effect of a variable x on the dependent variable y is simply its coefficient, βx. however, the interaction terms of interactive models have multiple effects, and to assess properly the full effect of such interaction terms, we must consider simultaneously how they affect the coefficients of the single variables that comprise the interaction terms, as well as how the coefficient of the interaction term depends on the other values of the other variables with which it interacts. figures 3a-d (below) therefore present predicted values (together with 95% confidence intervals) from models 2, 3, 5, and 6 from table 1, where the value dimensions “security” and “stimulation” have been standardised to vary between 0 and 1. figures 3a and 3c illustrate that for individuals who evaluate their employment relationship as being secure, predicted levels of life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing (who-3) are rather insensitive to how these individuals score on the value dimension “security” (dotted lines). however, for individuals experiencing job insecurity, their levels of life satisfaction and wellbeing become significantly lower the more they emphasise “security” values (solid lines). individuals in an insecure employment relationship who place a low value on “security” values actually have predicted higher levels of life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing than individuals who do not experience job insecurity, although this difference is not significant. the importance of human values as moderating factors is perhaps even more striking for the value dimension “stimulation.” figure 3b shows that predicted levels of life satisfaction are rather insensitive to how individuals in a secure employment relationship score on the value dimension “stimulation” (dotted line). individuals who evaluate their employment relationship as being insecure (solid line), however, experience higher predicted levels of life satisfaction the more they emphasise “stimulation” values, up to a point where there is no significant difference in predicted levels of life satisfaction between this group and individuals who evaluate their employment relationship as being secure. figure 3d shows that predicted levels of subjective wellbeing (who-3) increase markedly for individuals in a secure employment relationship the more individuals in this group emphasise stimulation values. but since the subjective wellbeing of individuals in an insecure employment relationship increases even more strongly, the wellbeing of individuals in secure and insecure employment relationships, respectively, is converging and is at roughly the same (predicted) level as high scores on the “stimulation” value dimension. what, then, is the societal relevance of these effects? in figure 3a (corresponding to model 2), around 12% of individuals experiencing job insecurity score so low on the “security” value dimension that their life satisfaction is not significantly worse (at the 5% level) than individuals in a secure employment relationship. the corresponding figure for subjective wellbeing (who3, figure 3c) is 22%. in figure 3b, around 6% of individuals who experience job insecurity score so high on the “stimulation” value dimension that there is no significant difference in life satisfaction between this group and individuals in a secure employment relationship. the corresponding figure for subjective wellbeing (who-3, figure 3d) is around 23%. why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 11 11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 0 1 w h o -3 stimulation 3d. stimulation and who-3 secure insecure 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 0 1 l if e s a ts if a c ti o n security 3a. security and life satisfaction secure insecure 11 11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 0 1 w h o -3 security 3c. secur ity and who-3 secure insecure 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 0 1 l if e s a ti sf a c ti o n stimulation 3b. stimulation and life satisfaction secure insecure why some employees might thrive on job insecurity sjöberg www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 5. discussion and conclusion the theoretical framework presented here has provided important new insights into the relationship between job insecurity, life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing. the empirical analyses confirm the conclusion from previous research that job insecurity is negatively related to both life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing. however, these analyses also demonstrate that the extent to which job insecurity is related to life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing is conditional upon individual value orientations. the more individuals experiencing job insecurity hold “security” values and the more they are motivated to avoid uncertainty and resist change, the stronger is the negative effect of job insecurity on their life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing. this is hardly surprising. a more intriguing conclusion is that the more people hold “stimulation” values and the more they are motivated by a desire to take on challenges in life and to seek variety, the smaller is the effect of job insecurity on life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing, up to a point where there is no difference in these two outcomes between people who experience job insecurity and those who do not. between 6% and 23% of individuals experiencing job insecurity score so high on the “stimulation” value dimension, alternatively score so low on the “security” value dimension, that there is no significant difference in life satisfaction or subjective wellbeing between this group and individuals who are not experiencing job insecurity. one obvious limitation of the research design in this study is that data is cross-sectional, which makes it difficult to discern cause-effect relationships (de witte et al., 2016). another potential limitation is related to what in the literature has been known as the “reinforcement hypothesis,” which basically argues that rewards obtained on the job grow in importance over time, whereas the absence of particular job rewards lessens their value over time. the implication of this hypothesis for the current study is that the presence of job insecurity over time would lessen “security” values and reinforce “stimulation” values. if “stimulation” in itself is associated with higher life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing, this could bias the results presented here. however, as argued by rokeach (1968), a minimal level of value stability is necessary for the continuity of personality. this implies that values are relatively stable over time, which would reduce potential bias caused by such reinforcement effects. an important question for future research is how human values relate to psychological resources such as locus of control, self-esteem, and optimism. in this study, we have consistently used the term “psychological resources,” as we adhere to the view that such resources are more states than traits and therefore they are also amenable to change over time. theoretically, there are reasons to believe that human values are a more fundamental characteristic of people than many psychological resources. however, this has yet to be empirically tested, as has the question of whether human values, as defined in this study, may be seen as a fundamental source of such psychological resources. author ola sjöberg stockholm university 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(2019). the determinants of life satisfaction in serbia: findings from the gallup world poll. international journal of wellbeing, 9(1), 43-60. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i1.751 veljko jovanović university of novi sad veljko.jovanovic@ff.uns.ac.rs copyright belongs to the author(s) 43 article the determinants of life satisfaction in serbia: findings from the gallup world poll veljko jovanović · mohsen joshanloo abstract: research on life satisfaction in non-western countries has grown somewhat in recent years, but still lags far behind that of developed countries. the present study was aimed at investigating determinants of life satisfaction in serbia, a developing country that has experienced a number of difficulties over the past three decades. a large, representative serbian sample (a total of 11,618 participants; 54.6% females, mage = 47.02) from the gallup world poll was used. the results showed substantial gender differences in life satisfaction only among the oldest old (aged 81-99), with elderly women reporting substantially lower life satisfaction than elderly men (cohen’s d = 0.38). life satisfaction showed a steady, progressive decline among women, whereas men’s life satisfaction declined until approximately 50 years of age, and then remained relatively stable. the relationship between income and life satisfaction was positive, but much stronger at lower income levels. robust predictors of life satisfaction in both men and women and across age groups were satisfaction with standard of living and household income, negative affect, and social support. keywords: life satisfaction, serbia, age, gender, gallup world poll 1. introduction subjective wellbeing (swb) has become one of the most lively and rapidly developing research areas in the field of social sciences over the past three decades. swb is typically defined in terms of two components that capture an individual’s subjective evaluations about life: cognitive (i.e., life satisfaction) and affective (positive affect and negative affect) (diener & ryan, 2009). a great deal of research has been devoted to the understanding of the nature of swb (busseri & sadava, 2011), its predictors (galinha & pais-ribeiro, 2011), and its potential benefits (de neve, diener, tay, & xuereb, 2013; diener & chan, 2011). moreover, many leading authors in the field have debated the importance of swb for public policy decisions and its value as a measure of social progress (e.g., dolan & metcalfe, 2012; easterlin, 2013; oishi & diener, 2014). although increasing attention has been paid to investigating swb across different cultural contexts (tov & diener, 2007), the vast majority of studies on predictors of life satisfaction have been conducted on weird (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic; henrich, heine, & norenzayan, 2010) samples. on the other hand, detailed research on wellbeing in developing countries still lags behind research in developed and english-speaking countries. the present study is the first to use the large data set from the gallup world poll (gwp) to investigate predictors of swb in serbia. there may be many important reasons for wellbeing researchers to study life satisfaction in under-researched countries. most conclusions about life satisfaction, and wellbeing generally, life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 44 have been based on the findings in western countries, and are usually assumed to hold true for people in most, if not all countries (e.g., lomas, 2015). this universalist perspective fails to recognize that determinants of wellbeing may have different importance for people across different countries, which might also lead to different policy implications. to help us understand whether factors found to be important for life satisfaction in western countries are universally applicable across cultures, research comprising individuals from different socioeconomic background needs to be executed. 1.1 subjective wellbeing in serbia serbia is a developing country located in southeast europe’s balkan peninsula, with a population of approximately 7 million people, and it was a part of the federal republic of yugoslavia until its breakup in 1991. given the turbulence of the past few decades (e.g., the war in former yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995, sanctions during the 1990s, hyperinflation, the nato bombing in 1999, the overthrow of the milošević regime in 2000, etc.), the issue of serbians’ quality of life and wellbeing deserves careful inspection. a rough sketch of swb in serbia over the past decade can be drawn from reports that use data from large-scale, international studies of wellbeing and quality of life. these studies have consistently shown that levels of swb and quality of life in serbia are among the lowest in europe. for example, the european quality of life survey 2012 (eurofound, 2012) conducted in 34 european countries found that serbia ranked 28th in life satisfaction, with the inhabitants of serbia rating their life satisfaction at 6.3 on average (on a scale from 1 to 10), compared with an average of 7.1 found in eu countries. similar results have been reported in the most recent edition of the world happiness report (helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2018), with an average life satisfaction in serbia of 5.398 (on a scale from 0 to 10) during the period 2015-2017. this ranks serbia 78th out of the 156 countries included in the report, with average life satisfaction similar to the other countries of the former yugoslavia (bosnia and herzegovina, croatia, macedonia, montenegro, and slovenia) but well below developed european countries such as norway and austria. according to the gallup-healthways global well-being index for 2014 (gallup, 2015), only 15.3% people in serbia are thriving in three or more wellbeing elements (purpose, social, financial, community, and physical), which is below the global average of 17%. despite discouraging results about the levels of wellbeing among those living in serbia, there is a lack of studies aimed at trying to explain these findings. however, due to poor socioeconomic and political conditions in serbia over the past few decades, relatively low levels of wellbeing are not surprising. for example, the state of the economy in serbia is characterized by frequent recessions, a high unemployment rate (especially among youth), high levels of poverty (the world bank group, 2015), and high income inequality (krstić, 2016). in addition, institutional corruption in serbia is widespread (clds, 2014), the quality of the health system is among the worst in europe (health consumer powerhouse, 2016), human rights violations are pervasive (belgrade centre for human rights, 2017), and the level of social capital is rather low (legatum institute, 2017). despite these adverse conditions, no study to date has examined the associations between socio-economic conditions and swb in serbia using representative samples. life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 45 1.2 predictors of life satisfaction research into predictors of swb has revealed a complex network of socio-demographic, political, economic, cultural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal factors associated with life satisfaction. most pioneering studies have been interested in external and situational factors influencing life satisfaction and they have come to the surprising conclusion that sociodemographic variables (e.g., age, education, marital status, income) have only a limited predictive value for explaining an individual’s life satisfaction (veenhoven, 2015). however, the conclusions about the small effects of objective living conditions on life satisfaction have probably been misinterpreted. as lucas and diener (2015) argue, “[t]he very fact that we can come up with a large list of such intuitively appealing predictors means that the size of any one of those effects likely will be small. as should be obvious, the more predictors there are of a single criterion, the smaller the association between any one predictor and that criterion can be” (p. 585). this implies that a thorough investigation of life satisfaction determinants needs to include a broad range of socio-demographic variables, since many of them, despite small statistical effects, have a meaningful contribution to an understanding of life satisfaction. as previously noted, most wellbeing studies take a universalist stance, assuming that predictors of life satisfaction may be context-free. however, it has been found that the significance of many specific predictors of swb varies across cultures, i.e., that the relationship between swb and both internal and external factors is often moderated by socio-cultural context. for example, income has been shown to play an important role in determining swb in both within-country and between-country analyses (sacks, stevenson, & wolfers, 2012), but the relationship between economic status and swb has been found to be stronger among poorer countries (howell & howell, 2008; but see sacks et al., 2012 for a different view). similarly, religiosity has been found to be associated with higher swb (stavrova, fetchenhauer, & schlösser, 2013), but this appears to be true only for countries experiencing adverse socioeconomic conditions, whereas in countries with favorable circumstances, religiosity and swb are not correlated (diener, tay, & myers, 2011). recently, ng and diener (2014) have revealed that the relationships between swb and both financial satisfaction and post-materialist needs (autonomy, respect, social support) were stronger in affluent nations than in poorer ones. previous studies have also indicated a complex relationship between age and swb across different countries. although most studies have found a u-shaped relationship between life satisfaction and age, with the lowest levels of life satisfaction in middle adulthood (cheng, powdthavee, & oswald, 2017), this does not hold for all regions of the world. for example, a steady decline of life satisfaction with age has been reported for individuals from eastern europe, the former soviet union, and latin america (steptoe, deaton, & stone, 2015). furthermore, the results regarding the relationships between socio-demographic variables and swb have often been inconsistent, and probably the best example of this inconsistency is research on gender differences in swb (for a detailed review, see batz & tay, 2018). to sum up, these studies highlight the importance of understanding swb in relation to the socio-cultural context, and emphasize the need to examine the factors associated with swb across different nations or cultures, since the results obtained in a single country cannot be generalized to other countries. 1.3 the present study to date, no research on life satisfaction in serbia has been conducted using representative samples, and the determinants of life satisfaction in serbia remain largely unknown. the life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 46 limited number of research findings about swb in serbia limits comparability with the results of research conducted in other countries. this also hinders the development of a debate about the policy implications of research on wellbeing in serbia, as there is no solid empirical base about the state of wellbeing among serbian inhabitants. the main goal of the present study was to examine predictors of life satisfaction using large, representative serbian samples from the gwp. we investigated: (a) age and gender differences in life satisfaction; and (b) the predictive value of socio-demographic variables, domain satisfactions, needs satisfaction, affective wellbeing (positive and negative affect) and some indicators of social capital in predicting life satisfaction. given the lack of research on life satisfaction in serbia, our expectations have been derived from previous cross-cultural studies that included countries with a similar socio-economic background to serbia. first, in accordance with previous findings which have shown that positive affect, income, and social support are robust predictors of life satisfaction across different cultures (for a review, see diener, lucas, & oishi, 2018), we expected these well-known predictors to be positively associated with life satisfaction in serbia. second, similar to findings in other post-communist countries (e.g., steptoe et al., 2015), we expected that life satisfaction would decline with age. third, as previous studies have demonstrated that the positive associations between indicators of social capital and life satisfaction were weaker in lowand middle-income countries than in rich countries (calvo, zheng, kumar, olgiati, & berkman, 2012), we hypothesized that social capital indicators included in the present study would have significant, but weak association with life satisfaction in serbia. finally, socio-demographic variables (except age and income) were expected to yield weak or non-significant associations with life satisfaction (e.g., diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999). to evaluate whether there were gender and age differences in the predictors of life satisfaction, separate analyses were conducted for men and women, and for different age groups. 2. method 2.1 participants the data were from the gallup world poll (gwp), which has collected nationally representative samples from serbia since 2007. each year, participants (aged 15 and older) have been contacted via landline and/or mobile telephones for participation in the survey. sample sizes are about 1,000 for each year, except for the year 2007, with a sample of 1,556. we used all available data from 2007 to 2017 in the present analyses, consisting of 11,618 participants (54.6% females, mage = 47.02, sdage = 17.38). the age distribution is shown in figure 1 below. life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 47 figure 1. age distribution 2.2 measures we used several items from the collection of gallup world poll items. these items measure variables that are generally identified in the literature as relevant predictors of swb. the items and their response formats are presented in the supplementary material (see table a). included was the cantril ladder of life scale (cantril, 1965) to measure life satisfaction, which is the main outcome of the present study. given that the intercorrelations between the items were weak, all of the items were used separately as variables. however, we were able to calculate and use three composite variables, based on the results of separate reliability and factor analyses. the results of a principal axis factoring showed that stress, worry, sadness, and anger formed a single factor (eigenvalue = 2.02, variance explained = 50.37%), with factor loadings ranging from .52 to .61 (α = .67). laughter and enjoyment formed a single factor (eigenvalue = 1.45, variance explained = 72.49%), with factor loadings of .67 (α = .62). finally, perceptions of corruption in businesses and the government also formed a single factor (eigenvalue = 1.60, variance explained = 80.11%), with factor loadings of .77 (α = .75). 3. results 3.1 life satisfaction by age and gender the results showed that there was no substantial gender difference in life satisfaction (cohen’s d = 0.00; for both males and females m = 4.95, sd = 2.21). figure 2 below shows the distribution of life satisfaction by age and gender. locally weighted smoothing (loess) was used in the scatter graphs for a more accurate representation of the data. the graph shows that life satisfaction declines with age in serbia. a steady progressive decline of life satisfaction is evident among women, whereas men’s life satisfaction shows a steady decline until approximately 50 years of age, and remains relatively stable afterwards. a detailed inspection of gender differences in life satisfaction across age (see table b in the supplementary material) indicated that the largest differences were found among the oldest old (aged 81-99), with elderly women reporting substantially lower life satisfaction than elderly men (cohen’s d = 0.38). life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 48 figure 2. life satisfaction by age and gender as a supplementary analysis, we also looked at gender differences in affect. the results showed that women reported higher negative affect than men, but a small effect size was found (cohen’s d = 0.13; mfemales = 0.36, sdfemales = 0.33, mmales = 0.32, sdmales = 0.32). no gender difference was found in positive affect (cohen’s d = 0.01; mfemales = 0.49, sdfemales = 0.43, mmales = 0.49, sdmales = 0.42). 3.2 explaining gender differences in life satisfaction across age in an attempt to explain the gender patterns observed in life satisfaction in serbia, we looked at the distributions of some of the predictors of wellbeing across age and gender. figure 3 below shows the distributions of six variables, which partially explains why life satisfaction is lower in women than men at advanced ages. over the age of 50, women are less educated than men, and are less satisfied with their standard of living and household income than men. they also experience more worry, sadness, and health problems than men at advanced ages. life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 49 figure 3. age and gender patterns in the predictors of life satisfaction 3.3 demographic predictors of life satisfaction in addition to the analysis of age and gender, we also examined the contribution of other important demographic variables. table 1 presents the results of seven separate anovas, using demographic variables as independent variables explaining life satisfaction. for religious affiliation, several categories with very small sample sizes (e.g., “hinduism” and “atheist”) were combined with the “other” category. the strongest predictor of life satisfaction was income quintiles (explaining 7.2% of the variance), followed by education (explaining 4.9% of the variance), and relationship status (explaining 3.9% of the variance). as shown in table 1 (see also figure a in the supplementary material), low-income, less educated, and divorced and widowed individuals were less satisfied than high-income, more educated, and individuals with other relationship statuses. table 1. anova results predicting life satisfaction m sd n employment employed full time for an employer 5.51 2.00 2696 df = 5, 8002 employed full time for self 4.86 2.32 604 f = 36.15 employed part time, do not want full time 5.34 2.22 354 p < .001 unemployed 4.42 2.34 271 partial η2 = .022 employed part time, want full time 4.87 2.21 374 out of workforce 4.85 2.32 3709 total 5.08 2.25 8008 education elementary 4.17 2.29 2370 df = 2, 10537 secondary 5.04 2.12 6610 f = 268.98 tertiary (four years beyond high school) 5.76 2.09 1560 p < .001 total 4.95 2.21 10540 partial η2 = .049 life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 50 location rural or farm 4.60 2.24 3163 df = 3, 10475 small town or village 4.95 2.20 3605 f = 53.97 large city 5.30 2.14 3219 p < .001 suburb of a large city 4.90 2.25 492 partial η2 = .015 total 4.95 2.21 10479 religious affiliation christian 4.99 2.23 8330 df = 2, 9011 muslim 4.99 2.13 375 f = 1.74 other 5.24 2.36 309 p = .175 total 5.00 2.24 9014 partial η2 = .000 relationship status single 5.59 2.12 2530 df = 5, 10431 married 4.90 2.14 5731 f = 85.56 separated 4.61 2.22 249 p < .001 divorced 4.26 2.47 436 partial η2 = .039 widow 4.22 2.24 1322 domestic 5.10 2.35 169 total 4.95 2.21 10437 income quintiles 1 poorest 20% 4.08 2.27 1565 df = 4, 9009 2 second 20% 4.57 2.21 1733 f = 175.12 3 middle 20% 5.01 2.17 1749 p < .001 4 fourth 20% 5.24 2.11 1881 partial η2 = .072 5 richest 20% 5.84 2.04 2086 total 5.00 2.24 9014 country of birth born in serbia 5.00 2.23 8176 df = 1, 8991 born in another country 5.00 2.33 817 f = 0.01 total 5.00 2.24 8993 p = .936 partial η2 = .000 employment status explained 2.2% of the variance, with individuals who were employed full time for an employer and those who were employed part time with no intention to have a fulltime job being the most satisfied. location explained 1.5% of the variance, with people living in large cities being more satisfied than those living in other locations. religious affiliation and country of birth were not significant predictors. an overall anova including all of the seven variables showed that the variables collectively explained about 12.5% of the variance in life satisfaction. when entered alongside each other, the unique contributions of the variables were reduced to .5%, .9%, .1%, 0%, 3.3%, 4.3%, 0% for employment, education, location, religious affiliation, relationship status, income quintile, and birth country, respectively. 3.4 regression analysis we used all of the predictors of life satisfaction, along with important demographic variables, in a multiple regression analysis, using the enter method. a total sample of 5,738 participants had no missing values on all of the 28 variables and were included in the analysis. the results are shown in table 2 below. life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 51 table 2. results of regression analysis b 95% ci for b t p β rsp (constant) 2.45 (2.16, 2.79) 15.36 .000 female 0.07 (-.03, .17) 1.34 .180 .02 .01 age -0.02 (-.02, -.01) -9.43 .000 -.13 -.10 age squared 0.00 (.00, .00) 1.31 .191 .02 .01 negative affect -0.78 (-.96, -.61) -8.87 .000 -.11 -.09 positive affect 0.49 (.35, .64) 6.86 .000 .09 .07 health problems -0.28 (-.40, -.16) -4.43 .000 -.06 -.05 hh income satisfaction 0.51 (.45, .57) 15.74 .000 .20 .17 satisfied with standard of living 0.88 (.77, 1.00) 14.76 .000 .19 .15 satisfied with healthcare 0.14 (.04, .25) 2.68 .007 .03 .03 satisfied with housing 0.07 (-.04, .17) 1.24 .214 .01 .01 confidence in government -0.11 (-.22, -.00) -1.99 .047 -.02 -.02 corruption -0.06 (-.20, .07) -0.93 .351 -.01 -.01 city satisfaction 0.25 (.14, .36) 4.40 .000 .05 .05 helped 0.06 (-.05, .17) 1.03 .305 .01 .01 volunteered 0.14 (-.08, .35) 1.25 .213 .01 .01 donated 0.21 (.09, .32) 3.56 .000 .04 .04 religion important 0.07 (-.03, .17) 1.44 .149 .02 .02 social support 0.59 (.46, .73) 8.85 .000 .10 .09 mastery 0.09 (-.02, .20) 1.61 .107 .02 .02 freedom 0.16 (.05, .26) 2.88 .004 .034 .03 safe at night 0.08 (-.03, .19) 1.41 .159 .016 .02 respect 0.00 (-.13, .14) 0.02 .985 .000 .00 education 0.14 (.05, .23) 3.08 .002 .037 .03 unemployed -0.50 (-.75, -.24) -3.79 .000 -.040 -.04 large city -0.03 (-.13, .08) -0.48 .632 -.005 -.01 widow -0.10 (-.26, .07) -1.18 .239 -.015 -.01 divorced -0.09 (-.32, .14) -0.78 .434 -.008 -.01 note: hh = household income, ci = confidence interval, rsp = semipartial correlation the predictors collectively explained about 37.5% of the variance in life satisfaction, f(27, 5710) = 127.01, p < .001, r2 = .375. thirteen out of 27 variables were not significant predictors of life satisfaction at the .05 level. based on the results of a separate stepwise regression analysis, household income satisfaction was the strongest predictor, explaining about 20.8% of the variance. the second strongest predictor was satisfaction with standard of living, contributing an additional 6.1%. age, negative affect, positive affect, and social support came next, explaining 4.1%, 2.5%, 1.2%, and 1.1%, respectively. these six variables jointly explained 36% of the variance in life satisfaction scores. the other variables collectively added about 1.5% of additional variance. based on the results of the stepwise regression, gender, squared age, satisfaction with housing, confidence in the government, perceptions of corruption, helping behavior, volunteering, religiosity, mastery, feeling safe at night, feeling respected, living in a large city, and being a widow or divorced did not contribute significantly over and above other variables and were therefore excluded from the equation. we also conducted regression analyses separately across age and gender groups, using the enter procedure, the results of which are shown in tables 3 and 4 below. life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 52 table 3. unstandardized regression coefficients for age and gender groups gender age group male female 15–24 25–44 45–64 65+ (constant) 2.60*** 2.47*** 4.01*** 2.83*** 1.95*** 2.19*** female 0.17 0.07 -0.00 0.11 age -0.02*** -0.02*** age squared 0.00 0.00 negative affect -0.69*** -0.86*** -0.75** -0.69*** -0.65*** -1.15*** positive affect 0.50*** 0.50*** 0.22 0.39** 0.56*** 0.82*** health problems -0.30** -0.26** -0.43 -0.25 -0.34*** -0.16 hh income satisfaction 0.56*** 0.47*** 0.37*** 0.41*** 0.57*** 0.62*** satisfied with standard of living 0.87*** 0.89*** 1.19*** 0.90*** 0.83*** 0.82*** satisfied with healthcare 0.08 0.19** 0.06 0.07 0.25** 0.11 satisfied with housing 0.06 0.08 -0.06 0.13 0.06 0.03 confidence in government -0.13 -0.09 -0.06 -0.13 -0.13 -0.10 corruption -0.11 -0.03 -0.20 -0.03 -0.17 0.04 city satisfaction 0.26** 0.26** 0.27 0.27** 0.34** 0.00 helped 0.00 0.11 0.06 0.02 0.04 0.22 volunteered 0.10 0.17 0.52* 0.10 -0.29 0.42 donated 0.13 0.26** 0.33* 0.20* 0.25* 0.00 religion important 0.07 0.08 0.12 -0.09 0.16 0.20 social support 0.51*** 0.67*** 0.86** 0.50*** 0.69*** 0.47** mastery 0.26** -0.05 0.26 0.02 0.05 0.26 freedom 0.12 0.19** 0.06 0.24* 0.14 0.09 safe at night 0.02 0.11 0.14 0.02 0.07 0.13 respect -0.03 0.02 -0.01 0.24* -0.14 -0.16 education 0.10 0.18** -0.33* 0.20* 0.32*** 0.02 unemployed -0.55** -0.46** -0.61* -0.42* -0.57* 0.13 large city 0.01 -0.06 -0.03 -0.09 -0.02 0.10 widow -0.23 -0.05 -1.08 -0.18 -0.14 -0.07 divorced 0.11 -0.20 0.59 -0.12 -0.13 0.02 note: hh = household income. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 table 4 below also presents the five most important predictors for each group, based on separate regression analyses using the stepwise procedure for each group. we used four age categories, to represent emerging adulthood (15-24), young adulthood (25-44), middle adulthood (45-64), and late adulthood (65 and older). the age categorization was based on previous work by steger, oishi and kashdan (2009), inspired by the classic works of erikson (1968) and arnett (2000). the results revealed that there were some slight differences in the predictors of life satisfaction across the age and gender groups, yet similarities are much more apparent than differences. life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 53 table 4. regression results across age and gender groups r2 f df most important predictors gender male .362 55.62 26, 2554 hh income, swsl, age, pa, na female .390 77.12 26, 3130 hh income, swsl, age, pa, na age group 15–24 .370 13.15 25, 559 swsl, hh income, social support, na, mastery 25–44 .295 32.38 25, 1938 swsl, hh income, social support, na, pa 45–64 .356 43.57 25, 1974 swsl, hh income, social support, na, pa 65+ .364 26.59 25, 1163 swsl, hh income, social support, na, pa note: the estimates come from regression analyses using the method of enter. the important predictors come from separate regression analyses using the stepwise method. swsl = satisfaction with standard of living; hh income = satisfaction with household income; pa = positive affect; na = negative affect. 3.5 relationship between household income and life satisfaction the relationship between per capita annual household income (in international dollars) and life satisfaction is shown in figure 4. incomes higher than $40,000 are rare and not included in the graph. as can be seen, at extremely low levels of income, the relationship between income and life satisfaction is very strong. at higher levels of income, the relationship is still positive but it constantly becomes less steep with increasing income. figure 4. the relationship between annual household income (in international dollars) and life satisfaction in serbia 4. discussion the main goal of the present study was to investigate the main predictors of life satisfaction in serbia using representative samples from the gallup world poll (gwp) in the period from 2007 to 2017. the results of the present study revealed no gender differences in life satisfaction when the analysis was conducted using the total sample. however, a more detailed inspection of the results, which took into consideration the participants’ age, showed that this did not hold true in late adulthood. gender differences in life satisfaction become evident in late adulthood life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 54 among the oldest old, with elderly women reporting substantially lower life satisfaction then elderly men. a number of factors may explain gender differences in life satisfaction among the elderly, such as a greater number of health problems, higher levels of negative emotions, and lower satisfaction with income and standard of living among elderly women in comparison to elderly men. these results are in accordance with the explanations for gender differences in swb offered by batz and tay (2018), who suggest that inequalities between men and women in access to educational, economic, and social resources might lead to lower life satisfaction among women who experience greater disadvantages in comparison to men. findings from serbia show that, indeed, women do have a lower rate of economic activity and a higher unemployment rate than men (šobot, 2014), which probably has a detrimental effect on the fulfillment of women’s needs, especially in their later years. findings regarding the relationship between age and life satisfaction in serbia showed that men’s life satisfaction decreased with age until middle adulthood and remained stable afterwards, whereas women’s life satisfaction continued to decrease steadily with age. the well-established u-shaped relationship between age and life satisfaction found in previous cross-sectional studies (e.g., blanchflower & oswald, 2008) was not evident in the serbian data. however, our findings are in accordance with the results of studies showing that life satisfaction is u-shaped with age only in high-income and wealthy english-speaking countries, whereas many poor, middle-income, and post-communist countries show a progressive decline in life satisfaction with age (deaton, 2008; steptoe et al., 2015). it is no surprise that life satisfaction in serbia does not increase after middle age, given that older people in serbia face a number of adversities, such as poor social welfare and healthcare systems, a high poverty rate, and weak institutional support (sevo et al., 2015; rašević, 2010). in addition, elderly women in serbia are poorer than men of the same age (rašević, 2010), which might partially explain a greater decrease in life satisfaction among elderly females in the present study. the findings regarding the relationship between household income and life satisfaction revealed a strong positive association at lower levels of income that remains positive but decreases at higher levels of household income. this is in line with previous findings (frey & stutzer, 2002), and it supports the notion that once basic needs are met, further increase in income has only a limited effect on life satisfaction. among socio-demographic variables, when examined separately, income was the strongest predictor of life satisfaction, followed by education, relationship status, employment, and location. lower life satisfaction was reported among low-income, less-educated, unemployed, widowed and divorced individuals, and individuals not living in large cities. our results are in line with the findings of previous studies that examined associations between life satisfaction and income (kahneman & deaton, 2010), education (zhang, braun, & wu, 2017), unemployment (winkelmann, 2014), and marital status (verbakel, 2012). lower life satisfaction among individuals living in rural areas compared to urban areas is not surprising, given that rural areas in serbia have much lower levels of quality of life (beker et al., 2017), which is typical for poorer european countries (shucksmith, cameron, merridew, & pichler, 2009). when examined together, the socio-demographic variables explained a total of 12.5% variance in life satisfaction, with the largest unique contributions coming from income and relationship status. these findings are largely consistent with previous studies investigating the life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 55 contribution of demographic variables to life satisfaction in developing countries (camfield, 2012; rukumnuaykit & pholphirul, 2016). as noted by easterlin (2001), a positive association between happiness and income has been repeatedly found in representative national surveys, and this income-life satisfaction relationship has been one of the most robust findings in the field of wellbeing. the large significance of relationship status for life satisfaction can be explained by the high level of importance placed on the family in serbia, which has traditionally been considered a collectivistic society (hofstede, hofstede, & minkov, 2010). similar findings on the effects of marital status on life satisfaction have also been found in research on life satisfaction in collectivistic cultures, such as those found in asia (ngoo, tey, & tan, 2015). the analyses that, in addition to demographic variables, also included measures of domain satisfactions (e.g., satisfaction with household income, standard of living, healthcare, housing, place of residence), needs (e.g., social support, freedom, mastery, safety, respect), affective wellbeing, and indicators of social capital (e.g., confidence in the government, corruption, volunteering) revealed several robust predictors of life satisfaction across gender and age groups. minor differences in predictors of life satisfaction were noted among men and women and different age groups, but the similarities were much greater. satisfaction with household income and standard of living, negative affect, and social support were strong predictors of life satisfaction in all groups. in addition, positive affect was a significant predictor of life satisfaction in all groups except among emerging adults, whereas unemployment contributed significantly to life satisfaction in all groups, except among older adults. these findings are in line with previous studies that used gwp data and showed that both financial satisfaction and post-material needs were significant predictors of life satisfaction (ng & diener, 2014). among the post-material needs, only social support was a consistent predictor of life satisfaction in both genders and across age groups, and it supported the crucial role of interpersonal relationships in human wellbeing. previous studies have also found that social support was a robust predictor of life satisfaction across different periods of life (siedlecki, salthouse, oishi, & jeswani, 2014). strong associations between life satisfaction and both positive and negative emotions are not surprising, given that they are components of the overarching construct of swb. previous studies have shown that positive and negative emotions are among the strongest predictors of life satisfaction (kööts-ausmees, realo, & allik, 2012), and some authors (e.g., davern, cummins, & stokes, 2007) even argue that swb is primarily an affective construct. it is important to note that negative affect had a somewhat greater unique contribution in predicting life satisfaction than positive affect across both genders and all age groups. these results are not in accordance with kuppens and colleagues (kuppens, realo, & diener, 2008), who, in a cross-national study, found that positive emotions were more strongly associated with life satisfaction than negative emotions. however, these differences should be interpreted with caution, because measures of affect and life satisfaction were not the same in our study and the study conducted by kuppens and colleagues. positive affect in the present study was assessed using only two indicators (enjoyment and laughter), whereas negative affect was measured using a broader range of experiences (worry, sadness, stress, and anger). this might life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 56 have led to a weaker unique contribution of positive affect in comparison to negative affect in predicting life satisfaction. some ageand gender-specific predictors of life satisfaction were observed in the present study. for example, volunteering was positively associated with life satisfaction only among emerging adults (aged 15-24), and perceived freedom and respect only among young adults (aged 25-44), whereas satisfaction with healthcare was a significant predictor of life satisfaction only among middle adults (aged 45-64). in addition, satisfaction with healthcare, donating behaviors, perceived freedom and education were significant predictors of life satisfaction among women but not among men. however, small effects sizes for both ageand genderspecific predictors of life satisfaction suggest that these findings should not be considered robust, and that future studies should comprehensively investigate age and gender differences in life satisfaction determinants. our findings highlight the importance of taking gender, particular needs, and the specificity of developmental periods into account when investigating life satisfaction, but they also clearly indicate that strong predictors of life satisfaction (such as affective wellbeing, satisfaction with standard of living, social support) had similar effects among men and women and among people of different ages. it is interesting to note that measures of social capital had only a limited value in predicting life satisfaction. as already noted, volunteering was associated with greater life satisfaction only among emerging adults, whereas donating behaviors were associated with greater life satisfaction among females and all age groups except older adults. on the other hand, corruption and confidence in the government were not significant predictors of life satisfaction in any of the age groups. similar findings were reported in a study conducted by jovanović (2016), who found that trust in other people was a significant predictor of life satisfaction among serbian adults, whereas institutional trust was not. this result is in accordance with previous findings that indicators of social capital and life satisfaction are more closely related in rich countries than in poorer ones (bjørnskov, 2003; calvo et al., 2012). 5. limitations and conclusions the present study has several limitations which should be addressed in future studies. first, we examined the predictive value of a broad range of variables associated with life satisfaction, but a number of important predictors of wellbeing were not included. future studies should investigate the incremental value of socio-demographic variables, needs satisfaction and measures of social capital over and beyond personality traits, which are among the most robust predictors of wellbeing (e.g., steel, schmidt, & shultz, 2008). in addition, life events should be included in research on determinants of cognitive wellbeing, as they can have both shortand long-term effects on life satisfaction (luhmann, hofmann, eid, & lucas, 2012). second, the present data did not provide the opportunity to identify relationships between wellbeing and predictors that hold within persons. therefore, future studies should use longitudinal designs to investigate causal relationships between life satisfaction and its determinants. despite these limitations, this study provides pioneering evidence on the state of and major determinants of swb in serbia by using a representative sample. our findings have both theoretical and practical implications. the results of the present study clearly show that the major predictors of life satisfaction identified in previous studies also hold true for serbia, suggesting that certain processes that underlie wellbeing are common across cultures. we should bear in mind, however, that our results about predictors of life satisfaction in serbia are life satisfaction in serbia jovanović & joshanloo 57 pioneering, and that data are not yet strong enough to warrant solid conclusions about specific policy implications. yet, our findings do provide some general policy-relevant suggestions. for example, the results showing that both material (e.g., household income) and sociopsychological factors (e.g., social support, freedom) matter for life satisfaction in serbia, indicate that policy makers interested in improving wellbeing should not focus exclusively on economic and material processes (e.g., reducing unemployment and increasing wages). unfortunately, wellbeing surveys are not currently used for policy purposes in serbia. the accumulation of reliable knowledge and well-confirmed conclusions about wellbeing in serbia appears essential for initiating public 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(2019). positive psychology interventions in patients with medical illness: what predicts improvement in psychological state? international journal of wellbeing, 9(2), 27-40. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i2.795 jeff huffman massachusetts general hospital jhuffman@mgh.harvard.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) 27 positive psychology interventions in patients with medical illness: what predicts improvement in psychological state? emily h. feig · brian c. healy · christopher m. celano · gholam reza nikrahan judith t. moskowitz · jeff c. huffman abstract: positive psychology interventions (ppis) have been shown to promote wellbeing in individuals with medical illness, although it is still unknown whether certain patient characteristics make participants more likely to benefit from such interventions. the present study tested whether, using individual patient data across five published ppi studies (three single-arm proof-of-concept trials, one non-randomized controlled trial, and one randomized controlled trial) in medically-ill persons, sociodemographic or psychological factors predicted subsequent change in wellbeing. in 208 participants, lower baseline psychological wellbeing and optimism, and higher symptoms of depression and anxiety were associated with greater improvement in psychological symptoms during the ppi. other factors were unrelated to symptom changes. in a sub-analysis of controlled studies, there were no group differences in the relationship between baseline factors and changes in wellbeing from preto post-intervention. findings suggest that patients with more severe psychiatric and/or medical comorbidity are no less likely to benefit from a ppi compared to those with higher levels of health, even though these programs do not directly target psychological distress. ppis may be widely applicable to medical patients, with lower psychological wellbeing a potential predictor of increased benefit. keywords: positive psychology, behavioral intervention, heart disease, diabetes, depression, anxiety 1. introduction positive psychology interventions (ppis) are treatment methods aiming to promote positive feelings, behaviors, and thoughts via structured activities such as expressing gratitude, performing acts of kindness, and using personal strengths (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). in healthy individuals, these interventions have consistently improved psychological wellbeing and reduced symptoms of depression (bolier et al., 2013). they differ from traditional psychological treatments that were developed to address a specific emotional or behavioral problem in that ppis can benefit individuals with and without mental disorders. the two continua model of mental illness and mental health has demonstrated that mental illness and positive mental health are related, but operate on separate continua; thus the absence of mental illness does not by definition mean one has strong positive article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 28 psychological wellbeing (keyes, 2005). ppis operate from this conceptualization; wellbeing is not just the absence of mental disorders, but also the presence of positive psychological resources (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). a growing body of literature suggests that ppis may also improve psychological wellbeing in those with medical conditions, although findings have been inconsistent, with significant variability in the type of intervention delivered and in the patient population. a meta-analysis of ppis on psychiatric and medical disorders found significant, small effect sizes of the interventions on depression and wellbeing, with no differences in effect size between medical and psychiatric populations (chakhssi, kraiss, sommers-spijkerman, & bohlmeijer, 2018). in addition to the studies reviewed in the meta-analysis, a positive affect intervention was effective in improving medication adherence in a study of 256 african american participants with hypertension, compared to an education only control (ogedegbe et al., 2012). further, a positive affect skills intervention for 159 individuals newly diagnosed with hiv led to higher levels of positive affect and less intrusive and avoidant thoughts compared to an attention-matched control up to 15 months after the intervention, but did not lead to significant differences in positive affect immediately after the intervention (moskowitz et al., 2017). on the other hand, a six-week phone ppi for non-hispanic white and nonhispanic african american veteran patients with osteoarthritis was not effective, compared to an attention-matched control on improving self-reported pain and functional difficulty (hausmann et al., 2018). psychological wellbeing in medical groups is particularly important, as it has been prospectively and independently associated with reduced mortality in those with physical illness (lamers, bolier, westerhof, smit, & bohlmeijer, 2012), a link that is potentially mediated by participation in beneficial health behaviors such as physical activity (steptoe, wright, kunz-ebrecht, & iliffe, 2006), healthy diet (giltay, geleijnse, zitman, buijsse, & kromhout, 2007; kelloniemi, ek, & laitinen, 2005), smoking abstinence (giltay et al., 2007), and medication use (leedham, meyerowitz, muirhead, & frist, 1995), and that is independent of depression. though it appears that ppis may enhance wellbeing in populations with medical illness (chakhssi et al., 2018; huffman et al., 2016; moskowitz et al., 2017; ogedegbe et al., 2012), it is unknown whether factors such as gender, age, race/ethnicity, or psychological distress moderate the effect of ppis. in a meta-analysis of 51 ppis in healthy individuals (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009), older participants and those with higher levels of depression showed more benefit. the samples in this meta-analysis were primarily younger individuals; only three of the 51 studies tested ppis in older adults. further, the interventions were delivered with the primary aim of improving psychological wellbeing. medical populations are typically older, and the goals of ppis in this group tend to focus not only on psychological wellbeing but also on health-related quality of life and health behaviors. it has yet to be tested whether these same patterns of response to ppis would emerge in a medical population, given the differences in age and life situation. understanding whether participants in the medical setting with certain characteristics respond better to pp programs would be helpful for understanding the variability in results of pp randomized controlled trials thus far, and for maximizing intervention efficacy, allowing providers to offer them to those most likely to benefit. such an approach is consistent with the increasing focus on personalized approaches to medicine. accordingly, across five ppi studies performed and published by our research team in varied medical conditions and settings, we examined, using individual patient data, whether any demographic, medical, and psychological factors predicted subsequent change in psychological predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 29 outcomes, independent of the study population. we chose to include only this set of studies, due to the relative consistency in intervention content (weekly ppi delivered in person or by phone and with accompanying treatment manual) and outcome measures, and so that we could use individual patient level data to improve power of analyses. based on prior research in healthy samples (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009), we hypothesized that older individuals, and those with higher levels of psychological distress pre-intervention, would show more improvement during the intervention. 2. method 2.1 study selection in total, our group has conducted six studies of ppis in medical populations. one of these studies was excluded from this analysis (nikrahan et al., 2016) because it did not use psychological outcome measures consistent with the other studies; thus we were unable to combine it with the other studies in the analysis. the remaining five studies are detailed below. 2.2 description of studies all studies involved instruction to complete weekly pp activities, explained by a study trainer, either in person or via phone, and written materials. participants completed the activities on their own over the week and wrote about them, with review of what they did at the next session. they did not receive reminders between sessions. while intervention content did vary in some ways between studies, they all included a core focus on teaching skills to boost positive thoughts and feelings. at the beginning, each intervention provided education on the rationale for targeting psychological wellbeing to improve health, customized for the target population of that study. all studies also included content on how to develop new skills into habits that could be sustained beyond the study end. each study was approved by the appropriate institutional review board, and all participants provided written informed consent. • positive emotions after a coronary event (peace) ii (huffman et al., 2016): this was a nonrandomized proof-of concept trial comparing an eight-week pp phone-based intervention to a treatment-as-usual control for patients after an acute coronary syndrome. the intervention included eight weekly 30-minute individual phone calls plus completion of pp activities between sessions. pp activities were based in gratitude (e.g., identifying positive events in the past week, expressing gratitude via a gratitude letter), strengths (e.g., remembering a past success, identifying and using a personal strength), and meaning (e.g., planning and engaging in acts of kindness, enjoyable and meaningful activities). participants were recruited from the inpatient cardiac floors at a u.s. academic medical center and enrolled to participate in the study after discharge. twenty-three participants received the ppi and completed follow-up data; 25 were later recruited and included in the control cohort. • peace iii (celano, albanese, et al., 2018): this was a randomized factorial trial comparing eight variations of a phone-based ppi in 128 participants after an acute coronary syndrome. participants were recruited from the inpatient cardiac floors at a u.s. academic medical center and enrolled to participate in the study after hospital discharge. the intervention included eight weekly 30-minute individual phone calls plus completion of pp activities between sessions. activities were largely the same as those in peace ii, with the addition of two more: capitalizing predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 30 on positive events and identifying humor in everyday life. half received booster sessions over the subsequent eight weeks after completing the eight-week intervention; half received an intervention combining pp with motivational interviewing to increase physical activity; and half were instructed to engage in pp activities daily, while the other half were instructed to do so weekly (although all only spoke with their interventionist once per week). there was no control condition. • optimism training intervention (mohammadi et al., 2018): this study, conducted in iran, was a randomized controlled trial of 61 participants with chronic coronary heart disease who had completed a cardiac rehabilitation program at an academic medical center. participants were randomly assigned either to an eight-week in-person group optimism training intervention (n = 31) or an attention-matched educational control condition (n = 30). each group session was two hours long; 17 positive psychological exercises were taught across the eight sessions. the intervention content had some overlap with other studies (e.g., identifying positive events in the past week), but was overall focused on optimism and used different exercises to elicit this (e.g., positive interpretations of life events, optimism in social relationships, detailing one’s best possible self and how to take steps to reach it, and using optimism at different times of day). the control condition provided extended education about cardiovascular illness and modifying risk factors. • researching emotions and cardiac health (reach; celano, freedman, beale, gomez-bernal, & huffman, 2018): this one-armed pilot trial examined a ten-week phone-based ppi in 11 outpatients with heart failure. the intervention included ten weekly 30-minute individual phone calls plus completion of pp activities between sessions. the pp activities were identical to those in peace ii, with several additional weeks devoted to integrating skills into daily life. participants were patients at a u.s. academic medical center and were recruited through primary care providers. the intervention also included a motivational interviewing component targeting health behavior engagement. there was no control condition. • positive psychology for type 2 diabetes (pp for t2d; dubois, millstein, celano, wexler, & huffman, 2016): this was a one-armed proof-of-concept trial examining an eight-week phonebased ppi in 15 participants with type 2 diabetes. the intervention included eight weekly 30minute individual phone calls plus completion of pp activities between sessions. the pp activities were identical to those in peace ii. participants were inpatients or outpatients at a u.s. academic medical center. there was no control condition. 2.3 measures questionnaires were completed at the start and end of each intervention. therefore, the length of time between baseline and follow-up measures was ten weeks for reach and eight weeks for the other studies. depression and anxiety were measured in all five studies, using the hospital anxiety and depression scale (hads; bjelland, dahl, haug, & neckelmann, 2002), which was developed to measure anxiety and depression in patients with medical illness by excluding physical/somatic symptom assessment. it includes seven items for depression (hads-d) and seven for anxiety (hads-a), with a range of scores from 0-21 for each subscale. both subscales have shown good internal consistency (m α = 0.82 for hads-d and 0.83 for hads-a; bjelland et al., 2002). predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 31 dispositional optimism was measured in all five studies using the life orientation test – revised (lot-r; range 6-24; scheier, carver, & bridges, 1994), a ten-item scale including six active and four filler items. this scale has shown good test-retest reliability and internal consistency (glaesmer et al., 2012; scheier et al., 1994). positive affect was measured in four studies (celano, albanese, et al., 2018; celano, freedman, et al., 2018; huffman et al., 2016; mohammadi et al., 2018) with the positive affect subscale of the positive and negative affect schedule (panas; range 10-50; watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988), which asks participants to rate their experience of ten types of positive affect over the past week. this measure has shown good internal consistency (α = 0.86). health-related quality of life was measured in three studies (celano, albanese, et al., 2018; celano, freedman, et al., 2018; huffman et al., 2016) with the medical outcomes study short form-12 (sf12; ware, kosinski, turner-bowker, & gandek, 2005), a 12-item questionnaire that includes both mental and physical health components (mcs and pcs) with demonstrated internal consistency (α > 0.70; luo et al., 2003). demographic and health information, including age, gender, marital status, and medical comorbidity, was collected through chart review at time of study enrollment. age and gender data were available for all five studies, marital status for 4/5 studies (n = 248; celano, albanese, et al., 2018; celano, freedman, et al., 2018; huffman et al., 2016; mohammadi et al., 2018), and medical comorbidity for 3/5 studies (n = 187; celano, albanese, et al., 2018; celano, freedman, et al., 2018; huffman et al., 2016). 2.4 data analysis the association of predictors with the change in each outcome measure was estimated in two ways. combining data from all five studies into one dataset, we estimated the difference in the change of each outcome with time based on each baseline predictor in all participants who received the pp intervention, using a random intercept linear mixed effects model with main effects for time, the predictor, the predictor-by-time interaction, and a categorical effect of study. the regression coefficient for the interaction term from this model was the focus of the analysis. in a second analysis including only the two studies that included both ppi and control arms (huffman et al., 2016; mohammadi et al., 2018), we estimated the difference in the effect of each predictor on the change in each outcome with time, comparing the ppi participants to the control group participants. in this analysis, we fit a random intercept linear mixed effect model with effects for time, ppi, the predictor, and all two-way and three-way interactions. the three-way interaction from this model estimated whether the predictor was associated with a different impact on the change with time, comparing the ppi and control arm. a study effect was also included in the analysis to account for differences between the two studies. for all analyses, continuous outcome and predictor variables were standardized by dividing by the standard deviation of the variable. this approach allows the mixed model coefficients to estimate the mean change with time in the standardized outcome for a one standard deviation increase in the predictor, which provides a measure of the effect size that can be compared across analyses. all analyses were completed in the statistical package r (www.r-project.org) with the nlme library. a p-value below 0.05 was considered significant, and all tests were two-tailed. predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 32 3. results 3.1 participants across studies, 208 participants received a ppi, and 55 were in a control cohort. mean age was 60.7 years (sd = 11.4), 46% of participants were women, and 68% of those with information provided (n = 169/248) were married. of participants in the united states (four studies; celano, albanese, et al., 2018; celano, freedman, et al., 2018; dubois et al., 2016; huffman et al., 2016), 78% were white. participants had a body mass index in the overweight range on average (m = 29.4, sd = 5.8); 40% had diabetes, 67% had hyperlipidemia, and 77% had hypertension. summary statistics for each outcome measure at baseline and follow-up are provided for each study in table 1. a recruitment flowchart for all studies combined can be found in figure 1 (below). table 1. descriptive information about each measure for each study at the start and end of the intervention n, m (sd) study timepoint lot-ra panasb hads-ac hads-dc sf12 pcsd sf12 mcsd peace ii baseline 48, 23.69 (4.62) 48, 35.15 (7.87) 47, 7.19 (5.39) 47, 4.94 (4.05) 47, 41.29 (11.73) 47, 47.49 (11.97) 8 weeks 42, 24.57 (5.01) 42, 37.21 (7.92) 41, 5.00 (4.09) 41, 3.80 (3.60) 44, 41.08 (11.61) 44, 49.89 (10.45) peace iii baseline 126, 22.94 (5.82) 128, 36.38 (7.54) 126, 7.02 (4.60) 126, 4.84 (3.78) 126, 36.81 (11.43) 126, 47.33 (12.69) 8 weeks 89, 24.25 (6.02) 85, 38.29 (7.62) 87, 5.22 (4.29) 87, 3.57 (3.57) 89, 40.97 (11.46) 89, 52.05 (9.64) optimism training baseline 61, 19.00 (2.85) 61, 27.75 (8.00) 61, 7.02 (4.18) 61, 7.34 (4.26) 8 weeks 58, 21.00 (3.41) 58, 27.81 (7.58) 58, 5.31 (3.60) 58, 5.71 (3.72) reach baseline 11, 27.18 (2.48) 11, 38.73 (3.35) 11, 4.00 (2.19) 11, 1.64 (1.43) 11, 46.03 (12.86) 11, 54.21 (6.30) 10 weeks 8, 28.75 (1.39) 9, 41.56 (4.77) 9, 2.22 (1.64) 9, 1.44 (1.42) 9, 48.43 (8.68) 9, 57.70 (3.89) pp for t2d baseline 15, 19.00 (6.83) 15, 7.87 (4.19) 15, 7.00 (3.66) 8 weeks 8, 24.38 (3.34) 8, 6.63 (3.25) 8, 3.38 (1.06) alife orientation test – revised; bpositive and negative affect scale – positive subscale; chospital anxiety and depression scale; dshort form 12 physical and mental health components predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 33 figure 1. recruitment flowchart combined across the five studies 3.2 predictors of change during the ppi baseline clinical and demographic variables predicted few differences in the change in psychological symptoms with time (table 2 below). of all relationships tested, only age was statistically significantly associated with change over time in the depression score, such that younger participants showed a larger preto post-intervention decrease in depressive symptoms. psychosocial baseline variables predicted changes in outcome over time, such that those with worse baseline functioning had a greater improvement in wellbeing. specifically, lower baseline mental health-related quality of life was associated with a larger improvement in positive affect, anxiety, and depression (see table 2 below). further, lower baseline optimism was associated with predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 34 a larger improvement in depression and anxiety preto post-intervention, higher baseline anxiety predicted a larger decrease in depression, and higher baseline depression predicted a larger improvement in anxiety and optimism. table 2. associations between baseline characteristics and change in psychological constructs during the intervention estimate (95% confidence interval) predictor lot-rb panasc hads-ad hads-dd age -0.08 (-0.22, 0.07) -0.07 (-0.24, 0.10) 0.05 (-0.08, 0.18) 0.16 (0.02, 0.30)* gender 0.14 (-0.14, 0.43) -0.04 (-0.37, 0.30) 0.16 (-0.09, 0.41) 0.01 (-0.27, 0.29) white 0.01 (-0.41, 0.42) 0.22 (-0.25, 0.69) -0.16 (-0.53, 0.21) 0.01 (-0.42, 0.43) marital status 0.23 (-0.08, 0.54) 0.00 (-0.35, 0.35) 0.08 (-0.20, 0.36) 0.13 (-0.18, 0.44) medical comorbidity 0.05 (-0.12, 0.23) -0.18 (-0.38, 0.03)^ -0.01 (-0.17, 0.15) 0.11 (-0.06, 0.29) sf12-pcsa 0.05 (-0.12, 0.21) 0.16 (-0.03, 0.35)^ -0.01 (-0.16, 0.14) 0.02 (-0.14, 0.19) sf12-mcsa -0.07 (-0.23, 0.09) -0.26 (-0.43, -0.08)** 0.25 (0.11, 0.39)** 0.38 (0.23, 0.53)*** lot-rb --0.07 (-0.24, 0.10) 0.26 (0.13, 0.39)*** 0.31 (0.17, 0.45)*** panasc -0.08 (-0.22, 0.07) -0.16 (0.03, 0.29)* 0.23 (0.09, 0.37)** hads-ad 0.12 (-0.02, 0.26)^ 0.05 (-0.11, 0.21) --0.32 (-0.45, -0.19)*** hads-dd 0.19 (0.05, 0.33)** 0.11 (-0.05, 0.27) -0.22 (-0.34, -0.10)*** - note: estimate is the estimated regression coefficient for the interaction term from the linear mixed model, which corresponds to the difference in change with time in standardized outcome for a one standard deviation change in each continuous predictor variable. for dichotomous predictors, the difference in the change with time in standardized outcome between the groups is presented. analyses included a categorical effect of study. ashort-form 12 physical and mental health components. blife orientation test – revised. cpositive and negative affect schedule – positive affect subscale. dhospital anxiety and depression scale. ^p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 when studies with both a ppi and a control were used to assess for a differential impact of the predictor on the change over time comparing the two arms, there was no significant effect for any of the predictors (table 3 below). there were trends that approached significance for a difference between conditions in the relationship between baseline anxiety and change in positive affect, and between baseline depression and change in optimism; those with higher anxiety showed more of an increase in predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 35 positive affect in the pp, compared to the control condition, and those with higher depression showed more of an increase in optimism in the pp, compared to the control condition. table 3. difference in effect of each predictor variable on change in psychological constructs during the intervention in the ppi compared to control condition, for studies that included a control estimate (95% confidence interval) lot-rb panasc hads-ad hads-dd age -0.21 (-0.68, 0.25) -0.08 (-0.50, 0.35) 0.18 (-0.26, 0.62) 0.1 (-0.32, 0.51) gender 0.44 (-0.55, 1.43) -0.66 (-1.56, 0.23) -0.15 (-1.08, 0.79) -0.11 (-0.97, 0.75) white -0.79 (-3.08, 1.49) 0.5 (-1.40, 2.39) 1.18 (-1.48, 3.84) 1.31 (-1.07, 3.69) marital status 0.99 (-0.23, 2.21) -0.49 (-1.59, 0.61) 0.32 (-0.82, 1.47) 0.78 (-0.27, 1.84) medical comorbidity 0.27 (-0.50, 1.03) 0.00 (-0.71, 0.70) 0.19 (-0.57, 0.96) 0.2 (-0.56, 0.96) sf12-pcsa 0.47 (-0.37, 1.30) 0.12 (-0.57, 0.81) 0.09 (-0.72, 0.90) 0.15 (-0.53, 0.83) sf12-mcsa 0.18 (-0.66, 1.02) -0.35 (-0.98, 0.28) -0.37 (-1.05, 0.31) -0.04 (-0.72, 0.63) lot-rb -0.07 (-0.35, 0.49) 0.18 (-0.23, 0.59) 0.11 (-0.31, 0.54) panasc -0.22 (-0.66, 0.22) -0.25 (-0.14, 0.64) 0.12 (-0.24, 0.48) hads-ad 0.05 (-0.40, 0.49) 0.38 (-0.01, 0.77)^ --0.04 (-0.40, 0.32) hads-dd 0.39 (-0.07, 0.86)^ 0.32 (-0.06, 0.70) 0.06 (-0.31, 0.42) - note: estimate is the estimated regression coefficient for the three-way interaction term from the linear mixed model, which corresponds to the difference in impact of standardized predictor for continuous predictors or group for dichotomous predictors on change with time in standardized outcome, comparing participants in pp arm to participants in control arm. results from the two studies with control groups (huffman et al., 2016; mohammadi et al., 2018). analyses included a categorical effect of study. ashort-form 12 physical and mental health components. blife orientation test – revised. cpositive and negative affect schedule – positive affect subscale. dhospital anxiety and depression scale. ^p < 0.10 4. discussion in summary, across five ppi studies in several medical populations, baseline clinical and demographic factors were minimally associated with change in psychological wellbeing during the intervention. however, lower baseline psychological wellbeing (measured via mental health-related quality of life, optimism, and positive affect) and higher baseline depression and anxiety were associated with larger improvements in depression and anxiety post-intervention. additionally, predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 36 lower baseline mental health-related quality of life was associated with a greater increase in positive affect, and higher baseline depression predicted a larger increase in optimism. of note, in the subanalysis of the two studies with a control condition (huffman et al., 2016; mohammadi et al., 2018), the relationship between baseline symptoms and change in depression and anxiety did not differ between groups, though a trend toward greater pp-associated improvements in positive affect and optimism existed among those with higher baseline anxiety and depression, respectively. the fact that higher baseline distress was associated with greater wellbeing improvement (in the overall analysis) or no less wellbeing improvement (in the sub-analysis) may signal that ppis can be successfully applied to patients who are experiencing higher psychological distress. it is possible, however, that regression to the mean explains these results, as those with higher baseline symptoms are more likely to reduce symptoms over time, regardless of an intervention. the fact that baseline symptoms did not predict improvement with the ppi compared to the control in the sub-analysis is particularly concerning for this reason, although that sub-analysis is also limited by a smaller sample size. while the present study cannot prove that ppis work better for those with higher baseline symptoms, it does at least suggest that ppis are not less effective or harmful for those with depression or anxiety. as ppis focus on promoting wellbeing rather than directly targeting depression or anxiety, some have wondered whether they could be useful in individuals with significant symptoms of depression or anxiety (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). such findings are consistent with prior works in healthy persons that found depression improvements with ppis to be greatest in those with higher baseline levels of depression (layous, chancellor, lyubomirsky, wang, & doraiswamy, 2011; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009), as well as those finding that high baseline positive affect can limit the effectiveness of ppis (froh, kashdan, ozimkowski, & miller, 2009). on the other hand, celano and colleagues (2017) found a ppi to be less effective in improving hopelessness than a control condition involving recall of daily events, in a sample of patients recently hospitalized for depression and suicidal ideation. therefore, ppis may be best suited for individuals with mild-tomoderate depression. the present study extends these findings to patients experiencing substantial medical illnesses, for whom promotion of wellbeing may be important to recovery and prognosis (chida & steptoe, 2008). there were no consistent relationships between demographic characteristics and outcomes with these interventions. while younger participants showed a larger decrease in depressive symptoms over time, this is likely explained by their higher baseline depressive symptoms. in their metaanalysis of non-medical populations, sin and lyubomirsky (2009) found that ppis were more effective in older participants, and in their meta-analyses of pp randomized controlled trials, bolier and colleagues (2013) did not identify any sociodemographic traits that predicted response to the intervention. the lack of a meaningful relationship between demographic variables and change in psychological symptoms in our study suggests that ppis in persons with medical illness may be applicable to a wide range of individuals, across age, gender, race, and medical comorbidity. given that the programs in this analysis all required a trained staff member to deliver the intervention, either in person or over the phone every week, the feasibility and cost of disseminating such a program in a healthcare setting is important to consider. remote delivery via telephone does improve feasibility in that participants do not have to attend extra appointments, for which transportation can be difficult and costly. however, trained staff must spend significant time on predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 37 intervention delivery for this level of intervention intensity. adaptation of ppis to digital platforms (e.g., apps, text messages) may help to reduce cost and interventionist burden in the future. strengths of this analysis include a sample of participants from several medical populations who received carefully developed ppis, and our ability to use all study data to analyze individual participant-level data is a more powerful approach than standard meta-analyses (panagioti et al., 2016). this was also the first such analysis of predictors of ppi response in patients with medical illness. the analysis also had several limitations. the interventions were all conducted at academic medical centers, and only in patients with heart disease or diabetes, and therefore our findings may not generalize broadly. a lack of a control condition in three of the five studies examined limits our ability to attribute significant relationships to the ppi itself, and some variables (e.g., medical comorbidities) were not measured in all studies. four studies were quite similar in terms of intervention content, while the fifth differed (mohammadi et al., 2018), which could obscure trends that would have been seen with a more consistent intervention. on the other hand, ppis are variable in the literature, and an understanding of predictors of response to different types of ppis would be useful. further, multiple analyses increased our risk of type i error. however, this was an exploratory study aimed to identify potential areas for future research, and a bonferroni correction would cause our significance threshold to be p = 0.0125, which most of our significance values fell below, suggesting that the findings were largely not due to type i error. in sum, ppis appear to be similarly applicable to medically ill patients with a wide range of baseline characteristics, and higher levels of distress do not appear to impede the effect of these programs in medical populations. future research should examine predictors of response to ppis in larger, randomized controlled trials to inform delivery of interventions to those most likely to benefit. conflict of interest statement this work was supported by the national heart, lung, and blood institute grant k23hl123607 (celano pi) and grant r01hl113272 (to dr. huffman), and tehran payame noor university and isfahan cardiovascular research center (code: 95112; to nikrahan pi). the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the national institutes of health. the sponsor had no role in the design, analysis, interpretation, or publication of the study. dr. celano has received honoraria for talks to sunovion pharmaceuticals on topics unrelated to this research. all other authors report no conflicts of interest. authors emily h. feig massachusetts general hospital harvard medical school brian c. healy brigham and women’s hospital massachusetts general hospital christopher m. celano massachusetts general hospital harvard medical school predicting response to positive psychology interventions feig, healy, celano, nikrahan, moskowitz, & huffman 38 gholam reza nikrahan farhangian university judith t. moskowitz northwestern university feinberg school of medicine jeff c. huffman massachusetts general hospital harvard medical school jhuffman@mgh.harvard.edu publishing timeline received 21 november 2018 accepted 5 may 2019 published 9 july 2019 references bjelland, i., dahl, a., haug, t. t., & neckelmann, d. 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(2015). ‘not like rose-tinted glasses… like taking a pair of dirty glasses off’: a pilot intervention using positive emotions in expressive writing. international journal of wellbeing, 5(4), 78-95. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i4.435 megan c. hayes teesside university megan@meganchayes.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 article ‘not like rose-tinted glasses… like taking a pair of dirty glasses off’: a pilot intervention using positive emotions in expressive writing megan c. hayes · kate hefferon abstract: studies conducted in various contexts and with varied populations have found expressive writing enhances physical and psychological wellbeing. this pilot intervention study countered the predominantly quantitative evidence by adopting a qualitative methodology, exploring the experience of using positive emotions in expressive writing. participants (n = 10), who all had previous experience in expressive writing, were asked to select one of ten positive emotion cards (pecs) each day for three days. participants were then asked to write expressively through the ‘lens’ of their chosen emotion. semi-structured interviews were conducted and experiences were evaluated using thematic analysis. the results identified two main themes that compared the experience of expressive writing both with and without the pecs. the first theme, processing (without the pecs) contained three sub-themes: sense of relief, habitual perspective and reactive to experience. the second main theme, progressing (with the pecs) contained three different sub-themes: sense of direction, changed perspective and interactive with experience. this study found that, for expressive writers, positive emotions may function in three ways: to relate to others or self-expand, to move past challenges cognitively or change unconstructive perspectives, and finally as a way to interactively link or ‘bridge’ from the written subject matter to constructive action, thus breaking cycles of reactive writing and rumination. implications of the study on the practice of expressive writing and its potential as a positive psychology intervention (ppi) are discussed. keywords: expressive writing, positive emotions, emotional processing, thematic analysis, positive psychology 1. introduction since the 1980s the field of expressive writing (pennebaker & beall, 1986; pennebaker & chung, 2011), which demonstrates the various emotional and physical health benefits of writing about one’s ‘deepest thoughts and feelings’, has been extensively studied via quantitative methods (for a review see frattaroli, 2006; sloan & marx, 2004). six years ago, the journal of health psychology ran a special issue which stressed the need to move ‘beyond expressive writing’ (nicholls, 2009) by exploring qualitative approaches to the paradigm. yet, to date, qualitative research literature remains virtually non-existent in the field, with quantitative research enduring as the favoured – or at least more widely published – approach (hoyt, austenfeld & stanton, 2014; teismann, het, grillenberger, willutzki, & wolf, 2014). this is salient in that leading researchers have themselves admitted “no single theory appears to account for the effectiveness of the writing paradigm” (pennebaker, 2004, p.138), despite its observable array of emotional and physical mailto:m.hayes@tees.ac.uk http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 health outcomes (baikie & wilhelm, 2005) including social effects (lepore & greenberg, 2002; slatcher & pennebaker, 2006), mood (teismann et al., 2014) and coping (hoyt, et al., 2014; spera, buhrfeind & pennebaker, 1994). though pennebaker and colleagues have observed that the writing paradigm is not a cure-all, nor benefits everyone (niederhoffer & pennebaker, 2009), we posit that a qualitative approach may assist in building a richer theoretical model of when, why and how it does work – thus furthering this proposed movement ‘beyond expressive writing’. 1.1 positive psychology and expressive writing the field of positive psychology, considered the scientific study of wellbeing and human strengths (carr, 2011; seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000), has embraced pennebaker’s expressive writing paradigm with enthusiasm. it is cited as a useful intervention in the oxford handbook of positive psychology (lopez & snyder, 2009) and other general reference works in the field (parks & schueller, 2014; snyder, lopez & pedrotti, 2010). this enthusiasm, however, has tended to overlook what pennebaker and colleagues themselves recognise as the paradigm’s entirely negative focus, writing about trauma, and so in essence dwelling on our miseries. they point out the irony, then, that expressive writing has become a feature of positive psychology (niederhoffer & pennebaker, 2009). that said, adaptations of the original expressive writing paradigm abound, from the inclusion of narrative instruction (danoff-burg, seawell, & agee, 2010) to adding a mindfulness component (poon & danoff-burg, 2011). amongst such adaptations, several are specifically positive, yet each has its own limitations given developments in the field of positive psychology. such developments include contentions about accentuating positivity (held, 2002), causing a gradual shift toward a more nuanced ‘positive psychology 2.0’ (wong, 2011) or a ‘second wave’, dialectic conception of positive psychology (ivtzan, lomas, hefferon & worth, 2015). for example, benefit-finding (king & miner, 2000) offers a way for writers to positively re-frame traumatic events. however, we posit that similar re-framing might be achieved without necessarily perceiving an explicit benefit. as an example, when grieving the death of a loved one, writing with emotions of hope or serenity could feel more appropriate and comforting than actively searching for positive benefits from the traumatic experience. equally, other examples of positively-focussed writing interventions such as writing about our ‘best possible self’ (king, 2001) or ‘intensely positive experiences’ (ipes) (burton & king, 2004, 2009) whilst found to be beneficial, for example in increasing emotional intelligence and lifesatisfaction (wing, schutte & byrne, 2006), also lack the nuance sought by second wave positive psychology. such interventions, it could be argued, have a one-dimensional conception of what it is to be positive, and provide little scope for constructively processing challenging feelings and experiences. thus, two objectives of the present study were 1) not to limit the subject matter of the writing to positive events, but rather to simply offer the ‘lens’ of a positive emotion, and 2) to offer a wide spectrum of emotions to select from, including emotions such as awe, interest and serenity, to promote a range of emotional responses to the events of one’s life that were not just typically ‘happy’ emotions. the researchers hoped that this adaptation would preserve the efficacy of the original writing paradigm (pennebaker, 1997; pennebaker & beall, 1986) whilst consolidating it with research into positive emotions and the many benefits of experiencing these emotions, which we will now outline. then might we truly adopt the writing paradigm as a cornerstone intervention of positive psychology (parks & schueller, 2014) in a manner appropriate to the ‘second wave’ developments of the field (ivtzan, lomas, hefferon & worth, 2015). positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 1.2 positive emotion in expressive writing emotions have been central to the writing paradigm since the original study, which demonstrated that writing the facts of a trauma alone does not result in significant improvements in physiological, health or self-report measures and that emotional expression is integral to the efficacy of the intervention (pennebaker & beall, 1986). currently, numerous theories seek to explain the underlying mechanisms of the expressive writing paradigm and its efficacy. the most prominent of these are emotional inhibition and cognitive processing (niederhoffer & pennebaker, 2009), although conflicting theory cites self-affirmation as a more prominent mediator in the effectiveness of writing (creswell et al., 2007). whilst this debate continues in the literature, we posit that one largely under-researched avenue to further substantiate the theory of expressive writing is a qualitative analysis of the function of positive emotions. in the field of positive psychology much research has been completed on the experience and function of positive emotions, in no small part pioneered by the work of alice isen (ashby & isen, 1999; isen, daubman, & nowicki, 1987) and barbara fredrickson (1998, 2001). fredrickson’s ‘broaden-and-build’ theory has been well documented and argues that significant positive emotions1, namely: love, joy, interest, awe, inspiration, gratitude, hope, serenity, amusement and pride (fredrickson, 2009), “broaden people’s momentary thought–action repertoires and lead to actions that build enduring personal resources” (fredrickson & cohn, 2010, p.782). researchers have already begun to explore the links between this theory and expressive writing (burton & king, 2009) yet to date no known study has explored these links from a qualitative perspective. the purpose of this present study, then, was to qualitatively investigate whether ‘broaden-andbuild’ theory and/or other similar psychological processes were experienced when positive emotions were incorporated into expressive writing. recent studies have pitched “positive writing” – whereby participants are asked to write “the most intensely positive experience” of their life “or an extremely important positive issue” that has affected them – against “expressive writing-as-usual” in participants with mood disorders and found that health outcomes were the same (baikie, geerligs & wilhelm, 2012) in keeping with previous research, illustrating that writing may have an effect whether or not it focuses on traumatic experiences (burton & king, 2004; king, 2001). building on these findings, in the present study we assert that the addition of specific positive emotions into the writing intervention, yet without limiting the subject matter of the writing, may have a host of benefits over and above those associated with “expressive writing-as-usual.” why might this be deemed an important addition to the practice of expressive writing? research since the 1970s has shown that social benefits accrue from the experience of positive emotions. for example, isen and levin (1972) and isen (1987) demonstrated that when we feel increased positive emotions, we tend to act with increased kindness and engage in more pro-social behaviours. beyond this, researchers have shown that regular experiences of positive emotions can contribute to physical and mental wellbeing, connect us to others and potentially promote resilience in times of hardship (fredrickson, 1998, 2001). again, it is important to note that, in line with ‘second wave’ positive psychology (ivtzan, lomas, hefferon & worth, 2015) and the emergence of compelling evidence regarding the “light” and “dark” side of positive emotions (gruber & moskowitz, 2014), there is a strong argument for a synthesis of the “positive” and “negative” in an expressive writing paradigm. in other words, by developing this pilot intervention, we recognised the value of 1 again, the authors recognise that what is termed a “positive” emotion does not always imply something “good” and that what is termed a “negative” emotion does not always imply something “bad”. further, the experience of both “positive” and “negative” emotions, depending on duration and context, could lead to both adaptive and maladaptive outcomes (for more on this debate, please see gruber & moscowitz, 2014; ivtzan et al., 2015). positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 engaging with the negative (writing about trauma) whilst simultaneously highlighting the benefits of positive emotions, and the many shades and complexities of these emotions. thus, although this study focuses on the inclusion of positive emotions within expressive writing, we do not suggest that so called “positive emotions” are more important than other emotions or that these emotions should be attained at the cost of feeling other “types” of emotions. finally, expressive writing researchers have asked whether the language used in the writing paradigm is reflective of personal changes, and more importantly how prescriptive a given writing exercise can be (niederhoffer & pennebaker, 2009). researchers have made extensive use of computerised language analysis of writing samples to address this question (tausczick & pennebaker, 2010). by such methods, positive emotion words such as ‘happiness’, ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘amusement’ in participants’ writing have been shown to mediate the efficacy of expressive writing (pennebaker & chung, 2007; pennebaker & seagal, 1999). we posited that this offered a clear rationale for developing an adaptation of the original paradigm that might encourage greater positive emotional expression. however, from a qualitative perspective, computerised language analysis alone would not be considered a rich or nuanced enough approach to capture how positive emotion in writing is experienced at the time of (and following) a writing exercise. to accomplish that, we have chosen a thematic analysis. this present study, then, explored one possible method for encouraging a greater use of positive language – with the aim of improving the efficacy of the paradigm – whilst avoiding limiting the writer by prescribing that they write only about positive events, or specific ‘benefits’ of an event. nicholls (2009, p. 177) cites the lack of “first-person accounts of what the experience of writing feels like”, which would enable “new research that will help us to find ways of specifying and further exploring our experiences of writing”, as a gap in the expressive writing literature. the current study was therefore devised to gather such first-person accounts, and uses thematic analysis to specify not just when or how often, but in what ways positive emotions are felt and experienced in expressive writing, to answer the research question: how do positive emotions function in a ‘positive journaling’ intervention? 2. methodology 2.1 research design this qualitative study was designed to keep participant experiences at the core of the analysis by taking an inductive approach in exploring first-hand accounts of how positive emotions function in expressive writing. the research question was: how do positive emotions function in a ‘positive journaling’ intervention. data collection was completed via semi-structured interviews with participants (n = 10) following a writing intervention over three consecutive days, in line with pennebaker (1997). the transcribed interviews formed the data corpus and were analysed. thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006) was used because it is considered “still the most useful in capturing the complexities of meaning within a textual data set” (guest, macqueen & namey, 2012, p.11). this approach entailed coding each transcript for prevalent themes, before synthesizing these into a thematic map. the ultimate purpose of this thematic analysis was to generate a broad overview of the commonalities in each individual’s experience. all transcripts and forms remained confidential and participants’ names were changed to preserve anonymity. in epistemological terms, the researchers employed a phenomenological and constructionist approach, and as such were sensitive that all the data were co-constructed between researcher and participants. throughout the study the primary researcher remained aware of her role as a white, western, female and was conscious of how this might shape her interpretation of positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 participant accounts. as far as possible, scrutiny was paid to the researcher’s personal biases and any preconceptions to avoid detrimental influence on the analysis. 2.2 compliance with ethical standards ethical approval for the study was obtained from the research ethics committee of the university of east london. the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest (financial or non-financial) and that no funding or sponsorship for the study was provided. informed consent was obtained via distribution of consent forms to all participants, which were then completed and returned by email so as to avoid participation in the study being limited by location. 2.3 participants and recruitment a convenience sample of participants (n = 10) was recruited, both female (n = 8) and male (n = 2). participants were not screened for the study by gender, ethnic origin or age although, in line with informed consent, all participants were over 18 years of age and under 65. recruitment was conducted primarily via the facebook page of lapidus2, a therapeutic writing organisation; thus the majority of participants were experienced in writing expressive journals and most kept a regular practice of this. participants were self-selected for the study. participants completed the intervention independently, at home and in their own time rather than in a lab, and in most cases completed the 30-minute, semi-structured interviews within two weeks of the three-day expressive writing intervention. no incentive was offered for participation. 2.4 materials a set of ten physical ‘positive emotion cards’ (pecs) were distributed to participants by post. the emotions included were love, joy, interest, awe, inspiration, gratitude, hope, serenity, amusement and pride, which have been demonstrated to be the positive emotions we tend to experience most often and which have been reviewed by researchers (fredrickson, 2009; 2011; please see condon, wilson-mendenhall & feldman-barrett, 2014 for expansion on “types” of positive emotions). cards were two-sided, with the name of the emotion on one side, and instructions on the reverse, as shown in figure 1 below. the instructions on the cards contained elements of the basic expressive writing paradigm (pennebaker, 1997) and guidance from the ‘positivity portfolio’ exercise proposed by fredrickson (2009) with the aim of encouraging as much engagement with the chosen emotion as possible. participants then used the pecs alongside their normal method of journaling, which tended to be either a specific notebook or loose sheets of paper. interviews were conducted via skype and were recorded with an ipad using the quickvoice application. figure 1: example of positive emotion cards (pecs) 2 further information regarding the work of lapidus can be found at www.lapidus.org.uk http://www.lapidus.org.uk/ positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 2.5 the writing intervention expressive writing researchers have stated, “the more that the topic or writing assignment is constrained, the less successful it usually is” (pennebaker & chung, 2007, p.267). for this reason, participants were instructed simply to write about their day for between 15 and 30 minutes using the chosen pec, relating this to their past, present or future should they choose. instructions were closely based on the standard expressive writing paradigm (pennebaker, 1997) and were as follows: for the next 3 days, write for 15 to 30 minutes each evening reflecting on your day. you may like to tie this in with your relationships with others, including parents, partners, children, friends or other relatives; to your past, your present or your future; or to who you have been, who you would like to be or who you are now. each day, choose one of the ten ‘positive emotion cards’ (pecs). which pec feels most relevant to your day, or would you most like to apply to your day? sit with all the cards quietly until you have chosen one, and then begin writing. 2.6 interviews once this intervention had been completed, thirty-minute semi-structured interviews were carried out with each participant individually, focussing on their experience of writing in the past versus writing with the pecs. questions centred on why participants chose specific emotions and how they felt both prior to and following the writing. participant’s writings were not collected. we felt that this enabled participants to be more candid in their writing, and thus to provide richer accounts of how they experienced positive emotions in the writing, which was the focus of the study. some participants, however, did choose to read small pieces of their writing aloud at interview stage. following the interviews, participants were provided with debrief sheets, which outlined how their data would be used and included researcher contact details. 2.7 analysis the full data corpus consisting of the verbatim transcripts of the 10 participant interviews was coded by the researchers and then examined using thematic analysis in accordance with the method set out by braun and clarke (2006). the primary researcher transcribed the interviews so as to ensure greater familiarisation with the data. each transcript was coded first for initial codes, and then a second time to draw out recurrent codes across the whole data set. recurrent how to use this emotion card: 1. choose just one emotion card each day. 2. think about how the emotion feels to you. 3. reflect on the emotion as you write in your journal. 4. be detailed; describe the emotion. 5. you may write about your past, present and future. 6. choose to see any negative events or thoughts through the lens of your chosen emotion. pride. joy. amusement. serenity. gratitude. hope. awe. inspiration. interest. love. hope positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 codes became themes that were felt to capture significant patterns of response across the group in relation to the research question: how do positive emotions function in a ‘positive journaling’ intervention? these themes were gathered into an initial thematic map, as well as several developed versions before a final thematic model was completed, composed of two main themes and six sub-themes 3. results and discussion though it was not an explicit criterion for participation, the majority of participants kept a regular journal and all had experience of journaling. therefore the thematic analysis resulted in a comparison between this typical expressive journal writing and the present pilot intervention. whilst this previous expressive journal writing might not be considered ‘standard’ expressive writing (given the writers followed no scientific instruction) the researchers felt this journal writing could justifiably be referred to as expressive because the inherent nature of the act – writing about one’s ‘deepest thoughts and feelings’ – was the same. the analytical process resulted in a thematic map of these two parallel main themes, as well as six sub-themes, as shown in figure 2 below. figure 2: thematic analysis of positive emotion cards (pecs) the two main themes were ‘processing’, for expressive journal writing (without the pecs) and ‘progressing’, for expressive writing (with the pecs). this can be likened to recent studies demonstrating the nature of unconstructive processing (e.g. rumination) and constructive processing (e.g. problem-solving) in expressive writing (hoyt, et al., 2014; stanton, 2011). participants stated unequivocally in their accounts that their previous writing had, largely, made them feel better, as the wealth of expressive writing literature attests to; yet specific focus on positive emotions in the pilot intervention appeared to do something more, with participants stating that they felt they had made progress in the writing, typically by having reached a point of changed perspective that was more constructive. therefore, our original research question concerning the function of positive emotions in expressive writing is addressed by the second main theme of ‘progressing.’ three sub-themes combined to support ‘progressing’ as the main theme of expressive writing with the pecs, all of which referred to movement, change or a writing without positive emotion cards (pecs) main theme 1 processing sub theme 1.1 sense of relief sub theme 1.2 habitual perspectives sub theme 1.3 reactive to experience writing with positive emotion cards (pecs) main theme 2 progressing sub theme 2.1 sense of direction sub theme 2.2 changed perspectives sub theme 2.3 interactive with experience positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 cognitive progression from the page back to real world circumstances or future actions. this contrasted with ‘processing’ as the theme of expressive journal writing. here the subthemes illustrated that, though there was some development through a sense of relief in the writing, there was a clear lack of progress beyond this, with participants instead describing “habitually” looking “at the bad stuff” (amanda) and reacting to life experience without a self-efficacious element; the writing was a way to feel better, but not to flourish. prevalence of these two parallel main themes and six subthemes is shown in table 1 and will now be discussed in more detail. table 1: prevalence of themes in participant accounts themes are presented in an order that we felt captured the cognitive journey of the participants in sequential order. firstly, their previous journaling experience as ‘processing’ (main theme 1) was interpreted as a sequence of feeling relief (subtheme 1.1) yet often ruminating (st 1.2) in a manner that was usually reactive to experience (st 1.3). secondly, using the pecs as ‘progressing’ (mt 2) was interpreted as a sequence of feeling directed (st 2.1) toward a changed perspective (st 2.2) in a manner that was usually interactive with experience (st 2.3). selected quotes are provided that the researchers felt typified the themes. 3.1 main theme 1: expressive journal writing (without pecs) as ‘processing’ this main theme integrates three subthemes, each detailing how the participant’s previous journal writing was very much a method of “dealing with” (rose) challenging circumstances and emotions, though not necessarily moving beyond them, as in unconstructive processing (hoyt, et al., 2014). as laura comments in regard to her previous journal writing: “looking back, which i do sometimes to those early journals, i can see how i tried to motivate myself a lot through writing, but at the same time it was a place to download or offload a lot of negative feelings, a lot of difficulties, which were just repetitive.” (laura) this theme coincides with previous findings in the research literature citing cognitive processing as one of several key theories underlying the efficacy of the writing paradigm; writing provides participants with a better understanding of themselves and challenging personal circumstances (niederhoffer & pennebaker, 2009). yet here rose describes her previous expressive journal writing as a way of processing, but again not necessarily moving on from challenging circumstances: (researcher) “okay, can you tell me a little bit about how you would use a journal, what kind of purpose it would fulfil?” (rose) “um, it was really, kind of, just a way of, i suppose, getting stuff in my head – thoughts in my head – out and onto paper, kind of just trying to kind of process things that i found difficult or that were making me emotional…” main themes and subthemes participants (n=10) (%) 1. expressive writing (without pecs) as ‘processing’ 1.1 sense of relief 7 70% 1.2 habitual perspective 7 70% 1.3 reactive to experience 7 70% 2. expressive writing (with pecs) as ‘progressing’ 2.1 sense of direction 7 70% 2.2 changed perspective 8 80% 2.3 interactive with experience 8 80% positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 (researcher) “and what does ‘process’ mean to you?” (rose) “um, i suppose just kind of, um, get it out of my head and, you know, see if i can kind of work out why i’m finding things difficult and then perhaps move on from them, so it’s a kind of a way of... yeah i suppose dealing with things that are, kind of, psychologically difficult. but kind of taking them out of your head and into a kind of more physical form.” rose notes here that she could “perhaps” overcome personal challenges, but later in her interview stressed that she often simply “wallowed in the difficult stuff” without any sense of progress. her description of writing as a way to process became the title of this main theme. the three subthemes that combined to form this first main theme of ‘processing,’ sense of relief, habitual perspective and reactive to experience, will now be discussed individually. 3.1.1 subtheme 1.1: sense of relief “like scratching an itch” the subtheme sense of relief was drawn from the multiple ways in which participants described their typical expressive journal writing as a kind of “download” (laura) of their thoughts onto paper, and the subsequent feeling of liberation. participants described their typical writing as “an aid of getting words out of my head, onto paper” (louise), “a container” (laura), “a repository” (rita) and even a place to “vomit” (amanda) negative emotion, which appears to concur with existing theory on inhibition and disclosure (niederhoffer & pennebaker, 2009). writing as a relieving practice was clearly seen as beneficial by participants, and in some cases even essential to normal functioning: “i’ll have things going round and round and round in my head and i’ll have an urge to just write… i can’t concentrate… i just have to get my journal out and write and it kind of gets the stuff out of the way, and then i might be able to do something else instead.” (amanda) the page was a place to unload, or process challenges; yet it was not a place to build optimism, a sense of self-efficacy or to feel one had made progress. writing was typically a way of returning to normal, not necessarily of thriving. this is not to devalue it; it was clearly of paramount importance as a coping mechanism to these participants. however, as nicholls (2009, p.174) observes, this manner of “letting go” may be merely a starting point or first phase to the potential of a writing practice to impact wellbeing, which this new study hopes to demonstrate. 3.1.2 subtheme 1.2: habitual perspective or the “negative comfort zone” the subtheme of habitual perspective was drawn from participants’ accounts of their typical expressive journal writing as tending to be negative and repetitive: “i would write about all the stuff that was going around in my head. invariably it would be quite negative.” (jane) this theme was expressed in seven of ten of the accounts transcribed. these habitual perspectives were primarily negative, with participants repeatedly stating that they were not driven to write when they felt positive: “i think when you’re in a positive mood, i don’t always, um, journal because i’m either, you know, i’m enjoying what i’m doing or um… so, uh, yeah, maybe i don’t journal as much when i’m positive.” (louise) or simply that they did not notice when they felt positive, with lower emotional recognition relating to positive emotion: positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 “i notice when i feel stressful or anxious... i don’t really have this awareness when it comes to positive emotions, now that i think of it, i never stop and notice” (mark) “...you are not always conscious about the things you think and how you’re thinking them, you know?” (john) as such, this impetus to write about negative thoughts and feelings often led participants to ruminate or stay stuck in cycles of thought which they had difficulty moving past. here laura describes her writing as an “obsession” with a challenging topic: “...the rest of the diary beforehand is all my obsession with weight loss [laughs]. so... so it’s very much a potpourri my journal writing and it will be whatever i’m feeling or thinking about or focussing or obsessing about.” (laura) although expressive writing research has demonstrated some efficacy in lowering rumination (gortner, rude, & pennebaker, 2006) these results have been modest and moderated by constructive or unconstructive styles (hoyt, et al., 2014). the present study indicates that regular practice of expressive journal writing may typically lead participants to unconstructively process, or ruminate, and that the addition of the pecs decreased this tendency, as will be demonstrated in the next main theme. 3.1.3 subtheme 1.3: reactive to experience “if i’ve had a tiresome day” this subtheme attempts to capture the manner by which participants described their journaling as an activity they would turn to in response to a bad day or difficult circumstances, which almost all participants were dealing with in varying degrees, from a loved one facing terminal illness to divorce. this was often described as a simple input-output process, with the challenge being relieved onto the page as we have seen demonstrated in the theme sense of relief, but without necessarily relating back out from the page to real experience; simply coping with it. here one participant describes her process: “i tended to be dredging things up… facing them…dealing with them” (jane) this also linked with the theme of habitual perspective in that, as participants tended to write when they felt negative, their writing – although helpful as a coping mechanism – was invariably negative: “i have an impetus to write when i’m not feeling good” (amanda) “...verbalising – and that means writing as well – about problems or issues is incredibly helpful” (becky) it was often very specific circumstances that initiated the writing as a form of coping or processing: “my marriage has kind of been ending, it’s kind of been ending for a long time; it ended last year. um… and i think… mostly that’s caused me to want to write really.” (amanda) “…if i’ve had a tiresome day or things have happened, um, i mean my dad is very poorly at the moment, so i’ve had times when i’ve written about that.” (louise) this theme of reactive writing highlights expressive journal writing as a form of coping, which the literature supports, from coping with job loss (spera, buhrfeind & pennebaker, 1994) to a broken heart (lepore & greenberg, 2002). positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 each of these subthemes supports the idea that expressive journaling typically acted as a method for processing negative emotion or circumstances. yet although this often led to participants feeling better, it did not necessarily progress to their feeling good (i.e. strong and well) as is arguably one of the primary aims of positive psychological research: to “help people become lastingly happier” (seligman, parks & steen, 2004, p.1379). participants rarely referred to feeling happy as a result of the writing, or efficacious or resilient; rather, they felt at best relieved and at worst stuck in ruminative cycles of negative writing. despite the fact that this writing-as-usual was evidently a valid coping mechanism, it did not appear to contribute to enhanced wellbeing or to flourishing. as amanda commented: “when i’m kind of glum and i need to write something down, i don’t think it makes me more glum.” most of us would agree that the mere absence of glumness is not the same as experiencing flourishing or wellbeing. we now move to a discussion of the second main theme that was drawn from the intervention writing: expressive writing (with pecs) as progressing. here we focus on participants’ accounts of writing with the pecs, and thus specifically address the research question of the function of positive emotions in expressive writing. 3.2 main theme 2: expressive writing (with pecs) as ‘progressing’ this second main theme summarises the way in which participants used positive emotions to progress beyond challenges, either by relating to others, reframing difficult circumstances or strategising for the future. this main theme had three subthemes: sense of direction, changed perspective and interactive with experience. a key factor in this adaptation of the writing paradigm was that it did not simply ask participants to write about positive things: participants were invited to write about whatever they felt they wanted to, yet as far as possible to relate this to their chosen pec. however, this did not appear to result in escapist or, as louise joked, “pollyanna-ish” writing. as rose commented: “i wasn’t, you know, sort of just thinking about flowers and hearts and nice clouds... it was more trying to sort of [pause] assess.” (rose) this comment typifies that, despite being free to write about negative feelings if they wished to, participants tended toward a kind of positive realism that was optimistic without being idealistic, which we will now evidence in the subthemes. 3.2.1 subtheme 2.1: sense of direction “i wasn’t just wandering about” the theme sense of direction captures the prevalence of participants who described writing with the pecs as a kind of directed journey: “i’ve just re-read those three pages and they really are quite deeply and honestly reflective… the cards gave me a focus as i wasn’t just wandering about… it feels a bit constrained to start with but then it was a good structure…” (laura) “...on all three days i did the same thing where i kind of went through this journey of thinking around a word and thinking about things in my life, and then there was always positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 this kind of... you know, i always came to this kind of point where it made me reflect on things in a new... in a way that i perhaps hadn’t before.” (rose) “...it felt more like there was this... this sort of centripetal force drawing the writing in so it wasn’t, it wasn’t sort of going off on one, it was, you know, it was all related” (valerie) there was a tendency to describe this in physical terms, as the examples above show. this was interpreted by the researchers as a way of forming narratives in the writing (danoff-burg, et al., 2010) centred on the chosen emotion; mark, for example, described one of his chosen pecs as “a tool... to explore.” the addition of the positive emotion in the writing helped participants feel “more connected” (john) or to “put a few connections together” (rose) and this manner of joining the dots, as it were, led to a sense of having gone somewhere in the writing, or progressed. as jane commented, “i felt in a better place for having done it”, or as rose said, “it led me down a path.” the “path” or “place” was normally one of changed perspective, which is the next subtheme. 3.2.2 subtheme 2.2: changed perspective “not rose-tinted glasses…like taking a dirty pair of glasses off” the theme of changed perspective captures how the participants came to form new perspectives on their life experiences when using the pecs, particularly those that were challenging. early and current research (e.g. fredrickson, 1998; isen, 1987; wadlinger & isaacowitz, 2006) has argued for the “broaden effect” of positive emotions and this was evident in this theme. here, when participants focussed on a certain positive emotion, they seemed to display broadened mind-sets by considering alternatives, assessing a wider range of experiences, and in some cases even challenging long-held beliefs. for example, when rose wrote with the hope card she commented: “…here’s an experience in my life that i hadn’t previously thought of as being particularly hopeful or particularly loving, but actually it was.” (rose) other participants, speaking more generally about using positive emotions in the writing, made similar comments. “...it gave me this perspective on a few things that are part of my life but haven’t really been part of my life at the same time – because i didn’t notice them.” (mark) “i don’t consistently write in that [positive] way ...if it was a piece of music it would be a different key to play in.” (laura) the broaden effect was particularly evident in the way participants spoke about challenges, which we have seen almost all the participants felt they were facing in varying degrees. yet this change of perspective, whilst positive, again tended to be decidedly realistic. jane, who also chose hope, commented: “i suppose the hope came from... um... [pause] looking at things differently, through like a filter if you like. not rose-tinted glasses, because that implies a lack of reality, but it is, i think, a bit like taking a dirty pair of glasses off” (jane) several participants also commented that this was the first time in memory that they had considered their experiences in relation to specific positive emotions, and so they reflected on the novelty of this: positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 “i was able to write in a way – i was able to write about things – in a way i wouldn’t usually write about because i don’t necessarily look at my life from a perspective of hope.” (mark) again in line with fredrickson’s work (1998, 2001) and the “broaden-and-build theory,” we might be justified in assuming that this broadening of mind-set on the page may result in the building of personal resources for the future, which the next and final subtheme seemed to support. 3.2.3 subtheme 2.3: interactive with experience “i felt more capable” we have discussed how the present analysis pertains to existing research on the broaden-andbuild theory of positive emotions (fredrickson, 1998, 2001). however, what was most interesting in the data corpus was the emergence of a novel theme which presents a third potential dimension to the function of positive emotions in the practice of expressive writing: what we have termed the ‘bridge’ effect. rather than using the page as a mere ‘dump’ of their emotions as they typically did when writing (this was described as a very one-way trajectory of the input of life experience and the output of this onto the page, resulting in relief), participants went on to engage in a further step. in this step they were able to relate what was on the page back out to real experience and strategise future actions; to bridge back from the private inner world explored on the page to an outer world, with a sense of their self-efficacy to meet challenges. in their previous journal writing – which seemed to be primarily a repository for negative emotion – often (though not always) participants would ruminate and get stuck in unconstructive loops; “patterns of thought” as rose called it, or the “negative comfort zone” as amanda commented. in contrast, positive emotions seemed to provide a bridge between the writing and real life. this was interpreted in the data analysis as a manner by which participants cognitively progressed past challenging life circumstances rather than simply processed or felt relief from them, which lead to feelings of both positive affect and self-efficacy: “i looked at, um, the event i wrote about in a different way than i probably would have done some years ago… and, uh, well, i felt more capable of doing things… well with more… more good things to offer.” (john) “i wrote a list of things that i would be proud of in the future.” (laura) “i kind of came out of it feeling more positive, like i’d kind of made some progress.” (rose) even in one case where a participant, amanda, “found it really difficult” to relate to the pecs and, in her own words, “resisted it quite a lot,” stating that the emotions “felt kind of irrelevant,” when she read back on her journal writing during the interview, she noted that, retrospectively, she could see the benefit of the intervention: “um… well now looking back i think it’s probably a good thing to do…it’s sort of making me think of good things in my life.” (amanda) the bridging effect from the page to real action was often expressed in relation to others. in cases when the use of the positive emotions was most embraced by the participants – particularly love – this assisted in linking the self with others (fredrickson, 2013). this broadening of the sphere of self has already been demonstrated as a function of positive emotions by (e.g. fredrickson, cohn, coffey, pek, & finkel, 2008; johnson & fredrickson, 2005) and this phenomenon can be rationalised as self-expansion, as per the findings of aron, aron, & smollan (1992). this was most poignantly evidenced in the present study through this account by jane: positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 “i think when i wrote with love... my experience was that i didn’t have any hard edges. so whereas i might have thought... my husband coming in and saying ‘oh, is there anything i can do to help with [dinner]?’ when i’ve already done everything, if i wasn’t writing about that with love, i could quite easily have gone into a judgmental place and thought... do you know, you always do that. you come in and you ask (laughs) if i want any help when i’ve finished, or almost finished. and, where i come from if i’m using a love filter is, nah it’s okay i’ve done it – but you could make me a cup of tea.” (jane) here jane does not simply react to a difficult situation with her husband by ‘dumping’ it onto the page; instead she first reframes it and then modifies future actions in line with this reframing. the positive emotion of love acts not only as a bridge connecting jane and her partner, but a bridge between jane’s private writings and her real experiences. when she wrote with positive emotions, she describes acting in accordance with what she has written, changing her actions to more pro-social behaviour and increasing her sense of self-efficacy to handle a potentially aggravating interaction with her husband. through the writing she both self-expands and strategises for the future; she builds a bridge between her sphere of self on the page and the wider sphere of her inter-relational experiences. this novel finding is in line with research on the social effects of the writing paradigm (slatcher & pennebaker, 2006). importantly, the more participants engaged with the positive emotions, particularly love, the more they described focussing on others in their writing. love was by far the most chosen of the pecs, picked by seven of the ten participants and the only card to be picked twice by any participant. one participant did discuss “self-love” (john), or self-esteem, but participants primarily expressed their love for others. conversely, those who resisted engaging with the pecs tended to speak more about the self as an individual, with little reflection on their relationships. for example, in becky’s case, she did not choose love and noted that she “felt really resistant” to the pecs. she then described writing about her mood and her childhood, with virtually no mention of others. further, becky referred to writing as a way to “transcend” or leave behind the everyday – such as arguments with a partner – rather than a space to work out ways of improving these difficult life circumstances. thus, actively engaging with the positive emotions, particularly love, seemed to be linked with a focus on others. when the pecs were embraced, participants actively reframed their interactions with others, even those interactions that were challenging, rather than just avoiding or ‘transcending’ them in the writing, as we see in jane’s account above. participants who embraced the pecs dwelled on support networks, reframed relationships, and were grateful for good qualities in others: “i just sort of felt gratitude for people’s calmness and, you know, sense of perspective and so on.” (valerie) “if i think of love in a different way you know... they are experiences of love that i’ve had.” (rose) this finding, that the pecs assisted participants in relating to others, was interpreted in line with previous research demonstrating that positive emotions can increase a sense of connection to others (johnson & fredrickson, 2005). positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 4. conclusion positive emotions in expressive writing appeared to function very much in accordance with fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory (2001), yet in addition key emotions such as hope and love appeared to serve as a ‘bridge’ leading writers beyond the page and into constructive action, thus potentially breaking habits of unconstructive writing or rumination. positive emotions seemed to function as a way for participants to reframe circumstances in a manner that subsequently related back to real-world experience; in other words they weren’t just reflecting or lamenting, they were in a sense strategising future actions or developing the sense of selfefficacy necessary to overcome the challenge. further, participants were better able to relate to others and behave in a more pro-social way. whilst it is not possible to generalise based on this small sample, one strong potential implication of the present study is that the writing journey for an individual, as nicholls (2009) has previously alerted us to, may have many supplementary stages beyond simply divulging one’s deepest thoughts and feelings. fredrickson and colleagues (1998; 2001) have argued that experiencing positive emotions can be a method of building resources, and they appear also to have this function in expressive writing. further, the most novel aspect of the present study is that positive emotions appear to transform writing from a purely solitary practice into a tool for better relating to others and altering real experience, through providing a ‘bridge’ beyond the page – beyond simply ruminating on the challenge – and into action. further, we posit that this positive reframing and bridging into actual action might initiate an ‘upward spiral’ for those utilising positive emotions in expressive writing (fredrickson & joiner, 2002). niederhoffer and pennebaker (2009, p.630) write that, “the path to a satisfying and fulfilling life does not bypass difficulties and negative thoughts and feelings... by openly facing our traumas we no longer end up in such psychological ditches. rather we can begin to build bridges to the considerable strengths that we all possess.” if facilitators and health professionals can find creative ways to assist clients in utilising positive emotions in expressive writing, we may begin to see the evolution of the practice into one that not only makes us feel better by facing our trauma, but also helps us flourish by assessing our strengths and resources. our suggestions for future research would be to develop further methods of encouraging participants to engage with positive emotions in expressive writing, without priming or restricting them. further, we would invite other researchers to quantitatively assess this pilot intervention with a larger sample, as well as conduct a longitudinal study to assess any potential long-term effects of engaging with the pecs. in qualitative terms, it may also be of interest to seek further evidence for this novel ‘bridge’ effect of moving beyond the page and into constructive action, perhaps by closely analysing those emotions we found to be most strongly associated with this narrative, such as love. finally, although not a focus of this study, a computerised language analysis of participant writings when using the pecs may serve to draw out more intricate linguistic changes, if any, and the implications of these. authors megan c. hayes teesside university megan@meganchayes.com kate hefferon university of east london mailto:m.hayes@tees.ac.uk positive emotions in expressive writing hayes & hefferon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 publishing timeline received 6 may 2015 accepted 28 september 2015 published 18 december 2015 references aron, a., aron, e. n., & smollan, d. 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(2017). fact or fable: increased wellbeing in voluntary simplicity. international journal of wellbeing, 7(2), 64-77. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i2.589 stacey ann rich la trobe university sarich@students.latrobe.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 article fact or fable: increased wellbeing in voluntary simplicity stacey ann rich · sharon hanna · bradley j. wright · pauleen c. bennett 1. introduction aesop (trans. 2014) tells of a peacock — beautifully plumed and brightly coloured — who mocks a crane for his dull appearance. the crane points out that he does indeed appear quite plain, but, unlike the peacock, is able to soar to great heights. in this fable, aesop wags his finger at the reader, warning that fine feathers do not make fine birds. moreover, he asserts, sometimes appearing outwardly simple can belie inward riches. this is the view taken by many who engage in a lifestyle known as voluntary simplicity, a way of living that is described as “outwardly simple and inwardly rich” (elgin & mitchell, 1977, p. 2). indeed, the value of a simple life has been espoused by writers and thinkers throughout time, who have consistently proposed simplicity as a path to wellbeing. if this is a legitimate claim, society stands to benefit if a simple lifestyle becomes more widely adopted. but is it legitimate? the following review briefly considers what is meant by the terms “voluntary simplicity” and “wellbeing.” we then ask the question: is there empirical evidence for an association between voluntary simplicity and improved wellbeing? voluntary simplicity (vs) — a term originally coined by gregg (1936) — is the name given to a lifestyle whose hallmark is reduced material consumption. elgin and mitchell (1977) adopted gregg’s turn of phrase to describe certain characteristics they believed were common to various “alternative” lifestyles of the day. the authors volunteered five values of a vs lifestyle, the first being material simplicity, or consuming only that which is required to satisfy needs. also proposed were human scale, a desire for smaller-scale living and working environments; selfdetermination, the desire to have greater control over life; ecological awareness, a recognition of the limit to resources and the impact of individual actions on the rest of the world; and personal growth, a desire to develop the inner life, be it intellectual or spiritual. the concept of voluntary simplicity touches many aspects of individual and societal life. simplifiers tend to work reduced hours, reduce their consumption, commit time to volunteer roles, use energy differently and report being happier. as a result, the lifestyle has the potential to impact research across multiple disciplines, including organisational, social and clinical psychology, economics, sustainability and public policy. understanding this lifestyle, therefore, is of interest to many. in order to understand the lifestyle, an understanding of who simplifiers are is required. the term “voluntary simplicity” is typically limited to those from highly developed “western-style” cultures (alexander & ussher, 2012, p. 83), whose circumstances could otherwise permit a life of abundance and material wealth, given that simplifiers (as they will be referred to here) are often reported to be highly educated and from middle class backgrounds (brown & kasser, 2005; elgin, 2010; huneke, 2005). despite this ability for material abundance, simplifiers commonly earn lower incomes than the general population (brown & kasser, 2005) although this is not always the case (alexander & ussher, 2012). indeed, exceptions appear to be the rule within the vs mailto:sarich@students.latrobe.edu.au http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 lifestyle. there is no set of rules to be strictly followed, and the manner and degree to which the lifestyle is engaged in is up to the discretion of the individual (gregg, 1936). for some, simplicity is a “coherently articulated philosophy” (etzioni, 1998, p. 626). for others, the simplification process is accidental (mcdonald, oates, young & hwang, 2006). as such, there are a myriad of ways in which the lifestyle manifests. the variety of motivations reported for living simply almost outnumber the variety of expressions of the vs lifestyle. concern for the environment, having time for oneself, improved health, and having more time for relationships and community are among some motivations listed by respondents to one multi-national survey of simplifiers (alexander & ussher, 2012). simplifiers also report major life events (breen pierce, 2000) as well as financial reasons (alexander & ussher, 2012; shama & wisenblit, 1984) as drivers of the decision to simplify. however, one concept that appears repeatedly in the literature is that of improved wellbeing. richard gregg, the man credited with coining the term voluntary simplicity, described simplicity as a “kind of psychological hygiene” (gregg, 1936, p. 25). similarly, elgin and mitchell (1977) proposed that motivation to simplify is often driven by “the realistic possibility of finding more satisfying ways to live” (p. 30). further, breen pierce (2000) proposed that “living simply can facilitate a life of balance, purpose and joy” (p. 24). the writings of these authors and others suggest that, for proponents of voluntary simplicity, the promise of increased wellbeing is an enticing aspect of the lifestyle. while many aspects of voluntary simplicity have been empirically investigated — including consumption behaviours (shaw & moraes, 2009; shaw & newholm, 2002), values (shama & wisenblit, 1984) cognitive processes (boujbel & d’astous, 2012; daoud, 2011), environmental responsibility (brown & kasser, 2005; elgin, 2010), and self-identity (grigsby, 2004; kahl, 2012) — investigation of the link to wellbeing is limited to just a few studies. before reviewing these studies, it is instructive to consider what is meant by the term “wellbeing.” it is generally described as a broad concept that covers many aspects of positive functioning (ryan & deci, 2001). two schools of thought have emerged within the wellbeing corpus: those of hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing. hedonic wellbeing — or hedonia — refers to pleasure and the absence of pain and distress, of comfort and enjoyment; whereas eudaimonic wellbeing — or eudaimonia — refers to concepts such as growth, meaning, authenticity, engagement and excellence, among others (huta & waterman, 2014; ryan & deci, 2001). while viewed as separate concepts, wellbeing researchers recognise that both are important to understanding wellbeing as a whole (huta & waterman, 2014; seligman, 2012). a large portion of the wellbeing literature to date has concentrated on life satisfaction. life satisfaction (ls) is an individual’s evaluation of the quality of their life and forms an important part of subjective wellbeing (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999). where it sits within the eudaimonic and hedonic traditions is a matter of debate, but it appears to be treated by most psychologists as hedonic in nature (huta & waterman, 2014). life satisfaction is well researched, with 11,782 articles addressing life satisfaction in the psychinfo database alone (accessed 25/04/2016). the satisfaction with life scale (swls) (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) is a frequently used measure of ls. in general, healthy, unincarcerated adults score above the neutral point on the satisfaction with life scale (pavot & diener, 2008). life satisfaction is not the only measure of wellbeing, and the brief description of wellbeing given here does not do the field justice. many alternative conceptualisations can be found elsewhere (cf. delle fave 2014; huta & waterman 2014; ryan & deci 2001). the information provided above is sufficient for the purpose of the current review, however, literature in the area of voluntary simplicity is typically constrained to measurement of life satisfaction and perceived happiness. in the following analysis, we investigate if the available literature supports an wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 association between voluntary simplicity and increased wellbeing, typically operationalised as life satisfaction. with authors describing increased wellbeing in the literature since 1936, a review and synthesis of evidence supporting the putative connection is long overdue. such a synthesis may provide insight into whether claims of improved wellbeing are empirically justified. 2. method investigation of voluntary simplicity spans many disciplines. accordingly, the search for literature was designed to be broad. one database from each of three disciplines was investigated in the search for literature, these being psychinfo (psychology) proquest business (economics) and proquest social science (sociology). figure 1 is a flow chart representing the search strategy utilised and the resultant pool of articles. figure 1. a flow chart of the review process articles were chosen based on whether they specifically looked at “voluntary simplicity,” rather than at a broader conceptualisation of “a simpler life,” and whether they specifically addressed a rt ic le s in cl u d e d results from database searches. search terms: “voluntary simplicity,” “simplicity,” “simple living,” “wellbeing” or “wellbeing,” “satis,*” and “happ*” n= 30 known to researchers (in press) n= 1 articles after duplicates removed n= 27 abstracts reviewed n= 27 abstracts excluded n= 21 not directly investigating the vswellbeing association (essays, commentaries, book reviews) a ss e ss in g s u it a b il it y l o c a ti n g r e so u rc e s dissertations excluded n= 2 peer-reviewed journal articles included n= 4 wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 wellbeing outcomes. further, the search was restricted to peer-reviewed journal articles. it is important to note that, while the methodology was not confined to quantitative studies, we could find no qualitative studies directly addressing the wellbeing outcomes of voluntary simplifiers. that is not to say that such outcomes are not discussed in the qualitative literature. concepts associated with wellbeing appear in the discourses of qualitative interviews, but are generally not the focus. our initial searches identified almost 30 relevant manuscripts, but when these were carefully assessed, it was found that only a few directly investigated the link between voluntary simplicity and wellbeing. indeed, only three studies were located using the database searches described, these being brown and kasser (2005), alexander and ussher (2012), and boujbel and d’astous (2012). one additional article, in press at the time of writing, was also included, this being rich, hanna and wright (2017). while the final pool of just four studies might be considered insufficient to support a comprehensive review, these studies contained wellbeing data for 3,233 participants, allowing a robust investigation of our central question. 3. results the results of the review are presented in the following sections. first, a table highlighting the characteristics of the four located studies is provided (table 1 below). drawing on this information, a critique and synthesis of the studies is then offered. this is followed by a statistical test of the relationship between voluntary simplicity and wellbeing, in the form of a metaanalytic procedure. before reviewing the studies, some clarification of terminology is required. the term “mainstream” is commonly used in the voluntary simplicity literature to refer to those participants living what may be considered a more socially normative lifestyle. however, the term “mainstream” is very broad, covering many aspects of a dominant culture. for the current investigation, the term “non-simplifying participants” will be used as a comparison label, as voluntary simplicity is the main point of difference between the groups being referred to. it is apparent from table 1 that the studies reviewed are similar in many respects, such as sampling, demographics and measurement of wellbeing. the four studies, however, differed in how they identified voluntary simplifiers. the following is a brief discussion and synthesis of these similarities and differences. 3.1 sampling the four studies utilised similar methods to recruit their vs participants, with a large portion coming from web-based sources (table 1). statistics from 2014 suggest the united states (87.4%) and australia (84.6%) have similar proportions of internet users (world bank, n.d.). although this represents a high proportion of the general population, internet usage is less likely for those with low income and the unemployed (australian bureau of statistics, 2007). this may be problematic for the generalisability of the studies’ findings. all four studies, however, employed other measures, such as magazines and letterbox drops, to reduce their reliance on internet-based recruitment and to find non-simplifying participants. 3.2 demographics the demographic characteristics between studies were largely homogenous. this may be indicative of the type of people attracted to the vs lifestyle, or a product of the type of people who engage with research. wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 table 1. comparison of the characteristics of the studies reviewed study brown & kasser (2005) alexander & ussher (2012) boujbel & d’astous (2012) rich, hanna & wright (2017) characteristic vs non-vs vs non-vs n 200 200 2,131 simplifiers (1,918 answering happiness question) 344 267 571 gender male 34.5% 34.5% not specified 35.9% 53.9% 11.7% female 65.5% 65.5% not specified 64.1% 46.1% 88.3% mean age 43 years, 5 months 44 years not specified, but nothing unusual about distribution 44 years, 6 months 35 years, 7 months 45 years, 2 months education postgrad 37.5% 21.5% not specified not specified college degree 39.5% 30.5% not specified 68.4% total sample not specified country of origin usa international (developed nations) canada predominantly australia wellbeing measure affect balance (diener et al. 1985) temporal satisfaction with life scale (pavot, diener, & suh 1998) single item retrospective happiness question satisfaction with life scale (diener et al. 1985) satisfaction with life scale (diener et al. 1985) voluntary simplicity measure self-identified as simplifier participation invited if participant fit a definition given self-identified (with vs values measure as validity check) voluntary simplicity index (leonard-barton 1981) research design cross sectional, between groups cross sectional, descriptive cross sectional, between groups cross sectional, correlational recruitment newsletters, magazines, websites, discussion lists list brokerage firm websites, blogs, and organizations related to vs association promoting vs snowballing and executive mba classes websites, blogs, social media, letterbox drop wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 for example, there was a predominance of females in the samples (table 1). this is not uncommon in the voluntary simplicity literature (breen pierce, 2000; huneke, 2005), however, it may not represent a genuine predominance of women within the lifestyle. rather, it may be indicative of the online recruitment methods used. there is evidence to suggest that females are more likely to reply to online surveys than males (smith, 2008). there was also homogeneity in age and education level. many scholars within the field argue that voluntary simplicity is the domain of those who could otherwise afford to live a higher consumption life if they chose to do so, due to higher levels of education and access to other resources (craig-lees & hill, 2002; maniates, 2002). this may be important, since research suggests that the level of education attained can have an effect on subjective wellbeing (kuppens, easterbrook, spears, & manstead, 2015). regardless of this possible confound in the relationship, given the similarity of available demographics between the studies and the profile of voluntary simplicity described in the associated literature, it appears likely that all four studies reached their target population. all four studies drew their samples from western and developed nations, meaning that the results may not be applicable to less developed nations. however, the problem of research being restricted to westernised cultures is not confined to the vs literature and has been discussed by scholars for some time (cf. suedfeld, 2016). for less developed nations, a simplified life is often a necessity rather than a choice (alexander & ussher, 2012) and little is known about the existence of voluntary simplicity outside of developed nations. as such, the conclusions drawn may only be applicable to western society. 3.3 measurement 3.3.1 wellbeing measurement similarities between the studies also extended to measurement of wellbeing, with life satisfaction being the most commonly used measure used in the four studies located (table 1). boujbel and d’astous (2012) and rich et al. (2017) employed the satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 1985), perhaps the most widely used measure of life satisfaction. the swls demonstrates robust psychometric properties (pavot & diener, 2008). brown and kasser (2005), however, measured life satisfaction using the temporal satisfaction with life scale (tswls) (pavot, diener, & suh, 1998). the tswls differs from the swls, in that it relates to past, present and future satisfaction. the scale has demonstrated good validity and reliability (pavot et al., 1998) with the past, present and future factors being related but distinct (mcintosh, 2001). brown and kasser (2005) also measured affect balance, calculated by subtracting mean unpleasant affect scores from mean pleasant affect scores on the diener and emmons (1985) nine-item scale. alexander and ussher (2012), however, measured wellbeing with a single item that asked those participants who had changed to a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity (90% of the sample or 1,918 participants) if they were happier as a result. participants could choose from four options, these being “much happier,” “somewhat happier,” “about as happy as i was previously,” or “less happy.” when considering the question of happiness, people may reflect on a variety of aspects of their lives to make such a judgment (verhofstadt, bleys, & van ootegem, 2015). further, there may be biases involved in the self-report of constructs such as happiness. for example, someone who has made a major change to their way of living may feel obliged to report that they are happier as a result, due to a post-decisional bias (gerard & white, 1983) or to eliminate any cognitive dissonance experienced (festinger, 1985). wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 3.3.2 identifying voluntary simplicity where the studies did differ quite markedly was in their approach to identifying voluntary simplifiers (table 1). of the four studies reviewed, two required voluntary simplifiers to selfidentify as such (boujbel & d’astous, 2012; brown & kasser, 2005). this may be problematic, as participants may self-identify as simplifiers incorrectly, without a full understanding of what is meant by this term. brown and kasser (2005) acknowledged this and attempted to reconcile the problem by statistically testing for differences between vs and non-vs groups on two characteristics associated with the lifestyle in the literature, these being reduced income and reduced spending. the vs group differed from the non-vs group on both variables, suggesting their self-identification was valid. boujbel and d’astous (2012) also assessed the validity of the distinction between vs and non-vs participants in their study, using a measure of voluntary simplicity values (shama & wisenblit, 1984). given these measures, it appears that both studies correctly identified their target populations. however, the level to which individuals were engaged in the vs lifestyle was typically not specified and nor was their length of involvement. this could be a limitation, since any association between vs and wellbeing may be tied to level or length of engagement. for instance, an extreme level of engagement, such as being entirely self-sufficient in a harsh environment (vannini & taggart, 2012) may result in lower levels of satisfaction and affect. people new to the lifestyle may also face difficulties learning to adapt. consistent with this possibility, a study with a sample of beginner simplifiers reported that some of the challenges faced may negatively impact their affect (ballantine, arbouw, & ozanne, 2011). consequently, the putative association between vs and increased wellbeing may be underestimated when categorising simplifiers as a group without regard to level of engagement or stage of the simplifying process (e.g., novice simplifiers). rich et al. (2017) measured level of engagement in simplifying behaviours rather than comparing the outcome of self-identified simplifiers to non-simplifiers. however, there were issues in the way voluntary simplicity was measured in this instance. a revised version of leonard-barton’s (1981) voluntary simplicity index was used to measure participants’ level of engagement in simplifying behaviours. as craig-lees and hill (2002) point out, the index does not cover all of the aspects of voluntary simplicity discussed in the literature. as a result, the measure may be missing important aspects of the lifestyle that have a stronger association with wellbeing outcomes. the measure also fails to take into account in which stage of the process of simplifying participants were. it is therefore unknown if participants were experienced or lifelong simplifiers, or inexperienced beginners. alexander and ussher’s (2012) participants were provided with a definition of vs and participants were invited to partake in the study if they identified with the definition and viewed their lifestyle as long term. many of the answers provided by the participants of the study fit the profile of simplicity as it is found in the literature, suggesting that the respondents were correctly identifying themselves as simplifiers. perhaps the best indication that voluntary simplifiers were correctly identified within the four studies is the homogeneity of demographics discussed previously. 3.4 study design no longitudinal or experimental studies were identified in the review process (table 1). the literature on the connection between voluntary simplicity and wellbeing is currently based on cross-sectional survey designs only, and, as such, causality between constructs cannot be inferred. further, the research questions being investigated differed across the studies. wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 alexander and ussher (2012) looked to gain insight into adherents of voluntary simplicity, with their survey containing 50 questions based on understanding of the lifestyle in the literature. wellbeing was measured as one part of an overall picture of voluntary simplicity. on the other hand, brown and kasser (2005) looked at relationships between ecologically responsible behaviours and wellbeing, investigating mindfulness and voluntary simplicity as possible mediators in that relationship. similarly, boujbel and d’astous (2012) investigated mediation, this time with voluntary simplicity as the independent variable, proposing a relationship between vs and life satisfaction with an ability to control one’s desire to consume as a mediating factor. mediation was also the target of investigation for rich et al. (2017), this time with deci and ryan’s (1985) three psychological needs being investigated as the mediator between vs and life satisfaction. nonetheless, all four studies measured wellbeing as the dependent variable, thus potentially providing insight into the relationship between voluntary simplicity and wellbeing. 3.5 strengths and limitations each of the studies was impacted by some limitations but, overall, the limitations of each study were somewhat mitigated by the strengths of others. for example, brown and kasser’s (2005) study design included a non-simplifying sample that was matched on many demographic characteristics, with the exception of education level. boujbel and d’astous’s (2012) nonsimplifying sample was not significantly different to their sample of simplifiers in level of education, somewhat mitigating any effect that education level may have had on wellbeing. similarly, while alexander and ussher’s (2012) study was descriptive in nature, it had a much larger sample size than those studies that utilised statistical testing. as such, the results obtained in the smaller samples are supported by the descriptive statistics obtained in the larger sample. further, the studies comparing vs to non-vs samples were limited, in that level of engagement within the lifestyle was not measured. rich et al. (2017) went some way to filling this gap by investigating simplifying behaviours on a continuum. 3.6 analysis of findings all four studies described a positive association between voluntary simplicity and increased wellbeing. in the case of life satisfaction, brown and kasser (2005) found that vs participants had a higher mean life satisfaction score (m= 4.47, sd= 1.08) than their non-vs participants (m= 4.23, sd = 1.12), t(398) = 2.18, p = .03. similarly, boujbel and d’astous (2012) reported their vs participants also had a higher mean life satisfaction score (m= 27.95, sd 5.55) than their non-vs counterparts (m= 26.15, sd= 5.25), t(609)= 4.07, p < .001 (standard deviations obtained from the authors). in addition to the mean differences reported between vs and non-vs participants, rich et al. (2017) found a significant correlation between increased engagement in vs and increased life satisfaction (r = .15, p =.001; note this figure is unpublished in the article). further, brown and kasser described a significant difference between their vs participants (m=2.05, sd=1.82) and non-vs participants (m= 1.60, sd= 2.20) in affect balance scores, t(398)= 2.23, p = .026. alexander and ussher’s (2012) survey asked participants who had transitioned to simplicity from more socially normative lifestyles if they were happier as a result. the response to this question prompted alexander and ussher to report that “the results overwhelmingly showed that the transition toward a simpler life increased happiness” (p. 76). forty-six percent of participants reported being much happier after simplifying their lives, with 41% reporting they were somewhat happier. only 12.7% reported being about as happy and 0.3% reported being less happy. wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 in order to investigate whether the association between vs and wellbeing exists when the studies are pooled, a meta-analysis was performed on the three studies that used a statistical test to measure the association, making it possible to compare effect sizes. the meta-analysis was conducted using comprehensive meta-analysis software (version 3) and the standardised mean difference (hedges g) was calculated (figure 2). the three studies, incorporating four measures of the vs to wellbeing relationship, indicate that engagement in a vs lifestyle is commensurate with higher wellbeing scores, hedges g = .28 (95% ci 0.20, 0.37), z = 6.279, p <.001. the q-statistic calculates if the studies in the meta-analysis share the same effect size. the q-statistic in the current study was .896, and, as this is equal with the expected value of q (the 3 degrees of freedom) p =.826, this suggests all studies share the true effect size. finally, the classic fail safe n was calculated to address the problem of publication bias. this analysis revealed that an additional 36 studies with an effect size of zero would be required to render the current findings non-significant. figure 2. forest plot of voluntary simplicity and wellbeing studies included in the metaanalysis brown and kasser’s (2005) measurement of affect balance is treated within the meta-analysis as a separate result. this was considered appropriate, given that positive and negative affect appear to be distinct from — but also related to — life satisfaction (diener et al., 1985). although there are only four studies within the meta-analysis, it should be noted that this is above the median of 3 in the cochrane database (davey, turner, clarke, & higgins, 2011). the use of the metaanalytic technique employed here is not intended to be definitive, rather, to statistically explore the putative associations within the small sample of research located. 4. discussion the aim of this study was to investigate whether empirical evidence exists to support a proposed link between voluntary simplicity and increased wellbeing. a systematic process, in line with the prisma guidelines (moher, liberati, tetzlaff, altman & the prisma group, 2009), was used to locate studies for inclusion. this methodology enabled us to build upon current knowledge, although the strict inclusion criteria both strengthened and weakened the conclusions that can be drawn. because we included only studies that were subjected to the peer review process, the pool of available literature was reduced. further, the requirement that studies should directly address wellbeing may have resulted in exclusion of rich qualitative information. indeed, despite the literature around the vs lifestyle being rich and diverse, it appears that little empirical attention has been paid to the wellbeing outcomes of voluntary simplifiers. only four wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 studies could be found that specifically addressed the issue in question. fortunately, each of these studies was reasonably robust, and, having synthesised currently available evidence, it is evident that some tentative conclusions can be drawn. most importantly, there does appear to be an association between engagement in voluntary simplicity and increased wellbeing. in the case of the meta-analytic investigation utilised, despite there being only four studies included, participant numbers were very high, and there was little variability in effect sizes, with the overall mean resting within the confidence intervals of each study. moreover, none of the confidence intervals included zero. although the effect may be considered small under cohen’s (1988) criteria, it should be noted that the life satisfaction scores reported by non-simplifying participants were also high. this is to be expected, as life satisfaction scores are generally negatively skewed, with respondents from western societies generally reporting scores around 70% of the scale maximum (cummins, 2003). in order for a larger effect size to be achieved, then, the level of life satisfaction of simplifiers would need to approach extreme satisfaction. in other words, there may be a ceiling effect at play that current instruments are unable to resolve. despite this measurement problem, the results of the meta-analysis suggest that people who identify as voluntary simplifiers, or who engage in higher levels of simplifying behaviours, report higher levels of wellbeing than their already satisfied non-simplifying counterparts. to better clarify whether the lifestyle itself is responsible for that increase, it is suggested that future research focus on longitudinal studies. such a design could involve recruiting people contemplating simplifying their lives and tracking them over a period of time, measuring their wellbeing. alternatively, designs that prospectively measure the relationship between level of engagement in a vs lifestyle and wellbeing may enhance our understanding of the links between constructs. before this can happen, however, there needs to be consensus regarding the most appropriate conceptualisation of wellbeing. although life satisfaction is arguably an important aspect of wellbeing, it is not the only aspect. satisfaction in many forms is often mentioned in the voluntary simplicity literature, and it is possible that it is not always satisfaction with life that simplifiers are seeking. words like “meaning and authenticity,” “relationships and community,” “balance and engagement” appear frequently in the discourse of simplifiers (breen pierce, 2000; elgin, 2010; zavestoski, 2002). if simplifiers are seeking meaning and authenticity in their lives, rather than other forms of life satisfaction, it may be critical to investigate these more eudaimonic aspects of wellbeing. in other words, are simplifiers finding what they seek? that is not to say that hedonic wellbeing should be ignored, rather it should be considered in harmony with eudaimonia. with this in mind, a more complex operationalisation of wellbeing, such as that provided by seligman's (2012) perma model, may represent a more fruitful target of investigation. perhaps more importantly, there also needs to be consensus developed regarding whether researchers are correctly conceptualising and measuring voluntary simplicity. there are at least two issues that require resolution. firstly, is voluntary simplicity one construct, or many constructs that share core features? gregg (1936) proposed that simplicity “involves a deliberate organisation of life for a purpose… as different people have different purposes in life, what is relevant to the purpose of one person might not be relevant to the purpose of another” (p. 4). gregg’s words hint at the possibility of subcategories of voluntary simplicity. indeed, researchers since gregg’s time agree that there are varying forms of the lifestyle (elgin & mitchell, 1977; etzioni, 1998), although these are typically poorly specified. wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 this is important because, while the current study found a relationship between voluntary simplicity and wellbeing, it remains to be seen if that relationship holds within subcategories of the concept. for example, someone who grows their own food and makes their own furniture in order to experience self-determination may experience different outcomes to someone who restricts their consumption in order to work less and free their time for other pursuits. there may be different personal attributes that bring both of these people to these differing forms of simplicity, and those personal attributes may affect how they experience wellbeing. if there are indeed distinct categories of voluntary simplicity, then investigating the overarching construct of simplicity without due attention to such subcategories may be confusing matters. secondly, is the relationship between vs and wellbeing that this review has investigated dependent on level of engagement with the vs lifestyle? it is possible that level of engagement may play a role in increased wellbeing, as proposed by boujbel and d’astous (2012) and rich et al. (2017). currently, it is unknown if there is a level of engagement that, once reached, relates to specific positive outcomes. perhaps there is a level of engagement wherein the lifestyle becomes burdensome! in order to understand how level of engagement may affect outcomes, a validated measurement instrument – that captures both the depth and type of involvement in subcategories of vs – is required. the issues discussed do not negate the usefulness of the topic. nor do they negate the current findings. this review demonstrates a connection between a loosely-bounded concept and increased life satisfaction. the next step requires clarification of the concept so that more work can be carried out across disciplines — fine-tuning our understanding of the potential impact of voluntary simplicity. 5. conclusion in this study, we investigated a theoretical — and often written about — link between engaging in a life of voluntary simplicity and increased wellbeing. extant literature addressing this concept was located and synthesised with meta-analysis results suggesting such a link exists. however, many questions remain open for further investigation. validated measures of more complex conceptualisations of wellbeing are urgently required, as are more sophisticated measures of type and depth of engagement with various aspects of voluntary simplicity. once these conceptual and measurement issues are resolved, longitudinal studies could assist in deepening the work already achieved, thereby clarifying exactly how and why living a vs lifestyle can increase wellbeing. aesop used storytelling to extol the value of simplicity, with countless retellings since. empirical research appears to tell the same story, with one point of difference: the ending is yet to be written. authors stacey ann rich la trobe university sarich@students.latrobe.edu.au sharon hanna la trobe university bradley j wright la trobe university mailto:sarich@students.latrobe.edu.au wellbeing in voluntary simplicity rich, hanna, wright, & bennett www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 pauleen c bennett la trobe university publishing timeline received 14 january 2017 accepted 6 august year published 25 november 2017 references alexander, s., & ussher, s. 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(2017). an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing: imagining a good life in professional training. international journal of wellbeing, 7(3), 19-38. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i3.642 christian r. bellehumeur saint paul university cbellehumeur@ustpaul.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 article an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing: imagining a good life in professional training christian r. bellehumeur · cynthia bilodeau · winnie yeung abstract: since its inception, there has been a rapid growth in the number of studies on peterson and seligman’s (2004) classification of positive psychology’s (pp) strengths and virtues, linking them to wellbeing (brdar & kashdan, 2010). however, some authors have criticized this approach (schwartz & sharpe, 2006), arguing that this classification does not integrate a complete understanding of the aristotelian virtue of practical wisdom. building on this critique, the article aims to apply the theoretical framework of gilbert durand’s anthropological structures of the imaginary (asi) in order to provide a nuanced approach to understanding positive psychology’s concepts of strengths and virtues. we suggest that this approach will contribute to enhancing the implications of these concepts for the practice of supervision and psychotherapy. in the first section, we explore the notion of virtue from the positive psychology perspective and contrast it with the aristotelian perspective. the comparison of these two perspectives lead to a rationale for proposing durand’s asi theory for greater understanding of the complexities inherent to the notion of virtues and their associated character strengths and their role in fostering a good life. in the second section, we briefly present an overview of durand’s asi theory. in the third section, we further demonstrate the links between the two theoretical frameworks (i.e., durand’s asi and pp’s strengths and virtues), by providing applications of the relevance of asi to both peterson and seligman’s (2004) six virtues and 24 character strengths. lastly, a case conceptualization is presented to articulate the clinical implications of this proposed approach. keywords: virtues, character strengths, wellbeing, practical wisdom, anthropological structures of the imaginary 1. introduction when reflecting on our experiences regarding challenging and unpleasant professional encounters, such as challenging psychotherapy sessions, demanding training experiences, or uncomfortable supervisory encounters, it is not uncommon to ask ourselves: how was i doing with this person? in this challenging psychotherapy session, was i fair with this “difficult” client? as a supervisor, was i brave enough to assert myself in a constructive way with what seemed to be a “stubborn” or “anxious” student? was i kind enough or too kind toward an “unfriendly” or “annoying” colleague? was i successful in my self-regulation? was i wise enough? the above questions are typically associated with one of two circumstances: 1) we question our overuse or underuse of specific traits (e.g., overuse of kindness translating into lack of assertiveness or genuineness); or 2) we question our interpersonal skills and consequently experience lower levels of subjective wellbeing and diminished interpersonal or intrapersonal satisfaction. when in this state of questioning, we may wonder how we can do better next time, or how we can avoid repeating this unpleasant encounter or difficult interaction in the future. in http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 other words, we imagine new ways of interacting in a more constructive, efficient and pleasant way when envisioning future challenging encounters. we experience these moments of self-questioning as part of our daily lives. they manifest themselves in both our personal and professional lives and refer to our ability to envision a “better version” of who we are. in the field of psychology and psychotherapy, it is safe to say that all major schools of thought address the notion of self-improvement, typically with a focus on targeting areas in which we are lacking. the positive psychology (pp) movement however, proposes a different approach to self-improvement by identifying character strengths to be nurtured and developed rather than focusing on repairing what is wrong or deficient (peterson & seligman, 2004; seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). the underlying assumption of this approach is that accentuating and exercising personal psychological strengths leads to increased wellbeing and promotes optimal functioning (peterson & seligman, 2004; seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). this new way of conceptualizing virtues and strengths has led to a growing number of empirical studies. with the search engine psychoinfo, an examination of the number of publications within a three-year period referring to the notions of virtues and strengths1 as developed by peterson and seligman (2004) since its beginning show the following results: 1) 2004 to 2006: 29 publications, 2007 to 2009: 38 publications, 2010 to 2012: 72 publications, 2013 to 2016: 156 publications. the number of articles examining the notion of virtues and strengths from a positive psychology perspective has more than doubled in the past three years. it is worth mentioning that the study of virtues is one of the four pillars of the second wave of positive psychology (pp 2.0), along with meaning, resilience and wellbeing (wong, 2011) which will be discussed further. despite this increase in numbers of empirical studies on peterson and seligman’s (2004) classification of pp’s strengths and virtues, schwartz and sharpe (2006) have criticized this approach. they argued that pp does not integrate a complete understanding of the aristotelian virtue of practical wisdom.2 although peterson and seligman’s (2004) classification does include the virtue of wisdom and knowledge (see diagram a), and therefore, several strengths (creativity, curiosity, judgment/critical thinking, love of learning, and perspective), according to schwartz and sharpe (2006), there are important things worth noting about this list of strengths. overall, they argue for an integrative and more expansive view of strengths which places (practical) wisdom at the crux of imagination and will.3 1 according to a search on psychinfo with only the expression “values in action” (via) as a keyword, june 28th 2017. 2 in the nicomachean ethics, aristotle (2000) advances an understanding of ethics known as virtue ethics because of its heavy reliance on the concept of virtue. derived from the greek word ethos, ethics refers to the personality and “character” of a person. aristotle’s aim was to describe what constituted excellent character in a person. aristotle (2000) referred to eudaimonia, which he considered the highest possible good for human beings. 3 “first, we believe that practical wisdom demands all of these strengths. … cultivating some of these strengths and neglecting others will lead to an impoverished toolbox – only hammers. second, we believe that practical wisdom requires other strengths that are not on the peterson and seligman list. it requires discernment, perceptiveness, and imagination. … and finally, and most important, the list of intellectual strengths, no matter how extensive, can never completely capture what goes into practical wisdom. for in addition to skill, which is what the intellectual strengths contribute to, practical wisdom requires will. to be wise, it is not enough to know the right thing to do. you also have to want to do it. in the absence of will, the intellectual and emotional skills that make up practical wisdom can be used as instruments of manipulation and abuse” (schwartz & sharpe, 2006, p. 386). an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 diagram a. durand’s classification of structures of the imaginary regimes diurnal nocturnal (could be called crepuscular) nocturnal structures heroic synthetic or “systemic” mystical verbal schema to distinguish to link to confound reflexive gesture postural oscillating, rhythmic or cyclical digestive or absorbing visual representations st-arnaud’s (1989) three axis of group dynamic4 axis of productivity axis of regulation axis of solidarity possible encountered values commitment, truth, boldness, clarity, justice, equality wealth, science authority, autonomy rational, logic, territory, freedom, challenge, to ascend, demarcation, ambition, exclusion slicing, fight, conquest, purity, speed, etc. coordination, conciliation, accommodation, tolerance, integration, simultaneity or unfolding in time according to either an eternal return or an exit from the current state of the world (parousia, history, point omega), mythological mission, mysteries, etc. gentleness, peace, human warmth, friendship, solidarity (to enmesh), sensuality (touch, taste), grandeur of the small/weak, what brings together colors, resemblance, inclusiveness, meditation, reflexion, inner life, etc. given the complexity of the notion of virtues, one may also wonder how complementary ways of understanding human nature can be taken into account when reflecting on virtues. in this article, we will focus on three possible ways: 1) peterson and seligman’s (2004) classification on pp’s strengths and virtues, 2) aristotle’s perspective of human nature, and 3) durand’s anthropological structures of the imaginary (asi). 2. overview the main goal of this article is to apply a theoretical understanding of durand’s asi for a nuanced understanding of the pp’s strengths and virtues in order to enhance further clinical implications. the main question of this analytical essay is the following: how can durand’s asi framework – proposing three main imaginary mythical categories – inform our understanding of peterson and seligman’s (2004) classification of virtues and strengths? in order to answer this question, this essay will be divided into three sections. 4 the relevance of these axes to asi are well explained in laprée (2013). an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 in the first section, we will explore the notion of virtue. this will begin with a brief presentation of the positive psychology approach, and mostly the notion of values in action (via), along with aristotle’s nicomachean ethics. in an effort to clarify the differences between positive psychology’s view of strengths and virtues and the aristotelian perspective, a summary of the critique of schwartz and sharpe (2006) will be presented, followed by a rationale to propose durand’s asi. in the second section, we will summarize durand’s theory of anthropological structures of the imaginary. and thirdly, we will further demonstrate the links between the two theoretical frameworks (i.e., durand’s asi and pp’s strengths and virtues), by providing applications of the relevance of asi to both peterson and seligman’s (2004) six virtues and 24 character strengths. this theoretical demonstration will be articulated by presenting a brief clinical case study, the case of marcella, who presents an ethical challenge within the context of clinical supervision. 3. virtues and strengths in positive psychology as contrasted by aristotle’s perspective of virtues positive psychology views human beings through a strength and talent lens, rather than a weakness and deficiency lens. while this approach has been endorsed for decades by scholars from humanistic schools of thought and even pastoral counseling,5 it is the pp movement that has brought this paradigm shift to self-improvement at the forefront of practice in psychology (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). in this emerging framework, the notion of virtues6 has been a major object of study (peterson & seligman, 2004). from antiquity (plato, aristotle), to major religious traditions (monotheism, hinduism, buddhism, and so on) to various philosophers (descartes, kant, nietzsche), the notion “virtue” (called in ancient greek: ἀρετή "arete") echoes the idea of moral excellence. it opposes the notion of vice, which can be briefly defined as a moral fault or weakness in someone's character or illegal or immoral activities. it is valued as an important principle or foundation of good moral being (peterson & seligman, 2004). bridging the ancient notion of “virtue” in the modern era of contemporary psychology, peterson and seligman (2004) have proposed a classification of six virtues – wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence – with corresponding strengths to assess one’s character strength signature (peterson & seligman, 2004). in order to propose this repertoire of virtues and strengths, peterson and seligman (2004), along with other colleagues, studied the major world religions and philosophical traditions. after identifying dozens of “candidate strengths,” peterson and seligman (2004) developed a list of 12 criteria7 to help them select the final 24 strengths distributed between six virtue categories (see appendix 1). the six virtues that emerged (i.e., courage, humanity, justice, etc.) were found to be shared across cultures and throughout time, spanning almost three millennia (peterson & seligman, 2004). 5 these similarities between the humanistic school and christian spirituality have also been observed (kaczor, 2015; zagano & gillespie, 2006). 6 in http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/virtue, the term “virtue” has three main meanings: 1) a good moral quality in a person, or the general quality of being morally good; 2) an advantage or good thing; 3) because of; as a result. this article will focus on the first meaning. 7 twelve criteria were retained to identify characters strengths: (1) ubiquity (widely recognized across cultures); (2) fulfilling; (3) morally valued; (4) does not diminish others; (5) nonfelicitous opposite (has antonyms); (6) traitlike (shows generality and stability) ; (7) measurable; (8) distinctiveness; (9) paragons (is strikingly embodied in some individuals); (10) prodigies (is precociously shown by some children or youth); (11) selective absence (is missing altogether in some individuals); (12) institutions (is the deliberate target of societal practices and rituals that try to cultivate it) (park, peterson & seligman, 2004). http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/moral http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fault http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/weakness http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/character http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/virtue http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/moral http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/quality http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/person http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/general http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/quality http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/morally http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/advantage http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/result an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 each of the six identified core virtues has corresponding character strengths. in order to develop this classification, they used various instruments: structured interviews, questionnaires, informant reports, behavioral experiments and observations. various criteria were used to distinguished character strengths from other related concepts, such as individual talents and abilities (park, peterson, & seligman, 2004). these six virtues are considered too abstract to be empirically and systemically studied, and hence, in an attempt to operationalize them, each virtue has a more precise set of character strengths (24 in total for all six virtues). these strengths are considered more practical to foster, and psychometric measures have been developed to measure them, such as the values in action (via-is) (peterson & seligman, 2004) and strengths use scale (sus) (govindji & linley, 2007). once identified, it is thought that the regular practice of strengths make it possible to attain their related virtue, leading to increases in wellbeing and buffering against mental illness (peterson & seligman, 2004). for example, for temperance, the strengths to be practiced are self-regulation, forgiveness, prudence and humility. pp’s understanding of human nature suggests that each personality is composed of a unique makeup of individual strengths and their related virtues, which peterson and seligman (2004) refer to as the “character strength signature.” however, as schwartz and sharpe (2006) have underlined, in this approach, virtues and strengths are treated as logically independent: “that people identify their ‘signature’ strengths and cultivate them, because more of a strength is better” (p. 377). this view is contrasted by the same authors: “with the aristotelian view that virtues are interdependent, that happiness (eudaimonia) requires all of the virtues, and that more of a virtue is not always better than less” (p. 377). according to kristjánsson (2010), the problem of cultivating signature character strengths is considered one of the main flaws of the approach by peterson and seligman: positive psychology asks us to identify our ‘signature strengths’ … those items from the virtues and strengths list that we are already best at, and to strengthen those, even at the expense of others (see, e.g., seligman, 2002, p. 245). seligman explicitly accepts that people can be virtuous although they do not display all six of the core moral virtues (2002, p. 137); and peterson and seligman are ‘comfortable saying that someone is of good character if he or she displays but 1 or 2 strengths within a virtue group’ (2004, p. 13). there is no attention given to the problem of one virtue colliding with another or to the bigger picture of relevance: how different characteristics fit into a well-rounded life. rather, individual strengths are treated as logically, empirically, and morally independent from one another … (p. 306). in this view, focusing on cultivating signature characteristic strengths rather than emphasizing the unity of character constitutes a significant flaw in peterson and seligman’s approach (kristjánsson, 2010). its focus on developing a limited number of character strengths that are already present may unwittingly produce individuals with certain character strengths but without character and virtue as it is generally understood. for example, some people may be strong in wisdom and knowledge but deficient in other strengths and hence may also be arrogant and disrespectful. in contrast, fowers (2008) highlights that a virtuous person typically possesses all virtues in various degrees and the disposition to act virtuously requires a sound understanding of how to act rightly at the proper time and place, considering the persons and the context. for aristotle (trans. 2000), a moral virtue is defined as a disposition to behave in the right manner when faced with extremes of deficiency and excess (these extremes are called vices). an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 moral virtues are thought to constitute excellence in character and to be primarily learned through practice (and habits) rather than through reasoning and instruction. in summary, a virtue refers to the idea of “an action which is perfectly executed or performed” (aristotle, trans. 2000). furthermore, aristotle (trans. 2000) uses the term phronesis (or prudence) to determine the appropriate or acceptable dose of fear versus intrepidity in a given situation. this is an example of the different ways one can examine any given situation as they attempt to determine the best possible action to carry out. phronesis relies on the repeated experience of past decisions, which have led to the creation of habits, good or bad. it is these habits which constitute one’s acquired character. according to aristotle (trans. 2000), everything in nature has a telos, or end goal. the goal of any person is to be virtuous, and, in order to be so, one must act morally. this requires not only that they demonstrate their moral virtues but they must also possess the intellectual virtue of prudence, or practical wisdom (schwartz & sharpe, 2006). this refers to aristotle’s doctrine of the mean.8 in order to explain his vision of virtue, aristotle (trans. 2000) proposes a table of virtues that are not intended as a set of exact rules to follow but rather a general guideline. according to him, a virtuous person is one who would demonstrate all the possible virtues, not as distinct qualities, but draw on them differentially in different aspects of their life. in this sense, his table presents only a rough approximation of his conceptualization of virtues and suggests that individuals will vary in how closely their virtues lie to the mean or closer to the extremes (vice) (aristotle, trans. 2000). in sum, the idea that there are two opposites for every virtue emphasizes the importance of moderation. a virtue is achieved by finding a middle ground, not by aiming for an extreme. however, it can be a struggle to identify exactly where this middle ground lies. aristotle (trans. 2000) argues that a truly virtuous person, with constant practice, would eventually naturally be inclined to behave appropriately and will have no need for rules. according to schwartz and sharpe (2006, p. 382-383), the aristotelian perspective differs from the peterson and seligman (2004) “strengths and virtues” perspective in three important ways: 1) strengths and virtues should be understood as integrated, not independent; 2) people should strive for the mean with respect to each virtue, that more of a virtue is not always better; and 3) there is a master virtue: practical wisdom, essential for orchestrating the other virtues into an effective and happy life. schwartz and sharpe (2006, p. 381) argue that the aristotelian virtue of practical wisdom must come into play as a master virtue in order to solve problems of specificity, of relevance, and of conflict, which can always arise whenever character strengths are translated into behaviour in real life situations. in articulating these important differences within the literature, our own reflections emerge regarding pp and its approach to the notion of virtues in fostering a good life and wellbeing. from a clinical perspective, we question the complexity of working with a large but finite number of strengths to be fostered in the context of client distress. we also wonder about the possible implications of overuse and underuse of these strengths and their relationship to client overall 8 virtue seen as the "mean or right middle" is different from the medium, because for each situation one must know how to adjust its position between the extremes. in some situations you have to be more fearful, whereas in others you have to be more fearless. for example, if an unknown person insults you on the sidewalk, it is better to continue on your way with a fear of an altercation, because choosing to respond with a fight would be considered silly and intrepid. but if someone physically threatens a loved one, it would be courageous and (normal) to get up and dare to defend that person, even if there are violent blows, because freezing in fear is not appropriate in this particular context. the brave human being always chooses the appropriate response: sometimes he (or she) is fearful, sometimes he (or she) is fearless. "the virtuous act" could be translated as "the appropriate act." an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 wellbeing. furthermore, we question the concept of the person and development of strengths. these reflections are detailed below. 3.1 reflection one: the finite number of identified virtues some studies have cast doubt on the existence of six higher order virtues, suggesting that the 24 character strengths as proposed by peterson and seligman (2004) may be better represented by a four, three or even two-factor model (cf. macdonald, bore, & munro, 2008; brdar & kashdan, 2010; mcgrath, 2015; martin-krumm & tarquinio, 2011). other authors also suggest that the socio-cultural dimension is lacking from the pp’s strengths and virtues research (martin-krum & tarquinio, 2011). furthermore, not only are virtues difficult to conceptualize, measuring these 24 strengths is also a complex task (peterson & seligman, 2004). given the ambiguity surrounding their conceptual grouping, one may wonder how it is possible to concretely foster all 24 of these strengths in each individual person. that is, psychotherapists may struggle with how to go about fostering the discovery (acquisition) of virtues and strengths in the context of extreme distress or severe mental illness. more importantly, because of the relative ease of operationalizing character strengths, this may divert valuable resources from actually measuring the cardinal virtues directly, which are thought to be relevant for moral education (cf. laprée, 2000; 2013). 3.2 reflection two: the overuse or underuse of strengths this reflection refers to the development and practice of virtues and how or whether it is possible to achieve balance. for example, how can one balance being kind and genuine, being courageous and prudent, showing a sense of equity and a capacity to forgive, self-control and zest, or showing loyalty and open-mindedness at the same time? these questions can be viewed as personal ethical dilemmas which have been linked to the problem of overuse and underuse of strengths (schwartz & sharpe, 2006). both overuse as well as underuse of strengths can have a negative impact on individual wellbeing (grant & schwartz, 2011). as previously mentioned, schwartz and sharpe (2006) have suggested that the via character strengths cannot be treated independently from one another, and should be cautioned from overuse. they also suggest that a “master” strength of practical wisdom is needed in order to effectively deploy one’s optimal range of strengths. finally, fowers (2008) emphasizes the importance of developing all 24 strengths and the importance of balance among the range of virtues for “unity of character,” as opposed to peterson and seligman’s (2004) approach which focuses on cultivating signature character strengths. 3.3 reflection three: the definition of wellbeing research findings have established significant positive correlations between via character strengths and wellbeing (peterson & seligman, 2004). however, the challenge lies in the fact that the notion of wellbeing is not monolithic across all cultures. for example, wong (2016a) has coined the term, the dialectics of wellbeing. dialectics in the merriam webster dictionary (2017) refers to the “dialectical tensions or opposition between two interacting forces or elements.” positive and negative emotions are opposites, but they are also intimately connected. in this sense, their relationship is not a static one but continues to evolve through the interplay of the two polarities (lomas & ivtzan, 2016). furthermore, wellbeing and ill-being are not two poles of a continuum, but are two separate dimensions of functioning (keyes, 2007). for example, avoidance and approach are not two opposite poles of the same dimension, but may exist in an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 parallel. to avoid or to approach is based on what is required under the circumstance. optimal levels of adaptation and wellbeing can be achieved through the dialectical interplay between two coexisting adaptive systems (wong, 2016b). individuals use different approaches for coping, based on their personality and the situations they encounter. 3.4 reflection four: embracing the wholeness of the person as mentioned in reflection 3, according to positive psychology 2.0 (wong, 2011; 2015; 2016c), it is important to consider both sides of human nature; the luminous and the dark sides. this can also apply to the notion of virtues. focusing only on virtues without recognizing the dark side can be analogous to focusing on nutrition without considering the possible contamination by bacteria and toxins. examples of dialectics of virtues include courage vs. fear, temperance vs. greed, transcendence vs. selfishness, and humanity vs. domination. therefore, pp 2.0 argues that it is not possible to properly study virtues without taking into account the inevitable vices that define the need for virtues. similarly, fowers (2008) also argues that “understanding good character is dependent on contrasting it with less noble character types to highlight the key features of virtue” (p. 630). 3.5 reflection five: fostering the development of strengths at the website www.viacharacter.org, a list of two to four interesting and concrete activities are provided to assist in improving each of the 24 character strengths. despite their relevance, it can be time consuming or challenging for clinicians to select the best activity among a list of over 75 possible ones. psychotherapists and clinicians may struggle with sifting through an array of choices, and experience doubt, if not some stress, about this. in this sense, clinicians may benefit from a more heuristic way of guiding the development of their clients’ character strengths. in sum, schwartz and sharpe’s (2006) critique of pp’s perspective on character strengths and virtues, along with the five reflections above, suggest the relevance of proposing an alternative theoretical framework for understanding virtues and character strengths. indeed, one may wonder what constitutes a “master” strength (or superordinate one) of practical wisdom. how do we find a balance between character strengths that should not be treated independently? one may have to imagine other ways of knowing. just like images can communicate to us in ways that words fail, the ability to create an imagined world helps us find our unique position in a world of reality (rautenberg, 2010). in seeking answers to the above questions, we suggest that a more heuristic framework could assist us in making sense of the complexity inherent to the notion of virtues and their associated characters strengths. specifically, we suggest that durand’s theory of imaginary can serve to provide a model that will help to foster a good life, according to aristotle (trans. 2000). durand’s asi is a culturally sensitive framework that can embrace multiple factors at a higher symbolic level, as well as the notion of dialectics (e.g., virtues vs. vices), through the use of a third path (i.e., the systemic mythical category) in what we suggest is a more practical and simple way. as schwartz and sharpe (2006) suggest, “it takes imagination and perception to translate virtue into action in any situation” (p. 381). aligned with the appreciation of a good life, according to aristotle, somerville (2006) has proposed the close relationship between ethics, imagination, and the symbolic capacity of human beings. this leads us to a different yet complementary view of human beings, proposed by durand’s (1960) anthropological structures of the imaginary (asi). in this view, human beings are seen as homo symbolicus (i.e., human beings http://www.viacharacter.org/ an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 with a symbolic capacity). within this culturally sensitive framework9 (wunenburger, 2013), the various elements of personality (virtues, strengths) are embedded in a more broad and global understanding of humankind (durand, 1960). 4. a brief overview of durand’s theory of anthropological structures of the imaginary philosopher and cultural anthropologist gilbert durand (1921-2012) developed his theory of anthropological structures of the imaginary (asi) as an attempt to encompass what it is to be completely “human.” his theory addressed issues of existence, structuring and imaginary. in his view, homo sapiens inhabit this world not by means of a predetermined nature from basic instincts, but by symbolic structures that create meaning. structures are brought about by the individuals’ ability to interpret and make sense of their experiences. this human capacity to interpret, homo symbolicus, leads to the creation of symbolic structures which guide human action. the structuring of meaning is created and transformed through interaction with one’s environment, and thus culture is considered a starting instinct in life, transmitted through ancestral lineage. the imaginary refers to the repertory of items or images that define for an individual and their collective what is possible to imagine, or make sense of. in this sense, human beings are seen as acting through a symbolic mode or (innate) symbolic structures of the imaginary rather than acting on instincts. one can see these structures of the imaginary as referring to one’s worldview. gilbert durand’s understanding of human action, guided by the anthropological structures of the imaginary, has been inspired by many domains: literature, arts, music, philosophical and religious beliefs, mythologies, esotericism, schools of humanities, mainstream civilization trends and the hermeneutics of applied sciences. according to durand (1960), there are, at the origin of human cultures, reservoirs of images and symbols which continue to shape our ways of thinking, living and dreaming. the imaginary is not just the concern of a rational approach, but is part of the whole human living constitution (wunenburger, 2013). to realize his vision of the person, durand10 (1960) argues that these images and archetypal patterns, common to anyone, deploy in an "anthropological trajectory," defined as a “ceaseless exchange taking place on the level of the imaginary between subject assimilatory drives and objective pressures, emanating from the 9 kristjánsson (2010) has pointed out that proponents of positive psychology have been “accused of hustling a disguised ideology of conservative political individualism. the accusation is that positive psychology is all about selffulfillment qua personal happiness, and although it does mention social factors (‘positive institution’), those are effectively relegated to being a side issue ” (p. 298-299). however, durand’s theory of sai is considered a culturally sensitive framework that takes into account western and eastern worldviews (durand-sun, 2013). 10 indeed, in his seminal work the anthropological structures of the imaginary (asi), gilbert durand (1960) considers the human being as a homo symbolicus, and the whole symbolic world of the latter constitutes the capability of his imaginary. note that, as opposed to one individual’s particular imagination, the term imaginary (from the french noun “imaginaire,” and not its adjective equivalent), refers to the general and collective human ability to imagine, which durand (1979) calls "the whole human universe" (p. 23). durand (1960; 1992) hereby reinforces the affirmation of his master gaston bachelard (1948), with a first axiom: "the images that are raw psychic forces are stronger than ideas, stronger than the actual experiences" (p.20, our translation). therefore, these "images [are] loaded with ambivalent emotions and symbolic correlates, organized into coherent networks which feed all symbolic expressions. the result is that human rationality is always acquired second." (wunenburger, 2013, p. 9, our translation). a second axiom in durand’s asi focuses on temporality – under both the eastern and western conceptions of time – of the imaginary, which comes in the form of functions designed primarily to help tame the passing of time and deal with the existential anguish of death: "finally, the imaginary is basically a temporal psychic activity, that is to say, both subject to time and able to challenge the destructive time exposing us to death" (wunenburger 2013, p. 9, our translation). an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 cosmic and social milieu” (durand, 1999, p. 41). there is a constant exchange between culture and the individuals within a society. culture plays a significant role in shaping worldview and influencing values. 4.1 durand’s classification of structures of the imaginary durand (1960) divides mental images and visual narratives of all cultures into two large polarities – the “diurnal” and the “nocturnal” – which are in opposition. these polarities are based on opposing worldviews or structures of the imaginary. however, to ensure the continual existence and balance of the regimes, a “synthetic system” is needed to allow the two opposing regimes – the heroic and the mystical – to co-exist and to maintain the balance between them (durand, 1999). diagram a (page 21) offers an abridged version of durand’s classification of the anthropological structures of the imaginary. the visual representations in diagram a demonstrate the main differences between the three structures. a bright yellow circle is used to represent the heroic structure, as it echoes the diurnal polarity, the verbal schema “to distinguish,” and also resonates the energy of productivity and constant tension in life. a darker (midnight blue) circle is used to represent the mystical structure, as it echoes the nocturnal polarity, the verbal schema “to confound” and at the same time resonates with the energy of solidarity, harmony and a peaceful life. finally, in the middle, a swirling circle11 with both the bright and the dark colours is used to represent the systemic structure as it echoes the verbal schema “to link,” and also resonates with energy of regulation. note that in the systemic structure, there is no “blending” of the two polarities (which would best be represented by a green circle, blending yellow and midnight blue); instead, the swirl illustrates the harmonious co-existence of opposites. another meaningful symbol of systemic structure is the yin-yang symbol. this brief introduction to durand’s asi can be further described by presenting, one by one, these three main mythical categories (heroic, mystical and synthetic) in more detail. the heroic structure: the diurnal regime, or the schizomorphic or heroic and purist structure, is the daytime image characterized by the verbal schema “to distinguish” and the dominant postural position of “getting up or standing, ascending,” or the upward rising thrust (bellehumeur et al., 2013). the heroic structure, in its postural reflexive gesture, predisposes to stand, to ascend, to separate (or distinguish or clarify) what is good and elevate us from what is bad or evil and what makes us fall, to purify, to struggle to victory (laprée, 2000). it carries the notion that heroes have to stand and fight and overcome any challenge they face (xiberras, 2002). this heroic structure echoes st-arnaud’s (1989) axis of productivity (bellehumeur & carignan, in press). in sum, there is always a sense or an energy of constant tension, not peace, within the heroic structure. the mystical structure, arising from the nocturnal polarity. durand uses the word mystical to allude to this mystery of ourselves. however, to avoid confusion of language, we prefer to speak of intimacy (or interiority) for this structuring. within the mystical structure, the verbal schema is “to confound,” whose reflexive gesture is digestive or absorbing, which tends to receive within oneself (durand, 1960). this can also be understood as “to merge,” so that two entities are now 11 although the visual presentation of systemic structure indicates a cyclical motion in a one-way direction of going down (spiral downward), it is important to keep in mind that this motion, according to durand’s image of yin-yang, has truly the motion of going back and forth (back to the original, a two-way motion). for durand, the reflex can trace back to culture, and the culture to the reflex. his theory can be applied from either way, as this is about regulation; things can go in either direction, a two-way movement, interrelationship, or going back to the original. an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 indistinguishable. in this state of fusion, everything is friendly, gentle, peaceful, warm, harmonious and internalized. "[w]ords are softened by figures of speech, such as the euphemism… ‘the fall is slowed to a descent’ (xiberras, 2002, p. 66)…" (laprée, 2013, p. 156). this is sort of a “solidarity building” energy (st-arnaud, 1989), which echoes the analogy and similarity principles that are found in durand’s mystical structure. indeed, it is important that each person feel good, that he finds his place within the relationship, while giving the other the same psychological space. each person is seen as trying to create for the other an atmosphere of confidence and security. 4.2 the systemic structure: an energy of “regulation” durand also identified a third structure called “synthetic” (later re-named “systemic”), arising from what he called in later writings the “crepuscular” regime occurring between the nocturnal and diurnal polarities. the crepuscular regime is not a polarity, as are the nocturnal and diurnal regimes, but refers "rather to an imaginary place of connection between these first two [heroic and mystical structures]” (laprée, 2013, p. 157). this structure refers to the third path, where both the diurnal and nocturnal regimes co-exist harmoniously because the principle of causality exists in this system. the systemic structure’s verbal schema is “to link,” and its reflexive gesture is oscillating, rhythmic, or cyclical, tending to synthesize or hold opposites together in harmony without any will of exclusion. this is like the linking of opposite principles in the chinese philosophy of yin-yang (wong, 2016c). while the synthetic structure embraces paradox, durand believes that personality disorders and social unrest can result from the disbalance of the heroic or mystical regimes being off-balance (bellehumeur et al., 2013; laprée, 2000). according to durand-sun (2013), the antithesis of eastern and western values can co-exist. the effects of these external and intrapsychic influences on a human being’s wellbeing can be revealed through their mythical categories of the imaginary. if one leans too much on the heroic side, the sense of wellbeing may be associated with too much stress; if one leans too much on the mystical side, there may be a lack of personal goal and healthy challenge in that person’s makeup. 5. applications of durand’s asi to pp’s conceptualization of character strengths and virtues in what follows, we will apply durand’s asi to the study of character strengths and virtues. but first, two points must be made. first, it is important to note that establishing the links between the theoretical constructs of strengths and virtues and asi is both theoretically and epistemologically challenging. both of these theories rely on greek classical philosophers that have complementary views of human nature. durand’s theory of the imaginary tends to be closer to plato (mattei, 1993; wunenburger, 1997; 2013) and the theory of virtues is closer to aristotle’s philosophy (peterson & seligman, 2004). however, given the empirical evidence of durand’s theory, along with the five reflections above, the relation between mythical categories and virtues and strengths seems logical and reasonable to propose. on a more practical note, in our attempt to classify strengths, we have noticed that some are more easily classified than others. in order to improve the scientific rigor, from a methodologically perspective, the three co-authors (one from eastern chinese cultural background, one from french canadian and one from english canadian background) have classified independently these 24 strengths. consensus was reached through inter-rater discussion. inter-rater agreement prior to discussion ranged between 70 and 80%. an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 diagram b attempts to illustrate an overall distribution of the six main virtues into two distinct polarities of the imaginary. diagram c is more specific in categorizing the 24 strengths. we remain tentative in our approach and aware of the need for future research. diagram b. asi as a heuristic classification of virtues diurnal polarity nocturnal polarity wisdom and knowledge humanity courage temperance justice transcendance (systemic) diagram c. mythical structures as a heuristic classification of strengths heroic structure (diurnal regime) systemic structure ("crepuscular " regime) mystical structure (noctural regime) creativity/ingenuity curiosity love/intimacy love of learning perspective kindness bravery leadership citizenship/teamwork industry/perseverance regulation/self-control modesty/humility zest hope prudence judgment/critical thinking spirituality gratitude fairness social intelligence awe/appreciation of beauty and excellence honesty/authenticy/integrity forgiveness/mercy humor/playfulness what follows is a case study to further illustrate the relevance of durand’s theory of the imaginary to the study of virtues and strengths for conceptualization and treatment planning. 6. case study: marcella marcella is a 29-year-old married female with no children. she and her five siblings were raised in argentina by her single mother and maternal grandparents. while she states she had a good relationship with her family, she also states her mother struggled with depression throughout her childhood, and, as a consequence, was often emotionally unavailable. growing up, marcella describes frequently feeling inadequate in relation to others. she explains her disadvantaged childhood made her have to “work harder than others to prove herself” and she felt as though she was never given the opportunity to achieve her true potential. at the age of 18, marcella left argentina to travel the world in “pursuit of opportunity.” she explains that it was in india where her life changed and she discovered purpose and meaning in life through engaging in their meditative practices, mentored by a gifted spiritual leader who had a major influence on her spiritual life. this allowed marcella to experience a deep spiritual connection and newfound gratitude in her own life. after two years of studying meditation in india, she came to canada to study psychology in order to help others discover and find themselves. she is currently enrolled in a demanding canadian graduate-level program to become a clinical psychologist. marcella describes herself as extremely competent in her work as a psychotherapist, given her life experience, and reports having a special ability to be perceptive of others, appreciate them and be sensitive to their needs. lately, however, she reports struggling with feelings of disillusionment in regards to her program of study and its reductionist view of healing. she explains experiencing frustration at the lack of competence exhibited by her peers an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 and resentful of her clinical supervisor, who fails to recognize the importance of her exceptional knowledge and skills regarding meditation for healing and her above-average capabilities. this has led her to use techniques she learned in her travels, regardless of the fact that they had not been approved by her clinical supervisor. because of this, her supervisor questioned her ethical awareness, which resulted in tensions between them. marcella reports that her perceived lack of freedom in her practice and lack of trust from her supervisor led her to attempt to conceal her use of spiritual practices with clients, leading to the eventual removal of her clients. in consequence, she states feeling excluded, insecure and worried about how she is professionally perceived in the program. 6.1 brief analysis of the case study marcella presents with anxiety related to her current struggles in her graduate program. marcella’s case could be examined from various clinical perspectives. for example, her sufferings could be seen through the lens of attachment (bowlby, 1988), related to her psychologically absent mother. she could also be seen as experiencing a sense of isolation due to her move to canada and the cultural differences between individualistic and collective cultures, resulting in acculturation stress (berry, 2005, p. 708). a third existential lens could perceive a possible conflict of values between the mainstream approach (e.g., clinical psychology) and her value of spiritual orientation. in other words, marcella could be experiencing a lack of meaning in her life, expressed as a lack of meaningful relationships and meaningful engagement. the proposed treatment could be to focus on the human capacity for imagination and meaning-making in order to create an alternative world that incorporates her spiritual world with the western individualistic world. all of these clinical avenues could be relevant for treatment. furthermore, conceptualizing marcella’s case solely from the lens of virtues may not sufficiently take into account the complexity of her situation. however, to better illustrate our previous points on the conceptualization of virtues, let us turn to the notions of virtues and character strengths. first, from seligman’s model of strengths, marcella demonstrates strengths in the area of awe and gratitude, mostly related to her past spiritual experiences in india, which have shaped her expectations of current academic experiences. from this perspective, strengths are seen as independent, and consequently, marcella would be encouraged to focus on these strengths individually to increase her wellbeing by applying her strengths in gratitude and awe in other domains, for example, by transferring her awe and gratitude to the academic expertise and knowledge that is offered to her by her professors, clients and colleagues. second, from an aristotelian perspective, the idea of practical wisdom would require strengths to be viewed through the lens of practical wisdom, which requires appropriate dosage of virtues and strengths to balance their integration in such a way that one would strive to the mean with respect to each virtue in order to achieve a better and happier life. from this perspective, marcella would demonstrate strengths in awe and gratitude, but deficiencies in strengths related to judgment and honesty (towards her clinical supervision). despite the fact that marcella strongly believes in her exceptional skills with regards to spirituality, a perceived lack of authenticity may also be interpreted as her desire to remain true to her own beliefs and values. however, within the context of her training, marcella’s attempt to conceal her practices with clients has resulted in the removal of her clients and in tensions with her supervisor (who was ethically responsible for her clients). therefore, despite marcella’s good intentions of wanting to help her clients to the best of her abilities, she could be seen as possibly benefitting from a focus on increasing her humanity (mostly social intelligence) and transcendence (such as an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 experiencing more hope in her clinical supervisor’s abilities to train her well) to help in recognizing all people as members of the human family, despite their difference in opinions and professional preferences. finally, to avoid any further conflict with her clinical supervisor, marcella could have benefitted from discussing her perspective with her supervisor sooner, in a humble way, to articulate her beliefs with regards to why spiritual interventions and meditation are so important for her at this stage of learning. given that cultural competency is required both in psychotherapy and in supervision, one could expect that her clinical supervisor could be open to hearing about this. if not, it would take courage from marcella to do so. her overemphasis on awe and gratitude is seemingly out of balance with her judgment and honesty. practical wisdom would allow her to do the right thing at the right moment. in marcella’s situation, it could be seen as the need to balance her developed awe and gratitude from previous positive experiences, to leave room for the requirements of her current situation, which require her to exercise judgment and express her awe and gratitude in a more honest way. this could also allow her to express her legitimate experience of vulnerability as a trainee. for example, marcella could share her impression of not feeling fully validated by her clinical supervisor for her self-perceived gifts of above-average spiritual awareness and skills. revisiting diagram c, inflated awe and gratitude, combined with deficiencies in judgment and honesty suggest an imbalance from durand’s perspective. there is an exaggeration of the mystical structure undermining the heroic structure. therefore, marcella may also benefit from recognizing her need to develop the virtue of wisdom and knowledge, her critical judgment (along with a stronger motivation to learn more about counseling and psychotherapy ethics in working with clients). also, diagram c, balancing these two mythical regimes into the systemic structure, could foster a more integrated and holistic awareness of her of spirituality, accompanied by a deeper functioning with regards to social intelligence. 7. conclusion despite its remarkable contribution, which has captured the interest of a growing number of researchers, the field of positive psychology’s concepts of strengths and virtues is not without its critics (schwartz & sharpe, 2006). as fowers (2008, p. 641) and kristjánsson (2010, p. 307) have recognized, despite some aristotelian misgivings identified in peterson and seligman’s (2004) approach to virtue, these two later authors of the via both acknowledged that they are still in development: “yet-to-be-articulated good theory that make sense of the classification entries, individually and collectively” (p. 9). in this article, we have attempted to apply a theoretical understanding of durand’s asi, seen for a more integrated and holistic vision of a human being and for a more nuanced approach to understanding positive psychology’s concepts of strengths and virtues. we suggest that durand’s theory of asi could be proposed as a complementary theoretical framework, taking into account the complexity of studying both virtues and character strengths. earlier in this article, we briefly referred to the contributions of the “second wave” of positive psychology (pp 2.0) (ivtzan, lomas, hefferon, & worth, 2015; wong, 2011; 2015) which is an umbrella under which there is the inclusion of many defining themes. it is most interesting to note that durand’s theory of the imaginary has various epistemological similarities with pp 2.0. we proposed that these similarities allow for a matching of wong’s (2015) defining themes of pp 2.0 and durand’s theory of the imaginary. diagram d summarizes the main similarities between the basic tenets of pp 2.0 and durand’s theory of the imaginary. an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 diagram d. similarities between pp 2.0 and durand’s theory of the imaginary positive psychology 2.0 (wong, 2011; 2016a, b, c) durand’s (1960) theory of the imaginary dialectical view (embracing both light and dark sides of human nature); yin-yang symbol. yin-yang symbol echoes the systemic (synthetic) mythical category. embracing and transforming the dark side of human existence echoes the willingness to confront our own mortality and make the best use of our limited time on earth. the imaginary as an answer to our existential fear of death and time flying by. capacity to consider unpleasant and undesirable territories such as suffering, terminal illness and death, as well as the positive side of life. both polarities such as life and death, suffering and happiness may co-exist. cultivating humanistic or global virtues not only at the individual level but also at the societal level; balance of yin and yang as a dynamic process; achieving the right balance depends on both internal and external conditions. the imaginary is dynamic and durand’s theory relies on both internal and external elements, which are part of the anthropological trajectory. pathways to wellbeing may be shaped by cultural differences. culturally sensitive framework, embracing western and eastern worldviews. welcoming of various ways of knowing (quantitative research grounded in the epistemology of positivism; qualitative research and knowledge from humanities such as philosophy, literature and religion). embracing human reality as a whole, taking into account various ways of knowing from multiple disciplines. considering the optimal wellbeing of individuals and organizations and the good life from a perspective that transcends traditional polarities (e.g., happinesssadness, vice-virtue) through adopting a transcendent lens that perceives over and above a commonly adopted either-or binary continuum. optimal wellbeing and optimal mental health echo the systemic mythical category, where opposites co-exist (laprée, 2000; durand, 1979). in sum, applying durand’s theory in conceptualizing marcella’s use of her strengths suggests other possible ways for psychotherapists to approach and support marcella’s efforts in moving forward. although there may be other patterns or conceptualizations that could be identified as relevant for marcella to consider in her personal and professional development, we argue that a balanced approach to integrating positive aspects of heroic structure and positive aspects of nocturnal regime (durand’s mystical and systemic structures) would greatly benefit marcella and ease the identification of the various development areas she is faced with. within the systemic structure (where, according to durand), we find optimal wellbeing, marcella could discover strengths such as perspective and social intelligence, as mentioned above, that would be greatly beneficial for her to move forward in her current challenges. the three original pillars of positive psychology identified by seligman (2011) were positive subjective experience, positive individual characteristics (virtues and strengths) and positive institutions and communities. to date, positive psychology has produced much research on the first two areas but there remains a lack of research in the third pillar (gable & haidt, 2011). therefore, the proposition of applying durand’s theory to notions such as virtues and strengths does not only serve the purpose of this theoretical concern per se. it echoes one main recommendation made by top researchers in the field of positive psychology who have previously shared concerns about the lack of research on integrating a more socially and an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 culturally sensitive view of human nature (gable & haidt, 2011). according to them, the field of positive psychology needs to create links with a “positive sociology” and a “positive anthropology.” therefore, in this article, we have briefly demonstrated how durand’s anthropological structures of the imaginary can be seen as a valuable framework which takes into consideration social and cultures dimensions of human nature. as more research is needed to better include various social and cultural influences to the notions of virtues and strengths, we agree with schwartz and sharpe’s (2006, p. 386) claim that practical wisdom requires other strengths that are not on the peterson and seligman list. for future research, it would be interesting to see how other religious traditions, such as the buddhism tradition and its emphasis on the virtue of detachment may influence the understanding of western classification of virtues and strengths. moreover, future research could focus on the role of strengths, such as flexibility and adaptability, which seem underrepresented in the peterson and seligman list. given the fact that cognitive rigidity has been found to lead to mental illness (depression and anxiety), flexibility is necessary in managing wellness in the complexity of the life context. finally, we agree again with schwartz and sharpe’s (2006, p. 386) claim about how “practical wisdom requires other strengths that are not on the peterson and seligman list [such as ] … imagination.” authors christian r. bellehumeur saint paul university cbellehumeur@ustpaul.ca cynthia bilodeau saint paul university winnie yeung saint paul university publishing timeline received 29 june 2017 accepted 14 november 2017 published 12 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(2006). ignatian spirituality and positive psychology. the way, 45(4), 41-58. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/virtue http://www.viacharacter.org/viainstitute/classification.aspx https://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/outlines/article/viewfile/2687/3348 https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-3651-y https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022511 http://www.drpaulwong.com/what-is-second-wave-positive-psychology-and-why-is-it-necessary/ https://thevirtueblog.com/2016/10/18/the-good-life-through-polarity-and-transcendence-part-1/ https://thevirtueblog.com/2016/10/18/the-good-life-through-polarity-and-transcendence-part-1/ https://thevirtueblog.com/2016/10/19/the-good-life-through-polarity-and-transcendence-part-2/ https://thevirtueblog.com/2016/10/19/the-good-life-through-polarity-and-transcendence-part-2/ http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/virtue http://www.viacharacter.org/viainstitute/classification.aspx an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 appendix 1. via classification of character strengths (peterson & seligman, 2004) 1. wisdom and knowledge – cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge • creativity: thinking of novel and productive ways to do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it • curiosity: taking an interest in all of ongoing experience; finding all subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering • judgment/critical thinking: thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one’s mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly • love of learning: mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one’s own or formally. obviously related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows • perspective: being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to the self and to other people 2. courage – emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external or internal • bravery: not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what is right even if there is opposition; acting on convictions even if unpopular; includes physical bravery but is not limited to it • industry/perseverance: finishing what one starts; persisting in a course of action in spite of obstacles; “getting it out the door;” taking pleasure in completing tasks • authenticity: speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way; being without pretense; taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions • zest: approaching life with excitement and energy; not doing things halfway or halfheartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated 3. humanity – interpersonal strengths that involve “tending” and befriending” others • kindness: doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them • love/intimacy: valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people • social intelligence: being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and the self; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick 4. justice – civic strengths that underlie healthy community life • citizenship/teamwork: working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing one’s share • fairness: treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance • leadership: encouraging a group of which one is a member to get things done and at the same time good relations within the group; organizing group activities and seeing that they happen an anthropological examination of virtues and character strengths and wellbeing bellehumeur, bilodeau, & yeung www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 5. temperance – strengths that protect against excess • forgiveness/mercy: forgiving those who have done wrong; giving people a second chance; not being vengeful • modesty/humility: letting one’s accomplishments speak for themselves; not seeking the spotlight; not regarding one’s self as more special than one is • prudence: being careful about one’s choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted • self-control/self-regulation: regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one’s appetites and emotions 6. transcendence – strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning • awe/appreciation of beauty and excellence: noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience • gratitude: being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks • hope: expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about • playfulness: liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side; making (not necessarily telling) jokes • spirituality: having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort blake, v. k., nehrkorn, a. m., & patrick, j. h. (2017). differential effects of health-promoting behaviors on wellebing among adults. international journal of wellbeing, 7(2), 28-42. doi:10.5502/ij w.v7i1.471 julie hicks patrick west virginia university julie.patrick@mail.wvu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 article differential effects of health-promoting behaviors on wellbeing among adults valerie k. blake · abigail m. nehrkorn · julie h. patrick abstract: as people age, identifying lifestyle choices that promote and support physical and emotional wellbeing becomes more important. using the reserve capacity framework to explore psychosocial contributions to health disparities (gallo, 2009), we examined the influences of age, gender, race, education, and income difficulty on engagement in two health-promoting behaviors: healthy eating and physical activity. we further examined how these factors relate to physical and emotional wellbeing in adults of varying ages. data from 456 adults (m age = 50.7) were used to test a model in which demographic variables, healthy eating and physical activity were expected to relate to both physical and emotional wellbeing. the model adequately fit the data [x2(df = 47, n = 456) = 150.57, p < .001; cfi = .90; tli = .84; rmsea = .07], accounting for 40.1% of the variance in physical wellbeing and 21.4% of the variance in emotional wellbeing. physical activity directly influenced both physical and emotional wellbeing. healthy eating related direc tly to emotional wellbeing, but not physical wellbeing. race exerted neither direct nor indirect effects. indirect effects of age on emotional wellbeing via healthy eating, and indirect effects of gender on both forms of wellbeing via physical activity were observed. education was associated with physical wellbeing directly and indirectly, via physical activity. education was indirectly associated with emotional wellbeing via healthy eating. income difficulty exerted both direct effects on wellbeing and indirect effects via both health-promoting behaviors. the independent contribution of sociodemographic influences and the importance of looking beyond age, race and gender as correlates of wellbeing are discussed. keywords: wellbeing, health promotion, aging, health disparities 1. introduction due to medical and other advances increasing survival through childhood and across the lifespan, people can expect to live longer now than at any other point in human history. many adults, however, enter midlife being overweight and/or insufficiently physically active (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2014), increasing the risk of chronic health conditions and disability (cdc, 2014; mattson, 2014). thus, a more complete picture of wellness in adulthood is needed. a variety of individual factors, behaviors and inequalities related to social status influence health and wellbeing at midlife (camfield & skevington, 2008; gallo, 2009). however, only a few studies have explicitly and simultaneously examined these interrelations (hoyt, chase-lansdale, mcdade, & adam, 2012; lawton, moss, fulcomer, & kleban, 1982). the primary goal of the current study was to examine the influence of demographic and social status indicators on two modifiable health-promoting behaviors: healthy eating and physical activity, which, in turn, were hypothesized to influence physical and emotional wellbeing. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 1.1 wellbeing wellbeing is a multifaceted and multidimensional construct, involving objective and subjective physical health, as well as cognitive and affective assessments of quality of life (lawton, et al., 1982). other conceptualizations, such as the perma model (forgeard, jayawickreme, kern, & seligman, 2011; seligman, 2011) focus on a wider range of dimensions, including positive emotions, engagement in meaningful activities, satisfying relationships with others, a life of meaning and purpose, and a sense of accomplishment. however, these aspects sometimes differ in their importance and interrelations at different points in the lifespan (kern, waters, adler, & white, 2015). across varying conceptualizations of wellbeing in adulthood, however, the importance of both physical and emotional wellbeing emerges. a recent meta-analysis (diener & chan, 2011) supports the links among emotional wellbeing, physical health and mortality risk, although other research points to more nuanced relations (friedman & kern, 2014; la placa, mcnaught, & knight, 2013). thus, disentangling the predictors of each form of wellbeing is an important public health initiative to promote health and wellbeing among adults. physical wellbeing often includes self-assessments of one’s level of physical health and functional ability, as well as one’s satisfaction with these areas (lawton, et al., 1982). emotional wellbeing incorporates cognitive and affective appraisals of a person’s quality of life, based on individual values and expectations. emotional wellbeing is often indexed through assessments of life satisfaction, affective experiences, and meaning. as indicators of current functioning and quality of life, these personal appraisals are often more meaningful to the individual than the clinical focus on morbidity and mortality (diener, 2000; 2012). the extant literature in the field of aging and emotion presents a picture of increasing positive and decreasing negative affect across adulthood. both men and women consistently report higher ratings for emotional wellbeing than physical wellbeing, but women report lower wellbeing than their male counterparts (germain et al., 2013; kostka & bogus, 2007). 1.2 health-promoting behaviors in the united states, guidelines for healthy eating and physical activity are the same across adulthood, although there are age-related differences in health behaviors. current younger adults engage in more frequent leisure-time physical activity than other age groups (schoenborn, adams, & peregoy, 2013). moreover, motivations to engage in physical activity may differ for adults of different ages (gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty, 2014). midlife, roughly ages 40 to 65 years, is a period when symptoms of illness and disability begin to emerge (lachman, 2004). thus, it is an ideal time to initiate compensatory lifestyle interventions to delay, minimize, or prevent age-related changes in physical and emotional functioning (baltes, 1987). among middle-aged and older adults, health promotion efforts often focus on increasing healthy eating and increasing physical activity because these behaviors tend to be highly modifiable and are associated with chronic health conditions and functional ability (michie, abraham, whittington, mcateer, & gupta, 2009). public health initiatives often begin with education outreach, with a goal to increase knowledge regarding health promotion behaviors. major initiatives have focused on helping the more than 35% of american adults who are obese maintain healthy weight. obesity is associated with increased risks for a host of chronic health conditions and depression (ogden, carroll, kit, & flegal, 2012). although greater knowledge of dietary recommendations among adults is associated with a higher intake of fruit and vegetables and lower intake of fats (artinian, fletcher, mozaffarian, kris-etherton, van horn, lichtenstein, et al., 2010), increasing knowledge may not be sufficient for improving or maintaining health. similarly, knowledge regarding health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 recommendations for physical activity is reasonably high among adults. a study of more than 2,000 adults showed that 94% recognized that regular exercise could result in health benefits and 68% knew the specific recommendations for physical activity. that knowledge, however, did not translate to increases in physical activity (morrow, krzewinski-malone, jackson, bungum, & fitzgerald, 2004). despite the challenges associated with healthy eating and other health promotion behaviors, the benefits of positive behavioral change in a single area can be substantial, leading to broad improvements across multiple domains of functioning (fisher et al., 2011). thus, interventions that focus on a combination of healthy eating and increased physical activity have the most consistent record of improving physical and emotional wellbeing (kostka & bogus, 2007; maruf, akinpelu, & salako, 2013; michie et al., 2009). 1.3 individual differences evidence shows that both physical and emotional wellbeing vary as a function of sociodemographic factors (cdc, 2014; schoenborn et al., 2013), with early research focused almost exclusively on the interaction of age and race (williams, jackson & anderson, 1997). in the united states, racial health disparities are well known. as a group, african americans often have poorer physical health than their caucasian counterparts. hispanic adults, regardless of race, also fare more poorly than caucasians. beyond race, other sociodemographic variables are also associated with wellbeing. for example, in both the health and retirement study (hrs) (mclaughlin, connell, heeringa, li, & roberts, 2010) and the national health and nutrition examination survey (nhanes) (crimmins, kim, & seeman, 2009), income and education emerge as primary influences on successful aging. across nations, and even within wealthy nations like the united states, wealth is often associated with higher wellbeing (diener & seligman, 2004). although race is often used as a proxy, education (raffensperger et al., 2010) and indicators of socioeconomic status (ses) may provide more specific information, with ses accounting for up to 60% of the “racial differences” in all-cause mortality (thorpe et al., 2012). of course, simply relying on measures of income is also inadequate (diener & seligman, 2004). thus, it is important to include a range of individual and sociodemographic factors. the reserve capacity model posits that ses stratification of health-related outcomes reflects an unequal distribution of negative versus positive experiences throughout the lifespan (gallo, 2009). according to this model, the conditions of low-ses environments expose individuals to more frequent stressful events (e.g., daily hassles, interpersonal conflict, discrimination), which can then negatively influence appraisals of and reactivity to future events. over time, this increased stress-responding may deplete a person’s resource reserves, leaving one vulnerable to negative physical and emotional outcomes (gallo, 2009). healthy eating and regular physical activity may offset these negative effects, thus ameliorating some of the negative outcomes associated with lifelong exposure to sociodemographic factors. 1.4 the current study the current investigation sought to provide a better understanding of how individual characteristics are related to health-promoting behaviors and to wellbeing. the information gained can be utilized to aid in the design of effective interventions that are sensitive to the differential effects of health-promoting behaviors on wellbeing. our analyses were guided by the model shown in figure 1 below. although each path depicted represents a specific hypothesis based on the extant literature, the primary focus was on the roles of sociodemographic predictors of wellbeing and the roles health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 that health-promoting behaviors might have. thus, we anticipated that the two healthpromoting behaviors would covary (amarantos et al., 2001; kosta & bogus, 2007) and that each would be associated with both physical wellbeing and emotional wellbeing (kost a & bogus, 2007; mcauley et al., 2000). age, gender, race, level of education, and difficulty paying bills (income difficulty) were all expected to be associated with the extent of healthy eating, as indexed by adherence to nutrition guidelines and engaging in regular physical activity, and with levels of physical and emotional wellbeing (cdc, 2014). figure 1. conceptual model in which each line represents a hypothesized relation between variables 2. methods 2.1 procedure data for these analyses were gathered as part of a health literacy and health behaviors survey, which was approved by the affiliated institutional review board (irb). other, unrelated analyses from this sample have been reported elsewhere (graf & patrick, 2014; graf & patrick, 2015). in the spring of 2012, participants completed the survey as a human intelligence task (hit) through amazon mechanical turk (mturk), an online crowd-sourcing service. evidence suggests that mturk samples are often equivalent to other forms of self-report surveys (buhrmester, kwang, & gosling, 2011; johnson & borden, 2012; weigold, weigold, & russell, 2013). a total of 641 responses were collected. each participant electronically consented prior to beginning the online survey and received a $5 honorarium upon survey completion. as is common in online surveys (oppenheimer, meyvis, & davidenko, 2009), we included several response integrity items (e.g., asking age on page 1 and then date of birth on page 30, and asking participants to check a specific box for an integrity question). responses from participants who failed more than three of these items were removed from the data set. 2.2 participants of the 641 adults who consented, 126 were excluded from analyses because of missing more than 50% of the responses on the measures of interest. an additional 38 failed the response consistency health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 items and 21 individuals did not identify as caucasian, african american or hispanic/no race specified. thus, data from 456 adults were available for the current analyses. our sample was diverse in age, ranging from 18 to 85 years (m age = 50.7, sd = 11.97). half of the respondents were female. the majority were married or partnered (59%), although 7.9% were widowed, 13.6% divorced, and 19.3% single/never married. about half (55%) identified as caucasian/white, 25.9% identified as black/african american, and 19.1% were hispanic/no race specified. the mean years of education completed was 14.4 (sd = 1.9) years. most (98%) had completed high school, with 44.8% having earned a 4-year or post-baccalaureate degree. income difficulty varied, with 30.3% reporting no difficulty paying their bills, 32.9% having a little difficulty, 25% having some difficulty, and 11.8% reporting a great deal of difficulty paying their bills. 2.3 measures health-promoting behaviors. the nine-item nutrition subscale of the health-promoting lifestyle profile ii (hplp ii) (walker & hill-polerecky, 1996; stark, chase & deyoung, 2010) was used to index healthy eating. using a 4-point likert-type scale, participants indicated the frequency with which they engaged in each behavior (never to routinely). higher scores indicate healthier eating. the sample mean was 22.80 (sd = 5.04; α = .81). using the same 4-point likert-type scale that was used to measure healthy eating, we assessed physical activity with the eight-item physical activity subscale of the hplp-ii (walker et al., 1996). the items query the frequency of following a planned exercise program, engaging in vigorous activity, and engaging in moderate physical activity. the sample mean was 18.67 (sd = 5.42; α = .88). physical wellbeing. we used three indicators of physical wellbeing, including the single selfassessed global health item and two-item physical role limitations subscale from the medical outcomes study short form-12 health survey (mos sf-12) (ware, kosinski, & keller, 1996). on average, our sample reported good to very good health (m = 3.40, sd = 0.97) and few physical role limitations (m = 0.84, sd = 1.25). we also used a modified version of the philadelphia geriatric center’s multilevel assessment instrument (pgc-mai) (lawton et al., 1982). because this scale includes a self-assessed global health item, we used its three unique items. the threeitem scale assesses problems performing adls, perception of health change, and health compared to peers. higher scores represent better physical wellbeing. the mean of the threeitem scale was 5.81 (sd = 1.14; α = .63). emotional wellbeing. the philadelphia geriatric center (pgc) positive and negative affect scales (lawton, kleban, dean, rajagopal, & parmelee, 1992) were used to assess emotional wellbeing. each five-item scale includes the frequency of experiencing specific emotions during the previous week (never to very frequently), with higher scores representing more of the underlying construct. positive affect includes the frequency of feeling happy, content, warmhearted, energetic, and interested. the mean for positive affect was 17.51 (sd = 3.36; α = .79). negative affect included the frequency of feeling annoyed, irritated, sad, worried, and depressed. for negative affect, a sample mean of 13.12 (sd = 4.16; α = .87) was obtained. in addition, a single 7-point item assessing global happiness was used. the mean was 5.07 (sd = 1.31). health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 3. results 3.1 preliminary analyses descriptive and bivariate statistics for demographic variables and scales are presented in table 1 below. pearson’s coefficients are presented for continuous variables and spearman’s rho for categorical variables. 3.2 testing the model amos (v. 21) (arbuckle, 2012) was used to estimate the model shown in figure 2. figure 2. final accepted model with standardized regression weights in determining statistical significance, standardized maximum likelihood estimates (mle) were tested using the critical ratio (cr = mle/standard error of the mle). crs greater than 1.96 are significant at the p < .05 level (arbuckle, 2012; byrne, 2010). we used multiple measures to assess model fit. in addition to the overall chi square, we used the comparative fix index (cfi), the tucker-lewis index (tli), and the root mean square error approximation (rmsea) to assess model fit, using values greater than .90 as cutoffs for the cfi and tli. for the rmsea, values less than .08 indicate adequate fit, whereas values less than .05 indicate a good fit of the model to the data (byrne, 2010). health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 table 1. means, standard deviations, and correlations among model variables variable m (sd) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1. positive affect 17.510 (3.36) -.55** -.61** -.31** -.18** -.28** -.28** -.33** -.06** -.04* -.08 -.13** -.23** 2. negative affect 13.120 (4.16) --.46** -.25** -.17** -.22** -.14** -.18** -.18** -.03* -.06 -.001* .33** 3. global happy 5.07 (1.31) --.35** -.12** -.32** -.29** -.27** -.11** -.01* -.07 -.12** -.32** 4. general health 3.40 (0.97) --.34** -.59** -.38** -.28** -.01** -.04* -.08 -.20** -.24** 5. role limitations 0.84 (1.25) --.39** -.14** -.15** -.04** -.07* -.02 -.17** -.23** 6. mai 3-item scale 5.81 (1.14) --.39** -.34** -.05** -.02* -.05 -.23** -.25** 7. healthy eating 22.800 (5.04) --.64** -.15** -.003 -.05 -.27** -.17** 8. physical activity 18.670 (5.42) --.07** -.11* -.03 -.26** -.19** 9. age 50.720 (11.97) 0 --.01* -.09 -.02** -.03** 10. gender 50% female --.01 -.05** -.10** 11. race 55% white --.11** -.06** 12. education 14.350 (1.86) --.12** 13. income difficulty 1.23 (1.12) - note. mai = multilevel assessment instrument. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01 health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 following the recommended two-step approach (anderson & gerbing, 1988), a measurement model was estimated. results of the accepted measurement model (x2(df = 4, n = 477) = 7.48, p = .112; cfi = .96; tli = .98; rmsea = .04) are presented in the upper portion of table 2. table 2. standardized and unstandardized estimates for sem model variable β b se(b) cr measurement model subjective happy emotional wb -.753 -1.000 negative affect emotional wb -.534 -2.244 .352 -6.379 *** positive affect emotional wb -.664 -2.235 .255 -8.759 *** global health physical wb 1.150 -1.000 role limitations physical wb -.500 --.617 .163 -3.775 *** mai 3-item scale physical wb 1.041 -1.591 .187 -8.495 *** structural model physical activity age -.022 ---.010 .020 --.501 healthy eating age -.108 ---.045 .019 -2.436 * emotional wb age -.039 ---.003 .004 --.815 physical wb age -.011 ---.001 .003 --.201 physical activity gender -.089 ---.961 .482 -1.992 * healthy eating gender -.039 ---.391 .444 --.880 emotional wb gender -.054 ---.103 .092 -1.117 physical wb gender -.094 ---.119 .072 -1.640 physical activity education -.250 ---.719 .129 -5.572 *** healthy eating education -.260 ---.697 .119 -5.869 *** emotional wb education -.017 ---.009 .025 --.345 physical wb education -.134 ---.045 .020 -2.266 * physical activity income difficulty -.122 ---.587 .216 -2.716 ** healthy eating income difficulty -.154 ---.691 .199 -3.471 ** emotional wb income difficulty -.238 ---.203 .043 -4.769 *** physical wb income difficulty -.239 ---.136 .033 -4.097 *** physical activity race -.027 ---.190 .308 --.618 healthy eating race -.028 ---.172 .284 --.605 emotional wb race -.037 ---.045 .058 --.771 physical wb race -.040 ---.032 .046 --.708 emotional wb physical activity -.133 ---.024 .011 -2.094 * physical wb physical activity -.413 ---.049 .009 -5.332 *** emotional wb healthy eating -.256 ---.049 .012 -3.915 *** physical wb healthy eating -.125 ---.016 .010 -1.648 covariance healthy eating physical activity -.617 15.027 1.34211.198 *** note. mai = multilevel assessment instrument; wb = wellbeing. x2(df = 47, n = 456) = 150.57, p < .001; cfi = .90; tli = .84; rmsea = .07; physical wellbeing (𝑟 2 = .40); emotional wellbeing (𝑟 2 = .21). *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 physical wellbeing was indexed by three measures, including self-assessed global health and physical role limitations from the medical outcomes study short form-12 health survey (ware health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 et al., 1996) and the pgc-mai index of functional ability (lawton et al., 1982). emotional wellbeing was indexed using three measures, including a global happiness assessment, and the positive and negative affect scales (lawton et al., 1992). each measure loaded onto its hypothesized construct. results of the path model are shown in the bottom portion of table 2 above. the summary statistics suggested acceptable fit of the model to the data (x2(df = 47, n = 456) = 150.57, p < .001; cfi = .90; tli = .84; rmsea = .07). the model accounted for 40.1% of the variance in physical wellbeing and 21.4% of the variance in emotional wellbeing. approximately 10.5% of the variance in healthy eating and 8.6% of the variance in physical activity was explained by the five sociodemographic variables. as shown in table 2 above, each individual path was assessed for significance. only half of these paths reached statistical significance. more physical activity (β = .13), healthier eating (β = .26), and less income difficulty (β = -.24) were associated with better emotional wellbeing. physical wellbeing was directly influenced by more physical activity (β = .41), less income difficulty (β = -.24), and more education (β = .13). similarly, age (β = .11), less income difficulty (β = -.15), and more education (β = .26) were associated with healthier eating. physical activity was associated with male gender (β = .09), less income difficulty (β = -.12), and more years of education (β = .25). as expected, the two health promotion behaviors were highly correlated (β = .62). 3.3 total, direct and indirect effects in order to achieve a better understanding of the ways in which demographic variables influence wellbeing, we conducted a closer examination of these paths for direct and indirect associations among variables in the model (see table 3). table 3. direct and indirect effects among model variables and physical and emotional wellbeing outcome determinant causal effects (β) direct indirect total physical wellbeing (r2 = .40) healthy eating -.125 --.125 physical activity -.413 --.413 age -.011 -.023 -.034 gender -.094 -.032 -.062 education -.134 -.136 -.270 income difficulty -.239 -.070 -.308 race -.040 -.015 -.025 emotional wellbeing (r2 = .21) healthy eating -.256 --.256 physical activity -.133 --.133 age -.039 -.031 -.070 gender -.054 -.002 -.052 education -.017 -.100 -.083 income difficulty -.238 -.056 -.293 race -.037 -.011 -.026 note. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 4. discussion wellbeing may be improved through specific behaviors, including healthy eating and physical exercise (kostka & bogus, 2007). however, many adults do not engage in optimal levels of either of these health-promoting behaviors. identifying which demographic characteristics are most associated with healthy behaviors may advance our ability to improve wellbeing across the lifespan (olson et al., 2014). to that end, the current study examined the relations among individual characteristics, health-promoting behaviors, and physical and emotional wellbeing in adults. the resulting model accounted for 40% of the variance in physical wellbeing and 21% of the variance in emotional wellbeing. the primary hypotheses, wherein adherence to healthy eating guidelines and engaging in physical activity relate to better wellbeing, were generally supported. the expected relation between healthy eating and higher emotional wellbeing emerged as significant, although modest. the modest strength of this association seems appropriate, however, due to the multiple dimensions comprising emotional wellbeing. further, the nonsignificant association between healthy eating and physical wellbeing may reflect delayed effects of healthy eating on physical wellbeing, requiring longitudinal analyses for detection (germain et al, 2013). it is also conceivable that healthy eating and physical wellbeing are reciprocally related, such that physical health prompts healthy dietary choices, which, in turn, support continued physical health. longitudinal data are better suited to answering questions about temporal ordering of effects. engaging in physical activity was significantly related to both physical and emotional wellbeing in the model, replicating associations found in previous literature (fisher et al., 2011; kostka & bogus, 2007; mcauley et al., 2000; stahl & patrick, 2012). although the strength of the relation between physical activity and physical wellbeing is stronger, the association between physical activity and emotional wellbeing also has practical importance (mcauley et al., 2000; olson et al., 2014). by investigating both paths in the same model, we address the differential effects of physical activity on multiple dimensions of wellbeing. according to the reserve capacity model, it is important to understand how individual and demographic characteristics relate to personal resources in order to support health and healthpromoting behavior (gallo, 2009). education and income difficulty were each directly, albeit modestly, associated with physical wellbeing. closer inspection of each path revealed additional indirect influences of education and income difficulty on physical wellbeing, through their relation with physical activity. thus, by studying the various demographic variables, such as gender and education, we can better understand how these variables influence physical activity and overall wellbeing. physical activity and wellness may contribute to a variety of positive or negative outcomes, significantly impacting one’s health. although we had also hypothesized direct associations between emotional wellbeing and each demographic variable, only income difficulty emerged, and its effects were much stronger than expected in this online sample of adults. this result may reflect different motives for technology use in this mturk sample, such that those with the highest ses are engaging online because they have free time and wish to be connected to an online community, whereas those with middle ses are online in order to supplement their income. adherence to healthy eating guidelines was also directly related to increased emotional wellbeing. examination of indirect effects reveals the additional influence of greater educational attainment and less income difficulty on emotional wellbeing, through their influence on better adherence to guidelines for healthy eating. parsing-out each specific avenue of influence on the physical and emotional health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 wellbeing of adults thus reveals the complex relations among personal characteristics, social environment, and lifestyle behaviors that place some individuals at risk for negative outcomes. in terms of health-promoting behavior, older age, more education, and ability to pay one’s bills predicted healthy eating among these adults. similarly, those with more education and those who can pay their bills were more likely to engage in regular physical activity. although not directly associated with either outcome, age did exert modest indirect effects on greater emotional wellbeing through healthy eating. this may be due to the fact that these relatively young, middle-aged and older adults may not yet be experiencing health issues that have prompted engagement in health-promoting behaviors in other samples (olson et al., 2014; stahl & patrick, 2012). education showed a strong relationship with both health-promoting behaviors, even within a sample that was highly educated. participants with more education experienced greater physical wellbeing via more frequent participation in physical activity and greater emotional wellbeing indirectly through better eating behaviors. these results indicate that higher education may contribute to understanding the importance of following empirically-based guidelines for healthy eating and physical activity, resulting in increased engagement in these behaviors. income difficulty, then, evidenced similarly sized but opposite effects among these variables. participants who were more financially strained were also less likely to engage in regular physical activity, indirectly affecting already lowered physical wellbeing. an indirect effect of income difficulty on emotional wellbeing is also evidenced through eating behavior, suggesting that income difficulty is not only physically and emotionally distressing, but is also associated with limited engagement in health promotion. these results further lend support to the reserve capacity model, whereby those with more education have experienced less financial strain and therefore have more resources available to attend to health-promoting behaviors. thus, just as in the case of age, gender, and race, potentially significant influences on wellbeing may be obscured in investigations that fail to deconstruct the influence of social status (ball, mishra, & crawford, 2003). 4.1 limitations and future directions although this study has both theoretical and practical significance, there are several limitations to be considered when interpreting these data. first, these data were based solely on self-reported dietary and physical activity behaviors. self-report data have several benefits, including being relatively inexpensive and anonymous. the most common disadvantages are response biases, wherein the participants’ responses are affected by social desirability and expectations; and cognitive fatigue and memory burden, affecting the validity of their responses (paulhas & vazire, 2007). the current study was designed to reduce these effects while optimizing efficiency of data collection. although cross-sectional analyses limit assumptions of causality, logic and theory indicate reciprocal relations. as a snapshot of a dynamic process, we cannot declare unequivocally that the hypothesized direction of influence is appropriate, although our post hoc analyses lend support to our model. longitudinal studies can more fully disentangle the reciprocal associations among personal characteristics, health-promoting behaviors, physical wellbeing, and emotional wellbeing. cross-sectional evaluations of subjective wellbeing are, however, a valid representation of an individual’s current state of functioning within their current environment (diener, 2000). one important aspect of this study was the use of the internet for data collection. this method of data collection has several potential benefits for the researcher, including reducing the costs health promoting behaviors blake, nehrkorn, & patrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 and time involved in data collection, and access to larger, more diverse samples, especially historically hard-to-reach populations. online surveys are also user-friendly and convenient for participants (buhrmester et al., 2011). potential problems include selection bias, limiting samples to only those with internet access, and loss of clarification due to the lack of contact with the researcher (casler, bickel, & hackett, 2013). however, mturk has been found to be less biased than other internet samples, as well as many university samples (buhrmester et al., 2011; casler et al., 2013). as online data collection has increased in popularity, many questions regarding data equivalence have been raised. ensuring continued wellbeing through life is a priority for individuals, their families, and the health care system. identifying the mechanisms through which we can increase wellbeing in the aging population is the first step toward achieving this goal. the current investigation extends the literature, supporting the value of healthy eating and physical activity as lifestyle components, which support and promote positive ratings of physical and emotional wellbeing in young, middle-aged and older adults. furthermore, the strong influence of demographic variables on health-promoting behaviors and on physical and emotional wellbeing accentuate the importance of identifying specific sources of health inequalities, in order to better identify those at higher risk and those who might benefit most from interventions. authors valerie k. blake west virginia university abigail m. nehrkorn west virginia university julie hicks patrick west virginia university julie.patrick@mail.wvu.edu publishing timeline received 21 september 2015 accepted 12 july 2017 published 25 november 2017 references amarantos, e., martinez, a., & dwyer, j. 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(2020). strengths-based actions to enhance wellbeing in the time of covid19. international journal of wellbeing, 10(4), 113-132. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.1441 tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough tayyab.rashid@utoronto.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 article strengths-based actions to enhance wellbeing in the time of covid-19 tayyab rashid · robert e. mcgrath abstract: covid-19 is truly an unprecedented event, forcing nearly four billion people into isolation, social distancing, and requiring people to rigorously follow public health measures such as frequent hand washing and indoor face-covering. people around the world have spent months staying home-bound, enduring significant financial, social, and emotional costs. they have been feeling anxious, irritable, afraid, and ambivalent in the wake of an invisible, pervasive, and potent pandemic. a strength focus can help us mitigate unwarranted or excessive negative emotions engendered by maintaining social distancing. this paper posits that by using our strengths, we can enhance our psychological immunity through pragmatic actions to enhance our daily wellbeing. more importantly, we can reframe and reappraise challenges to build perspective in dealing with global crises such as pandemics and disasters. strengths expressed through pragmatic actions can boost our coping skills as well as enhance our wellbeing. consistent with the zeitgeist of our times-equity, social justice, digital connections, the paper offers easily implemented, concrete actions using character strengths in adaptive ways to reduce the likelihood that social distancing will result in overwhelming anxiety, lack of structure or stimulation, and demoralization. keywords: character strengths, crises, pandemics, positive psychology interventions, social distancing, covid-19 applications: 1. managing public health crisis. nearly every person on this planet has been affected — in one way or another — by covid-19. to mitigate the transmission of the virus, social isolation, social distancing and following public health measures rigorously for prolonged period of time is required, with no end in sight. this can increase psychological distress and decrease wellbeing. the ability to effectively manage public health crisis, emotional stability and psychological wellbeing is critical. 2. culturally responsive treatments. covid-19 has exposed significant health and mental health inequalities that have existed for decades. working in low wage but essential care and services positions, ethnic minorities, have suffered disproportionately from the adverse impact of covid-19. there is an urgent need to systematically identify the most vulnerable individuals and offer them culturally responsive treatments. 3. amplification of strengths. assessment and amelioration of symptoms should be taken seriously. equally important is the assessment and amplification of strengths. a strengths-focused mental health approach will likely reduce stigma that hinders seeking treatment in a timely fashion. about:blank covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 1. introduction epidemics, plagues, and pandemics have been part of human history, but covid-19 is truly unprecedented. it has forced an estimated four billion people into social isolation (sanford, 2020). unless a safe vaccine becomes available and the majority of people take it, social isolation, social distancing, face-covering, frequent hand washing, and remote connection might be the norm. pandemics, like large scale natural disasters, create significantly disruptions (lau et al., 2003) and covid-19 is no exception. the data from an international study performed as a collaboration between 41 research organizations from 47 countries representing europe, north-africa, western asia and americas, completed in seven languages, with 1047 participants was collected in early april 2020 (ammar et al., 2020). the study assessed wellbeing, life satisfaction, social participation, diet behaviour, sleep quality, technology use, and psychosocial support. questions were presented in a deferential format with items related to responses “before” and “during” confinement conditions. the study found significant psychosocial strain in terms of large decreases in the amount of social activity through family (58%), friends/neighbours (45%), and entertainment (48%). social participation was associated with lower life satisfaction (31%) during the confinement period. social contact through digital means increased significantly (25%). the study concluded that there is an acute need for innovative strategies which promote social inclusion through digital solutions. an italian study found significant increases in depression and anxiety, when compared with pre-outbreak levels (baiano et al., 2020). however, not everyone develops clinical level of depression or anxiety. a french study explored the role of emotional experience as a critical factor in the experience of time. the study found evidence for the famous expression “time flies when you feel good; time drags when you feel bad." participants reported a slowing down of time as both sadness and boredom increased (witowska et al, 2020). when considering these factors, it is unsurprising that the cumulative impact of this global phenomenon will be profound (stanford, 2020). people have spent months in close quarters to ‘flatten the curve’ and have endured significant financial, social and psychological costs (torales et al., 2020). the curve, however, has an uneven impact, adversely impacting marginalized, ethnic, indigenous, and immigrant communities when compared to caucasians. a retrospective cohort analysis of 1052 confirmed cases of covid-19 from the period january 1 through april 8, 2020, found that compared to non-hispanic white patients, non-hispanic african american patients were 2.7 times more likely to be hospitalized, after adjustment for age, sex, comorbidities, and income. researchers attributed this to barriers to timely access to care or creation of circumstances in which patients were delayed care (yearby & mohapatra, 2020). covid-19 has brought to light similar significant health and mental health inequalities that have existed for decades. due to these chronic inequalities, racial and ethnic minorities have always been the most impacted by pandemics because of disparities in; exposure to the virus, susceptibility to contracting the virus, and quality of treatment. additionally, most marginalized communities are especially employed in low wage critical infrastructure health and other services (dee et al., 2011; mcleod et al., 2020; navaranjan et al., 2014). recall your last health care visit or use of public transit, how many health care and transit staff from a non-white cultural background have you encountered? compared to many professionals—the majority of whom tend to be white, heterosexual, privileged, and males—who can work from home, the majority of people of colour, especially recent immigrants with heath care training and expertise, have no choice but to leave the safer confines of their homes every day to go to work, increasing their exposure to the virus. many do not have the choice to do telemedicine and must travel to their workplace on crowded public transit, putting them and their families at risk of contracting virus. to make http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 matters worse, many marginalized workers work on a contractual basis without the benefits of paid sick days and are in constant fear of losing their jobs. this additional factor puts them and their families at further risk. furthermore, low wage workers often live in small apartments, with multi-generational families which further increases the risk of virus transmission (azar et al., 2020; dorn et al., 2020; krouse, 2020). covid-19 with its potential multiple peaks and waves, already has and will likely continue to have profound impacts on the day to day wellbeing of individuals. early indicators have shown that the most stressful experiences regarding covid-19 are; a) reading/hearing about severity and contagiousness of covid-19; b) uncertainty about length of quarantine; and c) social distancing requirements. younger, women and caregivers tend to experience more stress. there have been dramatic shifts in sleep, diet, physical activity, substance abuse as well as in dramatic increase in intimate partner violence (arora & grey, 2020; buttell, & ferreira, 2020). the most common coping strategies used are distracting, information seeking and consuming social media (klaiber et al., 2020) the goal of the current paper is to highlight how these challenges adversely impact day-today wellbeing and how we can use our strengths to take adaptive, pragmatic, and purposeful actions which are relevant to our wellbeing and use our strengths. it is understandable that with the easing of restrictions, restless for months and bored, people are adjusting to the new normal amidst a global pandemic with uncertainty—unsure how to operate in the different public spheres—when and where to mask our faces, how to physically distance in settings that are designed to connect us, and how to redesign work for an online format. these everyday challenges have significantly increased worry and anxiety, when compared to before the covid-19 outbreak (baiano et al., 2020). some have even entertained supernatural beliefs about covid-19 (somma et al., 2020). eventually, it is hoped that a vaccine will dispel worries and decrease anxiety. however, the cumulative impact of social distancing, persistent fear and anxiety will likely be significant. in order to effectively deal with this prolonged pandemic, with no clear end in sight, a comprehensive and inclusive psychological support system which meets the needs of most, if not all, is perhaps as crucial as public health measures (wang et al., 2020). the primary goal of this paper is to offer individuals, dyads, and families various inexpensive, practical, simple ideas which they can implement easily. 2. coping with natural disasters, technological catastrophes and pandemics prior experiences can help us in understanding how to cope with these challenges. natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, floods, tornados), technological catastrophes (e.g., nuclear and hazardous material spills, plane crashes), and pandemics (e.g., severe acute respiratory syndrome, avian or bird flu, ebola virus, coronavirus) are all collective experiences impacting individuals, families, and communities that we have dealt with before. exposure to these events is associated with both negative and positive outcomes (fergusson & boden, 2014; naushad et al., 2019). in particular, a systematic analysis of 41 studies that compared individuals exposed to a range of natural disasters to their pre-exposure state or a non-exposed comparison group were found to have higher levels of psychiatric disorders, especially post-traumatic stress disorder and depression (beaglehole et al., 2018). feeling anxious, irritable, afraid, and demoralized in the wake of a disaster as invisible, pervasive, and potent as a pandemic, makes sense. as noted above, marginalized populations are disproportionately affected by such disasters, not only in the united states, but across the globe (shuchman, 2020; yearby & mohapatra, 2020), resulting in more severe mental health effects (burgess, 2020; ornell et al., 2020; potent et al., 2020). traditional interventions may not be culturally relevant or may have limited effectiveness in the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 face of cultural obstacles faced by disadvantaged populations. consider a hispanic woman who will lose her income if she quits working in close quarters with others, or a black man, wearing a mask, trying to purchase groceries, operating under the fear that normal daily activities will devolve into a confrontation with law enforcement officers. traditional intervention may not be effective, given that covid-19 is evolving rapidly. there are no psychological interventions to deal with covid-19 specific concerns. existing treatments, nonetheless, can offer supportive care. there is room for effective psychological treatments which address pandemic specific concerns such as social isolation, health anxiety and differential impact on marginalized populations (hansel et al., 2020; holmes et al., 2020). the literature on the mental health consequences of epidemics is sparse (galea et al., 2020), but the mental health consequences of large-scale disasters (e.g., terrorists attacks, extreme weather events, and industrial disasters) have been documented (galea et al., 2002; gratten et al., 2011; tracy et al., 2011). during the 2014 west africa ebola outbreak, informal networks and support groups of ebola virus disease survivors were formed somewhat spontaneously to support recovered individuals (epstein et al., 2014). such psycho-social interventions can be encouraged and can play an important role in helping people to cope with residual impacts of covid-19. despite the lack of knowledge as to which psychological treatments are more relevant to treat covid-19 related issues, their importance as supportive care should not be minimized and these can still be very helpful in dealing with symptoms of depression, anxiety and overall psychological distress (holder et al., 2017). a strengths focus offers another path to help us mitigate unwarranted or excessive worry, anxiety, and demoralization. exploring and using our strengths can enhance our immunity to stressors by building protective and pragmatic habits and actions. applying our strengths helps us to reframe and reappraise challenges, and potentially provides us with a steady dose of wellbeing to build positive coping mechanisms (baker et al., 2017). a strengths-based approach may even be more effective for marginalized populations, in which traditional approaches to mental health that focus on deficiencies in the individual can result in further demoralization, and avoids the stigmatization resulting from diagnoses that may not adequately encapsulate the socio-economic and cultural experiences of these populations (samson, 2018; zalaquett et al., 2008). compared to an approach that focuses on symptom alleviation, a strengths focus can be more normalizing and engaging (niemiec & mcgrath, 2018; rashid & seligman, 2018). we offer 101 easily implemented, concrete actions that build on yours and others’ strengths in this period of isolation and uncertainty (see appendix a). tuning in to constant media coverage while being stuck at home can dramatically contribute to negative consequences (balaratnasingam & janca, 2006). work, school, and services shutdowns, combined with directives for social distancing, anxiety and fear can quickly turn into panic and terror. when we experience anxiety or demoralization in response to stressors, that can serve as a signal that it is time to engage in protective behaviour. tapping into our character strengths—the main ingredients of our character—can help us mitigate unwarranted or excessive fear, anxiety and demoralization. focusing on our character strengths, not our sense of fear or rage, offers a path to enhancing our psychological immunity. 3. character strengths character strengths can be conceptualized in a number of ways. christopher peterson and martin seligman (2004) offered a coherent model of such strengths, called the via (values in action) classification of character strengths and virtues (csv; peterson & seligman, 2004). according to the csv model, character strengths are traits or attributes of the individual that are http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 ubiquitously valued in their own right. unlike feelings of panic or demoralization that can leave us feeling isolated, character strengths used in a balanced and contextualized way generally boost one’s self-confidence and sense of efficacy (niemiec & mcgrath, 2019). the cvs outlines 24 character strengths, divided into six broader categories referred to as virtues (see table 1): knowledge & wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. table 1. via classification of character strengths and virtues. i. wisdom and knowledge – cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge creativity [originality, ingenuity]: thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it curiosity [interest, novelty-seeking, openness to experience]: taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering judgment [critical thinking]: thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one’s mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly love of learning: mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one’s own or formally; obviously related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows perspective [wisdom]: being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people ii. courage – emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external or internal bravery [valor]: not shrinking from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what is right even if there is opposition; acting on convictions even if unpopular; includes physical bravery but is not limited to it perseverance [persistence, industriousness]: finishing what one starts; persisting in a course of action in spite of obstacles; “getting it out the door”; taking pleasure in completing tasks honesty [authenticity, integrity]: speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretense; taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions zest [vitality, enthusiasm, vigor, energy]: approaching life with excitement and energy; not doing things halfway or half-heartedly; living life as an adventure; feeling alive and activated iii. humanity interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others love: valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people kindness [generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruistic love, “niceness”]: doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them social intelligence [emotional intelligence, personal intelligence]: being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and oneself; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick iv. justice civic strengths that underlie healthy community life teamwork [citizenship, social responsibility, loyalty]: working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing one’s share fairness: treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance leadership: encouraging a group of which one is a member to get things done and at the time maintain time good relations within the group; organizing group activities and seeing that they happen v. temperance – strengths that protect against excess forgiveness: forgiving those who have done wrong; accepting the shortcomings of others; giving people a second chance; not being vengeful humility: letting one’s accomplishments speak for themselves; not regarding oneself as more special than one is prudence: being careful about one’s choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/curiosity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/bravery https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perseverance https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/forgiveness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 self-regulation [self-control]: regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one’s appetites and emotions vi. transcendence strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning appreciation of beauty and excellence [awe, wonder, elevation]: noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in various domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience gratitude: being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks hope [optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation]: expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about humor [playfulness]: liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side; making (not necessarily telling) jokes spirituality [faith, purpose]: having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scheme; having beliefs about the meaning of life that shape conduct and provide comfort note. adapted from character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification (pp. 29-30), by c. peterson & m. e. p. seligman, 2004, american psychological association/oxford university press. copyright 2004 by the values in action institute. adapted with permission. terms in brackets are variants of the character strength according to peterson and seligman (2004). embedded hyperlinks refer to specific character strength pages at the via website (www.viacharacter.org) offering an overview of the signature strengths, critical questions, illustrations and summary of research findings. we have used the most updated titles of character strengths, consistent with values in actions website. these may differ slightly from original titles published by c. peterson. & m. e. p. seligman (2004). since the introduction of the csv model in 2004, hundreds of studies have been conducted exploring the role of character strengths in education, work, health and numerous other domains (see niemiec, 2018, for a review). 4. using character strengths amidst covid-19 why would using character strengths be a useful way to respond to the fear and stress caused by a pandemic? first, our strengths are as a natural part of our personalities as our weakness are. our sense of kindness, zest, or curiosity is a core part of who we are. one part of the csv model is the idea that for any person, some strengths are so central to an individual that they can be called signature strengths. researchers have suggested that on average people identify five of the 24 strengths as signature (mcgrath, 2019; peterson & seligman, 2004). individuals typically describe these strengths as essential to who they are, naturally energizing, and easy to use. for example, a person for whom creativity is a signature strength might realize she automatically searches for creative solutions whenever faced with a problem. a person for whom kindness is a signature strength may feel renewed whenever he engages in kindness or sees someone else acting kindly. actively using one’s signature strengths can be a way for us to make contact with positive feelings (shoshani & slone, 2016). signature strengths have been operationalized into pragmatic strategies. often delivered online, these are relatively simple strategies to increase wellbeing. seligman et al. (2005) empirically validated three strength-based interventions: three good things, also known as blessings journal; using signature strengths in a new way; and gratitude visit. numerous independent researchers have replicated these findings (gander et al., 2013; martinez-marti & ruch, 2014; mongrain & anselmo-mathews, 2012; odou & vella-brodrick, 2013; quinlan et al., 2015; schotanus-dijkstra et al., 2015; winslow et al., 2016). a number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses have documented the effectiveness of strength-based interventions (bolier et al., 2013; chakssi et al., 2018; ghielen et al., 2017; quinlan et al., 2015). a recent meta-analysis http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/spirituality covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 (schutte & malouff, 2019) of 14 studies has demonstrated that signature strengths interventions increased positive affect and happiness (weighted mean hedges’ g of 0.32) and life satisfaction (g = 0.42), and decreased depression (g = 0.21). however, research on strength-based interventions has a long way to go, with a need for more diverse samples and more behavioural outcomes (e.g., improved sleep, more time spent in interacting with loved ones, number of volunteer hour). that said, we have several reasons to believe a strengths-based approach can offer a valid alternative to traditional psychological treatments: first, focusing on strengths rather than our negative feelings or inadequacies when dealing with extreme stress can make those negative thoughts and feelings less powerful. it can remind us that we have our personal strengths that can carry us through the crisis (shoshani & slone, 2016). second, one important feature of character strengths — one of the reasons they are so widely valued — is that they contribute to us as individuals, but also to those around us, and even at times to the entire community. being able to use humor in dark times, love to reach out to others, or gratitude to make someone else who has done something good focus on it and feel better: these simple acts help others feel stronger and more positive even while they do the same thing for us (davis et al., 2016). an important element of character strengths is that using them to benefit ourselves does not diminish others. third, emerging lines of researchers have shown that, in addition to increasing wellbeing, interventions based in character strengths also have the potential for alleviating or ameliorating negatives states and symptoms associated with stressful events, including providing psychological support in recovering from breast cancer (casella-grau et al., 2014), learning to cope with difficult emotions (quoidbach & gross, 2015; uliaszek et al., 2016), recovery from drug addiction (krentzman, 2013), dealing with chronic physical illness (ghosh & deb, 2017), promoting healthy behaviour in the wake of cardiovascular disease (celano et al., 2018), coping with chronic illness (yan et al., 2020), and potentially decreasing the perceived stress related to care-giving (garcía-castro et al., 2020). finally, focusing on strengths can motivate us to respond more effectively to the challenges we face. strengths can be used to deal with those challenges adaptively, to come up with new solutions for the obstacles created by natural disaster (southwick et al., 2016). consider the frontline professionals dealing with covid-19, including but not limited to doctors, nurses, paramedics, first responders, and nursing home staff. they are exposed to repetitive trauma as part of their work. researchers have indicated that a substantial proportion of these providers may develop symptoms of anxiety, including posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, alcohol abuse, and medical concerns (naushad et al., 2019). yet, they are driven by their sense of humanity, teamwork, kindness and fairness to continue. quevillon and colleagues (2016) found that opportunities for professional and personal growth can help buffer frontline workers against mental health problems. character strengths can serve as central ingredients for fostering such growth. therefore, the potential value of a focus on one’s character strengths during times of disaster is not purely speculative. researchers have found in previous studies that strengths can be a protective factor in the face of negative life events such as covid-19. for example, a randomized study that used strength-based case management with individuals who were hiv positive was found to be more effective than usual care (samet et al., 2019). another example of the protective factor of strengths includes homeless youth who when asked to describe their key personal strengths, reliably identified attributes consistent with the 24 via character strengths. they anecdotally considered those strengths to be vital protective factors in their lives. the degree to which their actual use of strengths that were important to them matched their ideal use, and was also correlated with http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 resilience, self-worth, and wellbeing (cooley et al., 2019). similarly, sleijpen and colleagues (2018) examined 26 empirical studies exploring sources of resilience in young refugees. among other factors, the character strength of spirituality was reliably associated with resilience. in the context of natural disasters such as facing devastation from floods, those who were able to embrace, rebuild, and develop inner strength demonstrated transformational perspectives on self and the world (rateau, 2017). kampman and colleagues (2015) synthesized qualitative findings on posttraumatic growth following severe physical injuries. several of the themes they identified were consistent with the via virtues of humanity and transcendence. finally, blanchard et al. (2020) found that depression and functional impairment in individuals who had suffered a significant interpersonal loss in the previous six months (death of a first-degree relative or divorce) had a negative relationship with 11 of the 24 via character strengths. 4.1 character strengths in disasters based on these research findings, we can suggest at least five ways in which character strengths can play a vital role in enhancing the effectiveness of psychological care in the context of wide scale disasters by facilitating individual and community preparedness, resilience, meaningmaking and potential posttraumatic growth (southwick et al., 2016). first, the ability to make meaning of disaster events has been found to be a strong predictor of overall resilience (aiena et al., 2016). character strengths such as perspective, judgment, and spirituality can provide a pragmatic foundation for developing a sense of the implications of this pandemic for the larger scheme of our existence. second, being aware of and affirming our most important strengths can help us to reinterpret and reframe our fear about the pandemic. when we are stressed, our focus becomes narrow, and we tend to attend to selective aspects of a situation (fredrickson et al., 2003). approaching disasters from the perspective of our strengths can enable us to personalize the experience in a way that enhances the effectiveness of our responses. for example, the ability to navigate a disaster can be enhanced by actively experiencing gratitude for loved ones’ good efforts, even minor efforts such as helping around the house; by learning about others’ acts of responsible citizenship and personally engaging in good citizenship; by reflecting and sharing with loved ones a personal perspective on the pandemic; and by looking with hope towards a brighter future. third, using our strengths during a pandemic can provide us with a steady dose of wellbeing in ways which focusing on our vulnerabilities cannot. for example, research shows that helping others also contributes to the actor’s wellbeing (meyer et al., 2018). more than ever, it can be important for us to look for opportunities to be kind to someone who is struggling. whereas negative emotions such as fear, anxiety and panic can paralyze us or threaten our wellbeing, using strengths such as creativity, hope and optimism, self-regulation, gratitude, social intelligence, kindness, and—perhaps most importantly—perspective, help us take action and overcome adversity. fourth, challenges such as a global pandemic allow us to re-examine our priorities in life, reappraise what we value, and evaluate whether our actions match with upholding these values (yang, 2020). for example, the covid-19 pandemic has reminded us about the importance of our physical health. we can use strengths to pursue physical health more effectively, e.g., by thinking about the beauty in the world when we try to go to sleep rather than our fears, or by using prudence to avoid eating while bored. finally, it is important to remember that, while the term social distance has been widely adopted, what we mean by that is physical distance; social distance need not imply social isolation. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 in a time of social distancing, strengths use can offer us multiple ways to remain connected in prosocial and positive ways. our repertoire of strengths can still connect us to our social networks. strengths can facilitate three distinct aspects of social support (jacobs et al., 2016; kaniasty & norris, 2009). first, a strengths approach reduces the stigma and alienation that can come from conceptualizing struggles as a mental health issue (vertilo & gibson, 2012). second, spotting others' strengths can help us more effectively ask others for help (e.g., skeffington et al., 2016). third, knowing and using one’s strengths can increase social competence in the context of the improved quality of social relationships, enhanced feelings of competence, increased altruistic behaviour, and more meaningful leisure activity (fruel et al., 2001; kashdan et al., 2006). though social support is an important contributor to being able to cope with challenges (prati & pietrantoni, 2010), we need to keep in mind that the value of social supports should be viewed within a larger socio-economic and cultural milieu. for example, an individual from a marginalized community may be well-connected with other community members, but the community itself may not have sufficient resources such as disposable income, infrastructure, or time to help due to long work hours. 4.2 adaptive use of character strengths while being home-bond how do we effectively use our strengths to cope more effectively while staying home and maintaining physical distance? the list of 101 examples in appendix a attempts to translate the abstract notions of character strengths into concrete and pragmatic actions that do not take a lot of effort and can produce desirable results quickly. each action is associated with one or more strengths, with hyperlinks to specific page of the via website (www.viacharacter.org) which offers a comprehensive review of each of the 24 strengths, critical questions, illustrations, and a summary of empirical findings. one can complete a free strengths measure and receive instantaneous feedback. please note that these strategies are intended for individuals and families who may be spending more time at home due to the covid-19 pandemic but are not infected. most, if not all, of these actions engage multiple strengths, as noted in parentheses. certain strengths such as kindness are more represented than humility. this imbalance is in part due to the specific challenges related to covid-19. these actions have been largely distilled from the first author’s nearly two decades of experience trying to integrate character strengths with mental health symptoms in clinical settings (rashid & seligman, 2018), with substantial input from the second author.1 in summary, the negative emotions that are engendered by natural disasters call for making available traditional methods of intervention for clinical syndromes. however, these approaches can be complemented by a more positively focused, strengths-based perspective, one that relies on the individual’s existing capacities for effective functioning. instead of stigmatizing to individuals who are already disadvantaged, we believe a strengths approach can be empowering, and provide a valuable new avenue for taking on the task of managing the demands of a world in upheaval. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. 1 we are also deeply grateful to deborah bernstein for her extensive input on the list. we are also thankful for zachary zarowsky for his assistance with the organization of the article. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 authors tayyab rashid health & wellness centre university of toronto scarborough tayyab.rashid@utoronto.ca robert e. mcgrath fairleigh dickinson university publishing timeline received 24 april 2020 revised version received 25 september 2020 accepted 29 september 2020 published 30 september 2020 references adirim, t. a. 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(2018). an association between multiculturalism and psychological distress. plos one, 13(12), e0208490. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208490 sanford, a. (2020) coronavirus: half of humanity now on lockdown as 90 countries call for confinement. available at: https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/02/coronavirus-in-europe-spain-s-death-toll-hits10-000-after-record-950-new-deaths-in-24-hou (accessed 28 september 2020) schotanus-dijkstra, m., drossaert, c. h., pieterse, m. e., walburg, j. a., & bohlmeijer, e. t. (2015). efficacy of a multicomponent positive psychology selfhelp intervention: study protocol of a randomized controlled trial. jmir research protocols, 4(3), e105. https://doi.org/10.2196/resprot.4162 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-214 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-05898-9 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208490 covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 schutte, n. s., & malouff, j. m. (2019). the impact of signature character strengths interventions: a metaanalysis. journal of happiness studies, 20(4), 1179–1196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-9990-2 shuchman, m. (2020). lowand middle-income countries face up to covid-19. nature medicine. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41591-020-00020-2 shoshani, a., & slone, m. (2016). the resilience function of character strengths in the face of war and protracted conflict. in frontiers in psychology, 6, 2006. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02006 sleijpen, m., boeije, h. r., kleber, r. j., & mooren, t. (2016). between power and powerlessness: a metaethnography of sources of resilience in young refugees. ethnicity & health, 21(2), 158–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2015.1044946 southwick, s. m., satodiya, r., & pietrzak, r. h. (2016). disaster mental health and positive psychology: an afterward to the special issue. journal of clinical psychology, 72(12), 1364–1368. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22418 somma, a., gialdi, g., krueger, r. f., markon, k. e., frau, c., lovallo, s., & fossati, a. (2020). dysfunctional personality features, non-scientifically supported causal beliefs, and emotional problems during the first month of the covid-19 pandemic in italy. personality and individual differences, 165, 110139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110139 skeffington, p. m., rees, c. s., mazzucchelli, t. g., & kane, r. t. (2016). the primary prevention of ptsd in firefighters: preliminary results of an rct with 12-month follow-up. plos one, 11(7), e0155873. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155873 toback, r. l., graham-bermann, s., & patel, p. d. (2016). outcomes of a character strengths–based intervention on self-esteem and self-efficacy of psychiatrically hospitalized youths. psychiatric services, 67(5), 574–577. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201500021 torales, j., o’higgins, m., castaldelli-maia, j. m., & ventriglio, a. (2020). the outbreak of covid-19 coronavirus and its impact on global mental health. international journal of social psychiatry, 66(4), 317–320. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020915212 uliaszek, a. a., rashid, t., williams, g. e., & gulamani, t. (2016). group therapy for university students: a randomized control trial of dialectical behavior therapy and positive psychotherapy. behaviour research and therapy, 77, 78–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2015.12.003 van dorn, a., cooney, r. e., & sabin, m. l. (2020). covid-19 exacerbating inequalities in the us. the lancet, 395(10232), 1243–1244. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30893-x vertilo, v., & gibson, j. m. (2014). influence of character strengths on mental health stigma. journal of positive psychology, 9(3), 266-275. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.891245 wang, y., zhao, x., fen, q., et al. (2020). psychological 2019 outbreak in china. journal of health psychology, 25(6), 733–737. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105320919177 winslow, c. j., kaplan, s. a., bradleygeist, j., lindsey, a. p., ahmad, a. s., & hargrove, a.k. (2016). an examination of two positive organizational interventions: for whom do these interventions work? journal of occupational health psychology, 22(2), 129. https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000035 witowska, j., schmidt, s., & wittmann, m. (2020). what happens while waiting? how self-regulation affects boredom and subjective time during a real waiting situation. acta psychologica, 205, 103061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103061 yang, m. (2020). resilience and meaning-making amid the covid-19 epidemic in china. journal of humanistic psychology, 60(5), 662–671. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167820929215 yan, t., chan, c. w. h., chow, k. m., zheng, w., & sun, m. (2020). a systematic review of the effects of character strengths‐based intervention on the psychological well‐being of patients suffering from chronic illnesses. journal of advanced nursing, 76(7), 1567-1580. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14356. yearby, r., & mohapatra, s. (2020). law, structural racism, and the covid-19 pandemic. journal of law and the biosciences, 7(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsaa036 zalaquett, c. p., fuerth, k. m., stein, c., ivey, a. e., & ivey, m. b. (2008). reframing the dsm-iv-tr from a multicultural/social justice perspective. journal of counseling & development, 86, 364–371. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2008.tb00521.x http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1038/d41591-020-00020-2 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02006 https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22418 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110139 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201500021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2015.12.003 https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105320919177 https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1177/0022167820929215 covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 appendix a 101 strengths-based actions to practice during physical distancing in the following, we sometimes use the word “pod” to indicate the person or people with whom you are sheltering in place. at the end of each action, a number of strengths with hyperlinks are listed. you can explore more about these strengths using the hyperlinks listed in parentheses. following action can broadly parsed in following themes. the numerical number indicates the action listed. stress management: 1, 8, 11, 15, 23, 67, 68, 79, 97, 99 staying healthy: 2, 10, 14, 24, 26, 28, 38, 43, 44, 45, 56, 61, 63, 65, 77, 78, 80, individual growth: 17, 19, 20, 34, 39, 40, 49, 53, 57, 60, 64, 74, 75, 76, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95, 100 skill building: 3, 50, 54, 70, 71, 72, 91, 93, 97 interaction with others: 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 21, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 41, 47, 48, 52, 58, 59, 62, 66, 69, 84, 90, 94, 96, 101 social causes: 18, 22, 25, 31, 37, 42, 46, 51, 55, 73, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 98 1. cultivate mindfulness. try to remember to take a moment or two every hour or so during waking hours to notice your breathing, your surroundings, your physical and emotional experience. be present in your body and in your environment. (curiosity, self-regulation, zest) 2. establish a physical exercise routine that you can do at home. incorporate variations that are meaningful and motivating for you. you can also integrate physical exercise with yoga poses or a deep breathing exercise; share with your pod. (zest, teamwork, self-regulation) 3. build something using found objects in your environment. invite others to participate. (creativity, teamwork, curiosity) 4. ask others about their fears. give reassurance, use touch, refrain from judgement. help yourself and others cultivate calm acceptance. (social intelligence, kindness, hope, perspective) 5. leave a surprise gift for someone in your pod. hint: a special food treat is particularly welcome, perhaps a chocolate on the pillow of a child. (love, kindness) 6. prepare and deliver a meal to someone in your community. let them know to expect it but surprise them with what you make. leave it on the doorstep with a sweet note. (kindness, love, social intelligence) 7. snuggle up with someone special if you are lucky enough to be in physical connection with at least one loved one. be grateful for their presence while you cuddle. (love, gratitude) 8. take a moment away from the digital world and enjoy being quiet. pay attention to the opportunity to cultivate joy in the ordinary; look out the window at the sky, the birds, the landscape. (curiosity, zest, appreciation of beauty and excellence). 9. send a book to someone with the intention of making them smile or laugh. this is a great opportunity to support a local bookstore. if you don’t have access to a bookstore, send a digital book. (humor, teamwork, kindness) 10. dance! make it a family experience by inviting the whole pod. tune into a group dance on youtube or facebook. (zest, leadership) 11. listen to music while you are engaged in a tedious or boring task like folding laundry or washing dishes. notice if savoring the music helps make the task more pleasant. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, curiosity, perseverance) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/curiosity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/curiosity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/curiosity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perseverance covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 12. check in with neighbors to see if they need anything when you go shopping. (kindness, teamwork) 13. think up a project that will engage the interests and talents of everyone in your pod. you could play a game, work on a puzzle, or prepare a meal together. make sure to thank everyone for their participation. (teamwork, leadership, gratitude) 14. take a walk outside if you can, or walk around your living space. notice things that you find pleasing. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, perseverance) 15. cultivate mindfulness when you are eating. savor. take your time, finishing each bite before taking the next bite. (self-regulation, gratitude, prudence) 16. challenge members of your pod, especially children, to make you laugh. be generous about this! (humor, kindness, leadership, social intelligence) 17. practice compassion. at least once a day, set your intention to refrain from doing harm to others in your thoughts, words, and actions. (kindness, self-regulation) 18. create a group on social media devoted to finding a way to help others in the world during this difficult time. (leadership, kindness, teamwork, hope) 19. maintaining your living space can be a lot of work, especially if you take on large projects. do more than your share. don’t take credit, just do it! (perseverance, teamwork, humility) 20. think about a significant life event that changed you. write it down or tell it to a loved one. (honesty, perspective, love) 21. notice that you have two ears and only one mouth. try to make use of this observation. for at least one hour a week, try to listen twice as much as you speak. (social intelligence, perspective, self-regulation) 22. use social media to create an exchange of skills and resources to make yourself available to those who need help, for example #caremongering (teamwork, kindness, leadership, social intelligence, fairness) 23. create a ritual of solace to help handle uncertainty. this can be religious or spiritual. invite loved ones to participate. this is a terrific way to use telecommunication to include friends and family outside your pod. (spirituality, hope, creativity) 24. try to remember a favorite childhood food. share the memory with someone. (gratitude, appreciation of beauty and excellence, love) 25. explore a black, indigenous or diverse artist, poet or writer (e.g., bob marley, maya angelou, james baldwin) who has fought for equity and justice through their creativity shown resistance through their art outside at night and watch the stars. (creativity, appreciation of beauty and excellence, leadership) 26. rearrange a space in your home. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, creativity) 27. make a special breakfast to celebrate a birthday or anniversary. include an iou for a more substantial celebration after quarantine is over. (love, kindness, hope) 28. remember or study up on a happy event in history. write about it. (love of learning, hope, creativity) 29. make a gratitude list. share it with loved ones, especially if you are grateful for their presence in your life. invite them to do the same. (gratitude, love, social intelligence) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perseverance https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope http://iacharacter.org/character-strengths/perseverance https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/spirituality https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 30. call or video chat with a friend. ask them questions that will elicit the story of a special time in their life. listen to the whole story without interrupting. (social intelligence, kindness, self-regulation) 31. work on a creative project which focuses on inclusion and covid-19. for example you can partner with a friend, preferably from a diverse cultural background and showcase inclusive and diverse aspects of resilience in coping with covid-19 (creativity, love of learning, teamwork) 32. think of a friend, colleague, family member, or acquaintance who is alone. send them a text or email or call them to let them know you care. (love, kindness, social intelligence) 33. think up questions to ask loved ones that you anticipate will be fun for them to answer. (kindness, curiosity, love) 34. cultivate a positive attitude about your own health and about the health of your loved ones. (hope) 35. do something to make someone laugh or smile. (humor, kindness) 36. allow your loved ones to express themselves freely; don’t judge. (kindness, social intelligence, judgement, self-regulation, fairness, prudence) 37. reflect and discuss with your friends’ what steps you can take to end healthcare inequalities. if possible, call or connect online with a black, hispanic, indigenous or any one from a marginalized community to learn about systemic barriers they face and brainstorm ways to remove or minimize them. share your reflections or suggestions with your friends with the intention of building allyship! (fairness, teamwork, bravery) 38. deepen your connection with nature, for example, by walking, gardening, birdwatching, or foraging. do this for at least 10 minutes a day. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, perseverance) 39. slow down, you move too fast! when you are reading, cleaning, typing, browsing the web, be aware of your pace. choose at least one activity daily that you do at a leisurely pace. (prudence, self-regulation) 40. are you holding any grudges? is there tension in any of your relationships? use this time to reach out and to let it go. (forgiveness, kindness) 41. give your undivided attention to someone you love. this is a great opportunity to use video chat. (love, self-regulation) 42. if one of your friends is home-bound and they are having relationship challenges. please keep find ways so they can share any potential abuse with you. if they are afraid to share verbally, establish creative non-verbal ways to signal to each other so appropriate steps can be taken (fairness, social intelligence) 43. fight cabin fever! go for a hike, run up and down stairs, throw a ball, take an online exercise or yoga class, or go for a run while maintaining physical distance. (zest, creativity, self-regulation) 44. stop eating before you are full. (self-regulation, prudence) 45. reminisce about three places you’ve been that you’ve enjoyed. share the memory by sending or showing someone a video or photo of those places. (gratitude, appreciation of beauty and excellence) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/curiosity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/bravery https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perseverance https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/forgiveness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 46. express appreciation to front-line workers. take a cue from people in italy and spain, who have stood on balconies and applauded. social media is a good platform for this. (gratitude, kindness) 47. create a playlist of favorite songs or videos to share with a partner or friend. (love, creativity, kindness) 48. take over a chore to relieve a partner or a member of your pod. (love, kindness) 49. try to be open-minded. don’t criticize others. instead, try to empathize and be compassionate. this is relevant both in person and via telecommunication, especially social media. (social intelligence, self-regulation, judgement, fairness, humility) 50. revive a lost or forgotten pragmatic craft, such as calligraphy, weaving, sewing, knitting, woodworking… consider using it to contribute. for example, sew masks and donate to health care workers. (creativity, love of learning, self-regulation) 51. donate time or money to an organization that is helping those in greatest need. (teamwork, kindness) 52. acknowledge the inevitability of tension when living together 24/7. establish ground rules for conflict resolution, including celebrating your differences. (social intelligence, forgiveness, fairness, prudence) 53. practice restraint when you feel emotionally reactive. choose silence or mindful listening. (self-regulation, kindness, judgement, prudence, fairness) 54. invent a recipe without buying new ingredients. (creativity, prudence) 55. go through your clothes and donate anything you haven’t worn in a year. do the same with books and household objects. (kindness, self-regulation) 56. notice the way aromas influence your mood. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, curiosity) 57. notice small things that improve your mood. (prudence, humility) 58. watch a movie with your partner or pod. (love, appreciation of beauty and excellence) 59. watch and/or participate in a virtual concert. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, zest) 60. set your intention to be aware of frustration and use it as an opportunity to practice patience. (prudence, self-regulation, judgement) 61. find or frame old family photos. use them to decorate some spaces in your home. (creativity, appreciation of beauty and excellence) 62. inspire the pod to work together to sort and rearrange or redecorate a space in your home. (leadership, teamwork, appreciation of beauty and excellence, creativity) 63. set a goal to take exercise breaks throughout the day. stop what you’re doing and do five minutes of stretching or strength building (such as push-ups, planks, and squats) five or six times a day. (self-regulation, prudence) 64. resist the temptation to share information (personally or on social media), especially about covid-19, if it is likely to cause confusion or fear. don’t manifest panic by hoarding. (kindness, judgement, perspective) 65. using virtual or real-life visual images, create a collage depicting the life of each of your family members or loved ones. (love, perspective, creativity, kindness) 66. ask family members and friends how they survived other hard times in their lives. explore what helped them through: what worked for them and what they learned about themselves. (perspective, love of learning, curiosity) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/forgiveness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/curiosity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/leadership https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/curiosity covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 67. savor physical interaction with a pet or look for cute animals online. (love, humor) 68. honor and savor time alone and with loved ones. (gratitude, zest) 69. tuck a flower or treat between the sheets to surprise your bedmate. (humor, love) 70. plant and maintain an herb garden (either outdoors or indoors). have fun cooking with your homegrown herbs. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, creativity, zest) 71. think about maximizing the opportunities inherent in this time. get extra rest and take time to share with your pod and/or friends. tell your deepest secrets. be vulnerable. try to think of new things to do together. (honesty, creativity, gratitude, social intelligence, love) 72. do you have a toolbox? clean, update, and organize it. don’t have one? think about putting one together; it’s an important resource! (prudence) 73. learn about ten historical incidents/events or actions that have reinforced anti-black racism, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-semitism, maltreatment of indigenous people. reflect and write a few practical steps that you can do combat it (fairness, judgement, perspective) 74. learn how to talk to yourself using positive messages. practice positive self-talk regularly. (self-regulation, love of learning) 75. embrace the opportunity for solitude. take time to reflect on your behavior. think about the implications of your actions; what modifications might be useful? (humility, prudence, perspective, judgement) 76. look at the ways you’ve been critical of yourself and others. make a list of musts and shoulds that have held you back from making personal progress or collaborating well with others. (honesty, judgement, teamwork, humility) 77. play music and/or sing, alone or with others. (creativity, appreciation of beauty and excellence, teamwork) 78. play board games or card games. (humor, teamwork, zest) 79. use your phone or tablet to remind you to do your mindfulness practice, do some deep breathing, and be aware of your posture throughout the day. (self-regulation, prudence) 80. develop a morning coffee or tea ritual alone or with a partner (real or virtual). watch the sunrise or enjoy nature. (appreciation of beauty and excellence, love) 81. write a letter of gratitude to an essential or health care worker, or to a first responder. (gratitude, kindness) 82. provide or pay for a service such as laundry, errands, cleaning, or yard work for someone who could use the help, perhaps someone who is infirm, overwhelmed, infected, or overworked. (kindness, teamwork) 83. participate in an online campaign or activity (e.g., attending a webinar, workshop, or a townhall) which discusses ways to combat racism, discrimination, marginalization, or “othering” of people who might be different in some ways (honesty, fairness, judgement, teamwork) 84. when you have a reactive moment (and you will), remember to pause for at least a full minute (or three good deep breaths) before you respond. (self-regulation, social intelligence) 85. find a way to help a homeless person. (kindness, teamwork) 86. make a list of things that don’t concern you specifically, but that are issues for others in the community or the world. (perspective, teamwork, fairness) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/creativity https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/zest https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/appreciation-of-beauty-and-excellence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness covid-19, strengths, and wellbeing rashid & mcgrath www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 87. spend 20-30 minutes reading something that will broaden your perspective. look for a book, newspaper, blog, or magazine to widen your view of the world. (love of learning, perspective) 88. practice radical acceptance of negative thoughts and feelings. resist the temptation to be discouraged by them. search for meaning rather than blame. (humility, perseverance, perspective, hope) 89. assume good intentions on the part of others, including those who are different from you. have an open heart and a compassionate view and don’t discriminate based on sex, race, ethnicity, or nationality. set boundaries with firmness; don’t be mean. (fairness, kindness) 90. ask a loved one to tell you how they are feeling; ask questions for clarification and to draw them out. be compassionate and non-judgemental. don’t interrupt or disrupt with your own agenda. (social intelligence, kindness, love, judgement) 91. use this time to learn a new skill. read a “do-it-yourself/ book or watch videos on the web. if there are skills you’ve always wanted to improve or master, this is the time! might we suggest learning to make masks and then donating them to your local hospital? instructions abound on the internet. (love of learning, perseverance, teamwork) 92. direct your thoughts and energies to focus on others rather than on yourself. this will help you with fear and grief during difficult times. remember that the reason we are in quarantine is to save lives. consider the fact that by staying home, you are making an important contribution. (humility, bravery, teamwork) 93. rather than relying on your devices, memorize the phone numbers of your loved ones. (love of learning) 94. socialize with optimists via social media, social distancing, or telecommunication. (hope) 95. reflect on your strengths. be honest with yourself about them. (honesty, gratitude, prudence) 96. ask for honest feedback from loved ones and/or colleagues about your capacity to listen, your integrity, and your communication skills (verbal and non-verbal). heed their words. (social intelligence, honesty, teamwork, bravery) 97. being at home for a prolong period of time will inevitably present you with a problem which you could have easily otherwise solved (e.g., fixing an appliance, helping a loved one in trouble). monitor your mood. if you are becoming worried or anxious and the problem is not urgent, take a break. engage in a short activity which generate positive emotions. return to the problem, you will most likely find an acceptable solution (social intelligence, judgement) 98. cook for someone who is hungry, sick, or busy. send a meal (help a restaurant) to someone in another part of the world. volunteer your time. donate blood. (teamwork, kindness) 99. practice the yoga page savasana: lie flat on your back, legs relaxed, arms by your sides, palms facing up and open, toes relaxed to the sides. breathe deeply for five minutes. (selfregulation, prudence) 100. change a complaint into an opportunity for playfulness. tell a joke. don’t take yourself too seriously. (humor, self-regulation, humility) 101. try to find a way to surprise and delight your loved ones and yourself. strive for some lightheartedness. look for the absurd, the goofy, and the silly. fight despair with joy, fun, and love. (humor, kindness, teamwork, love) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perseverance https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perspective https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/fairness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/perseverance https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/bravery https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love-of-learning https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/hope https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/gratitude https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/bravery https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/flourish/building-your-strengths/ https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/social-intelligence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/judgment-critical-thinking https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/prudence https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/self-regulation https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humility https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/kindness https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/teamwork https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/love jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., & lomas, t. (2019). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: english). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-30. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.921 guideline version 1.0, 19th july 2019 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 special issue ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 2 . contents introductory notes………………………………………………………………………………. 4 preamble………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 professional bodies and the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice……… 4 guideline aspirations………………………………………………………………………… 5 who are the guidelines for?..................................................................................................... 5 provisional nature of guidelines……………………………………………………………. 5 key terms……………………………………………………………………………………… 6 section one: values, strengths, and principles………………………………………………. 8 values of positive psychology practitioners………………………………………………. 9 strengths of positive psychology practitioners…………………………………………… 9 ethical principles for positive psychology practice………………………………………. 10 section two: applications of the ethical guidelines in practice…………………………… 13 three important considerations…………………………………………………………….. 13 ethical decision making……………………………………………………………………... 13 working considerations……………………………………………………………………... 14 changes in clients……………………………………………………………………………. 14 changes in embedded environments……………………………………………………… 14 current emotional state and level of wellbeing…………………………………………... 15 avoidance…………………………………………………………………………………….. 15 power differentials…………………………………………………………………………... 15 overuse of strengths………………………………………………………………………… 16 practical wisdom…………………………………………………………………………….. 16 maintaining resilience and buffering against burnout…………………………………... 16 declaration of education and competence………………………………………………... 16 appreciating the importance of cultural context………………………………………… 17 resolving ethical dilemmas – a step-by-step guide………………………………………. 18 self-evaluation guide…………………………………………………………………………... 19 section three: case examples of ethical practice……………………………………………. 20 case example 1: cultural – applying ppis with cultural sensitivity…………………….. 20 case example 2: coaching – coaching clients in changing circumstances……………… 20 case example 3: clinical – working with trauma…………………………………………. 21 case example 4: organisational – pressure to misrepresent data.………………………. 22 ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 3 case example 5: mentoring – motivating ‘unwilling’ participants in an imbalanced relationship.………………………………………………………………………………... 23 case example 6: education – implementing wellbeing programmes where aspirations are hindered by existing practice..…………………………………………………………… 24 relevant guidelines…………………………………………………………………………….. 26 acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………. 27 initial signatories to the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice……………. 28 references……………………………………………………………………………………….. 29 further reading………………………………………………………………………………… 29 declaration: these guidelines are the result of a collaborative and independent working group led by aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache and tim lomas. the guidelines are independent of any organisation or association; however, numerous parties have been involved in the development and refinement of this first iteration. it is the authors’ intention to update the guidelines on a bi-annual cycle to further strengthen their depth and breadth of functionality, and we welcome feedback from the community to aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 4 introductory notes preamble ethical perfection is, perhaps, a utopian ideal, since human beings, including positive psychology practitioners (ppps), are fallible, vulnerable, and imperfect. the complexities of contemporary life, such as ever-expanding cyber-living, erratic climate change, refugee crises, evolving identities, and increasing economic polarisation, exacerbate human vulnerabilities. psychological services, especially ones with an explicit aim of restoring or enhancing wellbeing, are not easily offered without competing priorities and ethical dilemmas. no single set of ethical guidelines, standards, or even statutes can fully encapsulate the range of human complexities. a set of broad-based values, personal strengths, and principles, nonetheless can guide us to more ethical decision making, especially when we use positive psychological interventions (ppis), which generically aim to enhance wellbeing. this guideline contains a) values, b) strengths, and c) principles for positive psychology practice. it is important to note that ‘guidelines’ usually sit within broader frameworks, which will vary by context and jurisdiction. for example, guidelines may sit at the bottom of a prescriptive hierarchy such as that depicted in figure 1 below: figure 1. guidelines and broader frameworks. thus, it is important to consider guidelines along with other relevant frameworks. in addition, whilst an individual or organisation may subscribe to and endorse these guidelines for “positive psychology practice,” in some countries and jurisdictions it may be illegal to call yourself a “positive psychologist” – please be aware of the restrictions and requirements of your location. professional bodies and the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice where a practitioner is a member of a relevant professional body (e.g., american psychology association, australian psychological society, international coach federation), then first and foremost, their association’s standards, code or guidelines will inform their practice. we expect that when practitioners are members of a licensing or credentialing body (e.g., college of psychologists), with adequate education, training and experience in practising psychology or related fields, such practitioners are therefore familiar with the rules, standards, regulations, statues, and procedures of practising psychology within their jurisdiction. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 5 the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice introduced here are designed to augment, not replace, such existing jurisdictional/professional codes and guides. as such, these guidelines also provide a baseline for practitioners who are not associated with or affiliated to a professional body. guideline aspirations why have a set of ethical guidelines? these guidelines aim to enhance ethical practice by displaying a commitment to scientifically informed and evidence-based practice in the field of positive psychology (pp). they aim to infuse an aspiration to maintain (reasonable) fidelity to the science of wellbeing, and for practitioners to consider the corresponding guidelines for selfpresentation and marketing of the potential benefits. the guidelines attempt to promote to ppps and others a clearer understanding of what is ethically informed practice of positive psychology. with the assistance of such guidelines, ppps are expected to display a commitment to aspects such as:1 a) closely studying the research, and building their practice from a science base; b) continually updating their knowledge through ongoing learning and professional development; c) carefully and accurately communicating the limits of knowledge related to ppis, as well as potential benefits and pitfalls of specific ppis and wellbeing programmes; and d) monitoring the wellbeing, and positive and negative changes in wellbeing, of their clients during service provision. who are the guidelines for? the purpose of these guidelines is to enable optimal ethical practice of ppps, and in doing so to act beneficently (to do good to others) and non-maleficently (to avoid potential harm to others). as such, these guidelines are for professionals (e.g., psychologists) and others (e.g., students, or those with no affiliations) who are delivering ppis or using knowledge from the field of positive psychology in their practice. this is not a guideline for how to use or deliver particular ppis. provisional nature of guidelines we note that the current guidelines (version 1.0, 19th july 2019) are provisional and subject to ongoing revision every two years through an iterative consultative process with key stakeholders. such regularity is to ensure that the guidelines are responsive to contextual changes and reflect ever evolving local and global themes. in that respect, we welcome feedback on the guidelines outlined here at any time. it is also important to note that only english speaking, mostly western countries, have influenced the development of these guidelines, and, as such, the guidelines are limited to such boundaries. however, since this is a living growing document identified by version number, it is hoped that future versions will incorporate the influence of codes and guidelines from nonenglish speaking and non-western countries. 1 we have chosen four examples here to demonstrate such commitments, however, note that this list could be lengthy. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 6 key terms client practitioners work with clients. “client” is a generic term used to refer to the recipient of any services such as (however, not limited to) an individual, couple, family, group, organisation, sponsor, or other specifiable social unit. codes vs guidelines a code usually has legal or other enforceable ramifications, whereas guidelines suggest best practice which is not usually “regulated” or “policed.” guidelines, by their nature, imply that circumstances are varied and complex, and that following the guidelines often requires practitioners to apply practical wisdom – a combination of experience and common sense. pp pp: positive psychology. there are many ways of conceptualising and defining pp, but most operationalisations usually position it as the scientific study and promotion of overarching constructs such as “happiness,” “wellbeing,” “flourishing,” and “thriving.” for instance, lomas, hefferon and ivtzan (2015, p. 1347) define pp as “the science and practice of improving wellbeing.” relatedly, there is the notion of “applied positive psychology,” which can simply be read as the application of pp in real-world settings, including through ppis. ppi ppi: positive psychological intervention. there is within the literature a demarcation made between a “positive psychology intervention” and a “positive psychological intervention” – for an outline and explanation, see hone, jarden, and schofield (2015). here we incorporate the wider notion of positive psychological intervention that covers all activities across many disciplines (i.e., from other sub-fields of psychology in addition to pp) aimed towards increasing psychological wellbeing. one popular definition of a positive psychological intervention is: “a positive psychological intervention promotes positive emotions, behaviours, and/or thoughts, thereby increasing the wellbeing of an individual or group” (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, p. 92). ppp ppp: positive psychology practitioner. a practitioner who has completed requisite training to practise (e.g., psychotherapy, counselling, coaching), and undertaken pp specific training with a reputable training provider, thereby allowing an understanding of the scientific research process and its application in the delivery of applied positive psychology (e.g., ppis).2 strengths generally, ethical guidelines and codes espouse specific desired personal characteristics, arbitrarily selected by thought leaders of the specific field. for these guidelines, we used character strengths and virtues (csv: peterson & seligman, 2004), which is a model of empirically validated and cross-culturally endorsed character strengths (mcgrath, 2014). 2 who can call themselves a ppp? there is, as yet, no clear demarcation as to the amount and level of training or qualification needed. for example, could one consider oneself a ppp based on a 2-day course, 6-month accredited certificate, or a 2-year masters in applied positive psychology programme? in addition, supervised practice (e.g. peer and one-to-one supervision) and online consultation is ideal. further guidance regarding appropriate training and supervision is needed from the professional bodies in this field (and indeed, such issues are already being considered and addressed by relevant parties). ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 7 according to csv, character strengths are defined as universal traits that are valued in their own right and do not necessarily lead to instrumental outcomes. rather, as behavioural traits, they facilitate and guide a person to behave in responsible and ethical ways for their own and others’ welfare. character strengths, broadly speaking, reflect who a person is (i.e., their character), and values reflect what a person is committed to (i.e., their principles and actions). practitioner the term “practitioner” is used generically to refer to anyone with responsibility for the provision of pp related services. “practitioner” includes anyone undertaking role(s) such as (though not limited to) counsellor, psychotherapist, mental health professional, coach, trainer, mentor, or educator.3 principles principles direct attention to important ethical responsibilities. actions follow from certain principles. values values are beliefs held by individuals and shared by groups about desirable ends (i.e., broader ideologies about the world and how it should be). values transcend specific situations, guide how we select actions and evaluate others and ourselves, and are ordered by their relative importance (schwartz, 2006). values can represent an important way of expressing a general ethical commitment that becomes more precisely defined and action-orientated when expressed as a principle. in other words, values inform principles. in that communal sense, the values outlined in these guidelines are those the authors have identified as being broadly shared within the pp community. 3 the ethos and principles contained in these guidelines could equally apply to wellbeing researchers, where researchers could be considered practitioners in one sense, working with subjects who could be considered similar to clients. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 8 section one: values, strengths, and principles the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice incorporate the following values, strengths and principles. both values and strengths support the enactment of ethical principles, as displayed in table 1. table 1 values, strengths and principles of positive psychology practice values4 strengths5 principles 1. protecting the safety of clients and others. 1. honesty. 1. beneficence/non-maleficence. 2. alleviating personal distress and suffering. 2. fairness. 2. responsible caring. 3. ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships. 3. social intelligence. 3. respect for people’s rights and dignity. 4. appreciating the diversity of human experience and culture. 4. teamwork. 4. trustworthiness. 5. fostering a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned. 5. kindness. 5. justice. 6. enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application. 6. prudence. 6. autonomy. 7. enhancing the quality of relationships between people. 7. perspective. 8. increasing personal effectiveness. 8. judgement. 9. striving for the fair and adequate provision of counselling, psychotherapy and coaching services. 9. self-regulation. 10. perseverance. 11. bravery. in addition: • almost all codes stipulate a range of personal traits and qualities, whereas this code focuses on strengths and observable behaviours. 4 our values have been selected based on other similar guidelines, and, as such, many of the values can fit in different categories. for example, justice could be perceived as a value, or as a principle. trustworthiness could be perceived as a strength (honesty), a value, or as a principle. many of these constructs are debatable in this way. values have also been ranked by perceived importance, according to the guideline authors. 5 strengths 1-7 are ranked by how often they were mentioned and emphasised across 10 similar codes of ethics (e.g., british association for counselling and psychotherapy’s ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy). strengths 8-11, the authors have deemed important in upholding the six principles. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 9 • the lists of values, strengths, and principles are not in any way exhaustive, but, rather, an initial attempt at what is currently perceived most pertinent to practice. as the guidelines adapt iteratively over time, and debate is had amongst the pp community, it is anticipated that these elements will evolve. • the lists of values, strengths and principles is also not prescriptive. • a model of strengths (the values in action framework) was chosen, being the most evident in the literature and based on sound science. values of positive psychology practitioners the fundamental values of ppps include a commitment to: • protecting the safety of clients and others. this includes maintaining an ever-vigilant awareness of how a client is responding to one’s services, and, moreover, recognising the limits of one’s capacity and expertise (and, as such, recognising when a client may need professional help from other sectors, or if the public are in danger). • alleviating personal distress and suffering (when within one’s boundaries of expertise). this means deploying ppis in contextually relevant ways to decrease the distress of individuals who seek services in various professional contexts (e.g., therapy, coaching, health). • ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships. this includes respecting personal boundaries, and maintaining a commitment to professional practices such as privacy and confidentiality. • appreciating the diversity of human experience and cultures. this means not applying a “one-size-fits-all” framework to one’s clients, but, rather, respecting and indeed celebrating the variety of people’s unique developmental paths, and contextual and cultural backgrounds. • fostering a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned. this means that the individual develops and pursues goals that are not only fulfilling for the self, but also contribute to the greater good. • enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application. this means doing one’s best to stay abreast of developments in the literature and maintaining an up-todate knowledge of advances in the field. • enhancing the quality of relationships between people. this means recognising that people are inevitably situated within social relationships and networks, and striving to help the person enhance these bonds as far as possible. • increasing personal effectiveness. this means striving to help the client operate more effectively in the world and in the unique situations they find themselves. • striving for the fair and adequate provision of pp services. this might include advocating for services for hard-to-reach populations, or, where possible, advocating a pricing structure whereby people with less means are still able to benefit from services. strengths of positive psychology practitioners the practitioner’s personal strengths are important because they have an impact on the practitioner/client relationship. many of the strengths considered vital in the provision of services are considered as good personal qualities. it is inappropriate to prescribe that all practitioners possess these strengths, since it is fundamental that these personal strengths are deeply rooted in the person concerned and develop out of personal commitment rather than the requirements of an external authority. a thematic analysis of principles and values ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 10 espoused by major guidelines (see relevant guidelines section) showed that the following character strengths are presumed to facilitate ethical practice and decision making: • honesty: speaking the truth; presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretence; taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions. • fairness: treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance. • social intelligence: being aware of the motives and feelings of other people; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what to do to put others at ease. • teamwork: working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing one’s share. • kindness: doing favours and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them. • prudence: being careful about one’s choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted. • perspective: being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people. • judgement: thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; relying only on solid evidence to make decisions; having the ability to change one’s mind. • self-regulation: regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one’s appetites and emotions. • perseverance: working hard to finish what one starts, no matter the project: “getting it out the door” in timely fashion; not getting distracted when working; taking satisfaction in completing tasks. • bravery: being a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what is right even if there is opposition; acting on one’s convictions. ethical principles for positive psychology practice each of the six ethical principles described below is accompanied by examples of good practice that have been developed in response to that principle. ethical decisions that are strongly supported by one or more of these principles, without any contradiction from others, may be regarded as having a strong moral rationale. however, practitioners will likely encounter circumstances in which it is impossible to reconcile all the applicable principles, and choosing between principles may be required. a decision or course of action does not necessarily become unethical merely because it is contentious or other practitioners would have reached different conclusions in similar circumstances. a practitioner’s obligation is to consider all the relevant circumstances with as much care as is reasonably possible and to be appropriately accountable for decisions made. beneficence/non-maleficence beneficence involves a commitment to promoting the client’s and practitioner’s wellbeing. the principle of beneficence means acting in the best interests of the client, based on professional assessment. it directs attention to working strictly within one’s limits of competence and providing services on the basis of adequate training or experience. ensuring that the client’s best interests are achieved requires systematic monitoring of practice and outcomes (e.g., wellbeing) by the best available means. it is considered important that scientific research and ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 11 systematic reflection inform practice. depending on role and context, there is usually an obligation to take steps to enhance the quality of the services provided, and to commit to updating practice by continuing professional development. an obligation to act in the best interests of a client may become paramount when working with clients whose capacity for autonomy is diminished because of age, immaturity, lack of understanding, distress, or other significant personal constraints. non-maleficence, on the other hand, involves a commitment to avoiding harm to the client. practitioners who adopt this principle: • avoid sexual, financial, emotional or any other form of client exploitation; • avoid incompetence (i.e., appropriate application of ppis, e.g., knowing what works for whom) and malpractice; • do not provide services when unfit to do so due to illness, personal circumstances or intoxication. the practitioner has an ethical responsibility to strive to mitigate any harm caused to a client even when the harm is unavoidable or unintended. practitioners have personal and professional responsibilities to challenge, where appropriate, the incompetence or malpractice of others. they also have a responsibility to contribute to any investigation, and/or adjudication by an appropriately recognised body/authority, concerning professional practice which falls below that of a reasonably competent practitioner and/or risks bringing discredit upon their profession or pp. responsible caring the practice of pp promotes wellbeing. in pursuing this goal, ppps who adopt this principle demonstrate an active concern for the welfare of those with whom they work, and acknowledge the social and institutional power that structures their role as ppps. they have a primary responsibility to protect the welfare of those with whom they work. they recognise that individuals, families, groups, or communities may be in a vulnerable position. they also recognise their boundaries of expertise (including the absence of knowledge) and refer to other specialists when needed, and they accept responsibility and correct any harm that occurs as a result of their service provision. ppps are also expected to take an active and ongoing interest in empirical and theoretical developments in their field, ensuring that they maintain up-to-date knowledge of the evidence base regarding the ppis they are implementing. respect for people’s rights and dignity in accordance with the united nations universal declaration of human rights, respect for the dignity of persons and their rights requires that: each person and all peoples are positively valued in their own right, their rights are acknowledged and respected, and they are shown respect and granted dignity as part of their common humanity. practitioners who adopt this principle show respect which requires sensitivity to cultural and social diversity. this includes a recognition of differences among persons associated with their culture, nationality, ethnicity, colour, race, religion, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental abilities, age, socio-economic status, and/or any other personal characteristic, condition, or status. such differences are an integral part of the person, and should be respected as such. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 12 trustworthiness being trustworthy (fidelity) involves honouring the trust placed in the practitioner. trustworthiness is regarded as fundamental to understanding and resolving ethical issues. practitioners who adopt this principle: • act in accordance with the trust placed in them; • strive to ensure that clients’ expectations are ones that have reasonable prospects of being met; • honour their agreements and promises; • regard confidentiality as an obligation arising from the client’s trust; • restrict any disclosure of confidential information about clients to furthering the purposes for which it was originally disclosed – with the exception of mandated disclosure (e.g., a law in one’s jurisdiction requires such disclosure). justice justice involves the fair and impartial treatment of all clients and the provision of adequate services. the principle of justice requires that practitioners who adopt this principle are just and fair to all clients and respect their human rights and dignity. it directs attention to considering conscientiously any legal requirements and obligations, and remaining alert to potential conflicts between legal and ethical obligations. justice in the distribution of services requires the ability to determine impartially the provision of services for clients and the allocation of services between clients. a commitment to fairness requires the ability to appreciate differences between people and to be committed to equality of opportunity and outcome, and avoid discrimination against people or groups based on their personal or social characteristics. in other words, justice entails that unfair discrimination based on certain characteristics (e.g., gender or age) does not happen. practitioners have a duty to strive to ensure a fair provision of services that are accessible and appropriate to the needs of potential clients. autonomy autonomy involves respecting the client’s right to be self-governing. this principle emphasises the importance of developing a client’s ability to be self-directing within the provision of services and all aspects of life. the principle of autonomy opposes the manipulation of clients against their will, even for beneficial social ends. practitioners who respect their clients’ autonomy: • ensure accuracy in any advertising or information given in advance of services offered; • seek freely given and adequately informed consent throughout the relationship; • emphasise the value of voluntary participation in the services being offered; • engage in explicit contracting in advance of any commitment by the client and revisit/review the terms of that contract throughout the relationship; • protect privacy; • protect confidentiality; • customarily make any disclosures of confidential information conditional on the consent of the person concerned; • inform the client in advance of foreseeable conflicts of interest, or as soon as possible after such conflicts become apparent. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 13 section two: applications of the ethical guidelines in practice this section contains several guides and examples for the contextual application of these ethical guidelines. the content is designed to deepen thinking while also providing useful tools and a self-evaluation guide for resolving and supporting ethical decision making in practice. three important considerations before applying any specific ppis, one should assess and appraise the following three important factors, which are the cornerstone of best practice (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. is the ppi an appropriate match for the situation? this can be ascertained by reviewing the relevant literature and published evidence from reliable sources. for example, before a specific ppi is applied for gratitude, check to see if there is existing published evidence that shows that this specific ppi is a promising technique for the particular client. 2. does the ppi match with client’s presenting needs? 3. how will the effectiveness of a ppi be evaluated? in other words, what specific outcome can be identified and validly assessed to determine the effectiveness of the ppi? ethical decision making ethical decision making can be assisted by: having adequate knowledge of these ethical guidelines and the guidelines of an associated profession, being aware of the virtuous ethical behaviour of others, and the use of personal strengths in decision making. knowledge: we expect that the primary users of these guidelines – namely, ppps with adequate education, training, and experience in practicing psychology or related fields – are familiar with and can describe these ethical guidelines and any ethical guidelines that pertain to their profession and professional standing. most jurisdictions emphasise that practitioners need to be familiar with relevant rules, standards, regulations, statues, and procedures. behaviour: ethical behaviour, especially while delivering ppis, cannot simply come from cognitive knowledge. ethical behaviour ought to be closely tied with collective behaviours and practices. can you identify in your professional circles those individuals who model ethical practices? although your colleagues may not explicitly highlight such practices, due to their modesty, you are encouraged to explicitly ask your peers or wider professional community (regional or international organisation) how they adhere to the ethical standards of your field. collecting a case repository of good practices will be useful for reflexivity with respect to one's own behaviour. with sufficient accumulation of cases, illustrations of excellence will likely appear. ideally, practitioners will create an accessible hub where other practitioners have an opportunity to enrich this repository. using strengths towards ethical decision making: strengths can be helpful in several ways in ethical decision making. for example, identifying strengths exemplars can help with present ethical decision making. find a colleague who presents as a role model as an exemplar of ethical behaviour. reflect how they handled a specific ethical dilemma or situation, or, more generally, which specific strengths they embody in day-to-day interactions with colleagues and clients that is worth modelling and will help with decision making. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 14 working considerations there are a variety of considerations to be mindful of in working with clients that can have immediate and important ethical implications. in particular, it is pertinent to consider: changes in clients, changes in the environments in which ppps and clients find themselves, the current emotional state and level of wellbeing of clients and ppps, clients’ tendency towards avoidance, relationship power differentials, overuse of strengths, practical wisdom, a declaration of education and competence, and the importance of varying cultural contexts. consideration of these aspects can help mitigate, anticipate, or prevent some inadvertent and unpleasant consequences. changes in clients while delivering any psychological services, it is important to monitor the psychological wellbeing of clients throughout the course of treatment or intervention. some clients deteriorate, despite the demonstrated effectiveness of the ppi. symptoms can deteriorate for any number of reasons, making clients vulnerable. the client may not necessarily share this information with the practitioner, perhaps because they may feel ashamed, afraid, or hesitant to disappoint the practitioner who is working towards increasing their wellbeing. most often, the explicit focus of ppis is not the amelioration of symptoms, but, rather, the promotion of wellbeing. monitoring changing circumstances in the clients’ lives is important, as is calibrating the ppis to these changes. for example, if the client experiences a break-up or loses their job, it is important that the practitioner can address these changes and evaluate their impact. practitioners should be prepared to suspend an ongoing ppi and adjust the approach accordingly to presenting and ongoing needs, or refer on to another helping professional if appropriate. failure to do so can negatively impact the alliance, which may not be repairable. changes in embedded environments in addition to accounting for changes within clients, it is important to take into consideration the environment in which both clients and practitioners are embedded. take a ppp who is also a clinician, as an example. contemporary clinicians work in highly complex, fast-paced, and pressured environments which are marked by challenges such as a dearth of evidence-based treatment programmes, lack of cultural competence, and chronic and complex needs of clients that impact on multiple domains of their life. given these challenges, consider clients who: • may have lost their job or important contracts, or are being overlooked for a deserving promotion only because they do not fit the team; • may have been recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition; • are dealing with betrayal or other forms of mistreatment by their partner; • are experiencing an incident of discrimination; • are subject to destructive environmental events such as flooding or wildfire, or global problems such as famine. consider how these challenges might affect clients and shape their treatments. these cases present a variety of different issues that need to be considered and addressed in different ways, all while considering the regulations and standards of the profession with which the person is aligned. therefore, it is important that when ppps offer ppis, they learn about their clients and also about their environments and recent or current changes to their circumstances. practitioners also need to be cognisant of the challenges within their own work environment. this may include changes in administration which may bring changes in service modalities – ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 15 for example, a new director may endorse or oppose certain ppis or may prefer another treatment approach (e.g., neuro-linguistic programming, mindfulness-based therapies, acceptance commitment therapy). the changes may have direct or indirect impacts on the practice of ppis, including from an ethical perspective. current emotional state and level of wellbeing while offering ppis, it is important to assess changes in clients and their current emotional state and level of wellbeing. it is important that ppps practice within their scope of expertise and training. for clients that present with issues related to psychopathology (i.e., depression, anxiety, trauma), then the ppp should refer on to a suitably qualified and experienced helping professional. if such issues are not present at the beginning of the working relationships, the ppp needs to be vigilant that such issues may surface while the client is engaged in a ppi and be ready to refer to a sufficiently qualified helping professional. ideally, the practitioner would discuss with the client and consult with colleagues and relevant experts to ascertain what might be an appropriate timing for persisting with ppis in such a case. avoidance avoidance is one of the most common mechanisms people use to cope with negative emotions. a healthy psychological life entails being aware and adaptively using the full emotional spectrum. some clients seeking ppis may avoid deeper negative emotions due to their discomfort, and may seek ppis with hopes that they will dissipate their negative emotions or keep them at bay. examples of sources of negative emotions include memories of a bitter breakup or divorce, betrayal by a trusted friend, resentment for being the victim of discrimination, and being treated unfairly or in a biased manner by an individual or institution. one way to assess avoidance is by paying attention to negative emotions which find their way back in conversations despite not being discussed explicitly (i.e., emotions which persistently disturb clients and yet are deliberately not discussed). although ppis are breaking new ground with increasing evidence that positive emotions and character strengths can ameliorate and repair negative states (rashid & seligman, 2018), this is only the case if the negative states are meaningfully integrated in treatment. if strong negative emotions are avoided by clients or practitioners, the effectiveness of treatment may be compromised. power differentials one of the quintessential features of any psychological interaction involving a practitioner and a client is the power dynamics inherent in the relationship, and especially the power differential. therapists, counsellors, social workers, and other such professionals are usually aware of this differential. therefore, they strive to create a safe, non-judgmental, confidential and welcoming space where clients do not feel like the mere passive recipients of prescribed services. nonetheless, the nature of the transaction is such between the practitioner and the client that the practitioner is, inevitably, perceived as an expert. clients tend to look up to them as equipped with state-of-the-art knowledge, training, and experience in delivering ppis. therefore, the power differential is always there. the practitioner must be cognisant of this differential and should avoid any situations where the client or practitioner may have to make a decision that might be influenced by the power differential. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 16 overuse of strengths under or over use of some strength-based practices can exacerbate existing challenges. for example, in various coaching contexts, suggesting clients be more prudent can cause some to become more anxious or indecisive. clients exercising forgiveness without deliberating around when and whom to forgive may overlook offences, which, if unchecked or unaccounted, can hurt others. clients overusing creativity can find it challenging to adhere to norms or rules that foster equity and equal opportunity. clients committed to making fair decisions in their workplace can find it hard to reconcile opposing realities existing in the same sphere (e.g., coming to terms with how a well-educated and well-informed person can make unwise decisions). practical wisdom practitioners need what the philosopher aristotle called “phronesis,” i.e., practical wisdom to apply these guidelines. for example, consider a practitioner working with a high-level executive with whom they have established an excellent relationship and who has also made very good progress in their work. however, it comes to the practitioner’s notice that the executive is involved in unethical behaviour. should the practitioner preserve the solid relationship, or confront the person, risking the relationship? a single set of guidelines may not be sufficient. the practitioner needs to interpret the situation and balance competing motives. in such cases, practical wisdom is built from both cumulative experience and good relational bonds with colleagues who can advise and assist with ethical reasoning. maintaining resilience and buffering against burnout a number of pp constructs can buffer against practitioner burnout. positive emotions (e.g., hope, serenity, joy, interest, and awe) can broaden a practitioner’s attentional, cognitive, and behavioural resources, which can act as a buffer against vulnerabilities, such as symptoms of burnout (e.g., emotional exhaustion). personal practices such as mindfulness can also help in that regard. interpersonal strengths (e.g., social intelligence, kindness, love, humour, sense of purpose and meaning, and teamwork) can help cope with challenges such as depersonalisation (a state in which one's thoughts and feelings seem unreal or not to belong to oneself). likewise, a sense of purpose and meaning can restore a personal sense of depersonalisation. declaration of education and competence practitioners should declare the limits of their competence regarding specific psychological conditions, specific groups (e.g., working with children, other cultures, group work), and specific ppis. for example, a practitioner may have experience in assessing strengths in adults, yet not with assessing children’s or adolescents’ strengths. moreover, as the provision of service continues, it may move into areas in which the practitioner is more superficially experienced or qualified. for example, whilst a practitioner may be experienced and qualified to provide services to children, adolescents, and adults, they may not be experienced or qualified to deliver such services in the context of a family setting, in which case a referral or further support structures may be needed. in addition, practitioners should declare the educational training and relevant experience upon which their provision of practice is based. for example, a practitioner completes a six-month certificate which included a one-week face-to-face interaction, with the remaining course completed online. the certificate is not recognised by a municipal, regional or provincial license granting authority. the practitioner’s website states that they are a “certified positive ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 17 psychology practitioner.” they have no other professional practicing credentials. is this ethical? it is important to explicitly inform your clients of the nature, scope and limits of your professional education, practice, and credentials beyond your working title. appreciating the importance of cultural context ethical decision making should not be based only on awareness, knowledge, or cognitive understanding. decisions should also reflect the best available and relevant evidence and the circumstances of the cultural context. cultural context is critical in the delivery of ppis, because conceptualisation of what is normal, good, or adaptive is shaped by the values espoused as desirable by the culture and social context in which the concern or dilemma presents itself. additionally, cultures and social norms differ in how specific emotions are acknowledged, expressed, or amplified. therefore, it is important that guidelines for an ethical practice of ppis be rooted in such evidence. the ethical guidelines presented here are broad enough to accommodate cultural context, yet are sufficiently fine-grained to accommodate individual differences and needs. this integration of evidence, including cultural and individual factors, may be easy or readily available. though such an integration may not yield an ethically perfect path, process or outcome, when individuals strive towards ethical excellence, the collective wisdom helps them to navigate cases as they are encountered. new ground is broken, new paths are paved, and eventually excellence can be achieved. having the structure of these guidelines is, therefore, crucial to anchor a person’s thinking and actions. these guidelines also serve the purpose of evaluating the extent to which one’s actions are proximal or distant from ethical excellence. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 18 resolving ethical dilemmas – a step-by-step guide though it is impossible to be completely immune from being entangled in ethical dilemmas, the following steps, largely adapted from ethics in psychology (koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998), amongst other sources, will help a practitioner make sound ethical decisions: • practise in accordance with all statutes, regulations, and standards of professional practice, conduct, and guidelines, as stipulated by the respective license granting agency of your jurisdiction. such information will help a practitioner navigate ethical dilemmas. • develop an accurate perception of how the same event may differ from person to person. consult, with someone trusted and unbiased, as to whether the issue presents ethical dilemmas with serious consequences. discuss with peers to see if what you are perceiving is an ethical infraction, merely poor professional etiquette, or a situation which poses harm to self or the public. • review already-published relevant guidelines, rules, and standards. make sure you are interpreting these accurately and seek counsel if needed. written guidelines are sometimes abstract and not clear, with ample room for subjective interpretation. • collect all relevant and the best information that you can. identify existing gaps in information, and document facts and concerns. • integrate all the information in your process of reflection, and consult with someone who is well informed, open-minded, and not afraid to point out a practitioner’s potential shortcomings. • evaluate how the six ethical principles of these guidelines apply (i.e., beneficence/nonmaleficence, responsible caring, respect for people’s rights and dignity, trustworthiness, justice, autonomy). for example, evaluate the rights, responsibilities, and vulnerabilities of all involved. • brainstorm several solutions and appraise each as objectively as possible. • consider which character strengths might help you in making the soundest ethical decision. might you turn to your deeper sense of fairness, honesty, or kindness? perhaps your bravery is needed to motivate you to “do the right thing”? remember that ethical decisions require the use of multiple character strengths used optimally and in combination, not just one strength in isolation or one strength “used a lot” (niemiec, 2018). • visualise the outcome of your action or inaction. • reflect before making a decision on what impact it will have on you, all others involved, and what might be systematic implications. also reflect on what kinds of support you may need to adhere to your decision. • translate the decision into concrete actions that truly reflect the spirit of your decision. a number of actions may express your decision. select actions that express your decision accurately and validly, are measurable, connected to desired outcomes, and cause the least inconvenience or damage to those not directly involved. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 19 self-evaluation guide the following section outlines questions for practitioners to reflect on that will assist in avoiding ethical dilemmas to support best practice. ppi fit: first and foremost, based on the best evidence available, decide if a specific ppi (e.g., gratitude journal, using specific strengths, forgiveness exercise) is an appropriate fit for the client, given their presenting problems, circumstances, and motivation for treatment. ppi timing: what steps will you undertake to decide when the ppi is appropriate: 1) at the onset of the services, 2) while the ppi has already commenced? under what conditions would you consider a concurrent or alternative service or treatment? awareness of one’s own mental health: how aware are you about your own mental health? being a practitioner does not make you immune from experiencing symptoms of mental illness that may move towards a clinical range. what steps or actions do you routinely engage in to take care of your own mental health so that you can serve your clients optimally? what barriers do you face in taking care of yourself, such as lack of time and resources, feeling or believing you are just fine, and access to appropriate and relevant professionals who can take care of your mental health? mandatory reporting: how comfortable do you feel taking action against a client who might be responding well to ppis, yet wishes for confidentiality when they inadvertently report an incident (recent or in the past) or ongoing situation which may involve, for example, child or elderly abuse, sexual abuse, or imminent threat to the safety of someone? if you are not practicing under the code or guidelines of a professional body, do you have a legal requirement to report? exaggeration and generalisation: you meet someone at a conference who appears passionate about ppis and invites you to attend a workshop they are offering. you attend the workshop, which is built on a few studies with which you are quite familiar. the results, applications, and generalisability of studies are presented in an exaggerated manner. most participants find the presentation “transformative” and appear to believe the findings. what would you do? can you use the steps in the “resolving ethical dilemmas” section to guide your behaviour in such a situation? ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 20 section three: case examples of ethical practice the following cases are examples that may present in practice and have an ethical component relevant to the principles in these ethical guidelines.6 case example 1: cultural – applying ppis with cultural sensitivity ethical decisions should reflect the best available evidence in the circumstances of the cultural context. consider the following vignette. suzanne is an australian practitioner who is working with a female client of an east asian cultural background. the client wants self-improvement and to preserve her family relationships. suzanne opts to use the best possible self exercise. suzanne follows all the steps to guide the client through the exercise. somehow, despite making significant selfimprovements, the client reports that her relationships with her family have become sour. hence, no significant improvement in the client’s wellbeing is detected on repeated online measures. an important implication in this vignette is consideration of the concept of the self, which varies from culture to culture. suzanne follows a concept of self-development often associated with the west, which encompasses personal growth, and taking new and largely individual initiatives. by contract, self-development in eastern (and in most non-western) cultures is thought to place more relative emphasis on investing in relationships, improving social interaction, and contributing to preserving family, group, and tribal traditions. despite increasing cultural diversity in most urban metropolises, quintessential cultural differences frequently still hold. an important implication of these differences is that the client in this vignette may benefit from understanding how she can use her character strengths to bring benefit to her family or to connect with them more deeply. suzanne may use the character strengths interventions of turn your strengths other-oriented or character strengths appreciation (niemiec, 2018) in which her client learns to turn her best inner qualities into mechanisms of relationship building that benefits the other and prioritises a way of recognizing and valuing family members for their own best qualities. it could also be the case that selfdevelopment supported by significant others can bring deep and sustained increases in wellbeing. however, in an interdependent culture, self-development, which likely involves close family members, also requires managing more complex interactions over a longer period of time. by contrast, the best version of me activity, which focuses on improving individual strengths or taking a new initiative, may require a relatively shorter amount of time. therefore, it is imperative that ppps should consider how best their exercises can be culturally adapted. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • responsible caring – the ppp needs to try to care for the client in a way that takes into account the specifics of that client’s situation and background. • beneficence/non-maleficence – the ppp has a duty to do no harm. • respect for people’s rights and dignity – the ppp has a responsibility to be sensitive to cross-cultural dynamics, and to respect the client’s situated perspective and needs. 6 we are grateful to the following individuals who provided these cases: cases 1 & 3 tayyab rashid, case 2 annalise roache, case 4 stewart donaldson, case 5 matthew iasiello, and case 6 denise quinlan. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 21 case example 2: coaching – coaching clients in changing circumstances ethical dilemmas can appear unexpectedly and require an adjustment in service provision. consider the following vignette. amanda came to coaching because she was feeling a lack of direction and meaning in life. previously she had placed a lot of importance on career advancement, but now felt she needed to look for a more balanced approach to life, and moreover, was feeling sad and deflated that she had not accomplished more in life (outside of career enhancement). during the initial intake session, she identified several domains she would like to focus on, which included finance management (to support buying a home), personal development, and increasing fun and social time. she mentioned that her current job was challenging and that she would be looking to make a change in the future, yet this was not a current focus for coaching. in the first two sessions, in which goals were crafted and actions steps clarified, progress was being made in the direction she had indicated as important, and coaching was progressing well. however, at the beginning of the fourth session amanda declared that her work situation had deteriorated abruptly and she had resigned, having found a new job already. the resignation had not been received well and amanda was feeling unsettled and highly emotional in her workplace, where she still had four weeks to work out her notice. she indicates feeling triggered by her manager’s reaction to her resignation, which is bringing up memories of similar emotional confrontations from her adolescence. at this stage it was imperative for the coach to maintain their self-regulation strength and not make an impulsive suggestion due to the rise of amanda’s stressors. from there, the coach could then turn to using the strength of curiosity to check in on how amanda would like to proceed in the immediate future, and be open to shifting focus within the session/s. it may also be important to understand the nature of amanda’s emotional reaction to determine if coaching is a safe and appropriate mechanism for her current needs. while the coach may have contracted amanda for a set amount of sessions, the changes in the client’s situation must inform the appropriate way forward. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • responsible caring – the coach has a primary responsibility to use kindness and fairness to protect the welfare of amanda and recognise the boundaries of their expertise. • autonomy – here the coach could focus on developing amanda’s ability to be selfdirecting within the provision of services and all aspects of life, and to revisit/review the terms of their contract throughout the relationship. • beneficence/non-maleficence – the coach, acting in the best interests of amanda and based on professional assessment, should be aware of working strictly within their limits of competence, and to provide services on the basis of adequate training and experience. case example 3: clinical working with trauma most individuals who experience trauma become overwhelmed in many culturally nuanced ways, especially if they are working on a ppi. they may develop extensive mechanisms to avoid thinking, recalling, or behaving in ways that may be related to their trauma. while ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 22 offering ppis, it is important to appraise and assess such trauma (whether historical and/or current). without minimising or dismissing it, the practitioner ought to intervene if they have expertise, or, if not, to make a timely referral. the practitioner also needs to be vigilant in case trauma may surface while the client is engaged in a ppi. the practitioner must discuss with the client and consult with colleagues and relevant experts to ascertain what an appropriate timing might be for persisting with ppis in such a case. consider the following vignette. salma, 21, has a long history of experiencing physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. she seeks services for her persistent feelings of depression. she is expecting that the therapist would explicitly ask about the traumatic events in her life. instead, she is given a short questionnaire which does not include any questions about current or past trauma. in the counselling sessions themselves, salma finds she does not like the counsellor and chooses not to reveal the details of her trauma. thus, the treatment remains superficially effective and she is prescribed a fresh round of treatment within six months. as the above case demonstrates, it is important to explicitly ask about trauma (although doing so requires great sensitivity, and possibly also clinical training). depending on the rapport, some clients will explicitly ask related questions, and seek advice, suggestions, coping strategies, or culturally appropriate resources. it is important that, while the ppi is in process and details of a recent or remote trauma surface, the practitioner responds in a way that meets the needs of the client. first and foremost, the practitioner should be sufficiently qualified, trained, and experienced in dealing with the situation. practitioners should regularly tap their strengths of humility and prudence/caution by periodically checking if they should continue to provide services, or conversely, if the client would be better off with someone with more specific expertise in providing the suggestions, skills, and strategies that some clients need or ask for. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • responsible caring the ppp has a responsibility to care for salma in a way that considers the specifics of her situation and background. • beneficence/non-maleficence – the ppp has both a responsibility not to create further harm to salma, and to promote her wellbeing. case example 4: organisational pressure to misrepresent data many positive work and organisations interventions are evaluated to determine their effectiveness. ethical dilemmas can appear unexpectedly when clients do not accept findings and pressure practitioners to omit or misrepresent evaluation data. consider the following vignette and notice how a number of character strengths are underused, including honesty/integrity, perspective/wisdom, leadership, and humility. company xyz hired a pp practitioner to improve employee morale and performance. in consultation with company leadership, she decided to provide a training programme to increase employee psychological capital (hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism). evaluation data showed the employees loved the training and wanted more positive psychological training in the future. however, the evaluation data showed there were not significant differences in levels of hope, efficacy, resilience, optimism, morale, or performance between employees who were randomly selected to participate in the training, and those in the comparison group. the leaders of company xyz were so ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 23 pleased their employees enjoyed the training that they did not want them to see the discouraging evaluation results. instead, they asked the practitioner to report that the training was a big success, and that more training along the same lines would be provided for the employees in the future. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • autonomy – here the practitioner’s autonomy to act is being taken away. • beneficence/non-maleficence beneficence involves a commitment to promoting the client’s wellbeing, and this level of deception advocated by the company’s leaders is not in the best interests of the employees. additionally, acting beneficently requires providing services based on adequate training or experience. • trustworthiness – here the practitioner is being asked to exaggerate and generalise the effectiveness of the ppi, which does not honour the trust placed in the practitioner by the employees. case example 5: mentoring – motivating “unwilling” participants in an imbalanced relationship often, those who are most resistant to an intervention are those who may benefit most. ppps encounter a difficult situation when trying to motivate or persuade a client to participate in an intervention for their benefit, without manipulation. consider the following vignette. abbie, a case manager at a youth agency, has a client who refuses to participate in the exercises of a pp group intervention. the facilitator of the intervention has asked abbie to motivate her client to participate in the exercises, and convince them of the benefits of the intervention. abbie agrees with her colleague that the intervention would be greatly beneficial for her client. abbie is conscious that her client’s attitudes and behaviour often cause the client to be excluded from interventions that are likely to be helpful, and decides to challenge her client’s attitudes towards participation. abbie has developed a trusting, mentor relationship with the client, and is unwilling to compromise her integrity and betray the client’s trust by blindly “selling” the intervention to the participant or making promises that won’t be realised. rather, she modestly describes the evidence that supports the intervention, and works with her client to weigh up the costs and benefits of participation. she curiously poses questions to her client about the pros and cons of participating in the intervention and how her client’s signature strengths could be used in the group setting. abbie then supports her client to identify strategies to minimise the costs of participation, and they practice low-intensity versions of the intervention itself and her client’s strengths use prior to the group setting. abbie is certain that her client will benefit from participating in the intervention, and doesn’t want her client to be excluded from participation once again. equally, she does not want to betray her client’s trust or autonomy. abbie wants to challenge her client, and help expose her to new experiences, but fears that unethical manipulation could result in negative outcomes for her participant, and ultimately damage the quality of their hard-won relationship. rather than over-selling or exaggerating the benefits of participation, abbie works to understand the client’s attitude toward the intervention, challenges cognitive biases, and creates opportunities to demonstrate the benefits of the training in the safety of the case management session. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 24 • justice – the ppp has a responsibility to ensure that clients are not excluded from interventions based on a particular characteristic. • trustworthiness – the ppp uses the trusting relationship with the client to encourage the client to evaluate their attitudes and beliefs, but does not betray this trust. • autonomy – the ppp respects the will of their client, and is hesitant to manipulate it. case example 6: education implementing wellbeing programmes where aspirations are hindered by existing practice many schools want to adopt wellbeing programmes. however, they may do so for a range of reasons, from concern for student wellbeing, through addressing challenges like bullying within the school, to enhancing already strong practices. in addition, having a school wellbeing programme can also be viewed as a marketing opportunity and point of difference for some schools. consider the following vignette. a school staff member was requested by the principal to develop a wellbeing strategy and plan for adoption by the board, and then to organise a fast rollout of the key elements. the principal wanted to tell prospective parents that their children would benefit from explicit wellbeing teaching in the curriculum. teachers were all assigned responsibilities for teaching wellbeing, even though there had been very little professional development for staff in this area. many staff were stressed and felt unprepared for this teaching, as well as the additional workload it represented. a consultant was brought in to deliver a halfday professional development session in wellbeing for staff. some staff expressed concern to the consultant that they were anxious that they might cause harm to their students because they were ill-equipped and had no grounding in this area. in addition, the consultant has seen the school’s marketing which promotes its work on wellbeing (e.g., describing the school as supporting holistic wellbeing for staff and students, and building wellbeing at every encounter). the consultant is aware that the school continues to use a punitive discipline policy that undermines relationships between students and staff, and ignores scientific evidence for the wellbeing benefits of restorative practice and forgiveness. the mid-level teacher who has been made responsible for wellbeing programme implementation has briefed the consultant on these issues. the teacher is reluctant to raise the issues with the school leadership as this teacher has previously been intimidated by this group when raising similar concerns. at that time, their loyalty to the school was called into question, and their suitability to continue on as a teacher was challenged. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • beneficence/non-maleficence – the ppp has a responsibility not to unequivocally or uncritically endorse a school as being a “wellbeing school” if they are aware of school practices that undermine wellbeing. • autonomy – the teacher should not feel coerced into adopting a perspective or position that conflicts with their own judgement or values. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 25 relevant guidelines the following guidelines (organised by specific field and alphabetised within the field) were drawn upon and helped inform the development of these practice guidelines: psychological: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). nursing: • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • international – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 26 acknowledgements the following people, listed alphabetically, contributed substantially and provided input and feedback into the drafting of these guidelines: • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 27 initial signatories to the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice date of first signing the guidelines version signed name and website of association or body logo 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • via institute on character • http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-psychology-andcoaching-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/psychology,-social-work-andcommunityservices/postgraduate/master-of-appliedpositive-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa • https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluation-center/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia • https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience • www.nziwr.co.nz 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • humanship • www.humanshiplb.org 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • iranian positive psychology congress 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society • http://jphp.jp/ ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 28 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology • https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india • http://nppassociation.org/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • german society for positive psychology • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 29 authors aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas university of east london, united kingdom publishing timeline published 19 july 2019 references barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. further reading han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 30 sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. mathews, g. (2012). happiness, culture, and context. international journal of wellbeing, 2(4), 299-312. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i4.2 gordon mathews chinese university of hong kong cmgordon@cuhk.edu.hk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 299 article happiness, culture, and context gordon mathews abstract: the first part of this paper discusses why statistical comparisons of happiness and wellbeing are insufficient. it considers criticisms of these statistical comparisons, and discusses how, while they are useful for some purposes, they do not enable fully adequate cross-cultural comparison. the paper then discusses the problem of surveys both in terms of language, given the subtly different terms in different languages for happiness, and in terms of culture, arguing that difference in cultures can cause the findings of surveys to be less than transparent. it then turns to a consideration of culture itself, which has become increasingly problematic in anthropology in recent decades. ‘culture’ is a term that has been shifting in its meanings. culture no longer refers simply to ‘the way of life of a people,’ but also to the array of choices individuals make from ‘the global cultural supermarket’; culture in both these senses needs to be analyzed in terms of how it develops in the individual, as recent anthropological theories have been exploring. this new-found complexity of culture does not mean that researchers on subjective wellbeing should abandon culture as a variable; rather, they should augment statistical surveys of wellbeing, which are based on the older, conventional conception of culture, with ethnographic interviewing conducted by researchers who understand the language and culture in a given society. only on this basis can the cross-cultural study of wellbeing reach its full potential, the paper argues, a potential uniting of different academic disciplines in a common endeavor, that of fully understanding what happiness means and how it can best be attained in the world. keywords: happiness, wellbeing, well-being, statistical surveys, ethnographic research, culture, the cultural supermarket 1.1 why the statistical comparison of wellbeing is not enough research into happiness and wellbeing has become increasingly sophisticated in recent decades. in an earlier era, wellbeing of societies was often assumed, particularly by economists, to equate unproblematically with per capita income (conceição & bandura, 2008: 2). only in recent decades has it become fully understood that wellbeing cannot be equated with such a measure, but is more complex (mcgillivray, 2007), involving different individuals and different societies in how they comprehend their lives. this shift has been led particularly by psychologists and other scholars emphasizing ‘subjective wellbeing’ (for example diener & suh, 2000), focusing upon how individuals across different societies report upon their wellbeing, rather than relying upon objective measures. various prominent surveys of wellbeing ask, ‘taken all together, how would you say that things are these days: would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?’ alternatively, they may ask people to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10 (conceição & bandura, 2008: 6). these statistics are then used to compare various groups as to their degree http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 300 of wellbeing. this effort at statistical measurement, the dominant form of research into wellbeing today in the social sciences, seems, on the surface, to be straightforward. but can statistical measures of wellbeing yield the kind of transparent comparison of wellbeing that their proponents seek? many authorities have argued not. kahneman and tversky, after many attempts, eventually abandoned their attempts to find an impartial scale of subjective wellbeing apart from social context (easterbrook, 2004: 167). as kahneman and krueger write in a recent paper, how should a social scientist interpret answers to questions about global life satisfaction or happiness? after all, life satisfaction [...] is a global retrospective judgment, which in most cases is constructed only when asked and is determined in part by the respondent’s current mood and memory, and by the immediate context (2006: 6). as they explain about surveys of subjective wellbeing: one of the difficulties of using data on subjective wellbeing is that individuals may interpret and use the response categories differently. if jim says that he is ‘very satisfied’ and tim says that he is only ‘satisfied,’ is jim really satisfied more than tim? maybe. but maybe tim is the type of person who rarely uses superlatives to describe himself, either when he is jubilant or depressed, while jim tends to extremes in his self-descriptions. to put it another way, when tim answers a 4 about the intensity of a particular emotion, maybe that is the equivalent of a 6 for jim (kahneman & krueger, 2006: 18). they offer an alternative measure in this paper, the ‚u-index,’‛ for measuring the mood of respondents over a more extended period, giving a fuller sense of subjective wellbeing than measurements of life satisfaction alone can allow (kahneman & krueger, 2006: 19). in a similar vein, diener (2000: 34-35) discusses how, because subjective wellbeing consists of different components, it should be measured in multiple ways: not just in terms of life satisfaction, but also in terms of specific domains such as work and family, as well as levels of affect over time. these approaches reveal how the quantitative study of wellbeing is becoming progressively more sophisticated. and yet they do not fully solve the basic underlying problem that kahneman and krueger identify: given the kind of variation described above, can statistical measurements of wellbeing ever be transparently valid, or are these measurements too imprecise, too prone to the variables of subjective interpretation to be fully reliable? i maintain that statistical measurements of wellbeing and happiness are indeed valid and useful in some contexts. the variation that kahneman and krueger describe may perhaps cancel itself out if there is a sufficiently large sample size, although this itself would need to be measured in survey questions designed to uncover the range of intensity of feelings from individual to individual. given the current ‘state of the art,’ if a given society were to be measured as to wellbeing over a period of years or decades, using a sufficiently large sample size and the sophisticated array of survey instruments now available, thanks to the work of scholars like diener, kahneman, and krueger, and many others, the changes in wellbeing shown statistically over that period might indeed be indicative of something very real. however, once we extend this comparison from that of individuals in a given society to that of societies across the globe, the validity of measurement becomes more doubtful. happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 301 2. the statistical measurement of wellbeing across societies kahneman and krueger describe the difficulties of subjective wellbeing in terms of individuals, but even greater are the difficulties in comparing wellbeing across societal and cultural bounds. as diener and tov have written, well-being can be understood to some degree in universal terms, but must also be understood within the framework of each culture [...] there are pancultural experiences of swb (subjective well-being) that can be compared across cultures, but [...] there are also culture-specific patterns that make cultures unique in their experiences of well-being (2007: 691). they are implying that cross-cultural statistical measures alone are not enough; rather, each culture must be understood on its own terms. this represents a new mode of thinking in diener’s work, a new methodological caution in the work of a scholar who is arguably the most influential figure in the psychological study of wellbeing. earlier, in diener and suh’s edited book culture and subjective well-being (2000), there was a generally unquestioned assumption that cross-cultural statistical measures of wellbeing reveal truth. suh’s chapter in this book, for example, asks, ‚why are north americans happier than east asians?‛ (2000: 64, 72). this question assumes that statistical survey results reflect the reality of happiness or its lack, rather than being the product of surveys themselves and their culturally shaped responses. americans, a more detached observer has noted, may ‚inflate their reports of happiness [<] most modern americans say they are very or extremely happy, and one must be skeptical about whether their lives are really so wonderful‛ as the answers they give to survey questions indicate (baumeister, 1991: 210). indeed, in a society declaring in one of its founding documents the inalienable right to ‘the pursuit of happiness,’ its members seem all but culturally required to pursue and proclaim happiness in order to be fully american. in east asian societies such as japan, on the other hand, personal modesty is a key social value—one should not boast about one’s success or declare too loudly one’s wellbeing. to proclaim happiness, even in an anonymous survey, is felt by at least a few people i have spoken with to be an affront to good manners. thus it seems plausible that north americans are not ‚happier than east asians,‛ but are simply more willing to proclaim their happiness on a survey form (mathews & izquierdo, 2009: 7). psychologists investigating wellbeing have become increasingly aware of these difficulties. diener, oishi, and lucas (2003: 411) note how north americans may engage in self-serving biases such as self-enhancement more than east asians, contributing to this difference in reports of subjective wellbeing, and also ask whether ‚impression management‛ might lead to different subjective wellbeing scores across cultures (2003: 413). in subsequent work, oishi (2010) has demonstrated an acute insightfulness as to cultural variations in conceptions of wellbeing. he and scholars such as helliwell et a1. (2010), veenhoven (2010) and frey (2008) are becoming progressively more aware of the impact of sociocultural differences on wellbeing. however, because they are professionally committed to the statistical measurement of wellbeing, they can only note these differences while continuing with measurements that seem unable to take these differences fully into account. as of this writing, the latest major work on cross-cultural wellbeing is helliwell, layard, and sachs’ world happiness report (2012). it is sophisticated in its careful parsing of different types of measurements of happiness, distinguishing between current emotion, remembered emotion, and life evaluation and also in acknowledging cross-cultural variation. nonetheless, it happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 302 never fully analyzes statistical data in terms of sociocultural context in its chapters. in their chapter in the book, helliwell and wang simply say that: one basic check, once comparable data are assembled, is to see to what extent the answers drawn from different nations and cultures appear to be influenced by the same factors, and to the same extent. as it turns out, the cross-cultural commonality of the correlates of life evaluation is substantial (2012: 19). this may be true, but a degree of cross-cultural commonality does not indicate that culture can be ignored. this does not mean that the cross-cultural measurement of wellbeing is without value, despite what some critics seem to argue.1 these statistical comparisons viewed very broadly seem indeed to be accurate. when helliwell and wang (2012: 12-13) note that several societies in northern europe have far higher ratings in life evaluation than do several of the more poverty-stricken societies in sub-saharan africa, where life expectancy is almost thirty years shorter and poverty is endemic, the truth of this seems indubitable. the broad fact that the statistical data from developed-world societies represent those societies as happier than developing-world societies is important, and by no means self-evident: the data teach us something. but other, less extreme variations in these statistical data, such as the fact that northern european societies show on average a higher degree of happiness than east asian societies, calls for cultural contextualization of a kind that these authors do not provide. indeed, i argue that all of the subtle differences in happiness between different societies shown in the data require cultural contextualization in order to be fully comprehensible. 3. why and how culture must be considered scholars of wellbeing have argued that the effect of culture on wellbeing is not especially pronounced. the psychologists diener, oishi, and lucas (2003: 419), analyzing two large samples, maintain that between-nation differences amount to 12% and 15% of variance in life satisfaction, with much of the rest due to individual differences within societies. 2 the sociologist ruut veenhoven in 2005 told me during a personal conversation that in his own and others’ survey research on happiness, statistical analysis reveals that only a small degree (‚no more than 20 percent‛) of variation between societies can be attributed to cultural factors. these views imply that overemphasis on cultural difference in the measurement of wellbeing crossculturally may be misguided; culture may not be all that important. but while i certainly do not claim that culture is everything, as i will shortly discuss, to use survey results that may be culturally problematic to demonstrate that culture does not matter leads to the downplaying of culture as a foregone conclusion. the situation is like that of the joke about a man searching for his car keys at night. he is asked, ‘where did you lose them?’ and points into the blackness: ‘over there.’ ‘well, why are you looking for them here?’ ‘the light’s better here’ (mathews & izquierdo, 2009: 7). if valid knowledge is viewed as being only 1 one recent analysis (eckersley, 2009) argues that western liberal democracies rank highest in wellbeing surveys largely because of the skewed methodologies of investigators. ‚swb is a dubious measure for comparing countries because of cultural differences in response and because other attributes and attitudes also need to be considered... if there is a ‘holy grail’ of a single indicator that accurately measures how well nations and people are faring, swb is not it; the search must continue‛ (2009: 9, 10). 2 as diener, oishi, and lucas indicate (2003: 410), it is easier to compare nations than cultures, since the bounds of the latter may not be clear. this is quite true: culture today in one sense cannot be thought of apart from the context of nation-states, which shape their citizens into adhering to a common cultural framework. however, as i shortly discuss, culture today is more complex than this. happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 303 that which can be revealed through statistical measures, then that which is not statistically measured is rendered irrelevant, even though it may have fundamental value. scholars such as those cited above are well aware of the problems in using surveys and statistical measures to compare wellbeing across cultures, societies, and nations, but again, because their professions are based on the use of statistics, they attempt to address these problems by using still more surveys and statistical manipulations. this is not meant to in any way disrespect the scholars mentioned in the previous paragraphs, who are pioneers in the study of happiness in their disciplines and who have done very significant research. it is only to suggest that perhaps the answer to the problem of cross-cultural statistical measurement lies not in further statistical measurement, but rather to move beyond such measurement. if crosscultural statistical measurement of wellbeing cannot fully explicate sociocultural difference, as all the studies thus far discussed seem to indicate, then other kinds of explication become necessary. in interpreting statistics purporting to compare wellbeing across societies, anthropologists and linguists and other scholars who have expert cultural knowledge of these different societies must be consulted; otherwise the meaning of the data will remain open to question. there are two levels of problems that must be dealt with in the cross-cultural statistical measurement of happiness. the first is at the level of translation: the term for ‘happiness’ or ‘life satisfaction’ in one language may have subtly different nuances than that in another, affecting the data arrived at in surveys; this problem may be in some cases uncorrectable, but at least it must be acknowledged. thus, for example, the japanese terms shiawase or kōfuku have subtly different implications than the english term happiness, as does too the cantonese term hoisam, with speakers of japanese and cantonese using these terms in slightly different contexts than speakers of english use the term happiness. surveys purporting to statistically compare happiness cross-culturally must acknowledge and account for these differences. a term such as life satisfaction may be more easily translatable cross-culturally, but still may be problematic, since in some societies the term may appear more alien and experience-distant than in others, leading to subtly skewed statistical results. even a slight difference in nuance may result in a quite significant difference in survey results; but investigators into cross-cultural subjective wellbeing have for the most part not adequately addressed this fact. but the problem is not only linguistic. there is also the broader problem of cultural understanding, whereby the cultural context of happiness and wellbeing must be fully unpacked in any given society in order to understand statistical measurements of happiness in that society. how much does happiness matter in a given society? it is no coincidence, i argue, that happiness researchers have been based overwhelmingly in western europe and particularly the united states, societies emphasizing the individual pursuit of happiness; in many other societies, the individual pursuit of happiness is not of such salience (see, for example, mathews, 1996: 12-49). the personal pursuit of happiness is more highly valued in some places in the world than in others. beyond this, the array of particular cultural meanings of happiness differs in different sociocultural contexts. i address this issue in the final section of this paper, in advocating interviews and their analysis as a supplement to surveys and their statistical data; but first there is another problem that must be addressed. after this paper’s initial discussion of the importance of culture, we must ask: what is culture? 4. the shifting meanings of culture ironically, at the same time that researchers from other disciplines have been realizing the importance of culture, anthropologists have been turning away from the concept. in happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 304 anthropology today, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that the word ‘culture’ can no longer be used with a straight face. if i were to go to an american anthropological association meeting and speak of ‘japanese culture’ or ‘american culture’ or ‘chinese culture,’ i might not even be argued with, but merely smirked at as being hopelessly naïve. culture today, in the anthropological world, can be used in its adjectival form, but not as a noun; one can speak of something being cultural, in terms of it being socially constructed, but not of ‘indonesian culture,’ or ‘the culture of turkey’ (see brightman, 1995: 510). this is because it has become increasingly apparent to anthropologists in recent decades that societies do not have walls around them. there is no absolutely separate set of values distinguishing all those who are japanese or german or brazilian from all those who are not; rather there are so many borderlands and other imprecisions that all such cultural comparison becomes questionable. as hannerz has written, humankind has<bid farewell to that world which could<be seen as a cultural mosaic, of separate pieces with hard, well-defined edges. cultural connections increasingly reach across the world (1997: 107). of course some elements of separate cultures do indeed remain; culture in the older sense of the term cannot be dismissed. an observer of a street-corner interaction in tokyo will know immediately that it is tokyo, not paris or cairo: interpersonal modes of behavior mark it instantly as japan as opposed to france or egypt. culture in this sense may be defined as ‚the way of life of a people‛ (mathews, 2000: 4): the way people living within a particular society are linguistically, culturally, socially and institutionally shaped to relate to the world, and behave in certain distinctly recognizable ways. this is the standard definition of culture that anthropology textbooks have long offered; and this is the conception of culture that the analysts discussed in the preceding section seem more or less to adhere to. this aspect of culture clearly exists, particularly as set forth by national states today in their patriotic exhortations and educational curricula, seeking to bind their disparate populations into a single entity (hall, 1992: 291-99). however, it by no means exhausts culture in today’s world. culture can no longer be seen only as the way of life of people in a given society, anthropologists argue, in contrast to the ways of life of people in other societies. we also increasingly live within a global cultural supermarket, where we pick and choose aspects of our cultural worlds. thus, for example, a mumbai entrepreneur may read dale carnegie or stephen covey on how to conduct one’s life, while a new york stockbroker may practice yoga for similar guidance; the seoul doctor may follow christ while her european counterpart engages in buddhist meditation. culture in this sense may be defined as ‚the information and identities available from the global cultural supermarket‛ (mathews, 2000: 5): we choose aspects of our cultural world from the global culture that surrounds us, as befits our personal environments, desires, and characters. the cultural supermarket has become increasingly prevalent in today’s world, particularly because of mass media: it can plausibly be argued that in crucial respects, two football players or fashion models or anime aficionados or clinical psychologists located in beijing and new york, or madrid and tokyo, or auckland and rio de janeiro, might typically have more in common with one another than they might have with their own parents or grandparents, or with the vast majority of their fellow citizens. some readers may ask, ‘how important is the cultural supermarket, really, in understanding cultural difference?’ the answer to this question depends very much on what aspects of culture are being investigated. if, for example, the investigator is exploring linguistic categories, then the cultural supermarket may not matter very much, since one’s native language is not chosen but acquired in a child’s earliest years. if, on the other hand, the happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 305 investigator is exploring attitudes towards sexuality, or an array of other topics about which there are ranges of different personal views, then the cultural supermarket may be of considerable importance, and can hardly be ignored—even though, undoubtedly, choices from the cultural supermarket are influenced by one’s underlying cultural background. research into happiness may involve both these realms: both culture as ‘the way of life of a people’ and culture as ‘the information and identities available within the global cultural supermarket.’ in order to explicate this, let me now turn to how culture develops in individual minds. 5. culture and the individual the two concepts of culture i have just discussed co-exist within individual minds. to a very rough extent, the wealthier a society is, and the more individuals within that society are educated and computer literate, the more the cultural supermarket may play a significant role in individuals’ lives. i estimate that full consumers in the cultural supermarket have in recent years constituted the top 15 to 20 percent of the world’s population in terms of wealth, whether the middle class of developed societies or the upper class of developing societies. however, with the increasing development of the internet, cheap computers, and smart phones, as well as air transportation, the reach of the cultural supermarket is becoming significantly expanded. my recent research has investigated african and south asian traders and merchants in their global routes, and they too may be heavily involved in the global cultural supermarket, despite having little money (mathews, 2011: 207). because of the development of technology, and because the cultural supermarket does not directly require money in order to be consumed from,3 the cultural supermarket is increasingly sweeping the globe. choices from the global cultural supermarket are heavily conditioned by one’s social and national worlds. for every one american like john walker lindh, the california teenager who, after discovering islamic websites, eventually became an american taleban (bbc, 2002), there are hundreds or thousands of americans who become evangelical christians; by the same token, for every one indian who is a fan of western rock music, there are hundreds or thousands who find their musical passions expressed in the songs of bollywood. nonetheless, the global cultural supermarket is readily apparent today: while almost 30 percent of koreans are christian, by one account 28 percent of americans of baby-boomer age claim to believe in reincarnation (roof, 1994: 72). they may formulate these beliefs from within their own cultural patternings—some concepts of reincarnation in the united states emphasize personal growth, as reincarnation in india typically does not, just as korean christianity takes on forms that american christianity typically does not. still, the culture one lives in is no longer a reliable indicator of one’s spiritual beliefs, given the global cultural supermarket, and this is true in a number of other realms as well, from one’s taste in music and art to one’s choice of sexual partners. we each pick and choose from an array of available global choices, and our personal identities are shaped accordingly. of course this is not true in terms of one’s native language, and deep-seated, often subconscious, cultural norms—those underlying norms corresponding to bourdieu’s term habitus (1977: 72-95), the principles that cause us to recreate in its own image the social world that has created us. these features of ‘the way of life of a people’ stay with one throughout one’s life. but so too, today, is the increasingly important assumption that one can in many 3 the material supermarket cannot be consumed from without money, but the cultural supermarket can: all that one encounters in life can at least theoretically serve as elements within the cultural supermarket. but to most fully consume, education is highly useful if not essential, as is familiarity with global mass media through the internet. happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 306 respects make one’s own life. just as capitalism and consumerism have swept the globe in the economic realm, so too has adherence to the cultural supermarket within the cultural realm— increasingly we are all cultural consumers. once we allow for the existence of the global cultural supermarket, then culture as earlier discussed by diener and other psychologists becomes insufficient as a variable, because it involves only culture as ‘the way of life of a people’ and not culture as ‘the information and identities available from the global cultural supermarket.’ culture as ‘the way of life of a people’ is most apparent, as noted above, at the level of interpersonal interactions,4 as well as underlying cultural assumptions. this aspect of culture clearly influences happiness to a substantial degree; but happiness also has a large individual component, as linked not only to one’s individual experiences and one’s choices from the cultural supermarket but also to one’s genetic endowment (layard, 2005: 55-58): whether one is innately wired to ‘be happy.’ this is culturally influenced, but it is also acutely individual. when we say of someone, in an angloamerican context, ‘i think she’s crazy, but if it makes her happy, what can i say?’ we are acknowledging this realm: we have no comprehension of how she finds her happiness, but feel obliged to accept her individual pursuit of happiness. this ‘individual pursuit of happiness’ has a particular american ring to it, of course, and is much less emphasized in some other sociocultural contexts; but there is a universal element to the individual pursuit of happiness because of our nature as human beings. we are social beings subject to the ideas and wills of others, yet we are also alone in our own subjective consciousnesses, which no one else can finally fully know. only we, as individuals, can know whether we are happy or not.5 happiness in this sense is primarily in the realm of individual psychology, involving all the different genetic and environmental factors that have shaped a given individual, as i have noted. however, on this basis, it is also a matter of the cultural supermarket: of how individuals have made an array of cultural choices that have shaped their happiness on the basis of deep, taken-for-granted cultural shaping, and a matter of the social worlds that individuals live within, which evaluate and comment upon individuals’ choices. 6. the cultural shaping of the individual the cultural shaping of the individual takes place at three levels (mathews, 2000: 11-16). at the deepest level, there is that which is taken-for-granted: this is the shaping of one’s native language and of habitus; this is made up of culture as ‘the way of life of a people,’ but also of culture as ‘the information and identities available from the global cultural supermarket,’ if the idea of free choice as to one’s self and happiness is assumed and unquestioned. this level cannot usually be questioned, unless a profound enlightenment or a wrenching life event brings it fully to consciousness: we can’t get at our taken-for-granted unless it is brought to light and examined, but this may be traumatic or simply impossible. consider, for example, 4 psychologists who discuss ‘individualistic cultures’ and ‘collectivist cultures’ emphasize the interpersonal realm as shaping east asian cultures far more than western cultures. there is a degree of truth to this, but i view the distinction as partly bogus: ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ societies are both ‘individualistic’ and ‘collectivist’ (see bellah et al. [1985] for a discussion of american collectivism straining against a dominant individualistic language; see mathews (1996) for a discussion of japanese and american individuals making their lives in diverse ways within and against the cultural, social, and institutional poles of ‘individualism’ and ‘collectivism’). in fact, all human beings are rooted in both the individual and the collective, however much their cultural vocabulary and social and institutional imperatives may encourage expression leaning towards one or the other of these poles. 5 and of course even we ourselves typically cannot know with clarity whether we are happy or not; we may know this only in fleeting insights, or in retrospect. as i discuss at this paper’s close, we do not know ourselves, which is the great conundrum at the heart of research on subjective wellbeing. happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 307 how difficult it is for us to understand how our native language shapes our thinking: even if we are bilingual, we cannot easily analyze this realm because it is too deeply lodged within our minds. at the middle level, there is that which one has no choice but to follow; this is the level of shikata ga nai (japanese) and mouh bahnfaat lah (cantonese), terms meaning roughly, ‘that’s the way it goes’/’there’s nothing i can do about it.’ at this level, unlike the deepest level, the individual consciously understands the shaping he/she most follow, but can do little to resist: ‘i have to work/obey the boss/enrol my children in school/stop at the stoplight,’ and so on—the level of institutional and social rules and pressures. this level too is universal, although there is no exactly appropriate english translation to convey the meaning of these japanese and cantonese terms. at the surface level, the individual, shaped on the basis of the bottom two levels, consciously shapes his or her life. this top level is one at which we believe we have our own free choice: ‘i chose this buddhist path because i felt it was the most suitable path to obtaining wisdom / i married him because he was clearly the right person for me / i choose to listen to frank sinatra because he truly touches my heart as no other music does.’ but these choices are based on our two deeper levels of shaping: they are not really free. we choose on the basis of how we have been shaped to make our choices. we also choose on the basis of our social worlds and their judgments, and most broadly at the level of contemporary global capitalism and what it offers, making some choices—the global brands we all know so well—far more readily available than others. choice is free only to a very limited degree, but we typically believe it to be free. the metaphor of the cultural supermarket is in this sense a bit misleading, because it may be seen as implying that cultural choice is as free and easy as choosing flavors of ice cream or brands of beer, but it is not: our choices are often personally agonizing and also in large part preordained by our underlying cultural shaping. these levels have direct implications for happiness. at the deepest level of one’s cultural shaping are likely to be found those cultural patterns and shapings of language, gender, social class, and familial background that largely determine the basic conditions for happiness. these determinations aren’t known to the individual, but it is essential to be aware of them analytically. at the middle level are those factors the individual recognizes as blocking happiness: ‘i would be happy if only i didn’t have to work at this job / had more money / wasn’t married to my husband / didn’t have such awful parents / grew up in the kind of society that would have recognized my talents,’ and so on. at the surface level are the efforts one makes to become happy despite the unconscious and conscious barriers of the deeper levels, whether these efforts involve religious belief, self-help books, self-exhortations, or sexual encounters. other anthropological analysts have offered different accounts of how the individual is culturally shaped (for example, strauss & quinn, 1994 discuss cultural schemas as modes by which collective cultural concepts are rendered individual); but anthropologists in general today are aware that culture is far more complicated and individuated than was once assumed. before happiness can be fully understood and compared cross-culturally, these complexities must be understood and accounted for, i argue. and this necessarily requires ethnographic interviews: qualitative rather than quantitative research involving not statistical analysis, based on who interviewees represent, but rather discourse analysis, based on what interviewees say and how they say it within their larger social, cultural, and economic context. happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 308 7. what can culturally-sensitive research on happiness most fruitfully consist of? culture thus matters, but the meaning of culture has of late become much more difficult to pinpoint than was earlier assumed. thus, what might research on happiness best consist of? i argue that cross-cultural comparison of happiness on a country-by-country basis using only statistical measures is insufficient; there are too many contextual elements that are left out, such as those discussed above. in every society, there is both a particular broad cultural context, and also substantial individual differences, which are apparent in individuals’ choices from the global cultural supermarket. these individual differences may seem to lessen the importance of culture as conventionally conceived of: since individuals can increasingly to some extent pick and choose their cultural shapings, why should we be so concerned about conventionally defined cultural differences? however, in a broader sense, culture’s contemporary complexities make all the more important the inclusion of culture as a variable. without this inclusion, we cannot understand the range of different individual comprehensions, motivations and lives lived within common cultural frameworks. we must understand not only conventional cultural differences, but also how these shape individuals’ arrays of choices from the cultural supermarket. for this reason, cross-cultural analysis of happiness must be done on an individual basis through ethnographic interviewing, as well as on a statistical basis through cross-cultural surveys. this makes research on happiness more difficult; but through cross-cultural surveys coupled with close interviewing of a range of individuals, culture in all its complexity can appropriately be taken into account. interviews of individuals, done in depth and thoroughly analyzed, can bring a great wealth of knowledge about the complexities of individual lives as lived within their cultural, social, and institutional contexts, knowledge that statistical data alone cannot provide.6 it will take effort and expense to include individual interviews within cross-cultural statistical surveys of subjective wellbeing, but not as much effort as might be imagined. if interviewees are carefully chosen to form an accurate representation of the population at large of a society, in terms of gender, age, income, education level, place of residence, and religious belief or its lack, then i estimate that anywhere from 50 to 150 interviews would be sufficient, depending on a country’s population and variation, to provide enough of a detailed depiction of individual senses of happiness to enable fruitful cross-cultural comparison.7 (see bernard, 2002: 203-239, on the methodological bases of anthropological interviewing.) these interviews should be analyzed not in terms of statistical analysis but in terms of discourse analysis, the 6 it might be suggested that because quantitative cross-cultural survey data is used to rank societies in terms of happiness or some other attribute and to compute correlations between happiness and other measured variables, i should explain how my proposed interviews would improve the ability of quantitative survey methodology to do these things. but in fact, ethnographic interviews will not improve the ability of quantitative survey methodology to do these things. my argument is rather that quantitative surveys used to compare happiness cross-culturally, however sophisticated their methodology, are inherently insufficient, and must be augmented by ethnographic interviewing and by subsequent cross-cultural analysis to reach their full analytic potential. 7 ethnographic interviewing as to happiness is relatively new in anthropology (but see the chapters in mathews & izquierdo, [2009]); there is little disciplinary consensus on what an ethnographic survey of happiness in a given society might entail in terms of numbers of interviews. i have written a book comparing japanese and american senses of ‘what makes life worth living’ (mathews, 1996) that involved extensive interviews of 50 japanese and 50 americans, but in the book itself, only nine pairs of people were closely compared. this was seen as being anthropologically legitimate, since these people were portrayed as individuals living their unique lives within japanese and american contexts, rather than as representatives of japan and the united states. happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 309 close examination of what interviewees say and how they say it. the analysis of these discourses, in all their complexity, can provide a thorough sociocultural grounding to the uncontextualized statistics of so many psychological, sociological, and economic cross-cultural analyses of wellbeing.8 8. ethnographic interviews on happiness and their analysis there are a number of ways in which such interviews might be conducted, but let me offer a simple prototype. these interviews could conceivably be conducted in one session of two hours in length, although two sessions would be ideal, to enable follow-up questions and observe differences in mood as well as to obtain a greater degree of familiarity and thus frankness, as i have discovered from my own interviews. these interviews would ask about 1) a person’s life history (‘tell me the story of your life: what’s happened to you over the course of your life? tell me about your work / family / friends / hopes / dreams / fears / religious beliefs. how do you view your life? are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your life? on a scale of 1 to 10, would you describe yourself as happy? why? why not? explain why you see your life in this way. what do you think happiness means for you?’) and 2) that person’s senses of what happiness means in their society (‘how do people in your society typically think of a happy life? who do you know who is most happy, and why? who do you know who is least happy and why? how are you similar to and different in your sense of what makes you happy as compared to other people in your society? do you see your society as being a happy society? in what ways yes? in what ways no?’). questions such as these would enable the interviewer to both discover how a given individual views and pursues his or her life and happiness, and also how he/she views his/her society at large in its happiness, views which in an individual sense would be of limited validity, but when taken in aggregate would provide valuable cultural insights. interviews would need to be recorded, transcribed and translated, with notes taken as well concerning individuals’ facial and bodily responses to questions and expressions of emotion. in addition to these interviews, researchers would need to examine the prevailing popular and scholarly writings on happiness in each given society, scouring self-help books, magazines, movies, and television to find out what the prevailing discourses of happiness and wellbeing are within a given society. investigators also would need to understand the historical backgrounds of each given society, including religious belief, gender and familial relations, traditional social class formations, and so on. this must be understood before interviewing takes place, so that researchers can comprehend in advance the historical, sociocultural, and mass-mediated worlds of interviewees. it is essential that the interviewer thoroughly understand both the spoken and written language of interviewees, so that the nuances of interviews can be comprehended without the need for interpreters, and so that interviewers can thoroughly investigate the literature and mass media of a given society. in short, interviewers should not be globalists hopping from society to society; rather, each should be an expert on the society being investigated. interviews may be analyzed in accordance with the theory of culture offered earlier, with its different conceptions of culture, and different levels of the cultural shaping of the 8 i define a discourse as an underlying conceptual model shaping the thoughts of individuals on a given topic. typically a pluralistic society will have a number of competing yet overlapping discourses in any given realm: for example, for living a fulfilled and happy life, ‘be true to yourself’ as opposed to ‘love conquers all,’ or ‘you can’t get anywhere without money.’ the analysis of such discourses can provide pivotal maps of the meanings of happiness in different societies. the map of discourses in a given society, in a full array of realms, provides a representation of its culture, in both of the senses i have discussed. happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 310 individual. or another theoretical basis could be used, as long as it gives suitable weight to the complexity of culture today, in both its traditional and contemporary aspects. discourses of happiness need to be fully analyzed, in accordance with both interviewees’ accounts and also with mass media and other sociocultural representations; these discourses would need to be fully analyzed in the context of culture in both of the senses i have discussed. in this way, a full cultural portrait can emerge from the interviews conducted in a given society, a portrait that can give a rich contextual backdrop to the findings of statistical surveys. in the final analysis, statistical survey results and ethnographic findings will need to be combined so that the former can provide the latter with breadth, and the latter can provide the former with depth. only through this analytical combination can the statistical and the ethnographic be fully and usefully merged in arriving at suitably subtle and nuanced portraits of happiness in different societies. 9. concluding thoughts obviously the kind of study i have just outlined, conducted globally, would require much expertise, and more money than grant agencies up until now have shown any willingness to hand out. it is, admittedly, more economically feasible to conduct global surveys alone, as has been done thus far. however, for the reasons i have discussed in this paper, particularly the changing nature of culture in the world, such means of measurement are today insufficient. happiness can only be understood cross-culturally not just through questionnaires, but through extensive interviews of individuals of the kind i have described. only when these kinds of interviews are conducted, and the statistical and the ethnographic are combined, can the cross-cultural study of happiness and wellbeing truly come of age as an academic endeavor not confined to a single discipline or means of gathering data, but one that unifies disciplines and forms of data in a common endeavor. happiness research is not the domain of psychologists, or sociologists, or economists, or anthropologists alone—it must be the domain of them all, working together. in seeking to understand happiness, let us learn both from all the world’s societies and all the world’s academic disciplines: only through combining them can happiness be, if not necessarily found, then at least fully understood. there is a larger question obliquely addressed in a number of the articles and books mentioned in this paper, but one generally avoided in the study of subjective wellbeing. to what extent do people truly comprehend their own happiness? accounts of utopias and dystopias, from plato (1974) to huxley (1977) to the matrix (1999) show us that just because humans may judge their lives to be happy does not mean that they truly are fulfilled (see fromm, 1955 for a trenchant analysis of such incomprehension in the capitalistic world). marx’s ‘false consciousness’ may ring just as true today as when he explored the idea a century and a half ago. this is the most fundamental limitation on research into wellbeing, one that stretches to the horizons of future research: how can we comprehend ourselves? to cite just one contemporary analyst of happiness (gilbert, 2006), perhaps we cannot comprehend our own happiness and how to attain it. but this opens up a whole new realm of inquiry, one stretching far beyond the bounds of this current paper. author gordon mathews chinese university of hong kong cmgordon@cuhk.edu.hk mailto:cmgordon@cuhk.edu.hk happiness, culture, and context mathews www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 311 publishing timeline received 29 april 2012 accepted 1 august 2012 published 13 december 2012 references bbc. 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(2011) ghetto at the center of the world: chungking mansions: hong kong. chicago: university of chicago press. mathews, gordon, & carolina izquierdo. (2009) pursuits of happiness: well-being in anthropological perspective, edited by gordon mathews and carolina izquierdo. london and new york: berghahn, pp. 1-19. matrix, the. (1999) los angeles: warner bros. video. mcgillivray, mark, ed. 2007. human well-being: concept and measurement. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. oishi, shigehiro. (2010) ‚culture and well-being: conceptual and methodological issues.‛ in international differences in well-being, edited by ed diener, john f. helliwell, & daniel kahneman, pp. 34-69. oxford: oxford university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732739.003.0003 plato. (1974) the republic. translated by desmond lee. harmondsworth: penguin. roof, wade clark. (1994) a generation of seekers: the spiritual journeys of the baby boom generation. san francisco: harpercollins. strauss, claudia & naomi quinn. (1994) ‚a cognitive/cultural anthropology.‛ in assessing cultural anthropology, edited by robert borofsky, pp. 284-297. new york: mcgraw-hill. suh, eunkook m. (2000) ‚self, the hyphen between culture and subjective well-being.‛ in culture and subjective well-being, edited by ed diener & eunkook m. suh, pp. 61-86. cambridge ma: mit press. veenhoven, ruut. (2010) ‚how universal is happiness?‛ in international differences in well-being, edited by ed diener, john f. helliwell, & daniel kahneman, pp. 328-350. oxford: oxford university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732739.003.0011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732739.003.0003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732739.003.0011 veenhoven, r. (2012). cross-national differences in happiness: cultural measurement bias or effect of culture? international journal of wellbeing, 2(4), 333-353. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i4.4 ruut veenhoven erasmus university, the netherlands & north-west university, south africa veenhoven@fsw.eur.nl copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 333 article cross-national differences in happiness: cultural measurement bias or effect of culture? ruut veenhoven abstract: the number of cross-national research studies on happiness is soaring, but doubts about the comparability of happiness between countries remain. one source of doubt is the possibility of cultural measurement bias. another source of doubt is in the theory that happiness is culturally relative. these qualms were checked using the available data on differences in average happiness across nations. it appears that happiness can be compared across nations and used as an indicator of how well people thrive in a society. keywords: happiness, life-satisfaction, cross-cultural, cultural measurement bias 1. introduction1 happiness is a main goal in modern society; most individuals reach out for a happy life and as a citizen typically they endorse policies that aim at greater happiness for a greater number. consequently, there is a rising demand for knowledge about happiness. policy makers are particularly interested in societal conditions that promote happiness and the research field of comparative research into happiness in nations is one of the responses to this interest. this strand of research started in the early 1960s with cantril’s (1965) seminal book, the pattern of human concerns. forty years on comparative research into happiness has developed into a major research field and survey studies on happiness have been done in almost every country in the world. to date (march 2012) some 4500 survey findings on happiness in nations are available in the world database of happiness (veenhoven, 2012b), which have been used in some 500 scientific publications on happiness and society (veenhoven, 2012c). yet, although the number of comparative research studies on happiness is soaring, there are still doubts about the validity of the reported results. one misgiving is whether happiness can be meaningfully compared across nations, given that measures are likely to be subject to cultural bias. another qualm is that happiness draws on cultural variable notions of the good life and that any research aiming at universal conditions for happiness is therefore pointless. in this paper these reservations are considered in the light of what we have learned in the last forty years. 1 shortened version of a paper presented at the conference: happiness: does culture matter? berlin, november 2011. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 334 2. practice of comparative happiness research in order to know what we are talking about, i will first define happiness. next i will consider acceptable measures of this concept and summarize the main findings obtained using these measures in cross-national research. 2.1 concept of happiness the word 'happiness' is used in various ways. in the widest sense it is an umbrella term for all that is good. in this meaning it is used interchangeably with terms like 'wellbeing' or 'quality of life' and denotes both individual and social welfare. the word is also used more specifically to denote subjective appreciation of life and that is the meaning addressed in this paper. i define happiness as the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his/her own life-as-a-whole favorably. in other words: how much one likes the life one leads. this definition is explained in more detail in veenhoven (1984: 22-25; 2000). 2.2 measurement of happiness defined as the subjective satisfaction with one’s life-as-a-whole, happiness is something that we have in mind and things we have in mind can be measured using questioning. questions on happiness can be posed in different ways, directly or indirectly, and using single or multiple items. indirect questioning using multiple items is quite common in psychological measurement and for that reason the first generation of happiness measures consisted mainly of ‘inventories’, such as the 20-item life satisfaction index of neugarten et al. (1961). this approach is appropriate for assessing fuzzy mental syndromes of which the individual is not necessarily aware, such as ‘alienation’ or ‘neuroticism’; one cannot ask respondents how alienated they are. yet in the case of happiness, the concept is clear-cut and respondents are aware by definition. hence happiness can also be measured using single direct questions.2 2.2.1 common questions some common questions are presented in box 1 (below). all of the questions on happiness that have ever been used in empirical studies are collated and available in the collection measures of happiness of the world database of happiness (veenhoven, 2012c).3 2.2.2 validity critics have suggested that responses to questions on happiness actually measure other phenomena. rather than indicating how much respondents enjoy life, the answers will reflect their normative notions and desires. i have checked these qualms elsewhere and did not find empirical support for any of them (veenhoven, 1984: 3/1). later reviews of the evidence also concluded that questions about satisfaction with life are typically well understood and properly 2 a disadvantage of single questions is their vulnerability to slight variations in wording. such variations balance out when multiple questions are used. yet a common disadvantage of multiple questions is that wrong items slip in. for instance, of the 20 items in neugarten’s life satisfaction index only some tap happiness as defined here. most of the other items concern, rather, conditions for happiness, such as social participation. 3 the collection ‘measures of happiness’ is limited to indicators that fit the concept as defined here. this fit is established on the basis of face-validity; does the question(s) really concern subjective enjoyment of one’s life-as-awhole? questions that address slightly different matters are not included. consequently, the observations obtained using these questions are not incorporated in the finding collections of the world database of happiness. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 335 answered (e.g. diener, 1994; lucas et al., 1996; helliwell & wang, 2012). in short, direct questions on happiness measure what they are supposed to measure. box 1. some currently used survey questions on happiness single questions: ‚taking all together, how happy would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, not at all happy?‛ (standard item in the world value studies) ‚how satisfied are you with the life you lead? very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, not at all satisfied?‛ (standard item in euro-barometer surveys) ‚here is a picture of a ladder. suppose the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder the worst possible life. where on the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?‛ (0-10 ladder-like rating scale) (cantril's, 1965 present life ladder rating) multiple questions (summed): same question asked twice: at the beginning and at the end of interview. ‚how do you feel about your life-as-a-whole? delighted, pleased, mostly satisfying, mixed, mostly dissatisfying, unhappy, terrible?‛ (andrews & withey, 1976: life 3) five questions, rated on a 1-7 scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. (diener, 1985 satisfaction with life scale (swls)): 1) in most ways my life is close to ideal 2) the conditions of my life are excellent 3) i am satisfied with my life 4) so far i have gotten the important things i want in life 5) if i could live my life over, i would change almost nothing.4 2.2.3 reliability although single questions on happiness seem to measure what they are supposed to measure, they measure it rather imprecisely. when the same question is asked twice in an interview, the responses are not always identical, with correlations of about +.70. over a period of a week, test-retest reliability drops to circa +.60.5 though responses seldom change from `happy' to `unhappy', switches between `very' and `fairly' are rather common. the difference between response-options is often ambiguous and the respondents’ notion about their happiness tends to be general. thus any choice for one answer-category or another is sometimes haphazard. because choice is often uncertain, subtle differences in interrogation can exert considerable effect. variations in the place where the interview is held, characteristics of the interviewer, the 4 in my view this last item is not appropriate. one can be quite satisfied with life, but still be open to the opportunity to try something else. 5 world database of happiness, correlational findings (veenhoven 2012g), subject section ’happiness career: recent happiness’ (h5.2.1.1). cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 336 sequence of questions and precise wording of the key item can tip the scale to one response or the other. such effects can occur in different phases of the response process, during consideration of the answer and in how the judgment is communicated. much of these biases are random, and balance out in large samples. unless systematic bias is involved, this is no great problem in comparing average happiness across nations. in sum, responses to questions on happiness are not very precise, but this is no real problem in assessment of average happiness in nations. 3. cross-national pattern of happiness the above-mentioned questions on happiness have been used in survey studies among the general population in many nations. the first survey of this kind was done in the usa in 1946. to date, survey findings on happiness are available for almost all the nations of the world. all the findings are gathered in the collection happiness in nations (veenhoven, 2012b) of the world database of happiness. the most commonly used question reads: ‚taking all together, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?‛ 0--------1---------2--------3-------4--------5--------6--------7--------8--------9--------10 dissatisfied satisfied an example of the distribution of responses is presented in figure 1. this is the case for germany in 2006, where the average score was 7.2. figure 1. happiness in germany in 2006 source: european social survey (2006). cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 337 3.1 differences in average happiness across nations responses differ widely across nations. some illustrative results are presented in table 1 (below). it may be no surprise to see four west european nations in the top five, though one might not have expected average values as high as 8. the top position of costa rica6 may be more of a surprise, yet mexico is also among the happiest countries. average happiness is higher than one would expect in all latin american nations, while happiness is lower than common expectation in industrialized asian nations, e.g. only 6.3 in china and 6.5 in japan. table 1. average happiness (0-10) in nations 2000-2009 top >7.8 middle range 6-5 bottom <3.6 costa rica 8.5 south korea 6.0 sierra leone 3.5 denmark 8.3 south africa 5.8 benin, zimbabwe 3.0 iceland 8.2 russia 5.5 burundi 2.9 switzerland 8.0 ghana 5.2 tanzania 2.8 finland, mexico, norway 7.9 pakistan 5.0 togo 2.6 source: veenhoven (2012d). 3.2 change in average happiness over time though it is commonly assumed that we do not get any happier (easterlin, 1974), the available data show that average happiness has increased in most modern nations over the last 40 years. see table 2 (below). note that denmark is among the countries where happiness has increased. the danes were already quite happy in the 1970s and have gained about half a point on the 010 scale since. this means that even greater gains are possible in other nations. 3.3 societal correlates of happiness the observed differences in average happiness across nations are not unsystematic but go hand in hand with variation in several societal characteristics. some of these are presented in table 3 (below). much of the above-mentioned correlates of average happiness are part of the 'modernity' syndrome. hence, similar patterns emerge if we consider further indicators of modernity, such as urbanization, industrialization, informatisation and individualization. the more modern the country, the happier its citizens are. this finding will be a surprise to prophets of doom, who associate modernity with anomie and alienation. though modernization may involve problems,7 its benefits are clearly greater (veenhoven, 2005). 6 the score of 8.5 in costa rica is based on only one survey in 2007, while the averages for most other nations are based on several surveys over the years 2000 to 2009. 7 one of the problems of modernization is that the change from traditional society to the modern pattern involves social costs, which temporarily offsets the benefits of modern society. this pattern was observed in western europe when industrialisation took off and recently also in eastern europe between 1990-2010, where happiness followed a v-pattern after the transformation that followed the fall of communism. the stagnant happiness in japan and the delayed rise of happiness in south korea can be explained in this vein. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 338 table 2. change in average happiness in nations 1970-2010 up significant increase stable no significant change8 down significant decrease italy +0.63 spain +0.29 portugal -0.68 denmark +0.55 japan +0.20 france +0.55 ireland +0.19 luxemburg +0.41 west germany 0.00 usa +0.29 greece -0.30 uk +0.26 belgium -0.33 netherlands +0.26 source: veenhoven (2012e). table 3. happiness and society in 146 nations around 2006 characteristics of society correlation with happiness n affluence +.69 136 rule of law civil rights +.50 131 corruption -.69 137 freedom economic +.63 135 political +.53 131 personal +.41 83 equality income inequality -.08 119 gender inequality -.21 110 pluriformity % migrants +.29 126 tolerance of minorities +.49 77 modernity schooling +.56 138 urbanization +.58 137 explained variance (adjusted r2) 75% source: veenhoven (2012f). 8 the values for spain and greece do not reach the level of significance because they are based on less data points. the values for belgium do not reach the level of significance because of the high levels of fluctuation in the data they are based on. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 339 4. reality value of the differences: some validity tests what do these differences mean? is life really more enjoyable in modern nations such as denmark than in ‘underdeveloped’ nations such as togo? or are the differences due to cultural measurement error? below i will check the validity of these differences in two ways; first i will consider the evidence for some specific distortions and next i will report some global validity checks. 4.1 tests of specific distortions several suggestions have been made about possible sources of measurement distortion. the first is that translation plays us false, since words like 'happiness' and 'satisfaction' have subtly different connotations in various languages. similar questions would therefore measure different matters. a second suggestion is that responses are systematically distorted by desirability bias. in countries where happiness ranks high as a value, people will be more inclined to overstate their appreciation of life. a third claim is that response styles distort the picture. it is suggested that in collectivist societies people tend to present themselves as 'average', which leads to lower happiness scores. finally, a common suggestion is that happiness is a typical western concept. unfamiliarity with the concept in non-western cultures is seen to result in low ratings. i will inspect these claims one by one below. 4.1.1 differences a matter of language? the first claim is that the differences in reported happiness between countries result largely from variations in the meaning of key terms used in questions in different languages. translations can be imprecise. consequently, seemingly identical questions will tap different things. if this claim is true we can expect the following: one: the pattern of difference must vary with the keyword used, countries that score high on a question that uses the wo rd 'happiness' can rank low on questions that refer to 'satisfaction' with life, or score middle on a rating between 'best/worst' possible life. two: in bi-lingual countries, ratings of happiness must differ between linguistic categories. ratings must be more close to same-language populations abroad, than to different-language compatriots. three: average happiness must be highly similar in nations where the same language is spoken, even if these nations differ considerably in other respects. keyword does not matter. prediction one can be checked by comparing the happiness rank orders of countries on different happiness questions. for this purpose the gallup/kettering world survey (gallup, 1976) was used. this cross-national study involves three questions on happiness that were posed in 11 mono-lingual nations. data are presented in table 4 (below) that show that the rank order of happiness is largely the same for all three questions. though there are some minor differences, high positive rank order correlations emerge. rank order correlations may over-emphasize slight differences between countries at the same level of happiness. therefore, we also computed product moment correlations (r). these are respectively +.88 (best/worst by happy), +.89 (happy by satisfied) and +.99 (best/worst by satisfied). one could interpret these data as showing that the word 'happy' is less easily used in germanic languages. germany ranks relatively low on the happiness item, however, this is not a general pattern in languages of german origin. the difference does not appear in the results of the world value studies in 1980 and 1990, in particular not when the netherlands and cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 340 iceland are considered. the data do not support the common idea that having the english language involves easier use of the term 'happy'. table 4. happiness rank order of nations on three survey questions: 11 nations circa 1975 country happiness question happiness-in-life satisfaction-with-life best/worst possible life australia 2/3/4 1 1/2 canada 1 2 1/2 britain 2/3/4 4 3 usa 2/3/4 3 4 brazil 5 6 7 france 6 7 8 w. germany 7 5 5 mexico 8 8 6 japan 9 10 9 italy 10 9 10 india 11 11 11 rank order |--------------+.94 ---------------| |--------------+.94 ---------------| correlation (rs) |----------------------------------+ .91 -----------------------------------| source: veenhoven (2012b). little difference in bi-lingual nations. prediction two can be tested on two cases: belgium and canada. in belgium two languages are spoken, french and dutch. these linguistic categories can be identified in the data of the eurobarometer surveys, which allow a specification of regions within the country. the scores can be compared with those of france and the netherlands, which are also involved in the eurobarometer survey. in canada, french and english are spoken. data on level of happiness in these categories are available from blishen and atkinson (1980). these scores can be compared with those for france and britain from the gallup/kettering world survey (gallup, 1976). results presented in box 2 (below) show slight support for the prediction in the case of belgium. french-speaking belgians report somewhat less happiness than their dutch-speaking compatriots. this difference is in the same direction as the, much greater, difference in average happiness between france and the netherlands. the case of canada is contrary to the prediction however. french canadians report themselves slightly happier than englishspeaking canadians, while average happiness in france is markedly lower than that of the english speaking nations. inglehart (1977) reports similar results in the case of switzerland. the swiss of all tongues report relatively high levels of satisfaction with life. their scores rank far above the germans, french and italians, with whom the swiss share their languages. also, in this case the differences between language groups within the country are smaller than the differences in average happiness with the neighboring countries. sizable differences in average happiness in same-language nations. prediction three can be checked by comparing english-language nations (britain, australia, canada, usa), portuguese-language nations (portugal, brazil), spanish-language nations (spain, mexico) and german-language nations (former east germany and west germany). data are presented in table 5 (below). cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 341 box 2. happiness of language groups in bi-lingual nations compared to happiness in neighboring countries with the same language question: "on the whole, are you very satisfied (4), fairly satisfied (3), not very satisfied (2), or not at all satisfied (1) with the life you lead?" belgium french speaking 3.2 france 2.9 dutch speaking 3.5 holland 3.3 question: "all things considered, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your life as a whole? which number comes closest to how you feel?" the respondent was asked to choose a number from a card containing an 11-point scale ranging from 1 to 11. canada french speaking 8.9 france 7.6 english speaking 8.6 uk 8.5 usa 8.6 source: veenhoven (2012b: table 1.2.1b and 1.2.2.b). linguistic categories: belgium: inglehart (1977: 160/2), canada: blishen et al. (1980: 33). table 5. happiness in nations where the same language is spoken english australia 7.7 canada 7.8 uk 7.1 usa 7.4 german east germany 6.5 west germany 7.0 portuguese brazil 7.5 portugal 5.7 spanish mexico 7.9 peru 6.2 spain 7.2 source: veenhoven (2012b). average happiness appears to be quite similar in the english-speaking nations, though not identical, with the uk lagging behind. a comparison of happiness in portugal and brazil shows greater happiness in the latter nation. likewise, happiness is higher in mexico than in sametongued spain. the case of east and west germany also shows similar sizable differences in cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 342 average happiness in nations of the same language. this difference was even more pronounced in the first years after the re-unification of germany, when living conditions still differed markedly between east and west germany. average happiness was about one point lower in east germany than in west germany at that time. in sum, language cannot explain all the observed differences in average happiness across nations. if involved at all, the effect is modest at best. 4.1.2 differences a matter of desirability bias? the second claim to be tested is that part of the difference in self-reported happiness between countries results from differences in moral appreciation of happiness. in countries where happiness is regarded as morally desirable, people would be apt to over-report their satisfaction with life, both for reasons of ego-defense and social presentation. this claim is often raised to discount the high level of reported happiness in the usa (e.g. by ostroot & snyder 1985). happiness is indeed more valued in happy countries,9 but this does not mean that reports of happiness in these countries are inflated by desirability bias. moral acceptance of happiness is one of the cultural conditions for happiness and the degree of happiness is not without consequences for its evaluation. one of the ways to deal with chronic unhappiness is to denounce happiness as unimportant. strong correlation between global happiness and affect balance across nations. this distortion will manifest more pronouncedly in a difference in responses to questions about 'general life satisfaction’ than in reports of ‘how one has felt yesterday'. reports on recent feelings are probably less vulnerable to desirability distortion, because it is less embarrassing to say one has felt down lately, than to admit one's life-as-a-whole is unsatisfactory. recent feelings are also more difficult to deny; defense mechanisms have a better chance in the less palpable evaluation of life-as-a-whole. as a result we should see much divergence between reported happiness and affect level as measured by the balance of positive and negative affects in the previous day. for the same reason there will also be divergence between happiness and affect on the individual level. desirability pressures produce uniformly high reports of happiness, whereas reports of affect remain closer to reality and are more variable. this must manifest in small correlations between reports of these happiness variants; particularly in countries that cherish happiness, such as the usa. the world database of happiness contains data on 130 nations in which both overall lifesatisfaction and affect balance have been assessed. the measure of affect balance is based on responses to 14 questions about experiences during the previous day, such as ‘did you feel well rested yesterday? yes or no?’ average scores on both measures of happiness appear to be strongly correlated r = +.52. yet the correlation is not perfect, there are some deviant cases in african countries, where affect is high relative to life-satisfaction and in former communist eastern european countries where affect is low relative to life satisfaction. life-satisfaction and affect balance are more in line in asia, where both fall in the middle range and in western europe, where both are high (rojas & veenhoven, 2012). the usa does not stand out as a case where high self-reports of overall happiness go together with low affect balance score. 9 findings on happiness and value climate in nations: prevalence of hedonic values (subject code n4.11.2) world database of happiness (veenhoven 2012g). cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 343 all things considered, the observed differences in average happiness across nations are unlikely to be much influenced by desirability bias. 4.1.3 differences due to response style? the third claim holds that in collectivistic societies, such as japan, people will tend to present themselves as 'average' citizens. therefore, they will respond modestly and be apt to choose the midpoint of the response scale. this will lead to relatively low scores, because happiness is typically above neutral. by choosing the (neutral) midpoint of the scale, collectivistic people will avow themselves less happy than they are (iljima, 1982). in individualistic societies, people are seen to define themselves on difference with others, or orientate on internal cues and will therefore more often tick the higher end of the scale. if this claim is true, average happiness must be lower in collectivistic countries than in individualistic ones. this is indeed the case (veenhoven, 1999), but that does not necessarily signify cultural measurement bias, since the difference can also be due to differences in livability of cultures, collectivism fitting human nature less well. another implication would seem that the dispersion of happiness in a country, as apparent in standard deviation, must be smaller in collectivistic countries than in individualistic ones, collectivists tending to flock together. further happiness must be closer to the midpoint of the scale in collectivistic countries than in individualistic ones, irrespective of the average. greater dispersion of happiness in collectivistic nations, rather than less. inequality of happiness among citizens in a nation can be measured using the standard deviation (kalmijn & veenhoven, 2005), which appears to be to be smaller the more individualized the country (r = .78). this contradicts the prediction of collectivists flocking together. no particular concentration in middle categories. as mentioned above, iljima suggests that the japanese tend to choose the midpoint of the scale. there is some truth in this observation: for the 2000 world value survey 37% of the japanese responses are in the categories 4, 5 and 6. yet this is less than half of the population and about as many of the japanese scored 8, 9 or 10 (35%). a similar pattern is observed in south korea. the data do not show a concentration in the middle comparable to the concentration at the top of the distribution as we see in western nations. the distribution is just flatter and reveals greater percentages of very unhappy respondents.10 in sum, the lower happiness in collectivistic countries cannot be disposed as a matter of response tendency. 4.1.4 differences a matter of familiarity with the concept? the last claim to be checked is that happiness is a typical western concept, that is, because people in non-western societies are less familiar with the concept, they will respond more erratically, which will result in greater dispersion and a lower average. if unfamiliarity is indeed involved we can expect more 'don't know' and 'no answer' responses in non-western societies: particularly on questions which use the word 'happiness'. data are presented in table 6 (below). again the prediction is refuted by the data. nonresponse to questions about appreciation of life is generally low and not lower in non-western nations than in western ones. so, it can be concluded that the observed differences in average 10 there is a more pronounced tendency among east asians to select the middle category in responses to cantril’s ladder question (helliwell & wang 2012) this question, mentioned in box 1, invites to a rating of one’s life between the best and the worst possible. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 344 happiness across nations cannot be explained by variation in comprehensibility of survey questions on this matter. table 6. ‘don’t know’ response to survey questions about happiness nation life-satisfaction happiness usa 0.2% 0.8% zimbabwe 0.3% 0.2% china 0.5% 1.0% france 0.6% 0.8% russia 1.4% 4.5% india 2.7% 1.1% average in 84 nations 0.8% 1.5% source: world values surveys, life-satisfaction item, average waves 1 to 4. 4.2 general validity checks the total validity of happiness can be assessed against its correspondence with other indicators of wellbeing. this is called external validity testing. there are two ways to do that. one is to assess correspondence with other indicators of enjoyment of life in nations, such as incidence of depression and suicide. this is called congruent validity. in this context it also makes sense to compare with indicators of physical thriving, such as longevity. the second is to assess correspondence of happiness with conditions that are likely to be conducive to it. this is called concurrent validity. in this case we consider the link between external chances for a good life with the internal outcomes of life. 4.2.1 congruent validity tests 1: correspondence with other indicators of wellbeing happiness is only one indicator of the degree to which people flourish in a society. other indicators are incidence of depression and suicide and longevity. less depression in happier nations. if happiness is a relevant indicator of livability of society, we can expect a negative correlation between average happiness in nations and the incidence of depression. this appears to be the case. van hemert et al. (2002) compared average happiness and scores on the beck depression inventory (bdi) in 29 nations and found that bdi scores were negatively correlated with subjective wellbeing and other happiness-related variables (r = -.42). they conclude that depression has the same meaning at individual and country level and that depression is an adequate measure of (a lack of) subjective wellbeing at country level. less suicide in happier nations. if self-reports of happiness adequately reflect enjoyment of life in a nation, we can also expect a negative correlation with suicide rates. this also appears to be the case. the correlation in the set of 52 nations on which data is available is -.40. this relation is discussed in more detail in helliwell (2007). cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 345 longer life in happier nations. subjective enjoyment of life is likely to correspond with actual thriving and this must be reflected in longevity. there is a strong correlation: r = +.50. likewise average happiness in nations is also linked to self-rated health, r = +.60. 4.2.2 concurrent validity tests 2: correspondence with livability of nations concurrent validity testing is assessing correspondence with phenomena of another kind, likely to be causally related. in this case we can compare average happiness with indicators of the quality of society, such as material affluence and good governance. reported happiness is likely to be higher in nations that provide good living conditions than in nations that do not.11 above in section 3.3 we have already considered the statistical association between happiness and societal qualities, which together explain 75% of the differences in reported happiness in 148 nations. see table 3. so there is a considerable correspondence! still, not everything deemed desirable appears to be correlated with happiness. remember the noncorrelation with income-inequality. 4.3 how much measurement bias? any measurement involves bias and this measurement of happiness in nations will be no exception. so the question is not whether measurement bias is involved, but rather how much. the above analysis of societal correlates provides a cue. as we have in table 3, this handful of societal characteristics explains 75% of the observed differences in happiness. the variables involved are of an objective nature and their measurement is unlikely to be affected by the distortions presumed to be involved in the measurement of happiness. as such this high degree of explained variance marks that something solid is being measured and that the bias in the measurement of happiness can be no more than 25%. following this line of reasoning we must also acknowledge that the set of variables involved is far from complete. we have to make do with variables on which international statistics are available and we lack such data on potentially important things such as the quality of friendships in nations. if we had more data we could probably explain some 90% of the cross-national differences in happiness. what is more: the measurement of societal characteristics is not free of error either, not even the measurement of income per head and this also detracts from the explained variance. together, this means that the bias in the measurement of happiness is small at best, probably about 5%. 5. meaning of the differences there are also misgivings about cultural variation in the meaning of happiness. it is argued that happiness is a mere idea and that the observed differences are therefore of little consequence. the danes may be more positive about their life than the russians, but they evaluate their life in a different way and the outcomes are therefore not really comparable. this critique roots in a cognitive theory of happiness. below i will take a closer look at this theory (5.1) and then 11 there is some circularity in such a test. we measure happiness in nations to identify societal conditions that contribute to happiness, because we do not trust current assumptions. now we are about to validate our measure of happiness using these distrusted matters. still, it is worth knowing whether these indicators correspond or not. common beliefs are not held without any ground. so there must at least be some correspondence. if we do not find any relationship, there is clearly something wrong with one or both. if, however, we find a strong statistical relationship, we can be fairly sure that both indicators do reflect livability. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 346 present some evidence against it (5.2). next i will outline the alternative theory that happiness signals the gratification of universal human needs. 5.1 the theory that happiness is culturally relative in this view, happiness is regarded as a social construction, comparable to notions like 'beauty' and 'fairness'. in this line it is assumed that happiness depends on shared notions about life and that these collective notions frame individual appraisals. one of the ways this is assumed to work is individuals seeing the glass as half full or half empty, optimistic cultures tending to highlight the positive aspects of life, while pessimistic cultures emphasize its shortcomings. americans have been mentioned as an example of the former view and the french of the latter, e.g. by ostroot & snyder (1985). in this line inglehart (1990: 30) has suggested that happiness is lower in france than in the us, because life was harder in france for earlier generations, and this is echoed in a more pessimistic outlook on life today. another cognitive mechanism assumed to gear happiness is comparison with shared notions of the good life. in this view, happiness is the gap between perceptions of life-as-it-is with notions of how-life-should-be. in this line it is commonly argued that the advertising industry reduces our happiness, because it fosters dreams of a life that is out of reach for the common man (layard, 2005). in this line the low level of reported happiness in poor countries has also been explained as a result of exposure to western life-style. critics of western society see that as ‘false consciousness’ and assume that poor africans actually live better than they believe. an additional mechanism that has been mentioned is that we see ourselves typically though the eyes of others and hence also judge our happiness through their eyes. in this vi ew, happiness is a 'reflected appraisal'. we will be positive about our life when people around us deem us to be well off and negative when others see us as losers. in this vein the lower happiness in poor countries could be explained as the result of labeling: because africans see themselves lagging behind in the eyes of europeans, they would define themselves as unhappy, in spite of the advantages of their authentic way of life. the constructionist view implies that there is little value to happiness, happiness being a mere idea. since notions about the good life vary across time and culture, happiness is also seen to be culturally relative. a life that is deemed perfect in one culture may be seen to be a failure in another value system. 5.2 some tests of the cultural relativity thesis it is beyond doubt that shared notions frame much of our appraisals, yet this is not to say that all awareness is socially constructed. we need no shared notions to experience pain or hunger; culture at best modifies our reflection on these experiences somewhat. our understanding draws also on external stimuli and on inner signals. the question thus is: how does this work in the case of happiness? the reality value of this view cannot be tested as such, because the human mind is still a black box. yet we can check its aptness indirectly, when we consider the implications of the theory that happiness is a mere social construct. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 347 5.2.1 pattern of happiness not culture specific one implication is that conditions for happiness will be variable across cultures. if happiness is a culture-specific construct, its determinants will also be culturally specific. hence empirical studies on correlates of happiness must show considerable cultural variation and hardly any universal pattern. yet the available data show otherwise. similar conditions across nations. comparison of average happiness across nations reveals a common pattern. happiness is systematically higher in nations that provide a decent material standard of living, freedom, equality, solidarity and justice. remember table 3 and in particular the fact that these societal conditions explain together no less than 75% of the observed variation in average happiness across nations. similar correlations within nations. there are also differences in individual happiness within nations. in a happy country like denmark 5% of the people still rate 5 or lower on the 0-10 scale and in an unhappy country like zimbabwe some 13% score 8 or higher. are the reasons for high and low scores similar across nations? below, i consider some living conditions for which cross-national data are available. freedom. not only is average happiness higher in free countries, but within countries individuals are also happier the more control they have over their life. this appears among other things in strong correlations between personal happiness and perceived freedom and control all over the world.12 social rank. people are typically happier on the upper steps of the social ladder than at the bottom. this appears in findings on relative income position, 13 occupational prestige, 14 subjective class identification15 and indexes of socio-economic status16. the differences tend to be bigger at the lower end of the hierarchy. though the correlations with happiness differ in size, they are positive all over the world. this finding fits the view that we have an innate need for social respect. like other group animals we are hardwired to avoid a bottom position. marriage. adults are typically happier when living with a spouse then when single. the difference is around half a point on a 0-10 scale and is largely independent of income, gender and age. again, the size of the difference varies somewhat across time and nations but the pattern is clearly universal.17 this finding fits the view that we are social animals, hardwired to form pairs. personality. cross-national research on the relationship between happiness and personality is limited as yet, but the available data suggest that extraverted people tend to be happier18 across a variety of nations (lucas et al., 2000) and that neurotics tend to be less happy in all 12 world database of happiness, correlational findings (veenhoven 2012g), subject section ‘personality, inner locus of control’ (p4.58). for a recent cross national study see: verme (2008). 13 world database of happiness, correlational findings (veenhoven 2012g), subject section ‘current income’ (1.2) for a recent cross-national comparison see: ball & chernova (2008). 14 world database of happiness, correlational findings (veenhoven 2012g), subject section ‘current occupational level’ (o1.3.1). 15 world database of happiness, correlational findings (veenhoven 2012g), subject section ‘subjective social rank’ (s9.2.2). 16 world database of happiness, correlational findings (veenhoven 2012g), subject section ‘objective social status’ (s9.2.1). 17 world database of happiness, correlational findings (veenhoven 2012g), subject ‘marital status’ (m2.1). see also diener et al. (2000). 18 schimmack et al. (2002) found that the link between extraversion and hedonic level of affect is more universal than the link between extraversion and overall happiness and suggest that the influence of personality on the emotional component of happiness is pan-cultural, whereas the influence of personality on the cognitive component of happiness is more moderated by culture. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 348 cultures. once more there is difference in the size of the effects. for instance the effect of selfesteem appears to be stronger in individualistic cultures than in collectivistic cultures (oishi et al., 1999). still, the direction is the same everywhere. this is not to say that all conditions for happiness are universal. one notable exception is ‘education’. although there is a correlation between average happiness and level of education in countries, the most highly educated individuals are not always happier. correlations between happiness and education vary from -.08 to +.27. the correlation is typically much reduced when controlled for income or occupational status.19 5.2.2 average happiness is stable over time, but responsive to major events a second implication is that happiness must be variable over time. if happiness depends on shared notions of the good life, it will vary with fads about that matter and this is likely to be reflected in erratic movements in average happiness in nations, comparable to changes in political preferences and tastes for music. yet again this not what the data show. average happiness appears to be very stable over time, at least in western nations, where happiness has risen slightly without many fluctuations over the last 40 years (veenhoven, 2012e). this is not to say that average happiness in nations is immutable. happiness is rising gradually in most nations of the present-day world, and in particular in successfully developing nations (veenhoven & hagerty, 2006). happiness is also responsive to major events. average happiness dropped by more than one point in russia in the late 1990s after the ruble crisis. evidently, this drop cannot be attributed to a sudden change in collective outlook on life. 5.2.3 happiness of migrants closer to country of settlement than to country of origin if the appraisal of life is largely determined by socialized outlook, we can expect that migrants judge life differently from natives. though migrants live in the same society, they will evaluate it differently, because they look at life through differently cultured eyes. in this context, one can expects that: one: average happiness of migrants will be closer to the average level in their country-of-origin than to the average in the country-of-settlement; two: that this will be especially true for recent migrants; and three: that among migrants of different origins in a country, the rank order of happiness will be similar to the rank order of happiness among their respective countries-of-origin. elsewhere i have tested these predictions in two countries in the 1980s: australia and west germany. these countries host a sizable number of new-comers: australia, migrants from western europe and mediterranean countries; and germany, mediterranean migrants. in both countries survey studies had assessed happiness in samples that involved sizable numbers of migrants (veenhoven, 1994). average happiness of migrants close to average in country of settlement. prediction one is clearly defied by the data. the happiness of migrants is typically closer to the average in the countryof-settlement, than to the average in the country-of-origin. migrants from mediterranean countries are typically happier in australia and germany than their relatives at home are. all were first-generation migrants, whose pre-adult socialization took place in the country of origin. hence, if they had been brought up with a gloomy outlook, they have apparently lost that cultural heritage quite quickly. 19 world database of happiness, states of nations (veenhoven 2012f), variable r_ls_education_1990. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 349 second generation hardly closer. prediction two is a specification of the first one and is thus also largely disproved. still, we can look at the minor differences between happiness of migrants and the general public in the country of settlement. in australia this difference is little greater among fresh migrants than among first-generation veterans. in germany the prediction is confirmed; second-generation migrants are closer to the average german than are their firstgeneration parents. obviously this can also be the result of better adjustment to german society. rank-order of happiness in countries of origin not reproduced. prediction three is also not supported. in only half the cases do we see that the rank order of happiness among migrants more or less reflects the differences among mother-countries. this is for instance the case in the usa, where migrants from northern europe tend to be happier than migrants from southern europe, which reflects the difference in happiness between the north and south of europe (beals, 1985). yet in australia migrants from italy appeared to be equally as happy as the average australian, in spite of the fact that average happiness in italy is much lower (veenhoven, 1994: scheme 10). 5.2.4 happiness is closely linked to human thriving a third implication is that happiness is of little consequence. if happiness is sheer cognitive spin, based on fashionable ideas, it will not matter much whether it pans out positively or negatively. happiness is then a petty appraisal, such as a person’s preference for one kind of wallpaper or another; nice in itself but of no consequence for anything more than that. once more, this appears not to be the case. happiness appears to go hand in hand with objective thriving. follow-up studies have shown that happiness is a strong predictor of physical health and longevity, both at the individual level and at the societal level (e.g. danner et al., 2000; veenhoven, 2008). together, these findings do not support the theory that happiness is a mere making of the mind. note that these findings concern happiness-as-such, and not opinions about what adds to happiness. happiness-as-such is something that we experience ourselves and which we can appraise without the help of others. though we know how we feel, we often do not know why and in attributing grounds for our wellbeing we draw more on shared views. in this respect happiness is comparable to a headache: a headache-as-such is not a social construction, it is an autonomous signal from the body. yet our interpretations of what gives us a headache depend very much on hearsay. 5.3 the theory that happiness signals need-gratification an alternative view holds that we do not ‘calculate’ happiness, but rather ‘infer’ it, the typical heuristic being ‚i feel good most of the time, hence i must be happy‛ (schwartz & strack, 1991) it would seem that this inference is geared by our most salient affective experiences and that these are typically intense affects. this view is common in fiction. yet research using the experience sampling method shows that it is rather the frequency of affective experience that matters more than its intensity (diener et al., 1991). how do we assess the relative frequency of positive and negative affects? the cognitive view on affect procession suggests that we compute an affect balance in some way, using estimates of frequency and duration. a competing view is that this occurs automatically and that the balance reflects in mood. in this view mood is an affective meta-signal that, contrary to feelings and emotions, is not linked to specific objects. emotions denote an affective reaction to cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 350 something and prepare the organism to respond, while a negative mood signals that there may be something wrong and urges us to find out what that is. this latter process seems to be the most common; conscious computation of affect balance is rather the exception and typically limited to situations in which people do not trust their mood. 5.3.1 gratification of needs why do we feel good or bad at all? probably because that signals how well we are doing. affects are an integral part of our adaptive repertoire and seem to be linked to the gratification of human needs. ‘needs’ are vital requirements for survival, such as eating, bonding and exercise. nature seems to have safeguarded the gratification of these needs with affective signals such as hunger, love and zest. in this view a positive mood signals that all needs are sufficiently met at the moment. ‘needs’ in this theory should not be equated with ‘wants’ in the above discussion of cognitive theories. needs are inborn and universal, while ‘wants’ are acquired and can be variable across cultures. wants can at best concur, more or less, with needs. 5.3.2 function of happiness in this view, negative and positive moods function as red and green lights on the human machine, indicating either that there is something wrong or that all systems are functioning properly. if so, this is likely to have behavioral consequences, a negative mood urging caution and a positive mood encouraging action.20 this is what fredrickson’s (2004) ‘broaden and built’ theory is about. this theory also makes sense in an evolutionary perspective. it is likely that evolution has developed ways of monitoring needs gratification, in particular in organisms that can make choices. it is unlikely that rational thinking is the main path of monitoring, since rational thinking developed late in our evolution and animals can apparently do without it. it is quite likely that adaptation is guided by affective signals in the first place and that all higher animals can feel more or less well. it is unlikely that humans are an exception to this rule. our ability to think rationally has been added to an existing affect system and has not replaced it. this can be seen in the structure of the human brain, where the affect system is located in the older parts that we have in common with other animals. the ratio is situated in the neo-cortex, a part of the brain that is typical to humankind and to a lesser degree to the great apes. this ‘need theory’ of happiness is summarized in figure 2 (below). the theory implies that happiness is a universal phenomenon and as such can be compared well across nations. in this view differences in average happiness in nations denote variation in societal effectiveness in meeting human needs. i have discussed this theory in more detail elsewhere (veenhoven, 1995; 2006; 2010a; 2010b). 6. conclusion average self-reported happiness varies considerably across nations. these differences cannot be denounced as mere measurement bias, nor can they be explained as a result of cultural differences in the evaluation of life. the observed differences in happiness rather denote that not all societies meet universal human needs equally well. 20 this is not to say that negative affect inhibits all action, especially not in the case of fear and anger. still, positive affects tend to be more activating than negative affects are, on average. cross-national differences in happiness veenhoven www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 351 figure 2. need theory of happiness global assessment: overall happiness (satisfaction with one’s life-as-whole) sub-assessment: hedonic level of affect (balance of pleasant and unpleasant affect) information basis: affective experience underlying process: need gratification substrate: human nature source: veenhoven (2006). author ruut veenhoven erasmus university, the netherlands & north-west university, south africa veenhoven@fsw.eur.nl publishing timeline received 13 march 2012 accepted 27 august 2012 published 13 december 2012 references andrews, f. m. & withey, s. b. 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(2021). race, ethnicity and subjective well-being: exploring the disparities in life satisfaction among whites, latinx, and asians. international journal of wellbeing, 11(2), 51-72. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i2.1451 tim wadsworth university of colorado boulder tim.wadsworth@colorado.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 article race, ethnicity and subjective well-being: exploring the disparities in life satisfaction among whites, latinx, and asians tim wadsworth · philip m. pendergast abstract: while much research has been done on the causes and correlates of subjective wellbeing over the last two decades, a relatively small number of studies have addressed disparities in subjective well-being between various racial and ethnic groups. recently more research has addressed the differences between blacks and whites, and begun to unpack the causes for these differences. a smaller number of studies have started to look at differences between white and latinx respondents. in the present work we add to this literature by examining differences in life satisfaction between white, latinx and asian respondents, as well as the persistence of these differences after controlling for a variety of social, economic and lifestyle variables. after assessing how much of the racial and ethnic disparity between these groups can be explained by such factors, we present additional preliminary analysis that begins to explore the role of culture in understanding the relationship between race, ethnicity and subjective well-being. keywords: well-being; happiness; life satisfaction; race; ethnicity; latinx; asian 1. introduction in recent years, social scientists have done a good job of documenting the demographic characteristics associated with subjective well-being (swb); usually measured with questions about overall happiness or life satisfaction. from this work we know that married individuals report higher levels of well-being than singles (haring-hidore et al. 1985; wadsworth 2016), and that younger and older respondents report being happier and more satisfied than the middle aged (dolan 2008). we also know that levels of swb vary across racial and ethnic groups. on average, blacks and latinx report lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction than whites (campbell et al. 1976; clemente and sauer 1976; thomas and hughes 1986; hughes and thomas 1998; coverdill et al. 2011), but these trends have changed over time (iceland and ludwig-dehm 2018). with some exceptions (hughes and thomas 1998), scholars have demonstrated that the difference in swb between blacks and whites has decreased since the 1970s, primarily as a result of increasing swb among the black population. much less work has examined differences between whites and other non-black minority groups and the mechanisms that drive racial and ethnic differences in swb (barger et al. 2009; coverdill et al. 2011). in the current work we draw on the behavioral risk factor surveillance system (brfss) to both document existing racial and ethnic disparities in well-being between whites, latinx and asians, and to evaluate potential mechanisms by testing the resilience of about:blank race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 disparities when controlling for a variety of well-established correlates of swb—characteristics that also tend to vary by race and ethnicity. we also start to explore whether the remaining differences can be fully or partially explained by cultural factors. 1.1 why race and ethnicity (may) matter potential explanations for the relationship between race, ethnicity and swb steer us back to the foundational work and underlying debates in the study of swb. one of the primary points of contention in this literature has been the relative importance of transient vs. more enduring characteristics. the latter are considered to be long-term, relatively stable aspects of one’s personality and psychological architecture and are often viewed as the result of genetic predispositions. a recent meta-analysis found that genetics account for 32-36% of the variation in swb (bartels 2015). so, while much social science research ignores the role of these characteristics due to challenges in modeling these factors (requiring twin, genotyped, or genome-wide studies), there is often an unspoken assumption that individuals start with a certain “baseline” of swb from which other more transient characteristics exert their influence. these other characteristics include contexts, social experiences and short or long-term circumstances. these characteristics are subject to change and exhibit large amounts of variation across individuals, groups, places and time. they include things like marital and employment status, income, health, etc. the majority of the research on swb focuses on variation explainable by these types of characteristics. there is significant evidence that many of these contexts, social experiences and circumstances vary systematically by race and ethnicity and have long been used to discuss issues of racial and ethnic stratification. income, educational achievement and employment status have been central to the study of racial and ethnic inequality. indicators of marital status and family formation are often used in conjunction with these measures to assess concentrated disadvantage (kubrin et al. 2006; wilson 1990), and racial and ethnic health disparities have been widely studied in medical sociology and public health (williams and sternthal 2010). these and other racially and ethnically clustered characteristics are also strongly related to swb. marital status has consistently been one of the best predictors of happiness and life satisfaction (wadsworth 2016), and physical health (dolan et al. 2008), absolute and relative income (clark et al. 2008), employment status (dolan et al. 2008) and education (blanchflower and oswald 2004) have all been identified as correlates of swb. given that these factors vary by race and ethnicity and are also strongly associated with well-being, one explanation for the observed relationships between race/ethnicity and swb is that these factors represent mechanisms that explain racial and ethnic disparities. if this is the case, the influence of race and ethnicity should be attenuated, and potentially eliminated once we control for many of these characteristics. the second possibility is that some more enduring characteristic(s) drive the relationship between race/ethnicity and swb—that above and beyond more transient conditions, non-whites are more likely to report lower, or in some cases, higher, levels of swb. while the research on genetic explanations for racial and ethnic differences on broad psychological measures has been far from convincing (tov and diener 2009), it may be useful to consider another type of enduring characteristic—culture. while culture has not been discussed much in the literature on racial and ethnic disparities in swb, there may be important and resilient cultural differences that can help explain these disparities. international comparisons have demonstrated significant differences in swb even after adjusting for economic and other macro-structural forces (diener and suh 1999; diener and oishi 2000). these differences are often thought to be the result of cultural differences in emotional http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 expression norms or different prioritizations and influences of certain life domains. for instance, eid and diener (2001) found that the percentage of respondents who viewed pleasant emotions such as joy, affection, pride and contentment as desirable and/or appropriate varied significantly across the u.s., australia, china and taiwan. while 83% of australians and americans regarded all four of the emotions as desirable and appropriate, only 9% of the chinese and 32% of the taiwanese felt this way. tov and diener (2009) suggest that such differences in emotional expression norms may explain why east asian samples often report lower levels of swb compared to samples of european or north and south american respondents. for instance, they note that while japan has a higher standard of living and greater purchasing power than most latin american nations, the japanese generally report lower levels of swb than their latin american counterparts (diener and suh 1999; diener and oishi 2000). consistent with these findings, using one-week period of experience sampling, scollon et al. (2004) found more frequent experiences of pleasant affect among europeanand latinx americans compared to asians and asian americans. additional research on happiness and life satisfaction in latin america has demonstrated much higher levels of swb than would be expected given economic factors as well as other variables representing access to resources and opportunities (rojas and vega 2017; beytia 2016). while emotional expression norms may contribute to these differences, researchers have focused more on a different set of cultural expectations that place higher priority on family and other relationships and a lower priority on financial success and accumulation. in an article entitled, “the singularity of latin american patterns of happiness,” beytia (2016) used data from the world values survey to demonstrate that, on average, latin american respondents gain more happiness from human relationships and are more successful in cultivating them than respondents from other regions of the world. beytia writes, “money, both in its objective expression (income) and subjective (financial satisfaction), has less association with happiness in latin america than in the other regions studied…. in addition, those latin american and u.s. who respect and love their parents unconditionally are happier, and in latin america there is a greater proportion of people in this situation.” (2016: 25-26) while there is less empirical work on the topic, it is also possible that historical events can influence the collective conscience of large groups of racial or ethnic minorities. a growing body of work focused on cultural trauma and collective identity argues that the traumatic experiences of large groups of similarly identified individuals can create values, narratives and beliefs among entire groups, even those who did not directly experience the trauma and may not have even been alive when it occurred (alexander et al. 2004). while difficult to measure it is likely that a history of oppression, prejudice and discrimination may influence the collective experience of various emotional states for african americans, latinx, asians and other minority groups. however, recent work has also demonstrated higher levels of culturally embedded resilience and optimism among some minority groups during specific time periods and/or crises. graham and pinto (2019) report higher levels of optimism and lower levels of stress and pain among recent low income black and latinx respondents compared to their white counterparts. they suggest that this helps explain their lower levels of “deaths of despair” over the last decade. to date, much of the empirical research on culture and swb has pointed to potential differences between eastern and western cultures, and contrasted latin american culture with that of the united states and europe, though the work on collective trauma and other cultural psycho-social adaptations extends the possibility of such differences to include additional ethnic and racial minorities. whether these findings can shed light on potential differences in swb http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 between racial and ethnic groups within the u.s. is hard to know, especially given the potential for much more nuanced subcultural differences within the broader culture. it would be easier to rule out the influence of culturally based factors if racial and ethnic differences can be explained by individual economic, social and demographic characteristics than to provide empirical evidence that culture is playing an important role in shaping differences given the difficulty in operationalizing potentially relevant subcultural differences with nationally representative survey data. however, in the current work we begin to explore the role of culture by examining language usage as a measure of acculturation. 1.2 what we know about race, ethnicity and subjective well-being in the united states racial (and more recently, ethnic) differences in swb have been documented in the literature since the mid-1970s. in a general review of research on the quality of life in the u.s., campbell et al. (1976) and bracy (1976) cited multiple studies that showed higher average happiness and life satisfaction scores among whites than blacks. drawing on 1973 gss data, clemente and sauer (1976) also identified significant differences between black and white life satisfaction scores, with whites scoring higher even after controlling for a variety of socioeconomic and demographic variables. six years later, drawing on data originally collected by andrews and withey (1976), herzog et al. reported very similar findings (herzog et al. 1982). in 1986, thomas and hughes responded to william julius wilson’s claims in the declining significance of race (wilson 1980) by suggesting that we needed to look at both objective and subjective measures of well-being to truly understand shifting patterns of racial inequality. after noting important changes in the legal and social status of blacks in the u.s., they continued to document consistent racial gaps on various subjective quality of life measures available in the gss, including general life satisfaction, a trust in people scale, an anomie scale, a general happiness item, a marital happiness item, and a measure of physical health (thomas and hughes 1986). they reported that even after controlling for a variety of indicators of social class and other variables, “for all of the six dependent variables predicted mean scores show that whites experience better psychological well-being and quality of life than blacks do.” when they revisited their analyses a decade later with more recent data, their overall findings remained the same (hughes and thomas 1998). consistent with this work, stevenson and wolfers (2012) demonstrated that while the swb gap between blacks and whites narrowed from the 1970s through the first decade of the 21st century, significant differences still remained. using data from the brfss, barger et al. (2009) were some of the first researchers to include both black and latinx respondents in an analysis of subjective well-being. their findings suggested that, like african americans, latinx respondents experience lower average levels of swb than whites, but that most of these differences can be accounted for by an array of socioeconomic characteristics. in an attempt to revisit, extend, and improve on the work of hughes and thomas, coverdill et al. (2011) again turned to the gss to examine the relationship between race and ethnicity and happiness. in doing so they made two important contributions. most importantly, more recent data allowed them to examine similar questions pertaining to the swb of latinx (as a whole and grouped by country of origin—mexico vs. non-mexico). they documented a latinx/white gap in happiness that is similar to the gap between blacks and whites, is robust when various controls are included in the models, and is not dependent on latinx country of origin. their second contribution was more methodological. while most of the previous work in the area had used linear regression analysis when modeling ordinal data (hughes and thomas 1998; barger et al. 2009), coverdill et al. used partial proportional odds models, which allow for differential effects across various levels of an ordinal scale (e.g. race or http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 other variables may differentially influence the likelihood of being “unhappy” vs. “somewhat happy” or “very happy”, compared to the likelihood of being “unhappy” or “somewhat happy” vs. “very happy”). this improved analytic approach led to very similar findings regarding swb among blacks and whites—while gaps have diminished over time, there remain substantial and significant differences in overall happiness and other well-being measures between the two groups. in more recent work, iceland and ludwig-dehm (2019) address both changes in the blackwhite gap in happiness over the last four decades and offer an assessment of the driving factors behind the remaining gaps. they point to “the moderate narrowing of substantial racial disparities…such as life expectancy, residential segregation, and neighborhood conditions” (2017:16) as the primary explanation for the decrease in the happiness gap between whites and blacks and to the importance of marital status and income in explaining the remaining racial disparity in swb. in sum, five points stand out when reviewing the current state of the literature on race/ethnicity and swb: 1. happiness and life-satisfaction vary by race and ethnicity, with whites generally reporting higher levels than other racial and ethnic groups. 2. research among black and latinx respondents has demonstrated that even after controlling for a variety of socio-economic characteristics, these differences often still remain. 3. for blacks, much of the gap (with whites) appears to be associated with other well-studied disparities, specifically income and marital status. 4. we know much less about differences between other racial and ethnic groups. 5. there has been virtually no research regarding how more culturally-based factors may help explain racial and ethnic differences within the u.s. the current research attempts to build on this literature in a number of ways. first, like barger et al. (2009) we use data from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system, which provides a number of new possibilities. the substantially larger yearly brfss samples allow us to include asians in our analysis, a group that has not experienced the same levels of socio-economic disadvantage as blacks and latinx. the brfss includes a measure of life satisfaction, which is different than the happiness measure that has been utilized in more recent analyses from the gss. as previous research has suggested the possibility of different effects of race on happiness vs. life satisfaction, it may be instructive to explore the latter. the brfss geo-coded data also allow us to consider the influence of state of residence (the gss only allows the identification of which of the nine regions of the us the respondent lives in). as has been noted in previous research, we tend to observe higher levels of swb in some states compared to others (oswald and wu 2010). as there is unequal distribution of race/ethnicity by state, controlling for where respondents live will allow us to control for the confounding influence of geographic location. second, in addition to evaluating whether there are differences in swb by race and ethnicity, we conduct analyses to help explain what factors contribute to observable differences. while we appreciate coverdill et al.’s assessment regarding the preference for time-series data in order to disentangle the potential causes of well-being (coverdill et al. 2011 pg. 801), the brfss provides a wide array of covariates associated with both race/ethnicity and well-being. introducing them as controls in a series of models can help us understand what factors are associated with larger or smaller racial and ethnic differences in life satisfaction. relatedly, we move away from previous work that has used self-rated health as an indicator, rather than a contributor to swb http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 (thomas and hughes 1986; hughes and thomas 1998; coverdill et al. 2011), as we suggest that it is one of the strongest predictors of happiness and life satisfaction and is strongly associated with race and ethnicity (williams and sternthal 2010). as such, its absence as a covariate may lead to misspecified models. lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the brfss allows us to begin to explore the influence of culture. by examining the influence of one aspect of culture, we are able to identify whether less personal, potentially more enduring characteristics help explain any racial and ethnic differences in life satisfaction. 2. data and methods as noted above, the present work draws on data from the 2010 behavioral risk factor surveillance system (brfss), the largest ongoing, nationally-representative, telephone-based survey in the united states (centers for disease control and prevention 2010). states conduct their own data collection using state-level, random-digit dialed disproportionate stratified probability samples of the adult population. accordingly, response rates vary considerably by state, from a minimum of 39% in oregon to a maximum of 69% in nebraska, with data weighted for noncoverage and nonresponse. the brfss contains extensive data on self-reported risk factors and behaviors related to physical and mental health, and is widely used by public health departments and other state and local entities concerned about better understanding their communities. while we would ideally prefer more recent data, 2010 was the last year in which the brfss included a question about life satisfaction for the full national sample. given that the primary racial and ethnic groups we are interested in, asians and latinx, are non-randomly distributed among states, later years of brfss data that only collect life satisfaction in a few states fail to capture a representative sample of the population of interest. nonetheless, these data have several unique advantages. first, the brfss distinguishes between several racial and ethnic groups not available in the gss and other smaller surveys. sample sizes for many of these groups are quite small, but the sample of asians is sufficiently large to allow for their inclusion as another comparison group. due to the small samples, we combine all of the other racial groups into an “other race” category that is excluded from the models. finally, the brfss consists of yearly samples of between 300,000 and 500,000 respondents. this gives us information from 451,075 individuals in 2010, with which we can estimate very precise averages for the racial/ethnic groups included in our study. therefore, if we can account for significant differences between groups in the brfss data, we can say with a high degree of confidence that our findings are generalizable to the greater u.s. population. 2.1 dependent variable while there are several related measures of swb in the literature, the brfss collects data on life satisfaction. prior research suggests that life satisfaction represents an enduring assessment of the roles played by access to tangible and intangible resources for satisfaction with life in general, which is relatively invariant to day-to-day changes in current moods and situational contexts (diener and ryan 2009). in contrast, concepts such as happiness are more situationally determined by moods like joy, delight, anger, and fear, while also being influenced by more global assessments of life satisfaction and the hedonistic evaluations of experiencing one’s life as “good” or “bad” (kahneman, 1999), virtuous or fulfilling (diener and ryan 2009). the brfss asks respondents: http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 in general, how satisfied are you with your life? (response categories include: very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, very dissatisfied, don’t know/not sure, refused) most (98.7%) provide a valid answer to the question. amongst those who respond, many report being either “very satisfied” (46.2%) or “satisfied” (48.4%), with fewer reporting dissatisfaction (4.3%) or being “very dissatisfied” (1.1%) with their lives (descriptive statistics for life satisfaction and all other variables are listed in table 1.) an initial examination of the distribution of life satisfaction for whites, asians, and latinx led us to combine these final two responses into a single “dissatisfied” category for the sake of parsimony and to ensure adequate sample sizes in all response categories across race/ethnicity. table 1. descriptive statistics, brfss 2010 total sample non-hispanic white latinx asian mean mean mean mean life satisfaction dissatisfied 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.03 satisfied 0.48 0.46 0.54 0.56 very satisfied 0.47 0.49 0.42 0.41 race/ethnicity white 0.80 1.00 asian 0.04 1.00 latinx 0.16 1.00 demographics age 47.31 48.87 41.00 40.94 (sd) (16.69) (16.73) (15.03) (14.78) female 0.50 0.51 0.50 0.43 income $0-$14,999 0.09 0.07 0.23 0.07 $15,000-$24,999 0.15 0.13 0.27 0.09 $25,000-$34,999 0.10 0.10 0.13 0.06 $35,000-$49,999 0.14 0.14 0.12 0.12 $50,000+ 0.52 0.57 0.25 0.65 education < hs 0.09 0.05 0.29 0.03 hs graduate 0.26 0.26 0.29 0.13 some college 0.26 0.27 0.22 0.17 college graduate 0.39 0.41 0.21 0.67 employment employed 0.61 0.61 0.59 0.67 unemployed 0.07 0.07 0.11 0.09 student 0.04 0.03 0.05 0.10 retired 0.08 0.07 0.13 0.06 homemaker 0.16 0.18 0.07 0.07 can't work 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.01 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 marital status married 0.66 0.68 0.57 0.70 divorced 0.08 0.09 0.07 0.03 widow 0.05 0.06 0.03 0.02 separated 0.02 0.01 0.04 0.01 never married 0.18 0.16 0.28 0.24 self-rated health health "fair/poor" 0.15 0.13 0.24 0.09 health "good/excellent" 0.85 0.87 0.76 0.91 language of interview english language 0.93 1.00 0.56 0.97 spanish language 0.07 0.00 0.44 0.00 other language 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.03 n 321417 289830 25299 6288 note. analytic sample. descriptive statistics calculated with sampling weights. 2.2 independent variables our focal independent variable is race/ethnicity. since our primary motivation is in examining and explaining previously underexplored racial/ethnic disparities in life satisfaction, we retain only non-hispanic whites, asians, and latinx (those reporting hispanic ethnicity, of any race) in the sample. the brfss also measures an array of sociodemographic and economic characteristics that likely account for life satisfaction disparities between racial/ethnic groups. to capture differences in sample characteristics that may explain these disparities, we construct covariates for age (we also include an age-squared term to better capture the functional form of swb across the life course, which research has found is curvilinear; ferrer-i-carbonell and frijters 2004), gender (male=0, female=1), income ($0-$14,999=0, $15,000-$24,999=1, $25,000-$34,999=2, $35,000 $49,999=3, $50,000+=4), education (less than a high school diploma=0, high school graduate=1, some college=2, college graduate=3), employment (a series of binary indicators comparing being unemployed, a student, retired, unable to work, or a homemaker to being employed), marital status (binary indicators comparing being divorced, widowed, separated, or never married to being married), and self-rated health (0=”poor” or “fair”, 1=”good” or “excellent”). of these, income is missing the most data (14.3%). there is intermittent missing data across other measures as well, and after listwise deletion of missing data on all study measures and restricting the sample to non-hispanic whites, asians, and latinx, the final analytic sample is 321,417 (71.3% of the base sample). the brfss also includes complete data for state identifiers (categorical, containing fips codes) and the language spoken during the interview (binary measures for spanish speakers and non-english, non-spanish speakers compared to those interviewed in english), which we include in some models. we discuss the use of the language measures in more detail below. 2.3 analysis strategy life satisfaction and other similar swb concepts tend to be measured categorically in survey data. there exist several strategies for modeling these types of outcomes, each with their own benefits and limitations depending on the aims of the study. we began by fitting an extension of the general linear model, conventional ordered logistic regression models (plums: polytomous http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 universal models), to examine racial/ethnic differences in life satisfaction. however, an important assumption of these models is that independent variables display proportional odds across all levels of the dependent variable (i.e. the influence of an independent variable on the odds of being “dissatisfied” vs. “satisfied” or “very satisfied” would be the same as its influence on the odds of being “dissatisfied” or “satisfied” vs. “very satisfied”). an investigation of model residuals, wald tests (brant 1990), and crosstabs suggested that the distributions of life satisfaction were not constant across racial and ethnic groups, as expected; in other words, the assumption of proportional odds was consistently violated by the focal independent variables, regardless of what other controls were added to the models. while multinomial logistic regression may be an attractive alternative in that it allows each variable in the model to exert different influences on every category of the outcome, this option is not very parsimonious since many sociodemographic, health, and lifestyle variables do exert similar influences across all levels of the dependent variables. to remedy this issue while also allowing for more in-depth analyses of how swb varies across racial categories, we instead estimate ordered logit models with partial proportional odds using the “gologit2” package (williams 2016) for stata 14 (statacorp 2015). this approach allows us to relax the assumption of proportional odds only for those variables that violate it while retaining the more parsimonious restriction for those that do not. thus, independent variables not violating the proportional odds assumption produce one estimate of the odds associated with an individual belonging to any higher category of life satisfaction. for measures that violate this assumption, the models estimate k-1 coefficients where k represents the number of categories of the dependent variable. this strategy yields a 3-category outcome measure, with the first set of coefficients for independent variables (section a of table 2) representing the odds of a respondent with a given characteristic reporting that they are dissatisfied versus being either satisfied or very satisfied. as such, this indicates the odds of indicating the lowest level of life satisfaction. the second set of coefficients (section b of table 2) represents the odds of a respondent being very satisfied rather than satisfied or dissatisfied—thus indicating the highest level of swb. while these models typically report this second contrast in terms of the odds of belonging to the two lowest groups relative to the odds of being in the highest group, we chose to invert this contrast so that interpretation would be more intuitive (i.e. higher odds = more life satisfaction; lower odds = less life satisfaction). to further ease interpretation, we report odds ratios for all models. finally, we also account for the sampling frame of the brfss with the stata “svy” commands to adjust for the survey’s sampling weights nested within the appropriate strata and primary sampling units. 3. findings sections a and b of table 2 present the findings from six models from the brfss data. section a presents odds ratios indicating the relative likelihood (with white respondents being the reference group) of being “dissatisfied” (rather than “satisfied” or “very satisfied”), while section b indicates the relative likelihood of being “very satisfied” (rather than “dissatisfied” or “satisfied”). in section a of model 1, which only includes measures of race, ethnicity, age and gender, we can see that race and ethnicity are sometimes but not always associated with life satisfaction. latinx respondents demonstrate about the same likelihood of dissatisfaction with life as white respondents and asians are much less likely to be dissatisfied with their lives (or=.56) than whites. when considering one end of the swb spectrum, dissatisfaction with life, there appears to be no effect of being latinx and a reduction of risk for asians before controlling for other covariates. however, when we turn to the likelihood of being very satisfied (section b http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 of model 1) with life, a different picture emerges. in our baseline model, latinx respondents have 22% (or=.78) and asians have 23% (or=.77) lower odds of reporting being very satisfied. models 2-6 in sections a and b demonstrate the relationships between typical correlates of swb and the likelihood of a respondent reporting that they are “dissatisfied” (section a) or “very satisfied” (section b). in each successive model we include additional covariates that were discussed above. similar to findings in previous research, we observe that life satisfaction is associated with state of residence in the 2010 brfss. while we do not list state coefficients due to space restrictions, we note that model 6 includes fixed effects for state of residence. table 2. ordinal logistic regression models predicting life satisfaction by respondent characteristics, brfss 2010 model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 odds ratio odds ratio odds ratio odds ratio odds ratio odds ratio section a: "dissatisfied" (se) (se) (se) (se) (se) (se) race/ ethnicity asian 0.56 *** 0.62 *** 0.68 ** 0.68 ** 0.70 * 0.68 * (0.25) (0.23) (0.21) (0.21) (0.21) (0.22) latinx 0.92 0.85 ** 0.80 *** 0.65 *** 0.56 *** 0.55 *** (0.06) (0.07) (0.08) (0.10) (0.13) (0.15) demographics age 1.03 *** 1.01 1.06 *** 1.05 *** 1.05 *** 1.05 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) age^2 1.00 *** 1.00 * 1.00 *** 1.00 *** 1.00 *** 1.00 *** (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) female 0.98 1.00 0.93 *** 0.94 *** 0.92 *** 0.92 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) employment unemployed 5.41 *** 4.54 *** 3.75 *** 3.01 *** 2.94 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) student 1.87 *** 1.54 ** 1.45 * 1.41 * 1.40 * (0.08) (0.10) (0.11) (0.11) (0.11) retired 0.99 1.27 ** 1.08 0.95 0.94 (0.08) (0.07) (0.08) (0.09) (0.09) homemaker 1.27 *** 1.26 *** 1.03 0.90 + 0.90 + (0.04) (0.04) (0.05) (0.06) (0.06) can't work 10.44 *** 7.99 *** 3.60 *** 2.78 *** 2.77 *** (0.00) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) marital status divorced 3.02 *** 2.80 *** 2.24 *** 2.21 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) widow 2.44 *** 2.29 *** 1.87 *** 1.86 *** (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) separated 4.43 *** 3.93 *** 3.11 *** 3.02 *** (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) never married 2.87 *** 2.77 *** 2.31 *** 2.27 *** (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 self-rated health health "good/excellent" 0.24 *** 0.28 *** 0.28 *** (0.17) (0.15) (0.15) income $15,000-$24,999 0.89 * 0.88 * (0.06) (0.06) $25,000-$34,999 0.76 *** 0.75 *** (0.09) (0.09) $35,000-$49,999 0.70 *** 0.69 *** (0.11) (0.12) $50,000+ 0.41 *** 0.40 *** (0.18) (0.18) education hs graduate 1.04 1.04 (0.07) (0.07) some college 1.19 * 1.18 * (0.07) (0.07) college graduate 1.07 1.05 (0.07) (0.08) section b: "very satisfied" race/ ethnicity asian 0.77 *** 0.75 *** 0.71 *** 0.71 *** 0.66 *** 0.69 *** (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) latinx 0.78 *** 0.80 *** 0.85 *** 0.96 1.18 *** 1.21 *** (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) (0.04) demographics age 1.01 ** 1.02 *** 0.98 *** 0.98 *** 0.97 *** 0.97 *** (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) age^2 1.00 * 1.00 *** 1.00 *** 1.00 *** 1.00 *** 1.00 *** (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) female 1.02 1.00 1.07 *** 1.07 *** 1.08 *** 1.09 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) employment unemployed 0.40 *** 0.44 *** 0.49 *** 0.59 *** 0.61 *** (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) student 0.87 * 1.03 1.05 1.07 1.08 (0.05) (0.06) (0.06) (0.07) (0.07) retired 1.10 *** 0.93 * 1.00 1.12 *** 1.12 *** (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) homemaker 1.07 *** 1.06 ** 1.15 *** 1.27 *** 1.27 *** (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) can't work 0.25 *** 0.30 *** 0.52 *** 0.68 *** 0.67 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) marital status divorced 0.45 *** 0.46 *** 0.55 *** 0.55 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) widow 0.48 *** 0.49 *** 0.59 *** 0.59 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) separated 0.34 *** 0.36 *** 0.45 *** 0.45 *** http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 (0.03) (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) never married 0.48 *** 0.49 *** 0.55 *** 0.56 *** (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) self-rated health health "good/excellent" 2.75 *** 2.39 *** 2.42 *** (0.07) (0.06) (0.06) income $15,000-$24,999 1.03 1.02 (0.04) (0.04) $25,000-$34,999 1.06 1.06 (0.04) (0.04) $35,000-$49,999 1.25 *** 1.26 *** (0.05) (0.05) $50,000+ 1.81 *** 1.84 *** (0.07) (0.07) education hs graduate 1.01 1.01 (0.04) (0.04) some college 1.02 1.01 (0.04) (0.04) college graduate 1.29 *** 1.29 *** (0.05) (0.05) cut 1 intercept 0.03 0.03 0.01 0.03 0.04 0.02 cut 2 intercept 0.72 0.71 1.98 0.69 0.59 0.50 n 321417 321417 321417 321417 321417 321417 note. models adjust for sampling weights, model 6 includes state fixed effects * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01 *** p < 0.001 as our primary interest in these covariates is whether they can help explain some or all of the racial and ethnic differences in life satisfaction that exist in the baseline model, we do not review the findings from all of the models in detail. instead, we focus on how the relationship between race and ethnicity and life satisfaction changes after we control for potentially important social and economic characteristics. while it may be of interest to note the individual changes from one model to the next, because these individual changes are relatively small and monotonic, we focus primarily on the differences between the baseline and full models. looking first at the odds of asian respondents reporting being dissatisfied, we can see that their decreased risk of dissatisfaction is slightly attenuated as we move from model 1 to model 6. it appears that when factors such as employment and marital status, health, and income are controlled for—factors on which asians generally score higher on (see table 1) and which the literature has shown to be important contributors to swb—the decreased likelihood of asian dissatisfaction is slightly reduced but remains substantively and statistically significant. turning to the relationship between being latinx and being dissatisfied, we see a very different pattern. while there are no statistically significant differences in swb between latinx and whites before controlling for social and economic characteristics, as soon as we include these covariates in the model latinx respondents become significantly less likely to report being dissatisfied. in fact, after controlling for employment and marital status, income, health and state http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 of residence, latinx respondents’ odds of dissatisfaction are almost half (or=.55) that of their white counterparts. this suggests that the lower likelihood of latinx dissatisfaction is suppressed without considering the effect of known social and economic correlates of swb, correlates that latinx respondents generally report lower levels of compared to whites (see table 1). shifting our attention to the likelihood of being “very satisfied” (section b, table 3), adding the covariates to the model has relatively little effect on the asian/white difference. in the baseline model (model 1), asians have 23% lower odds whereas in the full model (model 6) their odds are 31% lower of being “very satisfied”. that is, after controlling for employment, marriage, health, income and state of residence, asian respondents on average were even more less likely than whites to report being “very satisfied” with their lives. in contrast, while latinx respondents had 22% lower odds of being “very satisfied” in the baseline model, after controlling for other factors they had 23% (or=1.23) higher odds of being “very satisfied” with their lives than their white counterparts. much of this attenuation and then reversal seems to be the result of income and health. once these factors, which have been demonstrated to be some of the most important correlates of individual swb, are controlled for, latinx respondents demonstrated a significant swb advantage. figure 1. predicted probabilities of life satisfaction before and after covariate adjustment figure 1 provides a visual representation of these changes based on predicted probabilities before and after adjusting for the covariates. to generate these values, we calculate the probability of each category of the outcome from the baseline (model 1) and full (model 6) model coefficients, varying only race/ethnicity. all other variables are set at their means. note that this strategy may actually under-represent the actual disparities present in the population, on average, between http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 racial groups, given that racial and ethnic group means for these covariates are different. however, we believe using the overall covariate means isolates the remaining racial/ethnic differences more clearly and simplifies comparisons for the sake of examining how covariate adjustment increases or reduces disparities in life satisfaction. looking first at the “dissatisfied” columns, we can see that the probability of being dissatisfied goes down for all groups when we control for covariates, but that the decrease is largest for latinx and smallest for asian respondents. turning to the probability of being satisfied, controlling for social and economic characteristics and state of residence increases the probability of being satisfied for whites and asians but decreases it for latinx respondents. as changes in these categories are relative (i.e. if probabilities increase in one or two categories they have to decrease in another) we should not be surprised to see a relatively small decrease in the probability of asians and whites being very satisfied and a relatively large increase in the likelihood of latinx respondents reporting the highest level of life satisfaction after we control for the covariates. our analyses suggest that social and economic characteristics associated with swb are essential to understanding differences in swb across racial and ethnic groups, but that controlling for these factors does little to eliminate differences, and in some cases exacerbates them. for instance, controlling for social and economic factors can help explain previous findings that suggested lower levels of swb among latinx respondents (coverdill et al. 2011), but they cannot explain why, after controlling for these factors, latinx are much less likely to be dissatisfied and much more likely to be very satisfied with their lives—in other words, social and economic characteristics cannot explain why latinx respondents experience higher overall life satisfaction than their white counterparts. these findings are quite different than what we see among the asian respondents. while controlling for social and economic factors slightly shifts the relative differences in the probabilities of asians and whites reporting low and high levels of life satisfaction, it does little to change the general pattern of asians being much less likely to report being either dissatisfied or very satisfied with life. one interpretation of our findings is that remaining racial and ethnic differences are the result of other transient characteristics that were not included in the models. however, we would argue that we have included indicators representing most of the major characteristics that have been consistently shown to influence swb (dolan et al. 2007). yet, given the nature of cross-sectional analysis, we cannot rule out this possibility. another potential explanation is that disparities are due to other, less studied characteristics that differ across race and ethnicity and have not been accounted for in our analyses. as hypothesized above, we find arguments for the importance of more stable factors related to culture and group experiences much more compelling than those related to genetic or biological factors when it comes to explaining remaining group differences in swb. latinx and asians as a group in the u.s. share a variety of experiences related to the immigrant experience and associated discrimination and prejudice, which have been much less common among the white population in recent history. while scholars have long studied how these obstacles contribute to socioeconomic disadvantage for some racial and ethnic groups, there are likely to be psychological impacts not captured by these types of time-varying social and economic measures. such impacts may accrue in individuals who experience these things directly, or for larger segments of the population through collective trauma and/or cultural identity. however, we would expect such factors to contribute to lower levels of swb, in general, despite observing higher levels of swb among these two minority groups after adjustment for key socioeconomic characteristics (with the exception of asians’ lower likelihood of being very satisfied). while it is http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 possible that this is the result of stronger group cohesion in the face of negative group experiences such as prejudice or discrimination, we have no way of empirically examining this assumption. however, there may be other relatively stable factors stemming from cultures of origin that contribute to differences in life satisfaction. as discussed above, these may be the result of important cultural differences in how people experience and express emotions and/or cultural differences pertaining to the influence of various factors or characteristics. while we are hesitant to offer “culture” as a post-hoc catch-all explanation for differences that have not been explained by more structural variables, the brfss does provide us the opportunity to gain some initial leverage on the potential role of culture of origin by including information about the language that was used in the survey interview in our models. previous research has used similar data as an indicator of assimilation (alba et al. 2002), where respondents who have greater facility or choose to speak english when given other options are considered more assimilated than respondents who use another language, which is usually assumed to be their native language (wadsworth and kubrin 2007). this additional source of measurable, cultural variation provides the potential for more deeply understanding the remaining swb differences between whites, latinx and asians. based on this assumption, it seems reasonable to suggest that those who were interviewed in their native language are likely to be more deeply embedded in the culture of their, or their family’s, place of origin, which may influence emotional norms or experiences expressed through ratings of swb. to explore the possibility that cultural assimilation influences swb, we ran additional models with dummy variables indicating if the interview was done in english, spanish or a language other than english or spanish, as well as interactions between latinx and spanish language interview, and asian and non-english/non-spanish interview. while we do not have information concerning which non-english language other than spanish was used in an interview, it seems safe to assume that asian respondents who were interviewed in a non-english language were interviewed in an asian language. this assumption was supported by higher rates of “other language” interviews among asians than any other racial/ethnic group. while the rate of nonenglish interviews among asians in the sample seems low (3%) in comparison to population estimates of the language spoken at home among asians in the us during this time period from the american community survey (acs; about 70%), it is comparable to the amount (about 3%) who are classified in the acs as limited english proficient and “do not speak english at all” (ruggles et al., 2020), which may be the case for participants electing to answer the survey in a language other than english. not surprisingly, interacting latinx with spanish language interview created significant collinearity when spanish language was included in a model with the interaction, as the only respondents interviewed in spanish were latinx. for this reason, we dropped the main effect of spanish language interview in the second model and let all of the effect of these two variables together be represented by the interaction term, as a measure of stronger adherence to latinx culture. table 3 displays the results of these models. model 1 in table 3 provides odds ratios and standard errors for the key variables from model 6 of table 2, with language of interview added, and model 2 includes the language and race/ethnicity interactions. while the models include all the covariates of the fully specified model from table 2, we suppress the output for most covariates to avoid redundancy. looking at model 2, only one of the 4 interaction terms is significant. latinx respondents who were interviewed in spanish were even less likely than those interviewed in english to report being dissatisfied with their lives. to determine the net impact of these interactions, we calculate a percentage difference between groups by dividing the predicted probability of the outcome for a comparison group (english-speaking latinx, english http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 table 3. ordinal logistic regression models predicting life satisfaction by respondent characteristics and language of interview, brfss 2010 model 1 model 2 odds ratio odds ratio section a: "dissatisfied" (se) (se) race/ ethnicity asian 0.67 ** 0.67 ** (0.23) (0.23) latinx 0.68 *** 0.68 *** (0.13) (0.13) language of interview spanish 0.51 *** (0.29) other language 1.30 1.56 (0.32) (0.45) latinx * spanish 0.52 *** (0.29) asian * other language 0.82 (1.02) section b: "very satisfied" race/ ethnicity asian 0.70 *** 0.70 *** (0.04) (0.04) latinx 1.20 *** 1.20 *** (0.04) (0.05) language of interview spanish 1.03 (0.06) other language 0.42 * 0.16 *** (0.17) (0.08) latinx * spanish 1.02 (0.06) asian * other language 2.89 (1.95) cut 1 intercept 0.02 0.02 cut 2 intercept 0.50 0.50 n 321417 321417 notes: models adjust for sampling weights and state fixed effects * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01 *** p < 0.001 speaking whites) over the same probability for spanish-speaking latinx and subtract the result from 1. holding all else constant, spanish-speaking respondents were 48% (1 (.012/.023)) and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 30% (1 (.023/.033)) less likely to report being dissatisfied, relative to their english speaking latinx and white counterparts, respectively. given the inconsistency of this finding across categories of the outcome and language/ethnic group combinations, we encourage a cautious interpretation. however, it does suggest that the higher average life satisfaction of latinx respondents may be at least partly associated with more cultural, rather than socio-economic, characteristics. does the fact that the interaction representing asian respondents being interviewed in another language is not significant suggest a less relevant role of culture for asians in terms of swb? we are hesitant to move towards this conclusion, in part because the percentage of asian respondents interviewed in a non-english language was only three percent, whereas forty-four percent of latinx respondents were interviewed in spanish, resulting in very limited power to detect a meaningful association. however, another possible explanation for both significant and non-significant findings is that english language proficiency may actually capture different nationalities of origin rather than different levels of assimilation. both the terms “latinx” and “asian” represent very heterogeneous populations from various countries of origin that may have higher or lower average levels of life satisfaction, and which face very different constraints in the u.s. for example, if more recent latinx immigrants who are less likely to speak english are from countries that tend to have higher average swb, findings may reflect cultural differences in country of origin rather than assimilation. likewise, among asian groups, findings may be muddled by tremendous variability in country of origin. the average experiences of recent hmong and japanese immigrants in the u.s., for example, are potentially very different despite a perhaps similar likelihood of speaking a non-english language during their interview. it is unfortunately impossible with the present data, however, to parse out these compositional issues that could explain the preliminary findings around language and swb. 4. discussion and conclusion our findings suggest that common socioeconomic and demographic characteristics are important in understanding racial and ethnic differences in life-satisfaction, but that these factors alone are insufficient for explaining the differences between white, asian, and latinx respondents. there are clearly other, potentially more stable factors, that drive some of the racial and ethnic differences in swb. we offer preliminary evidence that some of these factors stem from cultural differences, like language, but face data limitations for empirically identifying exactly what these cultural factors are. in considering latinx/white differences in life satisfaction, we come to a somewhat different conclusion than was reached by coverdill et al. (2011) in their study of happiness among gss respondents. some, but not all, of the ethnic differences in swb can be explained by other social and economic characteristics of the respondents. more specifically, factors such as marriage, income, education, employment and health can explain why zero-order correlations suggest a life-satisfaction advantage (in terms of the likelihood of being very satisfied) of white over latinx respondents, but these same factors cannot explain why, after controlling for them, we see a significant swb advantage of latinx respondents over whites. this advantage is present at both the low (with a lower likelihood of being dissatisfied) and the high (with a higher likelihood of being very satisfied, compared to whites) end of the life satisfaction spectrum. based on our preliminary findings concerning the role of language, we suggest that some of this latinx advantage likely stems from more cultural factors. just as latinx respondents demonstrated a lower likelihood than whites of being dissatisfied, spanish-speaking latinx respondents reported less dissatisfaction than their english-speaking latinx counterparts. while these http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 findings are preliminary and must be interpreted with caution, they are consistent with a wealth of research focusing on the “hispanic health paradox” which finds higher than expected levels of a variety of health and well-being indicators among latinx groups, given their otherwise lower rankings on socio-economic indicators typically associated with positive outcomes (sorlie et al. 1993; cervantes 1996; wadsworth and kubrin 2007). this literature has often pointed to a stronger sense of family, community, religion, and group identity as the cultural factors driving the paradox in health and well-being outcomes. these same factors could certainly be the foundation of higher levels of life-satisfaction as well, though they are not measured directly in the brfss data. the findings are also consistent with recent work on swb in latin american (rojas and vega 2017; beytia 2016) in suggesting that cultural factors boost happiness and life satisfaction among respondents who appear to be disadvantaged by other correlates of swb. investigating these differences more thoroughly, both cross-nationally and within u.s. samples would be a fruitful avenue for future research. for asians, we provide an initial examination of swb differences using the largest sample to date and identify patterns that were quite different than those typically observed among blacks and latinx. while very different than the comparison between white and latinx respondents, the findings pertaining to asians also hint that more cultural aspects may play an important role in shaping the swb of asians. while there were relatively small changes in the asian/white differences in reporting both high and low levels of life-satisfaction as we controlled for more socio-economic factors, we think the most intriguing finding was how robust the differences were to the addition of theoretically important covariates of life-satisfaction. that differences were seen on both ends of the spectrum, with asians being significantly less likely to report being very satisfied or dissatisfied, reveals a modal, more moderate level of satisfaction amongst this group than we observe in other racial or ethnic groups. while our additional analyses that added indicators of language to the models did not offer additional information regarding this pattern among asian respondents, it does seem consistent with previous research that has found broad differences in swb between respondents in western vs. eastern countries (diener and suh 1999; diener and oishi, 2000). this previous work has pointed towards different cultural norms regarding emotional expression (tov and diener 2009). while this previous research focused more on demonstrating the lower likelihood of respondents from asian countries viewing high swb expression as important, it may simply be that a certain middle ground is viewed as more desirable than either especially high or low swb. this same process could be playing out among asian respondents living in the u.s. we view our analyses as providing a starting point for examining the importance of more cultural factors. even after controlling for social and economic characteristics that are strongly associated with levels of assimilation, our analyses suggest that being latinx, and even more so, speaking spanish, is associated with higher life satisfaction. while language is not an ideal proxy for assimilation, we view these findings as preliminary evidence that more culturally based, traitlike factors are essential for considering the swb of racial and ethnic minorities. that the patterns of association regarding latinx respondents are consistent with existing research on the hispanic health paradox and swb in latin america is affirming. a deeper understanding of racial and ethnic differences in swb may be possible with further empirical investigation of other cultural factors, such as stronger emphasis on family and community, group identification and/or other culturally-based values, which may be present in other datasets. our findings regarding asians also speak to the importance of culture, though we have less empirical evidence that differences in swb are related to assimilation (or lack thereof). instead, our findings are similar to those of other cross-national work that has pointed to differences in http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ race, ethnicity and subjective well-being wadsworth & pendergast www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 cultural expression norms. whether these differences are manifestations of divergent psychological experiences, or simply a reflection of how individuals interpret or relate their experiences cannot be addressed with the current data. better understanding the source of these remaining disparities is an important avenue for future research. collectively, our findings add to, and extend, the research on swb among racial and ethnic minorities in the u.s. that some of the baseline differences in swb between latinx, asian, and white respondents can be explained by inequalities on a variety of social and economic determinants offers further evidence to the immense body of work regarding the impacts of racial/ethnic stratification. that other differences cannot be explained by these determinants speaks to the importance of culture, a topic that has received less attention in the literature on swb. future research should further investigate these types of factors if we hope to better understand what makes people happier and more satisfied with their lives. acknowledgments brfss data were made available by the centers for disease control and prevention. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors’ contributions both authors made critical contributions to all aspects of the project. authors tim wadsworth university of colorado boulder tim.wadsworth@colorado.edu philip m. pendergast u.s. census bureau disclaimer any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the u.s. census bureau. publishing timeline received 14 october 2020 revised version received 10 february 2021 accepted 16 february 2021 published 31 may 2021 references alba, r., logan, j., lutz, a., & stults, b. 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(2012). assessing meaning in life on an international scale. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 182-195. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.2 michael f. steger colorado state university michael.f.steger@colostate.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 182 article assessing meaning in life on an international scale: psychometric evidence for the meaning in life questionnaire-short form among chilean households michael f. steger · emma samman abstract: several research projects have endeavored to articulate parsimonious and comprehensive accounts of wellbeing. a set of core concepts is seen to be emerging, including the psychological wellbeing module of the oxford poverty and human development initiative’s international research on poverty. one of the core components of wellbeing according to this initiative and others is meaning in life. the present study focuses on a psychometric evaluation of a short measure of meaning in life to be used in international measurement of wellbeing, using data from a nationally-representative sample of households in chile (n = 1,997). the factor structure of the meaning in life questionnaire-short form (mlq-sf) was confirmed, and shown to be invariant across gender and age. the items of the mlq-sf formed a factor that was distinct from the items of other wellbeing measures that were assessed (psychological needs, life satisfaction, and domain satisfaction). scores on the mlq-sf were reliable in this sample, and correlated in the expected directions with other wellbeing indicators. we conclude that the mlq-sf shows distinct promise as a measure of a core component of wellbeing—meaning in life—in international research. keywords: meaning in life; wellbeing; psychological needs; life satisfaction; chile 1. introduction in the broadest sense, the term ‘wellbeing’ refers to people’s optimal functioning and experience. however, defining wellbeing more precisely continues to stimulate extensive debate. within psychology, the disease model has dominated, viewing wellbeing as the absence of illness rather than as the presence of any particular qualities (ryff & singer, 1998; ryan & deci, 2001). more recently, attention has shifted toward gaining a better idea of the characteristics that delineate positive functioning. psychologists have adapted two philosophical traditions to develop ideas about what constitutes wellbeing (ryff & singer, 1998; ryan & deci, 2001). the first tradition, known variously as the hedonic or subjective view, purports that wellbeing consists of subjective perceptions of happiness and the experience of pleasure (diener, 2000). in psychological terms, hedonic wellbeing ‚may be expected to be felt whenever pleasant affect accompanies the satisfaction of needs, whether physically, intellectually, or socially based‛ (waterman, 1993, p.2). the second tradition, known as the eudaimonic or psychological view, places greater emphasis on the cultivation of personal potential, virtue, and meaningful living (ransome, 2010; ryan & deci, 2001; ryff & singer, 1998; waterman, 1993). this eudaimonic tradition enlists concepts such as autonomy, personal growth, self-acceptance, life purpose, competence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 183 and mastery, belongingness and positive relatedness as important domains for understanding wellbeing (ryff & singer, 1998; ryan & deci, 2001). from the hedonic perspective, being virtuous and living a meaningful life can yield wellbeing as long as behaving in that manner is subjectively enjoyable. in contrast, from the eudaimonic perspective, enjoyment and pleasure are not necessary for wellbeing. instead, people must have the opportunity to exercise personal choice, gain a sense of competence and mastery, cultivate healthy relationships, and find meaning and purpose in life. at present, psychological research fails to empirically support theoretical arguments for differentiating between the two concepts as distinct kinds of wellbeing. philosophers debate whether hedonic and eudaimonic conceptualizations provide a more correct account of human flourishing. psychologists are more concerned with whether one tradition, the other, or both, best predict outcomes of interest, although some have appeared invested in promoting one or other tradition on its own as the most desirable outcome. as psychological research increasingly has taken an interest in understanding optimal functioning, evidence has accumulated that representative measures from each tradition provide complementary information (kashdan, biswas-diener, & king, 2008). for example, researchers have investigated the combination of hedonic and eudaimonic indicators in relation to meaning in life (kashdan & steger, 2007; king, hicks, krull, & del gaiso, 2006). results suggest that hedonic and eudaimonic elements frequently function together, and therefore that optimal functioning is best achieved through combining both approaches (keyes, shmotkin, & ryff, 2002). furthermore, the study highlights the relevance of investigating how facets of eudaimonia and hedonism work in unison (kashdan et al., 2008). although much of the research in this area has assumed that eudaimonic dimensions are antecedents of hedonic wellbeing (kashdan et al., 2008; zika & chamberlain, 1992), it is also plausible that hedonic variables might bring about eudaimonic wellbeing. for example, a meta-analysis has shown that positive emotions—key indicators of hedonic wellbeing—were antecedents in attaining career success and satisfying marriages (lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005). it follows that it may be most desirable to study elements of both hedonic and eudaimonic approaches when seeking to conceptualize wellbeing more broadly. 1.1 ophi and the assessment of wellbeing from 2007 on, the oxford poverty and human development initiative (ophi) has sought to develop a brief set of measures that could provide a broad conceptualization of wellbeing, and of deprivation, as part of its larger missing dimensions of poverty research program. the missing dimensions program aims to devise modules to measure five so-called ‘missing dimensions’ of poverty: quality of work, empowerment, the ‘ability to go about without shame,’ physical safety, and—most relevant to the current study—psychological wellbeing. these dimensions emerge as crucially important in the experiences of poor people but data are not systematically collected to measure them at the individual and household levels in internationally-comparable survey instruments (alkire, 2007). 1 by collecting these data and exploring the patterns of deprivations and interconnections that emerge, the aim is to provide a broad account of human flourishing that is deeply grounded in poor people’s realities (see oxford poverty and human development initiative, 2007). ‘shortlists’ of indicators were 1 alkire (2007) gives support for the importance of these dimensions – pointing in particular to the seminal voices of the poor study (narayan et al., 2000). for more details of each dimension, see the respective articles in oxford poverty and human development initiative (2007). assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 184 proposed on the basis of a sweeping review of the survey-based literature. they have been subjected to expert review in a number of international contexts and are currently being administered and analyzed in several countries.2 the ophi psychological wellbeing module is perhaps unique in combining hedonic and eudaimonic measures in a brief format that aims to be included in standard household surveys to generate internationally comparable results. the motivation is to understand how psychological factors – both hedonic and eudaimonic – relate to one another, and how they complement the more traditional objective indicators of wellbeing and of poverty that are derived from household surveys. in doing so, this module seeks to bring psychological factors into the picture as contextual variables that stand to contribute a richer perspective to an understanding of human experience and values, and particularly the importance of its nonmaterial components. to measure eudaimonic wellbeing, ophi adopts a two-pronged approach based on 1) the perception of meaning in life and 2) the ability to strive toward excellence in fulfilling this idea (samman, 2007). to measure these concepts, the module incorporates steger’s meaning in life questionnaire and deci and ryan’s measures of autonomy, competence and relatedness, the three psychological needs associated with goal identification and pursuit, which in turn predict ‘optimal functioning’. to measure hedonic wellbeing, the module contains separate indicators of satisfaction and happiness – drawing on diener and seligman’s (2004) argument that they represent cognitive and affective aspects, respectively – including measures of satisfaction in life overall and in several distinct domains that past work has shown to be important (see samman, 2007). testing these modules in developing countries is essential. 3 though the psychological scales have been subject to extensive psychometric testing, this has been largely among samples consisting of us college students. the hedonic measures, too, require further study in non-western contexts. 1.2 meaning in life in international wellbeing research despite several decades of empirical and theoretical emphasis on the importance of meaning in life (e.g., frankl, 1963; deci & ryan, 2000; ryan & deci, 2001; ryff & singer, 1998; steger, 2009, 2012; steger, frazier, oishi, & kaler, 2006), the bulk of meaning in life research has focused on only a small handful of countries. in addition to a rather limited range of international samples (e.g., hong kong – shek, 1995; romania – brassai, piko, & steger, 2011; slovakia, hungary – halama, martos, & adamovova, 2010; martos, thege, & steger, 2010; spain – steger, frazier, & zacchanini, 2008), only one report has systematically investigated cross-national differences using a measure shown to be psychometrically robust, revealing that american samples reported higher levels of meaning in life than japanese samples (steger, kawabata, shimai, & otake, 2008). this evidence of at least some degree of cross-national differences in meaning in life—among two fully industrialized countries—points toward the need for a greater investment in systematic efforts to understand meaning internationally. the implications could be substantial. not only do those who feel their lives are meaningful report greater wellbeing and lesser psychological distress (e.g., steger et al., 2006; see steger, in press, for review), but they also report better post-trauma adjustment (steger, frazier, et al., 2 for the full set of modules in english, french, igbo, tagalog, tamil, sinhala and spanish, and a description of work to date under the missing dimensions, see www.ophi.org.uk. 3 existing studies of cross-national wellbeing include deaton 2008, diener 2009, graham 2009, diener et al 2010 and the work of the international wellbeing group, available at: http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/acqol/iwbg/index.php. http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/acqol/iwbg/index.php assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 185 2008), better health (steger, mann, michels, & cooper, 2009), and dramatically lower risk of cognitive decline and incidence of alzheimer’s disease (boyle, buchman, barnes, & bennett, 2010) and death (boyle, barnes, buchman, & bennett, 2009). meaning in life appears to be a notable psychological resource, yet most research on this important variable has been conducted in industrialized western nations. it remains to be seen what kind of resource meaning in life is in most of the world. one possible explanation for this apparent neglect is that the western idea that meaning in life is marked by making sense of one’s life and pursuing a valued life purpose may be seen in different terms in other cultures. the research cited above suggests that people from diverse cultures can respond to measures of western notions of meaning in life, but indigenous models of meaning may need to be developed to supplement this research. a second reason for the small amount of international research on meaning is the absence of psychometrically sound, brief measures of meaning in life. prior to the publication of the meaning in life questionnaire (mlq; steger, frazier, oishi, & kaler, 2006), measures of meaning in life were criticized for having poor content validity (dyck, 1987) and structural properties (steger, 2007). although it is relatively brief, the mlq uses five items each to assess the ‘presence of meaning’ (how meaningful one feels one’s life is) and the ‘search for meaning’ (how intently one is seeking greater meaning in life). even five items can be too demanding for large-scale international research. therefore, the ophi collaborated with steger to develop a short form of the mlq presence of meaning subscale containing three items and a simplified response structure (4 points rather than 7). 4 the present study provides an in-depth psychometric analysis of this new measure, for the purpose of evaluating its utility in multidimensional poverty analysis as well as international public health and population surveillance research. because no previous research has reported on meaning in life, we cannot draw upon existing research to formulate hypotheses. meaning in life is regarded as a universally-valued aspect of human experience, therefore we anticipated that there would be positive correlations among all of the measures of wellbeing included in the present study. 2. method 2.1 participants and procedure following several small-scale pilots, ophi has undertaken small subnational surveys of its missing dimensions modules—alongside standard survey modules (income or consumption, health, education, etc.) in several cross-national contexts—notably philippines, chad, nigeria and sri lanka. in 2009, ophi undertook a nationally-representative survey of chile, involving some 2000 households, in conjunction with the centro de microdatos of the department of economics, university of chile. these households were a subsample of those interviewed in chile’s 2006 national household survey (encuesta de caracterización socioeconómica nacional, casen), with stratification conducted on the basis of urban-rural zone and income quintile.5 the 2009 survey integrated missing dimensions modules with standard questions on income, health, education, housing and employment from chile’s national household survey (encuesta 4 limited work has been carried out on the optimal response structure for psychological and subjective questions. given this lack of rigorous study, the relatively low levels of education in some developing country settings and evidence that people in different cultural contexts may not perceive such scales to be linear with equi-distant intervals, a cautious approach suggests a reduced set of options with labels attached to each interval. 5 the sample frame for the 2006 casen was the 2002 census – its sample was drawn using multi-stage random sampling with geographic stratification and clustering. for more information regarding the ophi survey, please see: http://www.ophi.org.uk/research/missing-dimensions/projects/. assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 186 de caracterización socioeconómica nacional, casen).6 the respondent was any adult member of a selected household and he or she responded to questions about perceptions (including the whole psychological wellbeing module) for him or herself only. the collection of these data provides an opportunity to examine the psychometric properties of the short form of the mlq in a nationally representative sample of households in chile. the final sample consisted of 1,997 individuals (51.8% female; age m = 47.6; sd = 13.2). chile is a long, narrow country in latin america’s southern cone, extending some 2650 miles from north to south and just 110 miles east to west. the country is bordered to the north by peru and bolivia, and to the east by argentina. chile has a population of some 17 million people, some 40 percent of whom live in or around the capital of santiago, and is relatively homogeneous compared to many other latin american societies. nearly 60 percent of its people identify themselves as white, 25 percent as mestizo and 8 percent as indigenous.7 most are catholic (some 70 percent) or evangelical (15 percent), according to the most recent 2002 census. chile is one of latin america’s top economic performers—its per capita gdp of some 16,000 usd places it second only to argentina in latin america,8 and its human development index (hdi) of .805 reflects a ‚very high‛ level of human development. at the same time, a recent survey suggests overall life satisfaction is relatively low by regional standards, higher only than that of peru. 9 though much of its ‘miraculous’ economic growth occurred under the authoritarian pinochet regime (1973-1990), income poverty rose markedly during this period and did not begin to recover until 1990, when chile reverted to a stable democracy. since then, the poverty headcount fell from over 40 percent to around 15 percent, as of 2009 (gobierno de chile, 2010). 2.2 measures all measures discussed below were translated into spanish and then backtranslated into english by translators associated with ophi. the translations were checked with researchers at ophi and at the centro de microdatos, university of chile. meaning in life questionnaire – short form (mlq-sf). three items from the mlq (steger et al., 2006) presence subscale were included in the study, with slight modifications to improve comprehensibility following translation: ‚my life has a clear meaning or purpose,‛ ‚i have found a satisfactory meaning in life,‛ and ‚i have a clear sense of what gives meaning to my life.‛ items were rated from 1 (not at all true) to 4 (completely true). recently, the mlq short form was used in national health surveillance research in the united states, revealing very good reliability and validity in those samples (kobau, sniezek, zack, lucas, & burns, 2010). basic psychological needs scale – short form. this scale was developed to assess the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness, drawing upon selfdetermination theory (deci & ryan, 2000). the original scale consisted of 21 items (gagné, 2003). deci and ryan proposed to ophi a shorter version (bpn-sf) for use in its module, using three items each to assess the needs of autonomy (α = .93; e.g., ‚i am free to decide for myself how to lead my life‛), competence (α = .82; e.g., ‚people i know tell me i am competent/capable 6 for more information regarding the survey, please see: http://www.ophi.org.uk/research/missingdimensions/projects/. 7 corporación latinobarometro (2011), p. 58. other groups make up 2 percent or less of the population. 8 per capita gdp is in current us dollars at purchasing power parity (ppp) world development indicators 2011 (http://databank.worldbank.org), hdi data is available at hdr.undp.org/statistics/. 9 according to most recent gallup world poll data, chile’s average life satisfaction is 6.3 out of ten, higher only than that peru (5.9), out of 19 latin american and caribbean countries (https://worldview.gallup.com). assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 187 at what i do‛), and relatedness (α = .94; e.g., ‚i get along well with people i come into contact with‛). items were rated from 1 (not at all true) to 4 (completely true). life and domain satisfaction items. based on a survey of the literature on philosophical, participatory and psychological accounts of wellbeing, samman (2007) provides a central list of life domains that previous reviews identify as important.10 participants were asked to rate the following items from 1 (very satisfied) to 4 (not at all satisfied): life overall, food, housing, income, health, work, local security, friends, family, education, free choice and control over life, dignity, neighborhood/town/community, ability to help others, and spiritual/religious/ philosophical beliefs. domains were selected under the assumption that they would contribute unique variance to overall wellbeing, hence internal consistency is not necessarily a relevant consideration. at the same time, the estimate of internal consistency (α = .58) indicated that people’s satisfaction with different domains tends to cluster to some extent. 3. results 3.1 data analysis plan in order to evaluate the properties of the mlq-sf, we conducted a series of analyses. first we sought to establish the structural validity of the new measure using confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). we then evaluated the internal consistency of the measure, and used exploratory factor analysis to gauge its distinctiveness from other wellbeing measures incorporated in the ophi survey module, as implemented in chile. finally, we sought to establish the measurement invariance of the mlq-sf across age and gender using multigroups applications of cfa. in addition, we conducted a preliminary descriptive examination of relations between the mlq-sf and other wellbeing measures. 3.2 psychometric evaluation of the mlq-sf 3.2.1 structure of the mlq-sf a cfa was conducted on a model in which these three items were loaded on by a common, meaning in life, factor. regression estimates were fixed for all error estimates, as well as two factor-to-item paths in order to free a degree of freedom necessary for evaluating goodness of fit. the model was first tested in the entire sample (n = 1,997). this was necessary to gain degrees of freedom needed to calculate modification indices. as recommended in previous research, we used the comparative fit index (cfi), non-normed fit index (nnfi), root mean square approximation of error (rmsea), and standardized root mean squared residual (srmr) to evaluate the fit of the mlq across cultures (hu & bentler, 1999; little, 1997). because of the large sample size, the chi-square was significant. rmsea also indicated some improvement could be made to the model. however, other goodness of fit indices were within range for an excellent fit of the model to the data (χ2 (df = 1, n = 1,997) = 26.10, p < .001; cfi = .99; nnfi = .97; srmr = .01; rmsea = .11, 90% c.i. = .08–.15). regression estimates for paths from the factor to the items ranged from .82 to .90. thus, the simple model of three items loading a single factor fits adequately for research purposes. according to modification indices, however, additional paths should be included in the model among each of the items and each of the error estimates as well as with the factor overall. this model would obviously lack parsimony. however, given the close semantic similarity of items 1 and 3 (both refer to ‘clarity’), a second model was run in which the error 10 on philosophical and participatory approaches, see in particular alkire 2002, on psychological approaches, cummins 1996. assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 188 terms from these two items were allowed to correlate. again, in order to release a degree of freedom, the third factor-to-item path was fixed. this model fit the data very well, exceeding all benchmarks (χ2 (df = 1, n = 1,997) = 5.57, p < .05; cfi = .999; tli = .997; srmr = .01; rmsea = .05, 90% c.i. = .02–.09). regression estimates for paths from the factor to the items ranged from .84 to .90. although this model is not the most parsimonious, it does maximize fit to the data, and demonstrates that these three items are closely related, and all items are strongly associated with the same latent factor, meaning in life. 3.2.2 reliability next, the internal consistency was calculated for the three meaning items, with cronbach’s alpha (.88), inter-item correlations (rs from .66 to .73), and single measure interclass correlation coefficient (.71) indicating a high degree of coherence among the items. the internal consistency of the mlq-sf in this chilean sample is nearly identical to that reported in a national american sample (α = .89; kobau et al., 2010). 3.2.3 distinctiveness of the mlq-sf from related measures finally, an exploratory factor analysis (maximum likelihood extraction with promax rotation, kappa = 4) was conducted with the three mlq items, as well as the nine items from the short form of the basic psychological needs scale and the 15 items from the life domain satisfaction measure. a total of nine factors were extracted according to the heuristic of eigen values greater than 1. items from the mlq-sf, and the items from each of the three bns-sf subscales, formed clear factors with strong, primary, pattern matrix loadings for the mlq-sf (.81–.91), the relatedness (.83–1.00), autonomy (.90–.92), and competence (.65–.91) subscales, with negligible secondary loadings (all < .08). the items from the life domain satisfaction measure had smaller primary factor loadings (.16–.50), and a less distinct factor pattern. the best-formed factor consisted of satisfaction with housing, life over-all, income, food, education, and health. only two other factors had multiple items with primary loadings greater than .30. the first consisted of satisfaction with ability to help others and spiritual/religious/philosophical beliefs. the other consisted of satisfaction with local security level and neighborhood/town/community. satisfaction with work, friends, family, and free choice and control over life did not load on any factors above .30. further investigation is needed to explain these patterns; however, there is no strong reason to expect shared variance. it is clear from these analyses that meaning in life and basic psychological needs are distinct from each other, and from the satisfaction items. 3.2.4 invariance of mlq-sf scores across gender to establish measurement invariance of the mlq-sf across gender, we conducted a series of multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (see byrne, shavelson, & muthén 1989; cheung & rensvold, 2002) on the dataset comparing male and female respondents using amos 17 (arbuckle, 2010). the first model tested consisted of the single-factor structure of the mlq-sf, as described above, allowing all parameters to vary across cultural groups. according to these indices, the two-factor model fit well across gender (cfi = .999, nnfi = .996, srmr = .00, rmsea = .03, 90%c.i. = .00–.06). with this level of weak, or configural, invariance, comparing correlations using the scale is tenable. we next tested the same model, but with factor loadings constrained to be equal across gender. the model fit was identical. finally, to establish strong, assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 189 also known as scalar, invariance, the regression intercepts were fixed across gender. this model also had excellent fit (cfi = .998, nnfi = 9.97, srmr = .00, rmsea = .03, 90% c.i. = .01–.05), demonstrating measurement equivalence across gender in this sample. 3.2.5 invariance of mlq-sf scores across age groups using the same procedure as described above, a series of analyses was conducted to determine the factorial invariance of the mlq-sf across age groups. the following age categories were created from the complete dataset: 18-29 years, 30-44 years, 45-59 years, and 60 years and older. when people with missing data were excluded, there were no individuals younger than 19 years old. thus, the de facto age groups were 19-29 years (n = 175), 30-44 years (n = 674), 45-59 years (n = 774), and 60 years and older (n = 374). with all parameters allowed to vary across age groups, the fit of the model was excellent (cfi = .998, nnfi = .994, srmr = .02, rmsea = .03, 90% c.i. = .01–.05). the fit was identical when factor loadings were fixed across age groups (cfi = .998, nnfi = .994, srmr = .02, rmsea = .03, 90% c.i. = .01-.05). finally, even with the regression intercepts fixed across age groups, the fit was still excellent (cfi = .993, nnfi = .994, srmr = .02, rmsea = .03, 90% c.i. = .02–.04). the mlq-sf appears to demonstrate measurement equivalence across age groups. thus, the mlq-sf shows the same desirable psychometric properties that the long form of the mlq does: internal consistency, structural validity, and measurement invariance across age and gender (kobau et al., 2010; steger & frazier, 2005; steger et al., 2006; steger, oishi, & kashdan, 2009). 3.3 descriptive statistics for the mlq-sf across the sample, mean scores on the mlq-sf were 9.64 (sd = 2.13), which corresponds to an average item rating of 3.21, or somewhat higher than ‚fairly true.‛ the average rating for item one (my life has a clear meaning or purpose) was 3.17, for item two (i have found a satisfactory meaning in life) the average rating was 3.14, and for item three (i have a clear sense of what gives meaning to my life), the average rating was 3.32. the total score for the mlq-sf was negatively skewed (skewness = -.677, seskewness = .055), as were each of the items (range of skewness = -.695 to -.898, range of seskewness = .054 to .055). the total score for the mlq-sf did not have significant kurtosis (kurtosis= .034, sekurtosis = .109), and neither did items one or two (range of kurtosis = -.109 to -.032, sekurtosis = .108 to .109), although item three did (kurtosis = .321, sekurtosis = .109). thus, respondents in general were typically of the opinion that their lives were meaningful, rather than meaningless. in fact, the positivity of endorsement raises some question of whether there was a ceiling effect on participants’ responses such that variance in response was constrained. the significantly skewed scores on each item bear this out. research using the typical 7-choice response anchors of the full mlq does not reveal a consistent pattern of skewness or kurtosis (e.g., steger et al., 2006), however, without additional research in other chilean samples, it is unclear whether adding more response options would ameliorate this tendency toward mlq-sf scores hitting a ceiling, or whether there is a naturally skewed distribution of the variable in real life, regardless of response options. 3.4 demographic factors and meaning in life the next set of analyses examined whether meaning in life scores varied by age, gender, or other demographic factors. there was a significant, negative correlation between age and mlqsf scores, although the magnitude of this relation was less than small (r = -.07, p < .01). women assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 190 reported significantly higher mlq-sf scores than men (t (1995) = 2.12, p < .05), although the magnitude of this difference was less than small (d = .09). although the omnibus f-test for differences among married, single, widowed, divorced, annulled, and cohabitating respondents was significant (f(6, 1990) = 5.56, p < .05), tukey’s b post hoc tests did not reveal any significant subsets of respondents, and widely differing numbers of respondents in each category (ranging from 2 to 1308) interfered with any conclusions that might be drawn from the omnibus test. thus, although there were significant relations with demographic factors, the effect sizes were less than small, suggesting that the influence of demographic factors was limited. 3.5 meaning in life and wellbeing after employing sample weights, correlation coefficients were calculated among meaning in life, the basic psychological needs, and the indicators of satisfaction. as can be seen in table 1, meaning in life, the three psychological needs, and overall life satisfaction were intercorrelated with medium to large effect sizes. the largest correlate of meaning in life was autonomy (r = .68). this finding was echoed in the correlations with domain satisfaction ratings (see table 2), where satisfaction with free choice and control over life was the strongest correlate of meaning in life (r =.44), with the rest of the correlations with domain satisfaction ranging from .20 to .39. the pattern of correlations indicated that eudaimonic variables were related more strongly with each other than they were with hedonic variables, and vice versa. table 1. correlations among meaning, psychological need satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction 1 2 3 4 1. meaning in life 2. relatedness .50 3. autonomy .68 .53 4. competence .53 .67 .60 5. life satisfaction .43 .34 .44 .40 note. all correlation coefficients are significant at p < .001 level. 4. discussion the wellbeing of nations is of abiding interest across diverse disciplines, spanning sociology, economics, and epidemiology on one end and psychology, medicine, and philosophy on the other end. increasingly sophisticated efforts are being made to model wellbeing for research and policy purposes (e.g., alkire & santos 2010; gallup, inc., 2007; kobau et al., 2010). although these new approaches are increasingly multidimensional, the inclusion of meaning in life in these efforts has been hampered by the lack of a solid measure with high utility. the present study builds on previous national-level research showing that the mlq-presence short form scale can be effectively used in large-scale research (kobau et al., 2010). we were able to show that the mlq-sf has a strong structure, that the factor structure was invariant across gender and age, that it is factorially distinct from psychological need satisfaction and life and domain satisfaction, and that meaning in life is positively associated with other components of wellbeing, in a previously unexplored national context. we believe that this is an important first step in deploying the mlq-sf in national and cross-national studies of health and wellbeing. assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 191 table 2. correlations between meaning in life and domain life satisfaction note. all correlation coefficients are significant at p < .001 level. as an ancillary finding, psychometric evidence for the brief measure of psychological need satisfaction also appears encouraging, at least at the level of internal consistency reliability and exploratory factor analysis. the three putative subscales formed distinct factors with high internal loadings and low cross-loadings. finally, taken as a whole, factor analyses and the pattern of correlations among measures supported the theoretical notion that hedonic and eudaimonic notions of wellbeing are distinct yet related. it also could be that linguistic similarities in the way that the satisfaction items were composed increased their intercorrelation. this does not explain why the eudaimonic variables were more highly related to each other than they were to the hedonic variables, but it could partly explain why the satisfaction items formed additional factors in the exploratory factor analysis. more research is of course needed. among the most pressing issues is that the kind of multidimensional data presented here, using psychometrically robust measures of psychological wellbeing, are not available in other countries. this limits any conclusions drawn from these data to a chilean context. there are fairly well-established national variations in some wellbeing indicators (e.g., life satisfaction ratings, diener, diener, & diener, 1995), and it is important to establish whether these variations obtain for the range of indicators in the present module. future research also should begin providing information about relationships among the psychological wellbeing components and outcomes of interest, such as health, mortality, education, income poverty, and other socioeconomic factors. in addition, future research should gauge whether each psychological component makes a unique contribution to these outcomes, or whether specific outcomes are best predicted by particular components. the present study begins the task of internationally validating to an easily implementable tool for measuring meaning in life. it strongly suggests that mlq-sf may be an appropriate tool for this purpose and places meaning in life among other important indicators of wellbeing. authors michael f. steger colorado state university michael.f.steger@colostate.edu meaning in life housing .30 income .28 health .30 work .30 local security level .20 friends .31 family .34 education .30 free choice and control over life .44 dignity .39 neighborhood/town/community .27 ability to help others .35 spiritual/religious/philosophical beliefs .34 assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 192 emma samman overseas development institute publishing timeline received 8 february 2012 accepted 28 april 2012 published 29 august 2012 references alkire, s. 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(2009). meaning in life across the life span: levels and correlates of meaning in life from emerging adulthood to older adulthood. journal of positive psychology, 4, 4352. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760802303127 waterman, a. s. (1993). two conceptions of happiness: contrasts of personal expressiveness (eudaimonia) and hedonic enjoyment. journal of personality and social psychology, 64, 678-691. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678 zika, s., & chamberlain, k. (1992). on the relation between meaning in life and psychological well-being. british journal of psychology, 83, 133-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1992.tb02429.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.52.4.574 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.09.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-006-9011-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2009.02.006 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760802303127 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1992.tb02429.x assessing meaning in life on an international scale steger & samman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 195 appendix the meaning in life questionnaire-short form, presence subscale—spanish version mv3 (sentido en la vida). por favor tómese unos minutos para pensar en las cosas que hacen que su vida sea importante. ¿qué tan ciertas son para usted las siguientes afirmaciones? mostrar tarjeta 6 para nada cierta algo cierta bastante cierta completa mente cierta no sabe/ no responde a. mi vida tiene un claro sentido o propósito. 1 2 3 4 99 b. he descubierto un sentido satisfactorio de la vida. 1 2 3 4 99 c. tengo una clara idea de lo que le da sentido a mi vida. 1 2 3 4 99 the meaning in life questionnaire-short form, presence subscale (translated from spanish) 1. my life has a clear meaning or purpose 2. i have discovered a satisfactory meaning in life. 3. i have a clear sense of what gives meaning to my life. the meaning in life questionnaire-short form, both presence and search subscales (original english version) 1. i am always looking to find my life’s purpose. (search) 2. my life has a clear sense of purpose. (presence) 3. i have discovered a satisfying life purpose. (presence) 4. i have a clear sense of what makes my life meaningful. (presence) 5. i am seeking a purpose or mission for my life. (search) 6. i am searching for meaning in my life. (search) © michael f. steger, 2009. this questionnaire is free for use in any research or educational capacity. its use in commercial activity is prohibited without prior consent from the copyright-holder, michael steger. kono, s., & walker, g. (2020). theorizing the interpersonal aspect of ikigai ‘(life worth living’) among japanese university students: a mixed-methods approach. international journal of wellbeing, 10(2), 101-123. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.979 shintaro kono university of alberta skono@ualberta.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) 101 theorizing the interpersonal aspect of ikigai (‘life worth living’) among japanese university students: a mixedmethods approach shintaro kono · gordon walker abstract: wellbeing literature has greatly benefited from cross-cultural and non-western research. however, most studies have been guided by western, english constructs such as “happiness.” thus, a large amount of non-western, non-english words related to wellbeing remain unstudied, leaving a crucial gap in our knowledge on wellbeing. to address this gap, we conducted a mixed-methods project to develop a theory of how japanese university students experience ikigai (‘life worth living’), and particularly its interpersonal aspect. first, we deployed a qualitative approach, in which photoelicitation interviews were conducted with 27 japanese university students, with the data analyzed using grounded theory. our results suggested that students’ ikigai was strongly influenced by ibasho (‘authentic relationship’). in such relationships, students felt that they could be true to who they were (i.e., be self-authentic), and that their close others sincerely cared about them without considering personal gains (i.e., they experienced genuine care). these perceptions were fostered and maintained by two types of interactions: experiencing together; and communicating experiences. the former involved directly engaging in personally valued experiences with close others, while the latter meant keeping close others updated about their important experiences and obtaining support from them to further pursue such experiences. these interactions were conditioned by echoed values (a state where people and close others understand and respect each other’s personal values), and trust (the belief that they do not violate each other’s privacy and do offer support when needed). this theory guided a second quantitative study which analyzed online survey data from 672 japanese students by using partial least squares structural equation modeling. our results suggested that our new measures for the constructs were valid and reliable, and that the hypothesized relationships among them are significant. our findings are discussed in relation to both japanese ikigai literature and western wellbeing research. keywords: culture, grounded theory, ikigai, mixed-methods, structural equation modeling, subjective wellbeing introduction subjective wellbeing (swb) has been studied across cultures (e.g., knoop & delle fave, 2013; uchida & ogihara, 2012). an extensive amount of western (mostly anglophone) research has established, for example, the operationalization of swb as comprising a cognitive appraisal of life satisfaction together with a salutary balance of positive and negative affect (pavot & diener, 2013). article http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 102 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org western-oriented research has also identified many socio-demographic correlates of swb, such as marital status and income (pavot & diener, 2013). by contrast, non-western and cross-cultural research has shown that the very meaning of “wellbeing” differs across nations (e.g., delle fave, brdar, freire, vella-brodrick, & wissing, 2011; uchida & ogihara, 2012). moreover, even the same predictor of swb (e.g., social support) can have different impacts across cultures (uchida, kitayama, mesquita, reyes, & morling, 2008). however, although these non-western/cross-cultural studies have made substantial contributions to our understanding of wellbeing, many have been guided by western (and often english) terms, such as “happiness” and “quality of life” (e.g., knoop & delle fave, 2013; uchida et al., 2008). consequently, there is a dearth of knowledge about non-western wellbeing-related concepts (lahti, 2019; lomas, 2016). one such culturally unique terms is ikigai in japanese, which roughly translates as “purpose in life” (kamiya, 1966) or “life worth living” (mathews, 1996). recently, ikigai has been associated with meaning in life (martela & steger, 2016) and more broadly eudaimonic wellbeing (kumano, 2018). in the following quotation, christopher peterson (2008) succinctly summarizes the potentiality of ikigai research: “ikigai is a good reminder to positive psychologists in the united states that our science should not simply be an export business. … no language has a monopoly on the vocabulary for describing the good life” (para 3). despite its potential, the ikigai literature remains limited. for instance, after conducting a systematic review of 144 articles, hasegawa, fujiwara, and hoshi (2015) concluded that studies adopted inconsistent and often unclear definitions and measurements of ikigai, and moreover underutilized qualitative methods. another review by kumano (2015, as cited in kumano, 2018) pinpointed the lack of english articles on ikigai. it is important to clearly conceptualize and measure ikigai, while also using various methods and communicate the results with non-japanese audiences. the purpose of the current project was, therefore, to develop a theory of how people pursue ikigai within the japanese university student context. specifically, we focused on understanding people’s subjective perception of having ikigai, and the factors related to it, rather than the metaphysical issue of whether one believes life in general has worth, which is consistent with recent discussions on meaning in life (martela & steger, 2016). to achieve ou purpose, we employed a mixed-methods design, specifically combining grounded theory (corbin & strauss, 2015) and structural equation modelling (sem; hair, hult, ringle, & sarstedt, 2017). this particular manuscript focuses on the interpersonal aspect of ikigai. literature review ikigai and interpersonal factors in terms of its etymology, kanda (2011) found that ikigai did not register any mainstream japanese dictionary until 1908. kanda also observed that once it became part of the modern vocabulary, ikigai has been used to mean the worth/effect of life, and/or subjective feelings that life is fulfilling. kanda (2013) further traced back the origin of ikigai to “ikiru-kahi,” which was used at least since the heian era (b.c. 747 to 1192). kanda’s (2013) review of classical literature also suggested that the original meaning of ikiru-kahi was the gratitude for being alive as something fortunate that happens(ed), especially among ordinary (non-aristocrat/samurai) people. in that sense, ikiru refers to “live” or “be alive,” whereas kahi or kai refers to “worth” or “effect.” ikigai research was pioneered by kamiya (1966), a psychiatrist. comparing it to shiawase, another japanese word for happiness, she maintained that ikigai more closely relates to people’s interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 103 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org sense of self and personal values, which may reflect their interpersonal relationships. kamiya also theorized that to feel ikigai, individuals have to satisfy the need for hankyo (resonance). this need is satiated, according to her, by having meaningful interpersonal relationships, and more deeply by loving and dedicating oneself to others. more recently, kumano (2012) conducted a series of psychological studies on ikigai that included interpersonal factors. in her survey of 1,171 college students and adults, acceptance from and interaction with others were positively correlated with ikigai feelings, while rejection from others was either negatively related or unrelated to these. kumano also observed that the effect of these interpersonal factors on ikigai was smaller among students (r2 = .45) than among middle-aged and older adults (r2 = .62 and .65, respectively). accordingly, she speculated that students’ ikigai may be more individualistic. another survey of college students, however, showed a different picture: when regressed together, interpersonal life events were more strongly associated with two sub-domains of ikigai—meaning in life and existential value—than their personal counterparts. similarly, among older adults, there is evidence that perceived social support positively predicts ikigai feelings (aoki, 2015). relatedly, kumano (2018) content-analyzed qualitative data on lay views of differences between ikigai and shiawase, and found that interpersonal relationships—especially doing something for others—were more associated with the former (10.5%) than the latter (4.4%). ikigai has also been studied from disciplinary perspectives. for instance, mathews (1996) conducted ethnographic multi-wave interviews with japanese and americans and discovered two distinct mechanisms to experience ikigai. in collectivistic cultures like japan, commitment to groups (e.g., family, colleagues) was normative, while in more individualistic cultures like the u.s., selfrealization was predominant. from a sociological perspective, takahashi (2001) argued the type of relationships that pertain to ikigai may differ across cultures. meaningful relationships in the west, takahashi observed, tend to involve equal independent selves, whereas in japan meaningful relationships are more often formed around a group (e.g., family) and interdependent selves (e.g., students who are dependent on their parents). takahashi also speculated that as japanese society globalizes and people adopt more individualistic values, their ikigai experiences may also shift in emphasis from group commitment to self-realization. subjective wellbeing and interpersonal factors the extant research on swb, especially eudaimonic wellbeing, has also recognized social aspects of wellbeing (huta & waterman, 2014). for example, ryff’s (2014) concept of psychological wellbeing includes the sub-dimension of positive relations, including having “warm, satisfying, trusting relationships” and being “concerned about the welfare of others” (p. 12). keyes’s (1998) definition of social wellbeing involves five facets: social integration (i.e., being part of society); social acceptance (i.e., perceiving others as kind and industrious); social contribution (i.e., one’s ability to contribute to society); social actualization (i.e., one’s belief that society is improving); and social coherence (i.e., making sense of societal events). in his perma model, seligman (2011) underscored the importance of positive relationships, and particularly people’s perception of having others in their lives who genuinely care about them. then, in addition to identifying interpersonal elements in the wellbeing state itself, other research has identified interpersonal factors that predict personal wellbeing. perceived social support. one of the most studied interpersonal predictors of wellbeing is perceived social support, defined as “people’s subjective judgments about the availability of help interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 104 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org from friends and family during times of need” (lakey, 2013, p. 847). lakey’s review found a positive correlation (r = .20 to .40) between perceived social support and swb. interestingly, it is perceived support, rather than enacted support per se, that more closely relates to wellbeing (e.g., lakey & cohen, 2000). a common explanation is the buffering thesis, namely that the more social support people perceive, the less stress they feel (lakey, 2013). however, this interpretation has not been well supported empirically (e.g., lakey & cronin, 2008), perhaps because coping is essentially “remedying negativity,” which is related to, yet distinct from, enhancing wellbeing. lakey and orehek (2011) proposed an alternative theory focused on positive affect, called relational regulation theory. this theory holds that “people regulate their happiness through ordinary, yet affectively consequential conversation and shared activities” (lakey, 2013, p. 853). there is emerging evidence that the relationship between perceived support and positive affect is mediated by ordinary conversations and shared activities (e.g., lakey, vander molen, fles, & andrews, 2016). feeney and collins (2015) also posited that social support allows individuals to not only cope with life adversities, but also pursue goals through life opportunities. having said this, uchida et al. (2008) showed that although the association between perceived support and swb became non-significant among americans when the effect of self-esteem was controlled for, it remained significant and positive among japanese people. thus, social support may be more relevant to wellbeing in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures. capitalization. another oft-cited, interpersonal predictor is capitalization, i.e., the process through which people share their positive life events with others (gable & reis, 2010). capitalization positively correlates with swb (gable, reis, impett, & asher, 2004), a relationship which remains significant even after taking into account the effect of positive life events themselves (gable & reis, 2010). the effectiveness of capitalization depends on the response from the person with whom one shared positive news (gable & reis, 2010). active and constructive feedback (e.g., asking details about good news) increases wellbeing, while passive (e.g., indifference) or destructive (e.g., seeing negative sides of a positive) feedback does not. people tend to capitalize with close others, such as partners, friends, siblings, and parents (gable et al., 2004). life events that one considers as more valuable tend to be capitalized more than other events (gable et al., 2004). interestingly, capitalizing behaviors also vary across cultures: people from collectivistic cultures are less likely to capitalize due to concern about negative influences on their relationships (e.g., jealousy) (choi, oishi, shin, & suh, 2019). self-determination theory. self-determination theory (sdt) researchers have long argued that the need for interpersonal relatedness—the feeling of being connected, understood, and loved—is an essential ingredient of wellbeing (ryan, huta, & deci, 2008). satisfaction of the relatedness need correlates with life satisfaction (e.g., sheldon & niemiec, 2006) and meaning in life (martela, ryan, & steger, 2018). in their comprehensive review, baumeister and leary (1995) hypothesized that the need can be fulfilled when individuals have: (a) positive frequent interaction with others, and (b) stable, caring relationships. the need for relatedness, and its implication for wellbeing, may be universal, with sheldon, elliot, kim, and kasser (2001), for example, finding that american and south korean students rank it as their second-most and most important need respectively. another interpersonal concept within sdt is authenticity, namely the state/trait of being selfauthored (i.e., acting in a self-endorsed manner) and being genuine (i.e., behaving in accord with who one thinks one really is) (ryan & ryan, 2019). the self-authorship part means that people can be authentic even when behaving according to social norms and expectations, as long as they interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 105 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org personally endorse the value of the act. hence, authenticity can be nurtured by autonomysupportive environments (ryan & ryan, 2019), which are characterized by types of interaction such as attentive listening, perspective taking, and emotional expressions (reeve, 2006). the genuineness part suggests that adaptive self-concealment—strategically hiding parts of one’s identity to avoid potential conflicts—takes a toll on wellbeing (ryan & ryan, 2019). overall, the more authentic individuals are, the greater wellbeing they report (e.g., lakey, kernis, heppner, & lance, 2008) even across different cultures (lynch, la guardia, & ryan, 2009). in summary, our review suggests that ikigai is influenced by various interpersonal factors (e.g., kamiya, 1966; kumano, 2012; mathews, 1996). however, the literature remains inconsistent as to what exactly such predictors are, ranging from acceptance and support from others (aoki, 2015; kumano, 2012), to altruism (kamiya, 1966; kumano, 2018) and commitment to a group (mathews, 1996; takahashi, 2001). also debated is the extent to which these interpersonal factors are relevant to ikigai within the current study’s population: young adults and students (kumano, 2012; takahashi, 2001). the extensive swb literature adds that wellbeing as an outcome can also involve interpersonal elements (huta & waterman, 2014). it also identifies interpersonal predictors of wellbeing, such as social support (lakey, 2013), capitalization (gable & reis, 2010), and relatedness need (baumeister & leary, 1995). however, the lack of non-western insights may leave important gaps in our understanding of wellbeing (e.g., choi et al., 2019; uchida et al., 2008). here, we echo the existing criticism that positive psychology and wellbeing studies have been, to an extent, eurocentric, uncritically accepting western concepts and assumptions (e.g., christopher & hickinbottom, 2008), which may have been facilitated by the un-critical use of english words. thus, the current study could contribute to both lines of research on ikigai and swb. qualitative method although our method has been described elsewhere (kono & walker, 2020), we outline some of the key characteristics below. sampling and sample the current project focused on japanese university students. this decision was made because, besides their accessibility, past studies have identified young adults as being relatively deprived of ikigai (kumano, 2012). we conducted our sampling at a large-size private university in the kanto region of japan in 2015. our inclusion criteria were that students had to be japanese natives and must have used a smartphone for one year or longer, with the latter a necessary condition of our photo-elicitation interview (pei) method (described below). at first, we adopted maximum variation sampling to enhance generalizability (patton, 2015), targeting students of varying sex, age, and academic backgrounds. our later sampling process was guided by theoretical sampling, specifically recruiting participants who can provide information that advances our emerging theory (corbin & strauss, 2015). in our case, for example, we invited students who were in romantic relationships. we ceased our data collection when the concurrent analysis indicated that our sample and theory was “saturated,” in that new data did not substantially change the theory (corbin & strauss, 2015). a total of 27 peis were conducted. the students’ average age was 20.26 years, and 14 were females. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 106 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org data collection our data collection method involved participant-driven peis (tinkler, 2013). first, students interested in the study were asked to sign a consent form and to fill a short questionnaire about their ikigai level and demographic characteristics. second, those who met the maximum variation or theoretical sampling criteria were given several days to: choose a maximum of 10 photographs in their smartphone which they thought were associated with their ikigai, make a title for each picture, and describe their pictures (e.g., location, time). this photo-selection encouraged students to reflect on their perspectives on and experiences of ikigai. third, these pictures were printed out and used in the subsequent semi-structured interview (with the first author, in japanese). the average interview length was 106 minutes. our main interview questions included: “what in this photograph makes you feel ikigai?”; “with whom do you usually feel ikigai in your everyday life?”; and “what does ikigai mean to you?” some questions, like the second example, could potentially have primed participants to discuss interpersonal issues, which may have resulted in our finding of ibasho. the participants were also asked to group and rank their ikigai photographs to further explore the meanings behind them (tinkler, 2013). all interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed within several days in japanese by the first author and professional transcribers. this immediate transcription made it possible to simultaneously analyze the data, which is crucial in grounded theory (corbin & strauss, 2015). a total of 1,293 pages of transcripts were collected. we offered each participant 3,000 jpy. data analysis our data analysis also closely followed corbin and strauss’s (2015) grounded theory procedure, with the support of nvivo 10. as soon as the transcripts were ready, the first author read them multiple times and corresponding research journals, and coded them in english. first, open coding was applied to natural breaks within the texts to examine different possible meanings of the excerpts (corbin & strauss, 2015). as codes accumulated and the coding schemata became clearer, axial coding was conducted by inspecting the data around emerging categories and generating codes that linked the categories (corbin & strauss, 2015). also employed was what corbin and strauss called “paradigm”: an analytical technique to understand what agents (in our case, students) did and what were the conditions for and consequences of their actions and interactions. to mitigate the risk of losing theoretically important nuances unique to the original language, in-vivo coding was also adopted by turning japanese words or phrases into codes. the above analysis process was also accompanied by memo writing, where the authors’ assumptions were critically challenged and the meanings of and relationships among categories were elaborated on (corbin & strauss, 2015). in these memos, different cases (students) were constantly compared with one another to identify common patterns and boundaries of such patterns (corbin & strauss, 2015). also created were diagrams, or visual representations of an emerging theory (corbin & strauss, 2015). diagramming aided in clarifying the relationships among emerging categories, identifying the core categories, and finding gaps in the theory. a total of 496 codes and 136 memos were created. after selective coding, including sorting the memos and writing summary memos (corbin & strauss, 2015), three core categories were established, along with three interrelated substantive theories: (a) valued experience, (b) life directionality, and (c) ibasho (authentic relationship). the current manuscript focuses on the third theory. except for the first paragraph of the results on valued experience, none of the other themes has been reported previously. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 107 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org trustworthiness first, as a form of expert debriefing (patton, 2015), the second author monitored randomly selected memos throughout this qualitative study. he ensured that the first author’s interpretations and logic were sound, while also comparing emerging categories with constructs in the relevant literature, which facilitated theorization (corbin & strauss, 2015). second, to enhance transparency, some of the memos were shared on the first author’s website (https://www.shintarokono.com/). third, member-checking was also implemented by asking the interviewees to review our initial findings almost a year later. of the 27 participants, 12 agreed to do so. they read brief descriptions of our overall theory and the core categories. they also completed a questionnaire to gauge what level of ikigai they would feel if they engaged in theoretically ibasho-inducing interactions (quantitative data), and to give advice for a hypothetical friend who faced difficulty in achieving ibasho (qualitative data). the former quantitative data indicated that the ibasho-inducing interactions generate high levels of ikigai (8 or higher on a scale of 0 to 10), and the latter qualitative data were added to our analyses. this qualitative study was approved by the research ethics boards at the university of alberta, canada (pro00056332) and tokai university, japan (15046). qualitative results our overall analysis indicated that central to japanese university students’ ikigai was keiken, i.e., personally valued experience (kono & walker, 2020). four distinct types of experience were of particular importance, namely ones that are: enjoyable (i.e., intrinsically attractive experiences, e.g., attending music events); effortful (i.e., challenging experiences that require persistence, like academic studies); stimulating (i.e., new experiences that sometimes alter one’s points of view, such as traveling); and comforting (i.e., ordinary experiences that give emotional relief, for example playing with pets). having a variety of valued experience made students perceive that their lives were worth living. in addition to these individual factors, our data clearly indicated that close others in students’ lives, and their interpersonal relationships with them, also played key roles in enhancing students’ ikigai. our interviewees called these ikigai-related relationships ibasho, or “the place to be.” for instance, id3-female associated several pictures of hers with this concept: [ibasho] is the place where you feel that the version of you in that place was appreciated. like, varsity teammates and coach, my [boss] and colleagues at my parttime job … the teachers who took care of me say, “this is the place where you belong.” i guess it’s the place where you feel secure. as further described below, we identified two factors that distinguished the interpersonal relationship students called ibasho from other relationships: self-authenticity and genuine care. as to the former, students perceived that, at least in their mind, they could be who they thought they really were in their ibasho relationships. with regard to the latter, students felt that their close others in these relationships truly cared for them, without consideration of personal gains. we found what is common between these two factors is the perception of “trueness” or authenticity—one about their sense of self and the other about the caring attitudes of others. therefore, we conceptualized ibasho as authentic relationship. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 108 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the consequences of ibasho self-authenticity. when students developed ibasho, they perceived that they could be true to who they really were in their close relationships. we call this self-authenticity. the feeling was often described with the japanese word su (“plain”). for example, id26-female’s photograph of her and her high-school varsity teammates getting face-painted and having fun represented how “plain” she could be with these friends: [with the high-school friends] i am, like, more “plain.” and i say things, without being so worried about [what they think]. when i’m with these [other college friends], i often think of various things, including “what would happen if i say this,” before actually saying it. id18-female, a first-year sport management student, already found herself being true to who she was—a baseball fanatic: “everyone [in the academic program] likes sports, so … they connect us. … here it feels easier to hang out with other students. … since i came here, i can show my ‘plain’ side, so it makes things easy.” id24-male characterized his relationship with his girlfriend as “carefree”: we say whatever we want to say. for instance, in extreme cases, we may say, “you look ugly” or “that’s disgusting.” we say things that normal couples would not say to each other. … we aren’t concerned about each other[’s judgment]. … the time and space shared with her feels so natural. genuine care. the other feeling that accompanied ibasho was what we call genuine care or the perception that students’ close others truly cared about them without consideration of personal gain. for example, id17-female included a picture of her high-school homeroom teacher because he sincerely cared about her and was like “family” to her. she noticed this during her college admission: [from my high school] only 10 students could enter [my college program]. and i was 11th. who was most upset? my teacher. (laughter) … when i got admitted, my teacher burst into tears and looked so happy. … i realized that he really cared about me. id12-female ranked her family photograph as the most important factor for her ikigai, because simply being with them made her feel supported, cared for, and “warm”: “when things didn’t go well with friends or i couldn’t [play music well] on the varsity [brass band] team, i really wanted to go home. … my home feels warm or hmm… they accept me.” there were some cases in which others cared about students to the extent where they almost seemed inauthentic. for example, id11-male recalled his interaction with his girlfriend: “there was the time when i was still doing job-hunting. i told her, ‘i got rejected …’ but, she was like, ‘it’s alright. the company that doesn’t hire you is … no good’ … i was like, ‘ah, so kind.’” assuming that these remarks did not truly represent his girlfriend’s assessment of the company and that id11-male did not believe in their authenticity, what was genuine here was the girlfriend’s empathy for him. thus, although self-authenticity and genuine care are interrelated, they are distinct constructs. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 109 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the ibasho interactions to develop and maintain authentic relationships, our informants engaged in two distinct types of interaction with their close others: (a) experiencing together, and (b) communicating experiences. experiencing together. our interviewees valued their interactions with their close others through their communal valued experiences (i.e., keiken). we term this “experiencing together.” keiken reflected students’ personal values, and thus doing keiken together was an experiential process of learning each other’s values. doing so brought students and others closer. experiencing together was most salient in the context of enjoyment and effort. an example of communal enjoyable experiences was id20-female’s picture of her and her best college friends taken at the end of their get-together. she chose this particular picture because they “scribbled” messages that directly signaled their closeness: “we scheduled to go to [a neighboring city] to play bowling, and this picture was taken after having so much fun … they wrote ‘love you all!’ without any hesitation. that made me so happy.” id18-female included a picture taken from a recent barbeque party hosted by a student group she just had joined. the cheerful and social atmosphere at this event allowed her to meet “different senior [members]” and realize “they were kinder and funnier than [she] expected,” which brought them closer. when effortful experiences were shared with close others, interactions added elements of competition, encouragement, and communal achievements and growth. an example of this was id4-male’s high-school varsity experience: “there were many problems [in the team], but we overcame them together. … i can still tell anything [to them].” similarly, id6-female’s experience of being academically challenged during a study abroad program resulted in her close friendship with other participants: it was really tough. but, we helped each other and divided assignments among us. … there was no morning, day, or night. we spent every minute together … if i am in trouble and tell them “i am having this issue,” they will make some action for me. communicating experiences. the other form of ibasho-producing interaction was communicating the information about their keiken with close others who were not directly involved in these experiences. we call this “communicating experiences.” in some cases, students simply updated close others about the progresses and consequences of their valued experiences. doing so was an effective way to maintain their relationships, as keiken represented the parts of their everyday lives they viewed as valuable and noteworthy. for instance, id15-male communicated his success as a part-time bridal photographer with his family: in [an album for bloom and bride], there was one of my pictures. that made me soooooo happy. as soon as i got home, i called my parents to tell, “hey, [my photograph] was used!” … they got really excited, too. … that made me happy. describing their updating behaviors, many interviewees used the term guchi (“complaints”), which connotes complaining about issues that one cannot resolve. this was the case for a recent conversation between id8-male and his high-school best friend. the point of guchi was not to get help, but rather to inform close others of their major experiences and to make sure that their relationships were still strong: interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 110 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org it’s like updating about recent things … when i am in trouble, … i just go talk to [my high-school best friend]. well, he doesn’t tell me anything [particular to do], but he listens to me. … he really knows bad sides of me. (laughter) … so, i feel that i really still need him. there were also cases where students had clear intentions to obtain support, either emotionally or materially, especially in the face of challenging experiences and/or short-term setbacks. people whom students viewed as their ibasho were particularly rich sources of support, not only because they genuinely cared about the students, but also because they could provide critical feedback when necessary, due to the self-authentic nature of their relationships. this was the case for id12-female’s interaction with her high-school best friend: [my high-school best friend] knows me more than anyone. … for example, when i go talk to others, people around me are like, “it’ll be alright.” … but, she is the only one who honestly says things like, “you are wrong here, [id12-female].” the conditions for ibasho echoed values. the above interactions between students and their close others revolved around students’ keiken that represented their personal values. hence, these interactions were preceded by moments when students and others revealed their values to each other and respected them. we call this “echoed values.” for instance, id6-female became close to her study buddies when they realized they all valued making efforts vis-à-vis academic experiences: people around me are not the type of students who, for example, study hard in a library until late night, … but, i want to … increase my score in [an english exam], and study abroad. … when i told [my study buddies] that …, they totally agreed with it. that made us much closer to each other. id20-female described similar phases of learning about each other with her college friends through enjoyable conversations: so, every time i got a new friend, we had lunch together on the roof. … over lunch, we talked about what we liked, and we dug up each other’s favorite things and things we were interested in. and we got really close to each other. trust. another important condition for experiencing together and communicating experiences was trust between students and their close others. this was because often keiken involved private issues for students (e.g., personal failures), and sharing it—directly or indirectly—required the belief that others would not violate their privacy and would offer necessary support. id14-female, for example, consulted her old friends when issues arose in relation to her valued experiences: “when it comes to deep talks, i really feel that my local friends are different. i guess i can’t trust [my college friends]. … the length of our friendships is different [from college friendships].” this quotation indicated that trust might be nurtured over an extended period of time. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 111 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org there were also some cases where students faced difficulties with their future close others, which led to the rapid formation of rapport between them. for instance, id8-male failed a college entrance exam and had to spend a year preparing for the following year. he called this time “the rockbottom,” but cherished his relationship with his friends who went to the same preparatory school: “i counted on them very much. … toward the end, my [score] was bad … but they didn’t care about those things, and talked to me. well, how to put it, they get me, you know?” in summary, our grounded theory of ibasho explains how students develop authentic relationship, which is an integral part of their ikigai (life worth living). the theory suggests that having authentic relationship is characterized by two distinct types of subjective perceptions: selfauthenticity and genuine care. authentic relationship was often developed and maintained through two modes of interaction: experiencing together, and communicating experiences. lastly, these interactions were conditioned by echoed values and trust. these constructs and relationships are summarized in figure 1, which served as the theoretical model for the second quantitative study. figure 1. a grounded theoretical model of ibasho (authentic relationship). all relationships are hypothesized to be positive. quantitative method to test the generalizability of the ibasho theory, quantitative data from a larger sample of japanese university students were collected by using a cross-sectional online survey. the data were analyzed through partial least squares sem (pls-sem), since it suits an exploratory stage of theory building, accommodates different types of measurement models, and includes more variables and relationships than its covariance-based counterpart (hair et al., 2017; sarstedt, hair, ringle, thiele, & gudergan, 2016). this quantitative study was approved by the university of alberta’s research ethics board (pro00066212). interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 112 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org sampling as described elsewhere (kono & walker, 2020), we used a japanese online survey company to collect data from its university student panelists living across the country. in august 2016, we randomly invited student panelists via email to answer screening questions in order to ensure that they: had japanese nationality; spoke japanese as their native language; and attended a four-year university/college in japan. a total of 4,328 panelists satisfied these criteria. of them, 2,921 were randomly invited to our main survey, considering our target sample size of 650 and given that a potentially low response rate is common in online surveys (manfreda, bosnjak, berzelak, haas, & vehnovar, 2008). this target sample size was determined by adding some extra cases to 602, which was calculated a-priori based on a larger model by using g*power (linear multiple regression, small effect f2 = .02, α of .05, statistical power of .80, and four predictors per endogenous variable). this stage of sampling was also stratified in that we targeted almost the same numbers of members from gender groups and academic-year groups. our final sample size was 674, which made our response rate 23.1%. participants were compensated with gift points worth a few hundred jpy. instruments to precisely measure the constructs in our ibasho theory, new measures were developed. we employed different measurement models for the constructs: namely, the reflective model for selfauthenticity, genuine care, echoed values, and trust; and the formative model for experiencing together and communicating experiences. the reflective model is commonly adopted in social science studies and assumes that a common factor causes equal covariances across indicators (hair et al., 2017; mackenzie, podsakoff, & podsakoff, 2011). conversely, in the formative model, a set of indicators can represent distinct (and sometimes uncorrelated) aspects of a construct, which are then linearly combined and define the meaning of the latent variable (hair et al., 2017; mackenzie et al., 2011). we applied the formative model to the two types of ibasho interactions because our qualitative study identified some sub-dimensions of these constructs (e.g., enjoyment vs. effort in experiencing together) that do not necessarily have a single, underlying cause (hair et al., 2017; jarvis, mackenzie, & podsakoff, 2003). in other words, the fact that a student enjoys time with close others does not always mean she also engages in effortful experiences with them. the use of the reflective model would make such an assumption. we also developed items for keiken (valued experience) as a control, as the existing research on interpersonal predictors of swb controls for the effects of positive life events (gable & reis, 2010). as valued experience consists of the four sub-dimensions (e.g., enjoyment, effort), its measure followed the formative model too. the different types of measurement model led to somewhat diverging item development procedures (mackenzie et al., 2011). for both types, an initial pool of items was constructed based on the qualitative study. the second author and another japanese researcher commented on these items, which resulted in identifying potential items and refining them. we then had eight researchers who have published in the area of ikigai and/or japanese wellbeing expert-review our items. using a 5-point scale, the experts assessed how accurately each of the reflective items represented the definition of the corresponding construct, as well as how distinct it was from the other constructs, that is, convergent and discriminant validities (dunn, bouffard, & rogers, 1999). they evaluated the formative measures, using the same scale, as to how well each item reflected the target construct’s definition and how comprehensive a set of items was, with the latter being content validity (mackenzie et al., 2011). based on these numerical data, we computed aiken’s validity coefficients interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 113 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org (dunn et al., 1999). we revised a few items with low, non-significant values, while using the experts’ comments as a guide. echoed values and trust did not go through this expert review process as we were afraid of “expert fatigue,” due to there being too many variables to be reviewed (benoit & wiesehomeier, 2009). lastly, all items were piloted with a small sample of japanese students (n = 14) to identify any clarity issues. a list of the final items is presented in table 1. all new items were administered using a 5-point likert-type scale. except for the valued experience items used in konno and walker (2020), none of the other items has been used elsewhere. table 1 validity and reliability of the ibasho measures variable item α/ρa ave loadings weights vif redundancy analysis (r2) experiencing togetherf n/a n/a .49 et1: i have enjoyed my experiences more when they were shared with my close others. .91*** .43*** 2.49 et2: with my close others, i have enjoyed pretty much anything. .86*** .33*** 2.06 et3: with my close others, i have gone through very difficult experiences. .81*** .23*** 2.22 et4: i have made more efforts than usual when i faced a challenge with my close others. .83*** 16** 2.63 *recently, i have experienced valuable things with my close others. communicating experiencesf n/a n/a .55 se1: i have talked to my close others about my recent experiences. .87*** .29*** 2.41 se2: i have shared my recent experiences with my close others. .91*** .46*** 2.29 se3: i have turned to my close others for material or emotional support when i faced a problem in my recent experiences. .84*** .30*** 2.24 se4: i have asked my close others for advice about my recent experiences. .76*** .11 2.11 *i have been connected to my close others through interactions related to my recent experiences. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 114 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org selfauthenticityr .83/.84 .75 n/a sa1: in my close relationships, i feel that close others and i can say what we really want to say to each other. .88*** .39*** 2.12 sa2: in my close relationships, i feel that close others and i can show bad sides of ourselves. .84*** .37*** 1.74 sa3: in my close relationships, i feel that close others and i can be who we really are. .88*** .40*** 2.04 genuine carer .82/.83 .74 n/a gc1: in my close relationships, i feel that close others and i give heartwarming words to each other. .87*** .41*** 1.89 gc2: in my close relationships, i feel that close others and i care about each other from the bottom of our hearts. .88*** .40*** 1.99 gc3: in my close relationships, i feel that close others and i do what we can do for each other without thinking about personal gains. .83*** .36*** 1.73 echoed valuesr .74/.75 .80 n/a ev1: my close others and i share find value in similar experiences. .88*** .54*** 1.54 ev2: my close others and i have similar value systems around what is important in our daily lives. .90*** .58*** 1.54 trustr .80/.80 .83 n/a tr1: i trust my close others so that i can talk about private issues. .91*** .54*** 1.81 tr2: i believe that my close others will help me when i am in trouble. .92*** .56*** 1.81 valued experiencef n/a n/a .61 ve1: i have enjoyed my recent experiences. .81*** .17 2.40 ve2: i have felt joy in my recent experiences. .85*** .31*** 2.37 ve3: recently, i have been engaged in experiences that required me to make efforts. .56*** .15* 1.72 interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 115 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org ve4: i have striven in my recent experiences. .70*** .15 2.18 ve5: recently, i have participated in stimulating experiences. .73*** .15* 2.19 ve6: recently, i have been engaged in novel experiences. .69*** .02 2.27 ve7: recently, i have had comforting experiences. .76*** .32** 2.08 ve8: recently, i have had relieving experiences. .69*** .08 2.02 *i have found value in my recent experiences. note. r indicates the reflective model, while f signifies the formative model. bolded are the metrics relevant to each measurement model. underlined values do not meet the corresponding thresholds. the japanese versions of these measures are available by contacting the first author. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 additionally, we also used kondo’s (2003) single-item ikigai scale to validate our new ibasho measures. this item was administered with a unipolar 11-point scale, with the higher scores indicating a higher level of ikigai. data analysis data were cleaned by inspecting univariate non-normality, univariate and multivariate outliers, heteroscedasticity, missing values, and multi-collinearity. two cases were deemed potential outliers based on mahalanobis’s distances and a conservative p-value of .001 (tabachnick & fidell, 2013, p. 74), as well as on visual examination of relative distance scores, which were excluded from further analyses. this made the final sample size of 672. then, descriptive statistics were derived and the new measures’ validity and reliability examined. lastly, our ibasho theoretical model (figure 1) was tested by using pls-sem with the smartpls 3 software program. quantitative results descriptive statistics, reliability, and validity our sample (n = 672) equally represented both sex groups (337 females, 50.1%) as well as different academic years (at least 24.9% for each year). the mean age was 20.14 years (sd = 1.33). the most commonly reported academic major was arts and humanities (22.3%), followed by management and economics (19.3%), engineering (13.4%), and social sciences (13.4%). although the majority did not know/want to report their parental income (50.1%), reported income levels were diverse, ranging from less than 2,500,000 jpy (11.5%) to 10,000,000 jpy or greater (8.0%). table 2 displays the means, standard deviations, and zero-order correlations of the main and control variables (i.e., sex and age). medium to large positive correlations (cohen, 1992) between the single-item ikigai scale and our new ibasho measures were taken as initial evidence for criterionrelated validity. table 1 contains the information on reliability and convergent validity of the new measures obtained by running our theoretical model with the pls algorithm and bootstrap interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 116 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org procedure. for the reflective measures, all of our cronbach’s α and composite reliability ρa coefficients, which signifies internal consistency reliability, exceeded the .7 threshold (hair et al., 2017). all ave scores as an indicator of convergent validity surpassed the .5 threshold (hair et al., 2017). all loadings were also greater than .7 (hair et al., 2017). in terms of the formative measures, all weights of ibasho items were significant except for one communicating experiences item (w = .11, p = .07). this and four keiken items with non-significant weights were retained for the sake of content validity as they had substantial loadings (hair et al., 2017). all vif scores were less than five, suggesting that our items were free from multi-collinearity (hair et al., 2017). to examine convergent validity, we also ran a series of redundancy models in which a set of formative indicators predicted the corresponding global, single-item measure of the construct (asterisked in table 1; hair et al., 2017). the resultant r2 in table 1 were near or beyond the .5 threshold. table 3 summarizes conservative indicators of discriminant validity called heterotrait-monotrait (htmt) ratios. all of our values met the .9 or lower threshold for exploratory studies (hair et al., 2017). table 2 means, standard deviations, and zero-order correlation coefficients m sd 1a 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. sex (female = 2) 2. age 20.14 1.33 3. ikigai single item 6.80 2.22 .13** .02 4. self-authenticity 3.32 0.88 .16** .07 .39** 5. genuine care 3.32 0.81 .17** .08* .46** .74** 6. experiencing together 3.38 0.87 .15** -.01 .45** .61** .62** 7.communicating experiences 3.27 0.90 .20** .04 .42** .54** .61** .69** 8. echoed values 3.18 0.89 .15** -.01 .52** .55** .59** .55** .60** 9. trust 3.40 0.97 .23** .00 .46** .64** .64** .61** .64** .66** 10. valued experience 3.27 0.79 .14** -.03 .67** .45** .53** .51** .50** .53** .49** note. n = 672. the ikigai single item was measured using a 11-point scale, while all the other ikigai related measures were administered with a 5-point scale. a as gender was a dichotomous variable, we conducted point-biserial correlation by using brown’s (2001) formula and excel software. * p < .05, ** p < .01 table 3 discriminant validity of the reflective measurement models based on heterotrait-monotrait (htmt) ratios and 95% ci 1 2 3 1. self-authenticity 2. genuine care .89 [.84; .94] 3. echoed values .70 [.62; .77] .78 [.68; .83] 4. trust .79 [.72; .84] .78 [.72; .84] .86 [.80; .92] note: according to hair et al. (2017), htmt ratios should be .9 or lower for exploratory studies. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 117 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org pls-sem with regard to the structural model, all vifs were lower than the threshold of 5 (hair et al., 2017). in terms of global model fit assessment, pls-sem methodologists have noted that the meaning of “fit” differs between pls-sem and covariance-based sem (cb-sem) (hair et al., 2017). specifically, cb-sem algorithms work to minimize the gap between theoretical and empirical covariance matrices, whereas the regression-based pls-sem estimator maximizes the variance in endogenous variables explained by the model (hair et al., 2017). most fit indices developed in the cb-sem context assess “fit” by assuming the covariance residual minimization as the goal. thus, pls-sem methodologists have recommended the use of multiple other indicators (e.g., r2, f2) as described below. that being said, henseler et al. (2014) identified srmr (the standardized root mean square residual) and rmstheta (the root mean square residual covariance) as potentially useful fit indices in pls-sem, and suggested .08 (or below) and .12-.14 (or below) as potential cut-off points. srmr and rmstheta for our model were .067 and .144, which we deemed acceptable and proceeded with the rest of the assessment. figure 2 summarizes path coefficients, statistical significance of the paths, variances explained (r2), and predictors’ effect sizes (f2 and q2) based on the pls algorithm and bootstrap procedure. first, all hypothesized paths were significant and in the expected direction (positive). especially noteworthy is that the effects of experiencing together and communicating experiences on the outcome variables were significant while controlling for each other’s influence, as were the paths from echoed values and trust to the mediating variables. moreover, the above eight associations remained significant after controlling for the impacts of valued experience. further, all specific indirect effects (e.g., echoed values → experiencing together → self-authenticity) were significant at .05 level. second, the overall model explained 44% and 49% of the variance in selfauthenticity and genuine care, respectively. these values are considered large (cohen, 1992) or medium (hair et al., 2017) effect size in social sciences. third, f2 values shown in figure 2 in the parentheses on the left side suggested that trust had medium-size effects on the mediating variables, while the effects of echoed values were small (hair et al., 2017). experiencing together had a medium-size effect on self-authenticity, whereas the other effects on the two outcome variables were small-size. fourth, we computed q2, which indicates the model’s in-sample predictive ability based on the blindfolding procedure (hair et al., 2017). the resultant values ranged from .31 for experiencing together and communicating experiences, to .35 for self-authenticity and genuine care. these above-zero values supported the model’s predictive capacity. lastly, q2 was examined to investigate the predictive relevance of individual predictors. the values displayed in figure 2 in the parentheses on the right side indicated that all hypothesized links had small-size predictive relevance (q2 ≥ .02), except the paths from communicating experiences to self-authenticity and from echoed values to experiencing together, which had minimal relevance (hair et al., 2017). interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 118 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org figure 2. pls-sem results of the structural model. ovals signify reflective models, whereas hexagons designate formative models. path coefficients are standardized. the left-side values within parentheses are the effect size f2, while the values on the right side are the predictive relevance metric q2. the effect of sex and age on all the endogenous variables are controlled for. ** p < .01, *** p < .001 discussion using a mixed-methods design, the current study developed the substantive theory of ibasho (i.e., authentic relationship). this theory explains how interpersonal factors contribute to ikigai among japanese university students. ibasho refers to an interpersonal relationship where people feel authentic and moreover valued and cared for. this finding in the student population supports the relevance of interpersonal factors for young adults’ ikigai (kumano, 2012). also noteworthy is that the premise of ibasho is rather individualistic than collectivistic. although some of our interviewees referred to a group (e.g., varsity team) as a source of their ibasho, most discussed individual relationships with particular others (e.g., teammates). even talking about a group, they did not necessarily focus on committing themselves to it (mathews, 1996). the very idea of self-authenticity means that ibasho is about the relationship of students’ self with a group and others, not self in them. this is not to say that students’ idea of self is immune to influences of social discourses and cultural norms; however, as takahashi (2001) observed, it may be that young adults in today’s japan have adopted more individualistic views of wellbeing and ikigai. furthermore, the concept of having a true self is aligned with an essentialist western philosophy (kanagawa, cross, & markus, 2001)1. it is possible that self-authenticity has become more important to japanese students’ ikigai due to increasing western influences (e.g., television shows, music lyrics). our ibasho theory posits that two subjective feelings, self-authenticity and genuine care, are integral to students’ ikigai. this is a rather novel suggestion, as extant ikigai studies—even sociological ones—have assumed ikigai-related perceptions are predominantly individualistic (e.g., meaning, purpose) (kamiya, 1966; kumano, 2012; takahashi, 2001). on the contrary, the swb literature has long acknowledged that personal wellbeing can involve interpersonal dimensions 1 we would like to thank one of the reviewers for suggesting this possibility. interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 119 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org (e.g., keyes, 1998; ryff, 2014). for example, both ryff (2014) and seligman (2011) associated their interpersonal wellbeing perceptions with warm trusting relationships and sincerely caring attitudes, respectively, which is akin to genuine care. self-authenticity is consistent with recent developments in authenticity research (ryan & ryan, 2019). our ibasho theory and the extant research concur that authenticity is an interpersonal issue, and that genuineness is the core of this construct (lopez & rice, 2006), although our theory differs in that it identifies self-authenticity as part of the wellbeing state itself, rather than predictor. our quantitative study found self-authenticity and genuine care are highly correlated with one another (r = .74, table 2), and thus worthy of being studied under a single framework. the current study is the first to relate these constructs with ikigai. our ibasho theory also specifies experiencing together and communicating experiences as two key interpersonal actions through which students build and maintain authentic relationships. part of experiencing together is having enjoyable experiences with close others, which is similar to lakey and orehek’s (2011) proposition that “ordinary but enjoyable” shared activities regulate happiness. in relation to the need for relatedness, baumeister and leary (1995) also noted the importance of positive frequent interactions. our study extends these propositions to the realm of eudaimonic wellbeing. moreover, experiencing together also involves making efforts with close others, which often comes along with negative emotions (e.g., stress). the literature is curiously silent on this form of shared perseverance. this unique finding may have been because ikigai is a form of eudaimonic wellbeing (kumano, 2018), and its pursuit requires not only pleasure, but also growth and goal achievements. communicating experiences, especially the sub-dimension of informing close others of one’s valued experience, resembles capitalization (gable & reis, 2010). although capitalization applies to any positive life events, past studies also show that it tends to occur after more valuable life events (gable et al., 2004), which is consistent with our ibasho theory. the other sub-component of communicating experiences, obtaining support, has a clear relationship with the social support framework (lakey, 2013). while our findings give credence to the efficacy of social support in enhancing ikigai (aoki, 2015), communicating experiences consists more of enacted support, whose association with wellbeing has been inconsistent or null in the literature (e.g., lakey & cohen, 2000). this may have been because our study focused on eudaimonic wellbeing, which requires actual support for goal pursuits (feeney & collins, 2015), and/or on japan, where support is culturally prioritized (uchida et al., 2008). the last two constructs in our ibasho theory are echoed values and trust that facilitate students in engaging in the above experience-based interactions. echoed values may be fostered in autonomy-supportive environments that enhance authenticity (ryan & ryan, 2019). creating such environments requires attentive listening and perspective-taking (reeve, 2006). our interviewees engaged in similar interactions. also relevant may be the role of others’ responses in capitalization (gable & reis, 2010). active and positive responses would likely come from those with similar values. what our concept of echoed values adds, though, is that the mutual understanding should be about keiken, i.e., what individuals consider as enjoyable, effortful, stimulating, and comforting. in the swb literature, trust has been recognized as a predictor of wellbeing (helliwell & wang, 2011). our theory explains that this may be because trust encourages people to share their valued experiences with one another either directly or indirectly. indeed, the capitalization research has shown that this type of interaction tends to occur among close others (e.g., family, partner) who have spent considerable time together and developed trust with each other (gable & reis, 2010). interpersonal aspect of ikigai kono & walker 120 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org conclusion the current study discovered that forming ibasho (authentic relationship) is key to students’ ikigai, and identified relevant variables in this process (figure 1). while the use of grounded theory led to the contextualized theory, the use of online survey and pls-sem resulted in new measures with validity and reliability, as well as quantitative evidence for the theory’s generalizability. broadly speaking, the current study helps addressing the dearth of research on non-western wellbeing terms (lahti, 2019; lomas, 2016), especially the need for more systematic ikigai research (hasegawa et al., 2015; kumano, 2018). it also bridges ikigai and swb research that sometimes do not communicate well with each other due to language barriers. despite these contributions, our study has some limitations. first, both qualitative and quantitative studies are essentially cross-sectional, and thus the resultant theory’s causal implications should be carefully interpreted. second, our samples may not have represented the most “typical” japanese students, as the interviewees attended a private university, while the survey respondents registered with an online survey company. third, although pls-sem’s ability to accommodate the different measurement model types and many variables and relations benefited our quantitative study, the method has some limitations, including the limited repertoire and documentation of global model fit indices (e.g., rönkkö, mcintosh, antonakis, & edwards, 2016). in terms of future research, longitudinal and experimental designs will help in testing the theory’s causality. longitudinal studies should carefully choose time intervals as young adults’ lives tend to be dynamic. we suggest monthly intervals as a good starting point. experimentally, researchers can have students engage in experiencing together and/or communicating experiences for a certain time (e.g., a week), and measure how their levels of self-authenticity, genuine care, and overall ikigai change. future studies on different age groups (e.g., middle-aged and older adults) will aid in testing our model’s generalizability. a major benefit of defining and measuring ikigai without using this japanese word is the facilitation of future cross-cultural studies. indeed, we also backtranslated our japanese items into english (table 1) and thus future researchers can use them, at least in anglophone cultures. the current study is a testament to peterson’s (2008) observation that no language or culture should dominate wellbeing research; 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(2020). women’s recovery journeys from chronic fatigue syndrome towards wellbeing: a creative exploration using poetic representation. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 144164. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1501 mahima kalla monash university kallamahima@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 article women’s recovery journeys from chronic fatigue syndrome towards wellbeing: a creative exploration using poetic representation mahima kalla · margaret simmons abstract: chronic fatigue syndrome (cfs) is a poorly understood condition, with an unclear aetiology. due to diagnostic difficulty, cfs has frequently been dismissed by medical professionals as an untreatable “psychological issue” leading to patients not receiving adequate care for extended periods of time. this situation has led to patients feeling isolated, neglected, and misunderstood. cfs is more common in women than men, in an approximate ratio of 4:1; accordingly, we explore seven (7) women’s experiences of cfs and by adopting an idiographic approach seek to amplify the voices of a group of patients who have long been marginalized, and often dismissed. findings are presented using a narrative research technique called poetic representation, wherein participants’ interview transcripts are cast into poetic forms. the condensed encapsulation of participants’ experiences through carefully crafted poetry adds an intensity that focuses readers’ attention more tightly than merely telling their stories. a small sample size commensurate with the study’s aim, enabled an in-depth exploration of each individual’s experiences. in the context of cfs, themes surrounding illness, diagnosis, treatment, wellbeing, and recovery were explored, focusing particularly on the potential for the recovery of a new life achieved through participants’ self-agentic psychosocial endeavors. the emerging poetic representations were clustered together in themes using a temporal framework, as follows: 1) downhill to diagnosis; 2) from diagnosis to despair; 3) from despair to hope; 4) looking back to move forward; 5) and, now. this research not only sheds light on the experiences of a puzzling illness, but also seeks to drive improvements in patient care through a more authentic understanding of the cfs lived experience. keywords: chronic fatigue syndrome, cfs, myalgic encephalomyelitis, women’s health, chronic disease, poetic representation, poetic inquiry, wellbeing, creativity, qualitative research introduction myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (me/cfs) (hereafter referred to as cfs) is a debilitating condition, with an unclear pathophysiology and no conclusive diagnostic options (sweetman et al., 2019). cfs symptoms include enduring fatigue, muscular pain, sleep disruptions, and emotional difficulties (sweetman et al., 2019; larun & malterud, 2007; söderlund et al., 2000). while the pathophysiology of cfs is currently unclear, recent research has shown that cfs is characterized by severe immunological malfunction (sweetman et al., 2019). currently, cfs diagnosis occurs primarily through a process of elimination of other illnesses with similar symptomatology assessed against patients’ self-reported symptoms (sweetman et al., 2019). there are over 20 clinical definitions of cfs, which makes it difficult for health practitioners to appropriately identify and treat the condition. a lack of clarity about the specific biomarkers for cfs renders patients and families confused and often without adequate about:blank chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 145 health and social care potentially for long periods of time (sweetman et al., 2019). while people of all ages and socio-economic groups can be impacted by cfs, research suggests that cfs occurs more commonly in women, with female-to-male cfs incidence ratios reported to be between 2:1 and 6:1 (sweetman et al., 2019; larun & malterud, 2007). when faced with a health condition such as cfs that could conceivably last a lifetime, patients are forced to incorporate their illness into their daily lives, and achieve some semblance of wellbeing in the midst of a complicated illness experience. as cfs sufferer cornes (2011) explains, the illness is hard to describe, may be viral or flu-like, is dominated by chronic exhaustion and is a state where “sickness has become the new normal” (p. 342). this state of being with cfs is one of remission rather than restitution (frank, 2013). moreover, there is ambivalence around what a normal or regular life entails for those with chronic illness. with acute illnesses, there is often a restitution or return to pre-illness levels of health – but not so with chronic conditions which necessitate ongoing adjustment, acceptance and management. indeed, with illnesses such as cfs, there is often a more dynamic, spiraling recovery journey towards improved states of wellbeing – as frank (2013) describes it a ‘remission’. while there is no globally recognised singular definition of wellbeing, there is some consensus among scholars that wellbeing is a multi-faceted concept, driven by individuals’ unique preferences and values in life (eger & maridal, 2015). the knowledge and discourse of wellbeing has evolved over centuries, from a relatively simple concept, considered interchangeably with “happiness”, to a contemporary holistic field of inquiry concerned with the study of overall quality of life and life satisfaction (eger & maridal, 2015). eger and maridal (2015) posit that wellbeing has two main facets: happiness (that is emotional, sensory, and affectbased in nature), and life satisfaction/livability. mcnaught (2011) also presents a multidimensional framework of wellbeing which comprises elements associated with the individual (e.g. physical, spiritual, psychological), the family (physical safety, ecology, economic resources), and the community (e.g. identity, fairness, equity). in her work on the ‘wellbeing machine’, mcleod (2017) discusses the notion of ‘becoming authentic’, and the transformative possibility of illness, whereby new ways of being become possible. she suggests that through improved affective states, such as hope, joy, trust and excitement, ‘recovery’ can be made possible. the discourse on recovery has expanded in recent decades to suggest that a person may be able to recover from illness and “recover a life” (slade et al., 2014, p. 14) despite not being fully medically ‘cured’ (anthony, 1993). the notion of recovery too, is multi-dimensional, going beyond the cessation of symptoms or a search for cure, to encompass the achievement of holistic outcomes and enhancement of a patient’s overall wellbeing and quality of life (harvey & ismail, 2008). recovery may represent different things for different people (harvey & ismail, 2008). it may entail improvement in the overall quality of a patient’s life, improved social relationships, greater self-efficacy, ability to engage in meaningful economic activity, or the general ability to lead personally fulfilling lives (liberman & kopelowicz, 2005; mueser et al., 2002). some even view recovery as the journey from a lack of hope or purpose in the context of an illness or disability, to a more enriched and satisfying life experience (secker et al., 2002). developments such as gainful employment may be seen as milestones on the recovery journey, rather than an end goal that one reaches upon a final recovery. indeed, recovery is a non-linear evolving journey, an “ongoing experience” (secker et al., 2002, p. 415), and sometimes characterized by relapses. nevertheless, in the pursuit of recovery, patients may be assisted to experience greater personal wellbeing and to lead more satisfying lives. chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 146 in light of the personalized nature of wellbeing and recovery, the exploration of patients’ personal narratives becomes even more critical in the context of a confounding illness such as cfs. patients often look to the health care system for information and support amid what may be a chaotic illness experience (frank, 2013). the lack of information about cfs in the medical field may exacerbate a patient’s ability to process and understand their illness experiences. it has been argued that cfs therefore disrupts or dismantles the self and that by telling one’s story, patients’ lives can be reassembled or reconstructed (frank, 2013; robertson, 2017). it is often difficult to articulate what it means to be ill and research tells us that in order to better understand the illness experience — for both the sufferer and others interested in learning more — a narrative exploration can be beneficial (robertson, 2017). this article therefore uses the method of “poetic representation” (richardson, 1997) to provide a creative interpretation of participants’ cfs narratives in order to better understand their experiences and help shape the discourse on wellbeing as it pertains to sufferers of this poorly understood illness. aim the aim of this study was to explore women’s narratives of dealing with cfs and understand their personal meanings of wellbeing and recovery. women were chosen as the participant group for this study given the higher incidence of cfs in women compared to other genders. through the means of poetic inquiry, we explore women’s recovery journeys, that is, their journeys of recovering functional lives and attaining improved wellbeing in the face of a challenging cfs illness experience. method participants this research study was approved by the monash university human research ethics committee (muhrec) prior to commencement. advertisements soliciting interest to participate in the study were published in e-newsletters and social media avenues of wellness and wellbeing interest groups. the inclusion criteria were that adult women who had been diagnosed with cfs were eligible to participate in the study. to minimize ethics-related risks, certain demographics were excluded: minors; pregnant women; people in palliation; and those with cognitive impairments, medically diagnosed mental illnesses or intellectual disabilities. interested people contacted the first author via email to express interest in participating in the study and were then asked screening questions as per research inclusion criteria via telephone or email. if the participants satisfied the inclusion/exclusion criteria and gave informed consent, they were included in the study. the consent process involved reading an explanatory statement and signing a consent form. participants were de-identified through the use of pseudonyms and include (with age and country of residence): abigail (43, canada); alicia (53, australia); cassandra (65, usa); daisy (46, england); faith (36, scotland); iris (33, england); and kayley (23, england). interviews because experiences of cfs are compounded by a lack of clear diagnostics and treatment procedures, an idiographic data collection and analytical method that would allow for detailed exploration of individuals’ experiences, was deemed appropriate (larkin et al., 2006). semistructured interviews were conducted with participants, which served as intentional conversations yielding rich and detailed first-person accounts of participant experiences of cfs chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 147 (liamputtong & ezzy, 2005). the interviews typically lasted 60-75 minutes, with some taking up to 90 minutes. demographic information was collected, including age and geographical location. participants were typically asked to provide some background information about themselves, their illness, and describe what recovery meant to them, although each conversation followed its own path in accordance with the participants’ stories. interviews were transcribed verbatim, including non-verbal expressions such as laughter, long pauses, hesitation and other emotional cues, to assist in the analytical process (smith et al., 2009). poetic representation as a creative analytical method for this study, we transformed participants’ transcripts into poetic representations. poetic representation refers to poems that tell stories, in this case cfs illness stories (faulkner, 2009, p. 19-21). poetry is ideal for working with illness narratives as it mimics the fragments and broken narratives that emulate illness experiences. we treated the verbatim interview transcripts as source documents and restructured participants’ words into poetic forms. by compressing the participants’ transcripts into these forms, dense text becomes illuminated and focused. while the stories and words belong to the participants, the poetic representations were constructed by the researchers. prendergast (2009) calls poetic representation an artistic practice within a research framework because it is “interested in creative language-based processes of constraint, synthesis, crystallization, image, and lyrical forms” (p. 561). poetry can thus enable the curious mind to see beyond the “everyday” because we often listen more intently and can “creatively play with metaphor and image during analysis, and communicate with more liveliness and accuracy when representing data” (cahnmann, 2003, p. 32). the selection of poetic representation as a form of inquiry in this study was also partly driven by our own academic and personal interests in sociological approaches to understanding patient narratives and poetry as an artform. we thereby identify our own positionality in the research context and process (corlett & mavin, 2018). the creative work of constructing the research poems took time and careful consideration. words and transcripts were read and reread, silently and aloud, while condensing, compression and discussion occurred. with both researchers engaged in an iterative process (first individually, then together in a series of workshop-style meetings), the poems began to take shape over a period of time and multiple readings and review. a key challenge that we faced in the poetry development process was balancing participants’ raw words with our own creative and analytical roles as researcher-poets. in order to authentically represent our participants’ words, we did not change word forms (e.g. tenses) in the poems, unless absolutely necessary, indicating alterations through the use of square brackets [ ]. additionally, to maintain some chronicity in the narratives, we did not generally re-order the participants’ words as they appeared in the interview transcripts. lines and stanzas were parsed based on the separation of ideas and narratives in order to make sense of the data in a way that resonates with the rhythms of speech (faulkner, 2009; riessman, 2003). in developing our poetic representations, we relied on several traditional creative tools employed in development of poetry, such as alliteration (to create rhythm), metaphors (for greater impact), and repetition (to highlight certain ideas). we applied the poetic method of ‘listing’, also known as ‘catalogue verse’, wherein several singular words or short phrases are written in succession to emphasize a specific point or add vividity and variety to a given topic (cahnmann, 2003). we utilised other literary devices in the poetry creation such as the ‘caesura’, a rhythmical pause to convey the intensity of a feeling, sentiment, or idea (literary devices, 2019). the literary device of ‘enjambment’ was also applied, characterized by the continuation of lines chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 148 without the use of punctuation between them to emphasize that recovery is not destination, but a journey. in addition, we carefully considered our use of punctuation to ensure that the poetic forms reflected the nuances of participants’ words and experiences; for example, periods signify a sense of finality, whereas ellipses demonstrate an ongoing continuity of certain events or experiences. analysis and discussion while widely used qualitative analytical approaches such as thematic analysis is typically used to elucidate codes and themes from interview transcripts (braun & clarke, 2013), butler-kisber (2010) argues that poetry can be ‘clustered’ in ways that provide greater analytical depth. in our data analysis, we therefore clustered various poetic representations together through a temporal lens, recognizing the notion of recovery as a journey and reflecting the importance of time (and changing perceptions of time) as a factor in participants’ experiences of cfs. the following themes or poetic ‘clusters’, embedded in a temporal framework, emerged in our analyses: • downhill to diagnosis • from diagnosis to despair • from despair to hope • looking back to move forward • and, now… downhill to diagnosis this cluster of poems, downhill to diagnosis, was based on the common experience of a progressive worsening of participants’ health, followed by an eventual diagnosis of cfs; the accompanying confusion illustrated by the poem kayley’s body shuts down. kayley’s body shuts down when i was 12 years old i was feeling very tired more and more and more... people would be saying “oh go to bed, you are so tired” when my mum would ask me to do stuff around the house i would say “i am too tired, i can’t” everything started to go downhill i had blood tests nothing seemed to be wrong i thought i was imagining it i looked normal... “what’s wrong with me?” my body basically shut down. my parents started trying to find out what is wrong with me chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 “is she just depressed?” “is she just unhappy?” i went to this clinic, [they] diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome. the above poem reflects the stress, confusion and blame that can arise in patients due to the lack of routine cfs diagnostic procedures. repetition of the poignant question “what is wrong with me?” was very noticeable for us in kayley’s interview transcript. the poetic form highlights kayley’s discomfiture, self-blame and questioning. the dismissal by other people to just go to bed, as if her suffering was merely a temporary, ordinary tiredness seems to exacerbate kayley’s self-blame, and raises the question of whether it was all in her mind. the expression of one’s body shutting down is also remarkable; as if the body were a shopfront, closing for business. this vernacular represents to us a sense of finality, an extended pause in the functioning of the body – the ‘closed’ sign appearing on the shopfront door. larun & malterud (2007) note that a challenging diagnostic journey and questioning of an illness’s legitimacy can burden patients and impact their self-identity. this notion of legitimacy is illustrated in the following poem called alicia, the fixer. alicia, the fixer apart from getting sick i could figure most things out for myself i could work out anything if i worked hard enough at it i could figure [it] out i used to fix companies but i couldn’t fix myself. the above poem demonstrates alicia’s struggle with reconciling her former identity as a heavily committed and effective problem-solver, with her new but confounding illness experience. while alicia views herself as accomplished and able to solve complex issues, her words “i couldn’t fix myself” imply a notion of a deficit self, rooted in the pathologizing idea that she is also, frustratingly for her, a problem to be solved. as alicia remarks, while she could fix complex organizations with hard work and determination, it was impossible to repair her own body, herself; this loss of power to illness is discombobulating in a way that robertson (2017, p. 17) describes as “estranging”. in the same vein, the following poem, daisy’s yuppie flu highlights the lengths some patients with cfs go to, to find a treatment or cure for their condition. daisy’s yuppie flu not being well my entire life age of 13, i had chronic fatigue “yuppie flu” it wasn’t well acknowledged there wasn’t a lot of knowledge about it there wasn’t any real structure, treatment [i tried] chinese medicines chinese herbs acupuncture chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 150 craniosacral treatments chiropractor nothing like pacing regimes the way doctors understand it now i’d done loads of things i got all my amalgam fillings taken out i’d gone to loads of nutritionists changed my diet loads of vitamins i had constant anxiety depression from being ill i’d work i’d crash the euphemism ‘yuppie flu’ to describe a debilitating chronic illness highlights the lack of social and medical understanding of cfs when daisy was first diagnosed. in this poem, we use the literary device of ‘listing’ (cahnmann, 2003) to highlight the variety of treatment modalities daisy attempted to try and feel better; like a shopping list, she tries this treatment modality and then this and this. this technique of listing illustrates the clear sense of desperation in daisy’s efforts to regain her health. as robertson (2017) explains, people often look to the health care system for empathy and help but frequently in the case of chronic and complicated illnesses such as cfs, the medical system is unable to provide that support. indeed, difficulties associated with cfs diagnosis and treatment, as illustrated in this poem, often lead to patients feeling a sense of personal and social loss (jelbert et al., 2010), as will be further discussed in the following poetic cluster. from diagnosis to despair this cluster of poems highlights the participants’ somatic and emotional experiences of battling cfs. frank (2013) notes the difficulty in telling a coherent illness narrative because life with a chronic illness is replete with “a series of present-tense assaults” (p. 11). the future is often hard to envisage when there is uncertainty, pain and chaos. participants described suffering from a range of physical and emotional symptoms, which also cascaded into their social environments, as illustrated in the following poem, abigail is bound. abigail is bound wheelchair-bound house-bound hopelessness helplessness anger grief depression suicidal thoughts isolated at home without work friends dropping like flies they can’t relate to it chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 151 intolerant to every food sleeping three hours a night nightmares and flashbacks feeling as though nothing will ever change. in the above poem we delineate, through the use of poetic listing, the myriad of physical and emotional symptoms experienced by people with cfs. abigail’s symptomatology is varied and debilitating, affecting all areas of her life from an inability to eat, sleep, and even walk. the metaphor she uses, “friends dropping like flies” is a powerful reflection of her rapidly altered social relationships, as is the case with many cfs patients (jelbert et al., 2010). in effect, the friends ‘drop’ abigail, adding to her descent into depression and isolation. in ending this poem, we intentionally applied the punctuation of a period after the participant’s words “nothing will ever change” to reflect a sense of finality and hopelessness; for abigail, this is how it was going to be from now on. the next poem also reflects the myriad of symptoms affecting people with cfs. noises on daisy’s skin very spacey difficult to concentrate drag myself to commute lots of pain noise quite painful i could feel noises on my skin pain in my joints pain outside my body stiffness pain muscle, joint pain pain in my bones migraines… digestive problems debilitating tiredness; really, really tired i could barely think days where i couldn’t get out of bed swollen up, retained a lot of water very, very anxious very, very depressed fuzzy thinking very cold, freezing cold all the time… the above poem continues the theme of the multiple and variable symptoms associated with cfs affecting several of the body’s organs and life processes, from digestive, skeletomuscular to nervous systems. we threaded daisy’s repeated use of the words “very” and “really” in her interview when constructing this poem, to attest to the aggravated symptoms she endured. the use of phrases “a lot of” or “lots of” seek to further amplify the intensity of felt symptoms. repetition is also used to effect with the word “pain”. as this word appeared several times chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 during daisy’s interview transcript, it was thus embedded in the poem to convey the multiple levels on which this symptom was experienced. the feeling of pain outside the body is also noteworthy and illustrates that the lived experience of pain goes beyond physical symptomatology, and is also felt viscerally and perceptually. similarly, the notion of feeling “noises on the skin” further exemplifies the overpowering physical discomfort and sensitivity that cfs brings. other qualitative experiential research conducted with cfs patients also reports congruent accounts of hypersensitivity (e.g. söderlund et al., 2000), as illustrated by the next poem. cassandra hits a brick wall my skin hurt to take a shower, the water hurt my skin a lot of sound would hurt my hearing so fatigued, like i was dragging an elephant out of bed exhausted, i’d wake up exhausted i was like a 98 year old woman in my forties i have to call and cancel again i hated doing that but i also hated being so tired i couldn’t you hit a brick wall you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine, then the next second, you’re not… your brain shuts down your body shuts down you can hardly form a sentence it’s not like being tired i had more energy running a marathon the marathon stuff is within your control you’ve built your body up but the other stuff just catches you unaware cassandra’s feelings of pain from normally benign everyday stimuli such as water and noise, echoes the hypersensitivity experienced by cfs patients, as previously discussed. the use of metaphors in this poem is particularly evocative. analogizing her body with an elephant highlights the heavy burden of movement cassandra experiences. the various points of comparison and contrast presented in this account also help to exemplify the lack of control and autonomy rendered by cfs. for example, cassandra’s comparison of herself with a 98-year old woman denotes rapid decay of her physical body. there is also an affecting contrast with running a marathon being deemed easier than enduring the cfs experience – because training can prepare one for the former, while the latter remains capricious. to magnify the unpredictability of symptom re-emergence, we utilized a combination of indentation, punctuation and the literary tool of caesura. the indentation (before “you’re fine”) followed by the caesura (depicted by a chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 comma) seek to suggest a passage of time where cassandra continues to feel reasonably well. the shock of symptom relapse and continuance is then captured through our use of ellipses when suddenly cassandra is no longer “fine”. as time passes with a chronic illness, participants also move forward with their illness and recoveries, and the next cluster of poems reflects a sense of optimism and hope for a better future. from despair to hope this cluster, from despair to hope, is centered around a pivotal moment, or series of moments that engendered a feeling of hope in the participants. being faced with any chronic illness, let alone one that has no prescribed medical tests or treatments can often result in hopelessness for the future (jelbert et al., 2010). in the following poem, we describe a participant’s journey towards hope for improvement in her health and wellbeing. kayley believes the doctors were saying “you are not going to recover” “there are no treatments” i spent about six months working on the way i perceived my illness and the world and a lot of issues and i got to a place where i believed that i could get better this poem points to a sense of agency and autonomy. after having been told, quite definitively, by authority figures that she would not get better, kayley appears to have determinately ‘walked her own path’, possibly to prove the doctors wrong, but certainly with the self-belief to heal. as with other poems, there is a sense of movement and journey as noted by the words “i got to a place”. this notion of illness as motion accords with sontag’s (1979) depiction of illness as travel or journey. the next poem continues the theme of movement towards healing and wellbeing. fleur’s joyful recovery i was looking for ways to help myself recover from chronic fatigue syndrome i was adamant no matter what, i was getting well i threw away all the horror stories of people with me and started reading recovery stories to get some inspiration of what might help me i came across a book by sasha allenby called, “joyful recovery” and i thought, “oh, joyful!” “that sounds wonderful!” chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 and i read that… her journey from cfs to full health she had a very similar background to me, been through a lot of same things i [gave] myself permission to heal we wake up, we count all our ailments, make sure they are all there, present and correct, then we go on… when i came across this concept of giving yourself permission to heal, that made sense to me… fleur’s account recapitulates the previous discussion on the determination to improve one’s health and wellbeing. the idea of giving herself permission to heal symbolizes fleur’s sense of hope and agency for an alternate possibility for her life alongside an apparent refusal to accept her prognosis. in this poem, we again applied indentation and caesura to reflect the progression and passage of time in fleur’s morning routine. the ellipses after “then we go on” seeks to capture the continual cycle of waking up, counting and confirming the presence of ailments, going about your day, and repeating this process the following morning. some may argue that this account resonates with the principles of positive psychology (gable & haidt, 2005), as depicted by the lines, “throwing away of horror stories”, imagining the possibility of a “joyful recovery”, and the somewhat self-deprecating playfulness of fleur ensuring her symptoms are “present and correct”. chronic illness literature views hope as a “psychosocial resource”, that by nature, is transcendent of possibilities, and can assist patients cope with their chronic illness (duggleby et al., 2012, p. 1211). furthermore, optimism and hope can often act as catalysts for people engaging in healthier behaviors, which in turn can be beneficial for chronic disease management (schiavon et al., 2017). for this study’s participants, a belief in hope and possibility for recovery contributed to changes in their behavioral patterns, thought processes, and self-identity, as discussed in the following cluster. looking back to move forward this cluster is called looking back to move forward because with illness narratives, as previously mentioned, there is often a sense of movement alongside the notion of temporality. on the journey through illness, patients may have the desire to move out of illness towards wellness acknowledging that the journey may be convoluted. the poems in this section demonstrate notions of movement, reflection, hope and growth using poetic devices such as pauses and breaks to reflect this sense of motion and change. as frank (2013) explains, the illness journey is often a process of growth and self-education and these poems reflect that sense of change too. alicia’s “hell, yeah” push on other people depending on me push through it chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 that whole dynamic isn’t working for me the biggest challenge to not over stimulate my body coffee, sugary crap pushing through tiredness thinking if i get it done i can relax the way i was brought up just “suck it up” a large part of my current journey has been working out what i refer to as "hell yeah, i want to do that" picking my battles simplifying my life i was working in one of the most stressful jobs imaginable i just sucked it up how toxic it was so toxic! like a silent invader… so, listening to my body and understanding what it needs has been key being ruthless about not exposing myself to unnecessary stress no time for people’s “dramas and shit” really understanding my body what it needs and doesn’t need and ultimately forgiveness and compassion for others for myself the strategy was to remove as many stressors physical, emotional, mental and flood my body with nutrients, fresh air, salt give it the optimal environment in which to recover… in this poem, there is a clear sense of movement; alicia even uses the notion of a journey to demarcate and reflect a before and an afterwards. looking back to reassess her life prior to the onset of her chronic illness, alicia notes the constant pressure (or “push”) she was under; the repetition of the term “push” highlighting that this was not “the optimal environment in which to recover”. frank (2013) and sontag (1979) support the notion of illness as a journey, one which chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 often emerges in hindsight but is also self-defining. as alicia constructs her story of illness, we notice the way she positions herself as agentic, moving forward and “removing” herself from a damaging and unhealthy environment (other “people’s dramas and shit”) to a space and place of understanding and self-care; a progression that frank (2013) alludes to as a “process of learning” through illness (p. 219). in the next poem, we notice that daisy is on a similar journey and the term “push” is also used to reflect the way she previously did things; in what she describes as a “a perfect recipe for chronic fatigue syndrome”. daisy isn’t finishing her novel… at least for now i was a very driven person just not stopping always wanting to do more i used to compete, show jumping that was really tiring and exhausting i was also a music journalist album launches or gigs late at night more exhausting myself i had undiagnosed dyslexia that plays into being really exhausted trying to learn things causing headaches, anxiety at school being told i wasn’t trying hard enough all a perfect recipe… for chronic fatigue syndrome i’m not as driven any more i used to push myself to do things that were exhausting and make me feel ill i wrote three quarters of a novel it was really exhausting i didn't find it enjoyable [people] kept saying, “finish this novel! finish this novel! then it can get published” but, that’s not why i'm writing a novel i was writing it as a creative exploration if i never feel like it again, i won’t this is who i am, and this is how i need to live my life for it to work for me to be well in this poem, daisy moves forward from a space where she was constantly, debilitatingly “exhausted” (noting that variations of this word are repeated five times in her interview transcript), to a place that now “works for [her] to be well”. the sense of motion in the story is further illuminated by the notions of being very “driven” at that time when she would constantly “push” herself. while there are often such pressures on the self, these expectations may also be from external sources. as the title daisy isn’t finishing her novel indicates, others were pressuring chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 157 her to complete her unfinished manuscript. but in daisy’s story, like alicia’s, there is ultimately a sense of reflexive agency; as daisy says, the novel was not written to please others but as a “creative exploration” which may or may not ever get finished. the possibilities of the unfinished novel sit in a future that daisy will herself determine; a decision that also highlights her personal growth and acceptance. the notion of looking back to move forward and personal growth is also evident in the following poem. fleur is grateful for cfs i believe my cfs came from being adrenally fatigued for a very long time due to childhood traumas and depression it made me realize that it was all that that had made me unwell and it was all that that was going to help me get well i didn’t like my body i felt it had been used and abused i felt i was fat, even though i wasn’t i didn’t feel pretty i wasn't what i thought my friends were i disliked the body i was in and the person i was i didn’t feel like i was popular enough i didn’t feel that people liked me i felt like i had to be somebody that i wasn’t wasn’t doing well enough wasn’t earning well enough i didn’t feel enough i didn’t feel enough in who i was i realized my life prior to getting cfs was not healthy – mentally or physically and even though cfs was horrendous, i am actually grateful for it because i was just surviving before literally surviving, and that was all… and now, i am thriving it has taught me so much about life we all think that you need to just get up go to work, have 2.4 children this ideal of earning money, having a nice car doing all this stuff that most of us are not happy doing… having the illness has really changed what i thought about life, about myself what i want in life i don’t think life is just for surviving chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 158 i think life is for thriving to live in harmony with ourselves, each other, and the planet in fleur’s transcript, we could not help noticing words such as “changed” and “taught” denoting personal growth from the illness experience. in looking back to reflect on her past, fleur tells us – and, in the telling, also informs her own narrative – that “… it was all that that had made me unwell, and it was all that that was going to help me get well”. fleur thus moves her story forward from a position of feeling she was never enough to a life living in “harmony”, not only with herself but with “each other, and the planet”. we recognize that the social and cultural expectations that were a feature of her life until she came more to terms with cfs can be internalized through years of social conditioning. indeed, so powerful are these expectations and narratives, particularly in fleur’s life story, that the word “enough” is repeated five times in the poem; not good enough, slim enough, pretty enough, successful enough, popular enough. in casting the raw data into the above poetic representation, we also applied the repeated commencement of phrases with “i’ to amplify fleur’s extensive reflections on a myriad of aspects of herself, her life, and the people around her. now, fleur has moved forward, with wisdom and even gratitude, making the perhaps surprising statement “even though cfs was horrendous, i am actually grateful for it”. this sense of gratitude for a difficult illness experience is a notion with which brett (2002) concurs, arguing that while suffering is terrible, it is nevertheless something that can be learned from in a creative and active way. in addition, fleur’s use of the expression “2.4 children” suggests the rejection of social and cultural narratives that people may accept often unconsciously, without introspection that they may have desires different from the norms of getting a job, starting a family, or owning material possessions. the poem also reflects two further compelling and repeated words alluding to their potency; “surviving” and “thriving” which are used several times in the poem to great effect. surviving chronic illness alone is not enough for fleur; it is important in the here and the now, to thrive. this notion of moving from surviving to thriving in the present, leads to our final cluster of poems. and, now… in this final section, we present poems that speak of transformation, and progress to places very much grounded in a more positive present. as frank (2013) explains, when people are ill, they “live simultaneously with both the threat of disintegration and the promise of reintegration”, (pp. 212) and these poems illustrate the notion of recovery and reintegration that may be inspiring for others going through similar illness journeys. the following poem denotes a more peaceful and meditative present. iris sustains her health i had a chance to meditate this morning a two-minute pause to set me up for the day i swim again, sustain my health in some ways, my life is even busier now but in a much more balanced way with being able to meditate, calm my system being more embodied in my experience rather than living in my head i work now as a complementary therapist coaching people with chronic illness chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 159 my colleague and i created women’s wellness circle online and in person support for women with chronic health problems a circle where everyone connects and reaches out for support we run online courses and residential retreats it has really taken off women say “this is a complete lifeline for me i am stuck in my flat, on my own, all the time i don’t know where i would be without this group thank you, you are saving my life” this poem highlights notions of an embodied peace, demonstrated in iris’s use of words such as “meditate”, “calm” and “balanced”. the poem also shows the “sustaining” actions that enable iris to “swim again”. the metaphor of swimming is one also drawn on by prosser (2007) who explains that illness has a way of forcing the sufferer to take “two steps forward and one step back; always shocking the system whenever improvements show signs of plateauing; and always swimming against the tide …” (p.199). like prosser, this poem also reflects the motions of swimming, a movement forward which may be hesitating at times, but it is nevertheless a progression. iris’s story also highlights how reaching out to others can be rewarding; she describes the creation of a healing “circle where everyone connects”; where other women with chronic illnesses “reach out for support” in a way they report as a type of lifeline (“you are saving my life”). indeed, reaching out to others while suffering, or having suffered, a chronic illness can be therapeutic. as frank (2013) indicates “illness remains a nightmare in many ways, but it also becomes a possibility, especially for a more intimate level of connection with others” (p. 11). connection with others is further highlighted in the following poem which relates cassandra’s journey to “now”. cassandra’s week in paris i can walk several miles i can ride my bike, garden, i don’t have to cancel things if i make plans with friends, i can keep them we can go to a movie my friends enjoy counting on me too they understood before but it’s also a bummer in the winters i carry my wood i shovel snow i feel strong and energetic my little baby got married last may i watched him grow up and go to college and he married he’s six foot two, gorgeous, has a beautiful wife i feel very blessed, i felt very blessed chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 160 i travelled to paris my son, i met him in paris we had a week in paris we walked for miles every day… cassandra’s account of a present where she can now fully connect with friends and family, also represents a “strong and energetic” woman who has the energy and vitality to chop and carry wood, and shovel snow. not only does this poem illustrate the ways in which cassandra has the strength to thrive, it also highlights her life’s “blessings”, as she reflects on successfully raising a family, demonstrated by her description of a “six foot two, gorgeous”, newly-married, son, with whom she had the fortune to travel to paris. for many people, overseas travel is a lifelong dream, particularly to the romantic city of paris; for the unwell, any travel may seem like an almost impossible dream. cassandra is understandably proud not only that she could meet her son for a “week in paris” but that she could walk around the city “for miles every day”. cassandra’s present story is an optimistic one filled with can do’s, rather than recriminations for what she cannot do. interestingly, the word “can” is repeated four times in cassandra’s narrative, in a way that is reminiscent of the story of the little engine that tries and tries to make its way up the mountain by repeating the mantra to itself “i think i can, i think i can”, and is slowly, incrementally and ultimately, successful (piper, 1930). the final poem in this article also uses a mountain climbing metaphor, both literally and figuratively. fleur climbs a mountain i decided to walk up a mountain! i thought this would either kill me or make me realize i am fully well that day, i walked up that mountain i didn’t struggle any more than anyone else that was there the day after that, i was a bit achy but you would expect that after climbing a mountain after that, i was absolutely fine and that was my moment when i thought “it’s gone” there are moments during your recovery where you can do the odd thing here and there but being able to walk up a mountain and feel fine two days later definitely, there is no me left then i am an author now, mainly self-help based on what i have been through i am also a coach, a health coach living in health, harmony and happiness… fleur’s account emphasizes the notion of the mountain as a metaphor, while also demonstrating the very practical challenges of successfully climbing a mountain; it is thus a fitting way to end chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 161 the poems in this article. for the participants in this study and many people with chronic illnesses, the notion of climbing a mountain is a useful metaphor for grappling with their illness. prosser (2007) describes his recovery from serious illness as similar to mountain climbing; like chronic illnesses, they seem insurmountable and can thus act as a powerful visual symbol for recovery from illness. such metaphors are effective in helping us to better understand the stories of others who may have recovered or are going through their own illness journeys. while everyone with an illness story has their individual journey to navigate, people may recognize elements of their own story in these poems and reflect “that’s my story. i am not alone” (richardson, 1997, p. 33). limitations and implications as demonstrated in the thematic analysis and clustering of poems to analyze participants’ stories of cfs in this study, the promise of poetic representation is that it vivifies participants’ words – bringing their experiences to life. there is legitimacy in undertaking research using poetic representation because it resonates with participants’ speech styles, rhythms and words and this is highly relevant to a group of women suffering cfs, whose voices may otherwise be unheard, dismissed or overlooked (evelyn, 2004; richardson, 2003). it is however important to distinguish between poetry as research inquiry and poetry as therapy. there is certainly value in the field of healing and psychological therapy through the creation of poetry (croom, 2015; hoffman, 2014), but poetic representation as a field of research inquiry should not be conflated with the technique of poetry as therapy to improve wellbeing (prendergast, 2009, p. 563). we also acknowledge other limitations in this project e.g.: gender is obviously a factor in the lives of participants, however due to the scope of the article, we are unable to provide a gendered discussion of the participants’ accounts of cfs. further research could explore participants’ stories of cfs through a feminist lens. in addition, there is scope for transforming people’s illness experiences into poems through other intersectional lenses such as ethnicity, age or sexuality. other research implications include poetic representations that are co-created with participants, rather than researcher-constructed. there is also the possibility of research which involves collective poetic representations that collate a number of participant voices. in addition, poetic representation could be used to explore other illnesses or diseases. as cahnmann (2003) argues, there is still a need for more poetic inquiry to form and inform a wider group of researchers to add further depth of knowledge to the field. indeed, she notes that many outside the field of qualitative inquiry claim that poetry is not and cannot ever be “real” research; that it has little to contribute and that it is indeed, a “risky business” (cahnmann, 2003, p. 30). we contend though that new forms of representation and analysis contribute to the field of research by offering new ways of seeing and understanding illness experiences, and concepts of wellbeing and recovery. such an exploration not only holds therapeutic value for the patients themselves, but can also offer invaluable clinical insights into the illness experience for health professionals and other interested parties such as carers and family members. concluding remarks the poetic representations presented in this article shed light on the arduous illness experience of cfs. in the process of constructing poetry from interview transcripts, there emerged a larger story of progression from despair, to hope, to significant identity transformation. through this work, our hope is to inspire further creative explorations of the patient experience, not only to offer a therapeutic outlet for patients, but to generate meaningful insights for driving chronic fatigue syndrome & wellbeing kalla & simmons www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 162 improvements in patient care based on a more authentic and empathetic understanding of patient narratives. acknowledgements we thank all the participants of this study for taking the time to share their stories, and generously letting us into their lives. we also thank late dr anske robinson for her contributions to this research. the data presented in this article was originally collected as part of the first author’s ph.d. research funded by the (formerly) australian postgraduate award scholarship. no other funding was obtained for the conduct of this study. conflict of interest statement the 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(2019). current research provides insight into the biological basis and diagnostic potential for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (me/cfs). diagnostics, 2019(9), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics9030073 lomas, t. (2017). the spectrum of positive affect: a cross-cultural lexical analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 7(3), 1-18. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i3.608 tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article the spectrum of positive affect: a cross-cultural lexical analysis tim lomas abstract: although wellbeing tends to be associated with positive affect, the phenomenological terrain in this regard is often poorly differentiated. in the interest of bringing further granularity to this area, an enquiry was conducted into relevant concepts found across the world’s cultures, focusing specifically on so-called untranslatable words. through a quasi-systematic search of academic and grey literature, together with conceptual snowballing, 134 relevant terms have been located so far (with the process of enquiry ongoing). through a process of grounded theory analysis, seven main themes were identified: peace/calm; contentment/satisfaction; cosiness/homeliness; savouring/appreciation; revelry/fun; joy/euphoria; and bliss nirvāṇa. the analysis highlights the need for a more expansive and granular conceptualisation of positive affect, one that recognises the depth and breadth of the subjective terrain that it covers. keywords: positive emotion, wellbeing, cross-cultural, language, lexicography 1. introduction 1.1 positive affect affect is commonly conceptualised in terms of valence. this occurs, for instance, in the two dominant naturalistic models of emotions: the circumplex (russell, 1980) and basic emotion (ekman, 1999) theories. the former holds that affective states are generated by the interaction of two independent neurophysiological systems: valence (i.e., pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (i.e., active-passive). conversely, the latter holds that a “discrete and independent neural system subserves every emotion,” and that these emotions differ in terms of valence, as well as factors including antecedent events, physiology, appraisal, and probable behavioural response (posner, russell, & peterson, 2005, p. 715). for instance, ekman identifies one positively-valenced basic emotion (enjoyment), and four negatively valenced ones (sadness, anger, disgust, and fear). drawing on such models, theories of wellbeing generally depict positively-valenced emotions as reflective of wellbeing, and negatively-valenced ones as antithetical to it. for example, the concept of subjective (or hedonic) wellbeing has been theorised as comprising two main dimensions (diener, 2000): cognitive (judgements of life satisfaction) and affective (the ratio of positive to negative affect). thus, in the affective component, positively-valenced emotions cumulatively contribute to wellbeing, while negatively-valenced emotions detract from it. however, positive affect covers a considerable amount of ground. as such, efforts have been made to delineate this territory with greater detail. for instance, delle fave et al. (2016) undertook a comprehensive cross-cultural analysis of lay perceptions of happiness, involving 2,799 adults across 12 countries in five continents. the researchers obtained 7,551 definitions of happiness, of which around 44% were psychological definitions, with the remainder split http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 between 10 different contextual definitions (of which the highest ranking were family and interpersonal relationships, health, daily life, standard of living, and work). within psychological definitions were 13 subcategories. the dominant one was “harmony” – accounting for nearly 30% of the definitions – which comprised four components: (a) inner peace (including peace of mind, emotional stability, detachment, tranquillity, and serenity); (b) balance (including inner balance, inner harmony, acceptance of life, being attuned with the universe, and balance between wishes and achievements); (c) contentment (in general and with oneself); and (d) psychophysical wellbeing (a single-item component). the second subcategory was satisfaction, encompassing attainment of life goals, realisation of dreams and expectations, and satisfaction with life and oneself. third was positive emotions, which predominantly featured high arousal positive affect (hap) feelings such as joy and elation, plus a lower percentage of low arousal positive affect (lap) feelings like comfort. fourth was positive states, referring to a general state wellbeing, plus more specific experiences such as flow. the remaining subcategories were optimism, meaning, absence of negative feelings, awareness, engagement/growth, purpose, mastery, and autonomy. interesting cross-cultural differences were also observed. for instance, to an extent, the findings corroborated the notion that people in western nations have a greater tendency towards emphasising hap, and east asians towards lap (lee, lin, huang, & fredrickson, 2013). granularity of a somewhat different sort is provided by ekman’s recent atlas of emotions project (www.paulekman.com), although the website doesn’t provide detail as to how this granularity was arrived at. methodological uncertainty aside, though, ekman usefully deconstructs enjoyment according to a spectrum of intensity: sensory pleasure; rejoicing; compassion/joy; amusement; schadenfreude (german: “enjoyment of the misfortunes of another person”); relief; pride; fiero (italian: “enjoyment felt when you have met a challenge that stretched your capabilities”); naches (yiddish: “pride in the accomplishments, or sometimes just the existence of, your actual [or mentored] offspring”); wonder; excitement; and ecstasy. it is unclear how these types were identified, and whether they have been empirically analysed. nevertheless, it is an intriguing attempt to delineate the range of emotions encompassed within the broad notion of “enjoyment.” of particular interest here is that three terms are from other languages, and could be regarded as “untranslatable” (since if they were perfectly translatable, presumably ekman would have deployed the equivalent english term). in that respect, it is possible that there may be other relevant untranslatable terms which may bring further differentiation to the realm of positive emotions. 1.2 untranslatable words this paper on draws lomas’ (2016) evolving lexicography of untranslatable words pertaining to wellbeing. while untranslatability is a contested construct, it essentially describes a word that lacks an exact equivalent in a given other language. the interest in such words is manifold. first, they offer insights into other cultures (wierzbicka, 1997). the general theoretical context here is the linguistic-relativity hypothesis (lrh) – sometimes also known as the sapir-whorf hypothesis, in recognition of the pioneering work of sapir (1929) and whorf (1940) – which holds that language influences how people experience and understand the world. the stronger version of this hypothesis is linguistic determinism, whereby language inextricably constitutes thought, whereas its milder version simply asserts that language shapes thought and experience (perlovsky, 2009). in relation to untranslatable words, the stronger view holds that only people enmeshed within the culture that produced a word can truly understand or experience the phenomenon it signifies (taylor, 1985). however, the milder perspective contends that such http://www.paulekman.com/ the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 words are, to an extent, accessible to people outside the culture, holding some universal relevance (wierzbicka, 1997). this latter point highlights a key point of interest: beyond being informative vis-à-vis the creating culture, such words can enrich other lexicons. the phenomenon of “borrowing” words is central to language development (durkin, 2014). of the some 600,000 lexemes in the oxford english dictionary, the percentage of these “loanwords,” i.e., those not part of the original westgermanic anglo-saxon language (lehmann, 1962), may be as high as 41% (tadmor, 2009). of particular interest here is why words are borrowed. haspelmath (2009) identifies two main reasons: “core” versus “cultural” borrowings. the former is when a loanword replicates an existing word, which tends to happen for sociolinguistic reasons, such as the cultural capital associated with using foreign words (blank, 1999). while this type of borrowing is not of concern here, the second is central. haspelmath refers to these as “loanwords by necessity,” where the recipient language lacks its own word for a particular referent. in lehrer’s (1974, p. 105) terminology, such words fill “semantic gaps,” i.e., “the lack of a convenient word to express what [one] wants to speak about.” it is this notion of a semantic gap that makes a given word untranslatable, indicating phenomena that have been overlooked or undervalued by, say, english-speaking cultures, but which another culture has identified. thus, the lexicography is founded upon the idea that such words can enrich a recipient language, and moreover augment the nomological network in psychology. such augmentation is desirable for numerous reasons, not least because academic psychology tends to be westerncentric (becker & marecek, 2008). much of its empirical work has been conducted with participants described by henrich, heine, and norenzayan (2010) as weird, belonging to societies that are western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (lomas, 2015). moreover, many scholars themselves are situated within such contexts, which influences their appraisal of the world. thus, the nomological network in psychology is arguably somewhat provincial, being largely founded upon concepts that happen to have been identified in english. the lexicography thus aims to augment this network with constructs which have not yet been identified in psychology, as signalled by an untranslatable word. to narrow its focus to a manageable area of enquiry, its concern is wellbeing specifically. a key aspect of this is positive emotions, which constitutes one of the six core thematic categories in the lexicography. (the other five are spirituality (lomas, in press a), love (lomas, in press b), ambivalent emotions (lomas, in press c), prosociality, and character development.) thus, this paper aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of this aspect of wellbeing through the study of relevant untranslatable words. 2. methods 2.1 initial data collection and analysis in the original paper establishing the lexicography, lomas (2016) identified 216 words pertaining to wellbeing, located through a “quasi-systematic” review of academic and grey literature (quasi in that there was insufficient material in academic psychology journals to permit a true systematic review, utilising conventional academic databases). these words were analysed using a variation of grounded theory (gt), a qualitative methodology which allows theory to emerge inductively from the data, via three main coding stages (open, axial, and selective) (strauss & corbin, 1998). in a process of open coding, the data (i.e., the words and their definitions) were examined for emergent themes. then, axial coding involved aggregating the themes into categories based on conceptual similarity. six main categories were produced, as noted above, which in turn were paired into three meta-categories: emotions (positive and ambivalent), the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 relationships (love and pro-sociality), and development (flourishing and spirituality). finally, selective coding saw the identification of a single “core” category, i.e., wellbeing. 2.2 subsequent data collection and analysis subsequent to the publication of this initial paper, the lexicography has expanded to nearly 1,000 words currently (the project is a work-in-progress, with new terms being continually identified and added, and the explanations of existing ones being refined and updated). however, these additional words have not altered the overall thematic structure of the lexicography; it has been possible to accommodate these within the existing framework of meta-categories and categories, although some new themes have been added within the categories. that is the case with respect to positive emotions – the focus of this paper – where the original schema of five themes has now expanded to seven (as explained below). the new words added to the lexicography arrived partly through contributions to a website created to host the evolving project (www.drtimlomas.com/lexicography) and partly through follow-up enquiries into the categories via “conceptual snowballing.” roughly speaking, of the nearly 800 words collected since the initial paper, 500 have been provided by website visitors, and 300 through conceptual snowballing. the term “snowballing” derives from research recruitment, whereby participants facilitate the participation of additional people, particularly those who may be “hard to reach” (sadler, lee, lim & fullerton, 2010). similarly, “conceptual snowballing” refers to the process by which enquiries into a particular concept – in this case a given untranslatable word – leads researchers to encounter related concepts. for instance, although nearly 120 different languages are currently represented in the lexicography – a tiny subset of the some 7,000 languages in existence – many words hail from a select group of languages that are particularly well-studied in psychologically-oriented literature, consisting of chinese, french, german, greek, japanese, pāli, and sanskrit. thus, an enquiry into a word from one of these languages would often lead researchers to an academic text, in which related words are discussed. an enquiry into the sanskrit term nirvāṇa, for example – discussed below – leads to texts in which a host of other interlinked concepts are also mentioned, from karma (a theory of causality with respect to ethics) to saṃsâra (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, from which nirvāṇa constitutes an “escape”). the current paper focuses specifically on positive emotions. it was an a priori decision to focus on this category (out of the six that currently constitute the lexicography as whole). this meant that the analysis selectively focused on the words in the lexicography which have been assigned to this category. this comprises 134 words at present, hailing from 35 languages: german (n = 14), spanish (12), chinese, french (both 11), greek (9), dutch, japanese (both 8), sanskrit/pāli (7), italian, swedish (both 6), norwegian (5), danish (4), arabic, latin (both 3), basque, finnish, gaelic irish, hawaiian, icelandic, welsh (all 2), balinese, creole, croatian, georgian, hebrew, hungarian, indonesian, inuktitut, māori, ngarluma, polish, portuguese, swahili, thai, and yiddish (all 1). it should be noted that this category excludes words that pertain to love, since this constitutes an entire category in itself, and has its own separate analysis (lomas, in press b). it should further be noted that although most of these words signify emotions or qualia more broadly, some are not emotions or qualia per se, but rather are phenomena associated with them. the words were again analysed using the variation of gt developed in the original paper. in the first stage of open coding, words were examined for thematic content, and grouped together based on thematic similarity, with seven broad themes identified. these seven themes build upon and refine the analysis in the original paper. there only five themes were identified – cosiness, revelry, savouring, joy/bliss, and nirvāṇa – on the basis of just 35 words. with the list having expanded to 134 words pertaining to positive feelings, two additional themes http://www.drtimlomas.com/lexicography the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 were identified (peace and calm, and contentment and satisfaction), while the other five were slightly adjusted (for instance, joy is now paired with euphoria rather than bliss, with bliss joining nirvāṇa in an expanded theme), as elucidated below. 3. results and discussion the words analysed fell into seven broad themes: peace/calm; contentment/satisfaction; cosiness/homeliness; savouring/appreciation; revelry/fun; joy/euphoria; and bliss/nirvāṇa. as per ekman’s analysis, to an extent these can be regarded as unfolding along a spectrum of intensity (from least to most intense or highly-charged). they are briefly discussed in turn, featuring a selection of relevant words. 3.1 peace/calm at the tranquil lower end of the arousal spectrum are various words alluding to calmness and peacefulness. perhaps pre-eminent in this respect is the sanskrit term smṛti, arguably more widely known by its pāli cognate sati. its significance relates to it being the basis – as a loan translation, i.e., semantic borrowing (durkin, 2014) – for “mindfulness,” which has become somewhat ubiquitous in the west. technically, smṛti does not signify an emotion per se, but rather – in many conceptualisations of it – a state of attentiveness, as captured in kabat-zinn’s (2003, p. 145) definition of mindfulness as “the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.” nevertheless, it can describe a form of calm abiding, with the practice of mindfulness associated with outcomes such as equanimity and imperturbability (grossman, niemann, schmidt, & walach, 2004). much more could be said about smṛti. for instance, in its original buddhist context, the term included ethical and spiritual dimensions which are not necessarily retained in contemporary conceptualisations of mindfulness (lomas, 2017). indeed, most terms here easily justify in-depth treatments, exploring their nuances at length. however, to achieve the comparative analysis aimed for here, a trade-off between depth and breadth is necessary. qualities of mind evoked by smṛti are found in other terms, including some that have also been developed in buddhism, albeit in different cultural contexts (i.e., where buddhism has been transmitted to), such as zanshin and seijaku in japanese. as per its use of ideograms, japanese is agglutinative, where lexemes can be easily combined to form more complex words. zanshin combines zan, which can be translated as “remnants” and/or “that which endures,” with shin, meaning “heart-mind” (sanchez, 2013, p. 54). together, they suggest the idea of a “remaining mind,” which can denote relaxed mental alertness, especially in the face of danger or stress, which is relevant in the context of martial arts, for instance. similarly, seijaku combines sei, translatable as “quiet,” with jaku, which can connote “tranquillity;” thus together they refer to silence, calm, and serenity, especially amidst activity or chaos. of course, words pertaining to peace and calm are not only found within buddhism. for instance, taoism – a philosophy and way of being indigenous to china – features various terms that tease out further nuances in this arena. these include tīngtiānyōumìng, literally meaning to “listen to life,” with an implication of submitting or trusting to fate or the “will of heaven,” and xīnrúzhǐshuǐ, which describes a mind being as tranquil as still water, suggesting that one is at peace with oneself. chinese also features xīnpíngqihé, implying the composure of an even and harmonious heart, and zìrán zìzài, which connotes an effortless grace and ease. then, away from asia, classical greece used ataraxia to describe a robust and lucid tranquillity, an almost unshakable peace of mind (with parallels with smṛti in implying decentring or detachment). the the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 quality was particularly valued by stoic thinkers, who, to an extent, regarded wellbeing as a function of the will, attainable by eradicating desire (mcmahon, 2006). for instance, epictetus (50-138 ce) wrote that “the man who rids his mind of desire and avers things only within his sphere of choice has virtue and an untroubled mind.” 3.2 contentment/satisfaction closely related to feelings of peace/calm are ones that fall under the banner of contentment and satisfaction. to an extent, this overlaps with peace/calm, in that contentment can involve being “at peace.” thus, some of the terms above could also fit into this category. for instance, ataraxia was viewed by stoics as the pathway to contentment, and indeed as contentment in itself (mcmahon, 2006). however, contentment/satisfaction appears to differ from peace/calm in being slightly more positively qualified, subjectively “warmer.” a particularly interesting term in this respect is the danish concept of hygge (which is also used in norwegian). this is frequently hailed as the epitome of an untranslatable word, representing a state of being that is said to be archetypically danish (or perhaps more broadly scandinavian), yet highly difficult to adequately capture in english. indeed, 2016 actually saw nine popular books published about hygge, invariably depicting it as the “secret” to the high levels of happiness in denmark (orange, 2016). it is thought to derive from the old norse hugga, which can mean “to comfort” (and may be the basis for the english “hug”). thus, to an extent, hygge denotes feeling safe, protected and cared for, and in that respect could also be situated here under the next theme of cosiness/homeliness. and yet, danes also reportedly use it to depict such pleasures as chatting with a friend or cycling in the sunshine. thus, whatever hygge signifies, it is not only cosiness. or perhaps, as some bloggers suggest (e.g., www.afroginthefjord.com), it speaks to feeling cosy “in one’s heart,” regardless of whether one’s material environment is actually “cosy.” one might argue that hygge is not an emotion per se, but rather a judgement on phenomena that engender contentment. however, this is fine, since this enquiry is also interested in words related to positive emotions. that said, some words do refer directly to feelings of contentment. for instance, danish also has morgenfrisk to describe feeling rested after a good night’s sleep, and arbejdsglæde – literally work (arbejde) happiness/gladness (glæde) – denoting the satisfaction/pleasure gained from one’s occupation. similarly, fiero features in ekman’s atlas of emotions as “the enjoyment felt when you have met a challenge that stretched your capabilities.” or consider the hebrew osher, often described as a state of contented happiness, but also involving joy, making it more strongly qualified than contentment per se. finally, indicating the kind of happy relief one might experience after successfully navigating challenging times, there is kǔqùgānlái in chinese, which literally means to go from pain and come towards sweetness. having charted some interesting territory around contentment, we can now return to the cosiness and homeliness implied by hygge, which constitute an interesting theme in their own right. 3.3 cosiness/homeliness overlapping with contentment/satisfaction is an intriguing class of words pertaining to cosiness and homeliness. i already noted that hygge can be used to denote such feelings, and further mentioned its etymological roots in the verb “to comfort” or “hug.” in that respect, it has parallels with the welsh cwtch, which as a verb means “to hug/cuddle,” and (intransitively) “to get cosy,” while as a noun refers to a hug/cuddle (coupland, 2014). however, as per hygge, it also evokes cosiness and safety, and describes places that engender such feelings. http://www.afroginthefjord.com/ https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=arbejdsglaede&action=edit&redlink=1 the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 the analysis uncovered various words which evoke these experiences. many hailed from colder countries, which perhaps indicates an intersection between geography, culture and language, whereby these qualities are particularly valued in relatively cold and inhospitable climates (brits, 2016). i have already touched upon the significance of hygge in that respect, although, as noted, this cannot be rendered merely as cosiness. moreover, even when it does connote this, the english “cosy/cosiness” does not do justice to its significance in nordic culture. beyond merely denoting warm and comfortable environs, it seems to speak to an almost existential sense of safety and belonging. revealingly, its antonym (uhygge) is not uncomfortable, but frightening or sinister (orange, 2016). that said, i wonder if the foregoing remarks do injustice to the english term “cosy.” personally, the term also has these existential connotations for me, and it strikes me that the construct has not received the attention in psychology that it merits. other words bring further nuance to this area. german, in particular, has numerous relevant terms. geborgenheit describes being protected and safe from harm, and perhaps also, more benignly, “snugness.” (it combines geborgen – a verb and adjective which can mean “safe or sheltered,” as well as “hidden” (hachmeister, 2002, p. 66) – with heit, which changes an adjective into an abstract noun.) another term often translated as “cosy” is the adjective gemütlich (gemütlichkeit as an abstract noun). however, again, “cosy” is not quite right here. the root gemüt is described by cassin, apter, lezra, and wood (2014) as the epitome of an untranslatable word, used by philosophers like kant to cover mind, mood, heart and soul, without being reducible to any one of these. indeed, von uexküll (1987, p. 175) suggests it has been widely used in german philosophy and mysticism to denote “the whole inner world of man.” thus, gemütlich conveys friendliness, soulfulness, even mindfulness (as in peace of mind), and is often used to depict a warm social atmosphere (whiteoak, 2008). finally, there is the adjective heimlich, often rendered as “homely.” however, it is perhaps slightly more complex. according to freud (1955), it also alludes to that which is or must be concealed from outsiders. as such, in requiring secrecy, the term can imply that something is “uncanny” and even “frightening,” and therefore paradoxically has similar meanings to its antonym unheimlich (parsons, 2014), although this is perhaps a rather esoteric interpretation, limited to select contexts like psychoanalysis. 3.4 savouring/appreciation as with most themes here, the previous one overlaps with this one, since in deeming a place cosy/homely, one might certainly be appreciating or savouring it. however, these latter concepts warrant addressing in their own right, with a rich vein of words relating to these. a quick note on the english concepts that serve as the overarching labels for this theme. these two are sometimes treated as synonymous. for instance, lin, chen, and wang (2011, p. 166) define “savouring” as “the appreciation of enjoyable life experiences.” however, savouring is perhaps more active, involving the deliberate enacting of strategies that facilitate appreciation. some words pertain more to savouring/appreciation itself, whereas others bring specificity to the phenomena that are its focus. relating to the state of appreciation is the icelandic adjective hugfanginn, which translates as “mind-captured,” alluding to being enthralled, fascinated or charmed. its etymology also implies that this experience may not be entirely voluntary; as per modular theories of attention (posner & petersen, 1990), one’s focus can easily be “captured” by phenomena that seem compelling or urgent. then there are terms denoting particularly deep or profound forms of appreciation, like the swedish verb njuta, which brings greater intensity than the english terms that are often offered as rough translations, such as “enjoy.” of similar potency is the hawaiian noun and the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 stative verb mahalo, which encompasses admiration, respect, esteem, and regard (pukui & elbert, 1986, p. 218). however, its etymology also conveys a notion of “divine presence,” such that it is used as an expression of deep gratitude and/or spiritual blessing (becker, 2016, p. 386). augmenting these mental states are terms that pertain more to the act of appreciation. for instance, reflecting once again the intersection of climate, culture and language, many temperate cultures have coined words articulating the pleasures of strolling outside, such as the french verb flâner (and its noun flâneur, denoting one who engages in the activity), the italian noun passegiata, and the greek noun volta. one might counter that “strolling” conveys something similar. however, this lacks the significance these terms have in their respective cultures, where they are much celebrated activities – and even rituals – rather than simply a generic verb. for instance, in her ethnography of an italian village, del negro (2005, p. 16) describes the passegiata as a vital “cultural performance.” similarly, benjamin (1983) highlights the significance of the flâneur in french culture, coming to prominence in the 19th century as a distinct and enviable type of person (i.e., the “man of leisure”). this latter example also shows how many words can take on complex associations with factors such as wealth and class. such terms are joined by words conveying an appreciation of nature. there is the japanese noun shinrin-yoku – literally forest (shinrin) bathing (yoku) – for the restorative feeling of “soaking up” the tranquillity of natural environments. the value to wellbeing of nature generally has been explored in the west, for instance, with gesler’s (1992) work on therapeutic landscapes; however, japanese scholars have studied the health benefits of shinrin-yoku specifically, deeming it an example of “forest medicine” (park, tsunetsugu, kasetani, kagawa, & miyazaki, 2010). a similar notion is expressed by the finnish verb maadoittuminen, which translates as “earthing” or “grounding,” and describes the act of going into a forest (or nature more generally) to ground oneself in the natural world (ober, sinatra, & zucker, 2010). finally, there are terms pertaining to a general appreciation of life itself. french is particularly rich in that respect, from joie de vivre (a “love of living”) to bon vivant (“one who lives well”), a trend which is commended as being indicative of a vibrant cultural character (harrow & unwin, 2009). with these latter terms, savouring/appreciation overlaps with the next theme, revelry/fun. 3.5 revelry/fun the final three themes broach more strongly qualified positive feelings. however, the nuanced diversity of terms – as in all themes here – shows the limitations of simply referring to these as “positive affect,” highlighting the value of introducing greater granularity into our lexicon. this fifth theme pertains to revelry and “fun,” covering more sensual and/or light-hearted forms of pleasure. or, to deploy a term approaching the status of a loanword, the words here relate to the gaelic noun craic, which captures a general sense of revelry and “good times” (grantham, 2009). incidentally, that i felt compelled to put “fun” in quotation marks above is indicative of the fact that, despite being a culturally valued experience, the topic has not attracted much academic attention (reis, o’keefe, & lane, 2016). to begin with, there are words denoting pleasure relating to revelry/fun. of course, many languages have terms directly translated as “pleasure.” what makes a word of interest here is that it brings additional nuances not found in the english word. for instance, the chinese verb guòyǐn suggests craving and satiety, as revealed by its components (with guò meaning “to pass through” or “go across,” and yǐn referring to addiction, craving or habit). thus, it embeds shades of both compulsion and satisfaction that are not found in english terms like “pleasure” (which fixes only on the benign outcome), “craving” (which omits reference to any such successful outcome), or “satiety” (which does not especially carry tones of positive affect). the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 articulating a sense of abandon is the portuguese transitive verb desbundar. denoting a sense of exceeding the/one’s limits, this can be used colloquially to refer to experiences of shedding one’s inhibitions in making merry (wafer, 2010). somewhat similarly, in the bantu group of languages in africa, the verb mbuki-mvuki has been described as the act of taking off clothes in order to dance (i.e., in a more uninhibited way) (holloway, 2005). likewise, the greek term kefi has come to describe a culturally-valued “emotional state heightened by alcohol,” usually evoked by social occasions featuring music and dance (riak, 2007, p. 42). then, pertaining to music and dancing themselves, there are literally thousands of untranslatable words – some of which are already loanwords – capturing specific styles and genres. for instance, the caribbean region alone has produced hundreds of styles/genres (manuel, bilby, & largey, 2012). finally, a wealth of terms denotes the social occasions that cultures have developed to enable fun/revelry. for instance, the balinese ramé can be used to describe parties that are particularly festive, tumultuous and lively (as well as signifying boisterous social occasions more generally) (geertz, 1973, p. 446). somewhat similarly, the chinese adjective rènào describes something as lively, boisterous, and bustling with noise and excitement. on a potentially gentler and more lighthearted note, chinese also has sànxīn, which literally means “to loosen the heart,” and carries suggestions of easing up, being carefree, enjoying a diversion, and driving away one’s cares. such examples could be multiplied at length, but are sufficient to allude to the diversity of terms pertaining to fun and revelry. we now move on to even more positively qualified experiences of pleasure. 3.6 joy/euphoria these final two themes cover truly elevated levels of positive feelings. if considered in terms of the circumplex model, they would be at the high end of either the valence spectrum (intensely pleasant) or the arousal spectrum (highly active), and, in some cases, both. this penultimate theme addresses feelings pertaining to euphoria, ecstasy, and joy. these three are themselves loanwords, the former two borrowed from greek (via latin), the latter from latin (via french) (bühler, 2005). both “euphoria” and “ecstasy” have undergone an intriguing process of semantic change over the centuries, thus highlighting the malleability of language. in its original greek context, “euphoria” combined eu (a prefix denoting “good”) and pherin (the verb “to bear” or “carry”), thus implying a person was healthy or of “good bearing.” while usually referring simply to physical health, it could also be deployed in a moral or developmental sense. for instance, aristotle used it as a near synonym of eudaimonia, presenting it as the desirable outcome of a virtuous life (raftari, 2015). however, by the time the word entered into english around the 17th century, it was mainly in a medical context, describing a condition of feeling well and comfortable, perhaps due to the effective operation of medicine. it was possibly this association with positive mental states, often arising from psychoactive substances, that gave rise to modern uses of the term, namely, as an intense feeling of wellbeing (bühler, 2005). “ecstasy,” likewise, has evolved. in its original context, it combined ek (“outside/beyond”) and stasis (“standing/stature”). it thus connoted a person “standing outside” themselves in some way, from the relatively benign (e.g., being astonished or entranced) to the more troubling (e.g., insanity or spiritual possession) (michaelsen, 1989). it entered english around the 14th century, and became mainly deployed in religious contexts, depicting an exalted state of “rapture” that could arise from the contemplation of the divine (mcginn, 1987). more recently, it has tended to simply denote intense pleasure. however, in some contexts – like modern psychiatry – both “euphoria” and “ecstasy” can carry pejorative connotations of being too intense, i.e., artificial the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 and/or socially inappropriate (wilmot, 1985). conversely, “joy” has invariably been characterised through the centuries as wholly benign and even morally worthy. (it entered english around the 13th century, from the french joie – meaning “delight” or “bliss” – which itself derived from the latin gaudere, meaning “rejoice.”) for instance, it has long been used in religious contexts to characterise the just psychological rewards of great faith and devotion (ehrenreich, 2007). notions of joy, ecstasy and euphoria are augmented by words covering similar territory. some align more with the less complicated benign purity captured by joy, such as the māori noun/adjective harikoa, which encompasses “joyful,” “euphoric,” “delighted,” “exuberant,” “elated,” and “jubilant” (štekauer, valera, & kőrtvélyessy, 2012). somewhat more complex is the french noun jouissance, deriving from joissant, meaning “to take pleasure/delight in.” however, it has also come to have sexual connotations, particularly coital ecstasy (susam-sarajeva, 2006). in that latter respect, it has become a term of interest in psychoanalytic theory, especially in the work of jacques lacan (2006). for instance, lacan dwelt upon its complex dynamics, suggesting that people have a limit to the amount of pleasure they can bear – possibly because at this zenith there is always the painful realisation of the inevitable come-down – and so beyond this limit, pleasure can become painful. thus, for lacan, jouissance represents the crossing of these limits (fink, 1997). relatedly, the chinese term lèjíshēngbēi implies that the zenith of joy necessarily begets sadness, in that peaks of happiness are generally followed by some descent into unhappiness (since it is not usually feasible to remain at these peaks for an extended duration). such terms thus intersect with another of the main categories in the lexicography, that of ambivalent emotions (lomas, in press c). more generally, they also align with the emergent paradigm of “second wave” positive psychology, which argues that wellbeing does not only involve positively-valenced emotional states, but also more ambivalent, “dialectical” ones (lomas & ivtzan, 2016). overlapping with jouissance are terms around ardour and passion. as per jouissance – and, indeed, euphoria and ecstasy – these are somewhat ambiguous, in that while intensely “positive,” they are yet potentially problematic, perhaps being excessive or unstable in some way. for instance, the russian noun azart describes excitement and fervour, but is also associated with recklessness and risk-taking. this brings to mind lakoff and johnson’s (1980) metaphorical model of cognition, whereby subjective states that are characterised using notions around heat are invariably unstable and beyond one’s control to an extent. another complex term is the spanish noun duende, which in an artistic context refers to a heightened state of emotion, spirit and passion, as seen particularly with the performance (or even just the appreciation) of art forms like the flamenco (miller, 2012). the term itself derives from an elf-like creature in spanish mythology, which perhaps indicates the capricious and non-rational state expressed by the term. thus, like azart, duende reflects the tempestuous dynamics of strong feelings like euphoria/ecstasy. however, a final class of positive emotions, while perhaps no less intense, are rather more stable, as the next section explores. 3.7 bliss/nirvāṇa feelings around euphoria/ecstasy can, for all that they are intensely positive in valence, be rather unstable, i.e., subject to swift dissipation. this stands in contrast to a range of elevated feelings that are more lasting and even relatively permanent. interestingly, these generally hail from spiritual contexts, implying that these usually may not be attained unless a person has some kind of spiritual practice. spirituality constitutes an entire category in the lexicography, with in-depth analysis in itself devoted to it (lomas, in press a). however, it would be remiss to not at least the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 touch upon some relevant terms here, as these represent some of the most potent positive states that human beings appear capable of experiencing (wilber, engler, brown, & chirban, 1986). relevant words can be found across numerous traditions, from west to east. for instance, christianity has developed terms like béatitude and charis to denote more lasting states of bliss. these have parallels with eudaimonia – a loanword in positive psychology – which, in its original greek context, articulated a sense of being graced with a divine spirit (cary, 2008). both béatitude and charis carry connotations of being blessed, and in receipt of god’s grace, and have been borrowed in that respect (with the latter itself the root of the term grace). béatitude arrived from french in the 15th century, and ultimately derives from the latin beātitūdō, conveying an ultimate or perfect happiness (mcmahon, 2006). with charis, in its original greek context, it covered similar territory to eudaimonia, conveying a range of valorised qualities, from kindness and grace to beauty and nobility. indeed, in mythology, a charis was the singular form for the goddesses of these qualities, known collectively as the charities (maclachlan, 2014). the term was translated into french as grâce itself adapted from the latin gratia – which implies favour, mercy, or thanks. subsequently, the term began to be deployed in religious contexts to describe being blessed, favoured or otherwise supported by god. in this sense it overlaps with beatitude, since within christian teachings, true (i.e., deep, lasting) happiness is regarded as ultimately only possible through god’s grace (tillich, 1967). this type of feeling has recently been recognised in psychology by wong (2016), who terms it “chaironic” happiness – thus drawing on the etymology of charis –defining it as a “blessing, joy, or gift of happiness of a spiritual nature, which is relatively independent of positive situations or our own happiness-enhancing efforts” (para 2). a related perspective on the possibility of “ultimate” happiness is found in eastern traditions, such as hinduism and buddhism. these have developed highly sophisticated lexicons relating to wellbeing, which highlights the depth of insight in their teachings. while it is beyond the scope of this paper to elucidate even a fraction of their relevant terms, it is worth at least touching upon some of the states described in these traditions, to appreciate the highest dimensions of the spectrum of positive feelings. in that respect, i will mention just two sanskrit terms, ânanda – and nirvāṇa. ananda is frequently translated simply as “bliss;” however, in hindu and buddhist contexts it is usually imbued with spiritual qualities not present in the english word. thus, teachings usually contrast it with sukha, which implies satisfaction/contentment (while its antonym duḥkha translates as dissatisfaction or suffering). however, as desirable as sukha may be, hindu and buddhist teachings tend to portray ânanda as far more elevated and worthy. for instance, iyengar (2010, p. 153) suggests there is a “vast difference”: while sukha tends to mean merely “ease,” “comfort,” or “sensual pleasure,” ânanda has a “spiritual quality.” sukha is often seen as dependent on circumstances, i.e., the extent to which one’s life is currently conducive to ease/comfort. it is therefore conditional, and is thus depicted as a “worldly” form of happiness (singh, 2012). in contrast, ânanda is regarded as unconditional, independent of vicissitudes of circumstance. rather, it arises when a person has developed sufficient detachment – usually through spiritual practices – that they may enjoy feelings of bliss that are relatively imperturbable and therefore durable. as strongly-qualified as ânanda is, though, even this is arguably superseded by nirvāṇa. in buddhist teachings, this does not merely connote an enduring wellbeing, but a permanent cessation of suffering (harvey, 2012). within buddhist cosmology, it signifies that a person has exited the cycle of birth, death, and re-birth – known as saṃsāra – that characterises existence (and which is pervaded by duḥkha). this sense of finality and liberation is reflected in the word’s the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 etymology, which means to extinguish (e.g., as a flame). it thus has similarities with the hindu notion of mokṣa. however, hinduism generally retains the concept of an individual “soul” or “inner self” – known as ātman, and also translatable as “breath” or “spirit” – that can be thus liberated. conversely, most schools of buddhism hold that no individual traces of personhood are preserved in this way, a principle known as anātman (epstein, 1988). as noted above, spirituality constitutes its own category in the lexicography, and so merits an analysis to itself. nevertheless, the terms included here indicate the far-reaching emotional states that may be possible, exceeding those denoted by such conventional english terms as “pleasure” or “satisfaction,” and even more intensely-qualified notions like “euphoria” and “ecstasy.” 4. conclusion the analysis has revealed a wealth of positively valenced feelings, covering seven broad overlapping themes. these were each labelled using two broad conceptually-similar english constructs that roughly encompass the terrain in question: (1) peace and calm, (2) contentment and satisfaction, (3) cosiness and homeliness, (4) savouring and appreciation, (5) revelry and fun, (6) joy and euphoria, and (7) bliss and nirvāṇa. these seven themes were deconstructed into finergrained elements through the analysis of relevant words. in many instances, the terms delineate a smaller, more precise phenomenological region than that covered by the english thematic labels. for instance, jouissance constitutes a quite specific instance of euphoria, one often connected to sexual activity. conversely, in a few cases, the untranslatable word perhaps occupies a larger phenomenological region; for instance, smṛti was noted as having a great range of meanings, including but not limited to peace and calm. in general, the sheer range of words encompassed by this category highlights the limitations of referring generically to “positive affect,” and points towards the value of developing a more fine-grained appreciation of the nuances in this area. indeed, the paper builds upon existing theory and research which has likewise sought to identify nuances in experiences and appraisals of happiness. for instance, in terms of the lay psychological definitions of happiness analysed by delle fave et al. (2016), the first theme here of peace/calm is linked to their dominant category of harmony, and particularly its first two components (inner peace and balance). conversely, its third component, contentment, aligns more with the second theme here (contentment and satisfaction). this second theme also overlaps with the second subcategory of delle fave et al., satisfaction, as well as the lap elements of positive emotions (their third subcategory), while the hap elements align more with the final three themes here. the last theme, bliss/nirvāṇa also resonates with wong’s (2011; 2016) concept of chaironic happiness. to an extent, this theme also reflects dambrun et al.’s (2012) category of authentic-durable happiness, and also wong’s (2017) idea of “mature happiness” – characterised by “peace, contentment, meaning, acceptance, and the feeling of being connected with god” (para. 6) – as does the first theme of peace/calm. the concept of mature happiness draws on frankl’s (1963) notion of “tragic optimism,” which alludes to the transformative capacity of the individual to flourish even amidst life’s challenges. wong depicts this type of equipoise as arising when people cease looking to the vagaries of circumstance to furnish them with happiness, and instead cultivate the kind of inner peace characterised by ataraxia above. this analysis also augments ekman’s deconstruction of enjoyment in his atlas of emotions. as per barrett, gross, christensen, & benvenuto’s (2001) concept of emotional granularity/differentiation, the words analysed here bring additional detail to this spectrum. although i had only seven main types of positive feelings (compared to ekman’s 12), each was further segmented into more fine-grained forms, with the lexicography currently featuring 134 the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 relevant terms, each of which brings its own nuances to the realm of positive feelings. for instance, one of ekman’s 12 types is fiero, which is just one of numerous terms subsumed within contentment/satisfaction here. moreover, the seven themes here include feelings not in ekman’s list, including peace/calm, contentment/satisfaction, cosiness/homeliness, and bliss/nirvāṇa. conversely, i have not included schadenfreude, since, although technically a form of pleasure, it is a malicious kind that is ultimately detrimental to wellbeing (mcnamee, 2007), and so does not warrant inclusion here. finally, my analysis does not include terms relating to love, which constitutes its own entire category and analysis in the lexicography (lomas, in press b), and which encompasses some positive feelings that ekman has situated within “enjoyment,” such as compassion and naches. overall then, the analysis above, to an extent, aligns with emergent schemas and constructs pertaining to positive affect – identified by the likes of delle fave et al. (2016), wong (2011; 2016; 2017), and ekman (1999) – while also differing in subtle ways. however, that does not necessarily mean that one schema is more correct or accurate than the others. there may be many valid and viable ways of delineating the experiential territory of positive affect (and indeed any realm of experience). many contemporary theories of emotion subtly blend elements of naturalism (i.e., the idea that humans access a relatively universal and stable set of affective responses) and constructivism (i.e., the idea that human experience is socially constructed and culturallyvariable). for instance, feldman barrett’s (2006) conceptual-act model proposes that discrete emotions emerge from a conceptual analysis of a “momentary state of core affect” (p. 49). while core affect is somewhat naturalistic, its “ebb and flow” is filtered through culturally-acquired linguistic-conceptual schemas that calibrate how these emotions are felt, interpreted, and reacted to. in the case of the varied schemas of positive affect mentioned above, it may be that different researchers – guided by their own preconceptions, agendas, and general cultural situatedness – have developed subtly different frameworks, which are all nevertheless valid on their own terms. indeed, it would have been possible for the thematic structure here to have been configured differently. for instance, within the theme of joy/euphoria was the concept of lèjíshengbēi, alluding to the way that peaks of happiness inevitably precipitate a comedown towards sadness. the concept is therefore inherently ambivalent, presenting a dialectical interaction of positively and negatively-valenced feelings. as such, the thematic structure above could have potentially been expanded to accommodate an eighth theme featuring these kinds of unstable, complex, ambivalent feelings. however, there is an entire category within the lexicography pertaining to such ambivalent feelings (lomas, in press c). therefore, rather than introducing an additional theme here, it was felt more parsimonious to situate lèjíshengbēi within joy/euphoria, and then to view it as a bridging term that intersects the categories of positive affect and ambivalent feelings. this kind of coding dilemma is common in qualitative and conceptual analysis. ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to classify phenomena such as emotions; different schemas can simply be more or less plausible, and it was felt that the framework presented here was the optimal configuration. other scholars may well approach the situation differently, however, which would also of course be totally acceptable. besides the contingent and somewhat subjective nature of the conceptual classification, the analysis also has various limitations. first, my treatment of the included words has been inevitably restricted, limited by attempting to convey an overarching comparative analysis (i.e., rather than focusing on a small number of terms) within the constraints of a short article. moreover, given that translation is such a problematic exercise, it will not have been possible to arrive at descriptions that would satisfy all speakers of the languages to which the words belong. as with any translation, one aims “to catch the spirit” of the original word (mcclaren, 1998, p. the spectrum of positive affect lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 128). however, given the fluidity and complexity of language use, there will always be many possible ways of defining and interpreting a given word. thus, the descriptions of the untranslatable words here are merely one possible way of elucidating these terms, and ultimately are based on my own selective and biased reading and interpretation of the source material. that said, i have consulted dictionaries, scholarly sources, and speakers of various languages in the aim of at least arriving at viable and valid – albeit partial or improvable – descriptions of all the words. in addition to issues around translation and hermeneutics, the analysis, and the lexicography itself, are by no means exhaustive. for instance, the lexicography only currently features around 120 languages, out of potentially more than 7,000 currently in existence. the lexicography, and its analysis, must be seen as works-in-progress. there are likely to be many relevant terms that are included neither in the analysis above, nor the lexicography as it currently stands. moreover, some cultures have been considered in more depth than others (particularly eastern ones), which reflects my personal interests, which drove the process of conceptual snowballing in particular directions. nonetheless, it is hoped that the analysis may still offer a useful cross-cultural appraisal of positive emotions, limited and partial as it may be. future research may then be able to build on this, developing an even more comprehensive and nuanced cross-cultural conception of this vital dimension of wellbeing. author tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk publishing timeline received 27 march 2017 accepted 17 october 2017 published 12 december 2017 references barrett, l. f. 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(2012). explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 251-270. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.6 sophie leontopoulou university of ioannina sleon@cc.uoi.gr copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 251 article explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample sophie leontopoulou · sofia triliva abstract: the present study brought together and examined two related, but distinct, concepts rooted in positive psychology, namely subjective wellbeing (swb) and character strengths. it sought to assess the impact of a number of demographic and other sociological and psychological factors, including physical and mental health, on emerging adults’ outlook on life. this study also set out to validate and investigate the levels of wellbeing and character strengths in the context of a more collective, mediterranean culture; that of greece. three hundred and twelve male and female students from two greek universities participated in the study, which consisted of a questionnaire battery, including measures of subjective wellbeing, character strengths and mental and physical health. youths were found to have a positive outlook on life. wisdom, courage and transcendence appeared to be the most salient among their character strengths, since character strengths were each highly and positively correlated with the wellbeing subscales of environmental mastery, purpose in life and self-acceptance. good physical and mental health were positively related to, and reliably predicted different aspects of, both wellbeing and character strengths; nevertheless, mental health appeared to affect and predict more aspects of wellbeing and character strengths than physical health. the significance of the above findings for the field of positive psychology is discussed. keywords: subjective wellbeing, character strengths, mental and physical health, emerging adulthood, positive psychology 1. introduction over the last decade there has been a dramatic rise in research that comes under the broad umbrella of the ‚positive psychology field‛ (noble & mcgrath, 2008; peterson, park, & sweeney, 2008). in their editorial to the millennium issue of the american psychologist, seligman and csikszentmihalyi proposed that a science of ‚positive subjective experience, positive individual traits and positive institutions‛ had much to offer in terms of improving the quality of life and in helping prevent certain types of mental illness (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). since then the field has expanded considerably and ‘positive psychology’ research has made a number of valuable contributions to a diverse range of individual disciplines encompassed by mainstream psychology, such as organizational, school and counselling psychology (luthans, avey, avolio, norman, & combs, 2006; lopez & edwards, 2008; miller, nickerson, chafouleas, & osborne, 2008). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 252 1.1 the role of subjective wellbeing in mental health one area of positive psychology that has attracted particular attention within the clinical domain has been the role that an individual’s sense of subjective wellbeing (swb) plays in their mental health. subjective wellbeing refers to the different ways in which people evaluate the quality of their lives (diener, 2000; diener, kesebir & lucas, 2008), and is seen as being made up of an interaction of cognitive and affective components. for example, those people who judge their lives to be rewarding and fulfilling and in general experience positive rather than negative moods are those deemed to be experiencing high levels of subjective wellbeing. there are a variety of external and internal factors that are seen as contributing towards an individual’s sense of subjective wellbeing—for example, physical health, financial status, job satisfaction and career opportunities, being involved in meaningful and rewarding social relationships, and the experience of certain major life events and underlying personality traits, such as extraversion (for a review see: weiss, bates, & luciano, 2008). there is now a substantial body of research that indicates that across the globe people have a tendency to rate themselves as being more satisfied than dissatisfied with life, averaging 7/10 in measures of swb (diener, 2000). as myers (2000) points out, this raises the question whether seemingly satisfied and happy people are merely in denial of their actual misery. or to put it another way, given that measures of swb are by their very nature self-report indexes, does the self-report nature of swb indexes represent individuals’ tendencies towards unrealistic positive bias as a protective mechanism? however, it would appear to be the case that swb does demonstrate convergent validity, as people who report that they are happy appear to be so to family and friends also. in addition, people who report being happy seem to be less hostile and abusive to others and also less vulnerable to disease, compared to people who are depressed (myers, 2000). certain personality traits that have been linked to swb and to ‘character strengths’ may account for the above findings. 1.2 personality traits associated with subjective wellbeing and character strengths recently, there has been increased interest shown in exploring the relationship between ‘character strengths’ and swb. much of this work has been carried out by martin seligman and his colleagues in the united states at the via institute (www.viacharacter.org/. also see e.g. park, peterson & seligman, 2004; peterson, ruch, beermann, park, & seligman, 2007). character strengths have been defined as ‚positive traits reflected in thoughts, feelings and behaviours‛ (park, et al., 2004, p. 613). under their taxonomy there are 24 strengths, and examples of character strengths include hope, gratitude, modesty, appreciation of beauty, curiosity, judgement and love of learning. these 24 strengths are classified into six broader categories, namely autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations, purpose in life, and self-acceptance (figure 1 portrays the classification of the character strengths). according to eysenck (1991), character traits are universally recognised and grounded in biology—as part of an evolutionary process that selects for ‘moral excellence’ as a means of solving important tasks necessary for the survival of the species. the relationship between character strengths and swb would appear to be complex since some—but certainly not all—character strengths appear to have a direct relationship with subjective wellbeing (brdar & kashdan, 2010). from the research evidence available to date, it would appear that whereas the qualities of hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity correlate highly with measures of life satisfaction, certain other diverse character strengths—which include the qualities of modesty, appreciation of beauty and love of learning—do not (park, et al., 2004). as a result of several years of research, seligman and colleagues have constructed a http://www.viacharacter.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hans_eysenck explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 253 note: via classification is copyrighted material of via institute on character, 2004. see www.viacharacter.org. used with permission. this image first appeared in niemiec (2012, p. 24). duplication of this image requires permission from the via institute, and a reference to niemiec (2012). figure 1: via classification widely used scale to measure character strengths—‘seligman’s via survey of character strengths’ (seligman, 2002), a 48-item version of the main 240-item scale titled ‘via inventory of strengths (via-is)’ (peterson, park, & seligman, 2005). to date, much of the data regarding the reliability and construct validity of the scale have been derived from us samples (stone, schwartz, broderick, & deaton, 2010); however, some interesting cross-national findings have also emerged. for example, in a comparative study of us and swiss nationals it was found that the character strengths most predictive of life satisfaction in both groups were love, hope, curiosity and zest. however, it was also found that whilst ‘gratitude’ was among the strongest predictors of life satisfaction within the us sample, ‘perseverance’ was a more robust predictor of life satisfaction amongst the swiss group (peterson, et al., 2007). in a study of character strengths within the 50 us states park, peterson and seligman (2006) reported that the most explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 254 common ones (in order) were ‘kindness’, ‘fairness’, ‘honesty’, ‘gratitude’, and ‘judgment’, while the least common were ‘prudence’, ‘modesty’, and ‘self-regulation’. the only strength that differed within the different states was ‘religiousness’. 1.3 subjective wellbeing of university students the transition that young people make between school and university is for many an exciting, yet challenging, time. on the one hand, the university experience provides the young person with the opportunity to enhance knowledge and perspective, to develop and establish aspects of personal identity and to achieve personal growth (giovazolias, karademas, & kalantziazizi, 2008). on the other hand, during the time that young people are at university, many of them will encounter a number of novel, practical, academic as well as social, emotional and psychological difficulties (leontopoulou, 2006). developing new social and romantic relationships, problems with living accommodation, difficulties with coping with new-found independence, separation anxiety that may be experienced by being away from one’s family, financial worries, health care concerns and coping with the demands of academic work are just some of the typical problems that many students will face (halamandaris & power, 1997). furthermore, these individual challenges may not occur independently of one another. for example, problems with social and/or romantic relationships may heighten the separation anxiety experienced by being away from home and support networks, and this in turn may reduce engagement in study. as another example, problems with living accommodation may increase financial worries (and vice versa), and poor physical health may restrict levels of social interaction, which in turn may lead to increased loneliness and feelings of isolation. 1.4 cultural considerations: concepts and measurement tools becker and marecek (2008) argue that the ethos of ‘positive psychology’ and its associated measurement tools are culturally bound. they claim that although the field promotes itself globally, its american roots are apparent, particularly in the way that the field endorses the individualistic goals of self-fulfilment and self-improvement, and in its ‚narrow view of the social‛ (becker & marecek, 2008, p. 1767). in contrast, mediterranean societies such as greece have traditionally been portrayed in the social science literature as being communityand family-oriented cultures (markus & kitayama, 1991; triandis, 1995). it is possible that the theoretical underpinnings of positive psychology may have less validity as a research paradigm when applied to greek students than to their counterparts in the united states and northern europe. to date there has been little research carried out that has sought to investigate the relative construct and convergent validity of us-derived positive psychology measurement tools among greek samples. it is clear, then, that further work in this area is needed. 1.5 the present study the overall focus of the present study was to investigate emerging adults’ outlook on life. more specifically, the study had three main aims. the first was to examine simultaneously two related, but distinct, concepts rooted in positive psychology, namely swb and character strengths, in emerging adulthood. research evidence linking the two concepts for greek emerging adults is scarce and widely spread in time, let alone studies mapping the relations between their respective subscales. therefore, conceptual affinities between the two concepts were sought in an effort to identify specific ways in which each construct impacts on the other during emerging adulthood. explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 255 the second aim of this study was to investigate the impact of a number of demographic and other sociological and psychological factors on emerging adults’ outlook on life, since such factors have been known to affect swb (diener, tamir, & scollon, 2006). the present study investigated university students’ (1) demographic characteristics (such as age, gender and socio-economic status); (2) academic information; (3) relationship information (romantic, social, with parents); (4) information about accommodation and working; and (5) physical and mental health. of particular interest were the possible patterns of relations between physical and mental health, subjective wellbeing and character strengths. to date the vast majority of studies linking swb and character strengths has been carried out in north american and north european societies. relatively little research has been carried out in the above direction in societies beyond that range. in one of the few studies that have been carried out outside north america and north europe, toner, haslam, robinson and williams (2012) found that in an australian adolescent sample the character strengths of temperance, vitality, and transcendence were associated with subjective wellbeing and happiness. brdar and kashdan (2010) investigated the relationship between character strengths and swb in croatian university students and found that strengths associated with vitality (such as zest, curiosity, gratitude, and optimism/hope) were strongly associated with increased swb. given that north american and north european societies, such as the united states, united kingdom and sweden are largely considered to be more individualistic in nature than other societies, such as greece, which is a more collectivist one (triandis, 1995), differences may be expected in the nature and direction of any results linking swb and character strengths. therefore, the third aim of this study was to provide reliable measurements of both wellbeing and character strengths and their subscales, validated for use with a greek sample. to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time this has been attempted. 2. method 2.1 sample information regarding participants’ demographic and other social and psychological characteristics is presented in tables 1 and 2. figure 2 portrays students’ self-reported physical and mental health status. with regard to satisfaction with living conditions, first-year students were happier with their living arrangements than the rest (f (1, 309) = 4.94, p < .05), possibly because this was their first time living on their own, away from home and perhaps because entering university is a major accomplishment, a personal achievement which allows students to feel good about themselves and their lives. two groups of students, those who were satisfied with their living conditions, and those who were not, were further examined in order to identify any other potential sources of support they might be enjoying. significant differences were observed between the two groups. in particular, the more satisfied the participants were with their living conditions, the more likely they were (1) to be romantically involved (χ² (4, 311) = 9.93, p < .05); and also (2) to see and talk to a greater number of close friends on campus (χ² (28, 26) = 43.62, p < .05). interestingly, (3) those satisfied with their living conditions tended to report better mental health as well (χ² (8, 299) = 23.9, p < .01). these findings are in line with previous research suggesting that satisfactory living conditions, as indicators of quality of life, lead to higher satisfaction with life at both a personal and a national level (saris, 2001; veenhoven, 1996). explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 256 2.2 measures the questionnaire battery used in this study included a total of 155 questions. twenty-three of these questions were developed to obtain information about our sample on a number of variables. these variables included (1) demographic information (i.e. age, gender, marital and socio-economic status, country of origin); (2) academic information (i.e. year of study, reregistration from another university, number of exams passed last semester, amount of time spent studying, academic performance); (3) relationship information (i.e. involvement in a romantic relationship, sexual preference, social relationships, involvement in academic and social activities, frequency of communication with parents); (4) information about accommodation and working (i.e. accommodation and satisfaction with it, working and time spent at work); and (5) physical and mental health (self-assessment of one’s physical and mental health on a four-point likert-type scale (i.e. ‚excellent‛, ‚good‛, ‚average‛ and ‚poor‛; the option ‚very poor‛ as a fifth point in the scale was not included, as concerns were raised that students would not select it in order to present themselves in a favourable light. a high score in the scale indicated better health). students’ swb was assessed with the use of ‘the psychological well-being scales’ (pwbs – short scales; ryff, 1989). this version of the pwbs included 84 items and answers were on a six-point agree–disagree likert-type scale. the response range was from ‚strongly disagree‛ to ‚strongly agree‛. a high score on the pwbs is deemed to indicate a high sense of subjective wellbeing. cronbach’s alpha for the whole scale was high, a = .92. the pwbs comprises six subscales, namely autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations, purpose in life, and self-acceptance, which have previously been reported to have good internal consistency, cronbach’s alpha ranging from a = .87 to a = .93, good test–retest reliability, r = .81 to r = .88, and good validity. cronbach’s a in the greek sample for each subscale was a = .80 for autonomy, a = .77 for environmental mastery, a = .80 for personal growth, a = .81 for positive relations, a = .75 for purpose in life and a = .74 for self-acceptance. sample items included ‚in general, i feel i am in charge of my life‛ (personal growth subscale) and ‚keeping close friends has been difficult for me‛ (positive relations subscale). seligman’s 48-item ‘via survey of character strengths’ (scs; seligman, 2002) was used to index students’ character strengths. the response range on this five-point likert-type scale was ‚very much like me‛, ‚like me‛, ‚neutral‛, ‚unlike me‛, ‚very much unlike me‛. each strength is measured by two items, a positively and a negatively phrased one. a high score on the scs suggested that participants manifested high scores on a number of character strengths. the reliability of the whole scale in the greek sample was high (chronbach’s a = .82). the via scs scale includes six subscales, namely wisdom (a = .76), courage (a = .76), justice (a = .70), human love (a = .74), temperance (a = .69) and transcendence (a = .75). sample items included ‚i am always curious about the world‛ (wisdom subscale) and ‚i am in control of my feelings‛ (temperance subscale). there is some debate in the literature regarding the structure of the via scs. for example, toner, et al. (2012) reported the existence of threeand four-factor solutions in the literature, while in their study they identified five factors. since this was the first time that the via scs scale was administered to a greek sample we chose to use the original six factors and investigate their potential relationship to the swb subscales. 2.3 procedure the questionnaire battery of 155 questions described above was administered to students during the lectures of the participating course instructors at each of the university departments. a researcher was always present and available for clarifications for the duration explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 257 of the questionnaire completion, which usually took about 45 minutes. students signed informed consent forms for their participation in the research endeavour and they were reassured regarding confidentiality. no financial rewards or course incentives were offered to participants. table 1: demographic, sociological and psychological characteristics of the sample (n = 312) characteristic value age m = 19.9 (sd 2.59) gender male female 73 (23.5%) 238 (76.5%) origin greek european other 281 (90.3%) 27 (8.7%) 3 (1%) living situation alone parents friends other 175 (56%) 45 (14%) 74 (24.4%) 18 (5.6%) satisfaction with living situation very/a little satisfied neither satisfied nor dissatisfied very/a little dissatisfied 249 (79.8%) 44 (14%) 19 (6.1%) romantic relations single attached 163 (52.4%) 148 (47.4%) contact parents at least 1/15 days mother father both neither 43 (15.4%) 3 (1.1%) 230 (82.1%) 4 (1.4%) frequency going out past 15 days >10 times 5-9 2-4 1 0 62 (20.7%) 110 (36.8%) 102 (34.1%) 19 (6.4%) 6 (2%) explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 258 fair (b) table 2: academic and employment characteristics of the sample (n = 312) characteristic value university peireaus crete 79 (25.9) 226 (74.1) year of study 1st 2nd 3rd 4th >4th 77 (24.8%) 90 (28.9%) 3 (1%) 34 (10.9%) 108 (34.3%) n exams passed m = 5.5 (sd 1.83) acad. performance > 5 (fail) 5-6 6-7 7-8.5 8.5-10 6 (2.6%) 17 (7.5%) 76 (33.3%) 112 (49.1%) 17 (7.5%) hrs of study per week m = 7.2 (sd 7.35) work yes no 29 (9.3%) 283 (90.7%) work hrs per week m = 17.3 (sd 12.16) volunteer work hrs per week m = 2.5 (sd .7) physical health mental health figure 2: self-reported status of participants’ (a) physical and (b) mental health excellent excellent good fair poor good poor (a) explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 259 3. results on ryff’s psychological well-being scales (pwbs) our sample had a mean of m = 4.23, with a standard deviation of sd = .50. even though a positive skew was evident in the data, tests for normality of data distribution did not reveal any significant deviations from the norm. seligman’s via survey of character strengths (scs) scale had a mean of m = 3.46 and a standard deviation of sd = .35, thus revealing a positive skew of the data; even so, the data were normally distributed. the positive bias evident in both scales corresponds to previous findings that, in general, people are more likely to rate themselves as being satisfied, rather than dissatisfied, with life (myers, 2000). details regarding the mean values and the standard deviations of the swbs and the via scs, including their respective subscales, can be found in table 3. table 3: means (m) and standard deviations (sd) for the pwbs and the via scs scales and their subscales swbs mean sd via scs mean sd autonomy 3.96 .67 wisdom 3.52 .46 environ. mastery 3.91 .64 courage 3.44 .57 personal growth 4.40 .55 human love 3.87 .44 positive relations 4.43 .76 justice 3.42 .58 purpose in life 4.46 .74 temperance 2.91 .50 self-acceptance 4.20 .82 transcendence 3.55 .43 total scale 4.23 .50 total scale 3.46 .35 subsequently, bivariate correlations were carried out in order to investigate any relations between subjective wellbeing (pwbs) and character strengths (scs). the literature so far indicates that some character strengths correlate to wellbeing, while others do not (brdar & kashdan, 2010). from the data available to date (park, et al., 2004; peterson, et al., 2007), one could expect that the wisdom, human love and transcendence subscales of the scs would correlate well with the overall pwbs scale and its subscales, as the qualities of hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity, which form the above subscales, have been found to correlate well with indices of life satisfaction cross-culturally; on the other hand, low, if any, correlations could be expected between the temperance subscale of the scs and wellbeing, since modesty was not found to relate to life satisfaction (peterson, et al., 2007). table 4 shows the correlations found between the overall scales of wellbeing and character strengths and their subscales. significant, high and positive correlations were found between subjective wellbeing and character strengths (r = .70, p < .001), indicating high convergent validity for the two measures. the contributions from all the wellbeing subscales to the overall character strengths scale were significant, the highest being from the purpose of life (r = .62, p < .001), the environmental mastery (r = .61, p < .001) and the self-acceptance (r = .61, p < .001) subscales. all contributions of the character strengths subscales to the overall wellbeing scale were also significant, the highest of which were from the courage (r = .62, p < .001), transcendence (r = .59, p < .001) and wisdom (r = .58, p < .001) subscales. temperance seemed to stand out from the other subscales, since it had a somewhat lower mean, as reported above, and also did not correlate well with either the overall wellbeing scale or its subscales. almost all correlations between the six subscales of ryff’s pwbs and the six subscales of seligman’s scs measures were significant. figure 3 portrays some of the highest correlations found between the via scs and the pwbs subscales. explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 260 courage table 4: correlations between subjective wellbeing and character strengths w is d o m c o u ra g e h u m a n l o v e ju st ic e t e m p e ra n ce t ra n sc e n d e n ce v ia s c s t o ta l sc a le autonomy .35** .47** .09 .25** .01 .31** .39** environmental mastery .46** .58** .19* .37** .23** .54** .61** personal growth .45** .23** .28** .24** -.05 .38** .43** positive relations .26** .27** .39** .27** .02 .29** .37** purpose in life .50** .55** .29** .37** .18* .50** .62** self-acceptance .50** .56** .24** .27** .27** .52** .61** pwbs – total scale .58** .62** .35** .41** .17* .59** .70** * p < .01 ** p < .001 figure 3(a): relations between the via scs and the pwbs subscales: environmental mastery and courage low (a) high environmental mastery explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 261 (b) wisdom transcendence (c) figure 3(b): relations between the via scs and the pwbs subscales: purpose in life and wisdom figure 3(c): relations between the via scs and the pwbs subscales: self-acceptance and transcendence low high high low purpose in life self-acceptance explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 262 3.1 relationship between demographic and other sociological and psychological factors, subjective wellbeing and character strengths the only significant difference that was found on the overall wellbeing scale with the aid of a one-way anova revealed that country of origin differentiated participants, in such a way that greeks raised in greece reported higher levels of wellbeing than students from non-european countries (f (187, 56) = 1.67, p < .01). subsequently, a set of t-tests and one-way anovas helped the identification of significant differences among participants with respect to the six wellbeing subscales (see table 5 for summary of significant findings). it is worth mentioning that mental health problems were more pervasive than physical ones, in that they significantly affected all subscales of wellbeing, except that of personal growth, in the expected direction. overall, the findings regarding mental health suggested that self-reports of mental health status related well to the subjective wellbeing scale as a whole. in terms of character strengths, significant differences were identified for the whole scale, as follows: (1) for participants’ marital status (f (92, 218) = 3.88, p < .001); (2) for being pleased with one’s living conditions (f (93, 218) = 1.65, p < .001); and (3) for self-reported physical health (f (91, 206) = 1.41, p < .05). t-tests and one-way anovas were also carried out for each of the six subscales of the scs (see table 6 for summary of significant findings). on the whole, the relationship between mental health and character strengths appeared to be as consistent as that for subjective wellbeing. 3.2 mapping the relations between subjective wellbeing, character strengths, physical and mental health and other demographic and sociological and psychological factors two hierarchical regression analyses helped clarify the relations between subjective wellbeing, character strengths, physical and mental health and other demographic and sociological and psychological factors in our sample. the first regression was performed to identify those factors that might predict overall levels of students’ wellbeing. age, gender and academic performance were entered into the regression equation first, followed by self-ratings of physical and mental health on the second and third step respectively and by all of the character strengths subscales at the last step. all independent variables, but for the demographic ones, proved to be strong predictors of subjective wellbeing (see table 7 for details). in particular, those with selfreported physical and mental health problems reported lower levels of subjective wellbeing, as did those who scored higher in the character strengths scales of wisdom, courage, human love and transcendence. the second regression was performed to identify those factors that might predict overall levels of students’ character strengths. age, gender and academic performance were entered into the regression equation first, followed by self-ratings of physical and mental health on the second and third step respectively and by all of the subjective wellbeing subscales at the fourth step. all independent variables proved to be strong predictors of character strengths (see table 8 for details). in particular, older students and students with higher academic performance appeared to enjoy higher levels of wellbeing, as did those with less self-reported physical and mental health problems and also those who scored higher in the wellbeing scales of personal growth and self-acceptance. explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 263 table 5: significant demographic, sociological and psychological, physical and mental health differences in the six subjective wellbeing subscales (pwbs) characteristic df t difference gender personal growth 242 2.19* females > males positive relations 242 2.31* females > males year of study autonomy 242 2.15* freshmen < others environ. mastery 242 1.96* freshmen < others personal growth 242 2.61** freshmen < others romantic relations environ. mastery 242 2.41** in relation> no relation purpose in life 242 1.94* in relation> no relation self-acceptance 242 3.37*** in relation> no relation work autonomy 243 2.38** working > not working pleased with living situation environ. mastery 4, 240 4.38** pleased > not pleased positive relations 4, 240 4.47** pleased > not pleased self-acceptance 4, 240 4.43** pleased > not pleased greeks raised in gr vs. others environ. mastery 3, 240 3.98** greeks raised in gr > others frequency going out with others positive relations 4, 227 2.59* frequent > infrequent talking to friends positive relations 7, 221 3.98*** frequent > infrequent physical health environ. mastery 3, 227 3.85** good > poor self-acceptance 3, 227 2.85* good > poor mental health autonomy 3, 228 6.53*** good > fair environ. mastery 3, 228 12.46*** good > poor positive relations 3, 228 3.46** good > fair purpose in life 3, 228 3.23* good > poor self-acceptance 3, 228 21.48*** good > poor * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .00 explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 264 table 6: significant demographic, sociological and psychological, physical and mental health differences in the six character strengths subscales (via scs) characteristic df t difference gender human love 309 2.55** females > males year of study justice 309 2.41** freshmen < others transcendence 309 2.35** freshmen < others romantic relations wisdom 309 2.05* in relation > no relation courage 309 2.25* in relation > no relation pleased with living situation wisdom 4,1 3.21** pleased > not pleased courage 4,1 3.78** pleased > not pleased human love 4,1 2.35* pleased > not pleased justice 4,1 4.06** pleased > not pleased transcendence 4,1 4.26** pleased > not pleased contact with parents transcendence 3, 275 2.7* frequent > infrequent pass more n exams transcendence 10, 198 2.39** pass more > pass less physical health courage 3, 294 3.61** good > poor justice 3, 294 4.12** good > poor mental health wisdom 3, 295 7.86*** good > poor courage 3, 295 9.77*** good > poor temperance 3, 295 3.54*** good > poor transcendence 3, 295 6.78*** good > poor * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 265 table 7: hierarchical regression with subjective wellbeing as the dependent variable and demographic, other sociological and psychological characteristics and character strengths as the independent variables df f p beta t sig t r² δr² δf age 3, 149 .65 .58 .07 .90 .36 .13 .13 .65 gender .00 .03 .97 academic performance .07 .85 .39 physical health 4, 148 2.45 .04* -.22 -2.78 .00** .06 .04 7.78 mental health 5, 147 5.94 .00*** -.34 -4.32 .00*** .16 .10 18.73 wisdom 11, 141 21.18 .00*** .24 3.76 .00*** .62 .45 28.34 courage .33 5.05 .00*** human love .18 3.09 .00** justice .07 1.26 .21 temperance -.06 -1.24 .21 transcendence .16 2.32 .02*** * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 table 8: hierarchical regression with character strengths as the dependent variable and demographic, other sociological and psychological characteristics and subjective wellbeing as the independent variables df f p beta t sig t r² δr² δf age 3, 149 4.03 .00** .16 2.06 .04* .07 .07 4.03 gender .02 .28 .77 academic performance .18 2.29 .02* physical health 4, 148 3.56 .00** -.11 -1.42 .15 .08 .01 2.04 mental health 5, 147 4.10 .00** -.19 -2.41 .01** .12 .03 5.83 autonomy 11, 141 18.81 .00*** .06 .95 .34 .59 .47 27.37 environmental mastery .11 1.69 .09 personal growth .38 4.38 .00*** positive relations .04 .55 .57 purpose in life .09 1.36 .17 self-acceptance .33 3.77 .00*** * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 4. discussion 4.1 the concepts of subjective wellbeing and character strengths one of the main methodological aims of the present study was to bring together and examine two related but distinct concepts, namely subjective wellbeing and character strengths. both concepts have their roots in positive psychology, in that they reflect cognitive, behavioral and dispositional characteristics of individuals that are aimed at developing and maintaining a positive outlook in life. conceptually they also have differences, in that wellbeing portrays a explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 266 way of critically thinking back to one’s life achievements and shortcomings and represents one’s current evaluation of those; while character strengths delineate one’s positive thoughts, feelings and behaviors toward an array of situations (park, et al., 2004). from the literature it would appear that character strengths may contribute towards wellbeing, but are not necessarily the same thing as wellbeing (peterson, et al., 2007). in any case, most researchers would agree that character strengths are less well defined in the research literature than is subjective wellbeing. correlation analyses indicated that wisdom, courage and transcendence seemed to be the most salient among the character strengths, since they were each highly and positively correlated with the wellbeing subscales of environmental mastery, purpose in life and self-acceptance, thus signifying conceptual affinities between these subscales. these same character strengths, along with human love, also proved good predictors of the overall wellbeing measure in our sample. in addition, the wellbeing subscales of personal growth and self-acceptance predicted overall character strengths. the above findings add to the growing literature that seeks to identify eclectic affinities between the character strengths and wellbeing, by way of clarifying which particular character strengths best relate to which aspects of wellbeing (peterson, et al., 2007). the constellation of relations between subjective wellbeing, demographic characteristics of students and also self-perceptions of their physical and mental health status were revealing. higher levels of autonomy were more common amongst those students who were older, those who worked and those who suffered from poor mental health. environmental mastery was mainly exhibited by older students, students involved in a romantic relationship, those pleased with their living situation, those who were greeks raised in greece, and those who enjoyed good physical and mental health. personal growth was more evident in females and older students. more positive relations with others was displayed by females, those pleased with their living conditions, those who went out and talked with friends more frequently and also by those suffering from poor physical health. purpose in life was more evident among students involved in a romantic relationship and those with better mental health. finally, students more likely to demonstrate self-acceptance were in a romantic relationship, were pleased with their living conditions, and enjoyed better mental health than others. students’ personal characteristics that affected their character strengths’ profile can be summarised as follows. higher levels of wisdom and courage were more common amongst those who were involved in a romantic relationship, who were pleased with their living situation and who enjoyed better mental health; better physical health also contributed to showing courage. human love was mostly exhibited by females and by those pleased with their living arrangements. more justice was displayed by older students, by those pleased with their living conditions and also by those enjoying better physical health. temperance was more evident among students with better mental health. finally, students more likely to demonstrate transcendence were older, had passed more exams, were pleased with their living conditions, saw or talked to their parents more frequently and enjoyed better mental health than others. 4.2 demographic and other sociological and psychological factors that impact subjective wellbeing and character strengths one of the foci of this study was to identify ways in which university students’ outlook towards life was affected by a number of personal characteristics, demographic but also cognitive and behavioral in nature, such as wellbeing and character strengths. overall, students were found to have a positive outlook in life, as suggested by their high scores in both subjective wellbeing and character strengths’ scales; this finding supports myers (2000) in his explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 267 assertion that people generally tend to report high levels of life satisfaction. this finding of ours can be explained in relation to the particular life situations of our sample. entering university usually signifies a major academic and life transition for emerging adults, given the high value assigned to academic achievement in the greek society (giovazolias, et al., 2008). undoubtedly, this transition can be accompanied by a degree of stress or even adversity, since for the majority of youth it means that they leave their family for the first time to live on their own, assuming responsibility for their everyday needs and for any challenges that may present themselves (leontopoulou, 2006). nevertheless, once the initial, often stressful period of adaptation to university life is over, usually at the end of the first year of studies, students may view life at university not only as challenging, but also as an opportunity to grow. indeed, older students in the present study demonstrated higher levels of a number of subjective wellbeing characteristics, such as autonomy, environmental mastery and personal growth, while they also appeared to possess higher levels of the character strengths of justice and transcendence. being pleased with one’s living conditions also contributed in a significant manner to youths’ wellbeing, as revealed by its association with environmental mastery, positive relations with others and self-acceptance, and all character strengths apart from temperance. good relationships and frequent contact with a romantic partner, friends and family seemed to heighten students’ sense of environmental mastery, purpose in life, positive relations with others, self-acceptance, wisdom and courage. 4.3 subjective wellbeing, character strengths and physical and mental health pulling on another strand, this study tried to determine the conditions under which emerging adults’ self-evaluations of their physical and mental health affected their sense of subjective wellbeing and their character strengths. good physical health was positively related to the wellbeing subscales of environmental mastery and self-acceptance, and also to the character strengths of courage and justice. physical health was also a good predictor of the overall scales for both concepts, even if a less strong one than mental health. indeed, good mental health appeared to be more pervasive, and a more reliable predictor of both wellbeing and character strengths, than physical health. in particular, it was associated with a wider array of positive characteristics of individuals, such as higher levels of the wellbeing aspects of environmental mastery, purpose in life, self-acceptance, and also of the character strengths of wisdom, courage, temperance and transcendence. one could speculate that, over the years, people who suffer from mental health problems may have discovered and got some practice in adaptive ways of handling them, either on their own, thus achieving more autonomy, or by eliciting the help of others, who may be close to them. 4.4 culture, subjective wellbeing and character strengths: impact on positive psychology yet another aim of this study was to examine some of the psychometric qualities of the character strengths measure in a different cultural setting than the more individualistic north american and north european context in which they have been developed and studied so far (becker & marecek, 2008). in particular, this study sought to examine how the two constructs held within a more collective, mediterranean cultural context, that of greece. as was apparent from correlation analyses, the character strengths scale (via scs) had high convergent validity, measured against the well-established subjective wellbeing (pwbs) measure. regression analyses went some way toward indicating adequate construct validity for the via scs scale, since the overall scale was predicted by personal growth and self-acceptance, while four of its explorations of subjective wellbeing and character strengths among a greek university student sample leontopoulou & triliva www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 268 own subscales predicted wellbeing. taken together, these findings suggested that the two constructs are conceptually distinct, albeit related. it appears, then, that two concepts that emerged from the positive psychology paradigm, namely subjective wellbeing and character strengths, are not only relevant in more individualistic societies, but also have validity in a more collective society, such as greece. still, the universality of positive psychology concepts and measures needs to be proven by further studies in different countries, and also by studies using diverse populations from each country. 4.5 limitations and future research limitations of the present study included its cross-sectional nature, which could not allow for observations of development and change of student wellbeing and character strengths over time. in addition, the sample was somewhat biased towards a positive outlook. further, assessment of student physical and mental health was based on just two self-report questions; nevertheless, some interesting findings emerged, which can be further explored in subsequent studies. further research is needed to tease out the conditions under which emerging adults maintain a positive outlook in life when faced with adversity. subjective wellbeing and character strengths could conceivably play either a mediatory or even a moderating role under stress and adversity, be it personal or environmental in nature, with any number of variables as outcome, including attitudes toward help-seeking (for instance, academic performance, absence of psychopathology or positive adaptation, in general). alternatively, subjective wellbeing and character strengths could be construed as outcome variables themselves in the face of stress, adversity or risk, in which case positive attitudes toward help-seeking could be conceptualized as mediators in the stress equation. detailed research can attempt to solve the theoretical and 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(2016). the art of second wave positive psychology: harnessing zen aesthetics to explore the dialectics of flourishing. international journal of wellbeing, 6(2), 14-29. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i2.497 tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 article the art of second wave positive psychology: harnessing zen aesthetics to explore the dialectics of flourishing tim lomas abstract: in recent years, a “second wave” of positive psychology has been emerging, characterised, above all, by an awareness and appreciation of the dialectical nature of flourishing. this paper offers a philosophical foundation for this second wave, based on eastern philosophy, and, in particular, zen aesthetics. part one introduces zen, including its key philosophical ideas and practices, as well as two antecedent traditions that helped to form it, namely, buddhism and taoism. part two then elucidates three aesthetic principles that are integral to zen: mono no aware (pathos of life), wabi-sabi (desolate beauty), and yūgen (profound grace). the paper discusses how these principles could be of value to positive psychology in fostering dialectical understanding and appreciation, thus highlighting future directions for the field. keywords: aesthetics, philosophy, zen; flourishing, dialectics 1. introduction positive psychology (pp) initially defined itself by a focus on “positive” aspects of human functioning (linley & joseph, 2004). this focus carried the implicit (and often explicit) message that positive phenomena were inherently desirable, and should be sought, and conversely that “negative” aspects of life were intrinsically undesirable, and should be eschewed. however, critical theorists from inside (e.g., wong, 2011) and outside (e.g., held, 2004) the field have highlighted flaws in this message. for instance, mcnulty and fincham (2011) argued that the value of any given phenomenon inextricably depends upon the dynamics of context. ostensibly positive qualities can be detrimental in certain situations; for instance, “excessive optimism” is linked to health risk behaviours (norem & cantor, 1986). conversely, seemingly negative qualities can be conducive to flourishing if harnessed skilfully; as seligman (1990, p. 292) put it, one must be “able to use pessimism’s keen sense of reality when we need it.” such observations call into question the validity of categorically classifying phenomena as either positive or negative. indeed, there is much critical debate within the field generally around the very notion of the “positive,” as exemplified by the recent articles by james pawelski (2016a, 2016b). for instance, lazarus (2003) pointed out that many emotional states are actually “co-valenced,” involving a complex blend of light and dark elements. a classic example is love, which is, as bauman (2013, p. 6) puts it, “that most sublime of all human conditions, one in which fear blends with joy into an alloy that no longer allows its ingredients to separate.” however, although these critical observations have challenged pp, they have not undermined it. rather, we have seen the emergence of what held (2004) calls a “second wave” within the field , which wong (2011) refers to as pp “2.0.” this second wave still focuses on the same fundamental meta-concepts around which the field initially crystallised, from wellbeing to mailto:t.lomas@uel.ac.uk http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 flourishing. however, it does so in ways that embrace the critical points raised above, developing a more nuanced understanding of the complex dynamics of so-called positive and negative aspects of experience (see lomas & ivtzan, 2015; ivtzan, lomas, hefferon, & worth, 2015). summarising this second wave approach, wong suggests it is characterised by a deep appreciation of the dialectical nature of flourishing. although “dialectics” encompasses a range of meanings, it essentially refers to the dynamic “tension of opposition between two interacting forces or elements” (merriam-webster, 2014). for instance, dialectics can refer to the way in which conceptual opposites, although diametrically opposed, are also intimately connected and co-creating; e.g., “good” can only be recognised by counterposing it with “bad.” thus, second wave pp recognises that flourishing involves “inevitable dialectics between positive and negative aspects of living” (ryff & singer, 2003, p. 272). this includes a creative and generative tension between polarities like freedom and restriction (schwartz, 2000), optimism and pessimism (norem & cantor, 1986), anger and forgiveness (mcnulty & fincham, 2011), boredom and curiosity/creativity (lomas, 2016a), and even happiness and sadness (ahmed, 2010). so, second wave pp recognises that the good life does not involve being a “well-defended fortress, invulnerable to the vicissitudes of life,” as king (2001, pp. 53-54) puts it, but, rather, appreciating and even embracing the complex and ambivalent nature of life. given this, one of the key tasks facing pp is to explore ideas and practices that might help us – pp as a field, and, indeed, people generally – to cultivate this kind of appreciation. to this end, this paper proffers one potential resource that might facilitate this, namely, aesthetics – a branch of philosophy concerning the nature and forms of beauty (brady, 2013). efforts are already underway within pp to recognise the role of the arts in promoting flourishing, as seen in lomas’ (2016b) notion of “positive art.” however, in terms of developing an appreciation of dialectics specifically, there may be much to be gained from exploring the aesthetic principles propounded by eastern philosophy in particular. (indeed, this approach aligns with attempts more broadly within pp to engage with and learn from non-western cultures; see e.g., lomas, 2015; lomas 2016d.) whilst eastern philosophy encompasses a multitude of traditions, these share a deep understanding of dialectics, as does eastern culture generally (schimmack, oishi, & diener, 2002). moreover, these traditions have embraced art and aesthetics as a vehicle for expressing their spiritual insights, and thus also aesthetic appreciation as a potent means of cultivating such insights. this pivotal role of art and aesthetics is encapsulated in one of the archetypal symbols of the east, the yin-yang motif associated with taoism. this is the ultimate dialectical symbol, capturing in stark, beautiful simplicity the way that opposites – light and dark, positive and negative – exist within a dynamic “mutually constituting relationship” (sameroff, 2010, p. 9). taoism, and buddhism more generally, both have an appreciation of dialectics at their core, and, moreover, have both used art and aesthetics to convey their spiritual insights in this regard, as discussed further below (in part one). however, it is arguably in zen where the engagement with dialectics through art/aesthetics truly comes to fruition. as such, this paper will focus on the aesthetic philosophy of zen in particular. the paper is in two parts. part one introduces zen, including some of its key philosophical ideas. part two then focuses on its aesthetic principles, examining how these could be used within pp to foster an appreciation of dialectics. 2. zen this first part briefly introduces zen, thereby preparing the groundwork for the discussion of its aesthetic principles in part two. zen was the intermingled product of numerous eastern traditions, particularly the confluence of buddhism and taoism. it is beyond the scope of this paper to give anything more than a cursory introduction to these immense traditions. second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 nevertheless, our appreciation of zen will be enhanced if we can gain some sense of the tributaries that combined to create this particular stream of thought and practice. thus, i shall touch briefly upon buddhism and taoism, before finishing by introducing zen itself. 2.1 buddhism i shall begin here by discussing buddhism. a more detailed account would preface this by exploring the way buddhism itself grew directly out of brahmanism – the multitude of religious beliefs and practices in the indian subcontinent, stretching back into unrecorded antiquity, that today are labelled as “hinduism” (king, 1999) – much as christianity emerged out of judaism. however, it shall suffice to note here that gautama siddhartha, better known by the honorific “buddha” (“enlightened one”), lived and taught in a cultural context – circa 480-400 bce, or possibly even earlier (coningham et al., 2013), in present-day nepal – that was entirely suffused with brahmanism. however, so significant and innovative was his experience and interpretation of the brahmanical dharma (“laws” or “teachings”) that his subsequent followers endowed his teachings with the status of a new religious tradition (gombrich, 2006). while there are many complex nuances to the buddha’s adaptation of vedanta (the key brahmanical texts), gombrich (2006) suggests that one point stands out: whereas the vedanta is fundamentally essentialist, the buddha promulgated a form of anti-essentialism. he taught that existence is characterised by three lakshanas (“marks of conditioned existence”): anicca (impermanence), anattā (insubstantiality), and dukkha (dissatisfaction/suffering). he argued for the inherent “emptiness” of existence (burton, 2001); not in the nihilistic sense that nothing is real, but, rather, that all phenomena are empty of a fixed, enduring, independent nature, but instead are transitory (anicca) and interdependent (anattā). these observations also apply to persons themselves, therefore, in contrast to the essentialist vedic notion of the atman, the buddha spoke of anatman (i.e., no self). however, he did agree with the vedas that it is people’s tendency to deny or ignore these fundamental ontological truths, and the related attempt to attach to phenomena that are inherently changeable, that ultimately causes much of human beings’ suffering/dissatisfaction (dukkha). moreover, the buddha agreed with brahmanism that liberation from suffering was possible. however, having disavowed the vedanta notion of atman – some inner essence that would be the vehicle for or recipient of liberation – he suggested that enlightenment would come through seeing all forms of selfhood as an illusion, leading to the ultimate and supreme state of nirvana. leaving aside esoteric intricacies, the incontestable message of the buddha is the possibility of liberation from suffering. central to this message were the four noble truths, a remedy for alleviating suffering: suffering is universal; it has a cause; cessation is possible; it can be achieved by following “the noble eightfold path.” this path essentially constitutes prescriptions for “right living,” comprising wisdom (right vision and conception), ethical conduct (right speech, conduct, and livelihood), and meditation (right effort, mindfulness, and concentration) (thrangu, 1993). furthermore, at the heart of the buddha’s teachings was a deep appreciation of dialectics, which would subsequently feature prominently in adaptations such as zen. this appreciation is reflected in the foundational idea of the “middle way,” the phrase the buddha often used to describe the noble eightfold path. for instance, in his foundational dhammacakkappavattana sutta, the buddha characterised this middle way as a “golden mean” – cf. aristotle (cunningham, 1999) – between punitive asceticism and sensual indulgence. as with most religions, following the buddha’s death, various schisms occurred, separating off into different schools. the early therevadan traditions adhered closely to the tipitaka (the pali canon comprising the earliest surviving record of the buddha’s teachings, like the noble second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 eightfold path (lomas, 2016c)). in subsequent centuries, schools emerged which developed these original teachings in innovative ways – including the pivotal dialectical idea of the middle way – with these schools often referred to collectively as mahayana (williams, 2008). it is from this latter group that zen emerged, as we shall see shortly. finally, vajrayana refers to a further efflorescence of philosophical and ritualistic development that occurred from the 3rd century ce onwards, particularly in tibet (davidson, 2003). of particular relevance to the present paper is the fact that many of these varied schools of thought began to harness the power of art and aesthetics in expressing and communicating their spiritual teachings and insights. for instance, besides the centrality of art and aesthetics to zen, another prominent example of the use of art in buddhism is the creation of intricate mandalas – geometric, symbolic patterns imbued with deep meaning, fashioned using coloured sand – in tibetan buddhism (bryant, 2003). we shall, of course, explore the role of art/aesthetics in zen in depth below. however, before we turn our attention to zen, we need a second piece of the puzzle: taoism. 2.2 taoism taoism is an overarching philosophy and way of life that is indigenous to china. like buddhism, it is thoroughly imbued with an understanding and appreciation of dialectics. it centres on the nebulous idea of “the tao,” which oldstone-moore (2003, p. 6) describes as a “nameless, formless, all pervasive power which brings all things into being and reverts them back into nonbeing in an eternal cycle.” although its origins lie in unrecorded antiquity, its formative influence is the i ching, or “book of changes.” the i ching initially began life over 3,000 years ago as a shamanic practice among the chou people; it then crystallised in written form around the time of king wen (circa 1150 bce) and his son, although the iteration that has reached us today is the version edited and annotated by confucius around the 5th century bce (wilhelm, 1950). the i ching emerged from the practice of consulting oracles: initially, binary yes/no oracles were used (e.g., cracks in tortoise shells), with “yes” represented by an unbroken line, and “no” by a broken line. to allow for further differentiation, lines were later combined in pairs, and then triads; finally these “trigrams” were themselves paired up, creating 64 hexagrams (i.e., permutations of broken and unbroken lines). divination practices typically involved asking a question, then throwing yarrow stalks upon the ground, with the resulting arrangement being interpreted as a particular hexagram. the i ching thus emerged as a guide to assist in the interpretation of these hexagrams. however, the key point – in terms of the dialectical philosophy at the heart of taoism – is this: the hexagrams represent not states of being, but of becoming. the focal point of the hexagrams is always the “moving” lines, i.e., any of the six lines that are dynamic or “unstable,” which would thus herald the shift to a different hexagram. as such, the overarching philosophical principle of the i ching is change, which, paradoxically, is the one stable and consistent law at work in the universe. as wilhelm (1950) puts it, “he who has perceived the meaning of change fixes his attention no longer on transitory individual things but on the eternal, immutable law at work in all change,” and it is here, in the i ching, that we find the origin of taoism, for this immutable law is “the tao, the course of things, the principle of the one in the many.” moreover, the i ching did not only recognise the fundamental ubiquity of change, it also identified the mechanism through which it occurs: the dialectical interaction between opposites (fang, 2012). thus, as per buddhism (with its notion of the middle way), taoism has an appreciation of dialectics at its core. indeed, this dialectical philosophy was subsequently captured symbolically by the yin-yang motif, which, above all else, has come to symbolise taoism (though the terms themselves do not appear in the i ching; instead we find dichotomies such as “the firm” and “the yielding”). second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 “yin” means cloudy/overcast, whereas “yang” means “in the sun” (i.e., shone upon), implying the two sides of a mountain (one sunlit, one in shadow) (lomas, 2016d). thus, as fang (2012) explains, yin-yang encapsulates various “tenets of duality.” the tenet of “holistic duality” means that reality comprises co-dependent opposites that each require the other for their existence (e.g., “up” depends upon the notion of “down”). moreover, the tenet of “dynamic duality” holds that these opposites tend to mutually transform into each other in a dynamic process; as fung (1948, p. 19) puts it, “when the sun has reached its meridian, it declines” (i.e., its zenith heralds the beginning of the descent into night). thus, yin-yang does not simply present a pair of static opposites, but includes an element of darkness in the light, and vice versa, capturing the ceaseless process of becoming. as ji, nisbett, and su (2001, p. 450) put it, “the pure yin is hidden in yang, and the pure yang is hidden in yin.” as a final point on this notion of yin-yang, it is particularly noteworthy – from the perspective of the present paper – that it should be so indelibly associated with an artistic image. this again reinforces the central point of this paper, namely, the unique power of art to communicate spiritual insights, and thus also the role of aesthetic appreciation as a means of understanding such insights. indeed, the overarching message of taoism is that a deep experiential understanding of the dialectics of the tao – as reflected in the yin-yang motif – is the path to liberation. the scriptural basis for taoism itself is the tao te ching, attributed to a sage/mystic named lao tzu, who possibly lived at some point between the sixth and third centuries bce (barnett, 1986). (his existence is disputed, since no historical records of him exist, and “lao tzu” means “old master,” so the book may “just” constitute a compendium of taoist folk wisdom.) the tao te ching is not simply a philosophical explication of the tao, and of principles such as yin-yang. as with the vedas and the buddha’s teachings, it offers a path of liberation from suffering. in particular, it suggests that suffering arises from ignorance of the tao, and from resisting the dynamic flux of life. as smith (1972, p. 77) puts it, “human beings, by turning away from the tao, bring suffering and chaos into their affairs.” conversely, liberation may be found through living in harmony with the natural operations of the tao. as expressed in verse 47, “mastery of the world is achieved by letting things take their natural course.” moreover, taoism held that this ability to live in harmonic accord with the tao – represented by the chinese term te – can be cultivated through psychospiritual meditative practices (kirkland, 2004), such as tso wang (“sitting with a blank mind”) or hsin tsung (finding the still place in the centre of consciousness). thus, taoism upheld the possibility of becoming subjectively “one” with the tao. however, in contrast to the more abstract and esoteric speculations of brahmanism (and some schools within buddhism), the taoist path to liberation was more “down-to-earth,” consisting more of not resisting the way of nature (hermann, 1990). taoism upheld the virtue of wu-wei – as articulated by the great chuang tzu (circa 3rd century bce) – which translates as “non-action,” but which really means surrendering to and aligning oneself with the tao, and allowing one’s actions to be as “spontaneous and free-flowing as the natural world.” as chuang tzu said, “the perfect man has no self; the spiritual man has no achievement; the true sage has no name” (cited in ho, 1995, p. 120). and it was when buddhism travelled to china and encountered taoism, that we find the birth of zen. 2.3 zen essentially, when buddhism was transmitted to china, it mingled with taoism to produce zen. as the great buddhist scholar d. t. suzuki (1961) put it, “zen is the product of the chinese soil from the indian seed.” this transmission is often attributed to the arrival in china of the indian buddhist monk bodhidharma, in 520 ce, who subsequently became known as the “first second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 patriarch” of zen (watts, 1957). however, watts argues that “the appearance of trends very close to zen” are evident almost as soon as mahayana sutras became available in china, which occurred at least as early as 384 ce through translations by the indian scholar-monk kumarajiva (p. 100). as buddhism entered china, we see a fascinating process of adaptation, with the teachings and practices assuming new forms to align with local culture – above all, taoism. key features of buddhism were, of course, retained, not least the possibility of enlightenment, and the value of meditation as a means towards “attaining” this. indeed, zen itself means “meditation,” or, more accurately, zen is a japanese rendering of ch’an, which was the chinese term for the indian word dhyana, which means “meditation.” we should note, though, that taoism already had its own forms of meditation, so this is not simply an indian practice “exported” into china (kirkland, 2004). however, buddhism in china began to take on a very different form, influenced above all by the taoist tradition that dominated in china (alongside confucianism). in the indian subcontinent, buddhism had been strongly shaped by the brahmanic context in which it emerged, as noted above. for instance, brahmanism included elements of polytheism, and tendencies towards abstract metaphysical analyses (king, 1999). these types of features thus often suffused mahayana buddhism, leading to a proliferation of mythological and esoteric schemas. this type of abstract philosophising jarred with the practical, “down-to-earth” nature of taoism. consequently, chinese buddhists began dispensing with what they regarded as unnecessary and unhelpful mythological speculations. instead, buddhism in china – which, for convenience, i shall just refer to as “zen” – sought to explain and interpret the buddha’s message of liberation using ideas from taoism. this taoist spirit was maintained, and, indeed, developed further, when zen was introduced into japan in 1191 by the japanese monk eisai (1141-1215), who founded the rinzai school (based on the teachings of the 9th century lin chi), and later by dogen (1200-1253), who founded the soto school. for instance, from the taoist principle of wu-wei, zen buddhists derived the idea that enlightenment did not necessarily have to involve an arduous sequence of mental training, leading to a gradual ascent to this summit of spiritual development. rather, zen suggests that “all” that is needed to attain enlightenment is for one to act naturally and spontaneously in accordance with the tao. this suggestion is evident in one of the first clear statements of zen, attributed to seng-ts’an (circa 600 ce), in his poem hsin-hsin ming (treatise on faith in the mind), which states, “follow your nature and accord with the tao; saunter along and stop worrying… don’t be antagonistic to the world of the senses, for when you are not antagonistic to it, it turns out to be the same as complete awakening” (cited in watts, 1957, p. 109). this notion that liberation consists in following one’s nature is reflected in the famous definition of zen given by po-chang (720-814 ce), “when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep.” indeed, the person realises that since they too are an expression of the tao, there is no way they cannot act in accordance with it. thus, there is no need to strive towards buddhahood (i.e., “attaining” enlightenment); rather, the task is to recognise that one already has a “buddha nature” (is already enlightened). consequently, zen places great emphasis on the possibility of “sudden” awakening: an immediate realisation in which one sees through the illusory construct that is one’s ego, and grasps in its completeness one’s buddha nature. of course, although recognising one’s buddha nature is ostensibly presented in zen as a simple act, in reality it is anything but. for this reason, zen developed various practices aimed at provoking this kind of awakening. for instance, zen places great emphasis on za-zen (meditation), particularly within monastic settings (watts, 1957). there was also the extraordinary development of the koan system, designed to test practitioners’ spiritual insight. second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 these were “riddles” that could not be solved with the conventional intellect – e.g., “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” – thereby creating a cognitive impasse, characterised by “great doubt” (suzuki, 1961); the trainee would thus dwell upon these imponderables, until the impasse suddenly gave way to a breakthrough of insight. and then there is art, which zen found to be a particularly effective vehicle for communicating and inculcating its ideas, as the next part explores. 3. zen aesthetics having now briefly introduced zen, this part now explores its aesthetics. there are many ways in which this topic could be approached, and, indeed, numerous reasons for doing so. as such, it is worth restating the purpose of this paper: to find an aesthetic mode that may allow us to appreciate the dialectical nature of life, and consequently to provide an aesthetic basis for second wave pp. thus, it is not the aim here to explicitly demonstrate that the practice and appreciation of zen can be the basis for spiritual liberation – although this may well, indeed, be the case – or to promote buddhism. rather, the more modest aim is simply to elucidate some zen aesthetic principles that can illuminate the kind of dialectical insights being explored in second wave pp. indeed, wong’s (2011) exposition of this second wave – pp 2.0, in his terminology – was based on his knowledge and understanding of zen dialectical principles. readers interested in the influence of zen on pp 2.0 are thus further encouraged to read wong’s (2009a, 2016a) work on “chinese positive psychology.” firstly though, let’s say a little about the importance of aesthetics within zen. in zen, art is seen as a particularly potent way of communicating spiritual truths, indeed, far more so than discursive prose. zen constantly seeks to eschew and overcome the limitations of conceptual thought, and to “point directly” into the “suchness” (i.e., nature) of reality. as chung-yuan (1977, p. xvii) puts it: “chinese aesthetics is not a rational system of thought, but a direct, intuitive experience, which contains within it certain basic, profound and subtle meanings essential to the attainment of the one.” and art is uniquely effective at just this kind of pointing, indeed, hermann (1990) describes art as the highest (though still inadequate) vehicle for truth. in zen, artistic creations enable adepts to reveal and express their spiritual insights, highlighting their “direct seeing” into the nature of reality. moreover, simply learning to appreciate zen aesthetics (i.e., without necessarily practising oneself) can also be a potent route to spiritual illumination. as such, bai (2002, p. 12) reports that zen “pervaded the arts and crafts, indeed all aspects of everyday life” in medieval china and japan – from flower arrangement to swordsmanship, poetry to painting – and rendered them vital expressions of and ways towards spiritual experience. this helped to universalise and democratise zen, bringing it out from the monastery and into people’s daily lives. zen aesthetics is abundantly blessed with a multitude of concepts and practices that are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this paper. for instance, innumerable works have been devoted to zen artistic traditions, and to the qualities embodied in them. one might mention the tea ceremony, for example, as elucidated by the tea master takuan soho (1573-1645). interpreting his work, hammitzsch (1979) suggests it comprises four key concepts. kei (reverence) refers to mutual deference and respect from the participants, and concomitant control of the ego. wa (harmony) reflects the experience of nonduality, in which the self does not stand apart from the other, but participates in a union of “interbeing” (nhat hanh, 2000). sei (purity) signifies that the “heart-mind” is free from the turbulent emotions which usually tend to disturb its equanimity. finally, jaku (tranquillity) refers to the nature of the resulting untroubled mind. such analyses abound in zen, depicting the significance of art forms ranging from archery to second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 poetry (suzuki, 1961). however, of most relevance in the context of this paper are zen principles of aesthetic appreciation. these can help us to discern and even find subtle beauty in the mysterious, dialectical nature of existence, and thus may serve as an aesthetic basis for second wave pp. i shall explore three key principles in particular: mono no aware (the pathos of life), wabi-sabi (desolate beauty), and yūgen (profound grace). there are other potentially relevant principles, such as the seven identified by hisamatsu (1971): fukinsei (asymmetry), kanso (simplicity), koko (austere sublimity), shizen (naturalness), daisuzoku (freedom from attachment), sei-jaku (tranquillity), and yūgen. however, according to watts (1957), mono no aware, wabi-sabi, and yūgen are the three main perceptual-emotional “moods” that zen aims to evoke, and so are perhaps the most apt for demonstrating the relevance of zen aesthetics to second wave pp. these will be addressed in turn. in doing so, the paper will mainly draw on japanese literature. however, further to the notion of “chinese positive psychology” (wong, 2009a; wong, 2016a), alluded to above, it is worth emphasising that these aesthetic principles were also explored with great depth and subtlety in chinese art, such as the flowering of poetry during the tang (618-907 ce) and song (960-1279 ce) dynasties. 3.1 mono no aware mono no aware encapsulates the pathos (evocation of compassion or sorrow) derived from awareness of the fleeting, impermanent nature of life. the term was coined by the 18th century literary scholar motoori norinaga – by combining aware, meaning “sensitivity” or “sadness,” and mono, meaning “things” – to reflect what he saw as being a dominant japanese aesthetic sensibility over the preceding centuries. this is captured, for example, in the opening of the epic 14th century japanese folktale, the tale of the heike: “the sound of the gion shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things … the proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night.” as outlined above, recognition of the impermanence and transience of life is a central tenet of most eastern philosophies, e.g., in buddhism, anicca (impermanence) and anattā (insubstantiality) are two of the three lakshanas (“marks of conditioned existence”). the importance of this recognition is that denial or ignorance of anicca and anattā, clinging resolutely to phenomena that are intrinsically subject to change, is seen as an ultimate cause of the third lakshana, dukkha (dissatisfaction/suffering). conversely, then, liberation can be found through a deep understanding and acceptance of anicca and anattā. with mono no aware, though, this acceptance is elevated into an aesthetic sensibility that to an extent can even appreciate this ephemerality, embracing the fragility and finitude of life (wong, 2012). this does not mean impermanence is welcomed or celebrated. there is still sadness present, a pathos at this transiency. however, mono no aware is a complex, refined emotional state in which this sadness is combined with a quiet rejoicing in the fact that one had the chance to witness the beauty of life at all, however fleetingly, and recognition that its ephemerality was somehow integral to its very beauty. as expressed by yoshida kenkō (1283-1350), “if man were never to fade away like the dews of adashino … how things would lose their power to move us! the most precious thing in life is its uncertainty” (cited in keene, 1967, p. 7). in zen, the preeminent symbol of mono no aware is the cherry blossom, whose fragile efflorescence so captivates attention during the bloom of spring. crucially, appreciation of its beauty may be heightened by one’s awareness of its transiency, in a way that would be missing if its florets were a permanent feature of the landscape. similarly, people’s delight at the innocence of childhood partly derives from a sorrowful understanding that this phase passes all too quickly; conversely, there would be something sinister about a person forever stuck in juvenescence. thus, as second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 prusinski (2013, p. 23) puts it, “the beauty lies not in the object itself, but in the whole experience, transformation, and span of time in which the object is present and changing.” the sensibility captured by the term mono no aware came to prominence during the tokugawa period (1603-1868), when it was suggested that this sensitivity, this “capacity to understand the world directly, immediately, and sympathetically” was a distinguishing feature of the japanese character (woolfolk, 2002, p. 23). we arguably see a similar phenomenon in the west during the romantic period, as in the works of goethe, when melancholia was upheld as a sign of a refined soul (ferber, 2008). however, zen is less weighed down by the kind of heaviness and even glorification of sadness that characterised romanticism. the mood of mono no aware is more accepting and tranquil, sighing rather than weeping. given the value of this sensibility, zen art has sought to capture this spirit of mono no aware, thereby both expressing and inculcating it. the haiku was a particularly effective vehicle for this. (other art forms also evoked mono no aware, and the other aesthetic moods considered here. however, haiku is the most amenable to presentation in this context.) matsuo bashō (1644-1694), arguably the greatest master of the haiku (hass, 1994), expressed this sense of mono no aware with particular genius, as seen here: “summer grasses –; the only remains; of warriors’ dreams.” crucially, for our purposes here, mono no aware is not a sensibility that “belongs” to zen, or to japanese culture, but is a mode of appreciation that has relevance for all people, and for second wave pp in particular. for instance, cultivating mono no aware might help people to flourish by becoming conscious of the dialectical notion that both positive and negative states are transitory; this could then facilitate a valuable sense of humility and modesty when life is going well, and, conversely, a feeling of hope if life is going badly (wong, 2012). similarly, developing an appreciation of mono no aware may help people to accept and even embrace the co-valenced nature of elevated emotions such as love (lazarus, 2003). as noted above, love is fundamentally dialectical, a potent blend of joy and sadness, safety and fear. as c. s. lewis (1971, p. 121) put it, “to love at all is to be vulnerable. love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” the relevance here of mono no aware is that one’s sense of love might be heightened by the realisation that one cannot guarantee its permanence, or secure its presence. we must therefore delight when love does grace us, just as we revel in the fleeting appearance of the cherry blossom. likewise, if it does pass, one can also try to accept the impermanence of life, and be grateful that one was fortunate to have ever loved at all. these are not necessarily easy sensibilities to cultivate; however, trying to develop mono no aware may nevertheless be a doorway to a “second wave consciousness,” i.e., a mode of being that appreciates the dialectical nature of life. in practical terms, there are various ways of encouraging this kind of sensibility. for example, there are therapies that use art to facilitate healing and growth, like poetry therapy (mazza, 1999). second wave pp could draw on such practices in developing interventions that engender mono no aware, thereby helping people to develop a greater appreciation of dialectics. 3.2 wabi-sabi the sense of ephemerality reflected in mono no aware is counterbalanced, in an intriguing way, by the second term, wabi-sabi. essentially, this captures the strange, desolate beauty of aged or imperfect phenomena. whereas mono no aware points towards erosion and wear, wabi-sabi reminds us that in this process of changing, a certain desolate beauty is nonetheless retained. think here of the mysterious power of old ruins, and the reverential qualities of depth and meaning that they can evoke. as prusinski (2013, p. 25) puts it, wabi-sabi depicts “a crude or often faded beauty that correlates with a dark, desolate sublimity.” the aesthetic categories of wabi (rustic beauty) and sabi (aged beauty) can be treated separately, as elucidated below, as each second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 bring subtly different qualities to the compound term. nevertheless, as park (2005) outlines, these are ultimately complementary concepts that are usually combined to form a coherent aesthetic sense, characterised by awareness, and, indeed, appreciation of (1) austerity, (2) imperfection, and (3) the passage of time. this sense is depicted by tanizaki (1933, pp. 11-12) in his classic exposition of zen aesthetics “in praise of shadows.” he describes preferring a “pensive lustre to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artefact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity … we love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colours and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them.” to fully appreciate the nuances of this sensibility, let us examine its components in turn. with wabi, appreciation of the impermanence of existence is reflected in the idea that we do injustice to life if we only value that which appears perfect and complete. rather, we should endeavour to see the grace in all seasons, as it were. as the 14th century monk kenkō asked, “are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, at the moon only when it is cloudless? ... gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration” (cited in keene, 1967, p. 115). this means not abhorring phenomena for being imperfect, but, rather, valuing their unique gifts. this aesthetic emerges in the art of tea, where flawed utensils are more prized than “perfect” ones; reactions to these items are thus illustrative of a person’s understanding of life – as the 17th century sen no rikyū put it, “there are those who dislike a piece when it is even slightly damaged; such an attitude shows a complete lack of comprehension” (cited in hirota, 1995, p. 226). thus, wabi reflects a deep acceptance of life and its imperfections, in contrast to the futile quest to create perfect conditions. this has obvious relevance to pp, as discussed further below. as hirota puts it, “wabi means that even in straitened circumstances no thought of hardship arises. even amid insufficiency, one is moved by no feeling of want … if you complain that things have been ill-disposed – this is not wabi.” similarly, sabi captures the profundity and mysterious elegance of aged or ancient phenomena, the rustic/rusty patina that lends these gravitas and significance. even as things change and age (as per mono no aware), there is beauty in this very process. sabi thus distils the notion of aging well, in the sense of “ripe with experience and insight,” together with the evocative feelings of “tranquillity, aloneness” and “deep solitude” that accompany the passage of time (hammitzsch, 1979, p. 46). a haiku by bashō captures the lonely beauty of sabi: “solitary now —; standing amidst the blossoms; is a cypress tree” (cited in dyrness & kärkkäinen, 2008, p. 66). as with wabi, this sensibility has relevance for second wave pp, since our sorrow at the passage of time, for instance, might be transmuted if we could see it through such eyes. indeed, zen art aims at just this kind of “re-evaluation” of beauty, finding value in what was previously judged to lack it (cooper, 2013). for instance, zen paintings often seek to capture the dignity of aged phenomena, like the bleak power of a withered tree in winter. or again, hammitzsch (1979) describes how the tea ceremony is designed to induce a sense of sabi (among other qualities), e.g., in the way it is ideally taken in a secluded, time-worn tea house, with aged, antique utensils. (as a reflective note, this last sentence was difficult to compose, due to a dearth of english words pertaining to aging that have a positive connotation, which arguably reflects a relative lack of the sabi aesthetic in western culture.) as prusinski (2013, p. 32) explains, these elements strengthen “one’s consciousness of space and time” – including the relative impermanence and unimportance of the tea-taking participants themselves – thereby creating a “heightened spirituality.” as with mono no aware, this wabi-sabi sensibility has relevance for second wave pp. for instance, one of the dialectical insights of second wave pp is the paradoxical notion that it is the effort to seek happiness that creates the very dissatisfaction one aims to alleviate; it is the act of second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 resisting what is, and seeking a “better” state of affairs, that stimulates the feeling of unhappiness. this insight has been recognised in diverse contexts, from buddhism (watts, 1957) to stoicism (mcmahon, 2006) to contemporary self-regulation coping theory (carver & scheier, 1990), and has, furthermore, been corroborated in empirical research (mauss, tamir, anderson, & savino, 2011). what is thus striking about wabi-sabi is that it offers us the opportunity to reevaluate our circumstances, to reappraise them as having value, as opposed to being deficient. for example, values promulgated by western capitalism might lead one to valorise new or perfect objects, and likewise to regard worn or imperfect ones as dissatisfactory. in this conventional mode of thinking, one might thus be discontent with old possessions, and not only covet new items, but come to believe that happiness consists in the acquisition of these. and, as scholars such as kasser (2011) have shown, this kind of materialism is detrimental to people’s own wellbeing, as well as to the environment. as such, the value of this aesthetic mode is not limited to personal happiness, but could have wider implications, such as addressing the acquisitive materialism that is exacerbating our current environmental crisis (cooper, 2013). essentially, in cultivating a wabi-sabi sensibility, one might learn to re-evaluate beauty, and, indeed, even reappraise happiness itself, so that one not only accepts the imperfections of existence, but even sees the subtle beauty in these very “flaws” (which would then be no longer perceived as flaws). for instance, zen buddhism has developed a beautiful approach to ceramics, known as kintsugi, which epitomises this principle of wabi-sabi. broken pieces are repaired using a precious gold lacquer (kin means golden, and tsugi means joinery). thus, the fault lines are not hidden or regarded as blemishes, but rather are accentuated and made beautiful. this metaphor may also be of value to pp. for instance, scholars working on the concept of posttraumatic growth often deploy a metaphor of a broken/shattered vase to describe the phenomenon, whereby the trauma survivor is encouraged to view their recovery as akin to refashioning the pieces of the vase into a meaningful configuration (joseph, 2012). clearly, notions like kintsugi have the potential to bring additional depth and significance to the vase metaphor, and thus to the healing process, helping people to find value, meaning, and even beauty in their scars and vulnerabilities. 3.3 yūgen finally then, is yūgen, translated by parkes (2011) as “profound grace,” and described as the most “ineffable” of aesthetic concepts. in philosophical texts it means “dark” or “mysterious,” and alludes to the unfathomable depths of existence, and the fundamental inability of the mind to comprehend these depths. as suzuki (1959, pp. 220-221) elucidates, yūgen is “a compound word, each part, yū and gen, meaning ‘cloudy impenetrability,’ and the combination meaning ‘obscurity,’ ‘unknowability,’ ‘mystery,’ ‘beyond intellectual calculability,’ but not ‘utter darkness.’” similarly, kaula (1960, pp. 69-70) describes it as the “sense of the mysterious quiescence beneath all things.” thus, yūgen reflects the notion that the mystery of existence may be ineffable and elusive, and beyond rational understanding, but nevertheless can be sensed in some inchoate, intuitive way (tsubaki, 1971). as suzuki continues, “it is hidden behind the clouds, but not entirely out of sight, for we feel its presence, its secret message being transmitted through the darkness however impenetrable to the intellect.” moreover, yūgen does not simply reflect one’s awareness of these mysterious depths, but the way one might also be moved in the core of one’s being by these mysteries, without quite knowing why. kamo no chōmei (1212) characterises yūgen thus: “it is like an autumn evening under a colorless expanse of silent sky. somehow, as if for some reason that we should be able to recall, tears well uncontrollably” (cited in dyrness & kärkkäinen, 2008, p. 65). second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 as with mono no aware and wabi-sabi, zen art endeavours to capture this elusive sense of yūgen. moreover, as with these other aesthetic moods, art is particularly effective at conveying it, at least compared to discursive modes of representation (which are intrinsically unsuited to representing the ineffable). as kaula (1960, pp. 69-70) explains, the sense that such art attempts to evoke is a “muted, tranquil world in which nothing remains immutably fixed, a world of mist, rain, and wind, of snow and withering flowers.” the quiescent depths of such a world are “too fragile and elusive … to be rationally understood or deliberately controlled,” but can nevertheless be alluded to by the skilful artist and perceived by the sensitive observer. however, zen does not tend to convey this sensibility through ostensibly incomprehensible works of art, as, for example, found in post-modern western “abstract” art. rather, zen art depicts “ordinary” natural phenomena, doing so as an example of the “direct pointing” to the ultimate nature of reality that zen in general aims towards. just as the zen practitioner’s “buddha nature” is demonstrated by seemingly prosaic acts such as eating or walking, zen artists use natural phenomena to evoke this sense of yūgen. for instance, the following seminal haiku, by basho, is often regarded as the ultimate expression of yūgen in japanese poetry (watts, 1957): “on a withered branch; a crow is perched; in the autumn evening.” as with the other aesthetic principles, yūgen is (or rather, could be) of great value to second wave pp. arguably, western psychology has already identified states of experience that are similar to yūgen, the kind of profound, transcendental states described by maslow (1972) as “peak experiences” or by wong (2009b) as chaironic happiness. deeply profound and moving, such moments go far beyond mere hedonic pleasure or even eudaimonic meaning, but shake the very core of one’s being, engendering life-changing experiences of self-transcendence (wong, 2016b). here one surpasses all concepts, entering the realm of awe, in which one is rendered speechless, powerless and even terrified by the mysterious power and grace of the universe (keltner & haidt, 2003). there are parallels here with frankl’s (1963) notion of the search for “ultimate” meaning, which is beyond human comprehension (wong, 2009c). however, what is unusual and potent about yūgen is the apparently “ordinary” nature of the phenomena that can evoke it, as reflected in basho’s haiku. western conceptions of peak experience tend to imply that these can only be experienced on some literal or metaphorical (e.g., developmental) mountain peak. with yūgen, though, there is the profound experience of the ordinary – which is within everyone’s reach – being revealed as extraordinary, as if lifting a veil on the sacred. and, as such, this is perhaps the place to end: in appreciating the dialectics of flourishing, as second wave pp aims to do, the fundamental point is the value of transcending narrow human constructs and categories, and glimpsing the strange, mysterious beauty of life. 4. conclusion this paper has suggested that pp might benefit from engaging with zen aesthetic principles. it was argued that second wave pp is characterised by an awareness of the dialectical nature of flourishing, and of the way wellbeing involves a delicate blend of apparently positive and negative elements. historically, this kind of dialectical appreciation has been developed by eastern philosophies, particularly zen, hence the rationale for suggesting that pp could learn from zen. indeed, research has already shown that pp can benefit from engaging with zen aesthetics, which can help illustrate the dialectical nature of flourishing (wong, 2012). as such, to facilitate an awareness of zen aesthetics in pp, this paper outlined three zen aesthetic principles – mono no aware (pathos of life), wabi-sabi (desolate beauty), and yūgen (profound grace) – showing in each case how pp could benefit from engendering these sensibilities. moreover, zen aesthetics also suggests new directions for pp, particularly research into the possibility of second wave positive psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 attaining inner contentment – even amidst difficult life circumstances – through selfdevelopment and cultivation. this paper has merely scratched the surface of what zen aesthetics – and eastern philosophy more broadly – can potentially offer pp as it matures and evolves as a discipline. future work will therefore be needed to allow the field to truly harness the insights of these immense traditions. authors tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk publishing timeline received 28 december 2015 accepted 9 july 2016 published 14 september 2016 references ahmed, s. 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(2018). the international landscape of positive psychology research: a systematic review. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 50-70. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i1.651 heejin kim university of california, irvine heejin.kim@uci.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 article the international landscape of positive psychology research: a systematic review heejin kim · kathryn doiron · meg a. warren · stewart i. donaldson abstract: since positive psychology originated in 1998 as an organized stream of inquiry in the united states, it has inspired new theory and research on human flourishing across the world. the current systematic review presents an overview of (a) the prevalence of scientific research in positive psychology across five continents and 63 countries, (b) the characteristics of the research, including methodology and topics, and (c) the influence of positive psychology in expanding established lines of research in new ways. through an analysis of 863 peer-reviewed positive psychology articles, this review attempts to map the international landscape of positive psychology research. further, it responds to relevant critiques of the field, confirming some and dispelling others. finally, recommendations are shared for future directions to build a more culturally responsive field of positive psychology that is committed to the advancement of flourishing and wellbeing in the global context. keywords: positive psychology, wellbeing, optimal functioning, happiness, international, global, cross-cultural, diversity 1. introduction since the inception of the positive psychology movement in 1998, scholarship in the area has grown in leaps and bounds in breadth of research, as well as reach across the world. the positive psychology perspective advocates a shift in the lens with which the world is viewed, i.e., one characterized by opportunity for growth (e.g., post-traumatic growth: tedeschi, blevins, & riffle, 2017) rather than mired by problems (e.g., post-traumatic stress: yehuda, 2002). in contrast to predominant psychological research that is preoccupied with depression and turmoil, it looks to what causes individuals to thrive. positive psychology has begun to create a roadmap for building positive qualities (e.g., resilience: luthar & cicchetti, 2000) as a complement to reducing negative influences (e.g., peer pressure: borsari & carey, 2001). this broad shift in perspective has opened up the space to pose new research questions, investigate previously ignored positive phenomena, and approach well-established areas of research with fresh eyes. consequently, over the last two decades, this movement has inspired a plethora of research across a wide range of areas of scholarship. as this movement has made ripples around the world, we attempt to take stock and ask the question: how have scholars across the globe interpreted and engaged this perspective? what are the unique characteristics of the extant research influenced by this perspective? what are some of the impactful contributions that have emerged? the purpose of this review is to address these questions by examining the research in positive psychology across the world in its first 17 years, from 1998 to 2014. to do so, we map the global landscape of positive psychology research using three main foci: prevalence, characteristics, and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 research topics. the prevalence of positive psychology research is operationalized as the extent to which peer-reviewed empirical articles have been published in and across regions. the characteristics of this research are mapped by examining the broad trends of the research methodologies employed. finally, we sample the prominent topics framed under the positive psychology umbrella that have made meaningful contributions around the world. we partially anchor our analyses around the early criticisms about positive psychology being an elite western phenomenon (e.g., christopher & hickinbottom, 2008), to examine the extent to which these critiques have been addressed. these first 17 years signify positive psychology’s nascence when the field had about 2,000 articles in our database of positive psychology articles and we believe that understanding the trend in the initial years can provide reflections on the past, as well as guidance for the future. the current review is the first attempt to offer a bird’s eye view of the broad trends in positive psychology research across the world. thus, it facilitates understanding of the role of regional contributions (where the research was conducted) in the larger international landscape of positive psychology. such an analysis of the state of positive psychology promises to be instructive on trends and key areas of development, and encourage new research questions and directions. while the current study does not compare the status of positive psychology research across cultures, it provides a snapshot of the state of positive psychology in various geographic regions, which, in turn, serves to map the global presence and progress of the field as a whole. thus, the current review hopes to spark conversations across regions in further advancing the field. 2. background before we assess the influence of positive psychology, it is useful to revisit the scope of the field. while the early and most prominent definition of positive psychology emphasized the study of wellbeing and happiness (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000), the positive psychology perspective has influenced a broad range of scholarship, across multiple levels of analysis, inspiring research on virtue (e.g., dahlsgaard, peterson, & seligman, 2005), meaning (e.g., king, heintzelman, & ward, 2016), gratitude (e.g., watkins & bell, 2017), positive emotions (e.g., shiota, yee, o’neil, & danvers, 2017), resilience (e.g., richardson, 2002), positive relationships (e.g., warren, donaldson, & lee, 2017), positive youth development (e.g., shek, sun, & merrick, 2013), and positive organizations (e.g., warren, donaldson, & luthans, 2017), among many others. therefore, despite a relatively short history, positive psychology has influenced research across most sub-areas of psychology and beyond, including education, management, coaching, therapy, public health, social services, philosophy, and political science (donaldson, csikszentmihalyi, & nakamura, 2011). global presence: what is known and what is not. although the positive psychology movement originated in the united states (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000), there is now a vibrant community of researchers across the world. a recent review showed that positive psychology scholarship was found to be published in over 46 countries (donaldson, dollwet, & rao, 2015). the global influence and popularity of positive psychology has grown to such a large extent that in addition to contributions in mainstream psychology journals, new journals dedicated to indigenous positive psychology scholarship are being developed (e.g., the middle east and north africa: middle east journal of positive psychology; india: indian journal of positive psychology). international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 table 1. illustrative sample of associations and degree programs by continent associations courses and degrees europe • european network of positive psychology • german-speaking association of positive psychology (german speaking areas) • german society for positive psychology research • french and francophone positive psychology association (francophone areas) • czech positive psychology center • hellenic association of positive psychology • italian society of positive psychology • polish positive psychology association • portuguese association for studies and intervention in positive psychology • spanish society for positive psychology (sepp) • swiss positive psychology association • turkish positive psychology association • oslo summer school (norway) • aarhus university (denmark) • universiteit twente; maastricht university (the netherlands) • universidade de lisboa (portugal) • ie university (spain) • university of east london; city university of london; university of glasgow; middlesex university london; anglia ruskin university; buckinghamshire new university (uk) asia • asian center for applied positive psychology • global chinese positive psychology association • national positive psychology association, india • japan positive psychology association • informal groups in south korea • lebanese american university (lebanon) • the chinese university of hong kong; hong kong shue yan university (hong kong) • jerusalem university (israel) • school of positive psychology (singapore) americas • associação de psicologia positiva da américa latina (latin america) • western positive psychology association • canadian positive psychology association • informal groups in mexico and brazil • instituto chileno de psicologia positiva (chile) • universidad iberoamericana (mexico) • techmillenio university (mexico) • claremont graduate university; university of pennsylvania; university of utah; harvard university; stanford university; university of california los angeles [ucla] extension; university of michigan, case western reserve university, university of missouri (us) oceania • new zealand association of positive psychology • university of sydney; university of melbourne: rmit university; tafe south australia africa • north-west university (south africa) international/ global • international positive psychology association international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 reviews of positive psychology literature in specific regions and cultures (e.g., south africa: coetzee & viviers, 2007; africa: eloff, achoui, chireshe, mutepfa, & ofovwe, 2008; the middle east and north africa: rao, donaldson, & doiron, 2015; non-western cultures: selin & davey, 2012; latin america: solano, 2014) have attempted to capture the scope and influence of positive psychology within these regions. however, these reviews, while commendable, tell us little about the differences and similarities in positive psychology research across regions in terms of prevalence, methodologies, and research topics. some broad reviews and volumes have hinted at the growing research across geographic boundaries, but it was beyond their scope to capture the nuances across regions, and therefore, their analysis did not highlight the contributions of regional voices and contextual nuances (donaldson et al., 2015; rusk & waters, 2013; sheldon, kashdan, & steger, 2011). consequently, while previous reviews have made important contributions, they do not illustrate and consolidate the scholarship on an international scale. the current review attempts to address this gap. is positive psychology an elite western phenomenon? despite its popularity and widespread interest, positive psychology has been criticized for pandering to hegemonic voices and lacking sensitivity to real issues. critics and theorists point out that the strong north american influence on positive psychology has resulted in placing the individual as the primary focus of research, to the exclusion of historical, cultural, political, and societal contexts (becker & marecek, 2008; christopher & hickinbottom, 2008). therefore, there has been a need to decenter western, particularly, north american positive psychology, and make visible contributions across the world. indeed, in addition to the international positive psychology association (ippa) that serves a global audience, there are actively engaged scholars and practitioners fueling positive psychology through regional associations (see table 1 above). the current review will shed light on these regional contributions across the world by examining research trends on a global scale. 3. method this review examines the prevalence, characteristics, and research topics of the extant empirical research published in positive psychology since the inception of the field in 1998, to 2014. this review builds on and extends a now well-established archive in the field that has been employed in other reviews (e.g., ackerman, warren, & donaldson, 2017; donaldson & ko, 2010; donaldson et al., 2015; rao & donaldson, 2015; rao et al., 2015). this archive consists of 1,628 peer-reviewed english-language articles that include theory, research, reviews, and critiques that identify with positive psychology, published between 1998 and 2014. as described in those reviews, the archive consists of peer-reviewed english-language journal articles gathered by using the search term positive psychology (in quotation marks, with no boolean operators, searching the full text of the articles) in five electronic research databases: academic searchtm premier, business source premier®, eric®, psycinfo®, and psycarticles®. similar to the past reviews, we acknowledge that there may be a considerable number of articles published in various languages that have made significant contributions to the field. however, it was beyond the scope and ability of the research team to access and analyze a comprehensive set of articles that were written in languages other than english. therefore, this archive has been restricted to english-language articles. we also acknowledge the risk of losing valuable research in the field by only reviewing articles that use positive psychology as a term in their full text. however, the epistemological underpinning for this search-term choice (i.e., “positive psychology”) was to minimize our own bias in labeling others’ articles as positive psychology and to use an objective, albeit restrictive, criterion. therefore, we maintain this international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 explicit criterion used in previous reviews and limit the analysis to literature that explicitly identified with the field of positive psychology. 3.1 screening and coding the current review focuses on the empirical contributions relevant to the international landscape of positive psychology. given the importance of geography for this study, a key dilemma that arose was whether to use geographical locations of empirical study samples or locations of author affiliations to determine the location associated with the articles. location of author affiliation was less practical for two reasons: 1) some authors indicated multiple institutional affiliations, sometimes in different countries; 2) some authors conducted research outside the country of their institutional affiliation. thus, it was decided that the sample location would serve as a concrete indicator of the region and country in which the research took place. as a consequence, this limited the review to the examination of empirical articles that clearly reported sample locations. consequently, the archive of 1,628 articles was screened to eliminate non-empirical articles (k = 656). in order to facilitate an analysis by geographical location, articles that did not report a sample location were also screened out (k = 109) to create a dataset (k = 863; henceforth referred to as such; see figure 1). figure 1. results of literature search (based on prisma standards, moher, liberati, tetzlaff, & altman, 2009) note: athe numbers in “records excluded” do not add up to 299 because these categories are not mutually exclusive. international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 after screening, each empirical article was coded to capture prevalence, characteristics and research topics. to determine prevalence, the location of the sample, including continent (i.e., europe, the americas, africa, asia, and oceania), region (e.g., northern europe), and country were coded. the u.s. was separately coded from the rest of the americas, as the u.s. had a disproportionately large number of articles, which skewed the analyses when included. since the positive psychology movement originated in the u.s. (gable & haidt, 2005), it is not surprising that there has been considerable research published therein (see figure 2), particularly in the first 17 years (from 1998 to 2014) of the movement. figure 2. the number of articles published outside the u.s. versus in the u.s. by year for the analysis of characteristics, we coded methodology, research design, and variables of interest. five domains of methodology and research design were coded: 1) research methods, including qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods; 2) level of analysis, including individual, dyad, group, organization, nation, activity/event, or multi-level; 3) study design, including correlational, experimental, or quasi-experimental; 4) study type, including cross-sectional or longitudinal; 5) measurement, including the article’s purpose as scale development, scale validation, or both. next, articles were coded for key constructs, i.e., predictors, outcomes, and mechanisms, with an eye to emergent topics examined in local contexts. further, each article was coded for whether it took a positive, deficit, or a combination of both perspectives. in their review, rao and colleagues (2015) found two main motivations that tend to inspire and guide the direction of positive psychology research. the “positive” perspective refers to an abundance-based approach that focuses on topics related to optimal functioning, wellbeing, and quality of life. articles that take a “deficit” perspective tend to introduce inherently positive constructs such as hope and benefit-finding as mechanisms and interventions to combat physical or psychological disorders, engage in a redemptive narrative, or help individuals cope with adversity (e.g., conducting selfinternational landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 compassion and optimism exercises for the benefit of depressed individuals (shapira & mongrain, 2010)). while most articles took one perspective or the other, some used a combination of perspectives to investigate the impact of positive constructs on a range of outcomes (e.g., wellbeing as well as depression as intervention outcomes). these articles were coded as “neutral.” finally, the influence of positive psychology research across the world was examined using a qualitative analysis of the articles in the dataset. the main themes were drawn and interpretations are discussed. 4. results 4.1 prevalence of all the positive psychology articles in the dataset that reported sample locations, 41% (k = 350 articles) were from the u.s. therefore, in some analyses in this review, the u.s. is used as a reference point, and at other times it is excluded from the analysis to facilitate comparison and fine-grained examination of research conducted in regions outside of the u.s. accordingly, research conducted outside of the u.s. may be referred to as “non-u.s.” research hereafter. the number of articles published outside of the u.s. encompassed 52% of the articles in this dataset, including those from five continents, namely, europe (k = 209), asia (k = 114), the americas (k = 52), oceania (k = 46), and africa (k = 25). the remaining 7% (k = 67) was comprised of multi-national articles. although these numbers are smaller than the articles produced in the u.s., the percentage of research taking place outside of the u.s. tends to increase every year. (see figure 2; though there are a few dips in the line graphs, the number of articles published generally increases every year.) examination of the dataset revealed that empirical research was produced in 62 countries other than the u.s., and the top locations were the united kingdom (k = 78), canada (k = 57), and australia (k = 55). china (k = 31) was ranked fifth and was the top country in asia, and south africa (k = 25) was ranked seventh and was the top country in africa (see table 2 below). while this review shows the growth of positive psychology research around the world, there is also evidence that some regions and countries tend to be hubs within a continent. for example, 79% of the positive psychology articles using samples from africa were from south africa. in the americas, apart from the u.s., 85% of the articles were published in north america (e.g., canada), compared with only 15% in south and central america. europe and asia showed similar trends. in europe, countries in the northern europe region (e.g., the u.k., ireland, norway, sweden, denmark, the netherlands, and finland) published 49% of the entire publications from the continent, while the remaining 51% were spread between southern europe, western europe, and eastern europe. in asia, countries in the east asia region (e.g., china, hong kong, japan, south korea, and taiwan) held 52% of the asian sample locations within the dataset, while the remaining 48% were spread between the middle east, south asia, and southeast asia. interest in positive psychology research has been spreading in new regions and countries. in the dataset, 24 countries were represented only once by participant samples (e.g., kenya, ukraine, thailand), and 14 out of these 24 were included only in multinational studies as a comparative research site. international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 table 2. number of publications by country country region number of publications uk northern europe 78 canada northern america 57 australia oceania 55 germany western europe 36 china east asia 31 spain southern europe 25 israel middle east/north africa 25 south africa south africa 25 netherlands northern europe 23 switzerland western europe 20 italy southern europe 16 india south asia 14 sweden northern europe 13 japan, taiwan east asia 11 norway northern europe 11 belgium western europe 9 hong kong east asia 8 south korea east asia 8 turkey eastern europe 7 iran middle east/north africa 7 new zealand oceania 6 singapore southeast asia 6 russia eastern europe 5 denmark northern europe 5 brazil south & central america 5 romania eastern europe 4 ireland northern europe 4 austria western europe 4 croatia eastern europe 3 finland northern europe 3 france western europe 3 poland eastern europe 2 argentina south & central america 2 indonesia. malaysia southeast asia 2 portugal, greece southern europe 2 cameroon, nigeria central & western africa 1 kenya, malawi, tanzania, uganda, zimbabwe east africa 1 hungary, kosovo, serbia eastern europe 1 kuwait, afghanistan, algeria, jordan, egypt middle east/north africa 1 northern ireland northern europe 1 el salvador, nicaragua, bolivia south & central america 1 lesotho south africa 1 pakistan south asia 1 thailand southeast asia 1 malta southern europe 1 international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 4.2 characteristics to understand the characteristics of positive psychology across regions, we coded the methodologies used in the articles by continents (see table 3). we analyzed various aspects of methodologies, including research method, level of analysis, study design, and scale research. table 3 summarizes the use of methods and design of research in each continent. the results largely confirmed the trend of conducting much quantitative, individual-level, correlational and cross-sectional research but also show the effort of using various other methods and designs in each region. table 3. methodologies by continent (%) africa n=25 americas n=52 asia n=114 europe n=209 oceania n=46 us n=350 multi n=67 total (%) research method quantitative 15 (60a) 34 (65) 96 (84) 171 (81) 28 (60) 287 (82) 49 (73) 680 (78.8b) qualitative 7 (28) 8 (15) 8 (7) 22 (11) 9 (20) 26 (7) 10 (15) 90 (10.4) mixed 3 (12) 9 (17) 9 (8) 16 (8) 9 (20) 34 (10) 8 (12) 88 (10.2) missing 1 (2) 1 (1) 3 (1) 05 (0.6) level of analysis individual 21 (84) 44 (85) 92 (81) 175 (84) 37 (80) 313 (89) 48 (72) 730 (84.6) dyad 0 1 (2) 4 (4) 3 (1) 01 (2) 07 (2) 2 (3) 18 (2.1) group 1 (4) 3 (6) 11 (10) 17 (8) 04 (9) 13 (4) 2 (3) 51 (5.9) organization 1 (2) 3 (1) 0 05 (1) 0 9 (1) nation 1 (4) 001 (0) 0 8 (12) 10 (1.2) activity/event 1 (2) 1 (1) 5 (1) 01 (2) 04 (1) 2 (3) 14 (1.6) multi-level 2 (8) 5 (5) 3 (1) 03 (7) 04 (1) 4 (6) 21 (2.4) missing 2 (4) 1 (1) 3 (1) 0 03 (1) 1 (3) 10 (1.2) study design 1 correlational 19 (76) 35 (67) 84 (74) 157 (75) 24 (52) 253 (72) 55 (82) 627 (72.7) experimental 1 (4) 4 (7) 12 (11) 28 (13) 13 (28) 044 (13) 2 (3) 104 (12.1) quasiexperimental 2 (8) 6 (12) 13 (11) 17 (8) 4 (9) 038 (11) 5 (7) 85 (9.8) missing 03 (12) 7 (13) 5 (4) 7 (3) 5 (11) 15 (4) 5 (7) 47 (5.4) study design 2 cross-sectional 20 (80) 34 (65) 90 (79) 152 (73) 28 (61) 260 (74) 62 (93) 646 (74.9) longitudinal 1 (4) 9 (17) 15 (13) 40 (19) 10 (22) 55 (16) 2 (3) 132 (15.3) others 2 (8) 4 (8) 8 (7) 016 (8) 6 (13) 28 (8) 0 0 64 (7.4) missing 2 (8) 5 (10) 1 (1) 1 (0) 2 (4) 7 (2) 3 (4) 21 (2.4) scale research scale development 1 (4) 3 (6) 0 04 (2) 2 (4) 8 (2) 2 (3) 20 (2.3) scale validation 03 (12) 3 (6) 13 (11) 06 (3) 1 (2) 15 (4) 7 (10) 48 (5.6) both 1 (4) 1 (2) 3 (3) 06 (3) 000 9 (3) 4 (6) 24 (2.8) neither 20 (80) 43 (83) 97 (85) 191 (91) 42 (91) 315 (90) 52 (90) 760 (88.1) missing 00 2 (4) 0 1 (1) 0v 2 (1) 001 (2) 003 (1) 0 2 (3) 11 (1.3) note: a percentage of number of each method out of total number of articles within the continent. percentages may not add up to 100 within each continent, as we rounded up .5 or above for individual scores; b percentage of number of each method out of total number of articles (k = 863). international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 4.3 topics we analyzed the topics of research as another characteristic of positive psychology research in regions. the independent and dependent variables of articles were coded and analyzed to identify topics and constructs studied across continents. themes that emerged across regions and continents were used to create extensive lists of topics studied as predictors or outcomes, and their frequency was calculated. popular themes and topics unique to each continent were identified. predictors. topic analysis across continents indicated that gratitude (k = 35) and personality variables (e.g., big five; k = 15) were the most commonly studied predictors among all regions (see table 4 below). in asian studies, emotional intelligence (k = 3), stability and balance (k = 2), and savoring (k = 2) were the main predictors of interest beyond the variables commonly used in positive psychology research across regions. in african studies, violence and trauma (k = 3) were most commonly studied. in the americas, compassion (k = 2) and positive behavior support (k = 2) were commonly studied, while in europe engagement (k = 5) was. in oceania, coaching interventions (k = 7) were a commonly studied predictor, and in the u.s., leisure (k = 9), courage (k = 8), and autonomy (k = 6) were among the unique top ten predictors beyond the variables commonly studied in positive psychology in general. outcomes. the dependent variables again showed some unique patterns in each region. predictably, the dependent variables found in common across all regions are among the most commonly investigated topics in positive psychology overall (donaldson et al., 2015; see table 4 above), including wellbeing (k = 149), life satisfaction (k = 91), positive/negative affect (k = 87), happiness (k = 60), and resilience (k = 28). in research from asia, social acceptance (k = 2), self-efficacy (k = 2), and post-traumatic stress (k = 2) were unique among the top dependent variables. in africa, coping and recovery (k = 2) were commonly studied, while in europe, anxiety (k = 11) and the concept of flow (csikszentmihalyi, 1990; k = 5) were common outcomes of interest. in the americas, values (k = 2) and humor (k = 2) were commonly studied outcomes, in oceania, positive youth development (k = 6) and positive relationships (k = 2) were commonly studied, and in the u.s., achievement (k = 8), attenuating of risk behaviors (k = 7), purpose (k = 6), and altruism (k = 5) were relatively common outcome variables. positive or deficit perspective. overall, 46% of the articles in the dataset (k = 397) took a positive perspective, 29% (k = 251) took a deficit perspective, and 25% used both positive and deficit perspectives (k = 215). the highest percentages of a deficit approach (40% of articles) were from africa and the americas (k = 10, k = 21 respectively). the highest percentages of positive approaches were from oceania (56%; k =26) and multinational studies (57%, k = 38). see table 5 below for exact frequencies. international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 table 4. frequencies of predictors and outcomes across continents/regions predictors outcomes common gratitude (35) personality (15) wellbeing (149) life satisfaction (91) positive or negative affect (87) happiness (60) depression (48) health (39) resilience (28) asia emotional intelligence (3) neuroticism (3) resilience (3) positive external-concept (2) savoring (2) self-concept (2) stability/balance (2) trust (2) attributional style (2) employability (2) social acceptance (2) post-traumatic stress (2) self-efficacy (2) africa violence/trauma (3) coping/recovery (2) americas motivation (3) compassion (2) psychological resources (2) positive behavior support (2) moral excellence (2) self-acceptance (2) values (2) humor (2) turnover (2) europe engagement (5) anxiety (11) flow (5) oceania coaching (7) calling (2) positive youth development (6) floundering (2) parenting style (2) positive relationships (2) flourishing (2) multi-national power/powerlessness (3) eudaimonic and hedonic dispositions (2) approach/avoidance (3) emotional disclosure (3) meditation/mindfulness (3) us leisure (9) courage (8) humility (7) attachment (7) self-regulation (7) autonomy (6) post-traumatic growth (5) achievement (8) organizational commitment (7) attenuating risk behavior (7) courage (6) purpose (6) altruism (5) creativity (5) effort (5) adjustment (5) prosocial activities (5) international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 table 5. frequencies of positive, neutral, and deficit approaches (%) africa (k=25) americas (k=52) asia (k=114) europe (k=209) oceania (k=46) us (k=350) multi (k=67) total (%) positive 10 (40) 18 (35) 55 (48) 88 (42) 26 (57) 162 (46) 38 (57) 397 (46) neutral 4 (16) 13 (25) 22 (19) 52 (25) 9 (20) 97 (28) 17 (25) 215 (24.9) deficit 10 (40) 21 (40) 37 (32) 69 (33) 11 (24) 91 (26) 12 (18) 251 (29.1) indigenous issues. the results from the analysis of indigenous issues demonstrated that some positive psychologists are addressing pertinent and socially relevant local events. this shows the potential of positive psychology to address the pressing events that affect people’s lives all over the world, although the actual number of articles including local topics is small in this analysis (k = 44; see table 6 for frequency of topics). table 6. frequencies of local topics studied asia post-traumatic stress (israel: 2) burnout (china: 1) migrant workers (china: 1) economic transition (china: 1) earthquake survivors (indonesia: 1) children exposed to war (afghanistan: 1) cumulative adversity (israel: 1) missile attacks (israel: 1) mystical experiences of muslims (1) africa cultural groups in south africa (4) hiv/aids (south africa: 2) african-centered coping (south africa: 1) americas trash pickers (nicaragua: 1) first nations cultural trauma (canada: 1) europe terrorism (spain: 2) hiv/aids (russia: 1) football supporters (england: 1) oceania indigenous students (australia: 1) multi-national us minority issues of races (9) september 9/11 (4) hurricane katrina (3) college campus shooting (1) low-income housing in nyc (1) no child left behind (1) war refugees (1) for example, in asia, some research in the middle east had focused on trauma and posttraumatic stress in response to chronic violence. some studies in china had examined the response of migrant workers and their children to the large economic transition that has taken place over the past decade, as well as the associated stigma. in the americas, study samples included trash pickers in nicaragua and aboriginal students in canada. in europe, research international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 investigated the impact of terrorism in spain. in south africa, a commonly studied topic of research involved the comparison of various ethnic groups and tribes that live together in the country. studies in the u.s. included research on race and ethnicity issues (e.g., african americans, immigrants) as well as the impact of the terrorist attack on september 11, 2001 and hurricane katrina in 2005. 4.4 influences we closely examined articles that demonstrated how positive psychology research is influencing the lives of individuals, groups, and nations. accordingly, the findings from our qualitative review highlighted main themes that show how positive psychology research is making influential contributions and shifting the discourse across the world. resilience after traumatic events. positive psychology has inspired research on the study of unexpected positive outcomes that emerge in the aftermath of man-made and natural disasters. one such area of research emerging in many locations around the world is the examination of resilience and benefit-finding after large-scale traumatic events such as terrorist attacks and earthquakes. weeks after a terrorist attack in spain, vázquez and hervás (2010) found that citizens were finding potential benefits (e.g., learning from the experience, meaning in life) in the aftermath of the attack, as well as experiencing positive reactions such as solidarity and a feeling of belonging to the nation. in a related vein, hobfoll and his colleagues (2009; 2012) have focused on understanding how one can cultivate resilience and the ability to stay engaged and vigorous in life while facing the constant threat of trauma and violence on the west bank and the gaza strip. another area of contribution of positive psychology research is the development of new constructs, and contextualized investigation of established constructs to capture how human strengths can provide a buffer against the effects of adversity. in a study of survivors of the 2009 earthquake in indonesia, lies, mellor, and hong (2014) found that hardiness and gratitude were negatively related to global distress and posttraumatic stress symptoms five and eight months after the earthquake, respectively. resilience after disease or injury. experiencing a serious disease or a catastrophic injury is often traumatic for individuals and their families. positive psychology research in this area has investigated strengths-based interventions and practices to buffer the impact, increase resilience, and actively cope with these conditions. the review by casellas-grau, font, and vives (2014) of 16 studies on positive psychology interventions for breast cancer patients demonstrated that well-designed interventions can help individuals with making meaning and sense of their condition, foster hope, and cultivate positive emotions. similarly, there is a growing body of research on interventions fostering posttraumatic growth and benefit-finding with cancer patients and individuals with other traumatic health problems all over the world, including in china, romania, and the uk (ho, chan, & ho, 2004; kállay, 2008; oaksford, frude, & cuddihy, 2005). another key contribution of positive psychology research is on understanding the complexities of people living with hiv and aids, and developing interventions to alleviate their problems. pecoraro et al. (2014) found that hiv patients facing stigma and discrimination were more likely to stay in treatment if desire to live, social support, spirituality, and positive thinking were present in their lives. in another instance, wood, theron, and mayaba (2012) found that reading culturally relevant stories to children who had been orphaned by aids led to increased resilience. international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 positive experiences of marginalized populations. a small but promising body of positive psychology research is on recognizing positive emotions and strengths in marginalized populations. in dominant scholarly research and popular literature, marginalized populations have often been deemed as unhealthy, depressed, and frustrated (e.g., choi, miller, & wilbur, 2009). however, contrary to popular notions, initial evidence suggests that marginalization from society itself does not necessarily predict negative affect and depression. vázquez (2013) found that an impoverished and stigmatized population (i.e., trash pickers) also experienced high levels of happiness and optimism. according to their findings, these individuals tended to find pathways to happiness through familial relationships and having time to participate in relatively inexpensive leisure activities like reading, rather than through having a high income. this aligns with biswas-diener and diener’s (2006) findings on experience of happiness among slum dwellers in india. moreover, the positive psychological perspective has served as a unifying mechanism to organize and combine interventions for marginalized populations. brendtro, brokenleg, and van bockern (2005) suggested the circle of courage as a theme for interventions that promote significance, competence, power, and virtue among native people suffering from intergenerational cultural traumas. they stressed the importance of a strengths-based approach rather than deficit-focused approach to youth development and created a new space for development and implementation of positive-oriented programs and policies. indicators of happiness across cultures. another way that positive psychologists are making an impact is through cross-cultural research that demonstrates the similarities and differences in indicators of happiness and wellbeing around the world. for example, delle fave, brdar, friere, vella-brodrick, and wissing (2011) investigated the components of happiness across seven countries. the authors found that happiness was commonly defined as psychological balance or harmony and that social and familial relationships are the largest predictor of happiness. brannan, biswas-diener, mohr, mortazavi, and stein (2013) looked at the relationship between social support and wellbeing in iran, jordan, and the u.s. and found that family support predicted wellbeing in all three countries, while friend support was predictive only in the u.s. and jordan. these findings highlight the nuances in the role of interaction between social relationships and culture on wellbeing. in other words, while social support is a common predictor of happiness and wellbeing across nations, there are cultural differences in the type and nature of social support necessary for greater wellbeing. in another instance, kormi-nouri, farahani, and trost (2013) observed different relationships between affect and wellbeing in sweden and iran. as increased positive affect led to increased wellbeing among swedish participants, a balance of positive and negative emotions led to higher wellbeing for the iranian participants. this shows that while people around the world may have some similar predictors of happiness, there are often cultural differences in how these indicators operate in predicting happiness and wellbeing. balance between positive and negative. positive psychology is often misunderstood as being concerned only with rosy aspects, while neglecting harsh realities of life (e.g., fineman, 2006). early proponents of positive psychology have insisted that the purpose of positive psychology is to balance positive and negative perspectives in the psychological sciences, and our review supports this. positive psychology research has made important contributions in finding ways to strike a balance between the inherently positive and negative aspects of human experience and explain both. for example, vallerand et al. (2008) showed that football supporters may experience both positive and negative consequences from their acts of team-support. previous research encountered a “paradox,” where supporters of sports teams are related to both positive international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 (e.g., psychological health) and negative (e.g., aggression) outcomes. vallerand et al. (2008) adopted the dualistic model of passion (vallerand et al., 2003) and explained the paradox, such that individuals’ passion types (i.e., harmonious or obsessive) predicted positive and negative consequences. this research presents a case where positive psychology not only argues for positive aspects of life, but equally encompasses both positive and negative aspects of a phenomenon in a single model. (for another example, see keyes’s (2003) model of languishing and flourishing.) 5. discussion the purpose of this review was to understand the overall landscape of positive psychology research that has emerged in various regions across the world in the initial 17 years of the field and to examine the validity of some of the critiques of positive psychology. thus, the review examined the prevalence, characteristics, and influence of empirical research in positive psychology across the world. 5.1 global presence positive psychology was found to have a large and growing global presence and visibility. the analysis reveals that positive psychology is entering and making important contributions in the scholarly conversations and debates across a range of important societal issues around the world. further, positive psychology is no longer a united states and western phenomenon as much as a psychological science in general. past reviews of research in psychological science have criticized that peer-reviewed psychological research is dominated by the united states and westernized samples. for instance, arnett (2008) found that 68% of samples of studies published in top journals of six sub-disciplines of psychology were from the united states, and 96% from westernized countries. in contrast, in the current review, 41% of the samples in positive psychology studies were from the united states, and 70% from westernized countries. thus, while positive psychology has been criticized for ethnocentrism (christopher & hickinbottom, 2008), this review shows that it fares better than the psychological research included in arnett (2008). 5.2 methodological relevance the analysis of methodologies used in the articles in the dataset reveals that the field is dominated by studies using quantitative, correlational, and individual-level analyses. while these tendencies are still observed, geographical analyses by continent indicate that preferences for methodologies show some variations within and across regions, depending on their contexts and regional concerns. for instance, research emerging from africa has several qualitative studies that may be explained in part due to a strong history of storytelling and the resulting influence on the choice of research methods (e.g., reitmaier, bidwell, & marsden, 2011). the research published in the u.s. showed a high percentage of individual-level analysis, and in asia there was a good number of group-level analyses, potentially reflecting the cultural differences in individualism and collectivism (hofstede, 1984). finally, compared to other regions, in oceania, a higher percentage of empirical studies employed mixed methods, longitudinal designs, experimental methods, and multi-level analyses. these are prima facie considered to be more desirable methodological practices in psychology, although the current analysis does not assess quality and rigor of individual studies. future research should examine the determinants of the use of research methods among scholars. international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 5.3 conceptual balance one of the most noteworthy findings from the analyses of topics and constructs studied was that research in positive psychology not only includes investigation of positive topics but also their interaction with and impact on psychological dysfunction (e.g., depression) and social issues (e.g., terrorism). this growing balance directly addresses one of the common concerns of positive psychology: that the field solely focuses on positivity, neglecting the negative reality of human life and society (hackman, 2009). further, cultural, social, and political issues and priorities in the regions influenced which constructs were studied and how this balance was achieved. a research interest in stability in asian research might reflect the values of religious traditions (e.g., buddhism, hinduism), while predictors such as trauma and violence, and outcomes such as coping and recovery in african research point to the historical and political struggles in the region (e.g., civil war, drought, and famine). similarly, the prevalence of posttraumatic stress and resilience as outcome variables in asian research may reflect research on managing adversity arising from wars in the middle east. 5.4 global relevance positive psychology scholars have added value to past and established research on posttraumatic stress and recovery through exploration of the human aftermath of large-scale traumatic events (e.g., vázquez & hervás, 2010) and the resilience of individuals who have been affected by disease or injury (e.g., casellas-grau et al., 2014). these studies show that evidence-based interventions are being applied to the most pressing issues of our time, such as combating the effects of terrorism and the hiv/aids epidemic. the research indicates that happiness and strengths exist in human beings in any circumstance, not exclusively among wealthy, privileged individuals (e.g., vazquez, 2013). further, while happiness and wellbeing may be experienced and expressed through different means across populations, positive psychology research and interventions can help understand and improve the quality of life for all, regardless of their current life circumstances (delle fave et al., 2011). 5.5 strengths, limitations, and future directions the purpose of this review was to examine the global landscape of research in positive psychology in its initial years, and, as such, is the first large-scale analysis of its kind. as the articles for this review were extracted from several large electronic databases, it is expected that it provides a fairly reliable estimate of the state of the field. as positive psychology gets close to the end of its second decade of existence, this review provides a summary of the first 17 years of the field across the world and highlights the emergence of what might be termed as the next generation of positive psychology that is increasingly diverse, culturally responsive, contextual, and influential. however, it is important to view this study in light of its limitations. the current investigation faces the limitations of previous reviews that have used similar methods (donaldson & ko, 2010; donaldson et al., 2015; rao & donaldson, 2015; rao et al., 2015). specifically, it includes only research published in english, and therefore underestimates the breadth and depth of positive psychology’s prevalence and impact around the world. similarly, only research that explicitly identified with or situated itself in relation to positive psychology was included in this analysis. thus, authors’ identification with alternative labels for positive psychology, such as psychofortology in south africa (strümpfer, 2005), may have caused an underestimation of the global influence of positive psychology. in addition, the paper does not international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 exhaustively cover all topics in positive psychology, and instead focuses on highlighting prominent trends, thereby inadvertently excluding some (e.g., wisdom). although the current analytical strategy emphasizes the research participants (i.e., where they are situated) so that it allows for commentary on the psychological phenomena of the people in the region, we acknowledge that using a different criterion (e.g., author location) would have enabled us to conduct other interesting analyses, such as patterns of multinational collaboration in scholarship. future studies could explore this. finally, the current study did not account for the impact of articles, which may be reflected in the impact factors of the journals or the number of citations of articles. weighing the count of articles with a measure of impact may highlight regions that have few articles yet may have high impact on the field. while the current study focused on presenting an international landscape of the field of positive psychology, future research can delve into some of the trends observed in this study to investigate the “why” and “how” of those trends. future research can also conduct reviews of the later years of the field to compare and contrast the new trends to these initial years and examine the changes. as a broader suggestion based on our findings, we recommend increased focus on the development of a culturally responsive positive psychology. a key area for growth of the field is the development, measurement, and testing of constructs that are grounded in the social, economic, and political context of the region. further, we call for increased cross-cultural comparative research that showcases the complex nature and multi-dimensionality of positive constructs and their relevance across cultures and contexts. 6. conclusion this study summarized the first 17 years of research in the field of positive psychology. while the field is still in nascence, scholars in positive psychology have made important progress across the world, giving rise to some general trends and regional perspectives. we anchored the analyses partially around the early criticisms of the field, which provide guidance for the future of positive psychology as an established field in psychology. csikszentmihalyi (1993) noted that an individual or system develops and becomes richer through successfully balancing differentiation and integration. differentiation involves pursuing uniqueness and distinguishing oneself from others, while integration entails unifying with others by creating something beyond oneself. positive psychology as a field will benefit from this approach by cultivating cultural sensitivity regarding human life in different contexts and integrating a wide range of perspectives and approaches into a unified view. acknowledgments special thanks to maria mcmanus and annelise austill, claremont graduate university, and russell donaldson, redlands university, for assistance with coding and database management, and noah boyd, joo young lee, and scott donaldson, claremont graduate university, for their helpful review and edits. a portion of this paper was awarded 3rd place by the american psychological association’s international psychology division (division 52) at the western psychological association convention 2016. authors heejin kim university of california, irvine heejin.kim@uci.edu kathryn doiron claremont graduate university international landscape of positive psychology kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 meg a. warren claremont graduate university western washington university stewart i. donaldson claremont graduate university publishing timeline received 30 july 2017 accepted 5 february 2018 published 13 july 2018 references ackerman, c., warren, m. a., & donaldson, s. i. 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(2013). generic quality of life utility measures in health-care research: conceptual issues highlighted for the most commonly used utility measures. international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 173-181. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i2.4 m. elske van den akker-van marle leiden university medical center vandenakker@lumc.nl copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 173 article generic quality of life utility measures in health-care research: conceptual issues highlighted for the most commonly used utility measures suzanne pietersma · m. elske van den akker-van marle marieke de vries abstract: purpose. effectiveness of health interventions is often measured by means of generic utility measures (e.g., eq-5d). these measures focus on aspects of qol that can be expected to be affected by health-care interventions. we argue that traditional health-related utility measures are based on a relatively narrow focus on the concept of qol. therefore, to better judge the effectiveness of health interventions, measures need to go beyond traditional health-related qol utility measures. methods. we conducted an analysis of the definitions and questions of the five most commonly used generic utility measures: the eq-5d, sf-6d, qwb-sa, hui2 and hui3. results. traditional health-related qol utility measures are based on a relatively narrow focus on the concept of health and health-related qol. we illustrate this narrow focus by zooming in on two issues: a) the focus on a too selective number of domains; and b) the use of a narrow interpretation of the features that can be part of domains. conclusions. we believe that using insights from different backgrounds and research fields (i.e., the subjective wellbeing approach and capabilities approach) will result in a more complete operationalization of health and health-related qol and hence will ultimately facilitate the allocation of health-care resources to interventions that are most effective in increasing people’s (health-related) qol. keywords: quality of life, health care outcome assessment, medical economics, subjective wellbeing, life satisfaction 1. introduction valuing the effectiveness of health-care interventions can help the allocation of scarce healthcare resources by maximizing health benefits. effectiveness of health-care interventions is nowadays most often measured in terms of quality-adjusted life years [1,2]. quality-adjusted life years combine the quality and quantity of life into a one-dimensional outcome. commonly used scales to assess quality of life (qol) are generic utility measures, like the eq-5d, sf-6d and hui [3]. these qol measures provide valuations (i.e., utilities) for different levels of a predefined set of domains, such as pain and mobility. they focus on domains of qol that can be expected to be affected by health-care interventions and are therefore often labeled as health-related qol measures. a common critique is that such utility measures do not capture all domains relevant to qol [4]. that is, the focus in health-related qol utility measures is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ health-related quality of life utility scales pietersma, van den akker-van marle, & de vries, www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 174 mainly on physical functioning and not that much on domains related to people’s mental and social experiences or adaptive capabilities. for example, existing health-related qol measures mainly focus on grasping the physical effects of cure-related treatments and do not detect important effects of health interventions in medical contexts such as end-of-life care [5,6]. besides the critique on existing qol utility measures there is also a shift in the way health is perceived. that is, the original definition of health of the world health organization (who) is said to be insufficient in these days – there is a need for an increased focus on people’s capabilities [7,8]. amid all these developments we want to reflect upon the content of traditional health-related qol utility measures. is it true that traditional utility measures are not capable of grasping all essential qol domains? in the current article we will zoom in on the definitions and questions of the five most commonly used generic health-related qol utility measures: the eq-5d, sf-6d, qwb-sa, hui2 and hui3 [3,9-11]. we argue that traditional utility measures are based on a relatively narrow focus on the concept of health and healthrelated qol. consequently these measures a) address only a selective number of domains of qol and b) oftentimes interpret (some of) these domains in a restricted fashion. besides focusing on these two issues we also briefly underline the potential usefulness of combining a diverse spectrum of theoretical ideas about qol, wellbeing and health. that is, we will highlight insights from not only the utility background [12], but also from a psychological subjective wellbeing background [13,14] and the capabilities approach [15,16]. we believe that using insights from these different backgrounds and research fields results in a more complete operationalization of health and health-related qol; and hence may ultimately facilitate the allocation of health-care resources to interventions that are most effective in increasing people’s (health-related) qol. this article is not meant to be a complete overview of all practical and theoretical issues related to qol utility measurements. our key objective is to highlight the narrow focus of the five most commonly used health-related qol utility measures and show the relevance of different theoretical insights in the light of the altered perception of health; i.e., health revolves around people’s abilities and resources to autonomously cope with life’s ever changing physical, mental and social challenges [7]. 2. generic qol utility questionnaires—too selective number of domains first of all we wanted to see what is meant when people say that utility measures do not grasp all domains relevant to qol [4]. in unraveling this issue we noticed that all five traditionally used utility measures have a common conceptual framework. they are all based upon the general who definition of health [17-22]. that is, there is a degree of consensus within the field of population health around the three-dimensional conception of health offered by the who ‚health is a state of complete positive physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity‛ *23+. this definition covers both the absence of negative aspects as well as the presence of positive aspects. perfect qol is equivalent to health in all three domains. however, the who definition is perceived as too broad and general [22,24]; thereby creating the necessity of formulating more concrete working definitions and operational definitions. consequently the translation of the who definition to concrete scales results in many variations [22] and leaves ample room for incompleteness in qol measures. we wanted to determine whether or not the three building blocks of health – physical, mental and social health – are represented in the existing scales. next, we will illustrate that the five most commonly used health-related qol utility measures employ a narrow focus; we looked at the working definitions and scale items of the five measures (see table 1 (below) for an overview). health-related quality of life utility scales pietersma, van den akker-van marle, & de vries, www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 175 table 1. content of the five most commonly used generic utility measures: the eq-5d, sf6d, qwb-sa, hui2 and hui3 utility measure working definition operationalization of working definition eq-5d people’s overall perceived health status questions on physical domain dominate (3 out of 5 items) sf-6d people’s overall perceived health status exclusive focus on physical and mental domains [18] qwb-sa health is perceived as the absence of functional limitations and/or specific symptoms and problems questions on physical domain dominate (66 out of 74 items) hui2/hui3 health is perceived as the absence of functional limitations and/or specific symptoms and problems exclusive focus on physical and mental domains [21,29] the qwb-sa, hui2 and hui3 formulated a quite limited working definition; health is perceived as the absence of functional limitations and/or specific symptoms and problems [20,21,25-27]. functional limitations could refer to all three pillars of health. they can refer to people’s physical symptoms, but also to daily problems people experience due to mental problems (such as anxiety issues) or social problems (such as having a limited social network). in general, however, when qol measures refer to functional limitations they most frequently refer to physical problems or symptoms [22,28]. in the qwb-sa this strong focus on the physical pillar of health is underlined by the concrete operationalizations of the working definition. that is, the qwb-sa contains almost exclusively questions referring to physical domains (e.g., symptoms, self-care, mobility, physical activity). in the hui the strong focus on the physical and mental pillar is underlined by the additionally used ‘within the skin’ working definition of qol. this means that the focus is exclusively on mental and physical aspects; social aspects are considered ‘outside the skin’ *21+. the exclusion of the social component is also shown by statistical analyses: the hui3 does not adequately measure social functioning [29]. in comparison, the eq-5d and the sf-6d have broader working definitions. that is, people’s overall perceived health status is central. not only dysfunction is central, but also function [17-19,30]. in the working definitions no selective reference is made to a subset of the three who pillars of health. however, when looking at the operationalizations of the working definitions it becomes apparent that in both scales not all three pillars of health are equally represented. in the eq-5d the questions on physical functioning and disabilities (i.e., mobility, self-care, pain/discomfort) dominate. one question assesses the mental health pillar (i.e., anxiety/depression) and one question is aimed at assessing the social health pillar (i.e., usual activities). for the sf-6d the overrepresentation of the physical and mental domains is explicitly noted by ware [18], who states that the ‚third factor in the who physical, mental, and social conceptualization of health remains to be operationalized‛ (p. 338). in sum, the five most commonly used generic utility measures focus predominately on the physical health pillar of the general who definition of health, leaving the other two pillars underrepresented. health-related quality of life utility scales pietersma, van den akker-van marle, & de vries, www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 176 3. generic qol utility questionnaires—narrow interpretation of domains in analyzing the content of the five utility measures we focused not only on the number of domains included but also on the interpretation of the meaning of the domains of qol. the three pillars of health in the who definition can be interpreted in different ways. as stated earlier it is argued that the current focus of the who definition should be changed [7,8]; it is argued that a focus on people’s abilities and resources is more fruitful than is a narrow focus on people’s perceived decrease in functional abilities or perceived physical state. a broad focus on people’s abilities and resources makes it possible to capture to what extent people are able to autonomously cope with life’s ever changing physical, mental and social challenges. abilities and resources can be defined as people’s adaptive qualities, self-management skills and coping abilities. the focus is on how well people are able to cope with diseases or impairments and not on reduced functional abilities. the reasoning is that people’s ways of adjusting to changed circumstances or functional abilities is more important than whether or not people have a measurable change in health status due to a certain chronic or acute disease [7,8]. next, we illustrate how the five most commonly used generic qol measures employ a narrow interpretation; the focus is almost exclusively on people’s functional abilities. as described above, the qwb-sa, hui2 and hui3 are based on a working definition of health that exclusively focuses on functional limitations and/or specific symptoms and problems [20,21,25-27+. no reference is made to people’s ability to cope and adapt. although for the eq-5d and the sf-6d the working definition is broader [17-19,30] than the definition used by the previously mentioned measures, their operationalizations still strongly focus on people’s health status. first of all, in the eq-5d and the sf-6d the questions on physical functioning and disabilities dominate. in addition, the questions related to the mental pillar do not focus on people’s mental abilities or resources. the focus is on functional mental issues or problems, such as depression and anxiety disorders. in the eq-5d the same reasoning applies to the social pillar: the question posed focuses on problems in performing daily activities. that is, the focus is on functional limitations and not on people’s coping abilities or adaptive qualities to handle daily struggles. in sum, the most commonly used generic utility measures include questions that focus extensively on ‘objective’ functioning and not that much on people’s coping abilities and resources. that is, existing utility measures focus on people’s actual level of functioning (i.e., whether or not people are still able to walk) instead of focusing on how people cope with changes in their physical health (i.e., whether or not people find ways to get by in daily life despite changes in physical health). 4. consequences of a too-strict definition of health—cure versus care before elaborating on potential ways to achieve a broader outlook on qol in utility measurements we first want to illustrate the effects of using existing generic utility measures. to this end, we looked at the usefulness of current generic utility measures in the cure versus care sector. in the cure sector the focus is on health gains; that is, on curing diseases. the main focus is on people’s degree of physical functioning and on eliminating diseases. it can be deduced that the physical and ‘objective’ orientation of generic utility measures could be sufficiently equipped to capture such effects of interventions in the cure sector. however, also in the cure sector it is well possible that mental and social domains as well as adaptive responses and coping abilities of people have a strong influence on their qol, hence making the physical and ‘objective’ orientation used in generic qol utility measures too narrow. this problem is even more predominant in the care sector. this sector is concerned with chronic diseases, which nowadays in western societies are most prevalent and account for most of the health-related quality of life utility scales pietersma, van den akker-van marle, & de vries, www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 177 expenditure in the health-care system [7]. the care sector is not that much focused on eliminating diseases, but more on regulating or reducing the effects of long-term limitations on people’s daily activities. the main aim is to increase wellbeing in general and not only to create physical and functional health gains. interventions in the care sector are concerned, for example, with living with diabetes or with end-of-life care. the focus is more strongly on people’s experiences and their adaptive capabilities. consequently, it is expected that the ‘objective’ orientation used in the generic qol utility measures is too narrow *31,32]. a broad outlook (i.e., looking at all three pillars of health as mentioned in the who definition) and a focus on resources and abilities are essential, especially for the care sector, to capture the effects of health-care interventions as fully and correctly as possible. 5. theoretical ideas about qol the focus of traditionally used qol utility measures can be seen as being too narrow. a clear and solid theoretical model of qol would help in constructing broad generic utility measures of general qol. there are some general theoretical frameworks related to qol. however, there is no consensus in the scientific literature on the ultimate theoretical framework [33,34,40]. this lack of clarity in the theoretical underpinning of qol leaves ample room for incompleteness in generic qol measures. we believe that using insights from different backgrounds and research fields will provide promising suggestions for improving health-related qol utility measures. there are two other research approaches, beside the utility approach, that are frequently mentioned when it comes to capturing the important aspects of qol [40], namely the subjective wellbeing approach [13,14] and the capabilities approach [15,16]. subjective wellbeing is a central concept in the psychological realm. in this field qol is typically described as subjective wellbeing, happiness or wellness [13,14,35-37]. broadly stated, wellbeing concerns how people think and feel about their lives. it concerns affective and cognitive evaluations. both positive and negative experiences are included. satisfaction with a diverse array of domains is central to subjective wellbeing; such as satisfaction with work, leisure, family, social relationships, mental health and physical health [13,14]. the focus is explicitly on mental and social domains; that is, the focus is on the two pillars of the who definition of health that are underrepresented in existent utility measures. in addition, people’s subjective experiences, abilities and feelings are central. the objective ‘correctness’ of people’s experiences is not relevant. in addition, the capability approach of amartya sen can be seen as a philosophical theory [15]. the capability approach provides a general framework of qol that revolves around people’s abilities or inabilities to achieve certain end states given their resources. the theory concerns the freedoms people have in life. sen explicitly states that the focus should not be on people’s functioning but on people’s capabilities *15,16+ – this matches the new suggested definition of health mentioned earlier (i.e., concentrate on people’s coping abilities) *7,8+. the capabilities approach has often been linked to health-related qol research; it is seen as a framework that is able to fill gaps in the field of health-care assessment [16]. both approaches (i.e., the subjective wellbeing approach and the capabilities approach) are in accordance with the newest suggested definition of health [7,8]. that is, both approaches provide a concrete framework that matches the new definition of health; they provide a characterization of a generally agreed upon direction in which to look in order to translate the new definition to concrete scales that capture qol more comprehensively. we believe that both theoretical approaches provide complementary and promising perspectives that are preeminently qualified to enrich and broaden existing health-related qol utility measures. until now, there has not been, unfortunately, very much cross-fertilization between the utility health-related quality of life utility scales pietersma, van den akker-van marle, & de vries, www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 178 approach, subjective wellbeing approach and capabilities approach [38-40], likely because they all originate from quite separate fields. we opt for closer collaboration between all three research disciplines to create solid definitions and operationalizations of health-related qol. 6. theoretical ideas about qol—missing links although we believe that using insights in the field of qol utility measurement related to subjective wellbeing and capability is fruitful, neither approach can be simply and directly incorporated in qol utility measurements. each approach can be defined as a general theoretical framework. that is, they do not provide clear cut operational definitions and consequently there is no universal concrete operationalization of qol or wellbeing. in the psychological realm there are hundreds of different scales in use that are based on the broad conceptualization of wellbeing [41]. the domains included in these wellbeing questionnaires differ greatly. in addition, in sen’s view the operationalization of qol depends on the exact research question; thus there is no universal operationalization of qol [15,16]. consequently, based on both the subjective wellbeing approach and the capabilities approach, it is unclear which aspects are missing in any given traditional qol utility measures. thus, besides the need for consensus on a general theoretical view of health there is also a need for consensus on a matching conceptualization. more debate and research is needed to clarify these issues before both the subjective wellbeing approach and the capabilities approach can be applied in expanding or adjusting existing health-related qol utility measures. 7. necessary future steps besides these specific theoretical issues there are also some more general matters that need to be resolved in order to develop new or altered utility measures. we will highlight two important issues. first, utility measures can include only a limited number of questions/domains. that is, only a limited number of items can be added to utility measures if the measure is to remain usable. second, including diverse domains in one scale can create problems (e.g., objective versus subjective items; proximal versus distal items; specific versus abstract items). for example, subjective items require totally different answering options and instructions than do objective items, creating a scale that is cognitively demanding. moreover, including both specific and abstract questions in one scale can cause the problem that the specific items are part of another larger and more abstract domain. new or altered utility measures can be developed in many ways. a possible route could be first to undertake a delphi-study amongst scientific experts to determine what the essential domains of qol are. by including scientists from diverse disciplines, insights from different theoretical angles (e.g., subjective wellbeing approach, capabilities approach) could be included. the next step would be to construct concrete questions that capture these domains and to test those questions in a large sample of respondents. for example, one could test whether/which domains overlap and how the domains correlate with different existing qol/wellbeing measures to determine which domains have the greatest validity in capturing the physical, mental and social phenomena of qol. this would enable researchers to identify a small selection of qol domains and to solve many practical and theoretical issues (e.g., level of abstractness). we believe that a utility measure should capture physical, mental and social domains to an extent sufficient to create a comprehensive operationalization of qol. this will ultimately facilitate the allocation of health-care resources to interventions that are most effective in increasing people’s (health-related) qol in relation to the cost of doing so. health-related quality of life utility scales pietersma, van den akker-van marle, & de vries, www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 179 acknowledgments this study was funded by a grant from the netherlands organisation for health research and development (zonmw 152002033): measuring the effects of health interventions on subjective well-being comprehensively: the development and validation of the ‚swb-xd. authors suzanne pietersma leiden university medical center m. elske van den akker-van marle leiden university medical center vandenakker@lumc.nl marieke de vries tilburg university publishing timeline received 15 january 2013 accepted 9 september 2013 published 7 october 2013 references 1 drummond mf, o'brien b, stoddert gl, torrance gw. methods for economic evaluation of health care programs. new york: oxford university press; 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(2013). valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents: do you know what you’re measuring? international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 162-172. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i2.3 jerome n. rachele queensland university of technology j.rachele@qut.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 162 article valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents: do you know what you’re measuring? jerome n. rachele · tracy l. washington · thomas f. cuddihy faisal a. barwais · steven m. mcphail abstract: measuring wellness among adolescents is an emerging trend among professionals and researchers endeavouring to influence youth as they establish lifestyle patterns in this critical period of life. this discussion highlights instruments used to measure adolescents’ wellness, and considers the empirical data supporting the validity and reliability of those instruments. in summary, adolescents’ wellness is an important indicator of future health and lifestyle habits. there are a number of tools available to measure wellness, each with its own focus, depending on the definition or model from which it was developed. this might cause debate regarding the appropriateness of some instruments for evaluating wellness. the majority of wellness evaluation approaches used with adolescent populations have less than ideal validation. a ‘gold standard’ definition could lead to the standardisation of a theoretical model against which wellness instruments could be validated. the absence of peer-reviewed studies reporting psychometric testing for wellness evaluation instruments used with adolescents is of concern given their growing popularity and highlights a priority area for future research in this field. keywords: wellness, adolescent, measurement technique, instrument 1. background ‘wellness’ is often considered the endpoint of physical, mental or social interventions. wellness has been described as a dynamic process maximizing an individual’s potential (dunn, 1977); a way of life orientated toward optimal health and wellbeing in which body, mind, and spirit are integrated by an individual to live more fully within the human and natural community (myers, witmer, & sweeney, 2000); and a construct reflecting the process of enhancing life quality by integrating and balancing one’s physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing (harari, waehler, & rogers, 2005). although the world health organization does not intend its definition to be exhaustive or scientific in nature, it defines wellness as ‚the optimal state of health of individuals and groups. there are two focal concerns: the realization of the fullest potential of an individual physically, psychologically, socially, spiritually and economically, and the fulfilment of one’s role expectations in the family, community, place of worship, workplace and other settings‛ (smith, tang, & nutbeam, 2006). to this end, wellness focuses on lifestyle behaviours which contribute toward individuals living to their fullest potential, and is determined not just in terms of its individual dimensions, but as an integrated whole. wellbeing on the other hand, has been described as the balancepoint between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced, whereby stable http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents rachele, washington, cuddihy, barwais, & mcphail www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 163 wellbeing is when individuals have the psychological, social and physical resources they need to meet a particular psychological, social and/or physical challenge (dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders, 2012). wellness also differs from other health-related concepts, such as health, which traditionally focuses on the individual in relation to illness status (breslow, 1972), and quality of life, which has been defined as individuals’ perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns (power et al., 1998). to observe the effect interventions have on wellness, or to observe wellness in a sample cohort at a single time point or change over time, it is important that wellness can be quantified. the advancement of wellness theories, such as early definitions provided by dunn (1977), towards more advanced theories comprising multiple levels of dimensions and subscales such as the indivisible self model of wellness (myers & sweeney, 2004a), has resulted in the development of a variety of instruments for measuring wellness. one population group for whom measuring wellness is particularly important is adolescents. behaviours or cognitions performed during this time may set the pattern for long periods of adulthood, as many lifestyle choices are established during adolescence (craigie, lake, kelly, adamson, & mathers, 2011; hallal, victora, azevedo, & wells, 2006; trudeau, laurencelle, & shephard, 2004). unhealthy habits and lifestyle choices established during adolescence can lead to disability and disease later in life. therefore, adult mortality and morbidity could be reduced by improving health habits in adolescence. specific wellness dimensions often reflect specific lifestyle outcomes. for example, lifestyle outcomes including stress, self-esteem, self-worth, nutrition and physical activity are also represented as subscales or dimensions within wellness models (table 1 below). measures like the wellness evaluation of lifestyle (wel) (myers, sweeney, and witmer, 1996) and the five factor wellness inventory (5f-wel) (myers & sweeney, 1999) have been used in many recent empirical studies (garrett, 1999; garrett, rivera, dixon & myers, 2009; myers & bechtel, 2004; myers, willse, & villalba, 2011; rayle & myers 2004; tatar & myers, 2010). scores derived from wellness instruments have been used as both dependent and independent variables to study wellness among youth in relation to diverse psychological constructs and demographic indices; and used across a variety of disciplines including clinical and non-clinical settings. for example: garrett (1999) used the wellness scores of native american youth to develop more effective counselling interventions; myers et al. (2011) explored the extent to which wellness factors are predictive of self-esteem; tatar and myers (2010) examined cross-cultural differences in wellness between children in israel and in the united states; rayle (2005) examined the impact of mattering on adolescent wellness; choate and smith (2003) infused a wellness model into the curriculum design of a first-year college course, as a framework to address student needs; watson and lemon (2011) compared the wellness responses of adolescents receiving counselling services at a community mental health centre with a norm group; and smith-adcock, webster, leonard, and walker (2008) examined a group counselling intervention developed to promote wellness among adolescent girls at risk of delinquency. wellness evaluation among adolescents has the potential to help identify those engaging in less than ideal lifestyle behaviours. adolescents might be reluctant to initiate communication about potentially damaging risk-taking behaviours (stephens, 2006) and might be unwilling or unable to effectively communicate the diagnostic indicators associated with early signs of mental illness (derouin & bravender, 2004). in these situations a wellness assessment tool can prove useful for those seeking to assist youth populations in establishing positive lifestyle behaviours, implement early health interventions or mitigate other health risks (haddad, valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents rachele, washington, cuddihy, barwais, & mcphail www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 164 table 1. the dimensions included in each of the multidimensional wellness instruments. instrument and model dimensions wellness evaluation of lifestyle* (97131 items), founded on wheel of wellness model spirituality; self-direction; sense of worth; sense of control; realistic beliefs; emotional awareness and coping; intellectual stimulation, problem solving and creativity; sense of humour; nutrition; exercise; selfcare; stress management; gender identity; cultural identity; work; leisure; friendship; love; total wellness; and perceived wellness. five factor wellness inventory* (90-97 items), founded on the indivisible self model essential self (spirituality, gender identity, cultural identity, self care), social self (friendship, love), creative self (thinking, emotions, control, work, humour), physical self (exercise, nutrition), coping self (leisure, stress management, self worth, realistic beliefs), and total wellness. perceived wellness survey* (36 items), founded on the perceived wellness model physical wellness, spiritual wellness, psychological wellness, social wellness, emotional wellness, and intellectual wellness. life assessment questionnaire (100 items), founded on hettler’s dimensions of wellness social, spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, and occupational. testwell* (100 items), founded on hettler’s dimensions of wellness social, spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, and occupational. optimal living profile (135 items), founded on the total person concept emotional, spiritual, physical, social, intellectual, and environmental. wellness inventory (120 items), founded on the wellness energy system self-responsibility and love, breathing, sensing, eating, moving, feeling, thinking, playing and working, communication, sex, finding meaning, and transcending. holistic wellness assessment (285 items), model not described self-regard, self-awareness and responsibility, sustainability, relational, risk prevention, spirituality, physical, health maintenance. adolescent wellness appraisal* (55 items), model not described self care and health history; health habits and knowledge; safety and violence; nutrition habits; drugs, alcohol and tobacco; quality of life; and both school and out of school activities. juvenile health and wellness survey* (104 items) , model not described general health, mental health, risk-taking behaviour, socio-demographic information, and health care habits. perceived wellness profile* (75 items) , model not described physical activity, participation in strength and stretching exercises, perceived energy level, perceptions of present body weight, and smoking and alcohol use among adolescents. wellness factor of the laffrey health conception scale* (21 items) , model not described eudaimonistic (wellbeing and humanness), role performance, and adaptive health. *a version of this instrument has been designed or modified specifically for administration to youth. valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents rachele, washington, cuddihy, barwais, & mcphail www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 165 owies & mansour, 2009). therefore effective measurement of wellness has application in the fields of healthcare, education, and counselling. evaluating wellness can assist in the implementation and evaluation of wellness-related interventions among adolescents, particularly those interventions that aim to promote positive lifestyle behaviours. the purpose of this discussion is to examine the contemporary state of wellness assessment of adolescents to help inform professionals and researchers regarding instrument selection, and identify priorities for future research in this field. 2. wellness instruments a number of wellness instruments have been used in adolescent samples. these include instruments such as the wel (chang & myers, 2003; garrett, 1999; garrett et al., 2009; myers & bechtel, 2004; rayle, 2005; rayle & myers, 2004; smith-adcock et al., 2008), 5f-wel (myers et al., 2011; tatar & myers, 2010), adolescent wellness appraisal (awa) (haddad et al., 2009; muscari, phillips, & bears, 1997), juvenile wellness and health survey (jwhs) (pyle, mcquivey, brassington, & steiner, 2003; steiner, erikson, hernandez, & pavelski, 2002; steiner, mcquivey, pavelski, pitts, & kraemer, 2000; steiner, pavelski, pitts, & mcquivey, 1998), perceived wellness survey (pws) (adams, bezner, & steinhardt, 1997; schembri, reece, & wade, 2006), wellness factor of the laffrey health conception scale (mahon, yarcheski, & yarcheski, 2005; yarcheski, mahon, & yarcheski, 2005; yarcheski, mahon, yarcheski, & hanks, 2010), and the personal wellness profile (savage & holcomb, 1997). additional measurement techniques include the use of analogue measures or scales (bishop, hudson, hilton, & wilde, 2005; kilgus & pumariega 1994; kilgus, pumariega, & rea, 2009; kilgus, pumariega, & seidel 2009), customised surveys (ansuini, fiddler-woite, & woite, 1996; sussman, dent, stacy, & burton, 1995), and adapted techniques such as the indicators from the positive and negative affect schedule and satisfaction with life scale, and developmental assets checklist (coatsworth, palen, sharp, & ferrer-wreder, 2006). wellness instruments that have been used in peer-reviewed studies among adult populations, but not adolescent populations, include the life assessment questionnaire (national wellness institute, 1983), optimal living profile (renger et al., 2000), wellness inventory (travis, 1981), holistic wellness assessment (brown & applegate, 2012) and testwell (national wellness institute, 1992). two common types of measures are employed to measure wellness: uni-dimensional and multidimensional measures. uni-dimensional wellness measures employ a general overall wellness rating item such as a likert scale or visual analogue scale. historically, this approach has been used among healthcare populations when assessing the effects of treatments (bishop et al., 2005; kilgus & pumariega, 1994; kilgus, pumariega, & rea, 2009; kilgus, pumariega, & seidel, 2009). uni-dimensional wellness measures encompass a single overall wellness score and are likely to have low respondent and administrator burden (due to less administration time, ease of completion, and cost). however, these measures do not allow for detailed evaluation of each dimension of wellness, and may not capture intricate changes required for evaluation of multi-faceted wellness interventions. some multidimensional measures report their foundation in underpinning wellness models, including the wel (chang & myers, 2003; garrett, 1999; garrett et al., 2009; myers & bechtel, 2004; rayle, 2005; rayle & myers, 2004; smith-adcock et al., 2008), 5f-wel (myers et al., 2011; tatar & myers, 2010), pws (adams, bezner, drabbs, zambarano, & steinhardt, 2000; schembri et al., 2006), and the awa (haddad et al., 2009; muscari et al., 1997). a summary of the dimensions included in these instruments, and their foundational models, is presented in table 1 (above). other multidimensional measures do not report a foundational wellness valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents rachele, washington, cuddihy, barwais, & mcphail www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 166 model. there are some similarities and differences in dimensions between wellness instruments. the differences between instruments may allow the administrator to select an instrument that captures wellness dimensions most pertinent to their purpose for measuring wellness. however, this comes with the disadvantage that the comparisons that can be made across measures of wellness comprised of differing dimensions are limited. multidimensional wellness measures have an advantage over uni-dimensional measures in capturing detailed information about an individual or group. while these instruments provide multidimensional assessments of wellness, they are also likely to carry a higher respondent and administrator burden due to their length and structure compared to uni-dimensional wellness measurement. 3. validity and reliability issues perhaps the most critical issue for adolescent wellness measurement, and one common in many developing fields, is the scarcity of peer-reviewed empirical work regarding foundational validity and reliability of measurements of wellness in adolescents. rudimentary investigations of validity and reliability of the instruments used to measure wellness in adolescents are lacking (or have produced less than ideal results) for many self-reported outcomes (chang & myers, 2003; shek et al., 2006; steiner et al., 2000; yarcheski et al., 2005). this is not surprising given that some instruments have been used in only a single peer-reviewed investigation of wellness among adolescents (bishop et al., 2005; coatsworth et al., 2006; copeland, nelson, & traughber, 2010; papenfuss & beier, 1984; shek et al., 2006; viner et al., 2004). it is also problematic to evaluate the rigour of non peer-reviewed reports of validity and reliability that are included in user manuals for wellness instruments, such as for the wel and 5f-wel instruments (myers & sweeney, 2004b, 2005). therefore, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding the reliability or validity of those particular instruments. another point for consideration is that the construct validity of wellness instruments will always be dependent on their foundational definition of wellness. this may cause debate regarding the appropriateness of some instruments for evaluating wellness while substantial variability exists across wellness definitions, models and instruments for measuring wellness. however, in the absence of a ‘gold standard’ definition, these debates are perhaps inevitable. for example, coatsworth et al., (2006) considered ‚subjective wellbeing/life satisfaction and developmental assets‛ as key constructs within wellness and therefore assessed wellness with the positive and negative affect schedule, satisfaction with life scale, and the developmental assets checklist. others might consider this measurement approach inappropriate if their own foundational definition of wellness is not congruent with coatsworth’s definition (adams et al., 1997; myers & sweeney, 2004a). disagreements about what a wellness definition should include are just one of a number of barriers to consensus. additional barriers may include the history of different priorities for assessment, religious and cultural differences, and the customary use of models or instruments within certain disciplines. in addition to discrepancies between definitions of wellness, the latent factors being evaluated by each instrument might not always match the wellness model underpinning that instrument or might not use items with sound psychometric properties. for example, the pws is based on the multidimensional perceived wellness model. however, factor analysis of empirical data suggests the pws does not measure the discrete dimensions in the perceived wellness model, but instead represents a single latent variable (wellness) (adams et al., 1997; harari et al., 2005). adams et al. (1997) concluded this did not suggest wellness is a unidimensional phenomenon, but dimensions are closely related by their perceptual nature rather than differentiated by content. other instruments have been developed and used with valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents rachele, washington, cuddihy, barwais, & mcphail www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 167 adolescents without description of their theoretical underpinnings, and with minimal or no psychometric testing (ansuini et al., 1996). the absence of peer-reviewed studies reporting psychometric testing for instruments used in adolescent populations is of concern and, as is common in many developing fields, highlights a priority area for future research. the advancement of valid and reliable outcome measures to evaluate wellness in adolescents is not limited to conventional investigations to establish reliability and validity. addressing some of the more complex issues surrounding the evaluation of change in this subjective construct (such as the response shift phenomenon (mcphail, comans, & haines, 2010; mcphail & haines, 2010a; mcphail & haines, 2010b) as well as the validity of proxy reporting (mcphail, beller, & haines, 2008), estimating values for minimally important difference (hays, farivar & liu, 2005) and cross-cultural adaptations of instruments (chang & myers, 2003) are priorities for future research. however, perhaps the greatest overarching threat to rigorous evaluation of wellness is the lack of consensus regarding its definition (roscoe, 2009). a ‘gold standard’ definition could lead to the standardisation of a theoretical model against which wellness instruments could be validated. while there is clearly no panacea in this regard, the world health organization’s description of wellness provides a useful starting point (smith et al., 2006). it could be argued that variation between instruments may allow for choices which more accurately represent the purpose of the measurement. however, similarities between wellness models (table 1) indicate that one model (or possibly an amalgamation of models) may be appropriate, and lead to harmonisation of assessment. progress toward developing a consensus for a definition of wellness during an international meeting of experts in the field would be a worthwhile undertaking. this method has proved successful in a number of examples in the past, most notably at the international health conference in new york in 1946, where the constitution of the world health organization was presented. this search for consensus led to the definition of health including the words ‚complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity‛ (world health organization, 1947). 4. instrument selection a number of factors influence professionals and researchers when they select an instrument to evaluate wellness. the most appropriate wellness measurement technique is likely to be dependent on the administrator’s purpose for measuring wellness. if the purpose is to measure lifestyle wellness so that it can be enhanced, then a multidimensional measure is more likely to permit a detailed evaluation of various components of wellness. this may allow for wellness programs (whether they are intended for individual or group treatment purposes) to be tailored to those wellness dimensions with the greatest relevance. this also provides the option of the respondent being referred to an appropriate practitioner within that domain for specialised treatment. if a less detailed evaluation of wellness is required, or if an instrument with low participant and administrator burden is necessary, then a uni-dimensional question such as a likert scale of general wellness might be more appropriate. there might also be a case for selecting a shorter multidimensional wellness measure that provides more detail than a unidimensional measure, but which is associated with less participant burden than longer multidimensional instruments. shorter multidimensional instruments have proven to be very successful in measuring other related constructs including wellbeing (keyes, 2002; tennant et al., 2007) and health-related quality of life (jenkinson & layte, 1997; rabin & charro, 2001; wille et al., 2010). valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents rachele, washington, cuddihy, barwais, & mcphail www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 168 when wellness in youth is assessed there might also be benefit in selecting an instrument that has been modified so as to be age appropriate. age-adjusted instruments include modified versions of the wel (wel-g, at a 7th grade reading level), pws (pws – youth) or 5f-wel (5fwel-t, at a 6th grade reading level), whereas other instruments have been designed specifically for youth (awa, jwhs). additionally, accessibility of wellness evaluation instruments is another factor that is likely to contribute to the popularity of some instruments. questionnaires such as the wel and 5f-wel can be accessed online through the host company mind garden inc (mind garden inc, 2010a, 2010b). however, access to some instruments with a stronger empirical foundation often comes at financial cost. at the time of writing it is not uncommon for the fee paid to copyright holders of some instruments for evaluating wellness to range between $1 and $4 per administration for some instruments, while other instruments do not have associated fees. 5. summary adolescent wellness is an important indicator of future health and lifestyle habits. instruments for evaluating wellness are particularly useful for those seeking to influence lifestyle behaviours among youth populations, including health and educational settings. there are a number of tools available to measure wellness, each with its own focus, depending on the definition or model from which it was developed. this may cause debate regarding the appropriateness of some instruments for evaluating wellness. however, in the absence of a ‘gold standard’ definition, substantial variability across measurement approaches is inevitable. the majority of wellness evaluation approaches used with adolescent populations have less than ideal validation. a ‘gold standard’ definition could lead to the standardisation of a theoretical model against which wellness instruments could be validated. progress toward developing a consensus for a definition of wellness during an international meeting of experts in the field would be a worthwhile undertaking. the absence of peer-reviewed studies reporting psychometric testing for wellness evaluation instruments for adolescents is of concern given their growing popularity and highlights a priority area for future research in this field. authors jerome n. rachele queensland university of technology j.rachele@qut.edu.au tracy l. washington queensland university of technology thomas f. cuddihy queensland university of technology faisal a. barwais queensland university of technology umm al-qura university steven m. mcphail queensland university of technology centre for functioning and health research, queensland department of health. valid and reliable assessment of wellness among adolescents rachele, washington, cuddihy, barwais, & mcphail www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 169 publishing timeline received 3 december 2012 accepted 11 april 2013 published 7 october 2013 references adams, t., bezner, j., & steinhardt, m. 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(2010). perceived stress and wellness in early adolescents using the neuman systems model. journal of school nursing, 26(3), 230-237. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1059840509358073 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/20.1.91 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515071003718384 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-5-63 http://dx.doi.org/10.1249/01.mss.0000145525.29140.3b http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/adc.2003.035154 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1939.2011.tb00107.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11136-010-9648-y http://dx.doi.org/10.1891/jnum.2005.13.1.65 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1059840509358073 thorsteinsen, k., & vittersø, j., (2018). striving for wellbeing: the different roles of hedonia and eudaimonia in goal pursuit and goal achievement. international journal of wellbeing, 8(2), 89-109. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i2.733 kjærsti thorsteinsen uit the arctic university of norway kjarsti.thorsteinsen@uit.no copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 article striving for wellbeing: the different roles of hedonia and eudaimonia in goal pursuit and goal achievement kjærsti thorsteinsen · joar vittersø abstract: goals are central to theories of happiness and previous research has shown that successful goal pursuit typically leads to a boost in wellbeing. taking these ideas further, the current study adopts the distinction between hedonic wellbeing (hwb) and eudaimonic wellbeing (ewb) and suggests that it is the former that increases when goals are achieved. by contrast, ewb is hypothesized to have a causal effect on the initiating and upholding of goal pursuits. in a short-term, longitudinal intervention study, 185 participants (78.8% women): 69 students and 116 participants from a sample representative of the norwegian population were asked to set a personal goal. every night throughout the next week, participants received one out of three different mental exercises (i.e., mental contrasting, process simulation or positive fantasizing) to support active goal pursuit. a path model found that ewb, and not hwb, predicted subsequent goal effort directly ( = .33, p < .001) and goal achievement indirectly (fully mediated by goal effort;  = .14, p = .001). further, the model showed that goal effort ( = .17, p < .001) and goal achievement ( = .13, p = .001) caused an increase in post-intervention measures of hwb but not in ewb. a multilevel linear growth model revealed elevated levels of hwb for all intervention groups after the goal pursuit week ( = .24, p < .001), while ewb in general did not change during the study period. however, ewb unexpectedly increased for those in the positive fantasizing condition. the present finding indicates that it is the eudaimonic part of wellbeing that ignites and sustains goal pursuit processes, at least when they take some effort. by contrast, hwb is less involved in goal pursuit initiatives and more related to the outcome phase. results are discussed with reference to several wellbeing theories. keywords: subjective wellbeing, eudaimonic wellbeing, hedonic wellbeing, goal pursuit, goal achievement, effort 1. introduction pursuing meaningful goals is a worthwhile activity. indeed, aristotle has convincingly argued that such a pursuit is the essence of a good life (e.g., russell, 2013), and most modern conceptualizations of wellbeing are consistent with the idea that happiness increases when personally important goals either are about to be, or actually are being achieved (brunstein, 1993; cantor & sanderson, 1999; carver & scheier, 1990; diener, 1984; diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; emmons, 1986; klug & maier, 2015; koestner, lekes, powers, & chicoine, 2002; little, 1989; smith, tong, & ellsworth, 2014). despite the consensus established for the view that successful goal pursuit leads to increased wellbeing, a related puzzle remains unsolved. it concerns the possibility that wellbeing might operate as both a cause and as an effect of goal pursuit, a situation often referred to as reciprocal causation. hence, the purpose of the present paper is to investigate whether wellbeing, or certain dimensions of wellbeing, not only follows http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 from goal achievement, but also ignites goal pursuing processes. in particular, we will analyze activities driven by goals that are somewhat difficult to reach. the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (e.g., fredrickson, 2001) is a renowned defender of a reciprocal wellbeing approach. briefly, the idea is that positive emotions broaden one’s momentary thought-action repertoires and consequently create an urge to explore novel thoughts and behaviors. next, these thoughts and behaviors will build psychological, social and physiological resources. these resources lead in turn to higher wellbeing. elevated wellbeing means more positive emotions, that again supply new thought-action repertoires, which then produce additional resources that cause better wellbeing, and so on in a neverending upward spiral. but a growing literature contests the principal assumptions in the broaden-and-build theory. it seems that it is low arousal, and not positivity in itself, that constitutes the underlying mechanism of the broadening of attention and memory. this view is supported by observations showing how both negative and positive low-aroused affect broaden attention and memory, whereas high-aroused positive (and negative) affect actually narrow them down (gable & harmon-jones, 2008; harmon-jones, gable, & price, 2013; harmon-jones, price, gable, & peterson, 2014). in addition, there are theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that an important function of low-arousal positive feelings—such as pleasure and satisfaction—is to give us more cognitive flexibility (carver, 2003; dreisbach & goschke, 2004). consequently, pleasure and satisfaction prompt the shift from one goal pursuit to another, or to keep coasting on an activated but relatively effortless goal pursuit. either way, pleasure does not typically motivate challenging activities and persistent goal pursuit (luhmann & hennecke, 2017). to find the kind of positive emotions that are capable of building psychological and physiological resources necessary in goal pursuit, one should probably look in the direction of high-aroused feelings such as interest, challenge and engagement (kirby, tugade, morrow, ahrens, & smith, 2014; shiota, thrash, danvers, & dombrowski, 2014; smith et al., 2014; straume & vittersø, 2012; vittersø, 2016). hence, in order to understand the dialectics between goal pursuits, goal attainment and wellbeing, we suggest that the positive emotions that are included as elements of wellbeing are better differentiated into those that are hedonic (or benefit-related) and those that are eudaimonic (or opportunity-related).1 the present research aims at using this distinction in a longitudinal experimental design. we proceed toward this end by briefly reviewing the concept of wellbeing, and, in particular, the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. 2. two forms of wellbeing: hedonic and eudaimonic most wellbeing researchers acknowledge that wellbeing is a multifaceted construct (diener, oishi, & tay, 2018; who, 2012) and a distinction is typically made between hedonic and eudaimonic forms (gallagher, lopez, & preacher, 2009; henderson & knight, 2012; tov, 2018). hedonic wellbeing (hwb) concerns feelings and evaluations that are recognized as pleasant or unpleasant, what kahneman refers to as the good-bad dimension of the human mind (kahneman, 1999). it is further becoming conventional to regard the concept of subjective 1 several conceptualizations exist to account for the difference between what we refer to as hedonic and eudaimonic feelings, such as wanting versus liking (berridge & kringelbach, 2013) and appetitive versus consummatory effects (burgdorf & panksepp, 2006). even the distinction between low aroused and high aroused positive feelings will often fit the characteristics of hedonic and eudaimonic feeling states, respectively. see vittersø (2016) for a comprehensive review of this argument. striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 wellbeing (swb) as a kind of hedonic of wellbeing (e.g., disabato, goodman, kashdan, short, & jarden, 2016; vittersø, 2016), although this conceptualization is debatable (haybron, 2016). eudaimonic wellbeing (ewb) reflects a more complex concept than that of hwb, and no consensus about a taxonomy of ewb has yet been established (e.g., vittersø, 2016). historically, the term “eudaimonia” was merely the ancient greek word for “a good life,” thus both hedonic theories and different versions of aristotelian theories of happiness were (competing) conceptualizations of eudaimonia (keyes & annas, 2009; nussbaum, 2001). more recently, however, the term “eudaimonia”—and particularly in the form of “eudaimonic wellbeing”—is taken to be a label placed on some variant of the aristotelian accounts of how a good life ought to be lived (haybron, 2016). as such, its philosophical heritage suggests that ewb must have something to do with optimal functioning in the sense of fulfilling one’s human nature (besser, 2016; haybron, 2008). the essence of this notion has been summarized as “the state of being well and doing well in being well” (macintyre, 2007). inspired by this philosophical literature, researchers have tried to translate the basic idea of eudaimonia into a scientific language, and we will discuss some of these attempts next. in psychology, the most cited approaches to ewb have sprung out of the humanistic movement in the mid-20th century. for instance, the eudaimonic identity theory (waterman, 1993; waterman & schwartz, 2013), ryff’s version of psychological wellbeing (ryff, 1989), and the self-determination theory (sdt; ryan & deci, 2001; ryan & martela, 2016) are all standing on humanistic shoulders in their respective focus on identity formation, positive mental health and organismic growth. the eudaimonic identity theory defines eudaimonia as the experience of personal expressiveness, which is the feeling that follows from having one’s best potentials actualized. eudaimonia is thus conceptualized as a particular kind of pleasure that also covers—but is not covered by—hedonia. stated logically, eudaimonic feelings are a sufficient, but not a necessary condition for hedonic wellbeing. by contrast, ryff’s theory of eudaimonia contains no feeling element. grounded in a synthesis of several humanistic theories, and strongly influenced by jahoda’s work on positive mental health (jahoda, 1958), ryff rather suggests that feelings are not relevant for the realization of personal potentialities, which she conceptualizes as the beautiful idea of purposeful life engagement (ryff, 2016). finally, the selfdetermination theory promotes a core eudaimonic idea in claiming that humans must live in accordance with their nature in order to live well. from the perspective taken by the sdt, living in accordance with one’s nature means to satisfy the basic needs of autonomy, competence and relationships. a fourth psychological conceptualization of ewb is offered by the functional wellbeing approach (fwa; vittersø, 2013, 2016, 2018). basically, it takes the aristotelian point of view that in order to understand what wellness is, we must relate the concept to our nature. further, the fwa suggests that at the most fundamental level, maintaining stability and fostering change are the two most essential features in the life of all biological organisms (e.g., damasio, 2018; pross, 2016). consequently, a wellbeing theory should be able to account for how these fundamental processes of our nature are related to the central concepts of that theory. the explanation proposed by fwa is, in brief, that high levels of hwb are an indicator of wellfunctioning stability, whereas high levels of ewb are an indicator of well-functioning change processes. finally, wellbeing is by the fwa considered to comprise both momentary feelings and a more stable orientation towards life. for hwb, the prototypical feeling is pleasure (operationalized as the frequency of felt pleasure, satisfaction and happiness) and for ewb the prototypical feeling is absorbed engagement (operationalized as the frequency of felt engagement, immersion and interest). the prototypical orientation to life in hwb is the striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 tendency to evaluate oneself and one’s environment as good rather than bad (operationalized as overall life satisfaction), and for ewb it is the inclination to develop one’s potential as a human being (operationalized as personal growth). the approaches presented above are just a few of the perspectives on ewb offered over the last two decades (e.g., huta & waterman, 2014; sheldon, 2018), suggesting that conceptual consensus remains to be established for this area of wellbeing research (e.g., disabato et al., 2016 kashdan, biswas-diener, & king, 2008). however, a key difference between hwb and ewb can be identified across most of these approaches. it is that pleasure—as a feeling and/or as an attitude (i.e., life satisfaction)—constitutes the core element of hwb. the salient feature of ewb, on the other hand, is associated with the development of a person’s potential as a human being. this distinction between two kinds of wellbeing—pleasure and satisfaction reflecting hwb, and absorbed engagement and personal growth reflecting ewb—is the analytical foundation offered in the present study. an important implication of this conceptualization is that the fwa predicts that hwb is associated with successful goal achievement and low-effort activities, whereas ewb is associated with the initiation of difficult goal pursuits and with effortful activities. 3. goals and wellbeing the theories presented thus far also hold different views on the causal relationships between goals and wellbeing. for instance, the eudaimonic identity theory proposes that fulfilling certain identity goals will lead to increased ewb. by contrast, the sdt tells us that so-called intrinsic goals (i.e., those related to the fulfillment of psychological needs) do not cause eudaimonia, but rather constitute eudaimonia. when a person’s ewb is sufficiently satisfied, the argument goes, then an increase in hwb will causally follow (ryan & martela, 2016). as for the broaden-and-build theory, assumptions about the association between hwb and ewb are included in the model as a proposition about how high hwb causes an increase in ewb (fredrickson, 2016). the psychological wellbeing approach has, to our knowledge, not articulated a causal model about the relationship between goals and wellbeing. ryff and her colleagues have, however, documented a series of positive consequences of high ewb (e.g., ryff, 2014, 2016; ryff & singer, 2008). the functional wellbeing approach makes several predictions about goals and wellbeing. in particular, the fwa expects that ewb is associated with the initiation of so-called change goals, and that hwb is associated with stability goals (e.g., luhmann & hennecke, 2017). the approach also predicts that hwb increases, at least temporarily, when a goal is achieved or a need is fulfilled. empirical evidence supports that goal achievement is associated with increases in hwb (klug & maier, 2015; koestner et al., 2002). furthermore, a study by sheldon and lyubomirsky (2006) suggests that goal pursuit may have positive effects on ewb too, although only when the goal concerns activity change, rather than circumstantial change. similarly, in a longitudinal study by bauer and mcadams (2010) those adopting intellectual growth goals increased in ewb (ego development) over 3 years, while those who adopted socio-emotional goals increased in hwb (swb). in line with the fwa, these studies indicate that change goals, i.e., intentional and effortful growth and activity goals, relate to ewb, while stability goals, i.e., goals concerned with ensuring secure circumstances and good social relationships, relate to hwb. mcgregor and little (1998) found that when we feel efficacy in our ability to reach a goal, we are rewarded with pleasurable feelings and positive evaluations of life (hwb); when a goal is integrated within core aspects of our sense of self, we experience a sense of meaning in life (ewb). both efficacy and integrity are important aspects of how goals contribute to striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 wellbeing; however, the science of wellbeing has tended to put more focus on efficacy and goal achievement. 4. the concept of goals when it comes to wellbeing, there are differences between the process of pursuing one’s goal (goal pursuit) and the result (goal achievement); between engaging in goal pursuit and attaining a desirable goal (e.g., kaftan & freund, 2018). there is evidence that the level of goal progress, and the change in goal progress, can be more important than goal achievement for the relationship between goals and hwb (hsee & abelson, 1991; klug & maier, 2015; steca et al., 2016). this gives backing to carver and scheier’s (2001) principles of feedback control processes, where reducing the experienced discrepancy between the goal state and the state of reality at a fitting pace gives rise to positive affect (hwb). however, in a longitudinal study, wiese and freund (2005) found that it was the degree to which people were involved in pursuing their goals that was associated with an increase in hwb over the span of three years; reported progress had a weaker relationship to wellbeing. while feedback control processes have immediate effects on hwb, over time, continued engagement in significant goals (ewb) seems essential to a good life. there is empirical support that wellbeing influences the goals we choose to engage in. for example, a study by palys and little (1983) found that people scoring higher on life satisfaction adopted goals with lower difficulty level and higher enjoyment than people scoring lower on life satisfaction. similarly, luhmann and hennecke (2017) reported that across seven studies, high levels of life satisfaction were consistently associated with high levels of stability goals, and low levels of change goals. considering that people do not put in more effort than they absolutely need to (silvia, mccord, & gendolla, 2010), setting subordinate goals is not beneficial. while high hwb can be beneficial for stability (e.g., social relationships), for change (e.g., improving income, education, and political participation) a moderate level of hwb is better (oishi, diener, & lucas, 2007). related to this, research on self-regulation strategies shows that positive thoughts about goal achievement lower the chances of fulfilling a goal (oettingen, pak, & schnetter, 2001; pham & taylor, 1999; taylor, pham, rivkin, & armor, 1998). further, in a series of experiments, oettingen, mayer, and portnow (2016) found that those with positive fantasies invested lower effort in their goal pursuit, which predicted low success in attaining their goal, and consequently more depressive symptoms 1 to 7 months later. although positive fantasies related to fewer depressive symptoms currently, over time—presumably by impeded goal pursuit—depressive symptoms increased. thus, focusing on hedonic feelings and outcomes leaves us less motivated to improve current standings and thus worse off in the long run. on the other hand, experiencing eudaimonic emotions such as curiosity, interest, awe and inspiration are central for helping us to keep working on something, even when it is difficult and not experienced as pleasant (e.g., schwartz & wrzesniewski, 2016). these emotions motivate us to engage in novel things, solve puzzles and try at tasks for a longer period of time (ainley, hidi, & berndorff, 2002; campos, shiota, keltner, gonzaga, & goetz, 2013; reeve, 1989; straume & vittersø, 2012; turner & silvia, 2006). further, these feelings are connected to a disposition towards being growth-oriented and curious (ainley et al., 2002; kashdan & steger, 2007; vittersø & søholt, 2011; vittersø, søholt, hetland, thoresen, & røysamb, 2010). thus, in our longitudinal study, we expect ewb to operate as a predictor of effortful goal pursuit. striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 5. improving goal pursuit analogous to the research presented on hedonic feeling states, oettingen and reininger (2016) found that positive outcome thinking reduces goal pursuit effort and leads people to behave as though they already have attained their goal, thus sapping energy and reducing goal achievement. however, thinking about the future in a systematic manner, evoking emotional states and producing links to action, can be beneficial for self-regulating towards a goal (baumeister, vohs, & oettingen, 2016; masicampo & baumeister, 2013; taylor et al., 1998). our focus is on two traditions of imagery techniques that both have proved effective in improving goal pursuit: mental contrasting (johannessen, oettingen, & mayer, 2012; oettingen, marquardt, & gollwitzer, 2012; oettingen, mayer, & thorpe, 2010; oettingen et al., 2001; oettingen, stephens, mayer, & brinkmann, 2010; sheeran, harris, vaughan, oettingen, & gollwitzer, 2013) and process simulation (pham & taylor, 1999; taylor et al., 1998). both mental contrasting and process simulation tone down the positive outcome focus, and, in its place, introduce aspects of reality and energize towards action. however, there are essential differences between the two: in mental contrasting, the focus is on identifying what it is in you that could hinder goal pursuit; in process simulation, the focus is on the activities and steps that you need to go through in order to meet your goals. also, importantly, in mental contrasting, you first activate the positive fantasy outcome and then focus on the obstacles and the behavior that will help overcome those obstacles, which is thought to induce a necessity to act by changing the interpretation of reality as an obstacle to wish fulfillment (oettingen et al., 2001). in process simulation, the weight is put on mentally visualizing actually going through the motions involved in goal pursuit by visualizing taking the right steps and putting in the effort (pham & taylor, 1999; taylor et al., 1998). both mental contrasting and process simulation have previously proved effective compared to positive fantasizing and outcome thinking. in this study, in order to further the goal pursuit process, our participants practiced either mental contrasting, process simulation or positive fantasizing every night for a week. by investigating all three mental exercises simultaneously, we wanted to explore if the differences presented above would give rise to detectable differences in wellbeing. 6. the present study the overarching purpose of the present study is to use both hwb and ewb in exploring how wellbeing and goal pursuit relate to each other. we designed a longitudinal intervention experiment, with electronic deliverance of interventions to aid in goal pursuit, so that we were able to examine wellbeing as both predictor and outcome variables in the same study. we expect to find that the role of hwb and ewb in goal pursuit conforms to the prediction deduced by the functional wellbeing approach as follows. 1) ewb is a stronger predictor of effortful goal pursuit than hwb. 2) the effect of successful goal achievement is stronger on hwb than on ewb. 3) goal effort will facilitate goal achievement. a second aim of the study is to explore how different strategies of goal pursuit may relate to wellbeing. more concretely, we expect mental contrasting and process simulation to show greater increase in hwb than positive fantasizing, due to their influence on goal achievement reported in earlier studies. following common practice in wellbeing research, we will also check whether gender and social status (being a student versus a member of the general population) have an impact on the dependent variables. striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 7. method 7.1 participants and procedure we recruited participants to the “happiness as a goal” study through two routes: 1) by advertising it in class and sending an invitation email to a convenience sample of psychology students at a norwegian university, and 2) by sending an invitation letter to a representative norwegian sample of 2,000 addresses. in order to be eligible to participate, one needed to own and know how to use a smart phone with internet access. one hundred and eighty-five participants (34 men and 127 women) volunteered for the study: 69 from the student population and 116 from the general population. they ranged in age from 21 years to 77 years, with a mean age of 36.08 (sd = 13.44). twenty-four participants did not report their age and gender. the study was administered exclusively online, using qualtrics, an online survey platform (https://www.qualtrics.com), in combination with surveysignal (http://www.surveysignal.com) for sending text messages to mobile phones. volunteers found their way to our information site by going to the link in our invitation e-mail/letter: by ticking “yes” to the informed consent question, they were randomized into one of three groups and sent to the registration site in surveysignal. after registering, participants in all three groups completed an identical questionnaire (t1) and were asked to set a goal that was “a little challenging, but achievable.” the goals adopted were variable in terms of content, for example, personal goals reported by the participants included “quit smoking,” “exercise more,” “get a good grade in my exam” and “save money.” after writing down their personal goal, all three groups were also asked to perform a mental exercise; however, the instructions for the mental exercises differed by group. the mental exercises are described in more detail in the next section, briefly: group 1 received instructions for mental contrasting (mc, n = 52, oettingen et al., 2001), group 2 received instructions for positive fantasizing (pf, n = 61, oettingen et al., 2001), and group 3 received instructions for process simulation (ps, n = 72, pham & taylor, 1999). participants were then informed that they would be asked to complete the same mental exercise every night for the following 7 days. at 9 pm, a text message that included a link to a daily report form was sent out to participants’ mobile phones. the daily report forms consisted of instructions for their assigned mental exercise and a short questionnaire. after one week of working with their goal and completing daily reports, participants filled out the second questionnaire (t2), and one week after that (15 days after the initial questionnaire) they completed a follow-up questionnaire (t3) with the same measures as at t2. participants received a gift certificate of 200 norwegian kroner (nok; approximately equivalent to 20 euro or 24 usd) for completing t1, the daily report forms and t2—and an additional gift certificate of 100 nok for completing the follow-up at t3. in the student sample, we had a raffle for a bonus gift certificate of 5000 nok amongst the students who completed all measures. the study was approved by the norwegian centre for research data. 7.2 measures we measured hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions of wellbeing as follows. life satisfaction. a short three-item version of the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) was used to capture life satisfaction. participants were asked to evaluate to what extent the following items were true for them on a scale from 1 (not true) to 7 (completely true). the items included were: “in most ways my life is close to my ideal,” “the conditions of my life are excellent” and “i am satisfied with my life.” cronbach’s https://www.qualtrics.com/ http://www.surveysignal.com/ striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 alphas were .87 at t1, .86 at t2 and .88 at t3. summary statistics across groups and time were m = 4.93, sd = 1.15. trait emotions. pleasure, interest and negative emotions were measured by the basic emotion trait test (bett; vittersø, oelmann, & wang, 2009). all variables were measured by three items each: pleasure was measured by pleasure, satisfaction and happiness; interest by interest, immersion and engagement; and negative emotions by anger, sadness and fear. instructions asked participants how often they felt each of the emotions in their everyday life, with response options running from 1 (never) to 7 (all the time). cronbach’s alphas at t1, t2 and t3 were .88, .88 and .91 for the pleasure subscale; .86, .83 and .89 for the interest subscale; and .65, .73 and .75 for the negative emotions subscale. summary statistics across groups and time were m = 4.67, sd = 1.00 for pleasure, m = 4.87, sd = 1.05 for interest, and m = 2.58, sd = 0.90 for negative emotions. personal growth composite. the instrument comprises four subscales: curiosity (amabile, hill, hennessey, & tighe, 1994) with three items, absorption (kashdan, rose, & fincham, 2004) with three items, complexity (from cattell’s 16pf, see ipip, 2002) with three items, and competence (from cloninger’s tci, see ipip, 2002) with three items. the participants responded on a 5-point response format from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). example items are: “i enjoy trying to solve complex problems” (curiosity), “when i am participating in an activity, i tend to get so involved that i lose track of time” (absorption), “i love to think up new ways of doing things” (complexity), and “i can perform a wide variety of tasks” (competence). cronbach’s alphas were .80 at t1, .81 at t2 and .75 at t3. summary statistics across groups and time were m = 3.61, sd = 0.56. goal effort and achievement. we measured goal effort and goal achievement at both t2 and t3 with one item each. goal effort was measured with the question: “how much effort have you put in to reach your goal?” with answer alternatives ranging from 1 (very little) to 5 (a lot). summary statistics for goal effort across groups and t2 and t3 measures were m = 3.14, sd = 0.94. goal achievement was measured by the item: “do you feel that you have reached your goal during this week?” the response options were 1 = yes (n = 45) and 0 = no (n = 83). time. our wellbeing variables were measured three times over a two-week period: before the intervention (t1), directly after the intervention week (t2) and one week after the intervention ended (t3). the time-variable was scaled such that the intercept represents the model-implied mean at the first time-point and the coefficient is the increase from the beginning to the end, i.e., t1 = 0, t2 = 0.5 and t3 = 1. intervention groups. we effect coded the groups such that the intercept represents the grand mean of the dependent variable for all three groups (alkharusi, 2012). 7.3 interventions in the daily report forms, we first asked participants in all three intervention groups to think of their goal (participants’ individual goals were integrated into the instructions) and follow the instructions for the exercises. the exercises took approximately the same amount of time to complete. they differed only with regard to the instructions. the mental contrasting intervention was adapted from oettingen et al. (2001). participants receiving this intervention were asked to first identify one positive aspect about achieving the goal, to picture events and experiences connected to the positive outcome, and to write down a few words describing what they thought about it. they were then asked to identify one negative aspect of the current situation that stands in the way of achieving their goal, and in the same manner, picture events and experiences connected to this obstacle and write down a few striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 words describing what they thought about it. the exercise is designed to create a mental contrast between the positive fantasy of the goal and the negative aspects of the present that may hinder goal achievement, and ultimately, induce a feeling in the participants of the necessity to act. in the positive fantasizing condition, participants were given the same instructions as for the mental contrasting, except that they were not asked to think about a negative aspect (oettingen et al., 2001). instead, they were asked to think about another positive aspect. that is, instead of creating a contrast to the positive aspect, people were only allowed to fantasize about the positive outcomes of realizing one’s goals. the process simulation intervention was adapted from taylor and colleagues (pham & taylor, 1999; taylor et al., 1998). here participants were asked to think about the processes they needed to go through, picture themselves collecting materials or resources, and, in as detailed and realistic a way as possible, see themselves completing the tasks that would lead to goal achievement. this mental exercise is designed to help participants identify activities and steps involved in goal achievement, which prompts them to form a plan for how they are going to achieve their goal. also, the mental exercise may help anticipate and regulate emotions that occur while working towards the goal. 7.4 data reduction and preliminary analysis we used ibm spss version 24 and mplus version 8 for our analysis. a principal component analysis (pca) of our wellbeing variables at t1, t2, and t3 showed that variables consistently loaded on two factors (with eigenvalues >1). swls, pleasure and negative emotions loaded on one factor; personal growth and interest loaded on the other factor. there were no crossloadings >.5. we composed hedonic wellbeing (hwb) as swls + pleasure − negative emotions (negative loading) and eudaimonic wellbeing (ewb) as personal growth + interest. hwb and ewb were standardized for the analyses. the analysis dataset consisted of 167 responses at t1, 128 responses at t2 and 107 responses at t3 = 402 observations (out of 185 x 3 = 555 possible, 72, 43%). data missing for the wellbeing variables were imputed using multiple imputations as follows. when still organized as a wide file (i.e., one record/row of data per participant), all variables belonging to the hwb construct were used as input for the em imputation algorithm as provided by ibm spss. a similar procedure was used for the variables belonging to the ewb construct. thus, the imputation was completed in two steps, first by including the hwb variables from all three waves, and then a new estimation using the ewb variables from the three waves. we combined the t2 and t3 measures of goal effort and goal achievement and used an average of t2 and t3 for ewb2 and hwb2 in the path model presented in figure 1 below, for the purpose of keeping the maximum number of participants in our analysis and for parsimony. the intraclass correlation coefficient (icc) was .84 for hwb and .78 for ewb, thus the multilevel analyses reported in tables 1 and 2 below were appropriate. 8. results 8.1 wellbeing, goal effort and goal achievement we hypothesized ewb to be a stronger predictor of effortful goal pursuit than hwb, because ewb affects goal effort, which in turn predicts goal achievement. we tested this hypothesis by fitting the path model depicted in figure 1 to our data. we did not include the intervention groups in this model because a preliminary analysis showed that the three groups differed striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 neither on goal effort, f(2, 127) = 0.06, p = .946, nor on goal achievement, f(2, 127) = 1.33, p = .269. the model was estimated with robust maximum likelihood (mlr) and had excellent goodness-of-fit, χ2(2, n = 185) = 3.80, p = .149, cfi = 1.00, rmsea = .07, 90% ci [.00, .18]. in line with the first part of our hypothesis, ewb at t1 significantly predicted goal effort directly and goal achievement indirectly, whereas neither of these paths were significant for hwb at t1. the total standardized effect from ewb at t1 to goal achievement was  = .23, p = .017, with the direct effect equal to  = .10 (p = .306) and the indirect effect equal to  = .14 (p = .001). the indirect effect is simply the path from ewb to goal effort times the path from goal effort to goal achievement. the total effect from hwb at t1 to goal achievement was  = .15, p = .128; the direct effect  = .09, p = .285; and the indirect effect  = .05, p = .258. we also tested the difference between the model depicted in figure 1 and a nested model in which the paths from ewb at t1 to goal effort and the path from hwb at t1 to goal effort were constrained to be equal. a satorra-bentler chi-square difference test for robust ml estimation showed a significant difference in goodness-of-fit between the two models, δχ2(1) = 3.96, p = .047. this result indicates that the impact from ewb on goal effort is significantly stronger than the impact from hwb on goal effort. using the same modelling strategy, no difference in the strengths of the paths from ewb at t1 and hwb at t1 on goal achievement was observed, δχ2(1) = 0.10, p = .746. figure 1. standardized regression weights for a path model of goal effort as a mediator between wellbeing and goal achievement. estimates from a model without the goal effort variable in parenthesis. ns = not significant. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. in a model estimated without the goal effort variable, a significant path was found from goal achievement to hwb at t2,  = .13, p = .001, whereas the path from goal achievement to ewb at t2 was not significant,  = .08, p = .144. constraining the two paths to be equal gave a significantly worse goodness-of-fit in the nested model, δχ2(1) = 4.27, p = .039. again, this means that the association from goal achievement to hwb is significantly stronger than the association from goal achievement to ewb. striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 when goal effort was included as a mediator in the model, the path from goal achievement to hwb at t2 was no longer significant and the chi-square of a nested model constraining the two paths to be equal was not different from the chi-square of a model in which the two paths were not constrained to be equal, δχ2(1) = 0.52, p = .470. this suggests that even if goal achievement in itself is an important predictor of hwb, our data indicate that it is the effort invested in reaching a goal that really drives the association between goal achievement and hwb. finally, the path from goal effort to hwb at t2 was significant,  = .17, p < .001, while the path to ewb at t2 was not,  = .10, p = .109. constraining the two paths to be equal gave a significantly worse goodness-of-fit in the nested model, δχ2(1) = 6.43, p = .011, illustrating the importance of goal effort on goal achievement, and further supporting the part of our hypothesis that expected the effect from goal effort on hwb to be stronger than its effect on ewb. 8.2 multilevel model of change in wellbeing we further investigated how the one week of active goal pursuit contributed to changes in ewb and hwb during the study period. for that purpose, we specified and estimated two multilevel linear growth models: one for hwb and one for ewb. both models included a random intercept in order to take each participant baseline score into account; and both models included the same level-2 covariates: gender, age and student vs. general population survey sample. although the intervention groups did not differ in terms of goal achievement, we still wanted to investigate if the different interventions influenced the wellbeing measures. we expected no intervention group differences in initial levels of wellbeing, as our participants were randomized to the groups. our focal explanatory variable at level-1 was time and our research question was if the intervention period of working towards a personal goal influenced either ewb and hwb, or both. 8.2.1 hedonic wellbeing the results for hwb are reported in table 1 below. the significant time-variable indicates that hwb increased for all three intervention groups,  = .24, p < .001, after the goal pursuit period. our hypothesis that participants practicing mc or ps would increase more in hwb, while participants in the pf-group would not, was not supported. that is, neither mc nor ps had a significant interaction effect with time. there were also no differences between students/general population, male/female and age. 8.2.2 eudaimonic wellbeing the results for ewb are reported in table 2 below. in contrast to hwb, there was no general time-trend for ewb. however, unexpectedly, the positive fantasy group increased significantly more than all groups combined on ewb,  = .29, p < .001). age was also significant in our model. this finding means that reported ewb increased with .02 scale point per year. for both hwb and ewb, the variances for the intercepts are relatively large compared to their standard errors (z = 2.23, p = .026 and z = 2.66 p = .008 respectively), indicating that there is substantial between-person heterogeneity within the intervention groups. the within-person random effects are also large and there is evidence of auto-correlation in the within-person residuals, thus there is uncertainty in the estimates of typical patterns. striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 table 1. results from the multilevel growth model for hedonic wellbeing (n = 161) ci95 fixed effects (intercept, slopes) estimate (se) t p lower upper intercept (level at week 1) -.47 0.31 -1.50 .135 -1.09 0.15 time .24 0.05 4.66 < .001 0,14 0.34 mc .17 0.12 1.472 .143 -0,06 0.40 pf -.01 0.11 -0.90 .372 -0.32 0.12 ps -.07 0.11 -0.69 .493 -0.28 0.14 time*mc -.03 0.08 -0.34 .735 -0.18 0.12 time*pf -.02 0.07 -0.27 .784 -0.16 0.12 time*ps .05 0.07 0.66 .508 -0.09 0.18 students .37 0.20 1.88 .062 -0.02 0.76 gender -.23 0.18 -1.28 .202 -0.60 0.13 age .01 0.01 1.15 .254 -0.01 0.02 ci95 random effects ((co-)variances) estimate (se) z p lower upper level 2 (between-person) intercept .37 0.17 2.23 .026 0.15 0.90 level 1 (within-person) residual .67 0.15 4.48 < .001 0.27 0.87 autocorrelation .58 0.19 3.09 .002 0.31 1.10 note: time was coded 0 = t1, .5 = t2 and 1 = t3, groups were effect coded; students were coded 1 = student, 0 = general population; gender was coded 1 = female, 0 = male; age was grand-mean centered; mc = mental contrasting; pf = positive fantasizing; ps = process simulation. table 2. results from the multilevel growth model for eudaimonic wellbeing (n = 161) ci95 fixed effects (intercept, slopes) estimate (se) t p lower upper intercept (level at week 1) -.78 0.30 -2.60 .010 -1.38 -0.19 time .11 0.06 1.72 .087 -0.02 0.23 mc .19 0.12 1.61 .109 -0.04 0.41 pf -.19 0.11 -1.75 .081 -0.41 0.02 ps .01 0.10 .06 .954 -0.20 0.21 time*mc -.13 0.09 -1.40 .165 -0.31 0.05 time*pf .29 0.09 3.31 .001 0.12 0.46 time*ps -.16 0.08 -1.92 .056 -0.32 0.00 students .25 0.19 1.33 .186 -0.12 0.62 gender .07 0.18 0.38 .708 -0.28 0.41 age .02 0.01 2.52 .013 0.00 0.03 ci95 random effects ((co-)variances) estimate (se) z p lower upper level 2 (between-person) intercept .48 0.18 2.66 .008 0.23 0.99 level 1 (within-person) residual .62 0.15 4.22 < .001 0.25 0.83 autocorrelation .46 0.19 2.40 .016 0.20 1.05 note: time was coded 0 = t1, .5 = t2 and 1 = t3, groups were effect coded; students were coded 1 = student, 0 = general population; gender was coded 1 = female, 0 = male; age was grand-mean centered; mc = mental contrasting; pf = positive fantasizing; ps = process simulation. striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 9. discussion our results suggest that hedonia and eudaimonia play different roles in the reciprocal relationship between wellbeing and goal pursuit. using a longitudinal design, we learned that eudaimonic wellbeing helped activate and advance effortful goal pursuit, whereas an intensive week of goal pursuit was rewarded by increased hedonic wellbeing. we found that people higher in eudaimonic wellbeing put more effort towards their goal and were consequently more likely to achieve it. hedonic wellbeing did not play a significant role in this part of the process, although the consequences of goal effort and goal achievement were increased hedonic wellbeing. we did not find the expected differences between the intervention groups. the results are in line with the predictions derived from the fwa (vittersø, 2013, 2016). the fwa claims that processes involved in effortful growth processes, such as embarking on a difficult goal pursuit, are related to ewb rather than hwb. the latter operates as a reward for goal achievement, but not as a motivator for the goal striving. the results are also compatible with the sdt (ryan & deci, 2017), which argues that hwb is the outcome variable and ewb is the causal variable of a goal process. however, the results partly contradict the predictions made by the broaden-and-build theory, because fredrickson argues that both eudaimonic and hedonic emotions contribute to increased goal effort (e.g., fredrickson, 2001, p. 219). in our data, only the eudaimonic part of wellbeing did that. a salient distinction between the fwa and the sdt concerns the conceptualization of wellbeing. for example, according to the fwa, the concept of wellbeing is not considered to be a state, but a process that includes those elements of human development that typically are referred to as optimal functioning—i.e., the process of development in and by itself. hence, when people feel engaged as they execute a challenging task, this feeling is in itself a positive experience. as such, it is a part of that person’s wellbeing, even if it is not labelled as pleasure or satisfaction. by contrast, the sdt considers the engaged experience that often occurs during the early phases of a goal pursuit as a cause of wellbeing, and not as wellbeing in itself. in other words, the sdt makes a sharp distinction between the feelings we have as we execute a plan that leads to a goal, and the feelings we have when the goal is reached. the former feeling state is not part of their wellbeing concept, whereas the latter is. the authors are, however, strongly aware of the fact that the results presented here are incapable of solving this important conceptual disagreement. 9.1 eudaimonic wellbeing, goal effort and goal pursuit the present findings indicate that it is the eudaimonic part of wellbeing that ignites and sustains goal pursuit processes, at least when they take some effort. by contrast, the hedonic dimension of wellbeing is less involved in goal pursuit initiatives and more related to the outcome phase. this finding is supported by existing theory and research outlining how ewb and interest encourage processes typical for focused goal pursuit (campos et al., 2013; schwartz & wrzesniewski, 2016; straume & vittersø, 2012). although we did not observe an effect from hwb on goal effort, our results do not corroborate the literature reporting that hwb and pleasure actually obstruct focused goal pursuit processes (carver, 2003; dreisbach & goschke, 2004; oettingen et al., 2016). nevertheless, our results show that ewb was positively correlated with subsequent goal effort and goal achievement, whereas hwb kicked in at a later stage of the timeline. in sum, it appears that when the influence of eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing is simultaneously compared, the existing influence of wellbeing on goal pursuit essentially takes place through ewb. that is, when controlling for hwb, eudaimonia was found to make an independent contribution to both goal effort and goal achievement. by striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 contrast, when controlling for ewb, hedonia did not make a similar independent contribution to either goal effort or goal achievement. it would thus appear that when it comes to the two main concepts of wellbeing, ewb is important for getting challenging projects started and hwb is important in rewarding successful task completion. the present study also shows that goal effort can help explain why the two forms of wellbeing have a differentiated impact on goal achievement. indeed, our results show that eudaimonic wellbeing constitutes a more important inner psychological resource for improving goal pursuit because it promotes adaptive forms of coping under challenge, by increasing effort towards the goal. one result that puzzled us was that the positive thinking intervention group actually increased in eudaimonic wellbeing during the study, compared to the other two groups. this finding was surprising, and we cannot rule out the possibility that it actually was an artefact of the uncertainty connected to the high heterogeneity in our sample. another possibility is that the period of only thinking positively about goal outcomes left participants wanting to do something. for example, taylor et al. (1998) found that although the outcome simulation group failed to take action to achieve their goals during the study period, they were left highly motivated. 9.2 goal pursuit, goal achievement and hedonic wellbeing our findings revealed that goal pursuit and goal achievement produce increases in hedonic wellbeing. the positive correlation between goal pursuit and hwb is well-established (klug & maier, 2015; koestner et al., 2002), but the current findings add to previous studies that have shown a causal relationship by using a longitudinal, experimental design (macleod, coates, & hetherton, 2008; steca et al., 2016). in our study, hwb increased after the intervention period where participants engaged in goal pursuit. also, the path model showed that the output of goal pursuits increased subsequent hwb, adding to the evidence that a major function of hwb is to reward goal fulfillment. our analyses did not detect any differences between the three interventions in goal outcomes and hwb. previous investigations by oettingen and colleagues (johannessen et al., 2012; kappes, singmann, & oettingen, 2012; oettingen, mayer, et al., 2010; oettingen et al., 2001), comparing mental contrasting and positive fantasizing, have found mental contrasting to be more effective than positive fantasizing alone in improving goal pursuit. process simulation has also led to more successful goal outcomes in the past (pham & taylor, 1999; taylor et al., 1998). in our study, the lack of differences between intervention groups may be explained by the heterogeneity in the goals our participants set and/or the short time-perspective of the study. also, for mental contrasting to be successful, participants need to have a high expectation of success, and we did not incorporate this into our analyses. 10. limitations and conclusion when comparing the changes in wellbeing, we did not have a control group (i.e., a group that did not engage in goal pursuit), thus we cannot be sure that it was the goal pursuit per se that actually increased hwb. however, subjective wellbeing, which we used to measure hwb, is thought to reflect the actual conditions in a person’s life and has been shown to be relatively stable over time (costa, mccrae, & zonderman, 1987; schimmack, schupp, & wagner, 2008), but still sensitive to short-term goal pursuits (steca et al., 2016). thus, it is reasonable to assume that the observed increase in hwb during our study stems from goal pursuit and goal achievement. striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 although we took means to recruit a representative national sample, the participants did actively self-recruit. thus, there might be some characteristics of our participants (high motivation) that may limit the generalizability of our results to the general population. moreover, the response rate for the population study was very low, which makes it difficult to generalize the present findings to the population in general. however, the fact that a sample originating from a population representative of norwegians was included in the study must be considered a strength in itself, given the extreme bias in the number of student samples utilized in psychological research. moreover, recent studies suggest that even samples with very low response rates appear to do a good job in making predictions about the population from which they are drawn (hellevik, 2016). previous studies have shown that wellbeing outcomes can be differentiated based on goal types, but because participants were free to pursue any goal of their interest, and were asked to set a personally meaningful goal, we did not take measures to differentiate between different types of goals in our analyses (e.g., zero-sum vs. non-zero-sum goals, intrinsic vs. extrinsic goals, self-concordant vs. controlled goals; headey, 2008; kasser & ryan, 2001; sheldon & houser-marko, 2001). our results accordingly reflect that people were instructed to set personally meaningful and slightly difficult goals. the hypotheses offered in the study were basically supported by significant results. however, the effect sizes were not very large. an explanation might be that the study was conducted in a natural setting, which increases the number of potential influences dramatically compared to a controlled laboratory setting. however, in a natural setting, even small effect sizes can have important implications for theory and practice (abelson, 1985). although the findings contribute to a more differentiated understanding of the dynamic interaction between wellbeing and goal processes, there are obviously other mechanisms involved in the regulation of goal-oriented activities. for example, in a natural setting, people pursue multiple goals in tandem, and active goals pull resources away from each other (kruglanski et al., 2002). participants in this study were asked to set and report on only one specific goal, thus, we do not know the influence of competing goals. this might be an interesting path that future studies could explore. in sum, and despite these limitations, the present paper adds to the previous research on wellbeing and goals by identifying the unique functioning of ewb and hwb in processes involving goal pursuit and goal achievement. this speaks to the importance of distinguishing between eudaimonic and hedonic dimensions of wellbeing. if wellbeing truly is a process and not a place—as diener and biswas-diener (2008) have suggested—it is important to fully realize the phenomenological richness and diverse valuations involved in a life well lived. a science of wellbeing should aspire to comprehend the complexity of subjective experiences and not narrow its scope to the study of pleasure and satisfaction alone. the experience of stepping out of one’s comfort zone is different from that of returning to a safe haven. the first can be exciting and even frightening; the second is typically felt as pleasant and rewarding. but both contribute to a good life—and together with other positive affects and judgments, they should be included in a scientist’s understanding of what “being well and doing well in being well” means. authors kjærsti thorsteinsen uit the arctic university of norway kjarsti.thorsteinsen@uit.no striving for wellbeing thorsteinsen, & vittersø www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 joar vittersø uit the arctic university of norway publishing timeline received 8 may 2018 accepted 19 august 2018 published 9 december 2018 references abelson, r. p. 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(2011). life satisfaction goes with pleasure and personal growth goes with interest: further arguments for separating hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. the journal of positive psychology, 6(4), 326-335. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2011.584548 vittersø, j., søholt, y., hetland, a., thoresen, i. a., & røysamb, e. (2010). was hercules happy? some answers from a functional model of human well-being. social indicators research, 95(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9447-4 waterman, a. s. (1993). two conceptions of happiness: contrasts of personal expressiveness (eudaimonia) and hedonic enjoyment. journal of personality and social psychology, 64(4), 678-691. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678 waterman, a. s., & schwartz, s. j. (2013). eudaimonic identity theory. in a. s. waterman (ed.), the best within us: positive psychology perspectives on eudaimonia (pp. 99-118). washington, dc: american psychological association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14092-006 who regional office for europe. (2012). measurement of and target-setting for well-being. second meeting of the expert group, paris, 25-26 june 2012. copenhagen: who regional office for europe. wiese, b. s., & freund, a. m. (2005). goal progress makes one happy, or does it? longitudinal findings from the work domain. journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 78(2), 287-304. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317905x26714 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42445-3_17 https://www.nobascholar.com/chapters/19 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-007-9058-1 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2011.584548 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9447-4 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678 https://doi.org/10.1037/14092-006 https://doi.org/10.1348/096317905x26714 jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 70–71. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.1 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 editorial positive psychologists on positive psychology introduction interest in positive psychology is rapidly expanding as the field continues to make swift progress in terms of scientific advancement and understanding. there are more courses, more workshops, more conferences, more students, more associations, more journals and more textbooks than ever before. the news media and public are thirsty for information related to happiness and, specifically, wellbeing, and for all facets of positive psychology generally. psychology departments are increasingly looking to teach courses and offer qualifications that focus specifically on positive psychology, and various organisations are trying to understand how they can best capitalise on and harness the field’s initial scientific findings. what you don’t hear so much about is how positive psychology operates in the real world, how researchers and practitioners became interested in positive psychology, how they work with clients and the various models and theories they use. what do they find most useful? what happens to their thinking and practice as they become experienced and knowledgeable in the positive psychology arena? why did they decide to move into positive psychology? what do they get out of being involved in the positive psychology community? what directions are they and the field heading towards? this book discusses these kinds of questions and issues, and is a book for all those in the wellbeing, helping professional and psychological fields interested in knowing more about the development, theory, research and application of the new field of positive psychology. it is a book that spans an eclectic range of interests from psychology students to psychologists, to coaches, to media and beyond. in the following chapters, thirteen people with various degrees of knowledge and skill in different facets of the positive psychology field share their experiences, concerns, hopes and dreams, thoughts, and opinions in interview format. all interviews were conducted july to october 2011 and thus reflect thinking at that time. before publication, all interviewees approved their transcripts as being accurate. thirteen interviews is obviously too small a number to arrive at any generalisation. this book is not research per se; it is exploratory in nature and should be consumed in that light. placement and order of each interview is random rather than sequential, meaning that they may be read in any order. my sincere thanks and gratitude to the giants of this field, and to the up and coming stars for passing on their wisdom and knowledge. i hope this book may be useful to those wanting to know more about what positive psychology is, how it developed, where it is going, how it is going to get there, and to those looking to move into the positive psychology arena. in short, i hope these interviews are engaging and provide further insight into this new and rapidly developing field, and that it enriches your understanding of positive psychology as it currently stands. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ editorial jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ nair, a. k., john, j. p., mehrotra, s., & kutty, b. m., (2018) what contributes to wellbeing gains proficiency or duration of meditation related practices? international journal of wellbeing, 8(2), 68-88. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i2.696 bindu m. kutty national institute of mental health and neuro sciences india bindu.nimhans@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 article what contributes to wellbeing gains – proficiency or duration of meditation related practices? ajay kumar nair · john p. john · seema mehrotra · bindu m. kutty abstract: several studies have shown physical and mental health benefits associated with different schools of meditation. however, reviews have recommended interpretation of study outcomes in the context of school specific traditional practices. in the literature, practice proficiency is often conflated with hours or years of meditation practice and it is difficult to attribute wellbeing gains directly to the proficiency of practice. we carried out two studies to examine wellbeing, practice proficiency, and duration of practice amongst brahma kumaris rajayoga (bkry) practitioners from india. in study 1, we surveyed participants (n = 1009) to record the socio-demographics, spiritual lifestyle components, and wellbeing enhancement attributed to their spiritual practice. we developed new measures for evaluating proficiency of bkry practice and for assessment of progress in wellbeing attributed to bkry practice. both measures had high internal consistency scores (alphas 0.95, 0.93). block-wise hierarchical linear regression analysis showed that after accounting for demographic variables, bkry practice proficiency strongly predicted progress in wellbeing, explaining over 51.6% of the total variance. in study 2, we took three well-matched groups (n = 86) that were distinct on the basis of duration of practice (long term, short term and zero term). we examined wellbeing differences in these three groups and the extent of correlation of wellbeing with practice proficiency, progress in wellbeing and duration of practice. we conclude that meditation practice does improve wellbeing and that proficiency of practice is better correlated with most aspects of wellbeing than duration of practice but there are a few aspects of wellbeing that increase with sustained practice over a long time. we recommend that studies involving other schools of spiritual/religious practice incorporate tradition-specific proficiency assessment (instead of using years of practice as a proxy) and also use the progress in wellbeing scale for assessing practiceaided improvements in wellbeing. keywords: spirituality, wellbeing, meditation, brahma kumaris, rajayoga 1. introduction spiritual, religious and meditative practices are associated with enhanced wellbeing (koenig, 2012; sedlmeier et al., 2012; sharma, 2006) but several methodological concerns have been raised regarding the extant studies (goyal et al., 2014; sedlmeier et al., 2012). suggestions to address these methodological concerns are being formulated (davidson & kaszniak, 2015; lutz, jha, dunne, & saron, 2015) with the note that while there has been progress, research in this domain is still in its early stages (awasthi, 2013; davidson & kaszniak, 2015). meditation expertise, proficiency and duration of practice are often used as synonymous terms (brefczynski-lewis, lutz, schaefer, levinson, & davidson, 2007; kaliman et al., 2014) but there is a need for a more nuanced approach. since different schools of thought differ in terms http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 of techniques and goals, as well as underlying belief systems (dahl, lutz, & davidson, 2015; sedlmeier et al., 2012), there is a need to study the unique context of a given practice while interpreting any outcome (lutz et al., 2015; thomas & cohen, 2014). while there have been attempts to connect practice proficiency and better health outcomes (wiist, sullivan, st george, & wayment, 2012), we have not found studies that examined the linkage between practice proficiency and wellbeing. in this paper, we use the term “school of thought” as an umbrella term for all categories of religious, spiritual and meditative traditions. “practice proficiency” denotes proficiency of an individual in the context of beliefs, practices and techniques that may be considered an integral part of a particular school of thought. the term “practitioner” refers to an individual who is actively engaged in the beliefs and practices of any one school of thought. we use the term “wellbeing” in a broad sense such that it denotes a good quality of life across several dimensions, including subjective wellbeing (high positive affect, low negative affect, high satisfaction with life), psychological wellbeing (self-acceptance, mastery and competence, positive relations and engagement and growth), meaning in life (framework for looking at life and sense of fulfilment), and quality of life (in the context of spiritual, religious and personal beliefs). “progress in wellbeing” and “wellbeing gains” refer to a subjective sense of improvement (or deterioration) in wellbeing parameters that a practitioner might experience after initiation of practice and attributes to the practice. “prior religiosity” refers to regularity of religious practice before becoming a practitioner. “high religiosity” implies daily or regular prayers (others are categorized as “low religiosity”). we use “prior religiosity” as a shorthand for propensity for regular practice, rather than degree of belief in a particular creed. we will use these terms in the context of one school of thought (the brahma kumaris) and then consider how this might lead to broader applications. the brahma kumaris (bk) is an international socio-spiritual organization that offers a variety of free self-development courses based on a philosophy of self-mastery termed as rajayoga (ry) that is distinct from, and unrelated to, rajayoga as commonly taught in the tradition of the sage patanjali (brahma kumaris, 2018). bkry teaches four subjects: knowledge (core tenets of the bkry philosophy that provide a spiritual framework for looking at life), meditation (also referred to as “yoga” within the group; there are many different meditation techniques used in ry including aspects of concentration, mindfulness, compassion, visualization, directed thinking; all these meditation techniques are based on knowledge), inculcation of virtues (visible through behaviour on the basis of knowledge and meditation), and service to humanity (on the basis of the first three subjects) (brahma kumaris, 2018; ramsay, manderson, & smith, 2010). bkry also provides spiritual lifestyle guidelines (diet, celibacy, brief meditative breaks during the day, volunteering for service activities etc.) and spiritual practice recommendations (early morning meditation at 4 a.m. or earlier, daily classes at a meditation centre, meditation before and after class) intended to foster self-development and wellbeing outcomes (ramsay et al., 2010). the spiritual applications research centre (sparc) is a bk-affiliated wing dedicated to facilitate creation of methods for selfdevelopment (sparc, 2018). we wanted to know how bkry practitioners, given their intense focus on self-development, perceived progress in different aspects of wellbeing (as compared to pre-bkry days). we also wanted to examine what factors would predict progress in wellbeing. further, we wanted to compare bkry practitioners with well-matched non-practitioners, using standard wellbeing measures. previous studies on bkry practitioners have reported an increase in positive thinking and happiness in life (ramesh, sathian, sinu, & kiranmai, 2013), reduction in middle latency what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 auditory evoked potentials during meditation (telles & naveen, 2004) and improvement in respiratory functions, diastolic blood pressure and lipid profile (mandape, bharshankar, & phatak, 2015; vyas & dikshit, 2002). an early study on the effect on autonomic changes was inconclusive, mentioning both sympathetic and parasympathetic activations (telles & desiraju, 1993), while a more recent study showed a parasympathetic dominance in bkry practitioners with more than 5 years of experience (bharshankar, mandape, phatak, & bharshankar, 2015). the mount abu open heart trial found regression of coronary atherosclerosis in participants who adhered to a healthy lifestyle – a combination of diet, exercise and stress management through bkry (gupta et al., 2011). a neuroimaging study found that bkry practice (between 10 and 22 years) was correlated with neuroplastic changes in brain networks (panda, bharath, upadhyay, & mangalore, 2016). a recent eeg study demonstrated state-trait interactions in bkry practitioners – those with long-term practice (minimum of 10 years) could quickly shift between rest and meditation states as indexed by eeg power changes, whereas novices took more time and the control subjects were unable to achieve any state changes (nair, sasidharan, john, mehrotra, & kutty, 2017). interventional studies using bkry have shown relief in chronic tension headaches and reduction in plasma cortisol levels in those suffering from headaches for over 5 years (kiran, behari, venugopal, vivekanandhan, & pandey, 2005), reduced neurotic symptoms and increase in hope and happiness (misra, gupta, alreja, & prakash, 2013). we carried out two studies to examine the connection between wellbeing and proficiency. study 1 surveyed bkry practitioners to evaluate proficiency and progress in wellbeing attributed to ry practice. we hypothesized that spiritual lifestyle components (regularity of attending spiritual classes and early morning meditation, hours of daily meditation and years of bkry practice) would predict proficiency, and that proficiency in turn would be a better predictor of progress in wellbeing than years of practice. in study 2, we examined wellbeing using standard measures in three well-matched groups of those with long-term practice (ltp), short-term practice (stp) and a control group (zero-term practice or ztp). our hypothesis was that bkry practitioners (ltp and stp) would report enhanced wellbeing as compared to ztp, and that these would be correlated with proficiency of practice. we further hypothesized that ltp would show additional wellbeing enhancements over stp, attributable to their longerterm practice. 2. study 1: proficiency and progress in wellbeing in bkry practitioners the purpose of study 1 was to examine: a) bkry practice proficiency and b) progress in wellbeing in a large sample and to examine possible predictors for each. both these measures are novel and thus this study was exploratory in nature. these two measures are based on bkry concepts and were developed with inputs from expert practitioners. in this study, we did not have the opportunity to use other commonly used wellbeing measures. 2.1 method 2.1.1 data collection all survey participants were bkry practitioners who gave written informed consent and submitted the completed bilingual (english-hindi or english-kannada) survey form (called “rajayoga practice checker”). the participants were given the option to withhold their name and contact details if they preferred to stay anonymous. the survey was administered during different meetings and retreats held in different parts of india – abu road (bk headquarters) bangalore, coimbatore, delhi and chennai. the only what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 criteria for participation were the ability to read and be fluent in english, hindi or kannada, and consistent (self-reported) meditation experience of at least 6 months. data collection during the various meetings and retreats ensured that only serious meditators participated in the study. two of the small retreats comprised dedicated (full-time) bkry practitioners, while others consisted of a general membership. the meetings focused on both spiritual research (reviewing spiritual material and preparing testable self-development projects) and selfdevelopment, while the retreats focused on experiential aspects. prior to the data collection sessions, the need for the survey was highlighted. participants were given an opportunity for reflection on their own spiritual journey as they took up bkry practice, and introspection on their strengths and weaknesses in order to rate themselves on the various scales. detailed explanations with examples were provided to enable the practitioners to carry out the self-rating. additional clarifications were provided when requested. honesty and accuracy in filling in the forms were requested and confidentiality was assured, with the commitment that only statistical data would be used for research and development. since the survey was specifically directed at bkry practitioners, the questions contained terms that are commonly used within this school of thought. apart from questions pertaining to sociodemographics and spiritual lifestyle, a key feature of the survey was the self-assessment of 25 core practice components (bkry practice proficiency scale) covering the four subjects of bkry. this section was adapted from an unpublished sparc project that documented the milestones on the journey from novice to mastery. another important feature was the inclusion of selfassessment of improvement (or deterioration) in several wellbeing parameters (progress in wellbeing scale) that the participants attributed to the practice of bkry. 2.1.2 novel measures and data analysis each school of thought has its own philosophy and set of guidelines for practice that enable optimal progress. the existing literature routinely uses years of practice as a shorthand for degree of practitioner expertise. however, it is possible that a short duration of deliberate practice can lead to proficiency levels that may not be achieved with long durations of casual practice. thus, there is a need for developing practice proficiency measures for each school of thought that can aid in assessing the progress made by the practitioner. the bkry practice proficiency scale was developed to fulfil this need. the terminology used in the scale is specific to bkry and is well understood by the practitioners. the bkry practice proficiency scale had 25 items1 in total, divided into four subscales for measuring each of the four subjects of bkry. the maximum possible score was 100. the subscale for “clarity of knowledge” had seven items that were scored as follows: perfect clarity = 4; very clear = 3; some clarity = 2; not sure = 1; no idea = 0. the subscales “experience of yoga (meditation),” “spiritual lifestyle” and “serving the world” had six items each that were scored as follows: constant experience = 4; good experience = 3; some experience = 2; trying = 1; no experience = 0. the term “constant experience” in bkry refers to the state of embodying or being in that state of experience and therefore is the highest extent of experience possible. the overall scale and each of the subscales had high internal consistency scores. cronbach’s alphas (and mcdonald’s omegas with confidence intervals) were 0.94 [0.931 (0.919-0.94)] for “clarity of knowledge,” 0.87 [0.866(0.85-0.881)] for “experience of yoga,” 0.85 [0.857(0.839 1 these items are very specific to the bkry tradition (for example: concepts such as “tree” and “ladder”) and are therefore omitted from the text for clarity and succinctness. the questionnaire can be provided on request. what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 0.873)] for “spiritual lifestyle,” 0.88 [0.882(0.867-0.896)] for “serving the world” and 0.95 [0.948(0.935-0.96)] for the overall proficiency scale. several longitudinal studies have reported wellbeing gains in meditators by using a prepost design across a meditation retreat, typically involving novice practitioners. however, this misses out data from the vast majority of experienced practitioners. further, intense practice of any school of thought can involve major lifestyle changes, leading to issues in adaptation for both the practitioners and those who come in contact with them. thus, initially, the practitioners may encounter some deterioration in relationships or personal happiness levels (due to heightened awareness of some personal limitations), while in the long run, most practitioners are likely to experience increased wellbeing across all domains. to test these ideas, we developed the progress in wellbeing scale to enable the practitioner to rate the extent of change across multiple dimensions of wellbeing (table 1 below) after commencement of ry practice and attributable to ry practice. thus, for carrying out the self-assessment of progress in wellbeing (or lack thereof), the participants had to compare their current state of wellbeing to their baseline state just prior to enrolling in bkry. we did not provide explicit criteria for rating progress across these dimensions, however, bkry recommends daily journaling (called a progress “chart” – this is flexible and can take many different formats), and so most participants are quite used to evaluating their progress on a regular basis. the progress in wellbeing scale had eight items for checking the participants’ sense of “overall improvement due to rajayoga” in various aspects of wellbeing (table 1). the items were scored as follows: excellent progress = 5; very good progress = 4; moderate progress = 3; no change = 2; worse in general = 1; worse due to rajayoga = 0. the scale had an alpha of 0.93 and omega of 0.933(0.923-0.948). after computing proficiency and progress in wellbeing scores, hierarchical linear regression was carried out to account for demographic variables (age, gender, education, monthly family income, prior religiosity and commitment level) as a block before examining the effect of practice variables on bkry proficiency. we included prior religiosity (high or low), as it might have a bearing on practice proficiency, and we included commitment level as a binary variable (full-time commitment to bkry or not), as it could influence depth and duration of practice. practitioners with full-time commitment are officially designated as “dedicated” or “surrendered” by the bk organization. we then analyzed the effect of bkry proficiency on progress in wellbeing after accounting for the demographic variables (as a block). 2.2 results of study 1 a total of 1,500 forms were distributed for study 1. completed survey forms of 1,009 respondents (67.2%) were analyzed. both genders were well represented (49.2% female). the average age was 45 years (range 15-83, sd=14.9 years). almost half were married (49.5%). most were from a hindu background (97.5%) but there were some respondents from jain, muslim, sikh, buddhist, christian or atheistic backgrounds. about half had high religiosity (52.5%, daily or regular prayers) prior to practice of bkry. the majority were college educated (64.3%) and most had a middle-class family income (76.1%). income earners formed 41.3% of the group. the non-income earners included dedicated practitioners, householders, students, retired and unemployed categories. bkry practice experience ranged from 1 to 57 years (median 12 years). most respondents meditated for more than 1 hour daily (76.1%) and the median lifetime meditation experience was over 7,000 hours. most respondents regularly attended bkry spiritual classes (91%) and what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 practiced early morning meditation (80.4%). more than 90% of the participants felt that they had experienced substantial progress in wellbeing after starting bkry practice (table 1). table 1. progress in wellbeing attributed to bkry practice (n = 1009, values in percentage) excellent progress very good progress moderate no change worse in general worse due to rajayoga not filled happiness 29.0 51.7 16.3 0.9 0.1 0.4 1.6 peace 27.4 53.0 16.8 1.1 0.2 0.1 1.4 harmony 19.6 50.3 24.5 2.2 0.2 0.1 3.1 values 21.2 48.2 23.5 1.7 0.2 0.0 5.3 selfdevelopment 23.0 51.0 22.9 0.9 0.3 0.1 1.8 work effectiveness 22.3 48.1 24.7 1.7 0.2 0.0 3.1 spiritual growth 21.8 50.4 23.7 1.3 0.1 0.0 2.7 quality of life 20.4 52.1 23.0 1.2 0.2 0.0 3.1 the ry practice proficiency scores ranged from 22.0 to 100 (m = 71.53, sd = 14.04). hierarchical linear regression indicated that demographic variables (age, gender, education, monthly family income, prior religiosity and commitment status to bkry) were significant determinants (f14, 714 = 3.53, p < 0.001) and explained 4.6% of the variance (adjusted r-squared). over and above the demographic variables, years of ry practice, hours of daily meditation, regularity of early morning meditation (4 a.m.) and regularity of spiritual study were significant determinants (f27, 701 = 12.95, p < 0.001) of practice proficiency, explaining 30.7% of the total variance. the progress in wellbeing scores ranged from 16 to 40 (m = 31.91, sd = 4.78). as can be seen in table 1, more than 95% of the participants felt that they had made progress (excellent, very good or moderate) in all the wellbeing dimensions, as compared to the pre-bkry baseline. hierarchical linear regression indicated that demographic variables were not significant determinants (f14, 686 = 1.30, p = 0.2). over and above the demographic variables, practice proficiency strongly predicted (figure 1) progress in wellbeing (f15, 685 = 50.9, p < 0.001), explaining 51.68% of the total variance (adjusted r-squared). figure 1 below shows the correlations between progress in wellbeing, practice proficiency and years of practice. progress in wellbeing was strongly correlated with proficiency in bkry practice (r=0.72, 95% ci 0.68 to 0.75) and weekly correlated with years of bkry practice (r=0.16, 95% ci 0.08 to 0.23). proficiency was correlated with years of bkry practice (r=0.29, 95%ci 0.22 to 0.36). shaded lines show 95% confidence intervals. what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 figure 1. progress in wellbeing as a function of proficiency (top), and years of practice (bottom left) in bkry. proficiency as a function of years of practice (bottom right). 2.3 discussion of study 1 the results provide evidence to support the hypothesis that the participants experienced improvements in wellbeing due to bkry practice. while several previous reports have assessed wellbeing in meditators, the present study is the first to specifically query the sense of progress in wellbeing attributed to the practice. also, as hypothesized, practice proficiency strongly predicted progress in wellbeing. there have been some attempts to make assessment scales that are specific to other schools of thought. religious understanding of basic precepts of buddhism (including the creation of a buddhist devoutness index) was found to predict improvement in health (wiist et al., 2012). manocha and colleagues in their study reported that items (such as meditation frequency, what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 group meditation, socialising with other practitioners, and substance usage) in the meditation lifestyle survey (mls) of long-term sahaja yoga practitioners predicted the depth of mental silence experienced (manocha, black, & wilson, 2012). a recent theoretical formulation of a phenomenological matrix of mindfulness-related practices is a welcome development (lutz et al., 2015), and, as the authors suggested, needs to go through iterations of empirical testing and modification. the present study is the first to link practice proficiency and a corresponding sense of progress in wellbeing attributed to the practice. the socio-demographics showed that bks represent all segments of society in terms of age, gender, education, income, profession and marital status. our study shows that high prior religiosity is not a prerequisite for engaging in or sustaining spiritual practice. thus, even if the practitioners were not regular in their prayers or other religious/spiritual practices prior to enrolling in bkry, the majority had a substantial commitment to self-development, as demonstrated by regular attendance of spiritual classes (involving a visit to the local meditation centre and lasting for at least 1 hour), participation in early morning meditation (4 a.m. or earlier) and more than an hour of daily meditation. taken together, bks engage in a significant alteration of their personal time and lifestyle choices while progressing on their path of self-development (ramsay et al., 2010). since 78.1% of the sample had more than 5 years of bkry practice, it is likely that the lifestyle changes in these practitioners have been sustained over a long period of time. we did not assess wellbeing per se using standard measures in study 1 but other studies have shown that bkry practitioners have enhanced happiness in life (ramesh et al., 2013), as compared to non-meditators, and that long-term bkry practitioners had fewer neurotic symptoms, and higher hope and happiness as compared to short-term practitioners (misra et al., 2013). these studies are similar to the bulk of the literature that has examined wellbeing in meditators, as they conflate duration of practice with proficiency of practice. to confirm that these two variables are indeed different, we did separate analyses and found that duration of practice predicts proficiency (8.4% of the variance) and progress in wellbeing (2.5% of the variance) but this forms a very small contribution compared to the overall contribution of practice proficiency to progress in wellbeing. thus our study suggests that instead of using years of practice as a proxy for proficiency or expertise in meditation, there is a need to explicitly assess proficiency using measures that are specific to each school of thought. how might a practitioner achieve high proficiency within a short duration and another achieve only low proficiency even after long-term practice? a number of factors can contribute to this situation. as discussed earlier, proficiency in bkry requires significant investment in terms of lifestyle adaptations (ramsay et al., 2010). the proficiency gains are likely to be dependent on how quickly and how much a practitioner is willing to undergo these changes. for some people, the conceptual framework is compelling enough to make large-scale changes in earnest. others might be more interested in the stress-relieving aspects of meditation and therefore focus only on that aspect. overall, our findings are in line with the literature that deliberate and focused practice builds higher competence than routine, unfocused practice (ericsson, 2006). meditation practice, and, to a greater extent, absorption, have an influence on meditation depth (hölzel & ott, 2006). in our study, different aspects of meditation depth were part of the assessment of practice proficiency. a study on long-term sahaja yoga meditators also showed that experience of mental silence (related to meditation depth) was facilitated by various practices and lifestyle factors (manocha et al., 2012). what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 the bkry practice proficiency scale and its four subscales had high internal consistency scores. the progress in wellbeing scale also had a high internal consistency score and can easily be adapted for use with other schools of meditation or spiritual self-development programs. our study indicates that a full assessment of practice proficiency is indeed a predictor of progress in wellbeing, as suggested by others (sedlmeier et al., 2012). while most practitioners reported progress in wellbeing across all the parameters, there were a few respondents who sensed a deterioration in their wellbeing after they started the practice of bkry due to extraneous factors (< 1%) and specifically due to bkry practice (<1%), but the latter did not find that it affected their progress in work effectiveness, spiritual growth or overall quality of life. this deterioration in wellbeing could be due to the difficulties in coping with the challenges of self-change or due to difficulties that come when friends and relatives oppose changes in lifestyle. the results show that bkry practitioners who adapt to the lifestyle changes experience a significant sense of progress in wellbeing. this is in line with other reports that show that meditation practitioners experience enhanced wellbeing on a number of measures (manocha et al., 2012; orme-johnson & dillbeck, 2014). 3. study 2: wellbeing in bkry practitioners in relation to proficiency and duration the purpose of study 2 was to evaluate wellbeing using standard measures in three distinct groups based on duration of practice (ltp, stp and ztp) but well matched on socio-economic aspects. we then examined (for ltp and stp), correlation between the different wellbeing results and bkry practice proficiency, as well as duration of practice. while the progress in wellbeing scale indicates progress across a number of dimensions (table 1), it does not necessarily indicate high wellbeing in any of the dimensions, as it is possible that the baseline was quite low. therefore, we wanted to assess several standard measures of wellbeing and examine how progress in wellbeing correlates with them. study 2 participants also took part in an eeg study on the ability to rapidly shift between rest and meditation states within a minute (nair et al., 2017), which constrained the sample size. 3.1 method 3.1.1 participants bkry practitioners (ltp and stp) were enlisted for the study with help and follow-up support of the regional coordinating offices of bkry centres in bangalore. ltp had a minimum of 10 years of meditation experience and stp had at least 6 months and at most 2 years of meditation experience. control participants (ztp) were recruited from the local community, and, where possible, were non-meditator colleagues of the practitioner participants. this was done to match the socio-economic and work background as much as possible. care was taken to ensure that none of the participants had had any lifetime exposure to any other form of meditation. table 2 below lists the socio-demographics of the participants. what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 table 2. socio-demographics for study 2 participants demographics ltp (n = 36) stp (n = 25) ztp (n = 25) statistics age mean (min, max) 45.06 (31, 64) 44.28 (27, 61) 45.04 (27, 59) f=0.05, p=0.95 gender female male 14 22 11 14 11 14 2=0.22, p=0.89 education school level diploma or degree post graduate or above 8 15 13 11 11 3 10 10 5 2=6.33, p=0.17 monthly family income high income upper middle income lower middle income low income 4 5 26 1 3 3 18 1 4 5 16 0 low cell counts$ body mass index (bmi) mean (min, max) 24.72 (17, 34) 25.56 (19, 39) 26.12 (20, 34) f=0.93, p=0.4 religiosity high medium low 19 8 9 16 4 5 20 2 3 2=4.81, p=0.3 meditation median (hrs) (min, max) 14240 (7300, 35040) 1095 (255, 2190) 0 t=12.34, p=0.00 note: $low cell counts prevent accurate statistics, but these values are comparable and differences are not significant. 3.1.2 measures the following wellbeing measures were used: 1) positive and negative affect schedule (panas) – revised (rao & mehrotra, 2006; feldman barrett & russell, 1998; watson & clark, 1988). in the revised form (and adapted to the indian context), this 26-item scale has two 13-item subscales for measuring positive affect and negative affect and has a 5-point likert-type scale ranging from “very slightly or not at all” to “extremely.” the state version was used for this study. it is considered to be the affective component of the subjective wellbeing. 2) psychological wellbeing (pwb) (mehrotra, tripathi & banu, 2013; ryff, 1989; ryff & keyes, 1995). this is a 20-item revised version of the original scale, adapted to the what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 indian context. it assesses the trait notion of eudaimonic wellbeing and has four subscales: self-acceptance, mastery and competence, positive relations and engagement, and growth. each subscale uses the same 6-point likert-type scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” 3) satisfaction with life scale (swls) (diener. emmons, larson, & griffin, 1985). this is a 5-item scale using a cognitive approach to assess one’s overall level of satisfaction with life. it has a 7-point likert-type scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” it is considered to be the cognitive component of subjective wellbeing. 4) life regard index (lri) (battista & almond, 1973; debats, van der lubbe, & wezeman, 1993). this 28-item scale evaluates the trait concept of meaningful life and has two 14-item subscales assessing framework and fulfilment aspects of a meaningful life. it has a 3-point likert-type scale with options of “disagree,” “no opinion” and “agree.” 5) who quality of life – spiritual religious or personal beliefs (srpb) (whoqol srpb group, 2006). this is a 32-item scale with eight subscales with four items each for “spiritual connection,” “meaning and purpose in life,” “experiences of awe and wonder,” “wholeness and integration,” “spiritual strength,” “inner peace,” “hope and optimism” and “faith,” each having a 5-point likert-type scale ranging from “not at all” to “an extreme amount” or “extremely” or “completely” for different subscales. it is used to assess how much one’s belief system might contribute to quality of life. it is a state scale with a timeframe of “last two weeks.” 6) rajayoga practice checker (rpc). this was the same questionnaire used in study 1. we also made a subset (without the spiritual practice components) for obtaining the socio-demographic details of the ztp group. the overall ry proficiency scale (and each of its subscales) and progress in wellbeing scale had high internal consistency scores similar to the scores in study 1. cronbach’s alphas were 0.90 for “clarity of knowledge,” 0.78 for “experience of yoga,” 0.85 for “spiritual lifestyle,” 0.91 for “serving the world,” 0.92 for the overall “rajayoga proficiency” scale and 0.89 for the “progress in wellbeing” scale. study 2 evaluated wellbeing using a number of measures considering subjective wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, meaning in life, and contribution of belief to quality of life. all the scales used (and their subscales) showed high internal consistency scores, indicating their reliability and suitability for assessment in this population. while cronbach’s alpha is the most commonly used measure of internal consistency, its use has been criticized with a strong recommendation to instead report mcdonald’s omega (dunn, baguley, & brunsden, 2014), along with confidence intervals. alpha and omega scores were similar in the present study and showed that the scales were reliable and suitable for use. table 3 below lists the cronbach’s alphas, mcdonald’s omega and confidence intervals for all the wellbeing measures. what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 table 3. reliability scores for the wellbeing measures wellbeing measure alpha, omega (ci) positive and negative affect schedule positive affect negative affect 0.87, 0.87(0.81-0.91) 0.81, 0.82(0.75-0.87) psychological wellbeing overall self-acceptance mastery and competence positive relations engagement and growth 0.86, 0.86(0.79-0.90) 0.71, 0.72(0.50-0.81) 0.74, 0.75(0.66-0.81) 0.68, 0.69(0.57-0.77) 0.66, 0.70(0.49-0.81) satisfaction with life scale overall 0.76, 0.73(0.59-0.80) life regard index overall framework fulfilment 0.85, 0.84(0.75-0.89) 0.72, 0.71(0.56-0.80) 0.75, 0.74(0.62-0.83) spiritual, religious and personal beliefs overall spiritual connection meaning and purpose in life experiences of awe and wonder wholeness and integration spiritual strength inner peace hope and optimism faith 0.96, 0.96(0.95-0.97) 0.87, 0.96(0.95-0.97) 0.74, 0.75(0.66-0.81) 0.77, 0.77(0.66-0.84) 0.82, 0.82(0.75-0.88) 0.83, 0.83(0.74-0.9) 0.87, 0.88(0.82-0.92) 0.88, 0.88(0.81-0.93) 0.86, 0.86(0.79-0.92) 3.2 results of study 2 statistical comparisons (using appropriate methods listed in table 4 below) revealed that bkry practitioners (ltp and stp) had significantly enhanced wellbeing as compared to ztp for almost all the wellbeing measures (table 4). the exceptions were for subscales on selfacceptance, positive relations, engagement and growth, awe and wonder, and spiritual strength. further evaluation using the jonckheere-terpstra test (which has a directional hypothesis and thus higher power) revealed that all these variables had a significant decreasing trend (i.e., ltp  stp  ztp), as expected. most wellbeing variables were correlated with rajayoga proficiency and with progress in wellbeing (table 5 below). three outcome variables were correlated with meditation duration: engagement, wholeness and integration, and spiritual strength. what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 table 4a. wellbeing measures (m and sd) and group differences wellbeing measures ltp (n=36) stp (n=25) ztp (n=25) group results ltp vs ztp stp vs ztp ltp vs stp positive affect 47.69 (7.65) 47.08 (8.64) 40.96 (9.83) f=5.06, p=0.008 p=0.009 p=0.037 p=0.959 negative affect 20.56 (6.52) 21.44 (5.32) 28.52 (7.63) h=17.66, p=0 true, jt=1713 true false overall pwb 101.33 (12.8) 100.24 (13.22) 88.24 (16.4) h=10.93, p=0.004 true true false selfacceptance mastery and competence 22.22 (2.26) 26.86 (6.86) 22.28 (3.12) 26.92 (5.84) 19.88 (4.12) 21.76 (7.83) ft=3.17, p=0.058 h=8.13 p=0.017 jt=992* true jt=897** false false positive relations 23.86 (4.85) 23.44 (5.31) 20.44 (5.98) h=5.42 p=0.067 jt = 953.5* engagement and growth 28.39 (2.16) 27.6 (2.33) 26.14 (4.41) h=3.99 p=0.136 jt = 953* life satisfaction 26.03 (6.54) 27.04 (4.86) 23.28 (5.91) h=6.16 p=0.046 jt = 966* overall lri framework fulfilment 76.69 (4.87) 39.42 (2.06) 37.28 (3.62) 75.4 (6.11) 38.84 (2.81) 36.56 (4.35) 67.36 (9.21) 34.56 (4.49) 32.8 (5.05) ft= 7.65, =0.66 ft= 7.25, =0.86 h=13.74 p=0.001 =0.75 =0.73 true jt=794*** =0.63 =0.72 true =0.10 =0.07 false overall srpb 134.44 (13.5) 131.48 (15.28) 108.44 (22.6) ft=9.08, =0.7 =0.81 =0.71 =0.08 spiritual connection 17.14 (1.96) 16.28 (3.18) 12.96 (3.56) ft=9.78, =0.65 =0.93 =0.70 =0.07 meaning and purpose 16.94 (2.19) 16.68 (2.72) 14.04 (2.56) h=17.65, p=0 true, jt = 770*** true false awe and wonder 16.17 (2.31) 15.84 (2.59) 13.44 (3.57) ft= 2, p=0.156 jt = 883** wholeness and integration 16.22 (2.13) 15.96 (2.24) 13.2 (4.05) ft= 4.86, =0.61 =0.69 =0.58 =0.11 spiritual strength 17.53 (1.86) 16.84 (2.03) 14.24 (4.62) ft = 3.16, p=0.059 jt = 839** what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 table 4b. wellbeing measures (m and sd) and group differences wellbeing measures ltp (n=36) stp (n=25) ztp (n=25) group results ltp vs ztp stp vs ztp ltp vs stp inner peace hope and optimism 16.39 (2.1) 16.58 (2.45) 16.08 (1.89) 16.88 (2.05) 12.48 (3.62) 13.32 (4.07) ft = 10.89, =0.87 ft=4.95, =0.61 =0.76 =0.64 =0.91 =0.61 =0.11 =0.08 faith 17.47 (2.08) 16.92 (2.4) 14.76 (3.72) ft=3.7, =0.5 =0.55 =0.46 =0.11 f: one-way anova followed by tukey’s hsd post-hoc test. h: kruskal-wallis rank sum test. jt: jonckheere-terpstra trend test. * p<0.05, decreasing ltpstp ztp ft: robust one-way anova using trimmed data followed by : robust explanatory effect size calculated for robust one-way anova and pairwise post hoc note: values in bold are statistically significant. table 5. correlations between wellbeing measures and proficiency, progress in wellbeing and practice duration measure practice proficiency progress in wellbeing meditation duration positive and negative affect schedule positive affect (pa) r = 0.36, p = 0.005 r = 0.4, p = 0.001 n.s. negative affect (na) tau = -0.16, p = 0.04 n.s. n.s. psychological wellbeing scale (pwb) pwb (overall) r = 0.28, p = 0.032 r = 0.31, p = 0.015 n.s. self-acceptance (sa) tau = 0.18, p = 0.03 n.s. n.s. mastery (mc) tau = 0.18, p = 0.026 tau = 0.17, p = 0.034 n.s. positive relations (pr) tau = 0.2, p = 0.015 tau = 0.24, p = 0.005 n.s. engagement (eg) n.s. tau = 0.19, p = 0.026 tau = 0.19, p = 0.02 satisfaction with life scale (swls) life satisfaction (ls) tau = 0.2, p = 0.015 n.s. n.s. life regard index (lri) lri total n.s. tau = 0.17, p = 0.034 n.s. framework (fr) n.s. n.s. n.s. fulfilment (fu) tau = 0.2, p = 0.017 tau = 0.19, p = 0.021 n.s. spiritual, religious and personal beliefs (srpb) srpb (overall) r = 0.45, p = 0 r = 0.41, p = 0.001 n.s. connection tau = 0.21, p = 0.015 tau = 0.28, p = 0.002 n.s. meaning n.s. tau = 0.18, p = 0.03 n.s. awe tau = 0.22, p = 0.01 n.s. n.s. wholeness tau = 0.39, p = 0 tau = 0.33, p = 0 tau = 0.19, p = 0.02 strength tau = 0.32, p = 0 tau = 0.24, p = 0.006 tau = 0.22, p = 0.01 peace tau = 0.35, p = 0 tau = 0.27, p = 0.003 n.s. hope tau = 0.17, p = 0.033 n.s. n.s. faith tau = 0.29, p = 0.001 tau = 0.31, p = 0.001 n.s. r: karl pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient. tau: kendall’s rank correlation coefficient. n.s.: not significant what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 3.3 discussion of study 2 the results of study 2 provide evidence to support the hypothesis that the bkry participants (ltp and stp) had higher wellbeing than controls across a number of measures: subjective wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, meaning in life and contribution of belief into quality of life. we discuss these findings below. as hypothesized, practice proficiency and progress in wellbeing were well correlated with most measures of wellbeing. surprisingly, and contrary to our hypothesis, ltp did not show more enhanced wellbeing than stp in any measure, and although there were significant trends of higher wellbeing in ltp as compared to stp, there were no overall group differences. duration of practice was correlated with only three subscales. 3.3.1 subjective wellbeing the subjective wellbeing (swb) scores for the ztp were similar (i.e., no significant differences for positive affect (pa), negative affect (na) or life satisfaction (ls)) to that found in the literature (agrawal et al., 2011). agrawal and colleagues (2011) had evaluated swb and its socio-demographic correlates in a large sample (n = 1099) from an urban bangalore population. since our sample is also from bangalore, the scores for ztp in the present study replicate the findings in the literature. ltp and stp both showed significantly enhanced pa and reduced na as compared to ztp, showing that rajayoga practice is associated with improved affect balance. this is in agreement with recent meta-analyses (goyal et al., 2014; sedlmeier et al., 2012) which show decreased na in meditators, and with a previous study of rajayoga practitioners that found increased happiness scores in ry meditators as compared to non-meditators (ramesh et al., 2013). there were no significant differences for pa between ltp and stp, which is in contrast to a previous study which showed that the long-term rajayoga group scored higher on hope and happiness as compared to the short-term group (misra et al., 2013). since misra and colleagues (2013) had used lyubomirsky and lepper’s (1999) scale, it is difficult to directly comment on these differences. a recent randomized controlled study on 100 patients (50 were taught rajayoga and practiced 20 minutes per day for 6 weeks, the other 50 did not practice any meditation; all patients received standard treatment), found that while both groups benefited from the medication, the percentage of relief experienced was much higher in the intervention group, as noted from the hamilton anxiety and depression scales (kiran, arora, & girgila, 2014). this indicates that novices (with less experience than stp) can also benefit from negative affect reduction through rajayoga practice. surprisingly, the groups in the present sample showed no ls related differences (even though the means were higher for the practitioners and the kruskal-wallis test did cross the significance threshold), unlike a previous study which showed enhanced “self-satisfaction” among rajayoga practitioners as compared to controls (ramesh et al., 2013). the previous study did not examine ls using the “gold standard” (diener et al., 1985) but instead, they used a subset of questions from the oxford happiness questionnaire (hills & argyle, 2002), an instrument that has received criticism for not being directly relevant to assessment of swb (kashdan, 2004). closer examination revealed that ltp and stp show enhanced ls as compared to the population score (agrawal et al., 2011) reported in the literature (p <0.05 and p < 0.01 respectively). thus, while it is possible that the rajayoga practitioners have slightly enhanced ls as compared to ztp, the effect size is still quite small and can be ignored in order to make a conservative estimate. an alternative explanation could be that while ltp and stp do show significant enhancements in other aspects of wellbeing, their goals for selfwhat contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 development and spiritual-transcendence may also be much higher, thereby contributing to an average level of ls similar to ztp. since ls is a cognitive-evaluative measure of swb (unlike pa and na which contribute to affect balance), the comparison to higher goals might offset the gains in satisfaction achieved due to higher levels of pa and reduced levels of na. finally, the jonckheere-terpstra test revealed a statistically significant trend of increased ls with duration of practice. (note that the results show a decreasing trend with decreasing duration of practice – the result is equivalent.) 3.3.2 psychological wellbeing there are no studies that have examined psychological wellbeing (pwb) for the adult indian population for the age range used in the present study. however, there is one report of a large field trial (mehrotra, tripathi, & banu, 2013) for indian youth (age range 20-35 years, n = 614) which can be used as a starting point for examining the results. there were no significant differences (all p > 0.05) between the scores obtained by ztp and the youth population for pwb (overall) or for any of the subscales self-acceptance (sa), mastery and competence (mc), positive relations (pr), and engagement and growth (eg). thus, the results from the current study replicate the findings from the youth study and extend and generalize the results to the adult urban indian population. ltp and stp had significantly higher overall pwb scores than ztp. for mc, only ltp showed significantly enhanced scores as compared to ztp, which indicates that long-term practice does confer additional wellbeing benefits as compared to short-term practice. additionally, a statistically significant trend of increasing sa, pr and eg was found with increased years of practice. it is worth noting that pr and eg are considered to be key contributors to flourishing in seligman’s “perma” model of wellbeing (seligman, 2012). thus, higher proficiency of practice sustained over a long term of practice may well be the key to a life of flourishing. it is fruitful to discuss the non-significant differences in ls and sa. global satisfaction with life was not enhanced, possibly due to a sustained gap between enhanced wellbeing and enhanced goals, as it is known that ls measures have an implicit comparison with have-want discrepancy (wu, 2008). another factor to be considered is that the study did not assess participants’ personal ideals and goals which could possibly influence the ls ratings. sa is defined as having a positive attitude towards the self and a positive view of past life, while acknowledging and accepting one’s good and bad qualities (ryff, 1989). a similar and more recent perspective considers sa to be an overall sense of contentment with oneself and with the way one’s life has played out (mehrotra et al., 2013). while introspection and self-evaluation are important tools for a meditator, self-criticism and judgmental non-acceptance are not healthy – they are strongly linked to various forms of psychopathology such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide (kannan & levitt, 2013). sa on the other hand, is related to self-compassion, which implies being kind to oneself in the face of pain and failure in a mindful way, in a manner distinct from self-pity, self-centeredness and self-complacency (barnard & curry, 2011). it is likely that in rajayoga, a path directed towards self-mastery, critical selfevaluation and self-compassion balance out. both ls and sa did show a significant trend of enhancement with duration of practice, which indicates that the ls and sa are slightly higher in the practitioners. an enhancement in sense of mastery (especially self-mastery, since it is a key goal for rajayoga) in ltp is not surprising. it is noteworthy that the mean values for mc in stp are higher than ltp too, but the sd is smaller and it just missed statistical significance. the trend what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 test was significant, showing that stp also have enhanced sense of mastery as compared to ztp. rajayoga mastery requires significant lifestyle changes, which may pose adjustment challenges in pr, as the practitioner tries to bring about these changes while engaging with the circles of family, friends and colleagues. with time, these relationships take a more positive turn, as evidenced by the significant increased trend. 3.3.3 meaning in life the life regard index (lri) evaluates the framework (fr) through which an individual views life goals and aspirations that make life meaningful, and fulfillment (fu) of these goals and aspirations. this scale can be suitably used for practitioners of different schools of thought, as it is not based on any particular belief system (debats et al., 1993) i.e., it does not base meaning on any specific external belief system or philosophy. in the present study, both ltp and stp had a significantly enhanced sense of meaning in life as compared to ztp. this is to be expected, as rajayoga offers a consolidated knowledge framework (as one of the four subjects of rajayoga) that can be used by the practitioner to look at life and its current challenges and an approach to create a potentially better future. among the other subjects are meditation (which allows an experiential basis of connecting with god and other living beings), spiritual lifestyle (which brings about discipline and inculcation of desirable qualities), and, finally, service (which promotes contribution to the welfare of others). through these subjects, rajayoga provides a structure for developing meaning in life. 3.3.4 beliefs and quality of life the spirituality, religiousness and personal beliefs (srpb) instrument was developed (whoqol srpb group, 2006) in conjunction with the quality of life assessment tool. it was validated across several religions and cultures (in 18 countries) and recognizes the contribution of the individual’s belief system to quality of life. both ltp and stp had significantly higher scores (than ztp) for the overall srpb scale, as well as the subscales measuring spiritual connection, meaning and purpose in life, wholeness and integration, inner peace, hope and optimism, and faith. there was also a significantly increased trend for experiences of awe and wonder, and for spiritual strength. thus the contribution of the rajayoga knowledge/belief system to the quality of life in the practitioners is substantial. 3.3.5 wellbeing, proficiency and duration of practice rajayoga practice proficiency was correlated with almost all wellbeing outcomes, with the largest correlations for srpb overall, wholeness, pa, peace, spiritual strength and pwb overall. these show the contribution of practice proficiency on enhanced wellbeing. as expected, progress in wellbeing was also correlated with a number of wellbeing outcomes. the largest correlations were for pa, srpb overall, wholeness, faith, and pwb overall. this shows a limited extent of convergent validity of the scales. progress in wellbeing does not necessarily imply higher wellbeing (if the baseline levels prior to rajayoga practice were lower, for example) but they are likely to be similar. years of rajayoga practice were correlated with eg, wholeness and spiritual strength, showing that there are some aspects of wellbeing that benefit from increased years of practice. overall, the wellbeing measures indicate that even short-term rajayoga practice confers benefits of enhancements in subjective wellbeing and psychological wellbeing, and provides a framework to meaningfully engage with life. sustaining rajayoga practice over time brings what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 about additional benefits in terms of better engagement and growth, as well as enhanced spiritual strength and an overall sense of wholeness and integration between different aspects of inner and outer life. 4. overall discussion our findings suggest that bkry practitioners experience a sense of progress across a number of dimensions in life. this progress in wellbeing is strongly associated with higher levels of proficiency in spiritual study, meditation experience, inculcation of virtues, and service orientation. while individual backgrounds (such as prior religiosity, supportive family etc.) may be of help to the practitioner, anyone who develops proficiency in practice is likely to experience progress in wellbeing. there are several limitations of this study. since these were cross-sectional studies, there was no opportunity to make causal inferences. a prospective study could also evaluate the relationship between personality factors and wellbeing by considering the individuals’ personality prior to the initiation into bkry and the changes that have been brought forth after initiation. such an evaluation would indicate (i) whether there were any particular personality patterns noted in individuals who chose to embrace bkry meditation, (ii) what kind of personality changes were likely due to practice of bkry, and (iii) whether personality factors predict progress in wellbeing. however, carrying out such a longitudinal study to consider the effects of long-term practice (such as the ltp group) is not an easy undertaking. a related limitation is that we surveyed only current practitioners. since we did not survey those who stopped bkry practice, we cannot rule out any factors that might enable individuals to adapt to the bkry lifestyle. another limitation is due to the reliance on only self-report measures, which are vulnerable to reporting biases. a study that simultaneously evaluates physiological variables would be less susceptible to this bias. our study makes several contributions to the literature. to the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive report that examines enhancement of wellbeing in practitioners of a school of thought in terms of their proficiency in spiritual lifestyle practices. we have found that proficiency of practice has much better correlation with different facets of wellbeing than duration of practice. we believe that studying different schools of thought and their practices can help unravel different pathways adopted by individuals for enhancement of wellbeing. we recommend that future studies in various schools of spiritual/religious practice incorporate tradition-specific proficiency assessment and suggest that the progress in wellbeing scale can be easily adapted for assessing practice-aided improvements in wellbeing. authors ajay kumar nair national institute of mental health and neuro sciences (nimhans), india john p. john national institute of mental health and neuro sciences (nimhans), india seema mehrotra national institute of mental health and neuro sciences (nimhans), india bindu m. kutty national institute of mental health and neuro sciences (nimhans), india bindu.nimhans@gmail.com what contributes to wellbeing gains nair, john, mehrotra, & kutty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 publishing timeline received 23 november 2017 accepted 30 july 2018 published 9 december 2018 references agrawal, j., murthy, p., philip, m., mehrotra, s., thennarasu, k., john, j. p., . . . isaac, m. 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(2019). assessing jordan b. peterson’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing: a book review of 12 rules for life. international journal of wellbeing, 9(1), 83-102. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i1.829 paul wong trent university drpaulwong@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 83 book review assessing jordan b. peterson’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing: a book review of 12 rules for life paul t. p. wong abstract: this article first critically examines the jordan b. peterson phenomenon and the popular appeal of his book, 12 rules for life. it then evaluates this book’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing in four areas: (a) the psychology of religious values, (b) the importance of personal responsibility, (c) accepting suffering as the foundation for wellbeing, and (d) the process of finding one’s meaning based on personal sacrifice and negotiating a balance between chaos and order. finally, it examines empirical support for his ideas, as well as his contribution to the emerging domain of existential positive psychology. finally, implications for the future of positive psychology research and interventions are discussed. 1. introduction jordan peterson is an enigma. at present, he is the best-known public psychologist (murphy, 2018), but also the least understood, because of the opacity of his views (johnson, 2018). “it can be tough to parse the peterson phenomenon. for one thing, it seems as if there are multiple petersons, each appealing to, or in some cases alienating, separate audiences” (bartlett, 2018). peterson enjoys the status of a rock star in psychology, giving interviews at almost all the major talk shows, speaking to sold-out theatres in major cities around the western world, and selling more than two million copies of his 12 rules for life in less than a year. however, for all his media and financial successes, he is also the most hated psychologist for his political and cultural views. those who hate him either dismiss his book offhand, or read it critically in order to discredit it. he has alienated most of his colleagues (see schiff, 2018) and offended a huge swath of academia. even some of his academic friends have carefully distanced themselves from him, afraid of being painted by the same brush. he used to speak regularly at the meaning conferences that i organize (www.meaning.ca), but now, a few of my colleagues have even criticized me for daring to speak about his recent book at the 2018 meaning conference (wong, 2018a). book review of 12 rules for life wong 84 slayback (2018) has provided a partial explanation of why peterson has become hated by so many intellectuals—the main reason is his intellectual arrogance and courage in attacking his colleagues in the humanity and social sciences departments for their ideology. another reason is that he refuses to play the traditional academic game of research and publications in refereed journals, and yet he is able to achieve greater success through mastering social media, especially youtube, with more than 1.6 million subscribers and more than 79.8 million views at time of writing (social blade, 2018). 2. the peterson phenomenon demands attention about 80% of peterson’s admirers are males, but for very different reasons, as reported in maclean’s (köhler, 2018). similarly, several of my clients from different walks of life have also been helped by peterson’s 12 rules for life; some even told me that his book had been more helpful than positive psychology books. numerous jordan peterson study groups and meetup groups have sprung up spontaneously to better understand his 12 rules for life, providing empirical support to peterson’s appeal. his self-authoring program with daniel m. higgins and robert o. pihl (www.selfauthoring.com) is based on the same theme of helping people sort themselves out; this program has helped numerous people (meadows, 2018; schippers, scheepers, & peterson, 2015). 3. peterson is a cultural phenomenon peterson is an international bestseller and a cultural phenomenon who demands our attention. in spite of all the criticisms directed against him and his 12 rules for life because of his cultural and political views, it is an undeniable fact that many people have found help from reading his book or doing his self-authoring program. as psychologists, especially those who identify as positive psychologists, we need to ask: what is in this book that has attracted and helped so many people? what does this book offer that is different or missing in the self-help books authored by positive psychologists? it behooves us to assess peterson’s book in an objective manner so that we can find something to enrich our research and practice of the psychology of wellbeing. i believe that peterson’s meteoric rise to fame was no accident—it was a phenomenon waiting to happen. several emerging currents have conflated to create a perfect storm, and peterson happened to be just the right person in the right place at the right time to become the conduit of all the pent-up feelings of dissatisfaction with political correctness and secular materialism, in addition to the yearning for meaning and spirituality in these chaotic times. peterson had all the necessary qualities and skills to pull off a one-man coup: a sterling academic background, a charismatic camera and stage presence, and a large and wide-ranging intellect, as attested by hundreds of hours of his engaging lectures and debates. if we dismiss his work simply because he is a polarizing and controversial figure, we will do a disservice to the discipline of psychology. it is legitimate to ask ourselves why he is able to attract and impact so many people, in spite of the fact that his 12 rules for life is a complicated book review of 12 rules for life wong 85 and frustrating book to read. unlike other self-help books, 12 rules for life covers a wide range of subjects, from theology and history, to evolutionary biology and personality psychology. it also includes numerous digressions with his rants against identity politics, cultural marxism, and postmodern feminism. in this review, i will assess peterson’s contribution to the psychology of meaning and wellbeing. therefore, i will not get involved in the maelstrom of the cultural warfare swirling around him. 4. a preliminary analysis of peterson’s popular appeal my preliminary analysis suggests three main reasons for the appeal of peterson’s 12 rules for life. first of all, his straight-shooting, no-nonsense style of writing is a breath of fresh air for young people educated in a campus climate of “coddling the american mind” (lukianoff & haidt, 2018); they welcome his authentic voice telling them the brutal truth about themselves and about the world in which they live. they respond positively to his pull-up-your-bootstraps talk, as if they have been longing to hear such guidance from the authoritative father figure they never had. secondly, he meets them where they are—at the bottom of a dominance hierarchy, a place of despair, confusion, and resentment. he speaks with empathy and understanding, but does not give them easy answers or phony promises. instead, he shows them a way out of their miseries on the condition that they aim at the highest good and make the necessary sacrifices for a better future. thirdly, he lays down concrete steps to guide them to transform their lives and achieve their heaven on earth. although there is nothing new in his advice, which is based on traditional judeo-christian values, he has a fresh new way of discussing these issues, and there is a coherent and deep conceptual framework for the 12 rules as a package. he is also able to add gravity and existential significance to scientific findings. for example, he is able to elevate mischel’s (1966) marshmallow study of delayed gratification to a higher spiritual plane of making self-sacrifice for the greater good, as exemplified by jesus’ death on the cross. 5. peterson’s obfuscating writing style contrary to his own advice to be clear and precise in speech and thought, peterson’s writing is often ambiguous, verbose, and guilty of tautology—saying the same thing at an increasingly deeper level. critics may dismiss his writing as gobbledygook dressed up in pseudoprofundity. however, his admirers find his words tumbling out like cascading ocean waves, inspiring them to look and think about many important issues in a deeper way. readers can form their own opinions by reading a quote from his overture that illustrates his recursive and opaque writing style: how could the world be freed from the terrible dilemma of conflict, on the one hand, and psychological and social dissolution, on the other? the answer was this: through the elevation and development of the individual, and through the book review of 12 rules for life wong 86 willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of being and to take the heroic path. we must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world. we must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate what is old and outdated. it is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. it’s asking a lot. it’s asking for everything (peterson, 2018, p. xxxiii). 6. overall assessment 6.1 peterson’s unique view on the psychology of religious values at the 2016 meaning conference, peterson (2016) had already stressed the danger of nihilism and totalitarianism following the destruction of traditional religious values by rationalism and empiricism. he pointed out that neither a return to the past, nor individualistic heroism in creating meaning and value is the proper solution. instead, he proposed an alternative approach based on the intersection of nature, culture, and individuals. this approach recognizes that religious and cultural thinking is an important source of “mythological truths” evolving over aeons and passed on to us as collective unconsciousness. the values that enable us to survive individually and collectively are based on these religious or mythological truths that teach us how to live meaningfully, in spite of the tragedies of life. in the first two chapters, peterson lays down the two pillars of truth. first, science is about the truths or empirical laws of things in nature; second, religion is the narrative of the laws of values or moral actions in human life. god or some sort of higher power is operating in both spheres of reality. we need both domains to provide an adequate account of human existence. like many of the past luminaries in science (e.g., francis bacon, isaac newton, albert einstein) and many scientists of the present day (quester, 2018), peterson believes in the existence of god as the grounding for moral laws, because science, by virtue of its nature, is not capable of providing a moral foundation or answering the ultimate question about god’s existence; in fact, even modern science itself faces a moral challenge (levin, 2006). both scientific research (emmons, 2003; hill & pargament, 2003; koenig, 1998; routledge, 2018) and philosophy (carkner, 2016; taylor, 2007) have presented a compelling case that religious beliefs are not only rational but also vital for our wellbeing. peterson believes our religious worldviews or assumptions determine what the world will reveal to us. “now you’re on a whole different kind of trajectory … you make the necessary sacrifice, and allow a whole new world of possibility, hidden from you because of your previous ambition, to reveal itself” (peterson, 2018, p. 100). unlike other positive psychologists, peterson believes that certain preconditions need to be met before one can live a meaningful life. if we choose to believe in transcendental values, “meaning is something that comes upon you, of its own accord” (peterson, 2018, p. 200). in other words, meaning is something that will be revealed to people who are ready—who have the right attitudes and values. “you can set up the preconditions, you can follow meaning, book review of 12 rules for life wong 87 when it manifests itself, but you cannot simply produce it, as an act of will” (peterson, 2018, p. 200). this view is exactly the same as that expressed by frankl (1985, 1986), who has long insisted that meaning is discovered rather than created simply by arbitrary action. more specifically, meaning can be discovered only if one has the meaning-mindset (wong, 2012a) and the motivation for self-transcendence (wong, 2014a; wong & reilly, 2017). research has shown that worldview is important in shaping not only our perceptions, but also how science is done (medin, lee, & bang, 2014). worldview is also an important factor in eudaimonic happiness (braaten & huta, 2018). peterson’s rules are based on ancient wisdom, especially as found in the bible. he argues that by their very nature, human beings need to be guided by moral rules and spiritual values in order to survive and thrive in a world full of temptations and evils; they ignore these rules at their peril. “we require rules, standards, values—alone and together… we need to stay on the straight and narrow path” (peterson, 2018, p. xxxiv). such traditionalist teaching can be reassuring to those who feel confused and lost in the postmodern culture of relativism, secularism, and nihilism. 6.2 peterson’s contribution to existential positive psychology life is a struggle, whether it is for mere survival or for achieving a good life. given the individual differences in circumstances and life goals, there are infinite ways to go through life; science cannot predict which path one chooses, nor which path leads to success, however one defines it. but human experience, both personal and collective, current and historical, confirms the ultimate truth that life is full of struggle and suffering, only some of which is avoidable through one’s actions. therefore, it seems reasonable for peterson to assert that the undeniable reality of suffering must be the foundation for living a meaningful life. stated simply, peterson raises a fundamental question: given the reality of suffering, what activity will you pursue today which will be not only good for you, but also for those around you and beyond? what activity will you pursue that will be good for you not just for today, but also for tomorrow, days after tomorrow, and forever? this is the fundamental question of meaning and purpose or how we should live as human beings. peterson’s answer to this fundamental question is also surprisingly simple: you have a moral obligation or a responsibility to yourself and your loved ones to aim at the greatest good according to your conscience and best understanding, then to pursue it each day with selfdiscipline, integrity, and courage. this is a narrow and difficult path demanding hard work and self-sacrifice, but the alternative is to waste your life in misery or despair. this sounds like a reasonable proposition worthy of serious consideration. book review of 12 rules for life wong 88 the whole book is an elaboration of why and how we can walk this narrow path of making self-sacrifice to ameliorate unnecessary suffering and bring a little bit of heaven to our earth. his entire project is about following certain time-tested rules based on the two supreme values of love and truth, defined and elaborated in various chapters of this book. here is a brief summary of peterson’s 12 rules in his cryptic style: life is suffering. love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated. truth is the handmaiden of love. dialogue is the pathway to truth. humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn. to learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in ways great and small. so, speech must be untrammeled, so that dialogue can take place, so that we can all humbly learn, so that truth can serve love, so that suffering can be ameliorated, so that we can all stumble forward to the kingdom of god (peterson, 2017). although peterson makes heavy use of jungian archetypes, his approach of taking personal responsibility for finding meaning in suffering is very similar to viktor frankl’s logotherapy (1985) and existential positive psychology (wong, 2016a, 2016b), which is also known as second wave positive psychology (pp 2.0) (ivtzan, lomas, hefferon, & worth, 2015; wong, 2011). the main tenet of existential positive psychology is that one can achieve wellbeing only through confronting the dark side of human existence and a dialectic process of finding meaning in ameliorating suffering. living each day fully does not simply mean focusing only on the present moment. it means having the courage to “place faith in god’s heavenly kingdom, and the truth. that’s a conscious decision to presume the primary goodness of being… once you are aligned with the heavens, you can concentrate on the day” (peterson, 2018, p. 351). this calls for the use of the double-vision strategy in meaning therapy (wong, 2016b)—to keep one eye on what we can do at the moment, and the other eye on our spiritual vision of heaven. peterson also challenges us to “repair what is in disorder, and make what is already good better” (peterson, 2018, p. 351); this dual-systems approach (wong, 2012b) is the most effective way to make you stronger. drawing from jungian psychology, peterson encourages his readers not only to integrate their shadow with the ego (the apprentice-piece), but also their animus (autonomy and dominance) with anima (communion and relationships) (the master-piece). both personal development and societal development depend on the transcendental function of integrating opposites with respect to race, gender, and sexual orientation, and our capacities for good and evil. it is unfortunate that most readers do not understand the communion focus of his last four chapters, culminating in the symbolic act of gently petting a street cat. book review of 12 rules for life wong 89 peterson’s psychology is clearly influenced by the daoist concept of yin-yang. this is another basic tenet of existential positive psychology. everything in life exists in polarities, and one needs to navigate a balance—between order and chaos, happiness and sorrow, good and evil— in order to survive and thrive in a harsh and competitive world (lomas & ivtzan, 2016; wong, 2016c). peterson challenges us to follow the narrow line between chaos and order or between yin and yang; this requires us to restore our belief in god as the source and foundation of our morality and stay away from nihilism and all kinds of totalitarian ideologies such as marxism, postmodernism, rationalism, and scientism. unfortunately, neither mainstream psychology nor positive psychology has fully recognized the importance of embracing the dark side of life and the dialectic nature of wellbeing. one of the major contributions from peterson is that he is able to make a compelling case for these concepts, as i will show later on. 7. overview of the book peterson gives advice on how to maintain a proper posture, make friends, raise children, listen, talk, self-improve, and so on. he explains why we need to explore the opposing forces of chaos and order and why we should choose order as the secure base in order to venture out and tolerate chaos, and thereby grow. 7.1 chaos vs. order in peterson’s words: chaos is the despair and horror when you feel you’ve been profoundly betrayed. it’s the place you end up when things fall apart, when your dreams die, your career collapses, or your marriage ends. … order is the place and time where the oft-invisible axioms you live by organize your experience and your actions so that what should happen does happen (peterson, 2018, pp. 35, 37). however, “in its positive guise, chaos is possibility itself, the source of ideas, the mysterious realm of gestation and birth. as a negative force, it’s the impenetrable darkness of a cave and the accident by the side of the road” (p. 42). thus, even in times of chaos, there is the opportunity of rebirth, transformation, and return to order; this will happen when we choose to accept our need for some time-tested ancient wisdom and traditional moral rules. again, this is the daoist principle of yin-yang operating to restore balance-in-living. thus, meaning in life does not come from the straightforward pursuit of one’s ideal career and relationships, as advocated by so many positive psychologists. rather, meaning comes from wisely navigating between security and risk, success and failure, or familiar grounds of book review of 12 rules for life wong 90 established knowledge and unproven new possibilities until one finds one’s way (wong, 2012b). i agree with peterson’s understanding of the world: “we eternally inhabit order, surrounded by chaos. we eternally occupy known territory, surrounded by the unknown. we experience meaningful engagement when we mediate appropriately between them. … chaos and order make up the eternal, transcendent environment of the living” (peterson, 2018, p. 43). this is the world of transcendence and polarity (wong, 2016c). we mess up our lives when we yield to nihilism and chaos. we experience meaning and mature happiness “from our deepest being” (peterson, 2018, p. 44), when we return to moral imperatives and take personal responsibility for our wellbeing. 7.2 steps towards restoration the following are steps towards the restoration of order. you can redeem yourself and earn your own salvation through sorting yourself out and developing the discipline to pursue a higher good. 1. know yourself. know “where you are, so you can start to chart your course” (p. 65). 2. your life has significance. “you have a vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world” (p. 62). 3. restore order to your life. “bring the divine force of hope to bear on the world” (p. 63). 4. discipline yourself. have the willpower to refine your personality, redirect your destination, and endure hardship. “he who has a why can bear almost any how” (nietzsche, as quoted in frankl, 1985). 5. aim at a more spiritual future. “you could help direct the world, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward heaven and a bit more away from hell” (p. 63). 6. devote your life to something higher and bigger than yourself. “that would give you a meaning, with a capital m. that would justify your miserable existence” (pp. 63-64). 7. navigate between chaos and order. you can recreate order in the midst of chaos, experience happiness in the midst of miseries. 7.3 peterson’s 12 rules of life the titles for his 12 rules of life are as follows: 1. stand up straight with your shoulders back; 2. treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping; 3. make friends with people who want the best for you; 4. compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today; 5. do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them; 6. set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world; 7. pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient); 8. tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie; 9. assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t; 10. be precise in your speech; book review of 12 rules for life wong 91 11. do not bother children when they are skateboarding; 12. pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. all these rules are action-oriented, but together they identify the characteristics of a responsible, fully-functioning human being, who not only enjoys a productive, rewarding life, but also contributes to the wellbeing of humanity. we can readily relate the above rules to major psychological concepts from carl rogers (1961), abraham maslow (1975, 1998), viktor frankl (1985), and wong’s (2016b) meaning therapy. 1. face your miserable condition with courage and confidence. 2. stop self-sabotaging and take good care of yourself, because life is precious. 3. find friends who support your efforts in self-improvement. 4. focus on improving yourself daily by aiming at your highest good. 5. be responsible in teaching your children character and how to get along with others. 6. bring order to your own life first before trying to change the world. 7. value and choose what is meaningful, even when it demands sacrifice. 8. value truthfulness and speak the truth as the backbone of your character. 9. listen with humility and an open mind as a way to learn something. 10. speak precisely about your intentions and concerns to minimize conflicts. 11. let “boys be boys” and “girls be girls,” accepting the reality of dominance hierarchies in various domains. 12. accept that life is hard for everyone; therefore, be charitable and show kindness to all sentient beings. 7.4 research support for peterson’s main concepts the most common criticism against peterson is that he does not have research support for many of his claims. since the 12 rules of life is intended to be a self-help book, this might be part of the reason for the scanty presence of references to 12 rules for life in the research literature. another reason is that, to the extent his rules are based on religious or mythological truth, it stands on its own legs without scientific support. finally, some things are so intuitive and self-evident, such as “one needs to take responsibility for one’s life” or “life is full of suffering,” that support is superfluous; however, there is considerable research support for these concepts in the literature. 7.5 taking responsibility for one’s life peterson asks his readers not to beat themselves up. rather, he challenges them to pull their weight conscientiously without complaint. this theme runs through the entire book: to stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. it means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. it means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly book review of 12 rules for life wong 92 comprehended. it means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please god, in the ancient language) (peterson, 2018, p. 27). there is considerable research evidence on the importance of being responsible or conscientious in a world full of competition, dominance hierarchies, and unequal distribution of resources. it is supported by research in sociobiology (gilbert, 2016; wilson, 2000). it is also supported by extensive psychological research on self-determination (deci & ryan, 2002), selfefficacy (bandura, 1982), self-regulation (bandura, 1991), self-control (baumeister, vohs, & tice, 2007), and internal locus of control (rotter, 1966). responsibility is also important in selfforgiveness and making reparations (bell, davis, griffin, ashby, & rice, 2017). “responsibility changes everything. … the moment we decide that we are the ones who are capable of and responsible for changing things, everything shifts” (izzo, 2012, p. 1). we not only need to choose the growth mindset (dweck, 2007) but also the grit mindset of selfdiscipline, self-sacrifice, and courage for some greater good (duckworth, 2016; wong, 2014b, 2018b). in sum, without assuming personal responsibility, no one can survive and thrive as a healthy, independent adult. similarly, no society can long survive, if its citizens do not have any sense of social responsibility or civil duty. a lot of research has also shown that conscientiousness is the best predictor of school and career success (ivcevic & brackett, 2014; kern, friedman, martin, reynolds, & luong, 2009). “conscientiousness—a tendency to be responsible, hardworking, and organized—mattered at every point in the human life cycle. it even predicted how long people lived—with more accuracy than intelligence or background” (ripley, 2013, p. 123). according to clifton strengthsfinders (gallup university, 2004): your responsibility theme forces you to take psychological ownership for anything you commit to, and whether large or small, you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion. your good name depends on it. if for some reason you cannot deliver, you automatically start to look for ways to make it up to the other person. apologies are not enough. excuses and rationalizations are totally unacceptable (p. 60). in sum, taking responsibility means to choose one’s own preferred path, to pursue one’s ideals, and to make painful sacrifices for something more important than one’s own life. peterson dares to paint responsibility in all its challenges and potentials. the alternative is unthinkable— it means living out the rest of one’s life in the living hell of unfulfilled promise, guilt, and regret. 7.6 suffering is the foundation for living a good life suffering is an inevitable aspect of living, such as the need to toil, the travail of birth, sickness, accidents, disability, and death. natural suffering needs to be accepted and embraced. book review of 12 rules for life wong 93 however, intentional infliction of suffering on others for one’s own gain or for its own sake is evil. most of the horrible sufferings in the world come from human-inflicted suffering. the reality of suffering is so evident in human history and in the daily news, reflecting the fact that “each human being has an immense capacity for evil” (peterson, 2018, p. 197). citing christ, buddha, tolstoy, dostoevsky, nietzsche, and frankl, peterson argues that all great thinkers have framed their solutions by beginning with this acknowledgement. he puts forward that we do not need scientific proof that life is suffering, because every living human being can attest to that fundamental fact of life. he also posits that the human proclivity towards evil is also a self-evident truth: we pick up bad habits naturally, but it requires effort and a moral compass to become a good person. for years, i have also been arguing that to understand happiness and wellbeing without considering the dark side of human existence is just as irresponsible as physicians and medical scientists focusing only on physical health without addressing the reality of pathogens and pain (thin et al., 2017; wong & bowers, 2018). “the good life” is not one that is achieved through momentary pleasures or defensive illusions, but through meeting suffering head on and transforming it into opportunities for meaning, wisdom, and growth, with the ultimate objective being the development of the person into a fully-functioning, mature being. on this formula for happiness, age-old wisdom and modern science are in agreement (emmons, 2003, p. 156). the above passage is actually from robert emmons’ (2003) book, the psychology of ultimate concerns. peterson has taken one step further beyond emmons by claiming that ancient wisdom—in terms of myths, symbols, and religions—is more important than modern science in teaching us who we are (our human nature), where we came from (our cultural heritage), and how we should live (our moral compass for the present and the future) in order to advance wellbeing for oneself and humanity. the difficulties intrinsic to life itself are sufficient to weaken and overwhelm each of us, pushing us beyond our limits, breaking us at our weakest point. not even the best-lived life provides an absolute defence against vulnerability. … the honest human spirit may continually fail in its attempts to bring about paradise on earth. it may manage, however, to reduce the suffering attendant on existence to bearable levels. the tragedy of being is the consequence of our limitations and the vulnerability defining human experience (peterson, 2018, p. 216). in short, peterson eschews the simplistic answers of american positive psychology and challenges us with the idea that existential truth and meaning can only be found in negotiating the right balance between life and death, happiness and misery, strength and weakness, and reason and faith. he even argues that the self-centered pursuit of happiness and success book review of 12 rules for life wong 94 without any ethical concerns is by itself a course to evil and suffering. meaning and happiness are experienced in striving for the right balance in the dialectical process: “perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill” (peterson, 2018, p. 94). down through history, many people have advocated the importance of focusing on the positive, from seligman’s (2002) positive psychology movement to the chinese communist party’s attempt to control the media (bandurski, 2015; lim & bergin, 2018). in the most extreme case, buddha’s father created an artificially positive environment where the young prince experienced only pleasures and beauty (diamond way buddhism, 2018). no matter how laudable, these attempts will not work in the long run, because suffering is ubiquitous and universal, as peterson has argued. in psychology, the negativity bias in information processing, evaluation, and emotion has been well-documented (baumeister, bratslavsky, finkenauer, & vohs, 2001; kanouse & hanson, 1972; lewicka, czapinski, & peeters, 1992; rozin & royzman, 2001). our brains have evolved with this negativity bias because of its survival value. wong and weiner (1981) have also demonstrated a negative bias in spontaneous attribution search. scientific research has also shown that psychological pain is real and undeniable in terms of subjective phenomenological reports and objective neuro-physiological measures (biro, 2010). both peterson and existential positive psychology believe that it is more adaptive to accept the reality of suffering and pain. research shows that psychological pain, whatever the cause, can be best overcome by directly accepting it (linehan, 1993), by confronting rather than suppressing it (cioffi & holloway, 1993), and by transforming its meaning (lópez-solà, koban, & wager, 2018). 7.7 the need for sacrifice and navigating between chaos and order consistent with existential positive psychology, peterson begins his analysis of meaning in life with the recognition that “pain and suffering define the world” (peterson, 2018, p. 172). given this bleak reality, peterson (2018) argues that: sacrifice can hold pain and suffering in abeyance, to a greater or lesser degree— and greater sacrifices can do that more effectively than lesser. of that, there can be no doubt. everyone holds this knowledge in their soul. thus, the person who wishes to alleviate suffering… will make the greatest of sacrifices… he will forego expediency. he will pursue the path of ultimate meaning. and he will in that manner bring salvation to the ever-desperate world (p. 172). different from traditional views of meaning, peterson focuses on both the dynamic, dialectic, and integrative nature and process of meaning, as proposed by wong’s (2011, 2012b) dualsystems process of the good life. thus, meaning is primarily not a static trait, but the process and outcome of a balancing and integrative act, characterized by the mature happiness of attunement, inner peace, and harmony (wong, 2014c; wong & bowers, 2018). this integrative book review of 12 rules for life wong 95 process of individuation, according to jung, may take continuous effort over a lifetime (wong, 2009). peterson (2018) reasons that: if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good. if the worst sin is the torment of others, merely for the sake of the suffering produced—then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to that. the good is whatever stops such things from happening (p. 198). thus, the fundamental ontological choice for each person is between good and evil, between meaning as the higher good, as opposed to the expediency of immediately gratifying carnal desires. to reduce suffering and seek the betterment of one’s own life and other people’s lives, we are responsible to choose the narrow path of following the former, in spite of the fact that we are constantly surrounded by evils and temptations. living a deeply fulfilling and meaningful life depends on both the depth of one’s sacrifice and the height of one’s mission. peterson’s greatest contribution to the positive psychology of meaning is to define meaning in life as sacrificing something of personal value at the present for a better future of greater value for both self and society. thus, to serve something greater than the self is an empty statement if it does not demand the sacrifice of expediency and the risk of failures and dangers in serving a higher purpose. the main consequence of attaining meaning goes beyond personal happiness, wellbeing, or success; rather, it is the development of a moral character strong enough to endure the storms of life and ennoble humanity in the process. a single courageous act of sacrifice can redeem the past and ennoble future generations. the retroactive and proactive benefits of meaning are clearly described by frankl (1985). the benefits of meaningful action also extend to your future, the people around you, and the broader world: if you act properly, your actions allow you to be psychologically integrated now, and tomorrow, and into the future, while you benefit yourself, your family, and the broader world around you. everything will stack up and align along a single axis. everything will come together. this produces maximum meaning. … meaning trumps expedience. meaning gratifies all impulses, now and forever. that is why we can detect it (peterson, 2018, p. 199). these new insights from peterson call for new research strategies that incorporate both the precondition of suffering and the dialectic process of balancing between positives and negatives. such research also calls for perspective studies and objective measures of adaptive success and wellbeing in overcoming difficult life circumstances. book review of 12 rules for life wong 96 8. conclusions peterson’s leitmotif throughout the book is that life is suffering and human beings are fragile: we can be damaged, even broken, emotionally and physically, and we are all subject to the depredations of aging and loss. this is a dismal set of facts, and it is reasonable to wonder how we can expect to thrive and be happy (or even to want to exist, sometimes) under such conditions (peterson, 2018, p. 338). this assessment of our human condition may have to do with his personal experience of helplessly seeing his two children suffering from illnesses, but reflects the position of many existential philosophers. therefore, the real challenge for positive psychology should be: how can we be at our best, when life is at its worst? how can we soar above all the hardships and traumas in a splendid display of the noble and defiant human spirit? how can we still experience joy and happiness, even when nothing goes right and our problems will not go away? peterson found his answer in accepting suffering as an inherent part of existence that requires no explanation; his “realization of the tight interlinking between vulnerability and being was the best answer [he] had… there’s something to be said for recognizing that existence and limitation are inextricably linked” (peterson, 2018, p. 343). this is just the way life is. for everything good that exists, there must be some limitation. his other answer is that since life is so hard, be kind to all sentient beings and savour the simple pleasures in life: “if you pay careful attention, even on a bad day, you may be fortunate enough to be confronted with [the] small opportunities” of petting a cat, seeing a little girl dancing on the street, or having a good cup of coffee in a café that cares about its customers (peterson, 2018, p. 353). in an outstretched arm and the tender touch of a street cat, this simple symbolic gesture speaks volumes of peterson’s idea of heaven on earth. the good life is (a) finding a sanctuary of peace in the middle of a storm (wong & bowers, 2018); (b) being connected with nature, with all sentient beings, and with the creator in perfect harmony; and (c) reaching out to the less advantaged with compassion. in that magic moment of connection, we become fully human as we transcend all egotistic interests and the differences that divide us in our attempt to embrace the sacredness of life as our common ground (wong, 2016c). it is so difficult for human beings to be happy, because people are complicated and life is hard. none of the theories and research findings will work for all people all the time, since all of us have to contend with so many issues, from political-economic problems, to relational, emotional, and health issues, to the demons dwelling in our unconscious. throughout the entire book, peterson leads us through the vast terrain of suffering—the dark valleys and the steep mountains—without circumventing difficult controversial issues. with book review of 12 rules for life wong 97 brutal acuity, he dismantles the ideology of cultural marxism and postmodern feminism. he then articulates an alternative vision of personal responsibility; his 12 rules are designed to challenge people to bring order to their own lives in a chaotic world, so that they can grow and become what they were meant to be for themselves, their families, and their communities. strictly speaking, the 12 rules are not just an antidote to chaos, because the ultimate aim of life is not a stagnant state of security. when people are stuck in this state of complete equilibrium and stability, boredom and entropy will set in, unless they find something to strive for or fight against. frankl (1985) has made the same point that full mental health or meaningful living depends on maintaining a healthy tension within us moving forward, rather than struggling to maintain an impossible-to-sustain equilibrium. like riding a bicycle, life is a balancing act between order and chaos. peterson’s 12 rules can be best understood as the life intelligence we all need to maintain a precarious dynamic balance between opposite forces as we move forward, in spite of the ups and downs of life. sorting out one’s inner lobster and getting established in the world is only half of peterson’s vision of the good life. his neo-darwinist view of struggling to improve one’s ranking in the dominance hierarchy, even at its best, represents a shallow life, not strong enough to be sustained in times of trials and temptations. the other half of peterson’s vision has to do with sorting out one’s spiritual core (whether it is the buddha nature or the image of god) by discovering the still small voice of one’s conscience and paying attention to time-tested truths based on collective ancient wisdom. this vertical transcendental dimension adds depth to our lives and enables us to aim at the highest good of ameliorating suffering and establishing heaven on earth. human progress depends on how we resolve the tension between our inner lobster and inner divinity. the following quote seems to suggest that, in the highest level of human development in an ideal society, the balance will tip in favour of the spiritual side: attend to the day, but aim at the highest good. now, your trajectory is heavenward. that makes you hopeful. … who knows what existence might be like if all decide to strive for the best? who knows what eternal heavens might be established by our spirits, purified by truth, aiming skyward, right here on the fallen earth? (peterson, 2018, pp. 111, 199). similarly, maslow (1971) also recognized that self-actualization cannot be the end-game; in his revised needs hierarchy, the highest achievement is self-transcendence—losing one’s self in serving a higher purpose and helping others to become their best. thus, transition from selfactualization to self-transcendence represents a hero’s ultimate balancing act, with one foot in ascending one’s dominance hierarchy and the other foot in using one’s gifts to serve others. that is why a compassionate and responsible liberal democracy offers freedom and the best hope to create an ideal existence. book review of 12 rules for life wong 98 peterson has a simple, pragmatic, and non-ideological way to transform individuals’ lives and the world. his prescription reminds us of covey’s (1989) book, the 7 habits of highly effective people, which is based on traditional judeo-christian values, the foundation of western civilization. it is hard to argue against these time-tested values, which are the cornerstones of any civil society and the western judicial system. much of what peterson has prescribed, such as speaking the truth and being kind to animals, are truisms that do not require scientific proof. i believe that frankl’s (1985) man’s search for meaning, warren’s (2014) the purpose driven life, and peterson’s (2018) 12 rules for life have one thing in common, accounting for their extraordinary appeal: they all proceed from a spiritual worldview that recognizes the existence of god and a transcendental reality. from this perspective, they emphasize that the good life is not about what you can get from life, but what life demands from you—your responsibility to make a special contribution for the glory of god and for the wellbeing of humanity, based on the opportunities you craft for your life. peterson’s book contributes to our understanding of both the depth and breadth of existential meaning, which is missing in the positive psychology of meaning (e.g., smith, 2017). his existential-spiritual-dialectical view of the good life is the same as my existential positive psychology or pp 2.0 (wong, 2011, 2012c). a few days ago, i actually dreamed of a great showdown pitching seligman’s (2011) perma against the existential dialectical approach of peterson’s 12 rules or wong’s 12 steps (wong, 2016d) to determine which approach produces more lasting positive changes in people through a series of real-life challenges. given the continued replication crisis in psychology (yong, 2018), it becomes increasingly difficult for positive psychology to claim that major life decisions about one’s wellbeing and future direction should be based on empirical research findings. what is needed is to go beyond convenience sampling with college students and self-report methodology. we need more collaborative and holistic research methods that incorporate real life experiences of persons from varied cultural heritages (wong, 2017). i highly recommend 12 rules for life, because it presents many helpful insights for both researchers and practitioners in positive psychology. but i have to warn readers that some of his rants may be offensive to those who do not share his conservative leanings. another weakness of this book, as i have alluded to earlier, is that it can be a frustrating experience wading through opaque passages. however, if you are willing to tolerate these minor limitations, you will be rewarded for reading this book. author paul wong trent university, peterborough, canada drpaulwong@gmail.com publishing timeline received 7 january 2019 accepted 8 january 2019 book review of 12 rules for life wong 99 published 3 april 2019 references bandura, a. 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(2013). enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 98-115. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i1.6 amanda l. hyde pennsylvania state university alh379@psu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 article enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective amanda l. hyde · jaclyn p. maher · steriani elavsky abstract: physical activity might be a viable tool for enhancing mental wellbeing because, in general, physical activity has been found to be related to more positive affect and higher satisfaction with life. the way we think, feel, and act changes with age, so it may be that physical activity, wellbeing, and the link between physical activity and wellbeing change with age too. without consideration for developmental changes, study findings are decontextualized and difficult to translate into people’s lives. aiming to become better equipped to use physical activity as a tool to intervene with wellbeing, we explored a lifespan perspective of physical activity and wellbeing. in this review, we (1) discuss physical activity, wellbeing, and the link between physical activity and wellbeing at different life stages, (2) highlight the need to consider interpersonal and intrapersonal differences in these constructs, and (3) identify gaps in the literature that, if filled, would further enhance our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing across the lifespan. keywords: development, life stages, satisfaction with life, affect, exercise, wellbeing 1. introduction physical activity significantly enhances mental wellbeing at any age (physical activity guidelines advisory committee, 2008), but affect, behavior, and cognition is subject to change across the lifespan, and these developmental changes may result in differences in physical activity, wellbeing, and in the link between physical activity and wellbeing across life stages. most research on physical activity and wellbeing has been conducted on samples with restricted age ranges, such as middle-aged women (e.g., elavsky & mcauley, 2005) or older adults (e.g., arent, landers, & etnier, 2000; mcauley et al., 2006). this narrative review aims to put forth a lifespan perspective by presenting previous research findings about physical activity and wellbeing at different life stages and highlighting future avenues of research that are necessary to fill gaps in the literature. based on the work of diener (1984) and diener, suh, lucas, and smith (1999), we define wellbeing as the preponderance of positivity of affect and high satisfaction with life. in general, people highly value their wellbeing and strive to be happy and satisfied with life (diener, 2000). physical activity may be a viable tool for enhancing wellbeing because, in general, physical activity has been found to be related to more positive affect and higher satisfaction with life (arent et al., 2000; ekkekakis, parfitt, & petruzzello, 2011; ekkekakis, 2003; netz, wu, becker, & tenenbaum, 2005; penedo & dahn, 2005; rejeski & mihalko, 2001); however, the magnitude of the effects vary widely across studies and individuals. for example, netz and colleagues (2005) found that age moderated the effect of physical activity on wellbeing in older http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 adults, with larger effects seen for people around age 65 years compared to people around age 74 years. without considering context, such as life stage, this variable evidence cannot be easily translated into people’s lives. it is our contention that a better understanding of physical activity and wellbeing will be reached through applying a lifespan perspective. a lifespan perspective can help contextualize physical activity and wellbeing into the always-evolving physical, psychological, biological, and environmental factors that manifest in life (baltes, 1987). the key suppositions of a lifespan perspective include the following: (1) development is a lifelong process, with changes occurring throughout the entire lifespan; (2) change is multifaceted, manifesting growths and declines of biological, personal, and environmental factors; (3) development is highly variable between people (i.e., individual differences) and across time (i.e., intrapersonal changes); and (4) development is embedded in multiple aspects of life, represented by age-related differences, social customs, and historical influences. a lifespan perspective details general trends across life and how characteristics of an individual and differences in life experiences can lead to deviations from general trends (baltes, reese, & lipsitt, 1980; baltes, 1987). the initial step toward taking a lifespan perspective of physical activity and wellbeing is to determine the general trends of physical activity, wellbeing, and the relation between these two constructs across the stages of life. figures 1 and 2 (below) are examples of lifespan perspective of physical activity and wellbeing, respectively. depicted in these schemas are general trends as well as examples of individual differences, life events, and daily changes that can impact these trajectories. following, we discuss previous research on general trends in physical activity and wellbeing and links between physical activity and wellbeing across life stages. 2. general trends in physical activity and wellbeing across life stages 2.1 childhood (3–9 years) 2.1.1 physical activity there is limited research tracking physical activity from childhood across the entire lifespan, but studies of prevalence rates of physical activity in children and trends from childhood to adolescence suggest childhood is characterized by higher levels of physical activity than other times in the lifespan. based on a cross-sectional study using accelerometers, it was found that children were over five times more likely to participate in 60 minutes of physical activity per day than adolescents or adults (troiano et al., 2008). pate and colleagues (2002) found that over 90% of school-aged children (7–16 years old) were engaging in at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity per day on five or more days a week. overall, the evidence shows that children are more likely to be meeting or exceeding physical activity guidelines than populations of other ages; however, most children are still not as physically active as they should be. the american physical activity guidelines recommend children participate in 60 minutes of physical activity daily (physical activity guidelines advisory committee, 2008). childhood may have higher rates of physical activity than other life stages because there are fewer barriers to physical activity during this time in the lifespan. some of the most commonly reported barriers to physical activity do not become a problem until well after childhood. for example, people commonly report that they are not physically active because of a lack of available time, feeling too tired, or having no motivation (brownson, baker, housemann, brennan, & bacak, 2001). childhood, however, is characterized by free time, energy, and an intrinsic value for play (hughes, 1995). beyond a lack of barriers, greater intrinsic motivation might explain high levels of physical activity in children. it is not beliefs in enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 the health, social, or physical benefits of physical activity that are associated with more physical activity in childhood (strauss, rodzilsky, burack, & colin, 2001); rather, children are physically active when they enjoy the activity and get a sense of accomplishment out of it (weiss, 2000). as a time of few barriers and greater intrinsic motivation to be physically active, childhood is more amenable to high levels of physical activity participation than are other developmental stages. 2.1.2 wellbeing it remains ambiguous how wellbeing in childhood compares to other stages in life because studies on lifespan trajectories of wellbeing tend to start in early adulthood. future research is needed that compares wellbeing in childhood to wellbeing in other life stages. although direct comparisons have not been made with other life stages, studies suggest children are mostly happy (holder, coleman, & wallace, 2010; holder & klassen, 2010; larson & lampmanpetraitis, 1989) and satisfied with their lives (proctor, linley, & maltby, 2009). some evidence suggests wellbeing may start to decrease around 10 years old with the transition into adolescence (e.g., greene, 1990; larson & lampman-petraitis, 1989). the tendency for children to have high wellbeing may be due to the amount of leisure time available during this stage of the lifespan and how children fill this time. childhood is characterized by ample free time to play (hughes, 1995). this opportunity for spending a large amount of time in freely selected, enjoyable, unencumbered activities can lead to positive affect and, because leisure is a major component of overall satisfaction (argyle, 2001; caldwell, 2005), play might also enhance satisfaction with life. another reason children might generally have high wellbeing is the availability of opportunities to acquire senses of autonomy, relatedness, and competence—basic needs that are strongly connected to wellbeing (ryan & deci, 2000). such opportunities are present when children receive encouragement from important others to learn independence and develop new skills. these same opportunities to build motor, language, and cognitive skills are typically not as richly available after the transition from childhood. 2.1.3 physical activity and wellbeing there is well-documented evidence that physical activity is associated with aspects of good mental health in children, including high self-esteem, low symptoms of anxiety and depression, and low stress (crews, lochbaum, & landers, 2004; gruber, 1986; mutrie & parfitt, 1998; parfitt & eston, 2005; strong et al., 2005), but there is little research on the effects of physical activity on satisfaction with life or affect in children. it has been shown that physical activity can acutely enhance mood in children (williamson, dewey, & steinberg, 2001), and although life satisfaction can meaningfully be measured in children as young as age six (huebner, 2004), little is known about the effects of physical activity on satisfaction with life or the long-term affective consequences of physical activity in children. future research is needed to determine the links between physical activity and wellbeing in childhood. 2.2 adolescence (10–17 years) 2.2.1 physical activity there is generally a steep decrease in physical activity seen across the teenage years (caspersen, pereira, & curran, 2000; kjønniksen, torsheim, & wold, 2008; riddoch et al., 2004; sallis, prochaska, & taylor, 2000; telama & yang, 2000; trost, pate, et al., 2002). this has been enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 shown in longitudinal studies of both self-reported (kjønniksen et al., 2008; telama & yang, 2000) and directly-assessed physical activity (riddoch et al., 2004; trost, owen, bauman, sallis, & brown, 2002). as a result of the decline in physical activity across adolescence, the percentage of people participating in regular moderate and vigorous physical activity significantly drops within the age range of 15 to 18 years old (pate et al., 2002; troiano et al., 2008). adolescence is a time of transitions, and unfortunately it seems these transitions include a decline in physical activity. objective physical activity surveillance indicates that only 8% of adolescents are participating in an average of at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day (troiano et al., 2008). it may be that declines in physical activity across adolescence are due to shifts in time constraints, received support for playful behavior, or preferences and motivations for physical activities during this life stage. expectations for less playful behavior and more workor school-related demands can result in less allocated time for physical activity (larson & verma, 1999). additionally, declines in physical activity competencies and preferences for physical activities have been shown to explain declines in physical activity behavior in the early adolescent years (sallis, alcaraz, mckenzie, & hovell, 1999). priorities, responsibilities, and attitudes shift dramatically in adolescence and it seems that physical activity levels suffer because of it. 2.2.2 wellbeing adolescence is typically characterized by lower levels of wellbeing than in childhood. in fact, satisfaction with life declines from age 11 to 16 (goldbeck, schmitz, besier, herschbach, & henrich, 2007) and, although most adolescents report they are satisfied with their life overall, a noteworthy 11% of adolescents report being highly dissatisfied (huebner, drane, & valois, 2000). in general, affect also becomes less positive across the transition from childhood to adolescence and continues to decline until late adolescence (greene, 1990; larson, moneta, richards, & wilson, 2002; moneta, schneider, & csikszentmihalyi, 2001). neurobiological, cognitive, and environmental shifts may each be responsible for the decline in wellbeing that is typical of adolescence. the brain systems responsible for emotional regulation, risk-taking behaviors, and elevations of depression and anxiety undergo structural and functional evolution during adolescence which may result in decreased wellbeing (casey, jones, & hare, 2008; ernst, pine, & hardin, 2006; yurgelun-todd, 2007). such neurobiological changes may also co-occur with changes of perceptions and motivation that enhance the decline of wellbeing. for example, in adolescence, mental health can become highly contingent on popularity and peer acceptance (bukowski, hoza, & boivin, 1993); therefore environmental factors such as peer victimization can have devastating consequences for an adolescent’s satisfaction with life and affect (martin & huebner, 2007). it has also been postulated that the reduction in positivity of affect seen in adolescence may be a result of an increase in exposure to stressful events (larson & ham, 1993). all the developmental changes occurring in adolescence can make coping with stressors a tumultuous task and, as a result, an individual’s wellbeing can suffer. 2.2.3 physical activity and wellbeing in adolescence, both physical activity and wellbeing tend to be declining. this makes it essential that we understand the link between physical activity and wellbeing during this stage of life. a study has shown that adolescents who are not physically active have lower levels of satisfaction of life than their more physically active peers (valois, zullig, huebner, & drane, enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 2004). little is understood about the long-term affective consequences of physical activity, but some studies have shown acute positive affective responses to physical activity in adolescents (schneider, dunn, & cooper, 2009; schneider & graham, 2009). future research is necessary to further establish the link between physical activity and positive affect in adolescence. although relevant studies are limited in number, the existing evidence base suggests that physical activity is linked to wellbeing in adolescence. 2.3 emerging adulthood (18–25 years) 2.3.1 physical activity cross-sectional and longitudinal research shows that physical activity levels during emerging adulthood continue to follow the decreasing trend that emerged in adolescence (caspersen et al., 2000; kjønniksen et al., 2008; troiano et al., 2008). the decline is steepest around age 18 years, with the exception that certain physical activities such as jogging alone, cycling, and some organized sports tend to strongly track across this stage of life (kjønniksen et al., 2008). approximately one-third of emerging adults engage in no leisure-time physical activity (barnes, 2007; pleis, lucas, & ward, 2009). given that emerging adulthood is characterized by shifting values and goals, it would not be surprising if physical activity motivation was also shown to shift during emerging adulthood. it may be that whereas physical activity is regulated by intrinsic motivation at younger ages (weiss, 2000), physical activity may be more regulated by extrinsic motivation (e.g., improving appearance, weight loss) in emerging adults. additionally, emerging adults may be faced with more barriers to physical activity than were present at an earlier age. the commonly listed barriers of a lack of time, energy, or motivation may be especially relevant during emerging adulthood when individuals are taking on many other responsibilities and priorities (brownson et al., 2001). in addition to shifts in motivation, physical activity may decline during emerging adulthood due to disrupted habits, as research has shown that habits regulate physical activity (gardner, de bruijn, & lally, 2011; verplanken & melkevik, 2008). habits are automatic behavioral responses to contextual cues (e.g., exercising every day after high school), so when transitions occur in which contextual cues are displaced (e.g., graduating high school), habits may be displaced and physical activity levels suffer. 2.3.2 wellbeing emerging adulthood is characterized by a sharp decline in wellbeing (carstensen et al., 2011; stone, schwartz, broderick, & deaton, 2010). both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have shown that people have fewer positive emotional experiences during emerging adulthood than during adulthood (carstensen et al., 2011). satisfaction with life steeply declines in emerging adulthood from rates that are not recovered again until older age (stone et al., 2010). at a time of life that should be full of excitement and vitality, emerging adulthood is characterized by typically low positive affect and declines in satisfaction with life. low levels of positive affect may be the result of an inability to regulate the multitude of emotional experiences that can occur at this age (carstensen et al., 2011). also, emerging adults are still developing effective emotional regulation skills and can be faced with an onslaught of hardships related to accepting responsibility, making major life decisions, and becoming financially independent (arnett, 2000). additionally, the socioemotional selectivity theory proposes that people experience less positive emotions at this early stage of adulthood because time is perceived as open-ended, so knowledge-attaining goals are prioritized over emotional enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 goals (carstensen, isaacowitz, & charles, 1999). satisfaction with life may also decrease during emerging adulthood because of the risks associated with exploration. failed career, scholarly, or romantic efforts may lead to discouragement and dissatisfaction with life. emerging adulthood is a time of development and growth; unfortunately, it seems that these challenges may have detrimental consequences for wellbeing. 2.3.3 physical activity and wellbeing one study found that when emerging adults participated in more physical activity than typical, their satisfaction with life was also higher than usual (maher et al., 2012). another study found that emerging adults who were more physically active tended to experience more pleasantactivated feelings (e.g., excitement, happiness) than emerging adults who were less active; and that when emerging adults were more physically active than was typical for them, they experienced more pleasant-activated feelings (hyde, conroy, pincus, & ram, 2011). studies have also linked physical activity to increases in positive affect in emerging adults (mcintyre & watson, 1990; watson, 1988). primarily, research on physical activity and wellbeing in emerging adulthood has focused on college students; therefore the results cannot be generalized to the ‚forgotten half‛ of emerging adults who do not attend college (halperin, 2001). 2.4 adulthood (26–65 years) 2.4.1 physical activity the decline in physical activity seen in adolescence and emerging adulthood levels off in adulthood and physical activity levels remain relatively stable at a low level until gradually declining again nearing the transition to older age (caspersen et al., 2000; troiano et al., 2008; tucker, welk, & beyler, 2011). at the start of adulthood, 32% of adults report engaging in no leisure time physical activity, and this number increases to around 40% at the conclusion of adulthood (barnes, 2007; tucker et al., 2011). directly-measured physical activity data show that fewer than 5% of adults are participating in an average of 30 minutes of physical activity per day (troiano et al., 2008). physical activity may be deprioritized during adulthood. initiatives for being physically active are oftentimes self-oriented (e.g., i want to be healthier, lose weight, or have fun); such goals are typically displaced by more family-oriented goals (e.g., i want to raise healthy children, financially support my family, or be a good spouse) during adulthood (nurmi, 1992). when physical activity is perceived as less important than other responsibilities, it is compromised as a result of lack of time and resources. indeed, lack of time and energy are the primary barriers to physical activity reported by adults (brownson et al., 2001). the typically low levels of physical activity characteristic of adulthood may be stable during adulthood because daily life tends to be more regularly structured than during other life stages so habits are likely to be developed and sustained (verplanken & wood, 2006; wood & neal, 2007). priorities and habits in adulthood are typically not correspondent with high levels of physical activity, which may explain why stable low physical activity levels are present in this life stage. 2.4.2 wellbeing adults tend to have a stronger preponderance of positive affect than do emerging adults and this positive trend continues throughout adulthood (carstensen et al., 2011; carstensen, pasupathi, mayr, & nesselroade, 2000; charles, reynolds, & gatz, 2001; diener & diener, 1996). enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 the preponderance of positive affect is a result of there being less negative affect, rather than just an increase of positive affect. there are mixed results concerning the exact trajectory of satisfaction with life across adulthood. an assortment of studies has shown that satisfaction with life decreases, increases, or is stable across adulthood (diener & suh, 1997; herzog & rodgers, 1981; horley & lavery, 1995; lang & heckhausen, 2001; mroczek & spiro, 2005; prenda & lachman, 2001; stone et al., 2010). as evidenced from the disparate findings of these studies, the trajectory of satisfaction with life is unclear. it may be that satisfaction with life varies more between-persons in adulthood than in other life stages. fortunately, the majority of adults are happy and satisfied with life (diener & diener, 1996; diener et al., 1999). the positive shift in trajectory of wellbeing that occurs in adulthood is proposed to be a result of motivational and emotion regulation developmental changes. the socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that as they age, adults begin to perceive time as limited and shift motivational focus from knowledge acquisition goals to emotional goals (carstensen et al., 2011, 1999). as a result, adults start avoiding situations that likely result in negative emotional experiences and rather focus on the people and scenarios that tend to lead to more positive emotional experiences. additionally, there is evidence to suggest that adults use more effective emotional regulation strategies than emerging adults (john & gross, 2004). adults may regulate emotions more by changing the way they think about situations and less by changing the way they act than emerging adults. emotion regulation develops in adaptive ways in adulthood, which leads to better wellbeing; however, there is growing research in recent years showing that stress reactivity and mood instability increase with age (sliwinski, almeida, smyth, & stawski, 2009). this research suggests that the observed increase in positivity of affect present in adulthood is due to adjusting goals or expectations and avoiding stressful situations rather than the result of better emotional regulation. 2.4.3 physical activity and wellbeing physical activity has been shown to predict positive affect in survey (stephens, 1988), intervention (reed & buck, 2009; reed & ones, 2006), and experience sampling (gauvin, rejeski, & norris, 1996; hyde, conroy, pincus, & ram, 2011) studies. most adult studies on physical activity and satisfaction with life have focused on subpopulations such as cancer patients and survivors and middle-aged women (e.g., courneya & friedenreich, 1999; elavsky & mcauley, 2005). for example, elavsky and mcauley (2005) studied perimenopausal and post-menopausal women and found that the relation between physical activity and life satisfaction was mediated by physical self-worth and menopausal symptoms. future research on broader populations of adults is necessary to generalize these results to a wider range of adults. 2.5 old age (65 years and older) 2.5.1 physical activity although some data indicate possible increases in self-reported physical activity in those 65 years and older (caspersen et al., 2000), negative trends in physical activity participation are corroborated by objective surveillance data (davis & fox, 2006; troiano et al., 2008). one such study estimated that older adults (m age = 76 years) average about two-thirds of the estimated physical activity energy expenditure and perform half as many minutes of moderate physical activity as younger adults (m age = 27 years; davis & fox, 2006). these trends continue across old age with an increasing proportion of older adults engaging in no leisure time physical enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 activity (e.g., 65–74 years or ‚young old‛ at 46% versus 75+ or ‚middle/old old‛ years at 56%), less moderate and vigorous physical activity (26% & 18% versus 15% & 8% for moderate and vigorous physical activity for ‚young old‛ and ‚middle/old old‛, respectively), and fewer older adults meeting current physical activity guidelines with advancing age (pleis et al., 2009; tucker et al., 2011). overall, nearly 52% of older adults report engaging in no leisure-time physical activity (barnes, 2007). there are motivational changes in terms of what drives older adults to adopt or maintain physical activity. older adults are less likely to be motivated by appearance or body image than young adults (brunet & sabiston, 2011) and instead choose to stay active to maintain their physical and mental health, functional independence, and for social benefits (belza et al., 2004; cohen-mansfield, marx, biddison, & guralnik, 2004). additionally, health problems and functional limitations present barriers to physical activity participation for many older adults that were not present in younger age (belza et al., 2004; brawley, rejeski, & king, 2003; cohenmansfield et al., 2004; schutzer & graves, 2004). older adults report walking as their activity of choice (belza et al., 2004) and self-report averaging approximately 3.6 hours of walking per week (salmon, owen, crawford, bauman, & sallis, 2003). it may be that preferred less intense physical activity, such as walking, replaces more vigorous physical activities that were performed during younger age, so that less energy is expended in old age. changes in motivation, abilities (actual and perceived), and preferences may help explain the decline of physical activity present in old age. 2.5.2 wellbeing although both young and old adults have expectations that they will become less happy as they age, cross-sectional comparisons show a tendency for older people to report more happiness (lacey, smith, & ubel, 2006) and more positivity of affect (carstensen et al., 2011, 2000; gross et al., 1997) than their younger counterparts. the increase in positivity drops off at age 60, suggesting there may be a point in the lifespan where affect stops becoming more positive, and instead stabilizes or even declines (carstensen et al., 2011; charles et al., 2001). the decrease in positivity of affect in older years, however, does not compare in magnitude to the increase in positivity that occurred in adulthood. although there is some evidence that life satisfaction increases in a linear fashion with age (prenda & lachman, 2001), other studies show that satisfaction with life peaks in midlife (lang & heckhausen, 2001) or between age 65 and 70, gradually decreasing thereafter (mroczek & spiro, 2005). shifts in motivation and emotion regulation may help explain the enhancement of wellbeing seen in old age. older adults show more flexibility in adjusting goals than younger adults and regulate goals with the primary purpose of avoiding losses as opposed to striving for gains (heckhausen, wrosch, & schulz, 2010; heckhausen, 1997). namely, older adults are more likely to disengage from unobtainable or unrealistic goals and are more likely to adopt more age-appropriate goals. compared to younger adults, older adults are also more likely to view themselves as healthier or more exceptional when compared to others (heckhausen, 1997). these adaptive tendencies help older adults optimize their development by protecting their self-esteem and motivational resources from the negative impact of failure or loss experiences (heckhausen et al., 2010). the constraints on time horizons in old age (i.e., perceived limits on future time) may also continue to shift motivation towards regulation of emotional states (e.g., appreciating life or being happy) over other types of goals (carstensen et al., 1999). these motivational shifts are likely to have implications for wellbeing in old age. enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 2.5.3 physical activity and wellbeing cross-sectional and longitudinal data indicate that physical activity indirectly enhances satisfaction with life in old age through its influence on affect, mental health, and self-efficacy (elavsky et al., 2005; mcauley et al., 2006). for example, mcauley and colleagues (2006) showed that greater amounts of physical activity were associated with greater self-efficacy, which was associated with more positive physical and mental health. in turn, health status was positively related to satisfaction with life. elavsky and colleagues (2005) found that self-efficacy and positive affect were significant mediators of the association between physical activity and wellbeing (i.e. global quality of life) at a 1-year follow-up of a physical activity intervention for older adults, and that changes in positive affect mediated this relation across an additional four years of follow-up. 2.6 summary based on the current literature, it seems that the highest levels of physical activity seem to occur in childhood, followed by a steep drop-off in adolescence, continued decline in emerging adulthood, stabilization in adulthood, and another drop-off in old age (see figure 1). in contrast, wellbeing seems to start high in childhood, drop-off throughout adolescence, emerging adulthood, and adulthood, increase in old age, and gradually decline in the oldest age (see figure 2 below). although physical activity has been shown to be linked to wellbeing at different ages, little is understood about how the link between physical activity and wellbeing changes across life stages. figure 1. a representative schematic of how physical activity changes across the lifespan including how individual differences (sex), life events (first child), and daily changes may impact the trajectory enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 figure 2. a representative schematic of how wellbeing changes across the lifespan including how individual differences (extraversion), life events (widowhood), and daily changes may impact the trajectory 3. interpersonal and intrapersonal differences it is important to note that the trajectory of physical activity and wellbeing across the lifespan is oversimplified when considered as general trends (baltes et al., 1980; baltes, 1987; nesselroade & ram, 2004; ram & gerstorf, 2009). taking a lifespan perspective also includes considering how physical activity and wellbeing vary at interpersonal and intrapersonal levels, and how these differences can vary across life stages. following, we will discuss how individual differences, life events, and daily changes may impact trajectories of physical activity and wellbeing. examples of each are also depicted in figures 1 and 2 (see appendices). 3.1 physical activity strong evidence suggests that physical activity varies systematically as a function of certain individual differences. for example, people who are more extraverted and less neurotic tend to participate in more physical activity than their counterparts (rhodes & smith, 2006). additionally, males are typically more physically active than females across the lifespan (caspersen et al., 2000; sallis et al., 2000; trost, pate, et al., 2002). physical activity also varies on an intrapersonal level. studies with repeated assessments of physical activity tend to show that half of the variability in physical activity is attributable to intrapersonal change (conroy, elavsky, hyde, & doerksen, 2011; hyde et al., 2011; matthews, ainsworth, thompson, & bassett, 2002). beyond intrapersonal changes in physical activity across life stages, physical activity also changes in accordance with major life events. for example, getting married or having a first child tends to decrease physical activity participation levels (brown & trost, 2003). enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 intrapersonal variability of physical activity is also present on shorter time scales. for example, intrapersonal fluctuations in physical activity has been shown to systematically vary between weekdays and weekends (e.g., conroy et al., 2011; matthews et al., 2002; trost, pate, freedson, sallis, & taylor, 2000). differences between people, major life-changing events, and minor differences between days can impact physical activity participation. 3.2 wellbeing not surprisingly, some people are happier and more satisfied with their lives than others. some variability in wellbeing is heritable through a temperamental predisposition for positivity and satisfaction with life (diener et al., 1999). other interpersonal variability is attributable to traits. several studies show that people who are more extraverted and less neurotic tend to have higher wellbeing than their counterparts (costa & mccrae, 1980; diener et al., 1999; hayes & joseph, 2003; huebner, 1991; larsen & ketelaar, 1991). additionally, life events such as getting married, having children, or widowhood have been shown to greatly impact wellbeing (clark & oswald, 2002). most studies have focused on explaining interpersonal differences in wellbeing, but positivity and satisfaction with life have been shown to vary at an intrapersonal level (fujita & diener, 2005; heller, watson, & ilies, 2006; hyde et al., 2011; maher et al., 2012; röcke, li, & smith, 2009; suh, diener, & fujita, 1996; watson, 1988). most repeated assessment studies found that intrapersonal fluctuations account for more than half of the variability in positivity and satisfaction with life. we have addressed intrapersonal changes in wellbeing across life stages, but wellbeing also systematically varies as a function of certain major life events. for example, marriage and widowhood lead to increases and decreases in wellbeing, respectively (diener, 2000; gove & shin, 1989; winter, lawton, casten, & sando, 1999). changes in wellbeing can also be the result of more minor events. greater social activity, higher physical health, and less perceived stress are related to high fluctuations in wellbeing (bolger, delongis, kessler, & schilling, 1989; mroczek & spiro, 2005; watson, 1988). importantly, the amount by which wellbeing fluctuates at an intrapersonal level can depend on life stage. for example, older adults tend to have less variability in positive and negative affect than young adults (röcke et al., 2009). similar to physical activity, wellbeing differs between people, and across the lifespan, major life stages, and days. 4. gaps in the literature this brief review has highlighted several gaps within the literature that need to be addressed. these gaps include (1) descriptions of wellbeing in childhood, (2) tests of links between physical activity and wellbeing in childhood, (3) tests of links between physical activity and preponderance of positive affect in adolescence, (4) tests of links between physical activity and satisfaction with life in general adults (i.e., not subpopulations), (5) longitudinal and experimental studies tracking the magnitude and underlying mechanisms of the relation between physical activity and wellbeing across the entire lifespan, and (6) tests of the impact of individual differences and life events on the link between physical activity and wellbeing at different life stages. 5. conclusions people’s affect, behaviors, and cognitions change across life stages and it is likely that these changes (ultimately reflected in changing motivations, behavioral choices, and affective enhancing our understanding of physical activity and wellbeing with a lifespan perspective hyde, maher, & elavsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 regulation) will have notable impact on the processes connecting physical activity and wellbeing. little is known about how the link between physical activity and wellbeing changes across the lifespan, and even less is understood about causality and underlying mechanisms of this relation. we look forward to research that takes on a lifespan perspective to fill these gaps in physical activity and wellbeing literature. additionally, this review should serve as an example of how other wellbeing research could benefit from implementing a lifespan perspective. authors amanda l. hyde pennsylvania state university alh379@psu.edu jaclyn p. maher pennsylvania state university steriani elavsky pennsylvania state university publishing timeline received 10 october 2012 accepted 9 january 2013 published 7 march 2013 references arent, s. m., landers, d. m., & etnier, j. l. 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(2015). mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation among workers. international journal of wellbeing, 5(4), 96-119. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i4.444 simon grégoire université du québec à montréal gregoire.simon@uqam.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 article mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation among workers simon grégoire · lise lachance · geneviève taylor abstract: few studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between mindfulness training and emotion regulation at work. this study reports results from a semi-randomized controlled trial of a brief mindfulness-based intervention (mbi) (grégoire & lachance, 2015) delivered in audio format. a pretest-posttest switching-replication design was used to assess changes in mindfulness, mental health (psychological wellbeing, psychological distress, stress and burnout) and emotion regulation (emotion awareness and impulse control) among forty-one (n = 41) employees working in a call center. data was collected using self-report questionnaires at baseline (t1), week 6 (t2), week 11 (t3) and week 25 (t4) in order to have a follow-up measure. both the analysis of variance and the prediction analysis showed that the intervention helped increased mindfulness and psychological wellbeing, but also reduced psychological distress, stress and burnout among employees. overall, the intervention helped employees refrain from impulsive or reactive behavior when experiencing negative emotions but had no significant effect on their emotional awareness. finally, there was a trend toward emotion regulation mediating the effects of the intervention on psychological distress. keywords: mindfulness, mental health, emotion regulation, intervention, workplace 1. introduction call centers can be stressful work environments (de cia et al., 2012). research shows that there is significantly more stress in call centers than in other work environments (15% vs 11% respectively; the shepell·fgi research group, 2008) and that many call center agents experience either mild (39.4%) or severe (8.3%) psychological distress symptoms (charbotel et al., 2009). call center agents also face great emotional demands (grebner et al., 2003). according to a survey conducted by the shepell·fgi research group (2010), over 40% of call center agents deal with angry clients every day. they are often victims of verbal aggression from clients or find themselves in a state of emotional dissonance, for instance, they have to maintain a professional, helpful and caring attitude while feeling angry, sad or diminished. such emotional labor may in part explain why there are significantly more emotional problems, such as anxiety and depression, in call centers than in other workplaces (19% vs 15%; the shepell·fgi research group). these statistics indicate that there is a need for interventions that could help promote mental health and the use of effective emotion regulation strategies among call center employees. the aim of the present study was to assess the efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention (mbi) recently developed by grégoire and lachance (2015). the authors have shown that this intervention helps to reduce psychological distress among call center employees. this study extends their work in four important ways. first, the efficacy of their intervention was assessed using both positive (psychological wellbeing) and negative (psychological distress, stress and mailto:gregoire.simon@uqam.ca http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 burnout) mental health indicators. according to a growing number of researchers, mental health measures should not only include manifestations of psychological distress but manifestations of psychological wellbeing as well (massé et al., 1998). secondly, this study explores the effect of grégoire and lachance’s (2015) intervention on two critical emotion regulation abilities among call center employees (i.e., emotion awareness and impulse control). it has been shown that the extent to which these employees are aware of their own emotions (as well as those of their clients) and refrain from impulsive or reactive behavior when experiencing negative emotions positively affects both their performance (nel & de villiers, 2004; shamsuddin & rahman, 2014) and their job satisfaction (çekmecelioğlu, günsel, & ulutaş, 2012). in this study, a mediating framework was tested in which the effects of the intervention on call center employees’ mental health would depend on how they regulated their emotions. although promising studies have been conducted recently on the role of mindfulness for emotion regulation at work (hülsheger, alberts, feinholdt, & lang, 2013), research in this field is still scarce (glomb, duffy, bono, & yang, 2011). third, the effects of the intervention developed by grégoire and lachance (2015) were assessed using a three months follow-up period. as noted by virgili (2013), the longer-term impact of mbis in the workplace are rarely assessed. fourth, compared to grégoire and lachance’s (2015) original study, the current research took into account employees’ compliance with the intervention. according to goyal et al. (2014), it is important to control for this variable since participants’ level of engagement in mbis may moderate their effectiveness. the background behind these goals is elaborated next. 2. mindfulness and mental health lately, various mbi’s (cullen, 2011) have been integrated in the workplace as part of mental health prevention initiatives (escuriex & labbé, 2011; irving, dobkin, & park, 2009; virgili, 2013). mindfulness is usually defined as the act of “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (kabat-zinn, 1994, p. 4). mbis are structured group interventions aimed at helping people cultivate mindfulness; they integrate ancient buddhist as well as modern clinical practices (keng, smoski, & robins, 2011). these interventions rely on various meditation techniques, either as a stand-alone intervention or combined with existing psychological interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (chambers, gullone, & allen, 2009). in mbis, participants are trained to consciously keep their attention and awareness focused on whatever is present (breath, thoughts, emotions, etc.), without fixating on any particular part of that experience or engaging in any secondary processing. they are encouraged to observe their mental phenomena as they manifest while noting any tendency to evaluate or appraise, and to consciously avoid engaging in these processes (chambers et al., 2009). the goal is to develop the ability to calmly step back from thoughts and feelings during stressful situations, rather than engage in anxious worry or other negative thinking patterns that might otherwise escalate into a cycle of stress reactivity (bishop, 2002). originally developed in clinical settings, mbis such as the mindfulness-based stress reduction program (mbsr; kabat-zinn, 1990), acceptance and commitment therapy1 (act; hayes, strosahl, & wilson, 1999) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (mbct; segal, williams, & teasdale, 2002) have been implemented lately in workplaces such as schools (flook, goldberg, pinger, bonus, & davidson, 2013; roeser et al., 2013), hospitals (bazarko, cate, azocar, & kreitzer, 2013; mackenzie, poulin, & seidman-carlson, 2006), telecommunications companies (bond & bunce, 2000) and call centers (walach et al., 2007). adaptations of these mbis have also 1 the term “training” rather than “therapy” is usually used in work settings. mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 been proposed where the form, content and overall duration of training were slightly adjusted in order to fit specific work environments. for example, brief (klatt, buckworth, & malarkey, 2009; mackenzie et al., 2006), on-line (malarkey, jarjoura, & klatt, 2013) and audio (grégoire & lachance, 2015) versions of mbis have been recently introduced in organizations. a growing amount of evidence suggests that mbis implemented in the workplace help reduce stress (bazarko et al., 2013; geary & rosenthal, 2011; gold et al., 2010; klatt et al., 2009; pipe et al., 2009; roeser et al., 2013; roeser, skinner, beers, & jennings, 2012; shapiro, astin, bishop, & cordova, 2005; walach et al., 2007; wolever et al., 2012), anxiety (gold et al., 2010; ruths et al., 2013), depression (bond & bunce, 2000; gold et al., 2010; hayes et al., 2004), burnout (bazarko et al., 2013; cohen-katz, 2004; flook et al., 2013; galantino, baime, maguire, szapary, & farrar, 2005; goodman & schorling, 2012; krasner et al., 2009; mackenzie et al., 2006; martín, rodríguez, pujol-ribera, berenguera, & moix queraltó, 2013; roeser et al., 2013; shapiro et al., 2005), negative affect (galantino et al., 2005), and psychological distress (franco, mañas, cangas, moreno, & gallego, 2010; shapiro et al., 2005). in a recent meta-analysis including 19 controlled and uncontrolled intervention studies, virgili (2013) showed that mbis had a robust medium– large effect on employees’ psychological distress. the overall within-group (pre–post) effect was hedges's g = .68 (95 % ci [.58, .78]), while the posttreatment between-group effect size for mbi compared with an inactive control was hedges's g =.68 (95 % ci [.48, .88]). correlational studies conducted in organizations corroborate these results and indicate that mindfulness is negatively related to the number of sick-leave days and medical treatment utilization (dahl, wilson, & nilsson, 2004), burnout (abdool karrim ismail, coetzee, du toit, rudolph, & joubert, 2013; reb, narayanan, & ho, 2013), negative affect, sleep related impairment, daily physical symptoms and perceived stress (abenavoli, jennings, greenberg, harris, & katz, 2013). taken together, these studies suggest that mbis represents a valuable way to reduce negative mental health outcomes such as psychological distress. however, their impact on positive outcomes remains unclear despite the fact that mental health and, conversely, mental ill-health, are usually conceptualized as a spectrum ranging from ‘positive mental wellbeing’ to mental illhealth and clinical problems (hassard, cox, murawski, & demeyer, 2011). goyal et al., (2014) noted that few mindfulness studies include wellbeing indicators. based on the randomized controlled trials they reviewed to test the efficacy of mbis within clinical populations, they concluded that although positive outcomes are a key focus of meditative practices, most trials did not include positive outcomes such as wellbeing, either as primary or secondary outcomes. moreover, it remains unclear whether or not the effect of mbis last over time. in their metaanalysis, virgili (2013) noted that only 6 studies (out of 19) included follow-up and that the length of these follow-ups was rather short (8.3 weeks on average). he concluded that at this point, we still do not know much about the long-term effectiveness of mbis. what also remains unclear are the variables that moderate or mediate the relationship between mindfulness training and mental health (baer, 2010). various authors have pointed out that participants’ level of engagement or compliance during mbis may influence the impact of this type of intervention (goyal et al., 2014). others argue that the effect of these interventions on mental health depends, at least in part, on its effects on employees’ emotion regulation (glomb et al., 2011; hülsheger et al., 2013). 3. mindfulness and emotion regulation emotion regulation can be defined as the ability to regulate one’s own emotions and emotional responses (gross, 1998). it is usually assumed that adaptive emotion regulation promotes mental health and adaptive functioning, while emotional dysregulation is part of many disorders such as depression and anxiety (chambers et al., 2009). according to a growing number of authors, mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 mindfulness training may promote emotion regulation. for example, shapiro, carlson, astin and freedman (2006) argue that through a process called reperceiving, people gradually develop, throughout their mindfulness training, the ability to observe their thoughts and feelings from a distance and see them as temporary events in the mind that do not necessitate particular responses, rather than as reflections of the self that are necessarily true or important. by learning to intentionally focus nonjudgmental attention on the contents of their mind, they begin to strengthen what hayes, strosahl, and wilson (2011) call their “observing self”. shapiro et al. (2006) argue that this particular shift in perspective brings clarity, objectivity, and equanimity, which in turn, promotes better emotion regulation. in their model, mindfulness training is conceptualized as a response-focused type of regulation that focuses on changing a person’s relationship to his or her emotions rather than the nature of the emotions themselves (chambers et al., 2009). others maintain that mindfulness training promotes emotion regulation by improving self-control or executive control (friese, messner, & schaffner, 2012; muraven & baumeister, 2000). for instance, teper, segal and inzlicht (2013) argue that when mindful, people are more aware of their interoceptive signals, which give them precious insights about their body’s affective responses to events. when such visceral sensations signal conflict between current behavior and a goal state, they are able to recognize it and mobilize self-regulatory resources, thereby avoiding the rumination that often ensues. for instance, if someone is able to focus on the bodily sensations of anger (e.g., rapid breathing), he or she can quickly recognize that control is needed. teper et al. (2013) also argue that when mindful, people are in a better position to accept and respond efficiently to affective signals that are vital in initiating adaptive behavior (i.e., regulation) instead of elaborating on them or suppressing them. in other words, the authors maintained that “people who are able to feel and accept the initial pang of affect will also be able to quickly mobilize the necessary regulatory resources, minimizing the negative consequences associated with full-blown emotional reactions” (teper et al., 2013, p. 452). the shapiro et al. (2006) and teper et al. (2013) models both suggest that mindfulness may be especially helpful for developing emotional awareness (erisman & roemer, 2010) and impulse control (feldman, greeson, & senville, 2010). emotional awareness is defined as the extent to which people are aware of emotions in both themselves and others (ciarrochi, caputi, & mayer, 2003) while impulse control is the ability to refrain from impulsive or reactive behavior when experiencing negative emotions (gratz & roemer, 2004). these are critical abilities for call center agents as they have to interact with clients and customers on a regular basis and face many emotional demands (grebner et al., 2003; shamsuddin & rahman, 2014). in fact, these employees sometimes get insulted or have to deal with clients’ impatience, anger or frustration, which elicits all kind of emotions in them. by learning to develop a more mindful stance and reperceive their emotional experiences (shapiro et al., 2006), call center employees may come to manage even complicated and confusing emotions with more clarity while interacting with their clients (erisman & roemer, 2010). as suggested by teper et al. (2013), they may recognize subtle changes in their affective states more easily and notice specific information related to their emotions, such as their origin or their consequences (hill & updegraff, 2012). they may also learn to respond to their emotions with greater self-control, flexibility and equanimity instead of reacting to them in an impulsive, automatic or rigid way (masicampo & baumeister, 2007; shapiro et al., 2006). these ideas have recently received empirical support outside organizational settings. in an experience-sampling study, for instance, hill and updegraff (2012) asked undergraduate students to report their current emotional experiences six times per day throughout the course of one week on a palm pilot device. they found that self-reported mindfulness was positively mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 related to emotional awareness (as measured by the ability to describe subtle differences between discrete emotions) and negatively related to emotion reactivity (as measured by less emotion liability for both negative and positive emotions). in a series of correlational studies, fetterman, robinson, ode and gordon (2010) found self-reported mindfulness to be positively related to self-control and negatively related to impulsivity, while baer, smith and allen (2004) found that it was associated with attention to feelings and with clarity of feelings. in a laboratory study, feldman et al. (2010) asked undergraduate students to go through a short (15 minutes) audio mindfulness meditation training. the authors found the training to be helpful at reducing reactivity to repetitive thoughts. in other words, participants were more likely to experience ruminative thoughts and emotions without becoming emotionally distressed by them. considering that emotion regulation is a critical ingredient of mental health (chambers et al., 2009) and that preliminary evidence suggests that mindfulness training helps promote emotional awareness and impulse control (baer et al., 2004; feldman et al., 2010; fetterman et al., 2010), we argue that the effects of the intervention developed by grégoire and lachance (2015) on employee’s mental health should be mediated by their impact on these two emotional strategies. throughout their mindfulness training, employees may gain more emotional awareness and control, which in turn, may positively affect their mental health. this mediation framework is in part supported by two studies recently conducted by hülsheger et al. (2013). the authors conducted a diary as well as an experimental field study in order to explore the relationship between mindfulness and surface acting, a common emotion regulation strategy among employees working in emotionally demanding jobs (e.g., employees interacting with aggressive or unpleasant clients). surface acting aims at altering the outward emotional expression without changing the actual feeling. it involves suppressing negative and faking positive emotional expressions for jobs holding positive emotional display rules (grandey, 2000). although often encouraged and supported in organizations, this strategy undermines employees’ well-being and increases their emotional exhaustion, partly because it is effortful and depletes mental resources (hülsheger et al., 2013). in their studies, hülsheger et al. (2013) found mindfulness to be helpful at reducing the use of surface acting among employees working in a broad range of service jobs, which, in turn, reduced their emotional exhaustion. 4. objectives and hypotheses of the study the aim of this study was to assess the effect of a mbi developed by grégoire and lachance (2015) on three outcomes: mindfulness, emotion regulation and mental health. the latter was operationalized with positive (i.e., psychological wellbeing) and negative (i.e., psychological distress, stress and burnout) indicators according to goyal et al.'s (2014) recommendation. psychological wellbeing is a state characterized by happiness, mental balance or social involvement, while psychological distress is defined as an emotional suffering characterized by symptoms such as irritability, depression, anxiety and self-depreciation (massé et al., 1998). stress refers to the emotional and physiological reactions experienced when a person confronts a situation in which the demands go beyond his or her coping resources (lazarus & folkman, 1984). burnout is a chronic stress reaction and can be defined as an affective state characterized by depletion of physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and cognitive weariness (shirom, 1989). based on past literature, the following hypotheses were formulated: hypothesis 1: mindfulness will increase from pre to post-intervention; hypothesis 2: mental health will increase from pre to post-intervention (psychological wellbeing will increase while psychological distress, stress and burnout will decrease); mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 hypothesis 3: emotional awareness and impulse control will increase from pre to postintervention; hypothesis 4: the effects of the intervention on mental health will be mediated by change in both emotional awareness and impulse control. 5. method 5.1 participants the intervention described below was presented to one hundred and twenty five (n = 125) employees working in the call center of a large not-for-profit organization in canada offering automotive, travel, residential and financial services and products. seventy-one employees (n = 71) chose to take part in the intervention on a voluntary basis, with an overall response rate of 56.8%, which is typical for studies in the organizational field (baruch & holtom, 2008). since thirty participants did not complete all four questionnaires included in this study, the analyses were conducted on a sample of forty-one employees (n = 41). chi-square and independent sample t-tests revealed no significant gender and age differences or differences regarding the outcome variables under study between employees who completed the study and those who did not. sample sizes at each time of assessment are presented in table 1 below. table 1. pretest-posttest control group design with switching-replication t1 n=71 t2 n=59 t3 n=45 t4 n=41 w1 w2 w3 w4 w5 w6 w7 w8 w9 w10 w11 w25 gr. 1 ○ x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 ○ ○ ○ gr. 2 ○ ○ x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 ○ ○ note. t = times of measurement; gr = semi-randomized groups; w = weeks; x = interventions; o = data collection over half of the employees who took part in this study were women (58.5%). ninety percent (90%) of the participants were call center agents, while the others were managers. the mean age was 36.1 years, with an age range of 22 to 61 years. employees received no monetary compensation or other kinds of incentives for taking part in this study. 5.2 description of the intervention the five-week intervention used in this study has been described in detail elsewhere (grégoire & lachance, 2015). every day, for five consecutive weeks, employees were guided through a 10minute audio meditation session in the morning, before beginning their work, and an additional 5-minute audio session immediately after lunch. all guided meditation sessions were created and recorded by a shambhala buddhist nun with more than 15 years of experience in teaching mindfulness meditation. the sessions covered five different themes: attention to body sensations (week 1), attention to the breath (week 2), attention to sounds and silence (week 3), attention to emotions (week 4) and awakening confidence (week 5). although this secular intervention is based on common processes usually used in mbis (i.e., attention and awareness, acceptance and openness, decentering), it also has its own particularities. in regard to its form, this intervention could certainly be described as a low-dose (or brief) mbi as it relies on slightly more than six hours of training. in comparison, typical mbsr protocols range from twenty to thirty hours of mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 training and participants are encouraged to practice meditation at home for 45 minutes per day, six days a week. this intervention can also be described as a self-help intervention, since it is mostly delivered in audio format and employees do not have much interaction with their instructor or other members of a group (see the procedure section below) (cavanagh, strauss, forder, & jones, 2014). in terms of content, this intervention relies on basic meditation instructions and concrete tips on how to be more mindful of body sensations or emotions, for instance. the sessions were built so that the instructor would teach basic skills (usually during the morning session) and then encourage employees to practice these skills (typically in the afternoon session). it is important to emphasize that the aim of this intervention is to initiate employees to mindfulness meditation in a convenient and flexible way and help them integrate attention and awareness into their workdays. this intervention does not have the depth or the complexity of traditional mbis such as mbsr or act and was not put forward to replace any of these interventions. the guided meditation sessions were integrated into the employees’ regular work schedule. they were uploaded in mp3 format on an internal server or on portable media players. therefore, employees were able to listen to their meditation sessions either at their workstation with a headset or in a training room dedicated to the project with a portable media player. in both cases, precautions were taken to make sure the employees were undisturbed during the sessions. for example, when at their workstation, they were asked to turn off their computer screen or move their chair away from it and close their eyes while listening to the audio sessions. there were also given a please do not disturb sign, which they could hang on their office door or put on their desk when listening to a session. when in the training room, employees were encouraged to sit on a chair and face the wall to avoid any potential distractions. they were also asked to remain quiet and not to disturb their colleagues. since call centers can be noisy, most employees (78%) chose to listen to their guided meditations inside the training room. 5.3 research design the intervention was assessed using a pretest-posttest control group switching replication design (trochim & donnelly, 2007), which means that during the first portion of the study, group 1 acted as the intervention group while group 2 acted as the control. during the second portion, the intervention was repeated and the roles were switched: group 1 became the control group while group 2 became the intervention group. for members of group 1, the meditation sessions were made available at t1, while for group 2, they were made available at t2 (see table 1 above). to randomly assign participants to either group 1 or 2 and create groups of similar sizes, the random function in excel was used to generate a number for each participant. the employees with odd numbers were then assigned to group 1 while those with even numbers were assigned to group 2. among the seventy-one employees interested by the intervention, four were not able to take part in their allocated group as they had vacations or other requirements that were already scheduled. therefore, groups could not be fully randomized and had to be slightly adjusted to accommodate these employees. thirty-nine participants were assigned to group 1 (n = 39) while thirty-six were assigned to group 2 (n = 32). as previously mentioned, a total of forty-one employees (n = 41) completed the intervention and filled out all questionnaires. of these, twenty-six employees were part of group 1 (n = 26), and fifteen employees were part of group 2 (n = 15). mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 5.4 procedure the study lasted twenty-five weeks and was held from march to september 2013. first, an e-mail in which the intervention was briefly presented was sent to all employees working in the call center. the intervention was presented as an initiative to promote mental health in the workplace and reduce occupational stress. those wanting to know more about this initiative were invited to take part in a one-hour information session held during regular work hours. because it was impossible to meet all employees at once, six information sessions of about 10 employees were held. the goal of these sessions was to explain the aim and format of the intervention, but also to give the participants basic information on what mindfulness is, and why it is important to adopt a mindful stance at work. the sessions were held by the first author of this study, the buddhist nun introduced earlier, and the managers responsible for the project. employees interested in the intervention were invited to fill out a questionnaire immediately after these sessions (first assessment, t1). the other assessments were completed at week 6 (t2), week 11(t3) and week 25 (t4) (see table 1 above). the groups were created after this information session. an additional session was also set up at the beginning of week 5 for group 1 and week 10 for group 2 (see table 1 above). this one-hour meeting was led by the buddhist nun and was intended to provide the participants with additional training on how to be more attentive to their emotions at work, as a complement to the audio sessions. for instance, employees were encouraged to conceptualize their emotions as impermanent mental events and observe them come and go without trying to act upon them. the aim of this meeting was also to connect with employees and answer any questions they had regarding their mindfulness practice. 5.5 measures demographic variables were assessed at t1. employees were asked to report their age, gender and job title. the other variables were assessed at all four data-collection time points (t1, t2, t3 and t4). mindfulness was assessed using the mindfulness attention awareness scale (maas; brown & ryan, 2003; jermann et al., 2009). the maas uses 15 items where participants must indicate how frequently they experience various situations (e.g. “i find myself doing things without paying attention” using a scale a scale from one (“almost always”) to six (“almost never”). scoring of the maas involves calculating mean performance across the 15 items, with higher scores indicating greater mindfulness. mental health was assessed using four indicators. respondents were asked to evaluate how often, over the last seven days, they had experienced various manifestations of wellbeing, distress, stress and burnout. psychological wellbeing was assessed with the psychological wellbeing manifestations at work scale (gilbert, dagenais-desmarais, & savoie, 2011). this scale contains 22 items and captures three factors: serenity (e.g. “i was able to face difficult situations in a positive way”), involvement at work (e.g. “i took on lots of projects”) and social harmony (e.g. “i smiled easily”). it is based on a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (almost always). because the correlations between these subscales were high (they varied from .67 to .87 across the four times of measurement), the global score of the scale was used. greater scores indicate higher psychological wellbeing at work. psychological distress was measured with the psychological distress manifestations at work scale (gilbert et al., 2011), a 23-item scale that captures three factors: irritability/aggressivity (e.g. “i had conflicts with my colleagues”), anxiety/depression (e.g. “i felt preoccupied and uneasy”) and work disengagement (e.g. “i felt disinterested in my job ”). the psychological distress manifestations at work scale is also based on a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 (almost always). once again, correlations between subscales were high (from .74 to .91) so the global score of the scale was used. greater scores indicate higher psychological distress at work. stress was measured using the psychological stress measure (psm-9; lemyre & lalandemarkon, 2009; lemyre & tessier, 1988). the respondents were asked to evaluate how often they had experienced various manifestations of stress (e.g., “i felt stressed”) using a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (almost always). higher scores on the psm-9 reflect more stress. burnout was assessed with the shirom-melamed burnout measure (smbm; sassi & neveu, 2010; shirom & melamed, 2006), a 14-item scale that captures three factors: physical fatigue (e.g., “i felt physically fatigued”), cognitive weariness (e.g., “i was too tired to think clearly”) and emotional exhaustion (e.g., “i felt i was unable to be sensitive to the needs of coworkers and customers”). the smbm relies on a 7-point likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (always). however, a 5-point likert scale similar to the one used to measure psychological wellbeing and distress, as well as stress, was used in this study for the sake of uniformity. emotion regulation was assessed with two subscales of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale (ders; gratz & roemer, 2004; labbé, côté, gosselin, & dagenais, 2012), lack of emotional awareness subscale (6 items) and the impulse control difficulties subscale (5 items). the ders was developed to assess difficulties in emotion regulation. the lack of emotional awareness subscale reflects an inattention to, and lack of awareness of, emotional responses (e.g., “when i’m upset, i take time to figure out what i’m really feeling”, reverse scored), while the impulse control difficulties reflects difficulties remaining in control of one’s behavior when experiencing negative emotions (e.g., “when i’m upset, i have difficulty controlling my behaviors”). higher scores for each subscale indicate greater difficulties in emotion regulation (i.e., more emotion dysregulation). employees were asked to indicate how often the items apply to themselves, with responses ranging from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always). descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and cronbach coefficients for all scales presented above were analysed across all assessment time points. as can be seen in table 2 below, all scales showed good to excellent internal consistency. employees’ compliance with the intervention was measured using the following question: on a scale ranging from 0 (not consistent at all) to 100 (very consistent), please rate to what extent you were consistent in the listening of your daily guided meditations. the employees in group 1 were asked this question at t2; employees in group 2 were asked at t3. mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 table 2. cronbach coefficients, means and standard deviations for all variables across the intervention variables α t1 t2 t3 t4 m sd m sd m sd m sd mindfulness .91 .94 2.80 .85 3.04 .85 3.20 .89 2.81 .85 wellbeing .92 .96 3.66 .52 3.82 .65 3.88 .52 3.82 .66 distress .94 .96 2.15 .67 1.95 .69 1.86 .56 1.85 .55 stress .89 .94 2.74 .74 2.43 .90 2.26 .69 2.23 .73 burnout .91 .95 2.55 .67 2.27 .82 2.13 .61 2.08 .68 lack of emotional awareness .75 .79 3.39 .68 3.50 .65 3.68 .73 3.68 .73 impulse control difficulties .81 .91 2.09 .81 1.93 .78 1.94 .69 1.76 .51 5.6 data analyses our first three hypotheses were assessed using univariate and multivariate analysis of variance (anova and manova) and the prediction analysis technique (hildebrand, rosenthal, & laing, 1977; szabat, 2005). grégoire and lachance (2015) have pointed out that, in studies aimed at assessing the influence of mbis among non-clinical populations, the prediction analysis technique represents a valuable complement to commonly applied statistical techniques such as anova and manova. they argue that in these studies participants often show few difficulties at baseline, making it more difficult to detect improvement or changes using traditional types of analyses of variance. moreover, others have shown that analysis of variance sometimes underestimate the effects of an intervention, especially in small sample sizes (ducharme, lévesque, zarit, lachance & giroux, 2007; lévesque, ducharme, zarit, lachance & giroux, 2008). unlike anova and manova, prediction analysis takes ceiling and floor effects into account in the score distribution at baseline, and the phenomenon of regression towards the mean for participants at both ends of the scale (extreme scores) (whitlatch, zarit & von eye, 1991). additionally, while anova and manova are used to analyze the mean differences between groups, prediction analysis serves to assess expected successful outcomes for those who take part in the intervention (experimental condition), and unsuccessful outcomes for those not participating in the intervention (control condition). this technique allows predictions for each participant based on: 1) their scores on dependant variables at baseline, and 2) the group they are in (experimental or control). our fourth hypothesis was tested according to hayes’ (2013) procedure for testing mediation effects using regression-based path analysis via mplus version 6 (muthén & muthén, 2011). this method allowed us to generate bootstrap confidence intervals for the indirect effects of mindfulness to wellbeing, distress and burnout through the mediating variables of impulse control and emotional awareness. this technique has proven to be superior to the causal steps approach devised by baron and kenny (1986). in fact, many simulations’ studies have shown that bootstrapping is one of the most statistically powerful methods for testing mediation with the lowest type i error, while the causal steps approach is one of the least statistically powerful approaches (hayes, 2009). 6. results in general, employees were consistent in the listening of their daily meditation sessions. the compliance rate was high within both groups (87.8% within group 1 and 83% within group 2). no significant correlations were found between compliance scores and mindfulness, mental mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 health or emotion regulation scores within groups. therefore, this variable was not taken into account in further analyses. according to our first hypothesis, mindfulness was expected to increase from preintervention to post-intervention and to do so in distinct ways for each group. within group 1, it would significantly increase between t1 and t2 and the effect would be maintained until t4 (or slightly drop). within group 2, mindfulness would significantly increase between t2 and t3 and the effect would be maintained until t4 (or slightly drop). in other words, a group-by-time interaction effect was hypothesized. to test these predictions, a two-way mixed-design analysis of variance (anova) with one between-subjects factor (group 1 and group 2) and one withinsubjects factor (time: t1, t2, t3 and t4) was used. prior to running the anova, the normality of the data was tested using the kolmogorov-smirnov and shapiro-wilk tests. we also tested the homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices using box’s m test, while the presence of outliers was checked (.001 level) using both univariate (z-scores) and multivariate (mahalanobis distance) approaches. the results of the anova revealed no interaction effect between groups and time [f(3, 39) = 1.64, p = .19], no main effect for time [f(3, 39) = 1.95, p = .13], but a main group effect [f(1, 39) = 7.51, p = .009, ηp2 = .16]. in order to better understand how mindfulness evolved during the intervention, bonferroni pairwise comparisons were examined even though no interaction and main effect for time emerged from the analyses. these comparisons showed that mindfulness increased between t1 and t3 (mean difference = .44, p = 0.003) within both groups and did not change significantly between t3 and t4 (mean difference = -.36, ns). however, mindfulness did not increase as expected. while it did increase significantly between t2 and t3 within group 2, it did not increase between t1 and t2 for group 1. taken together, these results partly support the first hypothesis that employees’ mindfulness would increase from preintervention to post-intervention. table 3 below shows how mindfulness scores evolved throughout the intervention within each group. our second hypothesis was that mental health would increase in both groups over the course of the intervention. according to the same logic presented above, mental health would significantly increase between t1 and t2 for group 1 and the effect would be maintained until t4 (or slightly drop). for group 2, it would significantly increase between t2 and t3 and the effect would be maintained until t4 (or slightly drop). the zero-order correlations between the mental health indicators used in this study (psychological well-being, psychological distress, stress and burnout) were first examined at each time of measurement. because correlations between these indicators were high, this second hypothesis was tested with a doubly multivariate analysis of variance (manova) with group (group 1 and group 2) as the between-subjects variable and time (t1, t2 t3 and t4) as the within-subject variable to control for type i error. assumption testing was conducted to check for normality, homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices, and univariate and multivariate outliers, with no serious violations noted. the manova revealed a time-by-group interaction effect [f(12, 28) = 3.08, p = .007, wilks’ lambda = .43, ηp2 = .57], a main time effect [f(12, 28) = 2.63, p = .017, wilks’ lambda = .47, ηp2 = .53] and a main group effect [f(4, 36) = 2.98, p = .03, wilks’ lambda = .75, ηp2 = .25]. the interaction effect suggests that the combined mental health indicator evolved differently for each group over time. the examination of this effect at the univariate level showed that psychological well-being [f(3, 117) = 8.26, p < .000, ηp2 = .18] , psychological distress [f(3, 117) = 5.90, p = .001, ηp2 = .13], stress [f(3, 117) = 4.75, p = .004, ηp2 = .10] and burnout [f(3, 117) = 6.54, p < .001, ηp2 = .14] all evolved differently for each group over time. mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 table 3. evolution of mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation indicators throughout the study for both groups variables gr. 1 gr. 2 (n = 26) (n = 15) t1 t2 t3 t4 t1 t2 t3 t4 m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd mindfulness 3.03 0.91 3.22 0.76 3.42 0.81 2.76 0.92 2.49 0.80 2.59 0.84 2.98 0.87 2.91 0.75 mental health psychological wellbeing 3.87 0.47 4.09 0.41 3.94 0.54 3.88 0.63 3.30 0.44 3.33 0.76 3.78 0.53 3.73 0.59 psychological distress 1.93 0.55 1.70 0.47 1.73 0.50 1.81 0.61 2.42 0.74 2.46 0.80 2.14 0.64 1.94 0.46 stress 2.38 0.57 2.00 0.58 2.06 0.60 2.06 0.71 3.07 0.86 3.11 1.01 2.55 0.81 2.55 0.70 burnout 2.31 0.55 1.89 0.47 1.98 0.59 1.99 0.72 2.86 0.70 2.90 0.92 2.37 0.65 2.23 0.62 emotion regulation lack of emotional awareness 2.3 0.50 2.10 0.44 2.23 0.45 2.48 0.71 2.33 0.60 2.31 0.65 2.15 0.63 2.44 0.71 impulse control difficulties 1.93 0.51 1.86 0.69 1.86 0.65 1.73 0.51 2.06 0.94 2.24 0.97 2.01 0.75 1.81 0.52 mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 simple effects and bonferroni pairwise comparisons showed that within group 1 psychological wellbeing significantly increased between t1 and t2, while psychological distress, stress and burnout decreased during that period. however, no significant differences were found on any of these indicators between t1 and t4, suggesting that the positive effects of the intervention did not last until follow-up for these employees. within group 2, psychological wellbeing significantly increased between t2 and t3 while psychological distress, stress and burnout decreased. between t2 and t4, significant differences were observed for all indicators, suggesting that the effects of the intervention lasted up to three months for these employees. the third hypothesis stated that the intervention would help improve emotion regulation. therefore, both lack of emotional awareness and impulse control difficulties scores were expected to decrease significantly (between t1 and t2 for group 1 and between t2 and t3 for group 2) and these effects would last over time (or slightly drop). this hypothesis was tested using a doubly multivariate analysis of variance (manova), with group (group 1 and group 2) as the between-subjects variable and time (t1, t2 t3 and t4) as the within-subject variable after having checked for normality, homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices, and univariate and multivariate outliers. the multivariate analysis revealed a nonsignificant time-by-group interaction effect [f(6, 34) = 1.33, p = .26, wilks’ lambda = .80], a significant main time effect [f(6, 34) = 3.8, p = .005, wilks’ lambda = .59, ηp2 = .40] and no significant main group effect [f(2, 38) = .42, p = .65, wilks’ lambda = .97]. when the main time effect was considered separately with univariate analyses, significant differences were found for impulse control difficulties scores only. bonferroni pairwise comparisons showed that these scores did not decrease significantly between t1 and t2 for group 1 and between t2 and t3 for group 2. however, they did significantly decrease between t1 and t4 in both groups. these results partly support our third hypothesis. the evolution of mental health and emotion regulation indicators throughout the intervention is presented in figures 1 to 6 below. figure 1. psychological wellbeing figure 2. psychological distress 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4 4.2 t1 t2 t3 t4 gr1 gr2 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1 2.3 2.5 t1 t2 t3 t4 gr1 gr2 mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 figure 3. stress figure 4. burnout figure 5. emotional awareness difficulties figure 6. impulse control difficulties the prediction analysis technique was also used to verify our first three hypotheses and to complement the analysis of variance. in order to conduct this analysis, the participants were first divided into quartiles based on the distribution of their baseline scores for each dependent variable. for each quartile, criteria for successful and unsuccessful outcomes were defined in standard deviation units in terms of the expected change for each dependent variable. table 4 below shows the criteria for expected successful outcomes in the experimental condition and for expected unsuccessful outcomes in the control condition based on the recommendations of whitlatch et al. (1991). table 4. predicted intervention outcomes for experimental and control conditions positive indicators negative indicators experimental condition (predicted and successful outcomes) control condition (predicted and unsuccessful outcomes) low high more than 1 standard deviation of improvement less than 1 standard deviation of improvement mediumlow mediumhigh more than .5 standard deviation of improvement less than .5 standard deviation of improvement mediumhigh mediumlow any improvement stability or deterioration high low any improvement, stability or slight deterioration (less than .5 standard deviation) stability or deterioration 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 t1 t2 t3 t4 gr1 gr2 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 t1 t2 t3 t4 gr1 gr2 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 t1 t2 t3 t4 gr1 gr2 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1 2.3 2.5 t1 t2 t3 t4 gr1 gr2 mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 the analyses were conducted to assess changes from t1 to t2 only, because the control group used between t2 and t3 cannot be considered a classic control group, as the employees in this group had already taken part in the intervention. under the prediction model, successful outcomes are expected for participants taking part in the intervention (group 1) and unsuccessful outcomes for those in the control condition (group 2). in other words, the model proposes an association between intervention and successful outcomes. the del statistic is used to test the prediction model2 and z values serve to test whether the observed values contain more cases than expected under the assumption of no association between intervention and successful outcomes. these analyses revealed significant differences for all dependent variables, except for lack of emotional awareness (see table 5 below). for each of these variables, more participants in group 1 had successful outcomes (from 51.9 to 81.5%, depending on the variable) than in group 2 (from 5.6% to 33.3%). according to the del statistic values, the proposed model described the data from 26% to 59% better than the model based on an assumption of no association. in summary, the results of the prediction analyses indicate that the intervention had positive effects on mindfulness, mental health indicators and impulse control difficulties for members of group 1. table 5. successful and unsuccessful outcomes frequencies on dependent measures by group for time changes dependent variables change from time 1 to time 2 successful outcome unsuccessful outcome observed expected observed expected del z p mindfulness 0.26 1.83 .034 gr. 1 14 (.52) 11.05 13 (.48) 15.95 gr.2 04 (.24) 06.95 13 (.76) 10.05 psychological wellbeing 0.40 2.89 .002 gr. 1 20 (.74) 15.60 07 (.26) 11.40 gr.2 06 (.33) 10.40 12 (.67) 07.60 psychological distress 0.32 2.28 .011 gr. 1 18 (.67) 14.40 09 (.33) 12.60 gr.2 06 (.33) 09.60 12 (.67) 08.40 stress 0.46 3.51 .000 gr. 1 19 (.70) 13.80 08 (.30) 13.20 gr.2 04 (.22) 09.20 14 (.78) 08.80 burnout 0.59 4.77 .000 gr. 1 22 (.81) 15.60 05 (.19) 11.40 gr.2 04 (.22) 10.40 14 (.78) 07.60 lack of emotional awareness 0.15 1.08 .140 gr. 1 12 (.44) 10.20 15 (.56) 16.80 gr.2 05 (.28) 06.80 13 (.72) 11.20 impulse control difficulties 0.42 3.22 .001 gr. 1 14 (.52) 09.00 13 (.48) 18.00 gr.2 01 (.06) 06.00 17 (.94) 12.00 2 unlike chi-square analysis, prediction analysis compares expected with observed cell frequencies only for specified prediction cells rather than among all cells. mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 according to our fourth hypothesis, the effects of the intervention on mental health would be mediated by changes in both emotional awareness and impulse control. to test this mediating hypothesis, a series of simple indirect effects models were estimated between mindfulness and each mental health indicator through impulse control and emotional awareness using regressionbased path analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals (hayes, 2013). because of the nature of our pretest-posttest control group switching replication design, residualized change scores for all variables were first computed for each participant between either t1 and t2 (group 1) or t1 and t3 (group 2). first, the indirect effects of mindfulness on wellbeing, distress, stress and burnout were each estimated using impulse control as a mediator. the same paths were then tested using emotional awareness as a mediator. following hayes (2013), these indirect effects were quantified as the product of the regression coefficient estimating the mediator (i.e., impulse control or emotional awareness) from mindfulness with the regression coefficient estimating the outcome (i.e., well-being, distress, stress or burnout) from the mediating variable. the results showed a marginally significant indirect effect of mindfulness on psychological distress, through impulse control difficulties. first, mindfulness was found to significantly negatively predict impulse control difficulties (unstandardized path coefficient = -.41, standardized path coefficient = -.43, se = .17, p= .01). analyses also showed that impulse control difficulties marginally positively predicted psychological distress (unstandardized path coefficient = .24, standardized path coefficient = .36, se = .12, p= .05). next, we estimated a biascorrected bootstrap-confidence interval (ci) for the product of theses paths. the significance of the indirect effect of mindfulness on psychological distress through impulse control would be evidenced by a confidence interval that did not include zero (preacher & hayes, 2008; hayes, 2009). using hayes’ (2013) procedure with 5,000 bootstrap samples, our analyses revealed a marginally negative indirect effect of mindfulness on distress through impulse control difficulties (point estimate = -.10, 90% percentile ci = -.19 to -.01), suggesting a trend in which the relation of mindfulness at t1 to psychological distress following the intervention was mediated by impulse control. all other indirect effects of mindfulness to wellbeing, distress, stress, and burnout through impulse control or emotional awareness were nonsignificant. 7. discussion the purpose of this study was to assess the effects of a brief mbi on mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation abilities among call center employees. the intervention proved to be helpful to increase mindfulness. in fact, mindfulness significantly increased within both groups between t1 and t3. moreover, although mindfulness scores slightly decreased after t3, the changes were not statistically significant, suggesting that the effects of the intervention were maintained during the three months follow-up period within both groups. however, mindfulness did not increase as expected as no interaction effect was found. this is in part because mindfulness increased between t1 and t2 for group 2 despite the fact that this group was acting as control. although less important than the one observed in group 1, such an increase may have masked the interaction effect. it needs to be recalled that prior to the intervention, all employees took part in a one-hour session where basic information was provided on the study, but also on mindfulness and its importance at work. this session may have had a positive impact on both groups. the intervention also helped to increase psychological wellbeing and decrease distress, stress and burnout among participating employees. these indicators changed according to what was expected in hypothesis 2 as showed by the interaction effect. these results are consistent with the recent meta-analysis done by virgili (2013) and show that mbis help increase mental health mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 in the workplace. they are also in line with recent studies showing that brief (klatt et al., 2009), self-help (cavanagh et al., 2014) mbis delivered outside training rooms (bazarko et al., 2013; wolever et al., 2012) represent an effective way to reduce distress in organizations. nevertheless, the results regarding mental health need to be interpreted with caution as the effects were maintained throughout the follow-up period only within group 2. one possible explanation for this is that the follow-up period was longer for members of group 1 (see table 1 above), which may in part explain why the effects were not maintained at t4 within that group. moreover, no information was gathered on the significant life events employees might have experienced during the follow-up period. it is possible that, compared to the employees of group 2, those of group 1 may have had to cope with more stressful situations, at work or at home. because of these methodological aspects, we believe that additional studies are required before drawing any firm conclusion on the long-term effects of this intervention on mental health. we also believe that the intervention would benefit from including a booster session at a later date where employees would be encouraged to continue their meditation practice, as this might insure longer-term effects. we had hypothesized that the intervention would help call center employees to manage their emotions with more clarity and less reactivity. the results partly support this hypothesis. while the intervention did reduce impulse control difficulties, it did not have any significant impact on emotional awareness as showed by the analysis of variance and the prediction analysis. different reasons might explain this result. for instance, employees may have had more practice, support and opportunities to develop emotional control than to develop emotional awareness. in fact, the importance of giving oneself more space of mind before taking action was a recurrent theme throughout the intervention and employees were explicitly encouraged to practice this ability at work. for example, they were encouraged to breathe and take small pauses during calls with clients in order to avoid reacting impulsively. on the contrary, the emotional awareness theme was introduced only at week 4 during the audio sessions and the one-hour meeting on emotion regulation previously described. therefore, employees may not have had sufficient time and opportunities to cultivate a mindful stance toward their emotional experiences. another potential explanation for this finding is that emotional awareness may best be conceptualized as a stable trait rather than a skill. this might explain why no significant changes were observed on that dimension during the intervention. contrary to expectations, the effects of the intervention on mental health were not mediated by changes in emotional awareness. however, the analyses did show a marginally significant trend towards an indirect effect of mindfulness on psychological distress, through impulse control difficulties. in other words, the more employees were mindful after the intervention, the less they experienced impulse control difficulties, and the less they felt psychological distress. this finding supports prior research suggesting that mindfulness training helps promote impulse control (baer et al., 2004; feldman et al., 2010; fetterman et al., 2010) and extends those findings to an organizational setting. these results were not replicated for the other mental health indicators. in addition, it must be noted that this was only marginally significant (p = 0.5). one possible explanation is that the study may not have lasted long enough to detect a mediation effect. another explanation could be that the sample size may have been too small, which may have decreased statistical power. however, this trend indicates that impulse control may represent a potential mechanism by which mindfulness influences psychological distress in a population of workers who face difficult emotional demands from their clients on a daily basis. future studies should continue to investigate to what extent mbis prove useful in helping workers cope with emotional job mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 demands, using larger samples and including additional follow-up assessments to assess potential longer-term effects of practice. so far, most studies exploring the relationship between mindfulness and emotion regulation have been conducted outside the work context, using student or clinical samples, such that empirical findings may not generalize to the work context. this study contributes to the existing literature on mindfulness in the workplace in two important ways. first, it provides further evidence for the effectiveness of an original mbi specifically designed for call center work environments. it shows that this intervention can have positive, lasting effects on mental health and that it reduces emotional reactivity among employees. more generally, it also provides support for the use of brief, self-help mbis in the workplace that are not classroom-based. these forms of interventions can serve as a valuable complement to traditional mbis. some have underlined that traditional mbis can sometimes be difficult to implement in workplaces as they are time-consuming (zeidan, johnson, diamond, david, & goolkasian, 2010) and have to be delivered in classroom settings (bazarko et al., 2013). although interventions delivered in audio format certainly have drawbacks (e.g., instructors spend very little time with the participants and cannot offer much support or guidance), they also have the advantage of being shorter and accessible from various locations. therefore, they may be especially convenient for employees who work on a busy schedule or remotely. this study has some limitations that warrant mention. first, it was not a fully randomized controlled trial, because four employees were unfortunately not able to take part in their allocated groups. the semi-random method used to assign these employees to groups may have introduced a selection bias to the study. the sample size was small and the participants included mostly call center agents working in the service industry. it is possible that such homogeneity added strength to the intervention beyond what would occur in a more heterogeneous sample composed of employees working in more diverse industries. moreover, attrition was high. in fact, forty-three (43%) of employees did not complete all four questionnaires. this is a higher rate than the one obtained by virgili (2013). of the 19 studies included in his meta-analysis, the overall attrition rates at posttreatment ranged from 0% to 56%, with a mean attrition rate of 14.6% (sd = 14.1) 3 . attrition was especially problematic among members of group 2, perhaps because employees within this group had to wait for a longer time before having access to the intervention. consequently, the sample size of the groups was uneven, which reduced the power of the statistical analysis conducted. finally, the amount of time employees may have listened to the meditation sessions outside their regular work hours was not taken into account. it is possible that if this information had been gathered, more nuanced results may have been obtained. in sum, the results of this study corroborates those obtained by grégoire and lachance (2015) and suggests that short periods of meditation done regularly in the workplace can help employees cultivate mindfulness and reduce both their psychological distress and emotional reactivity. in the future, studies could extend the results presented in this paper in various ways. for example, randomized control trials with active group controls could be put forward in order to evaluate the efficacy of brief intervention compared to existing cognitive-behavioral and relaxation techniques that have proven effective in reducing employee distress. studies could also be conducted to explore whether or not the intervention can be valuable for employees working in environments different to call centers. although this intervention was designed to fit call center reality, it is conceivable that it could be used in other work settings where employees have access to a computer, headsets or a quiet room. finally, it would be interesting to track 3 it needs to be underlined that most of the studies reviewed by virgili (2013) were shorter than the one presented here and did not include follow-up measures. mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation grégoire, lachance, & taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 mindfulness changes throughout this intervention with tools different than the ones used in this study. indeed, the maas has been criticized for having poor content validity and relying only on negatively worded items. grossman (2011) argued that using items assumed to reflect the opposite of mindfulness (i.e. operating on ‘automatic pilot’) and reversing their scores cannot provide a valid index of mindfulness. a promising instrument might be the one developed by höfling, moosbrugger, schermelleh-engel and heidenreich (2011). based on confirmatory factorial analyses (cfa), the authors built an alternative version of the maas containing only ten items, half of them being worded positively. they argue that the use of negatively and positively worded items can reduce response sets, contribute to a better response reporting and allows mindfulness to be measured both directly and indirectly. authors simon grégoire université du québec à montréal gregoire.simon@uqam.ca lise lachance université du québec à montréal geneviève taylor université du québec à montréal publishing timeline received 21 june 2015 accepted 7 october 2015 published 18 december 2015 references abenavoli, r. m., jennings, p. a., greenberg, m. t., harris, a. r., & katz, d. a. 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(2010). mindfulness meditation improves cognition: evidence of brief mental training. consciousness and cognition, 19(2), 597–605. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20237 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1072-5245.13.2.176 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/0470013192.bsa499 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963721413495869 https://www.workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.com/pdf/call_centre_workers_trendsinthecallcentresector_resource.pdf https://www.workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.com/pdf/call_centre_workers_trendsinthecallcentresector_resource.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12671-013-0264-0 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12671-013-0264-0 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1072-5245.14.2.188 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geront/31.1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027278 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014 jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 79–82. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.3 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky interview by aaron jarden sonja lyubomirsky is a research psychologist, professor of psychology at the university of california, riverside, and outgoing editor of the journal of positive psychology. she has spent most of her research career studying human happiness and is author of the popular book the how of happiness, which describes strategies backed by scientific research that can be used to increase happiness. in general, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? positive psychology is about what makes life worth living. it’s about the positive side of life. before positive psychology, most researchers were focused on studying topics like depression, divorce, stress, how to fix things, and positive psychologists are more interested not in what makes us unhappy, but in what makes us happy. not why people divorce, but why they stay together. my own research is on ‘happiness’, which i really started investigating long before the field of positive psychology came into being. what are some things that positive psychology has achieved to date? maybe the greatest achievement is that it almost does not need to be its own field anymore, because now so many researchers are studying the positive side of life. if you look at any top journal, like in my field, which is social/personality psychology, a huge fraction, sometimes like half, of the articles have something to do with wellbeing or optimism or some kind of positive topic. so it’s just pervading the field of psychology. i don’t know so much about related fields. we almost don’t need to have a separate area called positive psychology, because now it’s become part of most people’s thinking. it’s achieved critical mass. can you tell me a bit about your work in positive psychology? you’re renowned for your work in the area of positive interventions? i started doing research on happiness in 1989, so that was quite a while ago. just to give you a bit of history, the first day of grad school at stanford, i met my advisor, lee ross, who is famous for studying conflict and negotiation, nothing to do with happiness or positive psychology. the very first day we somehow started talking about ‘what is happiness?’, and ‘why are some people happier than others?’. at that time the only person—literally the only person—who was studying happiness was ed diener, and he didn’t even call it happiness, he called it ‘subjective wellbeing’. he had told me that at one point that he started to call it subjective wellbeing because he was up for tenure at the university of illinois and he thought http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 that ‘happiness’ was too unscientific a term, so he had to find a jargon term that was more acceptable. anyway, lee and i started investigating ‘how are happy people different from unhappy people?’, and so for the first ten years of my career, from ‘89 to ‘99, that’s what i did: trying to understand why some people are happier than others. most of that research was correlational, so reporters would often call me and ask me, ‘well, what can we tell our readers about how they can be happier?’. so, for example, one of my studies suggested that happier people are less likely to compare themselves to others. so reporters would call me and say, ‘shall we tell people that they should not compare themselves to others, they shouldn’t engage in social comparison?’. and i would be like, ‘well i don’t know! i can’t say that because all i know is that happy people do it or don’t do it, and that is just a correlational finding’. i thought that the question of how do you get people to do that, or how do you get people to become happier or look more like a happier person was solely an applied question. i thought that was a less interesting scientific question. it was very applied, and i was this basic scientist who was only interested in basic research. but then i realized that the question, ‘how can people become happier?’ or ‘can people become happier given that a lot of happiness is genetically determined?’, was in itself a really interesting scientific question. in 1999 i was invited to one of the akumal, mexico meetings where i met barbara fredrickson, ken sheldon, laura king, jonathan haidt, and, of course, martin seligman and mike csikszentmihalyi. that’s when we all just started talking, and two of the people there, ken sheldon and david schkade, and i started talking about whether people can even become happier. scientists up till then had been kind of pessimistic about whether people can really change their happiness set point. so we developed a theory about sustainable happiness. that’s more or less how my work in positive interventions started. we had this theory about showing that, yes, people can become happier, and then in the last 10 years of my career, along with ken sheldon and others, we have been conducting many happiness interventions. but, again, my interest isn’t just applied, so it’s not just that i want people to be happier—although i certainly do, it’s a nice fringe benefit—but my interest is really more in ‘how can people become happier?’. i’m interested in what are the moderators and the mediators underlying success at achieving happiness. what is the ‘how’ and the ‘why’? if people can become happier, why can they do that, and how can they do that? so that’s what we are trying to achieve in our research right now, looking at those root psychological mechanisms that enable people to be successful in achieving happiness. somebody comes to you and says they want to become happier. what would your first piece of advice to them be? people come to me a lot asking that question! i wrote the how of happiness, where my goal was to basically condense or summarize everything we knew up until then, in 2008, about how to become happier. so what i usually do is send them the 12 empirically-supported categories of strategies or activities that people can do if they want to be happier. i tell them that there is, of course, detailed information about how to become more grateful, or on nurturing their relationships, or pursuing meaningful goals, and i then talk about the research that supports all of these activities or strategies. so that’s what i do, i point them to these 12 strategies that i describe in my book. positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 are there any new interventions coming on board that you think are exciting that no one knows about as yet? there are certainly some exciting studies that we are doing that i can tell you about. for example, one really exciting project we are working on is with robert plomin and his post-doc claire hayworth in london. you may know he’s a behavioral geneticist, and he has something like 10,000 twins that he’s studying and following from birth, just about every twin born in the uk in 1990. we’re studying 2,000 of these twins. we’ve actually just finished the first study, which is a happiness intervention with the twins. there are identical twins and there are fraternal twins in this sample, and there are boys and girls, and so we can answer a lot of questions. what we are interested in in this study is to understand individual differences in people’s responses to happiness interventions. how much of those differences are genetic? because some people, when they try the strategies in my book, find them very effective and they become happier. but some people don’t become as happy to the same degree as others, or maybe don’t get happier at all. so what portion of those individual differences in people’s responses to happiness interventions is genetically determined? we can test that with this twin sample. what positive psychology activities and strategies do you think work really well together? we don’t really know the answer to that question. my students and i are actually only just now doing some studies where, in a positive activity intervention, we have people do several activities at the same time. usually in experiments you want to have everything very controlled, so you study one activity at a time. we’ve just completed a study where we had people do gratitude and kindness at the same time; but we don’t have the results yet. generally my answer, without the evidence, is that what goes well together is what fits you as a person. one of the themes of my book was the idea of fit. you have to somehow find what works for you and what you feel comfortable doing. for you, it could be one set of interventions, and for me, it could be something else. we are testing this hypothesis right now in a couple of studies. where do you see your research going in the future? we are still doing quite a few interventions to test ‘the how’ and ‘the why’. i mentioned the study with the twins. we’re also doing studies with kids. we just did a big study with a whole bunch of elementary school kids in vancouver. so i think it’s really interesting to apply the research to younger people. my friends keep asking me to write the how of happiness for kids, because people want their children to be happy so they really want to know. i don’t think the advice would be really that different, but we need to find out. there are already some researchers engaged in studying that question. we’re doing a lot of that kind of work— applying the interventions to different contexts. another line of research that i’m really involved in right now is about hedonic adaptation. hedonic adaption is an obstacle to happiness; it’s an obstacle to happiness interventions. if you adapt and get used to the rewards or benefits of whatever intervention you’re engaged in, it’s not going to be that successful. ken sheldon and i have a theory of how adaptation works, and how you can thwart it, forestall it, or prevent it. we’re testing that theory now. actually a paper that i’ve submitted with some colleagues about which we are really excited is about whether parents are less happy than non-parents. there have been a lot of articles, a lot of talk in the media about the idea that parents are unhappy, and most of it comes from just one study; and so we did three really nice studies that all used different methodologies, that go together really positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 well. all three studies showed the same thing, which is that parents are happier and have more meaning than non-parents—in general, when they are with their children, and when they go about their days. so we’re excited because this paper is going to really debunk this myth out there that parents are miserable. is there anything that i have not asked about, or general advice, that you would like to add? it’s so great that there is so much science out there: i think it’s really important to emphasize that, because positive psychology is so ‘popular’, as it were. there are a lot of mental health practitioners and coaches, as well as doctors, addiction specialists, prison guards, who are all applying the concepts of positive psychology, which is great. but we really need the science behind it, and so there are lots and lots of people now doing that research. we need to make sure people know about that, and, as i mentioned before, we almost don’t need the field anymore because it has permeated everyone’s thinking, so that’s important. in terms of people—graduate students or college students—who are interested in getting into the field, i would say the most important thing is not to study positive psychology, but to obtain a really rigorous training in statistics and methodology and general psychology, in whatever area you’re interested in, and then you can narrow your interests down to positive psychology. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 88–91. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.5 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener interview by aaron jarden ed diener, a.k.a. ‘dr. happiness’, is joseph r. smiley distinguished professor of psychology at the university of illinois and senior scientist at gallup. he has over 300 publications, with about 200 being in the area of the psychology of wellbeing, and is one of the most highly cited psychologists with over 30,000 citations. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the defining features of positive psychology? one defining feature of positive psychology is a desire to study positive aspects of human behavior and functioning; aspects of life that make it happier, more peaceful, and more desirable in general. although there are some cultural differences in what might be considered ‘good’ or desirable behavior, there is certainly some consensus too. everywhere in the world, people want to be happy, to get along with other people, to have their needs met, to develop and grow, and to have respect. people want to love and to be loved. it is these universals that we want to study as positive psychologists. of course people did study these things even before the advent of positive psychology, but the level of interest shown was much less than the interest shown in negative behavior, in problems. the second defining feature of positive psychology is that we are attempting to build it on a scientific base. many people talk about positive behavior, and try to increase it—from politicians to religious leaders to youth clubs. these are usually good things. but we want something new—the study of positive behavior using scientific methods. as the science grows, we will then be in a position to test interventions scientifically as well. can you tell me about your work in positive psychology, particularly around subjective wellbeing and happiness? i began studying subjective wellbeing, ‘happiness’, in 1981. for the first 10 years there were only a few pioneers working quietly in the area, and we received little attention. we were a backwater research area. in the 1990s we started to receive more notice, and more researchers entered the field. in the late 1990s positive psychology was founded by martin seligman and others, and this created more research in our field. in other words, positive psychology research and practice occurred before the positive psychology movement, but the movement gave this research a big boost. all of a sudden more attention and interest flowed to these positive research topics. we initially used the experience sampling technique in the early 80s to study people’s moods across time and situations. at that time there was a lot of focus on http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 demographic factors such as income and sex, but we paid careful attention to personality, and how it affected people’s happiness. we looked at a broad range of personality traits such as extraversion and self-esteem, but we also examined people’s goals, aspirations, and social comparisons. in the 90s we began to look more systematically across cultures to see if some societies were happier, and whether the same factors predict subjective wellbeing in different cultures. not only did we find that some societies tend to be happier than one might expect, such as the latin american nations, but we also found that certain variables predict happiness more strongly in some cultures than in others. for example, my daughter marissa and i found that self-esteem is a stronger predictor of life satisfaction in individualistic nations than in collectivistic ones. we have continued these lines of research to the present, but we also have begun to look more carefully at the outcomes of subjective wellbeing—are happy people healthier, more productive, and do they experience better social relationships? what we have found has surprised me. not only is happiness a pleasant state, but in most ways it is a particularly helpful one. for instance, happy people are healthier and live longer. they have better social relationships and stay married longer. they volunteer more, and they are better citizens at work. some of our work even finds that they make more money. when i started i was not pollyanna, i was skeptical of some of the claims made for the benefits of happiness. of course these claims have occasionally been exaggerated, but by and large i have become convinced that a general happy state is a very good one in terms of success in life. is there any new knowledge or studies around happiness you would like to highlight that you think are cutting edge? we are finding out more and more about happiness around the globe. two decades ago very little was known. we now know a great deal about which cultures are happiest and unhappiest, and some of the causes. for instance, we know that not having your basic needs met leads to low life satisfaction, and that corruption and other social interactions that lead to distrust lead to low levels of positive feelings. we also know that although a high income is associated with high life satisfaction across nations, other factors such as health and peace also lead to higher life satisfaction. an interesting thing is that some predictors of happiness are universal, such as having basic needs met, and having others one can count on for help. but there are some predictors of happiness that seem to be stronger in some cultures than in others. self-esteem is a much stronger predictor of happiness in individualistic cultures compared to collectivistic cultures, for example. another area of research that i am proud of is the development of new scales for use in positive psychology, and research showing the validity of these scales. we first developed a scale to assess life satisfaction, and showed that this scale has a strong level of reliability and validity. we have also developed a scale to measure feelings and emotions. a very short scale we created is designed to assess human flourishing by quickly tapping people’s feelings that their life is meaningful, that they have supportive family and friends, and so forth. this scale is very short, and therefore can easily be added to studies without taking up much time. all these scales are available on my website. your proudest moment in the field? i recently received the american psychological association's distinguished scientist award, and this was very rewarding. but my proudest moments have come not from awards, but have come in seeing what my family and my students have accomplished. my wife and three of our children are psychologists, and this is a great thing for a father. we never tried to convince our kids to become psychologists, we never even mentioned it. but they saw how much we loved positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 it, and that apparently drew them to it. in terms of my former students, many of them are turning out to be stars. they are doing such important research and accomplishing so much. beyond research they are becoming journal editors and department chairs. this gives me great joy. which discipline do you think positive psychology can learn most from moving forward? we can learn from every discipline, from neuroscience to anthropology to sociology. but the discipline i am learning a lot from is economics, and this surprises me. economists have sometimes overstressed the importance of money in happiness. however, we do need money in the modern world to meet our needs and to develop and to do interesting things. so money can be beneficial to happiness. but what i have learned from economists is an objective approach to problems and a reliance on data. too often in positive psychology people think they already know the answers to questions, or gain the answers from their intuitions. my fear is that positive psychology should not be the province of well-meaning people with strong opinions, without a scientific base for those opinions. i have found that economists really take a hard look at data, and they are often quite objective about that. i admire this aspect of economics. positive psychology is being applied in health, education, the army, in therapy, or more recently at the governmental level with a focus on assessment. where next? are there fields and areas that positive psychology is beginning to move into and gain traction? one of the really important applied movements is ‘national accounts of wellbeing’. martin seligman and i rekindled interest in this with our 2005 article, beyond money (psychological science in the public interest). we argued that governments need to measure various forms of psychosocial wellbeing to complement the measures of economics that all governments collect. people pay attention to what is measured, and right now the economies of nations get the lion’s share of attention. indeed, i would guess that the economy receives about 90 percent of the attention of politicians and the news media. national accounts of wellbeing are able to give a broader view of quality of life, and how citizens are faring. we are seeing progress across the globe. the prime minister of the united kingdom announced that wellbeing would become a concern of the government, and instituted a set of simple measures that would be collected in his country. other nations are following suit, and the organization of economic cooperation and development (oecd) is devising a set of prototype measures. i see this as the most important advance in applied positive psychology. measuring wellbeing might not seem as exciting as going out and intervening to make people happier or more virtuous. however, the national accounts promise to have a very widespread effect. in their ability to capture the interest of the entire population, they can provide leverage for many different types of changes in society that go far beyond the work of individual positive psychologists. i have my fingers crossed. what’s one aspiration you have for positive psychology? my strongest desire for positive psychology is that it not be a cult or a club. too often positive psychologists just look at the work of other positive psychologists, rather than broadening out and looking at relevant work of those who are not in the positive psychology fold. too often people look at a handful of leaders for what positive psychology is, and what other positive psychologists say about an issue. instead, we need to examine both what positive psychologists positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 say and also what others who have studied that topic have to say. there is a great deal of valuable material about positive psychology coming from people who are not ‘members’ of the positive psychology movement. if we don’t pay attention to this work, positive psychology will never flourish. one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology students, researchers or practitioners? i have two pieces of advice for aspiring positive psychologists. first, although work in this field is fun, it takes a lot of hard work and perseverance. some people pop into the field thinking that they will find magical and quick answers. instead, in a developing field such as this one we are searching for answers, and this requires deep thought and hard work. my second piece of advice is to build your work on science. listen to what other positive psychologists say, but always remain critical and a bit skeptical. learn to think for yourself. i see many young people who want to find out what the leaders of positive psychology think so they will know the truth. we are not at that point yet. you need to listen to the experts, but also look at the evidence and think for yourself. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz fors connolly, f., & johansson sevä, i., (2018). social status and life satisfaction in context: a comparison between sweden and the usa. international journal of wellbeing, 8(2), 110-134. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i2.710 filip fors connolly umeå university filip.fors@umu.se copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 article social status and life satisfaction in context: a comparison between sweden and the usa filip fors connolly · ingemar johansson sevä abstract: previous research has shown that social status is an important predictor of life satisfaction (ls). however, researchers have largely focused on the united states, which raises questions about the extent to which the cultural context moderates the relationship between social status and ls. in this paper, we argue that the dominant cultural orientations in society most likely influence the strength of the relationship between social status and ls. cultural orientations emphasizing competition, achievement and assertiveness should increase the positive influence of social status on ls, while cultural emphases on cooperation, equality and humility instead weakens the effect of status. we therefore analyze the social status-ls relationship in two distinctly different cultural contexts, i.e., sweden and the united states. based on theories about national differences in cultural value orientations, we argue that social status should be of more importance in the us compared to in sweden, since the dominant values and ideals emphasize hierarchy, mastery and masculinity, while the swedish culture represents an opposite pole by emphasizing egalitarianism, harmony, and femininity. we formulate a number of hypotheses and use survey data to examine the extent to which both social status attainment and social status seeking are related to ls in both countries. the results show that socioeconomic status (income) and sociometric status (perceived respect and admiration in everyday life) have a stronger influence on ls in the us compared to in sweden. further, the findings show that social status seeking (low honesty-humility) has a positive relationship to ls in the us, but is negatively related in sweden. the results also show that gender differences in the relationship between social status and ls are more pronounced in the us compared to in sweden. we conclude that both the attainment and pursuit of social status are more important for ls in the american cultural context compared to in the swedish, especially among men. these findings are in line with our expectations, based on the opposing cultural orientations in sweden and the us. the study contributes to the literature on the relationship between social status and ls, but also to the more general literature on the moderating influence of culture on the predictors of ls. keywords: subjective wellbeing, life satisfaction, social status, cultural orientations, socioeconomic status, sociometric status, status seeking, sweden, usa 1. introduction life satisfaction (ls) has become one of the most important benchmarks when measuring the quality of life across countries. both the oecd (2011) and the united nations (helliwell, huang & wang, 2017) promote ls as an important welfare indicator complementing traditional measures such as gdp and life expectancy when assessing levels of wellbeing across countries. since ls is such a central component of individuals’ overall wellbeing and quality of life, much research has examined its determinants (for a review see e.g., dolan, peasgood, & white, 2008; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 veenhoven, 2015). recently, studies have found that social status, and particularly an individual's position on the “local ladder” (i.e., respect and admiration from peers), have a strong impact on ls (anderson, kraus, galinsky, & keltner, 2012). this finding is not surprising because psychologists have previously proposed that social status constitutes a fundamental human motive (hogan & hogan, 1991; anderson, hildreth, & howland, 2015). moreover, previous research has shown that social status and adjacent concepts such as occupational prestige (treiman, 2013) predict various other outcomes related to wellbeing, such as health, self-esteem, and job satisfaction (smith 2004; fujishiro, xu, & gong, 2010; weaver, 1977). however, since present evidence about the relationship between social status and ls mostly comes from studies conducted in the us, it is unclear whether cultural context influences the relationship between social status and ls. indeed, previous research suggests that cultural norms can affect certain correlates of ls within countries. oishi, diener, lucas, and suh (1999) identify a systematic relationship between salient cultural values that differs between countries as well as geographical regions and standards for life satisfaction, judgments, and emotional experiences. for example, perceptions of freedom predict life satisfaction more strongly in individualist countries compared to in collectivist countries, supporting the idea that individual freedom is a more salient value in individualistic cultures (oishi et al., 1999). furthermore, kwan, bond and singelis (1997) found that “relationship harmony” was a more important predictor of life satisfaction in hong kong compared to in the united states, suggesting that harmonious relationships are more highly valued in the chinese culture compared to in the american culture. findings like these suggest that the relationship between contextual factors and ls is complex, and that contextual characteristics most likely affect the relationship between many individuallevel predictors and ls. the aim of this study is to increase the knowledge about cross-national differences in the relationship between social status and ls, by focusing on the potential impact of cultural norms on this relationship. by using unique survey data from sweden and the us, we can examine the social status-ls relationship in two distinctly different cultural contexts. while competition, selfachievement and assertiveness characterize american culture, the swedish culture is more egalitarian and emphasizes ideals such as cooperation and humility (hofstede, 2001; schwartz, 2006). we argue that these differences in cultural orientations most likely affect the significance of social status in society, which, in turn, might have important consequences for the relationship between social status and ls. on a more general level, this study also attempts to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the relationship between social status and ls by examining how the ls of individuals in the us and sweden are related to not only social status attainment, but also social status seeking. finally, since the main findings from previous research regarding gender differences in the importance of social status for ls are somewhat mixed (buss, 1999; hays, 2013), we also analyze to what extent such differences exist, and whether cultural contexts can contribute to the understanding of differences between women and men in terms of the relationship between social status and ls. 1.1 ls and social status attainment most scholars make a distinction between two different components of subjective wellbeing (swb): life satisfaction and affective wellbeing (diener, 1984; kahneman & deaton, 2010). whereas life satisfaction concerns individuals’ evaluations of their lives, affective wellbeing reflects the balance between pleasant and unpleasant affect in people’s lives (diener, 1984; brülde, 2007). comparative studies of ls have found large differences between countries, typically finding the highest levels of ls in countries characterized by high levels of gdp per social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 capita, life expectancy and social capital (helliwell, huang, & wang, 2017). within countries, previous research suggests that ls is higher among extraverted and emotionally stable individuals, those with high income, and people with good health; and lower among the unemployed and people who are lonely (blanchflower, 2009; mellor, stokes, firth, hayashi, & cummins, 2008). however, as we will elaborate below, social status is also an important predictor of ls. anderson et al. (2015, p. 575) define social status as “the respect, admiration, and voluntary deference individuals are afforded by others,” meaning that others hold high-status individuals in high regard and voluntarily comply with high-status individuals’ needs and desires without the need for threat or coercion. it should be noted that social status can operate at different levels. on one hand, it can refer to people’s global status position in society at large (adler et al., 1994; anderson et al., 2012). researchers often capture this status dimension by using the term “socioeconomic status” (adler et al., 1994). on the other hand, it can refer to the more local level in terms of people’s status among peers and the respect and admiration they experience in their everyday interactions (anderson et al., 2012). researchers often label this form of social status as “sociometric status.” previous studies have shown that both socioeconomic status and sociometric status predict subjective wellbeing. for example, people who score high in these two status-dimensions tend to be more satisfied with their lives and experience more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions compared to people who score low on social status (layard, clark, cornaglia, powdthavee & vernoit, 2014; anderson et al., 2012). furthermore, research suggests that sociometric status has a stronger relationship with swb compared to socioeconomic status, and that sociometric status predicts swb when using both experimental and longitudinal research designs (anderson et al., 2012). the fact that high-status individuals experience greater control over their social environment and increased levels of belonging and acceptance may explain these results (anderson et al., 2012). however, it is important to note that the evidence of a strong connection between social status and swb mostly comes from studies conducted in the united states. 1.2 social status seeking and ls not only is the attainment of social status relevant for ls, the pursuit of social status might also matter for the extent to which individuals experience wellbeing. the pursuit of social status is understood both in terms of how individuals value abstract goals such as power and achievement (schwartz, 1994), as well as more enduring personality dispositions, i.e., “what people are like” in terms of their habitual behaviors, feelings, and thoughts (costa & mccrae, 1990) in relation to social status. although status seeking is not clearly captured in dominant personality trait models such as the five-factor model, it is central in the recently proposed hexaco-model under a trait named honesty-humility (lee & ashton, 2004, 2013). people with low scores on the honesty-humility dimension want to enjoy and display wealth and privilege and actively pursue superior social status. conversely, individuals who score high in this dimension are not overly motivated by social-status considerations and view themselves as ordinary people without any entitlement to elevated social status (lee & ashton, 2013). in a study connecting honesty-humility to socio-political orientations in the us, lee, ashton, ogunfowora, bourdage, and shin (2010) found that people low in honesty-humility prefer a more hierarchical society in contrast to people high in honesty-humility, who prefer a more egalitarian social order. using data from a swedish sample, kajonius and dåderman (2014) found a similar pattern, showing that people with high scores on honesty-humility strongly favor a more equal distribution of resources within society. we argue that these results indicate that status-seeking social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 tendencies (low honesty-humility) will be more beneficial for wellbeing in a hierarchical context compared to in an egalitarian context. as a consequence, individuals low in honesty-humility would be more satisfied with their life if they lived in a more hierarchical society, whereas the opposite would hold for individuals high in honesty-humility. a few previous studies examine the influence of honesty-humility on ls. pollock, noser, holden, and zeigler-hill (2016) found a weak negative (non-significant) relationship between honesty-humility and life satisfaction in a small us sample (r = -.03). other related studies from the us have shown that people who value financial success and material resources (i.e., values/attitudes related to status seeking) tend to have somewhat lower levels of ls compared to people who put less emphasis on these values (kasser & ryan, 1993). given the fact that few studies generally exist on the topic, and that researchers have not conducted studies on the relationship between honesty-humility and ls in sweden (to our knowledge), further investigations about the general relationship between social status seeking and ls, as well as whether cultural contexts moderate this relationship, are warranted. 1.3 the cultural contexts of sweden and the us turning to the issue of whether cultural context influences the relationship between social status and ls, we now elaborate on why social status attainment and social status seeking might be of greater importance for individuals in certain cultural contexts than in others. national cultures are the shared values, beliefs, and norms that are common for the majority of individuals within a nation. these cultural orientations thus convey common preferences and ideals regarding what is viewed as good and desirable in society (schwartz, 2006). in his seminal work on cross-cultural differences, hofstede (1980, 2001) describes national culture as the value system and “mental programming” shared by the majority of individuals in a specific country. scholars have proposed that national cultures originate from the fact that societies face certain basic problems that they need to address, but that there are different ways to solve these problems. hofstede (1980, 2001) identifies five (later six) cultural dimensions, representing collective preferences for one state of affairs over another. country scores on these dimensions thus distinguish countries from each other in terms of the common values and the promotion of certain societal norms when addressing a specific societal problem. similarly, schwartz (2006) defines culture and cultural differences by referring to the underlying value orientations influencing social structures and relations. in line with hofstede, schwartz argues that these value orientations “evolve as societies confront basic issues or problems in regulating human activity” (schwartz, 2006, p. 140). according to schwartz, cultures differ on three bipolar dimensions, establishing seven interdependent cultural value orientations, ordered in a circle. the interdependent nature of these cultural dimensions suggests that if a specific culture emphasizes one polar value orientation, it typically de-emphasizes the cultural values of the opposing pole. the notion that national cultures (in terms of basic value orientations) exist has received empirical support. for example, minkov and hofstede (2012) found that, for a majority of the 28 countries studied, the value orientations of 299 in-country regions cluster along national lines rather than across borders. while emphasizing that different sets of values tend to distinguish between national cultures to a varying extent across different parts of the world, they nevertheless conclude: “it proves that national cultures can be distinguished if an appropriate selection of cultural indicators is used” (minkov & hofstede, 2012, p. 153). moreover, the fact that somewhat different conceptualizations of cultural dimensions tend to correlate highly, despite differences in measurements, indicators, and samples, suggests that there seem to be social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 meaningful cultural differences across countries. schwartz (2006) provides evidence in support of such similarities between various cultural theories by finding a considerable overlap between different conceptualizations of cultural dimensions. in this study, we argue that the cultures of sweden and the us differ in significant ways regarding their dominant values and societal norms. further, we argue that these differences should have substantial implications for the relationship between social status and ls. below, we discuss why the importance of social status generally should be more salient in the us culture compared to in the swedish, and, consequently why, the social status-ls relationship should be stronger in the us compared to in sweden. as discussed previously, a number of different theories about cultural orientations provide similar pictures of the national cultures of sweden and the us (see e.g., hofstede 2001; schwartz 2006). one of hofstede’s cultural dimensions stands out as highly relevant in relation to the interplay between social status and ls, as well as in relation to potential gender differences in this link. hofstede (2001) refers to this dimension as masculinity (versus femininity), capturing a fundamental dilemma of human societies regarding the relative strength of nurturance interests (social) and assertiveness interests (ego). hofstede labels the assertive pole “masculine” and the modest pole “feminine,” referring to the distribution of emotional roles (learned styles of interpersonal interaction) between men and women in society, i.e., the dominant gender roles. according to hofstede, this dimension captures the degree to which social gender roles are clearly distinct in society, meaning that men ought to be assertive and focus on achievement while women should be modest and focus on cooperation. while countries scoring high on the masculinity dimension have more pronounced differences, in feminine countries, gender roles instead tend to overlap, i.e., both men and women are supposed to be modest and more oriented towards cooperation. this dimension thus captures the extent to which assertiveness, competition, and wealth are valued as societal ideals rather than humility, cooperation, and modesty. according to hofstede, the difference between sweden and the us on the masculinity dimension is substantial. sweden’s score places the country as the most feminine among all countries surveyed, while the us score ranks well above the average among the countries at the masculine end of the scale (hofstede, 2001). consequently, while wealth and recognition are measures of achievement in the us, social relationships and quality of life tend to be the sources of achievement in sweden. these cultural orientations also suggest that gender differences should be more pronounced in the us than in sweden. based on another common problem for societies, namely, ensuring that people behave in productive ways that preserve society and the social structure, schwartz (2006) derives an egalitarianism/hierarchy dimension. at one end, egalitarian cultures emphasize values such as equality, social justice, and cooperation to uphold the social fabric of society. hierarchy cultures, at the other pole, instead make use of hierarchical systems of ascribed roles to ensure that people behave responsibly and in a productive manner. hierarchy cultures define the unequal distribution of power, roles, and resources as legitimate and even desirable, in order to promote stable social relations in society. as a result, values such as social power, authority and wealth are important in hierarchical cultures. adjacent to egalitarianism and hierarchy lies another cultural dimension, with the two opposing value orientations of harmony and mastery. schwartz (2006) argues that the harmonymastery dimension is derived from yet another common problem that societies face, namely, how people manage their relations to the natural and social world. at the harmony pole, the cultural orientations emphasize peace and unity with nature and consequently encourage people to understand and appreciate the world as it is rather than try to change or exploit it. conversely, social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 cultures scoring high on the mastery value orientation encourage active self-assertion to master, direct, and change the natural and social environment in order to achieve personal or group goals. while the cultural orientations associated with both egalitarianism and harmony stimulate equality, humility and cooperative regulation of interdependence, the contrasting cultural poles of hierarchy and mastery justify inequality, competition, and the differential distribution of resources associated with competition. this suggests that people are more likely to view assertiveness and competition as something good if they live in a country where the cultural value orientations emphasize hierarchy and mastery, as opposed to egalitarianism and harmony. according to schwartz (2006), the cultures of sweden and the us differ notably regarding the emphasis on these cultural orientations, suggesting that each culture promotes different societal norms and ideals. while the swedish culture, being part of the broader group of western european countries, puts very low emphasis on hierarchy and mastery in favor of the opposing values of egalitarianism and harmony, the us culture promotes ideals and norms in line with the cultural orientations of hierarchy and mastery. hence, the swedish culture encourages people to be modest about their achievements, paying attention to the fictitious “jante law” that stipulates that you should not stand out from the crowd. the us culture instead encourages “an assertive, pragmatic, entrepreneurial, and even exploitative orientation to the social and natural environment” (schwartz, 2006, p. 158). this means that americans should be more prone to display and talk freely about their “successes” and achievements in life. some even claim that being successful per se is not the great motivator in american society, but rather being able to show one’s success (hofstede, 2001). in line with this, studies also show that americans generally work longer hours than swedes (ohanian & raffo, 2012), and that their work orientations indicate that they “live to work” (okulicz-kozaryn, 2011). observed correlations between social attitudes and cultural values further corroborate these findings. for example, schwartz (2006) shows that the proportion of the general public stating that “hard work” is an especially desirable quality for children to learn is positively correlated with hierarchy and mastery orientations. further, it is more common for individuals in these cultural contexts to agree that “competition is good” (schwartz, 2006). these findings suggest that americans, in comparison with swedes, tend to work harder to obtain monetary rewards, and as a consequence attain higher social status based on how successful they are. finally, regarding potential gender differences, schwartz’s findings demonstrate that cultures emphasizing egalitarianism and harmony tend to promote women’s equality, for example, in terms of education, health, and employment. this, in turn, suggests that gender differences in the relationship between social status and ls should be more salient in the us compared to in sweden. the differences in cultural orientations between sweden and the us are, of course, also related to the actual distribution of material resources. other perspectives therefore further contribute to the understanding of the differences between the swedish and the american societies by highlighting that there are substantial differences, for example, in income inequality and welfare state arrangements. many approaches put an emphasis on institutional structures as intervening factors affecting the distribution of material resources and consequently class and gender inequality (e.g., korpi, 2000). because it is difficult to design institutions and implement social policies that are not in line with the prevailing norms and ideals in society, the design of institutions and the outcomes associated with them are inevitably linked to societal values and cultural orientations. political institutions thereby provide additional guidelines for how individuals think, act, and behave in relation to inequality and competition. for example, svallfors (2006) finds that while 17% of americans agree that it should be the government’s social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 responsibility to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor, in sweden the corresponding share is 43%. the reluctance to reduce income differences in the us may be explained by the fact that americans to a large extent believe that individual effort determines their social status and that differences in social status are legitimate (alesina & angeletos, 2003). we argue that the extent to which status differences are viewed as legitimate contributes in determining the strength of the relationship between social status and wellbeing. 1.4 hypotheses based on the differences in cultural orientations and institutional contexts between the us and sweden, we formulate four hypotheses regarding the relationship between ls and the attainment and pursuit of social status. first, we expect that social status attainment in general, both in terms of socioeconomic and sociometric status, should be of more importance for the ls of individuals in the us compared to in sweden, resulting in the following hypotheses: hypothesis 1a: socioeconomic status is more strongly associated with ls in the us compared to in sweden; hypothesis 1b: sociometric status is more strongly associated with ls in the us compared to in sweden. further, we anticipate a slightly positive relationship between social status seeking and life satisfaction in the us, since american cultural values emphasize competition and assertiveness, even though a previous study found no association between honesty-humility and ls in the us (pollock et al., 2016). however, this study analyzed only a small non-representative sample (n = 153), which makes further investigations into the association between honesty-humility and life satisfaction in the us highly warranted. conversely, given the importance of modesty and humility in swedish culture, we anticipate that status-seeking behaviors come into conflict with the social norms and are perhaps even penalized, and we therefore expect to find a negative relationship between social status seeking and ls in sweden. hence, we formulate the following hypothesis: hypothesis 2: social status seeking is negatively associated with ls in sweden, while positively associated with ls in the us. finally, regarding potential gender differences in the relationships between social status attainment and ls, as well as social status seeking and ls, we expect that such differences should be smaller in sweden compared to in the us, depending on differences in cultural orientations relating to masculinity, hierarchy, and mastery, but also depending on the level of gender equality, thus: hypothesis 3: social status and status seeking is more strongly associated with ls for men compared to women in the us, while such gender differences are smaller in sweden. 2. method 2.1 data we used qualtrics (http://www.qualtrics.com) web-survey panels in the us and sweden to recruit respondents for this study. three different attention checks were used in the survey to filter out respondents who did not fill out the questionnaire carefully. the data collection stopped http://www.qualtrics.com/ social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 when qualtrics recorded 1,260 completed survey responses in each country. the questionnaire was provided in english for the american sample and in swedish for the swedish sample. previous studies comparing survey samples provided by commercial platforms such as qualtrics with population data show that such samples tend to be fairly representative (heen, lieberman and miethe, 2014). 2.2 measures we measured ls using a single-item question on life satisfaction taken from the european social survey. the question reads as follows: “all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?” to answer the question, respondents used a response scale ranging from 0 to 6 with endpoints labelled “extremely dissatisfied” and “extremely satisfied.” previous research suggests that this single-item life satisfaction question is a reliable measure of life satisfaction, both within and between countries (cheung & lucas, 2014; fors & kulin, 2016). to measure socioeconomic status, we used respondents’ household income as a proxy variable. household income has been widely used in previous studies to measure socioeconomic status (see, for example, adler et al., 1994). aside from income, indicators of education and occupation are also widely used measures of socioeconomic status. however, we chose income instead of education and occupation, since previous research suggests that income is a more robust determinant of ls (argyle, 2003). we measured annual household net income using five country-specific income categories. the us questionnaire used the following categories: 1: $0 to $24,999, 2: $25,000 to $49,999, 3: $50,000 to $74,999 4: $75,000 to $99,999, 5: $100,000 or more. the swedish questionnaire used currency conversions to swedish sek for each income category, with figures rounded off to the nearest thousandth. to capture sociometric status, we used three items adapted from a study by anderson et al. (2012). respondents indicated to what extent they agreed or disagreed with the following statements: “i have a high level of respect in others’ eyes,” “i have high social standing,” and “others look up to me.” we rated agreement to these statements on a scale from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”) and averaged the ratings of the three statements into an index. cronbach’s alpha for the index was .81 for us men, .76 for us women, .79 for swedish men and .77 for swedish women, suggesting an acceptable internal reliability in both countries and for both men and women. we measured social status seeking using all four items from the honesty-humility dimension of the mini-ipip6 personality scale (sibley et al., 2011). the questionnaire asked respondents to indicate to what extent the following statements reflected their personality: “feel entitled to more of everything,” “deserve more things in life,” “would get a lot of pleasure from owning expensive luxury goods,” and “would like to be seen driving around in a very expensive car.” we recorded answers on a 7-point scale with endpoints labelled “very inaccurate” (1) to “very accurate” (7) and averaged the ratings of the four statements into an index. cronbach’s alpha for the index was .85 for us men, .81 for us women, .71 for swedish men and .67 for swedish women. although the alpha values were somewhat low in sweden, we believe that they are acceptable, taking into consideration that there were only four items included in the measure. in order to control for other relevant individual-level characteristics that affect life satisfaction, we measured the big five personality traits using the same mini-ipip6 personality scale (sibley et al., 2011) described above. all of these five traits have been connected to life satisfaction in previous research (steel, schmidt & shultz, 2008). we measured each trait using four statements averaged into an index. cronbach’s alpha for the extraversion measure was .71 in the us and .80 in sweden, .75 (us) and .68 (swe) for agreeableness, .59 (us) and .72 (swe) for social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 conscientiousness, .57 (us) and 77 (swe) for neuroticism, and finally .68 (us) and .69 (swe) for openness. we also included age as a control variable (six categories), since this variable has been connected to life satisfaction in some previous studies (blanchflower & oswald, 2008). finally, to control for respondents’ material living conditions, which affect life satisfaction (sacks, stevenson & wolfers, 2012), we included a measure of financial satisfaction when examining the relationship between socioeconomic status and ls. respondents indicated their satisfaction with their “financial situation” on a 7-point bipolar scale ranging from 0 (“extremely dissatisfied”) to 6 (“extremely satisfied”). 3. results table 1 below shows the demographic and personality structure of the samples in terms of gender, age, education, relationship status, and the big five personality traits. the demographic structure of the two samples does not differ in relation to gender (χ2 = 0.057; p = .811) and age (χ2 = 2.843; p = .724). the swedish sample reported significantly lower income (χ2 = 148.566; p = .000), fewer education years (χ2 = 107.423; p = .000) and a larger portion of this sample reported themselves as single (χ2 = 6.596; p = .037). regarding the big five personality traits (measured by the mini-ipip) the american sample scored higher on extraversion (t = 2.374; p = .018), conscientiousness (t = 6.120; p = .000), and openness (t = 3.531; p = .000) but lower on neuroticism (t = -3.056; p = .002). we found no significant differences regarding agreeableness (t = 1.512; p = .131). since population statistics for most of the variables above are not available, and therefore unknown, we include age and the big five traits as controls in our analysis. in table 2 below, we report descriptive statistics and correlations for our key variables: life satisfaction, socioeconomic status, sociometric status, and status-seeking personality (see appendix table 1 for correlations between all variables used in the analysis). regarding our outcome variable, we find that the level of life satisfaction is higher in the us sample compared to the swedish sample (t = 6.530; p = .000). similarly, the descriptive statistics for the two measures capturing social status attainment indicate that levels are higher in the american sample, both in terms of socioeconomic status (t = 9.168; p = .000) and sociometric status (t = 11.230; p = .000). the table also shows that the american sample scored higher on the measure capturing a statusseeking personality (t = 8.002; p = .000). we also note that, across all measures, the standard deviation is higher in the us sample compared to the swedish sample. because previous studies have shown that us society is more unequal compared to sweden in relation to both income (fritzell, 1999) and health (doorslaer et al., 1997), this finding is expected. social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 table 1. descriptive statistics for sociodemographic variables and personality traits in sweden and usa sweden usa n % n % age 18 24 115 9.1 138 11.0 25 34 231 18.3 234 18.6 35 44 228 18.1 220 17.5 45 54 239 19.0 224 17.8 55 64 216 17.1 210 16.7 65 or older 231 18.3 234 18.6 gender male 589 46.7 595 47.2 female 671 53.3 665 52.8 number of education years 0-5 25 2.0 66 5.2 6-10 128 10.2 67 5.3 11-15 670 53.2 503 39.9 16-20 369 29.3 475 37.7 21-25 57 4.5 109 8.7 26 or more 11 0.9 40 3.2 household income (net) $0 to $24,999 261 20.7 227 18.0 $25,000 to $49,999 390 31.0 287 22.8 $50,000 to $74,999 326 25.9 245 19.5 $75,000 to $99,999 184 14.6 177 14.1 $100,000 or more 99 7.9 323 25.7 relationship status cohabiting 753 59.8 815 64.7 has partner but not cohabiting 96 7.6 88 7.0 single (no partner) 411 32.6 357 28.3 n mean n mean big five personality traits agreeableness 1260 5.08 1260 5.15 conscientiousness 1260 4.88 1260 5.15 extraversion 1260 3.75 1260 3.88 neuroticism 1260 3.71 1260 3.57 openness 1260 4.85 1260 5.02 we find that socioeconomic status and sociometric status are moderately correlated, suggesting that people with high income also tend to report higher levels of respect and admiration in their everyday life. however, since the correlation between these types of social status is far from perfect, the data also support the notion that socioeconomic status and sociometric status are two distinct (although correlated) phenomena. as expected, the data show a positive relationship between life satisfaction and both socioeconomic status and sociometric status. although status social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 seeking is positively correlated with both income and sociometric status, we find no correlation in the pooled sample between status seeking and ls. table 2. descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations for key variables sweden usa mean s.d. mean s.d. life satisfaction household income sociometric status status seeking life satisfaction 3.76 1.37 4.13 1.49 1 household income 2.58 1.19 3.07 1.45 0.32 1 sociometric status 2.97 0.73 3.33 0.87 0.47 0.39 1 status seeking 3.12 1.14 3.56 1.60 0.01 0.21 0.31 1 note: all mean differences between sweden and usa are statistically significant at the .001-level (independent samples t-test). all correlations, except the correlation between status seeking and life satisfaction, are statistically significant at the .001-level. 3.1 socioeconomic status, sociometric status and life satisfaction we now begin our analysis by investigating the relationship between social status attainment and life satisfaction in sweden and the us, thereby testing hypotheses 1a-b. these hypotheses suggest that income (h1a) and sociometric status (h1b) are more strongly related to ls in the us compared to in sweden. we tested a series of multiple regression models, each with country as the moderating factor. we performed the moderation analysis using model 1 in the spss process macro (hayes, 2013), with 95% bias corrected confidence intervals and we calculated statistical significance using 5,000 bootstrapping replications. in model 1, presented in table 3 below, life satisfaction constitutes the dependent variable and socioeconomic status (total annual household income) is the main independent variable. as expected, the results show that there is a positive association in general between household income and life satisfaction. however, when adding the interaction term between country and income in model 2, we find that the effect of income on ls is moderated by country. the statistically significant interaction effect (model 2) indicates that income has a stronger impact on ls in the us compared to in sweden. in model 3, we include the control variable measuring respondents’ satisfaction with their financial situation. we consider this variable to be a proxy for the respondents’ material living conditions, and by including it, our intention is to ensure that the relationship between income and ls found in model 2 captures social status in society at large rather than differences in material living standards and financial stress (cf joo & grable, 2004). the results in model 3 show that the positive association between socioeconomic status (household income) and life satisfaction remains when taking the respondents’ financial situations into account. for illustrative purposes, the interaction between socioeconomic status and country is presented graphically in figure 1 below. the y-axis represents predicted values on the life satisfaction scale for the mean income and one standard deviation below and above the mean (xaxis). here we find that the difference in ls between the lowand high-income categories is 0.74 in the us and 0.42 in sweden. the figure clearly illustrates that the relationship between social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 socioeconomic status and life satisfaction is stronger in the us compared to in sweden, thereby indicating that country moderates the relationship between socioeconomic status and ls. table 3. the relationship between socioeconomic status and life satisfaction model 1 model 2 model 3 country (usa = 1, sweden = 0) 0.16** -0.17 -0.06 (0.05) (0.11) (0.10) income 0.23** 0.16** -0.02 (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) income x country 0.12** 0.08** (0.04) (0.03) satisfaction with financial situation 0.36** (0.01) constant 4.39** 4.52** 3.50** (0.21) (0.21) (0.21) individual characteristic controls yes yes yes observations 2520 2520 2520 note: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. cell entries represent unstandardized regression coefficients. figure 1. interaction effect of socioeconomic status and country on life satisfaction note: conditional effects and standard errors: usa: .28 (.024); sweden: .16 (.028). social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 turning to the next aspect of social status attainment, we present the relationship between sociometric status and ls in table 4. to begin with, we find a positive relationship between sociometric status and ls in the pooled sample (model 1). similarly to the results for socioeconomic status and ls, we find that the interaction term between sociometric status and country (model 2) is statistically significant, suggesting that sociometric status has a stronger impact on ls in the us compared to in sweden. table 4. the relationship between sociometric status and life satisfaction model 1 model 2 country (usa=1, sweden=0) 0.10* -0.45* (0.05) (0.19) sociometric status 0.56** 0.46** (0.05) (0.05) sociometric status x country 0.18** (0.06) constant 3.67** 3.95** (0.22) (0.24) control variables yes yes observations 2520 2520 notes: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. cell entries represent unstandardized regression coefficients. control variables: age and the big five personality traits. figure 2. interaction effect of sociometric status and country on life satisfaction note: conditional effects and standard errors: usa: .63 (.043); sweden: .46 (.049). social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 figure 2 graphically presents the relationship between sociometric status and ls in the two countries. the y-axis represents predicted values on the life satisfaction scale for the mean value of sociometric status and one standard deviation below and above the mean (x-axis). here we find that the difference in ls between the lowand high-status categories is 1.03 in the us and 0.75 in sweden. the figure shows that the strength of the relationship between sociometric status and ls is stronger in the us compared to in sweden. in summary, the results suggest that both socioeconomic status and sociometric status are more strongly positively related to ls in the us compared to in sweden. these results provide evidence in support for hypothesis 1a (the relationship between socioeconomic status and ls is stronger in the us compared to in sweden) and 1b (the relationship between sociometric status and ls is stronger in the us compared to in sweden). 3.2 social status seeking and life satisfaction we continue by investigating the relationship between social status seeking and ls. based on the ambiguous results from previous studies (mainly conducted in the us) that suggest a weak or non-existing relationship between status seeking (low honesty-humility) and ls, we formulated the following hypothesis: social status seeking is negatively associated with ls in sweden, while (slightly) positively associated with ls in the us. to test if status seeking has a negative effect on ls in sweden compared to a slightly positive effect on ls in the us, we examine the effect of status seeking on ls as well as the interaction between status seeking and country in table 5 below. as previously described, we use the reversed scores on the honesty-humility scale as a proxy for status seeking. as shown in model 1, and in line with the correlations presented in table 2, we do not find a statistically significant relationship between status seeking and ls in the pooled sample. however, the results obtained when including the interaction term between country and status seeking in model 2 reveal an interesting pattern. the interaction term is statistically significant and shows that the effect of status seeking on ls is clearly very different in the us compared to in sweden. in figure 3 below, we illustrate the impact of social status seeking on ls in the us and sweden. similar to previous graphs, the y-axis represents predicted values on the life satisfaction scale for the mean value of status seeking and one standard deviation below and above the mean (x-axis). the graph suggests that status-seeking individuals tend to have slightly higher levels of ls in the us, while status seeking is instead related to lower levels of ls in sweden. when comparing the low and high categories on the status-seeking scale based on the standard deviation, we find that the difference in ls is 0.25 in the us and -0.46 in sweden. we note that the negative relationship between status seeking and ls found in sweden is slightly stronger than the positive relationship found in the us. in summary, our results showing that status seeking is negatively related to ls in sweden while slightly positively related in the us provide evidence supporting hypothesis 2. moreover, the fact that we find a positive relationship between status seeking and ls in the us reveals that status seeking might not always be detrimental for ls, but in some contexts, such as the american, even slightly positive for individuals’ ls. social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 table 5. the relationship between status seeking and life satisfaction model 1 model 2 country (usa=1, sweden=0) 0.26** -0.58** (0.05) (0.13) status seeking 0.00 -0.16** (0.02) (0.03) status seeking x country 0.25** (0.04) constant 5.09 5.47 (0.23) (0.23) control variables yes yes observations 2520 2520 notes: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. cell entries represent unstandardized regression coefficients. control variables: age and the big five personality traits. figure 3. interaction effect of status seeking and country on life satisfaction note: conditional effects and standard errors: usa: .09 (.024); sweden: -.16 (.031). 3.3 gender differences in the social status-ls relationship finally, we test hypothesis 3 and examine whether there are gender differences in the social status-ls relationship, and whether these potential gender differences are affected by the social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 different cultural contexts of the us and sweden. in table 6 below, we present three regression models, including socioeconomic status, sociometric status and status seeking, for each country. table 6. the interaction effect of gender, social status, and status seeking on life satisfaction country usa sweden model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 gender (women=1, men=0) 0.36* 0.88** 0.39* 0.42** 0.80** 0.13 (0.16) (0.28) (0.18) (0.15) (0.27) (0.19) income 0.33** 0.19** (0.04) (0.04) income x gender -0.13** -0.04 (0.05) (0.05) sociometric status 0.76** 0.54*** (0.06) (0.07) sociometric status x gender -0.26** -0.16 (0.08) (0.09) status seeking 0.13** -0.15** (0.04) (0.04) status seeking x gender -0.13* 0.02 (0.05) (0.06) constant 4.10** 3.05** 4.74** 4.25** 3.46** 5.20** (0.33) (0.36) (0.36) (0.29) (0.33) (0.31) control variables yes yes yes yes yes yes observations 1260 1260 1260 1260 1260 1260 notes: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. cell entries represent unstandardized regression coefficients. control variables: age and the big five personality traits. overall, the results presented in table 6 show that there are substantial differences between sweden and the us in the extent to which social status attainment and status seeking affect ls differently among men and women. in the us, we find that the impact of socioeconomic status, sociometric status, and status seeking have a stronger, statistically significant impact on ls among men compared to among women (models 1-3). however, in sweden we do not find any statistically significant differences in the relationship between social status attainment, status seeking, and ls between men and women (models 4-6). nevertheless, even if we fail to find any statistically significant gender differences in sweden, it is important to note that the pattern found in the us suggesting that social status is of more importance for ls among men is also found at the trend level regarding socioeconomic status and sociometric status in sweden. however, regarding status seeking, we do not find this trend, since there is a slightly more pronounced negative effect on ls among men than among women in sweden. overall, these differences in the gendered patterns of the relationship between social status and ls provide support for hypothesis 3. we present these findings graphically in figures 4a-c. social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 figure 4a. interaction effect of socioeconomic status, country, and gender on life satisfaction note: conditional effects and standard errors: usa men: .35 (.035); usa women: .21 (.032); sweden men: .20 (.040); sweden women: .15 (.040). figure 4b. interaction effect of sociometric status, country, and gender on life satisfaction note: conditional effects and standard errors: usa men: .76 (.056); usa women: .50 (.059); sweden men: .56 (.069); sweden women: .40 (.064). social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 figure 4c. interaction effect of status seeking, country and gender on life satisfaction note: conditional effects and standard errors: usa men: .16 (.033); usa women: .02 (.033); sweden men: .-16 (.043); sweden women: -.14 (.043). 4. discussion the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of cultural context on the relationships between social status attainment, social status seeking and life satisfaction. we examined these relationships in the us and sweden, two diverse cultural contexts with different societal norms and ideals influencing the importance of social status in society. by focusing on two different aspects of social status attainment, we found that high levels of social status are more beneficial for ls in the us compared to in sweden. first, income, a common indicator of socioeconomic status, is more strongly connected to ls in the us compared to in sweden. second, sociometric status, i.e., the respect and admiration individuals obtain in everyday life, is also a stronger predictor of ls in the us compared to in sweden. the fact that social status is more important for ls in the us became even more salient when we examined the relationship between social status seeking and ls. in the egalitarian culture of sweden, where there is an expectation that people should be modest and not view themselves as better than others, the association between status seeking and ls is negative. in contrast, in the hierarchical culture of the us, characterized by competition and assertiveness, status seeking is associated with higher levels of ls. regarding potential gender differences in the relationship between social status and ls, we find that such differences are generally more salient in the us compared to in sweden, in line with our expectations based on the theories about differences in cultural orientations relating to masculinity, mastery and hierarchy (hofstede, 2001; schwartz, 2006). an illustrative example of how status seeking among men appears to be accepted and even rewarded in the us is the case of donald trump, who scores extremely low on honesty-humility, according to a recent study of his public persona (visser, book, & volk, 2017). this suggests that, for a large proportion of the american citizenry, high levels of status seeking are clearly accepted, even for the head of state. social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 by showing that the effects of both social status attainment and status seeking are more strongly associated with ls in the us compared to in sweden, our study provides novel insights regarding the role of culture as moderating the relationship between social status and ls. therefore, the study also contributes to the broader field, focusing on the role of cultural context in influencing the strength and direction of the relationships between different determinants and ls. further, because previous comparative research on this topic is limited to contrasting asian and american contexts, our results are particularly interesting, as they suggest that cultural values and ideals can influence the determinants of ls in countries within the western world. it is important to note that although we have found that cultural differences between the us and sweden seem to be of importance in moderating the strength of the relationship between social status and ls, social status attainment is still positively associated with ls, even in the relatively egalitarian context of sweden where modesty and humility are important ideals. this finding is, however, not that surprising, since it is hard to imagine a society where high social status (particularly sociometric status) would not be beneficial for ls. indeed, previous research suggests that social status is fundamentally rewarding and even predicts wellbeing among other animals such as chimpanzees (weiss, king, & enns, 2002). a potential limitation with our study might be the fact that we used data derived from a websurvey panel rather than from random samples representative of the populations in the us and sweden. however, previous studies have shown that web-survey panels similar to the panels used in this study tend to be representative of the general population (heen et al., 2014; see also clifford, jewell, & waggoner, 2015). another limitation is that we used a cross-sectional correlational research design, which allows for other interpretations of the observed associations. for instance, ls might affect social status attainment rather than the other way round. we certainly do not rule out the possibility that ls might influence social status attainment, since previous research has shown that ls is a desirable trait leading to increased social acceptance and liking (lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005). however, other research has also shown that social status predicts ls even when using longitudinal and experimental research designs, suggesting that social status indeed affects ls (anderson et al., 2012). more importantly, it is not clear how to theoretically interpret the main results reported in this paper (that both social status attainment and status seeking are more strongly associated with ls in the us compared to in sweden), if the causation between social status and ls is reversed. it is important for future research to investigate whether the findings observed in this study hold when using longitudinal and experimental study designs that provide better means for testing causality. further, some potential limitations might apply to our measures of social status. for instance, one can claim that our measure of socioeconomic status (income) not only measures an individual’s status position in society at large, but also to some extent measures the fulfillment of basic material needs. income might play a more important role for need fulfillment in the us compared to in sweden, due to the universal and encompassing nature of the swedish welfare state (korpi, 2000). country differences in basic needs fulfillment rather than cultural differences in the importance of social status could potentially explain the interaction effect found between country and socioeconomic status on ls. however, we see this as unlikely because the differences in ls between income groups across all income categories were larger in the us compared to in sweden, not just among the lower income groups. more importantly, even when controlling for the respondents’ satisfaction with their financial situation (see model 3 in table 4), we still found that socioeconomic status was more strongly associated with ls in the us compared to in sweden. social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 we also need to discuss our measure of sociometric status because it is not framed in relation to specific reference groups in the respondents’ local environment (e.g., perceived status among co-workers, friends etc.). in principle, respondents could therefore think of their status position in society at large as their frame of reference, instead of their status position in the local environment. however, we see this as unlikely for two reasons. first, the overlap between our measure of sociometric status and income (measuring status in society at large) was modest (r = 0.39). second, our measure of sociometric status had a stronger relationship with ls than socioeconomic status, replicating previous studies which have found that sociometric status is a stronger predictor of ls than socioeconomic status (anderson et al., 2012). we see several avenues for future research. studies should explore why social status has a stronger association with ls in the us compared to in sweden. for instance, could it be that individuals with high social status tend to have larger and stronger social networks in the us compared to in sweden? if so, this could help explain the stronger relationship between social status and ls in the us. indeed, previous research suggests that social status increases individuals’ sense of belonging and interpersonal connection. given the particular importance of social status in the american culture, it can therefore be assumed that this kind of mediation might exist to a greater extent in the us compared to in sweden. future research should also investigate if other dimensions of socioeconomic status, such as occupational prestige, display similar country differences regarding the impact on ls. another interesting question is whether the extent to which individuals have a status-seeking personality changes the effect of social status attainment on ls. this assumption is certainly reasonable in light of the mean value of our status-seeking measure, which suggests that levels of status seeking generally seem to be higher in the us. finally, one can also speculate whether the stronger relationship between social status and life satisfaction found in the us is beneficial for societal levels of subjective wellbeing. this is, of course, a complex question, but we argue that the comparably stronger relationship between social status and ls in the us might have a downside. in contrast to many other determinants of ls, social status constitutes a positional good (layard, 2005). viewed as a zero-sum game, one person’s increase in social status will, by definition, lead to a decrease in social status for another person. this means that it is hard to raise aggregate levels of subjective wellbeing in a society by means of encouraging status-seeking behaviors. instead, promoting factors that increase life satisfaction, but to a lesser extent constitute positional goods, would be more fruitful alternatives for increasing wellbeing among broader segments in society. such factors could include harmonious relationships, meaningful work, physical exercise, and social trust (layard, 2005; lyubomirsky, 2008). our study therefore also contributes to the ongoing discussion among policy-makers and scholars who increasingly have come to focus on life satisfaction as a key outcome complementing standard economic measures of human welfare. acknowledgments we would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editor gavin r. slemp for their valuable comments. we also thank maureen eger and our colleagues at the department of sociology, umeå university, for valuable comments on previous drafts. the data collection for the data used in this paper was funded by the swedish research council, grant number 2012-1117, “the co-production of social science and society: the case of happiness 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(1977). occupational prestige as a factor in the net relationship between occupation and job satisfaction. personnel psychology, 30(4), 607-612. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1977.tb02330.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.08.007 https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.131.6.803 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.03.020 https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397111427262 https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264121164-en https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2011.11.005 https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672992511006 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9188-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-015-9617-9 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029873 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1994.tb01196.x https://doi.org/10.1163/156913306778667357 https://doi.org/10.1920/wp.ifs.2004.0402 https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.1.138 https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12161 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.10.053 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1977.tb02330.x social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 weiss, a., king, j. e., & enns, r. m. (2002). subjective well-being is heritable and genetically correlated with dominance in chimpanzees (pan troglodytes). journal of personality and social psychology, 83(5), 1141-1149. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.5.1141 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.5.1141 social status and life satisfaction in context fors connolly & johansson sevä www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 appendix. table 1. bivariate correlations (pearson’s r) income sociometric status status seeking age gender extraversion agreeableness conscientiousness neuroticism openness financial satisfaction life satisfaction 0.32** 0.47** 0.01 0.05* -0.06** 0.32** 0.11** 0.15** -0.47** 0.10** 0.60** income 0.39** 0.21** -0.09** -0.17** 0.25** -0.01 0.05* -0.11** 0.00 0.49** sociometric status 0.31** -0.10** -0.14** 0.50** 0.18** 0.15** -0.26 0.16** 0.47** status seeking -0.37** -0.20** 0.22** -0.18** -0.14** 0.20** -0.09** 0.09** age -0.05* -0.02 0.06** 0.19** -0.31** 0.00 0.02 gender -0.05* 0.26** 0.06** 0.15** 0.04* -0.16 extraversion 0.29** 0.10** -0.18** 0.29** 0.30** agreeableness 0.20** -.09** 0.42** 0.02 conscientiousness -0.26** 0.17** 0.14** neuroticism -0.12** -0.31** openness 0.02 notes: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. gender (man=0, woman=1). a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness dorsey, d. (2011). first steps in an axiology of goals. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 167-185. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.17 dale dorsey university of kansas ddorsey@ku.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 167 article first steps in an axiology of goals dale dorsey abstract: in this paper, i explore the relationship between human wellbeing and long-term goals and projects. though it is by no means universal, many accept the claim that wellbeing is composed, at least in part, of the fulfillment of a person's long-term projects or goals. however, if we accept such a view, a number of puzzling questions arise. my main task in this paper is to answer two such questions. first: how much are such projects worth against more minor, shortterm goods? second: how much are such projects worth against themselves—in particular, how much do long-term projects matter for the worse-off in comparison to such projects for those who are better-off? keywords: goals, projects, axiology, lexical priority, wellbeing, well-being 1. introduction the penguin paperback edition of the thirty-nine steps includes this biography of its author, john buchan: john buchan was born in perth in 1875. his father was a minister of the free church of scotland; and in 1876 the family moved to fife, where john walked six miles a day to school. later they moved to glasgow and, when he went to glasgow university, he published articles in periodicals. when at brasenose college, oxford, he published five books and many articles, and won several awards, including the newdigate prize for poetry. his career was diverse and successful, and despite ill health, he was a barrister and member of parliament, in addition to being a writer, soldier and publisher. he married, and had four children. he was created baron tweedsmuir of elsfield in 1935 and became the governor-general of canada, until his death in 1940. his first success as an author came with prester john in 1910, and he went on to write a series of adventure thrillers, or ‘shockers’ as he called them, all characterized by their authentically rendered backgrounds, romantic characters, their atmosphere of expectancy and world-wide conspiracies, and the author’s own enthusiasm. his main heroes were richard hannay in the thirty-nine steps and four other books, dickson mccunn, the glaswegian provision merchant with the soul of a romantic, and edward leithen, eminent lawyer. buchan also established a reputation as an historical biographer with such works as montrose, oliver cromwell and augustus.1 1 john buchan, the thirty-nine steps (new york, ny: penguin, 2004 *1915+), author’s biography. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 168 i am tempted on reading this biography to declare that, at least in terms of prudential value, john buchan lived the best life of anyone i’ve ever heard of. maybe that’s too strong, but he’s surely toward the top of the list. a few things immediately strike me, assuming that this biography is faithfully rendered. most importantly, buchan was incredibly successful. but he wasn’t merely successful. he was successful in a number of widely varying pursuits throughout his life. not only was he an accomplished novelist, biographer, and poet, he was also a startlingly successful politician, serving in parliament, eventually taking the position of governor-general of canada. of course, many politicians are also (or claim to be) writers, but buchan’s writing went beyond the normal subject-matter of politicos. not only was he a historian, he was also the author of books that are meant, primarily, for fun and distraction: ‚shockers‛, or romantic thrillers told with distinctive panache. and through this endeavor he had perhaps his most lasting influence: the thirty-nine steps has been filmed countless times, including once by alfred hitchcock, and has even been the subject-matter of a successful stage spoof, currently (as of this writing) playing off-broadway. in reflecting on a life like this, one is not tempted to judge it of high quality because it contained large amounts of pleasure. (indeed, buchan’s biography gives us very little information about his mental states, save for what can be implied from the fact that buchan was never of robust health.2) in addition, we don’t make this judgment because he had a bunch of satisfied desires, though he surely did. rather, it was a good life because the long-term features of his life, his goals and projects, were successful—projects that apparently meant a very great deal to him. these long-term projects, being a historian, novelist, politician, etc., and their quality, seem to be the most important determinant of our assessment of his life. though his mental states, desires satisfied, etc., surely play some role, their role is comparatively minor. these projects seem to tell the story of his life, and do so in a way that cast his life as a rousing success. the above thoughts are, though by no means universal, popular. many accept the claim that wellbeing is composed, at least in part, of the fulfillment of a person’s long-term projects or goals.3 indeed, looking at buchan, this seems a plausible position. however, even if we accept this view, a number of puzzling questions arise. surely, many have noted, such projects cannot be all there is to welfare.4 (i say more about what i mean by ‘welfare’ in section two.) though his ill-health did not affect the extent to which his life was a great success, it certainly would have been better for buchan had he not been so sick so often. we live better lives when we eat delicious rather than non-delicious meals, see exciting rather than dull psychological thrillers, and steal tender kisses from our beloved. none of these things are rightly called projects, goals, or long-term interests in a way relevant to our discussion here. but if ‘smaller’ welfare goods contribute to welfare we are naturally led to wonder which of these goods is more important in terms of their relative welfare value. how much more? to what extent can they be traded-off against one another? 2 indeed, his health was an occasional hinderance to him. see, for instance, andrew lownie, john buchan: the presbyterian cavelier (jaffrey, ny: godine, 1995), 145. 3 see, for instance, john rawls, a theory of justice (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1971), 411; t. m. scanlon, what we owe to each other (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1998), ch. 3; simon keller, ‚welfare and the achievement of goals‛ in philosophical studies 121 (2004); joseph raz, the morality of freedom (oxford: oxford university press, 1987), ch. 12; derek parfit, reasons and persons (oxford: oxford university press, 1984), app. i; david velleman, ‚well-being and time‛ in the possibility of practical reason (oxford: oxford university press, 2000); douglas portmore, ‚welfare, achievement, and self-sacrifice‛ in the journal of ethics and social philosophy 3 (2007); dale dorsey, ‚headaches, lives, and value‛ in utilitas 21 (2010). 4 keller, 35. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 169 my main task in this paper is to work out, in some detail, a number of individual problems for the view that the successful achievement of goals and projects forms the primary element of human welfare. first: how much are such projects worth compared to comparatively minor, short-term goods? second: how much are such projects worth against themselves—in particular, how much do long-term projects matter for the worse-off in comparison to such projects for those who are better-off? along the way, however, the view itself must be characterized in more detail. in particular, very few who support such a view have offered any precise characterization of the distinction between projects, goals, and long-term interests on the one hand, and other sorts of welfare goods on the other. of course, this is no criticism: the distinction is tricky. but because many hold that such goals are of very significant importance, it would be nice to have at least a vague sense of what they are.5 a note before i proceed. the discussion in this paper is intended to be broadly exploratory. i seek only to propose some plausible answers to the above questions, and to grapple with the natural challenges that arise in offering any more-or-less precise account of the relative axiology of long-term projects and other welfare goods. though i believe that there are very good reasons to adopt the approach i offer here, i leave open the possibility of alternatives. i hope, simply, that this paper shows that answering the questions at hand is possible, even if my particular answer is not to everyone’s taste. 2. projects and satisfactions call a life-structuring activity, goal, or achievement a ‘global project.’ for instance, being a politician or writer of romantic thrillers are global projects, as are being a philosopher, climbing mount everest, being a cultivator of fine gardens, or a meditative monk. some projects take the form of goals, a particular achievement someone works for over the course of a life. consider, for instance, the global project of summiting k2, toward which a given individual may work for an extended period. the success of this particular global project is not determined by the content of one’s day-to-day activities, but rather on success in achieving this particular goal. call these ‘goal-like’ projects. on the other hand, some projects are ‘state-like’. for instance, one might value the global project of ‘being a philosopher’. in this case, there is no identifiable goal that forms the success condition of this project. rather, the success conditions appear simply to be maintaining the state of being a philosopher, doing, on a day-to-day basis, what philosophers do. in both cases, these projects—in buchan’s case the goal-like project of becoming the governor-general of canada, the state-like project of being a writer of romantic thrillers, etc.— seem quite clearly to form a different sort of good than other goods, such as the momentary pleasure i might obtain from a delicious lollypop, or the desire i might satisfy by having a drink of water. for lack of a better term, call goods that do not rise to the level of global projects ‘satisfactions’. (i should note immediately here that different substantive theories of wellbeing will offer different accounts of the nature of satisfactions. i shan’t commit to any particular interpretation.) i might believe, for instance, that having a lollypop right now is good for me. having a lollypop is not a global project, but rather a satisfaction. in addition, i might have a goal to finish reading john lecarré’s a perfect spy. though this might be a valued goal, it does not seem to count as a global project in the way that global projects broadly define the success or failure of our lives. 5 this is not to say that there have been no such attempts. raz, for instance, claims that genuine projects are those that are based on recognizable ‚social forms‛. see raz, 310. see also keller, 32-33. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 170 the distinction between projects and satisfactions is intuitive, but slippery. indeed, it seems a fool’s errand to attempt to provide a precise account of the distinction between global projects and satisfactions, and i will not attempt to do so here. i doubt very much that a sharp distinction is possible; whether, in a given case, x is a global project or a satisfaction will require substantive investigation on the basis of our considered judgments. however, i do hope to provide clarification of this distinction sufficient for my purposes, although i leave open the possibility that further, perhaps better, accounts could be provided. as noted above, projects can be goal-like or state-like. what, then, unifies these projects of very different structure? i think there are three jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for project-hood. first: narrative unification: global projects help to structure, and to narratively unify, a person’s life. to put this point in vellemanian terms (to be explored below), a global project is a primary element in an individual’s life story, it forms part of a greater, macro-level narrative of a person’s life. this is clear from the case of john buchan. buchan’s projects helped to tell the story of his life: he was not just a writer, but a writer of thrillers, biographies, and historical texts; he was a politician, and a successful one at that. in any story of buchan’s life, these projects will loom large: these activities provide a coherent narrative unity to discrete activities across diverse times of his life. not all features of a person’s life story are global projects. with this in mind, consider the second requirement: actions and decisions: global projects are determined, at least in part, by a person’s actions and decisions, and narratively unify these actions and decisions. actions and decisions helps to distinguish global projects from other things that might satisfy narrative unification, but that do not count, intuitively anyway, as global projects. for instance, a person’s life story could be narratively unified by saying that this person is a victim of kidnapping. but being such a victim is not a project, given that this project is not determined by a person’s actions and decisions. finally: global: global projects narratively unify a person’s whole life, or a segment of her life of significant temporal duration. though a person might ‚be a philosopher‛ for a day, to properly describe one’s status as a philosopher as a global project requires it to be the case that this project structures one’s life and explains one’s activities, etc., for a substantial section of one’s life. some embellishment is in order. take narrative unification. for a person to maintain a global project, it is not enough that some particular ‘story’ of his or her life could be told. rather, their lives must be narratively integrated. to see this requirement, consider the difference between two lives. the first person, roger, spends long periods on college campuses, teaching courses and doing research, engaging with colleagues and traveling to conferences. the second person, janet, does not act in a way that could be unified by a single project. janet may attend school briefly, drop out, take employment for short periods of time, spend time as a drifter, but establish a permanent home for at least some extended periods, etc. though her life might be rife with satisfactions, it does not maintain a global project. of course, a story could be trivially told of janet’s life. such a story would simply consist of a list of her activities. but without a unifying thread, her life maintains no global projects. one might ask further questions about what it means for a life to be narratively unified. though i will not be able to provide any precise account of this generally intuitive idea, it first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 171 seems to me that two points are worth noting. first, narrative unification requires common explanation of a substantial part of the events and activities in a life. for instance, roger spends lots of time on college campuses, teaches courses, and goes to conferences. these activities permit of a common explanation: roger is an academic. second, narrative unification provides the events and activities of a life with a shared meaning. again adapting a vellemanian thought to be explored in more detail later, it seems to me that a life is narratively unified if the meaning of particular events (or at least a substantial amount throughout a life) cannot be properly understood in isolation. a narratively unified life will treat each moment or event of a particular life as not simply atomistic, but as having a meaning that is shaped by events prior and subsequent to the moment or event itself. for instance, imagine that roger gives an academic talk at big state university. this activity, for roger, has a certain meaning: it is a natural part of an academic career, and, depending on his past research activities, may even be a highlight. the meaning of this event, in terms of his life, is necessarily shaped by the longerterm project in which he is engaged: being an academic. however, we could imagine another person, sally, who gives precisely the same sort of talk at big state university. but if we imagine that she is a politician, rather than an academic, the meaning of this event will be quite different. this event will be an oddity, something unusual, perhaps an honorific feature of her political career. the global project of being a politician will help to explain this event, but will also provide this event a meaning distinct from the meaning of a similar event in roger’s life.6 take, now, actions and decisions. global projects are those broad elements of our lives that help to narratively unify our actions and decisions, in particular. this feature of global projects helps to rule out certain things that may narratively unify a person’s life, but that do not, intuitively at least, constitute global projects. take a person who, from birth until death, is hooked up to a machine such that her brain is manipulated by electrodes for the purposes of eliciting certain pleasurable reactions. we might narratively integrate this person’s life by saying that she is hooked up to an experience machine. indeed, this will be a central part of this person’s life story. but though this may be a narratively integrated life story, it is not integrated by means of a particular project. this person’s life is wholly passive, and hence does not count as maintaining a global project.7 furthermore, if a person is born a native american, and spends virtually all of his life on a reservation, one can rightly say that a large section of his life is narratively integrated by the fact that he is a native american. indeed, it is quite right to say that the fact that this person is a native american will surely help to explain, and provide a shared meaning to, many of the actions and decisions he takes. but it would seem strange to say that ‚being a native american‛ is a project in the sense i mean: whether this person is a native american or not is not the product of any actions or decisions on this person’s part. finally, global is an important element in the account of global projects: this element differentiates those merely momentary goals (such as to pour myself another cup of coffee), and those goals that form the major element of human welfare (at least according to the view under consideration here). however, global should be understood to require long-term narrative integration of one’s actions and decisions, not long-term and constant narrative integration of one’s actions and decisions. to be engaged in the project of ‚being a philosopher‛ or ‚summiting k2‛, one needn’t be engaged in those characteristic activities at 6 see, for instance, alasdair macintyre, after virtue (notre dame, in: notre dame university press, 3rd. ed., 2007), ch. 15. 7 one might, quite accurately, say that ‚hooking one’s self into an experience machine‛ is a goal-like project, insofar as this is a goal one might work toward, and that might narratively unify one’s activities and decisions over the long term. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 172 every moment during which they are valued. one can be a philosopher and spend a day or two reading lecarré. that which is required to engage in any particular project will surely vary with the content of the project. however, we wouldn’t say of a particular activity or goal that it is a global project if it doesn’t provide a sufficient level of narrative integration in the long term. consider, for instance, a state-like project of being a ‚christmas churchgoer‛. this project consists of attending church once per year, on december 25th. though this might narratively unify some of a person’s activities and decisions in the long-term, it does not provide sufficient narrative unification: this state does not rise to the level of a global project. i take that to be the correct answer. this being said, the requirements of sufficient unification from project to project will likely vary substantially. hence i shan’t be able to offer any precise account of ‘sufficient’ narrative unification. whether a particular project satisfies this constraint will require case-by-case inquiry. two further features of the achievement of global projects should be noted here. i have not included knowing that one is engaged in a project, or explicitly deciding to engage in a project, in the necessary and sufficient conditions for project-hood. but this is the correct answer. one can engage in a global project without ever fully knowing or deciding to do so. for instance, it might be that through a simple accident, and without ever planning on doing so, a person has maintained a successful career as an accountant. this project is still narratively unifying of this person’s actions and decisions, despite the fact that being a successful accountant was never itself the product of deliberation on his part, nor, perhaps, was it even known to him. we can live according to global projects in spite of our ignorance of so doing, or explicit decision to do so. in this way, my account of a global project differs slightly from keller’s. keller writes: when we think of someone as having a goal, we think of her as pursuing it—as to some extent organizing her life, or intending to organize her life, around that goal. the extent to which something is a goal, or to which it is a strong goal, is in part a matter of the extent to which its bearer organizes her life around its pursuit. what’s important here is that your taking on a goal involves taking an attitude towards your activities and your life (even if your reasons for forming that goal are entirely selfless).8 i do think, as noted here, that global projects are ‘organizers’—they organize and narratively unify the activities and decisions in our lives. but they can play this role without being the object of any conscious decision or active intention on the part of the person involved. sometimes we may just ‘fall into’ global projects.9 i see no reason to say that a person engages a global project only when this global project itself, rather than the actions and decisions that make up this project, is a product of explicit deliberation or decision-making. borrowing an idea upon which i shall expand later, such projects can still provide our lives with valuable, self-directed meaning. this rough-and-ready account of the distinction between global projects and satisfactions is likely subject to counterexamples. furthermore, my account of such projects uses extremely vague language (‚significant temporal duration‛, ‚somewhere along the line‛, and the like). a more thorough examination is surely required to account for the extent to which goal -like and state-like projects are global projects rather than satisfactions. it is likely that whatever account 8 keller, 32-33. 9 along the same lines, i do not regard such global projects as necessarily requiring any significant ‚self-sacrifice‛ on the part of the agent. in this way, my view differs from portmore’s. see portmore, ‚welfare, achievement, and selfsacrifice‛, op. cit. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 173 is specified will include a substantial amount of grey area; whether a particular activity is best described as a global project or a satisfaction will require substantive, and sometimes difficult, judgments. 3. global projects and theories of welfare the broad thesis under consideration here, briefly touched on in the introduction to this paper, is that the successful maintenance, or achievement, of global projects forms a distinct and important element in human welfare. but, one might ask, what sort of a theory of welfare is this? does this thesis require us to adopt an objective theory? and if so, what kind? how broadly ecumenical is this position? consider, first, the common distinction between subjective and objective theories of welfare: a theory of welfare is subjective if and only if a necessary condition of the intrinsic value of x for a is a’s intrinsic valuing (perhaps under certain idealized or counterfactual conditions) of x. conversely, a view is objective if and only if x can be intrinsically valuable for a even though a does not intrinsically value x. subjective theories do, but objective theories do not, place a necessary condition on all welfare goods for a: a must value all such goods.10 l. w. sumner puts the point in the following way. for sumner, ‚a theory is subjective if it treats my having a favourable attitude toward something as a necessary condition of the thing being beneficial for me. it need not also treat it as a sufficient condition, and most subjective theories will not do so.‛ by contrast, ‚*o+n an objective theory< something can be (directly and immediately) good for me though i do not regard it favourably, and my life can be going well despite my failing to have any positive attitude toward it.‛11 as sumner notes, the distinction between subjective and objective theories of welfare is ‚mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.‛12 with this distinction in mind, there are three important points to be made. first, given the taxonomy i identify here, there is a wide range of both subjective and objective theories of wellbeing. not all will accept the claim that global projects form a crucial element of human welfare. for instance, a pure desire-satisfaction view would not be able to support such a claim, insofar as some individuals may not prefer or desire to maintain global projects of any description. furthermore, some objective views will not accommodate the thesis under consideration. hedonism, for instance, will claim that all and only pleasure is good for a person. but this straightforwardly denies the welfare value of global projects and their success. however, the view i explore here is broadly ecumenical. subjective theories can hold, e.g., that a global project must be valued. a subjective theory is also perfectly licensed to say that valued projects are better for an individual than other sorts of goods, even if this goes beyond an individual’s subjective preference-ranking. insofar as a’s valuing of x is merely a necessary condition on x’s welfare value for a, a subjective theory can declare that valued projects are better than other goods that may themselves also be valued. furthermore, objectivist views can clearly support the claim that projects are substantial improvements in a person’s life. though some objectivist views cannot support this claim (for instance, hedonism), others can. take, e.g., the ‘objective list’ view. the objective list view can hold that the fulfillment of such global projects is a crucial and significant element of any proper objective list. in addition, take ‘perfectionism’. perfectionism—put very roughly—holds that human welfare is best enhanced 10 the relevant form of ‚valuing‛ is controversial between subjective theories, of course. some will hold that valuing should be constituted as a desire or preference, others require some sort of cognitivist element. others hold that the proper form of valuing is counterfactual or idealized. still others deny this. i abstract from this controversy here. 11 l. w. sumner, welfare, happiness, and ethics (oxford: oxford university press, 1996), 38. 12 sumner, 39. thanks to an anonymous reviewer for requesting this to be made more clear. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 174 by the development and exercise of rational, or other particularly human, capacities.13 but given that many such goals will require long-term planning and rational activity, perfectionism will stress their relative axiological importance.14 a second point is worth making here. different theories of wellbeing, objective and subjective, may very well restrict the range of global projects the success of which improves lives. for instance, i might strongly value being a life-long counter of grass.15 but it might very well be that this long-term activity, no matter how substantially it structures my life story or explains my actions in the long term, does not count as the right sort of project.16 this project may not maintain sufficient preference-independent value for it to count as a genuinely valuable project. furthermore, imagine a person organizes his life around the principle of pleasure maximization. in other words, this person is a hedonist in the 18th century sense, a ‘libertine’.17 however, for this person, the project of being such a hedonist has no intrinsic value in itself: this person does not value the project of being such a hedonist for its own sake, only for the effects it has in generating pleasure. a subjective theory of wellbeing may well declare that this project is, for this person, not valuable in itself, insofar as this person values it only instrumentally rather than intrinsically. alternatively, an objective theory of wellbeing might declare that being this sort of hedonist is itself of preference-independent value, and though this person values the project only instrumentally, it is still a valuable project, sufficient to be a legitimate intrinsic good in itself. whether any particular project is valuable is thus a matter of controversy between alternative substantive theories of welfare. i will not adjudicate between rival, substantive, accounts of the value of such projects. in speaking of the value of projects, then, i refer simply to that subset of all global projects that the true theory of wellbeing declares valuable. call these ‘v-projects’.18 v-projects might be all and only those global projects that are valued by the person in question, or it may include projects that are simply those that possess sufficient preference-independent value, leaving aside whether any given individual prefers or values them. i leave this vexed debate to the side, as it will not affect my discussion here. a third point is also worth making. to see the issue at hand, consider that some satisfactions are ‘bigger’ welfare improvements than others. seeing a hilarious comedy is a bigger welfare improvement than seeing a mildly amusing one. but like satisfactions, some improvements in v-projects are of greater magnitude than others. take a simple example. assume that neither jon, john, nor johnny maintain any v-projects. assume that one could render jon a writer, john a writer and politician, and johnny a writer, politician, and family man. (assume that each of these is a v-project.) in each case, the magnitude of the improvement granted to each individual is distinct. johnny is provided a v-project improvement of greater magnitude than john or jon, etc. so far so good. but though this point may seem straightforward, it is impossible to provide a theory of ‘magnitude’ that is fully ecumenical between objective and subjective theories of the 13 cf. david brink, ‚the significance of desire‛ in oxford studies in metaethics, v. 3, ed. shafer-landau (oxford: oxford university press, 2008); dale dorsey, ‚three arguments for perfectionism‛ in noûs 44 (2010). 14 consider, for instance, j. s. mill, on liberty, iii.4. 15 see, for instance, john rawls, a theory of justice (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1971), 432-33. 16 incidentally, insofar as subjectivist views accept that valuing is a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for value, one can be a subjectivist and also hold that projects with intuitively valueless content do not improve lives in the same way as other valuable projects. 17 thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that i address this case. 18 worth noting also is that different theories of welfare will define welfare-relevant satisfactions very differently. i leave this vexed issue aside here. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 175 good. for instance, one might be tempted to suggest that the more projects one achieves, the greater the magnitude of one’s project improvement and the better-off one is strictly in terms of projects. but a simple numerical index is surely incorrect. assume, for the moment, that a subjectivist background theory is true. assume also that johnny prefers a life of project x only to a life of projects y and z. if so, and if we accept a subjectivist background theory, it seems right to say that johnny is better-off achieving fewer rather than more projects. take now an objective view. it might be that, together, projects x and y have positive, but negligible, preference-independent value, while z has substantial preference-independent value. this view might plausibly say that a move from x and y to simply z is an improvement; to grant z rather than x and y is an improvement of greater magnitude in terms of one’s v-projects. given the different ways that objective and subjective theories of welfare will measure the magnitude of individual project-improvements, and the extent to which individuals are betteroff than others in terms of v-projects, i will refer generically to ‘project-improvements’, and project-improvements of greater and lesser magnitude as determined by the true theory of welfare. whether project-improvements and their magnitude will be measured by a person’s preferences, by the preference-independent value of v-projects, or by some combination of the two, will be a topic determined by the truth background theory of welfare, and as such will be left aside here. 4. shape and meaning an account of the relative worth of v-projects and satisfactions is difficult in part because the go-to source for axiological comparisons, i.e., preferences, seem to be rather unhelpful in this regard. for instance, imagine a variation on the case of john buchan: johnny buchan: johnny buchan is a relatively sickly individual, but has the talent to become a successful writer of romantic thrillers. however, to regain the strength he requires to be such a writer, johnny must see the doctor, and undergo a short, but painful, treatment. imagine that, for johnny, becoming a successful writer would be a v-project. but imagine also that johnny prefers (perhaps under whatever relevant counterfactual or idealized conditions) not to have the treatment. i think we would regard johnny’s preference in this case as imprudent. though he may prefer the life in which he avoids having a short painful treatment to the life in which he is a successful writer, this preference is mistaken. he is better-off (and by ‚better-off‛ i mean intrinsically better-off) in becoming a successful writer even if he prefers to avoid the treatment. johnny’s case shows that we cannot rely on the preferences of individuals to identify the relative or comparative worth of goals in relation to other sorts of welfare goods. johnny is certainly made better-off by the avoidance of a short, but painful, medical treatment. but avoiding treatment is not as good as becoming a successful novelist. one might think that this conclusion requires me to adjudicate in favor of an objective approach to welfare. but, as i have so far noted, this is not so. both subjective and objective theories can accept the claim that the welfare value of projects is significant and, in fact, overrides an individual’s preferences (as in johnny’s case). subjectivism does not say that the comparative value of goods like being a successful novelist or the enjoyment of a lollypop must be set by johnny’s preference structure. it says only that whatever improves johnny’s life must be valued by him—as, we may assume, it is so valued. subjectivist views are thus free to determine how much valued goods of different characteristics improve johnny’s life. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 176 but if preferences do not offer the right account of the relationship between v-projects and satisfactions, what does? given their importance, at least in the cases considered in this paper, one possibility immediately arises: lexical: though both are intrinsically valuable, v-projects lexically dominate satisfactions.19 lexical domination comes in different shapes and sizes, and will be explored in more detail below. but for now, the basic idea is that it never makes anyone better-off to trade a projectimprovement, or potential project-improvement, for a finite sum of satisfactions. before i argue for lexical in more detail, it is worth dispatching one source of skepticism immediately. many have rejected the possibility of lexical priority relations at all.20 insofar as i argue against such skepticism elsewhere,21 i shan’t discuss it in any detail here, except to say the following. when we are confronted with a pluralist axiology of the sort confronted by those who would accept the axiological importance of projects or goals as well as ‘satisfactions’, we have a choice about how to weigh various goods. the only sensible method of testing any particular weighting is by its conformity to our considered judgments, and the strength of its rationale. i take these topics now, and in turn. lexical can be motivated by considering the following case. assume that jane wishes to become a successful musician, a project of great welfare value. we might be tempted to ask ourselves what might compensate, in terms of jane’s life quality, for her failure to achieve such a project. in other words, and more pointedly, could it be the case that jane’s failure to be a successful musician could be compensated by some amount of satisfactions, rather than vprojects? i submit that the answer to this question is no. suppose jane has the opportunity to become a successful writer, but could instead simply pursue momentary cheap thrills that are in no way narratively unified. of course, any halfway plausible theory of welfare will hold that the achievement of pleasure (even if it’s a simple cheap thrill) is a welfare benefit. but, plausibly, there is no amount of the cheap thrills that it would compensate her to the same degree as becoming a successful writer, especially when we consider that otherwise jane would achieve no v-projects whatever. it is one thing to elicit a considered judgment in favor of lexical, but quite another to provide lexical with a reasonable rationale. however, i think an important rationale can be provided, and it is derived from the status of v-projects as narrative unifiers. a person who maintains a v-project lives a life whose activities and decisions have a common, shared, meaning. this meaning needn’t be explicitly chosen, or indeed even recognized by the person in question. nevertheless, maintaining such v-projects shows that a given person’s actions and decisions share a common meaning, and the meaning that is shared among one’s actions and decisions is of great importance to the quality of one’s life. to see this in more detail, consider an insight of david velleman. velleman argues that wellbeing is not additive; in other words, the overall welfare value of two lives can differ even though these lives contain equal amounts of momentary wellbeing. velleman’s evidence for this claim is that the shape of a life (i.e., whether welfare benefits befall you at earlier or later times) is itself important to wellbeing. velleman writes: 19 i argue for a thesis very much like lexical in ‚headaches, lives, and value‛. as i note in the next section, i now believe that this claim is far too strong. 20 see, for instance, alistair norcross, ‚comparing harms: headaches and human lives‛ in philosophy and public affairs 26 (1997), 138-9; gustaf arrhenius, ‚superiority in value‛ in philosophical studies 123 (2005), 109; john broome, ‚weighing lives‛ (oxford: oxford university press, 2004), 58-9. 21 see ‚headaches, lives, and value‛, op. cit. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 177 consider two different lives that you might live. one life begins in the depths but takes an upward trend: a childhood of deprivation, a troubled youth, struggles and setbacks in early adulthood, followed finally by success and satisfaction in middle age and a peaceful retirement. another life begins at the heights but slides downhill: a blissful childhood and youth, precocious triumphs and rewards in early adulthood, followed by a midlife strewn with disasters that lead to misery in old age. surely, we can imagine two such lives as containing equal sums of momentary well-being< yet even if we were to map each moment in one life onto a moment of equal well-being in the other, we would not have shown these lives to be equally good.22 velleman contends that the former life is better than the latter, despite the fact that the sumtotal of momentary benefits are identical in each case. part of the explanation, according to velleman, is the shape of one’s life: the fact that an upward-sloping life is better, in itself, than a downward-sloping life. i think there is much in what velleman claims. but we should be careful to avoid the claim that the shape of a life makes a per se difference to wellbeing.23 for instance, imagine a person who lives, from birth until death, in an experience machine. this experience machine, however, has imperfect software, so at an early age the person experiences pain as well as pleasure. gradually (say, once per year), the experience machine software is updated, so that later in this person’s life she experiences much more pleasure than earlier in life. this life is surely no better than the life of a person whose experience machine works perfectly in the beginning, and then slowly deteriorates, assuming that the amount of pleasure in both cases is identical. if this is correct, velleman’s intuition should be explained in a way other than referring to the mere shape of a life; the per se shape of a life does not, apparently, have the ability to alter the quality of one’s life in all cases. but velleman quite rightly notes that later successes redeem earlier failures not because the shape of a life is per se valuable, but because there is an important relationship between the later successes and the prior failures: why would a person care about the placement of momentary goods on the curve that maps his changing welfare? the answer, i believe, is that an event’s place in the story of one’s life lends it a meaning that isn’t entirely determined by its impact on one’s well-being at the time. a particular electoral victory, providing a particular boost to one’s current welfare, can mean either that one’s early frustrations were finally over or that one’s subsequent failures were not yet foreshadowed, that one enjoyed either fleeting good luck or lasting success—all depending on its placement in the trend of one’s well-being. and the event’s meaning is what determines its contribution to the value of one’s life.24 according to velleman, the meaning of particular goods can be affected by events prior to, and after, the achievement of a particular good itself. but later success can affect the meaning of earlier failures (and vice versa) only if these successes and failures concern, in some sense, a narratively unified long-term structure of a given person’s life and activities.25 the meaning of 22 velleman, 58. 23 velleman, as i note below, avoids this claim. frances kamm, however, endorses it. see frances kamm, ‚rescuing ivan ilych: how we live and how we die‛ in ethics 113 (2003), 223. 24 velleman, 63. 25 compare velleman, 63-64. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 178 earlier events is affected by later events when these events concern the unified activities, goals, and projects in which one is engaged, and which one values. hence the best account of the ‘meaning’ of these particular momentary wellbeing achievements is not in terms of their place in an overall trend but rather in terms of their being activities that contribute to the achievement of a successful or unsuccessful project or goal. if one has early electoral success, but a long downfall, it would appear that this early success, though perhaps pleasurable, was not a step along the way to success in the project of being a successful politician. in this way, the later events of one’s life affect the ‘meaning of’ prior events—not because they indicate a per se welfare-relevant trend, but because they help to determine whether one’s life and agency can be unified by a v-project. it seems to me, then, we best capture velleman’s insight about the ‘meaning’ of particular momentary achievements not by insisting that the shape of a life is per se important, but rather by claiming that the central element of wellbeing is the achievement and maintenance of v-projects rather than momentary satisfactions. the importance of such projects in providing for a life’s ‘meaning’ is famously stressed by bernard williams: ‚a man may have, for a lot of his life or even just for some part of it, a ground project or set of projects which are closely related to his existence and which to a significant degree give a meaning to his life.‛26 williams confines much of his discussion to socalled ‚ground‛ projects, projects that allow us to see our lives as having any point at all.27 but v-projects needn’t be of such overwhelming significance to a person to ‚give a meaning to his life‛. long-term projects that help to narratively unify our actions and decisions provide a meaningful structure to our lives as a whole, not just from the outside (though that itself is significant) but also from the inside (even if they are not ground projects, in williams’ sense).28 global projects will typically loom large in any understanding of the ‘meaning’ of a life and its activities, even if these projects are not ‚ground‛ projects in williams’ sense. that global projects take the lead in providing this sort of meaning or understanding of one’s life should be no surprise given what’s come before. global projects are narrative unifiers. as noted above, to narratively unify a set of activities or events in one’s life is to provide them with a meaning in relation to that which does the narrative unification. thus to be a global project, this project must provide a shared meaning to a large subset of one’s life and the activities and events of one’s life. the importance of global projects in providing for a life’s ‘meaning’ shouldn’t be oversold. global projects are not the only things that can narratively unify a life or large sections of a life. after all, in certain cases the events of a life may be narratively unified by things that, e.g., are not determined by a person’s actions or decisions, such as a person’s born-into nationality or race. however, the meaning provided by global projects, stressed by velleman and williams, is central in an important way. because global projects are at least in part constituted by a person’s actions and decisions, they provide for a life’s self-directed meaning.29 a global project of mine captures the meaning of my life and activities that i, and my actions, help to shape. a 26 bernard williams, ‚persons, character, and morality‛ in moral luck (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1981), 12. see also ‚a critique of utilitarianism‛ in smart and williams, utilitarianism: for and against (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1974), sec. 5. 27 williams, ‚persons, character, and morality‛, 10. williams, in his critique of utilitarianism, refers to these ground projects as ‚commitments‛: ‚projects and attitudes which in some cases he takes seriously at the deepest level, as what his life is about,‛ (williams, ‚a critique of utilitarianism‛, op. cit., 116). 28 williams, ‚persons, character, and morality‛, 12. 29 again, this self-directed meaning needn’t be explicitly decided upon: it need only be a result of my own actions and decisions. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 179 nationality or race into which one is born does not.30 and this, it seems to me, is of tremendous significance for the quality of any life. when i achieve a v-project, i can look at my life as having a meaning that i help to shape. without such a project, if my life has any narrative unity at all, it is a unity not shaped by my own actions, decisions, plans, or desires, or is a selfdirected meaning that is ultimately valueless.31 whether velleman or williams would agree with my gloss on their insights is beyond my purview here. however, their reflections ring true, and support lexical. the narrative unity provided by a global project allows us to understand the self-directed meaning and point of a life and that life’s events. given this, i find it very difficult to believe that a life without a valuable, self-directed meaning or ‘organizing principle’ could be better than one with such meaning. 5. why lexical fails while the foregoing is plausible, and reveals the substantial importance of v-projects when it comes to the quality of lives, lexical should not be accepted in its current form. after all, though it seems plausible to say that the evaluative importance of v-projects is derived in large measure from their ability to provide a long-term, self-directed meaning to one’s life and activities, not all project-improvements entail the difference between living a life of valuable (as identified by the true theory of wellbeing) self-directed meaning and failing to do so. there is a distinction between maintaining a life with the sort of narrative unity and meaning provided by the achievement of v-projects, and improving a life that already maintains such a shared meaning. lexical holds that any improvement, however small, in terms of v-projects trumps any improvement, however large, in terms of satisfactions. but this is plausible only for individuals whose lives lack the meaning provided by v-projects. it is not plausible insofar as one already maintains a life of self-directed meaning. at least as far as my considered judgments are concerned, the greater one’s accumulation of v-projects, the greater the possibility that one could improve one’s life more by pursuing satisfactions (in sufficient amount) rather than improvements among v-projects. take john buchan. it seems right to say that no amount of satisfactions might have made up for the failure of all his v-projects. but though, once a writer, becoming a successful politician substantially improved his welfare, it seems sensible to say 30 though, of course, i may undertake any number of meaningful global projects in reaction to facts of my nationality or race. for instance, i might have as a global project becoming a member of a new nationality; or advancing the outlook for members of my race, especially if i am a member of an oppressed racial minority. 31 one objection should be mentioned here. i have so far claimed that objective and subjective theories of welfare could accommodate the view i discuss here. but one might think that relying on the self-directed meaning provided by a global project bars an objective theory from accommodating lexical. after all, objective theories will not require that a given individual value whatever project they are engaged in for that project to count as a v-project. if so, on an objective view, a particular project x might be good for a person p even if p doesn’t recognize, value, seek, or see a point to, the meaning of her life provided by x. recall, for instance, the libertine discussed in section 3. it could be that the libertine sees his hedonism as a mere instrument, but that an objective view will declare this project of per se value. if that’s correct, or so it would seem, this sort of self-directed meaning cannot be relied upon by objective theories in defending lexical. however, i think this objection is mistaken. a project can provide a self-directed meaning to a life and life’s activities even if the person in question does not recognize it or value it. but if that’s right , and if an objective theory of welfare is true (which entails that projects can be declared valuable simply on the basis of preference-independent value), we shouldn’t insist that whatever meaning provided by these projects must be valued or even recognized by the person whose projects they are. if an objective theory is correct, the self-directed meaning of a person’s life can be crucial to the quality of that person’s life even if that person does not recognize or value the meaning imparted by a v-project. thanks to an anonymous reviewer. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 180 that there is some amount of satisfactions that would have traded-off against this additional vproject. so lexical is too coarse. to refine it, call the v-project that provides one’s life any shape and meaning at all a ‘primary project’.32 it seems right to say that satisfactions themselves cannot be fungible against primary projects. after all, the distinction between a life that maintains a primary project and a life that does not is the difference between a life that maintains any valuable self-directed meaning at all, and one that fails to do so. if so, the following claim seems plausible: primary projects: primary projects lexically dominate satisfactions. however, if we assume, say, that someone could either become a successful politician or reject this in favor of substantial satisfactions, it seems less plausible to say that no amount of the latter could outweigh the former if we also assume that they have already maintained the life of a successful writer. if that’s right, we should accept: non-primary projects: non-primary projects do not lexically dominate satisfactions. primary projects and non-primary projects seem sensitive to the importance of a life of some valuable, self-directed meaning. in addition, they are sensitive to the claim that, the greater one’s achievement of v-projects, the less important this form of shared meaning becomes to the quality of one’s life. however, a problem looms. as we shall see in the next section, these principles are in tension. 6. accommodation along with primary projects and non-primary projects, a third principle seems plausible. interpersonal project fungibility: primary projects do not lexically dominate nonprimary projects. to put interpersonal project fungibility more precisely, one might say that there is some magnitude n of project-improvement for any person a (na), such that na is better than a primary project for another person, b. this claim seems hard to deny. it seems right to say that for any person a, who is slightly better-off in terms of project achievement than any other person b, for any magnitude project improvement m for b (mb), there is some na such that na>mb. if this is correct, by the transitivity of ‘better-than’, no v-project improvements lexically dominate any others. if so, this implies interpersonal project fungibility. if we accept these three axiological principles, plausible as they are, a serious problem looms. the easiest way to see this is to consider potential interpersonal, rather than intrapersonal, welfare distributions. take two people, gus and lee. assume that gus maintains no v-projects. assume also that lee maintains some v-projects. if gus’s primary project lexically dominates gus’s satisfactions (given primary projects), and some magnitude n of project-improvement for lee is better than gus’s achievement of a primary project (given interpersonal project fungibility), this would appear to commit us to saying that lee’s projects are also lexically dominant on gus’s satisfactions. after all, if some amount (m) of gus’s satisfactions are better than a project-improvement of magnitude n for lee (i.e., if non-primary 32 an anonymous reviewer notes that nearly all will maintain the global project of ‚staying alive‛, and hence the lexical dominance of primary projects for all living individuals is, in essence, a moot point. but recall that v-projects must be declared, by a sensible theory of welfare, to be intrinsically valuable. few, if any, such theories will declare mere life as intrinsically valuable. indeed, even the most raw form of subjectivism will seem to avoid this claim, insofar as few will desire to stay alive simply for the sake of staying alive. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 181 projects is true) and a project-improvement of magnitude n for lee is better than gus’s primary projects (given interpersonal project fungibility), then, by the transitivity of ‘better-than’, m gus’s satisfactions must also be better than gus’s primary project, in violation of primary projects. if we wish to maintain the transitivity of ‘better-than’, it would appear that these three plausible axiological principles are mutually incompatible. however, i think we can show that they are, in fact, compatible and in so doing come up with a reasonably plausible account of the relative weight of project-improvements for the betterand worse-off. the key is to be found in a crucial distinction in forms of lexical dominance. consider the distinction between the following two principles: total lexical dominance: x totally lexically dominates y if and only if any amount of x, no matter how small, is non-fungible against any amount of y, no matter how large. mitigated lexical dominance: x mitigatedly lexically dominates y if and only if there is some amount n such that nx is non-fungible against any amount of y, no matter how large.33 mitigated lexical dominance can allow that there is some number m (m<n) of x that is fungible against some finite amount of y. total lexical dominance cannot allow any trade-offs between any amount of the dominated and dominating good.34 if this is correct, we might explore an alternative to lexical: mitigated lexical: v-projects mitigatedly lexically dominate satisfactions. if we accept mitigated lexical, we can accommodate primary projects, non-primary projects, and interpersonal project fungibility. here’s how. we should expect that, as a person gets better-off, the fungibility of potential project-improvements against satisfactions increases. plausibly, as buchan gets better-off, his project-improvements become more fungible against satisfactions. i think the right way to express this idea is to say that as a person, a, gets betteroff, n—the magnitude project-improvement that would be non-fungible against satisfactions— increases. as a gets worse-off, n decreases. this claim might be expressed as: more fungible: as a person gets better-off in terms of v-projects, projectimprovements for this person of increasing magnitude are fungible against satisfactions. however, if we accept this claim, we can accept that primary projects are wholly non-fungible against satisfactions (primary projects), and also hold that lee’s valued project is fungible against satisfactions (non-primary projects). for gus, and for people who are slightly better-off than gus, we should expect that even a minute project-improvement will be non-fungible against satisfactions, i.e., n<1. hence primary projects are non-fungible against satisfactions. but as one gets better-off in terms of v-projects, the magnitude of one’s project-improvements required to render these project-improvements non-fungible against satisfactions (n) must increase. if so, we can accept that lee’s v-projects (magnitude <n) are fungible against satisfactions. given that gus’s primary project is not fungible against satisfactions, but lee’s valued project improvements of a sub-n magnitude are fungible against satisfactions, it must also be that a primary project for gus is worth more than the achievement of a valued project 33 mitigated lexical dominance is reminiscent of the ‚discontinuity‛ principle discussed by james griffin, well-being: its meaning, measurement, and moral importance (oxford: oxford university press, 1989), 85-89, whereas total lexical dominance is reminiscent of griffin’s ‚trumping‛ relation. 34 the following argument was inspired by a claim of gustaf arrhenius. see arrhenius, 107-8. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 182 improvement of magnitude n for lee; otherwise (given the transitivity of ‘better-than’) satisfactions are fungible against gus’s primary projects. if satisfactions are fungible only against sub-n project-improvements for lee, and gus’s primary project is worth more than n project-improvements for lee, we can accept primary projects. satisfactions are fungible against lee’s project-improvements of a sub-n magnitude, but gus’s primary project can be outweighed only by a greater-than-n magnitude of valued project-improvements for lee. if this is correct, gus’s primary project is non-fungible against satisfactions, but is fungible against lee’s projects. this principle allows us to keep the three axiological principles we were interested in: the lexical dominance of primary projects over satisfactions, the fungibility of satisfactions against non-primary projects (up to a certain threshold magnitude n), and the fungibility of primary projects against non-primary projects. insofar as primary projects, non-primary projects, and interpersonal project fungibility are plausible, there is reason to take very seriously the suggestion that v-projects mitigatedly lexically dominate satisfactions. 7. an interpersonal value function the mitigated lexical dominance of v-projects in comparison to satisfactions is significant in part because it provides a reasonably clear account of the relative axiological importance of vprojects against satisfactions. however, it is significant for a further reason. mitigated lexical along with more fungible imply a relatively natural, and independently plausible, method of determining the relative worth of project-improvements of a fixed magnitude for individuals who are betterand worse-off. to see why, consider the following. mitigated lexical implies that for any level of welfare, there is a magnitude project-improvement n such that a less significant project-improvement is fungible against satisfactions, but an equivalent or more significant project improvement is not. but more fungible implies that a person gets better-off in terms of v-projects, the magnitude project-improvement that is no longer fungible against satisfactions increases: it takes a bigger and bigger magnitude project-improvement to be nonfungible against satisfactions the better-off one becomes in terms of v-projects. in other words, n increases with increasing levels of v-project achievement. but if that is correct, for a primary project to be lexically dominant on satisfactions, and also unrestrictedly fungible against nonprimary projects, it must be that primary projects are at least of equivalent intrinsic value to project-improvements of magnitude n, at whatever level of v-project achievement. as a person gets better-off in terms of v-projects, a project-improvement of a fixed magnitude becomes less and less valuable in comparison to a primary project. but if this is correct, this seems to imply a more general claim. for any level of welfare, a project-improvement of magnitude m will be more evaluatively significant than a project-improvement of magnitude m for a person slightly better-off in comparison to a fixed point: a primary project. if that is correct, the following principle emerges: prioritarianesque: project-improvements of magnitude m for the better-off are worth less than project-improvements of magnitude m for the worse-off. prioritarianesque is implied by the relationship between v-projects and satisfactions, but is plausible to boot. it seems right to say that each additional v-project makes a less significant marginal contribution to a person’s welfare than the previous v-project. john buchan’s life was improved to a very substantial degree by becoming, say, a writer. and though he was even first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 183 better-off for having been a politician as well, his life did not improve as much as it did when he first became a writer, first maintained a life of valuable, self-directed meaning.35 of course, prioritarianesque is underspecified unless a precise value curve, illustrating the overall comparative weight of project-improvements, is articulated. what principled reason is there to believe that this curve should be defined by 1 x , say, as opposed to 1 2x or 1 x 2 ? the precise shape of the value curve will likely require substantial work and consultation with our considered judgments, and will likely result in a substantial degree of vagueness. however, though i cannot offer a precise answer to this question, the method by which it should be answered is clear. recall that we should treat satisfactions as restrictedly fungible against v-projects for the very well-off. to maintain the plausible result that primary projects should lexically dominate satisfactions, however, the achievement of a primary project for a single individual must be worth more than a project-improvement of magnitude n for the very well-off, where n is a project-improvement of sufficient magnitude such that satisfactions for the worse-off are not fungible against a project-improvement of this magnitude. but this allows us traction in determining the shape of the prioritarianesque value curve: for any welfare level l, one determines the magnitude n at which project-improvements for those at l are no longer fungible against satisfactions. once this has been done for all values of l, one has determined a precise prioritarianesque curve: because n increases with increasing l, the value of a single person’s achievement of a primary project in comparison to projects at welfare level l will also increase. hence the variable weight of a project-improvement of magnitude m in comparison to a primary project (i.e., the prioritarianesque value curve) is given, simply, by m n . this is one method to determine the shape of the curve implied by prioritarianesque, and although it still requires substantial inquiry into our considered judgments, gaining traction is not impossible; the shape of the curve is not mysterious. 8. unfinished business so far, i hope to have done two things. first, i hope to have argued in favor of a particular method of weighing project-improvements in comparison to satisfactions: the former mitigatedly lexically dominate the latter. second, i hope to have offered a value function that allows us to compare project-improvements for the better-off to project-improvements for the 35 it is worth comparing prioritarianesque to the more traditional understanding of its namesake, prioritarianism. according to prioritarianism, marginal benefits for the worse-off are heavily weighted against, but not lexically superior to, marginal benefits for the better-off, and the comparative weight of marginal benefits for the worse-off increases as they are compared to marginal benefits for individuals of increasing welfare. paul weirich, in ‚utility tempered with equality‛, noûs 17 (1983), 424, describes prioritarianism this way: the principle first weights utility gains according to the situations of the individuals to whom they go. the weight of a utility gain decreases as the utility of the recipient’s situation increases. more precisely, the weight is inversely proportional to the utility of the recipient’s situation. then the principle says to maximize weighted utility gains. this principle can claim to mediate between utility and equality because, although it gives some weight to every utility gain, it gives more weight to utility gains for those less well-off and so helps them to catch up. prioritarianesque implies that the relative weight of primary projects against non-primary project-improvements is, literally, ‚prioritarianesque‛: the value of a project-improvement of magnitude m decreases in comparison to primary projects as the welfare of those who stand to achieve such projects increases. prioritarianesque is not a version of prioritarianism, at least as weirich understands it. prioritarianesque says nothing about the comparative interpersonal weight of equivalent welfare benefits for the worse-off and better-off. prioritarianesque claims, instead, that project-improvements of magnitude m are of diminishing welfare value as one is better-off in terms of v-projects. first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 184 worse-off. however, this axiology has some interesting implications, which i explore in some concluding remarks. one might think that the relationship between satisfactions and v-projects here is strange, if not incoherent. for any given welfare level l, there is some magnitude project-improvement n that cannot be traded-off against any amount of satisfactions. but how could this be? for instance, let’s assume that, at welfare level 10, the magnitude of project improvement that is not fungible against satisfactions is 10. however, let’s say that magnitude 9 is fungible against satisfactions. but if that’s right, there can only be two options when it comes to the value difference between project-improvements of magnitudes 9 and 10. either there is an infinite value difference between a project-improvement of 9 and 10 (which seems false given that, as per prioritarianesque, all project-improvements are interfungible), or satisfactions permit of a value limit. if there is some particular finite value difference between a project-improvement of magnitude 10 for a person at welfare level 10, and a project-improvement of magnitude 9 for a person of welfare level 10, there must be some sort of asymptotic value limit for satisfactions that is set below the cardinal value of a project-improvement of magnitude 10 for a person of welfare level 10. but this itself seems quite implausible.36 satisfactions surely include things like pleasure. if so, it would appear that a pleasure of value +10 is of equivalent value to any pleasure of +10, and any set of two pleasures of +10 is of equivalent value to any pleasure +20. but if that’s right, additional pleasures (and hence at least a subset of satisfactions) must be linearly aggregative, which, or so it would seem, is incompatible with prioritarianesque. the latter principle holds that project-improvements are fungible. but if satisfactions can be linearly aggregative, and mitigated lexical holds, occasionally project-improvements of different magnitudes will not be fungible. it seems to me that there is good reason to accept prioritarianesque, along with the mitigated lexical dominance of v-projects against satisfactions. but one can accept these claims and also reject an asymptotic value limit for satisfactions if one instead rejects cardinal comparisons between satisfactions and v-projects. if my account is correct, we should eschew cardinal comparisons between goods, and rely simply on an ordinal ranking (which would entail the refusal to say how much better a certain good x is than another good y). when comparing states of affairs that involve trade-offs between satisfactions and v-projects, we simply produce a betterness ordering: this benefit for a person at this level of welfare is better than that benefit for a person at that level of welfare, and so on. in this way, we can claim that satisfactions, at least among themselves, can be measured on a cardinal scale. but this cardinal scale is incommensurable with the cardinal scale we use to measure the relative value of vprojects. when comparing their betterness, we simply declare that a project-improvement of magnitude 10 for a person at welfare level 10 is better than any amount of satisfactions; a project-improvement of magnitude 9 for a person at welfare level 10 is better than n satisfactions, and so on. a lexical priority relation that obtains between x and y simply entails that it never makes a state of affairs better to trade-off x for y; x and y are non-fungible. thus my view seems to require the rejection of cardinality. such a radical measure may seem reason to reject the axiology of goals at which i have gestured here. but that would be the wrong lesson to draw. to suggest that a particular theory of welfare is unsatisfactory because it leads to ordinal rather than cardinal comparisons between welfare goods seems to me to get 36 contrary, e.g., to the proposal of binmore and voorhoeve, ‚defending transitivity against zeno’s paradox‛ in philosophy and public affairs 31 (2003). first steps in an axiology of goals dorsey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 185 the cart before the horse. whether or not we should accept a cardinalized axiology seems to me entirely dependent on whether the theory of welfare we accept can support such cardinalization. but i think there are very good welfarist reasons for believing that cardinalization should be rejected. though that may leave us in a difficult position elsewhere, perhaps that is simply the position in which we find ourselves. author dale dorsey university of kansas ddorsey@ku.edu references arrhenius, gustaf. 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(1983). utility tempered with equality. noûs 17 (3), pp. 423–439. williams, bernard. (1974). a critique of utilitarianism. in utilitarianism: for and against, cambridge: cambridge university press. williams, bernard. (1981). persons, character, and morality. in moral luck, cambridge: cambridge university press. velleman, j. david. (2000). well-being and time. in the possibility of practical reason, oxford: oxford university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/019924376x.001.0001 mankiewicz, p. d., gresswell, d. m., & turner, c. (2013). subjective wellbeing in phychosis: mediating effects of psychological distress on happiness levels amongst individuals diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 35-59. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i1.3 pawel d. mankiewicz national health service, uk, and university of lincoln, uk pawel.mankiewicz@nhs.net copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 article subjective wellbeing in psychosis: mediating effects of psychological distress on happiness levels amongst individuals diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia pawel d. mankiewicz · david m. gresswell · colin turner abstract: a correlational study examined the suppositions of headey and wearing’s fourdimension model of subjective wellbeing (swb) and psychological distress amongst people experiencing psychosis. the research objective was to replicate the model with the studied sample and to examine how emotional distress resulting from psychosis affects the individuals’ satisfaction with life and positive affect levels. forty-seven individuals with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia completed self-report measures of psychoticism, paranoid ideation, depression and anxiety (brief symptom inventory), positive affect (affect balance scale), and life satisfaction (satisfaction with life scale). correlational patterns of the four-dimension model were replicated with individuals experiencing psychosis. although the levels of depression and anxiety were clearly elevated in comparison with general population norms, the levels of positive affect remained similar to those in the general population, and the average life satisfaction appeared only slightly decreased. depression was found to act as a dominant mediator between the severity of experiences of psychosis and satisfaction with life. possible explanations for the findings are proposed and implications from the positive clinical psychology perspective are suggested. based on the study outcomes it is argued that: (1) psychosis does not equal unhappiness, (2) psychosis does not immobilize adaptive mechanisms of swb, (3) psychosis does not exempt individuals from positive mood set-points, and (4) psychosis does not indiscriminately lower life satisfaction. keywords: subjective wellbeing, happiness, satisfaction with life, positive affect, psychosis, paranoid schizophrenia, positive clinical psychology 1. introduction 1.1 cognition and affect in subjective wellbeing subjective wellbeing (swb) has often been used as a general definition and synonym of happiness (noddings, 2003) with the implication that happiness is intrinsically about subjective and individual experience (nettle, 2005). hence, happiness can be perceived as a positive subjective state defined by the individual who believes that his/her life and current events are going well (diener & biswas-diener, 2008). empirical studies on swb have consistently suggested that it consists of at least two integral aspects: affect, which represents the emotional experience of joy, and cognition, which represents evaluation of satisfaction with life (carr, 2004). nettle (2005) proposed that swb http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 might be understood on three mutually interacting levels: level 1 consists of momentary feelings, such as joy and pleasure, level 2 involves judgements about feelings and life (individual life satisfaction), and level 3 consists of general subjective quality of life and flourishing. joy is the most immediate and direct sense of happiness and is brought on by a desired state being attained; little cognition is involved in this state beyond the recognition that the desired event has occurred (nettle, 2005). swb, however, is not identical to short-term sensory pleasure, to which individuals quickly habituate (peterson & park, 2009). hence, when people say they are happy, it does not mean that they are literally joyful all the time (nettle, 2005). the process of overall self-appraisal of life is involved, and the degree to which individuals judge the perceived quality of their lives favourably results in different levels of life satisfaction (veenhoven, 1991). this process may occur implicitly or explicitly (andrews & withey, 1974). diener and lucas (2000) explained that life satisfaction is the function of a person’s evaluation of how they are doing in their lives generally, especially in the domains that are important to them. each individual evaluates his/her life differently depending on their expectations, hierarchy of values, and previous experiences. it therefore follows that research on swb needs to incorporate idiosyncratic assessments of individuals’ thoughts and feelings about their lives (diener & lucas, 2000), and that in measures of life satisfaction the exact standards for happiness should be left up to the individual. despite this idiosyncratic approach, self-reports of happiness appear highly reliable and agree significantly with observers’ ratings, diary methods and behavioural measures (peterson & park, 2009). however, judgements of life satisfaction are not merely a function of how individuals appraise their lives, but also of how they feel at the time of judgemental processes (veenhoven, 1991). schwarz and strack (1991) argued that since moods increase the accessibility of moodcongruent information in memory, then if positive affect dominates at the time of the judgement, the selective retrieval of positive cognitions would result in an upbeat evaluation of one’s life satisfaction. it follows that satisfaction with life appears partially dependent on an individual’s emotional state (lewinsohn, redner, & seeley, 1991). in general, positive psychology researchers (e.g. diener & lucas, 2000; argyle, 2001) seem to support the assumption that positive emotions are not merely the polar opposites of negative ones but that these two dimensions are at least partially independent and coexist with each other. also, neurophysiological evidence indicating that the brain centres registering positive affect and negative affect are separate appears to support this assumption (kahneman, 1999). it has been demonstrated that in frontal zones a differential lateralisation for positive and negative emotions exists, with relative left-hemispheric activation for positive emotions and relative right-hemispheric activation for negative emotions (ahern & schwartz, 1985; alves, fukusima, & aznar-casanova, 2008; natale, gur, & gur, 1983). these structures, however, have been shown to work together to process and generate emotional information and emotional behaviour (huppert, 2005). furthermore, posner, russell and peterson (2005) demonstrated that although the existence of relative lateralisation for positive and negative emotions has been supported by empirical research, a strictly dimensional neuroanatomical continuum does not exist, as all affective states arise from coexisting and overlapping neurophysiological systems. 1.2 four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress headey and wearing (1991) provided evidence that some psychological distress can occur alongside moderately high general levels of happiness. therefore, in their model swb was subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 assumed to consist of at least three dimensions: positive affect, life satisfaction and negative affect. in a subsequent publication, headey and wearing (1992) argued that negative affect should be subdivided further, as the authors demonstrated that depression and anxiety, the two main forms of psychological distress, were at least partly independent and both influenced swb levels. the authors reported that measures of depression and anxiety were only moderately correlated, and that while individuals could be satisfied with their lives and anxious, it was rare to find people who were satisfied and depressed. both depression and anxiety were shown to be significant indicators of swb through their inverse effect on a sense of satisfaction, and on frequency of positive affect. given their findings, headey and wearing (1992) proposed a four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress. the four reciprocally interacting factors were: life satisfaction, positive affect, depression, and anxiety. based on data collected from their australian general population study, the authors established observed correlations between the four dimensions, as presented in figure 1. figure 1. observed correlations between four dimensions of swb and psychological distress note: reproduced with permission from ‚understanding happiness‛ by b. headey and a. wearing (1992), p. 33. 1.3 neglect of swb in traditional clinical psychology seligman and csikszentmihalyi (2000) argued that an exclusive focus on pathology has for a long time dominated the psychological discipline and has resulted in a negativistic model of human beings that lacks the positive features that make life worth living, and in a distorted view of normal human experience. the neglect of swb within the field of clinical psychology might be explained by the field’s long-established focus on people with severe psychological difficulties, which in practice often means tackling problems and reducing distress rather than promoting happiness (conway & macleod, 2002). thus, given that the historic endorsement of the disease paradigm of human functioning has led to a neglect of human strengths and virtues in clinical psychology, it appears important for clinicians working with individuals with complex, severe and enduring psychological difficulties, such as psychosis, to understand how happiness models apply to their clients in order to inform possible means to maximise their swb. life satisfaction depression anxiety positive affect + 0.40 + 0.50 0.52 0.17 0.25 0.34 subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 1.4 diagnostic descriptions of psychosis although the medical construct of schizophrenia has been methodologically questioned for decades (e.g. bentall, 1990; boyle, 1993), psychosis continues to be typically described using a symptomatological approach. the characteristic symptoms of psychosis have been divided into two major clusters: positive and negative symptoms. positive symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder and cognitive processing abnormalities (sass & parnas, 2003). negative symptoms refer to deficits in functioning and may include restricted emotional expression, impoverished speech, inattention, lack of motivation, apathy, poor concentration, social withdrawal, lowered activity levels, and avolition (johns, sellwood, mcgovern, & haddock, 2002). diagnostic guidelines of the icd-10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders (world health organisation, 1992) necessitate the presence of a minimum of one very clear positive symptom (such as delusions of control or hallucinatory voices) for most of the time during a period of one month or more, as the prime requirement for a diagnosis of schizophrenia. additionally, paranoid delusions of persecution and/or prominent threatening or commanding hallucinations must be present in order to satisfy diagnostic criteria for paranoid schizophrenia. 1.5 emotional distress in psychosis psychological distress has been acknowledged in most aetiological models of psychosis (corcoran et al., 2003) and severe symptoms of depression and anxiety were found to be prevalent amongst people with diagnoses of schizophrenia (marneros & akiskal, 2007; scheller-gilkey, thomas, woolwine, & miller, 2002). the prevalence of diagnostic comorbidity was found to be as high as 57.3%, of which approximately 62% of people were found to have some form of anxiety disorder (good, 2002). siris (1991) reviewed 29 studies investigating the incidence and prevalence of secondary depression in psychosis, and concluded that its occurrence amongst individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia ranged to as many as 70% of studied cases. in addition, his review highlighted that the personal wellbeing of persons with psychosis and depression was lower, they tended to experience more auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideations, they had lower self-esteem, and were more self-critical and hopeless. evidence suggests that experiencing positive symptoms of psychosis, especially auditory hallucinations, as dominating, insulting and commanding correlates with higher levels of psychological distress (vaughan & fowler, 2004). norman and malla (1991) reported that high levels of depression and anxiety were associated with hallucinations and delusions but not with negative symptoms. also, studies reviewed by bentall (2003) suggested that positive symptoms of psychosis, such as paranoid ideations, were accompanied by emotional distress, such as dysphoria and anxiety. cognitive models of psychosis suggest that depression and anxiety do not arise directly from positive symptoms of psychosis but rather from an individual’s interpretation of those symptoms and personal meanings attached to those experiences (fowler, garety, & kuipers, 1995). hence, following the cognitive framework, the appraisal of unusual experiences appears to play the critical role in determining whether or not an individual arrives at a delusional interpretation of a hallucinatory experience (steel, 2008). the cognitive content of emotions is hypothesised to be expressed in a symptom of psychosis, such as a delusional belief, which in turn directly contributes to the exacerbation of distress (freeman, garety, kuipers, fowler, & bebbington, 2002). subsequently, anxiety will arise from the threat belief, while depression will subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 be associated with beliefs about the power of the persecutors, personal failure and deserved punishment (freeman et al., 2002). overall, the picture of emotional experiences in psychosis as so far portrayed in the clinical and research literature appears to be largely negative and pessimistic. this bias might contribute to a discouraging supposition that the levels of positive affect and life satisfaction amongst individuals with experiences of psychosis might be considerably lower in comparison to the general population. however, as argued by linley, joseph, harrington and wood (2006), positive psychologists need to redress what is perceived as an imbalance in the focus of clinical research in applied psychology. 1.6 positive psychology and psychosis – a non-existent relationship? psychological deficits and disability have traditionally been the focus of clinical psychology, which has rarely focused on individuals’ resilience and resourcefulness. even though examples of studies describing successfully implemented interventions and their positive impact on wellbeing of people with psychosis have been available in clinical literature (e.g. bryson, lysaker & bell, 2002), braehler and harper (2008) still reported that quality of life of those diagnosed with schizophrenia remained low. although romme (1993) argued that intervention and rehabilitation for people with psychosis should focus on enhancing all fundamental qualities of their lives, the empirical studies of swb in psychosis appear underrepresented in comparison with psychopathologically oriented clinical research. therefore, a need for a more positive approach to psychotic experiences was identified by chadwick (1997), who argued that people diagnosed with schizophrenia have strengths as well as deficits, and that psychology has to focus on these capacities to increase dignity and life quality of people with psychosis. james (2001) suggested that overcoming a sense of powerlessness might be one of the factors contributing to the increase in swb of people with psychosis. more recent and positive approaches to the education of mental health practitioners advocated for delivering a thorough training in combating discrimination towards individuals with psychosis, focusing on their human qualities and encouraging their hope (houghton, shaw, hayward & west, 2006). the applied positive psychology movement has aimed to generate an empirical knowledge base focusing on human strengths which would complement the deficit-based traditional stance. hence, from the perspective of positive clinical psychology, as proposed by joseph and linley (2006), the role of mental health practitioners is not only to alleviate distress and treat symptoms, but also to promote health, build strengths and facilitate swb. thus, it can be argued that as a part of the change advocated by positive clinical psychology, we need to establish whether individuals with severe psychological difficulties, such as psychosis, can experience happiness in the way that people from the general population do. bergsma and veenhoven (2011) have recently instigated an empirical investigation of happiness levels amongst individuals with various psychiatric diagnoses and argued that mental disorder was not the same as unhappiness. unfortunately, their study did not incorporate participants with diagnosis of schizophrenia. to address the identified gap in the existing knowledge, the present study aimed to examine the applicability of the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress to people experiencing psychosis. 1.7 the present study a correlational study was conducted to examine the suppositions of the four-dimension model amongst individuals diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and to investigate how emotional subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 distress resulting from psychosis affects the individual’s satisfaction with life and positive affect levels. statistical analysis consisted of three subsequent stages. in stage 1, it was hypothesised that the correlational patterns proposed by the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress would be replicated with people experiencing psychosis (hypothesis 1). in stage 2 of the analysis, based on the evidence derived from previous research in emotional distress in psychosis it was hypothesised that the self-reported severity of experiences of psychosis would be positively correlated with the anxiety and depression dimensions of the model (hypothesis 2), and inversely correlated with the dimensions of positive affect and life satisfaction (hypothesis 3). it was also predicted that the presence of psychosis would be accompanied by heightened levels of depression and anxiety in comparison to general population norms (hypothesis 4), decreased levels of positive affect (hypothesis 5), and consequently, reduced life satisfaction (hypothesis 6). finally, given the replicated correlational patterns of the four-dimension model, in stage 3, it was hypothesised that the effects that experiences of psychosis might have on individual life satisfaction would be mediated by the affective levels of depression, anxiety and positive affect (hypothesis 7). 2. method 2.1 participants in our study, 47 participants with active experiences of psychosis were recruited from mental health specialist in-patient wards and outpatient clinics around the national health service’s trusts in the east midlands, uk. participants were aged from 18 years to more than 60, had the capacity to give informed consent, and were diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. of the 42 participants who provided demographic information, 31 were men and 11 were women. thirty-nine were of white british, two of white irish and one of black british caribbean origin. twenty-nine participants were outpatients and 13 in-patients. most participants were single, four were married and four divorced. thirty-two participants were unemployed, three were in part-time and one in full-time employment, three were students, and two were homemakers and/or carers. 2.2 measures the severity of psychosis, depression and anxiety symptoms were operationalized through the self-reported levels of burden they caused to an individual, and were measured with the brief symptom inventory (derogatis, 1993). the self-reported levels of positive affect, defined as joy or enjoyment, were assessed with the affect balance scale (bradburn, 1969). satisfaction with life, defined as a cognitive appraisal of an individual’s quality of life, was measured with the satisfaction with life scale (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985). 2.2.1 brief symptom inventory (bsi) the bsi is a 53-item self-report inventory, which has been designed to reflect the psychological complaint patterns amongst mental health in-patients and community outpatients. each bsi item is rated on a five-point scale (0-4) reflecting a person’s distress from ‚not at all‛ to ‚extremely‛. the bsi is a measure of current psychological symptom status and is scored on nine primary symptom dimensions: somatisation, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, psychoticism, and paranoid ideation (derogatis, 1993). subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 the bsi appears to have satisfactory psychometric properties. normative samples for bsi included 1002 adult psychiatric outpatients, 974 adult non-patients, 423 adult psychiatric inpatients, and 2408 adolescent non-patients. internal consistency was established using cronbach alpha coefficients for all nine dimensions, which ranged from 0.71 to 0.85, while testretest reliability coefficients were estimated between 0.68 and 0.91 (derogatis, 1993). internal structure and construct validity was found to be sufficient: orthogonal varimax loadings determined from principal components analysis ranged from 0.35 to 0.71. convergent and discriminant validity was examined through comparison with the minnesota multiphasic personality inventory; correlation coefficients scoped from 0.31 to 0.72 (derogatis, 1993). the bsi has been also standardised and normalised on the british population (francis, rajan, & turner, 1990; ryan, 2007). the bsi subscales scored for the purpose of this study were: psychoticism, paranoid ideation, depression, and anxiety. the severity of experiences of psychosis was measured with the subscales of psychoticism and paranoid ideation. derogatis and melisaratos (1983) described the subscale of psychoticism as representing a continuum progressing from a mild interpersonal alienation to a floridly psychotic state, and consisting of the first-rank symptoms of schizophrenia, including experiences of thought control. the paranoid ideation subscale represented a paranoid mode of thinking consisting of thoughts of projection, hostility, suspicion, centrality, and fear of loss of autonomy (derogatis & melisaratos, 1983). the content of both subscales combined appeared consistent with the clinical criteria for the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, as summarised earlier in the article. therefore, combined scores from both subscales were used to measure the individual levels of experiences of psychosis. the bsi subscales of depression and anxiety were scored to measure emotional distress arising from experiences of psychosis, which also formed the psychological distress facets of the fourdimension model. 2.2.2 affect balance scale (abs) the abs is a 10-item rating scale containing positive affect scale (pas, five statements reflecting positive feelings) and negative affect scale (nas, five statements reflecting negative feelings). the statements are presented in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ format. pas questions receive a rating of 1 for ‘yes’ and 0 for ‘no’, whereas nas ratings are reversed. the affect balance score is computed by subtracting negative affect scores from positive affect scores and adding a constant of 5 to avoid negative scores. the whole set of ten questions can be administered in less than 5 minutes (bradburn, 1969). for the purpose of this research only the pas scores were used. the abs was demonstrated to have good internal reliability: alpha coefficient was reported to be 0.72 by devins, beiser, dion, pelletier, and edwards (1997), and 0.74 by godoy-izquierdo, martinez, and godoy (2008). test-retest reliability of the abs was established as 0.76 (ryff, 1989). factorial invariance resulted with the following outcomes: adjusted goodness-of-fit value was 0.98, and its bentler and bonett index estimated as 0.91 (devins et al., 1997). the abs was also reported to show a convergent validity with other measures of related constructs, such as depression-happiness scale (lewis, mccollam, & joseph, 2000). the following psychometric properties were described for the pas: test-retest reliability was established as 0.83 (ryff, 1989), cronbach alpha coefficient was found to be 0.82 (godoy-izquierdo et al., 2008), and convergent validity with other single-item indicators of happiness ranged from 0.34 to 0.38 (lewis et al., 2000). subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 2.2.3 satisfaction with life scale (swls) the swls contains five items rated on a 7-point scale, from ‚strongly disagree‛ to ‚strongly agree‛, reflecting individual appraisals of subjective wellbeing. total scores fall into one of the levels of satisfaction, from ‚extremely dissatisfied‛ to ‚extremely satisfied‛ (peterson, 2006). normative data for the swls have been established on a diverse and cross-cultural population, including psychiatric inpatients, psychotherapy clients, prisoners, persons suffering from physical disabilities, older adults, and students. the swls demonstrated strong internal reliability and temporal stability: coefficient alpha for the scale was 0.87, and a 2-month stability coefficient was established as 0.82 (diener et al., 1985). over longer time periods, the test-retest reliability decreased to a level of 0.54, which demonstrated that the swls had a temporal stability property (for up to four years), while it has also been shown to hold sufficient sensitivity to detect change in life satisfaction during, for example, a course of intervention (pavot & diener, 1993). the swls was also reported to demonstrate satisfactory validity. the loading of compton’s happiness factor has been established to be as high as 0.83 and item-total correlations were reported to range between 0.57 and 0.75 (argyle, 2001). as presented by pavot and diener (1993), correlation of swls with other self-report and non selfreport measures of subjective wellbeing and satisfaction was found to range from 0.28 (informant reports) to 0.68 (e.g. andrews/withey scale). 2.3 procedure the recruitment to the current study and assessments were carried out by practising clinical psychologists amongst the clients with whom they had an established therapeutic relationship and working alliance. clinical psychologists determined whether a particular client within their caseloads met the inclusion criteria for the research. potential participants were given leaflets containing information about the study project. those who agreed to take part were then asked to sign a consent form and complete the questionnaires. the measures were administered to the participants by their psychologists in a fixed order: bsi, pas and swls. completion of the full assessment set took approximately 15-20 minutes. 3. results 3.1 stage 1: replication of the four-dimension model the levels of depression and anxiety were demonstrated to correlate positively (r = 0.667, sig < 0.001) with each other. satisfaction with life was shown to be positively correlated with positive affect (r = 0.418, sig = 0.003) and inversely correlated with depression (r = -0.473, sig < 0.001) and anxiety (r = -0.394, sig = 0.003). positive affect was also demonstrated to inversely correlate with depression (r = -0.274, sig = 0.031) and with anxiety (r = -0.169, sig = 0.129). the latter correlation was low and statistically non-significant. this finding seemed understandable in the light of previous research which demonstrated that it was not uncommon for an individual to be both anxious and joyful (headey & wearing, 1992). the findings supported our initial prediction (hypothesis 1). the correlational patterns of the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress established for the general population were replicated with people experiencing psychosis. pearson r correlation coefficients and their significance levels for the replicated four-dimension model are shown in table 1 (below). subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 table 1. pearson 1-tailed r correlation coefficients and their significance levels between the four dimensions of swb and psychological distress model within the studied sample four dimensions of swb & psychological distress depression anxiety positive affect life satisfaction depression -- r = 0.667 sig < 0.001 r = -0.274 sig = 0.031 r = -0.473 sig < 0.001 anxiety r = 0.669 sig < 0.001 -- r = -0.169 sig = 0.129 r = -0.394 sig = 0.003 positive affect r = -0.274 sig = 0.031 r = 0.169 sig = 0.129 -- r = 0.418 sig = 0.003 life satisfaction r = -0.473 sig < 0.001 r = -0.394 sig = 0.003 r = 0.418 sig = 0.003 -- 3.2 stage 2: psychosis and four dimensions of swb and psychological distress as shown in table 2, the levels of psychoticism and paranoid ideation were shown to be strongly positively correlated with the dimensions of depression (r = 0.716, sig < 0.001) and anxiety (r = 0.721, sig < 0.001) within the four-dimension model (hypothesis 2). the intensity of psychoticism and paranoid ideation was demonstrated to be reversely correlated with the dimension of life satisfaction (-0.349, sig = 0.008), and was found to show a reversed correlation with positive affect (hypothesis 3), though statistically non-significant (r = -0.219, sig = 0.069). table 2. pearson 1-tailed r correlation coefficients and their significance levels between the self-reported severity of psychosis and the four dimensions of swb and psychological distress study model dimensions depression anxiety positive affect life satisfaction psychoticism & paranoid ideation 0.716 sig < 0.001 0.721 sig < 0.001 -0.219 sig = 0.069 -0.349 sig = 0.008 table 3 (below) presents descriptive sample statistics and general population norms for the study model dimensions. as predicted (hypothesis 4), the average levels of depression and anxiety in the studied sample were both increased by at least 1 sd in comparison with the community norms. given the correlational patterns reported in stage 1, the finding appears consistent with the study model, since the sample levels of psychoticism were increased by approximately 2 sd and the levels of paranoid ideation were heightened by approximately 1.5 sd from the norms. our sample mean for the positive affect dimension was similar to the british general population mean. hence, contrary to our prediction (hypothesis 5), the participants exhibited levels of positive affect close to the british average. however, the sample mean score on swls was placed within the ‘slightly dissatisfied’ range of scores. in comparison, normative data described by diener et al. (1985) reported that the non-clinical population mean falls within the ‘slightly satisfied’ score range. consequently, our sample’s satisfaction with life was reduced by approximately 1 sd in comparison with the general population trend. this result supported our prediction (hypothesis 6). subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 table 3. descriptive sample statistics and normative data for the study model dimensions study model dimensions mean standard deviation psychoticism sample statistics 1.57 0.93 bsi norms* 0.27 0.48 paranoid ideation sample statistics 1.48 1.04 bsi norms* 0.54 0.65 depression sample statistics 1.58 1.04 bsi norms* 0.42 0.65 anxiety sample statistics 1.48 0.99 bsi norms* 0.45 0.60 positive affect sample statistics 2.96 1.73 abs norms** 2.84 not reported life satisfaction sample statistics 16.40 7.11 swls norms*** 23.50 6.43 note: (*) british non-patient norms reported by francis et al. (1990). (**) british non-clinical norms reported by basabe et al. (2000). (***) non-clinical norms reported by diener et al. (1985). 3.3. stage 3: mediating role of psychological distress a variable is assumed to mediate the relationship between a predictor and an outcome variable if the predictor first has an effect on the mediator, which in turn influences the outcome variable (miles & shevlin, 2001). in other words, a mediated relationship between variables occurs if a predictor has its effect on the outcome variable via another variable, the mediator. the starting point to construct a mediational model is a theoretically informed possibility that a mediator variable occurs ‘between’ the studied predictor and outcome variables (bennett, 2000). as suggested by frazier, tix, and barron (2004), decisions about potential mediators are based on previous research and existing theories, and are best made a priori in the design stage rather than post hoc. in the present study, mediators were identified on theoretical grounds and the development of the proposed mediational model (see figure 2 below) was informed by previous research discussed in earlier paragraphs. as argued by mackinnon, fairchild and fritz (2007), mediating processes often include multiple mediators, which are likely to provide a more accurate estimation of mediation effects in a variety of research contexts. subsequently, mediation models which consist of more than one mediator are straightforward extensions of the single-mediator models. derived from the hypothesised mediational pathways, figure 3 (below) depicts three mediational sub-models, which were investigated separately in order to establish mediating properties for each of the proposed mediators. the mediational sub-models assume three-variable systems in which the following causal associations occur: a representing the relation of the predictor variable to the mediator, b representing the relation of the mediator to the outcome variable adjusted for the predictor variable, and c’ representing the indirect-only relation of the predictor variable to the outcome variable adjusted for the mediator. subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 figure 2. hypothesised mediational pathways between the severity of psychoticism and paranoid ideation and the levels of life satisfaction (with the demonstrated correlational directions) (-) (+) (-) (-) (+) (+) (+) (-) (-) (-) figure 3. mediational sub-models: depression, anxiety and positive affect as hypothesised mediators in the association between psychoticism and paranoid ideation (predictor variable) and satisfaction with life (outcome variable) a1 b1 c’1 a2 b2 c’2 a3 b3 c’3 3.3.1 causal steps in mediation analysis the causal steps approach to mediation analysis (bennett, 2000; mackinnon, et al., 2007; miles & shevlin, 2001) was employed. in order to establish mediating properties of the hypothesised mediators, the stepped analysis needs to consist of the following four stages: (1) the predictor variable must be shown to significantly relate to the outcome variable using regression, (2) the predictor variable must be demonstrated to significantly relate to the mediating variable using depression psychoticism & paranoid ideation anxiety life satisfaction positive affect psychoticism and paranoid ideation depression life satisfaction anxiety life satisfaction positive affect life satisfaction psychoticism and paranoid ideation psychoticism and paranoid ideation subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 regression, (3) using multiple regression, the mediator must be shown to be significantly related to the outcome variable while the predictor variable remains controlled, and (4) when controlling for the mediator, the coefficient relating the predictor variable to the outcome variable must be smaller (in absolute value) than the coefficient calculated in step 1, or the relationship between the predictor and the outcome variable must be less significant than in step 1. when in step 4 the relationship between the predictor variable and the outcome variable is smaller than in step 1 (but still greater than zero) and the coefficient is statistically significant, then the data suggest partial mediation. if, when controlling for the mediator, the effect of the predictor variable on the outcome variable is zero, or the relationship is at least no longer statistically significant, then the data are consistent with a dominant mediation model. 3.3.2 outcomes of mediation analyses table 4 summarises results of mediation analyses with depression, anxiety and positive affect as mediating variables. in step 1, psychoticism and paranoid ideation were shown to be significantly inversely related to life satisfaction: b = -1.431, sig = 0.016. coefficient b suggested that with a single unit increase in psychoticism and paranoid ideation, an individual’s satisfaction with life decreased by approximately one and a half units. furthermore, based on r square value, psychoticism and paranoid ideation were estimated to account for 12.2% of variance in the levels of life satisfaction. given that the predictor and outcome variables remained the same, the results of causal step 1 applied to each of the mediational sub-models. table 4. results of mediation analyses causal steps r square coefficient b b significance step 1 0.122 1.431 0.016 mediation analysis 1: ppi*  depression  swl** step 2 (path a1) 0.513 0.432 < 0.001 step 3 (path b1) 0.224 3.123 0.020 step 4 (path c’1) 0.082 0.917 mediation analysis 2: ppi  anxiety  swl step 2 (path a2) 0.519 0.412 < 0.001 step 3 (path b2) 0.164 2.130 0.143 mediation analysis 3: ppi  positive affect  swl step 2 (path a3) 0.048 0.219 0.139 note: (*) psychoticism and paranoid ideation. (**) satisfaction with life. in step 2 of analysis 1, psychoticism and paranoid ideation were demonstrated to be significantly related to depression, the mediating variable: b = 0.432, sig < 0.001. with a single unit change in predictor variable, the depression levels increased by approximately a half of a unit. also, psychoticism and paranoid ideation were shown to account for 51.3% of variance in depression levels. in step 3, when controlling for the predictor variable, depression was demonstrated to be significantly related to life satisfaction (path b1 in figure 3): b = -3.123, sig = 0.020. the value for coefficient b suggested that when psychoticism and paranoid ideation is controlled, with a single unit change in depression, an individual’s life satisfaction decreased by more than three units. furthermore, when controlling for the predictor variable, depression was shown to account for 22.4% of variance in life satisfaction. in step 4, when controlling for the mediator, the predictor variable’s association with the outcome variable (path c’1 in figure subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 3) was shown to be close to zero and statistically non-significant: b = -0.082, sig = 0.917. thus, the results suggested that when controlling for depression, the change in life satisfaction associated with a single unit change in psychoticism and paranoid ideation was close to zero and, in addition, was statistically non-significant. according to the methodology described by miles and shevlin (2001), the amount of mediation was estimated by calculating the difference between the absolute values of coefficients in steps 1 and 4. the amount of mediation was therefore 1.349, which accounted for 94.26% of the initial b coefficient. consequently, the data obtained from mediation analysis 1 were consistent with a dominant mediational model suggesting that depression acts as a dominant mediator in the relationship between psychoticism and paranoid ideation (predictor variable) and satisfaction with life (outcome variable). hence, the outcomes appeared to partially support our hypothesis. yet, if the dominant mediating role of depression were to be supported with further evidence, then both anxiety and positive affect would be shown as statistically nonsignificant mediators in the current study model. in step 2 of analysis 2, the predictor was demonstrated to significantly relate to anxiety: b = 0.412, sig < 0.001. the coefficient b value suggested that with a single unit change in psychoticism and paranoid ideation, the anxiety levels of an individual increased by almost a half of a unit. moreover, psychoticism and paranoid ideation were shown to account for 51.9% of variance in anxiety levels. however, in step 3, when controlling for the predictor, the relationship between anxiety and life satisfaction was no longer significant: sig = 0.143. consequently, the data suggested that anxiety was not a statistically significant mediator of the relationship between the predictor and outcome variables, and the analysis did not proceed to step 4. in step 2 of analysis 3, psychoticism and paranoid ideation were shown not to act as a significant predictor of positive affect: sig = 0.139. again, the data suggested that positive affect was not a statistically significant mediator. consequently, steps 3 and 4 of the analysis were not undertaken. 3.3.3 effect size and statistical power as suggested by mackinnon et al. (2007), standardised regression coefficients served as effect size measures for individual relations in mediation analyses. table 5 presents standardised coefficients beta for steps 1 to 4 of mediation analyses in the present study (significance levels correspond to those reported for b coefficients). statistical power (1-β error prob.) of the multiple regression stages of the analyses was computed using g*power software (faul, erdfelder, lang, & buchner, 2007) and was established as 0.948 for mediation analysis 1, and 0.782 for mediation analysis 2. table 5. standardised coefficients beta for steps 1 to 4 of mediation analyses in the present study mediation analysis 1 mediation analysis 2 mediation analysis 3 coefficient beta for step 1 0.349 0.349 0.349 coefficient beta for step 2 0.716 0.721 0.219 coefficient beta for step 3 0.459 0.297 -- coefficient beta for step 4 0.020 ---- subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 4. discussion 4.1 psychosis does not equal unhappiness campbell (2007) reported a number of studies describing how people with experiences of psychosis felt trapped within a negative professional framework, which in their opinion encouraged the dismissal of significant positive aspects of their experience, and appeared stigmatising and discriminatory. in our investigation, we attempted to pursue a positive psychology approach to studying swb in psychosis, and to extend the focus of applied positive psychology research onto individuals with severe mental health difficulties. we tested the suppositions of the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress amongst people diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. the results supported most of the stated hypotheses and indicated that the model could be successfully utilised to gain some understanding of swb levels amongst individuals with experiences of psychosis. since the correlations between the dimensions of life satisfaction, positive affect, depression and anxiety were exceptionally similar to those reported by headey and wearing (1992), it might be concluded that the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress applies not only to individuals from a non-clinical population, but also to people with complex, severe and enduring mental health difficulties, such as psychosis. this finding seems rather important, since it indicates that the levels of swb amongst people diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, arguably the most severe form of psychosis, appear largely similar to the levels demonstrated within the general population. moreover, a range of the sample scores on the dimensions of positive affect and life satisfaction indicated that individuals experiencing psychosis might even feel very joyful and extremely satisfied with their lives. hence, contrary to the traditional deficit-oriented and misery-focused portrayal of psychosis, we can now present data to support the argument that in some instances individuals with experiences of psychosis can report levels of swb that are similar to those identified within the general population. 4.2 psychosis does not immobilize adaptive mechanisms of swb compared with a trend in the non-clinical population to be slightly satisfied with life, participants in our study appeared on average slightly dissatisfied with their lives. given the study model, we proposed that it was the emotional distress accompanying experiences of psychosis that accounted for this dissatisfaction, rather than the objective presence or absence of symptoms clustered in the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. the elevated levels of psychoticism and paranoid ideation clearly correlated with depression and anxiety dimensions within the model, and resulted in heightened levels of both dimensions in comparison to the general population norms. consequently, increased levels of psychological distress were accompanied by reduced satisfaction with life amongst individuals experiencing psychosis. interestingly, levels of positive affect in our sample were similar to those reported in the general population. we propose that because of those levels of positive affect (despite clearly elevated experiences of depression and anxiety), the average satisfaction with life reported in the sample was only slightly lowered in comparison with general population trends. the most immediate explanation of this surprising finding might be located within the four-dimension model itself, which originally suggested that positive and negative affect are separate and only moderately correlated entities (headey & wearing, 1992). further explanation of our finding can be based on a dynamic equilibrium theory of happiness developed by headey (2006). in their australian general population study, headey subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 and wearing (1992) demonstrated that the majority of people, regardless of their socioeconomic status, feel fairly happy with their lives. the authors proposed that every individual in any stable life situation, that is in the absence of major life changes, arrives at an equilibrium state in which their situation is viewed as being almost as satisfying as the life a person expects. in an equilibrium state, the present circumstances are regarded as considerably better than the worst previous period in a person’s life. consequently, a state of equilibrium that consists of high average levels of happiness appears to be associated with a set of idiosyncratic perceptions, aspirations and expectancies. as suggested by headey and wearing (1991), ‚human beings construct their world to arrive at a psychologically consistent set of perceptions – an equilibrium state – which supports or bolsters a feeling of wellbeing‛ (p. 8). in the dynamic equilibrium theory, headey (2006) proposed that both positive and negative major life events, such as winning a large sum in a lottery or becoming seriously ill, are typically habituated to and people return to their usual, individually-set equilibrium states of happiness. thus, on most occasions after major negative life events initially increase levels of psychological distress and decrease levels of positive affect, these return to their idiosyncratic base levels and the equilibrium in individual swb is reinstated. therefore, it appears that in the present study individuals diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia were able to adapt to even such disconcerting and unsettling experiences as onset of psychosis, acute episodes of paranoia and hearing voices, or admissions to inpatient wards, and return to their individual equilibrium states. 4.3 psychosis does not exempt individuals from positive mood set-points in their positive mood set-point theory, diener and diener (1996) proposed that there is a positive, rather than neutral, baseline for affect in human beings, which has significant adaptive, evolutionary, motivational, social, learning and intrinsic functions. for instance, positive moods give negative events maximum informational value and therefore such events can be easily noticed and quickly attended to. also, it is pertinent for motivational reasons that people are not in a negative mood most of the time. positive moods energise approach tendencies, which must prevail in human behaviour in order to obtain food, shelter, social contact, sex and so forth. although the exact set-point varies amongst individuals depending on a person’s socialisation and temperament, for most people it remains in the positive range (diener & diener, 1996). since the general levels of positive affect in our sample were demonstrated to be similar to those reported in the general population, we propose that the experiences of psychosis do not automatically disturb positive mood set-points of individuals diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. 4.4 psychosis does not indiscriminately reduce satisfaction with life the results of our mediation analyses were consistent with a dominant mediational model and demonstrated that depression acted as a dominant mediator in the relationship between psychoticism and paranoid ideation (predictor) and satisfaction with life (outcome). the data supported the indirect-only xmy mediation type (zhao, lynch, & chen, 2010), in which an increase in the levels of psychoticism and paranoid ideation (x) would reduce satisfaction with life (y) only if accompanied by increased depression levels (m). thus, the results suggested that experiences of psychosis might indirectly affect individual life satisfaction through their influence on depression levels. subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 consequently, the hypothesised mediational model was partially supported by the results, as considering the correlational patterns between the studied model dimensions we expected anxiety and positive affect to act as partial mediators as well. however, given the weak and statistically non-significant correlation between psychoticism/paranoid ideation and positive affect, it appears understandable that the latter did not have any significant mediating properties. furthermore, this finding seems consistent with one of the underlying suppositions of the four-dimension model of happiness and psychological distress, in which positive and negative affect are separate and only moderately correlated entities that coexist with each other. given the size and significance levels of anxiety correlation coefficients with both predictor and outcome variables, the results of analysis 2, which suggested no significant mediational properties of anxiety, were more surprising. however, again, the possible explanation for this finding appears to be placed within the empirical foundations of the four-dimension model reported by headey and wearing (1992). the authors argued that although depression and anxiety were both major influences on swb through their inverse effect on a sense of satisfaction, and on frequency of positive emotions, the two main forms of psychological distress were at least partly independent, and while individuals could be satisfied with their lives and anxious, it was very rare to find people who were both satisfied and depressed. also, the findings appear to remain in agreement with a cognitive model of depression, in which negative and self-defeating cognitions are unconditional and over-generalised and subsequently affect individual perception of one’s whole life (sanders & wills, 2005). this does not seem to leave much space for positive and joyful experiences. additionally, as argued by csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1997, 2002), heightened levels of anxiety might precipitate and even accompany the experiences of enjoyment. hence, there is a low and statistically non-significant reversed correlation between anxiety and positive affect. 5. study limitations 5.1 ambiguous implications for the practice of positive clinical psychology given the results of the current study, it seems plausible to suggest that in order to enhance satisfaction with life of a person with experiences of psychosis, psychological interventions would need to focus primarily on reducing symptoms of depression. and traditional clinical psychology that emphasises the alleviation of emotional distress offers exactly such interventions: psychological therapies for depression (e.g. barkham & parry, 2008). yet, applied positive psychology may propose an alternative approach that complements the traditional deficit-based stance. positive clinical psychology practice offers a range of strengths-based interventions that focus on amplifying an individual’s experiences of joy and on increasing a person’s satisfaction with life. joseph and linley (2006) argued that positive clinical psychologists identify human strengths and promote mental health as assets which buffer against mental illness through educational, relational and social interventions. the four-dimension model seems to depict clearly how the enhanced levels of joy and life satisfaction may operate as buffers against psychological distress. however, the model does not appear to suggest what exactly might be done in order to increase an individual’s swb from the positive psychology perspective. neither does the dynamic equilibrium theory. indeed, the model seems to imply that the levels of both depression and anxiety ought to be reduced to increase a person’s happiness, which is rather consistent with the traditional clinical psychology stance. the dynamic equilibrium theory, on the other hand, suggests that if left on their own individuals would sooner or later return to their equilibrium levels of swb. these theoretical inconsistencies with the applied subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 positive psychology approach seem to make the potential clinical implications of the present study rather ambiguous. yet, some guidance for psychological interventions from the perspective of positive clinical psychology can be found in the theory of flow developed by csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1997, 2002). the theory proposed that swb can be enhanced through engagement with everyday life and through involvement in absorbing tasks, such as work or leisure activities, in which a person exercises individual strengths, talents and interests. the involvement and absorption in activities that individuals do for their own sake lead to unique harmony and order in consciousness. such optimal experiences help an individual to develop and cultivate an optimistic perception of oneself and the future. these theoretical propositions informed the practical recommendations that carr (2005) gave to mental health professionals aspiring to pursue a positive psychology approach in their clinical practice. for instance, the author suggested that ‚clinicians may help clients identify their talents and explore ways to use these frequently to generate flow experiences‛ (p. 5). given the crucial role that activities, hobbies and work might play in the recovery of people with severe mental health difficulties (bryson et al., 2002; davies, hopkins, campisi, & maggs, 2012), the practical recommendations derived from the theory of flow appear consistent with the needs of individuals experiencing psychosis. 5.2 unexamined aetiology of psychological distress in psychosis the study did not investigate why individuals with psychosis often react with heightened levels of psychological distress. as already discussed, throughout the last two decades the subject of emotional distress in psychosis has been thoroughly investigated by cognitive psychology researchers. hence, for conceptual purposes, we have taken a cognitive perspective on this matter. cognitive models of psychosis propose that it is not a delusional or hallucinatory experience in itself that accounts for emotional distress of an individual experiencing psychosis. it is rather the individual’s appraisal or interpretation of that experience that triggers a particular emotional reaction (chadwick, birchwood, & trower, 1996). perhaps, the clearest cognitive framework for experiences such as delusions or hallucinations has been based on ellis’ a-b-c model, where a stands for ‘activating event’, b stands for ‘belief’ about activating event, and c stands for ‘consequences’ of holding a particular belief, including emotional, behavioural and physiological reactions (dudley & kuyken, 2006). within the a-b-c framework, hallucinations are the activating events (as), which are interpreted and appraised by an individual (bs). these interpretations might be delusional or paranoid in their content, and subsequently trigger associated emotional reactions (cs), such as anxiety or depression (chadwick et al., 1996). for instance, when a person experiences a threatening auditory hallucination, s/he might think s/he has lost control over her/his life and deserves punishment and, as the result of this belief, becomes depressed. consequently, given the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress, the person’s levels of joy and life satisfaction would be negatively affected. 5.3 unexplored external indicators of general wellbeing the study focused entirely on the subjective aspects of wellbeing. thus, objective indicators were not considered within the studied model. there has been an ongoing debate about the relevance of external factors for swb that continues to take place in the positive psychology literature. as explained by argyle (2001), the major weakness of objective indicators is that we do not yet know which to investigate uniformly, as different people might have radically subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 different hierarchies of values. hence, indiscriminate inclusion of a set cluster of external influences might pose a risk of distorting results of nomothetic quantitative studies. veenhoven (1991) argued that swb relates more strongly to psychological variables than to socio-economic indicators, whilst argyle and martin (1991) concluded that the effect of objective indicators on subjective satisfaction was statistically non-significant. for instance, a number of studies reported that a vast majority (up to 96%) of unmarried, unemployed and relatively uneducated people reported being satisfied with their lives (diener & diener, 1996). also, as western societies got richer during the last five decades, their people have not become any happier, yet at the same time average income has more than doubled (layard, 2005). furthermore, haidt (2006) reviewed the existing empirical studies and concluded that there was no evidence suggesting that personal or occupational success increases overall swb. almost zero association was found between having children and happiness (powdthavee, 2009). schwarz and strack (1991) reported that most objective life circumstances account for less than 5% of the variance in measures of swb and the combination of a dozen objective domains of life accounts for less that 10%. thus, the assumption of general external laws affecting one’s happiness appears to have turned out unfruitful, as the evidence suggests that levels of swb draw on inner sources rather than on outer ones (schimmack & lucas, 2007). it seems that, unless the basic life needs are jeopardized, people from all socio-economic and ethnic groups report their satisfaction well above neutral (diener & lucas, 2000). as noticed by peterson and park (2009), ‚most people rate themselves as somewhat above the midpoint of a happiness scale, whether they are multimillionaires in the united states< or homeless prostitutes in calcutta<‛ (p. 304). hence, the four-dimension model’s focus on internal emotional processes might be seen as both its limitation and its strength. 5.4 convenience sampling and selective participation non-probability convenience sampling was adopted for the purpose of this study. due to the limited number of potential participants and predicted difficulties with engaging individuals with active psychosis (as described by evans-jones, peters and barker, 2009), the study needed to be conducted with those accessible and agreeing to participate. as argued by leary (2004), non-probability samples are entirely acceptable for psychological research, since the goal is typically not to describe how the population behaves but rather test some specific hypotheses regarding relations between variables in a particular sample. ‚we may wonder whether the results generalise to other kinds of samples, but this question does not undermine the quality of particular study‛ (p. 126). as suggested by gassie (1968), research findings might be generalised from one situation to another if the study sample is representative of both situations. hence, how representative our sample has been of people with psychosis in general and how might it differ from individuals who experience psychosis but remain outside of specialist care? the response rate in our study appeared at least satisfactory: the majority of the individuals who received the research information sheet expressed their interest in contributing to the exploration of swb levels in psychosis and agreed to fill in the questionnaires. our participants were recruited from a range of specialist care settings: acute care wards, rehabilitation wards and outpatient communitybased clinics. therefore, a range of stages of recovery from acute psychotic episodes was included. furthermore, relatively high standard deviations of the psychoticism and paranoid ideation scales indicated that the range of current levels of psychosis varied considerably subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 within the sample, which indicated that severity of psychosis was indeed fairly well represented: from an acute to a relative recuperation stage. the study was not conducted in early intervention services. hence, individuals with first episodes of psychosis, or those at risk of developing psychosis, were not included. neither were persons who were in remission from psychotic experiences and consequently did not require a psychological intervention, or those who never searched for specialist care. thus, while generalising the present research outcomes, the specificity of the studied sample (i.e. individuals with present psychosis across the range of recovery stages in receipt of specialist care) needs to be taken into consideration. 5.5 limitations of mediation analysis the stepped approach to mediation analysis may appear to imply that if the statistical assumptions of causal steps were met and a series of regressions were conducted, then a definite answer about mediating effects would be provided. bramwell (1996) argued that since mediation analysis relies on purely correlational techniques, rather than on experimental manipulation of cause and effect, it cannot provide any conclusive evidence that the direction of causality is that which a researcher predicts. similarly, bryman and cramer (2001) proposed that a correlational study cannot establish the causal effects and the generation of causal explanations from correlational research can be meaningless; these effects can only be inferred. since causal inferences generally cannot be made on the basis of non-experimental studies, then correlational data must rather be interpreted merely in correlational terms and the only conclusion that can be made is that the causal model is consistent with the data. again, as suggested by bryman and cramer (2001), in order to make inferences about the likely direction of cause and effect, ‚the researcher must look to probable directions of causation... or to theories which suggest that certain variables are more likely to precede others‛ (p. 229). in addition, kenny (2008) argued that, given the causal assumption that underlies a mediational analysis, if the study model is misspecified, then the mediation analysis’ results are not so much meaningless as misleading. therefore, it is of major importance for any researcher to justify the assumptions that have been made in any mediational model. in the present study, the justification for causational directions in mediational models was established on the grounds of previous research conducted on the subjects of emotional distress in psychosis and cognitive and affective components of swb. it is argued here that the indirectonly causational model with depression as the dominant mediator was consistent with the obtained data. however, it is also acknowledged that the findings presented should be interpreted in correlational terms; a definite proof for the direction of causality should not be inferred. yet, kenny (2008) strongly disagreed with the idea that experimental studies are the only legitimate design for drawing causal conclusions. the author argued that the experimental requirement for manipulation prevents studying many variables of which manipulation would be unethical. additionally, if the mediators are internal psychological properties or processes then these variables can only be measured, not manipulated. ‚if we can only study variables that we manipulate, we have a science that artificially limits itself from studying as causes variables that cannot be manipulated‛ (kenny, 2008, p. 356). kenny’s conclusions appeared pertinent in the context of the present research. given the subject studied, the idea of constructing an experiment in which the investigated variables were experimentally manipulated appeared highly unethical, if at all possible. subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 6. future directions when interpreting the results of mediational analysis, the issue of an alternative equivalent model must be acknowledged. that is, for any given mediational model there are likely to be alternative models with different patterns of relations amongst the studied variables that are consistent with the data (frazier et al., 2004). as noticed by mackinnon et al. (2007, p. 595), although the consideration of a third variable may appear simple, three-variable systems can be very complicated, and there are many alternative explanations of observed relations other that mediation. the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress chosen for the purpose of the present study, although supported with evidence, is only one of a number of happiness concepts. successful replication of the model with the studied sample and its employment for the purpose of the proposed mediational pathways was only an initial attempt to investigate swb amongst individuals with complex and enduring mental health difficulties. it is important to remember that although the dominant mediational properties of depression were consistent with the obtained data, psychoticism and paranoid ideation accounted only for 12.2% of variance in the levels of satisfaction with life amongst the study participants. also, when controlling for the predictor variable, depression accounted for 22.4% of variance in life satisfaction. thus, it appears essential that future studies focus on establishing the other determinants of satisfaction with life amongst individuals experiencing psychosis. for instance, the mentioned theory of flow may serve as an alternative equivalent model and provide some indications for additional personal determinants of life satisfaction amongst individuals with severe psychological difficulties (e.g. an ability to become engaged in and absorbed with activities), which might inform the focus of future research. furthermore, as proposed by forgeard, jayawickreme, kern, and seligman (2011), future research on the subject of wellbeing should endeavour to capture the complex and multifaceted nature of wellbeing and combine both subjective and objective measures. the authors argued that ‚subjective measures are insufficient; objective measures provide essential additional information by conveying the circumstances in which individuals live and develop‛ (p. 98). this assertion seems particularly relevant to the sample studied, as it is fundamentally important to acknowledge the objective disadvantages and widespread stigmatisation that are faced by people with psychosis (e.g. lingwood, 2006; thornicroft, 2006). hence it seems essential that future research incorporates a holistic approach to the wellbeing of individuals with severe mental health difficulties, and that both internal (personal, psychological) and external (objective) variables are taken into consideration. acknowledgments the authors wish to acknowledge the effort that noel mcgrath, kerry beckley, deborah kingston, anna tickle, sharron smith, ian brown, lynn chapman and danielle deboos dedicated to the recruitment of participants for the study. authors pawel d. mankiewicz national health service, uk, and university of lincoln, uk pawel.mankiewicz@nhs.net david m. gresswell university of lincoln, uk subjective wellbeing in psychosis mankiewicz, gresswell, & turner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 colin turner national health service, uk publishing timeline received 10 july 2012 accepted 26 september 2012 published 7 march 2013 references ahern, g.l. & schwartz, g.e. 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(2011). an interview with daniel kahneman, international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 186-188. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.22 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 186 expert insight an interview with daniel kahneman princeton university interview by aaron jarden 16 december 2010 1. what got you interested in wellbeing research? i got interested through the work i was doing on what i called ‘experienced utility’ and ‘remembered utility’. we did experiments in which participants were recording their experience of pain, or discomfort, or pleasure, second-by-second or minute-by-minute. we then compared the results with retrospective measures from the same participants, that is, when we asked them ‘how did you feel?’, or ‘what was your total pleasure?’, or ‘total pain?’ and so on. what we found was that the retrospective measures didn’t necessarily correspond to what the participants had actually experienced. i noticed that the questions on wellbeing surveys are retrospective; they ask you how you have been. this led me to the distinction that i now refer to as the distinction between the ‘remembering self’ and the ‘experiencing self’. 2. what do you take "wellbeing" to mean? i distinguish between the ‘experiencing self’ and the ‘remembering self’. the wellbeing of the ‘experiencing self’ is a subjective experience of living. the wellbeing of the ‘remembering self’ is how satisfied you are with your life when you think about it. it’s a completely different kind of question for each ‘self’. i used to think that wellbeing really meant ‘experienced utility’. i don’t think this can be sustained because it turns out that life satisfaction is extremely important to people – this is the goal that they are primarily interested in – so you can’t have a measure of wellbeing that is not also responsive to what people want. so now i have what i call a ‘hybrid model of wellbeing’, in which i am interested in both. 3. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding to date? clearly the most important finding is that wellbeing has a large genetic component. if i had to pick one finding, to the best of what we know, certainly in ‘experienced happiness’, i’d pick that. there are data now, in the american economic review, which show that life satisfaction is quite heritable. between 33% and 50% of the variance in life satisfaction has been genetically determined – that’s the most important finding. 4. what is the most important application of wellbeing research to our lives? there are applications done by consulting firms (e.g., gallup) that record the wellbeing of employees in their place of work. despite firms being primarily interested in productivity, this work encourages firms to try to maximise employee wellbeing. it turns out that there is a interview with daniel kahneman jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 187 correlation between how much people like being at work (employee engagement) and productivity. that is the most important application to date, but of course there are others. 5. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding from your research? the finding reported in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences a few months ago (by angus deaton and myself) is the most important. we found that ‘experienced happiness’ in the united states levels off perfectly around $70,000 – $75,000 income per annum. life satisfaction, however, goes on increasing. that is the most important finding because it highlights the distinction between the two types of wellbeing. 6. what are you working on right now? i’m still exploring the distinction between the two types of wellbeing. several of us are also helping a group in the united kingdom that is trying to set up a measure of wellbeing that could be used to guide policy. i am essentially working on the following question: are there measures of wellbeing that are sufficiently sensitive to changes in policy to be useful for guiding policy? it’s quite uncertain because, by and large, what is impressive about national statistics is that they are very stable year-to-year. international differences are also very stable year-to-year. we are trying to understand whether there are any measures that are sensitive enough to pick up the effects of large changes in employment and unemployment, not among the unemployed or the people who have lost their jobs – that’s obvious – but in the population at large. gallup has many measures, so i’m working with gallup and other senior scientists on this. we are investigating whether the measures that gallup has are sensitive enough to perform this task. 7. what do you think the next big thing in wellbeing research will be? the attempt to implement wellbeing measurements at the national level in several countries is the next big thing. if these attempts are unsuccessful, then the next big thing is going to be a major disappointment. i’m afraid that these measures are premature, that we don’t know enough yet about what works and what doesn’t. my biggest worry is that the public will see how little impact seemingly big circumstantial changes have on the different measures. this may turn them off the whole thing, which is my biggest worry. 8. what are the main benefits of interdisciplinary research on wellbeing? the quality of research on wellbeing has improved measurably since top flight economists joined in substantial numbers. angus deaton (president of the american economic association last year), alan krueger, richard easterlin, and the like have clearly raised the level of sophistication in statistical analysis. the next thing that is happening is that geneticists and physiologists are going to add their input and the study of wellbeing will merge with the study of health and health statistics. to some extent this is already happening in the uk, or has been happening for a while (since the famous whitehall studies). i think there will be major developments from that merger in the near future. 9. what would the ideal census question on wellbeing be and why? i don’t think there is a single ideal to answer this question. i would be firmly opposed to a single measure because there are at least two distinct kinds of wellbeing – emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction. furthermore, in emotional wellbeing there is the distinction between interview with daniel kahneman jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 188 positive and negative affect, which are not perfectly correlated. in fact they are quite imperfectly correlated. therefore, if one is interested in the measure of suffering, which is what i would be most interested in and think is most relevant to society, then no single question would do. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz references kahneman, d. & deaton, a. (2010). high income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well‐being. proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 107(38), 16489‐16493. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107 clark, r. s., & plano clark, v. l. (2022). the use of mixed methods to advance positive psychology: a methodological review. international journal of wellbeing, 12(3), 35-55. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i3.2017 rachael clark northern kentucky university clarkr7@nku.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 article the use of mixed methods to advance positive psychology: a methodological review rachael s. clark · vicki l. plano clark abstract: a call for diverse research approaches in positive psychology by the international positive psychology association (2015) and the journal of positive psychology (2017) challenged psychology researchers to consider methodology outside traditional quantitati ve methods. the purpose of this methodological review was to examine the use of mixed methods approaches in empirical studies in positive psychology. the review identified 56 positive psychology articles published between 2010 and 2019 that used a mixed methods approach. to our knowledge, this is the first review of mixed methods methodology in the field of positive psychology. the small number of published articles in that period indicate mixed methods is either not currently a widely used methodology in the field or it is being used without identifying terminology. those studies using mixed methods often used positive psychology to inform an intervention in the quantitative strand and gathered interviews within the qualitative strand. opportunities for growth for positive psychology researchers include interpreting data in mixed methods style and strengthening the identification of key features of the approach in the text. keywords: positive psychology, methodological review, mixed methods research, quantitative and qualitative 1. introduction a call for more methodological diversity in positive psychology research in the journal of positive psychology (hefferon et al., 2017) and by the international positive psychology association (ippa; pawelski, 2015) challenged well-being researchers to expand traditional methodological approaches in the study of flourishing. until the early 2000s, psychology relied primarily on quantitative methods to measure hope, optimism, happiness, and other positive psychological elements (alise & teddlie, 2010; ivankova & kawamura, 2010). the near exclusive reliance on quantitative approaches, however, may have limited the use and potential of qualitative and mixed methods approaches, thereby constraining the field’s capacity to advance knowledge in the science of well-being (alise & teddlie, 2010; donaldson et al., 2015; hefferon et al., 2017; ivankova & kawamura, 2010). qualitative methods are used to explore experiences and perspectives that may either complement or digress from results of quantitative research (braun & clarke, 2014) and are well suited for exploratory research in which the participants’ view is key to understanding a phenomenon (denzin & lincoln, 1994). qualitative methods can be used to understand a variety of human experiences (josselson, 2013) or to understand the process of participating in an intervention study, including uncovering aspects found most and least beneficial for participants (akhtar & boniwell, 2010). the aim of qualitative research is not to generalize, but to enhance, about:blank review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 explore, or deepen understanding (yin, 2016). because qualitative research produces in-depth, rich descriptions of a lived experience, qualitative research is highly relevant to the field of psychology (povee & roberts, 2014) given its focus on human behavior and mental processes. positive psychology focuses broadly on attaining psychological well-being, or living well. although living well (“the good life”) can be measured with numbers, the words and images of research participants best illustrate the human experience and may be used strategically to enhance understanding of what it means to flourish, the different ways that flourishing can be experienced, and the contexts that shape flourishing. furthermore, mixed methods research approaches involve the intentional combination of quantitative and qualitative strands in the design, data collection, and interpretation of a study or series of studies (creswell & plano clark, 2018). using both methods together has the potential to create a deeper understanding than using one or the other (greene, 2007; johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004; morgan, 2014). greene (2007) argued that mixed methods research approaches encourage diversity in thinking and discussion of differences, leading to rich understanding. these descriptions hint at the deep, multifaceted information that can emerge from using a mixed methods design. by combining quantitative measures of human traits and functioning with qualitative descriptions of meaning and experiences, mixed methods research approaches have much to offer psychology in terms of understanding behavior within a context, within-group differences, and cross-cultural variability (plano clark & ivankova, 2016; schrauf, 2017; von der lippe, 2010). positive psychology is well-suited as a sub-discipline of psychology to integrate multiple sources of information about optimal human functioning to create a synergistic examination of new knowledge (plano clark, 2017). mixed methods addresses multiple types of questions at once and provides a mechanism for answering both how and why, how much and in what ways, and if and why flourishing occurs. this unique approach has the potential to move positive psychology forward more rapidly and efficiently, thereby creating new knowledge impacting innumerous individuals, communities, and workplaces. mixed methods and positive psychology are both emerging fields experiencing a great deal of growth in the past two decades (donaldson et al., 2015; ivankova & kawamura, 2010). several similarities and criticisms connect the disciplines. mixed methods and positive psychology, as we understand them today, existed well before their entrance into the academy in 1989 and 1999, respectively (greene et al., 1989; linley et al., 2006; maxwell & loomis, 2003; seligman, 1999). greene et al.’s (1989) seminal article is frequently cited as the work that propelled the field of mixed methods into scholarly conversation. however, maxwell and loomis (2003) noted that researchers mixed quantitative and qualitative methods in the early 1900s, well before greene et al.’s (1989) publication. similarly, positive psychology is often cited as emerging as a distinct field in 1999 following martin seligman’s presidential address to the american psychological association (seligman, 1999). however, positive psychology, in some form, existed in the philosophical teachings of confucius, in taoism, and religious traditions such as buddhism and hinduism in the distant past (see dahlsgaard et al., 2005 for a review), and in humanism and its focus on self-actualization more recently (maslow, 1954). in the late 20th century, diener (1984) reviewed and renewed the subjective well-being construct, snyder et al. (1991) operationalized hope, and diener and tov (2009) advocated for a worldwide approach in the study of happiness. since then, hundreds of scholars have extended this work and studied the factors that enable flourishing around the world and in diverse contexts. mixed methods research has been advanced as a methodology that may be used to diversify the approaches and enrich findings within psychology. in the last decade, calls for the inclusion of mixed methods have gone out in health psychology (dures et al., 2010), music therapy research http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 (bradt et al., 2013), suicide studies (kral et al., 2012), and developmental science (yoshikawa et al., 2013). mixed methods research offers a valuable approach to positive psychology research due to the flexibility of the methodology given the unique contexts and perspective s of the study of well-being. mixed methods research has also been proposed as a relevant approach to studying cross-cultural variability and as a means for moderating the eurocentric perspective in psychological theory (canales, 2012; schrauf, 2017). strengths mixed methods research brings to psychology research include perspectives aligned with the philosophy of pragmatism (i.e., rejecting either-or choice between quantitative and qualitative and developing useful solutions through research, tashakkori et al., 2021), investigation of cultural factors, the importance of integrating multiple sources of information, and supporting theory (bradt et al., 2013; dures et al., 2010; kral et al., 2012). the entry of mixed methods approaches in psychology has not been without criticisms. mixed methods research is critiqued by some due to contradictory epistemologies that simply cannot be combined, wherein epistemology refers to the nature of knowledge and how it is attained (hatch, 2002); prioritizing methods over questions, and by limited methodological procedures (toomela, 2011). mixed methods research has been called a trojan horse for positivism because it includes qualitative methods, but too often undervalues the potential contribution of these methods by focusing on objective uses of the methods associated with positivist stances to uncover a singular truth (giddings & grant, 2007). toomela (2011) stated psychology should go back to the way things “used to be” before world war ii and base itself on “structural-systemic methodology” (p. 44). qualitative research in psychology is still relatively rare (tashakkori & teddlie, 2010; donaldson et al., 2015; hoyt & bhati, 2007); however, the establishment of a new journal qualitative psychology in 2014 by the american psychological association and inclusion of reporting standards for qualitative and mixed methods research in the 7th edition of the apa publication manual (americal psychological association [apa], 2020; levitt et al., 2018) signaled a renewed interest in methods outside of quantitative. one of the challenges inherent in conducting research in the field of positive psychology is the sheer number of concepts included in the constitution of the term. early work in the field culminated with positive psychology being defined as the science of positive emotions, traits, and institutions (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). seligman (2011) expanded the definition scope to include more comprehensive features of well-being including engagement, meaning, and accomplishment. the umbrella of positive psychology also includes the study of human strengths: optimism, zest, perseverance, spirituality, and hope according to one source (peterson & seligman, 2004) and love, empathy, commitment, self-respect, and friendship according to another (bolt, 2004). further, some textbooks include the philosophical underpinnings of the field with references to humanism, confucianism, islam, and athenian traditions (lopez et al., 2016; peterson, 2006). considering the endless topics that could emerge from the study of any principle within the field of positive psychology creates a challenging task for creating inclusion criteria for a systematic or methodological review. rusk and waters’ (2013) systematic review of the reach and size of positive psychology resulted in 18,000 peer-reviewed articles from 700 psycinfo journals. the review resulted in the identification of 233 key terms related to the study of positive psychology including self-efficacy, autonomy, self-determination, and compassion (rusk & waters, 2013). in another systematic review, donaldson et al. (2015) found well-being, growth, and mindfulness among topics related to positive psychology. another challenge in conducting a review of mixed methods in positive psychology is the absence of mixed methods terminology in published articles in psychology. creamer and reeping (2020) assert that psychology has combined quantitative and qualitative methodologies http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 for years; authors simply may not use identifying terms highlighting the mixed methods features in these articles due to continued concerns for paradigm incompatibility in psychology research. with the unsettled nature of both mixed methods and positive psychology, a review of the pervasiveness and application of mixed methods in positive psychology was needed. to best promote the use of alternative methods within positive psychology, it is important to first understand the current usage of these methods. in addition, identifying examples of how positive psychology researchers are applying mixed methods approaches can serve as a guide to researchers considering the use of mixed methods within their own studies. 2. study purpose the purpose of this methodological review was to explore and describe the features of mixed methods articles in positive psychology research published from 2010-2019. this assessment of the status of mixed methods responds to the call for diversifying rese arch approaches in the science of human flourishing. this review closely examines a range of features characteristic of mixed methods methodology as applied within published articles. to our knowledge this is the first methodological review of mixed methods in positive psychology. our work expands upon and deepens donaldson et al.’s (2015) systematic review of publications in the field by more closely examining mixed methods approaches in empirical studies published in positive psychology. donaldson et al. (2015) found that 78% of 1336 published articles between 1999-2013 used quantitative methodology, and only 10% used mixed methods. this review also contributes to the growing literature of reviews of mixed methods research within psychology (e.g., creamer & reeping, 2020; hanson et al., 2005; plano clark, 2010; ponterotto et al., 2013). 3. methods the review procedures were informed by suggested practices for conducting methodological reviews of mixed methods research studies (howell smith & shanahan bazis, 2020; molinaazorín & fetters, 2016). we next describe procedures for the literature search and coding process. 3.1 literature search we conducted a methodological review of mixed methods research in positive psychology over a 10-year period (january 2010 to december 2019) using the psycinfo database. we selected psycinfo due to its extensive journal coverage, which contains about 2500 journals from the 17th century present (psycinfo facts sheet, 2017). coverage changes weekly as new journals are added and others removed. we selected the years of publication to reflect the recent use of mixed methods in the field of positive psychology. various terms are used by authors to identify mixed methods research, such as: multimethod, “survey and interview” or mixed methodology (creswell & plano clark, 2011, p. 15-16). in this review, we used specific search terms to determine the prevalence of the accepted language of both mixed methods and positive psychology as well as to enhance the replicability of our approach. the specific search terms were: (“mixed methods” or (quantitative and qualitative)) and “positive psychology”). terms were required to appear in the title, abstract, or full text of the articles. the terms were chosen because they have been accepted by leaders in their respective fields, and because using these terms allows for tracking the explicit use of mixed methods methodology (creswell & plano clark, 2018). articles selected for inclusion were required to be empirical studies in the field of positive psychology. reviews of literature, meta-analyses, and systematic reviews were excluded. the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 definition of mixed methods research by creswell and plano clark (2018) was used to define the search term mixed methods. studies needed to use mixed methods as a design feature and mix quantitative and qualitative approaches in data collection and analysis. this definition was chosen because it aligns with our understanding and practice of mixed methods methodology. we limited the results to publications from scholarly journals to evaluate recently published articles and received 140 hits. the first author scanned the titles and abstracts of all 140 articles and eliminated false hits using our criteria for inclusion. sixteen articles were immediately determined not to be empirical studies and were discarded, leaving 124 articles for a full review. after reading each article, even more articles (“false hits”) were excluded. a typical false hit was an article suggesting a mixed methods design for future research but did not reflect use of mixed methods in the current study. sixty-eight additional articles were eliminated after this review, leaving 56 articles that qualified for inclusion and were available either through our university’s library or interlibrary loan. 3.2 coding as the search results began to take form, we constructed a set of categories to guide our systematic investigation of the articles included. we used an iterative process to create coding categories, and regularly discussed the relevance of emerging codes. these categories were meant to provide a framework for the kind of information we were looking for in this methodological review, which were entered into a spreadsheet to organize information extracted from each article. although we extracted the following information, not all categories will be discussed in this paper due to space considerations. the data collection protocol in supplemental materials table 1 includes the following information to capture features that highlight both the mixed methods and positive psychology aspects of the articles: (1) basic information: author, title, journal, year of publication, location, and discipline of first author (2) positive psychology information: theoretical framework used, theory of positive psychology in sampling, flourishing piece, character strength studied, whether positive psychology was used as intervention (3) sampling information: population, quantitative sampling, qualitative sampling, perspectives used in sampling (positive psychology, mixed methods) (4) mixed methods design features: priority, timing, level of interaction, fixed/emergent, point of interface, named mixed methods design, value of mixed methods approach (5) methodology features: quantitative method, qualitative method, quantitative data source, qualitative data source (6) principles of mixed methods research: mixed methods title, rationale, research questions, purpose statement, interpretation of data the first author read each article, coded the data, and entered it into a spreadsheet. as the 56 articles were coded, 10% of the articles were randomly selected and coded independently by the second author, and any discrepancies in coding resolved through discussion. 4. results in this section, we describe the results of our methodological review, organized according to the major features of our coding categories. we first describe the results in broad terms, then discuss http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 specific mixed methods features associated with writing in the field, and finally highlight a few of the positive psychology features of the studies. 4.1 overview of the sample of the 56 mixed methods articles identified, 36 different journals were represented, including many disciplines other than psychology. a list of the journals represented in the sample and study topics are presented in table 1. table 1. journal representation: methodological review psycinfo 2010-2019. journal study topics no. of articles year(s) of publication emotional and behavioural difficulties positive affect 1 2019 frontiers in behavioral neuroscience gratitude 1 2019 plos one positive affect, optimism, gratitude 2 2019 2017 contemporary school psychology well-being 1 2019 current psychology psycap, workplace happiness 1 2019 frontiers in psychology emotional intelligence, happiness, via strengths 2 2019 frontiers in psychiatry connectedness 1 2019 public health flourishing, zest for life, well-being 1 2019 international journal for the advancement of counselling life satisfaction 1 2019 journal of positive psychology meaning in life, happiness in adolescents, purpose in life, hope and physical well-being, love, life satisfaction, awe, gratitude, prosocial behavior, wisdom, leisure activity, calling, positive affect, connectedness 15 2019 2016 2013 2012 2010 mental health and physical activity positive affect 1 2018 children and youth services review self-esteem, well-being, life satisfaction 1 2018 child youth care forum positive development 1 2018 translational issues in psychological science positive affect 1 2018 educational psychology in practice resilience 1 2017 journal of child & family studies gratitude, flow, happiness, savoring 1 2017 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 psychology of music impact of music festivals on wellbeing; adaptive functions of music listening 2 2016 2011 journal of psychology in africa meaning in life, well-being 2 2015 2014 alcoholism treatment quarterly positive psychology interventions in addictions treatment 1 2016 human relations psychological empowerment in change processes 1 2016 journal of environmental psychology residential experiences of people with disabilities 1 2016 journal of family psychology family intervention to improve family communication, well-being, and happiness 1 2016 journal of happiness studies positive psychology intervention for patients with acute coronary syndrome; work engagement, positive psychological resources 2 2019 2016 leisure sciences activating character strengths through charity sports events 1 2016 perspectives in psychiatric care benefit finding in chronic mental illness 1 2016 journal of spirituality in mental health character strengths in recovery 1 2015 primary health care research & development happiness as intervention 1 2015 archives of psychiatric nursing group psychotherapy in korean adolescents 1 2015 international journal of evidence based coaching and mentoring systems coaching 1 2014 journal of medical internet research web-based applications of positive psychology 1 2014 australasian journal of disaster and trauma studies post-traumatic growth 1 2014 journal of pediatric oncology nursing benefit finding in fathers of childhood cancer survivors 1 2013 educational & child psychology effects of positive psychology on efficacy beliefs 1 2012 journal of affective disorders re-experiencing a mood disorder 1 2012 applied psychology: health and wellbeing positive psychology in individuals with achondroplasia 1 2011 psychology of religion and spirituality virtue among cambodian american buddhists and christians 1 2010 revista de psihologie mindfulness 1 2010 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 the journals listed in table 1 demonstrate the diversity and broad appeal of positive psychology and mixed methods. results show that neither positive psychology nor mixed methods in the discipline is confined to a single journal. psychology represented the majority of first authors’ discipline (n = 30); however, a wide variety of additional disciplines were represented as well. select non-psychology disciplines included music (n = 2), alcoholism treatment (n = 1), and public health (n = 4). our data suggest an upward trend in the number of published mixed methods studies in positive psychology. published articles increased from three in 2010 to 16 in 2019. see figure 1 for a plot illustrating the trend in publication from 2010-2019 (solid blue line). figure 1. graph depicting the number of empirical publications: mixed methods in positive psychology 2010-2019. note. blue solid line = total sample (n = 56); orange dashed line = subsample with a positive psychologyinformed intervention and experiment (n = 25). geographic location of first authors was evenly distributed throughout the world, indicating a diverse appeal of the study of positive psychology in many cultures. figure 2 (below) indicates the continent on which first authors resided at the time of publication. first authors from north america were most prevalent (n = 19), closely followed by europe (n = 17), asia (n = 9), australia (n = 8), and africa (n = 3). 4.2 mixed methods features we were interested in whether the reviewed articles included the major features of mixed methods methodology discussed in the literature. next we describe the methodological labels or terminology that identify a study as mixed methods. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 n u m b e r o f p u b li ca ti o n s year of publication mixed methods publications in positive psychology 2010-2019 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 figure 2. first author location by continent: mixed methods in positive psychology 2010-2019. 4.2.1 title by providing an article with a title that indicates a mixed methods approach, an author makes her work more easily accessible to a mixed methods audience. a mixed methods title also advances the field of mixed methods by making the overall approach of the research design explicit (apa, 2020; creswell & plano clark, 2011; fetters & freshwater, 2015; levitt et al., 2018). of the 56 articles included in this review, only eight had a title that indicated a mixed methods approach, all published since 2016. “counselors’ perspectives of positive psychology for the treatment of addiction: a mixed methods pilot study” (krentzman & barker, 2016) is an example of a title that contains the topic, participants, and overall research design. a researcher may quickly scan the title and determine that the study used a mixed methods approach. 4.2.2 rationale the rationale of a mixed methods study is the reason the researcher provides for mixing qualitative and quantitative approaches in a research study (creswell & plano clark, 2011). by providing a rationale for conducting a mixed methods study, authors clarify reasoning behind the methodological approach chosen for a project. when a rationale for conducting a mixed methods study is explicit, other researchers can reflect on the thinking behind the choice of a mixed approach as well as consider the approach in future projects. although no article in this review explicitly stated a rationale using mixed methods terminology, nearly all (n = 55) of the reviewed articles implied a rationale for choosing a mixed methods approach. we inferred the reasoning behind the methodological choice based on http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 authors’ comments. for example, bar and st.-rosh-ha’ayin (2014) stated "the mixed-methods design and findings from the data can shed new light that broaden and deepen the understanding of the influences of personal systems coaching on the participants" (p. 59), indicating that complementarity was a likely rationale for using mixed methods. complementarity is a common rationale for mixing methods, and its purpose is to enhance findings from one method with a second method (greene, 2007). chaplin et al. (2010) used a mixed methods approach for both enhancement and triangulation. interviews were conducted: (1) to gain a "better understanding of why certain labels were chosen over others" (p. 347) and (2) in the results section, qualitative findings were described as providing additional support for hypotheses, which is a common use of mixed methods that triangulates evidence for support of research assumptions. 4.2.3 mixed methods purpose statements and research questions prominent authors in the mixed methods field suggest crafting mixed methods purposes and research questions when conducting mixed methods research. a mixed methods purpose statement includes elements from quantitative and qualitative purpose statements and conveys the intent of the mixed methods study (creswell & plano clark, 2018). about two-thirds of the reviewed articles (n = 36) provided a mixed methods purpose statement, either implicitly or explicitly. sometimes the article was part of a larger mixed methods study, as in selvan’s (2015) research using character strengths to facilitate recovery from alcohol misuse. although the article only conveyed the qualitative findings of the case study, the author referenced the quantitative phase of the study and the results that led to the selection of case study participants. a mixed methods research question addresses the integration of quantitative and qualitative data (creswell & plano clark, 2018). this type of question will typically be separate from the quantitative and qualitative research questions. of the 56 articles in this review, 33 of the articles contained inferred mixed methods research questions. the inferred mixed methods research questions required the reader to extrapolate from the aims of the study or the hypothesis statement that the study intent was aligned with using mixed methods. twenty-three articles had no mixed methods research question and either provided quantitative and qualitative questions only, or questions used a single methodology because the article conveyed only some of the results from a larger mixed methods study. 4.2.4 priority priority reflects the emphasis placed on the quantitative or qualitative strand within the mixed methods design for answering research questions (creswell & plano clark, 2018). none of the reviewed articles explicitly identified the priority of administration of the strands. therefore, we inferred the priority of each empirical study by reviewing the research questions, aims, hypotheses, and purpose for each. then we determined the relative weight of each strand in the study in terms of addressing the research questions. given the dominance of quantitative research approaches in psychology (donaldson et al. 2015), we expected articles with quantitative priority to outnumber studies with qualitative priority and studies with equal priority between quantitative and qualitative methodologies. however, qualitative priority studies (n = 15) together with studies of equal priority (n = 19) outnumbered quantitative priority studies (n = 22). 4.2.5 timing in mixed methods research, the temporal relationship between the quantitative and qualitative strands in a study is referred to as timing (creswell & plano clark, 2018). we made judgments http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 about the timing of the strands based on when data were collected and analyzed in relation to each other. twenty-five of the studies indicated sequential timing, which involves administration of a quantitative phase followed by a qualitative phase, or vice versa. twenty-five studies administered the quantitative and qualitative strands concurrently, indicating that quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously. for example, krentzman and barker (2016) wrote, “the study paired a written questionnaire with an in-depth, semi-structured individual interview," (p. 372) indicating a concurrent design with quantitative and qualitative strands administered together. only six studies used multiphase timing, which is an advanced mixed methods design that reflects an overall mixed methods methodology but includes multiple quantitative and qualitative phases (creswell & plano clark, 2011). 4.2.6 value of mixed methods design value refers to the authors’ discussion of the enriched findings in the content area discovered by using a mixed methods design (creswell & plano clark, 2011). boniwell et al. (2016) found challenges with the delivery of an intervention in a school setting, which they would not have been aware of had the qualitative strand not been administered alongside the quantitative examination. noteworthy challenges in the intervention included philosophical differences in the way parents and teachers thought about the purpose of education. the knowledge generated by the qualitative strand could be used to improve and guide future research in school settings. tümlü and akdoğan (2019) used qualitative data from focus groups to create an intervention aimed at reducing hindrances to life satisfaction in mothers with disabled children. other authors found value in mixed methods design from triangulating data. in one study, li and xu (2019) noted that the convergence of quantitative and qualitative data “confirm[ed] significant relationships” (p. 9) and qualitative data “supported the efficacy of emotional intelligence with rich details” (p. 12). in a study of positive education with high school students in australia, halliday et al. (2019) found value in a mixed methods design which allowed them to understand practical factors impacting a positive psychology intervention. in this study, the researchers implemented a well-being intervention, partially in online format, for 9th grade students. the intervention did not demonstrate a significant effect on mood even though the program had been shown to be effective in prior work. because halliday et al. used qualitative methods along with quantitative measures of mood, they discovered the students greatly disliked the online learning modules. further, the subject matter in the modules (characterized as “ill-being prevention”) was upsetting to some and caused more distress. teachers at the school remarked that students were engaged right up until the online modules began. without feedback from students and teachers about the intervention, the researchers would not have identified the online learning modules as problematic in this study. the insight gained from the qualitative phase provided an efficient mechanism for identifying possible reasons the intervention did not demonstrate statistical significance. this insight can provide a more efficient research design for future researchers who may select in-person interventions rather than online modules. 4.2.7 interpretation in mixed methods style if the researcher(s) interpreted the data in mixed methods style, they completed several steps that should be reflected in the manuscript. first, they would apply the analytic processes typically followed in quantitative and qualitative research. after both types of data have been analyzed, either at one or multiple time points, they would review both the quantitative and qualitative results and address how the integrated results and findings inform the mixed methods questions in the study (creswell & plano clark, 2011). twenty-seven of the 56 articles reviewed interpreted http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 the data in at least somewhat in mixed methods style. a minimal data interpretation would typically address mostly one method or the other without integrating the findings to address mixed methods research questions. 4.3 positive psychology features we were interested in how the reviewed mixed methods studies demonstrated aspects aligned with the principles of positive psychology. next, we discuss some of the major features of positive psychological research within the mixed methods context. 4.3.1 theoretical frameworks mixed methods practice is complex, and researchers often benefit from applying theoretical frameworks to inform the study design decisions (plano clark & ivankova, 2016). a theoretical framework provides a guide as perspectives shift from objective to subjective throughout the study (evans et al., 2011), and may facilitate the integration of quantitative and qualitative data (fetters & freshwater, 2015). most reviewed articles (n = 53) relied on a theoretical framework to guide implementation of the study. of those using a framework, the principles of positive psychology were used either explicitly or implicitly in 42 studies (e.g., white et al., 2018; passmore & holder, 2017, selvam, 2015) even when authors did not cite a specific theoretical framework, the use of a guiding concept or approach was common. for example, delle fave et al. (2013) used wong’s four-level model to structure the investigation of meaning in life in individuals from seven different western countries. more common was the use of multiple guiding frameworks to reflect the psychological constructs being studied. bar and st. roshha’ayin (2014) used motivation theories, self-determination theory, goal achievement theory, and systems thinking theories to frame a study of the impact of personal systems coaching on self-efficacy and well-being in israeli single mothers. 4.3.2 positive psychology perspectives in sampling sampling is a critical component in mixed methods research (collins et al., 2007), but can also be guided by a positive psychology approach through strengths-based methods. a strengths-based approach in sampling indicates that flourishing individuals were intentionally recruited in the sample. researchers who use a strengths-based approach in sampling would select individuals illustrating the highest level in a construct measurement (i.e., those with the highest score on a happiness scale), such as exceptional results from an intervention to reduce drinking behavior, as in selvam (2015). in selvam’s (2015) study, individuals were selected for inclusion in the qualitative phase based on results of the quantitative phase. the two selected individuals experienced “extreme recovery” from the intervention that aimed to reduce drinking through a contemplative practice and an exploration of how character strengths were experienced in the context of their recovery (p. 198). the only other studies using a positive psychology perspective in sampling were cook et al.’s (2010) study of cambodian american first-generation immigrants who exemplified the greatest embodiment of virtue as judged by community religious leaders and mohamed and thomas’ (2017) study which included refugee children and young people who exhibited strong adjustment and resilience, as nominated by staff at schools in london. 4.3.3 flourishing concepts for the purpose of this review, we considered flourishing broadly as the experience of reaching one’s potential and we expected the concept to be present within all the reviewed mixed methods http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 studies because it represents optimal human functioning; the aim of the field according to some of the early proponents of positive psychology (peterson & seligman, 2004; seligman, 2011). defined in several ways (see maslow, 1954; ryff & singer, 1998; seligman, 2011), we identified the flourishing element of articles as any evidence of reaching optimal human functioning. seventyfour different words and phrases were used by authors in the reviewed articles to illustrate flourishing. these words and phrases were placed into a word cloud, with a larger font indicating a greater frequency of usage. well-being was the phrase used most often in the reviewed articles, indicating that flourishing was often represented by this phrase in the studies. see supplemental materials figure 1 for a word cloud of the flourishing concepts in the review. 4.3.4 character strength focus character strengths have been called the backbone of positive psychology (peterson & seligman, 2004), and various frameworks and measures exist to support character strengths as the heart of positive psychology research. the via (peterson & seligman, 2004) and the clifton strengths finder (rath, 2007) models are widely known and used in the field. we found that only six of the 56 reviewed mixed methods studies used a specific character strengths framework. one example included a study aimed to increase work engagement and job performance using the via character strengths framework and micro-coaching (peláez et al., 2019). coghlan and filo (2016) used the original character strengths framework designed by park et al. (2004) to explore whether leisure activities activated participants’ character strengths and to understand the conditions under which those strengths were activated. the other 50 studies either did not explicitly use a framework or used pieces of frameworks such as a post-traumatic growth approach, bounded by hope, gratitude, and spirituality (subandi et al., 2014). 4.3.5 positive psychology-informed interventions finally, we were interested in whether studies including either an experimental or quasiexperimental component used intervention strategies informed by positive psychology principles. positive psychology-based interventions were noteworthy to us because as the field began to grow in the early 2000s, researchers questioned whether positive interventions could create happiness and even prevent depression and anxiety (seligman et al., 2005). we found that of the 25 experiments in this review, all 25 used aspects of positive psychology as interventions. experimental design represented a growing trend in positive psychology research using mixed methods between 2010 and 2019. we included a trend line illustrating the subset of mixed methods positively psychology articles published each year that used an experimental method in the quantitative strand (see figure 1, orange dashed line). figure 1 demonstrates an upward trend in experimental mixed methods research in positive psychology in recent years. we suspect this upward trend is a result of increasing acceptability of mixed methods in experimental designs. one example of a mixed methods experiment was huffman et al.’s (2016) implementation of exercises designed to improve healthy behavior in lowadherence patients following an acute coronary syndrome. each week, patients completed positive psychological exercises and answered questions about the usefulness and challenge of those exercises. the qualitative data supplemented quantitative depression scales, positive affect scales, and life satisfaction scales participants completed concurrently. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 5. conclusion the results of our methodological review show that mixed methods design is present in positive psychology, although considering the number of publications in the field, the methodology is still used infrequently. qualitative research in psychology is rare, and that may have impacted these findings, especially within the representation of journals. given that we restricted our literature search to a prevalent database within psychology, it seems reasonable to think that had we expanded our search outside of this database, we would have identified additional disciplines. several findings stood out in this methodological review as noteworthy. first, of the 56 articles we reviewed, 36 different journals were represented. the breadth of coverage is an illustration of the strength of mixed methods as a research approach spanning numerous disciplines. next, 55 reviewed articles provided at least an implied rationale for using a mixed methods approach. by providing a rationale for the chosen methodology, readers can apply such reasoning to their own research agenda and expand promising approaches in their work. several articles stood out as exemplary uses of mixed methods methodology and positive psychology. the following examples may be especially useful for researchers trained primarily in quantitative methodology due to the emphasis placed on the rationale for selecting a mixed methods design. nell’s (2014) use of an exploratory mixed methods design provided clear integration of the quantitative and qua litative phases in an investigation of sources of life meaning among south african university students, and nell et al.’s (2015) study of well-being in the nduomo community in south africa demonstrated clear, well-supported justification for the mixed methods approach in an explanatory design. selvam’s (2015) use of positive psychological interventions in facilitating recovery from alcohol misuse illustrated the leverage of positive psychology perspectives in sampling within mixed methods research. an intriguing finding uncovered in this review was that about half (n = 25) of the reviewed articles used positive psychology as interventions in experimental or quasi -experimental studies. positive psychology interventions (ppis) offer a means to directly engage in the science of wellbeing. when combined with a mixed methods research approach, researchers can both explain and explore the mechanisms behind human flourishing. the combination of mixed methods within positive psychology offers internally valid information along with in-depth understanding of the aspects of interventions participants found most meaningful. harnessing the power of participants’ perspectives in experiments may uncover knowledge that resides at the intersection of mixed methods and positive psychology. since mixed methods and positive psychology are growing, both disciplines have room for improvement to retain the quality and strength of previous research. although 52 articles implicitly identified the timing between the quantitative and qualitative strands, only four did so explicitly. clearly indicating the temporal relationship between the methodologies helps readers understand the rationale for mixing as well as how the data interact with each other. twenty-nine of 56 reviewed articles did not integrate the quantitative and qualitative data. the studies that interpreted data in mixed methods style did so minimally. to gain the greatest benefit from mixed methods approaches, more studies that integrate at various parts of the research process are needed. the research questions themselves could be integrated and mixing at every stage of the research process would produce in-depth findings at every step. all 56 reviewed articles used text data for the qualitative strand using open-ended questions or interviews. psychology lends itself to a variety of qualitative research methods beyond focus groups and interviews. researchers can expand their qualitative methods to include diverse http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 techniques like document/photograph analysis, action research, or participant journaling (hatch, 2002) to elicit nuanced, in-depth understandings of complex phenomena. given that mixed methods research can be complex, we expected a strong representation of well-documented approaches in the references sections of the published articles. although we did not create a coding category for mixed methods references in our data collection protocol, we noticed in our “general reflections” column that just in the articles published in 2019 over half of 16 articles (n = 9) did not include any mixed methods references to support the inclusion of the approach, which often included omitting definitions and rationale for using mixed methods as well. this finding aligns with creamer and reeping’s (2020) review of reviews of mixed methods approaches in psychology, in which they suggest the paradigm incompatibility issue is still present in the field. it is possible that psychology researchers quietly include qualitative strands and phases in order to hide this aspect of their work. creamer and reeping’s (2020) review led us to ponder the question of why psychology researchers disregard qualitative and mixed methods research as unimportant. we suspect the reason is due to persistent negative perceptions about the quality and rigor of both methodologies. povee and roberts’ (2014) findings from a study of perceptions of australian psychology graduate students and faculty support our views. participants perceived qualitative research in psychology as disrespected, unimportant, and not published as often as quantitative research. notably, many participants stated that qualitative research was not a legitimate form of inquiry. rubin et al. (2018) showed similar results and findings in a mixed methods study of qualitative research methods in u.s. psychology graduate programs. only 13% of participants reported their graduate program requiring a qualitative research methods course, and only 17% offered one as an elective. seventy-one percent of respondents rated the value of qualitative research methods in the psychology department as either unimportant or neutral. the first author has experienced numerous challenges attempting to publish mixed methods studies in psychology journals. often, rejection feedback included the suggestions of adding quantitative datasets to the study or increasing the sample size in qualitative phases. when combined with the lack of representation of qualitative methods in undergraduate programs, and the late addition of reporting conventions for the methodologies in the apa publication manual (2020), it is easy to see why mixed methods and qualitative methods continue to be seldom used in psychology research. the combination of positive psychology and mixed methods is an innovative mixture with great future potential. both fields have exploded with increasingly more studies published each year, indicating that researchers are receptive to both the discipline and the methodology. since qualitative research especially has not been prominent in psychology, the door is wide open for researchers to become part of the establishment of the models on which future research will be based. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. funding this work was supported by a graduate student and faculty mentoring grant from the university of cincinnati college of education, criminal justice and human services research and development professional practice board. the development professional practice board was not involved in study design, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, report writing, or submission of manuscript for publication. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of use of mixed methods clark & plano clark www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 authors rachael s. clark northern kentucky university clarkr7@nku.edu vicki l. plano clark university of cincinnati publishing timeline received 8 november 2021 revised version received 7 may 2022 accepted 12 may 2022 published 1 october 2022 references akhtar, m., & boniwell, i. 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(2017). an interview with victor j strecher. international journal of wellbeing, 7(2), 78-81. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i2.697 dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 expert insight an interview with victor j. strecher professor of health behavior & health education, university of michgan interview by aaron jarden 24 november 2017 1. what got you interested in wellbeing research? i was getting frustrated with my focus on health related behaviors for their own sake. it seemed like we were studying plants but not the soil they grew in. for example, when trying to help a person quit smoking we’d find that certain strategies helped, but underlying that always seemed to be a ‘why?’. why did you finally decide to quit after twenty years of smoking? the ‘why?’ questions relate more to a person's wellbeing. many behaviors that we've studied for so long, often if you follow a root cause analysis, seemed to go back to a loss of wellbeing, loneliness, isolation, alienation, anomie. i think those are the roots of many of our poor health behaviors. so i wanted to begin studying wellbeing to try to figure out the root causes of many of the health related behaviors that are so important to the public’s health. 2. what do you take "wellbeing" to mean? i suppose i'm a bit biased because i do a lot of research related to a purpose in life, so my definition would be having a strong purpose and being aligned with that purpose by having vitality and self-control. 3. why is wellbeing research important? we need to study the root causes of many of the problems we face in our society – problems often ignored by our medical model – the real causes of our inflated healthcare budget, our opioid crisis, our increasing rates of suicide and depression – the things that are hardest to study may also be the most important. 4. what is the most important application of wellbeing research to our lives? wellbeing research that's focused on identifying why some people are crushed by difficult life events – illness, loss of a loved one, return from battle, an earthquake or sunami – while others end up growing. now, that really fascinates me, and i think it's super-relevant to our society. 5. you’re a world expert on purpose, what are some of the most important wellbeing related findings from your research on purpose? one of the most fascinating things researchers, including our own team, are finding is that people with a strong self-transcending purpose in their lives – a purpose bigger than themselves – do much better. they live longer, are healthier, less likely to develop serious diseases, and more likely to change their health related behaviors. they become less defensive to change. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ interview with victor j. strecher jarden 79 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org in our own work we're finding that we're able to improve people's purpose in their lives. when we see improvements in people’s purpose, we also see reductions in depression and we see improvements in energy, self-control and willpower. we’ve found that energy and willpower are important for purpose, but also that purpose is important for energy and willpower. i could go on and on, there are many positive health benefits… actually, that can concern some scientists because very often you want to have greater specificity. you’d like to think, ‘okay, this factor (x) should cause some outcome (y)’. but how can this factor such as purpose in life contribute to so many different beneficial effects? and that's one really important question that we still face in our research. why does purpose work? 6. what are you working on right now? i'm trying to build a purpose pill, metaphorically speaking. using a digital platform for smartphones and the web, i'm trying to help people develop greater purpose in their lives, think about their alignment with their purpose, and then consider how energy and willpower influence that alignment. then finally, the platform examines how s.p.a.c.e. can influence their energy and willpower. and by s.p.a.c.e. i'm referring to sleep, presence (which is essentially mindfulness), activity, creativity, and eating. the platform is called jool – it’s designed to help people become more aware of their purpose, their alignment with their purpose, and the factors that influence their energy and their willpower every day. 7. what do you think the next big thing in wellbeing research will be? either or both in purpose or wellbeing more broadly? i think as we start looking at what we might call ‘precision wellbeing models’, we'll start looking at personalized models of what makes a person tick, and what gives them more purpose in their life. what gives them a bigger life. but very exciting to me as well is thinking about this at an organizational level. what would give a workplace more purpose, and what helps the employees of that workplace connect with their purpose and develop more energy and self-control within that workplace. then there are purposeful cities. what contributes to a more purposeful city? i think these different levels of analysis are going to be really exciting to study in the future using precision models – not treating individuals, workplaces, or cities as average, using the same algorithm or model. understanding that every person, workplace, or city may have their own specific algorithms of what makes them tick will be important. 8. what do you think are the main benefits of interdisciplinary approach to purpose? so we have public health people getting interested in purpose, psychologists, philosophers have always has been interesting in purpose. so what do you think are the main benefits of an interdisciplinary research approach to purpose? well, first it's hard for me to imagine single disciplines solving this problem. in fact rather than interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary, i try to think in terms of a trans-disciplinary approach where we're not just gathering different disciplines together and saying, ‘well let's work with each other.’ rather we think about a problem that we have, and we all kind of take off our disciplinary cloaks, and begin to working together on that problem. we start solving it, not as specific independent disciplines that might just be talking with each other, but rather trying to transcend our disciplines. and yes, as you say, we need philosophers, we need behavioral scientists, we need public health scientists, and medical scientists. with what i do we need software engineers, data scientists, and artists to help us as well. interview with victor j. strecher jarden 80 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9. one of the questions that people quite often have is about the difference between purpose in life and meaning in life. i do believe that the two are different. we can talk about macro-level meaning, like is there meaning in the universe? many people don’t believe there’s meaning in the universe. as astrophysicists are discovering that there are over 100 billion galaxies in our universe, and that each galaxy probably has over 100 billion suns, it makes us feel kind of small. the amount of time since the big bang -more than 13 billion years -and the length of our own lives makes us feel small and rather insignificant and possibly meaningless. albert camus wrote about this during world war ii in the myth of sisyphus. basically, ‘why don't we all just kill ourselves?’ because the world is pretty meaningless. sisyphus had to roll a boulder up a mountain every single day only to have it roll back down, but the very end of his book he essentially says, ‘sisyphus had a purpose in his life. one must imagine sisyphus happy.’ so while there might not be meaning in the universe, you can still have a purpose in your life, you can still have a purpose and direction in life, and whether this purpose is meaningful in a big universal away, who really knows? at this brief point in history, if we can bring greater joy, and less suffering to people, i do believe we can get meaning. but i do think that meaning is different than having a purpose. a purpose to me is a goal set to the things we deeply value. about victor j. strecher dr. strecher has been a professor in the university of michigan school of public health since 1995, and is currently director for innovation and social entrepreneurship. he founded the center for health communications research, healthmedia inc., and more recently jool health. author aaron jarden wellbeing and resilience centre, south australian health and medical research institute. flinders university aaron.jarden@sahmri.com references strecher, v. j. (2013). on purpose: lessons in life and health from the frog, the dung beetle, and julia. michigan, usa: dung beetle press. strecher, v.j. (2015). life on purpose: how living for what matters most changes everything. san francisco, usa: harperone. dulagil, a., green, s., ahern, m. (2016). evidence-based coaching to enhance senior students’ wellbeing and academic striving. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 131-149. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.426 aylin dulagil the positivity institute adulagil@bigpond.net.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 article evidence-based coaching to enhance senior students’ wellbeing and academic striving aylin dulagil · suzy green · madonna ahern abstract: this study examined the impact of an evidence-based within subjects coaching intervention within an australian high school. participants were a cohort of 25 female high school students aged between 15 and 16 years (mean age = 15.9). the coaching program was part of a broader positive education program conducted by the school. participants took part in a tensession evidence-based coaching program (teacher facilitated) that included topics such as goal setting, mindfulness, coaching, and helpful self-talk. pre and post measures were obtained for wellbeing, cognitive hardiness, trait hope, depression, anxiety, stress, and goal striving and goal achievement. participants showed a significant increase in wellbeing, total trait hope, cognitive hardiness, and a significant decrease in depression, anxiety and stress. participants also showed a significant increase in perceptions of successful striving towards personal goals. scores on personal goal commitment, academic goal striving and academic goal commitment demonstrated a trend towards increased success in the post-intervention scores but did not achieve significance. this study uniquely considers evidence-based coaching as part of a broader positive education approach in an education setting. limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed. keywords: coaching, high school, positive education, positive psychology, wellbeing 1. introduction schools have played a critical role in promoting wellbeing for some time. approaches have moved from a focus on self-esteem in the 1970s, to social skills programs in the 1990s and resilience and anti-bullying programs in the 2000s (mcgrath, 2009). more recently, schools have been recognized as important locations for the use of positive psychology, with the specific aim of increasing student wellbeing and building useful skills for promoting positive human development throughout the life span (huitt, 2011; gill, 2009; clonan, chafouleas, mcdougal, & riley-tillman, 2004; green, 2014). the wellbeing of adolescents is increasingly a salient concern for educators and can be defined as the combination of feeling good and functioning well (huppert & johnson, 2010). finding agreement about what constitutes adolescent (or student) wellbeing is difficult (roffey, 2012). roffey (2012), however, asserts that student wellbeing is “a sustainable emotional state characterized by (predominantly) positive mood, attitude and relationships at school, resilience, self-optimization and a high level of satisfaction with learning experiences” (p. 19). the recent nsw department of education and communities, “wellbeing framework for schools” (2015) document defines wellbeing as relating both to feeling good and functioning well (reflecting the distinction between hedonic and eudemonic wellbeing that has long occupied philosophers and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 psychologists). the document defines five domains in which wellbeing can be experienced: cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual. schools play an important role in shaping a student’s wellbeing through educating teachers to provide experiences and opportunities that develop character and wellbeing. schools are increasingly exploring more proactive approaches to adolescent wellbeing (van nieuwerburgh, 2012), such as positive psychology and evidence-based coaching (green, 2014). focusing on initiatives that proactively target young people provides a double benefit: improving the wellbeing of young people, and providing them with the psychological tools to help them deal with life problems as they grow into adulthood. it is widely recognized that schools are an important and influential environment for nurturing adolescents’ psychological and physical health. evidence is also now mounting to attest to the impact that student wellbeing has on academic performance (waters, 2011). as such, schools are increasingly recognized for the role they play in nurturing the whole adolescent, and there has been a greater focus on teachers delivering wellbeing programs within schools (waters, 2011). within australia, many schools are embracing whole-school approaches to “positive education” (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkin, 2009; green 2014), and teachers are undergoing extensive training in order to roll out such wellbeing programs to students (e.g., www.pesa.edu.au). given that positive psychology aims to increase wellbeing, schools serve as a critical vehicle for promoting positive human development (clonan et al., 2004; green, 2014). 2. positive education positive education was formally defined as a field in 2009 (seligman et al., 2009). seligman et al. (2009) claim there is evidence for the constructive development of both traditional academic skills and skills “for happiness” (seligman et al., 2009). the initiating premise for positive education was that wellbeing could be taught in schools to ameliorate subsequent mental health issues such as depression, and to increase life satisfaction, creative thinking and better learning (seligman et al., 2009). however, there is also a growing evidence base to show that student wellbeing is positively associated with academic performance. a meta-analysis of 213 studies involving 270,034 students ranging from kindergarten to high school showed that school students taking part in social and emotional learning programs ranked 11 percentage points higher on academic achievement tests than did students who did not participate in such programs (durlak, weissberg, dymnicki, taylor, & schellinger, 2011). since that time, the definition of positive education has been expanded and refined. green, oades, & robinson (2011) posited that “applied positive psychology in education” provided a more useful definition of the range of interventions that may be applied within schools. green further refined the definition of positive education as “the application of wellbeing science into an educational setting aimed at increasing the resilience and wellbeing of students, staff, and whole-school community” (green, 2014). in addition to recognizing and addressing the evolution of terminology (i.e., “happiness” to “wellbeing”), this definition acknowledges the increasing application of related wellbeing sciences such as evidence-based coaching and neuroscience under the umbrella of positive education (green, 2014). positive psychology and coaching psychology are complementary fields that share a common purpose, namely the enhancement of wellbeing (van nieuwerburgh, 2012). evidencebased coaching can be defined as “the intelligent and conscientious use of … [up-to-date information from relevant, valid research, theory and practice] … integrated with practitioner expertise in making decisions about how to deliver coaching” (stober & grant, 2006, p. 6). http://www.pesa.edu.au/ student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 education in the 21st century has been conceptualized in a multi-dimensional way, and includes new technologies, new pedagogies, a nationalized curriculum, open learning spaces and enhanced teacher training. in addition, it is argued that schools play an important role in assisting adolescents to develop cognitive, social and emotional skills (waters, 2011; 2014). as a result, a core component of modern schooling in both the private and state sector is the call for education to develop the whole student through social, emotional, moral and intellectual development (cain & carnellor, 2008; huitt, 2011). the desire to educate the whole student has emerged out of an environment that is complex and challenging; a world where more adolescents are experiencing mental health issues such as anxiety and depression (waters, 2011). models of academic achievement have long dominated the education landscape, and success has been associated with academic excellence (norrish, 2015). increasingly, the wellbeing of adolescents is becoming a salient concern for educators in the 21st century. positive education is growing globally, and schools in australia are rapidly adopting positive approaches (see gilman, huebner & furlong (2009), for a comprehensive review of the research in this area). in particular, australia has led the way, and may be considered a pioneer in the field, with the creation and implementation of large-scale, strategic, and customized positive education programs or positive psychology interventions (green, 2014). this interest was born out of the first global large-scale strategic positive education program launched at geelong grammar school in 2008 in australia with the support of professor martin seligman and his colleagues. since that time, other australian schools have followed suit. in addition, australia has played host to the first and second “positive psychology in education” symposiums hosted by the coaching psychology unit, university of sydney in 2009 and 2011, and the first australian positive education conference hosted by knox grammar in 2011. since then, a range of other positive education conferences has been hosted across australia. positive education ideally should be applied strategically across whole-school settings and embedded implicitly into the culture, as no two school systems would implement a positive education process identically (clonan, et al., 2004). however, at this point in time, it is most readily seen in the application of positive psychology interventions (ppis) in school settings. ppis can be defined as initiatives that aim to “cultivate positive feelings, positive behaviors, or positive cognitions” (sin & lyubormisky, 2009, p. 467). such ppis can take the form of either singlecomponent ppis (that focus on single key psychological constructs, e.g., gratitude), or multicomponent ppis (that focus on helping students develop skills in several psychological domains) (proctor, maltby, & linley, 2011). “strengths gym” is an example of a multi-component ppi that is aimed at developing character strengths through various exercises, in-class activities, discussions, and homework (proctor, tsukayama, et al., 2011). another recent development in the field of positive education is the increasing focus on building school staff’s capability to deliver wellbeing programs within schools. in australia, schools are embracing whole-school approaches to positive education, and teachers are undergoing extensive training in order to roll out such wellbeing programs to students, developing their own wellbeing and interpersonal skills in the process (green, 2014). however, the research examining the effects of positive education programs on teachers is relatively scant. recent research from geelong grammar school provides some qualitative data on the perceived benefits of a positive education program (norrish, 2015). while it is hoped that both staff and students are able to experience the wellbeing effects created by positive education programs, further research is required in this area. student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 3. coaching in schools whilst coaching has been popular in organizational settings since the early 1990’s, more recently it is being considered and adopted in educational settings (van nieuwerburgh, 2012). coaching psychology has been defined as the systematic application of behavioral science to the enhancement of life experience, work performance and wellbeing of individuals, groups and organizations (stober & grant, 2006). in coaching, the coach facilitates enhancement of the client’s goal attainment and wellbeing, and fosters self-directed learning and personal growth (green, grant, & rynsaardt, 2007). the growing interest in coaching in education is evidenced by the growing body of research suggesting that coaching is an effective intervention for students and staff within educational contexts. coaching interventions conducted with students may often extend beyond a focus on academic performance to a focus on students’ life goals, their enhanced wellbeing and improved mental health. in a study utilizing a randomized wait-list control group with female senior high school students, green et al. (2007) found that students in the coaching program experienced a significant increase in levels of cognitive hardiness and hope. participants also experienced a significant decrease in levels of depression. the current study builds on green et al., (2007) by adding measures of goal commitment and goal attainment to explore participants’ own goal progress and achievement. the current study also examined the impact of an evidence-based coaching program as part of a positive education program at the school, as opposed to a standalone intervention. a study comparing the effects of coaching programs and ppis on 73 male and female adolescents aged 15 to 17 years in australian high schools found that participation in the ppi program led to increases in mental wellbeing up to the nine-month follow-up, compared with the coaching program (green, norrish, vella-brodrick, & grant, 2014). participating in the coaching group was associated with increased academic goal striving compared to the ppi and control group, again up to a nine-month follow-up (green et al., 2014). evidence-based coaching has also demonstrated results with primary school students. a strengths-based coaching program undertaken by 38 year 5 (mean age 10;7) male students was associated with significant increases in self-reported levels of engagement and hope (madden, green, & grant, 2011). while such coaching programs may be considered as potential mental health interventions, further research is required. the current study adds to this literature by providing more evidence for the benefits of a coaching initiative as part of a broader positive education program. specifically, the aim of the coaching trial was: firstly, to provide an evidence-based coaching intervention for the senior students as part of the positive education program to enhance wellbeing, and secondly, to enhance academic outcomes for students. the study used a peer coaching model in order to maximize cost and time effectiveness. while not as effective as one-on-one coaching, peer coaching has been found to be an effective strategy in delivering coaching interventions (green, oades, & grant, 2006; spence & grant, 2005) where individual coaching is not applicable due to cost or time restrictions. 4. aims of the research the main aim of the coaching trial was to enhance mental wellbeing, cognitive hardiness, and personal and academic goal strivings (motivation and success) in students, given the increasing awareness that schools should aim to not only improve academic outcomes but wellbeing outcomes (seligman, 2009). in addition, and as noted in the introduction, there is a need for student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 further research both on positive psychology applications in schools, of which coaching is one approach, and more research on coaching in schools generally. the positive education program in the school was launched in 2011 to replace an existing life education program. initially, the program for each of the five year levels was developed under categories that aligned with seligman’s (2011) perma model of wellbeing: positive purpose/positive relationships/positive identity/positive relationships. these areas were also similar to those used by geelong grammar school for their positive education program. these categories were used until 2015, when, after evaluating the program, the school moved to adopt five positive psychology constructs (already utilized in the program which began in 2011) as the main focus of the program. the constructs were: character strengths and virtues (peterson & seligman, 2004), gratitude (emmons & mccullough, 2003), mindfulness (burke, 2010), flow (csikszentmihalyi, 1990) and savoring (bryant, 2003). these constructs are evidencebased positive psychology constructs with considerable research behind each of them. the school adopted these particular five constructs because: they are evidence-based; they were already in the program from the beginning but required greater a more in-depth understanding; they complement the school ethos (hope, justice, love and compassion); and they are constructs that can be explicitly taught to be applied in a practical way by students. in addition, researchers are calling for more empirical evidence on multiple constructs and whole school programs (van nieuwerburgh, 2012; waters, 2011; norrish & vella-broderick, 2009). the specific aims of the trial were: increased levels of wellbeing; increased levels of hardiness; decreased levels of depression, stress and anxiety; increased goal striving (academic & personal); increased autonomous motivation; and increased academic achievement. these measures were chosen because the school viewed the enhancement of wellbeing and resilience, and the enhancement of academic results as being the two main aims of the coaching program. 5. participants this study took place in an all-girls’ catholic high school in queensland, australia. the participants were 37 senior high school students (year 11, mean age 15;9) who were randomly selected to participate in the trial. given coaching is designed for a “normal, non-clinical population” (grant, 2003), a mental health assessment was conducted prior to the study to ensure that students did not present any clinical issues. their scores on the depression, anxiety and stress scale (dass, lovibond & lovibond, 1995) all fell within the normal or low end of mild range of psychopathology. prior to the study commencing, students were given information about the trial and informed that a number of students would be randomly selected to participate in the trial. school management agreed to run a pilot trial with one-third of the year 11 students. year 11 comprised 134 students grouped into six home-room groups. ten students from each room were randomly selected. the random selection process involved extracting the names of all year 11 students from the school management system and importing them into a microsoft excel file. the random generator feature within microsoft excel was used to create a random sample. the first ten students from each home-room list were then selected to take part in the study. the 60 selected students’ parents were approached for permission to participate in the study. parental permission was obtained for 37 students (61.67%). the 37 participants for whom parental permission was obtained comprised the intervention group and were randomly assigned to four groups (one teacher and one college psychologist ran two groups each). preintervention responses were completed by 35 students. of these 35, only 25 completed the postintervention measures (71% response rate). these non-respondents in the post-condition were student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 not included in the total analysis, reducing the study sample size to 25. despite the small sample size, the results were considered sufficiently positive to consider a wider rollout of the coaching program in the following session. 6. procedure the positive education program for all year levels (years 7-12) comprised timetabled classes (of approximately 11 hours per term for years 8 – 10, and 6 hours per term for students in years 11 and 12) where a variety of positive psychology concepts were explicitly taught to students. the school identified two important trajectory points where interventions could be most effective: 1) transition to high school – year 8 (12 13 years old) 2) transition to senior school – year 11 (15 16 years old). the positive education program had already catered for the first transition in year 8 by emphasizing performance psychology as a particular focus of the positive education program for year 8 students. in addition, senior teaching staff in the school perceived that students transitioning from year 10 to senior school experienced difficulties, an area that has been previously identified in the literature (shoshani & slone, 2013). these included anxiety, stress, inappropriate subject choices, unrealistic expectations, limited understanding of individual strengths, and inability to meet the requirement for the increased workload. hence, facilitating students’ transition to year 11 was identified as a key focus of the study. the selection process was completed at the end of the year prior to the program commencing. the program commenced the following year and lasted for two school terms, approximately half of the school year. this was judged by the school as a significant trajectory point for the trial, as these students had just finished the queensland studies authority compulsory senior education & training (set) plans in year 10, where students choose subjects and plan career aspirations to be pursued in the senior school years. staff at the school had observed that many students at this time (aged approximately 15) were not confident deciding on career options, and were still developing their strengths and capabilities. this observation has also been identified in the scientific literature whereby “academic self-concept” has been shown to be a significant predictor of subject selection (craven & marsh, 2008). the school considered that a coaching intervention at this point would allow students to develop skills in goal setting, striving and attainment, giving them confidence in decision-making skills and goal achievement. students were provided with a student life-coaching manual for the ten weeks of the trial, which set out the content to be covered in the ten sessions. the two teachers and one college psychologist compiled a teacher life-coaching manual (from their life coaching training) to supplement the work in the student manual. the student manual was a combination of information, activities and exercises for students to complete, and also contained segments used for inspiration and motivation. the coaching program was advertised through an information session held at a whole-school year-level assembly, with all girls in attendance. additionally, the program was advertised in the school newsletter, and a number of emails were sent to year 11 students. the 60 girls who were randomly selected were provided with a participant information sheet and a consent form for both themselves and their parents to sign if they wished to participate in the trial. participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups (three groups of nine students and one group of ten students) with one facilitator – either a teacher or the psychologist conducting the trial. participants completed a ten-session coaching program. teachers were trained as coach/facilitators to support the student coaches, and to ensure that ongoing coaching training could be provided. the teacher training comprised a two-day student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 workshop in evidence-based coaching provided by an expert consultant. fifteen teachers attended the training. the teachers were trained in the theories of coaching psychology and practices of evidence-based coaching. a teacher-training manual was provided for these two days, and table 1 below outlines the key topics covered in training. table 1. coaching manual topics (weeks 1 to 10) week topic weeks 1 to 3: students were taught the principles of coaching, covering a range of topics, in particular, the grow model. weeks 4 to 9: co-coaching sessions were held where students worked with a partner and applied the grow model. week 10: students took part in celebrating the end of the trial. 6.1 the coaching program the coaching program consisted of ten group-coaching sessions with the allocated teacher-coach, conducted over a period of two school terms (22 weeks including a two-week term break). the school has a six-day lesson cycle, so the coaching comprised one lesson every six-day cycle. the coaching program involved participants holistically examining aspects of their lives and identifying two goals that they wished to be coached on: one academic and one personal. the program was based on a solution-focused cognitive-behavioral framework that was utilized in three previous randomized, controlled studies on evidence-based coaching (green et al., 2006; spence & grant, 2005; green, grant & rynsaardt, 2007). each coaching session involved the setting of session goals, followed by a brief discussion of issues pertaining to the students’ lives. each coaching session commenced with a typical mindfulness exercise (asking students to focus on the present moment, thoughts and sensations without judgment) to assist with improving attentional capacity and inducing feelings of calm (campion & rocco, 2009). this addition to the coaching program was included, based on previous research that showed that mindfulness practice could enhance coaching outcomes (spence, cavanagh, & grant, 2008). this was followed by a group check-in for an update on each student’s goal progress. students shared ideas and strategies for achieving their goals. after this brief check-in, students received information about coaching topics (see table 1 above). an aim of the coaching program was to raise the students’ personal awareness of their current situation, academically and personally. the first part of the trial (weeks 1 to 3) was centered on students developing skills in goal setting and coaching, and formulating smart (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) goals to strive towards during the coaching program. during the second part of the trial (weeks 4 to 9), participants worked in pairs and co-coached each other using the grow (goals, reality, options, wrap-up) model (whitmore, 2003) to support successful goal striving. they had time to assist each other to identify personal resources that could be utilized in moving towards their goals, and to develop self-generated solutions and specific action steps. working in pairs, the participants worked systemically through the self-regulation cycle of setting goals and developing action plans, as well as monitoring and evaluating progress. during these sessions, the teacher acted as a consultant with each group of pairs, and offered constructive feedback as they continued to develop their coaching skills. the final session (week 10) was one of reflection, celebration and looking forward. student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 the teacher and psychologist conducting the trial met to organize the ten-session trial, and set regular meeting times to assess the progress of the trial and share strategies for keeping students engaged. the role of the teacher and psychologist in the trial was to train the students in the grow model, and then oversee the co-coaching process with the participants. as part of this process, they also role-modeled the coaching process. 6.2 experimental design a within-subjects design was utilized (with no control group). wellbeing, hope and cognitive hardiness were assessed at pre-intervention and post-intervention. students were asked to identify their personal and academic goals, and goal commitment measures were taken. students completed a survey before the coaching program started and again after the program ended. students completed an online survey the week before the trial began and completed the survey again at the end of the program. 6.3 wellbeing measures a range of wellbeing measures was selected to examine the impact of the coaching program on the students’ wellbeing. the following measures were used preand post-intervention to evaluate the impact of the coaching intervention: warwick-edinburgh mental well being scale (wemwbs). wemwbs is a measure of mental wellbeing focusing entirely on positive aspects of mental health (tennant, et al., 2007). it is a short and psychometrically robust scale and can be used as a tool for monitoring mental wellbeing at a population level or organizational level. it is used for both adults and children aged 13 and above. the wemwbs is useful for evaluating mental health promotion initiatives. trait hope scale. this scale measures the traits of agency and pathways that indicate high levels of hope in individuals. the trait hope scale (snyder et al., 1991) is a 12-item measure of the two dimensions of hope, ranging from 1 (definitely false) to 4 (definitely true). it consists of four agency items (i.e., items that tap the belief in one’s ability to initiate and maintain movement towards goals), four pathways items (i.e., items that tap the ability to conceptualize routes to a goal), and four filler items. a total score is used as a measurement of the global concept of hope and is calculated as the sum of the eight agency and pathways items (range = 8 to 32). test retest reliabilities for the trait hope scale suggest temporal stability (.83 over a three-week interval, .73 over an eight-week period) (snyder et al., 1991). alpha coefficients for the two subscales are acceptable (agency = .71 to .77; pathway = .63 to .80) (snyder et al., 1991). the alpha coefficients in this study were .79 for agency and .80 for pathways. this instrument demonstrates both internal and temporal reliability, with two separate and yet related factors, as well as an overarching hope factor (babyak, snyder & yoshinobu, 1993). several studies have confirmed its convergent and discriminant validity (snyder, 2000). cognitive hardiness scale (chs). the chs measures hardiness. hardiness may explain differences in mood states among groups of individuals who are subjected to stress and may have a buffering effect against stressful events (kobasa, 1979). hardiness is composed of three components: commitment, the ability to be deeply involved in or committed to the activities in one’s life; control, the belief that one can control or influence the events experienced in life; and challenge, viewing the changes in one’s life as exciting rather than as threatening (kobasa, maddi, puccetti, & zola, 1985). depression anxiety stress scale (dass). this scale measures the negative emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress. the dass is a set of three self-report scales designed to measure the negative emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress (lovibond & lovibond, 1995). the student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 dass has been shown to have high internal consistency and to yield meaningful discriminations in a variety of settings. each of the three dasss contains 14 items, divided into subscales of two to five items with similar content. subjects are asked to use 4-point severity/frequency scales to rate the extent to which they have experienced each state over the past week. scores for depression, anxiety and stress are calculated by summing the scores for the relevant items. goal striving and goal commitment. students were asked to set a personal goal and an academic goal during the coaching intervention. for each of these goals, they completed a questionnaire where they were asked a series of four questions (5-point likert scale) that identified the degree of autonomous motivation they applied to each goal. self-determination theory (sdt) (deci & ryan, 1985) is a theory of human motivation that has been extensively studied in the psychological literature. it involves a set of related theories that define and explain human behaviour by defining different types of motivation that an individual may engage in to complete a task or set of activities. sdt provides an understanding of what motivates individuals and provides an insight into how different types of motivation may impact employee engagement. participants were asked to rate the extent to which they were motivated to achieve a goal (from “1 not at all for this reason” to “5 entirely for this reason”) based on four statements derived from self-determination theory (deci & ryan, 1985). the four statements addressed four different motivation states as defined by sdt: intrinsic motivation (“striving because of the fun and enjoyment which the goal provides you. while there may be many good reasons for the goal, the primary reason is simply your interest in the experience itself”). the remaining three statements are based on three extrinsic motivation states; introjected regulation (“striving, because you would feel ashamed, guilty or anxious if you didn't. rather than striving just because someone else thinks you ought to, you feel that you ought to strive for that something.”); integrated regulation (“striving because you really believe that it's an important goal to have. although this goal may once have been taught to you by others, now you endorse it freely and value it wholeheartedly.”); and external regulation (“striving because somebody else wants you to or thinks you ought to, or because you'll get something from somebody if you do. that is, you probably wouldn't strive for this if you didn't get some kind of reward, praise, or approval for it.”). this approach to goal attainment scaling (sheldon & elliot, 1998) has been used in prior coaching outcome studies (e.g., green et al., 2006; for a compressive discussion of the use of different approaches for the measurement of goal attainment in coaching, see spence, 2007). students were also asked to rate their success in striving towards each academic and personal goal, and to rate their commitment to each academic and personal goal. students’ goal striving was measured by the question “in the last ten weeks, how successful have you been in attaining your strivings?” participants were then asked to provide a percentage estimate in 20% increments (totalling five e.g., “0 – 20% successful” up to “81 – 100% successful”). students were then asked to rate “how committed do you feel towards this goal?” in order to measure their perception of success and commitment for achieving the goal. the responses for this question comprised a 5point likert rating scale for this question ranging from “not at all committed” to “extremely committed”. 7. results a paired-sample t-test was conducted to measure differences between the means for the preintervention and post-intervention groups. a paired sample t-test is used to determine whether there is a significant difference between the average values of the same measurement made under two different conditions (minium, 1978). the null hypothesis for a paired sample t-test is that the variance of the variable means is zero. results of the analysis for each of the wellbeing student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 140 measures appear below. table 2 below outlines the results for all of the wellbeing measures comparing the pre and post measures in the experimental group. table 2. paired samples statistics for all wellbeing measures scores (n = 25) mean std. deviation std. error mean sig. (2-tailed) dass depression subscale pre-test 10.24 9.350 1.87 post-test 07.84 7.370 1.47 .06* anxiety subscale pre-test 08.16 6.320 1.26 post-test 08.00 6.660 1.33 .89* stress subscale pre-test 15.04 6.690 1.34 post-test 13.52 6.200 1.24 .22* hope trait scale pathway subscale pre-test 24.88 4.250 0.85 post-test 24.96 3.910 0.78 .88* agency subscale pre-test 24.20 4.780 0.96 post-test 25.32 3.720 0.74 .11* wemwbs pre-test 03.59 0.524 0.10 post-test 03.75 0.550 0.11 .05* cognitive hardiness scale pre-test 03.43 0.480 0.10 post-test 03.56 0.400 0.08 .03* *p = 0.05 dass questionnaire (depression, anxiety & stress subscales). a reduction in dass scores represents an improvement on each of the scales. all pre-test mean scores were at the low end of the mild range: depression subscale (mild range = 10 – 13) (m = 10.24); anxiety subscale (mild range = 8 – 9) (m = 8.16); stress subscale (mild range = 15 – 18) (m = 15.04). post-test scores showed a trend towards improvement, although these were not significant changes: depression subscale (normal range = 0 – 9) (m = 7.84, p = .06); anxiety subscale (m = 8.00, p = .89); stress subscale (normal range = 0 – 14) (m = 13.52, p = .22). the scores for the depression subscale were approaching significance in a positive direction. hts. table 2 above also shows the means, standard deviation and standard error means for the hts subscales. either the separate subscales or the total score can be used. in this study, the subscales were used to investigate any changes in the two different aspects of hts (pathway and agency). there were slight increases in the post-test scores for both pathway (m=24.96) and student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 141 agency (m=25.32), however, neither of these was significant, as shown (pathway: p = .88, agency: p = .11). wemwbs. there was a significant difference (p = 0.05) between the pre-intervention (m = 3.59) and post-intervention (m = 3.75) scores on the wemwbs (measuring mental wellbeing) such that students’ scores showed an increase in mental wellbeing after the coaching intervention. chs. students’ scores on the chs increased (i.e., students reported higher levels of cognitive hardiness) after the coaching intervention. only the average score for the chs was calculated. there was a significant difference between the pre-intervention (m = 3.43) and post-intervention (m = 3.56) scores on the chs (which measures students’ commitment, their perception of changes as challenging rather than threatening, and a greater belief in their sense of control over their lives) (p = 0.03). goal striving and goal commitment. the results for this analysis appear below. table 3 below shows the means, standard deviations, and standard error means for the preand post-, personal and academic goal striving, and goal commitment scores. table 3. paired samples statistics – students’ goal striving and commitment scores measure mean n std. dev. sig. personal goals pre-personal goal striving 3.00 24 1.25 post-personal goal striving 4.33 24 .82 .00* pre-personal goal commitment 4.20 25 1.08 post-personal goal commitment 4.36 25 .99 .52 academic goals pre-academic goal striving 3.68 25 1.22 post-academic goal striving 3.92 25 .95 .37 pre-academic goal commitment 4.40 25 .91 post-academic goal commitment 4.20 25 .76 .26 *p = 0.05 there was a significant increase in students’ perceptions of how successfully they achieved their strivings towards their personal goal. students indicated that they more successfully achieved their personal goals after the coaching intervention. the other three measures: personal goal commitment, academic goal striving, and academic goal commitment showed a trend towards increased success and commitment in the post-intervention scores, but did not achieve significance. 8. discussion the evidence-based coaching intervention appears to have had a positive impact on some aspects of students’ mental health and wellbeing. specifically, wellbeing scores after the coaching intervention were significantly higher than wellbeing scores before the coaching intervention. however, two aspects of the study require these results to be viewed with some caution. first, the sample size of the intervention group was small, with only 25 students. second, no control group measures were taken, resulting in an inability to make any comparisons between groups. there was no significant difference in students’ preand post-intervention depression, anxiety and stress scores. students’ scores on the dass depression and anxiety subscales were student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 142 in the mild range for both preand post-intervention, while scores for the dass stress subscales were in the normal range. the small sample size for this study may have impacted the likelihood of finding a significant difference on these scales. participants were screened for exclusion based on mental health issues at the beginning of the program (with none being excluded). the transition from middle to high school can be stressful and challenging and is referred to in the literature as "one of the defining parameters of development in the second decade of life" (barber & olsen, 2004, p. 3). the fact that students in the coaching program did not experience an increase in stress shows a positive impact. in addition, for the dass stress subscales then, there may have been a floor effect, i.e., a limitation reached in how far these scores could be reduced by the intervention. students’ post-intervention overall scores in cognitive hardiness were significantly higher than their pre-intervention scores, demonstrating an increase in students’ commitment, their perception of changes as challenging rather than threatening, and a greater belief in their sense of control over their lives. students indicated that they felt they more successfully achieved their personal goals after the coaching intervention (personal goal striving). while there was a trend towards improvement on students’ scores for academic and personal goal commitment, and academic goal striving, these were not significant. students indicated that they did not feel more committed to either their personal or academic goals, nor did they feel they more successfully achieved their academic goals after the coaching intervention. however, the lack of significant results may be impacted by the small sample size in this study. the school considered the results of the pilot study at the conclusion of the trial in 2013. in examining the promising results reflected in the pilot study data, the college principal and the leadership team decided to extend the program to the whole year 11 cohort. the college wanted to provide all year 11 students with the opportunity to experience coaching, as this approach aligned with work already being done with students, such as goal setting, and the positive education program, based on positive psychology. consequently, the school decided to extend the coaching intervention to the entire year 11 cohort in 2014, with 15 trained teacher-coaches delivering the program. students also completed an online evaluation survey at the end of the trial and provided valuable feedback as to the implementation of this coaching program. numerical and anecdotal comments provided useful feedback for improvement. these included moving the timing of the coaching sessions so that they did not occur near exam periods, and shortening the coaching program, as some respondents was considered it too long. the feedback from students was generally positive. anecdotally, all students who took part in the coaching program articulated that they learnt something from the program. the majority indicated that they would use what they learnt beyond the program, indicating valuable transferability of skills, especially at such a critical and stressful time in an adolescent’s life. a major limitation of this study is that while all students in the year 11 cohort took part in the broader positive education program, only those students who took part in the coaching program completed the various measures, and subsequently, are reported here. this was a decision made by the school in terms of piloting the program prior to consideration of its full uptake. in addition, the costs and resources associated with administering the tests to all year 11 students for a pilot program need to be taken into account. future research could include feedback from students who were not included in the coaching program, but who took part only in the positive education program. another limitation of the study was that longer-term followup measures were not taken, making it impossible to assess whether any benefits were sustained over time. student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 143 after evaluating the trial, a number of changes were made for the 2014 program. minor changes were made to the student-coaching manual. the coaching program was extended to include a variety of activities in each session to sustain student engagement (e.g., mindfulness, resource sheets, you-tube clips, “whip around” sessions, affirmations). the coaching program was shortened to consist of eight rather than ten sessions. sample comments from students followed up via a personal email from one of the teachers, one month after the trial, indicated how the students were progressing towards achievement of their goals after the program. students felt that their goals were going well, and that their planning and organizing skills were improved. some sample comments included: 1) “my goals are both still pretty well on track and i have been using many of the tips you taught us.” 2) “my goals are going quite well actually, i am receiving good marks in all my subjects and i still continue to improve, and in relation to my personal goal i am currently in the highest point in my hockey season and from the results we’ve received recently, we have a definite position in the semifinals coming up in a few weeks.” 3) “my goals are going great this term and i have my planning and organisation all sorted out.” 4) “i've become so organised in my homework and planning ahead for my school work that i've had to organise my brother study (sic) for his uni work! thank you for 'checking in' in the long term i've developed good habits.” 5) “thank you for checking in with us about how our goals are progressing.” 6) “i am very happy with how i am going and i found that my semester results after last term met the goals that i set for myself, particularly in english where i exceeded my goal. i am still putting in place the goal-setting tips that you taught us and i am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the life coaching program.” 7) “my personal and academic goals have been going well this term and i really enjoyed the life coaching.” a teacher not involved in the trial observed a group co-coaching (towards the end of the trial) using the smart goal process and commented in her reflection: “the coaching technique that students used with each other was intuitive and seamless as they progressed through the questions and stages of coaching each other. they did not have to rely on the question sheet at this time and seemed genuinely engaged with the process and knew the questions without having to rely on the handout. they were highly motivated when challenging each other with their commitments and established whether the strategies were working in order to meet the smart goal they had set for each other. when communicating with each other the students used deep and active listening techniques and seemed to follow the 80/20 rule well.” the results indicated that the trial was successful and that the program increased personal striving towards goals and had a positive effect on student wellbeing. given that senior high school (the start of year 11 in australia) is a time when there is a tendency towards increased stress due to transitioning into the senior school, the fact that students in this trial did not show increased stress is a significant finding. further study specifically examining this question would be valuable in developing a program to assist students in making the transition from middle school to senior school. it would be valuable, for example, to compare the stress levels of students in an intervention group with those in a control group during such a transition. 9. conclusion student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 this study provides further evidence of the impact on students’ mental health and wellbeing of implementing an evidence-based coaching program within a high school setting. further, it provides practical information for practitioners wanting to conduct similar trials in educational institutions. finally, the study demonstrates the value of integrating evidence-based coaching programs within broader positive education programs at schools to fully embed the complementary methods and skills in each area. in this study, the school found that the coaching program was able to support and build on the five constructs of the positive education program (strengths, gratitude, mindfulness, savoring, flow), indicating the capacity-building outcomes of this integrated program. ongoing research that integrates positive psychology interventions and evidence-based coaching would be valuable to further ascertain the cumulative and individual impact of programs with these two approaches it is worthy to note that this coaching program was conducted in 2013. after consideration of the promising results of the program, despite the small number of participants, the coaching program was offered, with some minor changes, to the entire year 11 cohort of students in 2014 (approximately 150 students). as well as 2014, the coaching program has continued (in 2015 and 2016) to be offered to the entire cohort of year 11 students (approximately 150 students each year). the coaching program is successfully providing students in transition to senior school valuable goal setting, striving, and achievement skills. an initiative that grew out of the coaching program is the coaching buddy program. this operated in 2015 and 2016, and occurs for four sessions in terms 3 and 4, where all year 11 students trained in coaching work with all year 7 students on goal attainment. the benefits of this initiative are twofold. first, the year 11 students have an opportunity to put their coaching skills into action by working with year 7 students. second, the year 7 students have the opportunity to learn about coaching and the grow model and to work on their own goals. authors aylin dulagil the positivity institute adulagil@bigpond.net.au l. suzy 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(2003). coaching for performance. london, united kingdom: nicholas brealey. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17521880802328178 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-5-63 http://dx.doi.org/10.1375/aedp.28.2.75 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0004944114523371 student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 148 appendix 1. overview of student coaching program week 1: introduction  introduction to coaching and the program  aims of program and setting group rules  review ‘roadmap of coaching’  irritations inventory worksheet  identifying needs and values worksheet  homework – letter from the future week 2: goal setting  review ‘smart goals and how to use them in coaching’  set smart goals x 2 – using ‘letter from the future’ and ‘smart goal planning guide’  complete ‘staying motivated’ worksheet  complete ‘stages of change’ worksheet  review –‘ house of change’ weeks 3-9: ongoing coaching sessions  coaching sessions – use ‘introduction to the grow model/structuring coaching sessions’  students to use ‘weekly review sheets’ week 10: conclusion and celebration  reflect on coaching progress  celebration of program completion implementation 1) student booklet and laminated cards of ‘grow’ model prepared 2) student participants finalized, i.e., randomly selected using the randomization function in ms excel 3) trial began in february 2013 (approximately week 3/term 1) 4) student participants completed nine sessions in total/50mins each (four sessions in term 1 and five sessions in term 2, including last celebration session) 5) cognitive-behavioral/solution-focused coaching intervention a) introduction b) understanding change/roadmap of change c) goal setting (irritations inventory) d) values identification e) letter from the future f) grow – a model of coaching g) student co-coaching (solution focused) h) ants into pets (cognitive behavioral) i) identifying resources j) celebrating success 6) trial was completed june 2013 student coaching, wellebing, and academics dulagil, green, & ahern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 appendix 2. survey questions for life coaching trial dear year 11 student during terms 1 & 2 of 2103 you have been involved in an evidence-based life (or personal) coaching project. the aim of the project was to improve academic outcomes and assist you in goal setting and implementation. the program consisted of a total of 9 sessions-8 weeks of coaching and 1 session of reflection and celebration:  week 1-intro to coaching/roadmap of coaching/irritations inventory/identifying needs & values/letter from the future  week 2-the grow model/house of change/staying motivated/stages of change  weeks 3 to 8-coaching in action, the grow model/weekly review sheets  week 9-reflection & celebration to assist teachers in reviewing this project-please supply honest reflections to the following questions: 1) what aspects of the coaching trial did you find useful and why? 2) how would you rate the success of being on your way to achieve your 2 goals (1 academic/1 personal) from 1 to 10? 3) what new things have you learnt from this trial? 4) how would you now rate your confidence in setting and working towards individual goalsfrom 1 to 10? 5) how has this trial helped you personally? 6) what aspects of the program would you change and why? 7) do you think this program would be beneficial for all year 11 students to participate in, over 2 terms? 8) is there anything you would like to offer as a helpful comment/s? ritchie, t. d., & bryant, f. b. (2012). positive state mindfulness: a multidimensional model of mindfulness in relation to positive experience. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 150-181. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.1 timothy d. ritchie university of limerick tim.ritchie@ul.ie copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 150 article positive state mindfulness: a multidimensional model of mindfulness in relation to positive experience timothy d. ritchie · fred b. bryant abstract: the present research tested langer’s theory of mindfulness in the context of positive experiences: positive state mindfulness. in study 1 (n1 = 586, n2 = 415) confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a three-factor model (focused attention, novelty appreciation, openended expectations) fit the data well and explained responses better than a one-factor model. in support of construct validity, study 2 (n3 = 239, n4 = 126) suggested that each dimension had a different pattern of associations with unidimensional trait measures of mindfulness, savoring beliefs, trait absorption, uncertainty tolerance, need for structure, and need for cognition. study 3 (n5 = 46) revealed that each dimension correlated uniquely with the positive affect, self-esteem, interpersonal connectedness, and the overall rehearsal frequency associated with positive autobiographical events. in support of criterion validity in study 4, in experiment 1 (n6 = 46) a boredom task decreased novelty appreciation, and in experiment 2 (n7 = 92) a problem-solving task increased focused attention. our data suggest that positive mindfulness is more than the absence of mindlessness and that it includes three distinct dimensions. we discuss the utility of positive mindfulness in both research and practice. keywords: state mindfulness; positive experience; wellbeing; savoring 1. introduction mindfulness is often conceptualized as paying attention flexibly to the present moment. notwithstanding the different conceptualizations of mindfulness, practitioners and researchers generally agree with the idea that mindfulness involves a present-focused time orientation (bishop et al., 2004). however, the definitions and applications of mindfulness vary widely, ranging from the philosophy and practices of buddhism (chiesa & malinowski, 2011), to the clinical sciences and therapies (kabat-zinn, 2005; rothwell, 2006; teasdale, segal, williams, ridgeway, soulsby, & lau, 2000), to cognitive and emotional research (brown & langer, 1990; carson & langer, 2006; erisman & roemer, 2010), to educational research and interventions (langer, hatem, joss, & howell, 1989), social and personality research (langer, 1997; langer, bashner, & chanowitz, 1985; langer & moldoveanu, 2000; sternberg, 2000), and to positive psychology (brown & ryan, 2003; jacob & brinkerhoff, 1999). a recent definition of mindfulness is: a process of regulating attention in order to bring a quality of non-elaborative awareness to current experience and a quality of relating to one’s experience within an orientation of curiosity, experiential openness, and acceptance< a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 151 process of gaining insight into the nature of one’s mind<‛ (bishop et al., 2004, p. 234). we agree with bishop et al.’s definition of mindfulness as a process. however, even though an impressive amount of research in recent years has helped to elucidate mindfulness in the clinic, there remains a paucity of evidence that helps to elucidate everyday mindfulness, such as mindfulness that occurs during positive experiences. in tandem with efforts to clarify the construct of mindfulness in clinical settings, several new measures of mindfulness have emerged, many of them within the past decade. for example, these include the freiburg mindfulness inventory (buchheld, grossman, & walach, 2001), the mindful attention/awareness scale (maas; brown & ryan, 2003), the maas for adolescents (brown, west, loverich, & biegel, 2011), the modified maas (höfling, moosbrugger, schermelleh-engel, & heidenreich, 2011), the kentucky inventory of mindfulness skills (baer, smith, & allen, 2004), the cognitive and affective mindfulness scalerevised (feldman, hayes, kumar, greeson, & laurenceau, 2007), and the toronto mindfulness scale (lau et al., 2006), to name a few. these scales have framed mindfulness primarily in terms of buddhist and clinical conceptualizations of mindfulness, examined mindfulness as a unidimensional trait, and as a hierarchical model (baer, smith, hopkins, krietemeyer, & toney, 2006). unique to the present research we grounded our thinking about mindfulness in langer’s social cognitive theory of mindfulness (1992, 1997). we appreciate the integrative approaches taken by researchers of mindfulness assessment in the clinic and therapeutic settings; however, in the present research we purposefully narrowed our scope for the sake of testing theorydriven hypotheses about the core characteristics of state mindfulness in the context of pleasant, enjoyable experiences. next, we acknowledge that bodner and langer (2001) proposed and supported the mindfulness/mindless scale (mms), designed according to langer’s theory. however, they not only examined trait mindfulness, as many other scales have done, but also their data supported a one-factor model. indeed, recent work by haigh, moore, kashdan, and fresco (2011) found support for a single-factor model of a brief version of the mms. the present research extends langer’s theory of mindfulness to positive experiences, and views mindfulness as a state rather than a trait. additionally, as we detail later, we expected positive state mindfulness to include multiple related but distinct dimensions. our approach is consistent with the notion of ‚everyday mindfulness‛ suggested by thompson and waltz (2007). that we rooted our model in positive experiences reveals that our conceptual basis is essentially consistent with that of clinical psychology. for instance, we garnered support for the idea that pleasant and enjoyable engagement oftentimes includes attention that waxes mindful and, as a state, mindfulness wanes as an experience transpires. our goal was to capture this empirically, using a variety of statistical and experimental techniques. we do not suggest that all positive experiences necessarily involve mindful states; rather, we suggest that some positive experiences do. this view is conceptually similar to the mindfulness championed in the clinical literatures, namely, that the presence of maladaptive cognitive, emotional and behavioral patterns suggests the absence of mindfulness. techniques that build mindfulness skills are desirable. hence, by extension we believe that individuals who exhibit adaptive cognitive, emotional and behavioral patterns will sometimes evince the presence of mindfulness spontaneously in their everyday positive experiences. related to langer and her colleagues’ descriptions of mindfulness (1992, 1997, 2000), in the present research we posited and tested a measurement model of mindfulness in relation to positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 positive experience, and emphasize the state-like nature of mindfulness rather than mindfulness as a disposition. shared among all relevant conceptualizations of mindfulness, we adhere to the idea that mindfulness is a way of paying attention flexibly to what is occurring in the moment and accepting that moment as it is, without judging it, or the self, critically. by focusing on langer and her colleagues' conceptualization of mindfulness, and by narrowing our focus to positive experiences, the present research fills important conceptual, psychometric and practical gaps in the literature. additionally, in narrowing our conceptualization of mindfulness to encompass positive state mindfulness, we tend to avoid references to mindlessness. we begin with a brief review of langer's mindfulness theory, and then later in study 1 we operationalize each of the dimensions that are derived from this theory. 2. review of mindfulness langer’s (1992) early conceptualization included mindfulness as a ‚state of conscious awareness<openness to novelty in which the individual actively constructs categories and distinctions‛ (p. 289). from this view mindfulness is a somewhat effortful way of attending to the present moment, in contrast to the automatic, shallow processing of mindlessness. together, both are akin to many dual-process models in social psychology (chaiken & trope, 1999). in a later conceptualization, langer and moldoveanu (2000) revised the definition of mindfulness to emphasize that it is a ‚process of drawing novel distinctions,‛ such that a perceiver experiences: a greater sensitivity to one’s environment, more openness to new information, the creation of new categories for structuring perception, and enhanced awareness of multiple perspectives in problem solving (langer & moldoveanu, 2000, p. 1). consistent with this view, we conceptualized mindfulness in the context of positive experiences as more than merely the absence of mindlessness. in theory, mindfulness may be engaged, sustained, and cultivated by the development and rehearsal of distinct perceptual, cognitive and meta-cognitive skills. on the one hand, these skills may help a person to suppress, inhibit, or eliminate maladaptive habits, heuristics, and automatic thoughts (mindlessness). on the other hand, mindfulness also includes other skills that foster the mobilization, sustainment, and enhancement of adaptive habits, and controlled processing of information. the latter were the primary focus of the present research. extending langer and moldoveanu’s (2000) conception, sternberg (2000) proposed the following central components of mindfulness: a) openness to novelty; b) alertness to distinction; c) sensitivity to different contexts; d) implicit, if not explicit, awareness of multiple perspectives; and e) orientation in the present (sternberg, 2000, p. 12). sternberg also emphasized the importance of conceptualizing and measuring mindfulness as a state. his summary of langer's mindfulness theory, and of the theory’s importance to future research, was optimistic: to the extent that this state [mindfulness] can be measured successfully, such measurement will be a valuable contribution to our understanding of people’s interactions with the context in which they live (sternberg, 2000, p. 18). positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 we agree with this conclusion. hence, the present research attempted to garner support for the idea that state mindfulness is estimable in self-report form, at least indirectly, and can be surmised from positive experiences. in emphasizing the utility of mindfulness as a psychological construct, brown and ryan (2003) suggested that mindfulness is a useful concept, because it ‚<may be important in disentangling individuals from automatic thoughts, habits, and unhealthy behavior patterns" (brown & ryan, 2003, p. 823). we concur with brown and ryan; however, despite their endorsement of mindfulness, our review of the published literature on mindfulness leads us to conclude at present that mindfulness researchers continue to partially agree on how mindfulness should be conceptualized and measured. such partial agreement has occurred far more in the realm of clinical psychology than in the realm of positive psychology. furthermore, researchers have not yet tested langer's mindfulness theory in the context of positive experiences. hence, the present research is novel in this regard. also, while the bulk of the extant public literature on mindfulness suggests that mindfulness is good, in general, such research has mainly framed mindfulness as something lacking; and hence, research is lacking from the view that mindfulness occurs spontaneously, especially during pleasant and enjoyable activities. therefore, to address these important conceptual, experiential and measurement gaps in the literature, we tested systematically hypotheses that were derived from langer’s social cognitive theory: mindfulness is a state; it is multidimensional; and sometimes occurs spontaneously during positive experiences. 3. positive mindfulness the notion of mindfulness in everyday experience is at the heart of the concept of savoring, a process through which people regulate and appreciate positive experience (bryant, 1989, 2003; bryant & veroff, 2007). savoring involves people’s ‚capacities to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in their lives‛ (bryant & veroff, 2007, p. 2). thus, savoring entails a mindfulness of positive thoughts and feelings in relation to either the past (reminiscence), the present (savoring the moment), or the future (anticipation). further, the capacity to attend to positive experience is a fundamental aspect of savoring. for this reason, in the present research, we purposefully focus on the construct of ‚positive state mindfulness.‛ we suggest that positive state mindfulness is central to the notion of savoring the moment. unless one notices and is mindfully aware of an ongoing positive experience, one cannot savor it. however, just because one is mindfully aware of an ongoing positive experience does not guarantee that one will savor it. thus, we predict that states of positive mindfulness will be positively related to self-reported savoring capacity, though not so strongly as to be equivalent. such theorizing is consistent with recent research that established moderate positive correlations between trait mindfulness and positive affect, curiosity, and emotion regulation (haigh et al., 2011). conceptually, it is important to clarify the relationship of temporal orientation to positive mindfulness and savoring, both of which fundamentally entail a present-oriented focus. just as mindfulness involves a person’s attention oriented to the present (farb et al., 2007), so also is savoring in the moment, in the here and now (bryant & veroff, 2007, p. 8). yet, it is also possible for people to savor memories from the past or anticipate pleasurable experiences. in such cases, however, people may not necessarily remember past feelings or imagine future feelings, but rather are savoring in the present the way they feel when they think about the past or the future (bryant & veroff, 2007; ritchie, skowronski, hartnett, wells, & walker, 2009; positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 ritchie, skowronski, wood, walker, vogl, & gibbons, 2006). thus, like mindfulness, savoring always involves some form of conscious present-focused attention on positive experience. 4. research hypotheses 4.1 the dimensionality of positive mindfulness in considering a person’s momentary awareness during a positive experience, the question of whether positive state mindfulness is unidimensional or multidimensional arises. although langer’s theoretical framework highlights multiple conceptual components that should each be present at varying levels when people are being mindful, mindfulness has often been assessed as a unitary phenomenon, in terms of a total score, with no distinction made among different dimensions of mindfulness (baer et al., 2006; bodner & langer, 2001). therefore, one purpose of the present research was to test directly the hypothesis that positive mindfulness is multidimensional rather than unidimensional. 4.2 construct validation a second goal of the present research was to assess the convergent and discriminant validity of dimensions of positive state mindfulness in connection with related state and trait constructs, following validation guidelines proposed by bryant and colleagues (bryant, 2000; bryant et al., 2006). this work involved examining nomological patterns of correlations between our measures of positive mindfulness and measures of other theoretically relevant constructs, including trait mindfulness, perceived savoring capacity, need for cognition, trait absorption, uncertainty tolerance, and need for structure. in assessing convergent validity, we expected that states of positive mindfulness would be positively correlated with related constructs, such as perceived savoring capacity, trait absorption, and uncertainty tolerance, with which they share common conceptual elements. in assessing discriminant validity, we expected positive mindfulness to be distinct from the need for cognition and need for structure; and, we expected that different dimensions of positive mindfulness would evince different patterns of association with the set of validation criterion measures. based on our position that positive state mindfulness is distinct from other notions of mindfulness, state and trait mindfulness are different constructs. mindfulness is not simply the absence of mindlessness. we also expected positive state mindfulness to share relatively little variance with measures of general trait mindlessness. 5. study 1 guided by langer's (1992, 1997) conceptualizations of mindfulness, we identified the following five theoretical dimensions presumed to underlie states of positive mindfulness: a) focused attention, b) openness to novelty, c) novelty appreciation, d) categorization and distinctionmaking, and e) open-ended expectations. the top panel of figure 1 illustrates this model. to explore the conceptual structure and validity of self-reports related to langer's theory of mindfulness, we tethered mindfulness items to a pleasant autobiographical event. the present study thus conceptualized mindfulness as a state that, in theory, can be recalled and described as part of an autobiographical episode or experience. below we briefly describe each hypothesized component of positive mindfulness. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 figure 1. conceptualizations of mindfulness note: the top panel illustrates the initial model of positive state mindfulness, five correlated factors predicted from langer’s theory; the bottom panel illustrates our refined, three correlated factor model of positive state mindfulness. 5.1 method 5.1.1 item construction we developed self-report items following procedures recommended by devellis (1993). we began by generating an initial list of 37 items, each intended to reflect one of the five characteristics of mindfulness that constitute langer’s theoretical model. all items were prefaced with the phrase: ‚during my positive experience<.‛. responses to each item were set to a six-point likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = disagree somewhat, 4 = agree somewhat, 5 = agree, and 6 = strongly agree).1 rather than clustering items and presenting them in their intended conceptual categories, instead we randomly ordered items for administration. focused attention. consistent with langer's and many others’ conceptualization of mindfulness, we hypothesized that focused attention on the present moment is central to mindfulness. accordingly, we generated a set of items designed to tap the extent to which respondents remembered experiencing a heightened focus of attention to the present moment during a recent positive event. we interpreted langer and others’ descriptions of a person who is mindfully focused as someone whose attention becomes immersed and absorbed in the present moment, akin to but not necessarily the same as, psychological absorption (tellegen & atkinson, 1974; wild, kuiken, & schopflocher, 1995). a sample item that we created for this dimension is: ‚<my attention was focused on what was happening just then.‛ 1 the initial 37 items are available from the first author; see table 2 for a list of final items and the appendix for further details. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 openness to novelty. in theory, mindfulness could be indexed through a person’s memory for having been cognitively receptive to novel information. consistent with this prevailing theoretical notion, we generated a second set of items intended to reflect openness to novelty. the central theme to these items involves being open to learning and being receptive to new ideas. if a person’s readiness to perceive novelty reflects mindfulness, then self-reports to such items ought to reflect this component of mindfulness. a sample item for this dimension is: ‚< i felt open to experience new things.‛ novelty appreciation. another dimension central in many conceptual models of mindfulness is a pleasurable appreciation of perceived novelty. we hypothesized that the state of being receptive to new experiences is distinct from the state of appreciating novelty. accordingly, we wrote a third set of items intended to reflect the extent to which respondents appreciated a sense of novelty during a recent positive episode. a sample item for this dimension is: ‚< i enjoyed the newness of the moment.‛ in this item, mindfulness is represented as recalled enjoyment of the novelty that a person perceived during a recent pleasant event. we wrote separate sets of items reflecting openness to and appreciation of novelty because theory suggests both dimensions are related but distinct. categorization and distinction-making. when conceptualizing mindfulness, langer (1992, 1997) referred to a dimension involving distinction-making, categorization, and the creation of new categories to guide perception. to reflect this particular dimension, we wrote nine items that represented perceptions about categorization or about distinction-making. a sample item for this hybrid dimension is: ‚<i compared different things that were happening‛. we designed these items to tap the extent to which respondents recalled noticing how they evaluated, appraised, and judged their perceptions during a recent positive experience. open-ended expectations. consistent with langer and her colleagues' research (langer & moldoveanu, 2000), we generated items intended to reflect a fifth component of mindfulness representing a person's experience of momentary uncertainty and self-reported degree of openended situational expectations. as langer (1997) stated, ‚from a mindful perspective< uncertainty creates freedom to discover meaning...if there are meaningful choices, there is uncertainty‛ (p. 130). to assess this dimension, we constructed four items. a sample item for this dimension is: ‚<i felt like anything could happen from one moment to the next.‛ 5.1.2 participants study 1 included two samples. we used sample 1 to test and refine a measurement model for the set of positive mindfulness items. we split sample 2 in half randomly for use in doubly cross-validating model modifications based on the first sample. sample 1 consisted of 586 undergraduate students enrolled in different sections of an introductory psychology course at loyola university chicago. reflecting the population of students in this course, the gender composition was 397 females (68%), 186 males (32%), and three respondents who did not indicate their gender (<1%). the mean sample age was 19.0 years (sd = 3.0; mode = 18). the ethnic composition was caucasian (63%), asian (22%), latin (10%), black (4%), and unspecified (1%). the final sample consisted of 569 respondents who provided complete data for all 37 items. sample 2 consisted of 415 undergraduate students enrolled in different sections of an introductory psychology courses at the same university. prior to analyses, the data were split into two sub-samples—sub-sample 2a (na = 208) and sub-sample 2b (nb = 207)—according to random sampling, stratifying on gender. sub-sample 2a consisted of 162 females (78%) and 46 males (22%). sub-sample 2b consisted of 161 females (78%), 45 males (22%), and one positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 157 respondent (<1%) who did not report gender. each random sub-sample included a sufficient number of observations for measurement modeling.2 5.1.3 procedure participants volunteered to complete the research materials in scheduled sessions. they were instructed first to reflect on the past week, and then to describe briefly in writing a positive experience that had occurred during the past week. to permit freedom in selecting positive experiences, we prompted respondents to choose what they deemed to be a positive experience, rather than asking them to report a particular kind of positive experience or asking them to choose from a list of pre-selected events and activities. we intended to elicit relatively ordinary positive experiences rather than momentous, peak experiences. we also wanted to hold constant the recent time frame; hence, we instructed respondents to remember as far back as only one week. after responding to the instrument, participants were debriefed, provided an explanation of the objectives of our study, thanked, and dismissed. 5.1.4 analytic strategy using confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). in study 1, we followed three common analytic strategies used in cfa (bryant et al., 2006; jöreskog, 1993). according to jöreskog (1993), researchers who formulate and then test a single measurement model a priori employ a strictly confirmatory (sc) approach. we used an sc approach to test a priori measurement models using four independent samples. jöreskog also referred to a second analytic strategy, model generating (mg), in which the researcher posits a tentative initial model, and then uses statistical and theoretical criteria to modify and retest post hoc refinements to improve the model’s fit to the data. in the mg scenario, the model to be tested is tentative and not fully established at the outset. consistent with this approach, we committed one full sample in implementing an mg strategy, adopting both theoretical and empirical criteria in model development. we also adopted a third analytic approach that jöreskog (1993) termed the alternative models (am) strategy. adopting this am approach in four independent samples, we tested the goodness-of-fit of an alternative one-factor model versus our final multidimensional measurement model of positive mindfulness.3 assessing model fit. we used five different statistical criteria to judge the goodness-of-fit of each cfa model: the goodness-of-fit index (gfi), the non-normed fit index (nnfi), the comparative fit index (cfi), the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), and the standardized root mean residual (srmr). analogous to r2 in multiple regression, gfi reflects the proportion of available variance-covariance information in the data that the given model explains, with larger gfi values representing better model fit. nnfi and cfi indicate how much better the given model fits the data relative to a ‚null‛ model, which assumes sampling error alone explains covariation among observed measures (i.e., no common variance exists among measured variables). bentler and bonett (1980) recommended that measurement models have gfi, nnci, and cfi of at least .90. rmsea reflects the size of the residuals that result when using the model to predict the data, adjusting for model complexity, with smaller values indicating better fit. according to browne and cudeck (1993), rmsea < .05 represents ‚close 2 with this sample, our final nine-item three-factor model included 21 estimated parameters: nine factor loadings, nine unique variances, and three factor correlations. each random sample thus provided roughly 10 observations per estimated model parameter (na: 208 / 21 = 9.90; nb: 207 / 21 = 9.86). 3 we followed a similar model-testing strategy using exploratory factor analysis with principal axis factor extraction and a promax (oblique) rotation method, and found similar results. they are available upon request from the first author. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 158 fit;‛ rmsea between .05 and .08 represents ‚reasonably close fit;‛ and rmsea > .10 represents ‚an unacceptable model.‛ srmr reflects the average standardized absolute value of the difference between the elements of the observed covariance matrix and the covariance matrix elements implied by the given model, with smaller values indicating better fit. hu and bentler (1998) suggested that srmr <.08 represents acceptable model fit. finally, we used the difference in degrees of freedom and chi-square values (i.e., the likelihood ratio test; bollen, 1989), to test hypotheses about differences in goodness-of-fit between nested cfa models. 5.1.5 hypotheses following the sc strategy, we initially specified a five-factor mindfulness model (focused attention, openness to novelty, novelty appreciation, categorization and distinctionmaking, open-ended expectations). however, we acknowledged the possibility that the full five-factor model might be too broad to tap the state mindfulness associated with a recalled positive experience and might need to be reduced to a smaller set of core subscales. we also expected that some items from the initial pool would need to be eliminated because of redundancy or low reliability. following the mg strategy, we expected to re-specify the initial measurement model if it achieved inadequate goodness-of-fit, using both theoretical and empirical criteria during model refinement. we hypothesized that our more parsimonious measurement model would fit the data better than both the initial five-factor and alternative one-factor models. following the am strategy, we used data from multiple independent samples to test the hypothesis that the more parsimonious measurement model would again fit the data better than a one-factor model, and would generalize across independent samples. all of the structural analyses in study 1 were aimed at developing and confirming a theory-grounded measurement model, whose construct validity would be assessed in study 2. 5.2 results and discussion 5.2.1 strictly confirmatory: testing the a priori measurement model initial screening of the pool of items suggested they were reasonably normally distributed. to test the first hypothesis, we subjected the initial 37-item, oblique five-factor model to maximum-likelihood cfa using lisrel 8.54 (jöreskog & sörbom, 1996) to analyze the covariance matrix. not surprisingly, we found that the initial full model fit the data unsatisfactorily, χ2 (619, n = 569) = 2551.03, gfi = .77, nnfi = .71, cfi = .73, rmsea = .08, srmr = .08 (see table 1). thus, the data did not confirm the a priori five-factor model for the initial pool of 37 items. accordingly, we adopted the mg strategy and tested a series of modified measurement models for the purpose of model refinement. 5.2.2 model generating: refining the initial factor structure we used established measurement modeling procedures (bryant, king, & smart, 2006) to refine this initial model by iteratively eliminating items with squared multiple correlations < .30 and combining factors that were highly inter-correlated (i.e., r >.90), while simultaneously requiring factors to have acceptable reliabilities (i.e., cronbach’s α >.70). this approach yielded: a) first, a five-factor model for 20 items that fit the data better but not acceptably; b) then, a three-factor model for 20 items that still fell short of acceptable fit; and, c) eventually a three-factor model for 9 items that fit the data well (see table 1). the final refined model consisted of three factors—novelty appreciation, focused attention, and open-ended expectations—each with positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 159 table 1. results from confirmatory factor analyses of the positive state mindfulness measurement models strategy model n # items χ2 df gfi nnfi cfi rmsea srmr sc 5-factor 569 37 2551.03 619 .77 .71 .73 .084 .081 mg 5-factor 569 20 803.63 160 .87 .79 .82 .088 .068 mg 3-factor 569 20 864.89 167 .86 .78 .81 .089 .071 mga 3-factor 569 9 103.82 24 .96 .91 .94 .076 .059 am 1-factor 569 9 534.62 27 .81 .50 .62 .193 .115 sca 3-factor 208 9 74.48 24 .93 .90 .93 .097 .062 sca 3-factor 207 9 71.52 24 .93 .87 .91 .095 .066 sca 3-factor 415 9 114.87 24 .94 .91 .93 .095 .060 am 1-factor 415 9 397.58 27 .80 .68 .70 .199 .109 sca 3-factor 239 9 101.10 24 .91 .87 .90 .116 .071 am 1-factor 239 9 318.76 27 .76 .60 .61 .220 .134 sca 3-factor 1361 9 252.91 24 .96 .93 .94 .085 .052 am 1-factor 1361 9 1215.13 27 .81 .67 .67 .194 .109 a our refined final model. note. sc = strictly confirmatory analysis, mg = model generating analysis, am = alternative models analysis. gfi = goodness of fit index. nnfi = non-normed fit index. cfi = comparative fit index. rmsea = root mean square error of approximation. srmr = standardized root mean square residual. results obtained using lisrel 8.54 (jöreskog & sörbom, 1996). three items. the bottom panel of figure 1 illustrates this model. the resulting measurement model provided an acceptable goodness-of-fit to the data: χ2 (24, n = 569) = 103.82, gfi = .96, nnfi = .91, cfi = .94, rmsea = .08, srmr = .06. 5.2.3 testing alternative models: is positive mindfulness multidimensional? we next tested whether this multidimensional model explained responses to the nine items better than a unidimensional model. as hypothesized, a one-factor model provided a poor fit to the data: χ2 (27, n = 569) = 534.62, gfi = .81, nnfi = .50, cfi = .62, rmsea = .19, srmr = .11. thus, the three-factor model fit the data better than a one-factor model, δχ2 (3, n = 569) = 430.80, p <.0001. these results indicate that positive mindfulness is multidimensional and reflects at least three basic dimensions. 5.2.4 strictly confirmatory: testing the cross-sample generalizability of the refined model the next set of analyses assessed how well the goodness-of-fit of the nine-item three-factor model replicated across two independent samples (ns = 207 and 208). we ran identical analyses for each independent sample, and for the pooled data from both samples combined (n = 415). results revealed that the refined three-factor model fit the data of each independent sample adequately: χ2 (24, n = 207) = 74.48, gfi = .93, nnfi = .90, cfi = .93, rmsea = .09, srmr = .06; and, χ2 (24, n = 208) = 71.52, gfi = .93, nnfi = .87, cfi = .91, rmsea = .09, srmr = .06, respectively. assessing the cross-sample generalizability of the refined three-factor model, additional tests of factorial invariance using multi-group cfa (jöreskog & sörbom, 1996) revealed that the factor loadings, factor variances-covariances, and unique variances of the three-factor model were equivalent for the two independent samples, χ2 (21, n = 415) = 30.83, p < .08. in addition, positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 160 the three-factor model provided an acceptable goodness-of-fit to the data of the two independent samples combined, χ2 (24, n = 415) = 114.87, gfi = .94, nnfi = .91, cfi = .92, rmsea = .09, srmr = .06 (see table 1). these findings strongly confirm the cross-sample generalizability of the three-factor cfa model. 5.2.5 testing alternative models in contrast, a unidimensional one-factor model fit the pooled data relatively poorly: χ2 (27, n = 415) = 397.58, gfi = .80, nnfi = .68, cfi = .70, rmsea = .20, srmr = .10, and provided a significantly worse fit compared to the three-factor model, δχ2 (3, n = 415) = 282.71, p < .0001. thus, the data suggest that the intended three-factor measurement model provides a reasonable representation of state mindfulness in relation to positive experience. this refined three-factor model incorporates the a priori mindfulness dimensions of novelty appreciation, focused attention, and open-ended expectations as originally hypothesized. however, the refined three-factor model excludes the initial mindfulness dimensions of categorization and distinction-making and openness to novelty. table 2 displays the completely standardized factor loadings from the confirmatory factor analyses. table 3 displays descriptive statistics and reliability estimates for the refined model. table 2. cfa factor loadings for the nine-item, three-factor positive state mindfulness model sample factor items 1 2 3 4 focused attention my attention was focused on what was happening just then. .67 .65 .64 .66 my attention was absorbed in the moment. .78 .73 .70 .84 i was aware of nothing else except what i was going through right then. .65 .62 .69 .72 novelty appreciation i enjoyed the newness of the moment. .68 .71 .78 .62 i took great pleasure in experiencing new things. .75 .80 .76 .79 everything happening seemed unique to me. .63 .62 .57 .73 open-ended expectations i wasn't sure of what to expect. .74 .77 .75 .72 i couldn't tell how things were going to unfold. .79 .80 .77 .82 i felt like anything could happen from one moment to the next. .64 .70 .58 .66 note: cfa = confirmatory factor analysis. tabled above are completely standardized factor loadings from maximum-likelihood cfa via lisrel 8.54 (jöreskog & sörbom, 1996). sample 1: pooled n = 1361. sample 2: n = 569. sample 3: n = 415. sample 4: n = 239. one smaller sample (n = 126) was not separately subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) but was included in the pooled sample 1. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 161 table 3. descriptive statistics for the positive state mindfulness scales sub-scale n αa mean sd min. max. focused attention (3 items) 583 .71 4.75 0.98 1.00 6.00 415 .73 4.84 0.99 1.00 6.00 239 .77 4.97 0.88 2.00 6.00 126 .79 4.76 1.04 1.00 6.00 1363 .73 4.82 0.97 1.00 6.00 novelty appreciation (3 items) 582 .73 4.60 1.02 1.00 6.00 415 .70 4.41 1.07 1.00 6.00 239 .75 4.51 1.10 1.33 6.00 126 .74 4.32 1.11 1.00 6.00 1362 .72 4.50 1.06 1.00 6.00 open-ended expectations (3 items) 585 .73 3.78 1.20 1.00 6.00 415 .80 3.77 1.28 1.00 6.00 239 .77 3.78 1.28 1.00 6.00 126 .76 3.87 1.27 1.00 6.00 1365 .76 3.78 1.24 1.00 6.00 a cronbach’s alpha, an index of item internal consistency. additionally, to ascertain the unique proportion of variance explained by a second-order factor and unique variance explained by each of the three first-order factors (n = 415), a schmidleiman solution was examined to assess the proportion of variance explained by a higher-order factor compared to the proportion of variance explained by each of the three hypothesized factors. results from wolff and preising’s (2005) macro for sas, version 9.1 suggest that the second-order factor (i.e., recalled positive mindfulness) accounted for only 19.4% of the variance and the three factors jointly accounted for 80.6% (focused attention = 34%, novelty appreciation = 26.4%, and open-ended expectations = 20.2%). these results converge with the previous findings that suggest a multidimensional model is a better fit with the data than a unidimensional or higher-order factor model. 5.2.6 correlations among dimensions of mindfulness finally, we used equality constraints via cfa (bryant et al., 2006) to directly compare correlations among the three dimensions, using the data of the pooled independent samples (n = 415). these analyses revealed that: a) focused attention was equally correlated with novelty appreciation (r = .61) and open-ended expectations (r = .67), δχ2(1) = 0.70, p < .41; b) novelty appreciation was more correlated with focused attention (r = .61) than it was with openended expectations (r = .36), δχ2(1) = 17.10, p <.0001; and, c) open-ended expectations had more to do with focused attention (r = .67) than with novelty appreciation (r = .36), δχ2(1) = 26.05, p <.0001. these results lend initial support to the divergent validity of the three dimensions that compose our refined measurement model. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 162 6. study 2 in study 1 we developed and confirmed a multidimensional factor model of recalled state mindfulness during a recent pleasant experience, and we established its structural validity using confirmatory factor analytic techniques. in study 2, we collected and analyzed two additional data sets for the purpose of testing the construct validity of each of the three mindfulness components with existing constructs. the goal of the second study was to investigate further our refined nine-item three-factor model of positive mindfulness, and extend our construct validation efforts to include more systematic tests of the model’s convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. toward this goal, we widened the conceptual net by administering the refined positive mindfulness measurement instrument along with a) existing measures of trait mindfulness, b) scales conceptually related to mindfulness, and c) scales conceptually distinct from mindfulness. thus, in addition to administering our refined three-factor measure, we administered two other self-report measures of mindfulness: the dispositional mindfulness/mindlessness scale (bodner & langer, 2001), and the dispositional mindful attention/awareness scale (brown & ryan, 2003). here, we sought to identify points of conceptual convergence and divergence between our state measure of positive mindfulness and trait measures of general mindfulness. in addition, we assessed five other constructs: a) savoring beliefs assessed in terms of the perceived capacity to savor positive experiences through anticipation, through appreciating the moment, and through reminiscence; b) trait absorption; c) need for cognition; d) uncertainty tolerance; and, e) personal need for structure. as a global test of discriminant validity, we hypothesized that each of the three dimensions of positive mindfulness would show a different pattern of associations with the set of criterion measures. as a global test of convergent validity, we hypothesized that trait absorption would be positively related to all three dimensions of positive mindfulness and that the need for structure would be negatively correlated with all three dimensions of positive mindfulness. we hypothesized that: a) all three temporal forms of savoring beliefs would be positively related to the mindful appreciation of novelty and to positive focused attention, but less strongly related to open-ended expectations; b) the capacity to savor positive experiences prospectively through anticipation would be negatively related to open-ended expectations; and c) tolerance of uncertainty would be positively related to the appreciation of novelty and open-ended expectations, but less strongly related to positive temporal focus. below we provide more specific theoretical foundations for our hypotheses concerning each of these criterion measures. 6.1 method 6.1.1 participants and procedure sample 3 (n = 239) included 165 females (69%) and 74 males (31%) with one respondent who did not report gender (<1%). sample 4 (n = 126) included 54 women (42.9%), 33 men (26.2%), and 39 respondents (31%) for whom gender information was not collected. the survey administration procedure used in study 2 was essentially the same as the procedure described in study 1. the only change was that respondents in study 2 needed more time to complete the additional validation measures we administered. to counteract any order effects, three different item orders were arranged and then randomly assigned to respondents. as noted below, not all instruments were administered to all respondents. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 163 6.1.2 measures mms. we measured dispositional mindfulness, or the stable trait of proneness to mindfulness in samples 3 and 4, using bodner and langer’s (2001) mindfulness/mindlessness scale (mms). the mms consists of 21 items, each assessed by a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree, with middle point = neutral). the mms composite score was reliable (sample 3 cronbach’s α = .80, sample 4 cronbach’s α = .87). bodner and langer (2001) presented evidence suggesting that their scale taps into a person's self-reported characteristic propensity to be mindful. even though the mms is a trait measure and our instrument is a state measure, both measures are based on langer’s conceptualization of mindfulness. therefore, we hypothesized positive correlations between the mms and at least one of our scales. maas. in sample 4, we also measured dispositional mindfulness using the mindful attention/awareness scale (maas; brown & ryan, 2003), a 15-item unidimensional measure of trait mindfulness, with items assessed using a 6-point scale (1 = almost always to 6 = almost never). the maas is worded such that higher total scores suggest the absence of mindlessness in respondents’ lives (sample 4 cronbach’s α = .88). given that the maas items were only indirectly based on langer's conceptualization of mindfulness, and that the items tapped into the absence of mindlessness rather than the presence of mindfulness, we expected that the total score of this trait measure would not correlate positively with our three scales. sbi. both samples 3 and 4 completed the savoring beliefs inventory (sbi; bryant, 2003), a self-report measure assessing a person's perceived ability to enjoy positive events by: a) anticipating the future (sample 3 cronbach’s α = .72, sample 4 cronbach’s α = .81); b) savoring the moment (sample 3 cronbach’s α = .72, sample 4 cronbach’s α = .81); and, c) reminiscing about the past (sample 3 cronbach’s α = .83, sample 4 cronbach’s α = .81). each scale has 8 items (4 positively-worded, 4 negatively-worded) assessed using a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). given that savoring involves mindfulness of positive stimuli, we expected that our present-oriented focused attention subscale would correlate positively with the present-oriented savoring the moment subscale of the sbi. we also expected that novelty appreciation would positively correlate with savoring the moment. based on the notion that anticipation requires a fixed positive expectation regarding the future, we expected that savoring through anticipation would correlate negatively with the positive mindfulness dimension of open-ended expectations. tas. we assessed trait absorption in sample 4 using tellegen’s absorption scale (tas; tellegen & atkinson, 1974), consisting of 34 items (sample 4 cronbach’s α = .79) assessed by a 7-point likert scale (0 = never to 7 = always). although trait absorption has primarily been linked to hypnotic susceptibility, absorption is also associated with experiential involvement (wild et al., 1995). thus, we expected that our focused attention scale would correlate positively with the tas, because both measures are present-time oriented and suggest sensory-perceptual and experiential engagement. uts. we assessed individual differences in the capacity to tolerate situational uncertainty in sample 4 using the uncertainty tolerance scale (uts; dalbert, 1999), an 8-item measure of the extent to which a person tolerates spontaneity, surprise, and disrupted routines. the uts contains both presentand future-focused items and uses a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree). the version we used was translated by c. dalbert from german into english (using back-translation). uts total score is used in our analyses (sample 4 cronbach’s α = .62). although this reliability coefficient is somewhat low, we expected that uts total score would correlate positively with each of our subscales. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 164 pns. we measured individual differences in the need for routine and structure in sample 4 using the personal need for structure scale (pns; neuberg & newsome, 1993), consisting of 12 items each assessed by a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree). a higher pns total score suggests a greater need for simple structure in life (sample 4 cronbach’s α = .81). because people less inclined to be spontaneous are likely to approach positive experiences with fixed plans and clear-cut future expectations, we would expect them to report lower levels of present-focused attention, appreciation of novelty, and open-ended expectations. from this view, individuals’ personal need for structure, in theory, should correlate negatively with all three of our components of mindfulness. nfc. finally, we measured individual differences in the motivation to think and understand in sample 4 using the 18-item version of the need for cognition scale (nfc; cacioppo & petty, 1982), with each item assessed using a 5-point scale (1 = extremely uncharacteristic to 5 = extremely characteristic). in sample 4, cronbach’s α for nfc was .87. we hypothesized that nfc has little to do with mindfulness in relation to positive situations, and hence would be uncorrelated with our subscales. 6.2 results and discussion we first computed unit-weighted average scores for each of our three subscales, along with scale and subscale scores for each of the criterion measures. we next used meta-analytic statistical methods to organize and simplify construct validation across the two samples. when the same constructs were assessed in both sample 3 and 4, we calculated and reported an average r weighted by sample size (d-stat 1.11; johnson, 1995). when a bivariate correlation was assessed in only one sample, we reported the pearson product-moment correlation. table 4 displays the correlations observed among our positive mindfulness subscales, the measures of trait mindfulness, and each of the criterion measures in study 2. table 4. meta-analytic and bivariate correlations among positive state mindfulness scales, trait mindfulness scales and related constructs measures n focused attention novelty appreciation open-ended expectations mms maas mms 365a .07 .32** .15* -- maas 126 .04 .13 -.32** .25** - sbi anticipation 365a .30** .28** -.11 .32** .30* sbi savor the moment 365a .41** .27** -.08 .34** .46** sbi reminiscence 365a .21** .17* -.19** .35** .49** tas 126 .17* .15 .18* .30** -.29** uts 126 .25** .20* .16 .36** .02 pns 126 -.19* -.14 -.10 -.31** -.18* nfc 126 .07 -.06 -.08 .61** .26** *p < .05. **p < .01. a meta-analytic correlations. note: mms = mindfulness/mindlessness scale (bodner & langer, 2001). maas = mindful attention/awareness scale (brown & ryan, 2003), higher scores reflect lower trait mindlessness. sbi = savoring beliefs inventory (bryant, 2003). tas = tellegen’s absorption scale (tellegen & atkinson, 1974). uts = uncertainty tolerance scale (dalbert, 1999). pns = personal need for structure (neuberg & newsome, 1993). nfc = need for cognition (cacioppo & petty, 1982). positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 165 in general, the validation results support the construct validity of our measure of mindfulness in relation to positive experience. confirming hypotheses, each of our three subscales of positive mindfulness demonstrated a different pattern of correlations with the criterion measures. these results support the discriminant validity of the three positive mindfulness subscales. below we consider the specific relations of each criterion measure with our subscales of positive mindfulness. 6.2.1 trait mindfulness/mindlessness as predicted, the data suggest that our positive state mindfulness subscales were more similar to the mms than to the maas; both of the latter are trait measures of mindfulness. supporting our hypotheses, novelty appreciation and open-ended expectations each evidenced modest positive correlations with the mms. our items were based entirely on langer’s conceptualization of mindfulness, which has consistently included the notions of seeking and producing novelty (i.e., novelty appreciation) and a tolerance for uncertainty (i.e., open-ended situational expectations). unexpectedly, our open-ended expectations subscale correlated negatively with the maas. what is it about being mindless that might actually predispose people to have more openended expectations in positive situations? we speculate that people who are characteristically unaware of their surroundings tend to lack expectations about what will happen next in positive situations; that is, characteristically mindless individuals are typically unsure about what to expect, cannot tell how things are going to unfold, and feel like anything could happen from one moment to the next (i.e., the three items comprising our open-ended expectations subscale). although this clearly seems to be the case, it leads to the paradoxical conclusion that being characteristically mindless actually helps people avoid closed-ended expectations during positive experiences; being mindless, in general, predisposes a person to be mindful with respect to remaining open to unlimited possibilities in positive situations. this ironic interpretation not only supports the discriminant validity of our open-ended expectations subscale, but also illustrates an important way in which mindfulness is not simply the opposite of mindlessness. moreover, that trait mindlessness is associated with positive state mindfulness, specifically concerning open-ended expectations, demonstrates the importance of distinguishing general trait mindlessness from mindfulness in relation to positive situations. 6.2.2 savoring beliefs concerning the criterion measures of savoring beliefs, the data confirmed the hypothesized pattern of correlations. specifically, as hypothesized our focused attention and novelty appreciation subscales were positively correlated with the perceived capacity to savor positive experiences through anticipation, savoring the moment, and reminiscence (see table 4). also as predicted, open-ended expectations correlated negatively with anticipation, although this effect did not reach statistical significance. contrary to predictions, however, open-ended expectations correlated negatively with savoring through reminiscence (r = -.19, p < .01). this latter finding suggests that being better at savoring retrospectively predisposes people to be more certain about what to expect, how things will unfold, and what will happen from one moment to the next in ongoing positive situations. given that stronger savoring beliefs via reminiscence are associated with more active memory-building during unfolding positive experiences (bryant & veroff, 2007), the tendency to savor through reminiscence may predispose people to be more closed-ended with respect to expectations in positive situations, so as to facilitate memory encoding for later recall. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 166 6.2.3 absorption further supporting our a priori hypotheses, the measure of trait absorption (tas) correlated positively with two out of three of our subscales: focused attention and open-ended expectations (see table 4). these results suggest that individuals with a tendency to become absorbed in the moment also tended to report being mindful during a recent positive event. 6.2.4 uncertainty tolerance also consistent with our hypotheses, uncertainty tolerance correlated positively with each of our subscales, though only two of these correlations (focused attention and novelty appreciation) were statistically significant. individuals with a proclivity to respond favorably to surprise and who tolerate disruption in daily routines tend to report being mindful during a recent positive experience. 6.2.5 need for structure further supporting our hypotheses, personal need for structure correlated negatively with our subscales, though only one of these negative correlations, focused attention (r = -.19, p < .05), was statistically significant. thus, the more need for structure, the less reported focused attention during recent positive experiences. alternatively, the less strongly individuals endorsed a personal need for structure, the more strongly they reported attending to the present during a recent positive experience. 6.2.6 need for cognition finally, supporting the discriminant validity of positive mindfulness, as hypothesized all three of our scales were uncorrelated with need for cognition (|rs| < .09, ns). the lack of a relation between nfc and state mindfulness suggests that the need for mental activity and mindfulness during positive activity are conceptually distinct. notice, in contrast, that both of the trait measures of mindfulness—the maas (r = .26, p < .01) and mms (r = .61, p < .01)—were correlated positively with need for cognition (see table 4). these results provide further evidence of the discriminant validity of positive state mindfulness, as distinct from trait mindfulness/mindlessness. 7. study 3 in study 1 we developed and confirmed a multidimensional factor model of state mindfulness during a recent pleasant experience, and we established its structural validity using confirmatory factor analytic techniques. in study 2, we collected and analyzed two additional data sets that garnered evidence of the construct validity of each of the three mindfulness components with existing constructs. the goal of study 3 was to investigate further our refined nine-item, three-factor model of positive mindfulness, and extend our construct validation efforts to include more tests of the model’s convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. toward this goal, we widened the conceptual net by again administering the refined positive mindfulness scale along with scales that would help distinguish our three sub-scales from each other. we were concerned with the unique pattern of correlations between positive mindfulness and conceptually related pleasant memorial phenomena, such as a) nostalgia, b) a sense of purpose in life, c) self-esteem, d) self-continuity, and e) interpersonal connectedness. research has established a solid link between nostalgia and subjective wellbeing (hepper, ritchie, sedikides, & wildschut, 2012; wildschut, sedikides, arndt, & routledge, 2006). as our positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 167 notion of positive mindfulness is itself grounded in subjective wellbeing, we anticipated that our scales would correlate positively with nostalgia and its correlates. additionally, we included items that assessed common features of positive events in memory, such as overall event rehearsal frequency, affect pleasantness at an event’s occurrence, and affect pleasantness at event recall (ritchie et al., 2006; ritchie et al., 2009; walker, skowronski, gibbons, vogl, & ritchie, 2009). we were concerned with if, and the extent to which, our positive mindfulness scales correlated uniquely with event-related affect, such as the perceived affect felt at a positive event’s occurrence and the affect prompted by thinking about the event at recall. we reasoned that novelty appreciation, for example, could correlate more strongly with affect at recall than with affect at occurrence, in part because the pleasant affect could be used to broaden and build upon a person’s current skills that could be useful for emotion-regulation (frederickson, cohn, coffey, pek, & finkel, 2008). finally, in relation to positive events, we wondered if people would report thinking about some aspects of mindfulness more often than others; hence, we examined the extent to which rehearsal frequency correlates positively with each dimension of positive mindfulness. 7.1 method 7.1.1 participants participants were undergraduate students (n = 46) from the university of limerick; half were women, half were men. their average age was 21.8 years (sd = 5.82). over 90% were irish. 7.1.2 procedure research assistants contacted students via email using class rosters. volunteers were emailed an informed consent form, the instructions and a spreadsheet file, in which they entered their autobiographical events and event ratings. participants were prompted to recall and type a brief description of two positive autobiographical events: ‚please recall a moment from your life that felt pleasant to you at the time.‛ following this, they were prompted to simply describe ‚what happened?‛ in a text space in the spreadsheet. they dated each of their events by indicating how old they were at the time the event occurred. event age was computed by subtracting their ages at each event from their current age. next, each returned their completed file to the research assistant, who then emailed each participant a debrief form, thanked them for participation and offered to deliver them a small token of appreciation for their contributions to the study. 7.1.3 measures participants rated both of their positive events using a number of scales that have been used to study autobiographical event characteristics (ritchie et al., 2006) and the functions of nostalgia (wildschut et al., 2006). each of the items that follow was prefaced with ‚thinking about this event<‛ on which participants rated both of their events along 6-point likert scales (strongly disagree = 1 to 6 = strongly agree), following the general instruction, ‚please indicate your agreement or disagreement by typing a number next to each statement.‛ the sample sizes reported below are the event sample sizes, not the person sample sizes; hence, the partial correlations preserve the multi-level data structure. such sizes vary due to skipped responses on some items for some events per person. the mean of each item positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 168 characteristic was used in the analysis. higher ratings reflect strong agreement that the items characterize what it was like for participants to think about a positive event. 7.1.3.1 positive mindfulness scales focused attention was assessed with two items: ‚focuses my attention on what is happening right now‛ and ‚absorbs my attention in the moment.‛ responses to these items were uncorrelated, r(91) = .13, p = .21. novelty appreciation was assessed with two items: ‚makes me enjoy the newness of this moment‛ and ‚reminds me to take pleasure in experiencing new things.‛ responses to these items correlated positively, r(90) = .38, p < .0005. open-ended expectations was assessed with two items: ‚makes me unsure of what to expect‛ and ‚reminds me that i cannot tell how things are going to unfold.‛ responses to these items correlated positively, r(91) = .47, p < .0005. 7.1.3.2 event characteristics scales nostalgia was assessed with two items: ‚makes me feel nostalgic‛ and ‚is a nostalgic experience for me.‛ responses to these items correlated positively, r(91) = .93, p < .0005. purpose in life was assessed with two items: ‚makes me feel life is meaningful‛ and ‚makes me feel life has a purpose‛. responses to these items correlated positively, r(91) = .79, p < .0005. self-esteem was assessed with two items: ‚makes me like myself better‛ and ‚makes me feel good about myself.‛ responses to these items correlated positively, r(91) = .71, p < .0005. self-continuity was assessed with two items: ‚makes me feel connected with who i was in the past‛ and ‚makes me feel connected with my past.‛ responses to these items correlated positively, r(91) = .85, p < .0005. interpersonal connectedness was assessed with two items: ‚makes me feel i can trust others‛ and ‚makes me feel connected to loved ones.‛ responses to these items correlated positively, r(91) = .54, p < .0005. overall rehearsal frequency was assessed with one item: ‚how often have you rehearsed or reviewed this event since it occurred?‛ (never = 1 to 6 = very frequently). finally, event affect was assessed with two items: ‚when it happened, how pleasant did this event make you feel?‛ and ‚when you remember the event now, how pleasant does the event make you feel?‛ (not at all = 1 to 6 = exceptionally). responses to these items correlated positively, r(86) = .32, p < .005. 7.2 results and discussion participants tended to recall and rate positive events from their lives that were, on average, 6.79 years old (sd = 7.24). this approach differs from our initial studies because in the present study we did not constrain positive event age to one week. nevertheless, event age was uncorrelated with each of the three scales of positive mindfulness. as in all of the previous studies, the composite averages each correlated positively with each other: focused attention with novelty appreciation, r(91) = .33, p =.002; focused attention with open-ended expectations, r(91) = .21, p = .04; and, novelty appreciation with open-ended expectations, r(91) = .36, p = .001. only focused attention correlated positively with event-related affect, specifically with the affect prompted at recall, r(86) = .35, p < .0005; and, none correlated with affect felt at an event’s occurrence. further, only focused attention correlated positively with overall rehearsal frequency, r(90) = .21, p = .04. next, novelty appreciation correlated positively with selfesteem, r(91) = .46, p < .0005. both focused attention and novelty appreciation correlated positively with interpersonal connectedness, r(91) = .25, p = .02, and r(91) = .33, p = .002, respectively. finally, focused attention, novelty appreciation, and open-ended expectations positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 169 each correlated positively with purpose in life, r(91) = .33, p = .002; r(91) = .39, p < .0005; and, r(91) = .34, p = .001, respectively. finally, none of the dimensions of positive mindfulness correlated with nostalgia or self-continuity. these findings add to the convergent validity of positive mindfulness. first, in studies 1 and 2 we examined the relations between our scales and a variety of existing individual difference measures, whereas in study 3 we examined the relations between our scales and conceptually related ratings about positive autobiographical events. despite this difference in scope, the fact that all positive event characteristics did not correlate positively with all of our scales suggests that each of the dimensions represents a related but distinct facet of positive mindfulness. second, up to this study we had prompted participants each for a single positive event that was constrained temporally to within the past week, a relatively recent event. in the present study we widened the scope of positive events by prompting not only two of such events per person but also placed no temporal constraints on their recollection task. despite these differences in approach, results across each of the studies produced a converging pattern of correlations. third, the validity estimates garnered in the present study support our notion that positive mindfulness is relevant to the study of a range of memorial and emotional phenomena. when thinking about their positive experiences our participants’ ratings evidenced a positive correlation between focused attention and pleasant affect, event rehearsal frequency, and interpersonal connectedness; thus, this dimension of positive mindfulness is relevant to several domains of experience: emotional, cognitive, and social, respectively. further, only novelty appreciation correlated positively with the self-esteem boosting quality of recalling past positive experiences. such reminiscence may make a person feel good about the self, which in turn may stimulate curiosity and an explorative use of attention, resulting in an appreciation for novelty. such a finding is consistent with the broaden-andbuild framework of emotion regulation (fredrickson et al., 2008). finally, all three of our scales correlated positively with a sense of meaning to life that thinking about past positive experiences can provide; consistent with findings from nostalgia research (routledge et al., 2011). indeed, reflecting on past positive events may prompt a person to reflect on the meaning and purpose of their own lives. the data suggest that doing so might actually prevent goal-oriented, future thinking, forecasting, and planning. one can experience a sense that one’s expectations can, for a moment, be suspended, as reliving a positive experience by itself imbues the self with a sense of existential meaning. interestingly, none of our scales of positive mindfulness correlated with nostalgia or selfcontinuity. one reason for this might be that nostalgia, while a predominantly positive emotion, is sometimes bittersweet (hepper et al., 2011). when we had asked participants to reflect on purely positive events, nostalgia may not have been as dominant a feature as it could have been. prompting nostalgic events or events associated with mixed feelings might provoke positive mindfulness. this is an empirical issue for future research. so far, our data support langer’s theory of mindfulness in the context of recalled positive experiences. in fact, the theory offers more dimensions than were needed to model positive experiences in our samples. theory predicted five dimensions; however, our data suggested that only three dimensions were necessary. across multiple samples our three-factor model fit the data better than a one-factor model, which distinguishes positive mindfulness from the onefactor trait models. to garner more validation evidence for our model, we next turned away positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 170 from subjective self-reports of autobiographical accounts to present-oriented, experimental manipulations. 8. study 4 we conducted two experiments to garner evidence for the criterion validity of positive mindfulness. in parallel we aimed to strengthen the argument that our measurement model is sensitive to fluctuations of state mindfulness, particularly with regard to experiential positivity. hence, we manipulated theory-relevant contextual elements within a controlled setting and then assessed the degree to which these manipulations influenced participant ratings on our 9item instrument (experiment 1), and on a single item from each of the three dimensions of our instrument (experiment 2). to minimize mono-operational bias in evaluating the construct validity of positive mindfulness (cook & campbell, 1979), the experimental tasks in both experiments were affectively neutral and relatively mundane compared to the recalled recent positive experiences we used in prior studies. to minimize mono-method bias in evaluating the construct validity of positive mindfulness (cook & campbell, 1979), experiment 1 was designed to decrease positive mindfulness; experiment 2 was designed to increase it. 8.1 experiment 1 in experiment 1, we aimed to induce boredom in participants via a repetitive task that has been shown to provoke boredom in the laboratory (van tilburg & igou, 2011). we reasoned that because the nature of the boredom task is inherently unpleasant, any or all of our three positive mindfulness dimensions might evidence lower scores during boredom. participants who experience only mild boredom, compared to those who experience greater boredom, may a) appreciate the novelty of the task to a greater degree, b) more strongly focus on the present, and c) formulate fewer expectations about what is going to happen in the near future. therefore, we hypothesized that participants in the high boredom condition would score lower than participants in the low boredom condition on one or more of our subscales of positive mindfulness. 8.1.1 method 8.1.1.1 participants and procedure participants included 34 women and 12 men enrolled in an undergraduate psychology course at the university of limerick. the mean sample age was 18.78 years (sd = 2.19, range = 17-27). each participant was randomly assigned to a low boredom condition (n = 24) or to a high boredom condition (n = 22). participants in the former transcribed via typing two wikipedia entries from a web site into a text editor; participants in the latter group did the same task for 10 entries (van tilburg & igou, 2011). they next each rated an item on their level of state boredom: ‚to what extent did the task you just completed make you feel bored?‛ (1 = not at all to 7 = very much). following this, they completed the 9-item positive state mindfulness scale (see appendix a). 8.1.2 results and discussion the state boredom manipulation proved successful: participants in the low boredom condition scored significantly lower (m = 3.79, sd = 1.84) on the boredom index than those in the high boredom condition (m = 4.91, sd = 1.57), t(44) = -2.20, p < .05. next, as hypothesized, participants in the low boredom condition evidenced higher novelty appreciation ratings (ls positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 171 mean = 4.81, se = 0.23) than those in the high boredom condition (ls mean = 4.07, se = 0.26), controlling for state boredom, f(1, 38) = 4.57, p < .05, partial ε2 = .11, model r2 = .14. further, the effect of boredom on novelty appreciation remained significant, controlling for state boredom and with both focused attention and open-ended expectations entered as covariates (due to the correlations between these ratings and the outcome rating), such that participants in the low boredom condition evidenced higher novelty appreciation ratings (ls mean = 4.81, se = 0.17) than those in the high boredom condition (ls mean = 4.15, se = 0.19), f(1, 36) = 6.93, p = .01, partial ε2 = .16, model r2 = .64. although the means were in the same direction as above, focused attention and open-ended expectations did not reach significance between boredom conditions. in sum, participants who engaged in the more repetitive and boring task of text transcription of web site passages into a text editor had a more difficult time maintaining a sense of novelty appreciation than those who engaged in a similar but less repetitive task. this makes sense, because what likely seemed novel at first to those in the high boredom condition became routine and a bigger challenge to appreciate compared to the low boredom condition. such a finding suggests that the more repetitive, unchallenging and boring a task becomes the harder it was for many individuals to find and appreciate novelty in the moment. indeed, the more mindless a task becomes to a person the less mindful they will remain during the task, in general (csikszentmihalyi, 1975). these data show that increased boredom diminished positive mindfulness, especially the appreciation of novelty. 8.2 experiment 2 experiment 2 differed from the previous experiment in two ways. first, in experiment 2 we sought to engage participants’ attention in a task in order to increase positive mindfulness rather than decrease it. second, as our outcome measures we assessed each dimension of positive mindfulness using only a subset of items from the full measurement instrument used in experiment 1. specifically, we chose the item with the highest cfa factor loading for each subscale in our earlier studies, to represent the dimensions of novelty appreciation, focused attention, and open-ended expectations. paralleling experiment 1, we reasoned that engaging in a pleasant task that afforded the opportunity to experience positive mindfulness would boost levels of one or more of our three dimensions, compared to engaging in the same task but with less opportunity to experience positive mindfulness. participants in each of two conditions first read the same riddle, and were then asked to solve the riddle (see appendix b). participants in the delayed answer condition were not told the correct response before prompted to solve it; whereas participants in the immediate answer condition were told the correct response before prompted to solve it. the former condition contained each of the three elements of positive mindfulness. for instance, being a mildly pleasant task, a) the novelty of the riddle was there to appreciate (it was unfamiliar to most participants), b) focused attention to the present was possible because they were given the goal to solve the riddle, and c) open-ended expectation was possible because they were informed that they would learn the correct response in a few minutes. in contrast, we reasoned that spoiling the mystery immediately by telling participants the correct response before prompting them for their response would not only stifle the opportunity to appreciate novelty, but would also shift these participants’ attention away from the present (toward the future, end of the study) and lead to closed-expectations (i.e., knowing the answer eliminated the suspense of discovering the correct response). thus, the delayed answer participants, compared to the immediate answer participants, were expected to find positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 172 an opportunity to appreciate the novelty of the task, sustain their focus to the present, and suspend their expectations about what should or could happen in the near future as they waited for the riddle’s outcome. in sum, we hypothesized that the delayed answer condition would produce higher scores on measures of positive mindfulness than would the immediate answer condition. 8.2.1 method 8.2.1.1 participants and procedure participants included 92 individuals (52 women, 36 men and 4 who did not specify their gender) who were enrolled in graduate programs at the university of limerick. the mean sample age was 29.09 years (sd = 8.32, range = 22-60). participants first read and then gave their informed consent to participate in a study entitled ‚what it’s like when you pay attention‛. each participant was randomly assigned to either the immediate answer condition (n = 51), who read a brief riddle1 and was immediately told the answer to it, or to the delayed answer condition (n = 41), who read the same riddle, then were prompted to solve it by typing a response, and later shown the correct response. following the riddle, participants in both conditions indicated their familiarity with the riddle (0 = no; 1 = no, but it seemed familiar; 2 = yes), and then rated the extent to which they were certain they knew the correct response (1 = not at all certain, 2 = a little certain, 3 = moderately certain, 4 = certain). following these ratings, both conditions completed a selection of three items from each of the three positive mindfulness subscales, one item from focused attention, open-ended expectations and novelty appreciation, respectively: ‚at the moment my attention is absorbed in the moment‛, ‚right now i cannot tell how things are going to unfold‛, and ‚at the moment i take great pleasure in experiencing new things‛ (6 = strongly agree, 5 = moderately agree, 4 = agree a little, 3 = disagree a little, 2 = moderately disagree, 1 = strongly disagree). participants then reported their gender and age. on the penultimate page, those in the delayed answer condition were then shown the correct response to the riddle; those in the immediate answer condition were reminded of the correct response, which they had seen earlier. finally, students were debriefed and thanked for their participation. 8.2.2 results and discussion the riddle manipulation proved successful: the participants who were told the answer before reading the riddle (immediate answer) more frequently solved the riddle correctly (40) than incorrectly (11) and those who were not told the answer before reading the riddle (delayed answer) more often responded incorrectly (24) than correctly (17), χ2 (1, n = 92) = 13.18, p < .0001, cramer’s v = .38, p < .0001. as expected, participants in the delayed answer condition evidenced higher focused attention ratings (ls mean = 4.66, se = 0.18) than those in the immediate answer condition (ls mean = 4.14, se = 0.16), f(1, 90) = 4.51, p < .05, partial ε2 = .05, model r2 = .05. this effect also occurred after controlling for the main effects of whether or not participants solved the riddle correctly, whether they had heard the riddle before the experiment, the extent to which they were certain that they knew the outcome, and with ratings of novelty appreciation and open-ended expectations included as covariates (due to the correlations between these ratings and the outcome rating). under these controlled conditions, focused attention ratings were higher for those in the delayed answer condition (ls mean = 4.55, se = positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 173 0.17) than those in the immediate answer condition (ls mean = 3.98, se = 0.19), f(1, 80) = 5.11, p < .05, partial ε2 = .06, model r2 = .47. participants in the immediate answer condition evidenced a larger open-ended expectation mean (ls mean = 4.94, se = 0.25) than those in the delayed answer condition (ls mean = 4.35, se = 0.21), however, this difference was statistically non-significant, f(1, 83) = 3.30, p = .07. finally, participants in the immediate answer condition evidenced nearly identical novelty appreciation means (ls mean = 4.41, se = 0.23) to those in the delayed answer condition (ls mean = 4.48, se = 0.20), f(1, 83) < 1, ns. these results suggest that the participants who learned the riddle’s outcome immediately allowed their present focus of attention to wander more than those who had to wait to learn the riddle’s outcome. those in the delayed answer condition had a legitimate reason to sustain their attention to the present moment. such a result supports our hypothesis that attentional engagement increases positive mindfulness. 9. general discussion the present research makes several important contributions to the field of positive psychology. first, our data clearly demonstrate that reported states of mindfulness during positive experiences are multidimensional (see baer et al., 2006). although social cognitive theorizing (langer, 1992, 1997) strongly supports a multifaceted conceptualization of mindfulness, existing measures of this construct exclusively provide only a unidimensional total score. further, existing measures of mindfulness focus on disposition and trait, whereas we posit and supported a state, positive state mindfulness. across four independent samples, our data unequivocally demonstrate that a theorygrounded three-factor model (focused attention, novelty appreciation, open-ended expectations) provided an appropriate and generalizable model for assessing states of positive mindfulness, whereas a one-factor model did not. thus, our data strongly confirm a priori, the multidimensionality of mindfulness, and they support the conclusion that states of positive mindfulness are meaningfully conceptualized in terms of focused attention, appreciation of novel stimuli, and open-ended expectations in relation to an unfolding experience. as a second important contribution to the literature, our multidimensional instrument is a valuable measurement tool for researchers who wish to operationalize mindfulness as a multifaceted state construct. indeed, doing so is consistent with existing theoretical frameworks. the data from study 1 demonstrate clearly the structural validity and ability of our three-factor model to replicate positive state mindfulness. across a combined sample of 1,363 respondents, the three-factor measurement model not only provided an acceptable psychometric representation of responses to the set of nine self-report items, but also consistently fit the data significantly better than a unitary, one-factor model and yielded brief subscales that had reasonable reliabilities. providing a third valuable contribution, the data from study 2 supported the construct validity of our three-factor model of positive mindfulness. in support of discriminant validity, each of the three positive mindfulness subscales correlated differently with the set of criterion measures. when controlling for differences in reliability, the three subscales were differentially inter-correlated, such that focused attention was equally related to both novelty appreciation and open-ended expectations, novelty appreciation was more strongly related to focused attention than to open-ended expectations, and open-ended expectations was more strongly related to focused attention than to novelty appreciation. this pattern of results supports the positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 174 conclusion that positive mindfulness is multidimensional, and that these three underlying dimensions are related but distinct. as a fourth contribution to the literature, our data support the conclusion that specific states of positive mindfulness are conceptually distinct from both general trait mindfulness and general trait mindlessness (see sternberg, 2000). in study 2 (table 4), including trait measures of both mindfulness (mms) and mindlessness (maas) enabled us to demonstrate that: a) trait mindfulness and trait mindlessness share only about 6% of their variance (r = .25); b) traits of high mindfulness and low mindlessness are more strongly associated with individual differences in need for cognition, absorption, uncertainty tolerance, and need for structure than are states of positive mindfulness; c) high trait mindfulness (mms total score) predisposes people toward higher levels of novelty appreciation and open-ended expectations, but is unrelated to focused attention during positive experiences; and, d) high trait mindlessness (maas total score) predisposes people toward open-ended expectations during positive experiences. this last finding is important because it illustrates a specific way in which trait mindlessness is distinct from the absence of mindfulness—being characteristically mindless may actually help people avoid closing their minds to future possibilities while positive experiences are unfolding. confirming specific nomological hypotheses about convergent and discriminant validity, the subscales of focused attention and novelty appreciation demonstrated reliable associations with self-assessed capacities to savor positive experiences prospectively (by anticipating), concurrently (by savoring the moment), and retrospectively (by reminiscing), and with tolerance for uncertainty. further confirming our hypotheses, responses to focused attention correlated positively with trait absorption, but were unrelated to the need for structure; and all three positive mindfulness subscales were unrelated to the need for cognition. yet our data are not entirely consistent with a priori predictions. somewhat unexpectedly, open-ended expectations were unrelated to self-assessed capacity to savor prospectively and concurrently, and were negatively correlated with perceived capacity to savor retrospectively. consistent with past theorizing (bryant & veroff, 2007), we suggest that savoring is most strongly associated with focused attention on pleasurable stimuli, and that the tendency to savor through reminiscence may predispose individuals to restrict expectations during ongoing positive experiences, in order to facilitate encoding of memories for later recall. also inconsistent with hypotheses, open-ended expectations were unrelated to uncertainty tolerance, and novelty appreciation was unrelated to trait absorption. nevertheless, the overall pattern of correlations of the three positive state mindfulness subscales with the set of criterion measures supported the convergent and discriminant validity of our multidimensional model of positive mindfulness. despite these conceptual and psychometric contributions, the present research is not without its limitations. the types of experiences that we sampled represent emotionally pleasant but relatively mundane and ordinary recent experiences. we did not intend to sample respondents’ self-reported peak experiences, such as memories associated with intense levels of positive emotional arousal. we acknowledge, however, that some individuals did report such events, and these events were inter-mixed with the ordinary pleasant events. perhaps other dimensions of mindfulness that we initially posited (e.g., categorization and distinctionmaking) would have emerged had we examined a wider range of positive experiences. in addition, although we included large samples of respondents, they were predominantly undergraduate students (an exception was study 4, experiment 2). although we see no theoretical reason to believe college students’ states of positive mindfulness should differ from positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 175 those of older adults, it remains important to demonstrate that our multidimensional measure of positive mindfulness generalizes to a wider community population. furthermore, studies 1, 2 and 3 assessed states of positive mindfulness retrospectively by asking respondents to report what they remembered experiencing during a recent positive event. although we minimized the potentially distorting effects of the passage of time by restricting respondents to a positive experience that occurred during the past week (studies 12), we have no way of validating the accuracy of these retrospective self-reports. while it would be advantageous in some respects to assess mindfulness concurrently during ongoing positive events (i.e., experience sampling methodology), doing so might well alter the very states that participants are experiencing. nonetheless, experience sampling methods could assist in validating positive state mindfulness. in study 4 we manipulated state boredom and task engagement. both experiments added to the validity of positive mindfulness using our scale. indeed, experiment 1 supported the notion that a repetitive and boring task impacted on positive mindfulness negatively, particularly affecting appreciation for novelty. experiment 2 supported the notion that limited engagement with a simple cognitive task interfered with a person’s ability to focus their attention on the present. stated differently, giving people the opportunity to engage in a puzzling task prompted them to focus their attention longer throughout the experiment, compared to those whose opportunity to engage was limited. these findings support the criterion validity of our multidimensional measure of positive state mindfulness. we hope that researchers seek to identify specific characteristics of positive events that promote states of positive mindfulness. for example, situational elements of uncertainty, spontaneity, novelty, complexity, surprise, inspiration, awe, nostalgia, and the absence of distraction may enhance the tendency to be mindful as positive experiences are unfolding (bryant & veroff, 2007). it would be valuable to manipulate such characteristics experimentally and measure participants’ responses using our states of positive mindfulness subscales. related to the applications of savoring (bryant & veroff, 2007), we believe there are numerous applications of positive state mindfulness. we began by modeling spontaneous positive mindfulness in ordinary positive experience. our data suggest that even a simple reminder about recent positive past events can rekindle positive mindfulness. we speculate that our dimensions of positive state mindfulness will be useful for practitioners of many disciplines. indeed, increasing positive state mindfulness bolsters daily enjoyment. for example, in education our measure will help educators examine students’ engagement with novel information, and will help elucidate why some students lose interest in a subject while others retain their interest. learning requires considerable effort; the expenditure of such effort can be a source of enjoyment and personal meaning. we think that assessing positive state mindfulness in the classroom will offer insights about the learning process, and ultimately assist educators to improve the quality of their instruction, as well as their students’ learning satisfaction and performance. as wellbeing researchers, we focus on the psychological processes that maintain health. positive state mindfulness offers new possibilities for understanding the construction and maintenance of wellbeing; at the same time, we believe that it also offers new possibilities to understand what happens when wellbeing is disrupted and subdued. for example, clinicians and counselors benefit from assessing not only their clients’ maladaptive symptoms, such as anhedonia and rumination, but also benefit from assessing the lack of their clients’ adaptive indicators, such an appreciation for novelty in the present moment. we view the goals to increase positive mindfulness and savoring as facilitative with mindfulness-based programs positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 176 (e.g., stress management, dialectical behavioral therapy). such goals include intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. in sum, we hope that positive state mindfulness and our measure will assist professionals in their efforts to improve the quality of life of those for whom they care. acknowledgements we would like to thank ellen langer, todd bodner, and claudia dalbert for sharing their measures with us. we are grateful to shannon archuleta, adam dehoek, carrie ericksen, scott 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(2005). exploring item and higher order factor structure with the schmidleiman solution: syntax codes for spss and sas. behavior research methods, 37, 48-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/bf03206397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0036681 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.06.017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167211418530 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658210903107846 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.3.569 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.975 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/bf03206397 positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 180 appendix a. the positive state mindfulness scale permission to use. permission for use of the positive state mindfulness scale (psms) is not necessary when use is for academic research or educational purposes. reference the authors by citing the present article. use of the psms in profit-making ventures requires permission and a nominal charge. inclusion of the psms within a larger scale that will be copyrighted also requires permission. send a request to the first author. usage and scoring. we staggered the item presentation order; a focused attention item, followed by a novelty appreciation item, followed by an open-ended expectation item, and so on. we set each item to a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = disagree somewhat, 4 = agree somewhat, 5 = agree, and 6 = strongly agree). score each subscale by computing either the average or the sum. each subscale is grouped below. instructions. phrase each item to fit your research question and design. for instance, in studies 1-3 we assessed recalled positive events; hence, our instructions were phrased in the past tense: ‚recall a recent positive experience that occurred sometime within the past five days.‛ in study 4, we assessed positive state mindfulness following different experimental manipulations; hence, we phrased the items in the present tense. dimension past tense present tense focused attention during my positive experience my attention was focused on what was happening just then. my attention is focused on what is happening right now. <my attention was absorbed in the moment. my attention is absorbed in the moment. <i was aware of nothing else except what i was going through right then. i am aware of nothing else except what i am going though right now. novelty appreciation during my positive experience i enjoyed the newness of the moment. i enjoy the newness of this moment. <i took great pleasure in experiencing new things. at the moment i take great pleasure in experiencing new things. <everything happening seemed unique to me. right now everything happening seems unique to me. open-ended expectations during my positive experience i wasn't sure of what to expect. right now i am not sure what to expect. <i couldn't tell how things were going to unfold. right now i cannot tell how things are going to unfold. <i felt like anything could happen from one moment to the next. i feel like anything could happen from one moment to the next. positive state mindfulness ritchie & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 181 appendix b the riddle used in study 4, experiment 2: ‚a boy was at a carnival and went to a booth where a man said to the boy, ‘if i write your exact weight on this piece of paper then you have to give me €50, but if i cannot, i will pay you €50.’ the boy looked around and saw no scale, so he agrees thinking no matter what the man writes the boy will just say that he weighs more or less. in the end the boy ended up paying the man €50. how did the man win the bet?‛ http://www.blurtit.com/q627108.html http://www.blurtit.com/q627108.html lomas, t. (2015). positive cross-cultural psychology: exploring similarity and difference in constructions and experiences of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 5(4), 60-77. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i4.437 tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 article positive cross-cultural psychology: exploring similarity and difference in constructions and experiences of wellbeing tim lomas abstract: critical theorists have accused positive psychology of paying insufficient attention to cultural variation in the way wellbeing is constructed and experienced. while there may be some merit to this claim, the field has developed a more nuanced appreciation of culture than its critics suggest. however, it could also be argued that positive psychology has not sufficiently appreciated or absorbed the wealth of literature within cross-cultural psychology pertaining to wellbeing. this paper aims to forge a bridge between positive psychology and cross-cultural psychology by introducing the idea of ‘positive cross-cultural psychology,’ an interdisciplinary conceptual space for existing and future cross-cultural research on wellbeing. moreover, the paper offers a meta-theoretical perspective on trends within this literature. it is suggested that crosscultural research is underpinned by two broad orienting perspectives: a ‘universalising’ perspective, which holds that, despite apparent cultural differences, people share a common human nature; and a ‘relativising’ perspective, which argues that people are strongly shaped by their cultural context. however, the paper finally argues that most research can actually be seen as offering a synthesising perspective – labelled here as ‘universal relativism’ – which recognises universals in the ways wellbeing is sought, constructed and experienced, but allows for extensive variation in the ways these universals are shaped by culture. keywords: cross-cultural; culture; universalism; relativism; wellbeing 1. introduction as positive psychology (pp) took shape in the early years of the 21st century, one of the most prominent criticisms of this nascent field concerned its presumptions of universality. scholars in the area were without doubt making pioneering efforts towards examining and elucidating constructs pertaining to happiness and wellbeing. however, almost without exception, these scholarly efforts were under the auspices of universities in north america, and other areas of the western world. this fact of culture and geography of course does not undermine any of the research and theorising undertaken there, except in one respect: it places limits on the extent to which one might deem the constructs identified in these locations to be universal. the trouble, from a critical perspective, was that much of the work undertaken in pp did appear to make this presumption of universality (wierzbicka, 2004). concepts that had been identified mainly through testing affluent american undergraduate students tended to be presented as if universally applicable across time and place, generalizable to all other peoples and cultures. this is not a tendency to which only pp is susceptible; arguably it is the default setting of most mainstream psychology. nevertheless, it was problematic, presenting a very culturally-specific http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 version of happiness – one influenced by north american traditions of expressive individualism (a term popularised by bellah, madsen, sullivan, swidler, & tipton (1996), and defined by pope (1991, p.384) as the ‘unmitigated reference to the value of the individual self’) – as being both universal and perennial (izquierdo, 2005). yet, while pp has tended to be somewhat mono-cultural, this does not mean that psychology more broadly has not engaged with cross-cultural differences in wellbeing; indeed, cross-cultural psychologists have for years explored the ways in which happiness and wellbeing are conceptualised and experienced across different cultural locations. however, one could argue that such research has not been sufficiently appreciated within pp. this failure is arguably, in part, a result of the nature of pp itself. when pp was first proposed, its stated aim was to redress a postulated negativity bias in what was pejoratively referred to as ‘psychology as usual’ (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). the argument was that, whereas psychology had hitherto tended to endorse a deficit model of the person, pp would offer a new conceptual and disciplinary space where researchers could focus on topics like happiness and wellbeing; indeed, the subsequent success of pp arguably shows that there was a need for such a field, providing a ‘collective identity’ for scholars interested in the ‘brighter sides of human nature’ (linley & joseph, 2004, p.4). however, to create and sustain the idea of a new substantive field, its founders had to position it as indeed a new field, sufficiently different to what had preceded it in psychology to warrant its creation. as a result, critical theorists such as lazarus (2003) and held (2004) pointed to what they regarded as a ‘separatist’ agenda in pp, in which efforts were made to distance the field from related areas of enquiry, presenting it as different and/or better. this included seeking to differentiate pp from antecedent paradigms that were also interested in wellbeing and fulfilment, e.g., arguing that pp held an edge over humanistic psychology through pp’s emphasis on scientific enquiry (disregarding a fair amount of empirical work within humanistic psychology). one could argue that this type of separatism has caused scholars within pp to similarly overlook the wealth of theory and research pertaining to wellbeing in crosscultural psychology. so, this paper attempts to open up a dialogue – or a bridge, or point of intersection – between pp and cross-cultural psychology by introducing the idea of ‘positive cross-cultural psychology’ (pccp). this is conceived of as a disciplinary space where the two fields meet, comprising research on the cross-cultural dimensions of wellbeing, and undertaken by all scholars, whether they align themselves with pp or cross-cultural psychology or indeed any other relevant field (e.g., economics). this will enable pp to appreciate and draw on existing work on wellbeing in cross-cultural psychology, thereby helping pp to develop an understanding of wellbeing that is broader, more comprehensive and less culturally-specific (i.e., less based on western conceptions and discourses). the idea of ‘pccp’ also reflects an emergent strand of work already in pp, in which scholars who align themselves with the field are increasingly beginning to investigate the cross-cultural dimensions of wellbeing, as epitomised by the pioneering efforts of ed diener and robert biswas-diener. this emergent cross-cultural focus in the field has been driven by numerous factors, which include the global perspective of scholars such as ed diener, a response to critiques of the field’s earlier presumptions of western-oriented universality and the global dissemination of pp itself (i.e., how the field has been embraced and developed by scholars outside the west). this paper aims to provide a brief overview of work that could be identified as pertaining to pccp, showing the richness and vitality of research and theory in this area. in doing so, the paper will suggest that within such work – and indeed in academia and society more broadly – there are two broad currents of thought regarding ‘other’ cultures. the first, arguably more dominant positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 and prevalent, is what we might call a ‘universalising’ perspective, which focuses on the commonalities between people across cultures. the second, perhaps currently less common or influential in pp, could be named the ‘relativising’ perspective, which focuses on the differences between people of different cultures. these terms derive from the work of berry, poortinga, segall, and dasen (2011), who identified four main perspectives in cross-cultural scholarship: extreme relativism; moderate relativism; moderate universalism; and extreme universalism (referred to as ‘absolutism’ in previous editions of their work). however, berry et al. suggest that, in practice, it is rare to find scholars who endorse the extreme perspectives, with most work tending towards the moderate stances. indeed, berry, poortinga, segall, and dasen (2002, p.xix) sometimes simply differentiate between universalist and relativist scholarship (which they also refer to respectively as ‘culture-comparative’ and ‘culturalist’ approaches). following their example, this paper will aggregrate work into universalist and relativist perspectives (while recognising that each branch may contain both moderate and extreme varieties). after this introduction, the first main section of the paper identifies work that leans towards a universalising perspective. this work seeks to identify universal aspects of psychological functioning, possessed irrespective of cultural location. such work often involves gathering data from ‘many people in many cultures,’ as triandis (2000, p.186) puts it, highlighting how people globally share similarities across a spectrum of human processes, from personality (yamagata et al., 2006) to emotional expression (ekman et al., 1987) to cognitive development (mcbride–chang & kail, 2002). in pp, research along these lines tends to involve global surveys, leading to the identification of ‘contextual determinants’ that influence happiness, from income to social capital. crucially, although the presence and extent of these determinants differs from place to place, what makes this work universalist is that these factors are seen as reliably affecting wellbeing regardless of cultural context. for example, diener and seligman (2004) showed that being homeless is strongly detrimental to wellbeing, whether in calcutta or california (since homeless people in these locales were both found to have comparably low levels of life satisfaction); as such, while societies across the world vary in their levels of homelessness, people will reliably be adversely affected by being homeless wherever they are. thus, such work upholds to some extent, either implicitly or explicitly, the idea of a universal human nature, as despite apparent cultural differences, people are viewed as largely sharing similar needs and concerns. the second section of the paper identifies work that leans towards a more relativising perspective. as well as drawing on the work of cross-cultural psychologists – since cross-cultural psychology encompasses both universalist and relativist stances – such scholarship also features those who specifically identify themselves as ‘cultural’ or ‘indigenous’ psychologists; triandis (2000) defines the former as those who ‘study a culture intensively with ethnographic methods’ (p.186), and the latter as scholars who explore ‘keywords, concepts, or categories that are widely used in a culture, and describe their meaning’ (p.185). in pp, this approach has arguably been less prevalent than the universalising perspective, since the field has tended to be dominated by more conventional epistemological perspectives (such as positivism). however, we are starting to see emergent efforts in the field to investigate variation in the way different cultures relate to happiness and wellbeing, including in terms of how these are defined (joshanloo, 2014), experienced (uchida & ogihara, 2012) and reported (oishi, 2010). thus, works cited here as examples of this perspective pay close attention to cultural differences, and tend to argue that people’s experiences of wellbeing, and of life more broadly, are strongly constituted by their cultural context. positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 finally, the third section of the paper presents a synthesising perspective, referred to as ‘universal relativism,’ which essentially describes a middle ground between universalism and relativism. it will be argued that many cross-cultural scholars (and their studies) actually tread this middle ground, acknowledging universals in human nature, but also recognising that these can be shaped by cultural context. it is worth noting that this concept of universal relativism could be regarded as fitting berry et al.’s (2011) definition of moderate universalism, namely work that ‘emphasises that there exist both differences and similarities in behaviour across cultures’ (p.8). however, following gardner and oswald (2007), it may be preferable to describe this position as a synthesis of universalism and relativism. (gardner and oswald’s own term for such a synthesis is ‘universal pluralism’; however, this paper shall use the phrase ‘universal relativism’ to stay consistent with berry et al.’s (2011) terminology.) indeed, berry et al. (2002, p.xix) appear to have argued for the desirability of such a synthesis, as they lament the fact that much of the discussion in cross-cultural scholarship has been ‘dominated’ by the debate between relativist and universalist approaches. this paper then aims to elucidate such a synthesis, in this case specifically with regard to cross-cultural scholarship pertaining to happiness and wellbeing. 2. universalism we begin by looking at what is perhaps the dominant cross-cultural trend within pp, the universalism perspective (which is generally of the moderate variety, per berry et al.’s (2011) terminology, but which also includes the occasional extreme stance). this perspective is predicated on the notion that, beneath apparent cultural differences, people share a common human nature: while it is recognised that cultures/societies1 vary, people generally are not seen to, and so are viewed as responding to this variation in broadly similar ways. as such, research in this area – undertaken mainly by obtaining ‘data from many people in many cultures’ (triandis, 2000, p.186), e.g., through large-scale surveys – examines the ‘contextual factors’ that impinge upon wellbeing, and then assesses the extent to which societies differ in terms of the presence or absence of these factors. (again, just to emphasise, the reason this approach still merits the label ‘universalist’ is that people in these different cultures are conceptualised in a universal way as being similar, e.g., sharing common needs). for example, if poverty reliably hinders life satisfaction, then researchers can explain cross-cultural differences in wellbeing according to variations in poverty levels across countries (lund et al., 2010). so, what are these factors? one of the most prominent sources of information on these comes from the long-running world values survey, which reveals extensive commonalities across diverse cultural and geographical locations. helliwell (2003) and helliwell and putnam (2004) analysed three successive waves of this survey (spanning 1980 to 1997), covering over 87,000 people across 46 countries, looking for the most prominent contextual determinants of subjective wellbeing (swb, e.g., life satisfaction). their analysis found that the top five factors, ranked in terms of importance, were: family relationships; financial situation; work; community and friends; and health. their analysis provides the structure for this section, which will highlight cross-cultural empirical work that is relevant to each of these factors. 1 although these terms are often used interchangeably, a useful distinction is offered by wilber (2000). while both pertain to the way human beings exist within collective networks, culture refers to the ‘intersubjective’ aspects of those networks, and society to their ‘interobjective’ dimensions. thus, culture describes how a group of people may share common ‘intersubjective’ values, meanings, worldviews, language, etc. conversely, society pertains to the ‘interobjective’ structural features of such networks, i.e., objectively measurable factors such as income or employment levels. this usage will be employed here. positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 before exploring these contextual determinants, it will help to set these in perspective by outlining the theoretical terrain that underpins much of the discussion in this area. many such universalising analyses draw on ‘telic’ theories of need satisfaction in which swb is the result of the environment satisfying the person’s basic biopsychosocial needs. according to veenhoven (e.g., 2013), swb thus depends on both ‘liveability’ (a congenial environment) and ‘life-ability’ (the ability of a person to take advantage of this). early models of needs were hierarchical (e.g., maslow, 1943), in which as lower levels are satisfied, higher ones assume prominence. however, the idea of hierarchy has been questioned; for instance, if material needs are not satisfied, people may still be sustained by supportive relationships, since such support may ‘to some extent avert the psychological costs of material deprivation’ (biswas-diener & diener, 2009, p.202). consequently, non-hierarchical models have been proposed. for example, lindenberg and frey’s (1993) social production function theory – see lindenberg (2013) for a recent commentary – outlines two ultimate goals (physical and social wellbeing) and five instrumental goals (comfort, stimulation, status, behavioural confirmation and affection). likewise, doyle and gough (1991) identify eleven intrinsically important ‘universal satisfier characteristics’ – from adequate nutritional food and water to security in childhood – the deprivation of which detrimentally impacts upon wellbeing. so, having briefly introduced some of the prominent theorising that underpins much of the work within the universalising approach, we can turn to the contextual determinants themselves. according to helliwell (2003) and helliwell and putnam’s (2004) analyses of the world values survey, the most important factor for swb is close, loving relationships, and marriage in particular. this finding is borne out by other studies. for example, a survey of 59,000 people in 42 countries found a consistent relationship between marital status and swb (diener, gohm, suh, & oishi, 2000). conversely, the greatest depressant of wellbeing is separation, followed by widowhood (blanchflower & oswald, 2004). the impact of relationships can be accounted for in terms of the telic theories above, where it is presented as a universal need (e.g., maslow, 1943). more functionally, partnerships offer ‘protection effects’ which impact upon wellbeing, such as division of labour, and emotional support/companionship from people sharing similar goals and ideals (arrindell & luteijn, 2000). however, we can note here that the positive impact of relationships can be mediated by cultural context; for example, there are greater social costs to being unmarried in cultures where marriage is a norm (vanassche, swicegood, & matthijs, 2013); similarly, the negative impact of separation and widowhood are mediated by intersubjective factors, such as the cultural status of widows (lloyd-sherlock, corso, & minicuci, 2015). thus, as we explore below in the third section on ‘universal relativism,’ universal needs (e.g., relationships) may intertwine with culturally-specific factors in complex ways. the second factor is income. cross-culturally, income has a weak correlation with wellbeing of around .2 (lucas & schimmack, 2009). however, this correlation is itself mediated by wealth, with a trend of diminishing marginal returns (blanchflower & oswald, 2004). at the lower end of the income scale, there is a robust association between the overall wealth of a country and its average wellbeing. a review of 115 studies across 33 countries by lund et al. (2010) showed that, cross-culturally, poverty consistently has a detrimental impact on wellbeing, since it hinders basic needs being met (via lack of education, food insecurity, poor housing, financial worries, and environmental stressors). here we see the relevance of the third factor, work; being in work reliably increases swb, while unemployment is one of the strongest depressants of wellbeing (wanberg, 2012). thus, poverty and unemployment combine to adversely affect swb. as poorer countries become wealthier, their overall levels of swb tend to rise, since greater wealth enables citizens to increasingly satisfy their basic needs. however, once wealth rises above a certain positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 point, further increases appear to be no longer matched by comparable rises in swb, a phenomenon known as the easterlin (2001) paradox (see easterlin, 2015, for a recent commentary). (that said, debates on the validity of this interpretation continue; for instance, veenhoven and vergunst (2014) argue that the paradox itself is an ‘illusion,’ and that increasing prosperity does reliably enhance wellbeing.) one explanation for the apparent paradox is that as people rise out of poverty, they are more affected by relative than absolute income (wolbring, keuschnigg, & negele, 2013). moreover, wealthier countries tend to have greater levels of income inequality within them, which has a detrimental effect on overall wellbeing; for example, pickett and wilkinson (2015) argue that societal inequality has a causal impact on social and health problems, such as higher morbidity and mortality rates, poorer educational performance, and greater levels of mental illness. unequal societies also tend to perform poorly on the fourth contextual determinant – social capital (defined by bourdieu (1986, p.248) as ‘the sum total of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual (or a group) by virtue of being enmeshed in a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’). for instance, comparing states within the usa, de vries, gosling, and potter (2011) corroborated the idea that inequality leads to people being more competitive and antagonistic – as highlighted by wilkinson and pickett (2010) in their influential text the spirit level, and confirmed by pickett and wilkinson (2015) – observing a consistent association between levels of ‘agreeableness’ and state level inequality. cross-culturally, social capital has a strong impact upon health and wellbeing (helliwell, 2006). this is borne out in a finnish study comparing a finnish-speaking majority population with a swedish‐speaking minority (hyyppä & mäki, 2003). although the two communities are very similar in most respects (including genetic profile, socioeconomic status, education, use of health services, and ecological context), there are remarkable disparities in morbidity, disability and mortality. for example, from 1991 to 1996, the average age at death for swedish-speaking men was 77.9, against 69.2 for finnish-speaking men. the authors suggest that these dramatic health inequalities cannot be explained by conventional health‐related risk factors, but derive from much greater levels of social capital among the swedish-speaking minority (including voluntary associational activity, friendship networks, and religious involvement). as for why there are higher levels of social capital for the swedish minority, this is possibly related to cultural differences, which – as indicated above – are accounted for by the universal relativism paradigm outlined in the third section below. finally, the fifth most important contextual determinant of swb is health. universally, disease and illness are found to detrimentally impact upon emotional wellbeing (see arokiasamy et al. (2015) for a recent review). likewise, grant, wardle, and steptoe (2009) report that swb is cross-culturally associated with common health behaviours (such as refraining from smoking). however, cross-cultural analyses reveal an unequal burden of disease across the world, with a greater risk of many illnesses in less developed countries. for example, in 2013 approximately 5.6 million children (under 5) died, 50% of whom lived in sub-saharan africa (liu et al., 2015). this is partly due to the greater prevalence of particular diseases in sub-saharan african countries. it is also because similar illnesses have differential effects depending on location; for example, deaton and tortora (2015) argue that the prevalence of and prognosis for hiv/aids is much worse in poor countries – particularly in sub-saharan africa, which has the lowest global ratings for satisfaction with healthcare – due to intersecting social factors, including poverty, political instability, and weak healthcare infrastructure. similarly, knaul, farmer, bhadelia, berman, and horton (2015) point out that access to treatment and medicines is grossly inequitable; for instance, high-income countries account for less than 15% of the global positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 population, but 94% of worldwide morphine consumption. this latter point highlights the intersecting issues addressed in this paper. people’s wellbeing might be universally affected by a common factor (e.g., illness). societies may then differ in terms of the extent to which their citizen’s are exposed to this factor, but again, as per the universalising perspective, people may reliably respond to these societal differences in similar ways. however, some of these societal differences may themselves be driven by cultural factors; for instance, with hiv/aids, low takeup of preventative measures may be partly due to cultural beliefs relating to the aetiology of the disease (penn & watermeyer, 2014). work is beginning to emerge that takes account of such complexities, which could be deemed to fall within the universal relativism perspective outlined below. however, before considering this, the next section outlines the relativising trend, which focuses on the strong impact of cultural differences upon wellbeing. 3. relativism while the universalising stance is arguably the more dominant perspective in pp, in crosscultural psychology more broadly there is a wealth of research tending towards a relativising perspective. that said, we are increasingly seeing this perspective represented within pp itself; for instance, focusing on forgiveness in the hmong culture, sandage, hill, and vang (2003, p.564) argue for the desirability of developing a ‘multicultural positive psychology’. as with the majority of scholars who lean towards the universalising stance above, scholars who adopt a relativist perspective are generally of the moderate variety in terms of berry et al.’s (2011) terminology; but there are also some who tend towards extreme relativism. most of the researchers included here would be likely to identify themselves as adhering to some form of social constructionism. although this label encompasses a range of different perspectives, they all share the ‘family resemblance’ (wittgenstein, 1953) of endorsing an epistemological perspective of anti-realism. thus, in contrast to the more positivist stance of the universalising research considered in the previous section, anti-realism holds that distinctions used to represent and explain the world – e.g., pp constructs such as swb – are socio-cultural products that reflect ‘particular historical and cultural understandings,’ rather than ‘universal and immutable categories of human experience’ (bohan, 1996, p.xvi). anti-realism comes in different ‘strengths’: strong constructionism holds that all aspects of human experience are entirely culturally created (and thus are particular to the specific cultural nexus in which they emerge), which obviously aligns with berry et al.’s notion of extreme relativism; conversely, weak versions claim only that aspects of human experience are culturally shaped (but may be moulded from universal human needs and qualities), which is reflective of berry et al.’s concept of moderate relativism. either way, research of this relativising variety looks specifically at how people in different cultures may have significant differences concerning wellbeing, from the way it is conceptualised and defined (joshanloo, 2014), to how it is experienced (uchida & ogihara, 2012) and reported (oishi, 2010). such cultural differences have been explored at various levels of scale. at the broadest level of cultural differences, the most prominent distinction in the cross-cultural literature is the notion that western societies tend to be ‘individualist’, whereas eastern cultures are ‘collectivist’ (hofstede, 1980). while the distinction was originally developed to address differences at a societal level, markus and kitayama’s (1991, p.224) work on self-construals explored the impact of such societal configurations on individual self-identity; this work suggested that people in the west tend to view themselves primarily as autonomous atomistic units, whereas eastern cultures emphasise the ‘fundamental relatedness of individuals,’ highlighting the importance of ‘attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence’; thus as triandis (2001, p.907) positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 puts it, people in collectivist cultures are more likely to ‘define themselves as aspects of groups’ and to ‘give priority to in-group goals’. from a critical perspective, it could potentially be argued that this individualist-collectivist distinction is simply the latest incarnation of the ‘east-west’ orientalising discourse identified by edward said (1995); just as with the ‘east-west’ distinction itself, it arguably homogenises and obscures myriad differences at a local level, neglecting the fact that ‘the east’ possesses its own strains of individualism while ‘the west’ has its own collectivist traditions (spiro, 1993). nevertheless, the individualist-collectivist distinction has been analysed and somewhat corroborated in hundreds of empirical studies (taras, kirkman, & steel, 2010). and, in pccp, the distinction does appear to capture important variation in the way wellbeing is shaped and experienced in different cultures. for example, stavrova and fetchenhauer (2015) show how wellbeing in collectivist cultures can be far more dependent upon the person successfully meeting approved social norms (e.g., in terms of sexual preferences or family structures). however, as one imbues the spirit of the relativising approach, even the basic idea of comparing cultures on a measure like swb becomes problematic. interestingly, an influential advocate of the universalising stance in pp, the economist lord richard layard (2005, p.33), raises this possibility, before dismissing it: ‘of course one could question whether the word for “happy” (or “satisfied”) means the same thing in different languages. if it doesn’t, we can learn nothing by comparing different countries. in fact it does.’ it may not be so straightforward though. for example, a prominent notion in anthropology is the sapir-whorf hypothesis – from sapir (1929) and his student whorf (1940) – which holds that a culture’s values and meanings are encoded in its language, such that linguistic categories shape and even determine thought itself. the critical question in terms of the legitimacy of making ‘east-west’ comparisons is whether terms such as ‘happy’ mean the same thing in different cultures. crucially, oishi (2010) suggests that they do not: whereas western conceptions of happiness pertain essentially to a positive emotional state, in the east, happiness is taken as referring more to fortune and luck. this may be due to various interrelated reasons, including more ‘fatalistic’ cultural expectations (shaw, 2011), deterministic philosophies derived from hinduism and buddhism, like the notion of karma (guang, 2013), and greater self-effacement, leading people to attribute success to external factors (imada & ellsworth, 2011). moreover, even if happiness is defined similarly across cultures, there may be further methodological issues relating to variation in how it is reported; e.g., whereas people in individualist cultures may be encouraged to assert and celebrate individual achievements, those in collectivist cultures may feel pressure to be self-effacing (du & jonas, 2015). however, in the context of this relativizing perspective, even the notion of ‘east-west’ generalisations might be seen as too broad and simplifying, as noted above (spiro, 1993). for example, work by cultural and indigenous psychologists has sought to understand cultural differences at a very fine-grained level, engaging with specific local cultures to examine their unique constructions and experiences of wellbeing, as per sandage et al.’s (2003) analysis of the hmong culture, cited above. some of this work falls within the purview of pccp (even if the scholars themselves would not identify as belonging to the field), since it pertains to happiness and wellbeing. for example, scholars have noted that certain cultures appear to lack words for particular mental states; according to russell (1991), there is no word for sadness in the tahitian or chewong languages, no word for fear in ifaluk, utku, or pintupi, and no word for surprise in fore, dani, or malay. from the perspective of the sapir-whorf hypothesis, such absences imply that people in these cultures do not experience such states (or at least, do not do so widely or frequently enough to warrant the creation of words to represent them). conversely, analyses of positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 so-called ‘untranslatable words’ suggest that some emotion terms are specific to particular cultures, indicating that such emotions are particularly (or even uniquely) prominent in these cultures (perlovsky, 2009). thus, anthropologically-minded researchers have conducted indepth ethnographies of local cultures in attempts to understand their unique perspectives. for example, izquierdo (2005) studied the matsigenka tribe in the peruvian amazon. in contrast to the individualistic way in which happiness is arguably constructed in the west (and thus in conventional pp) – i.e., as a personal mental state over which the individual has a measure of control – the matsigenka are portrayed as having a more ‘holistic’ understanding. their sense of wellbeing has less to do with individual health and functioning, and is more related to the maintenance of a collective balance between the tribe and its physical and spiritual environment; as such, it is arguable that a person could not conceive of himself or herself as flourishing if the collective commons was in trouble (as indeed it was for the tribe), since the individual and the collective could not be meaningfully separated. other scholars have conducted similarly finegrained analyses on constructions and experiences of wellbeing in other cultures, including the bolivian amazon (reyes-garcía, 2012), ladakh (richard, 2014), ethnic kyrgyz and uzbeks in southern kyrgyzstan (borbieva, 2013), and kazakhs in western mongolia (werner, barcus, & brede, 2013). similarly, other researchers have considered how culture influences the way in which ostensibly negative phenomena are experienced. for instance, studying the pintupi tribe (aborigines in the australian western desert), myers (1988) reported that anger was deemed an acceptable state, particularly if in response to another person failing to be compassionate. the tribe placed great emphasis on a sense of shared identity/kinship with others, and thus breaking this kinship (through lack of compassion) was deemed to warrant a harsh response. likewise, with the ifaluk tribe (an atoll in micronesia), lutz (1987) encountered the notion of song, a culturally valued state of ‘justified anger’. here, while anger may have had the same logical form as in other cultures (a desire for punishment based on perceived harm), its social meaning and valuation was different (i.e., highly positive). conversely, in certain cultures, one can find some negative states given far greater weight, to the extent that there are specific culture-bound psychopathologies, referred to in the recent diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-v) as ‘cultural concepts of distress’ (see kohrt et al. (2014) for a recent review). this does not simply mean cultural variation in how common disorders are experienced, but rather that sociocultural aspects of the disorder are inextricably connected to its underlying pathophysiology, and thus are defining features of it. for example, taijin kyofushu is a japanese anxiety disorder involving a fear of offending others through awkward social behaviour or an imagined physical defect (kirmayer, 1991). kirmayer argues that this disorder is strongly culturally determined: not simply a cultural overlay of a universal condition, but rather a pathological amplification of culturally-specific concerns relating to norms of politeness and deference. analyses such as this show the way in which mental experience can be strongly shaped by cultural context, and as such challenge the universalising studies cited above. relativising approaches are valuable for drawing our attention to complexity and nuance in different cultures, just as universalising approaches offer an important overview of common qualities shared by humanity. it is not the contention here that either perspective is flawed or inappropriate: we need to understand both common global trends (as universalism allows us to) and fine cultural details (as per relativism). however, it could be argued that, if either approach is pursued in isolation, one arrives at a skewed understanding of cross-cultural phenomena. here, we might draw on the work of philosopher ken wilber (2000), who contends that particular paradigms or approaches can be partially true: their insights or understandings may be valid, but positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 are nevertheless incomplete. thus, if pp embraced only universalism, while it would rightly gain an appreciation of people’s common humanity, it would overlook very real cultural differences. conversely, if it tended only towards relativism, while it would develop a fine-grained understanding of the impact of culture on wellbeing, cross-cultural similarities would remain unappreciated. given this analysis, there is value in trying to combine the two perspectives, as the final section illustrates. 4. universal relativism so far this paper has set out two broad trends within pccp: a universalising stance that looks for commonalities between people of different cultures, and a relativistic perspective focused on particularity, pluralism and difference. however, the two perspectives might not necessarily be mutually exclusive. following a hegelian process of dialectic, if the universalising stance is the thesis, and the relativising perspective represents its antithesis, it is possible to discern work that aims towards a synthesis of the two. indeed, it could be argued that most work in pccp actually falls within this synthesising middle ground. the notion of such a synthesis has already been identified by gardner and oswald (2007) under the rubric of ‘universal pluralism’. indeed, berry et al.’s (2011) concept of moderate universalism comes close to acknowledging this kind of synthesis; however, rather than the synthesising flavour of work in this area being viewed as a weak form of universalism, such research is arguably better captured by the hybrid term ‘universal relativism’. essentially, work that falls under the banner of universal relativism recognises that it is possible to acknowledge both universal similarities and cultural diversity, doing so by differentiating between deep versus surface structures (both within people and within cultures) (see e.g., wilber, 1996, p.46). the notion of deep structures refers to the way in which people may be seen as having universal needs, e.g., as per maslow (1943). societies then develop deep structural systems designed to meet these needs, including housing (to meet safety needs), laws (to meet security needs), systems of mutual recognition, e.g., names (to meet esteem needs), relationship structures, e.g., marriage (to meet love needs), and value systems, e.g., religion and philosophy (to meet meaning needs). however, while these deep structures may be universal, they can be expressed at a surface level in an almost infinite variety of ways, whether by people themselves or by their culture more broadly. crucially, this does not mean a superficial cultural overlay, but very significant differences in expression that fundamentally change the way in which these needs are experienced and met. this notion of universal relativism is represented visually in figure 1 below; this model suggests that the impact on wellbeing of the universal contextual determinants (from family relationships to health) is mediated by diverse processes and phenomena (from tradition to geography) that are specific to particular cultural contexts. as one considers the literature within pccp, it is possible to discern this universal relativism approach being quite widely endorsed (even if the authors themselves do not use such a term). indeed, many of the researchers cited above as producing work illustrative of a universalising or relativising stance have also undertaken research that could be categorised as reflecting a universal relativism approach. as berry et al. (2011) point out, it is rare to find scholars promulgating an ‘extreme’ position of pure universalism or relativism; most researchers are thus ‘moderates’ who acknowledge the validity of both universalism and relativism, and hence who could broadly be said to align with a position of universal relativism.) we can see this kind of universal relativism in studies which analyse the contextual determinants of wellbeing – and thus which align with the universalising stance – but which at the same time consider cultural differences that moderate the way such determinants are experienced. in terms of relationships positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 for example, the first determinant identified by helliwell (2003) and helliwell and putnam (2004), marriage, might be of greater benefit to people in more individualist cultures than to those in collectivist ones, since the generally lower levels of social support in individualist cultures means that the relative impact of close relationships may be greater (kasser & ahuvia, 2002). in terms of the second factor, income, while it may universally be the case that this matters for wellbeing (at least until one’s basic needs are met), cultural value systems can play a significant role in the weight and importance attached to money. take, for example, materialism, defined as ‘a set of centrally held beliefs about the importance of possessions in one’s life’ (richins & dawson, 1992, p.308). on the whole, materialism is cross-culturally negatively correlated with swb (platz & hyman, 2013). and yet crucially, from the universal relativism perspective, there are differences in the extent to which different cultures are materialistic, with western countries often regarded as more materialistic (joshanloo, 2013). (that said, podoshen, li, and zhang (2011) take issue with this generalisation, arguing that rapid socio-economic change in eastern countries is leading to increased materialistic consumer capitalism in these regions.) such ‘relativising’ differences in culture complicate the ‘universal’ relationship between income and wellbeing in interesting ways. figure 1: diagram showing universal factors and relativistic meditators of wellbeing moving on to the third factor, work, while unemployment is generally (i.e., universally) detrimental to swb (bell & blanchflower, 2010), researchers have explored the moderating ‘relativising’ effect of culturally-specific factors. for instance, analysing the 2010 european working conditions survey, bambra, lunau, van der wel, eikemo, and dragano (2014) found that while unemployment reliably lowered health and wellbeing, its impact was strongly mediated by the nature of the welfare regime in each country. returning to the individualistcollectivist distinction, research has suggested that unemployment may be less easy to bear in family relationships financial situation work community and friends health universal determinants relativistic mediators history tradition norms values culture language politics economics geography climate wellbeing positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 individualist cultures, as people are more likely to be judged based on individual achievements, and/or may have less social support to cushion its impact (martella & maass, 2000). unemployment is perhaps also more difficult to deal with in cultures characterised by a strong work ethic, where lack of work tends to be more harshly penalised as deviation from the norm (stam, sieben, verbakel, & de graaf, 2015). with the fourth factor, social capital, it is almost axiomatic that social capital is higher in collectivist cultures, since these are defined by their close social bonds (triandis, 2001). however, there may be paradoxical complexities in this general trend. in a survey of 28 countries, kappes, sharma, and oettingen (2013) found a significant positive correlation between individualism and interpersonal trust (an aspect of social capital). one explanation is that in individualist countries, people are less enmeshed in tight culturallybound in-groups; this means that they tend to engage more with the ‘general population,’ and thus are less wary of members of the out-group. likewise, allik and realo (2004) report that in more individualistic countries there is a higher level of civic engagement in political activity, possibly because once close personal networks become eroded, it becomes necessary to develop politically-driven societal structures (such as the welfare state) to take their place. in discussing the relevance of political structures to wellbeing – and cultural variation in such structures – we might end here by considering one final contextual determinant: freedom. while this was not ranked in the top five by helliwell (2003) and helliwell and putnam (2004), they did highlight its universal importance. indeed, pp recognises self-determination, and its constituent elements, as a universal human need (ryan & deci, 2000). crucially however, socio-cultural structures strongly impact upon people’s ability to attain self-determination, and consequently national wellbeing is linked to ‘political and cultural value supports for self-determination’ (downie, koestner, & chua, 2007, p.174). societies vary in the extent to which they facilitate various freedoms, including personal freedom (freedom of action, thought, and association; ruger & sorens, 2009), political freedom (liberal democracy, and checks and balances limiting the state’s powers; neumann, 1953), and economic freedom (personal choice, and protection of private property; graeff & mehlkop, 2003). all these freedoms are affected by the quality of political-legal frameworks, which vary greatly across countries; thus, communities with the highest swb tend to be those that enjoy ‘effective social and political institutions’ (duncan, 2010, p.165). in this regard, the world bank has conducted extensive assessments of the quality of governance worldwide (kaufmann, kraay, & mastruzzi, 2009). based on over 350 variables, six main ‘aggregate governance indicators’ have been identified, capturing six key dimensions of institutional quality of governance. these include: voice and accountability (i.e., political, civil, and human rights); stability and lack of violence; government effectiveness (bureaucratic competence and quality of public services); the regulatory framework (market-friendly policies); rule of law (quality of policing and the legal system); and control of corruption. thus, with this last point, we see the complex intersections between a universal human need (in this case, freedom) and socio-cultural variation (in how freedom is valued and upheld). given these complex intersections, we can discern the value of the universal relativism approach. firstly, freedom can be recognised as a universal need. this differs from the strong forms of social constructionism that are characteristic of the extreme relativism perspective (and even some moderate varieties of it), which often deny the existence of any such universals. for example, some people adopting a constructionist stance may embrace the kind of strong cultural relativism which holds that a belief in individual freedom is particular to western cultures, and should not be generalised (donnelly, 1984). however, the universal relativism approach still recognises that cultures have a strong determining impact on the way in which needs such as freedom are conceptualised, defined, valued, upheld and promoted. such differences are not a superficial positive cross-cultural psychology lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 cultural overlay, but have a deep impact on how people experience a phenomenon like freedom, and hence have a significant mediating effect on the (universal) connection between such contextual determinants and wellbeing. this type of approach thus potentially offers the best of both worlds, a nuanced synthesis of the two dominant trends in cross-cultural psychology. one might argue that the field of pp would benefit from embracing a stance of universal relativism, allowing it to fully appreciate the breadth of extant empirical and theoretical work in crosscultural psychology, as well as offering an agenda for research in the years ahead. acknowledgments the author would like to thank recent students on the msc in applied positive psychology programme at the university of east london, whose debates and questions in class helped provide inspiration for this paper. the author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors at the international journal of wellbeing for their constructive comments on the paper. authors tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk publishing timeline received 14 may 2015 accepted 26 september 2015 published 18 december 2015 references allik, j., & realo, a. 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(2019). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: greek). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-36. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1559 κατευθυντήριες γραμμές έκδοση 1.0, 19 ιουλίου 2019 aaron jarden university of melbourne/πανεπιστήμιο μελβούρνης aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au τα πνευματικά δικαιώματα ανήκουν στους συγγραφείς 1 ειδικη εκδοση κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για την ηθική πρακτική της θετικής ψυχολογίας aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas · virginia karavakou · christina seryianni http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 2 . περιεχόμενα εισαγωγικές παρατηρήσεις……………………………………………………………………. 4 πρόλογος………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 επαγγελματικοί φορείς και κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής της θετικής ψυχολογίας ……………………………………………………………………………………4 ποια είναι η επιδίωξη μέσω των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών…………………………. 5 σε ποιους απευθύνονται οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές; …………………………………5 ο προσωρινός χαρακτήρας των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών…………………………...6 βασικοί όροι…………………………………………………………………………………… 6 ενότητα ένα: αξίες, δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρχές………………………………………9 αξίες των επαγγελματιών θετικής ψυχολογίας……………………………………….. 10 δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρετές των επαγγελματιών θετικής ψυχολογίας……… 11 ηθικές αρχές για την πρακτική της θετικής ψυχολογίας…………………….……… 12 ενότητα δύο: εφαρμογή των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ηθικής στην πράξη………… 16 τρεις σημαντικοί προβληματισμοί……………………………………………………….. 16 ηθική λήψη αποφάσεων…………………………………………………………………… 16 παράμετροι πρακτικής……………………………………………………………………… 17 αλλαγές που βιώνουν οι πελάτες……………………………………………………….… 17 αλλαγές στο περιβάλλον…………………………………………………………………… 18 τρέχουσα συναισθηματική κατάσταση και βαθμός ψυχολογικής ευεξίας………… 18 αποφυγή……………………………………………………………………………………..… 19 διαφορές ισχύος…………………………………………………………………………...… 19 κατάχρηση των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα…………………………………………………… 19 πρακτική σοφία……………………………………………………………………………… 20 διατήρηση της ανθεκτικότητας και θωράκιση απέναντι στην επαγγελματική εξουθένωση ……………………………………………………………………………………20 δήλωση της εκπαίδευσης και των ικανοτήτων ……………………………………...……20 αξιολογώντας τη σημασία του πολιτισμικού πλαισίου………………………………… 21 επίλυση ηθικών διλημμάτων – οδηγός βήμα προς βήμα……………………………….… 22 οδηγός αυτο-αξιολόγησης…………………………………………………………………...… 23 ενότητα τρίτη: παραδείγματα περιπτώσεων ηθικής πρακτικής……………………….…24 παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 1: πολιτισμική εφαρμόζοντας θψπ δείχνοντας πολιτισμική ευαισθησία……………………………………………..……………………………………… 24 κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 3 παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 2: coaching – πελάτες σε μεταβαλλόμενες συνθήκες…...25 παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 3: κλινική – δουλεύοντας με το τραύμα……………………26 παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 4: οργανωτική – πίεση για διαστρέβλωση δεδομένων…. 27 παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 5: mentoring – κινητοποίηση «απρόθυμων» συμμετεχόντων στο πλαίσιο μιας μη ισότιμης σχέσης……………….……………………………...…… 28 παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 6: εκπαιδευτική – εφαρμογή προγράμματος ψυχολογικής ευεξίας σε περιπτώσεις όπου οι προσδοκίες παρεμποδίζονται από την υφιστάμενη πρακτική………………………………………………………………………………………29 συναφείς κατευθυντήριες γραμμές……………………………………………………………31 ευχαριστίες ……………………………………………………………………………….……… 32 πρώτοι υπογράφοντες τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για την ηθική πρακτική της θετικής ψυχολογίας…………….………………………………………………………………………… 33 συγγραφείς…………………………………………………………………..…………………… 35 βιβλιογραφία…………………………………………………………………..………………… 35 επιπλέον βιβλιογραφικές αναφορές………………………………………………………… 35 διευκρίνιση: οι παρούσες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές είναι αποτέλεσμα συνεργασίας μιας ανεξάρτητης ομάδας που διευθύνουν ο aaron jarden, o tayyab rashid, η annalise roache και ο tim lomas. οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές είναι ανεξάρτητες από οποιονδήποτε οργανισμό ή σύλλογο, ήταν όμως πολυάριθμα τα συμβαλλόμενα μέρη που συμμετείχαν στη δημιουργία και την τελειοποίηση της πρώτης αυτής επανέκδοσης. πρόθεση των συγγραφέων είναι να επικαιροποιούν τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ανά διετία ώστε να ενισχύονται περαιτέρω το βάθος και το εύρος της λειτουργικότητάς τους και κάθε ανατροφοδότηση από την κοινότητα είναι ευπρόσδεκτη στην ηλεκτρονική διεύθυνση aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au mailto:aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 4 εισαγωγικές παρατηρήσεις πρόλογος το ηθικό ιδεώδες είναι ενδεχομένως μία ουτοπία, καθώς οι άνθρωποι, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των επαγγελματιών θετικής ψυχολογίας (εθψ), οι οποίοι δεν είναι τέλειοι, είναι επιρρεπείς σε σφάλματα και ευάλωτοι. η πολυπλοκότητα της σύγχρονης ζωής, όπως η διαρκής επέκταση της κυβερνο-διαβίωσης, οι απρόβλεπτες κλιματικές αλλαγές, η προσφυγική κρίση, οι εξελισσόμενες ταυτότητες, και η αυξανόμενη οικονομική πόλωση εντείνουν την ανθρώπινη ευαλωτότητα. οι ψυχολογικές υπηρεσίες, ειδικά αυτές με ξεκάθαρο στόχο την αποκατάσταση ή τη βελτίωση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας, δεν προσφέρονται εύκολα δίχως αντικρουόμενες προτεραιότητες και ηθικά διλήμματα. μία μοναδική σειρά κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ηθικής πρακτικής, προτύπων, ή ακόμα και θεσμικών πλαισίων, δεν μπορεί να περικλείει πλήρως το φάσμα της ανθρώπινης πολυπλοκότητας. εντούτοις, μια σειρά από γενικές αξίες, δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρχές μπορεί να μας οδηγεί σε μία ηθικότερη λήψη αποφάσεων, ιδίως όταν χρησιμοποιούμε θετικές ψυχολογικές παρεμβάσεις (θψπ), οι οποίες γενικά στοχεύουν στη βελτίωση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας. ο παρόν οδηγός αναφέρεται σε: α) αξίες, β) δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα, και γ) αρχές πρακτικής της θετικής ψυχολογίας (θψ). είναι σημαντικό να σημειωθεί ότι οι «κατευθυντήριες γραμμές» συνήθως εντάσσονται σε ευρύτερα πεδία, τα οποία ποικίλλουν ανάλογα με το αντικείμενο και το κανονιστικό πλαίσιο. για παράδειγμα, κατευθυντήριες γραμμές μπορεί να βρίσκονται στη βάση μιας προτεινόμενης ιεραρχίας όπως η παρακάτω (εικόνα 1): εικόνα 1. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές και ευρύτερα πλαίσια. συνεπώς, είναι σημαντικό να λαμβάνονται υπόψη οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές μαζί με άλλα συναφή πλαίσια. επιπλέον, ενώ ένα πρόσωπο ή ένας οργανισμός δύναται να συμφωνεί και να επιδοκιμάζει τις παρούσες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για την «πρακτική της θψ», σε ορισμένες χώρες και αρμόδιους φορείς μπορεί να είναι παράνομο να αυτοαποκαλείται κάποιος «θετικός ψυχολόγος» παρακαλούμε να είστε ενήμεροι για τους περιορισμούς και τις προϋποθέσεις που ισχύουν στη χώρα δραστηριοποίησής σας. επαγγελματικοί φορείς και κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής της θψ κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 5 όταν ένας επαγγελματίας είναι μέλος ενός επαγγελματικού φορέα, (παραδείγματος χάρη, αμερικανική ψυχολογική εταιρία, αυστραλιανή ψυχολογική εταιρία και διεθνής ομοσπονδία coaching), τότε, τα πρότυπα, ο κώδικας ή οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές του φορέα του είναι εκείνα που θα καθορίσουν πρωτίστως την πρακτική του. περιμένουμε ότι όταν οι επαγγελματίες είναι μέλη ενός φορέα αδειοδότησης ή διαπίστευσης (για παράδειγμα, ενός συλλόγου ψυχολόγων), με επαρκή εκπαίδευση, κατάρτιση και εμπειρία στον τομέα της ψυχολογίας ή συναφών πεδίων, τότε θα είναι εξοικειωμένοι με τις αποφάσεις, τα πρότυπα, τους κανονισμούς, τα καταστατικά και τις διαδικασίες άσκησης της ψυχολογίας στη χώρα τους. οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για την ηθική πρακτική της θψ που παρουσιάζονται εδώ έχουν σχεδιαστεί για να ενισχύσουν και όχι να αντικαταστήσουν ήδη υπάρχοντες νομικούς/ επαγγελματικούς κώδικες και οδηγούς. ως εκ τούτου, αυτές οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές παρέχουν επίσης μία βάση για επαγγελματίες που δεν είναι μέλη κάποιου επαγγελματικού φορέα. ποια είναι η επιδίωξη μέσω των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών γιατί να έχει κανείς ένα σύνολο κατευθυντήριων γραμμών; αυτές οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές στοχεύουν στη βελτίωση της ηθικής πρακτικής, με το να επιδεικνύουν δέσμευση σε μία επιστημονικά ενημερωμένη και τεκμηριωμένη πρακτική στο πεδίο της θψ. οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές στοχεύουν στο να εμπνεύσουν την επιδίωξη της διατήρηση της αφοσίωσης στην επιστήμη της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας και να δώσουν στους επαγγελματίες κατευθύνσεις για την παρουσίαση του επαγγελματικού τους προφίλ και την προώθηση των δυνητικών ωφελειών. οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές επιχειρούν να προωθήσουν στους εθψ και άλλους επαγγελματίες μία πιο σαφή κατανόηση του τι συνιστά ηθικά ενημερωμένη πρακτική της θψ. με τη βοήθεια τέτοιων κατευθυντήριων γραμμών, οι εθψ αναμένεται να επιδείξουν διάθεση δέσμευσης, σε πτυχές όπως:1 α) τη συστηματική μελέτη της έρευνας και το χτίσιμο την πρακτικής τους σε μία επιστημονική βάση· β) τη συνεχή ενημέρωση των γνώσεών τους μέσα από διαρκή μάθηση και επαγγελματική ανάπτυξη· γ) την λεπτομερή και ακριβή επικοινωνία των ορίων της γνώσης σχετικά με τις θψπ, καθώς και των δυνητικών ωφελειών και κινδύνων συγκεκριμένων θψπ και προγραμμάτων ψυχολογικής ευεξίας· και δ) την παρακολούθηση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας καθώς και των θετικών και αρνητικών αλλαγών της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας των πελατών τους κατά την παροχή υπηρεσιών. σε ποιους απευθύνονται οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές; σκοπός αυτών των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών είναι να επιτρέψουν τη βέλτιστη δεοντολογική πρακτική των εθψ, και συνεπώς να λειτουργήσουν ευεργετικά (να ωφελούν τους άλλους) και όχι βλαπτικά (να αποφεύγουν την πρόκληση δυνητικών βλαβών στους άλλους). ως τέτοιες, οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές συνιστώνται για επαγγελματίες (π.χ., 1 έχουμε επιλέξει εδώ τέσσερα παραδείγματα για να παρουσιάσουμε τέτοιες δεσμεύσεις, εντούτοις σημειώστε ότι ο κατάλογος μπορεί να είναι μακρύς. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 6 ψυχολόγους) και για άλλους (π.χ., φοιτητές ή όσους δεν έχουν σχέση με το πεδίο) που παρέχουν θψπ ή χρησιμοποιούν γνώσεις από το πεδίο της θψ στην πρακτική τους. οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές δεν είναι οδηγός για το πώς να χρησιμοποιούνται ή να εφαρμόζονται συγκεκριμένες θψπ. ο προσωρινός χαρακτήρας των κατευθυντηρίων γραμμών να σημειωθεί ότι οι παρούσες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές (έκδοση 1.0 τής 19ης ιουλίου 2019) είναι προσωρινές και θα υπόκεινται σε συνεχή αναθεώρηση κάθε δύο χρόνια μέσω μίας επαναληπτικής συμβουλευτικής διαδικασίας με τα κύρια ενδιαφερόμενα μέρη. μία τέτοια κανονικότητα βοηθά να διασφαλιστεί ότι οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ανταποκρίνονται σε μεταβολές των πλαισίων και ότι αντανακλούν τις διαρκώς εξελισσόμενες τοπικές και παγκόσμιες θεματικές. υπό αυτό το πρίσμα, είναι ευπρόσδεκτη η ανατροφοδότηση σχετικά με τις παρούσες κατευθυντήριες οδηγίες ανά πάσα στιγμή. είναι επίσης σημαντικό να σημειωθεί ότι μόνο αγγλόφωνες, κυρίως δυτικές χώρες έχουν επηρεάσει την συγκρότηση αυτών των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών, οπότε οι παρούσες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές περιορίζονται στα ανάλογα όρια. αφού όμως αυτό είναι ένα ζωντανό αναπτυσσόμενο πόνημα, ταυτοποιημένο κατά αριθμό έκδοσης, ελπίζουμε ότι μελλοντικές εκδόσεις θα ενσωματώσουν την επιρροή από κώδικες και κατευθυντήριες γραμμές από μη αγγλόφωνες και μη δυτικές χώρες. βασικοί όροι πελάτης οι επαγγελματίες εργάζονται με πελάτες. "πελάτης" είναι ένας γενικός όρος που χρησιμοποιείται για να αναφερθεί στον αποδέκτη, (όπως, αλλά όχι αποκλειστικά, ένα άτομο, ζευγάρι, οικογένεια, ομάδα, οργάνωση, χορηγό, ή άλλο μέλος της κοινότητας) κάθε είδους υπηρεσιών. διαφορές ανάμεσα σε κώδικες και κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ένας κώδικας έχει συνήθως νομικές ή άλλες εκτελεστές συνέπειες, ενώ οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές προτείνουν βέλτιστες πρακτικές που συνήθως δεν είναι νομικά κατοχυρωμένες ή νομικά ελεγχόμενες. οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές, από τη φύση τους, υποδηλώνουν ότι οι συνθήκες είναι ποικίλες και πολύπλοκες, και ότι η τήρηση των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών απαιτεί συχνά από τους επαγγελματίες να εφαρμόσουν πρακτική σοφία έναν συνδυασμό εμπειρίας και κοινής λογικής. θψ θψ: θετική ψυχολογία. υπάρχουν πολλοί τρόποι σύλληψης και ορισμού της θψ, αλλά οι περισσότεροι λειτουργικοί ορισμοί συνήθως την τοποθετούν ως την επιστημονική μελέτη και προώθηση πρωταρχικών εννοιών όπως «ευτυχία», «ψυχολογική ευεξία», «άνθιση» και «μεγαλουργία». για παράδειγμα, οι lomas, hefferon και ivtzan (2015, σ. 1347) ορίζουν τη θψ ως «την επιστήμη και την πρακτική της βελτίωσης της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας». σχετικά, υπάρχει η έννοια της "εφαρμοσμένης θετικής ψυχολογίας," η οποία μπορεί απλά να διαβαστεί ως η εφαρμογή της θψ σε πραγματικές συνθήκες, μεταξύ άλλων μέσω θψπ. θψπ θψπ: θετική ψυχολογική παρέμβαση. υπάρχει στη βιβλιογραφία ένας διαχωρισμός μεταξύ μίας «παρέμβασης θετικής ψυχολογίας» και μιας «θετικής ψυχολογικής κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 7 παρέμβασης» για μία συνοπτική περιγραφή και επεξήγηση, βλ. hone, jarden, και schofield (2015). εδώ ενσωματώνουμε την ευρύτερη έννοια της θετικής ψυχολογικής παρέμβασης που καλύπτει όλες τις δραστηριότητες σε πολλούς κλάδους (δηλαδή, από άλλα πεδία της ψυχολογίας εκτός της θψ) με στόχο την αύξηση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας. ένας δημοφιλής ορισμός μιας θετικής ψυχολογικής παρέμβασης είναι: «μία θετική ψυχολογική παρέμβαση προωθεί τα θετικά συναισθήματα, τις θετικές συμπεριφορές, ή/και σκέψεις, αυξάνοντας ως εκ τούτου την ψυχολογική ευεξία ενός ατόμου ή μιας ομάδας» (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, σ. 92). εθψ εθψ: επαγγελματίας θετικής ψυχολογίας. ένας επαγγελματίας που έχει ολοκληρώσει την απαραίτητη εκπαίδευση για να ασκεί πρακτική (π.χ. ψυχοθεραπεία, συμβουλευτική, coaching), και έχει λάβει ειδική εκπαίδευση στην θψ από έναν αξιόπιστο φορέα κατάρτισης, επιτρέποντας έτσι την κατανόηση της διαδικασίας επιστημονικής έρευνας και την εφαρμογή της στην παροχή εφαρμοσμένης θετικής ψυχολογίας (π.χ., θπψ).2 δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα γενικά, κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής και κώδικες ενστερνίζονται συγκεκριμένα επιθυμητά προσωπικά χαρακτηριστικά, που επιλέγονται αυθαίρετα από τις αυθεντίες του συγκεκριμένου πεδίου. για αυτές τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές, χρησιμοποιήσαμε το μοντέλο «δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρετές» character strengths and virtues (csv: peterson & seligman, 2004), το οποίο περιλαμβάνει δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα που έχουν τεκμηριωθεί εμπειρικά και έχουν διαπολιτισμική ισχύ (mcgrath, 2014). σύμφωνα με το μοντέλο csv, ως δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα ορίζονται οικουμενικά χαρακτηριστικά που έχουν αυταξία και δεν οδηγούν απαραίτητα σε καθοριστικά αποτελέσματα. ως χαρακτηριστικά συμπεριφοράς, φαίνεται περισσότερο να διευκολύνουν και να καθοδηγούν ένα άτομο να συμπεριφέρεται με υπεύθυνο και ηθικό τρόπο για την ευημερία τη δική του και των άλλων. οι δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα, σε γενικές γραμμές, αντικατοπτρίζουν το ποιος είναι κανείς (δηλαδή, ποιος είναι ο χαρακτήρας του) και οι αξίες αντικατοπτρίζουν σε τι έχει δεσμευτεί ένα άτομο (δηλαδή, τις αρχές και τις δράσεις του). επαγγελματίας ο όρος "επαγγελματίας" χρησιμοποιείται γενικά για να αναφερθεί σε οποιονδήποτε έχει ευθύνη για την παροχή υπηρεσιών που σχετίζονται με την θψ. ο «επαγγελματίας» περιλαμβάνει οποιονδήποτε αναλαμβάνει ρόλους, όπως (αλλά όχι 2 ποιοι μπορούν να αυτοαποκαλούνται εθψ; δεν υπάρχει, μέχρι στιγμής, σαφής οριοθέτηση ως προς το βαθμό και το επίπεδο της απαιτούμενης κατάρτισης ή προσόντων. για παράδειγμα, θα μπορούσε κανείς να θεωρεί τον εαυτό του έναν εθψ βασιζόμενος σε 2-ήμερο μάθημα, ένα 6μηνο διαπιστευμένο πιστοποιητικό ή σε ένα διετές μεταπτυχιακό πρόγραμμα εφαρμοσμένης θετικής ψυχολογίας; επιπλέον, η εποπτευόμενη πρακτική (π.χ. η εποπτεία από συναδέλφους και η ατομική εποπτεία) και η διαδικτυακή συμβουλευτική είναι ιδανικές. απαιτείται περαιτέρω καθοδήγηση όσον αφορά την κατάλληλη κατάρτιση και εποπτεία από τους επαγγελματικούς φορείς στον τομέα αυτό (και πράγματι, τέτοια ζητήματα ήδη εξετάζονται και αντιμετωπίζονται από τα ενδιαφερόμενα μέρη). κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 8 αποκλειστικά) σύμβουλος, ψυχοθεραπευτής, επαγγελματίας ψυχικής υγείας, coach, εκπαιδευτής, μέντορας, ή εκπαιδευτικός.3 αρχές οι αρχές κατευθύνουν την προσοχή σε σημαντικές ηθικές υποχρεώσεις. οι ενέργειες ακολουθούν συγκεκριμένες αρχές. αξίες οι αξίες είναι πεποιθήσεις που κατέχουν τα άτομα και μοιράζονται οι ομάδες σχετικά με επιθυμητούς σκοπούς (δηλαδή, ευρύτερες ιδεολογίες για τον κόσμο και πώς θα έπρεπε να είναι). οι αξίες υπερβαίνουν συγκεκριμένες καταστάσεις, καθοδηγούν τον τρόπο με τον οποίο επιλέγουμε δράσεις και αξιολογούμε τους άλλους και τους εαυτούς μας, και ταξινομούνται με βάση τη σχετική σημασία τους (schwartz, 2006). οι αξίες μπορούν να αντιπροσωπεύουν έναν σημαντικό τρόπο έκφρασης μιας γενικής ηθικής δέσμευσης, η οποία ορίζεται με μεγαλύτερη ακρίβεια και είναι πιο προσανατολισμένη στη δράση όταν εκφράζεται ως αρχή. με άλλα λόγια, οι αξίες παρέχουν πληροφορίες στις αρχές. υπό αυτή την κοινή έννοια, οι αξίες που περιγράφονται σε αυτές τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές είναι εκείνες που οι συγγραφείς έχουν προσδιορίσει ως ευρέως αποδεκτές εντός της κοινότητας θψ. 3 το ήθος και οι αρχές που περιέχονται σε αυτές τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές θα μπορούσαν να ισχύουν εξίσου για τους ερευνητές ψυχολογικής ευεξίας, όπου οι ερευνητές θα μπορούσαν να θεωρηθούν επαγγελματίες κατά μία έννοια, σε συνεργασία με υποκείμενα που θα μπορούσαν να θεωρηθούν παρόμοια με πελάτες. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 9 ενότητα ένα: αξίες, δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρχές οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής της θψ ενσωματώνουν τις ακόλουθες αξίες, δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρχές. τόσο οι αξίες όσο και οι δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα υποστηρίζουν τη θέσπιση ηθικών αρχών, όπως παρουσιάζονται στον πίνακα 1. πίνακας 1 αξίες, δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρχές της εφαρμογής της θψ αξίες4 δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα5 αρχές 1. προστασία της ασφάλειας των πελατών και των άλλων. 1. ειλικρίνεια. 1. ευεργετική/ μη επιβλαβής πρακτική. 2. ανακούφιση της προσωπικής δυσφορίας και του πόνου. 2. δικαιοσύνη. 2. υπεύθυνη φροντίδα. 3. διασφάλιση της ακεραιότητας των σχέσεων επαγγελματιώνπελατών. 3. κοινωνική ευφυία. 3. σεβασμός των δικαιωμάτων και της αξιοπρέπειας των ανθρώπων. 4. εκτίμηση της πολυπολιτισμικότητας της ανθρώπινης εμπειρίας. 4. ομαδικότητα. 4. αξιοπιστία. 5. προώθηση μιας αίσθησης εαυτού που έχει νόημα για το άτομο. 5. καλοσύνη. 5. δικαιοσύνη. 6. ενίσχυση της επαγγελματικής γνώσης και της εφαρμογής της. 6. σύνεση. 6. αυτονομία. 7. βελτίωση της ποιότητας των σχέσεων μεταξύ των ανθρώπων. 7. προοπτική. 8. αύξηση της προσωπικής αποτελεσματικότητας. 8. κριτική ικανότητα. 9. προσπάθεια για δίκαιη και επαρκή παροχή υπηρεσιών συμβουλευτικής, ψυχοθεραπείας και coaching. 9. αυτορρύθμιση. 10. επιμονή. 11. γενναιότητα. 4 οι αξίες μας έχουν επιλεγεί με βάση άλλες παρόμοιες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές και, ως εκ τούτου, πολλές από τις αξίες μπορούν να ενταχθούν σε διαφορετικές κατηγορίες. για παράδειγμα, η δικαιοσύνη θα μπορούσε να εκληφθεί ως αξία ή ως αρχή. η αξιοπιστία θα μπορούσε να εκληφθεί ως δύναμη χαρακτήρα (ειλικρίνεια), ως αξία ή ως αρχή. παρόμοια διαπραγμάτευση μπορεί να γίνει για την ταξινόμηση πολλών από αυτές τις έννοιες. οι αξίες έχουν επίσης καταταχθεί με βάση τη σημαντικότητά τους, σύμφωνα με την κρίση των συντακτών των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών. 5 οι δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα 1-7 κατατάσσονται με βάση το πόσο συχνά αναφέρθηκαν και τονίστηκαν ως σημαντικές σε 10 παρόμοιους κώδικες δεοντολογίας (π.χ. «το ηθικό πλαίσιο καλής πρακτικής στη συμβουλευτική και ψυχοθεραπεία» του βρετανικού συλλόγου συμβουλευτικής και ψυχοθεραπείας). για τις δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα 8-11, οι συγγραφείς έχουν κρίνει σημαντική τη διατήρηση των έξι αρχών. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 10 επιπλέον: • σχεδόν όλοι οι κώδικες συμφωνούν σε ένα φάσμα προσωπικών χαρακτηριστικών και ποιοτήτων, ενώ οι παρούσες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές εστιάζουν στις δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και τις παρατηρήσιμες συμπεριφορές. • ο κατάλογος των αξιών, των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα και των αρχών δεν είναι σε καμιά περίπτωση εξαντλητικός, παρά μάλλον αποτελεί, μια πρώτη προσπάθεια να παραθέσει ό, τι είναι σήμερα αντιληπτό ως το πιο σχετικό με την πρακτική. καθώς οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές προσαρμόζονται επαναλαμβανόμενα με την πάροδο του χρόνου, και πραγματοποιείται συζήτηση εντός της κοινότητας της θψ, αναμένεται ότι τα στοιχεία αυτά θα εξελιχθούν. • επίσης, ο κατάλογος των αξιών, των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα και των αρχών δεν είναι δεσμευτικός. • επιλέχθηκε ένα μοντέλο δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα (το πλαίσιο «values in action»), το οποίο είναι επιστημονικά τεκμηριωμένο και περισσότερο διαδεδομένο στη βιβλιογραφία. αξίες των εθψ οι θεμελιώδεις αξίες των εθψ περιλαμβάνουν τις παρακάτω δεσμεύσεις: • προστασία της ασφάλειας των πελατών και των άλλων. αυτό περιλαμβάνει τη διατήρηση της ολοένα προσεκτικότερης συνειδητοποίησης του τρόπου με τον οποίο ένας πελάτης ανταποκρίνεται στις υπηρεσίες και επιπλέον, την αναγνώριση των περιορισμών της ικανότητας και της εξειδίκευσης του εθψ (και, ως εκ τούτου, την αναγνώριση του πότε ένας πελάτης χρειάζεται βοήθεια από επαγγελματίες άλλων ειδικοτήτων ή του εάν αποτελεί κίνδυνο για τους άλλους). • ανακούφιση της προσωπικής δυσφορίας και του πόνου (όταν αυτό εντάσσεται στα όρια εξειδίκευσης του εθψ). αυτό αναφέρεται στην ανάπτυξη θψπ που στοχεύουν στην ανακούφιση της δυσφορίας των ατόμων που αναζητούν υπηρεσίες σε διάφορα πλαίσια (π.χ. θεραπεία, coaching,υγεία). • διασφάλιση της ακεραιότητας των σχέσεων επαγγελματιών-πελατών. αυτό περιλαμβάνει τον σεβασμό των προσωπικών ορίων και τη δέσμευση για τήρηση των επαγγελματικών αρχών, όπως είναι ο σεβασμός της ιδιωτικότητας και η εμπιστευτικότητα. • εκτίμηση της πολυπολιτισμικότητας της ανθρώπινης εμπειρίας. αυτό δεν αναφέρεται σε ένα πλαίσιο εφαρμογής ενός μοντέλου για όλες τις ανάγκες, αλλά στην αναγνώριση και το σεβασμό των διαφορετικών ατομικών διαδρομών προσωπικής ανάπτυξης, καθώς και του κοινωνικού και πολιτισμικού υπόβαθρου του κάθε ατόμου. • η προώθηση μιας αίσθησης του εαυτού που έχει νόημα για το άτομο. αυτό σημαίνει ότι το άτομο αναπτύσσει και επιδιώκει στόχους όχι μόνο ικανοποιητικούς για τον εαυτό του, αλλά και στόχους που συμβάλλουν στο γενικότερο καλό. • ενίσχυση της επαγγελματικής γνώσης και της εφαρμογής της. αυτό σημαίνει ότι πρέπει κανείς να κάνει ότι καλύτερο μπορεί για να παραμείνει ενημερωμένος για κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 11 τις εξελίξεις στη βιβλιογραφία, και να επικαιροποιεί τις γνώσεις του σχετικά με τις εξελίξεις προόδου στο πεδίο της ψυχολογίας. • βελτίωση της ποιότητας των σχέσεων μεταξύ των ανθρώπων. αυτό σημαίνει ότι αναγνωρίζουμε ότι οι άνθρωποι βρίσκονται αναπόφευκτα μέσα σε κοινωνικές σχέσεις και δίκτυα, και προσπαθούμε να βοηθήσουμε το άτομο να βελτιώσει αυτούς τους δεσμούς όσο το δυνατόν περισσότερο. • αύξηση της προσωπικής αποτελεσματικότητας. αυτό σημαίνει ότι προσπαθούμε να βοηθήσουμε τον πελάτη να λειτουργήσει πιο αποτελεσματικά στον κόσμο και στις ιδιαίτερες καταστάσεις μέσα στις οποίες βρίσκεται. • επιδίωξη της δίκαιης και επαρκούς παροχής υπηρεσιών θψ. αυτό μπορεί να περιλαμβάνει την υποστήριξη των υπηρεσιών ακόμη και για πληθυσμούς που είναι δύσκολα προσβάσιμοι, ή όπου είναι δυνατόν, την υποστήριξη μιας τιμολογιακής πολιτικής, σύμφωνα με την οποία τα άτομα με λιγότερα μέσα να εξακολουθούν να μπορούν να επωφελούνται από τις υπηρεσίες. δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα και αρετές των εθψ οι δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα του επαγγελματία είναι σημαντικές επειδή έχουν αντίκτυπο στη σχέση επαγγελματία/πελάτη. πολλές από τις δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα που αξιολογούνται ως ζωτικής σημασίας για την παροχή υπηρεσιών, θεωρούνται ως στοιχεία ποιοτικού χαρακτήρα. αντενδείκνυται να θεωρηθεί ως δεδομένο ότι όλοι οι επαγγελματίες διαθέτουν αυτές τις δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα, καθώς είναι θεμελιώδες ότι τέτοιου είδους προσωπικές δυνάμεις είναι βαθιά ριζωμένες στον επαγγελματία και αναπτύσσονται από προσωπική δέσμευση και όχι από την απαίτηση μιας εξωτερικής αρχής. μία θεματική ανάλυση των αρχών και των αξιών που υιοθετούνται από σημαντικές κατευθυντήριες γραμμές (βλ. ενότητα συναφείς κατευθυντήριες γραμμές) έδειξε ότι οι ακόλουθες δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα θεωρούνται ότι διευκολύνουν την ηθική πρακτική και τη λήψη αποφάσεων: • ειλικρίνεια: έκφραση της αλήθειας· παρουσίαση του εαυτού με γνήσιο τρόπο και ειλικρινής συμπεριφορά· αυθεντικότητα· ανάληψη ευθύνης για τα συναισθήματα και τις πράξεις. • δικαιοσύνη: αντιμετώπιση όλων των ανθρώπων με τον ίδιο τρόπο σύμφωνα με τις έννοιες της αμεροληψίας και της δικαιοσύνης· η αποτροπή της μεροληψίας που τα προσωπικά συναισθήματα μπορεί να προκαλέσουν στις αποφάσεις για τους άλλους· η προσφορά ίσων ευκαιριών σε όλους. • κοινωνική eυφυία: επίγνωση των κινήτρων και των συναισθημάτων των άλλων ανθρώπων· προσαρμοστικότητα σε διαφορετικές κοινωνικές καταστάσεις· ικανότητα να κάνει κανείς τους άλλους να αισθανθούν άνετα. • ομαδικότητα: καλή συνεργασία στο πλαίσιο μιας μικρής ή μεγάλης ομάδας· πίστη στην ομάδα· ανάληψη της ατομικής δουλειάς. • καλοσύνη: καλές πράξεις και εξυπηρετήσεις προς τους άλλους· βοήθεια προς τους άλλους· φροντίδα προς τους άλλους. • σύνεση: προσεκτική αξιολόγηση των προσωπικών επιλογών· αποφυγή υπερβολικού ρίσκου· αποφυγή λεκτικών και μη συμπεριφορών τις οποίες το άτομο μπορεί αργότερα να μετανιώσει. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 12 • προοπτική: παροχή συνετών συμβουλών προς τους άλλους· οπτική του κόσμου με τρόπο που να έχει νόημα για τον εαυτό και για τους άλλους. • κριτική ικανότητα: αναλυτική και διεξοδική σκέψη· αποφυγή βιαστικών συμπερασμάτων· λήψη αποφάσεων μόνο με βάση αδιάσειστα στοιχεία· ικανότητα να αλλάξει κανείς γνώμη. • αυτορρύθμιση: ρύθμιση των συναισθημάτων και των συμπεριφορών· πειθαρχεία· έλεγχος των επιθυμιών και των συναισθημάτων. • επιμονή: σκληρή δουλειά για την ολοκλήρωση ενός έργου που έχει ξεκινήσει, ανεξάρτητα από το σε τι αυτό αφορά· έγκαιρη ολοκλήρωση· συγκέντρωση προσοχής κατά την εργασία· ικανοποίηση από την ολοκλήρωση εργασιών. • γενναιότητα: αμείωτο θάρρος μπροστά στην απειλή, την πρόκληση, τη δυσκολία, ή τον πόνο· ύψωση της φωνής για το δίκαιο ακόμη και αν υπάρχει αντίθετη άποψη· συμπεριφορά με βάση τις πεποιθήσεις. ηθικές αρχές για την πρακτική της θψ καθεμία από τις έξι ηθικές αρχές που περιγράφονται παρακάτω συνοδεύεται από παραδείγματα καλής πρακτικής, τα οποία έχουν αναπτυχθεί ως απάντηση στην αντίστοιχη, κάθε φορά, αρχή. οι ηθικές αποφάσεις που υποστηρίζονται σθεναρά από μία ή περισσότερες από αυτές τις αρχές, χωρίς καμία αντίφαση από άλλες, μπορούν να θεωρηθούν ότι έχουν ισχυρή ηθική συλλογιστική. ωστόσο, οι επαγγελματίες πιθανότατα θα βρεθούν αντιμέτωποι με συνθήκες, στις οποίες είναι αδύνατο να συμβιβάσουν όλες τις εφαρμοστέες αρχές, και θα είναι αναγκαίο να επιλέξουν μεταξύ των διαφορετικών αρχών. μια απόφαση ή πορεία δράσης δεν καθίσταται κατ' ανάγκη εκτός του πλαισίου της ηθικής πρακτικής απλώς και μόνο επειδή είναι αμφιλεγόμενη ή επειδή άλλοι επαγγελματίες θα είχαν καταλήξει σε διαφορετικά συμπεράσματα υπό παρόμοιες συνθήκες. υποχρέωση του επαγγελματία είναι να λαμβάνει υπόψη όλες τις σχετικές συνθήκες με τη δέουσα δυνατή προσοχή και να αναλαμβάνει την ευθύνη που του αναλογεί για τις αποφάσεις που λαμβάνονται. ευεργετική/ μη επιβλαβής πρακτική η ευεργεσία περιλαμβάνει μία δέσμευση για την προώθηση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας, τόσο του πελάτη όσο και του επαγγελματία. η αρχή της ευεργεσίας αναφέρεται στο να ενεργεί κανείς προς το συμφέρον του πελάτη, βάσει επαγγελματικής αξιολόγησης. κατευθύνει την προσοχή στην εργασία αυστηρά εντός των ορίων των ικανοτήτων του επαγγελματία και στην παροχή υπηρεσιών βάσει κατάλληλης κατάρτισης ή εμπειρίας. η διασφάλιση της επίτευξης των βέλτιστων αποτελεσμάτων προς το συμφέρον του πελάτη απαιτεί συστηματική παρακολούθηση της πρακτικής και των αποτελεσμάτων (όπως για παράδειγμα η ψυχολογική ευεξία) με τα καλύτερα διαθέσιμα μέσα. θεωρείται σημαντικό η επιστημονική έρευνα και ο συστηματικός αναστοχασμός να τροφοδοτούν την πρακτική. ανάλογα με το ρόλο και το πλαίσιο, υπάρχει συνήθως η υποχρέωση να ληφθούν μέτρα για τη βελτίωση της ποιότητας των παρεχόμενων υπηρεσιών και να δεσμευτούν οι επαγγελματίες για την επικαιροποίηση της πρακτικής τους μέσω της συνεχούς επαγγελματικής ανάπτυξης. η υποχρέωση να ενεργεί κανείς προς το βέλτιστο συμφέρον ενός πελάτη μπορεί να καταστεί υψίστης σημασίας όταν συνεργάζεται με πελάτες των οποίων η ικανότητα αυτονομίας περιορίζεται λόγω ηλικίας, ανωριμότητας, έλλειψης κατανόησης, ψυχικής δυσφορίας ή άλλων σημαντικών προσωπικών περιορισμών. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 13 η μη επιβλαβής πρακτική, από την άλλη πλευρά, αναφέρεται στη δέσμευση για την αποφυγή πρόκλησης βλάβης στον πελάτη. επαγγελματίες που υιοθετούν την αρχή αυτή: • δεν προβαίνουν στη σεξουαλική, οικονομική, συναισθηματική ή οποιαδήποτε άλλη εκμετάλλευση των πελατών· • διασφαλίζουν την καλή πρακτική (δηλ. την ορθή εφαρμογή των θψπ). για παράδειγμα, έχουν γνώση σχετικά με το τί «δουλεύει» για κάθε πελάτη· • δεν παρέχουν υπηρεσίες όταν δεν είναι σε θέση να το πράξουν λόγω ασθένειας, προσωπικών δυσκολιών ή μέθης. ο επαγγελματίας έχει την ηθική υποχρέωση να προσπαθήσει να μετριάσει οποιαδήποτε βλάβη προκαλείται σε έναν πελάτη, ακόμη και όταν η βλάβη είναι αναπόφευκτη ή ακούσια. οι επαγγελματίες έχουν την προσωπική και επαγγελματική υποχρέωση να αμφισβητούν, όπου χρειάζεται, την ανικανότητα ή την κακή πρακτική των άλλων. έχουν επίσης την ευθύνη να συμβάλλουν σε κάθε έρευνα ή/και επιδίκαση από αναγνωρισμένους φορείς/αρχές, σχετικά με την επαγγελματική πρακτική που είναι κατώτερη από εκείνη ενός ικανού επαγγελματία ή/και που κινδυνεύει να δυσφημήσει το επάγγελμά του ή την θψ. υπεύθυνη φροντίδα η πρακτική της θψ προωθεί την ψυχολογική ευεξία. κατά την επίτευξη αυτού του στόχου, οι εθψ που υιοθετούν αυτή την αρχή επιδεικνύουν ενεργό ενδιαφέρον για την ευημερία των ατόμων με τους οποίους συνεργάζονται και αναγνωρίζουν την κοινωνική και θεσμική δύναμη που δομεί το ρόλο τους ως εθψ. έχουν πρωταρχική ευθύνη να προστατεύουν την ευημερία εκείνων με τους οποίους συνεργάζονται. αναγνωρίζουν ότι τα άτομα, οι οικογένειες, οι ομάδες ή οι κοινότητες μπορεί να βρίσκονται σε ευάλωτη θέση. αναγνωρίζουν επίσης τα όρια της εξειδίκευσής τους (συμπεριλαμβανομένης της έλλειψης γνώσεων) και παραπέμπουν σε άλλους ειδικούς όταν χρειάζεται, καθώς και αναλαμβάνουν την ευθύνη και διορθώνουν οποιαδήποτε βλάβη προκύψει ως αποτέλεσμα της παροχής υπηρεσιών τους. οι εθψ αναμένεται επίσης να έχουν ενεργό και συνεχές ενδιαφέρον για εμπειρικές και θεωρητικές εξελίξεις στον τομέα τους, διασφαλίζοντας ότι διατηρούν ενημερωμένες γνώσεις σχετικά με την επιστημονική τεκμηρίωση των θψπ που εφαρμόζουν. σεβασμός των δικαιωμάτων και της αξιοπρέπειας των ανθρώπων σύμφωνα με την οικουμενική διακήρυξη των δικαιωμάτων του ανθρώπου των ηνωμένων εθνών, ο σεβασμός της αξιοπρέπειας των ατόμων και των δικαιωμάτων τους απαιτεί: κάθε άτομο και όλοι οι λαοί να εκτιμώνται θετικά αυτοδικαίως, τα δικαιώματά τους να αναγνωρίζονται και να γίνονται σεβαστά, να τους επιδεικνύεται σεβασμός και να αντιμετωπίζονται με αξιοπρέπεια ως μέλη της ανθρωπότητας. οι επαγγελματίες που υιοθετούν αυτή την αρχή επιδεικνύουν σεβασμό, ο οποίος απαιτεί ευαισθησία στην πολιτιστική και κοινωνική διαφορετικότητα. αυτό περιλαμβάνει την αναγνώριση των διαφορών μεταξύ των ατόμων που συνδέονται με τον πολιτισμό, την εθνικότητα, την εθνότητα, το χρώμα, τη φυλή, τη θρησκεία, το φύλο, την οικογενειακή κατάσταση, τον σεξουαλικό προσανατολισμό, τις σωματικές ή διανοητικές ικανότητες, την ηλικία, την κοινωνικοοικονομική κατάσταση ή/και οποιοδήποτε άλλο προσωπικό χαρακτηριστικό, συνθήκη ή κατάσταση. οι διαφορές αυτές αποτελούν αναπόσπαστο μέρος του ατόμου και θα πρέπει να γίνονται σεβαστές. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 14 αξιοπιστία το να είναι ένας επαγγελματίας αξιόπιστος (πίστη, αφοσίωση) περιλαμβάνει το να τιμά την εμπιστοσύνη που δείχνουν οι άλλοι προς το πρόσωπό του. η αξιοπιστία θεωρείται θεμελιώδης για την κατανόηση και την επίλυση ηθικών ζητημάτων. επαγγελματίες που υιοθετούν την αρχή αυτή: • ενεργούν σύμφωνα με την εμπιστοσύνη που τους έχει δοθεί· • προσπαθούν να διασφαλίσουν ότι οι προσδοκίες των πελατών είναι τέτοιες που έχουν εύλογες προοπτικές να ικανοποιηθούν· • τηρούν τις συμφωνίες και τις υποσχέσεις τους· • θεωρούν την εμπιστευτικότητα ως υποχρέωση που απορρέει από την εμπιστοσύνη του πελάτη· • περιορίζουν κάθε αποκάλυψη εμπιστευτικών πληροφοριών σχετικά με τους πελάτες στην προώθηση των σκοπών για τους οποίους δόθηκαν εξαρχής οι πληροφορίες – με εξαίρεση την υποχρεωτική γνωστοποίηση (π.χ. την υποχρεωτική, με νόμο, αποκάλυψη). δικαιοσύνη η δικαιοσύνη περιλαμβάνει τη δίκαιη και αμερόληπτη μεταχείριση όλων των πελατών και την παροχή επαρκών υπηρεσιών. h αρχή της δικαιοσύνης απαιτεί οι επαγγελματίες που την υιοθετούν να είναι δίκαιοι και αμερόληπτοι με όλους τους πελάτες και να σέβονται τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα και την αξιοπρέπειά τους. κατευθύνει την προσοχή στην ευσυνείδητη εξέταση τυχόν νομικών απαιτήσεων και υποχρεώσεων, καθώς και στην παραμονή σε εγρήγορση για πιθανές συγκρούσεις μεταξύ νομικών και ηθικών υποχρεώσεων. η δικαιοσύνη στη διανομή των υπηρεσιών απαιτεί την ικανότητα να καθορίζει κανείς αμερόληπτα την παροχή υπηρεσιών προς τους πελάτες, καθώς και την κατανομή των υπηρεσιών μεταξύ των πελατών. η δέσμευση για δικαιοσύνη απαιτεί την ικανότητα να εκτιμώνται οι διαφορές μεταξύ των ανθρώπων και να δεσμεύεται κανείς για την ισότητα ευκαιριών και αποτελεσμάτων, καθώς και να αποφεύγονται οι διακρίσεις εις βάρος ατόμων ή ομάδων με βάση τα προσωπικά ή κοινωνικά χαρακτηριστικά τους. με άλλα λόγια, η δικαιοσύνη συνεπάγεται ότι δεν θα συμβούν αθέμιτες διακρίσεις με βάση ορισμένα χαρακτηριστικά (π.χ. φύλο ή ηλικία). οι επαγγελματίες έχουν καθήκον να προσπαθήσουν να εξασφαλίσουν μια δίκαιη παροχή υπηρεσιών, οι οποίες είναι προσβάσιμες και κατάλληλες ως προς τις ανάγκες των δυνητικών πελατών. αυτονομία η αυτονομία περιλαμβάνει τον σεβασμό του δικαιώματος του πελάτη να ορίζει τον εαυτό του. η αρχή αυτή τονίζει τη σημασία της ανάπτυξης της ικανότητας ενός πελάτη να κατευθύνει τον εαυτό του, τόσο στο πλαίσιο των παρεχόμενων υπηρεσιών, όσο και στους άλλους τομείς της ζωής. η αρχή της αυτονομίας αντιτίθεται στην εφαρμογή χειριστικών πρακτικών προς τους πελάτες παρά τη θέλησή τους, ακόμη και με ευεργετική πρόθεση. επαγγελματίες που σέβονται την αυτονομία των πελατών τους: • διασφαλίζουν την ακρίβεια κάθε διαφήμισης ή πληροφορίας που παρέχεται προκαταβολικά για τις προσφερόμενες υπηρεσίες· κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 15 • ζητούν την ελεύθερη και επαρκώς ενημερωμένη συγκατάθεση του πελάτη καθ' όλη τη διάρκεια της συνεργασίας· • τονίζουν την αξία της εκούσιας συμμετοχής στις προσφερόμενες υπηρεσίες· • προβαίνουν σε ρητή σύναψη συμβολαίου πριν από οποιαδήποτε δέσμευση του πελάτη και επανεξετάζουν/ελέγχουν τους όρους του συγκεκριμένου συμβολαίου καθ' όλη τη διάρκεια της συνεργασίας· • προστατεύουν την ιδιωτικότητα· • προστατεύουν την εμπιστευτικότητα· • συνήθως προβαίνουν σε γνωστοποίηση εμπιστευτικών πληροφοριών μόνο υπό τον όρο να έχουν την συναίνεση του ατόμου που το αφορά· • ενημερώνουν τον πελάτη εκ των προτέρων για προβλεπόμενες συγκρούσεις συμφερόντων ή το συντομότερο δυνατόν μετά την εμφάνιση των συγκρούσεων αυτών. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 16 ενότητα δύο: εφαρμογή των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ηθικής στην πράξη το παρόν κεφάλαιο περιλαμβάνει διάφορες οδηγίες και παραδείγματα εφαρμογής των συγκεκριμένων κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ηθικής σε συναφείς περιστάσεις. το περιεχόμενο έχει σχεδιαστεί για να εμβαθύνει τη σκέψη, ενώ παράλληλα να προσφέρει χρήσιμα εργαλεία και έναν οδηγό αυτό-αξιολόγησης για την εξεύρεση λύσεων και την υποστήριξη της διαδικασίας λήψης ηθικών αποφάσεων στην πράξη. τρεις σημαντικοί προβληματισμοί πριν εφαρμοστεί οποιαδήποτε από τις θψπ, χρειάζεται κανείς να αξιολογήσει και να κρίνει τους παρακάτω τρεις σημαντικούς παράγοντες, οι οποίοι συνιστούν τον ακρογωνιαίο λίθο της βέλτιστης πρακτικής (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. είναι η συγκεκριμένη θψπ κατάλληλη για την περίσταση; αυτό μπορεί να διαπιστωθεί μετά από μελέτη της σχετικής βιβλιογραφίας και των δημοσιευμένων τεκμηριώσεων από αξιόπιστες πηγές. για παράδειγμα, πριν εφαρμοστεί μία συγκεκριμένη θψπ για την ευγνωμοσύνη, ελέγξτε να δείτε αν υπάρχουν ήδη δημοσιευμένα δεδομένα που δείχνουν ότι η εν λόγω παρέμβαση είναι μία εν δυνάμει αποτελεσματική τεχνική για το συγκεκριμένο πελάτη. 2. είναι συμβατή η θψπ με τις παρούσες ανάγκες του πελάτη; 3. πώς θα αξιολογηθεί η αποτελεσματικότητα μίας θψπ; με άλλα λόγια, ποιο συγκεκριμένο αποτέλεσμα μπορεί να παρατηρηθεί και να αξιολογηθεί με έγκυρο τρόπο ώστε να οριστεί η αποτελεσματικότητα της θψπ; ηθική λήψη αποφάσεων η ηθική λήψη αποφάσεων είναι δυνατό να υποβοηθηθεί από την επαρκή γνώση των συγκεκριμένων κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ηθικής και των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ενός συναφούς επαγγέλματος, την επίγνωση σχετικά με την ηθικά ενάρετη συμπεριφορά των άλλων, καθώς και τη χρήση των προσωπικών δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα κατά τη διαδικασία λήψης απόφασης. γνώση: αναμένουμε ότι οι βασικοί χρήστες του παρόντος οδηγού – συγκεκριμένα, εθψ με επαρκή εκπαίδευση, κατάρτιση και εμπειρία στην άσκηση της ψυχολογίας ή συναφών πεδίων – είναι εξοικειωμένοι και ικανοί να περιγράψουν τις συγκεκριμένες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής και όποιες άλλες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής αφορούν στο επάγγελμά τους και την επαγγελματική τους θέση. οι περισσότεροι αρμόδιοι φορείς τονίζουν ότι οι επαγγελματίες πρέπει να είναι εξοικειωμένοι με τους σχετικούς κανόνες, τα πρότυπα, τους κανονισμούς, τα συστήματα και τις διαδικασίες. συμπεριφορά: η ηθική συμπεριφορά, ιδίως όταν εφαρμόζονται θψπ, δεν μπορεί να προέρχεται μόνο από γνωστική κατάρτιση. η ηθική συμπεριφορά πρέπει να είναι στενά συνδεδεμένη με συλλογικές συμπεριφορές και πρακτικές. μπορείτε να εντοπίσετε στον επαγγελματικό σας κύκλο εκείνα τα άτομα που επιδεικνύουν ηθικές πρακτικές; παρόλο που οι συνάδελφοί σας ενδέχεται να μην επισημαίνουν τέτοιες πρακτικές λόγω μετριοφροσύνης, σας παροτρύνουμε να ρωτάτε ρητά τους άμεσους συνεργάτες σας ή την ευρύτερη επαγγελματική κοινότητα (περιφερειακών ή διεθνών οργανισμών), με ποιον τρόπο εφαρμόζουν τα πρότυπα ηθικής στο πεδίο σας. η δημιουργία ενός αρχείου καταγραφής περιπτώσεων καλών πρακτικών θα είναι χρήσιμη κατά τη διαδικασία αναστοχασμού της προσωπικής συμπεριφοράς. μετά τη συγκέντρωση επαρκούς αριθμού κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 17 περιπτώσεων, είναι πιθανό να εμφανιστούν παραδείγματα βέλτιστων πρακτικών. ιδανικά, οι επαγγελματίες θα δημιουργήσουν έναν προσβάσιμο σημείο συλλογής πληροφοριών, το οποίο άλλοι επαγγελματίες θα έχουν την ευκαιρία να εμπλουτίζουν. αξιοποίηση δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα για την ηθική λήψη αποφάσεων: οι δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα μπορούν να βοηθήσουν με πολλούς τρόπους στην ηθική λήψη αποφάσεων. για παράδειγμα, ο εντοπισμός πρότυπων δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα μπορεί να διευκολύνει την παρούσα διαδικασία ηθικής λήψης απόφασης. εντοπίστε ένα συνάδελφο που εμφανίζεται ως πρότυπο υποδειγματικής ηθικής συμπεριφοράς. αναλογιστείτε πώς χειρίστηκε ένα συγκεκριμένο ηθικό δίλημμα ή μία κατάσταση ή γενικότερα, ποιες δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα ενσωματώνει στην καθημερινή του/της συναναστροφή με συναδέλφους και πελάτες, τις οποίες αξίζει να κρατήσετε ως υποδειγματικές και μπορούν να σας βοηθήσουν στη λήψη αποφάσεων. παράμετροι πρακτικής υπάρχει μια σειρά παραμέτρων που χρειάζεται να έχει κανείς στο μυαλό του όταν δουλεύει με πελάτες, οι οποίες μπορούν να έχουν άμεσες και σημαντικές ηθικές επιπτώσεις. συγκεκριμένα, είναι σκόπιμο να ληφθούν υπόψη: αλλαγές που βιώνουν οι πελάτες· αλλαγές στο περιβάλλον στο οποίο βρίσκονται, τόσο οι εθψ, όσο και οι πελάτες· η τρέχουσα συναισθηματική κατάσταση και ο βαθμός ψυχολογικής ευεξίας των πελατών και των εθψ· η τάση των πελατών προς την αποφυγή· οι διαφορές ισχύος στη σχέση· η υπερβολική χρήση των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα· η πρακτική σοφία· η αποσαφήνιση της εκπαίδευσης και των δεξιοτήτων και η σημασία των ποικίλων πολιτισμικών πλαισίων. η μελέτη αυτών των παραμέτρων μπορεί να διευκολύνει τον περιορισμό, την πρόβλεψη ή την πρόληψη κάποιων ακούσιων και δυσάρεστων συνεπειών. αλλαγές που βιώνουν οι πελάτες κατά την παροχή οποιασδήποτε ψυχολογικής υπηρεσίας είναι σημαντικό να παρακολουθούμε την ψυχολογικής ευεξία των πελατών, καθ’ όλη την πορεία της θεραπείας ή της παρέμβασης. ορισμένοι πελάτες χειροτερεύουν, παρά την αποδεδειγμένη αποτελεσματικότητα της θψπ. η επιδείνωση των συμπτωμάτων μπορεί να συμβεί για διάφορους λόγους και καθιστά τους πελάτες ευάλωτους. ο πελάτης ενδέχεται να μην μοιραστεί απαραίτητα αυτή την πληροφορία με τον επαγγελματία, ίσως επειδή είναι πιθανό να αισθάνεται ντροπή, φόβο ή δισταγμό να απογοητεύσει τον επαγγελματία που δουλεύει με στόχο την ενίσχυση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας του πελάτη. τις περισσότερες φορές, οι θψπ έχουν ξεκάθαρο στόχο, όχι τη βελτίωση των συμπτωμάτων, αλλά την προαγωγή της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας. η παρακολούθηση των αλλαγών στις συνθήκες ζωής των πελατών είναι σημαντική, όπως είναι και η προσαρμογή των θψπ στις αλλαγές αυτές. εάν, για παράδειγμα, ο πελάτης βιώσει έναν χωρισμό ή έχει χάσει τη δουλειά του, είναι σημαντικό ο επαγγελματίας να ασχοληθεί με αυτές τις αλλαγές και να εκτιμήσει την επίδρασή τους. οι επαγγελματίες πρέπει να είναι προετοιμασμένοι να διακόψουν μια εν εξελίξει θψπ και να προσαρμόσουν την προσέγγισή τους ανάλογα με τις υπάρχουσες και εξελισσόμενες ανάγκες ή να παραπέμψουν τον πελάτη, αν αυτό κρίνεται απαραίτητο. στην περίπτωση που αυτό δεν γίνει, ενδέχεται να επηρεαστεί αρνητικά η σχέση και να μην είναι εφικτό να αποκατασταθεί. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 18 αλλαγές στο περιβάλλον εκτός από το να λάβει κανείς υπόψη τις αλλαγές που βιώνουν οι πελάτες, είναι σημαντικό να αναλογιστεί και το περιβάλλον μέσα στο οποίο βρίσκονται ενταγμένοι, τόσο οι πελάτες όσο και οι επαγγελματίες. ας πάρουμε για παράδειγμα έναν εθψ, ο οποίος ασκεί και κλινική πρακτική. οι σύγχρονοι κλινικοί επαγγελματίες εργάζονται σε εξαιρετικά περίπλοκα, με γρήγορους ρυθμούς, και πιεστικά πλαίσια, τα οποία χαρακτηρίζονται από προκλήσεις, όπως η έλλειψη τεκμηριωμένων θεραπευτικών προγραμμάτων, η ανεπάρκεια πολιτισμικής κατάρτισης, καθώς και οι χρόνιες και πολύπλοκες ανάγκες των πελατών που επηρεάζουν πολλαπλά πεδία της ζωής τους. με δεδομένες τις προκλήσεις αυτές, σκεφτείτε πελάτες οι οποίοι: • μπορεί να έχουν χάσει τη δουλειά τους ή κάποιες σημαντικές συμφωνίες, ή έχουν παραγκωνιστεί σε μία προαγωγή που δικαιούνταν, μόνο και μόνο επειδή δεν ταίριαζαν με την υπόλοιπη ομάδα· • μπορεί να έχουν διαγνωστεί πρόσφατα με μία σοβαρή ασθένεια· • αντιμετωπίζουν την προδοσία ή άλλης μορφής κακομεταχείριση από την/τον σύντροφό τους· • βιώνουν μία συνθήκη διάκρισης· • έχουν πληγεί από φυσικά καταστροφικά φαινόμενα (π.χ. πλημμύρα ή πυρκαγιά) ή από κάποιο παγκόσμιο πρόβλημα (π.χ. πείνα). αναλογιστείτε πώς αυτές οι προκλήσεις ενδέχεται να επηρεάσουν τους πελάτες και να διαμορφώσουν τη θεραπεία τους. αυτά τα περιστατικά παρουσιάζουν ποικίλα θέματα, τα οποία χρειάζεται να συνυπολογιστούν και να αντιμετωπιστούν με διαφορετικούς τρόπους, τηρώντας παράλληλα τους επαγγελματικούς κανόνες και τα πρότυπα που ακολουθεί ο κάθε επαγγελματίας. επομένως, είναι σημαντικό όταν οι εθψ προτείνουν θψπ, να γνωρίζουν για τους πελάτες τους και για το περιβάλλον τους, καθώς και για πρόσφατες ή τρέχουσες αλλαγές στις συνθήκες ζωής τους. οι επαγγελματίες χρειάζεται επίσης να έχουν επίγνωση των προκλήσεων εντός του δικού τους εργασιακού περιβάλλοντος. αυτές μπορεί να περιλαμβάνουν διοικητικές αλλαγές, οι οποίες ίσως επιφέρουν αλλαγές στις παρεχόμενες υπηρεσίες. για παράδειγμα, ένας καινούριος διευθυντής ίσως να προωθεί ή να αντιτίθεται σε συγκεκριμένες θψπ ή να προτιμά κάποια άλλη θεραπευτική προσέγγιση (π.χ., τον νευρογλωσσικό προγραμματισμό, τις θεραπείες που βασίζονται στην ενσυνειδητότητα, ή τη θεραπεία αποδοχής και δέσμευσης). τέτοιες μεταβολές μπορεί να επηρεάσουν άμεσα ή έμμεσα την εφαρμογή των θψπ, μεταξύ άλλων και από ηθική άποψη. τρέχουσα συναισθηματική κατάσταση και βαθμός ψυχολογικής ευεξίας όταν προτείνουμε θψπ, είναι σημαντικό να αξιολογούμε, τόσο τις αλλαγές που βιώνουν οι πελάτες, όσο και την τρέχουσα συναισθηματική τους κατάσταση και το βαθμό της ψυχολογικής τους ευεξίας. είναι σημαντικό οι εθψ να λειτουργούν εντός του πεδίου ειδίκευσης και εκπαίδευσής τους. πελάτες που αντιμετωπίζουν θέματα ψυχοπαθολογίας (όπως κατάθλιψη, άγχος, τραύμα) θα πρέπει να παραπέμπονται σε κατάλληλα καταρτισμένους και έμπειρους επαγγελματίες. στη περίπτωση που τέτοια θέματα δεν υφίστανται κατά την έναρξη της σχέσης, ο εθψ χρειάζεται να είναι σε επαγρύπνηση, καθώς αυτά μπορεί να προκύψουν ενώ ο πελάτης εφαρμόζει μία θψπ και να είναι έτοιμος να τον παραπέμψει σε κάποιον κατάλληλα καταρτισμένο επαγγελματία. ιδανικά, ο επαγγελματίας θα συζητήσει με τον πελάτη και θα συμβουλευθεί συναδέλφους και https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%ce%9d%ce%b5%cf%85%cf%81%ce%bf%ce%b3%ce%bb%cf%89%cf%83%cf%83%ce%b9%ce%ba%cf%8c%cf%82_%cf%80%cf%81%ce%bf%ce%b3%cf%81%ce%b1%ce%bc%ce%bc%ce%b1%cf%84%ce%b9%cf%83%ce%bc%cf%8c%cf%82 https://www.athenspsychologist.gr/therapies/therapeia-apodoxis-desmeusis/ κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 19 συναφείς ειδικούς, για να βεβαιωθεί ποια είναι η κατάλληλη στιγμή να συνεχίσει την εφαρμογή θψπ σε μια τέτοια περίπτωση. αποφυγή η αποφυγή είναι ένας από τους πιο κοινούς μηχανισμούς τους οποίους χρησιμοποιούν οι άνθρωποι για να διαχειριστούν τα αρνητικά συναισθήματα. μία υγιής ψυχολογικά ζωή περιλαμβάνει την επίγνωση και τη βίωση του πλήρους φάσματος των συναισθημάτων, με προσαρμοστικό τρόπο. ορισμένοι από τους πελάτες που αναζητούν θψπ, ίσως αποφεύγουν βαθύτερα αρνητικά συναισθήματα λόγω της δυσφορίας που τους δημιουργούν και αναζητούν θψπ, με την ελπίδα ότι αυτές θα τα εξαφανίσουν ή θα τα κρατήσουν μακριά. παραδείγματα πηγών αρνητικών συναισθημάτων περιλαμβάνουν τις αναμνήσεις ενός πικρού χωρισμού ή διαζυγίου, την προδοσία από έναν έμπιστο φίλο, την πικρία για το γεγονός ότι κάποιος γίνεται θύμα διάκρισης και δέχεται άδικη ή μεροληπτική μεταχείριση από πρόσωπα ή θεσμούς. ένας τρόπος αξιολόγησης της αποφυγής είναι η εστίαση της προσοχής σε αρνητικά συναισθήματα που εμφανίζονται επαναλαμβανόμενα σε συζητήσεις ενώ δεν συζητούνται ανοιχτά (δηλ. συναισθήματα που επίμονα ταράζουν τους πελάτες αλλά παρόλα αυτά σκόπιμα δεν συζητούνται). μολονότι οι θψπ ανοίγουν νέους ορίζοντες με ολοένα αυξανόμενες ενδείξεις ότι τα θετικά συναισθήματα και οι δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα μπορούν να βελτιώσουν και να αποκαταστήσουν αρνητικές καταστάσεις (rashid & seligman, 2018), αυτό συμβαίνει μόνο στην περίπτωση που οι αρνητικές καταστάσεις είναι ουσιαστικά ενσωματωμένες στη θεραπεία. στις περιπτώσεις όπου τα έντονα αρνητικά συναισθήματα αποφεύγονται από τους πελάτες ή τους επαγγελματίες, η αποτελεσματικότητα της θεραπείας διακυβεύεται. διαφορές ισχύος ένα από τα ουσιαστικότερα χαρακτηριστικά κάθε ψυχολογικής αλληλεπίδρασης που περιλαμβάνει έναν επαγγελματία και έναν πελάτη είναι η δυναμική ισχύος που ενέχεται στη σχέση και ειδικότερα η διαφορά ισχύος. θεραπευτές, σύμβουλοι, κοινωνικοί λειτουργοί και άλλοι συναφείς επαγγελματίες είναι ενήμεροι συνήθως για αυτή τη διαφορά. για το λόγο αυτό, προσπαθούν να δημιουργήσουν έναν χώρο ασφαλή, μη επικριτικό, εμπιστευτικό και ζεστό, όπου οι πελάτες δεν αισθάνονται ως απλοί παθητικοί αποδέκτες συνταγογραφημένων υπηρεσιών. παρ΄ όλα αυτά, η φύση της συνδιαλλαγής μεταξύ επαγγελματία και πελάτη είναι τέτοια ώστε ο επαγγελματίας να θεωρείται αναπόφευκτα ως ειδήμων. οι πελάτες τείνουν να τους θαυμάζουν ως ειδικούς με τις πλέον προηγμένες επιστημονικές γνώσεις, εκπαίδευση και εμπειρία στην εφαρμογή θψπ. συνεπώς, η διαφορά ισχύος είναι πάντοτε παρούσα. ο επαγγελματίας οφείλει να είναι ενήμερος σχετικά με τη διαφορά αυτή και θα πρέπει να αποφεύγει οποιαδήποτε κατάσταση στην οποία ο ίδιος ή ο πελάτης θα πρέπει να λάβει μία απόφαση που πιθανά επηρεάζεται από τη διαφορά ισχύος. κατάχρηση των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα η ανεπαρκής χρήση ή η κατάχρηση πρακτικών βασισμένων στις δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα είναι πιθανό να οξύνουν τις υπάρχουσες προκλήσεις. για παράδειγμα, σε ποικίλα πλαίσια coaching, η σύσταση σε πελάτες να είναι πιο συγκρατημένοι μπορεί να προκαλέσει σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις εντονότερο άγχος ή αναποφασιστικότητα. πελάτες που εξασκούνται στη συγχώρεση χωρίς να έχουν προβληματιστεί σχετικά με το πότε και ποιον να συγχωρήσουν, ενδέχεται να παραβλέψουν προσβολές, οι οποίες, εάν δεν ελεγχθούν ή αν δεν έχουν δοθεί εξηγήσεις για αυτές, είναι δυνατόν να πληγώσουν άλλους ανθρώπους. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 20 πελάτες που χρησιμοποιούν σε υπερβολικό βαθμό τη δημιουργικότητα μπορεί να δυσκολευθούν να συμμορφωθούν με πρότυπα και κανόνες που προάγουν την ισότητα και τις ίσες ευκαιρίες. πελάτες αφοσιωμένοι στη λήψη δίκαιων αποφάσεων στον χώρο εργασίας τους μπορεί να δυσκολευθούν να συμφιλιώσουν αντικρουόμενες πραγματικότητες που συνυπάρχουν στο ίδιο πεδίο (π.χ. να κατανοήσουν πώς ένα πολύ μορφωμένο και καλά καταρτισμένο άτομο μπορεί να λάβει άστοχες αποφάσεις). πρακτική σοφία οι επαγγελματίες χρειάζονται αυτό που ο αριστοτέλης ονόμαζε «φρόνηση», δηλ. την πρακτική σοφία να εφαρμόζουν τις συγκεκριμένες κατευθυντήριες γραμμές. για παράδειγμα, σκεφτείτε έναν επαγγελματία που εργάζεται με κάποιο υψηλόβαθμο στέλεχος, με το οποίο έχουν χτίσει μία άριστη σχέση και το οποίο έχει σημειώσει σημαντική πρόοδο στη δουλειά του. ωστόσο, ο επαγγελματίας αντιλαμβάνεται ότι το στέλεχος έχει εμπλακεί σε ανήθικες συμπεριφορές. θα πρέπει ο επαγγελματίας να διαφυλάξει τη σταθερή σχέση ή θα πρέπει να έρθει αντιμέτωπος μαζί του, ρισκάροντας τη σχέση; μία απλή σειρά κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ίσως δεν επαρκεί. ο επαγγελματίας χρειάζεται να αντιληφθεί την κατάσταση και να εξισορροπήσει τα αντικρουόμενα κίνητρα. σε τέτοιες περιπτώσεις, η πρακτική σοφία χτίζεται, τόσο από τη συνολική εμπειρία, όσο και από τις καλές διασυνδέσεις με συναδέλφους, οι οποίοι μπορούν να συμβουλεύσουν και να βοηθήσουν με την ηθική συλλογιστική. διατήρηση της ανθεκτικότητας και θωράκιση απέναντι στην επαγγελματική εξουθένωση αρκετές από τις έννοιες της θψ μπορούν να θωρακίσουν τους επαγγελματίες απέναντι στην επαγγελματική εξουθένωση. τα θετικά συναισθήματα (π.χ. η ελπίδα, η γαλήνη, η χαρά, το ενδιαφέρον και το δέος) μπορούν να διευρύνουν τους διαθέσιμους γνωστικούς και συμπεριφορικούς πόρους του επαγγελματία, οι οποίοι μπορούν να λειτουργήσουν ως προστασία απέναντι σε παράγοντες ευαλωτότητας, όπως είναι τα συμπτώματα επαγγελματικής εξουθένωσης (π.χ. η συναισθηματική εξάντληση). προσωπικές πρακτικές, όπως η ενσυνειδητότητα, μπορούν επίσης να βοηθήσουν στην περίπτωση αυτή. οι διαπροσωπικές δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα (π.χ. η κοινωνική ευφυΐα, η καλοσύνη, η αγάπη, το χιούμορ, η αίσθηση σκοπού και νοήματος, και η ομαδικότητα) μπορούν επίσης να βοηθήσουν στη διαχείριση απαιτητικών καταστάσεων όπως η αποπροσωποποίηση (δηλ. η αίσθηση ενός ανθρώπου ότι οι σκέψεις και τα συναισθήματά του μοιάζουν μη πραγματικά ή σαν να μην ανήκουν στον ίδιο). με τον ίδιο τρόπο, η αίσθηση σκοπού και νοήματος μπορεί να αποκαταστήσει την προσωπική αίσθηση στην περίπτωση αποπροσωποποίησης. δήλωση της εκπαίδευσης και των ικανοτήτων οι επαγγελματίες θα πρέπει να δηλώνουν τα όρια των ικανοτήτων τους όσον αφορά συγκεκριμένες ψυχολογικές καταστάσεις, συγκεκριμένες ομάδες (π.χ. παιδιά, ομάδες, άτομα με διαφορετικά πολιτισμικά χαρακτηριστικά), καθώς και συγκεκριμένες θψπ. για παράδειγμα, ένας επαγγελματίας μπορεί να έχει εμπειρία στην αξιολόγηση των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα σε ενήλικες, αλλά όχι σε παιδιά ή εφήβους. επιπλέον, καθώς η παροχή υπηρεσιών συνεχίζεται, ενδέχεται να προκύψουν ανάγκες σε τομείς, στους οποίους ο επαγγελματίας διαθέτει λιγότερη εμπειρία ή δεν είναι επαρκώς καταρτισμένος. για παράδειγμα, ενώ ένας επαγγελματίας μπορεί να έχει την εμπειρία και την κατάρτιση για την παροχή υπηρεσιών σε παιδιά, εφήβους και ενήλικες, ενδέχεται να μην έχει την αντίστοιχη εμπειρία και κατάρτιση για την παροχή αντίστοιχων υπηρεσιών σε οικογένειες, οπότε και να χρειαστεί παραπομπή ή κάποιο επιπλέον σύστημα στήριξης. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 21 επιπλέον, οι επαγγελματίες οφείλουν να δηλώνουν την εκπαίδευση και τη σχετική εμπειρία στις οποίες στηρίζεται η παροχή των υπηρεσιών τους. για παράδειγμα, ένας επαγγελματίας ολοκληρώνει ένα εξάμηνο δίπλωμα, το οποίο περιλάμβανε μία εβδομάδα δια ζώσης εκπαίδευση και ολοκλήρωση του υπόλοιπου προγράμματος διαδικτυακά. το δίπλωμα που έλαβε δεν αναγνωρίζεται από κάποια δημοτική, περιφερειακή ή πολιτειακή αρχή. στην ιστοσελίδα του επαγγελματία αναφέρεται ότι είναι «πιστοποιημένος επαγγελματίας θετικής ψυχολογίας». δεν διαθέτει άλλα επαγγελματικά εχέγγυα άσκησης του επαγγέλματος. είναι αυτό ηθικό; έχει μεγάλη σημασία να ενημερώνετε ρητά τους πελάτες σας σχετικά με τη φύση, το σκοπό και τα όρια της επαγγελματικής σας εκπαίδευσης και πρακτικής, καθώς και για τα διπλώματα πέραν του επαγγελματικού σας τίτλου. αξιολογώντας τη σημασία του πολιτισμικού πλαισίου η λήψη ηθικών αποφάσεων δεν αρκεί να βασίζεται μόνο στην επίγνωση, τις γνώσεις και τη γνωστική κατανόηση. θα πρέπει επίσης να αντικατοπτρίζει την καλύτερη διαθέσιμη και σχετική τεκμηρίωση, καθώς και τις συνθήκες του πολιτισμικού πλαισίου. το πολιτισμικό πλαίσιο είναι καθοριστικό για την παροχή θψπ, διότι η αντίληψη τού τι είναι κανονικό, καλό ή προσαρμοστικό διαμορφώνεται από τις αξίες που ενστερνίζεται το πολιτισμικό και κοινωνικό πλαίσιο στο οποίο παρουσιάζεται ο προβληματισμός ή το δίλημμα κάθε φορά. επιπλέον, οι πολιτισμοί και οι κοινωνικές νόρμες διαφέρουν ως προς τον τρόπο αντίληψης, έκφρασης και μεγέθυνσης συγκεκριμένων συναισθημάτων. συνεπώς, οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για την ηθική εφαρμογή των θψπ είναι αναγκαίο να βασίζονται σε τέτοια στοιχεία. οι κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής που παρουσιάζονται εδώ είναι αρκετά ευρείες ώστε να περιλαμβάνουν τις πολιτισμικές παραμέτρους, ενώ παράλληλα είναι επαρκώς λεπτομερείς ώστε να περιλαμβάνουν και τις ατομικές διαφορές και ανάγκες. αυτή η ενσωμάτωση των μεταβλητών, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των πολιτισμικών και ατομικών παραμέτρων, μπορεί να είναι εύκολα ή άμεσα διαθέσιμη. παρά το γεγονός ότι η ενσωμάτωση αυτή πιθανά δεν εγγυάται την ιδανική ηθικά οδό ή διαδικασία ή το ιδανικό ηθικά αποτέλεσμα, ωστόσο, όταν τα πρόσωπα επιδιώκουν την ηθική αριστεία, η συλλογική σοφία τα βοηθά να χειρίζονται την κάθε περίπτωση ως έχει. νέες προσεγγίσεις προτείνονται, νέα μονοπάτια ανοίγονται και τελικά η αριστεία μπορεί να επιτευχθεί. η δομή των συγκεκριμένων κατευθυντήριων γραμμών διαδραματίζει συνεπώς καίριο ρόλο ως στέρεη βάση, πάνω στην οποία μπορούν να αναπτυχθούν οι σκέψεις και οι συμπεριφορές ενός ατόμου. οι κατευθυντήριες αυτές οδηγίες λειτουργούν επίσης ως κριτήριο αξιολόγησης της εγγύτητας και της απόστασης από την ηθική αριστεία. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 22 επίλυση ηθικών διλημμάτων – οδηγός βήμα προς βήμα αν και είναι αδύνατο να είναι κανείς εντελώς προστατευμένος από το να εμπλακεί σε ηθικά διλήμματα, τα ακόλουθα βήματα, τα οποία έχουν προσαρμοστεί σε μεγάλο βαθμό από την ηθική στην ψυχολογία (“ethics in psychology”, koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998) μεταξύ άλλων πηγών, θα βοηθήσουν έναν επαγγελματία να λάβει σωστές ηθικές αποφάσεις: • εργαστείτε σύμφωνα με όλα τα καταστατικά, τους κανονισμούς και τα πρότυπα επαγγελματικής πρακτικής, συμπεριφοράς και κατευθυντήριων γραμμών, όπως αυτά ορίζονται από τον αντίστοιχο οργανισμό χορήγησης αδειών της περιοχής σας. τέτοιες πληροφορίες θα βοηθήσουν έναν επαγγελματία να χειριστεί ηθικά διλήμματα. • αναπτύξτε μια ακριβή αντίληψη για το πως το ίδιο γεγονός μπορεί να διαφέρει από άτομο σε άτομο. συμβουλευτείτε κάποιον έμπιστο και αμερόληπτο σχετικά με το αν το ζήτημα παρουσιάζει ηθικά διλήμματα με σοβαρές συνέπειες. συζητήστε με συναδέλφους για να δείτε αν αυτό που αντιλαμβάνεστε είναι μια ηθική παράβαση, μία απλώς κακή επαγγελματική πρακτική, ή μια κατάσταση που θέτει σε κίνδυνο τον εαυτό ή το κοινωνικό σύνολο. • εξετάστε τις ήδη δημοσιευμένες σχετικές κατευθυντήριες γραμμές, τους κανόνες και τα πρότυπα. βεβαιωθείτε ότι τα ερμηνεύετε με ακρίβεια και αναζητήστε συμβουλές, εάν είναι απαραίτητο. οι γραπτές κατευθυντήριες γραμμές είναι αρκετές φορές αφηρημένες και ασαφείς, αφήνοντας μεγάλο περιθώριο για υποκειμενικές ερμηνείες. • συλλέξτε τις καλύτερες και πιο σχετικές πληροφορίες που μπορείτε. εντοπίστε τα κενά στις πληροφορίες και καταγράψτε δεδομένα και προβληματισμούς. • ενσωματώστε όλες τις πληροφορίες στη δική σας διεργασία αναστοχασμού και ζητήστε τη συμβουλή ανθρώπων ενήμερων, ανοιχτόμυαλων, που δεν διστάζουν να επισημάνουν ενδεχόμενες ελλείψεις του επαγγελματία. • αξιολογήστε τον τρόπο με τον οποίο εφαρμόζονται οι έξι ηθικές αρχές των συγκεκριμένων κατευθυντήριων γραμμών (δηλ. ευεργετική/μη επιβλαβής πρακτική, υπεύθυνη φροντίδα, σεβασμός των δικαιωμάτων και της αξιοπρέπειας των ανθρώπων, αξιοπιστία, δικαιοσύνη, αυτονομία). για παράδειγμα, αξιολογήστε τα δικαιώματα, τις ευθύνες και τα τρωτά σημεία όλων των εμπλεκόμενων. • σκεφτείτε αρκετές λύσεις και αξιολογήστε τις όσο το δυνατόν πιο αντικειμενικά. • εξετάστε ποιες δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα μπορούν να σας βοηθήσουν στη λήψη της ορθότερης ηθικής απόφασης. θα μπορούσατε να καταφύγετε στη βαθύτερη αίσθησή σας για δικαιοσύνη, ειλικρίνεια ή καλοσύνη; ίσως το θάρρος σας χρειάζεται για να σας παρακινήσει να "κάνετε το σωστό"; να θυμάστε ότι οι ηθικές αποφάσεις απαιτούν τη χρήση πολλαπλών δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα, οι οποίες χρησιμοποιούνται με βέλτιστο και συνδυαστικό τρόπο, και όχι την αποκλειστική χρήση μίας δύναμης ή τη χρήση μίας δύναμης σε υπερβολή (niemiec, 2018). • οραματιστείτε το αποτέλεσμα της δράσης ή της απραξίας σας. • προτού λάβετε μία απόφαση, αναλογιστείτε ποιος θα είναι ο αντίκτυπός της σε εσάς και στους άλλους εμπλεκόμενους, και ποιες θα είναι οι πιθανές συστηματικές επιπτώσεις. αναλογιστείτε επίσης τι είδους στήριξη ενδέχεται να χρειαστείτε προκειμένου να τηρήσετε την απόφασή σας. • υλοποιήστε ό,τι αποφασίσατε, με συγκεκριμένες ενέργειες, οι οποίες πραγματικά αντανακλούν το πνεύμα της απόφασής σας. πολλές ενέργειες μπορούν να κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 23 εκφράσουν την απόφασή σας. επιλέξτε εκείνες που την εκφράζουν με ακρίβεια και εγκυρότητα, είναι μετρήσιμες, συνδέονται με τα επιθυμητά αποτελέσματα και προξενούν την ελάχιστη δυνατή ταλαιπωρία ή βλάβη σε εκείνους που δεν εμπλέκονται άμεσα. οδηγός αυτο-αξιολόγησης στην ενότητα που ακολουθεί περιγράφονται συνοπτικά ερωτήσεις προς τους επαγγελματίες για αναστοχασμό, οι οποίες θα βοηθήσουν στην αποφυγή ηθικών διλημμάτων, με σκοπό την υποστήριξη της βέλτιστης πρακτικής. καταλληλότητα θψπ: πρώτο και κύριο, με βάση τα καλύτερα τεκμηριωμένα διαθέσιμα στοιχεία, αποφασίστε εάν μια συγκεκριμένη θψπ, (π.χ., ημερολόγιο ευγνωμοσύνης, αξιοποίηση συγκεκριμένων δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα, άσκηση συγχώρεσης) ενδείκνυται για τον πελάτη σας, με δεδομένα τα τρέχοντα προβλήματα, τις συνθήκες και το κίνητρό του για θεραπεία. χρονική στιγμή θψπ: ποια βήματα θα ακολουθήσετε για να αποφασίσετε σε ποιες περιπτώσεις είναι κατάλληλη μία θψπ: 1) κατά την έναρξη των παρεχόμενων υπηρεσιών και 2) ενώ έχει ήδη αρχίσει η εφαρμογή της; κάτω από ποιες συνθήκες θα σκεφτόσασταν μία παράλληλη ή εναλλακτική υπηρεσία ή θεραπεία; ενημερότητα για την ψυχική σας υγεία: πόσο ενήμεροι είστε σχετικά με τη δική σας ψυχική υγεία; η ιδιότητά σας δεν σας παρέχει ανοσία απέναντι σε συμπτώματα ψυχικής ασθένειας, τα οποία είναι πιθανό να εντάσσονται στο φάσμα των κλινικών διαταραχών. ποια βήματα ή ενέργειες ακολουθείτε συστηματικά προκειμένου να φροντίσετε τη δική σας ψυχική υγεία, ώστε να μπορείτε να παρέχετε υπηρεσίες στους πελάτες σας με τον καλύτερο δυνατό τρόπο; ποια εμπόδια συναντάτε όταν φροντίζετε τον εαυτό σας – για παράδειγμα, έλλειψη χρόνου και πόρων, αίσθηση ή πεποίθηση ότι είστε μια χαρά, πρόσβαση σε κατάλληλους επαγγελματίες που μπορούν να φροντίσουν για την ψυχική σας υγεία; υποχρεωτική καταγγελία: πόσο άνετα αισθάνεστε να κινηθείτε εναντίον ενός πελάτη, ο οποίος ανταποκρίνεται καλά στις θψπ, αλλά σάς ζητά να τηρήσετε το απόρρητο όταν άθελά του αναφέρει ένα (πρόσφατο ή παρελθοντικό) περιστατικό ή μία τρέχουσα κατάσταση που αφορά, για παράδειγμα, σε σωματική κακοποίηση παιδιού ή ηλικιωμένου, σεξουαλική κακοποίηση ή άμεση απειλή της ασφάλειας κάποιου; εάν η άσκηση του επαγγέλματός σας δεν γίνεται στο πλαίσιο του κώδικα δεοντολογίας ή τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ενός επαγγελματικού φορέα, έχετε νομική υποχρέωση υποβολής καταγγελίας; υπερβολή και γενίκευση: σε ένα συνέδριο συναντάτε κάποιον που δείχνει πολύ ενθουσιώδης για τις θψπ και σας προσκαλεί να παρακολουθήσετε ένα εργαστήριο που διοργανώνει. συμμετέχετε στο εργαστήριο, το οποίο βασίζετε σε κάποιες έρευνες, τις οποίες εσείς γνωρίζετε καλά. τα αποτελέσματα, οι εφαρμογές και η γενίκευση των αποτελεσμάτων των συγκεκριμένων ερευνών παρουσιάζονται με υπερβολικό τρόπο. η πλειονότητα των συμμετεχόντων βρίσκουν ότι η παρουσίαση «τους άλλαξε» και δείχνουν να πιστεύουν τα ευρήματα. τι θα κάνατε; μπορείτε να αξιοποιήσετε τα βήματα που προτείνονται στην ενότητα «επίλυση ηθικών διλημμάτων» ως οδηγό για τη συμπεριφορά σας σε μια τέτοια περίσταση; κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 24 ενότητα τρία: παραδείγματα περιπτώσεων ηθικής πρακτικής οι ακόλουθες περιπτώσεις αποτελούν παραδείγματα περιπτώσεων που είναι πιθανό να προκύψουν στην πράξη και έχουν μια ηθική διάσταση σχετική με τις αρχές των συγκεκριμένων κατευθυντήριων γραμμών ηθικής πρακτικής6. παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 1: πολιτισμική – εφαρμόζοντας θψπ δείχνοντας πολιτισμική ευαισθησία. οι ηθικές αποφάσεις θα πρέπει να αντικατοπτρίζουν τα ισχυρότερα διαθέσιμα ευρήματα αναφορικά με το πολιτισμικό πλαίσιο. εξετάστε την ακόλουθη βινιέτα. η suzanne είναι μία αυστραλή επαγγελματίας, η οποία συνεργάζεται με μια πελάτισσα με πολιτισμικό υπόβαθρο από την ανατολική ασία. η πελάτισσα επιθυμεί αυτοβελτίωση και διατήρηση των οικογενειακών σχέσεων. η suzanne επιλέγει να χρησιμοποιήσει την άσκηση «η καλύτερη εκδοχή εαυτού». η suzanne ακολουθεί όλα τα βήματα για να καθοδηγήσει την πελάτισσά της στην άσκηση. με κάποιο τρόπο, παρά το γεγονός ότι παρουσιάζει σημαντική πρόοδο στην αυτοβελτίωση, η πελάτισσα αναφέρει ότι οι σχέσεις της με την οικογένειά της έχουν χαλάσει. ως εκ τούτου, δεν παρατηρείται σημαντική βελτίωση στην ψυχολογική της ευεξία κατά τις επαναληπτικές μετρήσεις. μια σημαντική παράμετρος στη συγκεκριμένη βινιέτα είναι η μελέτη της έννοιας του εαυτού, η οποία διαφοροποιείται από πολιτισμό σε πολιτισμό. η suzanne ακολουθεί μια αντίληψη για την προσωπική ανάπτυξη που συχνά συνδέεται με το δυτικό πολιτισμό, και η οποία περιλαμβάνει την προσωπική εξέλιξη και την ανάληψη νέων και -σε μεγάλο βαθμό ατομικών πρωτοβουλιών. αντίθετα, η προσωπική ανάπτυξη στην κουλτούρα της ανατολής (και των περισσότερων μη δυτικών πολιτισμών) πιστεύεται ότι δίνει μεγαλύτερη έμφαση στην επένδυση στις σχέσεις, στη βελτίωση της κοινωνικής αλληλεπίδρασης και στη συμβολή στη διατήρηση της οικογένειας, της ομάδας, και των φυλετικών παραδόσεων. παρά την αυξανόμενη πολιτισμική ποικιλομορφία στις περισσότερες αστικές μητροπόλεις, οι βασικότερες πολιτισμικές διαφορές συνήθως διατηρούνται. μια σημαντική συνέπεια αυτών των διαφορών είναι ότι η πελάτισσα σε αυτή τη βινιέτα μπορεί να ωφεληθεί από την κατανόηση του τρόπου με τον οποίο μπορεί να χρησιμοποιήσει τις δυνάμεις του χαρακτήρα της για να ωφελήσει την οικογένειά της ή για να συνδεθεί βαθύτερα μαζί της. η suzanne μπορεί να χρησιμοποιήσει τις παρεμβάσεις για τις δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα: «στρέψε τις δυνάμεις σου προς τον άλλον» ή «εκτίμηση των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα» (niemiec, 2018), στις οποίες η πελάτισσά της μαθαίνει να μετατρέπει τις καλύτερες εσωτερικές της ιδιότητες σε μηχανισμούς οικοδόμησης σχέσεων που ωφελούν τον άλλον και να δίνει προτεραιότητα σε έναν τρόπο αναγνώρισης και εκτίμησης των μελών της οικογένειας με βάση τις καλύτερες ιδιότητές τους. θα μπορούσε επίσης σε αυτή την περίπτωση η προσωπική ανάπτυξη που υποστηρίζεται από τους σημαντικούς άλλους να επιφέρει ουσιαστική και σταθερή βελτίωση στην ψυχολογική ευεξία. ωστόσο, σε ένα πολιτισμικό πλαίσιο αλληλεξάρτησης, η προσωπική ανάπτυξη, η οποία πιθανότατα περιλαμβάνει στενά μέλη της οικογένειας, απαιτεί την παράλληλη διαχείριση πιο σύνθετων αλληλεπιδράσεων για μεγαλύτερο 6 είμαστε ευγνώμονες στους παρακάτω για την παροχή των συγκεκριμένων περιπτώσεων: περιπτώσεις 1 & 3 tayyab rashid, περίπτωση 2 annalise roache, περίπτωση 4 stewart donaldson, περίπτωση 5 matthew iasiello και περίπτωση 6 denise quinlan. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 25 χρονικό διάστημα. αντίθετα, η άσκηση «η καλύτερη εκδοχή εαυτού», η οποία επικεντρώνεται στη βελτίωση μεμονωμένων δυνάμεων ή στην ανάληψη μιας νέας πρωτοβουλίας, μπορεί να απαιτήσει σχετικά μικρότερο χρονικό διάστημα. ως εκ τούτου, η πολιτισμική προσαρμογή των θψπ κρίνεται απολύτως απαραίτητη. οι ακόλουθες ηθικές διαστάσεις αποτελούν παραδείγματα σχετικά με την παραπάνω περίπτωση: • υπεύθυνη φροντίδα – κάθε εθψ χρειάζεται να προσπαθεί να φροντίσει του πελάτες του λαμβάνοντας υπόψη τις ιδιαιτερότητες των συνθηκών και του υπόβαθρού τους. • ευεργετική/μη επιβλαβής πρακτική – κάθε εθψ έχει καθήκον να μην προκαλέσει βλάβη. • σεβασμός των δικαιωμάτων και της αξιοπρέπειας των ανθρώπων – κάθε εθψ θα πρέπει να είναι ευαισθητοποιημένος σχετικά με τη διαπολιτισμική δυναμική και να σέβεται την οπτική και τις ανάγκες του πελάτη. παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 2: coaching – πελάτες σε μεταβαλλόμενες συνθήκες ηθικά διλήμματα είναι πιθανό να προκύψουν απρόσμενα και να απαιτούν μία προσαρμογή στον τρόπο παροχής υπηρεσιών. εξετάστε την ακόλουθη βινιέτα. η amanda αναζήτησε υπηρεσίες coaching καθώς ένιωθε ότι δεν είχε κατεύθυνση και νόημα στη ζωή της. το προηγούμενο διάστημα είχε δώσει μεγάλη σημασία στην επαγγελματική της εξέλιξη, αλλά τώρα αισθανόταν ότι έπρεπε να αναζητήσει μια πιο ισορροπημένη προσέγγιση στη ζωή και επιπλέον ένιωθε λυπημένη και αποθαρρημένη γιατί δεν είχε καταφέρει περισσότερα πράγματα (εκτός από την εξέλιξη της καριέρας της). κατά τη διάρκεια της αρχικής συνεδρίας, προσδιόρισε διάφορους τομείς στους οποίους θα ήθελε να επικεντρωθεί, οι οποίοι περιλάμβαναν τη διαχείριση των οικονομικών της (με την προοπτική της αγοράς ενός σπιτιού), την προσωπική της ανάπτυξη και την ενίσχυση της διασκέδασης και του χρόνου για κοινωνικές επαφές. ανέφερε ότι η δουλειά της ήταν απαιτητική και ότι σκόπευε να κάνει μια αλλαγή στο μέλλον, αλλά αυτό δεν ήταν ένα από τα αιτήματά της στην παρούσα φάση. στις δύο πρώτες συνεδρίες, στις οποίες προσδιορίστηκαν οι στόχοι και διευκρινίστηκαν τα βήματα των δράσεων που επρόκειτο να γίνουν, σημειώθηκε πρόοδος προς την κατεύθυνση που εκείνη είχε υποδείξει ως σημαντική και η διαδικασία προχωρούσε καλά. ωστόσο, στην αρχή της τέταρτης συνεδρίας, η amanda δήλωσε ότι η κατάσταση στη δουλειά της επιδεινώθηκε απότομα και ότι παραιτήθηκε, ενώ είχε ήδη βρει μια νέα θέση εργασίας. η παραίτησή δεν είχε καλή υποδοχή και η amanda αισθανόταν ανήσυχη και ιδιαίτερα συναισθηματική στο χώρο εργασίας της, στον οποίο έπρεπε να παραμείνει για τέσσερις ακόμα εβδομάδες. ανέφερε ότι τα συναισθήματά της αυτά πυροδοτήθηκαν από την αντίδραση του διευθυντή της στην παραίτησή της, η οποία έφερε στην επιφάνεια αναμνήσεις παρόμοιων συναισθηματικών αντιπαραθέσεων κατά την εφηβεία της. σε αυτό το στάδιο ο coach πρέπει οπωσδήποτε να διατηρήσει τη δύναμη της αυτορρύθμισης και να μην ενδώσει παρορμητικά σε μία άλλη πρόταση, λόγω της ενίσχυσης των στρεσογόνων παραγόντων που αντιμετωπίζει η amanda. ξεκινώντας από εκεί, ο coach μπορεί να αξιοποιήσει στη συνέχεια τη δύναμη της περιέργειας, ελέγχοντας πώς θα ήθελε κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 26 να προχωρήσει η amanda στο άμεσο μέλλον και να είναι ανοιχτός στην αλλαγή της εστίασης στο πλαίσιο της συνεδρίας (ή των συνεδριών). ίσως να είναι επίσης σημαντικό να κατανοήσει τη φύση της συναισθηματικής αντίδρασης της amanda για να αποφασίσει εάν το coaching είναι ασφαλής και κατάλληλος μηχανισμός για τις τρέχουσες ανάγκες της. μπορεί ο coach να έχει ένα συμβόλαιο με την amanda για ορισμένο αριθμό συνεδριών, αλλά οι αλλαγές στην κατάσταση της πελάτισσας θα πρέπει να αποτελέσουν τη βάση για την περαιτέρω πορεία. ενδεικτικά, οι ακόλουθες ηθικές πτυχές συνδέονται με την συγκεκριμένη περίπτωση: • υπεύθυνη φροντίδα – πρωταρχική ευθύνη του coach είναι να φερθεί με καλοσύνη και αμεροληψία ώστε να προφυλάξει την ευημερία της amanda και να αποδεχθεί τα όρια της εξειδίκευσής του. • αυτονομία – εδώ ο coach μπορεί να εστιάσει στην ανάπτυξη της ικανότητας της amanda να κινείται αυτόνομα, τόσο στο πλαίσιο των παρεχόμενων υπηρεσιών, όσο και σε όλες τις πτυχές της ζωής και να επαναπροσδιορίζει τους όρους του συμβολαίου τους κατά τη διάρκεια της συνεργασίας. • ευεργετική/μη επιβλαβής πρακτική – ο coach, πράττοντας με βάση το βέλτιστο συμφέρον της amanda και την επαγγελματική του εκτίμηση, πρέπει να φροντίζει να εργάζεται αυστηρά εντός των ορίων της εξειδίκευσής του, παρέχοντας υπηρεσίες βάσει επαρκούς κατάρτισης και εμπειρίας. παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 3: κλινική – δουλεύοντας με το τραύμα τα περισσότερα άτομα που βιώνουν τραύμα επιβαρύνονται σημαντικά με πολλούς πολιτισμικά διαφορετικούςτρόπους, ειδικά εάν δουλεύουν πάνω σε μία θψπ. είναι πιθανό να αναπτύξουν διευρυμένους μηχανισμούς για την αποφυγή της σκέψης, της ανάκλησης ή της συμπεριφοράς, με τρόπους που μπορεί να σχετίζονται με το τραύμα τους. όταν προτείνονται θψπ, είναι σημαντικό να αξιολογείται και να προσδιορίζεται ένα τέτοιο τραύμα (παλαιότερο ή/και τρέχον). χωρίς να το υποτιμήσει ή να το απορρίψει, ο επαγγελματίας θα πρέπει να παρέμβει στην περίπτωση που έχει την απαραίτητη εξειδίκευση ή, αν όχι, να προβεί σε έγκαιρη παραπομπή. ο επαγγελματίας πρέπει επίσης να επαγρυπνεί σε περίπτωση που ένα τραύμα αναδυθεί ενώ ο πελάτης πραγματοποιεί μία θψπ. ο επαγγελματίας πρέπει να συζητήσει με τον πελάτη και να συμβουλευθεί παράλληλα συναδέλφους και άλλους ειδικούς, προκειμένου να βεβαιωθεί για το ποια θα μπορούσε να είναι η κατάλληλη χρονική στιγμή για την συνέχιση μίας θψπ σε μια τέτοια περίπτωση. εξετάστε την ακόλουθη βινιέτα. η salma, 21, έχει μια μακρά ιστορία βίωσης σωματικής, συναισθηματικής και σεξουαλικής κακοποίησης. αναζητά υπηρεσίες για τα επίμονα συναισθήματα κατάθλιψης. περιμένει ότι ο θεραπευτής θα ρωτήσει ρητά για τα τραυματικά γεγονότα στη ζωή της. αντ 'αυτού, της δίνεται ένα σύντομο ερωτηματολόγιο, το οποίο δεν περιλαμβάνει καμία ερώτηση σχετικά με το τρέχον ή το παρελθοντικό τραύμα. στις συνεδρίες συμβουλευτικής, η salma διαπιστώνει ότι δεν συμπαθεί τον σύμβουλο και επιλέγει να μην αποκαλύψει τις λεπτομέρειες του τραύματός της. έτσι, η θεραπεία παραμένει επιφανειακά αποτελεσματική και της προτείνεται ένας νέος κύκλος θεραπείας εντός έξι μηνών. όπως φαίνεται στην παραπάνω περίπτωση, είναι σημαντικό να ρωτήσετε ρητά για τυχόν τραύμα (αν και κάτι τέτοιο απαιτεί μεγάλη ευαισθησία, και ενδεχομένως και κλινική κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 27 εκπαίδευση). ανάλογα με τη σχέση, ορισμένοι πελάτες θα κάνουν ρητά σχετικές ερωτήσεις και θα ζητήσουν συμβουλές, προτάσεις, στρατηγικές αντιμετώπισης ή πολιτισμικά κατάλληλη βοήθεια. είναι σημαντικό ότι, καθώς μία θψπ είναι σε εξέλιξη και λεπτομέρειες ενός πρόσφατου ή παλιού τραύματος αναδύονται, ο επαγγελματίας ανταποκρίνεται με τρόπο που ικανοποιεί τις ανάγκες του πελάτη. πρώτα και κύρια, ο επαγγελματίας θα πρέπει να διαθέτει επαρκή κατάρτιση, εκπαίδευση και εμπειρία στην αντιμετώπιση της κατάστασης. οι επαγγελματίες θα πρέπει να αξιοποιούν τακτικά τις δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα της ταπεινότητας και της σύνεσης/προσοχής, με το να ελέγχουν κατά περιόδους αν θα πρέπει να συνεχίσουν να παρέχουν υπηρεσίες ή αν αντίστροφα ο πελάτης θα ήταν καλύτερα να παραπεμφθεί σε κάποιον άλλον επαγγελματία, με μεγαλύτερη ειδίκευση στην παροχή καθοδήγησης, δεξιοτήτων και στρατηγικών που χρειάζονται ή ζητούν ορισμένοι πελάτες. οι ακόλουθες ηθικές διαστάσεις αποτελούν παραδείγματα σχετικά με την παραπάνω περίπτωση: • υπεύθυνη φροντίδα – ο εθψ έχει την ευθύνη να ενδιαφερθεί για τη salma με τρόπο που να εξετάζει τις ιδιαιτερότητες της κατάστασης και του υπόβαθρού της. • ευεργετική/μη επιβλαβής πρακτική – ο εθψ έχει την ευθύνη να μην δημιουργήσει περαιτέρω βλάβη στη salma και παράλληλα να προωθήσει την ψυχολογική ευεξία της. παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 4: οργανωτική πίεση για διαστρέβλωση δεδομένων πολλές θψπ στην εργασία και σε οργανισμούς αξιολογούνται προκειμένου να καθοριστεί η αποτελεσματικότητά τους. ηθικά διλήμματα είναι πιθανό να εμφανιστούν απροσδόκητα όταν οι πελάτες δεν αποδέχονται τα ευρήματα και ασκούν πίεση στους επαγγελματίες να παραλείψουν ή να διαστρεβλώσουν τα στοιχεία αξιολόγησης. εξετάστε την ακόλουθη βινιέτα και παρατηρήστε πώς μια σειρά από δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα υπο-αξιοποιούνται, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της ειλικρίνειας/ακεραιότητας, της προοπτικής/σοφίας, της ηγεσίας και της ταπεινότητας. η εταιρία xyz προσέλαβε έναν εθψ για τη βελτίωση του ηθικού και της απόδοσης των εργαζομένων. σε συνεννόηση με τη διοίκηση της εταιρείας, η εθψ αποφάσισε να προσφέρει ένα πρόγραμμα εκπαίδευσης για την αύξηση του ψυχολογικού κεφαλαίου (ελπίδα, αποτελεσματικότητα, ανθεκτικότητα, και αισιοδοξία) των εργαζομένων. τα στοιχεία αξιολόγησης έδειξαν ότι οι εργαζόμενοι ενθουσιάστηκαν με την εκπαίδευση και ήθελαν περισσότερη εκπαίδευση σε θέματα θψ στο μέλλον. ωστόσο, τα αποτελέσματα της αξιολόγησης έδειξαν ότι δεν υπήρχαν σημαντικές διαφορές στα επίπεδα ελπίδας, αποτελεσματικότητας, ανθεκτικότητας, αισιοδοξίας, ηθικού ή απόδοσης μεταξύ των εργαζομένων που επιλέχθηκαν τυχαία για να συμμετάσχουν στην εκπαίδευση και εκείνων της ομάδας ελέγχου. η διοίκηση της εταιρείας xyz ήταν τόσο ευχαριστημένη που οι υπάλληλοί τους απόλαυσαν την εκπαίδευση ώστε δεν ήθελαν να δουν τα αποθαρρυντικά αποτελέσματα της αξιολόγησης. αντ 'αυτού, ζήτησαν από την εθψ να αναφέρει ότι η εκπαίδευση είχε μεγάλη επιτυχία και ότι περισσότερα εκπαιδευτικά προγράμματα προς την ίδια κατεύθυνση θα πρέπει να παρέχονται στους εργαζόμενους στο μέλλον. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 28 οι ακόλουθες ηθικές διαστάσεις αποτελούν παραδείγματα σχετικά με την παραπάνω περίπτωση: • αυτονομία – εδώ αφαιρείται η αυτονομία του επαγγελματία να ενεργεί. • ευεργετική/μη επιβλαβής πρακτική η ευεργετική πρακτική συνεπάγεται τη δέσμευση για την προώθηση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας του πελάτη και αυτός ο τρόπος εξαπάτησης που υποστηρίζεται από τη διοίκηση της εταιρίας δεν είναι προς το συμφέρον των εργαζομένων. επιπλέον, η ευεργετική πρακτική απαιτεί την παροχή υπηρεσιών που βασίζονται σε επαρκή εκπαίδευση ή εμπειρία. • αξιοπιστία εδώ ο επαγγελματίας καλείται να υπερτονίσει και να γενικεύσει την αποτελεσματικότητα της θψπ, κάτι το οποίο δεν τιμά την εμπιστοσύνη των εργαζομένων προς τον επαγγελματία. παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 5: mentoring – κινητοποίηση «απρόθυμων» συμμετεχόντων στο πλαίσιο μιας μη ισότιμης σχέσης συχνά, εκείνοι που αντιστέκονται περισσότερο σε μια παρέμβαση είναι εκείνοι που μπορούν και να επωφεληθούν περισσότερο. οι εθψ αντιμετωπίζουν μια δύσκολη κατάσταση όταν προσπαθούν να παρακινήσουν ή να πείσουν έναν πελάτη να συμμετάσχει σε μια παρέμβαση που θα τους ωφελήσει, χωρίς χειραγώγηση. εξετάστε την ακόλουθη βινιέτα. η abbie, υπεύθυνη διαχείρισης περιστατικών σε ένα κέντρο νέων, έχει έναν πελάτη ο οποίος αρνείται να συμμετάσχει στις ασκήσεις μίας ομαδικής θψπ. ο συντονιστής της παρέμβασης ζήτησε από την abbie να παρακινήσει τον πελάτη της να συμμετάσχει στις ασκήσεις και να τον πείσει για τα οφέλη της παρέμβασης. η abbie συμφωνεί με τον συνάδελφό της ότι η παρέμβαση θα ήταν ιδιαίτερα ωφέλιμη για τον πελάτη της. η abbie έχει επίγνωση ότι η στάση και η συμπεριφορά του πελάτη της συχνά προκαλούν τον αποκλεισμό του από παρεμβάσεις που είναι πιθανό να είναι βοηθητικές για εκείνον και αποφασίζει να αμφισβητήσει τις αντιλήψεις του πελάτη της σχετικά με τη συμμετοχή του. η abbie έχει αναπτύξει μια μεντορική σχέση εμπιστοσύνης και διστάζει να διακινδυνεύσει την ακεραιότητά της και να προδώσει την εμπιστοσύνη του πελάτη της, προωθώντας τυφλά την παρέμβαση ή δίνοντας υποσχέσεις που δεν θα πραγματοποιηθούν. αντιθέτως, περιγράφει με μετριοπάθεια τα στοιχεία που υποστηρίζουν την παρέμβαση και συνεργάζεται με τον πελάτη της για να σταθμίσουν το κόστος και το όφελος της συμμετοχής του. θέτει, με αυθεντική περιέργεια, ερωτήσεις στον πελάτη της σχετικά με τα πλεονεκτήματα και τα μειονεκτήματα της συμμετοχής του στην παρέμβαση και με τον τρόπο που οι ιδιαίτερες προσωπικές του δυνάμεις χαρακτήρα θα μπορούσαν να αξιοποιηθούν στο περιβάλλον της ομάδας. στη συνέχεια, η abbie βοηθά τον πελάτη της να εντοπίσει στρατηγικές για την ελαχιστοποίηση του κόστους συμμετοχής και κάνουν μαζί εξάσκηση στις λιγότερο έντονες εκδοχές της ίδιας της παρέμβασης και στην αξιοποίηση των δυνάμεων χαρακτήρα του πριν από την έκθεσή του στην ομάδα. η abbie είναι βέβαιη ότι ο πελάτης της θα ωφεληθεί από τη συμμετοχή του στην παρέμβαση και δεν θέλει να αποκλειστεί για άλλη μια φορά. με τον ίδιο τρόπο, δεν θέλει να προδώσει την εμπιστοσύνη ή την αυτονομία του πελάτη της. η abbie θέλει να προκαλέσει τον πελάτη κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 29 της και να τον βοηθήσει να εκτεθεί σε νέες εμπειρίες, αλλά φοβάται ότι η αντιδεοντολογική χειραγώγηση θα μπορούσε να έχει αρνητικές συνέπειες για τον πελάτη της και τελικά να βλάψει την ποιότητα της σχέσης τους, την οποία έχουν κερδίσει με κόπο. αντί να προωθεί με υπερβολικό τρόπο ή να υπερτονίζει τα οφέλη της συμμετοχής, η abbie προσπαθεί να κατανοήσει τη στάση του πελάτη απέναντι στην παρέμβαση, αμφισβητεί τις γνωστικές προκαταλήψεις και δημιουργεί τις συνθήκες για να παρουσιάσει τα οφέλη της εκπαίδευσης στο ασφαλές πλαίσιο της συνεδρίας. οι ακόλουθες ηθικές διαστάσεις αποτελούν παραδείγματα σχετικά με την παραπάνω περίπτωση: • δικαιοσύνη – ο εθψ έχει την ευθύνη να διασφαλίζει ότι οι πελάτες δεν αποκλείονται από παρεμβάσεις λόγω ενός συγκεκριμένου χαρακτηριστικού. • αξιοπιστία – ο εθψ χρησιμοποιεί τη σχέση εμπιστοσύνης με τον πελάτη για να τον ενθαρρύνει να αξιολογήσει τις στάσεις και τις πεποιθήσεις του αλλά δεν προδίδει αυτήν την εμπιστοσύνη. • αυτονομία – ο εθψ σέβεται την επιθυμία του πελάτη και διστάζει να τη χειραγωγήσει. παράδειγμα περίπτωσης 6: εκπαιδευτική εφαρμογή προγράμματος ψυχολογικής ευεξίας σε περιπτώσεις όπου οι προσδοκίες παρεμποδίζονται από την υφιστάμενη πρακτική πολλά σχολεία θέλουν να εφαρμόσουν προγράμματα ψυχολογικής ευεξίας. ωστόσο, μπορούν να το πράξουν για πολλούς διαφορετικούς λόγους, ξεκινώντας από την ανησυχία για την ψυχολογική ευεξία των μαθητών, περνώντας στην αντιμετώπιση προκλήσεων όπως ο σχολικός εκφοβισμός, και καταλήγοντας στην ενίσχυση ήδη αποτελεσματικών πρακτικών. επιπλέον, η εφαρμογή ενός προγράμματος ψυχολογικής ευεξίας μπορεί να θεωρηθεί ως μια ευκαιρία για το σχολείο προώθησης και διαφοροποίησής του. εξετάστε την ακόλουθη βινιέτα. ο διευθυντής του σχολείου ζήτησε από ένα μέλος του προσωπικού να αναπτύξει μια στρατηγική για την ενίσχυση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας και ένα σχέδιο για έγκριση από το διοικητικό συμβούλιο και στη συνέχεια να οργανώσει μια γρήγορη παρουσίαση των βασικών σημείων. ο διευθυντής ήθελε να πει στους γονείς μελλοντικών μαθητών του σχολείου ότι τα παιδιά τους θα ωφεληθούν από ένα μάθημα ψυχολογικής ευεξίας στο ωρολόγιο πρόγραμμα. ανατέθηκαν στους εκπαιδευτικούς καθήκοντα για τη διδασκαλία των σχετικών μαθημάτων, παρόλο που υπήρχε πολύ περιορισμένη επαγγελματική επιμόρφωση του προσωπικού σε αυτόν τον τομέα. μεγάλο μέρος του προσωπικού βίωνε άγχος και ένιωθε απροετοίμαστο για αυτή τη διδασκαλία, καθώς και για τον πρόσθετο φόρτο εργασίας που τη συνόδευε. ένας εξωτερικός σύμβουλος ανέλαβε την παράδοση ενός μαθήματος επαγγελματικής ανάπτυξης -διάρκειας μισής μέρας για το προσωπικό, με θέμα την ψυχολογική ευεξία. ορισμένοι εκπαιδευτικοί εξέφρασαν στον σύμβουλο την ανησυχία τους σχετικά με το ότι θα μπορούσαν να βλάψουν τους μαθητές τους, καθώς δεν είχαν τα απαραίτητα εργαλεία και τις βάσεις σε αυτόν τον τομέα. επιπλέον, ο σύμβουλος έχει δει το μάρκετινγκ του σχολείου, το οποίο προωθεί τη δουλειά που γίνεται στον τομέα της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας (π.χ., περιγράφοντας πως το σχολείο υποστηρίζει συνολικά την ψυχολογική ευεξία του προσωπικού και των μαθητών, καθώς και κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 30 την ενίσχυση της ψυχολογικής ευεξίας με κάθε ευκαιρία). ο σύμβουλος γνωρίζει ότι το σχολείο εξακολουθεί να χρησιμοποιεί μια πολιτική τιμωρητικής πειθαρχίας που υπονομεύει τις σχέσεις μεταξύ των μαθητών και του προσωπικού και αγνοεί τα επιστημονικά στοιχεία για τα οφέλη της επανορθωτικής προσέγγισης και της συγχώρεσης για την ψυχολογική ευεξία. ο καθηγητής του γυμνασίου που είναι υπεύθυνος για τη εφαρμογή του προγράμματος ευεξίας έχει ενημερώσει τον σύμβουλο για τα συγκεκριμένα θέματα. ο καθηγητής διστάζει να θέσει τα ζητήματα αυτά στη διοίκηση του σχολείου, καθώς έχει γίνει παλαιότερα αποδέκτης συμπεριφορών εκφοβισμού από τη διοίκηση, όταν είχε εγείρει παρόμοιες ανησυχίες. την περίοδο εκείνη είχαν αμφισβητηθεί, τόσο η αφοσίωσή του στο σχολείο, όσο και η καταλληλότητά του να συνεχίσει να εργάζεται ως εκπαιδευτικός. οι ακόλουθες ηθικές διαστάσεις αποτελούν παραδείγματα σχετικά με την παραπάνω περίπτωση: • ευεργετική/μη επιβλαβής πρακτική – ο εθψ έχει την υποχρέωση να μην αναγνωρίσει πλήρως ή άκριτα ένα σχολείο ως ένα «σχολείο ψυχολογικής ευεξίας», αν γνωρίζει ότι σε αυτό εφαρμόζονται σχολικές πρακτικές που υπονομεύουν την ψυχολογική ευεξία. • αυτονομία – ο εκπαιδευτικός δεν πρέπει να αισθάνεται αναγκασμένος να υιοθετήσει μία οπτική ή θέση που έρχεται σε σύγκρουση με την κρίση ή τις αξίες του. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 31 συναφείς κατευθυντήριες γραμμές οι παρακάτω κατευθυντήριες γραμμές (ομαδοποιημένες ανά ειδικό πεδίο και αλφαβητικά εντός κάθε πεδίου) χρησιμοποιήθηκαν και έδωσαν υλικό για τη δημιουργία του παρόντος οδηγού πρακτικής: ψυχολογία: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). νοσηλευτική: • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). • united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • international – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 32 ευχαριστίες τα πρόσωπα που παρατίθενται παρακάτω με αλφαβητική σειρά, συνέβαλαν ουσιαστικά και παρείχαν πληροφορίες και ανατροφοδότηση για το προσχέδιο αυτών των κατευθυντήριων γραμμών: • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 33 πρώτοι υπογράφοντες τις κατευθυντήριες γραμμές για την ηθική πρακτική της θετικής ψυχολογίας ημερομηνία α’ υπογραφής του οδηγού υπογεγρ. έκδοση όνομα και ιστοχώρος της ένωσης /του φορέα λογότυπο 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • via institute on character • http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/m sc-applied-positive-psychology-andcoaching-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/study -areas/psychology,-social-work-andcommunityservices/postgraduate/master-ofapplied-positive-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa • https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluation-center/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia • https://www.wellbeingandresilience.co m/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience • www.nziwr.co.nz 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • humanship • www.humanshiplb.org 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • iranian positive psychology congress 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society • http://jphp.jp/ κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 34 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology • https://www.positivepsychology.org.n z/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india • http://nppassociation.org/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • german society for positive psychology • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 35 συγγραφείς aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas university of east london, united kingdom virginia karavakou university of east london, united kingdom christina seryianni university of east london, united kingdom χρονοδιάγραμμα δημοσίευσης εκδόθηκε στις 19 ιουλίου 2019 βιβλιογραφία barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. περαιτέρω βιβλιογραφικές αναφορές κατευθυντήριες γραμμές ηθικής πρακτικής jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, karavakou, & seryianni 36 han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 72–78. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.2 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan interview by aaron jarden todd kashdan, a.k.a. ‘the guns of positive psychology’, is an associate professor of psychology and senior scientist of the center for consciousness and transformation at george mason university. todd trained in clinical psychology and is well known for his research into curiosity, social relationships, personality in daily life, meaning and purpose in life, and their links to all aspects of wellbeing. are you curious about the questions i’m going to ask? of course! i hate to know the questions ahead of time. ok then, well, what prompted you to become interested in positive psychology? i’ve been in positive psychology a little over a decade now. the origin for me was when i was sitting in a doctor’s office, and at the time i was studying anxiety and panic attacks. in the office was an issue of psychology today and the main article was about sexuality and high suicide rates, with a small subtitle referring to an article on happiness and flow (a concept i had never heard of before). immediately i was thinking to myself that, while i’m devoting my career to helping people to deal with their anxiety problems, when it comes down to it, once their anxiety has dissipated, i’d basically shake their hand and say how amazing they’d been over the course of eight weeks and send them on their way; not thinking about or working with them on how they might organize their life now that they have eight extra hours of time and energy to devote to it. when i read [mihaly] csikszentmihalyi’s article on happiness and flow i thought to myself, it’s interesting, the idea that as psychologists, we’re going to help people organize their lives, and that was the moment for me. i don’t want just to reduce people’s anxiety, in fact i don’t know if that’s always a good thing. i want to organize and structure people’s lives in a way that’s congruent with the values that they care most about. that all hit me when i was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for my dermatologist appointment. what did you do before positive psychology? well before i did that i worked on the floor of the ny stock exchange as an assistant to a specialist. in brief, specialist firms create markets for particular stocks such that if there are lots of buyers but no sellers, they will step in and sell stock to particular people and companies. essentially, for 30 stocks, any transaction in the world had to go through my fingertips. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 were there any other key events that changed you and made you move into the field of positive psychology? my father left my twin brother and i when we were about two years old. my parents got divorced and then he just took off and never really spoke to us again. my mother died when i was thirteen. i never really defined myself as being someone who was an orphan or overcoming adversities, but everyone else always was surprised. i remember meeting a really distinguished psychologist at the university of virginia, irving gottesman. he’s well known for research on schizophrenia. after an interview with him he said to me, ‚you beat the odds, you’re supposed to be in jail, you’re supposed to be the drug addict, yet here you are, an orphan at 21 years of age, and you’re just not supposed to be here at this stage of your life‛. it made me realize the power of resilience. you shouldn’t be defining yourself by resilience, but it becomes embedded within the cells of your body. that’s the type of idea that i like to promote in people’s lives. not to make it their aim to make themselves become resilient, but use what we know about the human condition to help them overcome difficult life events so that they get bred into the bone. this resonates with me because i’ve overcome loss and adversity, but never defined myself by that adversity. in general terms, and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? it’s a tough question because there’s the established foundation of positive psychology and then there’s what i think it should be, and i always struggle between these two worlds. the core of positive psychology since its inception has been positive emotions and strengths of character; and then particular elements of relationships that allow them to flourish harmoniously for the long term. i think that all three of these are integral to living a well-lived life. i think that the problem is that positive emotions are the biggest strength and also the biggest problem for positive psychology. there are two ways of looking at positive emotions. one is that they are just a barometer or gauge that your life is going well. the other is that positive emotions are what we are aiming to construct—we want to construct our life so that there is a high frequency of positive emotions and a low frequency of negative emotions. to me, there are fundamental problems when this is the primary target for our interventions and what we want to create in our lives. i view positive emotions as the residual benefit of focusing on meaning and purpose in life, and close relationships. and from striving toward these personal projects, you’re going to fill your pockets with emotional experiences. they’re building blocks/cells and what’s important is, ‘what’s the connective tissue among these moments?’. that is what should be more fundamental to positive psychology. what do you want to be written on your tombstone? what do you want to be in your obituary? i think few people are going to answer ‘here lies a person who had a high frequency of positive emotions and a low frequency of negative emotions’. instead, they are going to want a tombstone that discusses intimate relationships, self-sacrifice, the search for ultimate truths, accomplishment, etc. but i can understand why these deeper topics are not at the forefront of positive psychology. after all, they don’t work as well in a media sound-bite. but we should be interested in the connective tissue among positive experiences and the architectural framework that houses them, as opposed to just increasing the amount of positive experiences. positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 what is one big question that positive psychology answers? how do you maintain a lasting, trusting, and satisfying relationship? two people who want to be committed to each other in a way where each feels accepted, validated, understood, with a sense of vitality and room to continually evolve. i think we’ve nailed that. which professional groups of people are most interested in harnessing positive psychology? that’s a really tough one! i mean positive psychology is being applied in education, in health, in organizations, in therapy, even in the army. is there somewhere else you think positive psychology is going to go next? i hope that it is in the government. i think that right now education is where the action is. everything should focus on the future. one of my big beefs with positive psychology is that there is insufficient generativity and generosity right now. there is an unusual culture of celebrities and hero worship: who’s published the books, who are the distinguished professors, who’s being cited in introductory psychology textbooks, who’s making the money, those kinds of things. who’s the next generation? i don’t know who the hell they are right now, but there are creative ideas floating around that people are afraid to reveal, given the possibility that they might look like idiots. most people who come up with unusual great ideas, get rejected. i want to invest in the future of positive psychology. right now education is where the action is. everyone i talk to speaks about the idea that something is wrong at the government level in that they control resources, they decide how much money goes to improving the welfare of humanity, they decide how much money is going to the business organizations, they decide what products they are going to subsidize. with government at the highest realm of the hierarchy, that’s where positive psychology needs to be playing a role. right now there is almost nothing at the governmental level. as a positive psychology practitioner and expert, are there any situations that you need to avoid, or things that you need to be careful of when you are applying the science in practice? as a practitioner, here is the important question to attend to, ‘what are the things the person, the couple, the organization that you are working with, are striving to obtain?’. let’s not impose outcomes on them. if they’re interested in increasing courage and sharing creative ideas, and we end up being the world’s greatest expert on morale and leadership, we have to start with and focus on the things they are interested in and not what we’re interested in. what i worry about is that there are a lot of practitioners in positive psychology, but i don’t know who is a generalist and who’s a specialist. ten years since the inception of this thing called positive psychology and there are still no specialties. you’re just a positive psychologist. and i think that’s particularly problematic. should you be working with parents if the work you’re most familiar with is richard davison’s and pre-frontal cortex activity? if your primary knowledge base happens to be in positive organizational behavior, what exactly makes you qualified to work with parents and children and the interaction between them? positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 i know you’re clinically trained and also do clinical work. do you think the scientistpractitioner model that a lot of clinicians gravitate to is a good model for positive psychologists to adopt as well? the scientist-practitioner model has been a little problematic because of the requirement for everything to be empirically supported before it can be adopted in the world. the mantra that i have adopted over the past few years is that we should be guided, as opposed to governed, by the research. if that fits with the scientist-practitioner model, then i’m for it. however if the scientist-practitioner model sets the bar even higher before we can use the science, then i’m a bit unsure that this level of quality control can be sustained. i think i’ve heard you previously term this approach as being ‘empirically informed’? yes, scientifically informed. that’s right. if you could start learning about positive psychology again from the beginning, i mean you’re a decade or more in now, what would you do differently? nearly everything that i have studied should be centered on the situational context that it is embedded in. that could be people in cults, it could be adults and their relationships with their friends or parents, it could be people embedded in their larger group cultural context. it doesn’t have to be their country of origin, it could be the sub culture they identify with, such as hip-hop culture, goth culture, the punk-rock culture. if i were to do it over again, i would have done two or three years focusing on understanding culture, understanding systems, understanding links between systems, and bringing that to my work with individuals and organizations. what are your plans for the future with regard to positive psychology? my big thing is friendships and romantic relationships. for me, this is the most important aspect of our lives. cultivating these friendships after the age of 30 is complicated; i have no idea what i’m doing and i know many other people feel the same way. what worked as a child, teenager, and young adult, doesn’t work as well in our 30s. when i was 20 years old, surrounded by other people in dormitories and bars, hanging naked from the rafters of a building somewhere, it was nearly impossible to avoid friendships. as you get older, it takes greater effort to find people and consistent effort to maintain friendships. to understand positive aging, we have to get a handle on life transitions. i’m not even referring to life at 65, 70, and 80; i’m talking about 30 to 35 years old. how do you cultivate new relationships when the characters around you have no understanding of the serpentine road it took you to get to where you are? how do you maintain action in a romantic relationship and honor the fact that you are still going to be attracted, seducing and being seduced by, other people in your life? how can you hold these different worlds simultaneously, with neither clashing? this is the realm that my work is going into, looking at people, looking at moments, all within a larger context. who are the emerging and unknown positive psychology researchers to look out for? good question. i think there are scientists in other fields of psychology that no one in positive psychology is talking about. henk aarts and ap dijksterhuis, in the netherlands, study nonconscious processes, basically the idea that once you figure out your bike path to work, you get this mental module in your brain that you can access so quickly that you’ve got plenty of mental resources left over to focus on something else. for someone else who doesn’t have a positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 clear mindful way of getting to work, this is a resource intensive endeavor. what is powerful is the idea that we can shift mental resources to activities that are completely outside of conscious awareness so that we are better able to regulate the multitude of decisions, choices, and data that are flying towards us on a daily basis. their work has great relevance to positive psychology, yet nobody is talking about this science much less how it can be applied when directly helping people. anybody else? there’s jamie goldenberg at the university of south florida who’s a terror management theory researcher. what’s interesting is that she applies this theory to sex and the notion that once you recognize the finality of existence and related existential issues, this affects how you treat your body in terms of dieting, in terms of sex, in terms of being attracted or repelled by the intimate sounds and smells of other people. it’s the same notion that things outside of conscious awareness are constantly biasing and playing tricks on what we value and how we behave. and positive psychology is simply not paying adequate attention to unconscious processes. completing self-report questionnaires won’t cut it. your answers when completing a self-report questionnaire are not necessarily going to converge with what you will actually do in a given situation where multiple options are available. what area of positive psychology do you still find difficult to understand? i mean, what’s the real minefield for new players? everything with non-linear dynamics is complicated. can you be a bit more specific? think about barbara’s fredrickson’s 3-to-1 ratio [of emotions]. it’s based on the notion that human experiences and behavior are dynamic and non-linear. think of the multitude of moments within a single day working in an organization. there are mathematical equations that can be calculated where, when there’s an attraction, there are two attractors, one that attracts negative moments and one that attracts positive moments. two attractors at the same time. it’s as if a person’s psyche has two vacuums. and there’s the notion that if you have a particular ratio of positivity, you’re more likely to be functioning optimally. i understand everything i just said, but the mathematics leading to that result is beyond my comprehension. how do i apply this knowledge to understand a person’s ratio of mindful to mindless moments? how do these formulas help people use their finite currency of time and energy more wisely over the course of a single day? given the notion that there are certain ratios, frequencies, and durations of experiences that lead to more successful outcomes, how can this be used to understand and improve people’s lives? there appear to be mathematical formulas to tackle non-linear life trajectories, but i don’t know how to calculate them, thus i can’t ask the questions the way that i would like to. if someone wants to be happier, what’s an individual’s best bet for increasing their happiness and wellbeing? the data are clear that it’s about appreciating the benefits you get from each moment as it unfolds. it’s a combination of gratitude and mindfulness, which are two overlapping circles. gratitude is the mindful recognition of benefits received, and mindfulness is a kind of open receptive attitude towards what happens as each moment unfolds. put those two together, that positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 attitude, that mind-set, that beacon of consciousness, and you can catch particular moments and make them linger both in the present as an increase in vitality and you can recall them at a later date as a mood boost. that’s where the action is. in positive psychology you’re renowned for research in the area of curiosity. can you tell us a little bit about curiosity? curiosity is one of the engines that make other elements in positive psychology work. you can’t use your strengths in new ways without this process of clarifying strengths as well as the situations where they can be used most effectively. where should i be changing my behaviors, my mind-set? when you reverse engineer this exploration of how to best use strengths, you’re talking about turning curiosity inward towards the self. this runs counter to how people typically think of curiosity. we normally think of curiosity as a mindset turned outward to novel, uncertain, or challenging external stimuli—from people to situations. and the reason why curiosity, the curiosity field, has such lasting power is that most people don’t think about how curiosity can be wielded like a laser, at any given point in time, and we can direct it outward or inward. we spend so much time trying to increase our positive mood that we forget periods of reflection and contemplation, and the importance of clarifying our values, about what’s meaningful, about what we want, about what we want in 100 or so years on this planet to stand for. this mindset usually leads to a positive experience if we are willing to extract meaning, but the actual search itself, the emotional state, is pretty much inert, it’s neutral. so there’s a whole terrain of research and theory that is yet to be touched in terms of how you balance the external search for meaning and the external search for more positive moments as the building blocks for living a good life, versus using time for yourself to reflect on and synthesize how things are going and whether there is adequate movement in the direction of deeply valued life aims. contemplation, introspection, curiosity turning inward, and this entire meaning making system is fertile terrain for the future of positive psychology. what’s your one big hope for the future of positive psychology? five years from now what would you like to see changed? intellectually, i think we already have great scientists. we’ve got publications, we’ve got outlets, we’re entering more territory than any other area of psychology ever has within a tenyear period. but what we don’t have is those people who have that skeptical mind-set of, ‘i’m not content with how things are and i want to continue building a future of new ideas, new theories, new ways to make things better’, which sometimes means tearing things down and starting from scratch. right now, the field of positive psychology is a bit too harmonious. ironic in that this harmony serves as a strength and weakness. my hope is that in five years there will be an appreciation of rigorous challenges. whatever is the ferment of the moment, whatever are the most exciting ideas, those will be challenged. not by trying to win fame by tearing someone down, because we’re all trying to build the greatest architectural masterpiece possible. right now there is too much fear and mistrust about having ideas challenged by other people, about dealing with the ambiguity of where ideas work. nearly all psychological ideas have their tipping points and boundary conditions, where the benefits no longer apply. we need to find them, and map this terrain. the ideas that are getting the most traction in positive psychology, strengths, positive emotions, gratitude, and mindfulness are being overemphasized. this is a common consequence of a paradigm shift. i think we have to appreciate questions such as ‘when do these things not apply?’, ‘when are they not working?’, ‘when do they need to be scaffolded by another process?’. we need to examine constructs and positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 interventions in tandem as opposed to separate, isolated ingredients. my hope is that innovative, integrative skeptics will represent the future of positive psychology, people thinking in greater complexity and people challenging people and ideas, and enjoying that challenge. what do you think is going to be the hot topic in the field over the next five years? it’s already in psychology: regulatory processes outside of conscious awareness. this is already happening under the umbrella of social neuroscience. i think it’s a nice way of describing the world! i’m not quite sure what you do with it in terms of improving the welfare of humanity. but recognizing that most of the things we do to enhance our lives occur outside of conscious awareness—that recognition alone can improve people’s lives. is there anything else you’d like to comment on that would be useful or interesting for someone looking at moving into the field of positive psychology? to be a good practitioner or scientist in this field you need to start with psychology, and then choose the topics that resonate within this lens of positive psychology. the idea of positive psychologists, of people specializing in positive psychology from the get-go, worries me because we have a hundred years of great ideas that could get lost quickly by attempting to start anew when a body of knowledge already exists. let’s build off the shoulders of predecessors. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 83–87. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.4 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley interview by aaron jarden alex linley is the founding director of the centre of applied positive psychology (capp) in the uk. he is recognised internationally as a leading expert on positive psychology, and works as an organisational consultant applying strengths in organisations. alex has written, co-written, or edited more than 150 research papers and book chapters, and seven books around the topic of positive psychology. in general terms, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? one of the features of positive psychology is its inherent focus on the positive. by that i don’t mean that it will ignore the negative, but it will pay attention to more of the positive things than has traditionally been looked at. i think that’s fundamentally important because there used to be a view that if we understood the bad, then, by taking away the bad, we would actually create the good, and i don’t believe that that is always the case at all. it’s far more important if we want to promote the good and the positive, that we can understand the good and the positive. what are some things that positive psychology has achieved to date? far and away positive psychology’s biggest achievement is to have put a positive perspective firmly into psychology. before positive psychology, psychology had been hugely focused on the negative side of things. psychology could have been regarded as quite a depressing discipline. since the advent of positive psychology anyone who is interested in the positive side of things has found a home. i think by virtue of that the single massive achievement of positive psychology is that it has legitimized the study of what’s right with people, and to then create new applications and interventions based on that knowledge that move people into positive territory, rather than just away from negative territory. do you think positive psychology has achieved things outside of psychology? without doubt! the positive turn in psychology has also legitimized a wider interest in things like happiness and wellbeing, as great examples. and we can see evidence for shifts in considering those in both social policy here in britain, and in economics in relation to what some economists recommend that we look at (which is also supported by more of the shift towards behavioural economics). more widely, things like martin seligman’s comprehensive soldier fitness programme in the united states are superb examples of how you can take some http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 of the principles of positive psychology and apply those in a way that makes a real and lasting difference to people’s lives. what are some of the most valid criticisms of positive psychology? first, in the early days there was a very valid criticism that positive psychology had largely ignored some of the ‘positive approaches’ that had gone before. it was quite dismissive of humanistic psychology. that has now changed. second, also in the early days there was a perception, although i don’t think this was a reality, that positive psychology was more focused on the positive, and therefore didn’t want anything to do with the negative, and therefore it would do the same things as traditional psychology had done, by just looking at one end of the spectrum. as that criticism was made, there was any number of people who came out and said that actually our view of positive psychology is that it incorporates the negative as well. but it is probably more oriented towards the positive side. a third observation is that there is, and this is not specific to positive psychology at all, this tension between the speed at which people seek to move towards application, and the speed at which the basic research can move. there has been a view in some parts of positive psychology that applications are moving too quickly. on the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of people working in practice who are out there trying things out and trying to do things that will make a difference, and who simply won’t wait for the research to catch up with what they need to know. and it was ever thus. the two, as much as possible, need to inform each other; but we need to recognise that there are very different trajectories and very different agendas that research and practice can be working towards. what area of positive psychology do you still find most difficult or challenging? there is still loads and loads that we don’t know, and still loads to be discovered about strengths, and the applications of strengths. i find that a hugely interesting and intriguing area, and obviously it’s an area where i work a lot myself. the move into neuroscience, looking at the neuroscience side of things, is an area that is outside of my traditional expertise, so that’s something that i need to work hard to understand; but it’s great to have that angle looking at things as well. can you tell me about your work in positive psychology, particularly around strengths? my work on strengths started way back, around ten years ago or so now. obviously i was involved in positive psychology from pretty early on, and i looked at the way that the field was developing; and in very broad terms, there was the work that had been done in happiness and wellbeing, and the work that had been done, or was starting to be done, in strengths. i thought, actually there are loads of people working in happiness and wellbeing, and a lot fewer people working on strengths; and yet, i see strengths as being one of the key ways in which we can achieve happiness and wellbeing. and it was one of the areas that seemed to have loads of potential for application. so i started off really trying to think about and understand what strengths were, and i wrote some early papers, probably five or six years ago now, with tentative definitions of how we could think about strengths. one of the things that came through from that early work was that the energy requirement of strengths was absolutely integral, and while it was implicit in some of the work that had been done so far, nobody had really put it as a hallmark of their theory, so that was something we set out to do. and then around about the same time we started working in practice, and i started working with the positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 british insurance company norwich union, which is now known as aviva, and found that we got very effective results working with them to recruit people according to the strengths that they had, using a strengths-based interview methodology that we developed. since then our research work and applied work has developed hand in hand. often we will develop ideas that we use to inform our work in practice around things like assessment and development and performance management, but from the ideas that we developed and try out in practice, we then develop the questions that we want to look at more rigorously or more empirically. the sorts of things that we are looking at now are to design studies about how strengths help you to achieve your goals, but we are also looking at some of the fundamental strengths. for example, we are designing a study where we look at the role of authenticity and mindfulness and organismic valuing and those sorts of concepts in relation to strengths. and then, of course, there are all of the continual validation studies and things that we do with realise2 as well. is there any new knowledge or studies around strengths that you would like to highlight that are particularly interesting? we have recently done some work on ‘strengthspotting’, and developed the strengthspotting scale, and from that validated the strengthspotting scale against realise2, to look at whether strengthspotters may have a particular strengths profile. it turns out that there are a range of characteristics that seem to define strengthspotting, and those tend to be things around the motivation to identify strengths, the situations in which you do so, the frequency with which you do it, and then, crucially, what you do with that knowledge. so we started to investigate that to see if we could help people to develop their ability to identify strengths in others in natural contexts. in addition to that, we validated that scale against realise2, and showed that connector, enabler and feedback were the key strengths that predicted strengthspotting capability across all the five strengthspotting domains. what’s one aspiration you have for the field of positive psychology? my biggest aspiration for positive psychology is that it continues to grow, but that it continues to grow in a way that influences applications and policy. the basic research needs to continue at pace, with real opportunity for positive psychologists to move into areas where positive psychology can make a sustainable, significant, and lasting impact on people’s lives for the better. i think where that is most likely to happen, sadly, is not from any individual research study; where it will come from is from a building of the body of data and that knowledge and then critically when that data and knowledge is translated into practice. whether it’s the work we do with big organisations, which has the potential to impact the lives of thousands of people, or the way that we inform the development of social policy, or whether it’s projects like the comprehensive solider fitness programme that martin seligman has developed with the us army, things like that really help positive psychology to step up to the plate and go above and beyond just being a basic academic discipline to something which is realising its potential to catalyse a positive difference in the world. and that would be my big aspiration for positive psychology—that it continues to do that. which discipline do you think positive psychology can learn from most moving forward? my gut instinct is economics. rightly or wrongly, the economists have had the measure of policy for many, many, years, and economic terms have shaped much of what goes on in the policy arena. but there are huge opportunities for the melding of psychology and economics. positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 we are already seeing this in things like behavioural economics, where economists are recognising that people are not the logical rational actors that we were always assumed to be by economic models, and instead we make irrational emotional choices based on a whole variety of different factors. for many years that was ignored by economics, and psychologists mocked them for the models being so wrong. but now positive psychology and economics are coming together a bit more and starting to say, ‘well, what can we take from psychology that can be applied in economic models that can then help us to better predict how people will behave and respond in different situations?’. once we have that model, we will be able to shape policy and shape interventions in a way that are much more going with the grain of what people will naturally do. there is huge opportunity there, and i think it’s appropriate at this point to acknowledge the work of daniel kahneman, who was one of the key people who led the development of the behavioural economics field. what’s the new hot topic for positive psychology in the coming five years? well that’s the million dollar question! i would guess it’s going to be something to do with one of two things. it could be neuroscience-based. there are going to be some key validations or insights that come from understanding brain functioning. that’s important, because as soon as you can start to talk about things at the level of the brain, people start to take you seriously and think this must be true. so it’s a good way of getting through the door and getting people’s attention. but now to the second topic, which has huge potential. i went to see martin seligman speak at the houses of parliament, in july [2011], and one of the things that he said he was working on was to develop algorithms with people like facebook and google to be able to map the prevalence of happiness-related words in our lexicon, in the things that people put in emails, in facebook postings, in linked-in postings, that sort of thing. so harvesting the potential for real-time data collection and data analysis using the new social technologies that are available, and combining that with a solid underpinning of psychological theory could really take us into domains we have not even imagined before now. who do you look up to in the field, either as practitioners or academics? without question number one on that list has to be martin seligman for everything that he has done to develop and promote the field. but more than that, the thing that he has done that i’ve never seen any psychologist do, is the way that he has been able to take positive psychology and use it and apply it and lead it in such a way that it has impact, that it makes a difference. so he’s had a huge impact on the development of social policy in the uk, but also in other countries, as in the comprehensive solider fitness programme that i mentioned before. but a whole raft of things like that really helps him to stand out in my mind as someone i admire enormously. second on that list would be barbara frederickson, for the massive developments that she has made in our understanding of positive emotion. her theory, the broaden-andbuild theory of positive emotions, is one of the stand-out theories in positive psychology. the third person would be chris peterson for his knowledge, but also his character and personality, the way that he brings positive psychology alive for people and makes it real. i look at a lot of his books and blog entries and postings to see where he’s really done that. another person, finally, would be mike csikszentmihalyi, simply for his erudition and scholarship. i don’t think there is anyone in positive psychology who knows more about more different fields of study and the history of thought and philosophy and all those sorts of things than mike, so i think he’s quite an incredible character. positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 what’s one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers or practitioners? that would be different for each. for a researcher, my advice would be to find an area that you are fundamentally excited by and interested in, so that it will maintain your interest and enthusiasm as you work on it. you could also be strategic with that and find an area where you think there is not yet a lot that has been done, but you think the area is likely to grow in profile and significance, and you can grow with it. that is certainly something that i was able to do by being involved with positive psychology from the beginning. i think for a practitioner, my advice would be to use your best judgement in the way that you work. it’s easy to get bound up with best practice, which is all about what has been done before. but that really blows out of the water any opportunity for innovation, if we only stick at what has been done before. so i’m a big advocate of using what we call best judgement: understand the literature, know the research and the findings, but be prepared to take all of that and say, moving beyond what is already known, this is my judgement as to what would be the best thing to do in this situation. and that’s how we have driven a lot of the innovation and a lot of the development in our methodologies for assessment, development, and performance management—around strengths. they have come through understanding the field, and then being prepared to make the adaptation and apply that in a practical way—even though there won’t be a specific study that says that this will be the result. we do a lot of research in practice as it might be called, rather than research that will always end up being published in academic journals. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz lomas, t., edginton, t., cartwright, t., & ridge, d. (2015). cultivating equanimity through mindfulness meditation: a mixed methods enquiry into the development of decentering capabilities in men. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 88-106. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.7 tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 article cultivating equanimity through mindfulness meditation: a mixed methods enquiry into the development of decentring capabilities in men tim lomas · trudi edginton · tina cartwright · damien ridge abstract: mindfulness meditation is thought to help practitioners become more tolerant of dysphoric emotions by enabling them to cultivate decentring skills. such skills may be especially useful for male meditators, as men are thought to have particular difficulties regulating their emotions, partly due to masculinity norms related to emotional toughness. however, few studies of mindfulness have focussed specifically on men to explore the intersection between wellbeing and masculinity. uniquely, we sought to examine the development of decentring capabilities in a non-clinical sample of male meditators using a longitudinal mixed-methods design. thirty meditators were recruited in london, uk. participants completed an emotional stroop task – at two points, a year apart – to assess changes in emotional reactivity linked to meditation. participants also undertook qualitative interviews at both time points, analysed using a modified constant comparison approach. together, the two datasets converged to suggest that men did develop decentring skills through meditation, leading to greater equanimity in the presence of negative qualia. in addition to offering insights into the mechanisms underpinning the impact of mindfulness on wellbeing, the study provides a gendered dimension to the analysis of wellbeing strategies like meditation, a dimension which has hitherto been conspicuously absent from recent literature in fields such as positive psychology. keywords: mindfulness, decentring, cognition, emotional stroop, wellbeing, masculinity, men 1. introduction 1.1 mindfulness and decentring following the development of kabat-zinn’s (1982) pioneering mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr) programme, academic interest in mindfulness has flourished, with over 500 studies on the subject in 2012 alone (shonin, van gordon, & griffiths, 2013). mindfulness has been harnessed in a diverse range of settings to deliver a multitude of positive outcomes, from alleviating occupational stress in challenging occupations (shapiro, astin, bishop, & cordova, 2005) to promoting healthy eating in people with eating disorders (dalen et al., 2010). so, what is mindfulness? kabat-zinn’s (2003, p.145) widely-cited ‘operational working definition’ constructs it as ‘the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.’ this type of awareness appears to represent a core psychological competency that is transferrable across multiple domains, enabling/underpinning a range of cognitive and behavioural strategies that are conducive to wellbeing. as summarised by grossman, niemann, schmidt, and walach (2004, p.36), the power of mindfulness – and hence of interventions designed to cultivate it – is based mailto:t.lomas@uel.ac.uk http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 on a number of factors: (1) people are often unaware of their moment-to-moment experience, and instead operate more on ‘autopilot’; (2) mindfulness is a skill that can be cultivated; (3) development is gradual and progressive, requiring practice; (4) better moment-to-moment awareness produces a ‘richer and more vivid sense of life’; (5) persistent non-judgmental awareness of mental content leads to less distorted perception and cognition; and (6) accurate perception and cognition can enhance self-efficacy and control over behaviour. in recent years various theories have been proposed on the mechanisms through which mindfulness exerts its positive effects. hart, ivtzan, and hart (2013) identify two main theoretical schools of thought, one developed by langer (1989) and colleagues, and the other by kabat-zinn (2003) and shapiro and colleagues (e.g., shapiro, carlson, astin, & freedman, 2006). langer’s work has tended to focus on mindfulness as a psychological trait (albeit one that can be cultivated through the practice of meditation), comprising dimensions such as engagement, noveltyseeking, novelty-production, and flexibility. in contrast, theorizing associated with kabat-zinn and shapiro and colleagues operationalizes mindfulness as a cognitive skill that can be trained through practice. the model developed by shapiro and colleagues has proved particularly influential (with over 1100 citations for shapiro et al. (2006) as of july 2015, for example). essentially, shapiro and colleagues offer a theoretical elucidation of kabat-zinn’s working definition (cited above), deconstructing this into three key ‘axioms’ or components: intention (i.e., a teleological motivation for engaging in practice, such as commitment to psychological development); attention (i.e., cognitive processes through which one attends to one’s experience); and attitude (i.e., emotional qualities with which one imbues one’s attention, like compassion). together, these three mechanisms combine to generate an overarching ‘meta-mechanism’ that shapiro and colleagues refer to as ‘reperceiving’; this is described as a ‘fundamental shift in perspective,’ in which ‘rather than being immersed in the personal drama or narrative of our life story, we are able to stand back and witness it’ (shapiro et al., 2006, p.377). thus, according to shapiro et al. (2006), in developing mindfulness, people are above all able to enter into a different relationship with their subjectivity. practitioners are encouraged to ‘stand back’ and view subjective qualia as phenomena passing through their internal world, rather than identifying with and attaching to or becoming averse to such qualia (bishop et al., 2004). this ‘standing back’ – referred to by shapiro et al. (2006) as ‘reperceiving’ – is perhaps more commonly known as ‘decentring,’ defined as ‘the ability to observe one’s thoughts and feelings as temporary, objective events in the mind, as opposed to reflections of the self that are necessarily true’ (fresco et al., 2007, p.234). (‘reperceiving,’ ‘standing back,’ and ‘decentring’ are essentially equivalent, different labels for the same phenomenon, and are often used interchangeably (hayes-skelton & graham, 2013). for consistency, this paper will use ‘decentring’ from this point onwards.) moreover, according to shapiro et al. (2006), decentring (or ‘reperceiving’ in their terminology) is in turn theorized to ‘lead to’ additional mechanisms which in themselves ‘contribute to the positive outcomes produced by mindfulness practice’ (p.379), including: self-regulation and self-management; emotional, cognitive and behavioural flexibility; values clarification; and exposure. thus, according to shapiro et al. (2006), decentring is the principle mechanism underlying the positive impact of mindfulness-based interventions on mental health. in such interventions, the aim is not to change participants’ thoughts/feelings per se, as cognitive therapy might seek to do, but to help people ‘become more aware of, and relate differently to’ this content (shapiro et al., 2005, p.165). for example, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (mbct) is an adaptation of mbsr, designed specifically to prevent depressive relapse (zindel, segal, williams, & teasdale, 2002). in mbct, people are taught to decentre from their cognitions, thus helping cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 prevent a ‘downward spiral’ of negative thoughts and worsening negative affect which could otherwise trigger a depressive relapse. thus mbct, and mindfulness interventions generally, involve ‘retraining awareness’ so that people have greater choice in how they relate and respond to their subjective experience, rather than habitually responding in maladaptive ways (chambers, gullone, & allen, 2009, p.659). one of the key beneficial outcomes of developing decentring capabilities is the ability to tolerate otherwise distressing qualia. the positive impact of retraining awareness in this way is not limited to depression, but extends to mental health generally. the inability to tolerate distressing qualia is seen as a transdiagnostic factor underlying diverse psychopathologies (aldao, nolen-hoeksema, & schweizer, 2010), including depression (borton, markowitz, & dieterich, 2005) and substance abuse (garland, gaylord, boettiger, & howard, 2010). for example, in substance abuse, inability to tolerate distress can lead to people attempting to suppress dysphoria through self-medication, using alcohol and other psychoactive substances to ‘blunt’ their negative affect (garland et al., 2010). however, tolerance of dysphoria engendered through mindfulness can lessen the likelihood of people attempting to suppress negative qualia. regression analyses show trait mindfulness is associated with reduced emotional suppression and increased tolerance of negative stimuli (e.g., schütze, rees, preece, & schütze, 2010). moreover, training in mindfulness can reduce thought suppression, thus helping prevent maladaptive avoidance coping strategies such as self-medication through alcohol (garland et al., 2010). similarly, mindfulness interventions for eating disorders can help people become aware of triggers of maladaptive eating habits (e.g., emotional distress), and to stay mindful in the presence of these triggers, rather than reacting by engaging in unhelpful eating behaviours (dalen et al., 2010). 1.2 mechanisms of decentring so, one of the key processes underpinning the positive impact of mindfulness on wellbeing is the development of decentring skills. as outlined above, shapiro et al. (2006) suggest that decentring (or ‘reperceiving’) comprises three components (intention, attention, and attitude), and leads to at least four mechanisms which impact positively on mental health (self-regulation and selfmanagement; emotional, cognitive and behavioural flexibility; values clarification; and exposure). the question then arises: how does decentring develop? it could be argued that, of the three component mechanisms identified by shapiro et al. (2006), the training of attention is the most crucial feature of this development. for many researchers, the learned regulation of attention is the defining feature of mindfulness, and meditative practices generally. as goleman (1988, p.107) puts it, ‘the need for the meditator to retrain his attention, whether through concentration or mindfulness, is the single invariant ingredient in every meditation system.’ likewise, walsh and shapiro (2006, pp.228-229) define meditation as ‘a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control.’ as this last definition implies, there is a subtle distinction between attention and awareness; although often used synonymously, these are distinct concepts, supervening on different neurophysiological processes (koch & tsuchiya, 2007). awareness refers to subjective experience, i.e., the ‘conscious registration of stimuli, including the five senses, the kinaesthetic senses, and the activities of the mind’ (brown, ryan, & creswell, 2007, p.212). there are different types of awareness: phenomenal awareness is a catch-all term for subjective experience, whereas access awareness describes aspects of conscious experience being available for ‘use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action’ (block, 1995, p.227). cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 in contrast, attention refers to cognitive mechanisms that control which stimuli enter awareness (rafal & posner, 1987). these mechanisms serve to enhance the way information is processed from select areas of the sensory field, moderating cognitive and perceptual processing by directing resources to relevant internal or external stimuli. thus, while awareness implies sensate ‘reactivity,’ attention is more like a ‘searchlight’; as austin (1998, p.69) puts it, ‘attention reaches. it is awareness stretched toward something. it has executive, motoric implications. we attend to things.’ attention is theorised as modular, comprising interrelated subcomponents that are controlled by executive processes within a supervisory attention system (norman & shallice, 1986). inhibitory and excitatory cognitive processes work together to direct and switch attentional processes to facilitate different attention modalities. a prominent framework proposes three such modalities, which supervene on functionally distinct but overlapping neural networks: alerting; orienting; and executive attention (posner & petersen, 1990). alerting (or ‘sustained attention’) refers to the intensity of concentration, involving on-going readiness for processing stimuli over time. the other networks pertain to attention selectivity. orienting (or ‘selective attention’ or ‘concentration’) regulates and allocates resources to certain stimuli. executive attention (or ‘divided attention’ or ‘conflict monitoring’) involves the monitoring and selection of competing stimuli; this requires ‘effortful’ top-down processing using various higher order cognitive processes, including inhibition of responses, self-monitoring and planning, and is implicated in the self-regulation and control of behaviour. in addition to these, mirsky, anthony, duncan, ahearn, and kellam (1991, p.112) added the faculty of attention switching, namely ‘the ability to change focus in an adaptable and flexible manner.’ researchers have used the above models of awareness and attention to conceptualise the cognitive mechanisms of mindfulness, and meditation more broadly. a distinction is frequently made between two types of meditation practice (lutz, slagter, dunne, & davidson, 2008): focussed attention (fa), which refers to concentrative, sustained attention on an object; and openmonitoring (om), which involves the receptive monitoring of the broader moment-to-moment content of experience. lutz et al. (2008) argue that fa-type practices involve the development of all four attention networks: sustained (towards a target like the breath), monitoring (to prevent the mind ‘wandering’), switching (disengaging from distractions), and selective (redirecting attention back to the meditative object). in contrast, om does not involve focusing attention on particular stimuli, but is, rather, a broad receptive awareness, i.e., ‘an open field capacity to detect arising sensory, feeling and thought events within an unrestricted ‘background’ of awareness, without a grasping of these events in an explicitly selected foreground or focus’ (raffone & srinivasan, 2010, p.2). in om, passing qualia are registered as they arise, but not ‘held on to’ (grossman et al., 2004, p.36). given these descriptions, mindfulness can be characterised as a state of om. that said, mindfulness practices invariably begin not with om, but with fa-type exercises, such as a focus on the breath. thus, within a practice, fa is generally needed as a precursor to om, since one’s attention must first be stabilised through concentration in order to prevent the mind ‘wandering’ during om (chiesa, calati, & serretti, 2011). the notion that meditation develops these attention and awareness capacities has been corroborated empirically. experienced meditators generally score higher than novices on most attention measures, including selective (hodgins & adair, 2010), sustained (jha, krompinger, & baime, 2007) and executive attention (moore & malinowski, 2009). moreover, longitudinal studies of novices learning meditation have found increases in most attention capacities related to meditation practice, including selective (jha et al., 2007), executive (wenk-sormaz, 2005), sustained (zeidan, johnson, diamond, david, & goolkasian, 2010) and switching attention (heeren, van broeck, & philippot, 2009). early stages of training in a meditation ‘career,’ cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 involving a primary focus on the development of fa, are associated more frequently with improvements in selective and executive attention, while later phases more frequently pertain to enhancements in om, i.e., in unfocused sustained attention (chiesa et al., 2011). together, the training of these different attention modalities means that mindfulness is viewed as a metacognitive skill that enables ‘the self-regulation of attention’ (bishop et al., 2004, p.233). conceivably, it is this development of self-regulatory attention capacities that contributes to the emergence of decentring skills in meditation. however, this hypothesis has not been directly tested, as the present study seeks to do. 1.3 examining decentring one way of exploring this hypothesis – i.e., that the cultivation of attention skills through meditation enables practitioners to develop decentring capabilities – is through a variant of the classic stroop (1935) paradigm, a cognitive task which assesses executive attention. the original stroop task requires participants to name the ink colour of a colour word, where slower reaction times (rts) are observed in ‘incongruent’ conditions (e.g. “blue” written in red ink) than in congruent conditions (“blue” written in blue ink). one explanation attributes the different rts between congruent and incongruent stroop conditions to ‘interference’ arising from conflict between different processing pathways underlying colour-naming and word-reading, caused by ‘the simultaneous activation of incompatible and competing representations’ (botvinick, cohen, & carter, 2004, p.541). longitudinal studies indicate that meditation can enhance stroop performance, which is interpreted as evidence that meditation can facilitate the development of executive attention (kozasa, radvany, barreiros, leite, & amaro, 2008). the particular variation of the paradigm that potentially links attention development to decentring capabilities is the emotional stroop, in which participants are required to name the ink colour of words which differ in terms of emotional salience (williams, mathews, & macleod, 1996). in general, reaction time for emotional words is slower than reaction time for neutral words, especially for words that are particularly meaningful to a person (riemann & mcnally, 1995). the emotional stroop is used in clinical assessment as an adjunctive diagnostic tool to indicate psychopathology, as patients are often slower to name the colour of a word associated with their condition (williams et al., 1996). theorists explain such findings in terms of cognitive biases, where certain stimuli have greater emotional salience for some people, who then direct their attention to the emotional meaning of the words, rather than to the task in hand (mathews & macleod, 1994). theoretically, it is conceivable that mindfulness training should enhance emotional stroop performance. rather than getting drawn into semantic processing of emotional stimuli (thus hindering rt), the enhanced attention skills of practitioners – involving a combination of attentional control, inhibition and flexibility – should enable them to redirect their concentration onto the task at hand (bishop et al., 2004). one might hypothesise that it is this type of skilful redeployment of attention that underlies the development of decentring capabilities, and enables practitioners to cultivate the ability to tolerate negative stimuli (i.e., being aware of such stimuli, but without engaging in destructive elaborative processing of them). (one must add that attention redeployment is not the only plausible mechanism underlying decentring. as noted above, shapiro et al. (2006) also include intention and attitude as important components. buddhist psychological theory also emphasizes the role of insight/wisdom in decentring, e.g., understanding the transient and ‘illusory’ nature of stimuli (goleman, 1988).) however, so far, this hypothesis has not been borne out in the few studies to examine the impact of meditation practice on the cognitive processing of emotional stimuli. a study of 33 long-term meditators failed to find any connection between mindfulness ability and emotional stroop performance cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 (lykins, baer, & gottlob, 2012). chambers, lo, and allen (2008) compared novice meditators with matched controls on a version of the internal switching task (a measure of sustained and switching attention) that involved a neutral and an affective condition. strikingly, while both groups exhibited slower rts in the affective condition, this difference was more pronounced among the meditators, suggesting that they were more reactive to the emotional stimuli. thus, although it could be hypothesised that mindfulness training should enable enhanced performance on the emotional stroop task – i.e., avoiding elaborative processing of emotional stimuli – so far this has not been shown in practice. the present study aims to revisit this hypothesis. 1.4 men and masculinity a further innovative element in the present paper is the focus on a population that has hitherto not been studied specifically in relation to mindful decentring, or the emotional stroop generally: a non-clinical sample of male meditators. most studies using the emotional stroop paradigm examine clinical populations (e.g., using it to help identify psychopathologies); thus studying task performance in a general population is unusual. the originality of this focus is augmented by the decision to study men specifically. the rationale for this decision is that men are seen as particularly liable to experience problems with emotional regulation. gender theorists argue that masculinity norms concerning emotional toughness can lead to men dissociating or disconnecting from their emotions (addis, 2008). levant (1998) even proposed the notion of ‘normative male alexithymia’ to describe how gendered socialization pressures can mean males are discouraged from, and even punished for, expressing emotions; the consequence is a tendency among men towards an ‘affective style’ referred to as ‘restrictive emotionality.’ this affective style is in turn linked to mental health issues in men. for instance, although women are commonly viewed as being more susceptible to psychopathologies such as depression (mcmanus, meltzer, brugha, bebbington, & jenkins, 2009), there is a concern that men’s liability towards restrictive emotionality means their distress may be expressed in indirect ways. whereas women are viewed as more likely to ‘internalize’ their distress – thus meeting conventional generic diagnostic criteria for depression – men are considered more likely to seek to suppress or avoid their distress through ‘externalising’ responses such as risk-taking, substance use, and anger (pollack, 1998). such responses are seen as at least partly responsible for statistical trends such as the rate of suicide among men in the uk being three-and-a-half times higher than the rate among women (office for national statistics, 2014), and men accounting for two-thirds of all deaths relating to alcohol use (office for national statistics, 2012). as such, a particularly salient question is whether mindfulness meditation can help men specifically to decentre from negative qualia, thus enabling them to better tolerate feelings of distress, rather than seeking to blunt, avoid, or suppress these feelings through the maladaptive responses highlighted above. thus, the research question that the current study seeks to answer is this: can the practice of mindfulness help men to decentre from negative qualia (as indexed by improved longitudinal performance on an emotional stroop task, and corroborated by qualitative interviews)? 2. methods 2.1 overview and design a longitudinal mixed methods design was used. thirty male meditators were recruited using a maximum variation sampling strategy. semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with participants on their entry to the study (t1), and again a year later (t2). twenty-nine of cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 these participants also completed a cognitive testing session at both time points, on the same day as the interview (participants first completed the test session, and then, after an interval of 10 minutes, undertook the interview). 2.2 participants inclusion criteria were that participants be over 18 and currently practicing meditation (though not as part of a clinical intervention). a purposive maximum variation sampling design was used, in which people with a wide range of demographic backgrounds and meditation experiences were sought (marshall, 1996). recruitment ended once saturation was reached (additional interviews were not deemed to be generating any substantive new themes). a diverse group of participants was recruited, all of whom lived and/or worked in london. recruitment was principally through meditation centres in london, uk, that were affiliated to the friends of the western buddhist order (fwbo, recently renamed the triratna buddhist community), one of the largest buddhist movements in the uk (bluck, 2006), the fwbo is unorthodox in that it does not identify with one particular buddhist tradition, but rather has syncretically selected practical/doctrinal elements from various traditions, from therevadan vipassanā meditation practices to tibetan deity rituals. twenty-six participants were affiliated to the fwbo: 10 were very closely involved with an fwbo centre (i.e., lived and/or worked there); 11 regularly attended one; and 5 had only occasional involvement. two further participants were affiliated to other traditions, and two final participants were unaffiliated to any group. the fwbo teaches two core practices: mindfulness (various forms, but most commonly the mindfulness of breathing), and the metta bhavana (operationalized in the literature as lovingkindness meditation (lkm)). thus, the 26 participants affiliated to the fwbo all practiced both mindfulness (mainly the mindfulness of breathing) and lkm to some extent, both generally and during the research year, as did three of the participants unaffiliated to the fwbo. additionally, some participants engaged in other practices, such as ‘sādhanā’ (an ‘advanced’ deity visualization meditation). levels of mindfulness practice (and other forms of meditation) over the course of the year varied greatly among participants, ranging from one session of mindfulness per week (with occasional periods during which practice ceased), up to two mindfulness sessions per day for the most committed practitioner. as a final point, although this variation in the types and amounts of meditation practice among participants may be considered ‘messy’ from a methodological perspective, it is arguably reflective of the realities of meditation practice away from controlled clinical settings, since practice habits not only vary from person to person, but also change and fluctuate over time for individuals themselves. 2.3 experimental session twenty-nine participants took part in an experimental session – repeated twice, about a year apart – in which they were assessed on: an emotional stroop task; a measure of verbal fluency; and the national adult reading test (nelson & willison, 1991) as an index of intellectual functioning (iq) to contextualise task performance. the emotional stroop paradigm was based on becker, rinck, margraf, and roth (2001). there were three conditions: positive words (e.g. “friendly”), negative anxiety-related words (e.g. “death”) and neutral words (e.g. “pencil”). each condition featured 12 different words, repeated six times, generating a list of 72 words, arranged on one card in six columns. each word was printed in black, brown, green, red, blue or orange ink. in the testing session, participants were required to state aloud the ink colour of the words as fast as possible. at both t1 and t2, all participants completed all three conditions, in the same cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 order: neutral, negative, positive. participants were timed on how long they took to complete each card. verbal fluency (ability to access and retrieve words within specific constraints) is considered to reflect executive function and attentional switching and flexibility. it is differentiated into phonemic (retrieving words on the basis of phonemic lexical properties) and semantic fluency (retrieving knowledge from within a semantic framework). phonemic fluency was assessed using the fas task (also referred to as the controlled oral word association test; benton, 1989), and semantic fluency using a category task. the fas task required participants to produce words (excluding proper nouns) beginning with specific letters of the alphabet. the letters were f, a and s at t1, and p, a and s at t2. at both t1 and t2 participants underwent three consecutive trials, one for each letter, with each trial lasting 60 seconds. for semantic fluency, the category task required participants to generate as many category exemplars as possible, in 60 seconds, for a specific given category (animals at t1, and food/drink at t2). 2.4 qualitative data collection and analysis participants were all interviewed at t1 for up to two hours, with a short follow-up interview at t2 lasting up to one hour. at t1, the first half of the interview involved eliciting narratives leading up to, and following on from, participants’ engagement with meditation. the interview began with a set request: “tell me a bit about life before meditation,” followed by probes to elicit relevant narratives. the second part focused on specific areas of interest, such as wellbeing, stress and coping. t2 interviews were unstructured, apart from a set opening request: “tell me a bit about how this year has been.” the data were analysed using a ‘modified’ constant comparison approach (strauss & corbin, 1998); this follows the protocol of modified grounded theory, but omits the final stage of developing a theoretical framework, instead focusing on open and axial coding, aiming to articulate inter-relations between key themes. the first phase of coding involved close reading of the first six t1 transcripts, line by line, to identify emergent themes, which generated 80 codes. subsequent transcripts were examined paragraph by paragraph for additional codes, with a final figure of 105. this paper concentrates on data pertaining to participants’ experiences of learning to decentre through mindfulness meditation. twelve codes were identified relating directly to decentring. the next stage involved the generation of a tentative conceptual framework: codes were compared with each other, and grouped into three overarching categories according to conceptual similarity. these three categories constitute the three overarching ‘themes’ outlined in the qualitative results section. 3. results 3.1 participant descriptive statistics descriptive statistics for the participants in terms of age, iq, and general meditation experience (i.e., numbers of years meditating, and hours per week meditating), are shown in table 1 below. table 1. participant descriptive statistics demographic range mean std. dev. age 27 – 610 042.50 9.1 iq 97 – 121 114.50 6.5 years meditating 1 – 26 010.80 7.1 hours/week meditating 1 – 80 004.10 1.8 cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 as elucidated above, mindfulness meditation (mainly the mindfulness of breathing) was the dominant practice, both within the group (29 out of 30 participants practiced this with some level of regularity) and for individuals themselves (it was practiced more commonly than any other type of meditation). more specific details on the precise amount of time devoted to specific practices were not obtained. 3.2 quantitative results in the emotional stroop, the dependent variable (dv) was the time in seconds taken to complete the list of 72 words for each condition (i.e., state aloud the ink colour of every word). thus, each participant had six dv scores: completion time for each of the three conditions (neutral, negative, and positive) at two time points (t1 and t2). at t1, participants were slowest on negative words, and fastest on positive words, while at t2, participants were slowest on neutral words, and quickest on negative words, as shown in table 2 below. in terms of analysing the development of decentring capabilities, the key outcome was longitudinal change in the differential between performance on neutral words and performance on negative words. the differential was calculated by subtracting the neutral words’ completion time from the negative words’ completion time, producing a ‘relative negative score’ (reflecting the relative impact of negative words on task performance). here, a positive score means a slower performance on negative words than neutral words; thus the higher the score, the greater the emotional reactivity. conversely, a negative score means quicker performance on negative words than neutral words; thus the closer the scores are to zero (or fall below zero), the less the reactivity. participants were slower on negative words than neutral words at t1 (producing a positive differential score), but quicker on negative words than neutral words at t2 (producing a negative differential score), as shown in table 2 and figure 1 below. table 2. stroop mean times and differentials in seconds (standard deviation in parentheses) neutral negative positive neg.-neut. differential pos.-neut. differential t1 t2 60.38 (10.11) 64.41 (14.73) 62.17 (10.67) 63.03 (10.91) 61.62 (8.22) 64.24 (12.06) -1.79 (4.55)* -1.38 (7.92)* -1.24 (6.02) -0.17 (8.26) * p = .029, one-tailed to analyse the change in differential over time, a paired-sampled t-test was conducted. this revealed that there was a significant longitudinal change in the ‘relative negative score’, t(29) = 1.97, p = .029, one-tailed, d = 0.73, 95% ci [-.13, 6.47], changing from a positive differential at t1 (m = 1.79, sd = 4.55) to a negative differential at t2 (m = -1.38, sd = 7.92). cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 figure 1: line graph showing the change in the ‘negative-neutral’ and the ‘positive-neutral’ stroop differentials from t1 to t2 a second key outcome was longitudinal change in the differential between performance on positive words and performance on neutral words. the differential was calculated by subtracting the neutral words’ completion time from the positive words’ completion time, producing a ‘relative positive score.’ a positive score means a slower performance on positive words than neutral words. a negative score means a quicker performance on positive words than neutral words. participants ‘improved’ their differential from t1 to t2, i.e., becoming quicker on positive words relative to neutral words, as shown in table 3 and figure 2 below. table 3. verbal fluency – phonemic and semantic fluency mean scores (standard deviation in parentheses). t1 t2 phonemic (fas) semantic (categories) 47.34 (9.99)** * 73.59 (11.81)** 55.86 (12.76)* * 84.28 (16.60)** * p = .001 ** p < .001 to analyse the change in differential over time, a paired-sampled t-test was conducted. this revealed that there was no significant longitudinal change in the ‘relative positive score,’ t(29) = 0.89, p = .38, d = 0.33, 95% ci [-1.83, 4.66], although the differential did reduce from t1 (m = 1.24, sd = 6.02) to t2 (m = -0.17, sd = 8.26) in the verbal fluency tasks, the dv was the number of different words produced in 60 seconds for each trial. a phonemic fluency score was obtained by calculating the mean score across these three trials (f, a and s at t1; p, a, and s at t2). the semantic fluency score was simply the dv from the category trial. participants improved their phonemic and semantic fluency scores from t1 to t2, as shown in the table and figure below. to analyse the change in differential over time, a paired-sampled t-test was conducted. there was a significant longitudinal change in phonemic fluency, t(29) = -3.76, p = .001, d = 1.39, 95% ci [-13.16, -3.87], with lower scores at t1 (m = 47.34, sd = 9.99) than t2 (m = 55.86, sd = 12.76). there was also a significant longitudinal change in semantic fluency, t(29) = -2.36, p = 0.25, -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 t1 t2 stroop differential difference in completion times (seconds) neg-neut differential pos-neut differential cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 d = 0.88, 95% ci [-4.06, -.287], with lower scores at t1 (m = 26.24, sd = 4.8) than t2 (m = 28.41, sd = 6.13). figure 2: line graph showing the change in phonemic and semantic fluency from t1 to t2. 3.3 qualitative results one overarching theme emerged from our analysis: through practicing mindfulness meditation, men reported developing decentring capabilities. under this broad theme, there were three interlinked themes, each with subthemes, as shown in table 4 below. the number of participants endorsing each theme and sub-theme is indicated in the table in parentheses; although such quantification is more commonly the province of content analysis, arguments have recently been made for extending such practices to qualitative methods more generally in order to improve the presentation of qualitative results (e.g., anderson, 2010), as has been attempted here. the themes and sub-themes express a general pattern of development of decentring skills, and are connected as follows (with numerical labels for subthemes, detailed in table 4 below, in parentheses). for most men, meditation was the first time they had introspected in any systematic way (1.1.), and many were surprised by aspects of their phenomenological experience (1.2.). nevertheless, participants also appreciated that mindfulness (and other forms of meditation) could have a positive impact on wellbeing (1.3.), such as helping them become more aware of their feelings (1.4.). men described learning to deploy their attention skilfully, beginning to decentre from their subjective qualia (2.1.), which was reported as a feeling of ‘stepping back’ (2.2.). doing so helped participants to appraise their emotions with greater clarity (2.3.), while also becoming less identified with these emotions (2.4.). these decentring skills consequently had a positive impact on wellbeing. participants were better able to tolerate distressing thoughts/feelings, which previously they might have tried to suppress or avoid (3.1.). this tolerance often, though not always, generated a sense of calmness (3.2.). more generally, being less immersed and invested in the vagaries of their emotional world meant that men were less reactive and experienced a greater sense of self-control (3.3.), and opened up to new and different feelings of wellbeing (3.4.). 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 t1 t2 mean number of responses phonemic semantic cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 table 4. qualitative themes theme sub-theme example quote 1. (n = 27) emotional engagement through meditation 1.1. (n = 16) turning inwards in meditation (12) “[i took] a mindfulness based cognitive therapy course, [which] was the introduction to watching my mind in a way.” (p26) 1.2. (n = 19) initial unfamiliarity with mind “there’s the shock [of] really encountering your mind for the first time!” (p20) 1.3. (n = 12) sensing the positive potential “it was a bit weird, and i really [didn’t] understand what i was doing counting my breaths, but it [felt] like i [did] a useful thing that might [help my] depression.” (p28) 1.4. (n = 20) awareness of emotions/thoughts “i can tell if something’s not right, maybe i have anxiety… then it dawns on me, ‘oh i’m upset aren’t i,’ and it’s like, ‘oh ok, just allow those feelings to come through.’” (p30) 2. (n = 18) learning to decentre 2.1. (n = 7) being interested but not involved “it’s finding this line between not pushing it away… but not getting caught up in it and feeding it... a particular type of attention… interested, but not getting caught up in it (p5) 2.2. (n = 11) stepping back “i'm able to step back more easily and become aware of what's going on, rather than just being in the flow of what's going on.” (p10) 2.3. (n = 8) greater clarity through distance “i see my own kind of states a bit clearer now, i’m not likely just to get buried and get lost in them.” (p24) 2.4. (n = 8) dis-identifying with mental content “i realised there was this very, very critical voice [in my head] … [then i thought], ‘what if that… version of reality that it’s telling me is not actually fair [or] true.’ (p9) 3. (n = 22) enhanced wellbeing through decentring 3.1. (n = 16) tolerance of negative qualia “it feels like building up a sort of stronger vessel to hold those uncomfortable feelings… i’m able to contain that… i don’t have to try to get away from the experience.’” (p26) 3.2. (n = 10) consequent calmness and lack of distress “in seeing the best and worst of ourselves, we are also bigger to hold it... the calmness is also like a bigness. one can hold the highs and lows of oneself.” (p29) 3.3. (n = 8) self-efficacy and control “it’s like you’ve got a third eye that’s watching yourself; it’s saying, ‘no don’t do that, that’s not nice’ … watching your own behaviour and allowing you to enjoy life.” (p11) 3.4. (n = 24) feelings of wellbeing “there was that sense of space, of choice opening up, of experiencing being a little more vivid, more bright; just my experience being a little more easy to be with.” (p29) 4. discussion the results indicate that practicing mindfulness can lead to enhanced decentring skills, and that these skills can enable people to better tolerate feelings of discomfort and distress. moreover, the current study is unique in exploring this development in men specifically. men are regarded as having particular issues in respect of emotional suppression (addis, 2008): masculinity norms related to toughness are seen as contributory factors in the development of a maladaptive affective style, known as restrictive emotionality, that is common in men (levant, 1998). development of such a maladaptive affective style can result in men struggling to tolerate or manage negative emotions, and instead seeking to blunt or avoid these emotions through various deleterious ‘externalising’ behaviours such as substance use, aggression or suicide (pollack, cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 1998). such is the prevalence of restrictive emotionality in men that levant (1998) refers to this as ‘normative male alexithymia.’ however, results here suggest that this affective style is not inevitable. through practices such as mindfulness meditation, men can learn to re-connect with their emotions, and develop a more adaptive affective style. moreover, the positive impact of meditation is not limited to re-connecting emotionally. mindfulness appears to facilitate a stance of decentring, via the development of capacities such as executive attention, which means practitioners not only develop better awareness of their emotions, but also and crucially, greater tolerance of them. thus, men here were able to feel relatively comfortable in the presence of these difficult qualia, rather than seeking to avoid or blunt them, as they said they previously often sought to do. the current study is also innovative in employing a mixed methods design to explore this development of decentring; thus, we have evidence for this development from both quantitative and qualitative datasets. firstly, longitudinal quantitative results from the emotional stroop task provide indirect evidence that men developed decentring skills through practicing mindfulness meditation. the key outcome in this task was the differential between negative and neutral performance. this differential can be interpreted as an index of emotional reactivity, gauging the extent to which attention processing is affected by the negative content of stimuli. here, this differential decreased from t1 to t2. the inference is that participants were less emotionally affected by negative stimuli at the second testing session. this interpretation is based on the fact that the emotional stroop is used in clinical assessment to help identify psychopathology (williams et al., 1996): people with a particular disorder perform more slowly on tasks featuring words relating to that condition, since such words are more personally salient; thus, people get drawn into semantic processing of the stimuli, rather than focusing on the set task. on this reading, improved performance on a stroop task might be taken as indicative of reduced psychopathology in a clinical patient. transposed to a non-clinical sample, as in the present study, reduced emotional reactivity to negative stimuli might be interpreted as reflecting increased tolerance of such stimuli. taking the stroop data alone, such an interpretation is rather speculative; however, in conjunction with the other data, this interpretation is more tenable. firstly, there were significant improvements over time in executive attention, as indexed by the verbal fluency tasks; these findings suggest that participants were developing skills related to attentional control, inhibition and flexibility, thus developing the cognitive mechanisms that could facilitate greater tolerance of negative qualia. secondly, the qualitative data also corroborated this notion of participants cultivating greater tolerance (as elaborated upon below). moreover, this development is what might reasonably be expected on theoretical and empirical grounds in light of previous work associating mindfulness with enhanced affective tolerance (bishop et al., 2004). furthermore, it is possible that this increased tolerance was linked to the cultivation of decentring skills through practicing mindfulness. of course, in terms of the quantitative data alone, this possibility cannot be substantiated due to the primary limitation of the study: the absence of a control group. (the reason for this omission is that, unlike most mixed methods research, the research was ‘qualitatively driven’ (mason, 2006), and therefore did not prioritize a conventional experimental design. that is, the primary focus of the research was qualitative interviews, with quantitative data gathered as an adjunct to this for the purposes of ‘interrogating’ or elucidating the qualitative data.) thus, although participants did become less reactive to negative stimuli over time, this cannot be definitively attributed to the practice of mindfulness itself. however, again, this possibility is strengthened by the qualitative data, which cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 was particularly useful in shedding light on participants’ subjective experiences of learning to decentre. the qualitative analysis corroborated shapiro et al.’s (2006) theoretical model of mindfulness, showing how the various components of their model operated in the context of participants’ actual meditation practice. as elucidated above, shapiro et al. (2006) argue that decentring (or ‘reperceiving’) comprises three components: intention, attention, and attitude. the quantitative data provided evidence suggestive of the development of attention, as discussed above. this evidence was corroborated by the qualitative data, as participants specifically described the development of attention skills, e.g., learning to ‘watch’ their mind (e.g., quote 1.1.). however, the qualitative data also pointed to the importance of the other two components identified by shapiro et al. (2006). firstly, intention played a crucial role (which is often overlooked in the meditation literature) as the fundamental pre-requisite for subsequent attention development. a significant aspect of participants’ narratives was the long road they had travelled in life before developing the requisite intention to engage with their mental health through meditation, which corroborates levant’s (1998) point above about the prevalence and durability of restrictive emotionality in men. it was often not until a crisis occurred (e.g., a breakdown) that men finally developed the motivation and courage to ‘do something,’ i.e., try meditation. the urge to improve their mental health thereafter constituted a strong element of their intention (as per quote 1.3). learning to imbue attention with a particular attitude was likewise crucial, as encapsulated by quote 2.1; this shows that intention and attention are themselves insufficient for decentring – one must still develop the difficult skill of attending in a compassionate and ‘nonjudgmental’ way, as kabat-zinn (2003) and others have emphasized. the qualitative data further corroborate shapiro et al.’s (2006) contention that learning to decentre (or ‘reperceive’) in turn leads to additional mechanisms that have a beneficial impact upon wellbeing. for instance, self-regulation/self-management and emotional, cognitive and behavioural flexibility are both reflected in quotes 3.3 and 3.4, which confirm chamber’s et al.’s (2009, p.659) contention that decentring facilitates ‘greater choice’ in how one responds to subjective experience. likewise, exposure – defined by shapiro et al. (2006) as the ability to experience ‘even very strong emotions with greater objectivity and less reactivity’ (p.381) – is evident in quotes 3.1 and 3.2. this corroborates clinical work which has found that mindfulness training can help people stay ‘present’ in the face of uncomfortable emotional triggers, rather than reacting though maladaptive behaviour patterns such as alcohol use (garland et al., 2010) or dysfunctional eating behaviours (dalen et al., 2010). interestingly, participants were also less affected by positive stimuli at t2 than t1 (although this change was not significant). taken together with the reduced reactivity to negative stimuli, this perhaps suggests that men cultivated increased equanimity to emotional stimuli in general. that is, participants became less reactive over time to both negative and positive stimuli (as indexed by improved performance on the respective conditions of the stroop task), although this reduction was more pronounced (i.e., statistically significant) with respect to negative stimuli. this equanimity reinforces a key theoretical assumption regarding the impact of mindfulness on mental health outcomes: that it helps practitioners to decentre from phenomenological content generally (i.e., irrespective of valence), and thus refrain from responding to negative emotional stimuli in maladaptive ways, such as suppression or avoidance. moreover, such decentring may be particularly helpful for men specifically: since these kinds of maladaptive patterns of emotional responding are linked to mental health issues in men (addis, 2008), the findings suggest that mindfulness meditation may be an effective strategy that can help men adopt more helpful patterns of emotional engagement. cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 limitations of the study mean that these interpretations are somewhat speculative, and need further testing and validation. in particular, as noted above, the lack of a control group means the longitudinal improvements in the stroop performance cannot be definitively ascribed to meditation (although the qualitative evidence suggests that this is a reasonable conjecture). there are other issues with quantitative testing; however, these are arguably not a concern in the present study. for instance, longitudinal paradigms featuring repetitions of a particular task are liable to practice effects, in which practice and experience gained on initial engagement with the task might enhance subsequent performance. however, while this is a legitimate concern for short test-retest intervals, a test-retest interview of a year is generally deemed adequate to ensure that such effects are minimal (hausknecht, halpert, di paolo, & moriarty gerrard, 2007). nevertheless, with the stroop task, one might still argue that practice effects were operative within each session, since participants completed three trials in each session – undertaking the neutral, negative and positive conditions (in that order). it has been found that stroop performance can be improved with short-term practice, as people find ways to minimise interference between the competing task demands of colour recognition and semantic encoding, potentially leading to a diluted stroop effect for later conditions (macleod & dunbar, 1988). such dilution is not a concern here, however. the order in which the conditions were presented may have affected absolute performance times (i.e. neutral words were presented before negative words, thus participants may have found negative words easier due to practice effects). however, the key outcome was not absolute performance times, but relative performance times, i.e., the negative-neutral differential at t1 and t2. as the order of the conditions was kept constant at t1 and t2, this meant both sessions were subject to the same practice effects (e.g. negative words being easier at t1 and t2). as such, analysis of the change in differential from t1 to t2 was unaffected. that said, it is possible that even if practice effects were not operant per se, participants undertook the t2 session in a different mood or ‘spirit’ than the t1 session, having already been exposed to the experience. assessing participants’ mood is difficult (without having specifically sought to do so), and so any interpretations offered here are necessarily speculative. nevertheless, it is conceivable that participants felt more relaxed and less anxious at the t2 encounter, benefitting from a familiarity with the researcher and the protocol that would have been lacking at t1. this dynamic change may have influenced the results. performance on the emotional stroop can be hampered by emotional states like anxiety (i.e., task performance on the ‘negative’ condition can be slower due to the greater salience of negative words), which is the very reason the task is used in clinical assessment (williams et al., 1996). conversely though, a case could also reasonably be made that participants have greater levels of anxiety at the t2 session, for example arising from a concern to ‘improve’ their performance. thus, while it is possible that factors like mood did affect test (and interview) performance, it is difficult to gauge the impact with accuracy. future longitudinal research might incorporate a state specific measure of mood (e.g., watson, clark, and tellegen’s (1988) positive and negative affect scale) into the protocol to account for such factors. the qualitative component of the study also raises certain issues. in qualitative research, a commitment to reflexivity means recognising that the methodological and epistemological choices of the research team influenced the data at all stages of the research process (cutcliffe, 2005). for example, the data elicited from interviews is shaped through factors such as the mood of participants (as discussed above), the choice of interview questions and the expectations of the interviewer. regarding question choice and interviewer expectations, it might be argued that the research question itself – i.e., whether mindfulness meditation facilitates decentring – led to the cultivating equanimity through mindfulness lomas, edginton, cartwright, & ridge www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 research team actively looking for a positive finding in the interviews. although the constant comparison analytic method used allows themes to ‘emerge’ inductively from the data, the notion that the expectations of the research team influenced the subsequent analysis cannot be ruled out. however, the convergence of the quantitative and qualitative data means that we can have a degree of confidence that our interpretations were not simply imposed upon the data, but reflected actual patterns of cognitive development. as such, it may be argued that mindfulness meditation is one way in which men can learn to decentre; consequently, by learning to do so, men may become more tolerant and show greater equanimity in the face of negative qualia, thus lessening their tendency to engage in maladaptive avoidance coping responses, and increasing their wellbeing more generally. these findings might have useful applications; for instance, young men might be encouraged to adopt meditation practices to equip them with valuable cognitive and emotional skills, helping to overcome deficits that this section of the population may be particularly liable to, thus enhancing the wellbeing of men themselves and of those around them. future work could also be undertaken with female meditators to examine any sex/gender differences in the development of decentring skills, thereby furthering our understanding and appreciation of mindfulness more generally. authors tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk trudi edginton university of westminster tina cartwright university of westminster damien ridge university of westminster publishing timeline received 13 january 2015 accepted 19 july 2015 published 3 august 2015 references addis, m. e. 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(2022). positive embodiment for wellbeing researchers and practitioners: a narrative review of emerging constructs, measurement tools, implications, and future directions . international journal of wellbeing, 12(2), 134-162. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i2.1917 martha munroe university of east london marthamunroe@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 article positive embodiment for wellbeing researchers and practitioners: a narrative review of emerging constructs, measurement tools, implications, and future directions martha munroe abstract: positive embodiment has emerged from the eating disorder field as a psychological construct describing positive experiences of inhabiting the body. as a positive construct associated with wellbeing, new theories, models, and measures may be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the field of positive psychology. no review to date has presented the literature on positive embodiment to this audience. this interdisciplinary inquiry highlights a shared interest in the promotion of wellbeing and the bui lding of protective resources bridging positive psychology and disordered eating prevention. a systematic literature search of six databases was performed (apa psychinfo, science direct, scopus, cinahl, academic search complete, and sportdiscus) and empirical research is presented with attention paid to wellbeing concepts and opportunities for further research. this literature search located two measurement tools that operationalize positive embodiment which are explored along with their conceptual roots and underlying theories. this review incorporates quantitative and qualitative studies, and explores concepts across identified studies. positive embodiment offers further understanding of the role of the body in wellbeing and nuance to the interconnections of concepts frequently viewed as separate, such as eating and exercise behaviour, agency and empowerment, self-concept and body image. implications for integration in current positive psychology interventions are discussed, along with limitations of current knowledge and future research potential. as a narrative review, the subjective nature of inquiry is acknowledged and this project humbly intends to provide a landscape perspective of an emergent topic area in order to inform future research, practice, and policy possibilities. in conclusion, while research on positive embodiment is still emerging and more research is necessary to generalize, connections to wellbeing have been found, new measurement tools provide opportunities for further study, and practitioners may gain a greater appreciation for the role of the body in wellbeing. keywords: positive embodiment; embodiment; wellbeing; positive psychology 1. introduction this review introduces the concept of positive embodiment to practitioners and researchers within positive psychology. positive embodiment brings together topic areas regarding the body and has potentially impactful relationships with wellbeing. this review begins with a brief consideration of the role of the body in positive psychology, a description of embodiment, and the emergence of positive embodiment. the two published scales that have operationalized positive embodiment the experiences of embodiment scale (ees; piran, teall, & counsell, 2020) and the mindful self-care scale (mscs; cook-cottone & guyker, 2018) will be discussed in about:blank positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 greater detail including foundational research and theories, current research, and future opportunities. the literature on positive embodiment will be reviewed in detail with attention to implications for practice and research. while research in this area began with a focus on the prevention of disordered eating, in line with the goal of positive psychology to foster positive outcomes rather than repair dysfunction and disorder, this article focuses specifically on the bolstering of wellbeing in relation to positive embodiment. 1.1 positive psychology positive psychology is the study of wellbeing and positive mental states, including life satisfaction, optimism, meaning and purpose, and happiness at individual, institutional, and societal levels (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). positive psychology interventions (ppis) are activities designed to improve wellbeing and promote mental health beyond the absence of pathology (van agteren et al., 2021). multiple models of wellbeing exist, including distinctions between ‘hedonic’ happiness or subjective wellbeing (diener, 2000) and ‘eudemonia’ or psychological wellbeing (ryff, 1989). multiple models of wellbeing have been put forth including keyes’ model of wellbeing as a spectrum (2007), seligman’s model of flourishing known by the acronym perma positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and achievement (2011), and the newer life model (layered integrated frame work example) describing multiple spheres of influence on wellbeing (lomas, hefferon, & ivtzan, 2015). the field of positive psychology, while influenced by earlier movements, is commonly considered to have begun with seligman, then president of the american psychological association, articulating the importance of re-balancing a field focused primarily on dysfunction to include the positive (seligman, 1998). since its inceptions there have been a number of conceptual “waves” within the field. the first focused to a large degree on quantifying the positive emotions that had been neglected by scientific inquiry; the second expanding to include ‘the dark side’ and the value and importance of so-called ‘negative’ and mixed emotions and experiences in life; and the third wave, building on the previous two, aiming to expand beyond a positivist, individual focus and incorporate a deeper understanding of socio-cultural forces, systems of power, and qualitative inquiry including feminist and social-justice perspectives (lomas et al., 2020). 1.2 the body in positive psychology within a few years of the designation of positive psychology, critiques characterized the field as a “neck-up focused discipline” (hefferon, 2015, p.791) that ignored the important role of the body in wellbeing. instead of an exclusive focus on cognitive and emotional processes, a more embodied approach in positive psychology was argued for (hefferon, 2015), exercise was advocated for as an ideal ppi (faulkner, hefferon, & mutrie, 2015; hefferon & mutrie, 2012), and a textbook on positive psychology and the body was written (hefferon, 2013). the stated aim of the textbook being highlighting copious research on physical mechanisms of wellbeing, with a focus on the body in everyday life, including how we care for, feed, move, and relate to our bodies (hefferon, 2013. pp. ix). the threads to embodiment and conceptual underpinnings of embodied phenomenological experiences have been gathered in hefferon’s introduction to the topic and reference merleau-ponty’s definitions of embodiment and subjective experiences (2013, pp. 8-9) frequently cited in embodiment research (discussed further below). the addition of the ‘v’ for vitality to seligman’s perma model of wellbeing, by some in the field, is symbolic of a greater embracement of the physical domain in positive psychology (st. andrew’s college, n.d.; zhivotovskaya, 2016). there has been growing research interest in the potential of yoga as a ppi focusing on mindhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 body connection and mindfulness of the body (e.g. bansal et al., 2013; ivtzan & papantoniou, 2014). additionally, positive body image, with its emphasis on the important role our relationship to our body plays in wellbeing, has begun to bridge the gap between embodiment research and positive psychology (e.g. ayala, & ramírez, 2018; cash & smolok, 2011; hefferon, 2015; tylka, 2011). 1.3 a brief review of the concept of embodiment embodiment has roots in philosophy and critical theory (foucault, 1979; merleau-ponty, 1962) and has a multitude of definitions that centre on experiencing and perceiving the world from the location of the body (tolman, bowman, & fahs, 2014, p. 760). central to understanding embodiment is the rejection of cartesian mind/body dualism for a unity that identifies the body as the centre of subjective experience in the world and does not distinguish the mind as separate from the body (vilvoskaya, 2021). essentially, we do not experience life as a mind alone, life is rooted in the experiences of the body and informed by the world around us, including culture and society (crossley, 1995; merleau-ponty, 1962.) in recent years, there has been growing interdisciplinary interest in embodiment (preliminary scopus search shows an average of 43 articles/year from 1981-1990, 110/year from 1991-2000, 530/year from 2001-2010, and 1516/year from 2011-2020). fields as divergent as cognitive neuroscience, psychotherapy, and eating disorder treatment have interest in this inquiry (e.g. glenberg et al., 2013; winter et al., 2018; cook-cottone, 2015). in psychology, several researchers have advocated for more inquiry into embodiment as an important part of understanding how individuals live in the world and in their bodies (e.g. blood, 2004; cash 2004; katzman and lee, 1997; piran, 2001). piran and colleagues (piran & teall, 2012; piran et al., 2020) describe three components of embodiment: (a) attunement to inner states of the body, as opposed to body image which primarily focuses on appearance related factors; (b) being comprised of a wide range of experiences frequently looked at individually, like eating and exercise behaviours, selfexpression, sexual agency, and self-care; and (c) a dialectical relationship between the body and socio-cultural influences. 1.4 positive embodiment positive embodiment is defined as an experience of comfort and connection with the body, attuned self-care, and bodily agency and is contrasted to disrupted embodiment, experienced as discomfort, self-neglect, and restricted agency (piran, 2016). there is some conceptual overlap with other positive body-related constructs, including body appreciation (tylka & woodbarcalow, 2015), body functionality (alleva & tylka, 2021), and body image flexibility (sandoz et al., 2013), but the breadth of experience encompassed by positive embodiment transcends a single area to capture a fuller concept of the way living in a body is experienced (piran, 2020). this expanded conceptualization of positive embodiment includes partial conceptual overlap with resistance to objectification (fredrickson & roberts, 1997) intuitive eating (tylka, 2003; tylka, & kroon van diest, 2013), and attuned or positive sexuality (respectively, statinski & ramseyer winter, 2019; hefferon, 2013, pp. 108-135). positive embodiment brings together these multiple facets of inquiry and provides an overarching framework to unify constructs. emerging research from gattario et al. (2020) found a correlation between positive embodiment and life satisfaction pointing to potential impact of further exploring these connections (explored further in results section). like positive psychology, models of positive embodiment offer a framework for moving beyond preventing mental illness in particular, the prevention of eating disorders (e.g. cookcottone, 2006, 2015; piran & cormier, 2005) – towards the innately valuable promotion of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 wellbeing. two multifaceted models of embodiment have been published in recent years, including the developmental theory of embodiment (piran, 2017) and the attuned representational model of self (cook-cottone, 2006) (see table 1). thus far no review has been undertaken to signpost the significance of positive embodiment to positive psychology practitioners. table 1. conceptual models of embodiment. conceptual models of embodiment attuned representational model of self (arms model) developmental theory of embodiment (dte) theoretical model of the self as a dynamic relationship between inner and outer components that are connected via the process of ‘attunement’ internal systems: cognitive (thoughts); emotional (feelings); physical (body) external systems: microsystem (family) exosystem (community) macrosystem (culture) when these components are well balanced healthy, positive embodiment occurs and allows for a well-functioning self (cook-cottone, 2006, 2015, 2018) developed from qualitative interviews with young women, older women, and a 5-year prospective study with girls (age 9-14 at initial interview) utilized purposive sampling method five domains identified – each containing a negative and positive pole 1) body connection and comfort; 2) agency and functionality; 3) experience and expression of desire; 4) engagement in attuned self-care practices; 5) resistance to self-objectification the dte organizes protective factors into three domains: the physical domain (physical freedom), the mental domain (mental freedom), and the social power domain (piran, 2016, 2017; piran et al., 2020) related scale: mindful self-care scale (mscs) (cook-cottone & guyker, 2018) related scale: experiences of embodiment scale (ees) (piran, teall, & counsell, 2020) developed from a review of literature of selfcare and expert input six factors emerged: 1) physical care 2) supportive relationships 3) mindful awareness 4) self-compassion and purpose 5) mindful relaxation 6) supportive structure developed from the above research project six factors emerged: 1) positive body connection and comfort 2) body un-encumbered adjustment 3) agency and functionality 4) experience and expression of sexual desire 5) attuned self-care 6) resisting objectification http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 1.5 the developmental theory of embodiment the developmental theory of embodiment (dte) has emerged from over 20 years of research by niva piran and colleagues, and offers a framework for understanding the social and cultural experiences that inform embodied realities for women and girls (piran, 2017; piran & teall, 2012). the foundational qualitative research includes a five-year prospective study with girls (age at beginning: 9-14 years), following participants through puberty and adolescence, and life history studies with both youngand older-women (piran, 2016; 2017). five dimensions of experience of embodiment emerged with each representing a spectrum from positive experiences of freedom to negative experiences of being controlled: 1) body connection and comfort; 2) agency and functionality; 3) experience and expression of desire; 4) engagement in attuned self-care practices; and 5) resistance to self-objectification (piran, 2016, 2017; piran et al., 2020). the dte also organizes protective factors into three domains: physical, mental, and social power domains (piran, 2015). building on extensive foundation qualitative research, piran and colleges employed various quantitative approaches (eg. piran & cormier, 2005; piran, 2019) and the experiences of embodiment scale was developed as the first quantitative measurement tool to capture experience of embodiment ranging from negative to positive (piran, teall, & counsell, 2020). 1.5.1 experiences of embodiment scale the experiences of embodiment scale (ees) was developed using four independent samples of women (n = 92, n = 412, n = 328, and n = 76 ) and six factors emerged: 1) positive body connection and comfort; 2) body un-encumbered adjustment; 3) agency and functionality; 4) experience and expression of sexual desire; 5) attuned self-care; and 6) resisting objectification (piran et al., 2020). positive experiences in one domain of the ees commonly co-occurred with positive experiences the other domains indicating links between the domains, though more research is needed to understand these relationships. scores also correlated with other measures of body connection, and self-esteem, and were stable at three-week follow-up (piran et al., 2020). key differences in the ees from the foundational qualitative research is the addition of the ‘body un-encumbered adjustment’ and less focus on eating behaviour as a dimension of the desire factor. as the ees is recently developed, only a small number of studies have so far deployed it (discussed in detail in results); thus, ample opportunity exists for further exploration of positive embodiment as captured by the ees. 1.6 the attuned representational model of self the second model for understanding embodiment and the ongoing negotiation of the self is the attuned representational model of self (arms), created by catherine cook-cottone (2006, 2015). the arms conceptualises the self as a dynamic relationship between inner and outer components connected via the process of attunement, a reciprocal relationship of mutual impact and regulation (cook-cottone, 2015; siegal, 2007). internal systems consist of cognitive (thoughts), emotional (feelings), and physical (body) components, and external systems consist of microsystem (family), exosystem (community), and macrosystem (culture). when components are in sync, healthy, positive embodiment occurs and allows for “effective functioning of the self … beyond self as subject or object” (cook-cottone, 2015, p. 2). in discussion of the arms and its impact relationship with disordered eating, cook-cottone draws on definitions of wellbeing as a spectrum (keyes, 2007) and of flourishing (seligman, 2011), foundational in positive psychology, and posits that people strive beyond the relief of suffering for positive dimensions http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 of mental wellness. the arms model and accompanying discussions focus on self-regulation, intentional self-care behaviours, self-compassion and body appreciation (cook-cottone, 2006, 2015, 2018). 1.6.1 the mindful self-care scale the mindful self-care scale (mscs) was specifically created to capture behaviours that facilitate positive embodiment and wellbeing (cook-cottone & guyker, 2018, p. 161). it was developed from a literature review of self-care supported by expert input and was validated with two independent samples (n=448, n=452) that included both women and men. a six-factor model emerged: 1) physical care, 2) supportive relationships, 3) mindful awareness, 4) self-compassion and purpose, 5) mindful relaxation, and 6) supportive structure. the authors utilise the definition of positive embodiment from piran and colleagues (2015); thus, it seems that the authors intend it to be applied to the same phenomena. an important note was the intention, in the development of the mscs, to develop actionable, practical items that could be used prescriptively after assessment; thus, each item within the mscs has potential to function as an intervention. the mscs has been used in a variety of settings including cross-cultural validation with a turkish population (sünbül, et al., 2018a); validation with hospice and health care workers and the development of a brief version of the mscs (hotchkiss & cook-cottone, 2019); the relationship between stress, self-care, and health related quality of life for students (feng et al., 2019); and the role of self-care in mitigating stress and burnout with student service professionals (jackson preston et al., 2021). in studies looking at self-care practices, but not positive embodiment, scores on the mscs were found to be strongly correlated with subjective wellbeing for indian students and working professionals (chatterjee & jethwani, 2020) and with wellbeing for students in mental health fields (sünbül, et al., 2018b). use of the mscs has so far focused on measuring selfcare behaviours with little emphasis on its intended purpose of measuring positive embodiment; thus, plenty of opportunities remain for further exploration of this scale in regards to positive embodiment and wellbeing. 1.7 research aims this narrative review aims to support wellbeing researchers and practitioners in maximizing the potential of positive embodiment. an emphasis will be placed on what this emerging subject area has to offer with respect to wellbeing, including both demonstrated and anticipated benefits. limitations of the current body of knowledge will be addressed, future opportunities for research will be identified, and implications for practice including adjustments to ppis based on new concepts will be explored. 2. method 2.1 narrative reviews the goal of review studies is to provide a summary and synthesis of the literature on a specific topic and report on the current state of research. as positive embodiment is a new field of study, a systematic review with formalized guidelines was seen to be less appropriate as the small body of empirical research has taken varied approaches to operationalisation and employed different methodologies (baumeister & leary, 1997). a narrative review was chosen in order to provide greater flexibility in exploring the literature, within a comprehensive, transparent search and selection process (ferrari, 2015). to address the subjective nature of narrative review, the study design was structured and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 140 robust in exploration of the subject and what it may offer researchers and practitioners. this review intends to serve as a stepping-off point, connecting research on positive embodiment with an audience who may not be aware of it. extensive statistical analysis of the data that exists was not performed as aggregation of quantitative and qualitative data makes such an appraisal difficult (dixon-woods et al., 2001) and with a limited number of total studies, disparate research methods, and study designs, a landscape overview of the topic was deeme d most appropriate. the hope is that this work piques interest for readers interested in embodiment and wellbeing, particularly those interested in further research on these concepts, or who may integrate insights into their work as practitioners. 2.2 search strategies and keywords this review aimed to locate studies operationalizing positive embodiment. a literature search was conducted utilizing six electronic databases apa psychinfo, science direct, scopus, cinahl, academic search complete, and sportdiscus. the databases were selected to span a breadth of disciplines (including psychology, sociology, sports psychology, and nursing) and to include abstract, keyword, and full-text searching. the initial search took place in april 2021 and was repeated in june 2021. keywords ‘positive embodiment’ were input into the aforementioned databases. a search for papers citing the development and validation papers of the two identified scales was also performed in order to locate studies that have deployed the ees (piran et al., 2020), and the mscs (cook-cottone & guyker, 2018). 2.3 eligibility criteria and study selection inclusion criteria and selection process are summarized in tables 2 and 3. all quantitative studies that operationalized positive embodiment were included. all participant samples were included. qualitative studies that centred positive embodiment as the topic of investigation were included. studies mentioning positive embodiment, or the dte as explanation of phenomena, but not operationalized or a primary focus were excluded. no date limits were applied. studies were limited to english. only papers retrievable online (including interlibrary loan) were included. due to retrieval issues with grey literature (dissertations), the decision was made to focus on peer-reviewed, published research. table 2. inclusion and exclusion criteria. inclusion exclusion empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals studies that operationalize positive embodiment (or experiences of embodiment inclusive of both positive and negative dimensions) (quantitative studies) studies that investigate positive embodiment phenomenologically (qualitative studies) non-empirical studies including book chapters, editorials, or reviews. grey literature that was not retrievable. studies on body image or related constructs that made mention of positive embodiment or models of embodiment as potential explanatory mechanisms but do not investigate positive embodiment specifically http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 141 initial search results were sorted manually, using zotero, to remove duplicates. next, titles and abstracts were reviewed to remove irrelevant papers, those that made passing reference to positive embodiment but did not address it specifically in the aims of the paper, and those containing conceptually similar subject areas (such as positive body image, body functionality, etc.) book chapters and review papers were also removed at this stage in order to focus on novel empirical studies. remaining papers were read in their entirety, or to the point where exclusion was determined. eligible papers identified were read closely and data was extracted into tables (tables 4, 5, and 6 in results). data extracted included research focus, participants, measures used or themes identified, and a summary of results. table 3. selection process. initial search => 128 documents duplicates removed => 82 screened titles and abstracts => 18 read in full => 10 met inclusion criteria final sample: 10 papers detailing 13 studies 2 scale development papers totaling 6 quantitative studies 6 quantitative papers detailing 5 studies 2 qualitative studies 3. results the search process yielded 10 papers including the scale development and validation papers previously discussed (table 4). of the remaining papers, six quantitative (table 5) and two qualitative inquiries (table 6) were identified. four studies measured positive embodiment using the ees, but none of the studies deploying the mscs focused on positive embodiment. all located studies took place in western countries and five of ten papers focus exclusively on female participants. a mixture of student and community samples was used. four studies used an experimental design and disparate measurement tools were deployed for many. themes of wellbeing, self-care, yoga and physical activity, and resisting objectification were present across studies and will be explored in more detail below. table 4. development and validation studies. paper population measures results mindful self care scale (cookcottone & guyker, 2018) two independent samples: 1. n=448, ages 18-71, 79.7% female, 90% caucasian 2. n=452, ages 18-78, 69.7% female, 70.8% caucasian 1. mscs – 84 2. eating attitudes test (eat-26; garner et al., 1982) 3. body esteem scale (bes; franzoi & herzon, 1986) 4. demographic information items assessed for normality of distribution sample 1: exploratory factor analysis, construct validity http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 142 sample 2: confirmatory factor analysis experiences of embodiment scale (piran et al., 2020) 4 independent samples of women 1. n=92, ages 19-55, 72.5% white, majority students 2. n=412, ages 18-45, 38.9% white, 41.8% asian, university / community sample 3. n=348, age 18-26; 53% black, 47% white; university, new york 4. n=76, age 18-45; 71.1% white, ~ half students, toronto study 1: 1. ees 2. body esteem (besaa; mendelson et al., 2001) 3. body surveillance subscale of objectified body consciousness scale (obc; mckinley & hyde, 1996) 4. alexithymia (tas-20; bagby et al., 1994) 5. eating attitudes (eat-26; garner et al., 1982) 6. self-esteem (ses; rosenberg, 1989) 7. depression (bdi; beck et al., 1989) study 2: 1. ees 2. body esteem (besaa; mendelson et al., 2001) 3. body surveillance subscale of obc (mckinley & hyde, 1996) 4. self-esteem (ses) (rosenberg, 1989) 5. alexithymia (tas-20, dif subscale; bagby et al., 1994) 6. body connection (sbc; price & thompson, 2007) study 1: item reduction, internal consistency, convergent validity study 2: further exploration of factor structure, convergent and discriminant validity study 3: confirmatory factor analysis study 4: ees scores stable at 3 weeks followup http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 143 7. body responsiveness (brs; daubenmier, 2005) 8. physical self-worth (subscale of pspp; kalmet & fouladi, 2008) 9. sexual assertiveness (hisa; hurlbert 1991) 10. disordered eating (ede-q; fairburn &beglin, 1994) 11. perfectionism – personal standards subscale of mps (frost et al., 1990) 12. sports competence (subscale of pspp; kalmet & fouladi, 2008) study 3: 1. ees study 4: 1. ees table 5. quantitative studies investigating positive embodiment paper population measures results alleva, et al., (2020) young-adult women (n = 114; m age = 22.19) 10-week hatha yoga programme, waitlist controlled. primarily western european participants exploring yoga, functionality appreciation and facets of positive body image 1. functionality appreciation scale (fas; alleva et al., 2017) 2. body appreciation scale (bas-2; tylka & woodbarcalow, 2015) 3. body compassion scale (bcs; altman et al., 2017) 4. multidimensional bodyself relations questionnaire – appearance evaluation subscale (brown et al., 1990) effects on positive body image mediated by embodiment and self-objectification yoga did not increase functionality appreciation functionality appreciation did not mediate effects on positive body image follow-up data could not be analysed due to attrition http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 5. self-objectification beliefs and behaviours scale (sobbs; lindner & tantleff-dunn, 2017) 6. physical body experiences questionnaire (pbe; menzel, 2010) 7. demographic info, prior experience with yoga, evaluation of yoga programme pretest, mid-test, post-test, and 1-month follow-up. yoga participants experienced lower selfobjectification at midtest and greater embodiment over time all participants (including controls) experienced improvements in body appreciation, body compassion, and appearance evaluation lower selfobjectification contributed to body appreciation and body compassion embodiment contributed to body appreciation, body compassion, and appearance evaluation main limitation – high attrition at follow-up cox, et al., (2020). n=62, women 18-54 mean age 23.89 usa, 74% caucasian, not experienced in yoga single yoga class with 3 conditions: 1. mindful approach 2. appearance focus 3. neutral instruction exploring yoga instructional strategies, positive embodiment and positive affect 1. state mindfulness: body subscale from the state mindfulness scale for physical activity (sms-pa; cox, ullrich-french, & french, 2016) 2. affect before and after: the feeling scale (fs; hardy & rejeski, 1989) 3. pleasantness of activity: visual analogue scale (like zenko et al., 2016). 4. forcasted pleasure (evs; lishner et al., 2008) modest effect for affect, highest for mindful condition significant effect for remembered pleasure – less pleasure for appearance focus than other conditions significant difference in body surveillance – higher for appearance condition no differences for body appreciation http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 145 5. body appreciation post: body appreciation scale-2 (homan, 2016) 6. body surveillance subscale of the objectified body consciousness scale (obc; mckinley & hyde, 1996). 7. baseline variables: short inventory for mindfulness capabilities (sim-c; duan & li, 2016), behavioral regulation in exercise questionnaire (breq-3; markland & tobin, 2004), body appreciation (bas-2; tylka & wood-barcalow, 2015), and body shape questionnaire (bsq-r-10; mazzeo, 1999) main limitation – small homogenous sample gattario, et al., (2020). n=760; 302 swedish women mean age 24.36; 242 swedish men mean age 24.36; 216 canadian women mean age 23.22 gender and cultural differences in embodiment and life satisfaction 1. ees (piran et al., 2020) 2. body esteem (besaa; mendelson et al., 2001) 3. thin-ideal internalization (sataq-3; thompson et al., 2004) 4. restraint subscale of eating disorder examination questionnaire (ede-q; fairburn &beglin, 1994) 5. satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener et al. 1985) swedish women had more positive embodiment than canadian women swedish women had more negative experiences of embodiment than swedish men women had lower scores for body connection and comfort, bodyunencumbered adjustment, and resisting objectification; no gender differences for agency and functionality, experience and expression of sexual desire, and attuned self-care. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 146 swedish women stronger correlation between ees and swls than body esteem swedish men no difference embodiment and body esteem correlated for both genders for women, embodiment predicted life satisfaction main limitation – variance in information collected in sample populations sundgotborgen, et al., (2019). n=2446, adolescent norwegian boys (43%) and girls; mean age 16.8 healthy body image intervention targeting positive embodiment and health-related quality of life three group workshops (spaced every 3 weeks) focused on body image, media literacy, and lifestyle 1. demographic information 2. experiences of embodiment (ees) 3. health-related quality of life (kidscreen-10; ravens-sieverer, 2006) assessed at baseline, 3months, and 12 months post intervention cluster controlled by schools for boys short-term positive effect on embodiment but was not maintained at follow-up for girls significant effect on positive embodiment, maintained in followup and peaked at 12months post intervention had minimal effect on health-related quality of life main limitation: high dropout rate especially boys and controls sundgotborgen, et al., (2020) mediational analysis of hbi study above 1. experiences of embodiment scale (ees) path analysis indicated positive embodiment was increased via increased self-esteem in both genders http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 147 2. internalization of body ideals (sataq-4; schaefer et al., 2015) 3. media literacy and social media use (unpublished scale) 4. self-compassion (tscs-sf; rae et al., 2011) 5. self-esteem (rses; rosenburg, 1965) 6. body image flexibility (biaaq; sandoz et al., 2013) only self-esteem mediated a positive effect on pe for both girls and boys transient small effect for boys, sustained effect for girls main limitation: high dropout rate especially boys and controls voica et al., (2021). n=410, 55.6% women, age 24, swedish, recruited from ongoing longitudinal study exploring disordered eating (de) with positive psychology lens 1. disordered eating (ede-q; fairburn & beglin, 1994) 2. self-esteem (sise; robins et al., 2001) 3. identity coherence subscale (epsi; rosenthal et al., 1981) 4. positive embodiment (positive body connection and comfort [pbcc]/ agency and functionality [af] subscales; ees) women had higher levels of de than men men had higher selfesteem and pbcc no gender differences in identity coherence and af for women – pbcc correlated with lower degrees of de; selfesteem moderately correlated; af and identity coherence were small to moderate for men – pbcc and self-esteem moderately correlated with lower degrees of de; identity coherence and af had small correlation predictive variables correlated positively with each other http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 148 multiple regression analysis: women, pbcc strongest predictor of low de (26.8% of variance) together, four variables account for 42.6% of variance in de for women, and 23.9% for men main limitation – cross sectional design does not establish direction of causality table 6. qualitative studies investigating positive embodiment paper focus sample themes results taylor, k. a., & russellmayhew, s. (2018). how women experience and maintain positive embodiment constructivist grounded theory 10 women, 1829, selfidentify as experiencing positive embodiment, no history of eating disorders, canada 1. working to balance selfcaring as pathway 2. conceptualizing self – self as unique & self in relation a core concept of working to balance all aspects of their lives and embodied experiences, achieved through self-caring. participants emphasize “practice” and “routine” in balancing individual self and cultural/social context. main limitation – small, homogenous sample ellison, t., & papps, f. a. (2020). the role of embodied practice (yoga) ipa interviews 4 women, 1. other-validated sexuality – conditioning & supports embodied practices facilitating positive http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 in the developing sexual potential defined as physical, mental, emotional, and social wellbeing related to sexuality caucasian (australian), ages 28 – 59, with regular embodied practice (yoga) disembodiment 2. embodiment practice – releasing conditioning & becoming embodied 3. self-validated sexuality – connection to self; connection to others; & connection to soul embodiment (from initial position of disrupted embodiment) participants reported increased feelings of connection to their bodies, sensations, internal states, a greater sense of selfexpression and individuality, increased body appreciation, positive affect, confidence, and self-described mental health main limitation – small, homogenous sample 3.1 wellbeing both research teams putting forward models and scales of positive embodiment, conceptualize it as intrinsically related with wellbeing. piran et al. describe positive experiences of embodiment as ‘embodied wellbeing’ (2020, pp.131) and the design of the mscs includes the stated purpose of items aimed at increasing wellbeing (cook-cottone & guyker, 2018), with mindful self-care considered a foundation of both physical and mental wellbeing. across all studies, links between wellbeing and positive embodiment were made including both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. qualitatively, participants in both studies self-described a connection between positive embodiment and their wellbeing; with participants drawing connections between sexuality, spirituality, and wellbeing (ellison and papps, 2020), and the self-described protective effect of positive embodiment on mental-health and self-esteem (taylor and russel-mayhew, 2018). in correlational research, positive embodiment measures predicted a significant degree of variance in disordered eating, evidencing the benefit of a positive psychology lens in understanding and preventing disordered eating by fostering resilience, wellbeing, and selfidentity (voica et al., 2021). positive embodiment was also correlated with higher life satisfaction, especially for women, for whom positive embodiment was a significant predictor of life satisfaction (gattario et al., 2020). life satisfaction, as mentioned in the introduction, is a component of hedonic happiness, or subjective wellbeing (diener et al., 1985). the yoga intervention studies provide insight into environments that support wellbeing and positive embodiment. the type of cuing in a single-session yoga class intervention was shown to http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 150 impact participants’ affect, another component of subjective wellbeing, with the biggest affect increase from cuing mindfulness (cox et al., 2020). this matters, authors posit, because experiencing pleasure and enjoyment while doing yoga or exercising may be a key factor in the continuation the practice which may in turn impact wellbeing further (cox et al., 2020). the 10week hatha yoga intervention, which was shown to improve body image via increased embodiment and decreased self-objectification, was phrased to participants as investigating wellbeing and included themes of empowerment, acceptance, compassion, connecting, gentleness, and body diversity in the content, again highlighting contextual factors for benefitting from yoga (alleva et al, 2020). sungot-borgen and colleagues’ (2019) school-based intervention, was shown to increase positive embodiment, especially for girls, and was designed in a way that focused on the wellbeing benefit of health behaviours. authors propose that this perspective of wellness could aid in reducing comparison and negative self-talk, increase media criticality, and improve body relationships, that in turn promote psychological wellbeing. in the exploration of indirect effects (2020) researchers posit that the pathway of improving self-esteem could have a knock-on effect on psychological wellbeing which could create a positive cycle of healthier choices, positive attitudes, and positive self-talk that would continue to improve positive embodiment experiences across domains. such connections with psychological wellbeing are discussed but not yet explored in detail, for example, correlated with measures of pwb as conceptualized by ryff (1989). connections to wellbeing have been drawn across studies with a recurring theme of the possibility of an upward spiral effect. 3.2 self-care self-care is considered a key to experiencing positive embodiment, evident in its centrality in the mindful self-care scale, and in the attuned self-care dimension of experiences of embodiment in the dte (piran, 2016; 2017) and the ees (piran et al., 2020). indeed, self-caring was also discovered as central in taylor and russell-mayhew’s qualitative inquiry into young women’s maintenance of positive embodiment (2018). cross-sectionally, swedish women had more positive embodiment than canadian women on most dimensions including attuned self-care, with no differences in attuned self-care found between swedish men and women; authors postulate greater gender equality may afford swedish women more time for self-care than canadian women which may affect life satisfaction (gattario et al., 2020). while not measuring self-care behaviour directly, in exploration of a positive psychology perspective on disordered eating, connections between both piran and cook-cottone’s models are drawn and authors emphasize the interconnections between domains of the dte – that increased body comfort may be related to self-care activities and attuning to body signals (voica et al., 2021). sundgot-borgen and colleagues’ school-based intervention (2019) promoted a self-care and functionality-based approach to lifestyle factors such as exercising, eating, and sleeping; suggesting that improving self-care behaviours could improve both health and positive embodiment and again echoing the notion of creating a positive cycle. 3.3 yoga and physical activity included studies reflect growing interest in the possibility of yoga and physical activity facilitating positive embodiment with an integrative approach to mind and body. yoga and exercise are features of both scales and models of positive embodiment. in the mscs (cookhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 151 cottone & guyker, 2018) yoga is included with mindfulness activities and as a mind/body practice and in the physical care factor, alongside exercise. the authors highlight established connections between exercise, wellbeing, stress-management, and health promotion. joyful and immersive physical activity is a component of the dte and is contrasted to exercise for controlling physique (piran, 2016). this relationship is operationalized in the ees and authors discuss how the scale offers future opportunities to explore yoga’s impact on positive embodiment (piran et al., 2020). two quantitative studies involved yoga interventions, and one qualitative study looked at experiences of women with regular yoga practices. in exploring effects of single -session yoga instructional strategies on positive embodiment, authors found that focus on appearance reduced affect benefit of a yoga class and suggest that the focus in yoga and exercise settings should prioritise enjoyment over appearance or weight, both for short-term benefit and likelihood of continuation (cox et al., 2020). in a 10-week yoga intervention, improved embodiment and lower self-objectification drove improvements in body image and embodiment scores were also correlated with body appreciation, body compassion and appearance evaluation (alleva et al., 2020). qualitatively, ellison & papps (2020) explored the role of yoga practice on positive sexuality via the pathway positive embodiment and participants described how yoga fostered a positive relationship with the self that in turn fostered a more attuned relationship with their sexuality. these inquiries into yoga and positive embodiment all reflect experiences that are immersive and experiential rather than cognitive or reflection-based. sundgot-borgen and colleagues’ school-wide intervention (2019) which was shown to increase positive embodiment for girls, was designed to challenge prevailing attitudes that glorify extreme exercise and diets by promoting exercise, nutrition, and sleep as self-care practices, which highlights the effect attitudes towards these activities have on embodiment. in further mediational analysis, authors discuss that future iterations may include physical activity as an experiential component in the intervention itself, which could potentially result in larger effect sizes for boys (sundgot-borgen et al., 2020). in cross-sectional studies, the value of yoga and attuned exercise for experiential promotion of positive embodiment is echoed with links made to its value in both treatment and prevention of eating disorders (voica et al., 2021) and the importance of joyful physical activity as a protective factor for positive embodiment (gattario et al., 2020). in investigating qualitatively how young women maintain positive embodiment, researchers found both yoga and exercise were aspects of self-care with physical, mental, and social benefits; with listening and responding to internal cues emphasized, alongside the relationship between caring for the body, body acceptance, and self-acceptance (taylor & russel-mayhew, 2018). across studies, yoga and physical activity consistently emerge as important but with a specific focus that it is not just the activity itself that is key but the nature of the relationship with the activity that impacts positive embodiment; that the purpose of activity should be experiential, enjoyable, and not focused on manipulating physique. 3.4 beyond appearance resisting objectification all included studies include value placed on resisting objectification and moving beyond an appearance-focused valuation of the body. resistance to objectification goes beyond body esteem and is an ongoing relationship negotiated in the context of social and cultural forces that become embodied practices (piran, teall, & counsell, 2020). this includes the ways women navigate socially prescribed beauty practices such as wearing makeup, food restriction, exercise for appearance, and spending personal resources on appearance. the negative and positive http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 polarities of this domain are, respectively, existing in the body as an object of gaze, or subjectively experiencing the world as an agent with meaningful goals (piran et al., 2020). the mscs also emphasizes experiencing the body subjectively rather than objectively and connect subjectivity with attending to both inner experiences and external demands. authors suggest that preoccupation with external objectives, may disrupt body image, and fuel burnout, disordered eating, disconnection, and substance-use; thus, self-care should be driven by positively inhabiting the body rather than appearance (cook-cottone & guyker, 2018). this theme of moving away from an appearance focus is present in both yoga intervention studies. in cox et al.’s yoga instructional strategy exploration (2020), body surveillance seemed to undermine the positive affect benefits of yoga. in alleva et al.’s 10-week yoga intervention (2020), researchers found reduced self-objectification at mid-test and greater scores on a measure of embodiment over time and both of these factors mediated the effect of the yoga condition on body image. the study was the first to explore connections between self-objectification, embodiment, and yoga practice, and while lower self-objectification did not predict body appreciation, it was found to predict body compassion and appearance evaluation (alleva et al., 2020). as previous discussed, a central feature the healthy body image intervention was focusing self-care behaviours away from appearance, increasing criticality of unhealthy body ideals and fostering awareness of media use to reduce self-objectification and internalization of harmful messaging (sungot-borgen et al., 2019; 2020). the authors describe how such criticality is important for adolescents to counter risk of eating disorders and body image concerns (sungotborgen et al., 2019). this echoes voica et al.’s (2021) exploration of positive protective factors for disordered eating and draws attention to further exploring the role of agency, functionality, and confidence as positive factors that may aid in prevention of disordered eating and help shift focus beyond appearance and objectification. in investigating gender and cultural differences in experiences of embodiment, gattario et al. (2020) discuss the role of social pressure for thinness, disordered eating, and the normative nature of body dissatisfaction. swedish women in the study scored lower on resistance to objectification than swedish men, but higher than canadian women, suggesting that while swedish women may experience fewer pressures than canadian women, they are not on par with swedish men, prompting authors to posit that such cultural variations highlight the need for systemic change to promote and protect wellbeing by counteracting objectifying portrayals of women (gattario et al., 2020). the theme of moving away from objectification and appearance was also apparent in qualitative studies. as the title ‘sexuality without that mirror’ suggests (ellison & papps, 2020), participants describe moving beyond objectified sexuality and attractiveness towards more embodied experiences, an experience participants connected with self-identified mental-health. in taylor and russel-mayhew’s inquiry (2018) into how young women maintain positive embodiment, authors theorize that sociocultural pressures lead to poor self-esteem that can create mental-health struggles including depression and eating disorders because women are taught to view themselves as bodies only and evaluated on appearance, which interrupts wellbeing. resisting objectification was a theme across all studies and is described as part of a synergistic relationship that works together with self-care, and physical activity to foster both positive embodiment and wellbeing. 4. discussion positive embodiment is a new topic of research with all eligible papers from 2018-present. this http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 cutting-edge investigation offers new depth to conversations on the role of the body in positive psychology, and appreciation for the interconnections between dimensions of embodiment. that, for example, there is nuance to recommending yoga interventions and practitioners should consider how environments, instructional strategies, beliefs and motivations for participation are related to the wellbeing benefits a person might or might not receive. while psychology often intends to be value-neutral and issues around bodies, gender, and culture are often framed as social justice concerns, positive psychology aiming for wellbeing beyond the individual, that encompass positive communities and positive societies is a worthwhile direction consistent with the third wave of positive psychology (lomas et al., 2015). it is a major strength of the research by piran and colleagues (e.g. piran, 2017), that theory has emerged from lived-experiences of people from a variety of backgrounds. the grounding in phenomenological experience provides unique opportunity to explore the relationships between embodiment and wellbeing, and how interventions at the individual, community, and societal levels may be impactful. with increased awareness of the importance of self-care, the connection between mindful self-care as facilitative of positive embodiment (cook-cottone, 2015, 2018) provides insight into why self-care matters, and potentially, why it works. while further research is needed to connect these constructs with one another and with various dimensions of wellbeing, there are indications this path is worth exploring. questions remain at this point, including whether positive embodiment represents a dimension of wellbeing previously overlooked, if it is a factor impacting wellbeing, and what direction of causality between these relationships may be. 4.1 signposts for practitioners adding nuance to embodied approaches in positive psychology body-focused interventions overview of research and applications physical activity research provides evidence for the impact of environments of yoga/exercise on wellbeing outcomes yoga and fitness activities that focus on appearance may undermine benefits attunement with exercise (awe) model may provide explanation and guidance for exercise facilitating positive embodiment (calogero et al., 2019) eating behaviour practitioners and coaches should be mindful of eating pathologies when discussing dietary changes intuitive eating has been shown to have strong connections with positive constructs (linardon et al., 2021) practitioners should consider adopting a weight-neutral approach when working with the body attuned selfcare self-care adds a ‘bottom up’ approach to cognitive and emotional approaches common in positive psychology self-care seems to play a role in both developing and maintaining positive embodiment positive sexuality moving from other-validated sexuality to self-validated sexuality increased self-reported wellbeing and was accessed through embodied practice of yoga resisting objectification developing a subjective experience of the self rather than an object of gaze appears important for wellbeing http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 mindfulness formal and informal approaches to mindfulness may be helpful for positive embodiment, attunement, and wellbeing mindfulness may be related to ‘attunement’ described in the arms models, and to models of authenticity from positive psychology supportive communities supportive community as a protective factor (piran, 2017), thus connecting to like-minded others is worth exploring, group-based interventions may be impactful school-based intervention showed lasting impact for girls, which is promising for promoting positive embodiment, and wellbeing, and potentially reducing pathology group nature of yoga and physical activity interventions may influence efficacy for promoting positive embodiment 4.2 beyond the individual while positive psychology has focused primarily on individual wellbeing, interventions targeting positive embodiment have so far have been in groups. piran describes the protective mechanism of supportive communities (2017) and cook-cottone and guyker (2018) include supportive relationships as a domain of mindful self-care. this focus on group and social interventions is potentially impactful for future interventions. mafrici and piran (2019) have explored how supportive peer connections may be an optimal environment for fostering positive embodiment as peers create their own body-related norms regarding body-talk, body acceptance, challenging ideals, and social power. family environments may also play a critical role in cultivating positive embodiment as much of what children learn about bodies and the world begins in families and may provide an important buffer against sociocultural environments that threatens embodiment (tylka, 2019). the importance of social interventions and the creation of supportive communities may provide guidance to positive psychology practitioners in the design and delivery of interventions aimed at increasing positive embodiment. proponents of positive embodiment emphasize the importance of protective factors across the mental, social, and physical domains, in considering the world health organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (who, 1946), there is potential for positive embodiment, alongside positive psychology, to inform public policy in the promotion of wellbeing (rodgers, franko, & lowy, 2019). 4.3 the life model and third wave positive psychology the dte and arms models, with their operationalisation of multiple spheres of influence on wellbeing, contain many parallels to the layered integrated framework example (life) model proposed for use by positive psychology practitioners (lomas, hefferon, & ivtzan, 2015). this includes both the dte (piran, 2017) and the life model (lomas et al., 2015) drawing on the work of bronfenbrenner’s experimental ecology of human development concept (1977), and the recognition across models, of multiple spheres of influence on individuals’ experiences including society and culture. further, positive embodiment has conceptual underpinnings in common with third-wave positive psychology in the incorporation of critical and feminist psychology perspectives, the acknowledgement of socio-cultural influences, and systems of power, and in the inclusion of qualitative perspectives grounded in lived experience (lomas et al., 2020). this third-wave represents an epistemological shift away from the positivist, individual focus of preceding waves, and meshes well with constructivist, dialectical relationships between person http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 and environment reflected in models of embodiment. 4.4 weight-neutral perspective and best practices incorporating social justice perspectives and scientific inquiry, the health at every size (haes) perspective has been robustly researched and provides strong evidence to move beyond weightcentric models of health (bacon & aphramor, 2011). this perspective informs many of the intervention designs in the located studies and bolsters support to a haes perspective in the promotion of wellbeing. lamarre and daníelsdóttir (2019) make the case for including a nonweight centric model of health and wellness, as well as a celebration of bo dy diversity, as pathways to positive embodiment. this angle, authors claim, is supported by both research and social justice perspectives. bennet et al. (2019) further discuss promoting resistance to weight stigma, particularly at the societal level as weight stigma threatens psychological wellbeing and physical health. authors argue that while research is ongoing, the costs of waiting until more is known outweigh the risks of challenging attitudes of weight bias (bennet et al., 2019). for positive psychology practitioners, appreciating the role of weight stigma and anti-fat bias in undermining wellbeing and disrupting embodiment could motivate the removal of dieting examples in textbooks and discussions. practitioners interested in using embodied approache s to wellbeing could benefit greatly from adopting a weight-neutral perspective in the interest of doing no harm and just as practitioners screen for potential risks with ppis inappropriate for those with anxiety or depression, practitioners should screen for disordered eating before encouraging foodor exercise-related interventions. 4.5 strengths, limitations, and future directions a strength of this review is that it provides a snapshot of the current state of research on an emerging topic area across methodologies and provides a bridge to practice and further research for those interested in exploring positive embodiment through a positive psychology lens. consistent with the remit of narrative reviews, this study has sought to locate evidence that addresses the research questions rather than conduct a prescriptive process more appropriate for a systematic review. of the ten papers located, five are limited to a single gender (girls and women). participants studied varied by ethnicity and location but all research was performed in western contexts (canada, usa, australia, scandinavia, and western europe). ages of participants varied with some utilizing student populations and others being community samples. due to a lack of consistency in measurement tools used, there is limited potential for cross-comparison. while this makes it difficult to compare studies across the board, taken together, the set of studies indicate what positive embodiment currently offers to discourse on wellbeing. the studies approach the concept from different angles and each adds insight. in the extraction of data, care was taken to focus on the outcomes and themes identified by the original authors and not to interpret beyond those findings. the preceding tables and themes summarize the findings and openly present the subject area as limited in scope and without sufficient breadth at this point generalize findings. further studies of validity, reliability, and structure are needed including potential revisions and exploration with wider populations. as a narrative review, there is a qualitative nature that allows for subjectivity and while care was taken in the reporting of the existing research, it is acknowledged that the researcher impacts the shaping of the discussion. future directions include further exploration of tools and models discussed including connections with wellbeing, studies with broader populations (including wider variety in location, culture, gender, and sexualities), further research on how weight stigma and eating behaviour may affect embodiment and wellbeing, further work to integrate these concepts into http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive embodiment and wellbeing munroe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 practice, and replication of current work with new and broader samples. 5. conclusion positive embodiment has both demonstrated and discussed links to wellbeing and thus should be considered important to researchers and practitioners of positive psychology. this construct, associated models and scales, provides many opportunities for further engagement including adding nuance to the understanding of the role of the body in wellbeing and directions for further research. while current literature is limited in scope, consistency of scale use, and somewhat narrow populations, future research may fill gaps in the knowledge. while generalizability is not yet possible, practitioners can explore the interconnections between concepts and incorporate further refinement in work they do. it is the hope that this introduction to positive embodiment sparks conversation, reflection, and exploration of the ideas from those in the wellbeing field. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors martha munroe university of east london when research was conducted; currently unaffiliated marthamunroe@gmail.com authors’ contributions study conceptualization, design, analysis and writing by martha munroe. acknowledgments sincere gratitude to cecilia yardley for moral support and proof-reading. publishing timeline received 7 september 2021 revised version received 11 february 2022 accepted 12 february 2022 published 1 june 2022 references alleva, j. m., tylka, t. l., & van diest, a. m. k. 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randomized controlled trial. international journal of wellbeing, 8(2), 22-67. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i2.745 acacia c. parks happify hiram college acacia@happify.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 article testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention to improve depression, anxiety, and resilience: a randomized controlled trial acacia c. parks · allison l. williams · michele m. tugade · kara e. hokes · ryan d. honomichl · ran d. zilca abstract: psychological interventions targeting wellbeing can reliably increase wellbeing and decrease depressive symptoms. however, only a handful of studies have implemented wellbeing interventions online, and those studies have largely done so in a way that prioritizes experimental control over realism and scalability. we sought to take existing wellbeing interventions with established efficacy and to evaluate their impact when translated into a format that is publicly accessible, scalable, and designed with the goal of engaging users. participants in this fully online trial were first-time registrants of the happify platform, a fully automated web and mobile wellbeing intervention grounded in positive psychology, cognitivebehavioral therapy, and mindfulness-based stress reduction, which has offered wellbeing programs to over 3 million registrants to date. consenting participants were randomly assigned to access the full happify platform or a psychoeducation comparison condition and further categorized by their usage during the study: recommended usage (a minimum of 2-3 activities per week) or low usage (usage less than the recommended level). participants were assessed on depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and a composite measure of resilience at baseline and 8 weeks later. participants who used happify at the recommended level reported fewer depressive and anxiety symptoms and greater resilience after 8 weeks than participants who used happify at a low level or participants who used the psychoeducation condition at any level. the happify group also experienced greater rates of reduction in depression and anxiety symptom severity category, and had a greater net benefit (% users who improved minus % users who deteriorated), compared to the other groups. the results of this study suggest a successful first attempt at implementing and scaling a comprehensive package of lab-tested wellbeing interventions without losing efficacy. keywords: online intervention, wellbeing, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, resilience, randomized controlled trial 1. introduction ample research shows that interventions targeting wellbeing can reliably decrease depressive symptoms (lamers, bolier, westerhof, smit, & bohlmeijer, 2012; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). a smaller amount of literature has also seen those interventions successfully delivered online as individual exercises (mongrain & anselmo-matthews, 2012; seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005; sergeant & mongrain, 2014; shapira & mongrain, 2010) and as packaged interventions (cohn, pietrucha, saslow, hult, & moskowitz, 2014; parks, della porta, pierce, zilca, & http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 lyubomirsky, 2012; schueller & parks, 2012). given the many barriers to real-world implementation for in-person mental health interventions, online interventions are a promising avenue for broad dissemination, due to their low per-person cost and ease of accessibility (muñoz et al., 2016; wang et al., 2005). there have been numerous attempts to translate the science of improving wellbeing into a scalable format, usually in the commercial sector. often, these interventions are science-based, but not science-generating; interventions are not empirically validated using such platforms, but rather, are assumed to work due to their scientific basis. however, we argue, in line with many other thinkers in this field, that it is not enough to be science-based; one must test interventions, in their implemented form, to make sure that they work as expected in a realworld setting (leykin, aguilera, torres, pérez-stable, & muñoz, 2012; mohr, cheung, schueller, brown, & duan, 2013; mohr et al., 2015). in a previous study, using an online platform called happify, we sought to implement the science of increasing wellbeing in a real-world setting and verify that these research-based activities remain effective when delivered naturalistically. we found, in an uncontrolled setting, that the use of the happify platform led to significant improvements in wellbeing among users over 8 weeks (carpenter et al., 2017). this study gave us initial evidence that the research-based activities we adapted from the literature remained effective in an online, interactive format; however, without a random-assignment, controlled design, it is difficult to infer causality. in the present study, we seek to take that research a step further by evaluating happify over an 8-week period using a randomized, controlled design. it is important to control for factors such as natural improvement over time, expectation of improvement, and behavioral activation (simply doing anything); the influences of these factors cannot easily be disentangled from “real” observed improvement in an uncontrolled study. comparison groups are therefore needed to obtain a true measure of an intervention’s effect, and to be sure it had an impact above and beyond natural improvement. in order to test happify’s effectiveness using a rigorous experimental design, we crafted an active comparison condition, the psychoeducation condition, in which participants receive psychoeducational content—much like an internet user might discover searching for information about wellbeing on their own. our psychoeducational condition was designed to provide a more robust and more meaningful comparison group than a simple waitlist control. the psychoeducational group was designed to provide a non-clinical equivalent to a “treatment as usual” condition—similar to many existing online platforms that focus on providing users with content and information without any concrete activities. this, therefore, helps us control for the impact of expectation and behavioral activation. in order to approximate and account for the effects of natural improvement over time, we also examined the moderating impact of platform usage, as measured by the number of activities completed during the 8-week intervention period. we did this by differentiating between participants who followed the recommended usage guidelines by completing a minimum of 2-3 activities per week during the intervention (i.e., a minimum of 16 total activities) and participants who completed fewer activities than this recommended amount (i.e., a maximum of 15 total activities). although the self-selected nature of this categorization is a limitation, it allows us to separate users who received the recommended dosage from those who did not, and may as a result only be experiencing improvement that would have happened naturally over time, without intervention. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 in summary, this study compares change in wellbeing over time among two randomized conditions—happify and psychoeducation—and also considers usage level (as recommended, or low usage) as a moderator. we specifically looked at three aspects of wellbeing: depression, anxiety, and resilience. previous research finds that the types of activities that are included on happify robustly improve depressive symptoms (bolier et al., 2013; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009), and even that happify itself can reduce depressive symptoms (carpenter et al., 2017). we seek to replicate our previous finding of happify’s effect on depression with an rct design, and explore those effects in more depth. although depression and anxiety are correlated, and share some common pathways for treatment, only one study that we are aware of has demonstrated positive effects of a wellbeing intervention on anxiety in adults (schotanus-dijkstra et al., 2017). this initial result is enough for us to explore happify’s results on anxiety as well. lastly, because happify is designed to not only reduce negative symptomatology, but also to build resistance to future symptoms, we explored resilience. a few studies are emerging that examine the role of mobile technology to build resilience (e.g., bush, bosmajian, fairall, mccann, & ciulla, 2011; hoorelbeke & koster, 2017; kizakevich et al., 2012; orr, king, hawke, & dalgleish, 2013; rose et al., 2013; roy et al., 2017; roy, highland, & costanzo, 2015). to our knowledge, however, few internet-based wellbeing intervention studies to date have directly measured resilience, so we considered this outcome more exploratory. in addition to examining group differences in outcome change over 8 weeks, we also explored “practical significance” for depression and anxiety, where scale cut-off scores for severity are available. specifically, we examined rates of participants experiencing improvement, degeneration, or no change in symptom severity levels between recommended usage happify participants and participants in all other conditions combined. we hypothesized that participants in the happify condition would improve, compared to participants in the psychoeducation condition, who received some components of happify (polls and exposure to information about wellbeing) but not others (e.g., interactive activities for improving wellbeing), and that this would be especially true for those who used the platform at the recommended level. we thus expected participants using the happify condition at the recommended level to show the greatest improvements in symptoms, as well as severity levels, compared to those using happify at a low rate or those using a psychoeducation comparison platform. 2. method 2.1 participant recruitment, onboarding procedures, and screening recruitment. this research was conducted under the supervision of the hiram college institutional review board. participants were recruited in february and march 2017 from among all new users of the consumer version of happify.com (see appendix a). a “freemium” version of happify is available to the general public for free, with additional premium content available to subscribers. participants in the current study who were randomized to the happify condition received the full premium version. all study experiences took place via smartphone or web, with no human contact outside of assistance with technical problems via email. the only inclusion criterion for intake, besides the level of computer literacy needed in order to find happify in the first place, was that the user be a new registrant, with no experience on the platform to date. all new users were offered the opportunity to participate in the study at the end of the process of registering for the free consumer site. participants were informed that the study involved using the happify wellbeing program two to three times per week, and that their experiences might not necessarily be testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 reflective of the full happify product. a total of 7,373 users completed the registration process and consented to participate in this study (see figure 1 below for a graphical representation of participant recruitment and retention). as data security is a concern for any online data collection, we implemented various safety measures to protect user privacy. they are summarized in the consent form (see appendix b) as follows: when you register for the study, you will be asked to give us your email address. in our secure database, your email address will be tied to your data by a randomly generated numerical code, which will allow us to connect each new questionnaire you take to the other questionnaires you have taken. depending on whether or not your email address contains identifying information, this may or may not constitute a risk to privacy were someone to compromise the security of our database. however, because email addresses will be stored separately from questionnaire data, the researchers will never be able to connect your data with any identifying information. however, if you wish to be completely certain that your data will remain private under any circumstances, you may create an anonymous email address for the purposes of this study and have its messages forwarded to your main account. allocation. participants who consented to participate in the study were prompted to complete the baseline assessment via email, as well as push notifications on their mobile device, if they had installed the happify app. the baseline assessment included measures of depressive symptoms (measured using the patient health questionnaire, phq-9; kroenke et al., 2001), anxiety symptoms (measured using the generalized anxiety disorder scale, gad-7; spitzer et al., 2006), stress (measured using the perceived stress scale, pss; cohen et al., 1983), positive emotionality (measured using the emotion subscale of the happify scale, hs-e; carpenter et al., 2017), and optimism (measured using the life orientation test-revised, lotr; scheier & carver, 1985), and took about 5 minutes to complete; users were compensated with a $5 gift card for completing the assessment. participants who completed the consent process and baseline assessment (n = 4,485) were then randomized to condition (happify n = 2,275, psychoeducation n = 2,210; 2,888 users did not complete the baseline assessment). post-test assessment. the 8-week post-test assessments were administered in april and may 2017; 1,053 participants completed the post-test (happify n = 474, psychoeducation n = 579). due to a technical error, however, two participants from the happify condition were offered the post-test assessment prematurely, less than 2 weeks after completing the baseline assessment; these participants were excluded from analysis. usage categorization and analysis. because we were interested in testing the impact of research-tested interventions in a new format—not so much on establishing their efficacy, which is already established in previous work, but on seeing if their efficacy persists with a new method of administration—we also examined the moderating impact of platform usage on each of our study outcomes. to do this, we classified participants who engaged with the platform at the recommended minimum rate of two to three activities per week (i.e., a minimum of 16 activities over the course of the 8-week intervention) as recommended usage participants, and those who engaged with the platform at less than the recommended rate (i.e., a maximum of 15 activities over the course of the 8-week intervention) as low usage participants. thus, of the 1,051 participants included in analysis, 222 were in the happify condition and used it at the recommended rate, 250 used happify at a low rate, 501 used the psychoeducation condition at the recommended rate, and 78 used the psychoeducation condition at a low rate. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 figure 1. study flow and user retention table 1. differences in baseline depression, anxiety, and resilience between participants completing at least 2 assessments and those who completed only 1 assessment 1 assessment (n = 3434) mean (sd) 2+ assessments (n = 1051) mean (sd) t p depression (phq) 12.9 (6.6) 11.9 (6.6) 4.42 .001 anxiety (gad) 11.2 (5.8) 10.3 (5.8) 4.45 .001 resilience 41.0 (16.8) 42.4 (16.7) 2.27 .022 e n ro ll m e n t consented to participate in study (n = 7373) excluded did not complete baseline (n = 2888) randomized to condition (n = 4485) a ll o ca ti o n allocated to happify (n = 2275) allocated to psychoeducation (n = 2210) completed 8-week post-test (n = 472) excluded did not complete 8-week post-test (n = 1801) technical error (n = 2) completed 8-week post-test (n = 579) excluded did not complete 8-week post-test (n = 1631) technical error (n = 0) f o ll o w -u p recommended usage (n = 222) low usage (n = 250) recommended usage (n = 501) low usage (n = 78) u sa g e c a te g o ri z a ti o n a n d a n a ly si s testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 table 2. demographic information for participants completing at least 2 assessments and those who completed only 1 assessment 1 assessment n = 3434 2+ assessments n = 1051 x² cramer’s v df p gender 7.34 .04 2 .025 male 545 (15.9%) 131 (19.4%) female 2848 (83.1%) 908 (86.4%) complicated 33 (1.0%) 10 (1.0%) age 45.22 .10 5 < .001 18-24 1366 (39.9%) 300 (28.6%) 25-34 1078 (31.5%) 384 (36.6%) 35-44 526 (15.4%) 192 (18.3%) 45-54 288 (8.4%) 113 (10.8%) 55-64 121 (3.5%) 47 (4.5%) 65+ 48 (1.4%) 14 (1.3%) employment 11.04 .05 5 .051 employed 1715 (50.0%) 564 (53.7%) homemaker 166 (4.8%) 56 (5.3%) retired 67 (2.0%) 17 (1.6%) self-employed 255 (7.4%) 82 (7.8%) student 918 (26.8%) 230 (21.9%) unemployed 306 (8.9%) 101 (9.6%) in order to assess the representativeness of people who completed both preand post questionnaires (those who were included in our study) as compared to the users who only completed baseline (who were excluded for lack of data), we compared these two groups on baseline characteristics and demographic variables. there are some statistically significant differences, and a summary of these differences are presented in tables 1 and 2. participants who completed both assessments were significantly less depressed, less anxious, and more resilient than non-completers. on demographic variables (age, employment status, gender), testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 there was a significant difference on age and gender. dropouts were more likely to be in the 1824 age category and less likely to be male. table 3. demographic information for participants included in analyses, by condition and usage happify psychoeducation lu (n = 250) ru (n = 222) lu (n = 78) ru (n = 501) gender male 39 (15.6%) 15 (6.8%) 13 (16.7%) 64 (12.8%) female 208 (83.2%) 205 (92.8%) 63 (80.8%) 432 (86.4%) complicated 3 (1.2%) 1 (0.5%) 2 (2.6%) 4 (0.8%) age 18-24 80 (32.0%) 59 (26.6%) 22 (28.2%) 139 (27.8%) 25-34 79 (31.6%) 88 (39.6%) 32 (41.0%) 185 (37.0%) 35-44 44 (17.6%) 42 (18.9%) 11 (14.1%) 95 (19.0%) 45-54 30 (12.0%) 23 (10.4%) 7 (9.0%) 53 (10.6%) 55-64 11 (4.4%) 8 (3.6%) 4 (5.1%) 24 (4.8%) 65+ 6 (2.4%) 2 (0.9%) 2 (2.6%) 4 (0.8%) employment employed 132 (52.8%) 125 (56.3%) 37 (47.4%) 270 (54.0%) homemaker 7 (2.8%) 10 (4.5%) 5 (6.4%) 34 (6.8%) retired 7 (2.8%) 3 (1.4%) 1 (1.3%) 6 (1.2%) self-employed 15 (6.0%) 17 (7.7%) 7 (9.0%) 43 (8.6%) student 60 (24.0%) 50 (22.5%) 23 (29.5%) 97 (19.4%) unemployed 29 (11.6%) 17 (7.7%) 5 (6.4%) 50 (10.0%) lu = low usage, ru = recommended usage the final sample used for analysis contained 1,051 users who completed the post-test assessment without experiencing a technical error. overall, the sample was relatively testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 distressed, and experiencing symptoms on the border between subclinical and clinical. at baseline, average phq score was 11.9 (sd = 6.6), which is in the middle of the moderate depression range (10-14) (kroenke et al., 2001). average gad score was 10.3 (sd = 5.8), which indicates moderate (10-14) anxiety (löwe et al., 2008). perceived stress scores were in the moderate range (m = 16.9, sd = 7.1), which is similar to the average stress levels in the general public (cohen & janicki-deverts, 2012). optimism scores averaged 11.7 (sd = 5.3), which is close to the midpoint of the scale, and positive emotion scores averaged 36.2 (sd = 18.4), which, according to internal validation data, is in the bottom 15th percentile of scores for consumers on happify. in short, the sample was relatively distressed, and experiencing symptoms in the subclinical range. a breakdown of demographic distributions by condition and usage can be seen in table 3. chi square analyses revealed significant differences in gender by condition (x2(6) = 13.42, p < .037), which appears to be driven by the smaller percentage of male participants in the recommended usage happify condition, relative to the three other conditions. there were no differences in age range (p = .77) or employment status (p = .28) as a function of condition. in addition, baseline levels for all continuous variables included in this study, as well as p-values for the condition by usage interaction, are presented in table 4. we found no baseline differences as a function of condition and/or usage on any of these variables, all main effect and interaction ps > .15. table 4. means and standard deviations of baseline continuous variables by condition and usage happify psychoeducation measure lu (n = 250) ru (n = 222) lu (n = 78) ru (n = 501) depression (phq) 12.3 (6.9) 12.3 (6.3) 12.9 (7.1) 11.4 (6.4) anxiety (gad) 10.3 (6.2) 10.8 (5.6) 10.6 (6.1) 10.1 (5.6) resilience 43.5 (17.8) 41.6 (16.0) 42.4 (17.2) 42.2 (16.5) optimism (lot-r) 12.0 (5.2) 11.7 (5.4) 11.6 (5.5) 11.6 (5.4) stress (pss) 17.2 (7.6) 16.5 (6.9) 17.1 (7.2) 16.9 (7.0) positive emotion (hs-e) 37.6 (20.0) 34.7 (17.6) 35.7 (17.7) 36.2 (18.0) lu = low usage, ru = recommended usage, phq = patient health questionnaire, gad = generalized anxiety disorder scale, lot-r = life orientation test-revised, pss = perceived stress scale, hs-e = emotion subscale of the happify scale 2.2 primary outcomes: symptoms of depression and anxiety two primary outcomes were assessed in this study. first, depressive symptoms were measured using the patient health questionnaire, nine-item scale (phq-9; kroenke et al., 2001). the phq-9 is a nine-item checklist that asks participants to rate the extent to which they have experienced a list of depressive symptoms (e.g., “feeling down, depressed, or hopeless” or “little interest or pleasure in doing things”) on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day). testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 second, anxiety symptoms were measured using the generalized anxiety disorder seven-item scale (gad-7; spitzer, kroenke, williams, & löwe; 2006). the gad-7 is a seven-item checklist with the same rating scale as the phq-9, with symptoms such as “feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge” and “not being able to stop or control worrying.” consistent with previous research, internal consistency was acceptable for both phq-9 (α = .88) and gad-7 (α = .90) (löwe et al., 2008; spitzer et al., 2006). these measures are both widely used in clinical settings to track symptom severity, and previous research has validated both in online formats (ahmedani, belville-robertson, hirsch, & jurayj, 2016; newby et al., 2017; titov et al., 2013, 2015). they are known for their sensitivity to change from treatment, making them ideal for this study. baseline levels of depression and anxiety did not differ significantly by condition or usage (see table 4). 2.3 secondary outcome: resilience the science of resilience is supported by a host of studies showing that people can maintain mental health and wellbeing despite exposure to psychological or physical adversity. this pattern, conceptualized as “resilience,” has been observed across different populations and various types of adversities (kalisch et al., 2017). several lines of research indicate that resilience is a multi-faceted construct that is characterized by three important features: an optimistic outlook, successful adaptation to stress, and the tendency to experience positive emotions in the midst of adversity. optimism. one characteristic of resilience is optimism, or the tendency to have a positive expectancy for future outcomes (carver & scheier, 2014; carver, scheier, & segerstrom, 2010; klohnen, 1996; rutter, 2006; scheier & carver, 1985; seligman, 1991; utsey, hook, fischer, & belvet, 2008). optimism has a major role to play in adaptation to stressful conditions. when confronting a challenge, optimists show more resilience, even if progress is difficult and slow (snyder & lopez, 2002). optimism facilitates resilience across the lifespan. recent prospective studies show that one facet of optimism (namely, a positive expectancy for the future) is particularly useful for predicting resilience from depression in adults (kleiman et al., 2017). indeed, optimism has been identified as the most influential adolescent cognitive factor to temper the effects of life stressors (tusaie-mumford, 2002). perceived stress. resilience is also characterized by lower perceived distress and higher wellbeing (block & kremen, 1996; connor & davidson, 2003; ford, eklund, & gordon, 2000; willis & burnett, 2016). much of the research in this domain examines self-reports of personality characteristics and outcomes from especially challenging life circumstances. for example, among recently bereaved widows, higher levels of resilience and lower levels of perceived stress predicted greater life satisfaction one month following the death of a spouse (rossi, bisconti, & bergeman, 2007). one research study focused on firefighters, who are individuals considered at high risk for developing ptsd symptoms following traumatic stress. research shows that lower levels of perceived stress characterize a resilience factor, protecting firefighters from the detrimental impact of highly traumatic stress (lee, ahn, jeong, chae, & choi, 2014). an intervention study examined the outcomes of a resilience-training program (including mindfulness meditation, nutrition, and exercise sessions) in an outpatient clinic. participants with low levels of baseline perceived stress who underwent resilience training evidenced lower levels of depression and anxiety, compared to those who did not undergo resilience training (griffin, johnson, kitzmann, kolste, & dusek, 2015). another randomized clinical trial study examined the effects of a resilience-training program (focused on attention and interpretation) testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 among academic physicians. physicians are an important population to examine because they are especially at high risk for distress because of multiple demands and expectations placed upon them. findings from this study show that after 8 weeks, participants who participated in the resilience-training program evidenced lower levels of perceived stress (among other variables), compared to wait-list control participants (sood, prasad, schroeder, & varkey, 2011). taken together, these findings indicate that higher resilience can predict lower levels of perceived stress. positive emotionality. maintaining and enhancing positive emotions yields important advantages when coping with stress. several studies have shown that positive emotions can fuel resilience in the face of stress. theoretically, resilience is defined as the ability to “bounce back” from stressful experiences quickly and effectively. the autonomic correlates of psychological resilience were examined by investigating patterns of cardiovascular recovery from negative emotional arousal (tugade & fredrickson, 2004). high-resilient (vs. lowresilient) individuals are more likely to report experiencing positive emotions alongside feelings of lab-induced anxiety and evidence faster cardiovascular recovery from the arousal generated by an anxiety-inducing task. mediational analyses revealed that the experience of positive emotions contributed, in part, to high-resilient participants’ abilities to achieve efficient emotion regulation, demonstrated by accelerated cardiovascular recovery from negative emotional arousal. these findings indicate that high-resilient individuals are characterized by using positive emotions to cope with stress (tugade & fredrickson, 2004; tugade, fredrickson, & barrett, 2004). similar patterns have been shown using daily diary techniques. researchers have found that daily experiences of positive emotion are important for the regulation of negative emotions, a marker of resilience (zautra, affleck, tennen, reich, & davis, 2005; zautra, johnson, & davis, 2005). daily experiences of positive emotion moderate stress reactivity and mediated stress recovery (tugade et al., 2004; tugade & fredrickson, 2004). researchers argue that positive emotions are useful in the resilience process for two reasons: 1) positive emotions may interrupt the ongoing stress response, and 2) positive emotions may accelerate one’s ability to adapt to subsequent stressors (ong, bergeman, bisconti, & wallace, 2006). over time, then, the experience of positive emotions functions to assist high-resilient individuals in their ability to recover effectively from daily stress. these findings are in line with other research showing that daily positive emotions accelerate recovery from stress, a pattern of response reflective of resilience (moskowitz, folkman, & acree, 2003). the resilience index. while there are existing resilience scales, none are considered a “gold standard” and each has its own substantial tradeoffs. in particular, many resilience scales ask about a person’s self-perceptions of their own resilience in stress, which much research has found is unreliable and not strongly related to actual resilient behavior (windle, bennett, & noyes, 2011). an alternative approach would be to assess traits that are known to predict resilient behavior, but that can be reliably self-reported on by participants. in line with this view of resilience assessment, rather than using an existing scale, we developed an index of resilience using the above three important facets of resilience: (low) perceived stress, positive emotionality, and optimism (see table 5 below). perceived stress was measured using the perceived stress scale (pss; cohen, kamarck, & mermelstein, 1983), a 10-item questionnaire that asks users to rate on a scale of 0 (never) to 4 (very often) how frequently they experience various symptoms of feeling stress (cohen et al., 1983; ezzati et al., 2014). positive emotionality testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 was measured using the emotion subscale of the happify scale (hs-e; carpenter et al., 2017), a four-item scale asking participants to rate the extent to which, over the past week, they have experienced positive and negative emotions that are activated or deactivated. optimism was measured using the life orientation test-revised (lot-r; scheier & carver, 1985), a 10-item scale with four filler items; for brevity, we used only non-filler items (vautier, raufaste, & cariou, 2003). participants rate the extent to which they identify with optimistic or pessimistic beliefs on a scale of 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). all three of these scales have been validated online in previous published research (hintz, frazier, & meredith, 2015; mchale, clark, & tramonte, 2015; rao & kemper, 2017; sergeant & mongrain, 2014). table 5. sample items from the three scales comprising the resilience index: life orientation test-revised (lot-r), perceived stress scale (pss), and happify scale emotionality (hs-e) life orientation test overall, i expect more good things to happen to me than bad. *if something can go wrong for me, it will. perceived stress scale *in the past month, how often have you felt stressed or nervous? in the past month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things? hs emotionality scale in the past month, how often have you felt joyous, exuberant, inspired, and/or awestruck? *in the past month, how often have you felt sad, guilty, and/or lonely? note. that pss is typically reverse scored in the opposite direction (higher means more stressed), but for a resilience index, we scaled all measures in the same direction so that a larger number corresponded to greater resilience. reverse-scored items are marked with an asterisk (*). to compute the resilience composite index, we combined items from each of the three scales, weighted such that each component of resilience contributed equally to the overall composite, regardless of the number of items in a particular scale. to do this, each of the raw survey items from the pss, hs-e and lot-r were rescaled from their original scale to run from 0 to 1. items within each scale were then averaged together, as were each of the three scale averages. for ease of interpretation, this final average was multiplied by 100 to quantify the resilience index, which ranged from 0 to 100. in addition to the theoretical rationale, steps were taken to justify the development of this composite resilience measure empirically. an initial correlational analysis demonstrated that each of these scales was strongly intercorrelated (rs ranged from = .54 to .67), indicating that we had the appropriate correlations to carry out a factor analysis. a principal components analysis with varimax rotation of the 20 statements supported a onefactor solution, with the first factor explaining 41.5% of the variance (eigenvalue = 8.31). taken together, these results provide rationale for the composite resilience index. at baseline, testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 resilience and the various resilience components did not differ significantly by condition or usage (see table 4). 2.4 experimental conditions happify (happify.com) can be accessed via the web, or via an app (android and ios), and all study activities took place through the happify platform. there were two intervention conditions between which participants could be randomly assigned: the full happify platform (n = 472), and a psychoeducational comparison intervention (n = 579). as per the consent form (see appendix b), participants were aware that there were different programs being tested, and that they would be randomly assigned to one program, which they would be unable to change. however, participants were unaware of whether the program to which they were assigned was “experimental” or “comparison.” since the psychoeducation condition was designed to look like any other happify program, it is unlikely that users unfamiliar with happify would be able to determine whether they were in the comparison condition. in the first 30 days, all participants received emails twice per week reminding them to visit the site and complete their assigned program. they did not receive emails after that, except to prompt for follow-up assessment. happify condition. the happify condition received full access to an online platform that offers techniques grounded in positive psychological interventions (ppi; parks & schueller, 2014), cognitive-behavioral therapy (cbt; beck, 2011), and/or mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr; kabat-zinn, 2013; carpenter et al., 2017). each of the core activities on the platform was selected from one or more of these three theoretical traditions, but only if there existed randomized, controlled research demonstrating its efficacy for improving wellbeing. those core activities are organized into five categories using the acronym stage: savor (savoring and mindfulness), thank (gratitude), aspire (goal-setting, reframing/optimism, and meaning), give (prosocial behavior, kindness, and forgiveness), and empathize (perspectivetaking and self-compassion). some of these activities would be considered “traditional” exemplars of the literature they came from. gratitude journals, acts of kindness, and using strengths are examples of activities on happify that are canonical ppis. users can do body scan meditations, walking meditations, and sitting meditations very much in line with traditional mbsr. they can also practice thought stopping and thought disputing, as well as goal setting, all of which are staples of traditional cbt. however, because these three approaches overlap in many ways, we do not clearly label each activity as “belonging” to only one area; for example, savoring appears in both positive psychology and mindfulness-based approaches, and many positive psychologybased activities could also be housed under the “behavioral activation” side of cbt. happify users have free choice from a growing catalog of over sixty 4-week programs tailored to different goals, such as conquering negative thoughts, feeling more connected to one’s family, or finding meaning in one’s job. together, these programs contain over 2,500 different activity variants. the design of each program is overseen by an author with expertise in the topic. the author selects a subset of the core activities that are appropriate to the goals of the program, and works with a writer to customize the selected activities for the specific nature of the program. for example, a track on living with chronic pain was overseen by afton hassett, a researcher at the university of michigan who specializes in psychosocial interventions for pain. she sampled interventions from positive psychology (gratitude, kind acts, strengths-building, finding meaning), cognitive-behavioral therapy (goal-setting, thought stopping), and mindfulness-based stress reduction (savoring the present moment, sitting testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 meditation). each of these appears in the track in a customized form that mentions pain and helps the user see the activity’s relevance to chronic pain. psychoeducational comparison. in order to account for regression to the mean and expectation effects, it is important to evaluate active interventions against one or more comparison groups (mohr et al., 2009). about half of online wellbeing intervention studies use waitlist control conditions, where users do not receive any aspects of the intervention being tested (bolier et al., 2013a; bolier et al., 2013b; schueller & parks, 2012). our psychoeducational condition was designed to provide a more robust and more meaningful comparison group than a simple waitlist control. the psychoeducational comparison intervention emulates many existing websites that provide information about wellbeing, where a person might end up if they are searching online. psychoeducational participants logged in regularly to an identical looking happify website or app, included an identical onboarding process, and were offered content that grew and changed over time. however, comparison group users did not experience some of the engagement elements from the main platform—they had no access to social forums, could not post their activity results publicly for others to see and comment on, and could not choose freely between different programs. like a waitlist group, users do not receive activities to try, but unlike a waitlist group, they do engage with content about wellbeing, and they also have the experience of using the happify platform. users in the psychoeducational comparison group completed a series of polls on the topic of wellbeing (haeck, parks, & schueller, 2016). in these polls, they were asked survey questions on wellbeing topics, and then were given some social comparison data about where they stand in their opinions compared with other users, as well as information about why the wellbeing topic is important, including references to relevant scientific studies. for example, after responding to a poll question that asked participants to indicate how often they have a deep or meaningful conversation with someone, participants were shown psychoeducational information about the benefits of conversation, including that people who spend less time alone and more time talking to others tend to be happier (diener & seligman, 2002), and that the happiest people have much less small talk but many more meaningful conversations than the least happy people (mehl, vazire, holleran, & clark, 2010). 2.5 other conditions in the larger ongoing study from which this paper draws, happify participants are randomized between three groups who receive different variations of the happify platform. the purpose of this subdivision is to test theoretical questions outside the scope of this paper, which focuses on main study outcomes. for the purposes of the current paper, therefore, only one happify-using condition is presented—one in which users have access to the full consumer platform. 2.6 analytic strategy we used a 2 (condition: happify, psychoeducation) x 2 (usage: recommended, low) factorial design, controlling for baseline levels of the dependent variable, to examine post-test differences in depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and resilience. because our analyses included a moderator, our plan was to frame results in terms of the highest order significant effect; in other words, results would be reported in terms of the 2x2 split if the interaction was significant, and if it was not significant, results would be reported in terms of main effects (aiken & west, 1991). testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 due to the large amount of missing data (77.7%), we chose to focus the main analysis only on users for whom we had complete data. results did not differ, however, when analyses were repeated using multiple imputation by chained equations (mice) to impute missing data on all three outcomes using spss (biering, hjollund, & frydenberg, 2015; dziura, post, zhao, fu, & peduzzi, 2013; white, kalaitzaki, & thompson, 2011), we generated five imputations with the following predictors: baseline scores on all three outcomes, gender, age, employment status, and condition. in addition to overall analyses of group differences, we evaluated “practical significance” in two ways. first, we compared rates of improvement in depression and anxiety by one or more severity categories between participants in the recommended usage happify condition and participants in all other conditions combined. second, to look at the overall improvement to a population that each intervention offered, we computed a “net improvement” value for each condition; by subtracting the percentage of users who deteriorated from the percentage of users who improved, we can look at the overall improvement to a population that each intervention offered. 3. results 3.1 general summary overall, users in the happify condition who used the platform at the recommended rate reported fewer depressive and anxiety symptoms, and greater resilience than happify participants who used the platform at a low rate or participants in the psychoeducation condition, regardless of usage. baseline and post-test raw means and standard deviations, as well as effect sizes for the baseline to post-test differences, are presented in table 6 below. posttest marginal means, standard errors, and 95% confidence intervals, based on the ancova models for each outcome, are presented in table 7 below. contrast mean difference estimates, standard errors, significance levels, and 95% confidence intervals are shown in table 8 below. 3.2 depressive symptoms on phq, the overall ancova revealed a significant interaction between condition and usage, f(1,1046) = 6.19, p < .013, ηp2 = .02, a small effect (cohen, 1988; miles & shevlin, 2001). simple main effects analyses revealed a significant effect of usage in the happify condition, such that recommended usage participants had lower depression at post-test (f(1,1046) = 15.23, p < .001), but no such effect in the psychoeducation condition (f(1,1046) = 0.03, p = .87). moreover, pairwise contrasts on post-test phq scores indicated that depressive symptoms for participants in the recommended usage happify condition were significantly lower than in the low usage happify condition (t(1047) = 3.90, p < .001) or the recommended usage psychoeducation condition (t(1047) = 3.41, p < .001). depressive symptoms in the recommended usage happify condition were marginally lower than in the low usage psychoeducation condition (t(1047) = 1.93, p = .053). all other pairwise contrasts were non-significant, ps > .27. 3.3 anxiety symptoms on the gad, the overall ancova indicated a significant interaction between condition and usage, f(1,1046) = 4.29, p < .039, ηp2 = .004. simple main effects analyses indicated that there was a significant effect of usage in the happify condition (f(1,1046) = 16.74, p < .001), but not in the psychoeducation condition (f(1,1046) = 0.25, p = .62). follow-up pairwise contrasts on post-test gad scores indicated that anxiety symptoms for participants in the recommended usage testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 happify condition were significantly lower than in the low usage happify condition (t(1047) = 4.09, p < .001), the low usage psychoeducation condition (t(1047) = 2.10, p < .036), and the recommended usage psychoeducation condition (t(1047) = 2.67, p < .008). additional contrasts indicated that anxiety symptoms in the recommended usage psychoeducation condition were significantly lower than in the low usage happify condition, but that pairwise contrasts comparing anxiety symptoms in the low usage waitlist condition to the low usage happify condition (t(1047) = 0.78, p < .44) and the recommended usage psychoeducation condition (t(1047) = 0.50, p < .62) were both non-significant. table 6. baseline and post-test means, standard deviations, percent change from baseline, and effect sizes by condition and usage for depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and resilience baseline post-test % change from base cohen’s d outcome cond usage mean sd mean sd depression h lu 12.3 6.9 10.9 6.7 8.6% 0.20 ru 12.3 6.3 9.2 6.1 25.2% 0.50 pe lu 12.9 7.1 10.8 6.9 13.6% 0.30 ru 11.4 6.4 9.9 6.3 15.0% 0.23 anxiety h lu 10.3 6.2 9.4 6.0 11.2% 0.15 ru 10.8 5.6 8.1 5.3 24.9% 0.50 pe lu 10.6 6.1 9.2 6.2 16.1% 0.24 ru 10.1 5.6 8.6 5.6 13.0% 0.27 resilience h lu 43.5 17.8 47.1 18.4 8.4% 0.20 ru 41.6 16.0 50.2 16.3 20.8% 0.54 pe lu 42.4 17.2 46.7 17.7 10.2% 0.25 ru 42.2 16.5 47.5 16.9 12.7% 0.32 note: h = happify, pe = psychoeduction, lu = low usage, ru = recommended usage. cohen’s d represents the amount of change from baseline to post-test for each of the condition and usage groups. 3.4 resilience on the resilience composite, the overall ancova indicated a significant interaction between condition and usage, f(1,1046) = 3.85, p = .05, ηp2 = .0041. simple main effects analyses revealed a 1 the resilience composite reported here includes the emotion subscale from the happify scale, which, along with the life satisfaction subscale of the happify scale, was used to measure wellbeing in the carpenter et al. (2017) article that preceded the current study. although the full happify scale was not an outcome of interest in the current study, we find a pattern of results that mirrors those reported above when examining the interactive effects of condition testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 significant effect of usage in the happify condition, such that recommended usage participants had lower depression at post-test (f(1,1046) = 17.32, p < .001), but no such effect in the psychoeducation condition (f(1,1046) = 0.48, p = .49). follow-up pairwise contrasts on post-test gad scores indicated that anxiety symptoms for participants in the recommended usage happify condition were significantly lower than in the low usage happify condition (t(1047) = 4.16, p < .001), the low usage psychoeducation condition (t(1047) = 2.67, p < .008), and the recommended usage psychoeducation condition (t(1047) = 3.30, p < .001). all other pairwise contrasts were non-significant, ps > .13. table 7. post-test marginal means by condition and usage and usage contrasts for depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and resilience usage outcome condition lu ru lu v. ru contrast depression happify 10.7 (.3) 9.0 (.3) f(1,1046) = 15.23, p < .001 psychoeducation 10.2 (.5) 10.3 (.2) f(1,1046) = 0.03, p = .87 anxiety happify 9.4 (.3) 7.8 (.3) f(1,1046) = 16.74, p < .001 psychoeducation 9.0 (.5) 8.7 (.5) f(1,1046) = 0.25, p = .62 resilience happify 46.3 (.8) 50.8 (.8) f(1,1046) = 17.32, p < .001 psychoeducation 46.7 (1.3) 47.7 (.5) f(1,1046) = 0.48, p = .49 note: lu = low usage, ru = recommended usage. standard errors are included in parentheses. marginal means are based on ancova models that include condition and usage as factors and baseline scores (on the phq, gad, and resilience index) as covariates. the phq is scored such that higher scores indicate more depressive symptoms. the gad is scored such that higher scores indicate more anxiety symptoms. the resilience index is scored such that higher scores indicate greater resilience. changes in depressive and anxiety symptoms from baseline to the 8-week post-test for users in the happify and psychoeducation conditions are displayed graphically by usage level in figure 2 below. participants who used happify at the recommended level demonstrated significantly larger reductions in depressive symptoms (2.7 points) compared to low usage happify participants (0.9 points, p < .001) and recommended usage psychoeducation participants (1.5 points; p < .001). depressive symptom reduction did not differ significantly between low usage psychoeducation participants and recommended usage happify participants (p = .14) or between low usage happify participants and either low usage psychoeducation participants (p = .31) or recommended usage psychoeducation participants (p = .80). similarly, happify users demonstrated significantly larger reductions in anxiety symptoms (3.1 points) compared to low and usage on the happify life satisfaction subscale as well as the full happify scale. in both cases, there is a significant interaction between condition and usage (life satisfaction: f(1,1046) = 4.51, p < .033; happify scale: f(1,1046) = 5.34, p < .021), such that participants showed the greatest increases in life satisfaction (and wellbeing, measured by the full happify scale) when using happify at the recommended level, compared to the three other groups. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 usage happify participants (1.4 points, p < .001), low usage psychoeducation participants (2.1, p < .05) and recommended usage psychoeducation participants (1.5 points; p < .002). anxiety symptom reduction did not differ significantly between low usage happify participants and low usage psychoeducation participants (p = .37) or recommended usage psychoeducation participants (p = .09), or between the two psychoeducation conditions (p = .91). table 8. contrast estimates for recommended usage happify versus other conditions outcome contrast mean difference se t p 95% ci depression h-ru vs. h-lu -1.7 .4 3.90 < .001 -2.5, -.8 h-ru vs. pe-lu -1.2 .6 1.93 .053 -2.4, .0 h-ru vs. pe-ru -1.3 .4 3.41 < .001 -2.0, -.6 anxiety h-ru vs. h-lu -1.6 .4 4.09 < .001 -2.4, -.9 h-ru vs. pe-lu -1.2 .6 2.10 .036 -2.3, .1 h-ru vs. pe-ru -.9 .4 2.67 .008 -1.6, -.3 resilience h-ru vs. h-lu 4.5 1.1 4.16 < .001 2.4, 6.7 h-ru vs. pe-lu 4.1 1.6 2.67 .008 1.1, 7.2 h-ru vs. pe-ru 3.1 1.0 3.30 < .001 1.3, 5.0 note: h-ru = happify, recommended usage, h-lu = happify, low usage; pe-lu = psychoeducation, low usage; pe-ru = psychoeducation, recommended usage. phq (gad) is scored such that higher values indicate more severe depressive (anxiety) symptoms; a negative mean difference indicates that the recommended usage happify condition had a greater reduction in depressive (anxiety) symptoms. resilience is scored such that higher values indicate more resilience; a positive mean difference indicates that the recommended usage happify condition had a greater increase in resilience. changes in resilience from baseline to the 8-week post-test for participants, by condition and usage, are shown in figure 3 below. recommended usage happify participants demonstrated significantly larger improvements in resilience (8.7 points) compared to low usage happify participants (3.7 points; p < .001), low usage psychoeducation participants (4.3 points; p < .009), or recommended usage psychoeducation participants (5.4 points; p < .001). all other conditions did not differ from each other in terms of change from baseline to post-test. 3.5 practical significance the percentages of users in each group who improved, did not change, or deteriorated by at least one clinical symptom category (e.g., changing from moderate to mild) on the phq scale and the gad scale are shown separately for recommended usage happify participants and participants in all other conditions combined in figure 4 below. in terms of depressive symptoms, a larger proportion of recommended usage happify users showed improvement (49.6%) than did participants in all other conditions (37.5%), and a smaller testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 proportion of recommended usage happify participants showed deterioration (14.4%) compared to participants in all other conditions (18.3%). the proportions of improvement, no change, and deterioration differed significantly between recommended usage happify participants and participants in all other conditions, x2(2) = 10.59, p < .005. in terms of anxiety symptoms, a larger proportion of recommended usage happify users showed improvement (46.9%) than did participants in all other conditions (34.9%), and a smaller proportion of recommended usage happify participants showed deterioration (10.4%) compared to participants in all other conditions (18.5%). the proportions of improvement, no change, and deterioration differed significantly between recommended usage happify participants and participants in all other conditions, x2(2) = 14.16, p < .001. figure 2. changes in depressive and anxiety symptoms from baseline to 8 weeks by condition and usage note: lu = low usage, ru = recommended usage. the y-axis in this figure represents raw point change from baseline to 8 weeks. error bars for each condition indicate standard errors of the mean change scores. depression ranges from 0-27, while anxiety ranges from 0-21. in order to quantify the overall quality of happify when used at the recommended level, as compared with the other conditions in the study (i.e., low usage happify, low usage psychoeducation, and recommended usage psychoeducation), we calculated a “net benefit” score – the percentage of users who improved minus the percentage of users who deteriorated. this score allows us to estimate overall intervention quality, taking into account not just average improvement, but the extent to which the number of users experiencing improvement outweighs the number experiencing deterioration. on net benefit, happify had a net benefit to depression of 35.1% of users, while all other conditions together had a net benefit of 19.2%. happify had a net benefit to anxiety for 36.5% of users, while all other conditions together had a net benefit of 16.4%. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 figure 3. change in resilience index from baseline to 8 weeks for happify, psychoeducational comparison, and no-usage control conditions note: the y-axis in this figure represents change from baseline to 8 weeks. error bars for each condition indicate standard errors of mean change scores. resilience ranges from 0-100. figure 4. percentages of participants who experienced phq and gad category improvement, no change, or clinical symptom severity category deterioration over 8 weeks by condition 4. discussion building on previous research finding happify’s effectiveness in an uncontrolled setting, this study shows more convincingly that happify improves wellbeing (as measured by indicators of depression, anxiety, and resilience), particularly among those who adhere to recommended platform usage guidelines. all hypotheses were supported by the results, which suggest that the wellbeing techniques made available in the happify platform survived translation to and remain effective in a less structured context characterized by substantial variation in user engagement and usage. they also suggest that the inclusion of testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 user engagement elements, combined with research-tested activities, lends an advantage above and beyond simple exposure to material on wellbeing (psychoeducation comparison) or the improvement that one would experience naturally over time (low usage sub-groups). psychoeducation can bring wellbeing concepts to mind, and may even lead individuals towards activities they could do to promote their wellbeing (youtube videos, for example, may suggest a behavior to try). however, an engaging platform that contains interactive wellbeing activities appears to be, across the board, about twice as powerful as psychoeducation. in short, these findings suggest that although being exposed to wellbeing concepts can be more helpful than nothing, there is an additive benefit to actively teaching and practicing hands-on activities, reinforcing them via conversations with others in forums, and bringing them to life in interactive games. these findings represent an important step towards validating the improvement of wellbeing in real-world settings, on a platform that is scalable and engaging for users. 4.1 dosage level as a moderator the analyses in this study distinguished between participants who used their assigned platform as instructed—two to three times per week over the course of the 8-week study— and those who did not. many clinical trials follow an intent-to-treat approach, including all participants, regardless of participation and adherence, because efficacy is considered to be a combination of effectiveness and palatability (i.e., the most effective intervention cannot be effective if nobody wants to use it). however, since our primary research question revolved around not efficacy but effectiveness, we added usage level as a moderator. we believe that this analytic approach is the best of both worlds, assessing both the overall efficacy of an intervention, while also determining its effectiveness in ideal conditions. exploring the impact of happify on users who used it as recommended allows us to test whether the research-based activities implemented in happify remained effective in that new format. in the current study, where our emphasis was on simple effectiveness in a new environment, our goal was to generate effect sizes and compare them with those of the previous studies from which the content of happify was adapted. in order to do that, it was important to equalize analytic methodology as much as possible. many of the studies in the wellbeing literature are published as experiments, not as “clinical trials,” and therefore do not follow clinical trial conventions such as consort reporting or intent-to-treat analysis (see the meta-analysis of sin & lyubomirsky (2009) for a broad review; all claims about the wellbeing literature are based on our reading of this meta-analysis). furthermore, many of these studies were performed in more controlled environments, such as college students completing a study for credit, with credit contingent on participation; the percentage of the sample exhibiting recommended usage patterns would be much higher in an in-person experimental context than in a naturalistic consumer setting. we therefore adapted our analytic strategy to most closely mimic the studies we hoped to make comparisons with— which means the ability to zero in on users who use happify as recommended. we would argue that comparing overall engagement rates of an online intervention like happify with an in-person or heavily monitored intervention would be like comparing apples and oranges, as users are much more free to vary in an unstructured clinical trial such as this one. at the same time, our analysis also allows readers to view the impact of low usage by comparing those who used as recommended with those who used at a lower rate. these data are also valuable in helping organizations understand the importance of encouraging testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 employees, clients, or patients to engage when trying to implement a large-scale intervention. second, splitting participants by usage level arguably provides very interesting additional information. by separating out users whose usage was low, we were able to estimate the natural change in wellbeing that can be expected over time. with an estimate of natural change over time, we are able to assess the extent to which the two intervention conditions improved above and beyond the improvement they would have experienced regardless. as many existing (and popular) internet interventions take a psychoeducational approach, providing users with information but not interactive activities, it is useful to have an additional group to see to what extent psychoeducation is helping above and beyond the natural improvement expected over time. while it would have been possible to randomly assign users to a no intervention group, we chose not to—in short, among people very interested in becoming happier, being assigned to do nothing can be problematic, and sometimes deleterious (mauss, tamir, anderson, & savino, 2011). the moderator split, therefore, allows us to see the wellbeing changes that occur in users who receive a minimal dose of intervention without risking the negative consequences of a no intervention group assignment in this eager population. while the self-selected nature of the low usage participants is a limitation, we felt that limitation was more acceptable than the alternative. we consider this to be a strength of the current study—we have suggested a way to explore the impact of receiving a low intervention dose compared with the as-recommended usage level in a context where doing so might normally be difficult or unethical. that said, we acknowledge that further research is needed to tease apart some of our assumptions about users who were assigned an intervention but did not use it—are they still affected by placebo effect and positive expectation from having enrolled in the study, despite having not actively participated in their assigned intervention (in other words, does this group represent more than natural improvement over time)? how might the results from low usage users differ from or resemble a true waitlist control group, where users do not pursue other treatments? we are eager to continue exploring these questions in future work to assess the validity of this approach. 4.2 limitations we believe that the current findings are an interesting first step towards implementing wellbeing interventions in a way that is scalable, without losing the ability to use rigorous research designs. however, we also acknowledge several limitations. this study is just the first in a series of studies that will help to evaluate the ability of an engaging, online platform to improve wellbeing, and future research can help to explore these remaining issues. 4.2.1 generalizability this study is specifically focused on users who arrived at happify naturally—these users are self-selected, and may be different from the general population in some ways that we did not measure. while we do believe our sample was representative of internet wellbeing seekers, it may be harder to generalize to different types of users in other contexts. the current study was conducted in a consumer population, but large-scale implementation efforts often happen in workplaces, among health care payers, or in other contexts where the users may be quite different. follow-up research can replicate these findings, as well as exploring other outcomes, in additional samples and contexts. to enhance our ability to testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 study generalizability in the future, we recently launched localized, translated versions of the platform in spanish, french, portuguese, german, chinese, japanese, and frenchcanadian. 4.2.2 limitation to self-reported, psychological outcomes the current study reports only on psychological outcomes—depression, anxiety, and resilience. however, there are many other outcomes that a scalable, online wellbeing intervention might impact, and future research can explore this. applied in populations with chronic health conditions, in primary care settings, or in workplace settings, could the improvements in depressive symptoms that happify produces, in turn, affect some of these other outcomes that are tied to health care expenses, company profits, or burnout rates? we further acknowledge a reliance on self-report that is commonplace in the study of wellbeing interventions, but nevertheless suboptimal. with wearable technology and smartphones, it is easier than ever to obtain in-the-moment data about mood, as well as objective data about the exercise, sleep, and even stress levels (using voice analysis) experienced by users. objective measurement is especially important for a construct like resilience, where self-reported measurement, while the norm in research, can be unreliable at predicting actual resilience during a stressful situation (razavi, 2001; schenker & gentleman, 2001). one objective measure that has particular relevance for resilience is heart rate variability (thayer, åhs, fredrikson, sollers, & wager, 2012). we are currently in the process of lab validating our smartphone-based relaxation game, breather, which measures heart rate variability. however, there are numerous other laboratory tasks with outcomes tied to resilience that could be implemented as technology-based tests, and we hope to see these developed soon to better the assessment of resilience in future research. objective measurement approaches can also provide valuable insight into the mechanisms that underlie wellbeing improvement; cognitive tasks, for example, can allow researchers to assess attentional and/or memory biases towards positive vs. negative stimuli, which may help us to understand what sorts of cognitive shifts take place as users engage with wellbeing promoting activities. similarly, analysis of text written by users in their social media accounts (e.g., carpenter et al., 2017) can help us understand the ways that users are thinking about and processing positive and negative emotions and events— and changes in these patterns may help us understand how users of wellbeing interventions may change in this regard. very little is known about the mechanisms by which wellbeing interventions lead to improvements in wellbeing; further research emphasizing objective outcomes could help shed some light on the question. 5. conclusions the present study shows, using a randomized, controlled design, that happify not only promotes wellbeing in users who adhere to recommended usage guidelines, it does so at a level that is substantially higher than those users may have been able to generate on their own. however, as noted above, there are numerous research questions that still remain to be examined. in particular, the rich datasets yielded by internet interventions and the agility afforded by delivering interventions using technology leave room for many research questions above and beyond simple effectiveness. for example, it would be interesting to zero in on specific components of happify, such as the games or the forums, and explore their role in improving outcomes, and how they can best be used to enhance user wellbeing. on a related note, internal data analyses testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 suggest that regular use at a rate of two to three times per week yields optimal outcomes compared to other frequency levels. however, carpenter et al. (2017) found that users experience higher wellbeing during 2-week periods that they use happify more, and lower wellbeing during 2-week periods that they use happify less, suggesting that users can boost their wellbeing with even short-term use as needed. more work exploring different types of usage patterns could shed some light on this question. beyond that, it would be interesting to explore the impact of different person-level variables, such as gender, baseline distress level, or age, on typical usage patterns, and on which usage patterns work best for a given user. additionally, it would be valuable to look more specifically at the mechanisms through which happify is improving wellbeing. given that happify targets five different aspects of wellbeing, are different activities working through different mechanisms? for example, are empathize activities improving wellbeing through increasing empathy, while savor activities target mindfulness? similarly, happify contains activities that draw from cbt, mindfulness, and positive psychology. does each of these approaches affect different aspects of wellbeing? or are all the activities impacting some larger factor, such as attention to positive stimuli? further work can help as to questions beyond whether happify works—how does it work, and when does it work best? lastly, as technology evolves over time, new features will be added to technologybased interventions, and internet intervention science will need to evolve as well to accommodate them. for example, with artificial intelligence tools and machine learning knowledge becoming more and more accessible, it is only a matter of time before internet interventions begin to provide highly customized programs for users. what is the best way to study the impact of deep customization when best practices for research rely heavily on the standardization of user experience? with more widespread distribution of smartphones, research in real-world environments is becoming more and more possible. but what is the best way to handle missing data in a consumer marketplace—no doubt, a research environment that is guaranteed to yield high rates of missingness? beyond that, as reach increases, structure becomes more difficult to uphold—so how can intervention science produce high-quality research in contexts where very little control over users is possible? when is it not feasible to randomly assign some users to a control group? these questions, and many others, remain open for further exploration in coming years. authors acacia c. parks happify hiram college acacia@happify.com allison l. williams happify university of minnesota michele m. tugade vassar college kara e. hokes hiram college testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 ryan d. honomichl case western reserve university ran d. zilca happify publishing timeline received 15 june 2018 accepted 30 september 2018 published 9 december 2018 references ahmedani, b. k., belville-robertson, t., hirsch, a., & jurayj, a. 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(2005). positive affect as a source of resilience for women in chronic pain. journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 73(2), 212-220. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022006x.73.2.212 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.11.009 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062873 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201400477 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2004.00294.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2004.00294.x https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760801999610 https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590344000222 https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.62.6.629 https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.4360 https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-9-8 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3506.2005.00357.x https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.73.2.212 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.73.2.212 testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 appendix a. multimedia screenshots the following appendix contains screenshots at each stage of participant experience on happify—from when participants first discover happify (part 1; as an example, we show screenshots from the apple app store, but participants also found us via the google play store and the web), to registration (part 2), to study enrollment and initial assessment (part 3), to assessment (part 4), study participation (part 5), and follow-up prompting (part 6). research process, part 1: app recruitment (advertising images from the apple app store) testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 research process, part 2: initial user registration (after user downloads app or visits website) 2.1 user is prompted to sign up and create a login to access content. 2.2 user completes demographic questions as part of their enrollment in the general site. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 2.3 user is offered the option to create a unique login or to use facebook to log in. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 research process, part 3: study enrollment (immediately after sign-up) 3.1 user reads a brief summary of the study and decides whether they want to learn more. 3.2 user reads a detailed consent form and indicates whether they accept the terms. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 3.3 because the consent form is lengthy and could be skipped by users, key points of the consent form are reiterated in a pop-up and users again confirm that they wish to participate. research process, part 4: assessment (first one is offered immediately after consent is given) 4.1 the survey used for both baseline and post-test is about 5 minutes long and contains nine different brief questionnaires. a progress bar shows users how many items remain in the current survey, and how many surveys remain in the overall assessment. surveys are administered one item at a time. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 4.2 for surveys with prompts, the prompt was displayed once at the beginning, then individual items followed. this prompt applied to the phq-9 and gad-7 items. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 research process, part 5: intervention (immediately after baseline assessment is completed) 5.1 happify condition this section contains a description of the happify user environment, including key user engagement features. 5.1.1. based on research findings that variety and customization are key to user engagement, happify users are offered a variety of tracks to choose from. they are also able to take a brief survey to help them match with a track by clicking “help me pick one.” 5.1.2. users can read a description of each track before choosing to commit to it. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 5.1.3. each activity has 2-3 variations that participants can choose between. in this particular variation of this particular activity, participants practice cognitive reframing. they can learn more about the research the activity is based on by clicking “why it works.” 5.1.4. once the activity is completed, users write about their experience in provided text boxes and rate their enjoyment of the activity. they can attach a photo to go along with what they did. happify users can share their posts with the community of happify users or post them in a way that is visible only to themselves. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 5.1.5 users can access a community of other happify users and participate in discussion forums. 5.1.6 consistent with research findings that generating new content is important to user confidence in an online platform, happify daily offers users articles, infographics, and videos related to happify content. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 5.1.7 users can access a “free play” section, which allows them to repeat any game or activity that they have unlocked in a track at any point. 5.2 psychoeducational comparison group the control conditions are different from the happify condition in two key ways: 1) they have no engagement elements (no free play, no community, no happify daily) other than generic reminder emails to return and work on their track, and 2) the activities are intended to be hedonically inert. 5.2.1 users in the psychoeducational comparison group had access to two 4-week tracks that revolve around taking polls. like the main happify site, it contains a scientific-sounding rationale for why it is expected to be helpful. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 5.2.2 example poll activity 5.2.3 psychoeducational information that appears after responding to poll testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 research process, part 6: follow-up prompts when follow-up assessment is due, participants in all conditions are notified via email, and receive the following pop-up as they log in. they will also receive push notifications to their phone if their account is linked to a mobile device. appendix b. consent form participate in a research study on the effectiveness of online self-help sign up as a research participant for the chance to contribute to valuable research on the effectiveness of online self-help programs. in the process, you may learn skills that help you cope better with stress, reduce negative thinking, boost optimism, and experience more positive emotion. as a volunteer, you’ll be asked to complete a set of questionnaires (about 5 minutes long), and then you'll be randomly assigned to an 8-week program of activities on happify. at the end of the 8 weeks we'll ask you to complete another 5 minute questionnaire, and you'll receive more questionnaires 1, 3, and 6 months after the program period. for the whole of the study, you can continue to access and use your assigned content as much as you like. as a thank you for your participation, you'll receive a $5 gift card for each assessment that you complete. consent to participate in a research study study title: comparing happify programs you are being asked to participate in a research study. the goal of this study will be to test the effectiveness of five different online self-help programs designed to help people increase their happiness. what will happen if i take part in this study and how many people will participate? if you decide to volunteer, you will be asked to complete a series of questionnaires that will take about 5 minutes, then you will be randomly assigned to an 8-week program on happify. you will not get to choose the program you are assigned to, and we ask that you do not use happify on another account testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 during the time you are enrolled in this study. at the end of the 8-week period, you will be asked to complete another 5 minute survey. at that point, you will enter the 6-month follow-up period, during which you may continue to use your assigned programs, or not, as you prefer. you will be asked to complete questionnaires 1, 3, and 6 months later. at the completion of the final follow-up (about 8 months from now), your participation will be over. by signing up for this research, you also consent to receive reminder emails throughout the study. a total of 4200 users are expected to participate. what other choices do i have if i do not take part in this study? you are not required to participate in this study. if you do not participate, you are free to seek any other self-help, or to sign up for happify as a regular user. what risks can i expect from being in this study? there are no anticipated risks to participating in this study. are there benefits to taking part in this study? by participating in this study, you will gain access to an online program which may benefit you. however, since some of the tracks we are testing are new, the efficacy of which are not yet established, we cannot guarantee that you will benefit directly by participating in this study. however, we are testing these tracks because we believe there is a good chance that they will be helpful to you. will my information be kept private? if you consent to participate in this study, you will be asked to complete a series of web-based questionnaires. when you register for the study, you will be asked to give us your email address. in our secure database, your email address will be tied to your data by a randomly generated numerical code, which will allow us to connect each new questionnaire you take to the other questionnaires you have taken. depending on whether or not your email address contains identifying information, this may or may not constitute a risk to privacy were someone to compromise the security of our database. however, because email addresses will be stored separately from questionnaire data, the researchers will never be able to connect your data with any identifying information. however, if you wish to be completely certain that your data will remain private under any circumstances, you may create an anonymous email address for the purposes of this study and have its messages forwarded to your main account. will i be compensated for being in this study? you will receive a $5 gift card for each of our five minute surveys you complete for up to $25 total. what are the costs of taking part in this study? there is no cost to you beyond the time and effort required to complete the procedure(s) described above. can i stop being in this study? you may refuse to participate in this study. you may also change your mind about being in the study and quit after the study has started at any time. testing a scalable web and smartphone based intervention parks, williams, tugade, hokes, honomichl, & zilca www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 who can answer my questions about this study? if you have any questions about this research project please contact chief scientist at happify, acacia parks, labs@happify.com. by checking the box that says “i accept” and clicking on the “next” button below, i will indicate that i have decided to participate in this study as a research participant. i have read and understand the information above. i understand that i will be emailed a copy of this consent form and the bill of rights. agreement pop-up text i confirm that i agree to participate in a study, which involves using a happify well-being program 2-3 times per week for 8 weeks. i understand that this is a research study and that my experiences here may not be reflective of the full happify product. text when assigned programs are completed congratulations on finishing your assigned tracks! you are now in the “follow-up” period of the study. you'll be asked to complete questionnaires periodically in the coming months, and will receive a $5 gift card each time you complete a follow-up questionnaire. you're also encouraged to continue using your tracks. for the best results, come back 2-3 times per week! happieness: does culture matter? hommerich, c. & klien, s. (2012). happiness: does culture matter? international journal of wellbeing, 2(4), 292-298. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i4.1 carola hommerich german institute for japanese studies hommerich@dijtokyo.org copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 292 editorial happiness: does culture matter? carola hommerich · susanne klien 1. introduction in recent years, with the emergence of ‘happiness studies’, an increasing number of investigations of subjective wellbeing, satisfaction and quality of life have been published across disciplines (haidt, 2006). as thin puts it in his article in this issue, happiness research is ‚about learning how people develop a sense that their lives are good‛ (2012: 313). such studies frequently include cross-cultural comparisons designed to examine, for example, whether americans are happier than europeans, or whether marriage contributes to happiness in a similar way in sweden and germany. however, whether such cross-cultural comparisons are feasible and under what circumstances remain hotly debated questions. in the course of our research on ‘happiness and unhappiness in japan’ at the german institute for japanese studies (dij), we have often met with difficulties applying to an asian context theories of subjective wellbeing that originated in western thought. to date, most theories of happiness are grounded in western ideas of progress and fulfillment (coulmas, 2009), as evident in veenhoven’s definition of happiness as ‚the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his life favourably‛ (veenhoven, 1991: 2). but can we assume, as has been done in many other studies, that japanese understand happiness in the same way as people from western societies (diener & suh, 1999; veenhoven, 1993)? in europe and the united states, happiness is something to pursue, but does this hold for asian societies, too? these are questions of general importance to happiness studies. opinions differ: while most researchers in psychology, sociology, political science and economy take it for granted that cross-cultural comparisons are feasible and meaningful (e.g. diener, 2009; frey & stutzer, 2002; layard, 2005; veenhoven, 1993), cultural anthropologists are divided on this issue (mathews & izquierdo, 2009). the traditional notion of spatialized culture is being challenged by ideas such as the ‚global cultural ecumene‛ (appadurai, 1990; appadurai & breckenridge, 1988; hannerz, 1989) and a ‚world in creolization‛ (hannerz, 1987), that emphasize mutual influence and the emergence of transnational interaction. in order to probe and perhaps bridge this disciplinary gap and find common ground, we brought together experts in happiness research from various disciplines and different cultural contexts. in november 2011, we held a two-day workshop at the japanese-german center berlin (jdzb), bringing together sociocultural anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, political scientists, and geographers from germany, japan, the netherlands, the uk, the united states, and switzerland. the underlying key idea was to make initial steps towards a multi-disciplinary approach combining quantitative and qualitative perspectives. whereas the amicable atmosphere during the workshop showed the fruitfulness and potential of this approach, the prolonged in-depth discussions which evolved made it clear that we are http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ happiness: does culture matter? hommerich & klien www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 293 still facing numerous unresolved issues when it comes to the question of the validity of crosscultural comparisons of wellbeing (see also lu & gilmour, 2006; yang, 2000). the gist of it is summarized in this special issue, in which we aim to shed light on the complex interrelations of wellbeing and cultural context. this special issue was conceived at the above-mentioned workshop in berlin. we wish to thank florian coulmas, takayoshi kusago, kate pickett, dimitris ballas, yoshiaki takahashi, motoi suzuki, chris winkler and gisela trommsdorff who participated in the workshop but are not represented here. we would also like to take the opportunity to express our cordial thanks to our hosts of the japanesegerman center berlin (jdzb) for excellent organization of the workshop. finally, we would also like to thank dan weijers at the ijw, who strongly supported this publication. 2. concepts of ‘culture’ in different disciplines when trying to answer the questions whether and how culture matters for people’s happiness, a first step is to provide a working definition of ‘culture’. this is not easy, as evidenced by the numerous definitions used in various disciplines. according to james clifford, culture remains ‚a deeply compromised idea i cannot yet do without‛ (1988: 10). this remark shows the dilemma inherent in the notion of culture, especially if envisaged conventionally as bounded, unitary and permanent. the very first attempt at a systematic definition stems from anthropologist edward burnet tylor, who saw culture as a ‚complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society‛ (tylor, 1958 [1871]: 1). at the beginning of the 1950s, kroeber and kluckhohn (1952) find 164 different definitions of culture and we assume there to be more rather than less to date. grouping them by similarity, kroeber and kluckhohn (1952) come up with six major classes of definitions of culture (see also berry et al., 1992: 166; rippl & seipl, 2008: 15): 1) descriptive definitions see ‚culture as a comprehensive totality‛ (kroeber & kluckhohn 1952: 85). such definitions attempt to list any and all aspects of human life and activity thought to be connected to what encompasses ‘culture’. one example is the definition by tylor quoted above. 2) historical definitions tend to emphasize the accumulation of tradition over time. one example would be the definition of culture by linton (1938: 78) as ‚the total social heredity of mankind‛. 3) normative definitions focus on shared rules and norms that govern the activity of a group of people. 4) psychological definitions—often also adapted in sociology—emphasize psychological features which can be seen as the result of a socialization process. the focus, however, is not on the cognitions of individuals, but on the values and meanings shared by the group. accordingly, smith and bond (1998: 69) define cultures as ‚systems of shared meanings‛, and schwartz (1992) and hofstede (1980) similarly see culture as becoming visible through ‚shared values‛. 5) structural definitions, on the other hand, emphasize the structural manifestation or organization of a culture. this includes specific patterns, institutions or social roles which structure the social relations within a respective group. this type of definition is similar to descriptive definitions in that it incorporates cognitive, symbolic and structural elements. it goes beyond a mere http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ happiness: does culture matter? hommerich & klien www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 294 list of customs and activities, however, and focuses on their interrelations and arrangements. 6) genetic definitions understand culture as adaptive to the habitat of a group. it develops through social interaction and out of a creative process that is characteristic of the human species. all of these definitions share a bounded and essentialist understanding of culture with an implicit element of relative order. in anthropology, however, the prevalent notion today is that culture no longer just refers to ‚the way of life of a people‛, but also to the array of choices individuals make from ‚the global cultural supermarket‛, to borrow mathews’ (2000: 4) terms. numerous ethnographic studies have demonstrated that the apparent boundedness and coherence of ‘a culture’ has been constructed rather than naturally given (fabian, 1990; marcus, 1986; thornton, 1988). this deconstruction of a spatially bounded idea of culture has resulted in a situation which mathews puts as follows in his contribution: ‚in anthropology today, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that the word ‘culture’ can no longer be used with a straight face‛ (2012: 303-304). 3. happiness in cross-cultural comparison whether or not a comparison of happiness across cultures is deemed possible depends on whether a culture-specific or a cross-cultural approach is taken. the former is based on the assumption that each culture is unique and can be described only by considering its specific setting (idiographic/emic). the latter looks for general patterns which can be extracted by comparing different cultural settings (nomothetic/etic). the definition of ‘culture’ within an academic discipline to some extent accounts for how the question of cross-cultural comparability of happiness is approached. while descriptive definitions and a culture-specific view dominate in cultural anthropological and ethnographic surveys, culture is most often defined as a system of shared values in psychology, sociology and political science, assuming the possibility of generalizing results across cultures. approaches such as the cross-cultural indigenous (cci) procedure suggested by yang (2000) could be seen as attempts to combine these two perspectives and overcome scientific ethnocentrism by aspiring to pay more attention to emic parameters but still implement a comparative approach. the validity of cross-cultural comparison of subjective wellbeing is also closely linked to the topic of how to measure a construct as complex as ‘happiness’. the central question about measuring happiness is whether, as many studies assume, asking respondents to grade their happiness on a scale yields meaningful information. such an approach assumes that individuals are capable of judging how happy they are. nettle, however, reports that the subjective perception of happiness can be manipulated. in his review of several studies, he shows that the weather, finding a dime, or the physical appearance of the other people filling out the survey all significantly affect how satisfied people reported being with their whole lives (nettle, 2005, chapter 1). mathews makes a similar point about the differences in individual perceptions of wellbeing in his contribution to this special issue, referring to kahneman and krueger (2006: 18). he concludes that ‚it seems plausible that north americans are not ‘happier than east asians’, but are simply more willing to proclaim their happiness on a survey form‛ (mathews & izquierdo, 2009: 7; mathews’ contribution to this special issue, 2012: 301). this brings us to another key issue, namely the question of what happiness means to individuals. most research on subjective wellbeing is at present based on an understanding of happiness grounded in eurocentric ideas. in the western intellectual tradition, happiness is http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ happiness: does culture matter? hommerich & klien www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 295 often seen as the most important goal to strive for. this, however, does not necessarily have to be the same in asian countries (kitayama, markus & kurokawa, 2000; mathews, 1996). let us assume a definition of culture as a system of shared values. happiness would then be one value amongst others. in european or north american value systems, it might be ranked towards the top of the value hierarchy. but this cannot simply be assumed to be the same in another cultural context. instead, a culture-relative approach is called for, in which researchers approach their object of analysis without the evaluation their own cultural background would ethnocentrically impose. thus, when trying to measure happiness across cultures, we first have to find a common definition of what happiness is. whereas happiness has been used synonymously with terms such as ‘subjective well-being, satisfaction, utility, well-being and welfare’ (easterlin, 2001) scholars across disciplines agree on the ambiguity of the concept of ‘happiness’ (nettle, 2005: 17-20, suikkanen, 2011: 149, blumenberg, 1987: 215), with some arguing for understanding the term as a vague one (feldman, 2010: 131-136; gilbert, 2006). indeed, finding a clear-cut definition of happiness seems difficult. blumenberg (1987), for example, advocates respecting the subjectivity of happiness, thus claiming that we should avoid an objective determination of what happiness means: happiness is what an individual understands as his or her happiness; it would be a potential catastrophe for mankind if one determined for all or all determined for one or many for few or few for many determined what happiness should consist of. this is why determining what happiness is should not be left to the hands of reason; therefore, one should not seek to shed light on what happiness is by objective means (blumberg, 1987: 216). nevertheless, the implicit or explicit concern with happiness has been a recurrent theme in human societies. we argue for a comprehensive examination of subjective wellbeing that connects qualitative and quantitative perspectives. the articles in this special issue try to work towards this goal. 4. contributions to the special issue the five authors differ in their perspectives on the measurability and comparability of happiness, with two of them coming from a research tradition based on qualitative methods, namely sociocultural anthropology, and three from disciplines which rely on quantitative methods – sociology and psychology. from the viewpoint of sociocultural anthropology, mathews and thin both argue for the pursuit of an interdisciplinary approach to happiness by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. both scholars argue that such an integrative approach would open up the possibility for a sensible cross-cultural comparison of wellbeing. by discussing the limitations of statistical surveys of happiness, mathews advocates a multi-method approach. not only translation problems, but also the shift of the meaning of ‘culture’, he argues, make it difficult to compare data based on the rating of a single question. he goes on to suggest that the additional use of ethnographic interviews could provide sociocultural grounding to the uncontextualized statistics often used in psychological, sociological, and economic cross-cultural analysis of wellbeing. similarly, thin emphasizes the chances of complementing quantitative with ethnographic and biographic research, in order to achieve a more holistic understanding of the social construction of happiness in cultural contexts. he argues that the reduction of the evaluation of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ happiness: does culture matter? hommerich & klien www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 296 individual happiness to numerical form does not give credit to the complexity of the task. integrating quantitative measures with a narrative approach could help to discover the story behind the numbers. veenhoven, on the other hand, argues in favor of the comparability of happiness surveys across nations by the exclusive use of quantitative surveys. using cross-national data to support his point, he makes a case against a cultural measurement bias of happiness. finally, uchida and ogihara present examples from cultural psychological research, identifying substantial differences in the cultural construal of happiness in european-american and east asian contexts. their results emphasize that cultural context does indeed matter for gaining an understanding of happiness. 5. in lieu of a conclusion all in all, this volume, with contributions by representative scholars from europe, the united states and japan, constitutes a first interdisciplinary attempt to combine quantitative and qualitative approaches in the study of happiness. we argue that happiness scholarship requires a new conceptual language that links qualitative and quantitative methods if we are to come to grips with the complexity of subjective wellbeing. we hope that this special issue will give rise to further examinations of happiness that exceed the conventional boundaries of disciplines and respective methodologies. authors carola hommerich german institute for japanese studies hommerich@dijtokyo.org susanne klien german institute for japanese studies references appadurai, a. 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(2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 92–97. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.6 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger interview by aaron jarden michael steger is an assistant professor in the counseling psychology and applied social psychology programs at colorado state university and has been involved in the field of positive psychology for the last ten years. mike’s research focuses on the foundations and benefits of living a meaningful life, and he is well known for developing the widely used meaning in life questionnaire. what prompted you to become interested in positive psychology? my interest came first from the topic of ‘meaning’. it was sort of an idealistic thing. i considered myself to be a little counter-cultural, a little hopeful that i would be able to find some tool that could help me shake people up or give people motivation to find a different way of living, a little bit more in accordance with collectivist values. so i stumbled on ‘meaning’. it was only after i started reading about meaning that i ran into a buddy of mine who said, ‚hey, here’s a good conference for you, you should check it out‛, and i think it was the second positive psychology summit, which was the first one i went to. how long would you say you’ve been interested in positive psychology? well as soon as i found out about it, that is, since about 2002. so for just about ten years now i’ve been interested in positive psychology. over the course of your career in positive psychology so far, what would you say are some of the key events? the major events for me were early influences by two different people. one was my advisor, at the university of minnesota, where the tradition is measurement. she invited me to evaluate the measurement of meaning and i did, using all the graduate school tools for ripping things to shreds—and it wasn’t good. i didn’t like any of the measures and i pointed out flaws that other people had identified in them as well. so she said, ‚here at minnesota, we fix it, so that’s your next project‛. so i developed the meaning of life questionnaire. the next big thing was that martin seligman put it on the authentic happiness web page and that got it out there. for me as a grad student at the time, it made me feel like i was actually doing legitimate science in this area and made it feel important in that way. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 in general terms what would you say are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? for me the most defining feature is that it’s science driven. it captures an appealing array of aspirations that people have and experiences that people desire, and find important and helpful. but what really sets us apart from other people looking at those same things has to be the science. what do you think is one of the big questions that positive psychology is seeking to answer? how can we have people experience the best that they can experience? and the question that we are neglecting is ‘what does that mean?’—what is the best that people can experience? and that’s not actually probably an empirical question. so you have all these battles of values and perspectives that take place; and so that, to me, is the interesting subtext: that we’re all pushing for the same thing but we view it, oftentimes, in very drastically different ways. what would you say were the field of positive psychology’s greatest accomplishments to date? it’s really been amazing. it has created an interdisciplinary space that, originally, was only interdisciplinary within psychology, with a few economists and one philosopher. it’s grown and it’s captured both practical, applied and research attention across many disciplines around this now widely accepted notion that we can learn how to be better off. that has been remarkable. i don’t think that anyone saw it coming right before and on the heels of sept 11th in this country [the united states]. if you were in charge of positive psychology now, what is one thing you’d change? it seems that a lot of people in positive psychology are heavily linked into revenue streams and that’s ok, i don’t have a problem with that. but in the early days of positive psychology there was a concerted effort to get graduate students to these conferences and allow them to meet these mentors and to fire them up. a lot of the graduate students at those earlier conferences were given $500 scholarships and didn’t have to pay the fee to come. and then you’d be right next to these people you’d been reading and marveling at. there used to be a top to bottom approach to really fuel new and exciting ideas. positive psychology has in some ways gotten to the place where the top stays at the top, the middle stays at the middle, etc., and a lot of people seem to be pulling resources out of positive psychology and into their own areas of interest, rather than returning it back into the field to continue feeding the growth. i don’t know if that’s a fair criticism or not, but it feels a lot more expensive and isolated to be a positive psychology graduate student now than it used to be. what’s one aspiration you have for the field of positive psychology? one of my aspirations for the field has already been answered in some ways. i really hoped when i started getting excited about this and trying to participate in my own way, that we’d catch the eye and the ear of the people who have influence to actually impact on lives. in one way that has happened, with those people who are trying to go from a seven to a nine on the 10 point scale—instead of the people who are trying to go from the negative two to the positive three—the people that are not clinically suffering. but for those people who are socially disadvantaged, economically disadvantaged—outside of the people that can pay a lot of money psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 to be treated or coached—i think that is really where a lot of exciting things will happen in the future. is there anything that you think particularly stands out in that space? based on some recent experiences in south africa, there are a lot of indigenous cultural models of people who are incredibly disadvantaged in comparison to the wealthy nations in the world; yet there’s some sort of positive and inspiring homeostasis that they’ve reached amidst all the deprivation, all the brutality, all the lack of opportunity. what would be really cool would be continuing to grow out from the western, affluent origins of positive psychology to join with the growing indigenous knowledge of psychologists around the world working within their own people, with what really works in their own places. i think we’ll have lots of really neat ideas and inspiring stories to reach out and broaden the impact of positive psychology around the world. in psychology as a whole, we’re getting good at developing western models for positive change, and then showing that they can be readily adapted for elsewhere. so, the stuff we do seems to work, but are we missing things that could be grown from other traditions? what things are created and work elsewhere that we could all benefit from? what are the other ‘mindfullnesses’ out there? which particular professional groups (aside from psychologists) are becoming more interested in positive psychology or perhaps your work on meaning? those interested in the work i do on meaning are career coaches and career psychologists, particularly doing work related to women’s issues in careers. almost all the interviews i do are from women’s magazines and are related to mid-career women, and career-balancing women, and also looking at the emerging workforce and those wanting to go to the next level in their careers. but i think that the world of work has been the biggest outside consumer of positive psychology. it seems like there are dozens of people who are doing industrial consulting and looking at happiness in the workplace leading to more productive, happy, workers. education will be a really cool place—they’re interested, they just need more support. those interested in more general meaning in life issues often appear to be in medical fields, particularly oncology and palliative care. who do you look up to most in the field of positive psychology? that’s a great question. i really like laura king, her work bounces around a lot of different methods, a lot of different perspectives. she’s done some really inspirational work on meaning in life with a graduate student named josh hicks. but i also think that just as a person, she is super approachable, super generative. i think bob emmons, as a person and as a scholar, has been really giving of what he does. the same is definitely true about ed diener. the list of people whose work i admire is very long, going back to the inspirational folks like [victor] frankl, and those that have done really solid, foundational work like carol ryff. these people have some ‘meaning’ angle. i like that because it shows that you can step outside of your research area and attack a question. if you could start learning about positive psychology again, what would you do differently? i probably wouldn’t want to start with measurement. one of the things that happens when you start developing a measure is that it’s great because it gives you a focal point and a tool to begin to do what you want to do; and if the measurement in the area had been better, then i wouldn’t psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 have done it. but it also, in a sense, locks you into that tool, and so a lot of my early research was around ‘how do i validate this thing in this group?’, and ‘how do i validate it in this group?’. and i did a lot of things that were right because they were fun, collaborating with people who had different perspectives. the biggest thing that we can do in this field is collaborate, especially by doing different things. starting again, i’d avoid measurement and i’d really try to challenge myself more to meet folks who are using methods that i’d never heard of. who do you think are some of the emerging or unknown researchers in the field of positive psychology? who do you look at and think ‘their research is cutting edge and cool’? i really like matt vesser’s work. he’s been looking at the role of meaning in terror management theory and that’s been something that is really cool and that there is a place for, but i never did the work myself. he’s published in jpsp [journal of personality and social psychology], so he’s not really super unknown or anything like that. what is astonishing is that as the access to international researchers has grown, i’ve realized that there is amazing research going on all over the place that we don’t hear about because we just keep reading the same journals. there are some really cool people, including lazslo brassai, who’s doing some really cool work with adolescents in romania; there are people like linda theron doing great work in south africa on aids orphans and there are other just amazing pieces that don’t get circulated, except for in places like the international journal of wellbeing of course. what do you think positive psychology could learn from the field of psychology as a whole? i have two pet peeves about positive psychology that are also true about the field of psychology as a whole. they are closely related. the first is losing your grasp of what it means to be a scientific discipline where your job is not just to defend your position, but it’s also to attack your position. it’s to really pressure what you think is right in a brave fashion. that doesn’t seem to happen a lot of the time. i think a lot of people get excited about what they’re doing and they love their initial research findings and they want to see their baby live and succeed. in positive psychology though, that stuff gets applied and becomes apocryphal immediately. people somewhere are going to turn it into a book or an intervention and say it’s the truth. that’s really dangerous if we’re not out there making sure that we are really putting pressure on our assumptions. the other thing is that forgetting what it means to be a science discipline leads to a lack of consistency in definitions of constructs and the creation of new constructs. everyone is mixing and matching terms and inserting their values into the definitions of constructs, and that really needs to be scrutinized. it confuses the science. one example is that people seem to want to define ‘purpose’ as having an altruistic aim to it. that is being offered as a definition of ‘purpose’, and it is difficult for folks to learn that that is just one type of purpose—and you might like it best, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only kind. people have asshole purposes too. we just need to figure out how to be objective about these things. what area of positive psychology do you think is the most difficult area for people to grasp and learn? the central area of positive psychology is the most difficult to grasp. what are we studying? what is happiness? do we want happiness? what are we trying to learn? what is our ultimate dependent variable? i think that is hard to express to people without being a little inaccurate. psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 what is the first book you would recommend to someone new to positive psychology? my first thought is stumbling on happiness by dan gilbert, although i don’t really agree with all its assumptions. it’s great to start with a little bit of a skeptical eye. a fun book to read that i think is also challenging is todd kashdan’s book curiosity. and in terms of how we can try to be as scientific and rigorous as possible, even in a popular book while still offering practical suggestions that people might be able to use, is sonja’s [lyubomirsky] the how of happiness, which is very good. she’s pretty honest about what we know and where we’re speculating, which i admire. so there are three good books. what’s the most cutting-edge book you’ve read personally in the last couple of years that stands out? i teach abnormal psychology, and i’m writing an abnormal psychology textbook at the moment, and so i’m reading a lot of the psychopathology literature. that challenges my perspective on positive psychology because i’ve been convinced that there really is a gap in perspectives. i originally thought it was all part of a continuum, which i think is true. but we haven’t addressed the continuum. so if you look at the treatments for psychopathology, a lot of them really do fall short of going beyond simply getting rid of bad things. so that’s helped me to figure out what are the things that are scalable that can bridge the gap between helping people eliminate problems, which we know how to do really well, and giving people the tools to set out some aspirations and to help to achieve them. how does someone go about getting more meaning in life? the easiest way to not have meaning in life is to really try to focus on having more meaning itself. meaning comes from doing, not just thinking. i think that the main thing is to have self understanding and an appreciation of your true strengths and limitations. i wouldn’t say that just learning your strengths is good enough, you need a true and honest appraisal of who you are and an honest encounter with life in the moment. that should be used to help people to develop a purpose, an overall life aim or mission—maybe more than one, and sometimes they compete. but really just engage in that and in life and in those things that match your values. and from time to time check in with the question ‘are you doing the things that matter to you?’. make sure you catch yourself once in a while doing something that matters to you and appreciate that you have that gift and the ability to do that. so it’s a little bit of that reciprocal acting and being aware of what we’re doing. is there anything else that you’d like to comment on that i haven’t asked about that you think would be useful to someone picking up a book on positive psychology who doesn’t know anything about positive psychology? if someone really wants to have a research career in positive psychology, i think that the main thing is to read old stuff. a lot of what we’re talking about is old. this year is the first year that i’ve heard people at a positive psychology conference talk about maslow very much, even though that book was published quite a while ago. so there are great ideas out there, there are great models being used outside of positive psychology. the most important thing for a researcher to do is to read outside of positive psychology, because we are really still just studying people. for practitioners, the most important thing to understand is that some prudence is necessary because the things that we are seeing work in these correlational studies or daily diary studies, or even in internally valid experiments, aren’t the same things that might psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 work with clients. the creativity that coaches, and therapists, and clinicians can have is awesome, but there is a responsibility with using research to do practice that means that you can’t guarantee anything about that: so maybe giving researchers a break for not always knowing what works might be helpful. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz moosad, l., & vaughan. c. (2020). care, collaboration and critique: the intersection of creativity and wellbeing in older women. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 100-116. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1485 lila moosad university of melbourne lila.moosad@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 article care, collaboration and critique: the intersection of creativity and wellbeing in older women lila moosad · cathy vaughan abstract: in this paper, we investigate the intersection of creativity and wellbeing for older women based on the experience of a group who participated in a photography project in melbourne, australia. we draw on interviews with 18 women who participated in the 500 strong photography project in 2019. this project aimed to raise the visibility and dispel stereotypical portrayals of older women through an exhibition of nude photographs of more than 400 women aged over 50 from melbourne and regional victoria. we suggest that, for the participants in this study, creativity and wellbeing are interlinked through the domains of care, collaboration and critique. for some women, the photography experience was an act of care, to liberate themselves from negative images of ageing and celebrate their bodies. for others, participation was a creative venture through which they could collectively acknowledge the contributions of older women. some women participated in the photography project to raise awareness of, and critique policies detrimental to, older women’s wellbeing. the findings of this qualitative research with older women support the arguments that: 1) wellbeing is understood by the participants within a matrix of personal and structural security; 2) creativity is a critical and under-theorised dimension through which women make these understandings visible. this study contributes to literature on contemporary ageing that contests singular notions of decline and loss and to theorizing the use of creativity in wellbeing frameworks. keywords: ageing, creativity, photography, wellbeing, women introduction norn, who is 86, has invited me (first author) to interview her at her house. her granddaughter who lives with her lets me in. over a cup of tea, norn reflects on how she came to be involved in a photography project called 500 strong. she has a personal connection with the photographer, and found posing for her a reassuring and comfortable experience. when asked what prompted her to participate in the project, she remarked she was initially daunted but she has always involved herself in creative community ventures and this project offered possibilities for richer conversations beyond seeing ageing as an economic burden. “new ways of seeing women are creative acts in themselves”, she concludes. (field notes, september 2019) arts-based activities and creative engagement have been shown to have positive effects on the personal health and wellbeing of older adults and to contribute to improvements in some physiological outcomes (patterson and perlstein, 2011; liddle et al., 2013; baker, 2014; davidson et al., 2014; cann, 2016; poulos et al, 2018; boyce-tillman, 2019). cohen (2006) outlines the positive health outcomes that older people experience through their participation in creative about:blank creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 activities. these activities not only arrest cognitive decline, they also contribute to an overall improved quality of life and feelings of positivity. in australia and elsewhere, many arts initiatives involving older adults have been used in structured ways in residential and community aged-care settings, often with older people who are experiencing physical and cognitive impairment (joseph and southcott, 2013; archibald and kitson, 2019; bellass et al, 2019; miller et al, 2019). this article delves into the links between creativity, wellbeing and older women through an exploration of women’s often creative participation as co-creators in a photography project. photographers like donnigan cumming, anne noggle and melanie manchot have photographed naked bodies of older women to disrupt stereotypical representations of age and gender, while other photographers like cindy sherman and rosy martin have used their own bodies with props to critique ageing norms for older women (hodgson, 2018). the 500 strong photography project is unique in its aim to create alternative images by bringing together up to 500 individual, naked images of older women. the participants came up with their own concept of how they wanted to be represented through their choice of props and poses. rather than view creativity as “the mysticism of special talents and abilities” (nielsen, 2018, p. 1), we use the notion of “everyday creativity” (amabile, 2017). amabile is interested in “the rich variety of emotions, perceptions, and motivations” (p. 336) that individuals engaged in creativity are able to describe. we take this notion of creativity to be a generative one and one that is intrinsically linked to participants’ life experiences and their understandings of wellbeing and ageing. in this article, we explore the reasons why the women were attracted to contributing to alternative images of ageing, how they chose to represent themselves during the photography session, and how this was linked to their understandings of wellbeing. if anything the proliferation of wellbeing research has shown that definitions of wellbeing and evaluation methods have never been truly stable or settled (dodge et al., 2012). studies have progressed from their foundations in “happiness and positive affect” (adler & seligman, 2016, p. 5) to broader understandings that acknowledge its eudaimonic qualities. in these latter studies, wellbeing is observed in and across various domains of life — relationships, employment, physical and emotional health, personal growth and personal care — however, definitional ambiguities persist (seligman, 2011; ryff, 1995). dodge et al. (2012) propose a definition that recognises the multi-faceted qualities of wellbeing. they suggest wellbeing is “the balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced” (p. 230), where resources and challenges can be psychological, social and physical. from this perspective, wellbeing fluctuates depending on the balance between a person’s resources and the challenges they face at any particular point in their lives. in recent times, anthropologists have contributed to wellbeing scholarship through an ethnographic approach that foregrounds people’s experiences and a theoretical assumption that wellbeing is generated within communities through social processes (calestani, 2013; fischer, 2014). more recently, white (2017) has expanded the concept of relational wellbeing through her work with communities in rural india and zambia. in this article, we foreground these relational and social understandings of wellbeing in favour of its economic and psychological conceptualisations. the ever-expanding discourse around ageing has generally been confined to certain key themes. the medical approach is primarily focused on the concept of a process of physical and mental decline. the policy-oriented material places a heavy emphasis on questions of the fiscal pressures of supporting an ageing population. much of this discussion has framed ageing as “a deficit” or a problem that “must be managed” by “individuals” (asquith, 2009, p. 256). however, a fruitful approach in recent research recognises ageing in a more complex and nuanced context creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 (holstein and minkler, 2007; dillaway and byrnes, 2009; martin and twigg, 2018; pilcher and martin, 2020). this literature has placed more emphasis on power relationships, environmental health determinants and “the biopolitics of health inequalities” (katz and calastanti, 2015, p. 29). several contributors have incorporated visual research to engage more broadly with ageing discourses, away from strictly biomedical constructions and discourses “steeped in a language of loss, erosion, lack, decline” (tulle and krekula, 2013, p. 9). while this article focuses on a specific artform — photography — to explore connections between creativity, ageing and wellbeing, many of the women interviewed for the study were already engaged in a range of other creative practices such as singing, drawing, theatre, performance, and writing. their interviews reflected their broader views on the importance of creative practices to their wellbeing and ageing experiences. while their participation in the 500 strong photography project was a one-off occasion, it prompted reflections on reasons for participating in the context of their creative practices generally. many of the participants, for example, put thought into the props they would use for their photography session and wanted the session to align with their life biographies and interests. while sipping tea, norn noted that “the truth of our bodies is not readily available, much of women’s true selves in hidden by fashion and convention”. for the participants in this study, being a part of 500 strong gave them the opportunity — or, as some of the women might say, the responsibility — to uncover their true selves with all the complexities, ambiguities and contradictions of their lives. for some of the women, the creative act was in the photography session itself. for others it was more significantly committing to the objectives of the 500 strong project; that is, to provide a different set of narratives, to shift conversations around portrayals of older women and their visibility. participating in their photography session was, as many participants suggested, an act of disruption against constructed norms of passivity and invisibility in dominant narratives about older women. through their participation, the women continue the tradition of subverting gendered norms through creative arts (richards et al 2012). while the photographer (ponch hawkes) made the final decision in the selection and arrangement of the images, the women, through the act of participation, provided the context to the debates that the photography exhibition is expected to generate. in this article we argue that the dimensions of care, collaboration and critique that underpin the reasons for participating “creatively” are useful signposts to alternative ageing and wellbeing discourses. methodology the 500 strong photography project was part of a wider initiative, flesh after fifty, developed in response to the lack of positive visual representations of older women in art and media. flesh after fifty would be a series of art installations and community engagement events to discuss issues of older women’s health and wellbeing and to contest the negative portrayals of women’s ageing. for 500 strong, 500 women aged over 50 were recruited from across the state of victoria and asked to pose for nude photographs of themselves using props and poses of their choice. the women had the option of partly covering their bodies and obscuring their faces with their props. ponch hawkes, a well-known australian photographer, took their photographs and these were scheduled to be exhibited in march 2020. this exhibition has since been postponed until february 2021 due to restrictions imposed as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. many of the women will not have seen their images prior to the exhibition. we invited 18 women who had contributed to the 500 strong project to participate in an interview. the women were recruited to represent age and geographical cohorts. the interviews were conducted by the first author between august 2019 and february 2020. creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 the interviews explored women’s motivation for participating in the photography project by asking them to reflect on their experience of the session. the interviews also discussed women’s experiences of getting older and their reflections on wellbeing. the questions aimed to draw out women’s embodied experiences of the photography session as well as the complex factors that contributed to their experiences of ageing. the youngest participant in the study was 50 years old and the oldest was 86. two of the participants were visually impaired. all participants were given written information about the project and they provided written consent prior to participation in the interviews. for the two participants who were visually impaired, project information and the details of the consent form were verbally summarised before the start of their interviews. the interviews were audiorecorded with the consent of the participants. the interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed by the first author for recurring, similar and divergent ideas and to identify the threads across creativity, ageing and wellbeing (bryman, 2012). the initial codes were derived from the data and later grouped into the themes of care, collaboration and critique. these themes were finalised through a close reading of the transcripts and quotes that identified the women’s relationships with their own bodies, with other older women and with concerns that impact on their wellbeing and their experiences of ageing. in this article the women are identified by a pseudonym except where they chose to use their own name, in which case they are identified by the first letter of their name. the university of melbourne’s health sciences human ethics sub-committee granted approval for this study in august 2019. results ageing, wellbeing and creativity the themes emerging from the interviews with participants in this study alerted us to the multidimensional links across ageing, wellbeing and creativity. their participation in the creative project offered them ways to reflect on their current lives and experiences, not in static and bounded ways, but in ways that stretch across temporal lines. sabeti (2015) refers to creativity in terms of improvisation, “simply our way of living and being in the world”, rather than innovation or the “production of something ‘new’” ( p. 217). it is this ongoing social and cultural recalibration of individual and relational lives, sabeti would argue, that generates wellbeing. this study draws from the works of medical anthropologist sarah lamb (2014; 2018), whose ethnographic research contests the cultural assumptions underlying the dominant ageing discourses that “overemphasise independence, prolonging life and declining to decline” (lamb, 2014, p. 42). these discourses, according to lamb, are embedded in cultural and biomedical assumptions that tend to obscure the realities of decline that accompany the processes of ageing. the flaw of this paradigm, according to lamb, is a failure to acknowledge that decline is indeed a natural part of ageing and “need not be incompatible” with enjoying life at a late stage of one’s life (lamb 2014, p. 51). lamb’s (2018) study illustrates how cultural, societal, medical, political and personal experience are all constituents giving “meaning to the body, self and aging” (p. 265). it is in this “confluence of factors” that ageing is constructed and experienced (p. 265). echoing lamb’s critique, several feminist/critical gerontologists argue that policy discourses frequently fail to analyse the implications of social and economic forces, the impacts of which are highly variable depending on women’s circumstances (holstein and minkler, 2007; dillaway and byrnes, 2009; freixas et al., 2012). critical gerontology addresses gendered structures of employment as well as unpaid labour as key factors shaping the disadvantages experienced by many older women. the impacts on women’s ageing processes need much greater attention from creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 researchers. qualitative research into creative projects has an important role in drawing attention to the structural factors that marginalize older women. also missing from the “decline and deficit” model of ageing (webster-wright, 2019, p. 98) is the vocabulary to express the ways in which women acknowledge their physical ageing at the same time as they embrace that process through creative expression. the work of sociologists twigg and martin (2015) linking the fields of ageing to visual arts research points to an insightful, new direction for analysis. like lamb, their multidisciplinary approach contests the mainstream “universalising” tendency of ageing discourses while providing scope for incorporating broader theoretical perspectives. twigg and martin’s (2015) analysis draws on the life experiences of age and acknowledges the breadth and diversity of women’s experiences. their use of visual research methods to elicit the richness of lives as a way to counter the “visual culture that systematically devalues and erases age” (twigg, 2013, p. 101) has also linked “micro processes of daily life … to wider sociocultural discourses” (twigg and martin, 2015, p. 356). for many of the women, drawing attention to material and structural barriers faced by women was a key reason for their participation in the project. many of the women saw themselves as being creative and were motivated to participate in the photographic project as an appealing creative outlet. for others, the experience of participating was a response to their life experiences and concerns about their own ageing process. terms like “dignified” and “private” and phrases such as “atmosphere of trust” were used by the women to describe their experience of being photographed naked. the photographer had created a studio environment where the lighting was dim and where women felt safe to portray themselves in whatever way they wanted. some of the women already had a connection with the photographer through other artistic collaborations and trusted her and her representation of their bodies. others had heard about the project through social media or through their friends. the ways in which women spoke about their reasons for participating in the project were wide-ranging. for wanda lust, aged 61, it was a “personal crusade to become more visible as i age”. she linked her personal campaign to be visible to the collective aim of taking action against the prevailing discourses to which older women were subjected. participant a (aged 70) wanted to illustrate that “life can still be joyous as one is ageing, that you can leave stuff behind that’s been a bit baggage-like and get on with doing more of what you want”. participant e (aged 53), who was also vision impaired, decided to get involved because she had “had enough of everybody telling me what i should do and shouldn’t do”. participant d’s (aged 66) motivation to participate arose from a desire to support a friend who had had a mastectomy and had participated in the photography event. participant d also wanted to contribute to broader discussions about women’s ageing experiences. creativity and wellbeing were not discussed by the women as solitary categories; these were conceptualized through the women’s life experiences and their cultural, social and political worldviews. ana (aged 68) had been diagnosed with scoliosis a few years prior and her spine deteriorated while she was also dealing with critical family illnesses and death. she had been a weaver of textiles all her life but was now unable to work with large weaving pieces. “i’m at a stage where i’ve sort of dealt with the fact that i’ve got a terrible back and i know how to manage it”, she said, when asked what prompted her to participate in the photography project. “i am at the best stage of my life in terms of independence and confidence”, she continued. ana’s “decline” does not prevent her from continuing her artistic practice in a modified way and through mentoring other weavers. by viewing ageing and wellbeing as located in their social lives and relationships, creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 the participants in this study offer a lens for exploring the interrelationships across creativity, ageing and wellbeing. for many participants the photography event afforded creative opportunities in being able to choose poses and props. the participants were focused on the representation of their bodies but they were also willing to explore the “complex and diverse interconnections” between their bodies and the contexts of their lives (martin and twigg, 2018, p. 3). the themes arising from our analysis of the interview transcripts suggest that notions of creativity, wellbeing and ageing are linked through the domains of care, collaboration and critique. these domains are often amorphous, overlapping and sometimes contradictory, but they offer insights into the dynamic processes of creativity, wellbeing and ageing. creativity as care as a creative undertaking, the 500 strong project departed from discourses “that have normalized the un-photographability of ageing female bodies” (tiiddenberg, 2018, p. 63). science and technology studies scholar, puig de la bellacasa, asserts that care is “an affective state, a material vital doing and an ethico-political obligation” (puig de bellacasa quoted in martin et al 2015, p. 626). for de la bellacasa, care is an active practice and has a political component. we suggest that by participating in the photography session, the participants were actively making older women’s bodies photographable. for them, joining in the photoshoot was an act of care for themselves and for older women more generally. some women had not previously perceived their participation in that way but the experience encouraged them to comment on changes to their physical appearance and the state of their bodies as a result of illness, childbirth and the process of ageing. this version of care included challenging dominant narratives about older women’s bodies while celebrating their lives and bodies. the participants spoke poignantly about their motivation for participating, as a way to acknowledge their personal hurdles and milestones while engaging playfully in front of the camera. for some of the women, participating in the photography session was a way of showing their healthy and functional bodies which they had looked after by staying active. the notion of care expressed through their creative act, some of the women suggested, would help foster alternative and positive representations of older women. the women had agency over how they wished to pose and participants contrasted this with their experiences of how older women were forced into a particular look by mainstream media and advertising, whether it be images of older women with white hair and glasses or welldressed older women going on cruises. the women in this study were able to pose with their choice of props, which variously included fans, books and scarves, noting that in some cases these symbolised their stories of migration, grief and survival. health, or the celebration of health, was a motive behind participating in the project. ana engaged in the project as an acceptance of her health but also as recognition that she was able to continue her creative pursuits without being defined by her back condition. “my back’s actually worse than it was but i’m fine”, she said. ana had held up a piece of her weaving as her prop and it served as a symbol of the physical labour required to produce her work of art. she wondered whether her photograph would detect the curvature of her spine. for wanda lust, participating in the photography event was personal and political. it was a way of caring for herself and for older women generally who are expected to fade into the background as they get older. creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 while wanda masked her face with a black veil, she wanted her tattoos and scar to be in the photograph. she had grown up with anxieties about her body but for the photography session she was keen to foreground her tattoos and her scar so she was “able to stand up and show the stories that are on my body”. she stated: i have very personal reasons for doing it. there was a whole kind of constellation of things — it all kind of happened at the same time. i’ve had quite a lot of surgery over the last 20 years including a full hysterectomy so i’ve got a big scar on my belly. i also have tattoos which i was always too terrified to ever disclose to my father. for many of the women, participating in the photography session was an invitation to take part in something whimsical. the playfulness generated by the photography experience also appealed to the women’s sense of care and play. for peggy (aged 64), it was a place to “cavort in a very gentle way”. she had recovered from breast cancer and was regaining her energy levels after the radiotherapy treatment. she did not see herself as an active person but was able to enjoy this experience. the capturing of movement in her imagery was a contrast to the passive images often seen of female bodies in art. it offered an insight into “the joyousness of life, not a downward decline”. the invitation to pose and move during the photography event was also seen by the women as an invitation to be playful. they were aware that their bodies had changed over the years, as a result of surgery, of having children and other events in their lives. many women had over time shifted their relationship to their bodies and no longer felt they needed to match the ideal that had been demanded of them throughout their lives. when abby (aged 60) went to her photography session, she wanted to present her best angle. she stated: cos i went in there wanting to show the best bits, and i came out thinking, well every bit is good and i didn’t have to sort of pick and choose, just sort of this is all of me and i didn’t have to think about i have to show this bit or that bit or so in that sense it maybe made me a bit more accepting of my whole body. she wanted her photograph to be taken in a particular way and there was a tension between what she thought would make for a good photograph and what the photographer would see as an interesting image. for abby, participating in the photography session allowed her to “accept my lumps and bumps” and “not to be afraid to show it to people”. for lisa (aged 53) and participant e (aged 50), the pressures of ageing and the visibility/invisibility tension that many of the other participants mentioned did not have the same resonance. they were both born visually impaired and their reasons for participating were prompted by narratives they had been subjected to all their lives. as lisa stated: all my life i’ve been called ugly or disabled or something like that from various people but i don’t see myself as that. i just wanted to say that i am who i am. i’m proud of who i am. as far as lisa was concerned, she was an average person and she wanted to present that image to the world. while participant e simply wanted to engage in the project because she had never done anything like it before, for both lisa and participant b, participating in the photography session was an opportunity to explore an interesting idea for themselves and be supported by their friends in their decision. creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 yiola (aged 55) wanted an enduring kind of visibility and thought the photograph would be a legacy of her life, stating, “there will be a portrait of me somewhere naked when i am gone”. she also wanted to make visible her commitment to social justice by using a book on cultural diversity as her prop. she linked her participation in the project to the bigger story of her parents’ migration to australia and their contribution to australian society. creativity as collaboration the project is not a project about me or any individual person and so the photograph is one that would best fit the need of a whole project, which would best represent a little bit of the idea of the diversity of women. so i was not concerned. once i decided i didn’t think of it being myself except in that moment[ary] decision about cloaking my face. because my body is another body in that particular context. i have donated the image of my body to a larger cause than what i’ve been thinking about myself. (participant norn) for many of the women, the photography project was not an event about individuals, it was viewed by them as a collaborative endeavor, as a way of initiating broader conversations about depictions of older women in the media and the arts and their invisibility. women like norn (aged 86) and wordsworth (aged 73) drew on the history of collectivism and women’s accomplishments that propelled them to participate in the photography session. they recalled key events in australia that progressed the lives of women such as access to tertiary education and being able to remain in the workforce after getting married. for example, wordsworth recalled, “i come from a working-class background, but education saved me”. their individual experiences of being refused a mortgage because they were young women or their experiences in the “gendered boardroom” inspired them to participate in the project and challenge dominant narratives, such as those that frame ageing in terms of decline and invisibility. there was also a sense of collaboration with the photographer as they negotiated the props and the accompanying poses and these interactions were playful and whimsical. at other times there were conversations with other women who had also arrived for the photography shoot. many of the women spoke of a sense of being part of a photographic collective that would shift conversations about older women’s bodies. they contested the images of perfection they saw on television and in magazines and wanted their “unphotoshopped” images to be on display. many of the women in this study were also actively collaborating in their neigbourhoods on projects ranging from climate change, community choirs, theatre groups and volunteering in hospitals. their participation in the photo shoot was an extension of this collaborative activism generally reflected in their lives. lovely l (aged 66) summarized her own participation in the photography shoot as a “dignified and private” event which led to her deciding to take on a bigger role with the wider flesh after fifty project to raise awareness of the ageism that exists against older women and their underrepresentation in public platforms. allocated an ambassadorial role, she assisted with recruiting older women for the 500 strong project and provided support during the photography sessions. as practicing artists, many of the women were interested in supporting other artists and saw their participation as contributing to a larger cause. rose (aged 75), who is a photographer herself, recalled the artist louise bourgeois who was producing her best works in her later years. creativity was a big part of rose’s life: at 75, she was preparing for an overseas photography creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 exhibition. prevailing attitudes about older women, she thought, underestimated their creative potential. rose’s sentiments were shared by participant a (aged 70), who stated: it occurred to me just as we were talking all the little play mobiles, little figurines, the granny always is white-haired with a bun. so even those sorts of things, there’s mummy and daddy and there’s this old person who’s a bit decrepit with a stick. and public signs always have people bent over with a stick. these simplified depictions did not offer young and older people a range of examples of ageing to draw from; but rather, reinforced the narratives of decline and dependence associated with ageing. for participant a, such singular depictions of ageing created a disconnect with younger people by characterizing older people as “other”. actively participating in activities that counter this narrative, participant a belongs to a multigenerational choir that has provided her with a weekly dose of energy. she is also part of a repair café where people, young and old, bring things to repair or mend and socialise. this sense of working collaboratively with other older women and across generations was a motivation for many of the women to take part in the photography session. creativity as critique i wore a mask, it was something i bought at the two-dollar shop. so just a blank mask, then i put a lacy thing across the eyes so, was i being creative? probably. i thought it was a good image. did i find it empowering? no. did i find it disempowering? no. i don’t think that was a concept that came into it for me. (participant d) participant d (aged 66) is still working professionally so she decided to wear a mask to obscure her face. her reasons for participating in the project were to be part of a collective set of images, rather than any sense of personal liberation. as a health lawyer, she had reflected on older women’s experiences in the health system where women were sometimes viewed as “a bunch of body parts”. for her, the photography project was about shifting discussions beyond decay and decline to incorporate broader issues of creative options for older women. it was about questioning “her place in the world” and the ways in which she could contribute to social change. participant d’s commitment to raising awareness of issues of family violence and the increasing levels of homelessness among older women could be assisted through her participation in creative projects like 500 strong. participant d’s concerns are supported by evidence that shows a 31% increase in the number of older women in australia experiencing homelessness between 2011 and 2016 (australian association of gerontology, 2018). she was critical of ageing discourses that prioritised and promoted the needs of the individual, suggesting that “collective wisdom” and having “a sense of community” was going to effect change, not individual-level analyses. healthy ageing for d was about finding solutions to problems that impact on society whether they are creative models of housing or living arrangements. she drew from her experiences in the legal profession to highlight gender inequities saying, “in the legal profession, it’s the invisibility of the experiences of the older women, whereas the older men, they are absolutely acknowledged for their wisdom and the women are not”. she used her first hand experience of the structural ageism in the law to draw attention to issues faced by older women and to critique the double standards that exist creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 in society. participating in the project was a way for d to be contributing to broader conversations of change. the potential of the 500 strong project to make a collective critique of current ageing policies and their impact on older women was also echoed by wanda. similar to d, she did not see her participation in the project as a cathartic act or one of empowerment, stating, “i left with the same issues and shame and doubt that i went in with”. wanda’s interest lay in using art as a form of activism to disrupt reductive discourses of ageing. rather than viewing age as a personal responsibility, she was keen to use the collective portraits to raise awareness of structural disadvantage experienced by older women and to move beyond stereotypical representations of old age. wanda and other women raised affordable housing and financial insecurity as critical issues facing older women in australia. their concerns about the vulnerability of older women to housing precarity has been well documented (nesbitt and johnson, 2019; darab et al., 2018). for h (aged 63) this was a personal experience and she was thankful to her friend who “has allowed me to build a room in a shed out the back. without her, i would be one of the homeless women on the street”. d, wanda and h exemplify the remit of the 500 strong and flesh after fifty projects; to generate political and critical debate through creative and artistic means. many of the women were, however, conscious of the fact that the 500 strong project had largely attracted educated, middle-class women and that there were groups of women absent from the project. according to them, the precarity of housing and finances did not afford many older women the luxury to participate in such creative projects. triumph (aged 63) was a nurse and chose her pseudonym after the motorcycle that she rode to come for the interview. she decided to get involved in the photography session because she had always been interested in women’s issues. for her, it was about contributing to images that depicted reality, stating, “i just don’t like this barbie doll, dolly bird look. we need to get out there and tell them women over 50 are interesting and vibrant”. because she was ineligible for the aged pension, triumph had been forced to return to work after recovering from a stroke. she reflected on this, “the worst thing is we’ve all got to work till we are all nearly 70, especially in nursing, it’s a really tough job”. for her, being involved in the project was a way of boldly progressing the causes of older women through a public exhibition of their naked photographs. the upcoming 500 strong photography exhibition will represent bodies in their various shapes and sizes. a frequent criticism of ageing discourses is that there is a need to counter the essential narrative of abelism (the norm of the able bodied individual). for participants like lisa and e, this project celebrates the diversity of older women’s bodies, thereby silencing the ableism trope through inclusion. both lisa and participant e were in their early 50s and they were worried about a future where older people with disabilities were not catered for in current policy and ageing discourses. participant e, for example, voiced her concerns about the future, “i’m scared what’s gonna happen to me when my parents pass away”. for lisa and participant e, ageing has meant an amplification of the barriers they faced as women living with disabilities. their contributions highlight the limitations of chronological ageing, particularly its neglect of disability and gender. at the same time, lisa and participant e did not want to be defined in deficit terms and saw themselves as contributing to society in a range of ways. lisa’s volunteering work at the eye and ear hospital and connections with community groups gave her a sense of wellbeing. capturing the voices of lisa and participant e underscores the importance of how creativity, ageing and wellbeing responses are informed by the realities of life experiences. for lisa and participant e, apart from their personal reasons for participating, the project offered a way to highlight their concerns about access to support services and their long-term creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 needs. for them, the process of ageing amplified concerns they had always lived with: issues of isolation, stable housing, lack of social inclusion and ongoing support networks. lisa wanted the needs of older women with disability to be heard, stating: listen to what people need, what their needs are and listen to the people who are ageing and disabled and, exactly what we need and what we don’t need. it shouldn’t be about money, it should be about services and people having the right to have what they need. older women with disability, older women in same-sex relationships, single older women and older women from diverse backgrounds are generally invisible in dominant ageing narratives and rarely depicted in the media (calasanti, 1996; marhánková, 2019). some participants commented on dominant media images that featured fit and healthy heterosexual, able-bodied, white couples playing golf or going on luxury cruises. these images, they argued, did not reflect the realities of their lives and interests. participating in the photography session was a way for them to initiate conversations about the range of ageing experiences and the need for multiple perspectives and diverse images of ageing. discussion why haven’t we done this before? why haven’t we thought about the importance of this before? i do remember thinking this is important because it opens the door when thinking about what we’re really like as women, especially as older women whose bodies have been the vehicle for a lot of dignity and various kinds of experience. in my case, the most astonishing of all, having babies. in the case of everybody, you know, sexual excitement, athletic prowess, kind of just ornating yourself when you want to. here you are [in the photographs] without ornation, no ornamentation at all. (participant norn) in this article we have argued that creativity as illustrated by older women’s participation in a nude or semi-nude photography project offers critical perspectives on their ageing and wellbeing. rather than viewing creativity as an intervention to enhance the wellbeing of older women, we have framed it as a dynamic and relational component in the lives of the women. this component has allowed us to engage with the individual and societal aspects of the participants wellbeing. for the participants in this study, creativity has been conceptualized through the lenses of care, collaboration and critique. the intersections of creativity, wellbeing and ageing were realised in the celebration of individual achievements, highlighting financial and housing precarity, committing to intergenerational conversations, critiquing current policies that disadvantage older women and celebrating their bodies. just as three older women artists, louise bourgeois, rachel rosenthal and nettie harris displayed their bodies “publicly, playfully, theatrically, flamboyantly, sardonically, ironically and pensively” in their artworks (woodward, 2006, p. 167) so too did the participants of this study. through their poses and props, the women contested the somewhat restricted and stereotypical images of older women while drawing on their biographical experiences to conceptualise ageing and wellbeing. the themes of care, collaboration and critique we use in this study reflect the relational and discursive processes through which the participants understand and experience creativity, wellbeing and ageing. for ana, rose, norn, wanda and wordsworth, notions of creativity were critical to who they were; their participation in the photography project was an extension of their creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 creative capacities and central to their ageing and wellbeing. for others who described themselves as not being particularly creative, participation in the photography project, nonetheless, proved to be an exercise through which they could do something “outrageous”, something they normally “wouldn’t have chosen to do” (abby). older women have been framed within popular culture as “invisible” or “hypervisible”, either by their absence or their “aged” presence (woodward, 2006, p. 163). this study illustrates the inherent contradictions the participants expressed when analysing their photography session. while some of the participants were critical of the invisibility that accompanies the ageing process for women, they also accepted the regimes of care that involved “looking young” such as coloring one’s hair and keeping fit through regular gym visits. pilcher and martin (2020, p. 8) highlight this “in/visibility paradox” in their visual research study with participants aged between 52 and 85 years. their participants felt they had to align with the norms of appearance for older women’s bodies while at the same time recognizing the ageist implications for women. similarly, we found that some of the participants in this study acknowledged the contradictions of posing for the photography session to contest ageist narratives while at the same time accepting that they wanted to conform to “acceptable” images of older women. participant h, for example, was critical of the portrayal of women in art and of advertisements that presented older women’s bodies in “a sanitized way”. she lauded the 500 strong project for keeping older women’s bodies in focus. yet, she felt the need to color her hair, “to be seen again”. this tension between images celebrating older women and maintaining a “youthful” look did not preclude participant h from critiquing the ageist discourses that confront older women. for a few of the women, ageing was an individual “moral agentive project” (lamb, 2018, p. 274) and they wanted the photography session to reinforce their sense of individuality, independence and hard work. they had endured financial and personal hardship in their lives and felt they had emerged stronger through the adverse events. their participation in the photography session was a testament to who they were and how they had addressed their wellbeing and ageing. lamb would argue that the women’s reflections illustrate their participation in the “biopolitics of ageing” (lamb, 2018, 274) which emphasised fitness, health, independence and “successfully” managing the contours of one’s life. the inadequacies of simplistic binaries such as sick/healthy, strength/weakness associated with ageing and wellbeing discourses (martin 2011; sandberg 2013; leahy 2020) were also illustrated through this study. focusing on the dichotomies of active ageing versus impaired ageing (leahy, 2019; 2020) does not, as this study argues, shed light on the potential for leading creative and fulfilling lives. as ana pointed out, her creativity and wellbeing continues to flourish despite her health issues. while she may be restricted in the scope of her work, she continues to express her creativity and wellbeing through working on weaving projects with a group of refugee women in melbourne. she has devoted herself to this project for the past few years. the capacity to live a stimulating life in one’s later life is no less valid for the decline or impairment that accompanies the process of ageing. ana’s exploration of her body and its capacity through her creative pursuits including her photography session offers a subtle way of understanding the experiences of ageing and wellbeing. these alternative images provided by women like ana help to shift discussion beyond “the two poles of active ageing and old age as decline” strands of thought (enssle and helbrecht, 2020, p. 8). for other women like participant d and wanda, participation in the photography project was an opportunity to promote more nuanced understandings of ageing and wellbeing. by being part of a collective photography exhibition, they wished to highlight concerns of housing and financial insecurity that impact on women’s experiences. their creative preoccupations were less creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 about promoting their healthy bodies and more about structural barriers faced by many older women. the participants in lamb’s (2018) ethnographic study illustrated similar differences in their ageing experiences. while some of her participants pursued healthy ageing through exercise and attention to diet, others were affected by anxieties of poor housing, unavailability of healthy food choices and inadequate access to medical care (lamb, 2018). definitions of the boundaries of old age varied among lamb’s participants: higher income participants constructed old age as an experience of their 70s and 80s whereas for lower income men and women old age was an experience that began at a much earlier age. similarly, for the participants in this study, ageing and wellbeing notions were shaped by their experiences of living with disabilities, their social networks and community involvement and life and health experiences. this study has also explored the creative responses of older women with disability and their wellbeing experiences. dominant ageing discourses overlook the concerns and the contributions of women (and men) with disability. the literature exploring the intersections of disability and ageing is limited (hebblethwaite et al., 2020) and models of participation that inform policies on ageing are based on “able-bodied and impairment free” assumptions (raymond and greiner, 2015, p. 198). leahy (2018) outlines the paradox of ageing and disability; the two areas have been theorised separately “even though disabled people age, and most people who are ageing will experience disability” (p. 2). for lisa and participant e, wellbeing is an ongoing project and ageing processes are only a part of their overall life experiences. their experiences of ageing intersected in familiar ways with experiences of living with disability. according to participant e, “the invisibility was always there, i don’t know what a 53-year old is supposed to act and feel” (sic). further opportunities for research generated by this study include an investigation of ageing and wellbeing using other creative media such as music, theatre or story telling; how creativity, ageing and wellbeing intersect in different socio-cultural and migration contexts and what the intersections of disability and ageing are. these questions will help to understand the complex and diverse lives of older people. limitations a key limitation of this study is the absence of a diversity of women’s voices; the study sample consisted predominantly of white, urban, middle-class and tertiary educated women. indeed, much of the literature on successful ageing defaults to “a strong anglophone bias” (lamb, 2014, p. 42) as though there is a single guide for how people experience ageing. this does not account for the extreme heterogeneity of women over 50 who have a wide range of life experiences. broader experiences of ageing and wellbeing will only be fully understood if the perspectives of indigenous women, women with different types of disabilities, from lgbtqi communities, from working class backgrounds, from rural and regional australia and from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are incorporated. their insights would make a richer contribution to building into the literature questions of abelism, class, place and race. the more perspectives that are included in research, the more useful this research will be in informing inclusive policy and practice that is relevant to the entire community. even within the sample in this study it is noteworthy that ageing and wellbeing are conceptualised in a variety of ways by women from different age groups. a further critical limitation of this study, which arose from the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, is that a post-exhibition participatory workshop with the interviewees to discuss the project findings and participant reflections on the viewing of their images had to be deferred due to the postponement of the exhibition. this session would have contributed to a richer creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 investigation of the notions of creativity, ageing and wellbeing through analysing women’s images as a collective piece of work as well as individual portraits. conclusion this paper has shown that qualitative interviews with a sample of women who participated in the 500 strong photography project can enrich our understanding of the links between creativity, wellbeing and ageing. these links, we argued, are revealed through the themes of care, collaboration and critique that the creative project provided a unique venue to explore. though the motivations for participating in the project and how it was experienced were diverse, nevertheless the analysis of the interviews showed consistent themes of raising the visibility of older women and their contributions while drawing attention to their concerns of structural insecurity. these insights alone show the potential for designing research around creative projects to understand older women’s wellbeing and ageing experiences. these findings clearly support the need to give greater weight to qualitative research methods in less conventional research contexts to counterbalance existing singular approaches to the study of “ageing”. the findings also contest binary assumptions such as: ability versus disability; independence versus dependence; illness versus wellness. above all, the approach taken in this research showed that everyday experiences of ageing are complex and challenge categorization. this study suggests ways of assimilating dimensions of creativity and wellbeing that would reframe and enrich discussions on ageing. ageing, as the women who spoke about the 500 strong project reinforce, is a rich concept that cannot be limited to abstract analysis that is often a feature of public health and policy disciplines. ageing is by definition located in personal experience and sociopolitical and economic contexts. this is why women’s experiences of illness or financial and housing precarity must be woven into their narrative of leading enriched lives. the challenge for policy makers, therefore, is to move away from “productive” and “healthy” discourses of ageing as the hallmark for policy formulation. a considered, dynamic approach that addresses socio-economic contexts, life histories and structural factors that shape ageing processes will contribute to more robust ageing policy frameworks. this qualitative study of a sample of older women involved in the 500 strong photographic project shows creative engagement as an important opportunity for practices of care, collaboration and critique. it suggests that a stronger focus on creative activities is a promising methodological approach which could contribute to a fuller understanding of how older women construct their sense of wellbeing. acknowledgements we are grateful to all the women who made time to participate in this study and share their reflections. our thanks also go to professor martha hickey, ponch hawkes and jane scott. the study is supported by seed funding from the creativity and wellbeing research initiative (cawri) at the university of melbourne. we also thank the two reviewers for their helpful suggestions. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors lila moosad university of melbourne lila.moosad@unimelb.edu.au creativity and wellbeing in older women moosad & vaughan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 cathy vaughan university of melbourne publishing timeline received 2 september 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 references adler, a. & seligman, m.e.p. 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(2006). performing age, performing gender. nwsa journal, 18(1), 162–189. https://doi.org/10.2979/nws.2006.18.1.162 mccann, c. m., beddoe, e., mccormick, k., huggard, p., kedge, s., adamson, c., & huggard, j. (2013 ). resilience in the health professions: a review of recent literature. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 60-81. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i1.4 clare m. mccann university of auckland c.mccann@auckland.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 article resilience in the health professions: a review of recent literature clare m. mccann · elizabeth beddoe · katie mccormick · peter huggard sally kedge · carole adamson · jayne huggard abstract: all health professions face numerous stressors within their clinical practice, including time pressures, workload, multiple roles and emotional issues. frequent workplace stress can impact on the physical and mental wellbeing of health professionals and result in burnout and, in some cases, traumatic stress-like symptoms. these outcomes can impact not only on the wellbeing of health professionals but also on their ability to practise effectively. it is therefore imperative that a preventive approach is adopted. developing resilience-promoting environments within the health professions can be explored as a means to reduce negative, and increase positive, outcomes of stress in health professionals. this literature review seeks to elucidate the processes and characteristics (both individual and contextual) that enhance resilience in the health professions. it explores relevant literature from five health professions (nursing, social work, psychology, counselling and medicine) to identify the individual and contextual resilience-enhancing qualities of each profession. commonalities and differences between the disciplines are identified in order to arrive at a definitive explanation of resilience across health professions. implications for clinical practice and recommendations for further research are also discussed. keywords: resilience, health professionals, literature review 1. introduction a number of stressors are associated with the health and helping professions, including time pressures, workload, having multiple roles, and emotional issues (lambert et al., 2004; lim, hepworth, & bogossian, 2011). frequent environmental stress associated with human pain and distress in the workplace can impact on the physical and mental wellbeing of health professionals and result in burnout and, in some cases, traumatic stress-like symptoms (stamm, 2010). these negative stress outcomes can impact not only on the wellbeing of health professionals, but also on their ability to care effectively for others (barnett, baker, elman, & schoener, 2007). it is therefore imperative that a preventive approach is adopted. developing and fostering resilient environments and individuals within the health profession is emerging as a way to reduce negative, and increase positive, outcomes of stress in health professionals. as part of a larger project exploring aspects of resilience in health professionals and in order to gain an understanding of how resilience and associated terms had been discussed in the health professional literature, a structured literature review was conducted. for the purpose of this review the definition of ‘resilience’ has been adapted from the developmental psychology literature, which dominates the field (luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000). we define ‘resilience’ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 as the ability to maintain personal and professional wellbeing in the face of on-going work stress and adversity 2. article search strategy the articles for this literature review were found by searching the databases medline (ovid), psychinfo (ovid), google scholar, social work abstracts plus, cinahl plus and proquest dissertations and theses. the search terms included combinations of the following keywords: coping, self-care, well-functioning, hardiness, resilience, health professional/worker/practitioner, nurses, social workers, psychologists, counsellors, doctors, speech-language therapists/pathologists, audiologists and optometrists. the search was limited to english-language peer-reviewed journals and dissertations published in the last 12 years (2000 to 2012). the initial search identified 159 articles in total. the following criteria were applied: 1) an article was included if it had a focus on coping, self-care, well-functioning, hardiness or resilience of health professionals; not students or patients. 2) an article was excluded if samples or discussions were exclusively about students or patients and/or were poorly generalisable to an identified health profession. 3) an article was excluded if results or discussions focused on the negative outcomes of stress with limited consideration of coping, self-care, well-functioning, wellbeing, hardiness or resilience. the criteria imposed on the search process resulted in 61 articles being found for inclusion. of these articles, 18 related to the nursing profession, 12 to the social work profession (three of which used the same sample), 11 to the psychology profession, eight to the counselling profession, seven to the medical profession (including psychiatrists and physicians) and five related to more than one health discipline. no articles were found that related to speechlanguage therapists, audiologists or optometrists so they will not be discussed any further. the following discussion considers each health discipline separately. we will review the studies on coping as a means to improve wellbeing, resilience and hardiness and any components of resilience specific to each health discipline. coping is the set of cognitive and behavioural strategies that individuals engage in when faced with stress (lararus & folkman, 1984). coping can involve positive methods such as problem-focused behaviours, support seeking or maintaining a work-life balance and/or maladaptive emotional-focused coping such as denial, avoidance and suppression. resilience and hardiness are constructs involving cognitive appraisals of challenge, control and commitment (kobasa, maddi, & kahn, 1982). 3. nurses of the health disciplines, nurses featured prominently in the articles related to resilience. 3.1 coping lambert et al. (2004) examined work stressors, ways of coping and demographic characteristics as predictors of physical and mental health among 1554 hospital nurses from japan, south korea, thailand and the usa (hawaii). while there were some differences across countries regarding predictors of physical and mental health (e.g., number of family living with them or nearby), several predictors were similar. regardless of culture, self-control, seeking social support, problem solving and positive reappraisal were the four most utilised ways of coping. resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 the findings suggest that cross-culturally nurses have similar ways of coping in the context of workplace stress. in a sample of 328 new south wales (nsw) and 190 new zealand (nz) acute care hospital nurses, chang et al. (2007) found that problem-focused coping was only mildly related to better mental health. however, high levels of emotion-focused coping were strongly related to low mental health. chang et al. (2007) examined the workplace stressors, coping mechanisms, and demographic characteristics which were the best predictors of physical and mental health. escape-avoidance (e.g., sleeping, drinking, smoking, using drugs), distancing (e.g., not taking things too seriously), and self-control (e.g., keeping feelings to oneself) emerged as the best coping predictors of mental health. mental health scores were higher for nurses with more years of experience and for those who used distancing as a way of coping but lower for those who used escape-avoidance and self-control coping, lacked workplace support and had a high workload. by investigating the coping strategies and experiences that bring joy and happiness (‘uplifts’) to the personal and professional lives of 23 singaporean nurses, lim et al. (2011) found that professional uplifts were related to being appreciated, having reliable working relationships, and health improvements of patients. personal uplifts were related to leisure activities, having disposable income, laughing with friends, and spending time with friends and family. coping strategies included taking time out (short breaks at work, rest and relaxing activities), seeking emotional support (from family or colleagues) and belief systems (luck, fatalistic thinking, spirituality). through a systematic literature review, zander, hutton, and king (2010) investigated coping and its relationship with resilience in assisting paediatric oncology nurses. the three themes identified were, (1) coping factors, (social, team and organisational support, personal views, attitudes, and circumstances, experience and types of stressors) (2) coping processes, (the contribution to effective adaptation), and (3) overcoming negative circumstances, (how effective adaptation and coping are combined when professionals are dealing with workplace stressors). 3.2 resilience and hardiness only nursing research used existing measures to examine resilience and hardiness. in a sample of quebec nursing assistants (nas) and registered nurses (rns), harrisson, loiselle, duquette, and semenic (2002) found that hardiness and work support were negatively related to psychological distress. hardiness positively correlated with work support. further analysis demonstrated hardiness to be a significant mediator between the effects of work support on psychological distress. judkins and rind (2005) examined the relationship between hardiness, job satisfaction, and stress among texan home health nurses. in this study there was a significant negative relationship between stress and hardiness, with those high in commitment experiencing less stress. a significant positive relationship between job satisfaction and hardiness (particularly for commitment and control) was found. no significant correlation was found between stress and job satisfaction. similar results have been found using qualitative techniques. ablett and jones (2007) aimed to describe 10 english hospice nurses’ experiences of work and compared the experiences with the personality constructs of hardiness and sense of coherence (belief in the comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness of the world). the results yielded 10 themes that hospice nurses used to describe their work, including spirituality, personal work attitudes, job satisfaction, coping and personal/professional resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 boundary issues. when comparing the 10 themes to hardiness, they all indicated a high level of commitment to and control over the workload of the hospice nurses. when the themes were compared with sense of coherence the nurses perceived their work as manageable and comprehensible. only some nurses viewed change as an opportunity for growth. ablett and jones (2007) suggest that the determining factor in nurses’ resilience might be the individual’s attitude towards change. in a sample of 98 portuguese nurses, garrosa, rainho, moreno-jimenez, and monteiro (2010) assessed the relationships between job stressors, hardiness and coping resources on burnout dimensions at two time points. at the cross-sectional level, personal resources, control and social support were negatively related to emotional exhaustion and challenge. unlike the findings of judkins and rind (2005), commitment was not found to affect any of the burnout dimensions. active coping was found to have more influence than hardiness in that it had main effects, both at the cross-sectional and temporal level, on depersonalisation and lack of personal accomplishment. specifically, active coping had an inverse temporal effect on depersonalisation and on lack of personal accomplishment. mixed results have been found in research that has used direct measures of an individual’s resilience. in a sample of 753 australian theatre nurses, gillespie, chaboyer, and wallis (2009) investigated whether the personal characteristics of age, experience and education contribute to resilience. the resilience measure included elements of personal competence, trust in intuition, change and control appraisals, and spiritual influences. results demonstrated modest but statistically significant associations between age, years of experience and resilience. no relationship was found between education and resilience. multiple regression analysis revealed that only years of experience predicted resilience and explained only 3.1% of the variance. the authors acknowledge that resilience may be influenced and developed by other contextual factors, not measured in the study. in a sample of 464 west virginia nurses, larrabee et al. (2010) used a measure of stress resilience that included three interpretive styles, namely deficiency focusing (assigning self as cause for failures, overemphasizing barriers, and negatively influencing motivation), necessitating (caution and judgment of tasks as inflexible) and skill recognition (acknowledgment of one’s own competence). they found that high psychological empowerment was predicted by more years’ experience, and the three stress resiliency subscales. psychological empowerment and low job stress were found to predict greater job satisfaction. high job satisfaction was the strongest predictor of intent to stay. 3.3 specific resilient qualities found in nurses in a sample of 772 australia theatre nurses, gillespie, chaboyer, wallis, and grimbeek (2007) found highly significant associations between hope and resilience, self-efficacy and resilience, and control and resilience. moderately significant relationships were found between coping (problem-focused approaches) and resilience, and competence and resilience. while these results depict resilience as being found within the individual, the authors suggest that hopefulness may only be possible in a supportive work environment and the development of self-efficacy may be influenced by the work culture. in a sample of nine queensland nurses, cameron and brownie (2010) identified eight themes that impact their resilience: (1) experience, (2) amount of satisfaction attained, (3) positive attitude or a sense of faith, (4) making a difference, close intimate relationships and sharing experiences with residents, (5) using strategies such as debriefing, validating and self-reflection, (6) support from colleagues, resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 mentors and teams, (7) insight into their ability to recognise stressors and put strategies in place, and (8) maintaining work-life balance. 3.4 summary of coping and resilience in nurses the above studies indicate that nurses use a number of positive coping strategies including problem-focused coping, taking time out and giving and receiving support from co-workers. the results suggest that positive coping might not be enough to reduce the negative effects of stress, whereas maladaptive coping (suppression and denial) might significantly increase the negative effects of stress. in terms of resilience, there are a number of individual and contextual factors that contribute to levels of resilience in nurses. these include work-life balance, hope, control, support, professional identity and clinical supervision. what remains unknown is whether resilience can be strengthened in nurses. following a review of personal resilience in the nursing literature, jackson, firtko, and edenborough (2007) recommended that resilience can be strengthened in nurses through strategies and mentorship programmes. these programmes should aim to develop positive and nurturing professional relationships, and encourage positivity, emotional insight, life balance, spirituality and personal reflection. 4. social workers 4.1 coping the research on the positive effects of coping in social workers has found mixed results. in a study of 591 social workers practising in new york state, acker (2010) found that coping strategies, age, experience and perceptions of competence all play a part in managing stress levels. social workers in a managed care work environment who felt competent in mastering organisational and clinical demands did not rely on problem-focused coping; but those who struggled, relied on emotion-focused coping and used escape-avoidance behaviours. multiple regressions indicated that coping had the greatest influence on social workers’ psychological and somatic reactions associated with burnout and perceived competence. the results also indicated that demographic characteristics impacted on stress. older social workers with more job experience were at lower risk for burnout and non-white social workers had lower levels of burnout. coping with the effects of suicide and suicidal behaviour has also been found to be important in two studies of social workers. in a sample of 285 mental health social workers who experienced either fatal or nonfatal client suicidal behaviour, ting, jacobson, and sanders (2008) found that increased levels of secondary traumatic stress, the availability of family and friends, group therapy, religion, older age, and male gender were all predictors of positive coping. over one-third of the sample used some form of negative coping. furthermore, although clinical supervision and support from family and friends were readily available as sources of support, respondents did not indicate they were the most effective. instead, peer supervision was less readily available but more frequently reported as effective. ting et al. (2008) suggest that rather than availability, quality of supervision support may be more important. in regards to family and friend support, the authors suggest that professionals may not want to burden close others with the emotional pain related to their work or are constrained by confidentiality issues. in a sample of 515 social workers, sanders, jacobson, and ting (2008) utilised both qualitative and quantitative data collected from a national study on client suicide. over half the sample (55%) had experienced at least one client suicide attempt, 31% had resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 experienced a client suicide completion and 30% had experienced both. five themes were identified as important to include in professional training programmes, namely (1) coping with the personal and professional reactions that resulted from client suicidal behaviour, (2) the provision of information on suicide assessment, (3) how to debrief after a completed suicide and how to interact with the clients’ surviving family members and friends, (4) examination of the power and control that clients have when they are considering suicide and feelings of powerlessness the social worker may experience, and (5) provision of information about treatment and interventions for suicidal clients. of the themes, learning to cope with suicide was considered the most important. 4.2 specific resilient qualities found in social workers by asking social workers to define resilience, researchers have identified a number of resilient qualities specific to social work. in a sample of 73 michigan social workers, greifer (2005) used both quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify personal and organisational protective characteristics of resilient social workers. resilience was defined as job engagement (the opposite of burnout). high social support, perceived fairness and low workload were found to relate to high job engagement. qualitative findings reveal that resilient workers attributed their job engagement to a number of cognitive and behavioural individual factors and organisational factors such as problem-focused coping, relaxation coping, optimism, conscientiousness, internal locus of control, humour, spirituality, gender, age, maturity, and job-meaning, skill match and job variety. using two samples of new zealand social workers (self-defined resilient practitioners and supervisors of student social workers), beddoe, davys, and adamson (2011) explored social workers’ understanding of resilience in the face of workplace demands and stressors. resilience-maintaining themes included the importance of self-care, strong professional values, exposure to positive role models and realistic professional expectations, maintaining learning and professional identity, awareness of ‘the big picture’, and the vital role of on-going supervision and holding on to personal and professional goals. through qualitative analysis, graham and shier (2010) and shier and graham (2011a, 2011b) identified personal factors that positively influence levels of subjective wellbeing (swb), workplace swb and the impact of mindfulness on swb in social workers. the sample consisted of 13 (11 female) social work practitioners who had the highest level of swb from a 2006 canadian survey. three themes that influenced their overall swb (either positively or negatively) were identified, namely (1) personal behaviours (spirituality, establishing routines, participating in activities, and seeking help), (2) interpersonal relationships (the impact of spouses, children, extended family, and friends), and (3) a clear self-identity beyond work (relations to groups, culture, and personal identity). a further three themes that influenced workplace swb were identified. these were (1) the work environment (physical, cultural and systemic), (2) the types and characteristics of relationships at work (connection with clients, relationships with colleagues and interactions with supervisors), and (3) the nature of the job (workload, type of work, personal fit and meaningfulness of the work; shier & graham, 2011b). the participants also confirmed that mindfulness influenced their overall swb and indicated five aspects of their life where they needed to be mindful (shier & graham, 2011a). these were (1) reflecting on and developing a personal identity, (2) considering issues related to control and openness, (3) being internally and externally aware of oneself, (4) reflecting on important moments in one’s life, and (5) maintaining work-life balance. resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 4.3 summary of coping and resilience in social workers these results from social work studies suggest that a number of individual and contextual factors impact on social workers’ resilience. these include age, gender, work-life balance, personal and professional identity and quality of supervision support. however, what remains uncertain is whether these factors can be changed and resilience in social workers increased. following a review of the literature, carson, king, and papatraianou (2011) suggested that the ability to be resilient is linked to professional values and identity. collins’ research (2007, 2008) highlights the interaction of structural, organisational and individual differences in resilience. he recommends that education and training in resilience, the management of positive emotions and optimism might benefit both students and qualified social workers, enabling them to cope more readily with work-related demands. in addition, the provision of on-going professional development, peer support, sensitive supervision and rest and recreation activities may enhance coping strategies. 5. psychologists 5.1 coping coping, career-sustaining behaviours and self-care are all strategies psychologists undertake in response to stress. however, while coping can involve both positive and negative strategies, career-sustaining behaviours and self-care generally refer to positive strategies only. two studies were identified that considered coping in psychologists. in a sample of 580 latino counselling and clinical psychologists, maldonado feliciano (2006) investigated the degree to which coping behaviours, social support, biculturalism (co-existence of two or more distinct cultures) and positive religious coping (prayer, faith, pastoral support) moderate the relationship between occupational stress and depressive affect. the results suggest that, overall, psychologists use more problem-focused coping strategies than emotional-focused coping strategies. frequently mentioned coping strategies included social support, planning and active problem solving, work support, recreational or disengagement activities, and sports and exercise. the least endorsed coping strategies were acceptance, humour, and personal counselling. when controlling for occupational stress levels, coping behaviours, work and nonwork social support, and biculturalism were found to negatively correlate with depressive affect. biculturalism was found to negatively correlate to occupational stress and depressive affect, and positively correlate to positive religious coping, importance of religion or spirituality, and degree of bicultural work environment, indicating biculturalism may contribute to resilience and merits further investigation. hannigan, edwards, and burnard (2004) systematically reviewed seven studies that focused on stressors, moderators and stress outcomes in uk psychologists. the review found that almost four out of ten uk clinical psychologists had worrying levels of distress and the results indicated that organisational and professional factors might inhibit psychologists’ ability to seek and obtain effective support for stress at work. for example, a fear of ‘‘becoming a client’’, or being seen to fail to manage work stressors, may inhibit practitioners’ seeking of support. coping following client suicide has also been investigated in psychologists. in a sample of 437 counselling and clinical psychologists, trimble, jackson, and harvey (2000) separated participants into three groups: (1) those who had a client commit suicide, (2) those whose clients had attempted but not succeeded in suicide, and (3) those for whom the most serious indicators were ideation or threats or gestures. of the psychologists who had experienced a resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 client suicide, 90% reported that they had coped with the situation by talking with colleagues, and nearly a third sought consultation with peers. other helpful strategies included recognising they were not responsible, accepting suicide as a possible outcome and talking with their supervisor. career-sustaining behaviours (csbs) and sources of satisfaction have recently been investigated in psychologists. in a sample of 286 illinois psychologists, stevanovic and rupert (2004) found that promoting growth in clients, helping others, satisfaction with professional autonomy, intellectual stimulation, and enjoyment of work were the most highly rated sources of satisfaction. gender differences were observed, with female respondents endorsing more sources of satisfaction. females also differed from males on three specific sources of satisfaction, namely intellectual stimulation, self-growth and flexible hours. the two top-rated csbs were spending time with spouse/partner/family and maintaining a balance between professional and personal lives. females reported using more csbs and were more likely than males to report using strategies that were relational, including spending time with friends, discussing work frustration with colleagues and participating in personal therapy. in a sample of 190 psychologists from pennsylvania, ganey (2005) found that those with high levels of csbs reported lower levels of burnout and emotional depletion than their low-csbs peers. in a survey of 595 american psychologists, rupert and kent (2007) found differences in satisfaction between those who worked in the private and those who worked in the public arenas. private practitioners had higher levels of personal accomplishment, more sources of satisfaction, and fewer sources of stress than those who worked in public settings. results, however, also indicated that private solo practitioners had less support than either private group practitioners or public respondents and greater over-involvement with clients than public respondents. a gender difference was also observed:, females in public settings experienced higher levels of emotional exhaustion than females in private settings, but this difference was not observed for males. unlike stevanovic and rupert, (2004) who asked only what csbs the psychologists utilised, rupert and kent (2007) also assessed csbs and their relationship to wellbeing. those rated as the most important to maintaining the psychologists’ wellbeing were both cognitive (maintaining a sense of humour, professional identity/values, and self-awareness/self-monitoring), and behaviourally focused (maintaining a balance between personal and professional lives, spending time with spouse or partner, engaging in hobbies). benler (2011) examined the effects of self-care and other contributing factors on rates of secondary traumatic stress among a sample of 175 american psychologists. high stress and more trauma work per week related to more negative symptoms. furthermore, clinicians who experienced personal trauma were also more likely to report negative symptoms. the self-care results indicated that regardless of trauma exposure psychologists who believed in and used leisure activities had higher job satisfaction and fewer negative symptoms, and psychologists who felt prepared for sessions with clients had fewer negative symptoms. a gender difference was also observed, with females being more likely than males to believe in and engage in self care activities. older participants were found to have higher levels of job satisfaction, but were less likely to think supervision was useful. using qualitative methods in a sample of 10 american female psychologists, martin (2010) identified seven themes that may impact on the wellbeing of those in the early stages of their career. these were: (1) challenges associated with the early-career phase, including insecurities about transition from trainee to professional and mixed messages from other professionals regarding the importance of self-care, (2) emotional self-care, including balancing professional resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 and personal life, reaching out for help when in distress, being supported, maintaining boundaries, and managing intense emotions, (3) physical self-care, including maintaining a physically active lifestyle and obtaining sufficient sleep, (4) self-care through ‚play,‛ including engaging in activities that foster creativity and travelling , (5) cognitive self-care, including undergoing psychotherapy, consulting with peers, and attending psychology conferences, (6) spiritual self-care, including participation in organised religion, and (7) recommendations to other early-career psychologists, including how to prioritise self-care, seek support from colleagues, and continue to learn. 5.2 specific resilient qualities found in psychologists two reviews were found that related specifically to psychologists’ wellbeing. the first focuses on individual practices and the second highlights the role professional culture plays in maintaining wellbeing in the psychology profession. following a review of stress and self-care practices, barnett et al. (2007) concluded that a focus on self-care is essential for the prevention of burnout and for maintaining psychological wellness. they recommend that psychologists attend to csbs (such as balancing personal and professional demands, taking regular breaks and having a balanced and healthy diet) and see them as essential to maintaining a wellfunctioning professional role. 5.3 summary of coping and resilience in psychologists the above studies indicate that psychologists rely on a number of factors to maintain resilience. these include age, gender, work-life balance, recreational activities (exercise, hobbies, vacations), personal and professional values and having a sense of purpose. what is not yet known is how to change these factors so that resilience in psychologists can be strengthened. barnett and cooper (2009) discuss self-care and the culture of psychology. they recommend that a culture that aims to emphasise efforts to maintain psychological wellness be created within the profession. to do this they suggest that positive self-care strategies such as personal psychotherapy are emphasised as an important element of on-going self-care. furthermore, such self-care activities should not be stigmatised, avoided or utilised only when one is unwell. they recommend that staff and experienced professionals act as role models for students and speak openly about their own struggles with maintaining a healthy work-life balance, about their own distress and how they address this distress, and the value of on-going self-care activities in their lives. 6. counsellors 6.1 coping like the research on psychologists, the research on counsellors has focused on coping careersustaining behaviours and self-care, with mixed results. in a sample of 414 north carolina school counsellors, stephan (2006) found that perceptions of the school environment (climate of support, role conflict, and role ambiguity) predicted emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. coping resources (self-efficacy, social support, and behavioural problemsolving) were not, however, found to play a significant role in the relationship between school environment and burnout. in a sample of 501 american counsellors, lawson (2007) found that four of the five csbs endorsed by counsellors were the same as those for psychologists namely, (1) spending time with partner/family, (2) maintaining balance between professional and personal lives, (3) selfresilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 awareness and a sense of control over work responsibilities and (4) maintaining a sense of humour. a number of support strategies highly endorsed by psychologists were strategies counsellors endorsed the least, including clinical supervision and peer support, discussing work frustrations with spouse/partner/family, participating in personal therapy, participating in peer support groups and discussing work frustrations with friends. surprisingly, the results indicated that counsellors who received more group supervision or more case consultation scored higher on burnout and vicarious traumatisation scales than those who received less. lawson (2007) hypothesises that these counsellors may be more aware of the stresses from their work and are therefore seeking more support. counsellors in this sample rated their own levels of wellness as higher than normal but rated the wellness of their colleagues significantly lower. lawson (2007) suggests that the sample may have consisted of a greater number of ‘well’ counsellors or that the counsellors surveyed were more likely to see stress, distress, and impairment in others than in themselves. in a sample of 506 american professional counsellors, lawson and myers (2011) found that the participants had higher positive professional quality-of-life factors (compassion satisfaction) and lower negative factors (compassion fatigue and burnout) than the norms. compared to the results from stephan (2006), counsellors who engage in more csbs were found to have higher professional quality of life scores. however, as in lawson (2007), they reported csbs that differed to those practised by psychologists (stevanovic & rupert, 2004). the top csbs shared by both counsellors and psychologists were spending time with partner/family, maintaining a sense of humour, maintaining balance between professional and personal lives, and having a sense of professional identity. the top csbs mentioned by counsellors only were maintaining self-awareness, reflecting on positive experiences, engaging in quiet leisure activities, and trying to maintain objectivity about clients. in comparison, psychologists rated using positive self-talk, taking regular vacations, participating in continuing education programmes, reading literature to keep up to date, turning to spiritual beliefs, and maintaining a sense of control over work responsibilities higher than the counsellors in this sample. similar to the findings of rupert and kent (2007), counsellors in school or community agency settings scored lower on professional wellness measures than those in private practice. using qualitative analysis, evans and payne (2008) explored support and self-care in a sample of six new zealand high school counsellors. six themes were identified, namely (1) self-care on the job (establishing a resilient mind-set for emotional demands, and recognising the ‘privilege’ of working with young people), (2) collegial support-schools (having someone else to empathise with, keep things in perspective, and wind down at the end of a difficult day), (3) collegial support-supervision, (4) the home-work interface (leaving the identity of ‘counsellor’ at the school gate and the positive contribution of professional training and experience on personal issues), (5) the influence of home on work life (the contribution of support from family and bringing personal lives into sessions to facilitate ‘connections’ with students), and (6) holistic self-care (maintaining balance and having a holistic regime that would both enrich personal lives and keep them prepared for school demands). gender differences were observed, with males speaking only minimally about holistic self-care. the results indicate that counsellors, like psychologists, engage in a wide range of behaviours that influence their wellbeing. what remains unknown from this research is the individual and contextual characteristics that enable counsellors to effectively engage in these behaviours. resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 6.2 specific resilient qualities found in counsellors two studies were identified that aimed to ascertain the characteristic associated with resilience in counsellors. this characteristic was self-compassion. this construct is relatively new to western thinking and involves the ability to understand one’s own suffering, experience feelings of caring, kindness non-judgment toward oneself, and recognise that struggles and triumphs are part of normal human experiences (neff, 2003). in a sample of 164 counsellors in america, ringenbach (2009) found that when controlling for burnout, self-compassion was significantly, negatively, associated with compassion fatigue and, when controlling for compassion fatigue, self-compassion had a significant, positive, relationship with compassion satisfaction and a significant, negative, relationship with burnout. furthermore, those who reported practising on-going meditation had statistically higher scores of compassion satisfaction. patsiopoulos and buchanan (2011) used qualitative analysis to investigate how 15 canadian counsellors practise self-compassion. three main themes were identified namely, (1) counsellors’ stance in a session, including acceptance, not knowing, attending compassionately to inner dialogue, mindfulness of present experience, and being genuine, (2) workplace relational ways of being, such as participating on a compassionate and caring work team, and speaking the truth to self and others, and (3) finding a balance through self-care strategies. participants also reported a number of benefits in relation to the practice of self-compassion, including an improved overall sense of wellbeing, job satisfaction, creativity, balance, openness, ‘groundedness’ and a deepened existential and/or spiritual sense of connectedness. additionally, self-compassion was reported to positively impact on the participant’s ability to work effectively with clients by helping them lower unrealistic self-expectations, develop more effective boundaries, find balance between client needs and counsellor need, self-correct when necessary and engage in more proactive, preventative self-care. 6.3 summary of coping and resilience in counsellors these results suggest that self-compassion may play a part in enhancing wellbeing in counsellors. they further suggest that the construct, whilst individual, may also impact on contextual factors such as perceptions of and involvement in teams and ability to work effectively and maintain boundaries with clients. several reviews highlight the importance of individual and contextual factors in maintaining wellbeing. cummins, massey, and jones (2007) found that in addition to personal factors, a supportive work environment that encourages regular self-care activities and offers manageable caseloads of clients dealing with trauma is critical in promoting wellness. furthermore, young and lambie (2007) suggest organisations have a responsibility to maintain counsellor wellness and they make two recommendations. organisations should promote healthy lifestyles by strategies such as subsidising gym memberships, paying for health risk assessments, improving food at work, allowing employees to take exercise breaks, and utilising time in group supervision to discuss stress management. they also suggest that organisations should directly reduce job stress through strategies such as reducing paperwork, allowing committees to deal with policy issues within financial parameters, to increase the counsellors’ sense of control and to improve interpersonal relationships and teamwork. 7. doctors of the health disciplines found, studies of medical practitioners were the least available. resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 7.1 coping four studies were identified that investigated coping and wellness-promotion strategies among doctors. in a sample of 188 uk hospital doctors, moores, castle, shaw, stockton, and bennett (2007) investigated the reactions experienced and coping strategies employed following a recent memorable patient death. sadness was reported in moderate to severe intensity by 43% of doctors and between 5% and 17% of doctors also reported fatigue, problems in sleeping, changes in appetite, anger and relief. no gender differences were observed except that female doctors were more likely to have cried. the results indicated that 83% of respondents coped by talking with others, having time alone and socialising. least-endorsed strategies were exercise and finding comfort in religious beliefs. fothergill, edwards, and burnard (2004) conducted a systematic review of 23 international studies on stress and stress management within the profession of psychiatry. they found that psychiatrists report high levels of personal and professional stressors. in particular, patient suicide was found to be a significant source of personal stress and an occupational hazard. despite the high levels of distress reported, psychiatrists were found to have high levels of job satisfaction. being valued, variety of tasks and having support in their role all contributed to high job satisfaction. coping strategies that psychiatrists used include relaxation training, organisational problem solving, staff support groups, confidential counselling and staff sensitivity sessions. through a qualitative online survey of 30 american physicians practising hospice and palliative medicine, swetz, harrington, matsuyama, shanafelt, and lyckholm (2009) found exercise and physical wellbeing, nurturing professional relationships, discussing feelings and valuing relationships with others to be the most common wellness-promoting strategies reported. several of the commonly reported strategies included coping within and improving the work environment; namely, ensuring clinical variety, making time within the day for oneself and engaging in meditation, personal reflection and reflection with others. in a sample of 161 canadian physicians, bergman, ahmad, and stewart (2003) found that females utilised different strategies than those favoured by males. female physicians reported more social support when stressed than males did. less-satisfied stressed female physicians had less support from work colleagues while less-satisfied stressed males reported less support from family or friends. furthermore, the results indicated that, for females, 70% of the variance in physical symptoms was explained by workload and support from work colleagues; whereas, for males, healthy life style, mental health, support from work colleagues and workload were significant predictors, and explained 42% of the variance. 7.2 specific resilient qualities found in doctors only one study was found that aimed to identify resilient qualities in doctors. through qualitative and quantitative analysis, wallace and lemaire (2007) identify positive and negative factors associated with physician wellbeing in canada. the authors first interviewed a sample of physicians to identify key factors. based on the themes raised by interview participants the authors designed a questionnaire and surveyed 182 physicians and residents. the results indicated that the strongest relationship to high physician wellbeing was positive patient interactions, which buffered the negative relationship between high emotional demands and wellbeing. support from co-workers and spouse, feeling one has a positive influence through one’s work and not feeling overwhelmed by one’s work were also positively related to wellbeing. the results indicate that individual and contextual characteristics may influence a doctor’s ability to maintain wellbeing in the face of stress. however, further research into this resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 area is required. moreover, as no intervention studies were identified it remains unknown as to whether these characteristics can be increased in doctors. shapiro, astin, shapiro, robitshek, and shapiro (2011) present an individualistic model for identifying strategies physicians employ to gain and regain a sense of control when caring for patients. the model had four modes of control. positive assertive and positive yielding represent the positive modes of control, while negative assertive and negative yielding represent the negative modes of control. shapiro et al. (2011) suggest that interventions that aim to increase self-awareness and reflective capacity and being mindful of emotion regulation might enable physicians to cope better with loss of control. through self-awareness, physicians might learn to recognise their responses; and they might learn to interrupt negative behaviours and reactions through mindfulness emotion regulation. they might then recognise situations where they are attempting to regain a sense of control and, instead, engage in more positive responses, such as assertion and letting go. this model does not consider the impact of organisational factors on the physician’s ability to cope with low control. chittenden and ritchie (2011), however, include both individual and contextual factors in recommendations for improving physician work-life balance and subsequent wellbeing. they suggest that to achieve work-life balance physicians should maximise job-fit by finding work that is flexible, consciously slow down, cultivate mindfulness, make personal and professional values and goals explicit, take care of physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, learn to ask for and accept help, and identify sources of emotional and practical support. 7.3 summary of coping and resilience in doctors as with research from other health disciplines, the research on doctors’ coping is limited. however, the results indicate that doctors engage in a range of individual and relational coping strategies when faced with stress. coping in response to client/patient death has been investigated in social workers, psychologists, physicians and psychiatrists, suggesting that this is an area of significant stress and warrants further investigation. the results of studies investigating resilience among doctors suggest that individual and contextual factors may influence wellbeing in the face of stress. given that no intervention studies were identified it is not clear whether resilience can be increased in doctors. 8. combinations of health disciplines very little research has been conducted on more than one health discipline and no research was identified that combined all the health disciplines considered in this review. 8.1 coping two studies were identified that investigated coping in response to work-related stress in more than one health profession. while the results of the following studies demonstrate differences in coping between professions, a number of similarities are also found. in a sample of 168 social workers and 155 nurses, gellis (2002) found differences between nurses and social workers on perceived job stress, job satisfaction and coping methods. nurses who relied mainly on avoidance strategies reported higher job stress than social workers. in comparison, social workers reported greater use of positive coping strategies compared to nurses. however, for both nurses and social workers high problem-reappraisal coping contributed to higher levels of job satisfaction. resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 a qualitative study by courvoisier, agoritsas, perneger, schmidt, and cullati (2011) aimed to explore feelings and coping strategies associated with regretted clinical decisions or interventions of 12 hospital-based physicians and 13 nurses. all participants reported at least one intense regret that led to feelings of guilt, anger, sadness, shame, helplessness, and a feeling of unfairness/injustice and occasionally to sleep problems, or sickness leave. furthermore, an accumulation of small and large regrets occasionally resulted in quitting one’s unit or moving to another specialty. several ways of coping with regrets were reported by both physicians and nurses. these included (1) cognitive strategies (rumination, suppression, acceptance, and selfattacking), (2) action-oriented strategies (trying to take responsibility, becoming more vigilant and repeating check-up procedures more often, and creating guidelines to avoid similar future incidents), and (3) social strategies (from colleagues or relatives). differences were found between physicians’ and nurses’ use of colleague social support. due to a fear of losing credibility, physicians seemed to avoid sharing regrets with colleagues in their ward or service and instead turned to colleagues from other services. in contrast, nurses sought support from colleagues in the same service as themselves. 8.2 resilience and hardiness ben-zur and michael (2007) compared hardiness, coping strategies, social resources, and burnout between 249 social workers, psychologists and nurses. results showed no differences between the three professions on all psychological measures, except depersonalisation, which was significantly lower for psychologists than for nurses or social workers. as in the research on hardiness in nurses (garrosa et al., 2010), these results indicated that challenge and control appraisals (not commitment) were negatively related with exhaustion, depersonalisation and emotion-focused coping and positively associated with accomplishment. importantly, these associations remained when other variables were taken into account. further analysis indicated that emotion-focused coping may moderate the association between challenge and control appraisals and depersonalisation; indicating that a combination of low maladaptive emotionfocused coping and high challenge/control appraisals is related to reduced depersonalisation for social workers, psychologists and nurses. this study indicates that there are strong similarities in resilience between the social work, psychology and nursing professions. it also suggests possible resilient pathways that involve challenge and control appraisals, emotionalcoping and social resources. furthermore, the results suggested that challenge and control appraisals were more effective at reducing the negative outcomes of stress than was problemfocused coping. the only article that addressed recommendations to increase resilience in health professionals was a review of the resilience literature by mcallister and mckinnon (2009). they confirm that resilience in the health professions involves a combination of individual and contextual factors. they make three recommendations for building resilience in health professionals: (1) that the concept of resilience is introduced in all training programmes (including education on ways to strengthen one’s own resilience, such as building a positive identity and increasing social support, coping skills and spiritual connection), (2) practitioners are given opportunities to reflect and learn from experience and other practitioners (exposure to role models who can share their experiences of being resilient and thriving in health workplaces), and (3) experienced health professionals demonstrate altruism, set good examples and share lessons from experiences, mentoring, leading, coaching and motivating others, so that a generative heath professional culture is developed. resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 9. summary of the literature on resilience in health disciplines the results of this literature are illustrated in the tables below. tables 1 and 2 (below) indicate that only gender (more specifically, being female) and maintaining a work-life balance have been found to consistently relate to resilience across all five of the disciplines. there were a further four factors that related to resilience in four of the five disciplines. these were: laughter/humour (which was inconsistent for psychologists and has not been investigated in doctors), self-reflection/insight (but this has not been investigated in social workers), beliefs/spirituality (which was inconsistent for psychologists and has not been investigated in counsellors), and professional identity (but this has not been investigated in doctors). differences have been found between psychologists and counsellors and between doctors and nurses however, due to different factors being measured between studies, conclusive differences cannot yet be identified. in addition, a large number of individual and contextual factors have been investigated in only one discipline. these have been presented in tables 3 and 4 (below). 10. questions arising from the literature review this review highlights a number of questions about resilience in the health profession. firstly the inconsistencies found between the studies regarding how they define and measure resilience has resulted in difficulty comparing health disciplines. furthermore, it is difficult to generalise the results to speech-language therapists, audiologists and optometrists given that no articles were found that relate to these disciplines. further questions include: do cultural factors influence resilience in health professionals? do factors such as self-compassion differ between professions? what types of relationships enable support to be accessed and used effectively? how can we match individuals with clinical supervisors so that a quality resilience-fostering relationship can be developed? are there differences in the quality of professional relationships between disciplines? what types of environments and groups nurture resilience? how does indoctrination into, and the culture of, a chosen health profession influence an individual’s ability to deal with stress and adversity? before further research is conducted it is necessary to develop a clear definition of resilience within the health profession. the results of this review suggest that resilience involves the interactions of individual and contextual factors. these individual factors include demographic characteristics (age, gender, experience), personal characteristics (having a work-life balance, laughter, relaxation) and professional characteristics (continuing education, professional identity), and the contextual factors include partner or family support, clinical supervision and culture of the discipline. it is this interaction that enables the maintenance of personal and professional wellbeing in the face of on-going work stress and adversity. future research would benefit from the development of a measure that captures all of these elements and processes of resilience. this would enable the identification of resilience in the health profession and foster the development of effective interventions. resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 table 1: factors within an individual that relate to resilience (identified for each discipline) factors nurses social workers psychologists counsellors doctors demographic age gender experience income x x x x x x x x x x x x behavioural (personal) quiet leisure activities laughter/humour work-life balance relaxation meditation exercise vacations help seeking x x x o x x x ± x o ± x x x x x x x x o x x x x x behavioural (professional) continuing education keeping up with literature problem/active coping ± x ± x x ± o o cognitive (personal) personal-identity self-awareness self-reflection/insight self-efficacy mindfulness positive selftalk/attitude positive reflection hope/optimism beliefs/spirituality x x x x x x x x x x x x o ± x x x o o x o x x x cognitive (professional) professional identity professional values objectivity commitment challenge control x ± ± x x x o x x x o o x x x x x o x x = support that this factor relates to resilience; x = strong support that this factor relates to resilience; ± = contradicting findings regarding this factor’s relationship to resilience; x = has been recommended; o = not highly endorsed/lack of evidence; = has not been researched/mentioned resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 table 2: contextual factors that relate to resilience (identified for each discipline) factors nurses social workers psychologists counsellors doctors relational (personal) partner support family support friend support therapy/counselling x x x x x x x ± ± ± o o x x relational (professional) validation/valued colleague support mentors/role models client connection client severity/suicidality making a difference clinical supervision peer supervision x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x o o ± x x x x x environmental low workload job variety skill match private practice culture x x x x x x x x x x x x = support for this factor has been found; x = strong support that the factor relates to resilience; ± = contradicting findings regarding the factors relationship to resilience; x = has been recommended; o = not highly endorsed/lack of evidence; = has not been researched/mentioned table 3: contextual factors relating to resilience investigated in only one discipline factors discipline team support nurses organisational support nurses debriefing nurses perceived fairness social workers job meaning social workers work setting/layout social workers helping others psychologists promoting growth in clients psychologists biculturalism psychologists intellectual stimulation psychologists recognising the privilege of the work counsellors using personal disclosure with clients counsellors organisational problem solving doctors resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 table 4: individual factors relating to resilience investigated in only one discipline factors discipline competence nurses positive reappraisal nurses creativity nurses empowerment nurses interpretive styles nurses sense of accomplishment nurses ethnicity social workers routine social workers conscientiousness social workers positive emotions social workers realistic expectations social workers recreational activities psychologists hobbies psychologists preparing for sessions psychologists personal values psychologists self-growth psychologists autonomy psychologists sense of purpose psychologists self-compassion counsellors time alone doctors assertiveness doctors letting go of need for control doctors authors clare m. mccann university of auckland c.mccann@auckland.ac.nz elizabeth beddoe university of auckland katie mccormick university of auckland peter huggard university of auckland sally kedge university of auckland carole adamson university of auckland jayne huggard mercy hospice auckland resilience in the health professions mccann, beddoe. mccormic, huggard, kedge, adamson, & huggard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 publishing timeline received 30 july 2012 accepted 26 august 2012 published 7 march 2013 references ablett, j. r. & jones, r. s. p. 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(2007). wellness in school and mental health systems: organizational influences. journal of humanistic counseling, education and development, 46, 98-113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1939.2007.tb00028.x zander, m., hutton, a., & king, l. (2010). coping and resilience factors in pediatric oncology nurses. journal of pediatric oncology nursing, 27(2), 94-108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1043454209350154 geeves, a., jones, s., davidson, j. w., & sutton, j. (2020). between the crowd and the band: performance experience, creative practice, and wellbeing for professional touring musicians. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 5-26. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1509 john sutton macquarie university john.sutton@mq.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 article between the crowd and the band: performance experience, creative practice, and wellbeing for professional touring musicians andrew geeves · samuel jones · jane w. davidson · john sutton abstract: in some musical genres, professional performers play live shows many times a week. arduous touring schedules bring encounters with wildly diverse audiences across many different performance ecologies. we investigate the kinds of creativity involved in such repeated live performance, kinds of creativity that are quite unlike songwriting and recording, and examine the central factors that influence musicians’ wellbeing over the course of a tour. the perspective of the professional musician has been underrepresented in research on relations between music and wellbeing, with little attention given to the experience of touring. in this case study, we investigate influences on positive and negative performance experiences for the four professional musicians of australian pop/rock band cloud control. geeves conducted intensive cognitive ethnographic fieldwork with cloud control members over a two-week national australian tour for their second album, dream cave (2013). adapting a grounded theory approach to data analysis, we found the level of wellbeing musicians reported and displayed on tour to be intimately linked to their creative performance experiences through the two emergent, overarching and interdependent themes of performance headspace (ph) and connection with audience (ca). we explore these themes in detail and provide examples to demonstrate how ph and ca can feed off each other in virtuous ways that positively shape musicians’ wellbeing, or loop in vicious ways that negatively shape musicians’ wellbeing. we argue that their creative practice, in thus re-enacting musical performance afresh in each venue’s distinctive setting, emerges within unique constraints each night, and is in a sense a co-creation of the crowd and the band. keywords: music performance, phenomenology, professional musician, cognitive ethnography, creative practice. wellbeing and creativity in professional musicians the tivoli, a fine old theatre and music venue in brisbane’s fortitude valley, is packed with 700 fans for a tour-opening gig by the alternative pop/rock band cloud control, who are back home on the road in australia to promote their second album, dream cave (2013). on this friday night in august 2013, as local music reviewers later write, cloud control send this audience “daft”, “into spasms”, producing “a truly electric atmosphere”. crowd responses include “delight”, “general awe”, and “a resounding singalong” in a set “nicely balanced between old and new tracks”: the new album’s “woozy psychedelia sounds great” as the gig showcases “the blissed out crooning we have come to love them for”1. videos shot by geeves as part of our ethnographic project confirm such powerful, varying, and pleasure-ridden interactions between band and 1 quotations are from reviews by paul mcbridge (https://paulmcbride.me/2013/08/26/live-review-cloud-control-palms-gang-ofyouths-the-tivoli-brisbane-23813/) and grace wilson (https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/cloud-control-3/). about:blank https://paulmcbride.me/2013/08/26/live-review-cloud-control-palms-gang-of-youths-the-tivoli-brisbane-23813/ https://paulmcbride.me/2013/08/26/live-review-cloud-control-palms-gang-of-youths-the-tivoli-brisbane-23813/ https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/cloud-control-3/ musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 crowd over this entire gig, and show audience members actively joining in, clearly loving the songs in full-bodied engagement, raised arms swaying along with the music in mass synchrony. the four musicians’ post-gig conversation backstage, recorded by geeves and discussed in more detail below, reveals their evident pleasure in this performance experience. the band members had an initial sense that “the first few songs were quite powerful”, and later felt that they were “feeding off the energy of the crowd”. so, they say, “we owned it”, “it went really well”, it was “the best sound ever”; they felt “really good and excited about the whole show”, thrilled at “the kind of level of connection and engagement” they experienced from the audience. the four musicians express and demonstrate high levels of wellbeing in and after this performance. unfortunately, delighted audiences and musicians with demonstrably high levels of happiness and pleasure are not inevitable in live performance, as we show below in contrasting this brisbane gig with the band’s second show of the same tour, the following night. in this paper, we investigate the components of, and influences on, professional musicians’ positive and negative performance experiences. we examine links between wellbeing and creative performance by asking how musicians construct, maintain, and regulate their (individual and collective) wellbeing over the course of single live shows and the extended timescale of a full and arduous tour. overview of methods and central concepts this introductory section provides an overview of the central concepts and frameworks animating our project. we briefly survey general research trends on wellbeing in music, identify key components and topics in need of further study, and characterize musical creativity within a broadly ecological approach. for current purposes, we understand both wellbeing and creativity in broad and pluralist ways. these are not concepts deployed by the musicians themselves. to analyze wellbeing and creativity, understanding these concepts broadly in the context of professional touring musicians’ experience, we introduce two overarching and interdependent themes that emerged from the analysis of our case-study data. the cognitive ethnographic methods we deploy, in conjunction with an approach to data analysis inspired by grounded theory (strauss & corbin, 1998), catch complex features operating together in the musicians’ own (individual and shared) experiences of live performance. this bottom-up approach identified the themes of performance headspace (ph) and connection with audience (ca). the musicians’ concept of ph relates to the ways their internal psychological landscapes shape, and are shaped by, performance, while ca concerns the dynamics of the musician-audience relationship. we home in on the sophisticated yet fragile strategies musicians develop for emotion-regulation and for constructing and maintaining what they regard as an optimal (or at least adequate) ph. we examine the dynamic, looping, iterative relations between this ph and musicians’ experiences of ca at each gig and across a full tour. these experiences are set within a broader distributed ecology of performance and underlie the musicians’ fluctuating levels of wellbeing. our cognitive ethnographic methods, we suggest, afford fruitful ways to tap and make sense of these diverse and variable components of musicians’ experience. wellbeing and music performance wellbeing is difficult to define. empirical studies taking wellbeing as their focus began to be conducted in the early 20th century (for a brief history of the empirical study of wellbeing, see diener, lucas & oishi, 2002). historically, definitions of wellbeing have fallen within two traditions: hedonic and eudaimonic (deci & ryan, 2008; ryan, huta, & deci, 2013). the hedonic musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 tradition has prioritized outcomes, defining wellbeing as experiences of happiness and pleasure generated when positive emotions outweigh negative emotions (diener, eunkook, lucas, & smith, 1999; kahneman, diener, & schwarz, 1999). the eudaimonic tradition, in contrast, has prioritized process, expanding the definition of wellbeing to encompass broader, global judgments around satisfaction, meaning and engagement in relation to life (seligman, 2002). contemporary researchers in the field describe the ongoing difficulties involved in reaching a consensus definition of wellbeing (clift & hancox, 2010; groarke & hogan, 2016; lamont, 2012). for the purposes of this article, we define wellbeing specifically and understand it broadly. specifically, wellbeing is defined as “a person’s cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life [that] include emotional reactions to events as well as cognitive judgments of satisfaction and fulfilment” (diener, et al., 2002, p. 63). this definition of wellbeing synthesizes the definitional strengths of the hedonic and eudaimonic traditions, with equal importance accorded to both the outcome and process components of wellbeing. to implement or operationalize this definition, we understand wellbeing to involve a balanced combination of physical, mental, emotional, and social health. such a pluralist and contextual approach to wellbeing (mitchell & alexandrova, 2020; alexandrova, 2017, 2012; wren-lewis & alexandrova forthcoming) is apt for application to the complex real-world setting of a working band’s daily life. while akin to denora’s social ecology (denora, 2013), this approach more firmly integrates cognitive processes and strategies as well as affective and environmental factors in addressing professional musicians’ experiences of performance, creativity and wellbeing. in the extensive body of research on relations between wellbeing and music, the primary foci have been music’s direct effects on physiology (kreutz, murcia, & bongard 2012), and music listening (davidson & krause 2018; västfjäll, juslin, & hartig 2012). listening to music often operates in service of the self-regulation of affect to increase the frequency and intensity of positive affect, or buffer against negative affect (laukka, 2007). joel krueger and colleagues develop a rich account of music as affective scaffolding, whereby music listening can afford access to novel or otherwise-inaccessible emotional experiences (krueger, 2014, 2019). interacting with music as a worldly, material resource within complex distributed ecologies is a central case of a broader human tendency to actively delegate the task of regulating certain features of our emotions to technological and environmental resources (colombetti & krueger, 2015), actively integrating music into our emotional lives at a range of timescales (krueger & szanto, 2016). krueger and others in these research traditions do, in principle, extend these ideas to musical performance, as well as to music listening. but fewer studies directly address wellbeing and music making. singing together in community choirs has been found to promote wellbeing on a range of dimensions (lee, davidson, & krause, 2016). while the scope and mechanisms of these effects are not well understood (clift & hancox, 2010; gick, 2011), the establishment and consolidation of social relationships in choral singing appears to play a central role (livesey, morrison, clift, & camic, 2012). music students have also been studied in relation to anxiety and health (araújo et al, 2017; osborne, greene, & immel, 2014). it has proved challenging to examine wellbeing in professional musicians (macdonald, 2013; davidson & krause, 2018), but some research suggests compromised levels of wellbeing related to stress, pain, and the intense demands of professional music making (kenny & ackermann, 2016; ascenso, williamon, & perkins, 2017). again, there are open questions concerning the significance of shared experiences and social connections of various kinds in maintaining the wellbeing of professional musicians. in a study of emotion and engagement in strong music performance experiences, for example, lamont found few “entirely solitary experiences”, such that strong experiences “were more typically shared with others (generating social meaning)” (2012, p. 588). emotion regulation is musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 strongly influenced by communication in a musical relationship (swaine, 2014). so, just as professional musicians’ relationship with their instrument is one candidate index for wellbeing (simoens & tervaniemi, 2013), social relations at different timescales among musical peer groups, and between musicians and their audiences, may influence the ways in which they experience emotions around performance, with consequent effects on their wellbeing. one prior study examined variability in professional musicians’ experiences of forging “connection” with an audience, in relation to preand post-performance routines, and the differing ways professional musicians assess and evaluate attentiveness and attunement to an audience (geeves, mcilwain, & sutton, 2016). in this body of work relevant to wellbeing among professional musicians, the bulk of research has focussed on classical or jazz genres; and, typically, either on isolated moments of strong experience, or on larger-scale concerns about careers or health. to date there has been less scientific attention to wellbeing among pop or rock musicians, despite evident fascination with this topic in music journalism and the broader culture. due no doubt to the practical challenges of access and immersive on-site research, very little research has addressed the daily grind and the ups and downs of touring and performing as a professional band. the current project aims to make an initial contribution on these fronts. in certain respects, our contribution to wellbeing research is intended to be modest. within our immersive case study, we do not argue that the performanceand audience-related factors singled out in our data exhaust the nature and components of musicians’ wellbeing. of course, as for professionals across domains, other events and concerns influence the musicians’ (individual and group) wellbeing. the musicians’ personal lives, for example, are not the topic of our study (though of course events in their personal lives, as well as the musicians' ways of coping with them, do in turn contribute to their headspace and wellbeing, and thus influence performances). we are not suggesting that musicians' overall wellbeing depends only on the looping connectionand audience-related ph on which our analysis below focuses. that said, we believe that our immersive cognitive ethnographic method, explained in detail in the method section below, can effectively tap the heterogeneous array of ecological factors grounding wellbeing and creativity in performance. it allows us to identify and explore in rich detail musicians’ emotion regulation strategies, experiences of pleasure, conflict, or frustration, and their shifting forms of engagement with each other and their audiences. creativity in live performance on tour in our case study, we treat a pop/rock band as an exemplar of a small group (for distinctive accounts of the strengths of case study research as the systematic production of exemplars for the social sciences see flyvberg, 2016, 2011; fine, 2012). as such, appropriate frameworks for understanding the processes and dynamics of its ongoing creative operation include studies in collaborative cognition, joint action, and social ontology (sawyer, 2006; larson, 2010; preston, 2012; tollefsen, dale, & paxton, 2013; walton et al, 2018; pearlman, mackay, & sutton, 2018). professional musicians working in this kind of band context have honed, extended, and celebrated their collaborative embodied skill over a range of timescales. they are engaged, firstly, in expert joint actions at a technical and creative level, in terms of their unique forms of skill development, songwriting, and performance. down to the microscales of finding the best recording in the studio, keeping time on stage, and adapting flexibly to unexpected disruptions, they have come to be able skilfully to align their actions and reactions both technically and aesthetically, and (at least when all is going well) with the appearance of effortless ease. further, as a band with a history, a growing and increasingly international following, and a range of musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 ambitions and hopes, they are also engaged in explicit, intentional, longer-term, goal-driven projects or endeavors, such as returning to australia to promote their sophomore album after two years living and recording in london (compare williamson & sutton, 2014 on the integration of interpersonal alignment in joint action with temporally-extended forms of deliberate collaboration). a band is composed of unique individuals with distinctive skills, histories, capacities, and psychological profiles. music brings this heterogeneity into the spotlight perhaps more clearly than for other cases of highly interactive teamwork (compare sutton & tribble, 2014): lead guitarist, bass player, drummer, and keyboard player bring very different capacities to their shared projects. the band members nonetheless have a very specific shared history, as well as complex social and interactive roles and practices, at every level from the transactive division of organisational labor in administrative and logistical decision-making to the flow of banter and in-group chatter that might fill nervous moments before a big gig. but creative processes in the context of touring musical performance differ substantially from creativity in songwriting or recording. likewise, the creative practice of a pop/rock band touring to support a recent-release album may have little in common with that of musicians in other genres. for example, while (as we show below) the band members flexibly adapted aspects of their performance—such as repertoire, set-list, and style—to fit the venue, audience, and context, improvisation within the performance of specific songs was less important than it is in some live jazz contexts. in these respects, excellent recent research on distributed creativity in music (clarke & doffman, 2017; bishop 2018; van der schyff et al, 2018; wheeler, 2018; schiavio, moran, van der schyff, biasutti, & parncutt, 2020), within the broadly distributed or ecological 4e approach (newen, de bruin, & gallagher, 2018), has not yet sufficiently addressed live performance. in our conclusion below, we build on the fieldwork data to consider creativity in music performance more specifically. we suggest a novel account of creativity in live performance on tour in light of the notion of a “cognitive ecology”, which “points to the web of mutual dependence among the elements of an ecosystem” (hutchins 2010, p. 706) within which the experiences, emotional states, and cognitive processes of individual musicians and the band as a whole are embedded. as experienced live performers with both longstanding and recent heavy touring schedules, the musicians are well aware that the success of each gig rests on a diverse array of factors. some factors, such as the nature of the venues and the quality of the acoustics, are outside their control, or at least more challenging to influence at short notice. other key factors involve their individual and shared experience, on emotional, interpersonal, technical, and aesthetic dimensions (as we discuss in detail below). the performers know that creative and powerful performances are scaffolded in complex social, institutional, technological, material environments, and are thus vulnerable to disruption in many ways. as we will demonstrate, these professional musicians develop rich, reflective individual and shared routines and strategies to help regulate their emotions, find and protect their optimal performance “headspace”, set any technical or practical concerns aside for the duration of the gig, and engage freely with audiences in the moment. these are distinctive performative dimensions of creative practice. they are anchored in embodied, affective, and interpersonal skills that the musicians have developed and honed—individually and together—over their careers and their shared history of performance. in many respects they are independent of the collaborative technical and aesthetic forms of creativity operative in their songwriting and recording practice. when on tour, the technical aspects of music performance are not, ideally, at the forefront of the musicians’ minds. though they care deeply about the quality and reception of their songs, in their experience on stage, as we will see, the music matters musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 less in the moment than broader expressive, aesthetic, and performative factors (compare chaffin & imreh, 2002; chaffin, imreh, & crawford, 2005). while the musicians do not want to overthink the challenges of effective live performance, they want to be able to think on their feet. the current study is motivated by a wish to observe closely the dynamic components of professional touring musicians’ wellbeing over time in the challenging circumstances of a series of live performances. the opportunity to embed a researcher in the band’s close circle afforded us a rare chance to trace and assess the heterogeneous and changing factors which constitute and shape the performers’ experience as individuals and in the context of their rich shared history as a successful band. as in ethnographic work on theatre actors, we discuss strategies the performers have developed to gauge an audience, and to monitor the flow of audience reactions over the course of a single gig (filmer, 2008, p. 160). in particular, we follow up on suggestions, sketched above in our review of relevant literature on wellbeing and music performance, that perceived “connection” with the audience plays a significant and variable role in sculpting what the musicians repeatedly called their headspace over the course of each gig and the tour as a whole. method participants our research participants were the four musicians (3 male, 1 female; age range 27-30) who comprised australian band cloud control: al wright (lead guitar, lead vocals), heidi lenffer (keyboard, vocals), jeremy kelshaw (bass guitar, backing vocals) and ulrich lenffer (drums, backing vocals). macquarie university ethics committee approved this research project, and all participants consented to taking part and being fully identified in this research. we use the terms performers, participants, and musicians interchangeably in this article to refer to cloud control members. our study focuses solely on the experience of the music performer. although cloud control members sometimes mentioned audience interaction in their accounts of performance experience, audience members were not approached for consent to take part in this study and are not treated here as participants in this research. cloud control members and geeves knew each other from growing up in neighboring suburbs in the blue mountains area, one hour west of sydney, australia. heidi and ulrich were raised in the same family, sharing a sibling relationship. jeremy and al had previously participated in research conducted by geeves. with the exception of al, who started learning guitar in late adolescence, participants each had over 15 years’ experience playing their primary instrument. the opportunity for geeves to conduct fieldwork research with cloud control on a national tour led to the inception of this research. when this research was conducted, cloud control’s four members had accumulated almost a decade of professional experience and successes performing together. a sketch of cloud control’s history provides further context. forming in 2004-2005 and winning the sydney university band competition in 2006, cloud control released their first recording, a self-titled ep, in 2008. cloud control’s radio airplay and live performance opportunities steadily increased over the next couple of years, consolidating the band’s presence in the sydney music scene. with their 2010 debut album, bliss release, cloud control experienced a surge in popularity and australian media interest and their reach expanded to a national audience. bliss release reached #20 on the australian music charts and saw cloud control win two jägermeister independent music awards (best independent album, breakthrough independent artist), two sydney music, arts & culture (smac) awards (best live musical act, record of the year), and the 2010 australian music prize. additionally, the band were nominated musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 for two australian recording industry association music awards (arias; best rock album and best breakthrough artist) and the triple j 2010 j award, produced two national australian tours and played as the support act for high-profile international bands supergrass and foo fighters on their australian tours. in 2011, following the success of bliss release, cloud control signed to record and management labels in the uk and relocated to london for the launch of bliss release to the uk market. over the next couple of years, the band interspersed working on a second album, which would come to be titled dream cave, with extensive touring throughout the uk and europe to continue to promote bliss release. dream cave was released in august 2013. the accompanying national promotional tour for this album was the focus of our research. design we used a case study research design inspired by grounded theory (glaser & strauss, 1967; strauss & corbin, 1998). grounded theory emphasizes bottom-up theory-building derived from strict adherence to data, and is useful when close examination of experience is sought and there is a paucity of existing theory on a topic (henwood & pidgeon, 2003). geeves conducted exploratory, ethnographic, short-term, intensive, qualitative fieldwork with cloud control. we did not design our research to provide an exhaustive account of factors that influence and overdetermine performer wellbeing, but aimed to stick closely to participants’ experience over the course of our research, following participants’ leads and tracking the particular factors that they identified as contributing to their wellbeing in these moments, at these times, and on this tour. like høffding’s semi-structured, qualitative interviews with members of the danish string quartet (høffding, 2019; høffding & martiny, 2016; schiavio & høffding, 2015), phenomenology occupied a central position in this research project. we designed an immersive study with the view to gather data that would be rich in its level of detail and idiosyncrasy. tracking the musicians so closely afforded the opportunity to catch their unique (individual and shared) emotion-regulation strategies and their reflections on how daily creative practice might continue to flourish as conditions and challenges varied over the course of the tour. the band members were well aware that theirs were not the only ways of maintaining creative and affective equilibrium. as al put it on one occasion, “this is the cloud control method, because there are so many different ways”. our ethnographic approach provides more direct, experience-near access than other methods might to the kind of shared expertise to which al was referring here, and to the musicians’ striking meta-awareness of their methods of self-regulation and what we might call “band-regulation”. in line with fassinger’s (2005) suggestion of applying to qualitative research “the traditional validity, reliability, generalisability and objectivity/neutrality standards applied to quantitative studies” (p.163), we incorporated self-reflective and self-reflexive practices into our research process with the view of boosting the trustworthiness of our data collection and analysis. for example, in line with best practice in grounded theory (strauss & corbin, 1998), geeves explicated his conceptual framework prior to data collection, did not generate any a priori hypotheses, and maintained regular reflective diary entries for the duration of his fieldwork (see browne & sullivan, 1999). in so doing, geeves sought to occupy a participant-observer position in which he remained mindful of the way in which his presence and intersubjectivity might affect observed phenomena. in this way, our study added to previous qualitative phenomenological research (e.g., høffding, 2019) and an awareness and acknowledgment of the ways in which the contents of observed phenomena can be changed, influenced and co-constructed by the presence of an observer. musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 procedure data collection data collection occurred from 23rd august 2013 to 12th september 2013, as geeves accompanied cloud control on their australian dream cave tour through queensland, new south wales, the australian capital territory and victoria for a total of 12 performances (see table 1). during this period, geeves audio-recorded 23 interviews with participants. interviews were conducted at opportune times in the late morning or early afternoon when participants were not involved in other work on tour. open-ended questioning was used to explore participants’ tour and performance experiences. all four participants were interviewed as a group on eight occasions, different combinations of three or two participants were the subjects of eight interviews, and solo research participants featured in seven interviews. these interviews totaled eight hours of data. geeves video-recorded all 12 performances, as well as backstage moments before and after performance in which musicians were talking about performance both amongst themselves and to geeves. interviews were recorded on a sony ic digital audio recorder (icd-ux80) recorder to which a sony electret condenser microphone (ecm-ds70p) was connected to maximize sound quality for later transcription. video footage was captured with a sony handycam 80gb dcrsr68 handheld video recorder. all interactions with participants, including interviews and backstage conversations, were structured by holding in mind the two interrelated processes of asking questions and making comparisons that underlie grounded theory. data analysis in line with grounded theory, we transcribed all interviews and then analyzed interview data through a rigorous cross-coding process. all authors worked together to identify, synthesize and link emergent thematic categories in the data that were of interest to performer wellbeing. we then presented these to jeremy and incorporated his feedback. specifically, jeremy pointed us towards highlighting more explicitly the bidirectional shaping of the performer-audience relationship, and emphasising the ways in which each musician’s performance experiences are co-constructed by the perceived experiences of audience members and other onstage musicians. in presenting our findings, we begin with an example of a performance that involved high levels of performer wellbeing, explore in more detail themes that emerged from our data as shaping performer wellbeing, and end with an example of a performance that involved lower levels of performer wellbeing. musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 table 1 performance schedule for cloud control’s dream cave australian tour date location venue 23/8/13 brisbane the tivoli 24/8/13 caloundra kings beach tavern 25/8/13 byron bay beach road hotel 28/8/13 canberra anu bar 30/8/13* adelaide the governor hindmarsh hotel 31/8/13* perth the capital 3/9/13 melbourne university of melbourne 3/9/13 mornington peninsula private residence 4/9/13 ballarat karnova lounge 5/9/13 bendigo star bar 6/9/13 melbourne the forum 7/9/13* tasmania republic bar 8/9/13 sydney carriageworks (fbi 10th birthday) 10/9/13 wollongong wollongong uni bar 11/9/13 newcastle bar on the hill 12/9/13 sydney the metro * = geeves did not accompany cloud control for these portions of the tour. results wellbeing in action: when things go well – the tivoli, brisbane as mentioned earlier, participants had favorable experiences of the first tour performance at the tivoli in brisbane. participants’ accounts of this performance were uncomplicated and unambiguous in their positive hedonic tone. put simply, performers considered this a good performance. everyone felt pleased. all had fun. unsurprisingly, participants expressed and demonstrated high levels of wellbeing in relation to this performance. the musicians described experiencing pleasure within themselves during performance, which formed a strong foundation for pleasurable experiences with the audience during performance. this then further increased the pleasure performers experienced within themselves, which in turn increased the pleasurable experiences they had with others, and this loop continued to build over the performance. participants reported feeling energized, enthused, accomplished, and in good spirits after the performance. participants unanimously reported the positive ways in which they felt the tivoli performance shaped their experience. for example, they shared their performance experiences of enjoyment, satisfaction and absorption: j: i think it went really well. i was really happy with it. u: same! h: we owned it! a: i felt pretty good, pretty calm. i wasn’t really thinking about it. musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 j: i felt relief… this is working…then you just enjoy it, have a great time, chill with the crowd. participants identified a range of factors that contributed to the favorable qualities of their experience. both heidi and ulrich remarked on how the quality of the band’s sound scaffolded their performance confidence: u: i had the best sound ever. h: it’s all about what kind of sound you get on stage. if the mix is out, it can make an otherwise great gig a really poor experience. it’s important that the mix gets nailed. for heidi, the confidence and enjoyment she experienced was enhanced by feeling able to join with her fellow bandmates in what she experienced as their confidence and enthusiasm during performance: al really brought it from the start and that made me feel really good and excited about the whole show. i’m affected by how these guys are enjoying it. we’re feeding off each other. if people aren’t having a good time, it makes it harder for you to rise above it. jeremy described how freedom from expectations and pressures from external agents contributed to the enjoyment in his performance experience: there were no industry douchebags, no “you have to go and meet these people or hang out with this guy”. we just got to do what we wanted to do. all musicians also described feeling deeply connected, in a positive way, to and with the tivoli audience during performance. ulrich summarized his experience of gauging a high level of interest and investment from the audience: the first few songs were quite powerful. we experienced the level [of connection] and engagement we normally experience from a crowd for our big singles, but these were singles that haven’t been out for very long. it was a really good response that set the tone for us. in her description of the energy that she experienced receiving back from the audience, heidi captured the sense of feeling connected to the audience that participants commonly reported across all of their performance experiences at the tivoli: i was feeding off the energy of the crowd, especially when they were doing these ones [raises hands] in “dojo rising”…it was a nice revelation that this song was connected. musicians’ descriptions of their performance experiences at the tivoli demonstrate how performance can impact musicians’ wellbeing in a positive way. musicians’ individual and shared positive experience were apparent both in participants’ words and in geeves’ observations, revealing personal and collective wellbeing. this positive experience reflects and was grounded both in the musicians’ own satisfaction and engagement in performance—as individual musicians and as a band with shared goals and values—and in their sense of a creative and active, mutually-reinforcing positive relationship with the gig’s audience. however, the above discussion draws on only one performance of the 13 that were the focus of our musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 ethnographic work. the next part of our analysis is motivated by wanting to more precisely render the aspects of performance experience contributing to musicians’ wellbeing. we now present a more detailed analysis of the relationship between performance and musicians’ wellbeing over the full course of the cloud control tour fieldwork. exploring wellbeing: performance headspace and connection with audience the musicians demonstrated high levels of self-reflective awareness in their accounts of their tour performance experiences. their expertise was by no means only technical and aesthetic: they also deployed sophisticated insights and subtle strategies in promoting and enhancing positive experiences both for themselves and for their audiences in the changing and often challenging tour contexts. we found that what emerged in the space between the musicians and audience in performance occupied a central role in participants’ performance experience and had a strong influence on their wellbeing. according to al: the crowd is just as important as the band. it’s all about the crowd, but then it’s all about the band. it’s all about what is between the two. two overarching, interdependent themes emerged from the data analysis as characterising what lies between the musician and the audience: performance headspace (ph) and connection with audience (ca). ph and ca are in a cyclic relationship, and influence performer wellbeing both separately and together. these two factors lie at the heart of live performance practice in this context and this genre of creative musical activity. ph and ca are so central in performance experience that musicians pay more attention to establishing a favorable ph and strong ca than to the need for masterful execution of musical technique, or even to the music itself. “playing an instrument is only a small part of playing live”, said al, “it’s not really about the music…the most important thing is connection”. participants described how they experienced ph and ca as sharing a looping, interdependent relationship. participants recognized ph as preceding ca, believing it was not possible for the audience to enjoy themselves during a performance without musicians also enjoying themselves. “i think when we have a good time, audiences have a good time”, said jeremy, “and that’s the ultimate aim, is for the audience to have a good time”. yet ca also fed back into ph. “i feel like it’s a different experience when you’re onstage and playing songs to a crowd that is not giving back to the energy”, said ulrich, “they’re just taking your energy”. “i feed off the energy of the crowd a lot”, stated al, “i don’t like feeling like we’re an afterthought. you don’t want to play to people who are in a line to get food…it’s not fun for me to play to people as a sideline”. we found that the closer participants came to achieving a favorable ph, the greater likelihood there was of being able to establish a strong ca which, in turn, increased the likelihood of participants being able to sustain a favorable ph. as demonstrated in the tivoli performance example, we found this type of mutually reinforcing “virtuous” looping between ph and ca to have a positive impact on performer wellbeing. yet we also found that ph and ca could loop in a less virtuous way, with a less favorable ph decreasing the likelihood of establishing a strong ca, which in turn resulted in an even less favorable ph. as we show below in a second detailed performance example, we found this type of “vicious” looping to have a negative impact on performer wellbeing. as we begin to explore ph and ca, it is worth noting that while participants spoke directly from their own subjective experience, they could speak only about their perceptions of others’ experience. it is possible that an audience member’s account of her experience of a cloud control musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 tour performance could differ from participants’ perceptions of that audience member’s experience of the same performance. as stated earlier, an understanding of audience experience is beyond the scope of this research. while our video data include some footage of audience behavior across the tour gigs, we focused exclusively here on performers’ expectations and beliefs about audience responses and did not triangulate these with any independent measures of audience experience. performance headspace (ph) performance headspace is best understood as participants’ mindset about performance. it is an in vivo concept that first arose in al, jeremy and ulrich’s discussion of their internal psychological landscapes in relation to music performance. participants recognized that headspace differed between performances. better performances were associated with more favorable headspaces. for example, al described his ideal performance as involving “the same kind of mindset as a really great party where you’re just doing what you want to do and hanging out”, before adding “it’s pretty much the same headspace”. for ulrich, “how you're feeling on the day is how you perform”, and if a musician is experiencing trepidation or “something is going on, you're unable to get into that headspace as much”. participants also placed importance on a capacity to inhabit a certain level of agency, choice, proactivity and reflexivity in relation to ph. “i feel like we’re learning to be proactive in our headspaces”, said jeremy, “i feel like we’re getting to a point where we’ve decided what matters so we can go and try to achieve that mentally.” our analysis of participants’ descriptions of performance experience yielded a small set of key and sometimes overlapping features of a favorable ph. the more favorable musicians’ ph for a performance, the higher their associated levels of wellbeing. participants were striving for a ph in which they could enjoy performing their music. “i think our best performances are when we enjoy it”, said jeremy. the musicians also aimed for feelings of satisfaction, accomplishment and validation in their experience of performance. “playing a good gig is one of the most satisfying things in my life”, said al, “when you’re just bringing everyone together, it’s fucking awesome”. participants viewed absorption in performance as another desirable feature of ph. with a tongue-in-cheek reference to eminem, al captured the immersive experience he pursued in performance, while acknowledging its elusive nature: i just want to be like eminem and lose myself in the moment. every night. that’s all i want to do… not thinking about anything, just playing the songs and enjoying… if i can do that, that’s great. it doesn’t always happen. similarly, heidi and ulrich described desirable performance experiences characterized by the dissolution of top-down tracking of experience. “you stop approaching it as watching yourself onstage and thinking about how you look and what you’re doing” said ulrich. heidi likened this to a flow state in which there are “no feelings of awkwardness [and] you’re allowed to feel. awkwardness takes you out of the moment. it makes you self-conscious. it breaks up a flow” (see geeves, mcilwain, sutton, & christensen, 2014; and høffding, 2019 for more on absorption during performance). we found participants also aimed for a ph that allowed flexibility and adaptation in the face of ever-changing situational demands. “it’s a specific, esoteric thing that’s different every time”, jeremy said, “you can’t have any preconceptions about what to do, unless what you do is adapt, cause that’s all you can do” (italics added). heidi provided an example of this adaptation when she described actively lowering her expectations during a performance. “i musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 was talking myself into a better state of acceptance”, she explained, “i thought it would be inappropriate to be jumping up and down in front of people who were just looking at a fish tank rather than engaging”. ph never occurs in a vacuum. while we found the musicians striving for a particular ideal quality of ph, they did not do so from a neutral starting point. ph is always situated in a particular personal and collective history and context. it would be naïve to consider musicians as blank slates in relation to ph. a variety of other factors contribute to performer wellbeing – such as residual moods, and individual and collective reactions to where musicians have just been and where they need or want to go – and all have ongoing influence on musicians’ ph. thinking of musical creativity and performance within a cognitive ecological framework also underlines the fragility of these core features of a favorable ph. as none of these are guaranteed to occur or to be sustained during a performance, performers’ wellbeing is vulnerable to shifting influences over the course of performance. participants reported two paradoxical-sounding strategies they followed to try to instil a favorable ph. the first strategy is best summarized as trying not to try. “don’t focus on having a good show”, said al. “if you try and do what you want to do, maybe you don’t end up doing it”, stated jeremy in agreement, “it’s almost impossible”. notions of authenticity, honesty and lack of pretension abounded in participants’ descriptions of this strategy. “it’s all about chilling out, doing what you’re doing and being yourself”, explained al, “that’s what people want to see. it’s like a performance but it’s a natural thing”. the second strategy identified by participants involved the notion of letting go. “letting go is really just remembering that there is a lot of stuff that doesn’t matter”, said al, “the only thing that ever holds me back from having a good gig is my own brain”. on the surface, the strategies participants reported using in the pursuit of a favorable ph might seem at odds with the levels of engagement and investment that music performance requires of musicians. during performance, it is almost as if participants did not want to be perceived by audience members as performing. maintaining the fourth wall was important. perhaps the musicians did not want to be seen by the audience as trying too hard, fearing this might have adverse ramifications for the musician-audience relationship. this is a fascinating double strategy of dialling up displays of authenticity and of a down-to-earth onstage presence, while also consciously trying to loosen egoic attachment to performance. these kinds of tensions or apparent paradoxes are familiar across a range of performance and skill domains, perhaps further entrenched through the expectations or cultural conventions intrinsic to certain genres of music performance. they may perhaps reveal how the musicians mitigate and manage the pressure of expectations by acting as if the stakes of performance are lower than they actually are. whatever the more specific reasons behind their use, these strategies served to enhance and protect participants’ wellbeing in relation to music performance. in addition to describing ph features and strategies, participants identified two further factors that shaped ph and influenced their wellbeing: confidence and pressure. in terms of confidence, jeremy noted: “it’s about having confidence that permeates everything you do”, “it is not about the one performance, it is an across the board thing”. participants could not establish confidence in performance without a baseline feeling of ease about the technical mastery and sound of their songs (see chaffin et al., 2005, for rich description of how “chunking” the lowerlevel technical elements of performance allows performers to concentrate on their higher-level expressive and aesthetic goals and processes). participants also described how the pressure they felt from themselves or others about performance could affect their ph: “as soon as anyone starts putting pressure on musicians it’s very hard”, said al, “i can’t stress enough how bad it is when musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 someone tells you to play well. or to go nuts. it’s the worst thing someone can do”. the precise mechanisms by which such pressure might disrupt creative practice in such performance situations are not clear from consideration of our data alone. connection with audience (ca) we found ca to be the second overarching theme in participants’ descriptions of performance experience. we see ca as the quality of connection a musician experiences with an audience. participants viewed ca as analogous to establishing and maintaining conversation. al viewed ca as “just like any human interaction with another person. you have to treat the other person with respect, take them seriously and be yourself”, and felt strong ca was akin to the “good feeling of empathising with someone else and having a good conversation”. “it’s silly to think of the crowd as a crowd”, said al, explaining his bespoke frame for establishing ca: “you have to be talking to them as a person in a small group. you are connecting, hopefully, with each person individually”. al also explained how ca can shape performer wellbeing in a markedly positive or negative way: the thing about being on stage is that it can easily flip the other way, where you feel like you’re four people against a larger number of people. if a gig goes badly, it’s when you start to feel like you’re not in the right place. but if you feel like everyone is there with you and you’re supporting each other to make something together, that’s cool. that’s what it should always be like… all i want to do is connect with people and really just feel like i’m having a good time. here, al spoke to the ongoing knife’s-edge on which the ca dynamic rests during performance. at any time, ca could go either way. when it comes to wellbeing, ca is high risk, high gain. we found emotional attunement, communication, and matching to be the key ingredients musicians reported working with when trying to establish ca. participants described how it was crucial to try to attune to the quality and quantity of emotion that they felt was present in an audience. for al, the main thing on stage was to “be really with the people who are in the room; really take them on to the stage with you and realize that they came out to see you play”. similar to filmer’s (2008, p. 160) actors who stand in the wings and monitor the flow of performance and reactions of an audience, participants described how a part of them would be constantly observing and monitoring feedback data received from the audience during performance including the amount of dancing, talking, eye contact, silence and singing along occurring in the crowd. this process helped participants to attune to the audience and modify their performance accordingly. in this way, the musicians aimed to communicate emotion during performance in a way that was as inclusive as possible for as many audience members as possible. “if you’re communicating a feeling, you just have to be really careful that you’re bringing everyone with you and you’re not being a jerk”, explained al. the band made on-the-fly adjustments to the setlist over the course of the tour, and this enabled them to maximize the likelihood of ca they read as a “party crowd”, “all-ages crowd” and “crowd of fans”. “you want to meet the audience”, said jeremy, “if they’re super crazy, you ride that energy wave. if they’re super chilled, then you chill out a bit more. what we all want is a matching”. matching is all about balancing needs. it involves the ongoing process during performance of a musician gauging emotion experience in an audience, weighing this with an musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 awareness of what they as a musician are experiencing emotionally and then trying to find a point of intersection. ideally, matching does not have to involve compromise. in jeremy’s words, “a good gig is matching what the audience wants with what we want as well”. practically, compromise is often required. yet participants also identified parameters outside of which they were unwilling to compromise. cloud control did not offer the same performance to all audiences. audiences had to demonstrate a desire for interaction that would then be deemed high-enough to earn them the best parts of musicians’ performance. “it’s the extra stuff on top, the stuff that makes you enjoy the show more and allows the audience to interact with you”, said heidi, “if they’re not wanting to interact, then you don’t give them that stuff”. as we will see in the next example, the musicians held these boundaries in relation to matching to protect their wellbeing from being too buffeted by audiences who they felt were uninterested in connection. wellbeing in action ii when things go wrong: kings beach hotel, caloundra good feeling was in short supply amongst participants as they discussed the second performance of the tour at kings beach tavern, caloundra, a coastal, working-class town at the southernmost end of the sunshine coast region in south east queensland. participant experiences ranged from “ok” for al to “fine” for jeremy and ulrich to a “real struggle” for heidi. in contrast to the virtuous cycle of ph and ca that governed the performance at the tivoli, a vicious cycle was established at kings beach hotel. ph was less than ideal, ca was limited and challenging to establish and maintain, and this then continued to weigh down ph. feelings of flatness, disappointment, shock, anger, relief that the performance was over and a sense of wanting to leave the performance in the past dominated participants’ accounts of this performance. unsurprisingly, participants expressed and demonstrated lower levels of wellbeing in relation to this performance. in contrast to participants’ experience of ph at the tivoli, participants felt their confidence levels were adversely affected by experiencing a lack of trust in the competence of the in-house sound technician at kings beach tavern. “the in-house sound guy was super flaky. at least he turned up”, sighed jeremy, with resignation. participants described how their ph was also negatively impacted by the lack of a private backstage area in which they were able to prepare prior to performance. as a result of this, participants, especially heidi and ulrich, felt acutely affected by the lack of control they were able to exercise over separation from the audience before and after performance. participants also found it difficult to establish and maintain ca during performance. al described finding it challenging to attune emotionally to an audience that he experienced as signalling a hyper-masculine flavor of aggression: “i saw a lot of guys with drinks doing guy dancing and bumping into people and being annoying. caloundra felt a bit more aggressive”. if ca at caloundra was a conversation, participants experienced the interaction as forced and their interlocutors to be disinterested in the particularities of the band and possessive of an energy that was at best disorganized, intoxicated and excessive, and, at worst, tumultuous, disrespectful and hostile. participants discussed experiencing a sense of feeling like interchangeable background party noise in caloundra and contrasted this with feeling appreciated by fans at the tivoli: j: people come because they want something to do as much as wanting to see you. in brisbane, you only get people who really want to see you because they’ve got more options, but in a small town like this, it’s different. musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 a: i think they have a lot more patience to come with you in brisbane. in caloundra, the crowd was partying but…they might not be our biggest fans. they want cheap thrills, man. they want to go and see a band and have a good time and hang out. and you can tell. j: they knew the singles off the radio, and just wanted to party. and it’s not going to see cloud control, it’s going to the . . . a: pub j: it’s just the thing in town to do. u: they’re willing to give you five minutes of their short attention span and unless you fulfil exactly what they want in those five minutes then they’re just gone, off to buy a beer. j: they don’t want to connect with you. they just want your songs to be there so they can connect with each other…so you end up just playing your party hits. participants’ feelings of disempowerment and despondency were palpable in their discussion of the kings beach tavern performance experience. the musicians felt marginalized and overlooked by the audience, treated as if their function was that of a jukebox, providing loud background music against which a disengaged crowd could enjoy vigorously bumping into each other. the limitations participants experienced in relation to establishing ca had ramifications for the extent to which they felt it was possible to match the audience and maintain ca during this performance. in contrast to the expansive range of matching that became possible in the tivoli performance, participants felt constricted by their perception of the audience’s emotion experience: h: it means you can’t be as indulgent. a quiet song like “just for now” demands more of an audience, demands them to behave more respectfully than perhaps that audience wanted to be. a: it demands people pay attention to a really dark stage for four minutes. and that’s why, in the right crowd, that song can be a highlight. but then with the wrong crowd, it can be the worst song in the set. it’s really bad singing a song like that and just hearing people talk all the way through. last night, they were very talky and very dancey. these often go hand in hand. people just want to dance with their friends ‘cause they’re having a really good time and it’s like “yeah cool, alright”. not all songs are appropriate. j: so you have to meet them in the middle. you can’t just demand that they pay attention because it’s probably going to suck. h: ‘cause they’re going to have a better time and we’re going to have a better time as well. a: they’re only going to pay attention to certain things as well. you have to shout at them and hit them with a big stick, but with other crowds you can really talk to them and engage with them on a more personal level. as evident in the discussion above, participants felt that the low level of ca at kings beach tavern left them with no choice but to deliver a less personal, less engaged performance, confined to operating within narrower parameters than the tivoli performance. over the course of the tour, if cloud control felt an audience was invested enough in a performance, they would “indulge” in a surprise rendition of a cover of an excerpt from the butthole surfers’ song “pepper” during the breakdown section of their song “gold canary”. this surprise consistently heightened apparent positive emotion during performance for both audiences and performers. our observations suggest that audiences loved being “treated” in this musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 way, and the presence or absence of this example of “extra stuff on top” that participants could include in performance came to be an effective shorthand indicator of strength of ca during performance. the kings beach tavern audience were not privy to this experience. an unfavorable ph and an audience that felt largely disinterested in connection could have disastrous impact on wellbeing. consequently, self-protection and minimising the negative impact on wellbeing of such a performance became central in their performance experience. “i spent most of the time just going to my happy place, pretending the show wasn’t happening, but it was”, said heidi, “what it became was an endurance”. conclusion in this study, we explored the relationship between musicians’ creative performance experience and wellbeing. we did so using a cognitive ethnographic methodology, conducting intensive fieldwork with the musicians in cloud control over the course of 13 performances on their 2013 dream cave australian tour. we found the level of wellbeing musicians reported and displayed on tour to be intimately linked to their creative performance experiences through the two overarching and interdependent themes of ph and ca. as demonstrated in the tivoli performance example, ph and ca could feed off each other in virtuous ways that positively shaped musicians’ wellbeing. alternatively, as shown in the kings beach tavern performance, ph and ca could also loop in vicious ways that then negatively shaped musicians’ wellbeing. the picture we have painted in this study of wellbeing and the way in which it is shaped by creative performance experience is far from exhaustive. the parameters of our case study design necessitated zooming in on what wellbeing looks like over a relatively short amount of time for a small number of participants situated in very specific relationship with each other within delimited social, cultural and historical contexts. the thickness of data yielded by this research is simultaneously its greatest strength and limitation. our immersive research provides rich insight into how creative performance experience shaped wellbeing for cloud control members on this tour. by sticking closely to musicians, by having the opportunity to move slowly alongside them in their experiences of performance and wellbeing on the tour, our study has taken the time to locate and put under the microscope everyday nuances of their touring life that may, ordinarily, remain overlooked or undetected. we noted above that musical creativity is typically theorized in the contexts of songwriting, recording, or improvisatory performance. the physically and emotionally taxing context of work as a professional touring band demands different forms of creative practice. this is where the ecological approach to distributed creative cognition comes into its own. in performing their songs each night, warding off the challenges and dangers of monotony, unresponsive audiences, or imperfect sound, the band was obviously not bringing something entirely new into being: their successful repertoire, including the increasingly popular songs on their new album, anchored their enduring appeal to large crowds. yet something fresh did emerge every night, as the musicians worked with the unique constraints of each venue, each audience, each soundworld. here, as the band labored to earn their keep in criss-crossing this huge country, creativity in performance always arose afresh. this emergent form of creativity was co-created by, or between, the crowd and the band, in each unique musical ecology. so just as the musicians’ experience was influenced by a collaborative, porous process, so too was their technical and aesthetic creative practice intrinsically distributed in performance, across an array of social and material resources. musical creativity in a working band is hybrid, distributed across mutually supporting interactions, across the changing environments which shape their ph, and across the fragile yet potentially powerful senses of energy and connection musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 they can, on occasion, experience emerging between the crowd and the band. any attempt to understand musical creativity on tour that did not adopt a distributed ecological approach, but restricted its focus to the thoughts, feelings, and aesthetic judgements of the four individual musicians alone, would miss the crucial ways that the balances shift over the heterogeneous elements of their performance ecologies. it would miss the changing spaces, sound systems, audience moods, and external pressures. our study offers a glimpse of how musicians manage the vulnerability of their (individual and collective) wellbeing in relation to performance experience, and of what they bring to the space between the band and the audience in attempting to bolster or insulate their wellbeing. as a small group of very different individuals with specialized skills and unique characteristics, cloud control have developed their own “method”, as al put it, for maintaining equilibrium and satisfaction through the testing creative processes involved in an arduous tour. this method includes a unique mix of more implicit and embodied ways of coping with challenges, and a sophisticated array of more explicit, self-aware strategies for regulating emotion and wellbeing over time. yet what would the strategies for regulating wellbeing in relation to creative performance experience look like for bands with a shorter history than cloud control? what about bands that had been together for a longer time? how many strategies from “the cloud control method” might overlap with those used by a death metal band? how might they compare to strategies used by a jazz quartet or by a classical orchestra? what might ph and ca look like in the performance experience of a dj or a punk rock band? what similarities and differences might exist in the way in which these factors shaped their wellbeing? there are many potential avenues for future research in this area. future work might explore in more depth underlying factors that may feed into ph and ca and also influence musician wellbeing (e.g., physical performance environment, previous performance experiences, perceived characteristics of and investment from audience). it could also build a model of what lies between the band and the audience that was at a level of abstraction broad enough to be able to be applied to understanding the relationship between wellbeing and performance experience for musicians from a variety of genres and who differed in their levels of expertise. future ethnographic work could also focus on the audience rather than the performer. how might the wellbeing of an audience member be shaped by her experience of live music performance? a model of what lies between the crowd and the band (audience perspective) could then be integrated with a model of what lies between the band and the crowd (performer perspective) to fully map what arises in this space in relation to creative performance experience and its ties to wellbeing. acknowledgements we are hugely grateful to the members of cloud control for participating in our study by welcoming a researcher into their inner circle during an arduous and professionally significant tour. doris mcilwain was a key collaborator and supporter at the time the fieldwork was undertaken, and is much missed. we also thank our colleagues in the cognitive ecologies research group at macquarie university, especially kath bicknell and greg downey, for specific feedback and suggestions. this research was funded by arc (australian research council) discovery project grants dp130100756 to doris mcilwain and john sutton, dp140102679 to jane davidson, and dp180100107 to john sutton. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors musician wellbeing geeves, jones, davidson, & sutton www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 andrew geeves macquarie university samuel jones macquarie university jane w. davidson university of melbourne john sutton macquarie university john.sutton@mq.edu.au publishing timeline received 2 september 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 references alexandrova, a. 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(2014). embodied collaboration in small groups. in c.t. wolfe (ed.), brain theory: essays in critical neurophilosophy (pp. 107-133). palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230369580_7 wren-lewis, s., & alexandrova, a. (forthcoming). mental health without wellbeing. the journal of medicine and philosophy. https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.43878 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s13164-012-0126-z https://doi.org/10.1177%2f2059204318792319 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586974.003.0027 https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12306 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351199797 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230369580_7 https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.43878 morse, j. l., prince, m. a., & steger, m. f. (2021). the role of intolerance of uncertainty in the relationship between daily search for and presence of meaning in life. international journal of wellbeing, 11(1), 34-49. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i1.1079 jessica l. morse colorado state university jessica.morse@colostate.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 article the role of intolerance of uncertainty in the relationship between daily search for and presence of meaning in life jessica l. morse · mark a. prince · michael f. steger abstract: people who are highly intolerant of uncertainty have a propensity to fear the unknown, which influences perceptions and desires for control and predictability (carleton, 2016). processes related to searching for and maintaining meaning might deviate based on intolerance of uncertainty as meaning-making can be spurred by breakdowns in one’s sense of understanding or predictability (park, 2010). the current study was designed to examine within-person relationships between daily search for and presence of meaning, while investigating how people’s intolerance of uncertainty (iu) influences the search-presence relationship. during a three-week daily diary study, results showed that daily search significantly predicted same-day presence and presence the following day. iu significantly moderated the effects of search on presence such that people who were highly intolerant of uncertainty experienced less presence when they engaged in searching than low iu participants. results suggest researchers should consider the potential consequences of iu in limiting the development of a vital well-being resource, presence of meaning. keywords: meaning; intolerance of uncertainty; search for meaning; personality processes; daily diary; meaning in life 1. introduction 1.1 the role of intolerance of uncertainty in the relationship between daily search for and presence of meaning in life meaning in life is a core component of people’s well-being, and the accelerating pace of research on meaning in life demonstrates that it aids people in coping with the challenges and uncertainties of daily life. mostly, researchers have focused on the idea that meaning in life can be a stable resource, which some refer to as presence of meaning (steger et al., 2006), consisting of our cognitive understanding of ourselves and our lives, our sense of purpose, and the feeling that our lives matter (martela & steger, 2016). a subset of research has considered how people accrue meaning through searching for meaning. scholars define the search for meaning as “the strength, intensity, and activity of people’s desire and efforts to establish and/or augment their understanding of the meaning, significance, and purpose of their lives” (steger et al., 2008, p. 200). where research on presence of meaning is abundant and consistent, research on search for meaning is less common and less consistent, often seeming to tell a subtle, complex story in which the context surrounding the search determines what influence, if any, search for meaning contributes to presence of meaning and well-being (e.g., cohen & cairns, 2012). both search for and presence of meaning have been studied primarily on the trait rather than state level. however, one of the foundational existential thinkers, frankl (1963), envisioned both searching about:blank daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 for and experiencing meaning to be fundamental human motivations that ebb and flow daily, even hourly. accordingly, this study was designed to look more closely at state levels of meaning, by investigating daily fluctuations in search for and presence of meaning in the context of a potential dispositional moderator of the relationship to explore nuances in the relationship between presence of and search for meaning. 1.2 relationship between presence of and search for meaning in life in most research, presence of and search for meaning are conceived of as stable individual differences, measured using global scales focusing respondents’ attention to life in general. those who score high on presence of meaning also report psychological health (e.g., ryff, 1989), life satisfaction (zika & chamberlain, 1992), happiness (peterson et al., 2005), positive affect (king et al., 2006), and low levels of psychopathology (e.g. ryff, 1989). links between search for meaning and psychological outcomes are less consistent. frankl (1963) specified searching for meaning as a healthy, natural motivational force that fuels people to better understand their experiences, yet empirical research presents a mixed view. much of the empirical research within us samples suggests searching for meaning relates to dysfunction (e.g., steger et al., 2006); at the same time, search for meaning is positively correlated with otherwise desirable traits, such as curiosity and a tendency to become absorbed in one’s experiences (e.g., kashdan & steger, 2007). steger and colleagues (2008) proposed that the implications of searching for meaning might depend on individuals’ reasons for searching, their extant sense of meaning in life, and other personality characteristics. in brief, searching for meaning may be indicative of healthy growth for some individuals, whereas for others, searching may be a sign of distress. perhaps if people searching for meaning feel certain that they are on a promising path, they are more likely to experience well-being. the relationship between presence of and search for meaning also appears mixed. in an unpublished systematic review of meaning in life studies in us adult samples, steger and colleagues (2017) found search for and presence of meaning correlated non-significantly at small, negative values across most studies. thus, when people feel that their lives are meaningful, they are less likely to search for meaning, and when they report searching for meaning, they are less likely to report having high presence of meaning at that time. although high levels of search and presence are not typically positively correlated in us adult samples, park and colleagues (2010) found that when individuals report high levels of search and presence, search is associated with positive well-being outcomes rather than distress. to add to the complexity, several researchers have reported small, positive correlations between search and presence in adolescents and young adult samples (e.g., bailey & phillips, 2016; dik et al., 2012), suggesting searching for meaning may be developmentally appropriate for adolescents and young adults even when they experience their lives as meaningful. across all ages, theorists assert that people have an inherent need for meaning and strive to maintain their sense of meaning (heine et al., 2006; park, 2010). however, people experience events and situations that challenge their understanding of themselves and the world around them. heine and colleagues (2006; meaning maintenance model) suggest that when people experience something that threatens their expectations of how things are supposed to be, they compensate by trying to regain a sense of meaning. when people experience a violation to their meaning framework, they may experience distress and recognize a need to resolve the incongruence by reaffirming alternative domains of meaning (heine et al., 2006) or by seeking new understanding(s) (park, 2010). steger and colleagues’ (2008) framework elucidates the processes involved in the relationship between search for and presence of meaning in their http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 presence-to-search and search-to-presence conceptual models. the presence-to-search model identifies deficits in presence of meaning as igniting searching for meaning, such that when people experience decreases in presence, they search to restore their sense of meaning (steger et al., 2008). additionally, when people report higher presence of meaning they report less searching (newman et al., 2017). steger and colleagues (2008) also outline a different mechanism through which people initiate searching for meaning to generate greater presence of meaning (search-to-presence). in other words, people are driven to search for meaning, and when they do so, they find and experience more meaning. in their study, steger and colleagues’ (2008) results supported the presence-to-search conceptual model. steger and colleagues’ (2008) study was cross-sectional and did not explore the dynamics of presence and search over time. newman and colleagues (2017) examined relations between daily presence, search, and wellbeing. they found that daily search positively related to same day presence and well-being and that higher levels of search on one day led to greater presence the next (newman et al., 2017). in other words, someone who is a “searcher” might look quite different in terms of well-being and affect than someone who is “searching” for meaning on a particular day. at the daily level, searching appears to relate to both positive and negative indicators of functioning. results of daily studies indicate that daily searching increases when meaning is threatened (park et al., 2017) and is associated with greater perceived stress (machell et al., 2017); however, daily searching is also significantly correlated with daily curiosity (garrosa et al., 2016), well-being and presence of meaning (newman et al., 2017). these results from daily experience methods align with the search-to-presence model, and further suggest that searching for meaning on a given day may function differently from searching for meaning at the trait-level. examining search and presence at the daily level provide a more nuanced assessment of their relationship and indicate that search for meaning sometimes is positively associated with wellbeing and presence of meaning. however, extant research does not explain why daily searching relates to such varied outcomes. we hypothesize that an underlying personality factor, intolerance of uncertainty, may explain why some people engage in daily searching and report more presence of meaning and higher levels of well-being whereas others engage in daily searching and report emotional exhaustion and distress. 1.3 the present study: mil and uncertainty the current study was conducted to clarify the dynamic between daily search for and presence of meaning by further examining the presence-to-search and search-to-presence conceptual models and by including a novel trait-level moderator in the analyses. beginning with the observation that sometimes searching for meaning is experienced as positive, but typically it is not, we explore the possibility that searching itself may be more than one process, or more specifically, that some people are prone to confronting the process of searching for meaning with distress. perhaps the cognitive attributions people generate when they recognize a need to make sense of an experience influence their reactions to and engagement in the search process. in other words, the extent to which people regard searching for meaning to be an ambiguous process with an uncertain or unknowable outcome paired with their perceived ability to manage that uncertainty will influence the search-presence relationship. where people high in curiosity may seek out or approach new experiences excitedly, those high in iu tend to avoid and experience distress when confronted with ambiguity and uncertainty. iu describes discomfort and difficulty with tolerating the unknowable, even as the unknowable may be inherent in searching for meaning. iu is defined as “an individual’s dispositional incapacity to endure the aversive response triggered by the perceived absence of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 salient, key, or sufficient information, and sustained by the associated perception of uncertainty” (carleton, 2016; p. 31). because individuals high in iu perceive uncertainty as threatening, they may be motivated to seek information in efforts to re-establish certainty when it is lost so as to regain a sense of control and predictability. accordingly, research suggests people who are highly intolerant of uncertainty are more likely than those low in iu to endorse a need for cognitive closure, a preference for order, and close-mindedness (e.g., berenbaum et al., 2008), which may perpetuate a desire to foreclose, or quickly come to a conclusion, rather than explore and entertain many possibilities. however, research also indicates that when high iu individuals experience uncertainty, they experience anxiety and worry that perpetuates avoidance of the experience of uncertainty (shihata et al., 2016). recent research on the conceptual nature of iu postulates two dimensions within the construct of iu: prospective and inhibitory iu. prospective iu refers to the desire to know what the future holds. people who are high in prospective iu tend to engage in appraising potential threats related to future uncertainty, whereas inhibitory iu reflects behavioral responses like avoidance of uncertainty (berenbaum et al., 2008; carleton et al., 2007; shihata et al., 2016). individuals who are high in prospective iu strongly endorse items like, “i always want to know what the future has in store for me”. (carleton et al., 2007, pp. 117). inhibitory iu is reflected in high endorsement of items like, “when it is time to act, uncertainty paralyzes me” (carleton, 2012). birrell and colleagues (2011) propose these dimensions may function differently such that individuals high in prospective iu may engage in approach behaviors to stave off uncertainty whereas individuals high in inhibitory iu may engage in avoidance behaviors to reduce their exposure to uncertainty. although these two facets may represent different components of iu, research suggests inhibitory and prospective dimensions are strongly correlated (e.g., fourtounas & thomas, 2016). in the context of searching for meaning, people high in prospective iu may actively seek to quickly resolve uncertainty and make meaning of an experience, whereas people high in inhibitory iu may avoid engaging with uncertainty, precluding searching for meaning. taking a step back, we suggest searching for meaning requires a willingness to experience uncertainty, to enter into the “unknown”, whether that might be the future, a potential outcome, or the meaning of one’s life. searching for meaning involves experiencing uncertainty as one seeks to make sense of new information or take on new opportunities. if people find uncertainty too intolerable, they may not engage in searching for meaning at all (inhibitory iu), may engage in searching for meaning in a cursory manner directed at finding certainty quickly, perhaps by reaffirming alternative meaning domains (e.g., heine et al., 2006) so as to reduce discomfort with uncertainty (prospective iu), and/or may only engage in searching when presence of meaning levels are high. generally, people who are highly intolerant of uncertainty may avoid, or endure only under duress, experiences that provoke a sense of not knowing, and such experiences may motivate them to quickly assuage their distress or avoid it. searching for meaning may serve the function of reducing distress associated with uncertainty among those high in iu. meaning is a tool for imposing a sense of stability, thus people innately seek to maintain meaning so that the world makes sense (e.g., heine et al., 2006; park, 2010). in attempting to maintain meaning, people may seek to foster meaning at concrete, specific levels (e.g., walking to work = an exercise in moving one’s legs in sequence) or at broad, global levels (e.g., walking to work = an opportunity to pursue one’s purpose) or somewhere in between (baumeister & vohs, 2002; park & folkman, 1997). baumeister and colleagues (2002) suggest that people experience greater satisfaction and meaning when they are engaged in highhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 level, global meaning pursuits; however, people tend to shift to concrete levels of making meaning when they feel overwhelmed by their experience. theoretically, people high in iu are more likely to engage in concrete meaning-making to derive a sense of quick certainty, whereas people low in iu might be able to engage in broader, more “meaningful” searching due to their ability to tolerate not knowing. or, as described previously, individuals high in iu may recruit alternative, unaffected meaning frameworks to regain a sense of meaning, essentially bypassing any searching or grappling with the unknown (mmm; heine et al., 2006) thus, people who are highly intolerant of uncertainty but who have multiple and/or robust meaning frameworks may be less likely to report searching for meaning when presence of meaning is low because they can employ alternative meaning frameworks to rebuild meaning, avoiding the distress associated with searching. in contrast, high iu people who lack existing meaning frameworks or who find their existing meaning frameworks unable to restore meaning may be more likely to experience distress as they try to make sense of new information and find new meaning. overall, when high iu people search for meaning, their search might result in less “meaningful” meaning such that, in their efforts to assuage the discomfort of not knowing, they quickly grasp to concrete or existing meaning frameworks to redevelop a stable meaning framework as a resource for safety. the resulting sense of meaning may lack the durability of a meaning framework built on more thoroughly considered grounds. theoretical perspectives of meaning and uncertainty suggest that iu likely shapes whether and how people engage in searching for meaning and finding meaning. yet, there is little empirical evidence to elucidate the exact role of iu in meaning-making. thus, our hypotheses capture possible variations in the presence-search relationship, with an emphasis on the likelihood of iu as a disruptor in meaning-making processes due to the uncertainty inherent in searching for meaning. 1.4 hypotheses based on the similar daily method used by newman and colleagues (2017), we hypothesize that results of the relationship between daily presence of and search for meaning will support the search-to-presence conceptual model. however, due to limited research, both competing conceptual models will be tested. further, the present study seeks to test iu as a moderator of the relationship between daily presence and search. 1.4.1 search-to-presence model hypothesis 1a. daily search for meaning will predict higher presence of meaning that same day. hypothesis 2a. iu will moderate the relation between daily search-presence such that low iu individuals will experience more benefit from searching (in producing presence of meaning) than high iu individuals. in other words, high iu individuals will experience distress that precludes their full engagement in and benefit from searching. thus, the slope between search and presence will be steeper for low iu individuals and flatter for high iu individuals. 1.4.2 presence-to-search model hypothesis 1b. daily presence of meaning will negatively predict search for meaning that same day. in other words, lower levels of presence will predict higher levels of search. hypothesis 2b. iu will moderate the relation between daily presence-search such that high iu individuals engage in significantly less searching than low iu individuals because high presence will satisfy the meaning needs of high iu individuals, thus they will not experience a need to http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 engage in a potentially distressing, uncertainty-provoking process, like searching. thus, the slope between presence and search will be steeper for low iu individuals and flatter for high iu individuals. 1.4.3 lagged analyses to further examine directionality, lagged analyses were conducted to test the following hypotheses. hypothesis 3a. iu will moderate the relation between searching for meaning the day before and presence of meaning the following day, while controlling for search, such that low iu individuals will experience more benefit from searching the day before (in producing presence of meaning) than high iu individuals. in other words, it is likely that high iu individuals will experience distress that will preclude their full engagement in and benefit from searching. thus, the slope between search the day before and presence will be steeper for low iu individuals and flatter for high iu individuals. hypothesis 3b. iu will moderate the relation between presence the day before and search the following day, while controlling for presence, such that high iu individuals engage in significantly less searching than low iu individuals because high presence on the day prior will satisfy the meaning needs of high iu individuals, and thus they will experience minimal need to engage in a potentially distressing, uncertainty-provoking process, like searching for meaning. thus, the slope between presence the day before and search will be steeper for low iu individuals and flatter for high iu individuals. 2. method 2.1 participants and procedure sixty-six undergraduate students (49 women, 17 men; mage = 19.03, sdage = 2.65) in the psychology research pool at colorado state university took part in this study. ethical approval for the current study was provided by the social, behavioral, & education research section of the institutional review board at colorado state university. the majority of participants identified as caucasian (76%), 6% african-american, 3% east asian, 12% hispanic-american/latino, and 6% multiracial/other. prior to attending a training session, participants were required to complete an initial battery of surveys, including the trait measure included in this study. during the training session, participants created usernames and learned how to log in and complete daily surveys. they received written instructions with their username, password, and the website to log in to complete daily surveys. participants were instructed to complete a daily survey each day for the following 21 days between 9pm and 5am each night. participants received reminder emails every 3 days. survey responses were anonymized prior to data analysis. 2.2 trait measures participants completed the intolerance of uncertainty scaleshort form (ius-12; carleton et al., 2007). responses to twelve items were given on a scale of 1 to 5 (1= not at all characteristic of me, 5= entirely characteristic of me). examples of items include, “unforeseen events upset me greatly” and “i always want to know what the future has in store for me”. 2.3 daily measures daily measures of presence of meaning and search for meaning included items used in previous daily studies on a scale of 1-7 (1= not at all, 7= very much) (kashdan & nezlek, 2012; kashdan & http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 steger, 2007). the daily presence scale included the items “how meaningful did you feel your life was today?” and “how much did you feel your life had purpose today?” the daily search scale included the following items: “how much were you searching for meaning in your life today?” and “how much were you looking to find your life’s purpose today?”. 2.4 analysis plan based on the nature of the research question and the hierarchical structure of the data, moderated multilevel structural equation model (msem) was identified as the appropriate analytic model. analyses were conducted using mplus 7.4 (muthén & muthén, 1998–2012). search for meaning, presence of meaning, and iu were treated as continuous and normally distributed. assumptions related to normality of data were tested and satisfied. search and presence were measured at the daily level and days were nested within persons. iu was measured once at baseline for each individual. all models were run as random effects models, which are commonly used to examine crosslevel interactions (walker et al., 2013). thus, intercepts and slopes were free to vary across participants. bayesian estimation was utilized, which allows for individual level variability in the intercepts and slopes and results in estimated confidence intervals, bayesian credible intervals, rather than point estimates for assessing significance of effects (e.g., van de schoot et al., 2014). due to the nature of the random models, no traditional model fit indices are available. additionally, raw scores were not centered as preacher and colleagues (2016) note that grandmean centering or using raw scores does not affect results in this type of model. to test hypothesis 1a (search-presence), the random slope of the within-subjects effect of daily search was used to predict daily presence. to test hypothesis 1b (presence-search), the random slope of the within-subjects effect of daily presence predicted daily search. to test hypothesis 2a and 2b for search-presence and presence-search, a 2 x (1-1) moderation multilevel sem was used (preacher et al., 2010). the predictor (search or presence) and outcome (presence or search) were measured daily. the moderator (iu) was measured once at the baseline time point. all variables were incorporated into the msem as latent variables. hypotheses 2a, 2b, 3a and 3b were tested using the random coefficient prediction (rcp) method with bayesian credible intervals (preacher et al., 2016). with the rcp method, a latent variable for the random slope is calculated. rcp methodology allows the slope variable to vary as a function of the predictors while minimizing the slope’s residual variance (preacher et al., 2016). specifying between and within level effects splits the between and within level variances such that they are not conflated, with the result that the within-level slope has only within-level variance and the between-level moderator has only between-level variance (preacher et al., 2016). moderation is then tested by examining if the moderator significantly predicts the random slope. rcp is especially useful for testing moderation in cross-level interactions (e.g., between-persons iu and within-persons sm and pm). the calculation of bayesian credible intervals, as opposed to point estimates of significance, provides a more robust test of statistical significance because repeated sampling of the data results in accurate estimation of asymmetrical confidence intervals that reflect that true distribution of the non-normal products of regression coefficients. further, bayesian estimation can be appropriately utilized with hierarchical data (muthen & asparouhov, 2003). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 3. results 3.1 descriptive statistics a total of 1,134 entries were collected, and 202 entries were missing or eliminated because the participant responded outside of the allocated response time, resulting in 15% missing data. data was missing at random and this percentage of missing data is common in daily diary studies (e.g., singer & willett, 2003). although the sample size may appear small, within-subjects designs substantially increase power (e.g., starr & davila, 2012) and msem controls for the nonindependence of nested effects and handles missing data well. the mean number of days completed was 16.94 (sd = 3.57). the mean of iu was 29.53 (sd = 8.68, skew = .24, kurtosis = .77, cronbach’s alpha = .90). the mean of the prospective anxiety subscale of the ius-12 was 18.96 (sd = 5.15, skew = .12, kurtosis = -.74, cronbach’s alpha = .85). the mean of the inhibitory anxiety subscale of the ius-12 was 10.74 (sd = 4.29, skew = .59, kurtosis = -.24, cronbach’s alpha = .88). the mean of daily presence was 5.19 (sd = 1.57, skew = -.67., kurtosis = -.25, cronbach’s alpha =) and mean daily search was 17.31 (sd = 8.68, skew = -.10, kurtosis = -.95, cronbach’s alpha =). iu was negatively correlated with search (r = -.018, ns) and presence (r = -.30, p <.05). at the daily level, presence and search were positively, significantly correlated (r = .24, p <.05). at the trait level, presence and search were negatively correlated (r = -.12, ns). 3.2 search-presence model (see table 1) 3.2.1 within-person effect of search on presence the random slope of daily search predicting daily presence was positive and statistically significant (ssearch-presence = 0.24, posterior se = .060, bayesian ci [.10, .35]), which is interpreted such that a 1-unit increase in daily search for meaning was associated with a .24 increase in presence of meaning. table 1. 2 x (1-1) rcp method of ius x (search-presence) and ius x (search_1-presence) moderated msem search-presence of meaning search_1 – presence of meaning 95% c.i. 95% c.i. within level estimate sd p lower 2.5% upper 2.5% sig. within level estimate sd p lower 2.5% upper 2.5% sig. intercept 3.70 .097 <.001 3.48 3.89 * intercept 3.34 .17 <.001 3.00 3.61 * residual variance .72 .034 <.001 .66 .79 * residual variance .66 .040 <.001 .58 .74 * pm on sm .10 .010 <.001 .087 .13 * between level between level s on iu -.005 .002 <.001 -.008 -.001 * s on iu -.005 .002 <.001 -.010 -.001 * intercept .24 .060 <.001 .10 .35 * intercept .17 .076 <.001 .053 .34 * residual variance .016 .004 <.001 .011 .026 * residual variance .019 .006 <.001 .013 .034 * 3.2.2 iu as moderator of the search-presence relationship there was a significant effect of iu predicting the random slope of search to presence (b = -.005; posterior se = .002, bci [-.008, -.001]), which suggests that those with higher levels of iu have a flatter slope of the search-presence relationship compared to those with lower levels of iu (see figure 1a). in other words, the relationship between search and presence was stronger, or more positive, for low iu versus high iu people. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 3.2.3 iu as moderator of the search_1-presence relationship there was a significant effect of iu predicting the random slope of search the day before (search_1) to presence (b = -.005; posterior se = .002, bci [-.010, -.001]), corresponding to a flatter slope of the relationship between search_1-presence relationship among those with higher levels of iu compared to those with lower levels of iu (see figure 1b). in other words, the relationship between searching for meaning the previous day and presence of meaning was stronger, or more positive, for low iu versus high iu people. figure 1a. iu as moderator of the same day search for meaning on presence of meaning relationship figure 1b. iu as moderator of the prior day’s search for meaning on current day’s presence of meaning in addition to testing the overall ius-12 score as a moderator, the prospective and inhibitory subscales of the ius-12 were each tested as moderators of the same day and lagged day searchpresence relationships. results of the moderation effects of both prospective and inhibitory iu converged with the moderation results from the total iu scale score, and thus are not presented. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 p re se n ce o f m e a n in g search for meaning iuslow iushigh 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 p re se n ce o f m e a n in g search for meaning_1 iuslow iushigh http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 3.3 presence-search model (see table 2) 3.3.1 within-person effect of presence on search the random slope of daily presence predicting daily search was positive and statistically significant (spresence-search = 1.91, posterior se = .74, bayesian ci [.35, 3.45]), indicating that on days participants reported a 1-unit increase in presence of meaning, they reported 1.91 more units of search for meaning. 3.3.2 iu as moderator of the presence-search relationship there was not a significant effect of iu predicting the random slope of presence to search (b = .015; posterior se = .024, bci [-.054, .033]). the lack of significant effect suggests that iu does not moderate the slope from presence to search. 3.3.3 iu as moderator of the presence_1-search relationship there was not a significant effect of iu predicting the random slope of presence the day before to search (b = -.003; posterior se = .031, bci [-.076, .048]), indicating no significant moderation by iu of the slope from presence the day before to search the following day, while controlling for presence. the residual variances of the slope terms in all models were significant, which indicates that there is high variability across individuals in the slope between search and presence, with some individuals having a steeper slope (i.e., stronger relations) and others having a flatter slope (i.e., weaker relation) between search and presence on a given day. the prospective and inhibitory subscales of the ius-12 were also tested in separate models as moderators of the same day and lagged day presence-search relationships. results of the moderation effects of both prospective and inhibitory iu converged with the moderation results from the total iu scale score, and thus are not included. table 2. 2 x (1-1) rcp method of ius x (presence-search) and ius x (presence_1-search) moderated msem presence-search for meaning presence_1 – search for meaning 95% c.i. 95% c.i. within level estimate sd p lower 2.5% upper 2.5% sig. within level estimate sd p lower 2.5% upper 2.5% sig. intercept 10.21 .48 <.001 9.30 11.11 * intercept 8.28 .81 <.001 6.71 9.67 * residual variance 10.65 ,51 <.001 9.81 11.82 * residual variance 9.85 .59 <.001 8.77 10.88 * sm on pm 2.05 .16 <.001 1.71 2.38 * between level between level s on iu -.015 .024 .27 -.054 .033 s on iu -.003 .031 .45 -.076 .048 intercept 1.91 .74 <.001 .35 3.44 * intercept .13 1.01 .47 -1.41 2.20 residual variance 2.42 .50 <.001 1.82 3.60 * residual variance 3.25 1.05 <.001 1.84 5.78 * 4. discussion the present study examined the relationship between daily search for and presence of meaning and considered the moderating effect of iu. two conceptual models were tested, one hypothesizing that searching for meaning led to a greater chance of finding meaning, as http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 operationalized by higher presence of meaning scores, and the second hypothesizing that losses in presence would result in compensatory searching for meaning. results revealed support for the search-to-presence conceptual model. on days when people reported higher levels of searching, they also reported higher levels of presence, a pattern which held for same day and one-day lagged analyses. the results of this study align in part with theoretical assertions of mmm (heine et al., 2006) and others (e.g., park, 2010) in that people are able to restore or enhance their sense of meaning by searching for it. this relationship between search and presence was significantly moderated by iu such that the relationship was more positive for low iu versus high iu people. in the lagged analysis model, searching the day before predicted higher levels of presence the following day and the relationship was stronger for people low in iu. thus, people who are able to tolerate uncertainty find more meaning when they search than people who struggle to tolerate uncertainty. the relationship between searching for and experiencing presence of meaning is flatter for people who are highly intolerant of uncertainty. for high iu individuals, search processes may be tolerated with distress such that the translation of search to presence is compromised by discomfort or anxiety. high levels of iu may limit the amount of meaning people high in iu can experience. perhaps, high iu individuals tend to operate at concrete, or lower levels of meaning making, as they attempt to assuage their distress, trying to find certainty as refuge. thus, the meaning they find is not as “meaningful,” which can explain why high iu people do not benefit as much from searching, in terms of presence of meaning. alternatively, searching for meaning produces both meaning and anxiety for high iu people, and the perception or experience of anxiety dampens or distracts from experiencing presence of meaning. in summary, exploring existential questions inherent in searching for meaning might provoke feelings of uncertainty, which in those who tolerate uncertainty well leads to exploration, resulting in resolution. among individuals high in iu, uncertainty likely induces anxiety along with limited exploration directed at finding certainty, which likely precludes experiencing more meaning in the aftermath of searching. results of the presence-to-search model was also significant. interestingly, on days participants reported more presence of meaning, they reported heightened search for meaning. these results contradict the supposition of the presence-to-search model that a decrease in presence of meaning spurs searching for meaning as we observed an increase in presence of meaning prompted searching. further, these effects were not significantly moderated by iu. thus, when participants experienced more meaning on a day, they were more likely to search for meaning that same day and the next regardless of how they tolerate uncertainty. presence of meaning may serve as a stable resource allowing for engagement in growth-oriented exploration, perhaps by searching for meaning. iu might not affect this relationship because the resource of presence of meaning provides people with stability and certainty, thus they seem not to be dissuaded from searching for meaning. at the trait level, park and colleagues (2010) found that when people report high levels of search and presence, then search is associated with positive well-being outcomes rather than distress. results at the daily level appear to converge such that people experience the benefits of stability and well-being in the context of presence of meaning, which then promotes exploration, self-actualization, and personal growth. results of lagged analyses indicate that presence of meaning significantly predicts searching for meaning the next day, but this relationship is not moderated by iu. results of the directional model, although significant, does not lend support to the presence-to-search conceptual model, as deficits in presence of meaning did not ignite searching but rather increases in presence ignited search. it is not surprising that presence and search are significantly, positively correlated on a http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 given day. on a day when someone feels that their life is meaningful, they may attend to or seek an understanding of the reasons that life feels meaningful that day and interpret such efforts as searching for meaning (newman et al., 2017). however, a different process may be involved in the association between same day versus lagged search-presence. disentangling these effects would require more nuanced assessments (e.g., qualitative interviews) aimed at better understanding participants’ search for and presence of meaning. further, results of this study suggest that daily searching may not operate in the same way, or have the same consequences, as trait searching. in other words, someone who is searching for meaning on a particular day may not look the same as someone who is a perpetual “searcher”. consistent with previous studies (e.g., steger et al., 2006), at the trait level, search and presence were weakly and negatively correlated in this study. at the daily level, search and presence were significantly positively correlated. thus, daily search is positively related to daily presence; however, “searchers” are generally lower in presence of meaning. additionally, at the trait-level, iu significantly negatively correlated with presence of meaning and was only slightly (nonsignificantly) negatively correlated with search. thus, those with higher trait-level iu tended to report lower levels of presence and search, which may indicate that those who can better tolerate uncertainty are more likely to search for and perceive presence of meaning. overall, results of this study provide support for the search-to-presence conceptual model and suggest that when people who are highly intolerant of uncertainty search for meaning, they do not report finding or experiencing as much meaning that same day or the following day as those who are low in iu. 5. limitations and future directions there are a number of limitations to this study. data was collected from a relatively small sample of primarily female undergraduate students. the search and presence of meaning profiles of young adults may differ from those of other ages. some previous research suggests adolescents and young adults endorse searching for meaning at higher rates than other age groups (e.g., bodner et al., 2014) and that search in young adulthood is not associated with the same levels of distress as typically noted (e.g., steger et al., 2009). thus, expanding this study to other age populations as well as more ethnically and culturally diverse populations is vital. additionally, there was a significant percentage of missing data as many participants did not log in at the appropriate times, or at all, on days throughout the three-week time period. it could be that participants were less likely to log in on days when they were very busy, distressed, or elated, thus the data could be skewed. the use of self-reports and the length of the study may contribute to inaccurate reporting. adding attention checks, varying the surveys given each day, and/or changing the length of the daily logs may improve the quality and response rate. examining lags across multiple days or examining dynamic change processes may also be informational. it is possible that we did not capture the true relationship between search and presence with the current design. a dynamic change model could inform if search or presence is a leading indicator of change or if true coupling between search and presence exists. additionally, a potential implication of the research conducted here is that the process of converting search to presence may take longer or in some way “look different” for high iu individuals. thus, examining trajectories of high iu versus low iu individuals may further elucidate the dynamics of converting search to presence. 6. conclusion overall, these results highlight nuances in the dynamic processes of experiencing meaning, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 searching for meaning, and tolerating the uncertainty that comes with meaning making. clearly, how people tolerate uncertainty plays an important role in the engagement in search processes and the translation from searching for meaning to experiencing it. when people search for meaning and do not find it, they are at higher risk for psychopathology and even suicidality (e.g., yook et al., 2010). thus, it is necessary for researchers to continue to examine the search-presence path for high iu people who are already at heightened risk for developing anxiety and depressive disorders due to their intolerance of uncertainty. helping high iu individuals experience meaning in life and cope with the uncertainty that searching for meaning provokes may be vital, as presence of meaning provides people with a valuable buffer against the many stressors and uncertainties of daily life. conflict of interest statement the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. authors’ contributions jessica l. morse: study conceptualization, investigation oversight, data curation, data interpretation, methodology, statistical analyses, and writing–original draft, writing–review and editing, approval of final draft. mark a. prince: data interpretation, methodology, statistical analyses, writing–review and editing, and approval of final draft. michael f. steger: study conceptualization, investigation oversight, writing–review and editing, approval of final draft. authors jessica l. morse center for meaning and purpose, department of psychology, colorado state university, fort collins, co, usa phoenix va healthcare system jessica.morse@colostate.edu mark a. prince colorado state university michael f. steger center for meaning and purpose, department of psychology, colorado state university, fort collins, co, usa optentia research programme, north-west university, vanderbijlpark, south africa publishing timeline received 4 december 2019 revised version received 25 january 2021 accepted 26 january 2021 published 31 january 2021 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ daily meaning and uncertainty morse, prince, & steger www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 references baumeister, r. f., & vohs, k. d. 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(2019). when you ask the fish: child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 97-120. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i4.1005 emma dunlop-bennett university of otago dunlopbennett@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 97 article when you ask the fish: child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children emma dunlop-bennett · jenny bryant-tokalau · anthony dowell abstract: child wellbeing is the subject of substantial academic and policy interest globally and in new zealand. notably however, the voices of children are largely missing in much of the extended literature. in addition, and largely due to an assumption that wellbeing is a universally held construct, the influence of cultural values and beliefs on the perceptions and experiences of wellbeing of children, such as the samoan children in this study, have not warranted in-depth attention. this study explores the influence of culture on how 8-year old samoan children living in wellington, nz, conceptualise their wellbeing (dunlop-bennett, 2019). part i of this article details the research approach developed for this study. guided by talanoa ile i’a (faleolo, 2009) or ‘talking to the fish’, this study positioned children as experts on their wellbeing and through the use of talanoa and photos successfully created the reflective discussion space for 11 samoan children to share their knowledge. the findings, outlined in part ii, show that when given the opportunity, these samoan children offered critical and realistic insights into their experiences and aspirations. one model of wellbeing shared by these children used the analogy of a seesaw, where wellbeing was achieved when the “good bits and the bad bits” are balanced. the influence of context of wellbeing was a second key finding. these samoan children’s experiences of wellbeing indicated a subtle interplay and balancing of their fa’asamoa (the samoan way) and new zealand life experiences. while this ethnic-specific study does not purport to represent the diversity of the samoan diaspora, it presents a model that can be adapted by the samoan diaspora living in other parts of new zealand as well as other pasifika and minority groups, as appropriate. keywords: child wellbeing, samoan wellbeing, culture, wellbeing introduction child wellbeing is the subject of a substantial body of academic and policy interest. its significance is reflected in international consensus in agreements such as the united nations convention on the rights of the child (unga, 1989) where 195 countries including new zealand have agreed that every child has the right to wellbeing. the world summit for children (unga, 1990) and more recently the 2030 agenda for sustainable development (unga, 2015) have emphasised the importance of child wellbeing to a country’s social, economic and environmental development. the early years of a child’s life are particularly important because it lays the foundations on which “virtually every aspect of human child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 98 development physical, intellectual and emotional – are laid down” (marmot, 2010, p.16). investing in children from an early age not only lays the foundations for better outcomes, it can also mitigate the negative effects of poverty that lead to poor health, low educational attainment, economic dependency, gender inequality, and increased violence (heckman 2008; naudeau, kataoka, valerio, neuman, & elder, 2011; neuman & devercelli, 2013). the way in which child wellbeing is used in the literature suggests that the concept has a shared meaning, however this is not the case (amerijckx & humblet, 2013; ben-arieh, 2000; ben-arieh, 2008; ben-arieh, ferran, frønes, & korbin, 2014; cronin de chavez, backettmilburn, parry, & platt, 2005; ereaut & whiting, 2008; pollard & lee, 2003; statham & chase, 2010). as ereaut and whiting (2008, p.5) explain, “…different meanings are being projected by different agents and what is apparently meant by the use of the term depends on where you stand. there are few fixed points or commonalities beyond ‘it’s a good thing’ ”. the term child wellbeing is used differently across disciplines and across diverse social cultural contexts which are, in turn prone to change. reaching a shared definition and understanding of child wellbeing is challenging because how it is conceptualised depends on where one stands culturally and socially. child wellbeing is defined, conceptualised, and referred to in so many ways that it has led to some questioning its value (seedhouse, 1995). fattore, mason, and watson (2016, p.v) capture this when, at their long list of child wellbeing dimensions, they say, “…in short, almost every possible theme can be related to well-being”. while there is a substantial body of academic and policy literature on child wellbeing, little of it is from the perspective of children. despite children being able to offer authoritative knowledge of their world and their experiences, their voices have largely been missing in research about their wellbeing (ben arieh, 2001; ben arieh, et al., 2014; fattore, et al., 2007, 2009, 2016; prout & james, 1997; sixsmith, gabhainn, flemming, & o’higgins, 2007). much of what we know about the wellbeing of children is through the perspective of adults, which may not necessarily reflect the views of children. further, while our understanding of child wellbeing is influenced by where we stand culturally and socially, little of the extant literature recognises the influence of other worldviews, cultural beliefs and values, and ways of knowing. much of the child wellbeing literature focuses on children predominately in north america, europe, and other western countries, which may have little relevance for children living in other socio-cultural contexts (amerijckx & humblet, 2013; camfield, streuli, & woodhead, 2010; ben-arieh, et al., 2014; fattore, et al., 2016; manolom & promphakping, 2015; saith & wazair, 2010; weisner, 2014; white, 2009). this article draws on an exploratory study of how samoan children living in wellington conceptualise their wellbeing (dunlop-bennett, 2019). the starting position of this study was that if it is to be credible and of value, it needed to ask those that know, live, and breathe the phenomena. for research on child wellbeing, those who know are the children themselves. given the paucity of literature from the perspective of peoples outside of the mainstream, this child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 99 study initially focussed on pasifika which, in talking with community leaders from the pasifika community, was refined to take an ethnic-specific focus on the samoan diaspora. the aims of this article are two-fold. having established that research on child wellbeing needs to privilege the voices of the children themselves, part i details the innovative research approach that was developed to create the space for samoan children to be share their insights. involving children in research is challenging given that in most cases, as seen in the literature, they are often not asked. this is particularly challenging for children who are raised in cultures where to a large extent they are ‘seen but not heard’. involving 8-year old samoan children in research required a process that was not only child friendly and age appropriate but also culturally authentic. this saw a weaving together of research methods grounded in the fa’asamoa (the samoan way) and fa’apalagi (the non-samoan way). part ii of this article highlights the findings that emerged from applying this innovative research approach. samoan children were able to conceptualised their wellbeing and articulate what was important to their wellbeing. the findings are followed by a discussion of the significance of this study. to set the context, a brief overview of pasifika is provided. pasifika peoples in new zealand pasifika is the collective term used to refer to people who have migrated from the pacific a region comprising 22 countries and territories or who identify as pasifika through descent. at the 2013 census,1 pasifika was the fourth largest peoples in new zealand. pasifika made up 13 percent of all children in new zealand under the age of 18 years (occ, 2016) and accounted for 12 percent of all births in new zealand (pool & jackson, 2017), yet there has no research on how pasifika children conceptualise their wellbeing. with one in every five school children projected to be of pasifika ethnicity by 2051 (ferguson, gorinski, wendt samu, & mara, 2008), it makes good sense from a practical and best practice point of view to include the voices of pasifika in child wellbeing research, policy, and programming. pasifika are often portrayed in new zealand as hard-to-reach, vulnerable, and disengaged (loto, hodgetts, chamberlain, nikora, karapu, et al., 2006; neilson, 2015). this deficit view does not reflect the way pasifika view themselves nor the aspirations that they hold for their children, families, and communities, as percival (nzcyes, 2008, p.24) explains: “nothing matters more to pacific people than the health, well-being and future success of our children. our community’s future is inextricably linked to their health and success”. this disconnect between how pasifika are portrayed and how they would portray themselves highlights very compellingly the need to explore how pasifika children, from their standpoint, conceptualise well-being. 1 this article uses data from the 2013 census of population and dwellings as only limited data from the 2018 census has been released. unless specified, all population data is from statistics new zealand website: www.stats,govt.nz. http://www.stats,govt.nz/ http://www.stats,govt.nz/ child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 100 as noted, pasifika does not refer to a single ethnicity or nationality. while there are some similarities amongst the ethnic groups covered by this collective term, each ethnic group has its own set of cultural beliefs, values, traditions, language, and social structures (macpherson, 1996; anae, coxon, mara, wendt-samu, & finau, 2001). anae (2010, p.1) has questioned the value of most pasifika research because it has “… ‘glossed over’ and ignored the cultural complexities of not only the multi-ethnic nature of pacific communities but also the intra-ethnic nuances of the diverse groupings and identifies of pacific peoples in new zealand”. to reflect the multi-ethnic nature of pasifika and to capture the intra-ethnic nuances that exist within the ethnic groups that make up the pasifika collective term, this study took an ethnic-specific approach. it focussed on the samoan diaspora, which is the largest pasifika ethnic group comprising 48.7 percent of the total pasifika population. the samoan diaspora is diverse and becoming increasingly so, shaped by the many different lived experiences in the diaspora, intergenerational differences, and new forms of samoan identity that are emerging as they make their place in new zealand. with 62.7 percent (89,271 people) of the samoan diaspora being born in new zealand, the story has shifted from a ‘migrant story’ to one in which ‘new zealand is home’. samoans living in new zealand, like other diasporic communities, are constantly navigating between different cultural worlds – the fa’asamoa and fa’apalagi worlds – and across spectrums of segregation, accommodation, and integration with the dominant new zealand society (berry, 2006). like all cultural ideals and practices, the fa’asamoa has adapted and continues to adapt to shifts in the broader social and economic contexts (anae, 2001; cowley, 2013; lilomaiava-doktor, 2009; mageo, 1998). the influence of these broader contexts have led to some arguing that the fa’asamoa should be renamed the fa’aaukilani or the fa’auelitone to account for the unique way in which it is being adapted in auckland and wellington (macpherson, 1997; taule’ale’ausumai, 1990). to reflect the influence of the broader contexts, this study focussed on the samoan diaspora living in wellington. in 2013, the samoan diaspora living in wellington comprised 22,383 people of which 44.9 percent (10,041 people) were under the age of 19 years. having set the study context, this article details how the space was created for 8-year old samoan children to share their knowledge and experiences in research. part i: creating the space to talk to the fish it was clear from the outset of this study on child wellbeing that if the findings were to be credible and of value, it needed to include the voices of samoan children. what was less clear was how to design the research approach to enable this. including children in research can be challenging. there is a view that children lack research competence, they are not capable of articulating their views clearly, and that the power differential makes it uncomfortable for them to share their views with an adult researcher (bradbury-jones & taylor, 2013). as participatory research with children becomes more frequent, there is a growing body of literature about how to include young children in research in a way that makes them feel comfortable and that their contribution matters (see: bradbury-jones & taylor 2013; graham, powell, taylor, anderson, & fitzgerald, 2013; o’reilly & dogra, 2017). child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 101 there is less guidance on how to include samoan children, or pasifika children more broadly, in research. a key challenge of this study was how to design it so that it was not only child friendly and age-appropriate but that it was culturally authentic. the study needed to be grounded in the samoan worldview but also reflect the diversity that exists within the samoan diaspora and the constant moving between the fa’asamoa and the fa’apalagi, which marks the daily lives of many samoan children. this required ongoing review of the literature on pasifika, the samoan diaspora in new zealand, participatory research with children, customary child raising ideology and practice amongst other ethnic minority diaspora groups, and piloting different methods with the samoan diaspora. this review, piloting and rethinking saw a weaving together of research methods grounded in the fa’asamoa and the fa’apalagi. to help explain why this was needed, the next section highlights how knowledge is constructed in the samoan worldview and place of children in this. the place of children and knowledge construction in the samoan worldview while the fa’asamoa is adapting, generally the samoan worldview is communal and family based, with prominence given to the collective. samoans do not stand alone as individuals but in relationship with their aiga or family (seiuli, 2012; tamasese, peteru, waldergrave, & bush, 2005; tui atua, 2003). this concept is captured in the fonofale (pulotu-endermann, 1995) in which a fale or house is used to illustrate wellbeing. the foundation of the fale represents family while the roof symbolises cultural values and beliefs. the inference is that the individual does not stand alone but is grounded in the family, which is in turn sheltered by cultural values and beliefs (fairbairn-dunlop, nanai, & ahio, 2014). while the fonofale does not reference samoan children, these ideas extend to them. samoan children are raised to know their place in relation to family, as cowley-malcolm, fairbairn-dunlop, paterson, wanzhen, and maynard (2009, p.27) explain, “children are raised to know their roles, to act on them diligently in the ‘service’ or tautua to their ‘aiga’. they know where to speak and not to speak, how to look and not to look, who to speak to and not to speak, how to address and not address.” samoan children are raised to have amio lelei (good behaviour), which amongst other expectations such as studying hard at school and coming home straight after school so they can help with household chores, is the expectation that they will listen and obey their elders (cowley-malcolm, et al., 2009; pereira, 2012; schoeffel, meleisea, david, kalauni, kalolo, et al.,1996). generally speaking, it is often said that samoan children are raised to be seen and not heard. looking at how knowledge is constructed, value is placed on the wisdom of the collective and the importance of communally agreed-to decision-making systems and processes (anae, et al., 2001; fairbairn-dunlop, et al., 2014). children as is common in gerontocracies in which ‘wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’ is correlated with age tend not to be included. tui atua (cited in tamasese, peteru, waldegrave, & bush, 2005, p.301) describes samoan knowledge constructive processes as bringing together three perspectives: child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 102 in samoan culture, there are three perspectives. the perspective of the person at the top of the mountain, the perspective of the person at the top of the tree, and the perspective of the person in the canoe who is close to the fish. in any big problem, the three perspectives are equally necessary. the person fishing in the canoe may not have the long view of the person at the top of the tree, but they are closer to the school of fish. as seen in this parable, the school of fish or the children have no voice but rather their perspective is given by those fishing in the canoe such as the parents or other elders: a perspective which could be distorted by the refraction of the sea. building on this parable, faleolo (2009) argues that if we really want to know what is important to the fish, we need to talk to the fish. in talanoa ile i’a, faleolo (2013, p.118) writes that including the perspective of the fish is about “... honouring and creating a pathway for the lesser known to become known, acknowledged and institutionalised”. integral to talanoa ile i’a is the talanoa or talk, which is done in such a way that it provides opportunities to probe, challenge, clarify and re-align the discussion (vaioleti, 2006). as a concept, talanoa has resonance across the pacific but vaioleti is credited as “adding to it a technical research-related meaning” so that it is not only simply about the ‘talk’ itself but also about the way in which the ‘talk’ is done” (suaalii-sauli & fulu-aiolupotea, 2014, p.333). fairbairn-dunlop & coxon (2014) argue that talanoa supports the creation of ‘safe places’ where people can share their stories and share them in ways where their voices are privileged. talanoa ile i’a (figure 1) provided the cultural frame to include the voices of samoan children, while talanoa created a ‘safe space’ for samoans to share their stories and experiences. this raised the question of how to adapt the talanoa process for children and ensure that they felt comfortable to share their ideas. the connecting piece was use of photography, which is positioned in the literature as a child-friendly way to engage with children. there are a number of ways in which photography can be used in research, from children being given a set of photos to choose from through to children taking photos of what they view as important to the topic. these ideas were piloted with two 8-year-old samoan children who said they wanted to decide what photos they took. in response to the researcher’s offer of a disposable camera, the children said that they did not know how to use it and that taking photos on a phone would be easier for them. in refining the research approach in line with this feedback, the researcher selected photovoice (wang & burris, 1997) to help guide the talanoa with children child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 103 figure 1: talanoa ile i’a. source: dunlop-bennett adapted from faleolo (2009). recruiting the fish and getting their consent to recruit samoan children to this study, the researcher used a respondent-driven sampling, in which as families were recruited they recommended other families. this approach was useful in reaching people beyond the researcher’s social group (ellard-gray, jeffrey, choubak, & crann, 2015). to be eligible, the children needed to be: 1. samoan to enable in-depth research that captures the intra-ethnic nuances within the samoan diaspora, the largest pasifika ethnicity in new zealand; 2. 8-years old to reflect the importance of investing in the early years of a child’s life. the global definition of ecd is children from birth to 8 years of age; and 3. live in wellington, which was selected to account for the influence of the broader context. the researcher accepted the first five families who met the research criteria, and their children became phase 1 participants. for phase 2, the researcher targeted recruitment to allow for gender balance, representation across the wellington region,2 and inclusion of a child living with a disability. sixteen families expressed interest in participating in this study of which 10 were selected. it was intended that one child from each family would share their insights on what child wellbeing meant to them, but this increased to 11 children to account for one set of twins. annex 1 shows the profiles of the samoan children and their parents. 2 about 80 percent of the wellington region live in wellington city, porirua and the hutt (lower and upper hutt. porirua and the hutt are both located about 20 kilometres from wellington city. child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 104 in terms of consent, suaalii and mavoa (2001) argue that for pasifika knowledge is measina (treasure) and pasifika children may not have the right to share this treasure without the consent of other family and community members. guided by this, as well as the researcher’s own cultural frame as a samoan, a two-step consent process was used in recognition of the collective nature of the fa’asamoa where children’s identity and voice are closely bound within family and community contexts. parents of eligible children were asked for their consent, before the researcher approached the children for their consent.3 talking with the fish based on the pilot phase, photovoice (wang & burris, 1997) was selected in which the samoan children took photos of anything that best told their story from their perspective. as wellbeing is not a term that is used in the everyday language of young children, the samoan children were asked to take 10 photos of what makes them feel ‘happy, safe, and loved’. these descriptors of wellbeing were intentionally kept short so that it was easy for the children to remember. over the research process, these descriptors were used by the researcher and the children as an anchor for the concept of wellbeing. the second stage of photovoice is contextualising the photos through discussion or talanoa, which wang and burris (1997, p.381) argue is important because, “photographs alone, considered outside the context of [their] own voices and stories, would contradict the essence of photovoice”. the contextualising of photos by the children took place in a group-setting or fono 4 which reflects the communal knowledge construction and validating processes integral to the samoan worldview. the group-setting approach of a fono can mask dissenting opinions, as people converge around a ‘norm’ which sees those who sense that their original ideas are not shared, abandon these in favour of more widely-shared views. while cognisant of this, the researcher selected the group-setting approach to help the 8-year old children feel at ease with the research process and comfortable to share their views. the researcher sought to mitigate the influence of group-think through the approach taken during the talanoaga5 as well as the analysis of the talanoa, which is discussed later in this section. figure 2 provides an overview of how the children were involved in this study. 3 parents of the samoan children also participated in this study through individual talanoaga with the researcher. the findings that emerged from the parent’s talanoa can be found in -bennett, e. (2019). through their eyes: a samoan perspective on child wellbeing [unpublished thesis]. dunedin: university of otago. 4 fono a meeting or gathering to discuss issues 5 talanoaga – a discussion child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 105 figure 2: an overview of the methods used with the samoan children. the fono were designed to keep the children engaged, to ensure that they all participated, and that the talanoaga was age-appropriate. as the children were from different parts of wellington and may not have known each other, the fono began with an activity to ‘break the ice’ including indoor bowling or go-karting. to help mitigate against children feeling that they needed to conform their answers, the researcher began each talanoaga along the following lines: researcher before we start, there are just a couple of things. first of all…there are no wrong answers. everything you say is right because it’s important. tomasi ohhhh that’s cool. tavita i can do that. researcher if you don’t want to answer a question, that’s okay you don’t have to just say pass. pele say nothing. moana or yes, don’t say anything. and if i’ve misunderstood you or you don’t get something i say, just let me know. it’s all good. and the last thing… it’s okay if something you say [points to a child] is different to child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 106 something you say [points to another child] because we all have different stories and that’s what makes this so cool. alright guys? to keep the children engaged in the talanoaga, it was structured like a quiz game where the researcher asked questions like, “you have ten seconds to show me a photo of what makes you feel loved”. each child was given a hand-sized copy of their photos so that they could easily flick through them to find the one they wanted to support their talanoa. once they had selected the photo, each child was given the opportunity to answer every question. as shown in the following excerpt the children’s answers varied in length and in detail. researcher okay now we are going to look for a photo….have you all got your photos still? great. you have 10 seconds to find a photo that makes you feel safe....okay who is going to go…ola you all want to go first (laughs)....mosese, what photo have you chosen? mosese this is a photo of me looking after my cousin. we were at the waterfront… ummm on the ice and my cousin couldn’t go by herself. she was too young… so there was a frame that she leant on and i helped her. researcher what a great big cousin you are. what is it about this photo that makes you feel safe? mosese well my cousin felt safe cos she was with me. i feel safe when i’m with someone…you know, someone who is looking after me. researcher that’s a really great answer. thanks mosese. tualagi, what photo do you have there? tualagi i’ve got three photos (laughs). researcher (laughs) great, which photo would you like to talk about first? tualagi this one. it’s my bedroom…and it makes me feel safe because…. i’m in a house that won’t blow away. researcher that’s great tualagi. tualagi also it has all my special things in it…like my toys and now i have a bunk bed…and i like being with my little lamb that makes noises….. mata gave it to me before she died so….. researcher so that’s really special then? tualagi yeah. researcher that must have been sad? tualagi yeah…my mum and dad say she’s ok though…we know where she is. researcher yes, your mum and dad are right. what is your other photo of? tualagi oh this one…its popcorn. researcher (laughs) popcorn? tualagi (laughs) yeah…cos my sister makes it for me…it’s my favourite snack. researcher what is it about your sister making you popcorn that makes you feel safe? tualagi cos she looks after me…i’m safe with her…i like it when she looks after me…you know, if mum and dad are busy…i feel safe. researcher that’s really great. and your last photo. tualagi it’s this one…with my dad again. researcher in your onesie? child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 107 tualagi yeah, i don’t have a photo of my mum…i don’t know why….cos my mum and dad make me feel safe all the time…they protect me and help me when i’m hurt….or when i’m sad they make me feel better… while the group dynamic of the fono can add something extra to the talanoaga particularly for young children, it can also make it more difficult to develop personal phenomenological accounts (palmer, larkin, de visser, & fadden, 2010; phillips, montaguea, & archer, 2016; tonkin & eatough, 2010). interpretive phenomenological analysis (ipa) was used to interpret the talanoa because it focusses on understanding not only an individual’s lived experience but also how they make sense of their lived experience. integral to this approach is ‘giving voice’ to the views of the research partners and ‘making sense’ of what is being said (larkin & thompson, 2012; larkin, watts, & clifton, 2006; smith, flowers, & larkin, 2009). the presence of multiple voices moving between individual and shared contexts, and the interactions between individuals all add complexity to using ipa. to reflect the group setting of the fono, the researcher adapted the ipa by drawing out the voice of the individual fish from the school of fish. guided by the literature (palmer, et al.,2010; phillips, et al., 2016; tonkin & eatough, 2010), this was done by separating out each individual child’s insights from the verbatim transcript of the fono and then selecting 10 blocks of talanoa for each child which reflected a particular point that they had made in relation to their wellbeing. the following excerpt is an example of one block of talanoa for tasi, which was coded to the ‘social connections/spending time with family’ theme: researcher tasi, what photo have you chosen? tasi this one. it’s of playstation. researcher that’s a great photo. what is it about your playstation that makes you feel loved? tasi cos, my brother plays with me. researcher and that makes you feel loved? tasi yeah, my brother always makes me happy. drawing out the voice of the individual fish from the school of fish helped to equalise the contribution made by each child, which was important because as shown earlier some children gave more detail in their answers while others gave less. prior to doing this, the themes that emerged from the talanoa (figure 3) gave the impression that they were of equal prominence. overlaying the 10 blocks of talanoa for each child, shown as coloured circles, on top of the relevant theme totally changed the picture. in doing this, the most important theme, from the standpoint of the children, was ‘not having to worry’. the most important sub-theme was ‘spending time with family’ under the ‘social connections’ theme, which accounted for 15 blocks of talanoa. this was the only sub-theme to be mentioned by all of the children. child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 108 figure 3: drawing the individual fish from the school of fish. to ensure that the children’s voices were reflected accurately, they were invited to a joint-fono where the researcher discussed the preliminary findings with them. of the 11 children who participated in phase 1 and phase 2, seven attended this report-back fono. during this joint-fono, almost all of the children drew pictures that illustrated how they conceptualised their wellbeing. these pictures included drawings of seesaws, flowers, treehouses, playstation, and ipads with apps.6 part ii: when you asking the fish wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children 6 an app is a piece of software that can be download to a device to look up information or to play a game (reference: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/app) https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/app https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/app child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 109 five themes emerged from the children’s talanoa (see table 1). the first theme related to how the children conceptualised wellbeing and the remaining four themes captured what they saw as important to their wellbeing. table 1 the key themes that emerged from the talanoa. key theme description frequency defining wellbeing as a bunch of stuff it’s a bunch of stuff 9 blocks of talanoa it’s made up of good bits and bad bits 4 blocks of talanoa connecting with loved ones spending time with family 15 blocks of talanoa having my family around 5 blocks of talanoa hanging out with friends 5 blocks of talanoa connecting with the environment 2 blocks of talanoa spending time reading books, playing with toys, or on my device 2 blocks of talanoa not having to worry knowing i have someone i can rely on 6 blocks of talanoa taking time out 5 blocks of talanoa having someone i trust who i can talk to 7 blocks of talanoa being looked after, cared for, and protected 9 blocks of talanoa my bedroom full of special things 4 blocks of talanoa living in a safe house 4 blocks of talanoa feeling valued, included, and with a sense of belonging having a place in the family 7 blocks of talanoa feeling included with friends 7 blocks of talanoa belonging to the team 4 blocks of talanoa having a place at school 2 blocks of talanoa being a good person helping others 5 blocks of talanoa being respectful, having integrity, being kind, and sharing 8 blocks of talanoa looking at the first theme how the children conceptualised wellbeing in more detail, children described their wellbeing as a bunch of stuff (13 blocks of talanoa). this bunch of stuff included things which could be categorised as physical, socio-emotional, psychological, spiritual or cultural elements of wellbeing. for example, during the talanoaga the children spoke of playing sport and eating healthy food (physical); of unconditional love and not feeling lonely (socio-emotional); of talking to somebody they trust or people or taking time not having to worry about things (psychological); of praying when they were uncertain about something (spiritual); and of being proud to be samoan (cultural). the ways in which the children spoke of what made them feel ‘happy, safe, and loved’ reinforced their holistic view of wellbeing. several children spoke about wellbeing having good bits and bad bits, as illustrated in the talanoa shared by moana: moana everything has a good side and a bad side. child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 110 researcher oh, that’s a clever way of putting it moana. can you tell me more about that? moana well… like social media. it’s good but then too much is bad. moana went on to talk about somebody dying, saying: moana if someone dies… well the good side is that they’re in heaven...god is looking after them now. the bad side is that you don’t get to spend time with them anymore. researcher you’ve explained that really well. so wellbeing is made up of good stuff and bad stuff? moana yeah. tualagi also spoke of the contrasting positive and negative elements of wellbeing by likening wellbeing to a bumpy path of highs and lows. she said that the path was always going up and down, “so when it was low, it’s ok cos it will go up again”. at the joint-fono where the preliminary findings were shared with the children, the children agreed a definition of wellbeing that it was about “a bunch of stuff that has good bits and bad bits”. in terms of what was important to their wellbeing, four themes emerged from the talanoaga: 1) connecting with loved ones; 2) not having to worry; 3) feeling valued, included, and that they belong; and 4) being a good person. table 2 provides one block of talanoa selected from the children to illustrate each theme. looking across the four themes that emerged from what children viewed as important to their wellbeing, 87 of the 97 blocks of talanoa related to connecting with people and building relationships. this was integral to the children feeling ‘happy, safe, and loved’. connecting with people and building relationships made them feel valued, secure, and that they belonged. only 10 of the 97 blocks of talanoa across these four themes related to material objects. this suggests that overall samoan children conceptualise their wellbeing primarily in relational terms. table 2 what is important to the wellbeing of samoan children? theme children’s talanoa connecting with loved ones ummm this one walking. i like doing hikes uphill… and the view [...] walking and stuff. oh and i also like playing netball. this photo here [...] i like playing netball because it makes me feel happy… even if we lose, i like playing it. also playing netball makes me fit, healthy. tualagi feeling secure and not having to worry this photo of my mum and dad is because they make me feel safe…they look after me and help me and make sure i’m okay and care for me…so it’s okay… i know everything is okay… you know even if i’m sad or something like that. moana child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 111 being valued, feeling included and that we belong [speaking about somebody who is sad] if he had friends, he would be happier. so we could try and be a friend [...] yeah, cos then he wouldn’t be lonely. there was someone at school who was lonely and so we showed friendship. penina being a good person i’m learning how to help people and how to be nice to people [...] helping people is good to do. mele this study did not set out to develop a model to illustrate wellbeing from the standpoint of samoan children, but the lack of children’s voices in the literature meant that current models of wellbeing on offer did not fit with the insights that they shared. finding a model that captured all of the children’s ideas generated a lot of discussion at the joint-fono because of the number of ways in which the children illustrated their wellbeing, such as seesaws, flowers, treehouses, playstation, and ipads with apps. one of the ideas that resonated with most of the children was a seesaw, in which wellbeing is achieved when the “good bits and the bad bits” are balanced (figure 4). the children spoke of the seesaw always moving up and down, which supports the dynamic nature of wellbeing. knowing that the seesaw was always moving between good bits and bad bits was how the children viewed resilience. describing wellbeing as a “bunch of stuff” showed that the children viewed wellbeing as holistic concept. this “bunch of stuff” included that could be categorised as physical, socioemotional, psychological, spiritual or cultural dimensions of wellbeing, and is depicted by apps that represent these different dimensions. the use of apps by the children reflects their modernity while the placing of these apps within a box symbolises their holistic view of wellbeing. the children captured the relational aspect of wellbeing by positioning the seesaw in a park. in other words, the seesaw (a child) is surrounded by their parents, sisters and brothers, grandparents, aunties and uncles, cousins, and friends. child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 112 figure 4: wellbeing a balance of good bits and bad bits. source: artwork by an 8-year old samoan child. when you ask the fish and listen to their answers this study is an invaluable first step in understanding how 8-year old samoan children living in wellington conceptualise child wellbeing. the findings that emerged from this study moved beyond the contexts of the existing literature by an adding an original contribution to the discussion on child wellbeing. this is achieved by offering a new way to involve children, outside of the mainstream, in research and by adding new knowledge of how samoan children living in wellington conceptualise their wellbeing. both of which are discussed in this section. the significance of the research approach two points mark the significance of the research process. firstly, this study reinforced the value of including children in research on issues that involve them. this study demonstrated that if research is to be credible and of, it must include the voices of those that know, live, and breathe the phenomena’. using a model grounded in a samoan worldview created the cultural space for samoan children to be positioned as experts on their wellbeing and to have their views contributing to the generation of new knowledge. research with children is often described as being difficult, with children positioned as ‘incapable’ of clearly articulating their view. this research has demonstrated that when given the opportunity, samoan children have a view and are capable, interested, and eager to share their insights and offer valuable knowledge about their wellbeing. child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 113 secondly this study showed how research approaches grounded in the fa’asamoa and fa’apalagi could be weaved together to create the space for samoan children to be included in research. developing the research design was challenging because the process needed to be culturally and age appropriate to the samoan worldview, as well as be sufficiently flexible to understand and take account of the changing times. this saw the weaving of fa’asamoa and fa’apalagi research methods such as: 1) talanoa ile i’a which recognises and gives prominence to the children’s voice; 2) the cultural concept and practice of talanoa which creates the safe space for children to share their stories; 3) group-setting talanoaga through fono; 4) the use of photography as a vehicle by which children could support their views, and 5) analysis of the children’s insights through adapting the ipa to draw out the individual voice of each fish from the school of fish. bringing together research methods grounded in the fa’asamoa and fa’apalagi helped the children provide their insights in a meaningful way. the children said that taking photos and talking about what made them feel ‘happy, safe, and loved’ was fun. being at ease and comfortable with the research process also helped the children share their views on sensitive issues such as feeling left out, feeling uncertain, and/or feeling sad. the topic of death for instance, which came up several times, was introduced by the children themselves. the talanoa shared by the children gave them a “shared ownership over the direction and focus of the discourse” (fa’afoi, parkhill, & fletcher, 2006, p.105). the benefits to children being invited to share their views, to have their views listened to, and to see their views clearly in the findings are immeasurable, as the children involved in this study themselves noted. the significance of the children’s insights the cultural voices identified in this research have been notably missing in much of the child wellbeing research and debate, which has tended to assume a universal child wellbeing experience and in turn to suggest universal solutions. developing solutions that are relevant and of value to the child wellbeing agenda in new zealand begins with building knowledge and understanding about how children, including children outside of the mainstream, conceptualise their wellbeing. the significance of the children’s insights can be distilled into three key areas. firstly, it extends the current literature by offering a definition of child wellbeing from the perspective of samoan children living in the diaspora. the children were able to conceptualise the complexity of wellbeing in a definition that makes sense to them. they defined wellbeing as “a bunch of stuff with good bits and bad bits”. in defining their wellbeing in this way, the children understood the concept to be holistic and comprising of multiple dimensions. further, they conceptualised that wellbeing being a balancing of the “good bits and bad bits”. defining child wellbeing in this way contributes new knowledge to the international literature. this definition, and how the samoan children conceptualised wellbeing as a seesaw, is broad enough to “enable people to describe wellbeing in a way that fits with their culture, values, and priorities” (dpmc, 2018a, p.8). recognising that there are multiple pathways to wellbeing, the ideas that underpin the seesaw in a park balancing good stuff with bad stuff, wellbeing as a holistic concept, and the importance of social connections and relationships – could be applied more broadly. the strengths of seesaw model are that children child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 114 globally can easily identify with it, it conveys their ideas in a simple way, and the universal appeal of a seesaw in a park could lend itself to be applied more widely to children outside of the samoan diaspora. secondly, this exploratory research responds to the recommendation by poulton, gluckman, potter, mcnaughton, and lambie (2018) for research that operationalises the multiple determinants of a global concept of wellbeing. research of this nature can help support multiagency responses to child wellbeing. the samoan children‘s holistic definition of wellbeing could lend itself to developing a multi-agency response to child wellbeing. these findings offer valuable insights to the framing of the draft child and youth wellbeing strategy (dpmc, 2018b); to the ministry of pacific peoples in its work to strengthen the wellbeing of pasifika; and for consideration by treasury as part of its pasifika living standards framework (thomsen, tavita, & levi-teu, 2018). these findings could also valuably inform individual sectoral responses to child wellbeing such as the recent nationwide kōrero mātauranga / education conversation (moe, 2018), where wellbeing was one of the most frequently mentioned themes. thirdly, knowledge of how samoan children conceptualise their wellbeing and what they consider to be important to their wellbeing has significance for the samoan diaspora in new zealand. while the scope of this study was localised to samoan children living in wellington, the findings could be relevant to samoan children living in other parts of new zealand as well as the wider pasifika community. this warrants further research. this study supports a counter-narrative to the generalised view about child wellbeing in the samoan diaspora. for the samoan diaspora, the knowledge generated in this study increases understanding about samoan children’s conceptions of wellbeing and in turn how wellbeing can be achieved against a shifting landscape. further, it is hoped that the experience of participation in this study may generate a more robust interest by the samoan diaspora and pasifika more broadly, in participating in national policy debates and in the policy-making process. conclusion this article presents findings from an exploratory study of how 8-year old samoan living in wellington conceptualise their wellbeing. shaped by the paucity of literature that captures the voices of children, particularly the voices of children outside of the mainstream, this is the first study on child wellbeing to privilege the voices of samoan children. this ethnic-specific study provided an innovative approach to creating the space for samoan children to share their knowledge and experiences of wellbeing, which could be adapted by other peoples in the diaspora, as appropriate. samoan children were able to define what wellbeing means to them and what is important to their wellbeing. overwhelmingly, the samoan children saw connecting with loved ones and building relationships as critical to their wellbeing. through the eyes of 8-year old samoan children, this study has added new knowledge to the child wellbeing literature. expanding knowledge and understanding of how children in the samoan diaspora conceptualise their child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 115 wellbeing is important to the lives of samoan children now but also for the formulation of policies to shape their future wellbeing. annex 1: profiles of the samoan children and their parents. authors emma dunlop-bennett university of otago dunlopbennett@gmail.com jenny bryant-tokalau university of otago child wellbeing through the eyes of samoan children dunlop-bennett, bryant-tokalau & dowell 116 anthony dowell university of otago publishing timeline received 14 may 2019 accepted 23 september 2019 published 26 september 2019 references amerijckx, g., & humblet, p.s. 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(2009). bringing wellbeing into development practice. wed working paper 09/50. wellbeing in developing countries research group. bath: university of bath. https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/dp/dp-18-09 https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/dp/dp-18-09 https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/wellbeing-budget/wellbeing-budget-2019-html https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/wellbeing-budget/wellbeing-budget-2019-html https://www.refworld.org/docid/57b6e3e44.html https://www.refworld.org/docid/57b6e3e44.html https://www.unicef.org/specialsession/docs_new/documents/a-res-s27-2e.pdf https://www.unicef.org/specialsession/docs_new/documents/a-res-s27-2e.pdf https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3 https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3 http://www.wje.org.nz/index.php/wje/article/view/296/310 http://www.wje.org.nz/index.php/wje/article/view/296/310 parks, a. (2015). review of the upside of your dark side: why being your whole self – not just your “good” self – drives success and fulfillment, by todd kashdan and robert biswas-diener. international journal of wellbeing, 5(1), 74-76. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i1.5 acacia parks hiram college parksac@hiram.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 article review of the upside of your dark side: why being your whole self – not just your “good” self – drives success and fulfillment, by todd kashdan and robert biswas-diener acacia parks overview the upside of your dark side is the result of collaboration between todd kashdan, a research powerhouse and vocal critic from within the positive psychology movement, and robert biswas-diener, an accomplished author, coach, consultant, and researcher in his own right. the resulting product gives readers the best of both authors’ strengths: outstanding empirical rigor, vibrant writing, and groundbreaking ideas. the central thesis of upside is to turn on its head the common wisdom that negative emotions are bad and should be avoided; they show how in moderation, in the right situations, three key negative emotions (anger, guilt, and anxiety) can be tremendously beneficial. they also argue that happiness and mindfulness, two constructs often thought to be universally beneficial, are not all good. they close with the proposition that a person who avoids negativity misses out on the benefits of being “whole” – a person who experiences both positive and negative emotions and harnesses each to their full potential. who is the audience of upside? like kashdan’s previous book, curious?, one of the greatest strengths of upside is its appeal to a very broad audience – its contents are certainly worth reading for the self-help market (and is written very accessibly to make that possible), but researchers in positive psychology also need to hear what kashdan and biswas-diener have to say. as a researcher myself, i am always impressed when a book manages to draw my attention to research that is relevant to my work but that i am unaware of. even more impressive, there were several occasions when the authors showed me a new perspective to research that i have previously read and consumed on my own! i am proud to say that my research program has benefitted by reading this selfhelp book – that hasn’t happened to me since haidt’s the happiness hypothesis almost 10 years ago. in short, from the casual reader interested in learning more about the science of emotion to the seasoned researcher looking for some new perspectives, upside delivers something worthwhile. strengths and weaknesses like any work, upside has both strengths and weaknesses. i noted one strength above: its appeal to a very broad audience. i was also pleased to see that, in a sea of self-help books on happiness that are informational but do not provide any real, implementable suggestions for http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ review of the upside of your dark side parks www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 improvement, upside provides concrete advice for using the scientific findings they describe to change one’s behaviors. for example, the authors provide a “speed limit” metaphor for helping readers understand when anger is and isn’t going to be helpful – basically, it has to be intense enough to get your attention (not just “irk” you) but not so intense that you lose logical thought or the ability to problem-solve. by helping readers apply this metaphor to figure out just how angry they are, and then advising readers to attempt problem-solving at just the optimal “speed” (or level of anger), they turn an otherwise abstract concept (“harness your anger”) into something the reader may actually be equipped to try after finishing the chapter. the sections on guilt and anxiety also provide similarly excellent suggestions. one problem i noted was in chapter 4’s discussion of the pitfalls of happiness. it is true that happiness, as a mood state, is not entirely positive (and they note several key disadvantages, such as thinking less critically), and i value the authors’ description of that research, as i do think it is important for readers to be educated on the nuances of happiness – that it isn’t always optimal. however, in my reading, the case for the pitfalls of happiness (that, as they say, the pursuit of happiness “often backfires”) is somewhat overstated. they spent a disproportionate amount of attention on work by mauss and colleagues which finds that people who want to be happy suffer from a paradoxical and frustrating inability to actually seek it. the “paradoxical effect” observed by mauss and colleagues is a relatively new phenomenon, and mauss’s work is by no stretch the only research that speaks to the topic, though the prose of upside would suggest otherwise. other work (including data in my own lab) finds that valuing happiness – particularly if it is assessed using a different measure than mauss’s – means better motivation and subsequently more successful efforts at selfimprovement. on a more minor note, although i enjoyed chapter 5, “beyond the obsession with mindfulness” – it’s one of the most playful in the book, and contains some interesting ideas – in my reading, it detracted from the unity of the book. the authors open by discussing how western societies have become obsessed with creature comforts – a direct lead-in to the general hypothesis of the book, that negative emotions may be uncomfortable, but we need them. encouraging mindlessness doesn’t really fit into that general argument. if anything, people often adopt mindlessness to avoid negative feelings and struggle with mindfulness because it involves accepting unpleasant feelings. indeed, the concluding chapter of the book comes full circle to endorse “wholeness” – which in many ways sounded a lot like what proponents of mindfulness strive for (they say, for example, that readers should “quit labeling … inner states as ‘good/bad’ or ‘positive/negative.” if that’s not mindfulness, i don’t know what is!). in short, the mindfulness chapter felt like a digression from the main thread of the book, though that thread was promptly picked up again in chapter 6. i found myself less convinced by the science, and subsequently less interested in following the chapter’s recommendations – not due to any problems with the science itself or the scientific rigor of the chapter – but because the book’s otherwise very compelling rationale and background argumentation did not squarely apply to chapter 5’s contents as it did to the others. conclusions the upside of your dark side is an expertly written, funny, thoughtful, and irreverent book. for consumers of self-help and members of the general public, it provides many practical pieces of advice while also giving the reader a solid understanding of a wealth of interesting and personally relevant research. as an academic myself, however, i cannot finish this book review without also lauding upside for its relevance as a piece of thought leadership in psychology. review of the upside of your dark side parks www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 i said something similar about kashdan’s last book, curious?, but it’s true here as well: while the book clearly set out to distinguish itself from positive psychology, reading the final chapter, i couldn’t help but feel like upside is perhaps even more “positive psych” than the actual positive psychology movement. it’s everything positive psychology is, but more: more interdisciplinary, more nuanced, more rigorous, and more self-reflective. this is showcased most of all in the final two chapters, in particular, (ch. 6, “the teddy effect” and ch. 7, “the whole enchilada”) which masterfully weave together research from so many disparate areas of psychology – kashdan’s home turf of curiosity, theoretical work on the nature of happiness (an area to which both biswas-diener and kashdan are vocal contributors), basic social psychology, decision-making, and industrial/organizational psychology. the interrelation between these fields and their relevance to happiness is illustrated using deftly executed examples from both history and popular culture. if you’ve ever had one of those “aha” moments where suddenly, you realize that everything is connected by one grand theme – that’s how i felt as i closed the book. happiness, and its pursuit, is a much broader topic than it gets credit for in the ongoing discourse of positive psychology; the wide-ranging, yet well-focused conversation started by kashdan and biswas-diener in upside is an important start in advancing academic thought on happiness. authors acacia parks hiram college parksac@hiram.edu publishing timeline received 26 january 2015 accepted 26 january 2015 published 26 january 2015 references kashdan, t., & biswas-diener, r. (2014). the upside of your dark side: why being your whole self – not just your “good” self – drives success and fulfillment. new york, hudson street press. 304 pp., $25.95 hardcover + $12.99 epub, isbn: 9781594631733. goodall, s., nicoll antipas, p., higgins, j., & cann, r. f. (2022). the buddy bench and beyond: exploring complexity-informed approaches to wellbeing education. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 86-101. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2133 suskya goodall suskya@gmail.com victoria university of wellington copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 article the buddy bench and beyond: exploring complexityinformed approaches to wellbeing education suskya goodall · philippa nicoll antipas · joanna higgins · rachel f. cann abstract: enhancing wellbeing in educational settings is a challenging endeavour as wellbeing education is inherently complex. this interdisciplinary conceptual paper aims to bridge the gap between psychological interventions and educational contexts by adopting a complexity lens to consider the puzzle of wellbeing in educational settings. we draw on the fields of positive psychology, educational theory, complexity thinking, and indigenous worldviews to conceptualise wellbeing education and illustrate the need to weave approaches together. embracing a complexity lens, we offer ways of prompting emergent wellbeing change: incorporating diverse perspectives, trialling nudges, and attending to interactions across the system. we argue that complexity-informed approaches to wellbeing education have the potential to create emergent change in and across complex educational systems. keywords: wellbeing, education, complexity thinking, systems 1. introduction wellbeing is an increasingly ubiquitous term in both public and political spheres. in 2015, the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) launched their project the future of education and skills 2030. the project maps out global education trajectories that are laden with wellbeing priorities. physical, mental, social, and emotional elements of wellbeing are anchored in the project’s foundations and transformative competencies (oecd, 2018). further, wellbeing is an implicit or explicit aspect of education systems around the globe. however, this focus on wellbeing is not a new direction in education and, in one form or another, has been espoused by educational scholars for decades (joseph et al., 2020; trask-kerr et al., 2019). recently, the positive education movement has reinvigorated the interest in foregrounding wellbeing in educational settings (m. e. p. seligman et al., 2009). educational contexts have been influenced by conceptualisations of wellbeing from a range of perspectives including: positive psychology (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000); ecological theory (mccallum & price, 2016; paterson & grantham, 2016); and indigenous worldviews (fleming & manning, 2019). as the field of positive psychology has matured, conceptualisations of wellbeing have evolved in a series of waves, from a focus on the positive, to nuancing to the negative, and recently to a call to embrace the complexity of wellbeing (lomas et al., 2020). digging deeper into the concept of complexity, we distinguish between the use of complexity in everyday parlance, and its conceptualisation in the literature of complexity thinking (cilliers, 2002). complexity thinking sees the world as interconnected, dynamic, adaptive, and giving rise to emergent phenomena, and therefore affords nuanced insights into wellbeing in education. as education researchers, being immersed in a nuanced view of wellbeing has motivated us to explore the complexity of wellbeing across educational settings, with applicability to early the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary contexts. the authors of this paper are strongly influenced by our backgrounds as teachers and leaders in the education sector in the bicultural nation of aotearoa new zealand. this bicultural education context is based on te tiriti o waitangi, a treaty signed in 1840 that intended to form a partnership between māori, the indigenous people of aotearoa new zealand, and non-māori peoples. our perspectives have been shaped by a holistic view of wellbeing in education that has been reflected in curriculum policy and practice for over 25 years (ministry of education, 1996). in this conceptual paper, we seek to explore the potential for perceiving wellbeing in education from a complexity perspective and stimulate interdisciplinary conversations between educators, positive psychologists, leaders, policy makers, and other interested parties. with a future focus, we argue that complexity-informed approaches to wellbeing education illuminate new perspectives of wellbeing, shine light on pertinent ideas that may have fallen into the shadows, and propose diverse pathways forward. 2. exploring wellbeing what is the good life? what does wellbeing mean? for centuries, humanity has grappled with these questions. rather than wellbeing definitions converging, the conceptual waters remain murky. a ubiquitous yet complex term, wellbeing or well-being boasts a myriad of specific definitions rather than interdisciplinary acknowledgement and convergence (paterson & grantham, 2016). the following section illustrates key perspectives and constructs of wellbeing, before turning to an exploration of wellbeing in educational contexts. psychological research into wellbeing has been largely influenced by two perspectives on the good life: the hedonic view and the eudaimonic view (oishi & westgate, 2021). the hedonic view that the goal of life is to maximise experiences of pleasure, is often associated with the concept of subjective wellbeing. measures of subjective wellbeing often capture three aspects of an individual's feelings: life satisfaction, high levels of positive emotions, and low levels of negative emotions (hefferon & boniwell, 2011; ryan & deci, 2001). in contrast, the eudaimonic view of life that true happiness is achieved through living a virtuous life, informs the concept of psychological wellbeing, often perceived as an individual’s appraisal of how well they are functioning in life (ryff & singer, 2008). these two views of wellbeing combine into a broad definition of wellbeing as “feeling good and functioning well” (keyes & annas, 2009, p. 197). goodman et al. (2020) explicitly link different perspectives of wellbeing, suggesting they fall under an umbrella of “general wellbeing defined as perceived enjoyment and fulfillment with one’s life as a whole” (p. 3, emphasis in original). such a diverse range of perspectives on wellbeing has led to researchers publishing in excess of 100 self-report wellbeing measures (goodman et al., 2020). however, in order to understand how individuals can enhance their wellbeing, an exploration of the elements that constitute wellbeing is needed. seeking to conceptualise and enhance wellbeing, researchers have created numerous wellbeing models, each comprising a variety of elements or dimensions. the five ways to wellbeing model was developed based on evidence of actions that increase wellbeing (aked et al., 2008). the perma model, developed by seligman (2011) using concepts from the field of positive psychology, outlines five elements of wellbeing: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, and accomplishment. the perma elements are not seen as an exhaustive list, for example health, vitality, and responsibility are possible additional elements (seligman, 2018). gallup has also developed a model of wellbeing with five elements: career, social, financial, physical, and community, which it uses as a basis for regular analysis of the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 wellbeing in the united states (rath & harter, 2010). these models focus on highly specific elements or dimensions, rather than taking a holistic view of wellbeing. various theorists foreground the ecological or holistic nature of wellbeing. moving beyond the individual, the wellbeing of one’s family, community and even society, can influence one’s wellbeing (la placa et al., 2013). in addition, paterson & grantham (2016) discuss the idea that “wellbeing seeks to connect mind, body and spirit – thus rejecting the compartmentalisation of people’s lives” (pp. 90-91). this holistic and interconnected view of wellbeing is evident in the māori worldview of wellbeing (durie, 1985). from a māori worldview, wellbeing is intricately connected to the notion of wairua, which can be translated as a spirituality that permeates all existence (valentine, 2009). as valentine and colleagues (2017) explain, “without wairua, there is no well-being” (p. 70). furthermore, in the bicultural context of aotearoa new zealand, collective wellbeing has been characterised through a variety of holistic models (authors, in press). an indigenous māori model of holistic wellbeing, te whare tapa whā, (durie, 1985) has been adopted within new zealand health and education contexts. the model is visualised as a house with four walls, each representing a dimension of wellbeing: taha tinana (physical wellbeing), taha hinengaro (mental and emotional wellbeing), taha whānau (social wellbeing), and taha wairua (spiritual wellbeing). resting on the foundation of the land, each interdependent dimension requires balanced development to metaphorically hold up the roof. this model contributes to the burgeoning myriad definitions, descriptions, characterisations, and explorations of wellbeing, weaving a complex web of intricacy around the construct. 3. introducing complexity thinking complexity thinking offers a way to describe the nature of complex systems, and thus to consider the inherent complexity of wellbeing in education. complexity is used across multiple fields in a multitude of ways, from the mathematical to the metaphorical. we intentionally use the terms ‘complexity’ or ‘complexity thinking’, rather than ‘complexity theory’ to reflect that there are currently two main views of complexity. one takes a mathematical, scientific or computational view and often seeks to create non-linear models of complex systems in order to understand them (alhadeff-jones, 2008; cilliers, 2002). the second view, which has influenced my approach, is grounded in the social sciences (hetherington, 2013). this view “argues that complexity theory does not provide us with exact tools to solve our complex problems, but shows us (in a rigorous way) exactly why these problems are so difficult” (cilliers, 2002, p. 257). because of these two views, some writers argue that the ideas around complexity have yet to be sufficiently described to constitute a fully-fledged theory (alhadeff-jones, 2008; gilbert, 2019; kuhn, 2008). one way complexity thinking has been used is to explore simple, complicated or complex situations. table 1 (below) explores the nature of these simple, complicated and complex situations. table 1 suggests that simple situations are essentially straightforward and that finding a solution to them is a matter of drawing a linear connection between cause and effect. baking is one such example: provided the recipe is followed accurately, a decent, standardised product can be expected every time. a complicated situation is more challenging and requires thorough analysis. there may be several moving parts, each of which may need consideration. sending a rocket to the moon, for example, is an exercise in this analytical approach. there are multiple factors that need to be minutely aligned in order to safely launch a rocket, however with the appropriate expertise, it is highly likely that the feat can be accomplished. the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 table 1. simple, complicated and complex situations. influenced by garvey berger & johnston (2015), snowden & boone (2007), and snyder (2013) simple complicated complex definition a routine situation with a straightforward, discernible answer. a difficult situation which requires indepth analysis and/or expert help. a ‘tried and true’ formula is likely to be ineffective. an interconnected, interdependent, and knotty situation which is in a constant and unpredictable state of flux. small changes may have disproportionately large effects. exemplar scenario following a recipe. sending a rocket to the moon. raising a child. relationship to cause and effect there is a direct relationship between cause and effect (linear). cause and effect are not immediately apparent, but may be gleaned through analysis. cause and effect are unrelated, and may only be discerned in retrospect (nonlinear). response following a formula is expected to lead to generally standard and predictable outcomes. response is framed as best practice. through analysis and careful thinking, approaches can be identified, and this is generally able to be replicated. response is framed as good practice. seek to see the system by hearing from multiple diverse voices to inform a series of small nudges which increase interactions. notice, learn from, and respond to the emerging patterns. response is framed as emerging practice. a complex situation comprises multiple, interconnected fishing lines each tangled with itself as well as being tangled together. untying one knot may result in one section of the line being untangled but may tangle another line up further. hence there is a non-linear relationship between cause and effect, which may mean that small adjustments can have disproportionate consequences. the joy and frustration of raising a child is used as a metaphor for a complex situation. children do not come with instruction manuals. the shelves and shelves of parenting advice books offer the illusion of ‘best practice’. therefore, raising a child is an exercise in adopting holistic, learning-focused approaches which accept the given context and adapt in response: "complexity diverts emphasis away from ... 'solutions' and 'evidence-based practice', to accepting the radical contingency of practice itself" (fenwick, 2012, p. 157). expanding beyond snowden and boone’s (2007) framing of simple, complicated and complex problems, emerging practice for wellbeing in education suggests seeking to understand a situation deeply before considering possible approaches to nudging a complex system in a desired direction. however, success is far from guaranteed. the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 zooming out to consider complex systems holistically, as befitting wellbeing in education, a complex system comprises agents which are connected and interact in a non-linear fashion. agents are influenced by feedback, which includes previous experiences as well as current circumstances, which inform their decisions and actions (holland, 2014). open to influence from external factors (gilbert, 2019; heylighen et al., 2006), complex systems are adaptive, dynamic (holland, 2014), and self-organising (capra, 2015). complex systems exhibit emergence (mason, 2008) which is to say that they are more than the sum of its parts (snowden & boone, 2007). for instance, each individual person is their own complex system: their physical bodies; their culture; their experiences; their families and friends. secondly, the classroom is situated within a specific school environment, and within an education system. finally, a complex system is interconnected with, and nested within, other complex systems (davis & sumara, 2006). it is indeed possible to see why richardson et al. (2001) can argue that perhaps “there is only one complex system” (p. 9). to further consider the perspective complexity thinking might afford wellbeing education, we explore pertinent characteristics of complex systems, including diversity, non-linearity, and emergence. diversity within a complex system allows it to be resilient and adaptive. in a human social system this means attending to multiple voices (cilliers, 2002; garvey berger & johnston, 2015). the goal of diversity is not to reach a consensus, but to strengthen a complex system’s ability to respond and adapt to change (capra, 1997; cilliers, 2002). in fact, capra argues that “contradictions within a community are signs of its diversity and vitality, and thus contribute to the system’s viability” (1997, p. 295). in essence, a robust complex system is a diverse system. complex systems are non-linear (gilbert, 2019). a complex system is not a machine: it cannot be broken down into its constituent parts to be analysed and understood (byrne, 1998). because the diverse agents within a complex system are interconnected and autonomous, small changes may produce disproportionately large effects, and vice versa (holland, 2014). the concept of emergence is pivotal to an understanding of complexity thinking (ell et al., 2019; hetherington, 2013). broadly speaking, when complexity literature speaks of ‘the whole being more than the sum of its parts’, it is referring to emergence. what is meant by this is that what organically arises, or emerges, from the non-linear interactions within a complex system cannot be predicted from an understanding of the system’s constituent elements (jacobson, 2020; mason, 2008). a prototypical example of emergence is water (holland, 2014). water consists of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen: h20. however, knowing what comprises a water molecule does not lead to an understanding that water is wet. this ‘wetness’ of water is an emergent phenomenon. considering the differences between simple, complicated and complex situations is a useful starting point to grapple with the complexity of complexity thinking, however understanding the holistic, dynamic and emergent nature of complex systems brings fruitful perspective to wellbeing in education. 4. the complexity of wellbeing in educational settings reinvigorating the interest in the relationship between wellbeing and education, positive psychologists proposed the concept of positive education, championing the teaching of wellbeing and achievement (seligman et al., 2009). as a movement, positive education has been the subject of academic discourse ranging from complimentary to critical, regarding both positive education and the implementation thereof (ciarrochi et al., 2016; halliday et al., 2019). common critiques of positive psychology include: content over context (ciarrochi et al., 2016; halliday et al., 2019); individual over collective (kern et al., 2020; lomas et al., 2020); positive the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 psychology over educational theory (white, 2021). these critiques often frame constructs in binary opposition. to disrupt notions of binary relationships, complexity thinking offers a fruitful perspective beyond these reductionist framings with the potential to bridge the gap between psychological and educational spheres. with a heritage in the social sciences that links to philosophies such as postmodernism and poststructuralism (cilliers, 2002), complexity thinking tends to reject binary oppositions (maclure, 2010) as reductionistic (capra, 1997; heylighen et al., 2006). instead, relationships between constructs are considered to be interwoven and dynamic. this nuanced view suggests a dialectical relationship. in order to illuminate dynamics between constructs, we now explore the critiques of content over context, individual over collective, and positive psychology over educational theory as dialectic relationships. tobin (2018) explains that “the dialectic relationship cautions that constructs considered in this way are inseparable constituents of the whole in which all postulated components presuppose the existence of one another” (p. 33). the sheffer stroke (|) indicates a both/and relationship rather than an either/or. the one mutually reinforces the other in an irreducible way. framing constructs as dialectical affords opportunities to acknowledge, respect and value global indigenous worldviews. 4.1 content | context the dialectic of content | context signals the importance of existing research alongside contextual conditions to promote wellbeing in educational settings. positive education programmes have been critiqued for a reliance on content over context (ciarrochi et al., 2016; halliday et al., 2019), leading to a gap between research findings and successful implementation in schools (conoley et al., 2014). to address this limitation, there is a move within positive education to recognise the importance of context, acknowledging that a range of external factors influence student wellbeing (allison et al., 2020). drawing on implementation science, halliday and colleagues (2019) highlight a number of factors to consider when implementing positive education programmes including: recipient, provider, organization, intervention, and socio-cultural and political contexts. recently positive psychology literature has outlined the need to consider context and systems (lomas et al., 2020; kern et al., 2020). positive psychologists nod to the complexity of wellbeing, yet this commentary seeks to interrogate concepts such as emergence and holism from a complexity thinking perspective. commentators often espouse ‘universal claims’ around successful positive education programmes based on western assumptions, values, and contexts (kern et al., 2020). the historical one-way flow of western ‘expertise’ needs to shift to an environment that respects and values indigenous knowledge (maree kopua et al., 2020). in aotearoa new zealand, education policy and practice seeks to embrace indigenous perspectives on holistic wellbeing promotion: “students’ wellbeing is strongly influenced by ... where they come from, what they value and what they already know” (ministry of education, 2013, p. 17). contextually-responsive and complexity-informed approaches to wellbeing in education settings are strengthened by valuing indigenous and local perspectives, knowledge and practices. 4.2 individual | collective individual and collective approaches to wellbeing are intricately intertwined, each of value, and informing one another as a whole. the field of positive psychology has advocated for a move beyond the current focus on individuals to consider social contexts and wider systems (kern et the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 al., 2020; lomas et al., 2020). whole-school wellbeing approaches call for the consideration of students, staff, parents, and the wider community as nested systems (davis & sumara, 2006; hoare et al., 2017; white & murray, 2015). collective wellbeing can be viewed as broader than whole-school approaches, to embrace ecological and complexity perspectives including wider educational systems (authors, 2021) and beyond to humanity and the planet (buchanan & greig, 2021). in contrast to the individual focus that dominates positive psychology, collective wellbeing is a foundation of many indigenous worldviews, stemming from relational and collectivist perspectives (mccubbin et al., 2013). indigenous community wellbeing is seen as a web of interdependent, interconnected and balanced interactions, relationships, and obligations (pitama et al., 2002; royal, 2005). from an indigenous new zealand perspective, “the māori approach to life is holistic” (royal, 2003, p. 33). a māori worldview is reflected through the inclusion of te whare tapa whā (durie, 1985) in education policy (ministry of education, 1996). an individual | collective approach to wellbeing acknowledges and embraces a range of indigenous and western perspectives. 4.3 positive psychology | educational theory a power imbalance is central to understanding the dialectic of positive psychology | educational theory. traditionally, experts or leaders of positive education programmes held positions of power (buchanan & greig, 2021); strategies to lessen resistance to change were provided (hoare et al., 2017); and educational theories were largely overlooked (white, 2021). understandably, this situation could be interpreted by educators as a disregard for their expertise. alternatively in some educational settings, inclusive wellbeing approaches explore power-sharing, communities of practice (buchanan & greig, 2021), appreciative inquiry (waters et al., 2021), and systems-informed practices (kern et al., 2020). the limited integration of positive psychology with educational theory and practice creates situations where wellbeing interventions, at times, create tensions with the given educational contexts. for instance, fidelity in implementing programme content may overlook the nuances of specific educational contexts. as halliday and colleagues (2019) observe, “even as fidelity matters, there is always some degree of adaptation needed” (p. 3). in contrast, emerging educational practice urges a response to student needs, highlighting the importance of adaptive expertise (le fevre et al., 2016). educational research shows that teaching strategies effective in one context are not necessarily effective in other contexts (sinnema & aitken, 2014). therefore, teachers practise adaptive expertise by consulting research; evaluating its applicability to their context; combining it with evidence from their own contexts; and drawing from their professional expertise to inform their practice (le fevre et al., 2016). a multitude of factors influence the effectiveness of wellbeing initiatives, some of which could be optimised through drawing on existing effective practices within education that incorporate complexity thinking. when the dialectical relationships of content | context, individual | collective, and positive psychology | educational theory are viewed as complex, interwoven and interdependent, potential abounds for camaraderie, collaboration and coevolution. 4.4 wellbeing education drawing on the authors’ experiences as educators and academics, we adopt the emerging term ‘wellbeing education’ (buchanan & greig, 2021; white, 2021), to call for a collaborative coalition between positive psychology, educational theory, and wellbeing theory. springboarding from the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 konu and rimpleä (2002) notion of ‘well-being in schools’, wellbeing education is an inclusive term that builds on positive education while highlighting the association between positive psychology and education-specific underpinnings (white, 2021). arising from academic research, practitioner commentary, and indigenous constructs, wellbeing education is challenging to formally define. inspired by various ideas from the fields of complexity, psychology, and education (see: buchanan & greig 2021; capra, 1997; gilbert, 2019; kern et al., 2020; mccallum & price, 2016; white, 2021), our emerging conceptualisation of wellbeing education is as follows: wellbeing education is a diverse and evolving notion. we perceive wellbeing education as situated in complex informal and formal learning contexts for individual and collective growth. wellbeing education acknowledges and values whole people: our physical, emotional, mental, social, cultural, and spiritual wellbeing, including our thoughts, feelings, hopes, values, strengths, shadows, and their interconnectedness with the community of life. the interconnected community of life includes the wellbeing of families, schools, communities, organisations, cultures, humanity, and the planet as an undivided whole. furthermore, the interconnectedness moves beyond a fixed point of time towards honouring the gifts of previous generations as well as championing the wellbeing of those yet to come. our conceptualisation is intentionally broad, complex, and holistic, providing opportunities for interpretation and contextualisation across a variety of learning environments. although wellbeing has been a feature of educational landscapes for some time, complexity thinking affords us the opportunity to appreciate wellbeing education as being as complex and intricate as raising a child. 5. beyond the buddy bench to adopt complexity-informed approaches to wellbeing education is to relinquish the linear framing of cause and effect, problem and solution, and binary thinking. rather, it is to call for holism: attempting to seek the system to the greatest extent possible; acknowledging the diversity of agents and the multiple ways they can interact; understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; and appreciating the myriad contexts that influence the system both internally and externally. a complexity-informed approach to wellbeing education offers a wider view. there is an appreciation of how systems are interconnected and nested; of how internal and external influences shape and morph a complex system; and that nonlinearity can account for unintended or unforeseen consequences. in the spirit of george box, who claimed that “all models are wrong but some are useful” (1979, p. 202), in this section we draw on our collective experience as educators to create a scenario whereby maia, a principal of an aotearoa new zealand primary school, is grappling with a wellbeing-related situation. this scenario is then unpacked to explore what one possible complexity-informed approach to wellbeing education might be. we acknowledge that, as appropriate from a complexity thinking perspective, that there are myriad approaches. in fact, further than this, we reject the notion that there can be ‘one way’ as the very nature of complex systems is that they are nested, contextual and dynamic. this one complexity-informed approach the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 is chosen to support further discussion and practical implications, as well as to explore possible dimensions and characteristics of such an approach. buddy bench scenario maia sighed and put the telephone down. ms whittaker again. that was easily the third time this term. maia knew ms whittaker’s child well. he was a quirky and sensitive wee soul. maia was worried: ms whittaker was right, sam was vulnerable and didn’t seem to have many friends, but she could hardly force kids into a friendship, could she? suddenly maia remembered something she’d seen ages ago, back when she was a new teacher: a buddy bench! a colourful bench in the playground where anyone who needed someone to play with during a break could go and sit, and then someone else would see them on the bench, and invite them to join in their game. brilliant! maia’s mind started racing with the possibilities. there was that old bench in the storeroom that could be repurposed. the caretaker could work with a group of kids to prep and paint the bench. she could call it an ‘extension group’. the parent-teacher association group would lap that up and might even give some money for the project… maia paused for a moment. she was getting carried away here. what else might she need to consider, she wondered. sure, sam didn’t have that many friends, but maybe he’s fine with that. perfectly happy in his own little world. perhaps the school should check to see if the kids would even want a buddy bench. no point going to all that effort if it’s just going to sit there and collect cobwebs. and perhaps, if the kids did want a buddy bench, the school should talk about what it is and how to use it. maia thought she could ask mr maniapoto if his class would perform a little role play in a school assembly... actually, thought maia, maybe there’s even more here to think about. we should check in with the kids, but also the teachers. and the non-teaching staff they notice what’s going on for kids too. a whole-school survey might be the ticket. and maybe a buddy bench isn’t the right solution. she’d just leapt onto that as the first thing that had occurred to her. what if we asked the kids to form a group to brainstorm ideas with a couple of teachers once the survey results were in, pondered maia. if it is a buddy bench, all well and good. they could trial the buddy bench for six weeks, and ask kids and teachers to notice what happens with it over this time. school culture, nodded maia to herself, that’s partly what this is about. we need to make it safe for kids to say they’re lonely, and to be brave and sit on a buddy bench, if that’s what we collectively decide to do. we also need to make it safe and brave for a person to collect a new friend from the buddy bench. there was a wry smile on maia’s face. these things are always more involved than you think. she reminded herself to slow down to hurry up. this scenario illustrates what one complexity-informed approach to a wellbeing-related situation might offer. maia’s mind runs through the gamut of possibilities to the concern presented to her by ms whittaker. she realises that when she pounces straight onto a potential solution, that of the buddy bench, she is adopting a binary approach. maia comes to understand that while the issue is about sam’s relationships, as a crucial lived experience for him, it is also one of exploring and understanding the culture and practices of the school. this is far more complex, in-depth and wide-ranging than initially thought. the approach maia moves towards in the scenario is then one of exploration, curiosity, and holism. a complex system is a learning entity (ell et al., 2019). this means understanding that the situation is not just about one child, but also the nested complex systems of his peers, the staff, the school’s values and structures, the community, and so on, that swirl around him. the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 appreciating that these nested systems are interconnected and intricately interwoven affords maia the opportunity to be curious and open to the possibilities of learning for her, and for others. to step into this space of learning possibilities, maia plans to attend to multiple and diverse voices. she contemplates what might need to happen around a possible plan in order to bring it to fruition. thus maia takes a holistic view whereby the potential buddy bench solution becomes positioned as a nudge in order that she and others can notice what emerges and how the system responds. through this particular complexity-informed approach, maia understands that there can be unintended consequences because of the non-linear ways in which individuals and systems interact. the buddy bench could be a roaring success. it could be an abject disaster. it may be useful for some. there is no way to predict. one can only nudge, watch, and learn. 6. adopting a complexity-informed approach telescoping out from this scenario, we appreciate that wellbeing education is inherently complex and that supporting desired change to emerge from across a complex system is challenging. in acknowledging that this may appear as a truism, we now integrate theory and practice further by offering practical suggestions for educators, psychologists, leaders, and practitioners. a complexity-informed approach to creating desired wellbeing emergence comprises dimensions, characteristics and prompts. when seeking to create system-wide change a complexity-informed approach to wellbeing education suggests two interwoven dimensions. one is to seek to nudge the system in a desired direction (garvey berger & johnston, 2015; gilbert, 2019). the other, enfolded, dimension is to increase interactions across the system in order to stimulate emergence (gilbert, 2019; snyder, 2013). in these complementary dimensions, the focus is on the system as a whole, rather than on individual elements (gilbert, 2019). further, we provide characteristics of a complexity-informed approach with prompts for reflecting deeply on these dimensions. 6.1 dimensions of a complexity-informed approach nudges are safe-to-fail probes with the purpose of learning about the dynamics of a complex system. if a nudge is not having a desired effect, it can be stopped without causing harm. on the other hand, if a nudge is having a desired effect, it can be scaled up into a wider project. this is the ‘safe-to-fail’ nature of the nudges (snowden & boone, 2007). we offer the following thoughts as suggestions for practical application. to create possible wellbeing education nudges, we might seek to see the system in its complexity: its interconnected, relational and diverse agents, including people, context, environment, policy. with an open and curious mind, we might ask questions of multiple voices, attending thoughtfully to what people say. for instance, exploring what wellbeing means to various members of the educational community. we might invite a diverse group to co-design multiple streams of possible nudges, including considering what already works in the organisation that could be amplified. with nudges in play, the focus then moves to noticing how the system responds. for example, we might observe how information flows through the system and see what emerges. alongside this, we might consider what constitutes a ‘desired effect’ and how this may make itself known or seen. complexity-informed approaches continually notice and adapt to how a system responds to nudges: amplifying or dampening them down accordingly. the second dimension of increasing the interactions within and across a complex system is enfolded within the dimension of the nudge. interactions between agents keep energy, information and emotion flowing and evolving within and across a system. they are the lifeblood of a complex system. whilst the understanding that relationships between people is the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 fundamental for wellbeing in both educational and psychological research, complexity-informed approaches go beyond this. the importance of relationships is embraced, but goes further to include interactions between various agents, which may be people, but also the physical environment, objects, and wider context in a radically holistic fashion (fenwick, 2012). moreover, by stimulating these dynamic and non-linear interactions between agents, the conditions for emergence are created, which enables change in complex systems. for example, we may see the buddy bench itself as an agent thus to sit on it is to interact with it. the act of sitting on the bench may create meaning for the person sitting and for those who notice the person sitting; and resonates with and from the relationships and culture of the system. this web of interactions gives rise to emergent phenomena, such as a culture of wellbeing. 6.2 characteristics of a complexity-informed approach in addition to the dimensions of a complexity-informed approach, we offer the following characteristics. these characteristics are intended as suggestions for actions that might be taken in order to create the conditions for emergent wellbeing change. further, garvey berger & johnson (2015) call on us to ask different questions and to hear from different voices in order to better grasp a sense of a complex system. with this in mind, we offer questions asked from a perspective of “empathetic wonder” (kern et al., 2020, p. 712), as prompts for reflection and action when considering a complexity-informed approach to wellbeing education. table 2. characteristics of a complexity-informed approach. characteristics of a complexity-informed approach prompts for reflection and action: understanding the nature of complex systems: that they are dynamic, adaptive, interconnected, relational, and nested. in what ways is your educational setting complex? ● who are the people involved? ● what influences your day-to-day reality? (e.g. policy, community dynamics, curriculum, physical environment, etc.?) if you were to imagine your education setting as a series of concentric circles, what might this look like? appreciating that expectations of direct cause and effect are problematic. rather, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the system gives rise to unpredictable emergent phenomena. bringing to mind a time where there was a much bigger (or smaller) reaction to a change in your educational setting than was anticipated, ● what was this reaction attributed to at the time? ● adopting a complexity-informed perspective, what other factors might you now identify as being in play? ● in hindsight, what have you and others learnt from this experience? seeking to understand a situation deeply before considering possible nudges. thinking about the situation at hand: ● what are people saying? ● what do you think? ● who else might have thoughts on the matter? ● how might you learn more? the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 characteristics of a complexity-informed approach prompts for reflection and action: attempting to ‘see’ the complex system to the greatest extent possible by seeking multiple perspectives from the diversity of agents within and without the system. consider a time when members of an educational setting have wrestled with a complex situation: ● who might you usually ask? ● who else might you ask? ● who might be surprised to be asked? ● are there external experts who might provide insight? co-designing small nudges that can be amplified or abandoned as required. how might you gather a small but diverse group of individuals from across your educational setting and wider community to discuss approaches to the situation? ● what has worked well previously? ● what is feasible? ● what might make enough of a difference? ● what might a novel approach look like? adopting a learning perspective: be curious to notice how the system responds to small nudges. with a nudge in play, what do you notice and therefore do in response? ● how might i embrace curiosity to approach the nudge itself and people’s response? ● how do different people respond to the nudge? o who is pleased? o who complains? o who does not notice? ● how will you gather feedback and monitor changes? ● what questions are worth asking, and to whom? 7. concluding thoughts complexity-informed approaches to wellbeing education have the potential to create emergent wellbeing change in and across complex educational systems. bridging the gap between psychological interventions and educational contexts, a complexity lens supported reconsideration of previous sites of contention as nuanced dialectical relationships. the notion of emergence provides a new way to conceptualise wellbeing education. appreciating that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, our conceptualisation strives for the inclusion of diverse perspectives, indigenous peoples, marginalised groups, and western perspectives, while providing opportunities for global insights. reframing the discourse around wellbeing education, a complexity-informed approach illuminates the importance of nudges and interactions to support desired change across a complex system. additionally, the characteristics of a complexity-informed approach with prompts for reflection are intentionally broad in the hope it may hold relevance across educational, psychological and organisational fields. overall, we contribute this conceptual paper as a nudge, inviting a conversation about the opportunities complexity thinking affords in the wellbeing education space. we call for an interdisciplinary coalition that strives for camaraderie, collaboration and co-evolution. see you on the buddy bench. the buddy bench and beyond goodall, nicoll antipas, higgins, & cann www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. publishing timeline received 10 december 2021 revised version received 20 january 2022 accepted 17 march 2022 published 1 november 2022 references aked, j., marks, n., cordon, c., & thompson, s. 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(2021). a decade of positive education and implications for initial teacher education: a narrative review. australian journal of teacher education, 46(3), 74–90. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2021v46n3.5 white, & murray, a. s. (2015). well-being as freedom: future directions in well-being. in white & a. s. murray (eds.), evidence-based approaches in positive education: implementing a strategic framework for well-being in schools (pp. 167–175). springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9667-5_9 about:blank about:blank lahti, e., (2019). embodied fortitude: an introduction to the finnish construct of sisu. international journal of wellbeing, 9(1), 61-82. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i1.672 emilia lahti aalto university, helsinki emilia.lahti (at) @aalto.fi copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 article embodied fortitude: an introduction to the finnish construct of sisu emilia lahti abstract: in the nordic country of finland, a cultural construct known as sisu has been used for centuries to describe the enigmatic power that enables individuals to push through unbearable challenges. sisu, however, lacks a direct translation and the construct has remained poorly defined and understudied. this article seeks to answer the question “what is sisu?” through the thematic analysis of two sets of qualitative data (n = 500 and n = 569) that were collected as part of a survey (n = 1,208) among a sample group of primarily finnish respondents. the most prominent part of the conceptual core of sisu is the ability to surpass one’s preconceived limitations by accessing stored-up energy reserves. sisu is invoked by adversity and is more about finding energy in the moment than about long-term endurance, goal-setting and achievement. instead of being about conscious willing or mental fortitude, it implies a strength that is connected to the visceral and somatic dimension of human endurance. i propose that sisu points to a universal phenomenon of latent energy in the human system, lends it a name and contributes toward a more culturally rich conversation on the human experience of overcoming adversity across life challenges. keywords: sisu, positive psychology, embodied cognition, qualitative research, thematic analysis, finland 1. introduction adversities are an inherent part of the fabric of human existence. consequently, our ability to overcome hardships and take action against slim odds has always been crucial for the survival of our species, as well as for the development of modern society. over 100 years ago, the founder of american psychology, william james (1914), outlined the need for a more nuanced understanding of human endurance and the need for “a topography of the limits of human power” (p. 38). in addition to taking strides in understanding mental illness and the causes of disease within individuals, researchers have expanded the conceptual landscape of psychology and developed empirically sound practices to understand the conditions and psychological resources that individuals draw from during times of distress. within the past two decades, our understanding has become enriched with theories relating to concepts such as post-traumatic growth (ramos & leal, 2013; tedeschi & calhoun, 2004), grit (duckworth, peterson, matthews, & kelly, 2007), resilience (luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000), mental toughness (gucciardi, gordon, & dimmock, 2009; jones, hanton, & connaughton, 2007), courage (pury & lopez, 2009; pury, kowalski, & spearman, 2007), and hardiness (kobasa, 1979; maddi, 2004, 2006). while the world is safer than it has even been in our recorded history and individuals experience more wellbeing (pinker, 2011), conflict and adversity still remain an inseparable part of life. gaining a more nuanced understanding of what enables individuals to endure hardships is not only useful, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 but is, in fact, necessary. however, the majority of the constructs currently used in examining these phenomena are mostly derived from the north american research tradition, therefore contributing to a discussion that is culturally unbalanced and not representative of the human family as a whole. bermant, talwar, and rozin (2011) have urged practitioners within the field of positive psychology to be careful not to imitate psychology, with its focus on american culture, but to pay attention to other cultures and the social context of the human related phenomena they research. prior to this, peterson (2008) wrote that, “there are lessons to be learned in all cultures about what makes life worth living and no language has a monopoly on the vocabulary” (para. 3). more recently, in the interest of adding to a greater cross-cultural sensitivity within the research around wellbeing, lomas (2016) outlined the beginnings of a positive cross-cultural lexicography of “untranslatable” words pertaining to wellbeing that do not have a direct english translation. sisu is one of the 216 words lomas mentions, and attributes the research on sisu as the inspiration for the lexicography (anthes, 2016; lomas, 2016). sisu is an age-old finnish cultural construct traditionally used to describe the ability of individuals to push through unbearable challenges. it has been researched in the context of finnish ethnic heritage among secondand later-generation finnish americans (aho, 1994; taramaa, 2009), as an ethnic symbol in constructing and maintaining finnish american culture (palo stoller, 1996; susag, 1998), in the literary production of “finnishness” within finnish american authors (taramaa, 2007), and, for example, as part of underground iron ore miners’ occupational narratives (lucas & buzzanell, 2004). sisu, however, lacks a direct translation (aho, 1994; lucas & buzzanella, 2004) and has been described in vague terms such as “inner fire” and “superhuman nerve force” (strode & hinshaw as cited in aho, 1994; taramaa, 2007). etymologically, the word sisu derives from the word sisus, which refers to the internal organs of a human or animal body (literally, the guts), or it can mean the interior of an object. dating back to the 16th century, when the first written remarks about sisu occurred, the word referred to a quality or inherent tendency. in 1745, daniel juslenius defined sisucunda in his dictionary as the location in the human body where strong affects originate (länsimäki, 2003). in estonian, sisu still means the inner part or content, whereas in the finnish language it evolved to describe a character trait. sisu originally referred to a negative quality, as the word pahansisuinen [bad spirited] implies. the transition of sisu into a positive quality and national narrative was partially backed by the finnish long distance running success in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. during the winter war in 1939-1940, sisu was lifted to an elevated status because of finland’s miraculous opposition to the mammoth-size red army. in 1940, the new york times ran a story entitled, “sisu: a word that explains finland” (strode, 1940) and time magazine (“finland: nothing worse to fear,” 1943) described sisu “as a peculiarly finnish brand of doggedness, capable of facing down death itself.” despite being an integral part of the finnish culture and folklore, sisu has remained understudied and elusive. when i first took a closer look at sisu at the end of 2012, i found no empirical research that would have sought to understand sisu in its own right, there were few online publications on the topic providing insight into it, and the construct lacked a coherent definition. in fact, many finns themselves seemed to find it difficult to explain sisu. there has been debate over whether sisu is a character trait, tendency, national spirit (aho, 1994), or merely a myth (hintikka, 1998). slade lander (1991) argued that the time for sisu is over and it is no longer part of finnish characteristics. in 1994, aho concluded that “it should be clear by now that we do need a good deal of organized, systematic scientific research to discover the scope and depth of sisu, geographically and situationally” (p. 199). due to lack of existing systematic embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 research on sisu and the elusiveness around the construct, the research question i begin with in this preliminary study is simply “what is sisu?” this is followed by an inquiry into whether or not sisu is a positive quality to have. 2. method 2.1 participants and procedure participants were invited to take part in the survey through social media sites such as twitter and facebook. no paid crowdsourcing services were used, but the survey spread organically. the average age of the respondents was 42 years (sd 12.5), and 80% were women and 95% finnish.1 prior to commencing, the study received ethical approval from the university of pennsylvania institutional review board. the survey tracking the representations of sisu among finns and those familiar with the construct was created using qualtrics and made available in finnish and english. the respondents (n = 1,208) were given the choice not to answer every question, so the number of responses for each question varied. to answer the main research question about the nature of sisu, answers to two open-ended qualitative questions were analysed. they consisted of 500 answers to (“how would you define ’sisu’?”) and 569 answers (“what consequences there may be of having too much sisu?”). the latter question was presented to respondents who had replied “yes” to the previous multiple-choice question “can an individual have too much sisu?” given the historical and cultural tendency in finland to glorify sisu, the second question aimed to provide another angle on the construct, focusing on its potential downside. 2.2 theoretical background for conducting a descriptive qualitative analysis, thematic analysis (ta) was chosen. braun and clarke (2006, p. 76) describe ta as “a method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within the data.” rather than merely organising the data, it is often used to interpret various aspects of the research topic and is particularly useful when little is known about the topic under study (boyatzis, 1998). while content analysis is a well-suited method for analysing large quantities of qualitative data (namey, guest, thairu, & johnson, 2007) it was abandoned in favour of ta, which goes beyond word or phrase counting to analyses involving “identifying and describing both implicit and explicit ideas” (guest, macqueen, & namey, 2012, p. 10). importance of a theme does not necessarily depend on quantifiable measures, but rather on “whether it captures something important in relation to the overall research question” (braun & clarke, 2006, p. 82). analysing the content of the data for recurrence of words or topics is suitable for simple reporting of common issues mentioned in data (green & thorogood, 2004), whereas ta offers a tool for more sophisticated and rich, yet complex, account of the data (braun & clarke, 2006). in the past, ta has suffered from a lack of clear guidelines. attride-stirling (2001) notes that this has contributed to some researchers not indicating how they actually arrived at their conclusions. to address this concern, a six-phase guide for conducting ta in a way that employs a clear, replicable, and transparent methodology outlined by braun and clarke (2006) was applied. the phases are: familiarisation with data, generating initial codes, searching for themes among codes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the final report. 1 demographic information was requested at the end of the survey and is based on information provided by those respondents (n = 1,018) who provided it. for informed consent and list of questions, see appendices a and b. embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 as braun and clarke (2006) instructed, one can code the content of the entire data set, or code to identify particular (and possibly limited) features of the data set. both data sets were analysed using the six-phase guide outlined by braun and clarke (2006). 2.3 data analysis the data were first read through twice to get an overall sense of the scope and flavour. interesting ideas and repeating patterns were written down. after the immersion phase, semantic content was identified (braun & clarke, 2006) and the data were initially coded for organising into groups that are potentially meaningful in relation to the phenomena (braun & clarke, 2006; tuckett, 2005). the codes identified features of the data that were considered relevant to the research question. a “good code” captures the qualitative richness of the phenomena (boyatzis, 1998, p. 1). due to the high volume of responses, the data in both cases were coded until theoretical saturation was reached (fusch & ness, 2015; guest, bunce, & johnson, 2006) and analysing it further did not produce leads for themes, and the core categories had become sufficiently dense. unearthing ideas and interesting bits was data driven (braun & clarke, 2006) as a result of the researcher following an inductive process of coding the data without trying to fit them into a pre-existing coding frame. memoing is part of qualitative research (miles & huberman, 1984) and was done throughout the process of collecting and reflecting on the data. the third stage involved sorting and combining different codes into clusters of similar meaning, ultimately leading to finer and more detailed thematic granularity. the process was continuous and iterative. potential themes were traced with the help of preliminary labels previously attached to the data. attention was paid not only to emergent themes but also data that diverged from the emerging patterns. this included anything that seemed to carry some kind of a relationship to another code. for example, the qualitative data around the question “what is sisu?” resulted in several divergent descriptions of enduring hardship. regardless of their intensity or nature, these answers were all initially coded as “enduring adversity.” after a more thorough analysis, several of the codes were moved under a more specific code of “enduring extreme adversity.” while digital applications were used as a tool for the analysis, at this stage, braun and clarke’s (2006) recommendation to visualise the data proved to be helpful. it meant creating an old-school image board that contained all the original code names and manually categorising them into clusters of notes. this was useful for gaining a clearer understanding of the semantic code jungle, observing potential links, and sorting codes into different candidate themes and subtheme piles. candidate themes were later evaluated for inner coherence, as well as in relation to relevant qualitative data, so that repeated patterns within the broader entity could emerge and be combined into categories of most prominent narratives reflecting the commonly underlying themes on sisu. at this point, all the data that were too thin and not supported by the overall narrative were discarded. after a comprehensive description of data through the use of themes, the analysis moved to refining and communicating the story of the themes as separate blocks of knowledge, but also in relation to the overall material. a descriptive name for each theme was created. finally, for the purpose of presenting the results, short and nuanced excerpts were selected and incorporated into one single table. embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 3. findings 3.1 the essence of sisu five hundred answers were analysed following the previously outlined process. they produced 95 initial codes, which were organised into 11 main categories. ultimately, three key themes with a distinct central organising concept (braun & clarke, 2016) depicting the most pronounced qualities of the construct were identified (figure 1). the final themes were: (theme 1) endurance amidst significant adversity with the emphasis on exceeding one’s preconceived capacities, (theme 2) taking action against all odds and having a consistent, courageous and forward-moving approach towards challenges, and (theme 3) accessing latent inner resources of energy and endurance that have previously been unexpressed or remained unknown to the individual. each theme included two subthemes that elaborate on the main theme. the main themes were also evaluated for their ability to describe the phenomena itself, as opposed to describing their observable outcomes. the first two, “extraordinary perseverance” and “action mindset,” offered a window into the latter, while “latent power” appears to underlie the first two categories. figure 1. the essence of sisu: themes and subthemes theme 1. extraordinary perseverance. extending oneself during a moment of suffering or significant discomfort was one of the most pronounced themes in the data (table 1 below). it is endurance with the emphasis on exceeding one’s preconceived capacities. sisu was mentioned in reference to overcoming hardships one has no control over, but also to describe self-selected challenges such embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 as demanding athletic performances, academic endeavours, or standing up for what is right. half of the data coded for adversity specified that sisu is about enduring significant adversity in particular (i.e., trauma, illness, accidents, loss of a loved one, functioning against very slim odds). the following descriptions exemplify the subthemes of adversity and exceeding one’s preconceived capacities: “pressing onward when you feel you cannot keep going, reaching beyond your limit, having resoluteness when facing an insurmountable obstacle, and sticking to your word,” and “blood and guts to go through the shit that life heaves on your shoulders, whether it’s wars, disabling accidents or diseases, financial ruination, death of loved ones, divorce, or having to turn a swamp into productive farmland.” respondents rarely mentioned sisu in relation to small daily nuisances. rather, it seemed to be reserved for major disruptions, and the most commonly used words referred to significant hardships and stress. vaikeus [adversity], epätoivon hetki [moment of desperation], este [barrier], koettelemus [tribulation], and taakka [burden] made up the majority of the references that related to enduring hardship. the word haaste [challenge, tribulation] perhaps carrying a more positive tone of striving towards a goal was used rarely, and even then it was often accompanied by ylitsepääsemätön [unbearable]. a majority of the data coded for extraordinary perseverance included the phrase “to not give up” [periksiantamattomuus, olla antamatta periksi], as opposed to using a similar expression with a somewhat different semantic flavour: “to keep on going” [ jatkaa eteenpäin]. table 1. the essence of sisu: codes and examples for extraordinary perseverance theme 2. action mindset. descriptions coded under the theme action mindset2 display a type of consistent, courageous approach towards challenges (table 2 below). it is to have a tendency to lean into the unknown and even seek out situations that are likely to test the individual. the theme is about taking action when there is no guarantee of success, and, in fact, failure may seem 2 jonathan gosling and henry mintzberg (2003) have used the term in a different sense as part of their framework for leadership training. it is one of a set of five managerial mindsets they describe to refer to attunement in managing change. embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 the likely outcome. it is about the beliefs and mindsets that pave the way towards action in situations that may at first seem overpowering and impossible. in this sense, it can even be seen as a catalyst for exceeding our preconceived capacities. sisu is about “sticking to what is right whether it makes you popular or not. believing in what you do no matter what the majority thinks,” as one respondent wrote. “a belief that, if you persist and stay the course, the outcome will be ultimately good,” is an example by another participant. if extraordinary perseverance relates to surpassing ourselves during the literal and proverbial ultra marathons of life, action mindset means taking the first step to embark on a journey that is likely to test our known capacities. table 2. the essence of sisu: codes and examples for action mindset theme 3. latent power. the theme speaks of the hard-to-explain and elusive dimension of sisu. recurring themes were those of sisu as emotional or physical strength that emerges as we refuse to give up. sisu as a latent inner power and capacity is about tapping into our potential dormant resources of energy and endurance that are somewhere “deep inside.” an excerpt from the data: we all hear or read about the most difficult situations humans face, like the holocaust. and we don’t really know how we would react and/or survive. when we face these personal questions of human limits, sisu has a meaning. it’s the meaning that somewhere deep inside yourself lies the potential quality of individual perseverance ... it’s a faith that if times get tough, you’ll have the sisu to see you through. the respondents’ language in this category was rather descriptive, as if trying to explain something that sits slightly beyond the grasp of verbal expression: “i like to think of the contrast between wonder bread [white bread] and finnish rye bread [this standing in for sisu]. i think of it as a certain type of mind/body courage. very intuitive, has something of the ‘stick to your guts’ in it, and some grace,” and “it is like the japanese concept of wabi-sabi. you only know it to experience it.” the narratives below in table 3 suggest something hidden and powerful, which is revealed under stress that is significant enough. action mindset a consistent, courageous approach toward challenges, taking action against slim odds and not being bounded by the observed limitations of the present moment. 1.8 boldness 1.9 facing one’s fears 1.10 standing up 1.11 creativity as a result of hardship 1.12 to believe in oneself 1.13 to have guts “i think it's non-delusional fearlessness toward what would otherwise be a difficult/frightening situation as well as a belief that, if you persist and ‘stay the course’ the outcome will be ultimately good.” “the ability to go against the stream.” “trust in one’s abilities and strength in physically or mentally adverse situations.” “sisu to me refers to the strength that lies beyond perceived limitations. i believe that sisu can also be cultivated by developing an unwavering positive mental attitude.” ”[sisu means] to have faith in oneself, in opportunities and action.” embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 table 3. the essence of sisu: codes and examples for latent power 3.2 is having sisu always a good thing? sisu was approached from a different vantage point in a question that examined whether sisu is always the desirable approach. an open-ended follow-up question (“what do you think are the consequences of having too much sisu?”) was presented to respondents who, in a previous question, had indicated that it is possible for an individual to have too much sisu. coding the data (n = 569) produced 69 initial codes that ultimately resulted in three key themes and six subthemes (figure 2 below). the main themes were: (theme 1) sisu that is harmful to the individual, (theme 2) sisu that harms the individual’s environment, and (theme 3) sisu that impairs the individual’s ability to think and reason. the last mentioned was originally a subtheme of “harm to self,” but because of its prominence in the data and ripple-like impact on the two previously mentioned themes, it was added as a main theme. theme 1. harm to self. the subthemes outline negative physical and mental consequences to the individual, such as health problems due to constantly overextending oneself, accidents, injuries, burnout, and even death. while the public discourse at large glorifies mental strength and perpetuates the “faster, higher and stronger” mentality, the answers here displayed an alternative, critical view (table 4). “[too much sisu leads to] denying the realities of life, as well as the limits of human strength, therefore denying the very core of our humanity in ourselves and others,” as one respondent wrote. harm in this category also meant taking more responsibility than one can bear and making foolish or outright “stupid” sacrifices, as the following excerpt from one respondent demonstrates: if the person has very unrealistic assumptions of mental or physical reserves, too much sisu can lead to foolhardiness and a backlash. overtaxing mental reserves may cause mental trauma, foolhardiness in the physical domain can even cause death. theme 2. harm to others. while resoluteness can be a positive driving force, there was a concern that people with too much sisu may get lost in the importance of their own personally embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 experienced purpose. this could potentially lead to mercilessness towards others and inability to attune to their needs. the examples included obsession over a task at the expense of others, ignoring people’s perspectives, failing to sympathise with their struggles, as well as being cold and ruthless toward one’s colleagues, family and friends. below are two examples. the codes, together with more excerpts from the data, are presented in table 5 below. creativity, sadly, is a rare companion to sisu. a person with sisu is someone who is trustworthy and seeks to make it on their own at all times. they are not necessarily the most helpful person because they think everyone else is capable of making it if they only bother to try and have the will. arrogance, aggressive behavior. bullying. overly critical of others. too much [sisu] makes a person intimidating to others, thus cultivating disrespect amongst peers. a person possessing sisu must also possess grace and kindness. it is a fine line to walk. figure 2. consequences of having too much sisu: themes and subthemes theme 3. harm to reasoning. too much sisu can cloud the mind and lead to opposite results than what were intended (table 6). examples include: having poor judgment, getting fixated on goals that may not work in the long run or may be harmful, and not being able to see the big picture or evaluate one’s capacities and ask for help. too much sisu could lead to not knowing when to quit (and not quitting when knowing that one should quit), therefore leading the individual in a embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 pointless loop of repeating the same pattern and expecting different results. the legend of sisyphus, who, according to the ancient greek story, is stuck in futile labour of rolling a heavy boulder up a steep hill, only to see it roll back down, is perhaps an apt metaphor for this. failure because of sisu ended up being a subtheme under “harm to reasoning,” since it was most often mentioned in relation to impaired thinking. the following response points to reasoning as a cornerstone of constructive sisu: you need to focus clearly on what you are now, but you also need to be able to learn from the past and be creative in finding new solutions when you seem to be stuck, knowing that hard work will pay off in the end. table 4. harm to self: codes and examples table 5. harm to others: codes and examples embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 table 6. harm to reasoning: codes and examples 4. discussion three themes describing the essence of sisu were generated as a result of a thematic analysis. while each theme presents a separate narrative, they are all more or less about finding a way to keep on moving forward when the external evidence and internal emotional feedback might point to the contrary. extraordinary perseverance relates to overcoming hardships and exceeding our preconceived limits, to venture beyond the known edges of our strength and transform assumed barriers into frontiers. action mindset is a forward-leaning, active approach toward challenges that acts as a pathway to taking action. latent power is our “inner engine” and denotes reserves of stored-up energy, which ordinarily are not called upon but are available when an unusually demanding situation occurs. latent power echoes the etymological origin of sisu that literally translates as “innermost part” or the “guts,” and, while doing so, it touches upon the elusive phenomenon, often described as human spirit or life force, that has piqued the minds of scientists, philosophers, storytellers, and artists alike across millennia. in the words of one respondent, “[sisu] is what defines us and is almost like magic in the sense that with it, you can do what others think is not possible.” extraordinary perseverance and action mindset incorporate nuances from related psychological concepts such as courage, perseverance and grit, while latent power points to something visceral rather than mental, and proposes a potential connection to research within embodied and somatic sciences. 4.1 sisu and related constructs in the empirical section of this article, sisu was analysed as a cultural construct. i propose that it not only enriches our shared vocabulary of the human experience by introducing a word outside the mainstream of american psychological lexicon, but points to a real phenomenon for which no term has existed. in the following, i briefly compare sisu to some related constructs. harm to reasoning inability to reason, think logically and use constructive cognitive strategies to ensure a successful outcome. becoming blind to the situation, having a fixed mindset and prioritizing short-term gains over long-term success. 2.18 failure to know when to quit 2.19 inability to reason 2.20 inability to see a situation for what it is 2.21 stubbornness that nears senselessness 2.22 functioning from fear mode 2.23 inability to take advice or ask for help 2.24 inability to learn 2.25 poor judgment 2.26 getting stuck in a rut (“the sisyphean trap”) “you can lose things if you don’t admit you’re wrong, or there’s nothing you can do about something ” “not knowing when to quit even though you will never succeed; spending too much time on unnecessary pursuit that doesn't really even give you a reward.” “when sisu itself become the goal, you’re already in trouble. sisu should always be a means to an end and even then one which is used with consideration.” “you can lose sight of what you are doing and not see the big picture.” “arrogance. blindness. failure to reevaluate oneself or one's approach. failure to experiment. failure to listen.” embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 whereas perseverance is the steadfast pursuit of a task, despite encountering obstacles and discouragement, with its emphasis on endurance measured by duration and consistency (markman, baron, & balkin, 2005), grit involves passion and its transformation into perseverance (duckworth, peterson, matthews, & kelly, 2007). one of the core components of grit is a sense of goal orientation, a pursuit of a dominant superordinate life goal (duckworth & gross, 2014). though “being gritty” and persevering means to keep on going despite adversities along the way, it does not necessarily require a singular adverse incident to initiate it (collins, macnamara, & mccarthy, 2016). the most pronounced quality of sisu relates to overcoming adversity, discomfort, and challenges. in the data, it was rarely described in relation to the pursuit of goals. sisu overlaps with certain endurance aspects of perseverance and grit but differs in its emphasis on short-term intensity rather than long-term stamina. most of the examples of sisu in the data involved determination and doggedness typical of grit but without the passion or focus for a big, overarching life goal. sisu is less about passion, achievement and winning (although it definitely can relate to those situations as well) and more about “putting up a good fight” and giving something everything you have. grit and perseverance get us on the road and keep us going long. sisu is the spare tank of fuel we tap into when we find ourselves running on empty. while there is no one universal definition of courage, researchers have been making progress in separating several different types of courage. the common thread between all of them is acting despite some form of fear (e.g., norton & weiss, 2009; rachman, 1990), whether it is, e.g., fear of judgment, social exclusion, unfavorable consequences, pain or physical harm. even though acting courageously in a particular situation means having to overcome fear, it may not always require going above and beyond one’s observed resources and therefore, tapping into “sisu zone.” consequently, while courage as a construct was not a main narrative in the data, facing and overcoming one’s fears was part of the theme of action mindset. psychological resilience is defined as positive adaptation to tragedy or ongoing significant life stressors (luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000), and the ability to bounce back from hardship (tugade & fredrickson, 2004). it is increasingly viewed as a dynamic process in which learned coping methods and psychological strategies such as optimism, problem solving, self-efficacy, and emotion regulation play a role (luthar, cicchetti, & becker, 2000; reivich & shatte, 2002). hardiness was originally researched as a pathway to resilience and is described as a combination of three separate but interrelated attitudes of commitment, control, and challenge (3cs) (kobasa, 1979; maddi & kobasa, 1984). mental toughness is an umbrella term used rather liberally to refer to sport-specific and sport-general values, attitudes, behaviours, and emotions that enable the individual to persevere, overcome an obstacle, and manage pressure (gucciardi, gordon, & dimmock, 2008, 2009). similarly to resilience, it is viewed as a collection of developed and inherent strategies and mental qualities. sisu is proposed as one pathway to resilience; it may contribute to an individual’s ability to retain the commitment and control required for hardiness, and allow for the final push of an athlete approaching the end of her known capacities. “sisu is a state of body, mind, heart, and soul in which you will not give up, no matter what comes your way. it is brother to ‘grit’ and sister to ‘perseverance’ and it will carry you through thick and thin” (a quote from the data). there is a degree of overlap likely between all constructs that seek to explain how humans keep on going. one can theorise where one begins and the other ends, but, in practice, it is hard to draw such lines and most likely we do not need to. however, in a culture that obsesses about the power of the mind, sisu takes a different turn. it invites us to pay attention to the potentially embodied quality of courage and fortitude. sisu as latent power points to a source of endurance embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 that is more about the visceral and somatic than conscious and cognitive, and which we know relatively little about: the embodied determinants of human emotion and functioning. 4.2 embodied fortitude: accessing reserves of latent energy the most prominent narrative around the conceptual core of sisu is the ability to surpass one’s preconceived limitations by accessing stored up deep energy reserves. while triumphing against slim odds and overcoming adversity are ubiquitous in our collective stories of human endurance, the phenomenon has been notoriously hard to explain, and scattered research exists. psychologist and philosopher william james was piqued by the phenomenon a century ago: for many years i have mused on the phenomenon of second wind, trying to find a physiological theory. it is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by anyone who probes so deep… (james, 1914, p. 8). given the acquired understanding of sisu as a latent source of energy, in this section, i aim to examine how such a construct could be related to certain psychological and biological processes that have emerged from recent research. research on the physiological side of stored-up capacity comes from the world of diving, weightlifting and competitive sports. free divers, for example, are able to far surpass the limits of ordinary breath holding because of a mechanism that causes the spleen to contract and change the diver’s blood composition by releasing oxygenated red blood cells into the bloodstream. studies on the biomechanics of weightlifting show that humans who are untrained are usually able to tap into about 65% of their maximal strength, the maximum a person could lift using conscious effort, while for trained weightlifters, this number is about 80% (zatsiorsky & kraemer, 2006). the adrenal glands pump cortisol and adrenaline into the blood stream, preparing the body for the surge of energy needed for the fight-or-flight response. it seems that the threshold of exceeding our capacities is not fixed but can be influenced. in a 2008 study, pollo, carlino and benedetti found that subjects who were given a placebo but told it was caffeine were able to lift more weight. clark, hopkins, hawley, and burke (2000) discovered a similar effect in a simulated 40-km bicycle time trial. the placebo effect has also been illustrated for pain and movement disorders (amanzio & benedetti, 1999; pollo, carlino, & benedetti, 2011), and there is evidence to suggest that the effect is related to individuals’ expectations and beliefs. amanzio & benedetti (1999) showed that placebo analgesia (pain relief) could be induced with verbal suggestions and dweck’s decades of research on mindset suggest that the beliefs individuals hold about their abilities impact their future behavior and even willpower (job, dweck, & walton, 2010; yeager & dweck, 2012). endurance can also be viewed as tolerance to muscle fatigue. according to the central governor theory (cgt) this is an emotional event (not a physical one) in which the brain “shuts off the body” to prevent hurt (noakes, st. clair gibson, & lambert, 2004). marcora’s research challenges this long-held notion by suggesting that exercise tolerance is ultimately limited by our perception of effort weighed against our motivation, not muscle fatigue or the capability of the muscles (marcora & staiano, 2010). even after exerting themselves to the point of exhaustion either physically or mentally, research participants were able to exert themselves more if sufficiently motivated (boksem, meijman, & lorist, 2006; marcora & staiano, 2010). a study by job, dweck and walton (2010) showed that research participants who believed that their willpower is limited and fixed were more likely to give up than those who believed that willpower is self-renewing. embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 latent power, or “intestinal fortitude,” as described by one respondent, is about fortitude as a somatic quality. research examining the embodied nature of human behavior and decision making has been overshadowed by the notion of behaviors emanating solely from the mind. in the last few decades, an idea has been promoted in cognitive science to view the body as having a central role in shaping our mind, actions and emotions. embodied cognition has now been fairly well established and it is the radical hypothesis that “our bodies and their perceptually guided motions through the world do much of the work required to achieve our goals” (wilson & golonka, 2013). furthermore, the expression of sisu is perhaps not entirely separate from its environment. after all, it is often called into being through the dynamic ebb and flow of situations that require us to act and respond. competition, fear or crises, but also a deep sense of purpose or fighting for a cause deemed worthy (the latter illustrated throughout the history of social justice by people from rosa parks and nelson mandela to edward snowden, and the like), can open a window to highly unusual displays of courage and emotional endurance. having a self-transcendent or prosocial purpose improves self-regulation in academic settings during tedious learning activities (yeager et al., 2014) and it has also been linked to positive outcomes for individuals surviving breast cancer (matthews & cook, 2009), to liver transplant recipients (wright, 2003), and aids patients (ramer, johnson, chan, & barrett, 2006). half a century earlier, austrian psychiatrist viktor frankl (1963) chronicled his extreme experiences as an auschwitz concentration camp inmate and identified that those who survived the inhumane conditions almost always had a self-transcendent purpose in their lives. for frankl himself, this meant enduring countless beatings, digging frozen ground, and fighting off malnutrition for years in the hopes of being reunited with his loved ones. six decades ago, roger bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. a deed long deemed impossible and even dangerous has since been lowered by almost 17 seconds and is now the standard of all male professional middle distance runners. it appears that either our capacities are still far from being set or our level of knowledge about the determinants of human performance is simply inadequate and could benefit from more systematic, crossdisciplinary research. our bodies and minds are not limitless, but the extent of those limits seems negotiable, with many paths leading to the top of “mount sisu”. 4.3 what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, until it doesn’t: on embracing constructive sisu encountering adversities emerged as a subcategory within the theme of extraordinary perseverance. while defining adversity can be a slippery slope, since what qualifies as a threshold of discomfort varies between individuals (delongis, coyne, dakof, folkman, & lazarus, 1982), in this paper it is approached simply from the angle of subjective human experience. what is considered to be the threshold of “significant challenge” is determined by the individual and varies between individuals, as well as within an individual’s lifespan, as we transform our life’s barriers into frontiers and render the unknown areas of our abilities into known ones. according to the survey, adversity seems to act as the doorway to sisu; sometimes it is the very experience of stress and discomfort that unleashes potentialities we did not necessarily know existed, a perspective that corresponds to certain psychological theories. below is another excerpt from energies of men: if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. the fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. we have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. there may embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 be layer after layer of this experience. a third and a fourth "wind" may supervene (james, 1914, p. 7). following this logic, we find sisu, our “second wind” and the extent of our mental and bodily strength, not despite adversities and discomfort, but because of them. akin to photosynthesis in nature, which is the complex process of transforming light energy into chemical energy, there seems to exist an equally puzzling process through which humans unearth and transform their latent energy into movement, momentum and action during moments which at first seem but dead ends. luthar, cicchetti and becker (2000) argue that in order to become resilient, an individual must experience some hardship. however, no tree grows infinitely into the sky. hardships strengthen the individual but after a certain point the impact can be the opposite (brown et al., 2009; van der kolk, 2000). what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, until it doesn’t. the idea is not to view adversities as entirely negative events but as a pathway to strength which we might not otherwise experience. tedeschi and calhoun’s (2004) work on posttraumatic growth shows that adversity can be a powerful catalyst for positive, life-altering changes in an individual’s life. if having sisu helps individuals endure, does more sisu always mean more endurance? according to these data the answer is no, and too much sisu may impair our ability to think clearly. it is not simply a matter of quantity (and whether one has it or not) but the quality of sisu, and perhaps also, of our thinking. in the broader scheme of things, our sisu is as good as our ability to reason, make informed decisions, attune to our surroundings, and evaluate our actions. at worst, the very quality that could elevate a person beyond her wildest dreams can be the thing to destroy her. the discussion on sisu extends far beyond the individual, as the impacts of our behavior influence those around us. the majority of respondents were keen to acquire more sisu, but were concerned how one can know if it’s wiser to continue to endure, or to simply give up. according to the data, too much sisu can result in disconnection from others and create an attitude of mercilessness as the individual imposes his or her own high (or harsh) standards on others. it seems that sisu is neither good nor bad, but is a tool one must learn to master. while endurance is about cultivating the emotional and physical stamina to endure life’s curve balls, one must also strive to become a well-rounded thinker, who is able to assimilate information from the surrounding environment and respond to challenges in a healthy way. constructive sisu is not blind and obsessive but flexible, adaptive and is informed by reason. it can also mean acceptance, surrender, and finding contentment in the moment instead of fighting it. this notion aligns with research by vallerand et al. (2003) on the two types of passion for activities. “whether a passion will foster positive affect and healthy persistence depends on whether it is harmonious or obsessive” (p. 757). while challenges can act as a pathway to sisu and growth, reasoning and self-understanding are the lamp to guide our steps. 4.4 limitations of the study and future work while the research helps render a more nuanced understanding of sisu, it nevertheless supports the notion of sisu as a construct that is hard to explain. out of the three themes describing the main essence of sisu, the third, latent power, leaves us with more questions than answers. this may be partly because the language and research for examining the embodied nature of human emotion and cognition have been overshadowed by the notion of behaviors emanating solely from the mind. the survey did not offer a deep enough dive into the construct, and descriptions such as “hard to describe” and “magical quality” were commonplace. however, it offers signposts that help inform the next set of research questions. future studies may benefit from embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 having a more in-depth approach and conducting unstructured interviews within the various domains in which humans encounter and overcome adversity. finally, it is important to note that 80% of the survey respondents were women, and in future studies it would be preferable to aim for a more balanced sample. whereas the present study offers a preliminary outline of the relationship between sisu and related qualities, further research is needed to understand how these qualities may influence one another, whether sisu can be cultivated, and, if so, how. furthermore, is sisu an enduring response of an individual that extends across situations or is it a more situationor task-specific outcome? is there a difference in the sisu-response between self-selected challenges and ones that people are forced to react to? while finland is recognised as the home of the construct of sisu, stories of humans extending beyond their known capacities are weaved into the collective daily canvas and history of our entire species. a systematic examination of stories and words from other cultures, such as rasmia (spanish), gaman (japanese) and l'chatchila ariber (aramaic) that relate to overcoming adversity, could further deepen our knowledge of the phenomenon. finally, the growing body of research on the role of the enteric nervous system and gut bacteria in emotion regulation can offer yet another fascinating pathway to understanding fortitude in a more holistic way. 5. conclusion the study introduced the finnish cultural construct of sisu by exploring its representations among the finnish population through a thematic analysis. sisu shares overlapping features with psychological qualities such as courage, perseverance and grit, but its most pronounced aspect is about tapping into previously unknown energy reserves that seem partially embodied rather than purely mental. stories of sisu are stories about transcending limitations across all domains of human life, from the physical to the emotional. it lends a word to the universal capacity of humans everywhere to endure in the face of adversity and take action against nearly impossible odds when needed. however, when discussing human behavior, we are dealing with a multifaceted phenomenon, which should not be merely reduced to its prominent characteristics. too much sisu can lead to stubbornness, disconnection, and other potentially harmful outcomes. sisu can be either self-defeating or self-enhancing, and understanding the conditions for both is crucial if one wishes to explore how it may be developed on an individual and collective level. a culture that glorifies and worships mental toughness, sisu, and achievement at the expense of virtues such as justice, benevolence, and integrity, puts itself on a dangerous path towards a world that demands winners and disregards those who can’t or choose not to fit this mould. language gives birth to mental imagery and constructs that help us describe our experiences and the world we live in. there are lessons to be learned in all cultures about how humans persevere. rendering something from “untranslatable” into a description which communicates meaning, can bring it within people’s grasp and open a possibility for empowering new dialogues. as we grow in our understanding of the phenomenon outlined in this paper—one that draws from a multitude of disciplines and ideas—we can unlock tools to address william james’ century-old question pertaining to the extent and limits of human spirit, while doing so, perhaps stirring the waters around the grand mystery of life itself: what is it that keeps our lights burning and hearts hoping during the dark night of the soul, and how might we best use this knowledge to alleviate the pain of those who are currently suffering? embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 acknowledgments a smile of gratitude to my advisors esa saarinen and frank martela, and all the kind reviewers, who gifted their invaluable feedback to improve this article. to angela duckworth for inspiration and support along the journey, and to my friends and family, who saw me through this writing process, which, at times, in itself felt like a feat of sisu. author emilia elisabet lahti aalto university, espoo emilia.lahti (at) aalto.fi publishing timeline received 8 september 2017 accepted 11 november 2018 published 3 april 2019 corrected version published 12 october 2022 (fixed the number of answers to questions about sisu) references aho, w. r. 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(2004). resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from negative emotional experiences. journal of personality and social psychology, 86(2), 320-333. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320 vallerand, r. j., blanchard, c., mageau, g. a., koestner, r., ratelle, c., . . . marsolais, j. (2003). les passions de l'âme: on obsessive and harmonious passion. journal of personality and social psychology, 85(4), 756-767. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.756 van der kolk, b. (2000). posttraumatic stress disorder and the nature of trauma. dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 2(1), 7-22. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3181584 wilson, a. d., & galonka, s. (2013). embodied cognition is not what you think it is. frontiers in psychology, 4(58), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00058 wright, k. b., (2003). quality of life, self-transcendence, illness distress, and fatigue in liver transplant recipients. (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of texas at austin, tx, usa. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/1082 yeager, d. s, & carol s. dweck, c. s. (2012). mindsets that promote resilience: when students believe that personal characteristics can be developed. educational psychologist, 47(4), 302-314. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2012.722805 yeager, d. s., henderson, m. d., paunesku, d., walton, g. m., d'mello, s., spitzer b. j., & duckworth, a. l. (2014). boring but important: a self-transcendent purpose for learning fosters academic selfregulation. journal of personality and social psychology, 107(4), 559-580. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037637 zatsiorsky, v. m., & kraemer, w. j. (2006). science and practice of strength training (2nd ed.). champaign, il: human kinetics. http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/isbn9789514283734.pdf https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/assc/article/view/4624 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01 https://doi.org/10.5172/conu.19.1-2.75 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.756 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3181584 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00058 https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/1082 https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2012.722805 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037637 embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 appendix a. informed consent dear participant, you are being invited to participate in a research study examining the social representations of the finnish concept of ‘sisu’. to be able to answer the questions and take part in this survey requires that you are familiar with the construct of sisu. this survey is part of a master’s thesis study for an applied positive psychology masters degree. its aim is to contribute to the available research literature on sisu, as well as to create a platform for future research. the study also seeks to understand whether sisu can be cultivated through conscious training, and what benefits this yields for individuals as well as communities. the study is supervised by angela duckworth, associate professor of psychology at the university of pennsylvania. in the following survey, you are requested to share your thoughts and personal experiences regarding sisu, and answer a few background questions. very little empirical work has been done to explore the meaning of sisu. your valuable input helps increase our general knowledge of the subject, and could potentially lead to the development of practical applications which enhance well-being. all information provided will remain confidential, and will only be reported as group data with no identifying information. all data, including questionnaires, will be stored in a password protected electronic format and only those directly involved with the research will have access to it. there is no paid compensation for the survey, but you can choose to enter a draw to win a psychology-themed book. your participation in this study is completely voluntary. you may decline altogether, or leave blank any questions you do not wish to answer. estimated participation time is about 15-20 minutes. most of the yes / no options include space for your observations or comments. if you give the research team permission to be in contact with you (in case of any further questions), kindly add your email address at the end of the form. your contact information will not be used for any purposes other than this study. if you have any questions about this research project or experience technical difficulties filling out the survey, kindly contact emilia lahti [contact removed]. if you would like a copy of this consent form to keep for yourself, please print out this page before proceeding to the survey. "by selecting ´yes´ and proceeding to the questionnaire, i give my consent for my data to be used and published in a form in which i will not be personally identified." no, i do not give my permission. leave the page. yes, i agree. continue to the survey! appendix b. survey questions 1. how would you define ´sisu´? 2. which statement do you think better reflects the deepest essence of sisu? 3. what is the best thing about sisu or people who display sisu? 4. do you believe some people inherently have more sisu than others? 5. name a single person, group of people or nation whose actions reflect having sisu. 6. what kind of situations or life events cultivate sisu? 7. what circumstances or situations inhibit sisu? 8. can sisu be learned or developed through conscious effort? 9. how would you advise cultivating the capacity for sisu? 10. can an individual have too much sisu? embodied fortitude lahti www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 11. what consequences there may be of having too much sisu? 12. do you have sisu? 13. do you wish you had more sisu? 14. how has having sisu affected your life? kindly share an example. 15. how do other people's actions affect your sisu? 16. would you rather a) choose to have more sisu or b) be more intelligent? 17. would you be interested in cultivating sisu through conscious practice? 18. do you have a favorite saying or quote about sisu? 19. do you think the meaning of sisu has changed in the past hundred years? 20. in what ways do you think sisu or how we describe it has changed? 21. do contemporary finns have enough sisu? 22. how would future finland look like, if finns strived to increase their level of sisu? 23. should there be more public discussion about sisu (in schools, workplaces and the media)? demographics: 24. what is your year of birth? 25. what is your gender? 26. what is the highest degree or level of school you have completed? 27. what is your marital status? 28. number of children? 29. total income of household? 30. number of working adults in the household? 31. are you a finnish citizen? 32. how many years have you lived outside of finland? chérif, l., niemiec, r., & wood, v. (2022). character strengths and inner peace. international journal of wellbeing, 12(3), 16-34. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i3.2195 lobna chérif royal military college of canada lobna.cherif@rmc.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 article character strengths and inner peace lobna chérif · ryan niemiec · valerie wood abstract: this research explored the relationships among inner peace and character strengths, both of which are understood to contribute to wellbeing, using a cross-sectional design. in study one (n = 25,302), we examined individuals’ perceptions of the strengths most relevant to fostering a sense of inner peace. in study two (n = 21,201), we examined relationships among individuals’ scores on the 24 character strengths and serenity and harmony in life. interestingly, the strengths individuals believed to be important for fostering inner peace (in study one) were different from those found to actually correlate with measures of inner peace (in study two). hope was most strongly associated with facets of serenity (inner haven, trust, and acceptance) and harmony in life. our findings indicate that, hope, zest, and gratitude are likely primary facets of inner peace, with spirituality and forgiveness acting as secondary facets for inner peace. implications and future directions are discussed. keywords: character strengths, inner peace, wellbeing, hope, zest, gratitude “every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.” thich nhat hanh (1992) 1. introduction 1.1 character strengths and wellbeing this the world health organization defines health character strengths are the positive parts of our personality that are core to our identity, produce positive outcomes for ourselves and others, and contribute to the greater good (niemiec, 2018). they are qualities that other people tend to admire, respect, and cherish (park & peterson, 2009). the via institute on character classification of character strengths and virtues offers a system of 24 character strengths nesting under six virtues, found to be universal across cultures, nations (peterson & seligman, 2004). like personality traits, these character strengths are assumed to be continuous and malleable as well as dimensional, meaning individuals possess each of these strengths to varying degrees and express them differently in different contexts and situations. the first virtue is wisdom, which captures cognitive abilities, such as the acquisition and use of knowledge for purposes of good, and includes the strengths of creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, and perspective. the second virtue is courage, reflecting one’s inclination to perform the right act (to do ‘the right thing’) in the face of external or internal opposition and/or a high risk of loss. courage is comprised of the more specific strengths of bravery, perseverance, honesty, and zest. the third virtue is humanity, which reflects interpersonal strengths such as attending to and befriending others and taking part in acts of generosity and kindness that inspire about:blank character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 others. related character strengths include love, kindness, and social intelligence. the fourth virtue, justice, captures civic strengths that underlie healthy community life and accentuate a sense of fairness between people and society. character strengths included in this virtue are teamwork, fairness, and leadership. the fifth virtue is temperance, which consists of having control over excess and the foresight to protect oneself from it. this virtue is demonstrated through the character strengths of forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation. finally, transcendence, the sixth virtue, refers to the extent to which one reflects on life’s mea ning, and one’s connection to the larger universe. related character strengths are appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality. researchers have consistently demonstrated an association between self-reports of the presence of these 24 character strengths and measures of wellbeing including less negative affect and greater subjective wellbeing, environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life, sense of autonomy, and self-acceptance. in demonstrating more direct effects of character strengths and wellbeing, character strength interventions have been effective in improving aspects of wellbeing. for example, proyer et al. (2013) conducted a strengths-based intervention (n = 178) where those in the experimental group completed activities focused on strengths highly correlated with subjective wellbeing (curiosity, gratitude, hope, humor, and zest), those in the first control group completed activities focused on strengths weakly correlated with subjective wellbeing (appreciation of beauty and excellence), and those in the second control group were waitlisted for the program. subjective wellbeing was evaluated pre and post intervention for all groups. results showed that both strengths-focused groups showed improvements in subjective wellbeing relative to the waitlisted group. schutte and malouff (2019) conducted a meta-analysis on the impact of such character strength interventions on various indicators of wellbeing and found that interventions targeting individuals’ highest-ranked character strengths out of 24, known as signature strengths, had an overall significant impact (weighted hedges’ g of 0.32). they concluded that signature strength interventions have the potential to contribute to beneficial outcomes (e.g., greater flourishing, happiness, less depression, and strengths use), but that more research is warranted. for example, most of these studies assessed wellbeing by measures of happiness or positive affect, rather than more comprehensive measures of wellbeing. there are certainly other important indicators of wellbeing and aspects of living the ‘good life’, including the experience of peace. the study of the relationship between peace and character strengths is an area that has largely been neglected, although it has recently been described by niemiec and pearce (2021) as an area for positive psychology and character strengths that is ‘ripe with potential’. the siloes of these two areas is surprising, given the robust quantity and quality of peace psychology research and character strengths research over the years. for example, there have been several-thousand studies of peace over the decades (christie et al., 2008) and over 700 studies of character strengths in the last decade and a half (via institute, 2022a). while a rigourous definition of inner peace has not been well established in the academic literature, many would agree that the experience of inner peace is assumed to be a highly beneficial state and one that reflects human flourishing (e.g., xi & lee, 2021). recognizing the importance of finding new ways to tap into improving inner peace for promoting human flourishing, niemiec (2021) has proposed a call for a new area of study for positive psychology in the domain of peace and character strengths. in the literature on peace (christie et al., 2008; neto and marujo, 2017), an important distinction has been made between positive peace (e.g., building harmony, equity, balance) and negative peace (decreasing or eliminating of violence, war, and human conflict). in addition, peace can be studied at the intrapersonal level (i.e., inner peace), interpersonal level http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 (relational peace) and intra/intergroup levels (e.g., within and between group peace). in this paper, we focus on inner peace from the perspective of character strengths, given their potential as a mechanism for inner peace building. 1.2 inner peace and wellbeing the experience of inner peace (also referred to as personal peace, internal peace, and peace of mind) has been historically valued by many cultures and religions. for instance, in both buddhism and taoism, experiencing inner peace is termed nirvana and is considered the ultimate life goal (see lee et al., 2013). nirvana has been described as a state of serenity that is achieved through detaching oneself from the material world and a sense of wellbeing that is not dependent on internal and external stimuli (mitchell, 2001). drawing upon hindu principles, inner peace is achieved through self-realization, where self-realization is synonymous with god-realization (keskin, 2016). to highlight the importance of inner peace for many cultures, the islam “salam” and judaism “shalom” greetings both translate to peace. in addition, the focus of sufism (sometimes referred to as islamic mysticism), a spiritual doctrine which can be traced back to the 8th century, is inward-directed and with practices devoted to fostering inner peace. in this practice, “contemplation takes precedence over strict rituals”, involving meditation, chanting and dancing, and a connection with the divine (e.g., bourcart, 2021). in many cultures, or in many societies, inner peace has been described as a deliberate state of either psychological or spiritual calmness, harmony and serenity, and tranquility even in the presence of stressors (barua, 2014). from a psychological perspective, it has been described as arising from the absence of “sufferings or mental disturbances such as worry, anxiety, greed, desire, hatred, ill-will, delusion and/or other defilements” (gogava et al., 2018, p. 4). inner peace can also be thought of as a homeostatic psychological state, or dynamic emotional equilibrium, achieved through emotional self-regulation which results in the optimal functioning of the mind (see ward, 2010). in addition, there are clear links with the recent surge in research on harmony (e.g., kjell & diener, 2021), in which harmony has been argued to be at the heart of wellbeing and the various facets of life (lomas, 2021; wissing, 2022). to summarize the above, and as defined in the current psychological literature, inner peace is comprised of both the experience of an internal state of peacefulness (i.e., low-arousal, positive affective states such as serenity) and a sense of internal harmony (e.g., lee et al., 2013), both of which are related to wellbeing. for example, soysa and colleagues (2021) found that dispositional serenity predicted lower stress and greater mental wellbeing (over and above mindfulness). in another example, delle fave et al. investigated 12 cultures and found that for 11 of them harmony was the single most common conception of life happiness (delle fave et al., 2016). however, inner peace and happiness are distinct affective states. however, inner peace must be distinguished from happiness, as they are distinct affective states. happiness, closely related to the emotion of joy, is more of a high-arousal, positive affective state, whereas inner peace is related to low arousal, positive affective states. having said that, both of these concepts are interrelated and work together in achieving subjective wellbeing (demirci & eksi, 2018). the research clearly affirms having a peaceful and joyful life would make any individual more functional, extroverted, tolerant, and optimistic. furthermore, these states of peace and joy lead to increased resilience and improved relationships with others. 1.3 character strengths and inner peace the purpose of the present research was to explore the relationships among components of inner peace and character strengths, both of which are understood to contribute to wellbeing and the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 ‘good life.’ the logic here is that discovered relationships among character strengths and inner peace could pave the way for the development of future strategies fostering inner peace (e.g., through the development of relevant strength-based interventions; cohrs et al., 2013; niemiec & pearce, 2021). to date, no studies have examined specific relationships between character strengths and measures of inner peace such as serenity and harmony in life. there is, however, research demonstrating relationships among character strengths, happiness, and contentment, all constructs related to inner peace (e.g., cohrs et al., 2013; güsewell & ruch, 2012; and lyubomirsky et al., 2005). in particular, character strengths that frequently emerge with the highest correlations to measures of contentment, happiness, and life satisfaction, include zest, hope, gratitude, love, humor, and curiosity (e.g., park et al., 2004; peterson et al., 2007). similarly, we might expect these strengths to be important for creating a sense of inner peace. however, in order to inform potential hypotheses for this research, a deeper dive into the central components of inner peace (discussed above): serenity and inner harmony. serenity, according to the findings of roberts and aspy (1993), and boyd-wilson and colleagues (2004), is the psychological byproduct of three more specific cognitive and affective states: hope, humility, and joy. hope stems from a sense of confidence, resilience, and inner strength; humility entails an acceptance of situations that are beyond one's control; and joy involves feeling love and a connection with the world. building on this work, kreitzer and colleagues (2009) found that serenity consists of what they termed inner haven, acceptance, and trust. inner haven reflects a sense of peace, calm, and inner security; an acceptance (similar to robert & aspy’s humility) of both ourselves and things we cannot control; and trust (similar to robert & aspy’s love) as the power to believe in innate kindness, the meaning of life, and the wisdom of the universe. like the three components highlighted by boyd-wilson et al. (2004), soysa et al. (2021) found that these three factors resulted in less stress and greater wellbeing. therefore, in terms of identifying character strengths that are similar in nature to some of the components of serenity, it appears that hope, humility, zest (similar to a sense of joy), spirituality (finding meaning in life, and connection to the outside world), and kindness might be relevant. in terms of harmony in life, delle fave and colleagues (2016) identified the following four related components: inner peace, balance, contentment, and psychophysical wellbeing. arguably, the main work on harmony comes from kjell and colleagues (2011), who define harmony as the experience of psychological balance and flexibility in life. as a result of their findings, they created the “harmony in life scale” which revealed that harmony in life was significantly correlated with measures of peace and balance. these facets are not as closely connected conceptually to character strengths, as those of serenity. for this reason, forming hypotheses about which character strengths might be related to the experience of harmony in life would be more speculative. in fact, as outlined by niemiec (2021), one could make the argument that each of the 24 character strengths has the ability to meaningfully contribute to the experience of inner peace. for example, one could leverage love to cultivate an inner state of joy, hope to confidently build a sense of agency and control over life events, find balance through leveraging perspective or forgiveness, and use gratitude to reflect on and believe in others’ innate kindness. 2. current research this is an exploratory study of the relationships between character strengths and inner peace. due to the lack of empirical research on this integration, we did not make scientific predictions about expected relationships among character strengths and measures of inner peace. however, based on previous research on serenity and harmony in life, and the strengths identifie d as correlated with the closely related concept of happiness, we expected that these measures of inner http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 peace might be associated with curiosity, gratitude, humility, hope, kindness, love, spirituality, and zest. evaluating potential alignment or unalignment between perceived and observed strengths is a novel phenomenon ripe for exploring. therefore, exploration was also one of our core research goals. in study one, using a cross-sectional approach, we were interested in examining individuals’ perceptions of the strengths they believe are important for inner peace. then, in study two, also using a cross-sectional approach, we examined correlations among individuals’ scores on the 24 character strengths and their endorsement of measures of inner peace (serenity and harmony in life specifically). 3. study one 3.1 method 3.1.1 participants and procedure participants were recruited through the via institute on character. after completion of the via inventory of strengths (described below), participants were asked to select up to two character strengths that most strongly support or create a sense of ‘inner peace’ for them. specifically, they were asked the following: “when you think of your own ‘inner peace’ (feeling calmness, tranquility, harmony) in a particular moment, either alone or with others, which character strength most strongly supports you or creates that ‘inner peace’ for you?” this question targets positive peace (christie et al., 2008)—the building up of harmony in oneself as opposed to reducing inner conflict/tension (negative peace). data was collected over seven consecutive days in february 2021. a total of 25,302 individuals responded to these questions. demographic information is provided in table 1. participants were mostly women (64.7%), between 18-54 years of age (85.4%), many had a bachelor’s (30.5%) or master’s degree (18.5%), most were from the united states, australia, mexico, the united kingdom, and canada (62.3%), many were fully employed (46.8%), with a mode household income of less than $20,000usd (26.5%). most participants (97.9%) did not indicate their ethnicity, nor their marital status (96.2%). 3.1.2 character strengths the via inventory of strengths (via-is-p, where the “p” refers to all “positive” keyed items) (via institute, 2022b) consists of 96 items (4 items for each strength) that assess character strengths. the via-is-p is a derivative of the via-is-r (192 items, where “r” refers to “revised”). both instruments maintain good psychometrics, however, the via-is-p, used in this study, is preferred when the goal is to balance test length with psychometrics (mcgrath, 2019). the mean correlation across the 24 scales between the via-is-r and the via-96-p is .92; the mean reliability across the 24 scales of the via-is-p is .77, and when the criterion of strengths behaviors has been assessed, the mean correlation across the 24 strengths on the via-is-p with the behavior criterion was .53 (mcgrath, 2019). respondents indicate their endorsement of statements about their strengths. ratings are made on a 5-point scale from 1 (not at all like me) to 5 (very much like me). a sample item for curiosity is “i am always curious about the world”, while a sample item for gratitude is, “i feel thankful for what i have received in life.” http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 table 1. demographic characteristics of the final sample (n = 25,302). n .% gender male 6,249 24.7 female 13,449 53.2 other 177 .7 skipped 5,427 21.4 age (years) 18-24 5,645 22.3 25-34 4,482 17.7 35-44 3,487 13.8 45-54 2,535 10.0 55-64 1,199 4.7 65-74 324 1.3 75+ 63 0.2 skipped 7.567 29.8 education no schooling completed 363 1.4 nursery school to 8th grade 138 0.5 some high school, no diploma 1,047 4.1 high school graduate or equivalent 2,836 11.2 some college credit, no degree 2,459 9.7 trade/technical/vocational training 599 2.4 bachelor’s degree 5,589 22.1 associate degree 836 3.3 master’s degree 3,358 13.3 professional degree 724 2.9 doctorate degree 468 1.8 post doctorate 124 .5 skipped 6761 26.7 location united states 6,463 38.0 australia 1,856 10.9 canada 913 5.4 united kingdom 950 5.6 other 6,810 7.3 skipped 8,310 32.8 employment status employed full-time 7,948 46.8 employed part-time 2,069 12.2 student 3,520 20.7 active military 460 1.8 homemaker 356 2.1 retired 348 2.0 unemployed 1,553 9.1 disabled or unable to work 125 0.7 other 1,073 4.2 skipped 7,850 31.0 household income (in usd) less than $20,000 4,506 26.5 $20,000-$34,999 1,959 11.5 $35,000-$49,999 1,643 9.7 $50,000-$74,999 2,137 12.6 $75,000-$99,999 1,598 9.4 over $100,000 3,598 21.2 skipped 9,861 39.0 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 3.2 results we were interested in evaluating the character strengths that individuals selected as being most critical to supporting a sense of inner peace for them. for this analysis, we calculated the frequency (percentage) with which a particular strength was mentioned overall (as first or second choice of strengths), and then compared the frequency with which individuals mentioned particular character strengths against ‘chance’ which we set to be above 8.3% (1/24 * 2). the frequencies of character strengths are listed in table 2, in rank order. out of the 24 strengths, 13 were selected as being most critical for fostering a sense of inner peace for individuals. in particular, the most important strengths identified were (in order): love, kindness, creativity, gratitude, perspective, spirituality, humor, honesty, hope, curiosity, love of learning, appreciation of beauty and excellence, and perseverance. as a post-hoc analysis, we were interested in evaluating whether the strengths mentioned as being important for creating inner peace happened to be those most strongly endorsed by individuals and therefore most salient to participants. to test this idea, we rank ordered the mean table 2. percentage of individuals mentioning particular character strengths as being important for creating inner peace. character strengths % love 20.0* kindness 18.1* creativity 15.3* gratitude 15.2* perspective 13.3* spirituality 12.1* humor 12.1* honesty 10.1* hope 9.6* curiosity 9.4* love of learning 9.1* appreciation of beauty & excellence 8.9* perseverance 8.5* self-regulation 4.7 fairness 4.3 humility 4.1 social intelligence 3.9 bravery 3.7 leadership 3.3 forgiveness 3.0 teamwork 2.5 judgment 1.8 zest 1.7 prudence 0.8 none 4.2 *indicates strengths mentioned above chance ( > 8.3%) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 via character strengths scores for participants and compared them against the list of strengths identified as being important for creating inner peace. the results showed there was not strong alignment between the strengths most strongly endorsed by participants and those mentioned as being important for inner peace. in particular, the top five strengths most strongly endorsed by participants (in order) just to be consistent were: honesty, kindness, fairness, judgment, and curiosity, only one of which (kindness) was included in the top five strengths mentioned as being important for inner peace. therefore, these findings more likely reflect participants’ true perceptions about what strengths are important for inner peace, rather than a reflection of the strengths that they personally score high on. 4. study two 4.1 method 4.1.2 participants and procedure the second study examined character strengths and established measures of inner peace. participants were recruited through the via institute on character. after completion of the via inventory of strengths (via-is-p) to evaluate character strengths scores, participants were invited to complete the two scales below with the following instructions, “we hope you will please take 2 minutes to help us with some important research we are conducting. please indicate your agreement with the following statements. please be open and honest in your responding.” over a seven-day period in may 2021, a total of 21,214 participants indicated consent by at least partially completing the two scales, with a final sample of 21,201 participants who completed both scales. demographic information for our participants is provided in table 3. participants were mostly women (68.6%), between 18-54 years of age (89.9%), most had a high school diploma, associate degree or had trade/technical/vocational training (80%), many were from the united states, australia, canada, and the united kingdom (39.8%), most were fully employed (56.4%) with a mode household income of over $100,000 (27%). most participants (98.6%) did not indicate their ethnicity, nor their marital status (97.2%). table 3. demographic characteristics of the final sample (n = 21,101). n .% gender male 5,030 23.7 female 11,290 53.3 other 142 0.7 skipped 4,739 22.4 age (years) 18-24 3,717 17.5 25-34 4,311 20.3 35-44 3,592 16.9 45-54 2,614 12.3 55-64 1,230 5.8 65-74 302 1.4 75+ 56 0.3 skipped 5,379 25.4 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 table 3 (cont.). demographic characteristics of the final sample (n = 21,101) education no schooling completed 75 0.5 nursery school to 8th grade 26 0.2 some high school, no diploma 410 2.6 high school graduate or equivalent 3,693 23.8 some college credit, no degree 590 3.8 trade/technical/vocational training 5,223 33.7 bachelor’s degree 671 4.3 associate degree 3,505 22.6 master’s degree 724 4.7 professional degree 460 3.0 doctorate degree 137 0.9 skipped 5,687 26.8 location united states 5,313 25.1 australia 1,842 8.7 canada 966 4.6 united kingdom 853 4.0 other 12,227 57.7 skipped 5,163 24.5 employment status employed full-time 8,353 56.4 employed part-time 1,633 11.0 student 1,832 12.4 active military 359 2.4 homemaker 303 2.0 retired 310 2.1 unemployed 1,050 7.1 disabled or unable to work 156 1.1 other 810 5.5 skipped 6,395 30.2 household income (in usd) less than $20,000 3,132 23.0 $20,000-$34,999 1,805 13.2 $35,000-$49,999 1,459 10.7 $50,000-$74,999 1,964 14.4 $75,000-$99,999 1,589 11.6 over $100,000 3,691 27.1 skipped 7,561 35.7 4.1.3 measures 4.1.3.1 serenity serenity was assessed using the 22-item brief serenity scale (bss: kreitzer et al., 2009), a shorter (an abridged version) version of the original 65-item scale developed by roberts and fiztgerald http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 (1991). in their analyses, kreitzer and colleagues found the presence of three factors: acceptance (10 items; e.g., “in problem situations, i do what i am able to do and then accept whatever happens even if i dislike it”), inner haven (8 items; e.g., “i experience an inner quiet that does not depend on events”), and trust (4 items; e.g., “i see the good in painful events that have happened to me”). specifically, the inner haven dimension relates most closely to our discussion of inner peace as these authors defined inner haven as a sense of inner peace, inner calm, inner security, inner strength, and inner centeredness. these authors acknowledged that their sample size was small (< 100), and that this factor structure should be confirmed by future researchers. therefore, in order to confirm whether this factor structure were supported by our much larger sample, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis. we specified the model such that the latent variables would correlate, each item would load on only one factor, and measurement error terms would not correlate. our results indicated that the three-factor solution was an acceptable fit for our data [χ2(207) = 139.57, cfi = .86, tli = .85, rmsea = .08, and r2 ranging from .00-.77]. this model was stronger than a single-factor model which showed poor fit [χ2(207) = 51062.48, cfi = .75, tli = .73, rmsea = .11, and r2 ranging from .35-.79]. therefore, we next calculated mean scores for each of the three subscales of acceptance, inner haven, and trust. accordingly, the reliability of all subscales ranged from good to excellent (cronbach’s α from .80-.90). descriptive statistics for serenity scores are listed in table 4. 4.1.3.2 harmony in life harmony in life was targeted with the harmony in life scale (hils: kjell et al., 2016), of which we used the abbreviated version (kjell & diener, 2021) containing 3 items (“most aspects of my life are in balance”, “my lifestyle allows me to be in harmony”, and “i am in harmony”). reliability for scale scores was excellent (cronbach’s α = .90), and descriptive statistics for this scale are provided in table 4. 4.2 results in order to assess relationships among character strengths and inner peace measures, we first conducted bivariate correlations among the 24 character strengths, and the serenity and harmony in life subscales (see table 4). we used a conservative p < .001 bonferroni correction given the number of correlations performed (48). to highlight some of our findings, acceptance and trust shared the following top five character strengths (although in different orders): hope, zest, gratitude, spirituality, and self-regulation. however, inner haven and harmony in life shared the following top five character strengths (although in different orders): hope, gratitude, zest, selfregulation, and spirituality. while these correlations are informative, it is difficult to make firm conclusions about relationships among character strengths and inner peace measures with knowledge that the character strengths share variability (they are correlated with one another), and we therefore need to account for this potential shared variance in our analyses. for this reason, we next conducted four multiple linear regressions entering the 24 character strengths simultaneously with predictors of acceptance, inner haven, trust, and harmony in life as outcome measures. results for these analyses are summarized in table 5, and indicate the unique variance accounted for in inner peace measures for each of the character strengths. notably, after controlling for the influence of other character strengths, gratitude, hope, (lower levels of) kindness, and zest were among the five character strengths most strongly associated with both acceptance and inner haven. what differentiated them was that forgiveness was among the top five strengths for acceptance, and spirituality for inner haven. hope was the strongest strength connected to both acceptance and inner haven. while trust was associated with gratitude http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 and hope, trust also was related to forgiveness (similar to acceptance), spirituality (similar to inner haven), and uniquely to social intelligence. finally, the five character strengths most strongly associated with harmony in life were (in order): hope, gratitude, zest, and negatively with kindness and judgement. in fact, hope was the primary strength most strongly associated with all measures of inner peace with the exception of trust (which was most strongly associated with spirituality). in addition, gratitude, zest, and lower levels of kindness were common to all measures of inner peace. the strengths that seemed to differentiate the facets of inner peace were the strengths of social intelligence (for trust), lower levels of judgment (for harmony in life), spirituality (for inner haven and trust), and forgiveness (for acceptance and inner haven). as mentioned, it was interesting table 4. correlations among character strengths and inner peace measures. character strengths acceptance inner haven trust harmony in life m sd appreciation of beauty .238* .294* .255* .196* 3.85 .75 bravery .279* .297* .165* .192* 3.44 .77 curiosity .342* .341* .231* .287* 3.82 .71 creativity .295* .313* .193* .197* 3.58 .78 fairness .329* .261* .212* .217* 3.96 .75 forgiveness .447* .348* .314* .284* 3.66 .75 gratitude .495* .520* .475* .492* 3.63 .78 honesty .312* .279* .204* .287* 4.08 .65 hope .582* .566* .456* .513* 3.71 .77 humility .208* .225* .186* .171* 3.63 .70 humor .249* .230* .127* .198* 3.71 .85 judgment .238* .215* .120* .154* 3.86 .63 kindness .228* .183* .198* .164* 3.98 .68 leadership .322* .320* .222* .268* 3.52 .86 love .300* .278* .247* .302* 3.64 .93 love of learning .304* .306* .203* .222* 3.85 .75 perseverance .333* .331* .200* .339* 3.29 .85 perspective .294* .312* .224* .244* 3.81 .71 prudence .215* .236* .150* .211* 3.60 .81 self regulation .327* .352* .234* .356* 3.23 .86 social intelligence .290* .308* .296* .253* 3.80 .70 spirituality .374* .482* .582* .347* 3.39 .98 teamwork .338* .266* .276* .281* 3.74 .71 zest .472* .485* .368* .485* 3.32 .84 m 3.35 3.08 3.32 4.63 sd .63 .85 1.04 1.44  .80 .90 .86 .90 note. m and sd refer to the mean and standard deviation, respectively. based on n = 21,201. * p < .001 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 that some character strengths were associated with lower levels of inner peace. specifically, higher scores on judgment and kindness were significantly related to lower levels of perceived inner peace across all the variables to different degrees. the other strengths with significant (albeit not large) negative associations with more than one variable include appreciation of beauty/ excellence (negative for acceptance and harmony in life, significantly positive for inner haven), bravery (negative for trust and harmony in life, significantly positive for acceptance and inner haven), and love of learning (negative for trust and harmony in life). because of the widespread negative relationship for kindness and judgment, we explore those findings, which are notable for two reasons. first, recall that kindness was the only character strength that individuals personally endorsed as a signature strength and that they mentioned as important for nurturing table 5. regression coefficients for relationships among character strengths and inner peace measures. acceptance inner haven trust harmony in life cs β (se) t β (se) t β (se) t β (se) t appreciation -0.03 (.01) -5.16* 0.03 4.48* 0.01 (.01) 0.93 -.04 (.01) -6.00* bravery 0.03 (.01) 5.49* 0.06 7.85* -0.04 (.01) -4.62* -.03 (.01) -4.64* curiosity 0.02 (.01) 2.16 -0.01 -1.25 -0.06 (.01) -4.73* .04 (.02) 5.05* creativity 0.02 (.01) 3.72* 0.02 2.91 -0.01 (.01) -1.34 -.05 (.01) -6.42* fairness 0.02 (.01) 3.44* 0.01 0.70 0.00 (.01) -0.10 -.01 (.01) -1.36 forgiveness 0.18 (.01) 31.58* 0.11 14.40* 0.10 (.01) 10.39* .03 (.01) 4.79* gratitude 0.08 (.01) 11.62* 0.12 13.77* 0.14 (.01) 12.68* .17 (.02) 20.49* honesty 0.01 (.01) 0.42 -0.03 -3.06 -0.02 (.01) -1.91 .06 (.02) 8.02* hope 0.25 (.01) 37.96* 0.29 32.86* 0.29 (.01) 26.50* .21 (.02) 25.95* humility -0.01 (.01) -1.66 0.05 6.08* 0.01 (.01) 1.41 .00 (.01) -0.50 humor 0.01 (.01) 2.47 0.02 2.74 -0.04 (.01) -5.00* .01 (.01) 0.81 judgment -0.04 (.01) -4.96* -0.08 -8.28* -0.09 (.01) -7.32* -.10 (.02) -13.19* kindness -0.09 (.01) -13.64* -0.15 -17.69* -0.05 (.01) -4.32* -.10 (.02) -13.65* leadership -0.01 (.01) -0.17 0.01 1.77 -0.01 (.01) -0.88 .00 (.01) -0.48 love 0.02 (.01) 5.55* -0.01 -1.84 -0.04 (.01) -5.47* .07 (.01) 10.42* love of learning 0.01 (.01) 1.20 0.01 1.19 -0.05 (.01) -4.72* -.03 (.01) -3.98* perseverance 0.03 (.01) 4.63* 0.02 3.08 -0.03 (.01) -3.40* .05 (.01) 6.06* perspective 0.05 (.01) 8.65* 0.06 7.48* 0.05 (.01) 4.75* .06 (.01) 7.86* prudence 0.02 (.01) 3.30* 0.07 8.62* 0.00 (.01) -0.02 .06 (.01) 7.82* self regulation 0.02 (.01) 3.75* 0.05 6.90* 0.01 (.01) 0.60 .08 (.01) 10.61* social intelligence -0.04 (.01) -5.27* 0.01 1.55 0.09 (.01) 8.46* -.01 (.02) -1.11 spirituality 0.02 (.01) 5.47* 0.16 27.70* 0.45 (.01) 62.03* .02 (.01) 3.47 teamwork 0.05 (.01) 8.53* -0.04 -4.55* 0.05 (.01) 4.52* .03 (.01) 4.75* zest 0.07 (.01) 10.64* 0.12 14.57* 0.04 (.01) 13.50* .20 (.01) 23.51* note. β represents the standardized regression coefficients, and se represents the standard error of the unstandardized coefficients. *p < .001 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 a sense of inner peace. in other words, while many individuals have kindness as a top strength, and believe in its importance for building inner peace, when we examine the relationship between kindness and inner peace measures, kindness scores are actually related to less experienced inner peace. these findings suggest that being more caring and altruistic could lead one to feel lower levels of inner peace as a result of susceptibility to compassion fatigue (you are more likely to be affected by the negative emotional states of others) and difficulties focusing on one’s own needs, given a stronger sense of interdependency or ‘enmeshment’ with others. second, regarding the negative relationship between judgment and some elements of inner peace, this might indicate an overuse of thinking and analysis (e.g., higher cognitive load) and potential for higher self-criticism (niemiec, 2019) that might limit the extent to which one experiences a sense of inner peace. finally, it is interesting to note that there were some strengths that were uniquely associated with different facets of inner peace. for example, social intelligence and spirituality were more strongly associated with trust, where trust reflects beliefs in a larger life plan, and in the ultimate goodness of this plan. these findings suggest that the ability to empathize with others, easily adapt to social environments, and an awareness of one’s own and others’ motives (social intelligence) might allow one to take greater comfort in ‘going with the flow’ and believing that there is a greater (and good) purpose in life. in addition, beliefs in a greater purpose or life meaning, connecting outside oneself with something greater or transcendent (spirituality) may help foster a sense of trust with fellow human beings. 5. general discussion 5.1 summary of findings in study one, we evaluated the character strengths that individuals perceived to be most critical to supporting a sense of inner peace. out of the 24 strengths, 13 were selected as being most critical for fostering a sense of inner peace for individuals: love, kindness, creativity, gratitude, perspective, spirituality, humor, honesty, hope, curiosity, love of learning, appreciation of beauty and excellence, and perseverance. one might question whether these findings reflect participants’ true perceptions about what strengths are important for inner peace, or, rather, whether these findings are simply a reflection of strengths most salient to individuals – perhaps because they are their signature strengths. we tested this idea and found that the top five strengths most strongly endorsed by participants in order were honesty, kindness, fairness, judgment, and curiosity, only one (kindness) of which was included in the top five strengths mentioned as being important for inner peace. in other words, rejecting this theory, the original findings likely reflect the strengths that individuals believe are most strongly tied to inner peace (love, kindness, creativity, gratitude, and perspective being the top five), rather than the strengths that they personally endorse. in study two, we more directly assessed the relationships among character strengths and inner peace, by examining observed relationships among character strengths and measures of inner peace (acceptance, inner haven, trust, and harmony in life). after controlling for the influence of other character strengths, hope followed by zest and gratitude were observed to be the primary strengths for inner peace as they showed highly significant associations with both harmony in life and serentity, hence demonstrating a strong, well-rounded connection with inner peace. this is in line with findings that these three strengths are repeatedly associated with subjective wellbeing (happiness) and life satisfaction (e.g., buschor, proyer, & ruch, 2013; park, peterson, & seligman, 2004). indeed, hope entails a sense of inner strength, which is conceptually http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 aligned with the aspect of inner peace to keep oneself strong in the face of stressors (so this sense of inner strength binds the two). in addition, hope is also related to thinking about and using effective pathways to get to a desired future. these ‘pathways’ (e.g., optimistic explanatory style) likely lead one to experience psychological balance, or a sense of confidence and perspective that one’s life is within one’s control and therefore perceive less unresolved life conflicts. gratitude involves connecting outside oneself to feel appreciation toward others and the universe. hence, there is likely to be that connection between a harmonious balance and sense of serenity and being at peace. zest involves being enthusiastic, vital, and feeling a passion for life; as the individual experiences and expresses this strength to others, it is likely this contributes to a wellrounded, or balanced wellbeing inclusive of acceptance, inner haven, and harmony. in addition to hope, zest, and gratitude, the character strengths of spirituality and forgiveness, which we will call secondary strengths for inner peace, because they were highly significant with either serenity or harmony in life and strong across multiple variables (spirituality was especially strong for trust and inner haven and to a lesser significant degree for acceptance while forgiveness was especially strong for acceptance, among the top five strengths for inner haven and trust, and significant to a lesser degree for harmony in life). spirituality and forgiveness (as well as the previously mentioned primary strengths) are spiritually -oriented strengths (niemiec, russo-netzer, & pargament, 2020), where spirituality is viewed as the search for or communing with the sacred (pargament et al., 2013), a definition reflected in two-thirds of the scientific studies of spirituality (kapuscinski & masters, 2010). the connection between these spiritually-oriented character strengths and inner haven and trust is perhaps not surprising. specifically, spirituality reflects practices that connect with transcendence (which would lead to a sense of inner haven), and beliefs in a greater purpose, and a connection to something ‘greater’ and ‘good’ in nature (similar to trust) (kreitzer et al., 2009). indeed, inner peace is deeply connected to many spiritual practices, beliefs, and doctrines. there were other character strengths with small but consistently significant relationships across the inner peace variables. these include perspective (significant for all variables in table 5), prudence (significant for all but trust), and self-regulation (significant for all but trust). each of these have a balance function to them in which the aim is to harmonize tensions, harmonize strengths and weakness, and harmonize self-interests and other-interests (bacon, 2005). for example, prudence aims to balance competing intrapersonal interests such as long-term satisfaction and short-term pleasures (bacon, 2005), while perspective involves finding balance across oneself, others, and the community (sternberg, 1998), and self-regulation offers balance and harmonizing around impulses, emotional expressions, and displays of habit. these three strengths likely have an important role in inner peace, perhaps in relation to balancing and expressing the primary and secondary strengths, as well as managing strengths that might be overused. interestingly, some character strengths were more consistently related to lower levels of perceived inner peace (to varying degrees). most notable, kindness and judgment were both negatively significant for both measures of inner peace and among the top five correlates for acceptance, inner haven, and harmony in life. as mentioned earlier, it was a somewhat surprising finding that kindness was negatively related to reports of inner peace, given that this was one of the strengths that, in study one, individuals mentioned as being important for building a sense of inner peace. limitations in individuals’ reports of their mental processes has been well documented (e.g., see the seminal work by nisbet & wilson, 1977), in addition to discrepancies between individuals’ attitudes and their actual observable behaviour and responses (e.g., ajzen & fishbein, 1980). in terms of more specifically explaining this discrepancy, kindness is other http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 oriented, involved in being caring, generous, and/or compassionate to others, which may be draining upon one’s inner serenity. this latter phenomenon has been referred to as character strengths overuse (niemiec, 2019), and it is possible that too much kindness can reflect compassion-fatigue and overdoing it, impacting personal self-care and a sense of serenity and harmony. similar logic can be applied to judgment in which too much critical thinking and analysis can lead one to feel out of balance and uncentered, especially when criticisms can quickly turn inward; as opposed to being constructive, self-evaluation can turn to self-reproach (niemiec, 2019). while it is easy to see how these examples of strengths overuse could bring about disharmony in inner peace, it is important to remember that the phenomenon of “strengths overuse” described here is a hypothesis that needs testing. finally, these findings suggest that while there is some overlap among character strengths that are associated with perceptions of inner peace, and those associated with related constructs (such as zest, gratitude, and hope), there are important distinctions between inner peace and related constructs as well. while happiness and wellbeing tend to be more closely associated with the character strengths of love, humor, and curiosity, inner peace is more related to the strength of spirituality (e.g., cohrs et al., 2013; güsewell & ruch, 2012; and lyubomirsky et al., 2005). 5.2 limitations and future directions there are some important strengths of this research including our large sample sizes. we are confident that our statistical analyses were adequately powered, (r2 for study two = .38-.54), and that our sample was global-reaching (despite mostly representative of north america) and diverse (despite our samples veering toward females and those of higher education levels). despite these two studies being the first we are aware of to examine relationships among character strengths and inner peace on a large scale, there are important limitations to note. first, while this research focused on two measures of inner strength (subscales of serenity and harmony in life), there are other facets and measures of inner peace yet to be explored, such as peace of mind (lee et al., 2013), contentment (one of which uses the acronym peace for positive emotion assessment of contentment experience, cordaro et al., 2021), and equanimity (juneau, shankland, & dambrun, 2020; rogers, shires, & cayoun, 2020). next, due to the correlational nature of this research, we are not able to infer causal relationships between facets of inner peace and character strengths. for example, it is not clear from this research whether strength-based interventions (focused on strengths most closely tied to each component of inner peace) would be effective methods of improving felt inner peace, or whether those who experience greater inner peace are those who also endorse particular strengths (or their strengths are a manifestation of that inner peace). we therefore suggest future intervention studies to examine different causal pathways for character strengths and peace. because of research on signature strengths showing benefit for numerous outcome variables such as flourishing, life satisfaction, depression, and strengths use (e.g., see meta-analysis by schutte & malouf, 2019), we wonder whether an individual’s deliberate use of their signature strengths might create inner peace. that route, as well as the route of targeting the specific strengths we found to most highly correlate with inner peace (i.e., hope and gratitude; zest, spirituality, and forgiveness as secondary) provide two potential avenues for future randomized intervention studies on inner peace. a third potential avenue for an intervention study, perhaps adjunctive to one or both of the previous suggestions, is the role of balancing strengths. in the case of inner peace, interventions exploring the tempering effect— the use of a strength to bring balance to an overused strength (niemiec, 2019)—could be deployed. such an intervention would target strengths that can be easily overused or that might http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 actually be “obstacles” to inner peace, such as our interpretations of judgment and kindness in our second study. further testing on character strengths overuse and inner peace is needed. the integration of character strengths and inner peace has substantial positive implications as a domain of research and practice for individuals, groups, and the larger society. as individuals struggle with mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, and loneliness, amidst an increasingly complex, contradictory, fast-moving world, inner peace is becoming more difficult to realize. the potential for individuals to turn to their strongest inner qualities offers an immediate pathway to counterbalance external and internal challenges. this integration has ramifications to ripple from individuals to families, groups, and communities. 5.3 summary and conclusion as we forayed into the territory of inner peace and character strengths, we found hope to be the character strength of 24 ubiquitious strengths to be most closely tied to the experience of inner peace. additional primary strengths for inner peace included zest and gratitude, while spirituality and forgiveness were denoted as secondary strengths for inner peace as they were particularly strong with one of the measures of inner peace. other strengths likely play a supportive role such as perspective, prudence, and self-regulation. this research also suggests there might be additional benefit in finding balance with some strengths (e.g., kindness and judgment) that might be overused and getting in the way of inner peace —in other words, strengths that need to be tempered. while future research is needed before strong conclusions about “inner peace strengths” can be made – and the elucidating of causal relationship between strengths and inner peace will be critical therein – there is an important foundation being built for this integration. we hope these findings point the way to future, character strengths-based interventions as a new and critical method for exploring and increasing inner peace, for individuals, and ultimately the larger society. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors lobna chérif royal military college of canada lobna.cherif@rmc.ca ryan niemiec via institute on character valerie wood queen's university publishing timeline received 24 february 2022 revised version received 31 august 2022 accepted 1 september 2022 published 1 october 2022 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strengths and inner peace chérif, niemiec, & wood www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 references ajzen, i., & fishbein, m. 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(2022). a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies of the antecedents and consequences of wellbeing among university students. international journal of wellbeing, 12(2), 163-206. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i2.1897 anton du toit 163 western sydney university a.dutoit@westernsydney.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org article a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies of the antecedents and consequences of wellbeing among university students anton t. du toit · russell thomson · andrew page abstract: background and objectives: wellbeing among university students is associated with better academic outcomes and diminished harm from mental illness. this study systematically reviews and meta-analyses longitudinal studies of the antecedents and consequences of wellbeing within this population, providing an overview which establishes a ‘natural history’ of wellbeing to form a background for intervention and policy. method: this study was a systematic review and meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed literature, based on a broad range of search terms across four journal databases in psychology, medicine and education. studies were organised by the domain of their study variables (i.e., self, relationships, or institutional context) and variables relating to wellbeing were extracted. the incremental effect of study variables measured at baseline upon prospective wellbeing was calculated with semipartial correlation coefficients which controlled for baseline wellbeing. meta-regressions were used to examine the effect of follow-up interval on effect sizes. results: sixty-two longitudinal studies of university student cohorts were identified. in 57 studies, wellbeing was an outcome variable. meta-analyses showed that effects were moderated by measurement interval between baseline and follow-up, becoming weaker with longer intervals, and that this was not an artifact of the measurement instrument. the study factors with the strongest positive effect sizes after controlling for baseline wellbeing were authenticity, self-esteem, self-support for autonomy, emotional repair, and ability to regulate distress and despondency; relationship commitment and group memberships; self identification with the university and time pressure. study factors with the strongest negative effect sizes were uncertainty regarding university, materialism, a belief in social complexity, depression, and stress. in five studies, wellbeing was an antecedent, showing positive associations with educational outcomes. conclusion: this review identified several antecedents of student wellbeing which could be targeted for interventions. these included self-relationship, emotion regulation, and interventions to decrease mental illness. universities might also make it easier to establish and maintain groups (e.g., study cohorts, interest groups). many variables which affect wellbeing are not amenable to study with experimental methods, but their study and use in wellbeing interventions should not be neglected. because the antecedents of wellbeing are numerous and diverse, further research in the area should take advantage of research methods which maximise the variety of data collected and minimise respondent burden, such as passively collected and linked data. keywords: wellbeing; life satisfaction; hedonia; eudaimonia; tertiary students; university students; college students; systematic review; meta-analysis; meta-regression about:blank wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 164 1. introduction 1.1 university students, mental health, academic performance and wellbeing university students are at an important juncture in in their development. as students they are engaged in a long-term project requiring substantial levels of motivation and effort. success at university may well open a path to a better life [1], while failure is likely to reduce employment opportunities and may lead to lower mental health and wellbeing [2]. further, most are in their late teens to early twenties, an important age for psychosocial development [3]. however, this period comes with challenges to mental health and to academic performance. previous studies have suggested that that the transition to university from school is problematic [4] and that the mental health of university students is poorer than that of equivalent age groups in the general population [5;6, see also 7–11]. these problems occur at a time when mental health is arguably of even greater importance than usual, for two reasons. first, poor mental health has been shown to be negatively associated with academic performance in university students [12,13]. second, there is substantial evidence linking poor mental health with noncompletion of university [14–16] (though there are multiple potential explanations for noncompletion). the scale of this problem is substantial: in the us, 37.6% of first-time students enrolled full-time in four-year bachelor’s degrees do not complete their degrees within six years [17], and in australian universities, 27.1% of undergraduate students enrolling in 2011 had not completed their degrees by 2019 [18]. improving students’ mental health, then, should also improve their academic performance and rates of completion. both mental illness and educational outcomes might be addressed with a focus on students’ psychosocial wellbeing. first, wellbeing is associated with mental illness while also being a distinct construct [19,20]. it may function as a protective factor for mental illness: higher levels of wellbeing are associated with lower levels of mental illness [21] and changes in wellbeing are prospectively associated with changes in mental illness [22,23]. second, wellbeing is also associated with academic performance and university retention. evidence from longitudinal studies suggests wellbeing may have a causal role in academic performance in university students [24–27], although the evidence is inconsistent [28,29]. an additional complication is that academic performance is also an antecedent of wellbeing [30], suggesting circular causation. third, there is evidence that wellbeing is protective against the negative effects of mental illness on academic performance. where mental illness is present in students, wellbeing decreases its impact on academic impairment. there is also a direct relationship: where mental illness is not present, wellbeing is also associated with lower academic impairment [21]. we may therefore point to three reasons why wellbeing is important for university students: it has direct associations with mental illness and academic outcomes and an association with academic outcomes mediated through mental illness. regarded purely in an instrumental way, then, wellbeing is associated with two variables which are highly relevant for university students. in addition to its instrumental value, however, wellbeing has an intrinsic value. it should be a target of policy for its own sake. 1.2 concepts and antecedents of wellbeing wellbeing might be broadly defined as what is good for a person, or as psychological health defined without reference to concepts of illness. there are several concepts of wellbeing in the current literature, and there are ongoing conceptual debates [for recent examples see 31–33] and attempts to resolve the issues [e.g. 34,35]. hedonic wellbeing centres around happiness and pleasure; eudaemonic wellbeing around meaning, purpose and actualisation of potential, life http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 165 satisfaction is a subjective evaluation without theoretical commitments to causes, and subjective wellbeing is a composite of life satisfaction and affective balance [36–38]. all these concepts of wellbeing, however, share substantial common variance [39]. the conception of wellbeing underlying this review is drawn from well-being theory, which posits that humans will pursue five elements of wellbeing as ends in themselves: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement [40]. conceptually, it overlaps with hedonic and eudaemonic wellbeing; empirically, it has been shown to correlate strongly with life satisfaction, eudaemonia, and hedonia [32,41]. (inasmuch as well-being theory is relatively new and so there are few studies using wellbeing measures explicitly based upon it, this review includes studies based on a broad range of concepts and measures of wellbeing.) whichever conception of wellbeing may be preferred, it is a broad concept. if operationalised as life satisfaction, it implicitly takes in the elements evaluated within that judgement. if its operationalisation has an affective component, it takes in anything which may alter those emotions. if operationalised as a composite measure, it explicitly takes in multiple life domains and processes. the breadth of the concept is mirrored by the large number of variables associated with wellbeing in the extant literature. these include demographic variables [42], personality [43], satisfaction of psychological needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness [44–46], physical activity [47,48], physical health [49,50], education [51], culture [43], and some economic variables, especially unemployment [42,52]. the breadth of the concept is also reflected in the diversity of its antecedents; over and above those already mentioned, there is evidence for associations between wellbeing and genetic inheritance [53], nature connectedness [54], the practice of minimalism [55], and use of social media [56]. further, there is a substantial literature on interventions to improve wellbeing, introducing still more variables. hendriks et al. found 188 randomised controlled trials published from 1998 to 2017 [57], and a search of three major wellbeing journals (journal of positive psychology, journal of happiness studies and international journal of wellbeing) found a further 40 for the years 2018 to 2021, though the true number is doubtless higher. 1.3 the advantages of longitudinal observational studies the diversity of variables associated with wellbeing makes it necessary to examine longitudinal observational studies as well as experimental studies to obtain an adequate picture of its antecedents. many of the variables which may affect wellbeing are not susceptible to experimental manipulation. in the university context, changes which might be made to improve student wellbeing are not all amenable to study with experimental methods. alterations to policies or to the physical environment aimed at improving wellbeing, for example, necessarily impact all students, so the scope for randomising participants to control and treatment groups for such changes is limited at best. further, the large number of antecedents of wellbeing means that any changes aimed at improving it occur in a context where it is subject to many other factors. it would be better to make changes with knowledge of this context—which again requires data from longitudinal studies. longitudinal observational designs have two further advantages. they may allow some insight into the duration of changes in wellbeing associated with changes in study variables. this relates to the important question of whether interventions and policy changes might be expected to produce transitory or enduring change. in the case of multi-wave designs, they may also suggest possible circular causation, i.e. whether changes in wellbeing are prospectively http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 166 associated with changes in other variables which in turn are prospectively associated with changes in wellbeing. previous longitudinal studies of wellbeing within the general population, as well as confirming [58] and extending [59–61] cross-sectional findings, have also provided some insight into the dynamics of wellbeing over time. for example, in developed countries, wellbeing tends to describe a u-shape over the life-course with minima in the early 40s to early 50s [62]; some variables appear to have an effect on wellbeing of very long duration [e.g. 63]; and wellbeing may have relationships with other variables of mutually reinforcing causation over time [64]. 1.4 the present study while there have been several reviews of interventions aimed at increasing wellbeing in university students [e.g. 65], as far as we are able to tell, to date there have been no systematic reviews of longitudinal observational studies of wellbeing in university students. accordingly, the objective of this study was to conduct a systematic review of antecedents and consequences of wellbeing of university students (defined inclusively, as hedonic wellbeing, eudaemonic wellbeing, life satisfaction, or composite measures) focused on longitudinal observational studies, and to use meta-analytic techniques to give an overview of the research results. the specific research questions were: 1. what are the antecedents of wellbeing in university students? 2. what are the consequences of wellbeing in university students? 3. what is known about the trajectories of wellbeing over time in this population? 2. methodology 2.1 study design this study conducted a systematic review of the literature using processes informed by the prisma guidelines, which recommend a minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews [66]. the main dependent variable of interest was wellbeing, defined as either hedonia, eudaemonia or life satisfaction, though composite measures were also included. the main study factors of interest related to antecedents of wellbeing, and were grouped into three of mcleroy et al.’s five social-ecological domains [67]: the self, relationships, and institutional context, i.e., tertiary education setting (see table 1 below). mcleroy’s model is an adaptation of bronfenbrenner’s general human ecological model of micro-, meso, exoand macro-systems [68] for the more specific context of health promotion. this classification of the variables associated with wellbeing contextualises them in the systems within which the individual is embedded. 2.2 eligibility criteria 2.2.1 data sources and search strategy the search was conducted according to prisma guidelines (see figure 1; below). databases searched were psycinfo, proquest psychology, medline (ovid), and eric; additionally, a small number of studies referred to in the text of articles located by the searches were included. the date of the last search was 19th may 2021. a broadly inclusive search strategy was adopted, due to the presence of wellbeing and related concepts in several literatures, and the use of different terms to denote the concept of wellbeing in different theoretical traditions. the strategy (see supplementary table 1 to supplementary table 4) was designed to capture four concepts. first, the study had to have wellbeing as a http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 167 dependent or an independent variable. the related terms included were wellbeing, wellness, quality of life, and positive mental health. other independent variables or dependent variables were not specified. second, because this review forms part of a larger project which uses a measurement instrument based on well-being theory [69,70], a set of synonyms and some antonyms for each of its five elements of wellbeing (i.e., positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement) was developed. some of the more common theoretical terms from the literature were also used as search terms, including life satisfaction, hedonia, and eudaimonia. further, several recent reviews of wellbeing outside this study's population of interest were examined for additional search terms [71–78]. third, the population of interest was tertiary students, so this concept restricted results to studies which sampled tertiary students. fourth, due to the large number of validation studies in this area, a set of terms related to psychometric validation was used as an exclusion criterion. search terms were run across title, abstract, and keywords. 2.2.2 study characteristics longitudinal observational studies were the focus of this review, to delineate temporal associations between independent variables and wellbeing, which have not previously been clearly articulated in a systematic review of this population. cross-sectional studies and any other type of study other than a prospective longitudinal study were excluded after review of the title and/or abstract, and if required full-text. as mentioned above, this study forms part of a larger project; and this influenced the inclusion and exclusion criteria. the larger project is based on well-being theory, which uses a broad composite measure of psychosocial wellbeing, so the concepts measured needed to either be composites themselves, or be constructs known to be influenced by such composites (most notably life satisfaction). therefore this study considered multiple concepts of wellbeing: hedonia, eudaimonia, and life satisfaction, as well as composites of these such as subjective wellbeing. however, it did not consider non-psychological measures of wellbeing such as access to resources. the emphasis on broad composite measures meant that studies which used only subscales from a wellbeing instrument were excluded (though the two studies which met this description are summarised in supplementary table 6). the larger project was planned to develop into a longer study which followed up participants after they had left university, so a measure focused on the general population was required; measures specific to tertiary students were excluded. a 2016 review of wellbeing instruments by cooke, melchert & conner [71] was used as the basis for a list of instruments (see supplementary table 5) to be used as an inclusion criterion, because its criteria for inclusion matched well with the requirement of the larger project. that is, that they (i) measure psychological aspects of wellbeing; (ii) measure wellbeing broadly, rather than within a specific domain; and (iii) focus on the general population rather than a specific group. studies which focused on a subsample of the student population were excluded unless the research question could only be reasonably examined within that population. studies which were mainly focused on mental illness or physical health were excluded. in summary, studies were included if they: i. used a prospective observational quantitative study design; ii. measured wellbeing, conceptualised as hedonia, eudaemonia, life satisfaction, or a composite of these, either as a prospective dependent variable or a baseline independent variable; iii. used a measure of wellbeing from a list of instruments with defined characteristics; http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 168 iv. used tertiary students as a sample; v. were published before or during 2020; vi. were written in english; and vii. were published in peer-reviewed journals. studies were excluded if they: viii. were a validation study for a survey instrument, an intervention or experimental study, a cross-sectional study, a commentary, opinion piece, or any other kind of study other than one with a prospective observational design; ix. did not sample from the student population as a whole (e.g., excluded students with chronic illness), although studies sampling only first-year students were included; studies with subsamples of the student population were included only if the research question could reasonably be investigated within that population, (e.g., a us study focused on race-related issues which sampled only african-american students was included, while a study focused on emotional intelligence which sampled only males was excluded); or x. were primarily concerned with mental illness or physical health. where it was unclear whether a study should be included this was resolved through discussion leading to consensus between the lead author (adt) and a co-author (ap). 2.3 analytic strategy 2.3.1 data extraction data were extracted from identified articles for the following variables: author, year of publication, focus of research question (i.e., categorised into self, relationships, and/or institutional context); country and number of sites where research was conducted, population of interest, sample size, percentage of females in the sample, measures of central tendency for age, independent variables (i.e., categorised into social-ecological domains, and within domains into themes (see table 1 below), with the exception of studies where the independent variable was wellbeing), dependent variables, instrument(s) used to measure wellbeing, findings, duration of study, and number of waves of data collection. the population of interest (as distinct from the sample) was either tertiary students or the general population; in several cases this was not explicitly stated and a determination was made, usually from whether the use of university students as the study sample was seen as a limitation of the study. where a study had collected the data required for meta-analysis (see below) but had not presented all the statistics required, the authors were contacted to request information. data extraction was done by the lead author (adt). the findings focused on the effects of the main study variables on wellbeing. while several papers had other dependent variables in addition to wellbeing, these were not within the scope of this review and hence were not reported. in a few studies, wellbeing was an independent variable; for these, only the effects of wellbeing on the dependent variable are reported. conversely, some papers had more than one wellbeing variable, and all of these were reported. cross-sectional findings were not reported; while almost all papers included them, the focus of this review was on longitudinal results. the findings column also included information on whether wellbeing was measured at one point in time or more than one—important because measurement at more than one time point allows analysis of the incremental effects of study http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 169 variables. where a study had more than two waves, the results reported were those for the longest duration between waves available, provided there was a baseline measure of wellbeing in the earlier wave. the measurement of wellbeing at baseline was designated time 1 or t1, the next measurement designated time 2 or t2, and so on. studies were categorised in table 2 to table 6 (below) based on where their main study variables fit into a social-ecological model taxonomy [67]. in cases where the main study variables are across more than one domain in this taxonomy, if their focus was predominantly on one domain they appear in only one table, though there were several papers whose study variables were divided fairly evenly between the self and relationships domains, and these were placed in table 5. figure 1. literature search and inclusion / exclusion process using prisma guidelines records identified through database searches: psycinfo (n=1,346); eric (n=651); medline (n=892); proquest psychology (n=984) total (n=3,873) s cr e e n in g in c lu d e d e li g ib il it y id e n ti fi c a ti o n additional records identified through other sources (n = 5) records after duplicates removed (n = 2,746) records screened (n = 2,746) articles excluded at initial screening (n=1,014): qualitative method (n=95) full-text not available (n=476) instrument (n=60) cross-sectional study (n=174) validation study (n=26) population (n=79) experimental study (n=41) mental illness (n=9) other (n=54) full-text articles assessed for eligibility (n = 1,732) full-text articles excluded (n=1,670): did not use instrument from list (n=1,042) cross-sectional study (n=490) validation study (n=41) experimental study (n=49) population (n=23) other (n=25) studies included in review (n=62) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 170 table 1. a social-ecological model taxonomy based on mcleroy et al. (1988) original taxonomy taxonomy used in present paper level description domain themes intrapersonal characteristics of the individual self personality, emotion regulation, self-relations, strengths, physical health, mental illness (anxiety, depression, stress), temporal structure, other interpersonal social networks and support: family, friends, and colleagues relationships social support, social rhythm, other institutional formal and informal institutions with their written and unwritten rules institutional context academics community relationships among institutions [not present in study variables] na public policy laws and policies [not present in study variables] na where multivariate models controlled for baseline wellbeing, study variables which remained in the final model were noted. given the generally large autocorrelations among successive measurements of wellbeing variables, incrementally predictive variables were of particular interest. 2.3.2 meta-analytic approaches to independent variables and measurement interval 2.3.2.1 semipartial correlation coefficients as wellbeing at a given point in time is typically strongly correlated with earlier measures of wellbeing, zero-order correlations with study variables, while useful for comparisons, are of limited explanatory value. however, semipartial correlation coefficients (also known as part correlations) are a measure of effect size for longitudinal studies involving autocorrelated time series data. semipartial correlations are the square root of the δr2 statistic, usually reported for regressions with stepped addition of independent variables. they were used to partial out the effect of time 1 wellbeing on time 2 wellbeing, isolating the incremental effect of the time 1 study variable. therefore, the results presented are for regressions with two independent variables—the earlier level of wellbeing and the independent variable—with the semipartial correlation indicating the increase in r2 from the addition of the independent variable. these were calculated with metafor and other r packages [79–84] from the subset of studies which reported the requisite information, and presented in forest plots. regression coefficients were also calculated, but these were strongly correlated (r = 0.9987) with the semipartial correlations, and so are not shown here. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 171 2.3.2.2 meta-analyses with time as moderator lastly, two meta-analyses were performed with measurement interval as a moderator, to investigate whether the effects of study variables were moderated by time. as most studies in the review contributed more than one variable to the analysis, the studies and individual independent variables were included as random effects in a multilevel mixed-effects model, with duration between wellbeing measurements as a moderator [80]. the logarithm of the duration was used, reflecting the known decrease in autocorrelation of wellbeing over time. the second meta-analysis included the dependent variable measure (swls vs. other) as a second moderator, to investigate if the instrument used might be confounding the effects of the measurement interval (dependent variable measures were divided into swls vs. other because of the large number of studies using the swls and the relatively small number of studies using any other single measure). 3. results 3.1 overview of study characteristics sixty-two prospective studies were identified in this review, predominantly from the us (31 studies), china (eight studies), canada, and australia (four studies each). two multi-country studies presented results for different countries separately [85,86], so there are 65 samples detailed in the tables below. convenience sampling was used in most studies, with the notable exception of the five studies based on wabash national study data [87–91]. several other studies also used samples from larger studies [69,92–95], though none were as large as the wabash study. a typical sample was around two-thirds female. thirty-four of the 62 studies (55%) had two waves and eleven (18%) had three waves; eight (13%) used emas or daily diaries. the median duration was 20 weeks, though there were eight studies with durations ranging from fo ur to thirteen years. fifty-seven of 62 studies (92%) focused on antecedents of wellbeing. forty-four studies (71%) controlled wellbeing dependent variables for earlier levels of wellbeing, allowing in principle for the incremental effect of study variables to be isolated, although only 29 (47%) presented the data required for calculation of semipartial correlation coefficients and inclusion in the meta-analyses. forty-four studies (71%) used the satisfaction with life scale (swls), four of which used another instrument as well. only 18 studies (29%) did not use the swls. forty-three studies (69%) examined study variables in only one domain, and 19 across two or three domains. twenty-eight studies (45%) tested processes of moderation or mediation. studies which focused on tertiary students as a population were more likely to be concerned with causal mechanisms in the institutional context domain (21 of 30 studies, with 14 of those concerned with institutional context variables only). in contrast, papers focused on the general population (using a sample of university students for convenience) were more likely to be concerned with causal mechanisms located within the self (30 of 32 studies, with 21 of those concerned with self domain variables only). supplementary table 7 stratifies the studies by instrument and population of interest. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 172 table 2. reviewed papers – self domain author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) boyraz, 2014 [96] us (2) g 232 (76.3%) 23.34 (7.29) authenticity ls, mh swls t2 ls correlated with t1 ls (r = 0.56), authenticity (0.35) and distress (-0.28; ps < 0.01). in a cross-lagged model controlled for temporal stability, t1 authenticity associated with t2 ls (β = 0.37). 6 wk (2) du, 2017 [97] china (1) g 74 (63.1%) 19.26 (1.15) self-esteem: personal (pse), relational (rse), collective (cse) ls swls t2 ls correlated with t1 ls (r = 0.82, p < 0.001), pse (r = 0.55, p < 0.001), rse (r = 0.52, p < 0.001), and cse (r = 0.26, p < 0.05). in an hierarchical multiple regression, t2 ls was associated with t1 ls (β = 0.87, p < 0.001) and t1 rse (β = -0.30, p < 0.05—the negative sign likely indicating a suppression effect). 1 mth (2) extremera , 2011 [98] spain (1) g 155 (83.2%) 23.37 (5.12) trait meta-mood (or emotional intelligence) happiness subjective happiness scale t2 happiness correlated with t1 happiness (r = 0.72), emotional repair (r = 0.52), and mood clarity (r = 0.33, all ps < 0.01). an hierarchical multiple regression controlled for sex and age showed t2 happiness associated with t1 happiness (β = 0.60, p < 0.01) then emotional repair (β = 0.20, p < 0.01). 7 wk (2) harris, 2005 [99] us (1) g 147 (73.5%) 21.7 (6.1) personality, constructive thinking swb swls t2 ls correlated with t1 ls (r = 0.76), neuroticism (r = -0.27), extraversion (r = 0.23), and constructive thinking (r = 0.28; all ps < 0.01). in a hierarchical regression, the only variable significantly prospectively associated with t2 ls was t1 ls (β = 0.75, p < 0.001). 4 wk (2) heller, 2007 [100] canada (1) g 101 (68.3%) 18.59 (1.35) personality traits and states, goals swb swls in a pooled multiple regression, state ls was associated with state extraversion (γ = 0.07, p < 0.01) and state neuroticism (γ = 0.12, p < 0.01). a multilevel mediation model found state extraversion (sobel test = 3.68, p < 0.01) and neuroticism (sobel test = 3.89, p < 0.01) mediated goals and ls, together mediating 61%. 10 days (30) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 173 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) hope, 2014 [101] canada (1) s 159 (72%) 18 (1.04) self-compassion, goals, goal motivation (ex/ intrinsic), goal progress ls, affect, psychosocial adjustment swls a hierarchical multiple regression found t1 self-compassion associated with t4 ls six mth later (β = 0.17, δr2 = 0.02, p < 0.05) with t1 ls controlled. 7 mth (12) iyer, 2011 [102] uk (1) g 120 (80%) 19.3 (2.15) nostalgia, identity continuity ls; perceived academic obstacles swls t3 ls correlated with t2 ls (r = 0.70, p < 0.05). (nb t1 data not used.) nostalgia was associated with ls only at low levels of identity continuity (one sd below mean; β = -0.15, p = 0.049). 4 mth (2) kashdan, 2007 [103] us (1) g 97 (66%) 19.75 (3.2) trait curiosity, meaning in life, and affect; personality; daily curiosity, growth-oriented and hedonistic behaviours ls swls t1 ls correlated with daily meaning (r = 0.58, p < 0.001), curiosity (r = 0.27, p < 0.01), and growth behaviour (r = 0.20, p < 0.05) (aggregated daily measures). multilevel models controlled for previous-day ls showed current-day ls associated with high trait curiosity (bγ01 = 0.05, p = 0.02), and previous-day na (b = -0.02, p = 0.02). 3 wk (22) lai, 2007 [104] hong kong (1) g 78 (57.5%) 98 ppts < 21; 15 ppts 21-30. (na) five social axioms, (i.e., beliefs about the world: social cynicism, social complexity, reward for application, religiosity, fate control) ls, selfesteem swls ls at t2, t3 and t4 correlated with earlier ls (rs 0.65 – 0.71, ps < 0.01) and earlier self-esteem (rs 0.44 – 0.50, ps < 0.01). t2-t4 mean ls correlated with cynicism (r = –0.39, p < 0.01), complexity (r = –0.23, p < 0.05). in a multiple regression, axioms associated with mean ls (r2 = 0.26); cynicism was only sig. independent variable (p < 0.01), mediated by mean self-esteem (sobel z = -3.21, p < 0.01). hierarchical multiple regressions showed complexity was the only axiom associated with mean ls w/o mediation (δr2 = 0.06, p < 0.01). 1 yr (4) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 174 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) lightsey, 2013 [105] us (2) g 65-127 (na) 19.72 (5.12) self-efficacy for emotion regulation, incl. subscales: selfefficacy for regulating: .. negative emotions (sern), .. despondency & distress (sedes), .. anger (seang), and .. experience, and expression of positive emotions (sepos). ls, pa, na swls correlations between ls across waves were 0.75-0.81, ps < 0.001. t2 ls correlated with t1 sedes (r = 0.50), t1 na (r = -0.42), and t1 seang (r = 0.37, ps < 0.01). in multiple regressions controlled for t1 ls and t1 na, t2 ls associated with t1 sedes (β = 0.24, p = 0.001, incl. seang and interactions); t3 ls associated with sedes (b = 0.157, p = 0.047) and t4 ls (b = 0.21, p = 0.017). regressions controlled for t1 ls, with a monolithic term for sedes, seang and their interaction with t1 na, associated with ls at t2, t3 and t4 (δr2 0.0280.033, ps < 0.04), but w/o moderation of the effect of t1 na on t2-t4 ls. multiple regressions found that sepos associated with unique variance in ls at t3 (β = 0.23, p = 0.004, δr2 = 0.065, p < 0.007) and t4 (β = 0.26, p < 0.004, δr2 = 0.067, p < 0.009), displacing other sear variables. 7 wk (4) emmons, 1995 [106] us (1) g 105 (84.8%) 21 (na) emotional ambivalence, fear of intimacy, repressive defensiveness, social support ls, social support, happiness, anxiety, depression swls ls measured only at baseline; no significant results for ls as an independent variable. 3 wk (22) harris, 2017 [95] us (1) g 393 (60%) 18.1 (na) extraversion, social experiences (numerous aspects) ls; happiness swls previous-year self-reported social variables correlated with current-year ls (abs. value 0.11 – 0.37, ps < 0.05). peer-reported social variables for the first yr of college mostly correlated with second-year ls (abs. value 0.12 – 0.15, ps < 0.05). a cross-lagged model showed pre-college extraversion associated with ls four years later, mediated by self-rated social connection (a*b = 0.10, 95%ci[0.02, 0.23], model p < 0.001) and belonging (a*b = 0.11, 95%ci[0.02, 0.25], model p < 0.001). 4 yr (5) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 175 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) grund, 2015 [107] germany (1) g 58 (69%) 24.1 (3.2) affect; motivational form; want or should conflict; selfcontrol, mindfulness ls; affect swls a hierarchical multiple regression showed t2 ls associated with ‘should’ conflicts (β = -0.37, p < 0.01), t1 mindfulness (β = 0.23, p < 0.05), and t1 self-control (β = 0.22, p < 0.05); r2 = 0.34. ‘should’ conflicts interacted with mindfulness (a*b = 0.09, ci[0.01, 0.25]) and self-control (a*b = 0.13, ci[0.03, 0.30]). 1 week (42) hope, 2016 [108] canada (1) s 341 (74%) 19.4 (1.8) participants: life aspirations, perfectionism, selfcriticism; goals and their selfconcordance informants: life aspirations, other and self-oriented perfectionism, personality swb; type of aspiration (exor intrinsic); goal selfconcordance swls t2 swb correlated with t1 swb (r = 0.61, p < 0.001). an hierarchical multiple regression of t2 swb (controlled for t1 swb) found prioritising extrinsic aspirations was associated (δr2 = 0.02, p < 0.01). 10 wk (2) jiang, 2016 [109] china (2) s 428 (61.2%) 19.8 (0.95) disciplinary culture, materialism swb, affect swls materialism correlated with later swb, r = -0.21 to -0.33 (ps < 0.01). a sem showed prior materialism associated with current swb (β = -0.21 and -0.23, ps < 0.01) controlled for prior swb; there was no moderation by disciplinary culture. 1 yr (3) arria, 2016 [110] us (1) s 932 (57%) mode 27 trajectory of marijuana use ls, health, drug use; service usage; impairment swls compared to the non-use group, the chronic, low-stable, lateincrease and early-decline groups had worse yr 10 ls, while the college-peak group had better ls. marijuana use trajectory associated with risk of low ls (< 15 on the swls) at yr 10 (p = 0.014): 6% for the non-use group, 7% for college-peak, 12% for low-stable and chronic, and 16% for early-decline. 10 yr (9) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 176 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) coffey, 2016 [69] us (1) s 149 (31%) 18.1 (0.4) elements of perma: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, achievement ls, job interviews, distress, vitality, college satisfaction, gpa, health swls t6 ls was associated with t4 per(m)a (β = 0.47, p < 0.001). looking at individual perma elements, t6 ls correlated with t4 positive emotion (r = 0.54, p < 0.001), t4 engagement (r = 0.35, p < 0.001), and t4 achievement (r = 0.50, p < 0.001). 4 yr (6) frazier, 2013 [111] us (4) g 1281 (73%) 88% aged 18-21 (na) trauma ls, distress; affect; meaning in life; prosocial behaviour swls no significant results for wellbeing. 8 wk (2) denovan, 2017 [112] uk (1) ss 192 (82.8%) 19.68 (2.91) stressor exposure; covitality factors (strengths) ls, pa, na; stress; grade point average swls no significant results for wellbeing. 6 mth (2) perera, 2014 [113] australia (1) s 236 (64%) 17.74 (0.68) optimism, engagement coping academic adaptation, wellbeing wemwbs a sem had both a direct path from optimism to wellbeing (0.58, p < 0.01) and a mediated path, from optimism to engagement coping (0.54, p < 0.01) to wellbeing (0.31, p < 0.01). r2 for wellbeing was 0.62. however, wellbeing not measured at t1. 8 wk (3) león, 2013 [114] spain (1) s 272 (85.3%) 21.76 (5.17) relatedness, competence, autonomy ls, swb, self-esteem swls t2 ls was associated with t1 competence (0.12, p = 0.02) and t1 relatedness (0.15, p = 0.01) 3 mth (2) jankowski , 2015 [115] poland (2) g 117 (86.3%) 22.2 (1.9) sleep variables ls; mood; sleep swls no significant longitudinal results for life satisfaction except correlations of repeated measures. 9 wk (4) pilcher, 1997 [116] us (1) g 87 (71.3%) 18.9 (1.1) sleep quality and quantity pa, na, ls, subjective health, swls sleep quality averaged over the week of the study correlated with ls (r = 0.28, p < 0.05) with the effects of sleep quantity partialled out. 1 wk (8) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 177 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) mood pilcher, 1998 [117] us (1) g 75 (72%) 18.9 (0.83) sleep quality and quantity wellbeing (ls, pa, na, mood), health swls for the first wave, av. sleep quality correlated with ls (r = 0.22, p < 0.05) with effects of sleep quantity partialled out; results from 2nd and 3rd waves n.s. 11 wk (24) robinson, 2000 [118] us (1) g 129 (na) na self-esteem life events mediator: mood states eudaimonic wellbeing pwbs hierarchical multiple regression controlled for t1 wellbeing showed pasttwo weeks' life events were associated with t2 and t3 wellbeing, across both two week periods (β = 0.15, 0.21, ps < 0.01) and the four week period (β = 0.12, p < 0.05). similar results for recent mood states, across both two week periods (pa: β = 0.11, p < 0.05 and β = 0.16, p < 0.01; na: β = -0.16, p < 0.01 and β = -0.13, p < 0.05) and the four week period (pa: β = 0.29, p < 0.05; na: β = -0.05, n.s.). 4 wk (3) schonfeld, 2019 [119] china (3) g 2160 (51.3%) 19.03 (1.19) daily stressors, selfefficacy positive mental health; depression, anxiety and stress pmhs t3 positive mental health correlated with t1 daily stressors (r = -0.22, p < 0.01), self-efficacy (r = 0.32, p < 0.001), depression (r = 0.28, p < 0.001), anxiety (r = -0.27, p < 0.001), stress (r = -0.31, p < 0.001), and t1 positive mental health (r = 0.40, p < 0.001). a longitudinal mediation analysis with sem fit the data well: χ2(2214) = 9,017.329, p < 0.001, rsmea = 0.038 (0.037, 0.039), srmr = 0.049, cfi = 0.930. 2 yr (3) whillans, 2019 [120] canada (1) g 1060 (71.9%) 20.63 (4.15) prioritisation of time or money; swb swb; activity motivation swb students who valued time more than money at t1 reported greater swb at t2 (β = 0.12, p < 0.001). controlled for t1 swb, sex, family ses and materialism, the effect remained significant (β = 0.07, p = 0.009). 15 mth (2) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 178 table 3. reviewed papers – relationships domain author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) impett, 2005 [121] us (1) g 153 (54.9%) 20.1 (2.4) relational sacrifice for approach or avoidance motives ls, affect, rel. quality and conflict swls today’s ls associated with yesterday’s ls (unstd. coeff. 0.21, p < 0.001). 14 day average ls correlated with t1 hope for affiliation (r = 0.16, p = 0.05) and fear of rejection (r = -0.23, p = 0.004). approach motivation mediated hope for affiliation and ls (β = 0.38, p < 0.001; sobel z = 2.89, p < 0.01). 2 wk (15) iyer, 2009 [122] uk (1) g 261 (75.9%) 18.7 (na) incompatible identities; multiple grp memberships; pa; depression, social class, uncertainty & support re: uni., goal ach., academic / financial obstacles ls; personal selfesteem; dep ression; identificatio n with student group swls t2 ls correlated with t1 ls (r = 0.51), t1 self-esteem (r = 0.39), t1 depression and t1 uncertainty (rs= -0.38), t1 multiple grp memberships and support (rs= 0.16) (all ps < 0.05). full mediation model showed t2 ls associated with t1 ls (β = 0.42) and paths from t1 identity compatibility (β = 0.19) and t1 multiple grp memberships (β = 0.25) to t2 id as uni student, which associated with t2 ls (β = 0.42) (all ps < 0.05). 3 mth (2) praharso, 2017 [123] australia (1) g 79 (68.4%) 21.97 (3.62) social support, group memberships ls, perceived stress, depr ession swls t2 ls correlated with t1 ls (r = 0.63, p < 0.01), depression (r = 0.45, p < 0.01), stress (r = -0.41, p < 0.01), and no. impt grp memberships (r = 0.22, p < 0.05). in a hierarchical multiple regression controlled for t1 ls, t1-t2 δ impt grp memberships associated with t2 ls (β = 0.19, p = 0.044; δr2 = 0.05, p < 0.05). 4 mth (2) vrangalov a, 2015 [124] us (1) s 666 (62.5%) 18-24 (na) hookups: definitio ns based on relationship length and physical intimacy ls, depression, anxiety, self-esteem swls multiple regressions controlling for t1 ls and other variables found that in females, t2 ls associated with oral hookups in any relational context. 16 wk (2) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 179 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) bahrassa, 2011 [125] us (1) ss 82 (56.1%) 18.5 (0.34) family conflict grade point average (gpa) in first semester swls t1 ls correlated with t2 gpa (r = 0.42, p < 0.01). hierarchical multiple regression showed ls*family conflict (β = 0.30, p = 0.01; δr2 = 0.055); high ls protected gpa from family conflict. 4 mth (2) cai, 2017 [126] china (1) g 2031 (79.8%) 19.89 (0.91) social rhythm (regularity of engaging in basic social activities) positive mental health pmhs t3 positive mental health correlated with t1 social rhythm (r = 0.20, p < 0.01). a repeated-measures manova showed a main effect for time on positive mental health over the study (f = 96.29, p < 0.0001, ηp2 = 0.05)). a cross-lagged panel analysis was a good fit (χ2 (2) = 34.01, p < 0.0001, cfi = 0.99, srmr = 0.029). 2 yr (3) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 180 table 4. reviewed papers institutional context domain author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) cruwys, 2015 [127] australia (4) ss 91 (82.4%) 23.93 (5.07) thesis completion, grades, grade aspirations ls, na, depression, self-esteem swls a multiple regression controlled for t1 ls found t2 ls associated with t1 academic aspirations (β = -0.27, p < 0.05) and thesis grade (β = 0.25, p < 0.05). discrepancy between aspired-for and received thesis grade associated with t2 ls (fδ [1,88] = 12.76, p = 0.001, η2 = .07). 4 wk (2) figueira, 2017 [97] portugal (1) s 128 (82%) 21 (4) perceived time pressure, role clarity, working conditions and peer social support personal wellbeing: subjective, psy chological and social wellbeing mhc-lf t1 working conditions correlated with t2 social wellbeing (r = 0.36, p < 0.01) and t2 swb (r = 0.21, p < 0.05); t1 peer social support correlated with t2 social wellbeing (r = 0.19, p < 0.05) and t2 eudaimonic wellbeing (r = 0.20, p < 0.05). a sem showed t2 swb associated with t1 swb (coeff. 0.56, p < 0.001), t1 time pressure and working conditions (both 0.20, ps < 0.05), and role clarity (-0.21, p < 0.05). t2 eudaimonic wellbeing associated with only by t1 eudaimonic wellbeing (0.52, p < 0.001). 8 mth (2) goodman , 2014 [88] us (48) s 6,610 (na) na good teaching, academic challenge eudaimonic wellbeing, leadership pwbs in well-controlled multiple regressions, good teaching associated with overall wellbeing and all subscales for white students; for african-american students only self-acceptance was significant. academic challenge associated with overall wellbeing and all subscales for african-american and white students. 8 mth (2) hevel, 2015 [89] us (17) ss 2,027 (na) na fraternity or sorority affiliation eudaimonic wellbeing, educ. dependent variables pwbs fraternity or sorority membership was not associated with wellbeing at the end of college. 4 yr (3) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 181 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) martin, 2011 [90] us (11) ss 1,786 (62.8%) na fraternity or sorority affiliation wellbeing, intercultural effectiveness, educ. outcomes pwbs a multiple regression controlled for t1 wellbeing and a wide range of covariates found fraternity or sorority membership was not associated with t2 wellbeing. 9 mth (2) martin, 2015 [128] us (49) s 4,000 (na) na commuting, college experiences psychological wellbeing pwbs membership of a learning community was a significant incremental predictor of wellbeing over the first year and over four years of college. 4 yr (3) murai, 2008 [129] japan (1) ss 485 (100%) 18 (0.2) wellbeing; health; stress; college life variables leave or dropout from uni gwbs gwbs subscale for ls and emotional stability associated with leave or dropout (or = 1.09, 95%ci[1.01-1.18], p = 0.034 for one point change). 1 yr (2) wakefield , 2018 [130] spain (1) s 216 (77.3%) 21.45 (1.26) ls, uni identificati on, uni contact ls, uni identifi cation, uni contact swls t2 ls correlated with t1 ls (r = 0.44, p < 0.001), t1 university identification (r = 0.27, p < 0.001), and gender (r = -0.17, p < 0.05). t2 ls was associated with t1 ls and t1 university identification in a cross-lagged model. 7 mth (2) maddi, 2012 [131] us (1) g 377 (78%) 21.7 (na) ls, hardiness grade point average (gpa) swls ls correlated with gpa six months to two years later (r = 0.182, p < 0.001). in a multiple regression with hardiness as the other independent variable, ls was also associated with gpa (β = 0.144, p = 0.033). 6 mth to 2 yr (2) bowman, 2011 [94] us (1) s 416 (43%) ~18 (na) racial / cultural diversity wellbeing, prosociality, volunteering, recognition of discrimination swls; pwbs subscales no significant results for life satisfaction – however, see supplementary table 6 for results for pwbs mastery and growth subscales. 13 yr (3) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 182 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) bowman, 2013 [87] us (49) s 8615 (na) na (na) diversity interactions wellbeing, leadership, intellectual engagement, intercultural effectiveness pwbs t2 wellbeing associated with squared interracial interactions (β = 0.038, p < 0.01) and squared overall diversity interactions (β = 0.049, p < 0.001). wellbeing benefits greater for non-white students for both interracial (β = 0.055, p < 0.01) and overall diversity interactions (β = 0.040, p < 0.05). ~8 mth (2) cole, 2008 [132] us (1) ss 99 (67%) 18.06 (0.91) outgroup comfort, status legitimating beliefs, academic concerns wellbeing, academic concerns, interracial contact gwbs t2 wellbeing correlated with t1 academic concerns (r = -0.23, p < 0.05). a multiple regression showed t2 wellbeing associated with gender x outgroup comfort (β = 0.37, p < 0.05). for women, t1 outgroup comfort was associated with t2 wellbeing. 6 mth (2) seder, 2009 [133] us (1) s 93 (62.4%) 17.98 (0.42) ethnic/racial homogeneity of facebook friendships; felt misunderstanding and understanding; personality; religiosity; political conservatism ls, pa, na swls for the non-white sample, t2 ls was correlated with t1 ls (r = 0.53, p < 0.01), felt understanding (r = 0.38), felt misunderstanding (-0.34), extraversion (0.47), neuroticism (-0.35), and openness (0.44; all other ps < 0.05). for the white sample t2 ls associated with t1 ls (r = 0.80, p < 0.01), % white on-campus friends (r = 0.47, p < 0.01), % white other-school friends (0.29, p < 0.05); broadly similar correlations among other variables. 3 mth (2) bowman, 2010 [93] us (1) s 416 (43%) ~18 (na) in-college community engagement, prosocial orientation, volun teering, servicelearning courses ls, eudaimonic wellbeing, volunteering swls, pwbs t2 volunteering had sig. correlations with all t3 wellbeing variables: growth (r = 0.13, p < 0.05), mastery (r = 0.18, p < 0.005), purpose (r = 0.14, p < 0.05), and ls (r = 0.15, p < 0.01). t2 service-learning correlated with mastery (r = 0.12, p < 0.05). 13 yr (3) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 183 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) kilgo, 2016 [91] us (46) s 4402 (62%) na (na) participation as orientation leader, residential assistant, peer educator; intramural sports, no. student org. eudaimonic wellbeing pwbs a well-controlled multiple regression found t3 overall wellbeing associated with being a resident assistant (β = 0.09, p < 0.05), sports participation (β = 0.07, p < 0.01) and student organisation membership (β = 0.08, p < 0.001). 4 yr (3) lent, 2009 [134] portugal (1) s 252 (86.1%) 21.48 (4.75) ls, pa; academic env. resources, self-efficacy, goal progress, sat., stress same as independent variables swls t2 ls correlated with all t1 independent variables, rs 0.24 0.47. path model showed t2 ls associated with t1 ls (β = 0.66) and t1 academic adjustment (β = 0.37). 15 wk (2) lent, 2012 [135] portugal (1) s 158 (57.6%) 21.33 (4.77) ls, pa; academic env. resources, self-efficacy, goal progress, sat., stress same as independent variables swls t2 ls correlated with all t1 independent variables, rs 0.39 0.48. path model showed t2 ls associated with t1 ls (β = 0.62) and t1 academic satisfaction (β = 0.12). 15 wk (2) singley, 2010 [136] us (1) s 769 (65%) na (na) ls, pa; academic env. resources, self-efficacy, goal progress, sat., stress same as independent variables, except pa swls t2 ls correlated with all t1 independent variables, rs 0.32 0.42. path model showed t2 ls associated with t1 ls (β = 0.68), t1 pa (β = 0.06), t1 academic goal progress (β = 0.06). 8 wk (2) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 184 table 5. reviewed papers – self and relationships domains combined author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) bucher, 2019 [137] germany (1) g 244 (75%) 27.4 (8.3) relationship status and duration, need satisfaction in rel., commitment life satisfaction , loneliness swls sem controlled for sex, age, relationship duration and previous life satisfaction showed effects of increase in relational intimacy (β = 0.30, p = 0.001) on life satisfaction. 52 wk (2) ye, 2019 [138] hong kong (1) g 214 (73.8%) 20.6 (1.44) emotional intelligence, provided social support, received social support subjective happiness subjective happiness scale t2 subjective happiness correlated with t1 emotional intelligence (r = 0.32, p < 0.001), t1 provided social support (r = 0.16, p < 0.05), and t1 subjective happiness (r = 0.66, p < 0.001). t1 trait ei associated with t2 subjective happiness (b = 0.57, se = 0.15, 95% ci= [.27, .86]) with age, gender and t1 social support controlled. ei had an indirect effect on t2 subjective happiness through t1 provided social support and t2 received social support in sequence (b = 0.05, se = 0.02; 95% ci= [.02, .12]). 6 mth (2) huang, 2020 [139] us (1) g 75 (83%) 22 (7) implicit theory of personality; big five personality. emas: others’ friendliness, task demands, state extraversion and conscientiousness life satisfaction , college satisfaction swls t2 life satisfaction correlated with t1 extraversion (r = 0.24, p < 0.05) and t1 neuroticism (r = -0.31, p < 0.01). other prospective results for life satisfaction n.s. 3 wk (2) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 185 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) sheldon, 2020 [140] us (1) g 125 (60%) mode 20 self-support, selfcontrollingness, need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, relatedness) swb swls t2 swb correlated with t1 self-support for autonomy (r = 0.42, p < 0.01), t1 selfcontrollingness (r = -0.20, p < 0.05), t1 need satisfaction (r = 0.51, p < 0.01), and t1 swb (r = 0.59, p < 0.01). in a hierarchical regression (first step t1 swb), t2 swb associated with need satisfaction at t1 (β = 0.19, p = 0.032) and t2 (β = 0.43, p < 0.001). r2 = 0.637. 6 wk (2) hu, 2020 [126] china (1) s 749 (82.4%) na social support, resilience life satisfaction swls t3 life satisfaction correlated with t1 social support (r = 0.18, p < 0.001) and resilience (r = 0.23, p < 0.001). a repeated-measures manova showed a main effect for time on life satisfaction over the study (f = 9.92, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.01), with a u-shaped pattern. 3 yr (3) velten, 2018 [85] germany (1) g 636 (58.9%) 21.69 (4.07) bmi, frequency of physical and mental activity, alcohol and tobacco use, vegetarianism, social rhythm (regularity of social activities) positive mental health; depression, anxiety and stress pmhs multi-group path analysis included all german participants (n = 2800) and a randomly selected sample of chinese students (n = 2745), matched for age and gender. regression paths set equal. model fit was good (cfi = 0.955, rmsea = 0.043, srmr = 0.048). baseline lifestyle factors explained 12.5% variance in wellbeing (german) and 11.2% (chinese). 1 yr (2) velten, 2018 [85] china (3) 8933 (61.9%) 20.59 (1.58) as above as above pmhs as above 1 yr (2) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 186 author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) rubin, 2016 [141] australia (1) s 314 (64.3%) 22.98 (7.74) subjective social status (sss); social contact with university friends ls, depression, anxiety, stress swls t2 ls associated with t1 sss (β = 0.16, p = 0.002) and t1 social contact (β = 0.13, p = 0.025) with t1 ls controlled. t1 sss still significant when mediated by t1 social contact (β = 0.15, p = 0.006). a bootstrapped path analysis showed partial mediation. mean 20 wk (11 29) (2) margraf, 2020 [86] germany (1) g 1608 (63.9%) 23.58 (4.73) social support, resilience, social rhythm, fertility wish, quality of health; family affluence, depression, anxiety, and stress positive mental health; depression pmhs a sem across all three samples with regression coefficients constrained to be equal was a good fit (χ2 = 3456, df = 162, p < 0.001, cfi = 0.911, rmsea = 0.075, srmr = 0.074; δχ2 = 48, δdf = 210, p < 0.001, δcfi = 0.005). 17 mth (2) margraf, 2020 [86] china (5) g 12057 (61.3%) 19.63 (1.66) as above as above pmhs as above 17 mth (2) margraf, 2020 [86] russia (3) g 677 (41.5%) 19.63 (2.16) as above as above pmhs as above 17 mth (2) wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 187 table 6. reviewed papers temporal structure author, year country (no. sites) pop. n (% fem) age mean (sd) independent variable(s) dependent variable(s) instrument findings duration (waves) anusic, 2012 [142] us (1) g 226 (85%) 18.8 (1.4) personality, ls, mh ls, mh, personality swls ls was best described by a model which divided variance into autoregressive (86% of variance) and state (14%) components. 9 wk (8) bostic, 2001 [143] us (1) g 60 (76.7%) 19.16 (2.01) personality, swb swb swls mean swb correlated with sd of swb (r = -0.52, p < 0.01), extraversion (r = 0.43, p < 0.01) and external locus of control (subscales: ‘chance’ r = -0.48, p < 0.01; ‘powerful others’ r = -0.27, p < 0.05). variability in swb correlated with conscientiousness (r = 0.33, p < 0.05), ‘chance’ (r = 0.33, p < 0.05), and ‘powerful others’ (r = 0.26, p < 0.05). mean week-to-week swb autocorrelation was 0.43. 10 wk (11) li, 2014 [96] china (1) g 360 (51.4%) 19.69 (2.93) ls, pa, na ls, pa, na swls an indicator-specific trait model had good fit (x2/df = 1.98, cfi = 0.97, tli = 0.94, rmsea = 0.052, srmr =r = 0.035). over three waves, swls consistency coeff. 0.46 – 0.61 and occasionspecificity coeff. 0.17 – 0.21, so reliability was 0.66 – 0.78. 8 mth (3) note: some of the data for studies using the wabash national study sample were taken from general information from the study website [144] and other papers using that sample. wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 188 3.2 antecedents of wellbeing 3.2.1 self domain (including mental illness) figure 2 and 3 plot the semipartial correlations of study variables from the self domain which were significantly associated with t2 wellbeing after controlling for t1 wellbeing. the independent variables from this domain were the most numerous, comprising 46 of the 66 significant independent variables for which semipartial correlations could be calculated. note that only significant results are plotted in this section, due to the large number of variables. figure 2. semipartial correlation coefficients for self domain variables seven semipartial correlations had absolute values of 0.20 or greater. uncertainty regarding how university would affect one’s life and how to be a good student had a semipartial correlation of 0.28 with prospective wellbeing [122]. three of the others came from studies examining selfrelations: authenticity had a semipartial correlation of 0.26 [96], self-esteem 0.22 [122], and selfsupport for autonomy 0.20 [140]. the remaining three came from one study with very small sample sizes [133], being extraversion for non-white students (rsp = 0.43, n = 25) and white students (rsp = 0.20, n = 48) and religiosity for non-white students (rsp = 0.30, n = 42). emotion regulation variables ranged from 0.10 [138] to 0.18, notably emotional repair and selfrated ability to regulate distress and despondency (both rsp = 0.18) [98,105]. personal strengths was the next strongest category, with measures of resilience across four samples ranging from 0.07 to 0.10 [86,145]. physical health was measured in three samples in different countries from the same study, with semipartial correlations ranging from 0.05 to 0.12 [86]. wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 189 figure 3. semipartial correlation coefficients for self domain variables (mental illness) significant results for three mental illness constructs—depression, anxiety, and stress—were found in six studies (see figure 3), with eight total samples (one being a multi-country study with three samples) and 19 variables. the semipartial correlations for depression ranged from -0.22 to -0.07; for anxiety, from -0.11 to -0.04, and for stress, from -0.18 to 0.14 (this last result perhaps representing ‘eustress’ [146]). overall, 23 study variables were positively correlated with prospective wellbeing and 23 negatively correlated. semipartial correlations ranged from -0.28 to 0.43; the mean absolute value was 0.14 and the median was 0.11, so for δr2 over baseline wellbeing the range was 0.0 to 0.19 with a mean of 0.04 and a median of 0.03. there were seven studies for which semipartial correlations could not be calculated due to the required data not being reported, but which nevertheless presented results controlled for t1 wellbeing. these analyses all controlled for more variables than the semipartial correlation analysis presented above, which controlled only for t1 wellbeing, so while their results were not directly comparable, they were more robust. three of these seven supported the results of the semipartial correlation analysis by finding significant results for similar study variables: positive effects for extraversion [95], positive affect [118], and negative effects for mental health problems [85]. five studies included six variables with significant effects which did not appear in the semipartial correlation analysis (one study had variables in both categories): there were positive effects for physical activity [85], balance of positive recent life events [118] , self-compassion [101], and valuing time over money [120]; and negative effects for negative affect [118], being a student of colour (in a us context) [89], and prioritising extrinsic over intrinsic aspirations [108]. a further 12 studies did not control for t1 wellbeing: nine of these produced significant results for prospective wellbeing. some of these supported the results of the semipartial correlation wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 190 analysis with significant results for similar study variables: positive affect [69], mindfulness and self-control [107], and personality [100,139]. eight found significant results for other variables: engagement [69,113] and achievement [69], prosociality [92], optimism [113], ‘should’ conflicts [107], marijuana use [110], and sleep [116,117]. finally, four studies in the self domain did not find any significant results for prospective wellbeing [106,111,112,115]. 3.2.2 relationships domain figure 4 shows the semipartial correlations of study variables from the relationships domain which were significantly associated with t2 wellbeing after controlling for t1 wellbeing. figure 4. semipartial correlation coefficients for relationships domain variables the three variables with the highest semipartial correlations were relationship commitment, with a semipartial correlation of 0.20, representing a δr2 over baseline wellbeing of 0.04 [121]; percentage of white on-campus friends amongst a subsample of white students, rsp = 0.20 (albeit with a small sample, n = 48) [133]; and number of important group memberships, rsp = 0.19 [123]. all but one of the semipartial correlations were positive; their absolute values’ range was 0.05 to 0.20, with the absolute values having a mean of 0.14 and a median of 0.11, equating to δr2 over baseline wellbeing in the range 0.00 to 0.04. the one negative semipartial correlation [86] appeared to be anomalous. there were four studies for which semipartial correlations could not be calculated in the manner described above [85,95,108,124], but which nevertheless presented results controlled for t1 wellbeing. one supported the results of the semipartial correlation analysis by finding a negative effect for irregular social rhythm[85], where regular social rhythm had shown positive wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 191 effects on wellbeing in other studies. the only other significant result was oral hookups for females [124], which had a positive effect on wellbeing. lastly, two studies did not control for t1 wellbeing [106,132]. only one of their study variables had a significant relationship with prospective wellbeing: outgroup comfort [132]. 3.2.3 institutional context domain figure 5 shows the semipartial correlations of study variables from the institutional context domain which were significantly associated with t2 wellbeing after controlling for t1 wellbeing. figure 5. semipartial correlations for institutional context domain variables the two variables with the highest semipartial correlations were self-identification with the university, rsp = 0.21 (δr2 over baseline wellbeing of 0.04) [130] and time pressure, rsp = 0.18 [97]. these were the largest effect sizes despite being measured across longer timescales: 30 and 34 weeks, respectively. the seven remaining independent variables in this domain were drawn from a group of three studies based on the social cognitive model [134–136], which all measured the same or similar variables over periods of eight to fifteen weeks. several aspects of academic adjustment measured in these studies (e.g., support, self-efficacy, progress, stress, satisfaction) made an incremental contribution to prospective wellbeing, with semipartial correlations ranging from 0.10 to 0.15 (δr2 0.01 to 0.02). there were six studies for which semipartial correlations could not be calculated, but still presented results controlled for t1 wellbeing; 13 of these variables were significant predictors of prospective wellbeing. none of these variables overlapped with those in the semipartial correlation analysis. the variables positively associated with prospective wellbeing included six wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 192 measures of engagement in university life and extracurricular activities [89,91], three related to academic experiences [88,128], and two variables relating to diversity [87]. there was one negatively associated variable, precollege academic motivation [89]. lastly, one study which did not control for t1 wellbeing found that academic concerns were negatively associated with prospective wellbeing [132]. 3.3 consequences of wellbeing as independent variable only five papers focused on wellbeing as an independent variable. most of these measured educational outcomes: life satisfaction had associations with later grade point average (gpa) of r = 0.18 and r = 0.42 in two samples [125,131]; in asian-american students it also moderated the negative effect of family conflict on gpa [125]. a composite wellbeing measure was associated with university dropout up to a year later [129], and another composite construct, perma, was associated with number of interviews for postgraduate opportunities two years later [69]. 3.4 temporal structure of wellbeing three studies focused on the temporal structure of wellbeing, two using models to decompose life satisfaction [142] and swb [147] into components which varied in stability over time. they found that these constructs potentially could be broken down into stable traits, short-term states and medium-term autoregressive components, though the components which could be detected varied with the duration of the study. 3.5 meta-analyses with time as a moderator a meta-analysis was performed to investigate whether the effects of study variables were moderated by the duration between wellbeing measurements. both the overall model (coefficient[se] = 0.0977[0.0305], p = 0.0013) and the moderator (coefficient[se] = -0.0239[0.0093], p = 0.0101) were significant, showing that in general the effect of study variables on wellbeing attenuated over time. however, it was apparent that the measure used for most studies, the swls, tended to be used in shorter duration studies (i.e., mean 18 weeks) whereas studies using other measures tended to be used in longer duration studies (i.e., mean 68 weeks), so type of measure was a possible confounder of the moderating effect of duration. to discern if these effects might be due to the measure used for the dependent variable, rather than the duration of the measurement interval, a further meta-analysis was performed with study as a random effect moderated by both measurement interval and type of measure (defined as swls vs. all other measures). this showed that study (coefficient [se] = 0.1219[0.0447], p = 0.0064) and study duration were significant (coefficient [se] = -0.0344[0.0113], p = 0.0024), but type of measure was not significant (coefficient [se] = -0.0139[0.0297], p = 0.6402), so the attenuation in effect was not due to the type of measure used. 3.6 publication bias publication bias (i.e., published results not being representative of the available research) was examined with a funnel plot (see figure 6, below) and tested with a rank correlation test for funnel plot asymmetry [148] yielding kendall’s τ = -0.0915, p = 0.1117, suggesting that it was not present in the reviewed studies. wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 193 figure 6. funnel plot for all studies with semipartial correlations available 4. discussion 4.1 summary of results this study was a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature relating to antecedents and consequences of wellbeing among university students. the main analyses involved wellbeing and study variables measured at baseline and their prospective association with wellbeing measured at a later time. a meta-analysis showed that effects of significant study variables were moderated by measurement interval, generally decreasing over time. the semipartial correlations of study variables showed their incremental contribution to prospective wellbeing over and above the contribution of baseline wellbeing. a total of 90 significant effect sizes for study variables were found; these were categorised into three domains: self, relationships and institutional context. a small number of studies provided different insights into the relation of wellbeing to other variables over time. a few studies showed wellbeing as an antecedent of other variables such as academic achievement and health; notably, these variables have also been shown to be antecedents of wellbeing in other studies [134–136,149,150]. two studies examining the temporal structure of wellbeing showed that it may be decomposed into transitory, autoregressive and trait-like components [142,147]. 4.2 discussion of results the meta-analysis of effect sizes moderated by measurement interval showed that the effects of study variables tended to diminish over time. this finding is complemented by the results of the studies by anusic et al [142] and li et al [147], which demonstrate that the temporal structure of wellbeing (life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing respectively) may be decomposed into elements of different durations: trait, autoregressive, and transitory, given sufficient study wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 194 duration [see also 151]. that is, each individual’s wellbeing may be broken down into a trait element which changes very little, an autoregressive element which is influenced by, but not identical to, its values at the previous measurement, and a transitory/error element which combines short-term influences and measurement error. this tripartite temporal structure raises questions about how its three elements relate to the antecedents of wellbeing. it may be that this structure is purely a mirror of its antecedent variables: that how antecedents of wellbeing break down into short-, mediumand long-term influences entirely determines the tripartite structure for an individual at a given point in time. or it may be that wellbeing is to some extent self-causing, over and above being self-correlated (i.e. associated with earlier values of itself, or autocorrelated). perhaps high wellbeing leads to behaviours likely to cause high wellbeing in future via mediated causal chains, somewhat similar to the broaden-and-build theory [152]. this is also suggested by empirical findings about the relationship of subjective wellbeing to physical health, social support, and work performance, which make “it [seem] likely that the causal arrow often travels in both directions” [153]. if this were the case, the autoregressive component of wellbeing would not be purely a correlation, but partly a relation of causation. delineating the nature of these relationships is a topic for further study. the temporal stability of variables affecting wellbeing should be measured and taken into account—as was done in some studies in this review [143,154,155]. this will help to determine to what extent the high autocorrelations of wellbeing between baseline and prospective measurements were due to the temporal consistency of the variables associated with wellbeing at baseline (in the studies reviewed, the largest effect size among antecedents of prospective wellbeing was generally baseline wellbeing). the individual study variables shown to be significant antecedents of wellbeing were both numerous and diverse. there were 66 significant variables emerging from the analysis of semipartial correlations, and a further 24 from studies for which semipartial correlations could not be calculated but which nevertheless presented results controlled for t1 wellbeing, for a total of 90 variables (after eliminating variables which were measured in more than one study, there was a total of 49 distinct variables). these were categorised into three domains: the self, relationships, and institutional context; the diversity of antecedents therefore ranging from the physical body to abstract relationships with social and cultural signifiers. many of these results were in accord with those in the existing literature on other populations. while there are no previous systematic reviews of longitudinal studies of wellbeing in tertiary students, a comprehensive review of studies of life satisfaction in youth aged 19 years and under [156] found associations between wellbeing and many of the variables in this review, such as personality, self-esteem, physical health, depression, and social support. the set of variables with significant zero-order correlations with wellbeing is almost problematically large. geerling and diener noted recently that it appears almost endless—yet is also growing [150]. however, the analytic technique of controlling for baseline wellbeing allows this group to be narrowed down to a smaller subset (albeit still large in an absolute sense). it therefore allows the delineation of a group of variables to target with policy changes and interventions. the most strongly associated antecedents of wellbeing form the most obvious candidates for this group—though of course it may not be possible to target them directly, or at all. from the positively associated variables in the self domain, authenticity, self-esteem, and selfsupport for autonomy had semipartial correlations of 0.20 or greater, and emotion regulation variables were also well supported. there is a substantial evidence base for the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (act) and other mindfulness-based interventions wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 195 targeting these areas with regard to their effect on mental illness [10–14], though the evidence base for their effect on wellbeing is smaller [however, see 65]. the negatively associated variables in the self domain were mainly related to mental illness, and universities often provide psychological services to students. but given the finite capacity of university counselling services, and the known rates of mental illness among people in this age group, scalable methods of treatment might be considered [157,158]. further, despite recent advances, much mental illness still goes untreated, so awareness campaigns and screening programmes might help to bridge this gap. physical health and resilience also offered positive semipartial correlations with prospective wellbeing, and there is emerging evidence supporting interventions for resilience [159–161]. the relationships domain presented few potential targets for intervention. however, group memberships were well supported with rsp = 0.19; they may be (and are) supported by universities with the provision of facilities and resources. here the study results provide empirical support for existing practices. in the institutional context domain, self-identification with the university had a semipartial correlation of 0.21 (though this was at one of the more prestigious universities in spain, the university of valencia). the three variables identified by singley et al [136] may be more promising candidates for policy changes and interventions: academic goal progress (in relation to concrete academic goals), academic goal support (including access to role models and mentors, instrumental assistance, and financial resources), and academic satisfaction, with rsp = 0.10, 0.10 and 0.12 respectively. these effect sizes were obtained despite a relatively large sample (n = 769)—effect sizes tended to be smaller with larger sample sizes—so these results stood out. further, similar and significant results were found in the two studies by lent et al. [134,135] which had designs very similar to the singley et al 2010 study. many of the antecedents of wellbeing had complex relationships (e.g. mediated) with one another and with wellbeing. almost half of the studies reviewed tested processes of moderation or mediation (28 out of 62). further, there was evidence from multiple studies suggestive of circular causation for some variables such as academic achievement [125,131,134–136], and this reciprocal effect has been also found in younger populations [149]. more broadly, wellbeing is prospectively associated with a number of variables [162], and reciprocal causation is thought to occur in wider populations and in a wider range of variables [153]. one of the benefits available from longitudinal observation research may be the discovery of naturally occurring processes by which wellbeing increases or decreases over time (some of which might involve circular causation). knowledge of these processes might allow the design of interventions which scaffold and enhance natural processes of growth in wellbeing or disrupt processes of decrease in wellbeing. while the research studies in this review cannot provide definitive answers, they do give some hints as to the possibilities. for example, martin et al 2015 [128] found that membership of a “structured learning community”, i.e. coursework completed with a consistent group of students, was predictive of wellbeing over oneand four-year time scales. further, as noted above, academic achievement may have a reciprocal causal relationship with wellbeing. so, while the nature of the causal mechanism still needs further investigation, this suggests a potential intervention to provide scaffolding for this naturally occurring process. the deliberate grouping of students into multi-year learning communities might provide opportunities for academic achievement and wellbeing to mutually support one another in a spiral of growth over time, in a way which is not possible in groups whose memberships change each semester. (it is also possible that the positive effect on wellbeing found in these learning wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 196 communities was due to social factors rather than academic achievement—hence the need for further research.) this study also highlights a potential quandary for researchers and policymakers concerned with university student wellbeing: that there are variables which may not be studied by experiment in a straightforward way, but which have substantial effect sizes for student wellbeing. so while there exists an understandable and justifiable bias towards the use of interventions which enjoy the higher standard of evidence provided by experimental study, there is no prima facie reason why variables which are not amenable to experimental study will not have comparable effect sizes (such as, from this study, academic goal support). further, a common reason why these variables are not amenable to experimental study is that they cannot be changed without affecting the entire student body; while this means that one cannot create control and experimental groups, it does mean that such policy changes will enjoy high levels of reach. however, at least some of these variables are in a grey area—those for which the change in policy may not be studied experimentally, but for which it is possible to isolate a more general causal mechanism inherent in the specific change. this would be done with the aim of studying the mechanism experimentally, providing a stronger case for policy changes targeting that variable. 4.3 limitations there were a number of methodological limitations in this systematic review. first, there are limitations associated with the systematic review and its search methods. studies in languages other than english were not included. neither was grey literature (i.e. non -peerreviewed literature, such as government reports), and it is possible that there are relevant reports produced by universities on student wellbeing. however, given the breadth of the search criteria and the number of databases used, it was likely that the majority of eligible studies in the peer reviewed literature have been included in this review. further, it appears that publication bias was not present in the reviewed studies. second, there are limitations associated with the studies included in the review. in particular, most studies were based upon convenience samples. psychology students were used in many of the samples, and the five large-sample studies using the wabash national study data focused on liberal arts colleges. studies comprising science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students are likely to be underrepresented. samples generally had a higher proportion of females, and it also appears likely that postgraduate students were underrepresented. attrition bias is possible, given the focus on longitudinal study design. while attrition was analysed in some studies [e.g. 87,120,141], this was not the case for all. further, the usual analysis of attrition by sex and age may not capture all relevant variables (e.g., personality) [163,164]. studies were surveybased, so single method bias is a possibility, as is self-report bias. it is also possible that there is measurement bias in some studies, for example, it may have been the case that the psychology students who made up many of the samples answered questionnaires differently to nonpsychology students due to their knowledge of questionnaire design. however, the five studies based on the wabash national study data had well-controlled analyses and in some cases had more robust sample designs—and results from these studies were consistent with those from less well-designed studies. studies tended to include some analysis to examine results by demographic categories as an attempt to examine sample bias. the studies in the review also used different concepts and measures of wellbeing. while different concepts of wellbeing show strong statistical similarities [32], they are nevertheless wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 197 distinct, and may not be affected in the same way by changes to other variables. however, at a pragmatic level, while 67% of the study variables included in the analysis of semipartial correlations and meta-analyses used the swls as a dependent variable measure, a multilevel meta-analysis with type of measure (i.e., swls, non-swls) and study duration as moderators showed a significant effect for study duration, but not for type of measure. in future reviews it would be prudent to include similar tests of moderation by outcome measure. third, there are limitations associated with the analytic methods used. the analysis of semipartial correlations, which used a study variable measured at baseline and wellbeing measured at baseline and prospectively, controls only for baseline wellbeing and not for any other variables. it would be possible, and instructive, to control also for some of the more commonly measured variables such as measures of psychological distress. it also must be interpreted bearing in mind the presumed differences in temporal variability of the study variables. that is, some were unlikely to change over the measurement intervals involved (e.g., personality variables), while others were much more likely to change (e.g., daily events). the meta-analysis of time as a moderator, which found that the effects of baseline variables on prospective wellbeing attenuated with measurement interval, did not differentiate between the baseline variables. it is quite possible that the results of this analysis would be different with a different group of baseline variables. however, it seems likely that the moderating effect of time would be greater if the difference in study variables’ propensity to change was taken into account. 5. conclusions this study used a broad search to systematically review 62 studies of wellbeing in university student populations. it extracted data from the studies to perform meta-analyses of the effect of study duration on effect size and to construct regression analyses of prospective wellbeing controlled for baseline wellbeing. the incremental contribution of baseline study variables to prospective wellbeing was thereby isolated. the study added to the literature by providing a synoptic overview of these variables in the university student population, establishing a ‘natural history’ of wellbeing to form a background for policy and potential targets for interventions to improve wellbeing. it found 49 distinct variables which made an incremental contribution to wellbeing, spread across three domains: self, relationships, and institutional context. the variables making the strongest positive incremental contribution were a group clustered around self-relations and self-regulation, as well as relationship commitment, group memberships, and self-identification with the university. the variables making the strongest negative incremental contributions were depression, anxiety, stress, and uncertainty about university. the effects of study variables tended to diminish with time; further, it appears that wellbeing is composed of transitory, autoregressive and trait-like elements with different time horizons for change. the presence of variables which make incremental contributions to prospe ctive wellbeing over and above baseline wellbeing not only suggests that these may be targets for intervention and policy—it also suggests that there may be already-existing processes of change in wellbeing which might be enabled or enhanced by interventions and policy changes. the breadth and diversity of antecedents of wellbeing creates an imperative for researchers to cast their net wide, both to detect confounding variables and to examine variables acting in combination. further research into ways to influence the individual-level variables influencing wellbeing is warranted, and empirically supported interventions which support and increase the skills, cognitions, and behaviours underlying these variables should be deployed by universities. wellbeing among university students du toit, thomson & page www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 198 conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors anton du toit western sydney university a.dutoit@westernsydney.edu.au russell thomson western sydney university andrew page western sydney university acknowledgments the authors would like to acknowledge ms lily collison for her assistance with literature search strategies and dr. sandro sperandei for his assistance with r programming. publishing timeline received 28 august 2021 revised version received 25 april 2022 accepted 12 may 2022 published 1 june 2022 references 1. pew research center. the state of american jobs [internet]. pew research center; 2016 p. 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(2022). are character strength-based positive interventions effective for eliciting positive behavioral outcomes? a meta analytic review. international journal of wellbeing, 12(3), 56-80. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i3.2111 robert e. mcgrath fairleigh dickinson university mcgrath@fdu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 article are character strength-based positive interventions effective for eliciting positive behavioral outcomes? a meta-analytic review justine bates-krakoff · allison parente · robert e. mcgrath · tayyab rashid ryan m. niemiec abstract: research on strengths-based positive interventions (sbpis) has often supported their effectiveness, but these studies overwhelmingly focus on experiential outcomes such as affect and subjective well-being. much less is known about their effectiveness for eliciting positive behavioral outcomes. the current article provides a lexicon to clarify distinctions between various types of positive interventions. this is followed by a meta-analysis of studies examining behavioral outcomes from sbpis. multiple databases were searched through october 2020. out of 418 studies evaluating what could be considered sbpis, only 48 analyses across 29 articles examined group differences in a behavioral outcome. random -effects metaanalysis of post-test data revealed a small to medium, statistically significant effect, hedges’ g = 0.32. evidence was insufficient to suggest small-study or methodological bias. sbpis seemed effective for eliciting behavioral change relative to control conditions consistent with prior meta-analyses. however, the available data are too limited to support sbpis as an alternative to traditional approaches that focus on direct symptom reduction. significance of scholarship to the public: strengths-based positive interventions (sbpis) represent an increasingly popular approach to behavior change. sbpis work under the assumption that personal strengths can be used to improve personal functioning. however, existing research on sbpis predominantly focuses on outcomes related to affect and well being. the current article goes one step further, providing a statistical review of studies examining behavioral outcomes from sbpis. results suggested a small to medium effect. however, a great deal more research is needed to establish the effectiveness of sbpis as methods of eliciting behavior change. keywords: character strengths, positive interventions, positive psychotherapy, meta-analysis, behavior change 1. introduction positive psychology was founded with the goal of fostering the scientific study of the positive aspects of human functioning, as a balance to what its founders perceived as an overemphasis on dysfunction in psychologists’ investigations into health (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). associated with its emergence was an increased emphasis on enhancing positive human functioning, contributing to feelings of well-being, and helping individuals to flourish and thrive. the founders particularly hoped for the development of “effective interventions to build thriving in individuals, families, and communities” (p. 5). researchers and clinicians quickly picked up about:blank character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 on this call, developing new approaches for improving functioning that will be referred to here as positive psychology interventions (ppis). in the first study examining interventions inspired by positive psychology, seligman et al. (2005) evaluated the effect of several such interventions on happiness and depression, including gratitude visit (writing and then delivering a letter of gratitude to someone the individual had never properly thanked) and three good things in life (writing down three things each evening that went well during the day and their causes). a particularly fertile source for ppis has been research and model-building connected with the concept of character strengths. peterson and seligman (2004) defined character strengths as ubiquitous traits that are valued in their own right and do not necessarily lead to instrumental outcomes. niemiec (2018; niemiec & pearce, 2021) defined character strengths as positive personality qualities that reflect core identity, produce positive outcomes for oneself and others, and contribute to the common good. for the most part, character strengths do not diminish; rather, individuals high on such strengths elevate those who witness the strength, producing admiration rather than jealousy. character strengths are valued across cultures. for example, they suggested every culture has conceptions of attributes such as kindness, spirituality, gratitude, creativity, and love. peterson and seligman (2004) distinguished character strengths from other positive attributes such as talents, forms of intelligence, skills, interests, resources, and values in two ways. first, character strengths seem to be universally perceived as contributing not only to individuals but to the community as a whole. as a result, they are considered prosocial attributes of a person, and in some cases even have moral implications (e.g., kindness and fairness); and enhance the flourishing of the community while benefiting the person regardless of their culture. second, while character strengths are stable, they are also perceived as malleable, and therefore open to intervention, while talents and resources are in general fixed. the most extensive model of these strengths is offered by the via classification of character strengths and virtues (peterson & seligman, 2004). the result of a three-year process that involved over 50 leading researchers in positive functioning, the classification includes 24 character strengths, such as creativity, gratitude, kindness, and self-regulation. character is not viewed as a fixed state, but rather as a dynamic construct. research on the use of the 24-character strengths has found that using one’s strengths has a positive and long-lasting impact on happiness (lavy, littman-ovadia, & bareli, 2014; proyer, wellenzohn, gander, & ruch, 2014; proyer et al., 2015). peterson and seligman (2004) identified ten criteria for character strengths: • strengths contribute to the pursuit of optimal functioning and well-being. • strengths are morally valued apart from any particular benefit. • the display of a strength is beneficial to witnesses. • antonyms cannot be expressed as desirable. • strengths can be measured in one’s behavior or actions. • strengths are distinct from one another. • there are past and present persons who epitomize character strengths. • strengths can manifest to a substantial degree early in one’s development. • it is possible for a person to be devoid of certain strengths. • institutions have been created with a dedication to cultivating strengths and virtues (e.g. art institutions, religious institutions). going forward, references to strengths are intended to imply character strengths unless otherwise indicated. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 1.1 strengths-based positive interventions one implication of the focus on character strengths is that intervention strategies intending to enhance those strengths have the potential to result in positive outcomes for the individual. such interventions can be referred to as strength-based positive interventions (sbpis). ruch and colleagues (2020) have recently drawn a distinction between generic and personalized sbpis. the former are based on the assumption that certain character strengths, such as gratitude, are particularly beneficial, and focus specifically on one or a small set of such strengths. the latter are based on the assumption that the most beneficial character strengths to enhance vary from person to person. these sbpis usually involve some sort of assessment to identify which of a larger set of strengths are most useful as the target of intervention for each participant. the treatment may begin with participants completing the via inventory of strengths (peterson & seligman, 2004), a measure of the via classification strengths. based on the participant’s results, a subset of the 24 strengths is chosen, and the individual is instructed to engage in some activity focusing on those strengths. for example, one of the interventions described by seligman et al. (2005) involved using test results to identify strengths particularly central to each participant, or signature strengths, and instructing participants to use those strengths in a new way for the following week. signature strengths have been defined as those character strengths that are easiest, most energizing, and most natural for an individual to express (peterson & seligman, 2004). they vary across individuals. other strengths are believed to be expressed to a lesser degree or with lower frequency. it should be noted that many positively focused interventions and sbpis predate the positive psychology movement. examples of the former include a program to increase happiness (fordyce, 1983) or goal pursuit (emmons & king, 1988); examples of earlier strategies that could be considered sbpis include generic interventions that focus on positive attributes such as humor, forgiveness, savoring, and gratitude (emmons & crumpler, 2000; enright & fitzgibbons, 2000; malouff & schutte, 2016; martin et al., 1993; weiss et al., 2016). what these strategies have in common is a focus on enhancing positive aspects of daily functioning, with the expectation that doing so will both improve standing on desirable dimensions such as well-being and enhance the resources available to the individual for addressing personal deficits, rather than focusing directly on alleviation of symptoms. though positive interventions preceded positive psychology, the movement has both spurred the development of and focused attention on positive interventions, sbpis in particular, and personalized sbpis even more so (niemiec, 2018). counseling psychologists have long emphasized the use of positive based interventions. gelso et al. (2014) included an emphasis on strengths and assets as one of the five central themes of counseling psychology, and traced this emphasis back to the 1950s. the importance of the focus on strengths reflects the historical belief among counseling psychologists that all individuals have strengths and coping abilities no matter the level of their disturbance, and that focusing on these assets rather than shame and hopelessness provides a better approach to enhancing mental health and achieving recovery. thus, while the introduction of positive psychology has expanded the breadth and analysis of positive interventions and has attracted greater interest in such interventions, these efforts complement longstanding practices in counseling psychology. because of this focus on the positive rather than on diagnosis, any positive intervention is potentially applicable to a variety of problems. in particular, sin and lyubomirsky (2009, p. 468) clarified the concept of ppis in an important way when they defined them as “treatment methods or intentional activities that aim to cultivate positive feelings, behaviors, or cognitions.” this definition encompasses both clinically relevant interventions (“treatment methods”) and more http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 informal strategies (“intentional activities”) that can, for example, include counseling on life problems, coaching, or self-help activities. the resulting literature therefore includes studies with both clinical and non-clinical populations. an illustration of the clinical use of positive intervention is provided by positive psychotherapy (rashid & seligman, 2018). again, though this term precedes positive psychology (peseschkian, 1990), the movement has brought substantial attention to the concept. figure 1 presents the full lexicon of terms we have summarized here, as backdrop to the current study. figure 1. lexicon of categories of interventions. note. strength-based positive interventions can be further subdivided into generic and personalized interventions, and personalized interventions inspired by positive psychology often involve signature strengths. positive interventions applied to clinical populations have been referred to as positive psychotherapy. a substantial literature has since emerged evaluating the effectiveness of these types of interventions (e.g., gander et al., 2013; proyer et al., 2015; seligman et al., 2005). ten recent reviews have specifically focused on positive interventions associated with positive psychology. these are summarized in table 1. all drew positive conclusions about the effectiveness of these interventions. however, several authors have since criticized the quality of at least the first two of these reviews. coyne (2014a) noted that bolier et al. (2013) under-emphasized the poor quality of the studies they included in their meta-analysis. the same author (coyne, 2014b) also criticized sin and lyubomirsky (2009) for, among other issues, combining studies using random and nonrandom assignment, combining studies that used varying standards for depression, failing to include any evaluation of the quality of the studies they reviewed, and using relatively poor indicators of effect homogeneity and publication bias. more recently, white et al. (2019) criticized these two reviews on a number of grounds, particularly what they saw as insufficient accounting for potential small-sample bias in studies they reviewed. using one method for correcting effect estimates for small samples resulted in substantial reductions in effect sizes. for example, where sin and lyubomirsky reported a mean correlation between treatment and well-being outcomes of .29, white et al. (2019) generated a mean of .08. it should be noted that small-sample bias is positive interventions strength-based positive interventions inspired by positive psychology http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=proyer%20rt%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=25954221 character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 frequently interpreted as evidence of selection bias, but there can be valid reasons for a relationship between sample size and effect size, e.g., if smaller samples contribute to greater experimental control (lenth, 2001). ghielen et al.’s (2017) literature review of 18 studies between 2011 and 2016 also noted several shortcomings in the literature, such as the file-drawer effect (i.e., negative and non-confirmatory results were not published), lack of random sampling, and the use of passive or waitlist control groups rather than active control groups. table 1. prior reviews of positive intervention studies inspired by positive psychology. authors type of review # studies time frame interventions other criteria outcomes targeted primary findings sin & lyubomirsky (2009) metaanalysis 49 19772008 ppia excluded physical interventions, mood induction studies well-being depression mean r values = [.29, .31] bolier et al. (2013) metaanalysis 39 19982012 ppis random assignment; peerreviewed well-being depression mean d values = [0.20, 0.34] quinlan et al. (2012)b systematic review 8 20042011 personalized sbpis non-clinical settings well-being academic selfefficacy significant improvement in all studies ghielen et al. (2017)bc systematic review 18 20112016 personalized sbpis similar to quinlan et al., but included clinical settings varied small to moderate effect sizes schutte & malouff (2018)b metaanalysis 14 20052017 personalized sbpis with signature strengths no other intervention included positive affect depression life satisfaction mean hedge's g values = [0.21, 0.42] chakhssi et al. (2018) metaanalysis 30 19982017 ppis adult clinical samples; exclusions similar to sin & lyubomirsky (2009) well-being depression anxiety mean hedge's g values = [0.23, 0.36] white et al. (2019) metaanalysis 136 19772012 ppis excluded physical interventions, mood induction studies random assignment; peerreviewed well-being subjective psych. depression mean r values = [.24, .25] mean r values = [.17, .09, .10] carr et al. (2020) metaanalysis 347 19982018 ppis randomization, excluded physical exercise interventions, mindfulness, and meditation interventions unless part of multi-component ppi programs well-being character strengths mean hedge’s g values= [0.39, 0,46] miglianico et al. (2020) systematic review 27 19982019 strengths interventions peer reviewed; excluded strengths possession or endorsement and focus on a single strength work performance outcomes, job satisfaction, work engagenment, well-being strengths use in workplace associated with wellbeing and work performance outcomes http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 authors type of review # studies time frame interventions other criteria outcomes targeted primary findings van agteren et al. (2021) metaanalysis 72 19772020 multicomponent ppis rcts; excluded studies comparing psychological interventions; at least one measure of mental wellbeing well-being resilience mean hedge’s g = 0.44 koydemir et al. (2021) metaanalysis 68 19502017 ppis adult non-clinical samples; random assignment; excluded physical activity interventions and positive psychotherapy; excluded studies aimed at increasing a single positive aspect subjective and psychological well-being d = 0.23 aincluded some studies of positive interventions that preceded positive psychology. bincluded unpublished studies and/or studies without comparison groups. cconsidered an extension of the previous review. note. ppis = positive psychology interventions; sbpis = strength-based positive interventions. another concern one can raise about existing research on ppis, a concern that is the focus of the present investigation, is an over-emphasis on certain classes of outcomes. specifically, coyne (2014a, b) criticized both bolier et al. (2013) and sin and lyubomirsky (2009) for focusing exclusively on experiential variables such as self-reported depression and well-being.1 this issue applies to several of the other reviews summarized as well. quinlan et al. (2012) provided recommendations for improving the quality of sbpis based exclusively on the impact of treatment on well-being. schueller et al. (2014) even considered the improvement of well-being a definitional component of a ppi, though they explicitly acknowledged the importance of changing thoughts and behaviors for achieving that goal. schutte and malouff (2018) noted that future research should focus on a broader variety of outcomes, such as work-related outcomes or health-related behavioral outcomes. while several authors have suggested the importance of looking at how well ppis and/or sbpis influence behavior, to date no review of the literature exists focusing on this very important issue for any type of intervention. 1.2 the current study the breadth of outcomes examined in positive intervention research is important, because the popularity of positive psychology has in part resulted from a belief that it offers a viable alternative to established therapies focused on correcting deficiencies. for example, the metaanalyses cited earlier imply the potential for positive psychology interventions to be used as freestanding treatments (also see chaves et al., 2018), as does the existence of material discussing positive psychotherapy as a treatment option (e.g., rashid & seligman, 2018). meyers and colleagues (2015) found interventions focusing on one’s personal growth initiative (pgi), particularly strengths interventions, showed better outcomes than an intervention focusing on individual deficienices. specifically, there was a short-term increase in pgi for the strengths intervention but no effect on pgi for the deficiency intervention (meyers et al., 2015). since behavior change is an essential ingredient in many treatment contexts (behavioral activation, 1 conceptually, depression has both affective/experiential and behavioral components. when represented by a single score, though, it is unclear the extent to which scores on depression measures reflect both elements of the construct. prior studies have reported substantial correlations (> .50) between measures of depression and measures of wellbeing and happiness, for example (ryff & keyes, 1995; watson & naragon -gainey, 2009). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 smoking or drug use cessation, increased exercise, increasing sleep duration, medication compliance, etc.), this belief cannot be valid if ppis are only effective at changing self-perceptions. the purpose of the present meta-analysis was to synthesize evidence concerning sbpis as contributors to behavior change as opposed to emotional and affective perceptions. in taking on such a project, several decisions had to be made about its scope. the first was the decision to limit inclusion to sbpis rather than ppis in general. this decision was made because the availability of strength lists inspired by positive psychology simplified the process of identifying relevant interventions. it provided a good boundary condition between interventions relevant to positive psychology versus positive interventions in general. a second decision had to do with whether to limit the review to literature that clearly emerged under the influence of the positive psychology movement. for example, schueller et al. (2014) criticized bolier et al.’s (2013) review for excluding studies that did not explicitly reference positive psychology as an inspiration. doing so, they suggested, created an arbitrary boundary to inclusion, with studies evaluating the same intervention included or excluded primarily based on what the authors chose to state. the current review included studies that focused on strength enhancement regardless of reference to the positive psychology movement. third, the review was not limited to studies examining what could be considered clinical interventions. as noted earlier, use of ppis has explicitly been encouraged in counseling or coaching as well as clinical work (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009), and a substantial literature has emerged from these settings (e.g., linley & harrington, 2005; park & peterson, 2008). to summarize, the meta-analysis focused on the use of sbpis, broadly conceived, to enhance outcomes likely to be indicative of behavioral functioning across both clinical and non-clinical settings. 2. method 2.1 search strategy the first search proceeded as follows. a lengthy list of terms that could potentially indicate a character strength was developed through a review of literature and discussion among contributors to the study (see appendix a). once this list was compiled, a systematic literature search was conducted using the psycinfo, medline, eric, clinicaltrials.gov, and cochrane central register of controlled trials databases spanning all records from initiation of the database until february 2018. identified studies had to include one or more terms in appendix a plus one or more of the following terms: therapy, psychotherapy, treatment, intervention, or trial. the initial search generated 769,202 references (see figure 2). the following criteria for inclusion were adopted: (1) the reference was published in a peer-reviewed, english-language venue. (2) the study included an intervention that focused on at least one of the strengths listed in appendix a. (3) the study included a comparison condition. random assignment was not required. (4) at least one outcome measure reflected a change in participant behavior rather than an emotional experience or attitude. this included both self -reported and independently observed behavior changes. (5) sufficient statistics were reported to enable the calculation of at least one standardized mean difference between the active and comparison conditions at posttest, or study authors were able to provide sufficient statistics upon request. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 figure 2. prisma flow diagram. search 1: psycinfo, medline, cochrane central register of controlled trials, clinicaltrials.gov eric through september 2018 (n = 769,202) s cr e e n in g in cl u d e d e li g ib il it y id e n ti fi ca ti o n search 2: psycinfo, eric october 2018 through october 2020 (n = 30,121) search 1: titles and abstracts screened (n = 82,649); 79,601 excluded: did not meet inclusion criteria search 1: second full-text review (n = 393); 377 excluded: did not meet inclusion criteria (316 had no behavioral criteria) search 2: second full-text review (n = 25); 12 excluded: did not meet inclusion criteria (6 had no behavioral criteria) search 1: studies included in metaanalysis (n = 16) search 2: titles and abstracts screened (n = 22,827); 22,537 records excluded: duplicates, off topic, or not empirical search 1: titles and abstracts screened (n = 581,016); 498,367 records excluded: duplicates, off topic, or not empirical search 1: full-text articles screened (n = 3,048); 2,655 excluded: did not meet inclusion criteria search 2: titles and abstracts screened (n = 290); 213 excluded: did not meet inclusion criteria search 2: 7,294 excluded: dissertation or book, not written in english, or duplicates search 1: 178,773 excluded: dissertation or book, not written in english, or duplicates; 9,413 excluded: results not yet available on clinicaltrials.gov search 2: full-text articles screened (n = 77); 53 excluded: did not meet inclusion criteria search 2: studies included in metaanalysis (n = 13) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 of the final 393 that were thought to be potential candidates for inclusion, 316 included no behavioral criteria. thus, almost all studies done on sbpis relied exclusively on experiential outcomes. the final pool consisted of only 16 articles. given the small sample, the search was repeated (search 2) from february 2018 to october 2020. this time the search was limited to the psycinfo and eric databases because all studies generated from the prior search were present in one of those two sources. identified studies had to include one or more terms in appendix a plus one or more of the following terms: therapy, psychotherapy, treatment, intervention, or trial. the initial search generated 30,121 references, of which only 13 met the criteria. again, the primary cause of exclusion was the absence of behavioral outcomes. 2.2 data extraction two doctoral students independently extracted data from each article and disagreements were resolved by one of the first two authors. across the 29 articles, 48 analyses were available that examined group differences in what was deemed a behavioral outcome at posttest. we provided results for several potentially important and intuitively compelling candidates for moderators of effect size. accordingly, the following variables were extracted: • age: child, adolescent/emerging adult, or adult • population: pre-college students, college students, adults, or clinical • setting: academic, community sample, or clinical sample • delivery system: live versus on-line intervention • monitoring: self-guided versus therapist-guided intervention • clustering: group versus individual intervention • basis for participation: volunteered to participate versus enrolled as a group (e.g., children in a classroom) • assignment: random versus non-random assignment to condition • type of control: waitlist versus active control we had hoped to evaluate recipient ethnicity as a potential moderator, but this information was absent from most of the studies. in addition, two doctoral students independently evaluated each study for risk of bias. seven potential contributors to bias were evaluated based on guidelines provided by the cochrane collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias (higgins et al., 2011): random sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding of participants and personnel, blinding of neurocognitive outcome assessment, blinding of behavioral outcome assessment, incomplete outcome data, and selective reporting. a detailed explanation of each of these can be found in appendix b. raters evaluated each study on each of the seven contributors as low, unclear, or high risk of bias. 2.3 statistical analyses statistics were computed using comprehensive meta-analysis, version 3.0 (borenstein et al., 2013). given variations in the populations, interventions, and outcome variables, results from the random-effects model are reported (borenstein et al., 2010). estimates of heterogeneity and smallsample bias were also generated. as noted previously, exploratory meta-regression analyses were conducted recognizing the results could only be considered preliminary. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 3. results 3.1 global findings table 2 provides a summary of the articles. the average length of the intervention was 8.48 weeks (sd = 7.47, median = 7.00, range = [2, 32]). the average sample size was 229.07 post-test participants (median = 82; range = [20, 2517]). there were 24 studies in which participants were randomly assigned to treatment. in the remaining studies, either the method of assignment was not adequately described, or assignment was non-random. table 2. summary of data across analyses. study intervention length targeted strength(s) behavioral measure sample setting live? selfguided? group? selfselected? assign ment control abbott et al. (2009) resilience online (rol) 10 weeks empathy, hope work performance 53 sales managers community online supervised individual no random waitlist akhtar & boniwell (2010) ppi for alcoholism 8 weeks gratitude alcohol consumption 20 mental health/ "substance misuse" clinical live supervised group no unclear waitlist annesi (2019) selfregulation treatment 6 months, 6 meetings, 45 minutes each selfregulation exercise selfregulation; eating selfregulation 109 adults community live supervised both yes random active armenta et al. (2020) classroombased gratitude letter writing 10 minutes weekly, 4 weeks gratitude academic performance (gpa) 1,079 adolescents/ emerging adults academic online supervised individual yes random active bagès et al. (2020) rpgs group intervention 3 weeks, 3 sessions, 60 minutes each empathy aggressive behavior; bullying 86 adolescents academic live supervised group no random active da costa rolo & gould (2007) fostering hope 6 weeks, 12 sessions hope athletic performance; academic performance 43 college student athletes academic live supervised individual yes random waitlist engbretson et al. (2020) cognitivelybased compassion training (cbct) 20 hours over 10 weeks compassion child prosocial acts; child selfreferential behaviors; child selfdistress 38 adults/ children community live supervised group yes random waitlist frie et al. (2020) selfregulation intervention (prevail) 8 weeks selfregulation weight change 93 adults community online both individual yes random active grant et al. (2009) coaching 10 weeks leadership global attainment scale 82 executives/ managers community live supervised both no random waitlist kadir et al. (2018) dual approach instruction 3 weeks, 7 sessions, 1 hour fidelity engagement; self-regulation 426 children academic live supervised group no random passive littmanovadia et al. (2014) strengths based career counseling (sbcc) 4 sessions, appeared to be weekly hope career exploration scale 61 unemployed adults community live supervised individual no quasirandom active maratos & sheffield (2020) compassione d-focused imagery 2 sessions, 1 week apart compassion pain tolerance 68 adults academic live supervised individual yes random active mcgonagle et al. (2020) coaching 12 weeks, 6 sessions gratitude, knowledge work engagement 50 adults clinical both supervised individual yes random waitlist mitchell et al. (2009) internet strengths intervention 3 weeks gratitude, knowledge orientation to happiness scale (oth) – engagement 40 adults community online supervised individual yes random active http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 study intervention length targeted strength(s) behavioral measure sample setting live? selfguided? group? selfselected? assign ment control mori & cigala (2019) perspectivetaking intervention 15 days, 9 sessions, 45 minutes each perspective proscocial behavior 206 children academic live supervised group no random waitlist ouweneel et al. (2013) ppi: selfenhancement intervention 8 weeks meaning, resourceful ness utrecht work engagement scale 311 adults community online supervised individual yes unclear active ouweneel et al. (2014) thoughts of gratitude 5 weeks gratitude utrecht work engagement scale-student: academic engagement 50 college students academic online supervised individual yes random active ouweneel et al. (2014) acts of kindness 5 weeks kindness utrecht work engagement scale-student: academic engagement 50 college students academic online supervised individual yes random active pang & ruch (2019) mindfulnessbased strengths practice 8 weeks, 1 session, 120 minutes each peterson and seligman’s character strengths task performance 63 adults community live supervised group yes random waitlist peters et al. (2017) internet ppi 7 weeks compassion fibromyalgia impact 126 adults with chronic pain clinical online supervised individual yes random waitlist quinlan et al. (2014) strengthsbased program 6 weekly sessions perspective classroom engagement 187 children academic live supervised group no nonrandom waitlist roth et al. (2017) ppi 10 weeks, 50min/wee kly gratitude, hope, kindness externalizing problems 42 children academic live supervised group no random waitlist sergeant & mongrain (2014) optimismbased ppi 3 weeks meaning orientation to happiness scale (oth) – engagement 166 adults interested in becoming happier community online selfguided individual yes random active shoshani & slone (2017) maytiv preschool program 32 weeks, 5 activities/w eek empathy, kindness, gratitude, selfregulation, approaches to learning scale 315 children academic live supervised group no random waitlist shoshani & slone (2017) maytiv preschool program 32 weeks, 5 activities/w eek empathy, kindness, gratitude, selfregulation, pro-sociality prosocial behavior 315 children academic live supervised group no random waitlist shoshani et al. (2016) maytiv program 30 weeks, 15 2-hour sessions meaning, gratitude, perseveranc e, hope, tolerance school attendance; grade point average; behavioral engagementchild report; behavioral engagement teacher report 2517 children academic live supervised group no random waitlist style & boniwell (2010) group life coaching 6 weeks, 6 sessions hope, meaning, selfacceptance orientation to happiness scale (oth) – engagement 31 adults community live supervised group yes random active timmons & ekas (2018) general writing-based gratitude intervention 8 weeks gratitude child behaviors 43 adults community online supervised individual yes random active timmons & ekas (2018) child-specific writing-based gratitude intervention 8 weeks gratitude child behaviors 45 adults community online supervised individual yes random active http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 study intervention length targeted strength(s) behavioral measure sample setting live? selfguided? group? selfselected? assign ment control timmons & ekas (2018) generalspecific writing-based gratitude intervention 8 weeks gratitude relationship quality (adult coping behaviors) 45 adults community online supervised individual yes random active timmons & ekas (2018) child-specific writing-based gratitude intervention 8 weeks gratitude relationship quality (adult coping behaviors) 43 adults community online supervised individual yes random active walker & lampropou los (2014) pp homework volunteering 2 weeks, 4 hours meaning behavioral activation for depression scale 43 college students with mild depression academic live selfguided individual yes random waitlist wingert et al. (2020) mindfulnessbased strngths practice 8 weeks mental focus on via character strengths student engagement 50 adults academic live supervised group yes random passive wittleder et al. (2019) mental contrasting with implementati on intentions 4 weeks selfregulation drinking days per weeks, (audit <8); drinking days per weeks, (audit ≥ 8); drinks per week, (audit <8); drinks per week, (audit ≥ 8); drinkingrelated problems, (audit < 8); drinkingrelated problems,, (audit ≥ 8) 200 adults community online selfguided individual yes random active note. pp = positive psychology; ppi = positive psychology intervention pre-test data was assessed for all groups. an analysis of pre-test data suggested that there was a small difference between groups, mean hedges’ g = 0.07, 95% ci = [0.02, 0.12]. in all but two cases where the authors provided cohen’s d values only, effect sizes were estimated from means and standard deviations. for 24 of 48 analyses, the total sample size for the comparison was < 50, so hedges’ g was used as an unbiased estimator of the standardized mean difference in small samples (hedges, 1981). using the knapp-hartung-sidik-jonkman method, which has been found superior to the standard dersimonian-laird method (inthout et al., 2014), the studies on average yielded a small, statistically significant effect size at posttest, g = 0.32, 95% ci = [0.19, 0.46], p = .0001. table 3 (below) provides effect sizes by study; note that only three 95% cis do not include 0. though the aggregation of data across studies supported the conclusion of a positive mean effect at the population level, the individual studies generally tended to be of insufficient size to identify a significant positive mean effect. in fact, the prediction interval (inthout et al., 2016) was [-0.25, 0.90], suggesting the potential for substantial variability in the value of sbpis depending on the context. 3.2 evaluation of bias increasingly, it is considered important in meta-analyses to consider the possibility that authors selectively reported results, and to test for this possibility. a number of such tests are now available. tests of selection bias produced somewhat inconsistent results. figure 3 (below) provides the funnel plot, which demonstrates some asymmetry. the begg and mazumdar rank http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 correlation (τ = .04 with continuity correction) did not differ significantly from 0 (p = .37), but egger’s more powerful test of the regression intercept (1.38) was significant at p = .02. the trimand-fill procedure suggested a point estimate of g = 0.10 [-.03, .24], i.e., the effect was no longer significant. however, this last method must be interpreted with some caution due to consisten t evidence of a tendency to detect bias even when absent, i.e., an excessive type i error rate (peters et al., 2007; terrin et al., 2003). in contrast, the vevea and hedges’ (1995) likelihood test of selection bias was not significant, χ2(1) = 2.31, p = .13. taken as a set, these findings do not provide strong support for small-study bias, though it is uncertain to what extent this reflects the relatively limited set of studies. table 3. summary of study effects. study g se 95% confidence interval abbott et al. (2009) 0.44 0.27 [-0.10, 0.98] akhtar & boniwell (2010) 0.61 0.44 [-0.25, 1.47] annesi (2019) 0.72 0.20 [0.33, 1.10] armenta et al. (2020) 0.02 0.07 [-0.12, 0.16] bagès et al. (2020) 0.39 0.22 [-0.03, 0.82] da costa rolo & gould (2007) 0.26 0.30 [-0.33, 0.85] engbretson et al. (2020) 0.32 0.34 [-0.34, 0.98] frie et al. (2020) 1.12 0.22 [0.68, 1.55] grant et al. (2009) 1.19 0.33 [0.54, 1.84] kadir et al. (2018) 0.45 0.10 [0.26, 0.64] littman-ovadia (2014) 0.25 0.25 [-0.24, 0.75] maratos & sheffield (2020) -0.16 0.24 [-0.63, 0.31] mcgonagle et al. (2020) 0.20 0.28 [-0.35, 0.75] mitchell et al. (2009) 0.36 0.32 [-0.26, 0.98] mori & cigala (2019) 0.58 0.14 [0.30, 0.86] ouweneel et al. (2013) 0.18 0.13 [-0.07, 0.43] ouweneel et al. (2014) -0.28 0.28 [-0.84, 0.27] pang & ruch (2019 0.44 0.34 [-0.23, 1.12] peters et al. (2017) -0.31 0.19 [-0.69, 0.06] quinlan et al. (2014) 0.42 0.16 [0.10, 0.74] roth et al. (2017) 0.09 0.30 [-0.50, 0.69] sergeant & mongrain (2014) 0.07 0.16 [-0.24, 0.37] shoshani & slone (2017) 0.84 0.12 [0.61, 1.07] shoshani et al. (2016) 0.04 0.04 [-0.04, 0.12] style & boniwell (2010) 0.20 0.37 [-0.51, 0.92] timmons & ekas (2018) -0.07 0.30 [-0.65, 0.51] walker & lampropoulos (2014) 0.42 0.30 [-0.18, 1.01] wingert et al. (2020) 0.76 0.29 [0.18, 1.33] wittleder et al. (2019) 0.24 0.10 [0.04, 0.44] overall 0.32 0.07 [0.18, 0.46] note. the overall estimates are based on the knapp-hartung-sidik-jonkman method. there was significant evidence of heterogeneity across studies, q(28) = 122.33, p < .001. i2 = 77.11, suggesting 23% of variability across study mean effects was due to sampling error. however, the standard deviation of the population effects was τ = 0.27, which is slightly less than the typical variability in meta-analyses as reported by linden and hönekopp (2021). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 figure 3. funnel plot. a qualitative assessment of risk of methodological bias was conducted using the cochrane collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias from version 5.1 of the handbook for systematic reviews of interventions (higgins & green, 2011). the resulting summary table is presented in table 4 (below). selection bias has to do with method of assignment (which in this case was coded as random vs non-random), and with bias arising from a systematic difference in how participants are assigned to treatment groups and comparison groups. performance bias results from problems in the measures used to blind study participants and treatment personnel, while detection bias results from problems in the measures used to blind outcome assessors from knowledge of which intervention a participant received. attrition bias is a systematic error caused by incorrect handling of incomplete data due to attrition. lastly, reporting bias arises from the selective revelation of outcome data. if insufficient information was provided to judge whether a certain source of bias was present, it was labeled “unclear,” and if it was not applicable to the study it was labeled “n/a.” most studies were adequately blinded, with the majority randomizing appropriately. a high risk of performance bias was identified in three studies. detection bias was largely not applicable, though two studies were deemed high risk. the risk of attrition bias was either low or unclear, and the risk of reporting bias was largely unclear, though it was high for one study and low for three studies. it should be noted that the cochrane standards are quite stringent. they require that double-blind procedures be used, and that authors report enough information to determine the degree to which allocation assignment could have been foreseen at any time during the study, which is often not a requirement for publication. overall, the results likely did not provide evidence for a substantial amount of methodological bias in these studies, though it should be noted that some of the descriptions were insufficient for judging bias. -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 s ta n d a rd e rr o r hedges's g funnel plot of standard error by hedges's g http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 table 4. qualitative assessment of risk of bias. study selection bias concealment bias performance bias detection bias attrition bias reporting bias abbott et al., (2009) low low unclear n/a low high akhtar & boniwell (2010) unclear unclear high high unclear unclear annesi (2019) low low low unclear low unclear armenta et al. (2020) low low low unclear unclear unclear bagès et al. (2020) low low unclear unclear low unclear da costa rolo & gould (2007) low low high n/a unclear unclear engbretson et al. (2020) low unclear low unclear low low frie et al. (2020) low low low unclear low unclear grant et al., (2009) low low unclear n/a low unclear kadir et al. (2018) high high unclear low unclear unclear littman-ovadia et al., (2014) high low low n/a unclear unclear maratos & sheffield (2020) low low unclear unclear unclear low mcgonagle et al. (2020) low low low unclear low low mitchell et al., (2009) low low low n/a low unclear mori & cigala (2019) low unclear unclear low low unclear ouweneel et al. (2014) low low low n/a unclear unclear ouweneel et al., (2013) unclear low low n/a low unclear pang & ruch (2019) low low unclear unclear low unclear peters et al. (2017) low low low n/a low unclear quinlan et al. (2014) high unclear unclear n/a low unclear roth et al. (2017) low low low unclear unclear unclear sergeant & mongrain (2014) low low low n/a low unclear shoshani & slone (2017) low low unclear unclear low unclear shoshani et al. (2016) low high high high low unclear style & boniwell (2010) low low low n/a unclear unclear timmons & ekas (2018) low unclear unclear unclear low unclear walker & lampropoulos (2014) low low low n/a low unclear wingert et al. (2020) low low unclear unclear low unclear wittleder et al. (2019) low low low unclear low unclear 3.3 moderating variables a simple meta-regression was conducted for each potential moderator (age group, population, setting, live vs on-line, self-guided vs supervised, group vs individual intervention, voluntary vs group participation, random vs non-random assignment, and type of control group) individually since simultaneous regression results would be particularly unreliable. consistent with the relatively low level of heterogeneity in effects, none of the regression analyses were significant at p < .05, and effects were small. 4. discussion across 29 studies, sbpis had a small, statistically significant effect on behavioral outcomes, with a mean effect size of g = 0.32. it is noteworthy that this level is consistent with results from other meta-analyses that focused on similar behavior change variables. for example, knight et al. (2017) found a mean g for interventions targeting work engagement of 0.29. tanner-smith and risser (2016) reported a mean g for brief alcohol interventions and reductions in self-reported alcohol use among adolescents of 0.25. durlak et al. (2011) found a mean g of 0.27 for schoolbased interventions used to enhance academic performance. though stein et al. (in press) reported a substantially larger mean effect for one of the most directly behavioral interventions in common use, behavioral activation (0.37-0.64), these effects disappeared when compared with active control conditions. thus, the associations between sbpis and behavioral outcomes http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 observed in the current meta-analysis are consistent with results for other intervention approaches. correcting for small-sample bias suggested the effect could be smaller, but there is insufficient evidence at this time to justify implementing such a correction. evaluation of bias was problematic given the number of instances in which insufficient information was provided to make a judgment. this is a matter of some concern given, for example, cuijper et al.’s (2010) finding that psychotherapy for depression seems to be much less effective in high -quality studies. with these caveats in mind, effects seem consistent with more established approaches to behaviour change. perhaps the single most important challenge raised by this meta-analysis is the need for broader research into ppis, and sbpis in particular. positive interventions and ppis have been touted as an alternative or supplement to symptom-based techniques. the results of our metaanalysis are consistent with this assertion, as are other recent studies that have directly compared positive interventions with symptom-focused interventions (e.g., cheavens et al., 2012; craske et al., 2019; dolev-amit, 2020). these findings also raise the intriguing possibility that positive interventions could provide a useful adjunct to more problem-centered solutions. we did not review the extent to which the current articles were present in previous meta-analyses examining interventions in positive psychology. even if they were, the authors of those reviews, which focused exclusively on well-being and related measures, would have excluded the analyses examined in the present review. 5. limitations at the same time, the tendency among researchers examining the value of sbpis to focus on a small set of outcomes means a great deal more work is needed on this topic. while 418 articles were identified that seemed to be on-topic, 322 were excluded due to the absence of any criterion reflecting behavioral change. most studies focused exclusively on affective and experiential variables such as depression, subjective well-being, and psychological well-being. ultimately, with a pool of 29 studies, there is currently insufficient basis for drawing firm conclusions regarding when, and for whom, sbpis may be the most appropriate behavior change techniques. practitioners and researchers interested in ppis would be well-served to consider broadening the set of outcome measures they examine if the goal is to demonstrate focusing on the positive is as valuable as focusing on the negative. the studies generally also provided insufficient information about the training and expertise of the treatment providers. future research reports on ppis would benefit from increased attention to detailed description of the circumstances of treatment. research has consistently supported interventions that focus on strengths as contributors to well-being, and counseling psychologists, clinical psychologists, school psychologists, and coaches all value enhancing the sense of well-being in the populations with which they work. however, long-term change requires behavior change. we recommend that future research on the effectiveness of positive interventions always include behavioral as well as emotional and affective outcomes. more research is needed to support the ability of positive interventions to directly influence behavior. this meta-analysis should encourage existing training for counseling psychologists and other mental health professionals to further explore the benefits of sbpis on behavioral outcomes. conflict of interest statement robert mcgrath is a senior scientist for the via institute on character. ryan niemiec is an employee of the via institute on character. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 funding this research was funded in part by the via institute on character, the copyright holder for the via classification referenced in this article. authors justine bates-krakoff school of psychology and counseling, fairleigh dickinson university allison parente school of psychology and counseling, fairleigh dickinson university robert e. mcgrath school of psychology and counseling, fairleigh dickinson university mcgrath@fdu.edu via institute on character tayyab rashid centre for wellbeing science, university of melbourne ryan m. niemiec via institute on character acknowledgments we are grateful to ashley hall-simmonds, keith johnson, kylin peck, dana serino, norah wallace, alec twibell, alyssa cangemi, bina westrich, and maram barakat for their help with ratings and data extraction for this study. publishing timeline received 3 january 2022 revised version received 14 july 2022 accepted 19 july 2022 published 1 october 2022 references references marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis. *abbott, j., klein, b., hamilton, c., & rosenthal, a. 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(2019). mental contrasting with implementation intentions reduces drinking when drinking is hazardous: an on line self-regulation intervention. health education & behavior, 46(4), 666-676. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198119826284 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2018.01.008 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0036145 http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/wwc_procedures_v2_standards_handbook.pdf http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/wwc_procedures_v2_standards_handbook.pdf character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 appendices appendix a. character strength terms. general terms: • positive psychology • virtue • character strength peterson and seligman (2004): • beauty • hope • perspective • bravery • humility • prudence • creativity • humor • self‐regulation • curiosity • judgment • social intelligence • fairness • kindness • spirituality • forgiveness • leadership • teamwork • gratitude • love • zest • honesty • learning • temperance • wisdom • knowledge • humanity • justice • transcendence • courage • perseverance kesebir and kesebir (2008): • character • humility • benevolence • conscience • faithfulness • fortitude • decency • charity • purity • dignity • humbleness • temperance • ethics • bravery • faith • morality • thoughtfulness • hospitality • rectitude • grace • appreciation • righteousness • helpfulness • compassion • uprightness • courtesy • integrity • virtue • love • fairness • honesty • perseverance • tolerance • patience • modesty • selflessness • honor • politeness • discipline • truthfulness • fidelity • dependability • kindness • justice • reliability • sincerity • gratitude • loyalty • courage • diligence • trustworthiness • generosity • thankfulness • forgiveness • mercy • gentleness • respect • wisdom • sacrifice • determination cawley, martin, and johnson (2000): • empathy • serenity • resourcefulness • order http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 franklin (1928): • silence • frugality • chastity • resolution • moderation comte-sponville (2001): • politeness • generosity • tolerance • fidelity • compassion • purity • prudence • mercy • gentleness • temperance • gratitude • good faith • courage • humility • humor • justice • simplicity • love bennett (1995): • responsibility niemiec (2018; personal communication, october 16, 2014): • divergent thinking • prosocial • meaning • originality • equity • goodness • empathy • conscientiousness • altruism • elevation rashid (personal communication, october 29, 2014) • abidance • harmony • rhythm • accepting • introspection • salubriousness • amiability • intuition • savoir‐faire • contentment • mellowness • social tactfulness • duty • nimbleness • self‐acceptance • equanimity • pacifism • serendipity • finesse • piety • soulfulness • flexibility • quaintness • tolerance http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ character strength-based behavioral interventions bates-krakoff, parente, mcgrath, rashid, & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 appendix b. risk of bias assessment. selection bias: random sequence generation describe the method used to generate the allocation sequence in sufficient detail to allow an assessment of whether it should produce comparable groups. h high risk of bias: non-random assignment u unclear risk of bias: method of assignment not adequately described l low risk of bias: random assignment selection bias: allocation concealment describe the method used to conceal the allocation sequence in sufficient detail to determine whether intervention allocations could have been foreseen in advance of, or during, enrollment. h high risk of bias: participant would have known before which treatment they would receive u unclear risk of bias: issue not addressed l low risk of bias: participant did not know treatment before study enrollment performance bias: blinding of participant describe all measures used, if any, to blind study participants and participant from knowledge of which intervention a participant received. provide any information relating to whether the intended blinding was effective. assessments should be made for each main outcome. h high risk of bias: participant aware of treatment group u unclear risk of bias: issue not addressed l low risk of bias: participant unaware of treatment group detection bias: blinding of outcome assessment describe all measures used, if any, to blind outcome assessors from knowledge of which intervention a participant received. provide any information relating to whether the intended blinding was effective. assessments should be made for each main outcome. h high risk of bias: individuals completing measures (teachers, parents, participant) aware of treatment group u unclear risk of bias: issue not addressed l low risk of bias: individuals completing measures unaware of treatment group attrition bias: incomplete outcome data addressed describe the completeness of outcome data for each main outcome, including attrition and exclusions from the analysis. state whether attrition and exclusions were reported, reasons for attrition/exclusions where reported, and any reinclusions in analyses performed by the review authors. assessments should be made for each main outcome. h high risk of bias: differential rates of incomplete data across groups ignored in data analysis u unclear risk of bias: incomplete data not discussed l low risk of bias: effect of incomplete data addressed in some way reporting bias: selective reporting state how the possibility of selective outcome reporting was examined by the review authors, and what was found. h high risk of bias: clear evidence that some results (groups, measures) were not reported u unclear risk of bias: issue not addressed l low risk of bias: authors indicate all groups and measures are included http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ kaufman, m. b., guest, a. m., mmbaga, b. t., mbelwa, p. a., hyatt, j. e., mushi, d., tibendelana, j. · saing'eu, p. y. o., msoka-bright, e. f., swalele, a., & kessy, j. (2022). what the world happiness report doesn’t see: the sociocultural contours of wellbeing in northern tanzania. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 27-50. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2061 michael b. kaufman kilimanjaro clinical research institute mbkaufma@uchicago.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 article what the world happiness report doesn’t see: the sociocultural contours of wellbeing in northern tanzania michael b. kaufman · andrew m. guest · blandina t. mmbaga · prosper a. mbelwa julie e. hyatt · declare mushi · joanitha tibendelana · paul y.o. saing'eu elizabeth f. msoka-bright · amina swalele · joackim kessy abstract: this paper presents a mixed methods approach to understanding wellbeing in the kilimanjaro region of northern tanzania — a country consistently ranked by the world happiness report as one of the least happy in the world. a primary objective is to demonstrate how qualitative data offering bottom-up perspectives on wellbeing offer a necessary complement to quantitative self-report measures, allowing for more nuanced cultural understandings of lived experience and wellbeing that recognize diversity both globally and locally. the research contextualized responses to standardized life evaluations (including the cantril ladder question used by the world happiness report) through observations and interviews along with culturally sensitive measures of emotional experience. findings show kilimanjaro to have more positive life evaluations than tanzania as a whole, and significant within-region demographic variation driven particularly by lower levels of wellbeing for nonprofessional women compared with nonprofessional men and professionals. in part because such demographic groups were often unfamiliar with standardized self-report measures, it was only through interviews, case studies, and culturally sensitive reports of emotional experience that we were able to recognize the diverse and nuanced life circumstances which individuals and groups were navigating and how those circumstances interacted with wellbeing. drawing on the example of nonprofessional women for illustration, we describe how key sociocultural factors – particularly, family stability, parenting circumstances, social relationships, and meeting life course expectations -intersect with economic realities to create varied experiences of wellbeing. the complex picture of locally understood wellbeing that emerged from this research presents an alternative picture to global perspectives reliant on survey self-reports. it serves as a reminder of the importance of methodological choices in global wellbeing research and urges the addition of local perspectives and paradigms to inform policy and practice. keywords: wellbeing, happiness, mixed methods, cultural psychology, tanzania. 1. introduction global studies of wellbeing such as the world happiness report (helliwell, layard, sachs, & de neve, 2021) have become popular because of their potential for identifying social indicators of human development that might be distinct from economic and structural markers of societal success. to make global comparisons feasible, the world happiness report relies primarily on data from a single self-report item: the cantril ladder question asking people to place themselves on one of ten ladder rungs where “the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you about:blank what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you.” the data from this measure allows researchers and policy makers comparative insight into macro-level variables that may impact wellbeing, but it is also often used to make more tenuous psychological claims about national levels of happiness. from a cultural psychology perspective, understanding wellbeing and emotions in diverse sociocultural communities is a notoriously complex task that requires careful attention to local contexts of human development (shweder, haidt, horton, & joseph, 1993; uchida, norasakkunkit & kitayama 2004; wierzbicka, 2010). drawing on this perspective, here we approach happiness and wellbeing as subjective psychological experiences shaped by both broadly experienced human needs and concerns and varying local ones. the complexity of understanding happiness and wellbeing in diverse local contexts may be particularly pronounced in non-western contexts where standard survey measures, such as the cantril ladder question, are unfamiliar. in fact, although global measures of wellbeing often intend to go beyond economic markers of societal success, most countries at the top of the world happiness report ratings are in relatively wealthy regions of the world that cultural psychologists identify as globally w.e.i.r.d. (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic; henrich, heine, & norenzayan, 2010). in the 2021 world happiness report (helliwell, layard, sachs, & de neve, 2021), for example, the 10 highest ranked countries are all high-income european nations (with the exception of new zealand) while the bottom 10 ranked nations are mostly low-income countries in sub-saharan africa (the three non-african countries are yemen, haiti, and afghanistan). these patterns suggest that relying on single survey items for making global comparisons seems to continue an emphasis on economic and structural, rather than sociocultural, influences on wellbeing. the limitations of basic standardized measures for exploring diverse sociocultural experiences of wellbeing have been widely recognized by researchers (e.g., mahali et al., 2018; selin & davey, 2012; white, 2016). in one recent initiative, for example, a distinguished group of positive psychology researchers worked with the gallup world poll to “add more culturally relevant constructs and questions to existing gallup modules” (lambert et al., 2020). the additions address dimensions of wellbeing such as “balance and harmony,” “relationship to nature,” and “relationship to group,” allowing for much greater nuance in making cross-cultural comparisons. but this effort still relies on large-scale survey measures that offer limited opportunities to integrate diverse experiences within cultures and between people into bottomup understandings of wellbeing. other scholars have proposed more intensive mixed methodology approaches as critical to better understanding local experiences of wellbeing (e.g., mathews, 2012; thin, 2012). such scholars suggest that better accounting for community perspectives in local contexts is important both as a complement to survey data that risks oversimplifying the nature of “culture” and as a humanistic endeavor guided by a respect for the diverse stories that are essential to human experience. yet, despite strong conceptual support, in practice the types of intensive mixed methods research needed to better understand wellbeing in diverse local contexts can be time, labor, and cost prohibitive while also requiring the integration of distinct methodologies. thus, while there is a rich qualitative literature tangentially related to wellbeing in fields such as medical anthropology and public health (e.g., fleming & manning, 2019; greenhalgh, 2016), there are few existing examples of research contextualizing global survey measures with scalable methodologies that attend to the dynamics of wellbeing in specific local contexts. the present study was designed to pilot methodologies and gather data exploring the value of research that considers wellbeing to be both a global construct and local sociocultural phenomenon. the research presented here draws from an intensive multiyear study of happiness what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 and wellbeing in the kilimanjaro region of northern tanzania using a mix of surveys, structured interviews, case studies, and ethnographic observations. tanzania was of particular interest because of its consistent ranking near the bottom of the world happiness report on terms that may not have been ideal for the reliability and validity of self-reports in this local context. in the years 2014 to 2016 leading up to our research, for example, tanzania was ranked the third most unhappy in the world among the 149 countries surveyed (helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2017). yet in tanzania, as in most any distinct locale, there is wide variation by region, demographic groups, and individuals in levels, definitions, and experiences of wellbeing. we thus contextualize findings from the world happiness report, focusing on life evaluations derived from cantril ladder, with data accounting for the particular sociocultural realities of wellbeing in kilimanjaro. we attend to elements of the context that include structural and economic factors regularly considered in global comparisons, but expand our focus to regional, demographic subgroup, and person level variables along with cultural meanings, values, and beliefs. all of these elements of sociocultural context shape how individuals define and experience wellbeing, and thus require research attention if we are to better understand and support efforts to foster wellbeing in non-weird settings. 1.1 from global to local: researching the contexts of wellbeing how then might sociocultural context be relevant to global comparisons of wellbeing such as those based on the world happiness report? first, it is worth emphasizing that the world happiness report itself explains in technical notes that its focus on the single cantril ladder item as a “life evaluation” is only one component of wellbeing — the other critical components include reports of positive affect and reports of negative affect (helliwell, layard, sachs, & de neve, 2021). it also notes that measures of affect seem less useful for global comparisons because they do not vary by country to the same degree as life evaluations. for life evaluations as measured by the cantril ladder item it finds six dimensions of national context most predictive: gdp per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. these variables, however, perpetuate the emphasis on economic context as the primary driver of wellbeing (see, for example, deaton, 2008). to move beyond such an approach, some scholars have proposed alternative measures more attuned to structural variables relevant in non-weird countries and regions such as sub-saharan africa (e.g., elliot, dixon, bisung, & kangmennaang, 2017; khumalo, temane & wissing, 2010). while these approaches are important and useful, any such approach drawing primarily on standardized nation-level data and comparisons still risks homogenizing diverse regions and countries. even within weird countries, for example, researchers have found reliable variations in wellbeing between cities and counties because of variations in income, population density, health, education, and other related variables (florida, mellander, & rentfrow, 2013; lawless & lucas, 2010). these types of contextual variables seem particularly robust as related to demographic groupings by socioeconomic status, gender, and age. a great deal of research, for example, finds that relative income within a particular reference group is closely linked to subjective wellbeing (clark et al., 2008; diener & seligman 2004). these class differences may be even more significant in low-income regions when a person’s income can be insufficient to meet basic needs (reyesgarcía et al., 2016). in addition, world happiness report research using cantril ladder data finds that women generally report higher levels of wellbeing than men, while younger adults generally report higher levels of wellbeing than older adults (fortin, helliwell, & wang, 2015). importantly, however, these general differences in life evaluations also vary by region and what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 country such that in many sub-saharan african countries’ women report lower life evaluations than men. accounting for these aspects of context may be more complicated when moving beyond life evaluations to consider affect and emotional experience. in self-reports of whether people had recently felt the positive emotion ‘happiness,’ for example, there are few overall gender differences while age differences vary significantly by global region. regional differences in world happiness report data include the finding that in east asia there are few age differences in recently experiencing the positive emotion of happiness, whereas data from sub-saharan africa suggests younger adults are more likely than older adults to report recent experiences of happiness (fortin, helliwell, & wang, 2015). in contrast, world happiness report data on the negative emotion of ‘depression’ shows fewer gender differences in sub-saharan africa than in other regions, and less age-related change. further, this survey data does not account for the ways depression manifests and is understood in culturally diverse ways (e.g., haroz et al., 2016; obeyesekere, 1985) thus, while demographic variables seem to consistently matter in shaping experiences of wellbeing, those experiences take on meaning in different ways depending on definitions of wellbeing and the dynamics of particular sociocultural contexts. regional and demographic variations in wellbeing have prompted researchers interested in culture and happiness to promote a need for more attention to within-country and within-culture differences (e.g., oishi & gilbert, 2016). cultural values may, for example, make for different experiences of wellbeing among aboriginal australian communities (heil, 2012) or hunterhorticulturalists in bolivia (reyes-garcia, 2012). likewise, dzokoto (2012) argues that understanding happiness in a place such as ghana requires taking global, cultural, and phenomenological perspectives — moving from macro structural factors to considerations of personal experience. a more phenomenological approach, including efforts to employ ethnographic fieldwork toward understanding local conception of wellbeing, has been successfully employed in non-western contexts ranging from indigenous cameroonian communities (reyes-garcia et al., 2021) to the swahili of lamu town in kenya (marazy & mafazy, 2019). the importance of bottom-up methodologies in contextualizing the meaning of wellbeing is widely recognized by cross-cultural researchers (e.g., delle fave et al., 2016; diener, lucas, & oishi, 2018; mathews, 2012; thin, 2012), and may be particularly important in non-weird contexts such as sub-saharan africa (gari & mylonas, 2009). in fact, methodology itself may shape accounts of wellbeing, with qualitative and person-centered methodologies particularly important to recognizing the inherently cultural nature of wellbeing (white, 2016). thus, as one example from zambia, white and ramirez (2016) found that rural participants tended to respond to research questions about self-worth primarily in reference to their economic situation despite qualitative case studies revealing many other sources of meaning in their lives. likewise, speaking specifically to tanzania, kilonzo and simmons (1998) have argued that positive mental health in tanzanian communities can only be understood in relation to traditional contexts where health involves a distinctive intertwining of spiritual, mental, social, and physical realms. these types of findings reinforce the importance of research that contextualizes standardized global comparisons of wellbeing through considerations of local experiences within particular sociocultural communities. 1.2 research questions the broad research project described through the rest of this paper was guided by an effort to contextualize the global construct of wellbeing (as operationalized by cantril ladder data) what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 through careful attention to local sociocultural experience in kilimanjaro. at the conceptual level, the research began with the general question of how wellbeing is experienced in a country designated by the world happiness report as one of the least happy in the world. at a practical level, the research was situated at a major regional medical center in northern tanzania interested in work that would offer clinical researchers and health care providers a culturally sensitive understanding of wellbeing of relevance to local health care provision. the broad questions of the research were thus oriented toward bridging between global comparisons of wellbeing and local experiences of wellbeing, with particular attention to piloting methodological approaches that could inform local policy and practice. while the larger project also investigated mental health related variables, for present purposes we focus on questions of wellbeing as initially defined using cantril ladder and as elaborated through community-based fieldwork that attended to affective wellbeing and individual experience. the specific questions that guide this paper are: 1. how do people within kilimanjaro region of northern tanzania, a non-weird sociocultural context, respond to and reflect upon the cantril ladder question, the primary measure of wellbeing used in the world happiness report? 2. what aspects of local sociocultural context seem associated with life evaluations in the kilimanjaro region, and how might demographic variations such as socioeconomic status and gender inform a more sociocultural understanding of wellbeing? 3. how might methodologies beyond cantril ladder that are attentive to local emotional experiences and personal narratives help contextualize understanding of wellbeing relevant to local policy and practice? 2. methods 2.1 overview and design this study was based at kilimanjaro christian medical centre, a major referral hospital serving surrounding regions with a focus on the kilimanjaro region (one of twenty-five regions of mainland tanzania). data collection occurred in two general phases during 2018-2019: an initial exploratory qualitative phase to understand relevant dimensions of the local sociocultural context, which informed a second phase of community-based population sampling using mixed methods including standardized surveys, interviews, and case studies. this paper focuses primarily on the second phase, and while the broader project examined both wellbeing and common mental disorders, this paper reports only wellbeing findings. 2.2 initial sampling and data collection our sampling strategy was developed in consultation with local experts at the tanzania ministry of finance and economics affairs national bureau of statistics kilimanjaro regional office (see, national bureau of statistics and office of chief government statistician, 2014). the sampling focused on the largest segment of population, working adults from 18-64 years old, because of our interest in working age adults comprising the majority of the population served by the medical center. to achieve a representative sample of this group, we recruited participants from three geographically dispersed field sites offering access to major groups in our target population across the kilimanjaro region: an urban outdoor marketplace, a semi-rural village center, and an employment hub with professionals. to achieve recruitment targets, we developed a screening log for potential participants to ensure the final sample matched local demographics. what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 the recruitment of participants, and the use of the screening log, were implemented by an eight person swahili-speaking field research team recruited locally who completed an eightweek course in culturally sensitive clinical methods of interviewing. the research team approached adults in each community with guidelines in place to prevent over-recruitment of individuals familiar or related to those assisting us and to protect the randomness of our sample. members of the community were invited to participate in on-site data collection offices that allowed entry and exit removed from public view, and were offered a modest cash incentive for their participation. table 1 shows regional demographics alongside the composition of our total 200 adult sample and our final 128 person “core sample” of participants identified as reliable in their cantril ladder responses through a process described further below. this sample of employed adults accurately represents 83.4% of adults in the region, excluding other groups in the census within our target age group (unemployed, 3.6%; in-home laborers, 7.8%; students, 3.7%; unable to work, 1.5%). table 1. demographics of total and core samples, unweighted, relative to estimates for the kilimanjaro regional population. population proportions sample proportions n=200 n=128 p-value gender female 51.6% 52.0% 46.8% 0.421 male 48.4% 48.0% 53.2% religion christian 67.0% 75.5% 77.4% 0.794 muslim 33.0% 24.0% 22.6% occupation farmers 64.0% 47.0% 51.6% 0.488 street vendors 17.9% 21.5% 21.8% 0.999 housewives 4.3% 11.0% 7.3% 0.315 professionals 13.8% 20.5% 19.4% 0.942 age category 18 34 44.4% 43.5% 42.7% 0.977 35 49 33.3% 33.5% 35.5% 0.800 50+ 22.2% 22.5 21.0% 0.854 education primary or below 52.5% 46.0% 0.301 above primary 47.5% 54.0% notes. p-values here are based on z-tests for sample proportions comparisons of the 200-person total sample and the 128-person core sample, showing no significant differences between the two. 2.3 measures we labeled our primary data collection instrument the demographic and psychosocial survey (dps). it was a mixed methods tool informed by global wellbeing research and local understandings derived through our initial phase of exploratory research. the dps was initially designed in english using many existing items from english language surveys, but was translated to kiswahili and back-translated before use in the field. field testing found the dps to be appropriate for men and women of different education levels, ages, and tribal and religious communities. administered verbally and individually, the dps took between one and two hours to complete depending on a participant's education level. table 2 lists the areas addressed in the dps. what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 table 2. topical areas in the demographic and psychosocial survey (dps). 1. basic demographics: gender, age, residential location, religion, religiosity, education, literacy, tribe, and relationship status 2. wellbeing (including cantril life ladder) 3. family composition and experience: marriage and children (created family) and family of origin 4. household composition 5. social experiences 6. socioeconomic conditions, resource sufficiency to meet needs and perceived financial status 7. urbanization and mass media exposure 8. health status, healthcare utilization and common mental disorders 9. religious identity, beliefs and practices 10. stressful life events and religious coping 11. cantril life ladder and cognitive interview exploring response selection 12. affect balance, positive and negative emotions, and emotions interview exploring recent situations in which endorsed emotions were experienced 2.3.1 measures of wellbeing following the most common definition of subjective wellbeing (diener, 1984) and the methods of the world happiness report, we assessed wellbeing using life evaluations along with reports of positive and negative affect. for life evaluations we replicated the world happiness report use of cantril life ladder (helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2017), but added what we labeled a “cognitive interview” to ask participants how they selected their ladder response. the cognitive interview asked participants what experiences they considered in choosing their ladder response, how they defined the best and worst lives possible for them, how they understood the meaning of their selected number, and how easy or difficult it was for them to answer the question. as explained later, results from the cognitive interviews shaped the final core sample we used for data analysis. to supplement the cognitive interview, we included an “emotions interview” to capture wellbeing in positive and negative affect along with affect balance (bradburn, 1969). as a general measure of affect balance, we asked participants to identify how much their experiences were negative versus positive in two time frames: life overall and in the last week. to assess specific positive and negative emotions experienced in life overall and in the last week, we initially considered using the panas (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988) including its international version (thompson, 2007). interviews and focus groups, however, suggested those measures to be a poor fit for local experience. we thus gathered a large list of positive and negative emotions in familiar kiswahili language terms, and used focus groups to winnow the list to the ten positive and ten negative emotions that were recognized as important and distinct in our target communities. we field tested our final list with groups varying by levels of education, gender, age and religion, finding it to be easily comprehensible across all groups. examples of the final instrument (available upon request to the authors) include the positive emotion of “tumaini” (roughly translated as “hope”) and the negative emotion of “aibu” (roughly translated as “shame”). after asking participants to identify each of the positive and negative emotions experienced in the last week, we asked them to describe the situations in which it was what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 experienced. these descriptions helped contextualize our analysis by offering examples of how positive and negative affect were experienced locally. 2.3.2 descriptive variables the dps included a series of demographic questions along with questions drawn from other research to assess common psychosocial and other correlates of wellbeing in global wellbeing research as well as potential correlates identified through exploratory fieldwork in kilimanjaro. the demographic and economic questions were drawn from tanzania’s 2015-16 demographic and health survey and malaria indicator survey, and the basic demographic and socioeconomic profile of kilimanjaro region undertaken in june of 2015. these questions allowed us to document variables including occupation, education, marital status, children, religion, food security, bank account and livestock ownership. the dps also measured food security by asking “how often in the last year did you have problems in satisfying the food needs of the household?”; perceived financial status by asking “comparing your financial situation to other people your age, would you say that you are better off or worse off financially?”; needs sufficiency by asking “over the last 12 months, my family and i had sufficient financial resources to pay for….” items include: schooling, shelter, clothing, transportation, food, medical and health care, community participation, recreation and leisure; and parenting satisfaction by asking “at this point in your life how satisfied do you feel as a parent?” and “overall, how well or poorly do you feel your child or children are doing at this point in their lives compared to other children their age/s?” other measures used in the current analysis include marital satisfaction, an 8-item social support scale derived from the perceived availability of social support scale (newland & furnham, 1999), and a 3-item loneliness scale (hughes, waite, hawkley, & cacioppo, 2004), along with items drawn from the pew forum on religion & public life (2010) surveys to assess the importance of religion, africanist religious practices, and the use of traditional healers (drawn from pew forum on religion & public life surveys reported in 2010). we also report below on health as assessed through questions asking participants to rate whether “health is a big concern” and whether “my health is near perfect.” translated versions of all these measures proved comprehensible during pilot testing of the dps instrument and potentially useful for purposes of piloting them in this context as potential predictor variables. 2.4 identifying a core sample while responses to cantril life ladder were central to our research, it became clear through field observations that many participants had difficulty with this measure of wellbeing. to quantify this difficulty, we trained two members of the local research team to code cognitive interview responses and assign an expected ladder score to each participant based on participants’ narrative accounts of their life evaluation. the two independent raters assigned expected ladder scores in three categories: negative (0-3), mixed (4-6) and positive (7-10). the raters realized moderate agreement (fleiss kappa = 0.502 (p<0.001)), while agreement with self-reported ladder scores occurred in only 128 out of 200 total cases. beyond this numerical discrepancy, our field research led us to be skeptical of the reliability and validity for cases where self-reported ladder scores were different from expected ladder scores. we observed two common reasons for discrepancy. first, participants with lower education commonly misunderstood or substituted another understanding of the question. a vast majority of all participants reported that they had never been asked a question like the ladder question. summarizing subjective states using a survey what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 question seemed foreign. in one case, for example, a nonprofessional woman who worked as a farmer was unable to understand the question, alternating between reporting her experience as a 0 and 10. in a second case, another nonprofessional woman who worked as a farmer responded first with a 6 and then with an 8, believing that her response would help her financially; when probed by the interviewer she was unable to relate to the concept of a life evaluation. a third nonprofessional woman farmer responded to the question as an aspiration, selecting a 10 in the hope that her children would be successful, own their homes and help her. a nonprofessional woman who worked as a street vendor had difficulty identifying a single number to represent a stable experience since she felt her life fluctuated based on whether she was able to meet her basic needs. as a second reason for discrepancy across the educational and socioeconomic spectrum, participants did not consider or integrate negative experiences into their chosen ladder response. they excluded or downplayed aspects of hardship that they conveyed in narrative. some said that they chose a number “in the middle” so as not to be at the bottom of the range, indicating a press for social desirability. one male doctor, for example, reported himself to be a 6, noting that he is “not doing very well” and regretted his chosen profession but didn’t want to see his life as less than a 5. likewise, a female doctor reported herself to be a 5, saying her family was falling apart, her husband (from whom she was separated) had “demons in his head”, and family was the most important thing to her but she wanted to be in the middle. in a third case, a nonprofessional woman farmer selected a 7 despite saying that her husband, whom she lived with, had married and provided for another woman and left her unable to provide more than a meal a day for her children or to pay their school fees. she was also unable to seek treatment for physical pains in her legs, and gave no rationale for her generally positive life evaluation. with our interviews and field work suggesting many such divergent interpretations of the ladder question, for purposes of quantitative analysis we were only confident in the reliability and validity of non-discrepant responses where self-reported ladder scores were in line with expected ladder scores based on cognitive interviews. we thus base most of our statistical analysis on 128 non-discrepant cases from the total sample, while emphasizing that this decision was based on a systematic qualitative review of all cases. this resulted in a core sample for statistical analysis with a mean ladder score of 4.65 (n=128, sd=2.42), which was significantly lower than that of the total sample of 5.4 (n=200, sd = 2.48, p < .001). while chi-square analysis of demographic differences between the core sample and the total sample revealed no overall differences, difficulty understanding the ladder question did prove more common for women and respondents with lower levels of education. this furthered our general concerns about primary reliance on the cantril ladder question in settings where less educated and culturally distinct populations may be unable to relate to this western-style exercise of life evaluation. the demographic characteristics of our core sample are reported in table 3. the sample and the kilimanjaro population it represents are comprised largely of young christian and muslim farmers and street vendors from ethnic groupings the tanzania census identifies as most common to the region. these demographics represent the religious and mostly agrarian character of a community living with limited material resources and significant health concerns. it foreshadows the importance of constrained educational opportunities in their wellbeing, both for themselves and as concerns their children’s future. what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 table 3: demographic profile of the final weighted core sample (n = 128). n proportion education primary or below 62 48.8% above primary 66 51.2% marital status married 72 56.5% separated/divorced 15 11.4% widow/widower 8 6.0% single 33 26.1% children has children 105 82.2% average number of children (all cases) m=2.75 sd=2.34 average number of children (parents only) m=3.34 sd=2.15 religion identifies religion as very important in his/her life 127 99.1% prays daily outside of religious services (daily or more) 96 75.4% agrarian has an account in a bank or other financial institution 36 28.2% household owns livestock, herds, other farm animals, or poultry 81 63.0 % reports sufficient financial resources for (=strongly or somewhat agree) food 118 92.5% shelter 109 84.9% clothing 105 82.3% transportation 94 73.3% schooling 80 62.8% medical and healthcare 100 78.6% community participation 102 79.8% recreation and leisure 84 66.1% health reports health as a big concern (somewhat or strongly agrees) 61 47.1% family uses traditional healers to treat sickness 20 15.9% notes. chi-squared tests of profile characteristics between the total 200-person sample and the 128-person weighted core sample show no significant differences. 3. results 3.1 life evaluations in kilimanjaro table 4 provides a statistical overview of our core sample, presenting mean scores for our main wellbeing variables along with means for major potential correlates of wellbeing. the overall mean score on the cantril ladder question in our core sample (n = 128) suggests a moderate average life evaluation (m = 4.65; sd = 2.42). for the total sample (n = 200), kilimanjaro’s average score (m = 5.13; sd = 2.48) was even higher and was not significantly different from the global average reported in the 2017 world happiness report (m = 5.31; sd = 2.28; p = 0.311) (helliwell, what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 layard, & sachs, 2017). our kilimanjaro results stand in contrast with world happiness report data finding tanzania to be one of the most unhappy nations in the world with a mean ladder score of 3.35 (noting, however, that the world happiness report statistics are based on a sample of the full population ages 15 and older). table 4. core sample characteristics and correlations with cantril life ladder all groups together nonprofessional women nonprofessional men professionals pvalue n mean (sd) corr n mean (sd) corr n mean (sd) corr n mean (sd) corr self-report ladder (0-10) 125 4.7 (2.4) 46 3.5 (2.6) 63 5.0 (2.0) 16 6.9 (1.3) <0.001 observed ladder (1-3) 125 1.9 (0.7) 46 1.5 (0.6) 63 2.0 (0.5) 16 2.8 (0.4) <0.001 affect balance last week (1-5) 125 3.7 (1.2) 46 3.5 (1.3) 63 3.7 (1.2) 16 4.2 (0.6) 0.159 positive emotions last week (0-10) 125 6.8 (2.6) 46 6.7 (2.9) 63 7.1 (2.4) 16 5.8 (2.6) 0.244 negative emotions last week (0-10) 125 2.7 (2.8) 46 3.6 (3.2) 63 2.2 (2.5) 16 2.2 (2.1) 0.027 food security (1-4) 125 2.2 (1.0) -0.43 46 2.6 (0.9) -0.30 63 2.1 (1.0) -0.26 16 1.3 (0.6) -0.30 <0.001 needs sufficiency (1-4) 125 3.0 (0.6) 0.50 46 2.9 (0.6) 0.41 63 3.0 (0.6) 0.43 16 3.5 (0.2) 0.13 <0.001 perceived financial status (1-7) 125 3.5 (1.8) 0.54 46 2.7 (1.6) 0.63 63 3.7 (1.8) 0.33 16 5.0 (0.8) 0.04 <0.001 social support (1-5) 125 3.7 (1.0) 0.35 46 3.6 (1.0) 0.47 63 3.6 (1.1) 0.12 16 4.5 (0.5) 0.19 0.003 loneliness (0-9) 125 3.0 (2.4) -0.09 46 3.6 (2.4) -0.03 63 2.6 (2.4) -0.01 16 2.7 (2.2) 0.01 0.084 number of close connections outside household 125 2.3 (2.9) 0.14 46 2.2 (2.6) 0.30 63 2.1 (2.9) 0.06 16 3.1 (3.4) -0.30 0.46 satisfaction as a parent (1-5) 102 2.7 (0.9) 0.45 40 2.4 (0.9) 0.36 50 2.9 (0.8) 0.34 12 3.3 (0.6) 0.25 <0.001 what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 table 4. continued all groups together nonprofessional women nonprofessional men professionals pvalue n mean (sd) corr n mean (sd) corr n mean (sd) corr n mean (sd) corr how well your children are doing (1-4) 102 3.1 (0.7) 0.32 40 2.9 (0.7) 0.41 50 3.2 (0.6) 0.08 12 3.4 (0.6) -0.08 0.009 satisfaction with marriage or partnership (1-5) 89 3.9 (1.1) 0.25 30 3.3 (1.3) 0.26 48 4.2 (0.8) 0.03 12 3.9 (1.0) 0.45 0.003 religious coping (0-28) 125 14.4 (4.5) 0.09 46 13.5 (4.1) 0.07 63 14.6 (4.2) 0.01 16 15.9 (6.3) -0.03 0.175 africanist religious practice (0-2) 125 0.4 (0.6) 0.09 46 0.3 (0.6) -0.03 63 0.5 (0.7) 0.30 16 0.2 (0.5) -0.36 0.336 health is near perfect (1-5) 125 2.0 (1.1) -0.28 46 2.4 (1.2) -0.08 63 1.8 (0.9) -0.35 16 1.8 (0.7) 0.22 0.003 notes. this analysis excludes housewives (n=3) which do not belong to the three demographic subgroups. p-values are obtained using the anova f-test to compare the means. associations with self-reported ladder scores using pearson’s correlation are reported; significant correlations using the z-test for correlations are reported in boldface. 3.2 correlates of wellbeing in kilimanjaro several aspects of the sociocultural context emerged from our exploratory field work and field interviews as being central to local evaluations of wellbeing. across all demographic subgroups there was an emphasis on perceived economic, social, and health circumstances in a person’s life. there were also, however, meaningful demographic contours, confirmed in survey results, in how these aspects of the context mattered to people’s life evaluations. as shown in table 4, nonprofessional women reported significantly lower life evaluations than other groups, while all nonprofessionals reported significantly lower life evaluations than professionals. though the three groups did not report significantly different levels of positive affect or affect balance, nonprofessionals did generally report less favorable economic, social, and health circumstances than professionals. the combined effects of gender and professional status seemed to form demographic fault lines in wellbeing for our sample. to better understand these fault lines, we focused our analysis on comparing nonprofessional women, nonprofessional men, and professionals (who did not demonstrate significant gender differences in part because of a smaller sample size). an anova f-test revealed significant differences between these groups in average life evaluations as measured by cantril ladder (p < .001), with nonprofessional women having the lowest average life evaluation (m = 3.47; sd = 2.59), nonprofessional men having a moderate average life evaluation (m = 4.96; sd = 1.99), and professionals having an average life evaluation that was notably higher than the global mean (m = 6.92; sd = 1.33) to explain these differences we identified correlates of the cantril ladder scores for our whole core sample and for each of the three key demographic subgroups. in considering these correlations by demographic subgroups, however, it became clear that nonprofessionals and what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 women are driving most significant relationships. in fact, as shown in table 4, for professionals no potential correlates had a significant relationship with life evaluations, a finding that is partially related to a smaller sample size but is also likely driven by lesser variation in the ability to meet basic needs. for nonprofessional women there was a particularly robust correlation between life evaluations and social support (r = .47; p = .001), between life evaluations and the number of close connections outside the household (r = .30; p = .047), and between life evaluations and perceptions of how well children are doing (r = .41; p = .008). for nonprofessional men, in contrast, the social variables seemed to matter less than health variables (as the only group where their rating of whether “health is near perfect” demonstrated a significant correlation with life evaluations: r = -0.35; p = .005). 3.3 predictive modelling of life evaluations drawing on correlational results, we built multivariate regression models to further analyze differences in life evaluations along demographic fault lines. as shown in table 5, we first examined gender and professional status as control variables (model a), then fit predictors without control variables into the model (model b), and then put predictors and controls together (model c). table 5. multivariate regression models predicting life evaluation scores (cantril ladder). model a model b model c coefficient p-value coefficient p-value coefficient p-value (constant) 4.905 <0.001 -1.152 0.347 -0.635 0.611 gender (0=male, 1=female) -1.361 0.001 -0.441 0.233 professional (0=nonprofessionals, 1=professionals) 2.514 <0.001 0.941 0.075 age category 50+ 0.689 0.116 0.772 0.077 marriage status=separated/divorced -1.351 0.017 -1.163 0.042 marriage status=widow/widower -1.397 0.06 -1.203 0.107 marriage status=single -0.135 0.794 -0.044 0.933 perceived financial status 0.56 <0.001 0.493 <0.001 needs sufficiency 1.221 <0.001 1.096 0.001 satisfaction as a parent (0=no children) 0.283 0.092 0.285 0.086 social support -0.048 0.803 -0.045 0.817 health is near perfect -0.074 0.673 -0.04 0.823 r-square 0.208 0.493 0.512 adj. r-square 0.195 0.453 0.465 sample size 125 125 125 the variables for these models were selected based on descriptive statistics and correlations, with a focus on selecting the most robust potential predictors of economic status, social relationships, and health. the three models together show that the differences in ladder scores by gender and what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 professional status are largely attributable to perceived financial status, needs sufficiency, and whether married participants are separated or divorced. model a shows that both gender and professional status significantly predict ladder scores when no other variables are included. model b ignores gender and professional status and shows that being separated or divorced predicts a significantly lower ladder score than being married. we suspect the divergence in marriage frequency is a factor in how gender affects life satisfaction and helps explain the findings of model c versus b: gender effects recede from b to c when marital status is included. perceived financial status and needs sufficiency, in contrast, significantly predict higher ladder scores. no other predictors are significant in this model (though parenting satisfaction, included in this model and model c only when a participant is a parent by using a dummy interaction variable, is trending toward significance). in model c, when controlling for gender and professional status, the economic variables and marital status still significantly predict ladder scores. importantly, in this model gender and professional status are no longer significant predictors of ladder scores. this suggests that demographic subgroup differences in wellbeing are largely explained by a person’s ability to meet basic material needs and by having stable marital relations. to better understand these differences we can draw upon qualitative data to consider wellbeing in relation to lived experiences. 3.4 qualitative data on life evaluations for nonprofessional women the demographic fault lines in wellbeing observed in both exploratory field work and the above statistical analysis focused our attention on nonprofessional women. nonprofessional women in kilimanjaro seemed to drive much of the local variation in wellbeing, experiencing different realities from nonprofessional men and professionals. beyond having average life evaluations that were lower than the region’s average, nonprofessional women experienced significantly lower perceived financial status, more marital separation and divorce, more widowhood, less satisfaction with marriage, more loneliness, and less satisfaction as parents, and perceived their children to be doing less well. we turned to our qualitative data to understand what this all meant in the lived experience of nonprofessional women. data from our cognitive interviews helped offer a more dynamic picture of how economic, social, and health concerns were experienced by nonprofessional women. these women often emphasized the psychological weight of economic challenges relevant to their particular life course stage, particularly as impacted by unstable relationships, anxieties about providing for children, and health challenges. for example, a 37-year-old farmer with 14and 15-year-old children, chose 3 on the ladder question. her life was “not good” because earning extra income was difficult and she lacked money to pay for her children’s needs. she had ambitions of opening a small snack counter as a business, but did not have funds for any start-up costs. she had thought that marriage would make her life better but she and her husband separated. “i don’t have his number and we don’t communicate. i never see him and i don’t know where he lives.” her parents were deceased. “my perspective is when i will get money and open my business and if the business does well, i will know i have a good life.” in another case, a 20-year-old single farmer without children selected a 3 on the ladder “…because there are many things that i need and i don’t have up to this moment…studying, to get money for my needs, helping my family.” her goals appeared to her out of reach: “…to have my own house, to help my family, have my own family that i take care of without help from someone.” what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 in a third case, a 50-year-old married street vendor who sold tomatoes and had three children chose number 6 “…because in the beginning i had a very difficult life as i was paying for my children’s education and they needed very high school fees to the extent that it was really painful for me. now, since they have finished school, i feel like a heavy burden has been released from me.” for her, “number 10 is for people who are confident with their life, they have health insurance in case they will get sick and they are sure of having three meals a day.” she reported her marriage to be “somewhat happy” on the dps but did not mention her husband in explaining her ladder choice or in solving her financial challenges. providing for children economically was a focal life course challenge for nonprofessional women — immediately for mothers and anticipated for younger women planning to have children. unstable relationships with husbands or partners not infrequently compound these challenges, leaving women to rear and support children largely or entirely on their own. conflict, estrangement, separation and divorce often characterized these relationships. relationships with families of origin, in-laws and extended relatives sometimes offered economic and emotional support, but sometimes did not. the burden of meeting financial needs intensified when children were in their school years; school fees and associated expenses were out of reach for most families but were seen as crucial to breaking the cycle of poverty and to the entire family’s economic prospects. limited educational opportunities, along with sometimes untreated health problems, made this all harder and could add further challenges to nonprofessional women’s wellbeing. these challenges were not, however, ubiquitous. qualitative data also revealed some ways nonprofessional women were able to successfully navigate economic, social and health challenges. in two illustrative cases, for example, nonprofessional women experienced conflict and instability in relationships with their children’s fathers along with significant economic hardship. but the two women selected cantril ladder responses at opposite ends of the spectrum. the first, an unmarried 27-year-old farmer with a one-year-old child, selected a ladder response of 0 because she saw her life as “very difficult and different from my expectations.” she did not have a house, furniture, more children and a business and the father of her child did not provide support. she was unable to complete her schooling because her mother lacked money for school fees. she also suffered from tuberculosis. the second nonprofessional woman, a married 59-year-old farmer with four children, selected 9 on the ladder even though she said: “i have been through a very difficult life.” her husband left her and married another woman, leaving her to raise children and put them through school on her own. she had a disease, likely to be diabetes, affecting her legs. her husband later returned to the marriage but it remained estranged and conflictual. yet, in spite of these difficulties, this participant summed up her life as “i am treated well… we don’t have problems for sure, we live well.” the crucial difference between these two participants seemed to be that the older woman was in a different life course stage, having succeeded in getting a child through schooling all the way to university. breaking through the economic challenges to a family’s social mobility offered the possibility of providing resources to raise younger children and of social security for mothers in older age. this participant’s son was in his twenties at the time of the interview and was financially supporting his mother. similarly, the previously described 50-year-old street vendor, now supported by her son, said: “when he passed to go to the university, he got a student loan. so as a parent i was responsible for everything…for all that time i was suffering and hurt a lot, but now the suffering has subsided a bit.” these older adult women’s perceptions of success are uncommon, and age as a variable is only trending toward significance in our regression modeling (though overall nonprofessional what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 women over 50 did report higher levels of wellbeing than younger nonprofessional women). but this life course pattern proved robust in our observations and interviews, reinforcing how fruitful it can be to supplement statistical analysis of cantril ladder responses with alternative approaches. we return to this methodological imperative in the discussion after first considering affect data as a further alternative for understanding wellbeing in local context. 3.5 affect data for understanding local contexts of wellbeing paying careful attention to local reports of positive affect, negative affect, and affect balance through both survey responses and emotions interviews allows for further nuance to understandings of wellbeing in kilimanjaro. reported affect balance showed no significant differences across demographic subgroups, unlike life evaluations, while emotions interviews reveal multiple aspects of lived experience which contribute positively to wellbeing. further, understanding nonprofessional women’s positive and negative affect reframed our interpretation of wellbeing captured by ladder responses and cognitive interviews. as shown in table 6, patterns of affect across the key demographic groups diverged from life evaluation patterns in the sample. overall, affect balance in the last week (the relative frequency of positive versus negative emotions) shows no significant difference between groups. further, nonprofessional women report greater variation in affect balance than other groups. all groups lean heavily towards a mean positive affect balance, and although more nonprofessional women reported a negative affect balance than nonprofessional men and professionals, there were also proportionately more nonprofessional women who reported “positive experiences much more than negative experiences” than for either of the other demographic groups. table 6. affect balance last week. total nonprofessional women nonprofessional men professionals pvalue n percent n percent n percent n percent negative experiences much more than positive experience 6 4.8% 2 4.4% 4 6.3% 0 0.0% 0.101 negative experience somewhat more than positive experience 21 16.9% 12 26.7% 8 12.7% 1 6.3% negative experiences about the same as positive experiences 14 11.3% 5 11.1% 9 14.3% 0 0.0% positive experiences somewhat more than negative experiences 48 38.7% 12 26.7% 25 39.7% 11 68.8% positive experiences much more than negative experiences 35 28.2% 14 31.1% 17 27.0% 4 25.0% total 124 100.0% 45 100.0% 63 100.0% 16 100.0% notes. there were no significant differences between groups based on a chi-squared test. what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 to analyze the reasons for greater variation in affective experience for nonprofessional women we drew upon data from our emotions interviews. the emotions interviews asked for specific examples of when each endorsed positive and negative emotion was experienced in the past week, and allowed us to explore emotional experience in relation to life evaluations discussed in cognitive interviews. participants tended to discuss their recent emotional experiences in different ways from how they discussed their life evaluations and the experiences that factored into their cantril ladder responses. in general, in the emotions interviews economic challenges receded while social interactions became more pronounced. as one example, the 37-year-old farmer with two children discussed above as having chosen 3 on the ladder question reported having “positive experiences somewhat more than negative experiences” in the last week. this farmer experienced positive emotions when she was able to prepare a birthday celebration for one of her children; because she felt love for her children and relatives; because a friend gave her money to visit her in the hospital; and because her sister-inlaw thanked her for the help she gave after her sister-in-law gave birth. her negative emotions occurred when a neighbor blamed her for not sharing food with the neighbor’s children and when experiencing a sibling’s economic hardship. similarly, the 27-year-old farmer discussed above with a one-year-old who experienced her life as “very difficult” and selected 0 on cantril ladder also reported “positive experiences somewhat more than negative experiences” in the last week. she experienced positive emotions when seeing her child start to stand, when her mother sided with her in an argument she had with the father of her child, when her brother’s son hurt his eye and it was treated, and when recognizing her freedom. she spoke of no negative emotions. the social interactions in these women’s lives that engendered positive emotions were centered on children, family, relatives, friends and members of the community. the emotions interviews seemed much more likely to elicit mention of these types of social interactions than the cognitive interviews discussing responses to the ladder question — discussions which tended to focus less on social interactions and more on economic constraints and family instability. yet, social interactions also seemed to make independent contributions to positive affect and helped buoy a general sense of wellbeing among nonprofessional women, while sometimes further helping them mitigate or cope with economic hardship and marital instability. to compare life evaluations and affect balance ratings for nonprofessional women from a more person-centered perspective, we cross-tabulated percentages of respondents for whom the valence of life evaluations matched and mismatched the valence of affect balance ratings (see table 7). table 7. life evaluations and affect balance for nonprofessional women (n = 45). affect balance last week negative much more or somewhat more than positive positive and negative about the same positive much more or somewhat more than negative total life evaluations positive (7-10) 2.2% 2.2% 0.0% 4.4% mixed (4-6) 4.4% 6.7% 35.6% 46.7% negative (0-3) 24.4% 2.2% 22.2% 48.9% total 31.1% 11.1% 57.8% 100.0% what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 there was noteworthy divergence among a majority of nonprofessional women who made negative and mixed life evaluations while reporting positive affect balance in the last week. the emotional story for nonprofessional women was, in other words, decidedly more positive than cognitive life evaluations. this generally positive emotional story complicates the overall story of wellbeing in kilimanjaro, offering a reminder that methodological choices along with the dynamics of a given sociocultural context shape how researchers and practitioners understand local meanings of wellbeing. 4. discussion the results of this pilot project reveal aspects of wellbeing experienced in the particular sociocultural context of kilimanjaro that are not incorporated into the broad global perspective captured by the world happiness report. the project offers insight into structural variables studied at the country level by the world happiness report, such as gender and socioeconomic circumstances, by revealing at the regional, demographic subgroup, and person level how they and cultural aspects of context relate to wellbeing. this project illustrates how a local paradigm in wellbeing research can both extend and diverge from the generalized and summative picture of wellbeing at the country and global level offered by the world happiness report. we return to our research questions to summarize answers provided by this research and its implications for research, policy, and practice. first, in response to the question of how people respond to and reflect upon cantril ladder as a measure of wellbeing, we found that a significant number of respondents did not understand cantril ladder and could not relate to its intended exercise of evaluating one’s life and translating it to a linear scale. another portion of respondents did not integrate the range of their experiences, especially negative ones, into their chosen number, even while mentioning these experiences in cognitive interviews as germane to their life satisfaction. our cognitive interviews revealed underlying reasons for these challenges: education and cultural familiarity. our research suggests that relying on cantril ladder as a measure of life evaluation may introduce similar challenges in other non-weird contexts and be reason for concern about its validity for some groups within a country or in comparing countries (henrich, heine, & norenzayan, 2010). it underscores the importance of efforts to incorporate methodologies sensitive to the range of respondent sociocultural circumstances in global samples (mathews, 2012; thin, 2012) and why the introduction of more culturally relevant survey questions and underlying constructs in the world happiness report, while potentially very useful, may not be sufficient (lambert et al., 2020). the results from our core sample point to often-overlooked heterogeneity within broad populations aggregated by the world happiness report: not only does kilimanjaro show a much higher mean ladder score than the rest of tanzania but within the region nonprofessional women’s mean ladder score is significantly lower than mean scores of other subgroups. our analyses, by attending carefully to subgroups, revealed that nonprofessional women are driving patterns in the region’s wellbeing. the ability to meet basic needs, the perception of financial status, and the marital status of being separated or divorced are simplified metrics that converge with the story evident in qualitative data: nonprofessional women experience higher levels of privation and marital conflict and instability than other groups. nonprofessional women exemplify a distinct experience of wellbeing shaped by the sociocultural context of their lived experience, involving wide-ranging and interacting influences such as gender, education, economic and material conditions, along with social, cultural and life course factors. these influences were qualitatively different from those of nonprofessional men what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 and professionals even though they are living in the same community. for example, where nonprofessional women showed a pervasive concern with meeting basic needs for themselves and their children, professionals attended more to advancing material conditions in the quality of their homes, transportation, children’s education, and healthcare. likewise, nonprofessional women were often profoundly challenged by marital conflict and instability, whereas professionals were decidedly less so — more often raising concerns about their individual purpose and meaning in terms separate from homelife and economic attainment. understanding wellbeing less by national mean ladder scores and more by lived experiences in distinct local contexts offers an important opportunity for global happiness research to be more sensitive to the cultural psychology of emotion (shweder, haidt, horton, & joseph, 1993; wierzbicka, 2010). this is likely in turn to better inform policy and practice. for example, policy prescriptions for a region such as kilimanjaro may be different from those needed in other parts of the country. and even within kilimanjaro, our research points to the importance of supporting nonprofessional women, especially in ways that foster social and parenting experiences and children’s educational attainment, as a way to target priority areas not only for this subgroup but as a priority for elevating overall wellbeing in kilimanjaro. disaggregation of heterogeneous subgroups can also better inform communities of practice, such as the medical community in kilimanjaro, by arranging often complex social, economic and other sociocultural variables affecting health and wellbeing into understandable and locally relevant models. such local insight is likely to be more valuable in clinical education and practice than broad generalizations about tanzania, or any country, as part of a global comparison. this all informs an answer to our second question about aspects of local sociocultural context that seem associated with life evaluations. as noted throughout, we found the ladder question to be quite sensitive to economic conditions, which is limiting considering that many scholars and policy makers have hoped it would transcend economic conditions and serve as a less material measure of wellbeing. the impact of social interactions with spouses and partners, for example, figured prominently in the emotional experiences of our kilimanjaro sample, as did many other social interactions with children, extended family, and community that were not as well captured by the ladder question. such social interactions were particularly meaningful for nonprofessional women in the context of kilimanjaro in navigating the life course, and reinforce previous research and theory emphasizing the importance of relational wellbeing in non-weird contexts (e.g., gough & mcgregor, 2007; white, 2017) this project’s concern with local sociocultural context also exposed the importance of using locally sensitive measures and mixed methods to capture not only life evaluations but also other aspects of wellbeing, including narrated experiences. as suggested, the selection of a number, such as 5, on cantril ladder by a nonprofessional woman will mean something quite different in the context of her life than a 5 chosen by a professional in kilimanjaro or a 5 reported elsewhere in the world. further, as personal stories of our respondents indicate, the context and meaning of two nonprofessional women selecting the same response to cantril ladder may differ significantly in ways best understood through qualitative methodologies. thus, in answering our third question about methodologies beyond cantril ladder that might be useful in contextualizing wellbeing, we found that engaging with people around locally relevant emotions opened rich opportunities for learning about experiences not pulled for by cantril life evaluations. this in turn generated stories that would resonate with positive psychology, cultural psychology, and interdisciplinary efforts to theorize wellbeing in subsaharan african populations (as has been proposed by scholars such as eloff et al., 2008; khumalo, temane, & wissing, 2010; kilonzo & simmons, 1998; white & jha, 2018). our what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 emotional interviews and case studies revealed several life course issues that were particularly salient to nonprofessional women’s wellbeing, including the importance of being able to provide one’s children with educational opportunities. there were also rich opportunities to discuss spiritual, communal, and environmental dimensions that we have not emphasized in this paper but which offer important directions for future research. while these dimensions can be addressed through standardized survey items, they require context to be meaningful for local practice. overall, then, our project and the examples of findings reported in this paper support the importance of adding local paradigms and culturally appropriate research methodologies to the broad global perspective captured by the world happiness report (see also white, 2016; white & ramirez, 2016). owing to our interest in generating insight for the local medical and development community, our research process was distinctly local and bottom up: working as a local team of researchers, we started with understanding local conditions rather than applying a preexisting methodology for capturing wellbeing. this guided us to include a range of measures, to sample, to recruit and to employ data collection practices attuned to local conditions. we sought to understand individual persons in sociocultural context as well as the population. this process could be replicated in select locations to provide more nuance in interpreting global comparisons of numerical measures. our approach and recommendations have limitations. the time and resources required to do the careful work of culturally sensitive research are significant and require both qualitative and quantitative skill sets. success in developing a locally sensitive global happiness research from the bottom up, as we are recommending, will likely face significant cross-cultural issues and coordination challenges. although our intent was to illustrate examples of insight gleaned from using this approach in a pilot project, and couch our findings in prior calls for greater local sensitivity in wellbeing research, our examples of findings lack the reliability obtained through replication. but by demonstrating the promise of this approach, we are trying to encourage more such efforts as a necessary complement to global comparisons. so is tanzania in fact one of the least happy countries in the world? it does after all seem true that some places in tanzania report negative life evaluations, and some subgroups seem to face systemic challenges that negatively impact wellbeing. but if we understand wellbeing to be defined both by global comparisons and by local sociocultural contexts, then we are compelled to go beyond standardized global questions about levels of wellbeing. we also need to ask questions that allow for insight into the lived experiences of wellbeing that can only be understood locally. acknowledgements the authors express our appreciation to biman chakraborty, janice muhr and perry msoka for contributions made to the underlying project upon which this article is based, and to anita kelly, irene evance and zuhura lintu for administrative support. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors michael b. kaufman kilimanjaro clinical research institute mbkaufma@uchicago.edu what the world happiness report doesn’t see kaufman et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 andrew m. guest university of portland blandina t. mmbaga kilimanjaro clinical research institute kilimanjaro christian medical university college prosper a. mbelwa independent scholar julie e. hyatt kilimanjaro clinical research institute declare mushi kilimanjaro christian medical university college joanitha tibendelana national institute of transport, tanzania paul y.o. saing'eu wings of mercy psychological support organization elizabeth f. msoka-bright 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(2013). satisfaction of basic phychological needs as a mediator of the relationship between community esteem and wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 20-34. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i1.2 lisa a. molix tulane university lmolix@tulane.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 article satisfaction of basic psychological needs as a mediator of the relationship between community esteem and wellbeing lisa a. molix · charles p. nichols abstract: past research has shown that possessing a strong sense of community or esteem for one’s community is positively related to feelings of psychological wellbeing. much less research has examined what mechanisms may underlie this relationship. self-determination theory, a theory of human personality and optimal functioning, proposes the existence of three speciestypical basic psychological needs (for competence, relatedness, and autonomy), the satisfaction of which is crucial for experiencing wellbeing. we hypothesized that need satisfaction is a mediator of the relationship between feelings of esteem for one’s community and several widely employed measures of wellbeing among a sample of residents living in an urban community in the united states. in accord with the primary hypotheses, the results revealed a robust association between community esteem and both hedonic and eudaimonic measures of wellbeing. furthermore, the associations between community esteem and wellbeing were mediated by self-reported satisfaction of basic psychological needs. this work contributes to an improved understanding of the complex relationship between esteem for one’s community and psychological wellbeing and has implications for debates surrounding the benefits and role of community in individuals’ lives. keywords: community esteem, basic psychological needs, hedonic wellbeing, eudaimonic wellbeing 1. introduction scholars from a variety of disciplines have noted that being a member of a well-functioning community can contribute to citizens’ overall wellness. studies have confirmed that possessing a strong sense of community or a high level of identification with or esteem for one’s community is associated with a variety of positive outcomes, including civic participation/engagement (chavis & wandersman, 1990) and psychological functioning (e.g., bettencourt & molix, 2003; davidson & cotter, 1991; prezza, amici, roberti, & tedeschi, 2001; prezza & costantini, 1998). despite these accumulating findings, much less research has examined mechanisms that may underlie the relationship between community esteem and psychological wellbeing. drawing upon scholarship from community, social, and personality psychology, the present study sought to replicate the previously observed positive relationship between community esteem and wellbeing, using a sample of citizens living in an urban community in the united states. moreover, we aimed to better understand what may explain the relationship between esteem for one’s community and psychological functioning, examining in particular the role played by satisfaction of basic psychological needs. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 basic psychological needs are thought to be species-typical motivational drives, the satisfaction of which is crucial for the achievement of wellbeing (deci & ryan, 2000; maslow, 1954; tay & diener, 2011). in particular, we examined the three needs identified as particularly important for human flourishing by self-determination theory, a prominent theory of human motivation and personality (deci & ryan, 2000; ryan & deci, 2000): the needs for autonomy, competence, and social relatedness. if people who like their communities more have higher wellbeing, perhaps this is (in part) because their communities are affording them greater means of satisfying their basic psychological needs. 1.1 community esteem social scientists have long sought to understand community and its effects (gusfield, 1975; nisbet, 1953; sarason, 1974; tonnies, 1955). sarason (1974) argued that the subjective perception of being connected to, invested in, and fond of one’s own community is important for a number of reasons, including for facilitating individual wellbeing. mcmillian and chavis’ (1986) influential model describes community as comprising four perceptual components: (1) membership (belonging to a community), (2) influence (mattering to the community), (3) integration and fulfillment of needs (the community meeting one’s needs), and (4) shared emotional connection (having shared experiences/interests with other community members). within the field of community psychology, being connected to or valuing one’s community is a widely studied variable that tends to be associated with not only strong communities, but also with healthy and happy individuals. for example, davidson and cotter (1991) found that participants in the southeastern u.s. who reported possessing a stronger sense of community also scored higher on a three-item measure of subjective wellbeing. prezza and colleagues found that in italian towns and small cities (prezza & costantini, 1998; prezza et al., 2001) and in large italian cities (prezza et al., 2001) residents’ sense of community was positively associated with life satisfaction. farrell, aubry, and coulombe (2004) found that among nonapartment dwelling residents of winnipeg canada, sense of community was positively correlated with wellbeing (measured using a psychiatric instrument, the general health questionnaire; goldberg, 1978). and jorgensen, jamieson, and martin (2010) found that among residents of a small city in australia, sense of community was positively correlated with a single-item measure of wellbeing (controlling for demographic variables). within the field of social psychology, bettencourt and molix (2003) have examined what they called a “sense of esteem for one’s community”. bettencourt and molix were inspired by research on the topic of social identity (tajfel & turner, 1986), particularly by recent research that has examined the effects on wellbeing of having higher levels of esteem for, or identification with, one’s social group. for example, research has shown that having esteem for one’s group can be beneficial for one’s wellbeing and can act as a kind of protective factor against stressors, enabling those with higher esteem to maintain higher wellbeing. bettencourt and molix (2003) reasoned that esteem for one’s community of residence would provide similar benefits to wellbeing. in a sample of women living in a rural area of the u.s., they found that those with higher levels of esteem for their community reported being more satisfied with their lives. while little other research has examined the relationship of community esteem to wellbeing, a recent cross-cultural study by morrison, tay, and deiner (2011) on national satisfaction is perhaps relevant. morrison et al. found that across 128 countries, positive attitudes toward or satisfaction with one’s nation consistently predicted higher wellbeing (i.e., satisfaction with life). one’s country may function psychologically as a kind of larger community for many people, leading satisfaction with one’s nation to meaningfully impact psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 one’s wellbeing in a manner consistent with social identity theory’s predictions concerning the benefits of other types of collective identities (tajfel & turner, 1986), a point mentioned by morrison et al. (2011) in explaining their findings. while there is initial evidence linking esteem for one’s community with wellbeing, a methodological limitation of these studies is that they have tended to measure wellbeing either solely in terms of diener and colleagues’ (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) five-item measure of life satisfaction or with very brief improvised measures of wellbeing (e.g., davidson & cotter, 1991). to date, no research of which we are aware has employed multiple wellvalidated measures of wellbeing to examine the relation of community esteem (or any other community feeling variable) with theoretically distinct types of human wellbeing in a single study. in the present research, we sought to investigate community esteem’s relation to both hedonic and eudaimonic measures of wellbeing. 1.2 psychological wellbeing wellbeing is conceived in different ways but generally refers to optimal psychological functioning and experience (ryan & deci, 2001). research has revealed positive associations between self-reported wellbeing and a variety of other factors, including civic engagement, relationship satisfaction, success in work domains, physical health, and life expectancy (see lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005, for a quantitative review). wellbeing is measured in various ways, usually by means of self-report. among scholars of wellbeing and positive psychology, a distinction is frequently made between two competing perspectives concerning how to conceive of wellbeing, each of which has its own corresponding survey instruments. the two conceptions of wellbeing are usually referred to as hedonic and. eudaimonic (bowman, brandenberger, lapsley, hill, & quaranto, 2010; henderson & knight, 2012; ryan & deci, 2001; ryff, singer, & love, 2004; waterman, 1993). in short, hedonic wellbeing refers to feeling good, whereas eudaimonic wellbeing refers to living a good (e.g., meaningful, virtuous, or authentic) life (see henderson & knight, 2012). measures of hedonic wellbeing, also often called subjective wellbeing, typically employ a straightforward approach of simply asking participants to indicate how happy they feel generally, how much positive and negative affect they are experiencing, and/or how satisfied they are with their life. the rationale behind the hedonic approach is that wellbeing is essentially happiness, and if you want to know if a person feels happy, the best approach is to simply ask him or her. measures of eudaimonic wellbeing are less straightforward. as far back as aristotle (2000), who was interested in people’s fulfillment of their true spirit or daimon, some scholars have had reservations with simply equating wellbeing with self-reported pleasure or happiness. either out of disagreement that wellbeing is the same thing as happiness, or out of concern that people lack the ability to judge accurately their own happiness, measures of eudaimonic wellbeing typically employ an indirect approach, asking people to report on a range of quality of life indicators, which the researcher then uses as an index of individual wellbeing. for example, ryff argues that psychological wellbeing is best measured by assessing six different dimensions of a flourishing life: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth, and autonomy (ryff, 1989; ryff & singer, 2008). often measures of hedonic and eudamonic wellbeing correlate highly (kashdan, biswas-diener, & king, 2008), but they nevertheless reflect different conceptions of wellbeing (keyes, schmotkin & ryff, 2002), and measuring both types can provide researchers with a fuller picture of other phenomena’s relation to wellbeing. in addition to fleshing out the relationship between community esteem and both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, the current work also sought psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 to better explain community esteem’s relation with wellbeing by examining a potential mediating variable: the satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs. 1.3 satisfaction of basic psychological needs satisfaction of basic psychological needs (termed “psychosocial prosperity” by diener, ng, harter, & arora, 2010) has repeatedly been shown to be a strong predictor of psychological wellbeing. while early conceptualizations of psychological needs (e.g., maslow, 1954) were subject to criticism on both conceptual and empirical grounds (see kenrick, griskevicius, neuberg, & schaller, 2010), in recent years there has been a resurgence of research on psychological needs and their satisfaction (e.g., deci, ryan, gagné, leone, usunov, & kornazheva, 2001; la guardia, ryan, couchman, & deci, 2000; patrick, knee, canevello, & lonsbary, 2007; sheldon & elliot, 1999; sheldon, elliot, kim, & kasser, 2001; sheldon & nemiec, 2006; tay & diener, 2011; wei, shaffer, young, & zakalik, 2005). in their contemporary form, basic psychological needs are theorized to be evolution-grounded, cross-culturally universal drives to have certain psychological experiences (feeling close to other people, feeling efficacious, etc.). achieving satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs is thought to be crucial for experiencing happiness and wellbeing, an inference supported using cross-sectional and longitudinal methodologies and in a variety of samples, including children and adolescents (e.g., milyavskaya et al., 2009; véronneau, koestner, & abela, 2005), undergraduates (e.g., sheldon & elliot, 1999; sheldon & nemiec, 2006; wei et al., 2005), workers (e.g., baard, deci, & ryan, 2004; deci et al., 2001; van den broeck, vansteenkiste, de witte, soenens, & lens, 2010), and in cross-cultural investigations (sheldon et al., 2001; tay & diener, 2011). notably, self-determination theory (deci & ryan, 2000; ryan & deci, 2000), a comprehensive and empirically well-supported theory of human personality and optimal functioning, proposes the existence of three species-typical, highly correlated basic psychological needs: (1) for competence, (2) for relatedness, and (3) for autonomy. competence refers to the feeling that one is efficacious and able to master challenges (deci & ryan 2000; white, 1959). relatedness refers to the feeling that one has rich social connections with friends and family members who care about oneself and about whom one cares (baumeister & leary, 1995; deci & ryan, 2000). autonomy refers to the feeling that one has choice and is not subject to coercion or unwanted pressure (decharms, 1968; deci & ryan, 1985, 2000). much of the research linking satisfaction of basic psychological needs to wellbeing has been inspired by selfdetermination theory and has examined specifically these three needs either individually or in aggregate (see ryan & deci, 2008, or vansteenkiste, ryan, & deci, 2008 for overviews). a central dimension of mcmillan and chavis’s (1986) much-cited psychological model of community is the feeling that one’s community fulfills one’s needs, which they equated with “reinforcement,” explaining that “the individual-group association must be rewarding for its members” (p. 12). self-determination theory’s focus on the importance of meeting one’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence led us to hypothesize that community esteem has its beneficial effects on psychological wellbeing by satisfying individuals’ psychological needs. to date, we are not aware of any research that has assessed the relationship between community esteem and satisfaction of basic psychological needs or, more specifically, examined whether community esteem might increase people’s wellbeing by satisfying their basic psychological needs. there are strong grounds for expecting community esteem to predict satisfaction of basic psychological needs. when you feel good about your community: (a) you feel like you can do psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 what it takes, and get the help/resources you need, to achieve your goals (competence), (b) you feel like there are people around you (e.g., neighbors, fellow community members) whose welfare you care about and who care about you (relatedness), and (c) you feel like you are able to make choices expressive of your true self, free from unwanted pressure and external social control (autonomy). the aim of the present study was to survey a community sample of participants living in an urban community in the southern united states to determine whether esteem for one’s community predicts psychological wellbeing. additionally, we sought to examine whether this positive relationship between community esteem and wellbeing is mediated by a third variable, the satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs. our prediction was that psychological need-satisfaction would indeed mediate the positive relationship between community esteem and wellbeing. 2. method the data were collected as part of a larger study (molix & nichols, 2012) examining overall wellness among residents living in an urban community in a sizeable u.s. city. participants were recruited from a variety of community locations (n = 156; 86 women; 63 men; 7 participants did not report sex). participants in the sample ranged from age 20 to 81 (m = 40.45, sd = 14.50; 16 participants did not report age). the majority of the sample (70%) self-identified as white or caucasian. twelve percent self-reported as black or african american, 1% as asian indian or south asian, 4% as hispanic or latino/latina, less than 1% as asian, 1% as native american, and 3% as mixed race (9 participants did not report any racial or ethnic group information). approximately 53% of the participants reported being single, 29% reported being married, 12% reported being divorced, 1% reported being widowed, and 5% of the sample did not report their relationship status. the majority of the sample (81%) reported having completed two or more years of college. approximately 17% of the sample reported that high school was the highest level of education they had completed, and 2% of the sample reported that junior high was the highest level of education level they had completed. sixty two percent of the sample reported having full time or part time employment at the time of data collection. fourteen percent of the sample reported that their annual household income was less than $15,000, 16% reported annual household income ranging between $15,000 and $30,000, 14.7 % ranged between $30,000 and$45,000, 12.8% ranged between $45,000 and $60,000, 9.6% ranged between $60,000 and $75,000, 9.6% ranged between $75,000 and $120,000, and 9.2% reported earning more than $120,000 annually (14% of the sample did not report their annual household income). approximately 38% of the sample reported owning a home, 46% reported that they were renting their place of residence, and the remainder reported that they lived with friends or family members. 2.1 procedures community residents were invited to participate via signs and fliers displayed at various community locations (e.g., parks, festivals, markets, self-service laundries) at tables staffed by trained study facilitators. eligible participants showed proof (e.g., a state identification card or driver’s license) of being 18 years of age or older and a resident of the local community. participants were ushered to a seating area and given a clipboard that contained a cover sheet for privacy, and the informed consent form. after reading and signing the consent form, participants were given a survey which included the primary variables of interest and some demographic questions, and which took approximately 15 minutes to complete. upon completion of the survey, participants were debriefed and paid $5 in cash. psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 2.2 measures esteem for one’s community. as have others (bettencourt & molix, 2003; bettencourt, molix, talley, & westgate, 2007), we measured esteem for one’s community using a modified version of the public and private subscales (each comprising four items) from luhtanen and crocker’s (1992) collective self-esteem scale.1 participants were first prompted to write in the name of their community and then asked to rate their agreement with eight statements using sevenpoint scales (1= strongly disagree and 7= strongly agree). example items include: “overall, my community is considered good” (public) and “i feel good about the community i belong to” (private). we created a composite esteem for one’s community score by averaging the items of the public and private collective self-esteem subscales. the composite measure was found to have good internal consistency (α = .83). satisfaction of basic psychological needs. the basic need satisfaction in general scale (bnsg; gagné, 2003; johnston, & finney, 2010; kashdan, julian, merritt, & uswatte, 2006) 2 was employed in the present study. the bnsg includes 21 items, with three 7-item subscales: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. participants are asked to rate their agreement with each statement using a 7-point response scale (1= not true at all and 7 = very true). examples of items include: “i feel like i can decide for myself how to live my life” (autonomy), “i really like the people i interact with” (relatedness), and “i often do not feel very capable” (competence, reversed). internal consistency for the subscales ranged from acceptable to good (autonomy α = .65; competence α = .72; relatedness α = .82). as have others (e.g., gagné, 2003; vansteenkiste et al., 2007), we averaged the three correlated subscales to form a single index of general need satisfaction (α = .87). hedonic wellbeing. in previous research (e.g., diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999), hedonic wellbeing has been conceptualized as comprising positive affect, negative affect, and satisfaction with life. as have others (e.g., sheldon & elliot, 1999; sheldon & kasser, 1998, 2001; sheldon & niemiec, 2006) we assessed hedonic wellbeing via watson, clark, and tellegen’s (1988) positive and negative affect schedule (panas) and diener, emmons, larsen, and griffin’s (1985) satisfaction with life scale. 3 the panas is a list of 20 emotion state items (10 positive and 10 negative). for each, participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they felt this way on average during the past month, using a 5-point response scale (1 = not at all and 5 = very much). examples of positive items include: excited, alert, and inspired. examples of negative items include: upset, nervous, and afraid. the positive and negative affect subscales were found to have good internal consistency (α = .86 and .83, respectively). the satisfaction with life scale includes five items and participants were asked to indicate their agreement with each item using a 7-point response scale (1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree). example items include: “in most ways, my life is close to ideal” and “if i could live my life over, i would change almost nothing”. the measure was found to have adequate internal consistency (α = .76). following the recommendations of diener and lucas (1999), we computed an aggregate 1 the original version of this scale was retrieved from dr. jennifer crocker’s research website (http://faculty.psy.ohiostate.edu/crocker/lab/cse.php). 2 this scale was retrieved from the self-determination theory website (www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/), which is maintained by e. l. deci and r. m. ryan at the university of rochester. it should be noted that the website is subject to change. 3 though the panas has been criticized for not capturing all relevant dimensions on which emotions can differ (e.g., activation; kashdan & roberts, 2004; schimmack & grob, 2000), it remains the measure of emotions most widely used among psychologists (dasborough, sinclair, russell-bennett, tombs, 2008), and it met our need for a validated, relatively brief measure of positive and negative affect. psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 wellbeing score by summing (standardized) scores for positive affect and life satisfaction and subtracting negative affect eudaimonic wellbeing. we assessed eudaimonic wellbeing using three subscales from ryff’s (1989) psychological well-being scale: self-acceptance, purpose in life, and personal growth.4 participants were asked to rate their agreement with each statement using a 7-point response scale (1= do not agree at all and 7= strongly agree). sample items include: “i like most aspects of my personality” (self-acceptance), “some people wander aimlessly through life but i am not one of them” (purpose), and “for me, life has been a continuous process of learning, changing, and growth” (personal growth). as have others (e.g., molix & bettencourt, 2010; sheldon, kasser, smith & share, 2002), we created a composite eudaimonic wellbeing score by averaging the items of the correlated subscales, which were found to have good internal consistency (α = .72). 3. results 3.1 preliminary analyses data were analyzed using spss version 18.0. all variables were examined for violations of normality and the presence of extreme outliers; none were identified. next, we conducted descriptive analyses. there were no associations between the primary variables and the majority of the demographic variables (i.e., participant age, race, marital status, education level, employment status, income level, home ownership); these variables were not included in the subsequent analyses. however, men and women did differ on basic need satisfaction and psychological wellbeing. specifically, women reported higher levels of overall need satisfaction (m = 5.62), than did men (m = 5.24), t (142) = 2.74, p <.05. when we examined the need satisfaction subscales individually, women reported higher level of competence (m = 5.57), than did men (m = 5.17), t (142) = 2.33, p < .05 as well as higher relatedness (m = 5.85), than did men (m = 5.32), t (142) = 2.99, p < .01. women also reported higher levels of eudaimonic wellbeing (m = 5.88) than did men (m = 5.48, t(144) = 3.05, p < .05.) as such, participant sex was included as a covariate in the primary analyses. the means, standard deviations, and partial correlations among the primary variables of interest are summarized in table 1. table 1. partial correlations controlling for participant sex are reported measure m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 community esteem(1) 5.39 1.07 basic needs satisfaction(2) 5.46 .79 .34** autonomy(3) 5.29 .84 .29** .83** competence(4) 5.42 .99 .19** .81** .57** relatedness(5) 5.64 1.01 .36** .86** .55** .52** hedonic wellbeing(6) 6.44 1.89 .22* .59** .52** .52** .46** eudaimonic wellbeing(7) 5.72 .79 .29** .62** .43** .51** .58** .59** *p < .05, **p < .01. 4 the other three subscales of ryff’s psychological wellbeing measure (i.e., positive relations with others, environmental mastery, and autonomy) were not used due to their close similarity to another study variable: satisfaction of self-determination theory’s basic psychological needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy. psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 as can be seen in table 1, community esteem was significantly correlated with hedonic wellbeing, r = .22, p < .05, and eudaimonic wellbeing, r = .29, p < .001 while controlling for participant sex. examination of the partial correlations further revealed that basic need satisfaction was independently associated with both hedonic wellbeing, r = .59, p < .001, and eudaimonic wellbeing, r = .62, p < .001. 3.2 tests of mediation in order to examine the primary hypotheses of the current study, we followed the recommendations of shrout and bolger (2002), who suggest a bootstrapping procedure to compute a confidence interval around the indirect effect (i.e., the path through the mediator). if zero falls outside of this interval, mediation is said to be present. we used the spss macro designed by preacher and hayes (2008) for this procedure. these analyses were run separately with hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing as the criterion variable, respectively, while controlling for participant sex. we specified a total of 5,000 resamples in estimating the indirect effect of community esteem on wellbeing through basic need satisfaction and calculated a 95% confidence interval around this effect (values for upper and lower bounds that do not include zero indicate a statistically significant effect with an alpha level of .05). in accord with our primary hypotheses, community esteem was associated with both hedonic wellbeing, b = .41, se = .15, p < .01, and satisfaction of basic psychological needs, b = .27, se = .06, p < .001. furthermore, when need satisfaction was included in the model, the direct relationship of community esteem on hedonic wellbeing was no longer significant b = .04, se = .13, p = .76, and the indirect effect of community esteem on hedonic wellbeing through the proposed mediator, need satisfaction, was significant, point estimate = .37, se = .10, 95% ci = .18 to .60, while controlling for participant sex (see figure 1). this mediational pattern suggests that the positive relationship between community esteem and hedonic wellbeing is due, at least in part, to need satisfaction. that is, community esteem may improve people’s hedonic wellbeing by helping satisfy their basic psychological needs. figure 1. mediation model with hedonic wellbeing as the dependent variable while controlling for participant sex all values presented are standardized regression coefficients. in the path from community esteem to hedonic wellbeing, the first value indicates the coefficient before basic needs basic psychological needs hedonic wellbeing community esteem .61*** .35*** .22** (.02 ns) psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 satisfaction is entered into the model while the value in the parentheses indicates the coefficient after. **p < .01, ***p < .001. next, we tested a similar model with eudaimonic wellbeing as the criterion. consistent with our hypotheses, community esteem was associated with both eudaimonic wellbeing, b = .21 se = .06, p < .001, and satisfaction of basic psychological needs, b = .27, se = .06, p < .001. furthermore, when the proposed mediator (need satisfaction) was included in the model, the direct relationship of community esteem on eudaimonic wellbeing was no longer significant, b = .05, se = .05, p = .33, and the indirect effect of community esteem on eudaimonic wellbeing through the proposed mediator, need satisfaction, was significant, point estimate = .15, se = .04, and a 95% confidence interval of .07 to .24, even after controlling for participant sex. this mediational pattern suggests that the positive relationship between community esteem and eudaimonic wellbeing may be due, at least in part, to the satisfaction of basic psychological needs (see figure 2). in summary, community esteem is associated with greater satisfaction of one’s basic psychological needs, which may lead to greater hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. figure 2. mediation model with eudaimonic wellbeing as the dependent variable while controlling for participant sex all values presented are standardized regression coefficients. in the path from community esteem to eudaimonic wellbeing, the first value indicates the coefficient before basic needs satisfaction is entered into the model while the value in the parentheses indicates the coefficient after. **p < .01, ***p < .001. 4. discussion the primary aim of the present work was to increase understanding of why having esteem for or valuing one’s community might be important for psychological wellbeing. the present study found that esteem for one’s community significantly predicted both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing in a sample of urban adults. moreover, the relationship between community esteem and wellbeing was mediated by the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. these findings replicate the relationship between community esteem and wellbeing observed by bettencourt and molix (2003). more importantly, the present results were consistent with an explanatory model whereby community affects wellbeing by enabling individuals to better satisfy their basic psychological needs. these needs—for competence, relatedness, and autonomy—have been shown in much past research to be important ingredients to living a happy life. it seems that having esteem for one’s community might be a critical factor in facilitating psychological need satisfaction and wellbeing. the fact that the same mediational pattern of associations eudaimonic wellbeing community esteem .60*** .35*** .27** (.06 ns) basic psychological needs psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 emerged using both hedonic and eudaimonic measures of wellbeing allows for a greater degree of confidence regarding the validity of the relationships. the present study extends previous research and provides a fuller understanding of how having esteem for one’s community relates to psychological wellbeing. specifically, by using multiple measures of wellbeing and examining a theory-derived mechanism by which community esteem relates to wellbeing, this study broke new ground. these results are consistent with ideas from positive psychology and from selfdetermination theory in particular (deci & ryan, 2000) that feeling competent and effective, free to choose on issues of personal importance, and in possession of strong social relationships, are particularly important psychological inputs leading to the experience of psychological wellbeing. researchers interested in better understanding identification with community or a psychological sense of community (e.g., mcmillan & chavis, 1986) have often argued for a community’s importance to the wellbeing of its members, but the models regarding how exactly community enhances wellbeing could be improved by incorporating some of the theory and research from recent decades of wellbeing research. at the same time, aside from emphasizing the importance of social relationships and interpersonal trust, wellbeing researchers have placed relatively little emphasis on the role of community per se in meeting psychological needs and facilitating wellbeing and mental health. to fully understand human flourishing, wellbeing researchers should transcend their often individualistic presuppositions (becker & maracek, 2008) and devote more attention to issues of group and community membership. while much work in the self-determination theory tradition (deci & ryan, 2000) makes the case for why need-satisfaction should lead to enhanced wellbeing, an important question for future study concerns the mechanism by which community esteem relates to basic psychological needs. as mentioned previously, there are convincing theoretical grounds for expecting community esteem (or related variables expressing positive feeling toward one’s community) to predict satisfaction of competence, relatedness, and autonomy needs. a healthy and well-functioning community likely makes people feel (a) able, and in possession of sufficient resources, to accomplish the goals they choose to pursue (i.e., competence), (b) free from unwanted pressure, intrusions, distractions, and outright coercion and instead able to make choices expressive of their true selves (autonomy), and (c) connected socially to a network of neighbors and friends whom one supports and from whom one receives support (relatedness). community esteem could potentially influence wellbeing by promoting pursuit of activities that promote happiness. an influential contemporary model of wellbeing (the hedonic adaptation prevention model; lyubomirsky, sheldon, & schkade, 2005; sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2006, 2012) argues that individuals can, to some extent, overcome the welldocumented human tendency to adapt hedonically to any situation. by engaging in effortful and varied activity, the model argues, people can achieve sustainable increases in their overall happiness levels. thus, it could be the case that individuals with greater esteem for their community feel the motivation and safety to engage in such happiness-conducive activities (e.g., physical exercise, artistic creation, socializing, etc.), benefiting their wellbeing as a result. 4.1 limitations and future directions this study has some limitations. first, while the sample was reasonably diverse with regard to participant sex, race, ses, and age, the participants were all urban residents. future research should explore whether the same pattern of results is replicated in other types of communities (e.g., rural). in addition, the sample size was relatively small, and the data were cross-sectional. psychological needs, community esteem, and wellbeing molix & nichols www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 future research might seek to employ a larger sample and examine the relationship between community esteem, psychological need satisfaction, and wellbeing experimentally or longitudinally in order to clarify the causal nature of the associations observed. in addition, while satisfaction of basic psychological needs seems to be one route by which holding one’s community in esteem contributes to positive psychological health outcomes, it is unlikely to be the only route. future research should explore other relevant variables to further elucidate how and why perceptions of one’s community influence wellbeing. other potential mediating variables of a psychological nature that should be explored in future research include selfesteem, hope/optimism, and safety/security. 5. conclusion the u.s. centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) define a healthy community as: a community that is continuously creating and improving those physical and social environments and expanding those community resources that enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and in developing to their maximum potential. 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(2022). review of the evolution of life worth living: why we choose to live . international journal of wellbeing, 12(3), 101-112. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i3.2395 paul t. p. wong trent university dr.paul.wong@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 book review review of the evolution of life worth living: why we choose to live c. a. soper (publisher and author), 2021 isbn: 978-1-8383439-0-3, 258pp, us$20.99 review by paul t. p. wong abstract: soper’s pain-brain theory, based on evolutionary biology, represents a provocative breakthrough for both suicidology and positive psychology. the main thesis of the book is that the evolved way of choosing to live rather than to die in the face of unbearable suffering is to develop a zest for happiness and meaning. his new theory can be summed up by a twoby-two matrix of “pain-type” versus “brain-type” of reducing pain, and the “keeper” versus “fender” levels of protecting us from suicide. my main critique is that the brain versus pain distinction is confusing because the brain is the center for all the functions needed for to reduce pain and keep us alive. similarly, his football metaphor of two levels of defense (“keeper” and “fender”) is incomplete because the best defense is offence, when a good last line of defense can be quickly turned into offence. therefore, a more fluid way of conceptualizing this distinction may be the dialectically interactive dual systems of life protection (yin) and life expansion strategies (yang) (wong, 2012). soper’s pain-brain theory is similar to wong’s general existential positive psychology theory of flourishing through suffering (wong, 2020a, 2021a). both approaches emphasize the centrality of suffering and posit that whether suffering results in mental illness and suicide or mental health and flourishing depends on whether we have the wisdom of the soul and the necessary social support. keywords: happiness, pain, suffering, suicide, brain, evolution, mental health 1. towards a general theory of mental health and wellbeing the mind in its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n. – john milton, paradise lost we have known for a long time that pain causes aggression (ulrich, 1966) and hurt people hurt others (wilson, 2015). that is why no amount of positive education on happiness (seligman 2003, 2011) or emotional intelligence (goleman, 2005) can resolve the mental health issue of violence against self and others without a deep understanding the mystery of suffering (wong, mayer et al., 2021; wong et al., in press). this timely book introduces a provocative pain -brain theory of preventing suicide through developing the zest for living a meaningful life as a way of coping with unbearable pain. in a about:blank review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 broader sense, this book is not just about suicide prevention, but also about a general theory of positive mental health and human flourishing. for many years, i have worked on a general theory of wellbeing to integrate two inextricably linked human needs for happiness and the ending of suffering. i have also argued that any general theory needs to be based on (a) psychological universals (norenzayan & heine, 2005) and (b) the emic and etic research of the unique experience and expression of psychological universals in indigenous cultures (wong 2020b; wong, 2021a; wong, mayer et al., 2021). therefore, when i reviewed soper (2022), i was overjoyed to discover that someone unfamiliar with my existential positive psychology approach has independently developed a more compelling general theory of wellbeing from an evolution perspective with a different set of concepts and terms. now that i have confessed my positive bias towards this book, i can proceed to critique this book in a more objective and balanced way. 2. what this book is all about at the very outset, the author clearly states that this book presents his answers to two important questions: why do we choose to live? and why do we choose to die when life is no longer meaningful or too painful? at a time when there is an increase in medically assisted deaths (bryden, 2021) and suicide remains the number one cause of death in the us (center for disease control and prevention, 2022), there is an urgency to learn why people choose suicide and how to prevent it. in spite of some progress in how to assess and intervene with patients at risk of suicide (clay, 2022), there is still no breakthrough in reducing unnecessary suicides and medical assistance in dying (maid; government of canada, 2022). soper’s evolutionary hypothesis provides a new perspective to understand the underlying reasons why some choose to die and why some choose to live in the face of overwhelming and unbearable suffering. the most innovative part of this new model is his scientific and spiritual insight that our loss of innocence and gaining of knowledge is responsible for our present predicament. his hypothesis is very similar to the biblical account of how adam and even were expelled from paradise after eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge. since we cannot turn back the clock and restore a childlike innocence, soper proposes the wisdom of the soul as one of the solutions to suicide. more specifically, happiness and meaning in life began to matter to human beings only when the human brain somehow perceived (a) the futility of life’s endless struggles which inevitably end in death, and (b) the dark option that one has both the intellect and the means to end one’s own life. life is often painful or not enjoyable. but even when it is not enjoyable, i still can find it worthwhile; happiness or satisfaction can result from taking up the challenge and completing it makes it all the more worthwhile (ho, 2014, p. 64). this theory is important because it provides the missing link in positive psychology or the psychology of wellbeing. it can account for the bidirectionality of suffering, which may lead to suicide or flourishing. happiness is seen as a product of natural selection primarily to prevent people from killing themselves. metaphorically speaking, if there were no hell, there would be no need for heaven with all its blessings. according to vaillant (1998), the language of metaphor from the humanities is needed to help us understand the deeper things in life or the big questions. throughout the book, the author uses logical arguments, empirical evidence, real-life examples, and metaphors to support this new theory. the unique contribution of this book is that “suicide is an ugly topic, but by equal measure, its evolutionary flipside is breathtakingly beautiful. this astonishing payoff is that homo sapiens acquired a zest for life.” (soper, 2022, p. 2). thus, one’s passion for life or quest for meaning is an http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 evolved primary motivation to make life worth living in times of suffering or existential vacuum, as proposed by viktor frankl (1946/1985) and expanded by wong (wong, 2019; wong, arslan et al., 2021). yes, we are made for happiness, and the pursuit of happiness is a universal desire just as seligman and colleagues have articulated (seligman, 2002; seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). but in real life, happiness can be disrupted by misfortunes, prolonged disabilities, and inescapable pain. in short, suffering happens to all human beings, from the cavemen of the stone age to the city dwellers in their high-rise condos. soper proposes that people may be tempted to choose death when they are going through hell or meaningless and inescapable suffering, unless they learn how to turn hell into heaven as suggested by opening quote by john milton (1667). in sum, “the possibility of suicide is part of what makes us human” (soper, 2022, p. 3), but at the same time, human beings are also endowed with the spiritual capability to live in “a heaven on earth, where the tenets of unconditional love, not darwinism, hold sway. we are spiritual beings. the outermost shield against self-destruction is our yearning for a life worth living.” (soper, 2022, p. 5). the summary statement of his first chapter, that “the brightest aspects of human experience arise from the darkest of possibilities” (soper, 2022, p. 3), is a more eloquent statement than my view that our best selves come from overcoming our worst selves (wong, 2021a). for both of us, we attempt to correct people’s knee-jerk reaction to pain and show them pain’s noble mission in teaching and healing. from an existential positive psychology perspective, the main thesis of this book makes perfect sense. i hasten to add that soper and i are not the only ones holding the view that wellbeing and flourishing come from our need to end or transcend suffering. i can cite many prominent psychologists and psychiatrists who have articulated similar views – william james’ (1902/1912) rebirth from sick soul, alfred adler’s (2009) social interest to overcome inferiority, viktor frankl’s (1946/1985) meaning of suffering, joseph campbell’s (2008) hero’s journey, scott peck’s (1978) road less travelled, jordan peterson’s (2018) 12 rules of life as antidote to chaos and suffering, and robert emmons’ (2003) deepest desires for the good life. i only have space to cite from one of the above: “the good life' is not one that is achieved through momentary pleasures or defensive illusions, but through meeting suffering head on and transforming it into opportunities for meaning, wisdom, and growth, with the ultimate objective being the development of the person into a fully functioning mature being. on this formula for happiness, age-old wisdom and modern science are in agreement.” (emmons, 2003, p. 156) although the main focus of this book is on suicide prevention, it would be great if soper could cite some of the related research and theories to expand his pain-brain theory to human flourishing. in the following sections, i will focus on some of the difficulties i have experienced in reviewing this book and suggest possible solutions. 3. what shall we do to prevent suicide? two types of solutions soper points out that before suicide takes place, there is an inner battle within us between a life force and a death drive. we need to understand this intrapsychic conflict in order to come out in favor of life. a cautionary note is that “balances have to be struck, because too much of a good thing, even of a life force, can be pathological” (soper, 2022, p. 35). life is a balancing act. we http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 cannot survive without experiencing any pain in our lives; it is not in our best interest to try living a happy and stress-free life. here are at least two reasons why pain or suffering has adaptive advantages: (a) it serves as a warning signal to inform us that there is something wrong in our lives, and (b) it motivates us to make sense of the pain and do something to end it. regarding the full benefits of suffering, see wong, mayer and colleagues (2021). for a new science of pain, we need to develop a taxonomy for pain and suffering. we need to at least differentiate between meaningful and meaningless suffering. to me, meaningful suffering means at least suffering which is inescapable and contributing to our wholeness. suffering is the essence of human existence, and point recognized by buddhism, christianity, as well as psychology (frankl, 1946/1985; james, 1902/1912; vaillant, 1993). it is not possible to truly love someone without suffering and sacrifice. similarly, it is not possible to achieve something worthwhile without delay of gratification, frustration, and the struggle to overcome failures. it is all the more impossible to love god and do his will without carrying the cross and denying ourselves. in sum, to be whole and mentally healthy, we need suffering as our teacher. soper observes that “meaningless pain can feel all the more unbearable precisely because of its meaninglessness.” (soper, 2022, p. 38). in other words, one’s private hell is meaningless pain. that is why viktor frankl (1946/1985) often quotes nietzsche: “he who know the why can bear any how” and proposes that the key to reduce suffering is to discover the meaning of suffering. wong and weiner (1981) confirmed empirically that when unexpectedly bad things happen to people, they automatically engage in attribution search, trying to figure out why it happened and for what reason or purpose it happened so that they could do something about it – either to change the situation or change themselves. pain is not always physical or external. according to erwin shneidman (1993), the father of suicidology, a “psychache” refers to all kinds of psychological pains, from durkheim’s feeling of not belonging (anomie), stressful states, and the common negative emotions of shame, guilt, and fear. there are many names for the same mental illness, according to soper. therefore, he is opposed to dsm classifications. according to ho (2014), a psychache may be considered as “mental bads” and we need physical goods and mental goods in order to flourish. like most social animals, “a network of supportive relationships is a lifelong survival necessity for us.” (soper, 2022, p. 40). the most common human suffering is social pain from rejection, loneliness, marginalization, or ostracization, and it can be the most powerful drivers for suicide. social pain can also explain why discrimination against minorities is a social evil, contributing to mental illness. soper points out that “bodily pain and emotional pain, while not identical, use similar circuitry in the brain.” (soper, 2022, p. 39). both physical and psychological pain can be resolved by the pain-type or the brain-type. the former type focuses on numbing the pain by reducing the intensity of the emotive or affective reaction. the latter type confuses or redirects the cognitive or intellectual process in order to prevent people from planning and carrying out the action of ending one’s life. our solution to the pain problem can be either pain-type or brain-type. this is the pain-brain theory of suicide prevention in a nutshell. soper’s main contribution is to recognize the centrality of suffering; we need happiness, compassion, love, hope, and faith because we need to ameliorate and transform suffering. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 soper’s main argument for the pain-brain theory is based on the fact there is no credible empirical evidence of animals, or children under ten years old committing suicide. 1 in other words, natural selection determined a long time ago that both intense pain and a well-developed brain need to be present before suicide could happen in human beings. the best outcome from natural selection is balance because we cannot survive for long without feeling any pain, as in the case of leprosy. therefore, we need some pain to keep us from getting injured or sick. in terms of mental health, we also need some amount of suffering to tell us what is lacking in our lives and the need to make some positive change (wong, 2020a). paradoxically, complete absence of pain and frustration may lead to pain and disaster (kundera, 1984). in other words, mental health depends on maintaining a proper balance between too much suffering and too little suffering in each context. it is not difficult to understand why reducing pain helps prevent suicide because no one in their right mind wants to die; they choose death only when the pain becomes unbearable. the pain-type solution functions as a painkiller or a placebo. we can reduce pain either chemically by taking painkillers such as aspirin and opiate, or psychologically: “humans also use various psychological tricks for pain relief.” (soper, 2022, p. 95). some of the common mind games include distractions, finding some meaning or benefits for the suffering, reappraisal (peacock & wong, 1990), and pursuing a self-transcendental goal (wong, arslan et al., 2021). there is already a considerable literature on meaning-focused coping (eisenbeck et al., 2021; park & folkman, 1997; riley & park, 2014; wong et al., 2006). since these mind-games clearly involve the cerebral cortex, they can also be classified as brain-type solutions. research has also shown that mindfulness meditation is effective in reducing pain (harvard heath publishing, 2019; inamdar, 2020); mindfulness reduces the sensorial and emotional reaction to pain by training the mind to observe the here and now with the mental skills of focused attention and detachment from self, thus involving both the pain type and the brain type. therefore, the boundary between these two types of solutions can easily break down. that is why i have a very difficult time deciding whether a particular pain control mechanism mentioned in this book is a pain type or brain type. it does not help when soper specifies that the brain type involves the function of degrading or denying the intellectual means to carry out the plan of suicide. various kinds of mental disorders such as delusion and psychosis actually save people from committing suicide. however, many brain-type solutions, such as mindfulness meditation or christian contemplative prayer (center for action and contemplation, 2020), cannot be considered as degraded mental states; on the contrary, they rather reflect an enlightened mental state, higher consciousness or a fully developed relational and spiritual brain (see siegal, 2016, 2018). we need a better way to differentiate these two types of solution to pain. for example, we can rename the “brain-type” as the “wisdom-type” to highlight the cognitive aspects of pain control and the wisdom of the ego (vaillant, 1994). we may also rename “pain-type” as the “emotive-type” to highlight the affective aspects of pain management. soper knows very well that there are different pathways to reduce or block pain: “the central nervous system is a complex network of channels and gates, with checkpoints where the intensity of incoming pain messages can be turned up or down, and sometimes blocked altogether, depending on the organism’s wider needs at the time.” (soper, 2022, p. 92). 1 according to ho, there are reports of suicides by children as young as six years old, but there is a lack of scientific documentation (bizarrepedia, 2016). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 pain control is a complex process with more than one kind of mechanism and feedback loop. therefore, it is difficult to employ a binary approach to decide whether the mechanism at work is of the pain type or the brain type. most likely, it involves both pain and brain mechanisms in different degrees. in any given context, pain can be best managed by either focusing on the numbing of sensorial and emotional reaction or by transforming the perception and cognitive processing of painful reality with wisdom of the ego (vaillant, 1998) or wisdom of the mind and soul (siegal, 2016, 2018). 4. the dual systems of life protection and life expansion another area of difficulty for me is soper’s football metaphor of the two levels of defense – “keeper” represents the last line of defense and “fender” the first line of defense. but in an actual football game, the best defense is offence. teamwork and a versatile strategy of playmaking are important for winning the game. a good last line of defense can be quickly turned into an offence when there is an opportunity to score against the rival team. similarly, for pain control, we also need a more fluid way of conceptualizing the process of preventing and transforming pain. it may be helpful to consider some kind of dialectically interactive dual systems such as avoidance (yin) and approach (yang). the two basic physiological or psychological systems represent the basic adaptive functions of life protection and life expansion, or yin and yang coping strategies (wong, 2012). when times are good or when people feel that they have sufficient resources, they naturally want to expand their life force and life field, not worrying about obstacles or failures. however, when they encounter serious danger or opposition, and when nothing seems to work, it may be wise for them to resort to the life protection function of retreat and regroup. a time of pause, wuwei (or doing what is natural, spontaneous, and meritorious without expecting anything in return; wikipedia, 2022), may be needed in order to figure out a better strategy to turn defeat into triumph. thus, our happiness is relative to both the degree of adversity we encounter and the level of wisdom of adaptation we possess. at the physiological and mechanistic level, the dual-systems involves the wisdom of the body according to walter cannon (1963), who theorized that the body knows how to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems in order to maintain homeostasis. it also involves hans selye’s (1956/1978) fight-or-flight coping mechanism. however, in a complex, digital society, the instinctual mechanisms may not work in some situation. for example, we often do not have a single visible enemy like a dangerous predator in the jungle because we are fighting against external threats such as artificial intelligence and robots outside of human control. similarly, we cannot escape from ourselves, and we have to confront and come to terms with our inner demons, such as the evils of greed, pride, envy, and power hunger. freud’s ego defenses may seem to be irrational and pathological to an observer but may protect health and save lives. vaillant (1994) identified four levels of defenses: 1) psychotic: delusion and denial, 2) immature: projection and fantasy, 3) neurotic: displacements and repression; and 4) mature: altruism and sublimation. all four levels of defense mechanisms may be employed and combined in a creative manner to turn suffering and tragedy to happiness and suffering, due to the brain’s marvelous capacity for synthesis and creativity. both vaillant and soper recognize the importance of organized religion, theistic and nontheistic spirituality, personal myth, meaning/purpose, and self-transcendence, which are typically considered as manifestation of the spiritual dimension of personhood (frankl, 1946/1985; emmons, 2003; van deurzen, 2011). therefore, they may be also considered as wisdom http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 of the soul for their contributions to personal growth and the betterment of humanity (moore, 1994; needleman, 2012; wong, 2021b). it is especially worth noting that some of soper’s fenders are related to the three classical christian ideals (faith, hope and love), which are the hallmarks of the wisdom of the soul. the following quotes clearly illustrate these fenders as also function as the highest kind of life intelligence – wisdom of the soul. regarding love, soper recognizes that “it is good for our mental health to have a daily agenda setter, preferably outside of our direct egoistic needs – that is, something or someone to love” (soper, 2022, p. 149). since most pain is social, anything we do to care for others contribute to pain-reduction and healing. the golden rule of loving others as ourselves represent a universal moral law to have compassion for others as for ourselves. self-help groups, faith communities, altruism, prosocial behavior, or self-transcendence (mayer & vanderheiden, 2021; wong, arslan et al., 2021) are examples of activities one can get involved in to reduce pain, mental illness, and suicide. love is also related to the god archetype: “a bright future awaits because god(s), karma, the great spirit, or what you will, is good. maybe not completely good, but at least steered by a moral compass. in this light, we can see the divine agents of religions not as parasites or cognitive errors, but as personifications of a benevolent order.” (soper, 2022, p. 179). faith in god(s) or a higher power is not just an option, but an imperative for mental health: “it is not that we can’t help but see a super-natural purpose — it is that we need to believe it. human thriving, sanity, indeed our survival, depend on our conviction that some benign order holds sway over our lives.” (soper, 2022, p. 177). “the universal solution to emotional pain, and the unifying offer of all therapeutic paradigms, and all religions, is hope.” (soper, 2022, p. 207). faith gives us a sense of calling or purpose for living (wong, 2014). faith also gives us a sense of tragic optimism, which is hope against hope (leung et al., 2021). in sum, faith in god(s) plays an over-arching role for both life protection and life expansion at all three levels of wisdom in order to reduce pain and suicide. faith helps us transcend our inherent human limitations in learning how to know our true self, how to relate to others, and how to connect with the vast unknown and unknowable transcendental realm. faith gives us hope in a happy future and it also deepens our empathy and compassion for ourselves and others (mayer, 2021). together, faith, hope, and love are the spiritual origin of happiness. there is already some empirical support that the origin of happiness may be from the soul (yang et al., 2021). 5. conclusions soper’s pain-brain theory may be considered a new framework for both suicide prevention and a general theory of relativity for mental health and wellbeing. it is surprisingly similar to my existential positive psychology perspective (wong, 2021c). yes, happiness is the first principle, and it can trump suffering as seligman (2003) proposed almost two decades ago. but soper shows us that happiness can trump suffering not by avoiding it or working around it, but by confronting and overcoming it with all the happiness-enhancing resources (ho, 2014), especially the wisdom of the soul (faith, hope, and love). to better understand the importance of this spiritual triad, i have conceptualized it as the golden triangle of self-transcendence (see figure 1; wong, 2019). the golden triangle explains why faith, hope, and love are needed to meet our basic mental health needs for meaningful work, loving relationship, and spiritual faith, resulting in true happiness and fulfillment. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 figure 1. the golden triangle of self-transcendence. another important contribution from soper is that balance or harmony is the essence of happiness (world happiness report, 2022). the important lesson to achieve life intelligence in general and wisdom of the soul in particular is learning how to navigate an adaptive balance between realism and idealism, suffering and happiness, self-care and self-sacrifice. we need “an honest facing of facts – a getting real that could bring practical benefits in reducing misery and saving lives.” (soper, 2022, p. 196). but this needs to be balanced by cultivating our resources (wong, 1993) and affirming our triumphant idealism: “each of us has the task of nurturing our own faith in the goodness of the world and its people – and living up to that belief.” (soper, 2022, p. 208). this is the same argument i have made for years that we need to face and embrace the dark side of human existence (wong, 2021c). the benefit of this realism is that it will not lead us to sadness and despair. quite the contrary, it actually deepens our need to create and maintain an invisible paradigm of a benign and beautiful world. there is actually no contradiction between seligman’s positive psychology (pp) and my existential positive psychology (pp2.0) because both are two sides of the same coin, or two ways of finding happiness when times are good or when times are bad. in times of suffering, pp2.0 is more needed. a general theory of mental health and wellbeing must integrate both sides, as argued more compellingly by soper in his book. to recap, fulfilling our need for happiness is made much more difficult by the rapid progress in science and technology and inevitable process of materialism and secularization. the change has become too fast and too much to adapt to for the ordinary mind without advanced training in science and technology. that is because the traditional values and ways of living has been displaced, and there is no adequate replacement to meet the basic human need for meaning, love, and faith. as a result of the above changes, our basic psychological needs for significance and connections are not met, and we are like fish without water (wong, 2020b; wong, arslan et al., 2021). a general theory of wellbeing, according to both soper and i, points to the direction of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 meeting our basic needs for meaningful work, loving relationships, and spiritual faith to restore positive mental health (figure 2). both of us have also emphasized that we need to navigate an adaptive balance between happiness and suffering so that we can achieve positive mental health and flourishing. from rather different perspectives, soper and i independently arrive at the same conclusion that we need to develop a relativity theory of mental health and wellbeing, which posits that whether suffering leads to suicide or flourishing depends on the wisdom of the soul and social interest or a caring community (adler, 2009). this general theory suggests that a fully happy brain (breuning, 2015), even in times of suffering, depend on developing the wisdom of the soul (mclaughlin & mcminn, 2022; siegal, 2018; vaillant, 1998). figure 2. basic physical health and mental health needs. my parting thought is that we really need more research to discover why people have the uncanny propensity and ability to turn heaven into hell, and to create hell for themselves for no apparent reasons (cowden et al., 2021; ho et al., 2022). the general theory of mental health and wellbeing is to enable people to live the best possible bittersweet life (cain, 2022) of turning hell into heaven and preventing the self-destructive act of turning heaven into hell. the general theory also teaches us how to meet our basic needs for mental health as illustrated by the golden triangle. most peoples’ assumptions about the self, others, and god are misguided because they are either too idealistic or too pessimistic. this general theory shows us a way of navigating an optimal balance even in the worse possible situations. in view of the above, i highly recommend this book. in fact, i suggest that this book or this review should be recommended to anyone who is struggling with the problem of “to be or not to be.” http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ review of the evolution of life worth living wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 conflict of interest statement the author has no known conflict of interest to disclose. funding this research received no external funding. author paul t. p. wong trent university dr.paul.wong@gmail.com references adler, a. 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(2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 98–104. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.7 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: acacia parks interview by aaron jarden acacia parks is an assistant professor of psychology at hiram college and completed her phd with martin seligman at the university of pennsylvania. acacia’s area of expertise is in positive interventions and applying positive psychology using new technologies. what prompted you to become interested in positive psychology? my interest was a marriage between my original interest and my advisors’ interests. it grew from first talking to marty seligman about research ideas when i was still applying for graduate school, and conversations with a couple of prospective research advisors. whenever you’re starting graduate school there is a compromise between what you’re interested in, and what your advisor is interested in. i came in with an interest in preventing depression using cognitive therapy. i thought that that was a really cool model instead of treating. by the time i had talked to marty about that, the positive psychology thing was just starting to gear up and he was beginning to think about this positive intervention idea. he suggested to me that cognitive therapy stuff for prevention was not really where the future was headed, and what we’re going to do instead is this wellness approach, this improving wellbeing. that’s going to do the same thing, only better; and that really resonated with me, it sounded really promising because one of the problems that they had with cbt was that people struggle with it, especially if you’re not depressed already. why would you do all this difficult stuff for depression? it wasn’t really compelling to people in the way that happiness is. so, we started talking about positive interventions and it all just blossomed from there. we developed this manual, and everything i’ve done has been steps beyond that. so your area in positive psychology, would you describe it as positive interventions? yes, totally. and how long have you been working in this area? since i started graduate school, which was in 2003. in general terms, in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? i think about positive psychology as being split into a basic theory and then applied sections. there are some really fundamental areas, like [barbara] frederickson’s positive emotion research, where ‘i can think of applications but that’s not the purpose of the research’; the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 research is ‘we want to understand the function that emotions serve’. areas like that are basic science contributions. [shelly] gables’ work about relationships has been translated into interventions, but it’s about relationship processes, not interventions. they did not do that research seeking to come up with an application. areas like that, i feel, are a more theoretical piece. on the other hand, there’s this more applied piece where we say, ‘what’s the outcome we want?’ and ‘how can we work backwards to figure out how to best do that?’; and that’s where the positive intervention research comes in. also, things like coaching and workplace situations and trying to change organizations fit in that applied sector. so i see positive psychology as having those two areas. a lot of fields have that kind of split, though, so it’s not really what makes positive psychology distinctive. what’s really unique about positive psychology is the interplay between researchers—both basic and applied—and practitioners. unlike clinical psychology, which is broken in half and has been trying for decades to bridge the ‘gap between science and practice,’ our practitioners want very much to do what is research-based. they are a huge asset to us. i think they could be even more of an asset if we (researchers) spent more time talking to them and learning from them. but yeah, if you look at various subfields of psychology, i’m not sure you’ll find any other area where practitioners are so eager to learn more about the science, and to put science into practice. when you think of the big questions that positive psychology addresses, what are the questions that stand out to you? that’s a really interesting question, because in some ways i see that there is no difference from other areas of psychology that are trying to change behavior. of course, i’m biased because i’m an intervention researcher. i think about positive psychology and then i think about the applied half, because that’s the half that i work in, but to me it’s about ‘how do you get a person to change their behavior?’, which i think is applicable to therapy research, health psychology and to a variety of parts of psychology. it’s not unique to positive psychology. what’s new and different are the outcomes we are interested in, and the specific behaviors we are trying to change. but a lot of it is just, ‘how do you get something to stick?’, ‘how do you get people to change their ideas?’, and that flows through social psychology and other areas as well. but i do think that those are the central questions. what do you think are some of the most valid criticisms that the field of positive psychology faces to date? one thing i worry about is the rate at which things become applied. i remember when we first started talking about positive interventions in the popular media in 2004 and those things started to get published. those things were already getting used out in the world. for example, coaches were using them, people were hearing about them in the news and using them, and we just had this one study. but that’s just how it seems to go, it’s very fast moving, and the second that news gets out that something is helpful in a single study, it’s all over the place. on one hand that’s really cool, because it’s getting out there, but on the other hand, it’s a little worrisome because you wonder ‘what if there’s a mistake in the data analyses?’, or if this was just a funny sample that doesn’t replicate. it’s already out there. it’s too late by then. so i worry about that a little bit, more so than in fields like clinical psychology, which i think may be overly cautious and overly slow to get things out there. things get out here even faster than you can keep hold of them. people who argue about that have a valid point, especially when it positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 comes to research findings that are lost in translation somewhat. one critique that positive psychology gets a lot from people like [barbara] ehrenreich and james coyne is that positive psychologists tell people with cancer that they should just ‘buck up’ and that they should just be optimistic and they’ll do better. i don’t know anyone who actually says that, but what happens is that it gets out there to the popular media and misunderstood and mistranslated. then, all of a sudden, that is what positive psychology is saying to a good number of people. so i think in some ways we’re not as careful as we could be about the sound bites that we release into the ether, or about maintaining the integrity of those sound bites so that they are accurate. what happens is that people like barbara ehrenreich hear something that just isn’t what we’re saying, but by the time it gets to her it is, if that makes sense. so i think that there are definitely some messages from positive psychology that reach the general public that aren’t what we intended; and those messages, even though they are not the intended messages, may be harmful. i think that this is a valid criticism. what is your view on the relationship between a positive intervention and assessing the effectiveness of these interventions over time? i mean there are a lot of people doing interventions but not everyone is assessing whether they are working or not. what are your thoughts about that? in some sense, i’m always surprised when practitioners aren’t assessing whether something is working, even just within their practices. for example, when i did clinical training as a graduate student (i’m not a clinician, but i started off as one), every time we saw a client they took assessment measures. next time we saw them they took more assessment measures, so we were constantly checking to make sure that we were actually doing something. i know that that is a practice that a lot of practitioners use, but then i also know that there are practitioners who don’t. that’s effectiveness on a much smaller scale, but equally important. if you’re taking something that’s manualized and you’re trying to implement it in the real world, you want to make sure it’s working in your setting. you should check, you shouldn’t just assume that because the research says it’s going to work it will. but at the same time, you shouldn’t assume that the research is invalid and not even try using it in your setting, which is another thing that practitioners can do sometimes, in that they figure that this is not relevant to me, this wasn’t tested on my population. researchers and practitioners are both falling down on their responsibilities in terms of getting everything to the practitioners in a digestible way. but then there are also the practitioners being concerned with efficacy and understanding that there is literature out there that shows that judgment and intuition are not perfect, that they are flawed; so if you think that this is working because i think that it is working, that doesn’t always match up. what’s one aspiration you’ve got for the field of positive psychology? in five years from now, how would you like to see the field of positive psychology? i would like to see some way to get the general public to care about the difference between something that is empirically validated and something that is not. because right now i think that people are just as happy to read the secret as they are to read the how of happiness. each of these is not like the other, but to the general public they are all grouped in the same category: books about happiness. part of the onus of this is on us not to do research and then write a book and put it out into the ether and assume that that works, but to actually test the books. test the things that we are putting out there up against quackery and show that they are better, so that eventually the idea can get out to the general public that yes, there are lots of choices. positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 for example there is tony robbins, and he’s going to tell you how to get happier, and there is the secret, which says that if you think about being happy suddenly the world will attract happiness to you: and those ideas are not like what we are doing. we need some way to get the general public to be more discerning about that, so that they can tell the difference about something that’s tested and something that someone just made up one day. that would just be superb. what do you think is going to be the next hot topic for positive psychology over the coming few years? i know what i would like the new hot topic to be! one of the conference talks i’ve just heard was looking at how physiological measures may be an alternative to self-reporting. i’d really like to see an emphasis on measures other than self-report, which has been used in psychology for a long time. but the problem is that nobody has a viable replacement for it and it’s very cumbersome to do anything other than self-report. what i would love to see are methods that aren’t cumbersome, and that are alternatives to self-report. for example, wrist bands that measure your level of stress so you don’t have to ask a person how stressed out they were this last week, because you have aggregate data to show you how stressed out they were; and it’s not done with cortisol, because measuring cortisol levels is expensive. these other physiological measures we were unable to use because they were prohibitive in cost. an alternative can be a thing you can buy upfront, and put on your participants, and it doesn’t have on-going expense. so i would really love to see a move towards methods that assess happiness in a way that doesn’t alienate the economists because it’s not a hard outcome, it doesn’t alienate the medical people because it’s not a hard outcome either, but something that feels more real than self-reported happiness. i feel like this will not only strengthen the field because it will also address the criticism that people get really upset at the idea of self-reported happiness, but it will also help us learn a lot more about what we’re actually doing for people, what it actually means when we change their self-reported happiness. does that mean we’re changing their moment-to-moment happiness or just their retrospective evaluations of their lives? we can learn so much more from that kind of moment-to-moment data collection instead of retrospective self-report, which we know from a lot of researchers is totally flawed. i’d really like to see a movement towards more sophisticated data. we’re better than self-report, we just haven’t figured out how we want to be better than self-report yet. who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? i have got a lot of really excellent advice from shane lopez, who has edited numerous volumes, and as i have tried to move towards that myself, he just always has such sage wisdom. shane has been supportive, even when he barely knew me, when i was just becoming a graduate student. he has continued to be very supporting, knowledgeable and accessible. sonja lyubomirsky is another leader in the field who has been so supportive of me from the very beginning of my career. she has been a great mentor over the years. she got me started as a reviewer at the journal of positive psychology and nudged me towards associate editorship. more recently, sonja has been a great collaborator, too, and has graciously found time to contribute to both of my edited books. it takes a special kind of person to spend so much time and energy on someone who isn’t their own student. i am constantly grateful for her. the other person i really admire is ed diener, who is actually the epitome of positive psychology. he’s happy, he’s energetic, he’s curious, he’s engaged, he’s supportive, and he’s personable. ed positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 diener is to me a paragon, he is a truly happy person and something about interacting with him is a very lively and inspiring experience. who do you think are the other young emerging researchers who are doing great things? i think by now that people generally know todd kashdan. even though he’s not the old guard, he’s a whippersnapper who’s making noise and good trouble. what i love about todd is that he’s got balls of steel; he’s brave and oppositional, in just the way that the field needs. there’s such a strong status quo in any field, everyone is doing things their own way, then there’s todd, who just comes along and goes ‘no, no, not that way, this way, or some other way’. he gets people to think in a way that i really respect. i always try to get todd involved in anything that i do. for example if i’m in a symposium i always think, let’s get todd in here and see what he has to say because i think that this is really great, but i’m sure that there’s something that i haven’t thought of and todd has always thought of something that i haven’t. i’m also a big fan of michelle louis. she recently published a paper suggesting that talking about strengths as a fixed personality trait might make people less willing to work on them, figuring they are stable so what’s the point. very cool stuff. we need more people adding nuance to positive intervention research. not just, ‘do they work?’ but ‘when do they work and for whom?’ and ‘when might they backfire?’. what are your plans for the future? i just started in a new tenure track position, so i’m getting my lab settled and spending my startup and just trying to figure out what i’m going to be doing for the next few years. i’m really interested in this physiological measurement thing, so i’m hoping to drop some money on that and i’m also hoping to be doing ambulatory assessment—that’s the new fancy term for ‘experience sampling’—research. i think that’s the direction we’re headed in as a field. i’m hoping to establish myself there and i also have these teaching projects that i’m working on, for example, an edited book with positive psychology activities that’s going to be completed at the end of this summer. i’m hoping to continue along that line. for example, i am guest editing a special issue for the journal of positive psychology on ‘positive psychology and higher education’—that’s a passion of mine. i’ve been teaching positive psychology since i started in graduate school. that’s eight years now. i’ve taught positive psychology a lot and it’s always my favorite course to teach and i really like helping other people learn to teach it and mentor people in that area. so, i hope to continue that in addition to the research. for someone new to the field of positive psychology, what is one book that you would recommend they read first? although it’s an old standard, i really recommend the handbook of positive psychology. it’s been around since 2003 i think, and they have a new edition so it’s updated, but no book provides, for a researcher, a better basis in a really broad array of topics, and a great orientation to who is doing the lead research. for people interested in positive interventions in particular, i am working on a handbook of positive interventions that should be coming out in late 2012. i’m really excited about it. it’s got a nice line-up of contributors. what about for someone who’s not a researcher? for the general public, the how of happiness would provide the best overview. there are other good books, for example curious, but that is very specific. and authentic happiness is a great positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 book, but it is very theoretical. the how of happiness is a perfect mix of research summary that’s clear and digestible, and also actual techniques and things that people can try. reading them in that way is very helpful because it shows the things that researchers are having people do—this is what we mean by increasing happiness. so that is really nice. i always have my positive psychology students read the how of happiness because it’s such a good introduction to the field. so your area of expertise is positive psychology interventions. if someone comes to you and says they want to be happier, which ones would you suggest? it depends on the context. i’ve been consulting on this grant by chris kahler at brown and he’s adapting positive psychotherapy for smoking cessation. one of the things that they do in smoking cessation is start the intervention two weeks before they actually quit. one of the things they are trying to do in this intervention is frontload with a lot of positive emotion because positive emotion is a predictor of good outcomes. so they are trying to make people experience as much positive emotion as possible so they have this protective factor when they are trying to quit that’s going to predict their success. there are a couple of exercises in that situation where it seems really logical that they should start with that, for example, the gratitude visit has been demonstrated to have a very powerful but temporary effect, so if what you’re looking for is an immediate benefit to get a person moving, then the gratitude visit is a good choice because it’s very intense. but as a long-term technique the gratitude visit is not a good choice because it is not very reusable and its effects are lost very quickly. i recommended that and i also recommended ‘three good things’, which has a low-grade, but more sustained, benefit. so what they did was start with ‘three good things’. it takes a while for that to build up, but once it does, it is a sort of constant source of positive emotion. combine that with the gratitude visit so that you have an immediate increase from the gratitude visit and, by the time that’s faded, ‘three good things’ has picked up and will carry it in the longer term. they have different strengths as activities: one is more on-going and sustained and is effective but takes time, but in the time that it takes you can be doing this other activity that keeps the person interested and engaged. i think that those are examples of two activities that are helpful to most people. the other activities involve a lot more nuance and consideration of which is best for whom. but any time that i think of a prototypical positive intervention that i want people to stick with i think of those two as a place to start. is there anything that you would like to comment on in general that you think would be useful for somebody who doesn’t know about positive psychology and who is reading a book about positive psychology to find out a bit more? there are a lot of misconceptions about positive psychology. as somebody who has taught not just a positive psychology course, but also these freshman writing seminars on the topic of happiness, i’ve had a lot of exposure to the things people think about happiness, and a lot of these are very disturbing to me. one of these includes misconceptions about optimism. people think that it is great to be positive all the time, and that that is what optimism is; but there is so much more nuance to what optimism is as a concept, so much more than just thinking everything is going to work out all the time. what i try to explain to people is that optimism is much more about entertaining the possibility that things could work out. so, if you’re a pessimist you think that things are not going to work out, and then you don’t even bother, so of course it doesn’t work out because you didn’t try. but optimism is just keeping open the idea that it could work and trying, as if it will work, so that you maximize your chances of it positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 working. that’s the reason that optimists are more successful. it’s not magic, it’s effort, and your level of effort depends on what you expect. so maybe optimists are wrong some of the time because they might think that something is possible when it’s not; but people worry about there being some danger to that, like ‘oh what if they’re deluded, you know, they think that everything’s going to go right and then they’re lazy and they don’t do anything’. that’s not what happens at all. people who don’t do anything are the pessimists who think that it’s not going to work out in the first place. optimism is a really good example of something that just got lost in translation. everyone in positive psychology understands what it is and outside of positive psychology it became this ‘think positive’ mantra, which is not at all what optimism is. the other thing i think that people really misinterpret, going back to the earlier positive psychology and cancer example, is just because there are research findings that suggest that outlook affects your health, doesn’t mean that you should be telling people that they are responsible for what happens. there is such a difference in saying that something is predictive and telling somebody what they should do. marty seligman and others constantly say that we’re not prescribing, but people want prescriptions and people take prescriptions away. it’s in some ways on us to be careful about what we say because it will be made into a prescription no matter what. i think that the solution to that is not to refuse to make prescriptions, but to control the direction of the prescriptions. for example, if you’re going to report that people who have a more optimistic outlook survive cancer for longer, you should not say, ‘but there’s no prescription here, i’m just describing’. somebody else is going to make up the prescription and then it could be wrong. if you’re going to throw that idea out there, then in a way it’s your responsibility to harness it so the take home message is something that isn’t harmful. for example, in this situation the take home message might be, ‘if the person is coping well, don’t tell them that they are wrong’. bonnano has all this research about how people get a bad rap when somebody dies and they’re not doing poorly, for example when someone loses a spouse and they’re relieved because their spouse is out of pain, or because they were older, or had a disease, and they’re doing alright because they’re coping well, then people say, ‘you’re making a mistake and you must secretly be upset and you’re not expressing it’, and people get all this social flack for that. so it might be, in the cancer case, that you don’t give people flack if they’re doing alright. it’s possible to do alright and it’s acceptable to do alright. there’s no evidence for this idea that you need to do ‘grief work’, or that you have to be upset. there’s no evidence that it will come back to bite you if you don’t express some underlying distress. so, i think that you can turn that into a reasonable take home message that isn’t harmful to people. my recommendation is that people take control of that by doing it themselves. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz dahlen, m., thorbjørnsen, h., von heideken wågert, p., hellström, c., kerstis, b., lindberg, d., stier, j., & elvén, m. (2022). the comeback effect: how happy are people who have recovered from a covid-19 infection? international journal of wellbeing, 12(2), 114-133. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i2.2019 micael dahlen stockholm school of economics micael.dahlen@hhs.se copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 article the comeback effect: how happy are people who have recovered from a covid-19 infection? micael dahlen · helge thorbjørnsen · petra von heideken wågert · charlotta hellström birgitta kerstis · daniel lindberg · jonas stier · maria elvén abstract: there is already a large body of research on the dramatic negative effects of covid 19 on peoples’ mental and physical health. millions of people have died, and the pandemic has negatively influenced the lives of billions of people. luckily however, the vast majority of people infected with the virus, recovers. the happiness and wellbeing of these people have not been extensively studied. in the current paper, we ask the question: are people who have recovered from a covid-19 infection happier than those who have not been infected at all? building on previous research on hedonic adaptation and counterfactual thinking, we hypothesize, and find, that those who have had an infection appear slightly happier than others. the study relies on two surveys conducted in sweden during the pandemic in 2020 (n=1029) and 2021 (n=1788). keywords: covid-19; recovery; happiness; sweden; pandemic 1. introduction “a healthy person has a thousand wishes, a sick person only one”. most people can probably recognize the sentiment, even from having a common cold: nothing would make you happier than being well again. indeed, a study of about 1,000 swedes found that those who had recovered from a cold flu in the past seven days rated their life satisfaction slightly but significantly above the average (dahlen, 2016). the aim of this paper is to test whether the same applies to people who have recovered from a covid-19 infection: are people who have had a covid-19 infection as happy as – or perhaps even happier – than those who have not been infected at all? happiness is here conceptualized as global subjective wellbeing (cf. kim-prieto et al., 2005). there is a growing body of research on how the covid-19 virus indirectly impacts people’s happiness and subjective wellbeing. for instance, it has been found to reduce wellbeing by way of stress (e.g., vazquez et al., 2021), and restriction-induced impacts on physical activity (e.g., dahlen et al., 2021), and life situations, such as loneliness (e.g., stieger et al., 2021), work-life boundary-blurring (pluut & wonders, 2020), and financial worry (e.g., bono et al. , 2020). however, to the best of our knowledge, no study to date has investigated the effect on happiness of actually having been infected by the virus. since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, an estimated 420+ million people worldwide have been infected by the coronavirus. while the infection can be fatal or lead to critical illness, the vast majority recovers within a number of weeks. in february 2022, about 342 about:blank recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 million people were estimated to have recovered from the coronavirus (worldometers, 2022). are these people slightly happier than the average? we believe that the question would make sense in light of the previous finding that people recently recovered from the cold flu are happier, since, from a virological perspective, covid-19 is actually a mutated form of the corona cold flu virus (e.g., chathappady et al., 2021). our prediction of a happiness-boost after recovering for covid-19 is far from trivial. in fact, recent studies find that people’s actual post-recovery health is overall lower than before being infected with covid-19 (e.g., hampshire et al., 2021; higgins et al., 2021; xie et al., 2021). in general, poorer health would be associated with lower levels of happiness (debnar et al., 2021; palmore & kivett, 1977). hence, based on recent studies of covid-19 and ‘long-covid’ health effects, one would expect that people recovering from the infection would be less happy than those not infected. however, several factors also point in the other direction. from a theoretical perspective, there are reasons to believe that people who recovered from covid-19 could be a bit happier than the average. first, hedonic adaptation theory suggests that people to a large part adapt to a steady state, such as good (and bad) health, and therefore derive more or less happiness primarily when this steady state is upset for better or worse (e.g., brickman et al., 1978; lykken & tellegen, 1996). second, research on counterfactual thinking suggest that the relief and pleasure people derive from not having to experience something worse (death or serious illness) may inflate their overall happiness. relatedly, gratitude theory suggests that people can increase their happiness by appreciating what they have previously taken for granted, such as their health, or even being alive (e.g., frias et al., 2011). having a covid infection would both be an upset of the steady state of and a reminder not to take one’s health for granted. we put our main hypotheses of a positive comeback effect after recovering from an infection to the test in two independent surveys. the first was conducted in december 2020, and the second, which also tested whether recovered people rated their perceived health and gratitude higher, was conducted in april 2021. both studies were thus conducted in the midst of the pandemic and long before the later and ‘milder’ omicron-mutation was widespread. 2. literature review 2.1 hedonic adaptation: transitory versus long-term effects there is ample evidence that people adapt to steady states, so that effects of both positive and negative factors on happiness deteriorate over time. the weather is a classic example. a survey of residents in california and in the midwest found that both groups believed that those living in the more pleasant californian climate would be happier, but a comparison found that, in reality, they were not (schkade & kahneman, 1998). similarly, a study of us retirees found that, while expecting to be happier from relocating to a place with nice weather, after settling in, the weather had only marginal effect on their happiness (oishi et al., 2009). conversely, numerous studies have found that transitory weather signif icantly impacts people’ reported daily happiness. for example, people are happier than average when the sun is shining (kämpfer & mutz, 2013) and less happy when it is cloudy (barrington-leigh & behzadnejad, 2017), and also vary in daily happiness depending on the temperature and humidity (connolly, 2013), and wind (peng et al., 2016). hedonic adaptation has been described as a kind of psychological immune system, which mitigates the long-term effects on people’s wellbeing from even the most dramatic life events (wilson & gilbert, 2005). the theory has been used to explain why changes in marital status seem to impact happiness more than the marital status itself (lucas et al., 2003), why the increased http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 wellbeing derived from improvements in basic housing needs was found to have a half-life of about two years (galiani et al., 2018), why the majority of the positive effect of an income increase wears off in about the same time (di tella et al., 2010), and even why lottery winners and accident victims would eventually report comparable levels of daily mundane pleasure (brickman et al., 1978). related to the topic of this paper, people have been found to partially adapt to long-term illness (graham, 2011), permanent disability (oswald & powdthavee, 2008), and to deteriorating health with age, even into their 100s (jopp & rott, 2006). similar to the reported effects of transitory weather, we expect that transitory illness would have a parallel effect on people’s happiness, by way of upsetting their steady state of good health to which they have been immune. an international comparison of cohorts revealed that the levels of people’s satisfaction with their health differed far less than their actual levels of health, implying that they are indeed adapted to their steady states of health (graham, 2011). this would potentially explain why people reported slightly but significantly above average levels of happiness within one week of recovering from a common cold (dahlen, 2016), coming back to their state of good health. we believe that the notion of contrast, which was conceived by brickman and colleagues (1978) to explain how lottery winners fail to derive long-term happiness from having won in contrast to the peak feeling of winning, could be applied to recovering from a covid infection as well. that is, in contrast to suffering the infection, coming back to the steady state of good health would make people feel significantly better. 2.2 counterfactual thinking and gratitude the notion of a happiness boost as a result of people experiencing a contrast to a previous temporary negative state, also resonates well with the literature on counterfactual thoughts (roese & olson, 2014; teigen & jensen, 2010; yang, gu & galak, 2017). counterfactuals are potential alternatives states of the world that are mentally stimulated and spontaneously generated after an outcome is experienced (markman et al., 1993). imagining alternative circumstances worse than the current state (“i could have died!”) are conceptualized as downward counterfactual thinking. extant research suggest that such downward counterfactuals are more likely to occur when people obtain a positive outcome (e.g., recovering from a covid19 infection) and nearly avoid a negative outcome (e.g., not becoming seriously ill) (markman e t al., 1993; teigen & jensen, 2011). for instance, in a study of 85 individuals exposed to the tsunami disaster in southeast asia in 2004, teigen and jensen (2011) demonstrated that downward counterfactuals occurred 10 times more frequently than upward counterfactuals and that this contributed to peoples’ feeling of being fortunate and lucky. in fact, none of these 85 individuals considered themselves victims or unfortunate, and in a follow-up study two years later, 95% reported having been lucky. avoiding an (even more) negative outcome is thus associated with feelings of being lucky, and the closer people consider themselves to having been to the counterfactual alternative (seriously ill or dead), the luckier and more fortunate they feel. moreover, research on gratitude and happiness suggest that reflections on death and illness may lead to increased feelings of appreciation and gratitude (frias et al., 2002). as people are reminded that good health and even life are benefits that are not given, they become more grateful. the positive relationship between gratitude and happiness is fairly robust and well documented, both in correlational studies (e.g., mccullough, emmons & tsang, 2002) and experimental studies (e.g., frias et al., 2011; emmons & mccullough, 2003). hence, not only are gratitude and happiness correlated, but evidence also suggest that gratitude causes happiness and well-being. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 3. hypotheses together, previous research on hedonic adaptation, counterfactual thinking and gratitude suggest that recovering from a covid infection should lead to increased feelings of happiness. a covid-19 infection is a transitory, negative experience which not only leads to sickness and fatigue, but also introduces feelings of uncertainty, fear and potential refle ctions on death. recovering from covid-19 relieves these thoughts and states, introduces a stark contrast to suffering the infection, and likely induces counterfactual thinking (‘it could have gone wrong’) with related feelings of appreciation and gratitude. we argue that this will lead to a (transitory) boost in happiness, which will bring people that has recovered from covid-19 to a level of happiness that is higher than for people not being infected at all. hence, our main hypothesis is: h1. people who recovered from a covid infection rate their happiness higher compared to those who have not been infected with the virus. several recent studies on post covid-19 health effects (long-covid) point to a wide array of negative long-term effects of attracting the virus, including fatigue, neurocognitive disorders, mental health disorders, metabolic disorders, gastrointestinal disorders and cardiovascular disorders (al-aly, xie & bowe, 2021; hampshire et al., 2021; higgins et al., 2021; xie et al., 2021). together, these studies suggest that there indeed are significant overall negative long-covid health effects in the population, and that these effects are more pronounced for people with poorer baseline-health and for people who have had a more severe infection (e.g., hospitalized patients). although these long-covid health effects are significant and well-documented, we still expect that recovering from a covid infection will have an overall positive impact on peoples perceived health, and subsequent happiness. first, whereas recent estimates suggest that perhaps as many as 4-10% of those infected get long-covid health disorders (al-aly et al., 2021; xie et al., 2021), the vast majority (over 90%) do not. the changes in perceived health among those not affected by long-covid disorders will thus likely determine the direction of effects. second, extant research suggests that people’s perception of and satisfaction with their health differ far less than their actual levels of health (graham, 2011). long-covid effects may thus have a smaller impact on peoples perceived health and wellbeing than one might expect based on their health data. the reason why we expect that recovering from covid, on average, will positively influence people’s perceived health is also twofold: first, by way of contrast, their (steady state) health will seem better coming back from a period of illness. second, the infection would potentially lower people’s aspiration levels pertaining to their own health. aspiration has been used to explain why people adapt and fail to derive happiness from previous events and steady states. for example, sheldon and lyubomirsky (2012) found that students who experienced positive life events also raised their aspiration levels in the same domains so that what they had achieved did not suffice to make them happier. graham (2011) reports on similar patterns related to health, where people in countries with higher health levels overall seem to also have higher health aspiration levels, and do not necessarily rate their health satisfaction higher. conversely, we expect that a lowered aspiration level would make people rate their perceived health higher. associating a covid infection with a lowered health aspiration level resonates with this paper’s beginning quote, “a healthy person has a thousand wishes, a sick person only one”: to recover. therefore, regardless of the actual and absolute level of health, we hypothesize http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 that people who come back from a covid infection rate their perceived health higher: h2. people who recovered from a covid infection rate their perceived health higher compared to those who have not been infected with the virus. an additional reason why we expect that recovering from a covid infection will have a positive impact on happiness is that people will feel more grateful in general, for being alive. gratitude theory suggests that being grateful mitigates hedonic adaptation by way of appreciating things that over time have been taking for granted, such as previous positive life events and achievements (e.g., sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2012) or a steady state of good health (e.g., jansbeken et al., 2020; watkins et al., 2003). whereas gratitude can be conceived of as both a trait and an intervention (e.g., witvliet et al. , 2019), it can potentially also be evoked by critical life events. for example, having a near-death experience can make people more grateful for being alive (frias et al., 2011), and people recovering from suicidal ideation may report above average appreciation of life (bryan et al., 2021). these findings also align well with the research on downward counterfactual thinking and feelings of luck and gratitude (teigen & jensen, 2011). if the factual outcome is better than the imagined, counterfactual, alternative, people likely feel lucky and likely experience feelings of gratitude. we believe that a similar logic can be applied to recovering from a covid infection. the infection can be fatal, of which most people are aware, meaning that coming back from the infection can indeed be conceived of as coming back to life (e.g., dahlen & thorbjornsen, 2021). but even with milder symptoms and without reflections on mortality and death, we expect that coming back from documented illness would evoke a greater appreciation for health and gratitude for (steady state) life. therefore, we hypothesize: h3. people who recovered from a covid infection rate their gratitude higher compared to those who have not been infected with the virus. 4. study 1 for the test of our main hypothesis, we used a demographically representative sample (49.5% females, mean age 50.6 yrs., age span 18-79 yrs.) that was retrieved from the novus sweden panel during the first two weeks of december 2020 for the purpose of gauging physical activities, health and life changes during the pandemic. a total of 1,029 of swedes (response rate 52%) anonymously filled out a questionnaire, which also included a question about whether they had been diagnosed with and recovered from a covid infection, which we used for testing our hypothesis. the participants were informed that they consented to be included in the study by answering the web-based questionnaire. the study was conducted in accordance with the declaration of helsinki (world medical association, 2013). all personal data connections were deleted after the material was collected and were not accessible to the researchers in the present study. 4.1 measures people answered “yes” or “no” to the question, “have you recovered from a diagnosed covid infection?” happiness was gauged with a two-item measure of global subjective wellbeing (cf. kimprieto et al., 2005), “how satisfied are you with life right now” and “how would you rate your wellbeing right now” on an 11-point scale from 0-10 (r = .83). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 4.2 data analyses the hypotheses were analyzed using anova and correlational analyses in spss. 4.3 results out of the 1,029 respondents, 55 (5.3%) answered “yes”, and 974 (94.7%) answered “no” to the question whether they had recovered from a diagnosed covid infection. in line with our hypothesis, those who had recovered from an infection rated directionally higher (m = 6.79) than those who had not been infected (m = 6.45). however, the difference was not statistically significant (t = 1.17, p = .12). we also conducted an exploratory correlational analysis between the happiness measure and a single-item measure of reported health (1 “very poor” – 5 “excellent”). interestingly, the correlation was greater in the covid-recovered group (r = .67) than in the non-infected group (r = .51), z = 1.74, p = .04. while the mean happiness ratings did not differ significantly between the groups, the direction was in line with our hypothesis. the correlational analysis gave some credence to the notion that people who had recovered from a covid infection derived greate r happiness from their health than those who had not been infected. we therefore conducted a new survey a few months later, to test our main hypothesis when a greater number of people had recovered from the infection, and to also test our additional hypotheses. 5. study 2 a survey was distributed on facebook during the second week of april 2021. a total of 1,788 swedes (60% females, mean age 53.8 yrs., age span 19-85 yrs.) anonymously filled out the questionnaire, the respondents were informed that they consented to be included in the study by answering the web-based questionnaire. the study was conducted in accordance with the declaration of helsinki (world medical association, 2013). 5.1 measures people answered “yes” or “no” to the question, “have you recovered from a diagnosed covid infection?” we also included the option, “have started or finished vaccination treatment”. happiness was gauged with a three-item measure of global subjective wellbeing (cf. kim-prieto et al., 2005),” i am satisfied with my life right now”,” i am satisfied with my life overall”, and “i have a happy life”, on a 10-point scale from 1 (completely disagree) 10 (completely agree), alpha = .92. the three-item measure was chosen for robustness in the replication of study 1, as well as for multivariate analyses with the other dependent variables. perceived health was measured with two items, “my health is good” and “i am satisfied with my health”, on a 10-point scale from 1 (completely disagree) 10 (completely agree), r = .86. gratitude was measured with three items, “i am grateful to be alive”, “i appreciate life” and “i am grateful overall”, on a 10-point scale from 1 (completely disagree) 10 (completely agree), alpha = .90. 5.2 data analyses the hypotheses were analyzed using anova and correlational analyses in spss 5.3 results out of the 1,788 respondents, 272 (15.1%) answered “yes”, and 1396 (78.2%) answered “no” to the question whether they had recovered from a diagnosed covid infection. an additional 112 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 (6.3%) had started or finished vaccination treatment. correlations between the three dependent variables are reported in table 1. table 1. descriptive statistics and correlation between the dependent variables, study 2 n m sd happiness perceived health gratitude happiness 1768 6.85 2.06 perceived health 1768 6.51 2.24 .53** gratitude 1768 8.12 1.82 .72** .50** ** < .001 before testing the hypotheses separately, we first ran a mancova with covid infection (recovered vs not infected) as a factor, happiness, perceived health and gratitude as dependent variables, and including age and sex as covariates. the factor produced significant effects on all three dependent variables while controlling for age and sex, f(3,1646) = 3.90, p = .009. next, we subjected the hypotheses to t-testing (table 2). table 2. differences in happiness, perceived health and gratitude, study 2 recovered from covid infection not infected m sd m sd t p cohen’s d happiness 7.18 2.00 6.78 2.06 3.03 .003 .20 perceived health 6.87 2.01 6.47 2.27 2.96 .003 .18 gratitude 8.38 1.58 8.06 1.86 2.93 .004 .17 in support of our main hypothesis h1, those who had recovered from a covid infection rated their happiness significantly higher (m = 7.18) than those who had not been infected (m = 6.78), t =3.03, p = .003. similarly, and in support of h2, those who had recovered from a covid infection also rated their perceived health significantly higher (m = 6.87) than those who had not been infected (m = 6.47), t =2.96, p = .003. finally, and in support of h3, those who had recovered from a covid infection rated their gratitude significantly higher (m = 8.38) than those who had not been infected (m = 8.06), t =2.93, p = .004. for additional comparison, the mean happiness of the people who had started or finished vaccination treatment (m = 6.90) rated between the two groups, not significantly different from those who had not been infected (and not started vaccination), t =0.61, p =.54, nor from the comeback group (t =1.23, p =.12). we used the preacher-hayes approach (model 4, 5000 bootstrapping samples, 95% confidence interval, as recommended by hayes et al. 2011) to test whether perceived health and gratitude would be parallel mediators of the comeback effect on happiness. the comeback effect was significant on both perceived health (0.40, 95% ci: 0.10–0.69), and gratitude (0.31, 95% ci:0.08– 0.55). the indirect effects on happiness were also significant through both perceived health, (0.08,95% ci:0.02–0.24), and gratitude (0.22, 95% ci:0.06–0.72). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 6. discussion and implications this paper investigated whether there is a potential comeback effect from recovering from a covid-19 infection, which would make people a bit happier than the average. our conclusion from two independent surveys is that there might be such an effect. while failing to reach statistical significance in the first survey with only a small number of people having been infected and recovered, the pattern was similar in both studies and reached significance with a larger sample in the second study. our findings resonate with hedonic adaptation theory, which suggests that people’s happiness may be more impacted by changes and transitory states than by steady states. applying this notion to transitory covid infections, we found that people were indeed a little bit happier than people who had retained a steady state of health. the study findings are also consistent with the literature on counterfactual thinking and luck. however, future research should further investigate the explanatory mechanisms underlying the effects revealed in the current study. other mechanisms may be at play as well. for instance, the prospect of getting seriously sick, or even dying, from a covid-19 infection, is a negative scenario carrying significant levels of unpleasant uncertainty for those infected. previous research has demonstrated that when an emotional event is negative, uncertainty enhances unhappiness (herrmann & wortman, 1985; wiggins et al., 1992). hence, removing negative uncertainty may boost happiness. previous research in both psychology and economics have studied the relief and pleasure people derive from not having to experience a negative outcome (yang, gu & galak, 2017). such feelings, as a result of favorable uncertainty resolution (e.g., recovering from c ovid19), thus likely enhance happiness (yang, gu & galak, 2017; wiggines et al., 1992). whereas such a ‘comeback effect’ in happiness seem to be present for the recovery of covid-19 and milder infections such as cold flu (cf. dahlen, 2016), future research should investigate whether this also applies more serious, complex and long-term diseases such as cancer. the correlational and cross-sectional design of the current studies put significant restraints on the causal inferences and conclusions to be made. one could, for instance, argue for a reverse causation: what if happy people are less afraid of covid, and thus get infected more often? although we cannot rule out such an explanation based on the current data, extant research suggest it is very unlikely. first, previous studies suggest that higher happiness reduces (rather than increases) the risk of getting ill or infected. while no study has applied this to covid, it has been proven for anything from colds to chronic diseases (e.g., cohen et al., 2003; lyubomirsky, 2005; marsland et al., 2006). second, a recent study finds that happy people are more prone to comply with restrictions to minimize risk of becoming infected (krekel et al., 2020). these findings, in combination with the results of our two studies, where the effect on happiness is mediated by perceived health and gratitude (study 2), make us more confident in arguing that happiness follows rather than precedes infection. what could be an additional factor in explaining our findings though, is the fact that people after having had an infection, may have enjoyed more freedom (less restrictions and less worries) as compared to those not infected. future studies should further investigate the correlates and psychological mechanisms underlying this effect. for instance, people who have recovered from the virus might also be more inclined to go out and maintain social relationships than others – a factor that certainly is positively correlated with both happiness and gratitude. in the current study, we hypothesized and found that recovering from a covid infection also would make people rate their perceived health higher. of course, using a cross-sectional, rather than longitudinal, design, we cannot rule out the possibility that the differences in perceived health would correspond to pre-existing differences in actual health between the two groups that http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 would not be related to the covid infection. however, it would be plausible to assume that potential pre-existing differences in actual health would be equally likely to work in the opposite direction, whereby those with lower rather than higher health ratings are more susceptible to the infection. we also hypothesized and found that recovering from a covid infection mitigated hedonic adaptation by way of not taking one’s health, or being alive for granted. those coming back from the infection rated their general gratitude and appreciation of life slightly higher. due to the temporary nature of hedonic adaptation, we would not expect the comeback effect to be enduring. we did not gauge the elapsed time from recovery, as the samples would be too small, but in all likelihood, the average time elapsed would be far greater than the time frames of a few days or weeks for previously investigated transitory effects, such as the weather or a common cold. it seems plausible that the transitory effect of recovering from an infection would be longer, partly because the infection itself lasted longer, and partly because the pandemic is still ongoing and very salient. in other words, people would be reminded more or less daily about the contrast of their recovered health vis a vis the infection. also, previous literature on downward counterfactual thinking and feelings of luck and gratitude (teigen & jensen, 2011) may suggest that these feeling linger longer. with larger samples and even more elapsed time in the ongoing pandemic, future research is very likely to find that the comeback effect from an infection dissipates gradually and will cease to exist after the pandemic. but we also believe that this unique situation, wherein a transitory effect would be prolonged by a salient contrast, could provide new perspectives to research on other transitory phenomena. for instance, people have been found to be less happy than average on cloudy days, but would this also be the case when these days are preceded by a rainy day (which would make a more favorable contrast to the present weather salient)? the findings in the current study put renewed focus on the importance of counterfactual thinking and gratitude in life. in line with previous research on gratitude and happiness, the study results suggest that reflections on illness and negative alternative outcomes may lead to increased feelings of appreciation and gratitude (frias et al., 2002). perhaps people should more frequently be reminded that good health and even life are benefits that are not given, in order to become more grateful and happier? as potential paths for future research, linking the research streams on hedonic adaptation, counterfactual thinking, and uncertainty resolution, may provide new insights into the longitudinal vs. transitory effects of covid-19 and related phenomena. for instance, although previous research on hedonic adaptation suggest that people quickly return to their own baseline level of happiness after both positive and negative events, research on counterfactual thinking and luck (and even supernatural beliefs) suggest that the effects on gratitude and how fortunate people perceive themselves to be may be more enduring. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors micael dahlen stockholm school of economics micael.dahlen@hhs.se http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ recovery from covid-19 dahlen, thorbjørnsen, von heideken wågert, hellström, kerstis, lindberg, stier, & elvén www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 helge thorbjørnsen center for applied research at nhh (snf) norwegian school of economics helge.thorbjornsen@nhh.no petra von heideken wågert mälerdalen university petra.heideken.wagert@mdu.se charlotta hellström mälerdalen university charlotta.hellstrom@mdu.se birgitta kerstis mälerdalen university birgitta.kerstis@mdu.se daniel lindberg mälerdalen university daniel.lindberg@mdu.se jonas stier mälerdalen university jonas.stier@mdu.se maria elvén 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(2015). differences of novice to black belt aikido practitioners in mindfulness: a longitudinal study. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 63-71. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.4 john lothes university of north carolina wilmington lothesj@uncw.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 article differences of novice to black belt aikido practitioners in mindfulness: a longitudinal study john lothes · robert hakan · kirk mochrie abstract: the martial art aikido may be useful in the development of mindfulness (lothes, hakan, & kassab, 2013) and is often philosophically referred to as a meditation in motion, because of the heightened awareness that is ascribed to the training (dobson & miller, 1978; saotome, 1986, 1989). fuller (1988) argued that martial arts training, especially aikido, has the potential for positive psychological effects such as increased self-control, increased awareness of self and of others and overall increased health and wellbeing. davidson (2010) argues more longitudinal research needs to be done to examine the changes of mindfulness over time. the current study was a longitudinal assessment of mindfulness in five aikido students of the university of north carolina wilmington aikido club from their starting through to their obtaining their black belts (a minimum of five years of training). the kims/maas was administered to these participants at nine intervals over the time course of their advancement in aikido. results showed a significant increase of selfreported mindfulness from the beginning of training to the achievement of black belt status. since the length of time from starting to achieve the black belt is approximately five years minimum, this unique longitudinal study affords us the opportunity to see what long-term effects aikido training has on individual’s levels of mindfulness. keywords: aikido, mindfulness, wellbeing, positive psychology 1. introduction aikido is a specific type of martial arts training that involves basic body movements practiced individually (aiki taiso), and with a partner (tai sabaki) (lothes, hakan, kassab, 2013). “aiki taiso” involves an awareness component through breathing and exercises in balance, whereas “tai sabaki” allows the practitioner to learn cooperation and timing in movement. individuals are also taught basic techniques (kihon waza) to effectively throw, pin, and blend or adapt with other people (lothes, et al., 2013). individuals who practice aikido tend to increase overall awareness, awareness of body position, awareness of others around the aikido practitioner, awareness of their own emotional states, and how other people’s emotions may affect the aikido practitioner’s emotional states (lothes, et al., 2013; westbrook & ratti, 1970; shifflett, 1999). consequently, aikido has been described as meditation in motion (dobson & miller, 1978; saotome, 1986, 1989) and has been argued to have the potential for positive psychological effects (fuller, 1988). it has been suggested there is a link between aikido practice and mindfulness (lothes, et al., 2013). mindfulness has been considered a multifaceted construct which incorporates non-reactive observation and description, and acting with awareness without judgment (baer, smith, hopkins, kreitemeyer, & toney, 2006). further, aikido is likely to be related to mindfulness in the following ways: mindfulness of aikido technique, breathing, balance, center of gravity, and mailto:lothesj@uncw.edu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 connection to others (shioda, 1968, 1991; ueshiba, 1984). although it seems there may be an unambiguous relationship between mindfulness and aikido little literature addresses this relationship. we have recently begun to address this issue (lothes, et al., 2013). results from a betweengroup assessment showed aikido practitioners scored significantly higher on mindfulness measures than control participants with no martial arts training. also, black belts (dan ranks) scored significantly higher than non-black belts (kyu ranks) on measures of mindfulness. lothes, et. al. (2013) also examined longitudinal (over 6 months) data among aikido students and found that mindfulness scores increased among beginners (i.e. all those in kyu ranks). davidson (2010) argues longitudinal studies on mindfulness should be encouraged: "unless we had measures at different points along the continuum of training, we could not disentangle training effects from the study of those individuals who are likely to persist in such training" (p. 9). the present study attempts to extend our previous work by examining differences in mindfulness scores from novice to black belt aikido practitioners over a five-year period as compared to the six months that was assessed in the previous lothes, et al., (2013) study. since the length of time from starting to black belt is approximately five years minimum (see table 1), the present longitudinal study affords us the unique opportunity to examine the long-term effects of aikido training on mindfulness. 2. method 2.1 participants beginning students (no prior martial arts experience) of the university of north carolina wilmington aikido club were recruited for the study. five (1 woman, 4 men) people volunteered as aikido participants in the study. four caucasians and one african american participated in the study. the average age at start was 20.4 years old. the average age at black belt was 25.4. 2.2 measures the kentucky inventory of mindfulness skills (kims) and mindful attention awareness scale (maas) were used to assess mindfulness for this longitudinal study. the kentucky inventory of mindfulness skills and the mindfulness attention awareness scale are both empirically validated measurements of mindfulness. the kentucky inventory of mindfulness skills (kims; baer, smith, & allen, 2004) measures mindfulness with 39 items using a 5-point response scale. the kims includes statements about observing, describing, acting with awareness, and accepting without judgment (baer, smith & allen, 2004). total scores may range from 39 to 195, with higher scores indicating greater levels of self-reported mindfulness. internal consistency reliability has been demonstrated to be high (cronbach’s alpha of .87; baer, smith & allen, 2004). the mindfulness attention awareness scale (maas; brown & ryan, 2003) measures consciousness associated with enhanced self-awareness. participants respond to 15 statements on a 6-point scale. total scores may range from 15 to 90, with higher scores indicating greater self-awareness. internal consistency reliability has been determined to be high (cronbach’s alpha of .87; brown & ryan, 2003). internal consistency reliability for both the kims and the mmas in our study was good with cronbach’s alpha of .91 for kims and .91 for maas. mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 2.3 procedures and design aikido classes were offered four nights a week, with each training session lasting two hours. there was no randomization of assignment in this study since all students were self-selected. participants of the uncw aikido club paid dues of $25 per month to belong to the club and train. participants were asked if they would be willing to volunteer for a study examining the effects of aikido training on mindfulness after the third class that they attended. after individuals agreed to participate they were given informed consents to sign and received a copy for their records. to insure that all information remained confidential participants were asked to use code names and surveys were kept in the principal investigator’s office. initially mindfulness surveys were given to the participants to take home after they joined the club. then participants were assessed for mindfulness ratings using the kims and maas upon each successful completion of their belt test. this was a total of nine assessments from start to black belt (see table 1 below). table 1. ranks, approximate timing of rank achievement by standards, and estimated time of experience rank approximate timing of training estimated experience years / months 7th kyu 2 months training after starting 3 months 6th kyu 3 months training after 7th kyu 6 months 5th kyu 4 months training after 6th kyu 11 months 4th kyu 5 months training after 5th kyu 1 yr 4 months (16 months) 3rd kyu 6 months training after 4th kyu 2 yrs (24 months) 2nd kyu 8 months training after 3rd kyu 2 yrs 8 months (32 months) 1st kyu 10 months training after 2nd kyu 3 yrs 8 months (44 months) shodan 1st degree black belt, 12 months after 1st kyu 4 yrs 8 months (56 months) nidan 2nd degree black belt, min. 24 months after shodan 7 yrs (84 months) as aikido students moved through their training, they were required to display a certain proficiency in understanding of technique and pass a belt test administered by one or more instructing black belts before being approved to move onto the next belt rank. measurements of mindfulness were conducted after a participant successfully completed each belt test according to the aikido world alliance testing standards. in addition to passing their belt tests each participant was required to undertake a minimum time of training between each test as shown in table 1. though these are minimum time requirements before an individual is allowed to be tested for the next belt, it is not uncommon for someone to take 5 years or longer to achieve a black belt in aikido. 3. results one-way repeated measures anovas were used to assess the effect of aikido training on mindfulness scores on the kims and the maas from start to black belt (shodan). as illustrated by figures 1 and 2 below, there was a significant effect of aikido experience on the kims measures of mindfulness between start (m = 130.40, sd = 14.064) and shodan (black belt) (m =158.80, sd = 16.41) (wilks lambda = 19.695, f1,4 = 2.462 p <. 0334, η2= .821) and also for the maas mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 between start (m = 60.60, sd = 10.74) and shodan (black belt) (m =70.80, sd = 13.31) (wilks lambda = 18.201, f1,3 = 2.275, p <.05, η2= .783). figure 1: mean scores for kims start and kims shodan (black belt) scores figure 2: mean scores for maas start and maas shodan (black belt) scores table 2 below presents post-hoc assessments of kims scores, which showed that the significant repeated measures outcome was accounted for primarily by differences between start and 3rd kyu (p < .01), start and shodan (p < .02), and 7th kyu and shodan (p < .04). these findings are illustrated in figure 3 below. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 maas start maas shodan m a a s m e a n s co re s 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 kims start kims shodan k im s m e a n s co re s mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 table 2: means table for kims scores after each successful belt test completion rank mean** standard deviation standard error kims start 130.40** 14.06 6.29 kims 7th kyu 127.20** 17.20 7.69 kims 6th kyu 136.20** 16.35 7.31 kims 5th kyu 138.40** 12.52 5.60 kims 4th kyu 140.20** 16.68 7.46 kims 3rd kyu 145.80** 14.04 6.28 kims 2nd kyu 139.80** 19.50 8.72 kims 1st kyu 142.20** 17.66 7.90 kims shodan 158.80** 16.41 7.34 * indicates significant difference from start **indicates significant difference from 7th kyu figure 3: mean scores combined for kims at each successful belt test completion from start to shodan (black belt) table 3 below presents post-hoc assessments of maas scores, which showed that the significant repeated measures outcome was accounted for primarily by differences between start and 1st kyu (p < .02), 7th kyu and shodan (p < .04), and 5th kyu and shodan (p < .007). these findings are illustrated in figure 4 below. 39 59 79 99 119 139 159 179 k im s m e a n kims mean mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 table 3: means table for maas after each successful belt test completion rank mean standard deviation standard error maas start 60.60** 10.74 4.08 maas 7th kyu 57.60** 15.01 6.71 maas 6th kyu 68.40** 02.61 1.17 maas 5th kyu 62.20** 10.92 4.88 maas 4th kyu 66.00** 09.62 4.30 maas 3rd kyu 73.80*v 05.76 2.58 maas 2nd kyu 66.80** 12.07 5.40 maas 1st kyu 67.60** 13.24 5.92 maas shodan 70.80** 13.31 5.95 *significantly different from start **significantly from start and from 7th kyu figure 4: mean scores combined for maas at each successful belt test completion from start to shodan (black belt) 4. discussion the results of this five-year longitudinal study suggest that aikido training may significantly increase ones’ level of mindfulness. benefits of increased mindfulness may include better concentration, enhanced awareness, improved immune system functioning and decreases in stress-related physical symptoms (shapiro, carlson, astin, & freedman, 2006). the results of this study support lothes, et al. (2013), who reported that six months of aikido training increased mindfulness in beginners and suggested that continued long-term participation in aikido training may lead to increased levels of mindfulness. participants were asked if they had started any meditative or mindfulness practices while doing aikido and all of them responded that they had not started any mindfulness practices since starting training. 15 25 35 45 55 65 75 85 m a a s m e a n maas mean mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 moreover, kims and maas scores at the beginning of this study were compared to beginning scores of the lothes, et al. (2013) study and no significant differences were observed. this diminishes the concern that individuals who carry on to shodan levels of aikido are initially different in mindfulness. although significant changes in kims and maas scores occurred over the course of this study, there was noticeable fluctuation in scores across points of measurement. the kims and maas were designed using language and terminology that is commonly taught to individuals who engage in a meditative practice. aikido instruction does not provide specific meditative instruction or nomenclature, rather mindfulness is learned experientially (kolb, 1984). these factors may explain some of the fluctuation in self-reported mindfulness scores. on the other hand, the progressive yet fluctuating scores across points of measure may be indicative of an interesting aspect of the development of mindfulness. it is logical that as one becomes initially more mindful greater attention is given to one’s lapses of mindfulness; hence periodically lower scores may result as one is moving toward greater mindfulness. we predicted a significant difference in mindfulness scores from start to black belt. we did not expect and we did not find the degree of difference that has been reported with mindfulness or meditation training populations (tanner, et al., 2009). comparisons across studies may be problematic in a number of ways (quickel, johnson, & david, 2014). self-reported studies of mindfulness on individuals participating in meditation and/or mindfulness programs may be more inclined to report higher levels of mindfulness due to demand characteristics (vartanian & powlishta, 2001), where individuals are reporting higher levels of mindfulness because they are supposed to be more mindful. rosnow (2002) describes demand characteristics as any “taskorienting cues” that may produce a subject bias. the individuals in this study were not directed towards any specific mindfulness language or descriptors; they were instructed on matters of present moment awareness through their aikido training. to date we are not aware of any five-year mindfulness meditation studies. our results are consistent with studies that have compared and examined the process of meditation on mindfulness. tanner, et al. (2009) examined the effects of transcendental meditation (tm) on mindfulness scores using the kims. at the start, tanner et al.'s wait list group (m = 128.03) and tm start group (m = 127.48) were not significantly different. after three months, the wait list group did not show any increases in mindfulness scores (m = 128.42), while their tm group did show significant increases in self-reported mindfulness scores (m = 135.08). these results are consistent with lothes, et al. (2013) and our current study found that aikido training develops a cultivation of mindfulness. in addition, brown and ryan's (2003) results suggested that years of meditation practice were related to higher maas scores. these results with maas scores are also represented in our study. vinchurkar, singh, and visweswaraiah (2014) found a positive relationship between cyclic meditation, which is also considered a meditation in action like aikido, with higher levels of self-reported mindfulness on the maas. one potential problem davidson (2010) points out is that, "while participants can be expected to provide reasonably accurate reports of the times of their formal practice periods, it is not clear the extent to which participants can accurately provide self-reports on the quality of practice" (p.9). the present study does provide both accurate reports of formal practice periods and quality of practice, since these practitioners had not only to meet their minimum training time requirements before moving onto the next belt rank, but also had to successfully complete a set of prescribed aikido techniques in front of a panel of black belt aikido instructors before being awarded their next rank. therefore, this long-term longitudinal study informs mindfulness research literature as suggested by davidson. mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 this longitudinal study tracked a small number of students across five years of aikido training. it is acknowledged that the small sample size is a limitation and that the design of the study cannot support a causal conclusion. however, the uniqueness of this study and the difficulty in tracking students over a multi-year period must be given merit and invites further consideration about causal linkage. suggested research includes tracking and examining mindfulness against matched control groups. it may also be of interest to assess mindfulness levels of individuals who drop out of training. other factors to be considered in future research might include examining the mechanisms through which aikido might increase levels of mindfulness (shapiro, carlson, astin, & freedman, 2006). acknowledgments the authors would like to thank andrew sato sensei of the aikido world alliance, richard price sensei of kure beach aikido and dr. catherine ibsen for their help and insights on aikido, mindfulness and data collection. authors john lothes university of north carolina wilmington lothesj@uncw.edu robert hakan, phd university of north carolina wilmington kirk mochrie, ma university of north carolina wilmington publishing timeline received 4 february 2015 accepted 7 may 2015 published 30 july 2015 references baer, r., smith, g., & allen, k. (2004). assessment of mindfulness by self-report. assessment, 11, 191-206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1073191104268029 baer, r., smith, g., hopkins, j., kreitemeyer, j., & toney, l. (2006). using self-report assessment methods to explore facets of mindfulness. assessment, 13, 27-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1073191105283504 brown, k., & ryan, r. (2003). the benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. journal of personality and social psychology, 84, 822-848. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/00223514.84.4.822 davidson r.j. (2010). empirical explorations of mindfulness: conceptual and methodological conundrums. emotion, 10(1), 8-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0018480 dobson, t., & miller, v. (1978). aikido in everyday life: giving in to get your way. berkeley, ca: north atlantic books. fuller, j. r. (1988). martial arts and psychological health. british journal of medical psychology, 61, 317-328. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1988.tb02794.x kolb, d.a. (1984). experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development (vol. 1). englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. lothes, j., hakan, r., & kassab, k. (2013). aikido experience and its relation to mindfulness: a two-part study. perceptual and motor skills, 116(1), 30-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/22.23.pms.116.1.30-39 mailto:lothesj@uncw.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1073191104268029 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1073191105283504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0018480 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1988.tb02794.x http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/22.23.pms.116.1.30-39 mindfulness and aikido lothes, hakan, & mochrie www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 quickel, e., johnson, s., & david, z. (2014). trait mindfulness and cognitive task performance: examining the attentional construct of mindfulness. sage open, 4(4), 1–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2158244014560557 rosnow, r. l. (2002). the nature and role of demand characteristics in scientific inquiry. prevention & treatment, 5(1), 37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1522-3736.5.1.537c saotome, m. (1986). aikido and the harmony of nature. boston: shambhala saotome, m. (1989). the principles of aikido. boston: shambhala shapiro, s., carlson, l., astin, j., & freedman, b. (2006). mechanisms of mindfulness. journal of clinical psychology, 62(3), 373-386. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20237 shifflett, c. (1999). aikido: exercises for teaching and training. merrifield, round earth pub. shioda, g. (1968). dynamic aikido. tokyo: kodansha international. shioda, g. (1991). aikido shugyo: harmony in confrontation. toronto: shindokan international. tanner m. a., travis, f., gaylord-king, c., haaga, d.a., grosswalk, s., & schneider, r. h. (2009). the effects of the transcendental meditation program on mindfulness. journal of clinical psychology, 65 (6), 574-89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20544 ueshiba, k. (1984). the spirit of aikido. tokyo: kodansha international. vartanian, l., & powlishta, k. k. (2001). demand characteristics and self-report measures of imaginary audience sensitivity: implications for interpreting age differences in adolescent egocentrism. the journal of genetic psychology: research and theory on human development, 162(2), 187-200. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221320109597960 vinchurkar, s. a., singh, d., & visweswaraiah, n. k. (2014). self-reported measures of mindfulness in meditators and non-meditators: a cross-sectional study. international journal of yoga, 7(2), 142–146. http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.133898 westbrook, a., & ratti, o. (1970). aikido and the dynamic sphere: an illustrated introduction. boston: turtle. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2158244014560557 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1522-3736.5.1.537c http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20237 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20544 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221320109597960 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.133898 a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness weijers, d., jarden, a., & powdthavee, n. (2011). promoting research on wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 1-3. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.21 dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 editorial promoting research on wellbeing dan weijers · aaron jarden · nattavudh powdthavee 1. welcome welcome to the inaugural issue of the international journal of wellbeing (ijw). the ijw is an open access peer-reviewed journal that publishes scholarly research on wellbeing (broadly construed). the purpose of the journal is to promote thought and discussion on this vital topic. the launch of the ijw is a direct response to increasing demand both for research on wellbeing and for publishing opportunities for wellbeing researchers. several established academic journals already publish research on wellbeing, most notably the journal of happiness studies, social indicators research, applied psychology: health and well-being, the journal of positive psychology, quality of life research, applied research in quality of life, the international journal of qualitative studies on health and wellbeing, and the forthcoming open access journal psychology of wellbeing: theory, research and practice. however, none of these journals provides the combination that is the ijw’s most striking attribute: a broad multidisciplinary scope, an interdisciplinary focus, and a commitment to provide all its content for free without delay or any cost to authors. 2. about the editorial team although the editors approach wellbeing research from their respective disciplines – philosophy, psychology, and economics – their shared passion for open access interdisciplinary wellbeing research brought them together to develop the ijw. as it turned out, many of the most influential thinkers in the field felt that an open access interdisciplinary journal on wellbeing was worth supporting. despite being edited by three early-career academics, over 50 leading wellbeing researchers have joined the ijw team as consulting editors or section editors. our large editorial team includes researchers from philosophy, psychology, economics, and other disciplines with an interest in wellbeing. this enables the ijw to review and publish a wide range of wellbeing-related research, including interdisciplinary research. 3. the importance of open access and interdisciplinary wellbeing research the ijw intends to take advantage of an academic environment that is increasingly aware of the need for open access publishing and the benefits of interdisciplinary research. readers of the ijw will enjoy free access to a wide range of the latest research on wellbeing. authors who publish in the ijw will make a contribution to the dissemination of free research on wellbeing without paying anything; and will benefit from having work published in a top quality blind peer-reviewed journal. open access publication of research has many benefits. the time and expense required to track down research in journals with subscription fees prevents many academics from editorial weijers, jarden, & powdthavee www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 productively joining the discourse they are investigating. these restrictions discriminate against the scholars who are already worst off, and ultimately slow the pace of academic progress. furthermore, subscription fees make it harder for wellbeing practitioners, such as clinical psychologists and coaches, to put new research to good use. publishing with an open access journal used to be thought of as risky – something that only established researchers would consider – but that is no longer the case. many studies have investigated the impact of open access publications, the most careful of which found that open access publications receive about as many citations as research published in subscription-only journals. there is at least one exception to this general rule, however; in poorer countries, open access articles are downloaded and cited more frequently than those published in subscription-only journals.1 as is perhaps much better known, interdisciplinary research also has considerable benefits. when researchers from diverse disciplines collaborate on a topic, they must first establish the overlap and disconnects between the established knowledge from each discipline. working through the disciplinary similarities and differences enables the collaborators to create a broader, more nuanced, and more accessible understanding of the topic. furthermore, if this collaborative understanding is reported, other researchers can use the resulting information as a guide to incorporating the findings of the other discipline(s) into their own investigations. researchers who draw on findings from other disciplines in this way can bring new and often fruitful perspectives to their discipline’s old problems and new challenges. performed in this way, interdisciplinary research has the potential to produce disciplinary advances much faster than if researchers never looked outside of their respective disciplines.2 since the public has a stake in any wellbeing research with practical implications, it too will benefit from these advantages of interdisciplinary research on wellbeing. 4. aims, scope, and points of difference the ijw aims to make the most significant research in wellbeing accessible to all in a timely manner. although we expect most submissions to be from a mainly philosophical, psychological or economic perspective, we are particularly interested in publishing interdisciplinary wellbeing research. the ijw aims to be the first choice for authors whose research draws on findings from two or more of the three disciplines mentioned above and any other relevant disciplines such as neuroscience, epidemiology, public policy, and sociology. the ijw aims to make the review and publishing process as fast as possible for authors without reducing the quality of the review or copyediting processes. the ijw’s blind reviewers are expected to return comments within four weeks. furthermore, because the ijw is an onlineonly journal, and uses an unconstrained ‘rolling issue’ process, accepted submissions will be available much faster than they would with most existing journals. along with research articles, the ijw will publish meta-analyses, review articles, critical notices, book reviews, interviews with established wellbeing researchers, and special issues. the ijw also plans to publish a diverse range of multimedia content, including readers’ comments on ijw articles, video abstracts, and debates. the ijw’s main point of difference, however, is that it is the only journal on wellbeing that incorporates full open access, broad multidisciplinary scope, and an interdisciplinary focus. 1 evans, j. & reimer, j. (2009). open access and global participation in science. science, vol. 323 no. 5917, (20 february 2009), p. 1025. doi: 10.1126/science.1154562 2 wilson, e. o. (1998). consilience: the unity of knowledge. knopf: new york. editorial weijers, jarden, & powdthavee www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 authors dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz nattavudh powdthavee nanyang technological university n.powdthavee@ntu.edu.sg references evans, j. & reimer, j. (2009). open access and global participation in science. science, vol. 323 no. 5917, (20 february 2009), p. 1025. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1154562 wilson, e. o. (1998). consilience: the unity of knowledge. knopf: new york. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1154562 weijers, d., jarden, a., angner, e., burns, g., chadwick, e., jose, p. e., joshanloo, m., tarragona, m., & thin, n. (2013). review of the oxford handbook of happiness. international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 213-228 doi:10.5502/ijw.v3.i2.8 dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 213 book review the oxford handbook of happiness susan a. david, ilona boniwell, amanda conley ayers (eds.), oxford university press, 2013, isbn: 978-0-19-955725-7 (cloth), 1097pp review by dan weijers . aaron jarden . erik angner . george burns . erica chadwick . paul e. jose mohsen joshanloo . margarita tarragona . neil thin 1. introduction (weijers) the oxford handbook of happiness is the most comprehensive single volume on the subject of happiness. this long-anticipated landmark collection, along with the similarly ambitious encyclopedia of quality of life research (a. michalos, ed. 2013, springer) shows happiness scholarship coming of age and spreading outward into new themes and disciplines as well as forward into policy and practice. the book takes a broad definition of happiness and its contents span positive psychology and interdisciplinary (but psychology-focused) happiness studies. on the whole, the handbook is a remarkable achievement in that it covers most of the basic contemporary knowledge about happiness as well as giving glimpses of more advanced and specific findings. it is remarkable to attain this level of coverage because about 10,000 publications on happiness are released each year (diener & scollon, 2013). this coverage makes the book the perfect resource for any student intent on studying happiness and any experienced researcher who wants to enter the field of happiness studies. established happiness researchers could also benefit from owning this book because the rapid expansion of research on happiness has made it increasingly difficult for them to keep abreast of the recent research trends and findings in the sub-fields of happiness research that they do not specialize in. furthermore, readers can use the book as a starting point for their happiness research with a high level of confidence because all the authors are recognized authorities in their respective areas and (perhaps with one or two exceptions) have provided excellent chapters that justify their status as ‘authorities’. some of the reviewers were particularly impressed with the extent to which the book transcends the traditional limitations of both positive psychology and moral philosophy to include many contributions emphasizing social, ecological, political, and policy dimensions of the study of happiness. perhaps inevitably though, other reviewers would have appreciated additional sections or chapters. for example, very little attention is given to biological aspects of happiness, such as health, evolutionary considerations, and the neuroscience of happiness. the same might also be said for economic, and possibly ecological, research related to happiness. but, given the book is already over 1,000 pages long, it seems unreasonable to bemoan a lack of depth on possible topics too loudly. on the whole, the editors should be commended for their choices of contributors and topics, and for their ability to keep the chapters to a length that nearly always manages to maintain a fine balance between depth and readability. unfortunately, the book is priced at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 214 about gb£115 or us$180, with second hand versions only marginally cheaper. at this price, many students, and possibly some researchers, will have to rely on their library getting copies. the oxford university press (oup) website claims that an ebook version is available, which, for anyone with a tablet or other ebook-reading device, would certainly be preferable to reading straight from the (enormous and heavy) book. according to an agent of oup, however, the ebook is available only through institutional suppliers. the remainder of this review briefly describes and evaluates the sections and chapters of the book. one author (as indicated next to the section title) is responsible for each section review. 2. section i: psychological approaches to happiness (chadwick) the first section of the oxford handbook of happiness, ‘psychological approaches to happiness,’ begins with an introduction by joar vittersø (chapter 2), followed by 8 thematic chapters. this section, like the entire volume, boasts eminent researchers of happiness. readers familiar with the field will appreciate the authors’ concise, up-to-date, and rigorous summaries, and novices can take comfort knowing each chapter provides an authoritative peek into many years of research. vittersø delivers what one expects from an introduction. he notes the flow and unique contributions to the section as he provides an articulate synopsis of how each chapter delivers on a psychological approach to happiness, interspersed with salient examples. the thematic chapters begin with a discussion of positive emotions as a central psychological approach to happiness (chapter 3; conway, tugade, catalino, and fredrickson). the chapter outlines the function of positive emotions as broadening attention, cognition and social cognition, all of which contribute to building wellbeing and resilience. the presentation of the widely known broaden and build theory of positive emotions in chapter 3 provides a solid transition to chapter 4 and the endowment-contrast model (e-c model; griffin and gonzalez). the e-c model describes happiness as bound by cognition and decision-making; it is a more complex and context-rich mode of understanding wellbeing than most extant theories (e.g. the hedonic adaptation). progressively through the chapter, the authors provide a coherent critique of wellbeing indices, while making a strong case for the utility of the e-c model and its mathematical formulation in wellbeing measurement. delle fave reviews the past and present of flow as well as proposing future directions for flow research in chapter 5. it is one of two chapters from the section to dedicate a subsection to the discussion of culture. her interesting critique of the validity of flow across cultures is bound to pique the readers’ curiosity and engage their critical thinking. returning to emotions as psychological approaches to happiness, in chapter 6 crum and salovey show how emotions are powerful communicators, facilitators and motivators with functional importance. they persuasively call for greater emotional intelligence in relation to all types of emotion, negative and positive, in order to funnel the ‚weather pattern of emotions‛ into fulfilling valued goals and living a fulfilling life. religion takes center stage in chapter 7 and the relationship between it and wellbeing is not straightforward, as myers outlines. religion is a positive associate of wellbeing when analyses are at the individual level and a negative associate when analyses are conducted at the grouplevel. chapter 7 not only questions the role of religion in happiness, but also the methodological approach to its measurement. on the whole, however, and to the potential dismay of atheists, myers concludes religion is good for happiness. the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 215 in an approach unique to the section, ferssizidi, kashdan, marquart, and steger use psychopathology as the launching point into psychological approaches to happiness in chapter 8. the authors clearly suggest routes to building the evidence base for the relationships between positive emotions and psychopathology within the literature. they also match specific positive interventions to specific disorders based on the current limited state of research. in chapter 9 boa and lyubomirsky review the evidence that happiness is more than a correlate or end-result, arguing that happiness also causes positive outcomes. this chapter is a concise version of the seminal review by lyubomirsky, king and diener (2005), with little new information; however, the value of this research cannot be overstated. chapter 9 is a must read. pavot and diener conclude the section with an up-to-date review of subjective wellbeing (swb). they include a contemporary outline of the relationship between heritability and swb, and articulately examine the complex area of swb and culture. chapter 10 would be equally well placed in section 2, ‘psychological definitions of happiness,’ and therefore provides a seamless transition to the section. the writing in the ‘psychological approaches to happiness’ section was highly accessible and simultaneously maintained enough scope and depth for the various interests and specialties of its readers. 3. section ii: psychological definitions of happiness (angner) in their introduction to the volume, the three editors note that they ‚chose to consider happiness in its broadest sense, treating it as an umbrella concept for notions such as well being, subjective well-being, psychological well-being, hedonism, eudaimonia, health, flourishing, and so on‛ (p. 3). this makes for an exceptionally broad conception of happiness. it can reasonably be asked whether anything simultaneously non-trivial and true can be said of a construct with such magnificent scope. section ii, titled ‘psychological definitions of happiness,’ examines ways in which particular researchers have sharpened their definitions of happiness. the aim of the section, as joar vittersø explains in his introductory chapter 11, is two-fold: ‚to explore the many understandings of happiness that exist today and illustrate that without conceptual clarifications, the study of happiness hardly makes sense‛ (156). chapter 13, by felicity f. miao, minkyung koo, and shigehiro oishi, begins by simply stating the definition associated with the work of ed diener and co-authors (174). according to this definition, which is widely used, swb is the sum of an affective and a cognitive component. having mentioned this, the authors outline the history of happiness research, review measurement issues, summarize current findings, and speculate about future research. ruut veenhoven’s chapter 12, titled ‘notions of the good life,’ begins by pointing out that ‚happiness‛ can be used in a wider sense to denote ‚the quality of life as a whole,‛ and in a narrower sense to refer to ‚a moment of bliss‛ (161). apparently disagreeing with the volume editors’ all-encompassing definition of happiness, he proceeds to argue that ‚we cannot meaningfully put all the good in one hat.‛ in the interest of clarifying what we are talking about when we talk about happiness, veenhoven distinguishes ‚chances,‛ or preconditions, from ‚outcomes,‛ and ‚internal qualities‛ from ‚external qualities‛ (161–162). in this way he obtains a 2x2 grid of things that one might legitimately be concerned with when one is concerned with happiness. in addition, he helpfully locates the area of interest of other contributors to the volume within the grid, thereby providing a visual representation of psychological conceptions of happiness. chapter 14, ‘measuring happiness and subjective well-being’ by robert a. cummins, follows veenhoven in noting the extraordinary range of constructs referred to by the term the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 216 ‚happiness‛ (185). cummins examines a selection of definitions of happiness, focusing especially on definitions that treat happiness as part of swb. two approaches are subsequently discussed in some detail: discrepancy theories, which consider swb to be a function of the discrepancy between achievement and aspiration, and tripartite models, which treat swb as constituted by three separate components, e.g., positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction. about two-thirds of the chapter, however, deals with measurement issues in a review of qualitative vs. quantitative approaches and a discussion of the special challenges facing measurement in low-functioning populations and cross-cultural contexts. cummins finishes with two sections, in one of which he presents a list of scales that he thinks ought to be avoided and in the other a list of scales whose use he recommends. veronika huta’s ‘eudaimonia’ (chapter 15) may be the most useful contribution to the section on psychological definitions of happiness. while the chapter ostensibly deals with eudaimonia, which in her words concerns ‚using and developing the best in oneself, in accordance with one’s true self and one’s deeper principles,‛ she explicitly contrasts it with hedonia, which concerns ‚pleasure and enjoyment.‛ she traces the differences between the two approaches to ancient greek philosophy, and in the following pages succeeds in situating a remarkable array of philosophers and psychologists within her philosophical framework. she discusses factor-analytic justifications for the distinction and offers a one-page bullet-point summary of the themes common to eudaimonic approaches. with a concluding discussion about sociological themes and future directions, this chapter should prove very useful indeed. chapters 16 and 17 center on two specific approaches to wellbeing in psychological literature. ‘what makes for a life well lived? autonomy and its relation to full functioning and organismic wellness,’ by christopher p. niemiec and richard m. ryan, discusses selfdetermination theory, which is firmly grounded in the eudaimonic tradition and treats human beings as ‚proactive organisms who seek out opportunities to feel choiceful, effective, and close to important others‛ (217). the chapter leaves it open whether self-determination theory is best understood as a conception of happiness, as suggested by the earlier section on ‚philosophical views of ‘the good life’‛ (215), or as an empirical theory of the antecedents of the good life, as suggested by the defense of self-determination theory in light of its effect on an undefined concept of ‚wellness‛ (216, 218). ‘functional well-being: happiness as feelings, evaluations, and functioning’ argues against the idea that wellbeing can be measured on a one-dimensional scale (238–239). vittersø reviews evidence to the effect that feelings, emotions, and evaluations have many dimensions; to the extent that wellbeing is about such things, then, it follows that wellbeing must have many dimensions too. he also argues that swb should be complemented with an account of optimal human functioning, which is partly independent of feelings, emotions, and evaluations, as it relates to autonomy, social relations, meaning and personal growth. besides the obvious differences between the contributors, e.g., regarding conceptions of happiness, there are occasional dissonant notes. the authors disagree about the emergence of systematic empirical study of happiness. vittersø writes that, with the exception of some scattered earlier attempts, ‚happiness research was not born until the end of the 1950s‛ (156). cummins says that ‚*the+ systematic study of swb is now over 35 years old,‛ explaining that two publications in 1976 ‚launched the idea that swb could be reliably measured‛ (186). (an early paper in this journal argued that the modern science of happiness is part of an uninterrupted research stream going back at least to the 1920s and 1930s; angner, 2011). meanwhile, miao, koo, and oishi trace the scientific study of wellbeing back to 1899 (174). the authors also disagree about what theories are empirically adequate. consider set-point theory. the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 217 cummins asserts that people have a ‚deep and stable positive mood state‛ that ‚represents the swb ‘set-point’ for each person‛ and which ‚the homeostatic system seeks to defend‛ (188), and vittersø claims that ‚the function of pleasure is to communicate that the return to the homeostatic set-point has been successful‛ (230). yet, bruce heady, in chapter 66, calls setpoint theory ‚of limited scope and stultifying in its implications‛ and argues that it ‚cannot be satisfactorily defended‛ (897–898). in their introduction to the volume, david, boniwell, and conley ayers claim that theirs is the first book worldwide to heed martin seligman’s call to unite psychologists, economists, sociologists, policy-makers, philosophers, and others, and that the book was intended as ‚the definitive text for scholars, researchers, teachers, and practitioners interested and invested in the study and practice of human happiness‛ (1). ‚to unite‛ can be understood in different ways. but the section on psychological definitions of happiness illustrates just how far from unified the science of happiness remains, even when we limit our attention to ‚psychological‛ definitions, thereby leaving the philosophical, economic, religious, and spiritual out of the picture. the section clearly illustrates vittersø’s point that the study of happiness makes little sense in the absence of conceptual clarification. that said, the section is useful in many ways. in the conclusion to his chapter, cummins offers the following recommendation: ‚future researchers can assist the process of conceptual consolidation by clearly stating why they have selected their scale of choice from the vast array available‛ (196). this is sound advice, though one might add that future researchers should also state why a concern with happiness in the editors’ broad sense of happiness (or quality of life, or wellbeing) inspired them to focus on one construct rather than another. just as researchers are expected to be able to defend their choice of statistical methodology, when required, they should also be expected to defend their choice of construct and scale. in reviewing a number of conceptions of happiness that appear (implicitly or explicitly) in the psychology of happiness, along with recommended measurement tools and standard results, the section offers a helpful bird’s-eye view of the current state of the study of happiness, warts and all. 4. section iii: philosophical approaches to happiness (weijers) the ‘philosophical approaches to happiness’ section is broad in scope but narrow in terms of the take-home messages. although some of the authors in this section do not reside in philosophy departments, all the eight chapters (including the introduction) demonstrate philosophical methods in their approaches to happiness. on the whole, the chapters are generally accurate, very well written, interesting, and of value to at least philosophers and all social scientists interested in happiness. the editors should be praised for the impressive scope of the section, which includes discussions of happiness from eastern, western, historical, contemporary, analytical, and continental philosophical perspectives. but, perhaps surprisingly, the main points made in each chapter are remarkably similar. indeed, readers of this section could be forgiven for thinking that all kinds of philosophers throughout history have nearly all agreed that happiness is not as valuable as it is generally perceived to be and certainly less valuable than other commonly discussed goods (e.g., meaning and virtue). james o. pawelski’s introduction (chapter 18) summarizes the section nicely and provides just enough information on the subsequent chapters to whet the appetite for more detail. i attempt something similar with the chapter summary below. the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 218 darrin m. mcmahon’s fascinating historical overview of happiness in western culture (chapter 19) summarizes some key themes from his monumental book the pursuit of happiness. mcmahon discusses how people related to happiness in ancient greece, during the christianity-dominated middle ages, and during the enlightenment. his message is similar to that of john stuart mill and mihaly csikszentmihalyi: pursue something meaningful and happiness will come as by-product. providing an interesting counterpart to mcmahon’s overview of happiness in western culture, philip j. ivanhoe discusses the concept of happiness in the work of two prominent chinese figures: kongzi (confucius) and zhuangzi (chapter 20). although there are differences that ivanhoe identifies, kongzi and zhuangzi both see the happy life as a meaningful one lived in accordance with the dao (the way), and not as one that is focused on the self or material things. this chapter might have been more useful if it was more general in its approach, discussing a wider range of eastern views on happiness. emmy van deurzen provides an overview of the nineteenth and twentieth century continental philosophy relevant to happiness (chapter 21). van deurzen describes continental philosophy as ‚deliberately unsettling in nature and challenging to the status quo‛ (p. 280). true to this ‘challenging’ description, all of the continental philosophers discussed by van deurzen decry the focus on happiness as the greatest value. indeed, they often deplore the pursuit of happiness because it can obfuscate the truly valuable things in life, such as truth, passion, reason, and meaning. summarizing his many years of work on happiness, raymond angelo belliotti provides an example of modern philosophizing by thought experiments (chapter 22). belliotti provides several examples of happy lives that are nonetheless not particularly desirable because they lack truth, meaning, or moral value. he proposes a distinction between happiness as feeling good and worthwhile happiness as positive emotions that have been earned through our moral actions in the real world. but even worthwhile happiness, belliotti concludes, is not the greatest good, or even always a great good, because it can interfere with leading a meaningful and virtuous life. daniel m. haybron (chapter 23) is slightly more sanguine about the importance of happiness, but agrees with belliotti that being happy is not as important as being virtuous. haybron provides interesting criticisms of defining and measuring satisfaction with life that psychologists and especially economists should take note of. the most important of these criticisms is that how satisfied someone is with their life depends most importantly on how high their expectations are for their lives—something that does not have a lot to do with wellbeing. haybron prefers an ‘emotional state’ definition of happiness that includes feelings of happiness, but is most importantly captured by mentally responding as if things are going well—psychically affirming one’s life. valerie tiberius’s chapter (chapter 24) discusses what philosophers do and how that is relevant to the empirical study of happiness. in addition to mentioning philosophers’ renowned prowess at conceptual analysis, tiberius also clearly articulates how philosophers make their arguments and reach their conclusions. given that her chapter puts the section in context, it might have been better suited placed at the start of the section. james o. pawelski’s chapter (chapter 25) on happiness and its opposites is an excellent example of how philosophical analysis can make a seemingly simple question extremely complex and then answer the question elegantly anyway. pawelski points out that unhappiness is not straightforwardly the opposite of happiness (something psychologists had discovered the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 219 empirically), since the absence of unhappiness does not result in happiness, and happiness and unhappiness can coexist. 5. section iv: spiritual approaches to happiness (joshanloo) existing data indicate that spirituality and religion are central to many people’s lives and may come to influence their understanding of what a good life consists in. these spiritual and religious approaches to defining and achieving a good life have been largely neglected in conceptualizing and measuring happiness in western psychology. section iv (titled ‘spiritual approaches to happiness’) was prepared with the aim of providing a summary of the scholarship in this area. authors in this section approach the concept of happiness from a religious/spiritual vantage point, and review some spiritual methods that are helpful in achieving happiness. chapters 27, 28, 29, and 32 largely discuss what an eastern conceptualization of happiness is like, and highlight major differences in the concept of happiness between asia and the west. for example, matthieu ricard (chapter 27) points out that while individuals in western societies emphasize the maximization of pleasure, the buddhist conceptualization of happiness does not regard pleasure as a major component of happiness. g.t. maurits kwee (chapter 28) underlines the fact that while in western psychology the self is defined as an independent agent, in buddhism the self is regarded as a relational being with no clear boundaries with the non-self. similar views can be found in hinduism. according to kiran kumar salagame (chapter 29), the hindu concept of happiness is not individualistic and pleasure-based. jane henry (chapter 32) points to another cross-cultural difference. that is, whereas high arousal emotions (e.g., euphoria and excitement) are highly valued in the west, low arousal emotions (e.g., contentment and inner peace) are more favored in the east. these authors make it clear that in eastern traditions (as opposed to in the west) the building blocks of happiness are higher values and virtues (vs. pleasure and positive emotions), living in harmony with our relational self (vs. autonomy and individualization), and experiencing low (vs. high) arousal emotions. chapters 30 and 32 review the potential of mindfulness and meditation techniques to facilitate happiness, and provide supporting empirical evidence. admitting that the existing evidence is still not decisive, peter malinowski (chapter 30) concludes that the evidence does suggest that these techniques can be beneficial for mental health. finally, annette mahoney and colleagues (chapter 31) discuss the concept of sanctification, ‚a process by which people appraise an aspect of life as having divine character and significance‛ (p. 398). the authors provide empirical evidence showing that many aspects of life (e.g., strivings, marriage, parenting, and the human body) can be viewed through a sacred lens across cultures and religious denominations. they also provide empirical evidence showing that sanctification is generally tied to mental health benefits. the chapters that highlight marked contrasts between asian and western conceptualizations of happiness draw attention to alternative views that are generally ignored in western psychology. this may have significant implications for the application of the assumptions posited by positive psychology in asian cultures. therefore, it is expected that readers interested in critical and cultural perspectives on positive psychology will find these chapters insightful. the six chapters (together with the integrative introduction by jane henry) successfully convince us that more research attention should be devoted to religious/spiritual aspects of happiness across cultures. the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 220 6. section v: happiness and society (thin) section 5, ‘happiness and society’, comprises an introduction (sam thompson) plus six thematic chapters by authors who will already be familiar to happiness scholars and several of whom (mulgan, dorling, marks, and jackson) are also well known beyond academia for their policy advocacy and public engagement. ‘society’ is here loosely interpreted as contextual influences on happiness, including macro-economics, long-term cultural traditions, national and regional patterns of socio-economic inequality, and geographical and environmental factors. for readers already familiar with the authors in this section, there will be few surprises here, as they largely stick to summaries of work they have already published. readers new to their work will be treated to inspiring introductions to some of the most important themes in happiness scholarship. all chapters in this section provide some degree of cultural analysis, exploring ideas and values rather than just the factitious information drawn from surveys. the first three chapters are, however, written mainly from within the survey-based quantitative tradition that remains so dominant in the public image of happiness scholarship. frey and stutzer (chapter 34) provide a wonderfully clear overview of survey-based research on associations between happiness and income, employment, consumption, and the political implications of the valuation of goods. tov and au (chapter 35) offer a careful discussion of the need to relate these findings to cultural traditions and values, showing how important it is to pay attention to the kinds of questions asked in surveys when developing generalized international comparisons of happiness or life satisfaction. ballas and dorling (chapter 36) offer a ‘geographical’ account that actually focuses mainly on socio-economic inequalities and on cultural history, rather than on features of the physical environment. a more analytical approach is taken by ahuvia and izbert-bilgin (chapter 37) who give an enlightening introduction to consumer culture theory as well as a nicely balanced review of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to understanding relations between culture, consumption, and ‘materialism’—basically, love of money and of the consumer goods. they carefully avoid the common pitfall of linking happiness research naively with puritanical anticonsumerism. though recognizing the strong positive associations between happiness and consumerist capitalism, they also recognize the many ways in which consumerism at personal and collective levels can cause unhappiness. this theme is taken up more emphatically in thompson, marks, and jackson’s chapter (chapter 38) exploring possible synergies between wellbeing and the promotion of sustainable development, posing the question of whether policies might be devised which help us to ‘deliver well-being without materialism’. in the final chapter of the section (chapter 39), mulgan (one of the uk’s most prominent policy analysts) takes up the theme of the translation from wellbeing research into public policy arenas such as family policy, health, work, and education. while the quality and variety of these chapters is excellent, it is disappointing that the editors seem to have made little or no attempt to find contributors from those disciplines most experienced in theorizing about society and culture, namely sociology, socio-cultural anthropology, and cultural studies. true, these disciplines have been rather slow to take happiness seriously as a systematic research theme, but their participation in the future could help happiness scholarship avoid psychologism, ethnocentrism, and the reductionism of survey-based studies. as a result of this deficit, the section offers no kind of analytical model for considering carefully the interactions between happiness and society or culture. the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 221 7. section vi: positive education (jarden) the ‘positive education’ section is a collection of nine chapters on the topic of happiness in education. these chapters are written by scholars of, and practitioners in, education. the introduction to this section describes the purpose of focusing on positive education—to increase children’s wellbeing—and defines ‘positive education’ as education aiming to ‚develop the skills of well-being, flourishing, and optimal functioning in children, teenagers, and students, as well as parents and educational intuitions‛ (p. 536). the chapters in this section take a range of approaches, from broad and theoretical to specific examples of the application of wellbeing-related practices in schools. starting with chapters by j. white (chapter 41) and then popivic (chapter 42), the reader is introduced to many of the questions about the philosophical underpinnings of and rationales for positive education. for example, to what extent should schools, rather than parents or society, contribute to a ‘flourishing life’? if schools should contribute, how should they go beyond academic tasks (which largely focus on knowledge transmission)? how exactly should schools educate for personal wellbeing? as popivic mentions: there is a striking imbalance in present education between the amount of time, resources, and attention dedicated to the study of the world on the one hand, and to the areas that constitute personal life and experience on the other. young people have opportunities to learn about mathematics, literature, geography, physics, etc., but little chance to learn about themselves and the ways they can experience and relate to their environment (p. 552). popivic then advocates that a whole-school approach, a cross-curricular approach, and individual happiness lessons are all needed for optimal positive-education experiences. noble and mcgrath (chapter 43) go further to prove additional historical context to wellbeing education. these first three chapters provide an excellent introduction to the context in which positive education is currently developing, although other chapter authors also provide various additional insights. the chapter by fox eades, proctor, and ashley (chapter 44) reviews a number of current school-wide wellbeing-focused educational initiatives (e.g., the celebrating strengths framework and the strengths gym) as well as the importance of focusing on teacher wellbeing, which is a nice addition. the chapter by mcinerney (chapter 45) stands out as an excellent example of how one can use research, principles and techniques practically to enhance student wellbeing. her focus is specifically on applying knowledge to the learning environment, and also cautions about the risks in teaching happiness. gillham and colleagues (chapter 46) outline the benefits of resilience in education and the relatively well-known penn resilience program, and the less well-known high school positive psychology program. a strong case for teaching resilience is made, and the empirical evidence presented is compelling (e.g., 19 controlled studies over the last 16 years). stenberg’s chapter (chapter 47) on teaching wisdom is another stand out chapter—although not as directly related to wellbeing as other chapters are. the last two chapters by morris (chapter 48) and m. white (chapter 49) describe how positive education has been implemented in their schools (wellington college in the uk, & geelong grammar in australia). these case studies provide rich descriptions of their focus and curriculum; and both have the aim of developing practical skills for living well. all in all, this section is ideal both for individuals unfamiliar with the topic of positive education and as a reminder for those who are familiar with it, as the chapters are packed with many novel and practical examples of positive education in practice. both well-known (e.g., resilience) and novel (e.g., wisdom) topics are covered. over such an eclectic range of topics, the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 222 positive education is explained and discussed, the benefits and risks are outlined, and a blueprint for positive education emerges. when taken together, these chapters traverse the scope, use and practice of positive education. however, as the section organizer, boniwell, concludes, although ‚happiness education is set for a positive future< it is important to recognize that we are still at the very beginning of the journey‛ (p. 538). 8. section vii: happiness and organizations (tarragona) section vii of the oxford handbook of happiness provides an excellent overview of state of the art research about happiness and organizations. like those portraits that are made up of many small pictures, each of these eight chapters depicts a specific aspect of wellbeing in the workplace, and, together, they create a mosaic that shows us the big picture of what we know about wellbeing and organizations today. in the introduction to the section, caza and cameron remind us that one of the three pillars of positive psychology is the study of positive institutions, and they define the domain of positive organizational scholarship, which studies positive outcomes and processes in organizations. in chapter 51, the same authors discuss virtuous practices in work settings, such as caring, compassionate support, forgiveness, inspiration, meaning and respect, and how these are related to workers’ happiness and a variety of performance outcomes, such as client satisfaction. barker, caza and wrzesniewski (chapter 52) present data about the benefits of seeing one´s work as a calling vs. a career or a job. they present recent findings about family-work enrichment that challenge the idea of work-life balance (which usually implies that one area always ‚takes away‛ from the other) and suggest that work and family life may actually enhance each other. in their chapter on work design and happiness, searle and parker (chapter 53) emphasize how workers are not passive recipients of the characteristics of their jobs, but that they actively modify their work environment and their tasks. warr (chapter 54) makes a similar point as he describes how jobs and job-holders influence and shape each other. warr presents 12 characteristics that are associated with worker´s happiness/unhappiness and offers a wonderful ‚vitamin analogy‛: a vitamin deficit may have terrible consequences for one´s health, but after reaching a satisfactory level in our system, more of that vitamin may have no further benefits and, in some cases, may even be detrimental. the same goes for job characteristics and their effect on happiness. for example, having a variety of tasks contributes to wellbeing, but an overload of tasks decreases happiness at work. youssef and luthans (chapter 55) give us the acronym hero (hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism) to summarize some of the aspects of psychological capital that can be developed and that positively impact performance at work. laura morgan roberts’ chapter (chapter 56) on reflected best self (rbs) starts with an evocative question: “did you bring your best self to work today?” rbs is based on our experience of being at our best and of the feedback that other people give us when we are in that mode. we can activate our rbs by having purposeful engagement, using our strengths, being aligned with our values and having affirming relationships at work. chapter 57, by thomas a. wright, presents numerous significant associations between employee wellbeing and job performance and retention, as well as new evidence for the surprising relationship between employees´ psychological wellbeing and cardiovascular health. chapter 58, by campbell quick and quick, focuses on executive wellbeing and the five pathways that lead to it: strength of character, self-awareness, socialized power motivation, the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 223 self-reliance and diverse professional support. the data they report about the asymmetry between executive men and women is striking: men are much more likely to be married than women and while many female executives regret not having had children, practically all males who wanted to have children became fathers. some of the common threads that run through the section include that there is ample evidence about the influence of work on wellbeing and about the benefits of workers’ happiness for organizations; that the relationships between different aspects of work and wellbeing can be non-linear and may change across the lifetime, so we need to develop more complex models and research designs to better understand these complex relationships; and that people and their tasks mutually transform each other. 9. section viii: relationships and happiness (burns) relationships and happiness have long been associated in our thinking, in our literature, and in our cultural values. fairytales have taught us from childhood that you get married and live happily ever after. most of us have discovered that relationships can drive us to the depths of despair, provide us with some of our greatest ecstasy and/or enhance our experience of enduring happiness. but do relationships enhance an individual’s happiness? or can individual happiness improve the quality of a relationship? what does the evidence show us? and how can this evidence improve our relationships or enhance the provision of relationship psychotherapy and counselling? these were some of the questions i had in mind as i approached this section. in his introduction to the section, meliksah demir says, ‚indeed, decades of theoretical and empirical work highlight that being in a close relationship, the number of close relationships one has, and the quality of relationship experiences in general, are robust and consistent correlates of happiness‛ (p. 817). chapter 60 (saphire-bernstein & taylor) explores the effects of gender (‚< relationships are more important determinants of happiness for women than is true for men.‛ p. 827), age (relationships vary over a person’s life span), and culture (marital status and subjective wellbeing are largely the same across cultures). outlining attachment theory and exploring its connection with positive emotions in close relationships, mikulincer & shaver (chapter 61) offer the hope that even insecure adults who have a secure relationship partner, in either marriage or psychotherapy, can become more secure. in chapter 62, lakey highlights the difference between objective and perceived social support in determining happiness, with perception of support being the winner: people with high perceived social support are happier than those with low perceived social support, regardless of the objective strength of that support. lakey is the only contributor in this section to raise the implications of this research for intervention – even though it occupies but half a paragraph. he makes the interesting point that most social support interventions have been based on objective support whereas the literature affirms they should be based more on perceived support by carefully matching specific providers with specific recipients (p. 855). the final chapter (demir, orthel & andelin) asks, ‘do friendship experiences matter for happiness?’ it concludes that while friendship is unlikely to be the greatest or only source of happiness, it is one of the most robust and frequent correlates with this outcome (p. 865). in sum, these chapters are well researched and densely referenced. they take you through the history of research into relationships and wellbeing, they provide the current state of evidence, and they raise potential directions for future research. however, as a clinical the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 224 psychologist and therapist practitioner i felt i reached the end of this section extremely well informed but no better equipped as to how to translate this important knowledge into useful therapeutic strategies. i would like to have seen at least one chapter, or a section in each chapter, on how the findings on relationships and happiness can be applied in areas such as couples, family and relationship therapies. 10. section ix: development, stability and change of happiness (jose) all six chapters in this section examine various and related questions concerning the stability and changeability of happiness. researchers and theorists in the field of positive psychology seek to understand and to predict fluctuations in happiness; thus, the key theme of this section is timely and important. the first chapter, entitled ‘an evolutionary psychological perspective on happiness’, written by hill, delpriore, and major (chapter 65), argues that the entire landscape of emotional experiences, from despair to joy, is rooted in an adaptational system that serves to enhance our evolutionary fitness. negatively valenced emotions such as anger serve to motivate us to acquire greater resources, and positively valenced emotions such as gratitude result from the achievement of fitness goals. humans like the hedonic feel of positive valence emotions and we seek to maximize the experience of those emotions, and conversely we do not like the feel of negative valence emotions and we seek to avoid those experiences. by doing so, we tend to act in ways that enhance our evolutionary fitness. as the authors put it, ‚happiness is hypothesized to serve as a psychological reward‛ (p. 879). individuals who satisfy adaptational goals are happier, according to this view. in conclusion, the authors suggest that evolutionary theory might function as a ‚meta-theory‛ concerning questions as to how we can enhance hedonic outcomes. thus, they seem to suggest that our genes significantly constrain and organize how humans strive for happiness, and resultantly, environmental fitness. the next chapter, ‘set-point theory may now need replacing: death of a paradigm?,’ by headey (chapter 66), neatly picks up the gauntlet laid down by the first chapter in that it addresses the issue of stability of happiness. headey describes ‚adaptation theory‛, also known as the ‚set-point theory‛, which argues that, in congruence with evolutionary theory, individuals strive for adaptation in their environments. humans endeavor to achieve homeostatic balance with their environment; thus, we seek positive experiences and emotions but we also readily adapt to these new circumstances so it is difficult to permanently maintain an elevated level of happiness (a frustrating process known as the ‚hedonic treadmill‛). headey relates the findings of recent research which cast doubt on this thesis—for example, research that shows that extraverted individuals gain significantly in life satisfaction over time whereas neurotic individuals show a strong decline in life satisfaction. he ends his chapter by making the bold statement that ‚if set-point theory was a sinking tanker, its crew . . . would be abandoning ship‛ (p. 897), although it could be said that more needs to be known about this process before we totally abandon this ship. the third chapter in this section is entitled ‘variety is the spice of happiness: the hedonic adaptation prevention model,’ and is authored by sheldon, boehm, and lyubomirsky (chapter 67). these authors ask a question in the vein described by headey concerning hedonic adaptation: how do we create circumstances that will sustain elevated happiness? in this chapter they propose a new version of their ‘hedonic adaptation prevention’ (hap) model, in which they map out several pathways that they argue lead to a ‚sustained well-being boost‛. as the title of their chapter suggests, surprise and variety are proposed to significantly enhance the process of positive events leading to enduring positive emotional responses. they go on to the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 225 report findings from two previously unpublished longitudinal studies that suggest that variety predicts maintenance of wellbeing. much more evidence needs to be applied to the job of verifying the hap model, but early evidence supports the major tenets of this provocative theory. keyes, in the next chapter (chapter 68), ‘promotion and protection of positive mental health: towards complete mental health in human development,’ describes the ‘dual continua model’ of psychological functioning, namely that mental health and mental illness are separable but (negatively) related domains. ‘promotion’ refers to efforts to promote greater mental health, which in turn is likely to lead to less mental illness, and ‘protection’ refers to efforts to prevent the onset of mental illness, which in turn is likely to allow mental health to continue (and possibly flourish). keyes reports empirical findings that support both the promotion and protection dynamics proposed by this dual continua model, and argues for an increased appreciation of how these two domains affect each other over time. joseph and hefferon (chapter 69), in their chapter titled ‘post-traumatic growth: eudaimonic happiness in the aftermath of adversity,’ take up the intriguing notion of ‚positive changes in the aftermath of adversity‛ (p. 926), as they put it. they state that between 30-70% of people tend to report some benefit following an adverse experience. the chapter includes a copy of their psychological well-being—post-traumatic changes questionnaire, which is commonly used to assess empirically the degree of improved wellbeing in various domains (i.e., perceived changes in self; more developed purpose in life; improved personal relationships; increase in sense of mastery; and greater personal growth). the authors note several new research areas on the topic of post-traumatic growth (e.g., using illness as a ‘window of opportunity’ to encourage self-regulation of behavior), and they end the chapter by noting that facilitating post-traumatic growth is a delicate process that is not entirely understood. the last chapter is written by steger, beeby, garrett, and kashdan (chapter 70), and continues with the topic of eudaimonic meaning-making described in the previous chapter. for these authors, meaning in life refers to ‚liv*ing+ a coherent life that links the present to the past, and projects our longings and aspirations into the future‛ (p. 942). further, they make important distinctions among three related aspects of meaning in one’s life; 1) comprehension of meaning in one’s life; 2) having purpose in one’s life; and 3) and searching for meaning in one’s life. the focus of the chapter is the description of their model for ‘lifelong meaning’. they propose that achievements of identity and connections to others, developed in childhood, foster a future orientation, solidified in adolescence, which in turn leads to purposeful and meaningful engagement with the world during adulthood. they would predict, therefore, that seeking purpose in life peaks in adolescence and gradually declines over time, having purpose in life builds through adolescence and early adulthood and peaks in late adulthood, and comprehension steadily builds through one’s life and peaks before death. research on meaning of life is ‚accelerating in breadth and sophistication‛ (p. 951), as they say, and their model of lifelong meaning can arguably be useful in guiding further research on this topic. these six chapters captured much of what is provocative and interesting in the study of happiness: can we defeat the hedonic treadmill? how do negative events lead to eudaimonic growth? what are the lifespan trajectories of meaning in life? how is mental health related to mental illness? are we genetically constrained to feel certain amounts of happiness? tentative answers to these perplexing questions are posed here, and the interested reader will benefit greatly from reading this material. the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 226 11. section x: happiness interventions (jarden) the ‘positive interventions’ section is a collection of seven chapters on the topic of happiness interventions. the introduction by spence and green (chapter 71) outlines this section’s focus: ‚put simply, this section is about different ways people can be assisted to enhance the quality of their life experience‛ (p. 958). they also point out that although ‚fortunately the scientific study of happiness is well established and much research has been done to guide our understanding of those strategies, practices, and methods that can reliably and lastingly enhance human happiness and well-being‛ (p. 958), this progress is against a backdrop of a burgeoning commercial market for happiness and wellbeing which is also difficult for consumers to navigate. there is at times a simplification of empirical research which may be leading to flawed attempts to translate research into effective practice. this in turn may be making people unhappier and thus safeguards are needed. the section organizers describe the sections in this constellation as focusing on four distinctly different aspects – 1) happiness strategies and practices, 2) alternative perspectives on change, 3) happiness amongst older adults, and 4) treatment and recovery models for enduring mental illness. the first chapter by parks and colleagues (chapter 72) is perhaps the most seminal in this collection. they define ‘positive interventions’ as ‚cognitive or behavioural strategies that attempt to build well-being through psychological processes‛ (p. 964), and outline the empirical evidence for various techniques; e.g., savoring, loving-kindness meditation, gratitude, strengths use, active-constructive responding, flow, expressive writing, reminiscing. they conclude with the view that there is now enough rigorous evidence to support empirically supported self-help (ess-h) interventions, and also provide cautionary notes on ‘person-activity fit’ which are valuable. the second chapter, by rashid (chapter 73), locates positive interventions within psychotherapy, outlining a 14-session positive psychotherapy (ppt) model which demonstrates how happiness-enhancing practices can be structured into a coherent therapeutic model. rashid defines positive psychotherapy as an ‚empirically validated psychotherapy that directly builds positive emotions, character strengths, and meaning with the aims of undoing psychopathology and promoting happiness‛ (p. 978). positive psychotherapy is summed up as a ‘build what’s strong’ to supplement the traditional ‘fix what’s wrong’ approach. the next chapter, by hayes (chapter 74), introduces acceptance and commitment therapy (act) as an alternative approach to behavior change. act does not specifically advocate enhancing happiness per se, but rather that acceptance and a commitment to a values-driven life improves life experience. act is, in a sense, another alternative to the disease model. readers will find it interesting to learn the role that ‘psychological flexibility’ plays in contributing towards good life outcomes. the fourth chapter, by spence and grant (chapter 75), focuses on coaching psychology and how coaching improves wellbeing and human functioning. they define coaching as ‚an actionoriented, collaborative, process that seeks to facilitate goal attainment, self-directed learning, and/or enhance performance in the coachee’s personal or professional life‛ (p. 1009-1010). they then outline the evidence in areas such as workplace/executive coaching, life coaching, health coaching, and educational coaching, and focus on self-determination theory and a useful guide in coaching for wellbeing. the short chapter by hsu and langer (chapter 76) outlines how mindfulness is important for cultivating happiness in later life, and that various social psychological studies point to this conclusion. the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 227 fava and ruini (chapter 77) outline wellbeing therapy, which is a psychotherapeutic intervention aimed at eliminating psychological distress. wellbeing therapy does this by focusing on wellbeing, targeting aspects that interrupt wellbeing, and the supports needed to achieve wellbeing. outcomes are based on and assessed with ryff’s six-dimensional model of psychological wellbeing. rounding out the section, the last chapter, by oades and colleagues (chapter 78), covers the collaborative recover model (crm), which is a framework designed to guide interventions in the provision of intervention services. the tools central to the crm are outlined, and examples are given. like most psychological interventions, which are designed for individuals, this collection includes little mention of the extent to which these interventions can be applied to groups and organizations. nonetheless, these chapters provide the current state of evidence for a range of positive interventions, give recommendations for implementing them, and conclude that positive interventions are enabling because they give people options about how they can direct the course of their own lives. 12. conclusion (weijers) all things considered, the oxford handbook of happiness is a wonderfully broad and rich resource for educated readers with an interest in happiness; well worth the shelf space for those who can afford it. authors dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz aaron jarden the open polytechnic of new zealand and auckland university of technology erik angner george mason university george burns cairnmillar institute, melbourne erica chadwick victoria university of wellington paul e. jose victoria university of wellington mohsen joshanloo victoria university of wellington margarita tarragona universidad tecmilenio neil thin university of edinburgh the oxford handbook of happiness weijers et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 228 references angner, e. (2011). the evolution of eupathics: the historical roots of subjective measures of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1): 4–41. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.14. diener, e., & scollon, c. n. (forthcoming). the what, why, when, and how of teaching the science of subjective well-being. teaching of psychology. lyubomirsky, s., king, l., & diener, e. (2005). the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success? psychological bulletin, 131(6), 803–855. michalos, a. (ed.) (2013). encyclopedia of quality of life research. springer. guitard, j., & jarden, a. (2022). cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction: an investigation of accurate and optimistic prospection and retrospection. international journal of wellbeing, 12(2), 1-35. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i2.1981 aaron jarden the university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction: an investigation of accurate and optimistic prospection and retrospection joline guitard · aaron jarden abstract: prospection can be defined as mental representations of possible futures which individuals use to make daily decisions. the current study aimed to assess the links between a specific type of prospection, cognitive forecasting of life satisfaction, and vari ous wellbeing and illbeing indicators. more specifically, this study aimed to assess individuals’ accuracy at cognitive forecasting, their accuracy at retrospective recall of life satisfaction, and the optimism of their life satisfaction forecasts in relat ion to wellbeing and illbeing indicators. to assess life satisfaction in the past, present, and future, we used the temporal satisfaction with life scale. data from 576 english speaking individuals who took part in the international wellbeing study was analysed. results showed that, as expected, individuals who exceeded their predictions of future life satisfaction and those who were accurate had stronger relationships with wellbeing indicators, while individuals who did not meet their expectations had stronger relationships with illbeing indicators. for retrospective recall, contrary to our expectations, individuals who believed their past life satisfaction to be worse than it had been and those who were accurate had stronger relationships with wellbeing indicators, while those who believed their past life satisfaction to be better than it had been had stronger relationships with illbeing indicators. finally, regarding optimism of forecasts, and also contrary to our expectations, it was found that optimistic individuals had stronger relationships with illbeing indicators, while less optimistic individuals had stronger relationships with wellbeing indicators. our results are interpreted following the relative standards model. keywords: affective forecasting; cognitive forecasting; life satisfaction; prospection; retrospection; wellbeing 1. introduction humans make many types of decisions about the future: from simple, to complex, to important. to make different types of decisions individuals use prospection: a mental representation of possible futures given the information available in the present and from past experiences (gilbert & wilson, 2007; seligman et al., 2013; seligman et al., 2016). individuals then decide and pursue the possible future they perceive as having the most favourable outcomes, and avoid the possible future they perceive as having less favourable outcomes (christophe & hansenne, 2016; hoerger et al., 2010; lench et al., 2019; seligman et al., 2013). during prospection, an individual can forecast how they will feel for a specific possible outcome. prospection about feelings is called affective forecasting and is defined by wilson and gilbert as “people’s predictions about their about:blank cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 future feelings” (2003, p. 346). these predictions can relate to different aspects of future feelings, such as the specific emotion (i.e., happiness, joy, awe), the valence (the feelings intrinsic attractiveness), the intensity of the emotion, and the emotion’s duration (gilbert & wilson, 2007). prospection can also be used by individuals to project into the past and recall past moods, termed retrospective recall (safer & keuler, 2002). research on affective forecasting suggests that individuals are not that accurate at predicting the impact of future events on their emotions. studies have highlighted a tendency for individuals to overestimate future emotions in intensity (e.g., the prediction that an emotion will feel stronger than it does when experienced) and in duration (e.g., the prediction that the emotional experience will last longer than it does when experienced) (gilbert et al., 1998; wilson & gilbert, 2003; wilson et al., 2000). this overestimation of the intensity and the duration of future emotions is called impact bias (gilbert et al., 2002) and is defined by wilson and gilbert as “the tendency to overestimate the enduring impact that future events will have on our emotional reactions” (2003, p. 351). one explanation for impact bias is that during prospection individuals neglect the efficiency or the availability of their coping mechanisms that come into play after the event occurs (called immune neglect: gilbert et al., 1998). other explanations for impact bias include adaptation neglect (where individuals fail to account for how quickly they will adapt to events) and focalism (where individuals fail to account for how other events not considered at the time of the forecast will impact the individuals’ emotional state in the future) (gilbert et al., 2000; lench et al., 2019; wilson & gilbert, 2008). research suggests that retrospective recall is biased in a similar way to affective forecasting, with individuals remembering longer lasting and more intense emotions than they experienced (wenze et al., 2012; wilson et al., 2003). much of prospection research over the last 25 years has focused on affective forecasting; prospection of future emotional reactions to an event. however, in recent years, interest in a different type of prospection has emerged from affective forecasting re search: cognitive forecasting. as opposed to affective forecasting, cognitive forecasting regards prospection about life in general, where individuals need to account for numerous aspects, such as emotions, life events, cognitions and thoughts (i.e., judgments of future life satisfaction). the most relevant research to date related to cognitive forecasting is from bertoni and corazzini (2018). they investigated how overestimation, underestimation, and accurate estimation of future life satisfaction (a cognitive judgment according to bertoni & corazzini) impacts subsequent levels of subjective wellbeing. figure 1 below shows an overview of their experimental design. as indicated below, bertoni and corazzini (2018) looked at over-and-underestimations in a novel way and described these as positive and negative forecasting errors. as such, a positive forecasting error happens when an individual surpasses their previous expectation of future life satisfaction. for example, at time 1 an individual forecasts that their life satisfaction would be 6/10 at time 2, yet at time 2 it is 7/10. oppositely, a negative forecasting error happens when an individual’s expectations about future life satisfaction are unmet. for example, at time 1 an individual forecasts that their life satisfaction would be 6/10 at time 2, yet at time 2 it is 5/10. an accurate forecast is when the same value was produced (i.e., they expected a 6/10 in the future at time 2, and at time 2 reported present life satisfaction as 6/10). bertoni and corazzini’s (2018) results indicated that forecasting errors do have an impact on wellbeing such that there is a higher cost to wellbeing when expectations are unmet (i.e., a negative forecasting error) than there is a gain when expectations are surpassed (i.e., a positive forecasting error). in other words, when things do not turn out as well as expected, this impacts a person’s wellbeing negatively, but importantly, to a greater extent than when things turn out more favourably. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 figure 1 overview of bertoni and corazzini’s (2018) experimental design note. this figure shows a simplified overview of bertoni and corazzini’s (2018) conceptualization of positive, negative and accurate forecasting errors and their impacts on subsequent levels of wellbeing. “t” indicates the time point of surveying where t1 is the first time of survey and t2 the second. the current research assesses the accuracy of cognitive forecasts by using a similar conceptualization of forecasting errors to that of bertoni and corazzini (2018). in addition, retrospective recall accuracy is also assessed in terms of errors according to the discrepancy between the judgment of past life satisfaction at a given time and present life satisfaction at that previous point in time. as shown in figure 2 below, a positive retrospective recall error is defined as a view that past life satisfaction was better than in reality (i.e., the individual was moderately satisfied with life at time 1 or 6/10, but now, at time 2, believes that their past life satisfaction at time 1 was very good or 8/10). on the other hand, a negative retrospective recall error is defined as a view that past life satisfaction was worse than in reality (i.e., the individual was moderately satisfied with life at time 1 or 6/10, but now believes at time 2 that their past life satisfaction at time 1 was poor or 4/10). finally, an accurate retrospective recall is when the same value was produced (i.e., the individual was moderately satisfied with life at time 1 or 6/10, and now believes at time 2 that their past life satisfaction at time 1 was moderate or 6/10). to our knowledge, past studies have looked at forecasting data by comparing two or more different times of surveying where at one time the prediction of the future is assessed, and at another time the actual experience of affect is assessed and any discrepancy calculated (ber toni & corazzini, 2018; christophe & hansenne, 2016; frank et al., 2021; hoerger, 2012; hoerger et al., 2016; hong et al., 2016; kaplan et al., 2020; lench et al., 2019; levine et al., 2012; wenze et al., 2012). the same occurs for retrospective recall where at a first time of surveying the current experience is measured, and at a later time the judgment of the past is assessed, and any discrepancy calculated (hayman et al., 2012; von wirth et al., 2021; wenze et al., 2012). by comparing two or more times of measure, researchers can assess accuracy of forecasting and retrospective recall, as well as the degree and type of errors present. for example, in bertoni and corazzini’s (2018) study, during the first survey they assessed the prediction of future life satisfaction using a single question, and at the second time point they assessed participants current life satisfaction with a single question. by comparing anticipated with subsequent current life satisfaction, they could determine the presence and extent of positive or negative forecasting errors made at time 1. = type of forecasting error at t1, realised at t2 subsequent judgments and levels of wellbeing t2 present life satisfaction positive exceeded expectation accurate no error negative did not meet expectation impacts on… t1 expected future life satisfaction t2 subsequent judgment of expected future life satisfaction (at t3) t2 present life satisfaction http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 figure 2 representation of retrospective recall positive, negative and accurate errors in the current study note. this figure demonstrates how we have conceptualized and calculated the types of errors in retrospective recall. the average retrospective recall scores were calculated by computing the mean score of discrepancies between judgments of past life satisfaction and present life satisfaction at the previous time of measure over five times of measurement, each three months apart (explained further below). “t” indicates the time point of surveying. to our knowledge, past studies have looked at forecasting data by comparing two or more different times of surveying where at one time the prediction of the future is assessed, and at another time the actual experience of affect is assessed and any discrepancy calculated (bertoni & corazzini, 2018; christophe & hansenne, 2016; frank et al., 2021; hoerger, 2012; hoerger et al., 2016; hong et al., 2016; kaplan et al., 2020; lench et al., 2019; levine et al., 2012; wenze et al., 2012). the same occurs for retrospective recall where at a first time of surveying the current experience is measured, and at a later time the judgment of the past is assessed, and any discrepancy calculated (hayman et al., 2012; von wirth et al., 2021; wenze et al., 2012). by comparing two or more times of measure, researchers can assess accuracy of forecasting and retrospective recall, as well as the degree and type of errors present. for example, in bertoni and corazzini’s (2018) study, during the first survey they assessed the prediction of future life satisfaction using a single question, and at the second time point they assessed participants current life satisfaction with a single question. by comparing anticipated with subsequent current life satisfaction, they could determine the presence and extent of positive or negative forecasting errors made at time 1. in addition to looking at accuracy of forecasts and of retrospective recall in a similar, but more extensive and robust way than bertoni and corazzini (2018), we propose a new way to explore forecasting data by evaluating not just accuracy, but the level of optimism about the future an individual portrays in their forecasts. as shown in figure 3 below, this is the discrepancy (rather than any realised value per se) between anticipated future life satisfaction and current life satisfaction at the same point in time (i.e., within the same survey period). this way of looking at the data gives new information about prospectors. more specifically, we determine if someone is more optimistic (favourable), realistic (neither favourable nor unfavourable), or less optimistic (unfavourable) in their forecasts of their future life satisfaction given their present evaluations. highly optimistic forecasting defines an estimation for the future accurate believes past life satisfaction was as good as it really was no discrepancy positive believes past life satisfaction was better than it really was discrepancy is positive negative believes past life satisfaction was worse than it really was discrepancy is negative t2 judgment of past life satisfaction t1 present life satisfaction = type of retrospective recall error http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 figure 3 representation of highly optimistic, realistic and lowly optimistic forecasts in the current study note. this figure demonstrates how we have conceptualized and calculated levels of optimism of the forecasts. the average optimism scores were calculated by computing the mean score of discrepancies over five times of measurement, each three months apart (explained further below). “t” indicates the time point of surveying. that is higher than the currently experienced life satisfaction (e.g., an individual may be currently moderately satisfied with life or a 6/10, but they expect to be more satisfied with life in the future or 7/10). a lowly optimistic forecast is defined as an estimation for the future that is lower than the currently experienced life satisfaction (e.g., an individual may be moderately satisfied with life in the present or a 6/10, but expects to be less satisfied with their life in the future or 5/10). finally, a realistic forecast is defined as an estimation for the future that is the same as the currently experienced life satisfaction (e.g., an individual is moderately satisfied with life in the present or a 6/10 and expects to be moderately satisfied with their life in the future or 6/10). this approach does not inform us on the subsequent accuracy of the forecasts or the relative value of the ratings of life satisfaction per se. for example, a lowly optimistic forecast between a current rating of 6/10 and a future forecast of 4/10 is the same as a present rating of 8/10 and a future forecast of 6/10 – both are less optimistic to the value of 2 increments. however, it gives us information about prior mindsets individuals might have regarding their future states and wellbeing. the current study brings important contributions to the field of prospection by 1) focusing on cognitive judgments about the future rather than judgments of affect in the future, 2) focusing more robustly and extensively on cognitive judgments about the future by using an established 15-item scale rather than single item questions, 3) investigating optimism of forecasts, 4) assessing retrospective recall of cognitive judgments, and 5) investigating more broadly how accuracy of forecasts, accuracy of retrospective recall, and optimism about future life satisfaction link to broader wellbeing and illbeing indicators. 2. aims and hypotheses the current study has three main objectives. first, we assess how accurate people are at cognitive t1 expected future life satisfaction t1 present life satisfaction highly optimistic expects higher life satisfaction for the future than current level discrepancy is positive realistic expects life satisfaction for the future to be the same as the current level no discrepancy optimism level lowly optimistic expects lower life satisfaction for the future than the current level discrepancy is negative = http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 forecasting through their forecasts of life satisfaction. in doing so, we investigate the differences between people who are more and less accurate, and how levels of accuracy relate to other wellbeing and illbeing indicators than have been studied and reported before. second, we assess how accurate people are at recalling their past life satisfaction. in doing so, we investigate the differences between people who are more and less accurate and how their accuracy relates to wellbeing and illbeing indicators. lastly, we investigate differences between a cognitive forecasting style in individuals who are more and less optimistic, and those that are realistic, in their forecasting of life satisfaction. in doing so, we investigate how these cognitive forecasting styles (highly optimistic, lowly optimistic, and realistic) relates to wellbeing and illbeing indicators. with these three aims our subsequent specific hypotheses were as follows: h1a. regarding the accuracy of cognitive forecasting, given that people are not accurate at affective forecasting (gilbert et al., 1998; wilson & gilbert, 2003; wilson et al., 2000), we expect that individuals will also not be accurate at cognitive forecasting1. however, we do not know the extent of this accuracy. h1b. we expect that both accuracy, and positive inaccuracy (when individuals go above their prediction making a positive forecasting error) of cognitive forecasting, are related positively to wellbeing indicators (i.e., happiness, hope, meaning in life, etc.) and negatively to illbeing indicators (i.e., depressed mood, rumination, etc.). on the other hand, we expect negative inaccuracy (when individuals do not meet their prediction therefore making a negative forecasting error) is negatively related to wellbeing indicators and positively to illbeing indicators. this hypothesis is depicted below in figure 4. figure 4 representation of h1b note. this figure shows the hypothesis that individuals who are accurate at cognitive forecasting and those who exceed their expectations (positive error) will have positive relationships with wellbeing (solid arrows) and negative relationships with illbeing indicators (dashed arrows). whereas individuals who do not meet their expectations (negative error) will have positive relationships with illbeing indicators (solid arrows) and negative relationships with wellbeing indicators (dashed arrows). h2a. regarding the accuracy of retrospective recall for past life satisfaction, given that individuals are not accurate at remembering past moods (safer & keuler, 2002; thomas & diener, 1990; 1 accuracy is hereby defined as: a discrepancy between expected life satisfaction at a future point in time and current life satisfaction at that future point in time (next time of measure), ranging between -1 and +1. individuals whose average score of accuracy (explained further below) did not fall between these parameters were considered inaccurate (they committed a positive or negative forecasting error). t1 expected future life satisfaction t2 present life satisfaction wellbeing indicators = positive exceeded expectation accurate no error negative did not meet expectation type of forecasting error at t1, realised at t2 illbeing indicators http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 wenze et al., 2012), we expect that individuals will also not be accurate at recalling past life satisfaction. however, we do not know the extent of this accuracy. h2b. we expect that accurate retrospective recall of life satisfaction is positively related to wellbeing indicators (i.e., happiness, hope, meaning in life, etc.) and negatively related to illbeing indicators (i.e., depressed mood, rumination, etc.). likewise, we expect that positive inaccuracy of retrospective recall is also positively related to wellbeing and negatively related to illbeing in the cases where individuals believe their past was better than it was. however, we expect negative inaccuracy to be negatively related to wellbeing and positively related to illbeing when individuals believe their past was worse than in reality. this hypothesis is depicted below in figure 5. figure 5 representation of h2b note. this figure shows the hypothesis that individuals who are accurate at retrospective recall and those who commit a positive retrospective error will have positive relationships with wellbeing (solid arrows) and negative relationships with illbeing indicators (dashed arrows). whereas individuals who commit a negative retrospective error will have positive relationships with illbeing indicators (solid arrow) and negative relationships with wellbeing indicators (dashed arrow). h3a. regarding highly and lowly optimistic, and realistic forecasts, the current study is the first to explore prospecting data and cognitive mindsets in this way. therefore, we do not know the relative proportions of individuals who may have a highly optimistic, lowly optimistic, or realistic forecasting mindset. h3b. knowing that trait optimism is related to wellbeing, and pessimism to aspects of illbeing (seligman, 1998), we expect that highly optimistic forecasters will have positive relationships with indicators of wellbeing (i.e., happiness, hope, meaning in life, etc.) and negative relationships with indicators of illbeing (i.e., depressed mood, rumination, etc.) compared to lowly optimistic forecasters. we also expect the same relationship for realistic forecasters, albeit to a lesser degree. alternatively, we expect that lowly optimistic forecasters will have negative relationships with indicators of wellbeing (i.e., happiness, hope, meaning in life, etc.) and positive accurate believes past life satisfaction was as good as it really was no discrepancy positive believes past life satisfaction was better than it really was discrepancy is positive negative believes past life satisfaction was worse than it really was discrepancy is negative wellbeing indicators illbeing indicators t2 judgment of past life satisfaction t1 present life satisfaction = type of retrospective recall errors http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 relationships with indicators of illbeing (i.e., depressed mood, rumination, etc.) compared to highly optimistic and accurate forecasters. this hypothesis is depicted below in figure 6. figure 6 representation of h3b note. this figure shows the hypothesis that individuals who are highly optimistic and those who are realistic in their forecasts will have positive relationships with wellbeing (solid arrows) and negative relationships with illbeing indicators (dashed arrows). also, individuals who are lowly optimistic in their forecasts will have positive relationships with illbeing indicators (solid arrow) and negative relationships with wellbeing indicators (dashed arrow). 3. method 3.1 participants data for the current study came from the international wellbeing study (iws; www.wellbeingstudy.com) and was collected between march 2009 and march 2013. the multicultural sample consisted of 576 adults over the age of 16 (84% female; mean age 41.2, sd 14.6) who spoke english as their main language. as depicted in table 1 below, participants came from 29 different countries with most being from the regions of oceania, north america, and europe. 3.2 materials the complete iws survey battery consisted of 19 questionnaires (217 items) that were completed in an average of 29 minutes. for the current study, only eight of the measures were used for analysis (those related to wellbeing and illbeing indicators) and included the 1) temporal satisfaction with life scale, 2) scales of psychological wellbeing – 18-item version, 3) subjective happiness scale, 4) adult hope scale, 5) gratitude questionnaire-6, 6) meaning in life questionnaire, 7) rumination scale, and 8) centre for epidemiological studies depression scale. the temporal satisfaction with life scale (tswls; pavot et al., 1998) was used to assess prospection and is described below, with the remaining seven measures described and referenced further in appendix a. all measures had adequate reliability, apart from the ‘purpose t1 expected future life satisfaction t1 present life satisfaction highly optimistic expects higher life satisfaction for the future than current level discrepancy is positive realistic expects life satisfaction for the future to be the same as the current level no discrepancy optimism level lowly optimistic expects lower life satisfaction for the future than the current level discrepancy is negative wellbeing indicators illbeing indicators = http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.wellbeingstudy.com/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 in life’ sub-scale of the scales of psychological wellbeing which had a low alpha of α = .342. table 1 participants’ world region world region relative frequency (%) count oceania 56.9 328 north america 24.3 140 europe 16.1 93 asia 1.4 8 africa 0.9 5 latin america 0.3 2 satisfaction with past, present, and future life was measured with the tswls (pavot et al., 1998)3, which was developed from a previous unidimensional measure of life satisfaction; the widely used satisfaction with life scale (swls) (diener et al., 1985; see jarden & jarden, 2016). the tswls assesses past, present, and future life satisfaction with 15 items (five for each temporal dimension). an example past life satisfaction item is “i am satisfied with my life in the past”, an example present life satisfaction item is “my currently life is ideal for me”, and an example future life satisfaction item is “the conditions of my future life will be excellent”. no specific timeframe (e.g., past week, past month, in general) is referenced in the scale instructions. items are answered using a seven-point likert type scale from (1) strongly disagree, to (4) – neither agree nor disagree at the mid point, to (7) strongly agree. scores for each of the three subscales range from 5 to 30. in the current study, internal consistency for the scale total4 was good with a cronbach’s alpha of α = .91, and subscales also had good internal consistency with alphas of α = .86 for past, α = .90 for present, and α = .85 for future life satisfaction. 3.3 procedure participants completed online self-report questionnaires at three months intervals (during an open week period) for a total of five times over one year (i.e., approx. 3 months apart). even though participants started the study at different times between march 2009 and march 2012, all participants completed the five surveys in full within a year. incentives for participation involved individuals receiving a summary report of their scores and a chance to win one of fifteen nzd100 amazon.com vouchers. we computed three main variables for the study analysis, and each is described below: 1) accuracy of forecasts, 2) accuracy of retrospective recall, and 3) optimism of forecasts. average accuracy of forecasts was computed for each participant by calculating the difference between present life satisfaction and predicted future life satisfaction at the previous time of measure (e.g., if at time 2, an individual scores 28 for present life satisfaction, and at time 1, they predicted their future life satisfaction to be 35, they would receive a difference of -7). differences in accuracy 2 this sub-scale has previously been identified as having a low alpha. for example, seifert (2005) reported α = 0.33. 3 all previous research on cognitive forecasting to date has only used a one item measure. for example, bertoni and corazzini (2018) asked: “how satisfied are you at present with your life as a whole?” and “how satisfied do you think you will be five years from now?”. 4 although we report total life satisfaction scores (as a combination of past, present and future life satisfaction), it is not a focus of the current study. therefore, results regarding total life satisfaction are not interpreted as we are instead concerned with temporal dimensionality here. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 were computed between all five times of measure for a total of four accuracy differences, and we then computed the mean of those four differences to obtain a more accurate single average accuracy score for each participant. average accuracy for retrospective recall was computed in a similar way for each participant by calculating the difference between past life satisfaction and present life satisfaction at the previous time of measure (e.g., at time 2, an individual scores 28 for past life satisfaction, and at time 1, their present life satisfaction was 35, they would get a difference of -7). differences in retrospective recall accuracy were computed between all five times of measure for a total of four accuracy differences, and we then computed the mean of those four differences to obtain a more accurate single average retrospective recall accuracy score for each participant. lastly, optimism of forecasts was computed. a highly optimistic forecast is an estimation for future life satisfaction that is higher than the current level of life satisfaction (e.g., the individual is currently moderately satisfied with life or 6/10, but they expect to be more satisfied with life in the future or 8/10), while a lowly optimistic forecast is the opposite (e.g., the individual is moderately satisfied with life or 6/10, but they expect to be less satisfied with life in the future or 4/10). thus, we calculated the discrepancy between anticipated future life satisfaction and current life satisfaction at the same point in time (i.e., within the same time of surveying). if the value was positive, that indicated a highly optimistic view, and if negative a lowly optimistic view (e.g., if at time 1 anticipated future life satisfaction was 6/10 and at time 1 present life satisfaction was 4/10, that was a highly optimistic view of +2. likewise, if at if at time 1 anticipated future life satisfaction was 6/10 and at time 1 present life satisfaction was 8/10, that was a lowly optimistic view of -2). a realistic forecast is an estimation for future life satisfaction that is the same as the current level of life satisfaction (e.g., the individual is currently moderately satisfied with life or 6/10 and expects to also be moderately satisfied or 6/10 in the future). we calculated this across all five time points, and then averaged the five scores for a more accurate optimism average. 4. results results are presented in the order of research questions; we investigate the accuracy of forecasts, then the accuracy of retrospective recall, and lastly the optimism of forecasts. full descriptive statistics and correlations for study variables at time 1 are presented in table 12 in appendix b5, with pertinent and large correlations reported below. correlations are interpreted following cohen’s (1988) guidelines: correlations of .10 to .29 are considered small, .30 to .49 medium, and .50 or above large. in computing correlations between study variables, and as displayed in table 12 in appendix b, we found that past life satisfaction was largely and positively related to self-acceptance (r = .50, p < .01) and to present life satisfaction (r = .52, p < .01). with regard to present life satisfaction, this was largely and positively correlated with self-acceptance (r = .62, p < .01), environmental mastery (r = .55, p < .01), subjective happiness (r = .64, p < .01), gratitude (r = .50, p < .01), the agency subscale of hope (r = .56, p < .01) and total hope score (r = .52, p < .01). present life satisfaction has its strongest negative correlation with depressed mood (r = -.60, p < .01). regarding future life satisfaction, this was largely and positively related to present life satisfaction (r = .61, p < .01), to subjective happiness (r = .51, p < .01), and to the agency sub-scale of hope (r = .50, p < .01). in other words, and as would be expected, these results indicate that all three past, present, and future life satisfaction have strong positive links to wellbeing indicators and that present life satisfaction 5 we also computed results for the other four time points, which had very similar values and are available on request. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 is strongly negatively related to the illbeing indicator of depressed mood. table 2 below presents correlations between accuracy of forecasts, accuracy of retrospective recall, optimism of forecasts, and with other study variables. table 2 correlations between accuracy of forecasts, accuracy of retrospective recall, optimism of forecasts and other study variables at time 1 forecasting accuracy retrospective recall accuracy forecasting optimism 1. forecasting accuracy 1 2. retrospective recall accuracy -.35** 1 3. forecasting optimism -.96** .37** 1 temporal satisfaction with life scale 4. past .21** .40** -.25** 5. present .44** -.34** -.58** 6. future -.12** -.13** .06 7. total scores .25** -.02 -.34** scales of psychological wellbeing 8. positive relationships with others .21** -.01 -.24** 9. self-acceptance .28** -.06 -.31** 10. autonomy .00 -.11** -.03 11. personal growth .05 -.11** -.09* 12. environmental mastery .25** -.12** -.31** 13. purpose in life .04 -.06 -.05 subjective happiness scale 14. subjective happiness .26** -.11* -.33** gratitude questionnaire 15. gratitude .19** -.08 -.23** adult hope scale 16. agency .21** -.08 -.26** 17. pathway .10* -.10* -.13** 18. total scores .17** -.10* -.21** meaning in life questionnaire 19. presence .17** -.23** -.22** 20. search -.21** .11* .22** rumination 21. rumination -.24** .11* .28** centre for epidemiological studies depression scale 22. depressed mood -.34** .18** .40** note. n = 576. *p < .05, **p < .01. light grey: correlation of .30 or greater. dark grey: correlation of.50 or greater. as indicated in table 2 above, accuracy of forecasts had a very strong negative correlation with the optimism of forecasts (r = -.96, p < .01). this result suggests that the more optimistic the forecast, the more negative forecasting errors individuals made and vice versa. in other words, individuals who were optimistic about their future life satisfaction were less likely to achieve http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 their expectation resulting in negative forecasting errors. this relationship is presented visually below in figure 7. figure 7 visual representation of the relationship between average accuracy of forecasts and average optimism of forecasts. note. average optimism ranged from -12 to 17.80. higher scores are associated with individuals who were highly optimistic in their forecasts while lower scores are associated with individuals who were lowly optimistic in their forecasts. scores between -1 and +1 are associated with individuals who were accurate. average accuracy of forecasts scores ranged from -17.25 to +12.75. higher scores are associated with individuals who exceeded their predictions, therefore creating a positive forecasting error. lower scores are associated with individuals who did not meet their predictions, therefore creating a negative forecasting error. scores between -1 and +1 are associated with individuals who were accurate. table 2 above also indicates that accuracy of forecasts is moderately positively correlated with present life satisfaction (r = .44, p < .01) and moderately negatively correlated with depressed mood (r = -.34, p < .01). retrospective recall accuracy was moderately positively correlated with past life satisfaction (r = .40, p < .01) and moderately negatively correlated with present life satisfaction (r = -.34, p < .01). finally, the optimism of forecasts is moderately negatively correlated with self-acceptance (r = -.31, p < .01), environmental mastery (r = -.31, p < .01), present life satisfaction (r = -.58, p < .01) and subjective happiness (r = -.33, p < .01), while it is moderately positively correlated with depressed mood (r = .40, p < .01). these results suggest that individuals who had a highly optimistic tendency in their forecasts of life satisfaction had a more negative relationship with wellbeing indicators, and they were less satisfied with their present life linear r² = 0.924 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 satisfaction. they also reported more depressed mood than individuals with a less optimistic tendency. h1a. accuracy of forecasts – proportion accurate, positively inaccurate, and negatively inaccurate average accuracy of forecasts scores ranged from -17.25 to +12.75. individuals were considered accurate if their average score (when their four accuracy results were averaged) fell between -1 and +1 (inclusively), while others were considered inaccurate – having committed a positive or negative forecasting error. of the 576 participants, 21.0% were accurate (n = 121, mean accuracy = 0.08, sd = 0.63), 39.2% committed negative forecasting errors (n = 226, mean accuracy = -5.0, sd = 3.27) and 39.8% committed a positive forecasting error (n = 229, mean accuracy = 3.85, sd = 2.19). therefore, with only 21% accurate, h1a (that individuals will not be accurate at cognitive forecasting) was supported. h1b. accuracy of forecasts – links to wellbeing and illbeing as indicated in table 2 above and supportive of h1b, average accuracy of forecasts was moderately positively correlated with wellbeing indicators (e.g., present life satisfaction, r = .44, p < .01) and moderately negatively correlated with illbeing indicators (e.g., scores of depressed mood, r = -.34, p < .01). to better compare accurate, positive, and negative error individuals, and to more stringently test h1b, we investigated individuals that were most and least accurate (n = 234; or 40.6% of the 576 sample). given the size of our sample, we chose to use a sub-group to test possible differences more stringently between most and least accurate individuals. therefore, to further explore differences between individuals with different accuracy levels we divided inaccurate individuals into two groups according to the type of forecasting error: positive or negative. these forecasting errors are defined as in bertoni and corazzini (2018) and above. the individuals within the positive forecasting error group were inaccurate individuals who exceeded their prediction of future life satisfaction (n = 57, mean age = 46.00, sd = 15.49, mean accuracy = 6.98, sd = 1.75, range 5.00 to 12.75), individuals in the negative forecasting error group were inaccurate individuals who reported not meeting their expectation for future life satisfaction (n = 56, mean age = 33.64, sd = 12.62, mean accuracy = -9.77, sd = 2.19, range -7.25 to -17.25), and accurate individuals had an average accuracy within + and – 1 (n = 121, mean age = 41.07, sd = 13.61, mean accuracy = 0.08, sd = 0.63, range -1.00 to 1.00). table 3 below presents the descriptive statistics for the wellbeing and illbeing indicators for each group. we then computed a manova to compare the three groups: individuals who made a positive forecasting error, accurate individuals, and individuals who made a negative forecasting error. variables that did not meet the analysis’ assumptions were treated as non-parametric. posthoc contrasts were done using bonferroni’s correction. table 4 below shows the statistically significant results of this manova analysis. as indicated in table 4 below, groups differed significantly on subjective happiness, rumination, positive relationships, the search for meaning in life, environmental mastery, past life satisfaction, and total hope scores. it is worth noting that the positive forecasting error group did not significantly differ from the accurate group on any of the variables. in terms of subjective happiness, and as displayed in figure 8 below, the negative forecasting error group had significantly lower scores than the accurate group (mean difference = -0.67, p = 0.01) and than the positive forecasting error group (mean difference = -1.12, p < 0.01). regarding rumination, and also displayed in figure 8 below, individuals in the negative forecasting error group scored significantly higher than accurate individuals (mean difference = 4.69, p < 0.05) and higher than http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 individuals in the positive forecasting error group (mean difference = 7.48, p < 0.01). table 3 descriptive statistics of study variables at time 1 of the three forecasting error sub-groups positive forecasting error accurate negative forecasting error m sd m sd m sd skewness kurtosis temporal satisfaction with life scale 1. past 20.18 [7.19] 18.90 [7.96] 16.41 [7.30] .09 -1.01 2. present 27.26 [4.37] 22.72 [7.14] 15.30 [6.78] -.28 -.85 3. future 20.56 [4.55] 22.88 [6.13] 23.80 [5.43] -.13 -.14 4. total scores 68.00 [12.24] 64.50 [18.90] 55.52 [15.92] .04 -.61 scales of psychological wellbeing 1. positive relationships with others 18.04 [3.36] 16.34 [3.84] 14.89 [3.90] -.73 -.37 2. self-acceptance 18.47 [2.75] 16.00 [4.40] 14.05 [3.98] -.84 -.06 3. autonomy 16.47 [3.84] 16.20 [3.55] 16.46 [2.82] -.76 .04 4. personal growth 19.02 [2.68] 18.83 [2.55] 18.82 [2.58] -1.56 2.53 5. environmental mastery 16.70 [3.10] 15.64 [3.84] 14.05 [3.76] -.66 .01 6. purpose in life 17.30 [2.91] 16.92 [3.13] 16.80 [3.46] -.87 .47 subjective happiness scale 7. subjective happiness 5.30 [1.12] 4.86 [1.31] 4.17 [1.36] -.38 -.49 gratitude questionnaire 8. gratitude 37.96 [4.63] 35.91 [6.08] 34.18 [5.92] -1.13 .79 adult hope scale 9. agency 26.32 [4.27] 25.12 [4.96] 23.00 [6.15] -1.20 1.41 10. pathway 24.95 [5.05] 25.24 [4.46] 23.91 [4.32] -.67 .11 11. total scores 51.26 [8.84] 50.36 [8.60] 46.91 [9.30] -.86 .44 meaning in life questionnaire 12. presence 26.00 [6.11] 24.99 [6.85] 22.75 [7.94] -.64 -.22 13. search 19.00 [7.98] 20.25 [8.68] 25.05 [7.51] -.26 -.97 rumination 14. rumination 20.11 [8.60] 23.11 [9.96] 27.59 [8.62] -.05 -.97 centre for epidemiological studies depression scale 15. depressed mood 7.81 [6.08] 12.09 [10.39] 21.23 [12.13] 1.12 .32 note. the analysis was conducted on the more stringent sub-sample comprising of 234 individuals. positive forecasting error group n = 57, accurate group n = 121, negative forecasting error group n = 56. skewness standard error = .16. kurtosis standard error = .32. the remaining results in table 4 can also be interpreted in a similar way in that the positive forecasting error group reported higher wellbeing and lower illbeing compared to the negative forecasting error group, with the accurate group located between these two groups. these results support h1b, in that both positive forecasting errors and accurate forecasting of life satisfaction are related to greater wellbeing and lesser illbeing, and that negative forecasting errors of life satisfaction are related to lesser wellbeing and greater illbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 as mentioned above, variables that did not meet the manova’s assumptions were tr eated as non-parametric. within our stringent subgroup for forecasting accuracy, the following seven table 4 manova results for positive, accurate and negative forecasting error groups positive forecasting errors accurate negative forecasting errors variable m sd m sd m sd df f ratio ηp2 p subjective happiness 5.30 [1.12] 4.86 [1.41] 4.17 [1.36] 2, 231 11.17 .09 < .01 rumination 20.11 [8.60] 23.11 [9.61] 27.59 [8.62] 2, 231 9.25 .07 < .01 mlq – search 19.00 [7.98] 20.25 [8.69] 25.05 [7.51] 2, 231 8.93 .07 < .01 spwb – environmental mastery 16.70 [3.10] 15.64 [3.70] 14.05 [3.76] 2, 231 7.55 .06 < .01 hope – total 51.26 [8.84] 50.36 [8.51] 46.91 [9.30] 2, 231 4.03 .03 = .02 tswls – past 20.18 [7.19] 18.90 [7.78] 16.41 [7.30] 2, 231 3.62 .03 = .03 note. ranked by f ratio. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing. mlq = meaning in life questionnaire. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. total = n = 234. positive forecasting error n = 57. accurate n = 121. negative forecasting error n = 56. mean of significant post-hoc contrasts are bolded. figure 8 visual representation of subjective happiness and rumination post-hoc contrasts note. n = 234. bars represent mean scores, and error bars indicate + and 1 standard deviation. variables did not meet the equality of variance postulate: present, future, and total life satisfaction, as well as self-acceptance, gratitude, depressed mood, and the agency subscale of hope. results of levene’s test of equality of variances are available in table 13 in appendix c. therefore, these variables were tested using a kruskal-wallis one factor anova. results are presented in table 5 below. 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 r u m in a ti o n s co re s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 s u b je ct iv e h a p p in e ss s co re positive forecasting errors accurate negative forecasting errors http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 table 5 kruskall-wallis results and pairwise comparisons for positive, accurate and negative forecasting error groups kruskall-wallis test summary medians pairwise comparisons statistic degrees of freedom sig. negative error group accurate group positive error group negative vs accurate negative vs positive accurate vs positive tswls – present 66.34 2 < .01 15.00 23.00 28.50 < .01 < .01 < .01 tswls – future 9.14 2 .01 25.00 23.00 21.00 1.00 .01 .04 tswls – total 18.12 2 < .01 54.50 63.00 67.50 <.01 < .01 .35 spwb – self acceptance 35.46 2 < .01 14.00 17.00 19.00 < .01 < .01 < .01 gratitude 13.97 2 <.01 35.00 38.00 39.00 .09 <.01 .09 hope – agency 11.35 2 < .01 25.00 27.00 27.00 .04 < .01 .49 depressed mood 41.89 2 < .01 19.50 9.00 7.00 < .01 < .01 .06 note. n = 234. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing. comparisons’ significance levels are adjusted with bonferroni’s correction for multiple tests. bolded results indicate significant difference between groups. h2a. accuracy of retrospective recall – proportion positively inaccurate, accurate, and negatively inaccurate average accuracy of retrospective recall scores ranged from -22.75 to +18.75. individuals were considered accurate in their retrospective recall if their average score (when their four retrospective recall accuracy results were averaged) fell between -1 and +1 (inclusively), while others were considered inaccurate – having made a positive or negative retrospective recall error. of the 576 participants, 18.4% were accurate in their recall (n = 106, mean retrospective recall accuracy = -0.10, sd = 0.63, all within + or 1), 55.6% made a negative error (n = 320, mean retrospective recall accuracy = -6.19, sd = 4.33), and 26.0% made as positive error (n = 150, mean retrospective recall accuracy = 3.94, sd = 2.79). therefore, with only 18.4% accurate, h2a (that individuals will not be accurate at retrospective recall) was supported. in addition, inaccurate individuals were more than twice as likely to make a negative retrospective recall error than a positive error (55.6% negative errors vs 26.0% positive errors). h2b. accuracy of retrospective recall – links to wellbeing and illbeing as previously indicated in table 2 above, the accuracy of retrospective recall of life satisfaction is negatively moderately correlated with the accuracy of forecasting (r = -.35, p < .01), meaning that individuals who rated their past life satisfaction as worse than it really was, also were more likely to exceed their forecasts of future life satisfaction, while individuals who rated their past life satisfaction as better were less likely to achieve their expectations of future life satisfaction. accuracy of retrospective recall was also moderately positively correlated with the optimism of forecasts (r = .37, p < .01), meaning that individuals who rated their past life satisfaction as better http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 than it was tended to be more optimistic in their forecasts of future life satisfaction, while individuals who rated their past life satisfaction as worse than it was tended to be less optimistic. moreover, and providing mixed support for h2b, accuracy of retrospective recall was positively correlated with past life satisfaction (r = .40, p < .01) and negatively correlated with present life satisfaction (r = -.34, p < .01). these results suggest that individuals who rated their past life satisfaction as better than it was reported higher scores of past life satisfaction, but also reported lower scores for their present life satisfaction. to better compare accurate and inaccurate individuals, we investigated individuals that were most and least accurate in their retrospective recall (n = 257; or 44.6% of the 576 sample). given the size of our sample, similar to the accuracy of forecasters analysis above, we chose to use a sub-group to test possible retrospective recall differences more stringently between most and least accurate individuals. therefore, to further explore differences in individuals with different retrospective recall accuracy levels, we divided inaccurate individuals into two groups according to the type of retrospective error: positive or negative. the individuals within the positive retrospective error group were inaccurate individuals who judged their past life satisfaction as higher than their actual life satisfaction at the previous time (n = 79; 82.3% females; mean age = 36.38, sd = 14.59, mean retrospective recall accuracy = 5.72, sd = 2.80, range 3 to 18.75), individuals in the negative retrospective error group were inaccurate individuals who judged their past life satisfaction as lower than their actual life satisfaction at the previous time (n = 72; 88.9% females; mean age = 45.03 years old, sd = 14.55, mean retrospective recall accuracy = -12.76, sd = 3.23), and accurate individuals had an average accuracy within + and – 1 (n = 106; 80.2% females; mean age = 40.52, sd = 15.26, mean retrospective recall accuracy = -0.10, sd = 0.63 range -1.00 to 1.00). table 6 below shows the descriptive statistics of the wellbeing and illbeing indicators for each group. we then computed a manova to compare three groups: individuals with positive retrospective errors, individuals with accurate retrospective recall, and individuals with negative retrospective errors. variables that did not meet the analysis’ assumptions we re treated as nonparametric. post-hoc contrasts were done using bonferroni’s correction. table 7 below shows the statistically significant results of this analysis. as indicated in table 7 below, groups differed significantly on the presence of meaning in life, environmental mastery, subjective happiness, the search for meaning in life, total hope scores, hope pathways scores, rumination, hope agency scores, personal growth, and autonomy. it is worth noting that the accurate group did not significantly differ from the negative retrospective error group on any variable. in terms of subjective happiness, and as displayed in figure 9 below, individuals who made positive retrospective recall errors scored significantly lower than individuals in the accurate group (mean difference = -0.60, p < .05) and than individuals in the negative retrospective error group (mean difference = -0.65, p < .05). regarding rumination, and also displayed in figure 9 below, individuals who made positive retrospective recall errors scored significantly higher than individuals who made negative retrospective recall errors (mean difference = 3.84, p < .05). the remaining results in table 7 can also be interpreted in a similar way in that the positive retrospective recall error group reported lower wellbeing and higher illbeing compared to accurate retrospective recall group, and the negative retrospective recall group. as mentioned above, variables that did not meet the manova’s assumptions were treated as non-parametric. within our stringent subgroup for retrospective recall accuracy, the following variables did not meet the equality of variance postulate: past, present, and total life satisfaction, depressed mood, and the presence of meaning in life. results of levene’s test of equality of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 variances are available in table 14 in appendix c. therefore, these variables were tested using a kruskal-wallis one factor anova. results are presented in table 8 below. table 6 descriptive statistics of study variables at time 1 of the three retrospective recall error sub-groups positive retrospective recall error accurate retrospective recall negative retrospective recall error m sd m sd m sd skewness kurtosis temporal satisfaction with life scale 1. past 21.54 [6.61] 21.55 [7.14] 12.82 [5.35] .12 -.87 2. present 17.71 [7.17] 22.50 [7.57] 26.64 [5.93] -.28 -.92 3. future 21.51 [5.83] 23.25 [5.90] 23.60 [5.55] -.17 -.01 4. total scores 60.76 [16.73] 67.30 [18.72] 63.06 [14.00] .01 -.41 scales of psychological wellbeing 1. positive relationships with others 15.82 [4.11] 16.75 [3.68] 15.78 [3.75] -.72 -.23 2. self-acceptance 15.85 [3.93] 16.56 [4.20] 16.85 [4.00] -1.06 .70 3. autonomy 15.28 [3.64] 16.08 [3.39] 16.69 [3.41] -.67 -.02 4. personal growth 18.16 [2.56] 18.81 [2.80] 19.26 [2.38] -1.51 2.33 5. environmental mastery 14.11 [3.92] 16.25 [3.35] 16.33 [3.46] -.67 .04 6. purpose in life 16.16 [3.26] 17.01 [2.98] 17.42 [3.19] -.50 -.63 subjective happiness scale 7. subjective happiness 4.39 [1.45] 5.04 [1.33] 5.04 [1.24] -.45 -.45 gratitude questionnaire 8. gratitude 35.61 [5.01] 36.54 [5.83] 37.24 [5.01] -1.07 .54 adult hope scale 9. agency 23.80 [5.65] 25.25 [4.71] 25.83 [5.00] -1.23 1.78 10. pathway 23.01 [5.40] 24.77 [4.31] 25.04 [4.72] -.90 .97 11. total scores 46.81 [9.98] 50.02 [8.29] 50.87 [9.19] -1.04 1.37 meaning in life questionnaire 12. presence 21.91 [7.71] 24.44 [7.34] 27.50 [6.28] -.66 -.41 13. search 22.82 [8.07] 20.45 [8.54] 18.96 [8.12] -.15 -1.03 rumination 14. rumination 26.63 [9.61] 23.24 [9.27] 22.79 [9.38] -.17 -.92 centre for epidemiological studies depression scale 15. depressed mood 18.22 [11.52] 10.89 [9.38] 9.43 [8.15] 1.05 .33 note. the analysis was conducted on the more stringent sub-sample comprising of 257 individuals. positive retrospective recall error group n = 79, accurate retrospective recall group n = 106, negative retrospective recall error group n = 72. skewness standard error = .15. kurtosis standard error = .30. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 table 7 manova results for accurate, positive and negative retrospective recall error groups positive retrospective error accurate retrospective recall negative retrospective error variable m sd m sd m sd df f ratio ηp2 p mlq presence 21.91 [7.71] 24.44 [7.34] 27.50 [6.28] 2, 254 11.43 0.08 < .01 spwb – environmental mastery 14.11 [3.92] 16.25 [3.35] 16.33 [3.46] 2, 254 10.13 0.07 < .01 subjective happiness 4.39 [1.45] 5.04 [1.33] 5.04 [1.24] 2, 254 6.34 0.05 < .01 hope – total 46.81 [9.98] 50.02 [8.29] 50.88 [9.19] 2, 254 4.38 0.03 = .01 hope – pathway 23.01 [5.40] 24.77 [4.31] 25.04 [4.72] 2, 254 4.25 0.03 = .02 mlq – search 22.82 [8.07] 20.45 [8.54] 18.96 [8.12] 2, 254 4.23 0.03 = .02 rumination 26.63 [9.61] 23.24 [9.27] 22.79 [9.38] 2, 254 4.00 0.03 = .02 spwb – personal growth 18.16 [2.56] 18.81 [2.80] 19.26 [2.38] 2, 254 3.40 0.03 = .04 hope – agency 23.80 [5.65] 25.25 [4.71] 25.83 [5.00] 2, 254 3.28 0.03 = .04 spwb – autonomy 15.28 [3.64] 16.08 [3.39] 16.69 [3.41] 2, 254 3.17 0.02 = .04 note. ranked by f ratio. mlq = meaning in life questionnaire. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing. total n = 257. positive retrospective error group n = 79. accurate retrospective recall group n = 106. negative retrospective error group n = 72. mean of significant post-hoc contrasts are bolded. figure 9 visual representation of subjective happiness and rumination post-hoc contrasts for retrospective recall note. n = 257. bars represent mean scores, and error bars indicate + and 1 standard deviation. 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 r u m in a ti o n s co re s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 s u b je ct iv e h a p p in e ss s co re positive retrospective recall errors accurate retrospective recall negative retrospective recall errors http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 table 8 kruskall-wallis results and pairwise comparisons for positive, accurate and negative retrospective recall error groups kruskall-wallis test summary medians pairwise comparisons statistic degrees of freedom sig. negative error group accurate group positive error group negative vs accurate negative vs positive accurate vs positive tswls past 70.84 2 < .01 13.00 21.00 22.00 < .01 < .01 1.00 tswls – present 48.90 2 < .01 28.00 23.50 16.00 < .01 < .01 < .01 tswls – total 6.38 2 .04 63.50 67.50 59.00 .38 1.00 .04 depression 31.92 2 < .01 8.00 8.00 15.00 1.00 < .01 < .01 note. n = 257. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. comparisons’ significance levels are adjusted with bonferroni’s correction for multiple tests. bolded results indicate significant difference between groups. in sum, individuals who made more positive retrospective recall errors, in comparison to individuals who made more negative retrospective recall errors, scored higher on aspects of illbeing, such as rumination and search for meaning in life6, and lower on aspects of wellbeing, such as subjective happiness, hope, purpose in life, personal growth and autonomy. these results are not supportive of h2b. h3a. optimism of forecasts – proportion highly optimistic, realistic, and lowly optimistic optimism scores ranged from -12 to +17.80. individuals were considered highly optimistic if their average optimism score was above 1, realistic if their average optimism score fell between -1 and +1, and lowly optimistic if it was less then -1. of the 576 participants, 39.4% were highly optimistic (n = 227, mean optimism score = 4.89, sd = 3.23), 22% were realistic (n = 127, mean optimism score = 0.05, sd = 0.68, all between + and 1), and 38.5% were lowly optimistic (n = 222, mean optimism score = -3.76, sd = 2.21). h3b. optimism of forecasts – links to wellbeing and illbeing to compare highly optimistic, realistic, and lowly optimistic forecasting styles, means for each participant’s optimism tendency were computed for all five times of measure by subtracting present life satisfaction scores from future life satisfaction scores within the same time of measure. table 2 presented earlier indicates that optimism of forecasts is moderately positively correlated with depressed mood (r = .40, p < .01), strongly negatively correlated with present life satisfaction (r = -.58, p < .01), and moderately negatively correlated with total life satisfaction scores (r = -.34, p < .01), subjective happiness (r = -.33, p < .01), self-acceptance (r = -.31, p < .01), and environmental mastery (r = -.31, p < .01). these results suggest that individuals who had a greater optimistic tendency in their forecasts of life satisfaction had greater negative relationships with wellbeing indicators, and were less satisfied with their present life. they also had greater depressed mood than individuals with lower optimism. to further examine the differences between individuals with different cognitive styles of forecasting, we investigated 69.3% (n = 399) of the total sample comprising of the most optimistic forecasters (n = 137: 23.8% of total sample, 81% females; mean age = 36.30, sd = 13.35, mean 6 in the literature, searching for meaning is related to high illbeing and lower wellbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 optimism score = 6.77, sd = 2.85, range 3.4 to 17.8), the least optimistic forecasters (n = 135: 23.4% of total sample, 86.7% females; mean age = 46.78, sd = 14.84, mean optimism score = -4.99, sd = 2.01, range -2.8 to -12), and realistic forecasters (n = 127: 22.0% of total sample, 82.7% females; mean age = 39.96, sd = 15.55, mean optimism score = 0.05, sd = 0.68, range -1.00 to 1.00) to perform comparisons. once again, we chose to perform analyses on this smaller sample to allow more stringent tests between the most and least optimistic individuals. table 9 below shows descriptive statistics of wellbeing and illbeing indicators for each group. table 9 descriptive statistics of study variables at time 1 of the three optimism sub-groups highly optimistic group realistic group lowly optimistic group m sd m sd m sd skewness kurtosis temporal satisfaction with life scale 1. past 16.40 [6.74] 19.87 [7.51] 20.99 [6.94] .11 -.84 2. present 16.36 [6.25] 23.77 [6.98] 27.65 [4.47] -.32 -.77 3. future 22.84 [5.32] 23.28 [6.57] 22.40 [4.92] -.21 .20 4. total scores 55.60 [14.44] 66.92 [18.74] 71.04 [12.55] -.05 -.30 scales of psychological wellbeing 1. positive relationships with others 15.15 [3.90] 16.09 [3.88] 17.65 [3.38] -.70 -.33 2. self-acceptance 14.89 [3.90] 16.02 [4.13] 18.05 [2.78] -.82 .20 3. autonomy 16.15 [3.34] 16.21 [3.48] 16.21 [3.42] -.74 .25 4. personal growth 18.55 [2.72] 18.81 [2.66] 19.19 [2.51] -1.60 2.54 5. environmental mastery 14.31 [3.87] 15.83 [3.58] 16.77 [2.89] -.68 .11 6. purpose in life 16.52 [3.39] 16.83 [3.19] 17.14 [2.94] -.88 .80 subjective happiness scale 7. subjective happiness 4.30 [1.39] 4.99 [1.26] 5.35 [1.10] -.43 -.46 gratitude questionnaire 8. gratitude 34.34 [5.98] 35.62 [5.96] 37.89 [4.74] -1.04 .50 adult hope scale 9. agency 23.28 [5.80] 24.99 [5.22] 26.28 [4.09] -1.29 1.88 10. pathway 23.53 [4.94] 24.88 [4.91] 25.11 [4.43] -.70 .16 11. total scores 46.80 [9.51] 49.87 [9.39] 51.39 [7.97] -.97 .91 meaning in life questionnaire 12. presence 22.40 [7.80] 24.53 [7.45] 26.61 [6.15] -.68 -.29 13. search 23.85 [7.91] 19.06 [8.15] 19.25 [8.28] -.18 -.99 rumination 14. rumination 27.49 [9.39] 23.95 [9.89] 21.16 [8.81] -.16 -.96 centre for epidemiological studies depression scale 15. depressed mood 18.62 [11.92] 12.47 [10.76] 8.89 [7.59] 1.04 .25 note. the analysis was conducted on the more stringent sub-sample comprising of 399 individuals. highly optimistic group n = 137, realistic group n = 127, lowly optimistic group n = 135. skewness standard error = .12. kurtosis standard error = .24. next, a manova was computed between the groups using bonferroni’s correction to assess post-hoc contrasts. variables that did not meet the analysis’ assumptions were treated as nonhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 parametric. significant results of the manova are presented in table 10 below. table 10 manova results for highly optimistic, realistic, and lowly optimistic forecasting highly optimistic realistic lowly optimistic variable m sd m sd m sd df f ratio ηp2 p tswls – past 16.40 [6.74] 19.87 [7.51] 20.99 [6.94] 2, 396 15.63 0.07 < .01 rumination 27.49 [9.39] 23.95 [9.89] 21.16 [8.81] 2, 396 15.60 0.07 < .01 mlq – search 23.85 [7.91] 19.06 [8.15] 19.25 [8.28] 2, 396 15.07 0.07 < .01 hope – pathway 23.53 [4.94] 24.88 [4.91] 25.11 [4.43] 2, 396 4.39 0.02 = .01 note. ranked by f ratio. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. mlq = meaning in life questionnaire. highly optimistic group n = 137. realistic group n = 127. lowly optimistic group n = 135. mean of significant post-hoc contrasts are bolded. as indicated in table 10, individuals with highly optimistic, realistic, and lowly optimistic cognitive styles of forecasting differed significantly on past life satisfaction, rumination, the search for meaning in life, and pathways to hope. figure 10 visual representation of past life satisfaction and rumination post-hoc contrasts note. n = 399. bars represent mean scores, and error bars indicate + and 1 standard deviation. in terms of past life satisfaction, and as displayed in figure 10 below, individuals from the highly optimistic group scored significantly lower on past life satisfaction than realistic individuals (mean difference = -3.47, p < .01) and than lowly optimistic individuals (mean difference = -4.59, p < .01). regarding rumination, highly optimistic individuals were found to have significantly higher scores than realistic individuals (mean difference = 3.54, p < .01) and than lowly optimistic individuals (mean difference = 6.33, p < .01). realistic individuals were also found to have higher 5 10 15 20 25 30 p a st l if e s a ti sf a ct io n s co re s 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 r u m in a ti o n s co re s highly optimistic realistic lowly optimistic http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 scores of rumination than lowly optimistic individuals (mean difference = 2.79, p < .05). the remaining results in table 10 can also be interpreted in a similar way in that the highly optimistic group reported lower wellbeing and higher illbeing compared to realistic and lowly optimistic groups. as mentioned above, variables that did not meet the manova’s assumptions were treated as non-parametric. within our stringent subgroup for optimism of forecasts, the following variables did not meet the equality of variance postulate: present, future and total life satisfaction as well as positive relationships, self-acceptance, environmental mastery, subjective happiness, gratitude, the presence of meaning in life, depressed mood, total hope score and the agency subscale of hope. results of levene’s test of equality of variances are available at table 15 in appendix c. therefore, these variables were tested using kruskal -wallis one factor anova. results are presented in table 11 below. table 11 kruskall-wallis results and pairwise comparisons for highly optimistic, realistic and lowly optimistic groups kruskall-wallis test summary medians pairwise comparisons statistic degrees of freedom sig. lowly optimistic group realistic group highly optimistic group lowly vs realistic lowly vs highly realistic vs highly tswls – present 153.87 2 < .01 28.00 24.00 16.00 < .01 < .01 < .01 tswls – future 2.46 2 .29 22.00 24.00 23.00 x x x tswls – total 68.12 2 < .01 70.00 67.00 55.00 .06 < .01 < .01 spwb – positive relationships 32.77 2 < .01 19.00 17.00 15.00 < .01 < .01 .13 spwb – selfacceptance 49.26 2 < .01 19.00 16.00 15.00 < .01 < .01 .02 spwb – environmental mastery 29.29 2 < .01 17.00 16.00 15.00 .16 < .01 < .01 subjective happiness 40.20 2 < .01 5.50 5.25 4.25 .08 < .01 < .01 gratitude 30.27 2 < .01 39.00 38.00 35.00 < .01 < .01 .13 mlq presence 20.34 2 < .01 27.00 26.00 24.00 .12 < .01 .06 hope agency 23.39 2 < .01 27.00 27.00 24.00 .30 < .01 .01 hope total 18.31 2 < .01 53.00 52.00 47.00 1.00 < .01 .01 depressed mood 54.02 2 < .01 7.00 9.00 15.00 .04 < .01 < .01 note. n = 399. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing. mlq = meaning in life questionnaire. comparisons’ significance levels are adjusted with bonferroni’s correction for multiple tests. x represent unavailable data as pairwise comparisons were not computed for future life satisfaction variable since the general test was found nonsignificant. bolded results indicate significant difference between groups. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 in sum, individuals in the highly optimistic group, in comparison to the lowly optimistic group, scored higher on aspects of illbeing, such as rumination and the search for meaning in life, and lower on aspects of wellbeing, such as past life satisfaction and pathways to hope. therefore, h3b was not supported. 4.2 results overview figure 11 below displays the results in line with the specific hypothesis; h1 then h2 then h3. a green arrow indicates that the hypothesis was supported, a bule arrow that there was mixed evidence, and a red arrow that the hypothesis was not supported. figure 11 representation of h1b, h2b, and h3b results t1 expected future life satisfaction t2 present life satisfaction wellbeing indicators = positive exceeded expectation accurate no error negative did not meet expectation h1 type of forecasting error at t1, realised at t2 illbeing indicators accurate believes past life satisfaction was as good as it really was no discrepancy positive believes past life satisfaction was better than it really was discrepancy is positive negative believes past life satisfaction was worse than it really was discrepancy is negative wellbeing indicators illbeing indicators t2 judgment of past life satisfaction t1 present life satisfaction = h2 type of retrospective recall errors http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 5. discussion the current research investigated relationships between a specific type of prospection, cognitive forecasting of life satisfaction, and various wellbeing and illbeing indicators. more specifically, we investigated individuals’ accuracy at cognitive forecasting, their accuracy at retrospective recall of life satisfaction, and the optimism of their life satisfaction forecasts in relation to wellbeing and illbeing indicators. we discuss results in this above order. 5.1 accuracy at cognitive forecasting regarding the accuracy of cognitive forecasts, results supported hypothesis h1a, that individuals are generally poor at cognitive foresting, with only 21% of participants reporting accurate forecasts of their future life satisfaction. furthermore, results supported h1b, that accuracy of forecasts and positive forecasting errors are related positively to wellbeing indicators and negatively to illbeing indicators, while negative forecasting errors have the opposite relationships with wellbeing and illbeing. these results are in line with bertoni and corazzini (2018) results that exceeded expectations (making a positive forecasting error) does not bring advantages in terms of wellbeing over being accurate, but not meeting your expectations (making a negative forecasting error) has negative impacts on wellbeing. 5.2 accuracy at retrospective recall results confirmed hypothesis h2a that individuals would be poor at retrospective recall of their life satisfaction with only 18.4% of participants found to be accurate, and we are additionally unsure why inaccurate individuals were more than twice as likely to make a negative error than a positive error (55.6% negatively inaccurate vs 26.0% positive inaccurate). furthermore, results disconfirmed hypothesis h2b that individuals who rate their past life satisfaction as better than it was (making a positive error) have more positive relationships to wellbeing and less relationships to illbeing (and vice-versa for individuals who made a negative error). instead, results showed that individuals who made a negative retrospective error (who believed their past life satisfaction was worse than in reality) and accurate individuals scored higher on measures of wellbeing and lower on measures of illbeing than individuals who made a positive retrospective error. there were some differences regarding the links with wellbeing indicators between t1 expected future life satisfaction t1 present life satisfaction highly optimistic expects higher life satisfaction for the future than current level discrepancy is positive realistic expects life satisfaction for the future to be the same as the current level no discrepancy h3 optimism level lowly optimistic expects lower life satisfaction for the future than the current level discrepancy is negative wellbeing indicators illbeing indicators = http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 accurate individuals and individuals who made negative errors (e.g., scores of present life satisfaction) where individuals in the negative error group scored higher on wellbeing measures than the accurate individuals. it is possible that these results may be interpreted in line with the relative standard model (diener & lucas, 2000; parducci, 1995), which stipulates that satisfaction (including life satisfaction) is determined not by objective conditions, but by the comparisons of one’s own standing (e.g., in terms of life satisfaction in the present) to relevant standards (e.g., one’s past life satisfaction, perceptions of family or friends’ life satisfaction, etc.; campbell et al., 1976; diener & lucas, 2000; michalos, 1985). the discrepancy between one’s own standing and their standard can affect the experienced satisfaction level in the present (e.g., present life satisfaction). as diener and lucas (2000, p. 47) mentioned, “a discrepancy that entails an upward comparison (when the comparison standard is higher) should generate lower satisfaction, whereas a downward comparison should lead to higher satisfaction”. individuals who recalled their past life satisfaction as better than reality give themselves an unrealistically high standard which entails an upward comparison, therefore bringing lower present life satisfaction, as well as more negative impacts on wellbeing. on the other hand, individuals who recalled their past life satisfaction as worse than reality create for themselves a standard that is low and entailes a downward comparison, resulting in better wellbeing and higher present life satisfaction. 5.3 optimism of life satisfaction forecasts regarding optimism of forecasts, we were unable to make a prediction regarding the proportion of individuals who might be highly optimistic, realistic, and lowly optimistic, as our study was the first one to assess data in that way. our results showed that 39.4% of individuals in our sample were highly optimistic, 22% were realistic and 38.5% were lowly optimistic towards their future life satisfaction. regarding h3b, that highly optimistic forecasts would report more wellbeing and less illbeing (and vice-versa for lowly optimistic forecasts), our hypothesis was disconfirmed. results showed that, in general, highly optimistic individuals scored lower on wellbeing measures and higher on illbeing measures in comparison to lowly optimistic individuals and secondly to realistic individuals. furthermore, individuals with a realistic style of forecasting also scored higher on certain illbeing measures (such as rumination and depressed mood) and lower on certain wellbeing measures (such as present life satisfaction, positive relationships, self-acceptance, and gratitude) than individuals with a lowly optimistic style of forecasting. therefore, in terms of optimism towards future life satisfaction, there could be an advantage to being lowly optimistic in comparison to being realistic, or highly optimistic. these results may also be interpreted in light of the relative standard model. individuals who are highly optimistic have a standard for the future that is, by definition here, very high, therefore entailing an upward comparison that lowers wellbeing and their present life satisfaction, while lowly optimistic individuals’ standards entail downward comparison, leading to higher wellbeing and life satisfaction in the present. 6. limitations, future studies, and summary like all studies, ours is subject to several limitations. firstly, the sample constituted mostly of women and individuals from western cultures. secondly, all questionnaires were subjective selfreports measures. thirdly, we used a time interval between judgments of approximately three months – others have used different intervals (e.g., bertoni & corazzini (2018) used 5 years), which may lead to different results. lastly, how we determined cut-values (e.g., -1 to +1 for “accurate”), or the constitution of our more stringent groups, may also impact results. future studies may address such sample and methodological issues (e.g., use objective http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 measures such as the day reconstruction method to assess retrospective recall), and also consider if there are developmental or age differences across the lifespan in such judgments. in summary, replicating previous research (bertoni & corazzini, 2018), the above analysis indicated strong links between accuracy of cognitive forecasting and greater wellbeing and lesser illbeing. however, the results related to accuracy of retrospective recall, and to the optimism of life satisfaction forecasts, and their links to wellbeing and illbeing, may necessitate a reorientation in our thinking if they can be replicated. the results indicated that both high optimism for future life satisfaction and positive errors in the recall of life satisfaction are related in varying degrees to higher illbeing and lesser wellbeing. this knowledge offers a distinctive and fruitful contribution to our understanding of these phenomena, and a potential path for the utility of prospection. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors joline guitard university of moncton aaron jarden the university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au acknowledgments the authors thank their colleagues and collaborators who in various ways contributed to the development of the perspectives and ideas expressed in this paper. in particular we thank the core collaborators of the international wellbeing study – professor todd kashdan, professor paul jose, professor ormond simpson, dr kennedy mclachlan, dr. alexander mackenzie – and to the participants of that study. we also thank dr rebecca jarden for assistance with proofreading. publishing timeline received 4 october 2021 revised version received 12 may 2022 accepted 13 may 2022 published 1 june 2022 references bertoni, m., & corazzini, l. 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(2000). focalism: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting. journal of personality and social psychology, 78(5), 821–836. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.5.821 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.4.719 https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.2.2.162 https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.2.2.162 https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612474317 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.2.291 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1023910315561 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s10862-020-09852-1 https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212447242 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0065-2601(03)01006-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0065-2601(03)01006-2 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00085.x cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 appendix a nine measures were used for analysis and included 1) the temporal satisfaction with life scale (explained above in methods section), 2) the scales of psychological wellbeing – 18-item version, 3) the subjective happiness scale, 4) the adult hope scale, 5) the gratitude questionnaire -6, 6) the meaning in life questionnaire, 7) the rumination scale, and 8) the centre for epidemiological studies depression scale. scales of psychological wellbeing the scales of psychological wellbeing – short version (spwb; ryff & keyes, 1995) is an 18-item measure of six more eudemonic dimensions of wellbeing (three items per dimension): autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. items are answered on a seven-point likert type scale ranging from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. an example item is: “i am good at managing the responsibilities of daily life”. in the current study, internal consistency for the spwb was α = .82 and alphas for the subscales ranged from α = .34 to α = .71; purpose in life α = .34, autonomy α = .61, personal growth α = .62, positive relationships α = .62, environmental mastery α = .63, self-acceptance α = .71. subjective happiness scale global subjective happiness was assessed with the subjective happiness scale (shs; lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999). the 4-item shs uses 7-point likert scales which differ across the 4 items, to assess how happy individuals consider themselves. an example item is: “some people are generally very happy. they enjoy life regardless of what is going on, getting the most out of everything. to what extent does this characterization describe you?”. in the current study, the shs’s alpha was α = .87. adult hope scale the 12-item adult hope scale (ahs; snyder et al., 1991) measures two dimensions of hope: agency and pathways. there are four agency items which measure successful goal-directed determination (e.g., “i’ve been pretty successful in life”). within these four agency items, one focuses on the past, two on the present, and one on the future. the pathways dimension also consists of four items with regards to one’s ability to find ways of surmounting obstacles (e.g., “i can think of many ways to get out of a jam”). four additional items are fillers and are not related to hope (e.g., “i am easily downed in an argument”). items are answered with an 8-point likerttype scales ranging from 1 definitely false to 8 definitely true. as well as agency and pathway factors, the ahs produces a global hope score for all eight hope related items. in the current study, the ahs global score had an alpha of α = .88, the agency subscale’s was α = .84, and the pathway subscale was α = .81. gratitude questionnaire-6 the disposition towards gratitude was measured with the gratitude questionnaire-6 (gq-6; mccullough et al., 2002). the gq-6 is a unidimensional measure that assess how grateful individuals are in general (e.g., “i have so much in life to be thankful for”). the items are answered on 7-point likert scales ranging from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. in the current study, the gq-6 had an alpha of α = 0.84. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 meaning in life questionnaire the meaning in life questionnaire (mlq; steger et al., 2006) assesses the presence of, and the search for, meaning in life with ten items; five for each subscale. the presence subscale assesses the extent to which individuals feel they live a life full of meaning (e.g., “i understand my life’s meaning”), and the search subscale assesses individuals’ motivation and engagement towards finding or deepening their understanding of meaning in their lives (e.g., “i am seeking a purpose or mission for my life”). items are answered on a 7-point likert scale ranging from 1 absolutely untrue to 7 absolutely true. in the current study, both the presence and the search subscales had good internal consistency both with alphas of α = .92. rumination scale the 6-item rumination scale, a new short form created for the international wellbeing study from the 22-item ruminative response style subscale of the response styles questionnaire 7 , assesses responses to depressive symptoms that focus on their meanings, causes, and consequences (nolen-hoeksema, 1991). participants were prompted with, “in the past 3 months would you say you . . .?” and responded to six items using this stem. two items came from the brooding factor, or moody and self-critical pondering (e.g., “thought: ‘why can’t i handle things better?’”), and four from the depression-related factor, thought to directly tap into depression symptoms themselves (e.g., “thought: ‘why can’t i get going?’”: treynor et al., 2003). participants responded to items on a 7-point likert scale from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. in the current study the alpha was α = .84. depression centre for epidemiological studies depression scale the presence of depressive symptoms (with a focus on the affective component) over the past week was assessed using the centre for epidemiological studies depression scale (ces-d; radloff, 1977). the well-known 20-item ces-ds is unidimensional (e.g., “i felt tearful”) with respondents answering on a four-point scale ranging from 0 = rarely or none of the time (less than 1 day), to 3 = most or all of the time (5-7 days). in the current study, the ces-d had good internal consistency with an alpha of α = 0.92. 7 credit for this scale development is for professor paul jose. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 appendix b table 12 descriptive statistics and correlations between study variables at time 1 note. n = 576. *p < .05, **p < .01. light grey: correlation of .30 or greater. dark grey: correlation of .50 or greater. square box correlations with the specific measure. variable m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 temporal satisfaction with life scale 1. past 19.28 7.35 1 2. present 22.78 7.42 .52** 1 3. future 22.98 5.70 .45** .61** 1 4. total 65.03 16.97 .81** .87** .80** 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 scales of psychological wellbeing 5. positive relationships with others 16.35 3.84 .34** .39** .30** .42** 1 6. selfacceptance 16.46 3.85 .50** .62** .48** .65** .51** 1 7. environmental mastery 15.71 3.57 .36** .55** .40** .53** .37** .59** 1 8. autonomy 16.17 3.38 .05** .18** .23** .17** .14** .25** .32** 1 9. personal growth 18.89 2.51 .21** .36** .36** .37** .36** .40** .34** .29** 1 10. purpose in life 16.95 3.14 .13** .24** .26** .25** .30** .35** .24** .17** .40** 1 subjective happiness scale 11. subjective happiness 4.91 1.32 .46** .64** .51** .65** .48** .65** .63** .29** .42** .26** 1 gratitude questionnaire 12. gratitude 36.22 5.96 .37** .50** .42** .52** .45** .49** .38** .16** .46** .29** .57** 1 adult hope scale 13. agency 25.09 4.97 .42** .56** .50** .59** .42** .70** .56** .32** .52** .47** .60** .52** 1 14. pathway 24.65 4.65 .26** .39** .41** .42** .30** .49** .45** .37** .44** .24** .52** .40** .67** 1 15. total 49.74 8.78 .38** .52** .49** .56** .40** .64** .56** .37** .52** .39** .62** .51** .92** .91** 1 meaning in life questionnaire 16. presence 24.79 7.05 .21** .46** .37** .41** .32** .47** .39** .38** .44** .38** .49** .51** .54** .43** .54** 1 17. search 20.74 8.25 -.12** -.22** -.06 -.17** -.13** -.22** -.23** -.13** .02 -.08* -.26** -.12** -.09* -.10* -.10* -.16** 1 rumination 18. rumination 23.78 9.48 -.28** -.42** -.25** -.39** -.33** -.47** -.55** -.37** -.2 ** -.19** -.54** -.31** -.42** -.33** -.41** -.33** .31** 1 centre for epidemiological studies depression scale 19. depressed mood 12.62 10.46 -.37** -.60** -.37** -.54** -.42** -.58** -.63** -.25** -.31** -.27** -.63** -.48** -.51** -.40** -.50** -.43** .30** .57** 1 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 appendix c the following three tables present the results of levene’s test of equality of variances for the three manovas computed in the results section. table 13 levene’s test results for the manova computed on positive, accurate and negative forecasting error groups levene’s statistic degree of freedom 1 degree of freedom 2 sig. tswls – past 0.81 2 231 .445 tswls – present 10.02 2 231 .000 tswls – future 4.45 2 231 .013 tswls – total 9.21 2 231 .000 spwb – positive relationships 3.21 2 231 .042 spwb – self-acceptance 8.57 2 231 .000 spwb – autonomy 2.61 2 231 .076 spwb – personal growth 0.25 2 231 .780 spwb – environmental mastery 1.30 2 231 .274 spwb – purpose in life 0.37 2 231 .690 subjective happiness 1.97 2 231 .142 gratitude 4.61 2 231 .011 hope – agency 4.37 2 231 .014 hope – pathway 0.37 2 231 .692 hope total 0.54 2 231 .584 mlq – presence 3.07 2 231 .049 mlq search 1.61 2 231 .202 rumination 2.44 2 231 .089 depressed mood 17.79 2 231 .000 note. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing. mlq = meaning in life questionnaire. the results presented are the levene’s test based on the mean. bolded results indicate the test was significant, therefore the null hypothesis that variances are equal is rejected indicating the need for nonparametric tests. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 table 14 levene’s test results for the manova computed on positive, accurate and negative retrospective recall error groups levene’s statistic degree of freedom 1 degree of freedom 2 sig. tswls – past 4.24 2 254 .015 tswls – present 4.08 2 254 .018 tswls – future 0.12 2 254 .891 tswls – total 5.67 2 254 .004 spwb – positive relationships 1.35 2 254 .260 spwb – self-acceptance 0.21 2 254 .814 spwb – autonomy 0.33 2 254 .723 spwb – personal growth 1.45 2 254 .238 spwb – environmental mastery 0.74 2 254 .478 spwb – purpose in life 0.50 2 254 .606 subjective happiness 1.80 2 254 .167 gratitude 0.91 2 254 .404 hope – agency 1.34 2 254 .263 hope – pathway 2.00 2 254 .138 hope total 1.78 2 254 .171 mlq – presence 2.78 2 254 .064 mlq search 0.90 2 254 .408 rumination 0.09 2 254 .915 depressed mood 7.40 2 254 .001 note. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing. mlq = meaning in life questionnaire. the results presented are the levene’s test based on the mean. bolded results indicate the test was significant, therefore the null hypothesis that variances are equal is rejected indicating the need for nonparametric tests. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cognitive forecasting and its link to life satisfaction guitard & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 table 15 levene’s test results for the manova computed on highly optimistic, realistic and lowly optimistic groups levene’s statistic degree of freedom 1 degree of freedom 2 sig. tswls – past 1.61 2 396 .202 tswls – present 14.34 2 396 .000 tswls – future 7.40 2 396 .001 tswls – total 13.83 2 396 .000 spwb – positive relationships 3.03 2 396 .049 spwb – self-acceptance 10.22 2 396 .000 spwb – autonomy 0.32 2 396 .725 spwb – personal growth 2.62 2 396 .074 spwb – environmental mastery 3.90 2 396 .021 spwb – purpose in life 1.56 2 396 .212 subjective happiness 4.92 2 396 .008 gratitude 8.17 2 396 .000 hope – agency 6.27 2 396 .002 hope – pathway 1.86 2 396 .157 hope total 3.59 2 396 .029 mlq – presence 5.80 2 396 .003 mlq search 0.63 2 396 .533 rumination 0.99 2 396 .373 depressed mood 22.68 2 396 .000 note. tswls = temporal satisfaction with life scale. spwb = scales of psychological wellbeing. mlq = meaning in life questionnaire. the results presented are the levene’s test based on the mean. bolded results indicate the test was significant, therefore the null hypothesis that variances are equal is rejected indicating the need for nonparametric test. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whelan-berry, j., & niemiec, r. (2021). integrating mindfulness and character strengths for improved wellbeing, stress, and relationships: a mixed-methods analysis of mindfulness-based strengths practice. international journal of wellbeing, 11(1), 38-50. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i2.1545 karen whelan-berry university of massachusetts amherst karenswb@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 article integrating mindfulness and character strengths for improved wellbeing, stress, and relationships: a mixed-methods analysis of mindfulness-based strengths practice karen whelan-berry · ryan niemiec abstract: the integration of mindfulness and character strengths is an emerging area of research and practice. the evidence-based, 8-week program, mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp) represents a unique approach in that the starting point and focus is on what is best in human beings – their character strengths. these qualities are then leveraged to improve one’s meditation practice or area of mindful living (referred to as “strong mindfulness”) and in turn, mindfulness is used as a lens for deepening awareness and use of strengths (referred to as “mindful strengths use”). while early controlled studies find mbsp to elicit well-being and reduce stress, and find it to be superior to popular mindfulness programs for different outcomes, we are not aware of any published qualitative analyses examining the mbsp participant’s experience. this study offers insights from a large international sample and extends the empirical data on mbsp, including the novel finding of benefit for building positive relationships, as well as confirming other findings such as the most common obstacles people confront in mindfulness practices. additional areas discussed using qualitative and quantitative findings include the most beneficial mindfulness/character strengths practices, the use of inward and outward-oriented practices, cognizance of the integration of mindfulness and character strengths, and self-reported positive outcomes, including substantial benefits to stress and problem management and boosts to meaning, purpose, engagement, accomplishment, and sense of self. keywords: mindfulness-based strengths practice; character strengths; positive interventions; strong mindfulness; mindful strengths use; mindful living; positive relationships 1. introduction the integration of mindfulness and character strengths is a relatively new area of research and practice, however, studies are showing significant potential for this integration in the workplace/organizations (niemiec & lissing, 2016; pang & ruch, 2019a), schools/education (lottman, zawaly, & niemiec, 2016; wingert et al., 2020), special populations (sharp, niemiec, & lawrence, 2016; shogren et al., 2017), and personal development (baer, 2015; niemiec, 2012). the manualized and in-depth integration of mindfulness and character strengths is found in the evidence-based mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp) program by niemiec (2014), based on the universal system of strengths referred to as the via classification of character strengths (peterson & seligman, 2004) and based on the latest research in the fields of mindfulness and character strengths individually. two comparison studies showed mbsp is superior to the goldabout:blank mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 standard mindfulness-based program, mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr), on the workplace outcome of employee performance using supervisory ratings (both fared equally to one another and superior to controls for well-being and stress) (pang & ruch, 2019a) and in elevating certain character strengths such as humor (hofmann et al., 2019). other empirical studies found mbsp to be superior to controls in boosting flourishing, life satisfaction, engagement, and signature strengths use (ivtzan, niemiec, & briscoe, 2016), as well as showing significant improvements to engagement, health, well-being, and meaning, as well as increases in student retention at the collegiate level (wingert et al., 2020). mindfulness-based strengths practice (mbsp) is an 8-week program, with 2-hour sessions, delivered in weekly intervals, and with a 5-hour, experiential mbsp retreat occurring a few days following session 6. the most common delivery modalities of mbsp are groups in online or faceto-face settings, followed by use in individual counseling or coaching situations. the context for mbsp varies widely from the business setting, primary/secondary education setting, university setting, hospital/clinic setting, churches and spiritual centers, and community/civic environments. the first two sessions in the mbsp program are primers in mindfulness and character strengths, respectively, each introducing key concepts, rationale, unique and applicable research findings, and include experiential activities, meditations, and strengths discussions in small groups. sessions 3 through 8 cover the integration of mindfulness and character strengths with the same range of teaching modalities. the foundational integration points involve the two main pathways for integration, described as “strong mindfulness” and “mindful strengths use” (niemiec, 2014). character strengths offer a unique opportunity to support or enhance mindfulness practices, meditation, and mindful living (i.e., strong mindfulness; niemiec, 2012; niemiec, rashid, & spinella, 2012). for example, the use of perseverance or honesty can be used to stick with a sitting meditation practice, the use of gratitude or hope can reinvigorate a mindful walking practice, and bravery or judgment might help to overcome barriers and obstacles to mindfulness practices. in turn, the use of mindfulness is an important lens for becoming tuned in to one’s best internal qualities (bretherton & niemiec, 2020), overcoming blind spots to selfknowledge (carlson, 2013), and pursuing balanced or optimal strengths use for the context (i.e., mindful strengths use). said another way, mindful strengths use elicits the seeing and appreciating of one’s own and others’ character strengths, the recognition of strengths overuse and underuse, and supporting decisions on which strengths to use in particular situations/contexts. indeed, mindfulness and character strengths can have a powerful effect on one another (duan & ho, 2017) and the integration model of the positive mutual effects has held up strongly in studies (pang & ruch, 2019b). the integration of these constructs points participants in the direction of handling life obstacles and stressors, building strong and positive relationships, expressing oneself authentically, pursuing goodness, and living life with mindfulness and strength. table 1 (below) offers the core topics/themes and short comments on each mbsp session. included in this table is the mbsp retreat in which participants deepen their practices of mindful, strengths-based living, by bringing full and deep attention to listening, speaking, standing, walking, preparing food, eating, and character strengths use. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 table 1. core topic/theme areas of mbsp by session session core topic/theme description 1 mindfulness and autopilot the autopilot mind is pervasive; insights and change opportunities start with mindful attention. 2 your signature strengths identify what is best in you; this can unlock potential to engage more in work and relationships and reach higher personal potential. 3 obstacles are opportunities the practice of mindfulness and of strengths exploration leads immediately to two things –obstacles/barriers to the practice and a wider appreciation for the little things in life. 4 strengthening mindfulness in everyday life (strong mindfulness) mindfulness helps us attend to and nourish the best, innermost qualities in ourselves and others, while reducing negative judgments of self and others; conscious use of strengths can help us deepen and maintain a mindfulness practice. 5 valuing your relationships mindful attending can nourish two types of relationships: relationships with others and our relationship with ourselves. our relationships with ourselves contributes to self-growth and can have an immediate impact on our connection with others. 6 mindfulness of the golden mean (mindful strengths use) mindfulness helps to focus on problems directly and character strengths help to reframe and offer different perspectives not immediately apparent. optional retreat mbsp ½-day retreat mindful living and character strengths apply not only to good meditation practice but also to daily conversation, eating, walking, sitting, reflecting, and the nuances therein (e.g., opening the refrigerator door, turning a doorknob, creating a smile). this day is therefore, a practice day. 7 authenticity and goodness it takes character (e.g., courage) to be a more authentic “you” and it takes character (e.g., hope) to create a strong future that benefits both oneself and others. set mindfulness and character strengths goals with authenticity and goodness in the forefront of the mind. 8 your engagement with life stick with those practices that have been working well and watch for the mind’s tendency to revert back to automatic habits that are deficit-based, unproductive, or that prioritize what’s wrong in you and others. engage in an approach that fosters awareness and celebration of what is strongest in you and others. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 there is an internal structure to each mbsp session (see table 2). the sessions start with an opening meditation to bring their attention to the present moment. this is followed by small or large group discussion of “what went well” with the previous week’s homework and practices; this often leads to what didn’t go well and the management of obstacles and setbacks but without this starting point the negative from the week is likely to quickly overshadow the positive and good experiences (baumeister et al., 2001; rozin & royzman, 2001). this is followed by teaching input on the core theme (see table 1) for the session and a related experiential activity, which is a central, embodied learning experience for the session. next, participants engage in what’s termed as the virtue circle (in some cultures, the practitioners use the term “strengths circle,” “wisdom circle,” or “appreciative circle”) which is a structured experience of mindful speaking and listening and strengths-spotting while sharing insights from the session. the session concludes with a review of the suggested mindfulness and strengths homework activities, and a concluding meditation. table 2. standard structure of mbsp sessions (niemiec, 2014) part focus area description i opening meditation start group with “practice,” allows for letting go of preceding tension and ushers in a different focus. ii discussion: whole group or multiple small groups review participants’ practice from last week with the following catalyst: what went well? iii lecture/input offering new material aligned with core themes. iv experiential core practice with mindfulness and character strengths is experienced. v virtue circle structured, respectful approach for mindful listening/speaking practice and strengthsspotting/appreciating practice. vi suggested homework review of focus areas in between sessions. vii closing meditation letting go of session to come fully into present moment; mindful transitioning to the next part of the day. while there are a number of promising theoretical and empirical findings of mbsp, we are not aware of studies conducted with a primary focus at the qualitative level, which allows deeper understanding of the experiences of the participants during mbsp, what engages them in mindfulness and character strengths practices, what obstacles emerge in their practice, and their perceptions of the benefits that mbsp brings them. we aimed to explore the most common and impactful practices people engage in with mindfulness and character strengths, the most http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 prevalent obstacles that serve as barriers to their daily practice, the relative importance of weekly attendance and homework, relevance of each of the areas of internal structure within an mbsp session, and perceived outcomes of mbsp (e.g., meaning, engagement, identity, relationships, stress management, problem management). hence, qualitative and quantitative findings are shared. 2. method we describe and explore post program survey data (n=126) collected from adult participants who chose to participate in the 8-week mbsp program. almost all participants paid for the program, and these programs span a six-year period, involving several countries, instructors, and groups. some groups were conducted face-to-face in a given country while other groups were conducted entirely online with synchronous webinars and involved participants from up to 15 countries at a time, with all groups meeting weekly and coming together to learn the material. the majority were led by the second author in an online format from the united states, in addition data from other facilitators in the netherlands and australia are included here. the data was collected from a post-program form that includes some basic quantitative data, such as the effect of the program on overall well-being or management of stress (using a 7-point likert scale with anchors of a lot higher/better, no change, and a lot worse/lower), and several open ended questions, such as “has this course had a positive effect on one of your relationships? if so, please explain.”, or “what has struck you most about the course?”. a standard part of the mbsp program is to complete the post-program form, which does not include demographic or identifying information. it is also standard mbsp practice to inform the participants that the form is voluntary, confidential, and is used for mbsp research. the via institute on character, which collected the mbsp data in this paper, is an independent, non-university, non-profit organization, and did not pursue irb approval for the mbsp post-program form (see appendix a). the first author who did not teach or participate in any of the mbsp groups analyzed both the quantitative and qualitative data to ensure objectivity. three open-ended, no-word-limit, text-only questions were used for qualitative analysis: 1) “has this course had a positive effect on one of your relationships? if so, please share:” and 2) “what has struck you most about this course? please share below:”, and 3) “as you think about the “virtue circle” (in which participants share their learning, insights, and or questions) were there any benefits of this experience? please explain.” in manually analyzing the qualitative data (huberman, miles, & saldana, 2019), all responses were read and descriptively coded to create summary labels for data, such as participants description of being self-compassionate. then iterative readings of the data and analysis of the codes were used to ensure consistent coding and to identify and count the most common codes or themes. as previously stated, our focus in this manuscript is the outcomes and experiences of the participants in order to increase the understanding of integrating mindfulness and character strengths practices. additional information on the mbsp design and participant experience is available from the authors. 3. results we summarize the results in six categories: practices created, meditation obstacles, outcomes, positive relationships, inwardand outward-oriented practices, and cognizance of the integration of mindfulness and character strengths. the results on the qualitative and quantitative items were as follows: http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 3.1 practices created one of the best ways to improve mindfulness is to engage in a regular meditation practice; this approach has been championed by the leading mindfulness-based programs (kabat-zinn, 1990; niemiec, 2014; segal, williams, and teasdale, 2013) and is central to character strengths intervention approaches as well (niemiec, 2018). in other words, make mindfulness part of one’s mindset and routine of daily life. the approach to working with character strengths offers a similar emphasis on practice and integrating that practice into one’s life (niemiec, 2018). of a myriad of potential ways to engage in mindfulness and strengths practices, 10 general approaches were selected and offered to participants to check what they did on a regular basis. table 3 shows these results. the top regular practices were the assigned mindfulness meditation each week (84%), observing their own and others’ strengths (79%), appreciating others’ strengths (71%), working on one’s own strengths (70%), and reflecting on past experiences with strengths (56%). an additional finding was that 100% of people engaged in at least one regular practice. table 3. mindfulness and character strengths practices practiced regularly during the mbsp program as rated on “check all that apply” question (n=118 as one mbsp program did not include this specific question.) practice count percentage mindfulness meditation 106 84% observing your and others’ strengths 100 79% appreciating other strengths 89 71% working with strengths 88 70% reflecting on past experiences with strengths 70 56% discussing strengths with others 58 46% asking others for feedback 43 34% tracking/monitoring your behaviors/practices 44 35% planning out your practices 33 26% journaling 28 22% when asked in an open-ended question about their favorite strengths practice, 37 (29%) wrote in the character strengths 360 experience, which is a systematic approach in which the individual gathers feedback on others’ perceptions and stories of their top strengths and then integrates that feedback in a meaningful way. this was followed by 27 (21%) indicating strengths-spotting as a favorite practice, which involves the specific identification of strengths in others. for the openended question about favorite mindfulness experience, 28 (22%) indicated the loving-kindness meditation, which involves the cultivation of strengths such as love and gratitude within oneself. the character strengths breathing space was next with 22 (17%); this short meditation involves the targeting of 3 character strengths at the core of most meditations – curiosity, self-regulation, and perspective. 3.2 meditation obstacles one of the most challenging elements of mindfulness practice is keeping it up. there are numerous obstacles of the body (e.g., painful sensations), mind (e.g., mind wandering), environment (e.g., too many noises), and logistics (e.g., not enough time). ten of the most common obstacles (allen et al., 2009; birtwell et al. 2019) were offered for participants to consider http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 (along with a write-in option), and to check all that apply. the most common obstacles to meditation practice were not enough time/too busy to practice (52% of participants), forgetting to practice (47% of participants), and mind wandering (33% of participants). table 4 provides the percentage for each obstacle queried. these obstacles are not dissimilar to other mindfulness studies on meditation difficulties or challenges (allen et al., 2009; birtwell et al. 2019). table 4. obstacles to mindfulness practice as rated on “check all that apply” question mindfulness obstacle count percentage not enough time/too busy 66 52% often forgot to practice/schedule 59 47% mind wandered too much 41 33% kept falling asleep 12 10% wanted to avoid troubling thoughts/memories 10 8% too bothered by the external (e.g., noises) 10 8% wanted to avoid difficult emotions 7 6% did not see the purpose in practicing 5 4% wanted to avoid painful sensations 4 3% it was not very helpful/beneficial 3 2% other 1 <1% 3.3 outcomes there are a number of positive outcomes associated with mindfulness practice alone (sedlmeier et al., 2012), character strengths practice alone (schutte & malouff, 2019), and mindfulness and character strengths (mbsp) together (pang & ruch, 2019a). mbsp participants were asked whether they perceived a direct effect of mbsp in their life across a number of valued outcomes that reflect areas of well-being and adversity. these included overall well-being, sense of who you are, engagement with life tasks, sense of accomplishment, meaning in life, sense of purpose, quality of relationships, management of stress, and management problems. all but one participant (99%) reported at least one positive impact of mbsp on their life. more specifically, using a likert scale from 1 to 7 where 7 means “a lot higher/better” and 1 means “a lot worse/lower” and 4 means “no change,” 91% of participants reported a positive change of well-being (see table 5 below). in addition, the following percentages of positive change were reported: sense of who you are (90%), engagement with life tasks (84%), accomplishment (74%), meaning in life (81%), sense of purpose (84%), relationship quality (86%), stress management (84%), and problem management (87%). the percentage of participant responses that indicated a negative change (a score of 3, 2, or 1 on a 7-point likert scale) to any of the 9 outcomes was less than 1% (.003%). the latter is an important percentage to note as programs, even mindfulness and strengths ones, should always assess for negative effects, or side effects of the program. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 table 5. positive outcomes attributed to mbsp, as rated on a likert scale of 1-7, by participants (n=118 as one mbsp program did not include this specific question.) overall wellbeing sense of who you are engagement with life tasks sense of accomplishment meaning in life sense of purpose quality of your relationships management of stress management of problems percentage responding 5-7 91% 90% 84% 74% 81% 84% 86% 84% 87% 1 a lot worse/lower 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 4 no change 5 9 15 28 19 16 13 18 12 5 41 34 36 33 39 35 38 38 41 6 53 49 45 42 42 47 53 49 49 7 a lot higher/better 13 23 18 12 15 17 10 12 13 3.4 positive relationships both the quantitative and qualitative data indicated a strong impact on positive relationships. first, 86% of participants rated an improvement in the quality of their relationships. next, when asked about the impact of the program on one of their specific relationships, the participants were required to write in their response. for this item, 67% of participants wrote in an affirmative response specifying one of their relationships that substantially improved or made general comments about improvement overall in their relationships. this means that 33% of participants left this question blank so we do not know whether or how mbsp affected their relationships. a few examples are offered. “i feel i am much more present with my family. helped me to appreciate my ‘whole self’.” “it has helped me be more mindful of and appreciative of the full scope of character strengths in others and myself.” “it has with clients, friends, family, and spouse. i understand and appreciate others more; i feel hopeful.” participants also described their strengths and mindfulness practices positively impacting their ability to process and or resolve conflict in relationships. “yes, i am more able to talk about struggles with my family and loved ones.” “mbsp allowed me to step back and adopt a curious attitude about a person who has been pushing my buttons lately. i go to the breath a few times, then ask myself about the person’s strengths. the result is i can see the person coming from a place of love, rather than a place of greed.” “mbsp has helped me be more mindful about choice over reaction.” in addition to positive relationships with others, participants also described being more selfcompassionate and appreciating their own strengths. “the most positive effect has been on the relationship with myself.” “yes, with myself first and then my appreciation of others.” http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 “my relationship with myself – and seeing some strengths in me that old family relationships had denied – was uplifting.” “my relationship with myself under stress. i’m more mindful of stress responses and view myself with more kindness.” diener and seligman (2004) note the crucial role of relationships to well-being and this is a central pathway in flourishing theories and studies (wagner et al., 2019). our data show a substantial improvement in relationships with others across participant self-ratings (quantitative) and their descriptions of how they improved their relationships (qualitative). this appears to be a novel and important result in the mbsp experience, and more widely, for the mindfulness literature where the variable of positive relationships is not one of the common areas explored. 3.5 inwardand outward-oriented practices in an examination of different ways of practicing with mindfulness and character strengths, both inward and outward expressions emerged. based on both quantitative and qualitative data, participants appeared to develop both an expression of character strengths inward toward themselves as well as an expression of character strengths outward toward others. in regard to an inward focus, 69% of participants became more aware of their signature strengths, 67% used their character strengths more often, and 67% deepened their mindfulness practice (see table 6 below for additional changes made by participants and attributed to mbsp). for example, these are reflected in participants observations about inward work relating to authenticity and their true self. welcoming back my true self. realising that i was running away from my core strengths and now using them wisely. it was a total turn around. importance of all the strengths and how understanding them all gives me more tools to work with. these inward-focused experiences are also seen in participants describing an increased sense of purpose (84%) and understanding of “who you are” (90%). the tangible improvement in well-being and the sense [of] self-agency i have in meaningful application of my strengths. more reminding myself of walking in authenticity. i aspire to be mindfully authentic, shifting from “doing” the work to becoming the work, expressing virtues in authenticity in daily action. through mbsp, i’ve really amped up my mindfulness practice. in combination with character strengths, this helps me become a better person, live a better life, and create a ripple effect to others. it has opened up my mind to a whole new level of creativity and purpose. engaging in practices between sessions (i.e., homework exercises) is an important part of the inner journey of mbsp. indeed, home practice has been shown in mindfulness studies to predict positive outcomes (lloyd et al., 2018; vettese et al., 2009). when asked about the percentage of homework the participants completed each week on average, the modal response was 75% and the percentage of participants who completed between 50-90% of the activities was 73% of participants. in reflecting on their experiences during the program, homework activities that explicitly involved interacting with other people mindfully, such as the strengths interview (in which participants choose one person to interview about their strengths), strengths-spotting, and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 the character strengths 360 were the three favorite strengths practices freely noted by participants (not prompted). in an open-ended question, 29% of participants identified the character strengths 360 as their favorite activity, in one case describing it as “transformational.” receiving feedback from others on our strengths lets us understand our strengths and use of them in ways that individual reflection typically does not provide, and it offers a means to deepen strengths practice overall and in specific contexts, e.g., in the workplace or family. table 6. personal changes in mindfulness and character strengths attributed to mbsp by participants as rated on “check all that apply” question practice/activity count percentage spot strengths in others frequently 99 79% use my strengths to deal with my problems/ difficulties 91 72% am aware of my signature strengths 87 69% have deepened my mindfulness practice 84 67% use my strengths more often 85 67% verbally appreciate strengths more in others 73 58% use mindfulness to face my problems/ difficulties 72 57% started a new mindfulness practice 56 44% overcome more obstacles in my mindfulness practice 55 44% i made no changes because of this group 0 0% in terms of outward-focused activities, 79% of participants regularly practiced strengths-spotting in others, while 72% used strengths to deal with problems/difficulties. participants explained: “i appreciate other people’s strengths more and tell them.” “at work – seeing strengths instead of differences.” “how people shine when you strength spot them.” in using strengths to deal with difficulties, participants observed: “i don’t seem to take things so personally anymore, if that makes sense? this goes for work, too, i speak my mind more, and am perhaps less of a pushover.” “yes, i have been treating my mother more kindly rather than out of frustration for her inabilities and high expression of anxiety.” 3.6 cognizance of the integration of mindfulness and character strengths when participants were asked whether they cared most about learning about mindfulness, about character strengths, or about the integration of these areas, 71% reported they were most interested in the integration of mindfulness and character strengths. in addition, when asked in a separate question what they believe is true for them, the majority of participants, 77%, indicated they believed that mindfulness will help their character strengths use and expression, while 69% believed character strengths will help their mindfulness practice, and 62% believed integration was essential for practicing either. meanwhile, only 1.6% of participants did not align with any of these three statements, indicating an overwhelming majority understood the integration and could see the impact therein. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 we did not ask a specific question about the development of the integration areas of mindful strengths use or strong mindfulness, however, several participants directly spoke to these terms. for example, in the open-ended question asking, “what has struck you most about this course?” eight participants explicitly described mindful strengths use while three explicitly described strong mindfulness. for mindful strengths use, participants noted: “i appreciate the most how mindfulness can boost the character strengths . . .” “now that i’ve experienced mindful strengths use in practice, i can truly see the amazing benefit of integration of the two concepts.” “i love to be mindful of strengths when facing a challenge.” an example of strong mindfulness included: “i was struck by how to use character strengths during mindfulness practices. helps me to do it [mindfulness] more consciously.” 4. discussion and future directions there are a number of interesting findings in these results. we discuss the results from the previous section alongside directions for future research. participants developed a range of practices in mindfulness and character strengths. engaging in a regular practice is central to all mindfulness-based programs (kabat-zinn, 1990, niemiec, 2014; segal, williams, & teasdale, 2013). large percentages of participants reported engaging in regular mindfulness practices (84%) and character strengths practices such as observing their own and others’ strengths (79%), appreciating others’ strengths (71%), and working on one’s own strengths (70%). future research might deploy dismantling procedures to examine the most active ingredients of mbsp, as mbsp includes a variety of mindfulness and strengths-based activities, meditations, and discussions. a recent study took a dismantling approach to examine two mindfulness-based programs, mbsr and mbct (mindfulness-based cognitive therapy) (stein & witkiewitz, 2020). the most common obstacles to mindfulness practice, by far, were participants not having enough time/too busy, forgetting to practice, and mind wandering. the other obstacles, such as falling asleep, being bothered by noises, or having troublesome thoughts/memories were reported but these and other obstacles remained at 10% or less of participants. this tells us that mindfulness teachers and students might directly target these three common obstacles in order to support the largest number of people in mindfulness-based programs. the mbsp program addresses this with the integration area, strong mindfulness, in which participants practice using their character strengths to confront and overcome their personal meditation obstacles. for example, a person might use curiosity to explore their mind wandering, prudence and selfregulation in the disciplining to schedule their practice, and perspective to overcome a sense of not enough time, or add gratitude and hope to their practice in order to feel more motivated to practice amidst their busy day. indeed, 44% of participants reported overcoming more obstacles in their mindfulness practice during the program. future research might target one specific obstacle and analyze the most optimal character strengths of the 24 to help overcome or manage it. there were a number of positive outcomes revealed by the data. in addition to over 99% of participants reporting some substantial positive outcome, high percentages were found for each specific area assessed. the five well-being pathways of a leading well-being theory, perma (seligman, 2011) can be seen as reflected in the mbsp outcomes, particularly the areas of engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement (the area of positive emotions was not measured). in addition, a leading theory of character strengths explains the major functions of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 character strengths as being linked with two overarching areas: opportunity (e.g., creating wellbeing) and adversity (niemiec, 2019). as the former area was just discussed, the latter area, adversity, was also assessed by asking participants about the perceived impact of mbsp on their stress management and their problem management. large percentages of respondents expressed a positive impact on their stress management (84%) and their management of problems (87%). this is similar to the positive impact of mbsp on different forms of adversity in controlled studies, such as stress (e.g., pang & ruch, 2019a) and loneliness (e.g., wingert et al. 2020). the inward-oriented and outward-oriented approach was another positive outcome, as our data show that participants found a balance in establishing practices to benefit themselves (i.e., inward) and to benefit others (i.e., outward). another positive outcome was the impact of mbsp on positive relationships. this was a substantial finding on both quantitative and qualitative levels. in addition to high self-ratings (86%) of participants reporting mbsp positively impacted one of their relationships, a majority of participants (67%) who were willing to write in a response of a specific positive impact, such as individual relationships (e.g., parent, child, or colleague) or a general group (e.g., family) that was positively impacted and with a specific change (e.g., able to be more patient or able to better understand another person). other findings dovetail with this positive relationships outcome. for example, the high frequency of participants engaging in strengths-spotting and strengthsappreciation lends itself to the building of positive relationships. with the emphasis of mindfulness studies veering toward targeting stress and well-being, we find this positive and substantial impact on relationships to be a novel and important finding. future research might explore the specifics of how and why the relationships are more positive. in mbsp multiple variables are involved such as meditation practice, mindful living practice, character strengths awareness and use, and multiple in-course and home-practice activities on the integration of these areas. given that positive relationships and meaning/purpose are two of the strongest predictors of overall well-being (e.g., diener & seligman, 2004; wagner et al., 2019), it is not surprising that participants reported better overall well-being. it would be interesting to investigate the mechanisms by which the integration of mindfulness and character strengths impact meaning in life, purpose, achievement, and other variables that participants reported elevating at the end of the program. an important contribution of the mbsp program is the novel integration of mindfulness and character strengths, discussed throughout as strong mindfulness and mindful strengths use. theoretically, these areas of integration have good emerging evidence (e.g., duan & ho, 2017; pang & ruch, 2019b). mindfulness has been discussed as an important pathway in helping people understand their self-knowledge – who they are, in that it can help people overcome the barriers in how they view themselves and process information about themselves (carlson, 2013). participants resonated with the integration and readily engaged in practices relating to both strong mindfulness and mindful strengths use. future research might develop an assessment tool for measuring these two integration pathways. this would open up additional research examining the impact of mbsp (or other mindfulness-based programs) on these dynamics as well as exploring the ease by which the pathways develop, differential outcomes, and capacity for sustaining each area of integration. acknowledgements the authors wish to thank the mbsp leaders from various countries who contributed to these data and all the other mbsp leaders who continue to inspire us. we also wish to thank palmer berry for her data entry work. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 authors karen whelan-berry university of massachusetts amherst karenswb@gmail.com ryan niemiec via institute on character publishing timeline received 11 january 2021 revised version received 13 april 2021 accepted 19 april 2021 published 31 may 2021 references allen, m., bromley, a., kuyken, w., & sonnenberg, s. j. 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(2019). character strengths and perma: investigating the relationships of character strengths with a multidimensional framework of well-being. applied research in quality of life. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9695-z wingert, j. r., jones, j. c., swoap, r. a., & wingert, h. m. (2020). mindfulness-based strengths practice improves well-being and retention in undergraduates: a preliminary randomized controlled trial. journal of american college health. advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2020.1764005 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9692-2 https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000144 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s10902-018-9990-2 http://doi.org/10.1177/0261429416641009 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01444-0 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1891/0889-8391.23.3.198 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9695-z https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1080/07448481.2020.1764005 mindfulness-based strengths practice whelan-berry & niemiec www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 appendix a. mbsp post-program form as previously noted, the via institute on character, which collected the mbsp data in this paper, is an independent, non-university, non-profit organization, and did not pursue irb approval for the mbsp post-program form. when asking the participants to complete the post-program form during the final session, the instructor verbally notes that post-program form is confidential, voluntary, and will be used to support strengthening the mbsp program and advancing the science, research, and practice of mbsp. all mbsp participants are eighteen year of age or older, and the form does not include any demographic or identifying information. the form only includes questions about participants’ experience in the program; mindfulness, strengths, and integrated practices that were developed or strengthened; obstacles to mindfulness encountered; and participants’ perception of the impact the program had, for example, on their wellbeing and or relationships. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ smith, j. l. & bryant, f. b. (2012). are we having fun yet?: savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 1-19. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i1.1 jennifer l. smith loyola university chicago jsmith11@luc.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article are we having fun yet? savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment jennifer l. smith · fred b. bryant abstract: although studies of type a behavior ceased in the early 1990s because of failures to replicate its connections with heart disease, the type a behavior pattern of speed, impatience, perfectionism, drivenness, and hostility may nevertheless be important in understanding individual differences in the subjective quality of life. the present study tested the hypothesis that type a behavior undermines the enjoyment of leisure time and that this detrimental effect is mediated by savoring responses that hamper enjoyment. confirming hypotheses, analysis of self-report survey data (n = 764) revealed that: (a) higher levels of type a impatience in social situations predicted significantly less vacation enjoyment; (b) social impatience predicted significantly lower levels of memory building and counting blessings, and higher levels of killjoy thinking, as savoring responses to vacation experiences, which in turn predicted less enjoyment; and (c) variations in these three savoring responses significantly mediated the link between type a impatience and enjoyment, and together explained 85% of the total effect of impatience on vacation enjoyment. furthermore, type a impatience significantly predicted killjoy thoughts about how one’s vacation could have been better, but not kill-joy thoughts about other things one should be doing instead of vacationing, suggesting that a-b differences in dampening savoring responses reflect differences in perfectionism rather than time urgency. finally, temporal awareness moderated the detrimental impact of type a impatience on enjoyment, by weakening the negative relationship between impatience and enjoyment. clearly, type a behavior has implications for understanding the quality, if not the quantity, of people’s lives. keywords: savoring, type a behavior, enjoyment, subjective wellbeing, subjective well-being 1. introduction during the late 1950s, cardiologists (friedman & rosenman, 1959) first proposed that behavior patterns of speed, impatience, perfectionism, drivenness, and hostility increased individuals’ vulnerability to heart disease. during the early 1970s, theorists (e.g., friedman & rosenman, 1974) labeled this constellation of traits associated with coronary disease ‚type a behavior,‛ and distinguished it from an oppositional counterpart termed ‚type b behavior,‛ reflecting a relaxed, easy-going, slower-paced lifestyle. for the next two decades, evidence accumulated linking type a behavior to an increased risk of coronary artery heart disease (e.g., haynes, feinleib, & kannel, 1980). however, later research (e.g., ragland & brand, 1988) and subsequent meta-analyses (e.g., myrtek, 2001) failed to support the association between type a behavior and heart disease. as a result, work on type a behavior effectively ended in the early 1990s, and since then little empirical work has examined this construct (samuel & mcclure, 2002). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 yet, even if type a behavior is unrelated to morbidity or mortality, this behavior pattern may still be important because of its potential effect on the subjective quality of people’s lives and their levels of enjoyment in response to positive experiences (bryant & yarnold, 1990). along these lines, theorists have argued that type a behavior undermines subjective wellbeing and erodes one’s capacity to enjoy life (friedman & ulmer, 1984). for example, friedman and ulmer (1984) describe type a behavior as ‚a continuous struggle, and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time, frequently in the face of opposition—real or imagined—from other persons‛ (p. 31). accordingly, the present study investigated differences in the ways that type as and type bs react to the positive experiences that vacations provide and how these differences ultimately impact the extent to which individuals enjoy their vacations. a vacation experience, and leisure more broadly, is a dynamic, multiphasic process rather than a static outcome (clawson & knetsch, 1966; madrigal, 2003; stewart, 1998). as leisure experiences unfold, antecedent goals and affective expectations shape ongoing appraisaldependent emotional reactions, which in turn shape proximal satisfaction, enjoyment, summary judgments, and future expectations (madrigal, 2003). in addition, motives, expectations, and preferences shift over time during leisure experiences (hultsman, 1998; stewart & hull, 1992). as a form of leisure, a vacation may even be conceived as an emerging state of mind rather than as an event, and ‚as a sequence of transactions between individuals and their environments, as personal stories with temporal and spatial qualities‛ (stewart, 1998, p. 391). moreover, the experience of any given day of one’s vacation may powerfully shape the experience of subsequent days (hultsman, 1998). along these lines, clawson (1963) proposed five non-mutually exclusive, sequential phases of leisure experiences, including anticipation and planning, travel to the site, on-site activity, travel from the site, and recollection of the activity. adopting this theoretical orientation with respect to vacations, we would expect future-focused savoring through anticipation to occur in the initial two stages, present-focused savoring of the moment to occur in the third stage, and past-focused savoring through reminiscence to occur primarily in the final two stages (see clawson, 1963; hultsman, 1998; stewart & hull, 1992). although savoring processes, like leisure experiences, unfold over time, the essence of savoring always occurs in the here and now, as people savor the positive feelings they have either when looking ahead, looking back, or enjoying the moment (bryant & veroff, 2007). and savoring these feelings takes time. for instance, when people are told to savor an experience, their dominant response is to slow down and try to make the moment last longer (bryant & veroff, 2007). type as’ high levels of time urgency (e.g., friedman & ulmer, 1984), however, suggest that these individuals have a low capacity to slow down and savor positive feelings. this decreased ability to savor a vacation experience could have negative consequences for type as’ wellbeing. people’s beliefs about their ability to savor a vacation were positively related to their reported health and wellbeing during a long vacation, and furthermore, savoring beliefs continued to predict greater health and wellbeing one month after the vacation (de bloom, geurts, & kompier, 2012). the present research is predicated on the assumption that type a behavior reduces the enjoyment of leisure experiences, and that this relationship is mediated by savoring responses, or behaviors and cognitions in which people engage during positive experiences to regulate positive feelings (bryant, 2003; bryant, chadwick, & kluwe, 2011; bryant & veroff, 2007). compared to type bs, type as may react to positive events in ways that dampen enjoyment. this emphasis on the mechanisms through which type a behavior may influence positive savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 experience is consistent with past recommendations that research on type a behavior should focus more on processes and less exclusively on outcomes in studying its associations with subjective well-being (bryant & yarnold, 1990). 1.1 type a behavior and subjective wellbeing as noted above, the type a behavior pattern is characterized by achievement-orientation, hard-driving competitiveness, speed, impatience, and aggressiveness—behaviors that may occur as a result of attempts to control stressful environments (glass, 1977) or to reduce uncertainty about personal abilities in response to situational demands (strube, 1987). of particular interest in the present study is the type a component of time urgency (i.e., ‚hurry sickness;‛ friedman & ulmer, 1984; mueser, yarnold, & bryant, 1987), which compels type as to move rapidly from situation to situation in pursuit of instrumental goals. as friedman (1996) has argued, ‚time urgency is<the major overt type a behavior (tab) component‛ (p. 25). in the context of vacation enjoyment, time urgency might make it harder for type as to ‚stop and smell the roses,‛ live in the moment, and fully savor positive experiences (bryant & veroff, 2007; friedman & ulmer, 1984). reviewing the literature on happiness, myers (1992) concluded, ‚the essence of happiness is pausing to savor the gift of our present moments‛ (p. 203). savoring positive experiences often involves prolonging or lingering in pleasant situations, which type as may be less likely to do because of time urgency (bryant & veroff, 2007). in fact, previous research suggests that type as actually find relaxation and leisure activities stressful (friedman & ulmer, 1984). for instance, type as show higher levels of adrenaline secretion and report greater distress during periods of inactivity compared to type bs, while type bs find work activities more stressful compared to type as (frankenhaeuser, lundberg, & forsman, 1980). type as also spend less time engaging in leisure activities, compared to type bs (kirkcaldy, shephard, & cooper, 1993). consistent with their tendency toward time urgency, type as are also less likely to take time to recall memories and reflect on previous experiences (friedman & ulmer, 1984). bryant, yarnold, and morgan (1991) found that type as were less likely to actively store memories after a positive experience in order to recall them at a later time, while type bs were more likely to purposefully encode memories after a pleasant event in order to reminisce about them later. however, type as and type bs did not differ in how frequently they reminisced or in the particular strategies they used to reminisce about positive memories (bryant et al., 1991). 1.2 the multidimensionality of type a behavior most prior studies of type a behavior and subjective wellbeing have examined only global, total score measures of type a behavior (bryant & yarnold, 1990; strube, berry, goza, & fennimore, 1985). however, there is strong evidence that type a behavior is multidimensional and that analyzing only global total scores may produce misleading results (bryant & yarnold, 1989, 1995). in particular, using confirmatory factor analysis to examine the structure of responses to the most commonly used self-report measure of type a behavior among college students—the student jenkins activity survey (sjas; glass, 1977)—bryant and yarnold (1989) concluded that a one-factor ‚total score‛ model provided a poor fit to the sjas data, and that a three-factor model, consisting of correlated factors of hard-driving competitiveness, rapid eating, and rapid talking, best fit the data. concerning the subjective quality of life, harddriving competitiveness reflects an intensely ambitious achievement orientation that might inhibit the enjoyment of leisure activities, whereas rapid eating and rapid talking reflect a savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 frenetic impatience that might make it difficult to spend time savoring pleasant physical sensations or lingering in social conversations. 1.3 savoring and type a behavior a central focus of the present study is on the construct of savoring as a process regulating enjoyment. savoring, defined as the capacity ‚to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences‛ in one’s life (bryant & veroff, 2007, p. 2), is also a multidimensional concept. bryant and veroff (2007) identified ten types of savoring responses, representing behaviors or cognitions in which people may engage when experiencing positive events: sharing with others, memory building, self-congratulation, temporal awareness, behavioral expression, sensory-perceptual sharpening, absorption, comparing, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking. when savoring a positive event, people attend to the experience and become mindfully aware of their positive feelings. however, time urgency is likely to divert people’s attention from ongoing positive experiences and thereby dampen savoring responses (bryant & veroff, 2007). moreoever, type as may also be more likely to multitask in an effort to accomplish more tasks in less time (friedman & ulmer, 1984). because multitasking divides attention simultaneously across multiple unfinished tasks, as a result type as may be less able than type bs to attend to positive experiences and savor the moment (bryant & veroff, 2007). the tendency of type as not to actively store memories of positive events may also limit their savoring responses (bryant et al., 1991). memory building is not only related to later retrospective enjoyment, but may also lead to greater enjoyment in the present. people pay more attention to details of the experience when they are actively storing a memory of a positive event, and they may therefore enjoy and appreciate the ongoing event more fully. for these reasons, we hypothesized that impatience and time urgency, which are central components of type a behavior, inhibit type as’ savoring responses in response to positive events, which in turn dampens their enjoyment of positive experiences. during positive experiences, type as, compared to type bs, may also engage in more dampening ‚kill-joy‛ thoughts about unfinished work-related tasks they should be doing instead. furthermore, type as’ tendency toward perfectionism (flett, hewitt, blankstein, & dynin, 1994) may increase their tendency to focus on faults in positive experiences, thereby undermining enjoyment. finally, an awareness of the fleetingness of time, as manifest in the savoring response of temporal awareness, might influence type as differently from type bs. for type bs, on the one hand, an awareness of the scarcity of time during a vacation might make the remaining time more enjoyable, by bringing ‚its positive qualities to the forefront of one’s attention along with a sense of motivation to make the most of it‛ (kurtz, 2008, p. 1238). given type as’ higher levels of time urgency, on the other hand, temporal awareness during a vacation might undermine their enjoyment of the moment, by reminding them of the fleetingness of leisure time, which might be better used in pursuit of work-related goals. however, it is also conceivable that an awareness of the speed with which time is passing might make leisure time less stressful for type as, by making them feel as if they will be back at work in no time at all, thereby reducing a-b differences in vacation enjoyment. for these reasons, we examined the savoring response of temporal awareness as a potential moderator of the relationship between type a behavior (particularly speed/impatience) and enjoyment. savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 1.4 current study the goal of the current research was to determine whether savoring responses mediate the relationship between type a behavior and level of vacation enjoyment. we chose to focus on vacation experiences for several reasons. first, vacations can boost positive affect and increase short-term happiness (nawijn, 2011). as mentioned previously, however, extant research suggests that type as compared to type bs may find vacations less enjoyable (e.g., frankenhaeuser et al., 1980; friedman & ulmer, 1984; kirkcaldy et al., 1993). in addition, vacations have an extended duration that allows people to use a variety of different savoring strategies across multiple positive experiences. people may also be more focused on the present moment during their vacations than during ordinary everyday life (bryant & veroff, 2007). we expected that type a behavior would be negatively associated with savoring responses that boost vacation enjoyment and positively associated with savoring responses that decrease vacation enjoyment. in particular, we tested five hypotheses: hypothesis 1: higher type a scores, specifically levels of speed/impatience, will predict lower reported levels of vacation enjoyment; hypothesis 2: higher levels of speed/impatience will predict lower levels of amplifying savoring responses associated with enhanced enjoyment (such as memory building and counting blessings) and higher levels of dampening savoring responses associated with reduced enjoyment (such as kill-joy thinking); hypothesis 3: amplifying savoring responses will predict higher levels of vacation enjoyment, and dampening savoring responses will predict lower levels of vacation enjoyment; hypothesis 4: savoring responses will mediate the negative relationship between type a behaviors of speed/impatience and vacation enjoyment; and hypothesis 5: the savoring response of temporal awareness will moderate the relationship between type a behaviors of speed/impatience and vacation enjoyment. we expected that high levels of temporal awareness might either amplify or dampen the detrimental impact of time urgency on vacation enjoyment. 2. method 2.1 participants and procedures a convenience sample of 764 undergraduates (613 females, 151 males) at a private metropolitan midwestern university participated in this study as partial fulfillment of an introductory psychology course requirement. although females were over-represented in this sample, no existing theory or consistent empirical evidence suggests that there are sex differences in the experience and expression of type a behavior, particularly with respect to speed and impatience or hard-driving competitiveness. participants were recruited to participate in a study about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in response to recent positive life events. participants completed a series of questionnaires, including the student jenkins activity survey (sjas; glass, 1977), the ways of savoring checklist (bryant & veroff, 2007), and a measure of vacation enjoyment. participants were then thanked and debriefed. savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 2.2 measures 2.2.1 student jenkins activity survey the student jenkins activity survey (sjas; glass, 1977) is a 21-item measure designed to assess type a behavior in college populations. the sjas taps into three factors related to type a behavior: hard-driving competitiveness, rapid talking, and rapid eating. the hard-driving competitiveness subscale (α = .72) is comprised of 11 closed-ended items (e.g., ‚do most people consider you to be: definitely hard-driving and competitive, probably hard-driving and competitive, probably more relaxed and easy going, or definitely more relaxed and easy going?‛). the rapid talking subscale (interitem correlation: r = .32, p < .0001) includes two items, and it is a measure of impatient social responding (‚when you listen to someone talking, and this person takes too long to come to the point, do you feel like hurrying them along?‛ and ‚how often do you actually ‘put words into his mouth’ in order to speed things up?‛). the rapid eating subscale (interitem correlation: r = .43, p < .0001) also consists of two items (‚ordinarily, how rapidly do you eat?‛ and ‚has your spouse or some friend ever told you that you eat too fast?‛). in past research, sjas total score and related subscales have shown acceptable internal consistency reliability and moderately to extremely high two-week test-retest stability (yarnold & mueser, 1989; yarnold, mueser, grau, & grimm, 1986). supporting construct validity, sjas scores correlate significantly with prospectively validated, objective measures of type a behavior (yarnold & bryant, 1988; yarnold & mueser, 1989), predict behavioral differences among college students in studying and leisure activities (ditto, 1982), and show discriminant validity in relation to measures of trait anxiety (nielson & dobson, 1980). given that the sjas has been used only sporadically in the past two decades, however, the question naturally arises as to whether it remains a valid measure of type a behavior. to address this issue, we compared data from the current study with previously published measurement models and mean scores from comparative samples of college students. first, confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the three-factor measurement model reported by bryant and yarnold (1989) provides an excellent goodness-of-fit to the sjas responses of our sample, 2(87, n = 764) = 335.31, rmsea = .065, srmr = .058, gfi = .94. second, mean sjas total scores in our sample were not significantly different from mean sjas total scores in the 1987 normative sample (yarnold, 1987), t(4854) = 1.07, p = .284, cohen’s d = 0.04. third, there were no significant differences between mean scores for the sjas subscales for our sample and a sample of 1,609 undergraduates reported by bryant and yarnold (1995): hard-driving competitiveness, t(2371) = 1.23, p = .221, d = .05; rapid eating, t(2371) = 1.87, p = .062, d = .08; or rapid talking, t(2371) = 1.78, p = .075, d = .08. considered as a whole, the results of these three sets of analyses suggest that college students today respond to the sjas items in the same ways college students did 15 to 25 years ago. 2.2.2 ways of savoring checklist the ways of savoring checklist (wosc; bryant & veroff, 2007) is a 60-item measure assessing types of savoring responses and strategies that the participants use during positive experiences. the wosc consists of a series of statements reflecting ‚things that people might think or do while they are going through positive events.‛ participants were asked to describe their most recent vacation and to complete a series of questions about how much they desired and enjoyed the experience. participants then completed 60 items about the things they did or thought about during their vacation (e.g., ‚i thought about sharing the memory of this later savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 with other people‛ and ‚i told myself why i didn’t deserve this good thing‛). participants indicated the degree to which each statement reflected what they thought and did during their last vacation on a seven-point scale (1 = definitely doesn’t apply and 7 = definitely applies). bryant and veroff (2007) reported evidence of the reliability and construct validity of 10 wosc subscales as indicators of savoring responses predictive of people’s enjoyment of positive events. these 10 wosc subscales (and their reliabilities in the present sample) are presented in table 2 (on page 9). whereas kill-joy thinking may dampen positive experience, the other nine wosc subscales (sharing with others, memory building, self-congratulation, temporal awareness, behavioral expression, sensory-perceptual sharpening, absorption, comparing, counting blessings) reflect savoring responses that may amplify positive experience. 2.2.3 vacation enjoyment the wosc (bryant & veroff, 2007) includes a single-item measure of the level of enjoyment that we used as the primary dependent measure in the present study. respondents were asked to think about the last time they went on a vacation and to indicate how much they had enjoyed their vacation (e.g., ‚when this event occurred, how much did you enjoy it?‛). participants reported their level of enjoyment on a seven-point scale (1 = very little and 7 = a great deal). although not specifically designed to assess vacation enjoyment per se, this selfreport question has been used extensively in research on the wosc over many years, across many different positive events, and with many different samples (see bryant & veroff, 2007). supporting the construct validity of this measure, additional data collected in the present sample for another project revealed that scores on this enjoyment item correlate positively with established measures of general happiness, positive affectivity, optimism, self-esteem, and perceived savoring capacity, and correlated negatively with symptoms of depression (|r|s > .10, ps < .01). using this single-item retrospective measure combines the multiple temporal phases of vacation enjoyment into a global assessment of the overall subjective quality of the vacation experience, just as people are often asked to make global evaluative judgments of their life as a whole (andrews & withey, 1976). although lacking the specificity and content validity of multidimensional measures of enjoyment (e.g., kendzierski & decarlo, 1991; stevens, moget, de greef, lemmink, & rispens, 2000), such single-item measures are the most commonly used means in the research literature of assessing enjoyment (smith, harrison, & bryant, in press). 3. results analyses were conducted to test the hypothesis that savoring responses mediate the relation between type a behaviors and vacation enjoyment. following baron and kenny’s (1986) procedure for establishing mediation, the analyses were conducted in three steps: 1) test whether type a behavior—particularly speed/impatience, assessed using the rapid talking or rapid eating subscales—significantly predicts lower vacation enjoyment (hypothesis 1); 2) test whether rapid talking or rapid eating significantly predicts higher levels of amplifying savoring responses and lower levels of dampening savoring responses (hypothesis 2); and 3) test whether savoring responses significantly predict vacation enjoyment when controlling for the effects of rapid talking or rapid eating (hypothesis 3). given evidence for the above linkages, we also tested the statistical significance of the hypothesized indirect effects of type a behavior on vacation enjoyment via savoring responses (hypothesis 4). finally, we examined whether temporal awareness moderated the relation between type a behaviors and vacation enjoyment (hypothesis 5). savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 3.1 hypothesis 1: speed/impatience as a negative predictor of vacation enjoyment two separate, multiple regression analyses were conducted to test whether type a behavior predicted less vacation enjoyment (hypothesis 1)—first using the sjas total score, and then using the three sjas subscales (hard-driving competitiveness, rapid talking, rapid eating) together, to predict vacation enjoyment. type a total score was only a marginally significant predictor of vacation enjoyment, f (1,762) = 3.55, p =.06, r2 < .01, with higher levels of type a behavior associated with less vacation enjoyment, β = -.07, p = .06. when entering all three sjas subscales simultaneously into a multiple regression as predictors of vacation enjoyment, the set of three predictors explained a small but significant proportion of variance in vacation enjoyment, f (3,760) = 3.60, p < .013, r2 = .01. confirming predictions about the impact of time urgency, only rapid talking showed a significant negative relationship with enjoyment when all three sjas subscales were entered simultaneously (see table 1). thus, speed and impatience in social situations (rapid talking) was uniquely related to less vacation enjoyment, whereas eating fast and being hard-driving and competitive were not. table 1: results of multiple regression analyses using hard-driving competitiveness, rapid eating, and rapid talking subscales of the sjas as simultaneous predictors of vacation enjoyment predictor (sjas subscales) b seb  t p < hard-driving competitiveness -0.01 .02 -.01 0.10 .93 rapid eating -0.05 .02 -.03 0.82 .41 rapid talking -0.21 .07 -.11 2.96 .003 note: dependent variable = vacation enjoyment. 3.2 hypothesis 2: rapid talking as a predictor of savoring responses because the only significant link between type a behavior and vacation enjoyment was for the sjas subscale of rapid talking, we conducted further tests for mediation only for the rapid talking subscale. specifically, we used the rapid talking subscale to predict each of the 10 ways of savoring subscales as potential mediators. supporting hypothesis 2, rapid talking significantly predicted three of the wosc savoring subscales (see table 2 below). specifically, higher rapid talking scores predicted less memory building, f (1,762) = 4.05, p < .044, r2 = .01, less counting blessings, f (1,762) = 2.50, p < .008, r2 = .01, and more kill-joy thinking, f (1,762) = 16.42, p < .0001, r2 = .02. these three savoring subscales are thus potential mediators of the negative impact of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment. 3.3 hypothesis 3: savoring responses as predictors of vacation enjoyment we examined whether memory building, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking were significant predictors of vacation enjoyment, when controlling for the effects of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment. first, we conducted three separate regression analyses with vacation enjoyment as the dependent variable, and one of the savoring responses (i.e., memorybuilding, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking) and rapid talking entered into the model savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 as simultaneous predictors (see table 3 below). together, memory building and rapid talking explained a significant amount of variance in vacation enjoyment, f (2,761) = 110.39, p < .0001, r2 = .23. after controlling for rapid talking, higher memory building predicted greater vacation enjoyment. counting blessings and rapid talking also explained a significant amount of variance in vacation enjoyment, f (2,761) = 126.47, p < .0001, r2 = .25. after controlling for rapid talking, counting blessings predicted greater vacation enjoyment. finally, kill-joy thinking and rapid talking also explained a significant amount of variance in vacation enjoyment, f (2,761) = 64.24, p < .0001), r2 = .15. after controlling for rapid talking, higher killjoy thinking scores predicted less vacation enjoyment. table 2: results of individual regression analyses using rapid talking to predict savoring responses as measured by scores on the 10 savoring subscales dependent variable (savoring subscales) b seb β t p < sharing with others: seeking out people with whom to share an experience or telling others how much you value the moment (6 items; α = .83) -0.08 .07 .04 1.21 .23 memory building: actively storing positive memories for later recall or thinking of reminiscing later about a positive event (7 items; α = .84) -0.13 .07 .07 2.01 .044 self-congratulation: telling yourself how proud you are or how impressed others must be (7 items; α = .82) -0.11 .07 .06 1.58 .12 temporal awareness: reminding yourself how transient and fleeting the moment is (5 items; α = .78) 0.07 .08 .03 0.88 .39 behavioral expression: laughing, jumping up and down, or making verbal sounds of appreciation (6 items; α = .73) -0.09 .07 .05 1.23 .22 sensory-perceptual sharpening: focusing on certain situational stimuli and blocking out others (4 items; α = .68) 0.04 .08 .02 0.53 .60 absorption: trying not to think, but to relax and exist only in the present (4 items; α = .72) -0.13 .07 .07 1.82 .07 comparing: contrasting your own feelings with what others seem to be feeling, or comparing the present situation with similar times in the past or personal expectations (7 items; α = .66) 0.09 .06 .06 1.53 .13 counting blessings: reminding yourself of your good fortune, or thinking about how lucky you are (3 items; α = .68) -0.21 .08 .10 2.64 .008 kill-joy thinking: reminding yourself of other things you should be doing, or thinking of ways in which the positive event could have been better (7 items; α = .80) 0.26 .06 .15 4.05 .0001 note. predictor = rapid talking subscale of the sjas. savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 table 3: results of multiple regression analyses testing individual savoring subscales as mediators of the relationship between rapid talking and vacation enjoyment predictor b seb β t p < testing memory building as mediator: memory building .047 .03 .46 14.42 .0001 rapid talking -.015 .06 -.08 2.52 .012 testing counting blessings as mediator: counting blessings .42 .03 .49 15.48 .0001 rapid talking -.12 .06 -.07 2.15 .032 testing kill-joy thinking as mediator: kill-joy thinking -.40 .04 -.37 10.80 .0001 rapid talking -.12 .06 -.06 1.81 .08 note: dependent variable = vacation enjoyment thus, all three of the ways of savoring subscales—memory building, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking—were significant predictors of vacation enjoyment when controlling for the effects of the rapid talking subscale on vacation enjoyment. considering all of these results together then, we see that memory building, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking each mediated the effects of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment. entering all three mediators—memory building, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking—along with rapid talking, as simultaneous predictors of vacation enjoyment, we found that all three savoring subscales remained statistically significant predictors of enjoyment, f (4,759) = 129.13, p < .001, r2 = .41: memory-building (β = .29, p < .001); counting blessings (β = .29, p < .001); and kill-joy thinking (β = -.33, p < .001). further supporting the mediating effects of savoring, the direct effect of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment was no longer statistically significant in the regression model (β = -.02, p = .54). figure 1 (below) displays the standardized regression coefficients in this mediational model. 3.4 hypothesis 4: indirect effects of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment to test hypothesis 4 systematically, we conducted bootstrap analyses of indirect effects (with 5,000 resamples), adjusting for both bias and skewness in bootstrap distributions (mallinckrodt, abraham, wei, & russell, 2006) while examining multiple mediators simultaneously (preacher & hayes, 2008), to estimate the bootstrap standard error (bse) and 95% bootstrap confidence interval (bci) for each relevant indirect effect. we used spss 16 to implement preacher and hayes’ (2008) bootstrap macro program for testing multiple mediators. results revealed that the indirect effect of rapid talking type a behavior on vacation enjoyment was statistically significant for all three savoring mediators in this regression model: (a) memory building, b = .18, bse = .05, 95% bci = -.09 – -.01; (b) counting blessings, b = -.05, bse = .02, 95% bci = -.10 – .02; and (c) kill-joy thinking, b = -.09, bse = .02, 95% bci = -.15 – -.04. decomposing the total effect, we found that memory building explained 18.4%, counting blessings explained 32.4%, and kill-joy thinking explained 42.3% of the total effect of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment. thus, together the three savoring responses accounted for 84.7% of the effect of savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 rapid talking type a behavior on vacation enjoyment. specifically, the dampening response of kill-joy thinking explained half of the indirect effect of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment, and the amplifying savoring responses of memory building and counting blessings explained the other half. in sum, our analyses strongly support the conclusion that savoring responses mediate the negative relationship between rapid talking and vacation enjoyment. figure 1: path model of the mediating effects of savoring responses on the relationship between rapid talking type a behavior and vacation enjoyment. note: path coefficients in the diagram represent standardized regression coefficients (n = 764). the proportion of variance explained in each dependent variable was as follows: memory building (r2 = .01); counting blessings (r2 = .01); kill-joy thinking (r2 = .02); vacation enjoyment (r2 = .41). *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. close inspection of the items constituting the 7-item kill-joy thinking subscale reveals two distinct types of negative savoring responses. two kill-joy items reflect thoughts about other things that one should be doing (‚i reminded myself of other places i should be or of other things i should be doing instead‛; ‚i thought about other things that were hanging over me, problems and worries that i still had to face‛; r = .48, p < .0001); and two kill-joy items reflect thoughts about ways in which one’s ongoing experience could be better (‚i thought about ways in which it could have been better‛; ‚i told myself how it wasn’t as good as i’d hoped for‛; r = .48, p < .0001). compared to type bs, type as’ greater time urgency might lead them to think more about unfinished projects looming over them during positive experiences (friedman & ulmer, 1984); whereas type as’ greater perfectionism might lead them more to search for and notice aspects of positive events that are less than ideal. to examine in greater detail these two separate facets of kill-joy thinking, we constructed mean scores for each pair of items and then estimated and compared the indirect effect for each of these 2-item subscales as mediators of the relationship between rapid talking and dampened vacation enjoyment. whereas rapid talking had a significant indirect effect through thoughts about shortcomings of current experience, b = -.10, bse = .03, 95% bci = -.17 – -.04, the indirect effect of rapid talking through thoughts about other things one should be doing was not significant, b = -.02, bse = .01, 95% bci = -.05 – 0.01; and comparing these two indirect effects, the former was stronger than the latter, z = 2.96, p = .003. these findings memory building counting blessings kill-joy thinking vacation enjoyment rapid talking .15*** -.10* .29*** -.33*** .29*** -.10* -.02ns savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 suggest that impatience dampens vacation enjoyment among type as by predisposing them to find faults in positive experiences more than by predisposing them to think of other things they should be doing. extending evidence that impatience among type as is associated with their greater perfectionism relative to type bs (flett et al., 1994), our results support the notion that type as’ greater kill-joy thinking during vacations reflects impatience resulting from perfectionism rather than from time urgency. assuming people are less likely to memorialize or count as blessings outcomes they see as less positive, greater perfectionistic impatience might also explain type as’ lower levels of memory building and counting blessings, relative to type bs. 3.5 hypothesis 5: temporal awareness as a moderator of the impact of type a behavior on vacation enjoyment it is noteworthy that a heightened awareness of the passage of time, as reflected in the savoring response of temporal awareness, predicted higher levels of vacation enjoyment (r = .33, p < .0001), but showed no significant relationship with rapid talking, r = .03, p < .39, and did not mediate the relationship between rapid eating and enjoyment. supplemental regression analyses testing for a rapid talking x temporal awareness interaction following aiken and west’s (1991) procedures indicated that temporal awareness moderated the relationship between rapid talking and enjoyment, b = 0.093, se = .043, β = .07, p =.03. probing this interaction, we found that lower levels of temporal awareness predicted a greater rate of decrease in vacation enjoyment as a function of rapid talking (see figure 2 below). analysis of simple slopes revealed that when level of temporal awareness was 1 sd below the mean, more rapid talking behavior predicted less enjoyment, b = – 0.37, se = 0.09, p = .026; whereas when temporal awareness was 1 sd above the mean, rapid talking behavior was unrelated to enjoyment, b = – 0.10, se = 0.09, p = .32. analysis of regions of statistical significance revealed that when level of temporal awareness was more than 0.33 sd above the mean, a-b differences in vacation enjoyment were no longer significant. these results suggest that increased awareness of the passage of time reduces the negative impact of rapid talking on vacation enjoyment. 4. discussion the present study contributes to our understanding of the link between type a behavior and subjective life quality in several ways. first, confirming predictions that savoring would mediate the negative relationship between type a behavior and enjoyment, we found that rapid talking predicted less memory building, less counting blessings, and more kill-joy thinking during participants’ most recent vacation; and each of these savoring responses in turn predicted vacation enjoyment. in other words, rapid talking predicted three types of savoring responses associated with reduced vacation enjoyment— less memory building, less counting blessings, and greater kill-joy thinking—which together explained 85% of the negative impact of type a behavior (in the specific form of rapid talking) on vacation enjoyment. these findings replicate and extend past work linking type a behavior to less enjoyment of vacations (e.g., frankenhaeuser et al., 1980; friedman & ulmer, 1984; kirkcaldy et al., 1993). however, in the present study, only the rapid talking subscale of the sjas significantly predicted vacation enjoyment. this result underscores the importance of adopting a multidimensional perspective in studying type a behavior (bryant & yarnold, 1989, 1995). our findings are consistent with earlier research demonstrating that type a behaviors of savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 impatience-irritability, but not achievement striving, predict marital dissatisfaction (barling, bluen, & moss, 1990). the fact that the sjas rapid talking subscale, but not the rapid eating or hard-driving competitiveness subscales, predicts savoring responses linked to less vacation enjoyment suggests social impatience rather than irritability per se underlies reduced enjoyment. figure 2. scores on the temporal awareness savoring subscale as a moderator of the relationship between type a rapid talking behavior and vacation enjoyment (n = 764). note: simple slopes are plotted for values of low temporal awareness that are 1 sd below the mean and for values of high temporal awareness that are 1 sd above the mean. analysis of simple slopes revealed that when temporal awareness was low, more rapid talking behavior predicted less enjoyment, b = – 0.37, se = 0.09, p = .026; whereas when temporal awareness was high, rapid talking behavior was unrelated to enjoyment, b = – 0.10, se = 0.09, p = .32. with respect to savoring, this study also replicates and extends previous evidence that type as are less likely to take the time to store memories and to reminisce about previous positive experiences (bryant et al., 1991; friedman & ulmer, 1984). creating and storing memories are essential aspects of savoring by memory building and counting blessings. type as appear to be more focused than type bs on moving ahead, and this time urgency seems to keep them from taking time to stop and appreciate positive experiences during their vacation. our results also shed light on the ways in which type a behavior actively dampens the enjoyment of positive leisure experiences. type as’ greater time urgency not only predicts less memory building and counting of blessings, but also predicts higher levels of kill-joy thinking—a savoring response strongly linked to diminished appreciation (bryant & veroff, 2007; quoidbach, berry, hansenne, & mikolajczak, 2010). our analyses indicate that type a impatience is more strongly predictive of kill-joy thoughts about the suboptimal qualities of vacation experiences, as opposed to kill-joy thoughts about other things one should be doing. thus, the detrimental impact of type a impatience on enjoyment seems more closely related to perfectionism than to time urgency per se (flett et al., 1994). v a ca ti o n e n jo y m e n t high fast talking low fast talking high temporal awareness low temporal awareness 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 our data also demonstrate that the savoring response of temporal awareness moderates the detrimental impact of type a impatience on vacation enjoyment. although impatience was unrelated to temporal awareness, thinking about how fast time was passing and how soon one’s vacation would be over weakened the negative relationship between type a impatience and enjoyment. given evidence that type as find leisurely relaxation stressful (frankenhaeuser et al., 1980; friedman & ulmer, 1984), reminding oneself of the fleetingness of time may well help impatient type as cope with the tension experienced while being away from work during vacations, thereby making this ‚down time‛ less unpleasant. in other words, temporal awareness may be a savoring strategy for type bs, but a coping strategy for type as. the present findings have direct implications for increasing type as’ vacation enjoyment. because perfectionism appears to underlie type as’ tendency to find faults with their vacations, these maladaptive savoring responses might be preempted by interventions designed to reduce perfectionism in type as (e.g., friedman & ulmer, 1984). moreover, type as could be trained to avoid dampening responses and to take time to ‚stop and smell the roses‛ by adopting more amplifying savoring responses, such as memory building and counting blessings. 5. strengths and limitations this study has several limitations. participants were not exposed to the same positive experience, but rather were instructed to focus on their most recent vacation; and type as and type bs may choose to go on different types of vacations. for instance, type as may prefer to follow a detailed itinerary jam-packed with different destinations and activities, whereas type bs may select more leisurely vacations. however, in the present sample, sjas total score and hard-driving competitiveness, rapid eating, and rapid talking subscale scores were uncorrelated with participant reports of how long ago their vacation occurred, how long their vacation lasted, and the degree to which they were responsible for their vacation or to which their enjoyment depended on what they or others were doing, as assessed via the wosc (bryant & veroff, 2007), |r|s < .051, ps > .16. nevertheless, future work might hold constant the positive experience(s) investigated, to make comparisons more clearly interpretable. we must also keep in mind that the present data are retrospective self-reports of savoring responses during one’s most recent vacation. although there is evidence that retrospective ratings of emotion contain accurate information about momentary emotional experiences (barrett, 1997), reports of emotional intensity show pronounced biases even after a short delay (schwarz, 2007). empirical evidence indicates that people are prone to recall vacations as having been more pleasant than they actually experienced them at the time the vacation was unfolding (mitchell, thompson, peterson, & cronk, 1997)—a phenomenon mitchell and thompson (1994) termed ‚rosy retrospection.‛ however, this retrospective distortion would produce an overall exaggeration of the level of enjoyment across all respondents and would not explain the patterns of mediation and moderation we have found. additional research is necessary to assess whether type as and bs actually engage in different savoring responses in ‚real time‛ while going through vacations (see bryant et al., 2011), as well as through other positive experiences. for example, type as may be more motivated than type bs to savor achievement-oriented positive events, such as winning a contest or receiving performance recognition (bryant et al., 1991). additional analyses were conducted to assess whether the present pattern of findings was specific to vacations or held for another type of positive experience as well. during the present data collection, a subset of participants (n = 709) also completed a second version of the wosc savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 (counterbalanced for order with the version assessing the recent vacation) that measured their responses to their most recent good grade on a test or paper. in contrast to results for the most recent vacation, a multiple regression analysis revealed than none of the three sjas subscales were significant predictors of how much participants reported enjoying the good grade, f(3,705) = 1.65, p < .18, r2 = .007: hard-driving competitiveness, b = .02, se = .09, β = .04, t = 1.10, p < .27; rapid eating, b = .10, se = .06, β = .07, t = 1.81, p < .08; and rapid talking, b = -.04, se = .06, β = -.03, t = 0.69, p < .49. nor did any of the mediating effects of savoring responses reach statistical significance. thus, type as and type bs did not differ in how much they reported enjoying their good grade, and savoring did not mediate the impact of type a behavior on enjoyment of the good grade. although these supplementary results do not conclusively settle the issue, they support the notion that the impact of type a behavior on savoring and enjoyment is specific to vacations and does not apply to all positive experiences in general. a further limitation is that we used only two items to assess rapid talking as an indicator of impatience in social settings. future research should employ a more extensive, multi-item measure of impatience, such as the type a time urgency scale developed by wright, mccurdy, and rogoll (1992), in predicting type as’ and bs’ responses to positive experiences. future work might also include direct measures of perfectionism (e.g., hewitt & flett, 1991), in order to distinguish high personal standards, particularly in social contexts, from the need for speed per se as a determinant of impatience. yet, despite these limitations, the present study provides evidence that type a behavior has important implications for the ways in which people savor positive events. an additional limitation of this study is its cross-sectional design, which may bias the mediation analyses (maxwell & cole, 2007; maxwell, cole, & mitchell, 2011). given that a vacation, like all leisure experiences, is a process that unfolds over time, we can speculate that type a behavior would occur throughout the vacation—during the initial stages as participants prepared for and anticipated their vacation, while they traveled to the location(s) of their vacation, and as they returned home from their vacation. likewise, we would expect participants to engage in different forms of savoring while they anticipate, enjoy the moment, and reminisce about their vacation experiences. moreover, we would expect there to be multiple circumstances that would elicit type a behavior and accompanying savoring responses throughout the vacation. however, we have not assessed mediation in the future-, present-, and past-focused phases of the vacation; nor have we assessed mediation across these multiple episodes during the vacation. in order to capture better the temporal unfolding of these dynamic transactional processes, it would be better to assess cognitive, behavioral, and emotional responses longitudinally across the course of the vacation rather than just retrospectively at the end (see madrigal, 2003; maxwell, cole, & mitchell, 2011; stewart & hull, 1992). moreover, real-time assessments of ongoing experience would be strongly preferable to retrospective reflections (hultsman, 1998; lee, dattilo, & howard, 1994; stewart, 1998). although data suggest that overall leisure satisfaction is relatively stable after three months, post hoc ratings and real-time assessments are distinct constructs that provide different perspectives on subjective experience (stewart & hull, 1992). along these lines, recent research using longitudinal experience-sampling methods with daily diary data reveals that daily positive events predict greater momentary savoring, which in turn predicts greater daily happiness (jose, lim, & bryant, 2012). over the course of a vacation, we would expect this momentary mediation to amplify overall enjoyment of the experience as a whole. jose et al.’s (2012) data support the validity of the conclusions we have drawn in the present study regarding the role of savoring as a mediator of vacation enjoyment. savoring, type a behavior, and vacation enjoyment. smith & bryant www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 our use of a single-item measure of enjoyment also limits our study. by requiring respondents to make an overall assessment of how much they enjoyed their most recent vacation as a whole, our global single-item measure of vacation enjoyment collapses across temporal domains and does not allow a fine-grained analysis of enjoyment in each phase of the unfolding vacation process. future researchers might use multiple measures of enjoyment that focus on each of the different temporal phases of the vacation process (i.e., anticipation, savoring the moment, reminiscing), in order to enhance the reliability and content validity of the measurement of enjoyment. we would expect time urgency to produce savoring deficits in relation to all temporal phases of vacationing, as type as rush to reach their vacation destination, fail to take time to savor the on-site activities, and hurry back to work afterwards without looking back. finally, we note that the size of our mediational effects is small. together, the three type a subscales explained only about 1% of the variance in vacation enjoyment; and, although memory building, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking together explained more than 40% of the variance in vacation enjoyment, rapid talking type a behavior explained only 1–2% of the variance in these three savoring responses. thus, type a social impatience reliably undermines vacation enjoyment, but to only a small degree. nevertheless, frequent small decrements in positive affect may have a cumulative impact on wellbeing—indeed, ‚repeating minor but positive life events in the short-term... may be sufficient to increase well-being in the long-term‛ (mochon, norton, & ariely, 2008, p. 635). authors jennifer l. smith loyola university of chicago jsmith11@luc.edu fred b. bryant loyola university of chicago publishing timeline received 20 august 2012 accepted 28 september 2012 published 7 march 2013 references aiken, l. s., & west, s. g. 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(1989). meta-analyses of the reliability of type a behaviour measures. british journal of medical psychology, 62, 43–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1989.tb02809.x yarnold, p. r., mueser, k. t., grau, b. w., & grimm, l. g. (1986). the reliability of the student version of the jenkins activity survey. journal of behavioral medicine, 9, 401-414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00845123 http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.2000.90.2.601 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01490409209513168 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.49.1.203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.49.1.203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.4.3.352 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa5203_2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1989.tb02809.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00845123 a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness suikkanen, j. (2011). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 149-166. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.6 jussi suikkanen university of birmingham jussiphil@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 article an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness jussi suikkanen abstract: according to the popular whole life satisfaction theories of happiness, an agent is happy when she judges that her life fulfils her ideal life-plan. fred feldman has recently argued that such views cannot accommodate the happiness of spontaneous or preoccupied agents who do not consider how well their lives are going. in this paper, i formulate a new whole life satisfaction theory that is not vulnerable to this objection. my proposal is inspired by michael smith’s advice-model of desirability. according to it, an agent is happy when a more informed and rational hypothetical version of her would judge that the agent’s actual life matches the best life-plan for her. i will argue that my new whole life satisfaction theory is a flexible model that can avoid many of the problems besetting previous theories of happiness. keywords: happiness, whole life satisfaction, conditional fallacy, advice-model 1. introduction the ordinary concept of ‘happiness’ is ambiguous.1 it is often merely used to describe how a person feels, i.e., a particular phenomenological state of the person. this is the state we are in when we feel contentment, satisfaction, euphoria, and the like. most of us have had direct experiences of feeling happy in this way. for instance, we usually feel happy when we unexpectedly see an old friend whom we haven’t seen for a while. when the term ‘happiness’ is used in this first sense, nothing more is required to be happy than to feel happy or to be in a happy mood. hereafter, i will use the sub-indexed term ‘happinessp’ to refer to this kind of happiness. this is because sometimes it is also called ‘psychological’ (or ‘local’) happiness. the second sense of ‘happiness’ is often said to be ‘deeper’ than the first one.2 it encompasses much more than agents’ mere momentary phenomenological states. consider a 1 this ambiguity is recognised and elucidated in different ways by feldman (2008, sec. 1; 2010, sec. 1.2), foot (2001, ch. 6), haybron (2000, sec. 2.1; 2003, sec. 1; 2008, pp. 5–6, and sec. 2.2), kraut (1979, p. 168), nettle (2005, pp. 17–20), sizer (2010, pp. 133–134), tatarkiewicz (1966, p. 1; 1976, pp. 1–6), telfer (1980, pp. 1–2),thomas (1968), and von wright (1963, p. 87). feldman (2010, pp. 131–136) argues against the consensus by claiming that we should understand ‘happiness’ as a very vague term. 2 for methodological reasons, i cannot offer a clear-cut definition of the term ‘happiness’ when it is used in this second sense. this is because i am not stipulating a new technical meaning for the term. rather, the considerations in this section suggest that ‘happy’ is used in ordinary language to make judgments that are neither about pleasure nor about wellbeing. for reasons familiar from wittgenstein (1958, §65–§71) and williamson (2007, ch. 3), i doubt whether this usage could be captured with any obvious and simple definition of the term. instead, we can investigate what the property of being happy could be such that it would make the core uses of the term in the ordinary language true. the most popular suggestions of this property are given in section 2, and my own theory will be explained in section 5. the bi-conditionals in these sections could also be understood as hermeneutic, nonobvious, and non-stipulative definitions of the term ‘happy’ when it is used in this second sense. an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 150 case in which a person uses drugs in order to feel euphoric. in such cases, we might hesitate to say that this person becomes genuinely happy even if she feels happy as a result (sizer, 2010, p. 137, and p. 139). happiness in this second sense seems to thus require more than merely experiencing (perhaps fleeting) sensations of happinessp. we typically use the term ‘happiness’ in this second way when we assess a longer period of an agent’s life. for instance, when we talk about a person having been happy in the 1990s, we do not mean just that the person had many euphoric experiences during that decade.3 in fact, some people may feel miserable for much of the happy periods of their lives (feldman, 2002, sec. 4). for instance, consider the life of an olympic athlete who undergoes a gruelling fouryear training regime in order to prepare for the next games. whatever the outcome of the olympics is for the athlete, it is conceivable that she later thinks of this period in her life as a happy one. after all, she was able to focus wholeheartedly on what she wanted. hereafter, i will use the term ‘happinessg’ to refer to happiness used in this second sense. this is because sometimes this sense of happiness is called ‘global happiness’. in addition, some philosophers use the term ‘happiness’ in a third sense (feldman, 2008, p. 219). when they talk about the happiness of an agent, all they mean is that the agent is living a good life. furthermore, they understand a life to be a good life when it has a high level of wellbeing (or a lot of ‘prudential value’). i will use the sub-indexed expression ‘happinessw’ for this third use of the term ‘happiness’. it is also sometimes called ‘eudaimonic happiness’ or ‘prudential happiness’.4 i will assume hereafter that this third sense of ‘happiness’ is distinct from the other two senses of the term. it seems conceivable that a person’s life can be happy in the other two senses even if her life lacks the normal constituents of wellbeing.5 for instance, it is often thought that, the further we go back in history, the lower the level of general wellbeing was. despite this, it is reasonable to think that people were not necessarily less happyp, or even less happyg. so, to summarise, it seems like being happyg requires more than just feeling happy (i.e., being happyp). yet, it does not seem to necessarily require as much as living a life with a high level of wellbeing (i.e., being happyw). my main goal is then to consider what is required for happinessg. what could the middle ground between happinessp and happinessw be? what constitutes being happy in that sense? i will begin by introducing, in section 2, different versions of the most popular theory of happinessg – the whole life satisfaction theory.6 section 3 will then explain fred feldman’s recent counter-examples to all the different versions of that theory (feldman, 2008; feldman, 2010, ch. 5). section 3 also argues that these cases are based on the so-called conditional fallacy, which is a typical flaw in philosophical theories based on subjunctive conditionals. section 4 will then look at how the conditional fallacy has been solved by michael smith in the context of theories of desirability, which have often been based on subjunctive conditionals (smith, 1995, sec.1). by using smith’s ‘advice-model’, i will then construct, in section 5, a whole life satisfaction theory with a new and improved structure. i will argue that the resulting theories 3 philippa foot (2001, p. 85) claims that this is what wittgenstein meant on his death-bed, when he said that he had had a wonderful life. 4 foot (2001, ch. 6), murphy (2008), and taylor (2002) are some of the philosophers who use ‘happiness’ in this sense. 5 however, crisp (2006, ch. 4) argues that happinessw consists of instances of happinessp. 6 in different forms, these views has been defended, for example, by benditt (1974), brandt (1967), kekes (1982), kraut (1979), montague (1966), nozick (1989), sumner (1996, pp. 145–146), tatarkiewicz (1966), telfer (1980, pp. 8–9), thomas (1968), and von wright (1963, pp. 98–99). whole life satisfaction models are also often used in empirical research (see, for instance, veenhoven (1984)). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 151 of happiness with the ‘advice-structure’ will be able to avoid feldman’s objections to the whole life satisfaction theories. finally, section 6 will discuss some of the advantages of the resulting view and respond to some of the objections to it. 2. whole life satisfaction theories of happiness so, why is being happy during a longer period of time neither a matter of just feeling happy nor of merely living a life with a high level of objective wellbeing? according to the most popular theory of happinessg, this is because at the heart of happiness lies the agent’s own conception of how her life is going. the idea is that everyone has a set of goals. even if some of these goals change at different stages of our life, they still tend to be fairly stable. in the past and the present, we have either achieved some of our goals, or we would have wanted to have done so.7 and, the rest of our goals we will want to achieve in the future. the plans that lead to satisfying as many of these goals as possible during the different stages of our lives can be said to constitute our ‘ideal lifeplans’. we also typically have some conception of what has happened to us in our lives, and we have some beliefs about what will happen to us in the future. in this situation, we can make judgments about whether our lives match up with our ideal life-plan. these judgments form the essence of whole life satisfaction theories. even though it is possible to formulate many different versions of the whole life satisfaction theory from the previous core idea, i will focus here on the three main alternatives. they all develop, in slightly different ways, the platitudinous idea that a person is happy when she is satisfied with her life. 2.1 cognitive whole life satisfaction theories8 a simple version of a cognitive whole life satisfaction (cwls) theory might claim that a person, s, is happyg to degree n at time t if and only if:9 1) there is a certain life that s has lived up to t, 2) at t, s has an ideal life-plan for her life, 3) at t, s has a moderately detailed conception of how her life has transpired so far, and 4) at t, s judges that her actual life so far matches her ideal life-plan to degree n. according to this proposal, being happyg consists of being in a cognitive state that represents how well an agent’s actual life matches up to her life-plan. as a result, according to cwls, she cannot be happy without actually believing that her life satisfies her ideal life-plan. accounts like cwls may seem at least somewhat plausible. i have a conception of what an ideal life for me would be like. on the basis of this conception, i am able to formulate a life-plan which might consist of having a safe childhood, getting a good education, having friends and a family, having a meaningful career, and so on. if i also believe that so far my life, by and large, fits this plan, then it seems reasonable to believe that i am happy. 7 it is worth pointing out that many of these goals are to engage in a variety of activities rather than to bring about some end-state. because of this, the resulting life-plans might be more a matter of living in certain ways rather than accomplishing certain feats. 8 versions of this view have been defended by kekes (1982), thomas (1968, pp. 104–108), and von wright (1963, pp. 98–99). 9 the formulations of all of the theories in this article are based on feldman (2008; 2010, ch. 5). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 cwls also has another advantage (feldman, 2008, sec. 4; feldman, 2010, sec. 5.4). we can create many different versions of this simple view. each one of them will classify agents as happy in slightly different ways. we can change how complete the agent’s life-plan must be, how accurate a conception she must have about her actual life, whether all aspects of her life must fit the plan or only the most important ones, whether the judgment in clause 4 must be about her whole life or a part of it, and so on. by changing these aspects of the theory, we can seek a reflective equilibrium between cwls and our intuitive judgments about which agents are happy. 2.2 affective whole life satisfaction theories according to some philosophers, cwls cannot be the true theory of happiness, because it would make happiness too intellectual, i.e. merely a matter of having certain beliefs.10 they argue that whether an agent feels pleased by how she lives is more important than any beliefs could ever be. hence, according to the views based on this idea, happiness is a specific kind of positive affective state based on an agent’s conception of her life. this causal origin of the relevant feeling of contentment is then taken to distinguish happiness g from the mere feelings of happinessp. it is worth emphasising that, according to these views, the relevant affective state must at least result from the agent’s implicit and vague assessment of how well her life is going overall. however, on these views, the prior cognitive judgments that must prompt her to have the relevant positive attitudes are not themselves constituents of her happinessg. i will call views of this kind affective whole life satisfaction (awls) theories.11 one formulation of such a view might claim that a person, s, is happyg to degree n at time t if and only if: 1) there is a certain life that s has lived up until t, and 2) at t, s takes pleasure of degree n in the fact that she has lived that life so far. 2.3 hybrid whole life satisfaction theories finally, some hold hybrid views, according to which happinessg requires both a cognitive judgment of how an agent’s life matches up to her life-plan and a positive affective state based on that judgment.12 a hybrid whole life satisfaction (hwls) view might claim that a person, s, is happyg to degree n= f(p, q) at time t if and only if: 1) there is a certain life that s has lived up to t, 2) at t, s has an ideal life-plan for her life, 3) at t, s has a moderately detailed conception of how her life has transpired so far, 4) at t, s judges that her actual life matches her ideal life-plan to degree p, and 5) at t, s takes pleasure of degree q in her judgment that her life measures up to her life-plan to the degree p. thus, according to hwls, the degree of an agent’s happinessg (expressed by ‘n’) is a function of two variables (‘f(p, q)’): the degree to which she believes that her life matches her life-plan (‘p’), and the strength of the positive attitude that results from that belief (‘q’). and, again, we could further specify different versions of hwls by changing its variables in various ways. 10 this objection is explained by haybron (2007, sec. 2; 2008, pp. 14–16). 11 different versions of this view have been defended by tatarkiewicz (1966), telfer (1980, pp. 8–9), and perhaps montague (1966, p. 96). see also haybron (2008, p. 82). 12 views of this type have been defended by, for instance, brandt (1967, pp. 413–414), and sumner (1996, p. 145). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 admittedly, cwls, awls, and hwls are simplified theories of happiness. in order to be plausible, they would have to be further developed in many ways. however, fred feldman has recently argued that all theories using this type of structure inevitably face insurmountable problems. in the next section, i will explain what these problems are and how they seriously challenge the plausibility of cwls. i will return to awls and hwls at the end of section 5. 3. feldman’s dilemma there is both an ‘actualist’ and a ‘hypotheticalist’ version of cwls. feldman has argued that both of those theories lead to implausible conclusions about who is happy (feldman, 2008, p. 230; feldman, 2010, sec. 5.5). i formulated cwls in the actualist way above. according to that formulation, being happy g requires that an agent has actually (a) formed a life-plan and a conception of how her life has transpired so far, and (b) compared the two. feldman has argued that these requirements make achieving happiness in the second sense too demanding (2008, pp. 230–232; 2010, pp. 82–84).13 it seems intuitive that an agent can be happy without having formed a life-plan or a detailed conception of what has happened in her life, let alone without having made any comparisons between the two. it is reasonable to claim that anyone who is unreflective in this way could be just as happy as someone who has extensively compared her life-plan with her actual life (and found that they accord).14 there is also a risk that the actualist cwls makes certain central varieties of happiness g unattainable for actual human beings (feldman, 2004, pp. 231–232; 2010, p. 82). consider a case in which the actualist cwls is used to assess how happyg someone’s life is overall from her birth to her death. in this case, the previous theory would require that, in order for the agent to be happyg, she would have to be capable of forming a sufficiently comprehensive awareness of her whole life from its very first day to its end. feldman seems to be right when he claims that actual human beings are probably not able to form such awareness (ibid.). hence, one consequence of the actualist cwls seems to be that no actual human being could live a happy life. this certainly seems to be a problematic consequence of the theory. we could try to avoid these problems by creating a hypotheticalist whole life satisfaction (hywls) theory (feldman, 2008, p. 234; feldman, 2010, p. 86). such a view might claim that a person, s, is happyg to degree n at time t if and only if: 1) there is a certain life that s has lived up to t, and 2) if, at t, s were to form an ideal life-plan for her life, and 3) if, at t, s were to form a moderately detailed conception of how her life has transpired so far, then, 4) at t, s would judge that her actual life matches her ideal life-plan to degree n. on this view, being happyg does not require that an agent has actually formed a life-plan and a conception of her actual life and made a judgment of how the two match up. rather, all it takes 13 see haybron (2008, pp. 85–86) for more on this ‘problem of attitudinal scarcity’. haybron (2007; 2008, ch. 5) also offers many other objections to actualist versions of whole life satisfaction views. 14 note that unreflective persons can experience a lot of pleasure, and their lives can score highly on objective measures of well-being. this means that these individuals can be both happyp and happyw. this will pose no theoretical problems for any plausible theories of happinessp and happinessw because self-reflection is presumably not a central constituent of either pleasure or objective well-being. thus, the happiness of self-reflective agents is only a problem for the whole life satisfaction theories of happiness g that require certain actual judgments for an agent to be happy. one alternative for a defender of the whole life satisfaction theory of happiness would be to bite the bullet here and to claim that such agents are not happyg even if they can be happyp and happyw. an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 for someone to be happyg according to hywls is that a certain subjunctive conditional is true of her. it requires only that, if she were to form a life-plan and a conception of her actual life, she would judge that the two match up. this allows unreflective people to be happy because the subjunctive conditional can be true even if its antecedent is false. even if a person never self-reflected, it could be true that, if she were to do so, she would judge that her life fits her ideal life-plan. fred feldman (2008, pp. 234–237; 2010, pp. 87–89), however, has argued that hywls faces serious problems of its own, and i am inclined to agree with him about this. in order to illustrate these problems, feldman introduces two characters to argue for this conclusion: an unreflective timmy and a contemplative philosopher. timmy is consistently active and cheerful. this is because he is always engaged in activities that he enjoys. what is special about timmy is that he never thinks about his own life at all. according to feldman, it could be true of timmy in this situation that, if he began to consider his ideal life-plans and his actual life, he would come to judge his whole life to be worthless (feldman, 2004, p. 235). this could be in part because he might make false judgments about his situation, in part because he might come to hold a demanding conception of an ideal life and find that his life falls short of it, and in part because he might find the whole business of selfreflection itself very depressing. as a result, according to hywls, timmy cannot be happy. however, this seems to conflict with our basic intuitions about timmy’s happiness. most of us would want to claim that timmy does seem to be happy just as he is – he is cheerful and likes the activities he is engaged in. this example shows that the subjunctive conditional, which hywls uses to measure happiness, does not seem to track our intuitions about which agents are happy. in feldman’s second example, the philosopher is deeply engrossed in philosophical deliberation. because of this, she does not think about her own life unless someone interrupts her. if someone did this, the philosopher would stop thinking about philosophy and start thinking about her own life. this would be annoying for the philosopher. if the philosopher had then formed a life-plan and a conception of her life in these counterfactual circumstances in which she is very annoyed, she would have concluded that her life is not going according to her plan. instead of philosophising, she would now spend time thinking about her own life. as a result, in light of the subjunctive conditional of hywls, the philosopher is not actually happy. yet, intuitively, there is no reason why she could not be happy now (in the actual life in which she thinks about philosophy and not about her life). after all, it is that life we are evaluating and not the counterfactual situation, in which her philosophical contemplation has been interrupted.15 these cases suggest that the hypothetical hywls has unintuitive consequences. we should notice, however, that these cases are so effective because they reveal the so-called conditional 15 the previous two examples are directly from feldman (2008, pp. 234–237; 2010, pp. 87–89). i have not changed them, because i hope that they enable the reader to assess how well my own whole life satisfaction theory can respond to feldman’s objections as they were presented. however, it is possible to imagine more vivid cases. consider the world’s best tennis players, formula 1 drivers, and fighter pilots. such activities require extreme focus. it might well be that, if these individuals reflected on their lives, they would lose focus and begin to lose matches, crash cars, and be shot down. if these individuals were to form judgments about their lives, their lives would change for the worse. as a result, in these counter-factual, self-reflective circumstances, they would judge their lives not to fulfil their plans. according to hywls, the truth of this counter-factual would mean that the tennis players, formula 1 drivers, and fighter pilots are not happy even when they are pursuing their careers successfully (because they do not self-reflect). this seems implausible to me. an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 fallacy committed by hywls. this fallacy is a well-known problem for philosophical accounts based on subjunctive conditionals.16 the problem with such accounts is that, when we assess a subjunctive conditional, realising the counterfactual antecedent of the conditional analysans can change the assessed state of affairs. if an agent were to form a life-plan, her life would be different from the one that we are trying to evaluate. the crux of the fallacy is that the changes made in the assessed states of affairs can impinge on the truth-value of our assessments. we cannot rule out that the changed life would be less happy, or happier, than the one we were originally assessing. in the previous cases, we wanted to assess the happiness of spontaneous and philosophising lives, but our account forced us to assess self-reflective lives instead. and, there is no guarantee that the latter lives are as happy as the former. yet, there are ways in which we can try to reformulate a theory based on a subjunctive conditional so as to avoid the conditional fallacy. in the next section, i will explain one such attempt from the debates about desirability. before that, it is worthwhile to briefly consider how happyp and happyw timmy and the philosopher are, and what kind of theoretical implications this might have. intuitively, timmy is happyp because of all the pleasure he experiences during his spontaneous activities. the philosopher is a more difficult case with respect to happiness p. it may be that she does not experience any specific sensation of bliss whilst philosophising. however, she might still be in a state of consciousness she desires to be in. the former consideration entails that internalist theories of happinessp would not classify the philosopher as happyp, whereas the latter fact entails that externalist theories would classify her as happyp. we can also stipulate that both timmy and the philosopher are happyw by the lights of the standard theories of happinessw. according to success theories of happinessw, a person is happyw when her core desires are successfully satisfied. timmy’s desires change constantly because he finds different enjoyable activities appealing at different times. however, he still always succeeds in satisfying these desires. the philosopher only desires to continue her philosophical investigations, and she succeeds in doing so. for these reasons, both timmy and the philosopher are happyw according to success theories. objective list theories of happinessw claim that happinessw consists of having certain goods that are necessary preconditions for being able to pursue any reasonable conception of a good life. these goods may include wealth, health, knowledge, important relationships, autonomy, and so on. we can stipulate that both timmy and the philosopher have a sufficient amount of these goods.17 therefore, according to the objective list theories too, they both count as happyw. these considerations suggest one potential way in which the whole life satisfaction theories of happiness might deal with feldman’s objection. it could be claimed that, when we consider timmy’s and the philosopher’s happiness, our intuitions are really about either happinessp or happinessw. we have just confused these intuitions for our beliefs about how happyg these agents are. this would mean that hywls’s judgment that timmy and the philosopher are unhappyg could still be correct without conflicting with our intuitive 16 my presentation of the fallacy follows wright (1992, p. 118). see also shope (1978). 17 according to some objective list theories, happinessp and/or happinessg also belong to the constituents of happinessw. this might make it true that, depending on our views on happinessp and happinessg, timmy and the philosopher might not be completely happyw even if they are considerably happyw because they have all the other relevant goods. this makes no difference to what follows below. an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 judgments about happiness, which in this case happen to be about the other two senses of happiness. i am not convinced that this proposal could deal with the objection. it seems that we can intentionally concentrate on the ordinary sense of happiness, which is neither just the amount of pleasurable experiences nor solely the objective level of well-being. when we focus on happiness in the ordinary sense, many of us would probably want to believe that timmy and the philosopher are happy individuals in this very sense of happiness. this would entail that hywls still conflicts with our intuitions. if this were true, then we should continue to attempt to formulate a theory of happinessg that better fits our considered judgments about happiness in this sense. i formulate such a theory in the next section. 4. desirability, the conditional fallacy, and the advice-model many philosophers have tried to account for desirability in terms of subjunctive conditionals (rawls, 1971, ch. 7; brandt, 1979, ch. 1).18 they are motivated by the thought that, even if we usually desire what is intuitively desirable, sometimes we may also desire what is not desirable. even if i desire to drink the liquid from the glass in front of me, that liquid may not actually be desirable because, unbeknownst to me, it is petrol rather than gin.19 similarly, drinking gin might not be desirable even if i happen to desire to drink it, because i have a more fundamental desire to work tomorrow. a natural way to avoid such problems is to give an account of desirability in terms of what an agent would desire in a counterfactual situation in which she were fully rational. this leads to theories based on subjunctive conditionals, according to which something is desirable if and only if it is what an agent would desire if she had all the relevant information and her desires were made coherent. if i knew that there was petrol in the glass, i would not want to drink it. this is why drinking the liquid from the glass in front of me is not desirable now. likewise, if my desires were made coherent, my desire to drink gin might disappear because of my more fundamental desires. we can then generate counterexamples to the previous subjunctive account of desirability using the idea behind the conditional fallacy introduced above (smith, 1995, p. 111). imagine that you have just lost a game of squash. is it desirable that you attempt to shake hands with your opponent? let us assume that, when you lose, you become so angry that, if you do attempt to shake hands with your opponent, you will hit her. yet, if you were rational, you would not do so. you would know how much it hurts to be hit and the process of making your desires coherent would excise your desire to hit the opponent. as a result, you would remain cool, calm, and collected. according to the view of desirability based on the subjunctive conditional, it is desirable for you to shake hands with your opponent in the actual situation. however, given that you will hit your opponent in that case, it is hard to see what would be desirable about the action you are contemplating. this again is an instance of the conditional fallacy. making the antecedent of the subjunctive conditional true when we assess the whole conditional changes the circumstances that we are supposed to be assessing. as a result, we cannot bring our conclusions about the desirability of the given action in the counterfactual case to the real circumstances that we are assessing. 18 similar theories about reasons have been defended by darwall (1984, pp. 80–82), falk (1990, pp. 36–39), korsgaard (1986, p. 15), and williams (1981). 19 these examples are from williams (1981). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 157 michael smith has formulated a theory of desirability which can avoid the previous conditional fallacy (smith, 1995, sec. 1; see also railton, 1986, p. 174).20 smith makes a distinction between the evaluated state of affairs of the actual agent, and the evaluating world in which the agent’s hypothetical fully-rational self is located. we then determine whether some course of action is desirable in the actual circumstances by considering whether the rational version of the agent (living in the evaluating world) would want the actual agent to act in that way in the evaluated circumstances. so, in the previous case, a considers in the actual world whether to attempt to shake hands with her opponent. she has a counterpart, a+, in the evaluating world with an informed and coherent version of her desires. instead of asking what a+ would want herself to do, we ask what would a+ want a to do in the real world. presumably, a+ would not want a to attempt to shake hands with her opponent. she knows that a would only hit her opponent. this means that smith’s advice-model gives the right conclusion. it is not desirable for a to attempt to shake hands with her opponent because, when thinking about this from the evaluating world, the idealised version of a would not want a to do so in the evaluated circumstances. it is clear why this theory avoids the conditional fallacy. that we have two separate perspectives – the evaluated and the evaluating world – guarantees that making the antecedent of the subjunctive conditional true in the evaluating world cannot affect the evaluated real circumstances. because of this, smith’s view is immune to the conditional fallacy. the changes we make to the evaluating world cannot affect the circumstances of the real world, the world that is being evaluated. this is why the truth-value of our assessments cannot be distorted by these changes. 5. the ‘advice version’ of whole life satisfaction theories of happiness the same move can be made to save hywls from feldman’s counterexamples.21 the resulting ‘advice version’ of the hypothetical whole life satisfaction (adhywls) view could claim that a person, s, is happyg to degree n at time t if and only if: 1) there is a certain life that s has lived up to t in the evaluated circumstances, and 2) if, at t, an idealised version of s, s+, were to form an ideal life-plan for s’s life, and 3) if, at t, s+ were to form a moderately detailed conception of how s’s life in the evaluated circumstances has transpired so far, then, 4) at t, s+ would judge that s’s actual life matches s+’s ideal life-plan for s to degree n. the basic idea of this proposal is the same as the one behind smith’s theory of desirability. consider the following example. we are trying to assess how happy ann is. she lives in the evaluated (actual) circumstances. we can then imagine an idealised version of ann, ann+, looking at ann’s life from the hypothetical evaluating circumstances. ann+ shares ann’s likes and dislikes. she also knows what ann wants and values during different stages of her life. on the basis of this information, ann+ can formulate an ideal life-plan for ann. if ann’s actual life went according to this plan, she would be engaged in activities that she likes and her desires would be satisfied. 20 robert johnson (1999) has argued that smith’s proposal cannot both avoid the conditional fallacy and be an internalist view of desirability in the desired sense. that is, the resulting view will no longer have room for a direct connection between what is desirable and what we are motivated to pursue. however, johnson does not contest that smith’s view does manage to avoid the conditional fallacy. 21 feldman (2008, p. 236; 2010, p. 88) comes close to formulating something like this proposal on the basis of valerie tiberius’s unpublished work (see tiberius (2003)). i will address the objections, which he might be presenting to this view, below (section 6.5). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 158 ann+ will also be informed about what has happened in ann’s life so far. ann+ will therefore be able to make an informed judgment about the degree to which ann’s life matches up with her life-plan for ann. adhywls then claims that ann is happy in the actual world at a given time if and only if ann+ would judge that ann’s life at that point meets the standards set by the ideal life-plan which ann+ has for ann. this proposal avoids feldman’s objections to both the actualist cwls and the hypotheticalist hywls. adhywls does not require that the agent whose happiness is assessed actually form any life-plans or beliefs about how her life matches those plans. rather, adhywls is based only on a purely hypothetical judgment which an imaginary version of the given agent could make. so, the objections to the actualist cwls do not apply to this view. the objections to the hypotheticalist hywls do not apply to this view either. consider first unreflective timmy. according to adhywls, in assessing his happiness, we do not need to consider what timmy himself would make of his life. rather, we first imagine a more rational version of timmy who knows timmy’s likes and dislikes (and his desires, values, and the like). because of this knowledge, the idealised timmy (timmy+) can come to believe that the best lifeplan for timmy in the real world just is to live spontaneously. any self-reflection from his actual counterpart would merely be counterproductive. for this reason, the life-plan which timmy+ would have for timmy would not contain any such reflection. according to the ideal life-plan then, timmy should not think about his life. rather, to follow this plan, timmy should simply continue to take part in the activities he enjoys. timmy+ can therefore come to judge that timmy’s actual life meets the standards of the ideal life-plan he has for timmy. as a result, this view can provide the right intuitive conclusion according to which timmy is happyg in real life. the same can be said about the contemplative philosopher. we can imagine a hypothetical, idealised version of her. this philosopher+ knows that the actual philosopher likes being immersed in philosophising and hates thinking about her own life. as a result, the philosopher+ can formulate an ideal life-plan for the philosopher that includes much philosophising and little self-reflection. the philosopher+ can then judge that the actual philosopher’s life really does satisfy the ideal life-plan that she has for the actual version of herself. this means that adhywls gives the right intuitive conclusion about the philosopher’s happiness. thus, unlike the previous whole life satisfaction views, adhywls is immune to feldman’s counterexamples. those counterexamples were based on the conditional fallacy, which many accounts based on subjunctive conditionals commit. the problem with these views is that making the antecedent of the relevant subjunctive conditionals true interferes with the circumstances we are trying to assess. yet, if we make smith’s distinction between the evaluated and the evaluating perspectives, this interference cannot happen. the antecedent of the counterfactual is made true only in the hypothetical (evaluating) circumstances from which the unchanged actual circumstances are then evaluated. this is why assessing the subjunctive conditionals of adhywls does not distort the truth-value of the assessed happiness claims. at this point, it is worth noting that awls and hwls – the affective and hybrid versions of the whole life satisfaction theories – are also vulnerable to feldman’s counterexamples. according to awls, timmy cannot be happy because he cannot be feeling satisfaction on the basis of having a sense of how well his life is going. as an unreflective person, timmy simply has no conception of this. likewise, timmy cannot be happy according to hwls, because that would require that he had formulated a life-plan, come to a conception of his life, made a judgment of an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 159 how the two match up, and felt satisfaction as a result. he has, of course, done none of these things. furthermore, the hypotheticalist versions of awls and hwls would also commit the conditional fallacy. in the counterfactual situations which would be specified by those views, timmy would not feel satisfaction about his new life in which he is made to self-reflect. as a result, even the actual timmy would not count as happy. finally, it’s not clear whether the defenders of these views could avoid these problems by adopting the advice-model introduced above. both of these views are motivated by the thought that one constituent of happinessg must be certain positive attitudes: feelings of satisfaction and the like. if we tried to use the advice-model to revise awls or hwls, the result would be that one requirement for being happyg is that an idealised version of a person experienced satisfaction from comparing her actual life to her ideal life-plan. however, it would be strange if such a hypothetical feeling of satisfaction were required for actual happiness. so, it does not make sense to use the advice-model to develop awls or hwls in order to avoid feldman’s counter-examples. rather, i will try to explain in the next section how adhywls itself can be used to explain why feeling satisfied is often an important part of happinessg (section 6.2). 6. some advantages of adhywls and responses to objections in this concluding section, i will first sketch some advantages of adhywls as a theory of happinessg. i acknowledge that these advantages do not amount to a full argument for this view.22 i will then conclude by responding to some potential objections to adhywls. 6.1 flexibility the first advantage of adhywls is that it offers a flexible structure for many different theories of happinessg. the first form of flexibility is temporal. adhywls is an account of what is required for being happy during a certain period of time. let us assume that this period, t, is shorter than the agent’s whole life but longer than a mere fleeting moment. in this situation, one version of adhywls would claim that a is happyg during t if and only if a+ would judge that a’s life during t matches up with the corresponding period of a+’s ideal life-plan for a. other versions might claim that, for a to be happyg during t, it is required that a’s life matches up with a+’s life-plan for her not only during t but also during some period before t (and maybe even for some time after t too).23 a second source of flexibility comes from the fact that adhywls can accommodate different kinds of idealisation of agents, and different ways in which they could construct the relevant life-plans. according to the simplest option, a+ would merely be aware of the complete sets of a’s wants, likes, desires, intentions, goals, and values (hereafter ‘conative attitudes’) during different periods of her life.24 a+ would then devise a plan that would maximise the number of these attitudes satisfied throughout a’s life. 22 so, i make no claims that this proposal is, for instance, definitely superior to haybron’s emotional state conception of happiness, defended in haybron (2008). 23 if t is agent’s whole life, then presumably a+ must compare a’s whole life to the ideal life-plan. feldman (2010, pp. 91–97) explores the advantages and difficulties of the different temporal formulations of the whole life satisfaction views. haybron (2001, p. 510) emphasises the forward looking aspect of happiness. 24 kraut (1979, pp. 178–179) and haybron (2007, sec. 3.1) emphasise that it is important that the agent’s moral and evaluative beliefs are also included in the input for the ideal life-plans. one advantage of the advice-model is that the idealised version of the agent can, by balancing them, find a coherent combination of the ethical perspectives that the an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 160 alternatively, a+ could devise a life-plan that would lead only to the satisfaction of a’s strongest, most deeply held and integrated conative attitudes. these two views would disagree about whether satisfying merely trivial desires could make an agent happyg. it is also possible to further idealise the ideal life-plans devised by the advisors. for instance, following smith, one could stipulate a+ to have an informed and coherent version of a’s set of conative attitudes. we could then consider what kind of a life-plan a+ would form for a on the basis of that idealised set. the resulting theory would claim that a happyg life needs to be a desirable life in smith’s sense. in this case, an agent could not become happierg by spending nights at the pub, if we assume that her ideal self would not plan such nights for her. the idealised self would know how bad the agent’s hangovers are, and how her desire to go to the pub conflicts with her more fundamental desires to work on the following days.25 we could even stipulate that the advisor is informed about all the objective evaluative facts regarding what constitutes a good life. she would then form the ideal-plan for the agent, not only on the basis of the agent’s conative attitudes, but also on the basis of which lives would be objectively good for the agent. according to this version of adhywls, an agent could not live a happyg life unless her life had a high level of objective well-being. it would not be possible to live a happy life, according to this view, that consisted of mainly counting blades of grass.26 finally, some views of happinessg claim that happy lives must have a certain narrative ‘shape’ (annas, 2004, pp. 47–48).27 according to these views, all happy lives must develop in overlapping and interrelated stages. such lives must include overarching projects and obstacles to achieving them, development of skills, helpers and enemies, instances of overcoming difficulties and the like. the corresponding version of adhywls would insist that the lifeplans formulated by the agents’ ideal selves also need to have a certain story-like structure. alternative accounts accept that people who live episodic lives with no narrative structure can be just as happyg as those who lead narratively-connected lives (feldman 2004, ch. 6; feldman, 2010, pp. 175–177; strawson, 2008, sec. 10). according to their version of adhywls, the ideal life-plans for some people could consist of various unconnected episodes lived in completely different ways. these views would allow people who do not experience their lives as narratives to be just as happy as anyone else. there thus seem to be many possible versions of adhywls. this is an advantage. the next stage in developing adhywls would be to compare which of the possible versions of the view mentioned above best fits our intuitions about who is happy.28 in this way, we could reach actual agent can take towards her life. this solves many of the problems related to the arbitrariness of actual life satisfaction assessments (see haybron, 2008, ch. 5, sec. 5). 25 this would admittedly make happinessg more objective, and less dependent on the agent’s own attitudes. 26 this would weaken the personal authority that individuals are often thought to have over the question of their happiness, i.e., this would make happiness less transparent for individuals (haybron, 2008, p. 13; but see feldman (2010, ch. 11) for an objection). someone might also add that a happyg life must be a morally virtuous life. in this case, an ideal life-plan for anyone would necessarily plot a virtuous life. on this view, evil people could not be happy (foot, 2001, p. 92). such views would be influenced by aristotle’s discussions of ‘eudaimonia’ (kraut, 1979, pp. 174–176, and sec. 4). kraut (1979) argues convincingly that the ideal-life plans relevant for happiness should not include objective facts about the virtuous life. 27 antti kauppinen (forthcoming) argues that a narrative shape is a requirement for having a ‘meaningful’ life. 28 there is also another sense in which the view is theoretically neutral. adhywls is formulated as a bi-conditional according to which the property of being happyg and the property of living a life that matches up to one’s ideal lifeplan are necessarily co-instantiated. this bi-conditional itself is neutral about whether the theory should be understood as a conceptual analysis of ‘happiness’, as a theory of the constitution of the property of happiness g, as a theory of what makes one happy, as a theory of what is merely a reliable indicator of happiness, and so on. an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 161 a reflective equilibrium between our considered judgments about the happiness of different agents and our philosophical theory of happinessg. 6.2 happinessg, happinessp, and happinessw could adhywls provide a plausible account of the relations between the different forms of happiness? above, i claimed that feeling happy (i.e., happinessp) does not always seem to be necessary or sufficient for actually being happyg. yet, in considering the motivation for awls and hwls above, i admitted that feeling happy does often seem to make people happierg. can adhywls accommodate both of these claims? first, it is easy to see why feeling happy is not always necessary for being happy g according to adhywls. an ascetic person may not desire, like, or value feeling happy, euphoric, satisfied, and so on. if an ideal version of this person formulated a life-plan for her, this plan would not include many hedonic experiences. as a result, such a person would not be happy g on the basis of feeling happy (haybron, 2008, p. 84). of course, most ordinary people do desire, like, and value hedonic experiences. so, the ideal life-plans that their advisors would create for them would include having these experiences often. therefore, these individuals would be happierg the more they experienced feelings of happiness, pleasure, satisfaction, and the like. this is why, according to adhywls, feeling happy can generally make most people happyg, at least to some degree. it is worth emphasising that people can also desire experiences of happiness with a specific causal origin. i may desire the feeling of happiness that i get from smelling flowers but not that which is induced by drugs. this is why, according to adhywls, i would not be made happierg by taking drugs that made me feel euphoric. i also claimed earlier that it is possible to be happyg without living a life with a high level of wellbeing (see also haybron, 2003, sec. 4.3). this will be true only if we assume an objectivist view of wellbeing.29 this view claims that there are universal constituents of wellbeing that can be listed.30 they might include, for instance, wealth, knowledge, health, pleasure, autonomy, friendship, parenting, food, shelter, meaningful work, virtue, perfection of human nature, and so on. in this situation, some individuals might care little about the items on the previous list. they might, for instance, prefer making art, collecting stamps, or philosophising to having a sufficient amount of all the listed items. as a result, the ideal life-plans that their advisors would create for them might not include many of the universal constituents of wellbeing. these individuals could be happyg even if their lives were lacking in wellbeing (haybron, 2008, p. 81). of course, the vast majority probably would prefer to have most of the constituents of objective wellbeing present in their lives (foot, 2001, p. 88). these individuals would be happy g according to adhywls only if their lives had a high level of objective wellbeing.31 this is why the wellbeing of these individuals is important for their happinessg, and why their happinessg is important for their wellbeing (haybron, 2008, p. 53). 29 this will also depend on the version of adhywls in question. as noted above, according to some versions of the view, ideal life-plans take into account objective evaluative facts about good lives. this would make it trivially true that a happy life must contain a high level of wellbeing. 30 parfit (1984, pp. 493–502) famously distinguishes such theories from hedonistic and desire-satisfaction views of wellbeing. 31 adhywls would thus explain why happinessg has prudential value for most people, i.e., why happiness in this sense is important for most of us (haybron, 2003, sec. 4.3). an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 162 finally, some views of wellbeing claim that an agent’s wellbeing consists of the satisfaction of her desires. according to these views, living a life with a high level of wellbeing might not require more than happinessg as described by adhywls.32 6.3 the reason-giving and explanatory roles of happinessg daniel haybron has recently argued that our everyday concept of happiness serves several functions in ordinary discourse (haybron, 2003, sec. 3.5; haybron, 2008, ch. 3, sec. 4). because of this, any plausible theory of happiness should be able to explain why the concept of happiness can serve these practical roles. can adhywls do so? well, why do we talk about happiness? first, we often appeal to considerations about happiness in making important decisions. we consider the fact that a certain career will make us happy to be a reason to pursue that career. second, we often utilise happiness in assessing how well someone’s life is going. in doing so, we assume that highly successful people are happy (other things being equal), and that people who are unhappy have failed to achieve their central goals. third, we use happiness to predict the behaviour of others. for example, if someone is unhappy, we know that they are unlikely to be good company at a dinner party. finally, we refer to happiness in explaining the actions of others. for instance, a person’s unhappiness can be used to explain why she has made major changes in her life. could happinessg be used for these purposes in ordinary discourse if adhywls were the correct account of this form of happiness? first, if it were, we would have in most cases reasons to pursue our happinessg. after all, our happiness would then be a matter of our life matching a life-plan that a more knowledgeable version of ourselves had created for us on the basis of our desires, likes, goals, values, and the like. being happy would therefore imply that our most important ends were achieved. hence, if we have reasons to achieve our goals, then, according to adhywls, we also have reasons to pursue happinessg. equally clearly, happinessg as understood by adhywls could be used to measure how well someone is doing in their lives. happiness would then simply consist of an agent’s actual life measuring up to a life-plan that is ideal for her. this understanding of happinessg could also be used for prediction and explanation. we can assume that other people share many of our ends such as enjoyment, human interaction, meaningful work, and so on. if we know that they are unhappyg, we also know that their lives do not match up to their ideal life-plans (which involve the satisfaction of these shared goals). this tells us many useful things about the lives and psychological states of these agents. this further information could be used to explain, for instance, why unhappy agents seek to change their lives. we could also use it to predict the behaviour of such agents. 6.4 happinessg and the experience machine laura sizer has argued that life satisfaction theories lead to implausible consequences in nozick’s experience machine case (sizer, 2010, p. 140; nozick, 1974, pp. 42–45). imagine a virtual reality machine that would give you experiences such that you could not distinguish them from real experiences. because of these experiences, it would seem to you that your life went according to your ideal life-plan. it would be as if things went well with your friends, that 32 haybron (2007) argues that there need not even be a match between whole life satisfaction and subjective notions of wellbeing. this is because whole life satisfaction views take into account satisfaction of a wider range of conative attitudes than the subjectivist views of wellbeing. an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 163 you had a successful career, and so on. yet, none of this would actually be happening. you would furthermore forget that you were in the machine. sizer claims that, because life satisfaction views measure happiness in terms of whether an agent judges her life to measure up to her life-plan, these views would entail that agents would be just as happyg in the experience machine. after all, the agent would make the very same judgments both in the experience machine and in real life. however, many people think that being happyg cannot be merely a matter of an agent believing that her life matches up to her life-plan. rather, according to them, the agent’s life must actually match up to her life-plan as well. fortunately adhywls can also avoid this problem. the agent’s idealised version, a+, would know whether or not the actual agent, a, is in the experience machine. this would be a relevant factor in a+’s assessment of whether a’s life matches up to a+’s ideal life-plan for her. if the plan which a+ forms for a on the basis of a’s goals includes real achievements and relationships, then a+ would not think that a’s life in the experience machine matches up to her life-plan. this entails that, according to adhywls, a would not be happyg in the experience machine. yet, someone else might value the relevant experiences themselves more than anything more genuine. such a person’s life-plan might be satisfied in the experience machine. adhywls would classify this kind of agent as happyg. however, as explained above, it wouldn’t classify everyone in the experience machine as happyg. so, adhywls is not vulnerable to sizer’s objection. 6.5 feldman’s final objections in this last sub-section, i want to address three remaining objections that feldman presents to all forms of whole life satisfaction theories. the first problem, the so-called instability (or ‘lability’) problem, is that people’s actual judgments about how their lives match up to their life-plans change more frequently than their state of happiness could ever change (feldman, 2008, sec. 3; feldman 2010, sec. 5.3; see also haybron, 2007, sec. 3.3; haybron, 2008, pp. 86–91). for instance, it has been demonstrated that trivial changes to the environment in which an agent makes life-satisfaction judgments affect those judgments (nettle, 2005, pp. 34–36). if a subject finds a ‘lost’ dollar in the experimental setting, she is likely to indicate greater satisfaction with her life than she would have done otherwise. because of this, our actual judgments about life-satisfaction cannot be reliable indicators of happinessg. adhywls does not suffer from such problems. it relies on hypothetical judgments of an idealised version of the agent. because these hypothetical judgments are based on being accurately informed about the agent’s real life and her stable conative attitudes, these judgments would not change from one moment to another. in fact, we do not need to think that they are made from any real temporal perspective at all. likewise, these judgments could not be affected by trivial changes in the agent’s actual circumstances. so, adhywls is able to avoid these problems with how fickle people’s actual judgments are. at the end of his article, feldman presents two further counter-examples to whole life satisfaction theories (feldman, 2008, pp. 236–237; feldman, 2010, p. 87, fn. 36, and pp. 88–89). the first of these concerns an agent who is badly confused about the actual circumstances of her life. for instance, we can consider jim carrey’s character truman from the film the truman show. unbeknownst to him, truman is in fact living in the centre of a constructed reality an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 164 television show. thus, although he does not know it, truman’s relationships and projects are not real because all of the other participants in them are merely acting. despite this, many people would probably judge that truman is living a happy life within the show. however, were truman to make an informed judgment about his life, he might come to judge it to be less than satisfactory. so, feldman claims that even the hypothetical versions of the whole life satisfaction theory could not accommodate the happiness of uninformed people like truman. adhywls can deal with this case in the same way as it deals with the previous cases. in some cases, the idealised version of the agent can come to judge that most of the agent’s fundamental goals (including the one of having many pleasurable experiences) will be achieved only if the agent does not have an accurate idea of her circumstances.33 as a result, the ideal life-plan for this person would not require her to be informed. this would mean that this person’s life of ignorance would match up to her ideal life-plan, and thus her ignorance would be one constituent of her happinessg. the same can be said about feldman’s second case. in it, tammy is miserable because she has an inaccurate picture of how well her life is actually going. if tammy were to become more informed about her life, she might judge that her life actually matches up quite well with her life-plan. feldman claims that intuitively tammy is unhappy even if the hypothetical versions of the whole life satisfaction views would lead to the opposite conclusion.34 this case might show that our intuitions about happiness are in part confused because of the different senses of ‘happiness’ (see footnote 14, and the end of section 3 above). perhaps we do not want to say that tammy is happy because we are thinking of phenomenological happinessp here instead of the more global happinessg. in the latter sense of the term, it might not be so implausible to say that tammy is at least not completely unhappy because, unbeknownst to her, ‘she is not a sinner’, ‘she is well liked by others’, and her life ‘matches up with her important ideals’ (feldman, 2008, p. 237). of course, it might also be fair to say that she would probably be much happierg if she knew all of this because she would then be able to enjoy these achievements. however, adhywls can accommodate this thought too. tammy’s goal might be to live an informed life and to experience enjoyment and satisfaction. if this were true, then tammy+ would not judge that tammy’s life completely matches up to the ideal life-plan that she has for her. this would mean that adhywls would come to the same conclusion as feldman about this case: that tammy is not happy. as a result of this, i conclude that adhywls is able to deal with all of feldman’s objections. it is therefore an improved version of the most popular view of happiness and so deserves further investigation. 33 these cases might be rare. it could be claimed that there is an even more ideal life-plan for agents like truman that includes becoming more informed, starting a new life on the basis of this new information, and thus becoming ‘genuinely happy’. this objection relies on the intuition that truman is not initially genuinely happy (contrary to what feldman’s example states). this thought would not be a problem for my view. we would simply need to add one requirement for ideal life-plans: that they must be informed. however, if we do believe that truman can be genuinely happy, then the above view just explains how my view could accommodate that intuition too. of course, we could also say that, even if truman is happy, he is not living a desirable life. we could then use the informed lifeplans to account for desirability, and the non-informed plans to account for happiness. 34 here is one case which awls (and possibly even hwls) seems to give the right results. that view would claim that tammy is unhappy because of the displeasure she experiences as a result of making her (false) judgment about how her life is going. an improved whole life satisfaction theory of happiness suikkanen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 165 author jussi suikkanen university of birmingham jussiphil@gmail.com references annas, j. 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(2015). re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants: full-model approach with extended cross-contextual analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 5(4), 17-59. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i4.405 ki-hoon jun seoul national university hankuk university of foreign studies legazpi_25@hufs.ac.kr copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 article re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants: full-model approach with extended cross-contextual analysis ki-hoon jun abstract: despite the numerous studies on the determinants of subjective wellbeing (swb), there are still under-researched areas as follows: a full-model approach allowing un-confounded and robust estimations, extension of cross-contextual approaches, and an account of recent changes in hofstede value dimensions. the present study aims to overcome those limitations with analyses of 59 countries from 1981 to 2013, rendering the following main findings. individual education’s effect was methodologically affected by the reference category level of dummy variables. i found weak influence of gprge (governance, political rights, and gender equality) and individualism, which were associable with the ambivalent nature of intellectual autonomy. regarding crosscontextual effects, i found that people from underdeveloped societies keep more to current pleasure, and that demand for welfare is higher in affluent and individualistic societies. a culture of uncertainty avoidance reduced the effect of national employment, because of its demotivating aspects in the workplace. overall, variables related with hedonism, social relation, and wealth showed coherently strong effects, but social progress factors had weak relevance. keywords: life satisfaction, happiness, robust effects, cross-contextual approach, hofstede value dimensions, social quality 1. introduction after first being discussed as an alternative to national gdp as a societal goal, subjective wellbeing (swb) has surged as an important tool for the evaluation of national policies, making observable people’s subjective reaction to the implementation of different policies (dolan & white, 2007; donovan, halpern, sargeant, & britain, 2002; helliwell & barrington-leigh, 2010). as a result, “the empirical literature on happiness, life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing has virtually exploded in the last decade and a half” (bjørnskov, 2008, p. 54). for instance, in 1990 only 111 studies on swb were registered in the web of science, but that number had increased to 410 in 1998. by 2008, the number further tripled to 1240, and since 2011 over 1500 studies on swb have been published on the database annually. in those numerous studies, a variety of domains across demographic, economic, social, and cultural sectors have been addressed as potential predictors of swb. in view of these rich explorations, the scopes of swb seem to have been fully explored, leaving few to be added. nevertheless, there are still unexplored areas as follows. the first limitation of previous swb research is that, while predictors of various types have http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 been discussed, very few studies have taken a full-model approach, failing to assure the effects’1 robustness to confoundation. while a variable’s effect instability is largely due to differences in control variables across studies (bjørnskov, dreher, & fischer, 2008, p. 167), the surest way to ensure robust and accurate estimation is the full model approach, which takes account of the widest range of control variables. this is important not only for empirical estimation, but also for theoretical developments on the nature of swb. researchers in swb have differed in their views with respect to the relative importance and significance of each sector; for effective discussion among diverse stances, accurate estimation is essential. all this supports the full model approach as the only means to control the widest possible range of confounders. despite such needs, hitherto, very few studies have addressed simultaneously economic, cultural, and demographic variables, and a broad range of social domains. the second limitation of previous studies is a scarcity of cross-contextual approaches, although the importance of such approaches has been indicated already. in detail, (a) interaction involving national wealth, (2) cultural moderation on national social factors, and (3) the moderation of demographic variables by national social factors are the three main areas of crosscontextual approach that have been under-researched. the last limitation of previous studies is that they have overlooked recent changes in national cultural values as predictors of swb. while most studies on the value–swb relationship have built on hofstede’s dimension system, all of them used the original framework that was constructed mainly during the 1970s, and thus they failed to capture subsequent cultural changes, as well as the effect of new hofstede dimensions proposed after the mid-2000s. with all those respects, it is suggested that the existing literature has predicted swb in the present by a limited range of past culture. to overcome the aforementioned three limitations, the present study pursues the three aims as follows. the first aim is to take the full-model approach on the joint effects of demographic, wealth, cultural variables, and a broad range of social domains. the second aim is to extend the cross-contextual approach, with a focus on interaction involving national wealth, cultural moderation on national social factors, and demographic variables’ moderation by national social factors. the last aim is to provide an account of up-to-date national culture as predictors of swb, building on alternative data than hofstede’s original framework. in the next section, i will give an overview of previous studies on the effect of demographic variables, national wealth, social factors, and value dimensions. subsequently, the threefold limitation of previous studies is elaborated in detail, followed by the research design for this study, analyses and results, and implications. because of limited space, the summary of results will be omitted. although not conventional in empirical studies, the present paper does not introduce hypotheses; it is simply impossible to set and state a hypothesis for the main and interaction effects of each of the numerous factors. furthermore, most of the effects analyzed in this paper have been hypothesized in previous literature. where this study replicates the same results as in previous studies, it is enough to re-state the previous studies’ hypotheses and specify that they were supported. where results differ from those of earlier studies, i will state my own possible explanations. meanwhile, two sets of variables are outside the present paper’s interest. first, i will exclude surveyed attitude variables (e.g. tolerance), because the direction of causality is not clear  one might be happy because one is tolerant, but it is also possible that one is tolerant because one is 1 in the present paper, ‘effect’ will always refer to ‘effect on swb’, unless stated otherwise. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 satisfied with one’s life. second, personality traits (e.g., extraversion and neuroticism) are also not part of my concern, because they do not constitute constructs separate from national sociohistorical traits or value dimensions (allik & mccrae, 2004; hofstede & mccrae, 2004). 1.1 cognitive and emotional domains in swb. happiness, defined as emotional/affective swb, is concerned with joy, contentment, and temporal mood; life satisfaction (hereafter ls), a cognitive component of swb, deals with the evaluation of objective conditions and fulfillments (diener, oishi, & lucas, 2003, p. 405), and thus is more materialistic in nature (haller & hadler, 2006; helliwell, barrington-leigh, harris, & huang, 2009) than is happiness. for a better understanding of the mechanisms of swb effects, the present study analyzes both happiness and ls. considering that ls is more materialistic than is happiness, a variable’s greater effect for ls should be explained by material conditions. if the effect is greater for happiness, in turn, it should be analyzed with more attention on other factors like social connectedness, attitudes, and emotional aspects. 1.2 previous findings: consistencies and inconsistencies in determinants of swb. the effects on swb in previous studies have covered various domains of the national economy, social indicators, and value dimensions, and are presented in table 1, following. here i review each sector’s effect significance in previous studies. 1.2.1 importance of national wealth and its variation across gdp levels. according to clark and senik’s (2010: 73-75) review, studies prior to their research consistently supported national affluence’s cross-sectional association with swb. national wealth’s longitudinal effect for a worldwide sample has been supported by roca (2011) and sacks, stevenson, and wolfers (2011). another issue is whether the income effect falls in richer countries, in line with the economic principle of diminishing marginal utility. this hypothesis was supported by blanchflower’s (2008, p. 33) and inglehart, foa, peterson, and welzel’s (2008) studies, but not by the research of sacks, stevenson, and wolfers (2010). in helliwell (2008), the national wealth effect was rather higher in the oecd group, where most member countries are somewhat affluent. 1.2.2 social factors: few consistent effects, and little support for the impact of democracy and inequality. intuitively thinking, development in social indicators like democracy, increased rights, and equality would lead to greater societal swb. empirically, however, only the benefits of social capital (trust and membership 2 ) and transparency (low corruption) have been consistently supported by all previous studies (table 1 below). excepting national employment rate, social domains in general do not make a significant contribution to swb when economic and cultural variables are controlled. 2 they belong to social capital’s subcomponents, according to the definition of putnam, leonardi, and nanetti (1993). file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_1 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 table 1a. significance and direction of swb determinants in previous studies variables previous studies supporting the effect demographic variables age non-linear: alesina, di tella, & macculloch (2004), feasel (2013), helliwell (2002), kim (2011), rojas (2011), tavits (2008) significantly positive: abbott & wallace (2012), flavin et al. (2010) significantly negative: helliwell & putnam (2004) non-significant: camfield, guillen-royo & velazco (2009) female significantly positive: abbott & wallace (2012), alesina et al. (2004), douhou & soest (2013), feasel (2013), flavin et al. (2010), helliwell (2008), kim (2011), tsai et al. (2011) significantly negative: camfield et al. (2009), salinas-jiménez artés & salinas-jiménez (2010) non-significant: helliwell & putnam (2004) education non-linear: helliwell (2002) significantly positive: blanchflower & college (2005), feasel (2013), helliwell (2008), helliwell & putnam (2004), roca (2011), salinas-jiménez et al. (2010), tavits (2008), tsai et al. (2011) non-significant: abbott & wallace (2012), camfield et al. (2009), douhou & soest (2013), flavin et al. (2010), kim (2011) individual/household income non-linear: douhou & soest (2013) significantly positive: flavin et al. (2010), feasel (2013), helliwell (2008), inglehart et al. (2008), kim (2011), salinas-jiménez et al. (2010), senik (2004), tsai et al. (2011) non-significant: abbott & wallace (2012) employed significantly positive: blanchflower & college (2005), douhou & soest (2013), flavin et al. (2010), feasel (2013), helliwell (2002), helliwell & putnam (2004), roca (2011) , tavits (2008), tsai et al. (2011) non-significant: camfield et al. (2009) married significantly positive: abbott & wallace (2012), alesina et al. (2004), blanchflower & college (2005), feasel (2013), flavin et al. (2010), helliwell (2002, 2008), helliwell & putnam (2004), kim (2011), salinas-jiménez et al. (2010), tavits (2008), tsai et al. (2011) religiosity significantly positive: feasel (2013), flavin et al. (2010), helliwell (2002) , helliwell & putnam (2004), kim (2011) health significantly positive: argyle (1997), george & landerman (1983), helliwell & putnam (2004), morrison, tay, & diener (2011), okun & george (1984), okun, stock, haring, & witter (1983) national economic factors national income non-linear: helliwell (2002), roca (2011) significantly positive: hanssen (2011), helliwell & putnam (2004), inglehart et al. (2008), kim (2011), minkov (2009), roca (2011), sacks, stevenson. & wolfers (2011), schyns (1998), tavits (2008) non-significant: diaz-serrano & rodríguez-pose (2012), flavin et al. (2010), helliwell (2008) economic growth significantly negative: roca (2011) non-significant: inglehart et al. (2008) inflation significantly positive: tavits (2008) significantly negative: diaz-serrano & rodríguez-pose (2012), hanssen (2011) re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 note: swb = subjective well-being. pdi = power distance. uai = uncertainty avoidance. ivr = indulgence versus restraint. among value dimensions, no previous study has dealt with long/short-term orientation’s effect for swb. among value dimensions, no previous study has dealt with long/short-term orientation’s effect for swb. table 1b. significance and direction of swb determinants in previous studies variables previous studies supporting the effect national economic factors transparency (less corruption) significantly positive: diaz-serrano & rodríguez-pose (2012), tavits (2008) democracy/rights significantly negative: arrindell, hatzichristou, wensink, & rosenberg (1997), helliwell (2008), helliwell & putnam (2004) non-significant: knutsen (2005), minkov (2009), ott (2008, 2009), roca (2011), schyns (1998) gender equality significantly positive: bjørnskov, fischer, & dreher (2007) non-significant: minkov (2009), schyns (1998) distribution equality (lower inequality), significantly positive: hanssen (2011), tavits (2008) significantly negative: roca (2011) non-significant: helliwell & putnam (2004), kim (2011), knutsen (2005), minkov (2009) labor union significantly positive: flavin et al. (2010) non-significant: abbott & wallace (2012) membership significantly positive: helliwell (2002), helliwell & putnam (2004), tov & diener (2008) national education non-significant: helliwell (2002, 2008) national employment significantly positive: diaz-serrano & rodríguez-pose (2012), flavin et al. (2010), feasel (2013) non-significant: alesina et al. (2004), hanssen (2011) trust significantly positive: abbott & wallace (2012), diaz-serrano & rodríguez-pose (2012), douhou & soest (2013), flavin et al. (2010), helliwell (2002), helliwell & putnam (2004), tsai et al. (2011) cultural zones east asia non-significant: helliwell (2002) eastern europe/orthodox significantly negative: feasel (2013), knutsen (2005), minkov (2009) islamic significantly negative: hanssen (2011) non-significant: feasel (2013), knutsen (2005) latin america significantly positive: knutsen (2005), hanssen (2011), helliwell (2002) value dimensions individualism significantly positive: arrindell, hatzichristou, wensink & rosenberg (1997), diener & suh (1997), fischer & boer (2011), larsen & eid (2008) non-significant: flavin et al. (2010), schyns (1998) masculinity non-significant: arrindell et al. (1997), basabe et al. (2000) pdi significantly negative: arrindell et al. (1997), basabe et al. (2000) uai significantly negative: arrindell et al. (1997), basabe et al. (2000) ivr non-linear: minkov (2009) re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 it is worth noting, in particular, that no previous study has supported the significant association of democracy with swb. on the contrary, a negative effect was found by inglehart et al. (2008) and arrindell, hatzichristou, wensink, & rosenberg (1997). inglehart et al. explained that during the years analyzed (at the beginning of the 1990s) many countries experienced a sudden transition to democracy, and their swb was stable by its nature (p.270)3. in my view, this is not a sufficient explanation because according to the same logic, also other national domains than democracy should have had limited effects whenever any country experienced radical changes. furthermore, in arrindell et al. (1997)  another study in which the coefficient of democracy is negative, only one out of 36 countries (the former yugoslavia) had experienced a transition to democracy during the years 1987–1993. inequality is another social variable whose effect does not stand out as being theoretically argued. the effect of greater inequality was detrimental to swb only in hanssen (2011) and tavits (2008); it was otherwise non-significant (helliwell & putnam, 2004; s. kim, 2011; knutsen, 2005; minkov, 2009), and even positive in roca (2011). with respect to inequality’s possible association with swb, clark (2003) argued that inequality might bring aspiring effects; because when seeing those who were richer, people might believe that they could become rich like them in the future. adaptation propensity (or treadmill effect) and comparison effect have been suggested as common explanations for both democracy and low inequality’s lack of effect (knutsen, 2005). regardless of whether or not a society is equal and democratic, people will accept the social system as granted as time goes by. therefore, the impact of social change on swb is temporary, and after time passes people’s swb will return to previous levels. on the other hand, people compare their circumstances with those of their within-society neighbors, rather than with those of people in distant societies (knutsen, 2005, p. 17). following the same logic, however, other factors like national wealth also should have experienced limited effects, which simply is not the case. in this respect, adaptation theory and comparison reference cannot be sufficient explanations. 1.2.3 hofstede value dimensions value dimension refers to organizational factors and attitudes which influence people’s ideas about how things “ought to be” (lonner, berry, & hofstede, 1980). it was initially pioneered by hofstede (fischer, vauclair, fontaine, & schwartz, 2010, p. 138; licht, goldschmidt, & shalom, 2007, p. 5; snider, 2003, p. 24), whose original version of a value dimension framework includes the following dimensions. individualism: the culture of individualism emphasizes independence, achievement, uniqueness, and individual rights, while the culture of collectivism (low individualism) prioritizes in-group membership, loyalty, interdependence and belongingness.4 power distance (pdi) refers to the social acceptance of unequal hierarchical relationship within an organization. it is important to note that such acceptance comes from societal members in a low position, not from the top. 3 as evidence, inglehart and colleagues provide another finding that the correlation between democracy and happiness fell from .74 in 1987 to .4 in 1993 and no further change occurred through to 2007. however, their bivariate correlation does not preclude that democracy since the 1990s no longer exerts positive influences on swb, and that democracy prior to 1987 was highly correlated with swb because of the wealth or other characteristics of earlier democratic countries, rather than of democracy itself. 4 all value dimensions’ introductions are quoted from hofstede & jan (2011). re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 masculinity vs. femininity: masculine cultures put emphasis on performance, achievement, material success, power, and gender role differences; conversely, feministic cultures prioritize quality of life, mutual care, equality, and similarity in societal role between genders. uncertainty avoidance (uai): while people in high uai cultures are highly sensitive to uncertainties and try to minimize risk through strict regulation, those in a low uai culture are willing to accept uncertainties. among these four dimensions, individualism’s social nature and its relationship with swb have been the most discussed, with varying stances. it has been pointed out that individualism is crucial for swb because it represents freedom, autonomy, and a greater number of choices (diener & suh, 1997; diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; larsen & eid, 2008). however, individualism might also feature negative aspects such as social isolation, loneliness, overreliance on materialism, and consumerism to escape from futility (cushman, 1990; schwartz, 2004, 2010). there also exists middle-ground stance that implies its moderated level is best, because in that condition autonomy and relatedness are balanced. while theoretical stances on individualism’s social function diverge, empirical analyses have been inclined to its positive association with swb (see table 1 above). basabe et al. (2000) note the negative aspects of masculinity, pdi, and uai. pdi legitimizes social inequality, causing anger at the societal level; masculinity causes more frequent negative emotions and lower social support because of excessive competitiveness and the prevalence of aggression; a high uai culture’s tighter formal rules and social control cause greater anxiety and negative emotions. table 1 above shows that most previous empirical studies support basabe et al. (2000)’s claims. lately, through co-research with michael minkov using world value survey (wvs) data for over 90 countries (hofstede & minkov, 2010; minkov, 2009), hofstede added two more dimensions. indulgence vs restraint (ivr): in cultures with a high degree of indulgence, free gratification of instinct-driven pleasure is allowed; in restraint cultures, hedonistic behavior is suppressed by strict norms (minkov, 2009). long/short-term orientation (lto): in long-term oriented societies, pragmatic and future-oriented behaviors like saving, persistence, and self-adaptation to changing circumstances, are encouraged; in short-term oriented societies, past and present elements such as national pride, tradition, a person’s ‘face’, and social obligations are more valued (hofstede & minkov, 2010). being proposed lately, however, they have been little discussed in relation to swb, except that minkov (2009) found ivr’s strong effect for happiness. to summarize, previous findings are inclined to support individualism’s positive association with swb, and the negative side of masculinity, pdi, and uai. for ivr and lto, few empirical examinations have been done because they came to light no earlier than the middle of the first decade of the present century. file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_1 file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_1 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 table 2: three flows of cross-contextual approaches for subjective wellbeing, in previous studies categories sub-categories authors effects’ variation interactions involving national wealth social factors moderation by national income groups helliwell (2008) perceived transparency and trust: highera in oecd group ott (2009) democracy and state capacity: higher in richer countries schyns (1998) gender equality and democracy: higher in richer countries cultural value's moderation by income schyns (1998) individualism: higher in richer countries income's moderation by value dimensions arrindell et al. (1997) affluence: higher in feministic culture where welfare system for quality of life is more demanded moderation of national social factors by demographic traits national social factors' moderation by individual traits alesina, di tella, & macculloch (2004) in american sample, lower economic inequality: higher for the right-wing and rich group; lower national unemployment: higher for the left-wing. in european sample: lower economic inequality: higher for the left and poor group; lower national unemployment rate: higher for the poor group. bjørnskov, dreher, & fischer (2008) government fractionalization, republic regime, and growth stability: higher for the right-wing lower income group national income, investment price, and compound growth rate: higher for the left-wing high income regulatory quality: higher for the right-wing and high income group governance and lack of corruption: higher for the left-wing, and low/middle income group flavin, pacek, & radcliff (2010) national labor union density: higher among low-income individuals joshanloo & weijers (2013) lower inequality: higher among non-religious people moderation of national social factors by demographic traits national social factors' moderation by individual traits weijers & joshanloo (2013) gender equality: higher for non-religious people variation of demographic effects across national income groups and cultural zones demographic variables’ moderation by national income level helliwell (2008) marriedness: in oecd individual education and church attendance: higher in oecd swift et al. (2014) younger age: higher in poorer countries demographic moderation by cultural zones bonini (2007) marriedness: less effects in south asia and sub-saharan africa, former socialist zone individual income: higher in former socialist zone, but lowest in south asia and subsaharan africa helliwell (2008) marriedness: no effect in latin america individual high education: no effect in english-speaking zone swift et al. (2014) being female: higher in latin america a higher means that the variable has higher or stronger effect in stated moderation groups re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 1.3 cross-contextual approaches: interaction models and group-wise analyses the priorities of different life domains for swb vary across countries even when countries’ economic development levels are similar (camfield, 2012, p. 404). in fact, it is not a new argument to emphasize the importance of considering crosscontextuality in swb predictors (bonini, 2007; fischer & boer, 2011; howell & howell, 2008; jorgensen, jamieson, & martin, 2010; oishi, diener, lucas, & suh, 1999; welzel & inglehart, 2010). to empirically deal with such cross-contextuality, there are two strategies. one is case-wise comparison  comparing predictors’ effects across different national or cultural groups, which differ in social, economic, or cultural contexts. the other is the statistical moderation approach  that is, to introduce cross-products between a variable of interest and a context variable. between the two strategies, most cross-contextual studies have taken a statistical interaction approach, dealing with three types of moderating effects: interactions involving national income, variation of national social effects across demographic groups, and variation of demographic effects across national income groups and cultural zones. they are summarized in table 2 above. 1.4 limitations of previous studies despite the fact that a wide variety of variables across demographic, economic, social, and cultural domains have been repeatedly addressed in the previous literature, there remain unexplored facets in national swb determinants. they are: (a) diverse ranges of cross-contextual or moderational approach, (b) full-model approach co-addressing demographic, economic, and cultural predictors, and a broad range of social factors, in order to enable each predictor’s accurate estimation without mutual confounding, and (c) taking account of the recent changes in hofstede’s value system when measuring its relationship with swb. 1.4.1 temporal validity of value dimensions all previous studies addressing the effect of hofstede’s dimensions of individualism, masculinity, pdi, and uai have relied on hofstede’s original data from 1967–1973, or archival data covering the 1990s. studies that have analyzed swb after the 1990s suffer a large time gap between value dimensions and swb. this would not be a problem if national culture changes little over time, but there is counter-evidence to this assumption. according to the abundant literature introduced in taras, steel, and kirkman’s (2012) empirical meta-analysis, a nation’s values can change even within short periods. based on their meta-analysis, taras et al. extracted decade-wise scores from the 1980s to the first decade of the 2000s, and found evidence that national culture does alter substantially over time. for any of the four dimensions, the degree of correlation between original scores and since-2000s scores was no more than .75 (p. 338). furthermore, they also found that during the 1970s the united states and south america were sharply contrasted in the degree of individualism and pdi, but since 2000 such cultural difference has disappeared or reversed (p. 339). with taras et al.’s findings on national culture’s changeability, predicting the current swb from the past culture will render limited validity. 1.4.2 joint account for all sectors: robust estimation without confounding helliwell, layard, and sachs (2012, p. 64) and helliwell (2002, p. 5) pointed out that social or cultural factors’ effects could be confounders for national wealth. as evidence, they showed that when social factors were controlled, the wealth effect coefficient for ls fell from .81 to below .30. in the same context, when estimating any of the following domains — demographic, economic, social, and cultural factors — the others remain as possible confounders to be controlled. solving file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_2 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 confounding is also important to assure robust effects (bjørnskov et al., 2008, p. 167). in fact, we say an effect lacks robustness whenever it is altered by controlled or uncontrolled confounders. for those reasons, an effective way for accurate and robust estimation is to establish models co-including variables of different domains which might confound each other. in other words, the effects of wealth, demographic, cultural and broad-ranged social factors can be estimated robustly only when all their effects are estimated together and simultaneously; otherwise, one would remain as a confounder of the others. in short, a full-model approach is needed for robust and precise estimation. notwithstanding, few studies hitherto have effectively dealt with this need. among previous studies which seem to be exceptions, feasel (2013) missed social capital and cultural value dimensions, while arrindell et al. (1997) and schyns (1998) missed demographic variables, analyzing only at the national level. meanwhile, minkov (2009) included only six national social indicators, while helliwell (2002) and helliwell, huang, & harris (2009) used only survey-based subjective variables for social domains, and helliwell & putnam (2004) and helliwell (2008) took only government quality and trust as social predictors. 1.4.3 unexplored areas in cross-contextual approaches with detailed findings in the studies reviewed above, at first glance the cross-contextual approach seems now fully explored. compared with main effects studies, however, the number of studies involved is quite small. when looking at those studies more carefully, furthermore, there remain unexplored areas as follows. one under-researched area in the cross-contextual approach is that involving national wealth  the interaction effects between national wealth and national-level social factors, and those between national wealth and cultural variables. while the types of moderation involving national wealth have been analyzed in both directions5, the range of socio-cultural factors is far from being exhaustive, including only two of the six hofstede value dimensions (individualism and masculinity) and five national social variables (transparency, trust, gender equality, democracy, and state capacity). taken together, the cross-contextual approach can be further developed by analyzing national income’s interaction with a broader range of national sociocultural elements. cultural moderation of national social effects has been also under-researched. regarding moderating effects by cultural zones, only perceived transparency and trust have been addressed by helliwell (2008). regarding moderation by national religion, likewise, only the effects of economic inequality (joshanloo & weijers, 2013) and gender inequality (weijers & joshanloo, 2013) have been examined as its objects. those variables are obviously far from being able to cover the exhaustive range of social domains. furthermore, no study has dealt with social domains’ moderation by cultural value dimensions. another unexplored cross-contextual approach regards the effect variation of multiple demographic variables by national social factors. at first glance it might not seem so, since di tella and macculloch (2004), bjørnskov, dreher, and fischer (2008), and flavin, pacek, and radcliff (2010) did compare national socio-economic indicators and cultural zones’ relevance across three categories of demographic groups  sex, income level, and political ideology (table 5 in schyns (1998) and ott (2009), the national socio-economic effects were compared by national income groups; in their studies, obviously, national wealth was a moderator, not the variable moderated. in arrindell et al. (1997), on the contrary, national wealth’s relationship with swb was the object of the moderating effect of two cultural value dimensions. file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_2 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 2 above). while they dealt with national social variables’ moderation by three types of demographic groups, their analyses do not tell us about the heterogeneity of the individual traits’ relevance by national social contexts. furthermore, their study’s moderating demographic variables were limited to individual/household income, sex, and political orientation. hitherto no study has dealt with moderation by other demographic variables like marital status, religiousness, employment status, and education level, or by interactions between national noneconomic and non-cultural social domains. by taking account into the national effects variation by more diverse demographic factors in the same model, further developments can be made on the cross-contextual scope for swb studies. to sum up, although the need for a cross-contextual approach has been repeatedly indicated, there are still a lot to be explored. in detail, there are three especially under-researched areas  (a) interaction between national wealth and national socio-cultural elements, (b) national noneconomic social factors’ moderation by culture, and (c) national social factors’ moderation by diverse demographic traits besides sex, income level, and political ideology. 2. aims and design of the present research the present paper aims to overcome the limitations in previous swb literature in three ways: (a) reflecting recent changes in national cultural values as predictors of swb, (b) establishing full models, allowing robust and un-confounded estimations, with simultaneous insertion of national wealth, culture, and sufficiently broad social domains, (c) extension of cross-contextual models, by newly taking into account interactions involving national wealth, cultural moderation on national social domains, and diverse demographic traits’ moderation by national social contexts. for those purposes, i will conduct analyses with a wvs sample of 59 countries covering the years from 1981 to 2013, using all observations where either happiness or ls was present. from wvs, two swb components are chosen. meanwhile, two types of predictors were picked from wvs. the first one is demographic variables, which includes age, sex, education, individual income, religiousness, employment status, matrimonial status, and health; the second one is social survey variables, including trust, institutional confidence, membership, and satisfaction with democracy. those individual-level observations are merged with the same year or the latest available prior year’s data of national logged gdp, objective national social indicators, and cultural value dimensions. the information about objective social indicators and value dimensions is described in the next sub-sections of this section. with those predictors, i analyze both ls and happiness, for richer explanations on the nature of found effectsin detail, whether the effects are more linkable with objective and material conditions (elements associated with ls), or with people’s changed attitudes, emotions, and social connectedness (elements associated with happiness). 2.1 value dimensions: use of alternative data to account for national cultural change unlike all the relevant reviewed studies, i will use taras et al.’s work for individualism, masculinity, pdi, and uai, and draw on hofstede’s later data for lto and ivr, in an effort to take into account national cultural changes that occurred after the 1970s. a caveat of using taras et al.’s data is that some of subject units were international regions, for which it is not always appropriate to apply the same regional score to all sub-regional countries. that is because, within regions like south america the national cultures are certainly heterogeneous, and such variation is not counted in taras et al.’s data. in turn, however, this does not mean that using hofstede’s old data is better just because all of its units are countries. analyzing today’s swb with data from file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_2 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 a past culture is likely to cause greater bias, which might raise more doubts on correlated economic and social effects in the same model, because of confoundation. therefore, i will persist in using taras et al.’s data, despite some expected discrepancy between international regional scores and the real culture of each nation within a region. however, i admit that there is a need to minimize that discrepancy. for that reason, the scores for africa, the arab region, the caribbean, central america, and south america will be applied only to countries which were included in taras et al.’s meta-analysis. however, the scores of the other, smaller, regions  the former yugoslavia, asian ussr, baltic ussr, slavic ussr, are applied to all countries in those regions, including those taras et al. did not meta-analyze  each of those regions consists of less than six countries, which are expected to be both geographically and culturally close to each other6. for the two newly proposed dimensions (lto and ivr), meanwhile, i use hofstede’s lateversion data. while those dimensions were not tackled by taras et al., hofstede’s data is enough to measure their current status because it is based on the surveys conducted during the 2000s (minkov & hofstede, 2010; minkov, 2009). 2.2 full model with parsimony: clustering national social variables in establishing the full model approach, one important issue is how to cover the wide range of social domains with a small number of variables. there are so many social sectors to be covered, but introducing many social indicators in the same model is problematic. it will be too complicated to discuss so many variables’ main and interaction effects within limited space for the present paper. furthermore, multiple social indicators can be bundled into a single dimension when their concepts are mutually related, even if not identical (e.g. world governance indicators in langbein & stephen (2008)). on the other hand, inserting those variables in the same model will cause inconsistency in findings (fischer, 2010, p. 2). all those respects support the need and legitimacy of obtaining a reduced number of dimensions, from many indicators which cover the full range of social domains drawn on yee and chang (2009)’s social quality framework, where four social dimensions were extracted from 19 indicators. for use for swb research, it has some merits as follows. first, it is theoretically linked with swb, since it is defined as people’s ability to participate in community life while their potential and well-being are supported from social environments (beck, 2001). secondly, yee and chang’s framework consists of only 19 variables to favor the parsimony, and those composing variables are largely coincident with previous studies’ swb predictors that were reviewed above. for those reasons, i adapt yee and chang’s social quality framework as a tool for clustering social predictors of swb. 6 while i decided to rely on taras et al.’s longitudinal data reflecting updated national culture, there are two exceptions: poland’s score for the first year of all four value dimensions (1989), and vietnam’s pdi for both years of survey (2001 and 2006) have come from hofstede’s original dimensions. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 table 3. source: social variables variables type variables source hard variables male employment ratea world bank female employment ratea public education expenditureb unesco, world bank, cepal, asian development bank, eurostat total secondary education enrolment un, world bank gini index (inversed) cia, world bank, eurostat public social expenditurebc oecd, asian development bank, cepal, imf, world bank, ilo, eurostat labor union density ictwss database, ilo social dialogue soft variables press freedom (inversed) freedom house government effectiveness world governance indicator, world bank corruption perception index transparency international average rightsd freedom house global gender gap indexe united nations development program general trustf world values survey institutional confidenceg organizational participationh satisfaction with democracyi a ratio to the population over +15. b rate per gdp. c since survey sources differ in included sectors of public spending (e.g. education, protection, pension, health, etc.), merely merging multiple sources without adjustment will cause serious distortions; to avoid such a problem, i count only public spending on social protection and security; when the raw scores contain other sectors like education or health, i subtracted those sectors’ spending rates from the raw scores, prior to use for subsequent analyses. d combined measure of political rights and civil liberties. e in yee and chang (2009)’s framework, the gender empowerment measure was used as a parameter for gender equality, but it is no longer published since 2010. f for the question on whether most people can be trusted, coded as one for yes, and zero for no. g while survey sources differed in the raw scale, all of them were adjusted to 14 by linear transformation. h if the respondents are engaged in any organization for active/inactive or voluntary works, coded as one; otherwise, coded as zero. i 1–4 ordinal scale. following yee and chang’s suggestion (p. 159)7, i cluster hard and soft variables separately. meanwhile, from the list of yee and chang’s social variables, i exclude pension replacement which is unavailable in most non-oecd countries, along with the voter turnout that has been little researched, which has been little researched in previous swb studies. the remaining variables are listed in table 3 above. after merging both subjective and objective social indicators, i performed the principal component analyses separately for hard and soft variables, as suggested by yee and chang. all analyzed social variables were clustered into four factors, as presented in the table 4. 7 the sources of social quality variables, prior to conducting principal component analysis, are listed in table 1 above. file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_3 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 table 4. principal component analysis (pca) for social variables variables loadings hard variables component 1 – national employment female employment rate .686 male employment rate .606 labor union density .277 component 2 – edu/welfare public social expenditure .520 total secondary enrolment rate .511 public education expenditure .473 gini index (inversed) .269 soft variables component 3 – gprge press freedom (inversed) .493 government effectiveness .475 average rights .470 ti cpi .456 global gender gap index .301 component 4 – social capital satisfaction with democracy .624 institutional confidence .591 organizational participation .343 general trust .334 note: prior to conducting pca, the national social variables had been merged with national wealth, cultural value dimensions data, and world value survey. only countries having listwise scores of hofstede’s six dimensions and wvs’s observations where either happiness or life satisfaction was available, were taken for pca estimation and all the subsequent analyses in the present paper. the component scores were extracted by averaging the standardized values of clustered variables, without weighting on variables with higher loading; giving all variables the same degree of importance is in line with the comprehensive full-model approach in this paper. edu/welfare = education and welfare factor at national level. gprge = governance, political rights, and gender equality. ti cpi = transparency international’s corruption perception index. after combining all social indicators, i performed principal component analysis. based on the results, the components were extracted by averaging standardized values of social variables. in the present paper, the components will be named with the following terms. national employment: the overall environment of national employment; it comprises male, female employment rate, and labor union density. education and welfare (hereafter edu/welfare): encompasses education, public expenditure, and economic inequality. governance, political rights and gender equality (hereafter gprge): this factor embraces the concept of governance, political freedom, and gender equality. social capital: this factor comprises participation, satisfaction with democracy, general trust, and institutional confidence. clustering those variables into the single concept of social capital is in line with its definition by putnam (1994). by reducing social variables to four factors, most previously discussed social determinants of swb can be analyzed at once, and the number of main and interaction terms is small enough to be interpreted in this paper. after clustering social variables, table 5 below presents summary statistics on all predictors for subsequent analyses. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 table 5. descriptive statistics variables n _mean std. dev. minimum maximum swb happiness 235893 _3.054 0.740 1 4 life satisfaction 239396 _6.662 2.407 1 10 demographic variablesa age/10 238706 _4.183 1.642 14 99 sex (male = 1) 239832 _0.479 0.500 0 1 individual incomeb 216294 _1.655 0.706 1 3 educationc 208138 _2.723 0.831 1 4 employed 242551 _0.531 0.499 0 1 married 242551 _0.637 0.481 0 1 religiosityd 242551 _0.651 0.477 0 1 healthe 233784 _0.656 0.475 0 1 sefs log gdp 240092 _8.581 1.411 _5.573 11.333 employment 241279 −0.021 0.747 −2.161 _2.403 edu/welfare 242551 −0.003 0.740 −1.782 _2.172 gprge 242551 −0.009 0.873 −1.710 _1.608 social capital 241948 −0.014 0.653 −2.647 _2.425 value dimensions individualism 242551 −0.112 0.676 −1.580 _1.790 masculinity 242551 −0.069 0.534 −1.460 _1.730 pdi 242551 −0.027 0.608 −1.380 _1.360 uai 242551 −0.240 0.669 −1.590 _1.710 lto 242551 −0.125 1.074 −1.602 _2.233 ivr 242551 −0.015 1.002 −1.820 _1.967 note: n in pairwise= 242551. 59 countries. aamong demographic variables, only age is continuous variable; individual income: three-step; individual education: four-step; sex, employed, married, religiosity, and health: binary variables. bit was recoded from original 10-step to three-step as follows: from 14 to 1, 57 to 2, 810 to 3. c1 = primary incomplete, 2 = primary complete, 3 = secondary complete, 4 = tertiary or higher degree. dcriterion set for religiosity: membership, participation, or service attendance in wvs survey. efive-step health variable in wvs was recoded to become a binary on e: 1 = very good or good, 0 = fair, poor, or very poor status. swb = subjective wellbeing. sefs = national socioeconomic factors. edu/welfare = national-level factor of education and welfare. gprge = governance, political rights, and gender equality. pdi = power distance. uai = uncertainty avoidance. lto = long/short-term orientation. ivr = indulgence versus restraint. 2.3 estimator method all models for ls, which is a continuous variable, are estimated with multilevel regression with robust standard errors. for happiness, which is a four-step ordinal variable, all models will be estimated with ordinal logistic regression with robust standard errors. unlike normal multilevel methods, however, neither random intercept nor random slope will be included; because random intercepts are actually equivalent to group mean, and they are already accounted for by national variables. likewise, random slopes correspond to the cross-level interactions, and this is in turn already covered by interaction terms between demographic variables and national sefs. for age, national wealth, and individualism, whose nonlinear effect has been discussed in the previous literature, both their linear and non-linear term will be included at the same time. meanwhile, prior to subsequent analyses, social quality factors and value dimensions are standardized. besides, age variable is divided into one tenth and centered, to prevent collinearity between linear, quadratic, and interaction effects. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 3. results and discussions table 6 and table 7 below display model series 1 and 2 for happiness, while table 8 and table 9 below present model series 3 and 4 for ls. in model series 2 and 4, each sef interacts with all the other predictors. table 6. happiness models, no interaction terms model 1a model 1b model 1c model 1d demographic variablesa age/10 − 0.107*** − 0.089*** − 0.089*** − 0.095*** (age/10)2 0.054*** 0.057*** 0.056*** 0.054*** sex (male = 1) − 0.143*** − 0.159*** − 0.161*** − 0.153*** individual income 0.281*** 0.294*** 0.297*** 0.274*** educationb 0.01f3.20 0.050*** 0.046*** 0.043*** employed − 0.050*** − 0.023* − 0.027* − 0.063*** married 0.519*** 0.586*** 0.581*** 0.574*** religiosity 0.288*** 0.241*** 0.235*** 0.207*** health 1.137*** 1.105*** 1.104*** 1.084*** sefs log gdp 0.137*** − 0.004 0.033*** log gdp2 0.023*** 0.034*** 0.009** employment 0.080*** 0.140*** edu/welfare − 0.312*** − 0.038*** gprge 0.258*** − 0.049* social capital 0.203*** 0.198*** value dimensions individualism − 0.013 − 0.024** − 0.016* individualism2 − 0.057*** − 0.063*** − 0.063*** masculinity 0.064*** 0.075*** 0.098*** pdi − 0.015* − 0.029*** − 0.067*** uai − 0.076*** − 0.072*** − 0.048*** lto 0.044*** 0.035*** − 0.016* ivr 0.591*** 0.584*** 0.559*** cut-point 1 − 1.949*** − 1.966*** − 1.925*** − 2.116*** cut-point 2 0.191*** 0.180*** 0.222*** 0.047 cut-point 3 2.994*** 3.038*** 3.083*** 2.939*** log-likelihood − 174929 − 172800 − 172694 − 171426 note: n = 175639. ordinal logistic regression with robust standard errors. aamong demographic variables, only age is a continuous variable; individual income: three-step; individual education: four-step; sex, employed, married, religiosity, and health: binary variables. beducation: 1 = primary incomplete, 2 = primary complete, 3 = secondary complete, 4 = tertiary or higher complete. sefs = national socio-economic factors. edu/welfare = national-level factor of education and welfare. gprge = governance, political rights, and gender equality. pdi = power distance. uai = uncertainty avoidance. lto = long/short-term orientation. ivr = indulgence versus restraint. * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_6 file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_7 file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_8 file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_9 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 table 7a. happiness models, with moderating effects model 2a: iva = log gdp model 2b: iv = employment model 2c: iv= edu/welfare model 2d: iv = gprge model 2e: iv = social capital main effects demographic variablesb age/10 − 0.089*** − 0.100*** − 0.091*** − 0.093*** − 0.092*** (age/10)2 0.054*** 0.054*** 0.056*** 0.053*** 0.053*** sex − 0.162*** − 0.163*** − 0.157*** − 0.161*** − 0.155*** income level 0.280*** 0.276*** 0.277*** 0.292*** 0.277*** educationc 0.046*** 0.042*** 0.038*** 0.039*** 0.049*** employed − 0.047*** − 0.065*** − 0.059*** − 0.045*** − 0.062*** married 0.591*** 0.577*** 0.585*** 0.594*** 0.570*** religious 0.166*** 0.190*** 0.192*** 0.148*** 0.214*** health 1.076*** 1.076*** 1.086*** 1.077*** 1.081*** sefs log gdp 0.184*** 0.087*** 0.047*** 0.079*** 0.029*** log gdp2 0.093*** 0.010*** − 0.010** 0.056*** 0.005* employment 0.235*** 0.264*** 0.191*** 0.233*** 0.140*** edu/welfare 0.060*** − 0.019* 0.158*** 0.065*** − 0.034*** gprge − 0.071*** − 0.249*** − 0.078*** − 0.099*** − 0.039*** social capital 0.206*** 0.224*** 0.205*** 0.222*** 0.219*** value dimensions individualism 0.000 − 0.017 0.030** 0.209*** − 0.009 individualism2 0.041*** − 0.015** − 0.102*** 0.157*** − 0.059*** masculinity 0.122*** 0.112*** 0.103*** 0.142*** 0.094*** pdi − 0.090*** − 0.105*** 0.052*** − 0.080*** − 0.067*** uai − 0.051*** − 0.059*** − 0.115*** − 0.079*** − 0.049*** lto − 0.092*** − 0.023** − 0.056*** − 0.195*** − 0.016* ivr 0.539*** 0.553*** 0.521*** 0.491*** 0.559*** interaction effects iv x demographics iv x age − 0.005 − 0.011** − 0.034*** 0.001 0.016*** iv x sex − 0.012 0.066*** − 0.000 − 0.003 0.053*** iv x income level − 0.052*** − 0.036*** − 0.103*** − 0.073*** − 0.008 iv x education 0.027*** − 0.006 0.003 − 0.013* 0.021** iv x employed 0.030*** − 0.052*** 0.019 0.042*** − 0.031** iv x married 0.030*** 0.029* 0.108*** 0.041*** − 0.085*** re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 table 7b. happiness models, with moderating effects model 2a: iva = log gdp model 2b: iv = employment model 2c: iv= edu/welfare model 2d: iv = gprge model 2e: iv = social capital interaction effects iv x religious − 0.003 − 0.085*** − 0.050*** 0.028** − 0.016 iv x health − 0.042*** − 0.071*** − 0.087*** − 0.082*** − 0.022 iv x national wealth iv x log gdp 0.009 0.044*** − 0.015 − 0.013* iv x value dimensions iv x individualism − 0.148*** − 0.073*** 0.127*** − 0.392*** − 0.033*** iv x masculinity − 0.040*** 0.010 0.000 − 0.064*** − 0.036*** iv x pdi 0.042*** 0.165*** 0.048*** − 0.032** 0.007 iv x uai 0.051*** − 0.124*** 0.089*** 0.051*** 0.004 iv x lto 0.054*** − 0.102*** 0.032*** 0.085*** − 0.007 iv x ivr − 0.081*** 0.082*** − 0.070*** − 0.169*** − 0.037*** cut-point: level 1 − 2.102*** − 2.171*** − 2.142*** − 2.208*** − 2.123*** cut-point: level 2 0.079** 0.006 0.025 − 0.018 0.051* cut-point: level 3 2.989*** 2.914*** 2.929*** 2.900*** 2.949*** log-likelihood − 170756 − 170813 − 170972 − 170429 − 171253 note: n = 175639. ordinal logistic regression, with robust standard errors. aiv = the variable involved in interaction with all the other predictors. bamong demographic variables, only age is continuous variable; individual income: three-step; individual education: four-step; sex, employed, married, religiosity, and health: binary variables. c1 = primary incomplete, 2 = primary complete, 3 = secondary complete, 4 = tertiary or higher complete. sefs = national socio-economic factors. edu/welfare = national-level factor of education and welfare. gprge = governance, political rights, and gender equality. pdi = power distance. uai = uncertainty avoidance. lto = long/short-term orientation. ivr = indulgence versus restraint. * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 table 8. life satisfaction models, no interaction terms model 3a model 3b model 3c model 3d demographic variablesa age/10 −0.057*** −0.009* −0.028*** −0.039*** (age/10)2 0.063*** 0.065*** 0.065*** 0.061*** sex −0.122*** −0.161*** −0.145*** −0.129*** income level 0.470*** 0.490*** 0.481*** 0.455*** educationb 0.052*** 0.111*** 0.093*** 0.088*** employed 0.022 0.062*** 0.054*** 0.011 married 0.392*** 0.421*** 0.443*** 0.429*** religious 0.200*** 0.094*** 0.121*** 0.085*** health 1.127*** 1.099*** 1.075*** 1.050*** sefs log gdp 0.294*** 0.214*** 0.201*** log gdp2 −0.024*** 0.000 −0.038*** employment 0.147*** 0.204*** edu/welfare −0.350*** 0.021* gprge 0.310*** 0.092*** social capital 0.206*** 0.205*** value dimensions individualism −0.107*** −0.147*** −0.184*** individualism2 −0.044*** −0.047*** −0.050*** masculinity 0.054*** −0.006 0.027*** pdi −0.126*** 0.021** 0.043*** uai −0.157*** −0.094*** −0.069*** lto 0.125*** 0.102*** 0.035*** ivr 0.693*** 0.620*** 0.576*** constant 4.495*** 4.354*** 4.399*** 4.616*** r-squared .176 .187 .193 .206 note: n = 174850. regression with robust standard errors. aamong demographic variables, only age is continuous variable; individual income: three-step individual education: four-step; sex, employed, married, religiosity, and health: binary variables. b1 = primary incomplete, 2 = primary complete, 3 = secondary complete, 4 = tertiary or higher complete. sefs = national socio-economic factors. edu/welfare = national-level factor of education and welfare. gprge= governance, political rights, and gender equality. pdi = power distance. uai= uncertainty avoidance. lto = long/shortterm orientation. ivr = indulgence versus restraint. * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 for better interpretation of the findings, the terms are classified as strong when the absolute value of the raw coefficient is .30 or above, moderate when it ranges from .15 to .30, weak when it ranges from .05 to .15, and close-to-zero when it is below .05. on the other hand, when the effect is strong or moderate, it will be considered to be substantial. among interaction effects, only those whose absolute value of effect size is over .05 in the same direction both for ls and happiness will be discussed. otherwise, too many interaction effects will be unnecessarily discussed without need, including theoretically irrelevant and nonrobust ones. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 table 9a. life satisfaction models, with cross-contextual effects model 4a: iva = log gdp model 4b: iv = employment model 4c: iv = edu/welfare model 4d: iv = gprge model 4e: iv = social capital main effects demographic variablesb age/10 −0.034*** −0.045*** −0.031*** −0.037*** −0.036*** (age/10)2 −0.059*** −0.061*** −0.063*** −0.057*** −0.061*** sex −0.142*** −0.136*** −0.141*** −0.140*** −0.131*** income level −0.484*** −0.448*** −0.467*** −0.483*** −0.463*** educationc −0.093*** −0.103*** −0.101*** −0.087*** −0.097*** employed 0.016 0.008 0.003 0.032** 0.010 married −0.433*** −0.418*** −0.421*** −0.436*** −0.418*** religious −0.080*** −0.118*** −0.082*** −0.067*** −0.092*** health −1.041*** −1.028*** −1.036*** −1.028*** −1.035*** sefs log gdp −0.447*** −0.223*** −0.249*** −0.277*** −0.198*** log gdp2 −0.032*** −0.050*** −0.095*** −0.003*** −0.037*** employment −0.348*** −0.321*** −0.190*** −0.304*** −0.188*** edu/welfare −0.114*** −0.017*** −0.056* −0.060*** −0.029** gprge −0.053*** −0.069*** −0.043*** −0.041*** −0.089*** social capital −0.213*** −0.218*** −0.201*** −0.219*** −0.280*** value dimensions individualism −0.181*** −0.135*** −0.191*** −0.094*** −0.173*** individualism2 0.002* −0.035*** −0.120*** −0.231*** −0.044*** masculinity −0.038*** −0.016*** −0.044*** −0.088*** −0.029*** pdi −0.075*** −0.029*** −0.057*** −0.013*** −0.031*** uai −0.112*** −0.063*** −0.049*** −0.099*** −0.059*** lto −0.053*** −0.029*** −0.015*** −0.175*** −0.038*** ivr −0.533*** −0.625*** −0.577*** −0.473*** −0.574*** interaction effects iv x demographics iv x age −0.003*** −0.005*** −0.032*** −0.025*** −0.029*** iv x sex −0.003*** −0.080*** −0.011*** −0.018*** −0.055*** iv x income level −0.090*** −0.068*** −0.053*** −0.131*** −0.026*** iv x education −0.036*** −0.019*** −0.031*** −0.035*** −0.032*** iv x employed −0.003*** −0.033*** −0.013*** −0.030*** −0.012*** re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 table 9b. life satisfaction models, with cross-contextual effects model 4a: iva = log gdp model 4b: iv = employment model 4c: iv = edu/welfare model 4d: iv = gprge model 4e: iv = social capital interaction effects iv x demographics iv x married −0.046*** −0.010*** −0.051*** −0.068*** −0.079*** iv x religious −0.001*** −0.035*** −0.077*** −0.002*** −0.082*** iv x health −0.031*** −0.006*** −0.076*** −0.066*** −0.056*** iv x national wealth iv x log gdp −0.126*** −0.222*** −0.064*** −0.069*** iv x value dimensions iv x individualism −0.041*** −0.009*** −0.149*** −0.525*** −0.066*** iv x masculinity −0.120*** −0.079*** −0.077*** −0.167*** −0.003*** iv x pdi −0.075*** −0.148*** −0.018*** −0.207*** −0.070*** iv x uai −0.229*** −0.185*** −0.207*** −0.238*** −0.050*** iv x lto −0.048*** −0.031*** −0.104*** −0.024** −0.121*** iv x ivr −0.231*** −0.207*** −0.085*** −0.254*** −0.015*** constant −4.599*** −4.632*** −4.585*** −4.589*** −4.606*** r-squared −−.228*** −.214*** −−.217*** −−.223*** −−.211*** note: n = 174850. regression with robust standard errors. aiv = variable which is involved in interaction with all the other predictors. bamong demographic variables, only age is continuous variable; individual income: three-step ordinal ; individual education: four-step ordinal; sex, employed, married, religiosity, and health: binary categorical variables. c1 = primary incomplete, 2 = primary complete, 3 = secondary complete, 4 = tertiary or higher complete. sefs = national socio-economic factors. edu/welfare = national-level factor of education and welfare. gprge = governance, political rights, and gender equality. pdi = power distance. uai = uncertainty avoidance. lto = long/short-term orientation. ivr = indulgence versus restraint. * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 3.1 demographic variables’ main effect 3.1.1 age for happiness, the linear coefficient of age ranged from −.08 to −.11, while for ls it ranged from −.06 to zero. meanwhile, the quadratic term was between .05 and .06 for happiness, and between 0.057 and .065 for ls. besides, the grand mean of age was 41.61 years for the happiness sample and 41.63 years for the ls sample. when all those are counted, its polynomial effect in happiness models reverses from negative to positive at a turning point between 49 and 51 years old, and in ls models reverses at a point between 42 and 46 years old. compared with previous studies that found age’s nonlinear effects, the turning points in the present analyses are at a relatively older age8. 3.1.2 sex the variable’s main coefficient was, whether moderate or weak, around −.15 for both happiness and ls, replicating the female’s advantage in swb. 3.1.3 religiousness the effect of religiousness was moderately positive in all happiness models except model 2d, and weakly positive in all ls models where value dimensions were included. its positive association with swb was replicated, but the difference in its effect size for happiness and ls can be explained by its different functions for swb. according to okulicz-kozaryn (2010), religiosity’s social aspects, like church attendance and events participation, are associated with ls. individual facets like belief in god’s importance, meanwhile, are more linked with deprived people’s consolation and alleviating life misery, and eventually with happiness (campbell, converse, & rodgers, 1976, p. 370). while both individual and social aspects of religiosity are supported, the present analysis shows that the former is more important for swb than the latter. 3.1.4 marital status the strong association between being married and swb was replicated, with coefficients ranging from .39 to .45 in all ls models, and coefficients ranging from .51 to .60 in all happiness models. according to nock (2005), being married has three advantages for swb9: (a) easier social success by signalling maturity and sociability, (b) efficiency in domestic labors, and (c) a more selfrestrained attitude in terms of domestic life and mutual care, leading to improved health. among those three aspects, (a) and (b) seem more related to ls, because they reflect more objective life conditions than happiness does. meanwhile, mutual cares and restraints are not so reflective of ls, and seem more able to be linked to happiness. with the strong effect of marital status for both ls and happiness, all those three aspects seem significant. 3.1.5 employment status 8 in alesina et al. (2004), the polynomial effect reversed at 39.3 years old for a u.s. sample and 44.1 for a european sample. while helliwell (2002) asserted that swb was the lowest in 35–44 years old group, also in kim (2011) the turning point was around 40 years old; and in tavits (2008) where turning point was 48-50 years old. in all previous studies with nonlinearity the age’s polynomial effect, direction changes at the age point between mid-30s and mid-40s old. 9 in his paper, nock mentioned only happiness, not ls. in my view, however, what he called happiness seems actually to be overall swb, because many of marriage’s advantages he stated are related to materialistic success, and thus also connectable with ls and the ladder of life, instead of happiness. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 contrary to expectation, the direction of the effect of being employed for happiness turned negative in all models. it turned positive for ls, but was non-significant in all full models except model 4d. since both positive and negative effects were below .10, it would be fair to say that the present analyses found no effect of employment status. while it would be also nonsensical to say that being unemployed is beneficial for happiness, the present analyses suggest that having a job does not of itself mean a lot for swb; what matters is not the job itself but its quality. 3.1.6 individual education individual-level education’s effect was significant but close-to-zero in all happiness full models except model 1b, and weak in all ls models. while education’s small effect is partially attributable to the models’ inclusion of higher income, health, and higher trust, through which its indirect effect flows (helliwell, 2002, p. 11), the present study confirms that education’s other aspects like self-realization of potential and freedom (sen, 2001) have limited effects on swb. on the other hand, education’s contribution to swb might have been offset by negative elements like failure to meet the high expectation in job seeking (brennan, durazzi, & séné, 2013, p. 74), or stresses coming from excessive academic competition (park & huebner, 2005). on the other hand, there is need to compare the results with previous studies where education’s effect was found to be strong even after controlling for its indirect effect through income and health (feasel, 2013; helliwell & putnam, 2004; helliwell, 2008; roca, 2011; salinasjiménez et al., 2010; tavits, 2008; tsai et al., 2011). all those studies coded education into dummy variables with the lowest level of education (primary education or lower) as the reference category, while the present study treats it as a continuous variable. if the education variable were categorical, treating it as a continuous variable would be obviously wrong. in both the aforementioned previous studies and in this study, however, education has been the ordinal variable. to address it in regression models, it should be recoded into dummy variables or should be treated as continuous variable. in this case, i would like to argue that this conventional way of setting multiple dummies with the lowest level of education might be problematic in terms of validity. this is especially for sufficiently developed countries, for the following reasons. first, in most developed countries there are very few who do not finish primary education. in such societies, being at the lowest educational level would be a kind of social stigma, because it is very unusual. slightly lower education than average might not be a significant disadvantage, but an education level far below might be a serious disadvantage. this means that effect of the lowest education (not just low education) is likely to be damaging. accordingly with the lowest education as reference category, the dummy variables’ effects represent the comparison between the majority in a normal condition and the few in an unusually bad condition. on the contrary, there is no such hazard of inflation when education is treated as a continuous variable. my additional analyses prove my conjecture above. i conducted a full model approach for happiness again, but this time i coded the education variable into dummy variables, varying in the level of reference category. table 10 below demonstrates that the appearance of dummy coefficients is largely altered by reference category level. all three dummy effects were reported to be substantial and significant, when lowest education was the baseline (model 5b). however, two of them lost significance when the reference category was changed to higher levels of education (model 5c and 5d). similarly, in model series 6 with trinomial education variable, tertiary or higher education’s effect lost its significance when the reference category level was raised from the lowest to the middle level (compare model 6a and 6b). re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 table 10. education's category steps, reference category levels, and their influence on its effect for happiness. refcata model 5a model 5b model 5c model 5d model 6a model 6b 1/4 2/4 3/4 1/3 2/3 no dummy −0.043*** education level: 1 −0.192*** −0.202*** −0.040*** education level: 2 −0.192*** −0.009*** 0.040*** education level: 3 −0.202*** −0.009** 0.056*** −0.016*** education level: 4 −0.219*** −0.027** −0.017*** log-likelihood −171426 −171396* −171396 −171396** −171440** −171440* note: n = 175639. log gdp, four national social factors, and six hofstede value dimensions were included in all models, but not presented in the table. arefcat = the level of reference category in respect to the number of category steps; for instance, 1/4 means that the reference category was the lowest level (which means value one), while the education variable was of four categories. when the category was of four-step scale, 1 = primary education incomplete; 2 = primary complete, secondary incomplete; 3 = secondary complete; 4 = tertiary or higher degree complete. when the category was of three-step levels, 1 = secondary education incomplete; 2 = secondary complete; 3 = tertiary or higher degree complete. * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 according to those results, education effects have been inflated by the previous convention of setting dummy variables with the lowest level of education as the reference category. when middle-level education was set as the reference category (model 5c, 5d, and 6b), meanwhile, the dummy effects in overall are similar to the results of my original analyses, where education was treated as a continuous variable. in my view, this is enough to suggest that taking education as a continuous variable is more favorable to precise effects estimation, than dummy analyses with the lowest education as reference category. 3.1.7 individual income while previous studies differed in the significance of individual income effects, such significance was fully supported in the present analyses. meanwhile, its effect was stronger in ls full models ( r = .44.50), than in happiness full models (.27–.30); this is in line with the argument that ls reflects more materialistic aspects than does happiness (haller & hadler, 2006; helliwell, huang, et al., 2009), but my finding shows that even for happiness affluence is substantially important. 3.1.8 health in the present analyses, the strong and robust effect of health was replicated, with a coefficient over 1.00 in all models for happiness and ls. furthermore, no sef robustly moderated health, meaning that the strong association between health and swb is universal, rather than varied by national contexts. 3.2 sefs’ main effects 3.2.1 national wealth in all models without log gdp’s interaction terms (model series 1 and 2b–2e), logged gdp’s effect for swb was weak or close-to-zero for happiness and moderate for ls. controlling its interactions, however, its influence became moderate for happiness (model 2a, coefficient .184) and strong for ls (model 4a, coefficient .447). national wealth’s greater effect for ls than for happiness is in line with haller & hadler (2006) and helliwell, barrington-leigh, harris, & re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 huang (2009)’s argument that ls reflects more aspects of evaluating material conditions than does happiness. meanwhile, the quadratic effect was positive in all happiness models except model 2c, while in the model series 4 for ls its direction was varied. therefore, i found no evidence for national affluence’s diminishing marginal effect. taken together, while the present analyses confirm national affluence’s relevance only for ls, i found no evidence supporting the hypothesis of diminishing marginal effect. 3.2.2 national employment factor in ls full models, national employment factors’ effect ranged from .18 to .35, while its effect for happiness ranged from .14 to .25. studies by flavin et al. (2010) and abbott and wallace (2012) only have dealt with labor union density’s relationship with ls. while no previous study addressed the relationship with happiness, the present study suggests that its importance is greater for ls than for happiness. while the path from labor union density to swb can be explained by its function of raising the worker’s collective autonomy (edwards, 1979), and boosting workplace participation (fenwick & olson, 1986), the present analyses suggest that such an outcome is crucial for ls but its relevance is relatively limited to emotional swb (happiness). this is contrasted with organization participation that is a part of social capitalwhile happiness and ls are associated with social capital to a similar degree, social capital’s effect for happiness is greater than that of national employment factor (table 6 above). this implies that participation in a labor union differs in nature from general social participation. while previous studies differed in the significance of national employment rate and labor union density, the present study fortifies their importance for swb. meanwhile, the substantial effects of social capital components (mainly trust and membership) are simply in line with their robust association with swb in previous studies. while social capital is often equated with social relationship (agampodi, agampodi, glozier, & siribaddana, 2015; kim, lee, & yoon, 2014; salomons, 2006; yang, yuan, & wang, 2008), or considered to be a core concept of it (mcknight, teaster, watkins, & lawrence., 2005; moscardo, 2007; risal, 2008, 2013; schrader, 2004), the present study suggests that the social relation is equally important for happiness and ls. 3.2.3 edu/welfare when it comes to the effect of edu/welfare, which consists of four variables  education expenditure, enrolment, inequality, and public social expenditure — i found little evidence for its association with swb. in model 1a and 3a the effect was strongly negative, and only in model 4a it was positive with coefficient size over .10. overall, the factor’s relevance was relatively less than that of other sefs. taken together, the present analyses do not find its firm association with happiness or ls. the finding of the relatively weak importance of edu/welfare components is in line with previous ones, where the association between inequality and swb has been varied and no significantly positive effect of national education has been found. besides, the negative sides of education (another component of the edu/welfare factor), like competitiveness and failure to meet higher expectations, also held at the national level. 3.2.4 gprge like the edu/welfare factor, gprge’s relevance for swb was found to be weak. its coefficient, around +.30 in models 1a and 3a, turned weak for most other ls models, and reversed to negative file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_6 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 for all the happiness models. in any case, the present paper does not support governance, gender equality, and political rights’ firm association with swb. this is in line with most previous studies where democracy and gender equality remained non-significant. regarding the weak or non-significant effect of democracy, one of the gprge’s components, i have stated that adaptation theory and comparison effect cannot be sufficient explanations because all national social factors should have weak or non-significant effects. a more probable explanation is that while gprge has been often conceptually linked with intellectual autonomy (inglehart & welzel, 2010; kabanoff, 1991; lea, 2000; sørensen, 1997, 1998), gprge’s effect would be undermined if intellectual autonomy is not necessarily beneficial for swb. counter-intuitively, intellectual autonomy has its own cost. first, it might be associated with more social isolation. the closest relationships around us are based on a certain degree of common cognitive paths (leins, fisher, pludwinski, rivard, & robertson, 2014, p. 327). in that case, intellectual independence might cause more distance between the self and others around him(her) due to differences in ways of thinking. a similar argument has been already made by durkheim’s classical work in sociology (1951). accordingly, protestants’ higher rate of suicide was explained by the world view of protestant religion that allows more differences and freedoms in thought. additionally, while an appropriate level of autonomy is needed for economic freedom, gratification, and satisfaction, further increase in choice can cause its own side effects like excessive search costs, post-decision regret (binswanger, 2006; desmeules, 2002; hsee, hastie, & chen, 2008; hsee & hastie, 2006; schwartz, 2010), and information overload (caprara, barbaranelli, pastorelli, bandura, & zimbardo, 1999; iyengar & lepper, 2000). those possible drawbacks of intellectual autonomy could provide explanations for the weak effect of gprge, which represents its social conditions, along with that of the limited effect of individualism, which is another parameter of autonomy in the cultural realm. 3.2.5 social capital the effect of social capital was around .20 in the all models, both for happiness and ls. along with employment, social capital’s effect was the highest of all sefs. with its similar degree of effect for happiness and ls, it is suggested that both the emotional outcome of social participation (happiness) and network favoring an individual’s success (the factor for ls) are equally relevant. 3.3 value dimensions’ main effects among the four original hofstede dimensions, only uai’s negative effect was fully in line with most previous studies. meanwhile, i found lto’s negative effect, and strong association between ivr and swb. 3.3.1 individualism in all happiness models except model 2b and 2d, the turning point of individualism’s polynomial effect was between .2 and +.2, all of which can be considered within the moderate level10(table 11 below). at first glance, this might seem to support the previous argument that the effect is optimal at the moderate level of individualism. however, it should be remembered that when the quadratic term is positive, the graph would show the contrary; the polynomial effect is at its lowest at the turning point, given that the effect keeps decreasing until that point and only changes to an 10 for happiness and life satisfaction’s listwise sample, the median value of individualism was −0.022 and −0.023 respectively. file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_11 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 increasing effect above that point. in turn, the quadratic effects’ direction was not fully consistent across the present happiness models. all other models, except models 2a and 2d, showed a negative quadratic term, but the positive quadratic effect in model 2d was too strong to be ignored (table 7 above). therefore, the present analyses do not robustly confirm any of the previous arguments regarding individualism-happiness association. this means that the majority of sample units fall above the turning point (table 11 below), suggesting that the total polynomial effect turned out to be negative for most of sample countries. in models 3b, 3c, 3d, 4b, 4c, and 4e, the quadratic term was negative, suggesting that at the turning point the polynomial function’s direction changes from increasing to decreasing. in those models, meanwhile, the turning point were at an extremely low level or at least below the low quartile. if the quadratic term is negative and the turning point is low, then the total effect (the sum of quadratic and linear coefficient) would be negative for the majority of sample countries which are above the turning point. in such functions, the function effect is positive only for the few units with an even lower level of individualism, and for the majority the polynomial effect would be always negative. with positive quadratic terms, the total effect is positive when the predictor’s level is above the turning point. in the model 4a, however, the turning point level was above the maximum level11, and therefore individualism’s total effect is obviously negative for all subject countries. in sum, in all ls full models except model 4d, individualism’s negative aspects are supported. taken together, while the association between individualism and happiness was unclear, the analyses on ls were plainly inclined to individualism’s dark aspects. these findings on individualism’s effect are largely at odds with previous findings, which were more inclined to its contributing aspects. to explain the inconsistency in findings, i conducted additional analyses to see whether the effect was largely affected by variation in controlled variables. table 12 below reveals that, among other value dimensions, ivr’s inclusion made individualism’s potential positive effect disappear for happiness, and reversed to negative for ls. in other words, the large reduction in individualism’s effect is due to ivr’s inclusion in the present analyses. this can be theoretically explained in relation to two separate dimensions of autonomy, which have been distinguished by schwartz (1994). schwartz distinguished two types of autonomyintellectual autonomy, referring to the independent pursuit of one’s own ideas and intellectual directions, and affective autonomy, referring to the independent pursuit of positive experience like pleasure, excited-ness, and a varied life. here, it should be remembered that i have already stated some reasons for the weak effect of intellectual autonomy when describing on gprge’s effects. 11 in the ls sample, the highest observed value of standardized individualism was 2.815, but the turning point in model 4a was 57.113. file:///d:/research%20-%20swb/revising/table%20-%20revised%20(final)%20(august%206).docx%23table_7 re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 table 11. individual's polynomial effect patterns' variation across model series 1-4 dependent variable model no. quadratic termb turning pointa polynomial effect’s shape value n belowc 0p%d locatione happiness model 1b (−)(−) −0.115 85177 048.50 near the median highest at moderate levelf model 1c (−)(−) −0.188 83690 047.65 near the median highest at moderate level model 1d (−)(−) −0.123 85177 048.50 near the median highest at moderate level model 2a (+) −0.006 89583 051.00 near the median lowest at moderate level model 2b (−) −0.575 50628 028.83 low-middle close to negative linear effectg model 2c (−)(−)(−) −0.146 93232 053.08 near the median highest at moderate level model 2d (+)(+)(+) −0.666 45065 025.66 just above the 1st quartile close to positive linear effect model 2e (−)(−) −0.079 85177 048.50 near the median highest at moderate level life satisfaction model 3b (−)(−) −1.206 31138 017.73 below the 1st quartile close to negative linear effect model 3c (−)(−) −1.580 8830 005.05 near the lowest extreme close to negative linear effect model 3d (−)(−) −1.833 2466 001.41 near the lowest extreme close to negative linear effect model 4a (+) 57.113 174850 100.00 above the highest value close to negative linear effect model 4b (−) −1.936 2466 001.41 near the lowest extreme close to negative linear effect model 4c (−)(−)(−) −0.795 43386 024.81 below the 1st quartile close to negative linear effect model 4d (+)(+)(+) −0.204 80868 046.25 near the median lowest at moderate level model 4e (−)(−) −1.978 2466 001.41 near the lowest extreme close to negative linear effect note: for happiness sample, n = 175639; for life satisfaction sample, n = 174850. aturning point = the predictor’s value point where the polynomial effect’s direction changes. b(−)(−)(−):negative, below .10; (−)(−): negative, from −.10 to −.05; (−): negative but above −.05; (+): zero or positive, from .00 to .05; (+)(+): from .05 to .10; (+)(+)(+): positive and above .10. c the number of observations with individualism level below the turning point. dit refers to within-sample percentile of turning point’s individualism score. ewhen the turning point is far from the mid-point, it is more likely that most countries have the same direction of polynomial effects— that explains the need to specify turning point’s sketchy location, through comparison with maximum, minimum, and median values of standardized individualism; in happiness sample, min. = −2.062, median = −0.022, max. = 2.823; in life satisfaction sample, min. = −2.059, median = −0.023, max. = 2.815. fat moderate level means when the individualism’s level is moderate. gthe polynomial is actually very similar to negative linear effect, either because turning point was near the lowest value and above that point the polynomial function kept decreasing, or because turning point was near the highest value and only above that point the function began to increase, applying to very few countries. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 table 12. individualism’s effect for swb’s variation, by the controlled value dimension variables controlled value dimensions happiness models life satisfaction models model no. b log-likelihood model no. b rsquared none model 7a 0.151*** −178927 model 8a −0.217*** .118 mas model 7b 0.146*** −178898 model 8b −0.207*** .119 mas, pdi model 7c 0.104*** −178849 model 8c −0.086*** .122 mas, pdi, uai model 7d 0.061*** −178667 model 8d −0.011*** .126 mas, pdi, uai, lto model 7e 0.156*** −177530 model 8e −0.106*** .135 mas, pdi, uai, lto, ivr model 7f −0.031*** −173322 model 8f −0.119*** .182 note: ordinal logistic regression for happiness, and general regression for life satisfaction; both with robust standard errors. n for happiness sample = 179337; n for life satisfaction sample = 178564. mas = masculinity; pdi = power distance; uai = uncertainty avoidance; lto = long/short-term orientation; ivr = indulgence vs. restraint. linear effect of individual-level demographic variables including age, sex, three-step income level, four-step education, employment status, marital status, religiosity, and health were included in all models but are not displayed in the table. * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 comparing schwartz and hofstede’s value systems, schwartz’s affective autonomy is similar to hofstede’s ivr, in that both relate to cultural endorsement of pleasure-seeking behaviors. therefore, controlling ivr’s effect in the model, individualism no longer counts the affective autonomy. while individualism has been discussed often in association with autonomy (diener et al., 1999; diener & suh, 1997; larsen & eid, 2008), when ivr effect is controlled individualism’s autonomous aspect is limited to intellectual autonomy. further, it should be remembered that, except minkov (2009), no previous study has co-included individualism and ivr for swb models. in my view, this would explain individualism’s having a far smaller effect than those found in previous studies. individualism’s effect is no longer inflated because, while previously it covered both affective and intellectual autonomy, in the present study it covers only intellectual autonomy, which is not a main contributor to swb. 3.3.2 masculinity contrary to basabe et al.’s (2000) argument, masculinity effect was positive in all models for both ls and happiness. while masculine culture’s negative effect was not replicated, its positive effect for ls was close-to-zero in all full models except in model 4d, and for happiness it was weak in all full models. taken together, the present findings differ from previous arguments, but they are not remarkable enough to allow new arguments to be suggested. to be more certain of masculine/feminine culture’s association with swb, further studies are needed. 3.3.3 pdi as expected, pdi effects for happiness were negative. none of them, however, was to the substantial degree. in all ls full models except model 4b, its effects were rather positive, significant or not. while the effect was close-to-zero in model 4d and 4e, the coefficient became above +.05 in model 4a and 4c. with some theoretical grounds, those results can be interpreted as a challenge to the high pdi’s dysfunction theory, which has been firmly argued in previous studies, including basabe et al.’s (2000) paper. it is theoretically possible that, in certain societies, the high pdi culture might bring its own benefits. hierarchy makes individual members feel re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 more stable and facilitates within-group coordination (magee & galinsky, 2008, p. 5). accordingly, in my view, since higher pdi means more widespread acceptance of the hierarchy, it might contribute to stability in social relationship. likewise, it is also possible that low pdi be detrimental in some societies. here it should be remembered that the definition of low pdi regards little acceptance of hierarchy, not necessarily egalitarianism. pdi may be low not only in egalitarian societies, but also in hobbesian societies where everyone struggles for power with no controlling authority, eventually degrading social swb. in any case, further studies should consider more possibilities for pdi’s effects on swb, including my conjectures. 3.3.4 uai among four original hofstede dimensions, only uai’s effect was plainly replicated, in line with previous arguments. its effect was significantly negative in all models for both happiness and ls though the degree was weak or close-to-zero. 3.3.5 lto lto’s effect for happiness turned negative whenever social quality factors were included (model 1d and model series 2). in full models for ls, the lto’s effect direction was varied but all effects above close-to-zero in degree were negative. overall, the present models are inclined to lto’s negative aspects. while hofstede (2001) defined lto as “the fostering of virtues oriented towards future rewards, in particular, perseverance and thrift” (p. 359), it seems that the emphasis on the future and success do not contribute to swb. 3.3.6 ivr unlike the effects of all other value dimensions, the influence of ivr on swb was consistently overwhelming. with effects always above or around .50 in all models, along with marital status and health, its effect for swb held the most powerful explanatory power. this finding is in line with minkov (2009), who found the importance of ivr was predominant, while most of the other effects were non-significant. he suggested that replication is needed because the wvs sample covers only a few countries in miserable conditions. however, i do not agree with his point. to quote the expression of triandis (2000, p. 31), sufficiently many ‘vulnerable’ societies were included in the wvs (e.g. belarus, iran, kyrgyzstan); even iraq has been surveyed in the wvs no less than three times (in 2004, 2006, and 2012). in any case, the predominant influence of ivr is not a byproduct of sampling bias, and the present study confirms indulgence’s robust and overwhelming effect on swb. 3.4 demographic variables’ moderation by sefs as a result of introducing national social effects’ moderating effects, many interaction effects recorded in previous studies have been altered. while bonini (2007), helliwell (2008), and swift et al. (2014)’s moderating effect of sex, individual income, and marital status by cultural zones were transferred to moderating effects by non-economic social factors, the interaction effects involving age, individual education, and religiosity disappeared; furthermore, the positive moderation of individual income by national income in bonini (2007) was reversed to negative. likewise, the moderation of national social factors by national income in previous studies disappeared, being replaced by value dimensions. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 3.4.1 low individual income: national wealth, edu/welfare, and gprge no less than three national factorslog gdp, edu/welfare, and gprgeinteracted with low individual income. the edu/welfare and gprge’s moderation suggests, in societies mature in the level of democracy, gender equality, governance, and welfare system, the deprived people are less disadvantaged. meanwhile, the log gdp’s negative moderation suggests that the meaning of individual’s relative poverty differs between rich and poor nationsbeing relatively poor in affluent countries might be merely a matter of economic dissatisfaction, but in poor countries it is a matter of survival. 3.4.2 male gender: by national employment factor and social capital in model 2b and 4b, national employment factor moderated the male sex. this can be explained by the fact that in most countries, in reality, the male is more responsible for getting a job and providing food for the family. therefore, males are more likely to be concerned. in model 2e and 4e, social capital moderated the male sex, which can be explained by gender difference in political participation and interests, which are parts of social capital components. in fact, it has been repeatedly found that “compared to women, men are more knowledgeable about and more interested in politics and more likely to feel politically efficacious (verba, burns, & schlozman, 1997, p. 1051)”, for reasons like women's disadvantage in access to information sources, the difference in social roles, and men's aggressiveness and taste for conflict. 3.4.3 marital status: edu/welfare and social capital factor models 2c and 4c show that married peoples get more benefit when the national education/welfare system level is better. this can be explained by two facts. first, the welfare system of most societies is centered on household units. since households are mostly formed through marriage, this means that those married, all of who have their own family, are generally in a more favorable position as welfare system beneficiaries. the same holds for education. for those married and with children, national education is important because it is related to the burden of their children’s education as a part of their domestic affairs. opposite to edu/welfare, social capital factor negatively moderated marriedness. that is, the single (unmarried) get more benefits from social capital than the married. in societies with a low level of social capital, the unmarried or the single will have more difficulties in accessing opportunities for social interactions out of the home. for the same people in high-level social capital countries, on the contrary, the increase in social memberships can buffer possible loneliness and social isolation. 3.4 interactions between national wealth and social quality no social quality factor interacted with wealth with coefficient over .05 both for happiness and ls. 3.5 value dimensions’ moderation of sefs 3.5.1 ivr’s negative interactions with national wealth, edu/welfare, and gprge while ivr’s interaction with the national employment factor (model 2b and 4b) should be dealt with in subsequent studies, ivr also negatively interacted with national wealth, edu/welfare, and gprge. that is, the effect of a high indulgence culture is greater in countries which are low in national affluence, education, governance, equality, and political freedom. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 such interaction between ivr and low social development seems to suggest that the nature of ivr, in certain aspects, is of evasive pleasure. this becomes more obvious when we focus on the negative interaction between equality/democracy/governance (gprge) and ivr. in many socio-politically oppressive societies (low gprge), people are often given the chance to console themselves through leisure, sports, or entertainment that is supported by the non-democratic government, with aims to appease people’s discontent. actually, most dictatorial regimes sponsor sports or entertainment (tunis, 1935)12. in my view, a similar argument can be made for ivr’s interaction with low edu/welfare and low national wealth. when people are poor and unprotected by society, they keep more to their current pleasure because they do not have hope for the future13. in this sense, ivr’s effect for swb partially reflects some aspects of swb whose nature is closer to blind happiness, which was argued by graham (2009). 3.5.2 edu/welfare’s interaction with individualism and uai for both ls and happiness, the edu/welfare factor was moderated by individualism in models 2c and 4c, to a moderate degree. according to adelman (1988), cohen and avrahami (2006), and kim and mckenry (1998), the development of institutional welfare reduces the community need for mutual informal support. this suggests that the effect of welfare for swb will be less in collectivistic societies, where according to kim & mckenry (1998) the informal support is more emphasized. to put it in another way, welfare effect will be higher in the individualistic culture than in the collectivistic one, which explains the robust interactions between individualism and edu/welfare factor. in models 2c and 4c, the edu/welfare factor was also moderated by uai, for both happiness and ls. moderation by uai can be explained by the reality that in societies where people are more prone to subjective security, perceived risks and uncertainties, current wealth becomes important to relieve anxiety. 3.5.3 national employment factor by pdi and low uai in models 2b and 4b, beside being moderated by ivr, the national employment factor was also moderated by pdi and low uai. the moderating effect of low uai is worth discussion in relation to the work environment. according to wennekers, thurik, stel, & noorderhaven (2007), large companies in high uai societies have a more restrictive climate than those in low uai societies, lowering satisfaction in the work environment. furthermore, employees of such companies are more worried about their future, suffering high job stress, fear of failure, lower ambition for individual advancement and pessimism about motives (arrindell et al., 1997, p. 42). while arrindell et al. associated those negative characteristics only with uai’s main effects, the present study relates those factors with not only uai’s negative main effects, but also the lower priority of national employment in high uai societies. a probable explanation for this is that getting a job (higher employment factor) is less meaningful in high uai societies because their cultural traits demotivate workers. meanwhile, pdi’s moderation on national employment can be explained with two factors. one is that employedness has more meanings in high pdi societies than in the othersin high pdi culture, having a job should be understood not only in terms of self-realization, but also in 12 for instance, spain’s former franco regime’s support for soccer, (xifra, 2008, p. 194), nazi germany’s effort to hold successful olympic games (murray, 1992), korea’s chun doo-hwan government’s deep interest in sports (kim, 2008). 13 actually, poverty and hedonism are often stated together (e.g. brasseaux, 1989, p. 3; castillo & beilock, n.d.; debnath & mondal, 2014, p. 658) re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 terms of fulfilling responsibility for their family (hwa-froelich & vigil, 2004). from the perspective of corporate organizations, in turn, companies in high pdi cultures are likely to adopt a seniority system, and this would add to importance of early job-getting in order to secure the future. in my view, this adds to the importance of being employed in high pdi countries, and this possibility explains the interaction between high pdi and national employment. 3.5.4 gprge’s negative interaction with individualism and masculinity in models 2d and 4d, gprge negatively interacted with individualism, to the strongest degree among all interaction terms for both happiness and ls. statistically, this finding seems to support that in individualistic cultures higher gprge becomes more detrimental to swb. theoretically, however, there is not any ground to support that interpretation. since both are related to intellectual autonomy, rather, it would be more valid to interpret the negative interaction as that gprge and individualism are mutual substitutes, and therefore when one’s level increases, the other one’s need decreases14. meanwhile, gprge interacted with feministic culture (low masculinity), weakly for happiness and moderately for ls (model 2d and 4d). its possible explanation is that the quality of life is more valued in a feministic culture, while it is facilitated by developed gprge. in the same models, gprge also interacted with uai, weakly for happiness but substantially for ls. the moderation effect of uai can be explained by relating governance (one component of gprge) with the ability to handle people’s subjective uncertainty, a similar argument to the one developed by schramm-nielsen (2000), who compared social causes of the degree of uai in denmark with that of france. regarding denmark’s lower uai culture than that of france, they explained with two factors; (a) danish organizational rules which explicitly allows more deviances, and endows more autonomy for subordinates, and (b) factors discouraging people from seeking permanent security in the same company (e.g. historical familiarity with high job mobility and rarity in internal promotions). they considered those elements as a part of state capacity, to deal with subjective uncertainty. considering state capacity’s conceptual association with governance, which is part of gprge, their arguments provide indirect explanations for the interaction between gprge and uai’s interaction. in other words, it can be said that governance is important for reducing/relieving the uncertainty in daily life, in order to prevent perceived uncertainty’s saturation going beyond a tolerable level, and for allowing individuals to freely handle it. 4. implications and concluding remarks using wvs panel data covering 1981 to 2013 for 59 countries, the present research aimed to explore swb determinants in greater detail, in three ways. first, this study took the full-model approach, analyzing joint effect of broad ranged economic, social, and cultural variables. second, the present paper also extended the cross-contextual approach by introducing new types of moderation effects. additionally, the present study took into account recent cultural changes in hofstede’s value dimensions, for more valid measurement of the relationship between value dimensions and swb. with those methods of interpretation, i could explain far richer findings than those hitherto discussed. while not all the new findings confirm the previous findings and existing swb theories, they could be explained with the following four ways of interpretation. 14 interpreting negative interaction as a mutually substituting relationship is not a completely new idea. the same approach was also taken by hanson (2015, p. 13), who discussed democracy and state capacity. re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 the first way is to focus on the individual/social needs regulated by national cultural values and individuals’ demographic traits, which in turn determines the relative importance of different predictors. for instance, i have specified that the more collectivistic the country is, the less beneficial the national welfare system is. likewise, by stating the higher priority of jobseeking and political participation, i could explain the moderating effects involving the male sex. the second way of interpretation is to focus on the analyzed variables’ meaning for an individual's personal life and social/organizational relationship. for instance, taking account of religiousness and marital status’s multi-faceted utilities, their effects on ls and happiness could be clarified. the third way of interpretation is to relate predictors with abstract valuesfor instance, autonomy. those values could not be and had not been operationalized quantitatively. however, their theoretical links with swb have been discussed in previous studies, creating clues about the effect of related predictors in the present analyses. for instance, the autonomy-swb relationship was able to be related to the present findings on the degree of individualism, gprge, and ivr’s effects. the last way of interpretation was the more methodological oneconfounding effects and robust estimation. this method was used especially for interpreting many of the present findings that differ from the previous ones. for instance, i have shown that uncontrolling ivr effects could cause inflation of individualism effects. likewise, when the hypothesis of national wealth’s diminishing marginal effects was rejected, i explained that by confounding with national wealth’s interaction with social factors. it should be noted that with comprehensive analyses on swb determinants, the present study revealed coherent effect patterns by variable types, as follows. first, with income level’s substantial effects, both for happiness and ls and both at individual and national level, the present study confirms the relevance of material conditions for swb. meanwhile, the predominant effect of social capital and marital status confirms the importance of social relationship and connectedness. additionally, the strong effect of ivr shows that temporary pleasure is more influential for both happiness and ls than has been hitherto considered. conversely, i could not find strong association between social progress and swb, despite the presence of its theoretical arguments in heylighen & bernheim (2001) and yee & chang (2009); among four social quality factors, edu/welfare and gprge seem to be the most closely related to social progress, but in the present study their effects were far from being remarkable. 4.1 future research 4.1.1 limitations of the present study the present research’s limitations are as follows. first, the present study did not consider a global sample. although i have stated that vulnerable countries were sufficiently counted in the present study’s sample, still the proportion between developed and underdeveloped countries (23 countries from oecd and 36 from non–oecd) does not match the proportions found in the real world. furthermore, despite that the present study substantially extended the range of crosscontextual effects, there are still more to be exploredfor instance, cultural values’ moderation on demographic variables. furthermore, national contexts affecting demographic effects are themselves, in reality, a combination of economy, society, and culture. it might be possible that, for instance, that individual education’s effect is moderated by the national wealth, and in turn this moderating effect is affected by national pdi level. national factors themselves mutually re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 interact, while at the same time influencing individual variables’ relevance to swb. while ciftci (2010, p. 145) found that the swb consequence of democracy development is varied by each country’s existing cultural and institutional schemes, the same can apply to other non-economic social factors. this fortifies the significance of analyzing moderating effects that are more complex, beyond two-dimensional interactions. for instance, the three-dimensional interaction between pdi, national wealth, and individual-level gender will show another picture of the swb mechanism. even when considering only national-level variables, exploring multi-order interactions (e.g. welfare effect’s variation, across combination models of national wealth and pdi culture) will enrich cross-contextual approaches to determinants of swb. furthermore, while i used hofstede dimensions as parameters of culture, there are far more cultural domains whose contexts deserve further researches. for further clarification of the swb mechanism, prospective studies should examine contexts defined by other cultural domains than hofstede dimensions. among those alternative cultural domains, the most familiar one for swb researchers would be the cultural zone. dealing with the cultural zone’s contexts would be far more intricate than doing with value dimensions’ contexts. the nature of value dimensions is assumed to be constant over time, and its defined attributes often tell some possible social consequences by themselves. for instance, we do not have to always know korea or spain’s histories or traditions, in order to understand high uai culture’s social functions in those countries. to explore cultural zones contexts, on the contrary, we will have to understand any socio-cultural changes that might have affected value priorities for swb. that means we have to look at the whole history of that culture, even when we use a rough approach to the culturespecific determinants for swb. those difficulties, however, do not deny the need to explore contexts of other cultural domains than value dimensions, for full understanding of contextual approach in swb determinants. besides, effect coherence by variable types suggests the need for further discussion of the nature of swb. this is related to two subjects: the prevalence of pleasure-seeking effects, and the degree of conceptual equivalence between social progress and swb. hitherto, debates on the nature of swb have been represented by two distinct viewpointspleasure-centered hedonism and virtue-centered eudaimonism (ryan & deci, 2001; waterman, 1993). in the present study, the pleasure-related variables exerted a coherently strong effect for not only happiness but also for ls, whose nature is rather eudaimonic than hedonistic (bünger, 2010; proctor, tweed, & morris, 2014). thus, the present findings are plainly inclined to the hedonistic viewpoint. by extension, it also suggests the possibility that the pleasure-seeking attitude’s role might be crucial, even more than hitherto discussed in swb research. contrary to pleasure-related variables, the effect of social progress turned out to be weak even for eudaimonic ls (bünger, 2010; proctor et al., 2014), indicating the discrepancy between social progress and swb. while various researchers see swb as an equivalent of social progress or as its direct outcome (e.g. d’acci, 2010; mcclean, 2014; plé, 2000; veenhoven, 2008; veenhoven & kalmijn, 2005), the present findings do not confirm such a stance. of course, the present study alone is not enough for complete rejection of their conceptual proximitynot confirming is not the same as rejection. in prospective analyses with a worldwide or more proportionate sample, the social progress effects might be larger than in the present findings. furthermore, even if social effects are weak in overall, swb still can be used to evaluate the social outcome of policies; we can still evaluate each social domain’s relative effects for swb, and find the relevant and effective policies that are connected with social domains having remarkable effects. at the least, however, the present study does suggest the need for re-discussion of the conceptual relationship between social progress and swb. here, it is worth stating two main re-exploration of subjective well-being determinants jun www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 stances on the nature of social progressuniversalistic and cultural relativistic views. in the universalistic view, the criterion and nature of social progress is universal, and should be applied equally across cultures (e.g. follett, 1998; spencer, 1895). accordingly, social progress factors’ measurement should be cross-culturally varied, and this makes it unfeasible to analyze the effect of standardized social progress factors for a multi-cultural sample. the universalistic view, therefore, supports that social progress and swb are heterogeneous concepts, and thus they should be taken separately. cultural relativists, in turn, argue that the current concept of social progress has been formed in the western tradition, and therefore it should not be forced on to other cultures (e.g. çaylak, 2008; riegg, 2007, p. 3). accordingly, since the definition of social progress is varied across cultures, in the cross-cultural sample studies it cannot be measured in a consistent way. thus, it will be harder to test social progress and swb’s conceptual equivalence or unrelated-ness. in this case, to continue exploring the conceptual links between social progress and swb, our frameworks of social progress should allow for constituting indicators that are partially varied across cultures. either universalism or cultural relativism is adapted, the present study casts doubt on the viewpoint that swb should be understood in the frame of social progress. above all, the effect patterns in the present study are too coherent to be disregarded. acknowledgement i would like to thank three professors of seoul national university: prof. jaeyeol yee, for his concern with my statistical rigorousness; , prof. dukjin chang, for having been my teacher of sociological foundations; prof. inchul choi, for his interest in my research despite disciplinary difference and my own earlier inexperiences. i am also grateful to daewook kim, phd student of sociology, for having encouraged me to pay attention to happiness studies. author ki-hoon jun seoul national university siskoih7@snu.ac.kr publishing timeline received 2 february 2015 accepted 25 august 2015 published 18 december 2015 references abbott, p., & wallace, c. 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(2011). the evolution of eupathics: the historical roots of subjective measures of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 4-41. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.14 erik angner university of alabama at birmingham angner@uab.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 article the evolution of eupathics: the historical roots of subjective measures of wellbeing erik angner abstract: this paper traces the historical roots of subjective measures of wellbeing, that is, measures designed to represent happiness, satisfaction, or other ‚positive‛ or desirable mental states. while it is often suggested that these measures are a modern invention, i argue that they have a long and rich history that conforms to theodore m. porter’s general account of measurement in social and behavioral science. subjective measures emerged in marital success studies, educational psychology, and personality psychology in the 1920s and 30s, and were further shaped by the epidemiology of mental health, gerontology, and the social indicator movement in the 1960s and 70s. consistent with porter’s account, these measures emerged in applied rather than theoretical branches of social and behavioral science, and they did so not as a result of physics envy, but rather as a result of a moral impulse to improve society; quantification was intended to make up for perceived deficiencies in unaided human judgment; and radical disagreements about the nature of wellbeing did not impede efforts to measure it – indeed, in time, there was considerably more agreement about how to measure wellbeing than about how to define it. keywords: eupathics, happiness, measurement, satisfaction, wellbeing, well-being, positive psychology 1. introduction it is often suggested that subjective measures of wellbeing – measures designed to represent happiness, satisfaction, or other ‚positive‛ or desirable mental states – are a relatively new invention. bruno s. frey and alois stutzer, for example, write: ‚recently, great progress has been achieved in economics: happiness has been seriously measured, and many of its determinants have been identified‛ (frey & stutzer, 2000, p. 145). two years later, the same authors note that economists traditionally have given little attention to questions of happiness, and add: ‚in the past few years the situation has changed: a number of economists see an advantage in measuring subjective well-being as expressed by individuals themselves‛ (2002, p. vii). similarly, it is often suggested that the so-called science of happiness – the body of empirical generalizations developed using subjective measures – constitutes a new development. this suggestion is evident, e.g., in the subtitle of richard layard’s book happiness: lessons from a new science (2005), and it is supported by authors like martin e. p. seligman, who grumbles: ‚for the last half century psychology has been consumed with a single topic only – mental illness‛ (seligman, 2002, p. ix). the impression that the systematic study of happiness and the like constitutes a recent development is partially due to its association with the positive psychology movement (cf. the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). this movement, which emerged in the 1990s in large part due to seligman’s efforts, is motivated by the belief that traditional psychology has spent an inordinate amount of time examining psychological pathology. according to positive psychologists, traditional psychology overlooked ‚positive‛ mental states because they were seen as derivative from or less authentic than negative ones, and therefore less worthy of study; in contrast, positive psychology proceeds from the assumption that positive mental states are no more derivative and no less authentic than negative ones, and consequently worthy of attention in their own right (seligman, 2002; seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). because of their implicit or explicit association with positive psychology, which as a self-conscious subdiscipline of psychology is a new development, it may seem as though subjective measures of wellbeing are new too. the goal of this paper is to trace the historical roots of measures of happiness, satisfaction, and the like. my thesis is that such measures, far from being a novel invention, have a long and rich history, and that this history conforms to the general account of measurement in social and behavioral science offered by theodore m. porter (1995). the appearance of a science of happiness was perhaps marked by a 1917 article promoting a discipline of ‚eupathics,‛ defined as the study of ‚the well being of the normal‛ (myerson, 1917, p. 344). modern efforts to develop measures of happiness, etc., are part of an uninterrupted research stream going back at least to the 1920s and 1930s. subjective measures emerged in marital success studies, educational psychology, and personality psychology in the 1920s and 30s, as tools developed for the study of personality were applied to happiness and satisfaction; the measures were further shaped by the epidemiology of mental health, gerontology, and the social indicator movement in the 1960s and 70s, as measures of happiness and satisfaction were recruited as proxies for mental health and wellbeing in large, representative samples. consistent with porter’s account, subjective measures of wellbeing emerged in applied rather than theoretical branches of social science, where they were developed not as a result of physics envy but of a moral impulse to improve society; quantification was intended to make up for perceived deficiencies in unaided human judgment; and radical disagreements about the nature of wellbeing did not impede efforts to measure it – indeed, in time, there was considerably more agreement about how to measure wellbeing than about how to define it. as an exercise in what hasok chang (2004) has called history of science as complementary science – that is, the ‚continuation of science by other means‛ (p. 249) – the history of subjective measures of wellbeing should be of interest not just to historians of psychology, but to practicing social and behavioral scientists as well as to anyone interested in the application of the science of happiness to public policy. as the quotes in the first paragraph above indicate, even highly prominent researchers of happiness and satisfaction appear unaware of the longevity and richness of the research stream of which they are part. the story offers further evidence for chang’s thesis that history can serve to recover knowledge – about natural and social phenomena as well as about previous efforts to measure them – that appears to have been forgotten; to develop critical awareness of contemporary efforts, their prospects and limitations; and to suggest novel experimental and theoretical developments. 2. the emergence and evolution of subjective measures in this section, i outline how measures of happiness and satisfaction emerged in educational psychology, marital success studies, and personality psychology in the 1920s and 30s, and how those measures were further shaped by the epidemiology of mental health, gerontology, and the social indicator movement in the 1960s and 70s (see appendix a for a timeline). as my the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 starting point, i take the references in a prominent contemporary review article (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999) as well as the sources quoted therein; for the early studies, i have relied heavily on the review article by warner wilson (1967). i group the studies by the discipline in which they appeared in order to emphasize the broad movements that generated and sustained an interest in happiness, and the like, as well as in the methods required to measure such things. this is not to suggest that work in different disciplines was entirely independent: in fact, as we will see, there was a fair amount of cross-pollination. furthermore, i do not mean to suggest that the historical sketch below is in any interesting sense complete: given how rich the history turns out to be, and given my focus on broad trends, i can offer only brief sketches of individual figures, projects, measures, and methods, and hint at the cultural, intellectual, academic, social, and economic context of which they were part. 2.1 marital success studies two of the earliest studies on happiness were penologist and social worker katharine bement davis’s factors in the sex life of twenty-two hundred women (1929) and psychiatrist g. v. hamilton’s a research in marriage (1929). davis, who received her ph.d. in economics, was interested in gathering ‚adequate data as to both the physical and mental facts of the sex life of the normal individual‛ (davis, 1929, p. ix). she also wanted to explore correlations between facts about women’s sex lives and other aspects of their lives. thus, one of the questions given to the roughly 2,200 subjects was the following: ‚do you consider your life on the whole (a) happy, satisfactory, successful; (b) unhappy, unsatisfactory, unsuccessful? in each case why?‛ (p. 89). hamilton’s study was similar in spirit, except that his subjects were married couples. he gave a window into what motivated these studies when he wrote: my standpoint is that of the psychiatrist who believes that subjective phenomena, as these are experienced by the persons who report their occurrence, do not need to be translated into anything else in order to be dealt with as objectively as we deal with all other biological phenomena (hamilton, 1929, p. xi). specifically, hamilton wanted to know how satisfied his subjects were with their marriages. to this end, he used responses to a set of questions about satisfaction to compute a ‚satisfactiongrade,‛ which he also referred to as an ‚index of spousal satisfaction/dissatisfaction‛ (pp. 7879). the satisfaction grade was thought to represent what hamilton called ‚marital success‛ (p. 8). the work of davis and hamilton clearly inspired lewis m. terman, stanford professor of education and psychology, proponent of large-scale standardized testing, and famous above all for the stanford-binet intelligence test (hilgard, 1957). in a 1938 book called psychological factors in marital happiness, terman described his project as follows: ‚we have selected as the theme of our study that aspect of the successful marriage which may be designated as marital happiness, and we wish to ascertain, if possible, what psychological factors are demonstrably associated with this state‛ (terman, 1938, p. 2). to this end, terman distributed questionnaires to 792 couples from the ‚middle and upper-middle classes of urban and semiurban californians‛ (p. 13). he constructed a ‚marital happiness score‛ on the basis of ‚(1) subjective ratings of the happiness of the marriage; and (2) factual information on husband-wife agreement or disagreement about various matters,‛ in which the subjective rating ‚was allowed a heavy weighting‛ (p. 3). for the subjective rating, respondents were given the question ‚everything considered, how happy has your marriage been?‛ and asked to ‚draw a circle around 1, 2, 3, 4, the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 5, 6, or 7,‛ where the options were ‚1 = extraordinarily happy,‛ ‚2 = decidedly more happy than the average,‛ ‚3 = somewhat more happy than the average,‛ and so on (p. 440). a decade after davis (1929), but drawing above all on terman (1938), sociologists ernest w. burgess and leonard s. cottrell published a study called predicting success or failure in marriage (1939). their study had three goals: to define ‚marriage adjustment,‛ to identify what factors were associated with marital success or failure, and to determine whether it was possible to predict ahead of time which marriages would lead to happiness and which would not (burgess & cottrell, 1939, p. 15). burgess and cottrell motivated their study of marital success by arguing that marital adjustment and incompatibility had become a social problem and therefore of public concern (p. 1). defining their terms, the authors wrote: a well-adjusted marriage from the point of view of this study may then be defined as a marriage in which the attitudes and acts of each of the partners produce an environment which is favorable to the functioning of the personality of each, particularly in the sphere of primary relationships (burgess & cottrell, 1939, p. 10). in their study, 526 couples were given the following prompt: ‚appraisal of marriage: very unhappy.....; unhappy.....; average.....; happy.....; very happy.....‛ and asked to check the relevant box (burgess & cottrell, 1939, p. 422). in practice, the authors used happiness as the criterion by which they judged both adjustment and success (p. 30). in sum, davis, hamilton and their followers were interested in a cluster of concepts – including ‚happiness,‛ ‚adjustment,‛ ‚success,‛ and ‚satisfaction‛ – which by and large were treated as interchangeable, and in the association of those concepts with personality, background, and sexual factors. these authors clearly believed that ‚subjective phenomena‛ were worthy of study in their own right and that they could be explored directly – without being ‚translated into anything else,‛ as hamilton (1929, p. xi) put it – by means of straightforward questions about respondents’ happiness or satisfaction. the description of inadequate marital adjustment as a social problem and of public concern underscores the fact that they thought the results of their studies could be helpful in alleviating social problems. interestingly, some of these researchers appear to have been more concerned with the happiness or satisfaction of the marriage than with that of the people in it (burgess & cottrell, 1939, p. 422; terman, 1938, p. 440). this literature might have been motivated not primarily by a desire to make people happy, but by a desire to ensure a sufficiently high population growth rate. 2.2 educational psychology perhaps the most influential early study of happiness, however, was goodwin watson’s ‚happiness among adult students of education‛ (1930). watson, who was a professor of education at columbia university’s teachers college, introduced his topic in the following way: no human quest may claim a larger following that that for happiness and satisfaction in life. even the highest ethics tends to justify itself by its contribution to human happiness. the beatitudes themselves constitute an attempt to formulate the conditions of the most blessed existence. certainly any educational program in modern times is likely to be justified only in terms of its direct or indirect contribution to human happiness. it becomes, therefore, extraordinary almost beyond belief that so few attempts have been made to the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 apply the techniques of psychological study to the understanding of happiness (watson, 1930, p. 79). what watson called ‚the highest ethics‛ might have referred to aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia or to the utilitarians’ maxim of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and ‚*the+ beatitudes‛ to the blessings said by jesus in the sermon on the mount. watson clearly disapproved of the fact that psychologists had not explored systematically how to achieve greater happiness – as instructed by philosophical and religious authorities – and he set out to make up for the deficiency. watson distributed anonymous questionnaires to 388 graduate students of education, and used a wide variety of measures to elicit degrees of happiness. as we will see in section 3.4, some of the measures were remarkably sophisticated. examining the responses, watson noted that subjects in general ‚tended to think of themselves as above the average on each happiness item‛ (p. 84). subjects who scored low to average in aggregate happiness ‚appeared to believe that they gave an impression of greater happiness than was justified,‛ whereas those who scored high ‚felt no sense of masquerade‛ (p. 87). watson also studied the correlation between aggregate happiness and subjects’ personality traits and living conditions. he found that happiness was not predicted by iq scores (p. 88), age, whether the subject came from a small town, physical defects, number of siblings, parents’ demand for obedience, having parents older than 40, whether the mother had a career, parents’ divorce or separation, school marks, extra-curricular activities, crushes, a wise sex education, or (perceived) popularity with the opposite sex, among other things (pp. 94-96). perceived harmony between parents did predict happiness, however (p. 94), as did (among other things) a preference to spend a few hours with the most delightful known companion of the same sex over one of the opposite sex, an ability to give a lecture to high school students about sex, an ability to administer a large group of people, an absence of strong fears, health during adolescence, an ability to fuse well, an absence of shyness or timidity, and marriage (p. 97). another important early contribution to the literature on happiness was a thesis written by randolph c. sailer under watson’s supervision. the thesis was published as happiness selfestimates of young men (sailer, 1931). while sailer largely followed the approach taken by watson (1930), he was also inspired by hamilton (1929) and others (sailer, 1931, p. 7). this fact indicates that there was cross-pollination at an early stage: researchers with different backgrounds were not ignorant of their predecessors’ efforts and in fact built upon them. distributing questionnaires to 500 young men across the united states, sailer found among other things an association between happiness on the one hand and religion as well as sociability on the other (p. 99). he added: ‚an especially notable relationship, the largest found in the entire study, connected those reporting themselves ‘more even, on a level’ rather than ‘more up-and-down, now happy, now depressed’ with the happier groups‛ (pp. 98-99). in the mid-1930s, a number of studies followed watson and sailer in exploring the relationship between various aspects of personality and happiness scores. many of these studies found a relationship that turned out to be surprisingly weak. thus, geo rge w. hartmann’s 1934 study ‚personality traits associated with variations in happiness‛ found little correlation between personality traits and experienced happiness (hartmann, 1934, p. 211). hartmann, who was a psychologist at the pennsylvania state college, used the term felicity instead of happiness (p. 209). similarly, percival m. symonds’s ‚happiness as related to problems and interests‛ (1937) concludes: ‚happy and unhappy *people+ are remarkably alike in their problems and interests. the unhappy do not have peculiar problems but make less the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 satisfactory adjustments to their problems‛ (symonds, 1937, p. 293). like watson and sailer, hartmann and symonds both had ties to the teachers college at columbia university. in sum, educational psychologists like watson, sailer, hartmann, and symonds agreed with davis, hamilton, and their followers that subjective phenomena like happiness and satisfaction were worthy of study in their own right. in contrast to some students of marital success, watson et al. were unambiguously interested in happiness, satisfaction, and felicity – which they appear to have treated as interchangeable – as a property of the individual person rather than his or her marriage. unlike the authors who preceded them, watson and his followers used a wide variety of sometimes remarkably sophisticated measures to assess the degree of happiness exhibited by their subjects. as we will see in section 3.4, the fact that they used a variety of measures allowed them to compare the performance of different measures and to argue that simple self-report measures were both reliable and valid and could often substitute for more extensive batteries of questions. that line of work set the tone for much of the research that followed. 2.3 personality psychology though efforts to measure happiness and satisfaction have roots in marital success studies and educational psychology, the discussion so far also implicates the discipline of personality psychology. according to a modern definition: ‚personality psychology is the scientific study of the whole person. the goal of personality inquiry is to provide a scientifically credible account of human individuality‛ (mcadams, 2001, p. 11308). at the time davis, watson, and their followers started studying happiness, personality psychology was in the process of emerging as an independent subdiscipline of psychology. while the effort to develop reliable methods for studying differences in personality traits across people and over time was not completely new, the ‚1921-1938 period was a time of intense research activity,‛ by the end of which the field of personality psychology was officially established (winter & barenbaum, 1999, pp. 8-9). the event is marked by the appearance of the first authoritative textbook (allport, 1937) and a landmark study (murray, 1938) (cf. mcadams, 2001, p. 11309). interestingly, murray went on to direct the work of herbert jeremy goldings at the harvard psychological clinic, to whom we will return in the next section (cf. goldings, 1954, p. 30). from its beginnings in the aftermath of world war i, personality psychology was characterized by an emphasis on measurement and psychometrics, and by a desire to be useful to corporations and governments (winter & barenbaum, 1999, p. 5). hence: building on the pioneering work of francis galton and alfred binet on mental testing and spurred by the mobilization of large military forces in world war i, psychologists began to invent self-report, multi-item tests to assess individual differences in personality functioning (mcadams, 2001, p. 11309). the hope was that a new exact science of personality would ‚furnish assistance to a corporate culture and a government suddenly confronted by dramatic changes and the need to ‘manage’ and control an american population that had suddenly become larger, more diverse, and ‘difficult’‛ (winter & barenbaum, 1999, p. 5). scientific and methodological developments relating to happiness and satisfaction during the late 1920s and 1930s are usefully seen against this background. the happiness research surveyed above was obviously driven by a desire to measure and account for personality characteristics across individuals. it was also apparently motivated by an ambition to enhance the happiness of people, or their marriages, and to help governments alleviate social problems. the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 seeing the measurement of happiness as an outgrowth of personality psychology is useful for answering watson’s question at the very beginning of his 1930 paper (cited in section 2.2). watson asked why it had taken so long for psychologists to explore empirically how happiness is distributed, what factors predict it, and how one should go about promoting it. the link with personality psychology goes a long way toward answering this question: it was not unti l after galton, binet, and the experiences of world war i that psychologists developed the confidence that they could reliably measure personality characteristics like happiness. in conclusion, the emergence of personality psychology as an independent subdiscipline of psychology was a critical step in the history of measures of happiness and satisfaction and the science of happiness. it was only with the establishment of personality psychology, thanks to people like allport and murray, that many psychologists developed the confidence that they could reliably and validly measure attributes of the person and that the results could be useful to governments and corporations. this hypothesis explains why, before the 1920s, few psychologists attempted to systematically measure happiness and satisfaction: the psychologists of the time had not yet convinced themselves that it was possible to measure attributes of the person. the hypothesis also explains why during the 1930s many psychologists thought that such a study was not only possible but long overdue. given that for philosophical, religious, or other reasons they thought that happiness was important to understand and promote, the conviction that it was possible to measure happiness quickly produced a desire to measure it. 2.4 synthesis and further development after these developments, in short order, there emerged a number of studies that drew equally on the results from marital happiness studies and educational psychology. for example, hornell hart’s inventive contribution chart for happiness (1940) explicitly drew on both.1 hart, a professor of sociology at duke university, asked: ‚one of the basic purposes of mankind is to be happy. can recent advances in scientific thinking tell us more and more effectively what to do in order to be happy, and in order to help make our fellow human beings happy?‛ (p. 16). the book was written both for those who ‚sense the fact that they are not living on as full a tide of happiness as they might attain‛ and for ‚psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, physicians, educators, social workers, pastors‛ and other professionals who are concerned with the happiness of others (pp. v-vi). hart paid more attention to the nature of happiness than his predecessors, offering not one but two ‚operational‛ definitions of the term: according to the one, people are happy insofar as they are prone to saying sincerely that they are happy; according to the other, people are happy insofar as they are in whatever state of consciousness that they seek to attain or maintain (pp. 182-184; cf. section 3.3 below). hart was deeply impressed by measurement instruments used in other scientific disciplines and hoped to develop something equally useful for happiness. having discussed intelligence tests, the fever thermometer, and the electrocardiograph, he went on to write: chart for happiness presents and explains another such invention, the euphorimeter, produced by the researches of various social scientists in various universities and colleges. this new instrument is to measure, not intelligence, or fever, or cardiac pulsations, but the happiness of those who submit themselves 1 specifically, hart discussed data from hamilton (1929), watson (1930), sailer (1931), terman (1938), and burgess and cottrell (1939) (cf. hart, 1940, pp. 173-174). hart was well versed in the research that preceded him. the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 to it. it is to diagnose, not mental aptitudes, nor physical disease, but the causes of human anguish (p. v). hart wanted happiness scores to be measurable on an ‚objective scale < which will have meaning for ordinary people‛ (p. 177). hence, he normalized the scores and assigned a score of zero to the point that divides happiness from unhappiness and 100 to the average happiness of all persons tested (pp. 175-176). as hart described it: the scale of this instrument is somewhat like the scale of a centigrade thermometer. the zero on the euphorimeter is the dividing point between happiness and unhappiness. from zero down, the scores mean deeper and deeper unhappiness. from zero up, the scores indicate greater and greater happiness. the 100-degree point is set by the average happiness of the general population (p. 19). the unit of the euphorimeter is called a euphor-unit, and is defined as ‚one one-hundredth of the difference between the zero point and the average happiness score‛ (p. 178). hart’s method for normalizing happiness scores allowed him to compare the results of various studies, as shown in figure 1. figure 1. the euphorimeter scale, with some typical scores.2 for purposes of his own research, hart developed two separate euphorimeters. because people’s happiness fluctuates from moment to moment, hart wrote, ‚it has been necessary to devise two types of euphorimeters – one to measure happiness ‘at the moment,’ the other to measure as closely as possible the general level of happiness or unhappiness on which one lives in the long run‛ (p. 21). one advantage of the at-the-moment euphorimeter was that it allowed him to develop a dense record of participants’ happiness levels over time. hart used this euphorimeter to draw charts showing how the happiness of three subjects, one who was falling in love, one whose mother was dying, and one who wondered why not everybody committed suicide, evolved over time (see figures 2, 3, & 4 below). 2 figures 1, 2, 3, & 4 are reproductions based on hart (1940, pp. 20-24). 500 100 0 -500 young man who was falling in love recently married couples average of 2,200 people tested wpa workers couples who have contemplated divorce prisoners working on roads young man whose mother was dying the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 figure 2. happiness fluctuations of a student who was falling in love. figure 3. happiness fluctuations of a student whose mother was dying. preached successful sermon; met enjoyable girl picnic – wonderful fellowship; all caught up on studies 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 -100 -200 -300 -400 -500 -600 -700 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 6 8 10 12 20 22 24 26 28 30 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 m arc h a p r il mother died; he felt relieved that she was out of suffering called home by message that mother cannot live school work mother much worse not sure he can ‚date‛ her gets very significant letter from her gets very significant letter from her unexpectedly fails to get ‚date‛ gets first ‚date‛ greatly attracted by girl 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 1 3 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 m arc h a pr il the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 figure 4. happiness fluctuations of a college boy who wondered why everybody did not commit suicide. hart found the case of the suicidal college student particularly interesting. taking the test apparently made the student realize that he was unusually unhappy and for no good reason; by tracking his euphorimeter readings carefully, it took him no more than a month to rise from the depths of despair to above-average happiness. hart concluded: ‚perhaps you can make equally great progress, if you also are unhappy‛ (p. 25). in 1954, under murray’s supervision, herbert jeremy goldings of the harvard psychological clinic published another study, which drew on research both on marital happiness and educational psychology. goldings suggested that he wanted to tap into ‚a commercially vigorous popular concern with happiness (books, magazines, etc.) indicating, perhaps, that in american culture people are not happy, or not as happy as they want to be, or not as happy as they feel they should be‛ (goldings, 1954, p. 30). goldings’s article is interesting in part because it contains an explicit discussion of ‚the intrinsic nature and characteristics‛ of happiness (p. 31). he defined happiness as a physiological state, though one that has consequences that are accessible through introspection. his article is also interesting because it uses new methods to measure happiness. other than using measures adapted from watson (1930) and sailer (1931), goldings asked his subjects to rate the happiness and satisfaction of 30 photographs of faces with ambiguous facial expressions, and proposed that 300 200 100 0 -100 -200 -300 -400 -500 -600 9 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 feb r uar y m arc h the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 the result could serve as an ‚indirect‛ measure of happiness, on the theory that subjects would project their own happiness onto the ambiguous facial expressions (goldings, 1954, p. 33; cf. section 3.4 below). using 20 harvard undergraduates as subjects, goldings confirmed watson’s finding that subjects tend to rate their own happiness as greater than the average (goldings, 1954, p. 36). goldings also found ‚a highly significant degree of agreement among experienced judges’ ratings of happiness‛ and a high correlation between avowed happiness and judges’ ratings (p. 46). however, because it did not behave as anticipated, he ended up rejecting the indirect measure as a measure of happiness. in brief, hart and goldings were well aware of their predecessors in marital success studies and educational psychology, and they sought ways to synthesize and build upon that research. both believed that individual happiness was worthy of study in its own right, that the scientific approach to happiness had particular power and potential, that self-report measures of happiness were adequate for a wide variety of purposes, and that scientific studies could help people become happier. by comparison with their predecessors, both hart and goldings offered a more explicit discussion about the nature of happiness. they also continued the educational psychologists’ efforts to develop and test novel ways to assess happiness. thus, hart developed a procedure, inspired by the centigrade thermometer, for standardizing happiness scores. hart also started tracking people’s happiness over time, which is particularly interesting in light of the affinities with the much more recent work by daniel kahneman and co-authors (e.g., redelmeier & kahneman, 1996). meanwhile, goldings developed a new projection-based indirect measure. not all their efforts succeeded: because goldings’s indirect measure failed to behave as expected, he abandoned the project of using such measures as measures of happiness. both hart and goldings expressed a desire to reach a wider audience, and perhaps to tap into what goldings (1954, p. 30) had called the ‚commercially vigorous popular concern with happiness.‛ 2.5 the epidemiology of mental health in the late 1950s and early 60s a number of authors with a background in the epidemiology of mental health recruited measures of happiness and satisfaction for use as measures of mental health in large, sometimes representative samples. this move, as we will see shortly, appears to have had an enormous impact on the use and interpretation of measures of happiness and satisfaction. a landmark study in the epidemiology of mental health is americans view their mental health, by gerald gurin, joseph veroff, and sheila feld (1960). as the title indicates, gurin and his co authors were primarily interested in how individuals themselves – as opposed to mental health experts – saw their mental health (gurin et al., 1960, pp. 3-4). the authors adopted a multiplecriterion perspective: they believed that mental health was best measured by using a battery of criteria, one of which was whether people felt happy. thus, gurin et al. did not identify happiness and mental health, but saw the former as an important component or indicator of the latter. one of the questions they asked was the following: ‚taking things all together, how would you say things are these days – would you say you’re very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy these days?‛ (p. 411). unfortunately, although they discussed what the subjects thought contributed to their happiness, gurin et al. said little about what they meant by the term (pp. 22-28). because they wanted a representative sample, gurin et al. enrolled 2,460 randomly selected, non-institutionalized american adults (p. 3). in this sample, gurin et al. found an association between unhappiness and pessimism and uncertainty about the future (p. 35), but no connection between the sex of the subject and his or her happiness (p. 42). they found that the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 older people were less happy than younger (p. 44), and that those with more education were happier than those with less (p. 46). they also found that happiness was positively related to income (p. 216). another important contribution to the epidemiology of mental health is norman m. bradburn and david caplovitz’s book reports on happiness: a pilot study of behavior related to mental health (1965), which built on gurin et al. (1960). according to bradburn and caplovitz, this study was ‚an effort to develop, for psychological and behavioral phenomena, time-series studies comparable to those that are commonplace in economics and demography‛ (bradburn & caplovitz, 1965, p. 1). as the following quote indicates, they were particularly interested in ‚psychological well-being‛: its long-range objective is to conduct periodic inventories of the psychological well-being of the nation’s population. from such inventories it is possible to determine for the first time the extent to which feeling states of the population are affected by major social trends, national and local crises, and changes in the economic and social structures, as well as by patterned events in the life cycles of individuals (p. 1). it appears that the authors identified ‚psychological well-being‛, ‚mental health‛, and ‚happiness‛ into a one-dimensional entity. in bradburn and caplovitz’s words: the underlying assumption of this research is that there is a dimension variously called mental health, subjective adjustment, happiness, or psychological wellbeing, and that individuals can be meaningfully described as being relatively high or low on such a dimension (p. 1). the authors were comfortable using self-report measures, as they wrote: ‚the most fruitful starting point in developing an instrument to measure a dimension of mental health seemed to be people’s own estimates of their level of psychological well-being or distress‛ (p. 5). using the specific measure employed by gurin et al. (1960), bradburn and caplovitz administered questionnaires to 2,006 members of 450 households in four rural illinois communities (bradburn & caplovitz, 1965, pp. 3-5) and concluded among other things that happiness was positively correlated with education and income, negatively correlated with age, and uncorrelated with sex (p. 56). in sum, mental health professionals like gurin, bradburn and caplovitz were concerned with the causes, distribution, and promotion of mental health in the population, and decided that measures of happiness and satisfaction could be recruited for the purpose. they thought it legitimate to use a measure of happiness as a measure of mental health because they considered happiness either identical to, a component of, or an indicator of mental health or psychological wellbeing. to assess individual happiness, these authors were comfortable using a single straightforward question, answered on a three-point scale, which remains in use today. as compared to previous research, the effort of the mental health professionals was different in important respects. above all, gurin et al. wanted to know the distribution of happiness in the population as a whole, so they started using large, random, and therefore representative, samples from the national population; bradburn and caplovitz wanted to know not only how happiness was distributed in the population, but also how the distribution developed over time, so they started collecting time series data, much like hart (1940) had. this approach would be picked up and further explored by representatives of the social indicators movement, to which we will return in section 2.8. in recent years, of course, the effort to track the happiness and satisfaction of the nation over time has received a great deal of attention under the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 headings like ‚national indicators of subjective well-being‛ and ‚national well-being accounts‛ (e.g., diener, 2006; kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, & stone, 2004). 2.6 review and call for more research in 1967, university of alabama psychologist warner wilson published the first major review article of research on happiness, or as he said (borrowing a term of goldings’s), ‚avowed happiness.‛ wilson reviewed the research discussed above, his 1960 dissertation in the area, and more. on the basis of this meta-analysis, wilson concluded that ‚avowed happiness can be determined reliably,‛ and that the ‚facts < support the validity of self-ratings‛ (1967, pp. 294295). on the basis of the studies he reviewed, wilson inferred: ‚the happy person emerges as a young, healthy, well-educated, well-paid, extroverted, optimistic, worry-free, religious, married person with high self-esteem, high job morale, modest aspirations, of either sex and of a wide range of intelligence‛ (p. 294). under ‚suggestions for further research,‛ wilson offered the following: ‚comparability of results might be increased if all investigators used the same measure. the designations ‘very happy,’ ‘pretty happy,’ and ‘not too happy’ used by gurin et al. (1960) and by bradburn and caplovitz (1965) seem as good as any‛ (wilson, 1967, pp. 304305). wilson ended his article by calling for more experimental research, in which the happiness of subjects is manipulated through therapy or other means. ‚studies involving direct attempts to manipulate the well-being of individuals are most desirable,‛ he maintained (p. 305). he continued: a story is told of how a small group of college men increased the poise and popularity, and presumably the happiness, of a female student by going out of their way to respond to her as though she were attractive. the possibility of systematically developing and applying such principles and techniques seems exciting indeed! (p. 305) while nobody, to my knowledge, has performed this particular experiment under controlled conditions – presumably because of ethical constraints – more recent happiness scholars have started performing controlled studies examining the causes of happiness. many of them are interested in developing interventions that can reliably be used to enhance people’s happiness (cf. lyubomirsky, 2008). 2.7 gerontology around the same time, a number of studies on happiness and satisfaction had appeared in the field of gerontology (larson, 1978). according to david l. adams (1971), a concern with ‚individual well-being‛ was one of the factors contributing to the development of gerontology in the first place (p. 64). he continued: ‚however, the difficulty of trying to assess ‘individual well-being’ has resulted in a variety of concepts, definitions, and measurements‛ (p. 64). the concepts included ‚morale,‛ ‚successful aging,‛ and ‚personal adjustment.‛ from the start, according to bernice l. neugarten, robert j. havighurst, and sheldon s. tobin (1961), there were two different approaches to measuring psychological wellbeing or wellbeing in gerontology. the one, according to neugarten et al., focused upon ‚the overt behavior of the individual and utilizes social criteria of success or competence‛ (p. 134). this approach was criticized, however, for relying too heavily on the assumption that social competence and participation were closely associated with wellbeing, and for imposing on the subjects the value judgments of the investigators (p. 134). the other approach, which emerged at least in part as a the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 reaction to the first, relied instead on an ‚internal frame of reference‛ in which attributes like success and competence figured only indirectly. hence: ‚here the variables to be measured have been the individual’s own evaluations of his present or past life, his satisfaction, or his happiness‛ (p. 134). in this approach: the assumptions are, whether or not explicitly stated, that the individual himself is the only proper judge of his well-being; that the value judgments of the investigator can thus be minimized; and, perhaps most important, that it is not appropriate to measure well-being in old age by the same standards that apply to middle age, namely, standards based upon activity or social involvement (p. 134). by relying on the individual’s own evaluations, happiness, and satisfaction, in this view, researchers could avoid multiple problems associated with assessments of success or competence. there were several studies that relied on this ‚internal frame of reference‛ (e.g., lebo, 1953). many of the early studies combined elements of the two approaches, and asked questions about ‚happiness‛ and ‚feelings of well-being or satisfaction‛ along with questions designed to assess degrees of social competence (pollak, 1948, pp. 66-67). thus, in an influential 1949 book, ruth shonle cavan, burgess, robert j. havighurst, and herbert goldhamer aspired ‚to define and to analyse the nature, patterns, and problems of personal adjustment to ageing‛ (cavan, burgess, havighurst, & goldhamer, 1949, p. v). the second author of this book was also the first author of a major contribution to the literature on marital happiness (burgess & cottrell, 1939), which underscores the fact that the different traditions explored here were not independent of one another. cavan et al. asked their 3,000 participants questions about both whether they felt satisfied, and whether, for example, they participated in clubs and organizations (cavan et al., 1949, appendix a). the most common focus in gerontology, however, was on ‚life satisfaction‛ (cf. adams, 1971; neugarten et al., 1961). thus, arnold m. rose (1955) studied the life satisfaction of married adults whose children had just left the home. rose asked his subjects: ‚in general, how satisfied are you with your life?‛ and offered them a list of five alternative answers: ‚very dissatisfied,‛ ‚somewhat dissatisfied,‛ ‚about average,‛ and so on (rose, 1955, p. 15). rose found that women (but not men) who married before the age of 20 or after the age of 30 tended to be less satisfied with their lives, that dissatisfied women were less likely to have a paying job and more likely to think they spent an inordinate amount of time doing housework, and that satisfaction was associated with social participation in both men and women (rose, 1955, pp. 18-19). a more explicit treatment of measures of life satisfaction appeared in neugarten et al. (1961). they took satisfaction to be closely related to ‚zest (vs. apathy); resolution and fortitude; congruence between desired and achieved goals; positive self concept; and mood tone‛ (p. 137), but did not specify if these factors were supposed to be components, causes, or mere correlates of satisfaction. in sum, gerontologists have been interested in wellbeing since the establishment of the discipline. while some authors in this tradition spoke about ‚psychological well-being‛ (neugarten et al., 1961, p. 134), they frequently talked about ‚well-being‛ without the modifier (cf. adams, 1971, p. 64; neugarten et al., 1961, p. 134). numerous gerontologists appear to have turned to happiness and satisfaction as proxies for wellbeing because they thought that by doing so they could avoid imposing their own value judgments and standards of wellbeing on their subjects; because they wanted to rely, to the greatest extent possible, on the subjects’ own standards of wellbeing; and because they felt that the subjects themselves were best situated to the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 determine to what extent they satisfied those standards. the tension between the two approaches to wellbeing measurement in gerontology is interesting because it mirrors the contemporary tension between subjective measures of wellbeing and capability-based measures. capability-based measures are designed to reflect not mental states like happiness but capabilities and functionings, that is, what a person can be and do in leading a life (sen, 2008, p. 24). 2.8 the social indicators movement a great deal of interest in subjective wellbeing during the 1960s and 70s grew out of the social indicators movement. this movement emerged in the late 1960s as a reaction against the widespread use of economic indicators like gdp as measures of ‚the goodness of life‛ (andrews, 1989, p. 401; campbell, 1976, p. 118). for instance, angus campbell (1976) admitted that economic measures were ‚easy to count‛ and he suggested that this goes a long way toward accounting for their popularity as measures of wellbeing. yet, he added: ‚none of us doubts that economic data have admirable qualities; the question is, how well do they represent the quality of national life? how valid are they as measures of the goodness of life in this country?‛ (p. 117). campbell was obviously not enthusiastic about economic measures. in contrast, the social indicator movement proposed a set of indicators that, although perhaps not as ‚easy to count,‛ would nevertheless be better measures of quality of life. as frank m. andrews put it: the idea called for two key changes from earlier practices. one was an expansion in the range of phenomena monitored beyond the traditional economic indicators, and an explicit recognition that ‚life quality,‛ however it might be designed, involved more than just economic considerations. the second change involved an attempt to focus directly on ‚output‛ indicators – i.e., indicators that show how well off people actually are – in addition to the more traditional ‚input‛ indicators that reflect budget allocations, procedures and processes that are presumed to enhance well-being (andrews, 1989, p. 401). the social indicator movement instead generated a wealth of so-called ‚objective indicators,‛ that is, statistics concerning life expectancy, quality of food and water, access to medical care, level of education, quality of housing, and so on (campbell, 1976, p. 118). the underlying assumption, of course, was that more education, housing, and medical care tended to increase the quality of life. as campbell put it: ‚it is reasonably argued that as the level of education rises, the adequacy of medical care improves, the amount of substandard housing is reduced, and the purity of the air and water is increased, the quality of life is therewith enhanced‛ (p. 118). nevertheless, a number of researchers came to think that objective indicators did not go far enough. as campbell wrote: [if] we believe, as i assume that most psychologists do, that the quality of life lies in the experience of life, then these are surrogate indicators. they describe the conditions of life that might be assumed to influence life experience, but they do not assess that experience directly (1976, p. 118). the problem was that indicators concerning education, housing and health care remained ‚input‛ indicators, and as such were subject to the same criticism as economic welfare measures. thus, the very argument that led to the rejection of economic indicators appears to have led to the rejection of objective indicators as well. in campbell’s words: the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 if we are primarily concerned with describing the quality of life experience of the population, we will need measures different from those that are used to describe the objective circumstances in which people live. we will have to develop measures that go directly to the experience itself. these subjective measures will surely not have the precision of indicators that are expressed in numbers of dollars, units of time, or numbers of square feet, but they will have the great advantage of dealing directly with what it is we want to know, the individual’s sense of well-being (p. 118). hence, it appears that the logic of their position forced members of the social indicator movement to reject an exclusive reliance not just on economic measures but on the wider set of ‚objective‛ measures as well, and to favor what they called more ‚direct‛ measures of quality of life. one hugely influential study in this vein is princeton psychologist hadley cantril’s book the pattern of human concerns (1965). cantril was particularly interested in people’s aspirations and in the manner in which aspiration levels affected their happiness and satisfaction. his goal was to find a method to estimate the aspirations and satisfactions by reference to the subjects’ own, possibly changing, standards (cantril, 1965, p. 21). for this purpose, he invented what he called the ‚self-anchoring striving scale‛ (p. 22). when using the scale, the subject is asked to judge how good his or her life is on a graphical, ladder-like device, where the top and bottom rungs represent respectively the best and worst possible life he or she could live (p. 23). cantril and his collaborators administered the test to a total of 23,875 subjects in 13 countries. under the heading ‚who are the satisfied?,‛ cantril discussed what characterized individuals who rated themselves high on the self-anchoring striving scale. among other things, cantril found that education, income, and occupation were strongly correlated with ladder ratings, that ‚people living in urban centers‛ rated themselves somewhat higher than ‚those living on the land,‛ but that men and women rated themselves about the same (p. 258). campbell, philip e. converse, and willard l. rodgers opened up their discussion in the quality of american life (1976) by pointing to deficiencies both with traditional economic measures of wellbeing and with those proposed by the social indicator movement. their book had two objectives. first, the authors wanted to establish ‚a system of reporting of psychological data which parallels our current repertoire of social indicators‛ (campbell et al., 1976, p. 4). second, they wished to provide ‚a fuller and truer representation of the state of society to those people who are responsible for social decisions‛ (p. 5). campbell et al. (p. 5) drew primarily on the three following sources: gurin et al. (1960), which they call the ‚first major study of the quality of life experience‛; bradburn and caplovitz (1965); and cantril (1965). on the basis of personal interviews with a random sample of 2,164 americans (campbell et al., 1976, p. 511), the authors reported: ‚persons who are currently single generally report a good deal less satisfaction with life than do married persons, and the lack of satisfaction shown by women and men who are divorced or separated is quite remarkable indeed‛ (p. 36). the young tended to report higher happiness than the old, but the old appeared to be more satisfied with life than the young (p. 36). the unemployed and the divorced scored ‚conspicuously low‛ (p. 51) and there was a ‚rather strong and regular relationship between income and a sense of well-being‛ (campbell et al., 1976, pp. 51-55). frank m. andrews and stephen b. withey’s book social indicators of well-being: americans’ perceptions of life quality (1976) was another major contribution. andrews and withey placed their research firmly in the social indicator movement. they wrote that ‚social indicators of the various conditions of human beings, and of the changes that characterize their lives, offer much the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 that is attractive,‛ but added that ‚in these days of growing interdependence and social complexity we need more adequate cues and indicators of the nature, meaning, pace, and course of social change‛ (p. 1). though the two said they chose to concentrate on ‚perceptions of well-being,‛ they immediately went on to say: ‚measurements of individual well-being seem to us, and to many others also, a particularly promising place to begin‛ (pp. 6-7). this suggests that they in fact did not draw a sharp distinction between wellbeing on the one hand and perceptions of wellbeing on the other. the study drew primarily on ‚four nationally representative probability samples of the american adult population,‛ for a total of approximately 5,500 individuals (p. 24). the social indicators movement, then, played a critical role in the development of subjective measures of wellbeing. though prominent people like andrews and campbell had initially advocated the use of objective measures, the logic of their position pushed them toward more ‚direct‛ measures of happiness and satisfaction. the argument that subjective measures are superior because they are more direct has since become part of a standard defense of subjective measures (cf. angner, 2011). like at least some of the gerontologists, these researchers thought of measures of happiness and satisfaction as measures of wellbeing, without any modifiers. this is clear from their use of the term ‚subjective measures of well-being,‛ e.g. in the title of campbell (1976), and from the fact that subjective measures were compared with, and found to be superior to, the more established economic welfare measures and the so-called objective indicators. these authors continued the development of subjective measures, and some of them – like cantril’s self-anchoring striving scale – remain in use today. like the epidemiologists we encountered in section 2.5, authors like andrews and campbell aspired to track the wellbeing of large, representative samples over time. unlike its predecessors, the social indicator movement unashamedly used subjective measures of wellbeing as macro-level indicators of quality of life – that is, as measures of social wellbeing – comparable to the standard economic indicators. since the subjective measures were thought to be superior to economic or other objective measures, subjective measures of wellbeing emerged as serious substitutes for, e.g., measures of gdp as welfare indicators. this idea remains part of the effort to develop ‚national well-being accounts,‛ as described in section 2.5. 2.9 summary and discussion in this section, i have sketched the emergence and development of measures of happiness and satisfaction. far from being a novel invention, these measures have an uninterrupted history that can be traced back at least to the 1920s and 30s. it was in the context of marital success studies that researchers like davis, terman, and others started systematically studying happiness and satisfaction, although some of them were interested in the happiness of the marriage, rather than that of the individuals in it. educational psychologists like watson were unambiguously interested in the happiness and satisfaction of individuals, as opposed to marriages; their use of a wide range of remarkably sophisticated happiness measures allowed them to argue on empirical grounds that simple self-report measures were both reliable and valid and could substitute for more extensive batteries of questions. the confidence that attributes of the person could be reliably and validly measured, and that the results could be useful to governments and corporations, was due to the emergence of personality psychology shortly after world war i. epidemiologists of mental health started using measures of happiness and satisfaction as measures of mental health in large, nationally representative samples. meanwhile, gerontologists used, above all, measures of satisfaction as measures not just of mental health, or psychological wellbeing, but of wellbeing without the modifier. the the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 social indicator movement entrenched the idea that measures of happiness and satisfaction could serve as macro-level indicators of quality of life – that is, as measures of social wellbeing – and as serious substitutes for, e.g., measures of gdp as welfare indicators. it might be objected that the foregoing discussion ignores interesting and important contributions to the literature. indeed, several early contributions that were in important respects similar to those discussed above, like adolf wohlgemuth (1919), j. c. flügel (1925), and arthur e. morgan (1934), have not been included. obviously, the story told here is incomplete: given how long and rich the history turned out to be, some omission is inevitable. but it is also worth remembering that my aim was not to identify researchers who ‚anticipated‛ modern research efforts, but to try to identify the work that was the most influential. discussion of the economists who brought happiness research to the attention of mainstream economics, above all bernard m. s. van praag (1968) and richard a. easterlin (1974) has also been omitted. these more recent developments are not discussed because their influence begins as this story ends. 3. porter on measurement in social and behavioral science in this section, i will argue that the history of subjective measures of wellbeing from the 1920s or 30s, in all essentials, confirms porter’s general account of the history of measurement in social and behavioral science. porter’s account is most clearly articulated in the book trust in numbers: the pursuit of objectivity in science and public life (1995) but has been discussed and developed in a number of forums, including the collection the age of economic measurement (klein & morgan, 2001) and the special issue of studies in history and philosophy of science (vol. 32, no. 4, 2001), edited by e. p. hamm and alan w. richardson. consistent with porter’s account, i will argue, subjective measures of wellbeing emerged in applied, rather than theoretical, branches of social and behavioral science, where they were developed not as a result of physics envy but of a moral impulse to improve society; quantification was intended to make up for perceived deficiencies in unaided human judgment; and radical disagreements about the nature of wellbeing did not impede efforts to measure it – indeed, in time, there was considerably more agreement about how to measure wellbeing than about how to define it. 3.1 subjective measures appeared in applied branches of psychology one of porter’s main theses is that the drive toward quantification was strongest in applied rather than theoretical branches of social science, and that it was the result not of physics envy, but rather of a moral impulse to understand and improve a changing society (bateman, 2001, p. 57; levy, 2001, p. 724; porter, 1995, p. viii). the history of the measurement of happiness and satisfaction confirms porter’s thesis: measures of happiness and satisfaction emerged in applied branches of psychology, sociology, and medicine, and they appeared not as the result of an effort to replicate the successes of quantification in the natural sciences, but rather of an ambition to understand the causal antecedents of happiness and satisfaction in order to build a happier and therefore better society. as we have seen, subjective measures of wellbeing did in fact emerge in applied branches of psychology, sociology, and medicine: in marital success studies (section 2.1), educational psychology (section 2.2) and personality psychology (section 2.3), as well as in the epidemiology of mental health (section 2.5), gerontology (section 2.7), and social indicators research (section 2.8). it is true that happiness, satisfaction, and other positive or desirable emotional states have begun to attract attention from more theoretical branches of psychology, economics, and neuroscience. hence, a collection like well-being: the foundations of hedonic the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 psychology (kahneman, diener, & schwarz, 1999) contains chapters, e.g., on the neuroscientific basis for utility appraisals. yet, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, which does not change the fact that the measures originally emerged in applied branches of social and behavioral science. there is little evidence that proponents of subjective measures suffered from ‚physics envy,‛ in the sense of an urge to replicate the successes of quantification in physics and other natural sciences. some of hart’s examples of successful measurement – including the electrocardiograph and the thermometer – did arguably come from the natural sciences; yet, his focus was unambiguously on practical applications in the interest of investigating and solving social problems. here is how he introduced his discussion about the power of quantification: when intelligence tests were invented a new instrument was placed in the hands of workers with human beings – a powerful instrument for diagnosing maladjustments, assaying human capabilities, placing students and workers in the surroundings where they would be most useful, and investigating various social problems. when the fever thermometer was invented a new instrument was placed in the hands of physicians – a powerful instrument for diagnosing bodily ailments. when the electrocardiograph was invented a new instrument for tracing the pulsations of the heart was made available for diagnosis and for pointing the way toward remedial treatment (hart, 1940, p. v). hart also pointed to the contribution of ‚aerial dynamics‛ to the velocity of human transportation (p. 18); yet, the example was only mentioned in passing and the emphasis on transportation suggests a concern with engineering rather than theoretical physics. moreover, his most powerful example came from epidemiology. hart reminded us that reliable statistics about infant death rates were critical in establishing that many infant deaths were the result of contaminated water rather than ‚summer complaint‛ or ‚the will of heaven,‛ and that the knowledge derived from such statistics allowed the mortality rate to be dramatically reduced (p. 17). in brief, though hart mentioned tools like thermometers and disciplines like aerodynamics, he was primarily interested in replicating the successes of applied sciences like epidemiology than of theoretical branches of physics and other natural sciences. the main impetus behind measures of happiness and satisfaction appears to have been a moral impulse to understand and improve society, specifically, an ambition to identify the causal antecedents of happiness in order to build a happier, and therefore better, society. the ambition is plainly evident throughout the history of measures of happiness and satisfaction. in early literature, authors like davis, hamilton, and terman were clearly trying to identify the factors that made for a happy marriage because they thought that a grasp of these factors would allow them to promote success in marriage. terman said that he was not committed to the view that ‚personal happiness is the only ‘proper’ goal of marriage,‛ but then added: ‚it is of the very nature of happiness that, other things being equal, it should be preferred to its opposite‛ (1938, p. 2). and burgess and cottrell, as we saw above, believed that marital adjustment and incompatibility had become a social problem and therefore of public concern (1939, p. 1). educational psychologists like watson and hartmann shared the ambition. as we saw in section 2.2, watson said he studied happiness because no other human quest had a larger following, because even ‚the highest ethics‛ emphasized the importance of human happiness, and because educational programs were justified only in terms of their contribution to happiness (1930, p. 79). unlike some of the later authors, watson did not frame his project in terms of wellbeing or welfare. yet, his use of the term ‚highest ethics‛ suggests that his desire the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 to explore scientifically the determinants and distribution of happiness may have been due to philosophical or religious commitments to happiness as a central constituent of the good life. hartmann (1934) started out by quoting raymond dodge, past president of the american psychological association. in a brief autobiographical narrative published in 1930, dodge had written: i am desirous of participating in the solution of < the problem of protracted human happiness. whether or not it fits in with one’s philosophy of life, the fact is incontestable that happiness is an important if not the most important aim of human endeavor (dodge, 1930, p. 119; quoted in hartmann, 1934, p. 202).3 hartmann obviously agreed: ‚if happiness be one of the major goals of living, if not the only consciously acceptable end of life itself,‛ he wrote, ‚surely an analysis of the conditions fostering or hindering its attainment is an intellectual obligation of the first order‛ (1934, p. 203). evidently, both watson and hartmann assumed that a happier world would be a better world and wanted to understand happiness in order to promote it. hartmann (1934, p. 203) made favorable mention of abraham myerson’s program of eupathics (myerson, 1917). myerson was clinical director at the taunton state hospital in massachusetts and a harvard neuropathologist. his goal was to establish a field of ‚mental hygiene‛ that had ‚for its aim the well being of the normal‛ (myerson, 1917, p. 344). he called the program the ‚more gracious sister‛ of eugenics, which ‚largely simmers down to a program for the elimination of the unfit‛ (p. 344). myerson had great hopes for the field. he appears to have equated wellbeing with happiness, and believed that ‚mood‛ was an important determinant of happiness. furthermore, he claimed that mood ‚can be reached and elevated in a perfectly definite manner‛ (p. 344). myerson invested eupathics with a great deal of importance. after asking rhetorically what was left out of the field, he answered: ‚nothing of consequence‛ (p. 346). hart and goldings were equally explicit about their desire to better understand happiness in order to promote it. as we saw in section 2.4, hart believed that ‚*one+ of the basic purposes of mankind is to be happy‛ (1940, p. 16). his euphorimeter was presented as designed ‚to point the way, not to administration of drugs, but to constructive measures which may relieve maladjustments, promote the cure of mental suffering, and open the way toward more joyous living‛ (p. v). the aim was to help people ‚live joyously within a menacing world < in spite of threats and pressures of war, of economic disaster, of our own incurable physical handicaps and past emotional wounds, and of the original natures of the people with whom we have to live and work‛ (p. 6). similarly, goldings explained his interest in happiness as follows: ‚how to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is, in fact, for all men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.‛ this pithy statement by william james reflects the almost unanimous judgment of prescientific psychologists from aristotle down. most laymen, caviling aside, would probably agree with it (goldings, 1954, p. 30). both hart and goldings appear to have operated on the assumption that the scientific study of happiness would help us build a happier, and therefore better, world. 3 in passing, dodge’s writings suggest that he found inspiration less from natural science than from philosophy. in the same autobiographical remarks, he wrote: ‚i am inclined to believe that the study of the history of philosophy and the logic of science form a valuable background for estimating the possibilities and the limitations of experimental evidence‛ (dodge, 1930, pp. 120-103). the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 the epidemiology of mental health is premised on the assumption that a better understanding of the causes and distribution of mental health might allow us to promote it more effectively. gurin et al. conclude their book by writing: ‚we hope that this study < contributes to the formulation of programs designed to make [psychiatric] help available to the maximum number of people‛ (gurin et al., 1960, p. 406). similarly, as we saw in section 2.7, gerontology had always been centrally concerned with measuring and promoting the wellbeing of older people. neugarten et al. (1961), for example, were dissatisfied with existing measures based on various criteria of success or competence, which they felt relied on dubious, value-laden assumptions; by developing better measures of wellbeing, they thought that they would be in a better position to understand and promote the wellbeing of older people. the social indicator movement, as we saw in section 2.8, was motivated by a desire to develop accurate measures of ‚the quality of national life,‛ ‚the goodness of life,‛ and ‚life quality,‛ that is, ‚indicators that show how well off people actually are‛ (andrews, 1989, p. 401; campbell, 1976, p. 117). authors like campbell et al. charged that widely used economic measures and social indicators were imperfect proxies for wellbeing, and maintained that ‚the nation must change from its fixation on goals which are basically economic to goals which are essentially psychological, from a concentration on being well-off to a concern with a sense of well-being‛ (1976, p. 1). they took the importance of happiness and satisfaction to be uncontroversial. as andrews and withey put it: ‚*it+ would seem fair to say that the importance of human satisfaction does not need to be defended‛ (1976, p. 10). the view that a society with more quality of life, wellbeing, etc., would be a better society infused all this work. hence: the promotion of individual well-being is a central goal of virtually all modern societies, and of many units within them. while there are real and important differences of opinion – both within societies and between them – about how individual well-being is to be maximized, there is nearly universal agreement that the goal itself is a worthy one and is to be actively pursued (andrews & withey, 1976, pp. 6-7). from the outset, these authors very much wanted their work to inform public policy, as when campbell et al. said they wished to provide ‚a fuller and truer representation of the state of society to those people who are responsible for social decisions‛ (1976, p. 5). cantril made it clear that his research was ultimately aimed not only at advancing scientific understanding, but also at designing new institutions: ‚more reliable predictions of what people want or do not want, believe or do not believe, will accept or will not accept, should aid the process of creating new forms of economic, social, and political institutions‛ (1965, p. 3). the moral impulse to build a happier and therefore better society is no less evident in contemporary writings on subjective measures of wellbeing. as part of their discussion of national wellbeing accounts, ed diener and seligman write: the most important contribution of a national system of well-being indicators would be that they could focus the attention of policymakers and the public specifically on well-being, and not simply on the production of goods and services; one of the main benefits of well-being measures is that they add a valuable perspective beyond a cost-benefit market analysis in evaluating societal structures and interventions (2004, p. 21). the hope is that national wellbeing accounts will help policymakers understand and promote that which really matters, which in their view is subjective wellbeing. the underlying the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 assumption is that a happier society would be a better society. similarly, richard layard writes that ‚*bentham+ proposed that all laws and all actions should aim at producing the greatest possible happiness< i believe that bentham’s idea was right and that we should fearlessly adopt it and apply it to our lives‛ (2005, pp. 111-112). the central importance of happiness for a good society is thought to entail that public policy should be designed to promote it. thus, diener and seligman ‚propose that *subjective+ well-being ought to be the ultimate goal around which economic, health, and social policies are built‛ (2004, pp. 1-2). in these passages, by the way, there is no trace of physics envy. in sum, the history of the measurement of happiness and satisfaction confirms the thesis that measures of happiness and satisfaction emerged in applied branches of psychology, sociology, and medicine. though happiness and the like have begun to attract attention from more theoretical branches of psychology, economics, and neuroscience, measures of happiness did not emerge there. the history also confirms that measures of happiness and satisfaction did not appear as a result of physics envy; while hart mentioned tools like thermometers and electrocardiographs, as well as disciplines like aerodynamics, he was interested primarily in practical applications, and he was most impressed by the successes of quantification in applied disciplines like epidemiology. the drive toward quantification was due to a desire to understand the causal antecedents of happiness in order to build a happier and therefore better society. 3.2 subjective measures as a means to overcome deficiencies in human judgment porter has also argued that quantification was intended to make up for perceived deficiencies in unaided human judgment, in particular, a lack of trust and suspicions of arbitrariness (levy, 2001, p. 724; porter, 1995, p. 199). this contention helps explain why the drive toward quantification was strongest in ‘soft’ disciplines like psychology in general and their applied subdisciplines in particular. in this view, practitioners in soft disciplines were most insecure, and therefore most susceptible to outside and inside pressure; they turned to empirical research to establish answers that could not be accused of being biased by personal, religious, and other considerations (porter, 1995, p. 200). the history of measurement of happiness and satisfaction confirms porter’s contention: throughout the history reviewed here, scientific measurement was seen as a means to overcome the limitations associated with unaided human judgment, in particular, a lack of trust and suspicions of arbitrariness. since the very early days of happiness measurement, contributors commonly complained that science had failed to give adequate attention to the determinants and distribution of happiness and satisfaction. watson’s remark that it was ‚extraordinary almost beyond belief that so few attempts have been made to apply the techniques of psychological study to the understanding of happiness‛ (watson, 1930, p. 79) has echoes throughout this history. for example, the complaint appears in dodge’s autobiographical sketch. notwithstanding the importance of happiness, dodge wrote, ‚it has received no commensurate scientific atention [sic]. the theory of the happy life remains at about the level where the greek philosophers left it‛ (dodge, 1930, p. 119; cited in wilson, 1967, p. 302). he continued: scientific [data] as to the fundamental positive conditions of protracted happiness are conspicuous for their absence< the positive conditions of happiness are left largely to accident, such as the satisfaction of instinctive wants with its tragic disillusionments and negative adaptions, the economic pressure to provide a market for manufactured products, the exigencies of the labor market, the desire to amass wealth, or the bolshevistic abolition of private the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 wealth. there are numerous wise protests that protracted happiness is achieved by none of these things; but positive, scientific data on the real conditions are as inconspicuous as scientific interest in the problem (dodge, 1930, p. 120). dodge believed that a scientific approach based on scientific measurement was more promising than alternative approaches; that in the absence of scientific data, ‚wise protests‛ were distrusted and largely impotent; and that using unaided human judgment rather than ‚the techniques of psychological study‛ was akin to leaving it to accident. the fear of arbitrariness is highly evident. the same concern appears in hart and goldings’s work. hart noted: by measuring accurately, scientists have trebled the length of human life – but then we discover that they have left a lot of people wondering whether life is worth living< what our scientists have been doing has been to use measurement to increase things which people thought would contribute to happiness, but without ever measuring happiness itself to see whether the alleged means were actually contributing to the desired end (1940, pp. 18-19). quite obviously, hart did not trust unaided human judgment to reveal what ‚actually‛ contributes to happiness. as we saw in section 2.4, hart favored a scientific approach. he asked: ‚can recent advances in scientific thinking tell us more and more effectively what to do in order to be happy, and in order to help make our fellow human beings happy?‛ (1940, p. 16). he answered: the present book is based on two propositions: first, that it is possible to measure happiness and unhappiness reliably; and second, that, if we can thus measure, we can then move on toward discovering the causal factors by means of which we can learn with more and more effectiveness to eliminate misery and increase joy scientifically (p. 16). hart believed that a scientific approach to identifying the causes of happiness, and a scientific approach only, would permit happiness scholars to be as effective in enhancing happiness as epidemiology had been in eliminating disease and aerodynamics in building airplanes. having pointed to the enormous success of measurement in fields like epidemiology, he added: ‚why not begin to apply these methods of precise measurement when we come down to the crucial question of happiness?‛ (p. 18). goldings (1954) concurred. in spite of the virtual consensus on the importance of happiness, he wrote, ‚there has been a marked reluctance on the part of present-day researchers to undertake systematic studies of happiness, unhappiness, and related phenomena‛ (p. 30). when he proceeded to talk about the questions that have to be addressed by ‚a psychology of happiness,‛ he clearly assumed that such a psychology would uncover insights that would be unavailable in the absence of scientific study. as we saw in section 2.8, authors like andrews and campbell were highly critical of economic measures and social indicators because of our ignorance of how objective conditions translated into subjective experience, which, they thought, was what ultimately mattered. as campbell et al. wrote, ‚the fact is that we do not know how well objective measures like these represent underlying psychological states or how well social indicators can be taken to represent the quality of life experience‛ (1976, p. 3). their research aimed to make up for this deficiency: the research with which this book is concerned derives from the conviction that the relationship between objective conditions and psychological states is very imperfect and that in order to know the quality of life experience it will be the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 necessary to go directly to the individual himself for his description of how life feels to him. this obviously will take us into the subjective world of perceptions, expectations, feelings, and values and will involve us in excruciating problems of definition and measurement (p. 4). while campbell and his coauthors recognized that a scientific study of subjective phenomena would face difficult problems, they clearly believed that a non-scientific approach would be even less promising. the theme is echoed in contemporary writings as well. seligman maintains that when it comes to what makes us happy, ‚the field of psychology *is+ a puzzling disappointment‛ (2002, p. ix). and diener and seligman target public policy when they write: while wealth has trebled over the past 50 years, for example, well-being has been flat, mental illness has increased at an even more rapid rate, and data, not just nostalgic reminiscences, indicate that the social fabric is more frayed than it was in leaner times. these inadequacies lead us to advocate that an ongoing system of indicators be instituted by governments and organizations to track well-being over time. it is clear that policymakers now care about well-being, in addition to economics, because policies are being created on the basis of mere guesses and romantic sentiments about what will enhance well-being (e.g., family leave). these guesses are undoubtedly correct in some cases, but they are incorrect in other cases. for this reason, ongoing measurement of well-being in representative samples and in diverse domains of life is required to confirm or disconfirm the efficacy of policies instituted to increase well-being (2004, pp. 2021). in diener and seligman’s view, the problem can be solved by shifting from unaided human judgment to a system of national wellbeing indicators, which would provide the hard data required to eliminate the reliance on unscientific beliefs. interestingly, proponents of subjective measures have also turned the tables on their critics, who do not trust the validity and reliability of subjective measures, and attacked them for failing to marshal any empirical evidence that undercuts the validity of such measures (diener, lucas, schimmack, & helliwell, 2009, p. 75). this move, triggered by the charge of arbitrariness and the lack of trust, implicitly faults the critics of subjective measures with relying too heavily on unaided human judgment. in brief, the history of happiness and satisfaction measurement confirms the contention that scientific measurement was seen as a means to overcome the limitations associated with unaided human judgment, in particular, a lack of trust and suspicions of arbitrariness. operating on the assumption that a happier society would be a better society and that happiness therefore is worth pursuing (cf. section 3.1), these researchers doubted that unaided human judgment was sufficient to identify the antecedents of happiness and considered a scientific approach more likely to accomplish this goal. the concern was that hypotheses generated by non-scientists were no better than mere guesses and romantic sentiments and that acting on such hypotheses was tantamount to leaving it to chance. the contention that subjective measures were seen as a means to overcome the limitations associated with unaided human judgment is consistent with the fact that the drive toward measuring happiness and the like appeared in applied subdisciplines like educational psychology, which are most frequently criticized for being ‘soft’ and therefore most vulnerable to a lack of trust and suspicions of arbitrariness. the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 3.3 disagreements about the nature of wellbeing porter has also proposed that the drive toward measurement is not typically impeded by disagreements about the nature of the object under study (m. s. morgan, 2001, p. 248; porter, 1995, pp. 94-95). the point was made in the context of attitude measurement as early as 1935, when allport noted that ‚attitudes today are measured more successfully than they are defined‛ (allport, 1935, p. 828). the history of happiness and satisfaction measurement confirms porter’s proposition: the researchers discussed here (insofar as they expressed a view at all) had radically different ideas about the nature of wellbeing, happiness, and satisfaction. yet, the disagreement was not treated as an obstacle to measurement.4 students of marital success, as we saw in section 2.1, were deeply interested in happiness, satisfaction, and the like, though their focus frequently was on the happiness of the marriage as opposed to that of the people in it. these figures had little to say about the nature of happiness, satisfaction, and success, though the terms appear to be treated as interchangeable, e.g., when davis asked whether people considered their lives ‚happy, satisfactory, successful‛ or ‚unhappy, unsatisfactory, unsuccessful‛ (1929, p. 89). educational psychologists were no less interested in happiness and satisfaction, though their focus was squarely on individuals rather than on marriages. they too appear to have treated happiness and satisfaction as interchangeable; when watson (1930) talked about satisfaction as well as happiness – e.g., in the first sentence of his paper – there is no evidence that he used the terms in any other way than as synonyms. he did say: ‚what is studied might, in the strictest sense be termed not happiness, but self-estimates of happiness‛ (p. 79). yet, the fact that from that point on he talked about happiness suggests that in watson’s mind the two were at least tightly linked. terman (1938) eschewed definitions. in order to avoid ‚philosophical connotations,‛ he wrote, he ‚preferred to apply the term in a sense familiar to everyone‛ (p. 3) without specifying what that sense was. terman immediately went on to offer what appears to be a purely operational definition: ‚the important thing to remember is that throughout this discussion happiness or unhappiness will mean a high or low score on a particular scale‛ (p. 4). the scale in question was constructed by combining subjective ratings with other ‚more objective‛ judgments, but from the weighting scheme it is clear that he considered the subjective rating the most important item. sometimes, terman (e.g. on p. 367) referred to his marital happiness score as an index of satisfaction, which suggests that he treated ‚happiness‛ and ‚satisfaction‛ as interchangeable. burgess and cottrell relied on webster’s new international dictionary, which defined ‚happiness‛ as ‚a state of well-being characterized by relative permanence, by dominantly agreeable emotion ranging in value from mere contentment to positive felicity, and by a natural desire for its continuation‛ (burgess & cottrell, 1939, p. 31). as the authors note, the dictionary definition emphasizes the subjective nature of the concept. interestingly, they made no attempt at explaining the meaning of the word to their subjects, on the assumption that people in general would understand the notion in accordance with the dictionary definition (p. 31). like terman, burgess and cottrell also sometimes talked about ‚satisfaction‛ and ‚success‛ instead of ‚happiness‛ (p. 45). hart (1940) appears to have been somewhat ambivalent, as he offered two different definitions of ‚happiness.‛ according to the first: ‚happiness is the state in which people are when they say sincerely, ‘i am happy,’ and it is the opposite of the state in which they are when 4 see angner (2010) for a more careful review of accounts of well-being implicit in the literature on subjective measures. the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 they say sincerely, ‘i am unhappy’‛ (p. 182). he added: ‚it has been assumed that the average person is sincere in his answers to such a test as the euphorimeter, especially when he does not sign his name < moreover, it has seemed reasonable to assume that whatever insincerities do occur tend to cancel each other out‛ (p. 182). he noted that the first definition, under the assumption of sincerity, ‚serves operationally as a basis for measurement, but it is rather deficient in providing insight,‛ and ‚does not take us very far into the meaning of the term‛ (p. 183). thus, he proposed a second definition: ‚happiness is any state of consciousness which the person tested seeks to attain or to maintain, and it is the opposite of any state which the possessor seeks to change or from which he seeks to escape or withdraw‛ (p. 183). in the end, however, hart argued that ‚the two definitions really define essentially the same thing‛ (p. 184). the name of the euphorimeter suggests that hart also identified happiness and euphoria. like hart, goldings was unusually explicit about ‚the intrinsic nature and characteristics‛ of happiness. he wrote: ‚happiness and unhappiness may be considered as zones on a continuum of hedonic affect which embraces feelings of elation, contentment, satisfaction, and pleasure at the positive pole and feelings of depression, discontent, and unpleasure at the negative pole‛ (goldings, 1954, p. 31). he added: *although+ in common parlance, ‚happiness‛ refers only to the positive elements of hedonic feeling, in the present investigations ‚happiness‛ more generally refers to the entire continuum as a whole and ‚satisfaction‛ and ‚dissatisfaction‛ refer more specifically to the polar regions of positive and negative hedonic feeling (p. 31). from this quote, it appears that goldings drew a sharp distinction between ‚happiness‛ as the continuum of hedonic feeling and ‚satisfaction‛ as the positive end of the continuum. it is unclear whether he in fact used the terms in this way, however. consider: in order to bring happiness and unhappiness (or satisfaction and dissatisfaction) into proper perspective vis-a-vis other general areas of psychological study, they may be considered hypothetical physiological states with both subjective manifestations (diffuse and pervasive feelings of pleasantness and satisfaction, and of unpleasantness and dissatisfaction) and objective signs (posture, gait, facial expression, tone of voice; feelingful verbal statements; indirect or projective indices of feeling) (p. 31). here, happiness and satisfaction were both treated as physiological states that cause subjective feelings as well as outward behaviors of a certain kind. campbell and colleagues (1976) differed from their predecessors by drawing a sharp distinction between ‚happiness‛ and ‚satisfaction.‛ having asked questions about satisfaction alongside questions of happiness, campbell et al. realized that answers to questions of satisfaction were not as highly correlated with answers to questions about happiness as they would have thought (p. 8). they wrote: ‚this means that there is some significant minority of persons who report relative happiness along with relative dissatisfaction with their lives, and the converse‛ (p. 9). as a result, they concluded that happiness and satisfaction were two different traits, both of which were constitutive of wellbeing, and which had to be measured independently. ‚satisfaction implies a judgmental or cognitive experience,‛ they maintained ‚while happiness suggests an experience of feeling or affect‛ (p. 8). the weak correlation between happiness and satisfaction, they continued, also means that the choice of measure may affect the conclusions of a study. campbell et al. favored a measure of satisfaction – as opposed to happiness – as a measure of the quality of life experience. they offered several reasons. first, the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 they took ‚satisfaction‛ to be easier to define and to translate than ‚happiness‛ (pp. 7-8). second, they wanted their data to be relevant to public policy, and they thought legislators and decision-makers were more accustomed to thinking in terms of satisfying needs than of promoting happiness (pp. 8-9). third, campbell et al. wanted a concept appropriate to use both in the context of ‚life as a whole‛ as well as in the context of more limited domains (p. 9). bradburn and caplovitz (1965) made another unexpected discovery, viz., that positive affect was remarkably weakly correlated with negative affect. in order to develop what they called ‚more detailed measures of well-being,‛ and using a strategy reminiscent of watson’s adjective-based measure, bradburn and caplovitz offered twelve different descriptions, half of them positive, half negative, and asked subjects how often they had felt that way during the past week (pp. 15-16). they wrote: ‚we expected that the items would cluster in two groups, one indicative of positive and the other of negative feelings, and that the two clusters would be negatively related to one another‛ (p. 16). as expected, the authors did find ‚a strong tendency for most of the items to fall into two clusters of positive and negative feelings‛ (p. 16). however, they were surprised to learn that ‚items in one cluster are not negatively related to those in the other cluster in any consistent or strong fashion‛ (p. 18). the two items which were the most strongly (negatively) correlated were ‚depressed or very unhappy‛ and ‚on top of the world,‛ and these items had a correlation of a mere -.19 (p. 18). interestingly, while positive and negative items did not correlate with each other, each was correlated with happiness (pp. 1819). the authors inferred that ‚happiness is a result of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings, rather than of the absolute amount of one or the other‛ (p. 21). in light of this finding, it is sometimes suggested that wellbeing should be seen has having three irreducible components: the presence of positive affect, the absence of negative affect, and satisfaction. in sum, the history of the measurement of happiness and satisfaction confirms porter’s proposition that the drive toward measurement is not typically impeded by disagreements about the nature of the object under study: the researchers discussed here (insofar as they expressed a view at all) had radically different ideas about the nature of happiness and satisfaction, but the disagreement was not treated as an obstacle to measurement. many researchers in this tradition declined to discuss what they meant by ‚happiness‛ and ‚satisfaction.‛ some of them simply noted that they use the concept in the ‚established‛ sense, and that they assumed their subjects to do so too; some made it explicit that they hoped to avoid philosophical discussion. when authors did offer explicit definitions of ‚happiness,‛ ‚satisfaction,‛ and ‚well-being,‛ not only did they disagree with each other regarding the proper understanding of these terms, but there are passages in which some (like hart and goldings) appear unable to agree with themselves. moreover, the perceived relationship between happiness and satisfaction shifted during the period under study. while the early contributors treated happiness and satisfaction as largely interchangeable, campbell et al. thought of them as different and of wellbeing as constituted by both happiness and satisfaction, and bradburn and caplovitz’s results have inspired the view that wellbeing consists of three irreducible components: the presence of positive affect, the absence of negative affect, and satisfaction. yet, the highly evident disagreement about the nature of happiness was not treated as an obstacle to measurement. 3.4 convergence in measurement in light of the disagreement about the nature of the object under study, it is interesting to note that, at least during the episode surveyed in this paper, there was a certain degree of convergence regarding how to measure happiness and satisfaction. it is true that since the the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 1920s and 30s a variety of instruments have been used to gauge people’s happiness and satisfaction; at no point was there consensus about the proper way to measure wellbeing. yet, there was a clear tendency to substitute a direct question like that of gurin et al. (1960) for more complex questionnaires. in addition, some found it more convenient to use preexisting measures than to develop their own. consequently, in time, there was considerably more agreement about how to measure wellbeing than about how to define it. watson (1930), as pointed out in section 2.2, used a surprising variety of remarkably sophisticated measures to assess his subjects’ happiness. first, he asked: ‚comparing yourself with other persons of the same age and sex how do you feel you should rate your own general happiness?‛ (p. 79). the subjects were then given a horizontal line, with captions that read, from left to right, ‚most miserable of all,‛ ‚about three-fourths of the population happier than you are,‛ ‚the average person of your own age and sex,‛ and so on (p. 80). subjects were asked to make a short vertical mark at the point where they thought they belonged, taking into account their ‚average state over several months‛ (p. 80). the subjects were also asked to place a circle at the point where they thought their friends would rate them (p. 80). second, subjects were offered ten descriptions, of one or two sentences each, and asked: ‚among the following descriptions, arranged in miscellaneous order, choose the one which comes nearest to fitting you‛ (p. 80). the descriptions included the following: ‚cheerful, gay spirits most of the time. occasionally bothered by something but can usually laugh it off,‛ ‚ups and downs, now happy about things, now depressed. about balanced in the long run,‛ and ‚life often seems so worthless that there is little to keep one going. nothing matters very much, there has been so much of hurt that laughter would be empty mockery‛ (p. 81). third, subjects were given a blank space and asked: ‚now write in a sentence or two, something like those above, which you believe will most truly describe your own general happiness in life‛ (p. 81). fourth, subjects were given a list of fifty properties – ‚enthusiastic,‛ ‚troubled,‛ ‚annoyed,‛ and so on – and asked: ‚check every term which you believe could fairly be applied to yourself in your prevalent attitudes‛ (p. 81). half of the descriptions were positive, half negative (p. 81). finally, using a graphic rating device as in the first question, subjects were asked about their happiness in different areas and in different stages of life (p. 82). on the basis of subjects’ responses, watson computed an aggregate ‚happiness score‛ (p. 82). to check for reliability, watson used the responses to different items to create two different happiness scores. he noted that the correlation between the scores for men and women were as high as .83 and .85 respectively. as a result of these calculations, he concluded: ‚this indicates that the measure is reasonably consistent, throughout‛ (p. 83). watson also noted that the correlation coefficient between the subjects’ own rating of their happiness on a graphical scale and the aggregate happiness scores for men and women were .81 and .82 respectively (p. 86). thus, he inferred that for some purposes, self-ratings may suffice. he wrote: ‚for the purpose of separating high and low groups such a simple indicator would probably be adequate‛ (p. 86). based on his own results, sailer drew the same conclusion: ‚in general, self-estimate of happiness proved to be a characteristic easily measured and showing considerable consistency and relationship to many other sorts of factors‛ (1931, p. 100). hart (1940) also used a range of measures. for his ‚at-the-moment euphorimeter,‛ hart modified one of the kinds of test used by watson (1930) and sailer (1931). participants were presented with a list of adjectives and asked to underline each adjective ‚which fairly well describes the way you have felt a good deal of the time or several times since you woke up this morning‛ and to cross out each adjective ‚which does not describe the way you have felt at any time today‛ (hart, 1940, p. 114). the adjectives were chosen by picking all synonyms and the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 antonyms of ‚happy‛ and ‚unhappy‛ in a dictionary, then adding all synonyms and antonyms of those, and so on, until he had a list of 48 adjectives (pp. 176-177). a subject was said to have a happy reaction each time he or she underlined a positive adjective or crossed out a negative one, and an unhappy reaction each time he or she underlined a negative adjective or crossed out a positive one (pp. 115-116). the test score could then be computed based on the number of happy and unhappy reactions (p. 177). after administering the test to 2,200 subjects, hart assured himself that the test was reliable by computing scores separately for each half of the adjectives and finding the reliability of the entire test to be .90 (pp. 178-179). for the ‚long-run euphorimeter‛ hart borrowed a number of questions from earlier studies and added some ‚which seemed likely to be valuable‛ (p. 181). many of the questions asked subjects how they ‚usually‛ felt, rather than how they felt at the moment (p. 111). the scoring system for the long-run euphorimeter was calibrated by comparing the results of 2,200 subjects who took both the long-run and the at-the-moment test (p. 181). the validity of his measures was assured, hart believed, by the manner in which he had defined ‚happiness.‛ in effect, he argued, ‚the adjective battery consists in offering an opportunity to say ‘i am happy’ in 48 different ways, or to say ‘i am unhappy’ in 48 different ways, or to make whatever compromise between these extremes fit one’s own state at the time tested‛ (p. 182). the long-run test also contained questions concerning how subjects felt about the change or maintenance of current conditions. hart wrote: at every crucial point in a long series of statistical analyses, based on these data, we have found that persons that say, in one form or another, ‚i am happy,‛ tend also to say, in various ways, ‚i want to keep my present way of life developing as it is now going‛ < the correlation is so close that it seems wisest to proceed upon the assumption that our two definitions of happiness really define the same thing (p. 184). he concluded: various improvements need to be made, and will continue to be made, in the euphorimeter tests. but it is believed that, as they now stand, with their present scoring methods, the euphorimeters measure happiness and unhappiness with sufficient reliability and validity to identify outstandingly happy and unhappy people and to give important aid in the process of increasing the happiness of those tested (pp. 184-185). hence, hart convinced himself on empirical grounds that the two definitions of happiness were interchangeable, and that the two euphorimeters – both of which were based on various kinds of self-reports – generated measures of happiness that were reliable and valid. goldings participated in a study on ‚personality development and projective techniques‛ (1954, p. 30), and as we saw, developed some original methods to assess happiness. first, his subjects were shown 30 photographs of faces with ambiguous facial expressions, and asked ‚to rate the satisfaction or dissatisfaction (happiness or unhappiness) of the people‛ (p. 34). he added: ‚the ss [subjects] rated each picture twice on a 10 point scale (extremely unhappy to extremely happy). the sum of the 60 ratings (2 ratings for each of the 30 pictures) constituted the s’s ascribed-happiness score‛ (p. 34). the reason why goldings included this test was the idea that ‚direct avowal of happiness may tend to be subjected to some distortion,‛ and that it would be important to have alternative, indirect means of measuring happiness. the significance of the happiness ascribed to others with ambiguous facial expressions is that the subject would be expected, on theoretical grounds, to project his or her own happiness onto the the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 faces (p. 33). second, subjects were given linear-type rating scales like those used by watson (1930) and sailer (1931) (goldings, 1954, pp. 34-35). on the basis of the results, goldings computed an ‚avowed happiness‛ score ranging from 1 to 6 (p. 35). third, goldings asked five experimenters to rank-order the subjects ‚on ‘general happiness and overall satisfaction’ based on the experimenter’s subjective, clinical judgment of the individual‛; the ratings were retrospective, and based on the impression made by the subjects during previous testing periods (p. 35). goldings found that there was ‚highly significant agreement among the five judges,‛ and that there was ‚a fairly close general agreement between the s’s avowal of his own happiness and the ratings assigned by the clinical judges‛ (1954, p. 40). in contrast, he found no positive correlation between avowed happiness and projected happiness. a closer examination of the data suggested to goldings that those subjects whose avowed happiness scores were in the normal range indeed tended to attribute their own mental state to the ambiguous faces, whereas those subjects who were extremely happy or unhappy tended to attribute the opposite state (p. 42). hence, he dismissed the indirect measure as a measure of happiness, noting that ‚the general hypothesis of a general supplementary projection of happiness must be rejected‛ (p. 41). bradburn and caplovitz (1965) agreed with goldings (1954) that self-report measures were no less adequate than any other kind of measure. in their view, the fact that no other measure had been shown to be decidedly more valid or reliable, entailed that psychological wellbeing may as well be assessed by simple self-report measures. they wrote: [there] is no evidence that self-reports are any less (or for that matter more) valid than expert ratings or psychological tests for rating people on a mental health dimension. furthermore, self-reports have the eminently practical virtues of face validity, directness, and ease of use (bradburn & caplovitz, 1965, p. 7). the authors were aware, of course, that there was no agreement on what to call the dimension of interest (p. 1). yet, in light of all the evidence, they could identify no reason to favor more complex measures over self-reports. in practice, bradburn and caplovitz relied heavily on the question from gurin et al. (1960). neugarten et al. constructed two indices of life satisfaction of their own. the first (life satisfaction index a) consisted of 20 statements of the form ‚i’ve gotten pretty much what i expected out of life‛ and checkboxes for ‚agree,‛ ‚disagree,‛ and ‚unsure‛ (1961, p. 141). the score was computed by awarding the respondent one point every time he or she agreed with a statement indicating satisfaction or disagreed with one indicating dissatisfaction. the second index (life satisfaction index b) consisted of twelve questions such as ‚how satisfied would you say you are with your way of life?‛ and three options ‚very satisfied‛ (for two points), ‚fairly satisfied‛ (one point), and ‚not very satisfied‛ (zero points) (p. 142). when confronted with cantril’s ‚self-anchoring striving scale‛, the subject was asked: ‚when you think about what really matters in your own life, what are your wishes and hopes for the future? in other words, if you imagine your future in the best possible light, what would your life look like then, if you are to be happy?,‛ and similarly for the worst possible life (1965, p. 23). thereafter, the subject was shown a non-verbal device referred to as ‚the ladder of life,‛ a drawing of a ladder-like shape where the rungs had been numbered from 0 to 10 (p. 22). next, the subject was told: ‚here is a picture of a ladder. suppose we say that the top of the ladder (pointing) represents the best possible life for you and the bottom (pointing) represents the worst possible life for you,‛ and asked ‚where on the ladder (moving finger rapidly up and down the ladder) do you feel you personally stand at the present time?‛ (p. the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 23).5 cantril’s basic idea was that this device would allow him to judge a person’s circumstances from the person’s own point of view. in this test, cantril wrote: ‚a person is asked to define on the basis of his own assumptions, perceptions, goals, and values the two extremes or anchoring points of the spectrum on which some scale measurement is desired‛ (p. 22). to his surprise, cantril learned that in some cultures ladders are uncommon; thus, he sometimes substituted a picture of a mountain for the ladder (andrews & robinson, 1991, p. 73). campbell et al. (1976) asked questions about subjects’ satisfaction in specific domains – including marriage, job, housing, etc. – as well as about their satisfaction with ‚life in general‛ and about their happiness, using the question from gurin et al. (1960). finally, campbell et al. computed what they called an ‚index of general affect‛ on the basis of ‚a series of descriptive adjectives‛ that subjects could use to describe their lives (1976, p. 13). the idea was to explore how domain satisfaction related to general life satisfaction, and how the latter related to other measures of the ‚quality of life experience.‛ for a great many of the comparisons, however, campbell et al. relied on a composite ‚index of well-being,‛ which was ‚a single variable representing a rather global sense of well-being,‛ and which combined the satisfaction score and the result on the adjective test (p. 49). andrews and withey (1976, ch. 6) tested 68 different measures but ended up favoring one they thought had more desirable qualities than the others, viz., the delighted-terrible (d-t) scale, which consists of seven categories ranging from ‚delighted,‛ though ‚pleased,‛ and ‚mostly satisfied,‛ to ‚mixed (about equally satisfied and dissatisfied)‛ to ‚mostly dissatisfied,‛ ‚unhappy‛ and ‚terrible‛ (p. 18). the subjects were given three additional response options: ‚neutral (neither satisfied nor dissatisfied),‛ ‚i never thought about it,‛ and ‚does not apply to me‛ (pp. 18-19). andrews and withey offered a variety of reasons to think that people make the kind of global judgments that their research presupposed and that their measures were valid. one of the reasons they thought it was meaningful to ask for global assessments was that people articulate such judgments ‚promptly and with apparent ease‛ (p. 64). moreover, in their sample, less than one percent checked the box marked ‚i never thought about it‛ when asked how they felt about their life as a whole (p. 64). finally, the authors suggested, the fact that questions such as ‚how are things?‛ are so common suggests that people think in those terms (pp. 64-66). as this review makes clear, since the 1920s and 30s, a variety of instruments have been used to gauge people’s happiness and satisfaction; at no point was there consensus about the proper way to measure wellbeing. nevertheless, at least during the episode surveyed in this paper, there was a certain degree of convergence regarding how to measure happiness and satisfaction. many of the early contributors, like watson, sailer, and hart used a remarkable variety of measures of happiness and satisfaction. however, over time there was a clear tendency to substitute a direct question like that of gurin et al. (1960) for more complex questionnaires (cf. diener et al., 1999, p. 277). having compared the performance of a variety of measures, watson, sailer, and many others concluded that self-reports appeared to perform as well as any other measure and sometimes better; certain measures, such as golding’s projection-based measures, appear to have been conclusively rejected. in addition, some contributors found it useful to employ preexisting measures rather than to develop their own. among other things, as wilson (1967, pp. 304-305) had pointed out, the use of the same tool as earlier researchers permits the construction of longer time series data. while some 5 the parenthetical notes in small caps are cantril’s instructions to the experimenter (cantril, 1965, p. 22). the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 disagreement remained, much of it appears to reflect a disagreement about the nature of wellbeing (cf. section 3.3) rather than a disagreement about how best to measure it. either way, in time, there was considerably more agreement about how to measure wellbeing than about how to define it. 3.5 summary and discussion in this section, i have argued that the history of subjective measures of wellbeing from the 1920s or 30s, in all essentials, confirms porter’s general account of the history of measurement in social and behavioral science. consistent with porter’s account, subjective measures of wellbeing emerged in applied branches of psychology, sociology, and medicine, and they appeared not as the result of an effort to replicate the successes of quantification in the natural sciences, but rather of an ambition to understand the causal antecedents of happiness and satisfaction in order to build a happier and therefore better society. throughout the history reviewed here, scientific measurement was seen as a means to overcome the limitations associated with unaided human judgment, in particular, a lack of trust and suspicions of arbitrariness. the researchers discussed here (insofar as they expressed a view at all) had radically different ideas about the nature of wellbeing, happiness, and satisfaction, but the disagreement was not treated as an obstacle to measurement. because of a tendency to substitute a direct question for more complex questionnaires, and because some found it useful to employ preexisting measures, in time, there was considerably more agreement about how to measure wellbeing than about how to define it. as a result, some of the self-report measures discussed here remain commonly used. this is true, for instance, in the case of the measures used by andrews and withey (1976), cantril (1965), and gurin et al. (1960). 4. conclusion in this paper i have traced the historical roots of measures of happiness, satisfaction, and the like. the history turned out to be longer than is typically suggested. far from being a recent development, subjective measures can be traced back at least to the 1920s and 1930s. the appearance of a science of happiness was perhaps marked by myerson’s 1917 study promoting the discipline of eupathics, the ‚more gracious sister‛ of eugenics, focusing on ‚the well being of the normal‛ (myerson, 1917, p. 344; cf. section 3.1). systematic happiness research took off shortly thereafter. subjective measures emerged in marital success studies, educational psychology, and personality psychology in the 1920s and 30s, as tools developed for the study of personality were applied to happiness and satisfaction; the measures were further shaped by the epidemiology of mental health, gerontology, and the social indicator movement in the 1960s and 70s, as measures of happiness and satisfaction were recruited as proxies for mental health and wellbeing in large, representative samples. the history is not only longer, but also richer, than typically suggested. as we have seen, the researchers in the traditions discussed here had rather different purposes, coming as they did from a variety of backgrounds and being involved in a variety of research projects. social and behavioral scientists who studied happiness, satisfaction, wellbeing, and the like operated with a variety of definitions. the scientists invented a fascinating variety of measurement tools, some of which were ultimately rejected, but some of which – like the question of gurin et al. (1960) – turned out to have a remarkable longevity. a number of the studies were longitudinal; some used remarkably large, representative samples. the history of the measurement of happiness and satisfaction is consistent with porter’s general account of measurement in social and behavioral science. one of porter’s main theses is the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 that the drive toward quantification emerged in applied rather than theoretical branches of social science, and that it did so not as a result of physics envy, but rather of a moral impulse to understand and improve a changing society. indeed, measures of happiness and satisfaction emerged in applied branches of psychology, sociology, and medicine, and they appeared not as the result of an effort to replicate the successes of quantification in the natural sciences, but rather of a desire to understand the causal antecedents of happiness in order to build a happier and therefore better society. porter also argued that quantification often appeared as a means to overcome deficiencies in human judgment, in particular, a lack of trust and suspicions of arbitrariness. in fact, throughout the history reviewed here, scientific measurement was seen as a means to overcome the limitations associated with unaided human judgment, in particular, a lack of trust and suspicions of arbitrariness. in addition, porter maintained that the drive toward measurement is not typically impeded by disagreements about the nature of the object under study. as it happens, the researchers discussed here (insofar as they expressed a view about the nature of happiness and satisfaction at all) had radically different ideas about the nature of wellbeing, but such disagreement was not treated as an obstacle to measurement – indeed, in time, there was considerably more agreement about how to measure wellbeing than about how to define it. the story confirms chang’s thesis that history of science as complementary science can serve multiple purposes (2004, p. 249). first, the story offers further proof that history can serve to recover knowledge about natural and social phenomena as well as about previous efforts to measure them that appears to have been forgotten. the variety and sophistication of the measures used even early in the game, by researchers like watson and hart, is astonishing and, it appears, largely forgotten by practicing social and behavioral scientists. recent work has noted a surprisingly weak correlation between objective conditions and subjective wellbeing (argyle, 1999). but this phenomenon was well known throughout the history reviewed here; symonds, for example, concluded: ‚happy and unhappy *people+ are remarkably alike in their problems and interests. the unhappy do not have peculiar problems but make less satisfactory adjustments to their problems‛ (1937, p. 293). meanwhile, recent years have seen a sharp debate about the extent to which people adapt to objective circumstances. under the heading ‚myths in the science of happiness,‛ diener criticizes what he calls the ‚extreme setpoint theory‛ and argues that circumstances do matter and that adaptation is not in general complete (diener, 2008, pp. 494-496). but already, in 1940, hart had shown that recently married couples, prisoners working on roads, and couples who have contemplated divorce exhibit sharply different happiness scores, which would disconfirm the extreme setpoint theory (see figure 1). the story also confirms that history can serve to develop critical awareness of contemporary efforts, their prospects and limitations. among other things, the historical overview offered here sheds light on the methodological and philosophical underpinnings of the project. as one example, critics of subjective measures sometimes suggest that proponents of subjective measures of wellbeing illegitimately assume without argument that people are capable of accurately reporting how happy or satisfied they are. this impression is sometimes encouraged by the proponents themselves. consider again frey and stutzer, who state: ‚in general, it can be assumed that [individuals] are the best judges of when they are happy and when they are unhappy‛ (2002, p. 4). they support this assumption by referring to ‚a sensible tradition in economics to rely on the judgment of the persons directly involved‛ (p. 4). this move is surprising, given that only a few pages earlier they attack the track record of economics in saying something useful about happiness (p. vii). however, as we have seen, it is a mistake to think that psychologists and economists working on subjective wellbeing simply take the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 people’s ability to report their happiness for granted. over the course of the history reviewed here, substantial efforts have gone into showing that the relevant measures are reliable and valid (cf. angner, forthcoming). finally, the story demonstrates that history can serve to suggest novel experimental and theoretical developments. as we saw in section 2.6, wilson ended his review by calling for more experimental research into the determinants of happiness. while the specific intervention he discussed may not be the most suitable one, he was quite right that the possibility of exploring experimentally the determinants of happiness is exciting. moreover, campbell et al. identified interesting avenues of theoretical development when they noted that degrees of satisfaction differ radically between individuals even under objectively identical circumstances. they also pointed out that this fact is part of the raison d’être of the whole endeavor: ‚if there were a close and universal relationship between the level of material possessions and the quality of life experience, there would, of course, be little point in undertaking a study of the kind in which we are here engaged‛ (1976, p. 10). campbell et al. suggest that satisfaction may be a function not just of actual or perceived attainment, but also of the standard against which attainment is assessed. hence: the individual’s assessment may derive from any or all of the following bases of evaluation: aspiration levels, or the situation that a person hopes eventually to attain, where a given domain is concerned; expectation levels, or the situation he feels he is likely to attain in the fairly immediate future; equity levels, or what he thinks should be true of his situation if perfect justice prevails, given how much he invests in it relative to others; reference group levels, or what he believes to be true of the situations of others with whom he identifies, such as friends and family or others of his income, race, or occupation; personal needs, or the amount of a particular reward he may require, such as how much savings to feel secure, how much housing to be comfortable, how much police protection to feel safe; and personal values, concerning such intangibles as freedom, equality, and the like (campbell et al., 1976, p. 14). while recent research has explored precisely this kind of question, the area is far from exhausted. it is my hope that this history, though short and in many ways incomplete, will be of interest not just to historians of psychology but to practicing social and behavioral scientists, as well as to anyone who is interested in the application of the science of happiness to public policy. this historical review has offered new perspectives on past and present scientific practice and further proof that history can serve to recover knowledge – about natural and social phenomena as well as about previous efforts to measure them – that appears to have been forgotten; to develop critical awareness of contemporary efforts, their prospects and limitations; and to suggest novel experimental and theoretical developments. further study into the history of subjective measures thus seems highly motivated, not just because of what we can learn about the historical origins of such measures but also because of what we can learn about their philosophical and methodological underpinnings. acknowledgements this paper is based on angner (2005). i am grateful to those, too numerous to name, who have offered feedback on earlier drafts. all errors remain my own. unless otherwise noted, all italics in original. the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 author erik angner university of alabama at birmingham angner@uab.edu references adams, d. l. 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(1930). happiness among adult students of education. journal of educational psychology, 21(2), 79-109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0070539 wilson, w. (1967). correlates of avowed happiness. psychological bulletin, 67(4), 294-306. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0024431 winter, d. g., & barenbaum, n. b. (1999). history of modern personality psychology theory and research. in l. a. pervin & o. p. john (eds.), handbook of personality: theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 3-27). new york, ny: guilford press. wohlgemuth, a. (1919). pleasure–unpleasure: an experimental investigation on the feeling-elements. the british journal of psychology monograph supplements (vol. 2). cambridge: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0073646 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0304-3959(96)02994-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/346773 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0061067 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0070539 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0024431 the evolution of eupathics angner www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 t im e li n e o f e a rl y c o n tr ib u to rs t o t h e l it er a tu re o n s u b je ct iv e m e a su re s o f w e ll b e in g a n d t h e s ci e n ce o f h a p p in e ss . a p p e n d ix a jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., & lomas, t. (2021). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 2.0: english). international journal of wellbeing, 11(3), 1-38. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i3.1819 guidline version 2.0, 15 july 2021 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 special issue ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 2 contents declaration: ................................................................................................................................................ 3 preface ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 iteration two: an overview of the new structure, content changes, and the review process. ............... 4 a call for support from the positive psychology community. ................................................................... 5 introductory notes ................................................................................................................................... 6 preamble ............................................................................................................................................................ 6 guideline aspirations ...................................................................................................................................... 6 who are the guidelines for? ............................................................................................................................ 7 professional bodies and the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice ................................... 7 provisional nature of guidelines .................................................................................................................... 7 key terms .......................................................................................................................................................... 8 ethical guidelines: values, strengths, and principles .................................................................... 10 values of positive psychology practitioners .............................................................................................. 11 strengths of positive psychology practitioners .......................................................................................... 12 ethical principles for positive psychology practice ................................................................................... 13 acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ 15 signatories to the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice ...................................... 17 authors ..................................................................................................................................................... 19 publishing timeline .............................................................................................................................. 19 references ................................................................................................................................................ 19 further reading ...................................................................................................................................... 20 appendix a: applications of the ethical guidelines in practice .................................................. 21 three important considerations ................................................................................................................... 21 ethical decision making ................................................................................................................................ 21 working considerations ................................................................................................................................ 22 changes in clients .......................................................................................................................................... 22 changes in embedded environments .......................................................................................................... 22 current emotional state and level of wellbeing ......................................................................................... 23 avoidance ....................................................................................................................................................... 23 power differentials ......................................................................................................................................... 23 overuse of strengths ...................................................................................................................................... 24 practical wisdom ............................................................................................................................................ 24 maintaining resilience and buffering against burnout ............................................................................. 24 declaration of education and competence ................................................................................................. 24 appreciating the importance of cultural context ....................................................................................... 25 appendix b: resolving ethical dilemmas – a step-by-step guide ............................................ 26 appendix c: self-evaluation guide ................................................................................................... 27 valuing ethics ................................................................................................................................................. 27 ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 3 application of ppis ........................................................................................................................................ 27 reflective practice .......................................................................................................................................... 28 self-care and burnout .................................................................................................................................... 28 appendix d: case examples of ethical issues ................................................................................. 29 case example 1: cultural – applying ppis with cultural sensitivity ....................................................... 29 case example 2: coaching – coaching clients in changing circumstances ............................................. 30 case example 3: clinical working with trauma....................................................................................... 31 case example 4: organisational pressure to misrepresent data ............................................................ 31 case example 5: mentoring – motivating “unwilling” participants in an imbalanced relationship .. 32 case example 6: education implementing wellbeing programmes where aspirations are hindered by existing practice ........................................................................................................................................ 33 case example 7 : making statements about one’s qualifications and about applied research ............ 34 appendix e: moving towards a ‘code of ethical positive psychology practice’? ..................... 36 appendix f: strengths in ethics .......................................................................................................... 37 considerations for using strengths to support ethical decision making. ............................................... 37 links to three models .................................................................................................................................... 37 appendix g: relevant guidelines ...................................................................................................... 38 declaration: these guidelines are the result of a collaborative and independent working group led by aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache and tim lomas. the guidelines are independent of any organisation or association; however, numerous parties have been involved in the development and refinement of both the first and this, the second, iteration. it is the authors’ intention to update the guidelines on a bi-annual cycle to further strengthen their depth and breadth of functionality, and we welcome feedback from the community to aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au or ethicalguidelinesppp@gmail.com. mailto:aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au mailto:ethicalguidelinesppp@gmail.com ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 4 preface iteration two: an overview of the new structure, content changes, and the review process. the authors are dedicated to ensuring that these guidelines are relevant and accessible globally in the contexts where positive psychology is practised. as such, we have committed to a twoyearly review of the guidelines to assure there is an opportunity to refine and expand the guidelines to ensure that they meet the needs of our diverse community. the process for the review of iteration one started in july 2020. feedback received has been both formal and informal. informally we heard from interested parties who have reviewed the guidelines in settings like academic peer book clubs, teachers using the guidelines with their students and other interested academics, scholars and practitioners. formally we undertook a process of invited feedback. we asked people to complete a survey, provide more in-depth feedback through open-ended questions, or directly contact us. we asked those invited individuals to pass on the invitation to anyone they felt might like to be involved, creating a snowball effect. we sought feedback from masters in applied positive psychology (mapp) programme leaders, those who had endorsed and helped create iteration one (including some ethicists), people who showed interest, those who teach positive psychology at a university level, the translation teams, and relevant organisation representatives of practitioners using positive psychology coaching and positive psychology training providers. the feedback received was critical, largely positive, and constructive, and resulted in several changes to the first iteration. in addition to this, we did receive a few comments that were considered beyond the scope of the current review, such as queries about “who gets to be a positive psychology practitioner?” and possible additional sections, such as ‘ethical guidelines for conducting positive psychology research’. iteration two contains several fundamental changes, which are both structural and content related. firstly, we developed and amended many aspects of the content with a particular focus on expanding and refining the language used to ensure that the guidelines, and the practitioners using them, are taking into consideration the needs of different populations (e.g., age, gender, sexuality and gender identity, neurodiversity), cultural awareness and diverse applications of positive psychology. secondly, we undertook major content reorganisation, moving to a more condensed ‘core’ document which contains the introductory notes and the ethical guidelines values, strengths and principles for positive psychology practice. the remainder of the content, which is more supplementary, along with new material, is now housed in a series of supporting appendices. these include sections covering; the application of ethical guidelines in practice, a step-by-step guide to resolving ethical dilemmas, an expanded self-evaluation guide, and case studies (including one new example). two new appendices include an overview of what moving towards a ‘code of ethical positive psychology practice’ could look like and a section on using strengths to support ethical decision making. aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache, tim lomas ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 5 a call for support from the positive psychology community. we invite your feedback and thoughts about the guidelines, their usefulness, and any gaps (i.e., in the application, language use, cultural inclusivity) that may benefit from being addressed. we also welcome ideas for new content and written submissions you believe would be helpful for users of the guidelines. feedback is open for 12 months (closing july 2022). we also seek your assistant in ensuring these guidelines are shared with those who could most benefit from their guidance. please contact us if you have ideas about how to extend their usefulness and reach. submit feedback via the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ethicalguidelinesfeedback or scanning the qr code. if you would like to contact the authors directly, please email to aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au or ethicalguidelinesppp@gmail.com. a note of thanks to the translators. lastly, we would like to pay special thanks to the many talented individuals who have taken the time to translate these guidelines into 10 additional languages which include; johannes heekerens, aljoscha dreisörner (german) natalie zadykian, natalia tsvetkova (russian) carina bidese, vivian callegaro, rafael ruschel (portuguese) marjan hassaniraad, naghmeh taghva (persian) andrea giraldez-hayes (spanish) julie beicker, jannie stricker (danish) sok-ho trinh, hrafnhildur krumma jonsdottir (french) aisha alahmadi (arabic) gulten adiguzel (turkish) virginia karavakou, christina seryianni (greek) we hope to expand the translations offered to as many languages as possible to ensure these guidelines are accessible wherever positive psychology is being applied across cultures. if you are interested in translating the guidelines, please contact aaron jarden at aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ethicalguidelinesfeedback mailto:aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au mailto:ethicalguidelinesppp@gmail.com ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 6 introductory notes preamble. ethical perfection may be a utopian ideal, since human beings, including positive psychology practitioners (ppps), are fallible, vulnerable, and imperfect. moreover, the complexities of contemporary life-including ever-expanding cyber-living, erratic climate change, global pandemics, refugee crises, evolving identities, and increasing economic polarisation exacerbate such human vulnerabilities. psychological services, especially explicitly aiming to restore or enhance wellbeing, are not easily offered without competing priorities and ethical dilemmas. no single set of ethical guidelines, standards, codes or even statutes can fully encapsulate the range of human complexities. nevertheless, we believe that a broad framework of values, personal strengths, and principles, nonetheless can guide us to more and better ethical decision making. this principle applies in all domains of endeavour, not least – most relevantly here – in engaging in positive psychological interventions (ppis), which inherently aim to enhance wellbeing. this guideline contains a) values, b) strengths, and c) principles for positive psychology practice. it is important to note that ‘guidelines’ usually sit within broader frameworks, of ethical practice, which will vary by context and jurisdiction. for example, guidelines may sit at the bottom of a prescriptive hierarchy such as that depicted in figure 1 below: figure 1. guidelines and broader frameworks. thus, it is important to consider these guidelines along with other relevant frameworks. in addition, whilst an individual or organisation may subscribe to and endorse these guidelines for “positive psychology practice,” in some countries and jurisdictions it may be illegal to call yourself a “positive psychologist” – please be aware of the restrictions and requirements of your location. guideline aspirations. why have a set of ethical guidelines? the purpose of these guidelines is to maintain and enhance ethical practice upholding a commitment to scientifically informed and evidencebased practice in the field of positive psychology (pp). at the highest professional level they aim to inspire fidelity to the science of wellbeing, and practitioners will ideally consider the guidelines in their self-presentation and marketing of the potential benefits. with the intent to ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 7 protect the public against potential harmful impact—intentional or inadvertent. the guidelines attempt to promote to ppps and others a clearer understanding of what constitutes the ethically informed practice of pp. with the assistance of such guidelines, ppps are expected to uphold commitment to aspects such as:1 a) closely studying relevant research, and building their practice from a scientific base; b) continually updating their knowledge through ongoing learning and professional development; c) carefully and accurately communicating the limits of knowledge related to ppis, as well as potential benefits and pitfalls of specific ppis and wellbeing programmes; and d) monitoring the wellbeing of their clients during service provision, and especially any negative impacts on wellbeing. who are the guidelines for? the purpose of these guidelines is to facilitate optimal ethical practice of ppps, doing so by encouraging ppps to act beneficently (doing good to others) and non-maleficently (avoiding potential harm to others). as such, these guidelines are for professionals (e.g., psychologists) and others (e.g., students, or those with no affiliations) who are delivering ppis or using knowledge from the field of pp in their practice. these are not guidelines for how to use or deliver particular ppis. professional bodies and the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice. where a practitioner is a member of a relevant professional body (e.g., american psychological association, australian psychological society, international coaching federation), then first and foremost, their association’s standards, code or guidelines will inform their practice. we further expect that when practitioners are members of a licensing or credentialing body (e.g., college of psychologists) with adequate education, training and experience in practising psychology or related fields such practitioners will therefore be familiar with the rules, standards, regulations, statues, and procedures of practising psychology within their jurisdiction. the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice introduced here are designed to augment, not replace, such existing jurisdictional/professional codes and guides. as such, these guidelines also provide a baseline for practitioners who are not associated with or affiliated to a professional body. furthermore, countries or regions of the world which may not have any coherent set of guidelines of practice of psychology, these guidelines can help practitioners to inform or organise their practice on ethical principles. provisional nature of guidelines. we note that the existing published guidelines (version 1.0, 19th july 2019), and this new iteration (version 2.0, 16 july, 2021) are provisional and subject to ongoing revision every two years through an iterative consultative process with key stakeholders. such regularity is to ensure that the guidelines are responsive to contextual changes and reflect ever evolving local 1 we have chosen four examples here to demonstrate such commitments, however, note that this list could be lengthy. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 8 and global themes. in that respect, we welcome feedback on the guidelines outlined here at any time. it is also important to note that primarily english speaking, mostly western countries, have influenced the development of these guidelines. as such, although we have sought to make the guidelines universally relevant, they may potentially be limited to such contexts. however, since these guidelines are a living growing document identified by version number, it is hoped that future versions will incorporate the influence of codes and guidelines from non-english speaking and non-western countries. final note – this is an iterative process. we remind the reader of these guidelines that they have been designed to be living and evolving, and as such, are both imperfect and intended to be updated every two years. feedback from all stakeholders will be reviewed by the custodians (authors) and will be considered for each future iteration. key terms. client practitioners work with clients. “client” is a generic term used to refer to the recipient of any services such as (however, not limited to) an individual, couple, family, group, organisation, sponsor, or other specifiable social unit. codes vs guidelines a code usually has legal or other enforceable ramifications, whereas guidelines are limited to suggesting best practice which is not usually “regulated” or “policed.” guidelines, by their nature, imply that circumstances are varied and complex, and that following the guidelines often requires practitioners to apply practical wisdom (a combination of experience and common sense), as well as to abide by relevant other local and professional codes. see appendix e for more on what developing a code may look like. pp pp: positive psychology. there are many ways of conceptualising and defining pp, but most operationalisations usually position it as the scientific study and promotion of overarching constructs such as “happiness,” “wellbeing,” “flourishing,” and “thriving.” for instance, lomas, hefferon and ivtzan (2015, p. 1347) define pp as “the science and practice of improving wellbeing.” relatedly, there is the notion of “applied positive psychology,” which can simply be read as the application of pp in real-world settings, including through ppis. ppi ppi: positive psychological intervention. there is within the literature a demarcation made between a “positive psychology intervention” and a “positive psychological intervention” – for an outline and explanation, see hone, jarden, and schofield (2015). here we incorporate the wider notion of positive psychological intervention that covers all activities across many disciplines (i.e., from other sub-fields of psychology in addition to pp) aimed towards increasing psychological forms of wellbeing. one popular definition of a ppi is: “a positive psychological intervention promotes positive emotions, behaviours, and/or thoughts, thereby increasing the ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 9 wellbeing of an individual or group” (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, p. 92). another popular definition of a ppi is “treatment methods or intentional activities that aim to cultivate positive feelings, behaviours, or cognitions” (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009, p. 468). ppp ppp: positive psychology practitioner. a practitioner who has completed requisite training to practise (e.g., psychotherapy, counselling, coaching), and undertaken pp specific training with a reputable training provider, thereby allowing an understanding of the scientific research process and its ethical application in the delivery of applied positive psychology (e.g., ppis).2 strengths generally, ethical guidelines and codes espouse specific desired personal characteristics, arbitrarily selected by thought leaders of the specific field. for these guidelines, we reviewed salient frameworks of strengths (appendix f). rather than synthesizing these diverse frameworks into one unified model of strengths, which is beyond the scope of these guidelines, we elected to work from one framework based on available empirical evidence (mcgrath, 2016; mcgrath, 2015; mcgrath, 2014; peterson & seligman, 2004). the via classification of character strengths and virtues (peterson & seligman, 2004) presents the strongest empirical evidence and application across various domains such as educational, clinical, workplace, health and leisure. according to the via, character strengths are defined as universal traits that are valued in their own right and do not necessarily lead to instrumental outcomes. rather, as behavioural traits, they facilitate and guide a person to behave in responsible and ethical ways for their own and others’ welfare. character strengths, broadly speaking, reflect who a person is (i.e., their character), and values reflect what a person is committed to (i.e., their principles and actions). practitioner the term “practitioner” is used generically to refer to anyone with responsibility for the provision of pp related services. “practitioner” includes anyone undertaking role(s) such as (though not limited to) counsellor, psychotherapist, mental health professional, coach, trainer, mentor, or educator.3 principles principles direct attention to important ethical responsibilities. particular actions follow from specific principles. values values are beliefs held by individuals and shared by groups about desirable ends (i.e., broader ideologies about the world and how it should be). values transcend specific situations, guide 2 who can call themselves a ppp? there is, as yet, no clear demarcation as to the amount and level of training or qualification needed. for example, could one consider oneself a ppp based on a 2-day course, 6-month accredited certificate, or a 2-year masters in applied positive psychology programme? these are questions that still need resolving within the field, and are beyond the scope of these guidelines per se. in addition, supervised practice (e.g. peer and one-to-one supervision) and online consultation is ideal. similarly, further guidance regarding appropriate training and supervision is needed from the professional bodies in this field (and indeed, such issues are already being considered and addressed by relevant parties). 3 the ethos and principles contained in these guidelines could equally apply to wellbeing researchers, where researchers could be considered practitioners in one sense, working with subjects who could be considered similar to clients. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 10 how we select actions and evaluate others and ourselves, and are ordered by their relative importance (schwartz, 2006). values can represent an important way of expressing a general ethical commitment that becomes more precisely defined and action-orientated when expressed as a principle. in other words, values inform principles. in that communal sense, the values outlined in these guidelines are those the authors have identified as being broadly shared within the pp community. we also acknowledge that different values may vary in importance in different contexts. ethical guidelines: values, strengths, and principles the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice incorporate the following values, strengths and principles. both values and strengths support the enactment of ethical principles, as displayed in figure 1 and expanded on in further detail in table 1. table 1 values, strengths and principles of positive psychology practice. values4 strengths5 principles • protecting the safety of clients and others. • honesty. • beneficence/nonmaleficence. • alleviating personal distress and suffering. • fairness. • responsible caring. • ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships. • social intelligence. • respect for people’s rights and dignity. • appreciating the diversity of human experience and culture. • teamwork. • trustworthiness. • fostering a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned. • kindness. • justice. • enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application. • prudence. • autonomy. • enhancing the quality of relationships between people. • perspective. • increasing personal effectiveness. o judgement. • striving for the fair and adequate provision of counselling, psychotherapy, coaching, and wellbeing services. o self-regulation. o perseverance. o bravery. 4 our values have been selected based on other similar guidelines, and, as such, many of the values can fit in different categories. for example, justice could be perceived as a value, or as a principle. trustworthiness could be perceived as a strength (honesty), a value, or as a principle. many of these constructs are debatable in this way. values have also been ranked by perceived importance, according to the guideline authors. 5 strengths are sourced from 10 similar codes of ethics (e.g., british association for counselling and psychotherapy’s ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy). the strengths of judgement, self-regulation, perseverance and bravery (hollow bullet points) have been chosen by the authors as deemed important in upholding the six principles. values strengths principles figure 1: values and strengths support principles. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 11 in addition: • almost all codes stipulate a range of personal traits and qualities, whereas these guidelines focus on strengths and observable behaviours. • the lists of values, strengths, and principles are not in any way exhaustive, but, rather, an initial attempt at surveying what is currently perceived most pertinent to practice. as the guidelines adapt iteratively over time, and debate is had amongst the pp community, it is anticipated that these elements will evolve. we note that the content of table 1 (values, strengths, principles), remain the same in version two as they were in version one. • the lists of values, strengths and principles is also not prescriptive. • one particular model of strengths is used here: the via classification of character strengths and virtues framework. this selection is based on the via being deemed to have the largest empirical research base in the literature among comparable frameworks. however, if you have a personal preference for, and familiarity with, a different strengths framework (e.g., gallup cliftonstrengths), then we encourage you to use that instead. in that case, aim to map the relevant strengths from your preferred framework onto the via strengths listed (e.g., for the first strength of 'honesty,' substitute in the nearest equivalent strength from your preferred framework). the general principle here is to use strengths as such in acting ethically, not necessarily to use the strengths specified by any particular framework. values of positive psychology practitioners. the fundamental values of ppps include a commitment to: • protecting the safety of clients and others. this includes maintaining an ever-vigilant awareness of how a client is responding to one’s services, and, moreover, recognising the limits of one’s capacity and expertise (and, as such, recognising when a client may need professional help from other sectors, or if the public are in danger). • alleviating personal distress and suffering (when within one’s boundaries of expertise). this means deploying ppis in contextually relevant ways to decrease the distress of individuals who seek services in various professional contexts (e.g., therapy, coaching, health). • ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships. this includes respecting personal boundaries, and maintaining a commitment to professional practices such as consent, confidentiality, and objectivity. • appreciating the diversity of human experience and cultures. this means not applying a “one-size-fits-all” framework to one’s clients, but, rather, respecting and indeed celebrating the variety of people’s unique developmental paths, and contextual and cultural backgrounds. • fostering a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned. this means that the individual develops and pursues goals that are not only fulfilling for the self, but also contribute to the greater good. • enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application. this means doing one’s best to stay abreast of developments in the research literature and maintaining an up-to-date knowledge of advances in the field. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 12 • enhancing the quality of relationships between people. this means recognising that people are inevitably situated within social relationships and networks, and striving to help the person enhance these bonds as far as possible. • increasing personal effectiveness. this means striving to help the client operate more effectively in the world and in the unique situations they find themselves. • striving for the fair and adequate provision of pp services. this might include seeking to provide services for hard-to-reach populations, or, where possible, implementing a pricing structure whereby people with less means are still able to benefit from services. strengths of positive psychology practitioners. the practitioner’s personal strengths are essential because they have an impact on the practitioner/client relationship. many of the strengths considered vital in the provision of services are invariably deemed good personal qualities in life generally. however, it is yet inappropriate to prescribe that all practitioners possess these strengths since it is fundamental that these are deeply rooted in the person concerned and develop out of personal commitment rather than the requirements of an external authority. a thematic analysis of principles and values espoused by major guidelines (see relevant guidelines section) showed that the following character strengths are presumed to facilitate sound ethical practice and decision making: • honesty: speaking the truth; presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretence; taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions. • fairness: treating all people the same according to notions of fairness and justice; not letting personal feelings bias decisions about others; giving everyone a fair chance. • social intelligence: being aware of the motives and feelings of other people; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what to do to put others at ease. • teamwork: working well as a member of a group or team; being loyal to the group; doing one’s share. • kindness: doing favours and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them. • prudence: being careful about one’s choices; not taking undue risks; not saying or doing things that might later be regretted. • perspective: being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people. • judgement: thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; relying only on solid evidence to make decisions; having the ability to change one’s mind. • self-regulation: regulating what one feels and does; being disciplined; controlling one’s appetites and emotions. • perseverance: working hard to finish what one starts, no matter the project: “getting it out the door” in timely fashion; not getting distracted when working; taking satisfaction in completing tasks. • bravery: being a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain; speaking up for what is right even if there is opposition; acting on one’s convictions. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 13 ethical principles for positive psychology practice. each of the six ethical principles described below is accompanied by examples of good practice that have been developed in response to that principle. ethical decisions that are strongly supported by one or more of these principles, without any contradiction from others, may be regarded as having a strong moral rationale. however, practitioners will likely encounter circumstances in which it is impossible to reconcile all the applicable principles, and choosing between principles may be required. a decision or course of action does not necessarily become unethical merely because it is contentious or other practitioners would have reached different conclusions in similar circumstances. a practitioner’s obligation is to consider all the relevant circumstances with as much care as is reasonably possible and to be appropriately accountable for decisions made. beneficence/non-maleficence beneficence involves a commitment to promoting the client’s and practitioner’s wellbeing. the principle of beneficence means acting in the best interests of the client, based on professional assessment. it directs attention to working strictly within one’s limits of competence and providing services on the basis of adequate training or experience. ensuring that the client’s best interests are achieved requires systematic monitoring of practice and outcomes (e.g., wellbeing) by the best available means. it is considered important that scientific research and systematic reflection inform practice. depending on role and context, there is usually an obligation to take steps to enhance the quality of the services provided, and to commit to updating practice by continuing professional development. an obligation to act in the best interests of a client may become paramount when working with clients whose capacity for autonomy is diminished because of age, immaturity, lack of understanding, distress, or other significant personal constraints. non-maleficence, on the other hand, involves a commitment to avoiding harm to the client. practitioners who adopt this principle: • avoid sexual, financial, emotional or any other form of client exploitation; • avoid incompetence (i.e., appropriate application of ppis, e.g., knowing what works for whom) and malpractice; • do not provide services when unfit to do so due to illness, personal circumstances or intoxication. the practitioner has an ethical responsibility to strive to mitigate any harm caused to a client even when the harm is unavoidable or unintended. practitioners have personal and professional responsibilities to challenge, where appropriate, the incompetence or malpractice of others. they also have a responsibility to contribute to any investigation, and/or adjudication by an appropriately recognised body/authority, concerning professional practice which falls below that of a reasonably competent practitioner and/or risks bringing discredit upon their profession or pp. responsible caring the practice of pp promotes wellbeing. in pursuing this goal, ppps who adopt this principle demonstrate an active concern for the welfare of those with whom they work, and acknowledge the social and institutional power that structures their role as ppps. they have a ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 14 primary responsibility to protect the welfare of those with whom they work. they recognise that individuals, families, groups, or communities may be in a vulnerable position. they also recognise their boundaries of expertise (including the absence of knowledge) and refer to other specialists when needed, and they accept responsibility and correct any harm that occurs as a result of their service provision. ppps are also expected to take an active and ongoing interest in empirical and theoretical developments in their field, ensuring that they maintain up-to-date knowledge of the evidence base regarding the ppis they are implementing. respect for people’s rights and dignity in accordance with the united nations universal declaration of human rights, respect for the dignity of persons and their rights requires that: each person and all peoples are positively valued in their own right, their rights are acknowledged and respected, and they are shown respect and granted dignity as part of their common humanity. practitioners who adopt this principle show respect which requires sensitivity to cultural and social diversity. this includes a recognition of differences among persons associated with their culture, nationality, ethnicity, colour, race, religion, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental abilities, age, socio-economic status, and/or any other personal characteristic, condition, or status. such differences may be an integral part of the person, and should be respected as such. trustworthiness being trustworthy (fidelity) involves honouring the trust placed in the practitioner. trustworthiness is regarded as fundamental to understanding and resolving ethical issues. practitioners who adopt this principle: • act in accordance with the trust placed in them; • strive to ensure that clients’ expectations have reasonable prospects of being met; • honour their agreements and promises; • regard confidentiality as an obligation arising from the client’s trust; • restrict any disclosure of confidential information about clients to furthering the purposes for which it was originally disclosed – with the exception of mandated disclosure (e.g., a law in one’s jurisdiction requires such disclosure). justice justice involves the fair and impartial treatment of all clients and the provision of adequate services. the principle of justice requires that practitioners who adopt this principle are just and fair to all clients, including hard-to-reach populations, and respect their human rights and dignity. it directs attention to conscientiously considering any legal requirements and obligations, and remaining alert to potential conflicts between legal and ethical obligations. justice in the distribution of services requires the ability to determine impartially the provision of services for clients and the allocation of services between clients. a commitment to fairness requires the ability to appreciate differences between people and to be committed to equality of opportunity, and avoid discrimination against people or groups based on their personal or social characteristics. in other words, justice strives to ensure that unfair discrimination based on certain characteristics (e.g., gender, age, sexual orientation) does not happen. practitioners have a duty to strive to ensure a fair provision of services that are accessible and appropriate to the needs of potential clients. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 15 autonomy autonomy involves respecting the client’s right to be self-governing. this principle emphasises the importance of developing a client’s ability to be self-directing within the provision of services and all aspects of life. the principle of autonomy opposes the manipulation of clients against their will, even for beneficial social ends. practitioners who respect their clients’ autonomy: • promote autonomy; • safeguard and ensure independent decision making; • recognise when the client is unable to exercise autonomy; • ensure accuracy in any advertising or information given in advance of services offered; • seek freely given and adequately informed consent throughout the relationship; • emphasise the value of voluntary participation in the services being offered; • engage in explicit contracting in advance of any commitment by the client and revisit/review the terms of that contract throughout the relationship; • protect privacy; • protect confidentiality; • customarily make any disclosures of confidential information conditional on the consent of the person concerned; • inform the client in advance of foreseeable conflicts of interest, or as soon as possible after such conflicts become apparent. acknowledgements the following people, listed alphabetically, contributed substantially and provided input and feedback into the drafting of these guidelines: • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr robert biswas-diener, positive acorn. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 16 • associate professor robert isler, waikato university. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • tia moin, mappcp, positively me coaching. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 17 signatories to the ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice date of signing the guidelines name of institution logo 19 / july / 2019 centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne. 19 / july / 2019 centre for positive psychology, university of east london. 19 / july / 2019 claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university, usa 19 / july / 2019 centre for positive psychology, central queensland university. 16 / july / 2021 auckland university of technology. 16 / july / 2021 itam center for well-being studies. instituto tecnológico autónomo de méxico. 16 / july / 2021 university of southern california. date of signing the guidelines name of organisation logo 16 / july / 2021 positive acorn. 19 / july / 2019 new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience. 19 / july / 2019 centro de educacion emocional positiva. 19 / july / 2019 humanship. 16 / july / 2021 european network of positive psychology. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 18 16 / july / 2021 international journal of wellbeing. 16 / july / 2021 lvs consulting. 16 / july / 2021 the mind room. 16 / july / 2021 the inclusion coach. 19 / july / 2019 the langley group. 16 / july / 2021 the positivity institute. 19 / july / 2019 the wellbeing and resilience centre. 19 / july / 2019 via institute on character. 19 / july / 2019 japanese positive health psychology society. 19 / july / 2019 new zealand association of positive psychology. 16 / july / 2021 world happiness foundation. * please note that the above institutions and organisations are examples, and this is not an extensive or exhaustive list. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 19 authors aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas wellbeing for planet earth, japan publishing timeline published july, 15 2021 references barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. clifton, d. o., & anderson, e. (2002). strengths quest: discover and develop your strengths in academics, career, and beyond. washington, dc: the gallup organization. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. linley, p.a. (2008). average to a+: realising strengths in yourself and others. leicester: capp press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2016). measurement invariance in translations of the via inventory of strengths. european journal of psychological assessment, 32(3), 187–194. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000248 mcgrath, r. (2015). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. the journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 41–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000248 ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 20 sin, n. l. & lyubomirsky, s. (2009). enhancing well‐being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: a practice friendly meta‐analysis. j. clin. psychol. 65, 468. van agteren, j., iasiello, m., lo, l., bartholomaeus, j., kopsaftis, z., carey, m., & kyrios, m. (2021). a systematic review and meta-analysis of psychological interventions to improve mental wellbeing. nature human behaviour, 1-22. further reading han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 21 appendix a: applications of the ethical guidelines in practice this section contains several guides and examples for the contextual application of these ethical guidelines. the content is designed to deepen thinking while also providing useful tools and a self-evaluation guide for resolving and supporting ethical decision making in practice. three important considerations. before applying any specific ppis, one should assess and appraise the following three important factors, which are the cornerstone of best practice (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. is the ppi an appropriate match for the situation? this can be ascertained by reviewing the relevant literature and published evidence from reliable sources. for example, before a specific ppi is applied for gratitude, check to see if there is existing published evidence that shows that this specific ppi is a promising technique for the particular client. 2. does the ppi match with the client’s presenting needs? for example, have aspects relevant to the person and their circumstances, such as, culture, religion, identity, motivation, been considered? 3. how will the effectiveness of a ppi be evaluated? in other words, what specific outcome can be identified and validly assessed to determine the effectiveness of the ppi? ethical decision making. ethical decision making can be assisted by: having adequate knowledge of these ethical guidelines and the guidelines of an associated profession; being aware of the virtuous ethical behaviour of others; and the use of personal strengths in decision making. knowledge: we expect that the primary users of these guidelines – namely, ppps with adequate education, training, and experience in practicing psychology or related fields – are familiar with and can describe these ethical guidelines and any ethical guidelines that pertain to their profession and professional standing. most jurisdictions emphasise that practitioners need to be familiar with relevant rules, standards, regulations, statues, and procedures. behaviour: ethical behaviour, especially while delivering ppis, cannot simply rely on individual knowledge, but is guided and informed by collective behaviours and practices. can you identify in your professional circles those individuals who model ethical practices? although your colleagues may not explicitly highlight such practices (e.g., due to their modesty), you are encouraged to explicitly ask your peers or wider professional community (regional or international organisation) how they adhere to the ethical standards of your field. collecting a case repository of good practices will be useful for reflexivity with respect to one's own behaviour. with sufficient accumulation of cases, illustrations of excellence will likely appear. ideally, practitioners will create an accessible hub where other practitioners have an opportunity to enrich this repository. using strengths towards ethical decision making: strengths can be helpful in several ways in ethical decision making. for example, identifying strengths exemplars can help with one’s ethical decision making. find a colleague who presents as a role model as an exemplar of ethical behaviour. reflect how they handled a specific ethical dilemma or situation, or, more generally, which specific strengths they embody in day-to-day ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 22 interactions with colleagues and clients that is worth modelling and may help with one’s own decision making. working considerations. when working with clients, there are numerous considerations to be mindful of that can have immediate and important ethical implications. in particular, it is pertinent to consider: changes in clients; changes in the environments in which ppps and clients find themselves; the current emotional state and level of wellbeing of clients and ppps; clients’ tendency towards avoidance; relationship power differentials; overuse of strengths; practical wisdom; maintaining resilience and buffering against burnout; a declaration of education and competence; and the importance of varying cultural contexts. consideration of these aspects can help mitigate, anticipate, or prevent some inadvertent and unpleasant consequences. changes in clients. while delivering any psychological services, it is important to monitor the wellbeing of clients throughout the course of treatment or intervention. some clients may deteriorate, despite the demonstrated effectiveness of the ppi, for any number of reasons, making clients vulnerable. the client may not necessarily share this information with the practitioner, perhaps because they may feel ashamed, afraid, or hesitant to disappoint the practitioner. most often, the explicit focus of ppis is not the amelioration of symptoms, but, rather, the promotion of wellbeing. monitoring changing circumstances in the clients’ lives is important, as is calibrating the ppis to these changes. for example, if the client experiences a break-up or loses their job, it is important that the practitioner can address these changes and evaluate their impact. practitioners should be prepared to suspend an ongoing ppi and adjust the approach accordingly to presenting and ongoing needs, or refer on to another helping professional if appropriate. failure to do so can negatively impact the alliance, which may not be repairable. changes in embedded environments. in addition to accounting for changes within clients, it is important to take into consideration the environment in which both clients and practitioners are embedded. take a ppp who is also a clinician, as an example. contemporary clinicians work in highly complex, fast-paced, and pressured environments which are marked by challenges such as a dearth of evidence-based treatment programmes, lack of cultural competence, and chronic and complex needs of clients that impact on multiple domains of their life. given these challenges, consider clients who: • may have lost their job or important contracts, or are being overlooked for a deserving promotion only because they do not fit the team; • may have been recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition; • are dealing with betrayal or other forms of mistreatment by their partner; • are experiencing discrimination; • are subject to destructive environmental events such as flooding or wildfire. consider how these challenges might affect clients and shape their treatments. these cases present different issues that need to be considered and addressed in different ways, all while considering the regulations and standards of the profession with which ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 23 the person is aligned. therefore, it is important that when ppps offer ppis, they learn about their clients, and also about their environments and recent or current changes to their circumstances. practitioners also need to be cognisant of the challenges within their own work environment. this may include changes in administration which may bring changes in service modalities – for example, a new director may endorse or oppose certain ppis or may prefer another treatment approach (e.g., mindfulness-based therapies or acceptance commitment therapy). the changes may have direct or indirect impacts on the practice of ppis, including from an ethical perspective. current emotional state and level of wellbeing. while offering ppis, it is important to continually assess clients’ emotional state and level of wellbeing, and especially to monitor any changes for the worse. it is important that ppps practice within their scope of expertise and training. for clients that present with issues related to psychopathology (i.e., depression, anxiety, trauma), then the ppp should refer on to a suitably qualified and experienced helping professional. if such issues are not present at the beginning of the working relationships, the ppp needs to be vigilant that such issues may surface while the client is engaged in a ppi and be ready to refer to a sufficiently qualified helping professional. ideally, the practitioner would discuss with the client and consult with colleagues and relevant experts to ascertain what might be an appropriate timing for persisting with ppis in such a case. avoidance. avoidance is one of the most common mechanisms people use to cope with negative emotions. a healthy psychological life entails being aware and adaptively using one’s full emotional spectrum. some clients seeking ppis may avoid deeper negative emotions due to their discomfort, and may seek ppis with hopes that they will dispel their negative emotions or keep them at bay. examples of sources of negative emotions include memories of a bitter breakup or divorce, betrayal by a trusted friend, resentment for being the victim of discrimination, and being treated unfairly or in a biased manner by an individual or institution. one way to assess avoidance is by paying attention to negative emotions which find their way back in conversations despite not being discussed explicitly (i.e., emotions which persistently disturb clients and yet are deliberately not discussed). although ppis are breaking new ground with increasing evidence that positive emotions and character strengths can ameliorate and repair negative states (rashid & seligman, 2018; van agteren et al., 2021), this is only the case if the negative states are meaningfully integrated in treatment. if strong negative emotions are avoided by clients or practitioners, the effectiveness of treatment may be compromised. power differentials. a quintessential feature of any psychological interaction involving a practitioner and a client is the power dynamics inherent in the relationship, and especially the power differential. therapists, counsellors, social workers, and other such professionals are usually aware of this differential. therefore, they strive to create a safe, non-judgmental, confidential and welcoming space where clients do not feel like the mere passive recipients of prescribed services. nonetheless, the nature of the transaction is such ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 24 between the practitioner and the client that the practitioner is, inevitably, perceived as an expert. clients tend to look up to them as equipped with state-of-the-art knowledge, training, and experience in delivering ppis. therefore, a power differential is always present. the practitioner must be cognisant of this differential and should avoid any situations where the client or practitioner may have to make a decision that might be influenced by this power differential. overuse of strengths. under or over use of some strength-based practices can exacerbate existing challenges. for example, in various coaching contexts, suggesting clients be more prudent can cause some to become more anxious or indecisive. clients exercising forgiveness without deliberating around when and whom to forgive may overlook offences, which, if unchecked or unaccounted, can hurt others. clients overusing creativity can find it challenging to adhere to norms or rules that foster equity and equal opportunity. clients committed to making fair decisions in their workplace can find it hard to reconcile opposing realities existing in the same sphere (e.g., coming to terms with how a welleducated and well-informed person can make unwise decisions). practical wisdom. practitioners need what the philosopher aristotle called “phronesis,” i.e., practical wisdom to apply these guidelines. for example, consider a practitioner working with a high-level executive with whom they have established an excellent relationship and who has also made very good progress in their work. however, it comes to the practitioner’s notice that the executive is involved in unethical behaviour. should the practitioner preserve the solid relationship, or confront the person, risking the relationship? a single set of guidelines may not be sufficient. the practitioner needs to interpret the situation and balance competing motives. in such cases, practical wisdom is built from both cumulative experience and good relational bonds with colleagues who can advise and assist with ethical reasoning. maintaining resilience and buffering against burnout. a number of pp constructs can buffer against practitioner burnout. positive emotions (e.g., hope, serenity, joy, interest, and awe) can broaden a practitioner’s attentional, cognitive, and behavioural resources, which can act as a buffer against vulnerabilities, such as symptoms of burnout (e.g., emotional exhaustion). personal practices such as mindfulness can also help in that regard. interpersonal strengths (e.g., social intelligence, kindness, love, humour, sense of purpose and meaning, and teamwork) can help cope with challenges such as depersonalisation (a state in which one's thoughts and feelings seem unreal or not to belong to oneself), as can a sense of purpose and meaning. declaration of education and competence. practitioners should declare the limits of their competence, and work within it, regarding specific psychological conditions, specific groups (e.g., working with children, other cultures, group work), and specific ppis. for example, a practitioner may have experience in assessing strengths in adults, yet not with assessing children’s or ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 25 adolescents’ strengths. moreover, as the provision of service continues, it may move into areas in which the practitioner is less experienced or qualified. for example, whilst a practitioner may be experienced and qualified to provide services to all ages, they may not be experienced or qualified to deliver such services in the context of a family setting, in which case a referral or further support structures may be needed. in addition, practitioners should declare the educational training and relevant experience upon which their provision of practice is based. for example, a practitioner completes a six-month certificate which included a one-week face-to-face interaction, with the remaining course completed online. the certificate is not recognised by a municipal, regional or provincial license granting authority. the practitioner’s website states that they are a “certified positive psychology practitioner.” they have no other professional practicing credentials. is this ethical? it is important to explicitly inform your clients of the nature, scope and limits of your professional education, practice, and credentials beyond your working title. appreciating the importance of cultural context. ethical decision making should be sensitive to the circumstances of the cultural context. such context is critical in the delivery of ppis, because conceptualisation of what is normal, good, or adaptive is shaped by the values espoused as desirable by the culture and social context in which the concern or dilemma presents itself. additionally, cultures and social norms differ in how specific emotions are acknowledged, expressed, or amplified. therefore, it is important that guidelines for an ethical practice of ppis be rooted in such evidence. the ethical guidelines presented here are broad enough to accommodate cultural context, yet are sufficiently fine-grained to accommodate individual differences and needs. this integration of evidence, including cultural and individual factors, may be easy or readily available. though such an integration may not yield an ethically perfect process or outcome, when individuals strive towards ethical excellence, the collective wisdom helps them to navigate cases as they are encountered. new ground is broken, new paths are paved, and eventually excellence can be achieved. having the structure of these guidelines is, therefore, crucial to anchor a person’s thinking and actions. these guidelines also serve the purpose of evaluating the extent to which one’s actions are proximal or distant from ethical excellence. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 26 appendix b: resolving ethical dilemmas – a step-by-step guide though it is impossible to be completely immune from being entangled in ethical dilemmas, the following steps, largely adapted from ethics in psychology (koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998), amongst other sources, will help a practitioner make sound ethical decisions: • practise in accordance with all statutes, regulations, and standards of professional practice, conduct, and guidelines, as stipulated by the respective license granting agency of your jurisdiction. such information will help a practitioner navigate ethical dilemmas. • develop an accurate perception of how the same event may differ from person-toperson. consult, with someone trusted and unbiased, as to whether the issue presents ethical dilemmas with serious consequences. discuss with peers to see if what you are perceiving is an ethical infraction, merely poor professional etiquette, or a situation which poses harm to self or the public. • review already-published relevant guidelines, rules, and standards. make sure you are interpreting these accurately and seek counsel if needed. written guidelines are sometimes abstract and unclear, with ample room for subjective interpretation. • collect all relevant and the best information that you can. identify existing gaps in information, and document facts and concerns. • integrate all the information in your process of reflection, and consult with someone who is well informed, open-minded, and unafraid to point out a practitioner’s potential shortcomings. • evaluate how the six ethical principles of these guidelines apply (i.e., beneficence/nonmaleficence, responsible caring, respect for people’s rights and dignity, trustworthiness, justice, autonomy). for example, evaluate the rights, responsibilities, and vulnerabilities of all involved. • brainstorm several solutions and appraise each as objectively as possible. • consider which character strengths might help you in making the soundest ethical decision. might you turn to your deeper sense of fairness, honesty, or kindness? perhaps your bravery is needed to motivate you to “do the right thing”? remember that ethical decisions require the use of multiple character strengths used optimally and in combination, not just one strength in isolation or one strength “used a lot” (niemiec, 2018). • visualise the outcome of your action or inaction. • reflect before making a decision on what impact it will have on you, all others involved, and what might be systematic implications. also reflect on what kinds of support you may need to adhere to your decision. • translate the decision into concrete actions that truly reflect the spirit of your decision. a number of actions may express your decision. select actions that express your decision accurately and validly, are measurable, connected to desired outcomes, and cause the least inconvenience or damage to those not directly involved. note: it is quite possible that the ethical principles may conflict with each other, or that a particular principle may take priority in a certain context. in such situations, consider strategies such as determining which values are more pertinent to the case; the long and short-term impact of prioritising one principle over another, or check in with peers on ways to resolve such conflicts. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 27 appendix c: self-evaluation guide self-evaluation guide6 the following section outlines an approach for practitioners to audit and reflect on their behaviours, attitudes, and practices to ensure ethical consideration, emphasising both client and practitioner wellbeing. these topics and questions could form part of regular self-reflective practise as discussion items to professional or within peer-supervision sessions. valuing ethics. practitioners are encouraged to view ethics as a helpful guide for promoting client wellbeing. use the questions below to reflect on your attitudes and orientation toward ethical practice. 1. what is your perspective on the topic of “professional ethics?” 2. how well do you know the guidelines or code of ethics that informs your practice? 3. how often do you discuss ethical issues and decision making with trusted colleagues? 4. how frequently do you receive training in ethics? 5. what is your view on the ways that ethics informs responsible practice? example ethical dilemmas to reflect on. mandatory reporting: how comfortable do you feel taking action against a client who might be responding well to ppis, yet wishes for confidentiality when they inadvertently report an incident (recent or in the past) or ongoing situation which may involve, for example, child or elderly abuse, sexual abuse, or imminent threat to the safety of someone? if you are not practising under a code or guidelines of a professional body, do you have a legal requirement to report? exaggeration and generalisation: you meet someone at a conference who appears passionate about ppis and invites you to attend a workshop they are offering. you attend the workshop, which is built on a few studies with which you are quite familiar. the results, applications, and generalisability of studies are presented in an exaggerated manner. most participants find the presentation “transformative” and appear to believe the findings. what would you do? can you use the steps in the “resolving ethical dilemmas” section to guide your behaviour in such a situation? application of ppis. practitioners are encouraged to be discerning in their application of positive psychological interventions. use the questions below to reflect on your knowledge of and approach to using ppis. 1. what are your criteria for deciding which ppi (e.g., gratitude journal, using specific strengths, forgiveness exercise) to use and with whom? do you consider a client’s presenting issues, circumstances, motivation for treatment, physical and mental abilities, personal attributes, preferences, and cultural and religious considerations? 2. how do you consider ways in which a ppi may not be an appropriate fit for the client? 6 we are grateful to dr robert biswas-diener for his extensive knowledge, wisdom and contribution to the development of this self-evaluation guide. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 28 3. to what extent do you believe that ppis might cause psychological harm? how? under what circumstances? 4. what type of informed consent do you use before administering ppis? 5. what steps do you undertake to decide when the ppi is appropriate? a) at the onset of the services, b) while the ppi has already commenced? in addition, under what conditions would you consider a concurrent or alternative service or treatment? 6. how regularly do you read primary source research about ppis? 7. using a specific example (e.g., gratitude interventions), how might you individualise ppis to increase effectiveness and reduce potential harm? reflective practice. practitioners are encouraged to engage in reflective practice. this means that they reflect on their decision-making process, the process and outcomes of intervention, and seek feedback regarding their practice. use the questions below to reflect on your ability to engage in this type of practice. 1. to what extent do you set aside time following a workshop or session with a client to reflect on your own process and performance? 2. what formal mechanisms do you have for capturing insights related to your practice and later implementing those insights? 3. how regularly do you solicit feedback from clients or colleagues regarding your practice? 4. which colleagues do you most regularly seek out for discussion of ethics and best practices? 5. how frequently do you receive new training? how do you choose this training? 6. are you aware of your own biases? 7. how do you know that you are being objective towards your clients. self-care and burnout. practitioners are encouraged to reflect on their health and wellbeing to protect against professional burnout and stress by engaging in ongoing self-care. use the questions below to reflect on your self-care habits. 1. being a practitioner does not make you immune from experiencing symptoms of mental illness that may move towards a clinical range. how aware are you of your mental health? 2. what steps or actions do you routinely engage in to take care of your mental health so that you can serve your clients optimally? 3. what are your predictable stressors, triggers, and professional vulnerabilities? 4. what barriers do you face in taking care of yourself? do you consider things such as a lack of time and resources, feeling or believing “i am fine”, and access to appropriate and relevant professionals who can take care of my mental health? 5. who supports you? who can you talk with about professional stress? 6. how would you know if you were experiencing burnout? what might you notice? 7. if you were to suffer emotional exhaustion or professional burnout, what would you be prepared to do to protect your clients and help yourself? ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 29 appendix d: case examples of ethical issues the following cases are examples that may present in practice and have an ethical component relevant to the principles in these ethical guidelines.7 case example 1: cultural – applying ppis with cultural sensitivity. ethical decisions should reflect the best available evidence in the circumstances of the cultural context. consider the following vignette. suzanne is an australian practitioner who is working with a female client of an east asian cultural background. the client wants self-improvement and to preserve her family relationships. suzanne opts to use the best possible self exercise. suzanne follows all the steps to guide the client through the exercise. somehow, despite making significant selfimprovements, the client reports that her relationships with her family have become sour. hence, no significant improvement in the client’s wellbeing is detected on repeated online measures. an important implication in this vignette is consideration of the concept of the self, which varies from culture to culture. suzanne follows a concept of self-development often associated with the west, which encompasses personal growth, and taking new and largely individual initiatives. by contrast, self-development in eastern (and in most non-western) cultures may place greater relative emphasis on investing in relationships, improving social interaction, and contributing to preserving family, group, and tribal traditions. despite increasing cultural diversity in most urban metropolises, traditional cultural differences frequently still hold at least some sway. an important implication of these differences is that the client in this vignette may benefit from understanding how she can use her character strengths to bring benefit to her family or to connect with them more deeply. suzanne may use the character strengths interventions of turn your strengths other-oriented or character strengths appreciation (niemiec, 2018) in which her client learns to turn her best inner qualities into mechanisms of relationship building that benefits the other, and prioritises recognizing and valuing family members for their own best qualities. it could also be that self-development supported by significant others can bring deep and sustained increases in wellbeing. however, in an interdependent culture, self-development, which likely involves close family members, also requires managing more complex interactions over a longer period of time. by contrast, the best version of me activity, which focuses on improving individual strengths or taking a new initiative, may require a relatively shorter amount of time. therefore, it is imperative that ppps consider how best their exercises can be culturally adapted. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • responsible caring – the ppp needs to try to care for the client in a way that takes into account the specifics of that client’s situation and background. • beneficence/non-maleficence – the ppp has a duty to do no harm. • respect for people’s rights and dignity – the ppp has a responsibility to be sensitive to cross-cultural dynamics, and to respect the client’s situated perspective and needs. 7 we are grateful to the following individuals who provided these cases: cases 1 and 3 tayyab rashid, case 2 annalise roache, case 4 stewart donaldson, case 5 matthew iasiello, case 6 denise quinlan, and case 7 robert biswas-diener. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 30 case example 2: coaching – coaching clients in changing circumstances. ethical dilemmas can appear unexpectedly and require an adjustment in service provision. consider the following vignette. amanda came to coaching because she was feeling a lack of direction and meaning in life. previously she had placed a lot of importance on career advancement, but now felt she needed to look for a more balanced approach to life, and moreover, was feeling sad and deflated that she had not accomplished more in life (outside of career enhancement). during the initial intake session, she identified several domains she would like to focus on, which included finance management (to support buying a home), personal development, and increasing fun and social time. she mentioned that her current job was challenging and that she would be looking to make a change in the future, yet this was not a current focus for coaching. in the first two sessions, in which goals were crafted and actions steps clarified, progress was being made in the direction she had indicated as important, and coaching was progressing well. however, at the beginning of the fourth session amanda declared that her work situation had deteriorated abruptly and she had resigned, having found a new job already. the resignation had not been received well and amanda was feeling unsettled and highly emotional in her workplace, where she still had four weeks to work out her notice. she indicates feeling triggered by her manager’s reaction to her resignation, which is bringing up memories of similar emotional confrontations from her adolescences. at this stage it was imperative for the coach to maintain their self-regulation strength and not make an impulsive suggestion due to the rise of amanda’s stressors. from there, the coach could then turn to using the strength of curiosity to check in on how amanda would like to proceed in the immediate future, and be open to shifting focus within the session/s. it may also be important to understand the nature of amanda’s emotional reaction to determine if coaching is a safe and appropriate mechanism for her current needs. while the coach may have contracted amanda for a set amount of sessions, the changes in the client’s situation must inform the appropriate way forward. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • responsible caring – the coach has a primary responsibility to use kindness and fairness to protect the welfare of amanda and recognise the boundaries of their expertise. • autonomy – here the coach could focus on developing amanda’s ability to be selfdirecting within the provision of services and all aspects of life, and to revisit/review the terms of their contract throughout the relationship. • beneficence/non-maleficence – the coach, acting in the best interests of amanda and based on professional assessment, should be aware of working strictly within their limits of competence, and to provide services on the basis of adequate training and experience. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 31 case example 3: clinical working with trauma. most individuals who experience trauma become overwhelmed in many culturally nuanced ways, especially if they are working on a ppi. they may develop extensive mechanisms to avoid thinking, recalling, or behaving in ways that may be related to their trauma. while offering ppis, it is important to appraise and assess such trauma (whether historical and/or current). without minimising or dismissing it, the practitioner ought to intervene if they have expertise, or, if not, to make a timely referral. the practitioner also needs to be vigilant in case trauma may surface while the client is engaged in a ppi. the practitioner must discuss with the client and consult with colleagues and relevant experts to ascertain what an appropriate timing might be for persisting with ppis in such a case. consider the following vignette. salma, 21, has a long history of experiencing physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. she seeks services for her persistent feelings of depression. she is expecting that the therapist would explicitly ask about the traumatic events in her life. instead, she is given a short questionnaire which does not include any questions about current or past trauma. in the counselling sessions themselves, salma finds she does not like the counsellor and chooses not to reveal the details of her trauma. thus, the treatment remains superficially effective and she is prescribed a fresh round of treatment within six months. as the above case demonstrates, it is important to explicitly ask about trauma (although doing so requires great sensitivity, and possibly also clinical training). depending on the rapport, some clients will explicitly ask related questions, and seek advice, suggestions, coping strategies, or culturally appropriate resources. it is important that, while the ppi is in process and details of a recent or remote trauma surface, the practitioner responds in a way that meets the needs of the client. first and foremost, the practitioner should be sufficiently qualified, trained, and experienced in dealing with the situation. practitioners should regularly tap their strengths of humility and prudence/caution by periodically checking if they should continue to provide services, or conversely, if the client would be better off with someone with more specific expertise in providing the suggestions, skills, and strategies that some clients need or ask for. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • responsible caring the ppp has a responsibility to care for salma in a way that considers the specifics of her situation and background. • beneficence/non-maleficence – the ppp has both a responsibility not to create further harm to salma, and to promote her wellbeing. • respect for people’s rights and dignity – the ppp has a responsibility to be sensitive to cross-cultural dynamics, and to respect the client’s situated perspective and needs. case example 4: organisational pressure to misrepresent data. many positive work and organisations interventions are evaluated to determine their effectiveness. ethical dilemmas can appear unexpectedly when clients do not accept findings and pressure practitioners to omit or misrepresent evaluation data. consider the following vignette and notice how a number of character strengths are underused, including honesty/integrity, perspective/wisdom, leadership, and humility. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 32 company xyz hired a pp practitioner to improve employee morale and performance. in consultation with company leadership, she decided to provide a training programme to increase employee psychological capital (hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism). evaluation data showed the employees loved the training and wanted more positive psychological training in the future. however, the evaluation data showed there were not significant differences in levels of hope, efficacy, resilience, optimism, morale, or performance between employees who were randomly selected to participate in the training, and those in the comparison group. the leaders of company xyz were so pleased their employees enjoyed the training that they did not want them to see the discouraging evaluation results. instead, they asked the practitioner to report that the training was a big success, and that more training along the same lines would be provided for the employees in the future. as the above case demonstrates, practitioners may be asked to exaggerate the impact of positive psychology training to boost the employees' morale. however, in line with the principle of trustworthiness, practitioners should not omit or misrepresent evaluation data. to meditate the concerns around misrepresenting facts practitioners could focus on promoting the specific elements of the training that employees enjoyed. furthermore, the practitioner should also carefully review and consult with someone with appropriate expertise in psychological capital to ensure the training adequately addresses the improvement of hope, efficacy, resilience, optimism, morale, and performance. the training content, outcome, and evaluation approach may need to be further refined to ensure they are appropriate and aligned with the desired outcomes. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • autonomy – here the practitioner’s autonomy to act is being taken away. • beneficence/non-maleficence beneficence involves a commitment to promoting the client’s wellbeing, and this level of deception advocated by the company’s leaders is not in the best interests of the employees. additionally, acting beneficently requires providing services based on adequate training or experience. • trustworthiness – here the practitioner is being asked to exaggerate and generalise the effectiveness of the ppi, which does not honour the trust placed in the practitioner by the employees. case example 5: mentoring – motivating “unwilling” participants in an imbalanced relationship. often, those who are most resistant to an intervention are those who may benefit most. ppps encounter a difficult situation when trying to motivate or persuade a client to participate in an intervention for their benefit, without manipulation. consider the following vignette. abbie, a case manager at a youth agency, has a client who refuses to participate in the exercises of a pp group intervention. the facilitator of the intervention has asked abbie to motivate her client to participate in the exercises, and convince them of the benefits of the intervention. abbie agrees with her colleague that the intervention would be greatly beneficial for her client. abbie is conscious that her client’s attitudes and behaviour often cause the client to be excluded from interventions that are likely to be helpful, and decides ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 33 to challenge her client’s attitudes towards participation. abbie has developed a trusting, mentor relationship with the client, and is unwilling to compromise her integrity and betray the client’s trust by blindly “selling” the intervention to the participant or making promises that won’t be realised. rather, she modestly describes the evidence that supports the intervention, and works with her client to weigh up the costs and benefits of participation. she curiously poses questions to her client about the pros and cons of participating in the intervention and how her client’s signature strengths could be used in the group setting. abbie then supports her client to identify strategies to minimise the costs of participation, and they practice low-intensity versions of the intervention itself and her client’s strengths use prior to the group setting. abbie is certain that her client will benefit from participating in the intervention, and doesn’t want her client to be excluded from participation once again. equally, she does not want to betray her client’s trust or autonomy. abbie wants to challenge her client, and help expose her to new experiences, but fears that unethical manipulation could result in negative outcomes for her participant, and ultimately damage the quality of their hard-won relationship. rather than over-selling or exaggerating the benefits of participation, abbie works to understand the client’s attitude toward the intervention, challenges cognitive biases, and creates opportunities to demonstrate the benefits of the training in the safety of the case management session. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • justice – the ppp has a responsibility to ensure that clients are not excluded from interventions based on a particular characteristic. • trustworthiness – the ppp uses the trusting relationship with the client to encourage the client to evaluate their attitudes and beliefs, but does not betray this trust. • autonomy – the ppp respects the will of their client, and is hesitant to manipulate it. case example 6: education implementing wellbeing programmes where aspirations are hindered by existing practice. many schools want to adopt wellbeing programmes. however, they may do so for a range of reasons, from concern for teacher or student wellbeing, through addressing challenges like bullying within the school, to enhancing already strong practices. in addition, having a school wellbeing programme can also be viewed as a marketing opportunity and point of difference for some schools. consider the following vignette. a school staff member was requested by the principal to develop a wellbeing strategy and plan for adoption by the board, and then to organise a fast rollout of the key elements. the principal wanted to tell prospective parents that their children would benefit from explicit wellbeing teaching in the curriculum. teachers were all assigned responsibilities for teaching wellbeing, even though there had been very little professional development for staff in this area. many staff were stressed and felt unprepared for this teaching, as well as the additional workload it represented. a consultant was brought in to deliver a halfday professional development session in wellbeing for staff. some staff expressed concern to the consultant that they were anxious that they might cause harm to their students because they were ill-equipped and had no grounding in this area. in addition, the consultant has seen the school’s marketing which promotes its work on wellbeing (e.g., ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 34 describing the school as supporting holistic wellbeing for staff and students, and building wellbeing at every encounter). the consultant is aware that the school continues to use a punitive discipline policy that undermines relationships between students and staff, and ignores scientific evidence for the wellbeing benefits of restorative practice and forgiveness. the mid-level teacher who has been made responsible for wellbeing programme implementation has briefed the consultant on these issues. the teacher is reluctant to raise the issues with the school leadership as this teacher has previously been intimidated by this group when raising similar concerns. at that time, their loyalty to the school was called into question, and their suitability to continue on as a teacher was challenged. as the above case demonstrates, there can be many ethical issues layered in any complex situation. this case highlights issues related to autonomy, transparency, competency, accountability, safety, truthfulness, and trust, across four levels of the practitioner/consultant, school leadership, teacher and teaching staff, and students. with such complex cases and dynamics at play, it is important to survey the ethical principles that may underly these issues. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • beneficence/non-maleficence – the ppp has a responsibility not to unequivocally or uncritically endorse a school as being a “wellbeing school” if they are aware of school practices that undermine wellbeing. they also have a duty of care if the teachers believe the program may cause harm if implemented inadequately. • autonomy – the teacher should not feel coerced into adopting a perspective or position that conflicts with their own judgement or values. the principle of autonomy opposes the manipulation of clients against their will, even for beneficial social ends, and it also emphasises the value of voluntary participation. • trustworthiness – the practitioner and teacher delivering the wellbeing program are having trust placed in them – by the client (the school) and by the students. as such they should, on the one hand, strive to ensure that expectations have reasonable prospects of being met, and on the other, are open and transparent about these prospects. case example 7 : making statements about one’s qualifications and about applied research. rapport and relationship quality between practitioner and client is essential in any service provision. this can be built with trust, truth and transparency. consider the following vignette. ajit is a consultant who works with positive psychological approaches. his website states: “i am passionate about positive psychology, the science of human flourishing. studies from this field prove that happiness is beneficial: it makes people healthier, more creative, and more sociable. as a result, i use a number of proven happiness interventions to help you boost your wellbeing (and your success!). in addition, i draw on the findings from neuroscience to help you hack your brain and be more successful.” ajit is representing science in general and positive psychological science specifically. in doing so, he must take care to represent the results of research accurately, truthfully and transparently and to be cautious in his promises to potential clients. specific considerations in his website that ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 35 might need to be addressed include the language used, the claims being made, and the qualifications portrayed. for example, ajit claims that research has proven that happiness is beneficial. "proven" is a strong claim that is generally antithetical to the scientific method. more responsible alternatives include "research suggests" or "there is evidence for." as another example, while research suggests several benefits of happiness, the evidence is far less strong for creativity than health. the evidence is mixed that happiness causally leads to greater creativity. ajit's language strongly suggests that the interventions he employs will lead to both higher wellbeing and success for his clients. although they can influence these outcomes, he cannot responsibly promise them as such practitioners should be careful not to generalise or exaggerate research findings. lastly, consumers of ajit's services will assume, based on his statements, that he has some legitimate expertise in research and in positive psychology and neuroscience specifically. if it turns out that ajit has simply read a few popular books on these topics, he does not indeed have the expertise and must be cautious in how he represents his qualifications. the following ethical aspects are examples relevant to the above case: • trustworthiness – ajit needs to be transparent and truthful about his qualification/s and experience in order to adequately set expectations that have a reasonable prospect of being met. • responsible caring: ajit needs to be well aware of boundaries of his expertise and should make them very explicit as to what he is trained to do and what he is not, in terms of personal qualifications and specific experience in using positive psychology interventions within a specific domain (e.g., education, health, organizations, clinical) and with specific populations (e.g., children, adolescents, adults, couples, families, institutions). • autonomy – ajit needs to be transparent and truthful about his qualification/s and experience in order to allow the client to have autonomy over their choices with regards to being self-directing in the provision of services. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 36 appendix e: moving towards a ‘code of ethical positive psychology practice’? as mentioned in the preamble above and as indicated in figure 1 there, ‘guidelines’ usually sit within broader frameworks of ethical practice, which will vary by context and jurisdiction. being at the bottom of a prescriptive hierarchy, it is important to consider guidelines along with other relevant frameworks. although definitions will vary, ‘guidelines’ usually refer to guidance developed by subject matter experts, and will use more suggestive language such as “may” or “it is suggested or recommended that”. above guidelines are ‘standards’ which are typically completed in a consensus process and approved by a certification body, with the language of standards being both suggestive (e.g., “suggested that”) and mandatory (e.g., “will”). at one level higher ‘codes’ indicate what one must do, are adopted by a regulatory body, and include language such as “shall” and “will” which indicate that action is mandatory. as such, codes have enforceable ramifications that are regulated and policed. as also mentioned in the introductory notes, codes supersede guidelines, and where a practitioner is a member of a relevant professional body, then first and foremost their association’s standards or code (or guidelines) will inform their practice. therefore, the next step in moving from guidelines towards a ‘code’ of practice would be the adoption of these ‘ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice’ by a regulatory body that can enforce them. this may also involve a credentialing and registration process for members associated with that body. when such a point arrives, the code itself will likely require aspects such as mandatory reporting, and adoption of more forceful, stringent language, and greater clarification of behaviour examples. however it is also noteworthy that these guidelines were developed in the most part from various codes, rather than guidelines, as indicated in appendix g. ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 37 appendix f: strengths in ethics positive psychology is the scientific endeavour about what makes life worth living and what goes right in life. it explores qualities, traits or attributes which create effective, inclusive, accessible and ethical practices at work, in education, health and leisure. there are several frameworks of these qualities, traits and attributes. it is our view that utilising strengths can promote ethical practice. the intention of this section is to aid in moving the guidelines to becoming more strength neutral (i.e., relevant across many frameworks). the guidelines themselves are infused with strengths from the via classification of character strengths and virtues framework. this framework (peterson & seligman, 2004) comprises 24 intrinsically fulfilling, ubiquitous traits, valued across cultures, and viewed as central components of a fulfilling life. the framework is reported to be the most used strengths framework by ppp’s, cross-culturally validated, available in many languages, and accessible (free basic assessment). the via website (www.viacharacter.org) lists more than 300 studies which have used this framework. considerations for using strengths to support ethical decision making. whilst iteration two of the ethical guidelines utilises the via framework (peterson & seligman, 2004), one could equally apply others strengths frameworks to support ethical practice. such frameworks might be the cliftonstrengths (clifton & anderson, 2002) or the strengths profile (linley, 2008) as examples. whereas the via ask the question “who are you?” and investigates character, the cliftonstrengths asks “what do you do well?” and identifies talents, and the strengths profile asks “what energizes you?”. the use of other frameworks can be enacted by adapting the terminology a specific strengths based framework with the strengths highlighted in the guidelines. the key point is to harness strengths (regardless of specific terminology) to support ethical practice and decision making. links to three models. • via classification of virtues and strengths https://www.viacharacter.org/ • the cliftonstrengths https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/ • the strengths profile https://www.strengthsprofile.com/ ethical guidelines 2.0 jarden, rashid, roache, & lomas 38 appendix g: relevant guidelines the following guidelines (organised by specific field and alphabetised within the field) were drawn upon and helped inform the development of these practice guidelines: psychological: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom psychology the british psychological society (bps), practice guidelines (2017, 3rd ed). • united kingdom psychology the british psychological society (bps), code of conduct (2018). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). nursing: • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • international – coaching – the international coaching federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2018). hendriks, t., schotanus-dijkstra, m., hassankhan, a, graafsma, t., bohlmeijer, e., & de jong, j, (2018). the efficacy of positive psychology interventions from non-western countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 71-98. doi:10.5502/ijw.v8i1.711 tom hendriks anton de kom university of suriname tom.hendriks@uvs.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 article the efficacy of positive psychology interventions from non-western countries: a systematic review and metaanalysis tom hendriks · marijke schotanus-dijkstra · aabidien hassankhan · tobi graafsma · ernst bohlmeijer · joop de jong abstract: recently, there has been a sharp increase in the number of studies of positive psychology interventions (ppis) from non-western countries. the aim of this study is to review and evaluate the efficacy of these ppis. databases, including pubmed, psycinfo, and scopus, were searched up to december 2017. in addition, we performed hand searches and reference checks. after removal of duplicates, 7,516 studies were screened and finally 28 randomized controlled trials (rcts) were included in the meta-analysis. a random effects model was used to compare group effect-sizes at post-test. results showed that ppis from non-western countries have a moderate effect on subjective wellbeing (g = 0.48) and psychological wellbeing (g = 0.40), and a large effect on depression (g = 0.62) and anxiety (g = 0.95). however, caution is warranted for the interpretation of the effect sizes in light of the study quality, which was assessed as low. this indicates the possibility of biases, which may explain why ppis from non-western countries report larger effect sizes than ppis from western countries. keywords: positive psychology interventions, wellbeing, positive mental health, cross-cultural 1. introduction in the past decade, there has been a rapidly growing number of studies investigating the effects of positive psychology interventions (ppis) (rusk & waters, 2013). to date, it appears that consensus on the definition of ppis has not yet been reached. sin and lyubomirsky (2009) introduced a broad definition, defining ppis as all interventions that are aimed at increasing positive feelings, behaviors, and cognition. narrower definitions were suggested by bolier et al. (2013), who added that these interventions should have been explicitly developed in line with the theoretical tradition of positive psychology, and parks and biswas-diener, who suggested that an intervention can only be regarded as a ppi if sufficient empirical evidence exists suggesting significant effects for the intervention (parks & biswas-diener, 2013). schueller and parks (2014) argued that in addition to the (positive) aim of an intervention, the pathways through which the interventions operate is a second essential component in deciding if an intervention can be considered as a ppi. they identified the following five pathways: (1) savoring (intensifying and prolonging momentary pleasurable experiences), (2) expressing gratitude (through reflection and activities of expression), (3) engaging in acts of kindness, (4) promoting positive relationships, and (5) promoting meaning and purpose. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 more recently, shin and lyobomirsky (2017) used the term “positive activity interventions” instead of ppis, and the term “ positive interventions” is also used (gander, proyer, ruch & wyss, 2013; rashid, 2009). we define positive psychology interventions (ppis) as interventions aiming at increasing positive feelings, behaviors and cognitions and using pathways or strategies to increase wellbeing based on theories and empirical research, following schueller and parks (schueller & parks, 2014; schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014). the growth of the scientific output from scholars in the field of positive psychology is not only limited to publications from western countries; since 2012, there has also been a strong increase in the number of studies originating from non-western countries (hendriks et al., 2018b). previously published meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials have examined the overall effects of ppis. a meta-analysis by bolier et al. (2013) that included 39 trials reported small effect sizes for subjective wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and depression. more recently, the authors of the current meta-analysis also examined the effects of 37 multi-component ppi (mppis) programs containing at least three positive psychology activities (hendriks et al., 2018b). this meta-analysis found a moderate effect size for subjective wellbeing, a small to moderate effect size for psychological wellbeing, and a small effect for depression and anxiety. in addition, this study showed that the region of origin of the studies was a strong and significant moderator. more precisely, ppis from non-western countries had substantially larger effects than ppis from western countries. for example, the effect size for subjective wellbeing was large (g = 1.13) for non-western studies, compared to small (g = 0.29) for studies from western countries. effect sizes for psychological wellbeing and depression also showed substantial differences. effect sizes for non-western studies were three to five times larger than the effect sizes for studies from western countries. the difference was mainly attributed to the overall lower quality of non-western studies. it should be noted that, following gosling, sandy, john, and potter (2010), north america, western europe, australia, israel, and new zealand were classified as western countries. a risk of bias analysis was conducted to assess the quality of the studies. findings from this analysis demonstrated that the average quality of studies from western countries was moderate, whereas the average quality of studies from non-western countries was low (hendriks et al., 2018b). for example, from the eight non-western studies, only one used an intention-to-treat analysis for the statistical data, in only one study assessment was blinded, none described the process of randomization (sequence generation) or the allocation of participants, and all studies had fewer than 50 participants per condition. 1.1 present study since only multi-component ppis were include in the aforementioned meta-analysis (hendriks et al., 2018b), findings on the efficacy of studies from non-western countries were based on a relatively small number of studies (nine out of 37 rcts). in this meta-analysis, rcts of single component, as well as multi-component ppis from non-western countries will be compared to interventions performed in western countries. the characteristics of the studies, including study quality, will also be examined, to attempt to explain differences in effect sizes. 2. method the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (prisma) guidelines (moher et al., 2010; moher, liberati, teztlaff, & altman, 2009) and the recommendations of the cochrane back review group (higgins et al., 2011) were followed in the planning and the implementation of the meta-analysis. no protocol was registered. the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 2.1 search strategy a systematic literature search was conducted by the first author (th) and second author (ms) in the following databases: pubmed, psycinfo, and scopus, from 1998 through 2017. pubmed and psycinfo are recommended as databases to be used in meta-analyses in mental health research (cuijpers, 2016). we did not include the cochrane central register of controlled trials, since that database does not allow export of citations, which complicates the screening process. instead, we selected scopus, another often used database for systematic reviews and metaanalyses (davis, mengersen, bennett, & mazerolle, 2014). the search was conducted by the first and third author (th, ah), and the last run was conducted on december, 8, 2017. databases were searched with the following terms: "positive psycho*" or wellbeing or happiness or happy or flourishing or "life satisfaction" or "satisfaction with life" or optimism or gratitude or strengths or forgiveness or compassion and "random*”. search strings were adapted according to the database (see appendix a). the reference lists of three meta-analyses (bolier et al., 2013; chakhssi, kraiss, sommers-spijkerman, & bohlmeijer, 2018; dickens, 2017) and seven review articles on ppis (casellas-grau, font, & vives, 2014; ghosh & deb, 2016; macaskill, 2016; rashid, 2015; sutipan, intarakamhang, & macaskill, 2017; walsh, cassidy, & priebe, 2016; woodworth, o-brien-malone, diamond, & schüz, 2016) were also checked. in addition, a hand search through the websites of three known non-western journals in the field of positive psychology was conducted, namely, the websites of the indian journal of positive psychology, the iranian journal of positive psychology, and the middle east journal of positive psychology. preliminary findings of a study that was recently conducted by the authors of this meta-analysis (hendriks et al., 2017) were also included. 2.2 selection of studies after removal of duplicates, we screened titles and abstracts. full texts of potentially relevant articles were fully assessed. this was done by the first (th) and third (ah) author independently. studies were included based on the following criteria: (1) randomized controlled trials; (2) conducted in non-western countries; (3) administered to healthy adults or adults in clinical populations; (4) published in peer reviewed journals, in the english language; (5) validated outcome measures were used to examine the effects on subjective and psychological wellbeing, depression, or anxiety. we excluded studies that: (1) did not provide sufficient data to calculate post-test effect sizes per condition; (2) were published in book chapters, dissertations, and studies in grey literature; (3) reported effects of mindfulness-based therapies, acceptance and commitment therapy, and compassion focused therapy, considering the vast number of meta-analyses on these interventions that have been published in the past decade. 2.3 data extraction the following data was gathered: author(s), year of publication, country of origin, study design, sample description, intervention type, delivery mode, description of control group, number of sessions, duration of session period, follow-up assessment, number or participants per condition at post-test level, mean age and standard deviation of participants, percentage of female participants, retention rate at post-test level, and the questionnaires that measured subjective wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, depression or anxiety. means and standard deviations at the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 post-test were extracted. in the case of insufficient data or unclear reporting in the studies, we contacted the authors through e-mail. 2.4 quality assessment the quality of the studies was independently assessed by the first (th) and third (ah) author, using the cochrane collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized trials (higgins et al., 2011). the following six criteria were assessed: random sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding of participants and personnel, description of drop-outs, power analysis, and intention-to-treat analysis or no drop-outs. one point was appointed for each criterion that was met, as described in the studies. according to this assessment tool, the quality of a study was assessed as “high” when five or six criteria were met, “moderate” when three or four criteria were met, and “low” when fewer than three criteria were met. disagreements between the first (th) and third (ah) author were discussed until consensus was reached. if any disagreement persisted, the second author (ms) or fifth author (eb) were consulted. 2.5 data analysis data analysis was conducted with the program comprehensive meta-analysis (cma, version 3.3.070, biostat, inc.). means, standard deviations, and sample sizes for each study were used to calculate the effect sizes. for each comparison between a ppi and a control group, we calculated the hedges' adjusted g because hedges' g is more accurate than cohen's d when sample sizes of the studies are small (cuijpers, 2016). effect sizes indicate the difference between the two groups at post-test and were calculated by subtracting the average score of the ppi group from the average score of the comparison group (both at post-test) and dividing the result by the pooled standard deviations of the two groups. effect sizes of 0 to 0.32 can be considered as small, effect sizes of 0.33 to 0.55 as moderate, and effect sizes of 0.56 to 1.2 as large (lipsey & wilson, 1993). if more than one measure was used for a similar outcome, we pooled the means and the standard deviations, so that each study outcome had one effect size (thalheimer & cook, 2002). if more than one experimental group was compared to another active control group and a non-active control condition in a particular study, we used data from the active control group. standardized mean differences (smd) with 95% confidence intervals (ci) were calculated as the differences in means between groups divided by the pooled standard deviation using hedges’ g. a positive smd was defined as an indicator of beneficial effects for the ppi compared with the control condition. intention-to-treat samples were used if possible. for the calculation of effect sizes for subjective wellbeing, we used instruments that explicitly indicated that they measured emotional wellbeing, as defined by keyes (2007). these were the mental health short form subjective wellbeing subscale (keyes, 2005), the oxford happiness inventory (hills & argyle, 2002), the whoqol-bref psychological health scale (whoqolgroup, 1998), the subjective happiness scale (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999), the subjective well-being questionnaire (molavi, torkan, soltani, & palahang, 2010), the life satisfaction index/scale (adams, 1969), the satisfaction with life scale (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985), the enright forgiveness inventory positive affect subscale (enright & rique, 2004), the index of well-being & index of general affect (campbell, converse, & rodgers, 1976), the multiple mood scale positive emotions (terasaki, kishimoto, & koga, 1992), the positive and negative affect schedule, and the scale of positive and negative experience (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988). for psychological wellbeing, we used instruments that explicitly measured psychological wellbeing, as defined by keyes (2007). these were the flourishing scale (diener et al., 2010), the mental health short form psychological wellbeing subscale (keyes, 2005), well-being/ill-being scale (kitwood & bredin, the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 1997), the ego resilience scale (block & kremen, 1996), the self compassion scale (neff, 2003), the symptom checklist-90 revised inverted score (derogatis & unger, 2010), and two unnamed scales measuring empowerment and organizational commitment (im, cho, kim & heo, 2016). for depression and anxiety, we used instruments that explicitly measured depression and anxiety. these were the beck depression index (beck, steer, & brown, 1996), the center for epidemiological studies depression scale (andresen, malmgren, carter, & patrick, 1994), the depression anxiety stress scale (lovibond & lovibond, 1995), the geriatric depression scale (lee, chiu, & kwong, 1994), the beck anxiety inventory (beck & steer, 1990), death anxiety scale (templer, 1970), and the state-trait anxiety inventory (spielberger, 2010). if more than one measure for a specific outcome was reported, a variance-weighted average of effect sizes from the scales within each study was used to calculate one effect size (marín-martínez & sánchezmeca, 1999). when follow-up data was available, between-group effect sizes (hedges’ g) at these time points were calculated. 2.6 heterogeneity statistical heterogeneity between studies was tested using the i2 statistic. this is a measure that indicates study-to-study dispersion due to real differences, over and above random sampling error (higgins & thompson, 2002). a randomized effects model with a 95% confidence interval and a two-tailed test were performed for the heterogeneity analyses. the i2 statistic was used to estimate the percentage of heterogeneity across the studies not attributable to random sampling error alone. a value of 0% indicated no heterogeneity. values of 75%, 50% and 25% reflected high, moderate, and low degrees of heterogeneity, respectively (higgins & thompson, 2002). significant heterogeneity was indicated by a significant q statistic (p ≤ 0.05), meaning that one or more variables were present that moderated the observed effect size. all studies were included, outliers were not removed. 2.7 subgroup analyses explanatory subgroup analyses were conducted to examine moderating effects of seven possible moderators. these moderators were: (1) study population: clinical or non-clinical; (2) mode of delivery of the ppi: group or self-help; (3) intervention type: single component or multi-component; (4) type of control group: active/placebo or non-active/waitlist; (5) duration of the intervention: ≤ 8 weeks or > 8 weeks; (6) cultural adaptation of the ppi: yes or no; (7) quality rating of the study: low, moderate, or high. 2.8 publication bias publication bias was assessed in the following ways. first, a funnel plot was created by plotting the overall mean effect size against study size. absence of publication bias is present when there is a symmetrical distribution of studies around the effect size (sterne, egger, & moher, 2008). second, a fail-safe n was calculated for each analysis to test the asymmetry of each funnel plot. the fail-safe n indicates the number of unpublished non-significant studies that would be required to lower the overall effect size below significance (egger, smith, schneider, & minder, 1997; orwin, 1983). findings were considered robust if the fail-safe n ≥ 5k + 10, where k is the number of studies (rosenberg, 2005). third, the trim and fill method (duval & tweedie, 2000) the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 was used. this procedure imputes the effect sizes of missing studies and produces an adjusted effect size accounting for the missing studies. 3. results 3.1 study selection we identified a total of 8,172 records. after removal of duplicates, 7,516 records remained. these records were screened, after which 372 records remained. these articles were assessed for eligibility, and finally 28 studies were included in the meta-analysis, which were published in 29 articles. the complete selection process is shown in figure 1. figure 1. flow diagram of the selection process of rcts on ppis from non-western countries id e n ti fi ca ti o n additional records identified through other sources (n = 931) s cr e e n in g total records: (n = 8,172) records after duplicates removed: (n = 7,516) full-text articles excluded (n = 344) main reason for exclusion: from a western country (n = 256) not an rct (n = 33) not a ppi (n = 26) no relevant outcomes (n = 7) article not available (n = 5) dissertation (n = 5) incomplete data/unclear reporting (n = 4) population <18 years (n = 5) full text not in english (n = 2) similar control group = (n = 1) e li g ib il it y rcts included in review (n = 28) full-text articles assessed for eligibility (n = 372) titles and abstracts screened (n = 7,516) records excluded (n = 7,144) records identified through database searching (n = 7,241) pubmed: (n = 1,966) psycinfo: (n = 3,804) scopus: (n = 1,471) pubmed n = 512 psycinfo n = 1935 scopus n = 2,194 in cl u d e d the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 3.2 study characteristics the rcts were published between 2012 and december 2017. seven studies (25%) were conducted among clinical populations and 21 studies (75%) among non-clinical populations. delivery modes were group based (n = 21, 75%) and self-help (n = 7, 25%). eleven studies (39%) had an active control group and 17 studies (61%) had a non-active control group (waiting-list, n = 1; no intervention, n = 16). the studies included a total of 3,009 participants. sample sizes from the intervention groups ranged from nine to 828, with a mean of 25.7 participants (excluding the cluster randomized controlled trial). fourteen studies (50%) had fewer than 20 participants in the intervention group, ten (36%) had between 20-40 participants in the intervention group, three (11%) had between 40-60 participants in the intervention group, and there was one (4%) cluster randomized controlled trial with 828 participants in the intervention group. twelve (43%) studies were from china (five from mainland china, seven from hong kong), six (21%) from iran, three (11%) from taiwan, two (7%) from japan, two (7%) from south korea, and malaysia, suriname, and turkey each accounted for one study. one of the self-help-based interventions was an online intervention. twenty-five studies reported the percentage of female participants, which was 67% (n = 2,010). excluding one cluster randomized controlled trial lowered the percentage of female participants to 61% (n = 1,817). twenty-one studies measured subjective wellbeing (swb), eight studies measured psychological wellbeing (pwb), 13 studies measured depression, and five studies reported on anxiety. all main characteristics of the studies are presented in table 1 (below). 3.3 quality assessment in total, the six quality criteria were assessed for 28 studies. the lowest score was 0 (five studies), the highest score was 6 (two studies). the overall study quality was low, with a mean score of 1.79 (sd = 1.67). three studies (11%) were rated with a high quality, two (7%) with a moderate quality, and 23 (82%) with a low quality. the description of the method that was used to generate the allocation sequence (sequence generation) was reported in 10 studies (36%). description of the method used to conceal the allocation sequence (allocation concealment) was reported in only five studies (18%). blinding of main outcome assessment was described in only three studies (11%). in 19 studies (68%) it was clearly described how many drop-outs there were during the intervention period. a power-analysis was conducted in seven studies (25%). five studies (18%) used an intention-to-treat analysis, and one study (4%) reported zero drop-outs. the outcome of the quality assessment is shown in table 2 (below). 3.4 post-test treatment effects the random effects model showed that ppis were significantly more effective for all outcome measures compared to the control conditions. the main results are presented in table 3 (below) and explained below. effect sizes of the individual studies are plotted in figures 2, 3, and 4 (below). the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 table 1a. study characteristics of rcts on ppi from non-western countries first author/ year/country design sample intervention delivery control group sessions, duration follow up n (post) mean age /sd % female retention rate (post) outcome measures al-seheel, 2016, iran rct students gratitude, islamic-based self-help ppi + placebo 2w ne = 19 nc1 = 20 nc2 = 21 21.9 (1.2) 85% nt = 95% swb: spane, swls arimitsu, 2016, japan rct healthy adults self-compassion group wait-list 7, 7w 3m ne = 16 nc = 12 23.3 85% ne = 80% nc = 60% swb: mms, pwb: scs dep: bdi, anx: stai asgharipoor, 2012, iran rct patients with major depression ppt group cbt 6, 12w ne = 9 nc = 9 26.4 (5.9) 72% ne = 100% nc = 100% swb: ohi pwb: sws-pwb subscale dep: bdi asl, 2014, 2016, iran rct infertile women ppt group wait-list 6, 6w ne = 15 nc = 16 30.5 (5.7) 100% ne = 83% nc = 89% swb: ohi dep: bdi chan, 2013, china, hk rct students counting blessings self-help placebo 1, 8w ne = 40 nc = 41 33.7 (7.2) 81% nt = 97% swb: swls cheng, 2015, china, hk rct healthy adults gratitude self-help placebo 4w 3m ne = 34 nc1 = 34 55% dep: ces-d chiang, 2008, taiwan rct elderly life review group wait-list 8, 8w ne = 36 nc = 39 78.1 (3.7) 100% nt = 71% swb: lisa chiang, 2010, taiwan rct elderly reminiscence group wait-list 8, 8w 3m ne = 45 nc = 47 77.2 (4.0) 100% nt = 75% pwb: scl-90r dep: bdi choy, 2016, china, hk rct elderly reminiscence group wait-list 6, 6w 6w ne = 39 nc = 42 78.0 (7.1) 67% ne = 85% nc = 62% swb: lss dep: gds deng, china, 2016 rct healthy adults gratitude group no intervention 5w ne = 36 nc = 29 35.7 (9.4) 0% _ swb: swbq dowlatabadi, 2016, iran rct women with breast cancer ppt group no intervention 10, 10w ne = 17 nt = 17 36.6 (5.5) 100% ne = 76% nc = 81% swb: ohi dep: bdi guo, 2016, china, hk rct students ppt group no intervention 8, 8w 3m ne = 34 nc = 42 20.4 (1.2) 95% ne = 81% nc = 98% dep: bdi hendriks, 2017, suriname rct healthy adults mppi group wait-list 7,7w ne = 80 n1 = 72 36.3 (9.6) 60% ne = 91% nc = 91% swb, pwb: mhsf dep, anx, stress: dass-21 the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 79 table 1b. study characteristics of rcts on ppi from non-western countries first author/ year/country design sample intervention delivery control group sessions, duration follow up n (post) mean age /sd % female retention rate (post) outcome measures ho, 2016, china, hk crct healthy families mppi group + self-help placebo 2, 4w 12w ne1 = 828 ne2 = 433 75% ne = 71% nc = 83% swb: shs hwang, 2016, china* rct student ppt group no active control 10, 5w 4m ne = 8 nc1 = 8 nc2 = 8 22.7 (2.3) 67% ne = 72% nc 1/2 = 80.0% swb: spane pwb: fs im, 2016, korea rct nurses mppi group no intervention 4, 9w ne = 25 nc = 24 25.6 (2.7) 82% ne = 100% nc = 96% pwb: ers, empowerment, work commitment ji, 2016, china rct students forgiveness group wait-list 10, 10w ne = 16 nc = 12 20.2 (1.4) 89% nt = 78% swb: efi anx: stai khayatan, 2014, iran rct women with ms ppt group no intervention 6, 6w ne = 15 nc = 15 31.1 (6.5) 100% ne = 100% nc = 100% dep: bdi koydemir, 2015, turkey* rct students strength-based intervention self-help (online) wait-list 5, 8w ne = 44 nc = 36 18.7 (1.0) 48% swb: shs, swls, phs lai, 2004, china rct elderly reminiscence group active control 6, 6w 6w ne = 36 nc1 = 30 85.6 (7.0) 68% nt = 85% pwb: wib lau, 2011, china rct elderly gratitude group active control, no intervention 1 ne = 29 nc1 = 25 nc2 = 29 62.5 (7.1) 60% anx: das lü, 2013, china rct students mppi group no intervention 8, 8w ne = 16 nc = 18 20.0 (4.3) 57% ne = 84% nc =100% swb: panas nikrahan, 2016, iran rct healthy adults mppi group 3 x ppi, wait-list 6, 6w 15w ne1 = 13 ne2 = 13 ne3 = 15 nc = 14 56.6 (8.7) 24% nt = 100% swb: ohi dep: bdi otsuka, 2012 japan rct healthy adults gratitude self-help placebo 4w 1m ne = 19 nc = 19 48.5 (5.1) 28% nt = 50% swb: shs the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 80 table 1c. study characteristics of rcts on ppi from non-western countries first author/ year/country design sample intervention delivery control group sessions, duration follow up n (post) mean age /sd % female retention rate (post) outcome measures wong, 2016, china rct students self-compassion writing self-help placebo 3d, -, 3m ne = 33 nc = 32 20.5 (1.4) 54% nt = 100% dep: ces-d wu, 2016, taiwan rct patients ith with dementia spiritual reminiscence group no intervention 6,6 w ne = 50 nc = 53 73.6 (7.4) 69% ne = 100% nc = 94% swb: lisa yousefi, 2015, iran rct elderly women reminiscence group active control 6, 3w 1m ne = 14 nc = 14 65.2 (6.4) 100% ne = 93% nc = 88% swb: ohq zhang, 2014, china rct students forgiveness group no intervention 1 4w ne=10 nc1=11 22.1 (1.0) 100% nt = 100% swb: iwb/iga dep: bdi anx: bai crct: cluster randomized controlled trial; hk: hong kong; mppi: multi-component positive psychology intervention; ppt: positive psychotherapy. subjective wellbeing efi: enright forgiveness inventory positive affect subscale; iwb/iga: index of well-being & index of general affect; lss: life satisfaction scale; lisa: life satisfaction index; mhc-sf: mental health continuum short form subjective well-being subscale; mms: multiple mood scale; ohi: oxford happiness index; ohq: oxford happiness questionnaire; panas: positive and negative affect schedule ; phs: whoqol-bref psychological health scale; shs: subjective happiness scale; spane: scale of positive and negative experience; swbq: subjective well-being questionnaire; swls: satisfaction with life scale; sws: subjective wellbeing scale psychological wellbeing ers: ego resilience scale; fs: flourishing scale; mhc-sf: mental health continuum short form psychological well-being subscale; scl-90r: symptom checklist-90 revised (inverted score); scs: self compassion scale; sws: subjective wellbeing scale; pwb subscale; wib: well-being/ill-being scale and two unnamed scales measuring empowerment and organizational commitment depression bdi: beck depression index; ces-d: center for epidemiological studies depression scale; dass-21: depression anxiety stress scale; gds-15: geriatric depression scale anxiety bai: beck anxiety inventory; das: death anxiety scale; dass-21: depression anxiety stress scales; stai: statetrait anxiety inventory the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 table 2. quality assessment of rcts on ppis in non-western countries studies sg ac boa ddo n>50 pa itt/ 0 do total score quality rating al-seheel, 2016 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 low arimitsu, 2016 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 low asgharipoor, 2012 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 low asl, 2014, 2016 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 low chan, 2013 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 low cheng, 2015 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 high chiang, 2008 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 low chiang, 2010 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 low choy, 2015 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 low deng, 2016 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 low dowlatabadi, 2016 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 low guo, 2016 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 low hendriks, 2017 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 high ho, 2016 1 1 0 1 1 1 5 high hwang, 2016 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 low im, 2016 1 0 0 1 1 0 3 moderate ji, 2016 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 low khayatan, 2014 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 low koydemir, 2015 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 low lai, 2004 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 low lau, 2011 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 low lü, 2013 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 low nikrahan, 2016 1 1 0 1 0 1 4 moderate otsuka, 2006 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 low wong, 2016 0 1 0 1 0 0 2 low wu, 2016 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 low yousefi, 2015 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 low zhang, 2014 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 low sg = sequence generation; ac = allocation concealment; boa = blinding of main outcome assessment; ddo = description of drop-outs; n>50, pa = n>50 or power analysis; itt = intention-to-treat analysis or 0 drop-outs 3.4.1 effects on subjective wellbeing for subjective wellbeing, a significant moderate to large effect was observed from 21 comparisons at post-test (g = 0.48, 95% ci: 0.24 to 0.72, p < 0.001). the effect sizes of the studies ranged from 0.34 to 2.22. heterogeneity analysis revealed a significant and high level of heterogeneity (i2 = 80.69, q: 103.60, p <0.001). removing four outliers reduced the effect size to g = 0.36 (95% ci: 0.18 to 0.53, p < 0.001). the heterogeneity was moderate after outliers were removed (i2 = 44.22, q = 28.69, p < 0.001), which means that there may be methodological issues which could lead to a high risk of bias. the forest plot in figure 2 (below) displays the post-treatment effects, including outliers. the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 table 3. between-group effects outcome measures ncomp hedges' g 95%ci z heterogeneity fail-safe n q value i2 all studies post-treatment subjective wellbeing 21 0.48 (0.24 0.72) 3.97*** 103.60*** 80.69 272 psychological wellbeing 8 0.40 (-0.03 0.83) 1.81** 35.26*** 80.15 29 depression 13 0.62 (0.19 -1.05) 2.81** 94.87*** 87.35 202 anxiety 5 0.95 (0.28 1.61) 2.77** 22.95*** 82.57 41 studies post-treatment, excl. outliers subjective wellbeing 17 0.36 (0.18 0.53) 4.01*** 28.69*** 44.22 psychological wellbeing 7 0.22 (-0.05 0.49) 1.61ns 9.74ns 38.37 depression 10 0.69 (0.38 -0.99) 4.44*** 26.55*** 66.11 follow-up effects, excl. outliers subjective wellbeing 8 0.43 (0.08 0.77) 2.45* 21.61** 67.60 depression 7 0.77 (0.23 – 1.30) 2.82*** 38.55** 84.43 * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; ns: non-significant 3.4.2 effects on psychological wellbeing for psychological wellbeing (eight comparisons), a significant moderate effect was observed (g = 0.40, 95% ci: -0.05 to 0.83, p = 0.070) at post-treatment. effect sizes ranged from -0.42 to 1.50. heterogeneity was significant and high (i2 = 80.15, q = 35.26, p < 0.001). after excluding one outlier, significant effects were no longer found. figure 3 (below) displays the posttreatment effects in a forest plot. 3.4.3 effects on depression a significant large effect for depression (13 comparisons) was observed (g = 0.62, 95% ci: 0.19 to 1.05, p < 0.001) at post-treatment. effect sizes of studies ranged from -0.89 to 2.45. heterogeneity was significant and high (i2 = 87.35, q = 94.87, p = 0.000). removing three outliers increased the effect size (g = 0.68, 95% ci: 0.38 to 0.99, p < 0.001) and heterogeneity was significant and high (i2 = 66.11, q = 26.55, p < 0.01). the forest plot in figure 4 (below) displays the post-treatment effects. the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 figure 2. effects of ppis on subjective wellbeing, including outliers figure 3. effects of ppis on psychological wellbeing, including outliers study name statistics for each study hedges's g and 95% ci hedges's standard lower upper g error variance limit limit z-value p-value al-saheel, 2016 0.19 0.31 0.10 -0.42 0.81 0.61 0.54 arimitsu, 2016 0.08 0.33 0.11 -0.57 0.73 0.24 0.81 asgharipoor, 2012 1.77 0.54 0.29 0.72 2.83 3.30 0.00 asl, 2014 0.89 0.34 0.12 0.22 1.56 2.60 0.01 chan, 2013 0.38 0.23 0.05 -0.06 0.83 1.69 0.09 chiang, 2008 0.81 0.24 0.06 0.34 1.27 3.38 0.00 choy, 2015 0.15 0.22 0.05 -0.28 0.59 0.70 0.48 deng, 2016 0.79 0.26 0.07 0.29 1.29 3.08 0.00 dowlatabadi, 2016 1.80 0.41 0.16 1.01 2.60 4.44 0.00 hendriks, 2017 0.37 0.16 0.03 0.06 0.69 2.35 0.02 ho, 2016 -0.08 0.06 0.00 -0.19 0.04 -1.30 0.19 hwang, 2016 -0.44 0.48 0.23 -1.38 0.50 -0.92 0.36 ji, 2016 0.95 0.39 0.15 0.18 1.72 2.43 0.02 koydemir, 2015 0.75 0.23 0.05 0.30 1.20 3.25 0.00 lü, 2013 2.22 0.43 0.18 1.37 3.06 5.16 0.00 nikrahan, 2013 0.31 0.31 0.09 -0.29 0.91 1.01 0.31 otsuka, 2012 0.00 0.28 0.08 -0.56 0.56 0.01 1.00 wong, 2016 -0.22 0.25 0.06 -0.71 0.26 -0.91 0.36 wu, 2016 0.43 0.20 0.04 0.04 0.81 2.16 0.03 yousefi, 2015 0.36 0.36 0.13 -0.36 1.07 0.98 0.33 zhang, 2014 -0.37 0.43 0.19 -1.22 0.48 -0.86 0.39 0.48 0.12 0.01 0.24 0.72 3.97 0.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 favours control favours ppi meta analysis study name statistics for each study hedges's g and 95% ci hedges's standard lower upper g error variance limit limit z-value p-value arimitsu, 2016 0.99 0.35 0.12 0.30 1.68 2.80 0.01 asgharipoor, 2012 0.11 0.45 0.20 -0.78 0.99 0.23 0.81 chiang, 2009 1.50 0.23 0.05 1.04 1.96 6.39 0.00 hendriks, 2017 0.20 0.16 0.03 -0.11 0.51 1.27 0.21 hwang, 2016 -0.42 0.48 0.23 -1.36 0.52 -0.88 0.38 im, 2016 0.57 0.29 0.08 0.01 1.13 1.99 0.05 lai, 2003 -0.04 0.25 0.06 -0.54 0.46 -0.15 0.88 wong, 2016 0.03 0.25 0.06 -0.45 0.51 0.12 0.91 0.40 0.22 0.05 -0.03 0.83 1.81 0.07 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 favours control favours ppi meta analysis the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 figure 4. effects of ppis on depression, including outliers 3.4.4 effects on anxiety effects on anxiety were reported in five studies. a significant large effect was observed (g = 0.93, 95% ci: 0.28 to 1.59, p = 0.006) at post-treatment. effect sizes of studies ranged from 0.15 to 2.54. heterogeneity was significant and moderate (i2 = 44.22, q = 22.95, p < 0.001). there were no outliers. the forest plot in figure 5 displays the post-treatment effects. figure 5. effects of ppis on anxiety, including outliers 3.5 subgroup analyses a moderator analysis was conducted for subjective wellbeing and depression, but not for psychological wellbeing, due to a limited amount of studies for this outcome. also, due to a limited amount of studies from moderate (n = 3) and high quality (n = 2), the moderating effects of study quality were not reported. our analysis showed that none of the variables had a moderating effect. all outcomes of the subgroup analyses are shown in table 4 (below). study name statistics for each study hedges's g and 95% ci hedges's standard lower upper g error variance limit limit z-value p-value arimitsu, 2016 0.78 0.34 0.12 0.11 1.46 2.27 0.02 asgharipoor, 2012 -0.60 0.46 0.21 -1.50 0.30 -1.30 0.19 asl, 2014 0.90 0.34 0.12 0.23 1.57 2.62 0.01 cheng, 2015 0.86 0.25 0.06 0.36 1.35 3.41 0.00 chiang, 2009 1.05 0.22 0.05 0.62 1.49 4.76 0.00 choy, 2015 0.99 0.23 0.05 0.53 1.45 4.25 0.00 dowlatabadi, 2016 1.10 0.37 0.13 0.38 1.81 3.00 0.00 guo, 2016 2.45 0.30 0.09 1.86 3.05 8.10 0.00 hendriks, 2017 0.37 0.16 0.03 0.06 0.69 2.35 0.02 khayatan, 2014 1.20 0.39 0.15 0.44 1.96 3.10 0.00 nikrahan, 2013 -0.05 0.31 0.09 -0.65 0.55 -0.17 0.86 wong, 2016 -0.39 0.22 0.05 -0.83 0.05 -1.72 0.09 zhang, 2014 -0.89 0.45 0.20 -1.77 -0.01 -1.97 0.05 0.62 0.22 0.05 0.19 1.05 2.83 0.00 -2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 favours control favours ppi meta analysis the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 3.6 publication bias for subjective wellbeing, the funnel plot was asymmetrically distributed in such a way that it was skewed in favor of studies with moderate to large effect sizes. this indicates the presence of publication bias. egger’s regression intercept also suggests that publication bias existed (intercept = 2.40, t = 3.72, df = 19, p = .0001). the mean effect sizes were calculated by imputing missing studies using the trim and fill method. one study was imputed and the effect size was adjusted to g = 0.52 (95% ci: 0.28 0.75), meaning the effect size actually increased. our findings are in line with other meta-analyses on the efficacy of wellbeing interventions (bolier et al., 2013; chakhssi et al., 2018; weiss, westerhof, & bohlmeijer, 2016), which consistently report more bias towards the publication of positive outcomes. publication bias findings were not reported for psychological wellbeing, depression, and anxiety, due to the low numbers of studies (eight, 13, and five respectively). such low numbers could lead to an unreliable publication bias analysis (cuijpers, 2016; lau, ioannidis, terrin, schmid, & olkin, 2006). table 4. results of moderator analysis outcome criteria value # studies hedges’ g (95% ci) z-value (p-value) subjective population clinical 6 0.88 (0.45 – 1.31) 3.99 (0.00) *** wellbeing non-clinical 15 0.32 (0.07– 0.58) 2.50 (0.01) * delivery group 16 0.64 (0.37 – 0.92) 4.65 (0.00) *** self-help 5 -0.01 (-0.18 – 0.16) -0.10 (0.92) ns intervention single component 11 0.33 (0.10 – 0.56) 2.84 (0.00) *** multi-component 10 0.70 (0.26 – 1.14) 3.13 (0.00) *** control active 8 0.16 (-0.20 – 0.51) 0.87 (0.38) ns non-active 13 0.66 (0.34 – 0.97) 4.06 (0.00) *** duration ≤ 8 weeks 16 0.32 (0.12 – 0.52) 3.08 (0.00) ** > 8 weeks 5 1.27 (0.24 – 2.30) 2.41 (0.02) ** adaptation adapted 10 0.30 (-0.01 – 0.60) 1.92 (0.06) ** not adapted 11 0.64 (0.35 – 0.94) 4.25 (0.00) *** depression population clinical 6 0.63 (0.10 – 1.16) 2.34 (0.02) * non-clinical 7 0.62 (-0.05 – 1.28) 1.82 (0.07) ** delivery group 11 0.70 (0.23 – 1.16) 2.93 (0.00) *** self-help 2 0.23 (-0.99 – 1.45) 0.37 (0.71) ns intervention single component 5 0.37 (-0.32 – 1.07) 1.06 (0.29) ns multi-component 8 0.78 (0.18 – 1.38) 2.52 (0.01) * control active 4 -0.21 (-1.02 – 0.61) -0.49 (0.62) ns non-active 9 0.96 (0.52 – 1.41) 4.23 (0.00) *** duration ≤ 8 weeks 10 0.79 (0.34 – 1.24) 3.43 (0.00) *** > 8 weeks 3 0.04 (-0.97 – 1.05) 0.08 (0.94) ns adaptation adapted 3 0.15 (-0.59 – 0.89) 0.41 (0.67) ns not adapted 10 0.76 (0.23 – 1.29) 2.81 (0.00) ** * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001; ns: non-significant. the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 3.7 follow-up effects the follow-up effects of the ppis were examined from four weeks after baseline/post-test up to three months after baseline/post-test (see table 3). follow-up effects for psychological wellbeing and anxiety could not be calculated due to the limited amount of studies, namely four and two respectively. for subjective wellbeing (eight comparisons) the effect size slightly decreased (g = 0.43, 95% ci: 0.08 0.77, p = 0.01). for depression (seven comparisons, after removal of one outlier), an increased effect size (g = 0.77, 95% ci: 0.23– 1.30, p = 0.005) was found. these findings suggest that ppi’s in non-western countries are also effective up to three months follow-up. 4. discussion this study aimed to examine the efficacy of ppis from non-western countries across randomized controlled trials. following a systematic literature search, 28 rcts were included in the meta-analysis. a moderate effect size was found for subjective wellbeing (g = 0.48) and psychological wellbeing (g = 0.40), and large effect sizes for depression (g = 0.62) and anxiety (g = 0.95). after removing outliers, the effect sizes decreased for subjective wellbeing (g = 0.36) and for psychological wellbeing (g = 0.22), but slightly increased for depression (g = 0.69). follow-up results showed slightly decreased effect sizes for subjective wellbeing (g = 0.43) and an increased effect size for depression (g = 0.77). the overall study quality was low. three studies were rated with a high quality, two with a moderate quality, and 23 with a low quality. there were also indications of publication bias, with a bias towards the publication of studies with positive results and with large effect sizes. our findings on the larger effect sizes of studies from non-western countries are in line with a previous metaanalysis on mppis (hendriks et al., 2018b), that reported substantially larger effect sizes of ppis from non-western countries on subjective wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and depression. the effects of ppis on anxiety have not been reported in previous meta-analyses, most likely because of the low number of studies reporting this outcome. since our metaanalysis was based on only five studies reporting on anxiety, caution is warranted when interpreting findings on anxiety in this study. the moderate to large effect sizes found in the current meta-analysis are also larger than those reported in a meta-analysis on ppis by bolier et al. (2013), which did not include non-western studies. hence, our findings indicate that the effect size of ppis that are conducted in non-western countries have larger effects than ppis that are conducted in western countries. a possible explanation for the larger differences in effect sizes is the low quality of the studies from non-western countries. the mean score of the study quality in this analysis was 1.79, indicating that there is a high risk of bias in the studies and the overall study quality is rated as low. in comparison, a previous meta-analysis of mppis where study quality was determined using the same criteria revealed a mean score of 3.43 for quality of studies from western countries (hendriks et al, 2018b). a high risk of bias, or low study quality, is often associated with larger effect sizes, or vice versa. for example, a meta-analysis on the efficacy of psychotherapy (cuijpers, van straten, bohlmeijer, hollon, & andersson, 2010) reported relatively smaller effect sizes in studies of higher quality, compared with low-quality studies. a meta-analysis on the efficacy of ppis (bolier et al., 2013) suggested that the association between high effect sizes and lower study quality might also be applicable to ppis. our quality analysis showed that rcts of ppis from non-western countries often do not adequately describe the sequence generation of randomization, or how allocation to the intervention was concealed. inadequate random the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 sequence and allocation concealment can overestimate treatment effects significantly (armijoolivo et al., 2015; dettori, 2010). blinding of assessors was also not described in the large majority of the studies, which can lead to overestimation of treatment effects (schulz & grimes, 2002). the found sample sizes were also small: 14 studies (50%) had fewer than 20 participants in the intervention group, and 10 studies (36%) had between 20 and 40 participants in the intervention group. the large majority of the studies in this meta-analysis was underpowered, which can lead to inflated estimates of the effect sizes (la caze & duffull, 2011). only five studies used intentionto-treat analysis (itt), which is a statistical method where data from all randomized participants is analyzed, regardless of their adherence. intention-to-treat analysis avoids an overestimation of the effects of an intervention (gupta, 2011; hollis & campbell, 1999). in addition to the methodological biases, other biases may contribute to higher effect sizes in non-western countries. a well-known phenomenon in psychology is the hawthorne effect. the awareness of being observed leads to conformity and social desirability, which in turn leads to positive behavior outcomes (mccambridge, witton, & elbourne, 2014). research suggests that in collectivistic societies people tend to respond in more socially desirable ways, to maintain good relationships with others (johnson & van de vijver, 2003; lalwani, shavitt, & johnson, 2006). another aspect of the hawthorne effect is the novelty effect of an intervention. in studies on the effects of mobile health interventions in western countries, it is noted that new technologies are perceived as more novel and having more value than traditional interventions. this novelty effect may lead to greater enthusiasm among participants and a greater attention to a particular intervention (ammenwerth & rigby, 2016; turner-mcgrievy, kalyanaraman, & campbell, 2013). in non-western countries, this effect could also be applicable to regular psychological interventions, since access to mental health interventions is limited (de jong et al., 2015; rathod et al., 2017). despite the lower study quality and the influence of possible biases that may have contributed to overestimation of the effect sizes, the possibility that ppis in non-western countries have larger effect sizes than ppis from western countries simply because they are more effective cannot be excluded. we suggest that ppis constitute a good cultural fit with nonwestern populations. western european and north american cultures (“western”) are often described as independent, whereas asian and south american cultures (“eastern”) are characterized as interdependent (markus & kitayama, 1991; morris & peng, 1994; park, uchida, & kitayama, 2016). while the goal of positive psychology interventions is to increase the wellbeing of the individual, many positive interventions operate through collective pathways that aim to improve interdependent relationships. the self, in interdependent cultures, is often perceived as a group-self with strong connections and feelings towards family members and the close environment. in such a setting, a group intervention may elicit more social support and wellbeing than in an individualized, independent, and egocentric cultural setting. examples are positive psychology activities such as the gratitude visit (davis et al., 2016; emmons & stern, 2013), acts of kindness (buchanan & bardi, 2010), and forgiveness (derakhtkar & ahangarkani, 2016). in addition, many positive psychology activities aim to stimulate low arousal emotions such as kindness (otake, shimai, tanaka-matsumi, otsui, & fredrickson, 2006; o'connell, o'shea, & gallagher, 2016), and compassion (arimitsu, 2016; yang, liu, shao, ma, & tian, 2015), and integrate prayer and other spiritual activities (rouholamini, kalantarkousheh, & sharifi, 2017; wu & koo, 2016) into interventions. studies show people from eastern cultures prefer such low arousal emotions (lim, 2016; tugade & fredrickson, 2004), and there is evidence suggesting cultural fit of emotions is associated with better health (yoo & miyamoto, 2018). ppis often include activities that aim to increase awareness, based on buddhist philosophy, for example, the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 mindfulness-based activities (hamilton, kitzman, & guyotte, 2006; ivtzan & lomas, 2016), and loving kindness meditation (fredrickson, cohn, coffey, pek, & finkel, 2008). in addition, several studies from iran were recently published that examined the effects of islamic-based ppis (alseheel & noor, 2016; rouholamini et al., 2017; saeedi, nasab, zadeh, & ebrahimi, 2015). such intervention may constitute a cultural fit with the backgrounds of the participants. this, in turn, could result in greater enthusiasm, commitment, and participation among the study populations, and therefore contribute to higher effect sizes. 4.1 study limitations besides the low quality of the studies, there are four additional limitations to the findings of this meta-analysis. first, our findings were based on a relatively small number of studies per outcome and subgroup. for example, psychological wellbeing was an outcome in only eight studies, depression in 11 studies, and anxiety in five studies. sample sizes were relatively small in the exploratory subgroup analyses. this limits the interpretation of the differences between groups. due to the small number of studies, publication bias analysis was not performed for psychological wellbeing, depression, and anxiety. follow-up effects could only be calculated for subjective wellbeing and depression, and findings should be treated with caution in light of the limited numbers. for these reasons, definite conclusions on the effects of ppis from non-western countries cannot be drawn. second, due to the high heterogeneity of the studies, it was not possible to clearly determine optimal conditions, for example, differences in efficacy between clinical or healthy populations, or differences in duration of the intervention. third, only studies published in peer reviewed journals in the english language were included. studies that were published in book chapters, dissertations, studies in grey literature and studies that were not in the english language (for example, two studies from iran, which were only available in arabic) were excluded. fourthly, only rcts were included in the analyses, and non-randomized controlled trials were excluded. while rcts are considered the gold standard in clinical research (rosen, manor, engelhard, & zucker, 2006), they are often cost intensive and complex (korn & freidlin, 2012). sufficiently powering an rct with its concomitant costs may not always be feasible in low and middle income countries, due to lack of financial resources. for example, 625 articles on positive psychology in the indian journal of positive psychology were screened. these studies were conducted in india and other asian countries. only two of these studies were rcts. including quasi-experimental studies, which are perhaps more often conducted in non-western countries than rcts, could increase the number of studies in the subgroups and thereby provide a more complete overview of the efficacy of ppis in non-western countries. 4.2 recommendations the limited number of studies included contributed to the finding of no significant moderators and unreliable results for the publication bias analyses. research in the field of positive psychology in non-western countries is still in its infancy. a bibliometric analysis revealed that in the time period 1998 2013, only nine rcts from non-western countries were published, and that number has now (2018) almost quadrupled (hendriks et al., 2018a). with this strong trend towards globalization of positive psychology, the study quality of non-western country rcts could benefit from protocol guidelines such as the consolidated standards of reporting trials (consort) (schulz, altman, & moher, 2010) or the standard protocol items: recommendations for interventional trials (spirit) guidelines (chan et al., 2013). further, we urge researchers from non-western countries to publish in peer-reviewed journals, even when there is a null finding of no effect, as this is likely to reduce the publication bias in positive psychology research. the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 authors tom hendriks anton de kom university of suriname tom.hendriks@uvs.edu marijke schotanus-dijkstra university of twente aabidien hassankhan anton de kom university of suriname tobi graafsma anton de kom university of suriname ernst bohlmeijer university of twente joop de jong university of amsterdam publishing timeline received 1 january 2018 accepted 21 may 2018 published 13 july 2018 references studies preceded by an asterisk were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis. adams, d. l. 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psycinfo well-being or happiness or happy or flourishing or "life satisfaction" or "satisfaction with life" or optimism or gratitude or strengths or forgiveness or compassion or "positive psych*").ti. and ("well-being" or happiness or happy or flourishing or "life satisfaction" or "satisfaction with life" or optimism or gratitude or strengths or forgiveness or compassion or "positive psych*").ab. and random*.af scopus #1 well-being or happiness or happy or flourishing or "life satisfaction" or "satisfaction with life" or optimism or gratitude or strengths or forgiveness or compassion or "positive psych*" #2 and abs(well-being or happiness or happy or flourishing or "life satisfaction" or "satisfaction with life" or optimism or gratitude or strengths or forgiveness or compassion or "positive psych*")and title-abs-key(random*)) and doctype(ar) and pubyear > 1997 and ( limit-to ( subjarea,"medi" ) or limit-to ( subjarea,"heal" ) or limit-to ( subjarea,"psyc" ) or limit-to ( subjarea,"soci" ) or limit-to ( subjarea,"nurs" ) or limit-to ( subjarea,"busi" ) or limit-to ( subjarea,"mult" ) ) and ( limit-to ( language,"english" ) ) and ( limit-to ( affilcountry,"united states" ) ) and ( limit-to ( exactkeyword,"human" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"article" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"humans" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"controlled study" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"male" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"female" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"adult" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"randomized controlled trial" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"controlled clinical trial" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"middle aged" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"aged" ) or limitto ( exactkeyword,"clinical trial" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"physiology" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"priority journal" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"major clinical study" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"young adult" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"treatment outcome" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"methodology" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"quality of life" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"clinical article" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"procedures" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"questionnaire" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"human experiment" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"normal human" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"wellbeing" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"double blind procedure" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"randomization" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"depression" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"outcome assessment" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"random allocation" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"follow up" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"questionnaires" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"exercise therapy" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"time" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"animals" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"doubleblind method" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"well-being" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"psychology" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"psychological aspect" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"stress, mechanical" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"training" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"physical activity" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"strength" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"mental health" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"placebo" ) or limit-to ( the efficacy of positive psychological interventions from non-western countries hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra, hassankhan, graafsma, bohlmeijer, & de jong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 exactkeyword,"health status" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"happiness" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"personal satisfaction" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"self concept" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"life satisfaction" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"follow-up studies" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"anxiety" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"satisfaction" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"psychological well being" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"self report" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"instrumentation" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"emotion" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"adaptation, psychological" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"united states" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"fatigue" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"social support" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"affect" ) or limit-to ( exactkeyword,"pilot study" ) lambert, l., lomas, t., van de weijer, m. p., passmore, h. a., joshanloo, m., harter, j., ishikawa, y., lai, a., kitagawa, t., chen, d., kawakami, t., miyata, h., & diener, e. (2020). towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing: a proposal for a more inclusive measure. international journal of wellbeing, 10(2), 1-18. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.1037 louise lambert united arab emirates university ltlamber@yahoo.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing: a proposal for a more inclusive measure louise lambert · tim lomas · margot p van de weijer · holli anne passmore · mohsen joshanloo · jim harter · yoshiki ishikawa · alden lai · takuya kitagawa · dominique chen · takafumi kawakami · hiroaki miyata · ed diener abstract: the science of wellbeing has come a long way from the early days of measuring wellbeing via a nation’s gdp, and wellbeing measures and concepts continue to proliferate to capture its various elements. yet, much of this activity has reflected concepts from western cultures, despite the emphasis placed on wellbeing in all corners of the globe. to meet the challenges and opportunities arising from cross-disciplinary research worldwide, the well-being for planet earth foundation and the gallup world poll have joined forces to add more culturally relevant constructs and questions to existing gallup modules. in this white paper, we review the discussion from the international well-being summit in kyoto, japan (august 2019), where nine such additions were proposed and highlight why a more global view of wellbeing is needed. overall, the new items reflect a richer view of wellbeing than life satisfaction alone and include hedonic and eudaimonic facets of wellbeing, social wellbeing, the role of culture, community, nature, and governance. these additions allow for the measurement of a broader conceptualization of wellbeing, more refined and nuanced cross-cultural comparisons, and facilitate a better examination of the causes of variation in global wellbeing. the new gallup world poll additions will be trialled in 2020, with additional inclusions from this summit to be made in 2021. keywords: positive psychology, wellbeing, hedonia, eudaimonia, life satisfaction, culture 1. introduction the science of wellbeing has come a long way. initially anchored in the field of psychology, it has since moved into fields like organizational development, health, education, economics, and policy expansion. indeed, global policy makers are progressively adopting wellbeing as an overarching framework by which to assess, track, and respond to human development challenges and opportunities. indices by which wellbeing is measured are thus critical, and need to be carefully reviewed and updated. for example, the world happiness report (whr), which has garnered international attention for its national happiness rankings, and the happy planet index, ranking environmentally sustainable wellbeing, assess wellbeing via the gallup world poll (gwp). both reports rely on a single question: the cantril self-anchoring striving scale (cantril, 1965), also called cantril’s ladder, which asks respondents to rate themselves on their current and future perceived quality or satisfaction with life, with the bottom of the ‘ladder’ representing low satisfaction/quality of life and the top, representing high satisfaction/quality of life. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 although the cantril’s ladder is a valid assessment of present perceived quality of life across global cultures, it is an incomplete measure of well-being. at the country-level, cantril’s ladder is highly correlated with a nation’s gross domestic product (gdp) (diener, kahneman, tov, & arora, 2010; helliwell, huang, & wang, 2017; joshanloo, 2018; joshanloo, jovanovic, & taylor, 2019; oishi & schimmack, 2010). this single score is also linked to several factors (e.g., personal freedom as well as healthcare, educational, and political functioning, joshanloo et al., 2019). it is further considered a western-centric metric of wellbeing reflecting western populations used in most psychology research (henrich, heine, & norenzayan, 2010) and is limited in its ability to reflect ways in which wellbeing is experienced and understood worldwide (lomas, 2015). scholars have found that subjective wellbeing can be ordered along a single dimension from evaluative judgements of life (cantril’s ladder) on one end to experienced affect on the other (diener, kahneman, arora, harter, & tov, 2009; diener, ng, harter, & arora, 2010). this ordering reveals that evaluative judgements are more highly related to income, standards of living, and luxury conveniences although meeting basic and psychosocial needs mediated the effects of income on life evaluation to a degree, while affect is more highly related to psychological needs, autonomy, social relationships, and fulfilment in daily tasks. wellbeing has also been thought of as a multidimensional set of constructs that are not reducible to a single facet (such as quality of life) (de chavez, backett-milburn, parry, & platt, 2005; lomas, hefferon, & ivtzan, 2015); it includes not only satisfaction with life, a cognitive appraisal of one’s life, but positive emotions and psychological resources (such as meaning in life), together with considerations of social inequality, environmental degradation, and political freedom. for example, morrison, tay, and diener (2011) found, using gallup world poll data that people tend to use proximate factors, such as one’s job, health, or standard of living to judge their wellbeing when overall living conditions are satisfactory or when individualism is salient. in contrast, individuals are more likely to use perceived societal success to judge life satisfaction when life conditions are difficult or when collectivist norms form part of their culture. this suggests additional dimensions need emphasis in wellbeing appraisals, preferably through consensus and founded on empirical evidence proffered by the global academic community. this approach also means capturing the diverse influences that have hitherto been overlooked in existing measures and which matter to individuals and societies. in the interests of advancing this aim, the authors recently participated in a three-day summit convened in august 2019 in kyoto, japan. funded and facilitated by the well-being for planet earth foundation (previously called the lifull foundation) and gallup representatives, its principal goal was to add new items to the gwp to ensure its representativeness in global wellbeing perspectives. this means including additional concepts that have been omitted to date, such as the role of culture, community, governance, and nature. this white paper offers a summary of the proposed additions, including their rationale and future research potential. by offering these additions, we hope to complement the work of the world happiness report council and offer a truly comprehensive “world wellbeing report” in the years to come. 1.1 what’s wrong with the gdp as a measure of prosperity? while income (gdp) is an indicator of prosperity, it is not the only one, and the realization of its inadequacy in measuring social progress is growing (adler & seligman, 2016; lambert, mulay-shah, warren, & younis, 2019; nikolova, 2016; stiglitz, sen, & fitoussi, 2009; uchida & oishi, 2016). measuring the market value of goods and services tells us little about individual wellbeing and happiness, or who benefits when a nation’s gdp increases. costs to the environment or health are also not calculated; in fact, this is a constant criticism of positive towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 psychology, the newly minted science of wellbeing, which focuses more on the psychological makeup of individuals and less on societal, political, and natural contexts in which they live (kern et al., 2019; mead et al., 2019). further, while more income generates higher life satisfaction, this relationship does not hold true everywhere or in all conditions (easterlin, 2015). for instance, a decrease in positive emotion due to rising ambitions and lost hopes for one’s economy, coupled with failed leadership in delivering jobs and rising social equality, underscores what is known as the “unhappy development paradox” (arampatzi, burger, ianchovichina, röhricht, & veenhoven, 2015). money is not all that matters; factors such as equality, access to opportunity, and feelings of respect can highlight what is happening in societies that a nation’s gdp cannot. 1.2 why does wellbeing matter? while this question has been answered by many researchers, a recap is helpful for those who remain unconvinced of its necessity as a matter of policy and global research. there are many reasons why wellbeing matters. first, individuals with greater wellbeing are known to generate greater social good and are easier on the public purse. for instance, they are more likely to save and control expenditures by consuming less (guven, 2012). they are more likely to show compassion, empathy, and more prosocial behavior (johnson & fredrickson, 2005; nelson, 2009; rand, kraft-todd, & gruber, 2015), be more socially engaged (mehl, vazire, holleran, & clark, 2010; richards & huppert, 2011) and volunteer to a greater degree (priller & shupp, 2011; son & wilson, 2012; thoits & hewitt, 2001). more likely to make more ethical decisions (james & chymis, 2004), they also engage in less risky behavior, smoke less, and exercise more (goudie, mukherjee, de neve, oswald, & wu, 2012; grant, wardle, & steptoe, 2009; huang & humphreys, 2012). individuals with greater wellbeing also tend to be healthier and live longer (boehm & kubzansky, 2012; sin, 2016; wiest, schüz, webster, & wurm, 2011). at school, greater wellbeing translates into better grades (durlak, weissberg, dymnicki, taylor, & schellinger, 2011; suldo, thalji, & ferron, 2011), while workplaces benefit with happier employees showing more productivity, engagement attitudes, and less sick time and absenteeism (bockerman & ilmakunnas, 2012; edmans, 2012; harter, schmidt, asplund, agrawal, & killham, 2010; harter, schmidt, & hayes, 2002; judge, thoreson, bono, & patton, 2001; krause, 2013; oswald, proto, & sgroi, 2012; walsh, boehm, & lyubomirsky, 2018). 1.3 the gallup world poll (gwp) the gallup world poll (2005-present) contains a core survey component that carries over from year to year covering the range of overall wellbeing measurements on a continuum from evaluative judgements of life (cantril’s ladder) to measures of affect and daily experiences (reflections on the previous day). the core instrument also includes measures of law and order, food and shelter, work quality, health, standard of living, citizen engagement, migration intentions, views of governance, and demographic variables. additional items and modules are added based on current events and the needs of sponsoring entities. this current initiative seeks to expand the core content to fill gaps in wellbeing research that align with eastern scholar’s findings and views. in world poll countries, gallup surveys residents using probability-based sampling methods. the samples are representative of the civilian, non-institutionalized national population, aged 15 and older in the vast majority of countries. exceptions to national coverage include unsafe areas, very remote locations and low human-density areas. typically, the sample size is 1,000 adults in most countries, while in the most populous nations such as china, india, and russia, gallup uses sample sizes of at least 2,000. the sampling of respondents and countries towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 represents more than 95% of the global population on any given year. this broad coverage of the global population has led to improved interpretations of the relationships among many wellbeing variables, including life satisfaction, age, health, and income across societies for example (deaton, 2008). gallup maintains a centralized level of research management and quality assurance coupled with country-specific knowledge provided by its regional research directors. this centralisation offers a single point of contact and strong processes to ensure consistency, quality and transparency. the world poll data collection is divided into seven regions. each region (see box) is led by a regional research director who is responsible for all phases of the research process in his or her portfolio of countries. the regional research director also oversees data collection efforts, which are carried out by the local partners’ field teams. good logistics are key to collecting quality data in the most time-efficient manner. in face-to-face countries, gallup’s local data collection partners use a field plan to deploy their field teams most effectively across geographies. in telephone countries, local partners must also manage the phone sample carefully for maximum efficiency. 1.4 why additions are necessary empirical research around wellbeing is rapidly growing. indices must keep pace with these scientific developments by including broader constructs that contribute to wellbeing, such as the natural, social, and political settings in which humans live and thrive (kern et al., 2019; mead et al., 2019). further, not only is the literature evolving, but non-western research in particular is emerging, making salient a dearth of cross-cultural diversity in the science and measurement of wellbeing (kim, doiron, warren, & donaldson, 2018). the predominant western view of wellbeing has implications for which of its aspects are researched, upon whom the research is based, and what resulting norms emerge for what constitutes a good life. for example, crosscultural differences influence how societies define the self (joshanloo, 2014), with individualism (a view of the self as independent and focused on the promotion of one’s success and personal attributes) being predominant in the west, and collectivism (where self construals are interdependent, with value placed on maintaining relationships, fulfilling social roles, and sacrificing for a collective good) being predominant in the east. with the exception of cross-cultural research, which tends to be relegated to the periphery of research findings, and the gallup world poll as well as a handful of other data collecting entities, much of the wellbeing research to date has largely been based on what have been called “weird” samples, i.e., western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic populations (henrich et al., 2010) reflected in nearly 90% of the published psychology research (arnett, 2009; christopher, wendt, marecek, & goodman, 2014; rad, martingano, & ginges, 2018). this western-centricity of psychology needs to be challenged to make research and its findings more representative of all humans; moreover, representative research populations and a broader range of wellbeing constructs will align more accurately with how communities around the world view themselves (kim et al., 2018) and reflect what truly comprises a good life. 2. the process a team of seven researchers was invited to the summit on august 5, 6, and 7, 2019. the summit took place at the shunkoin temple in kyoto, japan and was organized by the well-being for planet earth foundation, a non-profit dedicated to making wellbeing science truly global and representative of all human views and perspectives. invited participants were chosen for their range of cross-cultural research expertise, experience in developing measures and scales, intowards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 depth knowledge of non-traditional and/or non-western views of wellbeing, and leadership in philosophical and theoretical developments in the field of wellbeing. participants presented their findings and proposed research initiatives, focused on addressing current gaps in the literature through the provision of context and content from non-western regions of the world. they also collectively proposed alternative and/or additional topics for the existing gwp and formulated these as questionnaire items. these topics and items were discussed, debated, and voted upon. the list below includes the final selection. questions 1 through 6 are those with the highest votes, which were put forward to gallup for consideration. the remaining items (7 to 9) are those we felt were worthy of consideration for future editions of the poll. 2.1 proposed additions: constructs, questions, and rationales broadly, the constructs and items we recommend expand gallup’s current wellbeing measures of life satisfaction (i.e., cantril’s ladder) and the ratio of high-arousal positive to negative emotions, measures which primarily assess hedonic wellbeing (kahneman, diener, & schwarz, 1999; ryan & deci, 2001). with its focus on feeling good, experiencing pleasure, enjoyment, and comfort, and reducing pain, hedonic wellbeing is vital to human flourishing (huta & ryan, 2010). also crucial is eudaimonic wellbeing (ryan & deci, 2001; ryff & singer, 2008), using and developing the best in oneself (huta & ryan, 2010), a definition of wellbeing with roots in aristotle’s virtue ethics that is concerned with mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. while hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing overlap and are distinct, each contributes to wellbeing in complementary ways (huta & waterman, 2014; ryan & huta, 2009) and are both necessary to living a full life (joshanloo, 2016; keyes, shmotkin, & ryff, 2002; ryan & deci, 2001). our items reflect both orientations as well as the basic psychological needs posited by selfdetermination theory (sdt, ryan & deci, 2000) that must be satisfied for individuals to flourish, namely: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. while gallup will unveil its final additions to the gwp in time for its 2020 wave and may modify the wording of items further, we have put forward a short list of additions we felt were: (1) reflective of a comprehensive conceptualization of wellbeing, augmenting other wellbeing measures in the current literature; (2) most pressing to capture as global data does not yet exist for these items; (3) inclusive of a wider, richer, and more in-depth range of non-western worldviews not currently captured by the poll; (4) of emergent and dynamic interest as their relationships with other proposed concepts have not yet been examined; (5) useful items from which policy makers and other decision makers could take action and, (6) demonstrative of the true complexity of wellbeing, highlighting cultural, religious, or regional differences allowing for an examination of the factors that contribute to wellbeing across and within global societies. 2.1.1 proposal 1—relationship to nature: “i feel connected to nature and all of life.” the human need for relatedness goes beyond connecting with fellow humans; it extends to connecting with the greater-than-human natural world. nature connectedness refers to an emotional sensibility that one is part of the larger cycle of life and broader natural environment (leary, tipsord, & tate, 2008; mayer & frantz, 2004; nisbet, zelenski, & murphy, 2011). across samples spanning four continents, empirical evidence has demonstrated that individuals who feel emotionally connected with nature enjoy enhanced levels of both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing (see meta-analyses by capaldi, dopko, & zelenski, 2014; pritchard, richardson, towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 sheffield, & mcewan, 2019). greater feelings of nature connectedness are associated with higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and positive emotions, in addition to higher levels of autonomy, personal growth, environmental mastery, meaning in life, and positive relations with others. moreover, nature connectedness emerges as a significant, distinct predictor of many happiness indicators, over and above other types of human social relationships and connections (zelenski & nisbet, 2014). with regard to eudaimonic wellbeing, nature connectedness emerges as either similar to or greater in predictive magnitude than socio-demographic and economic benchmarks (martin et al., forthcoming). in sum, nature connectedness matters to wellbeing and researchers have made a case for nature relatedness as a basic human psychological need in its own right (baxter & pelletier, 2019; hurly & walker, 2019). further, meta-analytic results of studies utilizing samples from north and south america, europe, australasia, and asia provide evidence for a robust, causal link between nature connectedness and pro-environmental behaviours and activities that protect the planet’s wellbeing (mackay & schmitt, 2019; whitburn, linklater, & abrahamse, 2019). given this evidence, and in line with the summit’s sponsor, the well-being for planet earth foundation, we propose to include the item “i feel connected to nature and all of life”. 2.1.2 proposal 2—mastery: “i am capable of dealing with life’s challenges.” a sense of mastery is one aspect in the definition of eudaimonic wellbeing. individuals who score high on this factor “have a sense of mastery and competence in managing the environment, control a complex array of external activities, make effective use of surrounding opportunities, and are able to choose/create contexts suitable to personal needs and values” (ryff, 1995). noted earlier, within self-determination theory (ryan & deci, 2000), a sense of competence or mastery is one of three basic human psychological needs. while some research supports these needs as evident across cultures (e.g., chen et al., 2015), it has been suggested that the dimension of mastery may reflect more western, individualistic notions, with non-western cultures placing more emphasis on harmony with—rather than mastery of—their environment (christopher, 1999; joshanloo, 2013). due to a lack of global data, however, it has been difficult to investigate this claim and its consequences. measuring mastery on a global scale would enable a better quantification of the relative importance of mastery across different cultures, as well as its dynamic interplay with other aspects of well-being. we therefore propose the inclusion of the following item to assess self-perceived mastery: “i am capable of dealing with life’s challenges”. 2.1.3 proposal 3—meaning in life: “my daily activities seem worthwhile to me.” the desire for meaning is widely characterized as a fundamental motivation (frankl, 1963; maslow, 1968; williams, 2007) and cornerstone of eudaimonic wellbeing (diener & seligman, 2004; huta & ryan, 2010; ryff & singer, 1998; steger, 2012). high levels of meaning in life predict various wellbeing benefits including life satisfaction, positive emotions, high morale, vitality, resiliency after trauma, self-worth, personal growth, and environmental mastery, to name a few (see review, steger, 2009). a consensus has emerged detailing meaning in life as a multidimensional construct comprising three distinct facets: purpose—feeling directed and motivated by goals, coherence—feeling as though one’s life makes sense, and significance— feeling that one’s life and activities matter (george & park, 2016; heintzelman & king, 2014; martela & steger, 2016; steger 2012). although research has examined the purpose and coherence aspects of meaning, the significance aspect of meaning in life has been less studied. still, research is emerging which suggests that a sense of significance, feeling that one’s life matters and is worthwhile, is a central aspect of meaning (george & park, 2016). having a life worth living is towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 intimately connected with eudaimonia and aligned with the japanese notion of ikigai, translated as a sense of “life worth living” (sone et al., 2008, p. 709). it is important to note that “significance is not merely about any kind of positive and negative feelings in life, but about the sense of value that arises when we evaluate our lives” (martela & steger, 2016. p. 538). in order to measure significance, this central aspect of meaning in life, we propose to include the item “my daily activities seem worthwhile to me”. 2.1.4 proposal 4—low-arousal emotions: “did you feel calm and at peace yesterday?” as noted above, hedonic forms of wellbeing—often referred to as ‘subjective wellbeing’ (diener, 1994)—are frequently operationalized as having two elements: a cognitive component, usually framed as ‘life satisfaction’ (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) and an affective component, involving the ratio of positive to negative affect (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988). research into the affective component tends to emphasize and prioritize high arousal forms of positive affect. however, such trends reflect the influence of researchers and participants from western nations, since other cultures, particularly eastern ones, may place greater value on low arousal positive emotions (leu, wang, & koo, 2011), such as calmness and contentment. possible explanations include a certain ‘fear’ or wariness of high arousal emotions in such cultures (joshanloo, 2013). that said, low arousal positive emotions may be more universally valued than widely realized. for instance, analyzing lay perceptions of happiness across five continents, delle fave et al. (2016) found that the most prominent psychological definition was a sense of ‘inner harmony’, featuring three subcomponents: inner peace; contentment; and balance. we align with such findings, although we prefer to separate these subcomponents into two items: peace and contentment (this item), and balance (the next). in order to measure low arousal emotions, we propose to include the item, “did you feel calm and at peace yesterday?”. 2.1.5 proposal 5—balance and harmony: “the various aspects of my life are in balance.” a key insight from the summit was the recognition of the importance of balance and harmony (see lomas (forthcoming) for a conceptual review). these concepts are central to eastern conceptualizations of wellbeing (wong, 2011), reflecting the influence of traditions such as taoism (fang, 2012). at the same time, delle fave et al.’s (2016) research suggests their importance might be more universally recognized. while della fave et al. grouped balance together with peace and contentment into an overall construct of inner harmony, we separate low arousal positive emotions (the previous item) from our conceptualization of balance and harmony. our discussions of the latter centered on these qualities not as forms of low arousal affect, but rather as forms of dynamic equilibrium between dialectically related-contrasts across many aspects of life. these include (but are not limited to) subjective emotional states, character, activities, and self-other relations. first, a full life involves a range of emotions, including negatively-valenced ones, as illustrated by the paradigm of ‘second wave’ positive psychology (lomas & ivtzan, 2016). thus, there is a time for joy and a time for sadness, for acceptance and for anger, and so on, and flourishing involves an optimal subjective balance of these oppositional qualities. second, in terms of character, following aristotle’s notion of the ‘golden mean’, virtue and excellence are found in the optimal balance between extremes (courage, for instance, treading a middle line between timidity and rashness) (kristjánsson, 2006). third, with activities, wellbeing involves an appropriate balance between various life elements, as per the concept of ‘work-life balance’ (guest, 2002). finally, good self-other relations include striking a balance between prioritizing one’s individual needs with those of others (and also of the natural world). a flourishing life towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 involves many such balancing acts, with the overall configuration of these ideally being in a pattern of harmony. in order to measure this perceived balance and harmony in life, we propose the item “the various aspects of my life are in balance” (adapted from kjell, daukantaitė, hefferon, and sikström’s (2016) harmony in life scale). 2.1.6 proposal 6—relationship to group: “my happiness depends on the happiness of people close to me.” although individualism is often seen as a characteristic of western cultures, rates of individualism are growing worldwide as a function of increasing globalization (hamamura, 2012; santos, varnum, & grossmann, 2017). interestingly, parallel rates of collectivism are not in decline (e.g., mesoudi, magid, & hussain, 2016) and much of the world remains collectively organized. given that much of the psychology research stems from individualistic nations (henrich et al., 2010), the orientation to ‘other’ is often treated as more of an anomaly than a norm. collectivism reflects the view that the self is interdependent, related, and less differentiated from others than is the case in more individualistic contexts. in collectivistic settings, there tends to be a priority on relationships, social duties and roles, and ensuring that group prosperity and harmony take precedence (grossman & na, 2014). these narratives are expressed in norms, behaviors, socialization practices, and even how information is processed (mesoudi et al., 2016). to capture what is still the collectivistic norm in many cultures, the proposed item reflects the interdependency individuals have with one another, and that individual wellbeing is tightly bound to collective wellbeing. to measure this relationship to the group, we propose to include the item “my happiness depends on the happiness of people close to me”. 2.1.7 proposal 7—relationship with government: “to what extent do you feel that your government and/or society respects people for who they are (for example, their culture, religion, sexual, or political orientation)?” as noted, sdt proposes that autonomy is a basic human need (ryan & deci, 2000). in line with this, wellbeing tends to increase with greater political, economic, and personal freedoms (inglehart, foa, peterson, & welzel, 2008; ngamaba & soni, 2018; verme, 2009; welzel & inglehart, 2010). as such, it matters greatly the extent to which governments and societies are open, inclusive, and demonstrative of respect towards individuals with alternative lifestyles, cultures, religions, political orientations, and socioeconomic status. for instance, studies show that minorities (e.g., sexual minorities) are more satisfied in welcoming societies that are tolerant and inclusive (versus discriminatory, indifferent, or hostile). further, it seems that this relationship between life satisfaction and tolerant, inclusive societies is true for everyone, not only for individuals of minority groups (berggren, bjørnskov, & nilsson, 2017; kogan, shen, & siegert, 2018). studies support that social exclusion decreases subjective wellbeing (verkuyten, 2008) and discrimination based on sexual minority status, for example, is costly to individuals in terms of life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing as they suffer from disparities in employment, friendships, physical health, income, and social supports (conlin, douglass, & ouch, 2019; powdthavee & wooden, 2015). these same relationships between subjective wellbeing and discrimination against racial minorities is also evident (cormack, stanley, & harris, 2018; paradies et al., 2015; yoo, kim, & lee, 2018). in order to measure the relationship between individuals and their government and society (i.e., as either upholding or infringing upon their personal freedoms and dignities), we propose to include the item “to what extent do you feel that your government and/or society respects people for who they are (for example, their culture, religion, sexual, or political orientation)?” towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 2.1.8 proposal 8—leisure: “to what extent are you satisfied with how you spend your free time?” aristotle believed that leisure, “time away from unpleasant obligations” (stebbins, 2001, pg. 4), was central to a satisfying life, in part because its activities were freely chosen. modern theories not only refer to the freedom of choice inherent in leisure activity (gunter & gunter, 1980; iso-ahola, 1988; kelly, 1972), linking it to the satisfaction of our basic human need for autonomy, but theories and research also refer to the satisfaction of needs related to meaning in life, mastery, and relatedness that leisure offers (newman, tay, & deiner, 2014). while frequency of engaging in leisure activities is associated with happiness and life satisfaction (e.g., newman et al., 2014; sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2004), it is leisure satisfaction, how pleased one is with those experiences, that is paramount to wellbeing (see review, kuykendall, boemerman, & zhu, 2018). for instance, meta-analytic results of longitudinal and experimental studies suggest a causal effect of leisure satisfaction on hedonic wellbeing (kuykendall, tay, & ng, 2015). while such studies involved samples from many countries (i.e., australia, canada, england, finland, germany, japan, korea, netherlands, taiwan, and the united states), global data is needed. moreover, linkages between leisure satisfaction and markers of eudaimonic well-being have yet to be examined. it is possible that cultural views regarding the value of work and leisure could attenuate or enhance the relationship between leisure satisfaction and wellbeing. yet, no significant difference in the strength of this relationship was evident in kuykendall and colleagues’ (2015) meta-analysis across samples from countries that highly value leisure (e.g., european countries) compared to nations which value it to a lesser extent (e.g., united states). additional data is needed to examine if these results hold around the globe. in order to measure leisure satisfaction, we propose to include the item “to what extent are you satisfied with how you spend your free time?”. 2.1.9 proposal 9—resilience: “when life is difficult, i recover quickly.” resilient individuals are those who bounce back from difficulties, adapt to changing demands of stressful experiences, and move forward with few apparent disruptions to their daily functioning (carver, 1998; fletcher & sarkar, 2013). many studies demonstrate that resiliency is associated with greater happiness and satisfaction with life in the short-term and over one’s lifetime (e.g., doyle et al., 2015; haddadi & besharat, 2010; seery, holman, & silver, 2010; smith & holllinger-smith, 2015). resilient individuals still experience a range of negative emotions during stressful times, just as their less resilient counterparts do; indeed, highly resilient older adults show greater emotional complexity (i.e., the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions) compared to the less resilient (ong, bergeman, & boker, 2009). yet, as noted earlier in relation to balance and harmony, a full life necessarily includes a range of emotion (lomas & ivtzan, 2016). the strength that resilient individuals exhibit during stressful times comes not from ignoring negative emotions evoked by trauma and stress, rather their strength seems to lie in their ability to draw on positive emotions to regulate their overall affect (tugade & fredrickson, 2004). in turn, resiliency itself produces positive emotions, leading to an upward cycle of wellbeing (cohn, fredrickson, brown, mikels, & conway, 2009; zautra, johnson, & davis, 2005). others have suggested that meaning in life may be a critical link to resilience (weathers, aiena, blackwell, & schulenberg, 2016). while southwick and charney (2018) identified meaning in life as one of many factors correlated with resiliency, there is a paucity of studies examining the links between them. when added to gallup’s existing measures of positive affect and life satisfaction, inclusion of our suggested item on meaning in life and resilience could help elucidate relationships among these factors across nations. to measure resiliency, we propose to include the item “when life is difficult, i recover quickly.” towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 2.2 research potential of our proposed additions the research potential stemming from an expanded global measure of wellbeing is immense. while the concept of wellbeing is much richer than life satisfaction alone, the lack of global data on hedonic and eudaimonic facets of wellbeing has hampered progress in the field. the inclusion of these newly proposed items not only allows for the measurement of a broader wellbeing definition across the world, but also allows for refined and nuanced cross-cultural comparisons of wellbeing. for example, having multiple items that measure different aspects of wellbeing creates novel opportunities for examining the factor-structure or network-structure of wellbeing across different countries and cultures. additionally, given the abundance of other related measures present in the gwp, the inclusion of these new wellbeing items will allow for a better examination of the causes of variation in wellbeing across the globe. it is our hope that these new additions will serve to push the wellbeing agenda to the forefront of government policy, and, once data has been gathered, offer evidence to address current gaps in our knowledge. 3. conclusion the utility of the gwp’s assessment of wellbeing across the globe, and national reports which stem from it such the whr and happy planet index, cannot be overlooked. the gwp has helped to garner greater interest in wellbeing as a topic of serious academic concern, as well as capture the attention of governments in its use as an overarching policy framework. as one of the first global wellbeing assessments, it has raised the profile of wellbeing everywhere. however, it is now time for a new, comprehensive measure of global wellbeing to be used to successfully reflect the preoccupations and opportunities of societies and individuals across the world and truly advance a representative human science of wellbeing. we hope to have captured these missing nuances in our proposed items and stimulate the growing and ever evolving body of research to capture such new developments in both conceptualizations and measurements. authors louise lambert united arab emirates university ltlamber@yahoo.com tim lomas university of east london margot p van de weijer vu university holli anne passmore university of derby mohsen joshanloo the university of melbourne jim harter gallup yoshiki ishikawa well-being for planet earth foundation towards a greater global understanding of wellbeing lambert, lomas, van de weijer, passmore, joshanloo, harter, ishikawa, lai, kitagawa, chen, kawakami, miyata & diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 alden lai new york university takuya kitagawa rakuten dominique chen waseda university takafumi kawakami shunkoin temple hiroaki miyata keio university ed diener university of virginia university of utah publishing timeline received 27 october 2019 accepted 20 january 2020 published 1 june 2020 references adler, a., & seligman, m. e. p. 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(2019). руководство по этическим принципам для практики в рамках позитивной психологии (версия 1.0: русская). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-34. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1053 руководство версия 1.0, 19th july 2019 аарон жарден университет мельбурна aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au авторское право принадлежит автору (авторам) 1 special issue руководство по этическим принципам для практики в рамках позитивной психологии аарон жарден · тэйяб рашид · аннализ роуч · тим ломас · наталья задыкян наталья цветкова http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 2 . содержание введение..………………………………………………………………………………................. 4 преамбула.......................................................................................................................... 4 профессиональные организации и этические рекомендации для практики позитивной психологии.................................................................................................. 5 наши ориентиры.............................................................................................................. 5 для кого это руководство? ............................................................................................. 5 предварительный характер руководящих принципов...........................................6 ключевые понятия........................................................................................................... 6 раздел первый: ценности, сильные стороны и принцип..................................................... 9 ценности практиков в сфере позитивной психологии (ценности ппс).......... 10 сильные стороны практиков позитивной психологии........................................... 11 этические принципы практики позитивной психологии..................................... 12 раздел второй: применение этических принципов на практике...................................... 15 три важных соображения............................................................................................... 15 этическое принятие решений....................................................................................... 15 рабочие соображения...................................................................................................... 16 изменения в клиентах..................................................................................................... 16 изменения в окружающей среде.................................................................................. 16 текущее эмоциональное состояние и уровень благосостояния........................... 17 /избегание...........................................................................................................................17 силовые различия........................................................................................................... 18 злоупотребление сильными качествами.................................................................... 18 практическая мудрость................................................................................................... 18 поддержание устойчивости и меры против выгорания........................................ 19 заявление об образовании и компетентности......................................................... 19 оценка важности культурного контекста................................................................... 20 решение этических дилемм – пошаговое руководство....................................................... 21 руководство по самооценке........................................................................................................ 23 раздел третий: примеры этической практики..................................................................... 24 пример 1: культурный – применение ппв с культурной чувствительностью. ............................................................................................................................................... 24 пример 2: коучинг – коучинг клиентов в изменяющихся обстоятельствах...... 25 руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 3 пример 3: клинический – работа с травмой............................................................. 26 пример 4: организационный – давление с целью искажения данных.............. 27 пример 5: наставничество – мотивация «сопротивляющихся» участников несбалансированных отношений.................................................................................. 28 пример 6: образование – осуществление программ повышения благополучия в ситуациях, где им препятствует существующая практика...... 29 релевантные руководства............................................................................................................. 30 благодарности................................................................................................................................. 31 организации, первыми подписавшие руководство по этическим принципам для практики позитивной психологии............................................................................................ 32 список использованной литературы........................................................................................ 33 список литературы, рекомендованной для дальнейшего чтения.................................... 34 заявление. данные методические рекомендации являются результатом совместной работы независимой рабочей группы, возглавляемой аароном джарденом, тайябом рашидом, аннализ роуч и тимом ломасом. выработанные рекомендации не зависят от какой-либо организации или ассоциации. тем не менее, необходимо отметить, что в их разработку было вовлечено множество мнений, так же как и в первую попытку их усовершенствования. авторы намерены каждые два года обновлять эти рекомендации для их дальнейшего совершенствования в плане их глубины и широты функциональности. в этой связи мы приветствуем отзывы профессионального сообщества по адресу aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 4 введение предисловие этическое совершенство, возможно, является утопическим идеалом, поскольку люди, включая практиков позитивной психологии (ппс), подвержены ошибкам, уязвимы и несовершенны. сложности современной жизни, такие как постоянно растущий объем жизни в цифровом пространстве, неустойчивое изменение климата, миграционные кризисы, развивающаяся идентичность и усиливающаяся экономическая поляризация повышают уязвимость людей. в этих условиях довольно трудно предлагать психологические услуги, особенно с целью восстановления или улучшения самочувствия, не имея конкурентоспособных приоритетов и этических дилемм. ни один свод этических принципов, стандартов или даже законов не может полностью охватить весь спектр человеческих сложностей. тем не менее, набор общих ценностей, личных сильных сторон и принципов может направить нас к принятию более этически взвешенных решений, особенно когда мы используем позитивные психологические вмешательства (ппв), которые, в целом, направлены на улучшение благополучия людей. это руководство содержит а) ценности, б) сильные стороны и в) принципы позитивной психологии. важно отметить, что «руководящие принципы» обычно находятся в более широких рамках, которые будут варьироваться в зависимости от контекста и юрисдикции. например, руководящие принципы могут находиться в нижней части предписывающей иерархии, так, как изображено ниже на рисунке 1. рисунок 1. рекомендации и более широкие рамки (руководства; стандарты; коды практики; правила; акты). таким образом, важно рассмотреть руководящие принципы наряду с другими соответствующими структурами. кроме того, хотя физическое лицо или организация могут одобрить эти руководящие принципы для «практики позитивной психологии», в некоторых странах называть себя «позитивным психологом» может быть незаконно с юридической точки зрения пожалуйста, помните об ограничениях и требованиях того места, где вы находитесь и практикуете. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 5 профессиональные организации и этические рекомендации для практики позитивной психологии если практикующий специалист является членом соответствующей профессиональной организации (например, американской психологической ассоциации, австралийского психологического общества, международной федерации тренеров), то информировать их о стандартах, кодексе или руководящих принципах будут, прежде всего, их ассоциации. мы ожидаем, что когда практикующие специалисты являются членами организации по лицензированию или учетным данным (например, колледж психологов), с надлежащим образованием, обучением и опытом работы в области психологии или смежных областях, то такие специалисты-практики, следовательно, знакомы с правилами, стандартами, правилами, статусом и процедурами практической работы в психологии в пределах своей юрисдикции. представленные здесь этические руководящие принципы для практики позитивной психологии призваны дополнить, а не заменить существующие юридические / профессиональные кодексы и руководства. приводимые нами руководящие принципы обеспечивают основу для специалистов-практиков, которые не связаны с какой-либо профессиональной организацией. наши ориентиры в чем цель разработки набора этических принципов? эти руководящие принципы направлены на повышение этики практической работы с помощью демонстрации приверженности научным обоснованиям и следующей этим обоснованиям практике в области позитивной психологии (пп). они нацелены на то, чтобы вселить стремление сохранить верность науке о благополучии, а практикующим специалистам рассмотреть соответствующие руководящие принципы для самопрезентации и маркетинга потенциальных выгод. в руководящих принципах делается попытка донести до ппс и других лиц более четкое понимание того, что является этически обоснованной практикой позитивной психологии. ожидается, что с помощью таких руководящих принципов будет продемонстрирована приверженность таким аспектам, как1 : а) внимательно изучать исследования и строить практику на научной основе; б) постоянно обновлять свои знания путем постоянного обучения и профессионального развития; c) тщательное и точное информирование о пределах знаний, связанных с пп, а также о потенциальных преимуществах и недостатках конкретных пп и программ благосостояния; а также d) мониторинг благосостояния, а также положительных и отрицательных изменений в благосостоянии их клиентов во время предоставления услуг. для кого это руководство? цель этого руководства, содержащего основные этические принципы, состоит в том, чтобы обеспечить оптимальную этическую практику в сфере позитивной психологии и 1 мы выбрали четыре примера, чтобы продемонстрировать такого рода аспекты, однако необходимо отметить, что этот перечень может быть продолжен. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 6 при этом действовать благотворно (приносить пользу людям) и не причинять вреда (чтобы избежать потенциального вреда для других). как таковые, эти рекомендации предназначены для профессионалов (например, психологов) и других (например, студентов или тех, у кого нет связей с профессиональными организациями), которые предоставляют позитивную психологию или используют знания из области позитивной психологии в своей практике. это не руководство по использованию или разработке определенных техник позитивной психологии. предварительный характер руководящих принципов мы отмечаем, что нынешние руководящие принципы (версия 1.0, 19 июля 2019 года) являются предварительными и подлежат постоянному пересмотру каждые два года в рамках итеративного консультативного процесса с ключевыми заинтересованными сторонами. такая регулярность нужна для того, чтобы руководящие принципы учитывали контекстуальные изменения и отражали постоянно меняющиеся местные и глобальные темы. в этой связи мы в любое время приветствуем отзывы о руководящих принципах, изложенных здесь. также важно отметить, что только англоговорящие, в основном западные страны, оказали влияние на разработку этих руководящих принципов, и, как таковые, руководящие принципы ограничены такими границами. однако, поскольку это живой растущий документ, идентифицируемый по номеру версии, есть надежда, что в будущих версиях будет также учтено влияние кодов и руководств не англоязычных и незападных стран. ключевые понятия клиент специалисты-практики работают с клиентами. «клиент» это общий термин, используемый для обозначения получателя любых услуг, таких как (однако, не ограничиваясь) отдельное лицо, пара, семья, группа, организация, спонсор или другая конкретная социальная единица. кодекс в сравнении с руководящими принципами кодекс обычно имеет юридические или иные обязательные последствия, в то время как руководящие принципы предполагают лучшую практику, которая обычно не «регламентирована» или «контролируется». руководящие принципы по своей природе подразумевают, что обстоятельства различны и сложны, и что следование руководящим принципам часто требует от практиков применять практическую мудрость это сочетание опыта и здравого смысла. пп: позитивная психология. существует много способов концептуализации и определения пп, но большинство практических действий обычно позиционируют ее как научное учение и продвижение всеобъемлющих понятий, таких как «счастье», «благополучие», «процветание» и «преуспевание». например, ломас, хефферон и ивцан (2015, стр. 1347) определяют пп как «науку и практику улучшения самочувствия». в связи с этим существует понятие «прикладной позитивной психологии», которое можно просто интерпретировать как применение пп в реальных условиях. в том числе через ппв (позитивное психологическое вмешательство). руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 7 ппв: позитивное психологическое вмешательство. в литературе существует разграничение между «вмешательством позитивной психологии» и «позитивным психологическим вмешательством» для описания и объяснения см. hone, jarden и schofield (2015). здесь мы включаем более широкое понятие позитивного психологического вмешательства, которое охватывает все виды деятельности во многих дисциплинах (в том числе из других областей психологии в дополнение к пп), направленное на повышение психологического благополучия. одно из популярных определений позитивного психологического вмешательства: «позитивное психологическое вмешательство способствует положительным эмоциям, поведению и/или мыслям, тем самым повышая благополучие человека или группы» (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, p. 92). ппс: специалист-практик в области позитивной психологии специалист-практик в области позитивной психологии. это практикующий специалист, который прошел необходимое обучение для практической работы (например, психотерапию, консультирование, коучинг), а также принял участие в специальном тренинге по пп, организованном авторитетным провайдером в области тренингового обучения, позволяющим понять процесс научных исследований в области пп и его применение в прикладной позитивной психологии (например, ппв)2. сильные стороны как правило, этические руководящие принципы и кодексы поддерживают конкретные желаемые личностные характеристики, произвольно выбранные лидерами данной конкретной области. для предлагаемого методического руководства мы использовали работу петерсона и селигмана «сильные стороны и желательные ценности» (peterson & seligman, 2004), которая описывает совокупность эмпирически подтвержденных в кросс-культурных исследованиях наиболее сильных сторон и предпочтительных ценностей практикующих консультантов (mcgrath, 2014). согласно этой работе, сильные стороны личности определяются как универсальные черты, которые оцениваются сами по себе и не обязательно приводят к позитивным результатам. это, скорее, такие поведенческие черты, которые позволяют человеку вести себя в духе ответственности и соблюдения этики для благополучия их собственного и окружающих. сильные стороны характера, в широком смысле, отражают то, кем является человек (т.е. его характер), а ценности отражают то, к чему человек привержен (т.е. его принципы и действия). специалист-практик 2 кто может назвать себя ппс? пока что нет четкого разграничения в отношении количества и качества необходимой подготовки или квалификации. например, можно ли считать себя ппс на основе 2-дневного курса, 6месячного аккредитованного сертификата или 2-летней программы магистратуры в области прикладной позитивной психологии? кроме того, идеальным является надзорная практика (например, надзорный и индивидуальный надзор) и онлайн-консультации. профессиональные органы в этой области нуждаются в дополнительном руководстве относительно соответствующей подготовки и надзора (и, действительно, такие вопросы уже рассматриваются и рассматриваются соответствующими сторонами). руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 8 термин «специалист-практик» обычно используется для обозначения любого лица, ответственного за предоставление услуг, связанных с пп. этот термин обозначает любого специалиста, выполняющего роль (-и), такую как (но не ограничиваясь) консультант, психотерапевт, специалист по психическому здоровью, коуч, инструктор, наставник или педагог.3 принципы принципы обращают внимание на важные этические обязанности. действия следуют из определенных принципов. ценности ценности это убеждения, которых придерживаются отдельные лица и которые разделяют группы, объединенные желаемыми целями (т.е. более широкими представлениями о мире и о том, как он должен быть устроен). ценности выходят за рамки конкретных ситуаций. они определяют, как мы выбираем свои действия, как оцениваем других людей и самих себя. ценности структурированы относительно их важности (schwartz, 2006). ценности могут представлять собой важный способ выражения общей этической приверженности, которая становится более точной и ориентированной на действия, когда выражается в качестве принципа.другими словами, ценности определяют принципы. в этом общем смысле, ценности, изложенные в этих руководящих принципах, – это те, которые авторы определили как общие для сообщества пп. 3 этические принципы, содержащиеся в данном методическом руководстве, могут в равной степени применяться к исследователям благополучия, где исследователи могут считаться практиками в одном смысле, работая с субъектами, которых можно считать схожими с клиентами. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 9 раздел первый: ценности, сильные стороны и принципы этические руководящие принципы для практики позитивной психологии включают в себя следующие ценности, сильные стороны и принципы. как ценности, так и сильные стороны поддерживают принятие этических принципов, как показано в таблице 1. таблица 1 ценности, сильные стороны и принципы практики позитивной психологии ценности4 сильные стороны5 принципы 1. защита безопасности клиентов и др. 1. честность 1. полезность / непричинение вреда. 2. облегчить личный дистресс и страдания. 2. справедливость 2. ответственная забота 3. обеспечение целостности отношений между практиком и клиентом. 3. социальный интеллект. 3. уважение прав и достоинства людей. 4. уважение разнообразие человеческого опыта и культуры. . 4. работа в команде. 4. надежность 5. воспитание чувства собственного достоинства. доброжелательность. 5. 5. доброжелательность. 5. справедливость. 6. повышение качества профессиональных знаний и их применение. 6. автономия. 7. повышение качества отношений между людьми. 7. перспектива. 8. повышение личной эффективности. 8. умение принимать решения. 9. стремление к справедливому и адекватному предоставлению консультационных, психотерапевтических и тренерских услуг. 9. саморегуляция. 10. настойчивость. 11. смелость. 4 наши ценности были выбраны на основе других аналогичных руководств, и, как таковые, многие из ценностей могут вписываться в разные категории. например, справедливость может восприниматься как ценность или как принцип. надежность может восприниматься как сила (честность), ценность или как принцип. следовательно, многие из этих конструкций спорны. ценности также были ранжированы по предполагаемой важности, согласно авторам руководства. 5 сильные стороны 1-7 ранжируются по тому, как часто они упоминались и подчеркивались в 10 аналогичных этических кодексах (например, этическая основа британской ассоциации консультирования и психотерапии для надлежащей практики консультирования и психотерапии). сильные стороны 8-11, авторы считают важным поддерживать шесть принципов. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 10 дополнение. • почти все ранее разрабатывавшиеся профессиональные кодексы предусматривают описание ряда личных качеств; в отличие от них данное методическое руководство фокусируется на сильных сторонах специалистапрактика и наблюдаемом поведении. • перечень ценностей, сильных сторон и принципов ни в коем случае не является исчерпывающим, а, скорее, представляет собой самую первую попытку описания того, что в настоящее время воспринимается как наиболее уместное для практики. поскольку методические принципы с течением времени будут уточняться в результате активного обсуждения в сообществе пп, ожидается, что эти элементы будут развиваться. • списки ценностей, сильных сторон и принципов также не являются предписывающими. • была выбрана модель сильных сторон (структура «ценности в действии»), которая наиболее часто описана в литературе и опирается на научные исследования. ценности практиков в сфере позитивной психологии (ценности ппс). к фундаментальным ценностям ппс относятся следующие ценности: • защита безопасности клиентов и других людей, что включает в себя поддержание постоянного внимания в отношении того, как клиент реагирует на предоставляемые услуги. кроме того, это означает необходимость признания ограниченности своих возможностей и опыта (и, следовательно, признание того, что клиенту может потребоваться профессиональная помощь специалистов из других областей, а также особое внимание к ситуациям, которые могут представлять опасность для общества). • уменьшение уровня личных переживаний и страданий относительно того, что находится в пределах компетенции ппс. это означает необходимость оказания помощи для уменьшения страдания людей, которые обращаются за услугами в различных профессиональных контекстах (например, терапия, коучинг, здравоохранение). • обеспечение целостности отношений между практиком и клиентом. это включает в себя соблюдение личных границ и сохранение приверженности профессиональным этическим принципам, таким как конфиденциальность и сохранение права клиента на частную информацию. • уважение разнообразия человеческого опыта и культур. это означает, что ппс не применяет систему «один размер подходит всем» для своих клиентов, а действует из уважения и реального восхищения разнообразными уникальными путями развития людей, а также контекстуальными и культурными традициями. • воспитание чувства собственного достоинства, повышение самооценки лиц, обратившихся к ппс. это означает, что человек развивает и преследует цели, которые не только приносят пользу ему самому, но и способствуют большему благополучию. • повышение качества профессиональных знаний и способов их применения. это означает, что нужно делать все возможное, чтобы быть в курсе последних событий, руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 11 информации в литературе и постоянно обновлять знания о достижениях в этой области. • улучшение качества отношений между людьми. это означает, что признавая наличие неизбежных социальных взаимоотношений между людьми, необходимо стремиться помочь человеку максимально укрепить эти связи. • повышение личной эффективности. это означает стремление помочь клиенту действовать более эффективно в мире и в уникальных ситуациях, в которых он оказался. • стремление к справедливому и адекватному предоставлению услуг пп. это может включать продвижение услуг для труднодоступных групп населения или, где это возможно, продвижение структуры ценообразования, при которой люди с меньшими средствами все же могут пользоваться услугами. сильные стороны практиков позитивной психологии личные сильные стороны специалиста, практикующего позитивную психологию, важны, потому что они влияют на отношения специалиста-практика и клиента. многие из сильных сторон, которые считаются жизненно важными в предоставлении услуг, рассматриваются как хорошие личные качества. неуместно предписывать, чтобы все практикующие обладали этими сильными сторонами, поскольку крайне важно, чтобы эти личные сильные стороны были глубоко укоренены в соответствующем человеке и развивались из личной приверженности, а не из требований внешнего авторитета. тематический анализ принципов и ценностей, поддерживаемых основными руководящими принципами (см. раздел «соответствующие руководящие принципы»), показал, что следующие сильные стороны характера подразумеваются необходимыми для содействия этической практике и принятию решений: • честность: говорить правду; представлять себя искренне и действовать искренне; быть без претенциозности; брать на себя ответственность за свои чувства и поступки. • справедливость: относиться ко всем людям одинаково в соответствии с принципами честности и справедливости; не позволяя принимать решения о других людях на основе чувства личной предвзятости и, давая всем равные возможности. • социальный интеллект: осознавать мотивы и чувства других людей; знать, что нужно делать, чтобы соответствовать различным социальным ситуациям; знать, что предпринять, чтобы успокоить других людей. • командная работа: работа в качестве члена группы или команды; быть лояльным к группе, делая свою часть работы. • доброта: делать добрые дела; помогать людям; заботиться о них. • благоразумие: быть осторожным в выборе; не предпринимать неоправданные риски; не говорить или не делать то, о чем впоследствии возможно будете сожалеть. • перспектива: способность дать мудрый совет другим; уметь взглянуть на мир и увидеть смысл для себя и других людей. • взвешенность суждений: продумывать шаги и исследовать их со всех сторон; не спешить с выводами; полагаться только на убедительные доказательства для принятия решений; иметь возможность изменить свое мнение. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 12 • саморегуляция: уметь регулировать свои чувства и действия; быть дисциплинированным; контролировать свои желания и эмоции. • настойчивость: завершать начатое своевременно; не отвлекаться в работе; получать удовлетворение от выполнения задач. • храбрость: быть смелым человеком, который не боится угроз, вызовов, трудностей или боли; высказываться за то, что правильно, даже если есть оппозиция; действуя по убеждениям. этические принципы практики позитивной психологии каждый из шести этических принципов, описанных ниже, сопровождается примерами из практики, проведенной в соответствии с этим принципом. этические решения, которые решительно поддерживаются одним или несколькими из этих принципов, без какого-либо противоречия со стороны других, могут рассматриваться как имеющие сильное моральное обоснование. однако практикующие специалисты, скорее всего, столкнутся с обстоятельствами, при которых невозможно согласовать все применимые принципы, и может потребоваться выбор между принципами. решение или программа действий не обязательно становятся неэтичными только потому, что они спорны, или другие практики пришли бы к другим выводам в аналогичных обстоятельствах. обязанность практикующего специалиста состоит в том, чтобы рассматривать все соответствующие обстоятельства с максимально возможной тщательностью и нести соответствующую ответственность за принятые решения. полезность / ненанесение вреда полезность включает в себя обязательство содействовать благополучию и клиента, и специалиста. принцип полезности означает необходимость действовать максимально в интересах клиента, основываясь на профессиональной оценке. этот принцип направляет внимание специалиста на работу строго в пределах своей компетенции и на предоставление услуг на основе адекватного обучения или опыта. чтобы обеспечить максимальное удовлетворение интересов клиента, необходим систематический мониторинг практики и ее результатов (например, благополучия) наилучшими доступными средствами. важно, чтобы практикующие специалисты были информированы о научных исследованиях и результатах систематической рефлексии. в зависимости от роли специалиста и контекста ситуации обычно существует обязанность предпринять шаги для повышения качества предоставляемых услуг и взять на себя обязательство обновлять практику путем непрерывного профессионального развития. обязательство действовать в интересах клиента может стать первостепенным при работе с клиентами, чья способность к автономии уменьшается из-за возраста, незрелости, недостатка понимания, проблем или других значительных ограничений. с другой стороны, ненанесение вреда подразумевает стремление избежать вреда для клиента. практикующие специалисты, которые принимают этот принцип: • избегают сексуальной, финансовой, эмоциональной или любой другой формы эксплуатации клиента; • избегают некомпетентности (т.е. правильно применяют ппв, зная, что для кого подходит), злоупотреблений служебным положением; • не предоставляют услуги, если они не в состоянии это сделать из-за болезни, личных обстоятельств или опьянения. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 13 практикующий специалист пп несет этическую ответственность, стремясь смягчить любой вред, причиненный клиенту, даже если вред неизбежен или непреднамерен. практикующие специалисты пп несут личную и профессиональную ответственность за оспаривание, в случае необходимости, некомпетентности или злоупотреблений со стороны других людей. они также несут ответственность за участие в любом расследовании и/или вынесении судебного решения соответствующим признанным органом в отношении профессиональной практики, которая не соответствует практике компетентного практика и/или рискует дискредитировать их профессию или позитивную психологию. ответственная забота практика пп способствует благополучию клиентов. следуя этой цели, специалисты, практикующие позитивную психологию и принимающие этот принцип, проявляют активную заботу о благополучии тех, с кем они работают, и признают те социальные структуры и инстанции, которые определяют их роль в качестве ппс. специалисты несут основную ответственность за защиту благосостояния тех, с кем они работают. они признают, что отдельные лица, семьи, группы или сообщества могут оказаться в уязвимом положении. они также признают границы своей компетенции (включая отсутствие знаний) и обращаются к другим специалистам, когда это необходимо. они также принимают на себя ответственность и исправляют любой вред, который может возникнуть в результате оказания ими услуг. также ожидается, что ппс будут проявлять активный и постоянный интерес к эмпирическим и теоретическим разработкам в своей области, гарантируя, что они будут постоянно обновлять знания о фактических данных, касающихся методов позитивной психологии, которые они внедряют. уважение прав и достоинства людей в соответствии со всеобщей декларацией прав человека организации объединенных наций, уважение достоинства людей и их прав требует, чтобы каждый человек и все народы были оценены по достоинству в своих собственных правах, чтобы их права были признаны и уважаемы, чтобы каждому народу было оказано уважение, поскольку каждый народ – часть человечества. специалисты, практикующие позитивную психологию и принимающие этот принцип, проявляют уважение, которое требует учета культурного и социального разнообразия. это включает в себя признание различий между людьми, связанных с их культурой, национальностью, этнической принадлежностью, цветом кожи, расой, религией, полом, семейным положением, сексуальной ориентацией, физическими или умственными способностями, возрастом, социально-экономическим статусом и/или любыми другими личными характеристиками, состоянием или статусом. такие различия являются неотъемлемой частью личности и должны уважаться. надежность надежность подразумевает уважение к доверию, которое оказано специалисту. надежность считается основополагающим фактором для понимания и решения этических вопросов. специалисты, которые придерживаются этого принципа: • действуют в соответствии с оказанным им доверием; • стремятся к тому, чтобы ожидания клиентов соответствовали разумным перспективам; руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 14 • соблюдают свои договоренности и обещания; • рассматривают конфиденциальность как обязательство, вытекающее из доверия клиента; • ограничивают любое раскрытие конфиденциальной информации о клиентах для достижения целей, для которых она была первоначально раскрыта, за исключением обязательного раскрытия (например, закон в определенной сфере полномочий требует такого раскрытия). справедливость справедливость предполагает честное и беспристрастное отношение ко всем клиентам и предоставление адекватных услуг. принцип справедливости требует, чтобы практикующие, которые принимают этот принцип, были справедливыми и честными по отношению ко всем клиентам и уважали их права и достоинство. он указывает на добросовестное рассмотрение любых юридических требований и обязательств, и на внимательное отношение к потенциальным конфликтам между правовыми и этическими обязательствами. справедливость в оказании услуг требует умения беспристрастно предоставлять и распределять услуги между клиентами. стремление к справедливости требует умения ценить различия между людьми и приверженности к равенству возможностей и результатов, а также недопущения дискриминации людей или групп на основе их личных или социальных характеристик. другими словами, справедливость предполагает, что несправедливая дискриминация, основанная на определенных характеристиках (например, пол или возраст), не проявляется. специалисты обязаны стремиться к обеспечению справедливого предоставления услуг, которые доступны и соответствуют потребностям потенциальных клиентов. автономия автономия предполагает уважение права клиента на самоуправление. этот принцип подчеркивает важность развития способности клиента к самоуправлению в рамках оказываемых услуг, а также во всех аспектах жизни. принцип автономии противодействует манипулированию клиентами против их воли, даже для выгодных социальных результатов. специалисты, уважающие автономию своих клиентов: • обеспечивают точность любой рекламы или информации, предоставленной до предлагаемых услуг; • на протяжении всего взаимодействия стремятся к согласованности на основе предоставления адекватной информации • подчеркивают значимость добровольного участия в предлагаемых услугах; • участвуют в разъясннении контракта до выполнения любых обязательств со стороны клиента и пересматривают условия этого контракта на протяжении всего взаимодействия; • не раскрывают личную информацию; • оберегают конфиденциальность; • обычно раскрывают любую конфиденциальную информацию с согласия заинтересованного лица; • информируют клиента о предполагаемых конфликтах интересов заранее или, как можно скорее после того, как подобные конфликты становятся очевидными. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 15 раздел второй: применение этических принципов на практике этот раздел содержит некоторые указания и примеры для контекстного применения этих этических принципов. содержание предназначено для углубления мышления, а также предоставляет полезные инструменты и руководство по самооценке для решения и поддержки принятия этических решений на практике. три важных соображения прежде чем применять какие-либо конкретные ппв, следует определить и оценить следующие три важных фактора, которые являются краеугольным камнем наилучшей практики (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. соответствует ли ппв данной ситуации? в этом можно убедиться, просмотрев соответствующую литературу и опубликованные данные из надежных источников. например, перед тем, как конкретная ппв будет применена для благодарности, проверьте, существуют ли опубликованные доказательства того, что данная ппв является подходящим средством для данного клиента. 2. соответствует ли эта ппв потребностям клиента? 3. как будет оцениваться эффективность ппв? другими словами, какой конкретный результат может быть обозначен и достоверно оценен для определения эффективности ппв? этическое принятие решений этическому принятию решений может способствовать: обладание достаточными знаниями данных этических принципов и принципов соответствующей профессии, знание морально-этического поведения других людей и применение личных сильных сторон при принятии решений. знания: мы думаем, что те, кто прежде всего используют эти принципы, а именно ппс с соответствующим образованием, обучением и опытом работы в области психологии или смежных областях, знакомы с ними и могут описать их и любые этические принципы, касающиеся их профессии и должности. в большинстве случаев в сфере полномочий подчеркивается, что практикующие специалисты должны быть знакомы с соответствующими правилами, стандартами, правилами, положениями и процедурами. поведение: этическое поведение, особенно при проведении ппв, не может просто опираться на когнитивные знания. этическое поведение должно быть тесно связано с коллективным поведением и практикой. можете ли вы выделить в своих профессиональных кругах тех людей, которые демонстрируют образцовые этические практики? хотя ваши коллеги могут явно не выделять подобные практики из-за своей скромности, мы рекомендуем вам конкретно спросить ваших коллег и более широкий профессиональный круг (региональные или международные организации), каким образом они придерживаются этических стандартов в вашей области. сбор случаев передовой практики будет полезен для рефлексии по отношению к собственному поведению. со сбором достаточного количества случаев, вероятно, проявятся превосходные образцы. в идеале практики создадут доступный центр, который смогут обогащать другие специалисты. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 16 использование сильных качеств для принятия этических решений: сильные качества могут быть полезны в принятии этических решений несколькими способами. например, выявление примеров сильных качеств может помочь с принятием этических решений. найдите коллегу, который представляет собой образец для подражания в этическом поведении. подумайте, как он справился с конкретной этической дилеммой или ситуацией, или, в более широком смысле, какие конкретные сильные качества он воплощает в повседневном общении с коллегами и клиентами, которые стоит моделировать, и они помогут вам в принятии решений. рабочие соображения при работе с клиентами следует учитывать ряд факторов, которые могут иметь непосредственные и важные этические последствия. в частности, целесообразно учитывать: изменения в клиентах, изменения в обстановке, в которой находятся ппс и клиенты, текущее эмоциональное состояние и уровень благополучия клиентов и ппс, склонность клиентов к избеганию, различия в уровне отношений, злоупотребление сильными качествами, практическую мудрость, ситуацию с образованием и компетентностью, а также важность меняющихся культурных контекстов. принятие во внимание этих аспектов может помочь смягчить, предвидеть или предотвратить непреднамеренные и неприятные последствия. изменения в клиентах при оказании любых психологических услуг важно наблюдать за психологическим благополучием клиентов на протяжении всего курса лечения или интервенции. состояние некоторых клиентов ухудшается, несмотря на продемонстрированную эффективность ппв. симптомы могут ухудшиться по любому количеству причин, делая клиентов уязвимыми. необязательно, что клиент будет делиться этой информацией со специалистом, возможно, потому, что ему может быть стыдно, он боится или не решается разочаровать специалиста, который работает над повышением его благополучия. чаще всего в центре внимания ппв находится не устранение симптомов, а, скорее, повышение уровня благополучия. важным является мониторинг меняющихся обстоятельств в жизни клиентов, а также калибровка ппв в соответствии с этими изменениями. например, если клиент переживает разрыв отношений или теряет свою работу, важно, чтобы практикующий специалист смог уделить внимание этим изменениям и оценить их влияние. практикующие специалисты должны быть готовы приостановить происходящий в настоящее время ппв и скорректировать свой подход в соответствии с предъявленными и текущими потребностями или направить к другому специалисту в случае необходимости. невыполнение этого требования может негативно повлиять на сотрудничество, которое возможно не удастся восстановить. изменения в окружающей среде помимо учета изменений внутри клиентов, важно учитывать среду, в которую включены и клиенты, и специалисты. в качестве примера возьмем ппс, который также является клиницистом. современные клиницисты работают в очень сложных, быстро меняющихся и напряженных условиях, которые отличаются такими проблемами, как недостаток научно обоснованных программ лечения, отсутствие культурной компетенции, а также хронические и сложные потребности клиентов, влияющие на различные сферы их жизни. учитывая эти проблемы, рассмотрим клиентов, которые: руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 17 • возможно, потеряли работу или важные контракты, или не получили достойного продвижения по службе только потому, что они не подходят команде; • возможно, недавно получили диагноз серьезного заболевания; • имеют дело с предательством или другими видами плохого обращения со стороны своего партнера; • испытывают дискриминацию; • подвергаются разрушительным природным явлениям, таким как наводнение, лесные пожары, или таким глобальным проблемам, как голод. подумайте, как эти проблемы могут повлиять на клиентов, и определите способы их лечения. эти случаи представляют собой множество различных проблем, которые необходимо рассматривать и решать по-разному, учитывая нормы и стандарты профессии, с которой человек связан. поэтому важно, чтобы предлагая ппв, ппс узнавали о своих клиентах, об их окружении, а также о недавних или текущих изменениях в их обстоятельствах. специалисты также должны знать о проблемах в их собственной рабочей среде. это может включать административные мнения, которые могут привести к изменениям в способах обслуживания – например, новый директор может поддержать или противостоять определенным ппв или может отдать предпочтение другому подходу к лечению (например, нейро-лингвистическому программированию, терапии на основе осознанности, терапии принятия обязательств). изменения могут оказывать прямое или косвенное влияние на практику ппв, в том числе с этической точки зрения. текущее эмоциональное состояние и уровень благополучия предлагая ппв, важно оценивать изменения в клиентах, их текущем эмоциональном состоянии и в уровне их благополучия. важно, чтобы ппс практиковали в рамках своей компетенции и подготовки. клиентов, которые имеют проблемы, связанные с психопатологией (т.е. депрессией, тревожностью, травмой), следует направлять к специалисту с соответствующей квалификацией и опытом. если такие проблемы отсутствуют в начале рабочих отношений, ппс должен быть бдительным, поскольку такие проблемы могут проявиться у клиента во время ппв, и быть готовым направить клиента к достаточно квалифицированному специалисту для оказанию помощи. в идеале, специалисту следует обсудить с клиентом, проконсультироваться с коллегами и соответствующими экспертами, чтобы выяснить, каким может быть подходящий срок для продолжения ппв в таком случае. избегание избегание – это один из самых распространенных механизмов, с помощью которых люди справляются с негативными эмоциями. здоровая психологическая жизнь предполагает осознанность и адаптивное использование полного эмоционального спектра. некоторые клиенты, нуждающиеся в ппв и просящие их, могут избегать более глубоких негативных эмоций из-за своего дискомфорта и могут желать ппв в надежде, что те рассеют их негативные эмоции или будут их сдерживать. примерами источников негативных эмоций являются воспоминания о горьком расставании или разводе, предательстве со стороны верного друга, возмущение из-за то, что они стали жертвами дискриминации, и что кто-то или какое-либо учреждение подвергают их несправедливому или предвзятому обращению. один из способов определения избегания состоит в обращении внимания на негативные эмоции, которые руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 18 возвращаются в разговорах, несмотря на то, что они не обсуждаются явно (т.е. эмоции, постоянно беспокоящие клиентов, все же намеренно не обсуждаются). несмотря на то, что ппв открывают новые возможности, доказывая, что положительные эмоции и сильные черты характера могут улучшать и исправлять негативные состояния (rashid & seligman, 2018), это происходит только в том случае, если данные состояния значимо интегрированы в лечение. если клиенты или специалисты избегают сильных негативных эмоций, эффективность лечения может быть поставлена под угрозу. силовые различия одной из наиболее существенных особенностей любого психологического взаимодействия специалиста и клиента, присущей их отношениям, является динамика силы, особенно, разница в её мощности. терапевты, консультанты, социальные работники и другие подобные специалисты обычно знают об этом различии. поэтому они стремятся создать безопасное, непредвзятое, конфиденциальное и доброжелательное пространство, в котором клиенты не чувствуют себя просто пассивными получателями предписанных услуг. тем не менее, природа транзакций между специалистом и клиентом такова, что практикующий специалист неизбежно воспринимается как эксперт. клиенты, как правило, смотрят на них снизу вверх, как на обладающих самыми современными знаниями, обучением и опытом в предоставлении ппв. следовательно, перепад мощности всегда есть. специалист должен знать об этой разнице и должен избегать любых ситуаций, когда он или клиент, должны будут принимать решение, на которое может повлиять дифференциал мощности. злоупотребление сильными качествами недостаточное или чрезмерное использование практик, основанных на сильных качествах, может обострить существующие проблемы. например, в различных контекстах коучинга, предложение клиентам быть более осторожными может привести к тому, что некоторые станут более беспокойными или нерешительными. если клиенты, упражняющиеся в прощении, не задумываются о том, когда и кого прощать, то они могут игнорировать правонарушения, которые, если их не останавливать или не учитывать, могут причинить вред другим.клиентам, чрезмерно занимающиеся творчеством, может оказаться сложным придерживаться норм или правил, которые способствуют справедливости и равным возможностям. клиенты, приверженные принятию справедливых решений на рабочем месте, могут столкнуться с трудностью примирения с противоположной реальностью, которая существует в той же сфере (например, примириться с тем, что хорошо образованный и хорошо осведомленный человек может принимать неразумные решения). практическая мудрость специалисты нуждаются в том, что философ аристотель назвал «фонезисом», т.е. практической мудростью, чтобы применять эти принципы. например, рассмотрим практикующего специалиста, работающего с руководителем высокого уровня, с которым у него сложились прекрасные отношения и который также добился очень хороших результатов в своей работе. тем не менее, специалист узнает, что руководитель вовлечен в неэтичное поведение. должен ли специалист сохранять прочные отношения или противостоять руководителю, ставя под риск эти отношения? единого набора принципов может быть недостаточно. специалисту нужно разобраться в ситуации и руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 19 сбалансировать конкурирующие мотивы. в таких случаях практическая мудрость строится как на накопленном опыте, так и на хороших отношениях с коллегами, которые могут проконсультировать и помочь с этическими соображениями. поддержание устойчивости и меры против выгорания ряд концепций пп может противодействовать выгоранию специалиста. позитивные эмоции (например, надежда, безмятежность, радость, интерес и благоговение) могут расширить внимание, а также когнитивные и поведенческие ресурсы практикующего, которые могут выступать в качестве буфера против такой уязвимости, как симптомы выгорания (например, эмоциональное истощение). личные практики, такие как осознанность, также могут помочь в этом отношении. межличностные сильные качества (например, социальный интеллект, доброта, любовь, юмор, ощущение цели и смысла, а также работа в команде) могут помочь справиться с такими проблемами, как деперсонализация (состояние, в котором мысли и чувства кажутся нереальными или не принадлежащими самому себе). точно так же ощущение цели и смысла может восстановить личное чувство деперсонализации. заявление об образовании и компетентности специалисты должны заявлять о пределах своей компетентности в отношении конкретных психологических состояний, конкретных групп (например, работа с детьми, с представителями других культур, с группами) и конкретных ппв. например, практикующий специалист может иметь опыт в оценке сильных качеств у взрослых, но не иметь опыта в оценке сильных сторон у детей или подростков. более того, по мере продолжения предоставления услуг, они могут перемещаться в области, в которых специалист имеет более поверхностный опыт или квалификацию. например, в то время как практик может иметь опыт и квалификацию для оказания услуг детям, подросткам и взрослым, он может не иметь опыта или квалификации для предоставления таких услуг в контексте семейной обстановки, и в этом случае может понадобиться перенаправление или другие виды поддержки. кроме того, практикующие специалисты должны заявить об образовательной подготовке и соответствующем опыте, на которых основаны предоставляемые ими услуги. например, практикующий специалист имеет шестимесячный сертификат, который включает недельное личное взаимодействие, а остальной курс пройден в режиме онлайн. сертификат не признается муниципальным, региональным или местным органом по выдаче лицензий. на веб-сайте практикующего специалиста говорится, что он является «сертифицированным специалистом позитивной психологии». у них нет никаких других профессиональных дипломов. это этично? важно четко информировать ваших клиентов о характере, сфере и ограничениях вашего профессионального образования, практики и полномочиях, выходящих за рамки вашей экспертизы. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 20 оценка важности культурного контекста принятие этических решений не должно основываться только на осознании, знании или когнитивном понимании. решения также должны отражать наилучшие имеющиеся и соответствующие признаки и условия культурного контекста. культурный контекст имеет решающее значение при предоставлении ппв, потому что понимание того, что является нормальным, хорошим или применимым, определяется ценностями, поддерживаемыми культурой и социальным контекстом, в которых возникает проблема или дилемма. кроме того, культуры и социальные нормы различаются в том, как распознаются, выражаются или усиливаются определенные эмоции. следовательно, важно, чтобы принципы для этической практики ппв основывались на таких данных. представленные здесь этические принципы достаточно широки, чтобы приспособить их к культурному контексту, но в то же время достаточно тонки, чтобы учитывать индивидуальные различия и потребности. такая интеграция признаков, включающих культурные и индивидуальные факторы, может быть простой или легко доступной. хотя такая интеграция может не дать идеального пути, процесса или результата в этическом плане, если люди стремятся к этическому совершенству, коллективная мудрость помогает им ориентироваться в возникающих случаях. создается новое, прокладываются новые пути, и в конечном итоге совершенство может быть достигнуто. следовательно, структура этих принципов имеет решающее значение для закрепления мышления и действий человека. эти рекомендации также служат для оценки степени, в которой действия человека являются близкими или далекими от этического совершенства. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 21 решение этических дилемм пошаговое руководство хотя невозможно полностью защиться от путаницы в этических дилеммах, следующие шаги, в значительной степени адаптированные из «этики в психологии» (koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998), наряду с другими источниками, помогут практикующему специалисту принять правильные этические решения: • практикуйте в соответствии со всеми законами, правилами и стандартами профессиональной практики, поведения и принципами, как это предусмотрено соответствующим органом по выдаче лицензий вашей юрисдикции. такая информация поможет специалисту разобраться с этическими дилеммами. • получить точное представление о том, как одно и то же событие может отличаться от человека к человеку. проконсультируйтесь с тем, кому вы доверяете и кто беспристрастен, не является ли данная проблема этической дилеммой с серьезными последствиями. обсудите с коллегами, чтобы понять, является ли то, что вы происходит, этическим нарушением, просто плохой профессиональной этикой или ситуацией, которая наносит вред вам или другим. • просмотрите уже опубликованные соответствующие принципы, правила и стандарты. убедитесь, что вы правильно их понимаете, а при необходимости обратитесь за советом. письменные рекомендации иногда абстрактны и не ясны, с достаточным пространством для субъективной интерпретации. • соберите всю соответствующую лучшую информацию, какую можете. определите имеющиеся пробелы в информации и задокументируйте факты и проблемы. • объедините всю информацию в процессе размышления и проконсультируйтесь с тем, кто хорошо информирован, не предубежден и не боится указать на потенциальные недостатки практикующего специалиста. • оцените, как применяются шесть этических принципов данного руководства (т.е. полезность/непричинение вреда, ответственная забота, уважение прав и достоинства людей, надежность, справедливость, автономия). например, оцените права, обязанности и уязвимость всех участников. • обдумайте несколько решений и оцените каждое из них максимально объективно. • подумайте, какие сильные стороны характера могут помочь вам принять самое верное этическое решение. можете ли вы обратиться к своему более глубокому чувству справедливости, честности или доброты? возможно, необходима ваша храбрость, чтобы мотивировать вас «поступить правильно»? помните, что этические решения требуют применения нескольких сильных черт характера, используемых оптимально и в комбинации, а не только одной черты изолированно или одной черты, «используемой многоразово» (niemiec, 2018). • визуализируйте результат ваших действий или бездействия. • перед принятием решения подумайте о том, какое влияние это окажет на вас, всех других участников, и какие возможны систематические последствия. также подумайте о том, какая поддержка может вам понадобиться, чтобы придерживаться вашего решения. • преобразуйте свое решение в конкретные действия, которые действительно отражают дух вашего решения. ряд действий может явиться отражением вашего решения. выбирайте действия, которые точно и обоснованно отражают ваше руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 22 решение, измеримы, связаны с желаемыми результатами и причиняют наименьшее неудобство или ущерб тем, кто не вовлечен непосредственно. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 23 руководство по самооценке в данном разделе изложены вопросы для специалистов, которые необходимо обдумать с тем, чтобы избежать этических дилемм и обеспечить наилучшую практику. соответствие ппв: прежде всего, на основании наилучших фактических данных, решите, подходит ли конкретное ппв (например, журнал благодарности, использование определенных сильных черт, упражнение на прощение) для клиента, учитывая его проблемы, обстоятельства и мотивацию для лечения. сроки ппв: какие шаги вы предпринимаете, чтобы решить, когда будет необходимо ппв: 1) в начале предоставления услуг, 2) когда ппв уже началось? при каких условиях вы рассматриваете одновременное или альтернативное обслуживание или лечение? осознание своего психического здоровья. насколько вы осведомлены о своем психическом здоровье? будучи практикующим специалистом, вы не застрахованы от симптомов психических заболеваний, которые могут перейти в клиническую область. какие шаги или действия вы обычно предпринимаете, чтобы позаботиться о своем психическом здоровье с целью оптимального обслуживания своих клиентов? с какими препятствиями вы сталкиваетесь, заботясь о себе: нехватка времени и ресурсов, чувство или уверенность в том, что с вами все в порядке, доступ к нужным и соответствующим специалистам, которые могут позаботиться о вашем психическом здоровье? обязательная отчетность: насколько вы чувствуете себя комфортно, принимая меры по отношению к клиенту, который, возможно, хорошо реагирует на ппв, но при этом желает конфиденциальности, непреднамеренно сообщив об инциденте (недавнем или в прошлом) или настоящей ситуации, в которую, например, вовлечены ребенок или жестокое обращение с пожилыми людьми, сексуальное насилие или непосредственная угроза безопасности кого-либо? если вы не практикуете в соответствии с кодексом или руководящими принципами профессиональной организации, есть ли у вас законное требование отчитываться? преувеличение и обобщение. вы встречаете на конференции того, кто увлечен ппв и приглашает вас посетить семинар, который он предлагает. вы посещаете этот семинар, который построен на нескольких занятиях, с которыми вы достаточно хорошо знакомы. результаты, применение и обобщенность исследований представлены в преувеличенном виде. большинство участников считают презентацию «преобразующей» и, похоже, верят полученным результатам. что бы вы сделали? можете ли вы использовать действия, описанные в разделе «решение этических дилемм», чтобы руководствоваться ими в такой ситуации? руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 24 раздел третий: примеры из этической практики следующие случаи являются примерами, которые могут быть представлены на практике и имеют этический компонент, cоответствующий данным этическим принципам.6 пример 1: культурный применение ппв с учетом культурных особенностей этические решения должны отражать наилучшие данные в условиях культурного контекста. рассмотрим следующий эпизод. сюзанна австралийский специалист, работающий с клиенткой из восточной азии. клиент хочет самосовершенствоваться и сохранить семейные отношения. сюзанна решает использовать упражнение «лучшая возможная версия меня». сюзанна следует всем указаниям, чтобы провести клиентку через это упражнение. почему-то, несмотря на значительные улучшения в себе, клиентка сообщает, что ее отношения с семьей ухудшились. как следствие этого, никаких существенных улучшений в благополучии клиента не было обнаружено при повторной онлайн оценке. в данном эпизоде важным является рассмотрение концепции самости, которая варьируется от культуры к культуре. сюзанна следует концепции саморазвития, часто ассоциируемой с западом, которая включает в себя личностный рост и принятие новых и в значительной степени индивидуальных инициатив. саморазвитие в восточных (и в большинстве незападных) культурах, напротив, предполагает относительно больший акцент на инвестирование в отношения, на улучшение социального взаимодействия и на содействие сохранению семейных, групповых и племенных традиций. несмотря на растущее культурное разнообразие в большинстве мегаполисов, наиболее существенные культурные различия все еще сохраняются. важным следствием этих различий является то, что клиентка в этом эпизоде может извлечь выгоду из понимания того, как она может использовать сильные стороны своего характера, чтобы принести пользу своей семье или установить с ней более глубокие связи. сюзанна может использовать интервенцию с сильными сторонами характера «обратите свои сильные стороны на других» или «понимание своих сильных сторон» (niemiec, 2018), в которых ее клиентка учится превращать свои лучшие внутренние качества в механизмы построения отношений, которые приносят пользу другим, и отдает предпочтение умению признавать и ценить членов семьи за их лучшие качества. это также может быть тот случай, когда саморазвитие, поддерживаемое близкими людьми, может привести к глубокому и устойчивому повышению благополучия. однако, во взаимозависимой культуре саморазвитие, которое, очевидно, вовлекает близких членов семьи, также требует умения управлять более сложными взаимодействиями в течение более длительного периода времени. в отличие от этого, упражнение «лучшая версия меня», которая направлена на улучшение сильных индивидуальных качеств или 6 мы благодарны следующим лицам, которые предоставили эти случаи: случаи 1 и 3 тайяб рашид, случай 2 аннализ роуч, случай 4 стюарт дональдсон, случай 5 мэттью ясиелло и случай 6 дениз куинлан. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 25 проявление новой инициативы, может потребовать относительно более короткого периода. следовательно, крайне важно, чтобы ппс думали, как наилучшим образом адаптировать их упражнения к культурным условиям. следующие этические аспекты являются примерами, относящимися к вышеуказанному случаю: • ответственная забота ппс должен стараться заботиться о клиенте, учитывая особенности ситуации клиента и его происхождение. • полезность/ непричинение вреда ппс обязан не причинять вреда. • уважение прав и достоинства людей – ппс несет ответственность за чуткое понимание межкультурной динамики и уважение к взглядам и потребностям клиента по ситуации. пример 2: коучинг коучинг клиентов в меняющихся обстоятельствах этические дилеммы могут возникнуть неожиданно и потребовать корректировки в предоставлении услуг. рассмотрим следующий эпизод. аманда пришла на тренерскую работу, потому что она чувствовала недостаток понимания направления и смысла в жизни. раньше она придавала большое значение карьерному росту, но теперь чувствовала, что ей нужно искать более сбалансированный подход к жизни, и, кроме того, она чувствовала себя грустной и несчастной, потому что она не достигла большего в жизни (вне карьерного роста). во время первой вводной встречи она определила несколько областей, на которых она хотела бы сосредоточиться, включая управление финансами (с целью покупки дома), личностное развитие и увеличение времени для развлечений и общения. она упомянула, что ее нынешняя работа была сложной и что она постарается изменить это в будущем, однако это не было целью коучинга в данное время. на первых двух сеансах были сформулированы цели и были выяснены этапы действий, был достигнут прогресс в том направлении, которое она указала как важное, и коучинг хорошо продвигался. однако в начале четвертого сеанса аманда заявила, что ее ситуация на работе резко ухудшилась, и она уволилась, уже найдя новую работу. увольнение не было хорошо принято, и аманда чувствовала себя обеспокоенной и очень эмоциональной на своей работе, где она должна была отработать четыре недели до увольнения. она говорит, что чувство, вызванное реакцией ее менеджера на ее увольнение, вызывает воспоминания о подобных эмоциональных конфронтациях в ее юности. на этом этапе коучу было необходимо поддержать ее способность саморегуляции и не делать импульсивных предложений из-за увеличения стрессоров аманды. затем коуч мог использовать такую черту как любопытство, чтобы понять, как аманда хотела действовать в ближайшем будущем, и быть открытой для изменения внимания работы в течение сеанса /сеансов. также может быть важным понимание основы для эмоциональной реакции аманды, чтобы определить, является ли коучинг безопасным и подходящим средством для ее текущих потребностей. в то время как коуч, возможно, заключил контракт с амандой на определенное количество сеансов, изменения в ситуации клиента должны давать понятие о подходящем продвижении вперед. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 26 следующие этические аспекты являются примерами, относящимися к вышеуказанному случаю: • ответственная забота коуч несет основную ответственность за то, чтобы быть добрым и справедливым с целью обеспечения благополучия аманды и признания границ своей компетенции. • автономность здесь коуч мог сосредоточиться на развитии способности аманды самостоятельно определиться с предоставлением услуг и во всех аспектах жизни, а также пересматривать/вносить изменения в условия своего контракта на протяжении всей совместной работы. • полезность/непричинение вреда коуч, действующий в наилучших интересах аманды и основывающийся на профессиональной оценке, должен осознавать, что ему следует работать строго в пределах своей компетенции, и предоставлять услуги на основе своего адекватного обучения и опыта. пример 3: клинический работа с травмой большинство людей, которые испытывают травму, бывают ошеломлены многими культурными нюансами, в особенности, если они работают над ппв. у них могут развиться обширные механизмы, позволяющие избегать мыслей, воспоминаний или поведения, которое может быть связано с их травмой. предлагая ппв, важно понять и оценить такую травму (в прошлом и / или настоящую). не сводя к минимуму и не отвергая ее значения, практикующий специалист должен вмешаться, если он компетентен, а, если нет, то сделать своевременное направление. специалист также должен быть бдительным на случай, если травма проявиться во время работы клиента с ппв. практикующий специалист должен обсудить с клиентом и проконсультироваться с коллегами и соответствующими экспертами, чтобы определить, какими могут быть правильные сроки для продолжения ппв в таком случае. рассмотрим следующий эпизод. 21-летняя сальма имеет долгую историю физического, эмоционального и сексуального насилия. она ищет помощь от постоянной депрессии. она ожидает, что терапевт конкретно будет расспрашивать ее о травмирующих событиях ее жизни. вместо этого ей дают короткую анкету, которая не включает никакие вопросы о текущей или прошлой травме. на консультациях сальма понимает, что ей не нравится консультант, и решает не раскрывать подробности своей травмы. таким образом, лечение эффективно лишь поверхностно, и ей назначают новый курс лечения через шесть месяцев. как показывает вышеприведенный случай, важно прямо задать вопрос о травме (хотя это требует большой чуткости а, возможно, и клинической подготовки). в зависимости от взаимопонимания, некоторые клиенты будут явно задавать наводящие вопросы и обращаться за советом, предложениями, стратегиями для преодоления трудностей или ресурсами, соответствующими их культуре. важно, чтобы во время работы с ппв и появлением подробностей недавней или старой травмы, практикующий специалист реагировал соответственно потребностям клиента. прежде всего, специалист должен быть достаточно квалифицированным, обученным и опытным в соответствии с ситуацией. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 27 практикующие специалисты должны регулярно использовать такие сильные стороны, как скромность и благоразумие/осторожность, периодически проверяя, должны ли они продолжать оказывать услуги или, наоборот, клиенту будет лучше с кем-то более опытным, кто предоставит совет, навыки и стратегии, в которых нуждаются клиенты или просят их. следующие этические аспекты являются примерами, относящимися к вышеуказанному случаю: • ответственная забота ппс несет ответственность за заботу о сальме, учитывая особенности ее ситуации и истории. • полезность / непричинение вреда ппс несет ответственность за то, чтобы не причинить сальме дальнейший вред, и за ее благополучие. пример 4: организационный давление с целью искажения данных много работы и вмешательств в организациях осуществляются для определения их эффективности. этические дилеммы могут возникнуть неожиданно, когда клиенты не принимают результаты и заставляют практикующих специалистов пропускать или искажать оценочные данные. рассмотрите следующий эпизод и обратите внимание на то, как недооцениваются некоторые сильные стороны характера, включая честность/целостность, перспектива/мудрость, лидерство и скромность. компания n наняла практикующего специалиста для улучшения морального состояния и производительности сотрудников. в обсуждении с руководством компании специалист решила организовать программу обучения для увеличения психологического багажа сотрудников (надежды, эффективности, устойчивости и оптимизма). оценочные данные показали, что сотрудникам понравилось обучение и они хотели бы больше позитивнопсихологического обучения в будущем. однако, данные показали, что не было существенных различий в уровнях надежды, эффективности, устойчивости, оптимизма, морального состояния и производительности между сотрудниками, которые были случайно выбраны для участия в тренинге, и сотрудниками в группе для сравнения. руководители компании были довольны, что их сотрудникам понравился тренинг, и не захотели, чтобы те увидели разочаровывающие оценочные результаты. вместо этого они попросили специалиста сообщить, что обучение прошло очень успешно, и что в будущем сотрудникам будет предоставлено больше подобного обучения. следующие этические аспекты являются примерами, относящимися к вышеуказанному случаю: • автономность – здесь у специалиста отнимают свободу действий. • полезность/непричинение вреда. благожелательность подразуменвает обязательство содействовать благополучию клиента, и этот уровень обмана, пропагандируемый руководителями компании, не отвечает интересам сотрудников. к тому же, благожелательные действия требуют предоставления услуг на основе адекватного обучения или опыта. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 28 • надежность здесь специалиста-практика просят преувеличить и обобщить эффективность ппв, что не соответствует доверию, оказанному практикующему специалисту сотрудниками. пример 5: наставничество мотивация «сопротивляющихся» участников несбалансированных отношений часто те, кто больше всего сопротивляется интервенциям, может извлечь наибольшую пользу. ппс сталкиваются с трудной ситуацией, когда пытаются мотивировать или убедить клиента принять участие в интервенции для его же пользы без каких-либо манипуляций. рассмотрим следующий эпизод. эбби, кейс-менеджер в молодежном агентстве, имеет клиента, который отказывается участвовать во групповом ппв. фасилитатор ппв попросил эбби мотивировать ее клиента принять участие в тренинге и убедить его в преимуществах этой интрвенции. эбби соглашается со своим коллегой, что вмешательство будет очень полезным для клиента. эбби знает, что отношение и поведение ее клиента часто приводит к тому, что он исключается из интервенций, которые могут оказаться полезными, и решает изменить отношение клиента к участию. эбби установила доверительные отношения наставника с клиентом и не желает ставить под угрозу свою честность и предавать доверие клиента, слепо «продавая» интервенцию участнику или давая обещания, которые не будут выполнены. она предпочитает скромно описать результативность интервенции, и работает со своим клиентом, взвешивая затраты и выгоды от участия. она с любопытством задает своему клиенту вопросы о плюсах и минусах участия в вмешательстве и о том, как можно использовать его сильные стороны в групповой работе. затем эбби помогает своему клиенту определить стратегии, позволяющие минимизировать затраты для участия, и они пробуют малоинтенсивные варианты интервенции и сильные стороны клиента до работы в группе. эбби уверена, что ее клиент извлечет пользу из участия в интервенции, и не хочет, чтобы он вновь остался исключенным. точно так же она не хочет предавать его доверие или автономность. эбби хочет сделать вызов своей клиентке и помочь ей приобрести новые впечатления, но боится, что неэтичные манипуляции могут привести к негативным последствиям для ее участницы и в конечном итоге нанести ущерб их с трудом установленных отношений. вместо того, чтобы перехваливать или преувеличивать преимущества участия, эбби пытается понять отношение клиентки к интервенции, делает вызов ее когнитивным искажениям и создает возможности для показа преимуществ тренинга в сеансе безопасного кейс-менеджмента. следующие этические аспекты являются примерами, относящимися к вышеуказанному случаю: • справедливость ппс несет ответственность за то, чтобы клиенты не были исключены из интервенций на основании своей особенности. • надежность ппс использует доверительные отношения с клиентом, чтобы побудить клиента оценить свои взгляды и убеждения, но и не предает это доверие. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 29 • автономность ппс уважает решение своего клиента и не решается манипулировать им. пример 6: образование реализация программ благополучия, когда существующая практика препятствует стремлениям многие школы хотят использовать программы благополучия. однако они могут делать это по ряду причин: от заботы о благополучии учеников через решение таких проблем, как буллинг (издевательства в школе), до совершенствования и без того сильных практик. кроме того, наличие программы школьного благополучия может также рассматриваться для некоторых школ как маркетинговая возможность и их отличительная черта. рассмотрим следующий пример. директор школы попросил сотрудника разработать стратегию благополучия и план для принятия правлением школы, а затем быстро развернуть ключевые элементы. директор школы хотел сказать будущим родителям, что их дети получат пользу от подробного обучения благополучию в школьной программе. на всех учителей были возложены обязанности по обучению благополучию, хотя персонал в этой области очень мало профессионально подготовили. многие сотрудники испытывали стресс и чувствовали себя неподготовленными к этому обучению, а также к дополнительной нагрузке, которую оно представляло. консультант был приглашен на полдня, чтобы провести занятие по повышению квалификации сотрудников. некоторые учителя выразили консультанту обеспокоенность тем, что они опасаются, что могут нанести вред своим ученикам, поскольку они плохо разбираются и не имеют никакой подготовки в этой области. кроме того, консультант ознакомился с маркетингом школы, который рекламирует ее работу по обеспечению благосостояния (например, описание школы как поддерживающую целостное благополучие персонала и учащихся и обеспечение благополучия в каждом случае). консультант знает, что школа продолжает применять политику карательной дисциплины, которая подрывает отношения между учащимися и сотрудниками, игнорируя научные доказательства преимуществ в практике осознания и прощения. учитель среднего звена, на которого возложена ответственность за реализацию программы благосостояния, рассказал консультанту об этих проблемах. учитель не хочет поднимать этот вопрос перед руководством школы, так как раньше эта группа припугнула его, когда он высказывал подобную озабоченность. в том случае их лояльность к школе была поставлена под вопрос, и их пригодность продолжать работать в качестве учителей была поставлена под сомнение. следующие этические аспекты являются примерами, относящимися к вышеуказанному случаю: • полезность / непричинение вреда – ппс несет ответственность не за то, чтобы однозначно или без критики утверждать, что школа является «школой благополучия», если он знает, что школьная практика подрывает благополучие. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 30 • автономность учитель не должен чувствовать себя вынужденным принимать точку зрения или позицию, которая противоречит его собственному мнению или ценностям. релевантные руководства следующие указания (организованные по конкретным областям и в алфавитном порядке внутри области) были разработаны и помогли в разработке данных практических принципов: психологические: • австралия психология австралийское психологическое общество (aps), кодекс этики (2017). • австралия консультирование и психотерапия федерация психотерапии и консультирования австралии (pacfa), временный кодекс этики (2015). • канада психология канадская ассоциация психологии (cpa), канадский кодекс этики для психологов (2017). • новая зеландия психология психологическое общество новой зеландии (nzps), кодекс этики для психологов (2012, 4-е издание). • соединенное королевство консультирование и психотерапия британская ассоциация консультирования и психотерапии (bacp), «этические рамки надлежащей практики в консультировании и психотерапии» (2010). • соединенные штаты америки психология американская психологическая ассоциация (апа), этические принципы психологов и кодекс поведения (2017). • соединенные штаты америки консультирование американская ассоциация консультантов (aca), кодекс этики (2014). уход за больными: • австралия уход за больными совет по уходу за больными и акушерству австралии: кодекс этики для медсестер (2008). • новая зеландия уход за больными совет по уходу за больными новой зеландии (ncnz), кодекс поведения по уходу за больными (2012). • великобритания уход за больными совет по уходу за больными и акушерству (nmc), кодекс для медсестер и акушерок (2015). коучинг: • международный коучинг международная федерация коучей (icf): основные компетенции и кодекс этики (2015). руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 31 благодарности следующие люди, перечисленные в алфавитном порядке, значительно помогли, внесли существенный вклад и дали обратную связь в разработку данных принципов: • доцент аарон джарден, университет мельбурна, австралия. • г-н эндрю александра, университет мельбурна, австралия. • аннализ роуч, оклендский технологический университет, новая зеландия. • доктор дэн вейерс, университет вайкато, гамильтон, новая зеландия. • д-р дениз куинлан, новозеландский институт благополучия и устойчивости, новая зеландия. • профессор дайан велла-бродрик, университет мельбурна, австралия. • жизель тиммерман, позитивная работа, соединенные штаты америки. • хейн зегерс, европейская сеть позитивной психологии. • д-р хелена агеда маружо, высший институт социальной науки и политики (школа социальных и политических наук), лиссабонский университет, португалия. • профессор джеймс павельски, университет пенсильвании, соединенные штаты америки. • доктор джо митчелл, the mind room, мельбурн, австралия. • доктор джоэл милам, университет южной калифорнии, сша. • д-р джуди московиц, медицинский факультет северо-западного университета им. файнберга, соединенные штаты америки. • доцент карена берк, университет центрального квинсленда, австралия. • лиза сансом, lvs consulting, канада. • маргарита таррагона, позитиваменте, мексика. • мэтью ясиелло, центр благополучия и устойчивости, самри, австралия. • д-р мохсен джошанлу, университет кеймён, южная корея. • реб ребеле, университет мельбурна, австралия. • д-р рона харт, бывший директор mapp университета восточного лондона, англия. • д-р райан нимец, институт виа по характеру. • скотт асалоне, asgmc inc, сша. • саймон мюррей, ассоциация школ позитивного образования, австралия. • профессор стюарт дональдсон, университет аспирантов клермонта, соединенные штаты америки. • сью лэнгли, the langley group, австралия. • доктор сьюзи грин, институт позитивности, австралия. • д-р тайяб рашид, университет торонто скарборо, канада. • доктор тим ломас, университет восточного лондона, англия. руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 32 организации, первыми подписавшие этические руководящие принципы для практики позитивной психологии дата первого подписания принципов подписанная версия название и веб-сайт ассоциации или организации логотип 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • институт виа по характеру http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • центр позитивной психологии, мельбурнский университет • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • центр позитивной психологии, университет восточного лондона • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-psychology-and-coachingpsychology 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • центр позитивной психологии, • университет центрального квинсленда https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/psychology,-social-work-andcommunity-services/postgraduate/master-ofapplied-positive-psychology 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 центр ценностей клермонта, университет аспирантов клермонта, сша. • https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluation-center/ 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • центр благополучия и устойчивости, аделаида, австралия https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 * новозеландский институт благополучия и устойчивости, www.nziwr.co.nz 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • ассоциация психологов центральной азии, подразделение 1 позитивная психология 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • человечность • www.humanshiplb.org 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • иранский конгресс позитивной психологии 19 / июль / 2019 1.0 • японское общество психологии позитивного здоровья • http://jphp.jp/ руководство по этическим принципам жарден, рашид, роуч, ломас, задыкян, цветкова 33 авторы аарон джарден университет мельбурна, австралия aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au тайяб рашид, университет торонто скарборо, канада аннализ роуч оклендский технологический университет, новая зеландия доктор тим ломас, университет восточного лондона, великобритания наталья задыкян университет восточного лондона, великобритания наталья цветкова московский педагогический государственный университет, россия хронология публикации опубликовано 11 ноября 2019 список использованной литературы barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. 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(2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. weijers, d. (2013). an interview with conal smith, international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 210-212. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3.i2.7 dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 210 expert insight an interview with conal smith interview by dan weijers 20 september 2013 1. what got you interested in wellbeing research? after leaving university i spent the first eleven years of my career working as a policy analyst for the new zealand ministry of social development (with a couple of secondments to the treasury). many of the key policy challenges faced by both agencies boil down to how to evaluate the outcomes of policy interventions and how to assess the relative impact of quite different alternatives – for example, do you invest in hip operations or in an active labour market programme? the cost of the programme is, at best, only part of the picture since cost is minimised by doing nothing. to provide meaningful advice you need to be able to measure the outcomes of different policy programmes as well as the cost and to do this comprehensively means measuring wellbeing. 2. what do you take "wellbeing" to mean? i take wellbeing to refer to individual happiness, quality of life, and those aspects of community, environmental, and economic functioning that are important to a person's welfare. to a large degree i think of individual wellbeing as more or less equivalent to an economist’s notion of utility, as it is used in welfare economics. both objective and subjective indicators can be used to measure wellbeing. 3. why is wellbeing research important? wellbeing matters crucially to government policy: in practice, most government spending is ultimately concerned with improvements to peoples’ wellbeing. thus understanding how to measure wellbeing and understanding what drives it is crucial to improved policy-making. however, the same insights are also relevant to firms and voluntary organisations aiming for improved outcomes for both their clients and their workforce, and to individuals interested in the effect of life choices on their own wellbeing. 4. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding to date? that wellbeing can be validly and reliably measured. 5. what is the most important application of wellbeing research to our lives? this is a difficult question. one finding to have emerged from the literature on subjective wellbeing is that we are not necessarily particularly good at predicting how we will feel in the future or what things will contribute most strongly to our future sense of wellbeing. this is an http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ interview with conal smith weijers www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 211 area where wellbeing research can function usefully to help people make informed decisions about their own lives. 6. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding from your research? i’m not sure it’s possible to know how important any piece of research is until you see what other people do with it in terms of further research or direct policy implications. the finding that i find myself referring back to most often is the evidence – from my own work and a large number of other authors – that there is a common structure to the elements of wellbeing that is remarkably consistent across countries and population groups. 7. what are you working on right now? i’m mostly working on measures of subjective wellbeing. on the research front, i am currently involved in a project looking at the effect of culture on responses to subjective wellbeing questions and investigating ways to distinguish between measurement biases due to culture and real changes in subjective wellbeing associated with unmeasured features of life that covary with cultures. i’m also heavily engaged in promoting the uptake and use of the oecd guidelines on the measurement of subjective well-being (oecd 2013) in order to get national statistical offices to produce measures of subjective wellbeing in a consistent way across countries. 8. what do you think the next big thing in wellbeing research will be? in the area of subjective wellbeing i think there will be a range of very interesting opportunities for research over the next few years as very large, high quality datasets containing measures of subjective wellbeing become available from national statistical offices. many of the most contentious areas of debate on subjective wellbeing, such as whether income improves people’s life satisfaction, are fundamentally impossible to resolve with datasets of fewer than 1000 respondents, or with poor measures of subjective wellbeing and worse measures of income. 9. what are the main benefits of interdisciplinary research on wellbeing? it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that most real progress on measuring wellbeing has occurred only since psychologists, economists and others started working on the problem jointly, drawing on insights and data from an even wider range of disciplines. we would be worried if physicists could shed no light for chemists as to why the periodic table is structured the way it is. similarly, many of the most interesting developments in the social sciences over the past two decades have been driven by applying the empirical findings from one discipline in another area. 10. what would the ideal census question on wellbeing be and why? given that space in a census is always going to be very limited, i would go with a single question on the evaluative aspect of subjective wellbeing (below). this captures a lot of information relevant to all aspects of wellbeing in a concise format. the following question asks how satisfied you feel, on a scale from 0 to 10. zero means you feel “not at all satisfied” and 10 means you feel “completely satisfied”. overall, how satisfied are you with life as a whole these days? interview with conal smith weijers www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 212 author dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz references oecd (2013), oecd guidelines on measuring subjective well-being, oecd publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264191655-en lyon, d., owen, s., osborne, m. s., blake, k., & andrades, b. (2020). left / write // hook: a mixed method study of a writing and boxing workshop for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and trauma. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 64-82. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1505 donna lyon university of melbourne donnalyon04@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 article left / write // hook: a mixed method study of a writing and boxing workshop for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and trauma donna lyon · shannon owen · margaret s. osborne · khandis blake · bruna andrades abstract: this article investigates how the combination of writing therapy and embodied empowerment, explored through the physical sport of non-contact boxing, can facilitate the recovery journeys of women survivors of childhood sexual abuse (csa) and their move towards post-traumatic growth. it uses established quantitative psychological measurements and qualitative analytical approaches to examine the impact of an eight-week boxing and writing workshop for female survivors of csa, called left/write//hook (lwh), on participants’ recovery journeys. the hypothesis was that the lwh workshops would contribute to participants’ recovery and wellbeing. the article reports on the pilot study of the workshops as one aspect of an ongoing research project around lwh which uses concurrent, triangulation mixed methods design to gather and analyze qualitative audio-visual and creative-writing data produced by the women, alongside quantitative psychological assessment data. the findings of qualitative analyses of the participants’ creative writing and the quantitative psychological assessments of the impact of the lwh workshops on participants’ assertiveness, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, wellbeing, depression, anxiety and stress, along with preliminary findings of filmed material are presented and discussed in this article. the findings supported the hypothesis that the lwh workshops helped facilitate participants’ recovery journeys and supported their wellbeing. this article offers preliminary support for the argument that the dual approach of written/verbal and embodied creativity can enhance the wellbeing of survivors of sexual abuse and trauma. keywords: creativity, wellbeing, child sexual abuse, post-traumatic growth, boxing, writing, creative practice research, creative arts, mixed methods introduction how do you amplify the voice of those who have been silenced and promote the agency of traumatized bodies? this article reports on the findings of a creative arts mixed methods research project called left/write//hook (lwh), which aids women who have experienced childhood sexual abuse and trauma find a connection to their body, mind and spirit through weekly transformative writing and boxing workshops. written/verbal and embodied creative acts are paired in two contrasting acts of expression; creative writing and non-contact trauma informed boxing to explore how this can assist survivors in moving towards post traumatic growth. the workshop uses a trauma informed framework, emphasizing self-empowerment, personal agency, and self-determination as its grounding principles. a trauma informed framework focuses on promoting the agency of the survivor while ensuring they have the power of choice about:blank left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 during the process. as hopper writes (2017, p. 13), “instead of reinforcing helplessness, guilt, or shame, this process should open new avenues, build supports, and foster hope.” lwh serves to empower women and amplify their voice, firstly by directly targeting survivors to take part and secondly by gently encouraging or giving invitation to the participants to write about their trauma and lived experiences. the intent of the project is creative rather than therapeutic and therefore the writing prompts are imaginative in their approach. at times, the prompts were purposefully designed to speak to common experiences in survivors, such as guilt, shame and low self-esteem. these thematic prompts give participants a broad and imaginative entry point to creatively write whatever they want about or around their trauma. writing in the workshop can be from the perspective of a third person or a character’s point of view, but at the same time it is about women learning how to safely re-claim or re-story their lives. writing, sharing and listening are key principles in this workshop to help break the silence inherent in childhood sexual abuse and reduce its stigma of shame. the initial inspiration for the project came from the first author, lyon, who is herself a survivor of extreme childhood sexual abuse and trauma. she is also a creative arts practitioner, academic and filmmaker, who was drawn to the sport of boxing as a way of getting fit, feeling empowered and releasing anger. in her blog, lyon (2019) recalls that: trauma, sexual assault and violence often leave women feeling numb. at least, that is how it felt for me. i came to the sport of boxing because i began to experience anger that i knew was directly related to my childhood trauma. i thought boxing would be a positive outlet to release these pent-up emotions, but soon discovered that it was about so much more. breathing, mindfulness, technique and selfawareness are the processes that dominate this sport. whilst anger can fuel a training session, it quickly dissipates and the interplay between the physical and intellectual begins. there have been many times during my training that i have dissociated or had intense fear come up (related to perpetrator violence and memory) and countless times that i have cried. my trainers, though not traumainformed, have held a safe space for me, encouraging me to keep going and “fight through”. boxing has become a metaphor for my recovery and my life as a survivor. the positive effects that boxing has had on me, in terms of my overall health and well-being, have been phenomenal. i have met many other women like me, and i have a strong desire to share these stories of recovery, empowerment and hope, using the sport of boxing to aid these conversations. in 2018, lyon decided to bring together the concomitant acts of boxing and writing in the lwh workshop. during 2018, she ran the workshop twice and then in 2019, gained a level one certification as a boxing coach and sought collaborative and institutional partners within the university of melbourne to apply creative research and mixed methods to investigate the efficacy of the program for future expansion. lyon is the facilitator of lwh and partakes in the writing and sharing component of the workshop, situating herself as a co-participant with the survivors. she then leads the participants in a boxing workout session, training them in non-contact boxing, mixed with cardio and high-intensity exercise relevant to this type of sport. this research project was designed as a pilot study, using a concurrent, triangulation mixed methods design to bring together creative practice through qualitative audio-visual data and creative writing produced by the women, and quantitative psychological research methodologies to document the therapeutic change process of this arts-based intervention. the left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 study offers insight into a program that aims to break the silence of sexual abuse survivors and aid them in gaining body awareness, moving away from shame towards empowerment. in this study, wellbeing is conceptualized as an exemplar of positive mental health in both hedonic and eudaimonic forms (keyes, 2009), where the practice of self-care, meaning-making and experience of personal agency is socially embedded and facilitated through quality ties with others (ryff & singer, 2008). the role of the body in movement therapy provides a useful context for this research. the bodily dimension in boxing and the embodiment of the personal narratives of the participants is congruent with gross-cohen and eisikovits’s research into the role of the body in dance movement therapy and the relationship between bodily movement and kinesthetic awareness (gross-cohen & eisikovits, 2018). their study analyzed the experiences of dance movement therapists in relation to their practice. one therapist recounted a personal definition of wellbeing, describing it as something that can be both practiced and created. for this therapist, wellbeing can involve a “constant movement within the self, among all the physical, mental, and functional dimensions” (gross-cohen and eisikovits, 2018, p. 63). this psychological dimension of wellbeing feeds into the importance of making meaning from one's trauma and experiences in a shared group setting. meaning-making is an essential component in the recovery of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and their ability to re-claim a sense of self (anderson & hiersteiner, 2008). wright and gabriel (2018) draw on the findings of bogar & hulse-killacky, 2006; vilencia et al., 2013 and wright et al., 2007, to assert that “accepting and understanding the impact on survivors’ lives and self-structure, changing old self-beliefs and self-views, and restoring congruency are essential components in the recovery from csa” (p. 664). further to this, their findings identified eight key themes which were evident in a survivor's experience of meaning-making. one of these, which is of particular importance to the framework of this project, is that of experiencing personal agency. the impact of the research on the survivor's wellbeing is seen through the nonjudgmental practice of self-care (as a flow of practice), meaning-making through writing and connecting with one’s own and others’ experiences and feelings of agency. these practices are furthered when engaging in boxing as a form of embodied, expressive and empowered movement. this paper includes a narrative account of lwh and the research undertaken; at times it is a personalised account of lyon’s experiences. overarchingly, the paper aims to highlight the creative intentions of the project and acknowledge the lived and firsthand experiences of the women and researchers involved. arising from interdisciplinary collaboration and adopting a feminist perspective it responds to critiques that these aspects have been missing from previous research on related topics (bordere, 2017). the study offers a holistic and rounded understanding of abuse survivors and their stories of loss of identity, shame and hopelessness. it acknowledges and brings to light the fight of csa survivors to reclaim their sense of selves. literature on creativity and trauma recovery recent research has demonstrated that talking about abuse is vital to healing and recovery (mcclain & amar, 2013). studies have also shown that creative expression is a valid and positive self-help tool to aid healing in survivors of childhood sexual abuse (cross, 2003; mendeznegrete, 2013). journaling and creative writing, for example, have been found to be effective therapeutic tools to reduce post-traumatic symptoms, assisting survivors to find meaning in life (creely, 2018; cross, 2003; meekums, 2005). writing that uses free association techniques can unlock unconscious thoughts and beliefs about experiences, acting as a cathartic process while left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 remaining creative and imaginative (lourens, 2020). according to creely (2018), the process of writing encourages “transformation through emotional disclosure and present insight” (p. 24). in australia, no initiative has yet used practice-based approaches to address the needs of women who come to physical activity and sporting environments with the lived effects of csa. the most significant research in this area thus far has been undertaken by cathy van ingen, founder of shape your life (syl). syl is a boxing program in toronto, canada, designed to teach women and transgendered survivors of violence non-impact, recreational boxing. the survivors are encouraged to locate and view anger as healthy aggression and see it as a tool to aid healing and recovery (van ingen 2011). although writing practices are not part of syl, the program has previously created a participant-led arts project in which survivors have produced artwork and stories culminating in an exhibition to examine the positive effects of art and boxing on exploring individual’s trauma experiences (van ingen, 2016). it is widely recognized within psychology and movement therapy practice that trauma is stored in the body and that dealing effectively with its impact is best done indirectly through divergent routes within the creative and imaginal realm (van der kolk, 2014; naparstek, 2006). previous studies have explored the healing and recovery processes for survivors of csa. in particular, studies in the area of dance movement therapy have provided strong evidence to support the idea that creative work (whether writing, drama, painting or dance) combined with conscious body movement are complementary elements serving to improve the wellbeing and post-traumatic growth for trauma survivors (jorba-galdos, 2014; gray, 2001; winters fisher, 2019; ho, 2015; orkibi, bar, and eliakim, 2014; mills and daniluk, 2002; panhofer & payne, 2011). the idea that the body “feels, knows and remembers” (panhofer, 2017, p.6) is explored in the program of lwh, first through creative writing prompts, then through the act of boxing as a tool of outward expression. traumatic events leave long-term indelible effects on the body, or “kinesthetic marks” (panhofer, 2017). when survivors engage in creative and imaginal processes that help regulate the nervous system, they are then better equipped to deal with the mental and emotional aspects of their abuse in therapeutic contexts in a more meaningful way (naparstek, 2004). although boxing is considered a high-intensity and cardio-driven exercise, it has proven health benefits for people with diverse health conditions (sanchez-latra et al., 2020). its emphasis on directed and focused movement, strength and conditioning can leave participants feeling strong and empowered. each punch can serve to direct a survivor's power, anger and frustration in a targeted way (van ingen, 2011). the syl program is grounded in the field of sport for development and peace, which is an approach designed to target disadvantaged communities and regions of the world and activate sport for the benefit of society (van ingen, 2016). syl was formed from the belief that sport “can make a useful contribution addressing gender-based violence and critiquing power relations and social inequalities” (van ingen, 2016). lwh intersects within the fields of sport for development and peace and dance movement therapy; however, it is distinctive in its combination of sport with creative arts as a practice-based model. it embodies healing and recovery processes that speak to theoretical and experiential modes of healing for survivors of csa. throughout the lwh program, participants wrestle with the meanings and profundity of the effects of their abuse and trauma experiences through writing, and then physicalize these through boxing to release some of the confusion, shame and negativity that the writing and sharing may have brought up. due to the sensitive and often distressing nature of the subject of csa, scholars have expressed concern that studies that involve csa survivors as research participants may serve to further traumatize those involved (mcclain & amar, 2013). however, mcclain and amar (2013) also left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 note that there are greater risks in not doing this type of research, as it leaves unchecked shamebased narratives and survivors' voices remain mute. these latter outcomes are harmful and counter-intuitive to promoting post-traumatic growth. although lwh is not group therapy, it is well documented that group settings that encourage sharing and listening to other’s stories can be beneficial to the process of healing and recovery (arias & johnson, 2013). the research of henderson and bateman (2010, p. 79) affirms this, claiming that: telling one’s story (the ‘trauma narrative’) and directly facing the grief, anxiety, anger, betrayal and guilt related to the abuse, enables many to cope better with symptoms, memories and other issues such as substance abuse and relationship problems. furthermore, henderson and bateman (2010, p. 79, citing white & epston, 1989), state: persons give meaning to their lives and relationships by storying their experience… and in interacting with others in the performance of these stories they are active in shaping their lives and relationships. lwh creatively builds on aspects of this research through its practice-based model, using writing prompts as stimuli for participants to share aspects of the trauma narrative that each feels comfortable with through a process of automatic writing, in which the writer lets their thoughts flow onto the paper without pause. these narratives are often fractured and may be fragments of experiences, partly due to the unconscious act of writing automatically (without stopping and as a stream of consciousness) and partly due to the severity of abuse in some participants. the creative nature of the project allows the participants to arrive at their own understanding of what their narrative is or could be. this is enhanced through the practice of writing and actively listening to others’ stories, which helps to validate their own experiences. this recognition may serve as stimulus for multiple interpretations of past experiences, but importantly leaves a sense of agency with the women. they can choose to engage with a new or evolved narrative, if they want to, in their own time and in their own way (anderson & hiersteiner, 2008). aim and hypothesis this article investigates how the combination of writing therapy and embodied empowerment, explored through the physical sport of non-contact boxing, can facilitate the recovery journeys of women survivors of csa and their move towards post-traumatic growth, by using established quantitative psychological measurements and qualitative analytical approaches to examine the impact of the lwh workshops on participants. the hypothesis was that the lwh workshops would contribute to participants’ recovery and wellbeing. project methodology the study draws on pink’s (2015) notion of “blended practice”, a methodological approach in creative practice research that encourages practitioners to engage with the affordances of various practices and discourses to enrich the project at hand (oliver 2018; pink 2015). our research team comprised researchers from distinct disciplinary backgrounds of creative arts and psychology. this interdisciplinary expertise allowed the project design to deploy different methods at specific stages of the study. the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches within a concurrent left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 triangulation mixed methods research design facilitated a more robust exploration of the research questions than the use of one method alone (creswell & plano clark, 2011). quantitative methods were used to measure and analyze the impact of the workshops on participants’ assertiveness, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, wellbeing, depression, anxiety and stress. participants in the study also prepared written journals as part of their engagement in the lwh program, and a qualitative analysis of these journals was undertaken. further details about each of these approaches is given below along with supporting theoretical literature. a third strand of data collection in the form of ethically engaged documentary filmmaking and participant video diaries also took place. data sources were then triangulated to ensure that robust conclusions could be generated and to support the validity of future iterations of the project (creswell, 2009). the documentary aspect of the study was impeded somewhat by the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. a complete analysis of the documentary film materials is still underway; however, audio-visual data generated through video diaries have been used here as part of the mixed methods data triangulation. participants women aged between 18 and 65 years who identified as survivors of childhood sexual abuse and trauma were invited to participate in the study. there was no policy of exclusion based on physical health; rather, the training was modified to accommodate varying fitness levels. as this was a pilot study, only a small number of participants were required. eight women took part, ranging from 27 to 54 years of age. five of the women identified as part of the lgbtqia community, as did lyon, the facilitator. three of the women were on a national disability scheme, one was a full-time mother and four women held full-time or part-time jobs. all the women disclosed histories of abuse. across the group, participants reported psychiatric diagnoses including ptsd, major depression, and psychosis, and had received psychological and pharmacological treatments for these conditions prior to the program. each participant was screened by the facilitator and asked about the tools, services and/or processes they engaged with to self-assess their physical and mental health, based on their current situation. as this was not a formal therapy process (rather a creative one), the criteria for participation were based on ensuring participants who joined the workshop were currently receiving adjunct mental health support or had undergone previous workshops with lyon. women were recruited who saw themselves as displayed a sense of self-efficacy in most areas of life and/or who had or were undergoing therapy or counselling. this was in line with the recruitment method outlined by arias and johnson (2013), although many of the project’s participants still struggled daily with the effects of csa. participants were drawn to the project due to the combination of writing and boxing, with many participants revealing in their journal writings the desire to disclose, to tell their trauma, to make meaning of their lived experience and re-story their narrative. flyers were advertised in the boxing gym where the project was being held and at various organizations and cafes in the local area. the project was also actively promoted through social media, a local newspaper and radio station. the advertising material, plain language statement and consent forms were written in simple english, to be easily understood. a facebook page was created advertising an information night and the project set up a wordpress blog website. these blog entries formed part of lyon’s reflective thinking around the project. interested participants attended an information night to learn about the project and were given a plain language statement and consent form, along with an audiovisual release related to the documentary filming. no special provisions were made for participants with low literacy or left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 non-english speaking backgrounds as the research design was not targeting these demographics and there was no funding available for translation services. there was no cost for participants to attend the program and all participants were provided with free hand wraps and either used the boxing gloves at the gym or brought along their own. after the second week of the workshop the group moved online due to the covid-19 pandemic. one participant’s childcare duties changed at that point and she was unable to attend the workshops weekly, resulting in her attending less workshops overall. workshop design the lwh workshops ran weekly for two hours across eight consecutive weeks. the focus of the first hour was on a “feelings check,” whereby participants were asked to share how they felt that day and to talk briefly about their week. this was followed by automatic writing for 10-15 minutes based on prompts to stimulate the process. automatic writing is a free-conscious writing process by which one writes non-stop to a prompt. sharing of writing was encouraged, but not mandatory. the second hour of the workshop involved boxing techniques and exercise, including partner work, bag work, cardio, and strength-based training skills. when the workshop moved online after week two, the exercises were adapted to fit this environment and the focus turned to more individualized cardio and strength-based training, with the inclusion of boxing drills. the program followed a similar structure each week, with the beginning and end of the workshop tailored to allow for introductions. the first workshop involved working through a program handbook written by lyon, that delved into the workshop and its framework in more depth. all participants were provided with a hard copy of this handbook which outlined safety procedures in the event of challenging emotional situations that might occur from participating. the handbook detailed crisis numbers and strategies in the event of an emergency and in the case of participant distress or adverse emotional responses. at the end of every workshop, all participants were asked to think of three self-care strategies to draw upon for that evening (for example, going to bed early, cuddling a toy, reading a book, or having a bath). lyon set up a facebook message group and checked in with the participants on most weeks both individually and as a group to debrief in an informal way. the group connected throughout the week, sometimes sharing funny posts, or sending everyone good wishes. this helped to strengthen social bonds within the group. as noted earlier, as a survivor of csa, lyon became a facilitator-participant, going on her own journey and process through the workshops and alongside the women. this dual role was fundamental to the workshop’s success for lyon and the participants. the guidelines for the writing aspect of the workshop were listed in the handbook and read aloud at the first workshop. these advised that: reading aloud was optional but encouraged; trigger warnings would be given and there was no censorship; writing exercises were suggestions and starting points for participants’ own explorations; feedback is positive and no judgement calls are made about the writing. because self-empowerment and personal agency were part of the project’s value protocols, participants were given freedom of choice as to how much they wanted to be involved in the research process, including filming. for example, if a participant did not want to submit their writing in a week, they were not forced to. if a person didn’t want to be filmed or be the focus of filming in a session, then the team would respect that and avoid focusing on them when filming. psychological measures left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 assertiveness participants’ assertiveness ratings were captured before and after participation in the lwh program (i.e., before the 8-week program commenced, and after it completed). we measured assertiveness using a single category implicit association task (sc-iat). implicit association tasks are common psychological tasks that measure the degree to which people implicitly associate two concepts (in this case, associations between the self and assertiveness; blake, bastian, o’dean, & denson, 2017). to create the implicit assertiveness task, a separate sample of 26 people read a description of the concept of assertiveness then rated 61 traits on assertiveness on a 7-point scale anchored by very non-assertive and very assertive. high assertiveness was characterized as an ability to assert and expand one’s self, affect one’s environment, and perform actions. low assertiveness was characterized as unassertiveness. the top and bottom eight traits formed the high and low assertiveness words for the sc-iat and showed significant group differences on assertiveness in a pilot study, t(25) = 7.95, p < 0.001, mlowassertiveness= 2.29, sd = 1.18, mhighassertiveness= 5.59, sd = 1.52, d = 1.48. the high assertiveness words were: decisive, driven, gogetter, self-aware, persistent, independent, productive, and strong-minded. the low assertiveness words were: dependent, meek, hesitant, apathetic, idle, inactive, unconcerned, and scatterbrained. participants categorized these traits with seven words characteristic of the self (me, my, mine, self, myself; and the participant’s own first name and nickname [or, if they had no nickname, their name again]). implicit associations were assessed by asking people to press the same response key for low assertive + self and to press the opposite response key for high assertive + self. these associations were then reversed and the order in which participants performed these trials was counterbalanced. the sc-iat effect is the difference in response latency between low assertive + self and high assertive + self. we calculated d scores following established guidelines by greenwald, nosek, and banaji (2003), with higher scores indicating stronger associations of the self with assertiveness. post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms the presence and severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) symptoms were measured using the ptsd checklist for dsm-5 (pcl-5; national center for ptsd, 2016). this is a 20-item self-report measure that is used to quantify and monitor symptoms over time, screen individuals for ptsd, and assists in making a provisional diagnosis of ptsd. it assesses symptoms over the past month on a 5-point likert scale anchored by not at all and extremely. summing all 20 items (range 0–80) and using a cut-point score of 33 provides a provisional ptsd diagnosis and suggests the patient may benefit from ptsd treatment. the measure demonstrates sound psychometric properties (national center for ptsd, 2016), with cronbach values in this study of .94 (pre) and .97 (post). evidence for the pcl for dsm-iv suggests 5 points as a minimum threshold for determining whether an individual has responded to treatment, and 10 points as a minimum threshold for determining clinically meaningful improvement (clapp et al., 2016). wellbeing wellbeing was measured using the mental health continuum short form (mhc-sf; keyes, 2009). the mhc-sf is a 14-item self-report scale that asks participants to indicate on a likert scale (anchored by never and every day) how often they have experienced aspects of wellbeing including hedonic, emotional wellbeing (e.g. “happy”), eudaimonic, social wellbeing (e.g., social integration “that you belonged to a community, like a social group, or your neighbourhood”, and social acceptance “that people are basically good”), and psychological wellbeing (e.g., self left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 acceptance “that you liked most parts of your personality”, and personal growth “that you had experiences that helped you to grow and become a better person”). participants received an overall mean wellbeing score from 0–5, where higher scores indicate greater wellbeing. the mhc-sf has demonstrated moderate test-retest reliability and good convergent and discriminant validity with existing measures (lamers et al., 2011). cronbach values in this study were .93 (pre) and .96 (post). depression, anxiety and stress the 21-item depression, anxiety, and stress scale (dass-21; lovibond & lovibond, 1995) asks participants to rate their experiences of various symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress on a 4-point likert scale (anchored by never and almost always) over the past week (lovibond & lovibond, 1995). items for each subscale were summed, providing a total score from 0–21, for each of depression, anxiety, and stress. converted, full-measure scores are reported in the results. reliability and validity of the dass-21 has been well demonstrated (crawford et al., 2011; lovibond & lovibond, 1995). pre and post cronbach values for each subscale in this study were depression: .96, .95; anxiety: .82, .93; and stress: .92, .91. results of the psychological analyses assertiveness a repeated-measures ancova determined the effect of the program on implicit assertiveness over time. because assertiveness is positively associated with age and we expected program effects may be dose-dependent, we controlled for the effect of age and program compliance on implicit assertiveness over time. there was a significant effect of time, f(1,5) = 39.52, p = .001, partial eta squared = .89, but it was qualified by a very large time × age and a very large time × participation interaction, f(1,5) = 17.05, p = .009, partial eta squared = .77, and f(1,5) = 36.95, p = .002, partial eta squared = .88 respectfully. a scatterplot of these interactions indicated that implicit assertiveness increased as a linear function of program compliance (r2 = .52) and age (r2 = .08), with the largest effects due to compliance. indeed, as shown in figure 1, 52% of the variance in implicit assertiveness over time was due to compliance. this analysis shows that the program was most effective at raising implicit assertiveness for those who complied with the program and for those who were older. left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 figure 1. the effect of lwh program compliance on implicit assertiveness change scores over time. note: higher scores indicate an increase in implicit assertiveness over time (i.e., before versus after participation in the lwh program). post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms a significant reduction in severity of ptsd symptoms was observed from pre-program (m = 45.63, sd = 16.47) to post-program (m = 36.00, sd = 17.74), t(7) = -2.89, p = .023, 95% ci [1.75, 17.50], cohen’s dz = 1.022. the cl effect size indicates that after controlling for individual differences, the likelihood that a person scores lower at post-program than pre-program is 85%. the magnitude of reduced mean total score across the program also suggests that the participants achieved clinically meaningful improvement in the ptsd symptomatology at the completion of the 8-week program. wellbeing there was a significant improvement in overall wellbeing measured by the mhc-sf from preprogram (m = 2.27, sd = 0.91) to post-program (m = 2.74, sd = 1.05), t(7) = 2.81, p = 0.026, 95% ci [0.08, 0.87], cohen’s dz = 0.99. the cl effect size indicates that after controlling for individual differences, the likelihood that a person scores higher at post-program than pre-program is 84%. in respect of the likert scale, the change in mean scores indicates that the frequency with which the women experienced qualities of emotional and eudaimonic wellbeing increased from once a week (2) towards 2–3 times a week (3). depression, anxiety and stress scores for depression, anxiety and stress all showed a reduction from preto post-program: depression (pre m = 19.25, sd = 11.11; post m = 16.25, sd = 12.30); anxiety (pre m = 16.00, sd = 9.01; post m = 13.00, sd = 10.69); and stress (pre m = 23.25, sd = 11.00; post m = 18.25, sd = 9.71). although mean score reductions were not statistically significant, reductions were observed in left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 symptom severity categories for anxiety (pre: severe to post: moderate) and stress (pre: moderate to post: mild). the reduction in depression scores remained in the moderate range. reflective journal writing each week workshop participants were presented with a choice of creative prompts to inspire their journal writing. the prompts were selected by lyon from jen cross’s writing ourselves whole (2017) and her online e-book survivors write (n.d.). these resources offer a framework and writing prompts for use in writing groups for survivors. prompts pertaining especially to the themes of abuse, healing, recovery, and boxing were chosen. after the covid-19 pandemic forced the workshops online, other prompts were also included which pertained to isolation and ‘the virus’. the theme of isolation resonated for lyon not only because of its relevance to the covid-19 pandemic but also because of its relevance to csa and adult post-traumatic growth. different prompts were used each week; these are shown in table 1. lyon was aware that the writing might bring up experiences and emotions that could be distressing to participants. crying, tears and emotion were viewed as progress and as evidence of a healing journey, rather than something negative to be feared. table 1: weekly journal-writing stimuli for lwh workshop participants week 1 1. i am here because… 2. let me tell you why i am doing this… 3. being here… 4. today… week 2 1. to punch is to… 2. i connected and… 3. hand to cheek. i step, i punch, i… 4. there is no wonder i… week 3 1. if it hadn’t happened i… 2. now that we have connected 3. the virus 4. vulnerability week 4 1. my mother is a foot... 2. isolation 3. the virus part 2... 4. madness and vulnerability week 5 1. disgust and shame 2. vulnerability part 2. 3. isolation part 2. 4. the virus part 3. week 6 1. body 2. power 3. mind week 7 1. healing is... 2. i remember... 3. recovery... 4. things i like... week 8 1. the last 8 weeks... 2. being believed means... 3. fighting back means... left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 at the completion of the program, participants collated their journal writings and sent them to lyon, who then shared them with the research team. the written journals were subjected to thematic analysis following the framework outlined by braun and clarke (2006). this is a theoretically flexible approach enabling the identification, analysis and reporting of patterns or themes. journals were originally formatted in microsoft word before being transcribed into a microsoft excel spreadsheet. in excel, all pieces of writings were analyzed and categorized into themes. an inductive approach was then used to identify patterns in the data, while holding the research questions of the lwh program in mind. the thematic analysis of the written journals fifty-eight journal items were submitted by the women for analysis. six journal items were not produced because the participant was feeling unwell or had family commitments. the participants’ responses provide an understanding of their motivations and expectations for joining the program. the prompt for the first journal was “i am here because...”, and a range of motivations were made evident. for example, participant 2: i am here because i want to have a shared reality. madness is not having my story. not knowing my story. i am here to have a story, beginning, middle and end. participant 3: i am here because my mouth is the only weapon i have left, they took everything else from me but never managed to shut me up.” participant 7: i am here because i want to exist – i want to take up space, and not be some emotional sponge anymore. i want to know my feelings and release them. i want to fix my body and my mind and feel strong. i want to feel strength radiate through me. interestingly, the writings from this first prompt appeared in different ways in the journals and seemed to evolve throughout the weeks. from these journals, the thematic analysis identified three main themes: empowerment, connection/disconnection, and validation. these themes express a broader understanding of the feelings of being abused and conflictions around control, along with a sense of autonomy and agency, the (im)possibility of making a choice, and how they were now fighting back. theme 1: empowerment empowerment was one of the most significant themes in the participants’ journals. it reflected how the women felt safer, in control of themselves, strong, and how they were fighting back by doing the workshop. the journals tracked a clear improvement in the women’s feelings of empowerment as they progressed through the workshop program. for example, participant 4 wrote in week 2, “if it hadn’t happened, i would not have been so triggered that i became ‘insane, ‘unwell’ or whatever the feeling is.” (“if it hadn’t happened…” was a prompt proposed at the beginning of this week’s writing]) in week 5, the same participant wrote, “for some reason i cannot write about positive things like recovery, healing, and the things i like”. in the final week of the program, there appeared to be a shift in the participant’s sense of agency in her writing: “also, this week i got followed home by a man from the ezymart. i called the police.” left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 another example of this theme was provided by participant 2, who wrote in week 1, “i am here because i could pull a blanket over my head, a blanket of solitude, of safety. i am here because i could create a shield around me.” in week 8, as a response to the prompt “fighting back means...” the participant wrote: “fighting back means here is my hand, the palm of my hand, see it, it is a stop sign”. the shift from needing to create a layer of self-protection around themselves to being able to consider moving the body into a stance of affirmative action, suggests an internal “movement” in how the participant perceived their sense of agency. theme 2: connection/disconnection the second theme, connection/disconnection, describes how the women were (dis)connecting with themselves and sometimes with each other in the workshop. this relates to the research of dance movement therapist elizabeth lynn gray (2001), who affirms that the overwhelming nature of abuse on the body and mind causes a fragmentation that relates to the human system and causes a separation between the relationship of self and others. throughout the workshops, it was possible to see changes in how the women were connecting, especially with each other. for example, participant 2 wrote in week 1, “i am here because i want community. i am sick of the isolation that saved me. i am sick of getting so locked in myself”. for this participant, they appeared to move from feeling isolation to experiencing connection, evident in their writing from week 8: “eight weeks ago we had individual narratives. now we all have the same story.” regarding inner (dis)connection and fragmentation, the journals showed an improvement in how the women were developing a relationship to their trauma narratives. for example, participant 7 wrote in week 2, “i feel responsible and disconnected. my body, my mind and soul were separated and still struggle to reassemble”. in week 8, this survivor wrote, “i feel a sense of connection — connection to myself, to my centre, to my story, to my writing, my body”. similarly, participant 8 wrote in week 5, “i feel discoloured, filthy, so dirty dirty dirty”. three weeks later, this participant wrote, “i still remember everything, it’s still deeply saddening, but it doesn’t feel like it’s inside me anymore, like a rock in my guts. it feels like things i know, things i can talk about, but it’s a narrative that i can control rather than the other way around”. this suggests the feelings of shame so inherent in a survivor’s experience had moved from an inner sense of being to something that could now be located outside of the “self”. validation the third theme spoke to how the women felt their stories were validated, and revealed how their need to be heard shifted throughout the workshop. for example, participant 5 wrote in week 4, “i wish i could tell the so-called professionals just to get fucked and listen to what’s within”. in week 8, in response to the prompt “being believed” they wrote that, “being believed means i have taken back some power. it means i can finally feel freer”. another example was provided by participant 3 in week 1, who wrote, “i am here because so many have not wanted to know, found it too hard to listen to”. in week 8, this participant affirmed the importance of their stories being heard and accepted, writing, “being believed means everything. it means validation”. besides the themes already described here, there were other prominent themes noted within the writings which fall outside the scope of this article. they include memories of the abuse and the lack of support received at the time, along with sentiments of fear, anger and vulnerability, and the implications the abuse has had in their ongoing lives. the women also spoke about the experience and positive impact of boxing, and this rich additional detail will require further analysis. left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 it is also worth including here the written words of one participant, khale mchurst, from the final workshop. mchurst’s writing offers insight into how the combination of boxing and writing can powerfully release hidden narratives of abuse survivors through the combination of creative writing and boxing. they also illustrate how changes in the qualities of movement experienced (time, weight, flow and space) recall the qualities of movement proposed by dance movement therapist rudolf laban (laban & mccaw, 2011). mchurst stated, it’s been such a jarring experience each week to get so deeply entrenched in our collective trauma, to hear each other and cry for one another, then immediately exorcise the sadness from my body. it feels like as we share our secrets, i can feel the hook-like feet of depression trying to grapple onto me, trying to take hold. but before they get a chance to really dig in, i’m up, i’m moving, i’m too fast, you can’t catch me, i’ll run, i’ll punch, there’s no way you can get your hooks into me. by the time we’ve completed the hour of boxing i’m exhausted, but the sadness, the trauma, feels so much farther away than it did at the start. i still remember everything, it’s still deeply saddening, but it doesn’t feel like it’s inside me anymore, like a rock in my guts. it feels like things i know, things i can talk about, but it’s a narrative that i can control rather than the other way around. i feel more like my body is something useful, something that serves me, protects me, rather than something that just makes me a target for abuse. i feel less angry at my body for being female, and more thankful to it for being capable. documentary filmmaking the documentary filming forms part of practice-led creative research. it is an iterative and emergent creative collaboration. drawing on thomas’s (2012) framework of ethically engaged documentary practice it intends to empower the participants through a collaborative sharing of their experiences. observational documentary film recordings of the first two sessions were undertaken. here the filming does not actively intervene in the workshop, instead the camera is positioned as an onlooker observing the workshop. the covid-19 pandemic resulted in the workshop sessions moving on-line from weeks 3–8. these were audio-visually documented via screen recordings. participants were also invited to record video diaries. these participatory video experimentations were an open, creative invitation for the participants to record themselves and/or their surroundings at moments they saw fit during the program. in the absence of weekly observational filming of on-site workshops, these participatory videos became a central element of the documentary aspect of this pilot study. while a discussion of the broader documentary project falls outside the scope this paper, preliminary review of the documentary component provides evidence to support improved wellbeing amongst participants. central to these findings is that all participants are interested in continuing to participate in the documentary filmmaking aspect of the project. this is extremely significant given the shame associated with csa. as lyon notes, allowing a camera to bear witness to this act of “coming out” as a survivor requires incredible courage. for most participants, lwh is the first time they have shared their experiences of csa in a group setting. here personal agency is demonstrated by an active desire to make meaning of their trauma experiences and to share this with a wider public through participation in the documentary filmmaking process. left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 six of the eight participants contributed video diaries. these formed part of an autoethnographic process that shone light on the experiences and meanings of csa survivors and their everyday lives and served to track the contributors’ emotional journeys across the eight weeks. these provide interesting first-person accounts of participants’ wellbeing at various stages of the program. the video diaries echoed the key themes of empowerment, connection/disconnection and validation identified in the thematic analysis of journals as the camera became a diarizing tool for recording insight into one’s own healing process and pursuit of recovery. for one participant being filmed was a trigger directly associated with her trauma narrative. despite this, she engaged in the observational filming of the first two sessions and the recording of video diaries across the eight weeks. in her first video diary the anxiety is palpable as she describes the mixed emotions of being filmed in a safe space and a pride in her ability to position herself in front of the camera for a video diary. by week eight she is noticeably more comfortable in front of the camera and uses the video diary to reflect on the intensity of participating in the program amidst the covid-19 pandemic and the ways in which the program has inspired and validated her experiences. the video diaries thus offer first-person accounts that shed light on participants’ unique stories but also reveal a shared experience of community, connection, and reclamation of self because of participating in lwh. this supports the findings of enhanced wellbeing noted in analysis of the other data sets. discussion the quantitative psychological measures and the thematic analysis of the participants’ written journals provided evidence which supports the hypothesis that the combined acts of creative writing and boxing assist female survivors of csa in their journey towards recovery and wellbeing. the lwh workshops created a space for the women to disclose their abuse without judgement, offering them opportunities to make meaning out of their trauma, and to re-story their experiences through creative writing and embodied sporting activities. these findings support those of graham, powell and karam (2011) who argued that group participation with fellow survivors increases support for survivors and reduces feelings of isolation, stigma, and shame. while previous studies have given focus to csa survivor stories (anderson & hiersteiner, 2008; spermon et al., 2013), the combination of creative somatic and cognitive activities in the lwh program provided a new avenue for understanding the potential pathways towards recovery and wellbeing for participants. as panhofer (2017) suggested, from the perspective of dance movement therapy, dealing only with the verbal in a therapeutic context omits the experiences stored as memories in the body, and the findings of the present study illustrate how the combination of writing and boxing in the lwh workshops supported a move from implicit to explicit ways of knowing. further research in the field of dance movement therapy could advantage the program and afford new opportunities for exploring how movement and kinesthetic consciousness can support the move towards post-traumatic growth for female survivors of csa. the thematic analysis of participants’ written journals identified crucial changes in the way the participants experienced their connection with themselves and with the other women in the group. these transformations centered on the concepts of empowerment, connection/disconnection and validation, building on previous research conducted into the shape your life program and its participatory arts project (van ingen, 2016). the validation of the participants’ experiences, especially regarding feelings around empowerment, were enhanced after eight weeks. the participants’ writings are rich and diverse, and they have left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 functioned in this article as a basis for enriching and complementing the psychological data collected concerning a range of wellbeing-related variables. however, both the writing and documentary filming data explore memories of the abuse and its enduring impact in adulthood, which warrant further analysis that goes beyond the scope of the current publication but is currently in progress. a published volume of the writings produced during the program is also anticipated. the quantitative analysis indicated that the creative acts of boxing and writing improved women’s experience of their own assertiveness over time, with an important caveat. for those whose compliance with the program was low, no increase in assertiveness was seen. conversely, the self-rated assertiveness of some of these participants reduced after poorly added participation in the program. given the small sample size of this pilot study, these results need replication with larger samples. nevertheless, it is promising that quantitative, implicit measures—ones that are difficult for participants to fake and thus generally reliable—suggest that strongly compliant participation in the lwh program improves psychological assertiveness among csa survivors. encouragingly, the women demonstrated predicted improvements in ptsd symptoms, wellbeing, and general symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress across the program. the magnitude of reduction in pcl-5 scores confirms that the lwh program enabled the women to achieve a significant, clinically meaningful improvement in their ptsd symptoms. the wellbeing measure confirmed the experience of personal growth evidenced in the qualitative data. notably, the women reported more frequent experiences of satisfaction (emotional wellbeing), and more positive functioning through social contribution, social growth (feeling like society was a good place, or becoming a better place for all people), warm, trusting and positive relationships with others, and that their life had a sense of direction and meaning. again, despite the small sample size, these are powerful indicators of the potential of the lwh program to enable csa survivors to heal and flourish. conclusion this pilot study investigated how the combination of writing therapy and embodied empowerment, explored through the physical sport of non-contact boxing, can facilitate the recovery journeys of women survivors of csa and their move towards post-traumatic growth. it used established quantitative psychological measurements and qualitative analytical approaches to examine the impact of the lwh workshops on participants’ wellbeing, and found that the workshops did support the wellbeing of participants and their recovery journeys across a range of variables. previous studies have called on research that gives primacy to the voice of survivors, so that their experiences are not mediated through the lens of therapists, researchers, or other professionals (arias & johnson, 2013). that lwh is conceived and facilitated by a survivor of csa is central to the success of the program and a fundamental component of this study. at the conclusion of the initial eight-week program, the participants made clear their desire to continue, and after a short break the program was reinstated online. at the time of publication of this article, the program continues to operate in eight-week blocks. the resumption of face-to-face activities is also anticipated once distancing restrictions related to the covid-19 pandemic are sufficiently eased. further filming and workshops will be scheduled at this time. the findings of this pilot study support the therapeutic potential of the lwh model and indicate that further investigation and research investment is likely to prove beneficial to female survivors of csa who engage in programs of this kind. left / write // hook lyon, owen, osborne, blake, & andrades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 acknowledgements this research was funded by the creativity and wellbeing hallmark research initiative (cawri) of the university of melbourne. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors donna lyon the university of melbourne shannon owen the university of melbourne margaret s. osborne the university of melbourne khandis blake the university of melbourne and the university of new south wales bruna andrades the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 2 september 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 references anderson, k. m., & hiersteiner, c. 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(2018). perspectives of adult survivors of child sexual abuse: an exploration of the adjustments to self-structure through meaning-making in therapy. journal of child sexual abuse, 27(6), 663–681. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2018.1496961 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-006-9019-0 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-006-9019-0 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-007-9111-1 a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness hall, a. (2011). review of philosophy and happiness, international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 189-192. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.19 alicia hall university of alaska fairbanks ahall25@alaska.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 189 book review philosophy and happiness lisa bortolotti, ed., palgrave macmillan, 2009 isbn: 978-0-230-22429-2, 288pp, us$95.00 review by alicia hall the question ‚what is happiness?‛ may appear from a distance to be a straightforward question with a single answer, but upon inspection we find it is a complex russian nesting doll of questions, with each question opening up to reveal still further questions beyond it. a fruitful analysis of happiness requires not just a search for answers but also an understanding of what the relevant questions are. philosophy and happiness, an impressive volume edited by lisa bortolotti, provides an excellent illustration of how the analysis of happiness requires clear thought about both the relevant questions and their potential solutions. this book, which grew out of the conference happiness and the meaning of life, held at the university of birmingham in 2007, offers a fresh perspective on a number of classic questions about happiness and also points the way toward new avenues of research. the individual contributions to the book address a number of issues and are organized thematically into two parts. the first part, ‚happiness and the meaningful life,‛ brings together articles that consider, from various perspectives, the complex interplay between happiness (taken either in the sense of episodic happiness or in the more global sense of ‘a happy life’) and meaning (which can also be taken in two senses—either in the sense of the meaning someone gives to certain aspects of her life, or in the sense of the significance or ‘worthwhileness’ of a life overall). in the first chapter, thaddeus metz explores the distinctions between episodic happiness (here defined as ‘pleasant experience’) and meaning (in the sense of the meaningfulness of a person’s life overall). he argues that, among other differences, happiness is largely subjective and meaning is largely objective. while a life can be meaningful without happiness, he says, a meaningful life is further enriched by the presence of happiness. john cottingham explores meaning from another angle in an insightful argument about the diachronic nature of happiness. happiness, he says, is not just a matter of our individual experiences, but is also significantly dependent upon how we interpret those experiences. he argues that the concept of happiness is both an evaluative and a hermeneutic concept, so that to understand how any particular moment in a person’s life affects her happiness, we have to know what meaning that moment has for her. furthermore, the meaning it has for her will shift as she moves through life; the meaning of her past experiences is shaped by her current perspective as well as by her anticipation of the future. as such, to understand a person’s overall happiness we cannot just look at isolated time-slices of her life and add them up. in particular, suffering—whether experienced or anticipated—can transform our understanding of how our lives are going. review of happiness and philosophy hall www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 190 pedro alexis tabensky also looks at the connection between suffering and happiness. according to tabensky, happiness—understood here as joy—and suffering, rather than being polar opposites, can be causally connected. to wit, the most valuable form of joy is found not in the absence of suffering, but rather results from suffering. the joy that we manage to wrest from suffering is both different from and better than any joy that could be attained without it. both cottingham and tabensky explore how suffering can provide an impetus for the sort of reflection that helps our lives gain meaning. laurence james extends this analysis by arguing that death—or, more precisely, the expectation of it—is necessary for living a meaningful life. without the expectation of death, he argues, we would have no incentive to make choices about how to spend our time and which projects to devote ourselves to. we would give our lives no shape, and it is shape that imbues our lives with meaning. the immortal life, he argues, would therefore be a meaningless one. muireanna quigley and john harris also consider immortality in their contribution, but they come to a different conclusion. rather than depriving a life of meaning, immortality (or at least, an indefinitely extended lifespan such as regenerative medicine could potentially provide us), would allow our lives to have more meaning by giving us more opportunities to achieve success in projects we value. rounding off the first part of the book, havi carel and mike w. martin also consider how suffering and happiness can coexist. havi carel employs a phenomenological approach to explore the connection between happiness and health. according to carel, how our lives are going is a matter of both our experiences and our perceptions, and because of this, happiness and sickness are not mutually exclusive. she makes a compelling argument for the need for healthcare practitioners to consider health problems from the standpoint of phenomenology, so as to better comprehend how the patient’s life as a whole is affected by illness. in the final chapter of part i, mike w. martin provides a trenchant analysis of the nature of, and interactions between, happiness and meaning, and of how suffering fits into this picture. to live a happy life, he says, we must have meaning, although meaning alone is not enough. we also need to have some degree of enjoyment in our lives. where suffering fits in to this picture thus depends both on what we make of the suffering, and on whether the suffering we experience allows us any room for enjoyment. while the individual chapters in part i make different arguments, they all point to one important claim: that to understand what impact episodic experiences of happiness and suffering have on how happy or meaningful a life is overall, we need to consider how people make meaning out of, and derive happiness from, these lived experiences. the chapters in the second part of the book, entitled ‚happiness and the mind,‛ explore a wide variety of questions relating to mental states and happiness. in the first chapter of this section, elaine duncan, ilaria grazzani-gavazzi, and usha kiran subba, like the authors in part i, explore the role that the interpretation of experience plays in happiness, but they approach this question from an empirical perspective. summarizing cross-cultural research that employs self-reports to study episodic and global happiness, they rightly note that we need more empirical research on lay theories of happiness in order to attain a better understanding of what these self-reports mean. edoardo zamuner focuses on episodic happiness from an epistemic perspective. how do we know when another person is experiencing happiness? he argues that we can gain knowledge about a person’s happiness through visual perception, and he uses this argument to make a point about the distinction between observational properties and non-observational properties that has wider relevance for how we study happiness. review of happiness and philosophy hall www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 191 switching gears in chapter 10, erik angner takes a step back to consider the question of the role that happiness should play in our analysis of how countries are progressing. partly in response to well-known objections to using gdp as the basis for societal assessment and the development of public policy, there have been increasing calls for the use of measures of subjective well-being as an alternative for these purposes. however, angner persuasively argues that method of analysis would suffer from many of the same problems that arise from focusing solely on gdp. measures of average levels of subjective well-being do not tell us about the distribution of well-being throughout the population, and they also tell us nothing about other things we might value. they do not tell us how equitable a society is, for instance, or how educated and autonomous its people are. though a just, educated, and autonomous society might be happier than one that is not, we cannot and should not use subjective well-being as an indirect measure of these goods. next, iain law provides a thoughtful discussion of the difficulties that subjective and objective accounts of happiness encounter in trying to accommodate our pre-theoretic intuitions about happiness. in particular, he argues that if subjective accounts are to be viable, they need to find a way to make better sense of our common intuition that a person can be mistaken about her own happiness. the last three chapters of the book, by james lenman, jordi fernández, and valerie tiberius, explore the connections between identity, self-knowledge, and happiness. james lenman argues that our decisions about how to live are properly aimed at the humean goal of living a life that is able to withstand reflection, and that when we are trying to figure out what the (prudentially) good life is, what we are aiming for is some sort of stable conception of living well. jordi fernández shows what we can learn about happiness from considering the problem of incommensurable choices. according to fernández, what incommensurable choices present us with is a choice between two different hierarchies of value. deciding well when faced with such a choice requires knowledge of our values and desires, but such knowledge is not enough, for making this type of decision is also an act of self-creation. when we decide between two hierarchies of value, we are deciding what kind of person to be. in the final chapter of the book, valerie tiberius, like lenman, looks at happiness from a humean perspective. she argues that living a life that can bear our own scrutiny requires wisdom. to avoid regret, we need to choose wisely when faced with options about how to live, and this requires self-knowledge. rather than simply arguing that we need more self-reflection, however, tiberius looks to psychological research to draw conclusions about when reflection can be useful and when it can be harmful. this chapter is a fitting one to close the book, as it shows how theory and empirical research can and should be brought to bear in addressing the important questions of how to live. individually, the chapters in this book are all of a high quality and can stand on their own, but when read together an interesting dialogue emerges that shows how investigations proceeding from different starting points can work together to reveal a clearer picture of what it is we are studying. to gain a better understanding of happiness, we need to raise questions at several levels of analysis. we need to ask questions about the concepts we use, and about the potential sources and elements of happiness and how these elements interact. we also need to look into the various aids and impediments to the pursuit of happiness, and consider broad questions about the role happiness should play in decisions and evaluations at the societal level. in addition, it is important that we approach these questions from different perspectives, as answers coming from fields beyond our own can help us to question our own assumptions review of happiness and philosophy hall www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 192 and alert us to issues we might be overlooking. philosophy and happiness provides an excellent illustration of how this can be done. a rewarding and thought-provoking read, it proposes some intriguing answers and, perhaps even more importantly, raises still further questions that can help direct our investigations into the elusive nature of happiness. author alicia hall university of alaska fairbanks ahall25@alaska.edu la placa, v., mcnaught, a., & knight, a. (2013). discourse on wellbeing in research and practice. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 116-125. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i1.7 vincent la placa university of greenwich v.laplaca@gre.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 article discourse on wellbeing in research and practice vincent la placa · allan mcnaught · anneyce knight abstract: the aim of this article is to consider debates around the contested nature of concepts of wellbeing in health and social science research and practice, given that government policy discourse centres on the importance of wellbeing as a tool for making policy and evaluating outcomes. it draws attention to the work of mcnaught (2011). he has developed a definitional framework of wellbeing, in which wellbeing is perceived to be a macro concept or area of study concerned with the objective and subjective assessment of wellbeing as a desirable human state. the framework broadens wellbeing to a range of different domains beyond individual subjectivity, which has been the traditional focus of concern, and extracts it from customary affiliations with health to incorporate the family, community and society as a whole. the framework reflects the conceptual complexity of ‘wellbeing’ and highlights its dependency upon a range of social, economic and environmental forces that provide the resources and the contexts for the generation and maintenance of wellbeing at all levels of society. the article argues that the framework provides a paradigm that facilitates further development and systemisation of research and knowledge in the field of wellbeing. firstly, the framework has the capacity to bring some clarity, inclusiveness and holism to research and practice. secondly, it is useful as a tool to enhance theoretical frameworks and to guide the design and development of both health and wellbeing interventions. thirdly, it provides the philosophical underpinnings for wellbeing policy development. keywords: wellbeing, definitional framework, holistic research, theoretical framework, policy development, well-being 1. introduction: health and wellbeing as contested definitions debates around concepts of wellbeing traditionally flourished within the philosophy of ethics, particularly around how ‘one ought to live’ and the virtues of finding happiness and satisfaction (haybron 2008). historically, sociologists have also expressed interest in wellbeing, especially ‘subjective’ wellbeing, where the individual seeks to re-evaluate wellness, and in the potential of wider social forces, such as modernity, to influence it (veenhoven 2008). contemporary debates about human wellbeing have also generated a growing body of literature and research as well as policy discourse (stratham & chase, 2010; mcnaught, 2011; seligman, 2011; dodge et al., 2012). while there is extensive, if contradictory, literature on the concept of wellbeing, it has defied simple definition, because of its inherent complexity (mcnaught, 2011). contemporary discourse often initially refers to the who (1946: 100) definition that ‚health is not the mere absence of diseases but a state of wellbeing‛. whilst this definition links the concepts of health and wellbeing, it also has a tendency to underplay the significance and complexity of wellbeing as a concept. health tended to be located within biomedical and positivist discourses. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 wellbeing, on the other hand, was theoretically perceived as more appropriate to the domains of the emotional and psychological. as a result, wellbeing was often subsumed as one of many domains comprising the concept of health, as opposed to a phenomenon that might be analysed separately, even if it was agreed that both were related. the idea that wellbeing lay in the objective and subjective arena influenced argument around its measurement, for example, in the idea that it is effectively measured through finite economic and social indicators such as income, housing and work (diener et al., 2009). others, veering more towards the subjective side, relied upon individual, emotional and psychological interpretations of wellbeing (felce & perry, 1995). positive psychology has tended to integrate subjective states and objective elements such as family, community and the built environment. it then focuses upon how wider structural domains impact upon psychological development and influence individuals’ active ability to cope, thrive and build resilience on the subjective level. the ‘quality of life’ concept has focused on the degree to which an individual’s life is ‘desirable’ as opposed to ‘undesirable’, often accentuating environmental and structural determinants, such as income and other economic indicators. the structural circumstances and influences on the individual are accentuated as opposed to how individuals may interpret or alter the circumstances that impinge upon wellbeing. clearly, there is much sense in acknowledging the wider circumstances influencing subjective wellbeing. however, it may also be suggested that analyses of the concept require a clear range of specialist areas of research and practice that understand positive states of existence in particular domains, among particular populations and circumstances (mcnaught, 2011). the current uk government is now committed to measuring people's ‘individual’ and ‘psychological’ wellbeing, using such indicators as ‘satisfaction’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘happiness’ (stratton, 2010; office for national statistics, 2012). however, the emergence of wellbeing in policy discourse has not encouraged consensus either in respect of current government policy or in respect of how wellbeing is defined. the department for environment, food and rural affairs (defra) (2009) defines wellbeing as meeting individual need, giving sense of purpose in terms of personal relations, financial reward and attractive environments. on the other hand, government policy increasingly conceptualises health and wellbeing, not only in terms of absence of pain and disease, but also in terms of how they are produced through individual action and wider communities (department of health, 2010a; 2010b). the current uk government also often tends to view health and wellbeing as one and the same, produced on the social, physical, psychological and environmental level, suggesting that wellbeing is a multi-levelled definition, but not fully articulated as such. as a result, researchers, practitioners and policy makers need to be clearer in respect of potential definitional frameworks and how they are used to articulate interventions, policy and evaluations. it can be argued that mcnaught’s (2011) framework attempts to provide the parameters within which operational definitions of wellbeing can be constructed. by so doing, it provides a common currency that facilitates the operationalization of wellbeing research and practice initiatives, thereby making rigorous evaluations and comparisons more possible than is currently the case. 2. a definitional framework for the concept of wellbeing given the multiplicity of approaches in defining and theorizing wellbeing, mcnaught (2011) has attempted to identify and articulate the principle factors and relationships that create what is perceived to be ‘wellbeing’ through the development of what he terms a definitional framework of wellbeing. this framework is predicated on the idea that wellbeing constitutes an area of discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 research and practice that has objective and subjective components, and that social scientists cannot make rational evaluations of wellbeing as a state unless both are taken into account. the framework broadens wellbeing to a range of domains beyond individual subjectivity and extracts it from customary affiliations with health to incorporate the family, community and society as well as a range of environmental, geographic, socio-economic and political forces. while the individual is included in the model, the individual perspective does not dominate; the model considers all aspects of wellbeing. the four domains of the framework are individual wellbeing; family wellbeing; community wellbeing and societal wellbeing. figure 1. a structured framework for defining wellbeing from: knight, a. & mcnaught, a. (eds). (2011) understanding wellbeing: an introduction for students and practitioners of health and social care. banbury: lantern publishing (pp. 11). reproduced with the kind permission of lantern publishing. the framework perceives wellbeing as dynamically constructed by its actors through an interplay between their circumstances, locality, activities and psychological resources, including interpersonal relations with, for example, families and significant others. individuals alter their own accounts of their lives with reference to four domains. an example is when an individual does not feel happy with the situation in his or her birth family and resolves this by moving to another branch of the family or decides to do things differently when he or she starts a family. conversely, individuals can choose different models of relationships (personal and familial) where their previously unmet needs are satisfied. this can also involve moving to a new community or setting that offers economic opportunities and psychological resources different from those the individual previously had within the family. 2.1. individual wellbeing mcnaught (2011) perceives individual wellbeing as an important component of the framework, locating the active agent as possessing the power and consciousness to interpret and design wellbeing. drawing upon diener (2005), subjective wellbeing includes positive and negative evaluations about, for example, work and life satisfaction and affective reactions to life events society community family individual  housing  intergenerational and interpersonal relationships within and without the family  access to economic and social resources  ecology and the environment  physical safety  social cohesion identity economic security physical security political and geographical integrity of the country or state pride and self determination fairness, equity and social justice physical psychological social spiritual discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 such as joy and sadness. whilst individuals actively create and interpret wellbeing, it is capable of being influenced by socially defined concepts of wellbeing such as ‘how life should be’ and other standard definitions (michalos, 1985; veenhoven, 2008; robinson, 2010). individual wellbeing is multi-dimensional, incorporating, for example, subjective experiences of career and financial wellbeing, and physical, psychological, spiritual and moral experiences, further conditioned by those wider structural conditions and objective circumstances of an individual’s life which are capable of external observation and measurement. 2.2. family wellbeing family wellbeing refers to positive and negative evaluations such as life and work satisfaction, interest and engagement, quality of interpersonal and intergenerational relations, family access to economic and other resources and circumstances in which individuals live their lives (however one defines the family). families mould individuals and provide resources such as love; money; and information and status, which can enhance or reduce individual wellbeing. the family is conceptualised as a system organised around a hierarchy of subsystems of individuals and family members (bonomi et al., 2005), providing welfare, adjustment to circumstances and developmental outcomes from childhood to adulthood. 2.3. community wellbeing whilst there is no universal definition of community or community wellbeing, the concept generally refers to the social, cultural and psychological needs of individuals, their families and communities. it extends beyond solely subjective wellbeing, recognising the influence of health, poverty, transportation and economic activity, and of environmental and ecological considerations. central to the concept of community is ‘social capital’, which includes skills, goods and resources required to enable individuals to develop adequately in terms of both health and wellbeing (coleman, 1998; putnam, 1995; 2001; baum & ziersch, 2003; helliwell & putnam, 2007). identification with and participation within localities and communities can often be a source of social, psychological, spiritual/moral and physical wellbeing. communities themselves are moulded and influenced by external sources and events that can erode economic viability and physical and environmental security. the relationship between family and community wellbeing is central to the framework. for example, individuals can construct and draw upon personal and economic resources through familial relations, but this ability is mediated through available opportunities and constraints within the wider community (williams et al., 2011; smith et al., 2011). individuals and families might possess higher levels of wellbeing and social capital when they live in areas of low deprivation, or of regeneration, and have positive interaction with neighbours and friendship networks. 2.4. societal wellbeing the promotion of wellbeing at the societal level has come to the fore in recent years, generating further debate about how to define and assess wellbeing. stiglitz (2002) points out that change in the economy and its effects on society have rendered gross domestic product (gdp) as a measurement of economic wellbeing inadequate. the framework draws upon skilton (2009), who perceived societal wellbeing as a positive or negative mental state arising not only from the actions of individuals but also from a host of collective goods and relations with other individuals. a requirement for societal wellbeing is that basic needs are addressed and that individuals are integrated through a collective sense of purpose, achievement of goals and discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 participation in society. the concept of societal wellbeing draws in other elements of the framework in that it recognises that national and international concerns and conditions affect local communities and individuals and vice versa. the influence of society generally on subjective and individual wellbeing is demonstrated, for example, in the financial rewards, forms of employment, public services and state of the environment that national policy encourages and creates. the development of the concept of societal wellbeing has raised issues around structural social inequalities (wilkinson & pickett, 2010) and the development of methods for assessing and measuring it, for instance, the human development index (hdi) and the concept of gross national happiness (gnh). we now proceed to consider how the framework may be extended for future use among researchers, practitioners and policy makers as wellbeing assumes centre stage in national and global policy discourse. 3. clarity and holistic research and practice the framework posits wellbeing as a macro concept or paradigm with clearly recognised components and relationships that have been established in a range of uniand multidisciplinary studies. it does not dispute that there are conflicts and nuances in the way ‘wellbeing’ is operationalized and conceptualised. however, the essence of the framework is that these conflicts and nuances can be contained within the overall dynamics of the framework, which anchors the operational conceptualisations of wellbeing within a clear and broader definition. this is consistent with the philosophical and scientific origins of the concept of wellbeing. the framework acknowledges the contested nature of concepts and ideas around wellbeing, demonstrating its multiple nature; but integrates it into a framework which provides for some organisation, structure and clarification. simultaneously, the framework appears to allow sufficient opportunity to focus on the very rich and detailed specifics that comprise wellbeing. it also accentuates the ‘uniqueness’ of wellbeing as a topic in itself, as distinct from concepts of health; although there is much space in the model to examine relations with health and various other domains. it focuses upon wellbeing as more of an existential and multiple concept and domain of the human experience than previous models which attempted to work towards uncontested universal definitions (dodge et al., 2012). the framework allows for objective and subjective definitions and assessments of different strands of wellbeing. the attainment of wellbeing, as a result, is not just a matter of behavioural change or advancement of ‘positive psychology’. the framework’s multi-level and inclusive approach recognises that the quest for public and social policy solutions is a strategy that allows structures that are detrimental to individuals, families and communities to be altered. the model is also elastic enough to focus on individual ‘psychology’ and individual requirements, whereby the lay person can articulate needs and solutions. the inclusion of objective and subjective dimensions, together with a range of domains of study, provides clear guidance to researchers as to what research methods to employ when conducting research on potential interventions, strategies and likely outcomes. the strength of the framework is that it brings together how people feel about their circumstances and assessment of how their objective circumstances affect them as individuals, families and societies. the virtue of this approach is that it reverses a tendency towards fragmentation, silo thinking and silo analyses in the social sciences. it is likely that a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods will suffice, depending on the area and content of study. clarity around research and frameworks also enhances more effective practice (glanz et al., 2008). discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 4. development of potential theoretical frameworks and design of wellbeing interventions glanz and rimer (2008) assert that behaviour change and education is best served when it is built upon a combination of theories. theoretical frameworks inform assumptions about behaviour and its determinants, pioneer data collection and underpin planning of adequate and innovative interventions. traditionally, health belief and ecological theories have shaped both health and wellbeing interventions. we anticipate that the definitional framework provides a route for the development of other theoretical frameworks to guide the design of interventions. the structure of the framework is dynamic because the components are lived entities, and the relationships within and between these entities are in continual flux. this emphasis upon change and the multi-levelled construction of wellbeing locates the model in the school of thought that combines both agency and structure. it locates active individuals within a web of other domains which themselves are altered by the other domains and the individual. wellbeing is constituted through a duality of structure (giddens, 1984; stones, 2005). social environment and structure is both the medium and the outcome of social action as individuals negotiate reflexively through both according to circumstances and interpretation. this theoretical approach moves beyond purely positivist foundations and enables health and social care professionals to consider how structure, for example, the family and/or community (and individual interpretations of them), is produced in combination, ensuring a framework that focuses on wellbeing on various levels (smith et al., 2011). as delle fave and massimini (2007) point out, individuals acquire from their environment information that they subsequently replicate and transmit. subjectivity and reflexivity allow space for individuals to reinterpret and reassess everyday stimuli that originate in wider circumstances beyond the individual. the most effective interventions seek to influence individuals and environments (smedley & syme, 2000; glanz & rimer, 2008; smith et al., 2011; buck & frosini, 2012). the definitional framework can guide healthcare practitioners in unpacking the influence of a range of domains, assessing their significance and impact in terms of behaviour change and population-based intervention outcomes. the personal and structural rules and resources (giddens, 1984; hendrey & kloep, 2002; williams et al., 2011; smith et al., 2011) of an individual or community (for instance, family and community relations and/or ability to cope, thrive or develop resilience) impact significantly on how wellbeing (along with health) is created and maintained. for example, individuals with poor physical health may interpret their conditions differently according to attitude, behaviour and circumstances. individuals can develop wellbeing through mobilising personal resilience despite poor circumstances such as poverty or inadequate housing and physical disease (smith et al., 2011). similarly, individuals can choose to moderate negative behaviour that affects health and wellbeing. this includes behaviour such as overconsumption of alcohol or reactions to stress depending on, for instance, personal characteristics or peers and families, that may facilitate effective resilience and motivation to change (smith et al., 2011). the question of adapting resources to fluctuating challenges and circumstances has been taken up by dodge et al. (2012) in their attempt to provide a simplified and universal definition of wellbeing. the development of interventions does not exist independently of the circumstances of individuals and the contexts in which they occur. similarly, interventions not only generate outcomes, but actually spell out contexts of choices and responses that influence process and outcome. for example, the healthy foundations life-stage segmentation model (williams et al., 2011; smith et al., 2011) suggests that interventions to enhance health and wellbeing should account for, for instance, the psychological motivations, resources and environmental discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 constraints and opportunities that affect behaviours. interventions should be designed to match the abilities and resources of an individual at a given time, but strategies can be altered as the individual develops and changes (williams et al., 2011; smith et al., 2011). by clearly identifying domains of wellbeing, the framework can assist researchers and healthcare practitioners to identify potential and/or appropriate levels of interventions. for example, community has been found to be a significant influence in the success of interventions (mcnaught, 2011; smith et al., 2011), where the quantity and quality of community resources and relations impinge upon outcomes. by providing a multi-level framework, and classes of relationships or factors to measure and monitor, the framework provides a starting point to initiate design of the intervention without being prescriptive. the framework also provides other potential resources and outcomes generated through other contexts. the main benefit of the framework is its attempt to establish a common language and conceptual boundaries in a field of study which has been difficult to make sense of. as a result, it is easier to evaluate the significance of theoretical contributions and design and evaluate initiatives in a more systematic and organised way. conceptual rigour will enhance the design and development of health and wellbeing initiatives, ensuring that they are more manageable and focused. the framework will also develop rounded portraits of groups and individuals, their needs and requirements and provide the most effective means of assistance (smith et al., 2011). 5. wellbeing policy development as has been mentioned, government policy in the united kingdom increasingly places wellbeing at its centre (department of health, 2010a), although no agreement has yet emerged as to what constitutes wellbeing. at the same time, the government is encouraging opportunities for national and local services to develop and deliver services related to wellbeing (department of health, 2010b). the establishment of health and wellbeing boards, and new roles for general practitioners (gps) in england providing for wellbeing locally under gp consortia, is an example of this. health and wellbeing boards are integral to the changes to the english public health structure currently being implemented. we feel that a clearer and holistic definitional framework of wellbeing can significantly assist this, providing philosophical guidance to underpin, develop and evaluate wellbeing policy. holistic approaches, if adopted, will have implications for the changing roles of healthcare professionals as well as for their ability to develop expertise. more innovative approaches will be required for service delivery within future financial constraints and an evolving public health system (department of health, 2010b). there is also a requirement to develop wellbeing strategies in the long term if the concept is to have any value or public policy relevance. this, for instance, means developing a long-term perspective on how to encourage wellbeing across the lifespan (given an ageing population) and developing the relevance of the domains through the life-course and associated life-stages (department of health, 2010b; smith et al., 2011). it also entails delivering policy aligned to wider issues of economic cycles and social change. stewart and knight (2011), for example, have examined the influence of private sector housing across the generations within the context of, for instance, neighbourhoods and social capital. the other requirement for wellbeing policy formulation will be the continued consumerization and globalisation of healthcare (jonesdevitt, 2011) and issues of access to wellbeing services. devolution to wales and scotland also has implications for policy and practice (bain & adams, 2011). wellbeing, defined holistically and assigned long-term relevance and value, must be backed up by relevant practical application which enshrines these goals. consumerism often elevates the individual, choice and discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 risk (kemshall, 2002) but is this to occur whilst neglecting structural determinants such as poverty and poor environments? as venhooven (2008) asserts, subjective wellbeing is both an outcome of social systems and a factor in their functioning. delle fave and massimini (2007) draw our attention to the concept of ‘optimal experience’, a state of engagement, involvement and enjoyment which individuals may experience according to personal preference and the wider environment. such an outlook strengthens the case for person-centred wellbeing interventions and public policies that are long term and cover all relevant domains and contexts. this calls for a collaborative approach between researchers, intervention agencies and service users to ensure consistency by policy makers (delle fave & massimini, 2007) if wellbeing is to be established as an important element of future policy commitment. the clarity and consistency in domains throughout the framework reinforces the need for continued clarification of wellbeing and development of policy. the framework’s ability to locate wellbeing within a macro concept or area of study concerned with objective and subjective assessment and the broadening of the concept of wellbeing to a range of domains beyond individual subjectivity, provide some clarity and consistency to assist future policy development. 6. conclusion this article has provided a brief overview of contemporary debates around wellbeing and outlined mcnaught’s (2011) definitional framework of wellbeing, which we argue is broad and holistic, but sophisticated enough to deconstruct and apply practically. the model has some limitations. for example, it does not explore the global domain in much detail, nor the potential consequences of globalisation to establish global standards of wellbeing, often predicated on a western view. questions around global and established standards will assume increasing importance and bring the issue of ‘universal’ versus ‘culturally specific’ ideas around wellbeing to the debate (diener, 2009). it can also be argued that the framework is biased towards a western ‘post-industrial’ society, although that does not preclude developing similar frameworks within non-western countries and contexts. currently, the framework provides the ability to study and analyse wellbeing in different cultures and contexts. there is also capacity to explore how individuals in different cultures and communities adapt rules and resources according to circumstances and constraining influences. this article has outlined three distinct but related theoretical and practical uses of the framework: its capacity to bring some clarity, inclusiveness and holism to research and practice; its usefulness to theoretical framework development and design of wellbeing interventions; and as a tool for wellbeing policy development. authors vincent la placa university of greenwich v.laplaca@gre.ac.uk allan mcnaught hamdan bin mohammed e-university allan.mcnaught@gmail.com anneyce knight university of greenwhich a.knight@gre.ac.uk discourse on wellbeing in research and practice la placa, mcnaught, & knight www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 publishing timeline received 19 september 2012 accepted 9 january 2013 published 7 march 2013 references bain, h. & adams, d. 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(1946). constitution. geneva: who. wieners, l., radstaak, m., van zyl, l. e., & schotanus-dijkstra, m. (2021). to whom should i be kind? a randomized trial about kindness for strong and weak social ties on mental wellbeing and its specific mechanisms of change. international journal of wellbeing, 11(3), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i4.1489 marijke schotanus-dijkstra university of twente m.schotanus@utwente.nl copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article to whom should i be kind? a randomized trial about kindness for strong and weak social ties on mental wellbeing and its specific mechanisms of change leonie wieners · mirjam radstaak · llewellyn ellardus van zyl marijke schotanus-dijkstra abstract: the current study examines the role of social ties in performing kind acts to enhance university students’ wellbeing. due to facing multifaceted challenges, university students form a group that is particularly vulnerable in terms of their mental health. interventions harnessing prosocial behaviour have the potential to increase students’ wellbeing, strengthen personal competencies, and broaden social networks. the first aim of the trial (n = 222) was to explore whether a 4-week acts-of-kindness intervention targeting either (1) strong social ties, (2) weak social ties or (3) unspecified receivers (treatment-as-usual) differ in their impact on students’ mental wellbeing, positive relations, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and perceived stress. the second aim was to examine whether kindness for strong versus weak social ties have different underlying working mechanisms (i.e., positive emotions versus self-esteem) and who benefits most from these instructions (i.e., those with high or low levels of self-esteem and positive relations). results demonstrated that the most significant improvements in mental wellbeing were found in the kindness for strong social ties condition compared to the other conditions. no mediation effects of positive emotions and self-esteem were found. moderation analyses revealed that participants who performed kind acts for weak social ties reported significantly less positive effects on mental wellbeing, but only when their levels of self-esteem at baseline were medium or high. independent of group allocation, participants’ mental wellbeing increased throughout the intervention, but so did the experience of depressive symptoms, anxiety, and perceived stress. more research is needed to examine the timing of kindness interventions and investigate how they can improve mental wellbeing and psychological distress in acute phases of academic stress in university students. keywords: kindness; prosocial behaviour; positive psychology intervention; recipient; mental wellbeing; psychological distress. 1. introduction the concept of entering university marks a critical developmental phase that transforms adolescents into adults (arnett, 2015). university life provides students with opportunities to further their education, to build social relationships and, for some, a means to escape their parental homes (blanco et al., 2008). this time in a young adult’s life is characterized by increased autonomy, freedom, personal growth, and self-exploration opportunities (taylor & baxter magolda, 2015). however, this essential developmental phase is also characterized by increased levels of psychological distress, alcohol/drug abuse, academic pressure, loneliness, social about:blank to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 isolation, high levels of social comparison, peer pressure, and study-life imbalances (bergin & pakenham, 2015; katrevich & aruguete, 2017; mayer et al., 2016). therefore, it is not surprising that university students are three times more likely than the average adult to develop lasting psychological disorders (auerbach et al., 2016; blanco et al., 2008) and are therefore deemed a particularly vulnerable group (van zyl, 2021). kessler et al. (2007) found that more than half of psychological disorders reported by adults start during their time at university. this, however, is not a one-time occurrence but an established trend that increases over time (lipson et al., 2019). lipson et al. reported that the diagnosis of various forms of psychopathology in university students increased from 22 to 36% during the last decade. according to van zyl et al. (2021), these increases in psychological disorders may be a result of a disproportional imbalance between students’ study-related demands (e.g., work pressure, educational demands) and their available study resources (e.g., peer support, lecturer availability). the study-demands-resources framework (sdrf: lesener et al., 2020) proposes that when study demands are high and study resources low, it leads to mental health impairment processes such as burnout, disengagement, stress, depression, and anxiety. this, in turn, results in a significant impairment in psychological functioning that decreases academic performance and learning potential (ebert et al., 2018). to manage this imbalance, students need to activate their personal resources to buffer against the negative consequences it may have on their mental health (van zyl, 2021). this idea aligns with the two-continua model of mental health which suggests that psychological distress is independent of, yet related to, mental wellbeing (westerhof & keyes, 2010). longitudinal studies have shown that high levels of mental wellbeing protect against the onset of psychological disorders and improve recovery in people who are diagnosed with a psychological disorder (e.g., iasiello et al., 2019; keyes et al., 2010; schotanusdijkstra et al., 2019; schotanus-dijkstra et al., 2017). in addition, lesener et al. (2020) argued that personal resources refer to the internal capacities that students activate to self-regulate, control, and successfully impact their environment (e.g., prosocial behaviours, strengths, and grit). 1.1 prosocial behaviour and kindness interventions a growing body of research demonstrates that prosocial behaviour can be an essential personal resource that students can activate to help cope with the ever-increasing study-related demands and lack of resources at university (dovidio et al., 2017; hui et al., 2020). prosocial behaviour helps to build new networks, strengthen social bonds, and create a sense of purpose and meaning, which benefits mental health and wellbeing (chancellor et al., 2018). in addition, research has shown that kindness boosts one’s own happiness, acts as a buffer against burnout and emotional exhaustion, and increases creativity and life satisfaction (chancellor et al., 2018; curry et al., 2018; grant & berry, 2011; grant & sonnentag, 2010). hurling et al. (2015) identified small acts-of-kindness, such as gifting ice cream to a fellow student, as an everyday activity that can spark joy and immediately elevate positive affect in university undergraduates. the benefits of experiencing positive affect can be contextualized within the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. this theory argues that experiencing joy, interest, contentment, pride, and love broaden an individual’s momentary thought-action repertoire, enable the development of more positive thoughts and activities, help to build personal resources, and create an ‘upward spiral’ of mental wellbeing (fredrickson, 2001). therefore, performing small deeds of kindness could lay the foundation for future experiences of positive cognition, affect, and personal resources in university students. further, the positive impact of prosocial behaviour is not only beneficial to the self but spills over onto friends, family, and the extended social network of the individual as well (algoe et al., http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 2008; gray et al., 2014; layous et al., 2012; shiraki & igarashi, 2018). for example, one experimental study, conducted in the real-world context of college sororities, demonstrated that kindness helped form new relationships, especially when the recipient acknowledged the thoughtfulness of the performer and felt gratitude (algoe et al., 2008). moreover, kindness interventions can also have beneficial effects on pre-existing bonds, as they can improve and strengthen relationship quality over time (o’connell et al., 2016; waldinger & schulz, 2016). thus, building interventions around enhancing prosocial behaviours could help students feel good, function well, and fit in better at university. to date, research regarding prosocial behavioural interventions mainly focuses on prosocial spending or acts-of-kindness. the current study focuses on the latter, which is an established route to improve happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect (curry et al., 2018). the instructions of the acts-of-kindness intervention are simple: individuals are asked to perform kind acts for other people around them (chancellor et al., 2018). participants are encouraged to keep track of their acts by keeping a diary or registering such on an app. its simplicity and inexpensiveness make this intervention easy to implement, scalable, and suitable for various populations (van zyl & rothmann, 2019). despite the growing body of research on the effectiveness of this intervention (e.g., alden & trew, 2013; buchanan & bardi, 2010; chancellor et al., 2018; curry et al., 2018; nelson et al., 2021; ouweneel et al., 2014; trew & alden, 2015), there are still some unresolved issues which require further exploration. 1.2 the role of social ties within kindness interventions a notable limitation in current literature is that the recipients of such instructed kind acts are largely unspecified. potential recipients can be broadly divided into strong social ties, consisting of the people most trusted, loved, and closest to the performer, or weak social ties, persons who are merely perceived as acquaintances or strangers (gilbert & karahalios, 2009). one of the few studies that did specify the receiver, was a ‘money-spending trial’ by aknin et al. (2011). they reported that individuals who thought of a time they spent money on a family member or a close friend (i.e., strong social ties) experienced more positive affect than those that remembered giving money to charity (i.e., weak social tie). this study encourages the idea that the effect of performing kind acts is partly dependent on the nature of the relationship between performer and receiver (curry et al., 2018; petersen, 2012). however, the participants in aknin et al.’s (2011) experiment were only retrospectively asked to report on kindness. in contrast, studies in which participants were instructed to perform kind acts found contradictory results. for instance, when socially anxious students received a 4-week instruction to perform three acts-of-kindness for others on 2 days per week, participants reported a balanced distribution of kind acts for strong and weak social ties, and the type of relationship with the recipient did not predict improved positive affect (alden & trew, 2013). a similar conclusion was drawn in a recent experimental study. adult participants from 29 countries were directly instructed to perform at least one kind act each day for strong social ties, weak social ties, or the self, for 7 consecutive days (rowland & curry, 2019). these kindness conditions were compared to both an active control group, in which regular kind acts were observed, and a selfselected waitlist control group. the results showed improved happiness among the three kindness conditions compared to both control groups, but there were no differences between kindness directed at the self, strong or weak social ties. these results indicated that the effects of kindness did not vary as a function of the target (alden & trew, 2013; rowland & curry, 2019). however, these prior studies only measured aspects of emotional wellbeing, limiting conclusions about overall mental wellbeing (i.e., including social and psychological wellbeing; keyes, 2002; http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 ryff, 1989) and psychological distress. in addition, prior studies only aimed to determine the intervention's effectiveness, with limited focus on the psychological or behavioural mechanisms underpinning the change. specifically, none of these prior studies comparing kindness for strong or weak social ties examined the mechanisms through which the intervention might operate. 1.3 potential mediators and moderators of acts-of-kindness evidence from previous acts-of-kindness exercises in which social ties were not specified, shows that positive affect acted as a mediator of the intervention effects on relationship satisfaction (alden & trew, 2013) and mental wellbeing (nelson et al., 2016). increased need satisfaction— thus the level of autonomy, competence and connectedness—was also found to be a mediator of performing kind acts for others on emotional wellbeing (nelson et al., 2015). these working mechanisms may vary dependent on the different types of recipients, as the relationship between performer and receiver might strongly influence the nature of the interaction (van zyl et al., 2019). for instance, while strong social ties are characterized by high emotional intensity and positive communication (goette et al., 2012; klimecki et al., 2013), weak social ties can be linked to feelings of insecurity and anxiousness, as making contact with strangers may be perceived as more challenging (duronto et al., 2005; russell & shaw, 2009). a study by datu et al. (2021) demonstrated that a brief kindness intervention led to increased selfesteem in adolescents. this effect might be even more evident when kindness is directed at strangers (fu et al., 2017). thus, successfully performing kind acts for strong social ties might lead to experiencing more positive emotions. however, kindness for weak social ties might lead to positive self-esteem changes by inducing and handling uncomfortable situations (lyubomirsky et al., 2005). in turn, positive emotions and increased self-esteem might improve mental wellbeing (fredrickson, 2001). by contrast, self-esteem could also be a moderator of the effects of performing kind acts, because previous literature has revealed that individuals with high self-esteem are more engaged in prosocial behaviour (zuffianò et al., 2014). marshall et al. (2014) demonstrated that an increase in self-esteem predicts higher levels of later social support. in particular, research has shown that a longitudinal relation between self-esteem and prosocial behaviour exists, but only when kindness is directed towards strangers (fu et al., 2017). if individuals low in self-esteem show less kindness to strangers on their own initiative, it can be assumed that they are brought more out of their comfort zone when they are asked to do so as part of an intervention. therefore, research to date suggests that being kind to strangers might be most beneficial for people with low self-esteem because they might conquer themselves when accepting the challenge of helping people they are not familiar with. additionally, the performer's level of positive relationships may also play an essential role in how successful prosocial interventions are (lyubomirsky & layous, 2013; senf & liau, 2013). for example, positive emotions such as joy and love might be more easily evoked in interactions with individuals engaged in fulfilling relationships than with individuals with weaker social networks (kashdan et al., 2013). likewise, the positive effects of kindness are often spread among the person's social network; thus, a large and active network might boost these positive changes over a more extended period when multiple interactions have occurred. hence, being kind to friends and family might be most beneficial for individuals who are strongly engaged in positive relationships (lyubomirsky & layous, 2013). 1.4 current study the current study extends existing research by focusing on the role of social ties in performing http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 prosocial behaviour, using various mental health outcomes, and conducting mediation and moderation analyses. the primary aim was to explore whether 4-week acts-of-kindness interventions targeting either (1) strong social ties (family and friends), (2) weak social ties (strangers) or (3) unspecified receivers (treatment-as-usual) differ in their impact on students’ mental wellbeing, positive relations, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and perceived stress. the secondary aim of the current study focused on the mechanism by which acts-of-kindness intervention for strong versus weak social ties works and to determine which type of instructions works best for whom. we expect to find different working mechanisms of kindness dependent on the specific recipient. for example, being kind to family and friends might improve mental wellbeing primarily by experiencing more positive emotions during the interaction. in contrast, the positive impact of kindness to strangers might be mediated through positive self-esteem changes. it is also expected that the effectiveness of kindness is influenced by the levels of selfesteem and positive relations of the performer in a way that people with low levels of self-esteem benefit most from the weak social ties condition and people with high levels of positive relations benefit most from the strong social ties condition. 2. methods this three-armed randomized trial was approved by the ethics committee of the university of twente (bce17724) and registered in the dutch trial register (ntr6820). the best practice guidelines for positive psychological intervention research designs (van zyl et al., 2019) and the consort reporting guidelines were followed (moher et al., 2010). 2.1 participants participants were undergraduate psychology students from a university in the netherlands (n = 222; 74.3% female) with a mean age of 21.3 years (sd = 2.5). the majority of the participants were of dutch or german nationality (94.6%). differences in sociodemographic characteristics were not significant between the three conditions (see table 1, ps > .190) and there were also no significant group differences in any of the baseline outcomes (ps > .298). table 1. baseline characteristics of participants that performed acts-of-kindness for strong social ties, for weak social ties or non-specified (treatment-as-usual) kindness for strong social ties (n=76) kindness for weak social ties (n=76) kindness for unspecified receivers (n=70) age, m (sd) 21.25 (1.89) 21.16 (1.99) 21.39 (3.39) gender, n (%) female 56 (73.7) 54 (71.1) 55 (78.6) male 20 (26.3) 22 (28.9) 15 (21.4) nationality, n (%) dutch or german 71 (93.4) 72 (94.7) 67 (95.7) other 5 (6.6) 4 (5.3) 3 (4.3) marital status, n (%) married 1 (1.3) 1 (1.3) 1 (1.4) never been married 75 (98.7) 75 (98.7) 69 (98.6) living situation, n (%) alone 5 (6.6) 8 (10.5) 12 (17.1) with partner 10 (13.2) 7 (9.2) 7 (10.0) with parents 16 (21.1) 10 (13.2) 6 (8.6) with others 45 (59.2) 51 (67.1) 45 (64.3) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 2.2 procedure all second-year psychology students (n = 254) received an email with information and an online informed consent form after attending an introductory lecture about the study. the 222 participants, who gave informed consent and completed the baseline survey, were randomly allocated (ratio 1:1:1) to one of the three conditions using random numbers from randomizer.org. the randomization procedure was stratified by gender to ensure equal distribution of males over the three conditions. participants completed all online assessment measures at baseline, posttest, and 4 weeks after baseline (follow-up). during the 4-week intervention period, the mediator measures were weekly assessed (c.f. figure 1 for a flow-chart of the study and participants). all instructions and surveys were conducted in english in line with the language used in the study course program at the university. figure 1. flow-chart of participants. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 2.3 intervention conditions the three conditions received similar instructions once a week during the 4-week intervention period. in each condition, the participants were instructed to pick 1 day per week as their kindness day, on which they had to perform five kind acts for other people. we instructed participants to perform five kind acts on 1 day per week based on prior research indicating that performing five acts-of-kindness in 1 day led to more significant wellbeing improvements than performing five acts-of-kindness throughout the week (lyubomirsky et al., 2005). several other studies have also examined the effects of performing five kind acts on 1 day (chancellor et al., 2018; nelson et al., 2021; nelson et al., 2015). although examples of possible kind acts were listed as a guideline, conditions on performing the task were open. kind acts could be directed at the same person or at different persons, who could or could not be aware of the acts. the only difference between the three conditions were the instructions concerning the recipients of the acts. participants in the kindness for strong social ties condition were explicitly asked to perform kind acts for close family and friends. in contrast, participants in the kindness for weak social ties condition were asked to perform kind acts for strangers. the treatment-as-usual condition received general instructions without any emphasis on the recipient. the examples of possible kind acts aligned with these instructions, in that they focused on either family and friends (strong social ties) or strangers (weak social ties), or a mix of those. the following day, participants reported their kind acts they had performed in an online diary. examples of the performed acts as reported in these online diaries were: ‘doing the dishes for my flatmates’, ‘i bought coffee for my friend’, or ‘i gave a friend a ride home’ (for strong social ties) and ‘i let a stranger queue in front of me at the cashier in the supermarket’ or ‘i held the door open for multiple people at the bakery (for weak social ties). in the treatment-as-usual condition, in which the instruction of the intervention did not specify the receiver, the reported acts were distributed across both strong and weak social ties, for instance ‘helping another student with her bike’, ‘i bought my husband’s favorite dessert’ or ‘i shared my cookies with someone i didn’t know in the lecture’. 2.4 outcome measures 2.4.1 mental wellbeing mental wellbeing was measured as a primary outcome using the mental health continuum short form (mhc-sf; keyes et al., 2008). the 14-item scale measures emotional wellbeing (3 items; e.g., “in the past 4 weeks, how often did you feel happy?”), social wellbeing (5 items; e.g., “in the past 4 weeks, how often did you feel that you belonged to a community like a social group, your neighborhood, your city?”) and psychological wellbeing (6 items; e.g., “in the past 4 weeks, how often did you feel that your life had a sense of direction or meaning to it?”). participants responded on a 6-point scale from 0 (never) to 5 (almost always). higher scores on the computed mean score indicate a higher level of mental wellbeing. cronbach’s alpha was .87 at baseline and .92 at posttest, which is consistent with previous reports of the mhc-sf (keyes et al., 2008; lamers et al., 2011; schotanus-dijkstra et al., 2016). 2.4.2 positive relations the 9-item version of ryff's subscale of positive relations (ryff, 1989) was used, which addresses the quantity and quality of established relationships, e.g., “i know that i can trust my friends and they know that they can trust me”. estimations on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) result in total scores ranging from 9 to 63. a higher summed score hints at high engagement with others in positive relations, whereas lower levels indicate the lack of it. the instrument has http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 shown good internal consistency in previous studies (van dierendonck, 2004) and showed a cronbach's alpha of .83 at baseline and .89 at posttest. 2.4.3 depressive symptoms the 20-item center for epidemiological studies depression scale (ces-d) (radloff, 1977) asks participants to rate the frequency of depressive emotions and behaviours over the course of the last week, e.g., “i felt that everything i did was an effort”. answers range from 0 (rarely or none of the time) to 3 (most or all of the time) with a total score from 0 to 60, of which a higher score indicates more depressive symptoms. the ces-d reports overall good psychometric properties (smarr & keefer, 2011), which was confirmed in the current study with cronbach's alpha’s of .91 at baseline and .92 at posttest. 2.4.4 anxiety the 7-item generalized anxiety disorder scale (gad-7) (spitzer et al., 2006) was implemented in order to estimate participants level of anxiety (e.g., “not being able to stop or control worrying”). total higher scores (0–21) indicate prominent feelings of anxiety during the last two weeks on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 3 (almost every day). cronbach’s alpha was .89 at baseline and .85 at posttest, which was similar to prior validation studies (löwe et al., 2008). 2.4.5 perceived stress the level of perceived stress was estimated with the 10-item perceived stress scale (pss) of cohen et al. (1983), e.g., “in the last month, how often have you been upset because something that happened unexpectedly?”, with answers from 0 (never) to 4 (all the time). higher total scores (0– 40) indicate a higher level of perceived stress. earlier studies demonstrated good psychometric characteristics of the scale (cohen et al., 1997), affirmed in the current study (α = .87 at baseline and at posttest). 2.4.6 positive emotions positive emotions was assessed with 8 items from the modified differential emotions scale (mdes; schaefer et al., 2010). on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very intense), participants rated to what extent they experienced different kinds of emotions in the past 24 hours (e.g., “interested, concentrated, alert”; and “loving, affectionate, friendly”). higher total mean scores display the experience of deep positive emotions. the mdes has previously shown good psychometric properties (galanakis et al., 2016) and cronbach’s alpha in the current study was .78 at baseline and .83 at posttest. 2.4.7 self-esteem self-esteem was measured with the 10-item rosenberg self-esteem scale (rse; rosenberg, 1965), which consists of positively and negatively worded statements concerning an individual's personal feelings of self-worth (e.g., “on the whole, i am satisfied with myself”). answers range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), with higher sum scores (10–40) indicating high feelings of self-worth. the cronbach’s alpha of .90 at baseline and .91 at posttest is in line with previous findings on the good psychometric properties of the scale (franck et al., 2008). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 2.5 statistical analyses data analyses were conducted with spss version 25.0, using 2-tailed tests with a significance level < .05. due to high drop-out rates throughout the intervention, missing data were imputed using multiple imputations with 10 iterations and fully conditional specification (van buuren, 2007). drop-out at 4-week follow-up was so high (73.4%) that the presented analyses were conducted up to posttest only. the drop-out rates at posttest were equally distributed among the three conditions, kindness for strong social ties = 52.6%, kindness for weak social ties = 47.4%, kindness for unspecified receivers = 47.1; χ2(2) = 0.58, p = .749. in addition, demographic characteristics and outcome measures at baseline did not significantly differ between drop-outs and completers (ps > .217). adherence was a priori defined as performing at least 3 kind acts for at least two weeks. this is in accordance with most studies about acts-of-kindness, in which participants are usually instructed to perform 3 or 5 kind acts per day (e.g., alden & trew, 2013; chancellor et al., 2018; nelson et al., 2021; nelson et al., 2015; nelson et al., 2016; trew & alden, 2015). not all participants completed the online diaries (see figure 1), but at least 44.1% of the participants adhered to the program. adherence per week and total adherence did not significantly differ between conditions, χ2s < 0.70, ps > .706. further, three indicators of effort were measured each week on scales from 1 (no effort at all) to 9 (a great deal of effort). the level of effort the students had put in last week’s kind acts (average means between 3.4 and 4.5) and how hard they had tried to perform these acts (average means between 3.2 and 4.2) did not differ between conditions (ps > .176). however, invested time to perform the kind acts was significantly lower for weak social ties compared to the other conditions at week 2, kindness for strong social ties m = 4.23, sd = 2.21; kindness for weak social ties m = 3.17, sd = 1.70; kindness for unspecified receivers m = 4.34, sd = 2.18; f(2; 111) = 4.11, p = .021, and at week 3, kindness for strong social ties m = 3.93, sd = 2.09; kindness for weak social ties m = 2.84, sd = 1.82; kindness for unspecified receivers m = 4.00, sd = 2.02; f(2; 80) = 3.17, p = .047, but not at week 1 and 4 (ps > .135). paired t-tests were used to examine the change in all outcomes over time within each group. in addition, between-group efficacy was investigated with analyses of covariance (ancova) controlling for baseline levels of each outcome measure and bonferroni post-hoc tests. the relevant within and between-group effect sizes were reported in cohen’s d (cohen, 1988), in which a correction was applied to take baseline differences between groups into account (morris, 2008). additionally, simple mediation, multiple mediation, and moderator analyses were performed with hayes's (2012) process macro v3.1. first, it was tested whether the beneficial effect of prosocial behaviour (kindness for strong social ties = 1; kindness for weak social ties = 0) on mental wellbeing at posttest (t4) was mediated by positive emotions and self-esteem [(t1+t2+t3)/3]. mental wellbeing at baseline (t0) was added as covariate in the model. in the results, the regression coefficients of the a-paths describe the effect of the intervention on the mediator. the b-paths show the effect of the mediator on mental wellbeing and the c-path reports the total effect of the intervention on mental wellbeing. the c’-path is the direct effect of the intervention on mental wellbeing, when controlled for the mediators. calculation of the indirect effects (ab) were bias-corrected (bc) with 95% confidence intervals (ci) based on 10,000 bootstrapped resamples. an indirect (or mediation) effect is found when the bc 95% ci’s range does not contain zero. second, it was tested who benefited most from performing prosocial behaviour depending on the instructions given. the grand centred means of the potential moderators, self-esteem, and positive relations, at baseline and the condition strong versus weak social ties x moderator http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 interaction term were entered as predictors of the model. mental wellbeing at baseline was also entered in the model. interaction plots displayed the predictive effect of the condition at different levels of the moderator (1 sd below average, average, and 1 sd above average). 3. results 3.1 efficacy of performing kind acts table 2 shows that all three kindness conditions showed some significant changes over time, but most were not in the expected direction. participants in the kindness for strong social ties condition reported significant improvements in mental wellbeing, t(75) = -2.07, p = .042, d = 0.26, but also increases in depressive symptoms, t(75) = -4.21, p = <.001, d = 0.47, anxiety, t(75) = -2.01, p = .048, d = 0.26, and perceived stress, t(75) = -2.73, p = .008, d = 0.38. in addition, kindness for weak social ties demonstrated an increase in perceived stress, t(75) = -4.01, p = <.001, d = 0.43, while kindness for unspecified receivers showed an increase in depressive symptoms, t(69) = -3.10, p =.003, d = 0.39. no significant changes were found for positive relations. table 2. means, standard deviations (sd) and within-group results (paired t-test) for each outcome per condition and time point kindness for strong social ties (n = 76) kindness for weak social ties (n = 76) kindness for unspecified receivers (n = 70) m sd p m sd p m sd p mental wellbeing baseline 3.15 0.65 2.98 0.69 3.08 0.68 posttest 3.30 0.49 .042 3.04 0.60 .343 3.07 0.59 .973 emotional wellbeing baseline 3.40 0.82 3.23 0.88 3.32 0.89 posttest 3.46 0.57 .461 3.14 0.76 .350 3.32 0.76 .986 social wellbeing baseline 2.57 0.77 2.46 0.81 2.54 0.77 posttest 2.75 0.72 .023 2.58 0.66 .138 2.53 0.69 .898 psychological wellbeing baseline 3.52 0.76 3.29 0.75 3.40 0.75 posttest 3.67 0.55 .129 3.37 0.67 .296 3.41 0.61 .974 positive relations baseline 48.80 9.80 48.83 6.92 47.46 8.46 posttest 47.70 9.14 .201 48.44 6.62 .630 47.70 7.74 .800 depressive symptoms baseline 16.58 9.40 18.79 10.54 17.77 10.67 posttest 20.65 7.82 <.001 19.97 7.71 .276 21.75 9.52 .003 anxiety baseline 6.11 4.56 7.07 4.92 6.51 5.01 posttest 7.19 3.55 .048 7.36 3.08 .573 7.19 4.01 .296 perceived stress baseline 17.76 5.61 17.88 5.99 17.99 6.33 posttest 19.62 4.13 .008 20.29 5.16 <.001 19.00 5.31 .143 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 in addition, changes over time did not significantly differ between the three kindness conditions for depressive symptoms, anxiety, perceived stress, and positive relations (f < 0.02, ps > .176; see figure 2). however, changes in mental wellbeing, f(2, 218) = 3.70, p = .026—and in particular emotional wellbeing, f(2, 218) = 3.19, p = .043, and psychological wellbeing, f(2, 218) = 3.82, p = .023—significantly differed between the kindness conditions. post-hoc tests revealed marginal improvements in mental wellbeing (pstrong vs. weak = .065, d = 0.13; pstrong vs. usual = .054, d = 0.24) and psychological wellbeing (pstrong vs. weak = .050, d = 0.09; pstrong vs. usual = .056, d = 0.18) in favor of kindness for strong social ties. significant improvements were also found for emotional wellbeing (pstrong vs. weak = .037, d = 0.18), but only relative to weak social ties. figure 2. main effects of performing kind acts on mental wellbeing, depressive symptoms, anxiety and perceived stress from baseline to 4-week posttest. 2.5 2.75 3 3.25 3.5 baseline post-test m e n ta l w e ll b e in g 10 15 20 25 baseline post-test d e p re ss iv e s y m p to m s 4 5 6 7 8 9 baseline post-test a n x ie ty 16 18 20 22 baseline post-test p e rc e iv e d s tr e ss 2.75 3 3.25 3.5 3.75 baseline post-test e m o ti o n a l w e ll b e in g 2.75 3 3.25 3.5 3.75 baseline post-test p sy ch o lo g ic a l w e lb e in g 2 2.25 2.5 2.75 3 baseline post-test s o ci a l w e lb e in g http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 mediation and moderation analyses the simple mediation model revealed that changes in self-esteem mediated the effects of kindness for strong social ties versus weak social ties on mental wellbeing, b = 0.04, bc 95%ci [0.00, 0.09]. during the intervention, levels of self-esteem reduced more in the weak social ties condition compared to the strong social ties condition (see supplemental table), f(2, 151) = 9.88, p = .002. however, when positive emotion was added to the model, the mediating effect of selfesteem was attenuated, b = 0.03, bc 95%ci [-0.00, 0.08] (see figure 3). there was no mediating effect of positive emotions in either the simple, b = -0.02, bc 95%ci [-0.06, 0.02], or the multiple, b = -0.02, bc 95%ci [-0.05, 0.02], mediation model. it is noteworthy that positive emotions were significantly reduced within the kindness for weak social ties condition up to posttest, t(75) = 2.73, p =.008 (see supplemental material), but not within the kindness for strong social ties condition. figure 3. multiple mediation for the relationship between performing kind acts for strong (1) versus weak social ties (0) on mental wellbeing at posttest, mediated by self-esteem and positive emotions as measured during the intervention. the effects are controlled for the outcome measures at baseline. additionally, the moderation analyses indicated that self-esteem at baseline moderated the effect of kindness on mental wellbeing, b = 0.03, bc 95%ci [0.00, 0.05], t = 2.12 p = .036, but no moderation effect was found for positive relations, b = -0.01, bc 95%ci [-0.03, 0.01], t = -0.77, p = .445. figure 4 (below) shows that the effects of prosocial behaviour on mental wellbeing were reduced in the weak social ties condition when baseline levels of self-esteem were medium, b = 0.18, bc 95%ci [0.02, 0.31], t = 2.39, p = .018, or high, b = 0.34, bc 95%ci [0.00, 0.13], t = 3.24, p = .002, while the level of mental wellbeing did not seem to be influenced by the level of self-esteem at baseline in the strong social ties condition. 4. discussion this 3-armed randomized trial found that prosocial behaviour for strong social ties could boost mental wellbeing more than performing kind acts for weak social ties or unspecified social ties. a closer examination of the strong versus weak social tie conditions revealed that neither positive emotions nor self-esteem mediated the effects of kindness on mental wellbeing when both mediators were taken into account. further, the intervention seemed to be least effective for http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 figure 4. moderation analyses showing the effects of self-esteem and positive relations at baseline on improving mental wellbeing at posttest via performing kind acts for strong or weak social ties. esteem. an additional, noteworthy observation is the increase of psychological distress that was detected in the whole sample throughout the intervention, independent of the kindness condition. based on these findings, the question arises whether acts-of-kindness interventions are a suitable method to improve students’ mental health and if so, how to integrate their practical implementation into a university context which is characterized by various stressors. overall, the current study provides new evidence about the role of social ties in kindness interventions in several ways. first, our study demonstrated a trend towards a larger increase in mental wellbeing in favour of kindness for strong social ties. this finding is in line with a recall prosocial spending experiment by aknin et al. (2011), showing that strong social ties boost positive feelings more compared to weak social ties. our study adds that not only emotional wellbeing but also psychological and multifaceted mental wellbeing were marginally more improved when performing acts-of-kindness towards strong social ties was compared to weak or unspecified ties. a possible explanation for these findings is that kindness might enhance wellbeing by promoting a more charitable perception of others and one’s own community, leading to a sense of cooperation and awareness of what is good in one’s life (lyubomirsky et al., 2005). this effect might be more prominent if it relates to the person’s own social network rather than to weaker ties, in which feelings of community and connectedness to one’s own life have yet to develop. according to the broaden-and-build theory (fredrickson, 2001), the experience of love and connectedness within social bonds leads to the desire to further explore and strengthen these relationships, leading to building personal resources (lyubomirsky et al., 2011). being kind to strangers may entail a positive experience, but opportunities may be limited to build on those sole experiences to enhance wellbeing. further, being kind might satisfy the human need for connectedness and lead to greater liking and peer-acceptance by others (layous et al., 2012; lyubomirsky et al., 2005). strangers or weak social ties may not have the opportunity to reciprocate the kindness that was shown to them towards the initial performer. for example, binfet and whitehead (2019) demonstrated that adolescents used the kindness intervention to strengthen and invest in their pre-existing relationships instead of connecting with new people. by contrast, two prior studies—in which participant instructions for performing kind acts aligned most strongly to ours—found no differences between weak and strong social ties (alden & trew, 2013; rowland & curry, 2019). one possibility for the contradictory findings is that 2.5 2.75 3 3.25 3.5 low medium high m e n ta l w e ll b e in g level of self-esteem kindness for strong social ties kindness for weak social ties 2.5 2.75 3 3.25 3.5 low medium high m e n ta l w e ll b e in g level of positive relations kindness for strong social ties kindness for weak social ties http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 kindness to strong social ties might work differently for university students (aknin et al., 2011) than for adults (rowland & curry, 2019), as the structure of the personal social network might change over time. another explanation might be that participants in the kindness for strong social ties condition may have put in more effort in the intervention because increased motivation, effort and engagement can positively influence mental wellbeing (lyubomirsky et al., 2011; lyubomirsky & layous, 2013; sheldon et al., 2010). although we found some indications that invested time played a role in the intervention effects, results indicated that only participants in the weak social ties condition had put in less time compared to the other conditions. indicators of effort and engagement were, however, limited by high drop-out rates during the intervention. taken together, kindness to strong social ties might act more self-serving to meet university students’ social needs than being kind to weak social ties and enhances wellbeing more effectively by addressing the broadened effect of positive emotions. secondly, the findings of the mediation and moderation effects contribute to the literature examining how and for whom performing kind acts work best. positive emotions and self-esteem were not significant mediator variables in the current study. this finding is in contrast with prior research (e.g., datu et al., 2021; duronto et al., 2005; fu et al., 2017), of which the lack of effect of positive emotions was most surprising based on the abundant theoretical and empirical evidence demonstrating the benefits of positive emotions on mental wellbeing (e.g., fredrickson, 2013; nelson et al., 2016). a possible explanation for this contradictory finding might be that the current sample size was too small to detect mediation and moderation effects (brown et al., 2012; schoemann et al., 2017). the sample sizes at the time-points during the intervention focusing on the mediator outcomes were in particular low. more importantly, positive emotions and selfesteem decreased or stayed relatively the same during the intervention indicating that the intervention was not effective in helping students improving their levels of positive emotions and self-esteem in the first place. when no effect of the intervention on mediators occurs, it is also more difficult to detect a mediating effect, albeit not automatically excluded, making it legitimate to still test (hayes, 2009). finally, it might be that for self-esteem, a gender effect occurred. our study consisted mainly of female students, and a prior one-year longitudinal study demonstrated that self-esteem did not affect job satisfaction among female employees. in contrast, it did have a positive mediating effect for male employees (mäkikangas & kinnunen, 2003). in addition, the current study suggests that people with high or medium levels of self-esteem at baseline benefited less from performing kindness to weak social ties. it is tempting to conclude that people with low levels of self-esteem thus benefit more, but this hypothesis could not be confirmed in the current study. however, the findings indicate that it seems less effective to allocate people already high in self-esteem to a kindness intervention in which they have to focus on being kind to strangers. these people might already engage more in prosocial behaviour compared to people low in self-esteem (marshall et al., 2014; zuffianò et al., 2014) and could perhaps benefit more from other wellbeing interventions (hendriks, warren et al., 2019; van agteren et al., 2021). researchers should consider personal characteristics and preferences of participants when designing their study (elwyn et al., 2012), as well as designing kindness intervention studies in which a greater variety of possible moderators are assessed in large samples. lastly, we found elevated levels of depressive symptoms, anxiety, and perceived stress in one or more of the kindness conditions. these elevated levels of psychological distress did not differ between groups, suggesting that all undergraduate students reported similar experiences during the intervention. however, no control condition was included, which makes it unclear whether the increase in psychological distress was either directly triggered by the intervention, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 occurred in all students throughout the course of a semester, or was an interaction of the two. assuming that the current findings pointed towards a causal link between the kindness intervention and heightened symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, this is largely in contrast with prior studies in which kindness reduced depressive symptoms (chancellor et al., 2018; mongrain et al., 2011), anxiety (kerr et al., 2015; trew & alden, 2015), and perceived stress (kerr et al., 2015) over time. however, some studies reported little to no effect of performing kindness on psychological distress; mongrain et al. (2011) found decreased depressive symptoms within individuals who performed kind acts for others, but this decrease did not significantly differ compared to an early-memory control condition. similarly, kerr et al. (2015) found neither an effect of kindness on depression over time nor compared to a mood-tracking control condition, while the reduced effect on perceived stress was visible in both conditions. the increase in psychological distress might be explained by the context in which the intervention was performed (gruber et al., 2011; mcnulty & fincham, 2012). as the intervention was conducted over the course of a semester, the posttest date coincided with the midterm examination period, which is a well-known academic stressor that increases students’ stress, depression and anxiety (trueba et al., 2013). van zyl (2021) argued that study-related demands systematically increasing throughout the semester, starting low initially and systematically increases over time as work pressure, deadlines, study-life conflict, and study stress start to combine. this compounded experience of psychological distress peaks during the exam period (landow, 2006). as such, the benefits of the acts-of-kindness intervention may therefore not be sufficient to completely counteract the adverse effects their educational program may have had on their mental health. on top of that, the additional intervention instructions—which might have felt as external pressure instead of being intrinsically motivated—could also have further added to the examination period's academic demands (bergin & pakenham, 2015; deci & ryan, 2000; roddenberry & renk, 2010). all of these arguments could also apply to the high drop-out rates during the study and thereby a lack of information about students’ engagement in the kindness intervention. these findings also raise the question if there is a time during the semester in which it is effortless and natural for students to engage in prosocial behaviour to reap the most benefits from kindness interventions. this is important because a prior study demonstrated that high-adherers profited the most from engaging in kind behaviour compared to low-adherers and non-adherers (binfet & whitehead, 2019). previous studies have shown that individuals who go through acute phases of stress show increased interest in prosocial behaviour in a tend-and-befriend pattern (tomova et al., 2017; von dawans et al., 2019). however, the time leading up to the examination period is for most students likely characterized by an increased learning effort and, as a result, leads to a reduction in joyful and social activities. furthermore, the instructions of the kindness intervention in the current study may have been confrontational because they made the students aware of how little time they spend with others which might have triggered feelings of social isolation (bergin & pakenham, 2015; darling et al., 2007). based on the study-demandsresources framework which views prosocial behaviour as a potential personal resource that can be used to cope with high study demands, it could be argued that engaging in prosocial behaviour should be cultivated as resource before entering phases of acute stress, so that the benefits of it are retrievable when needed (lesener et al., 2020). taken together, these findings highlight the importance of understanding the situational context in which university students may find themselves in and the importance of understanding how to optimize the implementation of effective kindness interventions not merely to increase wellbeing but also to alleviate distress. the findings also suggest that kindness interventions can only realize their full http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 potential when they are performed by intrinsically motivated students and who have sufficient time and personal engagement, rather than being performed half-heartedly and by students who are primarily extrinsically motivated as part of a study program. 4.1 limitations several potential limitations need to be acknowledged when interpreting these results. first, the current study did not include a neutral control group, limiting the interpretability of the pre-post effects in particular. second, the use of a psychology student sample consisting of young and predominantly white female participants restricts the generalizability of the findings to the general or even student population. the current findings are potentially less generalizable to male university students, as previous studies have shown that prosocial behaviour during adolescents depends on gender and gender roles (van der graaff et al., 2018). in adulthood, some differences between gender remain; women tend to demonstrate higher rates of prosocial behaviour generally and have shown greater person-activity fit for positive interventions, including acts-of-kindness (thompson et al., 2015). in addition, the current study, as well as positive psychology in general, have not yet been successful in examining the effect of kindness interventions in a non-weird context (hendriks, schotanus-dijkstra et al., 2019). third, the significant drop-out rates during the intervention and at posttest, as well as at follow-up time points, represented a unique challenge. although multiple imputations were used to align with the intention-to-treat principle and decrease chances for bias, the data quality may still have been impaired. also, the follow-up data was not suitable, so no conclusions about the sustainability of effects can be drawn. finally, we do not know how successful the performed kind acts were. if receivers do not acknowledge or do not respond positively to a kind act, the performer might feel worse or demotivated because they could not positively impact the recipient (aknin et al., 2013; wiwad & aknin, 2017). 4.2 implications for future research future research should include a neutral control condition, larger and more heterogeneous samples recruited among different educational programs and from different cultures, and incentives to motivate participants to complete weekly diaries and surveys over a more extended period of time. to ensure higher rates of adherence, the intervention instructions could be tailored more personally to the participants needs and should be communicated in a more personal way than via texts by e-mail (e.g., using an instruction video or an interactive app; kelders, 2019; ludden et al., 2015). other recommendations to increase adherence include building in more variety (e.g., vary the type of recipient, the number of acts to perform; lyubomirsky & layous, 2013) and a social component such as an (online) group discussion or involvement of role models who motivate the students (morgenroth et al., 2015). the findings indicate that the effects on mental wellbeing, as well as for whom kindness works least well, differs dependent on the social tie. additional research is needed to further explore which facets of mental wellbeing are affected, which working mechanisms underlie this relation, and who benefits most from which type of kindness intervention. in addition, examination of the long-term effects of kindness interventions on the quantity and quality of person’s social ties could be a fruitful field for prospective studies. it would be particularly interesting to use various constructs of connectedness to measure the characteristics and the changes in participants' social networks, as neither social wellbeing nor positive relationships were affected in the current study. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ to whom should i be kind? wieners, radstaak, van zyl, & schotanus-dijkstra www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 5. conclusion the current study results indicate that the act of kindness intervention directed at strong social ties can promote mental wellbeing more than kindness directed to weak social ties or the acts-ofkindness intervention as usual with unspecified receivers. the effect of kindness on mental wellbeing appears to be embedded in a complex relationship between the giver and the personal characteristics and circumstances of the receiver. future research should identify different models of interaction between giver and receiver that influence the mechanisms of kindness. by understanding the various working mechanisms and beneficial and detrimental consequences of prosocial behaviour, kindness interventions could be personalized to maximize the benefits of kindness on mental health. conflict of interest statement the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. data availability statement data is available upon request via the corresponding author. authors leonie wieners university of applied sciences, germany mirjam radstaak university of twente, the netherlands llewellyn ellardus van zyl optentia research unit, north-west university, south africa department of hrm, university of twente, the netherlands departement of social psychology, goethe university, germany marijke schotanus-dijkstra university of twente, the netherlands m.schotanus@utwente.nl authors’ contributions schotanus-dijkstra initiated the study. schotanus-dijkstra, van zyl and radstaak were responsible for data collection. wieners performed the statistical analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. all authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version. publishing timeline received 26 november 2020 revised version received 9 june 2021 accepted 11 june 2021 published 30 september 2021 references aknin, l. b., dunn, e. w., whillans, a. v., grant, a. m., & norton, m. i. 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(2022). close to others closer to happiness?: an empirical investigation of the social determinants of subjective wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 12(2), 206-232. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i2.1887 marta g. pancheva istituto universitario sophia marta.pancheva@sophiauniversity.org copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 206 article close to others closer to happiness?: an empirical investigation of the social determinants of subjective wellbeing marta g. pancheva · alejandra vásquez abstract: extensive research on the determinants of people‘s subjective wellbeing has shed light on factors that influence quality of life and that traditional welfare measures tend to neglect. particularly important among these appear to be the relational, interpersonal aspects of human existence, and both intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of participating in different types of social networks and associative activities. this field of analysis, however, is not devoid of challenges. these include: the wide variety of social proxies adopted in the literature, which has often led to mixed results; and the almost exclusive use of cross-sectional data, which makes it impossible to control for individual unobserved characteristics that could significantly affect both wellbeing levels, and the quality of one’s social and relational context. in this study, we address both of these issues by examining the association between subjective wellbeing, and a rich set of 17 social capital indicators reflecting the following dimensions: personal relationships, social network support, civic engagement, and trust and cooperative norms. moreover, we use longitudinal data, and control for time-constant sources of heterogeneity among respondents, such as personality traits and predispositions. our results suggest a consistent relationship between wellbeing and all four dimensions of social capital examined. furthermore, we find evidence of important gender differences in the way social and relational factors affect overall life satisfaction. keywords: subjective wellbeing; social capital; relationships; longitudinal 1. introduction the idea that people are reliable judges of their own quality of life, and that it is therefore worth asking them to assess it directly, gained increasing acceptance during the second half of the 20th century among scholars from different disciplines. the analysis of people’s subjective wellbeing (swb) and what influences it has brought to light a number of factors that affect the quality of human life, the impact of which might otherwise be underestimated or completely overlooked (dolan et al. 2008; becchetti & pelloni 2013). among these, considerable attention has been paid to the social context of wellbeing, that is, to the value that different types of social networks have for individuals, and for society in general (helliwell & putnam 2004). in particular, in recent decades the analysis of swb has intersected with a concept that originated in the field of sociology, namely, social capital (bjørnskov 2003; helliwell & barrington-leigh 2010; leung et al. 2011). however, empirical evidence on the relationship between the two is still mixed. while, on the one hand, researchers have mainly used a single-item indicator of people’s overall life satisfaction about:blank close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 207 (ls) as a proxy of swb, on the other hand, a wide range of variables have been applied often interchangeably – as proxies of social capital at both the individual and collective level of analysis. these include trust, participation in formal or informal associative activities, contacts with family and friends, among others. one reason is the relative vagueness of the concept of social capital, which still lacks a widely accepted definition (portes 1998; scrivens & smith 2013). indeed, empirical investigations adopting different measures of social capital have produced mixed evidence on its relationship with people’s wellbeing, making it difficult to draw unambiguous conclusions (rodriguez-pose & berlepsch 2014). another open question concerns the nature and causal direction of this relationship. while it is possible that the existence of social capital directly or indirectly affects a person’s swb levels, the opposite could also be true, or a third factor, omitted from the analysis, could influence both variables (peasgood 2007). for instance, it may be the case that personal traits and innate predispositions influence both the respondent’s general perceptions and judgments about life and the quality of his or her relational context and attitude towards involvement in social activities. so far, empirical analysis in this field has almost exclusively used cross-sectional data, making it impossible for researchers to control for such individual sources of heterogeneity and, thus, potentially reaching spurious results. studies using longitudinal data are still rare and have mostly considered a handful of social capital aspects (peasgood 2007; becchetti et al. 2008; powdthavee 2008; lucchini et al. 2015). in this paper we contribute to the study of the relationship between swb and social capital at the micro level by explicitly addressing both the above issues. first, in order to obtain a more complete picture of how and the extent to which different social and relational factors relate to wellbeing, we analyse a wide range of indicators encompassing four distinct dimensions of social capital, namely personal relationships, social support, civic engagement, and trust and cooperative norms. we, thus, explore how each of these facets of a person’s social context relates to their overall satisfaction with life. furthermore, to address the potential problem of endogeneity, we implement an analytical strategy that successfully parcels out time-invariant heterogeneity characteristics, both observed and unobserved, that can significantly affect both these entities. to this end, we use panel data from a nationally representative sample of american adults who were called at three points in time and answered a wide range of questions concerning both their subjective perception of wellbeing, and a rich set of social and relational aspects of their lives. finally, we explore whether there is evidence of gender differences in the relationship between social capital and subjective wellbeing. the rest of the article is organised as follows: section 2 is devoted to the theoretical background of our study and summarises previous research on the relationship between social capital and swb. in section 3 we present the data and variables employed in our empirical investigation and formulate the research hypotheses. section 4 outlines the analytical strategy adopted. the empirical results obtained are reported in section 5, and discussed in section 6. section 7 concludes. 2. theoretical background in recent decades, the relational and social aspects that influence the quality of human life have gained increasing attention among scholars interested in determining the drivers of human wellbeing (dolan 2008; boarini et al. 2012; becchetti & pelloni 2013). the more and more widely accepted need to “go beyond the gdp” as a measure of progress (stiglitz et al. 2009) has fostered, among others, a keen interest in exploring the extent to which and how various features of a http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 208 person’s intimate and social networks can contribute to or hinder their happiness. this assessment is important because, for example, it has been argued that people tend to overestimate the wellbeing gains they can achieve by satisfying extrinsic desires (beside basic needs) through the consumption of material goods, while at the same time underestimating the importance of intrinsically valuable activities such as time spent with family and friends, participation in a variety of social activities, etc (stutzer 2004; putnam 2000; frey et al. 2007; bruni & stanca 2008; bartolini 2009). 2.1 sociality and relational goods the importance of sociality for wellbeing is not surprising given the propensity of humans to interact and cooperate which has been linked to two distinct physiological mechanisms. the first refers to the release of oxytocin and endorphins during social interactions, which promotes bonding with other members of a group (kilts 2002; zak et al. 2005). the second mechanism relates to the functioning of so-called mirror neurons that allow subjects to put themselves in others’ shoes and experience feelings such as empathy and compassion (rizzolatti et al. 1997; iacoboni 2009). pro-social preferences and attitudes such as generosity, reciprocity or altruism, have been analysed by behavioral scientists in experimental settings, among others (levitt & list 2007; van lange et al. 2013). moreover, they have been linked to the production of so-called relational goods in the encounter and interaction between people within different types of social networks (from the more intimate ones such as family and friendship, to wider ones related to participation in social and even economic activities, and organisations (gui 2005; uhlaner 1989, becchetti et al. 2008). such goods are simultaneously produced and consumed by the parties involved in a given relationship and have been defined as a kind of local public goods for whose emergence a coordinated investment (of time, energy, etc.) is required (becchetti & pelloni 2013). relational goods capture the non-instrumental, intrinsic value of interpersonal relationships in various contexts, and require sincere and genuine contact between the parties (bruni and stanca 2008). 2.2 social capital beyond this intrinsic value of social relations, another prominent strand of studies in the social sciences that focuses on the existence, characteristics, and outcomes of so-called social capital created within a certain network, has extensively examined over the last three decades the potential productive value arising from effectively functioning social groups. it has mainly distinguished two levels of analysis individual and collective, referring to social capital as a primarily personal or more general, public resource (scrivens et al. 2013). in particular, the first approach focuses mainly on the individual benefits that can be derived from the existence and use of the social capital resulting from belonging to a certain network of interpersonal and social relations (portes 1998). for instance, one of the precursors in the development of the concept pierre bourdieu defined social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (bourdieu 1986, p.21). as such, in bourdieu’s view, it could be exploited by members of a given social network to maintain their status and power while excluding non-members and, thus, hindering social mobility (scrivens et al. 2013). moreover, as economist g. loury stated, “the social context within which individual maturation occurs strongly conditions what otherwise equally competent individuals can achieve.” (loury 1977, p.176). indeed, it has been confirmed that the resources in one’s networks http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 209 can be highly relevant for personal outcomes in various fields from education (coleman 1988), to labour market participation (aguilera 2002; lin 1999; 2001), to physical and mental health (berkman & glass 2000; kawachi & berkman 2001), and so on. this view of the role of social networks in people’s lives, which is more instrumental than the above-mentioned one that exalts the intrinsic value of the relational goods created within them, sheds light from a different angle on the importance of the existence and characteristics of these networks in determining the overall quality of life and, therefore, the wellbeing levels of an individual. one of the scholars who opened up to this broader view of social capital, j. s. coleman defined it in rather general, if not vague (portes 1998) terms as “a variety of different entities … that consist of some aspect of the social structure” and “facilitate certain actions of individuals who are within the structure” (coleman 1990, p.302). in particular, he stressed that its existence is not necessarily confined to homogenous, class-based networks as in bourdieu’s view, but can actually emerge within more heterogeneous social groups (including families, communities, schools, etc.). moreover, coleman highlighted the functional role of social capital as a resource that can be used by social and even economic actors, and distinguished three main dimensions that compose it: trust, informational channels, and rules/sanctions (coleman 1988). the second one was subsequently analysed in depth by robert putnam who was interested in the characteristics and functioning of both formal (political, civic, and labour), and informal (interactions with family and friends) interpersonal networks, and their potentially beneficial role for society (putnam 2000). in putnam’s view social capital consists of “connections among individuals – social networks, and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (putnam 2000, p.19). the greater the amount of informal social interactions and participation in associative activities, the lower the incentives and frequency of free-riding. social capital fosters solidarity, cooperation, civic engagement, and responsibility, and can even produce, as a positive externality, economic growth and political stability (putnam 1993). 2.3 social drivers of subjective wellbeing beyond these considerations about the overall relevance of the existence and functioning of social networks, both individual and collective level aspects of social capital have been examined as potential drivers of human wellbeing. in particular, the analysis of social capital has intersected with another field of research that has grown exponentially over the past quarter century seeking to assess people’s swb and shed light on its determinants (bjørnskov 2003; helliwell & barrington-leigh 2010; leung et al. 2011; rodriguez-pose & berlepsch 2014; gable & bromberg 2018; helliwell et al. 2018). scholars have gone as far to state that social and relational factors not only significantly affect the quality of human life but are one of the “most robust correlates of subjective wellbeing” (helliwell & putnam 2004, p.1437). a wide range of indicators encompassing aspects of social capital at both the individual and collective level have been applied in the literature in order to empirically assess their relationship with self-assessed happiness. starting from the individual level of analysis concerning personal networks and various types of support deriving from their existence, among others, informal social activities such as time spent with family and friends, and frequency of contacts with neighbours have been associated, with greater life satisfaction (diener & seligman 2002; lelkes 2006; pichler 2006; peasgood 2007; powdthavee 2008; helliwell & barrington-leigh 2010; leung et al. 2011). this positive association has, on the one hand, been linked to the production of relational goods through the involvement in such non-instrumental social activities (becchetti et al. 2008). on the other hand, it may depend on the resources, in terms of various types of support, made available through involvement in http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 210 such interactions. the latter thesis has not been fully supported by empirical research with somehow mixed findings, instead, being recorded with respect to the social support resulting from the existence of such relationships and networks, especially the one received (leung et al. 2011; lucchini et al. 2015; gable and bromberg 2018). studies have shown that a person’s perception of being able to rely on the support of closely connected others is positively associated with wellbeing levels (kaul & lakey 2003; siedlecki et al. 2014). however, the support actually received or enacted does not always seem to have such beneficial effects highlighting a so-called social support paradox (shrout et al. 2006; rafaeli & gleason 2009). a positive relationship has been rather confirmed with respect to the provision of support (thomas 2010; aknin et al. 2013), as well as in cases where there is a certain degree of reciprocity in the exchange of social support (maisle & gable 2009). moving from the realm of personal relationships to the associative level of human interaction, participation in non-political and non-economic organisations has been found to be positively correlated with swb (pichler 2006; helliwell 2003; helliwell & putnam 2004; becchetti et al. 2008). at the same time, no significant or negative relationship was recorded with respect to involvement in political or professional interest groups (pichler 2006; leung et al. 2011). the case of volunteering and its relation to swb remains somewhat ambiguous, with rather mixed empirical evidence (dolan et al. 2008). volunteering has been linked to two distinct channels through which increased wellbeing can be produced: one involving the intrinsic rewards of caring for others or being involved in a cause that goes beyond the realm of one’s private interest; and a more extrinsic one related to the expansion of one’s social network (helliwell 2003; pichler 2006). however, even when empirically confirmed, its positive association with swb is less robust, with the impact of volunteering weakening considerably when controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity factors (such as personality traits) (meier & stutzer 2008). another form of associative activity that has been linked to swb is religious practice. usually operationalised through indicators such as frequency of participation in religious services, it has been positively and significantly associated with life satisfaction in several studies (helliwell 2003; helliwell & putnam 2004; greene & yoon 2004; clark & lelkes 2005; hayo 2007; rodriguezpose & berlepsch 2014). as in the case of volunteering, here too the impact on wellbeing can be at least twofold, with religious practices, on the one hand, influencing a person’s sense of meaning or tempering negative feelings such as insecurity, and, on the other hand, enabling the expansion of one’s social networks, and even the adoption of healthy behaviours (ellison 1991; 1994; mccullough & larson 1999). finally, the existence of such and other types of associative activities and the overall degree of civic engagement of citizens of a given society clearly depend on the quality of the social fabric and the particular social norms shared within it. for instance, one of the most widely examined aspects of social capital is trust both general and institutional – whose beneficial effects on happiness have been confirmed in various studies (frey & stutzer 2002; helliwell & putnam 2004; helliwell 2006; hudson 2006; bjørnskov 2008; helliwell & wang 2011). along with it, a person’s sense of belonging to their community of reference, and their feeling of safety within it, among others, have also been analysed as determinants of wellbeing (helliwell & barrington-leigh 2010; leung 2011; helliwell & wang 2011; rodriguez-pose & berlepsch 2014). despite all these findings, it is difficult to draw a uniform conclusion regarding the association between social capital and swb. this is partly due to the lack of an unambiguous definition of the former concept (scrivens & smith 2013), and partly due to data availability issues, with most http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 211 of the existing empirical analyses focusing on a single aspect, and only a handful of studies so far exploring a somewhat more integrated view to social capital in its various dimensions (helliwell & barrington-leigh 2010; leung et al. 2011; rodriguez-pose & berlepsch 2014). 3. data, variables, and hypotheses we use data coming from the midlife in the u.s. (midus) national longitudinal sample of adults, and collected in three dates: 1995/1996 (wave 1), 2004/2005 (wave 2), and 2012/2013 (wave 3), respectively. respondents were first administered a phone interview and then asked to complete an additional self-assessed questionnaire. for the purposes of our analysis, we selected a balanced sample of 1,600 respondents, aged 20 through 92, who completed both the phone interview and the self-assessed questionnaire in all the three waves of the survey (yielding a total of 4,800 observations). as a proxy of swb we use an indicator of the respondents’ “satisfaction with life at present” (diener 1984), measured on a 10-point likert scale that ranges from 0 (not at all satisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied). we follow a widespread practice, and treat this ordinal indicator as a cardinal variable in order to ease the interpretation of the estimated parameters, since both measures produce similar results (see ferrer-i-carbonell & frijters 2004). as explanatory variables, we chose a set of 17 distinct indicators of social capital reported in table 1. for the selection of these predictors we followed the classification proposed by scrivens and smith (2013), according to which existing social capital definitions and measures can be summed up and organized in four separate dimensions or categories. the first concerns the structure and nature of the respondents’ personal relational networks, and activities or behaviours that help to establish and maintain them (such as time spent together and other forms of contact, and communication). in a broad sense, this personal relationships dimension can reflect both intimate ones (with family and friends), and those with colleagues, neighbours, and so on. the second dimension of social capital concerns the resources derived from these relationships or, in other words, the different types of social support that can be seen as a result of the existence of these networks. the intuition behind the identification of this separate category of indicators is that, beyond their intrinsic value, personal relationships also influence the quality of one’s life through the various forms of support (both given, and received) that they activate. moving from the individual to the collective level, the third social capital category considered in our analysis refers to the respondent’s level of civic engagement. it includes various types of activities such as participation in civic or political organisations, engagement in voluntary services, etc. this dimension largely corresponds to putnam’s idea of formal and informal interpersonal networks (putnam, 2000). civic engagement can, on the one hand, have intrinsic beneficial effects on a person’s wellbeing deriving from acting in accordance with one’s values, fulfilling what is perceived as a civic obligation, or from the enhanced sense of purpose associated with contributing to the common good. on the other hand, it may also have an extrinsic value associated with the extension of one’s social networks and contacts. finally, the fourth category of social capital we consider refers to the dimension of trust and cooperative norms that characterise the respondent’s surrounding environment. such intangible resources can have a beneficial impact on the community as a whole, but also shape the way people behave as members of a society, with potential effects on individual wellbeing as well. other variables included as controls in our regression analysis are: a series of sociodemographic characteristics, namely age, and age squared; marital status (separated, divorced, widow, never married; ref. category: married), and number of children in the family; two social http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 212 stratification indicators, namely, educational level (undergraduate degree, postgraduate degree, ref.cat. high school diploma or less), and position in the income distribution (five income quintiles based on the net yearly equivalent household income of the respondent); respondent’s self-rated health (with five response categories: excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor), and wave dummies. detailed descriptive statistics can be found in table a1 in the appendix. table 1. list of social capital indicators. dimension question personal relationships 1. frequency of contacts with family visits, phone calls, letters, or electronic mail messages (1=several times a week; 2=once a week; 3=several times a month; 4 =once a month or less) 2. frequency of contacts with friends via visits, phone calls, letters, or electronic mail messages (1=several times a week; 2=once a week; 3=several times a month; 4=once a month or less) 3. frequency real conversation or get together with neighbours (1=several times a week; 2=several times a month; 3=less than once a month; 4=never or hardly ever) social network support 4. emotional support received by spouse/partner; parents; in-laws; children; other family/friends, anyone else (average n.hours per month) 5. emotional support given to spouse/partner; parents; in-laws; children; other family/friends, anyone else (average n.hours per month) 6. unpaid assistance received in a typical month from one of the following: spouse/partner; parents; in-laws; children; other family/friends; community volunteers; religious groups; governmental groups (0= no; 1=yes) 7. unpaid assistance given in a typical month to one of the following: spouse/partner; parents; in-laws; children; other family/friends; anyone else (0= no; 1=yes) 8. financial support received in a typical month from one of the following: spouse/partner; parents; in-laws; children; other family/friends (0= no; 1=yes) 9. financial support given in a typical month to one of the following: spouse/partner; parents; in-laws; children; other family/friends (0= no; 1=yes) 10. can call neighbour for help if needed (1= a lot; 2=some; 3=a little; 4=no) civic engagement 11. volunteer in one of the following: hospital/nursing home; school/ youth organization; political organization; other (0= no; 1=yes) 12. attend meetings of labor union or other professional organizations (0= no; 1=yes) 13. attend meetings of sports or other social organizations (0= no; 1=yes) 14. frequency attending religious services (1 =once or more times a week; 2=several times a month; 3=never) trust and cooperative norms 15. feeling safe being out alone in my neighbourhood at night (0= no; 1=yes) 16. don't feel i belong to anything i'd call a community (1= strongly agree 7=strongly disagree) 17. people do not care about other people's problems (1= strongly agree 7=strongly disagree) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 213 finally, based on the empirical results reported in the reference literature above, we formulate the following hypotheses for each of the dimensions of social capital: hypothesis 1. (personal relationships): the more frequent the contacts with close ones (family, friends), the higher the reported level of swb. hypothesis 2. (social support): the higher the level of social support, the greater the overall satisfaction with life. hypothesis 3. (civic engagement): the more actively the respondent is involved in associative activities, the higher his/her level of swb. hypothesis 4. (trust and cooperative norms): the stronger the sense of belonging and safety in one’s community, the higher the life satisfaction. 4. analytical strategy to assess the relationship between respondents’ wellbeing and the social capital indicators of interest, we ran two set of regressions based on the following equation, where subscript i refers to individuals, i=1,2,..,1600, and subscript t denotes the wave within which the information is collected (t=1,2,3): itti q q itq k k itkit zxls  ++++=  == 11 where lsit is our subjective wellbeing dependent variable (overall life satisfaction); xit is a vector composed of the 17 social capital explanatory variables indexed by k=1,2,..,k, with respective coefficients βk; zit is a vector of control variables, indexed by q=1,2,..,q, with respective coefficients γq; αi are individual fixed effects; are wave effects, and εit is a residual that varies both across individuals and time, and captures our overall ignorance about the factors associated with the dependent variable of the model. we used two different estimators: first, we applied a random effects (re) model which assumes that the independent variables in the equation are uncorrelated with the idiosyncratic error term. it allows to estimate the influence of both time-invariant, and time-variant predictors on the dependent variable, and is a good analytic strategy when the variables of interest have low within variation over time. however, such estimates would be biased in case of unobserved heterogeneity captured in the αi term of our equation. therefore, we also adopted a fixed effects (fe) model that allows us to control for time-invariant heterogeneity factors. instead of relying on cross-person comparison as in the case of cross-sectional data analysis, this approach allows to use the same person, followed over time, as its own control, and account for the influence of time constant characteristics like personality traits and dispositions, genetic endowments, which are among the most important drivers of swb levels (bartels 2015; raysamb & nes 2018). if there is enough intra-individual variation in the regressor, the fe model yields unbiased estimates of the influence of social capital on wellbeing. finally, a hausman model selection test was run to determine which of the two estimators was more efficient. 5. empirical results a bivariate descriptive analysis reported in table 2, based on the first wave of observations, generally confirms what is known in the literature with higher wellbeing levels reported by married, healthy, better educated, and affluent individuals. our data seems to confirm a uhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 214 shaped relationship between swb and age, with middle aged adults reporting lower mean life satisfaction levels than older ones. turning to our social capital variables of interest, for the first dimension of personal relationships we observe that people with more frequent contacts with family, friends, and neighbours report a higher ls. regarding the category of social network support, it seems that both giving and receiving emotional support is associated with lower average levels of swb for our sample. slightly higher ls levels are associated with providing financial help rather than receiving it. no apparent difference in levels of wellbeing is recorded for unpaid assistance, either given or received. interestingly, the perception of being able to count on one’s neighbour for help is associated with significantly higher overall life satisfaction levels. turning to the third civic engagement dimension of social capital, we observe higher average swb scores reported by individuals who actively participate in the various social activities considered in our analysis. finally, for the last category – trust and cooperative norms – we see that the greater the respondents’ sense of belonging and safety, the higher their average satisfaction with life. in order to assess more precisely the relationship between social capital and wellbeing, we then proceed to analyse the parameter estimates resulting from the application of the re and fe regression models presented in the previous section, reported in table 3. both re and fe estimators are first run for the whole sample (columns 1 and 4), and then separately for males and females (columns 2 and 5, 3 and 6, respectively). we begin by discussing the results of the re regression model. regarding the dimension of personal relationships, we find only partial confirmation of our first hypotheses. our empirical evidence suggests that less frequent contacts with family members have negative effects in terms of ls (slightly more pronounced for women than for men). however, no statistically significant relationship is found with respect to contacts with friends and neighbours. another covariate closely related to this social capital dimension is the respondents’ marital status. compared to the reference category of being married, never married, widowed, divorced and especially separated individuals register significantly lower ls levels. finally, we find a slightly positive association between the number of children in a household, and the wellbeing of female respondents. turning to the second category of social capital, namely social network support, our regression analysis suggests that receiving emotional support from closely related persons is positively associated with the respondent’s swb levels. the reverse seems to be true with regard to being the recipient of financial support or unpaid assistance. both of these forms of social support are associated with lower ls levels, the former for women, the latter for men. regarding providing (rather than receiving) support, our re estimates suggest that more time spent giving emotional support is associated with slightly lower swb, especially for women. at the same time, for the male subsample there is evidence that providing financial support is related to higher life satisfaction. finally, the perceived possibility to ask a neighbour for help seems to be, among our social support indicators, the one most strongly associated with ls. compared to the reference category (“a lot”), feeling less confident that neighbours would help in case of need is associated with substantial losses in swb for both genders (a relationship somewhat more pronounced for women). therefore, our second hypothesis is only partly confirmed. it seems that a more nuanced picture, taking into account also gender differences in the relationship between social support (provided and received) and swb shall be considered. taking into account the third category of social capital examined – civic engagement, we find no significant association between volunteering or participation in sporting or other social organisation meetings and respondents’ overall life satisfaction. at the same time, participation http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 215 table 2. average life satisfaction levels by covariates of interest. variables mean ls std. dev. variables mean ls std. dev. variables mean ls std. dev. variables mean ls std. dev. variables mean ls std. dev. variables mean ls std. dev. variables mean ls std. dev. dimension 1: personal relationships dimension 2: social network support freq. contacts family freqcontacts friends freq. contacts neighbours emotional support rec. emotional support given financial support rec. can call neighbour for help no 8 1.57 no 8.29 1.46 no 7.85 1.38 sev. times a week 7.91 1.4 sev. times a week 7.89 1.4 sev. times a week 7.93 1.38 yes 7.81 1.42 yes 7.81 1.43 yes 7.47 1.6 a lot 8.14 1.25 once a week 7.73 1.48 once a week 7.79 1.5 sev. times a month 7.63 1.46 financial support given unpaid assistance rec. unpaid assistance given some 7.47 1.52 sev. times a month 7.64 1.55 sev. times a month 7.74 1.4 never 7.28 1.71 no 7.51 1.63 no 7.82 1.47 no 7.68 1.46 a little 7.23 1.52 once a month, less 7.63 1.26 once a month, less 7.62 1.48 yes 7.93 1.34 yes 7.82 1.38 yes 7.86 1.42 no 6.69 1.68 dimension 3: civic engagement dimension 4: trust and cooperative norms volunteer attend meetings social org. attend meetings prof.org. religious service attend. feel safe out alone don’t belong community people don’t care for others once/more a week 8.14 1.25 agree 6.67 1.88 agree 7.3 1.74 no 7.75 1.51 no 7.76 1.48 no 7.75 1.48 sev. times a month 7.47 1.52 no 7.63 1.52 somewhat 7.61 1.6 somewhat 7.65 1.25 yes 7.91 1.32 yes 7.95 1.3 yes 8.12 1.13 never 7.23 1.52 yes 7.98 1.33 disagree 8.34 1.28 disagree 8.42 1.25 socio-demographic characteristics age group gender highest education level marital status hh income quintile self-reported health wave married 8.03 1.3 quintile 1 7.37 1.74 excellent 8.22 1.18 24-39 years old 7.91 1.4 male 7.84 1.33 high school or less 7.66 1.35 separated 6.51 2.3 quintile 2 7.68 1.4 very good 7.98 1 wave 1 7.83 1.43 40-49 years old 7.73 1.48 female 7.82 1.52 undergraduate 7.65 1.5 divorced 7.37 1.6 quintile 3 8.05 1.28 good 7.56 1.55 wave 2 7.92 1.42 over 50 7.64 1.55 postgraduate 8.15 1.37 widowed 7.53 1.83 quintile 4 7.93 1.29 fair 7.11 1.47 wave 3 7.9 1.56 never mar 7.19 1.38 quintile 5 8.08 1.26 poor 7 2.58 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 216 in trade unions or other types of meetings of professional organisations seems to have some boosting effect on people’s life evaluation, especially for males. in addition, we find some evidence that less frequent participation in religious services is associated with lower swb levels – a relationship entirely led by the female subsample. .thus, our third hypothesis is only partially confirmed. finally, all three indicators reflecting the fourth dimension of social capital including trust and cooperative norms seem to have a significant relationship with people’s satisfaction with life confirming our fourth hypothesis: feeling safe out alone at night-time, feeling a part of the community, and believing that others care about the people around them, are all associated with higher swb levels. turning to the fe regression model, which allows us to control for time-invariant unobserved characteristics that might have a substantial influence on respondents’ swb (raysamb & nes 2018; lucas 2018), the re estimates presented above are largely confirmed. more precisely, no particular differences are observed in the first social capital dimension. again, we find only evidence that rarer contacts with family are associated with lower levels of life satisfaction. married respondents appear to be by far the most satisfied compared to the other marital status categories, although for women the strong negative association with swb is now statistically significant only in case of separation. regarding the dimension of social support, receiving emotional support has a slight positive effect on wellbeing. again wellbeing seems to be lower for female respondents receiving financial help, while the boosting effect for the male part of the sample of giving such kind of support is even more pronounced. once controlled for individual fe, no significant relationship is observed with respect to the covariates of unpaid assistance. at the same time, not having the possibility to rely on neighbours in case of need again shows a strong negative association with ls, especially for women. as for the various forms of civic engagement considered, there are almost no differences compared to the re estimates, except for the relationship between swb and the frequency of attendance of religious services, where no significant association is found once we control for time-invariant heterogeneity characteristics of the respondents. finally, the re results are also confirmed in the case of the fourth dimension of social capital trust and cooperative norms, with the sole exception of the explanatory variable “feel safe out alone during the night” which is not significantly associated with ls in the fe regression model. a general comparison of the re and fe results shows that the signs of parameters are consistent in the two models. however, to determine which of them better fits the data, we perform a hausman specification test. the null hypothesis that the individual-level effects are adequately modeled by a random-effects model is resoundingly rejected in favor of the fixed effects one. time constant unobserved characteristics seem to be related to the social capital predictors, and it is therefore important to take them into account. in summary, even after controlling for time-invariant unobserved characteristics (such as the personality traits of the respondent, or inborn determinants of her perception of wellbeing), we can confirm that a number of social capital indicators continue to be significantly associated with swb. interestingly, in almost all cases, this relationship seems to be driven by one of the two genders, with no significant relationship found for the other one. the only indicators that consistently predict higher swb levels for both male and female respondents in our sample are the possibility to count on a neighbour’s help in case of need, feeling a part of a community, and being confident that people in general care about others’ problems. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 217 table 3. random (re) and fixed (fe) effects of social capital indicators on life satisfaction variables re whole sample re male re female fe whole sample fe male fe female dimension 1: personal relationships frequency contacts with family several times a week (ref.cat) once a week -0.14*** -0.14** -0.14* -0.06 -0.07 -0.07 (0.05) (0.06) (0.08) (0.06) (0.08) (0.09) several times a month -0.15** -0.14* -0.13 -0.09 -0.08 -0.10 (0.07) (0.08) (0.11) (0.08) (0.09) (0.13) once a month or less -0.31*** -0.28*** -0.36** -0.31*** -0.33*** -0.30 (0.09) (0.11) (0.16) (0.10) (0.13) (0.19) frequency contacts with friends several times a week (ref.cat) once a week -0.01 -0.06 0.05 0.02 -0.00 0.06 (0.05) (0.07) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.08) several times a month -0.02 -0.06 0.02 -0.04 -0.06 -0.00 (0.06) (0.08) (0.08) (0.07) (0.09) (0.10) once a month or less -0.10 -0.13 -0.09 -0.03 -0.08 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 frequency contact with neighbours several times a week (ref.cat) several times a month -0.03 0.01 -0.07 -0.09 -0.06 -0.10 (0.06) (0.08) (0.08) (0.06) (0.09) (0.09) never or hardly ever -0.09 -0.18 -0.08 -0.21 -0.28 -0.21 (0.13) (0.21) (0.17) (0.14) (0.21) (0.19) dimension 2: social network support log hours emotional support received 0.08*** 0.04 0.10*** 0.06** 0.03 0.07* (0.02) (0.03) (0.04) (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) log hours emotional support given -0.06** -0.02 -0.10** -0.04 0.01 -0.06 (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) (0.03) (0.04) (0.05) financial support received -0.14** 0.02 -0.27*** -0.07 0.16* -0.28*** (0.06) (0.08) (0.09) (0.07) (0.09) (0.10) financial support given 0.10** 0.13* 0.07 0.15*** 0.24*** 0.06 (0.05) (0.07) (0.07) (0.06) (0.08) (0.08) unpaid assistance received -0.10*** -0.15*** -0.07 -0.06 -0.08 -0.05 (0.04) (0.05) (0.05) (0.04) (0.06) (0.06) unpaid assistance given -0.01 0.04 -0.06 -0.01 0.06 -0.08 (0.05) (0.07) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.08) can call neighbour for help a lot (ref.cat) some -0.26*** -0.23*** -0.28*** -0.20*** -0.16** -0.24*** (0.05) (0.06) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.08) a little -0.33*** -0.31*** -0.34*** -0.18** -0.16 -0.21** (0.07) (0.10) (0.09) (0.08) (0.12) (0.10) no -0.65*** -0.43** -0.78*** -0.47*** -0.33 -0.57** (0.14) (0.19) (0.20) (0.16) (0.21) (0.23) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 218 table 3. random (re) and fixed (fe) effects of social capital indicators on life satisfaction (continued) variables re whole sample re male re female fe whole sample fe male fe female dimension 3: civic engagement volunteer 0.00 -0.01 -0.01 0.04 0.05 0.04 (0.04) (0.06) (0.05) (0.05) (0.07) (0.06) attend meetings prof. organizations 0.16*** 0.21*** 0.10 0.15** 0.18** 0.12 (0.05) (0.07) (0.07) (0.06) (0.08) (0.09) attend meetings social organizations -0.02 0.00 -0.05 -0.03 -0.03 -0.04 (0.04) (0.05) (0.06) (0.05) (0.07) (0.06) frequency participation religious services once or more times a week (ref.cat) several times a month -0.13** -0.06 -0.17** -0.08 -0.09 -0.09 (0.05) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.09) (0.10) never -0.06 0.02 -0.13* -0.00 -0.02 0.01 (0.05) (0.07) (0.08) (0.08) (0.11) (0.11) dimension 4: trust and cooperative norms feel safe being out alone at night 0.14*** 0.1 0.20*** 0.01 -0.11 0.11 (0.03) (0.06) 0.05 (0.04) (0.07) (0.05) don’t feel belong to community 0.12*** 0.12*** 0.13*** 0.07*** 0.06*** 0.07*** (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) people do not care about others’ problems 0.06*** 0.06*** 0.06*** 0.05*** 0.06*** 0.04* (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) socio-demographic control variables age -0.04*** -0.06*** -0.03** -0.00 -0.08 0.08 (0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.04) (0.06) (0.06) age squared 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00** (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) marital status married (ref.cat.) separated -1.01*** -0.93*** -1.06*** -0.90*** -0.86** -0.86*** (0.21) (0.36) (0.24) (0.22) (0.37) (0.27) divorced -0.29*** -0.28*** -0.29*** -0.09 -0.25** 0.05 (0.07) (0.11) (0.10) (0.10) (0.12) (0.16) widowed -0.32*** -0.60** -0.29** -0.27** -0.57* -0.16 (0.11) (0.28) (0.12) (0.13) (0.30) (0.14) never married -0.47*** -0.60*** -0.38*** -0.20 -0.41** -0.06 (0.10) (0.14) (0.14) (0.14) (0.21) (0.20) number of children 0.02 -0.02 0.05** 0.01 -0.04 0.05 (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 219 table 3. random (re) and fixed (fe) effects of social capital indicators on life satisfaction (continued) variables re whole sample re male re female fe whole sample fe male fe female level of education high school or less (ref.cat.) undergraduate degree 0.02 0.05 -0.00 0.08 0.13 0.02 (0.05) (0.07) (0.07) (0.08) (0.12) (0.11) postgraduate degree -0.06 -0.15* 0.06 0.15 0.05 0.19 (0.06) (0.09) (0.09) (0.15) (0.21) (0.20) income quintile quintile 1 (ref.cat.) quintile 2 0.21*** 0.15 0.26*** 0.17** 0.14 0.20** (0.06) (0.09) (0.08) (0.07) (0.10) (0.09) quintile 3 0.27*** 0.27*** 0.29*** 0.18** 0.14 0.23** (0.07) (0.10) (0.09) (0.07) (0.11) (0.10) quintile 4 0.33*** 0.32*** 0.38*** 0.24*** 0.18 0.33*** (0.07) (0.09) (0.09) (0.08) (0.11) (0.10) quintile 5 0.44*** 0.49*** 0.44*** 0.32*** 0.30** 0.38*** (0.07) (0.10) (0.10) (0.08) (0.12) (0.11) self-rated health excellent (ref.cat) very good -0.22*** -0.24*** -0.23*** -0.03 -0.09 0.01 (0.06) (0.08) (0.08) (0.07) (0.09) (0.10) good -0.46*** -0.48*** -0.46*** -0.20** -0.24** -0.18 (0.06) (0.09) (0.09) (0.08) (0.11) (0.11) fair -0.39*** -0.48*** -0.34*** -0.19** -0.34*** -0.09 (0.07) (0.10) (0.10) (0.08) (0.11) (0.11) poor -0.48*** -0.54*** -0.45*** -0.32*** -0.43*** -0.26** (0.09) (0.13) (0.14) (0.09) (0.13) (0.13) observations 4800 2253 2547 4800 2253 2547 individuals 1600 751 849 1600 751 849 sigma_u 1,260 1,204 1,305 1,470 1,465 1,807 sigma_e 1,026 0.977 1,066 1,026 0.977 1,066 rho 0.337 0.341 0.332 0.513 0.555 0.652 note. robust standard errors in parentheses; significance levels: *** p<0.01; ** p<0.05, * p<0.10. wave dummies included but not reported. 6. discussion the relationship between subjective wellbeing and social capital has been widely examined. however, previous investigations have often produced mixed results. this is partly due to the wide variety of social capital indicators that have been implemented interchangeably. on the other hand, the predominant use of cross-section data has limited the possibility to take into account personal heterogeneity characteristics that might significantly influence both a person’s self-reported wellbeing, and the social and relational aspects of his or her life and, thus, lead to spurious results. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 220 in the present study, we addressed both of these issues by employing longitudinal data to analyse a wide range of social capital indicators and their association with swb. by simultaneously exploring four distinct dimensions of a person’s social and relational context through the adoption of 17 separate indicators, we offer a comprehensive view of their relative importance for respondents’ overall life satisfaction. in addition, we highlight some gender differences in the relationship between swb and social capital that have rarely been discussed in the reference literature. moreover, by taking advantage of the longitudinal nature of our data, we are able to control for personal fixed effects and, thus, account at least in part for potential endogeneity that may otherwise bias the estimates. thus, our results differ from previous cross-sectional analyses in that they are more rigorous in the analytical strategy adopted. on the other hand, they add to previous longitudinal studies by the broad scope of the analysis of the different facets of the relationship between wellbeing and sociality. a direct comparison between the results we obtain and past studies that have implemented different methodologies and indicators is, therefore, difficult. however, here we briefly discuss the general similarities and differences we find compared to previous analyses. with regard to the personal relationships dimension of social capital examined, our evidence partially confirms previous findings (pichler 2006; powdthavee 2008; helliwell & barringtonleigh 2010; leung et al. 2011) of a positive association existing between people’s overall life satisfaction and more frequent contacts with closely related people. however, we find a statistically significant relationship only within the family the less frequent the interactions with family members, the lower the swb levels. the frequency of meeting with friends, on the other hand, is not related to any substantial differences in the overall life satisfaction of the respondents in our sample. finally, we find no confirmation of peasgood (2007) evidence that a higher intensity of interactions with neighbours is associated with greater happiness. in line with a social support paradox that has been examined in the literature (gable & bromberg 2018), our results suggest that being the provider or recipient of various kinds of assistance or help within one’s social network, can have differential implications in terms of a person’s overall life satisfaction, and vary by gender. for instance, once individual fixed effects are controlled for, our results suggest that receiving financial support is negatively associated with women’s wellbeing levels. at the same time, providing such support has a similar in magnitude, boosting effect on male’s satisfaction with life. unfortunately, without more detailed information on the specific structure of a respondent’s network and the different interconnections that occur within it, we are unable to make a more nuanced analysis of the different facets of social support and its implications in terms of people’s wellbeing. for instance, we cannot verify whether there is a certain degree of reciprocity and relational goods potentially arising from it, which underlies the positive associations recorded for some types of support. interestingly, however, our results seem to confirm the idea (rafaeli & gleason 2009) that sometimes it is rather the perception of others’ willingness to help in case of need that is more important for people’s wellbeing, than actually receiving the support itself (that in some cases is even linked to lower swb levels). the strong positive association we find between life satisfaction and the perceived possibility to count on a neighbour’s help if needed, goes in this direction. with regards to the civic engagement of the respondents in our sample, contrary to previous analyses (pichler 2006; leung et al. 2011), we do not find evidence of a positive relationship between their overall life satisfaction and performing voluntary activity or participating in social organizations. instead, we find evidence of a significant association between men’s swb levels http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 221 and attendance of meetings of professional organizations, however, a positive relationship and not a negative as reported in another study (leung et al. 2011). another form of associative activity we have examined is the frequency of attendance of religious services. while its positive association with life satisfaction has been confirmed in a number of studies (helliwell 2003; helliwell & putnam 2004; hayo 2007), this statistically significant relationship disappears once we control for individual fixed effects. this evidence might suggest that the beneficial influence of religious practice on swb is largely due to factors of personal heterogeneity that studies using cross-sectional data, such as those mentioned above, fail to account for. finally, the indicators with which we tried to account, at least in part, for the overall quality of the social fabric of a respondent’s background, capturing her sense of safety and belonging in/to the community, and beliefs about the concern of others for those around them, show a significant positive association with life satisfaction. these findings somehow confirm the extensive literature (frey & stutzer 2002; helliwell & putnam 2004; helliwell 2006; hudson 2006; bjørnskov 2008; helliwell & wang 2011) that emphasizes the great importance of trust in others for people’s wellbeing. although weaker than other social determinants of swb such as frequency of contacts with family members, these proxies for the cohesion of the social context in which a person lives retain their significance in both specifications of the regression model and appear to be uniformly relevant for males and females. 7. conclusion our study is clearly not without limitations. for example, although the use of longitudinal data on a nationally representative sample of us adults allows us to control for time-invariant sources of individual heterogeneity (fe regression model), this analytical strategy can only partially address the problem of unobserved heterogeneity, which may also be time-varying. a possible solution to this problem would be to adopt the instrumental variable approach. it is not, however, straightforward to find suitable variables strongly associated with the various dimensions of social capital explored in our study, and at the same time linked with the outcome variable swb exclusively through them. a second limitation of our analysis is that we are not able to fully address the issue of potential reverse causality between our dependent variable and the social capital regressors in the implemented models. finally, we have here only explored the relationship between a single-item measure of swb, namely life satisfaction, and the so-called social context of wellbeing, without taking into account the inherently multidimensional nature of human wellbeing. despite these limitations, our analysis offers a reliable account of the wellbeing implications of different aspects of social capital. even after controlling for various observed heterogeneity factors and unobserved individual characteristics over time, our results confirm the existence of a robust relationship between some social capital indicators and respondents' overall satisfaction. among possible directions for future research, we can list the broadening of the spectrum of swb dimensions considered, so as to take into account also its affective components (diener 1984) in order to explore more deeply the various implications that a richer and more vibrant social life and a more cohesive social fabric might have on human wellbeing. moreover, a further interesting enrichment of our analysis might consider comparing the relationship between social capital and this account of hedonic wellbeing that primarily reflects people's immediate experience of their lives (diener et al. 1999), with that observed with respect to a, so-called, eudaimonic idea of wellbeing intended to capture a person's flourishing or, in other words, the realisation of his or her full potential (ryan & deci 2001). for instance, dimensions of wellbeing http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 222 that reflect, among others, the sense of personal growth and life purpose (ryff 1989; ryff 2014) may be differently associated with social and relational factors such as those examined in this study, as hedonic and eudaimonic accounts were found not to be perfectly overlapping but rather to capture complementary but distinct patterns of wellbeing (pancheva et al. 2021). the evidence of a consistent relationship between different social capital dimensions and wellbeing suggests that it may be worth considering the use of such indicators for informing policies that attempt to foster the quality of human life. although it might be hard to imagine and design interventions directly affecting the realm of personal relationships and social support provided and received among closely related persons, it is important not to underestimate the impact that factors such as economic stress, work-family balance, and so forth, may have on it. at the same time, a vibrant associative life, strong social norms and generalised trust can be seen as collective resources that have both individual and societal beneficial effects (putnam 2000; helliwell & putnam 2004), and therefore deserve to be taken into account by decision-makers when formulating policy objectives and assessing the impact of interventions undertaken. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors marta g. pancheva university institute sophia marta.pancheva@sophiauniversity.org alejandra vásquez berg behavioural economics research group university of cagliari alejandra.vasquez@pucv.cl authors’ contributions m.g.p. and a.v. are equal first authors. acknowledgments we are grateful to carol d.ryff and the entire midlife in the u.s. team for conducting such a rich and valuable study. special 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(2005). oxytocin is associated with human trustworthiness. hormones and behavior, 48(5), 522-527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2005.07.009 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2005.07.009 close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 227 appendix table a1. summary statistics. variable mean std. dev. min max observations dimension 1: personal relationships frequency contacts with family: several times a week overall 0.66 0.47 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.35 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.32 0 1.33 t = 3 frequency contacts with family: once a week overall 0.18 0.38 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.25 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.29 -0.48 0.85 t = 3 frequency contacts with family: several times a month overall 0.09 0.29 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.18 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.22 -0.58 0.76 t = 3 frequency contacts with family: once a month or less overall 0.06 0.24 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.17 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.17 -0.61 0.73 t = 3 frequency contacts with friends: several times a week overall 0.58 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.36 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.34 -0.09 1.24 t = 3 frequency contacts with friends: once a week overall 0.17 0.38 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.23 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.29 -0.49 0.84 t = 3 frequency contacts with friends: several times a month overall 0.13 0.33 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.21 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.26 -0.54 0.79 t = 3 frequency contacts with friends: once a month or less overall 0.13 0.33 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.24 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.23 -0.54 0.79 t = 3 frequency contacts with neighbours several times a week overall 0.81 0.39 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.27 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.28 0.14 1.48 t = 3 frequency contacts with neighbours several times a month overall 0.15 0.36 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.23 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.27 -0.51 0.82 t = 3 frequency contacts with neighbours never or hardly ever overall 0.04 0.19 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.12 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.14 -0.63 0.70 t = 3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 228 table a1. summary statistics. (continued) variable mean std. dev. min max observations dimension 2: social network support emotional support received (hr in a typical month) overall 38.59 75.06 0 720 n = 4800 between 52.17 0 433.67 n = 1600 within 53.97 -333.41 518.26 t = 3 emotional support given (hr in a typical month) overall 64.25 96.75 0 720 n = 4800 between 68.89 0 566 n = 1600 within 67.94 -327.74 541.25 t = 3 financial support received (typical month) overall 0.14 0.35 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.24 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.24 -0.53 0.81 t = 3 financial support given (typical month) overall 0.76 0.42 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.29 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.30 0.09 1.43 t = 3 unpaid assistance received (typical month) overall 0.42 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.34 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.35 -0.24 1.08 t = 3 unpaid assistance given (typical month) overall 0.76 0.42 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.29 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.30 0.10 1.43 t = 3 can count on neighbour's help in case of need: a lot overall 0.62 0.48 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.36 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.31 -0.04 1.28 t = 3 can count on neighbour's help in case of need: some overall 0.23 0.42 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.27 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.32 -0.43 0.90 t = 3 can count on neighbour's help in case of need: a little overall 0.11 0.31 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.21 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.23 -0.55 0.77 t = 3 can count on neighbour's help in case of need: not at all overall 0.03 0.17 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.12 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.13 -0.63 0.69 t = 3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 229 table a1. summary statistics. (continued) variable mean std. dev. min max observations dimension 3: civic engagement volunteer overall 0.40 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.35 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.33 -0.26 1.06 t = 3 attend professional org. meetings overall 0.15 0.36 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.26 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.25 -0.50 0.82 t = 3 attend sports or social org. meetings overall 0.31 0.46 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.34 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.31 -0.35 0.97 t = 3 frequency attendance religious services: once or more times a week overall 0.39 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.42 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.24 -0.27 1.07 t = 3 frequency attendance religious services: several times a month overall 0.28 0.45 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.32 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.30 -0.38 0.94 t = 3 frequency attendance religious services: never overall 0.32 0.46 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.38 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.26 -0.34 0.98 t = 3 dimension 4: trust and cooperative norms feel safe out alone night-time overall 0.60 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.39 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.29 -0.06 1.26 t = 3 don't feel belong to community overall 0.33 0.47 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.34 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.32 -0.33 1.00 t = 3 don't think people care about others overall 0.06 0.24 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.16 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.18 -0.60 0.73 t = 3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 230 table a1. summary statistics. (continued) variable mean std. dev. min max observations overall life satisfaction overall 7.88 1.47 0 10 n = 4800 between 1.19 2.66 10 n = 1600 within 0.86 3.21 12.21 t = 3 age overall 54 13.03 24 92 n = 4800 between 10.76 33.33 83 n = 1600 within 7.35 44.01 63.68 t = 3 male overall 0.47 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.49 0 1 n = 1600 within 0 0.47 0.47 t = 3 female overall 0.53 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.49 0 1 n = 1600 within 0 0.53 0.53 t = 3 married overall 0.71 0.45 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.38 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.23 0.04 1.38 t = 3 separated overall 0.01 0.12 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.07 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.09 -0.65 0.68 t = 3 divorced overall 0.13 0.33 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.28 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.17 -0.53 0.79 t = 3 widowed overall 0.05 0.23 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.18 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.14 -0.61 0.72 t = 3 never married overall 0.08 0.27 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.25 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.09 -0.58 0.74 t = 3 number of children overall 2.26 1.61 0 13 n = 4800 between 1.46 0 9 n = 1600 within 0.67 -3.06 6.59 t = 3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 231 table a1. summary statistics. (continued) variable mean std. dev. min max observations education: compulsory school or less overall 0.47 0.49 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.46 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.18 -0.19 1.14 t = 3 education: undergraduate degree overall 0.35 0.47 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.43 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.21 -0.31 1.02 t = 3 education: postgraduate degree overall 0.17 0.38 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.36 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.12 -0.49 0.84 t = 3 equivalised disposable household income overall 82717.64 64893.9 0 300000 n = 4800 between 52777.02 2854.66 300000 n = 1600 within 37775.19 -117282 270684.3 t = 3 self-rated health: excellent overall 0.11 0.32 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.21 0 0.66 n = 1600 within 0.24 -0.55 0.78 t = 3 self-rated health: very good overall 0.29 0.45 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.25 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.37 -0.36 0.96 t = 3 self-rated health: good overall 0.31 0.46 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.31 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.33 -0.36 0.97 t = 3 self-rated health: fair overall 0.19 0.39 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.20 0 1 n = 1600 within 0.34 -0.46 0.86 t = 3 self-rated health: poor overall 0.08 0.27 0 1 n = 4800 between 0.15 0 0.66 n = 1600 within 0.22 -0.58 0.74 t = 3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ close to others closer to happiness pancheva & vásquez www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 232 table a2. correlation matrix social capital variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 1 2 0.2 1 3 0.17 0.1 1 4 -0.04 -0.1 -0.03 1 5 -0.04 -0.07 -0.03 0.57 1 6 0.02 -0.02 0.04 0.05 0.05 1 7 -0.07 -0.1 -0.04 0.14 0.15 0.04 1 8 0.15 0.09 0.34 -0.02 -0.03 0.03 -0.07 9 -0.04 -0.1 -0.03 0.16 0.11 0.21 0.07 -0.05 1 10 -0.09 -0.17 -0.05 0.21 0.19 0.08 0.14 -0.06 0.31 1 11 -0.16 -0.05 -0.07 0.12 0.1 0.03 0.18 -0.13 0.13 0.13 1 12 -0.08 -0.01 -0.01 0.07 0.06 0.01 0.09 -0.02 0.05 0.09 0.17 1 13 -0.18 -0.05 -0.06 0.1 0.08 0.02 0.12 -0.1 0.09 0.09 0.27 0.22 1 14 0.1 0.14 0.13 -0.06 -0.04 -0.02 -0.21 0.13 -0.05 -0.11 -0.25 -0.07 -0.13 1 15 -0.03 0.05 -0.07 0.01 0.03 -0.05 0.03 -0.16 -0.03 -0.01 0.02 0.05 0.06 0.03 1 16 -0.22 -0.14 -0.2 0.07 0.07 -0.01 0.13 -0.32 0.07 0.12 0.22 0.1 0.17 -0.26 0.12 1 17 -0.08 -0.03 -0.1 0.06 0.04 -0.03 0.07 -0.14 0.01 0.02 0.1 0.05 0.07 -0.08 0.08 0.3 1 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., lomas, t., bidese, c., callegaro, v., & ruschel r. (2019). diretrizes éticas para prática de psicologia positiva (version 1.0: portuguese). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-32. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1071 guideline version 1.0, 26th november 2019 carina bidese university of east london u1741735@uel.ac.uk os direitos autorais pertencem ao (s) autor (es) 1 special issue diretrizes éticas para prática de psicologia positiva aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas · carina bidese · vivian callegaro · rafael ruschel http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 2 . conteúdo notas introdutórias.…………………………………………………………………………….... 4 preâmbulo……………………………………………………………………………………… 4 órgãos profissionais e as diretrizes éticas para a prática de psicologia positiva………. 4 aspirações das diretrizes...............………………………………………………………….... 5 para quem são as diretrizes?..................................................................................................... 5 natureza provisória das diretrizes.…………………………………………………………. 5 termos-chave……………………...…………………………………………………………... 6 seção um: valores, forças e princípios..............................…………………………………...... 8 valores dos profissionais de psicologia positiva…………………………………………... 9 forças dos profissionais de psicologia positiva……………………………………………. 10 princípios éticos para a prática de psicologia positiva.………………………………….... 10 seção dois: aplicações das diretrizes éticas na prática.……………………………............... 14 três considerações importantes……………………………………………………………... 14 tomada de decisão ética.……………………………………………………………………... 14 considerações de trabalho.…………………………………………………………………... 15 mudanças nos clientes.……………………………………………………………………….. 15 mudanças nos ambientes relacionados.…………………………………………………….. 15 estado emocional atual e nível de bem-estar.…………………………………………......... 16 evitação.………………………………………………………………………………………... 16 diferenciais de poder.………………………………………………………………………… 16 uso excessivo de forças.………………………………………………………………………. 17 sabedoria prática …………………………………………………………………………….... 17 manutenção da resiliência e proteção contra o burnout.....……………………………….. 17 declaração de educação e competência.……………………………………………….......... 17 apreciando a importância do contexto cultural.………………………………………….... 18 resolvendo dilemas éticos um guia passo a passo.……………………………………....... 19 guia de autoavaliação………………………………………………………………………........ 20 seção três: exemplos de caso de prática ética.……………………………………………...... 21 exemplo de caso 1: cultural aplicando ipps com sensibilidade cultural.…………….... 21 exemplo de caso 2: coaching – trabalhando com clientes em circunstâncias mutáveis.. 22 exemplo de caso 3: clínico trabalhando com trauma.…………………………………… 23 exemplo de caso 4: organizacional pressão para deturpar dados..…………………...... 23 diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 3 exemplo de caso 5: mentoring motivando participantes "indispostos" em uma relação em desequilíbrio..……………………………………………………………………………….... 24 exemplo de caso 6: educação implementando programas de bem-estar onde as aspirações são prejudicadas pela prática existente..…………………………………………………... 25 diretrizes relevantes.…………………………………………………………………………....... 27 reconhecimentos.……………………………………………………………………………........ 28 signatários iniciais das diretrizes éticas para a prática de psicologia positiva.………........... 29 referências.……………………………………………………………………………………........ 31 leitura adicional.……………………………………………………………………………......... 32 declaração: essas diretrizes são o resultado de um grupo de trabalho colaborativo e independente liderado por aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalize roache e tim lomas. as diretrizes são independentes de qualquer organização ou associação; no entanto, várias partes foram envolvidas no desenvolvimento e refinamento desta primeira iteração. é intenção dos autores atualizar as diretrizes num ciclo bianual para fortalecer ainda mais sua profundidade e amplitude de funcionalidade e aceitaremos os comentários da comunidade para aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 4 notas introdutórias preâmbulo a perfeição ética é, talvez, um ideal utópico, uma vez que os seres humanos, incluindo os profissionais de psicologia positiva (ppps), são falíveis, vulneráveis e imperfeitos. as complexidades da vida contemporânea, a sempre em expansão vida cibernética, as mudanças climáticas erráticas, as crises de refugiados, as identidades em evolução e a crescente polarização econômica, exacerbam as vulnerabilidades humanas. os serviços psicológicos, especialmente aqueles com um objetivo explícito de restaurar ou melhorar o bem-estar, não são oferecidos facilmente sem prioridades concorrentes e dilemas éticos. nenhum conjunto único de diretrizes éticas, padrões ou mesmo estatutos pode encapsular completamente a gama de complexidades humanas. um conjunto de valores amplos, forças pessoais e princípios, no entanto, pode nos guiar para uma tomada de decisão mais ética, especialmente quando usamos intervenções psicológicas positivas (ipp), que genericamente buscam melhorar o bem-estar. esta diretriz contém a) valores, b) forças e c) princípios para a prática psicológica positiva. é importante observar que as "diretrizes" geralmente se enquadram em estruturas mais amplas, que vão variar de acordo com o contexto e a jurisdição. por exemplo, as diretrizes podem se encontrar na parte inferior de uma hierarquia prescritiva, como mostrado na figura 1 abaixo: figura 1. diretrizes e estruturas mais amplas. portanto, é importante considerar as diretrizes juntamente com outras estruturas relevantes. além disso, embora um indivíduo ou organização possa aderir e endossar essas diretrizes para “prática psicológica positiva”, em alguns países e jurisdições, pode ser ilegal se chamar de “psicólogo positivo” esteja ciente das restrições e exigências de sua localização. órgãos profissionais e diretrizes éticas para a prática psicológica positiva quando um profissional é membro de um órgão profissional relevante (por exemplo, associação americana de psicologia, sociedade australiana de psicologia, federação internacional de coaching), em primeiro lugar, os padrões, código ou diretrizes de sua associação informarão sua prática. esperamos que, quando os profissionais forem membros de um órgão de licenciamento ou credenciamento (por exemplo, college of psychologists), com educação, treinamento e experiência adequados na prática da psicologia ou áreas afins, esses profissionais estejam, portanto, familiarizados com as regras, normas, regulamentos, estatutos e procedimentos de prática da psicologia dentro de sua jurisdição. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 5 as diretrizes éticas para a prática de psicologia positiva introduzidas aqui foram projetadas para incrementar, e não substituir, os códigos e guias jurisdicionais/profissionais existentes. como tal, essas diretrizes também fornecem uma linha de base para os profissionais que não estão associados ou afiliados a um órgão profissional. aspirações das diretrizes por que ter um conjunto de diretrizes éticas? essas diretrizes visam aprimorar a prática ética, demonstrando um compromisso com a prática cientificamente informada e baseada em evidências no campo da psicologia positiva (pp). elas visam infundir uma aspiração de manter uma fidelidade (razoável) à ciência do bem-estar e para os profissionais considerarem as diretrizes correspondentes para a auto-apresentação e publicidade dos benefícios em potencial. as diretrizes tentam promover para as ppps e outros uma compreensão mais clara do que é prática eticamente informada de psicologia positiva. com a assistência de tais diretrizes, é esperado de ppps demonstração de comprometimento para aspectos como:1 a) estudar atentamente a pesquisa e construir sua prática a partir de uma base científica; b) atualizar continuamente seus conhecimentos por meio de aprendizado contínuo e desenvolvimento profissional; c) comunicar cuidadosa e precisamente os limites do conhecimento relacionado às intervenções de psicologia positiva, bem como os possíveis benefícios e armadilhas de determinadas ipp e programas de bem-estar; e d) monitorar o bem-estar, as mudanças positivas e negativas no bem-estar e de seus clientes durante a prestação do serviço. para quem são as diretrizes? o objetivo dessas diretrizes é possibilitar a prática ética ideal de ppps e, ao fazê-lo, agir de forma benéfica (fazer o bem a outros) e não maleficamente (evitar possíveis danos a outros). como tal, essas diretrizes são para profissionais (por exemplo, psicólogos) e outros (por exemplo, estudantes ou pessoas sem afiliações) que estão executando ipps ou usando conhecimento do campo da psicologia positiva em sua prática. esta não é uma diretriz de como usar ou executar determinadas ipps. natureza provisória das diretrizes observamos que as diretrizes atuais (versão 1.0, 19 de julho de 2019) são provisórias e sujeitas a revisão contínua a cada dois anos por meio de um processo consultivo iterativo com interessados chave. tal regularidade é para garantir que as diretrizes respondam às mudanças contextuais e reflitam temas locais e globais em constante evolução. nesse sentido, aceitamos comentários sobre as diretrizes aqui descritas a qualquer momento. também é importante observar que apenas países falantes do inglês, principalmente ocidentais, influenciaram o desenvolvimento dessas diretrizes e, como tal, as diretrizes são circunscritas a esses limites. no entanto, como este é um documento em desenvolvimento, identificado por um número de versão, espera-se que versões futuras incorporem a influência de códigos e diretrizes de países não falantes do inglês e não ocidentais. 1 escolhemos quatro exemplos aqui para demonstrar esses compromissos, no entanto, observe que essa lista pode ser extensa. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 6 termos chave cliente profissionais trabalham com clientes. “cliente” é um termo genérico usado para se referir ao destinatário de quaisquer serviços, como (no entanto, não se limitando a) um indivíduo, casal, família, grupo, organização, patrocinador ou outra unidade social especificável. códigos vs diretrizes um código geralmente possui ramificações legais ou outras implicações aplicáveis, enquanto as diretrizes sugerem melhores práticas que geralmente não são "regulamentadas" ou "policiadas". as diretrizes, por sua natureza, implicam que as circunstâncias são variadas e complexas e que cumprir as diretrizes frequentemente requer que os profissionais apliquem a sabedoria prática uma combinação de experiência e bom senso. pp pp: psicologia positiva. existem muitas maneiras de conceituar e definir a pp, mas a maioria das operacionalizações geralmente a posiciona como estudo científico e promoção de construtos abrangentes, como “felicidade”, “bem-estar”, “florescimento” e “prosperar”. por exemplo, lomas, hefferon e ivtzan (2015, p. 1347) definem a pp como “a ciência e a prática de aumentar o bem-estar”. de maneira semelhante, existe a noção da “psicologia positiva aplicada”, que pode ser simplesmente interpretada como a aplicação da pp em ambientes do mundo real, inclusive por meio de ipps. ipp ipp: intervenção psicológica positiva. existe na literatura uma demarcação feita entre uma “intervenção de psicologia positiva” e uma “intervenção psicológica positiva” para um esboço e explicação, ver hone, jarden e schofield (2015). aqui incorporamos a noção mais ampla de intervenção psicológica positiva que abrange todas as atividades em várias disciplinas (isto é, de outros subcampos da psicologia além da pp), com o objetivo de aumentar o bem-estar psicológico. uma definição popular de uma intervenção psicológica positiva é: “uma intervenção psicológica positiva promove emoções positivas, comportamentos e/ou pensamentos, aumentando assim o bem-estar de um indivíduo ou grupo” (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, p. 92). ppp ppp: profissional de psicologia positiva. um profissional que tenha concluído treinamento necessário para práticar (por exemplo, psicoterapia, aconselhamento, coaching) e que tenha realizado um treinamento específico de pp com um provedor de treinamento respeitável, permitindo assim o entendimento do processo de pesquisa científica e sua aplicação na execução de psicologia positiva aplicada (por exemplo, ipps).2 forças geralmente, diretrizes e códigos éticos endossam características pessoais desejadas específicas, selecionadas arbitrariamente por líderes de opinião da área específica. para essas diretrizes, usamos o forças e virtudes de caráter (character strengths and virtues, csv: peterson & 2 quem pode se chamar ppp? ainda não existe uma demarcação clara da quantidade e nível de treinamento ou qualificação necessária. por exemplo, alguém poderia se considerar um ppp baseado em um curso de 2 dias, um certificado credenciado de 6 meses ou um programa de mestrado em psicologia positiva aplicada de 2 anos? além disso, a prática supervisionada (por exemplo, supervisão entre pares e individual) e a consulta on-line é ideal. mais orientações sobre treinamento e supervisão apropriados são necessárias por parte dos órgãos profissionais nesse campo (e, de fato, esses problemas já estão sendo considerados e abordados pelas partes relevantes). diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 7 seligman, 2004), que é um modelo de forças de caráter validados empiricamente e endossados culturalmente (mcgrath, 2014). de acordo com o csv, as forças de caráter são definidas como traços universais que são valorizados por si mesmos e não levam necessariamente a resultados instrumentais. em vez disso, como traços comportamentais, eles facilitam e orientam uma pessoa a se comportar de maneira ética e responsável pelo seu próprio bem-estar e de outras pessoas. os pontos fortes do caráter, em termos gerais, refletem quem é uma pessoa (ou seja, seu caráter) e os valores refletem com o que uma pessoa está comprometida (ou seja, seus princípios e ações). profissional o termo "profissional" é usado genericamente para se referir a qualquer pessoa responsável pela prestação de serviços relacionados a pp. “profissional” inclui qualquer pessoa que desempenhe papéis, como (embora não limitado a) conselheiro, psicoterapeuta, profissional de saúde mental, coach, treinador, mentor ou educador.3 princípios os princípios direcionam a atenção para importantes responsabilidades éticas. as ações seguem certos princípios. valores valores são crenças mantidas por indivíduos e compartilhadas por grupos sobre fins desejáveis (ou seja, ideologias mais amplas sobre o mundo e como ele deve ser). os valores transcendem situações específicas, orientam como selecionamos ações e avaliamos os outros e a nós mesmos e são ordenados por sua importância relativa (schwartz, 2006). os valores podem representar uma maneira importante de expressar um compromisso ético geral que se torna mais precisamente definido e orientado para a ação quando expresso como um princípio. em outras palavras, os valores informam princípios. nesse sentido comum, os valores descritos nestas diretrizes são aqueles que os autores identificaram como sendo amplamente compartilhados na comunidade de pp. 3 o ethos e os princípios contidos nessas diretrizes podem se aplicar igualmente a pesquisadores do bem-estar, onde os pesquisadores podem ser considerados profissionais em um sentido, trabalhando com sujeitos que podem ser considerados semelhantes aos clientes. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 8 seção um: valores, forças e princípios as diretrizes éticas para a prática da psicologia positiva incorporam os seguintes valores, forças e princípios. tanto os valores quanto as forças apoiam a promulgação de princípios éticos, conforme exibido na tabela 1. tabela 1 valores, forças e princípios da prática da psicologia positiva valores4 forças5 princípios 1. protegendo a segurança de clientes e outros. 1. honestidade. 1. beneficência / não maleficência. 2. aliviar a angústia pessoal e o sofrimento. 2. justiça. 2. cuidado responsável. 3. garantir a integridade dos relacionamentos profissional-cliente. 3. inteligência social. 3. respeito pelos direitos e dignidade das pessoas. 4. apreciar a diversidade da experiência e cultura humanas. 4. trabalho em equipe. 4. confiabilidade 5. promover um senso de self que seja significativo para a(s) pessoa(s) em questão. 5. bondade. 5. justiça. 6. melhorar a qualidade do conhecimento profissional e sua aplicação. 6. prudência. 6. autonomia. 7. melhorar a qualidade dos relacionamentos entre as pessoas. 7. perspectiva. 8. aumentar a eficácia pessoal. 8. julgamento. 9. empenhar-se pela prestação justa e adequada de serviços de aconselhamento, psicoterapia e treinamento. 9. auto regulação. 10. perseverança. 11. bravura. 4 nossos valores foram selecionados com base em outras diretrizes semelhantes e, como tal, muitos dos valores podem caber em diferentes categorias. por exemplo, a justiça pode ser percebida como um valor ou como um princípio. a confiabilidade pode ser percebida como uma força (honestidade), um valor ou um princípio. muitas dessas construções são discutíveis dessa maneira. os valores também foram classificados por importância percebida, de acordo com os autores da diretriz. 5 as forças de 1 a 7 são classificadas pela frequência com que foram mencionadas e enfatizadas em 10 códigos de ética semelhantes (por exemplo, a estrutura ética para boas práticas em aconselhamento e psicoterapia da associação britânica de aconselhamento e psicoterapia). pontos fortes de 8-11, os autores consideraram importante defender os seis princípios. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 9 além do mais: • quase todos os códigos estipulam uma variedade de características e qualidades pessoais, enquanto esse código se concentra nas forças e nos comportamentos observáveis. • as listas de valores, forças e princípios não são de forma alguma exaustivas, mas uma tentativa inicial em relação ao que atualmente é considerado mais pertinente à prática. à medida que as diretrizes se adaptam iterativamente ao longo do tempo e os debates acontecem entre a comunidade de pp, prevê-se que esses elementos evoluam. • a lista de valores, forças e princípios também não é prescritiva. • foi escolhido um modelo de forças (a estrutura values in action), sendo o mais evidente na literatura e baseado em ciência sólida. valores dos profissionais de psicologia positiva os valores fundamentais dos ppps incluem o compromisso de: • proteger a segurança de clientes e outros. isso inclui manter uma consciência sempre vigilante de como um cliente está respondendo aos serviços e, além disso, reconhecer os limites de sua capacidade e experiência (e, como tal, reconhecer quando um cliente pode precisar de ajuda profissional de outros setores ou se o público está em perigo). • aliviar a angústia e o sofrimento pessoais (quando dentro dos próprios limites de sua perícia). isso significa implantar ipps de maneiras contextualmente relevantes para diminuir o sofrimento de indivíduos que procuram serviços em vários contextos profissionais (por exemplo, terapia, coaching, saúde). • garantir a integridade das relações profissional-cliente. isso inclui respeitar os limites pessoais e manter um compromisso com práticas profissionais, como privacidade e confidencialidade. • apreciar a diversidade da experiência e culturas humanas. isso significa não aplicar uma estrutura de "tamanho único" aos clientes, mas sim respeitar e realmente celebrar a variedade de caminhos de desenvolvimento exclusivos das pessoas e as origens culturais e contextuais. • promover um senso de si que seja significativo para a(s) pessoa(s) em questão. isso significa que o indivíduo desenvolve e busca objetivos que não apenas cumprem o eu, mas também contribuem para o bem maior. • melhorar a qualidade do conhecimento profissional e sua aplicação. isso significa fazer o melhor para ficar a par dos desenvolvimentos na literatura e manter um conhecimento atualizado dos avanços no campo. • melhorar a qualidade dos relacionamentos entre as pessoas. isso significa reconhecer que as pessoas estão inevitavelmente situadas em relacionamentos e redes sociais e se esforçar para ajudar as pessoas a aprimorarem esses vínculos o máximo possível. • aumentar a eficácia pessoal. isso significa esforçar-se para ajudar o cliente a operar com mais eficiência no mundo e nas situações únicas em que se encontram. • buscar a prestação justa e adequada de serviços de pp. isso pode incluir endossar serviços para populações de difícil acesso ou, sempre que possível, endossar uma estrutura de preços pela qual as pessoas com menos recursos ainda possam se beneficiar dos serviços. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 10 forças dos profissionais de psicologia positiva as forças pessoais do profissional são importantes porque têm um impacto no relacionamento profissional/cliente. muitos das forças consideradas vitais na prestação de serviços são consideradas boas qualidades pessoais. é inapropriado prescrever que todos os praticantes possuam essas forças, uma vez que é fundamental que elas estejam profundamente enraizadas na pessoa envolvida e se desenvolvam por compromisso pessoal e não pelos requisitos de uma autoridade externa. uma análise temática de princípios e valores adotados por diretrizes representativas (consulte a seção diretrizes relevantes) mostraram que as seguintes forças de caráter presumem facilitar a prática ética e a tomada de decisões: • honestidade: falar a verdade; apresentar-se de maneira genuína e agir de maneira sincera; ser sem pretensão; assumir a responsabilidade pelos próprios sentimentos e ações. • justiça: tratar todas as pessoas da mesma maneira de acordo com as noções de justiça e equidade; não deixar que sentimentos pessoais influenciem decisões sobre os outros; dar a todos uma chance justa. • inteligência social: estar ciente dos motivos e sentimentos de outras pessoas; saber o que fazer para se encaixar em diferentes situações sociais; saber o que fazer para deixar os outros à vontade. • trabalho em equipe: trabalhar bem como membro de um grupo ou equipe; ser leal ao grupo; fazer a sua parte. • bondade: fazer favores e boas ações pelos outros; ajudá-los; cuidar-lhes. • prudência: ter cuidado com as próprias escolhas; não correr riscos indevidos; não dizer ou fazer coisas que mais tarde podem ser lamentadas. • perspectiva: ser capaz de fornecer conselhos sábios a outras pessoas; ter maneiras de enxergar o mundo que fazem sentido para si mesmo e para outras pessoas. • julgamento: pensar sobre as coisas e examiná-las por todos os lados; não apressar conclusões; confiar apenas em evidências sólidas para tomar decisões; ter a capacidade de mudar de ideia. • auto regulação: regular o que se sente e faz; ser disciplinado; controlar apetites e emoções. • perseverança: trabalhar duro para terminar o que se inicia, não importa o projeto: “conseguir entregar” em tempo hábil; não se distrair ao trabalhar; ter satisfação na conclusão de tarefas. • bravura: ser uma pessoa corajosa que não se afasta de ameaças, desafios, dificuldade ou dor; defender o que é certo, mesmo que haja oposição; agir de acordo com as próprias convicções. princípios éticos para a prática de psicologia positiva cada um dos seis princípios éticos descritos abaixo é acompanhado por exemplos de boas práticas que foram desenvolvidas em resposta a esse princípio. decisões éticas que são fortemente apoiadas por um ou mais desses princípios, sem nenhuma contradição de outros, podem ser consideradas como uma forte lógica moral. no entanto, os profissionais provavelmente encontrarão circunstâncias nas quais é impossível conciliar todos os princípios aplicáveis e a escolher entre princípios poderá ser necessário. uma decisão ou curso de ação não se tornam necessariamente antiéticos simplesmente porque são contenciosos ou porque diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 11 outros profissionais teriam chegado a conclusões diferentes em circunstâncias semelhantes. a obrigação de um profissional é considerar todas as circunstâncias relevantes com o máximo cuidado razoavelmente possível e ser apropriadamente responsável pelas decisões tomadas. beneficência/não-maleficência a beneficência envolve um compromisso com a promover o bem-estar do cliente e do profissional. o princípio da beneficência significa atuar no interesse do cliente, com base em avaliação profissional. ele direciona a atenção para trabalhar estritamente dentro dos limites da própria competência e fornecer serviços com base em treinamento ou experiência adequados. garantir que os interesses do cliente sejam representados requer um monitoramento sistemático da prática e dos resultados (por exemplo, bem-estar) pelos melhores meios disponíveis. considera-se importante que pesquisa científica e reflexão sistemática informem a prática. dependendo da função e do contexto, geralmente há uma obrigação para a tomada de medidas para melhorar a qualidade dos serviços prestados e de comprometer-se com a atualização das práticas por meio de desenvolvimento profissional contínuo. a obrigação de agir no melhor interesse de um cliente pode se tornar fundamental ao trabalhar com clientes cuja capacidade de autonomia seja diminuída devido à idade, imaturidade, falta de entendimento, angústia ou outras restrições pessoais significativas. a não-maleficência, por outro lado, envolve um compromisso de evitar danos ao cliente. profissionais que adotam esse princípio: • evitam exploração sexual, financeira, emocional ou de qualquer outra forma do cliente; • evitam incompetência (ou seja, aplicação apropriada de ipp, por exemplo, saber o que funciona e para quem) e negligência; • não prestam serviços quando impróprio para fazê-lo devido a doenças, circunstâncias pessoais ou intoxicação. o profissional tem uma responsabilidade ética de se esforçar para mitigar qualquer dano causado a um cliente, mesmo quando o dano for inevitável ou não intencional. os profissionais têm responsabilidades pessoais e profissionais para desafiar, quando apropriado, a incompetência ou más práticas de outras pessoas. eles também têm a responsabilidade de contribuir com qualquer investigação e/ou adjudicação por um órgão/autoridade adequadamente reconhecido, referente à prática profissional que fica abaixo do esperado para um profissional razoavelmente competente e/ou corre o risco de trazer descrédito para sua profissão ou a pp. cuidado responsável a prática da pp promove o bem-estar. ao perseguir esse objetivo, os ppps que adotam esse princípio demonstram uma preocupação ativa com o bem-estar daqueles com quem trabalham e reconhecem o poder social e institucional que estruturam seu papel como ppps. eles têm a responsabilidade primária de proteger o bem-estar daqueles com quem trabalham. eles reconhecem que indivíduos, famílias, grupos ou comunidades podem estar em uma posição vulnerável. eles também reconhecem seus limites de especialização (incluindo a falta de conhecimento) e consultam outros especialistas quando necessário e aceitam a responsabilidade e corrigem qualquer dano que ocorra como resultado de sua prestação de serviços. também se espera que os ppps tenham um interesse ativo e contínuo nos desenvolvimentos empíricos e teóricos em seu campo, garantindo que eles mantenham conhecimento atualizado da base de evidências relacionadas as ipps que estão implementando. respeito pelos direitos e dignidade das pessoas diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 12 de acordo com a declaração universal dos direitos humanos das nações unidas, o respeito à dignidade das pessoas e seus direitos exige que: cada pessoa e todos os povos sejam valorizados positivamente em seus direitos, seus direitos sejam reconhecidos e respeitados e demonstrem respeito e dignidade garantida como parte de sua humanidade comum. os profissionais que adotam esse princípio demonstram respeito, o que requer sensibilidade à diversidade cultural e social. isso inclui o reconhecimento de diferenças entre pessoas associadas a sua cultura, nacionalidade, etnia, cor, raça, religião, gênero, estado civil, orientação sexual, habilidades físicas ou mentais, idade, status socioeconômico e/ou qualquer outra característica pessoal, condição ou status. tais diferenças são parte integral da pessoa e devem ser respeitadas como tal. confiabilidade ser confiável (fidelidade) envolve honrar a confiança depositada no praticante. a confiabilidade é considerada fundamental para entender e resolver questões éticas. profissionais que adotam esse princípio: • agem de acordo com a confiança depositada neles; • esforçam-se para garantir que as expectativas dos clientes sejam expectativas que tenham perspectivas razoáveis de serem cumpridas; • honram seus acordos e promessas; • consideram a confidencialidade como uma obrigação decorrente da confiança do cliente; • restringem qualquer divulgação de informações confidenciais sobre clientes além dos fins para os quais foi originalmente reveladas com exceção de divulgação obrigatória (por exemplo, uma lei na jurisdição exige tal divulgação). justiça a justiça envolve o tratamento justo e imparcial de todos os clientes e a prestação de serviços adequados. o princípio da justiça exige que os profissionais que adotam esse princípio sejam justos com todos os clientes e respeitem seus direitos humanos e dignidade. ele direciona a atenção para considerar conscientemente quaisquer requisitos e obrigações legais e permanecer alerta para possíveis conflitos entre obrigações legais e éticas. a justiça na distribuição de serviços requer a capacidade de determinar imparcialmente a provisão de serviços para os clientes e a alocação de serviços entre os clientes. um compromisso com a justiça requer a capacidade de apreciar as diferenças entre as pessoas e de estar comprometido com a igualdade de oportunidades e resultados e evitar a discriminação contra pessoas ou grupos com base em suas características pessoais ou sociais. em outras palavras, a justiça implica que a discriminação injusta com base em certas características (por exemplo, sexo ou idade) não ocorre. os profissionais têm o dever de se esforçar para garantir uma prestação justa de serviços acessíveis e adequados às necessidades dos clientes em potencial. autonomia autonomia envolve respeitar o direito do cliente de se auto governar. esse princípio enfatiza a importância de desenvolver a capacidade do cliente de ser autodirigido na prestação de serviços e em todos os aspectos da vida. o princípio da autonomia se opõe a manipulação dos clientes contra sua vontade, mesmo para fins sociais benéficos. profissionais que respeitam a autonomia de seus clientes: diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 13 • garantem precisão em qualquer publicidade ou informação fornecida antes dos serviços oferecidos; • buscam consentimento livre e devidamente informado durante todo o relacionamento; • enfatizam o valor da participação voluntária nos serviços oferecidos; • participam de contratos explícitos antes de qualquer compromisso do cliente e revisitam/revisam os termos desse contrato ao longo do relacionamento; • protegem a privacidade • protegem a confidencialidade; • habitualmente condicionam qualquer divulgação de informações confidenciais ao consentimento da pessoa em questão; • informam antecipadamente o cliente sobre conflitos de interesse possíveis, ou o mais rápido possível depois que esses conflitos se tornarem aparentes. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 14 seção dois: aplicações das diretrizes éticas na prática esta seção contém vários guias e exemplos para a aplicação contextual dessas diretrizes éticas. o conteúdo é desenhado para aprofundar o pensamento, além de fornecer ferramentas úteis e um guia de auto-avaliação para resolver e apoiar a tomada de decisão ética na prática. três considerações importantes antes de aplicar qualquer ipp específica, deve-se avaliar e estimar os três fatores importantes a seguir, que são o alicerce das melhores práticas (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. a ipp é uma correspondência apropriada para a situação? isso pode ser verificado revisando a literatura relevante e as evidências publicadas de fontes confiáveis. por exemplo, antes que uma ipp específica seja aplicada para gratidão, verifique se há evidência publicada existente que mostre que essa ipp específica é uma técnica promissora para o cliente em particular. 2. a ipp corresponde às necessidades apresentadas pelo cliente? 3. como a eficácia de uma ipp será avaliada? em outras palavras, qual resultado específico pode ser identificado e avaliado de forma válida para determinar a eficácia da ipp? tomada de decisão ética a tomada de decisão ética pode ser auxiliada por: ter conhecimento adequado dessas diretrizes éticas e das diretrizes de uma profissão associada, estar ciente do comportamento ético virtuoso de outras pessoas e o uso de forças pessoais na tomada de decisão. conhecimento: esperamos que os usuários principais dessas diretrizes ou seja, ppps com educação, treinamento e experiência adequados na prática da psicologia ou áreas relacionadas estejam familiarizados e possam descrever essas diretrizes éticas e quaisquer diretrizes éticas que pertencem à sua profissão e conduta profissional. a maioria das jurisdições enfatiza que os profissionais precisam estar familiarizados com regras, padrões, regulamentos, estatutos e procedimentos relevantes. comportamento: o comportamento ético, especialmente ao executar ipps, não pode simplesmente vir do conhecimento cognitivo. o comportamento ético deve estar intimamente ligado a comportamentos e práticas coletivas. você pode identificar em seus círculos profissionais aqueles indivíduos que são modelos de práticas éticas? embora seus colegas possam não destacar explicitamente essas práticas, devido a sua modéstia, você é incentivado a perguntar explicitamente a seus colegas ou comunidade profissional mais ampla (organização regional ou internacional) como eles aderem aos padrões éticos de sua área. a coleta de um repositório de casos de boas práticas será útil para a reflexividade com relação ao próprio comportamento. com acúmulo suficiente de casos, provavelmente aparecerão ilustrações de excelência. idealmente, os profissionais criarão um núcleo acessível, onde outros profissionais terão a oportunidade de enriquecer este repositório. usando forças para a tomada de decisão ética: as forças podem ser úteis de várias maneiras na tomada de decisão ética. por exemplo, identificar exemplares de forças pode ajudar em tomadas de decisão éticas presentes. encontre um colega que se apresente como um modelo de exemplo de comportamento ético. reflita como eles lidaram com um dilema ou situação ética específica ou, de maneira mais geral, quais forças eles incorporam nas interações diárias com colegas e clientes que valem a pena serem modelados e ajudarão na tomada de decisões. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 15 considerações de trabalho há várias considerações a serem analisadas ao trabalhar com clientes que podem ter implicações éticas imediatas e importantes. em particular, é pertinente considerar: mudanças nos clientes, mudanças nos ambientes em que os ppps e os clientes se encontram, o estado emocional atual e o nível de bem-estar dos clientes e dos ppps, a tendência dos clientes para a evitação, diferenciais de relação de poder, uso excessivo de forças, sabedoria prática, uma declaração de educação e competência e a importância de diferentes contextos culturais. a consideração desses aspectos pode ajudar a mitigar, antecipar ou impedir algumas consequências inadvertidas e desagradáveis. mudanças nos clientes ao prestar qualquer serviço psicológico, é importante monitorar o bem-estar psicológico dos clientes ao longo do tratamento ou intervenção. alguns clientes pioram, apesar da eficácia demonstrada da ipp. os sintomas podem piorar por vários motivos, tornando os clientes vulneráveis. o cliente pode não necessariamente compartilhar essas informações com o praticante, talvez porque possa sentir vergonha, medo ou hesitação em desapontar o praticante que está trabalhando para aumentar seu bem-estar. na maioria das vezes, o foco explícito das ipps não é a melhoria dos sintomas, mas a promoção do bem-estar. monitorar as circunstâncias em mudança nas vidas dos clientes é importante, assim como calibrar as ipps para essas mudanças. por exemplo, se o cliente tiver um rompimento ou perder o emprego, é importante que o profissional possa abordar essas mudanças e avaliar seu impacto. os profissionais devem estar preparados para suspender uma ipp em andamento e ajustar a abordagem de acordo com as necessidades presentes e contínuas, ou consultar outro profissional de assistência, se apropriado. não fazer isso pode afetar negativamente a aliança, o que pode não ser reparável. mudanças nos ambientes relacionados além de considerar as mudanças nos clientes, é importante levar em consideração o ambiente no qual os clientes e profissionais estão inseridos. tome como exemplo um ppp que também é clínico. os clínicos contemporâneos trabalham em ambientes altamente complexos, de ritmo acelerado e de pressão, marcados por desafios como a escassez de programas de tratamento com base em evidências, falta de competência cultural e necessidades crônicas e complexas de clientes que impactam em vários domínios de sua vida. diante desses desafios, considere os clientes que: • podem ter perdido o emprego ou contratos importantes ou estão sendo negligenciados para uma promoção merecida apenas porque não se encaixam na equipe; • podem ter sido recentemente diagnosticados com uma condição médica séria; • estão lidando com traição ou outras formas de maus-tratos por seus parceiros; • estão passando por um incidente de discriminação; • estão sujeitos a eventos ambientais destrutivos, como inundações ou incêndios florestais, ou problemas globais como fome. considere como esses desafios podem afetar os clientes e moldar seus tratamentos. esses casos apresentam uma variedade de questões diferentes que precisam ser consideradas e abordadas de maneiras diferentes, tudo isso enquanto se considera todos os regulamentos e padrões da profissão com a qual a pessoa está alinhada. portanto, é importante que, quando os ppps ofereçam ipps, eles aprendam sobre seus clientes e também sobre seus ambientes e mudanças recentes ou atuais em suas circunstâncias. os profissionais também precisam conhecer os desafios em seu próprio ambiente de trabalho. isso pode incluir alterações na administração diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 16 que podem trazer alterações nas modalidades de serviço por exemplo, um novo diretor pode endossar ou opor-se a certas ipps ou pode preferir outra abordagem de tratamento (por exemplo, programação neurolinguística, terapias baseadas na atenção plena, terapia de aceitação e compromisso). as mudanças podem ter impactos diretos ou indiretos na prática de ipps, inclusive de uma perspectiva ética. estado emocional atual e nível de bem-estar ao oferecer ipps, é importante avaliar mudanças nos clientes e seu estado emocional atual e nível de bem-estar. é importante que os ppps pratiquem dentro de seu escopo de conhecimento e treinamento. para clientes que apresentam problemas relacionados à psicopatologia (ou seja, depressão, ansiedade, trauma), o ppp deve se referir a um profissional de ajuda adequadamente qualificado e experiente. se tais problemas não estiverem presentes no início das relações de trabalho, o ppp precisa estar vigilante para que tais problemas possam surgir enquanto o cliente estiver envolvido em uma ipp e esteja pronto para encaminhar a um profissional de ajuda suficientemente qualificado. idealmente, o profissional discutiria com o cliente e consultaria colegas e especialistas relevantes para determinar qual seria a janela de tempo apropriada para persistir com as ipps em tal caso. evitação a evitação é um dos mecanismos mais comuns que as pessoas usam para lidar com emoções negativas. uma vida psicológica saudável implica estar consciente e usar de forma adaptativa o espectro emocional completo. alguns clientes procurando ipps podem evitar emoções negativas mais profundas devido ao seu desconforto e podem buscar ipps na esperança de dissipar suas emoções negativas ou mantê-las afastadas. exemplos de fontes de emoções negativas incluem memórias de um amargo rompimento ou divórcio, traição por um amigo de confiança, ressentimento por ser vítima de discriminação ou ser tratado de forma injusta ou tendenciosa por um indivíduo ou instituição. uma maneira de avaliar a evitação é prestar atenção às emoções negativas, que retornam às conversas, apesar de não serem discutidas explicitamente (ou seja, emoções que perturbam persistentemente os clientes e ainda assim são deliberadamente não discutidas). embora as ipps estejam desbravando novos caminhos com evidências crescentes de que emoções positivas e forças de caráter podem melhorar e reparar estados negativos (rashid & seligman, 2018), esse é apenas o caso se os estados negativos estiverem significativamente integrados no tratamento. se fortes emoções negativas são evitadas pelos clientes ou profissionais, a eficácia do tratamento pode ser comprometida. diferenciais de poder uma das características essenciais de qualquer interação psicológica que envolva um profissional e um cliente é a dinâmica de poder inerente ao relacionamento e, especialmente, o diferencial de poder. terapeutas, conselheiros, assistentes sociais e outros profissionais geralmente estão cientes desse diferencial. portanto, eles se esforçam para criar um espaço seguro, sem julgamento, confidencial e acolhedor, onde os clientes não se sintam como meros destinatários passivos dos serviços prescritos. no entanto, a natureza da transação é tal entre o profissional e o cliente que o profissional é, inevitavelmente, percebido como um especialista. os clientes tendem a admirá-los como equipados com conhecimento, treinamento e experiência de ponta no execução de ipps. portanto, o diferencial de poder está sempre lá. o profissional deve estar ciente desse diferencial e evitar quaisquer situações em que o cliente ou o profissional possam ter que tomar uma decisão que possa ser influenciada pelo diferencial de poder. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 17 uso excessivo de forças o uso insuficiente ou excessivo de algumas práticas baseadas em forças pode exacerbar os desafios existentes. por exemplo, em vários contextos de treinamento, sugerir que os clientes sejam mais prudentes pode fazer com que alguns se tornem mais ansiosos ou indecisos. clientes exercitando o perdão sem deliberar sobre quando e a quem perdoar podem ignorar ofensas que, se não forem verificadas ou abordadas, podem prejudicar outras pessoas. clientes abusando da criatividade podem achar difícil aderir a normas ou regras que promovem a equidade e a igualdade de oportunidades. os clientes comprometidos a tomar decisões justas em seu local de trabalho podem ter dificuldade em conciliar realidades opostas existentes na mesma esfera (por exemplo, chegar a um acordo sobre como uma pessoa bem-educada e bem informada pode tomar decisões insensatas). sabedoria prática os profissionais precisam do que o filósofo aristóteles chamou de "phronesis", isto é, sabedoria prática para aplicar essas diretrizes. por exemplo, considere um profissional que trabalha com um executivo de alto nível com quem estabeleceu um excelente relacionamento e que também fez um progresso muito bom em seu trabalho. no entanto, o profissional passa a perceber que o executivo está envolvido em comportamento antiético. o profissional deve preservar o relacionamento sólido ou confrontar a pessoa, arriscando o relacionamento? um único conjunto de diretrizes pode não ser suficiente. o profissional precisa interpretar a situação e equilibrar os motivos concorrentes. nesses casos, a sabedoria prática é construída a partir da experiência cumulativa e de bons laços relacionais com colegas que podem aconselhar e auxiliar no raciocínio ético. manutenção da resiliência e proteção contra burnout uma variedade de construtos de pp podem proteger contra o burnout do profissional. as emoções positivas (por exemplo, esperança, serenidade, alegria, interesse e fascínio) podem ampliar os recursos atencionais, cognitivos e comportamentais de um praticante, que podem atuar como um amortecedor contra vulnerabilidades, como os sintomas de burnout (por exemplo, exaustão emocional). práticas pessoais, como mindfulness, também podem ajudar nesse sentido. as forças interpessoais (por exemplo, inteligência social, bondade, amor, humor, senso de propósito e significado e trabalho em equipe) podem ajudar a lidar com desafios como despersonalização (um estado em que os pensamentos e sentimentos de alguém parecem irreais ou não pertencem a si mesmo). da mesma forma, um senso de propósito e significado pode restaurar um senso pessoal de despersonalização. declaração de educação e competência os profissionais devem declarar os limites de sua competência em relação a condições psicológicas específicas, grupos específicos (por exemplo, trabalhando com crianças, outras culturas, trabalho em grupo) e ipps específicas. por exemplo, um profissional pode ter experiência na avaliação de forças em adultos, mas não na avaliação de forças de crianças ou adolescentes. além disso, à medida que a prestação do serviço continua, ela pode se mover para áreas nas quais o praticante é mais superficialmente experiente ou qualificado. por exemplo, embora um profissional possa ser experiente e qualificado para prestar serviços a crianças, adolescentes e adultos, ele pode não ser experiente ou qualificado para prestar esses serviços no contexto de um ambiente familiar, caso em que um encaminhamento ou outras estruturas de apoio pode ser necessário. além disso, os profissionais devem declarar o treinamento educacional e a experiência relevante em que sua prestação de práticas é baseada. por exemplo, um profissional conclui um diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 18 certificado de seis meses que inclui uma interação presencial de uma semana, com o restante do curso concluído on-line. o certificado não é reconhecido por uma autoridade municipal, regional ou provincial de concessão de licenças. o site do profissional afirma que eles são "profissionais de psicologia positiva certificado”. eles não têm outras credenciais profissionais. isso é ético? é importante informar explicitamente a seus clientes sobre a natureza, escopo e limites de sua educação profissional, prática e credenciais além do seu título de trabalho. apreciando a importância do contexto cultural a tomada de decisão ética não deve se basear apenas na conscientização, conhecimento ou entendimento cognitivo. as decisões também devem refletir as melhores evidências disponíveis e relevantes e as circunstâncias do contexto cultural. o contexto cultural é crítico na execução das ipps, porque o conceito do que é normal, bom ou adaptável é moldado pelos valores tidos como desejáveis pela cultura e pelo contexto social em que a preocupação ou dilema se apresenta. além disso, as culturas e as normas sociais diferem na forma como emoções específicas são reconhecidas, expressas ou amplificadas. portanto, é importante que as diretrizes para uma prática ética das ipps estejam enraizadas nessas evidências. as diretrizes éticas apresentadas aqui são amplas o suficiente para acomodar o contexto cultural, mas são suficientemente refinadas para acomodar diferenças e necessidades individuais. essa integração de evidências, incluindo fatores culturais e individuais, pode ser fácil ou facilmente disponível. embora essa integração possa não produzir um caminho, processo ou resultado eticamente perfeito, quando os indivíduos buscam a excelência ética, a sabedoria coletiva os ajuda a navegar pelos casos à medida que são encontrados. novos caminhos são abertos, novos passagens são pavimentadas e, eventualmente, a excelência pode ser alcançada. ter a estrutura dessas diretrizes é, portanto, crucial para ancorar o pensamento e as ações de uma pessoa. essas diretrizes também servem ao propósito de avaliar até que ponto as ações de uma pessoa são próximas ou distantes da excelência ética. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 19 resolução de dilemas éticos um guia passo a passo embora seja impossível ficar completamente imune a ser enredado em dilemas éticos, os seguintes passos, amplamente adaptados de ética na psicologia (no original ethics in psychology, koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998), entre outras fontes, ajudarão o praticante a tomar decisões éticas sólidas: • pratique de acordo com todos os estatutos, regulamentos e padrões de prática profissional, conduta e diretrizes, conforme estipulado pelo respectivo órgão concedente de licença da sua jurisdição. essas informações ajudarão o profissional a lidar com dilemas éticos. • desenvolva uma percepção precisa de como o mesmo evento pode diferir de pessoa para pessoa. consulte, com alguém confiável e imparcial, se o problema apresenta dilemas éticos com consequências sérias. discuta com os colegas para ver se o que você está percebendo é uma infração ética, apenas má etiqueta profissional ou uma situação que prejudica a si mesmo ou ao público. • revise as diretrizes, regras e normas relevantes já publicadas. certifique-se de interpretá-las com precisão e procure conselhos, se necessário. as orientações escritas são às vezes são abstratas e pouco claras, com amplo espaço para interpretação subjetiva. • colete todas as informações relevantes e as melhores possíveis. identifique as lacunas existentes nas informações e documente fatos e preocupações. • integre todas as informações em seu processo de reflexão e consulte alguém bem informado, de mente aberta e sem medo de apontar as possíveis deficiências de um profissional. • avalie como os seis princípios éticos dessas diretrizes se aplicam (ou seja, beneficência/não-maleficência, cuidado responsável, respeito pelos direitos e dignidade das pessoas, confiabilidade, justiça, autonomia). por exemplo, avalie os direitos, responsabilidades e vulnerabilidades de todos os envolvidos. • pense em várias soluções e avalie cada uma delas o mais objetivamente possível. • considere quais forças de caráter podem ajudá-lo a tomar a decisão mais ética. você pode recorrer ao seu senso mais profundo de justiça, honestidade ou bondade? talvez sua coragem seja necessária para motivá-lo a "fazer a coisa certa"? lembre-se de que as decisões éticas exigem o uso de múltiplas forças de caráter usadas otimamente e em combinação, não apenas uma força isolada ou uma força “usada muito” (niemiec, 2018). • visualize o resultado de sua ação ou inação. • reflita antes de tomar uma decisão sobre o impacto que isso terá sobre você, todos os outros envolvidos e quais podem ser as implicações sistemáticas. reflita também sobre que tipos de suporte você pode precisar aderir à sua decisão. • traduza a decisão em ações concretas que realmente reflitam o espírito da sua decisão. várias ações podem expressar sua decisão. selecione ações que expressem sua decisão com precisão e validade, sejam mensuráveis, conectadas aos resultados desejados e causem o mínimo de inconveniência ou dano àqueles que não estão diretamente envolvidos. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 20 guia de auto-avaliação a seção a seguir traça perguntas para os profissionais refletirem sobre o que os ajudarão a evitar dilemas éticos para apoiar as melhores práticas. ajuste da ipp: em primeiro lugar, com base nas melhores evidências disponíveis, decida se uma ipp específica (por exemplo, diário de gratidão, usando forças específicas, exercício de perdão) é um ajuste apropriado para o cliente, dados seus problemas, circunstâncias e a motivação para o tratamento. momento da ipp: em que passos você irá decidir quando a ipp é apropriada: 1) no início dos serviços, 2) enquanto a ipp já tiver sido iniciada? em que condições você consideraria um serviço ou tratamento simultâneo ou alternativo? consciência da própria saúde mental: o quão consciente você está sobre sua própria saúde mental? ser um profissional não o deixa imune de apresentar sintomas de doença mental que podem se mover em direção a um espectro clínico. que movimentos ou ações você se envolve rotineiramente para cuidar de sua própria saúde mental, a fim de poder atender seus clientes melhor? que barreiras você enfrenta para cuidar de si mesmo, como falta de tempo e recursos, sentir ou acreditar que você está bem e acesso a profissionais apropriados e relevantes que podem cuidar de sua saúde mental? relatórios obrigatórios: quão confortável você se sente ao tomar uma ação contra um cliente que pode estar respondendo bem a ipps, mas deseja confidencialidade quando relata inadvertidamente um incidente (recente ou passado) ou uma situação em andamento que pode envolver, por exemplo, abuso de crianças ou idosos, abuso sexual ou ameaça iminente à segurança de alguém? se você não pratica sob o código ou as diretrizes de um órgão profissional, você tem a obrigação legal de denunciar? exagero e generalização: você conhece alguém em uma conferência que parece apaixonada por ipps e o convida para participar de um workshop que eles estão oferecendo. você participa do workshop, que se baseia em alguns estudos com os quais você está familiarizado. os resultados, aplicações e generalização dos estudos são apresentados de maneira exagerada. a maioria dos participantes considera a apresentação "transformadora" e parece acreditar nas descobertas. o que você faria? você pode usar as etapas da seção “resolver dilemas éticos” para orientar seu comportamento em tal situação? diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 21 seção três: exemplos de caso de prática ética os casos a seguir são exemplos que podem se apresentar na prática e têm um componente ético relevante para os princípios dessas diretrizes éticas6. exemplo de caso 1: cultural – aplicando ipps com sensibilidade cultural as decisões éticas devem refletir a melhor evidência disponível nas circunstâncias do contexto cultural. considere a seguinte vinheta. suzanne é uma profissional australiana que trabalha com uma cliente de origem cultural leste asiática. o cliente quer auto aperfeiçoamento e preservar seus relacionamentos familiares. suzanne opta por usar o exercíco de melhor self possível. suzanne segue todas as etapas para orientar o cliente durante o exercício. de alguma forma, apesar de fazer auto aperfeiçoamentos significativos, a cliente relata que seus relacionamentos com a família ficaram amargos. portanto, nenhuma melhoria significativa no bem-estar do cliente é detectada em repetidas mensurações on-line. uma implicação importante nessa vinheta é a consideração do conceito de self, que varia de cultura para cultura. suzanne segue um conceito de autodesenvolvimento frequentemente associado ao ocidente, que abrange o crescimento pessoal e a tomada de iniciativas novas e amplamente individuais. em contraste, acredita-se que o autodesenvolvimento nas culturas orientais (e na maioria das culturas não ocidentais) dê relativa ênfase maior ao investimento em relacionamentos, melhorando a interação social e contribuindo para preservar as tradições familiares, grupais e tribais. apesar da crescente diversidade cultural na maioria das metrópoles urbanas, as diferenças culturais essenciais ainda se mantêm. uma implicação importante dessas diferenças é que a cliente nesta vinheta pode se beneficiar ao entender como usar suas forças de caráter para trazer benefícios à sua família ou para se conectar com eles mais profundamente. suzanne pode usar as intervenções de forças de caráter de torne suas forças orientadas ao outro ou apreciação de forças de caráter (niemiec, 2018), na qual sua cliente aprende a transformar suas melhores qualidades internas em mecanismos de construção de relacionamentos que beneficiam o outro e priorizam uma maneira de reconhecer e valorizar os membros da família por suas melhores qualidades. também pode ser que o autodesenvolvimento apoiado entes queridos possa trazer aumentos profundos e continuados no bem-estar. no entanto, em uma cultura interdependente, o autodesenvolvimento, que provavelmente envolve membros próximos da família, também exige o gerenciamento de interações mais complexas por um longo período de tempo. por outro lado, a atividade melhor versão de mim, que se concentra em melhorar forças individuais ou em tomar uma nova iniciativa, pode exigir um período de tempo relativamente menor. portanto, é imperativo que os ppps considerem a melhor forma de adaptar seus exercícios culturalmente. os seguintes aspectos éticos são exemplos relevantes para o caso acima: • cuidado responsável o ppp precisa tentar cuidar do cliente de uma maneira que leve em consideração as especificidades da situação e dos antecedentes desse cliente. • beneficência/não-maleficência o ppp tem o dever de não causar danos. 6 agradecemos às seguintes pessoas que forneceram esses casos: casos 1 e 3 tayyab rashid, caso 2 annalize roache, caso 4 stewart donaldson, caso 5 matthew iasiello e caso 6 denise quinlan. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 22 • respeito pelos direitos e dignidade das pessoas o ppp tem a responsabilidade de ser sensível a dinâmica transcultural e respeitar a perspectiva e as necessidades situadas do cliente. exemplo de caso 2: coaching – trabalhando com clientes em circunstâncias mutáveis os dilemas éticos podem aparecer inesperadamente e exigir um ajuste na prestação de serviços. considere a seguinte vinheta. amanda chegou ao processo de coaching porque estava sentindo falta de direção e significado na vida. anteriormente, ela havia dado muita importância ao progresso na carreira, mas agora sentia que precisava procurar uma abordagem mais equilibrada para com a vida e, além disso, estava se sentindo triste e desanimada por não ter conseguido mais na vida (além do aprimoramento na carreira). durante a sessão inicial de admissão, ela identificou vários domínios nos quais gostaria de se concentrar, incluindo gerenciamento financeiro (para apoiar a compra de uma casa), desenvolvimento pessoal e aumento do tempo para socialização e diversão. ela mencionou que seu trabalho atual era desafiador e que procuraria fazer uma mudança no futuro, mas esse não era o foco atual para o coaching. nas duas primeiras sessões, nas quais as metas foram elaboradas e passos para ação esclarecidos, houve progresso na direção que ela indicara como importante e o coaching estava progredindo bem. no entanto, no início da quarta sessão, amanda declarou que sua situação de trabalho havia se deteriorado abruptamente e que ela havia se demitido, já tendo encontrado um novo emprego. a demissão não foi bem recebida e amanda estava se sentindo inquieta e altamente emocional em seu local de trabalho, onde ela ainda tinha quatro semanas para elaborar sua notificação. ela indica se sentir desencadeando gatilhos pela reação de seu gerente à demissão, que está trazendo lembranças de confrontos emocionais semelhantes de sua adolescência. nesse estágio, era imperativo que o coach mantivesse sua força de auto regulação e não fizesse uma sugestão impulsiva devido ao aumento dos estressores de amanda. a partir daí, o coach poderia usar a força da curiosidade para verificar como amanda gostaria de proceder no futuro imediato e estar aberto a mudar o foco nas sessões. também pode ser importante entender a natureza da reação emocional de amanda para determinar se o coaching é um mecanismo seguro e apropriado para suas necessidades atuais. embora o coach possa ter contratado com amanda um determinado número de sessões, as mudanças na situação do cliente devem informar o caminho apropriado a seguir. os seguintes aspectos éticos são exemplos relevantes para o caso acima: • cuidado responsável o coach tem a responsabilidade primária de usar a bondade e a justiça para proteger o bem-estar de amanda e reconhecer os limites de seus conhecimentos. • autonomia aqui, o coach pode se concentrar no desenvolvimento da capacidade de amanda de se auto dirigir na prestação de serviços e em todos os aspectos da vida, além de revisitar/revisar os termos do seu contrato ao longo do relacionamento. • beneficência/não-maleficência o coach, agindo no melhor interesse de amanda e com base na avaliação profissional, deve estar ciente de trabalhar estritamente dentro de seus limites de competência e prestar serviços com base em treinamento e experiência adequados. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 23 exemplo de caso 3: clínico trabalhando com trauma a maioria das pessoas que experimentam trauma ficam sobrecarregadas de muitas formas culturalmente diferenciadas, especialmente se estiverem trabalhando em uma ipp. elas podem desenvolver mecanismos extensos para evitar pensar, lembrar ou se comportar de maneiras que possam estar relacionadas aos seus traumas. ao oferecer ipps, é importante estimar e avaliar esse trauma (seja histórico e/ou atual). sem minimizá-lo ou descartá-lo, o profissional deve intervir se tiver experiência ou, se não, fazer uma referência em tempo oportuno. o profissional também precisa estar vigilante caso o trauma possa surgir enquanto o cliente estiver envolvido em uma ipp. o profissional deve discutir com o cliente e consultar colegas e especialistas relevantes para determinar qual seria o momento apropriado para persistir com as ipps nesse caso. considere a seguinte vinheta. salma, 21 anos, tem uma longa história de abuso físico, emocional e sexual. ela procura serviços para seus persistentes sentimentos de depressão. ela está esperando que o terapeuta pergunte explicitamente sobre os eventos traumáticos em sua vida. em vez disso, ela recebe um pequeno questionário que não inclui perguntas sobre traumas atuais ou passados. nas sessões de aconselhamento, salma descobre que não gosta do terapeuta e decide não revelar os detalhes de seu trauma. assim, o tratamento permanece superficialmente eficaz e ela recebe uma nova rodada de tratamento dentro de seis meses. como o caso acima demonstra, é importante perguntar explicitamente sobre trauma (embora isso exija grande sensibilidade e, possivelmente, também treinamento clínico). dependendo do relacionamento, alguns clientes farão explicitamente perguntas relacionadas e buscarão conselhos, sugestões, estratégias de enfrentamento ou recursos culturalmente adequados. é importante que, enquanto a ipp esteja em processo e detalhes de um trauma recente ou remoto emerjam , o profissional responda de uma maneira que atenda às necessidades do cliente. em primeiro lugar, o profissional deve ser suficientemente qualificado, treinado e experiente para lidar com a situação. os profissionais devem acessar regularmente suas forças de humildade e prudência/cautela ao periodicamente checar se devem continuar a prestar serviços ou, inversamente, se o cliente estaria melhor com alguém com experiência mais específica no fornecimento de sugestões, habilidades e estratégias que alguns clientes precisem ou solicitem. os seguintes aspectos éticos são exemplos relevantes para o caso acima: • cuidado responsável o ppp tem a responsabilidade de cuidar de salma de maneira a considerar as especificidades de sua situação e histórico. • beneficência/não-maleficência o ppp tem tanto a responsabilidade de não causar mais danos a salma quanto de promover seu bem-estar. exemplo de caso 4: organizacional pressão para deturpar dados muitas intervenções positivas no trabalho e nas organizações são avaliadas para determinar sua efetividade. os dilemas éticos podem aparecer inesperadamente quando os clientes não aceitam descobertas e pressionam os profissionais a omitir ou deturpar os dados da avaliação. considere a seguinte vinheta e observe como várias forças de caráter são subutilizadas, incluindo honestidade/integridade, perspectiva/sabedoria, liderança e humildade. a empresa xyz contratou um profissional de pp para melhorar a moral e o desempenho dos funcionários. em consulta com a liderança da empresa, ela decidiu fornecer um programa de treinamento para aumentar o capital psicológico dos funcionários (esperança, eficácia, resiliência e otimismo). os dados da avaliação mostraram que os diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 24 funcionários adoraram o treinamento e desejaram mais treinamento psicológico positivo no futuro. no entanto, os dados da avaliação mostraram que não houveram diferenças significativas nos níveis de esperança, eficácia, resiliência, otimismo, moral ou desempenho entre os funcionários que foram selecionados aleatoriamente para participar do treinamento e aqueles no grupo de comparação. os líderes da empresa xyz ficaram tão satisfeitos que os funcionários gostaram do treinamento que eles não queriam que eles vissem os resultados desanimadores da avaliação. em vez disso, pediram ao profissional que informasse que o treinamento foi um grande sucesso e que mais treinamentos na mesma linha seriam fornecidos aos funcionários no futuro. os seguintes aspectos éticos são exemplos relevantes para o caso acima: • autonomia aqui a autonomia do praticante para agir está sendo retirada. • beneficência/não-maleficência beneficência envolve um compromisso de promover o bem-estar do cliente e esse nível de manipulação preconizado pelos líderes da empresa não corresponde aos interesses dos funcionários. além disso, agir de forma benéfica requer prestar serviços com base em treinamento ou experiência adequados. • confiabilidade aqui, o profissional está sendo solicitado a exagerar e generalizar a efetividade da ipp, o que não honra a confiança depositada no profissional pelos funcionários. exemplo de caso 5: mentoria motivando participantes "indispostos" em um relacionamento desequilibrado frequentemente, aqueles que são mais resistentes a uma intervenção são aqueles que podem se beneficiar mais. os ppps encontram uma situação difícil ao tentar motivar ou convencer um cliente a participar de uma intervenção em seu benefício, sem manipulação. considere a seguinte vinheta. abbie, gerente de caso de uma agência de jovens, tem um cliente que se recusa a participar dos exercícios de uma intervenção em grupo de pp. o facilitador da intervenção pediu a abbie para motivar seu cliente a participar dos exercícios e convencêlo dos benefícios da intervenção. abbie concorda com seu colega que a intervenção seria muito benéfica para seu cliente. abbie está consciente de que as atitudes e o comportamento de seu cliente geralmente fazem com que ele seja excluído de intervenções que provavelmente serão úteis e decide desafiar as atitudes de seu cliente em relação à participação. abbie desenvolveu um relacionamento de mentoria com confiança com o cliente e não está disposta a comprometer sua integridade e trair a confiança do cliente "vendendo" cegamente a intervenção ao participante ou fazendo promessas que não serão realizadas. em vez disso, ela descreve modestamente as evidências que apoiam a intervenção e trabalha com seu cliente para avaliar os custos e benefícios da participação. ela curiosamente faz perguntas ao cliente sobre os prós e os contras de participar da intervenção e como as forças de assinatura do cliente podem ser usados no contexto grupal. abbie então apoia seu cliente a identificar estratégias para minimizar os custos de participação e eles praticam versões de baixa intensidade da própria intervenção e o uso das forças de seu cliente antes do contexto grupal. abbie tem certeza de que seu cliente se beneficiará da participação na intervenção e não deseja que seu cliente seja excluído da participação novamente. da mesma forma, ela não quer trair a confiança ou a autonomia de seu cliente. abbie quer desafiar seu cliente e ajudar a expô-la a novas experiências, mas teme que a manipulação antiética possa resultar em resultados diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 25 negativos para sua participante e, em última instância, prejudicar a qualidade do relacionamento conquistado com dificuldade. ao invés de vender excessivamente ou exagerar os benefícios da participação, abbie trabalha para entender a atitude do cliente em relação à intervenção, desafia os vieses cognitivos e cria oportunidades para demonstrar os benefícios do treinamento na segurança da sessão de gerenciamento de casos. os seguintes aspectos éticos são exemplos relevantes para o caso acima: • justiça o ppp tem a responsabilidade de garantir que os clientes não sejam excluídos das intervenções com base em uma característica específica. • confiabilidade o ppp usa o relacionamento de confiança com o cliente para incentiválo a avaliar suas atitudes e crenças, mas não trai essa confiança. • autonomia o ppp respeita a vontade de seu cliente e é hesitante em manipulá-la. exemplo de caso 6: educação implementação de programas de bem-estar em que as aspirações são impedidas por práticas existentes muitas escolas querem adotar programas de bem-estar. no entanto, elas podem fazê-lo por uma série de razões, desde a preocupação com o bem-estar dos alunos, passando por desafios como o bullying na escola, até o aprimoramento de práticas já fortes. além disso, ter um programa de bem-estar escolar também pode ser visto como uma oportunidade de marketing e um ponto de diferenciação para algumas escolas. considere a seguinte vinheta. um membro da equipe da escola foi solicitado pelo diretor para desenvolver uma estratégia de bem-estar e planejar a adoção pelo conselho e, em seguida, organizar um lançamento rápido dos elementos-chave. o diretor queria dizer aos futuros pais que seus filhos se beneficiariam com o ensino explícito do bem-estar no currículo. todos os professores receberam responsabilidades pelo ensino do bem-estar, embora houvesse muito pouco desenvolvimento profissional para os funcionários nessa área. muitos funcionários estavam estressados e se sentiam despreparados para esse ensino, bem como a carga de trabalho adicional que ele representava. um consultor foi contratado para realizar uma sessão de desenvolvimento profissional de bem-estar de meio dia para os funcionários. alguns funcionários expressaram preocupação ao consultor por estarem ansiosos por poderem causar danos aos seus alunos porque estavam mal equipados e não tinham fundamento nessa área. além disso, o consultor viu o marketing da escola que promove seu trabalho sobre o bem-estar (por exemplo, descrevendo a escola como apoiando o bemestar holístico para funcionários e alunos e criando bem-estar a cada encontro). o consultor está ciente de que a escola continua a usar uma política de disciplina punitiva que prejudica o relacionamento entre alunos e funcionários e ignora evidências científicas dos benefícios de bem-estar de práticas restaurativas e do perdão. o professor de nível médio, responsável pela implementação do programa de bem-estar, informou o consultor sobre essas questões. o professor está relutante em levantar os problemas com a liderança da escola, pois esse professor já havia sido intimidado por esse grupo ao levantar preocupações semelhantes. naquela época, a lealdade deles à escola foi posta em questão e sua adequação para continuar como professor foi desafiada. os seguintes aspectos éticos são exemplos relevantes para o caso acima: • beneficência/não-maleficência o ppp tem a responsabilidade de não endossar inequivocamente ou acriticamente uma escola como sendo uma “escola de bem-estar” se tiver conhecimento de práticas escolares que prejudicam o bem-estar. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 26 • autonomia o professor não deve se sentir coagido a adotar uma perspectiva ou posição que entre em conflito com seus próprios julgamentos ou valores. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 27 diretrizes relevantes as seguintes diretrizes (organizadas por campo específico e em ordem alfabética dentro do campo) foram elaboradas e ajudaram a informar o desenvolvimento dessas diretrizes práticas: psicológica: • austrália – psicologia – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • austrália – aconselhamento e psicoterapia – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canadá – psicologia – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • nova zelândia – psicologia – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, quarta edição). • reino unido – aconselhamento e psicoterapia – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • estados unidos da américa – psicologia – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • estados unidos da américa – aconselhamento – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). enfermagem: • austrália – enfermagem – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • nova zelândia – enfermagem – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). • reino unido – enfermagem – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • internacional – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 28 reconhecimentos as seguintes pessoas, listadas em ordem alfabética, contribuíram substancialmente e forneceram sugestões e comentários para a elaboração dessas diretrizes: • professor adjunto aaron jarden, university of melbourne, austrália. • sr. andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, austrália. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, nova zelândia. • dr. dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, nova zelândia. • dra. denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, nova zelândia. • professora dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, austrália. • giselle timmerman, positive work, estados unidos da américa. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dra. helena agueda marujo, instituto superior de ciências sociais e políticas, universidade de lisboa, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, estados unidos da américa. • dra. jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, austrália. • dr. joel milam, university of southern california, estados unidos da américa. • dra. judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, estados unidos da américa. • professora adjunta karena burke, central queensland university, austrália. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canadá. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, méxico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, austrália. • dr. mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, coréia do sul. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, austrália. • dra. rona hart, antiga diretora mapp, university of east london, inglaterra. • dr. ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, estados unidos da américa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, austrália. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, estados unidos da américa. • sue langley, the langley group, austrália. • dra. suzy green, the positivity institute, austrália. • dr. tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canadá. • dr. tim lomas, university of east london, inglaterra. diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 29 signatários iniciais das diretrizes éticas para a prática da psicologia positiva data da primeira assinatura das diretrizes versão assinada nome e site da associação ou corpo logo 19/julho/2019 1.0 • via institute on character • http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19/julho/2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19/julho/2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/msc applied-positive-psychology-and coaching-psychology 19/julho/2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/study areas/psychology,-social-work-and community services/postgraduate/master-of-applied positive-psychology 19/julho/2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa • https://research.cgu.edu/claremont evaluation-center/ 19/julho/2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia • https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19/julho/2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19/julho/2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience • www.nziwr.co.nz 19/julho/2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive psychology 19/julho/2019 1.0 • humanship • www.humanshiplb.org diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 30 19/julho/2019 1.0 • iranian positive psychology congress 19/julho/2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society • http://jphp.jp/ 19/julho/2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology • https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ 19/julho/2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19/julho/2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india • http://nppassociation.org/ 19/julho/2019 1.0 • german society for positive psychology • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 31 autores aaron jarden university of melbourne, austrália aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canadá annalize roache auckland university of technology, nova zelândia tim lomas university of east london, reino unido tradutores carina bidese university of east london u1741735@uel.ac.uk vivian callegaro university of east london u1417958@uel.ac.uk rafael ruschel university of east london u1826969@uel.ac.uk a tradução passou por três etapas: 1. inglês para português brasileiro. 2. do português brasileiro ao inglês (tradução reversa). 3. revisão final, adaptações, consenso final e ajustes à literatura científica de psicologia positiva em português brasileiro data de publicação publicado 26 de novembro de 2019 diretrizes éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, bidese, callegaro, & ruschel 32 referências barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. leitura adicional han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. osei-tutu, a., adams, g., dzokoto, v. a., affram, a. a., kenin, a., vural, n., & omar, s. m. (2022). conception and experience of well-being in two ghanaian samples: implications for positive psychology. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 51-64. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2123 annabella osei-tutu university of ghana, legon, accra aopare-henaku@ug.edu.gh copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 article conception and experience of well-being in two ghanaian samples: implications for positive psychology annabella osei-tutu · glenn adams · vivian a. dzokoto · adjeiwa a. affram abraham kenin · nilay vural · syed m. omar abstract: we conducted two studies to explore ghanaian understandings of well-being through a situation sampling method in which participants described situations that increased and decreased their well-being. participants in study 1 were 80 community members (mean age = 41.962; sd=13.900; 40 women, 40 men) who responded in the context of interviews through the medium of local languages. coding analyses revealed that these situation descriptions emphasized sustainability-oriented themes of materiality (tangible support, economic hardship) and peace of mind (presence or absence of worry or strife) with greater frequency than growth-oriented themes of psychologization (growth, meaning, achievement) and affect (happiness, sadness). participants in study 2 were 125 students (mean age = 21.592; sd=2.759; 68 women, 57 men) at three universities in ghana who responded via questionnaire in the medium of english. in contrast to the community sample, coding analyses revealed that the students’ situations emphasized growth-oriented themes of affect and psychologization with greater frequency than sustainability-oriented themes of materiality and peace of mind. we interpret these results within a theoretical framework that emphasizes the culturalpsychological foundations of well-being, and we consider implications for hegemonic perspectives of positive psychology. keywords: well-being, peace of mind, materiality, sustainability, collective well-being 1. introduction wellbeing has been a focus of study in the social sciences for decades (diener & tay, 2015; suh & choi, 2018). it has become increasingly important in recent years for its role as an economic indicator (diener & seligman, 2004; schyns, 1998; sirgy, 2021). critics (e.g., krys et al., 2020) have argued that standard conceptions and measures of well-being—which tend to valorize selfacceptance, personal growth, and happiness—have their foundation in modern individualist lifeways of the western, educated, industrial, rich, and (purportedly) democratic (in a word, weird; henrich et al., 2010) settings that disproportionately inform hegemonic forms of psychological science. such conceptions and measures can be problematic if researchers impose them as a context-general standard and interpret variation in ways that misrepresent or pathologize experience of well-being outside weird settings (see teo, 2010 on epistemological violence). for example, researchers have suggested that the imposition of an individualism-biased measure of life satisfaction—rather than something pathological about east asian ways of being (e.g., pressure for academic success)—may explain why students in east asian countries scored the lowest in life satisfaction in the most recent wave of the programme for international student assessment survey (rappleye et al., 2020). more generally, such individualism-biased about:blank well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 conceptions of well-being can cause harm if they orient people toward personal growth and higharousal happiness at the expense of broader solidarities and ways of (well-)being oriented toward sustainable existence (osei-tutu et al., 2021). as one alternative, researchers in japanese settings have developed a conceptual model and corresponding measure of interdependent happiness oriented toward the experience of embeddedness and interdependence (hitokoto & uchida, 2015). such settings, which afford an experience of self as inextricably linked with others (markus & kitayama, 2010), foster understandings of happiness that center on qualities such as interpersonal harmony, low psychological arousal (quiescence), and ordinariness (hitokoto & uchida, 2018). consistent with the argument about variations in conceptions of well-being, a recent investigation of happiness across 63-countries observed that a standard measure of independent happiness (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999) performed better—that is, was more reliable and showed stronger relationships with hypothesized correlates—in weirder settings, but the measure of interdependent happiness (hitokoto & uchida, 2015) performed better in east asian countries (gardiner et al., 2020). at the same time, the researchers observed that measures of both independent and interdependent happiness were least reliable in the african and southwest asian countries in the sample. this observation suggests that these two measures might not provide a globally comprehensive operationalization of happiness or well-being. with specific reference to the west african settings that inform the current work, researchers have placed a similar emphasis on affordances for embeddedness and interdependence in experience of self and well-being (e.g., adams & dzokoto, 2003; adjei, 2019). however, rather than values of harmony, this work understands the core of interdependent self as an experience of fundamental embeddedness—for better or worse—in networks of ontologically prior relationship that come with corresponding duties and obligations for material support (see adams & plaut, 2003; adams, 2005). what implications do these constructions of the self have for the experience of well-being? initial evidence comes from a study of cultural models of well-being implicit in four ghanaian languages (osei-tutu et al., 2021). members of our research team conducted interviews with 34 leaders from three religious groups. responses indicated some features of local models, including good health and positive affective states, that resemble the standard conception of well-being in mainstream psychological science. at the same time, they provided evidence for what we refer to as a sustainability orientation to well-being. in contrast to the mainstream emphasis on personal psychological growth, this orientation emphasizes material sustenance, acute sensitivity to interpersonal embeddedness, and corresponding attention to social obligations (coe, 2011; esiaka & adams, 2020; wilson fadiji et al., 2021). in contrast to an emphasis on high-arousal happiness, this orientation emphasizes the low-arousal positive affect that people refer to in english as “peace of mind” (tsai, 2007). the literal translations of these words refer to a sensation of coolness—associated with body, heart, and especially ears—that suggests an experience of relief that one has met social expectations. 1.1 the present work to grow our understanding of well-being in ghanaian settings, we adopted a novel methodological approach in the current study. rather than ask local cultural experts about words for well-being or analyzing responses to likert scale items, we assessed understandings of wellbeing indirectly by asking ordinary people—community members who responded to interview questions in local ghanaian languages (study 1) and students at three universities in ghana who responded to a questionnaire in english—to generate situations that increase or decrease well well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 being. our original purpose was to sample these situations to use as stimuli in a subsequent study (e.g., situation sampling technique; see kitayama et al., 19997). for the present article, we analyzed responses to assess the relative importance (gauged by frequency) of sustainabilityoriented themes, versus the mainstream standard emphasis on growthand promotion-oriented themes, as a function of valence (increase/decrease) and sample. 1.2 hypotheses the primary hypothesis (h1) concerns the distribution of themes within participants. specifically, it suggests that the sustainability-oriented themes we observed in research on ghanaian cultural models would emerge more prominently in situation descriptions than would the promotion-oriented themes that inform standard conceptions of well-being in mainstream psychological science. a second hypothesis (h2) concerns the distribution of themes across samples. given the association of university settings with modern individualist lifeways that afford an emphasis on personal growth and high arousal happiness (e.g., adams, et al., 2018), this hypothesis suggests that the pattern associated with h1 would be less evident among the student sample than the community sample. a final interest, more of a research question than a hypothesis, concerns distribution of themes as a function of situation valence. that is, we considered whether the distribution of sustainability themes versus growth themes would be different for situations describing decrease than increase in well-being. 2. study 1: community sample 2.1 participants participants were 40 men and 40 women, aged between 22 and 75 years (m= 41.962; sd=13.900), with a mix of education levels: no formal education (n = 3), basic (n=35), secondary (n=16), and tertiary/college (n=12), plus 10 participants who did not indicate education level. the majority of the participants were married (n=45); 25 were single; 2 were cohabiting, 3 were divorced; and 5 were widowed. there were equal numbers of participants (i.e., 10 men and 10 women) in each of the ethno-linguistic regions. 2.2 procedure one of the authors (ao-t) supervised interviews between august 2019 and february 2020 in four regions of ghana—ashanti, greater accra, northern and volta—using respective local languages of akan, ga, dagbani, and ewe. in each region, the researcher identified a native local language speaker who could assist with recruitment and conduct interviews in the local language. we approached prospective participants in their homes or public spaces (shops, bus stations) and invited them to take part in a study on well-being. those who agreed to participate provided verbal consent. a research assistant conducted individual interviews using a guide developed by the research team. using local language well-being terms, we asked participants to explain their personal understanding of well-being, to describe two situations in which their well-being increased, and two situations in which their well-being decreased. 2.3 coding research assistants transcribed interviews into english. we reviewed transcripts and developed a coding frame that included main themes (e.g., material, relational, peace of mind, affect), definitions of each theme, and examples (table 1). next, one of us (ao-t) trained two undergraduate students (one of ghanaian ancestry, the other european american) to apply the coding frame to well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 the situations. the coders worked independently to indicate presence (1) or absence (0) of a code, using multiple codes if necessary. inter-coder agreement was fair to very good (κ = .250-1.000). all kappa values were significantly different from zero at the level of p < .001, except for the theme peace of mind in situations of well-being decrease (κ =.250, p=.024). we resolved disagreements via collective discussion. table 1. themes, definitions, and sample well-being situations. theme definition community sample: study 1 student sample: study 2 material (-) poor material condition including unemployment, low or reduced income, finances, food supply, and other material resources limitations. just this year i am not able to cultivate the number of acres of maize as i usually cultivate every year because i don’t have enough money (t14) my well-being decreased once when i used all my money to buy something i really needed which meant the rest of the month i didn't really have money to rely on for my upkeep which resulted in me borrowing a lot of money from people. (#122) (+) materiality/good material condition/financial/business improvements/ material abundance/excess/comfort i stayed a long time without work and food until i got a work here… (h15) when i am financially stable (#51) relational (-) presence of bad/strained/conflictual relations; absence of relationships; loss/death/end of a relationship; unfulfilled relational expectations and roles of others i love people a lot, but people don’t love me in return (h09) socializing with negative friends. (#125) (+) good relationships/ peaceful relations/absence of bad relationships i was single and searching for a woman to marry. then god gave me a wife and children… (t19) being around people i'm comfortable and close to, willing to listen to me, converse with and make me laugh increases my social wellbeing. (#4) peace of mind (-) presence of high-arousal negative affect; presence/active disruption in the social/physical environment i was thinking of how to get money and build my own house and leave a rented house and take myself from the quarrels and misunderstanding in a compound house. (h12) when my roommates disturb me with their noise when am trying to sleep. (#103) (+) presence of low-arousal positive affect of internalized nature; absence of worry/problems/without stress; freedom from constraints (obligations to family) and external pressures/social pressures/social demands it was my brother that bought a house for me and my children, so now we don’t think of rent, we have our own water, our own electricity… (h02) my wellbeing increased when i started selling and making money on my own as i didn't have to worry about what to eat or wear next. (#108) well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 theme definition community sample: study 1 student sample: study 2 affect (-) presence of low-arousal negative affect i had a police case for instance which made me very sad (a01) a few months ago, my emotional and psychological state was disrupted. too much stress, anxiety and loneliness. (#22) (+) high-arousal positive affect i was happy when [i got] married (ac13) when i had admission to the university. i was really happy because nobody has been to the university among my female siblings. (#103) social validation (-) diminished social standing/social mattering/social worth/social status/social concern/social credibility someone lied against me that i impregnated a woman […] i was so ashamed that i couldn’t even walk on the street (h01) when i was disrespected by a female friend i was correcting about her attitude towards me. […]. trying to correct her, she ended up disrespecting me … (+) improved social standing/social mattering/social worth/social status/social concern/social credibility. social worth measured against an internalized social standard. i lost my grandparent i was asked to talk on behalf of the grandchildren since i was the eldest. […]at the end of the day everyone called me for suggestions because they didn’t understand how i was able to handle the situation. that particular thing made me very happy because they gave a lot of respect to me because i gave them some instances and they all complied with it. so now they call me for everything. (ac11) my well being increased when i went for a social gathering when i was well dressed and felt good among my peers. (#40) physical health (-) presence of poor physical health (for self or others in one’s social circle); negative health behavior (for self or others in one’s social circle) my husband’s sudden sickness, ++++ i never expected something like that in my marriage. [...] i had to struggle to take care of my sick husband and the entire family...(a03) my well-being decreased when i got so ill. (#120) (+) good physical health (for self or others in one’s social circle)/recovery of lost health; positive health behavior (for self or others in one’s social circle) i had a job as a waitress […] i bought good body products and went for check up at the hospital. you could see i was healthy (ac18) this is when i'm healthy. i was able to perform all necessary activities that will bring about healthy living. (#75) well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 theme definition community sample: study 1 student sample: study 2 psychologizing (-) challenges/obstacles to past or current work/career; hindrances to future work/career aspirations; failure to achieve life goals/being short of personal standards since i didn’t have money, i couldn’t further my education and it was difficult for me. i bought university forms went for interview and had been called but no money to pay for the tuition fee...(h17) i couldn't achieve all my goals. (#69) (+) academic/work/career-related achievements; freedom to be who one want’s to be/have own opinions/do whatever one wants without regard for what others think/seek one’s own values not social ideals. seeking new experiences/ discovery of self/self-development/search for personal identity i will say that when we were born our father didn’t look after us; it was our stepfather who sponsored us to go to school and so i can also write my name today. (h14) …my first month in university when my dad actually decided on giving me money to cater for myself. now, i get to buy whatever i want, and i get to do anything. i like due to the fact that i don't have any relative monitoring my movements in school. freedom. (#6) notes. (-) means decrease situation; (+) refers to increase situation. we use […] to indicate that portions of the sentence have not been presented 2.4 results reflecting the psychological character of well-being, relatively few participants (f = 10, 12.5%) mentioned physical health. consistent with the primary hypothesis (h1) and our earlier work on local conceptions of well-being (osei-tutu et al., 2021), the most prominent themes to emerge from analyses of situations were sustainability-oriented (fig. 1; and table 2, second and third columns from the left). fig. 1. relative frequency of themes. 0 20 40 60 80 100 community sample increase situation decrease situation 0 20 40 60 80 100 student sample decrease situation increase situation well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 more than two-thirds of participants mentioned the sustainability-oriented themes of materiality (f = 61, 76.3%) and peace of mind (f = 54, 67.5 %) in the context of either increase or decrease situations. indeed, coders noted these with significantly greater frequency than all other all themes except the sustainability-oriented theme of relationality (f = 49, 61.3%), mcnemar ꭓ2s(1, n = 80) > 5.11, ps <.025. in contrast, fewer than half of participants mentioned growthor promotion-oriented themes of affect (f = 38, 47.5%) or psychologization (f = 38, 47.5%) in either increase or decrease situations. the prevention-oriented theme of social validation was somewhat less frequent, but still common, present in responses of more than one-quarter of participants (f = 22, 27.5%) in either increase or decrease situations. table 2. relative frequency of themes within samples and valance dimensions. rank community increase (n=80) community decrease (n=80) student increase (n=125) student decrease (n=125) 1 matl (61.3%) pm (45.0%) psych (44.4%) affect (40.0%) 2 rel (42.5%) matl (43.4%) matl (33.6%) psych (31.2%) 3 pm (33.8%) rel (38.8%) affect (30.4%) matl (23.2%) 4 affect (21.3%) affect (36.3%) rel (18.4%) rel (23.2%) 5 psych (21.3%) psych (32.5%) ph /pm (14.4%) pm (22.4%) 6 sv (17.5%) sv (13.8%) ph/pm (14.4%) ph (10.4%) 7 ph (7.5%) ph (7.5%) sv (4.8%) sv (10.4%) note. matl = material; rel =relational; pm= peace of mind; sv= social validation; ph=physical health. shades of blue and green indicate sustainability-oriented themes. shades of orange indicate growthor promotion-oriented themes. an analysis of the distribution of themes as a function of situation valence revealed statistically significant differences in proportions for two out of seven themes. participants mentioned the sustainability-oriented theme of materiality more frequently in situations that increased (f = 41, 61.3%) versus decreased (f = 35, 43.8%) well-being, mcnemar ꭓ2(1, n = 80) = 4.45, p = .035. conversely, participants mentioned the promotion-oriented theme of affect more frequently in situations that decreased (f = 29, 36.3%) versus increased (f = 17, 21.3%) well-being, mcnemar ꭓ2(1, n = 80) = 4.03, p = .045. 3. study 2: student sample 3.1 participants a total of 125 undergraduate students (57 men and 68 women, mean age=21.592; sd=2.759) at three universities in southern ghana participated in the study. 3.2 procedure two of the authors (nv and aaa) approached undergraduate students on the three campuses between january and february 2020. they invited students to complete a paper questionnaire about well-being. students who gave verbal consent to participate completed the questionnaire on the spot. after providing demographic information and responding to a question about the meaning of well-being, participants responded to prompts instructing them to describe one situation where their well-being increased and another where their well-being decreased. we well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 excluded psychology students from the study because of concern that they may be familiar with concepts of well-being in mainstream psychology. 3.3 coding sample responses appear in table 1. one of us (ao-t) trained a new pair of coders (a ghanaian woman and an african american woman) who applied the same coding frame and followed a similar coding process as described in study 1. inter-coder agreement was again fair to very good (κ =.292 and 1.000), except for the theme for social validation for situations of well-being decrease (κ = -.015). we resolved disagreements using the same strategy described in study 1. 3.4 results results for the student sample deviated in hypothesized (h2) fashion from the pattern of results for the community sample. in particular, the most prominent theme across either increase or decrease situations was the growth-/promotion-oriented theme of affect (f = 73, 58.4%), which coders noted with significantly greater frequency than all themes except the other growth/promotion-oriented theme of psychologization (f = 59, 47.2%), mcnemar ꭓ2s(1, n = 125) > 6.49, ps <.012 (table 1, two right-most columns). a minority of participants mentioned the sustainability-oriented themes of materiality (f = 51, 40.8%), relationality (f = 44, 35.2%), peace of mind (f = 39, 31.2 %), or social validation (f = 17, 13.6%) for either increase or decrease situations. nearly one-quarter of participants mentioned physical health (f = 27, 21.6 %) for either increase or decrease situations. the analysis of the distribution of themes as a function of situation valence revealed a statistically significant difference in proportions for one of seven themes. as for the community sample in study 1, students in study 2 mentioned the theme of materiality more frequently in situations that increased (f = 42, 33.6%) versus decreased (f = 29, 23.2%) well-being, mcnemar ꭓ2(1, n = 125) = 4.65, p = .031. 4. comparative analysis of study 1 and 2 our original purpose in conducting both studies was to produce material for a situationsampling paradigm, whereby we randomly select responses of participants to use as stimuli in future studies (cf. kitayama et al., 1997). as one might infer from the differences in procedure across study—oral responses in ghanaian languages for study 1, written responses in english language for study 2, and different coders within each study—we did not embark on this research with the intention of comparing across studies. rather than equate procedures across studies with the intention of direct comparison, we selected the procedure that worked best within each sample, separately. still, a comparison of results across studies is useful as a test of hypothesis (h2) about variation in experience of well-being as a function of variation in engagement with eurocentric global modernity. to the extent that engagement with eurocentric global modernity is greater among (a) university students who respond to a written survey in the medium of english than among (b) community members who respond in an oral interview via the medium of a local ghanaian language, our theoretical framework would suggest that the former (compared to the latter) would show more evidence of growth-oriented conceptions of well-being characteristic of weird settings and less evidence of the sustainability-oriented well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 conceptions of well-being that emerged from our early research on local ghanian conceptions. accordingly, we proceed with comparisons across samples mindful of caveats about potential confounds from differences in procedure, which we consider again at length in the general discussion. first, an informal comparison of rank order in relative frequency of themes within each sample provides some evidence of hypothesized variation in priority of themes across samples (table 2). among participants in the student sample, growth-oriented emphases on affect and psychologization were the most frequent themes, with affect significantly more frequent than sustainability-oriented themes of responsibility and peace of mind. among participants in the community sample, sustainability-oriented themes of materiality, peace of mind, and relationality were the most frequent, and—at least for materiality and peace of mind—were significantly more frequent than growth-oriented themes of affect and psychologization. a more formal, direct comparison of relative frequency provides additional evidence of hypothesized variation in priority of themes across samples. in particular, we used log-linear modeling to simultaneously assess two-way partial associations for each theme (absent, present) with sample (community, student) and valence (decrease, increase).1 the analysis revealed several significant differences as a function of valence. consistent with results that we observed in analyses within each study separately, coders noted the theme of materiality more frequently in situations that increased (44.4%) versus decreased (31.2%) wellbeing, ꭓ2(1, n = 410) = 8.07, p = .004. in contrast, coders noted the themes of affect and peace of mind more frequently in situations that decreased (38.5% and 31.2%) versus increased (26.8% and 22.0%) well-being, ꭓ2s(1, n = 410) = 6.44 and 4.77, ps = .011 and .029. more relevant to the current interest, results also revealed several differences as a function of sample. consistent with the hypothesis (h2), coders noted sustainability-oriented themes of materiality (76.3% and 40.8%), peace of mind (67.5% and 31.2%), and relationality (61.3% and 35.2%) more frequently among responses of participants in the community sample than in the student sample, ꭓ2s(1, n = 410) > 18.52, ps < .001. similarly, results revealed a somewhat weaker difference whereby coders noted the sustainability-oriented theme of social validation more frequently among responses of participants in the community sample (27.5%) than in the student sample (13.6%), ꭓ2(1, n = 410) = 6.39, p = .011. there was no evidence of differences across settings in the frequency with which participants noted growth-oriented themes of affect or psychologization. as one might expect, participants were older in the community sample (m = 42.0 years, sd= 13.90) than the university student sample (m = 21.6 years, sd = 2.76), t(202) = 15.92, p < .001. this raises a plausible alternative explanation for observed differences in frequency of well-being themes across samples. specifically, differences may be due to age-related variation in well-being rather than cultural ecologies associated with university and off-campus realities. two sources of evidence argue against this alternative explanation. first, correlation analyses within each sample revealed no significant relationships between age and frequency of any theme. second, logistic regression analyses with sample and age as simultaneous predictors of the presence or absence of each theme revealed the same pattern of differences across samples in frequency of 1 the three-way partial association, corresponding to the two-way, sample x valence interaction in anova, was not statistically significant for any of the themes. well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 sustainability-oriented themes (materiality, peace of mind, relationality, and social validation) as did loglinear analyses. in no case did age emerge as a significant predictor of theme frequency.2 5. general discussion theory and previous research in many ghanaian and other west african settings have described a sustainability orientation to well-being that contrasts with the growthor promotion-oriented conception that prevails in hegemonic psychological science (osei-tutu et al., 2020; wilson fadiji, 2021). the current research replicates and extends the conclusion of earlier research with evidence from a situation sampling procedure. mainstream themes of personal growth and high arousal happiness were not completely absent from responses of ghanaian participants in the community sample. however, consistent with the primary hypothesis (h1), these themes were much less prominent than sustainability-oriented themes of materiality, relationality, and peace of mind. in contrast, and consistent with hypothesis (h2), mainstream themes of personal growth and high arousal happiness were relatively more prominent than sustainability-oriented themes in responses of participants in the university sample. this is consistent with theory and research in modernization theory (e.g., inkeles, 1969), which holds that engagement with formal education, the cultural milieu of university settings, and other affordances for modern individualist subjectivity will be associated with an experience of freedom from material constraint and a corresponding experience of well-being in terms of personal growth and fulfillment (adams et al., 2018). in turn, one can understand the emphasis on personal growth and fulfillment as part of a larger process of psychologization by which people experience wellbeing, love, and care in terms in an affective or psychological support rather than tangible, material support (coe, 2011; esiaka & adams, 2020; osei-tutu et al., 2021). the theme of materiality was prominent in both samples (although significantly more so in the community sample versus student sample). our respondents noted a variety of financial constraint situations as a source of well-being decrease, and they noted income-augmenting situations and financial stability as a source of well-being increase. the prominence of materiality is consistent with previous work (wilson-fadiji et al., 2021) and suggests that increased access to material security might contribute to improved subjective well-being. at the same time, an influential body of research (e.g., brickman et al., 1978) suggests that people easily habituate to material improvements in life conditions, especially beyond a level of basic comfort. it is likely that people would require fulfilment of additional needs, beyond material sustenance, to maintain a sense of subjective well-being. even so, results of the current work resonate with other research that emphasizes the importance of meeting basic needs and living conditions as the primary site of government policy to increase well-being. besides the procedural innovation of inferring conception and experience of well-being from descriptions of relevant situations, another novel feature of the study was the comparison of themes in situations that increased versus decreased well-being. in this case, the relevant differences were not in terms of the distinction between sustainability and growth/promotion orientations, but instead reflected a distinction between more and less material determinants of well-being. specifically, the theme of materiality was more frequent in situations that increased 2 we also conducted exploratory analyses of loglinear models including gender and sample as predictors of theme frequency. these analyses indicated gender differences in frequency of two categories. coders noted the theme of relationality more frequently among responses of women (f = 56, 59.1%) than men (f = 37, 38.1%), ꭓ2(1, n = 410) = 4.88, p = .027. in contrast, coders noted the theme of social validation more frequently among responses of men (f = 25, 25.8%) than women (f = 14, 13.0%), ꭓ2(1, n = 410) = 5.15, p = .023. in no case did gender moderate or otherwise qualify differences across sample that we report in the main text. well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 (versus decreased) well-being, but the themes of affect and peace of mind were more prominent in situations that decreased (versus increased) well-being. the robustness of this pattern—and potential explanations for it—constitute interesting directions for future research. 6. implications for positive psychology this current work provides a foundation for denaturalizing the psychologization of well-being in both hegemonic psychological science and the weird settings that disproportionately constitute its knowledge archive. results suggest that a conception of well-being in terms of psychological growth, personal meaning, and high arousal positive affect is not the just-natural expression of some inborn program. instead, this experience of well-being reflects a history of engagement with modern individualist lifeways and cultural ecologies of material affluence that enable them. similarly, if this mainstream model of well-being might sometimes be conducive to optimal experience, its optimality is not necessarily a general truth of human psychology. instead, the mainstream model is optimal to the extent that it is adaptive for flourishing within the weird cultural ecologies of the eurocentric modern order. the move to locate mainstream models of well-being in cultural and historical processes of eurocentric modernity provides a standpoint from which to contemplate their relationship to the coloniality that decolonial scholars associate with eurocentric modernity (e.g., adams et al., 2020 maldonado-torres, 2007; mignolo, 2011). psychological approaches tend to consider questions about the optimality of well-being with respect to individual actors abstracted from social and historical context (bulhan, 1985). that is, a practice or way of being is good to the extent that it affords a target person optimal outcome. psychological approaches rarely consider the broader social implications of those supposedly optimal ways of being, other than to assume an aggregation of individual effects would result in greater collective well-being. in contrast, epistemic perspectives of african and other global south settings direct attention to the conditions of possibility for those supposedly optimal ways of being. what if the self-expansive personal growth and high arousal affect associated with modern individualist ways of being are dependent on baseline levels of affluence acquired and sustained through (neo)colonial extractions (bulhan, 1985; mignolo, 2011; rodney, 1973)? what if these ways of being are necessarily available to only a privileged few, unsustainable if “scaled up” to the marginalized global majority, and dependent on heavily policed borders—at municipal, national, and even continental levels (besteman, 2019; gordon, 2022)—to maintain modern individualist standards of living within gated-community enclaves? if the answer to these questions is yes, then some re-thinking of standard models is in order. by raising such questions, epistemic perspectives from the global south prompt consideration of possible downsides of prevailing models of wellbeing that often pass without reflection. 7. conclusion besides revealing the cultural and historical foundations of the growth-oriented models of wellbeing that inform hegemonic positive psychology, the shift in epistemic perspective to an african or global south standpoint makes it easier to appreciate the adaptive value of an emphasis on materiality, relationality, and the peace of mind or relief that comes from satisfaction of obligations and expectations. although such an emphasis may not be conducive to high-arousal positive affect and personal fulfillment, its benefits lie in the broad assurance of support and possibility for a viable existence sustainable at the level of humanity in general. as the existential threat of anthropogenic climate change makes clear, we do not inhabit a world of unlimited possibility; instead, we share (unequally, to be sure) interdependent fates on our solitary planet. well-being in ghana osei-tutu et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 the sustainability-oriented models of being and well-being that we consider in this and other work, may provide optimal pathways for viable existence in recognition of our global reality of embedded interdependence (adams et al., 2020; keller, 2019). this may explain patterns observed in recent research indicating that people across a variety of settings (but perhaps especially various african, asian, and latin american settings relative to european or white settler societies) express a preference for low-arousal calmness over high-arousal excitement (crabtree & lai, 2021). rather than suboptimal forms that require intervention, sustainabilityoriented models reflect important insights about the human condition that are worthy of emulation in hegemonic psychology. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. acknowledgements this work was supported by the volkswagen foundation, germany (reference grant number: 94667). authors annabella osei-tutu department of psychology, university of ghana aopare-henaku@ug.edu.gh glenn adams university of kansas, usa vivian a. dzokoto virginia commonwealth university, usa adjeiwa akosua affram university of ghana abraham kenin university of ghana nilay vural university of amsterdam, the netherlands syed muhammad omar 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(2023). life in the open: preferences for openness as a substrate of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 13(2), 95-117. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i2.2471 roberta l. irvin north dakota state university roberta.irvin@ndsu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 article life in the open: preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being roberta l. irvin · michael d. robinson abstract: image schemas, such as those contrasting open and closed objects, are thought to play a fundamental role in self-regulation. open objects encourage interactivity, which should contribute to well-being according to theories that emphasize processes such as engagement, exploration, and personal growth. on the basis of such reasoning, participants in three studies (total n = 889) were asked to indicate their relative preferences for the spatial concepts of closed versus open, which were hypothesized to reflect key motivations related to protection versus exploration. in study 1, higher levels of open preference were predictive of higher levels of flourishing, a relationship that was evident across four samples. in study 2, open-preferring individuals scored higher in multiple forms of well-being. in addition, these individuals were deemed to be flourishing to a greater extent by their peers. in study 3, an open-closed preference slider was embedded into a daily diary protocol and higher levels of open preference were predictive of higher levels of affective and psychological well-being in both between-person and within-person analyses. in additional analyses, open preferences were linked to higher levels of approach coping and to higher levels of goal achievement. in total, the results provide key insights into orientations to the environment that are either conducive (open preferences) or not conducive (closed preferences) to well-being and flourishing. keywords: image schemas, open, closed, well-being, engagement, wellbeing 1. introduction in his topological analysis of motivation and personality, lewin (1935) centered on the spatial features of our existence. we find ourselves in various life spaces (e.g., at a party, on a university campus) and we negotiate those spaces by either remaining stationary or by moving, in a particular direction, toward a particular location. movements are typically linked to the goals that we have in combination with perceptions of environmental threat and reward as well as the affordances that are present (e.g., definite paths or obstructions). infants are thought to acquire their understanding of how the world works primarily on the basis of their sensorimotor experiences (mandler, 1992) and adult forms of representation may similarly depend on our ability to recruit sensorimotor imagery as a basis for more complex conceptual processes (barsalou, 1999; johnson, 2015; lakoff & johnson, 1999). fundamental to our experience as spatial beings is the phenomenon of containment (hedblom, gromann, & kutz, 2018). human bodies are containers who live in containers (houses or apartments) and travel in containers (e.g., cars) to sites that are containers (e.g., places of work, stores). a primary property of containers is that they are either open or closed. when a container is closed, the contents within that container are protected (burris & rempel, 2010). for example, about:blank preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 a locked house cannot be easily entered and a closed box hides and protects its contents. open containers, by contrast, lend themselves to exploration and interactivity. one can peer into open containers, handle objects within those containers, and open houses or stores are places that can be visited. when a store is open, in fact, one can enter that store, peruse its contents, and take things that one wants for personal enjoyment, provided that one pays for them. in sum, open and closed are critical properties in affordances for behavior (hedblom et al., 2018). our repeated sensorimotor experiences of spatial navigation are thought to give rise to image schemas, which are fundamental contrasts (coëgnarts & kravanja, 2014), largely of a spatial type (oakley, 2007), that one can use as a basis for understanding more abstract concepts (gibbs, 2011). the open-closed distinction, which can be appreciated as images of something being open or closed (hedblom et al., 2018), can be used to represent a large range of concepts, entities, and experiences. entire ecologies can be conceptualized as open or closed, with open ecologies facilitating mobility among members as well as information exchange (anderson, 1999). more typically, the open-closed distinction is used to describe people (with some people being more curious and exploratory than others: allport, 1960), minds (with some people being more willing to entertain alternative viewpoints: price, ottati, wilson, & kim, 2015), relationships with emotion (with openness linked to receptivity to one’s feelings: blackledge & hayes, 2001), and forms of social interaction (with some forms of interaction being more interdependent and selfdisclosing: greene, derlega, & mathews, 2006). from these uses of open and closed metaphor (lakoff & johnson, 1999), one can contrast an open mode of self-regulation that is engaged with the environment with a closed mode of self-regulation that is not (burris & rempel, 2010). engagement with the environment, in turn, is thought to promote well-being according to multiple theoretical perspectives and sources of data (deci & ryan, 2000; elliot, 2006; henderson, knight, & richardson, 2013; mazzucchelli, kane, & rees, 2010). a premise of the present work is that one can transform a metaphor-rich contrast such as open and closed into an individual difference dimension through the mechanism of preference. preferences, in general terms, can reveal key motivations of the individual (greenwald et al., 2002; kim & markus, 1999; woodcock et al., 2013), and preferences in the metaphoric realm can be powerful, owing to the centrality of metaphor to the conceptual system (lakoff & johnson, 1999). as an example, persich et al. (2019) asked participants whether they preferred “dark” or “light” in a series of studies. as hypothesized, given that darkness is metaphorically linked to negativity (meier, robinson, & clore, 2004; yu, 2015) and depression (mcmullen & conway, 2002; schoeneman, schoeneman, & stallings, 2004), dark-preferring individuals, relative to lightpreferring individuals, were more prone to depressive symptoms (persich et al., 2019). given the scope of phenomena metaphorically linked to open and closed (allport, 1960; hedblom et al., 2018; mittelman, 1991), a preference-based measure focused on this metaphoric contrast may have similar utility. in particular, favoring open to closed is likely to occur among individuals who wish to interact with the environment in more exploratory and interactive manners; by contrast, favoring closed to open is likely to occur among individuals who wish to protect themselves, such as from unpredictable events and circumstances (carleton, 2016). robinson and irvin (2022) created such a test and found that open-preferring individuals scored higher in extraversion and approach motivation, which is a profile consistent with the untroubled pursuit of environmental reward (hundt, mitchell, kimbrel, & nelson-gray, 2010). in a more recent set of studies, robinson and irvin (in press) found that closed-preferring individuals scored higher in neuroticism and they also endorsed the idea of trying to escape from their negative thoughts and experiences, which are tendencies that exacerbate symptoms related to anxiety and depression (spinhoven, drost, de rooij, van hemert, & penninx, 2014). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 in the present research, we pursue the hypothesis that open preferences, relative to closed preferences, should be more conducive to well-being, broadly defined (hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan, 2014). we have suggested that open preferences can be linked to engagement motivation and a variety of perspectives, from biological (alcaro & panksepp, 2011) to humanistic (mittelman, 1991) to behavioral (jacobson, martell, & dimidjian, 2001), converge on the idea that engaging with one’s environment is conducive to well-being. for example, behavioral activation interventions, which attempt to treat depression by engaging individuals with rewarding activities (jacobson et al., 2001), have been shown to increase levels of positive affect and well-being (mazzucchelli et al., 2010). also pertinent is the psychological flexibility perspective on well-being, which contends that high levels of well-being require that one is fully committed to the goals and values that one has as well as the environmental commerce that must follow from them (kashdan & rottenberg, 2010). indeed, seligman (2018) views engagement (which should be linked to open preferences) to be either a core component of well-being or a major pathway through which it can be achieved. open preferences can be contrasted with closed preferences (robinson & irvin, 2022) and we have suggested that closed preferences are likely to reflect motivations related to protection, either from one’s own thoughts and feelings (robinson & irvin, in press) or from events and circumstances that one cannot fully control (carleton, 2016). extant data suggest that protection motivation tends to undermine well-being, whether conceptualized in terms of avoidance goals (elliot, thrash, & murayama, 2011), a prevention focus (i.e., a mode of self-regulation that attempts to prevent negative occurrences: delegach & katz-navon, 2021), or desires to conserve rather than expand the self (hughes, slotter, & lewandowski, 2020). attempts to protect the self can be especially problematic in a relationship context as they counteract the processes that produce intimacy (greene et al., 2006), resulting in lower levels of social support (feeney & collins, 2015) and various forms of anxiety that are not conducive to well-being, either within or outside the context of relationships (manbeck, kanter, kuczynski, maitland, & corey, 2020; nelson, jorgensen, & clifford, 2021). recall, too, that robinson and irvin (in press) found closed preferences to relate to experiential avoidance, which is not conducive to well-being (eustis et al., 2020). given the centrality of the open preference measure (robinson & irvin, 2022) to the present studies, we should say more about it. this measure can be conceptualized as an implicit (mcclelland, koestner, & weinberger, 1989) or projective (bornstein, 1998) test, in that it does not ask individuals to characterize themselves or their personality traits. rather, it is a stimulusattribution (rather than self-attribution) test (bornstein, 2007), in that participants are merely asked to indicate their preference among stimuli. implicit tests of this type rarely correlate highly with explicit personality tests (bornstein, 2002) and implicit tests, relative to explicit tests, are thought to be more sensitive to the motivational substrates of behavior (mcclelland, 1987). in particular, they, relative to explicit tests, are thought to better predict spontaneous behavioral trends, particularly in the absence of explicit incentives (mcclelland et al., 1989). thus, what the open preference measure captures should not, in any way, be considered synonymous with what trait-based measures of personality capture (winter, john, stewart, klohnen, & duncan, 1998). variations in open preference could correlate with trait-based measures, but such relations should not be assumed (bornstein, 2002). robinson and irvin (2022) found that open preferences were stronger among extraverted individuals and robinson and irvin (in press) found that they were weaker at higher levels of neuroticism. extraversion and neuroticism are thought to capture basic processes related to approach versus avoidance, respectively (elliot & thrash, 2002), and extraversion and neuroticism are also the two traits of the five-factor model that most consistently http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 predict well-being (i.e., extraversion correlates positively with well-being and neuroticism correlates negatively with well-being: keyes, shmotkin, & ryff, 2002; mccrae & costa, 1991; steel, schmidt, & shultz, 2008). open preferences do not correlate with openness to experience, however (robinson & irvin, in press). openness to experience is the least well-understood of the big 5 traits (connelly, ones, & chernyshenko, 2014), but it seems to involve intellectual processes (wilt & revelle, 2015) as well as interest in the arts, liberal values, and unconventionality (feist & brady, 2004; kaufman, 2013). what open preferences capture, quite simply, does not seem to align with this set of tendencies (again, see robinson & irvin, in press). we have argued that the motivations captured by open preferences should be conducive to well-being (deci & ryan, 2000; mazzucchelli et al., 2010) and we conducted a three-study program of research to investigate potential links of this type. in study 1, this hypothesis was examined in the context of the flourishing scale, which was designed to examine well-being in multiple domains of functioning, albeit in the context of a single score (diener et al., 2010). in study 2, we adopted a multidimensional perspective on well-being, defining it in terms of the 5 subscales of the perma (butler & kern, 2016). doing so could reveal whether open preferences are linked to certain forms of well-being, but not others. in study 3, finally, we adopted the daily diary method (bolger, davis, & rafaeli, 2003), positing that higher levels of open preference – whether trait or state – would be linked to higher levels of affective and psychological well-being in one’s daily experiences. convergence across the three studies would be particularly persuasive in linking the construct of interest to both between-person and within-person variations in wellbeing. two of the three studies also pursued questions of mechanism. in study 2, we collected peer reports of social competence, reasoning that greater preferences for openness would be linked to the sorts of behaviors (e.g., self-disclosure: greene et al., 2006) that lead to more favorable peer impressions. in study 3, we explored two further mechanisms. interacting with the environment effectively typically requires higher levels of approach coping (e.g., problem-solving) and lower levels of avoidance coping (carver, scheier, & segerstrom, 2010). we hypothesized that open preferences, which we have suggested are related to engagement rather than disengagement, would display this generally beneficial coping profile. additionally, we pursued the idea that open preferences would co-occur with higher levels of self-efficacy, which in turn should promote the sorts of goal accomplishments that are conducive to well-being (klug & maier, 2015). these additional findings, we reasoned, would provide insights into some of the mechanisms that link open preferences to well-being. 2. study 1 2.1 method 2.1.1 participants and general procedures extraversion is a good predictor of well-being (lee, dean, & jung, 2008) and we therefore based sample size planning on the studies of robinson and irvin (2022), who found correlations between open preferences and the personality trait of extraversion (measured by a goldberg, 1999, scale) in the r = .25 range. to achieve .80 power to detect correlations of .25 with an alpha level of .05, g*power software (faul, erdfelder, buchner, & lang, 2009) recommended sample sizes of 123. studies were run for long enough to exceed this figure. four samples of undergraduate students who were seeking course credit at a midwestern university in the united states were recruited. in all cases, participants registered for a generically described personality and social cognition study using sona software and showed up to a http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 psychology department laboratory in groups of 6 or fewer, prior to the pandemic. after signing informed consent, participants were placed in private rooms with personal computers, in which they completed the measures described below (as well as other measures pertinent to other projects). data collection occurred through a medialab interface and sample sizes were 142 (69.72% female; 90.00% white; m age = 18.60), 147 (57.82% female; 87.76% white; m age = 19.46), 137 (68.61% female; 83.94% white; m age = 19.23), and 172 (68.61% female; 83.94% white; m age = 19.23) in studies 1a-1d, respectively. 2.1.2 preferences for openness image schemas are image-laden spatial concepts, often built on contrast (coëgnarts & kravanja, 2014), that derive from frequent interactions with the environment (johnson, 1987). although fundamental to spatial cognition and self-regulation (lakoff & johnson, 1999), image schemas are abstracted (or semi-conceptual), which renders them useful for many representational purposes (gibbs, 2011). we sought to target relative preferences for that which is open to that which is closed at the level of spatial concepts and used words rather than pictures in doing so (though see robinson & irvin, in press, who found that preferring the word open was highly correlated with preferring objects that displayed greater openness: r = .68). individuals who favor conceptual openness, we reasoned, also favor more exploratory and interactive modes of being. in accord with the projective testing tradition (mcclelland, 1987), participants received deliberately non-restrictive instructions: “for each of the following questions, please respond according to how you think or feel, in general.” these instructions were followed by the three target questions, presented one at a time: “which do you prefer? open or closed?”, “which is better? open or closed?”, and “which word do you like better? open or closed?”. for each question, participants clicked a button along a 1 (e.g., “open is much preferred”) to 5 (e.g., “closed is much preferred”) scale. responses were then reverse-scored, such that higher numbers reflected higher levels of open preference, and then averaged (study 1a: m = 3.85; sd = 1.10; α = .88; study 1b: m = 4.08; sd = 0.97; α = .88; study 1c: m = 4.05; sd = 0.95; α = .87; study 1d: m = 3.75; sd = 1.02; α = .82). skew was acceptable (-.95, -.88, -.95, and -.76 in studies 1a-1d, respectively) and the open preference measure was treated as a continuum in analyses. 2.1.3 variations in flourishing flourishing can be described as “living well” in all of its forms and is thought to include hedonic, eudaimonic, and social well-being components (hone et al., 2014). diener et al. (2010) created a widely used 8-item measure of this type by integrating multiple perspectives on well-being and this measure was used to capture broad variations in flourishing in study 1. participants indicated whether pertinent statements (e.g., “i am engaged and interested in my daily activities”) described their lives (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree) and a single flourishing score for each participant was computed by averaging across items (study 1a: m = 5.93; sd = 0.75; α = .86; study 1b: m = 5.69; sd = 0.82; α = .89; study 1c: m = 5.75; sd = 0.72; α = .89; study 1d: m = 5.89; sd = 0.69; α = .86). 2.2 results simple regressions indicated that higher levels of open preference were predictive of higher levels of flourishing. this was true in study 1a, b (unstandardized) = .14 [.03, .26], t = 2.56, p = .012, β (standardized) = .21, study 1b, b = .18 [.05, .32], t = 2.69, p = .008, β = .22, study 1c, b = .18 [.05, .30], t = 2.77, p = .006, β = .23, and study 1d, b = .20 [.10, .30], t = 4.03, p < .001, β = .30. sex differences http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 in open preference were neither expected nor found, fs < 1, ps > .30, and greater preferences for openness continued to predict flourishing when controlling for sex (-1 = male; +1 = female) in multiple regressions, ts > 2.50, ps < .05, βs > .20. according to some analyses, a predictor of functioning that is generally beneficial can become problematic if levels of it are too high (pierce & aguinis, 2013). in the present case, the linear relationship between open preferences and flourishing could display some evidence of curvilinearity at especially high levels of open preference. to examine this possibility, we created a dataset that combined participants from all sub-studies (n = 598). we then performed a multiple regression that predicted flourishing levels on the basis of both a linear (untransformed) and curvilinear (predictor squared: le et al., 2011) open preference term. the linear relationship between open preferences and flourishing remained significant, b = .17 [.10, .24], t = 4.65, p < .001, β = .23, but the curvilinear predictor was not significant, b = .01 [-.04, .06], t = 0.38, p = .708, β = .02. from the perspective of this analysis, at least, the relation between open preferences and flourishing exhibits no hints of curvilinearity. 2.3 discussion the spatial concepts of open and closed can be used to represent a wide variety of entities, including the self (allport, 1960) and the self-environment interface (hedblom et al., 2018). the closed orientation is one in which the self is protected, but at the expense of reduced interactivity (burris & rempel, 2010). because commerce with the environment is necessary in establishing relationships (greene et al., 2006) and in achieving one’s goals (blackledge & hayes, 2001), preferences for spatial openness (relative to preferences for that which is closed) should be more conducive to well-being. consistent with this analysis, study 1 found that higher levels of open preference were predictive of higher levels of flourishing – or “living well” (hone et al., 2014). the relationship appears to be robust, given that it was replicated in four samples, but further investigation was deemed important. 3. study 2 one goal of study 2 was to better understand the pathways through which open preferences relate to well-being. in the perma model, there are five such building blocks or pillars – namely, positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (seligman, 2018). these pillars tend to be positively correlated with each other, but they are separable, rendering it possible to gain an in-depth profile of well-being as a multidimensional entity (butler & kern, 2016). in study 2, we sought to relate open preferences to each of the perma dimensions in an effort to better understand the pathways linking open preferences to flourishing in overall terms. preferences for openness may also relate to social well-being, defined in terms of integration within one’s broader community (keyes & shapiro, 2004). although such achievements are typically assessed in subjective rather than objective terms (as was true in study 2), there are data indicating that subjective reports of social well-being correspond with objective indicators of integration (keyes & shapiro, 2004) and focusing on outcomes of this type makes sense given the suggestion that open preferences encourage connectivity to the broader social environment that one is a part of. in particular terms, we hypothesized that open preferences would correlate positively with the social integration and acceptance subscales that were administered. another purpose of study 2 was to examine whether open preferences can be linked to peer perceptions. tendencies toward engagement should, in principle, be observable to others and we therefore hypothesized that higher levels of open preference would be linked to peer reports of greater flourishing. a more particular focus, however, was on peer reports of social functioning http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 (larson, whitton, hauser, & allen, 2007). individuals who favor openness to a greater extent are likely to establish relationships that are closer and more intimate, owing to mechanisms such as self-disclosure (greene et al., 2006). if so, peers may rate open-preferring individuals higher in social competence, perhaps particularly with respect to close relationship skills (larson et al., 2007). 3.1 method 3.1.1 participants and procedures power considerations were identical to study 1. to guard against attrition with respect to peer reports, though, we sought to recruit over 164 participants, which would allow for 25% attrition on the peer side while retaining desired levels of power. a generically described personality and social cognition study was posted to sona and undergraduate students seeking course credit signed up for the study over the internet. the study itself was also conducted entirely online because it occurred when covid-19 protocols were in place. after signing up for the study, participants completed informed consent and then received a link to a qualtrics-programmed survey on a secure website. data were collected from 176 participants, but 9 of them failed attention checks, resulting in a sample size of 167 (58.08% female; 86.23% white; m age = 19.04). as part of their survey, participants were asked to provide the names and email addresses of 4 peers who knew them at least reasonably well. these peers were emailed and told that a participant was seeking credit for a psychology class and that their contribution would result in one additional point of credit. informants were also told that their responses would be confidential and that the relevant survey was a short one. peers who agreed to these terms clicked a hyperlink and visited a qualtrics-programmed website. peers who did not respond were sent a reminder and additional time, following which the protocol was closed. emails were sent to 688 peers and 501 (60.40% female; 91.91% white; m age = 20.91) provided reports that indicated attention to the task (i.e., in the form of passing attention checks). the vast majority of peers were students (88.89%) and the majority of them (60.00%) lived in the same city as their targets. on a 1-7 scale, peers indicated that they knew their targets very well (m = 6.13; sd = 1.10) and the average length of acquaintanceship was approximately 2 years (1 = i don’t know this person…6 = 1-2 years; 7 = 2-4 years…: m = 6.41; sd = 2.05). we retained peer data for 145 targets who received 2 or more peer reports (m = 3.41; sd = 0.75), whose responses were averaged. 3.1.2 preferences for openness participants indicated their preferences for the spatial concepts of open versus closed in a manner parallel to study 1, except that 10 questions were asked (e.g., “which is better? open or closed?”, “which is more valuable? open or closed?”) and a six-point response scale was used (1 = open; 6 = closed). responses to all items were reverse-scored, such that higher scores reflected greater preferences for openness, and an average score was computed (m = 4.99; sd = 1.08; α = .88). as in study 1, sex differences in open preference were not observed, f < 1, p = .711, ηp2 = .00. 3.1.3 personality profile we were interested in the full big 5 profile of open preferences and all such traits were assessed with the mini-ipip scale (donnellan, oswald, baird, & lucas, 2006). participants indicated their level of agreement (1 = very inaccurate; 5 = very accurate) with statements capturing variations in extraversion (m = 3.15; sd = 0.94; α = .70), agreeableness (m = 3.91; sd = 0.73; α = .68), http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 conscientiousness (m = 3.46; sd = 0.84; α = .72), neuroticism (m = 3.06; sd = 0.78; α = .57), and openness to experience or intellect (m = 3.50; sd = 0.64; α = .59). 3.1.4 well-being measures to investigate relations between open preferences and well-being in a more extensive manner than in study 1, we asked participants to complete several well-being measures. this included the flourishing scale (diener et al., 2010) also administered in study 1 (m = 5.53; sd = 0.97; α = .90). in addition, to capture the purported building blocks of well-being (seligman, 2018), participants were asked to complete the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016), which has separable subscales to assess positive emotion (m = 6.50; sd = 1.82; α = .86), engagement (m = 7.07; sd = 1.37; α = .58), relationship functioning (m = 6.90; sd = 1.94; α = .80), meaning (m = 6.86; sd = 2.08; α = .93), and accomplishments (m = 7.05; sd = 1.82; α = .84). finally, we added scales to assess social well-being, which emerges from a sociological tradition (keyes & shapiro, 2004). participants completed keyes’ (1998) 7-item scales for social integration (e.g., “i feel like i am an important part of my community”: m = 4.83; sd = 1.14; α = .90), social acceptance (e.g., “i feel that people are kind”: m = 4.14; sd = 0.92; α = .80), and social contribution (e.g., “i think i have something valuable to give to the world”: m = 4.83; sd = 0.92; α = .78). 3.1.5 peer report measures open-preferring individuals are likely to be more comfortable and skilled in their social interactions and behaviors of this type are observable by others (krenz, persich, & robinson, in press). to investigate potential links between open preferences and social competence, we asked peers to characterize (1 = extremely uncharacteristic; 9 = extremely characteristic) targets in terms of the close relationship (m = 7.32; sd = 0.98; α = .83) and social group skills (m = 7.23; sd = 1.06; α = .87) subscales of larson et al. (2007). further, we modified the diener et al. (2010) flourishing scale such that it was pertinent to peer report (e.g., “john doe leads a purposeful and meaningful life”: m = 6.29; sd = 0.54; α = .93). 3.2 results 3.2.1 personality profile open preferences are thought to be linked to higher levels of approach motivation (robinson & irvin, 2022) and lower levels of avoidance motivation (robinson & irvin, in press). consistent with this analysis, the open preference measure correlated positively with extraversion, r = .27, p < .001, and negatively with neuroticism, r = -.16, p =.043. potential relationships involving agreeableness, r = .13, p = .087, conscientiousness, r = .12, p = .109, and openness to experience, r = .14, p = .081, were not significant. thus, open-preferring individuals are extraverted, but not necessarily interested in intellectual matters. 3.2.2 self-reported outcomes as displayed in table 1, greater preferences for openness were associated with higher levels of flourishing. they were also predictive of higher levels for the perma dimensions of positive emotions, engagement, meaning, and accomplishments, but the link to relationships was not a significant one. extending beyond personal well-being, open-preferring individuals felt more connected to their communities (social integration) and felt that they contributed in positive ways to the society and world (social contribution). this profile suggests greater engagement and connection at higher levels of open preference. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 table 1. preferences for openness as a predictor of study 2 outcomes (simple regressions) ______________________________________________________________________________ type of report and outcome b [95% ci] t p β ______________________________________________________________________________ self-reported outcomes flourishing .33 [.20, .46] 5.06 <.001 .37 positive emotions .54 [.29, .79] 4.29 <.001 .32 engagement .34 [.18, .53] 3.51 <.001 .26 relationships .27 [-.00, .55] 1.95 .053 .15 meaning .53 [.25, .82] 3.66 <.001 .27 accomplishment .47 [.22, .72] 3.75 <.001 .28 social integration .28 [.12, .44] 3.50 <.001 .26 social acceptance .15 [.02, .28] 2.29 .023 .18 social contribution .21 [.09, .34] 3.31 .001 .25 peer-reported outcomes close relationships .26 [.12, .41] 3.52 <.001 .28 social group skills .26 [.10, .43] 3.22 .002 .26 flourishing .09 [.01, .18] 2.18 .031 .18 ______________________________________________________________________________ 3.2.3 peer-reported outcomes as displayed in table 1, peers judged open-preferring individuals to be more socially competent, both in personal relationships and in social group contexts. in addition, peers attributed higher levels of flourishing to their open-preferring targets. this relationship was not a strong one, however, perhaps because certain components of well-being – such as a sense of purpose and optimism – are better reported on by individuals themselves rather than by others (diener et al., 2010). 3.2.4 controlling for personality open preferences appear to capture features of personality and motivation that extend beyond the big 5. this was evident in multiple regressions that controlled for all big 5 traits. in these analyses, open preferences continued to predict self-reported flourishing, b = .18 [.07, .30], t = 3.25, p = .001, β = .20, positive emotions, b = .32 [.09, .56], t = 2.70, p = .008, β = .19, engagement, b = .22 [.03, .41], t = 2.25, p = .026, β = .17, accomplishment, b = .25 [.03, .48], t = 2.21, p = .028, β = .15, and peer-reported close relationship skills, b = .18 [.03, .33], t = 2.42, p = .017, β = .19, when simultaneously controlling for all big 5 traits. links between open preference and the remaining study 2 outcomes, though, were not significant when controlling for all of the big 5 traits, βs < .15, ps > .05. 3.3 discussion open preferences were linked to multiple aspects of well-being. in particular, open-preferring individuals scored higher in flourishing, positive emotions, engagement, meaning, and accomplishments and many of these relationships remained significant when controlling for big 5 traits. open-preferring individuals also reported higher levels of social well-being, though such relationships were no longer significant when controlling for big 5 traits. peers ascribed higher http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 levels of flourishing to open-preferring individuals and characterized them as more socially competent. open preferences therefore relate to social skills that are apparent to others. 4. study 3 thus far, we have conceptualized open preferences in trait-like terms. even so, we suspect that preferences along the open-closed dimension reflect state-related influences as well as traitrelated influences, in concert with the projective motivation literature (bornstein, 2007; mcclelland, 1987). to investigate both stable and malleable components of preferences along the open-closed dimension, we embedded such a measure into a daily diary protocol and hypothesized that higher levels of open preference – whether varying within or between persons – would be linked to higher levels of both affective and psychological daily well-being. we also used the daily diary protocol to probe for questions of mechanism. we have suggested that open preferences support engagement and closed preferences implicate protection motivation. if so, open preferences are likely to be linked to higher levels of approachrelated coping and lower levels of avoidance-related coping, which is a coping profile that contributes to well-being (litman, 2006). in addition, we have suggested that higher levels of open preference can be linked to greater engagement within one’s goals, which should be manifest in higher levels of self-efficacy as well as higher levels of goal achievement (moeller, troop-gordon, & robinson, 2015). 4.1 method 4.1.1 participants and procedures study 3 used a multilevel (daily diary) design, which is a powerful one (nezlek, 2012). in planning sample size, we followed recommendations in this literature, based on results involving simulation data (nezlek, 2012). maas and hox (2005) found that 50 or more level 2 (in our case, participant) units results in estimates of regression coefficients and variance components that are unbiased and we sought to exceed this number. on the basis of their simulation results, scherbaum and ferreter (2009) recommended 900 level 1 (in our case, daily report) units and we sought to exceed this number as well. undergraduate students from a midwestern university in the united states signed up for a “daily experiences study” over the internet. those who completed an initial intake survey were sent emails for 14 days in a row and told to complete at least 8 of them. emails, which were sent at 6 p.m., contained subject number information as well as a link to the daily survey in question, and participants were given until 2 a.m. (an 8-hour window) to complete each survey or it was considered missing. ultimately, 124 participants (70.16% female; 83.73% white; m age = 20.65) completed at least 8 surveys and the average included participant completed 12.20 of them (sd = 2.60). 4.1.1 daily open preferences in study 3, we sought to investigate whether preferences along the open-closed spatial dimension vary on a daily basis and we created a slider measure, which was inserted into the daily diary protocol, to investigate such processes. on each day, participants were asked to indicate their relative preferences for the words “open” versus “closed” by moving a horizontal slider, programmed in qualtrics, to the “correct position” for the day, with “open” to the far left and “closed” to the far right. slider movements were required and position was echoed by the display of negative numbers (from -1 to -100) with leftward movements and positive numbers (from +1 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 to +100) with rightward movements. when the slider was placed in the correct position, participants clicked a next button, which recorded the position that was chosen. for analysis purposes, these preference judgments were multiplied by -1, such that higher numbers indicated higher levels of open preference. the average day tended toward open preference (m = 20.67, 95% ci = 18.50 to 22.84), akin to studies 1 and 2, but the standard deviation was also appreciable (30.24). on 32.78% of days, some degree of closed preferences were endorsed; on 66.62%, the slider was placed toward the open side of the dimension, with 0.59% of days at center. we then computed an intraclass correlation coefficient (icc) for the measure, which apportions variance into between-participant versus within-participant components (west, ryu, kwok, & cham, 2011). the icc for the open preference measure was .29, indicating that 29% of the variance in open-closed preferences could be attributed to persons and 71% of the variance could be attributed to occasions. the .29 figure is lower than that found for positive affect (.43) or negative affect (.44) (see below), indicating a considerable degree of within-person malleability across days. nonetheless, when averaged across days, the open-closed preference measure also captures individual differences. this point was substantiated by creating a dataset in which participants were rows and day-specific open preference scores were columns. in this dataset, cronbach’s α was .88, indicating that an average across days aligns individuals in a reliable manner. we therefore computed an average score for each participant (m = 21.36; sd = 30.99) and treated it as a level 2 predictor of daily functioning, as a complement to the within-person analyses that were planned. 4.1.2 daily well-being affective well-being was assessed in terms of experiences of positive and negative affect (watson, 2000). in particular, participants were asked to report on the extent to which (1 = not at all; 5 = extremely) they experienced 3 markers of positive affect (happy, positive, and excited) as well as 3 markers of negative affect (sad, negative, and distressed). the rating scale was borrowed from the panas (watson, 2000) and the positive and negative markers were taken from both the panas and the spane (diener et al., 2010). day-specific experiences of positive (m = 3.27; sd = 0.98; α = .93, the latter based on a dataset with participants as rows and day-specific pa scores as columns) and negative (m = 1.77; sd = 0.80; α = .94) affect were computed by averaging across markers for a given valence. psychological well-being was assessed in terms of the dimensions of the psychological wellbeing model (ryff, 1989), which defines flourishing according to themes derived from theories in lifespan development, philosophy, and humanistic psychology. participants indicated their level of agreement (1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree) with statements reflecting autonomy (“today, i was not afraid to voice my opinions even if they were controversial”: m = 3.69; sd = 1.56; α = .93), mastery (“today, i was in charge of the situation i was in”: m = 4.03; sd = 1.41; α = .94), personal growth (“today, i sought new experiences that would help me grow”: m = 3.40; sd = 1.51; α = .90), positive relations (“today, i knew i could trust the people in my life”: m = 4.49; sd = 1.42; α = .96), purpose (“today, i had a sense of direction and purpose in my life”: m = 3.49; sd = 1.71; α = .96), and self-acceptance (“today, i felt confident and positive about myself”: m = 3.43; sd = 1.73; α = .95). a total score was also computed by averaging across items (m = 3.75; sd = 1.17; α = .96). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 4.1.3 mechanism-related measures we sought to gain insights into key mechanisms that could link open preferences to higher levels of well-being. preferring open to closed is thought to relate to motivations that support engagement and goal pursuit (robinson & irvin, 2022). to examine processes of this type within a daily diary study, we used two goal-related items taken from moeller et al. (2015). in response to the stem “while working on my goals today…”, participants were asked how efficacious they felt (1 = i felt i lacked the skills to achieve them; 5 = i felt like i had what it takes to achieve them: m = 3.63; sd = 1.14; α = .91) and whether they were successful in reaching their goals (1 = i was not successful in achieving them; 5 = i was very successful in achieving them: m = 3.50; sd = 1.14; α = .90). open preferences are also likely to function in an optimistic manner, with optimism being linked to higher levels of approach coping and lower levels of avoidance coping (carver et al., 2010). participants were asked to think about problems and stressful events they encountered on a particular day. then, they were presented with two approach-related coping items assessing active coping and planning (e.g., “i concentrated my efforts on doing something about the situation”) as well as two avoidance-related coping items assessing denial and disengagement (e.g., “i just gave up in trying to reach my goals”). for each item, participants rated their level of agreement (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) and we averaged across items to assess approach-related coping (m = 3.51; sd = 1.00; α = .94) as well as avoidance-related coping (m = 1.85; sd = 0.83; α = .94), based on similar daily diary protocols (e.g., irvin, persich, & robinson, 2021). 4.2 results 4.2.1 initial considerations sex did not predict average levels of open preference, f(1, 122) = 1.75, p = .189, ηp2 = .01, and we will omit this variable from further consideration. in the main analyses, we focus on whether open preferences are linked to higher levels of well-being, using multilevel models and the sas proc mixed procedure (singer, 1998). we first performed level 2 (between-person) models by using average levels of open preference to predict the daily well-being and process variables. in these models, the predictor was z-scored and intercepts were allowed to vary at random, consistent with a focus on individual differences (nezlek, 2012). we then performed level 1 (within-person) models in which day-varying levels of open preference were treated as predictors of the same daily outcome variables. in these analyses, the predictor was person zscored and the outcome and process measures retained their original units. 4.2.2 level 2 analyses table 2 reports the results of the level 2 models, which were focused on individual difference predictions. participants with higher average levels of open preference experienced more positive affect and less negative affect in their daily lives. in addition, such individuals scored higher in daily levels of autonomy, mastery, growth, positive relations, purpose, and selfacceptance. a goal-striving perspective on such relations was supported in that open preferring individuals (relative to closed preferring individuals) reported higher levels of self-efficacy and success in achieving their daily goals. also, open preferring individuals were more likely to cope with daily stressors in approach-related terms. these results complement studies 1 and 2 in suggesting that higher levels of open preference, in between-person terms, are linked to higher levels of well-being and flourishing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 table 2. average levels of open preference as a predictor of daily outcomes (level 2 mlms), study 3 ______________________________________________________________________________ category and outcome b [95% ci] t p ______________________________________________________________________________ affective well-being positive affect .30 [.19, .41] 5.39 <.001 negative affect -.12 [-.22, -.02] -2.40 .018 psychological well-being autonomy .38 [.19, .56] 4.05 <.001 mastery .37 [.20, .53] 4.46 <.001 personal growth .38 [.23, .54] 4.82 <.001 positive relations .39 [.20, .58] 4.01 <.001 purpose .42 [.19, .65] 3.63 <.001 self-acceptance .47 [.25, .68] 4.35 <.001 pwb total score .40 [.25, .55] 5.21 <.001 goal efforts self-efficacy .27 [.14, .39] 4.24 <.001 goal success .26 [.14, .38] 4.35 <.001 coping approach coping .29 [.18, .40] 5.25 <.001 avoidance coping -.15 [-.25, -.05] -3.05 .003 ______________________________________________________________________________ 4.2.3 level 1 analyses within-person relationships involving open preference are reported in table 3. irrespective of individual differences, days on which open preferences were higher were days associated with greater positive affect and lesser negative affect. as preferences shifted in an open (versus closed) direction, also, all well-being dimensions increased, such that individuals reported higher levels of autonomy, mastery, growth, positive relations, purpose, and self-acceptance. mechanismrelated results provide further insights into these processes in that open-preferring days were ones associated with higher levels of self-efficacy and goal pursuit success as well as a more proactive and less defensive manner of coping with problems and/or stressors. these results indicate that preferences related to the open-closed dimension shift from day to day in manners that are meaningfully related to orientations to the environment and well-being. to gain further knowledge concerning the within-person relationships, we performed lagbased analyses. in one set of analyses, we treated previous-day preferences as a predictor of current day positive affect and/or well-being (pwb total score). in another set of analyses, we considered the reverse direction. such lagged effects were not evident, ts < 2.00, ps > .150, suggesting that preferences along the open-closed dimension function in a day to day rather than cross-day manner. 4.3 discussion like study 2, study 3 found that individual differences in open preference were linked to multiple aspects of well-being. for example, individuals whose average scores indicated a greater preference for openness reported higher levels of autonomy, mastery, personal growth, positive relationships with others, purpose, and self-acceptance as they went about their daily lives. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 pertinent to the well-being enhancement literature (e.g., layous, chancellor, & lyubomirsky, 2014), however, it was also found that preferences along the open-closed dimension varied on a daily basis, with higher levels of open preference being linked to the same well-being outcomes. interventions that encourage a more open and engaged mode of existing, thus, are likely to translate into multiple well-being benefits for the individual, which is a theme that will be further pursued in the general discussion. table 3. within-person relations between open preference and daily outcomes (level 1 mlms), study 3 ______________________________________________________________________________ category and outcome b [95% ci] t p ______________________________________________________________________________ affective well-being positive affect .29 [.24, .34] 11.38 <.001 negative affect -.18 [-.22, -.13] -8.25 <.001 psychological well-being autonomy .14 [.08, .21] 4.41 <.001 mastery .16 [.08, .24] 4.08 <.001 personal growth .27 [.19, .36] 6.52 <.001 positive relations .21 [.15, .28] 6.63 <.001 purpose .28 [.20, .36] 7.02 <.001 self-acceptance .41 [.32, .50] 9.04 <.001 pwb total score .25 [.19, .30] 8.38 <.001 goal efforts self-efficacy .17 [.11, .22] 5.56 <.001 goal success .19 [.14, .24] 7.21 <.001 coping approach coping .12 [.07, .18] 4.52 <.001 avoidance coping -.06 [-.10, -.02] -3.08 .002 ______________________________________________________________________________ 5. general discussion as infants, our experience of the world is largely spatial, giving rise to image schemas that can be used to represent more abstract concepts such as affordances, agency, and the like (mandler, 1992). even as adults, theorists suggest that we understand ourselves, our goals, and our lives in largely spatial terms (lakoff & johnson, 1999), particularly through the mechanism of image schemas, which are simple space-based contrasts that exist at the interface of perception, image, and thought (gibbs, 2011). in the present studies, we pursued one important contrast of this type – namely, that between unspecified entities being open, and thus conducive to engagement and interactivity, or closed (burris & rempel, 2010). to link the open-closed contrast to personality processes, we used a preference-based technique (kim & markus, 1999; persich et al., 2019), reasoning that preferences for the image schema/concept of open (versus closed) would be reflective of preferences for engagement with the environment. in the perma model, engagement is a building block of well-being (seligman, 2018) and engagement also figures prominently in analyses of other processes conductive to well-being such as social involvement (hundt et al., 2010), resource building (fredrickson, 2013), and goal pursuit and its achievement (klug & maier, 2015). in fact, the system responsible for activated http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 feelings of positive affect is sometimes termed the behavioral engagement system (watson, wiese, vaidya, & tellegen, 1999) and engagement with the environment, whether through physical activity, social interaction, or goal pursuit, has been linked to positive affect in both correlational and experimental studies (watson, 2000). based on such frameworks, in part, we hypothesized that preferences for openness, which affords interactivity and engagement (coëgnarts & kravanja, 2014), would be systematically linked to higher levels of well-being. support for this basic hypothesis was found with respect to self-reports of flourishing (study 1), both selfand peer-reports of well-being (study 2), and states of positive affect and psychological well-being in a daily diary protocol (study 3). additional results linked open preferences to social competence (study 2) and active rather than disengaged modes of coping (study 3), which are conducive to well-being (carver et al., 2010). 5.1 further implications, limitations, and future directions all human beings are thought to use image schemas for self-regulation (oakley, 2007), just like all individuals are thought to use conceptual metaphors in representing features of the self and its goals (lakoff & johnson, 1999). in the context of such normative theories, the mechanism of preference appears to be a useful tool. if that which is closed affords protection and that which is open affords interactivity (burris & rempel, 2010), then asking people whether they prefer closed to open or open to closed should be capable of transforming a normative theory into one capable of targeting individual differences (fetterman, meier, & robinson, 2017). specifically, individuals who are attracted to the spatial concept of closed likely favor a mode of existence that is more protected, inasmuch as closed objects protect their contents, whereas individuals who are attracted to the spatial concept of open likely favor a mode of existence that is more exploratory and engaged. through the mechanism of preference, that is, a normative theory becomes one that is capable of probing for key motivations (and the orientations and behaviors that would result from them) with respect to the protection-exploration tradeoff (burris & rempel, 2010; elliot, 2006; lang & bradley, 2013). the resulting measure could be considered projective in nature, both because it seeks to measure underlying motivations (mcclelland, 1987) and because it does not ask individuals to ascribe personality traits to themselves. given the nature of the test, strong relationships with personality trait measures, which involve self-ascriptions of traits or tendencies (wilt & revelle, 2015), would not be expected (bornstein, 2002). although we have shown that open preferences are higher among extraverts and closed preferences are higher among neurotic individuals, these correlations are modest in effect size. the open preference measure is not a measure of the big 5 dimension of openness to experience; indeed, it does not correlate with this dimension (robinson & irvin, in press). thus, the sorts of motivations that are captured by the open preference measure are not necessarily those that predispose people to intellectual or artistic pursuits. rather, they seem to align with more basic orientations to the environment that are approachversus avoidance-related (carver, 2006). a caveat is that open preferences also seem to involve a willingness to think about feelings and other intrapsychic events (robinson, roiger, & irvin, 2022). in this connection, the open preference measure may capture some of the processes that are emphasized in humanistic (e.g., rogers, 1963) and experiential (e.g., blackledge & hayes, 2001) accounts of optimal functioning (henderson & knight, 2012). the open preference measure has a recent origin, but it uses procedures that have been validated in the attitude literature (eagly & chaiken, 1993) and its extensions to conceptual metaphor theory (fetterman et al., 2017; persich et al., 2019). as briefly mentioned in the method section of study 1, also, the word-based open preference measure used in the present studies http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 correlates highly (r = .68) with another measure that asks people to indicate their relative preferences for images showing doors, windows, and shutters that are open versus closed. furthermore, both the word-based and picture-based measures predict the same sorts of outcomes (robinson & irvin, in press), though we favor the word-based measure because it targets concepts rather than pictures of an idiosyncratic nature. given the suggestion that open and closed preferences capture motivational orientations to the environment, more work of a motivational nature would be valuable. open preferences have been linked with approach motivation (robinson & irvin, 2022) and closed preferences have been linked with experiential avoidance (robinson & irvin, in press), but additional lines of data might be pertinent. for example, pilot data in the lab suggest that individuals who favor open to closed are more inclined toward risk-taking in scenarios representing real-life dilemmas (e.g., whether one should ask another person on a date). additional studies of this type might target other contexts in which motivations related to engagement conflict with motivations related to protection (e.g., robinson, boyd, & persich, 2016). what the present findings do indicate is that open preferences are conducive to eudaimonic well-being. in fact, they might be eudaimonic in that open preferences would encourage commerce with the social and physical environment, which would be linked to self-expression, goal pursuit, growth, and change. when one is engaged with the environment, for example, one must continuously rework the self-environment interface in manners that change the self as well as the environment, resulting in new skills and new perspectives that add to the self’s repertoire (white, 1959). the self, in a sense, becomes a larger and more inclusive entity (hughes et al., 2020). by contrast, living in a protected way, in accordance with protection-related desires, would limit opportunities for growth as well as relationship building (farmer & kashdan, 2012). there may be elements of eudaimonia that would not be captured by open preferences, given that eudaimonia has been conceptualized in diverse terms (heintzelman, 2018), but living in an open manner would facilitate many of them. in support of this idea, study 3 found that open preferences, whether trait or state, were linked to autonomy, mastery, personal growth, positive relations, purpose, and self-acceptance. although we focused on eudaimonic conceptions of wellbeing in the present research, we suspect, but did not show, that open-preferring individuals are more satisfied with their lives. examining whether this is true is important because life satisfaction is considered a core component of well-being (diener et al., 2017). biological organisms need to engage with the environment, but they also need to protect themselves (kaschak & maner, 2009). these functions seem to vary with open preferences (robinson & irvin, 2022, in press), but one wonders whether open preferences can be too high. in study 1, we found no hint of curvilinear relationships between open preferences and flourishing, but it is possible that curvilinearity could be found with respect to other sorts of outcomes (pierce & aguinis, 2013). for example, it is possible that open-preferring people may sometimes be too honest in their communications with others, causing bruised feelings. and/or, it is possible that open-preferring people take unnecessary risks in their lives. speculations of this type require further research, but we do suggest that living one’s life in accordance with protection motivation is problematic for multiple reasons (blackledge & hayes, 2001; farmer & kashdan, 2012; nelson et al., 2021). we therefore further suggest that open preferences are more likely to be functional than closed preferences under many circumstances, but that additional research could focus on potential downsides to open preferences that are very high. our participants were emerging adults and this phase of life is one that is supposed to be linked to exploratory endeavors, whether in the relationship realm, the occupational realm, or the education realm (arnett, 2000). whether open preferences would be linked to flourishing and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 well-being among other age groups is not known. we suspect that this would be the case (bohart, 2007), but there are some suggestions that exploration-related goals give way other sorts of goals among older-aged adults (carstensen, isaacowitz, & charles, 1999). cultural differences are also worth studying. for example, some cultures are more prevention-motivated than others (gelfand et al., 2011) and, in these cultures, protection and inhibition may be valued to a greater extent than in western cultures (park, kitayama, miyamoto, & coe, 2020). in countries such as japan, relationships between open preferences and flourishing may be less pronounced than in countries such as usa (miyamoto et al., 2013). cross-cultural research, perhaps of the type conducted by gelfand et al. (2011), would be informative. finally, we speculate that open preferences may be less pronounced and/or less functional among groups who are disadvantaged, whether due to adverse childhood experiences or institutional barriers. the present studies were not designed to examine causal direction and, in accordance with recent extensions in conceptual metaphor theory (gibbs, 2019; persich et al., 2019), bidirectional relationships are most likely. there is evidence for the idea that viewing the self as an expanding entity can change the manner in which the self operates (landau et al., 2011; mattingly & lewandowski, 2013), but recent experiences (e.g., successful goal pursuit, a pleasant interaction) are also likely to change one’s preferences along the open-closed dimension. this analysis accords with the color preference literature, which has found both stability and change with respect to preferred colors (e.g., strauss, schloss, & palmer, 2013). in fact, considerable malleability was demonstrated in study 3 and this malleability warrants further attention. it is possible that preferences for openness, like experiential avoidance (eustis et al., 2020), could serve as a dependent measure of psychological functioning in future research of either an experimental or intervention type. we also encourage longitudinal research, which could establish that changes in open preference predict changes in well-being (see spinhoven et al., 2014, for a relevant model). 5.2 conclusions the present research highlights an important manner in which individuals appear to contribute to the sorts of lives that they have, through their preferences. preferring that which is open to that which is closed, the present results indicate, is linked to a mode of self-regulation that is more conducive to both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. these preferences are malleable, however, suggesting potential pathways through which lives can be enhanced. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. acknowledgments the authors thank the editor and reviewers for their suggestions. data availability datasets for this paper are available at: https://osf.io/3kxnv/?view_only=fe4d8f11a9564c71a65779cbc63321f9 author contributions both authors contributed to the designs and analyses of these studies. the first author wrote the paper and performed analyses, and the second author contributed to manuscript preparation and revisions. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ preferences for openness as a substrate of well-being irvin & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 authors roberta l. irvin north dakota state university roberta.irvin@ndsu.edu michael d. robinson north dakota state university publishing timeline received 21 july 2022 revised version received 17 april 2023 accepted 8 may 2023 published 13 june 2023 references alcaro, a., & panksepp, j. 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(2017). labor earnings reductions, happiness levels and needs hierarchy. international journal of wellbeing, 7(1), 23-39. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i1.540 stavros drakopoulos national and kapodistrian university of athens sdrakop@uoa.gr copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 article labor earnings reductions, happiness levels and needs hierarchy stavros drakopoulos · katerina grimani abstract: one of the main economic outcomes of the recent great recession has been the decrease of labor earnings in many countries. the relevant literature indicates that earnings and other socioeconomic predictors can influence levels of happiness. this paper tests the effect of pay cuts on happiness levels based on the psychological model of hierarchical needs. the basic idea of hierarchy is that the most important needs must be satisfied first before the secondary needs come into the picture. in a happiness research framework, this implies that for higher income levels, the effect of pay cuts on reported happiness levels becomes much weaker, given that the satisfaction of non-basic needs becomes important. the data used in this paper was drawn from the 5th european survey on working conditions, which focuses on european countries. two different disaggregation methods were performed, based on absolute nominal income threshold and relative income threshold, respectively. the methods for analyzing the data are the ordinary leastsquares (ols) regression model, and the wald chi-square test. the pay cuts are a stronger predictor of happiness for low/middle income individuals than for high income individuals when it comes to disaggregation based on absolute threshold. the regression coefficients of pay cuts for the low/middle income group were not significantly different from those for the high income group regarding disaggregation based on relative threshold. the results seem to depend on the disaggregation method, implying the need for further research and discussion. keywords: pay cuts, happiness, subjective wellbeing, maslow’s hierarchy of needs 1. introduction one of the main characteristics of the great recession of 2008 was the reduction of labor earnings in many countries for a substantial number of employees (jenkins et al., 2013). apart from the obvious effects of pay cuts on the purchasing power and living standards of individuals and households, falling labor earnings must also affect happiness levels, given that rising income has been shown to have a positive relationship to happiness (sloane & williams, 2000; helliwell, 2003; gasper, 2005; clark et al., 2008; stutzer & frey, 2010). happiness (or life satisfaction) has been defined as a combination of feeling good (hedonic perspective) and functioning effectively (eudemonic perspective). the hedonic component is concerned with subjective experiences of pleasure, while the eudemonic component is concerned with fulfillment and the realization of human potential and actualization (deci & ryan, 2008; steptoe et al., 2008; huppert, 2009). understanding the happiness (or job satisfaction) of employees is important because work exhibits a substantial psychological dimension for self-identity and sense of purpose, given that adults spend an average of about 33.6 hours per week at work (kahneman et al., 2004; tay & harter, 2013). improving the happiness levels of the workforce has important social and economic effects, since it brings benefits for both the employees and the organization, and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 influences an individual’s social behavior, employment relations and productive performance in the workplace (danna & griffin, 1999; lyubomirsky et al., 2005; grant et al., 2007; panos & theodossiou, 2007; wesarat et al., 2015). high levels of psychological wellbeing at the workplace allow employees to flourish and achieve their full potential for the benefit of themselves and their organization (grant et al., 2007; wesarat et al., 2015). in empirical work, reported subjective wellbeing is taken as a proxy measure for individual welfare and individual happiness (see stutzer & frey, 2010). in this study, the terms life satisfaction, subjective wellbeing, and happiness are used interchangeably, as is the usual practice in most recent studies (see also the discussion in la placa et al., 2013). the paper examines the relatively under-researched topic of labor earnings reductions and its relationship to happiness levels. based on maslow’s psychological theory of hierarchical needs (maslow, 1954), the paper argues that labor earnings are very important for happiness up to a certain level of income. the incorporation of the needs hierarchy into a happiness framework implies that individuals have a priority approach to happiness in relation to income. the crucial point here is that the most important needs must be satisfied first before the secondary needs come into the picture. it follows that forra higher income levels the effect of pay cuts on reported happiness levels becomes much weaker, given that the satisfaction of non-basic needs becomes important. in this work, the above idea is tested by employing data drawn from the 5th european survey on working conditions (2010). the structure is as follows: section 2 will present a literature survey concerning happiness and its relationship to labor earning changes. it will also discuss the incorporation of maslow’s needs hierarchy approach into the framework of happiness research. the following sections will concentrate on the data and the empirical methodology, as well as the main research findings. a conclusion will close the paper. 2. literature review 2.1 happiness and labor earning changes aristotle has been cited as the first written source of the idea that all human action is implicitly motivated by a desire to increase individuals’ subjective wellbeing or eudemonia, which referred to specific psychological experiences that were seen as the essence of a good life (deci & ryan, 2008). modern rational choice theory suggests that revealed preferences imply motivation which means that individuals who strive for money believe (at some conscious or unconscious level) that it will increase their happiness (ahuvia, 2008).1 accordingly, the existing empirical research reveals that the richer countries declare higher levels of happiness compared to poorer countries, and within each country, the richer members of society are happier than the poor. in particular, several studies have suggested that higher income is associated with greater life satisfaction (see for instance: easterlin, 1995; helliwell, 2003; liu et al., 2010). on the other hand, time-series analyses show that higher per capita incomes have failed to generate any noticeable improvement in happiness levels in most developed countries (e.g., blanchflower & oswald, 2004; easterlin & angelescu, 2012). although within a country at a given time those with higher incomes are, on average, happier, many studies have found that raising the incomes of all does not increase the happiness of all. this presents researchers with a paradox, termed usually as the happiness or the easterlin paradox (easterlin, 1995; 2001; cummins, 2000; mentzakis & moro, 2009; diener et al., 2013). 1 similarly, recent evidence from psychology suggests that high levels of income are also associated with lower levels of psychopathology (e.g., wood et al. 2012). the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 with these findings in mind, it is reasonable to assume that wage cuts would have the opposite effects on happiness levels. in fact, the effect might be stronger than pay rises, according to the notion of loss aversion, which implies that “losses loom larger than gains.” this concept originated in the work of kahneman and tversky (1979), and has since been shown to be useful in a range of real-world contexts (for example, camerer, 2000). in particular, under experimental conditions, a loss is typically estimated to have twice the influence on decisions as equivalent gains (novemsky & kahneman, 2005). however, there is not much relevant work examining the effects of wage cuts on happiness levels. one plausible explanation for this might be that until the great recession of 2008, nominal wage cuts was a rare and rather isolated phenomenon in most western countries. one of the few papers that has employed this idea in the subjective wellbeing framework found that experienced drops in income have a larger impact on wellbeing than equivalent income gains (boyce et al., 2013). similarly, a recent working paper found that measures of life satisfaction and affect are more than twice as sensitive to negative economic growth as compared to positive growth (de neve et al., 2015). however, another recent paper reported mixed results concerning the presence of loss aversion, and suggested that the relationship between pay growth and job satisfaction is less steep for cuts than for raises (smith, 2015). furthermore, according to drakopoulos and grimani (2015), pay cuts have a highly significant negative effect on psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction. this work aims to provide some additional insights into these relationships. 2.2 labor earning changes and hierarchical behaviour hierarchical choice consists of two interconnected central ideas: the first is that human needs are of varying importance, and the second is that human needs must be satisfied in a specific order. these two ideas imply that there are primary needs and secondary needs that cannot be substituted. according to maslow (1954), primary needs refer mainly to physical needs like the need for food, clothing and shelter, while secondary needs refer to intellectual or non-material needs (for a discussion of the definition of primary and secondary needs, see drakopoulos, 1994; max-neef, 1995; gasper, 2005). the hierarchical approach predicts that when income is very low, a very high percentage of it would be spent on food, since food satisfies a basic need. this is in line with the hypothesis that consumption evolves along a hierarchical order as income increases. the hierarchical model has been applied to a wide array of economic issues (see for instance, lluch et al., 1977; canterbery, 1979; jackson & marks, 1999; thiele & weiss, 2003; canova et al., 2005; chattopadhyay et al., 2009). however, the application of hierarchical choice to happiness research has not received much attention. in our framework, hierarchy implies that once a level of labor earnings that satisfies the basic needs has been reached, further changes of labor earnings do not provide analogous changes on happiness levels because secondary needs come into the picture (clark & oswald, 1996; drakopoulos & theodossiou, 1997; drakopoulos, 2013). taking into account the notion of earnings that satisfy basic needs, an employee’s happiness level can be written as: h = h(le, le∗, x) (1) where h is happiness, le is the level of labor earnings, le* is the level of labor earnings which satisfies basic needs, and x is a vector of characteristics comprising variables that affect happiness. the inclusion of the threshold level of labor earnings le* in equation (1) reflects the the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 essence of hierarchy. 2 the other variables (x) satisfy secondary needs and are taken into consideration only when le reaches a satisfactory level or target le*. (for a discussion concerning the determination of le*, see ferrer-i-carbonell 2005.) we can incorporate all the above by taking a two-part function: h(le, x) = {hl(le, x),hh(le,x)} (2) where h(le, x) = hl for le ≤ le* and h(le, x) = hh for le > le∗ with the following conditions (which are also our hypotheses to be tested in the empirical part of the paper): , and (3) the conditions provide the essence of the hierarchical approach to happiness levels. the first two conditions imply that labor earnings have a positive effect on happiness levels. the last condition infers that labor earnings do not provide the same rate of happiness levels once a given level (le*) has been reached, suggesting that other factors start playing a role with regard to the level of happiness. thus, falling labor earnings affect significantly and in a negative manner the happiness levels of the group of lower/middle income workers, while for the group of higher income workers, the effect of pay cuts on reported happiness levels becomes much weaker. in other words, falling earnings have an asymmetric effect on happiness, depending on the category of income. in the following sections of this paper, we will test this idea by using a large european dataset. 3. empirical analysis 3.1 data and participants the data used in this paper was drawn from the 5th european survey on working conditions,3 which aimed to provide a comprehensive picture of the everyday reality of men and women at work. the research was conducted in the first half of 2010 (face-to-face interviews in people’s homes in the national language(s) of the country) and contains data from 33 european countries and turkey. given our focus in this paper, the timing of the survey was two years after the financial crisis of 2008, when the phenomenon of nominal pay cuts became much more widespread in many european countries. thus, the 5th wave of 2010 captures very well the substantial occurrence of pay cuts in contrast to pre-2008 waves. the target sample size of 1,000 interviews was set for most countries. the participants were aged 15 or older, were in employment at the time of the survey, and were selected by the method of multi-stage stratified random sampling. they responded to a questionnaire of about 44 minutes’ duration, comprising 89 questions relating to issues such as work time duration, work organization, learning and training, physical and psychosocial risk factors, health and safety, 2 the inclusion of le* and the two-part function implies a kink at le*, and this is the main difference from the standard diminishing marginal utility approach, which gives one smooth function. 3 further information on the project can be found at www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/ewcs/index.htm. the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 work-life balance, worker participation, earnings and financial security. a number of questions were included to capture the effect of the economic downturn on working conditions. the questionnaire data of interest included happiness and labor earning changes variables. it also included type of occupation (four dummy variables: high skilled clerical, low skilled clerical, high skilled manual, low skilled manual), previous occupational status (seven dummy variables: employed with an indefinite contract, employed with a fixed-term contract, employed with a temporary employment agency contract, employed, unemployed, in education or training, other), and working hours per week. the participants were working adults aged 18 to 65. in terms of countries, the sample consisted of 34 dummy variables: albania, austria, belgium, bulgaria, croatia, cyprus, czech republic, denmark, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, hungary, ireland, italy, kosovo, latvia, lithuania, luxembourg, former yugoslav republic of macedonia (fyrom), malta, montenegro, the netherlands, norway, poland, portugal, romania, slovakia, slovenia, spain, sweden, turkey, and the united kingdom. finally, the data contained personal variables such as age and age squared, gender and educational level (three dummy variables: none and primary education, secondary, including lower, upper and post-secondary education, and tertiary, including advanced level of tertiary education). the happiness variable covers five positively worded items related to positive mood (good spirits, relaxation), vitality (being active and waking up fresh and rested) and general interests (being interested in things), all experienced over the previous two weeks. this five-item world health organization well-being index (who-5) is among the most widely used questionnaires assessing subjective psychological wellbeing with high clinimetric validity. since its first publication in 1998, the who-5 has been translated into more than 30 languages and has been applied successfully across a wide range of study fields (see, for instance topp et al., 2015; schutte et al., 2014; sisak et al., 2008; gill & feinstein, 1994). the who-5 was derived from the who-10, which in turn was derived from a 28-item rating scale (selected from the zung scales for depression, distress and anxiety, as well as from the general health questionnaire and the psychological general well-being scale), on the basis of a non-parametric item response theory analysis. the new version identified the 10 most valid items from the original 28-item scale (bech, 1993). each of the five items is rated on a 6-point likert scale from 1 (= at no time) to 6 (= all of the time). in addition, the five scores created an index, which was linearized by using z-scores transformation. the negative values of the z-scores were transformed into positive and the natural logarithm (ln) was estimated. reliability and validity estimations were conducted prior to index variable construction. the internal consistency approach (cronbach’s alpha) was employed in order to assess the reliability of the scale. according to the results, the cronbach’s alpha of the psychological general well-being scale was 0.8814. this suggests that the internal reliability of the scale is high, since an instrument with an internal consistency coefficient of 0.80 (scale total) or higher is considered to be adequate (cronbach, 1951; nunnaly, 1978). the validity of the scale was assessed by construct validity, using factor analysis. the results are considered to be satisfactory, since the loadings were far from 0 and the uniqueness was less than 0.50. the labor earning changes variable was assessed, reporting a change in their salary, comparing their current situation with that of a year ago (three dummy variables: pay cuts (decrease in labor earnings), no change in labor earnings, increase in labor earnings, see table 1 below). the theoretical model that we follow implies that the sample has to be disaggregated into two categories: low/middle and high income. there is no standard definition of high income threshold in the relevant literature. absolute nominal thresholds and relative thresholds are the two main methods found in most works on income levels (see murphy et al., 2007). both the “relative threshold cutoff,” based on median or mean income, and absolute nominal income threshold are widely used approaches (e.g., morissette & zhang, 2006; murphy et al., 2007). the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 table 1. definitions of variables variables/definitions ln happiness levels france = 1, otherwise = 0 ireland = 1, otherwise = 0 males = 1, females = 0 italy = 1, otherwise = 0 age (18 – 65 years) luxembourg = 1, otherwise = 0 age2 netherlands = 1, otherwise = 0 primary education = 1, otherwise = 0 uk = 1, otherwise = 0 secondary education = 1, otherwise = 0 bulgaria = 1, otherwise = 0 tertiary education = 1, otherwise = 0 cyprus = 1, otherwise = 0 low skilled manual = 1, otherwise = 0 czech republic = 1, otherwise = 0 low skilled clerical = 1, otherwise = 0 estonia = 1, otherwise = 0 high skilled manual = 1, otherwise = 0 hungary = 1, otherwise = 0 high skilled clerical = 1, otherwise = 0 latvia = 1, otherwise = 0 working hours per week (1 – 84) lithuania = 1, otherwise = 0 pay cuts (decrease labor earnings) = 1, otherwise = 0 malta = 1, otherwise = 0 no change labor earnings = 1, otherwise = 0 poland = 1, otherwise = 0 increase labor earnings = 1, otherwise = 0 romania = 1, otherwise = 0 belgium =1, otherwise = 0 slovakia = 1, otherwise = 0 denmark =1, otherwise = 0 slovenia = 1, otherwise = 0 germany =1, otherwise = 0 turkey = 1, otherwise = 0 spain = 1, otherwise = 0 croatia = 1, otherwise = 0 finland = 1, otherwise = 0 norway = 1, otherwise = 0 austria = 1, otherwise = 0 fyrom =1, otherwise = 0 portugal = 1, otherwise = 0 albania = 1, otherwise = 0 greece = 1, otherwise = 0 kosovo = 1, otherwise = 0 sweden = 1, otherwise = 0 montenegro = 1, otherwise = 0 in this work, the relative threshold cutoff approach identifies as high income those who earn above two times the median income. this is also consistent with empirical work indicating that above this level, individuals tend to save a considerable percentage of their income, something which implies that they can comfortably cover their basic needs (huggett & ventura, 2000). the application of this method gave 28,965 low/middle income individuals and 4,131 high income individuals. the disaggregation was based on the eurostat map data of european countries of median income for the year 2010. for the three following countries: albania, kosovo, and montenegro, the disaggregation was based on the trading economics map data for year 2010. the split performed for low/middle and high income groups is appropriate, given that the kolmogorov-smirnov test indicated that the income distributions are different (see table 2a below). an additional disaggregation, based on absolute nominal income threshold, was also conducted. the data was drawn from the world bank map data of european countries by gdp per capita for the year 2010. the low/middle income sample contains 29,239 individuals, while the high income sample contains 3,857 individuals. we determined a threshold value for each country that was based on each country’s per capita gross domestic product. the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 table 2a. summary statistics of variables (after disaggregation by relative threshold) variables low/middle income levels high income levels 000mean 0sd 000mean 0sd ln happiness levels 0001.040 000.533 0001.082 000.466 pay cuts (decrease labor earnings) 0000.201 000.400 0000.191 000.393 no change labor earnings 0000.541 000.498 0000.502 000.500 males 0000.482 000.499 0000.718 000.449 age 0041.044 011.460 0041.321 010.884 age2 1815.975 947.533 1825.854 920.091 primary education 0000.057 000.232 0000.059 000.235 secondary education 0000.675 000.468 0000.433 000.495 working hours 0038.415 011.652 0045.446 012.552 low skilled manual 0000.193 000.395 0000.091 000.286 low skilled clerical 0000.447 000.497 0000.307 000.461 high skilled manual 0000.159 000.366 0000.137 000.344 belgium 0000.089 000.285 0000.028 000.165 bulgaria 0000.023 000.153 0000.014 000.119 czech republic 0000.022 000.149 0000.021 000.143 denmark 0000.029 000.168 0000.027 000.163 germany 0000.058 000.234 0000.015 000.121 estonia 0000.021 000.141 0000.035 000.184 spain 0000.024 000.155 0000.026 000.160 france 0000.023 000.151 0000.012 000.111 ireland 0000.081 000.272 0000.024 000.155 italy 0000.022 000.147 0000.035 000.185 cyprus 0000.031 000.172 0000.008 000.089 latvia 0000.024 000.154 0000.020 000.141 lithuania 0000.023 000.151 0000.023 000.152 luxemburg 0000.021 000.144 0000.019 000.139 hungary 0000.017 000.131 0000.029 000.167 malta 0000.026 000.160 0000.022 000.146 netherlands 0000.022 000.149 0000.023 000.151 austria 0000.026 000.160 0000.023 000.149 poland 0000.022 000.148 0000.004 000.064 portugal 0000.025 000.156 0000.055 000.228 romania 0000.017 000.131 0000.056 000.229 slovenia 0000.039 000.194 0000.013 000.113 slovakia 0000.025 000.156 0000.016 000.127 finland 0000.029 000.168 0000.005 000.067 sweden 0000.025 000.156 0000.027 000.162 uk 0000.028 000.167 0000.031 000.175 croatia 0000.022 000.148 0000.059 000.235 fyrom 0000.028 000.166 0000.007 000.089 turkey 0000.025 000.157 0000.231 000.421 norway 0000.028 000.164 0000.024 000.155 albania 0000.023 000.150 0000.017 000.131 kosovo 0000.025 000.156 0000.014 000.118 montenegro 0000.023 000.151 0000.008 000.091 observations 28965 4131 the income above the given threshold value for each country has been considered as high, while the income below the given threshold value for each country has been considered as low/middle. the split performed for low/middle and high income groups is also appropriate, according to the kolmogorov-smirnov test (see table 2b below). the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 table 2b. summary statistics of variables (after disaggregation by absolute nominal threshold) variables low/middle income levels high income levels 000mean 0sd 000mean 0sd ln happiness levels 0001.031 000.542 0001.151 000.354 pay cuts (decrease labor earnings) 0000.206 000.404 0000.151 000.358 no change labor earnings 0000.546 000.497 0000.458 000.498 males 0000.486 000.499 0000.704 000.456 age 0040.649 011.474 0044.337 010.156 age2 1784.004 945.019 2068.919 898.533 primary education 0000.063 000.243 0000.015 000.124 secondary education 0000.679 000.466 0000.385 000.486 working hours 0038.784 012.036 0043.152 010.931 low skilled manual 0000.195 000.396 0000.069 000.253 low skilled clerical 0000.446 000.497 0000.309 000.462 high skilled manual 0000.165 000.371 0000.096 000.295 belgium 0000.080 000.271 0000.096 000.295 bulgaria 0000.025 000.157 0000.003 000.057 czech republic 0000.025 000.156 0000.003 000.060 denmark 0000.018 000.134 0000.111 000.314 germany 0000.052 000.223 0000.057 000.231 estonia 0000.024 000.154 0000.007 000.083 spain 0000.024 000.155 0000.028 000.165 france 0000.022 000.148 0000.019 000.138 ireland 0000.073 000.260 0000.080 000.271 italy 0000.019 000.137 0000.058 000.234 cyprus 0000.028 000.167 0000.018 000.133 latvia 0000.021 000.145 0000.040 000.197 lithuania 0000.025 000.158 0000.006 000.080 luxemburg 0000.023 000.151 0000.002 000.050 hungary 0000.017 000.131 0000.031 000.173 malta 0000.028 000.166 0000.004 000.068 netherlands 0000.022 000.148 0000.024 000.155 austria 0000.024 000.155 0000.034 000.182 poland 0000.021 000.143 0000.015 000.124 portugal 0000.031 000.174 0000.010 000.101 romania 0000.024 000.155 0000.002 000.045 slovenia 0000.038 000.191 0000.021 000.143 slovakia 0000.026 000.160 0000.006 000.080 finland 0000.024 000.153 0000.042 000.201 sweden 0000.021 000.143 0000.057 000.232 uk 0000.026 000.161 0000.046 000.210 croatia 0000.027 000.164 0000.020 000.142 fyrom 0000.028 000.165 0000.011 000.107 turkey 0000.054 000.227 0000.021 000.144 norway 0000.024 000.155 0000.047 000.213 albania 0000.022 000.147 0000.023 000.151 kosovo 0000.024 000.155 0000.015 000.122 montenegro 0000.022 000.146 0000.018 000.134 observations 29239 3857 4. empirical methodology in the econometric specification of this paper, happiness will be the dependent variable. the variable is determined by a number of factors, including labor earning changes. the methods for analyzing psychological wellbeing data is the ordinary least-squares (ols) regression and the wald chi-square test (williams, 2008; green & hensher, 2010; greene, 2012). the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 before we proceed to the report of the results, we should also mention a limitation of the present study that needs to be acknowledged. the limitation concerns the survey instrument employed, which was a self-reporting measure of happiness. this suggests that the information presented by the participants is based upon their subjective perceptions. although participants were assured of confidentiality, it is possible that they either overor underreported their level of happiness. however, self-reporting measures are widely used in many similar contemporary empirical studies (for instance, see fordyce, 1988; danna & griffin, 1999; charness & grosskopf, 2001; senik, 2005; kahneman & krueger, 2006). 5. results in line with the theoretical part and with our discussion of the empirical methodology section, our equation of interest for the low/middle income group is: (4) whereas for the high income group it is: (5) it is assumed that employees’ happiness is determined by a variety of factors. these factors are the following: le is the labor earning changes (three dummy variables: pay cuts (decrease in labor earnings), no change in labor earnings, increase in labor earnings), which is the basic independent variable; x is a vector of other individual socioeconomic variables, such as age, age2, gender, education level, type of occupation, hours of work, and country dummy variables, assumed to influence happiness levels (ferrer-i-carbonell, 2005; panos & theodossiou, 2007; dolan et al., 2008). the α and b are the associated coefficients, and εi is a normally distributed error term. the results of the ols regression models (with robust standard errors – table 3a below), which are similar for both groups, reveal a statistically significant negative effect of pay cuts (decrease in labor earnings) on subjective wellbeing. after the simultaneous estimation of the results for both regression models, the wald chi-square test was employed in order to examine whether coefficients differ across groups (greene, 2012). initially, there was a comparison of all of the coefficients from the two regression models. the results indicated that one or more of the coefficients significantly differ across groups (x2 (44) = 89.84, p < .01). subsequently, the significance of the independent dummy variable was tested separately. the results indicated that the regression coefficients of the independent dummy variable for low/middle income group are not significantly different from those for high income group. analogous results regarding the additional disaggregation based on absolute nominal income threshold are presented in table 3b below. one or more of the coefficients also significantly differ across groups (x2 (44) = 183.88, p < .01). however, the regression coefficients of the independent dummy variables for low/middle income group are significantly different from those for high income group (x2 (1) = 4.15, p<.05), suggesting that labor earning changes is a stronger predictor of happiness for the first group than for the latter. the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 table 3a. dependent variable ln happiness levels: simultaneous results for regression models (after disaggregation by relative threshold) variables low/middle income group high income group pay cuts (decrease labor earnings) -0.106 (-10.60)** -0.095 (-4.18)** no change -0.005 (0.73) -0.009 (0.55) males -0.070 (10.47)** -0.053 (3.24)** age -0.009 (-5.24)** -0.012 (-2.36)* age2 -0.000 (3.73)** -0.000 (2.23)* primary education -0.079 (-4.80)** -0.112 (-3.09)** secondary education -0.003 (-0.38) -0.012 (0.68) working hours -0.001 (-2.86)** -0.003 (-4.68)** low skilled manual -0.112 (-9.97)** -0.071 (-2.47)* low skilled clerical -0.028 (-3.17)** -0.032 (-1.78) high skilled manual -0.044 (-3.74)** -0.005 (0.19) belgium -0.065 (2.72)** -0.063 (0.93) bulgaria -0.082 (-2.77)** -0.005 (-0.07) czech republic -0.114 (-3.86)** -0.085 (-1.19) denmark -0.194 (6.88)** -0.178 (2.63)** germany -0.086 (3.43)** -0.060 (0.77) estonia -0.057 (1.86) -0.055 (0.86) spain -0.072 (2.50)* -0.093 (1.37) france -0.197 (6.78)** -0.117 (1.43) ireland -0.041 (1.71) -0.052 (0.75) italy -0.219 (7.29)** -0.092 (1.43) cyprus -0.036 (-1.32) -0.077 (0.82) latvia -0.012 (-0.42) -0.033 (0.46) lithuania -0.048 (-1.62) -0.006 (-0.10) luxemburg -0.102 (-3.33)** -0.113 (-1.55) hungary -0.055 (1.78) -0.005 (-0.09) malta -0.074 (-2.60)** -0.088 (-1.24) netherlands -0.131 (4.45)** -0.098 (1.41) austria -0.114 (3.97)** -0.096 (1.37) poland -0.055 (1.86) -0.105 (0.86) portugal -0.025 (-0.87) -0.005 (-0.09) romania -0.006 (-0.21) -0.052 (0.86) slovenia -0.026 (-0.99) -0.016 (0.21) slovakia -0.001 (-0.05) -0.075 (0.98) finland -0.142 (5.07)** -0.031 (0.27) sweden -0.152 (5.20)** -0.063 (0.93) uk -0.017 (0.62) -0.018 (0.29) croatia -0.057 (-1.95) -0.046 (-0.77) fyrom -0.049 (1.77) -0.103 (1.09) turkey -0.201 (-7.09)** -0.122 (-2.23)* norway -0.139 (4.91)** -0.103 (1.50) albania -0.078 (-2.66)** -0.101 (-1.34) kosovo -0.162 (5.54)** -0.020 (0.26) montenegro -0.039 (1.33) -0.016 (-0.18) constant -1.320 (29.45)** -1.469 (12.03)** observations 28965 4131 r2 0.061 0.066 note: robust z-statistics in parentheses. *significant at 5%; **significant at 1%. the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 table 3b. dependent variable ln happiness levels: simultaneous results for regression models (after disaggregation by absolute nominal threshold) variables low/middle income group high income group pay cuts (decrease labor earnings) -0.112 (-10.10)** -0.065 (-3.24)** no change 0.004 (0.51) 0.012 (0.99) males 0.074 (10.68)** 0.049 (3.56)** age -0.008 (-4.44)** -0.021 (-4.47)** age2 0.000 (2.88)** 0.000 (4.50)** primary education -0.092 (-4.69)** -0.005 (-0.09) secondary education -0.007 (-0.91) 0.015 (1.02) working hours -0.001 (-3.80)** -0.001 (-1.07) low skilled manual -0.118 (-9.66)** -0.049 (-1.87) low skilled clerical -0.033 (-3.82)** -0.017 (-1.25) high skilled manual -0.048 (-4.09)** 0.016 (0.66) belgium 0.054 (2.24)* 0.075 (1.08) bulgaria -0.077 (-2.25)* -0.151 (-1.01) czech republic -0.116 (-3.90)** 0.098 (0.99) denmark 0.175 (7.01)** 0.207 (3.06)** germany 0.075 (3.04)** 0.090 (1.24) estonia 0.061 (2.12)* 0.097 (1.02) spain 0.064 (2.43)* 0.131 (1.72) france 0.188 (7.35)** 0.187 (2.57)** ireland 0.025 (1.06) 0.101 (1.44) italy 0.212 (7.16)** 0.153 (2.17)* cyprus -0.051 (-1.72) 0.071 (0.90) latvia -0.036 (-1.03) 0.107 (1.45) lithuania -0.046 (-1.53) 0.069 (0.68) luxemburg -0.105 (-3.35)** 0.071 (0.69) hungary 0.045 (1.48) 0.064 (0.85) malta -0.083 (-2.89)** 0.165 (1.82) netherlands 0.121 (4.46)** 0.149 (2.05)* austria 0.098 (3.40)** 0.158 (2.28)* poland 0.038 (1.36) 0.134 (1.80) portugal -0.015 (-0.53) 0.014 (0.15) romania 0.026 (0.87) 0.211 (2.54)* slovenia -0.034 (-1.22) 0.027 (0.35) slovakia 0.001 (0.05) 0.047 (0.52) finland 0.135 (5.63)** 0.111 (1.59) sweden 0.137 (5.38)** 0.139 (2.00)* uk 0.004 (0.15) 0.064 (0.88) croatia -0.044 (-1.57) -0.024 (-0.29) fyrom 0.038 (1.23) 0.181 (2.21)* turkey -0.156 (-5.43)** 0.148 (1.99)* norway 0.121 (4.49)** 0.168 (2.39)* albania -0.086 (-2.77)** -0.094 (-0.99) kosovo 0.151 (5.29)** 0.070 (0.79) montenegro 0.028 (1.01) 0.073 (0.91) constant 1.323 (29.22)** 1.501 (11.95)** observations 29239 3857 r2 0.058 0.052 note: robust z-statistics in parentheses. *significant at 5%; **significant at 1%. most of the predictors exhibited a significant relationship to (ln) happiness at 1% or 5% level. the predicted value is higher for males, which implies that women’s happiness is less than that of men. with regards to age, a negative relationship to happiness is revealed. in addition, individuals with a high skilled clerical occupation and tertiary education have higher happiness the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 levels. moreover, longer working hours are associated with a decrease in the levels of happiness. greece, being the omitted country, seems to have lower happiness levels than the nordic countries, kosovo and the former yugoslav republic of macedonia, while it seems to have higher happiness levels than the rest of the balkan countries. thus, the results provide a strong indication for the validity of the theoretical discussion concerning hierarchical needs, income levels and reported happiness. at this point, it has to be noted that other factors might have played a role in determining the happiness level of europeans, and may confound the pay cuts estimates. in particular, the aftermath of the great recession witnessed the eurozone crisis, with large bailouts of countries and banks, and austerity policies. apart from public service cuts, all these developments implied distrust towards national and european governments and institutions, and a general feeling of uncertainty and fear (blanchflower & shadforth, 2009; ehrmann et al., 2013). it can be argued that these negative effects might have been stronger for low income groups, thus strengthening the negative pay cuts effects of our study. however, given that our data is from 2010, the public service cuts effects took a relatively long period to be instituted and implemented, and therefore their effect exhibits a considerable lag compared to the pay cut effects. although the relevant literature on this topic is not very extensive, some prior empirical research on happiness in general provides some insights regarding the main variables (see smith, 2015; boyce et al., 2013). our results indicate that males demonstrated higher levels of happiness than females. previous evidence on gender differences and their associations with happiness has been inconsistent. the 2009 study by stevenson and wolfers showed that measures of subjective wellbeing suggest that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men, although a few studies report no gender differences (for instance, louis & zhao, 2002; liu et al., 2010). one of the main explanations for these results might be that women may simply find the complexity and increased pressure in their modern lives to have come at the cost of happiness (see also ferber & green, 2003). furthermore, our findings point to a negative relationship between age and psychological wellbeing, which is consistent with other studies such as van praag et al. (2003) and drakopoulos and grimani (2013a). many papers on the determinants of happiness and wellbeing, suggest a u-shaped relationship between age and wellbeing, where the youngest and the oldest are happiest, while the middle age groups are the least happy (see for instance: blanchflower & oswald, 2008; frijters & beatton, 2012; drakopoulos & grimani, 2013b). one explanation here has to do with the higher expectations of the younger age group compared to older individuals (clark & oswald, 1994; gerdtham & johannesson, 2001). in addition, tertiary education and high skilled clerical employees were reporting the highest happiness levels (see for instance: tsou & liu, 2001; blanchflower & oswald, 2004; drakopoulos & grimani, 2013a). a negative relationship was also found between working hours and happiness, suggesting that individuals who have longer work hours report lower happiness levels. the evidence is consistent with other empirical work, such as in galay (2007). finally, happiness is higher for nordic countries and lower for southern contiguous countries compared to greece (huppert & so, 2013; drakopoulos & grimani, 2013b). our results can also be connected to research indicating that income is a very important happiness determinant for lower income groups (e.g., layard et al., 2010). furthermore, corazzini et al. (2012) focused on the differences between high and low income countries regarding the strength of relative concerns. their findings support the presence of relative concerns in the perception of wellbeing, with the strength of relativism being higher for respondents in high income countries. the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 6. conclusions falling labor earnings have been observed in many countries since the great recession. given that there is not much work on this important issue, the main aim of this paper was to investigate the relationship between falling labor earnings and workers’ happiness. the paper employed the psychological theory of hierarchical needs which has been applied to many economic contexts. the hierarchical structure of needs implies that the most important needs must be satisfied first before the secondary needs are considered. in the framework of the income-happiness relationship, the theory would predict that income is very important for happiness up to a certain level of income. for higher levels of income, income is still important but much less so, given that other factors affecting happiness come into the picture. the paper utilized a large sample to test the above relationships by using data from 33 european countries and turkey. in particular, the results indicate that pay cuts have a highly significant negative effect on the happiness levels of workers with low and middle income, implying that pay cuts reduce workers’ happiness compared to those whose pay does not change or increase. the effect becomes much weaker for the workers belonging to higher income group when it comes to the disaggregation based on absolute nominal threshold. the main empirical findings reveal different results between the two disaggregation methods. disaggregation based on absolute nominal threshold supports the notion of the needs hierarchy and its relation to labor earnings. labor earning changes seem to be more important for happiness for low and middle income group workers. moreover, it seems that labor earning changes lose their importance for the high income workers’ group, and this is consistent with the incorporation of the needs hierarchy into the context of happiness research. furthermore, the above empirical findings link psychological wellbeing issues to financial loss, and this is consistent with other relevant studies. there is a large literature pointing out the importance of subjective wellbeing for labor productivity, organizational performance, absenteeism, and health and longevity (for a recent survey, see de neve et al. 2013 and references therein). our results provide additional insights to the above, given that low and middle income workers are likely to suffer more in terms of happiness loss when nominal wage cuts are applied. the fall of happiness of low income groups may have stronger adverse effects on their productivity, work performance, absenteeism and health levels. nevertheless, there is a need for further research on understanding the above relationships, given that the relative threshold method did not provide the same support to the previous points. authors stavros drakopoulos national and kapodistrian university of athens sdrakop@uoa.gr katerina grimani national and kapodistrian university of athens publishing timeline received 22 june 2016 accepted 27 february 2017 published 9 june 2017 the effect of labor earnings reductions on happiness drakopoulos & grimani www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 references ahuvia, a. 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(2020). emotion as creative practice: linking creativity and wellbeing through the history and sociology of emotion. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 43-63. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1517 frederic kiernan university of melbourne kiernanf@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 article emotion as creative practice: linking creativity and wellbeing through the history and sociology of emotion frederic kiernan abstract: this article draws on recent developments in the history of emotion and the sociology of creativity to argue that emotions themselves may be viewed as creative practices. after an initial, broad overview of key historical and epistemological complexities in emotions research, it describes a framework for understanding emotion (and the history of emotion) proposed by monique scheer (2012), which is grounded in the practice theory of french sociologist pierre bourdieu. in scheer’s view, emotions should not be viewed as fundamentally internal physiological or psychological states, but as the practices to which those states are inextricably linked, and by which they are mobilized, named, communicated and regulated. the article then describes a sociological framework for understanding creativity proposed by janet chan (2016), which is also underpinned by bourdieu’s practice theory, and which posits that creativity is an inherent feature of all social action and may generate social change via institutionalized cultural practice or cultural revolt, the latter of which may itself take at least three forms. it then links scheer’s and chan’s frameworks together, explaining how, from this sociological perspective, emotions can be understood as creative practices, as embodied acts of thinking performed in habituated ways and which themselves generate change by doing different types of creative work. it proposes a new four-part framework for categorizing emotions as creative practices, based on chan’s framework for creativity: 1) emotion as institutionalized cultural practice; 2) emotion as cultural edgework; 3) emotion as cultural transcendence; and 4) emotion as cultural transformation. it concludes by suggesting that this framework provides an original and useful way of explaining the role of emotion in generating social and historical change, and of explaining the link between creativity and wellbeing from a sociological perspective. keywords: emotion, practice theory, pierre bourdieu, emotion as practice, history of emotions, creativity, sociology of creativity, wellbeing, creativity and wellbeing, emotions and change introduction in a presentation at the marconi institute for creativity (mic) conference, 2020, vlad glăveanu (2020b) observed that the power of creativity is precisely that of helping us reposition ourselves vis à vis the here and now of experience. in his recent writing about migrants from the perspectives of mobility studies and possibility studies, glăveanu (2020a) also points to creativity’s relevance to the broader study of emotion and affect. drawing inspiration from glăveanu, this article adopts his statement as the starting point for a sociologically oriented theoretical investigation of creativity and wellbeing by employing emotion as a conceptual stepping-stone linking the two. emotion is very often cited as a core element in definitions of wellbeing (dodge et al., 2012). two broad traditions of wellbeing research have addressed emotion in different ways (ryan & deci, 2001; henderson & knight, 2012; huta, 2016). the hedonic tradition has tended to focus on about:blank emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 pleasure attainment and pain avoidance, and therefore emphasizes happiness, positive affect, low negative affect, and satisfaction with life (diener, 2009; kahneman et al., 1991; lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999). on the other hand, the eudaimonic tradition has emphasized meaning, selfrealization, positive psychological functioning and human development (rogers, 1961; ryff, 1989; ryff & singer, 2008; waterman et al., 2010; vittersø, 2016). most researchers now treat wellbeing as a multi-dimensional construct (diener, 2009), with positive emotion often foregrounded as an essential defining feature, even if this is implied as a result of the cultivation of other factors (seligman, 2011). sociological approaches to the study of wellbeing have examined, for example, the link between social status and life satisfaction (connolly & sevä, 2018), and the way adjacent concepts such as occupational prestige predict health, self-esteem, and job-satisfaction outcomes in various contexts (treiman, 2013; smith, 2004; fujishiro et al., 2010). however, in part because of historical and disciplinary complexities in both emotions and creativity research (to be outlined in more detail below), the role of creativity and emotion in understanding wellbeing from a sociological perspective is still not well understood. steve derné (2017) has argued that sociologists of wellbeing are too heavily focused on suffering, and that moving away from topics such as pain and anguish towards discussions about how people define and experience wellbeing could provide fruitful avenues for further sociological research. in thinking about creativity and its potential links with wellbeing, this article draws on a definition of emotion as practice developed by monique scheer (2012) in the nascent field of the history of emotion and synthesizes this with a framework for the sociology of creativity recently proposed by janet chan (2016) to argue that emotions can be viewed as creative practices. the article highlights multiple intersections between emotion and creativity to argue that emotions may be viewed as fundamentally creative acts, proposing a four-part framework for categorizing emotions as creative practices. the article concludes by suggesting that this framework provides an original and useful way of explaining the role of emotion in generating social and historical change, and of understanding the link between creativity and wellbeing from a sociological perspective. research on emotion and creativity: historical complexities the term “emotion” has historically been just one of several related terms referring to a much wider variety of phenomena than the scientific term “emotion” does nowadays. in the seventeenth century, the term “emotion” could refer to physical agitations of any kind, including those caused by the wind in the trees (dixon, 2012). in the early nineteenth century, thomas brown, a professor of moral philosophy at the university of edinburgh, merged a number of everyday concepts (including passion, sentiment, affection) into one scientific concept “emotion” (dixon, 2003), but struggled to define what he meant by the term, writing, “perhaps, if any definition of them [emotions] be possible, they may be defined to be vivid feelings, arising immediately from the consideration of objects, perceived, or remembered, or imagined, or from other prior emotions” (brown, 1820/2010, 145–146). some decades later, william james (1884) famously asked “what is an emotion?”, reflecting not his engagement with an age-old conundrum, but rather, an attempt to define a relatively new psychological category in scientific discourse. for thomas dixon (2012), the transition of the term “emotion” into scientific discourse during the nineteenth century severed important links between emotion, morals and ethics which psychologists (averill, 2009), sociologists (harkness & hitlin, 2014) and historians (boddice, 2018; 2019) have only relatively recently begun to reconnect. this is a project that resonates strongly with the objectives of this article. emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 the term “emotion” continues to resist clear definition. paul kleinginna and ann kleinginna (1981) identified 92 definitions of “emotion”; almost three decades later, carroll izard’s (2010) study of the many meanings and aspects of emotion explored the views of 35 distinguished scientists on emotion, finding that: many psychological scientists and behavioral neuroscientists affirm that ‘emotion’ influences thinking, decision-making, actions, social relationships, well-being, and physical and mental health. yet there is no consensus on a definition of the word ‘emotion,’ and the present data suggest that it cannot be defined as a unitary concept (p. 363). izard also found there was moderate support for the view that the term “emotion” is “ambiguous and has no status in science” (p. 367). a more recent study by ursula hess (2017) examined whether cognitive scientists view emotions as categorical or dimensional in nature, where a “categorical” definition of emotion would ascribe discrete states characterized by qualitatively different neural substrates, expressive reactions, action tendencies and feeling states, while a “dimensional” approach would define emotions according to degrees of valence and intensity. the findings were inconclusive. hess wrote, “the answer to the question of whether emotions are categorical depends to some degree on why this question is asked” (p. 121). in other words, cognitive scientists not only disagree about how to define emotion, but also about what type of scientific category “emotion” even falls into. research on emotions across various disciplines (primarily the life sciences and anthropology) has gradually been corralled into two main paradigms, identifiable by universalist and social-constructionist discourses on emotion (biess & gross, 2014; plamper, 2015), with the latter being discussed further below. in the universalist camp, scholars have argued that at least some “basic” emotions are universally experienced by all humans in the same way (ekman et al., 1969; ekman & friesen, 1971; ekman, 1999; 2007). this has encouraged psychological approaches to the study of the link between emotions and creativity that focus primarily on individual-level variables (isen et al., 1987; russ, 1993; averill, 1999; radford, 2004; ivcevic & hoffmann, 2017). scholars working in this paradigm have tended to investigate the link between emotion and creativity by isolating variables pertaining to either or both concepts and then testing how they interact (russ, 2020). these approaches have shown emotion (ivcevic & hoffmann, 2019), affect (isen et al., 1987) and mood (baas, 2019) to be crucial to creativity, where creativity is usually treated as the production of a product deemed both novel and useful or appropriate in a particular context (cropley, 2011). different definitions of creativity have typically placed varying degrees of emphasis on the person, process, or product as elements of creativity (runco & jaeger, 2012), while a fourth p, “press” (i.e., the pressure of the environment) has also been given attention (rhodes, 1961), taking the study of creativity into domains previously viewed as irrelevant, such as education and business (cropley, 2011). recent research has further broadened the focus in psychological creativity studies by showing how creativity can be viewed as “distributed”, that is, existing across and between multiple actors, materials and domains (glăveanu, 2014). when relationships are taken as the unit of analysis rather than isolated individuals, creativity can be viewed as a “socio-cultural act” (glăveanu, 2015). research on the role of emotion in generating social and historical change is still relatively new, with emotions often being treated as responses to, or by-products of, change processes, rather than facilitators of them (barclay, 2017). however, historians of emotion have begun to view emotion as social structure rather than as something embedded in it (barclay, 2017, p. 4), emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 thereby providing new frameworks for understanding the links between emotion and social change. barbara rosenwein’s (2006) concept of “emotional communities” emphasizes how social groups can share norms of emotional valuation and expression, and in so doing she ties change to language and society. katie barclay (2011) has suggested that emotions, especially love, can reproduce particular forms of social order, and she uses a foucauldian approach to argue that emotions facilitate incremental change by way of reiterative processes of negotiation. william reddy’s (2001; 2008) concept of “emotional regimes” (2001, p. 29, and outlined further below) describes normative standards for emotional behavior that reinforce political power, arguing that change occurs through communities of resistance which also comprise “emotional refuges” (2001, p. 29). (for a useful overview of recent theoretical work on emotion and change, see barclay, 2017). in what follows, i will propose an alternative explanation for the role of emotion in generating social and historical change. the most explicit recent attempt to define emotions as creative in psychology has been made by james r. averill (1999; 2009), who has proposed that the standard criteria for creativity (which he states are novelty, effectiveness and authenticity) apply not only to intellectual and artistic “responses” but also to emotional ones, and thus, he frames emotions “as creative products” (2009, p. 251). in this vein, he argues that characteristics commonly associated with spiritual experiences (meaning, vitality and connectedness) apply to emotionally creative responses (averill, 1999). this approach does much to link the concepts of ethics, emotions and creativity together, by anchoring the functional and adaptive aspects of emotional behavior to an individual’s moral and ethical frameworks and belief systems. he also observes that the way emotional performances unfold is determined much more by social scripts than by evolutionary or biological drivers. using the example of grief, he writes, “from a social perspective, grief is a role that societies create in order to facilitate transition following bereavement, and that people may enact with greater or lesser involvement… biology only sets the stage; it does not write the script” (averill, 2009, p. 251; see also averill & nunley, 1988). however, while clearly grounded in a social-constructionist view of emotion, his approach frames emotions as fundamentally individual responses within a trigger-response dialectic, as “syndromes, that is, coordinated sets of responses to situations appraised as beneficial or harmful to the person” (averill, 2009, p. 250). this definition does not adequately account for the possibility that emotions are not always spontaneous responses to situations, but may indeed be deliberately evoked and strategically performed, as will be argued below. his approach also hinges on a definition of creativity as novelty, effectiveness and authenticity, which, as noted above, has recently been contested (glăveanu, 2015; 2020b). sociological and anthropological research on emotion increased significantly during the last three decades of the twentieth century (stets & turner, 2014b) and has often contested the claim that emotions are universally experienced by all humans the same way (rosaldo, 1980; lutz, 1988). definitions of emotion in sociology have proposed that emotions are senses that signal what is personally relevant about surrounding social events (hochschild, 1983); or have considered emotions in terms of four interdependent factors: physiology, cognition, expression and labelling (thoits, 1984); or, more recently, have framed emotions somewhat broadly as “responses to events that are linked with corporeal manifestations” (lively & heise, 2014, p. 68). these approaches share a key focus on the interdependent relationship between emotions and the cultural and structural relationships in which they occur, showing how they are both shaped by and reify those arrangements (lively & weed, 2016, p. 76; stets & turner, 2014a). the practice theory of french sociologist pierre bourdieu (1977; 1986; 1990) has also been influential in shaping sociological approaches to emotions research, for example, in discussions about emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 “emotional capital” (erickson & cottingham, 2014), or “emotional habitus” (burkitt, 1997), terms which i will clarify below. however, it was actually in the field of the history of emotion, not sociology, that monique scheer (2012) first proposed that emotions may be understood as a kind of practice in the bourdieuian sense. together with chan’s (2016) framework for the sociology of creativity, to be outlined further below, scheer’s theoretical contribution represents one of two crucial pillars to the argument being made in this article: that emotions can be viewed as creative practices. in sociology, creativity has also been a marginal topic historically, with the field of creativity research being dominated until recently by psychological and philosophical approaches (paul & kaufman, 2014). while weber’s notion of charismatic leadership, durkheim’s “collective effervescence”, and marx’s “active and creative subject” all made use of the concept of creativity in some way (chan, 2016), “the tendency to marginalize creativity was common to sociology in all the main national traditions” until recent years (domingues, 2000, p. 468). chan (2016) has proposed that the two theorists who stand out as having made significant advances in the sociology of creativity are hans joas and pierre bourdieu. joas (1996) drew on models of creative problem solving proposed by american pragmatists such as john dewey, william james, charles peirce and g. h. mead to theorize creativity as a distinct model of social action alongside habitual rational and normatively oriented action. he proposed that creativity is what happens when habits are interrupted, where such interruptions lead the actor to reconstruct their context through new ways of acting and thinking. drawing inspiration from joas, benjamin dalton (2004) nonetheless challenges his position in three key aspects, asserting that: 1) the duality between creativity and habit that joas endorses is misleading, and human action can in fact be simultaneously habitual and creative; 2) joas ignores to his detriment a contemporary strand of sociological theorizing based on bourdieu’s concept of habitus which can explain the simultaneous presence of habitual and creative elements in all human action; and 3) the incorporation of creative action into sociological theories of agency requires recognizing that creativity and habit cannot be viewed as separate types of action. as dalton (2004) writes, creativity is not simply the impulsive action of an inherently creative agent, a reaction to the interruption of previously successful routines, or a restrictive set of strategies available to the habituated actor. it also rests on the perfection of routine and the practical difficulties of action (pp. 604–605). artists can, for example, produce “good art”, which is deemed creative by the art world, without ever consciously attempting to be creative or experiencing interruptions to their routines; indeed, it is often the cultivation of routine that supports their production of creative work (chan 2016, p. 647). thus, even when habits or routines are successful, actors may be driven by mere boredom or exhaustion to alter or experiment with them. from this perspective, habits, routines and norms are not static; they are developed over time and can generate change, and are thus an ethical and political direction that actors may or may not move in. the claim that habitual and creative elements simultaneously exist in all human action leads chan (2016) to point out that the sociology of creativity is therefore premised not on the idea that specific people or processes are creative per se, but on the idea that creative social products are deemed creative (or not) by relevant critical communities according to domain-specific criteria. chan’s framework for the sociology of creativity, which draws primarily on bourdieu’s practice theory while incorporating ideas from joas, dalton and others, thus forms the second key pillar, alongside scheer’s (2012) framework of emotion as practice, in my argument that emotions may emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 be viewed as creative practices in this sociological sense. the two frameworks will now be set out in more detail before i make an attempt at their synthesis. monique scheer’s framework for understanding emotion as practice monique scheer (2012) has argued that bourdieu’s (1977; 1990) practice theory can be used to redefine “emotion” and to rethink the relationship between emotion, body and mind. in so doing, she provided an important framework for doing the history of emotion which has since been adopted by historians working across a range of periods (davison et al., 2018). bourdieu argued that practices are unconscious strategies that actors use to position themselves within a social field by investing capital and seeking more capital (robbins, 2014). here, “field” refers to broad and sometimes overlapping social spaces such as family, work, or the legal system, which influence the way things are said and done in that space, and which shape the way those sayings and doings are likely to be interpreted by others (thomson, 2014). “capital” refers to various types of resource, which all together take a symbolic form, but which can be classified into different types (for example, economic, social and cultural capital); as such, capital includes things like the knowledge of what constitutes appropriate behavior in a certain context (bourdieu, 1986; 1990, pp. 66–68; moore, 2014). practices are strategic social action and have been defined as “an organized constellation of different people’s activities” based on “practical rules … teleoaffective structures, and general understandings” (schatzki, 2012, pp. 13, 15). practices arise from the bodily knowledge that is accumulated as actors go about their social lives, much like the bodily knowledge that skilled drivers draw upon when navigating traffic in almost-automatic (that is, habituated) yet also improvised fashion, or which musicians with some degree of proficiency use when playing their instrument. for bourdieu (1990), this knowledge is stored in what he terms the “habitus”, which is “embodied history, internalized as second nature and so forgotten as history—[it] is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product” (p. 56), or, in other words, a durable but evolving tendency to act the same way in similar situations (maton, 2014). “habitus” thus refers to a general disposition for intelligent and strategic action, which is never perfectly prescriptive, meaning that it does not lock actors into robotic ways of being, even though it is the product of past experiences and socialization (dalton, 2004, p. 612). one’s actions in the world, even when deeply habituated, must always be tempered by the demands of the field, and as such, the imperfect alignment between habitus and field requires innovation in the carrying forth of social action. for this reason, bourdieu described the habitus as “the intentionless invention of regulated improvisation” (bourdieu, 1990, p. 57). members of a particular ethnic or cultural group will usually learn particular values, dispositions, ways of thinking, categorizing and even speaking that are acceptable within a field. the habitus generates strategies and actions (i.e., practices) that inform and guide how people maximize their capital in a field, and for this reason, practices arise from the interplay between habitus, capital and field. practices can be learned and unlearned, often but not always unwittingly, and they are sustained by reiteration (davison et al., 2018). practices therefore fall in and out of use in different social and historical contexts, and in bourdieu’s theory the shared embodied dispositions in the habitus are what mark people as members of a culture (chan 2016, p. 645). for example, in the past the act of tipping one’s hat may have felt like an almost entirely automatic and natural way to greet somebody. from the perspective of bourdieu’s practice theory, this act can be viewed as an investment of the hat-tipper’s knowledge of the appropriate way to act in a particular context, expressed in a habituated, embodied and performed way, and which serves the strategic purpose of communicating the message “i greet you”. nowadays, the emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 practice may seem rather anachronistic because its strategic value has been reduced in many fields if not completely lost. scheer (2012) argued that emotions can be understood as precisely the same type of thing: strategies for navigating social space, which may be learned or unlearned, and which involve engagements not just of internal physiological systems but also movements of the body and even the conscription of objects from the material environment (like one’s hat) into a learned performance of emotion. the performance of emotion may thus feel almost entirely automatic and natural to the performer, but it is in fact deeply culturally and socially inflected. scheer’s argument closely parallels that made by the philosophers of science paul e. griffiths and andrea scarantino (2009), who claim that emotions are “situated”, meaning that they are: designed to function in a social context; forms of skillful engagement with the world; scaffolded by the environment; and dynamically coupled to the environment which both influences and is influenced by the unfolding emotion (pp. 437–438). research in the fields of embodied cognitive science, enactivism, ecological dynamics and ecological psychology also supports the idea that the body is a knowing, mindful entity that stores past experiences in habituated, practical processes (gallagher, 2005; sutton et al., 2011; bergen, 2012; kimmel et al., 2018), and has proposed that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation (chemero, 2009). these theoretical developments are grounded in different epistemological frameworks than the sociology of bourdieu’s practice theory, and the current article is not attempting to map those concepts from one discipline to another; however, the key messages of these approaches are very similar: along with the brain, the body knows, remembers, and thinks. scheer (2012) thus argues that emotions are not something that happen to us so much as something that we do, and for this reason, emotions are not timeless, ahistorical states of being, but historically and socially specific acts of consciousness performed by a thinking, situated body-and-mind that is accumulating knowledge of how to navigate its social environment all the time. scheer’s framework of emotion as practice also locates emotion not strictly within the body, but instead in the practices that link habitus, capital and field, which exist both within and between the body and its environment. because of this, scheer uses the terms “feeling” and “emotion” interchangeably (and for this reason i will as well in this article), while acknowledging that scholars working in the universalist-psychological paradigm usually do not (scheer, 2012, p. 198). emotions can thus be induced, scaffolded, manipulated and diffused through practice, and require reiteration to maintain their integrity (davison et al., 2018). critics of practice theory as it applies to emotions have proposed that it struggles to deal with breaks in societal norms, suggesting that affect theory and psychoanalysis have proposed better models for explaining these issues (see the discussion of this issue in trigg, 2014). however, the dependency of practices on iteration does allow for shifts in performance and interactions within a field, thereby opening up the opportunity for change leading to new logics of practice (davison et al., 2018). below, i will take this point further to argue that emotions are creative practices, thus providing an alternative explanation for the role of emotion in generating social and historical change that relies not on the opportunities for change that exist between iterations of practice, but because, as chan (2016) has proposed, practices are themselves creative. scheer’s framework has thus been influential in advancing the history of emotion because it expands thinking beyond the long-held assumption that emotions are fundamentally internal experiences and thus beyond the reach of historians. it has allowed historians to examine the traces of emotion as practice left behind in objects, texts and artifacts, to see how they have fallen in and out of use over time and place, and to understand how emotions have served different strategic purposes, as practices do. emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 janet chan’s framework for the sociology of creativity chan (2016) argues that bourdieu’s theory of practice, with some minor modifications suggested by dalton (2004), provides a solid foundation for a useful sociology of creativity. she proposes that while creativity is an inherent feature of social action arising from the necessarily partly improvised strategies generated by the habitus, the form creativity takes depends on the nature of the field and the intentions of the actors in it. chan writes, the necessity to innovate is part of an overarching habitus that people share, regardless of their field of practice. when faced with obstacles and difficulties, people may follow the habituated way of dealing with problems allowed in their field, or they may question or challenge these accepted ways … (pp. 647, italics in original). if a field is stable and actors are in a comfortable position, creativity can take the form of institutionalized cultural practice, while if a field is rapidly changing or one’s position in the field is uncomfortable, creativity can emerge as cultural revolt, which will be described below. for chan (2016), creativity as institutionalized cultural practice is the typical form of creativity produced by artists, scientists and workers in creative fields who simply do their work well. this form of creativity may seem counterintuitive to those more familiar with pragmatist approaches to understanding creativity, which often treat creativity and habit as oxymoronic and which tend to emphasize novelty rather than value as evidence of creativity (dalton, 2004; rehn & de cock, 2009). however, by most definitions, novelty alone is not a sufficient condition for creativity (cropley, 2011), meaning that, in some contexts, the ability to identify and retrieve value from the already-existing may also be considered creative (rehn & de cock, 2009). creativity as institutionalized cultural practice places less emphasis on the production of novelty and originality as elements of creativity, even though it can facilitate gradual, valuable change, and it also downplays “thinking outside the box” as the pathway to creative work (rehn & de cock, 2009, p. 223); instead, it places greater emphasis on the cultivation of habits, the achievement of incremental gains and the gradual perfection of routines leading to new social (e.g. artistic, scientific) products judged as “creative” by critical communities according to domain-specific standards of excellence. from this perspective, cultures marked by rhetorics of novelty, experimentation and the valorization of risk-taking, and particularly those framed by modernist narratives of progress and capitalist development (rehn & de cock, 2009) may actually be less likely to lead to the production of great art, science and literature than the orthodox strategy of simply doing one’s job well (chan, 2016, pp. 649–650). creativity as cultural revolt can emerge when an actor finds themselves in a difficult or uncomfortable position in a field, as a search for “control over emergence” or a bid for radical sovereignty (lippens, 2012). for chan (2016), this control over emergence can take at least three forms: cultural edgework, cultural transcendence, and cultural transformation. drawing on stephen lyng’s (1990) ethnographic foundation, chan proposes that edgework occurs when actors seek to push or negotiate the boundaries between fields. this is often characterized by high-risk activities such as extreme sports, drug-taking, and high-risk sexual behavior, where boundaries such as life/death and health/illness are negotiated. but, working at the cutting edge of one’s artistic or scientific field can also entail such negotiation and risk. edgework thus generates a sense of authenticity and hyperreality, as a pathway to “objective reality uncontaminated by subjective cognition” that feels more “real” than real life (lyng, 1990, p. 449). edgework thus requires a high degree of skill as well as great trust in one’s habitus, because the closer actors emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 come to the edge, the more the habitus recedes and agency is liberated, which can account for the intense feelings of self-determination that edgeworkers report (lyng, 1990, p. 453). however, while edgework, as a form of cultural revolt, can renegotiate boundaries between fields and thus do creative work, it is not a guaranteed pathway to creativity, because a failure to navigate its inherent risks successfully can have potentially extreme negative consequences (chan, 2016, p. 654). cultural transcendence involves actors seeking to go deeper into a field to reinterpret it. this “occurs in and through detached reflection, decision and existential choice” (lippens, 2012, p. 354), and is neither about the risk-taking of edgework nor about following traditions or conventional practices. cultural transcendence, for chan (2016), occurs through the solitude of being immersed in focused work, and paradoxically involves finding “more” by giving things up. it is therefore characterized in part by a grueling but gratifying search for meaning, order and unity. the creativity of this process occurs through the exchange of old meanings for new ones, resulting in new interpretations of the familiar. lastly, cultural transformation occurs as a form of creativity when actors seek to recreate (rather than reinterpret or renegotiate the boundaries of) a field. this involves bringing “newness into the world” (lippens, 2012, p. 354, italics in original) by engaging with and transforming the field and its laws and codes that currently exist, without separating oneself from them. chan (2016, p. 657) cites gustave flaubert as an example from the literary field of this kind of creativity through cultural transformation. flaubert treated the seemingly mundane trivialities of everyday life with exceptional refinement and in a “flawless style … as a result, his initial impotence turns into an extraordinary creation” (dubois, 2000, p. 99). cultural transformation can also occur as a result of encounters with different cultures, whereby fresh ideas can be adopted and adapted to suit a local environment, as in, for example, the adoption of japanese aesthetics by architect frank lloyd wright and their transformation into a “new unity” (oiyama, 2013, p. 408). chan’s bourdieuian sociology of creativity thus allows for creativity to take a variety of forms within the two main strands of institutionalized cultural practice and cultural revolt, which arise from the necessarily innovatory strategies of an imperfectly prescriptive habitus. in what follows i will attempt to synthesize the above described bourdieuian frameworks for emotion and creativity in order to argue that emotions themselves may be viewed as creative practices. emotion as creative practice emotions may be viewed as creative practices in the bourdieuian sense because emotions have a creative element that takes a practical form, as institutionalized cultural practice or cultural revolt, and in so doing, emotions do creative work. because, for chan (2016), the sociology of creativity focuses not on creative people or processes but on creative products that must be deemed creative by relevant knowledgeable communities, the creative element of emotion as practice is measured by the response of the relevant community to the products of an emotional performance, which is itself shaped by the agency of the actor and their creative decisions regarding an emotion’s practical manifestation (e.g. its context, manner, media and timing). i argue that emotion as creative practice may take at least four forms, based on chan’s classifying categories for the sociology of creativity: 1) emotion as institutionalized cultural practice, when a field is stable or actors are in a comfortable position; or, emotion as cultural revolt, when a field is unstable or actors are in a difficult or uncomfortable position in a field, which takes the form of 2) cultural edgework; 3) cultural transcendence; or, 4) cultural transformation. and, because the form of the emotion changes in accordance with its practical manifestation, the emotion itself substantively changes, even if its name does not. an emotion may take different forms emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 depending on how the emotion is practically oriented, and the emotion may do creative work in different ways leading to different social outcomes. to demonstrate this, and in accordance with the aim of this article to explore the link between creativity and wellbeing, i will apply the concept of happiness to each of the four categories described below, while also giving examples of how the creativity of other emotions can be understood using this framework. note that the argument being made here is that emotions are creative practices, but not necessarily the reverse; creative practices may or may not be emotions, and this line of reasoning may warrant further investigation elsewhere. the argument is, rather, that to feel is to do creative work, and that by illuminating the creative element of emotion, emotion as creative practice can provide a new way of explaining the role of emotion in generating social change and provide a useful link between creativity and wellbeing from a sociological perspective. and, because scheer’s framework of emotion as practice does not treat emotions as distinct from, or as byproducts of, social action, but rather as practical forms of engagement with the world, when coupled with chan’s (2016) bourdieuian sociology of creativity emotion as practice can provide new insights into why people may engage in certain practices in order to feel, or avoid them in order not to. people may strategically evoke emotions or avoid doing them precisely because feeling does particular kinds of creative work. this, in turn, means that to feel involves varying degrees of risk, uncertainty and effort, and brings about different kinds of social change (frevert et al., 2014; davison et al., 2018; eitler et al., 2014). emotion as institutionalized cultural practice as chan (2016) has proposed, when a field is stable or actors are in a comfortable position, creativity can take the form of institutionalized cultural practice. in such contexts, creativity appears not as “thinking outside the box” but as incremental change facilitated by routine practice (e.g. the gradual perfection or refinement of routine) leading to products deemed excellent by a knowledgeable community according to domain-specific standards. emotion may take the form of institutionalized cultural practice. different societies and social groups value emotions in different ways, encouraging and cultivating particular emotions in members of the group while discouraging other emotions (reddy, 2001; rosenwein, 2006). socially sanctioned or appropriate emotions may be viewed as strategically valuable or desirable in one field, while being of lesser value in another field. where an emotion is highly valued, the habitus will be oriented towards strategies (practices) that will cultivate it, and the success of the actor’s work will depend on the domain-specific standards by which the emotional performance is judged. from this bourdieuian perspective, an emotion such as happiness may be viewed not strictly as a physiological or psychological state different in nature from, for example, surprise or disgust, but rather an institutionalized cultural practice to which physiological and psychological states are linked, and of which they are the result, and through the reiteration of which they are cultivated. darrin mcmahon’s (2006) sweeping study of the history of happiness has traced, for example, the development of happiness over two thousand years. he argues that happiness was not widely viewed as something that people could or should achieve during their lifetime (as opposed to the hereafter) until the enlightenment, and that this humanistic shift led to the consecration of happiness in the declaration of independence and france’s declaration of the rights of man. this fundamental change in expectations meant that “by the end of the eighteenth century … happiness could claim widespread recognition as a motivating ideal” (mcmahon, 2006, p. 13), which, in turn, has led to a modern search for happiness that has generated both new pleasures as well as new forms of pain. the latter has included, for example, gendered experiences of unhappiness in modern marriages, and the weaponization of happiness against emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 feminists as “killjoys” as they attempt to direct attention towards examples of sexism (ahmed, 2010). for ehrenreich (2010), happiness as a motivating ideal has encouraged a cult of positive thinking whose obverse effects have included feelings of failure when succumbing to moments of grief or misery, guilt about not always being happy enough, and even claims by health professionals that ehrenreich’s anger in response to her breast cancer diagnosis was unhealthy and dangerous. when viewed through a bourdieuian lens, happiness can be understood as an institutionalized cultural practice, whose performance is oriented in accordance with the values, norms and ethical frameworks internalized in the habitus of the actor in a given social or historical context and measured against the domain-specific standards in a field. this is not to say that happiness is always an institutionalized cultural practice; in what follows i will suggest that there are other ways to be happy. i argue, rather, that when an emotion is highly valued in a field, the habitus is oriented towards strategies for attaining it, and when the field itself is stable or an actor’s position is comfortable, these strategies can take the form of institutionalized cultural practice. the commercial slogans and happiness rhetoric of coca cola’s various campaigns, from “things go better with coke” in 1963 to “open happiness” in 2009 (ryan, 2019), or mcdonalds reportedly spending $1.37 billion in advertising the year of their “i’m lovin’ it” campaign (schultz, 2019), illustrate how those with sufficient investing power in a field can generate value from an emotion by promising certain types of experience linked to specific practices which in these cases unsurprisingly include purchasing the product. the emotion thus becomes a collection of habituated activities arising from a habitus socialized to view happiness as desirable and valuable, requiring sustained effort, cultivation and practice to fine-tune, and whose performance is geared towards meeting domain-specific standards of excellence (for example, by crafting conspicuous public displays of happiness on social media or at social gatherings). the emotion may thus be viewed as an institutionalized cultural practice as defined by chan (2016) and therefore, in this regard, as creative. any emotion can become an institutionalized cultural practice. grief, for example, may be viewed this way in certain contexts, since the psychological and physiological manifestations of the emotion are tied to and given shape by specific culturally and socially inflected practices (barclay, 2016). such practices not only serve the purpose of expressing individual feelings of grief, but they also guide the performance and thus the experience of grief itself in accordance with domain-specific standards. these standards often vary across time and place (averill, 2009). they may, for example, entail extended periods of public ritual involving specific mourning garments and musical or other cultural practices (jalland, 1996; maiello, 2005; agawu, 1988; racy, 1986). or, as paul rosenblatt (2004) has observed, in cultures where the time available for solemn contemplation is more restricted, these standards may allow only for the rather unceremonious practice of “grieving while driving” (p. 679). importantly, however, these standards and norms are not fixed; they are gradually altered and fine-tuned, and thus by their very doing they may change. the concept of emotion as institutionalized cultural practice thus aligns in many ways with reddy’s (2001; 2008) concept of “emotional regimes”, which he defines as “normative emotional styles that are backed up by socially enacted rewards and penalties” (2008, p. 96). this concept is useful for explaining how political regimes can rely on emotion regulation as a coercive and even oppressive tool, threatening sanctions of varying degrees to compel people into hiding improper responses to normative emotional expressions. he thereby provides additional links between emotion, ethics and political power, which raise the important question of how free we really are to feel what we feel. however, while acknowledging that emotion as institutionalized cultural practice may indeed function as a coercive political tool, my purpose here is to emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 emphasize that, insofar as the concept of emotion as institutionalized cultural practice reflects reddy’s emotional regimes, emotional regimes are themselves creative and change-generating. i suggest that the concept of emotion as institutionalized cultural practice provides an alternative explanation for how emotional regimes actually develop and why they are not fixed or static, but dynamic and changing. from a sociological perspective, if actors are in a comfortable position in a field, or if the field is stable, an emotion may take on the creative form of an institutionalized cultural practice; however, if actors find themselves in a difficult or uncomfortable position in a field, or if the field is unstable, emotion may emerge as cultural revolt in one of three forms: cultural edgework, cultural transcendence, or cultural transformation. each of these will be examined next in turn. emotion as cultural edgework to recall, edgework is a sociological classifying category for voluntary risk-taking through activities that have a “clearly observable threat to one’s physical or mental well-being or one’s sense of an ordered existence” (lyng, 1990, p. 857), and this, for chan (2016), constitutes a sociological category of creativity. chan’s and lyng’s accounts of edgework already make clear links to emotion, by reference to feelings of fear and nervousness that usually arise during the anticipatory phases of edgework, which then give way to feelings of exhilaration and omnipotence (lyng, 1990, p. 860). at the peak of the experience edgeworkers often report that their perceptual field becomes highly focused, with background factors receding from view and time passing either much faster or slower than usual (lyng, 1990, p. 861). edgework is thus closely linked with physiological and perceptual changes and feeling states in sociological literature. because the practice of edgework can take many forms (extreme sports, business entrepreneurship, wartime combat, drug experimentation, creative arts, and others), there is no unifying emotion that all edgeworkers experience, and in this sense it is somewhat analogous to mihaly csikszentmihalyi’s (2014) conception of “flow”. however, edgework differs from flow by virtue of edgework’s extremeness (lyng, 1990, p. 863). edgework experiences are linked to notions of self-realization, self-actualization and self-determination. lyng (1990) writes, “in the pure form of edgework, individuals experience themselves as instinctively acting entities, which leaves them with a purified and magnified sense of self” (p. 860). edgework experiences arise from practices that push or negotiate the boundaries between fields through impulsive, anarchic and spontaneous social action, and edgework thus seems to be antithetical to role behavior in the institutional domain, where institutional practices are marked by constraint and normative control. edgework practices are thus typically associated with excitement in a broad sense, although this does not necessarily always mean high physiological arousal. activities that push the boundaries or limits between fields may induce the feeling states described above while also serving the purpose of slowing down the mind, as in, for example, the high-risk and high-skill activity of voluntarily attempting to survive in the wilderness, where creative work at the (e.g. geographical) boundaries of a field can be motivated by excitement as well as the desire “to slow my mind down”, “to disengage from normal life”, and “to get away from authority” (ewert, 1994, p. 14). the emotion “happiness” could therefore ostensibly overlap in some ways with the concept of edgework, given that the feeling of being one’s “authentic self” is usually considered to be a key ingredient in popular conceptions of happiness (seligman, 2002), although this version of happiness would be different in many ways from the routine institutionalized cultural practices described in the previous section. emotion as cultural edgework is mobilized, named, emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 communicated and regulated by practices at the boundaries between fields, and thus edgework does its creative work by linking factors such as political-economic variables with individual sensations and feelings (lyng, 1990). chan (2016) also drew upon ronnie lippens’s (2012) idea of radical sovereignty type 1 (pp. 353–354) in her formulation of edgework. for lippens, this kind of creative work occurs where “the self unrelentingly flees all code and all law, immersing and indeed dissolving itself, i.e. its own coded self, in the sheer potential of life, and even beyond, into the sheer vital matter of earth … in short: transgression” (p. 353–354, italics in original). using the example of jackson pollock’s painting full fathom five (1947), lippens shows how pollock reached beyond the realm of law and code that says “you be this, or that”, or “you be a self with particular features and characteristics”, into a domain where he could encounter “the sheer energetic potential of yet-unformed matter” (pp. 355–356). words that name and practices that shape such experiences, and which coalesce in a dynamic relationship between a thinking body’s sensations and feelings and its environment, will vary across time and place, but they may nevertheless be linked by the underlying sociological concept of edgework as a particular form of creative practice at the boundaries between fields. emotion as cultural transcendence emotion as practice may facilitate the movement of an actor so deeply into a field that the actor reinterprets it. for chan (2016), this is a category of creative work in sociology because it generates new perspectives on the familiar. for lippens (2012), this work (which he named radical sovereignty type 2) takes the form of “radically detached and equally relentless reflection” (p. 354), facilitating the exchange of old meanings for new ones, and generating new perspectives without changing or transforming a field per se. a good example of such creative work taking the form of an emotional practice is mindfulness. there is now extensive literature on the practice and a variety of approaches to doing it, but many practitioners have drawn on buddhist philosophy and the writings of the dalai lama to treat mindfulness as the “science of the mind” (coleman & coleman, 2019), consciously and accurately identifying the reflective emotional states it induces as learnable skills. mindfulness is geared towards facilitating a deep meditative reflection that encourages individuals to encounter and categorize their thoughts in particular ways, detaching oneself from, and then paying attention to, the specific patterns of sensation that they produce (ivtzan, 2020). mindfulness seeks to cultivate an awareness of what the mind is doing in the present moment, along with the skill of interrupting unwanted or unhelpful thought patterns, and some have argued that it promises a healthier life, improved relationships with others and better adaptability to one’s environment (coleman & coleman, 2019; davis & hayes, 2011). the new perspectives generated by this creative work emerge without making any change whatsoever to the field itself. rather, the creativity of the practice resides in its transcendence, in the actor moving deeply into a field in order to reinterpret it, emerging with a new outlook on a world that remains precisely as the actor left it. the creative practice of mindfulness may also overlap with the concept of happiness in some ways, but here its creativity again takes a different form. mindfulness is increasingly deployed in developed societies as a strategy for achieving a manageable if temporary equilibrium with one’s environment where that environment is rapidly changing or unstable, and without actually acting upon the environment itself. examples of this include the use of mindfulness techniques as regular interventions to reduce work stress in high-pressure workplaces (bostock et al., 2019), or to reduce perfectionism and foster emotional wellbeing in highly gifted young people (oltonweber et al., 2020). this approach to creativity is thus not about embracing institutionalized emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 cultural practices or voluntary risk-taking at the edge of a field. it is, rather, about giving up old meanings in order to gain new ones, as by-products of being totally involved in a field, perhaps through immersion in creative arts or musical practice, or other forms of work. emotion as cultural transcendence may thus take many forms and names in different contexts, but the underlying features described here point to a skilled and practiced cultivation of physiological and psychological states that facilitate deep reflection and immersion in a field leading to new interpretations of that field. emotion as cultural transformation emotions may take the form of practices aimed at recreating the field in which they occur, by acting creatively upon that field. for lippens (2012), practices of this nature (his radical sovereignty type 3) represent a more promising bid for sovereignty than the other two types described above, because they are “about creation… it is to bring newness into the world. but in order to be able to do that, that is, to be able to create new law, new code, one must engage with the law or code that is” (p. 354, italics in original). in this process, old forms of oppression are crushed by embracing the field as it exists and reworking it to bring about change. emotion as practice may thus do creative work by cultivating specific physiological and psychological states in actors through organized social action aimed at bringing about cultural transformation of a field. the emotion “pride” and its potential for happiness may provide a good example. viewed from the perspective of emotion as practice, “gay pride” can be understood not as a fundamentally internal physiological or psychological state that same-sex attracted or gayidentifying people may occasionally find themselves to be in, but rather as organized social action aimed at mobilizing, naming, communicating and regulating such states in community members for specific (e.g. social or political) purposes. steven kates and russell belk’s (2001) four-year long ethnographic work on lesbian and gay pride day (lgpd), using data mainly gathered at the toronto celebrations, found that the events served as “a complex, multilayered form of consumption-related cultural resistance that raises awareness of social injustice and discursively informs social meanings in everyday life outside the festival” (p. 393). this was partly because conspicuous consumption during the events, which on the one hand may be considered a politically dubious activity, also acted as a “display and show of market power [that] may actually result in social legitimization of the gay and lesbian community” (p. 392). the carnivalesque nature of the events was also linked to specific feeling states, described as “an unusually overwhelming and captivating experience in [participants’] lives” (p. 404). one participant stated, the first lgpd i experienced … it was warm, beautiful, wonderful, you know, all the superlatives you can think of. i remember it as being as idealistic as anything i had ever hoped for (laughs), people laughing, hugging each other, kissing, just crowds of gay men and lesbians everywhere. it was definitely one of the biggest highs of my life, that first one (kates & belk, 2001, p. 404). forms of participation in the events included “many public and private ritual behaviors” including gift giving, special meals and foods, memorial ceremonies, and “public display by participants in colorful and sometimes outrageous ‘gay apparel’ (e.g., drag, leather, tight shorts, and t-shirts)”, which contributed to the events becoming “a contested social space, [whose] meanings are actively negotiated—and reflexively fought over—in the course of its practice” (p. emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 394). by grasping and working with the field as it is—its spaces, languages, products and their meanings (i.e., its laws and codes)—pride, when viewed as emotion as practice, does creative work in this context as cultural transformation by recreating the very field in which it occurs. and, pride may also be linked without too much strain to the notion of happiness through the attendant concepts of fulfilment and contentment (mckenzie, 2016, p. 80), meaning that happiness has, at least tangentially, taken on yet more nuances in the current study, as an active socially and politically driven emotion which exists as organized, creative social action. conclusion this article opened by reflecting on vlad glăveanu’s claim that the power of creativity lies in its capacity to reposition people in relation to one another and to the here and now of experience (glăveanu, 2020b). it has argued that emotions, when viewed from the perspective of emotion as practice (scheer, 2012), do this work precisely because emotions are, at a fundamental level, creative acts, as chan’s (2016) framework for the sociology of creativity helps to demonstrate. the article has argued that because understanding emotion requires examination not just of selfreported or otherwise observed physiological or psychological states (including neuronal brain states), but examination of the complete picture of the practice by which those states are induced, named, communicated, and regulated, emotion as practice thus affords multiple points of intersection with the sociology of creativity, which illuminates how emotions generate different types of meaningful change and thus do creative work. emotion as creative practice can be viewed as an embodied and performed act of thought, dynamically linking the feelings and sensations of the body with the body’s environment through practices, which, because of the always-imperfect alignment between habitus and field, are both skillfully improvised and also driven by the generative power of habituated tendencies. this approach has implications for emotions historians, because it proposes a new explanation of the role of emotion in generating historical change. scheer’s (2012) argument about how emotion as practice generates historical change hinged on the “plurality of practices”, since practices can “collide with one another, causing misunderstandings, conflicts, and crossovers between fields” (p. 204). this point is insightful, but it does not account for the inherent creativity of emotional practices which this article has sought to identify. emotions may generate change because they can take the form of institutionalized cultural practice, where individual normative emotional performances are gradually refined and measured against domain-specific standards of excellence which are themselves also gradually shifting. additionally, emotions may take the form of cultural revolt, where change is wrought by emotional practices as a) cultural edgework at the boundaries between fields; b) cultural transcendence, facilitating new perspectives on an unchanged field; or c) cultural transformation, where an emotional practice grasps and transforms the field itself. accordingly, historians working with the framework of emotion as practice may be encouraged to refract their line of inquiry in one or more of these creative directions in order to provide a more nuanced explanation of the role of emotion in generating social and historical change. this approach also has implications for understanding the links between emotion, creativity and individual agency, which can be seen to coalesce in the concept of wellbeing. emotion as creative practice suggests that emotions entail creative decisions involving varying degrees of intentionality which are shaped in part by internalized moral frameworks. this is pertinent since eminent creativity scholars such as arthur cropley have argued that “in defining creativity moral issues should come first” (cropley, 2011, p. 367); in a similar vein, emotions scholars such as dixon (2003; 2012) have argued that emotions research could benefit from stronger links emotion as creative practice kiernan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 between psychology, philosophy and ethics. chan’s (2016) sociology of creativity thus helps to explain not only how creativity is central to all social action, but also how its different forms suggest different kinds of links between emotion as practice and a range of moral and ethical concerns. insofar as emotions are things that we do, rather than things that happen to us, as scheer (2012) argued, then chan’s (2016) creativity framework helps to reveal how the creativity of emotion connects emotion, in different ways, to the ethical and moral implications of social action. the different creative forms of happiness suggested in this article thus illuminate some of the different ethical and moral dimensions of happiness and how these manifest in practice. this returns us to the question of the link between creativity and wellbeing. emotion as creative practice challenges the prevailing focus in wellbeing research on the individual over the collective (oades & heazlewood, 2017, p. 9), a focus that is not only supported by psychological approaches to the study of emotion that treat emotions as fundamentally internal and therefore individual experiences (ekman, 1999), but also by sociological approaches that treat emotions as “responses” to situations (lively & heise, 2014) rather than practical manifestations of the relationship between (or indeed the wrangling of) social structure and individual agency. just as systems-informed approaches to positive psychology are seeking out broader and more holistic understandings of wellbeing (kern et al., 2020), the concept of emotion as creative practice encourages us to rethink wellbeing (and especially the sociology of wellbeing) by expanding the analytical focus to include social structure as a component of emotion. this may help to address derné’s (2017) call for the sociology of wellbeing to pay greater attention to the ways people define and experience wellbeing, by suggesting a pathway towards a more profound sociological conception of wellbeing as a collective rather than individual creative achievement. acknowledgements this work was supported by the australian research council centre of excellence for the history of emotions [ce1101011] and the creativity and wellbeing hallmark research initiative (cawri) at the university of melbourne. conflict of interest statement the author reports no conflicts of interest. authors frederic kiernan university of melbourne kiernanf@unimelb.edu.au publishing timeline received 2 september 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 references agawu, v. k. 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(2013) religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing: testing a religious buffering hypothesis. international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 182-196. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i2.5 william james hoverd massey university w.hoverd@massey.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 182 article religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing: testing a religious buffering hypothesis william james hoverd · chris g. sibley abstract: the buffering effect of religion upon wellbeing has been well demonstrated; however, the question of whether this buffering effect also extends to protecting the religious against material hardship still requires investigation. we present a bayesian linear regression model showing that religious affiliation provides a protective buffer against the corrosive effects on subjective wellbeing of living in impoverished conditions. results from a national probability sample tested with an objective indicator of the deprivation of participants’ local neighbourhood, derived from census data, indicated that religious people living in deprived neighbourhoods were higher in subjective wellbeing than their non-religious counterparts living in those same neighbourhoods (n = 5,984 new zealanders). it was in impoverished conditions that the difference in wellbeing between religious and non-religious people was apparent; those living in affluent neighbourhoods showed comparably high levels of subjective wellbeing regardless of whether or not they were religious. our results explore new ground by showing for the first time that the buffering effect of religion is readily apparent within new zealand. keywords: religion, subjective wellbeing, deprivation, poverty, new zealand 1. introduction religion was famously described by karl marx, as the ‚opium of the people‛ (marx & engels, 1964). marx’s critique of capitalism implies that one modern function of religion is to protect and insulate the religious believer’s wellbeing from some of the stark realities of capitalism. in the world happiness report (helliwell, layard & sachs, 2012), religion was modelled as an external factor (community-based factor, rather than lifestyle) which can have a positive effect upon wellbeing and provide a buffering function (protective mechanism for personal wellbeing) in the face of stressful life events. yet the world happiness report does not explicitly consider the possibility that the link between religion and wellbeing may be moderated by deprivation (relative material disadvantage within a society). currently, in terms of method, most studies have concentrated on relating religious affiliation with, either, solely wellbeing measures or solely measures of deprivation. indeed, most studies of deprivation and religious affiliation, or of wellbeing and religion, do not statistically adjust for other demographics at a national level. when deprivation is examined, it has often been constructed from a collected set of variables involving income and education, rather than from robust national measures (smith & faris, 2005), such as the new zealand deprivation index. for example, dolan, peasegood and white (2008), in their review of wellbeing literature, indicate that religious affiliation is positively related to wellbeing and then, in other sections of their article, note that deprivation relates to lower wellbeing. the possible interactive effect of these variables, which is central to a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 183 buffering hypothesis, is inferred by much of the literature; however, direct empirical tests of this link remain scarce. diener, tay and myers (2011) documented a reliable relationship between religious affiliation, wellbeing and deprivation across different nations and american states. they found that people living in poorer nations or poorer american states tended to be more religious than those living in affluent nations or affluent american states. thus, in nations with higher religiosity, this religiousness appeared to create forms of social support which buffered wellbeing, indicating support for the argument that religious affiliation protects individual wellbeing from deprivation within poorer countries (diener et al., 2011). diener et al. (2011) offer a macro-level analysis of religious buffering occurring across poorer nations and a microlevel analysis of the effect occurring within relatively impoverished american states. diener et al. (2011) argued that this effect occurs for three primary reasons: firstly, religion offers social support; secondly, religion offers an alternate explanatory frame which offers unique meaning for one’s life; and thirdly, religion teaches respect for others regardless of personal circumstances. their model indicated that these three mechanisms combine to explain why religious affiliation buffers wellbeing against material hardship; that is, it mediates the effect. diener et al. (2011) analysed wellbeing and religiosity compared across nations and across american states. we seek to replicate the buffering effect that they find at the micro level in poorer american states at the neighbourhood level in the nation of new zealand. 1.1 religious affiliation and wellbeing the link between religion and wellbeing has been a topic of substantial sociological interest over the past three decades. the link between religious group affiliation and greater wellbeing has been demonstrated in numerous studies, across a variety of contexts (e.g., blaine & crocker, 1995; bradshaw, ellison & marcum, 2010; ellison, 1991; fabricatore, handal, rubio & gilner 2004; fiorito & ryan, 2007; hackney & sanders, 2003). most of the research in the field indicates that religious affiliation has a positive effect upon an individual’s wellbeing. the seminal work of ellison (1991, p. 80), in his review of the pre-1990s’ literature on religion and wellbeing, found that religion may affect wellbeing in four ways: ‚1) through social integration and support; 2) through the establishment of personal relationships with a divine other; 3) through the provision of systems of meaning and existential coherence; and 4) through the promotion of more specific patterns of religious organization and personal lifestyle.‛ from the 1990s, this relationship between religious affiliation and wellbeing has been extensively documented as occuring across a variety of western christian groups (cohen-zada & sander, 2011; ellison, 1991; mochon, norton & ariely, 2008; strawbridge, shema, cohen, roberts & kaplan, 1998). however, the exact nature of how the relationship between religious affiliation and wellbeing functions is not yet fully understood (mochon, norton & ariely, 2011; pargament, 2002). there exists minor variation between certain christian denominations (tix & frazier, 1998). there are also clear gender differences in this relationship (chamberlain & zika, 1988; cohen-zada & sander, 2011; steenwyk, atkins, bedics & whitley jr, 2010). in addition, the relationship between religion and subjective wellbeing includes both positive and negative effects upon wellbeing which still require further exploration (ano & vasconcelles 2005; ellison, bradshaw, kuyel & marcum, 2012; strawbridge et al., 1998). the positive relationship seems to occur cross-culturally among christians (clarke & lelkes, 2009) and also other religious groups (ellison & taylor, 1996), with the effect recently being found amongst studies of various muslim groups (ahmad & pevalin 2012; ahmed, 2010; abolfathi, yadollah & nuriza, 2009). it has also been argued that a positive relationship religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 184 between religious affiliation and wellbeing can be found across most religious groups worldwide (diener et al., 2011; dolan et al., 2008; kim, 2003), as long as there is adjustment for the various contextual influences, and specific theological worldviews of individual religious groups. the positive benefits of the relationship between religious affiliation and subjective wellbeing extend to mental coping and health (bradshaw et al., 2010; fabricatore et al., 2004; fiorito & ryan 2007; hackney & sanders, 2003; smith, mccullough & poll, 2002). in addition, evidence exists showing that general physical health (homan & boyatzis, 2010) and exercise rates (mochon et al., 2008) can be positively affected by the positive relationship between religion and wellbeing. the wellbeing benefits derived from religious affiliation stem from belief giving hope, structure and meaning to people’s everyday lives (wnuk & marcinkowski, 2012). in sum, the extant research indicates that there is a general, positive relationship for wellbeing which exists for those affiliated with a religious group, and that, on average, religious people have greater personal wellbeing than non-religious people. moreover, the literature suggests that this relationship is cross-cultural and can be found across a variety of religious groups. thus, this literature suggests that religious affiliation, which is positively related to wellbeing, offers a coping mechanism or a buffering effect to protect believers against both physical and social hardship. 1.2 deprivation and wellbeing decades of research by economists and psychologists suggests that the relationship between deprivation and wellbeing is far from straightforward (see diener & seligman, 2004; fischer & boer, 2011, for discussion). in a massive representative us sample, kahneman and deaton (2010) reported that earning more was linked to higher life-satisfaction (general positive evaluations of one’s life overall). however, they also found that once a certain level of income was reached (approximately usd 75,000), no further gains in emotional happiness accrued. conversely, a study of a large sample of us and european populations (alesina, di tella & mccullough, 2004) has found that social inequality, in both america and europe, is correlated with lower rates of happiness. the general literature indicates that deprivation is reliably related to decreased wellbeing (dolan et al., 2008; helliwell, layard & sachs 2012). this general body of research shows conclusively that poverty does predict decreased wellbeing, and that, conversely, money does ‘buy’ happiness, but only up to a point. similar effects have also been observed in national probability samples conducted in new zealand. for instance, sengupta et al. (2012) analyzed data from more than 5,000 new zealanders, and reported that those people who earned less tended to be less happy, less satisfied with their lives overall and more stressed in general. thus, we can conclude that, on average, increased deprivation is likely to lead to decreases in personal wellbeing. 2. overview of the present study we model the extent to which religious affiliation (the comparison of religious and nonreligious people) buffers the effect of poverty on subjective wellbeing, using nationally representative data in one western nation: new zealand. new zealand functions as a superb testing ground for our hypothesis because of its small size, its religious diversity, and because it provides the opportunity to integrate nationally representative data regarding wellbeing, deprivation, and religious affiliation. moreover, new zealand offers a fresh, relatively understudied western population to test for the existence of the relationship between religion, religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 185 wellbeing and deprivation. outside of the work of waldegrave (2009; 2010), who offers evidence to suggest that a general positive relationship between religion and wellbeing exists within older groups of new zealanders, there has been no study of religious affiliation and wellbeing in the new zealand population. there has been only a single study of the relationship between deprivation and religious affiliation in new zealand (hoverd, bulbulia & sibley, in press), which found that religious affiliation did not correlate with deprivation. new zealand’s population has been historically predominantly christian (oliver, 1966). since the 1960s, immigration from southeast asia, the pacific and the middle east has changed the ethnic and religious demographics of the nation (crothers, 2005; wilson, 1993). new zealand’s population should be understood to be religiously plural including various christian affiliations, muslims, buddhists, hindus and many other smaller religious groups (hoverd, 2008; statistics nz, 2006.) increasingly, the new zealand government (morris, 2007) and the scholarly community (hoverd & sibley, 2010; nachowitz, 2007; vaccarino, kavan & gendall, 2011) discuss new zealand religious affiliation by employing the term diverse to explain the variety of religious groups within the nation. because of this religious diversity and the generally accepted cross-cultural applicability of the relationship between religious affiliation and wellbeing, we measure our data across all religious people regardless of religious group differences. we employ the measure of religious affiliation. our study utilizes the measures found in hoverd, atkinson and sibley (2012), where self-reported affiliations with a religious group are called religious affiliation. this clarification of terminology is essential because other studies of religious demographics (kosmin & keysar, 2009; kosmin, mayer & keysar, 2001) use the term ‘religious identification’ to describe the number of individuals who affiliate with various religious groups. following diener et al. (2011), we theorised that religious affiliation should provide a protective buffer against the potentially deleterious effects on subjective wellbeing and social capital from living in impoverished conditions. 2.1 hypothesis we outline our hypothesis as follows: religious people living in deprived neighbourhoods should be higher in subjective wellbeing than their non-religious counterparts living in the same neighbourhoods. moreover, it will be in impoverished conditions that the difference in wellbeing between religious and non-religious people will be most apparent; whereas, those living in affluent neighbourhoods should show comparatively high levels of subjective wellbeing regardless of whether or not they are religious. 3. method we present a bayesian regression model testing whether being religious insulates one’s wellbeing against economic hardship in a large-scale new zealand national probability sample. we test this enduring hypothesis using data on religious affiliation drawn from the nationally representative and longitudinal new zealand attitudes and values survey (nzavs). the nzavs also utilizes a measure of subjective wellbeing, the personal wellbeing index, originally developed by cummins, eckersley, pallant, van vugt, & misajon (2003). (2003). in addition, we capitalize on a novel and highly robust measure of regional deprivation in new zealand: the new zealand deprivation index 2006 (nzdep; salmond, crampton & atkinson, 2007). the nzdep2006 is a census-based measure of deprivation derived from a principle components analysis of nine variables linked with socio-economic status, which are calibrated for each neighbourhood/small area unit of new zealand in which participants are located. we religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 186 used the percentile deprivation index, which gives an ordinal score from 1 (most affluent) to 10 (most deprived) for each mesh block area unit based on 2006 census data. the index measures relative deprivation within the nation. as a consequence, when we employ the term ‚deprivation,‛ ‚impoverished,‛ and/or ‚poverty‛ within this manuscript we are referring to those people who are rated as living in the most deprived geographic meshblock units of new zealand.1 conversely, when we use the terms ‚affluent‛ or ‚wealthy‛ we are referring to those people who are rated as living in the least deprived geographic meshblock units of new zealand. thus, we formally model the extent to which religious affiliation (the comparison of religious and non-religious people) acts as an ‘opiate’ which buffers the effects of deprivation on subjective wellbeing through comparison of nzavs religious affiliation data with the personal wellbeing index and the new zealand deprivation index 2006. this research offers important insight because it documents the hypothesized buffering effect of religion in a large national sample (n = 5,984) and uses a robust measure of religious affiliation, deprivation and wellbeing. it offers the first analysis of its type conducted in the new zealand context, and the first of which we are aware to employ bayesian estimation methods and statistically control for a wide range of other demographic covariates. this research also offers strong evidence for the existence of a relationship between the three variables of religious affiliation, wellbeing and deprivation within a single nation. 3.1 sampling procedure the nzavs-2009 questionnaire was posted to 40,500 participants randomly selected from the 2009 nz electoral roll. the publicly available version of the roll contained 2,986,546 registered voters. this represented all citizens over 18 years of age who were eligible to vote regardless of whether or not they chose to vote, barring people who had their contact details removed due to specific case-by-case concerns about privacy. in sum, roughly 1.36% of all people registered to vote in new zealand were contacted and invited to participate. 3.2 participant details the nzavs-2009 sampled a total of 6,518 participants. the overall response rate (adjusting for address accuracy of the electoral roll and including anonymous responses) was 16.6%. the low response rate was likely due to people’s unwillingness to sign up to a 20-year study. complete data for the measures analyzed here were provided by 5,984 participants (the majority of missing data was for residential location, which means that regional deprivation indices could not be assigned to those participants). of the 5,984 participants analyzed here, 2,657 (44.4%) of the sample identified as religious, and the remaining 3,327 (55.6%) were not religious. the sample comprised 3,574 (59.7%) women and 2,410 (40.3%) men. the mean age of the sample was 47.71 years (sd = 15.53). in terms of ethnicity, 4,305 (71.8%) of participants identified as new zealand european and the remaining 28.2% identified with another ethnic group (primarily maori, pacific, and asian peoples). the sample was broadly comparable to the population proportion of different ethnic 1 the index ratings are discussed in greater detail later in the methodology section. this index is based on census data including the level of poverty and affluence, access to transport, and household crowding, of different small neighbourhood units (around 100 persons on average) across the entire country. as such, it is an index of deprivation that is not based solely on reported household income or education, but is arguably more robust as an indicator of the level of poverty in each participant’s immediate residential location (salmond, crampton & atkinson, 2007.) religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 187 groups based on 2006 census data; however, the nzavs did oversample women relative to men. in terms of education, 1342 (22.4%) had no formal qualification, 1757 (29.4%) had a secondary school qualification, 974 (16.3%) had a tertiary diploma or trade certificate, 1359 (22.7%) had an undergraduate university degree or were studying toward one, and 552 (9.2%) had a post-graduate qualification. in terms of relationship status, 4296 (71.8%) of participants were in a romantic relationship or married, and the remaining 1688 (28.2%) were single. in terms of employment, 4499 (75.2%) of participants were in full or part-time employment, and the remaining 1485 (24.8%) were not. 3.3 deprivation index participants provided their postal address, and we used this information to identify the level of economic deprivation (nzdep2006) of the immediate area in which each participant resided (for a full discussion of nzdep2006 see: salmond et al., 2007). the nzdep2006 allocates a deprivation score to each meshblock based on a principal components analysis of nine variables using census data. these are (in weighted order): proportion of adults received a means-tested government supplied welfare benefit, household income, proportion not owning their own home, proportion single-parent families, proportion unemployed, proportion lacking qualifications, proportion household crowding, proportion with no telephone access, and proportion with no car access. the nzdep2006 thus reflects the average level of deprivation of different small neighbourhoods or community areas across the country (salmond et al., 2007). we used the percentile deprivation index, which gives an ordinal score from 1 (most affluent) to 10 (most deprived) for each mesh block area unit based on 2006 census data. the mean percentile nzdep2006 score for our sample was 5.00 (sd = 2.84). the nzdep2006 is commonly used in medical-related studies of the new zealand population in order to investigate potential associations between certain illnesses, health risks and deprivation (e.g., mckenzie, ellisonloschmann & jefferys 2010; salmond, crampton, king & waldegrave 2006; utter et al., 2010). nzdep2006 is also used as a tool to develop national social policy for the new zealand government (salmond & crampton, 2012). as such, nzdep2006 offers a nationally consistent measure of deprivation for the new zealand context. 3.4 questionnaire measures consistent with the method used in the nz census, we assessed religious affiliation by asking ‚do you identify with a religion and/or spiritual group?‛ the 2,657 participants who answered ‘yes’ were asked to complete an open-ended field specifying their religious denomination or group membership. personal wellbeing was measured using four items from the personal wellbeing index (pwi) developed by cummins et al. (2003). the pwi measures satisfaction with the following aspects of life: standard of living, health, what you are achieving in life, personal relationships, safety, feeling part of a community and future security. participants rated their level of satisfaction with four aspects of their life on a scale from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied), and ratings were then averaged to give an overall mean score. the mean scale score was 6.61 (sd = 1.79), and the scale had good internal reliability (cronbach’s alpha = .73). these items, and this item format, have been previously validated for use in the new zealand context with different populations and provide a good general measure of social capital (manuela & sibley, in press; sibley, harré, hoverd & houkamau, 2011). the four items included in the scale were: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0277953605004259 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0277953605004259 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0277953605004259 religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 188  ‚your standard of living.‛  ‚your health.‛  ‚your future security.‛  ‚your personal relationships.‛ 3.5 data analysis to test our predictions, we conducted a bayesian regression model predicting subjective wellbeing using data from a national probability sample conducted in new zealand, and matched these data for each participant with census indicators of the level of deprivation versus affluence of each participant’s immediate neighbourhood. our measure of deprivation is thus highly reliable, as it is based on census data from the immediate community region (see the method for further details). our model tested regression-based interactions that examined the extent to which (a) religious affiliation (religious or not religious) moderated the link between deprivation and subjective wellbeing. moreover, we adjusted other demographic factors that might also relate to subjective wellbeing. these other demographic factors were not the focus of the present study, and were included as control variables in order to adjust for their main effect on wellbeing. table 1. descriptive statistics and frequencies for all measures and demographics. n % m sd min max meshblock deprivation index 5984 5.00 2.84 1 10 age 5984 47.71 15.53 18 95 subjective wellbeing 5984 6.61 1.79 0 10 gender men 2410 40.3% women 3574 59.7% religious affiliation religious 2657 44.4% non-religious 3327 55.6% romantic involvement involved 4296 71.8% single 1688 28.2% employment employed 4499 75.2% unemployed 1688 24.8% ethnicity majority group 4305 71.7% minority group 1679 28.3% education no formal qualification 1342 22.4% secondary school qualification 1757 29.4% tertiary diploma or trade certificate 974 16.3% undergraduate university degree 1359 22.7% post-graduate qualification 552 9.2% religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 189 a bayesian linear regression model tested whether deprivation moderated the association between religion and subjective wellbeing. we tested for the significant interaction between deprivation and affiliation by creating product (interaction) terms between religious affiliation and centered scores on the new zealand deprivation index. the model used diffuse priors and was conducted in mplus 7.0. bayesian analysis is superior to frequentist estimation methods for a number of reasons (see gelman, carlin, stern & rubin, 2003). for our purposes, this approach allowed us to calculate the probability that our effects were significant based on credibility intervals. yuan and mackinnon (2009) put it nicely when discussing the difference between bayesian credibility intervals relative to more well-known frequentist intervals when they commented that ‚bayesian credible intervals have more natural probability interpretations than cis. a 95% credible interval means that there is a 95% chance that the credible interval contains the true value of the parameter on the basis of the observed data‛ (p. 304). in terms of interpretation, b coefficients from our analysis may be interpreted in much the same way as in a standard regression model, in that they represent the line of best fit for that parameter within the model.2 4. results as reported in table 2, our regression model indicated that those who were religious were significantly higher in personal wellbeing relative to those who were non-religious (b = .144). table 2: bayesian linear regression model testing the effect of deprivation on subjective wellbeing depending upon religious affiliation (non-religious versus religious). 95% credibility interval b posterior sd β lower 2.5% upper 2.5% p constant 5.468 .111 religious affiliation (0 no, 1 yes) .144 .046 .041 .053 .234 .001 meshblock deprivation index (1-10) -.103 .011 -.167 -.124 -.082 .000 deprivation x affiliation .035 .016 .036 .004 .065 .014 gender (0 women, 1 men) -.138 .046 -.038 -.227 -.049 .001 age .006 .002 .050 .003 .009 .000 romantic involvement (0 no, 1 yes) .817 .050 .205 .718 .915 .000 employment (0 no, 1 yes) .133 .056 .031 .024 .243 .009 ethnicity (0 minority, 1 majority) .237 .061 .050 .116 .356 .000 education (ordinal coded) .095 .018 .068 .060 .130 .000 note: n = 5984. model used diffuse priors; p-values were one-tailed and give the proportion of the posterior distribution below or above 0 (for positive and negative estimates, respectively). 95% confidence interval for difference between observed and the replicated χ2 values = [-13.096, 13.356]. bayesian information criterion = 23437.03, posterior predictive p-value = .496. people who lived in more deprived conditions also tended to be significantly lower in personal wellbeing (b = -.103). critically, these two effects interacted. this is shown in the significant effect for the religion by deprivation interaction term (b = .035). this indicates that neither the effect of religion nor that of deprivation can be considered in isolation. the difference between 2 all results were comparable when a more widely used, frequentist-based maximum likelihood method of estimation was used. religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 190 religious and non-religious people in personal wellbeing depended upon people’s relative level of deprivation. moreover, as can also be seen in table 2, this interaction occurred when adjusting for the main effects of various other demographic factors, including gender, age, relationship status, employment status, ethnicity and education. differences in wellbeing for religious and non-religious people living in low, moderate and high levels of deprivation are presented in figure 1. figure 1. estimated mean levels of subjective wellbeing (measured using the personal wellbeing index) for religious and non-religious people who were low, moderate and high in deprivation (measured using the nz deprivation index). note: error bars represent the posterior sd of the estimate. as can be seen, the difference in personal wellbeing was between religious and non-religious people who were high in deprivation—the poorer people in society. we tested this regression interaction by calculating predicted mean values at low, moderate and high values of deprivation (values of nzdep = 2, 5, and 8, respectively) for religious and non-religious people based on the parameters in our bayesian regression model. point difference tests indicated that people who lived in affluent regions (nzdep = 2) showed similar, and high, levels of personal wellbeing regardless of whether or not they were religious; they did not differ significantly from one another (b = .039, posterior sd = .066, 95% cis = [-.089, .199], p = .066). a different pattern emerged, however, for those high in deprivation (nzdep = 8). here, people who were religious and poor, fared significantly better than those who were non-religious and poor. this difference was significant (b = .248, posterior sd = .066, 95% cis = [.119, .376], p < .001). these findings indicate that religious people living in deprived neighbourhoods were higher in religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 191 subjective wellbeing than their non-religious counterparts living in those same neighbourhoods. 5. discussion religion has long been recognised as having a positive link with psychological wellbeing (ellison, 1991). however, robust empirical evidence has been lacking when it comes to considering whether the relationship between religion and wellbeing could be extended to buffering against the effects of economic deprivation. we modelled the proposed associations using data from a large nationally representative new zealand sample using bayesian linear regression. as hypothesised, our analyses indicated that religious people living in deprived neighbourhoods were higher in subjective wellbeing than their non-religious counterparts living in the same neighbourhoods. these effects were reasonably subtle and fairly small in effect size, but they were reliable and held when adjusting for a number of demographic covariates, including gender, age, and education. for those people who are religious and living in impoverished neighbourhoods, religion seems to provide a protective buffer upon wellbeing. a key strength of our study is that we estimated our models using a bayesian approach, which arguably provides more reliable, and practically interpretable, probability estimates as compared to more well-known frequentist estimation methods used in many regression models (see gelman et al., 2003). another key strength of our research is that it used a highly robust measure of deprivation based on neighbourhood characteristics and derived from census data on the level of average income, household crowding, access to transport and other key features at the neighbourhood-unit level. our findings regarding religious buffering show that the effect occurs when one indexes poverty based on the characteristics of people’s immediate location (in roughly 100-person units). diener et al. (2011) noted that in wealthy nations non-religious people tend to have higher subjective wellbeing than they do in poorer nations. our findings replicate this result but in a different manner. we find a religious buffering effect for religious people living in the deprived neighbourhoods of new zealand, in that religious people have higher subjective wellbeing than do non-religious people. thus, if you are non-religious in new zealand your subjective wellbeing is likely to be related to your level of personal wealth (sengupta et al., 2012). currently, one of the limitations of these results is that while they find evidence for the effect, they do not explain why this buffering function exists. diener et al. (2011) explain that religious affiliation provides this buffering effect because it offers social support, an alternative explanatory framework which offers unique meaning to life and that religion teaches respect for others regardless of personal circumstances. in future periods of data collection, the nzavs will be able to explore and unpack the unique roles that social support, life satisfaction and community belonging might each contribute to this buffering effect. this study is also important in the new zealand context, as it provides the first nationally representative evidence that the general effects of the relationship between religious affiliation and wellbeing exist within the nation. while other studies investigated income by religious group (hoverd & sibley, 2010) or provided a measure of the relationship between religion and wellbeing in older population segments (waldegrave, 2009; 2010), this study supplies a muchneeded representative measure of the relationship between religious affiliation, wellbeing and deprivation within and across a nationally representative new zealand sample. our results confirm that a beneficial relationship between religious affiliation and wellbeing exists, at a general level, in the religiously diverse new zealand context. and when extended to religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 192 deprivation, the paper provides important practical and social outcomes by showing that religious new zealanders are better psychologically buffered against economic stress than are non-religious people. interestingly, it is the new zealand churches with growing membership that tend to have congregations with lower average incomes, than churches experiencing a decline in affiliation (hoverd & sibley, 2010). we expect to be able to explore and publish further results investigating these relationships as we collect data and add measures to the nzavs. since our dataset is longitudinal, eventually the nzavs will allow us to measure changes over time in affiliation, wellbeing and deprivation in new zealand. elsewhere (sibley & bulbulia, 2012), the nzavs dataset has been able to successfully measure the longitudinal changes in perceived health amongst religious people in christchurch, new zealand, both before and after the 2011 earthquake which killed over one hundred people and left thousands of people homeless. when it comes to the global data which relates to religious affiliation, wellbeing and deprivation, together, our study sampled a religiously diverse (new zealand) population, whereas much of the existing research relating deprivation to strength of religious identification has centred upon north american, christian or muslim populations, or research across nations. when it comes to developing a working hypothesis or theory about the relationship between religious affiliation, wellbeing and deprivation, we want to stress that measuring deprived material conditions and contexts in relation to wealthy contexts is central for isolating this effect. micro-level neighbourhood comparisons within a nation are needed to supplement cross-national macro data. the macro-level global research comparisons offered by diener et al. (2011) and a recent gallup poll (crabtree, 2010) show the effect amongst poorer nations. using a national neighbourhood deprivation measure, we show that the buffering effect of religion on subjective wellbeing also occurs at the micro level within deprived neighbourhoods in wealthy nations, amongst religious people regardless of their specific religious affiliation. thus, the comparison between poor and wealthy nations made by diener et al. (2011) produces evidence for an effect which our results indicate also holds in comparisons between wealthy and poor neighbourhoods within new zealand. as a consequence, the effect that the subjective wellbeing of religious people is buffered against material hardship holds both at a macro level among nations and at a micro level within nations. finally, our neighbourhood-based data supports diener et al.’s (2011) conclusion that, in less religious societies with favourable circumstances, higher subjective wellbeing is achieved by most people whether they be religious or non-religious. understandably, more research will be required to further pursue the applicability of such an argument. further analysis of cross-national and national datasets will be required. moreover, it is likely that there is variation to be found among different religious groups and within particular subsets of these groups when it comes to future studies of the relationship between religion, deprivation and wellbeing. 6. conclusion we present a bayesian linear regression model showing that religious affiliation provides a protective buffer against the corrosive effects on subjective wellbeing and social capital of living in impoverished conditions. results from a national probability sample of n=5984 new zealanders indicated that religious people living in deprived neighbourhoods were higher in subjective wellbeing than their non-religious counterparts living in the same neighbourhoods. it is in impoverished conditions that the difference in wellbeing between religious and nonreligious people is apparent; those living in affluent neighbourhoods showed comparably high religion, deprivation and subjective wellbeing hoverd & sibley www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 193 levels of subjective wellbeing regardless of whether or not they were religious. our results demonstrate that the effect by which religious people who live in impoverished conditions are buffered against material hardship occurs at the neighbourhood level. we show that the religious buffering effect occurs both at a macro (across nations) and a micro level (within a nation’s neighbourhoods). our results also forge new ground by showing for the first time that this effect is readily apparent in new zealand. to return to marx then, in the new zealand context, our data indicate that the so-called ‚opium of the people‛ has its effects primarily when people are hurting due to poverty and deprivation, and that simply belonging to or affiliating with a religious group is enough to experience the palliative effect of religion. moreover, our data supplement existing crossnational research to suggest that this opiate effect occurs both at the macro level across nations and at the micro level within nations. acknowledgements collection of the new zealand attitudes and values study 2009 (nzavs-09) data analyzed in this paper was funded by university of auckland frdf (#3624435/9853) and ecrea (#3626075) grants awarded to chris sibley. preparation of this manuscript was partially funded by a government of canada, dfait postdoctoral research fellowship at the mcri religion and diversity project at university of ottawa awarded to william james hoverd in the period 2011/2012. we thank victoria university of wellington’s religious studies department for their support during manuscript preparation. we thank lara greaves for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. authors william james hoverd massey university w.hoverd@massey.ac.nz chris g. sibley university of auckland publishing timeline received 22 january 2013 accepted 15 july 2013 published 7 october 2013 references abolfathi, m., yadollah, t.a.h., & nurizan, y. 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author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 article information-seeking to support wellbeing: a pilot study of new zealand men peta wellstead · hugh norriss abstract: in new zealand, compared to women men have poor health outcomes in a range of domains. men also report barriers (both personal and structural) in seeking information to improve health and wellbeing. this paper reports a pilot project that investigated the informationseeking of new zealand men during episodes of mental and physical ill health. the research investigated the ways in which information can be provided to encourage men to engage in information-seeking in a more timely way to improve their health and wellbeing. results suggest that new zealand men face considerable barriers accessing information and support and that the pathways to care are often unclear or absent. these findings demonstrate challenges and opportunities to service providers in terms of engaging men. further research opportunities are also discussed. keywords: wellbeing; information-seeking; men 1. introduction within both government and community services throughout the developed world considerable expertise exists for measuring health behaviors and social outcomes for the population and this work is undertaken routinely. a response to this social analysis is often the development of information products and services to inform the community as to how changes in behavior can lead to better personal, family, and community outcomes and increased wellbeing. these initiatives take a number of forms and include tv and newspaper advertisements, websites, telephone help lines, letter box distribution of printed materials or promotional products, community advertising and bill board displays. it is the central premise of this paper that the information needs of new zealand men in the area of health and wellbeing are not well understood by service providers and that information provided to men oftentimes does not meet men’s need. this leads to poor uptake of help and support by men who need it and to a waste of resources. information needs, seeking and use are responses to the world in which the subject finds himself or herself. there must be a perceived need for information to which there is a consequent response, either to seek out new information (approach motivation) or to ignore that need (avoidance motivation). using need as a framework, it is therefore the case that using information and in turn increasing knowledge is a transitional process from a state of “distressing ignorance to becoming informed” (buckland, 1988, p. 115). while the rationale for increased information delivery seems valid, much of this activity takes little account of human information behavior, and particularly the way that different groups in society seek and use information. there is a presumption that all people seek and use information http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 in the same way and that this engagement leads to subsequent behavior change. “when considering the development of information products and services information researchers need to better understand the need for balance [in people's lives]. how do we balance information as a positive force in the lives of people against their desires to ignore it in order to continue to live in the relative calm and "normal" world that constitutes their small world of emotional safety and predictability?” (chatman, 2000, p. 16). a study of information-seeking, in this case an examination of information-seeking habits of new zealand men, must set that behavior within the context of the life of the subject overall. the personal styles that individuals use to seek and use information have an enormous impact on the worth of the information that has been created. some people are purposive foragers (spink & cole, 2006, p. 25) in times of need, others are reactive to life’s demands and take a more eclectic approach to finding information, while others have a more considered and cognitive style, so they collect and retain information which they think may have a value later. other studies show that the social demography of the seeker may impact both information-seeking style and the way information is used (case, 2007). it is clear also that there is a large group in society who are ‘information avoiders’. a recent australian study (wellstead, 2010) found considerable avoidance in the information-seeking behavior of australian men experiencing periods of life stress. this information behavior research demonstrates that individuals function informationally in complex ways, both alone and in groups. these styles vary depending on the personality and temperament of the individual, the functioning of group behavior, and the interrelationship between those two elements. a large number of studies over many decades has shown that men are less likely than women to seek help when experiencing periods of poor wellbeing, and across the life-span more generally (case, 2007; connell, 1999; mackenzie, reynolds, cairney, streiner, & sareen, 2012; mahalik, good, & englar-carlson, 2003; mcmullen & gross, 1983; mechanic, 1978; palsdottir, 2005). despite a community-wide increase in service provision to support health and wellbeing and a corresponding attempt to increase mental health literacy across all age groups, the majority of people experiencing mental health problems, particularly men, do not seek help. wellbeing is closely related to a range of mental health measures including life satisfaction and availability of help and support during periods of life stress and duress. globally, more than 70% of people with mental illness receive no formal help or treatment (henderson, evans-lacko, & thornicroft, 2013). research suggests that members of the community discount mental ill-health in men more often than they do in women (swami, 2012; wellstead, 2010) and that attempts to change community perception about mental health through community education campaigns have not been successful. the results of a recent australian study indicate that despite intensive community education programs over the last two decades, there has been little change in those who are depressed and suicidal in terms of their attitudes toward seeking treatment and, more importantly, their treatment-seeking behavior (chamberlain, goldney, taylor, & eckert, 2012). there is also evidence that men, when faced with periods of ill health, lack skills to source appropriate timely information and support to assist them into the care they need (ek, 2013; palsdottir, 2003; wellstead, 2010). a considerable element of feelings of wellbeing is the willingness to seek information and support. social support, and particularly the information sharing embedded within it, has long been considered integral to health and wellbeing (carveth & gottlieb, 1979; eckenrode & gore, 1981; b r sarason, sarason, & pierce, 1990; wellman & gulia, 1999). friendship ties are a information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 significant component in the complex behavior that is manifest in the giving and receiving of help, and it is clear that men and women use friends differently during periods of life stress and duress (king & terrance, 2006; spencer & pahl, 2006; wright, 1982; wright & scanlon, 1991). it has also been established that it is not just the receiving of help that is supportive, but also there is a supportive element in knowing help is available even if one chooses not to use it (antonucci & jackson, 1990; b. r sarason, pierce, & sarason, 1990; short, 1996). delays in seeking information lead to consequent delays in accessing care and receiving appropriate intervention and support (chatman, 1991b; goldberg & huxley, 1980; jorm et al., 2003; oliver, pearson, coe, & gunnell, 2005). those without information to support their everyday life needs, including their health information needs, can be considered “information poor”. it has been suggested that the typical member of the community who is considered information poor “does not know which formal channels to tap into in order to solve his problems … watches many hours of television daily… seldom reads… does not see his problems as information needs… is not an active information seeker… is locked into an informal information network that is deficient in the information that is ordinarily available to the rest of society” (childers & post, 1975). while childers and post are using the masculine pronoun other studies have shown that women too are information poor in a range of contexts (chatman, 1985, 1991a; harris & dewdney, 1994; lempert, 1992). little work has been to done to explore links between help-seeking behavior and wellbeing. the purpose of this project is to address this gap. the study under review in this paper had three goals: 1) it investigated the information-seeking behavior of new zealand men about matters of health and wellbeing; 2) it sought the views of participants about ways that the health and wellbeing of new zealand men could be supported; 3) it sought the views of participants about ways new zealand men might be encouraged to seek information and support more readily during periods when their wellbeing might be compromised. 2. context new zealand is a country of almost 4.5 million people. new zealand is a bicultural country; 67.6 percent of the people have european heritage, 14.6 percent belong to the māori ethnic group. new zealand is also a country of migrants; 22.9 percent of people in new zealand were born overseas. for people born overseas who live in new zealand, the most common birthplace is england (statistics new zealand, 2013). the laws, customs and social norms of new zealand society as a whole are strongly based within english traditions and history, although reengagement with maori traditions and culture has been an aspect of new zealand civic life over the last 20 or so years. the health of new zealand adults 2011/12 survey (new zealand ministry of health, 2012a) confirmed ongoing differences between men and women in health status, health behaviors and health service use. the survey reports that while men have poorer health than women in many areas they are less likely than women to have visited a gp, practice nurse or dental health care worker in the past year. of particular concern for the health and wellbeing of the new zealand community is that, while new zealand women have higher rates of diagnosed mental health conditions and reported psychological distress, new zealand men commit suicide at very much higher rates. there were 380 male suicide deaths (17.0 deaths per 100,000 male population, age-standardized) in 2010. in the corresponding period there were 142 female suicide deaths (6.4 deaths per 100,000 information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 female population, age-standardized). the ratio of male to female suicide death rate was 2.7:1 in 2010. in the age range 15-24, the elevated rate of male suicide is even more obvious with 23.8 deaths per 100,000 population (new zealand ministry of health, 2012b). another feature of new zealand society is the rate of road trauma and its impact on community wellbeing. despite substantial progress over the last 30 years, new zealand still lags behind many other countries in road safety, and road trauma deaths are high. over 250 deaths occur on new zealand roads each year. road crash death is highest in 14-44 year-olds and a significant proportion of these deaths occur in men. alarmingly, in 2011, 12, 574 new zealanders were killed or injured in road accidents: two-thirds of these were men, and many women killed or injured were in motor vehicles driven by men (new zealand ministry of transport, 2012). in february 2011 the canterbury region, including new zealand’s second largest city, christchurch, experienced a devastating earthquake that left 181 dead, many injured and homeless, and the entire country in a state of shock and upheaval. a significant part of the population of christchurch had to be rehoused in the christchurch region and many relocated elsewhere while the city center is rebuilt and social services are restored. there has also been ongoing community anxiety about the response of the insurance industry to consumer distress about the claims process. this work is ongoing and will take many years. the media have reported the christchurch earthquake and its aftermath in a style that has heightened community concerns and increased the “fear factor” in the community at large. ongoing aftershocks in the christchurch region and new quakes (albeit smaller) in other parts of the country have contributed to this anxiety. the research under review in this paper was conducted against this backdrop. 3. method data were collected from men in the new zealand community by means of an online questionnaire using the survey tool surveymonkey. the line of questioning reflected the instrument designed by the lead author as part of her doctoral research. this research examined the information-seeking behavior of australian men during periods of life stress and duress. given the close historical and social ties between australia and new zealand it was considered that the original survey instrument was a valid platform to examine the information-seeking behavior of new zealand men. in consultation with the mental health foundation of new zealand and other industry partners the instrument was refined to reflect more closely the lives of new zealand men, with particular reference to the lives of maori and pacific islander men. the survey was launched to coincide with the movember campaign. during november each year, the movember campaign in new zealand and around the world encourages men to seek sponsorship to grow a moustache, the aim of which is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and men's mental health (movember foundation, 2013). the questions in the survey were divided into four major categories: demographic data, availability of social support, information-seeking behavior and open-ended questions soliciting information about strategies that could be adopted to improve the health and wellbeing of new zealand men. the survey was promoted by the mental health foundation of new zealand (mhf) with a link to the questionnaire on the mhf website. industry partners were made aware of the survey and it was widely promoted through industry networks using email broadcasts, list-servs, promotional material and by advertorial in newsletters. information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 the survey was available online between november 1, 2012 and january 3, 2013. men from all sections of the new zealand community were invited to take part. five incentive prizes from a major hardware chain were offered to men who took part if they consented to include their email details at the conclusion of the survey. 4. results 4.1 demography three hundred and seven new zealand men entered the survey; 282 completed it (a completion rate of 91.1%). most participants had anglo saxon heritage (78.4%) and were between the ages of 45-64 (55%). most of the participants (84.1%) were wage and salary earners. half of the participants (50.9%) had university qualifications, either at graduate or postgraduate level. most participants (71%) had an income above $50,000 per annum. overwhelmingly the men in this study were married (61.8%) or had a partner with whom they lived (17.1%). of the men with children, 36.1% were the parent of an adult over the age of 25. a further 30.4% had young adult children aged between 18 and 25. more than a quarter (26.4%) were the parent of 6-12 year olds. of the men with children, 50.6% recorded that their children lived with them. 4.2 alcohol consumption drinking alcohol is a significant component of social life new zealand society. to a question regarding the consumption of alcohol 300 men responded (7 did not complete this question). 8.3% reported that they never drink alcohol and 30% reported that they only drink occasionally. 5.3% reported that they drink alcohol every day. 4.3 spirituality spirituality is a feature of the lives of many of the participants with over 60% answering “yes” or “somewhat” to the question “do you think of yourself as a spiritual person, for example believing in a higher power, god, or the supernatural?” these inclinations are obviously matters of private concern as, significantly, 75% of participants did not identify themselves as belonging to, or taking part in, any formal religious or cultural group, e.g. church or marae. 4.4 general health the vast majority of the men (85%) reported that their health was good to excellent on a 6-point scale (excellent to poor). 4.5 life satisfaction a significant number of participants (18%) indicated that they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their lives on a 6-point scale from very satisfied to don’t know. 71% were satisfied or very satisfied. 4.6 social support over 60% of the men indicated that they felt isolated at some point during the month prior to taking the survey on a 6-point scale (never to always). notwithstanding these feelings of isolation for a large group who completed the survey, 91% of respondents indicated that there were people in their network from whom they could seek help and support, and with whom they could discuss private matters. these people were family members, friends and colleagues. of particular note is that 45 participants (15%) skipped the information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 question that asked them to identify people in their network that they could call on for help. this is considerably more than the 9% who indicated in the previous question that they had no one to call on for help and support. over half of participants (54%) indicated that they socialized monthly or less often with people outside their family. while sociability outside the family was reported thus, 62% of participants indicated that they are part of a club, sporting team or community organization and 60% of those who answered this question indicated that they take part in activities with these groups fortnightly or more often. these findings appear to be contradictory. participants were asked to indicate how many people within their social network they felt they could call on for help and support. overwhelmingly most of the men (72%) indicated that they have 1-2, or 3-5 confidants, with some men indicating that there is no one they can call on. again some men (17) did not answer the question. ninety-six percent of participants indicated that they are someone who provides help and support to others, both those inside their families and elsewhere. significantly, many participants indicated that they provide help and support to work colleagues, employees and clients, that is, people outside their family and friendship network. 4.7 information seeking and use in answer to the question “who was most helpful to you when you needed information and support?”, significantly, only 186 participants responded (121 did not). the responses fell into six major categories: friends, family members, people at work, professional support, spouse/partner and, reflecting the responses to the earlier question about spirituality, 9% of the men suggested their spiritual advisor was a significant source of information and support. in terms of help and support that was available, many men indicated that they found the pathway to help difficult and perceived it to be unnecessarily complex. one man summed this up eloquently: somewhere to get answers without needing me to repeat myself (participant 47). and another: it's hard to know where to go when i want a good whinge! (participant 227) other men indicated that women seem to get more help and support during periods of illhealth: information on men's health and on issues for men is still relatively spartan compared with that available for women and children. there have been programmes for women's health in place for many decades. the same cannot be said for men (participant 45). other men felt a level of resentment about the strong female presence in the services providing help and support: every support avenue i could find was female as the default (initial victim support person, follow up on phone from victim support, counselor etc) – with no real emphasis on male needs (participant 171). the willingness to seek help was also a factor for many men: the information is always available just depends if one is open enough to hear it at the time. from my observation humans want a quick fix so they don't have to put any effort in (participant 201). and: the biggest issue men have is admitting there's a problem and seeking help (participant 60). many men indicated that there was a need for men to support other men and to undertake shared activities that were just about “being together”. 4.8 strategies for change this theme of “being together” and men supporting men was also a strong theme in the section that asked participants what might be done to improve the health and wellbeing of new zealand men. many men wrote moving stories about their struggles to find a clear path to being a man in the current era. it is clear that while this group of men were high achievers in terms of income and many hold positions of relative power in society, they feel somewhat lost as to how to information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 function effectively in what they perceive to be a “feminized world” where masculinity, and its demands, are not well understood. these struggles were palpable in much of the writing: men bond by doing stuff together. women change the dynamic of how men can relate. there needs to be spaces where men can be men and interact how men do without women always attempting to participate or emulate. women have enough groups to do their thing. there is also a time and place for men and women to be together. with men’s groups i am a part of then we have invited women to join us for a limited period where it is not imposed on the men (participant 300). there was also a sense of bewilderment in many of the responses. don’t know was a common response and only 156 (of the 307 participants) attempted to answer the question. of those that did, a one-stop shop approach to service provision, men helping themselves, trust that information and support are credible and the need to know what is “normal” were common responses. and there was an undercurrent of quiet despair in many of the responses, summed up by participant 236: harden up, deal with it or die. 5. discussion what is apparent from this study is that when the men were experiencing a major stressful life event many of them were unfamiliar with likely sources of information and help. the men were also unclear about appropriate pathways they could use in order to gain assistance. the pathways were either blurred or in many cases concealed by their own lack of knowledge of resources or help that might be available. they were also reluctant to seek out what they knew to be available due to their perceptions of what was normal behavior for men. these notions of “normal” created considerable gender role strain (pleck, 1995) for them and created additional stress. while many men expressed concern that they could not find the information and support they needed, others used a variety of strategies at different times to obtain the help they needed. these results are consistent with other studies (e.g. a. r. berger & janoff-bulman, 2006; m. berger, wagner, & baker, 2005; finn & bishop, 2006; gottlieb, 1981; stokes & wilson, 1984) that show that help is mobilized in a variety of ways depending on the contextual circumstances of the help that is required. not all available help is mobilized in the same way, or indeed, mobilized at all. the helping value of those within a social network is measured not only by those who provided help but also by those who were not called on. this decision not to call on certain people (who can be identified as potential helpers) is complex and not well understood (antonucci & jackson, 1990; nadler & mayseless, 1983; short, 1996; trivers, 1971). another major source of anxiety was the likelihood that their concerns would not be taken seriously because information and support services are set up to meet the needs of women. the role of women as confidants and sources of information for men in this study is also apparent. even for those men without a partner, women were important confidants: mothers, sisters and female friends were all indicated as confidants. this finding is consistent with other studies. in an examination of the impact of gender role orientations and friendship wright and scanlon (1991) cite a variety of studies which show that “men tend to be more open, more self-disclosing, and more intimate with their women friends than their men friends” (p. 552). most of the men in the study indicated that there are three to five people to whom they feel close. initially the small size of the social network of the men in the current study seemed inconsistent with the literature from other studies. a californian study of 1050 people in 1977 showed that numbers in the average social network were close to 10 (fischer & phillips, 1982). the 19th british social attitudes survey (park & roberts, 2002), which surveyed 3,500 randomly information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 selected respondents, found that 56% of men have 10 or more close friends (although 17% said they have no best friend at all). in another study reported in the sunday times (uk) (dobson & iredale, 2005) it was suggested “it takes a network of 18 close friends and relatives to provide an average person with the emotional and practical support to get through day-to-day life” (p. 11). while these numbers are higher than for the men in the current study, it is important to consider what those in these networks mean to the people who have identified them. spencer and pahl (2006, p. 45), in discussing their research into personal networks in the uk, make the point that it is important when considering such studies to consider, “those who are important to them [the participants] at the time, rather than all the people they know no matter how tenuous the connection”. spencer and pahl draw on the work of others to indicate that personal communities typically consist of 3-6 socially close intimate ties, 5-15 less strong but still significant ties, and approximately 1000 acquaintances and latent (but often still mobilizable) relationships (wellman & gulia, 1999). a great deal of research has examined this dilemma of reciprocity in the giving and receiving of help (e.g., antonucci & jackson, 1990; a. r. berger & janoff-bulman, 2006; fisher, nadler, & whitcher-alagna, 1983; reinhardt, boerner, & howowitz, 2006) and the burden that receiving help may imply. an australian study (short, 1996) has shown social class has a large bearing on the willingness of people to engage in informal economic exchange, with higher class people less likely to do so. for the purposes of short’s study, informal economic exchange means economy as social support rather than purely monetary exchange. this concept is best understood as the need to find information and help from those whom one believes will provide the type of support which best matches the event at hand due to the fact “the particular components of social support that impact on health and illness vary dependent upon the types of stresses being confronted by the person” (cutrona & russell, 1987, p. 62). similarly it can be suggested that “event sequence, operant illness beliefs, structural conditions and human agency interpenetrate the occurrence and timing of pivotal actions and denouncement of a help-seeking episode” (uchara, 2001, p. 519). taking account of these studies of social network density and the numbers considered optimum to ensure social connectedness and personal wellbeing, the fact that most men in this study have indicated they only have 3-5 close relationships might indicate that they are suffering some level of social and emotional isolation. but by including the word “close” in this study it might indicate that these men have similar patterns of relating to those identified above by wellman & gulia (1999). that is, personal communities that typically consist of from 3 to 6 socially close intimate ties and of 5 to 15 less strong but still significant ties, but with much larger numbers in a wider network that can be called upon for specific types of support. notwithstanding the possible interpretation of the data in this study, what is clear is that the challenge in terms of wellbeing is to ensure that individuals not only have a strong social network but also one that includes a diversity of ties (spencer & pahl, 2006) in order for the aforementioned optimum matching to occur in times of stress. it is worth noting that epidemiological research (cohen, doyle, skoner, rabin, & gwaltney, 1997) has found an increased relative risk of mortality among those with less diverse networks. a large number of theoretical frameworks and graphical models seek to explain the complex phenomena of how people seek and use information. there have been writers who have suggested that there may be within individuals an “information disposition” (childers, 1982, p. 104); others have suggested an evolutionary imperative (spink, 2010); there are those that suggest that when seeking information humans are “gap-bridging” (savolainen, 2000, pp. 43-45) and others suggest that “all information processing is emotional” (dodge, 1991, p. 59). what is clear information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 from these differing perspectives is that the process of information seeking is complex and not well understood, especially when it occurs during periods of stress or duress. what is also clear is that some individuals and groups in society face particular barriers when faced with the demands of information-seeking and information use. increasing information uptake within these hard-to-reach groups is a particular challenge for service providers. many men in this study indicated that they are information poor in terms of resources to assist them with matters of health and wellbeing. those who fall into the category of “information poor” are often considered as outsiders, that is, people living in a small world of limited resources (chatman, 1991b, 1996) but the men in this study are, largely, not outsiders. they are welleducated individuals with above-average income from an anglo saxon background. men such as these occupy positions of power in new zealand society (as they do in many other countries) so are not outsiders or living in a “small world”, yet in terms of information behavior about matters of wellbeing, they are information poor. sixty percent of the men who took part in this study identified themselves as experiencing feelings of social isolation. this is despite the fact that most of these men have high status within new zealand society in terms of education and income, and that the vast majority of them are married or in a committed “marriage-like” relationship. this issue of social isolation and what the men are reporting is one of considerable complexity and needs further investigation. 6. limitations notwithstanding wide publicity and that stakeholders in the maori and pacific islander community were engaged with the survey, only 17 maori men (6%) took part in the survey. the participants were predominantly of new zealand anglo saxon background. they were also mostly middle-aged, well-educated salaried professionals with above-average incomes. this sample bias is a major limitation of the study and the reason this paper is descriptive rather than analytical. further work is needed during future research projects to engage with a wider cohort of new zealand men in terms of their information-seeking to support wellbeing. 7. conclusion and recommendations this pilot study has identified some significant issues that would benefit from further investigation in terms of information-seeking by new zealand men in regard to their health and wellbeing. these include:  the role of men’s social networks in providing information and brokering support in new zealand, and the type of information and support embedded within these networks;  the fact that many of the men perceive themselves as socially isolated, either some or all of the time, notwithstanding that most of the participants had a partner, employment and social status;  the concept of information poverty within a group with seemingly good access to community resources due to their status, and  the impact of changing gender roles within society as a contributor to men’s health and wellbeing. the last of these may contribute to anxiety among some sectors in the community, but given the poor health of new zealand men and continuing high rates of suicide, road trauma, alcohol abuse and perceptions of social isolation, it is imperative to have this community conversation in order to design health policy initiatives that best meet men’s need. public health policy and the fiscal investment to provide it is designed to empower action leading to improved health information-seeking to support wellbeing wellstead & norriss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 outcomes. if these improved health outcomes are not forthcoming (and clearly with regard to the statistics relating to men’s poor health and wellbeing they are not), then a serious analysis of gaps and inequities needs to occur. agencies and professionals offering information and help might also wish to consider in more detail the notion of “optimum matching” in the help-seeking experience, and how services can take account of this concept more readily when seeking to support men. this pilot study has demonstrated that further research is required to better understand the way that new zealand men seek information and support to enhance their wellbeing. more data are also required about the type of information and support that best meets men’s needs in this domain in order that men have clear pathways to care when they need it. there is also considerable scope for further research of cross-cultural considerations of social network strength and provision of information and support. if the health and wellbeing of new zealand is to be improved, more research is required to better understand men’s information-seeking behavior and ways community agencies can develop information products and congruent services that men will find appealing and useful. authors peta wellstead freelance information services peta@freelanceinformationservice.com hugh norriss mental health foundation of new zealand hugh@mentalhealth.org.nz publishing timeline received 22 july 2014 accepted 12 august 2014 published 31 december 2014 references antonucci, t. c., & jackson, j. s. 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(2013). trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? an empirical study in adolescents and young adults. international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 197-209. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i2.6 maria platsidou university of macedonia platsidou@uom.edu.gr copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 197 article trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? an empirical study in adolescents and young adults maria platsidou abstract: the study aimed at investigating how trait emotional intelligence (ei) dimensions intertwine to predict components of happiness. a sample of 280 high school and university students was tested with the emotional intelligence scale and the oxford happiness inventory. regarding the inner structure of trait ei, findings suggested that certain dimensions (appraisal and utilization of emotions) predict others (optimism/mood regulation, social ability), thus confirming that there are lowerand higher-level dimensions in the trait ei continuum. also, path analysis confirmed that specific ei dimensions predict happiness in a distinctive mode. first, each of the components of happiness was directly predicted by at least one ei dimension: vigor and personal efficacy was predicted by appraisal of emotions; positive affect, enjoyment and fun and also life satisfaction were predicted by both optimism/mood regulation, and social ability; social interest was predicted by social ability. second, the happiness components were also indirectly predicted by the lower-level ei dimensions via the higher-level ei dimensions they affect. these findings suggest that focusing on developing the basic ei dimensions may be the key to designing effective training programs that will result in enhancing happiness. keywords: emotional intelligence, happiness, greek students, path analysis, emotional intelligence scale, oxford happiness inventory 1. introduction research in recent years has validated that emotional intelligence (ei) is significant in predicting a number of real-life outcomes, such as occupational and academic success and quality of interpersonal relations, in a differentiated manner than general intelligence or personality do (lam & kirby, 2002; petrides, frederickson, & furnham, 2004; petrides, pérezgonzález, & furnham, 2007). more specifically, several research findings indicate that trait ei predicts happiness and relevant dimensions, such as life satisfaction, positive affect, and depression-proneness, over and above other personality traits (e.g., those described by the big five personality model) (chamorro-premuzic, furnham, & lewis, 2007; petrides & furnham, 2003). although this association is clear, far less is known about how the inner—possibly hierarchical—structure of trait ei dimensions affects the components of happiness. considering the above, the present study aimed to investigate the constituent latent structure of trait ei and happiness, as tested in a sample of adolescents and young participants, and to determine how the dimensions of ei predict the components of happiness. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 198 1.1 trait ei trait ei concerns people’s self-perceptions of their emotional abilities and skills, personality characteristics and behavioral dispositions that influence their ability to cope successfully with environmental demands and pressures (petrides, 2011). according to petrides and his colleagues (petrides, pita, & kokkinaki, 2007), the construct can alternatively be labeled as trait emotional self-efficacy; it is located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies, and it is measured via self-reports. various theoretical models have been proposed to account for the nature, the structure and the component dimensions of trait ei and questionnaires have been designed to measure the construct(s) within each theory (e.g., goleman, 2001; petrides & furnham, 2001; petrides, pérez-gonzález, et al., 2007; wong & law, 2002). one of the most commonly used tools for measuring perceived (or trait) ei was designed by schutte et al. (1998). originally, the emotional intelligence scale (eis) was supposed to measure global ei; subsequent studies, having factor-analyzed the data collected with the eis, found that it can measure specific components of ei, such as optimism and mood regulation, emotion appraisal, social skills, and utilization of emotions (ciarrochi, chan, & bajgar, 2001; petrides & furnham, 2000; platsidou, 2010; saklofske, austin, & minski, 2003). this scale was used in the present study. 1.2 happiness and its determinants happiness, or “subjective wellbeing”, a term that is used synonymously, refers to the subjective assessment of quality of life or, in other words, the way people evaluate their lives. these evaluations can be both cognitive and affective, and refer to life as a whole and/or to specific domains of it, such as work and social life (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999). subjective wellbeing, or happiness, involves a number of distinct components, such as satisfaction with life as a whole or with significant life domains (e.g., satisfaction with social or work life), positive affect and low levels of negative affect (diener, 2000). furthermore, happiness can be operationalized in terms of self-realization or self-actualization (mcgregor & little, 1998) and it is possible to also include cognitive-evaluative elements regarding self-esteem and optimism, a sense of personal and environmental control, self-efficacy, positive relations with others, etc. (see meleddu, guicciardi, scalas, & fadda, 2012, for a review). happiness is measured using self-report questionnaires that assess either global happiness or specific component dimensions of happiness. the oxford happiness inventory (ohi; argyle, martin & crossland, 1989) that was used in the present study is amongst the most popular scales. it has been used to assess either global trait happiness or its specific dimensions (e.g., life satisfaction, personal efficacy, vigor, positive affect, sociability, social interest, cheerfulness) (argyle, martin, & lu, 1995; hills & argyle, 2002; karademas & kalantzi-azizi, 2005; meleddu et al., 2012). in determining happiness, many factors have been identified as significant (e.g., money, social relations, work, religion), with personality being the most outstanding factor (diener & ryan, 2009). specifically, there is consistent evidence showing that positive and negative affect, extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness and neuroticism are strong predictors of happiness (chamorro-premuzic et al., 2007; deneve & cooper, 1998; hayes & joseph, 2003; palmer, donaldson, & stough, 2002). trait ei has also been examined as a possible determinant of happiness and most studies have concluded that it predicts various components of happiness (e.g., extramera & fernandez-berrocal, 2005; kong, zhao, & you, 2012). given the conceptual and empirical overlap between trait ei and other personality dimensions, mostly the big five personality factors, many studies aimed to determine the unique contribution of trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 199 each of them in predicting happiness. as most findings showed, trait ei explains variance in various measures of happiness, such as global happiness, life satisfaction, depressionproneness, and multiple types of happiness, over and above the big five or the eysenck personality factors (furnham & christoforou, 2007; furnham & pertides, 2003; petrides, pérezgonzález, et al., 2007; saklofske et al., 2003). the study of chamorro-premuzic et al. (2007), in particular, underscored the significant role of trait ei in predicting happiness by mediating the explanatory paths from agreeableness, stability and consciousness to happiness. in their conclusion, the authors suggest that the different dispositional determinants of happiness may be hierarchically intertwined. whether this also applies to the inner structure of determinants of happiness, such as trait ei, deserves further exploration. in exploring the role of ei in happiness, most studies have focused on how global ei determines happiness (e.g., furnham & petrides, 2003; kong et al., 2012). however, according to the study of chamorro-premuzic et al. (2007) reviewed earlier, the distinct ei dimensions may have a differentiated role in predicting various components of happiness. until now, only few studies have examined the role of specific ei dimensions in predicting happiness. for example, in the studies of extramera and fernandez-berrocal (2005) and palmer et al. (2002), both of which used the trait meta-mood scale, it was found that clarity of emotions (i.e., the perceived ability to understand and discriminate between moods and emotions) accounted for further variance in life satisfaction, which was not explained by mood states and personality traits or by positive and negative affect, respectively. 1.3 aim and hypotheses of the present study given all the above, the present study aimed at investigating the distinctive mode in which the different trait ei dimensions predict components of happiness. specifically, first, regarding the relations of ei dimensions, mayer, salovey, and caruso (2008, p. 506) argue that ei dimensions fall along “a continuum from those that are relatively lower level, in the sense of carrying out fundamental, discrete psychological functions, to those that are more developmentally complex and operate in the service of personal self-management and goals”. based on this, the hypothesis tested was that ei dimensions at the lower levels of the continuum, such as the perception and appraisal of emotions, will affect the ei dimensions at the higher levels, such as utilization of emotions and emotion regulation; in turn, the latter will affect social ability, which is included among the more specialized ei skills. even though the argument of mayer et al. (2008) concerns the structure of ability ei models, it is plausible to assume that it may also apply to trait ei models. second, in predicting happiness, the hypothesis tested was that specific ei dimensions, such as social ability, can predict pertinent components of happiness, such as social interest, life satisfaction and enjoyment and fun. mood regulation and utilization of emotions can predict personal efficacy, positive affect and life satisfaction. finally, appraisal of emotions and possibly each of the mood regulation and utilization of emotions dimensions can indirectly affects the components of happiness via their effects on higher-level ei dimensions (as suggested above). 2. method 2.1 participants our sample consisted of 280 participants, aged 15 to 27 (m = 18.1, sd = 2.64), of whom 152 were high school students and 128 were university students. they were randomly recruited from trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 200 their schools located at a city of northern greece to voluntarily participate in the study. in terms of gender, 44.6% of the participants were male and 53.9% were female (while 1.5% did not report their gender). 2.2 research instruments participants were asked to complete a package of self-report questionnaires which aimed to measure their trait ei and happiness. the scales used for these measurements are described below. emotional intelligence scale. the emotional intelligence scale (eis; schutte et al., 1998) consists of 33 self-referencing statements in which participants are asked to rate the extent to which they (dis)agree with each statement on a five-point likert-type scale, ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. most factor analytic studies have suggested that the eis is not unidimensional, as schutte et al. (1998) originally proposed, and have identified four interpretable factors in the scale (petrides & furnham, 2000; platsidou, 2010; saklofske et al., 2003). oxford happiness inventory. the oxford happiness inventory (ohi; argyle, et al., 1989; hills & argyle, 2002) is a widely used trait happiness scale comprising 29 items. participants are asked to respond to each of them on a five-point likert-type scale (ranging from 1 = strongly agree to 5 = strongly disagree), with higher scores indicating greater happiness. ohi was initially designed to provide a measure of personal happiness as a whole but, in some studies, some specific dimensions of happiness have been identified: satisfaction with life, personal efficacy, sociability/empathy, a positive outlook, physical wellbeing, cheerfulness, and self-esteem (argyle, martin, & lu, 1995; hills & argyle, 2002); mastery and self-fulfillment, satisfaction with life, vigor, social interest, and social cheerfulness (meleddu et al., 2012); life satisfaction, vigor, and positive affect (karademas & kalantzi-azizi, 2005). 3. results 3.1 factor structure and reliability of the inventories both the eis and the ohi have been used in numerous studies in the past. however, the various factor analytic solutions that were found in previous studies are not stable. most produce multi-dimensional measures of ei and happiness, as described earlier, but there is not agreement amongst the various studies regarding the number and the nature of the component dimensions derived from each inventory. for this reason, petrides and furnham (2000) suggest that researchers should factor-analyze a scale before using it. therefore, in the present study exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to determine the underlying factor structure of each inventory in this sample. regarding the eis, an exploratory factor analysis using varimax rotation was first applied on the data. it resulted in a four-factor model, accounting for 44.62% of the total variance: (a) appraisal of emotions (eigenvalue = 5.41, 11.09% explained variance) refers to an accurate perc eptio n, understanding and assessment of emo tio ns i n oneself and o thers; (b) optimism/mood regulation (eigenvalue = 2.87, 8.78% explained variance) refers to an optimistic attitude and positive coping with difficulties in one’s own or others’ life; (c) social ability (ei genval ue = 1.82, 8.34% expl ained vari anc e) f acili tates eff ec ti ve i nterac tion and communication with others; finally, (d) utilization of emotions (eigenvalue = 1.67, 7.42% explained variance) refers to using emotions to promote thinking. in that model, 12 items were found to load almost equally on two factors or to have low loadings on a factor (< .40), so they trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 201 table 1. the structure of the emotional intelligence scale (standardized solution) in the test sample factors items appraisal of emotions (f1) optimism/ mood regulation (f2) social ability (f3) utilization of emotions (f4) e r2 aware of my emotions as experience them (ei9) .382 .924 .146 know people's emotions by facial expressions (ei18) .790 .613 .625 know why my emotions change (ei19) .524 .851 .275 easily recognize my emotions (ei22) .446 .895 .199 aware of others' non-verbal messages (ei25) .540 .842 .291 know what others feel by looking (ei29) .723 .691 .522 know what others feel by their voice tone (ei32) .583 .813 .339 expect to do well on most things (ei3) .566 .824 .321 expect good things to happen (ei10) .598 .802 .357 motivate myself by imagining a good outcome (ei23) .635 .773 .403 use good moods to keep trying (ei31) .582 .813 .339 others confide in me easily (ei4) .493 .870 .243 emotions make life worth living (ei8) .403 .915 .163 know how to make a positive emotion last (ei12) .474 .880 .225 arrange events others enjoy (ei13) .404 .915 .163 compliment others when doing well (ei24) .409 .912 .167 feel like having experienced others' events (ei26) .333 .943 .111 help others feel better (ei30) .509 .861 .259 see new possibilities when mood changes (ei7) .552 .834 .305 new ideas when in a positive mood (ei20) .782 .624 .611 new ideas when in a change in emotions (ei27) .336 .942 .113 factor correlations f1 – f3 f1 – f4 f2 – f3 f2 – f4 .396 .409 .468 .368 note: the following variable residuals were allowed to covariate: e12-d2, e13-d2, e22-d2, e26-d2, e30d2 (indicating that these items share common variance not only with the optimism/mood regulation factor but also with the social skills factor), e22-d3, e27-d3, d3-d4. trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 202 table 2. the structure of the oxford happiness inventory (standardized solution) in the test sample factors items positive affect, enjoyment & fun (f1) vigor & personal efficacy (f2) life satisfaction (f3) social interest (f4) e r2 wake up feeling rested (o2) .281 .960 .079 feel happy (o4) .741 .671 .549 optimistic about the future (o12) .539 .843 .290 have a good influence on events (o15) .602 .798 .363 have a cheerful effect on others (o17) .484 .875 .235 find beauty in things (o18) .480 .877 .230 experience joy and elation (o19) .769 .639 .591 can do most things (o20) .541 .841 .292 have fun with others (o24) .570 .821 .325 find things amusing (o25) .590 .807 .348 look attractive (o26) .425 .905 .181 laugh a lot (o29) .616 .788 .379 in control of my life (o1) .520 .854 .271 satisfied with my life (o3) .612 .791 .375 feel energetic (o5) .601 .799 .361 have happy memories of the past (o9) .443 .897 .196 make decisions easily (o11) .282 .959 .080 can organise time (o21) .362 .932 .131 committed and involved (o22) .329 .944 .108 life is good (o7) .807 .591 .651 life is rewarding (o8) .617 .787 .381 world is good (o23) .549 .836 .302 warm feelings for others (o27) .751 .661 .563 interested in others (o28) .664 .747 .441 factor correlations f1 – f3 f1 – f4 f2 – f3 f3 – f4 .624 .535 .689 .417 trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 203 excluded from further analysis. in the next step, confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was applied on the remaining 21 items, testing for the fit of the four-factor model. the goodness-offit indicators of this model were very good: satorra-bentler scaled χ2 (24) = 52.25, p < .000, χ2 /df = 2.18, robust cfi = .96, srmr = .06, and robust rmsea = .06 (ci90% .04 to .09) (schreiber, nora, stage, barlow, & king, 2006). these findings match the four-factor solution which emerged in previous studies (e.g., petrides & furnham, 2000; platsidou, 2010). the model also includes a number of interrelations between factors and few residual covariances, as shown in table 1 (above). cronbach’s α values indicated that two of the factors demonstrate acceptable levels of reliability (appraisal of emotions α = .78 and optimism/mood regulation α = .69), while the other two exhibit low reliability (social ability α = .61 and utilization of emotions α = .53). to investigate the latent structure of the ohi in the present sample, first, an exploratory factor analysis (with varimax rotation) was applied to the data. four factors were identified explaining for 41.13% of the total variance: (a) positive affect, enjoyment and fun (eigenvalue = 7.48, 15.19% explained variance), refers to experiencing a level of pleasurable engagement with the environment and positive moods such as joy, interest, and alertness; (b) vigor and personal efficacy (eigenvalue = 1.59, 9.82% explained variance), refers to the enthusiastic and resilient strength of mind and/or body and the power to achieve a desired goal; (c) life satisfaction (eigenvalue = 1.5, 9.28% explained variance) reflects the way a person evaluates his or her life as a whole rather than their current feelings; (d) social interest (eigenvalue = 1.36, 6.84% explained variance) is a feeling of community and an active interest in the welfare of humankind. five items out of the 29 loaded low (< .40) on the factors, so they were excluded from further analysis. in the next step, confirmatory factor analysis was applied on the remaining 24 items of the ohi. cfa verified the four-factor structure of the scale in this sample, with interrelations between almost all the factors, as shown in table 2 (above). an adequate fit to the data was yielded, as the goodness-of-fit indicators show: satorra-bentler scaled χ2 (246) = 379.76, p < .000, χ2 /df = 1.54, robust cfi = .90, srmr = .06, and robust rmsea = .04 (ci90% .04 to .05). cronbach’s α values indicated that all factors demonstrate satisfactory or acceptable levels of reliability: positive affect, enjoyment and fun α = .83, vigor and personal efficacy α = .64, life satisfaction α = .71, and social interest α = .66. 3.2 predicting happiness based on the cfas described earlier, the means of the item means for each of the ei and happiness factors were computed. the new variables—representing the four ei and the four happiness factors—were used in a path analysis aiming at examining how ei dimensions predict dimensions of happiness. the correlation matrix of ei and happiness factors is given in table 3 (below). path analysis was applied using the maximum likelihood robust method of estimation. according to the hypothesis, there must be paths running from the fundamental appraisal of emotions dimension to the higher-level utilization of emotions and optimism/mood regulation dimensions and from these to the more specific social ability. in the structural model that fitted the data best (shown in figure 1 below), there were paths running from appraisal of emotions to utilization of emotions and from utilization of emotions to both optimism/mood regulation and social ability. a path to the latter also ran from optimism/mood regulation. apparently, the initial hypothesis was largely confirmed. trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 204 table 3. correlations matrix of ei and dimensions of happiness appraisal of emotions optimism /mood regulation social ability utilization of emotions positive affect, enjoyment and fun vigor and personal efficacy life satisfaction ei dimensions optimism/ mood regulation .144* social ability .325** .340** utilization of emotions .269** .298** .311** happiness dimensions positive affect, enjoyment and fun .169** .477** .537** .260** vigor and personal efficacy .161** .459** .303** .192** .604** life satisfaction .234** .563** .485** .334** .313** .322** social interest .150* .212** .386** 150* .427** .268** .190** * p < .05, ** p < .01 regarding prediction of happiness, the second hypothesis was also partially confirmed. specifically, vigor and personal efficacy was directly predicted by both appraisal of emotions and optimism/mood regulation; positive affect, enjoyment and fun and life satisfaction were both directly predicted by optimism/mood regulation and social ability; finally, social interest was affected by social ability. in addition to the above, indirect effects of certain ei dimensions on the components of happiness were also noted; namely, utilization of emotions indirectly affected all components of happiness, via its effect on optimism/mood regulation and social ability. in turn, optimism/mood regulation, via its effect on social ability, exerted an indirect effect on positive affect, enjoyment and fun and life satisfaction (in addition to its direct effect on these variables) as well as an indirect effect on social interest. finally, appraisal of emotions had a more remote, indirect effect on the components of happiness, since it predicted utilization of emotions. as the goodness-of-fit indicators show, this model fitted excellently to the data: satorra-bentler scaled χ2 (13) = 22.12, p < .000, χ2/df = 1.70, cfi = .98, srmr = .06, and rmsea = .05 (ci90% .00 to .08). in this model, intercorrelations were noted between (a) appraisal of emotions and social ability, (b) vigor and personal efficacy and positive affect, enjoyment and fun, (c) positive affect, enjoyment and fun and social interest. trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 205 figure 1. the path model of the effects of trait ei dimensions on happiness components note: all the path coefficients are significant at the level .05 4. discussion the present study was designed to investigate how trait ei dimensions intertwine to predict components of happiness. regarding the inner structure of the scales used to measure ei and happiness, factor analyses confirmed that the variance of the eis (schutte et al., 1998) is accounted for by a four-factor model including appraisal of emotions, utilization of emotions, optimism/mood regulation, and social ability; in the ohi (argyle et al., 1989), a four-factor model was confirmed, including vigor and personal efficacy, positive affect, enjoyment and fun, life satisfaction, and social interest. in line with our expectations, the specific direct and indirect effects of trait ei dimensions on components of happiness were significant in greek high school and university students. this is in agreement with previous findings reporting the effect of trait ei on happiness (e.g., chamorro-premuzic et al., 2007; furnham & petrides, 2003; gallagher & vella-brodrick, 2008; kong et al., 2012). few studies (e.g., extramera & fernandez-berrocal, 2005; palmer et al., 2002), asserted that the specific ei dimensions predict happiness in a distinctive mode. the present study extended the above to include the four trait ei dimensions and the four components of happiness described earlier; the results largely confirmed the hypothesis, as they showed that, first, each of the components of happiness was directly predicted by at least one ei dimension: vigor and personal efficacy was predicted by appraisal of emotions; positive affect, enjoyment and fun as well as life satisfaction were predicted by both optimism/mood regulation, and social ability; social interest was predicted by social ability. trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 206 these findings suggest that individuals who are proficient in appraising emotions may experience a higher sense of vigor and personal efficacy; those who are optimistic and able to regulate their moods and those who are skillful in social settings tend to enjoy elevated levels of most components of happiness. second, the components of happiness were also indirectly predicted by the ei dimensions that affected the specific ei dimensions which directly predicted them, as described earlier. in other words, findings suggest that there is an effect of the lower-level ei dimensions on the higher-level ones, thus confirming that trait ei is a “hierarchically” structured construct, as mayer et al. (2008) asserted for ability ei. following this line of evidence, one can assume that individuals who are able to accurately appraise their emotions can utilize their emotions skillfully; in turn, those who utilize emotions efficiently tend to be more optimistic and able to regulate their moods and to be socially skillful; finally, individuals with optimism and good mood regulation report having higher social skills. evidently, the lower-level ei dimensions indirectly predict the happiness components via the higher-level ei dimensions they have an effect on. consistent with the above, the studies of extramera and fernandez-berrocal (2005) and palmer et al. (2002) found that clarity of emotions better accounted for further variance in life satisfaction than other ei dimensions such as attention of mood and emotions, and negative mood repair (salovey, mayer, goldman, turvey, & palfai, 1995). clarity of emotions as well as appraisal of emotions are both based on the fundamental ability to accurately perceive and understand emotions, hence providing further evidence that they may be the required precondition for the adaptive utilization and regulation of emotions and moods and for efficient use of social skills (extramera & fernandez-berrocal, 2005; salovey et al., 1995). the earlier and the current findings support the notion that the inner structure of trait ei includes basic dimensions (such as appraisal of emotions) at the lower levels of the continuum and more specific dimensions (such as social ability) at the higher levels. consequently, any effect within the ei dimensions is transmitted to the constructs that are affected by them, such as the components of happiness. the present study provides insight into the mechanisms that lie beneath emotional functioning and happiness. the findings suggest that focusing on developing the basic ei dimensions may be the key to designing effective training programs that will result in enhancing happiness. should future research confirm and expand this evidence, a significant step will be taken regarding the guidance of psychological and educational interventions which aim at developing ei abilities and skills. future research should also include a wider age range of participants, since the sample from high school and university students used in this study limits the extent to which these findings can be generalized. also, the cross sectional nature of the data limits determining developmental changes in the present study. in future studies, data obtained from middleand old-aged participants as well as from a longitudinal study design would enable testing for the stability of the current findings across the adult life span. furthermore, a wider battery of measures is needed in order to validate the contribution of trait ei to happiness. for example, the same study design can be tested using different measurement scales of perceived trait ei and happiness; multiple measures of trait ei and happiness can be used in order to better define measures of the latent variables (e.g., in the present study the social interest factor is defined by only two items). finally, since literature has concluded that personality contributes significantly in experiencing happiness (diener & ryan, 2009), the underlying effects of trait ei dimensions on components of happiness identified in this study trait emotional intelligence predicts happiness, but how? platsidou www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 207 should be re-examined, to take into account the role that personality holds in that grid of predictive relationships. authors maria platsidou university of macedonia platsidou@uom.edu.gr publishing timeline received 8 april 2013 accepted 28 august 2013 published 7 october 2013 references argyle, m., martin, m., & crossland, j. 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(2016). using wellbeing for public policy: theory, measurement, and recommendations. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 1-35. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i1.429 alejandro adler university of pennsylvania aadler12@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 article using wellbeing for public policy: theory, measurement, and recommendations alejandro adler · martin e. p. seligman abstract: indicators of social progress are the primary drivers of public policy. if existing economic measures of prosperity are complemented with wellbeing metrics that better capture changes in individuals’ quality of life, decision makers will be better informed to assess and design policy. the science of wellbeing has yielded extensive knowledge and measurement instruments during more than three decades. we review the existing wellbeing literature and answer three questions: (1) what is wellbeing? (2) how do we measure wellbeing? and, importantly, distinguishing this review from previous ones, (3) how do we use wellbeing metrics to assess and design policy? we suggest that the science of wellbeing is empirically mature enough to complement economic assessments of national progress. we build on existing work to provide recommendations on metrics and new, specific policies for societal wellbeing. keywords: wellbeing, public policy, measurement, positive psychology 1. introduction the history of humanity is a history of progress (e.g., diamond, 2013; pinker, 2011). within the constraints of the human condition, what can we strive for going forward? how do we measure what is intrinsically valuable? how do we structure institutions and make decisions to elevate the human condition? in this paper, we use a scientific approach to identify what individuals intrinsically value. we refer to this collection of domains as “wellbeing”. we first investigate the relationship between wellbeing and gross domestic product (gdp), the current gold standard for national prosperity. we then build on prior work on wellbeing and public policy to present the most recent advancements in the science of wellbeing. we also present specific recommendations on policy-relevant wellbeing metrics and on policies to increase societal wellbeing. our ultimate goal is to demonstrate that wellbeing science is currently ripe and right to inform public policy. decision makers use indicators of progress to assess and design policy. standard metrics of economic progress can be complemented with wellbeing measures to better depict changes in quality of life (helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2012; layard, 2011; stiglitz, sen, & fitousi, 2010). the science of wellbeing has evolved over the last 30 years, and wellbeing can now be reliably measured at both the individual and national levels (diener, emmons, larson, & griffin, 1985; diener, lucas, schimmack, & helliwell, 2012). wellbeing data about individuals and nations can provide useful information for policy makers and governments (jayawickreme, forgeard, & seligman, 2012; layard, 2011; sachs, 2012). these data may help align traditional cost-benefit analyses with measures that more accurately represent changes in individuals’ quality of life and in what they value (helliwell et al., 2012). by simultaneously measuring wellbeing and economic growth, governments can assess comprehensive national progress beyond material living mailto:aadler12@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 standards and thus be better informed to enact comprehensive societal prosperity (diener et al., 2009). 2. is gross domestic product a good enough metric of social progress? in 1934, economist simon kuznets designed gdp as an economic tool to help the united states monitor output and end the great depression (kroll, 2011). since then, gdp has increasingly become a global proxy for national progress, even though it was never designed as a measure of prosperity; it merely measures the total market value of the goods and services produced by a nation’s economy during a given year (encyclopædia britannica, 2009). even its creator, kuznets, declared that “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income” (kuznets, 1934). regardless, during the past 80 years, institutional architecture and public policy around the world have primarily revolved around maximizing gdp. traditional economists and policy makers have assumed that most activities can be measured in terms of monetary costs and benefits, but also that output indicators – especially gdp – reflect desirable social goals. the debate on whether social prosperity is a downstream effect of gdp growth has existed for over four decades. richard easterlin (1974) first published data questioning if gdp growth leads to wellbeing. his analyses revealed that gdp and life satisfaction are strongly correlated for low income countries. past a threshold, however, there is a minimal correlation between gdp and life satisfaction (easterlin, 1995). figure 1 shows this general trend. figure 1. gdp and life satisfaction (deaton, 2008) stevenson and wolfers (2008) reanalyzed easterlin’s data, and they found that when logging income, there is a consistent correlation between gdp and life satisfaction, regardless of per capita gdp. in other words, as can be seen in figure 2 below, each doubling in per capita gdp is associated with an approximately consistent increase in life satisfaction. thus, they claim, there does not seem to be a satiation point for money. even if all society cares about is life satisfaction, they argue, gdp is a good proxy for social wellbeing. and, since gdp is easier to wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 measure than wellbeing, and since it is a relatively objective measure, then gdp is a good enough measure of social progress. we disagree. we discuss alternatives in future sections. figure 2. log gdp and life satisfaction (stevenson & wolfers, 2008) recently, easterlin (2013) and others (e.g., deaton, 2008) have responded with further analyses of interand intra-national data. their results show that within countries, wealthier people are happier than poorer people. as figure 3 below shows, within countries, families in lower income brackets report significantly lower life satisfaction than families in higher income brackets. in short, within countries, relative income, rather than absolute income, seems to matter for life satisfaction. figure 3. wealthier families are happier than poor families (easterlin, 2013) wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 to directly address stevenson and wolfers’ (2008) claim that increasing gdp has intra-national downstream effects on life satisfaction, longitudinal analyses by easterlin (2013) show that as countries become wealthier, individuals in those countries do not report increases in life satisfaction, regardless of gdp per capita. the data indicate the relationship between gdp growth and changes in life satisfaction is not significant. the time spans of country growth rates for the 37 countries in figure 4 are for periods ranging from 12 to 34 years. although the data in figure 4 are longitudinal and not experimental, they are the closest that anyone has gotten to establishing causality between increases in national income and life satisfaction. figure 4. change in life satisfaction and gdp per capita 17 developed, 11 transition, and 9 developing countries since c. 1973 or later (easterlin, 2013) easterlin (2013) revises his initial claim that beyond a certain level of income there is no relationship between income and life satisfaction. instead, he concludes that only relative income (both within countries and between countries) is related to life satisfaction. since individuals compare themselves to people within their country and to people in other countries (by traveling or via tv and other media), absolute income does not affect happiness; if all countries become wealthier at a similar rate, then everyone becomes richer in absolute terms, but relative betweencountry wealth stays similar. if gdp does not fully capture social progress, then other relevant, measureable, and changeable constructs should be defined and operationalized. below, we define the multiple domains of wellbeing, and we show how to reliably measure it in a politically useful manner. measuring what people care about may yield policies which are more aligned with social values. 3. what is wellbeing? aristotle declared flourishing as the ultimate goal of human existence; he viewed it as being important in its own right, not just as a means to an end (robinson, 1989; irwin, 1985). flourishing is simultaneously the absence of the crippling elements of the human experience – depression, anxiety, anger, fear – and the presence of enabling ones – positive emotions, meaning healthy relationships, environmental mastery, engagement, and self-actualization (seligman & wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 csikszentmihalyi, 2000; seligman, 2011). psychological science has traditionally focused most of its efforts on the study of psychopathology and how to eliminate it. the more recent field of positive psychology provides the missing counterpart – the scientific study of flourishing individuals, institutions, and societies – to yield a fully descriptive model of healthy human functioning. although originally grounded in happiness and positive affect, which research by easterlin (1974; 1995; 2003) and others focused on in relation to income, the field’s understanding of wellbeing has evolved and expanded. wellbeing is now understood not simply as positive emotions, but, rather, as thriving across multiple domains of life (diener, scollon, & lucas, 2003). wellbeing integrates hedonic wellbeing (feeling good) and eudaemonic wellbeing (functioning well). the development of an integral conception of wellbeing that goes beyond affective indicators (e.g., happiness, affect balance) is the framework on which we base this paper. one of the most widely researched conceptualizations of wellbeing is subjective wellbeing (swb). bradburn (1969) empirically found swb to be a function of the independent dimensions of positive and negative affectivity. this definition of swb has since been empirically extended; it encompasses how people evaluate their own lives in terms of both affective (how they feel) and cognitive (what they think) components of wellbeing (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; diener, scollon, & lucas, 2003; veenhoven, 1994). overall, high swb combines three specific factors: (1) frequent and intense positive affective states, (2) the relative absence of negative emotions, and (3) global life satisfaction. research has shown that the affective and cognitive components of swb are separable, but there is some debate over the differential contributions of these factors (davern, cummins & stokes, 2007; lucas, diener, & suh, 1996). there is evidence that swb, often also referred to as hedonic wellbeing, does not provide a full picture of wellbeing, failing to capture the complexity of philosophical conceptions around the notions of happiness and wellbeing from humanistic and existential schools of thought. an alternative approach is the eudaemonic paradigm, in which wellbeing is construed as an ongoing, dynamic process (rather than a fixed state) of effortful living by means of engagement in meaningful activities (kopperud & vittersø, 2008; ryan & deci, 2001, vittersø, overwien, & martinsen, 2009). advocates of a eudaemonic approach to wellbeing argue that living a virtuous life and actualizing one’s inherent potentials are the paths to wellbeing (delle fave, massimini, & bassi, 2011). whereas hedonic wellbeing emphasizes the importance of feeling good, eudaemonic wellbeing is characterized by functioning well in multiple domains of life (keyes & annas, 2009; ryan & huta, 2009). the concept of eudaemonia was first proposed by aristotle (c. 350 bce) who argued that living a life of contemplation and virtue, in accordance with one’s inherent nature (i.e., living authentically) was the pathway to wellbeing (norton, 1976). there have been different approaches to defining eudaemonia in the field of positive psychology, with researchers identifying a number of different dimensions – meaning in life, purpose, autonomy, competence, self-realization, mindfulness, self-acceptance, authenticity, value congruence, and social connectedness (delle fave et al., 2011; baumeister & vohs, 2002; huta & ryan, 2010; ryan & deci, 2000; seligman, 2011). seligman’s (2011) wellbeing theory delineates five domains of life that people pursue for their own sake: positive emotion, engagement or flow, positive relationships, meaning or purpose, and achievement, or perma. ryff (1995) suggested six components of wellbeing: selfacceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. at the societal level, gallup has created the healthways wellbeing index that includes life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors, work wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 environment, and access to basic needs (kahneman & deaton, 2010). the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) has created the your better life index, comprised of 11 topics considered essential to quality of life (housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance). the index allows countries to identify the topics most important to them (kerényi, 2011). notably, each of these models and indexes suggests that wellbeing consists of profiles across multiple domains, rather than a single summary metric (forgeard, jayawickreme, kern, & seligman, 2011; jayawickreme et al., 2012). individuals, organizations, and governments can decide which domains of wellbeing are most important, observe how they compare to others, and devise strategic ways to enact change. 3.1 the instrumental value of wellbeing beyond the intrinsic value of wellbeing, research demonstrates that different domains of wellbeing may significantly contribute to advantageous life outcomes. studies of adults have shown that individuals with more positive affect report better social relationships, healthier behaviors, better self-reported health, and lower racial biases. further, adults with higher lifesatisfaction enjoy better physical health, greater accomplishment, better social relationships, and more productive economic contributions to society. research on subjective wellbeing suggests that, compared to people with low swb, individuals with higher levels of swb show stronger immune systems, live longer, have reduced cardiovascular mortality, lower levels of sleep complaints, lower levels of burnout, greater self-control, better self-regulatory and coping abilities, and are relatively more cooperative, more pro-social, more charitable, and more othercentered. optimism research suggests that, compared to pessimists, optimists have better physical health outcomes, including faster recovery from surgery, less reported illness, lower mortality risk, and less smoking and drinking (brand et al., 2010; chida & steptoe 2008; danner, snowdon, & friesen 2001; dillon, minchoff, & baker 1985; fredrickson & joiner 2002; fry & debats, 2009; haar & roche 2010; howell, kern, & lyubomirsky, 2007; kasser & ryan 1996; johnson & fredrickson, 2005; lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005; ostir, markides, black, & goodwin 2000; pressman & cohen, 2005; salovey, rothman, detweiler, & steward, 2000; segestrom, 2007; shen, mccreary, & myers, 2004; stone et al., 1994; williams & shiaw, 1999). 4. how do we measure wellbeing? over three decades of research have yielded an extensive collection of validated measurement tools for different domains of wellbeing. these instruments vary on a number of dimensions, including validity and resource utilization (e.g., time, money). we catalog the most widely used wellbeing metrics; depending on what a particular society values, governments may chose the instruments that best capture social wellbeing. 4.1 measuring subjective wellbeing subjective questions allow people to express the quality of their own lives, reflecting their own histories, personalities, and preferences. they reflect what people think is important and desirable, rather than what experts or governments think should define a good life. below, we present some of most widely used swb questionnaires. the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener et al., 1985) is a five-item measure narrowly focused to assess global life satisfaction and not to tap into related constructs such as positive affect or loneliness. the scale has been validated in many countries including brazil (gouveia, wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 milfont, nunes de fonseca, & pecanha de miranda coelho, 2009), the netherlands (arrindell, heesink, & feij, 1999), russia (balatsky & diener, 1993) and china (zhang, yang, & wang, 2009). the swls has been shown to have long-term stability, and it is successful at capturing the effects of stable influences, such as personality, as well as being sensitive to changes during individuals’ life spans (pavot & diener, 1993). a measure of the cognitive side of swb is the subjective happiness scale (shs; lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999). the shs is a four-item scale designed to assess dispositional happiness. despite its brevity, the shs is characterized by high internal consistency and a unitary structure. studies have reported alpha coefficients for the shs from .79 to .94 (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999). the shs has shown stability over time and across 14 different samples, comparable to those reported for other wellbeing instruments (diener, 1994; pavot et al., 1991). studies of the scale’s construct validity have indicated that it correlates highly with other hedonic measures and moderately with constructs theoretically and empirically related to happiness and wellbeing. evidence of discriminant validity has been obtained by low correlations with theoretically unrelated constructs, such as academic success and stressful events (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999). the positive and negative affect schedule (panas), consists of 20 items divided into two ten-item scales – one for positive affect and one for negative affect. watson et al. (1988) have reported cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .86 to .90 for the positive affect scale and .84 to .87 for the negative affect scale. test-retest correlations for an eight-week period ranged from .47 to .68 for positive affect, and .39 to .71 for negative affect. the authors also reported that measures of general distress and dysfunction, depression, and state anxiety are more highly correlated with the negative affect scale (positive correlations) than the positive affect scale (negative correlations), further validating this scale. other measures of affect include the affect intensity measure (aim; larsen, 1987; larsen, diener & emmons, 1986). the aim is a 40-item questionnaire that assesses the characteristic strength or intensity with which an individual typically experiences her emotions. items for the aim were written based on a construct definition of affect intensity resulting from the empirical work of diener, larsen, levine and emmons (1985) and larsen and diener (1985), which emphasizes the distinction between frequency of emotional experiences and intensity of experienced emotion. the aim has been shown to have good construct validity and test-retest reliability. moreover, responses on the aim are not significantly affected by malingering or social desirability. the aim shows no significant relationship to measures of depression or to measures of positive affect (larsen, 1987), indicating that the aim appears to assess the general tendency to experience emotions more strongly, regardless of their hedonic valence. life satisfaction is not an objective experience, and thus the accuracy of respondents’ reports cannot be verified (schwarz, 1987). life satisfaction has also been shown to fluctuate in natural settings over short time periods (lucas, diener, & suh, 1996). it has been suggested that these limits to the reliability of swb measures are likely to average out in representative population samples (kahneman & kruger, 2006). furthermore, while these measures do not provide accurate reports of real-time experiences, they still provide a way of understanding how individuals make decisions about their future. studies on swb measurement have shown that individuals do not always accurately report their subjective experiences. for example, kahneman and colleagues (1993) conducted laboratory studies in which participants were asked to provide a continuous indication of the hedonic quality of their experiences in real time. at the end of the experiment, individuals were asked to evaluate their experience as a whole. the authors reported that, although these retrospective evaluations were related to the participants’ real-time report, they were also wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 susceptible to systematic biases (kahneman & kruger, 2006). another difficulty in measuring wb is that individuals may interpret survey language differently, despite attempts to use clear descriptions in questions and responses. kahneman and krueger (2006) proposed a methodology to overcome this problem: the u-index. the u-index is a measure of the proportion of time an individual spends in an unpleasant state. an episode is identified as unpleasant if the most intense feeling reported at a specific time is a negative one. this overcomes the problem of idiosyncratic interpretations of scales because it only requires the respondent to consider the ordinal ranking of their feelings. the u-index is then calculated as the fraction of time that is spent in an unpleasant state. the developers of the u-index suggest that this measurement of swb is particularly suited for cross-country comparisons, since ordinal rankings of emotions reduce the impact of cultural or language differences between respondents. other efforts to overcome some of the limitations with survey evaluation of swb include the experience sampling method (esm), which aims to systematically obtain self-report data on participants’ everyday lives at many points in time, to obtain real-time experiences of swb in naturalistic settings (csikszentmihalyi, 1990; stone & shiffman, 1994). this methodology involves participants recording their feelings on a device at several different points throughout the day. there is evidence that this approach provides accurate data, since participants’ ratings have been found to be significantly correlated with physiological responses (steptoe, wardle, & marmot, 2005); however, this method is labor intensive and expensive, which limits its use in large studies (aan het rot, hogenelst, & schoevers, 2012). moreover, esm generates more missing data than other methods, since esm requires frequent input by participants over a period of time (ahmed et al., 2012). an alternative approach is the day reconstruction method (drm), which asks participants to systematically reconstruct their experiences of the preceding day with procedures designed to reduce recall biases (kahneman, krueger, sckade, schwarz, & stone, 2004). the drm has been shown to have adequate test-retest reliability and high internal consistency (bylsma, taylor-clift, & rottenberg, 2011; krueger & schkade, 2008). 4.2 measuring eudaemonic wellbeing measuring eudaemonic wellbeing provides a multidimensional understanding of individuals’ wellbeing beyond hedonia and aligned with a comprehensive, more accurate understanding of wellbeing. integral measures that try to combine different wellbeing constructs include ryff’s wellbeing scales, which encompass six distinct dimensions of wellness (autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and selfacceptance) and have a range of versions, including 84-item, 54-item, and 18-item (ryff & keyes, 1995). the most recent measure tapping into the domains of seligman’s (2011) wellbeing theory is the perma profiler – short form, a 15-item measure of positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and achievement (butler & kern, 2012). the warwick and edinburgh mental wellbeing scale (wemwbs) is a 14-item measure designed to assess the most relevant dimensions of mental wellbeing in the general population, which is considered to be a measure that combines the hedonic and eudaemonic aspects of wellbeing. the wemwbs measures positive aspects of mental health in the two weeks prior to the scale being completed. it is comprised of 14 positively phrased items, rated on a 5-point likert scale, which cover both hedonic and eudaemonic aspects of wellbeing. the wemwbs was developed in the uk and has shown good validity, test–retest reliability (0.83), and internal consistency (0.91). the wemwbs has been validated for use in the united kingdom and is employed in addition to the ghq12, a screening instrument used to detect psychiatric disorders in community settings and non-psychiatric clinical settings (vieweg & hedlund, 1983; parkinson, wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 2006; stewart-brown et al., 2009). in 2010, the wemwbs was chosen to assess the mental wellbeing of the general population in catalonia, spain as part of its national health survey; the spanish version has also been shown to have reliable and consistent results (lopez et al., 2012). there is a variety of other unidimensional instruments that measure specific personality constructs shown to be associated with or contribute to wellbeing, such as hope, perseverance, and hardiness (duckworth, peterson, matthews, & kelly, 2007; maddi & khoshaba, 2001; snyder et al., 1997). other measures are based on specific theories of eudaemonic wellbeing; these measures include personal autonomy and self-determination, curiosity and exploration, and character strengths and virtues (deci & ryan, 2004; kashdan, rose, & fincham, 2004; peterson & seligman, 2004; wehmeyer, 1995). 4.3 beyond survey methods there are two core advantages to using gdp as a metric of national progress. firstly, compared to wellbeing at a national level, it is relatively easy to measure. secondly, it is a relatively objective measure – governments are virtually unable to manipulate it, so international comparisons are fair. to engage with these two advantages, it is noteworthy to recognize recent advances in leveraging social media to measure wellbeing in real time, unobtrusively, and inexpensively. wellbeing scientists are starting to use large social media datasets (“big data”), such as facebook and twitter, to track the psychological states of large populations in time and space. big data researchers are particularly focused on twitter, since “tweets” are publically available and are generated continuously in large numbers (about 500 million tweets per day from around 200 million users across the world (park, schwarz, & eichstaedt, 2014). methods for capturing psychological states through language analysis started at least 50 years ago, and lexical analyses methods have progressed tremendously since (pennebaker, mehl, & niederhoffer, 2003; stone, dunphy, smith, & ogilvie, 1966). traditional approaches use a priori dictionaries – predetermined lists of words associated with different constructs (e.g., “happy,” “excited,” and “smile” are part of a positive emotions dictionary (pennebaker, chung, ireland, gonzales, & booth, 2007). to date, most big data wellbeing research has focused on affectivity, often by measuring variations in relative frequencies of positive and negative affect words used in tweets, facebook, or blogs (dodds, harris, kloumann, bliss, & danforth, 2011; kramer, 2010, dodds and danforth, 2010). a new generation of wellbeing research has emerged that builds and validates language models specific to a given wellbeing construct. for example, schwartz and colleagues (2013) find the words, topics, and phrases that correlate across us counties with county-level life satisfaction as measured through center for disease control (cdc) surveys. identifying these statistical associations with individual language features, such as words and phrases, enables the empirical construction of better language models that predict a given construct of wellbeing. such “openvocabulary” approaches identify and weigh predictive words statistically and are not based on a priori dictionaries (schwartz et al., 2013). emerging language-based assessments of psychological states and traits are comparable in validity to existing survey methodologies (park et al., 2014). big data research has demonstrated that social media can be used beyond wellbeing measurement; for instance, big data analyses can predict public health threats. google has used search queries to track influenza epidemics and detect them earlier than the cdc (ginsberg et al., 2009). other studies have used twitter to reliably detect and track lyme disease, h1n1, depression, and other illnesses (chew & eysenback, 2010; de choudhury, counts, & horvitz, wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 2013; salathé, freifeld, mekaru, tomasulo, & brownstein, 2013; st louis & zorlu, 2012). in the private sector, corporations are increasingly using big data to inform decision making in the domains of supply chains, workforce management, and consumer marketing (michael & miller, 2013). social media-based assessment of wellbeing offers the promise of a less resource-intensive alternative to survey methods for assessing large-scale wellbeing, which is advantageous for wellbeing measurement for policy. however, the use of social media is currently skewed towards young users, and significant regions of the world do not have universal access to the internet, which may politically disenfranchise some individuals if governments use social media to measure wellbeing. but schwarz and colleagues (2013) have proposed that young people’s tweets are infused with reliable information about the psychosocial environment which older individuals also inhabit, thus serving as proxies for individuals in both young and older age groups. furthermore, conservative estimates suggest that by the year 2030, 95% of the world’s adult population will have access to the internet (chadwick, 2006). even though the use of social media to measure wellbeing is a nascent methodology, it has the potential to replace survey methods in measuring large-scale wellbeing for policy. 4.4 measuring national and international wellbeing in a first attempt to measure multi-dimensional flourishing at an international scale, so and huppert (2009) surveyed 23 european nations. their definition of “flourishing” includes hedonia and eudaemonia, but without objective measures to supplement self-report measures. in this study, to flourish, an individual must have all the “core features” below and three of the five “additional features”. table 1. hedonic and eudaemonic flourishing core features additional features positive emotions engagement, interest meaning, purpose self-esteem optimism resilience vitality self-determination positive relationships so and huppert administered wellbeing items to over 2,000 adults in each of the european nations in figure 5 below to assess the wellbeing of each country. denmark leads the ranking with 33% of its citizens flourishing. the united kingdom has about half that rate, with 18% flourishing, and russia sits at the bottom with only 6% of its citizens flourishing. in figure 5 below, countries in blue are scandinavian countries, those in green are in western europe, and those in red are eastern european. as our previous discussion on the relationship between relative gdp per capita and life satisfaction would predict, there is a strong correlation between the gdp of each of these countries and their ranking on this list. regardless, having a “dashboard” measure of their citizens wellbeing informs decision makers which components of wellbeing are low, so that they might design specific policies to target them (seligman, 2011). we discuss specific policies in another section. other international initiatives to measure national wellbeing have gained momentum in the last decade. below, we highlight the four that have used the most rigorous survey methods. we wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 aim to highlight that changes in national progress depend on the domains of life that an index incorporates, which should reflect social values. figure 5. prevalence of flourishing across european countries participating in the european social survey 2006/7 (so & huppert, 2009) the social progress index (spi) ranks countries according to three equally weighed criteria: basic human needs, wellbeing (mostly swb), and opportunity for social mobility (social progress imperative, 2014). ranked by wellbeing alone, switzerland, iceland, and the netherlands top the list, together with other european countries. the bottom of the list is mostly populated by sub-saharan countries. overall, wealthier countries are higher on wellbeing rankings than poorer countries. ranked by the full spi, which includes wellbeing, but is not limited to it, new zealand tops the list, accompanied by european and north american countries, and japan. although “social progress,” “wellbeing,” and gdp are correlated, depending on the variables included and their respective weight, international rankings change (see appendix a for spi figures with ranking details). even though this last point might seem inconsequential, the happy planet index (hpi; mcgough, 2012), which endows the ecological footprint domain with a particularly heavy weighting, proves that national accounts variables and their weights are trivial. considering only “experienced wellbeing,” the data from the hpi are similar to those from the spi, with scandinavian and north american countries at the top of the list, and sub-saharan countries at the bottom. ranked by the full hpi, with its heavy weight on ecological footprint, it is middle income countries, mostly in latin america, that top the list – chiefly because their experienced wellbeing and life expectancy are slightly lower than countries topping the wellbeing lists, but their ecological footprints are orders of magnitude lower than those of countries with the highest wellbeing (see appendix b for hpi figures with details). the oecd’s better life index (organization for economic cooperation and development, 2013) allows individuals to decide how important each of 11 domains is to them. the 11 domains are housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, civic engagement, health, life wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance. for instance, if an individual only cares about life satisfaction, then countries like switzerland, norway, iceland, and sweden top the list, with portugal and hungary at the bottom of the list (the index only covers the 34 member countries of the oecd). conversely, if all we care about is income, then the index ranks countries by their gdp per capita. the united states tops the list, followed by the next wealthiest countries (per capita): switzerland, luxembourg, and belgium. if we care about all 11 domains equally, then australia tops the list, followed by sweden, canada, and norway. as in the social progress index, there is a significant correlation between the different domains, but which factors we choose to weigh impacts the rankings. even though australia tops the list if we consider the 11 factors with equal weight, australia is number 14 out of 34 in income (gdp per capita) and number 12 in life satisfaction. the united states, the wealthiest country, is number 14 in life satisfaction and number 6 when weighing the 11 factors equally (see appendix c for better life index figures with ranking details). using similar methodologies, the un’s world happiness report (2012) decomposes happiness (swb) by regions of the world, and, using regression analyses, determines which factors explain the variance in happiness in each region of the world as well as in each country. it is not surprising that north america, australia, new zealand, and western europe top the regional list, given the average gdp per capita of those countries and the relationship between gdp and life satisfaction discussed earlier. however, it is surprising that, given their significantly lower gdps per capita, countries in latin america and the caribbean enjoy comparable levels of happiness to those in western europe. it is noteworthy that although gdp per capita does account for a significant portion of the variance in happiness across countries (about 20% on average), social support accounts for about the same variance, and healthy life expectancy for about 10% (see appendix d for world happiness report figures with ranking details). the happiness rankings of individual countries is consistent with other rankings based on wellbeing or life satisfaction, with scandinavian countries and canada topping the list, and mostly subsaharan african countries at the bottom of the list. these different indexes demonstrate that in measuring national wellbeing, wellbeing correlates significantly with different domains of life (including income), and that a country’s relative progress looks different, depending on what factors we choose to include in indexes. importantly, these indexes demonstrate that the more data about a country that is available, the better equipped decision makers will be to use measures to both design and assess public policies, depending on what they and their constituents value. thus, multi-dimensional dashboard indexes are descriptive, not prescriptive – decision makers are free to decide what factors to prioritize. 5. using wellbeing to assess public policy research increasingly supports that wellbeing indicators may be employed to assess and inform policy domains such as externalities, social capital and trust, unemployment, tax structures, and moral debates (cullis & lewis, 1997; diener et al., 2009; dolan, 2008; dolan, peasgood, & white, 2008; green, 2011; helliwell & huang, 2011; helliwell et al., 2012; layard, clark, & senik, 2012; luechinger & raschky, 2009; van praag & baarsma, 2004). even though most of the existing research is based on measures of subjective wellbeing rather than on multidimensional measures of both hedonic and eudaemonic wellbeing, the data still indicate that measuring wellbeing is feasible and desirable. wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 5.1 externalities several public goods and services (e.g., better roads, day centers for the elderly, public squares, and parks) produce costs or benefits that are not easily captured through traditional economic indicators, even though they may significantly improve or diminish citizens’ quality of life. measuring costs and benefits through changes in people’s wellbeing may help policy makers have options to mitigate the negative effects of externalities, and to allocate resources to the most convenient cost-effective alternatives (diener et al., 2009). in a key study on externalities, van praag and baarsma (2004) compared self-reported life satisfaction measures of people living in areas with different airport noise. they showed that it is possible to assess the monetary value of airport noise damage as the sum of hedonic house price differentials and a residual cost component. the residual cost component was estimated from the effect of airport noise on life satisfaction. this novel method not only provides an accurate estimate of the effects of noise, based on experienced utility (kahneman & tversky, 2003), but it also presents policy makers with the choice to monetarily compensate people affected by externalities using a simple procedure. first, the effect of the externality on life satisfaction needs to be evaluated. then, using the known association between intra-national differences in income and life satisfaction (easterlin, 2001; 2013), it would be possible to determine a reasonable amount of money to compensate individuals in affected areas. 5.2 social capital and trust trust plays a key role in building social capital (meier & stutzer, 2008; powdthavee, 2008; putnam, 2000). economic growth may bring benefits to inhabitants of a country, especially in developing nations where a large portion of individuals live in poverty (helliwell et al., 2012). however, we also know that systematic increases in gdp and globalization without the right policies to protect people have contributed to generating detrimental effects on the quality of social relationships and on individuals’ sense of community belonging. it is important to have the right accounting measures to monitor these trends (stiglitz et al., 2010). these findings may explain why life satisfaction has plateaued in the us and the uk during the last five decades, while it has improved considerably in denmark and italy. levels of trust have fallen substantially over time in the former countries, but have risen in the latter ones (layard, 2011; layard et al., 2012). 5.3 unemployment unemployment has undeniable serious financial implications. under the economic assumption that income is related to utility, job loss logically leads to lower levels of wellbeing. the impact of unemployment on wellbeing, however, goes beyond the loss of income (stiglitz et al., 2010). there is a large body of literature that shows how individuals eventually adapt to most positive or negative events in their lives, whether in the professional or private sphere (brickman & campbell, 1971; frederick & loewenstein, 1999; stutzer & frey, 2006; zimmerman & easterlin, 2006). an exception to this habituation phenomenon is unemployment, particularly for men (clark, diener, georgellis, & lucas, 2008). unemployment produces a loss of social status, selfesteem, workplace social life, and confidence, and it diminishes other factors that matter for a good quality of life (layard et al., 2012). unemployment also has detrimental effects on unemployed individuals’ family members and on their communities (diener et al., 2009). also, the effects of job insecurity and of potential unemployment have an adverse effect on those who are employed (green, 2011). in a metawellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 analysis, paul (2005) found that the negative effects of unemployment are greater for workingclass employees, for countries with higher income inequalities, and for nations with lower levels of unemployment protection. these results give key recommendations for public policies aimed at protecting people’s wellbeing (diener et al., 2009). behavioral economists have developed reliable ways of monetizing the negative impact of adverse life events, such as unemployment, on life satisfaction, or the shadow prices of these events. for instance, clark and oswald (2002) calculate the pain from unemployment in a british sample at £15,000 per month. beyond the income lost from losing a job, comprehensive social progress metrics can include and monetize life events like unemployment to inform policy design. we discuss these in the section on wellbeing for policy design. 5.4 tax structures governments need resources to manage the responsibilities that citizens have delegated to them (e.g., education, health, and justice). taxation is the most common source of governmental income. however, the question regarding the best tax structure arises frequently: are progressive or proportional tax structures better for society? decisions are normally based on data on the maximum amount of money that governments can generate using different tax systems (stiglitz, 1988). however, it has been shown that tax structures have different effects on people’s wellbeing (cullis & lewis, 1997; layard et al., 2012). if wellbeing metrics are used when deciding on the most appropriate tax structures, these indicators may help policy makers design optimal tax structures that maximize tax revenue without reducing societal wellbeing. the loss of wellbeing may be calibrated for different levels of taxation to find an efficient taxation structure that will maximize national wellbeing. (diener et al., 2009). 5.5 moral debates how can societies make legal decisions about morally controversial issues, such as prostitution, abortion, drugs, punishment, and gambling? internally consistent arguments can be made for and against these issues. however, the values of individuals or small groups are rarely aligned. one of the advantages of wellbeing measures for advising public policy is the subjective nature itself of self-report instruments (helliwell & wang, 2012). in these cases, subjective indicators of preferences – which reflect people’s own values and life goals – provide policy makers with one democratic and fair (from a utilitarian perspective) tool to make decisions on morally-charged issues (diener et al., 2009). 6. using wellbeing to design public policy as a response to the data on gdp and wellbeing discussed earlier, easterlin (2013) and others (e.g., deaton, 2008) suggest that rather than targeting gdp growth, national governments can provide the enabling conditions for wellbeing through better public services (e.g., health and education), urban planning that promotes relational leisure and diminishes commuting times, and a stronger social safety net. as others have before them (e.g., okun, 1975), they acknowledge that there are tradeoffs between different contributors to wellbeing, including freedom, opportunity, efficiency and equality. to best enable social wellbeing, each government needs to weigh up these tradeoffs, depending on what constituents value. on average, for example, the french probably value equality over freedom, whereas americans prefer freedom over equality. wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 below, we propose specific public policies that might advance the domains in seligman’s (2011) wellbeing theory. 6.1 promoting positive relationships socializing and getting and giving social support are important precursors to wellbeing in all age groups (turner, 1981). an absence of opportunities for social interaction leads to loneliness, which has significant negative effects on physical health and wellbeing (cacioppo, hawkley, & berntson, 2003). urban planning should take into account that spaciousness and other physical characteristics of living spaces are important factors of positive neighboring. further, community housing provides people with better opportunities for interaction and the prevention of loneliness (skjaeveland & garling, 1997; kuo, sullivan, coley, & brunson, 1998). volunteer work is fertile ground for meaningful social interactions. volunteer work is a result of conscious free choice driven by values and self-congruent goals, and it is an activity that psychologically benefits both the recipient and the helper (gagné, 2003; weinstein & ryan, 2010). findings from a longitudinal study indicate that volunteer work increases happiness, life satisfaction, self-esteem, sense of control, and physical health (thoits & hewitt, 2001). psychologically beneficial volunteer work depends on an autonomous choice, rather than on external incentives. millette and gagné (2008) found that autonomous motivation is a mediator in the association between job characteristics and job satisfaction, and they suggest that volunteer jobs should use team work and establish social contacts between volunteers and clients, and volunteers and colleagues, as well as provide decision-making power and meaning in their work (e.g., defining the mission and vision of projects). policies can facilitate the creation of different forms of volunteer organizations and promote information about available opportunities to people. community centers facilitate interactive and meaningful activities and they create social ties. in adolescents, involvement in structured group activities is associated with increased civic involvement and an increased sense of community, which, in turn, predicts social wellbeing albanesi, cicognani, & zani, 2007). albanesi and colleagues suggest that to have a pro-social youth it is important to provide adolescents with opportunities to experience a sense of belonging to peer groups. at the other end of the spectrum is disability associated with aging. one of the aspects of disability that is most relationally harmful is limited mobility. access to transportation for elderly is associated with higher life satisfaction (liddle, gustaffson, & bartlett, 2012). policies such as sidewalks and community environments that are accessible for wheelchair users, and providing free wheelchairs and hearing aids for members of socially disadvantaged groups, can increase physical mobility and social interactions. 6.2 promoting meaning an important source of psychological meaning comes from an individual’s cultural environment. people look to their culture for social values and goals, and some of these are adopted as personal values and guiding principles of behavior. today, mass media is a core element of the great majority of cultural environments. there is evidence that the effects of television on cognitive development and academic achievement in children depend on the content of what children watch (schmidt & anderson, 2006). television and social media that connect people and provide them with opportunities for growth (e.g., educational programs) have a positive impact on societal wellbeing. in the domain of mass media, a concrete policy is the funding of public tv that provides informational and educational programs. wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 unemployed individuals have lower wellbeing and less opportunities and incentives to engage in meaningful activities (mckee-ryan, song, wanber, & kinicki, 2005). furthermore, the shadow prices of unemployment in different contexts can be reliably calculated; these prices include contextual factors such as unemployment as a norm or as an exception, and other factors, such as gender and age (clark & oswald, 2002; clark, 2003). including the shadow prices of unemployment in national indicators of progress can inform how much funding governments direct towards policies aimed at decreasing unemployment, such as lowering interest rates or temporarily increasing government spending. even for employed individuals, providing opportunities to engage in meaningful activities is individually, socially, and economically beneficial (lucas et al., 2004). interventions that provide meaning and self-efficacy in the workplace exist (turner, kessler, & house, 1991; vastamäki, moser, & paul, 2009). open, shared office spaces with natural lighting, for example, contribute to information sharing, to employee motivation, and to a sense of belonging to a community. 6.3 promoting autonomy research in self-determination theory (deci & ryan, 2000) shows that intrinsic motivation is facilitated by the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: the need for autonomy (making one’s own choices), competence (the experience of success in what one does), and relatedness (the experience of being close to other people). the extent to which different activities (work or leisure) are satisfying is dependent on the content of the goals at which those activities are directed. ryan, huta and deci (2008) propose a self-determination theory model based on autonomous and self-determined action directed at goals that are intrinsically valued and have pro-social consequences. autonomy can be promoted indirectly in two ways: firstly, by creating policies that provide people with more opportunities for choice in different domains of their lives, and, secondly, by removing unnecessary legal barriers and limitations in people’s daily environments. crime, for instance, is a significant negative environmental condition that promotes fear and interferes with people’s sense of freedom and autonomy (powdthavee, 2005). furthermore, the negative impact that violence and crime has on people’s lives can be monetized (clark & oswald, 2002). thus, with limited financial resources, governments can use monetized wellbeing data like these to inform what policies to implement – a public security policy in this case. the same rationale applies for health, the negative impacts of illness on freedom and autonomy, and the monetization of health to inform public policy (powdthavee, 2005; powdthavee & van den berg, 2011). health is particularly important for promoting autonomy, since studies show that disability, whether temporary or permanent, is one of the domains of life in which people do not show full hedonic or eudaemonic adaptation (oswald & powdthavee, 2008). regardless of the domain promoting self-efficacy and self-determination, interventions are most effective in autonomy-supportive contexts – when they are implemented as proposed opportunities, rather than enforced necessities (chirkov, ryan, & sheldon, 2011). 6.4 teaching the tools for wellbeing schools usually teach children and adolescents the tools that they will need for academic performance and for accomplishment later in life. positive education complements the existing pedagogical paradigm with the skills for wellbeing (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009). founded on the claim that wellbeing is skill-based and can be taught, positive education enhances students’ wellbeing and behavior, increases engagement in the classroom, wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 and teaches tools that a majority of parents value (seligman, 2002; seligman, et al., 2009). research has found that (1) the tools for wellbeing can be taught in formal settings, such as schools and universities, as well as in non-formal settings, such as corporations, governments, and prisons, and (2) that these tools should be taught, due to the intrinsic and instrumental value of wellbeing. recent experimental research found that teaching the skills for wellbeing (e.g., mindfulness, emotional regulation, communication, decision making, and critical thinking) enhances students’ performance on standardized tests (adler & seligman, 2014). with the necessary research, public school curricula can include empirically grounded, culturally sensitive, and environmentally relevant skills for wellbeing in parallel to academic subjects. 7. beyond gdp using gdp as the sole measure of national welfare raises two core issues. first, not all market activities can be monetized (e.g., psychological and environmental externalities). secondly, despite the fact that economic measures of progress provide useful information to governments, businesses, communities, and individuals, they provide a limited depiction of individuals’ quality of life and of societal prosperity (diener et al., 2009; stiglitz et al., 2010). measures of wellbeing provide valuable information to complement existing economic measures of national progress; they can empower decision makers to better design policies that enhance individuals’ lives, according to what individuals value. major international institutions and national governments have begun to support using wellbeing to inform policy. for example, former french president sarkozy’s commission (stiglitz et al., 2010) recommended that the statistical offices of the world should “incorporate questions to capture people’s life evaluations, hedonic experiences, and priorities in their own terms” (p. 18). the himalayan kingdom of bhutan has used gross national happiness, rather than gross domestic product, to design its institutional architecture and policies since 1972 (adler, 2011). british prime minister david cameron has said he will be held accountable to the extent that his government increases gross domestic wellbeing (gdw). at an international level, on june 13th, 2011, a united nations resolution encouraged member states “to pursue the elaboration of additional measures that better capture the importance of the pursuit of happiness and wellbeing in development with a view to guiding their public policies” (un general assembly resolution a/65/l.86). further, as discussed in detail above, the oecd has developed its better life index to advocate for wellbeing in its 34 member states. there is no single measure that can exhaustively capture the state of societies at a given point in time. if gdp is complemented with measures that capture changes in wellbeing, decision makers will have a more comprehensive, multi-dimensional, accurate portrayal of social progress. the science of wellbeing is theoretically, metrically, and empirically ripe enough to complement economic measures of prosperity for public policy. authors alejandro adler university of pennsylvania aadler12@gmail.com martin e. p. seligman university of pennsylvania publishing timeline mailto:aadler12@gmail.com wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 received 20 april 2015 accepted 8 january 2016 published 14 may 2016 references adler, a. 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(2009). measuring subjective well-being: a comparison of china and the usa. asian journal of social psychology, 12(3), 221-225. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467839x.2009.01287.x zimmermann, a. c., & easterlin, r. a. (2006). happily ever after? cohabitation, marriage, divorce, and happiness in germany. population and development review, 32(3), 511-528. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2006.00135.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-839x.2009.01287.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-839x.2009.01287.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2006.00135.x wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 appendix a: the social progress index figure 6. top rankings based on wellbeing (the social progress imperative, 2014) figure 7. bottom rankings based on wellbeing (ibid) wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 figure 8. spi rankings (ibid) wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 appendix b: the happy planet index figure 9. top rankings by experienced wellbeing country hpi experienced wellbeing life expectancy ecological footprint denmark 36.6 7.8 78.8 8.3 canada 43.6 7.7 81.0 6.4 norway 51.4 7.6 81.1 4.8 venezuela 56.9 7.5 74.4 3.0 switzerland 50.3 7.5 82.3 5.0 sweden 46.2 7.5 81.4 5.7 netherlands 43.1 7.5 80.7 6.3 israel 55.2 7.4 81.6 4.0 (mcgough, 2012) figure 10. bottom rankings by experienced wellbeing country hpi experienced wellbeing life expectancy ecological footprint mali 26.0 3.8 51.4 1.9 benin 31.1 3.7 56.1 1.4 chad 24.7 3.7 49.6 1.9 central african republic 25.3 3.6 48.4 1.4 botswana 22.6 3.6 53.2 2.8 tanzania 30.7 3.2 58.2 1.2 togo 28.2 2.8 57.1 1.0 (ibid) figure 11. hpi rankings country hpi experienced wellbeing life expectancy ecological footprint costa rica 64.0 7.3 79.3 2.5 vietnam 60.4 5.8 75.2 1.4 colombia 59.8 6.4 73.7 1.8 belize 59.3 6.5 76.1 2.1 el salvador 58.9 6.7 72.2 2.0 jamaica 58.5 6.2 73.1 1.7 panama 57.8 7.3 76.1 3.0 nicaragua 57.1 5.7 74.0 1.6 (ibid) wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 appendix c: your better life index figure 12. country rankings by life satisfaction (oecd, 2013) figure 13. country rankings by income (ibid) figure 14. country rankings weighing 11 factors equally (ibid) wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 appendix d: world happiness report figure 15. happiness rankings by region (sachs, 2012) figure 16. top happiness rankings by country (ibid) wellbeing for public policy adler & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 figure 17. bottom happiness rankings by country (ibid) magnier-watanabe, r., benton, c., orsini, p., & uchida, t. (2023). predictors of subjective wellbeing at work for regular employees in japan. international journal of wellbeing, 13(1), 36-58. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i1.2177 remy magnier-watanabe university of tsukuba magnier-watanabe.gt@u.tsukuba.ac.jp copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 article predictors of subjective wellbeing at work for regular employees in japan remy magnier-watanabe · caroline benton · philippe orsini · toru uchida abstract: japan has been experiencing a long decline in its workforce. companies in japan are eager to retain their existing employees and diversify their recruitment. employees with longterm and open-ended employment are also switching companies at a greater rate. consequently, japanese firms have started paying attention to employee subjective wellbeing, now recognized as a source of higher job performance. this study empirically explores the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work for japanese regular employees beyond those already identified in europe and u.s.-centric research. we applied a two-stage design, consisting of interviews and a questionnaire survey to identify those factors that promote subjective wellbeing in japanese corporations where long-time employment and group cohesiveness and achievement are valued over individual achievement. we identified eight factors affecting subjective wellbeing at work for japanese regular employees: meaningful work, relationships, culture, workspace, evaluation, time off, financial benefits, and diversity at work. consequent regression analyses highlighted the discriminant importance of work relationships, evaluation, diversity, workspace, and meaningful work. eudaimonic and hedonic happiness were found to be caused by different factors. as expected, meaningful work led to eudaimonic satisfaction of life at work in japan. in contrast hedonic happiness was affected by factors external to work itself, such as work relationships, work evaluation and diversity. interestingly, diversity at work was found to have an ambivalent effect as it was related to both positive and negative affects at work. these findings will help japanese companies create a work environment that can maximize regular employees’ wellbeing, job performance, and retention. keywords: subjective wellbeing; predictors; work; japan 1. introduction 1.1 pressures on the labor force japan has the fastest aging population in the world (world atlas, 2022). the world economic forum is projecting that the japanese working age population (ages 15-64) will fall by around 20% by 2040, reducing the workforce by as many as 12 million people from 65 million workingage people in 2017 to 61 million in 2025 and only 52 million in 2040 (fleming, 2019). this is mainly due to the double phenomenon of declining birthrate and aging population; in 2018 alone, the japanese population shrank by 448,000 people as the country registered about 1.37 million deaths and 0.92 million births. facing this dire challenge to the country’s future, the japanese government has attempted to bring more women into the workforce, as well as to attract foreign workers over the past decade (magnier-watanabe, 2016). partly due to new legislation designed to encourage more females to work (rich & ueno, about:blank subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 2020), women’s participation in the workforce in japan stood at 53% in 2019, having recorded an increase of five percentage points in the last 5 years (catalyst, 2020). however, it remains low compared to other industrialized countries and to that of japanese men which stood at 71% that same year (statistics bureau of japan, 2020). while ‘womenomics,’ a policy of then-prime minister shinzo abe, helped more women enter or return to the labor market, their jobs remain mostly part-time and low-paid compared to those of men (larmer, 2018). and even though the demographic decline has placed strong pressure on japan to open up borders to more foreign workers, changes in immigration policy are proving problematic, as japanese citizens are hesitant to let more foreign workers enter the country (peng, 2016). hence, foreign workers, mainly from china and vietnam, constitute only a small segment of the working population and are concentrated in the manufacturing, wholesale/retail, accommodation, and food and drink service industries (mhlw, 2020). according to recent estimates, foreign workers in japan totaled about 1.66 million as of october 2019 and their number has increased steadily over the past 5 years (mhlw, 2020). however, foreign workers still represent a mere 2.4% of the total workforce, far less than the percentage in europe (10%) and the united states (16%) (the japan times, 2016). unable to bring in more women or foreigners faster into the labor pool, companies are eager to retain their existing workforce. japanese firms have started paying attention to employee subjective wellbeing, now recognized as a source of higher job performance (lyubomirsky et al., 2005; magnier-watanabe et al., 2017, 2020b). japan has witnessed a decline in the already low state of wellbeing since the sustainable development network has investigated global happiness (helliwell et al., 2020). in the latest survey measuring how country nationals perceive the extent of their happiness, japan is ranked 62 out of 153 countries, and its ranking has dropped substantially over the last decade. tokyo is ranked 79 out of 186 cities in terms of the current life evaluation of its citizens, while it is ranked 86 and 46 for their positive and negative feelings, respectively (helliwell et al., 2020). in response, the abe administration implemented a ‘work style reform’ agenda (hatarakikata kaikaku) in 2016 specifically aimed at reversing the decreasing productivity brought about by the aging and shrinking workforce (prime minister of japan, 2017). the stated goals of the government bill which was passed in 2018 are to reform the workplace, reduce working hours and make work more flexible, and treat employees fairly regardless of employment status (okunuki, 2018). these measures are squarely aimed at supporting subjective wellbeing among workers and higher work productivity (baudrand et al., 2018). 1.2 focus on regular employees the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work have not yet been clarified for japanese employees. furthermore, japanese companies and society at large are first and foremost interested in looking after a class of workers specific to japan, the regular employees. in his authoritative book on the japanese employment system, rebick (2005) stresses the difference between regular and non-regular employees, which is central for understanding human resources management in the country. first, regular employees, or ‘seishain’, are employed for an unlimited period, while non-regular employees are working for a fixed period of usually twelve months. these non-regular employees include part-time workers who in fact work almost fulltime schedules, hourly workers on limited schedules, contract employees, and dispatched workers. these second-tier status workers have much lower wages and no job security, compared to regular employees (gordon, 2017). more critically, these two categories of employees do not get the same consideration by employers and society at large. rebick (2005) notes that “a non-regular employee is also less likely http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 to be regarded as a full member of the community that makes up the company” (p. 18). regular workers are often referred to as core employees as they have much longer job tenure, and the term ‘seishain’ in japanese “means more than a mere hired worker and implies belonging to a community formed by people with the same interests” (suzuki, 2010, p. 394). at the same time, japanese companies have increasingly been relying on non-regular employment, which now represents about 40% of total employment, or more than 20 million workers (statistics bureau of japan, 2020). this rise started even before the 1991 burst of the japanese economic bubble (gordon, 2017). indeed, the separation between regular and non-regular employees is part of japan’s labor law, which provides many more benefits to regular employees, and allows firms to use non-regular employees as a buffer that can be cut (by not renewing contracts) while retaining regular employees. for example, the limit on overtime work in the ‘work style reform’ passed in 2018 concerns regular workers only. accordingly, this paper aims at identifying the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work for core workers in japan. it will make a broad inventory of these predictors, building on previous findings and using an exploratory approach based on mixed methods.’ 2. literature review 2.1 subjective wellbeing at work happiness, or wellbeing, has been a topic studied since ancient greece with philosophers such as aristotle arguing that people could influence their health and happiness by living a virtuous life. in modern times, wellbeing has been a topic of major focus in the fields of sociology and psychology. currently, it has been gaining attention as an important topic among scholars of management and business as a factor in promoting motivation and job performance in today’s increasingly hectic, changing and stress-filled environment (magnier-watanabe et al., 2020a). in the workplace, it has been credited as a source of superior job productivity and performance (lyubomirsky et al., 2005) in several countries including japan (magnier-watanabe et al., 2017). salas-vallina et al. (2018) identify two strands of thoughts regarding wellbeing. one emphasizes “eudaimonic aspects of happiness,” or living a life of virtue in pursuit of human excellence. self-determination theory (deci & ryan, 2000) is one example that addresses psychological needs such as inherent need for growth and autonomy. the other strand purported by diener et al. (1999) emphasizes the subjective nature of wellbeing and includes both eudaimonic and hedonic aspects of happiness, the latter concerning the positive emotions of pleasure (and negative emotions of displeasure). many researchers also note the distinction between cognitive and affective evaluations of wellbeing, where the cognitive evaluation concerns an individual’s assessment of a person’s relative situation to some point of reference, and affective evaluation relates to one’s emotions. these are also said to be mutually correlated (tsurumi et al., 2020). given that employees, just like any person, routinely have good and bad experiences in their daily lives, and that the totality of these ups and downs has a significant effect on their emotional state, including happiness, this paper will adhere to the proposition that subjective wellbeing, also called emotional wellbeing, is multifaceted and “includes people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction” (diener et al., 1999, p. 277). in this research, we focus on subjective wellbeing at work. in other words, one’s subjective wellbeing at work is influenced by daily emotional experiences at work, both positive and negative, and one’s overall satisfaction with work. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 2.2 predictors of subjective wellbeing at work a wide range of predictors of subjective wellbeing have been examined and confirmed (diener et al., 1999). recent extensive review of the literature on subjective wellbeing at work (fisher, 2010; salas-vallina et al., 2018) have revealed a wide variety of predictors. salas-vallina et al. (2018) reviewed 58 empirical papers which investigated positive predictors of happiness at work at the individual level. they organized the extracted list of 38 predictors into 4 meta-categories: work context factors (autonomy, flexibility, supportive supervision, adequate staffing, workload management, environmental clarity, career development, situational factors, justice, feedback, empowerment, trust, dignified treatment, lean management, work climate, fair salary, perceived external social prestige, job resources); leadership (inspirational leadership, transformational, leadership, transactional leadership, authentic leadership, creative leadership), social interactions (collaboration, interpersonal relationships, high quality connections, workermanager relationship, pleasant interactions, communication), and personal resources (level of education, work family conflict, negative emotions, morale, time perspective, personal resources, resilience, authenticity, positive mood, proactive personality). in addition, personality and emotional intelligence have been found to be predictors of subjective wellbeing and subjective wellbeing at work (gannon & ranzijn, 2005; higgs & dulewicz, 2014). specifically, emotional intelligence and social relationships at work contribute positively to subjective wellbeing (brackett et al., 2004). looking at personality using the big 5 personality traits, furnham and petrides (2003) found that extraversion and openness to experience were positively associated with happiness at work, while neuroticism was negatively related to it. however, in the case of japan, there has been little research elucidating a comprehensive list of potential predictors of subjective wellbeing at work. some researchers have analyzed the salient psychological characteristics related to happiness in general of a large group of japanese respondents; the important factors they found were self-realization and growth, connection and gratitude, positivism and optimism, and independence and autonomy (iwata et al., 2018). furthermore, recent findings have highlighted the importance of organizational virtuousness, or pervasive positive attributes and behaviors in the firm (magnier-watanabe et al., 2020b). in addition, higashide (2016) has proposed the three broad dimensions of income and employment as necessary conditions, community and its attributes (trust, individualism, democracy, and democratic process) as context, and pleasure, engagement and meaning as individual behavior and experiences. however, his model has not received empirical validation. the commission on measuring wellbeing (cabinet office of japan, 2011) did not explore the work domain beyond employment (as opposed to unemployment) and the resulting material wealth. 3. current research literature has identified many yet inconsistent factors affecting subjective wellbeing at work for diverse groups of people. we aim to fill a gap by making a broad inventory of the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work (both eudaimonic and hedonic aspects) for japanese regular employees, building on previous findings and using an exploratory approach based on mixed methods. we applied a 2-stage design, whereby we first conducted in-depth interviews whose findings were then statistically assessed using a questionnaire survey. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 3.1 study 1: interviews 3.1.1 sampling and interviewee demographics the first phase of our research aimed to map the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work for japanese employees beyond those few identified in europe and us-centric research, using qualitative data gathered in interviews conducted by the authors. these interviews were conducted with 14 japanese employees all working for different companies in manufacturing, it, banking, and services. candidates were recruited through the alumni network of the researchers’ academic institutions. respondents were not given any information on the aims of the study, aside from the fact that they would be interviewed about the predictors of wellbeing at work. interview questions included background information about the interviewee, and a general description of their business unit and firm. of those interviewed, 71% (10 out of 14) was male, mean age was 43 (range 25–59), which is consistent with the gender and age distribution of regular employees in japan (mhlw, 2019). all respondents had received higher education and were regular employees. 3.1.2 procedure and coding all interviews were conducted in japanese, which was the primary working language of all respondents. two of the four researchers involved in this project are native or near-native speakers. all interviews were open-ended to allow for unbiased opinions from the respondents regarding their thoughts about wellbeing at work, and lasted between 60 and 90 minutes, were recorded, and then transcribed. the critical incident technique (flanagan, 1954) was applied during the interviews to elicit instances of concrete situations in which the interviewees perceived potential predictors of wellbeing at work. this open-ended method has been employed for the recall of specific events believed to be crucial in affecting final outcomes. respondents were asked about specific situations in detail in which they experienced subjective wellbeing. in doing so, they were tasked to reflect on the causes, descriptions, and outcomes, and to describe their feelings and perceptions. the authors analyzed the content of the interviews following the five steps put forward by strauss and corbin (1998) and often used in management research, most recently by gabriel et al. (2020). in the first step, we read the transcripts to identify pertinent expressions or keywords mentioned by our interviewees and obtained 137 first-order codes (charmaz, 2006; corbin & strauss, 2008). in the next step we grouped these first-order codes into larger consistent yet distinct 35 categories. when diverging opinions among researchers arose, those were resolved through discussion until mutual agreement was reached. in study 2, we set out to confirm the predictors from study 1 using exploratory factor analysis and to identify the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work using regression analysis. the original questionnaire for the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work is based on the interviews’ 137 first-order codes minus 29 codes that had been mentioned by only 2 interviewees or less for a total of 106 codes. 3.2 study 2: questionnaire 3.2.1 sample to confirm the relevance of the predictors uncovered during the interviews, we conducted a questionnaire survey of 229 regular japanese employees working in japan. the sample size was adequate as it is recommended there be at least five times as many observations as the number of variables to be analyzed (hair et al., 2009); there are 38 variables (35 potential predictors of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 subjective wellbeing at work and 3 constructs for subjective wellbeing at work), thus requiring at least 38*5=190 observations. the data were gathered in march 2020 using a japanese internet survey service with a large database of potential respondents throughout japan working in a wide range of industries and in different functions. in addition to basic demographic questions (gender, age, education), the questionnaire included items inquiring into the respondent’s situation with the present company (industry, company size, position, number of subordinates). the sample was made up of about 60% men and 40% women. it also consisted of sizable groups of different age ranges and a majority of university-educated respondents (67%). furthermore, the sample consisted of 57% general employees, 30% without any subordinates, and 67% working in services (tertiary industry), and 49% in companies with 500 employees or more (table 1). although the proportion of men was lower than in study 1 (71%), it was higher than that of women. furthermore, while all interviewees in study 1 were college graduates, only 67% of respondents in study 2 were. for study 2, we gave precedence to all respondents being regular employees over having graduated university, as this research seeks to uncover the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work for japanese regular employees, irrespective of their education. table 1. sample demographics variables frequency mean (sd) (%) spane-p spane-n swls-w gender male 137 (59.8%) 2.85 (0.92) 2.78 (0.92) 4.2 (1.21) female 92 (40.2%) 3.07 (0.95) 2.96 (0.93) 4.26 (1.53) age 25-29 36 (15.7%) 3.04 (0.86) 3.09 (0.84) 4.23 (1.3) 30-39 56 (24.5%) 2.99 (0.9) 2.8 (0.99) 4.3 (1.38) 40-49 52 (22.7%) 2.89 (1) 2.95 (0.86) 3.98 (1.35) 50-59 59 (25.8%) 2.75 (1.01) 2.82 (0.96) 4.2 (1.43) 60 and over 26 (11.4%) 3.19 (0.8) 2.51 (0.89) 4.65 (1.09) education high school 33 (14.4%) 3.08 (0.84) 2.84 (0.84) 4.31 (1.42) vocation school 11 (4.8%) 2.88 (1.1) 2.82 (1.05) 3.8 (1.37) junior college 7 (3.1%) 2.43 (0.86) 3 (1.06) 3.17 (1.59) university 153 (66.8%) 3.03 (0.93) 2.84 (0.93) 4.3 (1.29) master’s degree 22 (9.6%) 2.3 (0.87) 2.9 (0.98) 4.06 (1.49) other 3 (1.3%) 3 (1) 2.89 (0.92) 4.8 (1.06) position general employee 130 (56.8%) 2.79 (0.9) 2.86 (0.9) 4.05 (1.41) section /proj. manager 36 (15.7%) 2.95 (1.07) 2.69 (1.04) 4.17 (1.1) manager 24 (10.5%) 3.02 (0.85) 2.95 (0.95) 4.49 (1.2) division manager 11 (4.8%) 3.64 (0.78) 3.5 (0.86) 5.04 (1.51) senior management 13 (5.7%) 3.33 (0.81) 2.46 (0.64) 4.85 (0.89) ceo / rep. director 10 (4.4%) 3.38 (1.06) 2.73 (0.97) 4.68 (1.5) other 5 (2.2%) 2.8 (0.81) 3.27 (0.75) 3.68 (1.28) subordinates 0 69 (30.1%) 2.48 (0.95) 2.91 (0.98) 3.71 (1.39) 1 to 5 people 55 (24%) 2.84 (0.86) 2.72 (0.86) 4.28 (1.2) 6 to 10 people 34 (14.8%) 3.27 (0.78) 2.83 (0.79) 4.41 (1.01) 11 to 30 people 38 (16.6%) 3.36 (0.8) 2.89 (0.95) 4.52 (1.48) 31 or more 33 (14.4%) 3.23 (0.92) 2.92 (1.03) 4.71 (1.34) industry primary 8 (3.5%) 3.77 (0.94) 3.38 (1.29) 4.83 (1.48) secondary 67 (29.3%) 2.86 (0.88) 2.78 (0.87) 4.08 (1.33) tertiary 154 (67.2%) 2.93 (0.95) 2.86 (0.93) 4.26 (1.34) company size less than 10 29 (12.7%) 3.18 (0.97) 2.83 (0.91) 4.23 (1.29) 10 to 49 24 (10.5%) 2.73 (0.84) 3.07 (1.04) 4.22 (1.75) 50 to 249 39 (17%) 2.82 (0.72) 2.94 (0.81) 4.17 (1.02) 250 to 499 26 (11.4%) 2.92 (0.9) 2.55 (0.7) 4.44 (1.1) 500 or more 111 (48.5%) 2.96 (1.02) 2.85 (0.98) 4.2 (1.43) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 3.2.2 predictors of subjective wellbeing at work potential predictors of subjective wellbeing at work were measured using statements created by the researchers, based on the results of the previous semi-structured interviews described above. respondents had to provide their level of agreement with those statements about predictors of subjective wellbeing on a 5-point scale, reflecting their reality at work today. 3.2.3 subjective wellbeing at work the measurement of subjective wellbeing at work used in this paper includes a person’s general self-evaluation and their daily emotions, both positive and negative. both were measured for respondents’ work and life domains by widely used instruments: the former by the satisfaction with life scale (swls), and the latter by the scale for positive and negative experience (spane) (diener et al., 2010). the three were measured using statements to which respondents had to provide their level of agreement. the three constructs of spane-p, spane-n, and swls-work were used to assess subjective wellbeing at work (rahm et al., 2017). each aspect of subjective wellbeing at work was considered separately in order to capture nuanced aspects of subjective wellbeing. taken together, these three constructs (spane-p, spane-n, swls-work) make up subjective wellbeing at work. positive and negative affects were assessed using the scale for positive and negative experience (spane) adapted by changing the focus of each question from one’s life to one’s work. spane consists of 12 items rated on a 5-point scale, half of which are items concerning positive and the other half negative feelings. respondents were asked to what extent they had experienced the following feelings over the past 4 weeks at work: positive, negative, good, bad, pleasant, unpleasant, happy, sad, afraid, joyful, angry, content (diener et al., 2010). satisfaction with work was evaluated with the satisfaction with life scale (swls), again adapted by changing the focus of each question from one’s life to one’s work. swls-work comprised 5 questions on a 7-point scale about global cognitive judgments of satisfaction with one’s work (diener et al., 1985; kobau et al., 2010). survey items included the following: in most ways my work is close to my ideal; the conditions of my work are excellent; i am satisfied with my work; so far, i have gotten the important things i want in my work; if i could start over my work career, i would change almost nothing. japanese versions of these validated questionnaires have been collected by diener (2020) and are freely available. nevertheless, two native japanese university professors involved in this research checked the translations for accuracy and consistency. in order to minimize common method variance, a mandatory pause of 15 minutes was built into the data collection process between questionnaire items about the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work and those about the measurement of subjective wellbeing at work (podsakoff et al., 2003). in effect, this time lag in the data collection process is equivalent to having two distinct surveys, thus ensuring that common method variance is unlikely to create bias in the interpretations of results. 3.2.4 validity and reliability of subjective wellbeing at work outcome and predictors factor analyses were conducted on the 106 questions used to measure the variables under study to ensure that the items displayed highest loadings on the intended constructs and to assess discriminant validity. regarding the predictors of subjective wellbeing, we used an exploratory factor analysis and removed question items that had excessive cross-loadings, free stood as oneitem factors, or considerably reduced factor reliability, in keeping with costello and osborne (2005)’s recommendations. this process led to the removal of 65 problematic questions, leaving http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 the remaining 41 questions appearing in table 2. we used an oblique (promax) rotation since we cannot exclude the fact that some factors may be correlated with one another (ucla statistical consulting group, 2020). such oblique rotation methods may produce multicollinearity between the predictor variables so this will be addressed when examining their effect on subjective wellbeing at work. this yielded the following 8 distinct factors with eigen values above 1, explaining 77% of the total variance: meaningful work (49%), work relationships (6%), work culture (5%), workspace (4%), work evaluation (3%), time off (2%), financial benefits (2%), and diversity at work (2%) (table 2). table 2. pattern matrix of questions on antecedents of subjective well-being at work meaningful work work relations work culture workspace work evaluation time off financial benefits diversity at work have professional skills .958 have a professional vocation .913 have passion for your work .888 be in line with your work .833 having responsibilities at work .746 have autonomy at work .613 set your own work objectives .602 freedom of expression at work .595 having an overview of your work .564 getting results .561 have a respected superior .941 have good relationships with your supervisor .893 have a respectful superior .887 have a caring superior .859 have good working rels with your colleagues .569 be in a dynamic corporate culture .820 be in a caring and generous corporate culture .800 be in a friendly corporate culture .796 being in an indulgent corporate culture .751 be in an honest and integrated corporate culture .735 be in a corporate culture of solidarity .732 have good work equipment .862 have a good size workspace .811 have a clean and pleasant workspace .719 have access to a relaxation area .700 have a well-arranged workspace .645 have a management by objectives in the evaluation of your work .885 have a contribution valued by others .751 get feedback on your work .708 having authority acquired through experience .704 have clear criteria in the evaluation of your work .703 having many days off .894 not working .881 receiving days off .732 be financially independent .824 be financially stable .758 take early retirement .725 have performance-related pay .591 have diversity in terms of nationalities .857 have diversity in terms of cultures .836 have gender diversity .734 # of items 10 5 6 5 5 3 4 3 % of variance 49.161 6.364 5.310 3.968 3.662 3.168 2.470 2.443 cronbach alpha .939 .945 .948 .898 .903 .878 .882 .893 extraction method: principal component analysis. rotation method: promax with kaiser normalization. rotation converged in 8 iterations. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 for subjective wellbeing at work, a confirmatory factor analysis by way of amos 26.0 confirmed the existence of the 3 separate components of positive affect (spane-p), negative affect (spanen), and satisfaction with one’s work (swls-work), consistent with past research. goodness of fit indices (chi-square/df=2.380; cfi=0.989; srmr=0.029; rmsea=0.040; pclose=0.998) indicated excellent model fit (hu and bentler, 1999; gaskin and lim, 2016). convergent and discriminant validity were estimated based on composite reliability (cr), average variance extracted (ave), and maximum shared squared variance (msv) (fornell and larcker (1981). cr was greater than 0.70, ave greater than 0.50 and msv and square root of ave greater than inter-construct correlations, which demonstrates convergent and discriminant validity (gaskin et al., 2019) (table 3). table 3. regression weights, convergent, discriminant validity of outcome variables standardized regression weight cr ave msv spane-p i have felt happy at work for the past 4 weeks .903 0.963 0.813 0.467 i have been feeling well at work for the past 4 weeks .910 i have felt satisfied at work for the past 4 weeks .905 i have felt joy at work for the past 4 weeks .914 i’ve had nice things at work for the past 4 weeks .881 i’ve had positive feelings at work for the past 4 weeks .897 spane-n i’ve felt unpleasant at work for the past 4 weeks .870 0.934 0.704 0.074 i have felt bad at work for the past 4 weeks .893 i have felt angry at work for the past 4 weeks .845 i have had negative feelings at work for the past 4 weeks .839 i have felt sad at work for the past 4 weeks .831 i have felt worried at work for the past 4 weeks .747 swls-w in general, my work closely matches my ideals. .884 0.927 0.720 0.467 my working conditions are excellent. .879 i am satisfied with my work. .920 if i could start my working life over again, i would hardly change it. .708 so far, i’ve gotten the important things i wanted from my job. .836 cr: composite reliability; ave: average variance extracted; msv: maximum shared squared variance correlation scores between the variables were all below 0.8, which removes any concern of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 multicollinearity (field, 2005), despite the fact that the factors were obtained through a promax rotation which allows the factors to be correlated (ucla statistical consulting group, 2020). 4. results 4.1 study 1 results in study 1, we obtained the following 8 themes: meaningful work, work relationships, work culture, workspace, work evaluation, time off, financial benefits, and diversity at work. representative quotes from respondents are shown below. meaningful work: respondents mentioned that being able to accomplish goals that are in line with what they would like to do and understanding how their job fits into the bigger scheme of things were important for their happiness. we defined these and similar such factors that provide meaning to their job as “meaningful work.” “when we talked about happiness, we talked about a sense of accomplishment, right? a sense of accomplishment is due partly because you are able to achieve the goal that the company gave you, but i think the sense of accomplishment is higher when you have a goal that you want and are able to achieve. it's like setting your own goals. i feel a greater sense of accomplishment when i am able to do something that i want to do, rather than a goal given to me by my company, rather than being forced to do it.” (household product manufacturer, purchasing department, department manager) “it is very interesting to learn what other people are doing in different departments. in this sense, i am happy to know the whole “world of my company” and not just be a frog in a well.” (it industry, audit department, auditor) work relationships: many respondents placed importance on having good work relationships for their happiness. this finding is not surprising considering the importance of groups and longterm orientation and employment in japanese culture. “we don’t have a single superman, but by working together, we can gather a variety of ideas and insights, and make them better and better. it’s not about one superman.” (household product manufacturer, product development department, department deputy manager) “it is better when we cover for each other, as naturally, there will be times when people have to take time off.” (household product manufacturer, purchasing department, department manager) work culture: respondents stated that they desired a culture that fits with their own, and one that values loyalty to employees. this finding is consistent with japanese culture’s emphasis on group and long-term orientation. “i wonder what is important regarding corporate culture. maybe it’s very japanese, but i think it’s surprisingly important to find out whether a company’s corporate culture fits, and whether or not there is chemistry.” (household product manufacturer, product development department, department manager) “i want to be loyal to a company that is loyal to its employees.” (sales subcontractor, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 operations, sales staff) a few respondents, however, noted the importance of having a nice, appropriate office environment. “after all, there’s nothing better than a good environment, right? it includes things like space and the comfort of the chairs, though. it's also about brightness, isn't it? we are also creating a kind of communication space.” (it industry, audit department, auditor) “the office is very clean. this is very good.” (building maintenance, human resource department, department manager) many respondents also noted that evaluations at their company were fair, which they deemed very important for their happiness at work. “if you look at it over a long period of time, people who do their jobs well and make an effort are evaluated appropriately at my company. in that sense, it is a good company (and i am very happy).” (household product manufacturer, purchasing department, department manager) several respondents also emphasized the need for more personal time and less overtime, which reflects the increasing awareness of the need to decrease overwork from both the government and corporations in japan, where overtime was once considered a mark of being a good corporate soldier. “i used to go home with my computer and do my work. now, i don’t do it, and i don’t let people do it. i am happier now that i am able to manage my own time.” (household product manufacturer, product development department, department deputy manager) “having my own time is very important.” (distribution, sales support department, technical sales assistant) “it is a lot easier now to manage my own time in my department. when i was in sales, i couldn’t do this. it is the difference between heaven and hell.” (it industry, audit department, auditor) with regards to financial benefits, many respondents noted the importance of having their pay linked to performance. this reflects the growing trend in japanese companies to introduce some form of performance incentives. “i am happy when pay is linked to performance.” (sales subcontractor, operations, sales staff) in terms of diversity, many respondents were ambivalent stating both the positive and negative aspects of workforce diversity. this indicates that many japanese employees have conflicting feeling about diversity and its effect on happiness at work. “diversity is a plus for performance for our customers. but for an old-fashioned company like mine, diversity can have a negative internal impact.” (it industry, general affairs department, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 human resource section manager) 4.2 study 2 results 4.2.1 descriptive statistics first, study 2 was able to statistically confirm the eight antecedents of subjective wellbeing at work identified in study 1: they were meaningful work, work relationships, work culture, workspace, work evaluation, time off, financial benefits, and diversity at work. furthermore, it was found that the first antecedent explained almost half of the variance. second, in order to examine significant differences among the constructs and compare them on a 5-point likert scale, mean scores were calculated for each dimension. overall, all predictors of subjective wellbeing at work were found to be above 3.0 on a 5-point scale, with work diversity the lowest with a mean of just 3.01. the average for subjective wellbeing at work was 4.23 on a 7point scale, indicating respondents were slightly satisfied with their work, while that for spanep and spane-n were both below 3.0 on a 5-point scale, denoting slightly less frequent experience of either positive or negative emotions at work. table 4 shows the means, standard deviations, and correlations between the variables under study. it can be noted that the number of subordinates had the highest correlation score with any component of subjective wellbeing at work (0.340, p<0.001 with spane-p), which remains weak nevertheless. this result suggests that respondents with more subordinates tend to experience more positive emotions at work. table 4. means, standard deviation and correlations mean sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 1. gender (1) 1.40 0.49 1 2. age (2) 3.93 1.26 -.221** 1 3. education (3) 3.58 1.25 -0.115 -0.098 1 4. no. of subordinates 2.61 1.43 -0.026 -0.019 0.025 1 5. company size (4) 3.72 1.47 0.087 -.189** .202** .250** 1 6. meaningful work 3.61 0.80 -0.082 .144* -0.085 .251** -0.008 1 7. work relations 3.47 0.99 0.013 -0.034 -0.111 .219** 0.076 .588** 1 8. work culture 3.39 0.92 0.031 -0.062 -0.086 .191** 0.047 .676** .732** 1 9. workspace 3.46 0.89 0.066 -0.038 -0.064 .230** 0.125 .607** .600** .654** 1 10. work evaluation 3.36 0.91 0.107 -0.083 -.186** .173** -0.026 .617** .696** .766** .646** 1 11. time off 3.47 0.98 0.018 0.083 -0.054 0.096 0.105 .551** .496** .516** .579** .465** 1 12. financial benefits 3.29 0.93 -0.027 -0.010 -0.058 .221** 0.112 .597** .489** .634** .633** .617** .553** 1 13. diversity at work 3.01 1.07 0.051 -0.095 -.175** .271** 0.082 .482** .511** .511** .552** .540** .480** .540** 1 14. spane-p 2.94 0.94 0.118 -0.028 -0.084 .340** -0.011 .495** .548** .503** .426** .528** .345** .375** .464** 1 15. spane-n 2.85 0.92 0.093 -0.129 0.009 0.017 -0.038 -.139* -.200** -.153* -.219** -0.119 -0.124 -.177** -0.019 -0.076 1 16. swls-work (a) 4.23 1.34 0.021 0.042 0.027 .255** -0.002 .529** .512** .489** .445** .451** .369** .436** .368** .618** -.307** 1 *p<0.05; **p<0.01. (1) 1: male (2): female (2) 1: under 25; 2: 25-29; 3: 30-39; 4: 40-49; 5: 50-59; 6: 60 and over (3) 1: high school; 2: vocation school; 3: junior college; 4: university; 5: master degree; 6: doctor degree (4) 1: less than 10 employees; 2: 10 to 49 employees; 3: 50 to 249 employees; 4: 250 to 499 employees; 5: 500 employees or more (a) 7-point scale 4.2.2 predictors of subjective wellbeing at work three separate regression analyses were conducted to identify which of the 8 possible factors (see table 2) are predictors of subjective wellbeing at work, by separately examining their relationships with spane-p, spane-n, and swls-work. to analyze subjective wellbeing at work, we decided to keep the three factors of spane-p, spane-n and swls-work separate. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 indeed, while these variables are related because of their shared affective component, they remain independent constructs. past research on the measurements of subjective wellbeing has confirmed that evaluative scales on the one hand and positive and negative affect measures on the other hand loaded on different factors (kapteyn et al., 2015). furthermore, when measuring subjective wellbeing, the bifactor model with one general and three specific factors (assessed with swls, spane-p, and spane-n) presented a better statistical fit than three-factor or higherorder factor models (chen et al., 2006; jovanović, 2015; rice & shorey-fennell, 2020). the explanatory power of the regression models (table 5) was evaluated based on the amount of variance (r²) in the outcome constructs for which the model could account. the model explained 29% of the variance (f=11.227, p=0.000) for spane-p, 9% for spane-n (f=2.661, p=0.008), and 21% for swls-work (f=7.245, p=0.000), near or far exceeding the threshold of 10% proposed by falk and miller (1992) as indication of substantive explanatory power. the value of the unstandardized regression coefficient (b) indicates the degree to which each predictor variable affects the outcome variables. for spane-p, identified predictors were work relationships (b=0.216, p=0.009), work evaluation (b=0.221, p=0.015), and work diversity (b=0.222, p=0.001), for spane-n, workspace (b=-0.214, p=0.018) and work diversity (b=0.209, p=0.006), and for swls-work, meaningful work (b=0.282, p=0.001). table 5. predictors of subjective well-being at work spane-p spane-n swls-w b se beta b se beta b se beta (constant) -6.21e-17 0.057 1.10e-16 0.064 -1.26e-17 0.06 meaningful work 0.103 0.079 0.103 0.031 0.090 0.031 0.282 0.084 0.282** work relations 0.216 0.082 0.216* -0.168 0.093 -0.168 0.157 0.087 0.157 work culture 0.019 0.090 0.019 0.072 0.102 0.072 0.079 0.095 0.079 work space -0.024 0.079 -0.024 -0.214 0.089 -0.214* 0.025 0.083 0.025 work evaluation 0.221 0.090 0.221* 0.061 0.102 0.061 -0.117 0.095 -0.117 time off -0.042 0.075 -0.042 0.030 0.085 0.030 0.003 0.079 0.003 financial benefits -0.077 0.072 -0.077 -0.154 0.082 -0.154 0.130 0.076 0.130 diversity at work 0.222 0.066 0.222** 0.209 0.075 0.209* -0.016 0.07 -0.016 r2 0.290** 0.088* 0.209** f 11.227 2.661 7.245 *p<0.05; **p<0.001 5. discussion study 1 uncovered eight factors affecting subjective wellbeing at work: meaningful work, relationships, culture, workspace, evaluation, time off, financial benefits, and diversity at work. consequently, study 2, by way of regression analyses, showed discrete predictors for each aspect of subjective wellbeing at work: for positive feelings at work, work relationships, evaluation, and diversity; for negative feelings at work, workspace and diversity; and for satisfaction with one’s work, meaningful work. 5.1 weak predictors first, each predictor influences distinct constructs of subjective wellbeing at work (spane-p, spane-n, and swls-work), save for diversity at work which was found to be related to both http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 positive and negative affects at work. unexpectedly, work culture, time off, and financial benefits did not significantly affect any of the constructs of subjective wellbeing at work, although all, except the last one, were elicited from the interviews. it is therefore important to note that two different methodological approaches yielded different predictors of subjective wellbeing at work. this could be explained by the fact that our sample size was limited and that survey respondents were all regular employees with open-ended employment. being a regular employee is seen as a goal, as a prize in itself, especially now that they account for only 60% of all jobs in the country (statistics bureau of japan, 2020). regular employees cannot be picky about the culture of their company, and workers in the regular employee category can expect to be treated the same regardless of the firm. what’s more, regular employees are embedded in the traditional system of japanese human resource management practices which consists, among others, of long-term employment and development, seniority-based compensation and promotion, and teamwork (sekiguchi et al., 2016). job security and guaranteed incremental pay raises are more important than the small idiosyncrasies of corporate culture; this is especially true considering that regular employees can expect to find very similar work cultures based on the prevalent consensual and collective decision-making found in the japanese business system (witt, 2014). financial benefits and compensation in general depend more on the number of years an employee has been working for the company and one’s track or career path, rather than performance (sekiguchi et al., 2016). it follows that companies within the same industry and of a similar size would pay about the same salaries to employees with comparable titles and numbers of years of service since the start of their career. the lack of salary differentials, all things equal, render financial benefits a non-issue when it comes to subjective wellbeing at work. lastly, japanese employees are notorious for working long hours and taking few days of paid leave, although the law provides regular employees with 20 days of paid leave per year in addition to numerous national holidays. according to ono (2018), in japan “taking time off in itself is seen as a negative signal, regardless of how (or whether) taking time off affects outcomes” (p. 40). as a result, options to work less are certainly not expected to be associated with subjective wellbeing at work. the results would certainly be very different if we were to look at non-regular employees with precarious employment contracts. 5.2 diversity as an ambivalent predictor according to magoshi and chang (2009), diversity designates “differences in terms of nationality, ethnic group, gender, age, and those with or without physical and mental difficulties” (p. 31). diversity management is defined as firms providing opportunities and making use of people with different cultural identities, where culture has a broad meaning referring to nationality, ethnic origin, gender or age (ely & thomas, 2001). past research has noted that japanese companies, although lagging behind those from other developed countries, have increased their diversity in terms of compensation and promotion. however, their rates for diversity in leadership are still have very low (women, 4% and foreigners, 0.3%) (magoshi & chang, 2009). the benefits of diversity for corporations have been extensively researched. they include the acquisition of knowledge about minority groups in society and higher levels of innovation and creativity (ely & thomas, 2001), as well as the creation of a positive and responsible corporate image (cunningham & melton, 2011). the threats of diversity stemming from differences in cultural identities consist of those related to one’s career and power, symbolic threats originating from differences in values and beliefs, and intergroup anxiety caused by interactions with outgroup members (stephan and stephan, 2000). these benefits and threats of diversity have led to the development and validation of a specific measurement tool, the benefits and threats of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 diversity scale (btds) (hofhuis et al., 2015). 5.3 significant predictors of subjective wellbeing at work first, the results of regression analyses showed that the factor meaningful work, which incorporates having a professional vocation for which one has passion and responsibility, was the only significant predictor of satisfaction with life domain related to work (swls-work) and that it explained about 21% of this construct. this suggests that for japanese regular employees, satisfaction with life in the work domain is mostly dependent on the intrinsic value of work itself. this is consistent with the findings of steger et al. (2012, 2013) which found that meaningful work is personally significant and has positive valence for workers. steger et al. (2012) have noted that there is little consensus on the definition of meaningful work and that its causes and experience are often commingled. meaningful work consists of psychological meaningfulness in work, meaning making through work, and greater good motivations (steger et al., 2012). psychological meaningfulness in work refers to the perceived significance of one’s work and its outcome (taubman-ben-ari & weintroub, 2008). meaning making through work can denote the role of work as a source of meaning in one’s life overall. as such, these two factors are tightly linked. greater good motivation is the desire to make a positive impact on the greater good. to place this finding in context, we must recognize that although most research on subjective wellbeing has been centered on the western world, wellbeing is heavily culture-based and is interpreted differently in asia and other regions. previous research on wellbeing in japan has highlighted the importance of ikigai, which is an important concept in japanese culture and everyday life, and which has been gaining attention among western scholars. it is defined as something to live for or the joy and purpose for living in japanese dictionaries and has been associated with eudaimonic wellbeing (kumano, 2018). in this sense, it has also been presented as one of the factors behind the country’s longest life expectancy (sone et al., 2008). to a certain extent, psychological meaningfulness at work can promote ikigai. ikigai does not, however, have to be a grand or ambitious overtaking, but can also be found in hobbies or other simple tasks one enjoys (mathews, 1996). kamiya (1966) also states that it is similar to happiness but incorporates a view toward the future. in other words, work one enjoys, however routine or complex, can be considered as a positive force for motivation. in accordance with this viewpoint, our results show that japanese regular employees’ wellbeing at work was largely affected by having work that gives meaning to their professional life, rather than other external factors such as relationships, evaluations or office environment. in other words, for regular employees of japanese companies, it is important that work be more than just a means for earning wages. work should also offer some source of meaning. furthermore, trompenaars found seven dimensions of preferences and values that differ across cultures. for the cultural dimension of individualism vs. communitarianism, which evaluates whether one places importance on being recognized for individual achievements or for contribution to a group/team, japanese culture is found to be quite communitarian; japanese employees are more prone to find meaning or ikigai in contributing to a group or others than those employees of more individualistic cultures such as the united states, france or australia which tend to place value on individual achievement and recognition. (trompenaars & hampden-turner, 2011). in terms of the hedonic aspects of happiness, or the day-to-day fluctuations in positive sentiments, respondents were asked about the positive and negative emotions they felt at work over the last four weeks as measured by spane-p and spane-n. in contrast to swls-work, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 factors external to the respondents’ work itself had an impact: work relationships, work evaluation and diversity at work accounted for 29% of positive emotions at work as measured by spane-p. this can be explained by the collectivist or group-oriented nature of japanese culture that has been identified by an abundance of research (trompenaars & hampden-turner, 1997; markus & kitayama, 1991). in such a group-oriented culture, happiness or wellbeing is tied to one’s relationship with others and one’s place in one’s group. the interdependent self becomes highly developed and significantly defined in terms of relationships (markus & kitayama, 1991; gelfand et al., 2001). as such, the relationships employees have at work and how they are viewed (or evaluated) significantly affect the emotions they feel in their day-to-day work lives. in terms of negative emotions, workspace and diversity accounted for slightly less than 10% as measured by spane-n. the regression coefficient for workspace and spane-n was negative, meaning that a better workspace led to lower levels of negative emotions at work, or conversely an unsatisfactory workspace meant higher levels of negative emotions. this is explained by herzberg’ two-factor theory (1996) which states that hygiene factors, defined as work-related elements that surround but are extrinsic to the job, such as the workspace, lead to job dissatisfaction or unpleasantness when absent, but do not directly lead to job satisfaction when present. in this manner, the results of this survey show that the absence of an adequate or appropriate workspace affected the respondents’ emotions negatively. as described in a previous section, diversity, in terms of nationality, culture, gender, but not age, had both positive and negative effects on employees’ emotions at work. it is a double-edged sword in a collective and homogenous culture as japan. while diversity brings creativity, novel ideas and positive company image, it can also cause disorientation and friction in japanese companies, whose corporate culture has been traditionally entrenched by both the homogenous population and the practice of life-long employment (gordon, 2017). as shown by the above results, subjective wellbeing at work is influenced by both eudaimonic and hedonic happiness, which each had clearly different predictors. eudaimonic happiness in japanese regular employees as measured by the satisfaction with life scale is predicted by having meaningful work, while hedonic happiness as measured by scale for positive and negative emotions was predicted by the positive and negative emotions experienced due to work relationships, work evaluations and diversity of co-workers. both types of happiness are important and should receive attention by management. 6. implications 6.1 implications for theory as stated earlier, little research has examined the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work in japan. our results partially confirm some of those from iwata et al. (2018), who focused on the individual psychological characteristics of the japanese for subjective wellbeing in general, rather than on predictors which may lie outside the individual. specifically, we found that meaningful work, related to individual employee characteristics, was the strongest factor, accounting for almost half the variance for the predictors of subjective wellbeing at work among japanese regular employees. moreover, meaningful work was identified as the only predictor of swlswork, further establishing its influence. this is also consistent with higashide’s (2016) proposed (and yet unsubstantiated) dimension of pleasure, engagement and meaning as a necessary condition for subjective wellbeing at work. the importance of organizational virtuousness, or pervasive positive attributes and behaviors in the firm (magnier-watanabe et al., 2020b), was corroborated through the identification of work relationships, culture, workspace, evaluation, and diversity at work as predictors. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 meaningful work, as the most significant of our predictors of subjective wellbeing at work, is not included in the four meta-categories previously identified by salas-vallina et al. (2018) in their recent survey of all predictors of subjective wellbeing at work found in the existent literature. meaning and passion found in the intrinsic value of work is neither a factor related to work context, nor to leadership, to social interactions, or personal resources. we therefore contribute to the wellbeing and motivation literature by uncovering a fundamental predictor of happiness at work. furthermore, since we identified this predictor in the japanese context, it may be embedded in this specific national culture, as also suggested by our discussion of the importance of the ikigai concept in the country. we therefore add to the literature on japanese management and cross-cultural organization. 6.2 implications for practice in this research, we have found that diversity is a predictor of both positive and negative experiences at work, suggesting that japanese regular employees are ambivalent about diversity at work. diversity and its management are believed to indeed have an indirect positive effect on japanese employees, resulting in stronger organizational commitment by way of satisfying employees’ expectations that the company is committed to understanding and utilizing the unique characteristics of each individual” (magoshi & chang, 2009, p. 34). however, this research highlights the existence of a concurrent negative effect of diversity in the workplace. while cultural diversity has been heralded as a threat to japanese homogeneity (iwabuchi, 2015), it is the first time to our knowledge it is documented with empirical evidence in the context of japanese firms. as japan is preparing to lose 20% of its working population over the next two decades, japanese firms must be able to retain and recruit talented employees. they must also increase their employees’ productivity through enhancing their engagement and motivation (tritch, 2003) to maintain competitiveness. for practical implications, our results show that for japanese regular employees, matching workers with jobs that they find meaningful and providing opportunities to increase their skills and responsibilities are the most important factors for increasing satisfaction at work. in the context of japanese culture which values group-orientation and the concept of ikigai, meaningful work or tasks do not have to be ambitious or complex but should provide satisfaction and preferably be appreciated by and/or contribute to others. this value placed on contribution to others or to something that is bigger than one individual is in contrast to value placed on individual achievement and advancement by employees in many western countries. on the other hand, increased time-off or financial benefits were not shown to have an effect. considering the comparatively large number of days off and low pay differential among regular employees of similar position and age in companies of similar size and industry, employees may not consider these factors as variable. furthermore, diversity was found to have both positive and negative effects on employees’ subjective wellbeing. this is a serious issue for japanese firms which must resolve their frequently criticized very low diversity in terms of employee nationality and gender through training and active engagement if they are to regain their competitiveness in the everchanging and global economy. they must be able to take advantage of the unique competencies of non-traditional employees. 7. conclusion this research has uncovered eight original factors related to subjective wellbeing at work for japanese regular employees. these are meaningful work, relationships, culture, workspace, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 evaluation, time off, financial benefits, and diversity at work. however, regression analyses showed that eudaimonic and hedonic happiness were found to be caused by different factors. only meaningful work led to eudaimonic satisfaction of life at work among japanese regular employees, which is consistent with emphasis placed on ikigai and contribution to something bigger than oneself in japan compared to many other western countries where more emphasis is given to personal achievement (trompenaars & hampden-turner, 2011). in contrast hedonic happiness, or day-to-day positive (or negative) emotions were caused by factors external to work itself: work relationships, work evaluation and diversity. the effect of work relationships on positive emotions can be understood to be due to the emphasis placed on belonging to a group or group cohesiveness in japan. 8. limitations one limitation is the small sample size of 229 which did not allow for statistical analysis by demographic categories. in our next study, we hope to build on our findings and expand our sample size in order to investigate the factors that promote subjective wellbeing among gender, job rank, age and employment category (regular, non-regular employees, part-time employees). this will become more important as japanese companies are starting to find that they need much more flexibility in their human resource management practices as they navigate the acceleration of change in the global business environment. although this paper’s focus on japanese regular employees and gives a unique perspective on subjective wellbeing at work in a non-western context, a comparative study across cultures and employment categories (e.g., non-regular and or part-time employees) would provide further insight and confirmation of the findings. besides core employees, japanese companies have been relying on a higher proportion of non-regular employees, who act as a buffer in uncertain economic times. furthermore, as a national strategy japan is trying to increase the number of foreign professionals working in the country due to the declining workforce. as the number of foreign professionals increase, corporations will have to rethink their management of employee motivation and wellbeing. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. this study was funded by a japan society for the promotion of science (jsps) grant-in-aid for scientific research (kakenhi #20k01906). authors remy magnier-watanabe university of tsukuba magnier-watanabe.gt@u.tsukuba.ac.jp caroline benton university of tsukuba philippe orsini nihon university toru uchida niigata university of international and information studies http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ subjective wellbeing at work for employees in japan magnier-watanabe, benton, orsini, & uchida www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 acknowledgments we thank the japanese interviewees for contributing their time and sharing their personal opinions, and the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions. publishing timeline 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(2015). wellbeing in bhutan. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 1-13. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.1 robert biswas-diener portland state university robert@positiveacorn.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article wellbeing in bhutan robert biswas-diener · ed diener · nadezhda lyubchik abstract: gross national happiness (gnh) is often recommended as a new approach to assessing economic and social development, and the small nation of bhutan has become known for advocating this measure of quality of life. little has been published on actual wellbeing outcomes of gnh policy in bhutan. the current study uses a demographically representative sample to evaluate a variety of measures of quality of life in bhutan. we compared 11 nations with bhutan on 4 domains – psychological, social, environmental, and income and material wellbeing. we found mixed results concerning bhutan’s wellbeing. results from the study indicated that bhutan ranks first in terms of environmental wellbeing and ranks moderately high on social wellbeing. however, it scores fairly low in terms of overall psychological wellbeing. thus, like many societies in the world, bhutan is succeeding in some areas but remains challenged in other domains. limitations and implications of the study are discussed. keywords: well-being, wellbeing, happiness, bhutan, gross national happiness, public policy 1. introduction wellbeing in general, and happiness specifically, has become a topic of policy interest in recent years (e.g. diener, lucas, schimmack & helliwell, 2009; diener, oishi & lucas, 2015). several lines of research have converged to allow for the focus on wellbeing. first, researchers have created psychometrically sound measures of wellbeing such as the satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 2010; pavot & diener, 1993). these measures have increasingly been scrutinized for their potential psychometric virtues and limitations and have been found to have reasonably strong reliability and validity (see diener et al, 2010; pavot & diener, 2008) and to converge with non-self-report measures (sandvik, diener, & seidlitz, 1993). as such, these instruments are useful in detecting differences in life satisfaction between groups of people, for measuring the relationship of wellbeing with other concepts such as health, and for predicting future behaviors (diener, inglehart, & tay, 2013). second, advances in technology and research design have yielded insights into the nature of wellbeing (clark, diener, georgellis, & lucas, 2008). as a result, researchers have increasingly called for wellbeing and similar subjective measures to be used alongside traditional economic and social indicators to guide policy (diener et al., 2009), and statistical agencies have done so as well (oecd, 2013). among the factors most centrally implicated in the increasing popularity of wellbeing policy is the recent trend in research results pointing to the benefits of happiness. some of the advantages of higher wellbeing include work and economic benefits such as higher prosperity, enjoyment, and increased productivity at work (diener & tay, 2013) and higher incomes (deneve, diener, tay, & xuereb, 2013). there are also health benefits of happiness such as increased longevity (deneve, diener, tay, & xuereb, 2013) and lower psychological stress (hooker & pressman, 2015). in addition, there are psychosocial benefits to wellbeing that include mailto:jayajedi@comcast.net http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 increased social capital and cooperation (moore & diener, in preparation), more frequent prosocial behavior and an increase in social relationships and networks (deneve, diener, tay, & xuereb, 2013), more successful relationships such as marriage or friendships (lyubomirsky, king & diener, 2005), increased fertility and fecundity (diener, kanazawa, suh, & oishi, 2014), and high levels of altruism and trust (keltner, kogan, piff, & saturn, 2014). such findings are one reason many experts argue for the inclusion of wellbeing in policy development (diener, oishi, & lucas, 2015). in light of the increased focus on individual wellbeing, leaders of several countries have endorsed national wellbeing programs. for example, in the united kingdom, prime minister david cameron supported the establishment of the measuring national well-being programme. the program aims to measure the uk’s national wellbeing beyond that of its economic standing and looks at social, personal and environmental wellbeing as well (office for national statistics, 2015). the former president of france, nicolas sarkozy, similarly appointed a commission of economists that reached a similar conclusion: that a country’s wellbeing reaches far beyond that of its economic prosperity (stiglitz, sen, & fitoussi, 2009). there have also been multinational efforts in recent years that have been directed at the measurement of wellbeing. the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) produced a set of comprehensive guidelines that outline the instructions for validity, methodology, psychometrics and analyses of wellbeing measures (oecd, 2013). smaller-scale wellbeing improvement efforts have also been taking place around the world. for example, the state of vermont, in the united states, has taken a state-wide wellbeing approach to help citizens thrive (murphey, 2006). similarly, the city of bahia, in brazil, has also focused on the wellbeing of its citizens as a viable policy goal (world bank, 2015). finally, the town of dragør, denmark, is conducting a comprehensive study to assess how wellbeing measures can contribute to the creation of public policy (happiness research institute, 2013). perhaps the most widely known example of wellbeing policy comes from the nation of bhutan. in the early 1970s, the fourth king of bhutan, jigme singye wangchuck, announced that gross national happiness (gnh) should be the chief public policy direction for bhutan (burns, 2011; dorji, 2013). the gross national happiness commission for bhutan published a report in 2006 which presented its rationale for making happiness an integral part of its public policy. the commission stated that it saw gnh as the primary indicator of the country’s overall national development and included commitments to the people of bhutan such as reducing poverty, achieving gender equality, generating employment, better governance, and capacity building (gnh commission, 2006). bhutan defines gnh as having sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development, environmental conservation, and the promotion of culture and good governance. bhutan’s nine indicators of gnh are: health, education, living standards, time use, environmental quality, culture, community vitality, governance, and psychological wellbeing (burns, 2011) (see figure 1 below). bhutan’s focus on gnh has been widely publicized and has captured worldwide media attention because of its novel approach to policy (revkin, 2005). despite its popular appeal, and the fact that it is decades old, little is known about the effectiveness of bhutan’s gnh program. some critics have argued that gnh is nothing more than a publicity stunt (santos, 2015). on the other hand, supporters have argued that there are legitimate benefits to this policy and have stated that bhutan “…offers us a…practical, scientific approach for creating a political environment conducive to the pursuit of happiness” (burns, 2011, p. 85). there has been some research attention directed to bhutan’s levels of wellbeing. one study found that bhutan ranks eighth on wellbeing on a list of 178 countries (white, 2007). bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 another study (diener & tay, 2015) found that bhutan’s overall wellbeing ranks 26th out of 164 nations. while it is significantly higher than that of other nations in the region, it ranks below some of the developing and western nations. in the end, there are scant data and a preponderance of speculation regarding the quality of life in bhutan. figure 1: nine indicators of gross national happiness in bhutan in the current study, we seek to explore the wellbeing of the citizens of bhutan. to do so, we utilize new data gathered through the gallup world poll (2007). this new survey information provides an initial opportunity to evaluate broad metrics of wellbeing in the kingdom of bhutan. 2. methods 2.1 sampling the data for this study were collected by the gallup organization as part of the gallup world poll (gwp). the gwp includes annual waves of cross-sectional data from 164 nations. the data are demographically representative of age, sex, urban and rural populations, education, number of children, income and other factors. the gwp includes more than 200 items that assess psychological, social, environmental, income, and material wellbeing as well as health, work, bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 and security satisfaction. the items include open-ended, likert-type and dichotomous response formats. participants for this study were recruited in one of two ways – if at least 80% of the population in a given country had telephone coverage respondents were contacted via random digit dialing or using a nationally representative list of phone numbers. the respondents were interviewed over the phone. in technologically developing countries, where phone access is not as widespread, face-to-face interviews were conducted using an area frame design where sampling units were selected through stratification by population size or geography. then, using random route procedures, specific households were selected and separate individuals were randomly selected within a household using the kish grid technique (kish, 1949). all interviews were conducted in the native language of the interviewee. the specific number of participants included in our current analyses vary by nation, depending on how many waves of data were collected in each country. in each case there are at least one thousand demographically balanced respondents per nation. in many cases, there are tens of thousands of respondents. for example, in this study china is the nation with the largest sample size, with 38,580 individuals participating. bhutan’s sampling (n = 1,000) was conducted during the summer of 2013 (may-july), and was the result of door-to-door contact and face-toface interviewing for the survey. 2.2 analytic strategy in the current study we compared and contrasted bhutan with other nations on a wide range of wellbeing variables. we selected 11 candidate nations based on their usefulness as targets of comparison. these 11 nations fell into the following classifications: 3 nations located in the same geographic region as bhutan – india, nepal, and china; 3 nations with similar average household incomes as bhutan– armenia, guatemala, and vietnam; 3 western nations for potential cultural contrast – united states of america as it is the richest nation of the world and therefore a common target of comparison, netherlands and costa rica, which are comparable in size to bhutan, and both rank as happy nations but represent differing levels of gdp and have distinct cultures; finally, we included 2 “anchor nations” which represent the top and the bottom-ranking countries on the gwp in terms of wellbeing – denmark and burundi. 2.3 wellbeing variables we selected four domains of interest – psychological, social, environmental, and income and material wellbeing – within the 12 countries. the domains were each assessed using three separate variables, with the exception of psychological wellbeing, which was assessed using six variables. most of the variable response scales were presented as dichotomous yes/no items, with the exception of the cantril self-anchoring ladder, which uses a likert-type answer scale ranging from 0 to 10. because there were 164 nations represented in the current study the individual country rankings could range from 1 to 164 (with the exception of certain variables where there was a nation with missing data, in which case the total would be less than 164). household income was assessed on a continuous scale (reported household income from the previous year). psychological wellbeing was measured using a combination of global evaluation and affect items. first, we used the cantril self-anchoring striving scale (cantril, 1965) or “cantril ladder.” the cantril ladder is a self-report global life evaluation measure that asks people to rate their life on a scale (or ‘ladder’) that ranges from 0 (worst possible life) to 10 (best possible life). this measure allowed us to gauge the individual’s subjective evaluations of wellbeing. we also bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 employed a range of positive and negative affect items measuring the experience of enjoyment, smiling, worry, sadness, and anger during the day before the data were collected. the items were scored on a yes/no dichotomous scale. in order to calculate percentages, participants’ responses were subtracted from 2 and multiplied by 100. social wellbeing was measured using three separate variables asking participants to rate, respectively, whether or not people in their society have respect for children, whether the respondent has a sense of freedom, and whether the respondent has people he or she can count on in case of emergency. these items were also scored on yes/no dichotomous scales. environmental wellbeing was measured by asking participants to report on their perceptions of local air quality, water quality, and environmental protection – i.e. whether or not the aforementioned characteristics are present in their country. finally, income and material wellbeing was measured by assessing household income, owning a television and going hungry. household income was assessed by asking participants to indicate their household income in the past year. although we recognize that owning a television may not be an indicator of overall wellbeing, it is an indicator of having access to electricity and the material wellbeing associated with access to electricity. the ‘going hungry’ item asked each respondent to indicate whether they “had gone hungry at any time during the previous year.” 3. results 3.1 psychological wellbeing the results of our comparisons of national levels of psychological wellbeing can be seen in table 1 below. we included mean cantril ladder scores, relative ladder rankings, the percentage of people in each nation who experienced positive and negative affect, respectively, the previous day, and relative rankings of positive and negative affect. bhutan ranks 65th in life evaluation as measured by the cantril ladder. bhutanese respondents reported higher life evaluations (m =5.57, sd =1.28) than did respondents from other countries in the same geographic region. the bhutanese respondents also reported higher life evaluations than did their counterparts in countries with similar average annual incomes. in general, bhutan has lower mean life evaluations than the western nations in our analyses. finally, the bhutanese respondents reported much higher mean life evaluations than people living in the lowest anchor nation, burundi (m =3.69, sd =1.59), but much lower mean life evaluations than people living in the highest anchor nation, denmark (m =7.77, sd =1.53). with regards to affect, bhutan ranks 28th in overall positive affect (78 percent) and 62nd in negative affect (22 percent). table 1: psychological wellbeing ladder m (sd) ladder ranking pa pa ranking na na ranking bhutan 5.57 (1.28) 065 78% 28 22% 062 china 4.87 (1.91) 108 82% 17 15% 007 india 4.79 (1.89) 113 66% 63 28% 110 nepal 4.43 (1.70) 128 75% 58 21% 048 armenia 4.40 (2.03) 131 52% 98 43% 160 guatemala 6.12 (2.36) 043 84% 10 27% 106 vietnam 5.41 (1.44) 077 62% 79 21% 045 costa rica 7.24 (2.06) 012 83% 10 24% 077 netherlands 7.50 (1.29) 004 85% 07 21% 056 usa 7.19 (1.98) 014 83% 15 25% 084 burundi 3.69 (1.59) 162 60% 83 20% 044 denmark 7.77 (1.53) 001 84% 11 19% 030 bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 in an effort to illustrate national standings relative to denmark we have placed ladder scores on a single continuum, as can be seen in figure 2 below. although the ladder scale ranges from 0 to 100, the respondents from the nation with the least positive life evaluations (burundi) still reported an average score of 47. this visual aid is helpful in understanding the relative distances between mean national scores. as can be seen, bhutan ranks above many of its geographic and income “neighbors”. that said, bhutan still falls sort of the overall life evaluations reported by respondents from western and more economically developed nations. figure 2: mean life evaluation scores for each country 100 denmark (100) netherlands (96) costa rica (93) usa (92) 90 80 guatemala (78) bhutan (71) 70 vietnam (69) china (62) india (61) 60 nepal (57) armenia (56) 50 40 burundi (37) 30 to illustrate the distribution of cantril’s self-anchoring ladder for bhutan, in figure 3 below we have displayed the percentage of respondents who have selected a given point on this scale between 0 and 10. eighty-three percent of respondents gave responses that were in the middle to slightly positive and there were very few respondents who were either extremely satisfied or extremely dissatisfied. with regard to positive and negative affect, one can clearly see that bhutan scores fairly high on positive affect (28th of 162 nations). a closer examination of the data reveals that 68% of the bhutanese respondents reported that they experienced “a lot” of both enjoyment and laughter on the day preceding the survey. only 10% of the bhutanese respondents indicated that they did neither. bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 figure 3: distribution of scores for positive life evaluations (bhutan) 3.2 social wellbeing the results of our comparisons of national level social wellbeing are presented in table 2 below. as can be seen, bhutan has the highest average reported rates for respect for children (95%), as compared with all 11 other countries in this study, including the united states (70%). with regard to having the freedom to choose what they want to do with their lives, the bhutanese people score the same as china (81% for both nations), but lower than western nations. regarding the ability to count on others in the time of need, bhutan scores the same as vietnam (82%), but again, lower than western nations. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 table 2: social wellbeing respect for children freedom count on others bhutan 95% 81% 82% china 92% 81% 78% india 73% 71% 58% nepal 54% 60% 78% armenia 79% 49% 70% guatemala 35% 72% 83% vietnam 89% 87% 82% costa rica 63% 90% 91% netherlands 84% 90% 94% usa 70% 85% 93% burundi 54% 39% 35% denmark 83% 94% 96% note: numbers indicate the percentage of respondents who positively endorsed each variable 3.3 environmental wellbeing the results of our comparisons of national level environmental wellbeing can be seen in table 3 below. bhutan scores higher than 10 of the 11 comparison countries on air quality at 92% and is equal to that reported by the top anchor country, denmark. in terms of water quality, bhutan ranked right in the middle of the remaining countries and lower than western nations (81%). with regard to overall environmental protection bhutan scored the highest of all countries in our study (95%). table 3: environmental wellbeing air quality water quality environmental protection bhutan 92% 81% 95% china 76% 75% 76% india 86% 66% 56% nepal 89% 82% 55% armenia 61% 66% 31% guatemala 81% 69% 45% vietnam 72% 75% 65% costa rica 85% 89% 65% netherlands 81% 94% 68% usa 86% 87% 57% burundi 83% 51% 54% denmark 92% 96% 65% note: numbers indicate the percentage of respondents who positively endorsed each variable 3.4 income and material wellbeing the results of our comparisons of national income and material wellbeing can be seen in table 4 below. bhutan ranks 92nd in terms of overall income (diener & tay, 2015) and eighth of the 12 comparison nations. in terms of having a television set, 76% of individuals in bhutan have one (whereas 8% of bhutanese respondents report having internet). with regards to going hungry, only a small minority of individuals report suffering from hunger (6%). although the respondents in bhutan report going hungry at higher rates than are reported by their counterparts in the industrialized nations, in our study they report lower rates of hunger than do their geographic and income counterparts. bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 table 4: income and material wellbeing household income ($) having a television gone hungry bhutan 05,956.07 76% 06% china 09,193.52 97% 03% india 04,209.95 66% 15% nepal 04,124.87 58% 10% armenia 05,090.42 98% 09% guatemala 06,609.12 94% 16% vietnam 06,531.74 96% 07% costa rica 12,815.22 98% 09% netherlands 46,243.46 98% 01% usa 56,386.75 98% 03% burundi 001,073.48 02% 46% denmark 051,363.14 98% 02% note: with the exception of the income figures, numbers indicate the percentage of respondents who positively endorsed each variable in an effort to illustrate bhutan’s standing relative to the other nations on these other indices of wellbeing—social, environmental and income/material—we have depicted the relative rankings on a single continuum, seen in figures 4 and 5 below. we created an index score by averaging the three social and three environmental variables and placed them on a continuum between the highest (100%) and the lowest (0%). as can be seen, for both the social and environmental indices, bhutan ranks above both its geographic and income “neighbors”. these figures are informative in that they present a concrete visual representation of the relative position of nations on these dimensions. figure 4: social wellbeing 100 denmark (91) 90 netherlands (89) bhutan and vietnam (86) china (83) usa (82) costa rica (81) 80 70 india (67) armenia (66) nepal (64) guatemala (61) 60 50 burundi (42) 40 bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 figure 5: environmental wellbeing 100 90 bhutan (89) denmark (84) netherlands (81) 80 costa rica (79) usa (76) china and nepal (75) 70 vietnam (70) india (69) guatemala (65) burundi (62) 60 armenia (52) 50 4. conclusion it is easy to romanticize the citizens of bhutan as living in shangri la, a kingdom of peace, harmony, and happiness. it is just as it is easy to cynically dismiss the gross national happiness approach as being nothing more than a publicity stunt. we are able to investigate the wellbeing of bhutanese people on a wide range of dimensions and, perhaps more importantly, are able to compare these scores with those from people from a wide range of nations. starting with measures of psychological wellbeing, we see that the bhutanese score in the middle of nations. they are not distinguished by exceptionally high levels of psychological wellbeing, as the romantic notion would hold, but nor are they obviously deficient in psychological wellbeing, as the cynical view would hold. it appears that people in bhutan enjoy adequate psychological wellbeing and that they generally appear to live happier lives than their counterparts in geographically and economically similar nations. in an absolute and also in an overall relative sense, bhutan is doing moderately well. interestingly, an investigation of other types of wellbeing, most notably social and environmental, helps paint a slightly more complex portrait of bhutanese happiness. on both of these dimensions the bhutanese respondents in the current study reported very high scores. specifically, bhutan scored the highest of any nation on environmental wellbeing and higher than all other candidate nations except denmark and the netherlands on social wellbeing. this suggests that bhutan’s superior standing relative to its income and geographic counterparts might be related to social and environmental variables. while bhutan’s high standing on these variables does not appear to translate directly to exceptionally high psychological wellbeing, it could be that social and environmental factors buffer bhutanese people from problems that otherwise lower the quality of life for their regional counterparts and income peers in terms of economic development. in particular, it should be noted that bhutan is not a highly economically developed country. only about three-quarters of the bhutanese respondents reported having electricity and 6% went hungry during the previous year. given these somewhat impoverished bhutan biswas-diener, diener, & lyubchik www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 material circumstances, the social, psychological, and environmental wellbeing of the nation is higher than one might expect. there are, of course, several limitations in the current study. one of the limitations of this study is missing information. for instance, no data were available for rates of access to electricity in bhutan. another limitation is that we used a cross-sectional sample that represents a single point in time and thus does not give a sense of temporal development in the data. looking at waves of data in the future will be essential to building confidence in these conclusions and in terms of understanding the direction in which bhutan is moving. additionally, it would be beneficial to assess the same individuals in a longitudinal study to see how the gnh policy has affected their lives over time. future study could also improve on the current investigation by employing a multi-method approach. the data we used were all based on self-report surveys, and could be supplemented in the future by other types of measures of wellbeing, including peer report or experience sampling. finally, we argue that it would be entirely appropriate to connect new measures of wellbeing collected in the future with measures of bhutan’s nine gnh indicators. in the end, bhutan may not be the shangri la the popular media sometimes hold it out to be. we found legitimate problems, such as hunger and far from perfect happiness, in our current investigation. that said, it is also clear that bhutan might offer an instructive lesson on ways that social and environmental policy can buffer citizens from certain material deprivations. bhutan is higher on many indices of wellbeing than many of its geographic 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(2009). report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm white, a. (2007). a global projection of subjective well-being: a challenge to positive psychology? psychtalk, 56, 17-20. world bank. (2015). brazilian projects among the most inspiring in the world. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/08/03/projetos-brasileiros-100-mais-inovadoresmundo http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/08/03/projetos-brasileiros-100-mais-inovadores-mundo http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/08/03/projetos-brasileiros-100-mais-inovadores-mundo a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness bryant, f. b., chadwick, e. d., & kluwe, k. (2011). understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience: unsolved problems and future directions for theory and research on savoring . international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 107-126. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.18 fred b. bryant loyola university chicago fbryant@luc.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 article understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience: unsolved problems and future directions for theory and research on savoring fred b. bryant · erica d. chadwick · katharina kluwe abstract: in this paper, we focus on unanswered questions and future directions in positive psychology, with a special emphasis on savoring processes that regulate positive emotions. to advance our understanding of the savoring processes underlying positive experience, we highlight three unresolved issues that must be addressed: (1) discriminating the distinctive neuropsychological profiles associated with different savoring processes; (2) developing viable methods of measuring and analyzing the mediational mechanisms involved in real-time savoring; and (3) clarifying the developmental processes through which people acquire different strategies to savor positive experiences across the life span. we propose several potentially fruitful lines of attack aimed at addressing these unsolved problems, each of which requires new methods of assessment to advance theory and refine our conceptual understanding of savoring. keywords: positive psychology, savoring, neuropsychological profiles, mediation, development, emotion, wellbeing, well-being 1. introduction psychologists are yet to fully address the vast richness and complexity of positive experience. in studying positive emotional experience, theory and research in psychology has focused primarily on the affective consequences of positive events as a function of situational and personal characteristics. although that work provides useful predictive models for distinguishing levels and types of emotional reactions to positive events, it has only recently begun to explore the causal mechanisms through which positive experiences produce different emotional reactions in different individuals or within the same individual over time. we currently know very little about how the mind transforms positive and negative experiences into emotions. what positive psychology currently lacks is a clear understanding of the mediational processes through which positive events produce particular emotions. the purpose of this paper is to address crucial obstacles that theorists and researchers must surmount in order to develop a clearer understanding of the processes that regulate positive emotional experience. we begin by briefly reviewing current conceptual perspectives on savoring as a diverse set of processes underlying the regulation of positive feelings. having provided a theoretical framework for understanding savoring, we then consider three important unsolved problems concerning savoring processes and the mechanisms through which they unfold—puzzles that understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 must be resolved in order to advance our understanding of the savoring processes underlying positive experience. these thorny problems are: (1) discriminating the distinctive neuropsychological profiles associated with different savoring processes; (2) developing viable methods of measuring and analyzing the mediational mechanisms involved in real-time savoring; and (3) clarifying the developmental stages, and concomitant changes in cognitive and social skills and in life experiences, that underlie the acquisition of different savoring strategies across the life-span. we address each of these critical issues in turn and propose several potentially fruitful lines of attack aimed at addressing these unsolved problems. 2. current perspectives on savoring savoring involves the self-regulation of positive feelings, most typically generating, maintaining, or enhancing positive affect by attending to positive experiences from the past, present, or future (bryant, 1989, 2003; bryant, ericksen, & dehoek, 2008; bryant & veroff, 2007). in explicating the nature of savoring, it is important to distinguish four interrelated conceptual components: savoring experiences, savoring processes, savoring strategies, and savoring beliefs. at the broadest conceptual level, a savoring experience consists of one’s sensations, perceptions, thoughts, behaviors, and feelings when mindfully attending to and appreciating a positive stimulus. examples of savoring experiences include listening to a virtuoso musical performance, eating a gourmet meal, soaking in a warm bath, receiving a compliment, spending time with a good friend, or winning an honor or award. at an intermediate conceptual level, a savoring process is a sequence of mental or physical operations that unfolds over time and transforms a positive stimulus into positive feelings to which a person attends and savors. at the narrowest conceptual level, a savoring response or strategy is the operational component of the savoring process—that is, a specific concrete thought or behavior that amplifies or dampens the intensity, or prolongs or shortens the duration, of positive feelings. examples of savoring responses or strategies include counting blessings to remind oneself of one’s good fortune, carefully taking a ‚mental photograph‛ of a spectacular sunset for later recall, mentally congratulating oneself in response to a personal achievement, and closing one’s eyes to focus one’s attention and block out distractions while tasting a delicious wine. and lastly, savoring beliefs reflect people’s perceptions of their ability to enjoy positive experiences, as distinct from their ability to obtain positive outcomes in the first place, and encompass temporal domains of savoring (bryant, 2003; bryant et al., 2008; bryant & veroff, 2007). 2.1 savoring experiences bryant and veroff (2007) distinguished savoring experiences in terms of whether one’s dominant focus of attention is on the external world or the internal self during the savoring experience. in world-focused savoring, the source of positive feelings is primarily identified with something or someone outside oneself (e.g., being awestruck by a spectacular sunset). in such experiences, savoring is largely experienced as an involuntary, uncontrollable positive emotional response to an external stimulus. in self-focused savoring, on the other hand, positive feelings are primarily perceived as originating within the self (e.g., pride in winning a contest). bryant and veroff (2007) also further distinguished savoring experiences in terms of whether they primarily involve cognitive reflection, in which one introspects about one’s subjective experience, or experiential absorption, in which one minimizes introspection in favor of perceptual engrossment (see lambie & marcel, 2002). understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 2.2 savoring processes different savoring processes are presumed to regulate different positive emotional states (bryant & veroff, 2007). for example, the savoring process of: (a) thanksgiving regulates gratitude, (b) marveling regulates awe, (c) basking regulates pride, and (d) luxuriating regulates physical pleasure. combining the distinctions between worldversus self-focused attention and between reflection versus absorption with respect to savoring experiences produces a 2 x 2 classification model of four primary savoring processes and their associated positive feelings (see figure 1 below): (a) the savoring process of thanksgiving (which underlies gratitude) is a form of world-focused cognitive reflection; (b) the savoring process of marveling (which underlies awe) is a form of world-focused experiential absorption; (c) the savoring process of basking (which underlies pride) is a form of self-focused cognitive reflection; and (d) the savoring process of luxuriating (which underlies physical pleasure) is a form of self-focused experiential absorption. type of experience focus of attention _________________________________________________________ external world internal self cognitive reflection thanksgiving (gratitude) basking (pride) experiential absorption marveling (awe) luxuriating (physical pleasure) figure 1. conceptual model of four primary savoring processes and the positive affective states associated with them, as a function of focus of attention and type of experience (adapted from bryant & veroff, 2007). 2.3 savoring strategies bryant and veroff (2007) have identified ten savoring strategies that people use in relation to positive experience: sharing with others, memory building, self-congratulation, sensoryperceptual sharpening, comparing, absorption, behavioral expression, temporal awareness, counting blessings, and kill-joy thinking. just as different cognitive appraisals predict the use of different coping strategies, likewise different cognitive appraisals predict the use of different savoring strategies. for example, stronger internal causal attributions for a positive outcome predict higher levels of self-congratulation, greater perceived outcome rarity predicts greater memory building, and greater perceived event desirability predicts greater use of counting blessings. women, compared to men, tend to engage more in sharing with others, behavioral expression, and counting blessings (all of which are associated with greater enjoyment) in response to positive outcomes, whereas men tend to report a greater use of kill-joy thinking (which is associated with less enjoyment). although bryant and veroff (2007) originally categorized savoring strategies in terms of whether these responses reflected cognitive processes (e.g., self-congratulation), behavioral processes (e.g., behavioral expression), or a blend of both cognitive and behavioral processes (e.g., sensory-perceptual sharpening), subsequent theorists have used other conceptual understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 frameworks for categorizing savoring strategies. for example, chadwick and jose (2010) have categorized different savoring responses as reflecting either engaged savoring (e.g., absorption) or dismissive savoring (e.g., kill-joy thinking). others have distinguished between savoring responses intended to amplify positive emotion and dampening responses intended to suppress positive emotion (wood, heimpel, & michela, 2003). extending this latter framework, quoidbach, berry, hansenne, and mikolajczak (2010) have distinguished among four broad types of savoring strategies (behavioral display, focusing attention on the present moment, capitalizing, and positive mental time travel) and four broad types of dampening strategies (suppression, fault finding, distraction, and negative mental time travel). in contrast, bryant and veroff (2007) considered both amplifying and dampening responses to be efforts to regulate positive emotions that reflect different styles of savoring. for example, the cognitive savoring strategy of ‚kill-joy thinking,‛ which stifles positive feelings, is more prevalent among east asian adults than north american adults (bryant & veroff, 2007) and serves to regulate positive emotions in ways that are culturally normative. by the same token, efforts to cope by ‚catastrophizing‛ one’s situation actually amplify distress, but are nonetheless conceptualized as coping responses (keefe, brown, wallston, & caldwell, 1989). these multiple conceptual frameworks of savoring strategies parallel the wide range of theoretical models for categorizing coping strategies, including distinctions between cognitive versus behavioral coping (moos & schaefer, 1991), problem-focused versus emotion-focused coping (lazarus & folkman, 1984), active versus passive coping (brown & nicassio, 1987), and approach versus avoidance coping (roth & cohen, 1986). operationalizing bryant and veroff’s (2007) notion of complexity in savoring responses, quoidbach et al. (2010) have also focused on the concept of positive regulatory diversity (i.e., using multiple savoring strategies rather than a few specific savoring strategies) and have found that people who typically use a broader range of savoring strategies report higher levels of overall happiness. 2.4 savoring beliefs bryant (2003) developed the savoring beliefs inventory (sbi) as a self-report instrument for assessing savoring beliefs with respect to savoring the moment, savoring through reminiscence, and savoring through anticipation. although a savoring experience requires a focus of attention on positive feelings in the present, savoring may also involve a temporal focus on either the past (termed reminiscence) or the future (termed anticipation). when people savor through reminiscence, they attend to positive feelings that they rekindle from the past, or attend to other positive feelings they experience when looking back on the past. when people savor through anticipation, they attend to positive feelings they imagine they will have in the future, or attend to other positive feelings they experience when looking forward. people may also enhance the quality of an unfolding positive experience by remembering how much they looked forward to it earlier (i.e., recalled anticipation) or by looking forward to reminiscing about it later (i.e., anticipated recall). regardless, the positive feelings that one experiences when savoring are in the here-and-now. thus, savoring can involve a form of ‚mental time travel‛ (quoidbach et al., 2010; suddendorf & corballis, 2007), through which individuals either generate positive feelings in the present from imagining future or past positive events, or enhance the emotional impact of ongoing present events by reflecting on them from a pastor future-focused perspective. with both an adult and child version of the sbi, bryant and veroff (2007) discuss how females, compared to males, tend to perceive themselves as more capable of savoring positive experiences—a sex difference that emerges as early as 10 years of age, persists throughout older understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 adulthood, and has been found in the united states, canada, australia, and japan (bryant & veroff, 2007). comparing sbi scores across temporal domains within individuals, people typically report that they are most capable of savoring through reminiscence, moderately capable of savoring the moment, and least capable of savoring through anticipation. having provided a conceptual overview of savoring, we now consider three unresolved problems that theorists and researchers in this area face. these are scientific challenges that must be overcome in order to advance our understanding of savoring. for each of these issues, we discuss the current state of knowledge in the social and behavioral sciences with respect to the underlying matters, and we suggest ways in which future work might approach the problem. 3. clarifying the neuropsychological underpinnings of savoring one thorny unaddressed problem in understanding savoring involves determining whether different savoring processes have unique neuropsychological underpinnings and, if so, discriminating the distinctive neurological profiles associated with each process. for instance, one might hypothesize that each of the four primary savoring processes—thanksgiving, marveling, basking, and luxuriating—is associated with a unique pattern of brain activity involving the operation of different neural mechanisms. however, relatively few studies have systematically explored the neuropsychology of positive emotion (borod, 2000; burgdorf & panksepp, 2006; phan, wager, taylor, & liberzon, 2004), and none as yet have explicitly investigated the neuropsychology of savoring. because the field of positive neuropsychology is still in its infancy, we have much to learn about the neuro-anatomy of enjoyment. indeed, neuroscientists have yet to determine how positive affect arises in the brain (burgdorf & panksepp, 2006; kringelbach & berridge, 2009). if savoring through attentional focus on positive feelings is truly distinct from pleasure per se, however, then neurological activity during savoring experiences should be noticeably different from neurological activity during simple pleasure. along these lines of establishing distinctions among positive neuropsychological processes, kringelbach and berridge (2009) have proposed that eudaimonia (i.e., the experience of purpose or meaning) is associated with a distinctive neurological profile compared to hedonia (i.e., the experience of pleasure or joy). unfortunately, however, researchers have not yet focused systematically on the neuropsychology of savoring. 3.1 differences in emotional reactions to negative and positive experience prior research aimed at differentiating brain regions and processes related to negative and positive experience and emotion has established the foundation for research on positive neuropsychology. brain-imaging studies indicate that unpleasant stimuli activate an older, more primitive part of the human brain, whereas pleasant stimuli activate a higher order part of the human brain of more recent evolutionary origin (hamann, ely, hoffman, & kilts, 2002; paradiso et al., 1999). consistent with these findings, maclean (1990) suggested that negative experience primarily engages the older, primitive ‚reptilian brain,‛ whereas positive experience primarily engages the younger, executive functioning ‚mammalian brain.‛ other neuro-imaging research has demonstrated that self-generated positive experiences produce a different neuro-anatomical profile than do self-generated negative experiences. for example, damasio et al. (2000) instructed 41 adults (age 24–42) to re-experience intense personal emotional episodes involving happiness, sadness, anger, or fear, and to recall an equally specific but emotionally neutral episode involving an unemotional but specific day (from getting up in the morning to preparing breakfast, getting dressed, leaving for work, understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 arriving at work, and continuing on throughout the day). participants were encouraged to produce detailed images of recalled events and to concentrate attentively on those images. positron emission tomography (pet) scanning revealed that reliving past experiences of happiness produced a different pattern of neurological activity than did reliving past experiences of sadness, anger, or fear. these findings suggest that the process of mentally reliving positive experiences, as through retrospective savoring, is neurologically distinct from the process of mentally reliving negative experiences, as through rumination. there is also evidence that the anticipation of joy activates a different region of the brain than the anticipation of punishment. for instance, knutson, adams, fong, and hommer (2001) obtained functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) scans from eight adults as these individuals anticipated either winning or losing money while playing a video game. results revealed that anticipated reward activated the sub-cortical nucleus accumbens and elevated self-reported happiness, whereas anticipated punishment did not. these findings support the conclusion that looking forward to positive experiences stimulates parts of the brain associated with appetitive stimuli more than do other forms of anticipation. 3.2 positive neuropsychology contemporary neurological evidence reveals that when people contemplate positive stimuli, the brain actively perceives the way in which the body responds to these stimuli. for example, matsunaga et al. (2009) used pet scanning to compare the neurological reactions of 12 healthy male volunteers (age 20–29) to a film portraying romantic scenes involving marriage and expressions of love versus a neutral ‚control‛ film of a past tv weather report. relative to the neutral film, the romantic film produced greater activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, thalamus, superior temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and cerebellum; and these neurological changes were associated with heightened positive mood. activities of brain regions related to interoceptive awareness (i.e., an individual’s ability to discriminate between sensations and feelings), such as the insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, and orbitofrontal cortex, were also linked temporally to increases in high-frequency heart-rate variability. these results suggest that while an individual experiences positive emotions, activities of the central nervous system and cardiovascular system are interrelated, such that the brain perceives the body to be in a positive state. such findings support the conception of savoring as involving a cognitive meta-awareness of ongoing positive experience. electroencephalogram (eeg) measurements of brain electrical activity show that resting asymmetry predicts positive emotion; specifically, relative left hemispheric activity is related to positive emotion (tomarken, davidson, wheeler, & doss, 1992; tomarken, davidson, & henriques, 1990). researchers suggest that the brain systems represented by frontal eeg asymmetries are moderators of emotional activity, or, in the case of emotional activation, mediators (coan & allen, 2004). these frontal asymmetries are proposed to reflect brain systems that mediate approach and withdrawal motivational tendencies underlying emotional responding, in other words, processes within the savoring experience. only recently has the eeg method of measurement been used to reveal second-by-second variations in the experience and expression of pleasure (light, coan, frye, goldsmith, & davidson, 2009). children, ages 6 to 10 years old, who expressed increasing pleasure by smiling, and vocally, facially and/or physically expressing positive affect, showed increases in left frontal activity while playing a game. children who expressed contentment showed increases in right frontal activity and decreases in left frontal activity. this study indicates that asymmetry may be more understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 than an indicator of approach-withdrawal driven motivations; namely it may signal externalinternal focus as well. other recent research provides evidence that different types of positive experiences involve different neurological processes. for example, takahashi et al. (2008) instructed 16 college students to imagine experiencing events involving either joy (e.g., winning a lottery, eating a favorite food, going on a date), pride (e.g., getting a perfect score on a math test, winning a sports competition, winning first place in a music recital), or neutral affect (e.g., recording a tv show, studying, buying medicine for a cold) while undergoing fmri. results indicated a different pattern of brain activity during imagined experiences of pride versus joy. pride conditions produced greater activity in the middle temporal gyrus and left temporal pole, which are components of neural substrates associated with social cognition (adolphs, 2001). joy conditions, in contrast, produced greater activity in the ventral striatum including the nucleus accumbens, which are key nodes for processing hedonic and appetitive stimuli (rolls, 2006). these findings are consistent with the notion that the savoring process of luxuriating in appetitive stimuli, such as food or gifts, involves different neurological correlates than the savoring process of basking in the pride of accomplishment. additional fmri research suggests that re-experiencing past events and pre-experiencing future events both activate a common neurocognitive system involving the joint contribution of medial temporal and medial prefrontal structures, including areas of the brain involved in selfreferential processing, dissociation from one’s current state, and cognitive elaboration (addis, wong, & schacter, 2007; botzung, denkova, & manning, 2008). thus, savoring through reminiscence may well engage some of the same areas of the brain as does savoring through anticipation. however, compared to imagining future events, recalling past experiences appears to activate the medial pre-frontal cortex more strongly (botzung et al., 2008)—results consistent with neurological studies of episodic, autobiographical memory. 3.3 savoring and positive neuropsychology future work in positive neuropsychology is needed to explore how brain activity differs when people are savoring different types of positive experiences. in general, because savoring is meta-cognitive, we hypothesize that all savoring experiences activate the prefrontal cortex, although to varying degrees depending on the specific type of savoring experience involved. based on current theory and research in neuropsychology, we can speculate about differences in neurological activity that are likely to underlie several different forms of savoring. see figure 2 (next page) for a summary of the brain regions we speculate are associated with savoring. for instance, we expect savoring that involves cognitive elaboration will activate cortical regions of the brain, in contrast to savoring that involves more passive processes such as experiential absorption, which will activate subcortical regions (woltering & lewis, 2009). cognitive elaboration requires higher-order executive functioning, and thus places greater demands on the prefrontal cortex, while experiential absorption more exclusively taps reward and pleasure regions. recognizing that the reward system involves the prefrontal cortex and is highly complex, we adopt a reward circuitry for experiential absorption from ikemto’s (2010) neurobiological theory, which includes contributions from the nucleus accumbens, medial prefrontal cortex, and lateral hypothalamus. in addition, we propose that experiential absorption generally activates sensory systems for touch and vision in the parietal cortex more than does cognitive elaboration (olivier, pouget, & duhamel, 2005). understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 figure 2. summary of regions speculated to be associated with savoring. ©andrew swift ms cmi (www.swiftillustration.com) we can also speculate about the neurological correlates of selfversus world-focused savoring. recent fmri experiments reveal that being ‚strongly externally aware‛ correlates with activation of lateral fronto-parietal areas, whereas being ‚strongly internally aware‛ correlates with activation of medial brain areas (vanhaudenhuyse et al., 2011). because worldfocused savoring involves a heightened awareness of one’s environment, we also propose that world-focused savoring activates regions in the hippocampus that represent the spatial environment (moser, kropff, & moser, 2008). finally, we can speculate about the brain regions involved in proactive versus reactive savoring. because proactive savoring involves the executive functions of planning and organizing, we hypothesize that generating positive emotions ‚from scratch‛ will engage the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which regulates these particular higher-order functions (lezak, howieson, loring, hannay, & fischer, 2004; woltering & lewis, 2009). in contrast, we expect reactive savoring to activate neural regions responsible for the regulation of reactive emotions, in particular the amygdala, hypothalamus, anterior cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex (woltering & lewis, 2009). however, several major procedural restrictions limit the utility of currently available mri and pet scanners as tools for studying the neuropsychology of savoring. because the quality of images is extremely sensitive to even small involuntary movement (e.g., breathing, swallowing, twitching), which can degrade clarity and produce image artifacts, current neuro-radiological technology requires research participants to remain motionless during scanning (reiser, semmler, & hricak, 2008). obviously, such restrictions may alter people’s natural and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex orbitofrontal cortex anterior cingulate cortex nucleus accumbens hippocampus and amygdala parietal cortex hypothalamus http://www.swiftillustration.com/ understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 spontaneous savoring responses, distract their attention while trying to savor, or prevent them from savoring in ways that are behaviorally expressive. another problem is that while undergoing mri, people often experience anxiety-related reactions, ranging from tension to claustrophobia to panic attacks (melendez & mccrank, 1993), which not only compromise the quality of images, but also alter the very thoughts and feelings under investigation. moreover, scanners currently cost millions of dollars, are difficult to access due to high demand, and are not feasible for collecting data in ongoing real-life situations. obviously, major advances in scanning technology are necessary before researchers can use mri and pet scanning to study the neuropsychology of spontaneous real-time savoring in naturalistic settings. these limitations make eeg measurement a promising technique for assessing the neuropsychology of real-time savoring. ultimately, a systematic understanding of the neurological underpinnings of savoring will support the development of pharmacological treatments aimed at boosting savoring capacity in individuals with specific forms of brain injury or disorder. such work also has the potential to guide the development of cognitive-behavioral interventions aimed at improving quality of life for individuals who have lost the neurological capacity for certain forms of savoring, but who are still capable of savoring in other ways. clearly, much work remains to be done in the uncharted areas of positive neuropsychology in general, and the neuropsychology of savoring in particular. 4. investigating mediational mechanisms in real-time savoring a second thorny problem in the study of savoring is the methodological challenge of studying the mediational mechanisms involved in real-time savoring. to tackle this problem, researchers must identify not only the duration and sequencing of relevant independent variables in real time, but must also develop reliable and valid methods and measurement procedures for categorizing and quantifying these key variables as they unfold in real time. these new methods must assess savoring in ways that do not alter the phenomena under investigation. current retrospective self-report methods and measures are inadequate for studying ongoing savoring processes as they unfold in the moment and across real time. and yet, without such research, it is impossible to develop an ecologically valid psychology of savoring. 4.1 mediational effects although the concept of mediation has a relatively long history in psychology (maccorquodale & meehl, 1948), there has been a huge up-swell of interest in this topic during the past two decades (mackinnon, fairchild, & fritz, 2007). james and brett (1984) defined mediation as the process by which the ‘‘influences of an antecedent are transmitted to a consequence through an intervening variable’’ (p. 307); and baron and kenny (1986) defined mediation as ‘‘the generative mechanism through which the focal independent variable is able to influence the dependent variable of interest’’ (p. 1173). mediational analyses pinpoint causal chains of influence through which independent variables transmit effects to dependent variables— essential information in advancing our understanding of the dynamic processes that underlie psychological phenomena in both experimental and nonexperimental research (holmbeck, 1997; shrout & bolger, 2002; spencer, zanna, & fong, 2005). the investigation of mediation has evolved from the initial study of a simple ‚two -step path sequence‛ (i.e., a  b  c) via correlation and multiple regression into the analysis and comparison of multiple simultaneous indirect effects via path analysis and structural equation understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 modeling (mackinnon, 2000; preacher & hayes, 2008). techniques are also available for analyzing complex multilevel mediation in which indirect effects occur in clustered data that include both between-groups and nested within-subjects measurements in the same analysis (preacher, zyphur, & zhang, 2010). researchers have now developed statistical procedures for testing the statistical significance of three-step path mediation, in which a  b  c  d (taylor, mackinnon, & tein, 2008). in addition, researchers have developed statistical procedures for testing interactional hypotheses about ‚moderated mediation‛ (preacher, rucker, & hayes, 2007), in which another independent variable influences the strength of a particular mediating mechanism, such that mediation is stronger under certain circumstances, for certain types of events, or for certain types of people, compared to others. within the context of research on savoring, mediational analyses provide a means of testing hypotheses about the specific causal mechanisms through which positive outcomes and events influence positive emotions. different types of positive experiences presumably evoke different cognitive appraisals, which activate different combinations of savoring responses, which in turn produce different positive feelings. these savoring responses sometimes change the actual or perceived nature of the antecedent positive stimulus, thereby further modifying subsequent savoring responses (lazarus & folkman, 1984). thus, real-time savoring is assumed to unfold in a rich multiplicity of complex ways, which may well involve bidirectional causality. in many respects, current methods of studying and measuring savoring processes and their mediating effects on positive emotions are inadequate to accommodate these complexities. new methods are needed in order to investigate savoring as a dynamic process that unfolds in real time. 4.2 a dynamic process: causal ordering and the mediational effects of savoring given a particular positive event, the same savoring responses arranged in different temporal orders might well produce different emotional consequences. and yet, prior cross-sectional and longitudinal research on savoring has ignored the temporal sequence in which multiple savoring responses may occur. for instance, an awareness of the fleetingness of time may have a different impact on positive emotions depending on the exact timing of these thoughts during the savoring process. research indicates that increased awareness of an experience’s future ending can enhance one’s present enjoyment of it (kurtz, 2008). in particular, undergraduates instructed to think about college graduation about six weeks beforehand reported greater happiness, and made more efforts to capitalize on the remaining time they had left in college, when the time remaining until their graduation was framed as being short (one-tenth of a year) as opposed to long (1,200 hours). however, naturally-occurring thoughts about the fleetingness of time may well have profoundly different emotional consequences depending on the specific timing of such thoughts. consider two individuals, al and zack, both of whom are celebrating their birthday. both individuals engage in the same two cognitive savoring responses during the celebration— namely, each reminds himself how fast time is passing, and each thinks about how fortunate he is to be experiencing his birthday celebration—but in opposite sequential order. al thinks first about how fast time is passing in his life, and then thinks how fortunate he is to be celebrating his birthday; whereas zack, in contrast, thinks first about how fortunate he is to be celebrating his birthday, and then thinks about how fast time is passing in his life. although both individuals engaged in the same two savoring responses during the birthday celebration, al might well report greater positive affect and more gratitude than zack, as a result of the different causal sequences for the same two savoring responses. alternative temporal orderings understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 of the same set of savoring strategies may produce dramatically different emotional consequences. this possibility highlights the critical importance of studying mediational primacy and recency effects for savoring responses as they unfold in real time, in order to understand the impact of savoring on positive emotions. 4.3 savoring: unfolding in real time to assess subjective experience in real time, researchers have developed other self-report methods of assessment besides paper-and-pencil or online measures. for example, participants can use rotating dials or sliding meters to reflect their momentary feelings in real time (larsen & fredrickson, 1999). yet, such measurement strategies may be awkward or distracting, particularly in real-life settings. indeed, there is evidence that continually evaluating one’s own emotional states during a positive experience can lower one’s final level of enjoyment, compared to simply rating one’s feelings at the end of the experience (schooler, airely, & loewenstein, 2003). the process of assessing one’s own thoughts and feelings may change the very experiences being evaluated. other work has developed alternative methods of assessing emotions that go beyond selfreport. for example, the frequency, intensity, onset, and duration of positive emotions can be quantified from specific observable changes in facial muscles using the facial action coding system (ekman & friesen, 1978). extending this form of assessment, bailenson et al. (2008) have developed and validated an automated, computer-driven real-time system for the recognition of emotion (including happiness) in videotapes of facial expressions in conjunction with physiological measurements of cardiovascular activity, somatic activity, and electrodermal responses. yet, these methods of measurement have the drawbacks of reactivity, cost, and difficulty of implementation in real-world settings. to assess mediational processes involving cognitive appraisals, savoring responses, and positive emotions in real time in a less reactive fashion that is more feasible in real life, participants could be asked to vocalize their thoughts and feelings while they are occurring, and the content, sequencing, intensity, and duration of these verbal expressions could be coded and analyzed via process-tracing methods such as verbal protocol analysis (ericsson & simon, 1993). researchers could also use a variation of the electronically activated recorder (mehl, vazire, holleran, & clark, 2010)—a digital audio device that unobtrusively records ambient sounds while participants go about their daily lives—to apply processing-tracing methods to real-time verbal protocols during ongoing savoring experiences. cowie and cornelius (2003) have reviewed methods, tools, and coding systems currently available for quantifying the emotional states conveyed in human speech. a top priority for future research on real-time savoring processes is to refine the measurement tools and scoring systems required to assess savoring during ongoing positive experiences. 5. identifying the life-span developmental mechanisms for learning to savor besides unanswered questions about neuropsychological underpinning and mediational mechanisms in real-time savoring, a third unsolved problem in work on savoring is the need to clarify the processes through which people learn to use different cognitive and behavioral strategies to savor positive experience across the lifespan. children’s capacity to regulate positive emotions evolves over the course of neurophysical and cognitive development. in addition, the dispositional influences of temperament and personality limit the range and characteristic levels of positive affect children experience, and make it easier or harder for them to savor in particular ways. environmental factors also shape the repertoire of savoring understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 responses that children acquire over time, through family dynamics, social and peer relations, and cultural influences (bronfenbrenner & morris, 2005). the natural course of aging changes cognitive and behavioral capacities for savoring among older adults. a great unrealized challenge is to identify the life-span developmental stages and processes through which children and adults adopt, expand, and revise their savoring repertoire in relation to positive experiences throughout life. it is also important to discover how savoring may shape development through social relationships, lifestyle, and health. within the prescriptive bounds of culture, families directly and indirectly encourage or discourage the active pursuit of positive experience in children through the ways in which they organize children’s experiences. for example, whether or not parents celebrate milestones, birthdays, holidays, and accomplishments, take vacations, and pursue enjoyment at work and leisure—and the specific ways in which they do so—not only teaches children the value of appreciating and enjoying life, but also provides concrete models for savoring that children can imitate. moreover, the process of socialization produces lifelong frameworks or schemas for approaching certain forms of positive experience in specific ways (tomkins, 1962). 5.1 savoring the moment young children, even infants, seemingly have an innate capacity for positive feelings. between 6 and 8 weeks, smiles of enjoyment occur in response to visual, auditory, and tactile stimulation, and expressions of enjoyment in response to social stimuli increase dramatically by 4 months of age (sullivan & lewis, 2003). early in life, caregivers promote and regulate positive emotions and guide the development of self-referent positive emotions in children, through selective reinforcement and modeling of emotional behavior (tronick, cohn, & shea, 1986). one arena in which caregivers first encourage and regulate children’s positive affect is during parent-child play, in which parents deliberately enhance or dampen their child’s emotional reactions to maintain an optimal level of arousal (stern, hofer, haft, & dore, 1985). imaginative play may well provide the earliest structured proving-ground where children can experience self-control over positive emotions (hughes, 2010). parents also influence the development of emotional regulation by the nature of the living situation they provide, stemming from their personality, socioeconomic status, values, and cultural norms, among other influences. but over time, children become more capable of selfregulating positive emotions as a function of neurophysiological development, the acquisition of cognitive and linguistic skills, and increased self-understanding. the development of children’s language skills is also crucial in the development of savoring because it enables caregivers to communicate verbally with children about the causes and consequences of positive emotions, the rules for public expression of positive affect, the benefits of regulated emotions, and concrete strategies for generating, intensifying, dampening, sustaining, or curtailing positive feelings. in addition, children overhear and understand when their parents talk about their own emotional experiences and learn to imitate their cognitive and behavioral repertoires (thompson, 1991). as cognitive development continues during the preschool years, representational skills related to emotion emerge, providing children with ‚meta-emotive understanding,‛ or concrete knowledge of emotional processes (thompson, 1990), which are the basis for the child’s first conscious strategies for managing emotions. younger preschool children typically have only a few simple, predominantly behavioral strategies for regulating emotions, such as controlling sensory inputs by covering the eyes or ears (bretherton, mcnew, & beeghly-smith, 1981) or physically relocating themselves. this fact suggests that behavioral savoring strategies such as understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 sensory-perceptual sharpening, experiential absorption, and behavioral expression may be the earliest techniques that children acquire for enhancing positive feelings. during middle childhood, the range and complexity of strategies for managing emotion increase dramatically, as children learn that they can alter emotions by redirecting their attention (harris & lipian, 1989), controlling their own thoughts (carroll & steward, 1984), or reinterpreting the situation to amplify or dampen their arousal (terwogt, schene, & harris, 1986). if the development of savoring parallels that of coping, then cognitive savoring responses develop in late childhood. research indicates that young children cope with stress using behavioral distraction methods such as playing with favorite toys, whereas older children are more likely to use cognitive strategies such as imagining pleasant fantasies (band & weisz, 1990; compas, 1998). 5.2 savoring through reminiscence children as young as three years of age can accurately describe details of events that occurred several months earlier (reese, haden, & fivush, 1993). and by the end of the preschool years, children can narrate their own past experiences to others, regardless of whether their audience has shared those experiences (fivush, haden, & reese, 1996). by age 6, children also understand that people can rekindle emotion by recalling memories of an earlier emotional experience (harris, guz, lipian, & man-shu, 1985). however, it is important to keep in mind that savoring the past is a higher-order process than simply recalling the past. no one has yet studied systematically the extent to which children deliberately savor by looking back on positive memories, and the age at which they typically first begin to do so. savoring through reminiscence requires one to reflect on feelings associated with pleasant memories and to think abstractly about one’s own inner experience. based on evidence that the higher-order cognitive functions necessary to engage in past-focused self-reflection may not fully develop until late childhood or early adolescence (inhelder & piaget, 1958), bryant and veroff (2007) proposed that children gradually learn through socialization to articulate their inner experience in relation to the past. in particular, children presumably first master the art of retelling and reliving positive memories in the company of others and then later learn how to savor positive memories in their mind when they are developmentally capable of such abstractions. 5.3 savoring through anticipation at least three cognitive skills are necessary in order to savor by looking forward to positive experiences—an ability to reflect on one’s own feelings, an awareness of the future, and the capacity to delay gratification. as early as age 2, children show awareness of the future in their speech and behavior (atance & o’neill, 2001). however, children typically do not develop the cognitive resources and perspective-taking skills necessary to delay gratification until age 4 or 5 (mischel, shoda, & rodriguez, 1989). not surprisingly, this lack of impulse control makes it hard for young children to savor upcoming positive experiences through anticipation. indeed, adults often find it difficult to delay gratification in certain situations, making savoring through anticipation a lifelong challenge. further complicating the process of anticipation are the possibility of disappointment and the necessity of coping with dashed hopes and expectations. through socialization, children typically learn the effortful control required to handle disappointment; mothers’ strategies for regulating their children’s emotions at age 2½ predict these children’s facial and behavioral responses to disappointment at age 5 (spinrad, stifter, donelan-mccall, & turner, 2004). the potential for positive anticipation to produce unrealistically high expectations and to inflate the understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 perceived likelihood of positive outcomes also makes future-focused savoring a greater challenge than past-focused savoring. to protect children from the pain of disappointment if the future outcome does not happen or fails to meet expectations, some parents may teach their children not to ‚get their hopes up‛ or not to ‚count your chickens before they hatch.‛ although such forms of defensive pessimism may temper disappointment, they have the unintended side-effect of precluding the joy of anticipation. younger children may also be more prone to magical thinking than older children and to have superstitious beliefs about the effects of intention or anticipation on future outcomes (mcleish, 1984), such as the notion that looking forward to a positive event tempts fate and thereby jinxes the outcome. such beliefs might make children more willing to savor prospectively as they grow older. 5.4 distinguishing temporal capacities to savor although children develop the ability to savor the moment, reminisce about the past, and anticipate the future by early childhood, the ability to differentiate these capacities develops in late adolescence. using the children’s savoring beliefs inventory (csbi) with children ages 10 to 13 (i.e., stage of concrete operations) reveals that unlike college students and older adults (i.e., stage of formal operations), preadolescents hold a unitary conception of their capacity to savor positive experiences and do not distinguish among their abilities to savor prospectively through anticipation, concurrently in the moment, or retrospectively through reminiscence (bryant & veroff, 2007). cross-validating research with older populations, girls report higher csbi total scores than do boys across all four ages. in other words, compared to boys, girls generally perceive themselves as better able to enjoy positive experience. thus, gender differences in perceived savoring ability emerge as early as 10 years old. considered together, these data suggest that children make judgments of their capacity to savor their lives, but that these evaluations are less differentiated with respect to time than are adults’ self-evaluations. but the age at which children’s awareness of their capacity to savor first develops remains is yet to be determined. 5.5 the development of specific savoring processes savoring processes that involve basic emotions, such as joy or wonder, should emerge earlier in life than savoring processes that involve self-conscious, higher-order positive emotions, such as pride or gratitude, which develop later. because infants’ earliest facial expressions of enjoyment relate to physical pleasure (sullivan & lewis, 2003), we might expect luxuriating to be the first savoring process to develop. unlike the savoring process of basking in the pride of accomplishment, the process of mindfully appreciating physical pleasure does not require the experience of self-referent positive emotion. the basic emotion of joy typically emerges within the first nine months of life, whereas the high-order emotion of pride does not emerge until about age 3 (tracy & robin, 2007). likewise, young children seem to have an innate sense of awe and wonder in relation to the world around them— something adults often seem to lose and long to regain. the capacity to experience gratitude, on the other hand, does not fully develop until middle childhood, between ages 7 and 10 (peterson & seligman, 2004). thus, based on current understanding of cognitive and emotional development, we can speculate about the typical sequence in the development of children’s capacities to engage in specific types of savoring processes. along these lines, we propose that children first acquire the abilities to savor through luxuriating and marveling, followed later by the ability to bask in the pride of accomplishment, and finally the ability to savor through thanksgiving. in the same understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 vein, we would expect children to report hedonic savoring experiences involving positive feelings before they report eudaimonic savoring experiences involving meaning and purpose. 5.6 future directions for developmental research on savoring current measurement tools are inadequate for developmental research aimed at identifying children’s earliest forms of savoring. existing self-report measures of savoring responses, such as the ways of savoring checklist (wosc; bryant & veroff, 2007), have been designed and validated for use with adults. although readability statistics reveal that the wording of the wosc items is at a reading-level appropriate for the typical 9-year-old, using the current instrument presents at least two potential problems. first, if children younger than age 9 cannot comprehend the wosc items, then researchers cannot use the wosc to determine whether initial savoring responses emerge before age 9. second, children may be capable of savoring positive experiences before they have the cognitive skills necessary to describe such experiences on a self-report questionnaire. these psychometric limitations suggest that pinpointing the age at which savoring first emerges may require researchers first to identify the precise neurological profiles associated with specific savoring processes and responses in adults, and then to determine the age at which these profiles first appear in children. ultimately, such neurological profiles might well provide the ‚gold standard‛ for future work aimed at establishing the criterion validity of new measures of savoring responses, savoring beliefs, and actual savoring capacities. 5.7 savoring in older age emerging evidence supports the notion that people’s capacity to savor the moment increases later in life. recent results from over 340,000 telephone interviews with individuals in the united states reveal that wellbeing, especially positive emotions, steadily increases from the age of 50 (stone, schwartz, broderick, & deaton, 2010). over the adult life-span, from 18 to 85 years of age, the trajectory of individuals’ appraisals of their happiness resembles a ‚u‛—it begins high, dips from the late 30s until age 50, and then begins to climb, until by age 80 individuals have exceeded all reports of happiness at younger ages. age-related increases in happiness may reflect an enhanced ability to savor the moment in older age that results from the perception that one’s time is limited, which produces a heightened focus on current feelings (carstensen, fung, & charles, 2003). consistent with this reasoning, carstensen et al. (2003) have argued that, ‚it is precisely a sense of anticipated ending that makes old age emotionally meaningful. when emotional goals weigh more heavily than knowledge-related goals, people have the time to savor the moment, focus on the present, and derive emotional meaning‛ (p. 119). these conclusions are also consistent with kurtz’s (2008) experimental evidence that becoming more aware of the approaching end of an experience can boost one’s appreciation of it. harkening back to children’s early absorption in spontaneous enjoyment, we suggest that people are most capable of savoring the moment during the early and late stages of their life. supporting the adaptive benefits of savoring, there is prospective evidence that positive emotions not only protect individuals from physical decline in old age (ostir, markides, black, & goodwin, 2000), but also increase longevity (danner, snowdon, & friesen, 2001). thus, savoring may ultimately optimize both the quality and quantity of life. as people age and their physical and cognitive capacities decline, special challenges emerge with respect to savoring. older adults may no longer be able, or motivated, to savor the same experiences as when they were younger, nor may they be able to savor the same experiences in the same ways. this reasoning suggests that having a more diverse repertoire of savoring responses may enhance understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience bryant, chadwick, & kluwe www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 people’s capacity to adapt more effectively to aging. a better understanding of the impact of aging on savoring (and of savoring on aging) would enable practitioners to develop effective interventions aimed at helping adults sustain the capacity to savor positive experience in old age. much work remains in building a formal life-span developmental model of savoring. 6. conclusion in this paper, we have outlined three important, unsolved questions with respect to savoring— namely, what are its neuropsychological foundations, how can we study its role as a mediator of positive emotions during ongoing experience, and how does it develop across the lifespan? through this endeavor, we hope to guide and encourage future work aimed at advancing our understanding of these key issues. we note that solving each of these tricky puzzles requires not only new theoretical frameworks, but also new ways to assess cognition and emotion. as has been the case in so many scientific areas, including the study of coping, conceptual progress often stems from crucial advances in measurement, which make it possible to test innovative hypotheses, and develop and refine new theoretical models. thus, as cattell (1893) wisely observed long ago, ‚the history of measurement is the history of science‛ (p. 316). for, unless one can measure the underlying phenomena of interest, it is impossible to conduct empirical research and advance knowledge. certainly, this same progression must also occur in the study of savoring, as the development of new methods of assessment will enable theorists and researchers to solve thorny problems that no one has ever addressed. clearly, there are many other worthwhile areas of exploration within the general topic of savoring that we have not addressed here. some of these additional savoring-related areas that are particularly ripe for future investigation include cultural differences and similarities, relationships with negative emotions and outcomes, intervention efforts, and evolutionary implications. it is our fondest hope that this paper will encourage readers to pursue work on savoring along many different lines in the years ahead. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank dr. paul jose for helpful feedback and advice on an earlier draft of this manuscript. we would also like to thank andrew swift (ms cmi) at www.swiftillustration.com for his image of the natural brain; it provided us with an excellent canvas to highlight regions we speculate are associated with savoring. authors fred b. bryant loyola university chicago fbryant@luc.edu erica d. chadwick victoria university of wellington katharina kluwe loyola university chicago references addis, d. r., wong, a. t., & schacter, d. l. 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(2003). savoring versus dampening: self-esteem differences in regulating positive affect. journal of personality and social psychology, 85, 566–580. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.3.566 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1082-989x.7.4.422 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.845 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2004.00256.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1003744107 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x07001975 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00001163-200304000-00005 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhm120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1094428107300344 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1986.tb01838.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01319934 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.4.791 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.4.791 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.62.4.676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21488 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-228x.2009.01066.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.3.566 lomas, t. (2020). positive coaching psychology: a case study in the hybridization of positive psychology. international journal of wellbeing, 10(2), 37-52. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i2.1083 tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 article positive coaching psychology: a case study in the hybridization of positive psychology tim lomas abstract: positive psychology has fruitfully interacted with numerous other disciplines, creating new hybrid paradigms. one such instance involves coaching, which shares the field’s focus on enhancing wellbeing and performance across life domains. as a result, there is considerable interest in exploring its interaction with positive psychology, and developing frameworks for their integration. to shed further light on their relationship, this paper explores four perspectives on the intersections and differences between these emerging fields. these include perspectives where: (a) the fields are essentially coterminous; (b) positive psychology encompasses coaching; (c) coaching encompasses positive psychology; and (d) the fields overlap but are not coterminous (the author’s preferred perspective). more generally, the paper offers suggestions for how positive psychology can integrate with the various kinship fields in these processes of hybridisation. keywords: positive psychology, coaching, coaching psychology, theory acknowledgements: thank you to students and colleagues at the university of east london, who have inspired and informed the analysis presented in this paper. 1. hybridizing positive psychology since its inception, positive psychology (pp) has found itself becoming “twinned” with myriad conceptually-similar disciplines. such twinning is usually indicated by the word “positive” being appended to the field in question. thus, we find a panoply of hybrids such as “positive education” (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009), “positive health” (seligman, 2008), “positive health psychology” (schmidt, raque-bogdan, piontkowski, & schaefer, 2011), “positive neuropsychology” (randolph, 2015), “positive psychotherapy” (seligman, rashid, & parks, 2006), “positive clinical psychology” (wood & tarrier, 2010), “positive organizational scholarship” (cameron, dutton, & quinn, 2003), “positive organizational behaviour” (bakker & schaufeli, 2008), “positive social science” (seligman, 1999), “positive social psychology” (lomas, 2015b), “positive cross-cultural psychology” (lomas, 2015a), “positive art therapy” (wilkinson & chilton, 2013), “positive art” (lomas, 2016), “positive sports psychology” (salama-younes, 2011), and, most relevantly here, “positive psychology coaching” (passmore & oades, 2014). how are we to regard such hybrids? one answer is that, in these cases, the prefix “positive” may serve a similar operational function as it does for pp itself. in that respect, pawelski (2016a, 2016b) has shed valuable light on its functions. first, he offers a “descriptive” analysis of the way the term functioned in seminal documents in the founding of pp (pawelski, 2016a). he identifies five main usages: (a) positive orientation (pp’s basic direction, namely as complementary to the “negative” focus of mainstream psychology); (b) positive topography (its main areas of study, e.g., strengths); (c) positive target population (its beneficiaries, mainly non-clinical populations); (d) positive process (its approach for achieving desired outcomes, such as building good about:blank positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 qualities); and (e) positive aim (its ultimate purpose or goal, namely providing an “empirical vision for understanding and cultivating wellbeing”) (p.343). then, in a “normative” analysis, pawelski (2016b) suggests one inclusion criterion and five continuum criteria for identifying something as positive. the inclusion criterion is simply preference, in that a phenomenon is positive if its presence is preferred to its absence. then, the continuum criteria indicate the “degree” of positivity, with positivity being a function of: (a) relative preference (the strength of the preference for it over something else); (b) sustainability across time (the longer-lasting the better); (c) sustainability across persons (the more popular the better); (d) sustainability across effects (the more positive knock-on effects, the better); and (e) sustainability across structures (the more scalable and transferable across contexts, the better). it is possible that the term “positive” serves similar functions in the hybrid paradigms noted above. that is, fields such as education may have been inspired or encouraged by pp to develop a more positive orientation within their own context. however, that would not make the paradigms above “true” hybrids, but rather just parallel fields that have evolved towards a comparable ethos, towards their own “version” of pp. in that case, for instance, “positive education” would not mean that education has incorporated elements of pp, but rather has just followed its example in also developing a positive orientation within its own parameters. that might mean encouraging students to prioritise their academic strengths and skills, say, rather than fixing their academic weaknesses. we might refer to such examples as “nominal hybrids.” conversely, though, it is possible that such fields are genuine hybrids, in that a given field has a genuine and meaningful relationship with pp. this would mean that the field is drawing on ideas, theories, and practices that could be said to specifically pertain to pp, from resilience to gratitude. thus, in that sense, “positive education” might include helping students to cultivate resilience and gratitude within an educational context (see e.g., l. waters, 2014). in contrast to nominal hybrids, these “genuine” pairings could be referred to as “substantive hybrids.” in these instances, rather than the prefix simply being “positive,” one could argue that the prefix is actually “positive psychology,” but that the labels for the fields are being elided in such a way that the term “psychology” has been concealed (thus “positive psychology education,” say, is simply rendered as “positive education”). questions around hybridisation are particularly intriguing where pp shares close conceptual and practical affinities with the field with which it is being paired. this is the case with the intersection between pp and coaching (c) – and relatedly between pp and coaching psychology (cp) – where many scholars have noted their convergences (e.g., biswas-diener, 2010; kauffman, 2006; linley & harrington, 2007; oades & passmore, 2014). for instance, linley and harrington (2007) suggest that both pp and c/cp: (1) are focused on the improvement of performance and well-being (as per pawelski’s (2016a) “positive orientation” and “positive aim”); (2) assume the possibility of optimal environmental conditions that can/do promote flourishing; and (c) are concerned with developing strengths and fostering their domino effects across all domains of a person’s life. such are the convergences that the conjoining of these fields – as per emergent paradigms such as “positive psychology coaching” (passmore & oades, 2014, p.68) – constitutes a particularly interesting instance of hybridisation. however, the nature of their intersection remains a matter of debate. as such, exploring this intersection represents a fascinating case study for interrogating the hybridisation phenomenon more generally. before considering the interaction between pp and c/cp though, it will help to consider the disciplines separately. for there is on-going debate as to what these fields are in themselves, which complicates the issue of understanding their interaction. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 2. what is positive psychology? the status and identity of pp has always been somewhat opaque and contested. the field was initiated by martin seligman and colleagues in the late 1990s as a way of redressing a perceived “negative bias” in mainstream psychology (a move conceptualised by pawelski (2016a) as pp’s foundational “positive orientation”). psychology as a whole was appraised as focusing primarily on disorder and dysfunction, with little attention paid – outside of certain pockets of scholarship, like humanistic psychology (waterman, 2013) – to more “positive” aspects of human functioning, from flourishing to fulfilment. hence the value of a drive to redress that imbalance, legitimising and encouraging exploration of these more “positive” phenomena (the “positive topography” in pawelski’s (2016a) analysis). for many people attracted to pp though, it was not a new field or speciality per se, but rather a “collective identity” unifying researchers interested in “the brighter sides of human nature” (linley & joseph, 2004, p.4). according to that dominant perspective, pp is more an ethos, a way of “leaning towards” positive topics that is open to scholars and practitioners in established psychological fields, from clinical psychologists (e.g., wood & tarrier, 2010) to neuroscientists (e.g., urry et al., 2004). alignment to this mind-set and identitynarrative served to unify disparate scholars already working on topics that are now regarded as falling within the purview of pp, such as positive emotions or psychological development. more recently though, there have also been efforts to delineate pp as a specific discipline, endowing it with a distinct professional identity along the lines of specialities such as health or clinical psychology (lomas & ivtzan, 2016a). part of the impetus for this move comes from the community of postgraduate pp courses, whose numbers have greatly expanded in recent years, organically leading to some graduates and scholars self-identifying as pp “practitioners”, and even as “positive psychologists” (though this label is contentious, not least since “psychologist” is usually a protected title in most jurisdictions). two contrasting perspectives on the nature of pp are therefore emerging. the “ethos” perspective states that pp is potentially open to, and conducted by, scholars across all and any areas of psychology (and indeed other academic and professional fields, such as social work or nursing). for instance, a clinical psychologist interested in theories and practices pertaining to flourishing could be said to be aligned or engaged with pp, as for instance elucidated by wood and tarrier (2010) in their notion of “positive clinical psychology.” conversely, the “discipline” perspective views pp more as a distinct speciality, an identifiable branch of psychology – equivalent to clinical or counselling psychology, say – whereby a scholar can specialise in pp (lomas & ivtzan, 2016a). of course, these two perspectives are not mutually exclusive. it is perfectly feasible for one scholar from a distinct branch of psychology (such as clinical psychology) to take a keen interest in pp, and so affiliate to it from an ethos perspective, and for another scholar to primarily view themselves as being situated within pp, and so to self-identify with it from a discipline perspective. the issue of what pp is, exactly, nonetheless remains open. beyond generalities such as focusing on “the brighter sides of human nature” (linley & joseph, 2004, p.4), what are pp’s defining characteristics? various definitions of pp have been advanced over the years. for instance, linley and harrington (2007) define it as “the scientific study of optimal functioning, focusing on aspects of the human condition that lead to happiness, fulfilment, and flourishing” (p.13). a broader and more generic definition is offered by lomas, hefferon, and ivtzan (2015), who position pp as the “science and practice of improving wellbeing” (p.1347). this latter definition aligns with pawelski’s (2016a) analysis of pp’s “positive aim,” in which he identifies pp’s “ultimate goal” as “providing an empirical vision for understanding and cultivating wellbeing” (p.343). in these operationalisations, wellbeing is an all-encompassing term, enfolding the various components identified by linley and harrington (2007) (e.g., optimal http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 functioning, happiness, fulfilment, and flourishing). indeed, wellbeing is increasingly favoured in academia as a broad, overarching, multidimensional term, incorporating all the ways in which a person might hope to do or be well (de chavez, backett-milburn, parry, & platt, 2005), including physical health (larson, 1999), social relationships (bourdieu, 1986), cognitive performance (tang et al., 2007), and positive emotions (diener, 2000). for instance, pollard and davidson (2001) define wellbeing as “a state of successful performance across the life course integrating physical, cognitive and social-emotional function” (p.10). that said, in identifying pp as being focused on wellbeing, it is worth noting that wellbeing can be appraised in either deficit-based negative terms, or asset-based positive terms. with the former, wellbeing consists in the absence of some undesirable quality or process, whereas in the latter it means the presence of some desirable quality or process. an absence of a deficit does not necessarily entail the presence of an asset, i.e., that people are “flourishing.” one of pp’s foundational metaphors is of a continuum, from a nominal minus 10, through zero, and up to plus 10 (keyes, 2002). on that metaphor, ameliorating deficits such as mental disorder constitutes bringing people up to “zero.” that is hugely beneficial, as far as it goes. but one can still aim to move people into the positive integers. and it is that which pp focuses on, rather than ameliorating deficits (which was a common endeavour across “mainstream” psychology prior to the 1990s, and which retains a strong foothold in many areas, such as clinical psychology). the metaphor is not perfect; for instance, people can be simultaneously situated both in negative territory (e.g., diagnosed with mental illness) and positive territory (e.g., excelling in certain aspects of living) (keyes, 2002). on the whole though, it is a useful schema for how pp sits in relation to other fields that are also concerned with wellbeing (but may do so from a more deficitbased perspective). as a final point, one prominent aspect of pp is the development of “positive psychology interventions” to improve wellbeing, such as gratitude exercises (emmons & mccullough, 2003), as well as applied initiatives geared towards the same end, such as public policy (lomas, 2015b). such activities are known under the generic rubric of “applied positive psychology” (app). collectively, pp and app in this paper will be referred to using the acronym (a)pp. 3. what is coaching and coaching psychology? the roots of coaching stretch back at least as far as classical greece, where elite athletes were coached by professional trainers (allen, 2016). this foundational association with sporting endeavour continues to the present day (palmer & whybrow, 2014), representing one of the first instances of coaching being studied in an academic context, namely through the work of griffith (1926), a sports psychologist. rather than viewing sports coaching as simply a form of instruction (i.e., regarding the physical skill required for a given sport), griffith viewed the coach as also taking on the broader role of “teacher,” whose duties included motivating and ministering to the psychological needs of athletes. in the following decades, this notion of coaching was embraced in other areas of activity, most notably business. following work by scholars such as gorby (1937), who suggested that coaching techniques could improve productivity and profitability, the 1940s onwards saw a burgeoning movement within occupational settings to hire coaches to help get the best out of employees. in the early years, such coaching often simply took the form of informal conversations, later followed by more systematically-organised and model-driven forms of coaching interaction (kampa-kokesch & anderson, 2001). this focus on business and occupational settings dominated the theory and practice of coaching for much of the 20th century. then, in more recent decades, coaching has begun to be studied and deployed across myriad settings, outcomes, and endeavours, from health behaviours (young et al., 2014) to family http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 dynamics (allen & huff, 2014). meanwhile, as those developments were taking place, the related concept of coaching psychology (cp) began to be identified, and to be differentiated from coaching. back in the 1950s, lawther (1951) was writing about the “psychology of coaching,” and by the 1960s, the phrase “coaching psychology” had begun to appear in the literature (e.g., gaylord, 1967). however, not until the 1990s did cp as a distinct sub-discipline began to emerge, principally through initiatives such as the foundation of the coaching psychology unit at the university of sydney, and the subsequent establishment of a similar unit at city university london. the emergence of cp was further strengthened through the launch of specialist journals, such as the international coaching psychology review. as part of this emergence, scholars have sought to differentiate cp from coaching per se (passmore & theeboom, 2016). one popular way is to present coaching as an applied activity, and cp as the psychological science of this activity. thus, for instance, the international coach federation defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” as an activity, this need make no explicit reference or recourse to psychological research or theory – although of course the coach may well choose to – but is in essence a process of human interaction between coach and client. cp might then be viewed as the scientific study and understanding of this process. in that sense, the domains of psychology which can inform this endeavour is very broad – from psychodynamic theories and methodology, to psychological perspectives on cognitive development. here we can thus see a parallel with pp and app, in that coaching can be regarded as equivalent to app, and cp to pp. collectively, both coaching and cp in this paper will be referred to using the acronym c(p). in understanding cp as the science of coaching, however, several key questions emerge, which this paper seeks to explore, namely: (a) what is the scope and remit of c(p), and (b), how do these differ from (a)pp? first, the nature of c(p) remains a matter of some debate. for instance, passmore and theeboom (2016, p.30) discuss attempts to fashion a working definition of coaching during a workshop in 2002 at the annual conference of the counselling psychology division of the british psychological society. initially, grant and palmer (2002) proposed that coaching is focused on “enhancing performance in work and personal life domains with normal, non-clinical populations, underpinned by models of coaching in established therapeutic approaches.” however, various critiques were made of that formulation, including in relation to the focus on “normal, non-clinical populations,” since coaching techniques were starting to be offered in clinical domains, and also regarding the assumption that coaching only draws on therapeutic models. consequently, an amended definition was proposed, stating that coaching is concerned with “enhancing wellbeing and performance in personal life and work domains, underpinned by models of coaching in established adult learning or psychological approaches.” what is particularly interesting about this definition is that, apart from the reference to “models of coaching,” it is highly similar to definitions of pp. so too are other definitions of c(p), such as spence’s (2007) explanation that coaching is “primarily concerned with human growth and change, based on the philosophical assumption that individuals have vast reservoirs of untapped potential within them and are naturally inclined towards developing that potential” (p.256). thus, even while the nature of (a)pp and c(p) themselves remains a matter of debate, the fields clearly share significant intersections and overlaps. 4. intersections and overlaps so, (a)pp and c(p) evidently have numerous features in common (linley & harrington, 2007). these include: (1) an applied focus on improving wellbeing and performance (per pawelski’s http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 (2016a) “positive orientation” and “positive aim”); (2) an interest in engendering change across life settings, including personal life and in the workplace; (3) a humanistic emphasis on facilitating development, and helping people fulfil their potential (per pawelski’s “positive process”); and (4) an emphasis (albeit non-exclusively) on working with “normal” (i.e., nonclinical) populations (per pawelski’s “positive target population”). so, what are the differences between (a)pp and c(p)? whenever this question is posed, it is usually in terms of comparing pp (rather than (a)pp more broadly) with coaching (rather than c(p) more broadly). in that respect, many scholars depict their interaction as a mutually beneficial partnership, in which each brings different skills and strengths to the table. in short, pp is often viewed as offering scientific theory and empirical rigour, and coaching as providing applied practices and proficiencies (grant & cavanagh, 2007). for instance, kauffman (2006) describes pp as the “science at the heart of coaching” (p.219), while biswas-diener (2010) positions coaching as “the natural choice for being the applied arm of positive psychology” (p.5). as such, the relationship is often discussed in terms of how pp can further the evidence base and theoretical underpinning that coaching may be seen to lack, while coaching can endow pp with the practical tools that it in turn is lacking (oades & passmore, 2014). however, this formulation would seem to challenge the role of cp as the science of coaching, and also to neglect the emergent praxis of app. after all, describing pp as the “science at the heart of coaching” would appear to supplant the function of cp in this role. and yet there is evidently a flourishing paradigm of cp, as illustrated above. likewise, pp also has its own applied dimension in the form of app. in this sense, the relationship between (a)pp and c(p) is presently unclear. for instance, is coaching itself an example of app? and if it is, one can argue that both pp and cp seek to scientifically study and understand the process of effective coaching. in that case, a range of options for the interaction of (a)pp and c(p) suggest themselves, including: a) (a)pp and c(p) as coterminous: both app and c are essentially forms of coaching, and pp and cp draw on an equally broad range of theory and research in studying them. b) c(p) as a subset of (a)pp: (a)pp encompasses c(p), with app including more forms of practice than c, and pp including a wider range of theory and research than cp. c) (a)pp as a subset of c(p): c(p) encompasses (a)pp, with c including more forms of practice than app, and cp including a wider range of theory and research than pp. d) (a)pp and c(p) as distinctive: both (a)pp and c(p) draw on distinct, albeit potentially partially overlapping, forms of practice (in the case of app and c) and theory and research (in the case of pp and cp). further complicating this picture is the trend towards exploring a closer integration between (a)pp and c(p) (van nieuwerburgh & tunariu, 2013). thus we have seen the emergence of paradigms like “positive psychology coaching” (ppc). passmore and oades (2014) describe this as “coaching approaches that seek to improve short term well-being (i.e. hedonic well-being) and sustainable well-being (i.e. eudaimonic wellbeing) using evidence-based approaches from positive psychology and the science of well-being and enable the person to do this in an ongoing manner after coaching has completed” (p. 68). they propose that ppc is underpinned by four key theories that are often regarded as being the province of pp (cf. pawelski’s (2016a) “positive topography): strengths (proctor, maltby, & linley, 2011); broaden and build (fredrickson, 2009), self-determination (ryan & deci, 2000); and wellbeing generally (seligman, 2012). there is evidence to support the view that the application of these theories influences some of the foci of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 coaching. for example, the identification and use of strengths in coaching settings can promote goal progress (linley, nielsen, gillett, & biswas-diener, 2010), flow (jackson & csikszentmihalyi, 1999) and psychological capital (luthans, avolio, avey, & norman, 2007). as such, given the complexities of the potential relationship between (a)pp and c(p), as elucidated above, further deliberation and research are needed to help us better understand the interaction between (a)pp and c(p), thus facilitating more integrative approaches. such forms of enquiry are particularly relevant given the emergence of courses such as the msc in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology at the university of east london. with this, and other similar initiatives, scholars and students in both arenas – (a)pp and c(p) – are beginning to look meaningfully at their interaction, and in the process help both fields develop and progress. to that end, this paper presents an analysis of several possible ways of conceptualizing their interaction. 5. querying ownership the conventional view is that (a)pp brings theoretical models and empirical research to the relationship, while c(p) offers practical expertise and skills. however, for this view to hold, it would mean that pp has exclusive access to, or ownership of, scientific theory and research, to which cp itself cannot lay claim. similarly, it would mean that coaching has exclusive access to, or ownership of, specific applied practices that “belong” to coaching, and to which app cannot lay claim. however, neither of those arguments can be supported. firstly, it is not the case that specific theories “belong” to pp. consider the theory of self-determination (ryan & deci, 2000). this is often cited as being among the trove of theoretical insights that pp brings to the interaction with coaching (passmore & oades, 2014). however, deci and ryan (1980) had been developing this theory for decades before pp emerged on the scene. moreover, deci and ryan themselves do not appear to strongly align with pp; at most they imply that pp would benefit from fully incorporating the implications of their theory (deci & vansteenkiste, 2004). as such, it would be overweening for pp to claim self-determination theory as “one of its own.” while pp has wholeheartedly embraced the theory (ryan, huta, & deci, 2013), that is not the same as “owning” it. indeed, cp has likewise embraced the theory to its benefit (spence & oades, 2011). thus, selfdetermination is not owned by pp, nor by cp, but rather is harnessed by both. similarly, nor is it that specific practices “belong” to coaching, thus constituting the corpus of applied techniques that it supposedly brings to the (a)pp – c(p) intersection. take the practice of mindfulness for instance – both as a skill/quality manifested by the coach, and as a skill/quality that they might encourage in their client. one might consider this an example of an applied technique that has been utilized within coaching (passmore & marianetti, 2007). however, mindfulness was first harnessed in the west within clinical settings as a treatment for chronic pain (kabat-zinn, 1982). and it was initially developed as a psychospiritual practice within buddhism around 2,500 years ago (lomas, 2017). thus, by no stretch of the imagination does mindfulness “belong” to coaching. likewise, mindfulness has been harnessed by app in applied settings that could not be construed as pertaining to coaching per se, such as in educational contexts (ivtzan & lomas, 2016a). again though, there is no way mindfulness could be regarded as a “positive psychology intervention.” thus, as with self-determination theory, mindfulness constitutes an applied practice (together with concomitant theoretical perspectives) that belongs neither to app nor coaching, but has been profitably harnessed by both. 6. relationship configurations as such, what we have is a vast corpus of psychological theories, evidence-bases, and applied http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 practices – developed across psychology as a whole, and other allied disciplines – that belong neither to (a)pp nor c(p), but can be harnessed by both. thus, both (a)pp and c(p) can be seen as having theoretical/empirical dimensions (i.e., pp and cp), and both have a realm of applied practice (i.e., app and c). if that is the case, then how can we appraise the intersection between (a)pp and c(p)? it seems that this relationship can be configured in one of four main ways – as alluded to above – depending on how generously and expansively one defines the fields. the first way simply views (a)pp and c(p) as fundamentally coterminous, covering the same territory, as outlined in figure 1 below. from that stance, there is essentially nothing in c(p) that could not also be said to pertain to (a)pp, and vice versa. that is, as articulated above, (a)pp and c(p) share numerous aims and concerns, including promoting wellbeing and performance, and facilitating the fulfilment of potential. in that respect, both pp and cp can draw on an equally wide range of theory and research, while at the same time, app would regarded as synonymous with coaching (in this view). in the interests of openness, this is not my view, with my preferred configuration being the fourth one, in which (a)pp and c(p) are overlapping but non-identical. nevertheless, logically, (a)pp and c(p) as coterminous is one model of their interaction, to which some scholars and practitioners may be drawn. for instance, one could imagine this configuration appealing to someone who defines c(p) very broadly (so that every form of interaction in app could be deemed a type of coaching, for instance), while also defining (a)pp somewhat narrowly (so that it excludes interactions that cannot be seen through a coaching prism, such as more systemic initiatives). figure 1. interaction # 1 = (a)pp & c(p) as coterminous (a)pp & c(p) the second perspective takes a more expansive view of (a)pp, and positions c(p) as its subset, as outlined in figure 2 below. from that stance, although (a)pp and c(p) share numerous aims and concerns (e.g., promoting wellbeing and performance), c(p) is not the only means by which these can be achieved. other examples include macro-level initiatives, such as the formation of public policy to promote wellbeing (lomas, 2015). thus, on this view, c(p) could be deemed a subset of the broader field of pp. in this case, one could imagine this configuration appealing to people who primarily affiliate to (a)pp, and have an expansive appreciation for the scope of the field, drawing its boundaries widely so that it intersects with fields ranging from nursing to politics. then, if all coaching was viewed as pertaining to wellbeing in some way, one could see how c(p) would be positioned as just one element of a much broader field of (a)pp. figure 2. interaction # 2: (a)pp as encompassing c(p) a(pp) c(p) conversely, the third perspective reverses the scope of the fields in the second perspective, taking http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 a more expansive view of c(p), and positioning (a)pp as its subset, as outlined in figure 3 below. for instance, whereas c(p) could be regarded as focusing on improving all aspects of life, (a)pp could be deemed as focusing on wellbeing in particular. thus, on this view, (a)pp could be regarded as a subset of the broader field of c(p). in a mirror image of the second perspective, one could envisage this configuration appealing to those who primarily affiliate to (c)p, and have an expansive appreciation for the scope of the field, drawing its boundaries widely so that it not only pertains to wellbeing, but all aspects of functioning. then, if such people have a relatively narrow view of (a)pp – conceptualising it as just involving theories and interventions relating to positive emotions, for instance – then one could see how this might be situated as one aspect of a wider paradigm of c(p). figure 3. interaction # 2: c(p) as encompassing (a)pp c(p) (a)pp finally, one could also configure the relationship whereby (a)pp and c(p) constitute overlapping but not coterminous fields of endeavour. here, (a)pp and c(p) both have theoretical/empirical and applied dimensions in common. however, they also have aspects which pertain to only one of them. if, for example, one defines pp as the “science and practice of improving wellbeing” (lomas et al., 2015, p.1347), this leaves open the possibility of identifying forms of coaching that do not directly pertain to wellbeing, but rather just to performance. for example, a person might receive coaching to better themselves at some discipline, such as job performance. while this activity may of course pertain to wellbeing – such as inducing flow (csikszentmihalyi, 1990) – it does not necessarily. one might conceivably imagine a person improving while deriving no direct wellbeing benefits – such as experiences of pleasure, or health improvements – from doing so. in that respect, (a)pp and c(p) might constitute an overlapping venn diagram, as shown in figure 4 below. figure 4. interaction # 4: (a)pp & c(p) as overlapping (a)pp pcp c(p) 7. identifying territorial claims as noted above, this fourth configuration is my preferred one. so, staying with this perspective for a moment, figure 5 below offers a flow chart for identifying whether a given theory or practice pertains to either (a)pp, c(p), neither, or both – with the latter being an integrative paradigm referred to here as positive coaching psychology (pcp). the first question is whether “it” – the empirical outcomes, theoretical models, or applied practice in question – directly pertains to wellbeing (per pawelski’s (2016a) ultimate “positive aim” of pp). the qualifier “directly” is important here, albeit one that is difficult to definitively judge. that is, it’s helpful to try to http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 differentiate between phenomena that directly and indirectly pertain to wellbeing. after all, just about anything could be said to “indirectly” pertain to wellbeing, inasmuch as it is hard to conceive of something that does not affect wellbeing, however obliquely. to give a random example, honing memory skills through mnemonic techniques indirectly impacts wellbeing in various ways, from improved memory facilitating educational and occupational success, to being better able to recall positive experiences (t. waters, 2014). as such, if we were to consider here phenomena that indirectly affect wellbeing, then all human endeavour might be regarded as within the purview of (a)pp. thus, it would be prudent to at least attempt to only focus on phenomena that directly pertain to wellbeing, even if differentiating between direct and indirect is difficult in practice. this differentiation also means that it is possible to identify forms of c(p) that do not overlap with (a)pp, as alluded to in the paragraph above (e.g., forms of occupational coaching that do not directly focus on enhancing wellbeing). figure 5. flow chart for differentiating between fields if it is ascertained that a given phenomenon (e.g., theory, applied practice) does not directly pertain to wellbeing, then it is not “within the scope” of (a)pp. (the phrase “within the scope” is felicitous here, and preferable to formulations such as “belonging to.” as elucidated above, it is not the case that particular theories, concepts, or practices “belong” exclusively to (a)pp, nor indeed to any other academic field.) that being so, one can then ask whether the phenomenon involves a coaching relationship. of course, there may be variation in how one chooses to define such a relationship, with the possibility of doing so more narrowly (e.g., limiting it to situations in which the participants self-identify as coach and client), or more widely (e.g., all manner of variations on that theme, such as mentoring or teaching). if the phenomenon does not involve such a relationship, then it falls within the scope of neither (a)pp, c(p), nor pcp. if it does, then it may represent a case of c(p) alone (i.e., an instance of c(p) that does not overlap with (a)pp). if the phenomenon does directly pertain to wellbeing, then once again, one can ask whether it features a coaching relationship. if not, then it falls within the scope of (a)pp alone (i.e., an instance of (a)pp that does not overlap with c(p)), whereas if yes, then it represents an instance does it directly pertain to wellbeing? does it involve a coaching relationship? does it involve a coaching relationship? other c(p) (a)pp pcp yes yes yes no no no http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 of pcp (i.e., where (a)pp and c(p) intersect). thus, this chart offers an initial way of appraising the ways in which (a)pp and c(p) overlap and yet also differ. it is hoped this articulation will be useful to proponents of (a)pp and c(p) who are interested in exploring their integration over the coming years. 8. relevance to hybridisation moreover, this analysis may have broader relevance beyond the specific interaction of (a)pp and c(p). a key aim here was for this enquiry to serve as a case study for the myriad other pp hybrids, from “positive education” (seligman et al., 2009) to “positive clinical psychology” (wood & tarrier, 2010). that is not to suggest that in every hybrid, the dynamics will be the same as those identified above with respect to (a)pp and c(p). indeed, there may well be different forms of hybridisation. for instance, a distinction was made in the introduction between “nominal” and “substantive” hybrids. the former is when another field simply harnesses the prefix “positive” – perhaps influenced by pp’s example – thereby developing a positive orientation within its own context. the latter is when a field has genuinely sought a meaningful integration with (a)pp (e.g., incorporating theories closely associated with pp). that said, this distinction does not mean one can definitively pigeon-hole the various hybrids: rather than viewing these two types as exclusive categories, it is perhaps more useful to see them as a continuum, involving greater or lesser degrees of integration with (a)pp. in any case, people may view a given paradigm in different ways – some seeing it more as a nominal hybrid, others as a substantive one – as i shall discuss further below. and then, even if there is general agreement over the type of hybrid, there may well be differences of opinion regarding its nature. all that is to say that the specifics of the analysis above – of the (a)pp c(p) interaction – may not generalise to other hybrids. however, the principles of the analysis above may have broader relevance. so, with any hybrid, one might also usefully look at: (a) ideological diversity; (b) different relationship configurations; (c) issues of ownership; and (d) schematics for identifying territorial claims. with (a), this refers to the likelihood that within any given field or paradigm, there will be a diversity of perspectives with regard to how it intersects with (a)pp. for instance, in their elucidation of “positive clinical psychology,” wood and tarrier (2010) recommend that clinical psychology brings on board the commitment to positivity fostered by pp, while maintaining its concern with “negative” phenomena (i.e., mental illness), thus “integrat[ing] the study and fostering of positive and negative characteristics equally” (p.820); however, they also note that their colleagues may not be uniformly in favour of such integration, with some holding the view that “positive topics are not within the remit of clinical psychology.” such ideological diversity is to be expected, and even encouraged (on the view, as per haidt, rosenberg, and hom (2003), that viewpoint diversity enriches fields and organisations). thus, where hybrid paradigms do exist, it would be worth identifying varying perspectives on the nature of the integration. this could be through analyses like the one conducted here, or a myriad of other ways, from in-depth interviews with practitioners and stakeholders (see bas and firat (2017) in relation to “positive education”), to more extensive surveys of the field. such diversity then impacts upon (b), namely how the relationship between the two fields is configured. in relation to (a)pp – c(p), four alternatives were presented: (1) (a)pp and c(p) as coterminous; (2) c(p) as a subset of (a)pp; (3) (a)pp as a subset of c(p); and (4) (a)pp and c(p) overlapping, but each also possessing distinctive features. it is likely that all hybrids could similarly develop a range of configuration models, which could variously attract proponents within the paradigm. for instance, it has been suggested here that, as per pawelski (2016a), pp’s overall aim is with improving “wellbeing.” there are then interesting conceptual debates http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 regarding the relationship between wellbeing and similarly overarching terms, such as health. for instance, de chavez et al. (2005) argue that some scholars view wellbeing as a subset of a health, whereas for others, wellbeing is the broader term, with health being a subset (one focused on physical wellbeing specifically). as such, in relation to “positive health” (seligman, 2008), one could imagine, (1) some scholars deeming (a)pp a subset of the broader domain of health (premised on wellbeing being a subset of health), (2) others arguing that health is a subset of (a)pp (based on wellbeing as the broader term), (3) yet others proposing various forms of overlap, and (4) still others not seeing an overlap at all (based on the idea that “positive health” is a nominal hybrid, rather than a substantive one). seligman (2008) himself appears to endorse a version of (4), suggesting that “positive health” merely has “parallels” to (a)pp, in that it focuses on “[physical] health rather than illness” (just as pp focuses on mental health rather than mental illness) (p.3). third, with respect to (c), analyses of hybrid paradigms would likely enquire into issues around ownership. it was argued here that particular theories and practices could not be said to “belong” to (a)pp or c(p), but rather just “pertain” to them. wood and tarrier (2010) make a similar point with respect to “positive clinical psychology.” for a start, so-called “positive characteristics,” like resilience, are “causally implicated in the development of disorder, and buffer the impact of life events on distress” (pp.820-821); such topics and qualities are therefore highly germane to clinical psychology, regardless of these also being central to pp. moreover, they argue that “no topic can be deemed as fundamentally “positive” or “negative””, since qualities that are deemed positive can, in their absence, be detrimental to wellbeing; thus, for instance, an inability to forgive can be maladaptive, which then brings the topic of forgiveness within the purview of clinical psychology. indeed, in a similar vein, proponents of so-called “second wave” pp have suggested that it is difficult to categorically identify a given topic as positive or negative, since such appraisals are context dependent (lomas & ivtzan, 2016b). with forgiveness, for example, while this is generally an adaptive process, mcnulty and fincham (2011) argue that this can, under certain contexts (e.g., on-going abusive relationships) be ultimately detrimental to wellbeing. thus, within every hybrid paradigm, there are debates to be had around which topics or practices “belong” or “pertain” to either of the partner fields. finally, following on from (3), point (4) holds that it may be possible to develop rubrics for identifying “territorial claims” with respect to the fields that form the hybrid paradigms. here, a flow chart was offered for differentiating between theories and practices that pertain to: (a) (a)pp alone, (b) c(p) alone, (c) both (a)pp and c(p) (labelled here as pcp), and (d) neither. in that case, the relevant questions determining the “flow” were “does it directly pertain to wellbeing?” (whereby a negative answer would take the phenomenon in question out of the purview of (a)pp), and “does it involve a coaching relationship?” (whereby a negative answer would take it out of the purview of c(p)). one could imagine similar heuristics being created with respect to other hybrids. take “positive education,” for instance. in that case, the first question could remain operative (where a negative answer would take the phenomenon out of the purview of (a)pp), but the second question could be “does it pertain to educational settings?” (whereby a negative answer would take it out of the purview of education). in that case, there may well be: per (a), aspects of (a)pp that are not directly relevant to education (although that of course depends upon how widely one views the remit of education), such as topics relating to physical health; per (b), aspects of education that are not directly relevant to (a)pp (although that too depends upon how widely one views the remit of (a)pp), such as protocols around examinations and marking; per (c), topics that pertain to both (a)pp and education, and so fall do within the remit of “positive education,” such as deployment of the strengths paradigm http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychology coaching lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 within the classroom (see e.g., white & waters, 2015); and per (d), phenomena related to neither (a)pp nor education. 9. conclusion the analysis here sheds light on the intersection between (a)pp and c(p), and moreover has broader relevance to the various hybrid paradigms that have emerged over recent years. in relation to the (a)pp – c(p) intersection specifically, the findings here challenged the conventional assumption that pp brings empirical science to the partnership while coaching provides practical expertise. rather, i suggested that both (a)pp and c(p) draw on a common body of theories and practice, which as such, “belong” to neither field. i then set our four possible permutations for the interactions of the fields: (1) (a)pp and c(p) as coterminous; (2) c(p) as a subset of (a)pp; (3) (a)pp as a subset of c(p); and (4) (a)pp and c(p) overlapping, but each also possessing distinctive features. i then noted my preference for the fourth configuration, and in that respect, presented a flow-chart that allows one to differentiate between theories/practices that pertain to: (a) (a)pp alone; (b) c(p) alone; (c) both (a)pp and c(p) (labelled here as pcp); and (d) neither. i then argued that, while other hybrid paradigms may differently conceptualise the relationship between pp and the particular field, many of the same questions and principles applied in the analysis here will still be relevant. these include issues around: (a) ideological diversity; (b) different relationship configurations; (c) ownership; and (d) identifying territorial claims. it is hoped that this analysis will be useful to scholars and practitioners in (a)pp and c(p), and in all the fields with which (a)pp is entering hybrid relationships, thereby allowing such hybridisation to further develop and prosper over the coming years and decades. authors tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk publishing timeline received 7 december 2019 accepted 20 april 2020 published 1 june 2020 references allen, k. 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(2023). psychedelics and psychological strengths. international journal of wellbeing, 13(1), 1-35. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i1.2325 trey brasher stockton university treybrasher@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article psychedelics and psychological strengths trey brasher · david rosen · marcello spinella abstract: classical psychedelics appear efficacious in improving psychological well-being in randomized clinical trials, but their effects in the population at large are relatively unknown. in the present paper, which includes three studies conducted by online survey with a collective 3,157 participants, classical psychedelic users showed greater psychological strengths and well-being, and lower levels of distress, after controlling for demographic variables, respondents’ beliefs about the potential benefits of psychedelics, and their use of other psychoactive drugs. these benefits contrast with patterns for cannabis and alcohol users, both of whom showed comparatively maladaptive profiles. reported relationships between psychedelic use and the combined index of psychological strengths was fully mediated by selftranscendence. we show an effect of motivation for psychedelic use, where those who reported a ‘growth’ motivation showed the most robustly adaptive psychological profile. psychedelic users reported more lifetime meditation experience, and within psychedelic users, greater frequency of use correlated with greater hours of lifetime seated meditation practice. meditation experience did not account for the differences in strengths, well-being, and distress. in these studies, psychedelic users showed an adaptive psychological pattern on a wider array of strengths than previously studied, which were not attributable to several salient covariates. while causality cannot be inferred from this study, findings align with and advance past research which provides evidence for the potential benefits associated with psychedelics. keywords: psychedelics; positive psychology; psychological strengths; mindfulness; selftranscendence; entheogens 1. introduction there is a current resurgence in the research and clinical applications of classical psychedelics119, namely psilocybin, dmt/ayahuasca, lysergic acid diethylamide (lsd), mescaline, and analogous drugs, which have common pharmacodynamic mechanisms as agonists at the 5-ht2a receptor116. in addition to experimental and clinical trials, these drugs have been widely used in the general population. in the united states alone, the estimated lifetime prevalence of use is about 10% of the population, or approximately 32 million individuals85. classical psychedelics have been shown to produce long-lasting trait changes in certain aspects of personality, which were thought to be relatively stable across the lifetime79,91. notably, psychological changes derived from a single psychedelic experience in the context of clinical trials can last between 4-14 months56,58,76,148,177, and some research suggests changes may persist longer than currently demonstrated, even up to a lifetime43. in this prospective survey-based study, we attempt to expand upon the set of psychological traits conceivably altered by psychedelic use. about:blank psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 2. background psychedelics have been associated with a range of both stateand trait-level psychological characteristics 79. pre/post changes in the following areas have been shown in trials of psychedelicassisted psychotherapy: improvements in mood/positive affect84,141, increased overall wellbeing56,133,141,158,167, increased openness29,78,103,142, increased mindfulness61,104,135,147, increased empathy44 increased meaning in life141 , decreased depression3,55,57 and anxiety63 , and decreased substance misuse3,51,53. a number of these findings were explicit therapeutic targets for the clinical trials, others unanticipated and oblique to the stated aims, while nonetheless psychologically beneficial, and attributable to the psychedelic experience in a therapeutic setting103. these findings raise the possibility that the use of classical psychedelics in non-clinical contexts also might lead to lasting trait changes. preliminary research suggests this might be the case. changes in the following traits have been shown pre/post treatment with psychedelics in a structured but naturalistic setting (e.g. an ayahuasca ceremony): increased acceptance151, increases in trait selftranscendence17,19, improved physical health8, increased meaning in life17, increased mindfulness152, increased self-compassion135, increases in both agreeableness and openness8, decreased substance misuse157, decreased physical pain7, and improved convergent and divergent thinking181. in these non-clinical experimental settings, as with clinical settings, changes in psychological traits often persist, sometimes for years1,9,17,26,56,101. prospective studies, conducted by online surveys, have reported relationships between the use of psychedelics in a naturalistic setting and changes on a largely overlapping set of psychological measures, as shown in clinical trials and non-clinical experimental settings. previously reported differences include an increased sense of meaning in life59,77, increased selfcompassion153, increased prosociality72,168,179, increased empathy95, increased openness117, greater overall well-being24, greater life satisfaction24, and less substance misuse77. of these studies, only lerner & lyvers (2006)95, walsh et al. (2016)168 and hendricks et al. (2018)71 report findings comparing psychedelic users to non-users, and only hendricks et al. (2018)72 reports findings from a large sample of the united states population. these psychological attributes, potentially altered by the use of classical psychedelics, are generally associated with greater overall psychological well-being in the psychological literature, as well as in the psychedelic literature specifically79,123. beyond these changes, naturalistic (e.g. non-clinical) psychedelic use in us population level samples is associated with an equal or reduced instance of mental health problems, psychological distress, and suicidality70,74. the aggregate psychedelic literature suggests the potential for increases in positive psychological traits56,79 as well as possible reductions in psychological maladies58,70. psychedelics dose-dependently produce distinct neural correlates and a concomitant subjective experience variously called a peak experience82, mystical experience60, selftranscendence128, or ego dissolution91,92,110. this type of unitive experience entails a constellation of subjective correlates including feelings of a dissolution of the boundaries between self and other, subject and object, the self and the external world, and a sense of union with something larger than oneself27. in modern literature, self-transcendence and ego dissolution are often used interchangeably128. while self-transcendence is generally measured as an acute state, psychedelic use has also been found to increase trait self-transcendence, a more enduring aspect of selfidentification with a larger whole17,19. state self-transcendence scores are reliably positively correlated with clinical outcomes3,15,39,51,91,117, 110,132,133. particularly germane in the context of this paper, the degree of participants’ self-transcendence or ego dissolution experiences correlated with long term positive psychological effects beyond the scope of explicitly desired clinical outcome(s)58,76,148. naturalistic psychedelic users appear to experience similarly meaningful peak http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 experiences as those demonstrated in clinical settings35,59,60,102,180 which also mediate positive outcomes52,77. second-wave psychedelic studies report mostly positive psychological effects. it should be noted that this is not always the case. negative affect, including extreme anxiety and fear are reportedly common during psychedelic experiences (39%), which include a clinical setting58. other studies report ‘challenging experiences’ in 40% of participants in a clinical setting51. in an online self-report survey study with a large sample size (n = 1993), 8% of participants indicated that their psychedelic experience(s) actually decreased their life satisfaction and well-being 24. it is strongly suspected that in rare cases naturalistic psychedelic use can provide a stressor that leads to a psychotic break in users predisposed to psychosis32,183,184,185. despite this suspicion, both past and current studies investigate(d) psychedelics for the potential treatment of psychosis186. 3. purpose/hypotheses several lasting trait level changes have been shown in the psychedelic literature, however, subjective reports of psychedelic use, such as those found on reddit.com/psychedelics or erowid.org/experiences, can include a wider array of benefits and drawbacks than the ones established to date by quantitative studies136. these indicate effects of psychedelic use may not be limited to hitherto measured domains. most studies focus on one or two key psychological traits that may indicate treatment efficacy79. the aim of this study was to replicate traits altered in clinical trials in a larger survey-based sample while measuring an expanded array of traits that might be associated with psychedelic use. the present studies were undertaken in an iterative manner for the accrual and honing of a battery of psychological traits which might be associated with the use of classical psychedelics as well as internal replications of such findings. the rationale for including three studies is to indicate the way in which multiple studies homed in on a battery of traits that seemed to replicate and remain consistently different between psychedelic users and non-users. in study 1, we began by establishing links between psychedelic use and well-being and mindfulness measures, as well as measures of self-transcendence, all previously shown in the literature to be significantly altered by psychedelic experience(s), as well as some exploratory measures. in study 2, we expanded mindfulness and related measures, replicated well-being and self-transcendence measures, and added exploratory measures of maladaptive social functioning. we also expanded covariates and introduced a comparison between psychedelic users and users of cannabis and alcohol to ascertain if the psychedelic profile appeared unique. in study 3, we included the widest range of traits for which we previously saw associations, applied both the covariates and cannabis/alcohol comparisons, and conducted a meditation analysis to see if, like in clinical research, differences were mediated by the degree of self-transcendence. we inquired into participants’ ‘motivation’ for psychedelic use, analyzed the differences between intentions, and added beliefs about psychedelics as covariates. we apply the terms “adaptive” and “maladaptive” to indicate directionality in all study analyses and the final figure. “adaptive” indicates differences in a direction shown to contribute to psychological health, and “maladaptive” indicates differences in a direction shown to be associated with poorer psychological health. based on previously reported findings in the literature, we hypothesized that lifetime psychedelic users would score significantly higher on adaptive psychological traits as well as significantly lower on maladaptive traits, while controlling for salient covariates, and that differences in these traits would be mediated by self-transcendence. further, we predicted that http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 the intention among psychedelic users to use the substances for personal growth, as opposed to fun/recreation, would predict the largest differences in psychological strengths. 4. participant recruitment participants were recruited via email and social media by undergraduate students at a northeastern university who received a small amount of course credit for participation as well as participant recruitment, where not participating had no effect on students’ course grades. participants were naive to the purpose of the studies. students could send a link to the survey via email or social media to up to ten individuals unrelated to the class, as well as fill it out themselves. it was specified that participants must be community-dwelling adults, age 18-years or older. this type of sample recruitment allowed for a more demographically diverse sample (in terms of age, education level, etc.) than limiting the sample to college students or online psychedelic-themed forums, as well as a greater diversity of opinions and attitudes surrounding psychedelics. a link to a google forms survey was provided that had an informed consent, demographic questions (age, sex, years of formal education, religious affiliation, and lifetime hours of meditation), and a survey that was approved by the stockton university institutional review board, in accordance with the ethical principles of the american psychological association and the declaration of helsinki. data were imported into spss to be analyzed. effect sizes are reported as partial eta squared values from spss in accordance with the cutoff values suggested by cohen, 201333 . to improve data validity, two instructed response items were included in the survey (e.g. “please click on number 5 for this item.”) participants who did not answer both items correctly were dropped from analyses. further, extreme univariate outliers (>3.0 sd beyond the mean) were also dropped from analyses36,108. rather than studies specifically targeting psychedelic users and relying on prevs. posttreatment self-reported changes3,59, we gathered large samples without indicating the purpose of the study. this allowed direct comparison between psychedelic users and non-users. since experimental and clinical trials tend to have limited sample sizes, correlational studies may help establish if those results are seen in larger populations. correlational studies can also investigate whether any of the findings of clinical trials are found when a controlled clinical setting and trained clinician are not present37,139. second generation psychedelic research findings are potentially skewed toward positive results given participant recruitment in clinical trials relies on self-selection and often targeted social media ad campaigns all but ensuring participants have a positive view of psychedelics. previous survey studies3,52,59 have recruited almost exclusively from psychedelic-related internet forums and social media platforms targeting psychedelic users. while these types of studies can provide proof of concept-style evidence, the present studies utilized broader samples, including both users and non-users. further, the psychedelic users in these samples were not limited to those who are self-motivated to use specialized psychedelic internet forums, or those who are algorithmically selected for social media advertisement targeting based on a history of interest in psychedelics. while our recruitment method is a type of convenience sample, the lack of targeting and hidden purpose of the study insulates the results from the types of biases pervasive in even well designed modern psychedelic studies. larger samples allow for greater statistical power in analyses and controlling for the potential influence of several demographic or other social and behavioral confounds. a particularly salient confound is the influence of the use of other psychoactive drugs, which may not be uncommon among psychedelic users115 . if so, then other studies have, in effect, been evaluating polydrug users and not controlling for these extraneous and confounding effects, rather than isolating the influence of classic psychedelic use. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 5. study 1 the goal of study 1 was to establish whether people who have used classical psychedelics one or more times show greater well-being and mindfulness than non-users across measures. this study also examined self-transcendence using a variety of validated measures. increases in trait mindfulness have been reported after use in both laboratory and naturalistic settings56,59,61,148. there appear to be phenomenological similarities99 , neurophysiological similarities111, and mindfulness meditation and the psychedelic experiences have been shown to combine to synergic effect146 . long-term meditation practice is associated with greater self-transcendence, and both long term meditation and the use of classical psychedelics have been associated with altered connectivity of the default mode network (dmn)164,175 . models have shown selftranscendence, mindfulness, self-compassion, and emotion regulation are interrelated, collectively reducing negative emotion and increasing psychological well-being166 . given these overlaps we sought to examine the relationships between psychedelic use and selftranscendence, mindfulness, compassion for oneself and others, positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction. it was hypothesized that psychedelic users, compared to non-users, would demonstrate higher scores on these measures, apart from negative affect, after controlling for demographic influences and meditation experience. 5.1 methods 5.1.1 survey completion, demographics, and measures participants (n = 465) completed demographic and characteristic surveys (see supplement 1), as well as psychological well-being surveys with measures including but not limited to measures of self-transcendence, positive psychological and psychological distress measures (see supplement 2 for a full list). all measures, unless otherwise specified, used a 7-point likert-type scale to provide consistency across items. where possible, shorter scales, or shorter versions, were chosen to maximize the array of constructs measured and minimize participant burden. intrascale reliabilities (cronbach’s α) obtained in this sample are reported here for all relevant scales. see supplement 1 for survey completion statistics and demographic information and supplement 2 for a full list of questions/scales included. 5.1.2 procedure the procedure for all 3 studies is described in the introduction. participant data and validity are detailed in supplement 1 for all three studies. 5.1.3 data transformation data were inspected for skewness before statistical testing. since the statistical tests to be used (e.g. mancova) assume a normal distribution, any variables with a considerable degree of skewness (> .3 or < -.3) were subjected to data transformation in order to normalize their distribution157 . all scores for all scales were converted into standardized scores and then t-scores (m = 50, sd = 10) to serve a standard for comparison across measures with different scoring systems157 . see supplement 5 for details. 5.2 results 5.2.1 analysis of covariance (ancova). an ancova controlling for age, sex, and education showed that psychedelic users reported more hours of lifetime meditation practice than non-users [f(1,460) = 3.86, p > .001, ηp² = .04], m http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 = 814.0 sd = 2428.3 vs. m = 231.0 sd = 1538.3, respectively. thus, lifetime meditation experience was used as a covariate, along with demographic variables, in the subsequent analysis to disentangle that behavior from any results obtained. see supplement 4 for full ancova. 5.2.1 multivariate analyses of covariance (mancova). a mancova was performed to examine differences between lifetime psychedelic users vs. nonusers to more conservatively protect against both type i error and the chance that covariables were influencing the outcome. this result was significant, f(11,445) = 3.71, p <= .001; wilk's λ = .92, ηp² = .08. the mancova controlled for the covariates of age, sex, education, having a religious affiliation, and lifetime hours of meditation. significant differences in the predicted direction were observed for all measures except mindfulness. see table 1 for results. psychedelic psychedelic users nonusers m (se) m (se) f ηp² directionality mysticism 54.1 (1.3) 49.2 (.5) 6.47‡ .10 a inclusive identity 53.9 (1.2) 49.3 (.5) 8.54‡ .13 a self-transcendence 50.7 (1.2) 49.7 (.5) 6.32‡ .10 a mindfulness 50.6 (1.2) 50.0 (.5) 1.20 equanimity 53.0 (1.2) 49.6 (.5) 7.19‡ .11 a kindness (fsa) 52.1 (1.3) 49.6 (.5) 3.97‡ .07 a self-compassion 53.2 (1.2) 49.4 (.5) 9.64‡ .15 a life satisfaction 50.3 (1.2) 50.0 (.5) 5.87‡ .09 a positive affect 50.5 (1.2) 49.8 (.5) 3.81‡ .06 a negative affect 49.5 (1.2) 50.1 (.5) 2.46* .04 a *a = adaptive, m = maladaptive table 1. study 1 mancova of differences between psychedelic users (n = 72) and non-users (n = 392) on psychological strengths and affect. means and standard errors (in parentheses) are provided. analysis is controlling for age, sex, education, religious affiliation, antianxiety/antidepressant medication, and lifetime meditation hours. significance: *p <= .05, †p <= .01, ‡p <= .001. bold indicates medium-large effect size. 5.3 discussion these results are consistent with the hypothesis that psychedelics are associated with greater well-being and psychological traits linked to it. consistent with clinical trials, psychedelic users showed greater self-transcendence on three different scales, greater positive emotion, and less negative emotion. they further showed greater mindful acceptance (i.e. equanimity), kind attitudes towards others, self-compassion, and overall life satisfaction. these are adaptive characteristics that link to greater well-being across multiple domains166. contrary to predictions, no differences were found in mindful awareness. effect sizes were moderate apart from a small effect size for negative affect and large effect sizes for inclusive identity and self-compassion. by statistically controlling for demographic factors and meditation experience, we eliminate possible confounds. this approach particularly critical for meditation, since the subjective results of meditation practices and psychedelic use share some overlap111. indeed, psychedelic users in this http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 sample reported substantially more meditation experience than non-users, but this difference was not responsible for the group differences observed. 6. study 2 the goal of study 2 was to replicate and expand the findings of study 1 regarding psychological measures associated with psychedelic use. study 2 expanded mindfulness and related measures. the measure of mindfulness used in study 1 (pm.awa) explicitly focuses on awareness of thoughts and emotions. in contrast, the items of the mindful attention awareness scale (maas) deal with the degree of mind wandering23. the maas has been demonstrated to relate to functional connectivity in the dmn13,45; both psychedelics and mindfulness alone, as well as in concert, are known to modulate connectivity in the dmn with lasting effects148; for this reason, the maas may present a relevant measure related to potential alterations in the dmn, whose structure and function relate to the degree of self-transcendence reported19,28. on this evidence we suspect the maas may be more sensitive to psychedelic related alterations. we measured gratitude with the g3, forgiveness with the ttf22 , and humility with the hum. these are three psychological strengths consistently associated with greater mental and physical well-being and potentially associated with psychedelic use172,173,174. study 2 added exploratory measures of maladaptive social functioning. greed, malicious envy, and chronic hostility are indicative of maladaptive patterns that relate to poorer cognitive, emotional, and social functioning, as well as physical health89,109,112,145. study 2 replicated and expanded well-being and self-transcendence measures. meaning in life and life satisfaction are overarching aspects of functioning that relate to multiple psychological strengths and adaptive functioning in many aspects of life41,69,125. psychological well-being, health, and sleep quality are interrelated, with psychological strengths possibly exerting influence on well-being through health behaviors, physiological processes, and/or coping ability122,154. perceived social support and perceived health were measured rather than attempting to measure actual support or health since perceived aspects involve psychological interpretation of events and are more closely tied to well-being64,107,134. whereas study 1 inquired about attitudes of kindness, we sought to examine whether this translated into prosocial behavior. we inquired about the number of days per month, on average, people spent a significant part of their day volunteering or helping others. we inquired about the lifetime use of other psychoactive drugs. use of one class of psychoactive substances has been shown to predict increased odds of using others140. this highlights the likelihood that many psychedelic users may have used other categories of psychoactive drugs. to determine whether the characteristics associated with psychedelic users are specific to psychedelic use, it would be necessary to control for the potentially confounding effects of the concomitant use of other psychoactive substances. beyond controlling for substance use, study 2 expanded covariates by introducing a comparison between psychedelic users and users of cannabis and alcohol to ascertain if the psychedelic profile appeared unique. income and work status were also gathered as covariates. it was again hypothesized that psychedelic users would score higher in measures of wellbeing, mindfulness, self-transcendence and volunteering behavior and lower in maladaptive characteristics (greed, malicious envy, and chronic hostility) relative to non-users and that these differences would again be independent of demographic variables as well as lifetime nonmedical use of other classes of psychoactive drugs (alcohol, cannabis, opioids, sedatives, 3,4methylenedioxymethamphetamine [mdma], dissociative, and major stimulants). it was http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 hypothesized the profile for psychedelic users would be distinct compared with cannabis and alcohol users. 6.1 methods 6.1.1 survey completion, demographics, and measures same as study 1, see supplement 1 for survey completion and demographics and supplement 2 for measures. the final sample was n = 1550. 6.1.2 procedure the procedures for participant recruitment, data collection, response validity, and data transformation were the same as in study 1. see supplemental material 1 for transformations 156. to assess lifetime and recent psychoactive drug use, participants were inquired about their lifetime use of opioids, major stimulants, cannabis, mdma, sedatives, classic psychedelics, and dissociatives (ketamine or pcp). the questions specified non-medical use only. participants were asked to estimate the number of times they used each class of drug using a likert-type ordinal scale (never = 0, once or twice = 1, 3-10 times = 2, 11-19 times = 3, 20-50 times = 4, 51-99 times = 5, 100+ times = 6), which was also used to dichotomize into those who had ever vs. never used a drug in each category. 6.2 results 6.2.1 psychoactive drug usage see supplement 1. 6.2.2 correlations non-parametric, spearman’s rho (df = 1548) tests were used to correlate use of psychedelics and other drugs since ordinal ratings were used. correlations were significant and positive between psychedelic use and use of all other classes of drugs (p < .001). this indicates the need for controlling for the use of other non-psychedelic classes of drugs as covariates in the subsequent analyses. see supplement 3. 6.2.3 multivariate analyses of covariance a mancova examining differences between psychedelic users versus nonusers on the wellbeing measures was significant [f(14,1496) = 2.38, p = .003; wilk's λ = .98, ηp² = .02]. the mancova controlled for the covariates of age, sex, education, ethnicity, affiliation with a religion, student status, and the non-medical use of other classes of drugs(major stimulants, sedatives, opioids, cannabis, mdma, and alcohol). significant differences were observed on all well-being measures except for sleep quality. all measures, except for perceived social support, were in the predicted direction, i.e. showing a relatively more adaptive pattern in psychedelic users. see table 2 (below) for results. 6.2.4 cannabis to compare these results with cannabis use, a mancova was performed to examine differences between cannabis users versus nonusers on the well-being measures, controlling for demographic variables and use of other psychoactive drugs. this result was significant for cannabis use [f(14,1496) = 3.24, p <= .001; wilk's λ = .97, ηp² = .03]. the mancova controlled for http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 the covariates of age, sex, education, ethnicity, affiliation with a religion, student status, and the non-medical use of other non-cannabis classes of drugs (major stimulants, sedatives, opioids, psychedelics, mdma, and alcohol). significant differences were seen in all measures except sleep quality, with effect sizes ranging from small to medium. differences were in the adaptive direction on six measures and maladaptive on the remaining six measures. see table 2 and figure 3 for results. psychedelics cannabis alcohol users nonusers users nonusers users nonusers m (se) m (se) f d m (se) m (se) f d m (se) m (se) f d mindfulness 51.5 (0.8) 49.6 (0.3) 8.60‡ ↑ 49.8 (0.3) 50.1 (0.4) 8.60‡ ↓ 49.8 (0.3) 50.1 (0.5) 8.31‡ ↓ equanimity 50.8 (0.8) 49.8 (0.3) 10.07‡ ↑ 49.6 (0.3) 50.5 (0.4) 10.07‡ ↓ 49.6 (0.3) 50.6 (0.5) 10.07‡ ↓ gratitude 51.2 (0.8) 49.7 (0.3) 3.58‡ ↑ 50.1 (0.3) 49.7 (0.5) 3.58‡ ↑ 49.9 (0.3) 50.0 (0.5) 3.54‡ ↓ forgiveness 50.6 (0.8) 49.9 (0.3) 3.91‡ ↑ 49.7 (0.3) 50.6 (0.5) 3.91‡ ↓ 50.3 (0.3) 49.4 (0.5) 3.99‡ ↑ humility 51.9 (0.8) 49.7 (0.3) 3.23‡ ↑ 50.5 (0.3) 49.4 (0.4) 3.23‡ ↑ 49.6 (0.3) 51.1 (0.5) 3.13‡ ↓ perceived support 49.5 (0.8) 50.4 (0.3) 2.42‡ ↓ 50.2 (0.3) 50.4 (0.5) 2.42‡ ↓ 50.4 (0.3) 50.0 (0.5) 2.45‡ ↑ inclusive identity 51.1 (0.8) 49.8 (0.3) 3.26‡ ↑ 50.7 (0.3) 48.8 (0.5) 3.26‡ ↑ 50.0 (0.3) 49.9 (0.5) 3.24‡ ↑ self-trans. 52.7 (0.8) 49.4 (0.3) 4.63‡ ↑ 50.4 (0.3) 49.2 (0.4) 4.63‡ ↑ 49.9 (0.3) 50.1 (0.5) 4.59‡ ↓ sleep quality 50.2 (0.8) 50.1 (0.3) 1.51 50.0 (0.3) 50.2 (0.5) 1.51 50.5 (0.3) 49.4 (0.5) 1.6 perceived health 51.1 (0.8) 50.2 (0.3) 1.69* ↑ 50.5 (0.3) 50.1 (0.5) 1.69* ↑ 50.8 (0.3) 49.4 (0.5) 2.05† ↑ volunteering 50.4 (0.8) 49.9 (0.3) 2.51‡ ↑ 49.3 (0.3) 51.0 (0.5) 2.51‡ ↓ 49.8 (0.3) 50.2 (0.5) 2.40‡ ↓ greed 48.1 (0.8) 50.3 (0.3) 13.36‡ ↓ 50.5 (0.3) 49.1 (0.4) 13.36‡ ↑ 50.8 (0.3) 48.4 (0.4) 12.97‡ ↑ envy 48.0 (0.8) 50.0 (0.3) 9.23‡ ↓ 49.6 (0.3) 50.0 (0.4) 9.23‡ ↓ 50.3 (0.3) 48.6 (0.5) 8.97‡ ↑ hate 48.7 (0.8) 50.0 (0.3) 9.84‡ ↓ 50.2 (0.3) 49.0 (0.4) 9.84‡ ↑ 49.9 (0.3) 49.5 (0.5) 9.59‡ ↑ table 2. study 2 mancova of differences between users and non-users of psychedelic users on measures of psychological strengths, well-being, and distress. sample sizes: psychedelics (users, n = 239; non-users, n = 1288), cannabis (users, n = 959; non-users, n = 568), and alcohol (users, n = 495; nonusers, n = 1032). means and standard errors (in parentheses) are provided. analysis is controlling for age, sex, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, local residency, income, student status, work status, local residency, and lifetime non-medical use of other categories psychoactive drugs. significance: *p <= .05, †p <= .01, ‡p <= .001. d = directionality. bold indicates medium-large effect size; all others are small effect sizes with sleep quality being nonsignificant. items below the line are negative psychological qualities. 6.2.5 alcohol a third mancova was performed to examine the differences between those who use alcohol on a regular basis (i.e. 1 or more alcoholic beverages in an average week; n = 1032) versus those who do not consume any on a regular basis (n = 495). the result was significant for alcohol [f(14,1496) = 3.66, p <= .001; wilk's λ = .97, ηp² = .03]. the mancova controlled for the covariates of age, sex, education, ethnicity, affiliation with a religion, student status, and the non-medical use of other classes of drugs (major stimulants, sedatives, opioids, psychedelics, mdma, and cannabis). significant differences were observed on all well-being measures except for sleep quality, with effect sizes ranging from small to medium. differences on four measures were in http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 the adaptive direction for regular alcohol consumers (forgiveness, perceived social support, inclusive identity, and perceived health), and in the maladaptive direction on nine measures. see table 2 for results. 6.3 discussion demographic patterns are well-established in aspects of wellbeing and psychoactive substance use11,161. in our data, those who had used psychedelics at least once were more likely to have used other categories of psychoactive substances. these data bolster justification for controlling for these factors in group analyses to ensure that any differences found were not related to extraneous variables and instead isolate the associations. when those influences were controlled for, psychedelic users showed more adaptive psychological patterns (i.e. greater levels of strengths and lower levels of maladaptive traits) compared to non-users, with the exception of perceived social support. in contrast, the patterns with cannabis and alcohol users versus nonusers were far more varied. cannabis users showed more maladaptive patterns in half of the measures, while regular alcohol users showed maladaptive patterns in roughly two-thirds of the measures. it is important to caveat this discussion with the understanding that observed differences showed primarily small-moderate effect sizes, potentially limiting the interpretability of results. with that in mind, all but one of the differences between users and non-users appeared in the predicted direction. alcohol and cannabis use have been associated with mixed health outcomes. while alcohol has no approved medical uses, cannabis constituents and products have known therapeutic uses4. the quantity, context, and motivation for use likely play important roles in the costs versus benefits of the outcomes. for example, while light to moderate consumption of alcohol is associated with lower levels of depression in the presence of stress, this is not the case in young adults or the elderly50,100. there is also a positive association between alcohol use disorders and clinical depression, where the presence of one disorder doubles the risk of the other14. similarly, heavy cannabis use is associated with depression97 and because of the pharmacological variability inherent to cultivated cannabis, coupled with the confusion surrounding this variability even in interested and conscientious cannabis consumers126, it may be difficult to make any serious assertions regarding psychological strengths and liabilities related to cannabis consumption. it is important to note that this study specifically inquired about the non-medical use of cannabis. we saw cannabis and psychedelics as a useful comparison; while cannabis is used more commonly than psychedelics, the perception of risk associated with the two categories of drugs are comparable in the general population5,113. this contrasts with categories like major stimulants and opioids where recreational use is perceived to have greater risk. 7. study 3 the goal of study 3 was to replicate the range of traits for which we previously saw associations, applying applicable covariates, and running cannabis and alcohol comparisons. we sought to conduct a mediation analysis to see if increases in positive psychological traits were mediated by the degree of self-transcendence (single item self-transcendence measure)138, as well as an analysis of ‘motivation’ for psychedelic use. by chance, study 3 took place during the beginning of the covid‑19 pandemic. data collection took place during the entire month of april and first week of may 2020. this was approximately two weeks after quarantines began in many regions68. data collection was centered in new jersey, which along with new york, was becoming the epicenter of the pandemic. for this reason, items relevant to the pandemic were tailored toward psychological http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 adjustment to the developing situation. this allowed for a unique opportunity to examine the effects of psychedelics during an ongoing global crisis. we predicted the pandemic would not affect the relatively adaptive psychological profile seen in the psychedelic users group. in this study, we sought to further control for peoples’ beliefs about the potentially beneficial effects of psychedelics. it is well known that beliefs about a drug cause expectancy effects, both placebo and nocebo16. historically, there have been a wide range of attitudes and beliefs about classical psychedelics, ranging from sacred to hazardous to psychotherapeutic93. thus, controlling for potential effects of beliefs might be useful to discern the effects of the psychedelic experiences themselves rather than beliefs about them. the effects of set and setting in the context of psychedelic experiences are well established31,144. a subcategory of psychological set is the motivation and beliefs of the users. a range of motives have been associated with the use of psychedelics including euphoric effects, broadening consciousness, activity enhancement80, personal growth81, and psychological self-exploration77. there is evidence that intention (e.g. the desired result of taking a psychedelic) or motivation for use is a predictor of positive outcome in recreational psychedelic drug users66,182. motivation and beliefs of that user might be expected to inform where they take psychedelics, for example, in a structured context where a religious or spiritual substructure is implicit in the psychedelic experience144. in study 3, we asked participants to indicate their most common “intention” for taking psychedelics, either “fun/recreational” or “growth motive” in order to ascertain possible effects. we hypothesized psychedelic users would again show a predominantly adaptive pattern among psychological strengths and distresses and that these results would be independent of beliefs about psychedelics. we hypothesized that alcohol and cannabis users would show mixed patterns of results compared to psychedelic users. we further hypothesized that one’s motivation for psychedelic use would be relevant among psychedelic users, where those with growth-related motivations (i.e. psychological, spiritual) would show a more adaptive pattern than those with predominantly recreational motivations, and that frequency of psychedelic use would predict increased levels of at least some of these traits. 7.1 methods 7.1.1 survey completion, demographics, and measures same as study 1 and 2, see supplement 1 for survey completion and demographics and supplement 2 for measures. of the 1,142 counted respondents, 1,008 provided data on whether they practiced sitting or moving meditation. since that was considered a critical covariate in this study, the sample was effectively reduced to those respondents in the multivariate analyses of covariance (n = 1008). 7.1.2 procedure the procedures for participant recruitment, data collection, response validity, and data transformation were the same as in studies 1 and 2. see supplemental material 1 for transformations157. use of psychoactive drugs was assessed per study 2. in addition to self-reported drug use, an open-ended item was added asking for those who have used classic psychedelics to specify which ones: 125 reported psilocybin mushrooms, 133 reported lsd, 13 reported dmt, 3 reported ayahuasca, and 21 reported mescaline-containing plants (peyote or san pedro cacti). additionally, participants were asked their motive for using psychedelics (“what is/was your http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 main reason for using psychedelics, if you ever have?”, with possible responses of: “growth (psychological, spiritual, and/or consciousness)”, “fun/recreation”, or “i've never used them”. one item dichotomously assessed the belief about whether psychedelics can be used in a beneficial manner (“i believe that it's possible for psychedelics to be used in a way that promotes psychological well-being”), with “agree”/“disagree” as possible responses. 7.2 results 7.2.1 for psychoactive drug usage see supplement 1. of psychedelic users, 70.6% reported primarily fun/recreation motives, while 29.4% reported primarily growth motives. broken down by users/nonusers, 85.4% of psychedelic users believed they could be used for beneficial purposes, while 45.2% of nonusers endorsed this belief. 7.2.2 correlations between use of psychedelics and other drugs see supplement 3. a non-parametric correlation analysis showed (as in study 2), that more frequent use of psychedelics was positively associated with more frequent nonmedical use of all measured drug classes, but not alcohol. 7.2.3 psychedelic use a mancova examining differences between psychedelic users (n = 182) versus nonusers (n = 826) who provided meditation data on the well-being measures was significant [f(22,956) = 2.17, p < .001; wilk's λ = .95, ηp² = .05]. see supplement 4 for significant and non-significant influences of covariates: significant differences were observed on all well-being measures. the directionality was in the adaptive direction for all measures except for financial fear during the pandemic (siff), on which psychedelic users scored slightly higher than nonusers. see table 3 and figure 1 for results. 7.2.4 cannabis use a mancova examining differences between cannabis users (n = 675) versus nonusers (n = 333) on the well-being measures was significant [f(22,956) = 2.17, p < .001; wilk's λ = .95, ηp² = .05]. significant differences were observed on all well-being measures. the directionality was in the maladaptive direction for all measures except for three: cannabis users scored higher in gratitude (g3), self-transcendence (sist), and lower on financial fear during the pandemic (siff). results show moderate to large effect sizes. see table 3 for results. 7.2.5 alcohol use a mancova examining differences between regular alcohol users (n = 693) versus nonusers (n = 315) on the well-being measures was significant [f(22,956) = 1.79, p = .014; wilk's λ = .96, ηp² = .04]. significant differences were observed on all well-being measures. alcohol users showed more adaptive levels in 12 areas: higher scores on altruism (casa), elevation (elev), benefit reminding (brs), gratitude (g3), forgiveness (ttf), perceived support (sipss), meaning in life (simil), life satisfaction (sils), subjective sleep quality (sisq), and lower levels of pain perception (sips) and pandemic fear (sipf). other measures showed a maladaptive pattern in alcohol users. with the exception of peer support, results show moderate to large effect sizes. see table 3 for results. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 psychedelics cannabis alcohol users nonusers users nonusers users nonusers m (se) m (se) f d m (se) m (se) f ηp² m (se) m (se) f d mindfulness 50.4 (.9) 50.0 (.3) 5.93‡ ↑ 49.8 (.4) 50.4 (.6) 5.96‡ ↓ 49.6 (.4) 50.9 (.6) 6.06‡ ↓ equanimity 52.0 (.9) 49.6 (.3) 6.36‡ ↑ 49.5 (.4) 51.2 (.6) 6.39‡ ↓ 49.6 (.4) 51.0 (.6) 6.51‡ ↓ self-kindness 51.4 (.9) 49.7 (.4) 4.23‡ ↑ 49.2 (.4) 51.6 (.6) 4.18‡ ↓ 49.8 (.4) 50.3 (.6) 4.24‡ ↓ altruism 52.2 (.9) 49.6 (.4) 3.46‡ ↑ 50.0 (.4) 50.1 (.6) 3.37‡ ↓ 50.1 (.4) 49.9 (.6) 3.46‡ ↑ awe 53.2 (.9) 49.2 (.3) 3.69‡ ↑ 49.8 (.4) 50.0 (.6) 3.73‡ ↓ 49.7 (.4) 50.4 (.6) 3.68‡ ↓ elevation 51.6 (.9) 49.6 (.4) 3.46‡ ↑ 49.9 (.4) 50.0 (.6) 3.27‡ ↓ 50.0 (.4) 49.8 (.6) 3.49‡ ↑ benefit rem. 52.0 (.9) 49.6 (.4) 2.62‡ ↑ 49.9 (.4) 50.5 (.6) 2.66‡ ↓ 50.3 (.4) 49.5 (.6) 2.65‡ ↑ gratitude 50.2 (.9) 49.6 (.4) 2.78‡ ↑ 49.7 (.4) 49.6 (.6) 2.72‡ ↑ 49.9 (.4) 49.3 (.6) 2.72‡ ↑ forgiveness 51.4 (.9) 49.7 (.3) 3.06‡ ↑ 49.4 (.4) 51.2 (.6) 3.00‡ ↓ 50.3 (.4) 49.2 (.6) 3.16‡ ↑ self-trans. 53.4 (.9) 49.6 (.3) 4.80‡ ↑ 50.4 (.4) 50.2 (.6) 5.00‡ ↓ 50.2 (.4) 50.5 (.6) 5.03‡ ↓ perc. support 51.2 (.9) 49.8 (.4) 1.75† ↑ 49.5 (.4) 51.2 (.6) 2.03‡ ↓ 50.7 (.4) 48.7 (.6) 1.85† ↑ meaning/life 52.4 (.9) 49.5 (.4) 2.98‡ ↑ 49.3 (.4) 51.3 (.6) 3.01‡ ↓ 50.2 (.4) 49.5 (.6) 3.02‡ ↑ life satisfaction 51.0 (.9) 49.9 (.4) 3.78‡ ↑ 49.6 (.4) 51.3 (.6) 3.81‡ ↓ 50.5 (.4) 49.3 (.6) 3.90‡ ↑ perc. health 51.1 (.9) 49.8 (.4) 2.48‡ ↑ 49.4 (.4) 51.3 (.6) 3.28‡ ↓ 50.3 (.4) 49.4 (.6) 2.53‡ ↑ sleep 51.6 (.9) 49.2 (.4) 3.24‡ ↑ 49.3 (.4) 50.4 (.6) 3.43‡ ↓ 49.7 (.4) 49.6 (.6) 3.21‡ ↑ anxiety 49.0 (.8) 50.3 (.3) 6.50‡ ↓ 50.2 (.4) 49.9 (.6) 6.56‡ ↑ 50.3 (.4) 49.5 (.5) 6.48‡ ↑ depression 48.5 (.8) 50.0 (.3) 6.12‡ ↓ 50.3 (.4) 48.6 (.6) 5.97‡ ↑ 50.0 (.4) 49.2 (.5) 6.19 v ↑ helplessness 48.3 (.9) 50.2 (.3) 4.64‡ ↓ 50.4 (.4) 48.8 (.6) 4.38‡ ↑ 49.9 (.4) 49.6 (.6) 4.64‡ ↑ boredom 47.0 (.8) 49.8 (.3) 9.43‡ ↓ 49.9 (.4) 48.1 (.5) 9.30‡ ↑ 49.6 (.3) 48.7 (.5) 9.32‡ ↑ pain perception 49.6 (.9) 50.1 (.4) 2.28‡ ↓ 50.7 (.4) 48.5 (.6) 3.33‡ ↑ 49.4 (.4) 51.4 (.6) 2.50‡ ↓ pandemic fear 49.6 (.9) 49.8 (.4) 4.33‡ ↓ 50.4 (.4) 48.5 (.6) 4.14‡ ↑ 49.8 (.4) 49.9 (.6) 4.29‡ ↓ financial fear 50.1 (.9) 50.1 (.3) 3.29‡ ↑ 49.8 (.4) 50.6 (.6) 3.80‡ ↓ 50.2 (.4) 49.8 (.6) 3.21‡ ↑ table 3. study 3 mancova of differences between users and non-users of psychedelic users on measures of psychological strengths, well-being, and distress. sample sizes: psychedelics (users, n = 182; non-users, n = 826), cannabis (users, n = 675; non-users, n = 333), and alcohol (users, n = 693; nonusers, n = 315). means and standard errors (in parentheses) are provided. analysis is controlling for age, sex, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, local residency, income, student status, work status, cohabitation status, lifetime meditation hours, local and us residency, and recent and lifetime nonmedical use of other categories psychoactive drugs, the belief that psychedelics can be beneficial. d = directionality. significance: *p <= .05, †p <= .01, ‡p <= .001. bold indicates a large effect size, all other effect sizes are medium, with only perceived support being small. 7.2.6 motivation for psychedelic use (growth vs fun/recreation motive) a mancova comparing psychedelic users only based on their primary motive for using them (growth [n = 53] vs fun/recreation [n = 127]) on the well-being measures was significant [f(22,132) = 1.65, p = .044; wilk's λ = .78, ηp² = .22]. 16 of the 22 measured trait differences reached significance, all differences were in the adaptive direction for growth-oriented users, and all 16 significant results had large effect sizes. see table 4 for details. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 used psychedelics never used psychedelics figure 1. differences between psychedelic users and non-users on measures of psychological strengths and distress. n = 1142. all differences are statistically significant (p > .001), except benefit reminding and perceived support, where p > .01. error bars show standard error. 7.2.6 fun/recreational psychedelic users vs. non-users a mancova was performed to compare psychedelic users with fun/recreational motivations (n = 132) vs. nonusers (n = 799), which was significant [f(22,900) = 1.57, p = .046; wilk's λ = .96, ηp² = .04]. see table 5. significant differences were found on all well-being measures: differences were in the adaptive direction for fun/recreational users on 12 measures [equanimity (pm.acc), self-kindness (usks), altruism (casa), awe (awe3), benefit reminding (brs), forgiveness (ttf), selftranscendence (sist), perceived support (sipss), meaning in life (simil), life satisfaction (sils), sleep quality (sisq), helplessness (sish)], and in the maladaptive direction on the other 10 measures [mindfulness (maas6), elevation (elev), gratitude (g3), perceived health (siph), anxiety (phq.anx), depression (phq.dep), state boredom (sisb), pain perception (sisp), pandemic fear (sipf), financial fear (siff)]. effect sizes were moderate with the exception of mindfulness, equanimity, anxiety, depression, and boredom, which were large. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 growth recreational motive motive f ηp² directionality mindfulness 54.3 (1.4) 49.4 (.9) 2.40‡ .29 a equanimity 55.4 (1.3) 50.8 (.8) 3.08‡ .34 a self-kindness 51.8 (1.6) 48.7 (.9) 1.63* .22 a altruism 53.4 (1.4) 51.3 (.9) 1.47 (a) awe 56.9 (1.4) 51.2 (.8) 2.30‡ .28 a elevation 52.6 (1.5) 49.4 (.9) 1.78* .23 a benefit reminding 55.7 (1.5) 49.8 (.9) 1.43 (a) gratitude 52.4 (1.5) 47.7 (.9) 1.96† .25 a forgiveness 52.2 (1.5) 49.9 (.9) 1.45 (a) self-transcendence 59.7 (1.4) 52.8 (.9) 1.86* .24 a perceived support 50.2 (1.5) 48.9 (.9) 1.15 (a) meaning in life 52.1 (1.6) 49.3 (1.0) 1.57* .21 a life satisfaction 50.7 (1.4) 48.6 (.9) 2.64‡ .31 a perceived health 53.2 (1.3) 49.6 (.8) 2.73‡ .32 a sleep 53.3 (1.4) 50.2 (.9) 1.78* .23 a anxiety 47.0 (1.3) 51.1 (.8) 3.06‡ .34 a depression 47.3 (1.4) 50.9 (.9) 2.39‡ .29 a helplessness 48.1 (1.5) 50.8 (.9) 1.85* .24 a boredom 43.8 (1.4) 48.5 (.8) 2.26‡ .28 a pain perception 48.5 (1.5) 52.6 (.9) 1.22 (a) pandemic fear 47.6 (1.6) 51.1 (1.0) 1.55 (a) financial fear 48.2 (1.4) 50.4 (.8) 1.61* .22 a *a = adaptive, m = maladaptive table 4. mancova of differences in psychological strengths, well-being and distress between psychedelic users with growth (n = 127) vs. recreational motives (n = 153) from study 3. means and standard errors (in parentheses) are provided. analysis is controlling for age, sex, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, local residency, income, student status, work status, cohabitation status, lifetime moving meditation hours, and the recent and lifetime use non-medical use of other psychoactive drugs (i.e. opioids, major stimulants, mdma, dissociatives, sedatives, and alcohol). results are consistently in the adaptive direction, a, for growth motive psychedelic users, with nonsignificant differences indicated with parentheses. significance: *p <= .05, †p <= .01, ‡p <= .001. no text is bold because all effect sizes are large. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 fun/rec. psychedelic users non-users f ηp² directionality mindfulness 48.4 (.9) 50.0 (.3) 5.65‡ .14 m equanimity 49.8 (.9) 49.7 (.3) 6.01‡ .15 a self-kindness 50.8 (.9) 49.7 (.4) 4.33‡ .11 a altruism 51.3 (1.0) 49.5 (.4) 3.19‡ .09 a awe 52.0 (.9) 49.1 (.4) 2.88‡ .08 a elevation 49.6 (1.0) 49.9 (.4) 3.17‡ .09 m benefit reminding 51.0 (1.0) 49.5 (.4) 2.02† .06 a gratitude 49.6 (1.0) 49.6 (.4) 2.46‡ .07 m forgiveness 50.7 (.9) 49.7 (.3) 2.74‡ .07 a self-transcendence 51.9 (.9) 49.3 (.4) 3.03‡ .08 a perceived support 51.5 (1.0) 49.9 (.4) 1.93† .05 a meaning in life 51.8 (1.0) 49.6 (.4) 2.76‡ .08 a life satisfaction 50.4 (1.0) 50.0 (.4) 3.81‡ .10 a perceived health 49.0 (.9) 49.8 (.3) 2.25‡ .06 m sleep 50.2 (1.0) 50.0 (.4) 2.69‡ .07 a anxiety 50.5 (1.0) 49.7 (.4) 6.28‡ .16 m depression 51.1 (1.0) 49.2 (.4) 6.12‡ .15 m helplessness 50.1 (.9) 50.4 (.3) 4.68‡ .12 a boredom 50.1 (.9) 49.9 (.3) 8.87‡ .21 m pain perception 50.1 (.9) 49.9 (.3) 2.63‡ .07 m pandemic fear 50.7 (.9) 49.8 (.4) 4.66‡ .12 m financial fear 50.6 (.9) 50.2 (.3) 3.38‡ .09 m * a = adaptive, m = maladaptive table 5. mancova of differences in psychological strengths, well-being and distress between psychedelic recreational users (n = 149) vs. psychedelic non-users (n = 800) in study 3. means and standard errors (in parentheses) are provided. analysis is controlling for age, sex, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, local residency, income, student status, work status, cohabitation status, lifetime meditation hours, and the recent and lifetime use non-medical use of other psychoactive drugs (i.e. opioids, major stimulants, mdma, dissociatives, sedatives, and alcohol). results are consistently in the adaptive direction for growth motive psychedelic users, with nonsignificant differences indicated with parentheses. significance: *p <= .05, †p <= .01, ‡p <= .001. bold indicates large effect size. traits below the line are psychological distresses. 7.2.7 mediation analysis a mediation analysis was performed to determine whether self-transcendence mediated any relationship between psychedelic use and overall subjective well-being. in order to do this, a principal components analysis using varimax rotation was performed to the 9 psychological strengths (maas6, eqpm.acc, usks, casa, awe3, elev, brs, g3, ttf), excluding selftranscendence. two non-overlapping factors were extracted that had eigenvalues of 3.2 and 1.9, which accounted for 32.4% and 24.2% of the variance respectively (56.6% cumulative). factor i (casa, elev, brs, g3, awe3) and factor ii (pm.acc, eq, maas6, ttf, usks), in turn, formed a single second-order factor that had an eigenvalue of 1.24 and explained 70.0% of the variance. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 this was termed the cumulative strengths index (csi) and was formed by averaging the t-scores of the 9 scales (α = .76). a mediation analysis was performed using process macro for spss, with model 4, was used for the mediation analysis (hayes, 2018). this was to determine whether the relationship between lifetime use of psychedelics (independent variable, x) and cumulative strengths (csi; dependent variable, y) was mediated by self-transcendence (sist; m). the model was statistically significant, f(1, 1139)= 56.91, p < 0.001, r2=0.05. psychedelic use frequency positively predicted self-transcendence (sist; β = 2.20, p < .001). psychedelic use did not directly predict cumulative strengths (csi; β = -.04, p = .799), but sist did (β = .27, p < .001), [f(2, 1138) = 153.67, p < 0.001, r2=0.21] . the interaction of psychedelic use by self-transcendence (i.e x by m) was significant, f(1, 1137) = 4.63, p = 0.032, and the indirect effect of x on y via m (psychedelic use on csi via sist) was significant (ie = .60, 95%ci = .43, .79) [figure 2]. thus, the relationship between psychedelic use and cumulative strengths csi was fully mediated by self-transcendence78. figure 2. mediation analysis (study 3). the relationship between psychedelic use and a combined index of psychological strengths was fully mediated by self-transcendence. significance: *p <= .05, †p <= .01, ‡p <= .001. beta se 95% ci p ll ul self-transcendence (sist) psychedelic use 2.20 .29 1.62 2.77 <.001 cumulative strength index (csi) psychedelic use -.04 .16 -.36 .27 .799 sist .27 .02 .24 .31 <.001 table 6. results of the process linear regression for the mediation analysis 7.2.8 correlation a correlational analysis was used to test whether more frequent use of psychedelics among psychedelic users related to a greater degree of psychological strengths, well-being, more meditation experience, and lower levels of distress. a spearman rank-order correlation was performed since the frequency of use item employed an ordinal scale. in order to control for multiple comparisons, but not be overly stringent and increase the false negative rate, a benjamini hochberg procedure was used12. see supplement 3. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 7.3 discussion consistent with study 2, psychedelic use correlated positively with all other classes of psychoactive drugs except alcohol. this underscores the need to control for the use of other psychoactive drugs in these analyses. the multivariate analyses comparing users vs. nonusers of psychedelics, cannabis, and alcohol mirror the results of study 2. psychedelic use was associated with greater psychological well-being, apart from slightly higher financial fear during the pandemic, controlling for relevant covariates including demographic variables, lifetime and recent use of other psychoactive drugs, and the belief that psychedelics could have beneficial effects. these findings are generally consistent with those of psychedelic users in studies 1 and 2, with the exception that perceived social support was higher in psychedelic users in study 3 but not study 2. also consistent with study 2 is the findings that cannabis and alcohol users, in contrast, again showed a mixed pattern of results (see figure 3 for comparison). it is potentially noteworthy that the positive psychological profile shown study 3 appeared during the acute stressor of the early covid-19 pandemic. consistent with our predictions, psychedelic users who cited a growth motive for using psychedelics showed greater strengths and well-being, and lower distress, on most measures (16 out of 22) compared with those whose reported motive was fun/recreation. effect sizes are large for all 16 observed differences. it must be noted that these differences were at a trend level when seated meditation was included in the covariates, but significant when it was removed. we believe a pertinent explanation might be that seated meditation requires a great deal of motivation for growth because of the time and discipline required, so controlling for the influence of meditation would diminish the effects of growth motivation based on the overlap124,130. frequency of psychedelic use showed positive correlations with mindfulness, equanimity, forgiveness, self-transcendence, and sitting meditation experience, and inverse correlations with state boredom and pandemic fear. mindfulness/equanimity, meditation, self-transcendence, and boredom (conversely) are associated with activity of the dmn21,38,54,159 a network known to be modulated by psychedelic experiences21,28,83. consistent with study 1, psychedelic users reported more lifetime hours of sitting meditation experience than non-users. this was true for both seated and moving meditation practices and after controlling for demographic influences. further, among psychedelic users, more frequent psychedelic use correlated with greater seated meditation experience. relatively little attention seems to have been given to the prevalence of contemplative practices among non-clinical psychedelic users in the literature. the finding of greater meditation hours among psychedelic users in this study might be a meaningful association given that randomized clinical trials showing use of psychedelics during formal sitting meditation retreats increases trait mindfulness147 and the notable overlaps between these domains of self-exploratory practices111. it is uncertain why psychedelic users reported greater financial concern, especially since age, income, education, and work status were controlled for. further, psychedelic users showed lower anxiety and less fear of the covid-19 pandemic. one explanation could be that psychedelic users or their family members are more likely to be in occupations that were affected by the pandemic. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 figure 3. comparison of psychedelics, cannabis, and alcohol across studies up (↑) and down (↓) arrows indicate whether users in each category of drug scored higher or lower than nonusers, respectively, while a dash (–) menans no significant difference found. absence of a symbol and color indicates that measure was not used in that study. green/red coloring indicates whether the difference is adaptive (green) or maladaptive (red) for users. double arrows (↑↑, ↓↓) indicate consistent findings across the two datasets, while dashed (⇡, ⇣) arrows with a yellow background indicate conflicting results. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 8. general discussion 8.1 summary of findings in three studies, with 3157 participants (study 1, n = 465; study 2, n = 1550; study 3, n = 1142), psychedelic use was associated with greater psychological strengths and lower maladaptive psychological traits, after controlling for demographic variables and other drug use. findings present significant differences observed on a range of traits (shown in figure 3). traits associated with psychedelic use appeared almost wholly in the adaptive direction; this is in contrast to the patterns seen for cannabis or alcohol use, both of which present mixed associations with the battery of psychological traits. the current studies advance and replicate results that show naturalistic psychedelic use can be associated with overall well-being56,133,141,157,166. a mediation analysis revealed that relationships between psychedelic use and psychological strengths were fully mediated by self-transcendence. this mediation supports a solid body of evidence linking the ‘self-transcendent’, ‘ego dissolution’, or ‘mystical-type’ experience to positive clinical15,39,51,91,110,117,132,133 and naturalistic31,49,52,76,80,162,163 outcomes of psychedelic use. the intention for psychedelic use appears to enhance benefits observed in association with the use of psychedelics in a naturalistic setting. participants who reported ‘growth’ as a primary motivation showed a more adaptive profile than those who reported ‘fun/recreation’. some traits showed a reversal of the adaptive pattern seen with overall psychedelic users (see table 5). 8.2 novel and replicated trait findings novel psychological strengths associated with psychedelic use previously unreported in the psychedelic literature include higher awe, equanimity, kindness/altruism, benefit reminding, sleep quality, forgiveness, elevation, gratitude, and lower helplessness, and boredom (see figure 3 for summary of results). in most cases, precedents in the literature explicitly predict psychedelics would impact these psychological traits, but they have never been quantitatively demonstrated. awe has been hypothesized as a putative mechanism of underlying successes in psychedelic psychotherapy71. while trait equanimity appears unreported in the psychedelic literature, several authors have suggested increases based on subjective reports120,155. a recent paper reported post-psychedelic decreases in ‘experiential avoidance’178, which is essentially the inverse of equanimity as measured in this study65. in the vein of greater empathy44,95 and prosocial behavior72,168 seen in previous studies, we found that psychedelic users are higher in trait kindness as well as self-reported volunteer hours, which we referred to as “altruism”. interestingly, extraordinary altruists show an increased overlap of self and other processing, a neural correlate and phenomenological component shared by self-transcendent psychedelic experiences34,96. elevation is unreported although perhaps greater empathy106,127 underlies this finding since it is essential to care about the well-being of others to experience elevation at the sight of others’ virtuous acts. the same may be true of forgiveness, another hitherto unreported adaptive aspect also explicitly suspected by previous authors62. gratitude has been reported as a common subjective aspect of a cathartic psychedelic experience131,156,157 but to the authors’ knowledge, never quantified. benefit reminding may emerge in a similar vein, since both involve enhancing appreciation of events, although this has not been reported or suggested to our knowledge in the psychedelic literature. we observed greater reported humility among psychedelic users. a previous survey-based study failed to find a significant difference between psychedelic users and non-users on trait humility albeit with a much smaller sample size95. greater subjective sleep quality is unreported. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 we observed several lower maladaptive psychological traits and distress previously unreported in the literature. psychedelic users reported lower state levels of helplessness and boredom. perceived helplessness appears to be a core aspect of depression105. boredom susceptibility has been linked to increased odds of psychedelic drug use18, as well as other substance use and anxiety and depression (lepera, 2011). we report lower scores on scales measuring greed, envy, and hate among psychedelic users. psychedelic use has been linked to decreased greed in one other study where psychedelic users score lower on the value of financial prosperity95. the following findings replicate those of previous research, showing psychedelics associated with: greater self-transcendence17,19, greater mindfulness61,104,135,147,152, greater self-compassion135,153, greater positive affect84,141, greater perceived health8 , greater life satisfaction24 , greater meaning in life59,76, less anxiety63, and depression55,57, and decreased levels of perceived physical pain7,171. all our findings align with previous research, whose reported findings were all replicated in the same direction. only four findings are contrary to our hypotheses for psychedelic users vs nonusers. psychedelic users showed more financial fear related to the covid-19 pandemic in study 3; perceived social support was in the maladaptive direction in study 2 but changed to adaptive in study 3; mindfulness was non-significant in study 1 but significant in studies 2 and 3; sleep quality was non-significant in study 2 but adaptive in study 3. while the variation in effect sizes and nature of a survey methodology might make detailed interpretation difficult, the directionality of the totality of results is potentially more revealing than any individual result (see figure 3). 8.3 psychedelics and psychological strengths during the covid-19 pandemic study 3 was conducted during an early phase in the united states of the worldwide covid-19 viral pandemic. due to the potential for idiosyncratic results and as a particularly salient cultural zeitgeist, we included two ad hoc items, regarding “pandemic fear” and “financial fear”, as well as ascertaining whether the participant or a close family member had been infected. infection of the participant or a family member was then used as a covariate in the analysis. psychedelic users reported less pandemic fear, but contrary to our hypothesis, reported increased financial fear after controlling for annual income. the time frame of data collection (within april 2020) was in the first few weeks of the pandemic, so employment disruptions had not really begun. it’s unclear to the authors why this is the case but might be related to the lower value psychedelic users place on financial prosperity95. the economic stress of the pandemic may introduce cognitive dissonance by making the value of financial prosperity more salient. alternatively, it may be because psychedelic users tend to work in industries that were more susceptible to disruption during the covid-19 pandemic (such as the creative sector). we note the retention of significance of psychological traits in the adaptive direction, even during a pandemic. 8.4 psychedelic users show substantially different psychological profile from cannabis and alcohol users both cannabis and alcohol show ambiguous and multivalent effects on measured psychological traits, after controlling for demographics and other drug use (see figure 3). the association of psychedelic use with adaptive traits contrasts with both a commonly used legal and a commonly used illegal drug (federally), both of which are associated with trait profiles difficult to parse. carhart-harris and nutt30 reported a similar finding in a survey of recreational drug users, where 67% of lsd users and 60% of psilocybin users claimed that use of these drugs had produced long-term positive effects on their sense of well-being. they indicated, by contrast, only http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 6% of alcohol users claimed similar improvements in well-being attributed to alcohol use30 . our studies suggest these reported long-term positive effects may not merely be a claimed perception. 8.5 psychological strengths mediated by self-transcendence reported relationships between psychedelic use and strengths were fully mediated by selftranscendence (see figure 2). this mediation analysis supports a large number of precedents indicating that self-transcendent experiences mediate the positive effects of psychedelic experiences15,26,39,51,57,91,110,117,132,133,187. this is consistent with the significant positive correlation observed by nour et al. (2016)118 between a measure of self-transcendence and long-term wellbeing and life satisfaction. this finding suggests the centrality of the self-transcendent experience might extend beyond a clinical setting. 8.6 intention for psychedelic use predicts adaptive psychological set in study 3 we report the effects of intention/motivation for psychedelic use between ‘fun/recreation’ and ‘growth’ (psychological, spiritual, and/or consciousness) users. intention to use psychedelics for ‘growth’ was associated with a psychologically adaptive pattern as compared to ‘fun/recreation”. 16 of 22 associations are in the adaptive direction with large effect sizes and the remaining six are treading in the adaptive direction but failed to reach significance. compared to non-users, ‘fun/recreation’ users showed increased depression and anxiety, decreased sleep quality, elevation, mindfulness, perceived health, and increased fear of the covid-19 pandemic. four of the five differences with large effect sizes were in the maladaptive direction. motivation for use appears to be a significant determinant of associations, with growth motivation associated across the board with adaptive associations when compared to fun/recreational motivation. while fun/recreational users show 12 adaptive vs 10 maladaptive traits compared to non-users, four of five associations showing large effect sizes were in the maladaptive direction, making the data difficult to interpret. previous authors reported ‘clear intentions’ and the intention for ‘spiritual connection’ both predict psychedelic-induced mystical experiences66 , as does ‘religious intent’114. although other authors have reported variable mental health outcomes in naturalistic settings182, to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to report the effect of intention for personal growth compared to fun/recreation on psychedelic use in naturalistic settings. 8.7 psychedelic users report more meditation experience psychedelic users reported more lifetime hours of sitting meditation experience in study 1 and study 3 (study 2 did not inquire about meditation experience). within psychedelic users, greater frequency of use correlated with greater hours of lifetime seated meditation practice. survey studies have previously reported that the majorities of their samples experienced desirable changes in contemplative practices, including meditation practice, attributed by the participants to psychedelic experience(s)59,160. despite the known overlap in the history120, phenomenology111, and neural correlates121, and synergy73 between meditation and the psychedelic experience, to the authors’ knowledge, no study has shown that psychedelic users report more hours of sitting meditation experience or a relationship between frequency of use and hours of lifetime seated meditation. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 8.8 theoretical conclusions the adaptive psychological differences observed in psychedelic users might variously be viewed as the average intrinsic psychological disposition of individuals prone to take psychedelics and/or the result of the transformative psychological effects of the experiential and pharmacological components of the psychedelic experience. these can be viewed as competing hypotheses about why psychedelic users would exhibit these associations, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. the former might be referred to as the ‘gravitational hypothesis’: people with greater psychological strengths tend to gravitate toward the consumption of psychedelics in naturalistic settings, in which case greater strengths are not a causal effect of psychedelic use but rather reflect predisposing factors behind psychedelic use. the latter can be referred to as the ‘transformational hypothesis’: people who take psychedelics in naturalistic settings can undergo transformational change that results in a variety of increases in psychological strengths, causally connected to the pharmacological action of psychedelic drugs. while the methodology of the current study prohibits a conclusive determination, within the context of this study the gravitational hypothesis appears less likely for a number of reasons. the principal reason is that psychedelic users are not seeking out psychedelic drugs in isolation. in the current studies, psychedelic users are more likely to have used other classes of psychoactive drugs. a small minority of psychedelic users (0.83% in study 2, and 1.0% in study 3) have used psychedelics only, with no other non-medical psychoactive drug use (not including alcohol). possibly as a result of their legal status, the vast majority of psychedelic users are not exclusively gravitating toward psychedelic use only. this has previously been found by other authors115. the retention of relative benefit even in cases where the intent was purely ‘fun/recreational’ casts further doubt on the gravitational hypothesis, as polydrug use appears common in ‘fun/recreational’ settings where psychedelics are likely to be consumed (e.g. music festivals or raves)10,20,48,94. in favor of the transformational hypothesis, many controlled clinical studies have already shown that psychedelics can cause lasting changes in psychological traits. in follow up studies to clinical trials with psychedelics, authors have reported long-term psychological changes causally linked to psychedelic experiences76 including decreased depression at six months26 and continued elevations in well-being, life satisfaction, positive mood, and social behavior at 14 months56,58. causally linked long-term psychological changes lend plausibly to similarly lasting changes in naturalistic psychedelic users, in accordance with the transformational hypothesis. the terms ‘recreational’66,102 and ‘naturalistic’77,117 are used synonymously in the psychedelic literature to indicate the usually illicit use of psychedelics outside a clinical or laboratory setting. the ambivalent connotation of the term ‘naturalistic’ might contribute to its increasing prevalence in the literature, as opposed to the more classically pejorative term ‘recreational’. the current studies cast some doubt on the coherence of a single categorization for non-clinical psychedelic users. the distinction between ‘fun/recreational’ intent and ‘growth’ intent reflected in our data suggests future studies should potentially differentiate multiple categories of nonclinical psychedelic users. our data suggest naturalistic psychedelic use might be associated with particular psychological traits, highlighting the potential implications of increasing access to psychedelics. particularly in comparison to cannabis and alcohol, the current studies suggest psychedelics can be associated with an adaptive psychological profile. in study 3, 52% of participants reported a belief that it’s possible for psychedelics to be used in a way that promotes psychological well-being. while this was collected and used for the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 purpose of a covariate in analyses, it is potentially indicative of a warming public perception of classical psychedelics as medicines. 8.9 study strengths and limitations the methodological strengths of this study include the large number of measured psychological strengths and weaknesses, a large sample size and concomitant statistical power, and adjustment for demographic and other substance use covariates. nonetheless, several methodological limitations exist in this study. we relied on self-selecting/self-report data, which have the inherent potential for a range of implicit biases. foremost, this study did not collect a truly randomized sample but rather a type of convenience sample, primarily from the east coast of the united states, and therefore it remains unclear to us how representative our sample is of the population at large. the total sample was around 70% female, which may be an artifact of the starting student population and the individuals they chose to recruit (sex was factored out of all analyses as a covariate). an intrinsic drawback of this recruitment method is that while each study was done in its own time interval, there is a chance a participant of study 1 could also have participated in a proceeding study, either by being a student in another class or via random snowball recruitment. self-reported substance use data reported retroactively is subject to bias in recall, as memories may have faded over time. data might have been collected years or even decades after the last use of a particular class of substances (e.g. older participants who may have experimented with psychedelics in their youth). subjects may wish to downplay their use of particular substances or exaggerate their use of others. 9. general conclusion this study is the first to compare psychedelic users and non-users on a broad range of psychological traits in a large sample. taken as a whole, lifetime psychedelic use appears to be associated with greater positive psychological traits and lower maladaptive traits and distress, even during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. associations with these traits appear independent of other illicit drug use (including mdma and dissociative anesthetics purported to offer similar benefits), meditation experience, and demographic factors. the psychological profile associated with classical psychedelic use is overwhelmingly adaptive, while the same profile of psychological measures associated with cannabis and alcohol use show much more ambiguous mixtures of adaptive and maladaptive. a mediation analysis indicates the observed psychological strengths are fully mediated by trait self-transcendence. further we show the impact of intention; using psychedelics in a naturalistic setting with ‘growth’ motivation is associated with the most robust set of psychological strengths and lower distress. a future study should explore if set & setting, preparation, integration, or ancillary practices such as meditation, mediate the adaptive profile seen in growth motivated users. we also report psychedelic users meditate more, with increasing psychedelic use being associated with increased lifetime sitting meditation hours. the tendency of psychedelic users to display higher levels of a broad spectrum of positive psychological traits and lower levels of maladaptive traits and distress should be explored in randomized clinical trials to establish causality. conflict of interest statement the authors declare no conflicts of interest. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ psychedelics and psychological strengths brasher, rosen, & spinella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 data accessibility data files are available on 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(2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 116–118. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.10 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson interview by aaron jarden barbara fredrickson is the kenan distinguished professor of psychology and director of the positive emotions and psychophysiology lab (pep lab) at the university of north carolina, and is a leading scholar within positive psychology, social psychology, and affective science. barbara’s research centers on positive emotions and human flourishing, and her work is cited widely, including her 2009 book, positivity, which describes the relevance of her 20-year research programme on positive emotions for a general readership, and her broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? the distinctive features of positive psychology are rather nebulous because a lot of things that can be called positive psychology are often not necessarily termed positive psychology. at the overarching general level would be looking at the aspects of human nature that help us become a better version of ourselves over time, that help propel us towards growth, or greater confidence, greater resilience, greater honesty, greater integrity. the study of those aspects and a lot of that work happens under the umbrella of positive psychology, and a lot of it happens outside of it. the boundaries i think are very blurry. what are some things that positive psychology has achieved to date? one of the biggest achievements of positive psychology to date is just getting on the public radar; of being clearly an area of science worth investing in, worth paying attention to, worth applying. the tremendous interest right now in creating resilience training programs, and trying to create a more resilient public, or a more resilient military force, really speaks to the strength of this perspective. if you had a magic wand, what would be one thing that you would change about positive psychology? that there would be a clear source of funding for positive psychology. right now it’s unclear where more funding for the more basic science pieces of it will come from. the demand for the fruits of positive psychology is far larger than the supply of good science, and that in part is because we don’t necessarily have the funds to be training people in the basic science areas of positive psychology. positive psychology spans both basic science and applied science, and right now we have a situation where the applied side is not necessarily being fed by enough of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 the basic science pieces. that’s in part because funding for the basic science pieces is harder to come by and training dollars for training scientists in those areas is tough to come by. so that would be my magic wand: to invest in the basic science side, especially in training the next generation of people to do it. what do you think is the new hot topic for positive psychology over the next few years? health is getting stronger attention in that we need to go beyond looking at wellbeing or happiness as simply judgments and emotions, and really anchor them in how they are affecting the bottom line of people’s life expectancy, their illness histories, the dollars they cost their employers in health care visits, and also more and more in how much positive psychology within organizations affects their bottom line. i think ways of making those metrics concrete are especially vital. and then at the basic science level, looking at how wellbeing and emotions are part of larger dynamic systems is going to be ever more crucial because wellbeing is not a single state, you know—it’s not like you reach some happiness plateau and you’re forever there—instead people get caught up in upward spirals or downward spirals, or some selfsustaining system in one way or another. we need to better understand those temporal dynamics and how they unfold and how they reinforce wellness or illness over time. can you tell me a little bit about your work in the area of positive psychology? i work on emotions, and positive emotions in particular. my students and collaborators and i are interested in everything about positive emotions, which are short-lived, momentary, fleeting experiences that have, in the moment, ways of altering the ways we think, the ways we behave, the way we see other people. over time those momentary effects of positive emotions add up and really change who we become, change how people grow and change over time. so i’m interested in those short-term and long-term accumulated effects of positive emotions. we’re looking at those in a wide variety of ways, especially right now focusing on physical health. as you have been working in the field of positive psychology, what’s one learning experience that’s made a big difference for you? one that’s really a challenge is going from basic research on laboratory studies and finding out the cognitive effects, say, of positive emotions, to making the transition into applied work, and trying to help people achieve more positive emotions so they can have the good outcomes that those emotions may bring. there is a vexing additional piece of people’s wishful thinking: people sometimes so hunger to have wellbeing and have positive emotions that they lose sight of whether they are really having them when they fill out a questionnaire. there’s a lot of, in jargon terms, experimenter demand or demand characteristics, but it’s just, in general terms, kind of wishful thinking. so as a researcher, working in that more applied domain, you really need to be looking to see whether this is a genuine, bona fide, positive emotion that this person is reporting, or do they wish they were feeling a positive emotion? do they earnestly wish that, so they’re in a way presenting a counterfeit positive emotion? because wellbeing and wellness and happiness are all things that people so earnestly strive for, they can sometimes lose sight of ‘what’s the real thing?’ versus just too quickly saying, ‘oh yes, i’m happy’, without really examining the data for that. positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 what’s your proudest moment in the field of positive psychology to date? it’s when people put the ideas into use. i’m trained as a lab researcher and a basic scientist. i think of myself as an emotion theorist. what positive psychology offers really well is an interface between people doing the basic science, and practitioners in all different kinds of domains, industry, education, the military and so on, who want to put that science into action. so some of the proudest moments i’ve had are when people do that, they translate what i’ve been working on into application, and are finding success with that. so again, there is only so much one person can do, and the ideas that emerge from the science that i’ve been doing, i can communicate those in a way that i can pass the baton on to others who can do great things with those ideas. that’s something that makes me really proud. who are the emerging and unknown researchers in positive psychology to look out for? i can give some names of people i know well because they have been junior collaborators of mine. sarah algoe is one who is doing phenomenal work on gratitude in particular, and other ways that certain positive emotional moments can transform social opportunities and relationships. she’s working at the interface of emotions and relationships. one of my current doctoral students, bethany kok, is diving into the physiological substrates of the upward spirals that we think sustain people’s wellbeing, so she’s a name to keep an eye out for in the future. what’s one book, other than your book positivity, that you think all those getting into the field and learning about positive psychology should read? the best initial take is perhaps sonja lyubomirsky’s book the how of happiness, which is excellent in helping people understand the basic exercises that have a track record for improving wellbeing, and in helping people understand the hurdles and the sluggishness they must overcome, for happiness and wellbeing to improve. i think it gives a good realistic account. what’s one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers and or practitioners? stay actively invested in the positive psychology community and also in the home discipline your training is in, whether it’s social psychology or affective neuroscience or others. both of those affiliations are really vital. identifying in positive psychology can be useful and productive, but it wouldn’t be the only identity that you would want or the only identity hat that you would want to wear. make sure that the work that you are doing is equally turning heads within a related discipline that isn’t necessarily under the umbrella of positive psychology. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz kiernan, f., davidson, j. w., & oades, l. g. (2020). researching creativity and wellbeing: interdisciplinary perspectives. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1523 frederic kiernan the university of melbourne kiernanf@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 special issue researching creativity and wellbeing: interdisciplinary perspectives frederic kiernan · jane w. davidson · lindsay g. oades introduction this special issue on creativity and wellbeing represents the outcome of a collaboration between the international journal of wellbeing and the creativity and wellbeing hallmark research initiative (cawri) at the university of melbourne. it includes contributions from academics associated with cawri as well as those in our local and international network. the volume appears at a time when these two concepts, and the relationship between them, have been brought to attention in a range of contexts by extraordinary global events. the covid-19 pandemic, for example, has had disastrous health and wellbeing impacts and has led to stay-at-home orders and extensive lockdowns which have “changed everyday life for the masses, in an unprecedented manner” (warren & bordoloi, 2020, p. 1). insofar as creativity involves adaptive behavior that emerges in response to interruptions to previously successful routines and habits (joas, 1996), 2020 has been the year of creativity par excellence. but the disruptive impact of covid-19 has also destroyed or damaged many creative social products generated by those old routines and habits, meaning that routines and habits, and not just interruptions or impasses, can also be pathways to creativity (dalton, 2004). the events of 2020 should therefore give us pause to consider the meaning of the term “creativity” and to reflect on the potential role of creativity in cultivating and supporting wellbeing. the purpose of this special issue is to consider the relationship between creativity and wellbeing from a range of disciplinary perspectives in order to illuminate and better understand this relationship. because of this disciplinary variety, theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches are drawn from different traditions of creativity research. modern creativity research is usually said to have started in 1950 with the publication of guilford’s 1949 presidential address to the american psychological association, titled “creativity” (guilford, 1950), although creativity was a key aspect of much early sociological thinking, as in, for example, weber’s notion of charismatic leadership and marx’s idea of the active and creative subject (chan, 2016). nevertheless, creativity research was mostly marginalized in sociology until the late twentieth century, with the field being dominated by psychological and philosophical approaches (cropley, 2011; domingues, 2000). but theoretical links between creativity and wellbeing find roots even in the seventeenth-century writings of francis bacon and rené descartes, two of the early founders of modern science, who viewed creativity as involving the harnessing of the forces of nature for the betterment of the human condition (cropley, 2011). creativity has also been understood in different ways in different cultures, with some conceptions of creativity emphasizing “vertical” or process-oriented aspects, and others emphasizing “horizontal” aspects associated with novelty and rupture (celik & lubart, 2016). similarly, definitions of wellbeing have varied greatly, with some emphasizing the individual experience of pleasure, life satisfaction and self-realization, while others are tied to the collective about:blank researching creativity and wellbeing kiernan, davidson, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 experiences of social groups and the interrelationships between people, land, culture, and spirituality (dodge et al., 2012; oades & heazlewood, 2017). the links between creativity and wellbeing, and their cognate terms and concepts in other languages, thus have a long history in scholarly and cultural thought. scholarly literature on creativity often distinguishes between “big-c” and “little-c” creativity. “big-c” creativity refers to eminent-level creativity: the work of famous, unambiguous creators such as pablo picasso and albert einstein. this idea is grounded in older romantic and typically western conceptions of creativity, which have been guided by the construction of the lone creative genius, someone said to be in possession of greater amounts of creativity than others, and whose creative work is said to require some degree of separation from society (montuori & purser, 1995). on the other hand, “little-c” creativity refers to the informal, everyday potential for creativity that all people possess and is grounded in the idea that creativity is a quality essential to human development and is a vital component of a healthy and happy life (richards, 2018; see also kaufman & beghetto, 2009, who added “pro-c” and “mini-c” to this model). this shift in creativity research away from the lone creative genius to the everyday creative practices of regular people was also reflected in the “four p” framework for creativity— person, product, process, press—which was widely used in the second half of the twentieth century to understand the different dimensions of creativity (runco & kim, 2011). the fourth p, “press” (i.e. the pressure of the environment), of this framework helped to bring creativity research into domains such as business, education and manufacturing, which were previously viewed as irrelevant to creativity research (cropley, 2011). this has also helped to position creativity as an increasingly important concept in the burgeoning field of wellbeing research (basadur & basadur, 2011; krippner, 2011; csikszentmihalyi, 2014; gillam, 2018; barker, 2019). over the last decade, a variety of new units of analysis in creativity research have been proposed. such propositions include, for example, the idea that creativity can be viewed as a socio-cultural act (glăveanu, 2015), which may be spread across and between multiple actors and elements (glăveanu, 2014; clarke & doffman, 2017). other scholars have suggested that creativity is not a domain-general phenomenon (baer, 2016), but rather, something that varies according to the way it is expressed, and which is therefore measured against domain specific standards and local criteria (chan, 2016; kaufman et al., 2017; kaufman & sternberg, 2019). these developments in creativity research have opened up new possibilities for understanding and applying the concept of creativity in a seemingly limitless number of contexts, but they also risk dissolving the idea of creativity into an amalgamation of related elements which may, in turn, undermine its explanatory power. thus, as the field of creativity studies develops in exciting directions, new challenges also emerge, which implicate our understanding of what and where creativity is, and how it relates to wellbeing. the contents of the special issue against this background, this special issue presents eight articles that each address current challenges in creativity and wellbeing research. two of these articles examine the link between creativity and wellbeing from a theoretical perspective. nicolas b. verger and raffi duymedjian examine the creativity of romantic relationships at the dyadic level, where “dyad” is defined as a prolonged interaction between two individuals, taking the couple as a single unit. their approach treats romantic creativity as an observable, quantifiable, yet non-product-hierarchic phenomenon, and they propose an original theoretical framework for explaining how romantic creativity and wellbeing may be linked. they argue that romantic creativity can take the form of a dyadic process, in which the dynamics of discovery and self-expansion can be explored by one researching creativity and wellbeing kiernan, davidson, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 or both members of the dyad, thereby taking the relationship in new and meaningful directions. addressing the theoretical link between creativity and wellbeing from a different angle, frederic kiernan’s article argues that the history and sociology of emotion (scheer, 2012) and the sociology of creativity (chan, 2016) can coalesce in a new framework for understanding emotion as creative practice. kiernan’s study sets out four categories of emotion as creative practice—a) emotion as institutionalized cultural practice; b) emotion as cultural edgework; c) emotion as cultural transcendence; and d) emotion as cultural transformation—to argue that emotions themselves do creative work. he thereby provides a new explanation for the role of emotion in generating social and historical change and forges new theoretical links between creativity and wellbeing from a sociological perspective. two of the articles consider the link between creativity and wellbeing by examining musicmaking practices. andrew geeves, samuel jones, jane w. davidson and john sutton consider in their article the perspective of the performing musician, who is presently underrepresented in research on the relationship between music and wellbeing. using the case study of australian pop/rock band cloud control, their article investigates how the performing practices of musicians on tour impact their wellbeing, and they argue that the concepts of “performance headspace” and “connection with audience” can serve as explanatory themes for the link between creativity and wellbeing for performing musicians. taking a different approach, grace thompson, melissa raine, susan m. hayward and hannah kilpatrick question in their article how music-making workshops can be made more autism-friendly. their research gathers community perspectives on this issue to argue that environmental and social factors work together to create a sense of safety and inclusion for autistic participants, and that a welcoming atmosphere and acceptance of diversity are expected from the workshop facilitator and group members. three of the articles examine the link between creativity and wellbeing specifically for women. donna lyon, shannon owen, margaret s. osborne, khandis blake and bruna andrades investigate in their article how the combination of creative writing and non-contact boxing can facilitate the recovery journeys of women survivors of childhood sexual abuse towards posttraumatic growth. their article reports on a series of workshops named left/write//hook which used a range of analytical and creative techniques to understand how writing and boxing are uniquely positioned to benefit the workshop participants. they draw on ideas and techniques from dance movement therapy, kinesthetics, psychology and other areas to suggest that different modes of cognition (language-based and embodied) and the creative activities through which these were realized in the workshops contributed to participants’ recovery journeys and supported their wellbeing in different and crucial ways. lila moosad and cathy vaughan examine in their article the link between creativity and wellbeing for a group of 18 older women who participated in a photography project called 500 strong. the project involved more than 400 women aged over 50 from melbourne and regional victoria, australia, who each posed nude in photographs in order to challenge negative stereotypes about women’s ageing as a time of decline and loss. this qualitative study examined the experiences and motivations of the participants, finding that the link between creativity and wellbeing in this context could be explained by the concepts of care, collaboration and critique. the third article to address women’s creativity and wellbeing is by mahima kalla and margaret simmons, who examine how these concepts intersect in the experiences of a group of women suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. this medical condition is poorly understood, and because of this it has frequently been dismissed as an untreatable psychological issue, leading to inadequate care and to patients feeling isolated and neglected. the authors report that the illness researching creativity and wellbeing kiernan, davidson, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 also disproportionately affects women rather than men at an approximate ratio of 4:1. because of the illness’s ambiguous status in medical discourse and its unclear aetiology, the researchers adopt a narrative research technique called poetic representation, casting the participants’ own words into poetic forms. the authors thus interpret their data not just as researchers but also as poets, thereby rethinking the role of the researcher in creativity and wellbeing research by using the medium of poetry to communicate different aspects of the participants’ illness experience. broadening the conceptual scope somewhat, amanda e. krause, anya lloyd-smith and john hajek examine the intersection of creativity and wellbeing in migrant communities in australia through a study of community language radio. their research focuses on the practices of presenters at australia’s largest community language radio station, 3zzz, and their article argues that community language radio plays a crucial role in supporting wellbeing of both individuals and communities by providing an accessible and adaptable outlet for creative expression. the article highlights how the radio programs provide a form of creative cultural and language maintenance which contributes positively to wellbeing in the australia migrant context. conclusion this special issue thus advances the field of creativity and wellbeing research by exploring linkages between these concepts from a range of disciplinary perspectives. it proposes new theoretical frameworks and concepts linking creativity and wellbeing in romantic relationships and in emotion, and it considers the role of music making for wellbeing from the perspectives of performing musicians as well as autistic people. it gives particular attention to the experiences of women, as survivors of abuse, as sufferers of chronic fatigue syndrome and as empowered agents in the ageing process, and it also gives attention to community language radio as a creative pathway towards wellbeing for migrant communities in australia. the special issue also flags numerous potential avenues for further investigation, and we, as the editors, look forward to seeing where these exciting developments in the field will lead. authors frederic kiernan the university of melbourne kiernanf@unimelb.edu.au jane w. davidson the university of melbourne lindsay g. oades the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 2 september 2020 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 references baer, j. (2016). domain specificity of creativity. elsevier. barker, s. (2019). mental wellbeing and psychology: the role of art and history in self discovery and creation. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429434310 researching creativity and wellbeing kiernan, davidson, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 basadur, m., & basadur, t. (2011). attitudes and creativity. in m. a. runco & s. r. pritzker (eds.), encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed, pp. 85–95). elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-3750389.00017-0 celik, p., & lubart, t. (2016). when east meets west. in v. p. glăveanu (ed.), the palgrave handbook of creativity and culture research (pp. 37–55). palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-13746344-9_3 chan, j. (2016). creativity and culture: a sociological perspective. the palgrave handbook of creativity and culture research, 639–660. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46344-9_31 clarke, e. f., & doffman, m. (eds.). (2017). distributed creativity: collaboration and improvisation in contemporary music. oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199355914.001.0001 cropley, a. (2011). definitions of creativity. in m. a. runco & s. r. pritzker (eds.), encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., pp. 358–68). elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-375038-9.00066-2 csikszentmihalyi, m. (2014). flow and the foundations of positive psychology: the collected works of mihaly csikszentmihalyi. springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8 dalton, b. (2004). creativity, habit, and the social products of creative action: revising joas, incorporating bourdieu. sociological theory, 22(4), 603–622. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0735-2751.2004.00236.x dodge, r., daly, a. p., huyton, j., & sanders, l. d. (2012). the challenge of defining wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 222-235. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v2i3.4 domingues, j. m. (2000). creativity and master trends in contemporary sociological theory. european journal of social theory, 3(4), 467–484. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310022224903 gillam, t. (2018). creativity, wellbeing and mental health practice. palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74884-9 glăveanu, v. p. (2014). distributed creativity: thinking outside the box of the creative individual. springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05434-6 glăveanu, v. p. (2015). creativity as a sociocultural act. the journal of creative behavior, 49(3), 165–180. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.94 guilford, j. p. (1950). creativity. american psychologist, 5, 444–454. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0063487 joas, h. (1996). the creativity of action (j. gaines & p. keast, trans.). university of chicago press. kaufman, j. c., & beghetto, r. a. (2009). beyond big and little: the four c model of creativity. review of general psychology, 13(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013688 kaufman, j. c., glǎveanu, v. p., & baer, j. (eds.). (2017). the cambridge handbook of creativity across domains. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316274385 kaufman, j. c., & sternberg, r. j. (2019). the cambridge handbook of creativity. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316979839 krippner, s. (2011). altered and transitional states. in m. a. runco & s. r. pritzker (eds.), encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., pp. 33–39). elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-375038-9.00008-x montuori, a. & purser, r. (1995). deconstructing the lone genius myth: toward a contextual view of creativity. journal of humanistic psychology 35(3), 69-112. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678950353005 oades, l., & heazlewood, f. (2017). wellbeing language & definitions guide. mental health commission of nsw. richards, r. (2018). everyday creativity and the healthy mind: dynamic new paths for self and society. palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55766-7 runco, m. a., & kim, d. (2011). the four ps of creativity: person, product, process, and press. in m. a. runco & s. r. pritzker (eds.), encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., pp. 534–537). elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-375038-9.00102-3 scheer, m. (2012). are emotions a kind of practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? a bourdieuian approach to understanding emotion. history and theory: studies in the philosophy of history, 51(2), 193–220. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00621.x warren, m. a., & bordoloi, s. (2020). when covid-19 exacerbates inequities: the path forward for generating wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 10(3) special issue: covid-19 and wellbeing, 1-6. https://doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1357 rehal, b., & van nieuwerburgh, c. (2022). understanding the factors that contribute to educator flourishing. international journal of wellbeing, 12(2), 36-87. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i2.1931 brittany michael-singh rehal university of east london brittany@educatorflourishing.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 article understanding the factors that contribute to educator flourishing brittany michael-singh rehal · christian van nieuwerburgh abstract: recent research supports the use of positive psychology in education and sets out ideas for educators and leaders to promote and guide student flourishing in schools. there is significantly less research on how educators flourish. this study explores the conditions needed for educators to flourish by applying constructivist grounded theory to uncover the experiences of people who identify as flourishing educators. the researcher s conducted 13 interviews with self-identified flourishing educators and educational leaders and sought feedback from experts on a proposed theory. participants included educators and educational leaders in various locations throughout the u.s.a., europe, the middle east, and the u.k. this resulted in the ecological model for flourishing educators which included these elements: authenticity, integrity, agency, autonomy, professional and personal growth, positive relationships, receiving recognition and acknowledgment, being treated as a professional and feeling seen, valued and trusted. the term ‘flourishing educator’ is used to be inclusive of all types of educators, not merely teachers. based on the research, the researchers posit a new definition of flourishing educators: a flourishing educator is an educator who feels seen, trusted and valued. they are treated as a professional and encouraged to be authentic. they have autonomy, integrity, agency and experience positive relationships along with personal and professional growth. this study has implications for educators and educationa l leaders, and will hopefully encourage further research on educators within the field of positive education. keywords: flourishing educators; educational leaders; grounded theory; ecological model 1. introduction the literature on flourishing educators is scarce compared to the growing research on how educators can foster flourishing students through positive education (berkowitz & bier, 2005; elias & arnold, 2006). positive education, defined as education for both traditional skills and happiness (seligman et al., 2009), has continued to evolve as researchers operationalize the role of trust for student wellbeing (leighton et al., 2016), study the implications of positive education (white & kern 2018), implement whole-school positive education approaches to foster positive mental health and wellbeing among school communities (hoare et al., 2017) and engage parents in positive education (dubroja et al., 2016). positive education is a subfield of study within positive psychology, defined as the scientific study of optimal human functioning (linley et al., 2006). while positive education is instrumental for students, this study focuses on educators and seeks to understand what educators need in order to experience flourishing for themselves. viewing educators through a positive psychology lens is largely unexplored (cherkowski & walker, 2018; murphy & louis, 2018). as a result, the review of the literature is framed around about:blank educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 key aspects of flourishing that are relevant for educators: positive relationships, meaning, accomplishment and trust. 1.1 positive relationships meaningful relationships are part of a flourishing learning climate (cherkowski & walker, 2018) and according to the theory of perma (seligman, 2011) and ryff’s 6-factor model of wellbeing (1995), positive relationships are essential for wellbeing. the effect of positive relationships are illustrated in professional learning communities (plcs) and have the potential to create lasting and sustainable change by expanding school capacity, educator growth, measurable improvement in student learning, and collective as well as individual development of professional skills (cherkowski & walker, 2018; fullan, 2002; hargreaves, 2003; muijs & harris, 2006; toole & louis, 2002). 1.2 meaning meaning is a significant element of the perma theory and a distinct dimension of ryff’s model categorized as purpose in life (1995). meaning can be channeled to create a shared vision when leadership is distributed, which can create more opportunities for educators to lead or actively contribute to the shared vision (muijs & harris, 2006). finding meaning is an essential component of flourishing and experiencing a continuum of wellbeing (cherkowski & walker, 2018; seligman, 2011; lyubomirsky et al., 2006). 1.3 accomplishment in schools, accomplishment is often interpreted as academic achievement. however, there is currently increased attention on holistic education scaffolded by an education model that focuses on developing social and emotional competencies, in addition to intellectual competencies (berkowitz & bier, 2005; cherkowski & walker, 2014; hayward et al., 2007). several researchers have adopted a humanistic lens for viewing educators, looking at when educators receive compassion (mcclain et al., 2010) and how wisdom can be integrated in schools (ylimaki & mcclain, 2009), which illuminates a parallel to the holistic education model as the call for humanistic education gains momentum. educational environments rooted in humanistic education values might integrate the practice of recognizing educators’ accomplishments. 1.4 trust while it could be argued that “trust” is a component of positive relationships, it is worth emphasising how educators benefit from being trusted in their professional roles. studies show educators can benefit from receiving both affective trust (compassion for educator wellbeing) and cognitive trust (belief in educators’ professional capabilities) (murphy et al., 2017; schaubroeck et al., 2011). trust contributes to a positive social climate in schools, helps foster wellbeing, and builds psychologically safe environments for educators to talk about their teaching and take risks (achor, 2011; biron & burke, 2014; cherkowski & walker, 2018; lambert, 2002; murphy & louis, 2018). while trust may be perceived as daunting, trust is often built in the smallest mome nts and creates a foundation for empathy (brown, 2018; gottman & silver, 2012). some constituents of flourishing educators are in the literature and were starting points for our study. we aim to provide a working definition of flourishing educators and be tter understand the conditions for creating, sustaining and nourishing flourishing educators. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 2. method given the lack of research on flourishing educators, grounded theory was utilized to allow a theory to surface (charmaz, 2006). all data was analyzed and collected through employing the grounded theory approach of theoretical sampling, writing memos, initial coding, focused coding and theoretical coding (bohm, 2004; charmaz, 2006; strauss & corbin, 1997). the researchers’ purpose is to invite educators, practitioners, policy-makers and educational leaders to engage with the proposed theory by exploring the theory’s resonance and application to related and unrelated contexts. 2.1 participants participants were recruited through purposive sampling to ensure the researchers could select people who met the requirements for flourishing and additionally guarantee diversity through the global lens and focus of the study (lincoln & guba, 1985). there were 13 participants in various countries who self-identified as flourishing teachers or currently served as educational leaders with perspectives to share on the topic. of the 13 participants, 5 were male and 9 were female. participants voluntarily participated after seeing the recruitment post or after being contacted through professional colleagues. participants included educators and educational leaders who worked in local, primary and international schools in various locations throughout the u.s.a., europe, the middle east, and the u.k. 2.2 procedures the researchers obtained ethical approval from the school of psychology research ethics committee and all participants completed a consent form. the researchers posted the criteria for participants on social media, professional databases and through professional contacts by defining flourishing and asking educators to participate if they self-identified as flourishing educators. a flourishing educator was defined as ‘when teachers feel a sense of joy, play, laughter, and fun at work; when they are encouraged and supported to take risks in their teaching; and when they see they are making a difference in the lives of their students, school, and community’ (cherkowski & walker, 2014 & 2018). each iteration included 5-8 participants who completed individual, 60-minute, semistructured interviews via video call. one researcher conducted each interview and asked participants four standard, open-ended questions with follow-up questions differentiated to each participant's response. first, the researcher explained the interview process and answered any questions from participants. second, the researcher began the audio recording and asked the standard questions with follow-up questions interspersed as needed. third, the researcher concluded each interview by asking if there was anything else participants would like to say about being a flourishing educator. fourth, the researcher transcribed and coded all interviews in addition to notation on body language, laughter and other non-verbal data. the first iteration began with 5 self-identified flourishing educators (round 1). the researcher followed the format described above and asked the following questions: 1. what experiences led you to identify as a flourishing educator? 2. of all the things that you’ve talked about, what do you feel are the most important elements of your flourishing as an educator? 3. what factors sustain your flourishing as an educator? 4. is there anything else that you would like to say about being a flourishing educator? http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 after narrowing down the themes from all 5 participant interviews in round 1, the researchers constructed a table to represent and define the 7 themes identified in the interviews. the second iteration included 8 participants who were educational leaders (round 2). one researcher followed the format described above and asked the following questions: 1. what are some factors that you believe contribute to educator flourishing? 2. of the things you’ve talked about, what are the most important elements? 3. what keeps/sustains educator flourishing? 4. is there anything else you would like to say about flourishing educators? the researchers reviewed the new data from the interviews in round 2 and discovered new themes with some overlap from round 1. the themes and overarching concepts of the data were causal, thus the researchers redesigned the model and edited the theory to reflect the changes and illuminate the core components. for the third iteration, the researchers requested feedback from experts on the flourishing educator model and theory created from the combined data of the first and second iteration (round 3). the researchers reached out to 11 experts and received responses from 5. the feedback was primarily positive and suggested that the proposed theory was consistent with current and ongoing research on flourishing educators. the experts’ constructive feedback was applied and informs the final theory presented in this article. 2.3 analysis the researchers used a grounded theory approach to analyze the data throughout each iteration (strauss & corbin, 1997). the primary objective was to create a theory to name the conditions and factors that create, support and nourish flourishing educators which could support policymakers, educational leaders, school districts and universities. due to the social constructivist grounded theory process, there were some modifications to questions after transcript analysis to investigate emerging concepts in greater depth (charmaz, 2006). the researchers reached saturation with 13 participants and stopped interviews at this point. the final submission of the theory was complete when the researchers concluded that there was nothing more to add to the proposed theory. 3. results and discussion the term ‘flourishing educator’ is used to emphasize the inclusivity of all types of educators, not merely teachers. the model presented here is an “ecological model” per feedback from experts who incorporated ecological metaphors in past and ongoing research on educator and leader flourishing (cherkowski et al., 2018; walker et al., 2021). in this model, the flourishing educator (tree) is sustained by the sun (leaders earning trust), water (leaders demonstrating trust) and soil (leaders prioritizing educator flourishing). the elements of the model reflect the differentiation required to foster all types of flourishing educators, just as different types of trees have different needs to reach their full, abundant potential. taylor discusses a similar idea likening the diversity of trees in nature to the diversity of each individual (2021). watering a tree is an action, as is demonstrating trust. the ways leaders demonstrate trust in their teams include observable actions such as empathy, granting educators autonomy, and presuming positive intentions. in contrast, the sun sustains the tree simply by being; the ways leaders earn trust are less through individual, specific actions, and more through embodying ways of being, such as vulnerability, integrity, and intellectual humility. for a seed to grow to its full potential, the seed needs ample space and the soil needs to contain nutrients that foster the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 seed’s growth. similarly, flourishing educators require a seemingly paradoxical balance of space and nourishment from their leaders and environment. the following section describes each element of the ecological model for flourishing educators. 3.1 leaders prioritizing educator flourishing leaders prioritize educator flourishing by differentiating professional development to include opportunities for both personal and professional growth for educators, specifically educator directed opportunities. this element is similar to leithwood and colleagues’ claim that successful schools have educational leaders who provide individualized support for educators to continue developing their knowledge and skills (2008, p. 30). a head teacher gave a poignant example about giving educators: ‘the opportunity to research, reflect and lead some of their own professional learning in contrast to being directed in terms of what to learn, when to learn, how to learn, who to learn it from--the idea that a teacher is a leader in their own learning. there is a deep emphasis on reflective practice and practice-based research’ (participant h, p. 1). giving educators an abundance of choice aligns with eger’s work that links choice to freedom and agency (2017). flourishing educators felt their flourishing was a priority to leaders who: invested time and curiosity in them by offering ongoing coaching conversations, used shared language such as the inclusive ‘we’ and demonstrated consistent actions that intentionally removed barriers obstructing or delaying the growth of flourishing educators. one participant shared, ‘support looks like removing barriers’ (participant m, p. 5). another leader remarked on the ripple-effect of coaching: ‘it doesn’t need to be just me coaching staff, the ideal level is when staff members are coaching each other’ (participant n, p. 7). this view echoes the findings of o’connor’s study on the ripple -effect of coaching at an organizational level (2013). rather than a linear model of change, the ripple -effect and complex adaptive systems theory addresses the complexity of organizational change along with the impact on the wellbeing of individuals within these systems (o’connor, 2013). 3.2 feeling seen, valued and trusted flourishing educators described how feeling seen, valued and trusted unlocked their potential and gave them permission to be fully authentic. these feelings were fostered by leaders, coaches, mentors, students and/or colleagues in the educators’ current or past environment. research has identified valuing, hearing and seeing educators as important components to leadership for school improvement (harris et al., 2013; hopkins et al., 2014; jacobson et al., 2005). the specific phrase, ‘what support do you need?’ asked in a safe space contributed to educators feeling heard when there was actionable follow-up. educators felt seen when their contributions and perspectives were incorporated into decision-making and when they were asked what they wanted feedback on rather than told what they should work on. heintzelman and king include ‘mattering’ as an important aspect of meaning in life (2014) and steger specifically identified finding meaning in work as a key contributor to finding meaning in life (steger et al., 2012). educators felt valued when they were given opportunities to lead and share their knowledge. an assistant head teacher stated: ‘i feel like i’ve gone even further than i ever thought i would or could/as soon as i set foot there [current school], as a classroom assistant, i just propelled into leadership’ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 (participant d, pp. 4, 1) this element is consistent with research that distributed/transformational leadership relies on building capacity in others, sharing decision making responsibilities with teachers and seeing the relationship between teachers and leaders as a reciprocal partnership rather than a hierarchy (cherkowski, 2018; lambert, 2002; leithwood & poplin, 1992; muijs & harris, 2006). educators felt trusted when they were given unstructured time and when they were encouraged to attain school-wide learning goals in unique, creative and authentic ways. the absence of the expectation of compliance leaves room for educators to appreciate and utilize their freedom in ways that ultimately benefit their students’ learning and build their professional capacity. knight’s suggestion of using the ‘freedom within form’ theory is based on a similar idea that a balance of structure and choice intentionally honors the voice of teachers (2010). 3.3 treated as a professional leaders treat educators as professionals by how they choose to respond versus react in highstress situations, giving permission and encouragement for educators to take risks in their teaching, how they consistently speak to educators and through creating opportunities for educators to grow and authentically exist rather than micromanaging. a principal reflected on her past experience as a teacher: ‘i felt that i should be trusted as an instructional leader to reach students by any means necessary. even if that meant going outside the frame of what was prescribed by the department or school or district to reach those students. i try to support teachers in that and treat them as professionals’ (participant l, p. 4). from the perspective of an educator: ‘the fact that i’m left to do what’s best inside my classroom tells me that i’m trusted to do what i need to do as a professional’ (participant c, p. 8). from a leadership perspective: ‘we tell them [educators] the basic foundation and they can decide how to use the pieces we give them for how to build it and make it. if you don’t micromanage teachers, it gives them the latitude to design their program or classroom for how they see fit. sometimes, as an administrator, you have to get out of the way and let the teacher do what they’ve been doing. they’re successful’ (participant k, pp. 4-5). these quotes align with studies showing school leaders are more influential when they display both affective trust, compassion for educator wellbeing, cognitive trust and belie f in educators’ professional capabilities (murphy et al., 2017; schaubroeck et al., 2011). 3.4 receive recognition and acknowledgement educators report recognition accompanies wisdom when leaders show ‘lack of ego, willingness to give credit’ (mcclain et al., 2010, p. 337). the results of this study support the importance of receiving recognition as one leader defined education as a, ‘high stress, low thank’ profession (participant i, p. 5). another participant shared: ‘i’m in a school where the administration doesn’t micromanage, she [administrator] will walk through occasionally and give positive words of encouragement and we are trusted to be professional adults and to do our job to the best of our ability’. (participant c, p. 7). this suggests that school leaders who embrace a humanistic approach to leadership might be more likely to recognize educators which is consistent with the accomplishment component of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 the perma theory (mcclain et al., 2010, seligman, 2011). there is a paradoxical tension here of educators being recognized and being left alone to do their best. as with most themes, distinguishing how and when to choose either option is subjective to individual educators and should be differentiated. a leader stated: ‘you have to know your teachers. do they like praise, do they like recognition, what type of things make those teachers tick? individually making sure that teachers’ effort has not gone unnoticed. just like with students, when they’ve made improvements and gains it’s important to recognize that’ (participant k, p. 3). 3.5 positive relationships several participants echoed findings from previous studies that leaders and educators need to build positive relationships and leaders need to know educators individually in order to best promote educator growth (fullan, 2002). one educator stated: ‘in my flourishing, i think the most important thing for me is my relationship with the staff and the people i work with’ (participant e, p. 1). this data supports the positive relationship component identified in seligman’s perma theory (2011). another educator reflected: ‘i find that when administration respects my decisions as to what i do in the classroom, it helps me to become what i believe would be a flourishing teacher’ (participant c, p. 1). this quote demonstrates how leaders promote educator growth by granting autonomy and choice to educators which simultaneously builds relationships. 3.6 autonomy an important aspect of the description for what autonomy means in this study posited by a leader in an hei: ‘professional autonomy is teachers using their skill set to implement things that they know will work in their classroom based on the students they see everyday that they built relationships with’ (participant i, p. 3). in this study, autonomy is giving teachers permission to use their skill set within their classroom as well as control in making decisions regarding their professional development and other aspects of teaching that directly impact their daily routines. autonomy can be understood as the gift of unstructured time (i.e. ‘prep periods’ for educators to plan on their own rather than go to mandatory meetings), intentional and self-selected goals for growth, and curriculum options shared as helpful resources rather than monolithic scripts. an educator described: ‘i was given complete flexibility and control over my schedule, and how i structure my day’ (participant b, p. 2). a leader succinctly stated: ‘an important factor is giving teachers autonomy to go from compliance to innovation’ (participant m, p. 1). providing educators with autonomy allows educators to integrate wisdom from personal life experiences and connections to their current and past students to tailor curriculum, content and learning experiences to best meet the needs of their students. a participant reflected: ‘all of our research questions are different. so with 24, 25 teachers, every single one of us has a different question that we want to answer. if anything it’s pretty clever of the head http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 [teacher], because we’ll have some knowledgeable others around the building who will feel like they’ve had the autonomy to go away and learn something new, but in turn this benefits the whole school’ (participant d, p. 12). this excerpt unpacks the paradox of how educator autonomy can lead to an increase of shared knowledge and connection among educators, leaders and school communities. another educator explored the benefits of shared knowledge: ‘...when you’re excited about what you’re doing you share it with others. no teacher is an island. when people start sharing then you’re getting all these wonderful ideas from all different types of perspectives and backgrounds and it just helps to make for a really forward-thinking environment for the kids’ (participant c, p. 7). these findings support self-determination theory-that basic needs of competence, autonomy and connection must be fulfilled in order for people to be motivated to change and grow (deci & ryan, 2004). 3.7 agency the following quote serves as the definition for agency in this study: ‘when i talk about agency, i’m talking about where there is scope and where we have supported, developed people making informed choices about their work, their time, their space, their instructional practice’ (participant h, p. 2). the phrase, ‘supported, developed decision-capital’ by participant h neatly summarizes the essence of the experiences described by other participants as a paramount aspect of agency throughout educator and leader interviews and emerged as the most important contributor to educator flourishing. this element supports hope theory, which contends agency thinking is the level of confidence, intention and the human ability to take various routes to an ideal future (snyder et al., 2002). here’s one example of agency for an educator’s personal and professional growth: ‘i was allowed to be out every friday to attend uni. when i needed to do a practicum, like a placement, in another school for 10-weeks, i could go off and do my practice for 10weeks in another school and know that my job was still safe. if i needed a study day at home because my assignments were due i was given a study day and my pay wasn’t docked. if i needed to do an observation or i needed to observe somebody else, that was all put in place instantly, with no arguments. i just felt like they really wanted me to do well’ (participant d, p. 3). here’s another example of agency in a school setting: ‘a big part of flourishing is the autonomy to know what makes the most sense for you and the freedom to choose what makes the most sense as a teacher, because that’s the way to get the best out of that individual teacher’ (participant b, p. 6). this participant illuminates the connection between supported, developed decision-capital and leaders prioritizing her flourishing as an educator and as a person. 3.8 integrity integrity is evidenced in how flourishing educators own their values and see their values reflected in their school through actionable ways values are lived out rather than simply written. according to researcher brene brown, ‘integrity is choosing courage over comfort. you choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy. and you choose to practice your values rather than http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 simply professing them’ (brown, 2018, p. 188). a participant shared: ‘i remember when i walked into the education board, she used a phrase, “we take the job very seriously but we never take ourselves too seriously.” that aligned with my values and now my own staff and i recognize that phrase. we take our job seriously but we don’t take ourselves too seriously’ (participant n, p. 2). the paradoxical tension in integrity is the balance between educators owning their authentic values and also recognizing alignments to core values of their school which provides opportunities for authentic contribution. as one leader shared: ‘i have to feel a part of a team, i have to feel a connectedness to the overall overarching goals of education’ (participant l, p. 6). 3.9 authenticity one participant claims: ‘the ability to be my most authentic self is giving me the opportunity to be my most effective and know it’ (participant b, p. 11). this participant addresses the connection between permission to be authentic and increased effectiveness as an educator. furthermore, another participant stated: ‘i need to speak my own truth, i need to be a person of authenticity, according to myself, and that is important to me as a teacher and as a person.’ (participant a, p. 16). she went on to share: ‘as a teacher, you actually teach how you are and who you are’ (p. 7). this quote embodies the prevalent connection several educators identified between who they are as individuals and how they educate their students through their way of being. several educators and leaders discussed the salient need to be their full, holistic selves in order to best serve their students and feel consistent alignment with their values. from a leader’s perspective: ‘the most important element to teachers flourishing in an environment would be feeling safe to be authentic’ (participant l, p. 5). these perspectives about the importance of authenticity align well with the conclusions of stephen joseph that when people feel accepted, understood and valued they are more open to learning and are more likely to experience wellbeing (2016). 3.10 professional and personal growth throughout the transcripts, there is an overarching emphasis on ‘finding better ways’ in reference to teaching, leading, and throughout personal growth. this data supports fin dings that professional learning communities contribute to capacity building (stoll, 2009; stoll & louis, 2007; vescio et al., 2008). one participant summarized: ‘if you’re not understanding different ways of achieving high results, if you’re not asking yourself challenging questions about how people work and how the organization works and how it can work better ... if you’re not asking yourself challenging questions as a leader, you’re never going to find better answers’ (participant h, p. 11). the act of asking challenging questions links to the importance of coaching cultures and a way leaders can model taking risks and actively seeking out better ways. another participant reflected: ‘i feel like a lot of teachers, that 5-year burnout or whatever burnout, it happens because http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 they are not also focusing on themselves because we are so student-oriented and studentfocused. one thing that helped me tremendously in the last 4-5 years is being able to take some time for myself and for my family’ (participant c, p. 11). this quote illustrates how educators acknowledging and prioritizing their own wellbeing through permission from leaders or from themselves could combat teacher burn-out and increase flourishing educators. research on the importance of integrating faculty wellbeing within the workplace supports this finding (achor, 2011; cherkowski & walker, 2014; seligman, 2011). 3.11 leaders demonstrating trust throughout each component, the act of responding rather than reacting is evidenced. as one leader proposed: ‘the key components to a relationship of trust is how you react to people who take risks or make errors for a lack of better words. the leaders’ responses to those things sort of...they start to build walls or a space of trust’ (participant i, p. 3). this element is supported by covey who proposes trust increases through individual effort as well as through consistent contributions (2006). additionally, trust has been identified as a key virtue of educational leaders (cherkowski, 2018). 3.12 empathy empathy can be understood as acknowledgement of the lives educators live outside of school and is often experienced through the way leaders communicate more so than what leaders say. as one leader expressed: ‘it’s not about what you say, it's about how you say it that’s pivotal to how the information will be received. that goes with students as well as teachers’ (participant k, p. 3). another leader discussed: ‘so often in schools there are so many other things going on. maybe they're going through a messy divorce, maybe somebody close to them is dying; there are all sorts of factors that take place in one’s life that can affect performance. assuming kindness and understanding that we’re all going through stuff is helpful and i think people flourish in that environment where they feel understood and treated like a normal person. there's lots of pressure and change that has to be dealt with. for teachers to be in a flourishing environment i think the first thing is that you [leaders] need to default to kindness, empathy and trust’ (participant h, p. 4). this link between empathy and trust corroborates research claiming trust is often built in the smallest moments and creates a foundation for empathy (brown, 2018; gottman & silver, 2012). 3.13 presuming positive intentions leaders who submit to the challenging yet simultaneously rewarding outcomes of vulnerability give themselves permission to presume positive intentions for the educators they lead. presumption of positive intent can be evidenced in how leaders respond, for example one leader explained: ‘i try to say yes to everything i can. if teachers have an idea i try to say yes as often as i can’ (participant m, p. 1). another leader noted: http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 ‘leaders can take as much off of educators’ plates as possible. that is my goal as a leader. as a principal, i figure out what needs to be done to satisfy the people above me (superintendents) and board members, what are their expectations. we would sit down and we would say “okay, this is what needs to be done, what can we do to take this off the educator’s plate.” and we don’t take it off to put something else there. we take it off. that’s how you help teachers unplug. you give them less to do’ (participant i, p. 8). this example displays how empathy can be demonstrated by intentionally respecting and valuing educators’ time. 3.14 granting educators autonomy from an educator’s perspective: ‘i don’t have to turn in a set of lesson plans every week to be scrutinized. i don’t have to show what standards i’m checking off. it comes from a very supportive environment. so kind of the fact that i’m left alone is what makes me feel like i’m being trusted’ (participant c, pp. 7-8). from a leader’s perspective: ‘what we would do is have a conversation about strategies, and it didn’t have to be something that i agreed with, it was me trusting their professional judgment and expertise regardless of their experience; whether you’re a first-year teacher or a twenty-year teacher. it was just me saying, “okay, we’re going to try this, great! let me know how this works. when we come back we’re going to revisit it. when i come in, i’m going to look for this and give you a little feedback’ (participant i, p. 4). autonomy is experienced as ‘leaving educators alone’, providing feedback on specific areas identified by educators themselves, giving educators supported, developed decision-capital, and then following up by providing educators with what they need. 3.15 educator-driven decision making educator-driven decision making looks like collaborative decisions in which educators are not merely consulted to check the box for evidence of ‘collaboration’, rather educators are active and influential stakeholders in decision -making processes regarding policies, school values and ongoing changes that directly affect educators. this data adds credibility to studies showing leaders who develop a shared vision for the school with educators succeed in not only empowering educators, but generating hope, optimism, and a greater commitment and sense of responsibility when educators feel they have a voice in matters that affect them (fullan, 2002; leithwood & poplin, 1992). ‘you need to find a way to balance what the national aims are with what your aims as a school are and then collaboratively and collectively make decisions about how you’re going to achieve those things’ (participant h, p. 2). 3.16 leaders earning trust this element is aligned to cherkowski’s suggestion that teacher leaders’ mindset and way of viewing their role contributes to educator flourishing and potentially whole school cultures (2018). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 3.17 transparency and vulnerability transparency and vulnerability go hand-in-hand because intentional transparency is underpinned by leaders submitting to the discomfort of vulnerability. one leader gave an example of how vulnerability can be modeled through transparency stating: ‘showing vulnerability as a head teacher. being open with staff about things that aren’t going right and things that are a real challenge to me.’ (participant n, p. 6). transparency and lived vulnerability can be understood as reciprocal accountability between educators and leaders. one leader discussed: ‘we care about equity and we hold each other accountable for that’ (participant m, p. 4). 3.18 intellectual humility and will participant data revealed a paradoxical balance between leaders demonstrating intellec tual humility and professional will, a concept consistent with collins’ theory on level 5 leadership (2007). leaders talked about when they recognized the need to seek help or expertise for an educator or challenge balanced with the need for determined, professional will. for example, one leader courageously shared: ‘sometimes the feedback is out of my realm of expertise so i need to pass you on to human resources or the nurse. i’ve had to refer teachers to get some psychological assistance that i didn’t feel qualified to give. i think this is another way to establish trust because even if i want to help they may need to have someone more qualified’ (participant l, p. 4). another leader expressed: ‘for once the leader can stop being the hero for a change. i think that’s a very powerful idea that this one person isn’t going to solve all the problems, isn’t going to come up with all the answers, etc. i think for the staff to accept that is hugely helpful because they see the side of you that’s human’ (participant n, p. 6). this element is similar to grant’s idea that leaders owning and admitting what they don’t know leads to increased creativity and opportunities to build cultures that encourage rethinking (2021). at the same time, leaders own their responsibility to utilize their professional will to facilitate the empowerment of educators. as one participant shared: ‘i like to empower teachers to own their own place within schools’ (participant g, p. 4). 3.19 integrity the data may relate to a leadership concept of ‘infinite mindset’ coined by sinek positing leaders who adopt an infinite mindset see change and challenge as an opportunity for transformation, value long-term and lasting solutions over short-term and temporary fixes, advance a just cause and live lives of service (2019). as one leader pointed out: ‘if everything surrounds a very clear, values-based vision that we’ve decided together by staff telling me why they think we’re doing what we’re doing; we agree “this is the direction we’re going” we decide “that’s it” and we head towards it. the structure that it takes, the what and the how-it doesn’t really matter what we choose as long as we do it in one way or another’ (participant g, p. 8). the influence of a leader’s vision aligns with penlington and colleagues’ study finding clearly communicated and positive visions from head teachers are an essential component to cultivating school cultures with mutual trust (2008). living a life of service is evidenced in this http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 excerpt stating: ‘there will come a time when some of the teachers that are here need to leave here to continue to grow. so knowing your staff really well and being able to have open and honest conversations with them about their career goals, about their development priorities, about who they are and what it is they’re willing to achieve. it’s also about connecting them and signposting them to those sorts of opportunities” (participant h, p. 13). below is the final version of the ecological model for flourishing educators. figure 1 ecological model for flourishing educators artist: shannon potts conclusion this study set out to better understand the experience of educator flourishing and then present a way of conceptualizing it to support those who are interested in pursuing the objective of enhancing the wellbeing of educators and support the endeavour of naming, creating and supporting flourishing educators. the ecological model for flourishing educators shown above (fig. 2) names the elements that could be considered when prioritizing educator flourishing and provides a metaphor that may be helpful for practitioners and policymakers. some implications for policy-makers include increasing investment in educator wellbeing, providing more opportunities for educator-directed professional learning, and teaching the elements of educator flourishing in educator training programs. the implications for educational leaders include providing training for leaders on demonstrating trust, earning trust, and prioritizing educator flourishing to best encourage and sustain empowering leadership styles. educators can consider the elements of this theory when applying for new positions by assessing what conditions are in place to best promote their flourishing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 figure 2 ecological model for flourishing educators explanation leadership = sun, water, soil flourishing educator = tree water = “leaders demonstrating trust” looks like: ● empathy ● presuming positive intentions ● granting educators autonomy ● educator-driven decision making sun = “leaders earning trust” looks like: ● transparency ● vulnerability ● intellectual humility ● will ● integrity (alignment with values evidenced through behaviour) soil = “leaders prioritizing educator flourishing” looks like: ● shared language and inclusive ‘we’ ● professional/personal growth ● creating an environment for growth ● coaching roots (things educators need, nourishment from students, mentors, coaches, leaders, etc.): ● feeling seen ● feeling trusted ● feeling valued ● treated as a professional ● receive recognition and acknowledgment leaves (the educators’ identity and visible traits that are given permission to exist from the nourishment in the roots and soil): ● positive relationships ● agency ● authenticity ● autonomy ● integrity ● professional and personal growth this study invites further research into the elements required to create and sustain the conditions for flourishing educators. specifically, this data aligns with harris and colleagues’ question of the limitations of current professional development for educational leaders and could lead to research on what investment in leaders' growth looks like (2013). it would be useful to extend the current findings by examining the leadership requirements for flourishing educators and understand how to help leaders learn how to adopt this leadership approach. considering this research took place with english-speaking educators, it would be helpful to undertake a comparative study in non-english-speaking contexts. quantitative research can be conducted to evaluate whether flourishing educators have an impact on student wellbeing and student academic performance. as the research seeks to be inclusive of all educators, it may be helpful to apply similar research in heis. this research invites fellow educators, researchers, educational leaders and lifelong learners to ask better questions about how flourishing can be sustained and fostered systemically. one of the limitations of this study is the inclusion of only english-speaking participants. thus further research needs to be undertaken in different cultures. the first author is an educator, thus the possibility of bias was addressed through regular meetings with the second author to manage any bias throughout data analysis. participants were educators or educational leaders primarily from k-12 schools with the exception of one participant who is a leader in an hei, therefore the researcher has been explicit about the type of educational institutions involved in http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 the demographic data table (appendix a). based on the research, a new definition of flourishing educators is suggested for future research. a flourishing educator is an educator who feels seen, trusted and valued. they are treated as professionals and encouraged to be authentic. they have autonomy, integrity, agency and experience positive relationships along with personal and professional growth. this ecological model for flourishing educators is intended to push forward the research agenda on the topic of positive education. it is not intended to be the final theory on flourishing educators or identify the only elements needed to foster flourishing educators. education is fluid and evolving, thus the theory seeks to continue the work of previous research on what elements are needed for educators to flourish. the findings propose many of these elements are needed to foster and sustain educator flourishing. the researchers believe flourishing educators will be able to create a ripple effect of flourishing students, flourishing schools and flourishing communities. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors brittany michael-singh rehal university of east london brittany@educatorflourishing.com christian van nieuwerburgh royal college of surgeons in ireland acknowledgments the authors thank the readers who chose to take the time to read and reflect on this research. publishing timeline received 14 september 2021 revised version received 12 february 2021 accepted 12 february 2022 published 1 june 2022 references achor, s. 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(2018). positive education: learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v8i1.588 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v8i1.588 educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 appendix a demographic data table for all participants participant a gender female current role/title permanent primary school teacher country you’re teaching in ireland type of school (international, local, etc.) urban, local school in the village with approx 286 pupils. participant b gender female current role/title kindergarten teacher country you’re teaching in california, usa type of school (international, local, etc.) local, montessori school participant c gender female current role/title fourth-grade teacher country you’re teaching in usa type of school (international, local, etc.) local/public participant d gender female current role/title assistant headteacher & y6 teachertransitioning from primary school to secondary school country you’re teaching in uk type of school (international, local, etc.) public school http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 participant e gender female current role/title special education teacher (grade 3-6) country you’re teaching in ireland type of school (international, local, etc.) local, primary school participant f gender female current role/title head teacher country you’re teaching in london type of school (international, local, etc.) local, primary school participant g gender male current role/title executive principal country you’re teaching in north england type of school (international, local, etc.) community school, an academy, nonselected government funded school. school in a deprived area, 70% of students receiving free meals, significantly high on the deprivation scales. participant h gender male current role/title head teacher country you’re teaching in england type of school (international, local, etc.) public http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 participant i gender female current role/title director of student success country you’re teaching in kuwait type of school (international, local, etc.) international university participant j gender male current role/title educator, author, teaching 7th grade science, director of dean of students office, blue and gold officer (naval academy) country you’re teaching in north carolina, usa type of school (international, local, etc.) local school participant k gender male current role/title assistant principal country you’re teaching in ohio, usa type of school (international, local, etc.) public participant l gender female current role/title principal country you’re teaching in kuwait type of school (international, local, etc.) local school with international/american curriculum http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 participant m gender female current role/title principal country you’re teaching in usa type of school (international, local, etc.) public participant n gender male current role/title head teacher country you’re teaching in northern ireland type of school (international, local, etc.) local school http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 appendix b coded transcripts (2 examples) participant b (educator) code raw transcript thoughts/noticings boundaries personal growth autonomy supportive leadership authenticity sel classroom /school ethics positive relationships *=name changed to anonymize data researcher: can you tell me what experiences led you to identify as a flourishing teacher? participant b: i had three years of teaching experience in environments that i would say are the exact opposite of flourishing. [brief laughter] i was not flourishing, no one around me was flourishing, these were in urban charter schools in brooklyn. these charter schools are known for their high turnover, my last year in central brooklyn, when i quit that school out of i believe 46 staff, 46 teaching staff, only six returned the next year. 50% turnover would be really high, would be really typical at these schools, and so those experiences showed me what the worst teaching environment...and then now i am working for a school that, i’m working for a family partnership in california, and it’s the exact opposite of all of the things that i hated. i just recognize that i’m so...i feel so super supported, and i feel successful, i feel like my opinion counts, i feel like i matter, i feel like what i’m doing is seen-i feel like that’s the biggest thing, i feel really seen and recognized. both as an individual and as a competent teacher. i think for me, the biggest marker of what i define for me as “yes i am a flourishing teacher” is i feel like i get to be myself at work and i just get to do the job that i love. i think especially the contrast of having had the prior -contrasting -awareness -“high turnover” =big predictor for teacher happiness -specific examples -supportive leadership -“feel successful” = great feeling, what could this be called? -”opinion counts”=not only listened to but heard -seen -“individual and as a teacher” -authenticity -contrast http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 experiences and now having this, just it just puts it in relief you know. researcher: when you say that you feel super supported, tell me what that feels like on a daily basis. participant b: from the beginning, i came into a situation where they wanted to redo the physical environment of the classroom and i have a lot of strong opinions about that and they were like “great, what do you want? let’s do it.” so i was allowed perfect freedom to design the physical environment of my classroom within the confines of the building. the room shape is weird but other than the physical structure, i was given complete freedom to design that physical space. i was coming in new to the school and with my experiences and my curriculums that i was familiar with. one of the curriculums i’ve used in the past is called “fundations” it’s a phonics curriculum, i really like it. i know how to use it, i’m very successful with it, and i told themeven though they have an existing phonics program, i told them i really want this and i will show you that it’s really good and it’s better than what you had before and they were like “okay, how much? okay, that’s reasonable”. it was like, $600.00 and they were like “sure, ok, we can do that”. that blanket trust of like “we saw something in you that made us want to hire you, we clearly think that you’re competent for this job, you are telling us that you believe this tool would be the best way for you to accomplish it, sure-we can get that tool for you”. again, obviously everything -“they wanted” -administrative direction/decision -authenticity -autonomy -supportive admin -experience, familiar curriculums -phonics is so important -authenticity -awareness -trust -supportive leadership -respecting her as a competent teacher -curriculum as a tool, not a script -boundaries -autonomy -trusted “by people who are above me” -supportive admin http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 within reason. i was given complete flexibility and control over my schedule, and how i structure my day, again, within reason and coordinating with the other teachers for lunch and recess and all of that. i think overwhelmingly i feel very trusted by the people who are above me. my site coordinator, who i call my principal but he’s not really my principal, he’s more of an administrator and then the ceo of the charter. my site coordinator is jason* and the ceo is kevin* and he runs all of the family partnership schools. there’s two elementary, two high/middle schools, i’m not sure how many total but he runs all of them. the autonomy that i have...from the very beginning i didn’t feel like i had to prove myself. i felt like i had the benefit of trust and then, obviously, as i got results, that trust increased. but i wasn’t fighting an uphill battle to convince people of anything. they were on my side from the beginning. as i got more successful, i got more trust and more wiggle room to have even more freedom. their basic position was “yeah, we trust you, we believe you’re going to do great.” versus “wait and see” or “ok, prove it”. i had one experience early on with parents who were really difficult and both jason and kevin and the whole administration and staff just 100% had my back. he was physically threatening and immediately it was “no, you’re not allowed on campus without an appointment and without one of us. you’re not allowed anywhere near her”. so it was very clear. again, there was no questioning of “what did you do to piss him off or what did you do…?” none of that. and, you know, other teachers and staff have had difficulties with this -specific details about school and how admin is set up -autonomy mentioned -“didn't feel like i had to prove myself” -powerful, empowering -trust as a continuum, beginning with trust and gradually building more -contrasting, not fighting -“on my side” = support, backup, belief in her -increased success = increased ‘wiggle room’ and trust for more freedom -“we believe you’re going to do great” = positive beliefs about her capability -“100% had my back” = prioritize teachers over parents -immediate consequences for parents who overstep -contrasting, rather than blame her -this parent had a record with other teachers and staff -school somewhat expected this -“swiftness with which they had my back and the unquestioning” = the school/school leaders have their own boundaries and will not question the consequences to ensure teachers safety. -“just left me to do my best job” = support is the absence of the admin at times -“just leave me alone” -direct same quote as participant c -balance between support when needed http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 person so it’s not like they didn’t expect it in a way but the swiftness with which they had my back and the unquestioning like “no, you don’t feel safe, so we’re going to fix that”. again, just left me to do my best job. i feel like the biggest thing that they’ve done is just leave me alone when i just need room to do my job and supported me when i needed support. researcher: you mentioned before that you felt you had freedom in designing the physical space, you mentioned that you felt that you had autonomy from the very beginning and once you continued to get results you felt the trust increased and that you had even more freedom. can you tell me more about the freedom that you feel as a flourishing teacher? participant b: yeah, i don’t have someone checking up on me very often. especially right now, you know, we have distance-learning happening, and it’s very...admin has less of an opportunity to kind of “check-in” on what’s going on with the students. previously, it wouldn’t be uncommon for there to be a meeting at school and they’d perhaps walk by my classroom, and i’ve said that their always welcome to just walk by, or walk in and observe, they don’t need to tell me ahead of time, which again, was respectful, because kevin told me in the beginning that he would always let me know ahead of time before he came to observe and i was the one who said “no it’s fine” because that’s just my personality. so before, there was a little more accountability in that he could walk in at any time and see what’s and trust and distance when she needs room to ‘do her job’ -“i don’t have someone checking up on me very often” = this is seen/felt as an invasion of trust or lack of trust -covid is providing more autonomy for some teachers -meetings at school referenced -walk by referenced -this teacher specified that the drop-ins are okay -seen as respectful -authenticity connection to her personality as well as autonomy -interesting, his focus is on the kidsmost supervisors are focused on the teacher, what is the teacher doing -less accountability, yet kids are still learning and teachers are still teaching...interesting -‘foundation of trust’ = something built over time and in the beginning of her role -data potentially helpful strategy to demonstrate student growth http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 going on “oh yeah, the kids are learning” but now, there really isn’t that kind of accountability. no one has dropped in on a zoom lesson, no one is checking in on my kids and seeing how they’re reading, but i built up enough of a foundation of trust that when i present my data, it’s not questioned. when admin asks, and it’s not just me-it’s all of the teachers at my school, “so what are you doing?” i can just answer and it’s not an accusation it’s genuinely a question that is asked to gather information. i feel like that’s a big one; the communication towards me is never accusatory or judgmental, there’s no subtext, no secret test that i have to pass, you know, their not trying to like “catch me”, if their asking a question, it’s genuinely to gather information that they need and my answer is accepted at face value. researcher: so you feel that the communication is genuine when their talking to you, is that correct? participant b: genuine, respectful, complimentary, positive, validating, acknowledging. researcher: you talked about trust and how you were listened to when you brought up new ideas, you feel that you’re able to get to do the job that you love. tell me more about getting to do the job you love. -“it’s not an accusation” such an interesting contrast of what it’s not. -style of communication -contrasting -‘no secret test that i have to pass’ = powerful description -“catch me” similar to ‘firing line’ quote from participant a -“genuinely to gather information” even though this is for their benefit, she feels safe and trusted to answer honestly. -description of communication -supportive leadership -authenticity -specific examples from first grade -autonomy -connection to student autonomy and teacher autonomy -authenticity http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 participant b: i mean i love teaching. i love working with this age group. i teach kindergarten and first grade and it’s my favorite age group. it’s the exact, ideal age group that i want and i love having the kids make connections and figure out language and figure out numbers and our number system and put things together and think deeply about character motivation and figure out why a book is funny and get the jokes that the author kind of sprinkles into the chapter. all of those things i love and so the autonomy that i have lets me do that in the way that is most effective for me. i think just like our students function best in different mediums and different ways, i know how my brain works and i have a very good sense of how i can teach and what materials and methods are most effective from me then to the kids. so the autonomy that i have allows me to flourish and allows my students to flourish, which is ultimately the best part, because i’m allowed to teach in the way that’s most authentic to me. if i had, and i have had, to do...follow a certain lesson plan structure or a curriculum that for someone else may have been great, but for me, didn’t work. it just wasn’t authentic to me, so it wasn’t effective, or as effective because it wasn’t authentic. i think a big part of flourishing is the autonomy to know what makes the most sense for you and the freedom to choose what makes the most sense as a teacher, because that’s the way to get the best out of that individual teacher, right? then, therefore, the kids are going to flourish, which makes that teacher happy. then i think, you know, the opposite, where i was in ny a big thing that i hated was norming for the sense of -ripple effect of flourishing**mentioned in several transcripts -authenticity is ‘allowed’ = supportive leadership/environment -structure in lesson plans or curriculum can be an inhibitor to some. it’s not a one-size-fits-all deal. -contrasting -when something isn’t authentic, it’s less effective = interesting -autonomy -trust and support from leadership -‘to get the best out of that individual teacher’ = choice and freedom which ripple effect to kids -contrasting -opposite = ‘norming for the sense of norming’ -‘easiest for admin’ rather than ‘best for student learning’ or ‘most helpful for teachers’. interesting. -“instead of making me change myself to make it easier for them to assess me, they do the heavy lifting” = such a powerful quote -authenticity -‘shifting the burden’ =supportive leadership http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 norming. so a big thing was across classrooms, across grades, things had to be the same for the sake of being the same because it was easiest for administrators to judge what was happening in a small amount of time or the same amount of time because everything was supposed to be the same. so i appreciate here that my administration, instead of making me change myself to make it easier for them to assess me, they do the heavy lifting of adapting their understanding around what they’re looking at so that i can just be myself, right. it’s shifting the burden of figuring out the different things from me to them. the two elementary schools that we have are very, very different. ultimately, obviously, we want the same things, we want our kids to achieve similar benchmarks. but i will never teach the way that sara teaches and she will never teach the way i teach and the fact that that’s ok, and that neither one of us is being forced to be the other person contributes greatly to my sense of happiness. when kevin comes to observe me, he’s not comparing us. he’s asking me questions to find out what’s going on so he can assess the learning environment, the student achievement, the student talk, you know all of those things, it’s not “well i saw this in sara’s class, what’s the equivalent here” or vice versa, right. it’s like “well, we all want the babies to read, so how are you getting towards reading?” and, again, it makes me feel very seen as an individual and appreciated for who i am as opposed to they put up with me in spite of it. -supportive admin -authenticity -‘he’s not comparing us’ -letting teachers be authentic -all things being assessed are in relation to students -“very seen” = such a good feeling -supportive leadership -authenticity -contrasting -awareness -personality in context of a place -contrasting -specific memory -such an impactful question, “how can i support you” -authentic answer -authenticity http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 researcher: you mentioned that before, you said previously that you felt really seen and recognized as an individual and as a teacher. so tell me more about feeling seen. participant b: i have a very strong personality [laughter] and...i have ny in my blood, i lived in ny and there’s definitely a big part of me that’s ny tough and not california hippydippy-woo-woo [laughter]. one of the things that i [laughter] appreciate the most about jason, and even kevin but mostly jason, is he asked me in the beginning of the year, “so how can i support you? what’s the best way for me to support you?” and i told him, “the best way for you to support me is to let me always speak freely to you and reign me in when i’m getting a little too heated.” [laughter]. so i am able... when i talk to jason i drop f-bombs all the time, if i’m annoyed or getting frustrated or passionate about...and i’m not directing them at him, obviously, i’m not being mean to him. but i express myself in the full breadth of my ny personality [laughter] without having to sensor myself. then he does the interpreting for me, he goes, “ok, i’ll talk to so-and-so about that for you, so you don’t have to drop f-bombs” and, you know i told him to reign me in and i mean that so he’s like, “you gotta calm down about that one, you know, you’re just gonna have to deal with that” and i’m like “okay, you’re right”. i’m not judged for what i say, i’m not annoying, i’m not difficult, i’m not a troublemaker, all those negative things that people get labeled as when they speak out and they’re passionate about what they do; i don’t get that. you know, he knows i’m fiery and partly that’s -feels trusted enough to vent her frustration or passion -interesting that frustration and passion are closely related and can produce similar results -authenticity -supportive leadership -supportive leadership/a type of leadership that fits this teachers’ needs. something here about differentiating leadership for teachers the way teachers differentiate content for students. -interesting, people are labeled as such when they ‘speak out and they’re passionate’ -autonomy -authenticity -‘that’s real’= humanity, real life -supportive admin -speculation about teacher tie to education and learning -interesting reflection on how teacher passion is “extinguished” yet also http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 why i’m good at my job because i’m super passionate. instead of asking me to relegate my passion to a narrowly defined box that is only for students, he just lets me be myself and then helps navigate situations where you can’t drop f-bombs [laughter] right? like that’s real. even kevin, i feel like i’ve dropped fewer f-bombs with him, but i’ve definitely cursed with him and i’ve definitely been like, “no this is fucking stupid, like i hate this, blah blah blah” and he just kind of goes, “yeah okay, hmm, so what do you want to do about it” and to be able to talk to the ceo about that, like in that way, again i think teachers, if they aren’t anymore, at least once were, incredibly, deeply passionate about education and learning and students and children and...i don’t think that it’s possible to ask someone to temper their passion in some placed without having it extinguish their passion in other places. so, if you’re asking me to work hard, stay up late, work on weekends, figure out how to do this for my students and i’m willing to do it because i love them and i adore them and i want what’s best for them, but then calm the fuck down about these other things. i just don’t think it’s possible. i think you either get it all or you don’t get any of it. or some sort of like sedated version in between. i think asking teachers to do that, to temper themselves because then their going to be labeled troublemakers or blah, blah, blah, or rioters, but then asking them to still be super passionate about their students...i think that’s what eventually burns them out. so allowing teachers to be their full selves, even when it’s not polite, in appropriate environments you know, i’m not dropping f-bombs with parents, called upon -contrasting of boundaries -interesting, boundaries can be broken as long as allowances are made for “these other things” (i.e. lesson plans, scripted curriculum, etc.) -all or nothing type of analogy for passion -contrasting -reference to burn out -authenticity -‘emotional drain’ = more impactful on her teaching performance than they may realize -at 100 all the timehow amazing if this is possible for a majority of teachers. interestingly this is also identified as ‘nourishing’ for her! -another contrasting, specifically being ‘caught’ -‘no trap’ = another powerful visual -amazing feeling -supportive admin http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 but i need to be...if you’re talking to me about my opinion about something i need to be able to express it fully and not filter it for you. because the act of filtering is such an emotional drain that it can’t help but affect me in other ways. so the fact that i don’t have to filter myself, that i can just be at 100 all the time, in my school, is so nourishing. not only be at 100, but also know that i’m not secretly being judged, or i’m gonna feel the effects two months down the line at my observation or someones gonna try and catch me in something because i pissed them off you know, there’s no trap about it. when i’m speaking my administrators, i never feel like i’m walking into a trap. researcher: part of what you said earlier that might...that i saw and noted down is you said the word authentic. so tell me more about being authentic. participant b: i just get to be myself. i get to be my personality. i get to move and talk and teach and organize and plan and present and design and record and...the way that works for me and that is me. my classroom looks very different from the 2nd and 3rd grade classroom because carrie is a different person and the way that she works and organizes and all of that. within the basic requirements of -our students are meeting the standards, and -there’s vertical alignment in terms of the skills and fundamental understandings that they have, we’re allowed to just do it our way. i really have not been asked to adapt to somebody -authenticity -classroom ethics -autonomy -supportive leadership -authenticity -authenticity potentially leading to effectiveness and flourishing (?) -self-awareness -speculation many teachers are reflective and self-aware -many teachers ‘prevented’ from doing the best job -more trust in teachers to know their best -authenticity http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 else’s way and i deeply appreciate that. i just get to do my thing the way that i want to do it. i think authenticity is such a deeply important aspect of flourishing in teaching because ultimately the point of good teaching is that the children are flourishing, and i know that you’re not asking about that, but, i recognize that when i am most myself, i am most effective. seeing myself be effective is a big part of that feeling of flourishing. i’m been in situations where i felt hamstrung, right? like, i’m very self-aware and i think a lot of teachers are pretty reflective and self-aware so we know when we’re not doing our best job and we also know when somebody, like kneecapped us, and is preventing us from doing our best job. we know what it looks like when we’re doing our best, we know how our kids respond, we know what it looks like in our classroom, we know what it feels like and so that knowledge combined with not being there is devastating. the ability to be my most authentic self is giving me the opportunity to be my most effective and know it. i have days where obviously things didn’t go as well as planned and blah, blah blah but by and large... i’m killin’ it and i know it [laughter]. and that’s because i know i don’t have to put up with a lot of bullshit. i just get to go in and do my job. i don’t have to spend my emotional or intellectual energy on satisfying a bunch of administrative bullshit and then feel drained by the time i get to actual teaching. i...some people, everybody plans in different ways. i don’t write lesson plans anymore. like, i haven’t written lesson plans since i was forced to in my first year of teaching, and i hated it then and i never wrote -authenticity -contrasting, able to know that it’s not always great -so much value in ‘getting to go in and do my job’ -administrative requests are draining and take away from actual teaching -authenticity -supportive leadership -giving teachers options -autonomy -meeting teachers where they are, different for different people/teachers -supportive leadership http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 them before. i would plan my lesson, i would do all my prep, and then i would sit down and write the lesson plan, because lesson plans don’t help me. i’m sure they help some people, they don’t help me. no one has ever asked me here to write a lesson for them. when kevin came to observe me, he had a pre-observation meeting and i had the opportunity to...there was like a form we needed to fill out, you know, he has a bunch of forms and stuff, and so he sent it to me ahead of time and he said “you can fill it out ahead of time if you want or we can fill it out together when i’m there”. i am not a form-filler-outer so he sat there and he just asked me the questions and i just talked to him and then he filled out what he needed, right? for somebody else, they probably would’ve wanted to like sit down and think and type, you know, and have it all ready before they talked and like, that’s what i mean when i say authentic, i wasn’t forced to do something a way that doesn’t work for me and is just extra steps because that’s just not how my brain works and there was no judgment about it, right? researcher: earlier you mentioned that you feel successful. tell me more about feeling successful. participant b: my students are killin’ it. i mean, you know, i have benchmarks for..i know what on grade level looks like and what it means and what phonics patterns mean and i know what above grade level is and i have a very clear picture of that and ⅔ of my class is well above -authenticity -success measured by her students success (connection to participant c and participant e) -teacher knowledge, content knowledge -classroom ethics/community -specific example from her current students -keeping the next teacher in mind by making sure she does what she can to prepare her kiddos -compassion for their next teacher and their individual studies as students -“measure” referenced -sel http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 grade level. i have some kids who are behind, for various reasons but i have a solid group of kindergarteners coming into next year reading on a mid-first grade level already, half of my first graders are already going to second grade reading on a third grade level, beginning third grade level already. and they came in high, it’s not like i did all of it, i had a high group in both grades. but, yeah my success is...i consider myself successful if i feel like i am adequately preparing my kids for the next grade, and not just they’re on grade level but my goal is for them to be above. especially for the ones going to second grade because it’s a different teacher. so i want them to enter...i want things to be a little bit easier for them then she might expect. so they can dive deeper. that’s one measure, but also the like social-emotional environment. i had two kids in first grade that were...one especially was pretty much the reason the other teacher retired, you know, the ones we love the most, the difficult kids and we got that shit turned around real fuckin’ fast. you’re changing all the names anyway so susie came in not knowing her letter sounds in first grade because she was just, you know, quote end quote “silly” and she would just roll around on the floor and do nothing i don’t even know what she would do but...we just cut that shit out within like two weeks. and within two weeks she was working independently! and it’s not because i was being a bitch to her, it’s because she got 0 reinforcement for being silly, i was just like, “no, we’re not doing that” [laughter] and she’s so proud of herself. like, she’s so proud of herself. the fact that she can read and...she came in and didn’t even really -specific example -student success after 2 weeks -classroom ethics -sel -academic success coupled with sel success (?) -specific example -sel -classroom ethics http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 know how to count properly and the other day i did a number talk with her and it was like 4 + 7 + 9 + 3 + 6, i think, like i can’t remember the numbers but there were two pairs that added up to ten and then like a fifth number and she was able to walk me through, “well i know 7+3 is 10 and i know 6 + 4 is 10 so that makes 20 and i just have the 9 so that makes 29.” and she’s so proud of herself! and ethan, who was in trouble all the time and just...i don’t know, he just got away with murder last year and he has given me very few problems, once we got him on a check-in, check-out behavior chart system. he loves me and he loves school and he does what he needs to do and...so another marker would be creating an environment where my kids can feel academically successful, be academically successful but also feel it, like, they recognize it in themselves and where we don’t have kids like wilin’ out. [laughter] you know, because it’s not good for them, you know, it’s not good for children to tantrum. and one of my kids, quinn, was apparently a huge crier and like his parents were so concerned, they brought like a ‘calm down box’ and extra snacks because he just goes...i mean, i don’t know, i never saw it because he never tantrumed in my class because the very first time he started i was like, “na uh, we don’t do that here.” and he was like, “oh, i guess we don’t do that here” [laughter] and he’s never tantrumed in my class. not one time. and that i consider to be very successful. i feel successful that i don’t have children crying in my classroom….out of manipulation, frustration, or any other big...traumatic emotions that really shouldn’t be associated with school. you know, -sel -sel -teacher modeling sel and reinforcing consistent behavior -personal growth -authenticity -sel *clear -said without hesitation -balance between semi-regular basis -asking a question that is vague enough to be answered directly http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 i’m very big...i joke about it, but trauma reduction is a huge marker of success because it can be very traumatic to not know things and get things wrong but it can also be like no deal at all and that’s successful. like if my kids can get something wrong and it’s not even a thing then great, that’s...i’ve been successful. and they know that i love them and i care about them and i’m happy to see them. researcher: so of all of the things that you’ve talked about that are the experiences of you as a flourishing teacher, what are the most important elements? participant b: autonomy, trust and authenticity. empowerment. researcher: what would you say keeps you/or sustains your flourishing? participant b: honestly, jason is really great at checking in on a semi-regular basis. not annoyingly often, but often enough, and asking like “is there anything you need? can i help support you?” and if i answer that question with something that might be annoying like, “can you scan all these report cards for me because i didn’t know i had to scan them. he’ll go, “sure!” and, he’ll do it, even though it’s not really his job, like however i answer the question. and if i go, “nah, i’m good.” he’ll go, “okay” and then he goes away for a few weeks. [laughter] -supportive leadership -“even though it’s not really his job” connection to admin who help teachers “above” or “below” their job description -again, being left along when needed -autonomy -“leaves me alone” -support is the absence of their presence and persistence sometimes -“biggest thing” -strong language -distinction between new teachers and experienced teachers. they have different needs, also a connection to autonomy / authenticity. -again, repetition of “leave us alone” -“annoying, adds unnecessary things”= detracting from 100% teaching -supportive leadership -connection to teacher happiness (?) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 like, literally, i mean not really because you know we have our weekly meetings when we have to talk about random things but you know he’s not specifically bugging me. if i say, “nah, i’m good” he goes, “okay”, and then he leaves me alone. like so many times in ny, i really think that the biggest thing administrators can do to support teachers who know what they’re doing and are experienced and are not asking for mentoring and, you know, new teachers have different needs, but for teachers that are experienced; that feel capable and confident and basically have it down, just go away. [laughter] just leave us alone and we will be fine [laughter]. the more you poke your nose in...that’s just annoying and adds unnecessary things. it’s almost like..they really don’t need to do much. they just need to get out of our way. i really think that if every administrator could just get out of your way like 50% more then their doing, they’d probably be great. like teacher happiness would skyrocket. [laughter] researcher: i will read you the definition that i posted to show what flourishing looks like in my research and then i will ask you if there is anything else you’d like to say about being a flourishing teacher. the definition is, “when teachers feel a sense of joy, play, laughter, and fun at work; when they are encouraged and supported to take risks in their teaching; and when they see they are making a difference in the lives of their students, school, and community”. so is there anything else you’d -another contrast between beginning teachers and experienced teachers -interesting point, possibly not possible for beginning teachers (?) -“competent and capable” = connection to flourishing ? -trial and error, -personal growth -mentors, could be a connection to coaching -contrasting experience -different view of flourishing depending on where teachers are in their experience? interesting. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 like to add about yourself being a flourishing teacher? participant b: i don’t know whether it’s truly possible to be a beginning and flourishing teacher. like, i think a big part of my flourishing and the teachers that i see flourishing around me is the fact that i feel competent and capable. i don’t know that it’s possible to really flourish like your first year of teaching. i think a lot of the reasons that i flourish now are because of mistakes that i’ve made and learning things the hard way and falling flat on my face and learning things the hard way and having some great mentors that dragged me along a little bit. so, yeah. just as you were reading that i was thinking about that. i think it requires a certain level of experience and you know, again, this is only my 4th year in the classroom so it’s not like i’m a veteran right now but urban charters are a pressure cooker so 1 or 2 years there...and you’re..you got it or you don’t’ and you’re not teaching anymore but, yeah. that’s not really here nor there but i just thought about it as you were reading it. what it would mean for a firstyear teacher or like a second-year teacher and what they need to get to flourishing probably looks very different. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 participant h (educational leader) themes used throughout: actionable steps or examples of providing teachers with autonomy trust experience of personal growth coaching/coaching approach vulnerability required from leaders empathy humanity modeled from leaders educator vs. teacher/ treated as a professional? presuming positive intentions for educators/everyone? infinite vs. finite mindset getting rid of things for educators and leaders raw transcript thoughts/noticings thoughts/noticings that’s a big question. i was recently reading an updated journal article that kind of concedes the leadership in 2007 and then they rewrote/updated their position in 2019. it was interesting because what it suggests is that leaders are only 2nd to teachers in terms of having an impact on student growth and achievement. i think it’s an interesting statement. they revised it slightly but the overarching emphasis is the same. leaders creating the conditions for which teachers can do really well. some of them are the opportunity to research, reflect and lead some of their own professional learning in contrast to being directed in terms of what to learn, when to learn, how to learn, who to learn it from—the idea that a teacher is a 2/23/2021 importance of teachers being allowed and supported to take charge over their learning. 3/5/2021 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 leader in their own learning. there is a deep emphasis on reflective practice and practice-based research. the climate in which the teachers work in. factors like their ability to collaborate with other teachers, their openness to communication, their orientation to change...things like that are what systems are in place in the school that promote teachers working collaboratively with one another. is the culture one that facilitates things like learning lesson studies, teacher research groups, coaching, or is it one that is quite top-down and senior staff are giving directives to teaching staff about what they’re to be doing and how to do it. in terms of their orientation to change and openness to communication, i think the way leaders communicate to their staff is also quite important. i’m referring to how often is that communication? is the communication 1-way communication or are there opportunities for teachers themselves to lead the communication or have more of a dialogic relationship? i’m trying to think of some of the things that don’t go well in places i’ve worked and some things i’ve tried to make a little bit better. i write about this a lot from a lot of different angles. some of the things that i think would support teachers flourishing in england may sound irrelevant in other contexts. when i think about teacher flourishing, i think about concepts like teacher wellbeing. you know teachers being well. i know from an english perspective and leading an english primary school, i think about the concept of agency. the idea of supported, developed decision-capital. teachers having a greater power and greater control to make decisions that impact their day, their professional time, their instructional practice, and i think that often gets confused with “do whatever, do whatever you want.” but i don’t think that’s what it is at all. agency is doing a million and one things that are less noticeable. some may be consistent and some less so. → interesting aspect about ‘systems in place that promote collaboration. potentially flourishing? → is dialogic conversation/commu nication a potential theme? --communication ‘the way leaders communicate’ “supported, developed, decisioncapital” , great wording → agency and autonomy; synonymous? -assumption collaboration = coaching -what trust looks like in actionable ways http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 when i think about agency, i think about marking, planning, admin, their planning time. teachers allocating a part of their week to assessment and planning and so it’s giving professional people the decision to do those sorts of things as they see fit in alignment with the school goals for growth and opportunity. their planning time in my school doesn’t need to be taken on site, they can plan at home, they can plan at a pub, they may want to do it virtually...it’s the idea that there are certain things at school that need to be told. if a fire breaks out, i’m going to tell them what they need to be doing. i think there’s absolutely a place for that in leadership, but far too often it’s become the default. when i talk about agency i’m talking about where there is scope and where we have supported, developed people to make informed choices about their work, their time, their space, their instructional practice, that we do that as often as possible. we continue to keep systems in place for them to further develop themselves as professional people. that also comes down to the ideas of monitoring, scrutiny, accountability as it relates to agency and teachers flourishing. i think the implicit message in all of those mechanisms is “we don’t trust you. if you’re left to your own devices you’re not going to do a great job.” i think that relates directly to teacher flourishing because if the implicit message is always “we don’t trust you. we think you need to be monitored or you wont perform well. we think you need to be scrutinized.” it’s always this deficit model. within the teacher is the problem and someone else needs to come in and solve it. i think it implicitly weakens everybody on staff. i think people are far less likely to flourish in those conditions. i also think its about professional challenge and inspiration that leaders have a responsibility to challenge their professional people. so it doesn’t mean “do whatever you want and let’s hope it works out.” it means leaders asking teachers the right kinds of questions to help them solve instructional problems, fall in love with their work again if that’s what’s necessary. i think leaders have a job to influence → this idea that two truths can be true. you can have agency and autonomy and also be directive when needed. potential definition for autonomy in schools/among educators? → what flourishing is not → also related to systemic structure of educational hierarchies → could this theme be personal/professional growth? are they synonymous? → idea of ‘systems in place for them to __.” really important. where does this go? is this part of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 professional teachers and help them to be their very best. that involves challenging them and inspiring them. that involves a note and a level in kindness in all of that. if there is a teacher that is performing not in the standard they normally do or not to the standard that we expect, i don’t think it’s about more monitoring, more scrutiny, more accountability measures; i think it’s about how we influence that person to be their very best. but it’s also a vulnerable position from a school leaders perspective in understanding why it is that person’s not performing. because sometimes it’s technical; you can look at it as ‘skill’ or ‘will’. you know they don’t have the skill set to perform fully or they don’t want to perform well, they're lazy and they're not performing well so they're not happy. but so often in schools there are so many other things going on. maybe they're going through a messy divorce, maybe somebody close to them is dying, there are all sorts of factors that take place in one’s life that can affect performance. assuming kindness and understanding that we’re all going through stuff is helpful and i think people flourish in that environment where they feel understood and treated like a normal person. there’s lots of pressure and change that has to be dealth with. for teachers to be in a flourishing environment i think the first thing is that you need to default to kindness, empathy and trust. i think the way we respond to people. calm, caring, considerate responses rather than emotional, or emotive responses to teachers in the working environment. i think it’s also about purpose. getting teachers to work together is an incredible thing and i think there are benefits to that on it’s own, especially when there is a focus on learners and learning. the other side of that and thinking about the idea of agency is voice. if we’re going to have people working together collaboratively, there has to be an end, a result that’s going to come from that. it can’t be that we ask people to come together to talk about how we teach math and then they come back to us with their ideas and then those ideas get shelved. if we’re going to have teachers in collaborative environments then they need → kindness = humanity? → i like this concept of ‘skill or will’ → beautiful example of humanity and empathy. could empathy encompass humanity and kindness towards self and others (in terms of themes?) → mores about how we speak than what we say → professional/educatio n as a calling vs. job. → i don’t know what this theme sounds like yet but i’m curious about what this concept is regarding voice, meaningful contribution and cocreation. maybe this is a balance of the paradox between autonomy and wanting teachers to flourish? having that challenge that may be personal/professiona l? -idea of how we speak is here again. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 to be meaningfully collaborative environments. they need to have a point. i think that often there are lots of initiatives that take place at school where people are tokenistically put into collaborative working groups or professional learning communities or any other incarnation of teacher collaboration and at the end of all of it, it doesn’t go very far. so people don’t engage as meaningfully because at the end it all just goes away. all of this referencing my core idea that the wellbeing, the flourishing needs to be in the work itself. the work needs to be the joy. there are all sorts of things that i hear about in england at least that are wellbeing or environmental flourishing initiatives that all have to do with distracting people from the fact that their work is not great. you know the work is crappy or we get treated poorly but if we bring in a yoga instructor once a week that will distract people from the fact that this work isn’t great or if we bring in tea, coffee and cookies in the staffroom it makes up for the fact that we’re observing them six times a year and giving them one-way feedback. the idea of a teacher flourishing has to be inside the work itself. all of these things that i’m speaking about, all are adjustments, in the english context, to the traditional, relationship between the school leadership and teachers themselves. my view is that if we get the work right, then a lot of the initiatives that we put in place to help teachers flourish or improve their state of being well-a lot of that stuff disappears. because when the work is the joy, people far more naturally flourish in that environment. people want to be their best in that kind of environment. as an example, at my school the way that we do “performance management” which is the traditional term how it’s described in england and in itself sounds unpleasant. the idea that if we want to challenge our professional people, allowing them to be in a condition whereby they can ask questions, lines of inquiry, about their own professional growth and development. they can ask questions about their own teaching that is of interest to them. throughout collective voice? → potential theme or theme integration of ‘meaning’ (also part of perma) → what collaborative learning / creation is not → i want to explore this idea, “the work needs to be the joy”. very insightful look into what wellbeing is not. it’s not a distraction from a toxic work environment, it’s an intentional target. → a better way to evaluate educators/progress → coaching culture, -meaning, being a stakeholder having a voice as an educator example of setting a ‘just cause’ for educators connection to simon sineck http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 the course of the year they can meet with another teacher for a coaching conversation about their journey towards answering that question and they can meet with someone like me as their line manager, a few times a year, about how answering that question that they asked is having an impact on them professionally and the children that they serve. in terms of challenging our professional people, outside of the view of actual capability or performance. if a teacher is neglecting or abusing some of the children, obviously the response is not a line of inquiry-those things are taken much more seriously. but in a general sense believing and understanding that all our teachers wants to be the very best teacher they can possibly be; the idea of challenging professional people means involving ourselves in conversations with them where we’re creating a framework whereby they can ask challenging questions of themselves and their profession and professional development. then we provide the conditions to which they can go and answer those questions. i think that that’s part of it. also having an ambitious set of overarching priorities for the development of the school. that doesn’t need to come solely from the principal. it might be the principal who lays the groundwork or asks the staff the right questions in the direction we want to go. but it’s also important to have ambitious targets for the whole school. both for pupil achievement but also around the wider development of the whole person. we have three kind of overarching development themes. 1 is the development of the whole person and we call that the ‘whole family’. so it’s looking at the children, the staff, governors, the community and how it is that we’re being ambitious with their growth, development and achievement as children, maybe for parents the courses we’re running, the opportunities we’re providing them with, and it’s more than just quantitative data. asking the community the things that are important to them and then it’s about supporting them achieving the things that are important to them. ambitious targets for teachers that are about the development of the school coaching ‘norm’, normalizing questions and introspection and also personal growth → balance of the paradox of autonomy/agency → again, this idea of a collective purpose that educators are stakeholders in. → autonomy balance with community and connection -the coaching questions are professional growth that are self-selected “of interest to them” → actionable step of creating the conditions -something deeper here about ambitious priorities. does this tie into simon http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 but are aligned with the teaching staff themselves. in the last few years, we’ve been trying to rewrite our curriculum in a way that diversifies, decolonizes and includes a variety of voices, perspectives and people; but those aren’t targets that were driven by me. those are conversations that we’ve had as a staff so that all of us are bringing these targets along together and then supporting teachers in how their individually determining how they want to contribute. which is where the challenge is. if we’re trying to develop the whole schools approach to curriculum, the challenge is aligning each of the teacher’s to their contribution of that. in terms of creating the right culture, i think the most important overarching philosophy i wrote about a year or two ago. it was a philosophy from the company huel. which has a slogan, you know their main slogan on the side of their wall which is, “don’t be a dick”. i don’t know if that’s quotable for your research. because i think it’s really important and it gets overlooked a lot. there are school leaders in tons of countries and there’s lots of pressure and change that has to be dealt with, you’re dealing with money, you’re dealing with hr, you’re dealing with the human beings in the building, your dealing with attainment; there’s lots of different angles and there’s lots of different pressure and the easiest position to default to is just short, curt, and i guess it’s kind of what we were saying before. when things aren’t going well, people default to what they know and what’s easiest to them. which in many cases is to protect themselves and treat other people poorly and blame other people. there are always going to be people who take advantage and who don’t live up to their expectations of themselves or your expectations of them but that’s not true for most people. erring on the side of kindness will often win you far more than you will lose in the short term of the 1 person who's going to take advantage. finding a way to get rid of things like the high-stakes funny and so relevant, "don't be a dick". → example of impact and actionable step taking after listening to what teachers want → again, concept of kindness, empathy, humanity. can i find a definition of empathy that encompasses selfkindness and kindness towards others? → what flourishing leading is not and what happens when it gets tested. → solid gold --->big connection to simon sinnek= infinite vs. finite mindset, long-term sinecks ‘just cause’? → actionable step to support them achieve “alignment with educators” paradox of autonomy http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 accountability regimes in schools. that doesn’t resonate in every country, like in canada, ontario we don’t have that kind of system so it would be irrelevant. that’s one of the things in a system like that which allows teachers to flourish. they're not jumping through hoops of high stakes accountability at the expense of everything else. what their able to do is ensure children achieve through some of the methods we talked about earlier; collaboration and community treating people kindly is the most important thing and the second thing is finding a way to change all or most of the things that place the greatest amount of stress, anxiety and pressure on teachers and find a way to turn those things into something else. reflective time for self-directed learning, turn them into instructional consistency so maybe monitoring isn’t as important; moving people away from the cliff edge. being kind to people and being certain that the system structures metrics you have for measuring or enacting change in your school are not like do or die. their not sudden death. if it doesn’t work you’re going to get fired. there needs to be an element of trust built into them, there needs to be an element of time built into them and, there needs to be elements of support, challenge and development built into them. treating people kindly, erring on the side of kindness and then replacing anything that is cliff edge, highstakes, anxiety inducing. buffering teachers from anything that's a distraction to growing, developing and helping children achieve. there needs to be real clarity around “what is it that we’re here to do”. for example in england, or there historically has been a heavy emphasis on standardized tests as a measure, i should say the measure of school effectiveness. if that is the overarching end goal; that all children achieve well on standardized tests and that’s the only goal that you set for yourself. then you need to brand yourself really clearly that that’s what you’re out here to do, you need to attract the right kind of people to your organization who also believe in that as their passion and mission as well and you need to check everything vs. short-term → #thereisabetterway → is this positive relationships or is it something else? the paradoxical community that’s created when we have autonomy? → strong language ‘sudden death’ ‘going to get fired’ → not only protecting time but being proactive in terms of distractions because distractrations for teachers take away from the growth, development of children. → importance of knowing our ‘why’ → paradox of two truths being true and that we can find and -connection to jim collins, ‘opening bid of trust’ great quote about 'buffering teachers' and example of transforming the old or replacing the old traditions http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 that you’re doing in your school against that as the overarching target. now the challenge that i faced with that in particular is that i don’t believe that is...i think one of the core ideas is that children can leave here and read, write and solve problems, they’re academically strong, but i was really clear with staff from the start that that’s only part of the puzzle. that needs to be balanced with developing young people who are critical, happy and fierce, sassy, courageous. it’s a piece of the puzzle. once you’ve established what it is your setting out to do, which in our case was different to the national aims. you need to find a way to balance what the national aims are with what your aims as a school are and then collaboratively and collectively make decisions about how you’re going to achieve those things. for us i guess, it was important that in order to remove the handcuffs of monitoring, scrutiny and high-stakes accountability, which often is very much directed at the teacher. the reason it’s primarily directed at teachers is because school leaders need some form of certainty that students are going to do well on the standardized test. so it’s kind of going back a level and saying okay if we want them to do well on a standardized test, what are the key ingredients. for our school it was having a consistent and evidence-based instructional program was the key. our school didn’t have that when i came here. in order for children to achieve consistently well, everyone doing their own thing, especially when there is high turnover in inner london schools, doesn’t make any sense. because all you have to do then is turn up the monitoring, scrutiny and accountability regimes. if your workforce is constantly in it’s infancy, you have to manage complexity. the only way to do that is to have somebody go in your class, tell you if what you’re doing is good enough or not and then if it’s not good enough tell you what you need to do to make it better and if it is good enough tell you to help other people be better. but the problem with that is that it leaves most people on that cliff edge. they are constantly worried that the next time somebody comes in and watches it’s not going to be very good, or they have a disagreement about what that person thinks about as create better ways to achieve goals → clarity, “clear is kind, unclear is unkind” from brene brown, also using data to drive innovation/reflection → this concept of teachers flourishing potentially leading to educators who can develop the ‘whole person’ including courage-building, happiness, etc. → hold the tension of paradox between what you want, what teachers and community wants, and national aims → example of how the intention is often good or at least understandable, yet the actions or way to get results is what negatively impacts teachers/schools/socia l climates → another paradox of what autonomy is not → this makes me think of schools that are not new, yet they feel new because the vision is wishy washy → where does this go?!? → actionable step is figuring out the way to balance super strong language about what high-stakes accountability feels like for teachers “handcuffs” → maybe this is an example of transparency and collective alignment/ collaboration? http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 good and what they think is good and it’s never going to align and therefore their job is at risk so they leave. it’s always this volatile, volatility that always exists there. the easiest way to sort that out is come up with a consistent view of what great instructional practice in a specific subjects looks like. that, in a nutshell in it’s simplest form, summarizes how we got away with the idea that people don’t need to be monitored and scrutinized all the time because we collaboratively designed a consistent instructional program for the time children start with us to the time they leave. that took time, but once that was established, people can step away from the cliff edge because we weren’t talking about whether what people were doing was good enough or not, we were all doing the same kind of thing. the only way to buffer teachers from those sorts of distractions and the anxiety and stress that comes along with high stakes stuff is to ask what it is that’s creating that issue in the first place and then creatively solve it. inside of that process there are more specific things that take place. working in this school, working in a previous school, working in different roles, i ask people what it is that was driving them out and making them stressed and anxious and unhappy and there were common themes there. often the highstakes accountability, the constant monitoring, scrutiny and pressure. i just implemented practices that took that pressure and stress away but solved the problem they were trying to get at anyway. i guess that’s it. when you ask people why they do those things; why do they observe teachers and grade them, why do they monitor them and scrutinize their books and their planning, they’ll often talk about consistencies or they want better results or to be able to predict how kids are going to do on a test, they want the highest quality of education or teaching. they come up with answers that i don’t think anybody would consider wrong. i want the children to have a world class education for our students, i or has nothing to do with student/teacher learning and there is no shared purpose → personal connection to how awful this is. especially educators who feel teaching as a calling and then aggressive critique or tumultuous relationships are an attack on our selfworth. → what theme is this? i’m not sure but this is important. this idea of clarity, defining the problem in order to have a great solution. this takes away personal judgment and makes this tangible (einstein, “if i had an hour to solve a problem, i’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes solving it.”) → asking coaching questions to better understand → negative ways of accomplishing goals → ability to see merit even when the way it’s gone about isn’t agreed with → again, this theme emerges of ‘there is a better way, and if there isn’t yet-you create it as a leader with your community the new way doesn't terminate the overarching goal of the old way of monitoring and scrutinizing, it's just a better way. for everyone. → open-minded that it’s not only one way to do this. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 want them to achieve really well, i want them to understand deeply and understand lots of things, as many as they possibly can understand deeply. but the view that there’s only one way to do that and that way is cliff edge is wrong. at the root of all of that is how do we buffer teachers from these things; as leaders we need to be experienced enough to know a variety of ways of getting to the same endpoint. if you’re not reading as a leader, if you’re not visiting other schools and other systems, if you’re not understanding different ways of achieving high results, if you’re not asking yourself challenging questions about how people work and how the organization works and how it can work better. if you’re not asking yourself challenging questions as a leader, you’re never going to find better answers. you can’t buffer teachers unless you know better and you’re confident. there needs to be an emphasis on the development of leaders. the same way i’m talking about the support and growth of teaching staff, leaders need to embrace that same culture themselves. alignment. in the development of the ambitious things we’re trying to achieve at the school, at the school level it’s making sure those conditions for teachers to flourish are responses to the needs of the teaching group that you have. there was a time a few years ago that teachers really wanted to get into other teachers' classrooms to experience how other teachers are teaching. i think we called it ‘sharing incredible practice’ where every teacher had an opportunity to go and see another teacher teaching, write a reflection on it and then debrief and talk about the decisions they made. but if we did that today, i don’t think they would get the same things out of it and i don’t think they would want to do that necessarily. it’s really about adapting and adjusting the systems you have in place for teachers to flourish, to meet the needs of those teachers. sometimes, that means asking them. “what is it that you would want to do, what is it that you would find beneficial?” but sometimes you get to the point where the knowledge in the room is only the knowledge in the room. there’s a really great henry forb quote where he says, “if i asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster of teachers, parents, children, etc.’ -fantastic quote. connection to how leaders must also experience personal and professional growth, infinite mindset and a growth-oriented mindset → gold → this is really interesting and personally relatable. the same way educators need challenge, leaders also need challenge and need context in terms of knowing the environment and having experience as a teacher to make better decisions as a leader. i don’t know if this is personal growth or something bigger. maybe a theme about the need for educational leaders to lead from experience as a teacher? or is this part of ‘there is a better way’? → temporary highlight for authenticity but this is something bigger. being able to recognize when something is bigger than what leaders can handle/know. maybe intellectual humility? → there is something here about personal growth as leaders and the constant seeking of better ways to do things. does this connect to mindset? **important differentiation for teachers. -intellectual humility and how it benefits educators → again, a collective vision http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 horses.” you get to a point where you can ask your staff over and over again but they're limited by what they know. so part of the leadership experience is going beyond what is known in your building and coming up with alternatives and different ideas. part of that is experience. part of that is having been through all of those things yourself as a teacher. so when it comes time to help support and develop your own staff, you’ve got an array of views and opportunities that they don’t know exist yet. it’s about all the factors i think. at the teacher level, they need to feel quite aligned to who we are as an organization. that means constantly involving them in processes so that the direction the school is taking isn’t just the direction of one person. it’s not just the head teacher or the principal. the direction the school is taking it has involved the students, it’s involved the staff, it’s involved the community so that people are coming to work in a place and trying to achieve things for themself professionally in a school that they feel deeply aligned to. helping people continue to flourish means ensuring the system adapts to meet the needs of people, it means involving then in those design processes and whatever ambitious targets your setting for yourselves in a given period of time, they feel aligned to it and they understand how they’re going to contribute. i think that it’s also knowing when you need to let go of people. i think our school is really great, i feel lucky to work here and i know other people feel the same. there will come a time when some of the teachers that are here need to leave here to continue to grow. so knowing your staff really well and being able to have open andhonest conversations with them about their career goals, about their development priorities, about who they are and what it is they’re willing to achieve. it’s also about connecting them and signposting them to those sorts of opportunities. → this idea that the ‘better way’ is fluid and not fixed. → a potential theme about differentiating for educators the way educators are taught to differentiate for students. or maybe a broader theme of alignment in terms of schools with clarity in what they expect from students, expect similar from educators/leaders and thus all members of staff demonstrate, model and embody best practices. one of which is differentiation and meeting people/students where they are. → aspect of alignment. does this come up in other transcripts? -not sure if this is the accurate theme about educators contributing. i’m thinking that when educators are respected as professionals, they’re involved in the overall process. but there is something bigger here about community and inclusion. also about alignment for educators. ***very strong quote to demonstrate infinite mindset “knowing when you need to let go of people” → the ‘dark side’ of flourishing? → personal connection to ‘honest conversations’. how i felt when my supervisor helped me find/create opportunities. this bigger picture thinking advances the whole field of education far beyond one school. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 appendix c first iteration of flourishing educator theory factors that influence the flourishing of educators: theme: definition: experience of personal growth engaging in activities, events, opportunities both within and outside of school to support personal growth. feeling seen and celebrated feeling a sense of connection and belonging in being seen. feeling celebrated by earning promotions, acknowledgment, etc. feeling a sense of autonomy educators are allowed to teach in different ways and with different skills, they feel trusted and they feel they have choice. experience and benefit/grow from holistic leadership the administrative team or head administrator models growth by creating opportunities for educators, shows empathy, seeks to understand and leans into leadership rather than managing/scrutinizing. authenticity in school, being authentic looks like teaching in a style that’s authentic/natural to who they are as a person rather than how the school wants them to teach. allowed to be who they are and bring their strengths to their work environment. own their calling as a holistic educator rather than a temporary ‘job’ of teacher calling vs. profession. educators educate the whole child and own their responsibility as role models, regardless of if they are “off” work or not. positive relationships positive relationships among students, staff, admin, etc. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ educator flourishing rehal & van nieuwerburgh www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 appendix d second iteration model http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ krause, a. e., lloyd-smith, a., & hajek, j. (2020). the role of community language radio for understanding creativity and wellbeing in migrant communities in australia. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 83-99. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1495 amanda e. krause james cook university admanda.krause1@jcu.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 article the role of community language radio for understanding creativity and wellbeing in migrant communities in australia amanda e. krause · anya lloyd-smith · john hajek abstract: community radio—and community language radio specifically—occupies an important place in australia’s multicultural landscape. members of many language communities arriving in australia have been denied important opportunities in their home countries including outlets for self-representation and public creativity in their languages. within australia, radio provides an accessible means of creative expression, provides vital social connection for community members of all ages and generations, and supports social cohesion on a wider scale. this article explores how community language radio in australia can play a critical role in supporting the wellbeing of both individuals and communities by providing an accessible and adaptable outlet for creative expression. this case study examines the practices of presenters from australia’s largest community language radio station, 3zzz, which reports broadcasting in around 70 languages weekly. a sample of 16 presenters from the station completed an online, mixed-methods survey. the results afford discussion of the format and composition of community language programs as a form of cultural and language maintenance, the perceived role of creativity in program design and delivery, the perceived impact of the programs for the community, and the perceived role of the program for individual and community wellbeing. the findings are considered with respect to pertinent theoretical frameworks, exploring the implications concerning creativity, community, and wellbeing. the multifaceted results we present highlight how creative community language radio participation is able to contribute positively to wellbeing in the australian migrant context. keywords: community radio, ethnic radio, broadcasting, creativity, wellbeing, cultural and linguistic diversity, migration introduction the processes of migration and refugee settlement have brought to australia a diversity of languages and cultures, particularly over the last 75 years—with a significant concentration having arrived in the last decade. according to the 2016 census, one third of the australian population was born elsewhere, and of this group, 18 percent have arrived in the country since 2012 (australian bureau of statistics, 2016). furthermore, more than one fifth of australians speak a language other than english in the home, and over 300 separate languages have been identified. settlement in a new country requires access to information about government systems and services, local news and current affairs. successful integration is facilitated through the provision of this information in first languages, as well as through the provision of opportunities for cultural and linguistic maintenance and ongoing connections with countries of origin. members of many recent language communities arriving in australia have been denied important about:blank community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 opportunities in their home countries including outlets for self-representation and public creativity in their languages. alongside the national public broadcaster, sbs, which transmits radio programs in a range of community languages, an important means to achieving this for members of migrant communities is through community radio. community radio—and specifically community language radio—occupies an important place in australia’s multicultural landscape. within australia, community language radio provides an accessible means of creative expression, provides vital social connection for community members, and supports broader social cohesion (forde et al., 2009; kwong, 2012). community radio serves an essential function for communities whose needs are not met by mainstream (public or private) broadcasters. in australia, there are more than 450 community radio stations with 97 of those broadcasting in languages other than english on either a part-time or full-time basis (national ethnic and multicultural broadcasters’ council, n.d.). the largest volunteer-based community language or ethnic broadcaster1 in australia is 3zzz (n.d.), being the focus of this study. like other such stations, it stands in significant contrast to sbs, with local rather than national function, and limited financial resourcing. its volunteer staffing, unlike sbs’s professional career orientation, also provides the potential for greater individual autonomy which is of specific interest to us here. based in melbourne, 3zzz began broadcasting on a regular basis in 1989 and currently reports broadcasting in over 70 languages for over 60 ethnic groups (3zzz, n.d.). with such a large number of languages and cultures represented—both established communities as well as new and emerging communities—the station presents an ideal site for examining a range of approaches to programming and the impact that the programs themselves have on the wellbeing of various communities. thus, the present work examines the experiences of 3zzz presenters in order to gain a greater understanding of how community language broadcasting can contribute to wellbeing2 by providing an accessible and adaptable outlet for creative expression. literature review an increasing body of research is highlighting the benefits of community radio, in addition to a number of studies which explore different aspects of the broadcasting of community languages in australia (e.g., kwong, 2012), both as it relates to the volunteer and the publicly funded (i.e., sbs) radio sectors. it is true that there are undoubtedly many challenges facing community radio, such as funding and governance (see, e.g. order, 2016). however, given our specific interest in how wellbeing may be supported, in this section we focus on several relevant, positive themes arising from previous research on community language radio—particularly of a volunteer nature—and set out a case for current research situated in the australian context. maintaining and representing culture community language radio plays a beneficial role for maintaining and representing cultures (meadows et al., 2007; milan, 2008; purkarthofer, et al., 2008; van vuuren, 2002). community 1 since the mid-1970s, the term “ethnic” has been replaced in many domains by the more inclusive term “community languages” (e.g., “ethnic schools” are now more formally called “community language schools”), which reflects the fact that the languages are present and used within the wider australian community, are used not only by overseas-born but also by australian-born generations, and are learned and used by members of other ethnic groups (clyne, 1991, p.3). the terms “ethnic radio” and “ethnic broadcasting”, however, continue to be used by the sector itself, as well as by peak bodies and researchers (e.g., national ethnic and multicultural broadcasters’ council, n.d.). 2 the world health organization’s (2020, p. 1) definition of health makes reference to physical, mental, and social well-being rather than simply the absence of disease or illness. we use the term “wellbeing” rather than health, given that it transcends a strictly biomedical model of health (rudd, 2017). our use of the term acknowledges that people’s perceived quality of life is a part of how health/wellbeing is experienced (rudd, 2017). community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 language broadcasting “represents a valuable cultural resource that contributes to australia’s rich and diverse cultural heritage through its commitment to maintaining, representing and reproducing local cultures” (forde et al., 2009, p. 126). access to the local community is particularly beneficial for emerging communities with little or no established networks (meadows et al., 2007), as listeners also develop a “sense of belonging” where they are able to contribute to talk-back discussions on air and are even able to form relationships with the presenters (meadows & foxwell, 2011, p. 100). the use of traditional music, news and language in community language radio can assist listeners to retain a connection with their home culture and to maintain relationships with others in their community (meadows et al., 2007; forde et al., 2009). community language radio is an important resource for advertising community events and local news (forde et al., 2009). tuning in to programs spoken in their own language also helps listeners preserve their language proficiency, as well as to teach this language to their children (forde et al., 2009). broadcasting traditional music has also frequently been noted as a way of maintaining ties with the country of origin and creating a sense of belonging to the new one, as well as “bridg[ing] cultural gaps between ethnic communities and mainstream australia” (meadows et al., 2007, p. 80). creating a sense of community community radio is dependent upon volunteerism for most aspects of its operation. the high level of involvement by volunteers is particular to community radio broadcasting (milan, 2008; purkarthofer et al., 2008; van vuuren, 2002). community language radio stations have been reported to average 271 volunteers per radio licensee, compared to an overall national average of 75 (forde et al., 2009). further, the boundaries between presenters and listeners in community radio are blurred (meadows et al., 2007; milan, 2008). many listeners become producers and are in fact encouraged to do so. this interchange of roles is a defining feature of community radio and is an important distinction from mainstream radio (meadows et al., 2007; milan, 2008; oliveira, 2013; order, 2017; purkarthofer et al., 2008). as a result of this, community broadcasting has a “community development function” such that it can enhance social capital, being the ability people have to work together towards a common goal (van vuuren, 2002, p. 94). van vuuren (2002, p. 105) found in her research on (generalist, i.e. non-ethnic) community radio that the station with the greatest volunteer satisfaction appeared to be a part of a “dense interlocking network” of other socially aware community groups in the area. in other words, members of that community tended to volunteer their time across multiple organizations, along with experiencing a sense of belonging at the station. this function also extends from production to the audience; listeners, tuning in to hear about various social issues, in turn often become more active within the community (milan, 2008). community radio also disseminates content which builds community; order (2017) found that specialized cultural programming can engage both older and younger generations in discussion, in an attempt to combat a feeling of alienation often experienced by first generation migrant youth towards their parents’ home culture. empowering individuals and communities community radio—whether generalist or ethnic-focussed—has an empowering function, as listening to radio requires no literacy level or significant cost to access (oliviera, 2013). as a truly accessible forum, it can lend itself to unobstructed citizen participation, which itself is a political tool of activism and social change (meadows et al., 2007; milan, 2008; for a different view see also forde et al., 2002). community radio presenters have the power to present not only their own community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 ideas but also the ideas of their listeners, from under-represented communities (milan, 2008). as producer and listener roles are blurred, listeners of community radio have more power of participation compared to those of mainstream radio and of other media. listeners of ethnic radio are thus given a platform which they may not have elsewhere due to their marginalized status (milan, 2008). van vuuren (2006) sees community radio as being self-regulated, because the community surrounding the community radio sets the agenda. the community is then able to cover topics that may otherwise be ignored, misrepresented, or glossed over by mainstream broadcasters (order, 2017; purkarthofer et al., 2008). community radio volunteers cite a range of empowering benefits gained through their involvement, such as the acquisition of journalism training and communication skills (purkarthofer et al., 2008), improved self-confidence and self-worth (forde et al., 2009; van vuuren, 2002), development of networking strategies, and numerous social and emotional benefits as outlined below (see also order, 2017). enhancing wellbeing community radio, including specifically community language radio, has been found to enhance the emotional, social, and physical wellbeing of its listeners (kwong, 2012; meadows et al., 2007; meadows & foxwell, 2011; oliveira, 2013; order, 2017). the benefits to wellbeing have been found to be particularly relevant for marginalized communities (meadows et al., 2007; order, 2017). research has shown that listening to community broadcasting can help mediate the challenges of loneliness, depression and isolation, often brought on by a traumatic migration process (meadows & foxwell, 2011). the sense of being a part of a community, hearing a familiar presenter’s voice, and being reminded of cultural ties by hearing news or music in the community language all contribute to an increased sense of wellbeing (meadows & foxwell, 2011; order, 2017). indeed, meadows et al. (2007) and order (2017) both name community radio as a survival tool for marginalized communities, whereas advantaged and well-established groups listen to improve their lives more generally. meadows and foxwell (2011) also noted that, when interviewing different types of listeners about why they listened to community radio, members of ethnic and indigenous communities made more references to emotional and social wellbeing compared to less vulnerable groups. moreover, indigenous australians believed that community radio circulated an alternative, more positive view of their own community, compared to mainstream media which could perpetuate negative views, instigating at times a feeling of shame (forde et al., 2009; meadows & foxwell, 2011). community radio also has the potential to improve and safeguard the health of vulnerable migrant groups, by broadcasting essential health and social services information in multiple languages. this is particularly true at times of crisis, such as the widespread bushfires in australia during the summer of 2019-2020, and the global pandemic which emerged in 2020 (radioinfo, 2020). additionally, community radio is also able to assist in mundane times. for example, a study by centrelink—the australian government body overseeing the allocation of social security payments and services—indicated that multilingual radio broadcasts were a much-utilized resource for community language groups to gain access to vital information in their language about services available to them, which many members of marginalized groups depend on for daily needs (forde et al., 2009). providing opportunities for creativity community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 the flexibility of community radio allows for innovative practices. for example, creative uses of language during community radio programs can assist in engaging younger community members who may be disengaged from the community. in research conducted in the multilingual setting of kenya, ojwang (2015) found that a radio station that intentionally incorporated urban slang—used by young people regardless of their ethnic group—was able to effectively convey important health information to its target audience using a neutral medium. the structure of community radio stations is typically non-hierarchical, and, to a degree, presenters have autonomy to be “creative” with the way in which they present their content (order, 2017, p. 247; see also milan, 2008; purkarthofer et al., 2008). that is, community radio broadcasters can exercise autonomy in decision-making (milan, 2008; order, 2017; purkarthofer et al., 2008). this autonomy includes decisions around the type of content, program format, style of delivery, and methods of audience engagement. although the empowering, community-building and cultural maintenance benefits of community language radio have been well-documented, the creativity aspect of community language radio, and its connection to wellbeing, have not been fully explored. further illumination of the link between creativity and wellbeing in the community language radio context can be gained by examining a specific case study, and by drawing on the expertise of researchers across various disciplines including psychology and sociolinguistics to elucidate the results. the present research, set in the australian context, aims to do this and will therefore deepen the understanding of how ethnic broadcasting can contribute to wellbeing by providing an accessible and adaptable outlet for creative activity and cultural expression. aim we aimed to explore, from a multidisciplinary perspective and at a micro level, how ethnic community radio in australia can enhance wellbeing by providing an accessible and adaptable outlet for creative cultural expression. australia’s largest ethnic community radio station, 3zzz (n.d.), was chosen as our case study. this study was guided by the following research questions: rq1: what are the programming practices and motivations of different language groups in ethnic community radio? rq2: how does creativity feature in the practices of different language groups in ethnic community radio? rq3: how do these creative practices enhance individual and community wellbeing? method research design following a common methodology in community radio research (e.g., anderson, 2017; kwong, 2012; van vuuren, 2004), we adopted a case study approach, which allowed us to focus on the experience of volunteers at one community radio station (3zzz). data were collected by means of a questionnaire with open and closed questions, as described in detail below, and again consistent with previous research in the field (e.g., van vuuren, 2002; 2004). the mixed-method nature of the survey instrument allowed for both quantitative and qualitative data to be collected for analysis. community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 participants recruitment involved an email invitation circulated by 3zzz staff to all presenters at the station and direct, follow-up email invitations to program representatives with publicly available contact details on the station’s website. sixteen individuals filled out the questionnaire. the respondents included seven females (43.80%) and nine males (56.3%). their ages ranged from 41 to 76 (m = 61.3, mdn = 64.0). while the respondents currently resided in australia, only four of the participants (25%) were born in australia. participants had resided in australia for between 4 and 71 years (m = 41.6, mdn = 49.0). only one participant reported that their first language was english; the first languages of the remaining individuals were french (3 participants), german (2), greek (4), japanese (1), sinhala (1), spanish (2), turkish (1), and yiddish (1). the university of melbourne approved this research (approval number: 1955413.1). participation was voluntary, and individuals had the opportunity to enter a prize draw for one of two $50 aud gift cards. procedure and materials individuals accessed the questionnaire via a direct weblink and, after indicating their consent to participate, they completed the questionnaire as a series of webpages (hosted using qualtrics). after completing the questionnaire, participants were thanked and debriefed. participants were asked to report their gender, age, country of birth, the number of years they had resided in australia, and their first language. individuals were asked questions about their community language program involvement. they indicated the 3zzz language program they were involved in, the number of years they had been involved, their role in the program, and how many hours per week they were involved in (a) preparing and (b) presenting the program on-air. to learn about the participants’ programs, they were asked: what sort of content do you include in your program?; why do you include this content?; and, for those who indicated that they used english in their program (i.e., by responding to a yes/no question), why do you use english in your radio program? moreover, participants were asked whether the radio program follows the same basic format each week (yes/no), and if they felt that there is room for creativity when they are preparing or presenting their radio program (yes/no). depending on their response, one follow up question asked: in what ways do you feel you are able to be creative when you are preparing or presenting your radio program? or why do you think there is no room for creativity? the next section included two open-ended questions concerning the impact of the radio programs: what do you think the role of your program is for your community (what does your program provide to your community)? and what do you think your audience gets from listening to your program? participants responded to a third question, how important do you think it is for your community to have its own radio program?, using a five-point scale (1 = extremely important, 5 = not at all important). lastly, participants responded to a set of 16 items taken from krause, davidson and north’s (2018) 36-item scale designed to measure the benefits to wellbeing resulting from participation in music (e.g., “it allows me to be creative”; see table 1 for all items). the items were selected as most appropriate to understanding wellbeing in the community radio context. slight amendments were made to simplify the language for use with non-native speakers of english involved in radio broadcasting, to facilitate participant responses concerning the impact of their involvement in the radio program using a five-point scale (1 = disagree, 5 = agree). data analysis community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 a series of thematic analyses (braun & clarke, 2006) were performed to identify patterns within the qualitative data. following the process outlined by braun and clarke (2006), all of the responses were coded according to topic and then these codes guided the identification of themes. spss (version 25) was used to explore the quantitative data and calculate descriptive statistics. results program involvement the 16 respondents were involved in programs presented in nine different languages: austrian, cypriot turkish, esperanto, greek, japanese, jewish, mauritian, sinhala, and spanish. respondents indicated that their roles included presenting (n = 13), production elements (n = 8) and language program convenor (n = 3); some participants (n = 9) reported that they had two roles. participants had been involved with a language program at the station between 1 and 25 years, and for an average of 8.4 years (mdn = 4.5). respondents stated that they would spend an average of 4 hours preparing (mdn = 4.0, range: 2-8) and 1.1 hours (mdn = 1.0, range: 0.25-2) presenting each week. program content a thematic analysis identified three themes pertaining to content included in their particular language program. because individual responses included at least three, varied components, the resulting themes arose from both looking across responses as well as breaking apart individual responses. the first theme, “entertainment”, covered a range of content, including music, sports reviews, talk back segments, interviews, comedy segments, stories, travel information, historical talks, as well as topics of interest and recipes (“music, comedy and stories”). while a broad range of content were noted, some types were more prominent than others. music was the most commonly cited type of content (n = 9), with responses making reference to music in general as well as specific types of musical activities (“we also promote and work with local artists often having them in as guests playing music”). in contrast, recipes and stories were only mentioned once (e.g., “food recipes”; “comedy and stories”). the second theme, “current affairs”, covered topics including news, political content, and weather (“current affairs”; “science and technology in the world”; “social and political issues”). the presenters referenced covering both australian issues (“commentary on current affairs issues relating to australia”; “local topics”) as well as international issues from their home countries (“news from mauritius”; “politics in sri lanka”). additionally, respondents mentioned also covering social and culturally specific issues, whether local or international in scope (“workers’ rights and other progressive matters”; “culturally significant issues”; “matters of social justice, the environment, war and peace”). the third theme, “culture and community events”, pertained to current happenings within their local community. though related to the current affairs theme, this type of content included announcements and information about community events and community members (“community announcements, including death notices”; “events organized by local greek organization”; “community events”; “information from communities”) and cultural activities and information (“readings from greek literature”; “cultural activities”; “topics of interest from cyprus and turkey”). it was clear that presenting information about their own culture and community is important to presenters at 3zzz, making it a unique, tailored program for listeners. community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 english content half of the programs (7 out of 14) included content in english. a thematic analysis of the reasons for including english content revealed two themes: (1) the lack of translatability of certain (australian) english terms or concepts, as well as (2) a need to accommodate differing levels of community language proficiency among presenters and listeners. with regard to the use of english vocabulary or translations, participants indicated that it was easier as a speaker to use familiar terms (“sometimes it’s because we haven’t got a better word or expression to convey the message”) as well as indicating a desire to convey the intended meaning clearly to their audience (“for clarification of terms to australian-born listeners”). participants also indicated a desire to accommodate the language skills of both the presenters (“my co-presenter feels as though she has limited knowledge of the greek language so she presents primarily in english”) and guests (“we also sometimes conduct interviews in english when the interviewee is someone who was born and educated here”). including english content is an inclusive practice relative to the program’s audience and larger australian context. in addition to catering to multiple generations (for whom language skills and preferences vary), presenters recognized that using english helps to “reach out to australian members of the community” and attract australian-born listeners. motivations for content inclusion there was a complexity to the varied responses to the question “why do you include this content?”. two themes were identified: “of interest” (with three sub-themes) and “platform for the community”. the “of interest” theme was divided into “of interest to the listeners”, “diversity”, and “of interest to presenters”. several presenters mentioned they included their particular content because it was what their listeners want (“it is of interest to the listeners”; “this is what our listeners are interested in”) or had been requested (“feedback from listeners helps to inform the content”; “most requested”), indicating that listener input helps to shape the type of content presented. diversity was expressed as including chosen content to cater to the diversity of their listening audience (“variety to cater to the diversity of the audience”) as well as “to expand the parameters of understanding of listeners/viewers”. in addition to considering the listening audience, several 3zzz presenters stated they include certain content because it is of interest to them (“it is what i am interested in”), suggesting presenters consider their own interests as well. with respect to the “platform for the community” theme, respondents indicated that their programs provide an opportunity for the community to share their events and find out what is happening locally (“to help community organizations”; “share their talent with the community”). additionally, the radio program provides a way for the community to celebrate their members’ achievements (“we like to share and celebrate their achievements”) maintain culture and language (“provide a program for greek language listeners”; “no other program covered these topics with enough detail”). the role of creativity while 84.6% of the participants indicated that the program’s format was consistent each week, all respondents indicated that there was room for creativity in their program involvement. a single theme concerning “autonomy” was identified in terms of how the presenters spoke about being creative when preparing or presenting their radio program. while several participants broadly expressed that being creative when preparing or presenting their radio programs is due to having autonomy with regard to the program content (“we have autonomy as programmers”; “no restrictions on content”), two sub-themes further delineated that autonomy facilitated community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 presenter creativity with regard to (1) the style of presentation/communication and (2) presenting community-specific content. while how the content is presented (“having sections that actually bring something new or interesting to listeners”) hints at the type of content included, this theme is more concerned with how the program is presented. thus, it includes the order within which they present the program content (“choosing the order of the news or the style in what i want to communicate and choosing the music as well”). in this way, even though the program might use a consistent format, this kind of autonomy facilitates presenters’ creativity: they choose their own ways of communicating and presenting as they best see fit for their listeners. participants’ responses suggest that creativity as autonomy was also expressed in terms of what content is presented, indicating the importance of flexibility with regard to content choices. community-specific content appeared to fall into three broad types: events and topics, guest interviews, and the type of music chosen for the program. radio presenters were able to focus on certain issues or happenings in the world and of interest to their community. for example, “when there are special programs (e.g., mothers’ day)” or special cultural holidays like mauritius independence day or divali, they are able to tailor their radio program to that event and play special music or even prepare a quiz. in this way, presenters can develop programming around what is currently important in their community (“the focus each week can be different depending on what is happening in the community”). this notion of creativity through autonomy and flexibility extends to inviting “guests according to topical issues and events” as presenters indicated that the people they invite on their program and the topics they discuss help them to be creative. additionally, being able to choose the style of music they want to present (“exploring different types of greek music”; “choose a certain singer or a certain type of music”), allows the presenters to be creative. program impact all participants believed that it was highly important for their community to have its own radio program. on a scale where 1 was rated as extremely important, the mean response was 1.3 (mdn = 1.0). two higher-order themes were identified from a thematic analysis concerning the perceived role of the radio program for the community: a sense of belonging/connection (with three subthemes: connection to language, culture, and the community) and information and entertainment. the first sense of belonging sub-theme, “connection to language”, was predominant: most presenters spoke about the important role of their radio program in helping their listeners stay connected with their languages (“familiarity in language”; “contact with the greek language and culture”; “hearing their language spoken”; “connection with their own language”). the second sub-theme, “connection to culture/cultural identity”, related to how program listeners are able to stay connected to what is happening within their culture (“cultural memories”; “it provides them a door to new and fresh culture produced in their own language”). 3zzz programming provides an opportunity for listeners who have moved to australia to engage with, and remained connected to, their original culture (“cultural identity”; “cultural memories and songs of their countries”) and also introduces broader community members to new cultures (“they get to know the local hispanoamerican culture”; “keeps listeners informed about the esperanto movement, as well as informing our international listeners”). in this way, radio programs offer opportunities to express and enact cultural identity. the third sub-theme “connection to community” refers to how their programs function as an information board for their communities. presenters’ radio programs offer listeners a way to community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 know what is happening within their community and allows them to stay connected (“the community gets information”; “an excellent way to communicate with the community”; “community events”). the second theme “information and entertainment” pertains to each of the two topics separately. this sub-theme of information does overlap with the “connection with community” sub-theme, as sometimes the information is community-specific. for instance, presenters noted that their radio program provides a platform for their listeners to receive news and information about what is happening in their community and the world around them (“unique in-depth news and analysis”; “news from the islands we come from”; “keeps listeners in australia informed”). the focus of the radio program was also reported as being to entertain listeners (“entertainment”; “fun and entertainment”; “entertainment and new trends in music”), such that “enjoyment” was also stated as a listener outcome. importantly, given the nature of the programming, 3zzz listeners can enjoy unique content that is different from mainstream media (“it provides diversity of information”; “the community gets information it wouldn't get in mainstream media”; “unique in-depth news and analysis of all sorts of issues”). wellbeing participants reflected on the wellbeing benefits of their participation via a short, quantitative measure (sample means and standard deviations are presented in table 1). while the small sample size precluded additional analyses, the widespread high level of agreement with the items indicates positive associations between the participants’ involvement with community language radio and their own, personal wellbeing. the perceived benefits to wellbeing were related to the different domains of wellbeing—including social, emotional, personal growth, and quality of life. moreover, the creativity item was the most highly endorsed item, suggesting that the presenters appreciated the creative aspect of their work. community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 table 1. descriptive statistics concerning the wellbeing items (n = 14) item m mdn sd it allows me to be creative 4.7 5.0 0.5 it makes me feel more connected to other people who speak my language in melbourne 4.6 5.0 0.6 it gives me a sense of belonging 4.6 5.0 0.8 it helps me develop friendships 4.6 5.0 0.8 it helps me learn new skills 4.6 5.0 0.7 it makes me feel more connected to other people who speak my language around the world 4.4 5.0 0.8 it helps me bond with other people 4.4 5.0 0.8 it makes me feel uplifted 4.4 5.0 0.8 it helps me improve myself 4.4 5.0 0.8 it improves my mood 4.3 4.0 0.7 it helps me feel more positive about life 4.3 5.0 0.9 it makes me feel more connected to the wider australian community 4.2 4.0 0.9 it is important to my sense of identity 4.2 4.5 1.1 it helps me learn about myself 4.1 4.5 1.0 it helps me to think about who i am 3.9 4.0 1.2 it increases my self-esteem 3.9 4.0 1.2 note. responses were made using a 5-point scale, where 1 = disagree, and 5 = agree. discussion in this study, we aimed to explore the programming practices of different language groups to consider how ethnic community radio might (a) provide a platform for creative practice and (b) influence wellbeing. each of these elements are discussed in turn below. three interconnected themes dominated the thematic analysis: language, culture and community. these three elements are central to the 3zzz presenters’ involvement as well as the program’s impact on themselves, their listening audience, and their community. programming practices and motivations it is difficult to treat these themes of language, culture and community separately when considering programming practices and motivations (rq1). as 3zzz is an ethnic community radio station, programs are linked to a specific ethnic or language community and each individual community drives content decisions and shapes the program. the representation, promotion, and maintenance of language, culture and community are facilitated through programming content that is informationand entertainment-focused. the languages and cultures in question are given a forefront position, such that the community and listening audience are central to programming decisions and presenter practices, resulting in 3zzz providing a platform for bringing the community together and situating the language community with the broader multicultural local community. it is clear that 3zzz provides a platform for media representation for both presenters and listeners to connect to their (local and home) culture and communities, their language and their identity. in doing so, 3zzz programming helps people feel a sense of belonging. one presenter stated they wished “to be a serious and credible ‘bridge’ between australia, greece, and greekcommunity language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 australia”. the metaphor of a bridge is particularly apt in describing the presenters’ goals and practices—there is a clear desire to draw together people from different generations, as well as to appeal to migrant and native-born listeners, and local and international listeners. creativity importantly, participants’ responses drew attention to the creative aspects of participation in community language radio. when asked about being creative, the presenters placed the emphasis on how the content is produced, demonstrating the importance of considering creativity in terms of process rather than product. thus, with regard to rq2—which asked how creativity features in the practices of different language groups in community radio—creativity can be understood here using a process-based lens (hogan et al., 2018). understanding creativity in community language broadcasting means not simply referring to a trait that a person might have or the end products that are new or innovative, but rather the acts that people do; this is in line with bernard’s (2012) argument that the concept of creativity must be broadened. from a stricter, genius (“big c”) perspective on creativity, the presenters’ behaviors may not be deemed creative; however, the presenters’ actions suggest mundane, everyday (“little c”) creativity3. in aiming to cater to a diverse listening audience, presenters expressed their motives to develop content of interest and importance to their community. for instance, the process of navigating language (via intentionally using english) to promote inclusion and to accommodate the language proficiency and language preferences of fellow presenters and listeners could indeed be considered as creative. from the responses, it was apparent that the freedom and flexibility of the community radio format (milan, 2008) affords the presenters the opportunity to be creative in how they construct, produce, and perform their programming. in the present study, we have interpreted this as autonomy, and previous research has suggested that the level of autonomy community radio station presenters have in making decisions about their programs can be empowering (milan, 2008). thus, we argue that such autonomy might be an antecedent for creativity in this radio context. however, we do recognize that simply having high levels of autonomy or freedom may not necessarily equate to high levels of creativity. indeed, it is interesting to consider whether the presenters themselves (or the listening audience) consider their involvement as creative. for instance, the presenters’ sustained involvement in creating radio content might alter their opinion as to whether or not the process or resulting products are deemed creative. to the presenters, it may simply be the result of their hard work, but to an outsider, such effort and products may be labelled as “little c” creative. wellbeing we were also interested in considering how creativity may be linked to wellbeing in ethnic community radio (rq3). creativity is recognized as being essential for survival and prosperity (küpers et al., 2018), as well as for positive psychological development (karwowski et al., 2017) and bolstering health and wellbeing (silvia et al., 2014). our findings suggest that surveyed presenters believe their involvement in community radio affords them, amongst other things, the opportunity to be creative, which in turn has consequences for their wellbeing. 3 while much creativity research has historically been concerned with genius or exceptional individuals (so-called “big c creativity”), it is important to consider everyday creativity (“little c creativity”), which refers to daily creative actions by ordinary people (ivcevic, 2007; silvia et al., 2014; tanggaard, 2015). everyday creativity has been defined in terms of originality displayed during work and leisure activities throughout daily life: it is about what and how things are done (richards, 2010). because typical acts of everyday creativity can include self-expression in daily pursuits (ivcevic, 2007) and because everyday creativity is not only about a product but also about the process (richards, 2010; hogan et al., 2018), it follows that we can consider the presenters’ actions from this framework. community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 the wellbeing experienced by those involved in community language radio can be examined through the lens of research in the closely related field of music psychology. ruud (2017, p. 589) theorized that music can act as a “cultural immunogen” because it “protects, promotes, and maintains our health and quality of life”. ruud’s view states that music engagement contributes to four aspects of wellbeing: a sense of vitality, a sense of agency, a sense of belonging, and a sense of coherence and meaning (ruud, 2017). though ruud’s focus was music, we can extend this framework to consider ethnic radio’s role in maintaining and promoting wellbeing and quality of life. indeed, the present findings suggest that ethnic community radio promotes ruud’s four aspects of vitality, agency, belonging, and coherence/meaning. for the presenters themselves, their participation in ethnic community broadcasting appears to promote all four aspects. the content motives demonstrate how the focus on their language and community gives presenters a sense of meaning. further, as representatives of the station and their language group, the presenters are able to feel a sense of belonging. their level of autonomy not only promotes flexibility and creativity, but it gives presenters a sense of empowerment or agency. by volunteering, these presenters are taking an active role in their communities, which likely promotes a sense of vitality. it is particularly interesting to consider how ethnic community radio also promotes wellbeing beyond that of the presenters—that of the programs’ listeners and language communities. the presenters are not only recipients, but they are also conduits—helping to promote the wellbeing of others, and their communities. this is most clearly evident with regard to ruud’s sense of belonging. the presenters’ focus on creating a community platform with their programming provides a way for listeners to connect, stay informed (of current affairs and local events), and actively participate in their communities. this helps to create a sense of belonging for those living in the community. at the same time, the language programs create the opportunity for listeners to connect to their language, culture and heritage. again, this would help create a sense of belonging because highlighting and including their culture assists them to move beyond their marginalized status (milan, 2008). additionally, this recognition and promotion of maintaining language and culture assists in creating a sense of meaning, and helps these communities thrive. thus, we argue that, like music, ethnic community radio functions as a cultural immunogen. more broadly, the findings concerning wellbeing can be considered from the framework of self-determination theory, and the role of basic psychological needs in particular (ryan & deci, 2002). according to self-determination theory, the needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy influence people’s experiences of personal growth, vitality, and wellbeing (lombas & esteban, 2018; milyavskaya & koestner, 2011). autonomy is defined as feeling that one’s actions are self-governed and self-endorsed; relatedness concerns feeling connected socially; and competence refers to feeling that one’s efforts are effective (deci & ryan, 2000). the community radio sector enables the acquisition of broadcasting and communication skills (purkarthofer et al., 2008) which can facilitate a sense of competence; research also indicates that psychological needs are fostered in autonomy-supportive environments (e.g., oostlander et al., 2014). it is apparent that 3zzz presenters have control over their program content and format, the skills to produce and broadcast programs on a weekly basis, and an understanding of the role of the programs for their community, such that we infer their autonomy and competence are well supported in their broadcasting pursuits. thus, not only do autonomy and competence facilitate creativity, but they also promote perceived individual wellbeing. the promotion of relatedness is certainly clear given the consideration, and role, of the community in ethnic community broadcasting. indeed, community is both a motivation and an outcome in this context. there is an inherent sociability to community radio (vidal, 2019), and community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 the presenters would experience membership of multiple, intersecting communities (e.g., their broadcasting group, their language community and the broader listening community). given the fact that social contexts that support the three basic psychological needs promote engagement and positive outcomes (deci & ryan, 2008), leveraging the promotion of the need for relatedness likely leads to higher levels of engagement. there is a nice synergy in the fact that satisfying the need for relatedness facilitates both the presenters’ wellbeing and has benefits for and within the community. in this way, the benefits are not unidirectional. it is clear that relatedness bolsters social capital, which, in turn, bolsters wellbeing. as ruud (2017, p. 596) stated: our belongingness, i.e. our relationships with other people will likewise always be an important factor in defining our state of health, which depends to a significant extent upon our “social capital”—that is, how well we are integrated with or at least connected to the community. according to robert putnam, many studies have established beyond reasonable doubt that social connectedness is one of the most decisive determinants of our wellbeing (putnam, 2000, p. 326). indeed, there is additional evidence that social capital positively influences migrants’ quality of life (adedeji, 2019; see also ehsan et al., 2019). limitations and future research the present study points to a number of directions for further research. firstly, this study was limited by a small sample size and single case study design. a larger sample size across multiple community radio stations around australia would enable a broader examination of trends and facilitate a focus on new and emerging community languages not represented in this case study. secondly, the findings suggest that self-determination theory could provide a useful framework for designing a larger-scale, quantitative study that would measure basic psychological needs, wellbeing (necessarily adapted for use in the more complex, migrant context) and social capital. additionally, interviews and focus groups would also be helpful in eliciting a more nuanced understanding of creativity and wellbeing in the community radio sector. thirdly, it is important that future research include listeners’ perspectives to further understand how presenters are able to influence listener and community wellbeing. for instance, research could examine how the interaction between presenters and listeners (such as during talkback segments) enables listeners to feel a part of the creative process, and enhances their sense of competence, relatedness, and autonomy—thereby promoting their wellbeing. finally, for the presenters who participated in this research, creativity existed within the process of creating and delivering programming, rather than through a focus on judging the product. additional work is needed to further delineate creativity in community language radio; one interesting avenue may be to consider an emerging stream of creativity research that focuses on innovative work around solving problems that communities and societies face (amabile, 2017, p. 336). it may be fruitful to examine the types of problem-solving practices that are utilized by community language groups when broadcasting during community events and emergencies (e.g., health pandemics, bushfires, floods), and to frame this through the lens of creativity. in line with glăveanu’s (2020) argument that movement and mobility creates possibilities for creativity and innovation, another avenue may be to compare programming practices of new and emerging migrant communities with more established communities as well as new radio programs and stations with their more-established counterparts. community language radio krause, lloyd-smith, & hajek www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 conclusion using 3zzz as a case radio station to examine community language radio, this research has explored how community language radio in australia can enhance the wellbeing of its practitioners by providing an accessible and adaptable outlet for creative expression. the findings highlight how the community broadcasting context allows presenters to have their needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence met, and how the process of preparing and presenting community language radio programming is creative in nature. these presenters’ practices are largely driven by explicit considerations of their listening communities and their practices are perceived to lead to wellbeing benefits not only for the presenters but also for the listeners and their communities. it is hoped that these findings will contribute to the body of research on the importance of the community radio sector in the australian context and beyond. while much remains to be explored and understood, these findings indicate that the ethnic community broadcasting sector appears on many levels to be a mechanism for enhancing migrant wellbeing in australia. acknowledgements this research was conducted at the university of melbourne with the support of a creativity and wellbeing research initiative (cawri) seed funding 2019 grant and a faculty of arts’ 2019 inter-faculty incubator research project grant. the authors wish to acknowledge jessica phillips, dina saheb, and ambrin hasnain for their contributions as research assistants and express sincere gratitude to all of the participants who have participated in this research. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors amanda e. krause james cook university & the university of melbourne anya lloyd-smith the university of melbourne john hajek the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 2 september 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 references adedeji, a. 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(2012). an interview with andrew oswald, international journal of wellbeing, 2(1), 68–69. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i1.5 nattavudh powdthavee nanyang technological university n.powdthavee@ntu.edu.sg copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 expert insight an interview with andrew oswald university of warwick and iza (institute for the study of labour) interview by nattavudh powdthavee 23 february 2012 1. what got you interested in wellbeing research? in the early 90s one of the things that attracted me was the thought that we could use wellbeing data to try to answer the question of whether unemployment was voluntary or involuntary. that’s one thing that drew me in. and, second, just generally, i realised that it was possible to conduct happiness surveys and that just seemed to me a very interesting thing to do. and i remember the first time an equation came out where happiness was increasing in income and i thought “hmm, we’re definitely onto something here”. 2. what do you take "wellbeing" to mean? i’m quite happy to listen to people when they answer survey questions, so i don’t want to force my idea of wellbeing on them. i would say, a feeling of joy and also broader contentment with your life. but in my work i’ve come to the conclusion that, at least in large samples, it doesn’t much matter whether we ask people “life satisfaction”, “mental health”, “happiness right now” and so on. the question is not all that important, though i remain open to the possibility that i might change my mind with future data sources. 3. why is wellbeing research important? it seems to me that if you’re a social scientist, an economist say, then this is the most important thing there is. what could be more important than understanding human wellbeing? unless you have very powerful views about animal ethics, unless you’re in that special category (and i know some people are), human wellbeing is the most important topic in social science. 4. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding to date? it’s not easy to say what the most important wellbeing finding is. i do think that age “u shape” is an extremely intriguing result and might tell us something very profound about human beings. other ones that come to my mind are the importance of relationships (like marriage), the way that humans bounce back from things (like bereavement), and the fact that wellbeing is increasing in income is, it seems to me, a very important, fundamental finding. 5. what is the most important application of wellbeing research to our lives? wellbeing applications haven’t come through terribly strongly, yet. this is, by some measures, a relatively new branch of social science. and i think that the big applications will be about valuing green factors, environmental factors, in our lives. i think that the economics of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ interview with andrew oswald powdthavee www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 happiness methods are going to revolutionise our attitudes to the green movement. they’ll also be used in the courts for valuing subtle things, such as emotions from important life events. and there will be a replacement of gdp by a wellbeing index, towards the end of my life or even, perhaps, earlier. 6. what are you working on right now? right now i’m working on the happiness of non-human primates, amazingly enough. i never expected to do that. i’m trying to understand—using randomised methods—how much government policy can raise the happiness of a country’s citizens. not an easy thing to do for a country. 7. what do you think the next big thing in wellbeing research will be? i think the next big thing is likely to be linking up with the hard sciences. and exactly how that will be done is hard to say. it could be a link with genes, it could be a link with human biology, it could even be a link with the study of animals—non-human animals and humans. but, by its nature, predicting the next big thing is awfully hard. 8. what are the main benefits of interdisciplinary research on wellbeing? i would turn the question around i suppose, or i tend to when people ask me this type of question. wellbeing is an incredibly interesting, important subject and different disciplines are going to look at wellbeing and think about it from different angles. presumably each angle has part of the truth, so by the nature of this subject you can’t say that it’s for psychologists, it’s for economists, it’s for medical researchers, or it’s for physiologists. it’s not for anybody. it’s just wellbeing has these multiple aspects and that’s why it’s such a good topic for a blending of disciplines. 9. what would the ideal census question on wellbeing be and why? i don’t think it makes too much difference in large samples, though i remain open to the possibility that i’ll have to revise my view. i am quite content at the moment with a question like, “how happy do you feel right now?” that would be fine. in the longer run i believe those kinds of answers will be blended with physiological or brain science measures of the happiness of individuals. 10. is there anything else you would like to comment on? i think we will go over more and more to the construction of randomised experiments in some sort of longitudinal data setting with scientific measures, hard science measures, of what goes on inside humans that’s out of their control. that is, truly objective data blended with subjective data. author nattavudh powdthavee nanyang technological university n.powdthavee@ntu.edu.sg special issue jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., lomas, t., & al-ahmadi, a (2020). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: arabic). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-38. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1337 guideline version 1.0, 12th july 2020 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 اإليجابيممارسة علم النفس ل ةخالقياالرشادات األ عائشة األحمدي ،اليز روتش، تيم لوماسأنآرون جاردن، طيب رشيد، http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 2 المحتوى 5 ................................................................................................................................... مالحظات تقديمية 5 ............................................................................................................................................ المقدمة 6 ................................................................ ة علم النفس اإليجابي في الهيئات المهنيةاإلرشادات األخالقية لممارس 6 ........................................................................................................................ تطلعات هذه اإلرشادات 6 ............................................................................................................................ لمن هذه اإلرشادات؟ 7 .................................................................................................................... الطبيعة المؤقتة لإلرشادات 7 ..........................................................................................................................المصطلحات األساسية 10 ...................................................................................................... القسم األول: القيم، نقاط القوة، والمبادئ 11 ........................................................................................................... قيم ممارسي علم النفس اإليجابي 12 ............................................................................................. نقاط القوة عند ممارسي علم النفس اإليجابي 13 .......................................................................................... المبادئ األخالقية لممارسة علم النفس اإليجابي 16 ................................................................................. خالقية في الممارسة سم الثاني: تطبيقات اإلرشادات األالق 16 ......................................................................................................................... ثالثة اعتبارات مهمة 16 .................................................................................................................... اتخاذ القرارات األخالقية 17 ................................................................................................................................ اعتبارات العمل 17 .......................................................................................................................... التغيرات في العمالء 17 ........................................................................................................ التغيرات في بيئة الممارس والعميل 18 .................................................................................................. الحالة الشعورية الحالية ومستوى العافية ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 3 18 ................................................................................................................................ تجنب المواجهة 19 ....................................................................................................................................... القوة رقف 19 .............................................................................................................. اإلفراط في استخدام نقاط القوة 19 ................................................................................................................................. الحكمة العملية 20 ........................................................................................... الحفاظ على المرونة ومقاومة االحتراق الذاتي 20 ....................................................................................................... عن المؤهل العلمي والكفاءة عالناإل 21 ................................................................................................................... تقدير أهمية السياق الثقافي 22 ..............................................................................................دليلك خطوة بخطوة -حل المعضالت األخالقية 24 ................................................................................................................................. دليل التقييم الذاتي 25 ...................................................................................... القسم الثالث: أمثلة على حاالت الممارسات األخالقية 25 ................................. تطبيق التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس اإليجابي مع الحساسية الثقافية -: الثقافة1مثال الحالة 26 ................................................. التدريب الحياتي للعمالء في الظروف المتغيرة -: التدريب الحياتي2مثال الحالة 27 .................................................................................... العمل مع الصدمات النفسية -: إكلينيكي3مثال حالة 28 ................................................................... الضغط لعرض البيانات بشكل مضلل -: المنظمات 4مثال الحالة 29 .................................. تشجيع المشاركين "الذين ليس لديهم رغبة" في عالقة غير متوازنة -: التوجيه 5مثال الحالة 29 ............................................. الممارسات الحالية اتعرقله تطلعاتتنفيذ برامج العافية حيث ال -ملتعلي: ا6مثال حالة 31 ............................................................................................................... اإلرشادات األخالقية ذات الصلة 32 ........................................................................................................................................ شكر وتقدير 34 ............................................................. ن األوليين على اإلرشادات األخالقية لممارسة علم النفس اإليجابيموقعيال 36 ............................................................................................................................................. المراجع ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 4 37 ................................................................................................................................ قراءات إضافية رشادات األخالقية هي نتيجة عمل مجموعة تعاونية مستقلة بقيادة آرون جاردن، طيب رشيد، أناليز روتش، تيم اإلإعالن: هذه طراف في إنشاء وصقل عية، ومع ذلك، ساهم العديد من األرشادات األخالقية ليست مرتبطة بأية منظمة أو جملوماس. هذه اإل إلرشادات في دورة نصف سنوية لتعزيز أدائها بعمق وشمول أكبر، ونرحب هذه النسخة األولى. ينوي المؤلفون تحديث هذه ا aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.auبالتعليقات واآلراء على ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 5 مالحظات تقديمية المقدمة positive اإليجابيعلم النفس بمن فيهم من ممارسيالبشر نأل ؛بالمدينة الفاضلة مرتبطة فكرة خالقية هي غالبًاالمثالية األ psychology practitioners (ppps) االنتشار :تعقيد الحياة المعاصرة، مثل فإن وليسوا مثاليين. والضعف،عرضة للخطأ واالستقطاب السياسي المتنامي، ،الناشئةزمات النازحين، والهويات ، وأمنتظمال غيرتغير المناخ و، اإللكترونيةالواسع للحياة و تحسين العافية، تعادة أالخدمات النفسية وخاصة تلك التي تهدف بشكل واضح السإن .الضعف البشري كل ذلك أدى إلى زيادة اإلرشاداتتوجد مجموعة واحدة من الو ،األولويات والمعضالت األخالقية صراع معتقديمها بسهولة من غير ال يمكن فعند اتخاذ خروعلى الجانب اآلتجسد المدى الكبير للتعقيدات البشرية. أن هايمكن التي أو المبادئ أو حتى التشريعات األخالقية، ، خاصة عند ، والمبادئ المبنية على أسس عامةنقاط القوة الشخصيةو، من القيم مجموعةالقرارات األخالقية يمكن أن توجهنا والتي تهدف بشكل positive psychology interventions( ppis) اإليجابياستخدام التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس تحسين العافية. إلىعام أن االنتباه الىومن المهم . اإليجابيمارسة علم النفس ج( مبادئ م على أ( قيم ب( نقاط القوة األخالقية اإلرشاداتهذه تحتوي قد تكون في اإلرشاداتعلى سبيل المثال، ف. والنطاق القضائيللسياق اتبعً تختلف ،عادة في أطر واسعة تتمثل "اإلرشادات" هذه : 1أدناه. الشكل هرمي كما هو موضح في الشكلمنظور التسلسل ال أسفل .الواسعةالعمل وأطر اإلرشادات :1شكل ذلك إلىالعمل األخرى ذات الصلة. باإلضافة طرأاالعتبار ضع فين أن اإلرشاداتالمهم عند تناول ه منإنسبق، ف بناء على ما بعض في القانونييكون من "، فقد الاإليجابي"لممارسة علم النفس اإلرشادات وإقرار هذهة بتبني مفعندما يقوم شخص أو منظ التصرفات acts اللوائح regulations قواعد الممارسة codes of practice المعايير standards اإلرشادات guidlines ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 6 والمتطلبات كن على اطالع بالقيود رجاءً –" اإليجابيص في علم النفس ك "مختأنتصف نفسك ب أنالقضائية اطقمنالو البلدان . الجغرافي في موقعك هيئات المهنيةفي ال اإليجابينفس األخالقية لممارسة علم ال اإلرشادات ، جمعية علم النفس الهيئات المهنية في المجال مثل: )جمعية علم النفس االمريكية ىحدإا في عندما يكون الممارس عضوً الخاصة بهيئاتهم لممارسةاقواعد و اإلرشاداتوير ايتقوم المع أن( فمن األساسي، ، االتحاد الدولي للمدربين الحياتييناألسترالية كلية )مثلن أعضاء في هيئات الترخيص واالعتماد ما نتوقع عندما يكون الممارسوكتوجيه ممارستهم في المقام األول. على الء جاالت ذات الصلة، فسيكون هؤمأو ال ، وتدريب وخبرة في ممارسة علم النفسكاف مع وجود تعليم ،النفس( اءعلم ضمن اإليجابيالمتعلقة بممارسة علم النفس اإلجراءاتواللوائح والتشريعات وير ايوالمع ينناة بالقواين على در والممارس نطاقهم القضائي. المهنية المرتبطة اإلرشاداتللقواعد وروحة هنا مصممة لتكون إضافة طالم اإليجابياألخالقية لممارسة علم النفس اإلرشادات ينتمون لهيئات مهنية. قاعدة أساسية للممارسين الذين ال اضً يأتقدم اإلرشاداتهذه أنكما بالنطاق القضائي وليس استبدالها. اإلرشاداتهذه تطلعات االلتزام طريق توضيحة المهنية عن تحسين الممارس إلىتهدف اإلرشاداتاألخالقية؟ هذه اإلرشاداتهذه إلى نحتاج م ل اإلخالصحافظة على ملل التطلعتهدف لغرس نهاإثباتات العملية. المبني على األدلة واإل اإليجابيبممارسة علم النفس فسهم والتسويق للفوائد أنتقديم التي تتوافق معها عند اإلرشاداتلعلم العافية، وليضع الممارسين في عين االعتبار )المنطقي( ماهية الممارسة األخالقية لممارسي علم النفس ب لنشر الوعيهي محاولة اإلرشاداتهذه المتوقعة من الخدمات التي يقدمونها. :1 التالية باألبعادااللتزام اإليجابييتوقع من ممارسي علم النفس . باالستعانة بهذه االرشادات، وغيرهم اإليجابي علمي. لعلمية وبناء ممارساتهم على أساساالطالع الدائم على األبحاث ا (أ من خالل التعليم المستمر والتطوير المهني في المجال.تحديث معارفهم باستمرار (ب المحتملة للتدخل المنافع والتحدياتو، اإليجابيلحدود معرفتهم في مجال العالج بعلم النفس والدقيق الحذر عالنإلا (ج وبرامج العافية. اإليجابيالعالجي بعلم النفس خالل فترة تقديم الخدمة.ة والسلبية في عافيتهم اإليجابي، والتغييرات عافية عمالئهممراقبة (د ؟ اإلرشاداتلمن هذه منفعةبذلك تتحقق ال، اإليجابية األمثل من قبل ممارسي علم النفس خالقيهي لتمكين الممارسات األ اإلرشاداتة من هذه ايالغ ن )مثل للمختصي موجهة اإلرشاداتهذه ذاء محتمل لآلخرين(. اي )تفادي أي اإلضرار وعدم لآلخرين( هو خير )لعمل ما يقدمون خدمات التدخل العالجي ممن( أو منظمات هيئات أليينتمون ين الذ)مثل الطالب او ال ( وغيرهمالمعالجين النفسيين خترنا أربعة أمثلة هنا لتوضيح مثل هذا االلتزام، ولكن ضع في عين االعتبار أن مثل هذه القائمة يمكن أن تكون طويلة جداً. ا 1 ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 7 ليست إرشادات حول كيفية استعمال و ،في ممارساتهم اإليجابيأو الذين يستعملون معرفتهم في علم النفس اإليجابيبعلم النفس . اإليجابيو تقديم تدخل عالجي معين في علم النفس أ لإلرشاداتبيعة المؤقتة طال ( هي إرشادات مؤقتة وعرضة للتغير 2019، 19في يوليو 1.0 إصدار)الحالية اإلرشادات أن إلى االنتباهنلفت أننريد أن لضمان ؛اإلجراءات . وقد وضعت هذهاألساسيينمن خالل عملية استشارات متكررة مع المساهمين عامينالمستمر كل ، من هذا المنطلقجديدة محلية أو عالمية. ورئيسية مواضيع يأوتعكس ،مع التغييرات في السياقمتماشية اإلرشاداتتكون وقت. يأالمطروحة هنا وفي اإلرشاداتتعليقات على يأفنحن نرحب ب هذه نإ ، لذلك فاإلرشاداتهذه شاء نإأثرت على قد فقط ومعظمها غربية اإلنجليزيةتتحدث اللغة دواًل أنإلى وتجدر اإلشارة هنا برقم تعرف ستبقى قيد التحديث والتطوير متجددة ثيقةهذه و نإالرغم من ذلك، ف د. وعلىه الحدوذتقتصر على ه اإلرشادات تتحدث دول المن غربية وأخرى غير الدول ال رشادات من دولإات القادمة تأثير قواعد وصدارتشمل اإل أنمل على أ صداراإل . لها رسميةبوصفها لغة اإلنجليزية المصطلحات األساسية client العميل خدمة مثل )على سبيل المثال وليس ةيأستخدم للداللة على متلقي ين يعملون مع العمالء. "العميل" هو مصطلح عام الممارسو وحدة اجتماعية أخرى. ةيأ الحصر( الفرد، الثنائي، األسرة، المجموعة، المنظمة، الكفيل، أو uidelinesodes vs gc اإلرشاداتبين القواعد و الفرق كون عادة خاضعة "للضبط" أو ت ال، وتقترح أفضل الممارسات اإلرشاداتجبرية، بينما وأ قانونيةالقواعد عادة ترتبط بعقوبات أنمن الممارسين ايتطلب غالبً ها اتباع أنالظروف مختلفة ومعقدة، و أنبطبيعتها توضح ب اإلرشادات ".القانونية" الرقابة مزيج من الخبرة والمنطق السليم. -يستخدموا الحكمة العملية psychology positive (pp)اإليجابي علم النفس ة للبنى الدراسة العلمية والمعزز هو: لمفهوم التشغيلي األكثر استعمااًل الكن ،اإليجابيهناك عدة طرق لتعريف مفهوم علم النفس علم نيعرفا lomas, hefferon and ivtzan (2015, p. 1347) أما ."" و"االزدهارة العافيالشاملة مثل "السعادة" و" تطبيقي" والذي ببساطه ال اإليجابيك مفهوم "علم النفس لويرتبط بذ م وممارسة تحسين العافية"،ه: "عل أنعلى اإليجابيالنفس التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس في الحياة بما فيها ةالحقيقي في المواقف اإليجابيه تطبيقات علم النفس أنمكن فهمه على ي . اإليجابي ppi( nterventionpositive psychological i( اإليجابيالتدخل العالجي في علم النفس ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 8 في اإليجابيالعالجي وبين " التدخل "اإليجابيالعالجي في علم النفس هناك فرق واضح تحدده الكتابات األدبية بين "التدخل وسع في نحن هنا نجسد الفكر األ .hone, jarden, and schofield( 2015) إلى، ارجع للموجز والشرح -علم النفس" من المجاالت الفرعية يأ ن التخصصات )عديد معبر شطةنفي علم النفس والذي يشمل جميع األ اإليجابيالتدخل العالجي أحد التعاريف الشائعة للتدخلومن زيادة العافية النفسية. إلىالتي تهدف (اإليجابيعلم النفس إلى األخرى لعلم النفس باإلضافة د أو روبالتالي زيادة العافية عند الف ة،اإليجابيو األفكار أو/المشاعر، السلوكيات، " تعزيز: هو العالجي في علم النفس اإليجابي (. schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, p. 92)." المجموعة ractitionerpositive psychology p (ppp)اإليجابيممارس علم النفس تدريب، الالنفسي رشادلمثال، العالج النفسي، اإلعلى سبيل ا)مهنته ممارسة ل بالممارس الذي أكمل التدريب المطلوهو ا يتيح له فهم عملية البحث م، مةمعروف بكفاءته العاليمع مدرب اإليجابيفي علم النفس صمخت تدريب إلىباإلضافة (تيالحيا 2(.اإليجابيطبيقي )مثل، التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس تال اإليجابيعلم النفس خدمات العلمي وتطبيقاته في تقديم trengthssنقاط القوة في مجال من قبل قادة الفكر ، اختيرتفي الشخصيةة مرغوبة خصائص معين األخالقيةوالقواعد تبنى اإلرشاداتبشكل عام، ت ، وهو (csv: peterson & seligman, 2004)الشخصية ينقاط القوة فو الفضائل :اإلرشادات هاستخدمنا لهذوقد معين. (. mcgrath, 2014)عبر مختلف الثقافات ومعتمد الشخصية مصدق تجريبيً وة في اعبارة عن نموذج لنقاط الق إلىتؤدي أن وليس من الضروري ،ة لها قيمة لذاتهاسمات عالمي :أنهانقاط القوة في الشخصية تعرف على فإن ،cvsوفقاً ل رف بطرق أخالقية ومسؤولة لمصلحته الشخص للتص حرى، كسمات سلوكية، فهي توجهبل باأل نتائج عند استعمالها كأدوات، شخصيته(، والقيم يأية الشخص )الشخصية تعكس هو بشكل عام، نقاط القوة فيو. وتسهل عليه القيام بذلك اآلخرينة ومصلح ه(. اتمبادئه وتصرف يأبه الشخص )لتزم ي اتعكس م practitionerممارس ال يوجد تحديد واضح لمقدار أو مستوى ، المن يستطيع أن يطلق على نفسه مسمى ممارس علم النفس اإليجابي؟ حتى اآلن 2 لعلم النفس اإليجابي بناًء على دورة ايمكن أن يعتبر الشخص نفسه ممارسً التدريب أو المؤهل المطلوب. على سبيل المثال، هل ضافة إلى أشهر، أو ماجستير في علم النفس اإليجابي التطبيقي مدته عامان؟ باإل 6مدتها يومان، أو شهادة معتمدة أخذها في ذلك، فإنه من المثالي الممارسة تحت اإلشراف )مثل، اإلشراف المتبادل بين زميلين( واالستشارات اإللكترونية. هناك حاجة للمزيد من التوجيه بشأن التدريب واإلشراف المناسبين من الهيئات المهنية في هذا المجال )وبالفعل، مثل هذه القضايا قيد األخذ نظر فيها من قبل الجهات المختصة(. بعين االعتبار وي ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 9 . "ممارس" اإليجابيتقديم خدمات لها عالقة بعلم النفس شخص يقوم ب يأ إلىشكل عام لإلشارة مصطلح "ممارس" يستخدم ب صحة نفسي، معالج نفسي، مختص سبيل المثال وليس الحصر( مرشد من األدوار التالية )على يأشخص يقوم ب يأتشمل 3أو معلم. ، موجه، ممرنفسية، مدرب حياتين principlesالمبادئ تنبع من مبادئ معينة محددة. فتصرفاتنا ،ليات األخالقية المهمةالمبادئ تجعلنا ننتبه للمسؤو valuesالقيم دولوجيات ياال يأ)ات المرغوبة ايعن النهوالتي تتشاركها المجموعات فراد،التي يملكها األ المعتقداتالقيم هي عبارة عن واآلخرين فسناأنتوجه كيف نختار تصرفاتنا ونقيم و. القيم تتجاوز المواقف المحددة، (يكون أنعن العالم وكيف ينبغي األوسع م تمثل القيم طريقة مهمة للتعبير عن االلتزام األخالقي العا أنيمكن (.schwartz, 2006وهي مرتبة حسب أهميتها النسبية ) نإف المبادئ. بهذا المنطقتثري يمبعبارة أخرى، الق ،عندما يتم التعبير عنه كمبدأ ةعملي الذي يصبح تعريفه أكثر دقة وبطريقة جتمع علم النفس ممشتركة على نطاق واسع في أنهاب نوالمؤلف هي تلك التي وصفها رشاداتاإلالقيم الموضحة في هذه .اإليجابي روح ومبادئ هذه اإلرشادات يمكن أن تنطبق بشكل متساو على الباحثين في مجال العافية، حيث يمكن اعتبار الباحثين 3 ممارسين من ناحية واحدة، وهي أنهم يعملون مع أشخاص يمكن أن نعتبرهم مشابهين للعمالء. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 10 القسم األول: القيم، نقاط القوة، والمبادئ كل من القيم ونقاط القوة تدعم .القيم، نقاط القوة، والمبادئ التالية اإليجابياألخالقية لممارسة علم النفس اإلرشاداتتتضمن . 1المبادئ األخالقية كما هو موضح في الجدول تشريع 1الجدول اإليجابيقيم، نقاط القوة، ومبادئ ممارسة علم النفس ال المبادئ 5نقاط القوة 4القيم اإلضرار عدم /تحقيق المنفعة .1 ةنا.األم1 ة سالمة العمالء واآلخريناي. حم1 ة المسؤولة اي. الرع2 اإلنصاف. 2 اة الشخصيةنا. تخفيف الضيق والمع2 الممارس نزاهة عالقة نا. ضم3 العميل ب . احترام حقوق الناس وكرامتهم3 . الذكاء االجتماعي3 والثقافات لخبرات ا تنوع . تقدير4 يةناسناإل الجدارة بالثقة . 4 . العمل الجماعي 4 لذي يعتبر االذات تعزيز معنى . 5 األشخاص أولشخص ل بالنسبة امعبرً المعنيين . العدل 5 . اللطف 5 جودة المعرفة المهنية تحسين .6 وتطبيقاتها . االستقاللية6 . الحيطة 6 . وجهة النظر7 جودة العالقات بين الناس سينتح. 7 الحكم إصدار. 8 الذاتية . زيادة الفاعلية 8 رشاد اإل . السعي لتقديم خدمات9 لعالج النفسي، التدريب ، االنفسي كاف الحياتي، بشكل منصف و . تنظيم الذات9 . الصمود 10 . الشجاعة 11 إرشادات أخرى مشابهه، وعلى هذا النحو، يمكن للعديد من القيم أن تتناسب مع فئات مختلفة. فعلى تم اختيار قيمنا بناء على 4 سبيل المثال: يمكن النظر إلى العدالة على أنها قيمة أو مبدأ، كما يمكن اعتبار الجدارة بالثقة قوة )األمانة(، أو قيمة أو مبدأ. طريقة. كما تم تصنيف القيم حسب أهميتها من وجهة نظر مؤلفي هذه اإلرشادات.العديد من هذه األساسيات قابلة للنقاش بهذه ال إرشادات أخالقية مشابهه )على سبيل المثال، 10صنفت بحسب عدد مرات تكرار ذكرها والتأكيد عليها في 7-1نقاط القوة 5 الجمعية البريطانية لإلرشاد النفسي والعالج اإلطار األخالقي للممارسة الجيدة في اإلرشاد النفسي والعالج النفسي الصادر من ، اعتبر المؤلفون أنه من المهم التمسك بالمبادئ الستة. 11-8النفسي(. نقاط القوة ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 11 ذلك: إلىإضافة هذه القواعد تركز على نقاط أنعلى مجموعة من السمات والصفات الشخصية، في حين اتنص جميع القواعد تقريبً • والسلوكيات التي يمكن مالحظتها. القوة على نه لما ينظر اليه اآليأمحاولة مبدهي ، بل الشكشكل من األ يأقوائم القيم، نقاط القوة، والمبادئ ليست شاملة ب • مع مرور الزمن، ومع النقاش الحاصل في متكرر تتكيف بشكل اإلرشادات أنبالممارسة. بما أنه األكثر ارتباًطا ناصر. عتتطور هذه ال أنه من المتوقع نإف ،اإليجابيمجتمع علم النفس لزامية.إالقيم، نقاط القوة، والمبادئ ليست قوائم • في الكتابات األدبية اكونه األكثر وضوحً (،via التصرفعمل القيم في إطارتم اختيار نموذج من نقاط القوة ) • على علم صحيح. اومستندً اإليجابيقيم ممارسي علم النفس االلتزام بما يلي: اإليجابياسية لممارسي علم النفس تتضمن القيم األس والوعي الدائم لكيفية استجابة العميل للخدمات التي يقدمها االنتباههذا يشمل و ،ة سالمة العمالء واآلخرينايحم • متى قد يحتاج إدراكوخبراته )وعلى هذا النحو، حدود قدراته الممارس يدرك أن ذلك، إلىالممارس، باإلضافة عندما يكون عامة الناس في خطر(. أوالعميل لمساعدة متخصصة من قطاعات أخرى، في علم ةالعالجي تالتدخالهذا يعني توزيع و ،الشخصية )عندما يكون ضمن حدود الخبرة( والمعاناةتخفيف الضيق • خصصة باختالفها )على سبيل الضيق عند االفراد الذين يلجؤون للخدمات المت خفضل حسب السياق اإليجابيالنفس ، الصحة(. ، التدريب الحياتيالعالج النفسي ،المثال االلتزام بالممارسة المهنية مثل ذا يشمل احترام الحدود الشخصية، ووه العميل،بالممارس عالقةة نزاه ضمان • الخصوصية والسرية. يصلح لشخص واحد يصلح للجميع" مع هذا يعني عدم تطبيق سياسة "ما ،اإلنسانيةوالثقافات تقدير تنوع الخبرات • شخص، وخلفياتهم ة لكل والتميز في طرق النمو المختلفالتنوع ب واالحتفاءحترام اال ،من ذلك بداًل ولكن العمالء، المختلفة. الثقافية وظروفهم لشخص يضع األهداف ا أنهذا يعني ، بالنسبة للشخص أو األشخاص المعنيين ارً تعزيز معنى الذات الذي يعتبر معب • هم في الخير العام. ًضا تسيأكنها هذه األهداف ليس مرضية للنفس فقط، ولويسعى لتحقيقها. التطورات في الكتابات يبذل الشخص قصارى جهده لمواكبة أن وهذا يعني، ة المهنية وتطبيقاتهاتحسين جودة المعرف • التطورات في المجال. آخر ظ على المعرفة المتجددة بااألدبية والحف ، والشبكات االجتماعية ال محالة الناس ينخرطون في العالقات أن إدراكيعني جودة العالقات بين الناس، وهذا تحسين • .اإلمكانهذه الروابط قدر لتحسينوالسعي لمساعدة الفرد ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 12 في العالم وفي المواقف الفريدة ليةعفا أكثرهذا يعني السعي لمساعدة العميل على العمل بشكل ة،ذاتيزيادة الفاعلية ال • فيها. فسهمأنالتي يجدون هذه الخدمات تقديم إلىوالدعوة التأييد هذا قد يشملو ،منصفةالو كافيةال اإليجابيالسعي لتقديم خدمات علم النفس • بحيث يستطيع األشخاص ذوي ؛حيثما كان ذلك ممكنًا الترويج لتدرج األسعارأو للفئات التي يصعب الوصول اليها، هذه الخدمات. لمحدود االستفادة منالدخل ا اإليجابينقاط القوة عند ممارسي علم النفس عديد العميل، وهناك الثر على عالقة الممارس بتؤ نهاأل ؛مهمة اإليجابينقاط القوة في الشخصية عند ممارسي علم النفس تعد المناسب غير من ه نإأيًضا، وفي المقابل ف تعتبر صفات شخصية جيدة، كما ماتجوهرية في تقديم الخد التي تعتبر القوةن نقاط م تكون نقاط القوة في الشخصية هذه متأصله في أني ه من األساسنأل هم يمتلكون نقاط القوة هذه؛أننصف جميع الممارسين ب أن أظهر التحليل الموضوعي للمبادئ والقيم التي تتبناها سلطة خارجية ما. ن متطلباتوليس م الذاتي الفرد وتنبع من االلتزام تسهل أنهاية يفترض تنقاط القوة في الشخصية اآل أن( ذات الصلة التوجيهية اإلرشاداتظر لقسم ناالرئيسية ) اإلرشادات الممارسة األخالقية عند اتخاذ القرار: الفرد خالية من االدعاء، تحمل صرف بطريقة صادقةالت ،: قول الحق، تقديم النفس لآلخرين بطريقة حقيقيةاألمانة • ه. وتصرفات همشاعر مسؤولية تجعل أنالشخصية والعدالة، عدم السماح للمشاعر اإلنصافلمفاهيم اوفقً بمساواة: معاملة جميع الناس اإلنصاف • ة. منصف ااآلخرين متحيزة، إعطاء الجميع فرصً القرارات تجاه المواقف االجتماعية المختلفة، ن، معرفة ما يجب عمله ليتناسب معإدراك دوافع ومشاعر اآلخريالذكاء االجتماعي: • .بالراحةجعل اآلخرين يشعرون يجب عمله ل معرفة ما على الفرد تجاه تأدية ماوالء للمجموعة، المجموعة، ال أوالعمل الجماعي: العمل بجدارة كعضو في الفريق • المجموعة. لآلخرين، مساعدتهم، واالعتناء بهم. عمال الخيرةطف: عمل المعروف واألالل • .عمل أشياء قد يندم عليها الحقًا أوعدم قول و ،لها داع ، عدم اتخاذ مخاطر الالحيطة: الحذر في اختيارات الفرد • واآلخرين. ر للعالم بطرق ذات معنى للنفسالنظتقديم النصح الحكيم لآلخرين، ووجهة النظر: القدرة على • االستنتاجات، إلى التسرع في الوصول م، عدالجوانبالحكم: التفكير في األمور بعمق وفحصها من جميع إصدار • ك. يأفقط التخاذ القرارات، امتالك القدرة على تغيير ر د على األدلة القويةاالعتما التحكم في شهوات الفرد ومشاعره. ،االنضباطيفعله، ما و يشعر به الفرد تنظيم الذات: تنظيم ما • تشتت مه في الوقت المناسب بغض النظر عن نوع المشروع، عدئنهاإو، الفرد يبدأ به ما ءنهاإلالصمود: العمل بجد • عند العمل، الشعور بالرضا عند إتمام المهام. االنتباه ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 13 الدفاع عن الحق حتى لو ، األلم أوات، الصعوب ،التحدي، مواجهة الخطر خشىت ال شجاًعا اتكون شخصً أنالشجاعة: • .التصرف بناء على قناعات الفردواك معارضة، نت هناك اإليجابيالمبادئ األخالقية لممارسة علم النفس مبدأ، ويمكن لكل استجابة نشأتالجيدة التي اتللممارسمصاحبة ألمثلة تأتي ،التي ستذكر الحقا الستةكل من المبادئ األخالقية لها أنتناقض مع المبادئ األخرى ب يأهذه المبادئ، وبدون من أكثر أوبواحد ةبشد المدعومةالقرارات األخالقية النظر إلى ا التوفيق بين يواجه الممارسون ظروفاً يستحيل فيه أنمن المرجح فإنه وعلى الرغم من ذلك، .خالقي قويوأ منطقي أساس التصرف غير أخالقي أوالقرار يعد ال. امطلوبً أمراً ، ويكون االختيار بين المبادئ تلك الظروفب جميع المبادئ المرتبطة من واجب .في ظروف مماثلة استنتاجات مختلفة إلىن وصلويتقد ممارسين آخرين نأل أوه مثير للجدل أنبالضرورة لمجرد عن قراراته. مسؤواًل يكون أنو ،من االهتمامقدر أكبرجميع الظروف المرتبطة مع يضع في عين االعتبار أنالممارس اإلضرارتحقيق المنفعة/ عدم مصلحة تحقيق ال على العمل تحقيق المنفعة قاعدة عافية العميل والممارس، وتعنيااللتزام بتعزيز يقتضي تحقيق المنفعة فقط، على العمل ضمن حدود كفاءة الفرد ديلتشدل االنتباهتلفت نهافضال عن أ ،صتخالمالتقييم على األفضل للعميل، باالعتماد ارسات والنتائج للمم مراقبة منهجيةة العميل تحقيق منفع ضمانالخبرة. يتطلب أو ى أساس التدريب الكافيوتقديم الخدمات عل الممارسة. بإثراءالمنهجي يقوم البحث العلمي والتفكير أن ه من المهمنإ .العافية( بأفضل الوسائل المتاحة ،)على سبيل المثال تزام بتحديث الممارسةللتحسين جودة الخدمات المقدمة، واال معينة خطواتوالسياق، يجب عادة االلتزام با على الدور اعتمادً عند العمالء ة األهمية ايفي غ افضل مصلحة للعميل أمرً أقد يصبح االلتزام بالعمل لتحقيق .التطوير المهني المستمر عن طريق قيود شخصية أخرى. أو، عدم النضج، عدم الفهم، الضيق، مربسبب الع على االستقالليةلديهم القدرة الذين تتناقص .العميلذاء يإبتجنب االلتزامينطوي على اإلضرارم عد نإف ومن ناحية أخرى، ن الذين يتبنون هذا المبدأ يلتزمون بالتالي:الممارسو شكال استغالل العميل. أشكل آخر من يأ أوالعاطفي أوالمادي أوتجنب االستغالل الجنسي • : ، على سبيل المثالاإليجابيالتطبيق الصحيح للتدخالت العالجية في علم النفس يأ) الكفؤةغير تجنب الممارسة • .سوء الممارسةتجنب و، (على حدى صلح لكل شخصي امعرفة م .ياب العقلغ أوالظروف الشخصية أوفي وضع مناسب لتقديمها بسبب المرض ال يكونونعدم تقديم الخدمات عندما • مكن ي ال أوضرر يلحق بالعميل حتى عندما يكون الضرر غير مقصود ايالممارس عليه مسؤولية أخالقية بالسعي لتخفيف غير الممارسة أو ، لسوء الممارسةامناسبً ذلك عندما يكون لتصديصية ومهنية على الممارسين لهناك مسؤولية شخو تجنبه، سلطة معترف بها بشكل أوتحكيم قضائي من قبل هيئة أوتحقيق يأمسؤولية المساهمة في ضايأ. يتحمل الممارسون كفؤةال ءة المقبولة يندرج تحتها من ناحية الكفا وما ،موثوق، فيما يتعلق بالممارسة المهنية التي تقل عن المستوى المهني المطلوب . اإليجابيسمعة علم النفس أوالمخاطرة بتشويه سمعة مهنتهم أوو/للممارس ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 14 ة المسؤولة ايالرع ون هذا الذين يتبن اإليجابيعلم النفس يظهر ممارسوالسعي لتحقيق هذا الهدف، وفي .تعزز العافية اإليجابي سممارسة علم النف ممارسي علم النفس كدورهم ويدركون السلطة االجتماعية والمؤسسية التي تشكل ،عمالئهم بمصلحةفاعاًل اهتماما المبدأ و أ ،الجماعات ،سراأل ،الفرادا أنب دركونم . إنهمعمالئهمة مصلحة ايحموهي أساسيةمسؤولية فهم عليهم. اإليجابي ين مختص إلى ويلجؤونهم يدركون حدود خبراتهم )بما في ذلك غياب المعرفة( أنكما ،ضعيففي موضع تكونالمجتمعات قد من المتوقع من والتي يقدمونها. دماتضرر قد يحدث نتيجة للخ يأ بإصالحويقومون المسؤولية آخرين عند الحاجة، ويتحملون نا، لضمهمفي مجال ريقيةيمبظرية واإلنيكون لهم نشاط واهتمام مستمر في التطورات ال أن ضايأ اإليجابيممارسي علم النفس .الذي يقومون باستعماله اإليجابي التي تتعلق بالتدخل العالجي في علم النفسباألدلة العلمية ة حديثة ومتجددة فالحفاظ على معر حقوق الناس وكرامتهماحترام لي: كل شخص والناس جميعاً ي اميتطلب كرامة الناس وحقوقهم فإن احترام ، ناسنمم المتحدة العالمي لحقوق اإلاأل نإلعال وفقًا إنسانيتهمكجزء من والتأكيد على كرامتهم ،احتراممعاملتهم بوجابية في حد ذاتهم، واالعتراف بحقوقهم واحترامها، ايلهم قيمة هذا . التنوع الثقافي واالجتماعي تجاه الحساسيةالممارسون الذين يتبنون هذا المبدأ يظهرون االحترام الذي يتطلب . إن المشتركة ، هم الزواجيةجنسهم، حالتدينهم، ، جنسيتهم، عرقهم، لونهم، ساللتهمثقافتهم، شخاص من ناحيةاالختالفات بين األ إدراكيشمل حالة أوظروف أوخصائص ةيأ أوو/ االقتصادي، -الوضع االجتماعي، قدراتهم الجسدية والعقلية، سنهم، توجهاتهم الجنسية من الشخص، ويجب احترامها على هذا األساس. أتجزي شخصية أخرى. هذه االختالفات هي جزء ال قة ثالجدارة بال بالثقة )اإلخالص( احترام الثقة التي يمنحها الناس للممارس. جديرا نساناإليتضمن كون وحلها.ا األخالقية ايالجدارة بالثقة تعتبر أساسية لفهم القض :يلتزمون بالتالي ن الذين يتبنون هذا المبدأالممارسو . صرف بناء على الثقة الممنوحة لهمالت • . معقولة يمكن تحقيقهاتوقعات العمالء هي توقعات أن لضمان السعي • . العمالء معواالتفاقيات م الوعود اتراح • . بهم ينبع من ثقة العميل االسرية التزامً اعتبار • ة، باستثناء افشاء ايفي البد تحديدهااألهداف التي تم لخدمةفشاء للمعلومات السرية عن العمالء إ يأ حصر • فشاء(.مثل هذا اإل القضائيةفي منطقة الشخص القانونعندما يلزم ،على سبيل المثال)لزامي اإلالمعلومات العدالة ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 15 ن ويكون الممارس أن العدالةيتطلب مبدأ كما .كافية تخدماوالحيادية لجميع العمالء وتقديم تتضمن العدالة المعاملة المنصفة مراعاة إلى االنتباه تشد نهاإ .وكرامتهم اإلنسانيةمالء ويحترمون حقوقهم الذين يتبنون هذا المبدأ عادلين ومنصفين مع جميع الع نإ .واألخالقية القانونيةتناقضات محتملة بين المتطلبات ألي دائما واالنتباه، القانونية في االلتزامات والمتطلبات الحي الضمير ، دايالخدمات بين العمالء بشكل مح تحديد الخدمات التي يقدمونها للعمالء وتوزيعالخدمات يتطلب القدرة على العدل في توزيع ، تحقيق تكافؤ الفرص والمخرجاتيتطلب القدرة على تقدير االختالفات بين الناس وااللتزام ب اإلنصافبااللتزام فضال عن أن وبعبارة أخرى، ؛االجتماعية أوالمجموعات على أساس خصائصهم الشخصية أوضد األشخاص العنصري وتجنب التمييز ارسين واجب على المم .()مثل الجنس والعمر غير عادل بناًء على خصائص معينة عنصرييستلزم العدل عدم حدوث تمييز مالئمة تكون الخدمات أنو ،يكون من الممكن لمن يحتاجها الحصول عليها أنو، للخدمات منصف تقديم لضمانالسعي المحتملين. الحتياجات العمالء االستقاللية ويؤكد هذا المبدأ على أهمية تطوير قدرة العميل على .بنفسه في حياتهحكم تي أناحترام حق العميل في تضمن االستقالليةت التالعب يعارض مبدأ االستقاللية .الحياة جوانبوفي جميع الخدمات المقدمة فيتوجيه النفس( وذلك أوالتوجيه الذاتي ) ات اجتماعية مفيدة.ايمن اجل غ نارادتهم، حتى لو كإ دونبالعمالء : يلتزمون بالتالي المبدأن الذين يتبنون هذا الممارسو معلومات تعطى قبل تقديم الخدمة. أو إعالن يأالدقة في ضمان • قة. المعطاة من قبل العميل بإرادته طول فترة العال وافقة المبنية على اطالع"الم" السعي للحصول على • .له في الخدمات التي يتم تقديمها عميل طوعامشاركة اليمة التأكيد على ق • جعة شروط العقد طول فترة التزام من قبل العميل وإعادة النظر/ ومرا اييحدث أنقبل في تعاقد صريحاالشتراك • العالقة. ة الخصوصية. ايحم • ة السرية. ايحم • روط عادة بموافقة الشخص المعني.للمعلومات السرية مش افشاء يأجعل • .يظهر هذا التضارب أنأسرع وقت بعد في أو، المحتملبتضارب المصالح بالغ العميل مسبقاإ • ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 16 ة في الممارسة االخالقي اإلرشادات: تطبيقات الثانيالقسم تم تصميم .في السياقات المختلفة األخالقية اإلرشاداتهذه تطبيقمثلة لواأل اإلرشاداتعديد من على ال قسميحتوي هذا ال مفيدة ودليل تقييم ذاتي لحل ودعم اتخاذ القرار في الممارسة العملية. المحتوى للتفكير بعمق مع توفير أدوات ثالثة اعتبارات مهمة الثالثة التالية المهمة، والتي تمثل حجر ل، يجب على الفرد تقييم العواماإليجابيتدخالت عالجية في علم النفس يأقبل تطبيق (:barlow, allen & choate, 2004) الممارسات ألفضلاألساس تابات ؟ يمكن التأكد من ذلك بمراجعة الكخيار مناسب لهذه الحالة اإليجابيهل التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس .1 على سبيل المثال، قبل تطبيق تدخل عالجي معين في علم النفس ف موثوقة، مصادر العلمية المنشورة في األدبية واألدلة هذا التدخل العالجي في علم أندلة علمية منشورة تبين هناك أ ناك ما إذالمعرفة ، تحقق"متنان"اال قوةل اإليجابي لهذا العميل. واعدةعبارة عن تقنية اإليجابي النفس ؟ يناسب احتياجات العميل الحالية اإليجابيهل التدخل العالجي في علم النفس .2 ة التي يمكن نيبعبارة أخرى، ماهي النتيجة المع ؟اإليجابيلية التدخل العالجي في علم النفس سيتم تقييم فاعكيف .3 ؟ اإليجابيجي في علم النفس التدخل العال ةلياعتحديدها وتقييمها بشكل صحيح لتحديد ف اتخاذ القرارات األخالقية اإلرشاداتو خالقيةاأل اإلرشادات: وجود معرفة كافية بهذه التالية من خالل األموريدعم أنيمكن خالقيةاتخاذ القرارات األ مال القوة األخالقية الفاضلة لآلخرين، واستعالسلوكيات إدراك ، تلك القرارات األخالقيةالمرتبط بمهني المجال األخالقية لل . ارالشخصية في اتخاذ القر المؤهلين اإليجابيعلم النفس ممارسي األخالقية، وبالتحديد اإلرشاداتنتوقع من المستخدمين األساسيين لهذه المعرفة: ،يكونوا على معرفة كافية أنالصلة، ذات المجاالت األخرى أوالكافي لممارسة علم النفس تدريب والخبرة والتعليمبال يجب على هأنب القضائية قالمناطتؤكد معظم . المهني وتصنيفهممهنتهم األخالقية التي تخص اإلرشاداتهذه ويستطيعون شرح تبطة بمهنتهم.رالم اإلجراءاتشريعات واللوائح وير والتايين والمعنالقوبا ة وفهماييكونوا على در أنالممارسين يأتي ببساطة من المعرفة نأ نيمك ، الاإليجابي، وخاصة عند تقديم التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس السلوك األخالقيالسلوك: لئك أوتحدد أن بإمكانكهل .بالسلوكيات والممارسات الجماعية اوثيق اارتباط مرتبطاالسلوك األخالقي يجب أن يكون .العقلية ه الممارسات يسلطون الضوء على هذ ك قد الزمالء أن؟ على الرغم من ةالسليم لذين يمثلون الممارسات األخالقيةااالفراد أومنظمة إقليمية )بصراحة المجتمع المهني األكبر أوك ءتسأل زمال أنه من المستحب أنال بسبب تواضعهم، إ بشكل واضح سيكون للممارسات الجيدة كمرجعيةالحاالت أمثلة مجموعة منجمع ير األخالقية في مجالك.ايمعبال همتقيد يةكيفعن ( دولية من ، أماحتماً التطبيقات المتميزة ستظهر ،مثلةتجميع الكافي لأللمع او ،االعتبارفي همع اخذ سلوك الممارس فعل ودلرد مفيدا جع.االمر سين فرصة إلثراء هذهللجميع بحيث يصبح لجميع الممار ةمنصة متاح شاءنإبن وقوم الممارسيفالناحية المثالية، ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 17 على القرار األخالقي، عند صناعة مفيدة بعدة طرقتكون نقاط القوة أنيمكن استعمال نقاط القوة في صنع القرار االخالقي: اوذج. ابحث عن زميل يمثل نمخاذ القرارات األخالقية المطروحةساعد في اتت أنل المثال: تحديد نماذج لنقاط القوة يمكن سبي ماهي نقاط القوة التي بشكل عام أوموقف أخالقي معين، أوكيف يتعامل مع معضلة فكر خالقي،يحتذى به كقدوة في السلوك األ توضع كنموذج وستساعد في اتخاذ القرارات. أنمية مع الزمالء والعمالء والتي تستحق يجسدها بالتحديد في تفاعالته اليو اعتبارات العمل أخالقية مهمة ومباشرة. يكون لها تبعات أنوالتي يمكن ،العمل مع العمالءي يجب مراعاتها في الت االعتباراتهناك العديد من علم النفس وممارسوالتي يجد عمالء الء، التغيرات في البيئاتالعم في االعتبار التغيراتنأخذ بعين أنالمهم ه من نإفا، تحديدً ، ميل العمالء لتجنب اإليجابيلعمالء وممارسي علم النفس عافية ا ية الحالية ومستوىالحالة الشعور فسهم فيها،أن اإليجابي مية هوأ المؤهل العلمي والكفاءة، اإلعالن عنالحكمة العملية، فراط في استخدام نقاط القوة، ، فرق القوة في العالقة، اإلالمواجهة غير تفادي بعض العواقب أوتوقع، أويساعد في تحقيق، أنالنظر في هذه االبعاد يمكن إن السياقات الثقافية المتنوعة. مرغوبة. الغير أومقصودة ال التغيرات في العمالء تتدهور حالة وقد .فترة التدخل العالجي أوخدمات نفيسة، من المهم مراقبة عافية العمالء خالل الفترة العالجية اييم دعند تق تتدهور أنيمكن . مالمستعملة معه اإليجابيجي في علم النفس للتدخل العال المثبتةلية اعبعض العمالء بغض النظر عن الف العميل هذه المعلومات مع يشارك أنليس بالضرورة و ،لعميل في موقف ضعفمما يجعل ا سبب من األسباب، أليعراض األ قد ال . الذي يعمل في سبيل تحسين عافيته التردد في تخييب ظن الممارس أوالخوف، ،ه قد يشعر بالخجلنا ألالممارس، ربم تعزيز باألحرىهو تحسن االعراض، بل اإليجابيللتدخل العالجي في علم النفس التركيز األساسي -األحيانفي أغلب -يكون إلىبالنسبة اإليجابيالتدخل العالجي في علم النفس نفس أهمية تقييم هو بمالحظة التغيرات في ظروف حياة العمالء .العافية يتمكن الممارس من التعاطي مع أنخسر وظيفة، فمن المهم أو النفصاللتعرض العميل إذاعلى سبيل المثال، ف هذه التغيرات، الذي يقومون اإليجابيالتدخل العالجي في علم النفس إليقافن وعدمستن ويكون الممارس أنيجب . رهاثذه المتغيرات وتقييم أه إذاخر لمساعدته مختص آ إلىيل العميل وتح أولالحتياجات المطروحة والمستمرة، باستعماله مع العميل وتعديل نهجهم تبعا . مكن إصالحها فيما بعدي والتي قد العلى عالقة الممارس بالعميل، قد يؤثر الفشل في القيام بذلك سلبا .ذلك مناسبا أنك مارس والعميلبيئة المالتغيرات في على العمالء والممارسين. من مراعاة البيئة التي تشمل كل ضايأه من المهم نإخذ تغيرات العميل في االعتبار، فأ إلىباإلضافة ن وصران المعوكلينيكي. يعمل المعالجون اإلينكلينيكيإ ينضا كمعالجيأالذين يعملون اإليجابيعلم النفس ثال: ممارسيمسبيل ال مثل ندرة برامج التدخالت العالجية المبنية تاتتميز بالتحديقاع، ومليئة بالضغوطات، والتي يسريعة االفي بيئات شديدة التعقيد، .في حياتهم مالء والتي تؤثر على مجاالت عديدةعلى األدلة العلمية، نقص الكفاءة الثقافية، واالحتياجات المزمنة والمعقدة للع ضع في اعتبارك العمالء الذين: نظراً لهذه التحديات ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 18 مختلفون همنأليتم تجاهلهم في الحصول على الترقية التي يستحقونها فقط أومهمة، صفقات أووظيفتهم ربما فقدوا • الفريق. عن خطيرة. بحالة مرضية اخيصهم مؤخرً ربما تم تش • من قبل شريك الحياة. المعاملةشكال سوء أغيرها من أوشريك حياتهم لهم بخيانة يمرون • عنصري. تمييز يتعاملون مع وضع فيه • عالمية مثل المجاعة. تكالمش أوحرائق الغابات، أو الفيضانات :بيئية مدمرة مثل ألحداثعرضة • وعة نت تعرض مجموعة متهذه الحاال. ةالتحديات قد تؤثر على العمالء وتشكل خطتهم العالجي هذه أنضع في االعتبار كيف المهنة التي ينتمي يرايذلك يتم مع مراعاة لوائح ومعا المختلفة التي يجب النظر فيها ومعالجتها بطرق مختلفة، كل ايمن القض أن ،اإليجابيبتقديم التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس اإليجابيعلم النفس ا يقوم ممارسوعندملذلك من المهم ،ليها الفردإ لظروفهم. التي حصلت حديثا أوهم وعلى بيئاتهم وعلى التغيرات الحالية على عمالء ايتعرفو إلىيؤدي أنيمكن مما اإلدارةقد يشمل ذلك التغيرات في التحديات داخل بيئة عملهم، و إدراك إلىضا يأيحتاج الممارسون ض تدخالت عالجية معينه في علم النفس ريعا أوالمدير الجديد قد يؤيد فعلى سبيل المثال ،المقدمة شكال الخدمةأ التغيرات في العالج والبرمجة اللغوية العصبية، العالجات القائمة على التأمل، ،)على سبيل المثال، آخر اعالجي امنهجقد يفضل أو، اإليجابي التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس غير مباشر على ممارسة أولتغيرات قد يكون لها تأثير مباشر هذه ابالتقبل وااللتزام(. ، بما في ذلك المنظور األخالقي.اإليجابي الحالية ومستوى العافية الشعورية ةالحال الشعورية الحالية ومستوى من تقييم التغيرات في العمالء وحالتهم البد اإليجابيالجية في علم النفس ثناء تقديم التدخالت العأ للعمالء الذين بالنسبة .ضمن نطاق تدريبهم وخبراتهم اإليجابيتكون ممارسة ممارسي علم النفس نأ. إنه من المهم العافية اإليجابي ممارس علم النفس نإالصدمات النفسية(، ف أو، القلق أواالكتئاب، ي)أ نفس المرضيمشكالت تتعلق بعلم ال يظهرون في ظاهرةذا لم تكن هذه المشكالت إ .كافيةوخبرة ن متخصص ذو مؤهل مناسبالمساعدة المتخصصة م إلىيلجأ أن يجب مثل هذه المشكالت قد نأل يبقى يقظا أن اإليجابيالعميل، فيجب على ممارس علم النفس والممارس بينة عالقة العمل ايبد إلى ا لتحويل العميلالممارس جاهزً يكون أنكما يجب ،اإليجابيالعميل للتدخل العالجي في علم النفس ثناء ممارسةأفي تظهر مع الزمالء التشاور و العميل يقوم الممارس بمناقشة أنيجب من الناحية المثالية. تهمختص مؤهل بشكل مناسب لمساعد في مثل اإليجابي سفي علم النف ةجيواصلة التدخالت العالم إلىللعودة بالمجال للتأكد من الوقت المناسب والخبراء ذوي الصلة هذه الحالة. المواجهة بتجن يكون أنا تستلزم الحياة الصحية نفسيً و ،مع المشاعر السلبية للتكيفليات التي يستعملها األفراد اآل أكثرحد أ هو المواجهةتجنب يلجؤون للتدخالت العالجية في علم النفس بعض العمالء الذين قد يتجنب .مشاعره بعادأويستعمل كل لمشاعره ا الشخص مدركً ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 19 عون للحصول على التدخالت العالجية في علم سقد يوشعورهم بعد االرتياح، المشاعر السلبية العميقة بسبب تلك اإليجابي مثلة مصادر المشاعر أوتشمل يبقيها تحت السيطرة، أومشاعرهم السلبية يجنبهم ذلك مواجهة أنمل على أ اإليجابيالنفس المعاملة غير ولكونه ضحية التمييز العنصري، االستياء، من صديق موثوق فيه الخيانةمرير، الطالق ال أو االنفصال : السلبية المشاعر السلبية التي إلى االنتباههي من خالل المواجهةطرق تقييم تجنب ىحد. إمؤسسة أوالمتحيزة من قبل فرد أوالعادلة يتعمد لمشاعر التي تزعج العمالء ومع ذلك ا يأصريح )يتم مناقشتها بشكل لم في المحادثة حتى لو تعاود الظهور بشكل متكرر . (العميل عدم مناقشها المشاعر أندة على ايمع األدلة المتز ةقامت بفتح آفاق جديد اإليجابيالتدخالت العالجية في علم النفس أنعلى الرغم من وهذا فقط في ، (rashid & seligman, 2018)الت السلبية اتحسن وتصلح الح أنيمكن ة ونقاط القوة في الشخصيةاإليجابي نإالممارسين، ف أوالمشاعر السلبية القوية من قبل العمالء تم تجنب أما إذا ،دمج الحاالت السلبية بشكل مفيد في العالجحال لية العالج.اعذلك يهدد ف رق القوةف .رق القوةفي العالقة، وباألخص ف الكامنةالقوة هي ديناميكيات بين الممارس والعميل نفسي تفاعل أليالجوهرية االبعاد أحد هذا المماثلةن وغيرهم من أصحاب المهن واالجتماعين ويتصاصواالخ ونن النفسيون، والمرشدودرك المعالجي اعادة م رد متلقين مج همأنبشعر العمالء ي رحبة بهم حتى الوسرية وم دةايومح ةمنعون جاهدين لخلق مساحة آهم يسنإلذلك ف .االختالف يميل .ه خبيرأنللممارس على فيها التعامل بين الممارس والعميل ينظرطبيعة نإك فومع ذل .ة لهمسلبيين للخدمات المقدم العالجي التدخل في تقديم خدمات اتوالخبر اتهم مجهزون بأحدث المعارف والتدريبأنعلى لممارسينيتطلعوا ل أن إلىالعمالء يأب نيتج أنويجب لهذا الفرق يكون الممارس مدركا أنيجب و فرق القوة موجود دائما، أنلهذا ف .اإليجابيفي علم النفس .القوة قربفثر اتخاذ قرار متأ إلىالممارس أول العميموقف يضطر فيه فراط في استخدام نقاط القوةاإل . على سبيل تفاقم التحديات القائمة إلىيؤدي أنوة يمكن الق نقاطالتقصير في استخدام بعض الممارسات القائمة على أوفراط اإل يكونوا أكثر حذرا أنيؤدي اقتراح الممارس على العمالء ب أنيمكن ،الحياتي المختلفةيب العديد من سياقات التدر في ،المثال قومون ييسامحون ومتى فيمنالملي التسامح دون التفكير . العمالء الذين يتدربون علىيصبح البعض أكثر قلقا ومترددا أن إلى رطون ف الذين ي ءقد تؤذي االخرين. العمال ،الحسبانخذها في أ أو ذا لم يتم التحقق منهاإوالتي ،بذلك قد يتغاضون عن الجرائم وتكافؤ الفرص. العمالء الذين العدل يعاترالقواعد التي أو عرافالتقيد باأليجدوا صعوبة في أنيمكن بداع في استخدام اإل مه هناك من يقوم بالنقيض في مجال عملهأنواقع التصالح معفي عملهم قد يجدون صعوبة في يلتزمون باتخاذ قرارات منصفة ت غير حكيمة(.اومطلع جيد يمكنه اتخاذ قرار ا جيدامتعلم تعليم هناك شخص يكون أنالتصالح مع ، ى سبيل المثال)عل الحكمة العملية ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 20 سبيل على ،اإلرشاداتالحكمة العملية لتطبيق هذه يأ، ”phronesis“ية لمفالطون الحكمة العأ سماه ما إلىيحتاج الممارسون وقد قام بتحقيق تقدم جيد ،، أسس معه عالقة ممتازةيعمل مع مسؤول تنفيذي رفيع المستوى االمثال، ضع في اعتبارك ممارس يحافظ أنهل يجب على الممارس . غير أخالقيهذا المسؤول متورط في سلوك أن الممارس إلى نتبهي. ومع ذلك عملالفي موعة واحدة من تكون مج ويخاطر بالعالقة؟ قد ال يواجهه أن أو ؟بينه وبين العميل بالتزام الصمت على العالقة المتينة ل هذه ثفي م .يق التوازن بين الدوافع المختلفةتحقالعمل على والموقف تحليل إلىيحتاج الممارس فاالخالقية كافية، اإلرشادات ديم النصح ة مع الزمالء الذين يمكنهم تقت الجيدالخبرات التراكمية وروابط العالقا، الحكمة العملية تبنى من كل من الحاالت منطق األخالقي.والمساعدة في الوصول لل مة االحتراق الذاتيواالحفاظ على المرونة ومق الصفاء، األمل، ،)مثلة اإليجابيلمشاعر ويمكن ل ة االحتراق الذاتي،مقاوم اإليجابييمكن لعديد من البناءات في علم النفس ضد نقاط الضعف، مثل حاجزتمثل أنوالتي يمكن ، الممارس المعرفية والسلوكيةتوسع موارد أن (الدهشة، االهتمام، الفرح تساعد .رمثل التأمل في مثل هذا األم تساعد الممارسات الشخصية أنيمكن كما اإلرهاق العاطفي(. كعراض االحتراق الذاتي )أ بالهدف والمعنى، ، اإلحساسالفكاهة، اللطف، الحب، الذكاء االجتماعي ،على سبيل المثالالشخصية ) ة في العالقاتنقاط القو حالة تبدو فيها أفكار الفرد هو) "depersonalization" الطابع الشخصي نامثل فقد في التكيف مع التحديات جماعي(لالعمل ا يعيد الشعور أناإلحساس بالهدف والمعنى يمكنه نإالشخص نفسه(. وبالمثل، ف إلىتنتمي ال أوواحاسيسه غير حقيقية ."depersonalization" الشخصي الطابع نافقدب الشخصي والكفاءة مؤهل العلميال عن عالناإل العمل مع مثل،، ومجموعات معينة )ة معينهيسق بحاالت نفلفيما يتع كفاءتهمحدود عن ا يفصحو أنيجب على الممارسين . على سبيل المثال:اإليجابياألطفال، الثقافات األخرى، العمل مع المجموعات( وتطبيق تدخالت عالجية معينة في علم النفس أوفي تقييم نقاط القوة لدى األطفال ت لديه خبرةليسط القوة عند البالغين، ولكن اقد تكون لدى الممارس خبرة في تقييم نق أوقل خبرة أهو ناطق فقد تأخذ األمور منحنى ليجد الممارس نفسه في م عالوة على ذلك، مع استمرار تقديم الخدمة .المراهقين قين، والبالغين، لكنه قد اللألطفال، والمراه الخدمات تقديم خبرة في وذا قد يكون الممارس مؤهل ،يل المثالعلى سبكفاءة فيها. إلىتحويل العمالء تكون هناك حاجة ل ، وفي هذه الحالةخبرة في تقديم هذه الخدمات في إطار االسرة اذ أو كون مؤهالي أشكال أخرى من المساعدة المتخصصة. الحصول على أوخرين مختصين آ ا ليهالصلة التي تستند إوتدريبهم والخبرات ذات وا عن مؤهلهم العلمي يفصح أنيجب على الممارسين ذلك، إلىباإلضافة سبوعا من التفاعل تضمنت أ أشهرستة مدته يحصل الممارس على شهادة لمؤهل الخدمات التي يقدمونها، على سبيل المثال: تراخيص في المنطقة التي بها من قبل سلطة منح ال هذه الشهادة غير معترف .ترنتناإل الدورة على يكمال باقلوجه، مع إ وجها مؤهالت يأ ليس لديه" مع أنه اإليجابي سمعتمد في علم النف ممارس"ه أنلهذا الممارس ب اإللكترونيويذكر الموقع يعمل بها، األكاديميك مطبيعة ونطاق وحدود تعليببوضوح ه من المهم ابالغ العمالءنإخالقي؟ . هل هذا أةمهنيالممارسة لل أخرى التي ترتبط بمسماك الوظيفي. والمهني، والمؤهالت ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 21 ير أهمية السياق الثقافيتقد هذه القرارات تعكس أنيجب فقط. بل اإلدراك المعرفي أوالمعرفة، أوعتمد صنع القرارات األخالقية على الوعي، ي الأيجب م التدخالت في تقدي اا حساسً موضوعً الثقافي السياق . يعد لسياق الثقافيتبطة بظروف اروالم األدلة المتاحةفضل أبضاً الوعي اي لدى مرغوبةالشكل من خالل القيم تيوقابل للتكيف أو، مفهوم الفرد لما هو طبيعي، جيد نأل ؛اإليجابي العالجية في علم النفس المعضلة األخالقية نفسها. أو تظهر فيه المشكلةالسياق االجتماعي الذي من ه وتمن ثقاف الفرد والتي يستمدها حتى المبالغة فيها. أوالتعبير عنها أوعض المشاعر ب إدراكالجتماعية في كيفية ذلك، تختلف الثقافات واألعراف ا إلىباإلضافة تعد .من مثل هذه األدلة اإليجابيلممارسة التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس الممارسات األخالقية تنطلق أنه من المهم نإف لكلذ كفي كنها في نفس الوقت بالغة الدقة بما يالسياق الثقافي، ل الستيعاباألخالقية المطروحة هنا عامة بما يكفي اإلرشادات بسهولة ةتكون متاح أن، بما في ذلك العوامل الثقافية والفردية، يمكن بين األدلة هذا التكامل. الستيعاب االحتياجات الفردية ، خالقيالناتج األ أوالعملية األخالقية، أو، عنه المثالية في المسار األخالقينتج ي هذا التكامل قد ال أنعلى الرغم من و ،ويسر تم فتح . ا عند مواجهتهاايفي التعرف على هذه القض الحكمة الجماعية تساعدهم نإفراد للتميز األخالقي فعندما يسعى األلكن اإلرشاداتمن البنيةهذه وجود نإ ، فلهذا ة المطاف،اييق التميز في نه، ويمكن تحقآفاق جديدة، وتمهيد مسارات جديدة في تقييم مدى التزامأيضا األخالقية تفيد اإلرشاداتهذه .وتصرفاتهتفكير الفرد ليهايستند إل ؛مر بالغ في األهمية، أقيةاألخال األخالقي. بعده عن التميز أوالفرد وقربه ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 22 خطوة بخطوة دليلك -حل المعضالت األخالقية اط بتي تم استنالخطوات التالية ال نإالمعضالت األخالقية، ف يف من التورط اإلنسان محصنًايكون أن م من استحالةعلى الرغ -ethics in psychology (koocher & keithخالقيات علم النفس أ منها من العديد من المصادر ومنها كتاب كثيرال spiegel, 1998)، :ستساعد الممارس على اتخاذ قرارات أخالقية سليمة المنصوص عليها من قبل واالرشادات المهنية واإلدارة ير الممارسةاييعات واللوائح ومعلجميع التشر الممارسة وفقا • مارس على التعرف مثل هذه المعلومات ستساعد الم. التي يمارس فيهاالقضائية منح التراخيص في المنطقة وكالة المعضالت األخالقية. على يكون محل ثقة وغير ااستشر شخص. عندما يحدث من شخص آلخر ايكون مختلف أنيمكن لنفس الحدث ه أناستيعاب • إذا تناقش مع زمالئك لتحدد. ذات عواقب وخيمة أخالقيةالموضوع المطروح يشكل معضلة ناك إذا، حول ما متحيز على النفس ارً يشكل ضر موضوعه أن أومجرد تقصير في اآلداب المهنية، أو، عبارة عن مخالفة أخالقية االمر ناك خرين.اآل أو إذاتطلب المشورة أنو بشكل دقيقك تفهمهم أنتأكد من ، وذات الصلةالمنشورة يرايوالمع ينناوالقو اإلرشادات راجع • ، مع وجود مجال واسع للتفسير الذاتي.واضحةا مختصرة وغير ناأحي تكون المكتوبة اإلرشاداتتكون .لزم االمر قم بتوثيق وحدد الثغرات الموجودة في المعلومات، . وأفضلهاالمعلومات المرتبطة بالموضوع قدر من أكبراجمع • . قلقكالحقائق والنقاط التي تثير أوجه إلىخشى اإلشارة ي ، وال، ذو عقلية منفتحةر، واستشر شخصا مطلعاجميع المعلومات في عملية التفكي وظف • التقصير المحتملة لدى الممارس. ة المسؤولة، احترام حقوق الناس اي، الرعاإلضرارعدم /تحقيق المنفعةالستة )قيم كيف تنطبق هذه المبادئ األخالقية • جميع الحقوق، والمسؤوليات، ونقاط ضعف (. على سبيل المثال، قيماالستقالليةوالجدارة بالثقة، العدل، وكرامتهم، المعنيين. . بأكبر قدر من الموضوعيةوتقييم كل منها متعددةحلول إليجاداستخدام العصف الذهني • إلىهل يمكنك اللجوء .سلمدتك في اتخاذ القرار األخالقي األالتي يمكنها مساع ر نقاط القوةضع في عين االعتبا • اللطف؟ قد تكون شجاعتك مطلوبة لتحفيزك على "فعل الصواب "؟ تذكر أو، األمانة أو، اإلنصافبك العميق احساس معا على النحو األمثل، وليس استخدام نقطة عددة للقوة في الشخصيةالقرارات األخالقية تتطلب استخدام نقاط مت أن ,niemiec)"االستخدام الكثير" لنقطة قوة واحدة أوقوة واحدة للقوة في الشخصية في معزل عن باقي نقاط ال 2018). عدم اتخاذه. أوقرار األخالقي ال اهذتخيل نتيجة قيامك باتخاذ • آثار من ، وما قد يكون لهفي تأثير هذا القرار عليك وعلى جميع المعنيين بهذا الموضوع فكر ملياقبل اتخاذ هذا القرار • زام بقرارك.تفي اشكال الدعم التي قد تحتاجها لالل ضايأ. فكر تبعات في النظام أو منهجية ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 23 أن اإلجراءاتلعديد من ، يمكن لبشكل حقيقي إجراءات ملموسة تعكس جوهر قراراتك إلىترجم القرارات األخالقية • وبحيث تكون قابلة للقياس، ،التي تعبر عن قرارك بدقة وبشكل صحيح اإلجراءاتقم باختيار عبر عن قرارك.ت الذين ليست لهم صلة مباشرة بالموضوع. ألولئكزعاج ممكن إ أوضرر بأقلالمرجوة، وتتسبب النتائجومرتبطة ب ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 24 دليل التقييم الذاتي .الممارسات أفضلما سيساعدهم في تجنب المعضالت األخالقية لدعم ن مالممارسو أسالة ليفكر فيهاالقسم التالي يعرض ذا إ احة، قرراألدلة العلمية المت أفضلشيء، بناء على يأة وقبل اي: في البداإليجابيالتدخل العالجي المناسب في علم النفس الشخصية، في ة، استخدام نقاط قوة معينناصحيفة االمتن :)على سبيل المثال اإليجابيفي علم النفس امعين اعالجي تدخال ناك ج. الللع ه، ودافعه ظروف، ته المطروحةكلمشل للعميل، نظرا ان التسامح( مناسبً مريت التدخل العالجي في علم ماهي الخطوات التي ستتبعها لتقرر متى ستستعمل: اإليجابيتوقيت التدخل العالجي في علم النفس يأتحت ( ستنتظر وتقرر بعد فترة من بدأ تقديم الخدمة؟ 2أوة تقديم الخدمة؟ اي( هل ستتخذ هذا القرار في بد1؟ اإليجابيالنفس ؟ة العالج هذه مع طريقة عالج أخرىدمج طريق أولعالج طريقة ا روف قد تفكر في تبديلظ من المرور محصن كأنعني ي ال مستوى صحتك النفسية؟ كونك ممارسادراكك لمدى إ ما الوعي بصحة الفرد النفسية: لتي تتخذها بشكل روتينيا اإلجراءات أوماهي الخطوات .المرضي حدال إلىية والتي قد تتطور ساالضطرابات النف بأعراض ل ثتك لنفسك، مايتتمكن من خدمة عمالئك على النحو األمثل؟ ماهي العوائق التي تواجهها عند رع ة صحتك النفسية حتىايعلر المختصين المناسبين في المجال القدرة على التواصل مع أورام، ي امعلى كأناالعتقاد أوضيق الوقت والموارد، الشعور ة صحتك النفسية. ايوالذين يمكنهم رع ، اإليجابييستجيب بشكل جيد للتدخالت العالجية في علم النفس جراء ضد عميلإلة اتخاذ مدى تقبلك لمسأ ما التبليغ االلزامي: وضع الزال أو الحاضر( أوحصلت في الماضي )يخبرك من دون قصد عن حادثة أنطلب منك االلتزام بالسرية بعد لكنه ي لم تكن تمارس نشاطك إذاتهديد وشيك لسالمة شخص ما؟ أواعتداء جنسي، أوشخص مسن، أوطفل إلىإساءة ويشمل ،قائما باإلبالغ؟!وني ناق متطلب أينية، فهل عليك إرشادات أخالقية تابعة لهيئة مه أولقواعد وفقاً ويدعوك ،اإليجابيلتدخالت العالجية في علم النفس ل ويبدو لك متحمسا ،المؤتمرات أحدتقابل شخص في المبالغة والتعميم: التي تعرفها جيداً. يتم عرض نتائج تي بنيت على عدد قليل من الدراساتال تحضر ورشة العمل. لحضور ورشة يقوم بتقديمها )نقطة تحول في يعتبر العرض أن جد معظم المشاركين في الورشةيو هذه الدراسات بطريقة مبالغ فيها، وتعميمات وتطبيقات ماذا كنت لتفعل؟ هل يمكنك استخدام النقاط السابق ذكرها في قسم " حل المعضالت ،م صدقوا النتائجهأن لك المجال( ويبدو األخالقية" لتوجيه سلوكك في مثل هذه الحالة؟! ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 25 الممارسات األخالقية القسم الثالث: أمثلة على حاالت اإلرشاداتمثلة قد تظهر في الممارسة ولها مكون أخالقي وثيق الصلة بالمبادئ الموضحة في هذه الحاالت التالية هي أ 6التوجيهية. مع الحساسية الثقافية اإليجابيتطبيق التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس -الثقافة: 1 حالةالمثال في االعتبار الحالة التالية: ضع .احة في سياق الظروف الثقافيةتاألدلة العلمية الم أفضلتعكس القرارات األخالقية أنيجب تعلى تطوير الذاأن تعمل العميلة تريد سيوية، آتعمل مع عميلة ذات أصول ثقافية شرق أستراليةممارسة ناسوز best possible self“ "ممكنهفضل ذات أرين مت"استخدام ن. تختار سوزاعائليةالعالقاتها ىوالحفاظ عل exercise” ، ة أحرزت العميل أنالرغم من لتوجيه العميلة خالل التمرين. علىات وجميع الخط ناتتبع سوزو في تحسن يأظهر يعالقتها بعائلتها تدهورت. بالتالي، لم أنصرحت ب أنهاال إ، طوير الذاتجازات كبيرة في تنإ يس التي أخذتها العميلة.ايج المقائعند الرجوع لنت عافية العميلة . تتبع ألخرىه يختلف من ثقافة أنحيث ،خذ مفهوم الذات في عين االعتبارهذه الحالة هو أالتي تضمنتها همة من األمور الم ، واتخاذ يتمحور حول التطوير الذاتيا بالثقافة الغربية، والذي البً غ مرتبطةطوير الذاتي من وجهة نظر مفهوم الت ناسوز الغربية( رغيغلب الثقافات أ )وفي الثقافات الشرقية يتطوير الذاتال أن عتقدي في المقابل، حد كبير. إلىمبادرات جديدة وفردية تحسين التفاعل االجتماعي، والمساهمة في المحافظة على تقاليد العائلة، العالقات،على االستثمار في تركيزا أكبر يضع ه التزال هناك اختالفات ثقافية أنال د في معظم المدن الحضرية، إايوالقبيلة. على الرغم من التنوع الثقافي المتز والجماعة ستفيد من فهم كيف يمكنها استخدام نقاط ت أنة يمكن العميل في هذه الحال أنلهذه االختالفات هي المهمةاالثار أحد .جوهريةو استخدام جي بالعالاستعمال التدخل نا. تستطيع سوزأعمقللتواصل معهم بشكل أولعائلتها شخصيتها لتحقيق الفائدةالقوة في لنقاط القوة في الشخصية نا" االمتن أواط القوة بطرق جديدة في العالقات" استعمال نق" التالية:نقاط القوة في الشخصية ,turn your strengths other-oriented or character strengths appreciation” (niemiec“ وتقديرها ةقيطرلوياتها أومن جعل توآليات لبناء العالقات التي تفيد اآلخر إلىصفاتها الداخلية أفضلحيث تتعلم عميلتها تحويل (2018 شخاص أاتي المدعوم من قبل التطوير الذ أن ضايأمر يكون األ أنفراد االسرة لما فيهم من صفات حسنة. يمكن أ تقديرإلدراك و التطوير نإومع ذلك، ففي الثقافات المترابطة، فزيادة عميقة ومستمرة في العافية. يجلب أنيمكنه اإلنسانفي حياة مهمين طول. وعلى أتعقيدا على فترة زمنية أكثريتطلب إدارة تفاعالت لةمقربين من العائ بأفراد يرتبط أنتمل الذاتي، الذي من المح رة اتخاذ مباد أوشطة المتعلقة بالذات، والتي تركز على تطوير نقاط القوة في الفرد ناألنوع من أفضل نإكس من ذلك، فالع ،روتش أناليز 2الحالة طيب رشيد، 3و 1حن ممتنون لألشخاص التالي ذكرهم والذين قدموا أمثلة الحاالت: الحالة ن 6 .كوينالن دينيس 6الحالة ، اياسيلو ماثيو 5الحالة ، دسوندونال ستيوارت 4الحالة ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 26 فضل أعتبار في عين اال اإليجابيم النفس لع وسيأخذ ممار أن. لهذا، فمن الضروري اقصر نسبيً جديدة، قد تتطلب فترة زمنية أ .امناسبة ثقافيً الطرق لجعل تمارينهم مثلة مرتبطة بالحالة السابقة: أب األخالقية التالية هي ناالجو ي عين االعتبار خصائص فتأخذ ةقية العميل بطرايمحاولة رع اإليجابيس علم النفس ريحتاج مما -المسؤولةة ايالرع • ه.تحالة العميل وخلفي . اإلضرارواجب عدم اإليجابيعلى ممارس علم النفس -اإلضرارعدم /تحقيق المنفعة • جاه الديناميكيات المختلفة ت يكون حساسا أنمسؤولية اإليجابيممارس علم النفس على -حترام حقوق الناس وكرامتهما • بين الثقافات المختلفة، واحترام وجهة نظر العميل المحددة واحتياجاته. للعمالء في الظروف المتغيرة تيلحيااالتدريب -تيحياالتدريب ال :2مثال الحالة الية: حالة التفي عين االعتبار ال ضعالخدمة المقدمة. في وتتطلب تعدياًل ،تظهر المعضالت األخالقية بشكل غير متوقع أنيمكن ا كبيرً امً تولي اهتماأماندا ت ناك. نقص في التوجه والمعنى في الحياةت تشعر بانك نهاأل حياتيالللتدريب أمانداجاءت ى ذلك، لع وعالوة توازنا في الحياة، أكثرث عن نهج بحاجة للبح أنهاب ن، لكنها شعرت اآلفي السابق للتقدم الوظيفي التقدم الوظيفي(. خالل الجلسة األولية، خارج نطاقفي الحياة ) ازيدلم تحقق م نهات تشعر بالحزن والفراغ ألناك (،شراء منزل )لتتمكن منضمنت اإلدارة المالية عليها، والتي ت زحددت بعض المجاالت التي ترغب في التركي أنهاو تملؤها التحدياتوظيفتها الحالية أنالعميلة ذكرت االجتماعية.زيادة المتعة وقضاء األوقات و ،التطوير الذاتي ، ل جلستينأو. في تيالحيا تركز عليه حاليا في التدريب أنتريد تتطلع لتغييرها في المستقبل، لكن هذا لم يكن ما از تقدم في المجاالت رحإتم خطوة بخطوة،التي سيتم اتخاذها اإلجراءاتوتحديد هدافتم فيهما صياغة األ واللتان ة ايفي بد أماندامع ذلك، وضحت . ويسير بشكل جيد تيالحيا التدريب نا، وكبالنسبة لها مهمة أنهاالتي ذكرت العميلة ب خبر . لم يتم تقبلوجدت عمال آخرا أنهاتستقيل، بما أناضطرت ها في العمل قد تدهور فجأة فوضع أنالجلسة الرابعة إلى ب اذهال عند وأصبحت حساسة بشكل كبير تشعر بعدم االستقرار أماندات ناوك ،استقالتها بشكل جيد في العمل ت أشعرت به عندما ر ما أنب أمانداأسابيع بعد تقديم استقالتها. ذكرت ةألربعت ملزمة بالعمل ناك أنها، حيث عملها جعلها تسترجع ذكريات المواجهات العاطفية المماثلة من فترة مراهقتها. ردة فعل مديرها على استقالتها، مندفعة على قوة "تنظيم الذات" وعدم تقديم اقتراحات المحافظة المدرب الحياتيمن الضروري على نافي هذه المرحلة ك " لمعرفةاستعمال قوة " حب االستطالع إلىيلجأ أن تيلحيامدرب ال، يمكن ل. من هذا المنطلقأماندابسبب زيادة مثيرات قلق عليه خالل الجلسات. تم مناقشته والتركيز ي اتغيير ماحتمالية مع المستقبل القريب، وتقبل هاب تتعامل أن أمانداالكيفية التي تريد ة الحتياجات بآلية آمنه ومناس الحياتي تدريبال ناك إذاالشعورية لتحديد ما أماندافعل فهم طبيعة ردة ضايأ قد يكون من المهمو التغيرات في حالة العميل يجب أنال أماندا على عدد معين من الجلسات، إالمدرب قد اتفق مع أنالحالية. على الرغم من أماندا .اسب للمضي قدمً نالطريق األتوجهنا وتدلنا على أن ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 27 بالحالة السابقة: مثلة مرتبطة الجوانب األخالقية التالية هي أ ومعرفة أمانداة مصلحة ايلحم اإلنصافية الستعمال اللطف وسسامسؤولية أ الحياتي مدربالعلى -ة المسؤولةايالرع • دود خبراته. ح لذاتي من خالل الخدمات على التوجيه ا أماندايركز على تطوير قدرة أنهنا يمكن للمدرب الحياتي -ستقالليةاال • لي(واتفاقهم األ أو) بين الممارس والعميل ومراجعة شروط العقد /، وإعادة النظرحياتها جوانبفي جميع المقدمة و طول فترة العالقة. أنلى التقييم المتخصص، يجب إ ويستند أمانداالذي يعمل في مصلحة تيالحيا مدربال -اإلضرارتحقيق المنفعة/ عدم • يقدم الخدمات على أساس التدريب المناسب والخبرة. أنحدود مؤهالته، و تجاوز عملهي الألى به بصرامة إنتي العمل مع الصدمات النفسية -كلينيكيإ: 3مثال حالة على يعملون كانواذا إ، خاصة قافاتهمث باختالفعديدة ثقافية حملون أعباءصدمات النفسية يالغلب األشخاص الذين يمرون بأ و التصرف بطرق قد تكون مرتبطة أقد يطورون آليات واسعة النطاق لتجنب التفكير، و ،اإليجابيتدحل عالجي في علم النفس في حصلت )سواءمة دتلك الصه من المهم تقييم نإف اإليجابيعند تقديم التدخالت العالجية في علم النفس بصدماتهم النفسية. ت لديهناذا كإ فقط يجب على الممارس التدخلوه، أنالتقليل من ش جزء منها أو يأعن التغاضي من غيرو الحاضر(. أالماضي يحتاج كما أن الممارس ،مختص في هذا المجال في الوقت المناسبى لإفيجب تحويل العميل إذا لم يكن،خبرة في هذا المجال، و هذا، .اإليجابيصدمات نفسية خالل فترة تطبيق التدخل العالجي في علم النفس ةيأفي حال ظهور ايكون منتبهً أن إلى اضً يأ يت المناسب لمواصلة يتشاور مع زمالئه والخبراء في هذا المجال للتأكد من التوقن يناقش الممارس مع العميل وأويجب الحالة التالية: في مثل هذه الحالة. خذ في عين االعتبار اإليجابي جية في علم النفسالالتدخالت الع تبحث عن ، وللعنف الجسدي، والعاطفي، والجنسيعاماً، لديها تاريخ طويل من التعرض 21ر مسلمى، تبلغ من الع يسألها المعالج بشكل صريح عن الصدمات التي أنلديها توقع بو باالكتئاب،المستمر شعورها على للتغلبمساعدة صدمات قد تكون ةيألة عن سئأ حتوي علىي قصير ال استبيانمن ذلك، تم إعطائها الً بدتعرضت لها في حياتها. لكن الأالنفسي وتختار مرشدتتقبل ال ، تجد سلمى نفسها الالنفسي رشادفي جلسات اإل .و الحاضرالسابق أ تعرضت لها في دورة جديدة ويوصف لها ،شكل سطحيب عالً اتفاصيل الصدمة التي تعرضت لها. وبالتالي، يبقى العالج فه برحاتص .أشهرستة ةمدلفسي نمن العالج ال ك يتطلب حساسية عالية القيام بذل أنإال ) السؤال عن الصدمات بشكل صريح أمر مهم نإسابقة، فكما هو موضح في الحالة ال بعض العمالء سيطرحون أسئلة مرتبطة نإ، فبين الممارس والعميل العالقة حسب على(. وضايأ كلينيكياإ تدريبا وربما تفاصيل صدمة ثقافية مناسبة. عندما تظهر أو موارد ،لتأقلمت، استراتيجيات اقتراحااال موضوع بصراحة، ويطلبون النصح،بال يقة تلبي يستجيب الممارس بطر أنه من المهم نإف اإليجابيو قديمة خالل العمل على تدخل عالجي في علم النفس ة أحديث . ففي التعامل مع هذا الموقلديه خبره كافية ، وا، ومدربً يكون الممارس مؤهاًل أن، يجب العميل. أوال وقبل كل شيءاحتياجات ناذا كإ ممابشكل دوري ن خالل المراجعةباستمرار م والحذر نقاط قوتهم من التواضع والحيطة يجب على الممارسين استعمال ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 28 كبر في لديه خبره أ آخر بعمله مع شخص أكثريد العميل سيستف ناك إذاو على العكس، أيستمروا في تقديم الخدمات، أنيجب .أو يطلبها بعض العمالء هذا المجال بالتحديد ويستطيع تقديم المقترحات، والمهارات، واالستراتيجيات التي يحتاجها لة السابقة: امثلة مرتبطة بالحأهي التالية ب األخالقيةناالجو سلمى بطريقة تراعي تفاصيل ظروفها ة ايمسؤولية رع اإليجابيعلى ممارس علم النفس -ة المسؤولةايالرع • وخلفيتها. مزيد من األذى لسلمى، مسؤولية عدم التسبب في اإليجابيعلى ممارس علم النفس -اإلضرارعدم /تحقيق المنفعة • وتعزيز عافيتها. بشكل مضلل البياناتالضغط لعرض -منظمات : ال4مثال الحالة يمكن أن تظهر المعضالت .اعليتهافالمقدمة من المنظمات يتم تقييمه لمعرفة العالجيةوالتدخالت اإليجابيكثير من العمل و تحريفها. أالتقييم بياناتعلى الممارس لحذف قومون بالضغطوي ،تقبل العمالء النتائجي غير متوقع عندما البشكل األخالقية يجب، بما في النقص في استخدام بعض نقاط القوة في الشخصية أقل مما الية بعين االعتبار والحظ كيف يظهرضع الحالة الت ظر، الحكمة، القيادة، والتواضع. ن، وجهة الالنزاهة، األمانةذلك بالتشاور هم، وقد قرر الممارسدائوأ لتحسين معنويات الموظفين اإليجابيممارس في علم النفس xyzعينت شركة .(، الصمود، والتفاؤلعليةامل، الف)األساسيات الصحة النفسية أتحسين تقديم برنامج تدريبي ل مع رؤساء الشركة في علم النفس أكثربدوا رغبتهم في الحصول على تدريبات أدريب وتلحبوا اأالموظفين أنظهرت نتائج التقييم أ التقييم عدم وجود فروق ذات داللة إحصائية في مستويات بياناتذلك، أظهرت نمعلى الرغم .في المستقبل اإليجابي للمشاركة اين الذين تم اختيارهم عشوائيً و األداء بين الموظفأ المعنوياتو أو التفاؤل، أ و الصمود، أ ،ليةعمل، أو الفااأل قد موظفيهم نألة ايسعداء للغ xyzاء شركة رؤسكان المقارنة. اركين في المجموعةفي التدريبات، وبين المش أنبدالً من ذلك، طلبوا من الممارس و ،مشجعةالغير يروا نتائج التقييم أنهم لم يريدوهم أناستمتعوا بالتدريب لدرجة للموظفين في المستقبل. المشابهةالمزيد من التدريبات ه سيتم تقديم أن، واا جدً ناجحً نالتدريب كا أنتقرير اليكتب في مثلة ترتبط بالحالة السابقة: أالية هي األخالقية الت الجوانب .لتصرففي ااستقاللية العميل هنا سلب الممارس ي -االستقاللية • الذي الخداع ، وهذا المستوى منتعزيز عافية العميلب التزاما يتضمن تحقيق المنفعة -اإلضرارعدم /المنفعةتحقيق • توفير الخدمات بناًء ذلك، يتطلب تحقيق المنفعة إلى باإلضافة .نيدعوا له رؤساء الشركة ليس في مصلحة الموظفي . لكافيعلى الخبرة والتدريب ا ، اإليجابيجي في علم النفس اللية التدخل العاععميم فيما يخص فيطلب من الممارس هنا المبالغة والت -الجدارة بالثقة • ن في الممارس.حترم الثقة التي وضعها الموظفوي ا الفعل الوالقيام بهذ ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 29 متوازنة" في عالقة غير رغبةتشجيع المشاركين "الذين ليس لديهم -التوجيه : 5مثال الحالة االستفادة منه هم أكثر الناس الذين يمكنهم اإليجابيللتدخالت العالجية في علم النفس كون األشخاص األكثر مقاومةي ام اغالبً ،بالمشاركة في تدخل عالجي لمصلحتهعندما يحاولون تشجيع العميل او إقناعه موقفا صعبا اإليجابي علم النفسيواجه ممارسو . ضع في عين االعتبار الحالة التالية: التالعب بهدون ىحدإفي عميل يرفض المشاركة في تمارين التدخل العالجي ة الشباب، لديها ايلرع في وكالةآبي، باحث حالة من آبي المعالج الذي يقوم بتطبيق التدخل العالجيطلب . اإليجابيعلم النفس مجموعات العالج النفسي الجماعي في عالجي هذا التدخل ال أنالتدخل. تتفق آبي مع زميلها ب هذا قناعه بفوائدإعميلها للمشاركة في التمارين، وتشجع أن من التدخالت العالجية التي هتسبب في استبعادي ما موقف وسلوك عميلها غالبا أن لعميلها، وتدرك ون مفيدا جداكسي ت آبي عالقة أشأن. المشاركةمن هموقف في تناقش العميل أن ت، فقررلو شارك فيها تكون مفيدة لهسعلى األرجح الترويج للتدخل ثقة العميل من خالل وخيانةة بنزاهتها استعداد للمخاطرلديها ، وليسبالثقة مع العميل تتسم توجيهية فائدة هذا التدخل بوصف األدلة التي تدل علىلن تتحقق. بدالً من ذلك، تقوم وعودا او إعطائه ايً عميانللعميل العالجي على أساله باستعمال قوة حب االستطالع وطرح آبي وفوائد المشاركة. تقوم وتعمل مع عميلها لتقييم ثمنبدون مبالغة، signature" وكيف يمكن استعمال نقاط القوة المميزة ،جابيات وسلبيات المشاركة في التدخل العالجيايالعميل عن strengths "ويقومونالمشاركةميلها لتحديد آليات لتقليل ثمن وبعد ذلك تشجع آبي ع ،لدى عميلها في المجموعة ، يقوم أناستعمال نقاط القوة لدى عميلها قبل ب على التدرقل حدة من التدخل العالجي نفسه وبممارسة أشكال أ امعً . المجموعةبذلك في ى. وعلأخرى مرة ها من المشاركةليستبعد عمي أنتريد عميلها سيستفيد من المشاركة في التدخل العالجي، والأن آبي متأكد من تساعد أنو ،تتحدى عميلها أنآبي هذا وتريد . حقه في االستقالليةتتعدى على أن ويلها أتخون ثقة عم أنتريد حد سواء، فهي ال بعالقتهم يضر نتائج سلبية لعميلها، وأن إلى بالعميلخالقي غير األ يؤدي التالعب أنتجارب جديدة، لكنها تخشى في تعريضه ل العميل موقفالمشاركة، تعمل آبي على فهم فوائد لمبالغة فياو أمن الترويج الزائد بداًل كبير. بعد جهدالتي وصلوا لها الجيدة . اآلمنة بحث الحالة جلسةفي ،التمرينفوائد إلثبات، وخلق فرص تحدي التحيزات المعرفيةو، العالجيتجاه التدخل بالحالة السابقة: مثلة مرتبطة أالتالية هي ةخالقياأل الجوانب عدم استبعاد العمالء من التدخالت العالجية بسبب ة الحرص علىمسؤولي اإليجابيعلم النفس على ممارس -العدل • .معينة شخصيةخصائص وبين العميل لتشجيعه على تقييم مواقفهعالقة الثقة بينه اإليجابييستخدم ممارس علم النفس -الجدارة بالثقة • خون هذه الثقة.ي ومعتقداته، ولكونه ال التالعب به. فكرة ، ويتردد في العميلرغبة اإليجابييحترم ممارس علم النفس االستقاللية • الممارسات الحالية اتعرقله تطلعاتحيث ال تنفيذ برامج العافية -التعليم: 6حالة مثال ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 30 بمعالجة ااالهتمام بعافية الطالب، ومرورً من ابدءً سبابأذلك لعدة الرفاهية، وقد يكونس اعتماد برامج تريد العديد من المدار اعتبار ذلك، يمكن إلى. باإلضافة فعاًل ثبتت قوتهاأالتي تعزيز الممارسات إلى ة، ووصواًل ت مثل البلطجة في المدرس االتحدي بالنسبة لبعض المدارس. ضع في عين االعتبار الحالة التالية: وجود برامج عافية مدرسية بمثابة فرصة تسويقية ونقطة تميز ة رادجلس إمن قبل م افية وخطة لتبنيهاظفي المدرسة وضع استراتيجية للعمو أحدطلب مدير أحد المدراس من يخبر أولياء األمور الذين يفكرون في أنرسة دسريع للعناصر الرئيسية. أراد مدير الم وثم تنظيم عرض المدرسة، تم تكليف لعافية الصريح في المنهج الدراسي، وقدتعليم ا أطفالهم سيستفيدون من أندخال أبنائهم لهذه المدرسة بإ قليلة في هذا المجال. ةال على تدريبات مهنيلم يحصلوا إ مهأنم العافية، على الرغم من يبمسؤوليات تعل االمعلمين جميعً مثله ذلك من ي ام إلىهم غير مستعدين لهذا النوع من التدريس، باإلضافة أنعديد من موظفي المدرسة بالتوتر وبالشعر . نصف يوم امدته العافية للموظفينيم جلسة تطوير مهني عن بمستشار لتقد االستعانةتمت ف ضافي في عملهم،إعبء وليست لديهم ،جيدمعدين بشكل هم ليسوا نالضرر بطالبهم أل يلحقوا أنقلقهم من عن لمستشارل عبر بعض الموظفين عملها يقية والتي تروج لالمدرسة التسو إعالنات شاهد المستشار ذلك، إلىفي هذا المجال. باإلضافة ساسيات العمل أ تدعم العافية الشاملة للموظفين والطالب، وبناء العافية في كل أنهابوصف المدرسة تم )على سبيل المثال، في العافية تضعف العالقات بين المدرسة الزالت تستعمل سياسة التأديب العقابية التي أنعلى علم ب المستشار ، مع أن(تعامالتها د قام المعلم . وقعلى العافية والتسامحصالحية تالممارسة الهل األدلة العلمية لفوائد ، وتتجاالمدرسة موظفيالطالب و رة هذه األمورثاإمتردد في أنه المعلمكما بين . باطالع المستشار على هذه األمور يةلعافاالذي تم تكليفه بتنفيذ برنامج تم التشكيك في والئه ها،دعن .مواضيع مشابهه في السابق بإثارةعندما قام ه تم تهديدهأنحيث ؛دارة المدرسةمع إ .ه غير مناسبأنفي المدرسة بحجة للمدرسة وتم تهديد استمراره السابقة: بالحالةمثلة مرتبطة أاألخالقية التالية هي الجوانب أنهامسؤولية عدم المصادقة على مدرسة على اإليجابييتحمل ممارس علم النفس -اإلضرارعدم /تحقيق المنفعة • علم بممارسات المدرسة التي تضعف العافية. ىعل كانذا إللمدرسة أو انتقاد بع "منهج العافية" دون تشكيكمدرسة تت قيمه. ه أويأيتعارض مع ر وقفو مأ وجهة نظرعلى تبني شعر المعلم باإلكراهي الأ يجب االستقاللية • ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 31 لصلةذات ا ةاألخالقي اإلرشادات في واالستفادة منها كل مجال( بجدية فياألحروف التالية )مرتبة حسب المجال، وثم بحسب ال اإلرشاداتتم االعتماد على األخالقية: اإلرشاداتتطوير هذه علم النفس: (.2017األخالقية )القواعد ، (aps)جمعية علم النفس األسترالية -علم النفس -استراليا • (.2015(، القواعد األخالقية المؤقتة )pacfaاالرشاد والعالج النفسي ) اتحاد -االرشاد والعالج النفسي -استراليا • (. 2017النفس ) لعلماء(، القواعد األخالقية cpaجمعية علم النفس الكندية ) -علم النفس -كندا • الرابعة،، القواعد األخالقية لعلماء النفس )الطبعة (nzpsوزيلندية )جمعية علم النفس الني -علم النفس -نيوزيلندا • 2012.) (، اإلطار األخالقي bacpلإلرشاد والعالج النفسي ) البريطانيةالجمعية -اإلرشاد والعالج النفسي -المملكة المتحدة • (.2010للممارسة الجيدة في اإلرشاد والعالج النفسي ) دئ األخالقية لعلماء النفس (، المباapaجمعية علم النفس األمريكية ) -علم النفس -األمريكية ات المتحدة يالوال • conduct (2017.)الممارسة وقواعد ةاألخالقي (، القواعدacaاألمريكية ) النفسي جمعية اإلرشاد النفسي اإلرشاد –ات المتحدة األمريكية يالوال • (2014.) التمريض: (.2008مجلس التمريض والتوليد في أستراليا: القواعد األخالقية للتمريض ) -التمريض -أستراليا • (.2012( ، قواعد التمريض والتوليد )ncnzمجلس التمريض في نيوزيلندا ) -التمريض -نيوزيلندا • (.2015) توليدوال ضيمرتال ( ، قواعدnmc) التوليدمجلس التمريض و -التمريض -المملكة المتحدة • : الحياتي التدريب (.2015) خالقيةقواعد األ(: الكفاءات األساسية والicf) الحياتيين االتحاد الدولي للمدربين -الحياتي تدريب ال -دولي • ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 32 شكر وتقدير :اإلرشاداتساهم األشخاص التالية أسماؤهم أبجديًا بشكل كبير وقدموا مساهمات ومالحظات في صياغة هذه لبورن، أستراليا.يأستاذ مشارك آرون جاردن، جامعة م • درو ألكسندرا، جامعة ملبورن، أستراليا. أنالسيد • ، نيوزيلندا.ةلتكنولوجياد ناليس روتش، جامعة أوكالأن • كاتو، هاميلتون، نيوزيلندا.ايويجرس، جامعة و أنالدكتور د • ، نيوزيلندا.مرونةمعهد نيوزيلندا للرفاهية وال، نالدكتورة دينيس كوينال • جامعة ملبورن، أستراليا. ، فيال برودريك نااألستاذة دي • ات المتحدة األمريكية.يالوال اإليجابي،، العمل ناجيزيل تيمرم • .اإليجابي، الشبكة األوروبية لعلم النفس ن زيجرزايه • الدكتورة هيلينا أجيدا ماروجو، المعهد العالي للسياسة االجتماعية )كلية العلوم االجتماعية والسياسية( ، جامعة لشبونة • ، البرتغال. ات المتحدة األمريكية.ي، الواليانا، جامعة بنسلفاألستاذ جيمس باولسكي • ، ملبورن، أستراليا. ند رومايذا م، الدكتور جو ميتشل • ات المتحدة األمريكية.يالدكتور جويل ميالم، جامعة جنوب كاليفورنيا، الوال • ات المتحدة األمريكية.ينبرج ، الوالايالدكتورة جودي موسكوفيتز، كلية الطب بجامعة نورث وسترن ف • أستراليا.، سنترال دنكوينزال رينا بورك، جامعةأستاذ مشارك كا • ، كندا.لالستشارات lvs، سومأنليزا س • ، المكسيك.مارجريتا تاراغونا، بوزيتي فيمنتي • ، أستراليا.شامري، مركز الرفاهية والمرونة، اسيلوايماثيو • ، جامعة كيميونج، كوريا الجنوبية.لوناالدكتور محسن جوش • ، جامعة ملبورن، أستراليا.ريب ريبل • جلترا. نإفي شرق لندن، mappالدكتورة رونا هارت، المدير السابق لجامعة • للشخصية. via عهدنيميك، م ناايالدكتور ر • ات المتحدة األمريكية.يالوال ،asgmcسكوت أسالون، شركة • أستراليا. اإليجابي،ة مدارس التعليم جمعي، ايمون مورايس • ات المتحدة األمريكية.يكليرمونت للدراسات العليا، الوالالبروفيسور ستيوارت دونالدسون، جامعة • جلي، أستراليا.نجلي، مجموعة النسو ال • أستراليا. اإليجابية،د. سوزي جرين، معهد • ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 33 د. طيب رشيد، جامعة تورنتو سكاربورو، كندا. • جلترا. نإجامعة شرق لندن، ،الدكتور تيم لوماس • ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 34 اإليجابياألخالقية لممارسة علم النفس اإلرشاداتاألوليين على نوقعيالم تاريخ التوقيع اإلرشاداتلى ع ألول مرة النسخة التي تم توقيعها الشعار اسم وموقع الجمعية أو الهيئة للشخصية via عهدم • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • /http://www.viacharacter.org/www اإليجابي، جامعة ميلبورن النفس علم مركز • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp اإليجابي، جامعة شرق لندن النفس علم مركز • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscap plied-positive-psychology-andcoachingpsychology سنترال ندجامعة كوينزال، اإليجابي النفس علم مركز • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyarea s/psychology,-social-workandcommunityservices/postgraduate/mast er-of-appliedpositive-psychology للتقييم، جامعة كليرمونت للدراسات كليرمونت مركز • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 العليا بالواليات المتحدة األمريكية • /https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluat ion-center/ أديليد، أسترالياالمرونة، مركز العافية و • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • / https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com النجلي مجموعة • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • / https://langleygroup.com.au المعهد النيوزلندي للعافية والمرونة • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • www.nziwr.co.nz ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 35 علم 1 قسم ، األوسط الشرق في النفس علم جمعية • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 اإليجابي النفس هيومنشيب • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • www.humanshiplb.org كونغرس علم النفس اإليراني • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 الجمعية اليابانية لعلم نفس الصحة اإليجابية • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • / http://jphp.jp الجمعية النيوزلندية لعم النفس اإليجابي • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 /https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz اإليجابية العاطفية التربية مركز • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 الهند طنية لعم النفس اإليجابي في الجمعية الو • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 (nppa) • / http://nppassociation.org الجمعية األلمانية لعلم النفس اإليجابي • 1.0 2019يوليو 19 • /https://www.dach-pp.eu ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & al-ahmadi 36 المؤلفون آرون جاردن ، أسترالياجامعة ميلبورن aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au طيب رشيد جامعة تورنتو سكاربرو، كندا أناليز روتش جامعة أوكالند التكنولوجية، نيوزالندا تيم لوماس جامعة شرق لندن، المملكة المتحدة عائشة األحمدي جامعة قطر، دولة قطر aisha.alahmadi@qu.edu.qa تم النشر في 2019يوليو 19 المراجع barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. 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(2022). more than a feeling: perceptions of wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners. international journal of wellbeing, 12(2), 88-113. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i2.2027 daniela ramirez-duran the university of melbourne daniela.ramirezduran@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 article more than a feeling: perceptions of wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners daniela ramirez-duran · margaret l. kern · helen stokes abstract: as the understanding of subjective wellbeing within different populations continues to evolve, it is necessary to ensure the perspectives of people with diverse worldviews are included. this mixed methods study focuses specifically on 166 regular ashtanga yoga practitioners (ayps), exploring participants’ perceptions of subjective wellbeing. definitions were analysed using word count analysis and reflexive thematic analysis, which yielded four overarching themes about the nature of wellbeing. the multidimensional nature included emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual, social, and ethical elements. the holistic nature highlighted integration, balance, and stability across wellbeing dimensions. the non-dualistic nature represented wellbeing comprised of seemingly dichotomous concepts (e.g., agency/receptiveness). the dynamic nature included change and embodied moment-tomoment experiences. yoga may provide corporal and mental abilities resulting in the specific themes that emerged within participants’ responses. ayps’ conceptualisations of wellbeing provide an avenue to explore embodied wellbeing, with implications in ways of knowing about and cultivating wellbeing in a way that directly incorporates mind, body, and spir itual interconnections. keywords: ashtanga yoga; wellbeing; reflexive thematic analysis; holistic wellbeing; mindbody 1. introduction positive psychology as a discipline has advanced the conceptualisation, measurement, and cultivation of wellbeing (kern et al., 2020). over the past three decades, an array of theoretical frameworks and models have been proposed, conceptualising subjective wellbeing as a multidimensional construct, including emotional, cognitive, psychological, social, physical, and spiritual dimensions (chia et al., 2020; friedman & kern, 2014). although not necessarily an absolute truth, the various models, with related measures and interventions, have been incorporated into a range of programs, curricula, and other practical applications (cooke et al., 2016; kern et al., 2020). however, the conceptualisations and measures themselves bring several often unacknowledged biases and implications. for example, wellbeing within different populations depends on which conceptual framework is used (e.g., black & kern, 2020; hone et al., 2014; joshanloo, 2013); lay people’s definitions do not always match scholarly definitions of we llbeing (e.g., hone et al., 2015); and different populations perceive wellbeing in different ways (e.g., bharara et al., 2019; black & kern, 2020; huang et al., 2020). this points to the need for studies within specific populations, identifying what wellbeing means and how it is experienced by about:blank wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 different groups of people within their natural contexts, as well as reflecting on the implications of choosing particular models and measurements that may or may not align with these conceptualisations. the use of alternative research designs and methods to study wellbeing within groups holding alternate worldviews provides opportunities to incorporate more inclusive definitions of optimal functioning into wellbeing research and practice (kern et al., 2020). in this article, we focus on the perceptions of one specific population: regular ashtanga yoga practitioners (ayps). we first consider some of the existing models and frameworks of wellbeing, stressing limitations of existing approaches commonly used within positive psychology and the value of incorporating alternative approaches to broaden and deepen our understanding of wellbeing as a construct. second, we briefly review yoga as a practice and a worldview, arguing for its potential to provide relevant insights into conceptualisations of wellbeing. while there are many forms of yoga, we focus specifically on ashtanga yoga (ay), which is a systematic method that encourages a regular practice and can potentially influence practitioners’ views and experiences of wellbeing. third, drawing upon qualitative data from 166 regular ay practitioners, we analyse practitioners’ perceptions of wellbeing. finally, we discuss implications, limitations, and potential future directions for research and practice. 1.1 expanding conceptualisations of wellbeing with some exceptions (e.g., wong, 2013), scholars and practitioners within the positive psychology arena have been driven by several often-unacknowledged epistemological assumptions, including methods that are reductionistic in nature, viewing human nature from a deterministic lens, with a tendency toward making universal claims, and a bias toward quantitative data (kern et al., 2020; waterman 2013). nomothetic approaches have been widely used in the social sciences to explore and examine common characteristics, experiences, and phenomena across people, with the aim of identifying commonalities in human existence (lomas et al., 2020; nafstad, 2015). while this has enabled positive psychology to advance the study and betterment of happiness and optimal functioning, it offers limited opportunities to understand the particularities of wellbeing within specific groups, populations, and cultures (lomas, 2015). in contrast, ideographic approaches view people as unique individuals, valuing subjective experiences, diversity, and culture (nafstad, 2015; wong, 2013). they often align with qualitative methods, allowing the researcher to comprehend the individual as a whole and in interaction with their immediate and broader social, cultural, and environmental context (waterman, 2013). lomas et al. (2020) proposed that positive psychology is expanding and shifting its focus from an individualistic, agentic, and westernised view of human functioning and wellbeing, towards a more inclusive, diverse, and cross-cultural approach. this shift involves moving from positivist and post-positivist methodological approaches to other epistemologies, including constructivist and phenomenological perspectives. qualitative and mixed-methods research designs can contribute to deepening and broadening the understanding of subtleties and complexities of optimal human functioning (hefferon et al., 2017; kern et al., 2020; lomas et al., 2020), allowing researchers to draw on the strengths of each (creswell & plano clark, 2011). examining non-western worldviews at an epistemological level can aid in expanding the knowledge about how wellbeing is defined, measured, and cultivated in a manner that values diverse perspectives (kern et al., 2020; lomas et al., 2020). teramoto-pedrotti et al. (2012) pointed to the value of both cross-cultural (i.e., across nations) and multicultural (i.e., cultures co-existing within a nation) studies, with a need for greater consideration of the value placed on the work and perspectives of people from diverse, non-western backgrounds (see also lomas, 2015). this http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 means considering how lay people from different age groups, minorities within western societies, and people with different cultural and ethnical backgrounds define and experience wellbeing (bharara et al., 2019; black & kern, 2020; bourke & gelden, 2007; hone et al., 2015; huang et al., 2020; joshanloo, 2014). 1.2 yoga: an eastern practice in the western world one population that might offer unique perspectives and insights around wellbeing is regular yoga practitioners. yoga is an ancient eastern practice, estimated to have originated thousands of years ago in the hindu valley (de-michelis, 2005). considered a method that binds mind, body, and soul with the divine, yoga has been traditionally defined as the cessation of mental fluctuations, enabling a more harmonious and balanced lifestyle (iyengar, 2005). it has been argued that yoga can improve overall health by addressing physical, mental, and spiritual elements through the transformation of the self (bhavanani, 2016; riggins, 2013; salagame, 2011). research on yoga has exponentially grown over the past decades (jeter et al., 2015; gupta et al., 2018), with an increase in the number of practitioners in western countries (birdee et al., 2008; cramer et al., 2016). the practice of yoga is associated with a range of health benefits (büssing et al., 2012; hendricks et al., 2017), with therapeutic benefits for both physical and mental illness (e.g., cramer et al., 2013; cramer et al., 2015). a considerable body of research shows its benefits as an intervention, primarily focusing on its physical components such as postures and breath (e.g., field, 2017; riggins, 2013; singleton, 2010). however, fewer studies have considered the practices, experiences, and perspectives of regular practitioners (field, 2011; riley & park, 2015). philosophical frameworks and resulting methodologies used by contemporary scientific approaches, as well as focusing on yoga as a mainly physical practice, has limited the breadth and depth of yoga research, disregarding its original intention and relevance as a mental and spiritual practice (salagame, 2011). exploring yoga as a practice in and of itself, rather than as an intervention, offers opportunities to understand contributions to human functioning and wellbeing that the practice itself offers practitioners. from a traditional perspective, yoga entails universal moral observances that regulate one’s behaviour with others (yama), self-discipline and principles by which one lives (niyama), the practice of withdrawal and detachment from external objects (pratyahara) and a state of higher consciousness achieved when the person becomes one with the object of meditation (samadhi) (iyengar, 2005; jois, 2016). combined with physical postures (asana), breath techniques (pranayama), concentration (dharana), and meditation (dhyana) (büssing et al., 2012; riggins, 2013), these elements conform a philosophical framework known as the eight limbs of yoga or ashtanga yoga, described in the ancient text the yoga sutras of patanjali (iyengar, 2005). the knowledge and application of these elements through a regular yoga practice may provide an internal frame of reference for practitioners to perceive, experience and function. 1.3 ashtanga yoga ay can be considered as a system equally comprising patanjali’s philosophical eight-fold framework and the practice known as ashtanga vinyasa yoga (jois, 2016; maehle, 2006). concretely, ay involves a vigorous physical practice characterised by a continuous and synchronous flow of breath and movement (vinyasa), which requires learning and following a series of postures according to each person’s needs and expertise, while both concentrating on a particular focal point (drishti) and steading the breath (jois, 2016; maehle, 2006; phillips, 2005). this definition includes several elements of the philosophical framework, such as the physical practice (asana), the breathing techniques (pranayama), and concentration (dharana). the use of a http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 focal point (drishti) and the use of the breath (pranayama) not only provide an object to place attention to concentrate (dharana), but offer the possibility of withdrawing from the senses (pratyahara) (jois, 2016; maehle, 2006). since the vinyasa practice is a continuous flow of shortlived postures, it may enable a meditative state (dhyana), allowing practitioners to engage in meditation on impermanence (maehle, 2006). within the practice, moral observances in relation to others and oneself (i.e., yamas and niyamas) should be practiced alongside and beyond the physical practice, by applying these behaviours and principles to everyday life (bhavanani, 2014; iyengar, 2005; jois, 2016). jois (2016) stressed the importance of understanding each element both on its own and in relation to the others. for example, yama, niyama, asana, and pranayama are considered external elements that should be cultivated before developing the others, as their practice would enable the development of the other four internal elements (jois, 2018; 2016). ivtzan and papantoniou (2014) contended that elements such as self-discipline, self-awareness, and flow have been studied within wellbeing research, mirroring aspects from yamas, niyamas, dharana, and pratyahara. thus, ay implies conceptualising yoga as an integrative and multi-faceted practice that targets different aspects of wellbeing. ay is taught in a personalised and progressive manner, for the practitioner to build a selfpractice at their own pace, gently building strength, steadiness and health (jois, 2018). ay is characterised by a one-on-one approach within the context of a group class as taught in mysore, india (ie., mysore style class), where each practitioner is practising their own set sequence in their own time. as illustrated in figure 1, the practice starts with sun salutations a and b (ie., surya namaskar) and continues with a set of standing postures, to then continue with primary series and closing postures. intermediate and then advanced series follow primary series, with each being learnt once the practitioner has completed the previous series (swenson, 2007). each asana is practised with a specific gazing point (drishti) and long free breathing with sound (keen, 2021). the practice of asana, drishti and breathing simultaneously is known as trishtana, meaning three standing places, and is characteristic of the ay method. another distinctive element is vinyasa. each asana has multiple movements, and each movement corresponds with either an inhalation or an exhalation. this synchronisation is called vinyasa, and each asana comprises a set number of vinyasas. for example, surya namaskar a has nine vinyasas (jois, 2016). vinyasas are traditionally counted in sanskrit by the teacher, either while teaching each movement and breath for a new asana, or when teaching a led class (maehle, 2006). sanskrit-led classes, mysore style classes, and self-practice typically include chanting of an opening and closing mantra (jois, 2016; jois, 2018). another element that is applied during ay practice is bandhas, usually translated as bonding and understood as energy locks, which consist of a combination of muscle engagement and internal bodily awareness (maehle, 2006). finally, within the ay system, resting is encouraged once a week, during full and new moon days, and during menstruation for women. practitioners are encouraged to practice between four and six days a week to experience the benefits from the method (maehle, 2006). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 figure 1 ay primary series chart. reprinted from ashtanga yoga leeds, by joey miles. retrieved march 11, 2022 from https://www.ashtangayogaleeds.com/downloads/ashtanga -primary-series-charta4/. reprinted with permission. 1.4 the current study for the current study, the uniform structure of ay provides consistency of the practice and the teaching methods. a limited number of studies have focused specifically on ay. quantitative studies have examined the effectiveness of the practice regarding physical health outcomes, suggesting it can contribute to cardiorespiratory fitness (cowen & adams, 2007), weight control (benavides & caballero, 2009), strength (gruber, 2008; kim et al., 2012; mazor et al., 2018), muscular endurance, flexibility, and cardiovascular health (gruber, 2008). a few dissertations have studied the effects of ay on established practitioners, focusing on the transformative effects that people experience through their yoga practice, using a qualitative approach in very small sample sizes (acebedo, 2013; jones, 2019; lachiusa, 2016; werner, 2017). although some studies have aimed at assessing psychological wellbeing, the measurements used reflect a predominantly deficit standpoint, since they mainly evaluated the impact of yoga on depression and anxiety symptoms (e.g., benavides & caballero, 2009; jarry et al., 2017). no studies have been found on wellbeing using an ideographic approach on a large cross-cultural sample of ayps. this study aimed to explore the perceptions of regular ayps in relation to their wellbeing and to determine in which ways ayps’ perceptions of wellbeing support or differ from existing models of wellbeing. for the purposes of the study, we focus on subjective individual perceptions of wellbeing. consistent with ideographic approaches and constructivist and phenomenological epistemologies, the wellbeing construct was not defined beforehand. rather, we sought to understand wellbeing based upon participants’ perspectives and lived experiences. we aligned with a mixed methods paradigm (see onwuegbuzie et al., 2009) in terms of our philosophical http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.ashtangayogaleeds.com/downloads/ashtanga-primary-series-chart-a4/ https://www.ashtangayogaleeds.com/downloads/ashtanga-primary-series-chart-a4/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 assumptions and data analytic process, with a greater focus on qualitative elements. specifically, we were guided by a social constructionist paradigm, with both quantitative and qualitative components in the data collection and analysis stages. 2. method 2.1 participants the present study used a subset of respondents from a larger study focused on ay and wellbeing, which included 352 participants from 42 countries, fluent in english and/or spanish. participants were recruited online, including invitations on facebook and instagram, postings on social media communities related to ay and/or wellbeing, and emailing information about the study directly to yoga studios and teachers, asking them to share the survey with others. the sample represents a convenience sample of willing volunteers who may not generalise across ayps, but provides unique and important perspectives in and of themselves. here we focus on 166 respondents who regarded themselves as regular ayps and completed the free-response question to define wellbeing. both included and excluded participants included a range of demographic characteristics (see supplement 1) and a variety of characteristics of their ay practice (see supplement 2). all procedures were approved by the university of melbourne’s human research ethics committee (protocol #1955377.1). 2.2 measures participants completed an online survey either in english or spanish between april and august 2020. the survey included a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions measuring aspects of their yoga practice, wellbeing, personal traits, health, and demographic information. drawing upon the collected dataset, the current study includes the questions that addressed respondents’ ay practice, engagement with yoga philosophy (see supplement 3) and demographic information, along with one question that explored their perception of wellbeing (see supplement 4). participants completed a series of closed-ended questions on their ay practice and ay philosophy. most participants were practising regularly for 1 to 10 years (68.67%) following mysore style (43.37%) or self-practice (26.51%), and practising between 5 to 6 days a week (59.04%) for 1 to 2 hours (81.33%) per session. the majority were practising primary (46.39%) or intermediate (45.18%) series, and mainly included vinyasa (96.99%) and drishti (95.78%) in their practice. most considered yoga philosophy relevant (64.46%) and commonly engaging with readings (83.13%) at least once per week (60.84%) (see supplements 1-3 for details). 2.3 data analyses participants’ responses were recorded using qualtrics survey software (https://www.qualtrics.com/au/) and exported to nvivo (version 12) software for analysis. responses to open-ended questions exploring ayps’ perceptions of wellbeing were analysed using a sequential mixed-methods approach. we began with a quantitative description of the words that participants used in their definitions. this involved examining the frequency of words used to define wellbeing, creating a word cloud (see figure 2) and summary tables (see supplement 5) encapsulating responses. this quantitative component intended to provide an overview and general understanding of the data (eichstaedt et al., 2021; mcnaught & lam, 2010). we followed this with an in-depth qualitative exploration using reflexive thematic analysis (rta; braun & clarke, 2012) to systematically identify, organise, and reflect upon patterns of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.qualtrics.com/au/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 meaning within the data. rta acknowledges the relevance of the role of the researcher in bringing and reflecting upon their own set of values, beliefs, interests, and background to enlighten and shape the data analysis (braun & clarke, 2021; terry & hayfield, 2020). we followed the six iterative steps of rta as proposed by braun and clarke (2012; 2021): (1) familiarisation with the data, (2) code generation, (3) construction of potential themes, (4) review of potential themes, (5) definition and naming themes, and (6) generation of a written report. the codes were generated using both a semantic and latent coding approach, meaning that some responses were coded based on the explicit meaning of data, while others were based on the underlying meaning of participants’ responses, involving a greater degree of interpretation (byrne, 2021). aligned with a constructivist epistemology, we considered meaningfulness of the information as the main guide in the development of codes and themes, using both inductive and deductive approaches (byrne, 2021). 2.4 research team and coding process the authors have backgrounds in psychology and wellbeing, and the lead author has an established ay practice and a yoga teaching certification. consistent with rta, data analyses were mainly conducted by the lead author due to expertise with both ay and we llbeing, supported by the other authors. researcher reflexivity was achieved both independently and in collaboration with the other two authors throughout the process (braun & clarke, 2021; byrne, 2021). while we acknowledge the influence that these backgrounds might have had in the creation of the survey and the interpretation of the results, it also enabled us to use a common language amongst ayps and within the ay community, and to capture and understand key elements provided by the respondents. after familiarising with data, a broad range of codes was generated. codes were grouped into themes that best represented core concepts meaningful across participants. potential themes were reviewed, and final themes were selected and refined. for instance, “positive relationships” and “high quality connections” were integrated into the sub-theme “harmonious relationships”, which sits under the theme “social dimension of wellbeing”. the preliminary theme “positive emotions” was divided into the sub-themes “low intensity positive emotions” and “high intensity positive emotions”, which are part of the theme “emotional dimension of wellbeing”. these themes were then integrated into the overarching theme “the multidimensional nature of wellbeing”. sub-themes were grouped into themes, and themes into overarching themes, based on shared meaning to allow a better comprehension and communication of participants’ perspectives. we acknowledge that there are multiple ways to group codes and develop a theme, as this is bounded to the researchers’ perspectives (byrne, 2021). although we primarily used inductive and latent approaches to coding to best represent participants’ perceptions, we also included deductive and semantic coding. an example of the former is considering the presence of positive emotions as a component of wellbeing. an example of the latter is using terms from responses, such as “physical”, “emotional” and “social” for themes composing “the multidimensional nature of wellbeing”. blending these approaches are acknowledged in rta (braun & clarke, 2020; byrne, 2021). whilst the deductive approach did not involve a priori coding nor development of a codebook, it did considered a range of wellbeing theories, concepts and ideas while developing codes, aligned with rta (braun et al. 2018; braun & clarke 2021). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 3. results 3.1 linguistic representations of wellbeing figure 2 illustrates the words most commonly used by regular ayps to describe wellbeing, with larger words reflecting a greater frequency (min = 3, max = 41), with no specific representation for colour. the most frequently used words were “well”, “feeling”, “mental”, “body”, and “physical”. we identified clusters of words representing physical (i.e., body, physical, physically), mental (i.e., mind, mental, mentally), emotional (i.e., emotions, emotional), relational (i.e., others, social, relationships, connections, people), and spiritual (i.e., spirit, spiritual) dimensions of wellbeing. wellbeing was also commonly defined by using words such as “good”, “well”, and “positive”. other frequent words that stood out at this stage included “life”, “able”, “state”, “balance”, “peace”, “harmony”, and “contentment” (see supplement 5 for details). participants’ responses varied in length (min = 1, max = 87) with an average of 16 words (see supplement 5). rta involved active reflection and interpretation of codes across the dataset and beyond exact words to develop the final themes. the rta yielded 4 overarching themes depicting the nature of wellbeing. these overarching themes stemmed from 73 sub-themes within 17 main themes. table 1 summarises these overarching and main themes with representative quotes for each sub-theme, in addition to the number of participants mentioning each sub-theme and the equivalent percentage. it is noteworthy that sub-themes and themes contribute to sense-making and the meaning of the overarching theme, and that the number of mentions does not represent their relevance, but rather provides information on the reflexive and interpretative process (see supplement 6). figure 2 words used by regular ayps to define wellbeing http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 table 1 regular ayps’ perceptions of wellbeing. main themes sub-themes representative quotes n % (1) multidimensional nature of wellbeing wellbeing is comprised of different dimensions emotional 12.25% low intensity positive emotions emotional health high intensity positive emotions sense of ease or comfort sense of enjoyment or pleasure “being calm, healthy and content” “physical, emotional and psychological health” “mental and physical stability combined with a joyful feeling” “feeling at ease in own body-mind, as well as with others” “being able to enjoy life” 84 24 21 8 7 7.14 2.04 1.79 0.68 0.60 psychological 9.20% mental health self-acceptance self-care and support autonomy equanimity meaning and purpose fulfilment personal growth resilience “feeling good, mentally healthy” “that i'm content with myself in every aspect” “it is knowing how to come back to that loving centre of inner support” “capable of doing what i want or need to do it life” “being steady in mind and body” “living out your calling/purpose that not only brings you happiness, but serves others” “something that underpins fulfilment in all areas of my life” “an overall acceptance of my current state of being and the goal of being better” “the strength to endure difficult situations and the ability to bounce back from adversity. in short, to be resilient.” 53 20 12 6 5 5 3 2 2 4.51 1.70 1.02 0.51 0.43 0.43 0.26 0.17 0.17 physical 8.68% physical health vitality strength longevity nutrition rest “healthy body” “feeling healthy and energetic” “when the body is able to move the way i like it to and feels strong and full of energy” “feeling young” “it’s important for me to keep moving and eat well” “making sure you are well rested” 86 6 4 3 2 1 7.31 0.51 0.34 0.26 0.17 0.09 spiritual 4.09% spiritual health transcendence “well-being is physical, mental and spiritual” “it means i can more fully understand where i stand in relation to everything 22 15 1.87 1.28 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 main themes sub-themes representative quotes n % observance around me” “being awake or conscious” 11 0.94 social 3.85% harmonious relationships environmental connection social connection social wellbeing enjoyment of social connections boundaries social support belongingness social contribution “being a good person to self and others effortlessly” “feeling connected to the people, nature and the world around me” “feeling purposeful and connected to others” “physical, mental and social wellbeing” “enjoying time with loved ones” “mental clarity to say no to what doesn’t makes you feel good” “being able to ask for and find help” “feeling like i have communities i belong to” “living out your calling/purpose that not only brings you happiness, but serves others” 16 7 6 5 5 2 2 1 1 1.36 0.60 0.51 0.43 0.43 0.17 0.17 0.09 0.09 ethical 0.52% ethical behaviours moral principles “not harming self as well as others in any way” “have yamas and niyamas in balance” 3 3 0.26 0.26 (2) holistic nature of wellbeing dimensions of wellbeing are interconnected and make sense as a whole integration of dimensions 9.02% mind-body plus emotional and/or social mind-body mind-body-spirit “optimal mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual health” “it is a state where in the mind and body are aligned together” “a synchronisation of mental, physical and spiritual health” 43 40 23 3.66 3.40 1.96 balance between dimensions 2.65% mental, physical and spiritual internal and external life balance mental, physical, and emotional mental and physical mental, physical, and social “body, mind, and spiritual balance and harmony” “being in balance and harmony, internally and with the external world” “balance. mentally, spiritually. applying this to all aspects of life.” “the sensation of harmony or balance at a physical, mental and emotional level” “a state of relative balance in all layers and sub-layers of being in one's life (physical/ mental/emotional/spiritual)” “a balance in life of physical, mental, social, family.” 10 7 5 4 2 2 0.85 0.60 0.43 0.34 0.17 0.17 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 main themes sub-themes representative quotes n % mental and spiritual “balance. mentally, spiritually.” 1 0.09 stability within dimensions 1.45% mental stability physical stability social stability spiritual stability emotional stability “i tend to view well-being holistically--it's hard to be well when not in good physical, mental, social, and spiritual shape. some areas may be better nurtured at different times in life, but unless all are in proper proportion it's not easy to say that someone is doing well.” 6 6 2 2 1 0.51 0.51 0.17 0.17 0.09 (3) non-dualistic nature of wellbeing wellbeing transcends polarities and dualistic conceptualisations presence of and freedom from 14.63% presence of positive attributes freedom from illness and pain presence and freedom “have a healthy body and a free mind” “health/wellbeing is about freedom; freedom from illness/injury” “a state of mind relatively calm and happy (…) to not have pain in body parts and in the mind” 136 21 15 11.56 1.79 1.28 process and state 10.89% internal state ongoing process process and state “being healthy, feeling contentment” “finding a healthy and sustainable balance in life” “a state of harmonious interaction between the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of being a human” 93 25 10 7.91 2.13 0.85 agency and receptiveness 4.51% power and motivation to change accept and embrace change change and embrace “you are at choice to put your best foot forward” “being content, accepting, compassionate and gentle. of myself, the conditions i live in, other people.” “being able to change the things i can change, and being able to accept the things i can't. the balance of change and accepting where i am now.” 31 16 6 2.64 1.36 0.51 coping and thriving 3.24% optimal mode coping mode coping and thriving “it means when you can feel the best that you can, it refers to physical, mental and social wellbeing” “being able to have the tools to cope with what life throws at you” “feeling good, being balanced physically and mentally, being able to cope” 17 12 9 1.45 1.02 0.77 enabler and outcome 1.70% enabling higher quality of life a result of actions or mindsets “wellbeing helps to live better myself and with others” “it is a measure of my self-esteem” 12 4 1.02 0.34 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 main themes sub-themes representative quotes n % enabler and outcome “being well in the mind and that will then make a difference to the physical” 4 0.34 (4) dynamic nature of wellbeing wellbeing has an ever changing and evolving essence, from one individual to another and throughout the lifespan embodied experience 10.04% feeling being doing having “feeling safe, peaceful and happy” “being at peace” “keep moving and eat well” “have strong, well-built relationships” 40 39 28 11 3.40 3.32 2.38 0.94 context 2.04% inner dynamic inside-out outside-in “it is acknowledging myself as the source of my emotional, mental and physical state” “hard to explain but when you feel good, you can treat people better in general” “becoming at peace with the challenges that come up in my days and my life” 8 8 8 0.68 0.68 0.68 time 1.36% present moment impermanence “being conscious and equanimous in the present moment” “acknowledging that the only constant is change” 10 6 0.85 0.51 3.2 overarching theme 1: the multidimensional nature of wellbeing the first overarching theme was wellbeing as a multidimensional construct, represented by six main themes – emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual, social, and ethical dimensions – with many of the participants including multiple dimensions in their descriptions. for instance, one participant perceived wellbeing as “being physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally balanced”. the “emotional” theme included a variety of positive states, ranging from high (e.g., joy, happiness) to low (e.g., peace, contentment) intensity, with the latter more frequently mentioned. some participants pointed to a sense of enjoyment, noting for instance “being able to enjoy life”. others pointed to a sense of ease, mentioning for example “feeling at ease in own body-mind, as well as with others”. the “psychological” theme captured broader aspects of living well, including general mental health, self-acceptance, and self-care and support. for instance, one participant pointed to “the capacity of feeling as comfortable as i can with myself” (self-acceptance), and another spoke about “health and maintenance of myself” (self-care). equanimity appeared as an interesting sub-theme representing a mental state. for instance, one participant described wellbeing as “being steady in mind and body”. the “physical” theme included general mentions of physical health along with aspects of vitality, strength, longevity, nutrition, and the value of rest. for instance, participants spoke about “when the body is able to move the way i like it to and feels strong and full of energy”, “feeling young”, and “making sure you are well rested with good food, water and sleep”. the “spiritual” theme reflected broad mentions of spiritual health with attitudes towards and beyond the self, such as self-transcendence and observance. self-transcendence appeared in comments such as “i can more fully understand where i stand in relation to everything around me”. participants pointed to the state of mind towards the self, like being “aware”, “observant” or “awake”, which was represented within the sub-theme observance. for instance, one participant http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 noted “being observant and compassionate towards one’s own state”. the “social” theme captured various interpersonal aspects of life, including from overall mentions of social wellbeing to specific aspects such as the presence, quality, and enjoyment of relationships. for instance, one participant mentioned that wellbeing meant “connection to others” and another referred at it as “enjoying time with loved ones”. participants also indicated the quality of those social connections as central to wellbeing, stating for instance “have strong, well-built relationships with my partner and my friends so i can lean on them and they can lean on me”. participants pointed to the importance of harmonious relationships, depicting wellbeing for example as “being a good person to self and others effortlessly”. beyond individual relationships, connection to nature and the surrounding environment was also regarded as an important part of wellbeing, with participants noting “feeling connected to the people, nature and the world around me” and “being content, accepting, compassionate and gentle; of myself, the conditions i live in, other people”. the “ethical theme” reflected actions and beliefs avoiding maleficence and seeking beneficence. participants spoke of ethical behaviours such as “not harming self as well as others in any way”, and moral principles such as having “yamas and niyamas in balance”. while the latter statement explicitly refers to the espoused principles and values of yoga, the former represents ahimsa, one aspect of the yamas. 3.3 overarching theme 2: the holistic nature of wellbeing the second overarching theme focused on the holistic nature of wellbeing, defined as “the interconnection of wellbeing dimensions and their connection to the whole”. this overarching theme can be represented by the following quote: “well-being is physical, mental and spiritual; it is the full package”. within this overarching theme we identified three themes comprised of 15 subthemes. the “integration of dimensions” theme represented the connection between different dimensions. regular ayps considered that the integration of physical and mental domains was central to wellbeing. for instance, one participant perceived wellbeing as “a state where in the mind and body are aligned together”. furthermore, participants pointed to other dimensions as coexisting in overall wellbeing, for instance defining wellbeing as “optimal mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual health” and as “a synchronisation of mental, physical and spiritual health”. the “balance between dimensions” theme included seven sub-themes representing the equilibrium between different domains of wellbeing and life. most sub-themes represented balance between the combination of multiple dimensions of wellbeing. this aligns with findings from the word count analysis, which uncovered the use of words such as “balance” and “harmony”, reflected in comments such as describing wellbeing as “a state of relative balance in all layers and sub-layers of being in one’s life (physical/ mental/ emotional/ spiritual)” or as “the sensation of harmony or balance at a physical, mental and emotional level”. furthermore, participants alluded to balance between different elements of life, such as “work” and “time for myself”. for example, participants depicted wellbeing as “finding a healthy and sustainable balance in life” including internal-external balance, represented as “being in balance and harmony, internally and with the external world”. the “stability within dimensions” theme reflected a sense of steadiness in each realm (i.e., physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, ethical). a participant noted that wellbeing is “being well deep in my psyche; spiritual, physical, emotional, social stability”. another participant commented: “i tend to view well-being holistically--it's hard to be well when not in good physical, mental, social, and spiritual shape. some areas may be better nurtured at different times http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 in life, but unless all are in proper proportion it's not easy to say that someone is doing well.” 3.4 overarching theme 3: the non-dualistic nature of wellbeing the third overarching theme reflected an understanding of wellbeing that embraces qualities often considered incommensurable, transcending typical polarities and dualistic conceptualisations. this overarching theme included five main themes representing different categories for seemingly dichotomous concepts, but where participants held conceptions that simultaneously encompassed both. “presence of and freedom from” was the first theme, and it represented wellbeing as having elements regarded as pleasant and the absence of unpleasant states. most participants (81.93%) mentioned positive states or traits to define wellbeing. for example, one participant noted that wellbeing is to “have a healthy body and a free mind”. other participants defined wellbeing as not experiencing “illness”, “pain” or “suffering”. for instance, one regular practitioner stated that “health/wellbeing is about freedom; freedom from illness/injury”. a subset of participants perceived wellbeing as comprising positive attributes and the lack of negative qualities. one practitioner perceived wellbeing as “a state of mind relatively calm and happy…to not have pain in body parts and in the mind”. a second theme was conceiving wellbeing as a “process and state”. this included perceiving wellbeing as a continuous journey rather than an end destination. this was illustrated in one participant’s statement, referring to wellbeing as “finding a healthy and sustainable balance in life”. wellbeing was also perceived as a state experienced in one point in time. for instance, one regular practitioner spoke about “being healthy, feeling contentment”. regular ayps also brought these both elements into their definitions. for example, one practitioner defined wellbeing as “a state of harmonious interaction between the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of being a human”, reflecting both the fluid (process) and fixed (state) nature of wellbeing. the third theme, “agency and receptiveness”, represented wellbeing as being able to actively manage or change one’s own state and/or circumstances. for instance, one participant noted “you are at choice to put your best foot forward”, reflecting a personal sense of agency. participants also regarded wellbeing as being receptive, adopting an accepting and embracing attitude toward change. for instance, one regular practitioner defined wellbeing as “an overall acceptance of my current state of being”. participants also mentioned wellbeing as encompassing both the ability to change and to embrace change, noting for instance: “being able to change the things i can change, and being able to accept the things i can't. the balance of change and accepting where i am now.” the fourth theme, “coping and thriving”, reflected the perspective that wellbeing involves simultaneously facing adversities and flourishing. this included having sufficient coping skills, with participants noting for instance: “being able to have the tools to cope with what life throws at you”. participants also pointed to the ability to be at their best. for example, one participant stated that wellbeing “means when you can feel the best that you can”. respondents also regarded wellbeing as simultaneously involving coping and thriving abilities. as one participant described, wellbeing is “feeling good, being balanced physically and mentally, being able to cope”. finally, conceiving wellbeing as “enabler and outcome” was the fifth theme. this reflected wellbeing as both facilitating other aspects of life, and because of other aspects of life. participants noted “wellbeing helps to live better myself and with others” and “being well in the mind, and that will then make a difference to the physical”. participants also pointed to the role of actions and mindset, seeing “it is a measure of my self-esteem”. other practitioners defined wellbeing as both being a facilitator and a result. one participant, for example, defined wellbeing as “being well in the mind http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 and that will then make a difference to the physical”. 3.5 overarching theme 4: the dynamic nature of wellbeing the final overarching theme referred to the ever-changing and evolving essence of wellbeing, from one individual to another and throughout their lifespan. here we identified nine subthemes, grouped into three key features. this overarching theme can be exemplified in this practitioner’s definition: “wellbeing means feeling at peace with the current moment, grateful for the past and welcoming the future”. firstly, the “embodied experience” theme accounts for wellbeing being subjectively experienced, not only through the mind, but also with the body. what and how wellbeing is perceived, was represented by verbs used by participants, such as “feeling”, “being”, “doing”, and “having”. some definitions of wellbeing reflecting this embodied experience were “being at peace”, “keep moving and eat well”, “feeling safe, peaceful and happy” and “have strong, well-built relationships”. secondly, the “context” theme represents wellbeing in relation to a setting and the influence it may or may not have in people’s lived experience. although environmental factors were mentioned in people’s responses, definitions of wellbeing mainly pointed to internal dynamics, excluding external factors. for example, one participant portrayed wellbeing as “acknowledging myself as the source of my emotional, mental and physical state”. practitioners also described wellbeing as being part of a dynamic in which the internal experience is reflected in behaviours impacting in the environment. for instance, one participant stated: “hard to explain but when you feel good, you can treat people better in general”. finally, practitioners mentioned that wellbeing involved a dynamic in which one can find an internal stability during turbulent times. one practitioner, for example, commented that wellbeing is “becoming at peace with the challenges that come up in my days and my life”. finally, the third theme encompassed wellbeing as being dynamically bounded to time, with two main features: 1) wellbeing as occurring in the present moment, and more specifically, within the current experience, such as “being conscious and equanimous in the present moment”; and 2) impermanence, alluding to the transient nature of existence. this can be exemplified in this practitioner’s words: “acknowledging that the only constant is change”. 4. discussion people can perceive and experience wellbeing in a variety of ways, not necessarily fitting mainstream models proposed by theorists connected to the positive psychology discipline (bharara et al., 2019; black & kern, 2020; hone et al., 2015; huang et al., 2020). alternative research methods such as qualitative and mixed methods approaches offer a deeper and broader understanding of wellbeing, with possibilities of developing more inclusive, integrative definitions (hefferon et al., 2017; kern et al., 2020; lomas et al., 2020), and more specific definitions that are particularly relevant to certain populations. in the present study, we examined regular ayps’ perceptions of wellbeing, finding definitions and elements that go well beyond the common wellbeing models within the positive psychology literature. although findings cannot be generalised to other populations, they provide insights into expanded perspectives on wellbeing that may indeed resonate with other populations. 4.1 extending mainstream and emerging conceptualisations of wellbeing aligned with many of the existing models of wellbeing (e.g., deci & ryan, 2008; huppert, 2014; http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 keyes & annas, 2009; ryff & keyes, 1995; seligman, 2011), multidimensionality was a core feature in regular ayps’ conceptualisations of wellbeing. this is consistent with findings from recent studies taking ideographic approaches across different groups of people (black & kern, 2020; bourke & gelden, 2007; huang et al., 2020), underscoring the importance of including multiple facets when defining, measuring, and improving wellbeing. like these other ideographic studies, our findings support the need to identify which dimensions might be relevant to a given population, rather than assuming what dimensions matter. in this case, emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual, social, and ethical dimensions were most relevant. several of these dimensions align with existing models. for example, the presence of positive emotions, the sense of enjoyment, and positive relationships appear across various models (e.g., diener et al., 2009; keyes, 2007; ryff & keyes, 1995; seligman, 2011), as well as psychological elements mentioned by participants, such as autonomy, meaning, purpose, resilience, selfacceptance, personal growth, and fulfillment (e.g., ryff, 1989; seligman, 2011). unlike these models, participants spoke to spiritual and ethical dimensions. within the spiritual side, sub-dimensions aligned with büssing et al.’s (2007) construct of spirituality, encompassing awareness and connection to oneself and beyond. intere stingly, their conceptualisation also includes compassion, gratitude, equanimity, meaning and conscious interactions, elements that were also noted by regular ayps in this study, yet were classified as part of either emotional, psychological, or social wellbeing. the ethical dimension aligns with studies focused on moral judgements and ethical behaviours (e.g., hannah et al., 2011). sustainable behaviour (e.g., pro-ecological, frugal, altruistic behaviours toward the environment) has been linked to increased levels of wellbeing (corral-verdugo et al., 2011). this dimension also aligns with the aforementioned conceptualisation of spirituality, where values and ethical norms are described as part of this construct (büssing et al., 2007). the overlap of elements from spiritual and ethical dimensions with other wellbeing dimensions and with spirituality point to the need to further explore and clarify these areas. the conceptualisation of wellbeing as the presence of positive attributes was clear, with participants pointing to wellbeing as a state consistent with complete health (keyes, 2007) or optimal functioning (deci & ryan, 2008). however, they also viewed wellbeing as a process that leads to other positive outcomes. that is, participants viewed wellbeing as both an enabler and an outcome. these insights reveal the complexity and dynamism of the construct, which may require novel approaches to articulate the diversity and layers of the properties of wellbeing, rather than linear, reductionistic perspectives across time. although the concept of balance has been deemed relevant to wellbeing, it still constitutes an emerging area. lomas (2021) coined the term balance/harmony to refer to both the relationship between two phenomena (i.e., balance) and the dynamic relationship of these balancing phenomena (i.e., harmony). consistent with this definition and with previous research on lay conceptualisations of wellbeing (e.g., delle-fave 2016), regular ayps included the concept of balance in their definitions, referring to the relationship held between two or more wellbeing dimensions. similarly, ayps described wellbeing in terms of integration of multiple dimensions and stability within each dimension. these definitions also illustrate lomas’ (2021) proposition of balance/harmony as a ‘golden thread’ or unifying principle underpinning all dimensions of wellbeing. 4.2 knowing about wellbeing through embodied experience interestingly, participants often referred to their embodied experience to conceptualise wellbeing, using words like “feeling”, “being”, and “doing”. this aligns to what kahneman and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 riis (2005) defined as experienced wellbeing, comprising the introspection of moment-tomoment lived experiences. here, some participants specifically defined wellbeing in terms of the current experience and mentioned the element of impermanence, aligning with the proposition that experienced wellbeing encompasses the present experience as it unfolds. furthermore, experienced wellbeing is mostly represented in feeling positive emotions, and thus, is linked to hedonic wellbeing (kahneman & riis, 2005). regular ayps often defined wellbeing in terms of emotional health or experiencing positive emotions. consistent with findings in other groups of people (e.g., black & kern, 2020) and eastern cultures (lim, 2016; lu & gilmour, 2004), practitioners highlighted the presence of low intensity positive emotions as part of wellbeing. this contrasts with focus on high intensity positive emotions prominent across various emotionbased measures, which were less prominent in this study, but are generally valued in westernised population (tsai, 2007). conceptualisations of wellbeing also involve d either experiencing a sense of ease or a sense of enjoyment. while both could be considered a pleasant experience, they differ in the quality of the actual experience, similar to high and low arousal positive emotions. this suggests that hedonic wellbeing is wider and more nuanced than the sole presence of positive emotions and absence of negative emotions (deci & ryan, 2008). it also suggests an alignment with a dimensional approach to positive affect comprising different levels of emotional activation and pleasantness (richardson et al. , 2016). participants’ conceptualisations of wellbeing were described beyond the emotional (i.e., feeling), including other embodied elements (i.e., being, doing), suggesting that practitioners can know about wellbeing through the body. this is consistent with embodiment frameworks stating that “all psychological processes are influenced by body morphology, sensory systems, motor systems, and emotions” (glenberg, 2010, p. 586). with yoga being a physical practice able to affect the autonomic nervous (muehsam et al., 2017; streeter et al., 2012), musculoskeletal (francis & beemer, 2019), endocrine, and immune systems (muehsam et al., 2017), regular practitioners’ corporal abilities may differ from other groups of people, thus influencing their mental processes and how they conceptualise wellbeing. for instance, breathing techniques used in yoga can improve the balance of the autonomic nervous system and foster stress resilience and a state of “calm alertness” (brown & gerbarg, 2005; 2009). similarly, practices involving mindfulness meditation such as yoga, have been related to enhanced interoception (gibson, 2019), the ability to perceive physiological changes in internal organs (hefferon, 2013). beyond emotional elements, practitioners’ conceptualisations of wellbeing revealed the relevance and richness of other elements of the internal context, which are more concordant with eudaimonic wellbeing. while the emotional aspects discussed earlier are typically considered as hedonic wellbeing, and more representative of experienced wellbeing, these eudaimonic elements can also be accessible for introspection through people’s lived experiences. this was reflected in expressions such as “being able”, “being awake”, or “living”, representing a state of human existence. kahneman and riis (2005) refer to this as “experienced eudaimonia”, which can provide a “comprehensive description of internal life” (p. 18). some elements representing these eudaimonic conceptualisations of wellbeing involved receptiveness, observance, and equanimity, which represent a common thread in contemplative philosophies and practices. regular ayps’ defined wellbeing in experienced eudaimonic terms by underlining not only optimal functioning but also coping abilities. typically, models of eudaimonic wellbeing include personal attributes considered virtuous, rather than capabilities to accept, deal with , and overcome adversity. in contrast, practitioners regarded coping skills as central to dealing with, adapting, and responding to change and life challenges. the resource-congruence model (wong et al., 2006) highlights the relevance of adaptive coping strategies and the ability to match them http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 to particular contexts to decrease stress and increase wellbeing. for instance, acceptance towards external and internal elements can be considered existential coping strategies, especially when facing uncertainty and change (wong et al., 2006). further exploring the notion of experienced wellbeing, both in hedonic and eudaimonic terms, as well as the possibility of embodied wellbeing as ways of knowing about wellbeing, may provide an avenue to understand optimal human functioning through an embodied perspective. 4.3 underlying philosophical assumptions in ayps’ wellbeing conceptualisations practitioners’ conceptualisations of wellbeing can also be discussed in terms of the implicit assumptions and underpinning worldviews. potentially anchored in yogic traditions and further elaborated from contemporary philosophical systems, this discussion may provide further insights in the ways wellbeing is conceptualised and studied. regular ayps tended to perceive wellbeing holistically and establish an interconnection between dimensions, emphasising the mind-body connection. holistic thought has been described as the tendency to perceive phenomena as a whole, focusing on the relationships between an object and the field, and has been related to interdependent self-construals and eastasian and aboriginal cultures (henrich et al., 2010). holistic thought also underpins nonwestern health frameworks, such as traditional chinese medicine (chan et al., 2002), and ayurveda (chauhan & maheshwari, 2021), which is intricately connected to yoga. indian philosophy systems sustaining yoga, such as samkhya and the vedas, also take a holistic approach to the study of human existence (tigunait, 2014). these views contrast with conventional models that compartmentalise health into specific silos (saylor, 2004). practitioners’ conceptualisations reflected a holistic view of health, which may be supported by the aforementioned approaches, providing an internal frame of reference to define wellbeing. furthermore, eastern and aboriginal models view health as a dynamic interaction between mind and body, as well as with other elements from social, spiritual, and natural environments (butler et al., 2019; chauhan & maheshwari, 2021). this aligns with practitioners’ conceptualisations and can be related to philosophical foundations of yoga. for example, traditional texts such as the yoga sutras highlight yoga as a practice for stilling the mind, with asana practice involving the development of both steady body and a calm mind (iyengar, 2002). within the yoga philosophy system, tigunait (2014) argued that physical calmness and stillness flows into the mental realm, keeping the mind quiet and harmonious, enabling the development of the higher stages of yoga entailing consciousness. this contrasts to the still prevailing cartesian view in health sciences, conceptualising body and mind as separate and essentially different entities that are studied by separated fields (saylor, 2004). new paradigms might be needed to fully understand and explain the mind-body connection, and specifically in relation to wellbeing. 4.4 implications most research and models on wellbeing have predominately taken a cognitive approach, mostly assuming that knowledge about wellbeing is accessed through the mind (hefferon, 2013). wellbeing conceptualisations from regular ayps suggest that this knowledge is embodied, meaning that cognitions rely on body structure and functions, which are embedded in a broader psychosocial context (varela et al., 2016). following embodiment approaches, symbols such as the construct of wellbeing become meaningful through perception, experience, and interaction with the objects and situations such symbols represent, rooting through emotions, actions, and senses (glenberg, 2010). an embodied perspective to wellbeing explicitly acknowledges the role of the body to comprehend and generate wellbeing language, for instance linking interoception http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 and the use of metaphors representing wellbeing. findings from this study pose the need to consider alternative paradigms to understand how the mind and body work together in achieving optimal human functioning. wellbeing research and practice may benefit from the development of a transdisciplinary and holistic model of wellbeing in which mind and body are acknowledged as an integrated system to experience, comprehend, and nurture wellbeing. emergent research and models involving the interconnection of biological, psychological, and social spheres of health are taking an integrative (kemp et al., 2017; yang & immordino-yang, 2017) and interdisciplinary approach (mead et al., 2021), providing the foundations to develop more comprehensive wellbeing frameworks. in moving towards more complex models, applying a systems approach to an individual level may also enhance this understanding (kern et al., 2020). current wellbeing models do not explain relationships between nor integrate different individual dimensions. thayer et al. (2009) argue that an exhaustive wellbeing model should explain the complexity and diversity of physiological, affective, cognitive, and behavioural factors contributing to health and illness. furthermore, the multidimensional nature of wellbeing also points to the need of progressing towards more sophisticated models conceptualising and addressing wellbeing beyond the individual level. for instance, mead et al. (2021) propose a model integrating individual (i.e., physical and psychological), relational, community, and environmental spheres to tap into an unacknowledged potential to promote collective wellbeing while also enhancing individual wellbeing. 4.5 limitations and future directions this study explored conceptualisations of wellbeing specifically in regular ayps. the qualitative approach allowed the perspectives and voices of the participants themselves to come to life. however, several limitations must be acknowledged. firstly, although rta does not specify word limits for the analysis, the length of responses in some cases limited the reflection and interpretation of data. still, the sample size allowed us to find patterns and shared meaning across participants. secondly, the tools to collect data and the interpretation of findings were influenced by the backgrounds and expertise of the authors in the fields of psychology, wellbeing, and yoga. while this allowed researchers to identify, comprehend, and synthesise key elements in participants’ conceptualisations of wellbeing, interpretations are strongly bounded to knowledge and expertise from those fields. lastly, this study was exploratory. associations between yoga and wellbeing have been hypothesised based on previous research, theoretical models and philosophical assumptions coming from a range of fields, and these relationships should be further investigated. future studies might examine the different dimensions of wellbeing identified in this study. this would allow a richer comprehension of the type and quality of elements that are relevant to practitioners for each area of wellbeing. a specific area to continue exploring is the spiritual and ethical dimensions. there seems to be an overlap of concepts in the literature between definitions of spirituality and elements traditionally pertaining to psychological or emotional wellbeing. furthermore, spiritual wellbeing has been mainly studied from different fields, such as nursing and medicine (e.g., canada et al., 2008), and differences with spirituality are not clear. future research should address these constructs. similarly, although the ethical dimension was r elevant, it was not represented strongly across participants. future research examining ethical and moral elements of yoga in more depth may contribute to understand its implications to a further extent. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in regular ashtanga yoga practitioners ramirez-duran, kern, & stokes www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 5. conclusion regular ayps provided a dynamic and integrated perspective to wellbeing, supporting and expanding current views on optimal functioning. the combination of the nature of yoga and the devotion to a regular practice may contribute to shaping practitioners’ physical and mental processes. this might influence the ways in which wellbeing is perceived, experienced and conceptualised, through pathways and strategies that naturally arise within ay, but might expand to affect approaches to wellbeing that integrate the body, mind, and soul. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors daniela ramirez-duran the university of melbourne daniela.ramirezduran@unimelb.edu.au margaret l. kern the university of melbourne peggy.kern@unimelb.edu.au helen stokes the university of melbourne h.stokes@unimelb.edu.au authors’ contributions research design and planning were conducted by drd, in collaboration with pk and hs. reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken by drd, with feedback from pk and hs. this article was written by drd, with revisions and editing by pk and hs. acknowledgments this research is part of a phd thesis that has been supported by the national agency for research and development (anid) through becas chile (grant no.72190189). publishing timeline received 9 november 2021 revised version received 16 march 2022 accepted 18 march 2022 published 1 june 2022 references acebedo, a. 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(2021). engaged but exhausted: work-related wellbeing profiles of south african employees. international journal of wellbeing, 11(4), 88-105. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i4.1823 leoni van der vaart north-west university 12772356@g.nwu.ac.za copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 article engaged but exhausted: work-related wellbeing profiles of south african employees leoni van der vaart · leon t. de beer abstract: organizations and colleagues alike benefit from dedicated employees who are immersed in their work and energetically pursue their tasks. unfortunately, this may come at a price for employees who may burn out. organizations are, therefore, confronted with a responsibility to assist employees in striking a balance between eagerly engaging in their tasks and taking care of their wellbeing. before designing and implementing interventions, it is valuable to identify how engagement and burnout components cluster within individuals and whether these different combinations have different implications for employees. the study aimed to explore whether burnout and work engagement combine within individuals to form different burnout-engagement profiles. the study also aimed to examine the implications of different profiles for employees’ psychological distress, affective commitment, and turnover intention. among 1048 south african employees, latent profile analysis highlighted five distinct burnout-engagement profiles: burned-out, risky, moderately balanced, stars, and workaholics. the burned-out reported higher levels of psychological distress than the risky. still, both reported higher levels than the moderately balanced, who also reported higher levels of psychological distress than the stars. the burned out and the workaholics reported equal levels of psychological distress. the stars reported the highest levels of affective commitment, followed by the workaholics, the moderately balanced, and the risky, with the lowest levels reported by the burned-out. the burned-out reported the highest levels of turnover intention, followed by the risky, the workaholics, and the moderately balanced, with the lowest levels reported by the stars. limitations, recommendations for future research and practical implications are discussed. keywords: burnout; work engagement; latent profile analysis; wellbeing profiles; employee wellbeing 1. introduction there is no question that covid-19 and the associated lockdowns have accelerated changes within organizations, sectors, and societies (giorgi et al., 2020). for example, organizations were forced to implement work-from-home practices to remain sustainable during ‘hard lockdown’. while many of these changes were beneficial for employees, remote working also introduced challenges. employees reported greater autonomy and flexibility, but at the same time, they experienced a lack of equipment and other resources, increased parenting duties, and a lack of effective communication and meaningful connections (de klerk et al., 2021; koekemoer et al., 2021). therefore, the pandemic (and remote working arrangements) comes with a trade-off by increasing employee motivation and engagement and decreasing employee job-related wellbeing such as burnout. as many companies indicated that they wish to continue with https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i about:blank burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 remote work (or to some extent), organizations are confronted with a responsibility to assist employees in striking a balance between eagerly engaging in their tasks and taking care of their wellbeing even after the pandemic. consequently, employers need to understand the interplay of work engagement and burnout and the consequence of this interplay to design effective interventions. burnout research has been ongoing for half a century, and the term has resurged in the public sphere due to attention that the world health organization’s (who) changes to the icd11 for 2022 has commanded (who, 2019). similarly, work engagement research has been around since the 1990s (bakker et al., 2014). however, most research on engagement and burnout took a variable-centered approach to study these constructs, their antecedents, and their outcomes instead of a person-centered approach (abós et al., 2019; moeller et al., 2018). person-centered approaches reject the notion of homogeneity, implied by variable-centered approaches, assuming that the heterogeneous population consists of several homogenous subgroups (or sub-populations) identified through their differential responses to the variables under investigation. such an approach acknowledges that variables combine within individuals (to form sub-groups), and this combination has implications for individuals’ affect, behavior, and cognition (morin et al., 2018). as a developing area of research, person-centered studies (on burnout and engagement) started to emerge more recently, also in the work context (see abós et al., 2019; innanen et al., 2014; moeller et al., 2018; samela-aro et al., 2019). although these studies are valuable, they are limited in number and scope, and our study has at least three advancements. first, none of these studies has used the theoretical facets of burnout proposed by schaufeli et al. (2020). as burnout research is nuanced (de beer, 2021), theoretical developments are imperative, and measuring instruments should keep up with such developments. consequently, schaufeli and colleagues developed a new instrument using both inductive and deductive approaches. the burnout assessment tool (bat) is presented as a more contemporary, updated and psychometrically sound scale compared to other existing burnout instruments (see schaufeli et al., 2020 for an overview of the development of the scale and critique against other conceptualizations and measurements of burnout). second, these studies did not investigate the total and specific levels of engagement and burnout simultaneously, a second-order total score with the specific firstorder components. research demonstrated that employees could, for example, experience burnout holistically (as a single dimension) but also that the different components thereof remain important (gillet et al., 2021). combining these two possibilities (total vs specific) suggests that employees can present a global burnout experience (as a total score). the specific levels of exhaustion, cognitive and emotional impairment, and mental distance may also provide unique insights. consequently, in line with burnout’s definition as a syndrome, a second-order factor score indicated by the scale’s items, mediated by the four specific components, is considered the most theoretically sound operationalization. similarly, work engagement is most often modelled (except by innanen et al., 2014) as unidimensional. in the current study, it will also be modelled as a second-order model juxtaposed to bat-assessed burnout. third, all these studies were conducted in weird (i.e., western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) contexts. south africa, as a developing country, differs significantly from weird countries based on these indicators. previous studies (de beer et al., 2020; schaufeli, 2017a) indicated that engagement and burnout levels could differ depending on the country in which it is measured, potentially influencing the emergence and prevalence of different burnout-engagement profiles. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 the current study aimed to extend to the scientific conversation on burnout-engagement profiles by exploring how bat-assessed burnout (see schaufeli et al., 2020) and work engagement cluster within individuals (from a non-weird context) to form different burnoutengagement profiles. the study also aimed to examine the implications of the different profiles for employee outcomes (i.e., psychological distress, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intention). these outcomes are often associated with engagement and burnout, and they have important implications (i.e., performance and turnover) for organizations. the study also provides valuable information that organizations can use to tailor their interventions for these different groups by pursuing these aims. 1.1 burnout-engagement profiles: two sides of the same coin employee work engagement is defined as a “persistent and pervasive affective-cognitive state that is not focused on any particular object, event, individual, or behavior” (schaufeli & bakker, 2004, p. 295). it is characterized by vigor (i.e., having high levels of energy and mental resilience), dedication (i.e., feeling inspired, proud, and enthusiastic), and absorption (i.e., being engrossed in one’s work) (decuypere & schaufeli, 2020; schaufeli & bakker, 2004). burnout is defined as “a work-related state of exhaustion that occurs among employees, which is characterized by extreme tiredness, reduced ability to regulate cognitive and emotional processes, and mental distancing” (schaufeli et al., 2020, p. 4). bat-assessed burnout adds two additional components (cognitiveand emotional impairment; the reduced functional capacity to manage cognitions/emotions) but does not include the professional (in)efficacy component as it was not a major component in the development of the bat. the omission of professional (in)efficacy is in line with research that provided evidence questioning the role of professional (in)efficacy in the burnout syndrome (e.g., de beer & bianchi, 2019; schaufeli & salanova, 2007). burnout and engagement have been posited to be located on different ends of two continua (i.e., the pleasure–displeasure continuum and the high activation–low activation continuum) of the circumplex model of subjective wellbeing. whereas burnout is depicted as an unpleasantlow activation state, engagement is depicted as a pleasant-high activation state (bakker & oerlemans, 2011; innanen et al., 2014; schaufeli, 2017b). despite the presence of these states on opposites of the continua, several person-centered studies (abós et al., 2019; innanen et al., 2014; moeller et al., 2018; samela-aro et al., 2019) illustrated that employees could experience the two states simultaneously. previous studies supported this and showed that engagement and burnout components could combine to form between two (innanen et al., 2014; samela-aro et al., 2019) and five (abós et al., 2019; moeller et al., 2018) profiles. more specifically, past research illustrated that burnout and engagement cluster to form quantitatively and qualitatively different profiles: high burnout-high engagement, moderate burnout-moderate engagement, low burnout-low engagement, high burnout-low engagement, and low burnout-high engagement profiles. lacking prior guidance from research, in which the total scores and specific components of burnout and engagement were specifically investigated, a more open hypothesis is framed in which the number of profiles is considered but not the structure (that will best reflect employees’ wellbeing configurations) thereof. 1.2 psychological distress, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intention as correlates of profile membership the study’s second aim was to investigate if the identified profiles differ in psychological distress, affective commitment, and turnover intention. psychological distress refers to nonhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 specific psychological and psychosomatic complaints (schaufeli et al., 2020; de beer, 2021). affective commitment refers to the emotional connection an employee has with the organization. affectively committed employees identify with the organization and remain in it because they want to (allen & meyer, 1996). lastly, turnover intention refers to an employee’s desire or plan to leave the organization (tett & meyer, 1993). according to the health impairment process of the job demands-resources (jd-r) theory, burned-out employees experience a depletion of their energetic resources and consequently develop health-related problems which undermine their functioning (bakker & demerouti, 2017). therefore, burnout initiates a process that results in impaired psychological functioning (i.e., psychological distress). burned-out individuals can also not connect emotionally with the organization because they no longer identify with the organization (knoll et al., 2019; meyer et al., 2006). as part of the coping process, these individuals may want to escape their dire situation and develop a desire to leave the organization. previous variable-centered studies confirmed the positive relationship between burnout and psychological distress (de beer, 2021) and turnover intention (wang et al., 2020) and the negative relationship between burnout and affective commitment (sarisik et al., 2019). engaged employees with a ‘want to’ orientation experience improved functioning through a motivational process of the jd-r model (bakker & demerouti, 2017). therefore, engaged employees function well psychologically. they are emotionally invested in (and identify with) the organization and wish to remain in it. previous variable-centered studies have supported the negative relationship between engagement and psychological distress (shimazu et al., 2018; van mol et al., 2018) and turnover intention (coetzee & van dyk, 2018), and the positive relationship between engagement and affective commitment (guo et al., 2020). in line with findings from variable-centered approaches, person-centered studies reported more favorable associations between profiles with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement and affective outcomes (abós et al., 2019; innanen et al., 2014; moeller et al., 2018). similarly, these studies also reported more favorable associations between profiles with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement and cognitive outcomes (abós et al., 2019; moeller et al., 2018). these findings illustrate engagement’s potential to offset the negative consequences of burnout. one exception to this trend is the tendency for profiles with both high burnout and engagement levels to report mixed associations with outcomes. for example, individuals in the engaged but exhausted profiles reported both positive and negative affective experiences but still reported high levels of turnover intention (moeller et al., 2018). these findings illustrate that positive outcomes (e.g., commitment) may result from high engagement levels, but this comes at a cost (i.e., psychological distress and wanting to leave). 1.3 hypotheses hypothesis 1. five burnout-engagement profiles can be identified. hypothesis 2a. profiles with high(er) levels of burnout and low(er) levels of engagement may be less adaptive profiles with higher levels of psychological distress compared to those with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement. those with high levels of both burnout and engagement will also report high levels of psychological distress. hypothesis 2b. profiles with high(er) levels of burnout and low(er) levels of engagement may be less adaptive profiles with lower levels of affective commitment compared to those with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement. those with high levels of both burnout and engagement will also have high levels of affective commitment. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 hypothesis 2c. profiles with high(er) levels of burnout and low(er) levels of engagement may be less adaptive profiles with higher levels of turnover intentions compared to those with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement. those with high levels of both burnout and engagement will also have high levels of turnover intentions. 2. method 2.1 participants a purposive sample of participants (n=1048) was used from the burnout assessment tool project. specifically, participants had to be at least 18 years of age and employed in south africa at the time of the study. data were collected with an online survey distributed on social media and to immediate networks via e-mail. a national newspaper also ran an article on burnout which included a link to the online survey. the mean age of participants was 40.80 (sd=11.20). more than half of the participants were females (54.50%). participants’ educational levels ranged from secondary (46.00%) to post-secondary school qualifications (54.00%). the most commonly occurring ethnic1 category was white (37.10%), followed by african (36.10%), indian (12.10%), coloured (12.10%), and asian (3.10%) employees. the relevant institutional research ethics committee granted ethics approval for the project which complied with ethical guidelines such as voluntary participation, informed consent, and confidentiality (ref: nwu-00558-17-a4). 2.2 measures burnout was measured with the core version of the burnout assessment tool (bat-23) (schaufeli et al., 2020). the bat comprises 23 items measured on a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (‘strongly disagree’) to 5 (‘strongly agree’). the bat measures burnout as a syndrome in line with its definitional operationalization and comprises exhaustion (8 items; e.g., ‘when i get up in the morning, i lack the energy to start a new day at work’), mental distance (5 items; e.g., ‘i feel indifferent about my job’), cognitive impairment (5 items; e.g., ‘when i’m working, i have trouble concentrating’), and emotional impairment (5 items; e.g., ‘at work, i feel unable to control my emotions’). work engagement was measured with the short version of the utrecht work engagement scale (uwes-9) (schaufeli et al., 2006). the uwes-9 contains a total of nine items measured on a 7point frequency scale ranging from 0 (‘never’) to 6 (‘always’). the items are divided equally between vigor (e.g., ‘i get carried away when i am working’), dedication (e.g., ‘i am enthusiastic about my job’), and absorption (e.g., ‘i am immersed in my work’). psychological distress was measured as a single scale consisting of both psychological and psychosomatic complaints, with the secondary symptoms scale of the bat (schaufeli et al., 2020). it comprises 10 items divided equally between psychological (e.g., ‘i feel tense and stressed’) and psychosomatic complaints (e.g., ‘i often get sick’). these items are measured on a 5-point frequency scale ranging from 1 (‘never’) to 5 (‘always’). turnover intention was measured with three items developed by hellgren et al. (1997). the items (e.g., ‘i feel that i could leave this job’) are measured on a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1 (‘strongly disagree’) to 5 (‘strongly agree’). affective organizational commitment was measured with five items from the affective commitment scale (allen & meyer, 1990). the items are measured on a 5-point frequency scale ranging from 1 (‘never’) to 5 (‘always’). 1 designations are used in line with the exact terminology of the employment equity act, 55 of 1998 for designated and non-designated groups. no offense is intended. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 2.3 analysis plan mplus 8.6 (muthén & muthén, 1998-2021) was used for data analyses. confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was performed using the robust version of the maximum likelihood (mlr) estimator. the mlr estimator is preferred because of its ability to perform well with the potential of a skewed distribution in the data. we assessed model fit based on the recommendations of kline (2016): cfi and tli ≥ .90; rmsea and srmr ≤ .08. the reliabilities of the scales were calculated using the mcdonald’s omega reliability coefficient (ω). latent profile analysis (lpa) was performed on the factor scores exported from the preliminary measurement models, a practice that has become more common in recent applications of mixture models (meyer & morin, 2016). lpa is a model-based approach that clusters individuals or cases into groups (latent profiles) based on their responses to observed continuous variables (muthén & muthén, 2000). being model-based, formal statistical procedures are used to determine the optimal number of profiles (tofighi & enders, 2008; wang & wang, 2020). deciding on the optimal number of profiles firstly depends on several information criteria: akaike information criterion (aic), bayesian information criterion (bic) and sample size adjusted bic (abic). the decision secondly depends on whether there are significant differences between the k and k-1 models. these differences are indicated by p-values associated with the lo–mendell–rubin likelihood ratio (lmr) test, the adjusted lo–mendell–rubin likelihood ratio (almr) test, and the bootstrap likelihood ratio (blrt) test. if these p-values are significant, the model with fewer profiles is rejected in favor of the model with more profiles (tofighi & enders, 2008; wang & wang, 2020). simulation studies demonstrated that the bic and blrt perform better (nylund et al., 2007; tein et al., 2013) and was used in the current research to inform decision-making. once the number of profiles has been decided on, class classification is examined to determine the reliability with which individuals were assigned. two criteria are used for this purpose: estimated posterior class-membership probability and the entropy value. for the former, nagin (2005) recommended values of above .70, and for the latter, clark (2010) recommended values of >.80. it is also recommended that the profile sizes do not become too small (e.g., proportionally, < 1.0% and/or numerically n < 25) (lubke & neale, 2006). finally, we used the bolck-croon-hagenaars (bch) method (see bakk & vermunt, 2016 for a detailed description) to compare the levels of psychological distress, commitment, and turnover intention across the profiles. the robust bch method was preferred as the covariates were continuous data (asparouhov & muthén, 2015). 3. results 3.1 confirmatory factor analysis for the profile variables the measurement model entailed specifying second-order models for engagement (with its three lower order factors) and burnout (with its four lower order factors). this is in line with the recent validation studies of bat-assessed burnout that followed a theoretical approach to the modeling of burnout as a syndrome, i.e., global score indicated by the items but mediated by the first-order components (see de beer, 2021; vinueza-solórzano et al., 2021). the model yielded an acceptable fit to the data (sb-χ2 = 1735.61, p < .001; df = 456; cfi = .90; tli = .89; rmsea = .05 [.049, .054], p = .131; srmr = .07) and no data-driven model modifications were done posthoc. the reliability coefficients for the respective higher and lower order factors were acceptable: engagement (ω = .90), dedication (ω = .83), absorption (ω = .68), vigor (ω = .79), http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 burnout (ω = .94), exhaustion (ω = .91), mental distance (ω = .81), cognitive impairment (ω = .90), and emotional impairment (ω = .86). 3.2 latent profile analysis the optimal number of classes was determined by estimating six models with increasing numbers of latent classes and comparing the fit statistics of these models. table 1 shows the fit indices for the models. table 1. comparison of lpa models model log likelihood #fp scaling aic bic abic lmr lr test p almr lr test p blrt p entropy smallest class proportion 1-profile -10578.41 18 1.07 21192.82 21282.01 21224.84 2-profiles -8014.68 28 1.52 16085.36 16224.09 16135.16 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.93 39.40% 3-profiles -6990.83 38 1.79 14057.66 14245.94 14125.24 0.06 0.06 0.00 0.93 16.80% 4-profiles -6171.78 48 1.73 12439.56 12677.38 12524.93 0.02 0.02 0.00 0.95 7.70% 5-profiles -5818.49 58 1.83 11752.97 12040.34 11856.12 0.08 0.08 0.00 0.95 4.40% 6-profiles -5303.27 68 2.17 10742.54 11079.46 10863.48 0.45 0.45 0.00 0.94 4.10% notes. #fp = number of free parameters; aic = akaike information criterion; bic = bayesian information criterion; abic = sample size adjusted bic; lmr = p value associated with the lo–mendell–rubin likelihood ratio test; almr = p value associated with the adjusted lo–mendell–rubin likelihood ratio test; blrt = p value associated with the bootstrap likelihood ratio test. the aic, bic, and abic values failed to reach a minimum, and the lmr, almr and blrt remained statistically significant (p < .05). since these tests are all tests of statistical significance, determining the optimal number of profiles can be influenced by sample size (marsh et al., 2009), and indicators may likely improve without reaching a minimum (howard et al., 2016). an examination of the plots indicated that adding a fifth profile resulted in the addition of a qualitatively and quantitatively different profile (i.e., profile with high scores on all variables), compared to the model with four profiles, whereas adding a sixth profile did not add anything theoretically meaningful (i.e., the profile parallels the fifth profile). therefore, the more parsimonious five-profile model was preferred. the elbow plot in figure 1 (below) supports the additional gain in fit between the fourth and fifth profile, illustrating a plateau has not been reached after the fourth profile. the five-profile solution is also theoretically interpretable and yields adequate profiling – the posterior class membership probabilities were above .93 (exceeding .70), and the entropy value (.95) was also high (exceeding .80). as displayed in table 2 and figure 2 (below), five profiles differing on both the burnout and engagement variables could be identified. therefore, hypothesis 1 is accepted. profile 1 (burned-out) scored high on all burnout variables (especially on mental distance) and low to very low on the engagement variables (especially on dedication). they constituted 7.79% of the sample. profile 2 (risky) scored moderately high on burnout, but moderately low on engagement. they constituted 27.80% of the sample. profile 3 (stars) were the opposite of the risky profile with moderately low scores on burnout but moderately high to high scores on engagement (especially on dedication). they constituted 23.96% of the sample. profile 4 (moderately balanced) scored moderately on both burnout and engagement. they constituted 36.01% of the sample. profile 5 (workaholic) scored moderately high to high on all variables (especially dedication and absorption). they constituted 4.43% of the sample. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 figure 1. elbow plot for the information criteria table 2. mean level differences for the burnout-engagement types burned out risky stars moderately balanced workaholic burnout and engagement variables batex 1.07a 0.56b -0.75d -0.24c 0.63b batmd 1.15a 0.51b -0.65d -0.30c 0.71b batci 0.98a 0.59b -0.77d -0.22c 0.53b batei 0.86a 0.44b -0.58d -0.21c 0.56b bat 1.01a 0.52b -0.69d -0.22c 0.49b vigor -1.28d -0.44c 0.69a 0.09b 0.61a dedi -2.11e -0.72d 1.11a 0.15c 0.97b absorp -1.71d -0.56c 0.90a 0.09b 0.89a engage -1.27e -0.43d 0.68a 0.09c 0.58b correlates psychological distress 0.57a 0.40bc -0.46e -0.15d 0.39ac commitment -1.21e -0.45d 0.65a 0.11c 0.39b turnover intention 1.26a 0.61b -0.75e -0.24d 0.26c notes. batex = bat exhaustion; batmd = bat mental distance; batci = bat cognitive impairment; batei = bat emotional impairment; dedi = dedication; absorp = absorption; engage = engagement; within rows, means with different letters are significantly different from each other. 10000.000 11500.000 13000.000 14500.000 16000.000 17500.000 19000.000 20500.000 22000.000 1 2 3 4 5 6 aic bic abic http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 figure 2. burnout-engagement profiles note. batex = bat exhaustion; batmd = bat mental distance; batci = bat cognitive impairment; batei = bat emotional impairment; vigor = vigor; dedi = dedication; absorp = absorption; engage = engagement. mean-level factor score differences were examined between the five types of burnoutengagement types regarding the burnout and engagement variables (see table 2, above). the burned-out profiles scored the highest on all the burnout variables, followed by the risky and workaholics (with equal levels), the moderately balanced, with the stars reporting the lowest levels of burnout. for engagement, the stars reported higher levels on all engagement variables when compared to the moderately balanced, the risky, and the burned-out (who reported the lowest levels). the stars reported higher dedication and overall engagement levels than the workaholics, but these two groups reported equal levels of vigor and absorption. post hoc analysis 2 (i.e., cross-tabulation) was used to determine whether an association existed between sex and the burnout-engagement profiles. pearson’s chi-square (χ2) test was employed to determine whether these associations between the categorical variables were significant. cramer’s v provided a measure of the strength of the association between the categorical variables (field, 2018). cohen’s (1988) guidelines were used to determine the magnitude of the practical effect sizes: small (.10), medium (.30), and large (.50). as shown in table 3 (below), the results indicated a significant association (of small effect) between sex and the burnout-engagement profiles. results showed more females in the burned-out and risky groups, whereas the stars group contained slightly more males (contrary to the expected counts). 2 post hoc analysis was performed based on a reviewer’s recommendation as biological sex has been shown to be an important covariate in burnout literature. -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 burned-out (7.8%) risky (27.8%) stars (24.0%) moderately balanced (36.0%) workaholics (4.4%) batex batmd batci batei bat vigor dedi absorp engage http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 table 3. sex associations with profiles n (%) burnedout (expected counts) risky (expected counts) stars (expected counts) moderately balanced (expected counts) workaholic (expected counts) female 570 (54.49) 51 (44.10) 186 (158.60) 114 (137.30) 196 (204.30) 23 (25.60) male 476 (45.51) 30 (36.90) 105 (132.40) 138 (114.70) 179 (170.70) 24 (21.40) χ2(df) 22.81(4)* cramer’s v 0.15 notes. df = degrees of freedom; *p < .001 3.3 psychological distress, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intention as correlates of profile membership a measurement model was specified for the correlates. psychological distress, commitment, and turnover intention were specified as three correlated unidimensional variables. the model fitted the data acceptably (χ2 = 721.13, df = 149, p < .001; rmsea = .07 [.068, .079], p < .001; cfi = .90; tli = .89; srmr = .05). mean-level factor score differences were examined between the five types of burnout-engagement types regarding psychological distress, commitment, and turnover intention. as displayed in table 2 and figure 3, significant differences are reported between the different profiles, supporting the construct validity of the profiles. figure 3. psychological distress, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intention as a function of profile membership the burned-out reported the higher levels of psychological distress than the risky. still, both reported higher levels than the moderately balanced who also reported higher levels of psychological distress than the stars. the burned-out and the workaholics reported equal levels of psychological distress. therefore, hypotheses 2a was accepted as profiles with high(er) levels of burnout and low(er) levels of engagement are less adaptive profiles with higher levels of distress compared to those with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement. -1.50 -1.00 -0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 burned-out risky stars moderately balanced workaholics psychological distress commitment turnover http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 those with high levels of both burnout and engagement will also reported high levels of distress, as expected. the stars reported the highest levels of commitment, followed by the workaholics, the moderately balanced, and the risky, with the lowest levels reported by the burned-out. therefore, hypotheses 2b was accepted as profiles with high(er) levels of burnout and low(er) levels of engagement are less adaptive profiles with lower levels of affective commitment compared to those with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement. those with high levels of both burnout and engagement also had high levels of affective commitment, as expected. the burned-out reported the highest levels of turnover intention, followed by the risky, the workaholics, and the moderately balanced, with the lowest levels reported by the stars. therefore, hypotheses 2c was accepted as profiles with high(er) levels of burnout and low(er) levels of engagement are less adaptive profiles with higher levels of turnover intentions compared to those with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement. those with high levels of both burnout and engagement also have high levels of turnover intentions, as expected. 4. discussion interventions aimed at enhancing individuals’ work-related wellbeing of individuals are imperative given the direct consequences of covid-19 (international labor organization, 2021) and its indirect effects that resulted in changes in the work environment (de klerk et al., 2021; koekemoer et al., 2021). identifying work-related wellbeing profiles enables organizations to tailor their interventions for different groups of employees, enhancing the effectiveness of these interventions. therefore, the current study aimed to identify such profiles among a sample of employees in a non-weird context. the study also aimed to examine the implications of profile membership for employee affect and cognition to complement the validity of the profiles. the results indicated that five profiles exist: moderately balanced (36%), risky (28%), stars (24%), burned-out (8%) and workaholics (4%). the configurations of these profiles overlap to a great extent with the profiles identified by moeller et al. (2018). the prevalence of these profiles also differed somewhat from moeller et al.’s (2018): less engaged (or stars) and workaholic profiles but more burned-out profiles. the jd-r theory supports the buffering effect of job resources in counteracting the health impairment process transpiring from job demands (bakker & demerouti, 2017). non-weird (or developing) countries generally have less access to resources (janik & rothmann, 2015), potentially increasing the prevalence of burned-out profiles in this context. however, the prevalence of the engaged versus workaholics profiles overlaps with the findings of innanen et al. (2014): more engaged (or stars) profiles than workaholic profiles. post hoc analysis for biological sex showed that females were slightly more prevalent in the burned-out and risky profiles. in past research, female participants have shown a tendency to score higher on burnout than males (e.g., bakker et al., 2010; thrush et al., 2019) and in south africa (de beer et al., 2016). however, it has been speculated that males may under-report burnout (agrawal et al., 2020) and other mental health issues (e.g., sigmon et al., 2005). insofar the implications of these profiles are concerned, burned-out individuals are most in need of assistance as they have high levels of distress. they are the least committed, and they are most likely to leave the organization. similarly, the risky is at risk because they are also distressed. they show little commitment to the organization and want to leave (although they are better on all indicators than the burned-out). the moderately balanced are perhaps less concerning as they are less distressed, more committed to the organization, and more inclined to stay with the organization than their burned-out and risky counterparts. the stars have the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 lowest levels of distress, are the least likely to leave the organization, and are the most committed to the organization. these findings are in line with previous research that reported more favorable associations between profiles with low(er) levels of burnout and high(er) levels of engagement and affective and cognitive outcomes (abós et al., 2019; innanen et al., 2014; moeller et al., 2018). supporting the jd-r theory (bakker & demerouti, 2017), the less adaptive profiles (i.e., burned-out and risky) experience a health impairment process in which their psychological functioning is impaired. the more adaptive profiles (i.e., stars and moderately balanced) experience a motivational process that enhances their psychological functioning. the former is also less attached to the organization due to an impaired identification (knoll et al., 2019; meyer et al., 2006). the workaholics are pandora’s boxes; they are very engaged and committed, but they experience similar distress to the burned-out and are at risk of leaving the organization. previous research demonstrated that these individuals have difficulty detaching from work (innanen et al., 2014) which may explain their high levels of psychological distress and commitment. they strongly identify with the organization, but they want to leave because of the price they pay (i.e., elevated psychological distress). the ‘price they pay’ may manifest as job dissatisfaction (with a resultant desire to leave) and is in line with other research that demonstrated the negative association between workaholism and job satisfaction in a nonweird context (valenzuela & díaz, 2010). consequently, these employees may still perform above average, and managers might be tempted not to intervene as they do not want to interrupt the status quo. however, these employees are at similar risk to their burned-out counterparts. in conclusion, the current study extends the scientific conversation on burnout-engagement profiles in several ways. in support of the circumplex model of subjective wellbeing (bakker & oerlemans, 2011), the current findings illustrated that burnout and engagement could be interpreted as two opposites of the continuum (i.e., negatively correlated). but they can also cluster together in the same direction (i.e., positive correlation) within the individual. thus, combining the components (rather than the components in isolation) determines whether employee outcomes will be positive or negative. without a person-centered approach, the ‘darker side’ of engagement (as becomes evident in the workaholic profile) may not be visible (moeller et al., 2018). furthermore, burnout seems to co-vary quite strongly in all the profiles when considering the total and specific components, whereas the opposite seems true for engagement. for engagement, it is evident that the (lack of) dedication drives (the lack of) engagement, especially in the burned-out profile. consequently, these results indicate that it was worthwhile to model engagement as a global construct with separate components rather than a unidimensional construct. although the findings of the current study support general trends (in both the configurations and prevalence of profiles), slight differences were observed. apart from the differences in the prevalence of some profiles discussed earlier, the current sample did not identify any apathetic profiles (i.e., profiles with low scores on burnout and engagement). these differences may allude to the importance of context when investigating wellbeing profiles. one may observe core profiles that will be replicable across different contexts, but profiles can emerge that are context specific. 5. limitations and recommendations for future research this study was not without limitations. the first limitation was that the data was cross-sectional and did not allow for analyzing transitions between classes as would be possible with longitudinal data. future researchers should consider longitudinal designs and implement http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 analytical techniques such as latent transition analysis (wang & wang, 2020). the longitudinal analysis will also enable researchers to determine cause-and-effect between profile membership and employee outcomes which were not possible in the current study. secondly, even though our sample was quite large and exceed the recommendations for the minimum sample size (n=500) for lpa (tein et al., 2013), we cannot discount the possibility that a larger group of participants would not have yielded an additional group (e.g., apathetic) which might exist in the population. thirdly, recent research has shown that burnout and depression have significant overlaps, especially the exhaustion component, and that burnout is likely a syndrome on the depressive spectrum (bianchi et al., 2021). therefore, in future profile analyses, including a measure of depression might be an interesting addition. lastly, our sample was non-probability in nature, and representative samples in organizational research in south africa are almost nonexistent for many reasons (e.g., lack of sampling frames, lack of accurate statistics about representation in the formal sector, and a lack of consensus on which variables to use to ensure fair representation). even so, the generalization of our results should not be made carelessly. 6. practical implications based on the findings of this study, a differentiated approach to interventions is recommended. for example, most of the sample falls into more adaptive profiles (i.e., moderately balanced and stars). these individuals may benefit more from identifying ‘what works well’, and these elements can be used to optimize wellbeing (and consequently affective and cognitive outcomes). it may be more worthwhile for the risky to focus on preventative measures to prevent their transitioning into burned-out employees. in contrast, the burned-out and workaholics may benefit more from remedially orientated measures to facilitate recovery. the current study did not investigate the antecedents of profile membership. however, well-known organizations (e.g., gallup) and academics (bakker, demerouti, and schaufeli) have identified the precursors to burnout and engagement. for example, the jd-r theory stipulates that an excess of hindrance demands (e.g., conflict and role ambiguity) and the absence of challenge demands (e.g., responsibility) and resources (e.g., managerial and collegial support) in the workplace are antecedents of burnout and engagement (bakker & demerouti, 2017). this notion overlaps with gallup’s (2020) identification of the top five causes of burnout: “unfair treatment, unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support, and unreasonable time pressure” (p. 7). regardless of the focus (i.e., optimization, proactivity, or remediation) or the specific causes (i.e., demands or resources), a top-down and bottom-up approach to intervention is recommended (see van wingerden & van der vaart, 2019 for more detail). top-down approaches such as managerial support can include supporting employees’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as advocated for by the self-determination theory (ryan & deci, 2017). such supportive practices include shared decision-making (autonomy support), uplifting feedback (competence support), and demonstrating interest (relatedness support) (van der vaart & van den broeck, 2019). bottom-up approaches such as job crafting (zhang & parker, 2019) or need crafting (laporte et al., 2021) can include asking for clarity or doing more of what you are good at. crafting can create meaning (zhang & parker, 2019), which enhances wellbeing (gallup, 2020). alternatively, counselling and effort-recovery strategies (e.g., sleep, exercise, setting boundaries) may be beneficial. ultimately, the organization should take a strategic approach to wellbeing, entrenching it into the organizational culture and every step of the employee experience cycle (i.e., attraction, hiring, onboarding, engagement, performance, development, and departure) (gallup, 2020). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ burnout-engagement profiles van der vaart & de beer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 7. conclusion even though burnout and engagement can be considered opposite ends on a continuum, the profiles identified in the current study show that individuals can also have scores on all components of burnout and engagement, which can be in opposite directions or even in the same direction. the results also illustrate that these combinations matter for affective and cognitive employee outcomes, outcomes that matter for optimal and productive work. conflict of interest statement the authors declare no conflict of interest in the publication of this article. the research funder had no role in the study’s design nor in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of the data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results. funding this study formed part of a project that was supported by the national research foundation (nrf, south africa) under reference number csrp170523232041 (grant no: 112106). the views and opinions expressed are those of the researchers and do not reflect the opinions or views of the nrf. data availability statement the associated analyses and data for the current study can be requested from the authors. all reasonable requests will be considered. authors leoni van der vaart north-west university 12772356@g.nwu.ac.za leon t. de beer north-west university leondb@gmail.com authors’ contributions van der vaart and de beer conceptualized the study. van der vaart took the lead in the literature review, the writing of the manuscript, and the statistical analyses for the latent profiles. de beer acted as an additional writer, reviewed the manuscript, performed the data management for use in the analyses, and assisted with the initial modelling of the data before the profile analyses. publishing timeline received 27 july 2021 revised version received 30 august 2021 accepted 22 september 2021 published 30 september 2021 references abós, á., sevil-serrano, j., haerens, l., aelterman, n., & garcía-gonzález, l. 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(2022). measuring eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods in the pursuit of the good life: the riverside eudaimonia scale and the rich & sexy well-being scale. international journal of wellbeing, 12(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i1.1575 sonja lyubomirsky university of california, riverside sonja.lyubomirsky@ucr.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article measuring eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods in the pursuit of the good life: the riverside eudaimonia scale and the rich & sexy well-being scale seth margolis · eric schwitzgebel · daniel j. ozer · ramona l. martinez sonja lyubomirsky abstract: well-being science has largely focused on subjective well-being, defined in terms of life satisfaction and positive and negative emotions. however, some philosophical accounts of well-being, like “eudaimonia” accounts, emphasize the attainment of goods, such as having deep social relationships and achieving one’s creative potential. we supplement psychological measures of eudaimonia by developing two self-report measures of well-being informed by the philosophical literature. the riverside eudaimonia scale (res) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their eudaimonic well-being along several dimensions emphasized in the philosophical literature on eudaimonia. the rich & sexy well-being scale (rswbs) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their attainment of other commonly valued goods that have received less attention in the literature on eudaimonic well-being: sex life, wealth, personal physical beauty, and social status. in three studies, we develop and validate these scales. keywords: riverside eudaimonia scale; rich & sexy well-being scale; well-being; sex life; wealth; personal physical beauty; social status 1. introduction when people say they are doing well, what do they mean? they might mean they are in a positive state of mind, or they might mean that they are attaining external goods (e.g., financial and career success). while research has shown that external goods such as money and career success are related to well-being to an extent (e.g., diener & biswas-diener, 2002; staw et al., 1994), laypeople tend to overestimate the impact of such external goods on well-being (aknin et al., 2009; diener & seligman, 2004). indeed, researchers find that materialism and valuing money, image, and power are negatively related to well-being (belk, 1984; csikszentmihalyi, 1999; sheldon et al., 2004). in light of lay beliefs about how to pursue happiness and the consequential impacts of such beliefs on well-being, it would be scientifically useful to have validated scales that assess the extent to which people believe they have attained the kinds of worldly goods that are associated with external conceptions of “doing well.” in this paper, we offer two such scales. one (the rich & sexy well-being scale) assesses the extent to which people believe they have attained external goods such as wealth, sexual about:blank eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 attractiveness, and power. the other (the riverside eudaimonia scale) assesses the extent to which people believe they have attained “eudaimonic” goods such as positive social relationships and intellectual or artistic achievement. both scales are focused not on subjective states but on self-ratings of the attainment of these goods. the eudaimonia scale is informed by philosophical conceptions of human flourishing, while the rich & sexy scale is rooted in psychological work concerning the potentially excessive allure of money, image, and power. psychological inquiry into well-being generally falls along two traditions (deci & ryan, 2008; ryan & deci, 2001; see also keyes et al., 2002): the hedonic approach (emphasizing maximizing positive emotion and minimizing negative emotion; i.e., happiness and subjective well-being traditions) and the eudaimonic approach (emphasizing the fulfillment of human potential; i.e., psychological well-being traditions). aristotle (4th c. bce/2002) suggested that eudaimonia entailed the attainment of goods related to intellectual and social flourishing, with other contemporary philosophical thinkers following suit (e.g., haybron 2008; hurka, 2011; kraut, 2007; nussbaum, 2011; rice, 2013). philosophers working in this tradition tend to emphasize the attainment of loving relationships, wisdom, creative achievement, meaningful work, and appreciation of beauty. most psychological research on well-being examines well-being in terms of subjective mental states. for example, diener’s (1984) conceptualization of subjective well-being—high positive affect, low negative affect, and high life satisfaction—has been central to psychological research on well-being over the past few decades (see diener et al., 2018, for a review). although the term “eudaimonia” has been adopted by psychological well-being researchers as well (for example, in the contributions collected in waterman, 2013, see especially ryan et al., 2013), it is generally used in a way that emphasizes subjective mental states. the philosophical eudaimonistic tradition emphasizes the attainment of “objective” goods like friendship and meaningful work, thus distinguishing itself from approaches that emphasize subjective affect and satisfaction. existing eudaimonic measures blend self-reports of subjective experience or satisfaction with self-reports of the attainment of material or psychological goods (ryff & keyes, 1995; keyes, 2002). other measures are grounded in the concept of “quality of life” as it applies to health and development policy (gasper, 2010; moons et al., 2006). thus, psychologists presently lack measures of well-being that are specifically constructed with a conception of the attainment of specific outward goods in mind. previous research also points to psychometric issues with existing eudaimonic measures. our aim was to develop two maximally distinct self-report measures of well-being, one focusing on the obtainment of certain desired “high-brow” goods and the other focusing on “lowbrow” goods; see below. accordingly, we reviewed the philosophical literature on flourishing (e.g., aristotle, 4th c. bce/2002; bishop, 2015; darwall, 2002; hurka, 2011; kraut, 2007; nussbaum, 2011; rice, 2013; sher, 1997), deriving a list of goods that are emphasized, while excluding subjective goods like joy and satisfaction. we also drew on our knowledge of conceptions of “doing well” or flourishing as portrayed in popular culture, including some “low-brow” items, such as wealth and physical beauty. we especially focused on goods that previous psychological research suggest may be overvalued in the pursuit of happiness, such as money, image, and power (kasser & ryan, 1996; ryan & deci, 2000). we then divided this list into five “high-brow” objective goods emphasized by philosophers and five “low-brow” objective goods that are usually omitted from such lists. the former “eudaimonic” list included wisdom, productivity, meaningful relationships, personal growth, and creative achievement. the latter list included wealth, power, fame/popularity, physical beauty, and an active sex life. to maximize the specificity of these lists, we omitted “middle-brow” goods that arguably belong to both lists, such http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 as health, security, and autonomy. we also excluded moral goods, such as helping others, because it is tendentious to treat moral attainment as a dimension of personal well-being in the target sense of flourishing “prudentially”—that is, having things go well for you in particular. our first measure, the riverside eudaimonia scale (res), was designed to reflect the philosophical conception of eudaimonic flourishing in this “high-brow” sense. the other, the rich & sexy well-being scale (rswbs), was designed to emphasize instead the attainment of “low-brow” goods. by “doing well,” one might mean that one feels happy and satisfied (subjective well-being), that one is flourishing in distinctively human activities valued by philosophers (eudaimonic wellbeing), or that one has an abundance of wealth, power, beauty, and sex (which we label “rich & sexy well-being;” i.e., non-eudaimonic well-being). by measuring all three types of flourishing in a way that keeps them theoretically and empirically distinct, we can begin to investigate relationships among these and other constructs (margolis et al., 2019). we believe that eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic approaches are importantly different. whether or not “rich & sexy” goods are conducive or not to sustainable well-being, lay conceptions of their relevance for happiness makes their valid measurement consequentially important. sheldon and colleagues (2004) find, for instance, that the pursuit of extrinsic goals like wealth, fame, and image, are negatively related to well-being. borrowing from philosophical wisdom and validating a measure of goods of this kind allows us to further unpack the content and process of the pursuit of the good life. 1.1 eudaimonia eudaimonic well-being has two central features: (a) the attainment of certain objective goods, and (b) flourishing with respect to activities constitutive of a human life in its full potential. eudaimonic well-being, as we intend the phrase, involves actually attaining human excellence, as opposed to merely feeling like one is flourishing. philosophers in the eudaimonic tradition thus emphasize the attainment of such goods as genuinely loving relationships, practical wisdom, appreciation of beauty, and meaningful creative work (aristotle, 4th c. bce/2002; darwall, 2002; hurka, 2011; nussbaum, 2011; sher, 1997). although most psychological research on well-being has focused on subjective well-being, a large body of work also examines eudaimonic well-being (see ryff, 2014, for a review). measurement issues are a central concern in this research. it is difficult to determine whether someone has actually attained goods like wisdom and appreciation of beauty. self-report methods, despite their limitations, are commonly used in eudaimonic research. most eudaimonic research uses one of three scales: the psychological well-being scale (pwbs; ryff & keyes, 1995), the mental health continuum (mhc; keyes, 2002), or the questionnaire for eudaimonic well-being (qewb; waterman et al., 2010). other measures are sometimes considered eudaimonic, but most of these measures were designed to assess something other than eudaimonia in the context of the attainment of specific goods (see sheldon, 2018). below we review these measures and evaluate whether this philosophical notion of wellbeing is represented in the measures’ content. ryff (1989) surveyed the psychological literature and proposed the following six dimensions of psychological well-being: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. this definition of psychological well-being is often equated with eudaimonia (proctor & tweed, 2016). ryff and keyes (1995) introduced a measure of psychological well-being that assesses each of the six dimensions of psychological well-being with three items (pwbs). each 3-item subscale was found to have poor http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 internal consistency (ranging from .17 to .68), and the intended six-factor model fit observed data marginally better than a one-factor model (van dierendonck, 2004). ryff’s six-factor model seems also to fit poorly with 42-item, 54-item, and 84-item, and 120-item versions of the pwbs (abbott et al., 2006; kafka & kozma, 2002; van dierendonck, 2004). furthermore, the surface content of the pwbs does not target eudaimonic well-being in a non-experiential sense and omits some goods central to philosophical accounts. some items ask for self-ratings of components of eudaimonic flourishing, such as loving (“i have not experienced many warm and trusting relationship with others”; reverse scored) and learning (“for me, life has been a continuous process of learning, changing, and growth”). however, the pwbs lacks self-ratings of intellectual or creative achievement. also, some items appear to measure subjective well-being, including life satisfaction (“when i look at the story of my life, i am pleased with how things have turned out”) and negative emotion (“the demands of everyday life often get me down”; reverse scored). other items overlap with types of flourishing we aim to capture with our new rich & sexy well-being scale (e.g., “i generally do a good job of taking care of my personal finances and affairs”). although philosophical conceptions of eudaimonic flourishing sometimes include life satisfaction, financial competence, and minimal negative emotion, these goods are not distinctive of eudaimonic flourishing, which pertains to the attainment of nonexperiential goods. inclusion of such items in the pwbs impairs its ability to specifically target eudaimonic well-being. as its name suggests, the psychological well-being scale may measure psychological well-being in general as opposed to eudaimonia particularly. extending ryff’s (1989) work, keyes (2002) created the mental health continuum (mhc). this measure assesses emotional, psychological, and social well-being. the social component is unique to the mhc, whereas the first two components borrow from other measures. the mhc includes three items to assess emotional (i.e., subjective) well-being, with one item for each of diener’s (1984) components. six items of the mhc are used to measure each of ryff’s six components of psychological well-being with one scale. lastly, keyes developed five new items, with each one measuring a different aspect of social well-being. subsequent research has supported the three-factor structure of the mhc (de bruin & du plessis, 2015; franken et al., 2018; jovanovic, 2015; lamers et al., 2011). in addition, the measure seems to have suitable reliability (e.g., cronbach’s alphas above .9) and construct validity (franken et al., 2018; keyes et al., 2008). however, like the pwbs, the mhc contains not only items that target objective flourishing but also more subjective items like, “during the [past month], how often did you feel ... “happy” and “satisfied with life.” furthermore, the surface content of some items is not straightforwardly related to eudaimonic flourishing. for example, “during the [past month], how often did you feel”…“that people are basically good” might capture something like optimism and positive sociality, but some philosophers argue that wisdom requires rejecting the belief that people are basically good (hobbes 1651/1996; schopenhauer 1851/2007; xunzi, 3rd c bce/2014; for discussion, see schwitzgebel, 2007). as with the pwbs, the name of the mhc accurately suggests its broad theoretical target—namely, mental health in general, not eudaimonic flourishing in particular. diener and colleagues’ (2010) flourishing scale—conceptualized as a measure of “social-psychological prosperity”—similarly captures a mix of subjective feelings (“i am engaged and interested in my daily activities”), optimism, and elements of eudaimonic flourishing, as well as ethical engagement (“i actively contribute to the happiness and well-being of others”). lastly, waterman and his colleagues (2010) developed a 21-item eudaimonia measure. initial testing of the questionnaire for eudaimonic well being (qewb) provided good reliability and validity evidence (schutte et al., 2013; waterman et al., 2010). the scale’s items are designed to http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 assess self-discovery, perceived development of one’s best potentials, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, intense involvement in activities, investment of significant effort, and enjoyment of activities as personally expressive. although the authors of the scale argue the qewb is unidimensional, they used a parceling approach that may hide other factors. other researchers have found that three-factor or four-factor solutions create the most interpretable solution (schutte et al., 2013). thus, there appears to be a discrepancy between the number of constructs the scale supposedly measures (6) and the number of factors the scale contains (3 or 4). for our purposes, the content of the qewb is too narrow. most of the qewb’s 20 items appear to target meaning in life and being invested in personally worthwhile activities. no items concern love or meaningful personal relationships, and no items directly concern intellectual or artistic attainment (apart from self-knowledge). the qewb thus appears to target one important aspect of eudaimonic flourishing rather than a broad selection of eudaimonic goods. in light of these concerns, we sought to design an improved measure of eudaimonia. in addition, we aimed to measure eudaimonia reliably with just a few items. we call this new scale the riverside eudaimonia scale (res). 1.2 non-eudaimonic attainments attainment-oriented approaches to well-being are not all eudaimonic. in popular culture and some philosophical traditions, the good life is sometimes conceived in terms of goods like wealth, beauty, fame, career success, and long life (homer, 8th c. bce/1951; the lox, 1998; the yangist chapters of the annals of lü buwei [knoblock & riegel, trans., 3rd c. bce/2000]). philosophical theories with an objective component, such as those of nussbaum (2011), bishop (2015), and even aristotle (4th c. bce/2002), also often include such goods, although typically these goods receive less emphasis. as discussed above, psychological research suggests that people tend to overvalue goods of this sort in the pursuit of happiness (aknin et al., 2009; belk, 1984; csikszentmihalyi, 1999; kasser & ryan, 1996). to our knowledge, no existing measure of well-being aims to capture this type of “success.” thus, we sought to develop a new measure focusing distinctively on a broad range of goods that might be regarded as part of “doing well” or as part of a good, enviable life, but which tend to be downplayed in traditional eudaimonic theories. based on our sense of cultural plausibility and our knowledge of the psychological literature on external goods that may be overvalued in the pursuit of happiness, we targeted wealth, fame/popularity, beauty, power, and sex. we call this new measure the rich & sexy well-being scale (rswbs). thus, the res and rswbs each target not flourishing overall but more contrasting forms of flourishing, which, to phrase a bit cartoonishly, reflect the vision of the high-minded philosopher on the one hand and the las vegas-style partier on the other. we anticipated that the pursuit and attainment of “rich & sexy” goods might correlate differently with respondents’ values and personality traits than would the pursuit and attainment of eudaimonic goods. in particular, because narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy all involve manipulativeness in service of selfish ends, we expected these dark triad traits to correlate with the rswbs. we also expected that the res would correlate with the big five personality traits in a manner similar to that of most standard measures of well-being (i.e., highest correlations with extraversion and negative emotionality, lower correlations with agreeableness and conscientiousness and near-zero correlations with open-mindedness; steel et al., 2008). however, because the pursuit and attainment of “rich & sexy” goods is generally not highly related to subjective well-being, we anticipated that correlations between rswbs and big five traits might not show the same pattern. finally, we anticipated that the rswbs and res http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 might correlate differently with values (as measured by the schwartz values survey; schwartz, 1992). given that both the rswbs and the res measure self-rated achievement, we anticipated correlations of both with achievement-related values (self-direction, stimulation, and achievement). because standard measures of well-being find correlations between well-being and valuing moral goods (aknin et al., 2012; king & napa, 1998), we anticipated the res would correlate with valuing universalism and benevolence. however, due to the unusual focus of the rswbs on external goods such as sex, money, and power, we anticipated it might correlate instead with valuing hedonism and power. 1.3 present studies we conducted three studies to develop and validate the res and the rswbs. we investigated the factor structure and reliability of these two new measures, and we explored their validity by correlating them with 1) other well-being measures to demonstrate discriminant validity and 2) personality traits and demographic characteristics to provide evidence of construct validity. to establish discriminant validity, we report disattenuated correlations. these correlations are adjusted upwards based on the reliability of each measure and approximate correlations between latent variables in a structural equation modeling approach. specifically, a correlation is disattenuated by dividing the original correlation by the square-root of the product of the reliability coefficients of each measure. because the reliability coefficients are typically less than unity, the denominator will be less than unity, rendering a disattenuated correlation greater than the original correlation. disattenuated correlations below unity demonstrate differences in the underlying constructs being measured. by contrast, typical attenuated correlations may show evidence of discriminant validity when, in reality, the same construct is being measured with poor reliability. to ensure that our results were not a result of imperfect reliability, we disattenuate our correlations (with p-values based on the attenuated correlations). these three studies draw from data that were also used to develop and validate the riverside life satisfaction scale (margolis et al., 2018) and measures of desire fulfillment and desire satisfaction (margolis et al., 2019). materials, data, and r code for this project are available at https://osf.io/n2pw8/?view_only=c376721072e04772890c13fa85090375. based on previous theory and research, we expected the following patterns of correlations: • the res will correlate highly with other well-being measures. • the rswbs will correlate less well than the res with other well-being measures. • the res will correlate with the big five in the same manner as most well-being measures. • the rswbs will not correlate with the big five in the pattern typical of other well-being measures. • the res will correlate negatively with the dark triad traits. • the rswbs will correlate less negatively, or perhaps even positively, with dark triad traits. • both the res and the rswbs will be associated with valuing self-direction, stimulation, and achievement as measured by the schwartz values survey. the res but not the rswbs will be associated with valuing universalism and benevolence. the rswbs but not the res will be associated with valuing hedonism and power. our hypotheses involving the rswbs are somewhat more tentative relative to those involving the res. given that there are no extant validated measures of non-eudaimonic well-being, we are exploring its relationships with other relevant constructs. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://osf.io/n2pw8/?view_only=c376721072e04772890c13fa85090375 eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 2. study 1 2.1 method 2.1.1 participants we aimed to recruit approximately 500 participants to ensure a sample size that would provide a high degree of confidence in individual factor loadings, which were used for item selection. the participants (n = 504) were recruited from prolific academic™ online panel. we only included participants who spoke english as their first language and did not originate from the u.s. (a u.s. holiday fell between our two assessments, which might have affected our test-retest reliabilities.) most participants were from the u.k. (79%) and caucasian (82%). half (51%) were female, with ages ranging from 18 to 67 years old (m = 35.1, sd = 12.0). half (52%) of our sample were in a relationship. their median education was an undergraduate degree, and median household income was £30,000£39,999. 2.1.2 procedure following consent, participants completed several questionnaires and were then compensated £5. next, we asked participants to complete the same set of questionnaires 2 weeks later. we recruited 200 participants out of the original sample of 504, but our final sample size was 194 after removing people who did not respond to any items. 2.1.3 materials the first assessment included the measures described below. the assessment also included additional measures unrelated to the current project. participants rated their agreement with five items reflecting a broad range of types of eudaimonia. these items were chosen to reflect the five high-brow goods commonly mentioned in philosophical eudaimonic theories. rather than creating a large number of items to be reduced in scale development, we carefully constructed the five items to precisely reflect the five target aspects of objective flourishing. one item (adapted from the pwbs) concerned learning and growth. another targeted meaningful productivity, and a third targeted personal relationships. wisdom could not be queried directly, as reporting “i am wise” seemed likely to produce paradoxical responses. therefore, we developed the item, “i know what is really important in life.” finally, we aimed to measure achievement without committing to a narrow view and referred to several types of achievement: “i have realized my creative, artistic, intellectual, or athletic potential.” these items were rated on a 7-point likert scale. see table s1 of the supplement for a full list of items. next, we developed 51 items designed to assess the five potential aspects of non-eudaimonic well-being: the frequency and quality of sex, personal wealth, personal beauty, social image, and social power. see table s3 for a full list of items. participants rated their agreement with each item on a 7-point likert scale. we measured positive and negative affect with the affect-adjective scale (diener & emmons, 1984). this measure asks participants to rate the extent to which they have felt specific emotions over the past week on a 7-point likert scale. we added three low-arousal items (“peaceful/serene,” “dull/bored,” and “relaxed/calm”) to the 7-item scale to balance the scale with high and low arousal emotions (margolis et al., 2018). we computed affect balance scores by reverse scoring negative affect items and then averaging all affect items. mcdonald’s ωt (mcdonald, 1999) for affect balance, positive affect, and negative affect, were .93, .93, and .87, respectively. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 participants completed the riverside life satisfaction scale (rlss; margolis et al., 2018). this measure includes three direct and three indirect items regarding life satisfaction. participants rated these items on a 7-point likert scale and ωt equaled .93. the rlss correlates very highly (disattenuated r = .96-.97) with the well-known satisfaction with life scale (diener, et al., 1985), but its surface content maps onto a broader philosophical conception of life satisfaction (margolis et al., 2018). we administered the subjective happiness scale (shs; lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999), which asks participants about their happiness levels. all four items of this measure use a 7-point likert scale and the measure had an ωt of .90. participants completed the 18-item version of the psychological well-being scale (ryff & keyes, 1995), which includes six subscales: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. items were rated on a 6-point likert scale. mcdonald’s ωts ranged from .50 to .89 across the six subscales. when all items were averaged to create an overall score of psychological well-being, ωt equaled .85. we measured the traits of machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism (i.e., the dark triad) with the dirty dozen (jonason & webster, 2010). this measure includes 12 items on a 7point likert scale. mcdonald’s ωts for machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism were .80, .79, and .81, respectively. participants completed the 60-item big five inventory–2 (i.e., bfi-2; soto & john, 2017a), which measures five traits with three facets each. each facet is assessed with four items that use a 5-point likert scale. mcdonald’s ωts ranged from .82 to .92 for the traits and .70 to .85 for the facets. we obtained demographic information about our participants from prolific academic™. we used the following variables: age, sex, education, relationship, personal income, and household income. 2.1.4 missing data approximately 17% of demographic data were missing. no data were imputed for these variables. 0.1% of data on psychological measures were missing. we imputed values with r’s mice package using predictive mean matching with five iterations (rubin, 1986; little, 1988; schenker & taylor, 1996). 2.2 results 2.2.1 eudaimonia items to assess the structure of our eudaimonia items, we performed exploratory factor analyses. in these analyses, we considered our items to be ordinal, due to their non-normal distributions (see figure s1). thus, we used the polychoric correlation matrix and weighted least squares estimation. the extracted eigenvalues (2.81, 0.71, 0.60, 0.55, 0.33) suggested the items reflected one latent construct. this general factor explained 46% of the shared variance among the items. when we extracted a second factor, an additional 10% of the shared variance could be explained. the small increase in explained variance and pattern of eigenvalues suggested our eudaimonia items were unidimensional. in addition, we performed confirmatory factor analyses (cfa). we used diagonally weighted least squares estimation and a meanand varianceadjusted χ2 because our items were treated as ordinal. a one-factor cfa fit the eudaimonia items well (χ2(5) = 361, cfi = .978, tli = .957, rmsea = .111, 90% ci [.079, .147], srmr = .038; see table s1 for factor loadings). the rmsea of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 this and other models may indicate worse fit than other fit statistics, because rmsea is positively biased in models with low degrees of freedom (kenny et al., 2014). to assess internal consistency, we examined the average inter-item correlation and ωt , which were .40 and .77, respectively. another measure of reliability, the 2-week test-retest correlation, was .75 (95% ci = [.38, .81]). 2.2.2 rich & sexy well-being items we investigated the structure of the rswbs items, again considering the items to be ordinal due to their non-normal distributions (see figure s2). using a scree test, the first several eigenvalues (17.28, 3.89, 3.44, 2.67, 2.14, 1.58, 1.23, 1.06, 1.03) suggest that these items form three to six factors. we conducted exploratory factor analyses with three, four, five, and six factors extracted (with exploratory bifactor analyses showing a similar pattern of results). the four-factor solution, where image and power items had the strongest loadings on one factor (which we label “status”) led to the most interpretable factors. see table s3 for factor loadings from the exploratory factor analysis with four factors and item-total correlations between each item and its subscale. from the information in table s3 and item content, we selected four items from each of the four subscales to be included in our rswbs measure. we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis with these items to assess how well a four-factor model fit the items without crossloadings (table s2). we found that a four-factor model fit the items well (χ2(98) = 379.6, cfi = .970, tli = .964, rmsea = .076, 90% ci [.068, .084], srmr = .051). a confirmatory bifactor model with four specific factors also fit the items well (χ2(88) = 272.9, cfi = .980, tli = .973, rmsea = .065, 90% ci [.056, .073], srmr = .045). we examined the internal consistency of the overall rswbs and each subscale with ωt (overall rswbs = .87; subscales sex = .88, wealth = .80, beauty = .83, and status = .81) and the average inter-item correlation (overall rswbs = .30; subscales sex = .62, wealth = .49, beauty = .53, and status = .53). the 2-week test-retest correlations match the ωts well (overall rswbs= .88; subscales sex = .86, wealth = .78, beauty = .84, and status = .87). 2.2.3 associations between the res and rswbs and other measures table s5 presents the correlations between the res and the rswbs, and demographic variables. notably, women, highly educated respondents, and respondents in relationships reported higher scores on the res. similarly, education and relationship status, as well as income, were positively associated with the rswbs. expectedly, the sex subscale of the rswbs was positively correlated with relationship status, and the wealth subscale was positively correlated with income. table s4 displays the correlations between the res and rswbs, and other psychological constructs. as expected, although the rswbs correlated with other measures of well-being (r’s .47-.57 [all reported r’s are disattenuated]), the res correlated more highly (.57 .88), suggesting that the res is more closely related to subjective well-being and psychological well-being. the rswbs and res correlated at r = .58, indicating a substantial relationship. the res correlated negatively with dark triad psychopathy, whereas the rswbs showed no relationship with psychopathy. conversely, the rswbs was positively correlated with dark triad machiavellianism and narcissism, while the res showed no relationship. the res showed the expected correlations with big five traits, typical of well-being measures. as expected, the rswbs showed a different pattern, with much lower correlations with agreeableness and conscientiousness. although open-mindedness is not usually related to measures of subjective well-being (steel, schmidt, & shultz, 2008), it was related to our objective well-being measures: r = .25 for the rswbs and a strikingly large r = .52 for the res. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 3. study 2 in study 1, we developed measures of eudaimonia and rich & sexy well-being. in addition, we examined the correlations of these measures with other psychological measures and demographic characteristics to establish construct validity. in study 2, we aimed to replicate these correlations using only the final set of rswbs items. we also added a weekly affect measure to examine whether a more mutable measure of affect correlates as strongly with our new measures as do trait-like measures. finally, we added measures of socially desirable responding and demand characteristics. 3.1 method 3.1.1 participants we aimed to recruit approximately 300 participants because we were primarily interested in correlations, which stabilize around sample sizes of 250 (schönbrodt & perugini, 2013). we recruited participants (n = 303) from prolific academic™. as in study 1, only those who spoke english as their first language were included. approximately half (45%) were female, and they were mostly from the united states (69%) and white (73%). participants ranged from 18 to 70 years old (m = 31.9, sd = 11.6). approximately a third (37%) were in a relationship, and the median education level was an undergraduate degree. the median household income was £40,000£49,999. 3.1.2 procedure following consent, participants completed several questionnaires and were compensated £4. 3.1.3 materials participants completed all of the measures listed below. first, participants rated their agreement with the five eudaimonia items used in study 1 using a 7-point likert scale. mcdonald’s ωt equaled .78. they then completed the 16 rswbs items selected in study 1 using a 7-point likert scale including subscales for sex, wealth, beauty, and status. mcdonald’s ωt equaled .90 for the overall scale and .91, .88, .90, and .87 for each of the subscales, respectively. participants completed the rlss (margolis et al., 2018), shs (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999), pwbs (ryff & keyes, 1995), dirty dozen (jonason & webster, 2010), and bfi-2 (soto & john, 2017a). for ωts values for these scales, see table s6. to measure affect, we administered the same 12 items used in study 1. however, we measured both general and weekly affect using six composite variables: general affect balance, weekly affect balance, general positive affect, weekly positive affect, general negative affect, and weekly negative affect. mcdonald’s ωts ranged from .89 to .93 for these composites. participants completed a 16-item version of the balanced inventory of desirable responding (hart et al., 2015). items such as “i never regret my decisions” and “i am a completely rational person” were rated on a 7-point likert scale and had a ωt of .82. to assess demand characteristics, we administered the perceived awareness of the research hypothesis scale (rubin, 2016), which asks participants to rate how confident they are that they have identified our research hypotheses. this four-item scale uses a 7-point likert scale and ωt equaled .91. prolific academic™ provided the same demographic information for our participants as in study 1. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 3.1.4 missing data psychological measures had a missingness rate of 0.2% and were imputed using predictive mean matching with five iterations. demographic variables were missing at a rate of 15%, and no data were imputed. 3.2 results 3.2.1 confirmatory factor analyses we conducted a one-factor cfa with diagonally weighted least squares estimation and a mean and varianceadjusted χ2 with the eudaimonia items. this model fit well (χ2(5) = 19.6, cfi = .982, tli = .965, rmsea = .098, 90% ci [.055, .146], srmr = .037). see table s1 for factor loadings. we conducted confirmatory factor analyses with the rswbs items, again treating the items as ordinal. a four-factor model fit the items well (χ2(98) = 243.2, cfi = .985, tli = .982, rmsea = .070, 90% ci [.059, .081], srmr = .047). see table s2 for standardized factor loadings. a confirmatory bifactor model with four specific factors also fit the items well (χ2(88) = 185.6, cfi = .990, tli = .986, rmsea = .061, 90% ci [.048, .073], srmr = .046). 3.2.2 associations between the res and rswbs and other measures table s5 provides correlations between the res and the rswbs and demographic variables. these correlations were similar to those in study 1. one of the largest differences between the two sets of correlations is that only study 2 found a positive significant correlation between the res and personal income (stieger test of difference between correlations p = .04). see table s6 for correlations between the res and rswbs and other psychological constructs. as in study 1, the res correlated more highly with other well-being measures (disattenuated r’s = .64-.91) than did the rswbs (.48-.56), and the two new measures correlated with each other at about r = .5.1 also as in study 1, the res correlated negatively with psychopathy, and the rswbs correlated positively with machiavellianism and narcissism. we also replicated the study 1 patterns concerning the big five personality traits. socially desirable responding correlated more strongly with the res than with the rswbs (steiger test of difference between correlations p < .001), perhaps indicating that people would rather present themselves as high in eudaimonia than high in rich & sexy well-being.2 lastly, demand characteristics may have impacted the rswbs more than the res scores (stieger test of difference between correlations p = .01), although we are uncertain why this would be so. 1 the correlations between the res and life satisfaction and between the rswbs and life satisfaction are significantly different (p < .01). likewise, these correlations are significantly different for happiness (p = .02) and psychological wellbeing (p < .01). 2 we found that socially desirable responding does partially explain the correlation between our scales and other wellbeing constructs of interest, but only modestly. specifically, we found that the res was significantly correlated with life satisfaction (r = .73), happiness (r = .69), and psychological well-being (r = .91). after controlling for socially desirable responding, we find that these correlations are smaller, but still significant and in the same direction. specifically, the res is significantly correlated with the following well-being variables, controlling for socially desirable responding: life satisfaction (r = .58), happiness (r = .53), and psychological well-being (r = .70). similarly, we found that the rswbs is significantly correlated with life satisfaction (r = .53), happiness (r = .51), and psychological well-being (r = .56). after controlling for socially desirable responding, these correlations become modestly smaller. specifically, the rswbs is significantly correlated with the following well-being variables, controlling for socially desirable responding: life satisfaction (r = .48), happiness (r = .45), and psychological well-being (r = .49). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 4. study 3 study 2 replicated study 1 by reproducing its factor analyses and correlations. study 2 also extended study 1 by correlating the res and the rswbs with weekly affect, socially desirable responding, and demand characteristics. study 3 aimed to replicate many of the results of study 2. additionally, we tested correlations between values of the schwartz values survey and the res and rswbs. we hypothesized that people with different values might seek these different types of well-being. in particular, we expected 1) that both forms of well-being would be associated with valuing the self-direction, stimulation, and achievement, 2) that the res but not the rswbs would be associated with valuing universalism and benevolence, and 3) the rswbs but not the res would be associated with valuing hedonism and power. 4.1 method 4.1.1 participants we aimed to recruit approximately 400 participants because we expected that correlations with values might be modest. we again recruited participants (n = 406) from prolific academic™ and only included those who spoke english as a first language. participants were mostly from the u.k. (57%) and white (78%). more than half (58%) were female, ranging in age from 18 to 70 (m = 36.3, sd = 11.8). a majority (62%) of participants were in a relationship, and their median education level was college/a levels. the median household income was £30,000£39,999. 4.1.2 procedure following consent, participants completed a series of measures and then received £2.5 for completing the survey. 4.1.3 materials all the measures described below were administered to participants. as in study 2, participants completed the res (ωt = .79) and the rswbs (ωts = .90 [overall], .89 [sex], .83 [wealth], .90 [beauty], and .83 [status], the rlss (ωt = .91; margolis et al., 2018), the affect-adjective scale (ωts = .92 [affect balance], .92 [positive affect], and .89 [negative affect]) and the balanced inventory of desirable responding (ωt = .83, hart et al., 2015). participants completed the bfi–2 extra-short (soto & john, 2017b). each trait is measured with three items on a 5-point likert scale. mcdonald’s ωts ranged from .58 to .80 for the traits. we administered the schwartz values survey (schwartz, 1992), which asks participants to rate the extent to which each of 58 values is “a guiding principle in [their lives]” on a scale ranging from -1 (opposed to my values) to 7 (of supreme importance). items included “social power (control over others, dominance)” and “pleasure (gratification of desires).” the 58 values were scored into 10 value subscales (see list of 10 values in table s7) with low ωts ranging from .31 to .57. prolific academic™ provided the same demographic information for our participants as in studies 1 and 2. 4.1.4 missing data demographic variables were missing at a rate of 10%, and no data were imputed. other measures featured a missingness rate of 0.6% and were imputed using predictive mean matching with five iterations. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 4.2 results 4.2.1 confirmatory factor analyses we conducted a one-factor cfa with the res items, which were treated as ordinal. thus, we used diagonally weighted least squares estimation and a meanand variance-adjusted χ2. this model did not fit very well (χ2(5) = 84.3, cfi = .936, tli = .871, rmsea = .198, 90% ci [.162, .236], srmr = .067). however, if the errors of items 3 and 4 are allowed to correlate, the model fits well (χ2(4) = 17.3, cfi = .989, tli = .973, rmsea = .091, 90% ci [.050, .136], srmr = .032). this model has slightly different factor loadings than a model without correlated errors (loadings = .71, .89, .52, .58, .62). see table s1 for factor loadings. we conducted confirmatory factor analyses with the rswbs items, treating the items as ordinal. a four-factor model fit the items well (χ2(98) = 432.3, cfi = .965, tli = .957, rmsea = .092, 90% ci [.083, .101], srmr = .055). see table s2 for standardized factor loadings. a confirmatory bifactor model with four specific factors also fit the items well (χ2(88) = 377.9, cfi = .970, tli = .958, rmsea = .090, 90% ci [.081, .100], srmr = .053). 4.2.2 associations between the res and rswbs and other measures see table s5 for correlations between the res and rswbs and demographic variables. these correlations were similar to those in study 1 and study 2. although the res and personal income were significantly correlated in study 2, this was not the case in study 3—a finding that matches that of study 1. table s7 displays the correlations between the res and the rswbs and other psychological constructs. again, these correlations were very similar to those found in studies 1 and 2, further confirming the finding that the res is more closely associated than the rswbs with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and subjective measures of well-being, and also further confirming the association of both of our new measures of well-being with open-mindedness. most of the results were as expected. both the res and the rswbs correlated with valuing stimulation and achievement, and the rswbs was associated with self-direction. the res but not the rswbs was associated with valuing universalism, and the rswbs but not the res was correlated with valuing power and hedonism. the res was associated with valuing benevolence but, contrary to expectations, the rswbs was also associated with valuing benevolence. other reported associations with values were exploratory. 5. discussion in three studies, we developed and validated two measures of well-being focused on the attainment of eudaimonic and external goods: the riverside eudaimonia scale and the rich & sexy well-being scale. these measures were specifically designed to capture self-reported achievement, in contrast with the measures of subjective well-being used in most psychological research on well-being. 5.1 riverside eudaimonia scale the res had favorable psychometric properties with just five items. notably, a one-factor model fit well. in addition, the measure displayed acceptable reliability, in terms of both internal consistency and test-retest correlation. we believe the res has content validity, as it aligns with philosophical conceptions of eudaimonia. in addition, we provide evidence of the construct validity of the res by correlating it with measures with which we would expect it to correlate. the res was positively associated http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 with education level and being in a relationship, whereas correlations between the res and gender, age, and income were positive, as one might expect, but less consistent. the res correlated with other well-being measures, but these correlations were low enough to suggest that we were measuring a different construct. the res showed disattenuated correlations with the psychological well-being scale of approximately .9, suggesting that it is not unreasonable to interpret the psychological well-being scale as a measure of eudaimonia, although more subjectively conceived, given the content of the items. the res was moderately correlated with each big five trait, matching previous correlational research linking well-being and the big five. however, the res correlated more strongly with open-mindedness than other well-being measures typically correlate with this trait (steel et al., 2008). plausibly, agreeing that one is “inventive, [finding] clever ways to do things” and “original, [coming] up with new ideas” (big five open-mindedness) are likely to be related to describing one’s life as full of learning, change, and growth, and that one has realized one’s creative, artistic, intellectual, or athletic potential (res). lastly, study 2 found a significant and moderate positive correlation between the res and socially desirable responding, which was replicated in study 3. measures of well-being are typically correlated with socially desirable responding, and it is unsurprising that the res would be similarly impacted. 5.2 rich & sexy well-being scale our new rswbs also showed favorable psychometric properties. although we initially expected a five-factor model to provide the most interpretable factors, a four-factor model seemed most appropriate and fit the model well, with facets for wealth, physical beauty, social status, and sex life. the rswbs and its facets showed high internal consistency and high test-retest correlations. predictably, the rswbs was positively associated with education level, being in a relationship, and income. however, it was not significantly correlated with age or gender. the rswbs was positively correlated with other well-being measures, but as expected, the correlations were lower than the correlations between eudaimonia and the same measures. the positive relationship among subjective measures of well-being, eudaimonic flourishing, and attainment of goods described in the rswbs fits well with bishop’s (2015) “inclusive approach” to well-being, which suggests well-being involves positive causal networks containing selfreinforcing elements. subjective well-being and the attainment of eudaimonic and noneudaimonic goods all tend to relate positively: finding meaningful work in which you are successful (eudaimonic well-being) can enhance mood (subjective well-being) and income (rich & sexy well-being), which can then open further opportunities for the attainment of subjective and objective well-being in a positive (virtuous) cycle. conversely, losing one’s job can have downstream consequences on well-being in a negative (vicious) cycle. similarly, a good sex life, loving relationships, financial security, and life satisfaction might all form a positive causal network in a typical well-functioning marriage. the rswbs showed small positive correlations with machiavellianism and narcissism. we speculate that the correlations are positive due to a relationship between machiavellianism, narcissism, and the valuing of the goods on the rich & sexy list, but low due to the fact that seeking does not imply getting, and excessive machiavellianism or narcissism might in the long run interfere with obtaining wealth, social status, and sex (furnham et al., 2013). it is also unsurprising that narcissists would rate themselves favorably with regard to physical beauty. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 5.3 limitations and future directions our measures employ self-report, which is not the ideal way to assess objective aspects of wellbeing. for example, agreement with “i am wealthy” or “i am more attractive than most people my age” on the rswbs might reflect self-confidence as much as it reflects verifiable wealth or conventional physical attractiveness. agreement with “i know what is really important in life” might reflect sophomoric self-assurance rather than actual practical wisdom. despite these possible limitations, subjective measures of objective goods are often accepted as adequately valid. for example, researchers frequently ask students for their grade point averages instead of requesting their transcripts. future studies might disentangle self-report from objective attainment by using non-selfreport measures, such as peer ratings of physical beauty or practical wisdom, or objective measures of wealth or intellectual or athletic attainment. outside of verifiable self-insight in these domains, there may be interesting predictive value in self-perceptions about such matters. as previously noted, our lists of eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods are incomplete. we wanted two measures that would capture a sharp distinction between “eudaimonic” goods characteristic of distinctly human flourishing valued by philosophers and “rich & sexy” goods that many people value highly despite being downplayed in philosophical traditions. other goods, like health, security, and autonomy, do not fall clearly on either side, while also overlapping with “quality of life” measures in public health policy (cooke et al., 2016). moral attainment is also absent from our lists, despite its prominence in philosophical eudaimonic accounts—in part because we doubt the validity of self-reports of general moral attainment (schwitzgebel, 2019; sun & goodwin, 2019) and in part because including it would suggest ethical attainment is not just ethically good but also partly directly constitutive of personal, prudential well-being. finally, thorough eudaimonic lists often include subjective goods like pleasure, problematizing the subjective/objective distinction (annas, 2011). such goods were excluded to enhance the contrast between our measures and existing subjective measures. a complete measure of flourishing would require a complete list of objective goods that are properly weighted in the cultural context—a task far more ambitious than we attempt here. (for thoughts on how to get closer to this goal, see alexandrova, 2018; nussbaum, 2011; seligman, 2011.) finally, our studies recruited participants online—primarily white and from the uk and the u.s. paid online participants might be expected to have different attitudes toward work and money than the general population (kaufmann et al., 2011). also, given cultural differences in self-reported values (schwartz, 1994), members of collectivist cultures may show lower correlations between rich & sexy well-being and other types of well-being; they may also prioritize social well-being over individual well-being. furthermore, for people in relatively less wealthy nations, the pursuit of wealth may be positively related to well-being when such pursuit enables financial security and the satisfaction of basic needs (ingrid et al., 2009). this possibility holds particular relevance for the rswbs, which we acknowledge may represent particularly rich, industrialized, and western outlooks on non-eudaimonic well-being. further work is needed in validating this scale cross-culturally. 5.4 concluding remarks apart from subjective well-being, a growing body of research is focused on eudaimonia, which refers to the attainment of goods related to human excellence. the riverside eudaimonia scale was designed to capture eudaimonia, with just five items, in a way that is informed by philosophical work on human flourishing. in addition, we developed a new measure of nonhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 eudaimonic well-being: the rich & sexy well-being scale. both measures appear reliable and valid, although the accuracy of self-ratings remains a concern until self-reports can be checked against non-self-report measures. psychologists tend to favor subjective approaches to well-being. in contrast, many philosophical, literary, and popular traditions conceptualize well-being as a matter of attaining certain outward goods and living up to one’s human potential. according to the latter approaches, attaining such goods might actually be constitutive of the good life. according to more subjective views, such attainments might simply correlate with well-being. we offer that the good life consists of positive subjective evaluations of one’s life and current state, healthy psychological functioning in key domains, and attainment of life-enriching goods, whether those are characteristic of expressing one’s full human potential (eudaimonic) or perhaps are part of baser human indulgences (non-eudaimonic). ultimately, fruitful interdisciplinary discourse requires good self-report measures of all components of what it means to be well. conflict of interest statement the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding statement this research was supported by a grant from happiness and well-being: integrating research across the disciplines, saint louis university. data availability statement data is available upon request via the corresponding author. authors seth margolis university of california, riverside eric schwitzgebel university of california, riverside daniel j. ozer university of california, riverside ramona l. martinez university of california, riverside sonja lyubomirsky university of california, riverside sonja.lyubomirsky@ucr.edu publishing timeline received 29 january 2021 revised version received 12 september 2021 accepted 8 november 2021 published 31 january 2022 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mailto:sonja.lyubomirsky@ucr.edu eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods margolis, schwitzgebel, ozer, martinez, & lyubomirsky www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 references abbott, r. a., ploubidis, g. b., huppert, f. a., kuh, d., wadsworth, m. e., & croudace, t. j. 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(2004). the construct validity of ryff's scales of psychological well-being and its extension with spiritual well-being. personality and individual differences, 36, 629-643. waterman, a. s. (ed.). (2013). the best within us: positive psychology perspectives on eudaimonia. american psychological association. waterman, a. s., schwartz, s. j., zamboanga, b. l., ravert, r. d., williams, m. k., bede agocha, v., ... & donnellan, b. m. (2010). the questionnaire for eudaimonic well-being: psychometric properties, demographic comparisons, and evidence of validity. the journal of positive psychology, 5, 41-61. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760903435208 xunzi (3rd c. bce/2014). xunzi: the complete text (e. hutton, trans.). princeton, nj: princeton university press. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1177/0146167203261883 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.5.1.51 robertson searfoss, a. (2012). review of well-being and theism: linking ethics to god international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 229-232. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3.i2.9 amy robertson searfoss victoria university of wellington amysearfoss@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 229 book review well-being and theism: linking ethics to god william a. lauinger, continuum publishing, 2012, isbn: 978-1-441-10030-6 (hbk), us$110.00, 195pp review by amy robertson searfoss in 2010, harris published the moral landscape, which promotes a science of morality based on the idea that morality is relevant to animals and humans only to the extent that morally good things increase wellbeing.1 to harris, human wellbeing depends entirely upon “events in the world and states of the human brain,” which means, “there must be scientific truths to be known about it.”2 william lauinger’s well-being and theism introduces a model of wellbeing in complete contrast to harris’. in an argument aimed primarily at philosophers researching wellbeing and others interested in how to reconcile wellbeing with theism, lauinger advances an innovative and well-argued explanation of human welfare that ultimately links human wellbeing to god. in developing the connection between human wellbeing and theism lauinger posits two aims, both of which diverge from more traditional, philosophical approaches to wellbeing that also seek to link ethics to god. lauinger’s first aim is to introduce a hybrid approach, desireperfection theory, formulated in response to deficiencies he detects in both pro-attitude and objectivist stances on wellbeing. the second aim of lauinger’s study is to establish metaphysical grounds for claims posited in part one. in line with his two aims, lauinger divides the book into two sections. part one provides an accessible and detailed overview of pro-attitude and objectivist theories. generally, pro-attitude theories maintain that, whether factual or not, one’s proattitudes, broadly understood as desires or urges, comprise one’s wellbeing. one’s attitude toward what is happening in one’s life determines whether or not one’s life is going well. within the pro-attitude family, lauinger focuses specifically on desire-fulfilment theories, which he sees as the most likely pro-attitude model to challenge his own stance. desirefulfilment theories maintain that human welfare boils down to desire, whether actual or hypothetical. lauinger rebuts this stance with a number of potent objections, including what he calls the stability problem, that desires can and do shift over time. lauinger’s most potent objection is desire-fulfilment theories’ inability to account for the “good” in “prudentially good for,” mainly because humans sometimes have defective desires, where they desire things not intrinsically good for them, like drugs. for example, according to desire-fulfilment theories if sam decides to smoke, then smoking is prudentially good for sam (i.e. smoking contributes to sam’s wellbeing). yet, this runs counter to the human intuition that 1sam harris, the moral landscape: how science can determine human values (london: transworld publishers, 2010). 2ibid., 2. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ well-being and theism: linking ethics to god searfoss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 230 smoking is harmful and, thus, prudentially bad for sam (i.e. does not contribute to sam’s wellbeing). lauinger’s objection to desire-fulfilment theory is noteworthy, because he relies on human intuition as the basis for determining what is prudentially bad. however, if we think back to a time before the harmful effects of smoking were known, human intuition would have told us that smoking is a beneficial act, helpful in calming the nerves and in weight control. lauinger’s work might benefit from consideration as to how the context of culture affects our understanding of what is prudentially bad and, thus, regulates what is considered prudentially good, as it seems implausible that these are static notions divorced from the cultural contexts in which they occur. the cultural basis of many of our human intuitions challenges lauinger’s argument about our intrinsic desires by suggesting that rather than desires being in-built, they may be shaped by our cultural backgrounds, which serve to inform our perceptions and attitudes. assuming that culture is responsible for determining our pro attitudes, it might override or at least influence our individual human intuitions about what contributes to our wellbeing. if this is the case, ethics might ultimately be linked to culture rather than to god. after launching a number of effective criticisms against desire-fulfilment theories, lauinger turns to objectivist theories, which he largely rejects due to their inability to account for the “for” part of “prudentially good for.” lauinger pays specific attention to objective-list theories, which posit that wellbeing is the result of attaining certain things from a list of meaningful pursuits, like health or friendship. though lauinger admits that objective-list theories are able to capture the “good” portion of “prudentially good for,” he argues that just acquiring the goods on the list is insufficient, as they must somehow match personal desires to contribute to wellbeing. notwithstanding that objectivist theories divorce themselves from pro-attitudes, there are certain qualifications that must be met for wellbeing, and, as lauinger observes, pro-attitudes are reasonable when considered in conjunction with the way the human mind works, since it is unlikely that humans desire something that does not psychologically benefit them in some way. lauinger successfully identifies and critiques the shortcomings of both objectivist and proattitude stances. indeed, lauinger is correct that if one pushes for either a purely objectivist or purely pro-attitude approach, the shortcomings of each drives us back toward the other, creating an unproductive tautological cycle. to break this pattern, lauinger introduces his own hybrid theory, desire-perfection theory, which seeks to bridge the gap between objectivist and pro-attitude theories of wellbeing. desire-perfection theory is based on the assumption that most humans have in-built desires for basic, intrinsic goods, such as knowledge, friendship, etc. however, an individual must also desire these intrinsic goods for them to contribute to that individual’s wellbeing.3 lauinger’s model is strong on two accounts. one is that it provides criteria for the “good” portion of “prudentially good for,” in the form of objective-value constraints, such as health and friendship (the perfection part of desire-perfection theory in the form of perfectionist value). the second is that lauinger also manages to attend to the “for” element of “prudentially good for” by applying pro-attitude limitations on wellbeing (the desire part of desire-perfection theory). desire-perfection theory maintains that even when an individual lacks information about certain things that may be prudentially fit for her, as long as she desires the basic goods that represent those things, they are still good for her. take sumner’s bluegrass example, where someone who has never heard bluegrass music before walks into a park, hears bluegrass, and 3 for a discussion of this point in reference to meaning of life literature please see susan wolf, "happiness and meaning: two aspects of the good life," social philosophy and policy 14 (1997): 207-25. well-being and theism: linking ethics to god searfoss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 231 decides she likes it. though she did not know about bluegrass music beforehand, it still satisfied the intrinsic desire she has for aesthetic experience and, thus, contributes to her wellbeing.4 it becomes clear in the second half of the book that lauinger’s choice to utilize a hybrid model with both pro-attitude and objective value constraints limits the possibilities for metaphysical grounding that can be employed to support his argument, which results in a few deficiencies. lauinger examines two metaphysical approaches as grounding for his theory: unguided evolution and aristotelian hylomorphism. unguided evolution is the idea that evolutionary processes are directed solely by reproduction. aristotelian hylomorphism, in the form lauinger uses, maintains that organisms are comprised of matter and have a “substantial form” that leads the organism toward its optimal welfare (i.e. perfection) as determined by the sort of organism it is. though lauinger astutely presents positive arguments for both metaphysical approaches, demonstrating his knowledge of relevant arguments, in the end, he predictably finds neither evolution nor hylomorphism suitable as metaphysical grounds for his three-fold, aquinianinspired model of human desire. the deepest level of human desire lauinger observes is the desire for infinite good or infinite object, which he assumes is god, though he allows for others who may not make the same assumption. second-level desire is represented by intrinsic desires for basic goods, like friendship, health, and knowledge, which lauinger sees as cascading from the desire for infinite good. the third level comprises the desire for finite instances of basic goods, which lauinger states are neither intrinsic nor stable. lauinger’s specific criticism is that organisms’ possession of fixed forms demands that evolution occur within the limitations of these forms, which means that evolution is not responsible for generating the forms themselves. there must be something else ultimately causing the emergence of fixed forms, which in lauinger’s estimation is god. lauinger argues that the inadequacies posed by hylomorphism and evolution are rectified only by turning to theism, which has the power to bridge the disconnect that exists between evolution and basic goods when it is assumed that objective values are not fully accounted for by natural processes. this is an interesting point, but one that should not necessarily be taken at face value. lauinger admits that it is plausible for evolution to generate within humans a need for basic goods but proposes that the natural process of evolution is insufficient to account for the quality of basic goods that is not solely natural, such as mathematical platonism, which maintains that numbers and sets (abstract mathematical objects) exist independently of humans. “given this supposition, it seems doubtful that unaided evolution would build into us the ability to engage in mathematical reasoning, for it seems improbable that unaided evolution would build into us the ability to break through to, or to connect up with, some non-natural mathematical realm.”5 though lauinger admits the controversial nature of this statement, he uses it to propose that a non-natural intermediary (i.e. god) is required to respond to this disconnect. however, culture is also worth consideration as the force behind the cultivation of a need for basic goods that cannot solely be ascribed to unguided biological evolution and is of particular interest in the examples of pain and the development of ethics introduced in section 5.4. despite fitzpatrick’s claim that “pain is typically bad” and usually avoided, points which 4 lauinger, well-being and theism, 27. for those interested in sumner’s work, please refer to leonard w. sumner, welfare, happiness, and ethics (oxford: oxford university press, 1996). 5 lauinger, well-being and theism, 126. well-being and theism: linking ethics to god searfoss www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 232 lauinger seems to accept, there are numerous examples of cultural groups with rituals that involve copious amounts of pain, including māori tā moko and the lakota sundance.6 in traditional applications of māori moko, a chisel was used to remove portions of flesh from the face into which ink was then rubbed to create a three-dimensional, grooved design. part of the lakota sundance ceremony often involves ritual piercing, partial suspension, and complete tearing off of participants’ flesh to signify individual sacrifice for the benefit of the entire tribe. in these instances, pain is not avoided or mitigated but is intentionally sought and viewed as fundamental to cultural group integration and belonging. though lauinger uses the pain example to demonstrate the need to inquire where “value laden” features of facts with dual aspects come from, he overlooks culture as a possible answer. ultimately, lauinger argues that theism is the only means to overcome the gap between evolution and basic goods. yet a number of scholars, like weijers, argue this very point and have identified alternatives to theism that incorporate evolutionary theory. one such alternative is optimistic naturalism, which maintains that science and technology might enable humans to find meaning in life by assisting “our actions, which we find meaningful partly because they might have particular infinite consequences to actually have infinite consequences for life.”7 optimistic naturalism is worth consideration, not only because of its novel integration of science into human wellbeing, but because of its ability to mediate subjectivist and objectivist views of wellbeing in a way that challenges lauinger’s approach. regardless of where one falls on the naturalist/theist spectrum, well-being and theism is an interesting and provocative book that enhances wellbeing literature by challenging established approaches and introducing the desire-perfection model that seeks to compensate for some of the shortcomings of current wellbeing theories. despite its, at times, underdeveloped interpretation of evolutionary theory, questions the work raises concerning the ways in which ethics is linked to god are laudable and will undoubtedly encourage new avenues to open in the study of wellbeing. overall, lauinger has managed to attain his goal of developing a model that incorporates elements of pro-attitude and objectivist models and bolsters these claims with a metaphysical grounding that supports his desire-perfection account of wellbeing. author amy robertson searfoss victoria university of wellington amysearfoss@gmail.com 6 ibid., 135-39. for further information regarding fitzpatrick’s stance, see william fitzpatrick, “robust ethical realism, non-naturalism, and normativity, in oxford studies of metaethics 3, ed. russ shafer-landau (oxford university press, 2008), 159-206. 7 dan weijers (online first). "optimistic naturalism: scientific advancement and the meaning of life," sophia. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2fs11841-013-0369-x. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2fs11841-013-0369-x buchanan, a. & kern, m. l. (2017). the benefit mindset: the psychology of contribution and everyday leadership. international journal of wellbeing, 7(1), 1-11. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i1.538 ashley buchanan cohere ash.buchanan@cohere.com.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article the benefit mindset: the psychology of contribution and everyday leadership ashley buchanan · margaret l. kern abstract: this paper explores the significance of mindset in shaping a future of greater possibility. one’s mindset reflects personally distinguishable attitudes, beliefs and values, which influence one’s ability to learn and lead, and to achieve and contribute. bringing together two areas of research – a “being well” perspective from positive psychology and a socially and ecologically orientated “doing good” perspective – the benefit mindset is presented as a mutually supportive model for promoting wellbeing on both an individual and a collective level. it builds upon dweck’s fixed and growth mindset theory, by including the collective context in which an individual resides. the benefit mindset describes everyday leaders who discover their strengths to make valuable contributions to causes that are greater than the self, leaders who believe in making a meaningful difference, positioning their actions within a purposeful context. we argue that creating cultures of contribution and everyday leadership could be one of the best points of leverage we have for simultaneously bringing out the best in people, organizations and the planet. keywords: mindset, contribution, leadership, learning, success, purpose, wellbeing, social innovation, systems thinking 1. introduction when carol dweck’s book, mindset: the new psychology of success (2006), was first published, it was promoted as a simple idea that made a big difference. dweck suggested that beliefs about our own intelligence and abilities – as either fixed traits that we cannot change or as attributes that can be improved through effort – have an important influence on our ability to learn and grow. according to this fixed and growth mindset (fgm) theory, a fixed mindset leads to a reduced capacity for learning, whereas a growth mindset offers a pathway for reaching higher levels of human potential. this concept has become popular in education and business, suggesting that the mindset we choose to adopt for ourselves profoundly shapes our ability to learn and to be successful (harvard business review staff, 2014). ten years on, however, we live in a world that is starting to question what it means to grow and be successful (honeyman, 2014). humanity is facing an ever-increasing number of pressing social, environmental, and economic challenges, including degenerating ecosystems, population growth, and economic stress (scharmer & kaufer, 2013). there is increasing appreciation for the indivisible and interconnected nature of our wellbeing (ki-moon, 2012), and the need for setting limits to economic and population growth on a planet with finite resources (capra & luisi, 2014; meadows, meadows, & randers, 1992). it is in this context that a new socially and environmentally focused mindset paradigm appears to be on the rise. rather than being driven by individual gain, this emerging mindset and global movement is symbolized by people who believe in being well (rusk & waters, 2013), mailto:ash.buchanan@cohere.com.au http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the benefit mindset buchanan & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 and doing good for our world (hawken, 2007). it is a purpose-driven, leadership-based mindset that is redefining success: not only being the best in the world, but also being the best for the world. it is what we call the benefit mindset. to support this position, we first consider mindset theory from an individual and a collective perspective. we recognize both the contribution that fgm has provided to our understanding of learning and achievement, as well as its limitations in addressing our collective challenges. second, we suggest that individually focused “being well” perspectives coming from positive psychology complement the leadership and purpose focused “doing good” applications coming from socially and environmentally oriented communities and organizations. finally, we propose the benefit mindset – which is orientated towards collectively creating the future – as a complementary evolution of fgm. 2. mindset theory mindset can generally be defined as the underlying assumptions that shape a person’s ability to perceive and understand the world (mcewen & schmidt, 2007). mindset is a deep psychological construct that underpins our personally distinguishable attitudes, beliefs, and values (schein, 2015). it influences our “everyday” behaviors and actions (senge, 1990), our ability to learn (dweck, 2006), and has a cascading, self-fulfilling effect on reality (crum et al., 2011; crum & langer, 2007). this means that there is no way to avoid the subconscious influence of our mindset (bohm & edwards, 1999). the mindset we adopt for ourselves acts like a puppet master, pulling the “everyday” strings of our future possibilities on both individual and a collective levels (clifton, 2013). with appropriate ability and conditions, we can consciously shift our mindsets. at an individual level, creating shifts in our mindset and beliefs can promote long-term improvements in wellbeing and resilience (e.g., vella-brodrick, 2013). personal shifts also impact outcomes at the collective level. indeed, meadows (1999) suggested that the most powerful and influential whole-system lever is the mindset out of which a system arises. she states that mindsets are the underlying sources of systems, and small shifts in our mindsets can produce big systemic changes. thus, mindset is an individual characteristic that offers great potential at creating change at both individual and collective levels. being able to co-discover how mindsets manifest themselves, while being open and able to shift them, is the essence of creating profound personal and whole-system change (brown, 2005; hochachka, 2005; scharmer, 2009). although mindset has been studied by numerous scholars across multiple disciplines (e.g,. mcewen & schmidt, 2007; meadows, 1999; schein, 2015), dweck’s fgm theory has received the most attention within various sub-disciplines of psychology. dweck’s mindset research specifically focuses on how beliefs around the nature of one’s intelligence impacts a person’s ability to learn, accomplish their goals, and reach their potential (dweck, 2006). by limiting the theory’s focus to beliefs on intelligence and learning, it has enabled numerous studies on the relationship between mindset and accomplishment. however, this limited focus generally neglects the broader contextual implications of mindset. the major implication of this limited focus is that it overly encourages people to think about what they do (fixed mindset) and how they do it (growth mindset), rather than the broader question of why they do something. this leads to a tendency for individuals to repeat the patterns of the past, rather than bringing about what could be different and meaningful in the world. in effect, dweck’s framework has isolated learning and accomplishment from the broader context of leadership and purpose. given that today’s modern pursuit of success and growth is believed to be one of the main reasons for the global challenges we are facing in the world today the benefit mindset buchanan & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 (capra & luisi, 2014), any framework that promotes learning and accomplishment without context is arguably a risky endeavor. by not specifically considering the larger socioenvironmental context, the fgm framework runs the risk of creating unintended consequences for our common future. from a societal perspective, rather than promoting “learning for learning’s sake” and “accomplishment for accomplishment’s sake,” it is preferable to have a mindset framework that encourages people to think about why they do what they do, and how they can make valuable contributions to the collective good. this is not to say that learning and the pursuit of accomplishment should not be encouraged. the human drive to learn, achieve and realize our visions is one of the most powerful tools we have for creating the future (e.g., ryan & deci, 2000). however, if we want to create the best future possibility for all of humanity, then such motivations should be situated within a purposeful and collective context (clifton, 2015; cooperrider & whitney, 2005). 3. moving beyond the fgm over the past few decades, three areas of research and application have emerged that are enriching what it means to reach one’s potential, and more explicitly positioning an individual’s development and contributions within a purposeful and collective context. these are the being well movement, the doing good movement, and the leadership maturity framework. 3.1 the being well movement under the umbrella of positive psychology, there is growing interest in what could be called the being well movement. the field seeks to explore what is right with people, to identify activities and interventions that build a personal sense of wellbeing, and to gain a more scientifically rigorous picture of what constitutes the optimal functioning of individuals, groups, and institutions (boniwell, 2012; seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). core to this perspective is understanding the psychological traits that empower people to operate at the peak of their potential, such as discovering their strengths (e.g., park, peterson, & seligman, 2004), experiencing and sharing positive emotions (e.g., fredrickson, 2004), participating in satisfying relationships (e.g., gottman & silver, 2015), being psychologically engaged and interested in life tasks (e.g., csikszentmihalyi, 1990), and having a sense of meaning and purpose in life (e.g., steger et al, 2008). whereas early scholarship focused primarily on hedonic wellbeing (i.e., feeling good, with a focus on emotion), the past decade has increasingly seen a shift toward more sophisticated models of wellbeing (e.g., huppert & so, 2013; ryff & singer, 1998; seligman, 2012). notably, although much of the focus has been on individual subjective wellbeing, there is a growing call to turn to more collective and whole system conceptualizations (e.g., boston consulting group, 2015; ki-moon, 2012). studies are increasingly considering wellbeing in the workplace (e.g., cameron & dutton, 2003), in schools (e.g., oades, robinson, & green, 2011; waters & white, 2015), and in communities (e.g., cooperrider & fry, 2012; seligman, 2013). one of the goals of this movement is to see a greater proportion of the world’s population flourishing (e.g., seligman, 2012). the pursuit of this goal is leading to the realization that human flourishing is best thought of, not as an individual activity, but rather, as something we must do together (e.g., ki-moon, 2012). this goal must be approached on both an individual and a collective level if we want to live in a flourishing global society. as a result, this being well movement is fundamentally enriching our appreciation of what it means to reach our potential beyond learning and achievement, and it is helping populations widen their circle of compassion to encompass our collective ability to flourish. the benefit mindset buchanan & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 3.2 the doing good movement what if the aim of every person, every organization, and every act of development was to be a force for good? in what is being called the doing good movement (hawken, 2007), companies, communities, policies, and several areas of study are doing just that. international groups such as b-corporation (honeyman, 2014) and conscious capitalism (mackey & sisodia, 2014) have been helping organizations all over the world return shareholder value and purposefully benefit the common good (felbe, 2015; sisodia, sheth, & wolfe, 2014). practices such as social labs (hassan, 2014) and collective impact (kania & kramer, 2011) are helping communities facilitate large-scale social change and improvements. at the highest level, policies and measures like the global goals (www.globalgoals.org) have been developed to guide everyone towards a sustainable future. at the heart of this doing good movement are people leading with purpose (hurst, 2014), people who share a deep motivation to be of value to the systems to which they belong (edwards, 2015; brown, 2011). these leaders believe in making generative contributions to society, the environment, and the economy – thinking about me and we (hollender, 2015; scharmer & kaufer, 2013). what is becoming clear to the leaders of this movement is that it is not enough to address doing good through externally focused initiatives alone. in order to change the world externally, we need to be also willing to change ourselves internally by shifting our mindsets (e.g., bohm & edwards, 1991; reed, 2007; scharmer, 2009). in particular, it has been suggested that we need to cultivate a willingness to work collectively, learning how to access a deeper level of our humanity (heifetz, grashow & linsky, 2009; scharmer & kaufer, 2013), from being learners and achievers who are focused on doing things better to being leaders and contributors who are focused on doing better things. in summary, this doing good movement aspires to provide people with a richer appreciation of what it means to be of value – to themselves, to others, to nature and to the future. 3.3 the leadership maturity framework a third area that is enriching what it means to reach one’s potential, and positions an individual’s development within a collective context, is the human development literature. building on ego development theory (loevinger, 2014), the leadership maturity framework (lmf; cookgreuter, 2013) describes different ways that adults make meaning at different levels of developmental maturity (see table 1 below). as a person matures, their meaning-making approach, their mindset, and their action logic becomes more comprehensive and effective in dealing with the complexities of life (rooke & torbert, 2005). the fixed and growth mindsets can generally be seen to parallel the expert and achiever levels of leadership maturity, respectively. achievers have typically been found to only be able to work within the systems to which they belong and do not question the system itself. however, the framework identifies higher levels of meaning-making maturity; this includes the individualist and the strategist. the theory suggests that it is only when people mature to an individualist level of leadership maturity that they can regularly maintain ecosystem awareness and can lead the systems they are a part of, rather than just learn and achieve within the system. thus, individualists have a significant advantage for questioning why they do what they do, challenging their underlying assumptions, and finding purpose beyond the accomplishment of goals. making the shift from achiever to individualist thus represents the beginning of a shift from being a learner and an achiever within a system to becoming a leader for the system. the benefit mindset buchanan & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 table 1. leadership maturity framework: expert to strategist levels of leadership maturity maturity % key characteristics strategist 4%  embraces the tenets of an ecosystem worldview  develops lifetime purpose  committed to creating ecosystem benefit  generates organizational and personal transformations individualist 10%  able to shift from ego to ecosystem awareness  looks at the status quo through multiple perspectives  able to query their assumptions, values and beliefs  before solving problems, figures out what the problem is achiever 30%  goal and ideal oriented  continues to grow and develop themselves  often questions the “shoulds” in professional contexts  independent, entrepreneurial and self-reliant expert 38%  interested in being successful  ruled by logic and expertise  has a strong sense of what “should” and “ought” to be  likes to perfect their craft note: levels are organized hierarchically, with greater maturity at the top level (strategist) versus bottom (expert). percentages of sample population by rooke & torbert, (2005). characteristics noted by cookgreuter, (2013). this table is only a partial reproduction of the lmf. for the complete table, refer to cookgreuter and rooke & torbert. the potential for learning and leadership increases again once people shift to the strategist level of maturity. strategists are able to hold a world-centric perspective. they tend to focus on developing a lifetime purpose, have been shown to be highly effective at leading organizational and societal transformations (brown, 2011), and generally commit to making a meaningful difference for all of their stakeholders. as a whole, the lmf highlights that reaching a world-centric perspective is the result of internal growth and transcendence (esbjörn-hargens, 2009), and that there are definable and testable mindsets that are consistent with the fgm as well as the emerging being well and doing good movements. 4. the benefit mindset to reflect this emerging mindset paradigm, we propose an extension to the fgm framework: the benefit mindset (figure 1 below). the benefit mindset framework highlights some of the important distinctions we have noted: between learning and leadership, and between achievement and contribution. the definition specifically includes the term “everyday” because of the ever-present puppet master effect our mindsets have on the lives we lead, the actions we take, and the future possibilities of the world we live in. as a practical example, figure 2 below provides a case study of an everyday leader. the benefit mindset buchanan & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 figure 1. comparing the fixed, growth and benefit mindsets figure 2. marva collins: an everyday leader case study (adapted from roberts, 2015) this proposed evolution is not to suggest that concepts such as the fgm are less important. on the contrary, learning how to grow, achieve and differentiate ourselves through deliberate practice is integral to every person’s development. the benefit mindset simply positions human development and effort within a collective and purposeful context. by explicitly extending the fgm framework in this way, we provide a richer definition of what it means to learn and lead – to achieve and collectively contribute. from this perspective, the key question these everyday leaders ask themselves is not how they can flourish in isolation, but rather, how we can all come together and become partners in each other’s flourishing. they recognize that our ability to flourish is deeply interrelated with the communities and ecosystems to which we belong. marva collins is an american teacher who was raised with the “expectation to be excellent.” however, in the 1970s, she worked in a school system where the inadequacies associated with african-american education appalled her. marva lived at a time when students were labelled as “unteachable” or as having impossible-to-overcome learning disabilities if they did not fit into the normal education system. whereas most teachers tried to get the most out of this existing system, collin’s questioned the purpose of the system itself. she decided to put her values in action, cashed in her $5,000 pension, and started a new school for any child who’d been failed by the school system. the school was especially for those diagnosed with impossible-to-overcome learning disabilities. facing tough odds, she learned to embody her value of “believing in the children” and famously transformed the lives of thousands of underprivileged students. after the first year, every student in her class tested five grade levels higher. collins not only taught the unteachable, she inspired a whole new generation of teachers. in 1980, ms. collins was recognised for her contributions, being asked to become the secretary of education in the u.s. government. the benefit mindset buchanan & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 finally, there is an interesting dynamic that can be seen here that is worth discussing. although studies and applications across the being well and doing good movements have occurred in different domains, we suggest that the two are mutually supportive. the more well you are, the greater your capacity for doing good. and the more good you do, the greater your capacity for being well. being well and doing good are quite likely interconnected enablers of each other. the existence of such a virtuous relationship is supported by numerous findings, including theories of resilience (reivich & shatté, 2002), self-determination theory (ryan & deci, 2000) the benefits of altruism (post, 2005; ricard, 2015), and post-ecstatic growth theory (roepke, 2013). 5. implications the great value we see in this extension of the fgm is in how it can help people think about the interwoven nature of human and ecological flourishing. the benefit mindset is a powerful tool for talking about the role that mindset plays in purposefully creating the future. it is something anyone can do, regardless of position or status, to make a meaningful difference. additionally, this extension to the fgm has implications across multiple fields, most notably education, business and psychology, which we offer as a few examples, but encourage readers to consider specific applications to their own respective domains. 5.1 education many education systems globally are over-emphasizing academic performance, and often neglect the potential of internal development (e.g., palmer, zajonc, & scribner, 2010). the benefit mindset framework provides students with a richer perspective of human potential and internal development. it can help students integrate learning and leadership, achievement and contribution at an early age. it also could have significant impacts in shifting students’ awareness to include me and we, and in empowering youth to become purposeful future makers. 5.2 business it has been suggested that the future belongs to businesses with purpose (honeyman, 2014; hurst, 2014). developing everyday leaders with a benefit mindset could be one of the best ways to truly embed purpose and everyday leadership into business operations. a growing number of people only want to work for purpose-driven organizations (bailey, 2015), and the benefit mindset offers strategic value for attracting and supporting the development of people in using business as a force for good and in promoting cultures of human flourishing. 5.3 psychology much of psychology focuses on what is within the person or on how aspects of the social context influence a person’s behavior. the benefit mindset challenges psychologists to develop more sophisticated contextual perspectives of wellbeing, leadership, and human potential. it also challenges researchers to explore psychological pathways for shifting mindsets beyond growth. while there is clarity on how to shift from a fixed to growth mindset, how do we help individuals and organizations cultivate a benefit mindset? 6. further work this paper is just the beginning of a broader conversation on the importance of mindset in shaping a future of greater possibility, and further research is needed to develop the thesis presented in this paper. the benefit mindset buchanan & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 we offer a challenge to the social sciences to explore the potential of the benefit mindset. research questions could include: how does contribution impact individual wellbeing and promote collective flourishing? how does mindset empower people to widen their circle of compassion? what are the enablers and barriers to developing a benefit mindset? how might a school, business or sustainability project benefit from purpose-driven mindset development? what are the broader economic, societal, and ecological implications of a culture of contribution and everyday leadership? does the level of application (e.g., individual, organizational, societal) influence outcomes? how do we best measure and quantify the scale and quality of benefit created? while “being well” and “doing good” may sound reasonable, the words “well” and “good” involve a value judgment. how do we decide what “well” and “good” are? if it is beneficial to humanity, then people ought to be a part of defining what that well and good are. this level of moral and ethical complexity creates the need for dialogue between an increasing diversity of stakeholders. in addition, the definition of “benefit” may evolve over time and across cultures, depending upon the morals and values of the people themselves. further work around cultural interpretations and definitions of the benefit mindset is needed. 7. conclusion while we can aspire to create a future of greater possibility, there is a case to be made that it is only going to be systemically possible if we also consider the ever-present influence of mindset. the benefit mindset is presented as a complementary evolution of dweck’s fixed and growth mindsets, highlighting the important distinctions between learning and leadership, and between achievement and contribution. we argue that creating cultures of the benefit mindset could be one of the best points of leverage we have for simultaneously bringing out the best in people, organizations, and the planet as a whole. we hope that by defining this mindset paradigm, it will improve our collective understanding and provide psychological visibility of how our everyday leaders are creating profound personal and whole systems change. authors ashley buchanan cohere ash.buchanan@cohere.com.au margaret l. kern the university of melbourne peggy.kern@unimelb.edu.au publishing timeline received 9 june 2016 accepted 23 november 2016 published 9 june 2017 references bailey, m. 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(2015). conceptualising and measuring mental fitness: a delphi study. international journal of wellbeing, 5(1), 53-73. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i1.4 paula robinson phd university of wollongong paula@positivepsyhologyinstitute.com.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 article conceptualising and measuring mental fitness: a delphi study paula robinson · lindsay g. oades · peter caputi abstract: despite the increased use of the term mental fitness in the popular and psychological literature, there is little consensus in relation to theory, definition and measurement. the concept of mental fitness could be used to parsimoniously engage, educate and promote proactive, positive mental health activities to the wider community, without stigma and within a language that is easily understood. this delphi study engaged an international expert panel (n = 25) to evaluate a definition and four guiding principles of mental fitness. expert consensus was achieved supporting the definition and four guiding principles with suggested modifications. the final definition of mental fitness is “the modifiable capacity to utilise resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving”. the final four guiding principles are (1) fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness; (b) mental fitness could be understood by the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness; (c) mental fitness is measurable; and (d) mental fitness can be improved, in a similar way to physical fitness. the panel also offered valuable recommendations for future research and practice. keywords: fitness, mental fitness, physical fitness, positive mental health 1. introduction mental fitness is not a new concept in the psychological literature. mccarthy (1964) suggested the concept was a solution to the following plea written by the distinguished behavioural scientist and public health expert dr andie knutson (1963): “positive mental health has been left on the doorstep of the public and professional community as a neglected and starving stepchild...it would be useful to have some new term to replace positive mental health…that retains the good will and enthusiastic participation of members of the mental health profession and their medical, health and welfare colleagues, and yet effectively elicits the involvement of members of the social sciences” (pp. 303-304). mccarthy (1964) suggested the concept of mental fitness to express knutson’s positive mental health concept. she asked the committee on mental health research programs of the apa “to try it on for size and see how well it fits” (p. 201). further, mccarthy suggested utilising the term mental fitness for president kennedy’s population based fitness program by combining mental and physical fitness initiatives i.e., a total fitness solution. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 1.1 why mental fitness? the positive psychology literature (e.g., seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000; seligman, 2008) supports knutson’s proposition and confirms that a scientific understanding of positive mental health and effective interventions are important for building thriving individuals and communities. whilst seligman (2002) explains that the general stance of positive psychology is prevention, he confirms there is very little focus on how to educate, promote and engage the wider community in proactive positive mental health activities. keyes (2007) whilst agreeing with the need to prevent illness, also argues for a need to promote positive mental health, and uses the term flourishing. keyes suggests there are economic and social advantages for a paradigm shift towards mental health promotion to work in conjunction with mental illness prevention. he argues that if most government strategies for mental health continue to focus on diagnosed mental illness alone, the best that can be hoped for is a reduction in the level of diagnosed mental illness. moreover, this approach does not assure a mentally healthy population, suggesting that mental health is a separate continuum whereby ‘a languishing individual’ can function at levels similar to someone with a major depressive episode i.e., diagnosed as neither mentally ill nor mentally healthy. this view is consistent with the world health organisation’s (who) evidence paper on mental health promotion (see naidoo & wills, 2000) which states that health can mean the absence of disease or disability but, just as often, may refer to a state of fitness or to a reservoir of personal resources that can be called upon when needed. further, who suggest that health promotion supports personal and social development and emphasises the importance of positive mental health education and practices for their own sake as well as for prevention and treatment. the challenge is how to further engage and motivate the wider community to not only become proactive in their own positive mental health strategies and activities, but to sustain them. it is suggested here that a more familiar framework underpinned by research and delivered via an easy to understand language that is not stigmatised is needed. notwithstanding numerous anti-stigma campaigns in western nations, there remains conceptual confusion and stigma surrounding many psychological concepts because the concepts suggest that there is something wrong with the person. for example, “mental health” is often used interchangeably with “mental illness”. this is not the case with the term “physical health” and “physical illness”. the term “physical fitness goes further by being viewed as a process of achieving optimal physical health. so one solution to overcome some of the stigma would be to revisit mccarthy’s proposition to utilise the term mental fitness as a process of achieving optimal mental health. at a foundational level and as is the case in the development of physical fitness, achieving higher levels of mental fitness would require motivation. it is useful to employ well-developed and evidenced-based theories to support such an endeavour. research from self-determination theory suggests that the innate human needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness facilitate higher levels of motivation and provide the basic components for human growth and development. conversely, if these needs are thwarted an unsuccessful response is probable (see deci & ryan, 1985, 2000; sheldon, 2002; baard, deci & ryan, 2004). therefore, consideration of these basic psychological needs would be important to any mental fitness model and subsequent interventions. the concept of mental fitness could also be incorporated as a component of health-related or total fitness. the american college of sports medicine (acsm, 2000) support the definition of ‘health-related fitness’ developed by pate (1988) who defines fitness as the demonstration of capacities that help prevent disease and promote health. conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 the conceptualisation of mental fitness must be a coherent combination of theory, research and practice and utilising the physical fitness analogy would have relevance to the wider community. to commence the process, a review by robinson, oades and caputi (2014) suggests there is evidence that the term mental fitness is being increasingly utilised to engage and promote positive mental health strategies and practices. in summary, the term fitness was reviewed by charting the historical, popular and psychological literature. to understand how prevalent the term fitness is for the english speaking, general population of the 21st century, the popular search was performed on google, revealing a large number of search engine results depending on the term searched; fitness 461 million results, physical fitness 86 million, mental fitness over 17 million and physical/mental fitness together revealed more than 6 million results. an analysis examined the first 50 pages for each group and the content was allocated to a category. this allocation to a category was most often made using the information available on the google search page and also by viewing the source website to determine the exact nature of the site. the primary categories were then calculated by frequency; the first category contained pages that appeared to the researchers to be information reflecting a reputable genre e.g. health and psychological services; the second category contained less reliable sources, e.g. individuals without qualifications, private blogs, social media, etc.; the third category was specifically advertising courses and programs from multiple sources; the fourth category contained either government or non-government organisations; and finally there was a media category containing pages where the terms appeared in published material, e.g. magazines. the psychological literature was analysed via a psycinfo search extending from 1879 to 2013 which revealed a total of 60 results, consisting of peer-reviewed journals and books. despite the relatively small number of results from the psychological literature, there were a number of related and frequent themes that emerged from the analysis which were congruent with the historical and popular searches, for example, (a) mental and physical health and fitness often appear together and involve intentional, learned, skills that are changeable via regular exercises to practise; (b) evolutionary theory, the processes of adaptation and natural selection; (c) mental fitness has cognitive, affective and behavioural components; (d) mental fitness can be domainspecific, that is, work, home, and social; (e) it is a process with wellbeing outcomes; (f) mental fitness has capacity to use psychological resources, e.g. resilience; (g) mental fitness may also assist in the reduction of some mental illnesses, e.g. anxiety, anger and depression; (h) there are treatment and prevention components; (i) there are numerous mental fitness tests and indicators but they vary in explanation and content. overall, the results suggest that ‘mental fitness’ is a widely used term, particularly in the popular literature, and is being utilised in much the same way as is the term ‘physical fitness’. all search results revealed similar language and ideas across the historical, popular and psychological literature. the meaning of the term mental fitness suggests it is a process towards functioning at optimal levels, and that it is holistic, goal-orientated, adaptive, intentional and developmental. individuals are active agents in the process of becoming mentally fit and have the ability or capacity to adapt and respond to enable them to move towards a successful fit between themselves and their environment. further, mental fitness (like physical fitness) is viewed as important to mental health and can be learned; indeed the primary focus in the popular and psychological literature is exercise and training. however, central findings in the review is a lack of consistent theoretical and empirical foundations, that there is no consensus on a definition and there are no reliable and valid measurement instruments of mental fitness for scientific investigation or for practitioners to apply. conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 based on the above results, a preliminary definition and four guiding principles for the development of the concept of mental fitness were constructed for consideration and evaluation by an international panel of experts in the field of psychology and positive psychology using the delphi technique (see summary below): 2. the definition mental fitness is the changeable capacity to utilise resources and skills to psychologically adapt to environmental challenges or advantages to meet psychological needs. key terms within the definition of mental fitness were based on the literature review, which suggested mental fitness is changeable, captures capacity, utilises learned resources/skills, is adaptable, and relates to environmental challenges (or advantages) and requires motivation to participate in regular, intentional activities. it is important to note that the meaning of the term ‘adapt’ in the context of mental fitness is drawn from the encyclopaedia of positive psychology (lopez, 2009) which states “adaptability is the capacity to adjust oneself readily to fit changed circumstances”. in summary, the definition suggests that a mentally fit person has a reserve of psychological resources and skills that can be readily utilised to increase the probability of a successful response to a negative stressor or an opportunity. further, it suggests that a mentally fit person would be expected to have high self-awareness and self-regulation to elicit a psychologically flexible response (e.g., kashdan & rottenberg, 2010). 2.1 principle 1 fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness. principle 1 is based on the assumption that the term physical health is understood by individuals and the wider community as absence of physical disease, without stigma. conversely, the term mental health is understood as absence of mental illness but is largely stigmatised. stigma is a crucial issue as noted by a comprehensive review of the literature led by cheverton (2009). the review supports the notion that the stigma attached to mental ill-health prevents most people from disclosing it. the review suggests that the longer people leave seeking help, the more significant their ultimate call on health and social services will be. thus the underlying assumption of principle 1 suggests that the term fitness is easily understood by the wider community and it is essentially a positive term that is not stigmatised. 2.2 principle 2 mental fitness could be understood by individuals, organisations, educational institutions and the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness. physical fitness is defined by corbin, pangrazi and franks (2000) as a set of attributes relating to the ability to perform physical activity that people have or achieve, and by microsoft encarta’s entry on physical fitness (2004) as a combination of qualities that enable us to be at our full potential in performing vigorous physical activities and involve (but are not limited to) strength, flexibility and endurance. the term mental fitness employs metaphor, transposing components from one context to another e.g., mental strength, flexibility and endurance. these terms would be useful for ease of explanation and application for mental health practitioners and the wider community. table 1 below shows a conceptual example of a resource index containing positive conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 mental health constructs proposed by robinson, oades and caputi, (2014), utilising the physical fitness framework. table 1: conceptual example of a mental fitness resource index strength self-efficacy positive affect ratio social support emotional management flexibility mindfulness acceptance psychological flexibility endurance resilience meaning purpose hope in summary, principle 2 suggests that physical fitness is already understood in the wider community as a strategy for illness prevention and is associated with optimal physical functioning. for example, cardiac fitness achieved through exercise assists in lowering heart attacks and mortality rates (e.g., blair et al., 1996). therefore, the term mental fitness would be a more positive concept to communicate mental health initiatives to individuals, schools, organisations and the community because it uses an established language and framework that is positive, parsimonious, preventative, proactive and easily understood. moreover, it is possible to articulate mental fitness activities and practices aligned to physical fitness to create a total fitness solution physical and mental being of equal importance for wellbeing and optimal functioning. 2.3 principle 3 mental fitness is measurable principle 3 suggests that the operationalising of a mental fitness model would first require the building of a resource index. components of a resource index would consist of evidence-based psychological variables that are developmental, changeable and understood as being a part of a proactive and preventative approach to positive mental health. there are a number of psychological theories, measures and interventions that have converging characteristics of individuals who are considered to be functioning well. for example, warner and vroman (2011) found that specific behaviours predict improvements in wellbeing. an evidence-based resource index would also assist in synthesising key theories, research and activities within the psychological literature relating to positive mental health that remain largely disconnected. 2.4 principle 4 mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness. principle 4 suggests that mental fitness can be learned via developmental activities, exercises and regular practice to ‘fit’ assessed needs. evidence in positive psychology and the neural plasticity literature suggests the brain has the ability to change and adapt as a result of experience and learning new behaviours throughout life. neuroscientist davidson (2005) found via functional conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) analysis that individuals could regulate their emotions if they were well practiced (also see meta-analyses of greenwood & parasuraman, 2010; sin and lyubormirsky, 2009). a meta-analysis by bolier et al. (2013) also found that positive psychology intervention activities increase both subjective and psychological wellbeing outcomes. diener and biswas-diener (2008), in their discussions on psychological wealth, include engaging activities as part of the process of improving wellbeing. following the conceptual review and preliminary formulation of a definition and four guiding principles, the next step to develop the concept and measurement of mental fitness is to have the definition and principles evaluated by a global panel of experts utilising the delphi technique. 3. method 3.1 research design the delphi method is useful for evaluating definitions, new concepts and for gathering of knowledge and opinions (adler & ziglio, 1996; buccini, jones, iverson & caputi, 2009; mullen & gold, 1988). for example, it has been used to identify problems (yell, deno, marston, 1992), investigate theoretical and practical issues (fish & piercy, 1987), predict trends (cramer, 1991), identify components of mental disorders (morrison & barratt, 2010) and investigate areas that have not been articulated clearly or explored widely (weatherman & swenson, 1974). the delphi process provides researchers with a systematic methodology to organise responses and ideas that can be developed further into theory, models and measurement (linstone & turoff, 1975; merriam, 1998). moreover, it provides an efficient and effective way to involve busy experts who may not be able to come together to interact with each other to investigate theoretical and practical issues and ultimately build consensus. typically, in a delphi study, a set of criteria is formulated to use when choosing an expert panel to ensure all members have expertise in the specific domain being investigated. martino (1972) recommends that the expert panel be made up of between 15 and hundreds of panellists. however, somers, baker and isbell (1984) suggest that small panels are more advantageous because small panels reduce the complexity of data analysis. panel opinions are gathered by conducting two or three rounds of communication and the group response on the final round is used to represent group consensus (grissom & cochran 1986). according to mcelreath (2001), key summary steps are necessary to conduct an effective delphi study. mcelreath’s steps were followed throughout this study. a guiding assumption of the delphi technique is that consensus of the expert panel’s opinion is a good predictor of future practices (weatherman & swenson, 1974). 3.2 procedure this study consisted of four phases as summarised in figure 1 below. 3.2.1 phase 1: participants lopez and rogers (2001) suggest two of five specific criteria be applied to select the expert panellists. to further ensure panel expertise, participants were chosen if they met three of the following five criteria: 1) author criteria panellist must have at least three primary or secondary author publications related to psychological growth and development; conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 2) presenter criteria panellist must have made two or more presentations at nationally or internationally respected conferences on topics relating to psychological growth and development; 3) academic criteria panellist must be an academic in the field of psychology and hold a doctoral degree; 4) practice criteria panellist must be a practicing psychologist registered for more than ten years and currently working with clients on a regular basis; 5) positive psychology criteria panellist must be specifically published in the sub-field of positive psychology or teaching it in an academic setting. each panellist was allocated a code to provide anonymity throughout the study. this also ensured a more objective evaluation of each other’s comments and ideas without attaching any one comment to a particular person. given many of the panellists have high profiles in their field of expertise, anonymity also controlled for any (conscious or unconscious) bias by other panellists based on knowledge of the authors or their work (see appendix 1 for a summary of expert panel criteria). figure 1: delphi study method summary flowchart 3.2.2 phase 2: round 1 request following completion of phase 1, round 1 request was distributed by email to all expert panellists. the requests contained a participant information sheet, steps in the study, an explanation of the delphi process, an abstract and specific questions (see example question in figure 2) relating to the initial definition and four guiding principles of mental fitness. whilst the development of the definition and principles were completed, round 1 deliberately gave minimal information about the development of the definition and the four principles to the phase 1: panel selection of criteria for delphi panel recruitment & send out requests. phase 2: round 1 request study emailed to panel including proposed definition and guiding principles. phase 3: round 1 results & round 2 request panel receive quantitative and qualitative results. panel is requested to agree, disagree, or provide a neutral response and comment for each response. phase 4: final consensus consensus results are formulated based on % of agreement/disagreement for the definition and each of the four guiding principles conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 expert panel. the reason for this approach was twofold: (a) given their expert knowledge, it was important to allow the panel to respond to questions without too much background information to influence or bias their initial responses; thus their responses were based on their own knowledge alone and not given to them by the researchers; (b) to ensure the panel focussed on the specifics of the questions only and not on the justification of how they were formed. the panel consisted of experts in psychology with expert knowledge based on strict criteria set in phase 1, therefore, an important goal of the study was to have panellists respond based on their own knowledge and experience. there were five major questions in the study. the following example illustrates the qualitative and quantitative components of each question: figure 2: example question the definition provided was “the changeable capacity to utilise resources and skills to psychologically adapt to environmental challenges or advantages to meet psychological needs”. generally, i agree/disagree with the definition of mental fitness disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 agree (neutral) below, please write any specific comments or ideas on the definition (in less than 100 words) question 1 asked panellists to rate their level of agreement to comment on the definition of mental fitness. panellists were also supplied with summary explanations for key terms within the definition and what these key terms might mean in relation to a mentally fit person (see appendix 2). for example, the summary explanation for the term: capacity a mentally fit person has a reserve of psychological resources and skills that could be readily deployed to improve the probability of an adaptive response to a negative stressor or a favourable circumstance or advantage. this part of the study gave the panellists the opportunity to comment on specific terms in the qualitative section and also allowed them to either agree or disagree on the overall definition in the quantitative section. questions 2 to 5 asked the panel to rate their agreement/disagreement and comment on each of the four guiding principles of mental fitness: principle 1: “fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness”. principle 2: “mental fitness could be understood by individuals, organizations, educational institutions and the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness”. principle 3: “mental fitness is measurable”. principle 4: “mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness”. conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 as in question 1, each principle had a brief summary explanation (see appendix 2). 3.2.3 phase 3: round 1 results to panel and round 2 request in round 2 a participant information sheet, an abstract, method and qualitative and quantitative response results from round 1 were forwarded to panellists via email. in this second round, panellists were asked to rate and comment on each other’s specific round 1 responses for the definition and each of the four guiding principles of mental fitness. as this was the first time the panel viewed each other’s responses, they were asked to agree or disagree with other panellists’ suggestions or ideas with no response being treated as neutral. panellists were also asked to note at the end of each question, any additional elaborations, suggestions or ideas based on the other panellists’ qualitative responses. 4. results 4.1 round 1 the final pool of twenty-five panellists was primarily drawn from australia, the united kingdom and the united states. other countries represented in the study included demark, canada and new zealand. fifteen panellists were males and ten were females. analysis shows that of the twenty-five respondents, 88% met author criterion, 88% met the presenter criterion, 80% met the academic criterion, 52% met practice criterion and 64% met the positive psychology criterion (see detail in appendix 1). 4.1.1 round 1 quantitative results all twenty-five expert panellists completed round 1. averages were calculated across all panellist response items on a 7-point likert scale. table 2 below shows, mean, standard deviation, mode and median for all five questions. results suggest a high level of agreement for the proposed definition and each of the four guiding principles of mental fitness. principle 4 shows the highest level of agreement and the lowest variability. table 2: descriptive statistics generally, i agree/disagree with … level of agreement the definition “mental fitness is the changeable capacity to utilise resources and skills to psychologically adapt to environmental challenges or advantages to meet psychological needs”. (m = 5.54, sd = 1.44), mo = 6, md = 6 principle 1 “fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness”. (m = 5.88, sd = 1.69), mo = 7, md = 6 principle 2 “mental fitness could be understood by individuals, organizations, educational institutions and the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness”. (m = 5.83, sd = 1.59), mo = 6, md = 6 principle 3 “mental fitness is measurable”. (m = 5.64, sd = 1.02), mo = 5, md = 6 conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 4.1.2 round 1 qualitative results members of the panel were asked to “write any specific comments or ideas on the definition and the 4 principles of mental fitness (in less than 100 words)”. the qualitative responses from all panellists were reviewed for inclusion in round 2. tables 3 to 7 show all responses that were included in round 2. examples of qualitative comments not included in round 2 were: 1) panel responses where they generally agreed without offering any suggestions or changes to the definition or principles, for example: a) “i think that this is an excellent definition. the five key terms elaborate on the concept very well. i also like the way that mental fitness may be compared with physical fitness in such a way that the lay person can easily relate to”. b) “yes, this is particularly appealing and the field of brain plasticity gives ample evidence that this is possible. it is also inherently attractive in the same way in which physical fitness is linked to health and well-being.” 2) panellists who generally disagreed but did not include any suggestions or changes, to the definition or principles, for example: a) “yes and no; can be learned if you have the right coach.” b) “no – i don’t think it is a term that is widely used.” in summary, the purpose of round 1 was to (a) quantitatively assess whether the expert panel agreed or disagreed with the definition and each of the four guiding principles of mental fitness and (b) to offer suggestions/ideas for improvement. quantitative results suggest a high level of agreement. ideas put forward by the panel were collated and the results evaluated by the expert panel in round 2. 4.2 phase 4 round 2 results: consensus for definition and four guiding principles twenty-two panellists responded to round 2 by the deadline set by the researchers. the task for round 2 was for the expert panel to respond to the qualitative suggestions/ideas proposed in round 1 (see summary responses in tables 3 to 7). the panel’s response range consisted of “yes i agree”, “no i disagree" and "neutral". blank responses indicating the respondents did not hold a strong view either way were not calculated in the results. for the purpose of this study, all responses were calculated and if less than 20% disagreed and more than 51% agreed, the definition or principle was changed according to the expert panel’s recommendation (buccini, et al., 2009). tables 3 to 7 summarise the expert panel’s feedback. summary of results from table 3 below show the expert panel recommended the following changes to the definition of mental fitness: (a) internal and external challenges are both viewed as important, therefore, the term challenges remains with the word environmental being removed; (b) some members questioned the use of the term changeable, implying that it is too general. whilst the term flexible was mentioned as an alternative, this is not appropriate in relation to capacity. the term capacity is utilised here to refer to the size of the resources and skills available, not the nature of the resource itself. therefore, the adjective flexible is added before the word adapt; (c) further, as the panel considered the term changeable as not being clear, this has also been considered. for this reason, the word modifiable has been chosen to replace the word changeable. whilst the two terms are similar, modifiable is more specific than is changeable, by implying limits principle 4 “mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness”. (m = 6.54, sd = 0.72), mo = 6, md = 6. conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 to the change, and that the change is primarily intentional, i.e., it can increase or decrease, it can be trained, in a similar manner to physical fitness; and (d) replacing psychological needs with the term thriving. thus the revised definition is as follows: “mental fitness is the modifiable capacity to utilise resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving”. table 3: qualitative responses for definition the definition: “mental fitness is the changeable capacity to utilise resources and skills to psychologically adapt to environmental challenges or advantages to meet psychological needs”. “changeable” or perhaps “flexible” capacity? “not clear what you mean by ‘changeable’ capacity. is this where the flexibility and ability to respond with an appropriately adaptive response is implied?” “stressors/challenges are not always external but can often involve internal dialogue and selfperceptions…personal (and interpersonal) stressors/factors seem relevant and deserve specific reference.” “the term ‘environmental’ to me implies that challenges or advantages can only be external to the individual. would a lack of confidence in being able to do well in a job interview, for example, not be recognised as some sort of challenge for an individual to overcome?” “mental fitness meets more than just psych needs, so perhaps this part is rather limiting….this is a sort of baseline achievement, but actually that mental fitness could help us go a lot beyond this and into the domain of true mental flourishing.” “meeting needs may imply survival, while flourishing or thriving refers to enjoying full potential… it may not capture the notion of flourishing or thriving.” summary of results from table 4 below shows principle 1 remained unchanged with the panel suggesting it could be (a) measured on a continuum and (b) that mental fitness is a process with mental health and wellbeing as outcomes. table 4: qualitative responses for principle 1 principle 1: “fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness”. “yes, mental fitness should be asset based, in other words that a person possesses certain desirable qualities rather than does not possess certain undesirable qualities.” “recently, mental health is also defined in terms of the presence of psychological well-being. therefore, to further clarify the distinction between mental fitness and mental health, the former should be focusing on the process while the latter should focus on the outcome. in other words, mental fitness will imply the ability to achieve wellbeing and prevent or reduce mental illness.” “fitness is also understood in a biological sense as in “survival of the fittest”, and the fitness of a species for a particular environment. hans selye’s original research on stress spoke of fitness as a determinant of the stress response.” “there is overwhelming empirical and theoretical reasons to believe that almost all well-being and human functioning is on a continuum (e.g. from anxiety to calmness). focussing on only a positive or negative pole is one of the greatest weaknesses of psychology today. in the present case, there will be a continuum from low to high level of fitness, and only focusing on the positive poll is neither scientifically justifiable or logical.” “i really like the term fitness and yes it does get away from negative connotations. it can be measured on a continuum as you can have different levels of fitness and gives the opportunity for some development and growth.” conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 “psychological fitness should be understood as the presence of positive qualities, not the absence of negatives.” summary of results from table 5 below for principle 2 shows the panel recommended organisational references be deleted but supported using the concepts of physical and mental fitness (total fitness) together to convey meaning to the wider community. principle 2 was revised as follows: “mental fitness could be understood by the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness”. table 5: qualitative responses for principle 2 principle 2: “mental fitness could be understood by individuals, organizations, educational institutions and the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness”. “not just illness prevention, but also wellness promotion.” “my one concern would be using it in an organisational setting. it is not a term that i think managers would be able to use about an individual due to the points that i raised regarding possible connotations. i am not sure who in an organisation would be able to use this term in an organisational context without there being a potential danger of legality over the term. in an organisational context, i know words such as ‘tough mindedness’ have started to be accepted but i would be concerned about passing judgement or discussing the mental fitness of employees.” “although there are differences between physical and mental fitness i think that there are enough similarities to quickly and easily convey the meaning of the term to the broader community. hopefully this will also serve to strengthen the connection between mind and body, as the scientific separation of the two really makes very little practical sense.” “plenty of evidence from the sports and endurance literature i’m sure that links physical and mental toughness.” “i reiterate my comments above for principle 1. it gives scope for growth, change and is developmental by nature; not fixed at any point in time.” “total fitness could also include the concepts of stability (being calm, centred and confident) as well as speed (improvising and intuitive).” “perhaps the general community would think that mental fitness had something to do with intelligence or being smart at school. it would be important to stress that mental fitness would apply to any age, just not young who were also physically fit and it may be hard to separate the two images of physical and mental fitness. could an older person be physically challenged but still mentally well or could a younger person be very fit but depressed?” summary of results from table 6 below for principle 3 suggest it remains unchanged but with the panel recommending: 1) components of strength, flexibility and endurance need a specific definition; 2) components of strength, flexibility and endurance will need rigorous scientific investigation; 3) self-report is viewed as limiting and specific components of mental fitness may be difficult to measure. the panel suggested consideration of an objective measure. 4) a further recommendation is to investigate the relationship of strengths and mental fitness. conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 table 6: qualitative responses for principle 3 principle 3: “mental fitness is measurable”. “i like the fact that an individual who practices most of the key principle psychology interventions may develop mental fitness as defined here. for example, individuals who have identified their strengths and use them in the service of something bigger than themselves may develop strength (self-efficacy), flexibility (acceptance), and endurance (meaning).” “generally agree with this, although i think there are a number of ways you could cut this data. would also be interested to see where strengths use specifically fits into this construct, as something that is associated with a wide range of positive correlates.” “it would be helpful to have a definition of the terms to aid understanding. it might also make more sense to indicate if a component builds strength, flexibility or endurance, as i imagine that there is cross over between them.” “i think it would be useful to operationalize exactly what you mean by strength, flexibility, and endurance.” “would need a bit more information about how ‘strength’, ‘flexibility’ and ‘endurance’ are defined within mental fitness; not entirely sure that the resource index components’ are specific to the three domains.” “at some point you will need to explain why the different descriptors have been put into these categories.” “i agree that in principle it is measurable, but care needs to be taken with whether it is measurable through self-report – mindfulness has been, though this has been widely criticised and the findings are not comparable with objective measures. similarly, this is a major problem with the via – what does self-reported sense of humour actually mean? particularly when we know that people have enhancement biases where most people think that they are better than average (see sedikides’ work in this area).” “clearly some aspects of mental fitness are easy to measure. but like in physical fitness there are dimensions which are difficult to measure, dimensions like mindfulness, meaning or purpose seem to me very difficult to measure.” summary results for table 7 below for principle 4 suggest it remains unchanged but with the panel recommending: 1) caution when drawing parallels that are too close to physical fitness, as they may differ across variables; 2) the need to study individual differences; 3) activities could be developed to work simultaneously on mental and physical fitness; 4) design research to show how mental fitness differs from other interventions; 5) motivation to improve may be less given there is no clinical diagnosis; 6) the development of a set of targeted activities based on proper assessment. conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 table 7: qualitative responses for principle 4 principle 4: “mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness”. “i totally subscribe to this view that mental fitness can be learned and developed. see for example fred luthan’s work on psychological capital which seems to follow a similar principle. i would be cautious about drawing the parallels too closely with physical fitness, since there may come a point where the parallel breaks down and ultimately constrains you in terms of your thinking and also how you present mental fitness to a wider audience. just something to be aware of.” “as an example, reading todd kashdan’s book on curiosity has made me more curious, which has made me more mentally fit i would argue so yes.” “i think that you can definitely improve mental fitness through training and exposure to mental exercises. i have observed people improve specific aspects of mental fitness such as: strengths, positivity and hope. the only piece i wonder is if everyone can increase mental fitness, like physical fitness there maybe individual differences between people. there might also be a small percentage of people who are unable to increase their mental fitness.” “yes learned (taught) and caught from experiences including failure – so that personal construing is possible. i feel that growth mindset research (dweck) is key to understanding how this process can be delivered, largely from reflection. “nice concept but for me it conjures up the notion that physical and mental health are dichotomous concepts. i think the real skill would be to develop activities that simultaneously work on mental and physical fitness. the two systems are interdependent. after i return from a good workout at the gym, i think more clearly, rationally and positively. i am sure some psychological interventions that work on self-appreciation and gratitude (e.g. for good health and life) would encourage more physically and healthy lifestyles.” “strength, flexibility and endurance seem to be useful conceptual categories for communicating the meaning of mental fitness, but i am unsure about their utility beyond that. it would be helpful to have definitions of these terms to better understand how they could be targeted.” “yes, this is particularly appealing and the field of brain plasticity gives ample evidence that this is possible. it is also inherently attractive in the same way in which physical fitness is linked to health and well-being.” “mental fitness interventions will target the components of strength, flexibility, and endurance. the theoretical underpinnings of any interventions specific to the components of ‘mental fitness’ will have to be compared to a cognitive behavioural intervention, compared to a self-determination theory intervention, compared to an emotional intelligence theory (compared to placebo/control). if you are very specific with the language to describe the construct, construct factors, measurement, and the potential theoretical underpinning for applied interventions, then construct validation will also be systematic.” “if clinical psychologists did not believe that a trained clinician could not increase a person’s well-being (from below normal to normal), then one wonders what their mission is. similarly, positive psychology interventions should effectively increase a person’s well-being (from normal, or just below normal, to above normal). however one has to acknowledge that average motivation to change may be less in the latter situation, as immediate suffering is not a driver.” “i’m not sure about the degree to which mental fitness is learned and increased in the same way that physical fitness is achieved. i would predict a more complex set of precursors in terms of prior emotional/psychological learning that may interact with the ‘mental fitness program’ and thus need to be ‘targeted’. however, i endorse the idea of having a set of targeted activities and exercises based on proper assessment that would lead to increased levels of mental fitness. my questions would be around such things as ‘is there a neat set of exercises to take a person from self-doubt to self-belief’. will the parallels of ‘physical and mental fitness’ hold up across some variables, and not so well with others?” 5. discussion the reason for undertaking this delphi study was to address the conceptual confusion and to commence the process of developing the concept and subsequent measurement of mental fitness. this study proposed an initial definition and four guiding principles drawn from a conceptual review and current theory. the results suggest acceptable levels of consensus were reached by the international expert panel for the definition and four guiding principles of mental fitness. conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 quantitative results suggest the panel generally agreed with the definition and each of the four guiding principles. qualitative results also suggest general agreement, with minor modifications and further provided constructive recommendations based on the level of agreement set by the researchers. specifically, the definition of mental fitness was updated to be “the modifiable capacity to utilise resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving”. principles 1, 3 and 4 remained unchanged. the panel recommended principle 2 be modified to “mental fitness could be understood by the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness”. numerous useful suggestions and insights were put forward by the panel as summarised in the results section. for example, the panel suggested that mental fitness could be viewed as a process whilst mental health and wellbeing could be viewed as an outcome thus inferring that scientifically evaluated mental fitness practices and activities could achieve improved levels of wellbeing and assist in preventing or reducing mental illness. from a biological perspective, the term ‘survival of the fittest’ was noted in relation to hans selye’s research on stress and fitness as a determinant of the stress response. these suggestions (and others detailed in tables 3 7) concur with the conceptual review previously conducted. the components of self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness) were viewed by the panel as an important component of wellbeing but limiting, the panel suggested the concepts of thriving and flourishing were more important within the definition. overall, the results of this delphi study suggest that the concept and principles of mental fitness were understood and generally accepted by the panel as an endeavour worthy of scientific exploration. further, the concept of mental fitness was viewed as a positive and effective strategy that can assist in the promotion of mental health activities to improve levels of health and wellbeing within the wider community. 6. limitations the results presented in this study do not mask the complex nature of defining, measuring and improving mental fitness. the process is both a creative and scientific undertaking. this delphi study has provided valuable feedback but was based on only two rounds: the study may have benefited from a third round designed to give the panel an opportunity to collaborate further. whilst the delphi method provides a systematic approach, in-depth discussion and final input is limited by the predetermined cut-offs. another limitation is that the sub-components of strength, flexibility and endurance were not fully defined and each will require further investigation. 6.1 future directions and implications the expert panel made numerous constructive recommendations for future research and practice. for example, members of the panel suggested mental fitness could be measured on a continuum and emphasised the need to explore the nature of individual differences and levels of motivation in the absence of a clinical diagnosis. by consensus, the panel also suggested that strengths could be a specific area of research to ascertain their relationship to mental fitness. panellists also suggested the need for research designed to compare differences with other positive mental health interventions. a further recommendation was that a mental fitness strategy can create the opportunity to develop community-based programs and panellists suggested that mental fitness activities could be developed to simultaneously work on mental and physical fitness. such activities must address targets based on accurate assessment. the panel stressed the importance of developing both self-report and performance based measures as is the case with physical fitness assessment. because there is a paucity of studies that conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 have investigated how positive mental health activities and practices might interact together in a more holistic way, the panel also suggested exploring components of a mental fitness model to determine combinations that serve as good predictors of thriving individuals. there are also broader questions to be answered, longitudinal studies would be useful in answering them. for example, what happens when people engage in mental health practices and activities regularly over an extended period of time? what would change if people felt more comfortable talking about their mental fitness in a way similar to how they talk about physical fitness? more broadly, the panel suggested that an alignment to the physical fitness analogy provides a preventative and proactive approach that can be easily understood by the community and without stigma and therefore a worthy field of study. the rationale to commence investigating a mental fitness concept is driven by the need for new and novel approaches to mental health and the increasing but inconsistent use of the term in the psychological and popular literature, which is limiting both research and practice. there is a need for more research on what mental fitness is and what it is not to develop a cohesive theoretical framework, a standardised operational definition, and reliable and valid measures for future research, replication and practical application. authors paula robinson university of wollongong paula@positivepsyhologyinstitute.com.au lindsay g. oades university of wollongong peter caputi university of wollongong publishing timeline received 25 october 2013 accepted 2 june 2014 published 26 january 2015 references adler, m., & ziglio, e. 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(1992). barriers to implementing curriculum-based measurement. diagnostique, 18, 99-114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00336297.1988.10483898 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2008.00351.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2008.00351.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20593 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pfi.4150230412 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9245-3 conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 appendix 1: summary of expert panel criteria panellist number author criteria presenter criteria academic criteria practice criteria positive psychology criteria 1 x x x x 2 x x x x 3 x x x x 4 x x x x 5 x x x x x 6 x x x x 7 x x x x x 8 x x x x 9 x x x x 10 x x x 11 x x x 12 x x x x 13 x x x x x 14 x x x x 15 x x x x 16 x x x x 17 x x x 18 x x x 19 x x x 20 x x x x 21 x x x 22 x x x 23 x x x x 24 x x x x x 25 x x x x conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 appendix 2: questions with summary explanations q1: generally, i agree/disagree with the definition “mental fitness is the changeable capacity to utilise resources and skills to psychologically adapt to environmental challenges or advantages to meet psychological needs”. explanation of key terms within the definition: 1) capacity a mentally fit person has a reserve of psychological resources and skills that could be readily deployed to improve the probability of an adaptive response to a negative stressor or a favourable circumstance or advantage. 2) utilise resources & skills is capacity in action. a mentally fit person will trigger capacity and use specific psychological resources and skills to improve the probability of an adaptive response. 3) psychologically adapt – a mentally fit person is more likely to successfully adapt when the specific resources and skills are utilised. 4) challenges or advantages – a mentally fit person would be expected to have higher levels of self-awareness and self-regulation to elicit a psychologically flexible response dependent on the environmental challenge or advantage presented. 5) psychological needs – a successful adaptive response would ensure the needs of competence, autonomy and relatedness are being addressed. q2: generally, i agree/disagree with principle 1 fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness. principle 1 is generally based on the following assumptions: 1) physical health is understood in the wider community as absence of disease. 2) mental health is understood in the wider community as absence of mental illness and largely stigmatised. 3) conceptual confusion exists in relation to many psychological terms causing a slowdown of mental illness prevention and optimal mental health promotion resulting in a lack of engagement by the general community. the term fitness is easily understood by the wider community and not stigmatised. q3: generally, i agree/disagree with principle 2 mental fitness could be understood by individuals, organizations, educational institutions and the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness. principle 2 is generally based on the following assumptions: 1) physical fitness is understood in the wider community as a strategy for illness prevention and associated to optimal physical functioning essentially based on levels of strength, flexibility and endurance. 2) mental fitness could be understood in the wider community as a strategy for mental illness prevention and associated to optimal mental functioning using the same conceptual framework as physical fitness, i.e., strength, flexibility conceptualising and measuring mental fitness robinson, oades, & caputi www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 and endurance. thus mental fitness could be aligned to physical fitness by way of explanation and assist in a total fitness solution, both physical and mental fitness being essential for optimal human functioning. there is a real need for a more proactive, preventative approach to mental illness and mental health promotion as we have with physical fitness. q4: generally, i agree/disagree with principle 3 mental fitness is measurable. principle 3 is generally based on the following assumptions: the operationalising of a mental fitness construct would first require the building of a resource index. subscales could be analogous to physical fitness i.e. strength, flexibility and endurance for parsimony and ease of explanation to the wider community. following a comprehensive review of the literature, an example of a resource index was offered to the panel (see table 1). q5: generally, i agree/disagree with principle 4 mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness. principle 4 is generally based on the following assumptions: 3) mental fitness can be learned (activities, exercises, regular practice). 4) mental fitness interventions could target specific components. ricard, m. (2011). the dalai lama: happiness from within. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 274290. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.9 matthieu ricard shechen monastery and mind and life institute copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 274 article the dalai lama: happiness from within matthieu ricard abstract: the dalai lama often speaks of a ‘buddhist science,’ a science of mind and, for the last thirty years, he has engaged in numerous dialogues and collaborations with scientists within the mind and life institute. how can this ‘science of mind’ contribute to our understanding of happiness? what does the dalai lama mean by this simple and straightforward statement ‚the main goal of life is happiness?‛ in this essay, i discuss what enduring happiness means according to the buddhist perspective and the ways in which the dalai lama embodies this enduring happiness. i will approach happiness as a way of being, not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortune takes back, but a skill that can be cultivated. in order to become happy, we have to learn how to change our selves. keywords: wellbeing, well-being, happiness, buddhism, dalai lama 1. introduction during the last thirty years i have been fortunate to spend extended periods of time in the presence of the dalai lama and i have gained great insights by witnessing his attitude in the face of very challenging circumstances. most of the time the dalai lama is ebullient with joy and kindness, but i have also seen him deeply saddened. yet he also says that deep within he retains his inner peace, no matter what the outer circumstances might be. in 2008, a few months before the beijing olympic games, thousands of tibetans demonstrated throughout tibet as an impassioned plea to the world. they were expressing their frustration and resentment at fifty years of harsh oppression under the chinese totalitarian regime. the government’s reaction was brutal. hundreds of unarmed tibetans were killed, thousands imprisoned and tortured. the dalai lama expressed his deep sorrow and confided how powerless he felt to alleviate the suffering of his people. ‚yet,‛ he added, ‚i can always relate to a sense of equanimity and inner peace.‛ the dalai lama is certainly not indifferent to the pleas of others. i heard him once confiding: ‚for the last thirty years, every day during my early morning meditation tears come to my eyes when i consider the innumerable sufferings of sentient beings.‛ is sadness compatible with happiness? some contemporary research shows that people sometimes report being sad and happy at the same time (larsen et al., 2001), but this research refers to the juxtaposition of different feelings. in the case of the dalai lama, it seems that emotional sadness coincides with happiness as an enduring way of being. whether sadness is compatible with happiness thus all depends on what we mean by ‘happiness’. to understand what we mean by ‘happiness,’ we need to explore the buddhist understanding of sukha, a sanskrit term that can be defined as: [a] state of flourishing that arises from mental balance and insight into the nature of reality. rather than a fleeting emotion or mood aroused by sensory the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 275 and conceptual stimuli, sukha is an enduring trait that arises from a state of mental balance. it entails a conceptually unstructured and unfiltered awareness of the true nature of reality. (ekman, davidson, ricard and wallace, 2005, p. 60) one may thus understand that sadness in the face of a tragedy, such as an injustice or a massacre, is by no means incompatible with sukha, since it remains compatible with compassion, with a sense of direction and meaning in life, with inner strength and deep confidence in our resolve to bring about a better world. even in sadness we can continue to pursue a meaningful and constructive life. so the dalai lama does feel sadness, but not despair, which is to lose all hope, meaning, and inner freedom. similarly, the buddhist concept of duhkha, often translated as ‘suffering,’ is not simply an unpleasant feeling. rather, it refers to a basic vulnerability to suffering and pain due to the misapprehension of the nature of reality and to the influence of afflictive mental states such as hatred, craving, pride, and envy. the dalai lama often speaks of a ‘buddhist science,’ a science of mind and, for the last thirty years, he has engaged in numerous dialogues and collaborations with scientists within the mind and life institute. how can this ‘science of mind’ contribute to our understanding of happiness? what does the dalai lama mean by this simple and straightforward statement ‚the main goal of life is happiness?‛ in this essay, i will attempt to consider what enduring happiness means according to the buddhist perspective. i will approach happiness as a way of being, not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortune takes back, but a skill that can be cultivated. in order to become happy, we have to learn how to change our selves. 2. outer and inner conditions for happiness we all strive, consciously or unconsciously, competently or clumsily, to be happier and to suffer less. instinctively most people put all their hopes and fear in the outer world. but our control of this outer world is limited, temporary, and often illusory. in addition to that, the universe is not a mail order catalogue for all our desires. no one would deny that it is eminently desirable to live long and in good health, to be free in a country at peace where justice is respected, to love and to be loved, to have access to education and information, to enjoy adequate means of subsistence, to be able to travel the world, to contribute as much as possible to the wellbeing of others, and to protect the environment. sociological studies of entire populations clearly show that human beings enjoy their lives more in such conditions. but in pinning all our hopes on the external world, we can only end up being disappointed. the reason is that it is our mind that experiences the world from morning till evening. our mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy. we all know that we can feel miserable in a little paradise and, conversely, retain our ‘joie de vivre’ in the face of adverse, undesirable circumstances. as the buddhist thinker alan wallace wrote: if you bank on achieving genuine happiness and fulfillment by finding the perfect mate, getting a great car, having a big house, the best insurance, a fine reputation, the top job — if these are your focus, wish also for good luck in life’s lottery. ([sic.] 2003, p. 20) it is thus very naïve to imagine that external conditions alone can ensure happiness. that is the surest way to a rude awakening. as the dalai lama once said when visiting a city in portugal where a lot of building activities were taking place: ‚if a man who has just moved into a luxury the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 276 apartment on the hundredth floor of a brand new building is deeply unhappy, the only thing he’ll look for is a window to jump out of.‛ we willingly spend fifteen years in school, then go on to professional training for a few more; we work out at the gym to stay healthy; we spend a great deal of time enhancing our comfort, our wealth and our social status. we put a great deal into all this, and yet we do so little to improve the inner condition that determines the very quality of our lives. as the tibetan teacher yongey mingyur rinpoche writes in the joy of living: unfortunately, one of the main obstacles we face when we try to examine the mind is a deep-seated and often unconscious conviction that ‘we're born the way we are and nothing we can do can change that.’ (2007, p. 32) according to buddhism, the state we generally consider to be 'normal' is just a starting point, and not the goal that we ought to be setting for ourselves. our life is worth much more than that! it is possible, little by little, to arrive at the ‘optimal’ way of being. what strange hesitancy, fear, or apathy stops us from looking within ourselves, from trying to grasp the true essence of joy and sadness, desire and hatred? fear of the unknown prevails, and the courage to explore that inner world fails at the frontier of our minds. i once met a californian teenager who told me: ‚i don’t want to look inside myself. i’m afraid of what i’d find there.‛ i mentioned this to the dalai lama, who exclaimed: ‚but that is the most interesting thing to do! there is so much happening within the mind, much more than in any movie.‛ he was echoing marcus aurelius’ sentiment that we should ‘look within where we find the fountain of all good’ (marc-aurèle, 1953). and yet, looking within is something that we must learn how to do. why should we be able to delve inside ourselves without the slightest effort? simply because we want to? such an assumption makes about as much sense as hoping to be able to play a mozart concerto simply by tapping on the piano keys from time to time. we are all a mixture of light and shadow, strengths and weaknesses. but this state of affairs is neither optimal nor inevitable. each of us has the potential to become free from mental states that cause suffering for ourselves and others, to find inner peace and to contribute to the wellbeing of others. but just wishing for this is not enough. we need to train our minds (ricard, 2006; 2010). happiness is a skill that requires effort and time. as influential as external conditions may be, suffering, like wellbeing, is essentially a state of mind. it is the mind that translates good and bad circumstances into happiness or misery. the search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world. it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and compulsive desire and, above all, of ignorance, that poison the mind. if happiness is a state that depends on inner conditions, one must recognize those conditions with awareness and then bring them together. it is important to emphasize that the cultivation of inner conditions for happiness does not mean wallowing in egocentric introspection and failing to be concerned with others. it is not a ‘selfish’ process, as its aim is to diminish self-centeredness and cultivate altruism. a key component of ‘finding inner happiness’ is to cultivate benevolence, altruistic love, and compassion. these qualities are cultivated within, but expressed towards others. in essence, according to buddhism, seeking happiness for oneself alone is doomed to failure, since self-centeredness is a major source of our discontent. the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 277 3. extrinsic and intrinsic values according to the buddhist, by pinning all our hopes and fears on the external world, we can only end up being disappointed. for instance, in hoping that money will make us happier, we work to acquire it; once we have it, we become obsessed with making it grow and we suffer when we lose it. a friend from hong kong once told me that he’d promised himself that he’d save a million dollars, then quit work and enjoy life, and thereby become happy. ten years later he had not one million but three million dollars. what about happiness? his answer was brief: ‚i wasted ten years of my life.‛ wealth, pleasures, rank, and power are all sought for the sake of happiness. but as we strive, we forget the goal and spend our time pursuing the means for their own sake. in so doing, we miss the point and remain deeply unsatisfied. this substitution of means for ends is one of the main traps lying across the pursuit of a meaningful life. as the economist richard layard puts it: some people say you should not think about your own happiness, because you can only be happy as a by-product of something else. that is a dismal philosophy, a formula for keeping oneself occupied at all costs. (2005, p. 235) according to tim kasser (2008), cross-cultural studies have clearly demonstrated that, in accordance with buddhist views, the pursuit of extrinsic, materialistic values is detrimental to wellbeing. kasser defines ‘consumerism’ as a mindset that makes one believe that a happy, meaningful, and successful life occurs when a person is wealthy and owns many possessions that convey a high social status (kasser & kanner, 2004). multiple studies of a variety of types of people in a variety of settings have shown that to the extent people take on consumerist beliefs, the more they report high levels of personal suffering (kasser, 2002), of depression and anxiety, as well as physical discomfort (headaches, stomachaches, and backaches). they also report stronger, more frequent experiences of unpleasant emotions such as anger, frustration, sadness, anxiety, and worry. materialistic values are also associated with using more drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, and other mind-altering substances. other studies have demonstrated that materialistic aims typically stand in opposition to the kinds of values that promote good interpersonal relationships (grouzet et al., 2005; schwartz, 1992). they tend to oppose values such as being ‘helpful’ and ‘loyal,’ obtaining ‘true friendship’ and ‘mature love,’ and having close, committed relationships. they also oppose aims such as working for ‘social justice’ and ‘equality,’ and trying to make the world a better place. a strong focus on money and possessions also seems to increase the likelihood of ‘objectifying’ other people (kasser, vansteenkiste, & deckop, 2006) and treating them as instruments to be manipulated in the pursuit of one's self-centered goals. materialistic individuals also report engaging in fewer pro-social and more anti-social activities, including questionable ethical behaviors in business settings. thus, the beliefs of consumerism seem to work against healthy, compassionate human interactions. the cross-cultural research of schwartz (1992) reveals that to the extent people value aims such as wealth and status, they tend to care less about values such as ‘protecting the environment,’ ‘attaining unity with nature,’ and having ‘a world of beauty.’ conversely, abundant research shows that intrinsic goals are positively associated with personal, social, and ecological wellbeing (kasser, 2006). people oriented towards intrinsic values are more empathic, more cooperative, and more likely to engage in the kinds of prosocial, generous behaviors that promote good will and the wellbeing of others. the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 278 in short, according to r. h. tawney: the psychological evidence suggests that the social system of consumerism is one that does indeed encourage the egotism, greed, and quarrelsomeness that contribute to personal suffering, lower compassion, and greater damage to other living things. buddhism, in contrast, is a proven means of discouraging such qualities and helping people fix their minds on much higher ends, ends that will benefit their own well-being, the well-being of other people, and the well-being of other species of living things. ([1920/2004], p. 180 cited in kasser’s unpublished [2008]) the dalai lama continually encourages the enhancement of intrinsic values, which are those that can contribute something to the world. these include kindness, inner contentment, selfdiscipline, tolerance, non-violence towards human beings, animals and the environment, and a sense of global responsibility. 4. pleasure and happiness it is very common to confuse pleasure with happiness. buddhism argues that there is no direct relationship between pleasure and happiness. the fleeting experience of pleasure is mostly dependent upon outer circumstances, on a specific location or moment in time. it is unstable by nature and the sensation it evokes soon becomes neutral or even unpleasant. it leads to ‘hedonic adaptation’ and when repeated it may grow insipid or even lead to disgust; savoring a delicious meal is a source of genuine pleasure, but we are indifferent to it once we’ve had our fill and would even sicken of it if we were to continue eating. pleasure is almost always linked to an activity and naturally leads to lassitude by dint of being repeated. listening to beautiful music requires a focus of attention that, minimal as it is, cannot be maintained indefinitely. after a while, fatigue kicks in and the music loses its charm. if we were forced to listen to it for days on end, it would become unbearable. furthermore, pleasure is an individual experience, most often centered on the self, which is why it can easily descend into selfishness and sometimes conflict with the wellbeing of others. pleasure can be joined to cruelty, violence, pride, greed and other mental states that are incompatible with true happiness. therefore, it stands to reason that if we identify happiness with pleasure, we would never be able to achieve enduring happiness. instead of being, like pleasure, vulnerable to outer circumstances, genuine happiness gives us the resources to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life. it does not mutate into its opposite, but endures and grows as we keep on experiencing it. it imparts a sense of fulfilment that, in time, becomes second nature. this distinction does not mean that we should not seek out pleasurable sensations. there is no reason to deprive ourselves of the enjoyment of a magnificent landscape, of swimming in the sea, or of the scent of a rose, as long as such sensations do not lead to craving. although intrinsically different from happiness, pleasure is not its enemy. whether pleasure poses any threat to happiness depends on how it is experienced. if pleasure is tainted with grasping, gives rise to avidity and dependence, and impedes inner freedom, it has become an obstacle to happiness. on the other hand, if it is experienced in the present moment, in a state of inner peace and freedom, pleasure adorns happiness without overshadowing it. as observed by tsong-kha-pa: [c]linging to such stimuli as the actual source of one’s happiness can easily give rise to at least intermittent, if not chronic, anxiety as one faces the possibility, the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 279 likelihood, or certainty that stimuli will not last. ([sic.] 2000, pp. 281–284, c.f. wallace and shapiro 2006, pp. 691-692) the collaborative research between neuroscientists and buddhist contemplatives seems to support this distinction between pleasure and happiness. the mental states that long-term meditators generate are related to emotional balance and positive affects (involving, for instance, the left prefrontal cortex), rather than with sensations and pleasure (involving the reward areas of the brain). the distinction between pleasure and happiness is found throughout buddhist literature and is not foreign to western psychology. according to ryan and deci (2001), hedonic happiness occurs when we are primarily seeking pleasant feelings and avoiding unpleasant ones, while eudaimonic happiness is conceptualized more in terms of optimal functioning. ryff (1995, p. 100) describes eudaimonia ‚as the striving for perfection that represents the realization of one’s true potential.‛ a recent study (steger, kashdan, and oishi, 2008) shows that the wellbeing resulting from hedonic behaviors is unstable. this notion is also traceable to aristotle’s ethics. in essence, for the dalai lama, happiness does not consist of an uninterrupted succession of pleasurable experiences. rather, it is an optimal way of being, an exceptionally healthy state of mind that underlies and suffuses all emotional states, that embraces all the joys and sorrows that come our way. it is also a state of wisdom purged of mental poisons and of insight free from blindness to the true nature of reality. sukha includes a combination of various fundamental human qualities, such as altruistic love, compassion, inner peace, inner strength, and inner freedom. 5. altruism and happiness a series of studies conducted on hundreds of students found an undeniable correlation between altruism and happiness, determining that those who believe themselves to be happiest are also the most altruistic (myers, 2000). research done by seligman (2002) indicates that the joy of undertaking an act of disinterested kindness provides profound satisfaction. some students were given a certain sum of money and asked to go out and have fun for a few days, while others were told to use this money to help people in need (elderly, sick patients, etc.) all were asked to write a report for the next class. the study has shown that the satisfactions triggered by a pleasant activity, such as going out with friends, seeing a movie, or enjoying a banana split, were largely eclipsed by those derived from performing an act of kindness. when the act was spontaneous and drew on humane qualities, the entire day was improved; the subjects noticed that they were better listeners that day, more friendly, and more appreciated by others. ‚the exercise of kindness is a gratification, in contrast to a pleasure,‛ seligman (2002, p. 9) concludes. according to buddhism, there is a direct relationship between having a good heart and happiness. joy and satisfaction are closely tied to love and affection. as for misery, it goes hand in hand with selfishness and hostility. compassion is also deeply related with wisdom. altruistic love and compassion are attuned to reality insofar as they recognize and appreciate the interdependent nature of all beings. this naturally brings more empathic concern for others (batson, 2011) through the recognition that we are all the same in wanting to avoid suffering. being attuned to reality, altruistic love and compassion are ‘functional’. someone who sees phenomena as interdependent cultivates compassion, and who then acts accordingly, will feel a sense of the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 280 harmony. this is a win-win situation. on the contrary, an exceedingly self-centered person views the world as consisting of intrinsically separate entities: ‘me,’ ‘others,’ ‘the rest of the world.’ such a person attempts to build his individual happiness within the bubble of selfcenteredness. this is essentially dysfunctional because the world is not made of separate entities. such a worldview leads to a lose-lose situation where the person is miserable and makes others miserable. the research in neuroscience also indicates that loving-kindness and compassion are among the most positive of all positive emotions or mental states. the collaborative research involving neuroscientists and buddhist contemplatives began in earnest fifteen years ago. following an initial exploratory phase, about twenty experienced meditators were tested: monks and laypeople, men and women, easterners and westerners. all of them had devoted between ten thousand and fifty thousand hours to meditation—to developing compassion, altruism, mindfulness and awareness. these studies led to the publication of several articles in prestigious scientific journals, establishing the credibility of research on meditation and on achieving emotional balance, an area that had not been taken seriously until then. in the words of richard davidson: ‚it demonstrates that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine‛ (kaufman, 2005)1. experienced meditators have the ability to generate mental states that are precise, focused, powerful and lasting. in particular, experiments have shown that the region of the brain associated with emotions such as compassion, for example, showed considerably higher activity in those with long-term meditative experience. these discoveries show that basic human qualities that contribute to wellbeing can be deliberately cultivated through mental training. during meditation on compassion (lutz, greischar, rawlings, ricard and davidson, 2004), most experienced meditators showed a dramatic increase in the high-frequency brain activity called gamma waves in areas of the brain related with positive emotions and with empathy. other studies (fredrickson, cohn, coffey, pek and finkel, 2008) have also shown that ‘lovingkindness meditation’ significantly increases positive emotions and decreases psychological distress. twenty years ago it was almost universally accepted by neuroscientists that the brain contained all its neurons at birth, and that their number did not change with experience. we now know that new neurons are produced up until the moment of death, and we speak of 'neuroplasticity', a term which takes into account the fact that the brain changes continuously in relation to our experience. for example, a particular training, such as learning a musical instrument or a sport, can bring about a profound change. mindfulness, altruism, and other basic human qualities that contribute to happiness can be cultivated in the same way, and we can acquire the 'knowhow' to enable us to do this. in buddhism, 'to meditate' means 'to get used to' or 'to cultivate'. meditation consists of getting used to a new way of being, of perceiving the world and mastering our thoughts. meditation is a matter not of theory but of practice, just as it does not satisfy our hunger to read a restaurant menu if we are not going to eat something from it. it is essential to maintain the continuity of meditation day after day, because in this way our practice gradually gains 1 richard davidson’s words here are reported by m. kaufman, in his (2005) interview of davidson for the washington post. the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 281 substance and stability. cultivating loving-kindness and compassion is, according to buddhism, essential to happiness (ricard, 2010). the dalai lama often speaks of two kinds of compassion. the first is a ‘biological’ compassion that we feel towards those who are close to us, to our children, relatives, and close friends. this compassion is naturally present in most people, but is limited and biased. the second one is an ‘extended’ compassion for all sentient beings—friends, strangers, or difficult people—that is unbiased and unlimited, but needs to be cultivated, emotionally and cognitively. the dalai lama also stresses the fact that compassion is a source of courage in the face of suffering. when we experience in a self-centered way, either our own suffering or others’ sufferings, the greater those sufferings are, the more discouraged we will become. conversely, if we are deeply concerned with others’ wellbeing and not overly focused upon ourselves, our own sufferings will seem flimsy; and the more we are exposed to others’ sufferings, the more our compassionate courage to do whatever it takes to dispel these sufferings will grow. 6. dealing with emotions according to the dalai lama, one important aspect of the ‘buddhist science’ of happiness is to develop methods for dealing skilfully with emotions, reinforcing constructive ones and counteracting afflictive ones. buddhism considers that if an emotion strengthens our inner peace and seeks the good of others, it is positive, or constructive; if it shatters our serenity, deeply disturbs our mind and is intended to harm others, it is negative, or afflictive. that is what differentiates, for instance, ‘holy anger’—indignation before injustice—from rage born of the desire to hurt someone. the former has freed people from slavery and domination; it seeks to end injustice or to make someone aware of the error of his ways. the second generates nothing but sorrow. likewise, the thirsts of obsessive desire and greed that latch onto the objects of their attachment are other examples of afflictive emotions. conversely, altruistic love directed towards the wellbeing of others, compassion focused on their suffering in thought and deed, are considered to be examples of nourishing emotions that help to generate happiness. 6.1 negative emotions the tibetan word nyön-mong (klesha in sanskrit) refers to a state of mental disturbance, torment and confusion that ‘afflicts us from within.’ hatred, jealousy or obsession make us deeply uncomfortable. moreover, the actions and words they inspire are usually intended to hurt others. conversely, thoughts of kindness, affection and tolerance give us joy and courage, open our minds and free us inside. they also spur us on to benevolence and empathy. in addition, the disturbing emotions tend to distort our perception of reality and to prevent us from seeing it as it really is. craving idealizes its object, hatred demonizes it. these emotions make us believe that beauty or ugliness is inherent in people and in things, even though it is the mind that decides if they are ‘attractive’ or ‘repulsive.’ this misapprehension opens a gap between the way things appear and they way they are, clouds the judgment and makes us think and act as if these qualities were not largely based on how we see them. 6.2 positive emotions on the other hand, ‘positive’ emotions and mental factors strengthen the clarity of our thinking and the accuracy of our reasoning, since they are based on a more accurate appreciation of reality. selfless love reflects some understanding of the intimate interdependence of beings, of the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 282 our happiness and that of others, a notion that is attuned to reality, while selfishness opens an ever-wider abyss between us and other people. buddhism’s sole objective in treating the emotions is to free us from the fundamental causes of suffering. it starts with the principle that certain mental events are afflictive regardless of the intensity or context of their formation (ekman et al., 2005). that is particularly true for the three mental processes considered to be basic mental ‘poisons:’ desire (in the sense of hunger or tormenting greed), hatred (the wish for someone to be harmed), and delusion (which distorts our perception of reality.) buddhism usually includes pride and envy as well; together, these are the five major poisons associated with some sixty negative mental states. the texts also refer to ‘84,000 negative emotions.’ these are not all specified in detail, but the symbolic figure gives a sense of the complexity of the human mind and helps us to understand that our methods of transforming the mind must be adapted to the enormous variety of mental dispositions. that is why buddhism speaks of the ‘84,000 doors’ that lead to inner transformation. 7. ignorance: clinging to the notion of self undermines happiness ignorance, in the buddhist lexicon, is an inability to recognize the true nature of things and the law of cause and effect that governs happiness and suffering. among all the ignorant ways we go about building happiness, one of the most sterile is egocentrism. according to buddhism, we can never be truly happy if we dissociate ourselves from the happiness of others. echoing romain rolland (1952); life soon becomes goalless when selfish happiness is life’s only goal. among the many aspects of mental delusion and ignorance, the most radically disruptive is the grasping onto the concept of a personal identity: the individual self. buddhism distinguishes between an innate, instinctive ‘i’—when we think, for instance, ‘i’m awake’ or ‘i’m cold’—the notion of the ‘person’, which refers to the dynamic flow of our personal history, and a conceptual ‘self’ shaped by the force of habit. we attribute various qualities to it and posit it as the core of our being, autonomous and enduring. a similar distinction between the ‘i’, the ‘person’ and the ‘self’, has been presented by psychologist david galin (2003). as to the ‘self’, we imagine it as an invisible and permanent thing that characterizes us from birth to death. the self is not merely the sum of ‘my’ limbs, ‘my’ organs, ‘my’ skin, ‘my’ name, ‘my’ consciousness, but their exclusive owner. at every moment between birth and death, the body undergoes ceaseless transformations and the mind becomes the theatre of countless emotional and conceptual experiences. and yet we assign qualities of permanence, uniqueness, and autonomy to the self. furthermore, as we begin to feel that this self is highly vulnerable and must be protected and satisfied, aversion and attraction come into play—aversion for anything that threatens the self, attraction to all that pleases it, comforts it, boosts its confidence, or puts it at ease. these two basic feelings, attraction and repulsion, are the founts of a whole sea of conflicting emotions. out of fear of the world and others, out of dread of suffering, out of anxiety about living and dying, we imagine that by retreating inside the bubble of ego, we will be protected. we create the illusion of being separate from the world, hoping thereby to avert suffering. in fact, what happens is just the opposite, since ego-grasping and disproportionate self-cherishing are powerful magnets to attract suffering. some western psychologists share this buddhist perspective. in a theoretical paper and review of the subject (dambrun & ricard, 2011), it was argued that the perception of a structured self that takes the form of a seemingly unitary, permanent, and independent entity leads to a self-centered psychological style and seems to be a significant source of both the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 283 affliction and fluctuating, hedonic, happiness. conversely, a selfless psychological style emerges when perception of the self is a dynamic network of transitory relations, and this seems to be a source of durable eudaimonic happiness. markus and kitayama (1991) also distinguish between an independent self and an interdependent self. they postulate that individuals have strikingly different concepts of their self, and these variations are a function of differences in cultural settings. these different selfconstructs affect the ways in which individuals experience themselves and others, and also affect their cognitions, emotions and motivation. one of the characteristics of entering a state of ‘flow’, a very rewarding mental state, is precisely the vanishing of the self. according to mihaly csikszentmihalyi2, at such times, one becomes< completely involved in an activity for its own sake. the ego falls away. time flies. every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost. in the west, transient and spontaneous states of ‘no-self’, such as in shamanic trances, are often identified as altered states of consciousness and are said to reflect an abnormal psychological functioning (ward, 1989). this contrasts with the various eastern traditions where the concept of ‘no-self’ is often associated with an optimal way of being, awareness and wisdom. in buddhism, the understanding of the lack of reality of an independent, unitary self corresponds to a state of great lucidity and wisdom. it represents the culminating point of a thorough analytical and contemplative investigation, which is very different from an uncontrolled, confused state of trance. according to buddhism, an erroneous sense of self forms the basis of all mental affliction, be it hatred, clinging, desire, envy, pride, or confusion. from that point on, we see the world through the distorting mirror of our illusions. we find ourselves in disharmony with the true nature of things and that inevitably leads to frustration and suffering. this notion is also found in western psychology, which recognizes that cognitive distortions, resulting from various egocentric biases, are also associated with self-centeredness (greenwald, 1980). the buddhist analysis leads us to conclude that the self does not reside outside the body, or in any part of the body, nor is it some diffuse entity permeating the entire body. we willingly believe that the self is associated with consciousness, but consciousness too is just a flow or experience: the past moment of consciousness is dead (only its impact remains), the future is not yet, and the present doesn’t last. how could a distinct self exist, suspended between something that no longer exists and something that does not yet exist? where then is the self? it cannot be exclusively in my body, because when i say, ‘i am proud,’ it is my consciousness that is proud, not my body. so is it exclusively in my consciousness? that is far from certain. when i say: ‘someone pushed me,’ was it my consciousness being pushed? of course not. the self obviously cannot be outside either the body or the consciousness. the only way out of this dilemma is to consider the self as a mental or verbal designation linked to a dynamic process, to a series of changing relations that incorporate the perception of 2 this passage is from an interview of csikszentmihlyi conducted by john geirland for wired.com (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.09/czik_pr.html). http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.09/czik_pr.html the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 284 the outer world, sensations, mental images, emotions, and concepts. the self is merely an idea that does not match any real entity. when the self ceases to be the most important thing in the world, we find it easier to focus our concern on others. the sight of their suffering bolsters our courage and resolve to work on their behalf, instead of crippling us with our own emotional distress. psychologist paul ekman has been inspired to study ‘people gifted with exceptionally human qualities.’ among the most remarkable traits he has noted among such people are ‚an impression of kindness, a way of being that others can sense and appreciate, and, unlike so many charismatic charlatans, perfect harmony between their private and public lives.‛ (ekman, 2001)3 they emanate goodness. above all, notes ekman, they exhibit ‚an absence of ego. these people inspire others by how little they make of their status, their fame—in short, their self. they never give a second thought to whether their position or importance is recognized.‛ such a lack of egocentricity, he adds, ‚is altogether perplexing from a psychological point of view.‛ ekman also stresses how ‚people instinctively want to be in their company and how, even if they can’t always explain why, they find their presence enriching. in essence, they emanate goodness.‛ according to ekman, the dalai lama is someone who embodies all these qualities. 8. craving no one would dispute the fact that it is natural to desire and that desire plays a driving role in our lives. but let us not confuse the deep aspirations of making oneself a better human being, of working for the good of others or of achieving spiritual awakening, with the desire that is mere hunger and tortures the mind. as natural as it may seem, desire degenerates into a ‘mental toxin’ as soon as it becomes a craving, an obsession, or an unmitigated attachment. such craving is all the more frustrating and alienating in that it is out of synch with reality. when we are obsessed by a thing or a person we misconstrue them to be one hundred percent desirable; and possessing or enjoying them becomes an absolute necessity. as the buddha shakyamuni taught: prey to craving, like a monkey in the forest you jump from branch to branch without ever finding any fruit, from life to life without ever finding any peace. 9. hatred of all the mental poisons that cause suffering, hatred is the most toxic. it is one of the chief causes of unhappiness and the driving force of countless acts of violence. when someone hits us, instinct would have us hit back. likewise, human societies give their members the right to retaliate in varying degrees of justice, depending on the societies’ level of civility. tolerance, forgiveness, and understanding of the aggressor’s situation are generally considered to be optional. we are rarely able to see the criminal as a victim of his own hatred. it is even harder to understand that the desire for vengeance stems from basically the same emotion that led the aggressor to assault us. so long as one person’s hatred generates another’s, the cycle of resentment, reprisal and suffering will never be broken. if hatred responds to hatred, hatred will never end, taught the buddha shakyamuni. eliminating hatred from our mind stream is therefore a critical step in our journey to happiness. hatred exaggerates the faults of its object and ignores its good qualities. we perceive the hated person or group as 100% detestable (dalai lama and cutler, 1998). 3 the preceding quoted passage as well as the ones that immediately follow come from personal communication with paul ekman in 2001. the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 285 under the influence of anger our mind sees things in an unrealistic way, the source of endless frustration and sorrow. as noted by the dalai lama: by giving in to anger, we are not necessarily harming our enemy but we are definitely harming ourselves. we lose our sense of inner peace, we do everything wrong, we cannot sleep well, we put off our guests or we cast furious glances at those who have the impudence of being in our way. we make life impossible for those who live with us, and even our dearest friends are kept at a distance. this rigid frame, the prison of the mind, is responsible for much of the hate and violence that plague us. by forming the image of the ‘enemy’ as despicable, we generalize it as being the whole person or the entire group. the mind, steeped in animosity and resentment, encloses itself in illusion and is convinced that the source of its dissatisfaction is entirely exterior to itself. our perception of being wronged or threatened leads us to focus exclusively on the negative aspects of a person or a group. we solidify the ‘evil’ or ‘disgusting’ attributes we see in them as being permanent and intrinsic traits, and turn away from any reevaluation of the situation. we thus feel justified in expressing our animosity and retaliating. by then, we have obscured the basic benevolence that makes us appreciate everyone’s aspiration to avoid suffering and achieve happiness. this process has also been clearly recognized in western psychology (beck, 1999). according to ekman (2003), anger is inaccurate in its assessment of reality in that it does not perceive a situation in a balanced way, but views it through the distorted filter of ‘me, i, my, and mine.’ he also writes of a ‘refractory’ period during which only perceptions that support our anger come to mind and we do not register any interpretation that contradicts our view. as one of the dalai lama’s teachers, dilgo khyentse rinpoche (1993, pp. 126-127) wrote: ‚instead of hating so-called enemies, therefore, the real target of your hatred should be hatred itself.‛ as appropriate as patience, without weakness, may be towards those we consider our enemies, it is entirely inappropriate to be patient with hatred itself, regardless of the circumstances. one day, the dalai lama received a visit from a monk arriving from tibet after spending twenty-five years in chinese labor camps. his torturers had brought him to the brink of death several times. the dalai lama talked at length with the monk, deeply moved to find him so serene after so much suffering. he asked him if he had ever been afraid. the monk answered: ‚i was often afraid of hating my torturers, for in so doing i would have destroyed myself.‛ 10. is it possible to be free of afflictive emotions? how can one develop constructive emotions while ridding ourselves of destructive ones? as emphasized by the dalai lama (1998): [r]ecognition of the nature of the mind and an accurate understanding of the phenomenal world are essential for our quest for happiness. if the mind relies on totally erroneous views about the nature of things and maintains them, it will be very difficult for us to transform ourselves and achieve freedom. developing a correct view is not a question of faith or adherence to dogma but of clear understanding. this arises from a correct analysis of reality. in addition, we need to work on our thoughts one by one, analyzing the way they emerge and evolve and gradually learning to free them as they arise, defusing the chain reactions that allow thoughts to invade the mind. furthermore, being able to repeatedly free oneself of such the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 286 afflictive thoughts as they occur gradually erodes their very tendency to form again, until they stop appearing altogether. just as our emotions, moods and tendencies have been shaped by the accumulation of countless instantaneous thoughts, they can be transformed through time by dealing in a mindful way with such thoughts. the experience of introspection shows that the negative emotions are transitory mental events that can be obliterated by their opposites, the positive emotions, acting as antidotes. we have to gradually familiarize ourselves with each antidote—loving-kindness as antidote to hatred, for instance—until the absence of hatred becomes second nature. the tibetan word gom, which is usually translated as ‘meditation,’ more precisely denotes ‘familiarization,’ while the sanskrit word bhavana, also translated as ‘meditation’ means ‘cultivation’. gom is about familiarizing oneself with a new vision of things, a new way to manage one’s thoughts, of perceiving people and experiencing the world. 10.1 the use of antidotes the first method of freeing oneself of afflictive emotions consists of neutralizing afflictive emotions with a specific antidote, just as we neutralize the destructive effects of poison with anti-venom, or of acid with an alkali. one fundamental point emphasized by buddhism is that two diametrically opposed mental processes cannot form simultaneously. we may fluctuate rapidly between love and hatred, but we cannot feel, in the same instant of consciousness, the desire to hurt someone and to do him good. the two impulses are as opposed to each other as water and fire. in the same way, by habituating your mind to altruistic love, you gradually eliminate hatred, because the two states of mind can alternate but cannot co-exist at the same time. so the more we cultivate loving-kindness, the less there will be space for hatred in our mental landscape. it is therefore important to begin by learning the antidotes that correspond to each negative emotion, and then to cultivate them. since altruistic love acts as a direct antidote to hatred, the more we develop it, the more the desire to harm will wither until it finally disappears. it is a question not of suppressing hatred, but of turning the mind to something diametrically opposed to it: love and compassion. it is equally impossible for greed or desire-passion to co-exist with inner-freedom, which allows us to taste mental peace and to rest in the cool shade of serenity. desire can fully develop only when it is allowed to run rampant to the point where it monopolizes the mind. as for anger, it will be neutralized by patience. this does not require us to remain passive, but to steer clear of being overwhelmed by destructive emotions. as the dalai lama (1999) explains, patience safeguards our peace of mind in the face of adversity; it is a deliberate response (as opposed to an unreasoned reaction) to the strong negative thoughts and emotions that tend to arise when we encounter harm. there are many other such methods to free ourselves from afflictive mental states. another way to deal with afflictive emotions is to dissociate ourselves mentally from the emotion that is troubling us (ricard, 2010). usually we identify with our emotions completely. when we are overcome by anxiety or by a fit of anger, we are at one with that feeling. it is omnipresent in our mind, leaving no room for other mental states such as inner peace or patience, or to consider reasoning that might calm our discomfort. however, if at that moment we are still capable of a little presence of mind—a capability that we can be trained to develop—we can stop identifying with our anger. the mind is, in fact, capable of examining what is happening within it. all we need to do is observe our emotions in the same way we would observe an external event taking place in the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 287 front of us. the part of our mind that is aware of the anger is just simply aware—it is not angry. in other words, awareness is not affected by the emotion it is observing. when we understand that, we can step back, realize that this emotion has no solidity, and allow enough space for it to dissolve by itself. by doing so, we avoid two extremes, each as bad as the other: repressing our emotion, which would then remain in a dark corner of our consciousness like a time bomb; or letting the emotion explode at the expense of those around us and of our own inner peace. not identifying with emotions is a fundamental antidote that is applicable to all kinds of afflictive emotions. 11. happiness and ‘goodness’ in plato’s georgias it is stated that: the happiest man is he who has no trace of malice in his soul. during a five-day meeting with scientists at dharamsala in india, psychologist paul ekman, one of the world specialists on emotions, and his daughter eve sat near the dalai lama for a private conversation. throughout their conversation, as he often does, the dalai lama casually held paul’s hand in his. paul was very moved by this moment and confided later: ‚i felt some kind of compassionate warmth flowing from his hand. i never thought that goodness could be palpable.‛ the dalai lama is one of the few people in this world who enjoys a high moral stature. he inspires respect and deep sympathy in millions of people, as do gandhi, martin luther king, nelson mandela, and desmond tutu. as the dalai lama’s long-time student and friend robert thurman writes: everyone tends to like the dalai lama even when they don’t think they will. the question is ‚why?‛ *<+ i have witnessed this strange phenomenon time and again over the years whenever the dalai lama appears in public, as well as in private meetings with noted scientists, dignitaries, and heads-of-state. (2008, p. ix) more than anything else, the dalai lama is a good human being. when he says, ‚my religion is good heart,‛ his words ring true because he embodies them. when he was asked why, wherever he goes, tens of thousands of people come to see him and listen to him, he first answered with his usual simplicity: ‚i don’t know.‛ then, after a pause, he added: ‚i have no special qualities, but perhaps it is because all my life i have meditated on love and compassion with all the strength of my mind.‛ i remember one evening when the dalai lama was leaving a meeting with students at bordeaux university in france and walked through the crowd of people who had not managed to get a seat in the theatre. an old couple was standing to one side, afraid of getting caught up in the crush. the husband was standing behind his frail wife, who was in a wheelchair. the dalai lama's ever-alert gaze lighted on them. he broke through the crowd and went and took the old lady's hands in his and looked at her closely, smiling. his only words were inexpressible words of loving-kindness. after those few minutes, which seemed like an eternity, the old man said to his wife, ‚you see, he is a holy man.‛ the dalai lama would certainly not describe himself as a ‘holy man’—’nonsense’—he would reply and add: ‘we are all basically the same human beings. we all share the wish to be free from suffering, we all strive towards happiness and have the same kinds of emotions, whether in the east or in the west.’ in fact, another characteristic of the dalai lama is his authenticity. he is exactly the same in public and in private, with heads of states or with the person who works in a hotel where he is the dalai lama: happiness from within ricard www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 288 staying, seeing them as a fellow human being and showing them all exactly the same kindness, concern, and openness, being fully present with them. i have seen him at the strasbourg european parliament, disappearing in the kitchen to greet the cooks, while the chief representatives of the fifteen european countries watched with charmed amusement, standing at the banquet table waiting for him to sit. he is not concerned with his image and laughs with the same glee when he hears a chinese official calling him ‘a wolf in monks’ clothes’ and other people describing him as a ‘living god.’ he enjoys saying, having undergone gall-bladder surgery in india in 2008: ‚now it is scientifically proven that the dalai lama has no healing power.‛ i believe that this is a manifestation of his inner peace and freedom from the preoccupations that so often afflict our minds: gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and anonymity, pleasant and unpleasant circumstances. it is not surprising that both in the dalai lama’s life and in buddhist contemplative practice, the notions of wisdom and compassion are intimately intertwined with the notion of happiness. altruism does not preclude in any way pursuing our own aspirations to flourish in life. in fact, the best way to achieve happiness is to be altruistic. so, according to buddhism, wishing that all beings be free from suffering and achieve happiness, which is the heart of compassion, surely includes yourself, since you are one of those many beings. your happiness is as desirable and legitimate as anyone else’s. this is known as the ‘two-fold accomplishment of other’s and our own aspirations.’ 12. conclusion so when the dalai lama declares that ‘the main purpose of life is happiness’ (dalai lama and cutler, 1998), i have come to think that in his mind happiness is inseparable from wisdom (the understanding of the true nature of reality) and compassion. happiness is incompatible with various mental states that cause us to see reality in a distorted way and to give rise to afflictions such as hatred, jealousy, arrogance and selfish greed. after having been fortunate to have known the dalai lama intimately for many years, i am convinced that the goal of life is a deep state of wellbeing and wisdom, accompanied by love for every being: the immutable simplicity of a good heart. it is therefore only at the price of constant cultivation of wisdom and compassion that we can become really the guardians and inheritors of happiness, true ‘felicitators’. the dalai lama's message is always the same and he repeats it to anyone willing to hear it: anyone, even if they are hostile, is a living being like me who fears suffering and aspires to happiness. they have every right to be spared suffering and to achieve happiness. that thought makes us feel deep concern for the happiness of others, whether friends or enemies. it is the basis of genuine compassion. in essence, someone who looks for happiness outside takes everything from the world, someone who cultivates happiness within, has something to give to the world. author matthieu ricard shechen monastery and mind and life institute publishing timeline received 13 february 2011 the dalai lama: happiness 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(2021). life balance and harmony: wellbeing’s golden thread. international journal of wellbeing, 11(1), 50-68. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i1.1477 tim lomas wellbeing for planet earth lololomas@googlemail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 article life balance and harmony: wellbeing’s golden thread tim lomas abstract: the relevance of balance and harmony to wellbeing has been under-appreciated in psychology. even though these concepts have received considerable attention across different contexts (e.g., work-life balance), this literature is fragmented and scattered. there have been few attempts to bring these disparate threads together, or to centre these concepts as foundational and important across all aspects of human functioning. this paper remedies this lacuna by offering a narrative review of these diverse works. relevant literature is organised into four emergent categories: affect, cognition, behaviour, and self-other relations. throughout these, balance and harmony can be appreciated as not merely relevant to wellbeing, but arguably a defining principle, a ‘golden thread’ running through its myriad dimensions (though this thread is itself multifaceted, comprising a cluster of interlinked concepts). based on this analysis, an overarching definition of wellbeing is offered: the dynamic attainment of optimal balance and harmony in any – and ideally all – aspects of life. this paper provides a foundation and stimulus for further work on these important topics. keywords: balance, harmony, wellbeing, happiness, cross-cultural 1. introduction this paper explores and conceptualises the concept of ‘life balance and harmony’: processes of balance and harmony (b/h) across all areas of human functioning. the contention is that b/h are at the heart of wellbeing (with b/h and wellbeing both being ‘compositional’ phenomena: i.e., although b/h will often be referred to here as ‘a principle,’ it actually constitutes a cluster of conceptually-related dynamics; similarly, wellbeing encompasses all the ways one might hope to do or be well; thin, 2020). however, b/h have been relatively underappreciated in psychology and academia more broadly. in certain locales – particularly eastern cultures – b/h have attracted much attention and thought, reflecting the philosophical traditions in such places. similarly, the concepts do appear in many areas of psychological literature (like ‘work-life balance’). however, these strands of research and theory are largely disconnected, and the importance of b/h as a whole has not received the attention and prominence it merits – namely, as a golden thread running through all dimensions of wellbeing (i.e., a unifying principle that pertains to all its domains). this lacuna may partly reflect the possibility that b/h have not figured as prominently in western cultures as elsewhere. thus, an important context for this analysis is the western-centric nature of psychology, being mostly conducted by and on people from ‘weird’ countries (western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic), particularly the usa (henrich et al., 2010). as a result, concepts, methods, and priorities associated with american psychology have come to dominate the international scene (danziger, 2002). relatedly, psychology tends to overlook perspectives developed in non-western cultures (delle-fave & bassi, 2009; lomas, about:blank life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 2016). for instance, the west has developed a preference over time for ‘linear’ analytic modes of cognition, influenced by interpretations of aristotelian logic promoting ‘either-or’ thinking (peng & nisbett, 1999). by contrast, eastern cultures have cultivated more holistic, dialectical forms of reasoning, which accommodate seeming contradictions and opposing perspectives by seeking a ‘middle way’ (wong, 2011). consequently, such cultures have emphasised the importance of b/h to wellbeing and life more broadly (e.g., socially and environmentally). this emphasis is reflected in taoism, for instance, whose yīn yáng motif illustrates the dynamic process of balance and harmonisation between co-dependent opposites (fang, 2012). similarly, confucius saw harmony as the core of a good person, who “harmonizes but does not seek sameness” (analects 13.23; cited in li, 2006, p.586). these cultural biases have influenced psychology, which – per its western-centric orientation – has not focused on b/h to the extent they merit. however, such ideas have by no means been disregarded in the west or by psychology, historically or currently. indeed, appraising interest in b/h through the lens of an ‘east vs. west’ polarity may be a contemporary incarnation of the orientalist discourse identified by said (1978), which juxtaposed the supposed rationalism of the west with the ‘non-rationality’ of the east (hwang, 2020). such homogenisation obscures the dynamic heterogeneity of these regions (hamamura, 2012), and overlooks the fact that across western academia many disparate references to b/h can be found. moreover, b/h may be more universally valued than often realised. analysing lay perceptions of happiness worldwide – including in western countries – delle fave et al. (2011; 2016) found the most prominent category was harmony/balance (comprising, besides balance and harmony themselves, features such as inner peace and serenity). likewise, research from new zealand has found that when workers are asked about their conceptions of wellbeing, b/h rank near the top of its valued constituents (hone et al., 2015; jarden et al., 2018). thus, the issue here is not lack of research into b/h, but underappreciation of their importance. despite b/h having been invoked in manifold ways in psychology and related fields, there are few overarching works – with valuable exceptions like delle fave et al., wong (2012, 2020), kjell et al. (2016), and (gruman et al., 2018) – drawing these disparate threads together, or identifying b/h as a key principle of human functioning. however, as this paper demonstrates, b/h can be seen as a ‘golden thread’ running through all aspects of wellbeing, and deserve a central place in the field. before delving into the literature, let’s briefly clarify what balance and harmony mean. 2. balance and harmony in the literature, b/h are qualified in myriad ways, from ‘mental balance’ to ‘work-life balance.’ but in general, what does it mean for something to be in balance or harmony? although these are sometimes used interchangeably (e.g., bourke & geldens, 2007), balance is often positioned as a component of a broader notion of harmony. for example, in kjell et al.'s (2016) harmony in life scale, harmony is described as involving balance and flexibility (in harmonizing different aspects of life). this approach is also taken here, where essentially balance is used to describe the relationship quality between two dialectically related phenomena, and harmony to signify the dynamic co-ordination of multiple such ‘balancing acts.’ however, in themselves, these are complex, multifaceted concepts, as elucidated below. moreover, they function in at least three different ways, as: (a) analytical principles (i.e., a means for people to understand and evaluate phenomena); (b) motivational principles (i.e., guides to choices and actions); and (c) axiological principles (i.e., valued life outcomes themselves). these distinctions create nuanced complexities; for instance, even if outcomes like good work-life balance can be understood analytically as good for wellbeing, people may yet not value these motivationally or axiomatically. with these points http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 in mind, let’s briefly explore how balance and harmony in themselves tend to function or be used in the literature. balance usually signifies the relationship quality between two interlinked phenomena. its etymology reflects this usage, deriving from the latin bilanx, which denotes two (bi) scale pans (lanx). such relationships can vary vis-à-vis: (a) basic nature, and (b) temporal dynamics. with (a), they may be spectral (poles of a spectrum, e.g., hot-cold), or categorical (dichotomous categories that are often linked, e.g., work-life). then, with (b), balance can be synchronic (in the moment) or diachronic (over time). an example of synchronic balance might be homeostatic equilibrium regarding temperature (neither too cold nor hot). diachronic balance could include someone deeming that overall they average good work-life balance (even if at times they are imbalanced). moreover, many examples below involve a concern with ‘optimal’ balance. a principle often invoked is aristotle’s (1986) ‘golden mean’ (telfer, 1989). in that, optimal balance does not involve crude calculations of averages, nor simply identifying the mid-point on a spectrum, but carefully finding the ideal point (which may be skewed towards one pole). relatedly, the swedish notion of lagom – sometimes known as the ‘goldilocks’ principle – refers to something being just the right amount (dunne, 2017). the concept of harmony is slightly more elusive, as is its etymology, which derives from the latin harmonia (joining or concord). in that respect, one could use it interchangeably with balance, i.e., a relationship between two entities (stuart et al., 2010). however, people frequently refer to balance and harmony, implying they have slightly different ideas about what these terms mean (otherwise one would suffice). it thus helps to consider arenas where harmony is often invoked, such as music, which indeed is how ideals of harmony were often elucidated in classical chinese and greek philosophy (li, 2008). in music, harmony can denote a pleasing, ordered arrangement of multiple notes. in that respect, if balance describes the relationship quality between two interlinked phenomena, harmony could be conceptualised as the relationship quality between multiple such ‘balancing acts.’ a harmonious marriage, for instance, implies not merely balance with respect to one aspect of life (e.g., division of chores), but successfully managing numerous such balancing acts across many areas of life. with such conceptualizations in mind, i sought to draw together the disparate threads of research and theory relating to b/h in the psychological literature. in that respect, i endeavoured to ‘cast the net’ as widely as possible. for that reason, this is not a systematic or even a scoping review, both of which set clear parameters and boundaries, and methodically and exhaustively cover a given topic (munn et al., 2018). here, the relevant literature is too scattered and diffuse, and i did not know in advance where its boundaries would lie. moreover, such an expansive approach meant an unwieldy amount of literature which would not be amenable to these more focused approaches. for instance, ‘work-life balance’ is but one instance of b/h among dozens considered here, but a google scholar search for this phrase alone returns around 187,000 results. as such, rather than conduct a tightly defined and limited review, i preferred an open-ended and even ‘meandering’ approach: exploring without a prescribed goal, and even – inspired by taoism – wandering ‘purposefully without aim’ (ingledew, 2016). in this spirit i hoped i would be led down unfamiliar pathways, and stumble upon unexpected ideas. this process is not as exhaustive or rigorous as a systematic review of course; as such, i cannot claim to have identified all relevant literature pertaining to b/h. however, this exploratory approach is better suited to my goal of drawing together scattered works across diverse contexts. i began with an initial expansive sweep of the terrain using google scholar, first entering “balance” and “psychology,” and then “harmony” and psychology.” for each query, i read the abstracts, and – in most cases the full manuscript – of the first 200 items (with some overlap http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 between the queries). then followed a second stage in which i explored intriguing leads in these papers (i.e., relevant literature discussed within), which led me to a further 300 or so papers. throughout all this, i approached the literature guided by the ethos of grounded theory, an approach to qualitative analysis in which data are explored for emergent themes, thereby iteratively generating theory (strauss & corbin, 1997). as i proceeded through the literature, i grouped together relevant ideas and research into thematic categories. in that respect, four overarching categories emerged: affect; cognition; behaviour; and self-other relations. these are illustrated in the figure below, together with key concepts that helped constitute the categories (as elucidated in the text below). the figure also conveys the overarching conceptualization of b/h deployed here, namely: balance constitutes the relationship quality between two interlinked phenomena (as signified by the various scales); and harmony reflects the dynamic co-ordination of multiple such balancing acts (as signified by the arrows linking the scales, and overall by the central harmonic musical notation). figure 1. dynamics of balance and harmony, featuring core categories and concepts it should be noted that the categories are not discrete or rigidly separated: some concepts fall within multiple categories, so situating them within a given one for the narrative below was a judgement call. moreover, some concepts did not fall neatly into any of these four categories – such as in relation to gender (lomas, 2013) or political affiliation (lomas, 2017a) – so they do not account for all relevant b/h dynamics. however, rather than awkwardly shoehorn such additional concepts into these four, or create a fifth ‘miscellaneous’ category, these further forms are treated as targets for a future research agenda, as elucidated in the conclusion. nevertheless, overall, this structure proved a useful way to organize the disparate literature. the four categories are discussed in turn below, each featuring a wealth of relevant concepts. indeed, given the broad remit of this review, it is not possible to cover each concept in depth. emphasis is therefore placed where possible on meta-analyses and systematic reviews, since in themselves they offer summaries of the concepts at hand. in some respects, the review itself reflects the literature in being somewhat diffuse and scattered; b/h are complex ideas, and are http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 conceptualized in myriad ways across the various literature fields. thus, even though b/h are identified here as a key principle of wellbeing, this principle is itself multifaceted, involving a cluster of interlinked concepts. even so, an overarching theme emerged from the analysis, namely that b/h is a ‘golden thread’ running through all dimensions of wellbeing. one cannot say b/h are the only such thread; others may also be relevant and merit attention. for instance, axiological commitment to wellbeing itself may be another such thread. but certainly, it seems that across all potential dimensions of wellbeing, principles of b/h apply, as elucidated below. 3. affective balance and harmony the first category is a broad swathe of literature which invokes b/h in relation to emotions. this features numerous overlapping concepts (and near synonyms), including balance, equanimity, and equilibrium, as well as complexity, diversity, and granularity. let’s begin with ‘affect balance,’ which conceptualizes wellbeing in terms of synchronous balance between positive and negative affect (pa/na). since bradburn's (1969) pioneering work in this area, a wealth of research has emerged. for instance, although pa and na are usually regarded conceptually and experientially as a continuum, their underlying neurophysiological dynamics may be more complex. lindquist et al. (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of 397 studies (using fmri and pet paradigms) to test three hypotheses, in which pa and na are supported by systems that are: bipolar (increasing/decreasing monotonically along the valence dimension); bivalent (independent); or an ‘affective workspace’ (a flexible set of valence-general regions). overall, they found support for the latter, with valence flexibly implemented by various valencegeneral limbic and paralimbic brain regions. efforts have also been made to understand what type of balance constitutes wellbeing. in that respect, researchers have estimated high wellbeing to involve a ratio of pa to na of around 2-3 to 1 – with parks et al. (2012) putting it at 2.15:1, for instance, and fredrickson and losada (2005) at 2.9:1. however, such work has been critiqued, particularly the latter for issues including attempting to link such ratios to physical laws (brown et al., 2013). as such, while the general principle may be broadly accepted – wellbeing involving pa outweighing na – the precise dynamics of this ratio are still to be determined (nickerson, 2018). still in this affective state-space, a second parameter of interest is arousal, where attention has focused particularly on low arousal emotions (which, as with b/h generally, are emphasised in eastern conceptions of wellbeing; leu et al., 2011). one could conceivably be in balance if experiencing high pa and na simultaneously, as in highly-charged mixed emotions (lomas, 2017c). more often though, ‘emotional balance’ (or ‘equanimity’) – is invoked for low arousal states (i.e., ‘neutral’ emotions involving minimal pa and na). that said, many such states tilt towards positivity, conceptualised as ‘low arousal positive affect,’ as captured by lee et al.'s (2013) peace of mind scale. without such tilting, one is in the realm of constructs such as detachment, which is somewhat ambiguous vis-à-vis wellbeing. in psychospiritual traditions like hinduism and buddhism, it is valorised as reflecting an ability to eschew attachments (seen as a root cause of suffering), as captured by the quiet ego scale (wayment et al., 2015) or the ashtanga yoga hindi scale (raina & singh, 2018). however, in other contexts, detachment can be problematic, as in the clinical conceptualisation of schizophrenia spectrum disorders and dissociative disorders (renard et al., 2017). moreover, even in psychospiritual contexts, intense detachment states can adversely affect people with mental health vulnerabilities (lomas et al., 2015). finally, whereas equanimity implies synchronous balance (neutrality at a given moment), emotional equilibrium can describe a diachronous process that averages out over time. here scholars sometimes refer to emotional homeostasis (hiew, 1998), which describes a complex http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 system’s ability to self-regulate around a desired set-point. thus, emotional equilibrium usually refers to people’s capacity or tendency to swiftly return – from either na or pa – to a neutral baseline (golombek & kutcher, 1990). then, in a different conceptual space are constructs of emotional complexity, diversity, and granularity. complexity is defined as “having emotional experiences that are broad in range and well-differentiated” (kang & shaver, 2004, p.687), while diversity similarly means experiencing a “variety and relative abundance” of emotions (quoidbach et al., 2014, p.2057). both are premised on the value of having a range of emotions, synchronously and/or diachronously, and – more relevantly here – that these should ideally be in some form of harmony (rather than fragmentation or tension). for instance, a meta-analysis by o’toole et al. (2019) linked emotional complexity to behavioural adaptation. relatedly, emotional granularity (or differentiation) refers to “specificity of representations [and] experiences of emotion,” and an “ability to make finegrained nuanced distinctions between similar emotions” (smidt & suvak, 2015, p.48). in that respect, granularity appears to help people better manage their emotional experiences, especially more diverse or complex ones (ong et al., 2017). intriguingly, in such models, it is helpful for negatively valenced emotions to be included, albeit not exclusively (werner-seidler et al., 2019). thus, while people usually prefer pleasant emotions, at times negative emotions like sadness (lomas, 2018), anger (lomas, 2019a), or boredom (lomas, 2017b) are not only natural but valuable. consider that people sometimes actively seek such emotions – e.g., listening to sad music – for reasons including emotional catharsis, understanding experiences, and finding meaning amidst difficulties (vuoskoski et al., 2012). relatedly, some of the most cherished experiences, such as love, can involve a potent mix of emotions (lomas, 2017c). from this perspective then, wellbeing includes the harmonisation of diverse emotions. moreover, this category is not limited to emotions, but covers all valanced qualia. consider even pleasure and pain, where common sense – and philosophical traditions like utilitarianism (donner, 1991) – might deem their respective presence and absence the ultimate arbiters of wellbeing. but even here some balance is important. people clinically incapable of feeling pain are liable to injury, since pain serves an important evolutionary function as a warning signal to avoid noxious stimuli and protect damaged tissue (eregowda et al., 2016). relatedly, a person continually stimulated by pleasure may lack motive force to address bodily needs; for instance, food intake is regulated by unpleasant hunger sensations (führer et al., 2008). thus, at least some sensitivity to discomfort is important, with wellbeing relying on an optimal balance between presence and absence of pain. for instance, nelson et al. (2014) elucidate the role of emotional learning – including both pleasure and pain cues – during sensitive developmental periods. that said, as noted above vis-à-vis the golden mean and lagom principles, attaining balance regarding a given phenomenon involves carefully finding the right amount (which with pain is weighted towards its absence). finally, we can take an even broader existential perspective with respect to emotions. a key theorist in this respect is wong (2011, 2012, 2016, 2020), who has advanced the notion of ‘mature happiness’ (wong & bowers, 2018). drawing on chinese philosophy, he positions b/h as the core of wellbeing, in its deepest, most fulfilling sense. this includes an optimal balance between the presence and absence of suffering. most models of psychotherapy, for example, hold that development requires people becoming aware of and integrating negative aspects of themselves, a process which although uncomfortable is ultimately beneficial to wellbeing (johnson, 1993). however, this type of flourishing does not necessarily come easily or quickly, but rather is attained through hard-won experience, hence ‘mature.’ in this respect, wong has been inspired by frankl (1985), who influentially advanced the idea that meaning and redemption can be found http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 even amidst life’s difficulties. overall, wong has arguably done the most to highlight the importance of b/h in psychology, and this paper aligns with his work and makes a similar case. 4. cognitive balance and harmony the second broad category is ‘cognition’ – an overarching term encompassing all forms of mental activity (excluding affective processes, which warrant a category unto themselves, as per above). a useful framework of relevant phenomena is provided by wallace and shapiro (2006). drawing on buddhist philosophy, they elucidate four forms of ‘mental balance’: conative; attentional; cognitive; and affective. we’ll consider these in turn, excluding affect (as this was covered above). with the latter though, it is worth adding that wallace and shapiro emphasise its self-regulation: not merely experiencing balance, but actively facilitating it through emotional regulation skills. in that respect, they invoke the value of meditation – as they do with the three other types – in promoting such skills (farb et al., 2012). conative balance refers to intentions and volitions, and the extent to which these are optimally balanced for wellbeing. an example is block and block's (2006) notions of ego control and ego resiliency. the former differentiates people on whether they characteristically express affect and impulse (under-control) versus inhibit such tendencies (over-control). resiliency is then the ability to strike an optimal balance between underand over-control (adapting according to the situational dynamics), which is linked to outcomes like creativity (zabelina & robinson, 2010) and goal attainment (seaton & beaumont, 2015). likewise, vallerand et al. (2003) differentiate passion that is harmonious (accommodating to other aspects of life) versus obsessive (allconsuming). a meta-analysis by curran et al. (2015) linked the former to positive outcomes (e.g., pa, flow, and performance), and the latter to negative ones (e.g., na, rumination). consider, for instance, exercise, which we’ll explore in the next section (on behavioural b/h). while insufficient exercise can be harmful, so too can be excessive exercise (blond et al., 2019), from physical issues like injury (mckenzie, 1999), to psychosocial outcomes associated with addiction (johnston et al., 2011). thus, one would ideally find a middle way between too little and too much passion, both synchronically (in a session) and diachronically (over time). another example is categorical balance between different behaviours. a person may enjoy both exercise and gastronomy, say, and research into harmonious passion suggests their overall wellbeing – not merely physical, but also psychosocial – would be served by diachronically balancing these seemingly competing desires (curran et al., 2015). attentional balance is also crucial to wellbeing, particularly from a buddhist perspective. a quale (e.g., sensation) may be unpleasant to varying degrees; however, its effect is powerfully influenced by one’s attention (e.g., whether one fixates on it or focuses awareness elsewhere). crucially, in buddhism – and in the psychological literature (rueda et al., 2005) – attention is not a passive capacity, but an active one capable of self-regulation. moreover, it can be trained, which is a central purpose of meditation. in this sense, wallace and shapiro argue for balance between attentional deficit (inability to focus) and hyperactivity (the mind being excessively aroused or distracted). this may be cultivated through practices like mindfulness, which can be defined as sustained, voluntary attention on a familiar object, without forgetfulness [i.e., deficit] or distraction [i.e., hyperactivity] (asanga, 2001). note that such ideas around attentional deficits and hyperactivity do not align with their use in clinical contexts as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd). in relation to the latter, for instance, ‘dual-processing theory’ (sonuga-barke, 2002) explains adhd in terms of dysfunction in either of two neuropsychological processes (behavioural inhibition or reward dysfunction). here too though issues of balance may yet come into play. rutledge et al. (2012) draw parallels between dual-processing theory and the dual http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 systems theory of self-control, where mcclure et al. (2004) showed that self-control involves two brain systems (reward, and cognitive control). rutledge et al. further suggest that adhd may be addressed by training cognitive deficits via a ‘process-specific approach’ – such as programs to improve attention or working memory – which has some parallels with the kind of attention training encouraged by wallace and shapiro. finally, wallace and shapiro's notion of cognitive balance refers to mental engagement with reality (again invoking deficit and hyperactivity). cognitive deficit means a relative lack of engagement (being absent-minded or inattentive), whereas hyperactivity means being overly engaged (caught up in one’s assumptions; imposing biases and projections upon reality). in buddhism, the ideal is again mindfulness – noticing clearly but non-judgementally (kabat-zinn, 2003). other examples of cognitive balance include striking an optimal line between type i vs. type ii errors (false positive vs. negative conclusions) (tversky & marsh, 2000). when meeting strangers, for instance, one must be wary of both naivety and suspicion (type i and ii errors of assuming trustworthiness and untrustworthiness respectively). another example might be balancing cognitive ‘styles,’ such as analytic and holistic modes of cognition (peng & nisbett, 1999). finally, this form of balance also relates to flow, a rewarding state of absorption which depends on parity between task demands and capacity to manage them (csikszentmihalyi, 2000). if demands outweigh capacities, this generates stress and anxiety, whereas the reverse can produce boredom and apathy (see fong et al. (2015) for a meta-analysis of flow state dynamics). 5. behavioural balance and harmony the third area in which b/h are prevalent might be termed behavioural, an expansive – indeed vast – overarching category encompassing all the ways people act and operate in the world. this covers a great swathe of phenomena, from character and lifestyle to ‘body maintenance activities’ and physiology. the topic of character has made a recent resurgence, particularly with the notion of ‘character strengths’ (peterson et al., 2007). a prominent approach is the values in action taxonomy, which classifies people according to their interests and capabilities, and encourages developing these as pathways to wellbeing (niemiec, 2017). the concept of character has a long pedigree of course, traceable to the likes of aristotle. most relevant here is his aforementioned golden mean, where virtue treads the middle line between opposing vices of excess and deficiency. this is not simply moderation, nor splitting the difference between opposites (e.g., being moderately truthful). rather, actions should be carefully calibrated based on context, and may fall anywhere upon a spectrum as appropriate (per the lagom principle). in that respect, rashid (2015) and niemiec (2017) have pioneered an approach to understanding mental illness – and distress generally – based on underor over-use of strengths. from that perspective, strengths (such as perseverance) are not positive in themselves, but only insofar as one finds middle ground between under-use (e.g., laziness) and over-use (e.g., stubbornness) (gruman et al., 2018). such notions have been applied promisingly in relation to conditions including social anxiety (freidlin et al., 2017) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (littman-ovadia & freidlin, 2019). then, in considering such balancing acts across myriad strengths, we might speak of characteristics being in harmony. in that respect, schwartz and sharpe (2006) have argued that eudaimonia requires the skilful harnessing of many interdependent virtues, guided by ‘practical wisdom’ (phronesis). a second behavioural area – in itself exceedingly broad – might be termed lifestyle. here matuska and christiansen (2008, p.9) articulate the notion of a balanced lifestyle as “a satisfying pattern of daily occupation that is healthful, meaningful, and sustainable to an individual within the context of his or her current life circumstances.” in this arena, the most widely studied http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 interaction is work-life balance (i.e., time/energy devoted to work relative to other areas of life). this is a huge literature – the largest of any topic here – whose range is revealed by the many systematic reviews and meta-analyses that themselves summarise only aspects of it. for instance, in a medical occupational context, dimou et al. (2016) found that poor work-life balance is the most commonly reported factor for burnout (of which 40% of surgeons met the criteria), while pulcrano et al. (2016) observed that good work-life balance is associated with work satisfaction and quality of life. such factors matter greatly for wellbeing: a meta-analysis of 485 studies found a robust link (r = 0.37) between job satisfaction and health (faragher et al., 2005). other analyses have explored factors that hinder work-life balance; these include, at a personal level, negative characteristics such as na and neuroticism (allen et al., 2012), and more systemically, a collectivistic culture and higher economic gender gap (allen et al., 2015). then, in work itself, other forms of balance have also been well-studied. the effort-reward imbalance model identifies a key source of work-related stress as work demands outweighing its benefits (siegrist, 2016). such imbalance affects wellbeing, including increased risk of depressive disorder (rugulies et al., 2017). thus, ideally, efforts and rewards would be balanced, or even tilted towards the latter (more reward for less effort). that said, research on flow suggests it should not be tilted too far, as engagement is impeded if work is insufficiently challenging (llorens et al., 2013). the notion of lifestyle balance overlaps with literature on what one might call ‘body maintenance activities’ (keeping the body healthy and functioning well), or alternatively ‘energy balance-related behaviours’ (kremers, 2010), encompassing processes like rest, activity, and diet. to begin with, optimal sleep involves balancing insufficient and excessive sleep, both of which can harm wellbeing (e.g., see yang et al.'s (2015) meta-analysis of their impact on coronary heart disease). relatedly, balance is needed between rest and activity, particularly finding the middle line between underand over-exertion, as mentioned in the previous section vis-à-vis exercise. b/h is also important regarding types of activity. for instance, guidelines from the national institutes of health recommend a good mix of endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance activities (national institute on aging, 2018). such multi-modal training can be very beneficial (see e.g., lam et al.'s (2018) systematic review of clinical trials involving its health impact for people with cognitive impairment and dementia). another focus in this area is diet. with any individual element, rarely can it be categorically deemed helpful or harmful; after all, even ‘water intoxication’ can be dangerous (radojevic et al., 2012). rather, it depends upon the lagom principle of the right amount. then, an overall balanced diet is important (or ‘harmonious,’ per our usage here, as it involves multiple elements). there are perennial disagreements about what this involves (laudan, 2000). nevertheless, research is emerging on the value of intake patterns like the ‘mediterranean’ diet (e.g., vegetables, fruits, legumes, cereals, and fish) (see sofi et al.'s (2008) meta-analysis showing its impact on health). finally, b/h also pertains to physiological dynamics. these overlap with body maintenance activities, except are more (but not totally) outside voluntary control. these include homeostatic processes like temperature, which is ideally self-regulated by the hypothalamus to stay within a healthy range (around 37°c) (osilla & sharma, 2019). people also assist this self-regulation via behaviours – e.g., adjusting clothes and the environment – that may be understood as forms of embodied cognition (lee et al., 2014). even with illness, although generally always counter to wellbeing, its mechanics can often be considered in terms of b/h. for instance, with many bodily processes – such as the immune or cardiovascular system – it is important that these are neither under(hypo-…) nor over-active (hyper-…), but calibrated to an optimal level (al-jameil et al., 2015). here again, humans may have a role in maintaining this balance, e.g., self-administering http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 insulin in diabetes to avoid hypo-/hyperglycaemia (sircar et al., 2016). thus, even with health and illness, b/h are at their core. 6. self-other balance and harmony the fourth category goes beyond the individual to include their wider environmental contexts. this encompasses numerous relationship forms: of the person to other people; in society more broadly; and between people and their ecological context. first, it is worth contextualising this section by elucidating a key point about human existence. bakan (1966) argued that humans have two fundamental modes of being: agency (as autonomous self-contained entities), and communion (as also inextricably part of networks of other people and processes). cultures differently emphasise these modes: following distinctions articulated by hofstede (1980) and triandis (1988), decades of research suggests the west tilts towards the former (individualism), and the east towards the latter (collectivism) (see taras et al. (2012) for a meta-analysis). that said, critics such as hwang (2020) have critiqued this kind of dualistic binary, as noted above. in any case, caveats aside, it seems neither mode can be totally negated without severe harm: erosion of communion can lead to individual isolation and societal disrepair (bellah et al., 1996), whereas denial of agency can degenerate into totalitarian dehumanisation (danoff, 2000). so, people and cultures must balance agentic and communal existence (e.g., meeting the needs of individuals and the group). navigating such dynamics applies to social relationships of all kinds, from dyads such as marriage (rothbaum et al., 2000), to larger groupings like friendship networks (levpušček, 2006), to society more broadly (ip, 2014). with marriage, for instance, most scholars and therapists agree successful partnerships involve a dynamic balancing act of give-and-take (pillemer, hatfield, & sprecher, 2008). at some points and vis-à-vis certain goals, couples may be in synchrony. but in other instances, these may be in tension, meaning one person must give way. but diachronically, balance can be maintained if the other acquiesces at another time (and people may realize that doing so, while ostensibly a sacrifice, ultimately serves their wellbeing by facilitating a stronger partnership, involving future reciprocation). for instance, reviewing bonds among older adults, fyrand (2010) suggests reciprocity is a key predictor of mental health and relationship strength. conversely, its lack, or worse, ‘negative reciprocity’ – tit-for-tat destructive acts – is linked to poor relationship outcomes (e.g., marital distress) (salazar, 2015). the importance of reciprocity partly involves people wanting fair treatment, as elucidated by game theory (debove et al., 2016). however, people also tend to value treating other people fairly and not ‘over-benefiting’ from the relationship at their expense (mcpherson et al., 2010). that said, such dynamics are not universal, with psychopathy for example – which may be a trait continuum – characterised by lack of reciprocity (gervais et al., 2013). considering the myriad balancing acts that constitute a successful partnership, it makes sense – aligning with the terminology of this paper – that there is an ideal of a ‘harmonious’ marriage’ (tsouvala, 2014). the metaphor of harmony is then even more applicable when additional people are brought into play – from expanding the dyad into a family (guanchen & shijie, 2013), to society as a whole (ip, 2014). in these cases, harmony might best be seen as attaining that crucial balance between agency and communion across numerous people (at varying levels of scale). there are of course debates within societies about where that balance lies (or ought to). as noted, western cultures generally tilt towards individualism, and eastern cultures towards collectivism (although the picture is complex, with the modernization theory of cultural change, for instance, indicating some universal movement in the direction of individualism; hamamura, 2012). in both cases, one justification given by their proponents is that their particular emphasis is more http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 conducive to social harmony (chan, 2010). this goal may be more commonly explicitly invoked in eastern rather than western societies, given the former’s emphasis on collectivism (uchida et al., 2004). but even if ‘harmony’ is less often used in western contexts, nevertheless the ideal frequently expressed may be construed as a form of harmony, where people co-exist and interact productively (hall & lamont, 2013; arcidiacono & di martino, 2016). finally, we can expand our frame still further and put society in the context of the ecosystem. here concern moves beyond society being in harmony with itself, to the necessity of it being in harmony with the natural world upon which it depends materially and existentially (kjell, 2011). in this respect, cultures differ in the extent to which such harmony is valorised, or even seen as relevant at all (lomas, 2019b). less industrialised cultures – particularly indigenous ones – are generally seen as having more successfully developed and/or maintained philosophies of such harmony, which means balancing humans’ needs with those of the natural world (izquierdo, 2005). by contrast, more industrialised countries – particularly in the west – are dominated by disconnected, predatory, instrumentalist modes of relationship which view nature more as a resource to be exploited (emel, 1990). notions of harmony with nature have previously tended to be niche concerns in such societies. but growing recognition of the climate crisis has brought environmentalism to the fore worldwide (pihkala, 2018), including realising that aspirations for progress must be balanced against the earth’s capacity to sustain it (schumacher, 2011). 7. conclusion this paper has proposed that b/h are not merely relevant to wellbeing, but may be a definition feature – a ‘golden thread’ running through all its dimensions. this case was made by exploring the great wealth of references to b/h scattered throughout psychological (and related) literature. however, despite this extensive work, the concepts have hitherto been underappreciated in the field as a whole. the research and theorizing above has been fragmented and disconnected, with few attempts to weave it together, and to place b/h at the heart of wellbeing. this lacuna may be due to concepts of b/h having been less influential in the west – relative to eastern cultures (peng & nisbett, 1999) – and relatedly to the western-centricity of psychology (danziger, 2002). yet research by the likes of delle fave et al. (2011, 2016) suggest b/h may be far more widely valued than is often realized. the paper began by differentiating forms of balance according to their basic nature (spectral vs. categorical) and temporal dynamics (synchronic vs. diachronic). it then suggested that if balance denotes the relationship quality between two dialectically related phenomena, harmony is the relationship quality between multiple ‘balancing acts.’ after an open-ended and expansive search of the literature, guided by the aims and processes of grounded theory, relevant works were assembled imperfectly into four overarching categories: affect; cognition; behaviour; and self-other relations. ‘imperfect’ because some ideas either, (a) pertained to multiple categories (but were placed in one for the sake of the presentation here), or (b) did not align with any of the categories (as elucidated below). affective b/h included: emotional equanimity and equilibrium (mainly synchronous); emotional diversity, complexity, and granularity (mainly diachronous); the pleasure-pain calculus; and the existential notion of ‘mature happiness.’ cognitive b/h included: conative; attentional; and cognitive forms. behavioural b/h included: character; lifestyle; body maintenance activities; and physiology. finally, self-other b/h included: relations of the person to others; within society more broadly; and between people and their ecological context. throughout the categories, b/h were seen as not merely integral to wellbeing, but arguably its sine qua non. take almost anything relevant to wellbeing – with the sole but important http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 exception of illness – and one usually cannot say categorically whether its presence or absence is conducive to wellbeing, except in terms of b/h. indeed, even with illness – in some sense the opposite of wellbeing (or wellness) – principles of b/h still apply. that is not to say all forms of b/h are the same; in fact, these are complex concepts, with considerable variation in their nature, dynamics, and expression. nevertheless, these do appear to be fundamental principles that run as a golden thread through all aspects of wellbeing. this includes functioning as: (a) analytical principles (i.e., a means to understand and evaluate phenomena); (b) motivational principles (i.e., guides to choices and actions); and (c) axiological principles (i.e., valued life outcomes in themselves). in these respects, an overarching definition of wellbeing is offered here: the dynamic attainment of optimal balance and harmony in any – and ideally all – aspects of life. the centrality of b/h to wellbeing has already been elucidated by the likes of kjell (2011), wong (2012), delle fave et al. (2011, 2016), and (gruman et al., 2018). moreover, they have shown that b/h may be more widely appreciated than is frequently realised. indeed, emerging work is beginning to give b/h their due prominence. for instance, i am part of a new global wellbeing initiative, a partnership between gallup and wellbeing for planet earth (a japan-based research foundation). this is focused on developing new items for the gallup world poll that reflect more non-western perspectives on wellbeing (to augment current wellbeing-related items, which can be deemed as western-centric, such as life satisfaction and high arousal positive affect) (lambert et al., 2020). these include an item relating to b/h – “in general, how often do you feel the various aspects of your life are in balance” – which has so far been included in the 2020 and 2021 waves of the poll. it will be instructive to assess how such items complement existing ones in creating a more comprehensive framework of wellbeing, and to explore regional variation in responses. as such, this paper adds to a burgeoning discourse around the importance of b/h, even the review here is non-exhaustive and incomplete. on that latter point, the analysis can of course be improved through subsequent work. for instance, some forms of b/h identified in the literature did not fit neatly into the categories, like individuals balancing qualities deemed stereotypically masculine and feminine (lomas, 2013), or society balancing leftand right-wing political agendas (lomas, 2017a). these merit further research, as does the question of whether there are aspects of life where b/h are not relevant, or times when these are not sought by people. in any case, this paper provides a foundation for asking these vital questions, allowing us to better understand these dynamics at the heart of wellbeing. acknowledgments i would like to thank everyone involved with the global wellbeing initiative – including the teams from gallup and wellbeing for planet earth, as well as the wider community of scholars – for all their work in discussing and conceptualizing the topics featured here. these conversations and interactions have been very inspiring and illuminating, and have strongly shaped the content and direction of this paper. please visit www.globalwellbeinginiitiative.org for more details about the initiative. authors tim lomas wellbeing for planet earth lololomas@googlemail publishing timeline received 11 november 2020 revised version received 18 january 2021 accepted 19 january 2021 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.globalwellbeinginiitiative.org/ life balance and harmony lomas www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 published 31 january 2021 references arcidiacono, c. and di martino, s. 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(2015). developing wellbeing at work: emerging dilemmas. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 91-108. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.6 pertti laine university of turku pertti.laine@utu.fi copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 article developing wellbeing at work: emerging dilemmas pertti laine · risto rinne abstract: developing wellbeing at work is one of the most challenging tasks in contemporary society. as no single definition of wellbeing at work is commonly accepted as the most comprehensive and relevant, we introduce a discursive definition. we argue that wellbeing at work is associated with many contradicting dilemmas concerning both the development process and wellbeing at work itself. in the development processes of four organizations, analysed using data gathered in interviews with the key actors in the processes, seven such dilemmas of major importance for development are identified. the dilemma theory is helpful in charting the emerging dilemmas in developing work wellbeing and the theory contributes to the construction of better development processes. keywords: wellbeing at work, dilemma management, development process 1. introduction the aim of this article is twofold. first, we will introduce our idea and definition of wellbeing at work (ww). it is necessary to demonstrate what the essence of the phenomenon ww is when discussing the challenges we face in enhancing it. secondly, we argue that developing ww is a process where many decisions are made, many of them being unconscious and hidden. those decisions are strongly associated with values, which in many cases are contradictory. different values result in paradoxes and dilemmas: it is hard to choose between different contradictory alternatives. the issues raised are at the core of dilemma theory (hampden-turner, 1990; hampden-turner & trompenaars, 2000). dilemma theory contributes to enhancing ww by making visible the many decisions and the value contradictions it involves. we apply dilemma theory in our research to better understand the value-based decision-making process in ww development. enhancing ww is strategic in nature. the business strategies of companies often rely on a resources-based view or theory (rbv, rbt) (e.g. amit & schoemaker, 1993; barney, 1991, 2001; prahalad & hamel, 1990), which in principle also gives strategic importance to ww issues. however, in practice it seems that ww is often discussed one-dimensionally. lack of a holistic view of ww makes us concentrate on problems of ill-being only; the costs of sick leave, for instance. we argue that having a more holistic view of ww and being more conscious about the nature of ww development as a decision-making process, with its value contradictions and dilemmas, would also make it easier for ww issues to gain strategic importance. this in turn is one of the major conditions for moving ahead in ww development. the purpose of this article is to work on identifying the dilemmas we encounter in decision making in practice when executing ww development projects. first we will introduce a ‘contemporary view’ and definition of ww. then the dilemma theory will be discussed in more detail. after that we introduce four ww development projects and examine what kind of dilemmas can be identified mailto:pertti.laine@utu.fi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 to challenge the implementation of plans to promote ww. finally the results will be discussed and some ideas for further research will be presented. 2. a contemporary idea of wellbeing at work 2.1 our view of a definition of ww to form a holistic picture of ww we first introduce our analysis of ww as a concept. we differentiate between the subjective experience of ww and affecting and resulting factors (see figure 1 below). figure 1: different views related to a definition of ww we see the different components of our conceptualization of ww to be tightly connected to each other. experiences of health or high levels of performance, for instance, necessarily affect our subjective and general experience of ww. some ‘affecting factors’ may have an impact on performance level without having any significant effect on the general experience of ww. the relations and connections are many. one major issue in our conceptualization is where to place work stress and other factors indicating ill-being – factors that often have been used as indicators of ww in general. we see each as a kind of mediating factor resulting from different things (e.g. heavy work load) and having an impact on subjective wellbeing. so we see them as ‘affecting factors’, to emphasize that the subjective experience of wellbeing should be seen as the general indicator of ww. so, stress-related factors are placed in the first box in figure 1. in spite of the emerging difficulties of our classification we see that it gives us a practical base for discussing ww as a concept and we will use it in the following discussion. 2.2 affecting factors – components of ww we conducted a literature review of 14 key databases in different sciences for peer-reviewed articles on ww issues. we wanted to see how ww has been discussed and defined in scientific articles in relation to our classification in figure 1. first, using the most common terms of ww (‘wellbeing at work’ or ‘work wellbeing’ or ‘occupational wellbeing’ or ‘employee wellbeing’) we got 422 matches (duplications having been removed). more than 90 per cent of matches were from the year 2000 or later, which reveals the recent emergence of ww as a concept. then, we analysed the abstract content of the material and rejected irrelevant articles, ending up with 316 articles. that material was then classified into seven categories of affecting factors formed by a discursive research of the finnish peer-reviewed articles (laine, 2013). the categories were also well suited for international data: 66 per cent of the articles could be properly classified in the given categories. however, looking at the total spread of the material it can also be seen that the search result is quite dispersed, which tells us that the concept of ww has not yet become affecting factors (components of ww) subjective ww (subjective experience of ww) outcome variables (work ability, health, work engagement; performance, efficiency etc.) 1 2 3 wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 properly established. based on the literature we present a discursive classification of factors involved in forming the experience of ww (‘affecting factors’ in figure 1 above) (see table 1 below). in table 1 below we present only a few ‘randomly picked’ examples of the literature to show evidence for our discursive classification. the criteria for classifying our material in the discursive categories were not univocal: for instance, is workflow a work content issue or is it an individual and motivational factor? we were forced to choose based on our own subjective opinion which of the many possible criteria were the most dominant and which best described the article’s content. however, as our target was simply to form a big picture, we believe that the discursive categories outlined reflect the research reality accurately enough for us to take these categories as a base for our ‘discursive definition’ of ww. 2.3 subjective ww and resulting factors most contemporary definitions of ww seem to use subjective emotion or feeling as a general indicator of ww (box 2 in figure 1). ww can be connected to the construct of subjective wellbeing (swb), which refers to people’s cognitive and affective evaluations of their lives (e.g. diener, 2000). also, the construct of affective wellbeing determines the presence of wellbeing in terms of different experiences, which in turn are determined by different emotional feelings such as arousal and pleasure (warr, 1987a, 1987b). these views applied in defining ww move the focus from traditional stress theory and ill-being-based conceptualization to theories on wellbeing. we see this as a major paradigm shift. in this connection the construct of psychological wellbeing also arises (e.g. ryff & keyes, 1995; schmutte & ryff, 1997). psychological wellbeing represents “a generalized feeling of happiness” (schmutte & ryff, 1997, p. 551) and it can be reviewed dimensionally by its components of positive psychological functioning. these dimensions encompass a breadth of wellness that includes positive evaluations of oneself and one’s past life (self-acceptance), a sense of continued growth and development as a person (personal growth), the belief that one’s life is purposeful and meaningful (purpose in life), the possession of quality relations with others (positive relations with others), the capacity to manage effectively one’s life and surrounding world (environmental mastery), and a sense of self-determination (autonomy) (ryff & keyes, 1995). these dimensions can be viewed easily from the work perspective as well. to summarize this brief discussion on the subjectivity of ww we cite here the comment of bridget juniper (2011, p. 25): “the literature on this subject [defining employee wellbeing, ew] shows ew to be subjective and multidimensional. […] ew is: that part of an employee’s overall wellbeing that they perceive to be determined primarily by work and can be influenced by workplace interventions”. we need the overall concept of ww to express the condition of the working life and to relate to the needs for its development. for operationalizing ww from the affective and subjective basis the long research tradition on wellbeing in general should be acknowledged. in our literature review articles representing the ‘resulting factors’ (box 3 in figure 1 above) also emerged. in our classification we had a category ‘other emerged factors’ for those issues we could not place in any of the seven categories in table 1 below. altogether 26 articles out of 106 were placed in the category describing the influences of ww. it seems that there is a growing interest in reviewing ww’s influences on the performance and efficiency of the workforce and in seeing its development as an investment. wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 table 1. factors affecting the experience of ww: discourses ww discourse: ‘affecting factors’ no. of articles (%) references: based on the literature review of peer-reviewed scientific articles and other relevant literature (only some examples) (1) health issues and a health-promoting way of living. healthy working environment; accidents and risks. 058 (18) 00 cotton & hart (2003); janz, champion, & strecher (2002); nixon, mazzola, bauer, kruger, & spector (2011); pitt (2008); prochaska, diclemente, & norcross, (1992); pronk & kottke (2009); sparks, faragher, & cooper (2001). (2) work/family roles; work/non-work interference: conflict or support, enrichment. 010 (3) 00 amstad, meier, fasel, elfering, & semmer (2011); bhave, kramer, & glomb (2010); dockery, li, & kendall (2009); geurts & demerouti (2003); hamer, kossek, anger, bodner, & zimmerman (2011); huffman, sanders, & culbertson, (2011); livingston & judge (2008). (3) individual factors and personality. 014 (4) 00 antonovsky (1993); carmeli, yitzhak-halevy, & weisberg (2009); chiaburu, oh, berry, & li, (2011); le, oh, robbins, ilies, holland, & westrick (2011); robbins, allen, casillas, peterson, & le (2006); vasilopoulos, cucina, dyomina, morewitz, & reilly (2006); vasilopoulos, cucina, & hunter (2007); zellars, perrewe, & hochwarter (2000). (4) working life uncertainties and threats (changes in the work context; threats of layoffs etc.). 007 (2) 00 hellgren & sverke (2003); hu & schaufeli (2011); kossek, kalliath, & kalliath, (2012); parzefall (2009); quinlan (2007). (5) work related factors (meaning and content of work, work strain, competence, etc.) also work stress and research concerning different work contexts. 067 (21) 0 demerouti, mostert, & bakker (2010); maslach and leiter (1997); raediker, janssen, schomann, & nachreiner (2006); rodriguez-sanchez , schaufeli, salanova, cifre, & sonnenschein (2011); salanova, bakker, & llorens (2006); schaufeli, salanova, gonzales-roma, & bakker (2002); seligman & csikszentmihalyi (2000). (6) human relations and social factors at the workplace. 013 (4) 0 harrison (2013); lozada, d’adamo, & fuentes (2011); mcgrath (2012); welbourne, gangadharan, & sariol (2014); many works of the classics on human relations at the workplace. (7) management; leadership style; personnel policy. 039 (12) alimo-metcalfe, alban-metcalfe, bradley, mariathasan, & samele (2008); liu, siu, & shi, (2008); mcmurray, pirola-merlo, sarros, & islam, (2010); skakon, nielsen, borg, & guzman (2010) (systematic meta-analysis of 49 articles from 1980-2008). (1) – (7) total 208 (66) (8) other emerged factors (e.g. performance, efficiency, concept, methods, development projects). 108 (34) (diverse and scattered material; no examples taken) total 316 wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 2.4 summing up the discursive definition of ww in figure 2 below we present an illustration which sums up the previously mentioned ideas on ww. we call this totality the ‘discursive definition’ because it is based on discursive approaches and ideas found in scientific articles. figure 2: discursive definition of ww: (1) affecting factors, (2) subjective ww and (3) resulting factors the illustration of ww also contains a dynamic element. plus/minus symbols (+/-) in each of the boxes stand for a positive or negative effect on ww. for instance a work team (team spirit) can be strongly supportive of ww, but if some members are replaced or the personnel involved change, the effect can be disastrous overnight. unexpected threats of layoffs can totally change employees’ perceived security and turn uncertainty into the most dominating factor of their experienced ww. having a holistic view of ww makes its development very challenging and puts high demands on the process of development. our view of ww requires processes featuring three essential qualities: (1) diagnosing the most essential things affecting people’s subjective feeling about their ww at a given point in time; (2) a wide view on ww not excluding any potential means for enhancing it; and (3) considering and evaluating the outcomes from the perspective of all parties. these principles were applied in the projects of our four cases. one ceo who is cited later in this article states: “[investing in ww] doesn’t mean these days for nordic walking [refers to “refreshment days” organized by employer where some physical activities are exercised] […] if that is the only way, we are walking in the swamp [expresses his view on the traditional way of taking care of ww]”. our conceptualization above introduces a more comprehensive and systemic perspective to the development of ww. wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 3. dilemma theory – in search of the optimal mix having now presented our view of ww we move to discuss the challenges involved in its development. we face contradictions in everyday decision making when different values cause incoherence in choosing between the options that constitute the decision. those alternatives or choices associated with decision making can be called practical dilemmas. the opposite of ‘pure dilemmas’, which are insoluble, practical dilemmas can add value by a process that is called reconciliation. this idea is associated with eastern philosophies, which endeavour to find harmony and see contradictions to be an enriching power (hampden-turner, 1990; hampdenturner & trompenaars, 2000). to illustrate dilemmas and reconciliation between them, hampden-turner (1990) applied a matrix with xand y-axes representing the opposing values. the objective of the reconciliation is to reach the upper right corner of the matrix where synergy is gained. a compromise is placed in the middle of the matrix, representing a situation where nobody is happy and where no synergy is achieved (see figure 3 below). figure 3: opposing value dimensions and reconciliation process (adapted from hampdenturner, 1990) the reconciliation process is illustrated as a spiral, which stands for the continuous learning curve in search of balance and synthesis. we are continuously looking for better ways of performing and doing things and no solution is permanent. we applied the matrix differently by seeing the positioning on the xand y-axes as representing the optimal value or quality combination in the prevailing situation (see figure 4 below). for instance, given cost-effectiveness (time consumption) and engagement with development as opposing values, the positions reached in the reconciliation process stand for the optimal time invested in relation to the level of engagement and the involvement created. typically, many of these relations may appear in the shape of a turned u-curve: ‘too much of a good thing’ (time in our case) may turn the implications to a negative direction (see e.g. le et al. (2011)). wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 figure 4. reconciliation for an optimum mix of opposing values (laine & kuoppakangas, 2015) this description of reconciliation relates to ‘rational-appearing’ decision making. we are aware of two contradicting powers and reconcile them to reach the optimal decision. to go deeper into our application of the dilemma theory, we distinguish between conscious decision making and the dilemmas associated with it, and unconscious or hidden positioning in relation to dilemma continuums affecting the explicated decisions. the second type of dilemmas may contain prejudices or stereotypes, which might prove to be false after further consideration. according to this distinction we have explicit dilemmas based on rational-appearing consideration and implicit or hidden dilemmas affecting the former. when, later in this article, we concentrate on the empirical evidence, we interpret the positioning of the informants by how they express themselves in relation to the values under discussion. positions estimated in this way are more related to hidden values than to explicated decision making. hampden-turner’s idea of reconciliation (1990) presumes that there is something to be reconciled; it presumes a dimensional look at the values. we are not making ‘either/or’ judgements but ‘both/and’, meaning that we are including ‘some amount’ of both qualities in our decision. the question is ‘how much’; what is the optimal mix in the prevailing context? our example of time invested to create engagement is a typical one. on the ‘rational side’ we may calculate that by making a certain extra investment in processing, we can generate a certain amount of engagement (bearing in mind the difficulties concerning the measurement of this relationship). on the ‘hidden side’ we may have the view that things don’t need to be processed but that employees should be engaged; that’s what they are paid for. or we may see that processing things is extremely important to get employees engaged and understand what the change is all about. the prejudices we bring to the process will affect our final positioning. to conclude, we list our perspectives of applying the dilemma theory: 1) organizational decision making is based on values which in many cases are opposing or contradicting, creating dilemmas. practical dilemmas can be solved and taken advantage of. wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 2) organizational decision making is dimensional by nature; in most cases we target the finding of a ‘both/and’ solution and value-adding harmony, by combining the values. 3) the process in which we search for harmony and the optimal mix of values searched is called the reconciliation process. it can be seen as a continuous learning process, which takes us to better decisions. 4) we distinguish between formal decision making and implicit positioning on value dimensions. in reviewing formal decision making it is important to be able to identify the hidden positioning. 5) from a practical point of view, the reconciliation process should be seen as threedimensional, with factors other than the values under consideration affecting decision making. those ‘other factors’ can also be used as excuses to hide our ‘real positioning’ on the value dimensions. 4. aims and method the objective of this paper is to identify the core dilemmas emerging when implementing four ww development projects. the research question is formulated as follows: what kinds of dilemmas and value positioning can be identified concerning the development of work wellbeing (ww)? we applied a multiple case-study approach (see e.g. yin (2003)) as we reviewed the experiences and views of 18 informants in four case organizations in 2008. the 18 people were not randomly picked to represent the organization; they were the actual main actors for making decisions, or influential in some other respect concerning their development project. as each development project was based on mutual cooperation, the representatives also had an important role in implementing the projects. the informants and their organizations are introduced in table 2 below. we shall not introduce the organizations in more detail (we promised not to identify the organizations in our reports) but we think that the general information of the work processes given in table 2 below is enough for the research purposes here. we shall come back to the limitations of the research material and the case organizations later in the discussion. all the projects were academically supported and 50 per cent publicly financed, and proper research plans and reporting were required. the projects aimed, first, to identify the state of ww in the case organizations (a standardized questionnaire, qpsnordic, was used for mapping the situation) and secondly, to innovate concrete means for enhancing ww. the overall goal was to engage the key persons (the top management and the trustees) and the whole personnel in the common development of ww in order that they would see its importance. the projects were conducted in the organizations by applying principles of participatory action research (par) where learning in the process played a big role (elden & levin, 1991). the interviews reported here constituted the first phase of the interventions, in which the informants’ position on ww issues was reviewed. wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 table 2. the informants and their organizations target organization/ informants industry (nature of the work process) number of personnel ww project (supervisor + number of team members) enterprise 1 (protec 1) mill manager chief trustee of employees supervisor health and safety rep production manager total 5 process industry (process control). corporation 1332. factory 196. 1 shift 1 + 14 enterprise 2 (protec 2) mill manager chief trustee of employees production manager supervisor health and safety rep total 5 process industry (process control). corporation 1800. factory 160. 1 shift 1 + 16 enterprise 3 (mettec 1) ceo chief trustee of employees production manager supervisor health and safety rep total 5 metal industry (shift work) corporation 1085. factory 800. 2 shifts 1 + 17 1 + 16 city 1 (nursing home 1) director of social security director of nursing home chief trustee of employees total 3 public administration (elderly care). city admin. personnel 1699. nursing home personnel 2 + 30 grand total 18 industry 15, elderly care 3. time of the interviews 15 h 47 min. interview average/ informant 53 min. in order to collect the data we applied the semi-structured depth interview (ssdi) method, which covers many different interview strategies from completely structured to completely unstructured interviews (wengraf, 2001). in our case the interviewer had some thematic questions planned in advance. these thematic interviews lasted, on average, a little less than one hour. the interviews began with a short introduction of the content of the project, and the thematic areas of the interview were briefly described. general questions about the business were presented as well at the beginning (adjusted for the interests and knowledge of the interviewees) to start the interaction using the most familiar issues. the interviews were audio-recorded and wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 the main parts were transcribed (some 200 pages of text in finnish) and relevant quotations were translated into english. the analysis proceeded in several phases and it was conducted by searching for the dilemmas based on ww conceptualization. so the analysis was partly guided by the presented theory of ww, in which dilemmas are for the most part hidden, but it was also oriented to allow ideas from the interview situation to emerge. this kind of reasoning and approach can be called ‘abductive’, and the analysis applied can be termed ‘framework analysis’ (lacey & luff, 2001). after a couple of readings the main thematic areas – dilemmas – were identified and the next readings were focused on finding more evidence, illuminating the dilemmas and reviewing the positioning on the dilemma dimensions. the action research process also accumulated material on discovered dilemmas and positions. the processes of the four cases contained 20 workshops altogether and the workshop discussions were documented and analysed from a dilemma point of view. we shall come back to the restrictions of our multiple-case study and analyses applied in the discussion. 5. results: the emerging dilemmas in developing ww the core dilemmas presumed by the literature and which emerged and were ‘tested’ in the interviews are recapitulated in the following list. many other dilemmas could be identified as well, but we chose the core and general level dilemmas, which can, according to our experience of many processes, be easily found in other similar situations. 1) adapting the personnel to work demands vs. developing the work and work environment 2) responsibility of individual vs. responsibility of employer 3) source of exhaustion: working life vs. private life 4) ww as a cost factor vs. ww as an investment / ww as earnings-generating factor 5) reactive vs. proactive development of ww 6) innovative renewing vs. unwillingness to change, and 7) development vs. production priority in our dilemma concept, as stated previously, the dilemmas are not necessarily associated with concrete decision making between concrete options; they are more underlying positions that may have an effect on decision making in a more implicit way. dilemmas here are more opposing and contradicting positions that emerge as reactions in certain situations where change is occurring. before going more deeply into the specific dilemmas and positions, one very important general level observation of the interviews was made: not one of the informants raised ww as a strategic level issue and as a strategic success factor important for the long-term success of the organization. this can be seen as the dilemma of all dilemmas in that this hidden position affects most of their subsequent choices (see hampden-turner (1990), p. 157). without shared strategic importance, the development of ww will probably encounter serious problems. another general level observation was that the positioning of the informants on the dilemma dimensions was not strongly contradictory in nature. in spite of them having different values and organizational positions, their views were taken in a comprehensive and holistic way. that is a good sign from a cooperative development point of view. we shall next move to discuss the emerged dilemmas and the identified positioning in regard to the dilemmas. wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 5.1 dilemma 1: adapting the personnel to work demands vs. developing the work and work environment not one of the informants saw this contradiction or question to be a dilemma as we define it; not one of the representatives of the employer said, for instance, that ‘we should improve the working conditions of the employees to create better ww’ but instead emphasized more what the workers should do. also, the perspective of listening to people is included in this dilemma; if employees are not heard, they are probably more adapted to the demands of production according to the views of the decision makers. so signals indicating that the work strain is too heavy, without having the possibility to control it, tell us about the ‘personnel adaptive’ value position of the decision-makers. [what is expected…?] ‘[…] that employees would come to work with pleasure and would follow the given orders and instructions […] that they were really interested in what they are doing, by that we shall get better results […]’. (production manager, protec 1). ‘[…] especially the young employees see […] that you have no chances to have an impact on anything […] older workers on the other hand are only waiting to get rid of this rat race by the help of some system [refers to the pension system] […]’. (chief trustee of employees, protec 2). [does employer listen…?] ‘i must say that not always or is not sufficiently interested in what we are saying […] quite often feels like they turn a deaf ear […]’. (chief trustee of employees, protec 2). statements indicating this dilemma were many and they represented mainly the ‘personnel adaptive’ value position. this adaptive strategy seems to have been the mainstream strategy executed in finnish working life (mäkitalo, 2005). 5.2 dilemma 2: responsibility of the individual vs. responsibility of the employer based on the interviews, the responsibility of ww was mostly seen to belong to all the parties, not to one actor only. however, different kinds of responsibilities were identified where the responsibility of one actor was emphasized. especially, the responsibility of living a healthpromoting lifestyle is seen to belong to the individual and the role and the chances of the employer in this respect are seen as limited. on the other hand, issues which are related to resources (e.g. investments in equipment or the number of personnel) are self-evidently seen as the responsibilities of the employer. ‘… it is not an employee alone […] but an employee should have own motivation and will to keep fit and to change his/her lifestyle healthier […] if you are in good shape you manage better at the work place but if you have bad problems you don’t have enough energy to exercise [considering this paradox]’. (chief trustee of employees, protec 1). [employer responsibility…?] ‘speaking about human beings i mainly want moderateness from the employer and listening of conscience [opinion of the responsibility of the employer]’. (chief trustee of employees, protec 2). ‘[…] but however, i would see the management […] it is their responsibility to give the impulse [for developing ww]’. (chief trustee of employees, mettec 1). [employer responsibility…?] ‘[…] it is absolutely this adducing of the question of resourcing […] very strongly, there seems to a strong desire for it […]’. (director of nursing home, nursing home 1). wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 as taking responsibility for ww was mostly seen as even-handed and covering all parties, but also as being dependent on the kind of responsibility we are talking about, we should be more specific in setting our questions concerning the different responsibilities. in this connection the role and responsibility of a certain specialist function (i.e. medical or hr) vs. the responsibility of the line organization should also be discussed. 5.3 dilemma 3: source of exhaustion: working life vs. private life the direction of ww-threatening factors ranges from work to employees’ private lives (hakanen, 2005). however, in the interview data statements supporting both views could be found. also ‘modern’ views, which see working life and private life as being totally integrated, were presented. the teams at the workplaces involved seemed to have a remarkable role to play in supporting their members both in work and private life problems. ‘this working society is very important in that it gives social support if something bad happens at home […] i at least think that it will help if you have somebody at the work place to share the difficulties […] a human being is the same for 24 hours.’ (mill manager, protec 2). in managerial practice, the role of the supervisor in taking care of team members’ ww has been emphasized. this has led some informants to see challenges concerning the intimacy of private life. ‘it is good for the employer representative in his/her leadership to know something about the private life [of his/her team member] also, in a way to better manage the subordinate. but it is a bit difficult because some of these work wellbeing things are connected to private life.’ (production manager, protec 2). in our research data, ‘black and white’ positions were lacking and most of the informants saw the mutually reinforcing meaning of working and private life. 5.4 dilemma 4: ww as a cost factor vs. ww as an investment / ww as an earnings-generating factor the next dilemma identified is related to seeing ww as a cost factor vs. also seeing possibilities to gain positive outcomes by developing ww. this refers to seeing investing in ww as having potential for increasing future earnings. none of the informants was positioned to see the costs only, with no positives involved in developing ww; however, the difficulty of identifying the benefits was emphasized. the more concrete the ww issue is, the easier it is to see it as an investment. ‘it [seeing ww development as an investment] is a difficult question always, how much in an economically tight situation are we willing to invest in things like that [ww] […] then we should see the things in long run […] its value […] of course other priorities will appear that will rise on a higher level […]’. (mill manager, protec 1). [conversation on work accidents, following more than 400 working days with no accidents] ‘[…] so it is easier for the employer to invest in physical work safety for no accidents than in mental work safety things […]’. (chief trustee of employees, protec 1). seeing the development of ww as a cost-generating ‘sacrifice’ is not promising from an investment point of view. it is even harder when the payback remains ambiguous. ‘[…] was it two years ago when a whole day was sacrificed […] there were things like work safety […] our doctor told about a healthy style of living as well as mental wellbeing. wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 it is hard to measure […] [means pay back] […] it is easy to measure the costs […]’. (mill manager, protec 2). there were also points made concerning seeing investments in personnel as beneficial and earnings-generating, but a question of what constitutes real ww investment arises. ‘[…] in principle i believe that investing in personnel pays back, but it doesn’t mean these days for nordic walking [refers to “refreshment days” organized by employer where some physical activities are exercised] […] if that is the only way, we are walking in the swamp [expresses his view on traditional way of taking care of ww].’ (ceo, mettec 1). ‘perhaps you could also see […] all system changes, building up a rewarding system, it is in a way investment in wellbeing by which the personnel is made engaged […] making the shift schedule […] they are not hard investments but […]’ (production manager, mettec 1). when discussing the benefits of improved ww, the significance of the cost of sick leave emerged. people were very well aware of the average absence rate of five per cent and compared their rate to that. in our research data, the question of these costs dominated the ww discussion and in many cases ww was seen as being the same as job satisfaction. ‘ok, it [ww] is a cost […] there come the sick leaves, they who are satisfied here, their threshold for taking sick leave is much higher than those who are dissatisfied.’ (production manager, protec 2). 5.5 dilemma 5: reactive vs. proactive development of ww ww development has been criticized for being reactive. observations based on interviews support this impression. ‘i think that we are alert and follow these things [ww] and see case by case if we have some role in this […] not just to let things be but to react [refers to a case when somebody left the company and the reasons why should be found out]’. (mill manager, protec 2). ‘of course things like training, investment in equipment, shortages are being reacted to both in machines and personnel […]’. (chief trustee of employees, mettec 1). ‘quite often we react only when we have a problem, only then we are awakened suddenly […]’. (chief trustee of employees, mettec 1). 5.6 dilemma 6: innovative renewing vs. unwillingness to change adapting a wide conceptualization of ww has shifted the focus of development towards renewing working life, and therefore towards an emphasis on the innovative development of work processes (laine, 2013). striving for innovative changes also creates dilemma situations when the psychological costs of change are too large. this dilemma was easy to identify in the interviews, but also emerged when we conducted work seminars, which were also targeted towards discovering innovative work procedures. [how do you see developing the work?] ‘it is a good thing […] and even if you want your work to be many-sided you are not willing to move when the opportunity is arranged […] even today we had a case where the people in logistics would have a possibility to move to production, people were not interested.’ (production manager, protec 1). ‘when i think of the work [in the metal industry factory] and see how monotonous it is, i would think that it is a risk for the ww of the employees […] but there is surprisingly big amount of people who like this and feel unsure to take a step of changing the job.’ (ceo, mettec 1). wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 this dilemma is the eternal one referred to in many studies, but it is worth rethinking. we should be able to create new means to support and motivate people in regard to change. 5.7 dilemma 7: development vs. production priority in an industrial context, formulating the dilemma like this is a little provocative: of course production should be the priority. on the other hand, if development never takes place and production is always prioritized, the organization is sure to get into trouble in the long run. it is also a question of energy. if everyday production consumes all the energy of the employees, there is no room for development. ‘[…] as today there is a need all the time to develop all the sectors it doesn’t leave much room for development, if in a way your basic work gets all the energy’ (chief trustee of employees, mettec 1). 6. discussion work wellbeing, ww, is undoubtedly one of most challenging targets for change in contemporary working life, especially as there is no commonly accepted and shared definition of ww. our conceptualization of ww highlights many attributes that can be connected to what we called a modern idea on ww. this wide, holistic and integrated ‘discursive definition’, based on discourses of ww identified in the finnish material and supported by international findings, is a step in formulating frameworks for discussion on ww. in search of dilemmas affecting the development of ww, it is easy to notice that the concept of ww itself contains many contradictory features and elements. combining all the ingredients of ww to form a ‘harmonic mix’ involves bringing together contradictory elements emerging from the different needs of individuals, families and working life. most of these elements compete for our scarce resources, time and energy, forming practical dilemmas or paradoxes. dilemma theory as applied here highlights the contradictory value-based nature of working life decision making as well as the principle of dimensionality when positioning ourselves in relation to the elements of the decision. also, the idea of reconciliation to describe the process where value positions are sought is useful in reviewing decision making. our focus was on things affecting formal decision making in a development context, so we were more interested in hidden or implicit positioning in relation to the values. considering the ww developmentspecific values by casting them in the form of dilemmas was well suited for pointing out the essentials of the hidden values. our research material was taken from interviews conducted in four development projects on ww. three of the cases were industrial and one was in elderly care. as we had chosen a multiplecase-study approach, the case industries did not represent any particular part of working life but acted as fields for gaining concrete examples. as three of the cases were industrial and only one in the service industry, no comparisons were made between the industries. also the interviewees were taken more as individual actors in the process than representatives of their personnel group, so no comparisons were made here either. this kind of qualitative case-study approach has many uncertainties but also has the potential to create a deeper understanding of complicated organizational phenomena (e.g. lee, collier, & cullen, 2007). based on the empirical data, seven dilemmas were identified. when considered in relation to the discursive conceptualization of ww, these dilemmas have also been found in general discussion and their existence was also supported by discussions of the referred projects in the workshops. as the emerging dilemmas were so numerous, we concentrated on charting the field wellbeing at work laine & rinne www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 of ww development and demonstrating the contribution of the use of dilemma theory. so within the framework of this paper, there is no room for further comment on the dilemmas that emerged. 7. conclusions to conclude, the following points can be made:  the concept of work wellbeing (ww) is so young and still so scientifically undefined that meta-research on the concept would be expected; however, discursive definition of ww may offer some baselines for proceeding  dilemma theory, and its principles as contradicting value-based decision making, the idea of dimensionality with opposing ends or extremes and the search for synergy and harmony between extremes using a reconciliation process, are especially well suited to the development of an issue like ww  the distinction between formal decision making and implicit positioning on value dimensions is important in understanding the challenges of the development of ww  in principle, contradicting values are very likely to emerge in developing ww. in our case the positioning of the informants on the dilemma dimensions was not strongly contradictory in nature. however, this lack of potential conflict about ww is not enough to boost development – it should be changed into a more active mood of helping the progress of ww. as this article concentrated on charting the field of developing ww, empirical research on the dilemmas of ww development is needed as well as research concentrating on each of the emerging dilemmas in more detail. authors pertti laine university of turku pertti.laine@utu.fi risto rinne university of turku publishing timeline received 1 august 2014 accepted 23 march 2015 published 21 june 2015 references alimo-metcalfe, b., alban-metcalfe, j., bradley, m., mariathasan, j., & samele, c. 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(2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 119–124. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.11 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell interview by aaron jarden ilona boniwell is a principal lecturer in positive psychology at the university of east london, founder of the european network of positive psychology, as well as the masters of applied positive psychology at the university of east london. ilona’s main research is on subjective time use, time perspective, eudaimonic wellbeing and applications of positive psychology to one-toone work, business and education. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? positive psychology looks at the optimal side of human functioning, and the distinctive feature is its positive approach and the fact that it relies on solid empirical evidence. this is what distinguishes it from humanistic psychology, which was prominent in previous years. what are some key questions that positive psychologists seek to answer? what makes people happy? what contributes to lasting happiness? what contributes to lasting physical health? what constitutes personality strengths? what contributes to wisdom? what makes us more resilient? what is happiness in itself, and how do we define it and how do we measure it? what are positive emotions, and what can positive emotions contribute to? this in particular is a very important question that barbara frederickson is working on. the interesting questions for me at the moment are around the areas of resilience, post-traumatic growth, and positive aging. the interaction between positive psychology and psychology as usual poses a real challenge at the moment. fascinating also is ‘what is positive parenting?’ and ‘how can we bring up children in a better way and be better parents?’. as a mother of four teenagers and a baby, this is also a very practical question for me. how can positive psychology help people in the real world, how can positive psychology contribute to education, to business, to work-life in general? how can positive psychology help us to understand one-to-one helping professions, like coaching and counselling, and what can it really bring to coaching and counselling? on the one hand, it sounds relatively easy and positive psychology can, in fact, bring a lot to coaching. but when you get down to it and start teaching coaches about positive psychology, surprisingly they are very often lost. that’s one of the difficult questions for me: how can you really make positive psychology very tangible, so when practicing psychologists work with it and work with its tools, they can actually get quite a lot out of it and go in depth with their clients, rather than just stay on the surface? http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 what is one big challenge you think positive psychology faces? the challenge of the future, and what is going to happen with positive psychology in general. whether positive psychology should become more integrated with ‘psychology as usual’ or not? remaining a distinct positive psychology tradition with certain distinct personalities within this tradition is potentially a negative trajectory, because it can become a field that is a little bit stuck with itself and is relatively unopen to the rest of psychology as a discipline. so for me the big challenge is how to integrate positive psychology back into psychology as usual in such a way that it still remains its own distinct field in some way, but is fluid and transparent and accepted by the rest of the discipline, and penetrates the rest of psychology fully enough without becoming a one-camp stop. someone wants to become happier. what’s your first piece of advice for them? that would be the ‘count your blessings’ exercise. this is an exercise that i was quite against when it first appeared and when i first came across it because it seemed to me to be incredibly light hearted. nevertheless, after seeing many, many people try it—i’m talking mainly about my students and seeing students exercising positive psychology tools and trying the exercises and different approaches—i would have to admit that it is the most profound and helpful tool that there is. the implementation of this tool, from theory to real life, is probably a bit tricky because it does sound simple and you have to write it down and so on. nevertheless, just focusing on the positive features of the day appears to have profound effects on becoming happier. what’s the new hot topic for positive psychology in the coming two years? i’m a bit biased by my own research interests, but really it’s the definition of eudaimonic wellbeing. being able to distinguish between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing, which seems to be on the one hand quite an obvious trajectory and something that makes intuitive sense, and on the other hand is something that is extremely difficult to achieve; to draw the line between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing, if there is such a line. or to draw the line between eudaimonic and hedonic personality such as the work of joar vitterso. this is something that really excites me, to see if there is this difference between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing, to see if we can define eudaimonic wellbeing. if you look at the literature, sometimes eudaimonic wellbeing is a cluster of distinct constructs, related in some respects. in some situations it is a distinct construct, but not necessarily falling under the umbrella of eudemonia very easily. so, the objective is to try to understand what eudaimonic wellbeing is, whether it is associated with a specific experience that is different from hedonic wellbeing; whether there are different drivers of eudaimonic wellbeing, and whether we can measure it differently from hedonic wellbeing; and whether there are indeed different personalities dependent on their eudaimonic and hedonic choices. these are the hot questions. who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? i always get excited by ed diener’s work. every time i see him present he comes up with something new. obviously he is an extremely solid researcher who has done fantastic work in the field, but in addition he is dynamic. every time he speaks, there is something different and something new, and he is definitely progressing in his thinking. i look up to him because he is not only robust, but truly progressive; a true researcher who challenges himself and takes steps further and further. if research findings disagree with his previous conclusions, he’s the first to positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 admit it. the second person is martin seligman, because of his energy, and the energy he brings to the field of positive psychology and the capacity for leadership of the field. the third person is joar vitterso, who is a norwegian professor. he is one of the people who does really solid work and is not limited to the existing constructs of positive psychology. he often proposes new ways of representing information and challenging previous conclusions, so his research on eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing is probably the most progressive. he has come up with amazing findings and experiments, some of the most ground breaking experiments, and so excites me very much because his thinking is non-standard, and he is able to approach the same questions from different directions and look at them from a different perspective as well. so i admire his work very much. can you tell me about your research work in positive psychology? i have two main areas of research. one part of my research is on time, and that further breaks down into research on balanced time perspective and research on time use and perceived time use. most of my research in recent years was around balanced time perspective. so overall the question of time, as you know from your research on the international wellbeing study, which asks about time, is very important for positive psychology, and is something that has not been looked at sufficiently. there is a distinction between perception of time and perception of time in terms of its use. research on time, in terms of time management and the use of time in daily life, is something that has not been hugely developed in psychology overall. a recent review of time management research managed to identify 37 empirical papers on the subject. if you step away from this conversation and think about how many thousands of books exist on time management compared to a total of 37 studies, there is an amazing gap. there is the question of time perspective, not time perception, in research studies that is a bit different. i’m not talking about measuring whether your perception of the duration of 30 seconds was accurate, i’m not talking about that; i’m talking about time as it is used in everyday life. if you consider that time management only managed to produce 37 research studies, then there is a huge gap in our understanding in how we can actually use and manage our time more productively and happily on an everyday basis. so it’s unsurprising that this research topic is extremely important. in recent years, however, my research was mainly focused on time perspective, and again the question of balanced time perspective, not necessarily how to define it. now we are quite clear with definitions and different approaches to balanced time perspective, but now the focus is on how to enhance it. this is something that interests me a lot. with my students, i’m trying to identify the key factors that contribute to us being able to balance time perspective better, for example, factors such as cognitive flexibility and being able to switch between different temporal zones in our perception more successfully. that’s one part of my research. the second part of my research is on educational interventions in the area of positive psychology. i have two big programs currently running. one is a programme with a group of secondary schools to enhance wellbeing in school-aged children. this is a programme which runs a course from year 1 to year 10 of these primary and secondary schools, it’s a big group of schools called the haberdasher’s aske’s federation, that are implementing this educational program. we are exploring what can contribute to the enhancement of wellbeing in school-aged children. the second part is that we have developed with colleagues an educational programme for the enhancement of resilience, i suppose in some ways similar to the penn resilience program, but relying on the wider literature. it’s not just relying on cognitive behavioural approaches in trying to enhance resilience, but also incorporating ideas from post-traumatic growth and positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 positive psychology directly. we have developed a 12-week curriculum called the spark resilience curriculum. we are working to see to what extent this curriculum enhances resilience in children. it does seem to be working and we have good findings that we are writing up, in terms of decreasing depressive symptoms and enhancing resilience, and self esteem; self-esteem was a by-product. these are my two areas of research at the moment, educational research and time research. the third area is eudaimonic wellbeing. can you tell me a bit about the masters of applied positive psychology (mapp) programme at the university of east london? this is my favourite project within positive psychology in terms of trying to make things happen. the mapp programme has been running for five years now, extremely successfully. it was the second programme in the world on positive psychology. nowadays there are more programs opening up, for example in portugal; there are about five or six around. we have an incredibly positive student intake, so the last four years out of five the programme has had quite substantial competition, which is exciting because it means we are able to attract a very good calibre of graduates from different disciplines to enter this program. i suppose the best feature of this programme is its interdisciplinary nature. the students on this programme are the most interesting people i have come across in my life. they bring with them experience and knowledge from so many different domains of life and all are dedicated to the betterment of humanity. so we have people coming from the social sector, from the voluntary sector, from the business sector, from the education sector; we even had a vet in the program, and we typically have a couple of lawyers on every cohort. all of them bring with them this very different understanding, depending on their professional background experience, and i think this enhances and enriches positive psychology hugely, dramatically. i really see the future of positive psychology not only integrating with psychology, but also going very much multidisciplinary and trying to find the usefulness of positive psychology in different domains through cooperation with people from different professional backgrounds. so the mapp programme is something i am really, really proud of. i think it is working, and i think it is something that is developing positive psychology because it is these very students that pose many challenges for me when i teach, or to our team when we teach, and i think those challenges are being fed back into the field of positive psychology as a whole. these are very important challenges, because these students are the ones who bridge the gap between the ivory tower and academics and different theoretical approaches, and discover what works in real life and what doesn’t work. who are the emerging and unknown researchers in positive psychology to look out for? here i would like to mention one of my students, a phd student who is doing research on eudaimonic wellbeing. her name is francesca elston, and she is adopting both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, which is quite unusual in the positive psychology field, to look at the construct of eudaimonic wellbeing; and to understand the interaction between eudaimonic wellbeing and values specifically, and how we can define and measure eudaimonic wellbeing overall. she is definitely one of the people to look out for. another person, veronica huta, is also a researcher in the eudaimonic wellbeing field and she is becoming more prominent now, and her research is very interesting. another person is michael pluris. michael is working on the concept of ‘differential susceptibility to environmental influences’, the basic premise of which is that (a) because psychology has been so disproportionately concerned with the adverse effects of negative environmental conditions on pathological outcomes (b) it has failed positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 to appreciate that it may not be, as long presumed by diathesis-stress thinking, that some individuals are more ‘vulnerable’ to adversity than others, that is, disproportionately likely to be negatively affected by negative experiences, but that (c) these very same individuals are actually more generally plastic or malleable than others and thus also disproportionately benefit from supportive or nurturant environmental conditions. to summarise it briefly, the idea of differential susceptibility is that often the people who are perceived as most vulnerable in genetic terms, benefit the most and progress the best from positive environmental characteristics and different environmental conditions. so rather than viewing certain types of people as possessing genetic characteristics that make them more vulnerable to negative environmental influences, it is extremely liberating to understand that these same characteristics that make them vulnerable to negative environmental influences also make them positively vulnerable to positive environmental characteristics. that is something he has been doing for a number of years, and this is research to look out for. he has also carried out some studies on differential susceptibility in samples of school children who undertook the spark resilience program. again, some interesting findings have come out of his research. i really enjoyed reading the textbook positive psychology you wrote with kate hefferon that’s just come out. it’s a great general introduction to the field. other than that, what’s one book that you think all those getting into and learning about positive psychology should read if they don’t know much about positive psychology? for me it’s not so much martin seligman’s’ books, but the books by mihaly csikszentmihalyi that are the best. unless somebody is after a very structured introduction and understanding to positive psychology, i think the first book they should read is flow. furthermore, to put it more broadly, the core book on positive psychology has not been written by a positive psychologist. for me, it is a man’s search for meaning by victor frankl. i think these two books capture the essence of what positive psychology is or could be about. there are many well-structured books summarising a number of different constructs very well. but the starting point for me would be these two books. what’s your most proud moment in the field of positive psychology to date? the graduation ceremony, about three years ago, when the first bunch of mapp students were graduating with their masters degrees; the chancellor awarding the degrees started to read out ‚and now i’m proud to present the award for the very first graduate of a masters of applied positive psychology in europe‛. at this point i cried and felt really, really proud. is there anything you would like to comment on that i have not asked about? just to add a little bit to your question about the mapp program. the future development of positive psychology at the moment lies in its international appeal. we have quite a lot on positive psychology in america, in europe and in australia. i think the next organisational step is really africa, south america and asia, in terms of regional movement of positive psychology. i’m really excited about the mapp programme reaching further. we are going distance learning from next september, and will be able to reach different parts of the world. i’m also excited about different developments in these regions and different research findings that are coming from these regions. i recently had an opportunity to present with one of the chinese professors on positive psychology at one of the international conferences, and what struck me—and what i was not prepared for—was the opposite research conclusions, for positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 example in the area of time perspective. that really opened my eyes to the importance of cultural understanding and cultural specificity with regard to positive psychology findings, and this is something i find really exciting in terms of future developments in positive psychology—to integrate cross-cultural findings to the extent possible and to learn from the research of each other. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz counting and recounting happiness and culture: on happiness surveys and prudential ethnobiography thin, n. (2012). counting and recounting happiness and culture: on happiness surveys and prudential ethnobiography. international journal of wellbeing, 2(4), 313-332. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2.i4.3 neil thin university of edinburgh n.thin@ed.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 313 article counting and recounting happiness and culture: on happiness surveys and prudential ethnobiography neil thin abstract: the analysis of numerical data from happiness surveys has caught the attention of governments, corporations, and public media. it is questionable, however, whether the humanistic and empathetic aspirations of happiness scholarship can be well served by num erical reductionism unless this is more effectively complemented by ethnobiographical approaches which explore how self-ratings emerge from cultural contexts and self-narratives. happiness is imagined, generated, and expressed both through quantification and through stories. in scholarship, as in everyday life, we count and recount our blessings. this somewhat neglected distinction between numerical and narrative representations of happiness applies to conceptual, experiential, and methodological issues. it may help us to understand the social construction of happiness in cultural contexts, in conjunction with other distinctions such as those between affective and cognitive appraisals, and between hedonic and eudaimonic versions of the good life. there are potential synergies between psychometric and ethnobiographical approaches which could help us to recover some of the core humanistic values of the ‘happiness lens’, namely: empathy (respect for subjectivity); positivity (attention to goodness); holism; a lifespan perspective; and consequentialist transparency (making progressive intentions and causal theories explicit). anthropology has good potential to help strengthen these values, particularly by using ethnobiography to help us understand what numerical representations of happiness mean. keywords: happiness, culture, anthropology, self-reports, quantification, biography, self, meaning, suffering 1. introduction: quantitative happiness science and the narrative turn happiness scholars explore how people develop a sense that their lives are good, and sociocultural anthropology is about how people become human through the medium of culture. both have quantitative and narrative aspects. happiness scholars ask ‘how happy are people?’, ‘how does happiness happen?’, and ‘in what ways does happiness matter?’. socio-cultural anthropologists, typically keener on story-telling than quantification, nonetheless use vague and implicit quantifiers in cultural descriptions and comparisons. studies of happiness and of culture face a common dilemma: the subject matter is extremely general and elusive, and to develop conversations about it – let alone study it ‘scientifically’ – we tend to feel obliged to simply and reify these abstractions. culture becomes ‘cultures’ or cultural artifacts, or more specific measurable differences between populations. happiness becomes substantialised in the form of aggregate numbers representing people’s self-evaluations. at the same time as anthropology (like most social research) took a ‘narrative turn’ in the 1980s (bruner, 1984; sarbin, 1986; kleinman, 1988), the new ‘science’ of happiness was celebrating the countability of this elusive entity that had throughout human history mainly http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 314 been discussed through narrative (diener, 1984; veenhoven, 1984; argyle, 1987; myers, 1993). arguably, the biggest story of happiness scholarship has been the global public’s willing compliance, worldwide, in this extraordinary exercise in reducing complex self-evaluation and life-evaluation to numerical form (veenhoven, 2012: 454). the sheer bravado of quantitative happiness science has been captivating, and even by the early 1980s the proliferation of happiness scales and measurements seemed to have facilitated a new ‘science’ of happiness (diener, 1984). but interesting though the numbers and the debates about them may have been, in themselves they provide information about happiness that is just as inadequate as numerical ratings of symphonies or composers or artists would be as a form of commentary on the arts. the time has surely come for us to make stronger efforts to bring happiness scholarship to interdisciplinary maturity by integrating numerical analysis with exploration of the stories behind the numbers. anthropology, with its long tradition in empathetic and holistic study of culture and experience, is well placed to help in this process, particularly if it continues to strengthen its interest in ethnobiography (see e.g. mathews, 1996; berthon et al., 2009). happiness scholarship and anthropology both require us to be evaluative while also respecting individual and cultural diversities and relativities. through them, we hope to engage empathetically and respect other people’s subjectivity while also retaining enough detachment to judge and analyse objectively. in light of these balancing acts it is hardly surprising that proponents of these disciplines in their different ways have not been consistently empathetic (thin, 2008; 2012a; 2012b). yet empathy is arguably a core value of both disciplines, both as a methodological principle (while studying psychosocial phenomena we ought to try to imagine other people’s feelings and thoughts) and as an intended outcome (we should provide understanding that can improve prospects for interpersonal and interinstitutional empathy). also, in both these disciplines we are studying long-term emergent processes which are not only understood mainly through biographical stories, but are actually to a large extent generated through collaborative narrative make-believe. happiness and culture come into existence through conversations and nonverbal interactions. we collude with others to make them happen by developing the stories through which we both interpret and shape our experiences and our relationships. this means that in doing research into the subjective experience of happiness and culture we are engaged in generating the processes we want to learn about. happiness researchers aren’t just capturing information about a pre-existing reality; they are participating in people’s construction of what happiness is. in this era of surveys we now think of happiness, in part, in terms of scales and of graphs purportedly depicting growing national ‘gaps’ between happiness and wealth. although we may worry about deficiencies and losses of both culture and happiness, there is a key difference: culture is part of our expected inheritance and milieu as humans, whereas happiness is (perhaps increasingly in ‘postmaterialistic’ societies) something that we must deliberately generate. all of us seem to maintain two quite different modes of understanding and interpreting the goodness of our lives: we count (our blessings, our pains, our position relative to our former selves or our expectations or significant others, etc.) and we recount our past and our future (both introspectively in interior monologues and interactively through conversations and expressed narratives). in the social sciences, these quantitative and qualitative modes of enquiry and discourse have tended to polarize into antagonistic or at best mutually distrustful camps of positivists and interpretivists respectively. bruner (1986: 12-13) contrasted the ‚paradigmatic‛ mode of thought (on which logico-scientific rationality is based and which is particularly relevant to understanding the physical world), with the ‚narrative‛ mode (which counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 315 builds on ‘folk psychology’ to explore the plot lines of people’s lives and the mental processing associated with them). although another pioneer of the narrative turn, sarbin (1986), declared that ‚psychology is narrative‛ (p. 8), many scholars prefer to keep story-telling out of the shop window, and proceed as if ‘data’ were synonymous with ‘numbers’. most survey-based academic papers give details of the survey instruments and population samples used, but do not even hint at the heuristics or thin-sliced self-narratives by which respondents may have arrived at their numerical self-evaluations. 2. on scientific reductionism and heuristics one branch of positivist scholarship does explicitly recognize that survey self-reports are tendentious and partial representations of happiness: nobel prize-winner daniel kahneman has for many years drawn our attention to the ‚simplifying heuristics‛ by which people arrive at answers to survey questions, which must be put into play because our numerical self-ratings don’t come ‚ready-made‛ like names (kahneman, 1999: 21). since aggregate scores are unavoidably distortive, he recommends a more realistic way of arriving at scores, allowing us to measure ‚objective happiness‛ by using less confusing and (for respondents) less demanding techniques of momentary wellbeing assessment (kahneman, 1999: 21). these give us a heap of hedonically rated moments which can then be aggregated to provide an overall score. fellow psychologist fredrickson (2000) then pointed out that beginnings, peaks, and ends are justifiably salient in our self-evaluations because they are richer in information about our life stories and our minds. since happiness is complex, subjective, and narratively constructed, there is no reason to assume that we will get a more valid or useful representation of it by treating it as a heap of momentary pleasures. analogously, it would be questionable to evaluate the experience of a wagner opera by meticulously counting not just its exquisite peaks but all of its boring quarter-hours to give an aggregate score. the opera is experienced as a whole: its peaks, its structure and its musical narrativity are what matter. kahneman is optimistic that we will soon have developed very much more affectometers and hedonimetric techniques for measuring ‚experienced utility‛ (kahneman, 1999: 18). even if he is right, we’ll still need narratives and other qualitative approaches to conduct responsible life evaluation. as the philosopher anna alexandrova (2008) has sensibly recommended, we ought to make intelligent, context-relevant uses of the different kinds of assessment: momentary assessments are helpful in making decisions relating to short-term pleasures and pains, but life satisfaction assessments (and, i would insist, not just numbers but stories too) are more likely to be helpful for considerations of major life-choices. no social sciences escaped the ‘science wars’ that in the 1970s and 1980s seemed to exacerbate the ‘two cultures’ fragmentation between positivistic and interpretive approaches to studying human sociality. but happiness scholarship, with its combination of a rich variety of scientific methods with strong respect for subjectivity and philosophizing, seems well positioned to transcend those often unnecessarily adversarial stand-offs. all serious happiness scholars, in whatever discipline or school of thought, are forced to reflect on the differences and synergies between the generalizing art of measurement and the more idiosyncratic and hermeneutic approaches to understanding happiness via life stories. in scholarship, as in everyday life, we are all both quantifiers and storytellers. so despite the ideal-type distinction between numerical and narrative modes of enquiry and representation, quantitative representations of psychological conditions tend to be strongly intertwined with stories, and stories frequently rely on implicit quantification for their interest and persuasive power. counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 316 indeed, quantitative researchers have long been aware that their numerical analysis is potentially misleading without strong appreciation of how nonspecialist respondents use and understand the vague quantifiers (such as the highly culture-bound ‘not too happy’ used in usa surveys) on which numerical findings depend, especially when those findings are based on elicited self-reports (bradburn & miles, 1979; schwartz, 1999; sanford & moxey, 2003). in happiness studies, the counting metaphor is associated with ‘bottom-up’ approaches in which our wellbeing is conceived as a heap of evaluations which can become depressed through pains and elevated by pleasures. the narrative metaphor is more likely to support ‘top-down’, holistic appreciation of life as a complex organic whole in which a master-plot is interwoven with a variety of subplots, characters, and dramas. in counting-house mode, life is good if the pile is high. it was this elevation metaphor that allowed the poet robert frost (1942: 15) to suggest that ‚happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.‛ if life domains are counted separately, you have to either average the height of each pile, or specify some weighting according to the salience of each life domain. in narrative mode, life is good if the journey is interesting or if we seem at least to be proceeding in a promising direction. in counting-house mode, we persuade ourselves that happiness is a matter of factual verification: the heap is either high or not. in narrative mode, by contrast, the knowability of happiness is much more dubious: happiness can be consigned to the uninteresting happy ending, dangled on the end of a stick as an unreachable otherworldly ideal, or conceived as the enjoyment or meaningfulness of the journey. quantified suffering is quite simply a subtraction from the heap, but narrated suffering can acquire a critical role in providing the sufferer’s life with interesting contrast, with new relationships with sympathetic others, with some existential meaning, or with a dramatic plot. as in all other sciences that necessarily transcend the naturalistic-hermeneutic division, happiness scholars may be tempted to avoid debates about the respective contributions of quantitative and qualitative approaches. but the discipline as a whole must recognize the different strengths of these approaches, and seek constructive synergies between them. much has been made, in many key texts on happiness, of the conceptual parsing of happiness into ‘affective’ aspects (i.e. how good or bad people feel, emphasized in hedonic approaches taking pleasure as the core meaning of happiness) and ‘cognitive’ aspects (i.e. how people interpret and evaluate the quality of their lives in more detached and reflective ways, as emphasized in eudaimonic approaches taking value, meaning, fulfillment or perfection as the core meaning of happiness) (see for e.g. schimmack et al., 2002; veenhoven, 2012: 453-4). but the distinction between happiness quantified and happiness narrated seems rather more stark, and potentially more instructive but also more threatening if allowed to persist as a cultural divide within happiness scholarship. over several decades a colossal effort has gone into debating the reliability of various kinds of measures. it is vital that this be matched by more careful debate on whether, when, and why measuring is needed, and how the knowledge it generates can be rendered more comprehensible and useful through exploration of more sophisticated biographical information. 3. bureaucratic happiness quantification: a product of radical modernity it seems likely that humans in all cultural contexts have always used both substantialist and narrative metaphors, and consequently both quantification and discursive story-telling, in assessing the goodness of people’s feelings and lives. although 18th and 19th century utilitarians made rhetorical declarations in favour of the quantifiability of happiness, it was only in the 20th century that people tried to put this into practice in systematic research. john counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 317 sinclair, the scot who invented modern national statistics with the recommendation that their core purpose was to establish the ‚quantum of happiness‛ (sinclair, 1791: xiii), didn’t dare to suggest that anyone try to measure subjectivity directly. bentham (1781/2000, ch. 4), dreamed of a ‚felicific calculus‛ and edgeworth (1881, ch. 3), speculated about the development of hedonimetry but neither was bold enough to propose any realistic plans let alone to engage in practical experimentation with these ideas. yet today, it seems to have come to pass that humanity is indulging in a unique experiment in persuading ourselves that happiness is, after all, measurable. many people would still accept that life stories have an important part to play in understanding happiness, but this is all but forgotten in the public discourse on the science of happiness. sometimes, the quantitative and narrative approaches have been combined. for example, interesting stories about happiness have been developed on the basis of numbers, as in easterlin’s (1974) hugely influential article which convinced lots of people that there was an ‘easterlin paradox’ in the form of an apparent contradiction between the universally positive income-happiness correlation in cross-sectional studies (i.e. everywhere richer people’s selfreported happiness tends to be higher) and the lack of such correlation in many longitudinal studies (i.e. lots of nations have seen rising income without rises in self-rated happiness scores). arguably it has been the sheer tellability and newsworthiness of number-based happiness stories that has captured the public imagination. in other cases, conversely, numbers have been derived from stories, as in the famous study of milwaukee nuns’ diaries and health records, which found the authors of the more optimistic and cheerful diaries to have had better health and longevity (danner et al., 2001). that study emerged from a lucky natural experiment, but many other longitudinal cohort studies are now tracking lifespan development of happiness and related psychological, behavioural, and situational factors in ways which are genuinely going to transcend the quantitative-narrative divide by showing how self-reports relate to plans, anticipations, events, and memories (elliott, 2005, ch. 10; pavot, 2008: 132). the psychologist sternberg (for decades a global superstar of psychometrics) describes his own progression from ‘psychometric’ research on love to a more in-depth, humane, and ultimately more revealing and more rational and scientific approach identifying strong cultural patterns evident in analysis of personal love stories (sternberg, 1998: ix-x, 24). nonetheless, sternberg also took the trouble to subject his theories of story types to empirical psychometric testing. similarly, the number-crunching empirical sociologist donald campbell did a total about-turn from his 1960s disparagement of case study methods to strong approval of them in the 1970s (flyvberg, 2006: 221). the recent ‘felicitators’ collection in this journal included several biographical papers by scholars who hitherto had specialized mainly in the analysis of statistical evidence on happiness (helliwell et al., 2011). freedman’s (1978, e.g. ch. 3) review of mainly statistical evidence on happiness also humanizes the text by providing semi-fictional biographical summaries of composite representatives of ‘happy people’ on the basis of interviews. generally, however, the happiness quantifiers – largely social and experimental psychologists (diener & biswas-diener, 2008; veenhoven, 2012), neuroscientists (davidson, 2004; hanson & mendius, 2009) and economists (frey, 2008; helliwell & wang, 2012) – have worked quite separately from the happiness story-builders and biographical interpreters – largely psychotherapists (frankl, 1959/1984; pennebaker & seagal, 1999; bernstein, 1990), a few narrative psychologists (bruner, 1986; baumeister, 1991; mcadams, 2005; bauer et al., 2008; bauer & mcadams, 2010), philosophers (haybron, 2008; bok, 2010), theologians (e.g. turner, 2008), and popular self-help and life coaching authors (riklan, 2004; swan, 2010). quantifiers counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 318 specialise in finding the most efficient and ‘reliable’ means of eliciting self-disclosure. narrativists specialize in interpreting the psychological, social, and cultural complexities of selfmaking. to anthropologists and to anyone interested in cultural diversity, it is startling to learn that despite all the diverse ways of conceiving selves, lives, and happiness, and despite the inevitable indeterminacy of all of these in all cultural contexts, most people worldwide are prepared and able, when asked, to put a number on their happiness or on the quality of their life (veenhoven, 2012: 454). this ‘step one’ personal aggregation has given birth to an explosion of ‘step two’ social aggregation at community and national levels: the survey-based aggregation of numerical self-reports has undoubtedly become the dominant emblem of the new discipline. it is now clear that in aggregate form, these numbers give us useful information that tends to correlate well with other ways of measuring people’s overall happiness, life satisfaction, and quality of life (helliwell & wang, 2012; diener & biswas-diener, 2008, ch. 14; diener & tov, 2012: 144; veenhoven, this issue). treated with due caution, numbers have key roles to play in developing new kinds of conversation about happiness, and in checking the plausibility of common claims and assumptions about its causes and effects. though no doubt the merits of scientistic approaches to subjective issues are sometimes overstated by their proponents (for a critique of unrealistic claims about happiness ‘facts’ see wilkinson, 2007; and for a critique of unwarranted causal claims, see thin, 2012a, ch. 8), prospects for cumulative and robust knowledge generation are surely improved by this insistence on transparent research methods, on clarification and refinement of constructs and survey questions, and on systematic comparison with other studies (diener, 1984: 542-3). there are nonetheless good reasons to worry about the numerical reification of happiness that is shown in the widespread tendency of scholars, media, and politicians to treat numerical self-ratings as if they revealed a substantial entity called ‘happiness’. just as ‘the economy’ is an abstraction that takes on a realistic life of its own when measured as gdp, and just as money is a symbol of value which gets mistaken for real worth by so-called ‘materialists’, similarly it is becoming common to treat happiness – which is obviously highly abstract and ultimately indeterminate – as if it were adequately represented by personal and national scores. in typical public reports on happiness surveys, the danish ‘are’ happier than the french, by virtue of some portion of their citizenry having awarded themselves higher digits (e.g. helliwell & wang, 2012: 30, 36, 38, 40-42). north americans have, according to perhaps the most iconic and most common misrepresentation, made no happiness gains since the 1950s (and sometime this heroic claim is expanded to ‘the west’ in general, e.g. in layard, 2005: 29). parents ‘are’, according to most survey reports, less happy than childless people, and these reports according to one comprehensive review provide clear ‚empirical evidence‛ that ‚beliefs about parenthood and childlessness < are largely false‛ (hansen, 2012: 49). such overconfident conclusions dismiss out of hand the many interesting debates that might arise through confrontations between survey reports and biographical self-reports. we are assured on the basis of numerical self-reports that ‚we are generally quite happy‛ (freedman, 1978: 36) or that ‚most people are happy‛ (diener & diener, 1996). in the dieners’ paper, the criterion for being ‘happy’ is that you believe yourself to have a ‘neutral’ balance of good and bad feelings or of larger satisfactions and dissatisfactions. they assume that the selfreport is the self-evaluation – that people ‘are’ happy if they self-report themselves a 5 on a 0-10 survey scale. they also assume that people are able, intelligently, to make quantitative comparisons between goods and bads such that a ‘unit’ of one cancels out a ‘unit’ of the other. counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 319 they then assume, more controversially still, that a ‘neutral’ self-evaluation is the point at which you can responsibly be described as ‘happy’. but can we really tell when a leg pain is neutralized by a musical joy, for example? and if someone says their bad moments are almost as frequent as their good ones, or that they are dissatisfied with almost as many aspects of their lives as those they are satisfied with, can we reasonably call them ‘happy’? a little more conversation, and a bit of story-telling, are needed if we are to make responsible use of such survey-based claims. 4. you and your life: eudaimonism and the mistrust of ‘hokey cokey theory’ you put your whole self in, your whole self out. in out, in out, you shake it all about. you do the hokey cokey and you turn around. that's what it's all about. [traditional song, uk] an embarrassed and reluctant father dances in and out to the hokey cokey at a children’s party. ‘i don’t think he’s really putting his whole self in, do you?’ says one onlooker. ‘no,’ says another, ‘i don’t think he really believes that the hokey cokey is what life is all about, do you?’ there are two parts to hokey cokey theory. first, we invent a ‘whole self’, an integrated identity which we hope will be a good one, like the ‘good daimon’ from which ancient greek philosophers developed the idea of ‘eudaimonia’, or ‘thriving’; and we then pretend that this coherent self gives our life some kind of meaning – ‘that’s what it’s all about’. sceptical adults know this to be always a fragile and provisional invention: we juggle all the time with various private and public selves and roles, and we rely on our own feelings, other people’s views, and cultural narratives to tell us whether each version is a good one. in interaction with other people and with the environment, we develop stories involving a variety of tokens which can be deployed as extensions of the self. picture now a five-year-old boy on the pitch-and-putt course, who turns triumphantly to his father, shouting ‘i’m on the green and you’re not.’ he demonstrates at that tender age a sophisticated intuition of how the self develops through playful self-extensions. note that he isn’t so immersed in the game that he mistakes the ball for his actual self. he is well aware that when he proceeds to the putting green it is not his whole self that will plop into the hole. i would assume that respondents to the ‘all things considered’ global happiness survey question are similarly aware that the self-report, like the golf ball or the ‘whole-self-in’ move in the hokey cokey dance, is a playful part-self – a nanobiography, if you like. promoters and interpreters of happiness surveys don’t consistently show this same level of understanding. in order to get conversations going about national happiness, they suspend disbelief and treat numerical self-reports as if they were self-disclosures – i.e., revelations of actual selves and actual happiness – rather than provisional, temporary self-expressions. in the absence of evidence to the contrary we trust, in a general sense, that self-reports refer to ‘happiness’ or to how well people believe their lives are going. unless there is evidence of systematic distortion, we have no need to worry about occasional rogue responses that are given in bad faith, because the aggregate statistics still give a fair if absurdly concise representation of aggregate happiness. but to find out what self-reports mean, we need to explore how people’s sense of self develops through interactive narration in cultural contexts. in doing so, we will learn a great deal about emotion norms, shared narratives, ideal character types, aspirations, and norms of self-presentation that will tell us a great deal more about happiness than we can learn from numerical ratings. counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 320 probably the most tricky demand placed on respondents to happiness surveys is the idea of asking them to evaluate, in a detached way, their ‘life-as-a-whole’, or to consider ‘all things’ when assessing their current happiness. such reports, it is hoped, enrich our understanding of the multiple dimensions of wellbeing by taking into account the multiple domains that respondents hold dear (rojas, 2003). respondents presumably recognize some scientific purpose in this extreme act of simplification, but there is no reason to make the hokey cokey assumption that they put their ‘whole self in’ to the numbers they report. nor indeed is any aggregation – from experiences to self-ratings or from individuals to nations – ‘what it’s all about’: the concept of happiness begs much more sophisticated conversations than can ever be facilitated by the analysis of these numerical reports. let’s not forget that even book-length autobiographies are highly selective in choosing a small set of aspects of the self and life events to disclose. this being so, it is clearly absurd to expect the nanobiographies that we get from survey responses to be more than partial self-disclosures. arguably, no such survey evidence should be presented alone, without some qualitative enquiries into what the respondents were thinking about when they offered the self-ratings. to arrive at a single-digit summary of their own happiness or life satisfaction people seem able not just to detach their analytical selves from their experiencing selves, but also to distinguish their selves (‘i am a happy person’) from their lives (‘my life is going well’). there has already been ample debate on the questions of whether people are trustworthy judges of their own wellbeing, and whether survey-elicited numerical self-reports are trustworthy representations of those self-evaluations and life-evaluations. much less has been said about comprehensibility of the self/life distinction, but the happiness philosopher dan haybron provides a provocative introduction. he invited his students to consider the case of george, a very happy man who bases his happiness on the utterly false belief that people love and admire him. nearly all students agreed that george is ‘happy’, but half of them disagreed with the claim that he has a ‘happy life’ (haybron, 2009). i interpret this ‘happy person versus happy life’ distinction as one between hedonic and eudaimonic evaluation, and thence between the relatively simple numerical representation of pleasure and the much more complex, necessarily narrative analysis of the goodness of someone’s life. if george reports a high barometric happiness score we may have no reason to disbelieve it. but his life story is one of self-deception, indignity, and vulnerability. the nanobiography that a number gives us can actually be seriously undermined by the more substantial biography that lies behind it, and none of these comes close to full self-disclosure. it may represent mainly or only ill-informed, unsustainable, inauthentic pig-like pleasure of the satisfied fool whose life is worse than that of ‚socrates dissatisfied‛ as j.s. mill (1861/1957: 9) put it. it’s not that animalistic pleasure is intrinsically wrong, it’s that it is a small and – according to eudaimonists – ‘lower’ component of all the happiness that there could be in our lives. haybron’s example refers to a hypothetical individual and is of tenuous relevance to studies of large numbers of real individuals. but it does remind us that most of us require more than one-shot barometric self-evaluation to assess how well people live: stories matter too, because they tell us about how people’s happiness unfolds over time, how it relates to character, and how it emerges from particular social contexts and in response to challenges as well as to pleasures. and if one person’s self-evaluation can be deluded, could this not also be true of aggregate happiness scores? kahneman (1999) argued in favour of ‚objective‛ (p. 7) happiness assessments based on momentary self-evaluations on the grounds that these require much less ‚cognitive counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 321 integration‛ (p. 19) than is the case with longer and more complex self-assessments such as day recollection or life satisfaction because in these more general, cross-temporal senses, people ‚generally do not know how happy they are‛ (p. 21). it might reasonably be inferred from this that scholars who take a ‘hedonistic’ approach to the good life (happiness as pleasure) are more likely to be counters, whereas those who insist on ‘eudaimonic’ approaches (the good life as the achievement of meaningful self-actualization) are more likely to be narrators. still, many scholars espousing eudaimonic perspectives have shown themselves more than willing to subject eudaimonia to numerical reduction, developing scales to measure ‚psychological wellbeing‛ (ryff & singer, 2008), ‚self-determination‛ (deci & ryan, 2008), ‚eudaimonic growth‛ (bauer & mcadams, 2010), ‚personal expressiveness‛ (waterman 2011: 371), ‚eudaimonic wellbeing‛ (waterman et al., 2010), and ‚meaning-in-life‛ (steger et al., 2006). this multiplication of measures shows the diversity of this unmanageably residual category of ‘eudaimonic’ wellbeing. ironically, researchers seeking to prove that it is qualitatively different (and morally superior) to ‘hedonic’ or ‘subjective’ wellbeing often end up simply demonstrating only that these various kinds of goodness contribute to a ‘quantitative’ selfassessment of happiness (for a superb critique of several key eudaimonists, see kashdan et al., 2008: 223). so no matter what happiness concept forms the basis of self-report measures, we still need to investigate self-stories to find out what people’s self-ratings actually mean. when eudaimonists use terms like ‘fulfilment’, ‘self-actualization’, and ‘authentic self’, there are a host of questionable implicit assumptions concerning ideal selves which people are psychological capable of distinguishing from less worthy alternatives. eudaimonists tend to blame self-alienation on life circumstances that inhibit the pursuit of self-actualization (e.g. waterman, 2011:363-4). but the quest to identify and then approximate oneself to this ideal self could lead, of course, to endless anxieties about which potential selves we should be trying to perfect (ben-shahar, 2009). to the extent that it perpetuates self-doubt, aristotelian perfectionism is an ‚inhumane doctrine‛ (kraut, 1979: 194). so although new narratives may help us out of alienation, it may have been excessive investment in specific linear projected self-stories that got us into trouble in the first place (becker, 1997). this is not to say that efforts towards self-improvement are necessarily bad. it’s hard to imagine how anyone could progress through life without some process of sifting through choices to reject activities for which we have no aptitude. but to understand how people cope with the unavoidable dilemmas posed by the impossible variety of human potentials and goals, we need to appreciate the role that self-narratives play in enabling people to develop a sense that at least some of their goals and achievements are good and meaningful, or, alternatively, that it doesn’t much matter whether they are so long as the pursuit of them is enjoyable and not harmful to others. a quantifying, ‘more-is-better’ approach to fulfillment or authenticity won’t do because pretending to have a single ideal authentic self is psychologically dangerous. ideal selves are cultural constructions, not pre-existing entities, and they need to be actively constructed through personal fictions that are sharable with other people. this is not just a simple process of discovering or revealing a ‘real’ self that exists independently of the stories we co-construct (holstein & gubrium, 2008). similarly, it has increasingly been argued since the 1980s that cultural representations are narratively co-constructed (tedlock, 1991). although we can measure ‘culture’ when it suits us, what matters is that we appreciate and learn about cultural processes. to assess happiness or culture, we need a narrative approach, which explores how people’s conversations with other people, their engagements with cultural narratives, and their counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 322 introspective self-dialogues interact to facilitate or inhibit viable autobiographies. hokey cokey theory is problematic for both hedonists and eudaimonists, i.e. to anyone who overinvests in either a numerical self-representation or in an ideal self, because there is no ‘whole self’ independent of the stories we tell about it. 5. stop making sense? meaning and anti-meaning overlapping with the boom in happiness studies, there has been since the 1960s an explosion of interest, among philosophers and psychologists, in the concept of meaning-in-life (see e.g. frankl, 1959/1984; baumeister, 1991; steger, 2009; wolf, 2010). biographies are important vehicles for both developing and reporting on the sense in which lives can be meaningful. by exploring oral and written narratives from diverse languages and cultures, we can get a sense of the common and idiosyncratic root metaphors through which meaning is developed: life as a journey; as a stream; as an organic cycle of growth and decline; a puzzle or quest; a vessel; a drama or story; a construction process; an investment, and so on. ‘meaning’ is a vague term, but we can usefully parse it to distinguish four kinds of existential ‘meaning’ which biography might be said to convey: purpose, communication, order, and justice. purpose is about linking outcomes with plans and anticipating the pleasure of intentional achievement. in western autobiographies, arriving at a sense of purpose is often associated with a cathartic crisis or ‚turning point‛ beyond which an individual begins to live what they see as their true destiny (bruner, 2001: 32). turning points can, however, denote the repression of individuality, and its immersion into a new sense of belonging in a set of cultural traditions. in sun chief, the autobiography of don talayesva, a hopi chief of arizona, the structure of the story depends heavily on the painful initiation rite as a ‘turning point’ at which individualist mischief and lack of direction was literally flogged out of him so that he learned to ‚live right‛ by obeying elders and respecting ancestors (simmons 1942: 87). purpose considerations are therefore about personal control and agency, but also about teleology or destiny the idea that a life seems to be leading towards some predefined outcome and that good luck or bad luck along the way is somehow ‘meant to be’. communication generates connections between speakers and hearers, between symbols and referents, and between the constituent parts of an utterance. by telling a life, we seek authentication from an actual or imaginary audience (gergen & gergen, 1988). life reviews also try to establish a sense of order, the antithesis of chaos or patternlessness. order can be based on internal consistency (the sense of fit between the different activities, roles, and phases of an individual’s life) and external consistency (links between the individual and broader patterned environments social, historical, environmental, and cosmological or ‘spiritual’). worldwide, people are interested in the aesthetic quality of individuals’ lives, seeking the sense that someone’s life has a good ‘feel’ or ‘pattern’, that it is a good example of a human life, that it is not a ‘mess’. these ‘prudential’ and ‘perfectionist’ considerations can also be complemented by ethical criteria, concerning whether the relations between efforts and rewards in someone’s life seem to exhibit justice. when the expected links between efforts and rewards are severed through bad luck or enemy action, this is perceived not only as injustice but also as a loss of meaning. violence is ‘meaningless’ (to witnesses and victims, though not necessarily to perpetrators) if it lacks a clear sense of purpose and justice. in suffering narratives, it can be tamed by being rendered meaningful. alienation and self-doubt, similarly, can be tamed through narrative selfjustification. it is no accident that many of our early western autobiographies were called ‘confessions’ or ‘apologia’ – self-justifications: an interest in conscious choices between diverse counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 323 human potentials is bound to lead to self-doubt and guilt. as has often been demonstrated empirically in recent years, telling or writing down stories about our lives has important therapeutic benefits (myerhoff, 1978; pennebaker & seagal, 1999; mcadams, 2005). presumably, they achieve this in part by helping us justify and make sense of crucial life choices that we can never be sure were good ones. if self-narratives as the means by which people make sense of their lives have so much emotional and moral baggage invested in them, you can understand why some researchers, not only in the positivist happiness quantification camp but also in qualitative anthropology, have chosen to ignore autobiographies as sources of information on happiness and culture. but can we really avoid this problem by relying instead on numerical self-reports, which force respondents to thin-slice intuitively rather than ponderously? when we make meaning through stories, we learn about how adversities can become resources for progress and meaning. so the aggregator’s argument, that it is better for a nation to report as much positive affect and as little negative affect as possible, may not work at the level of the individual: here, it’s not just the arithmetic that matters but the stories make the numerical self-reports possible. biography can serve to describe, celebrate, and highlight any of the above qualities (purpose, communication, order, and justice), but is often a key means by which such qualities are invented. and the generation of meaning can be done, ironically, through tales of disjuncture, alienation, and meaninglessness which are then overcome. what cross-cultural biographical studies can offer, potentially, is a sense of whether these various kinds of ‘meaning’ which have become such prominent concerns in modern western philosophy are similarly evident in the life stories that people tell in diverse cultural contexts, or whether different kinds of meaning are emphasized, or whether perhaps the idea that life should be meaningful is barely expressed at all. first-person perspectives are unavoidably hard to interpret: they are filtered in so many ways that many researchers and policy-makers choose to reject them as too distorted, and their interpretation and evaluation too morally fraught, to be worthy of policy consideration. what i tell a researcher about my satisfactions will in the first place reflect not simply my actual feelings and views (which in any case may be highly volatile and uncertain, varying from moment to moment and from one encounter to another) but also my preferences for what i want the researcher to record about me. this may be distorted in major ways by my expectations of what the study ought to report, or by my desire for approval or recognition or pity, etc. even if given a truth drug which forced me to give the most accurate rendition of my true feelings, these would in any case be strongly influenced by many factors other than objective circumstances. for example, my current life satisfaction reflects my previous experiences, my views on what a good life should be like and on what i deserve, my expectations for the future, my perceptions of what selected individuals or categories of relevant other people have and what i think they enjoy. all of these interpretive challenges apply just as much to numerical self-reports. box 1 (below) summarises some of the key considerations that we would need to discuss with a respondent if we wanted to understand the thinking behind the numerical self-report. from this it should be clear that there are great gains to be made from conducting ethnographic and biographical enquiries at the same time as doing surveys. this is rarely done (although for some examples of mixed-method ethnographic approaches, see selin & davey, 2012). at its simplest, it would involve asking at least a sample of respondents to say, briefly, what they had in mind when they rated their happiness or life satisfaction. more adventurous work might involve, for example, systematically reviewing large numbers of personal diaries counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 324 or blogs to identify trends in aspirations, experiential salience, remembrance of the past, and so on. this might be done in conjunction with longitudinal surveys to help researchers develop a sense of the stories behind the numbers. box 1. variable considerations when thinking about life satisfaction number and variety of domains considered: how many aspects of life are thought to matter, and are some more important or salient than others? meaning/interconnectedness of domains considered: is the quality of some domains of experience dependent on others? how important is the sense that life has some overall coherent meaning or consistent story line? time preference: is the emphasis on the present, the recent past, the distant past, or on anticipated future happiness? do ultra-happy childhoods present a threat to the wish to see progressive improvements in happiness through the lifecourse? summative or dynamic: how important, if at all, is the criterion of gradual progress from worse to better over time? postmortem welfare: how, if at all, is the assessment influenced by belief in an afterlife, or doubts or worries about postmortem rewards and punishments? legacy: how, if at all, is the assessment influenced by thoughts of our postmortem influence on the people and places that survive us? self-concept: is a discrete individual the main or only consideration, or do some people evaluate their own life satisfaction only as part of a wider collectivity? 6. ‘happily ever after’: constraints on happiness narration for all its diverse possible referents, happiness is essentially a psychobiographical concept, a lens through which we think evaluatively and narratively about people’s selves and lives. the enjoyment of life becomes significant, and is culturally legitimated and structured, through life reviews and life stories. oddly, although all humans are interested in how good and how meaningful people’s lives are, the stories we tell about lives are rarely prudential (i.e. focused on what is good for the person whose life is under consideration). the overwhelming impression from browsing published biographical literature is that life stories (oral or written, real or fictional) tend to be either heroic and dramatic (focused on unusual achievements and struggles) or pathological (focused on exceptional suffering). this neglect of the prudential value of stories and events (how good they are for the person whose life is being told) is often strongly embedded within narrative traditions which seclude happiness in the bland hereafter of the un-narrated happy-ever-after ending and not in the cut and thrust of a good narrative. the idea that happy lives should go untold was similarly expressed by a paxtun woman who told the anthropologist bénédicte grima ‚i have no story to tell: i’ve been through no hardships‛ (grima, 1991/2002: 53), and before that by tolstoy’s (1878/1954) quip in the first line of anna karenina, that ‚all happy families are alike‛. just as hegel (1822/1975) noted that happiness is on the ‚blank pages of history‛ (or ‚happiness writes white ink on white pages‛ as de montherlant (1958) put it), so in story-telling – fairy-tales, fiction, book-length biographies or everyday personal narratives – happiness tends to be marginalized or hinted at through other themes such as ambition, success, and love. counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 325 pursuers of happiness studies may want to fight this kind of prejudice, and demonstrate that many of the most interesting biographical themes are about happiness. but they may also learn indirectly about happiness and life meanings from stories about how people struggle with adversity and existential doubt. the anthropologist paul stoller (2007) notes how among intellectuals, himself included, the challenge of life-threatening illness often provokes strong desires to express a new sense of awareness of one’s place in the world and of the meaning of one’s life: ‚there are, of course, few things more intimate in life than illness. and so it stands to reason that illness narratives are widespread‛ (p. 184). it may well be that there is a pan-human tendency to appreciate what matters in life through narratives of suffering and deprivation, and that – as the phenomenological anthropologist michael jackson puts it in his recent book on ethnographic approaches to wellbeing, we need to understand this ‚not as a settled state but as a field of struggle‛ (jackson, 2011: 1). biography is not just about reporting and generating meaning for the protagonists of life stories. listening to, narrating, and analyzing life stories are key means for developing interpersonal concern and empathy. life stories are among various ways in which we can show prudential interest in the goodness of other people’s lives. asking and telling about well-being is not just expression of pre-existing facts: our happiness, or at least our affective competence, requires explicit everyday recognition from other people. szalai (1980) pinpoints one of the paradoxes of wellbeing when he notes that in most cultures there are standardized greetings in the form of wellbeing enquiries (‘how are you?’ etc.), yet the expected standard replies to such questions (‘fine’ and/or, reciprocally, ‘how are you?’) don’t necessarily contain any information about wellbeing other than that the respondent is well enough to observe this social convention. humans are uniquely and universally concerned about wellbeing and seem to believe in the possibility of making and expressing homogenized assessment of the multiple domains of wellbeing. but we don’t generally follow this concern through to careful interpersonal, intertemporal, or cross-cultural wellbeing comparisons. just as narrative traditions discourage interest in happiness, so too the conventions of interpersonal dialogue make it hard to include substantial attention to wellbeing in normal conversation. although our identities are closely intertwined with the ways in which we communicate our moods and emotional dispositions, anthropological studies of identity have rarely ventured into consideration of the emotional implications of the communication and formation of identities. but humans need other people to recognise not just the various cognitive aspects of our identity (ethnicity, gender, age, etc.) but the affective aspects too. identities depend on intersubjective negotiation: they are generated through interaction, recognition, and perhaps above all by narration. biographical story-telling seems a particularly suitable place to develop engagements between anthropology and happiness studies. through such engagements, anthropology could become more cheerful and realistic, while happiness studies could become less ethnocentric, more holistic, and better informed by qualitative analysis and ethnographic research. anthropologists, psychologists, psychotherapists, and philosophers all make substantial use of life histories, life reviews, and self-narration. but ethno-biographers still exhibit biases which inhibit the exploration of happiness. an adequate representation of society conveys some sense of how people experience life and find meaning in it, and of how these experiences and meanings have changed. in his pathbreaking book illness narratives (1988), the foundational text in the anthropology of suffering, kleinman rightly criticizes modern medical practitioners’ inattention to the ‚experience of illness‛ (p. xiv). his own unremittingly pathological work, however, like that of most of his colleagues in medical and psychological anthropology, can by counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 326 the same token be criticized for its almost total lack of interest in the experience of happiness. kleinman’s more recent biographical work what really matters (2006) makes his own existential pessimism more explicit. he tells life stories of a few exceptionally tormented individuals, and concludes that ‚what really matters‛ is ‚facing up to our existential condition‛ (kleinman, 2006: 231). to kleinman and his interviewees, this means resignation to life’s awfulness. he does fleetingly acknowledge the place of ‚joy, exuberance, and fulfillment <love and hope‛ (kleinman, 2006: 13) and suggests that by making sense of traumas and finding dignity and meaning, we may achieve a kind of ‚quiet liberation‛ (p.10) despite a nagging sense of hopelessness. still, life is, for kleinman, basically miserable. as noted above, jackson tries to make a virtue out of the miserabilist outlook in trying to make sense of the lives of traumatized west africans (2011), and there is now a thriving industry in ethnobiographies of suffering (e.g. nash, 1992; reed-danahay, 1997; das et al., 2001; grima, 2002/1991; biehl, 2005; biehl, good, & kleinman, 2007; mattingly, 2010). 7. conclusions: the happiness lens in positivist, ethnographic, and biographical research as i have argued previously (thin, 2012a: ch. 1) the ‚happiness lens‛, i.e. the most morally and intellectually compelling principles and values of happiness scholarship, can usefully be spelled out as five qualities: 1) empathic respect for subjectivity (showing an interest in people’s feelings) 2) positivity (paying attention to goodness, so as to offset the normal social science bias towards pathologies) 3) holism (exploring ‘whole lives’ by looking at how the various domains, inputs, events, and processes interact) 4) a lifespan perspective (exploring ‘whole lives’ through time, by enquiring into their narrativity – how they are anticipated, experienced, remembered, and communicated in both internal conversations and externalized self-stories). 5) consequentialist transparency (an acceptance of the responsibility to explain how we expect our values, institutions, and activities to translate into good lives – i.e. making explicit our implicit happiness theories). these principles and objectives are easy to assert, but do our methods and the themes we explore actually help us pursue and exemplify these principles in action? theoretically, happiness surveys promote all of these values: they elicit first-person perspectives on the goodness of life, which are then analysed so as to develop and test causal theories of the interaction between happiness and various factors. yet it is ironic that happiness scholarship has largely come to public attention via survey findings, since these are surely the least empathetic, most reductionist, and most decontextualizing and temporally blind of social research methods. scientific detachment is required of the surveyor, while the respondents are required to meekly answer the restrictive questions which either show no interest in the content of their happiness, or do so in a piecemeal fashion with no attention to narrative happiness. respectful of the first-person perspective to the point of naivety, the happiness quantifier is interested in whether your glass is half full but refuses to listen to your stories about what’s in the glass and how it got there. positivist happiness derives from ‘humanistic’ psychology, but it has sacrificed too much of its humanity and philosophical plausibility in order to grab our attention by reducing happiness to a thing-like, countable entity that seems systematically comparable across time and space (annas, 2004). counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 327 anthropology, by contrast, generally favours ‘participant observation’ methods which deliberately promote empathy between researchers and informants. the key source of anthropology’s best potential contributions to quality-of-life studies lies in the intimacy of primary research encounters. in theory at least, these promote a strong sense of empathy with research subjects, a humane respect for subjective viewpoints, and a capacity for observing how life narratives and aspirations emerge from socio-cultural contexts. as edgerton (1990) has argued, longitudinal ethnographic research allows us to understand better how wellbeing emerges over time in relational ways. anthropological intimacy and empathy, when they are emphasized, put anthropology in stark contrast to the conscious avoidance of these in experimental psychology and behavioural economics, and to the less deliberate intimacyinhibiting use of survey tools by social psychologists and sociologists. however, in recent years the trend has been for anthropologists to seek out people who are sufficiently miserable for them to sympathise with, and by systematically ignoring happiness most anthropologists demonstrate in practice a significant form of empathy failure. table 1 (below) sketches out some of the different ways in which, as i hope i have demonstrated above, the core principles and values of happiness scholarship are promoted or inhibited by various cultural features of positivist happiness science, socio-cultural anthropology, and biography. finally, it is worth considering the implications of these discussions for policy and practice. in the final section on policy in the first world happiness report, the authors (all economists) argue that it is ‚highly desirable that happiness be measured by firms, communities, schools, hospitals and even medical practitioners. this will permit a more rapid increase in knowledge about the sources and consequences of happiness.‛ (helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2012: 94). while it is clearly desirable for all of these institutions to be guided by good understanding of the causes and effects of happiness, this recommendation seems unduly optimistic in its assumption that these kinds of institution could in general make responsible use of quantitative methods. except in the largest kinds of firm that could afford to hire in expertise and conduct reliable large-scale surveys or other numerical observations, it seems likely that quantitative methods could at best be used as a very rough way to start conversations about a variety of satisfactions. by contrast, any organization of any size, even ones with no social scientists, could reasonably be expected to make good use of qualitative research on happiness: anyone with basic social skills and empathic awareness can get other people to provide instructive stories about their sources of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, meaning, and motivation. author neil thin university of edinburgh n.thin@ed.ac.uk publishing timeline received 10 may 2012 accepted 4 september 2012 published 13 december 2012 counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 328 table1. happiness in positivist, ethnographic, and biographical approaches positivist happiness science sociocultural anthropology biographical studies empathy and subjectivity empathy promoted by showing respect for people’s own views on their wellbeing and its causes; but inhibited by over-reliance on survey and experimental methods. empathy promoted by intimate long-term participant observation, allowing respondents to express themselves at length, and by encouraging self-reflexive auto-ethnography; but inhibited by lack of interest in happiness. empathy promoted through the rhetoric of personal stories with strong plots, psychobiographical observations, and engaging plots; but inhibited by lack of interest in happiness. positivity core interest in happiness and the good life is the key strength and novelty of happiness scholarship. in some survey approaches, too little respect for eudaimonic happiness. until recently, no systematic interest in happiness, strong pathological bias, plus some naively romantic celebration of nonwestern virtue and happiness. strong emphasis on positive strengths, virtues, and success, but little systematic interest in happiness. psychobiographies and sociobiography tend to have strong pathological bias. holism strong interest both in developing summative indices of whole-life wellbeing plus exploring domain-specific wellbeing. limited exploration of how these are woven together through personal and cultural narratives. holism has always been a key value and strength of anthropology, though sometimes inhibited by excessive social constructionism and downplaying of somatic and psychological factors. key strength of biography lies in showing how temporality, emplotment, characterization, and meaning-making work together to formulate coherent or meaningful lives and selves. lifespan perspective downplayed in crosssectional surveys but getting more attention through longitudinal studies crosscultural varieties and commonalities in the structuring of the life course is a key theme, along with ritualisation of life crises and transitions. was in the past inhibited by atemporal snapshot representations of social reality, but is increasingly strengthened by ethno-biography. lifespan development is a key theme in biographical studies, though typically the individualisthagiographic approach inhibits attention to cultural and social structuring of the life course. consequentialist transparency clear recognition that happiness is at the core of ‘what really matters’. weaker attention to causal theories, particularly due to sloppy causal inferences on the basis of correlational evidence. limited (and sometimes pathological) attention to the ‘what really matters’ question, and evaluative analysis is inhibited by tradition of antiwestern/anti-modern cultural relativism good representation of personal values and personal theories of how things turn out. tends to be weaker on contextual analysis of socio-cultural causality. counting and recounting happiness and culture thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 329 references alexandrova, a. 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(2016). free to choose? economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 81-100. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i1.390 hans pitlik austrian institute of economic research (wifo) hans.pitlik@wifo.ac.at copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 article free to choose? economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions hans pitlik · martin rode abstract: recent research has shown that the degree to which people feel they are in control of their lives is an important correlate of individual happiness, where those who feel more in control are found to be systematically happier. in turn, the economic sources of perceived life control are only insignificantly established in the literature. the present paper employs individual data from the world value survey and european values study, covering the period from 1981 to 2013, to establish the macro-determinants of individual life control. we find that living in a country with high overall economic freedom is a major determinant of feeling in control of one’s own life. the effect is similar for individuals in highand low-income countries, while the impact of democracy is negligible in both cases. interacting relative income with economic freedom, we find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it is by far the lower income groups that derive the biggest gain of perceived life control from living in a country with comparatively high economic freedom. in low-income countries, the effects of economic freedom on life control perceptions do not appear to be conditional on personal income levels. keywords: locus of control, economic institutions, well-being, democracy 1. introduction the search for the determinants of happiness (or life satisfaction) has grown in intensity in recent years. innumerable articles based on multidisciplinary research have produced a whole array of individual and social correlates of “the good life”. these range from individual life circumstances, like personal income, employment, or health status, through traits like interpersonal trust, all the way to macro-determinants at the country-level, such as gdp per capita, democracy, and the quality of economic institutions.1 recently, a number of articles have also found that the degree to which people feel they are in control of their own lives is an important correlate of subjective wellbeing measures (e.g. inglehart et al. 2008, verme 2009, bavetta and navarra 2011). according to this literature, people who perceive they are comparatively more in control of their own fate are also found to be systematically happier as individuals. this enhanced feeling of life control could just be the product of personality characteristics, or also the outcome of changing economic and social circumstances that increase freedom of choice for the individual. the latter has been argued by inglehart et al. (2008), who identify enhanced life satisfaction and control with greater individual freedom. however, from the perspectives of social psychology and consumer research, the relationship between enhanced freedom of choice and wellbeing is not so clear-cut: schwartz (2000 and 2004), for example, argues that freedom of choice may be detrimental to individual 1 reviews by dolan et al. (2008) or frey (2008) provide good overviews of the topic. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 well-being, as it involves high information and decision-making costs. hence, a choice-induced paralysis may be a sign of a "tyranny of freedom", where people are not able to cope with the perceived oversupply of different choices available to them. the concept of locus of control, originally developed by rotter (1966), refers to the degree to which individuals expect outcomes to be contingent on their own behavior or personal characteristics, versus the degree to which they expect outcomes to be a function of pure chance or fate. individuals who perceive themselves as having a high internal locus of control believe in their own ability to control life’s course and influence the world around them. they interpret personal choices as the main cause of individual success or failure. in contrast, people with a high external locus of control believe that control over events is largely outside their influence. these individuals believe they are under the control of powerful others, or some supernatural being, where the outcome of situations is beyond their sphere of influence. compared across different disciplines, the link between locus of control and subjective wellbeing has been studied somewhat more intensely in psychology up to date (e.g. april et al. 2012), where underlying individual characteristics are the main focal point. recently however, a few papers also treat this relationship from an institutional-economic perspective: for example, bavetta and navarra (2011) find that economic freedom and locus of control, defined as autonomy freedom, complement each other in the determination of happiness. verme (2009) provides a promising application by claiming that locus of control affects how people evaluate freedom of choice. so-called internals believe that they have control of their lives and that outcomes are the consequences of effort and skills. for internals, freedom of choice is therefore a more significant source of happiness than for externals, who feel that they have little or no control over their lives. as verme (2009) highlights, the degree to which individuals value free choice, a fundamental concept in neoclassical economics, might very well be regulated by the degree to which these same people feel they are in control of their lives. according to similar arguments forwarded by buchanan (2005), the demand for big government is associated with a certain fear of freedom and anxiety about being made responsible for one’s own actions. so if individuals feel capable of reaping the benefits of free choice and minimal government intervention, they are likely to value both highly and vice versa. in line with these ideas, kouba and pitlik (2014) show for a sample of eu and oecd member states that an internal locus of control is strongly related to negative attitudes towards government interventionism. if we take it as given that individual locus of control is a major determinant of personal life satisfaction and happiness, and that some people might be more able to reap these benefits, the next logical question is to investigate the macro-determinants of life control itself: what are the factors that determine whether people feel largely in control of their lives, or not? up to date, this question is addressed only insignificantly in the economic literature, even though the psychic capacity to make choices and assume their consequences is known to be vital for the existence of a market economy (c.f. buchanan 2005, verme 2009). notable exceptions are inglehart et al. (2008) and welzel (2014). both studies draw on lifestyle changes during the past thirty years to explain the perceived increase in life control, finding that these may be driven by economic development, democratization, and increased tolerance. still, these authors have neglected a possible connection between locus of control and economic freedom. following buchanan (2005), we do this in the current paper, recognizing that capitalism and free markets are an important element of individual freedom. in particular, we would like to find out if economic institutions that are built on the principle of freedom of choice are also drivers of individual life control perceptions. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 it is almost surprising that this question has not been investigated earlier, because a variety of papers have found determinants of life satisfaction and other personality traits to be significantly influenced by economic institutions. for instance, berggren and jordahl (2006) find support for the idea that market economies, which are built on voluntary transactions with both friends and strangers and within the predictability provided by the rule of law, entail incentives for social trust to emerge. similarly, berggren and nilsson (2013) find that the degree to which economic institutions and policies are market-oriented is related to tolerance. they find economic freedom to be positively related to tolerance towards homosexuals, especially in the longer run, while tolerance towards people of a different race and a willingness to teach children tolerance are not strongly affected. in addition, a large number of studies have shown that there is also an effect of economic institutions on happiness. employing the economic freedom of the world (efw) index by the fraser institute, ovaska and takashima (2006), gehring (2013), and rode (2013) find economic freedom to be an important determinant of happiness or life satisfaction. taking into account that all these authors omit the question of locus of control in their models, it might just as well be the case that the effect of economic freedom on subjective wellbeing passes through the feeling of being in control of one’s own life. employing individual data from the latest versions of the world value survey and the european values study (wvs/evs), we find that high overall economic freedom is a major determinant of the perception of being in control of one’s own life, even if we control for economic development as measured by ppp-adjusted gdp per capita. interestingly, the effect of economic freedom is similar for individuals in highand low-income countries, but only as long as we do not control for common shocks to life control perceptions over time. the positive effect of economic freedom on life control remains robust to the inclusion of time dummies in our sample of rich countries, while it becomes insignificant in our sample of poorer countries when time-fixed effects are included. the impact of electoral democracy is negligible in both cases. we further test a widespread belief stating that economic freedom benefits primarily people at the top of the income distribution. in terms of life control, the effects are not so clear-cut however, as high-income earners generally enjoy freedom of choice, whereas those at the bottom of the income distribution may be 'double-constrained' by low income and restricted opportunities. at the individual level, our results imply that a high personal income rank also has a substantial positive impact on the perceived control over one's own life, reflecting the fact that a higher income generally gives people more freedom to decide their life’s own course. the effect of income rank on individual life control also appears to be stronger in low-income countries, as compared to richer countries. interacting income rank with economic freedom, we find that it is also the groups at the bottom of the income distribution that derive by far the biggest life control gains from living in a country with comparatively high economic freedom. closer inspection again reveals that this effect is primarily driven by the rich-country sample. we thus conclude that the strong relationship between economic freedom at relatively low income levels and life control is likely to be driven by reduced individual choice restrictions for the inhabitants of wealthy countries only. in turn, perceiving a low relative income in a poor country cannot be compensated for by increased opportunities, highlighting the elevated degree of restrictions that poverty imposes on individuals’ freedom of choice. the remainder of the paper is organized as follows: section two focuses on the description of the data and the research strategy of our analysis. section three presents a graphical analysis, the empirical estimations, and discusses the results. section four concludes. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 2. data and research strategy this paper employs data from the european values study and the world values survey (2014) to measure internal locus of control and other individual characteristics of respondents. these organizations have interviewed different people in a large number of countries in a series of six waves since the early 1980s, employing a similar methodology throughout all waves. generally, the surveys are all conducted for a representative sample of the adult population of each country, and the resulting data is freely available to all users. we use the integrated data file that includes longitudinal aggregates from all six waves of the evs/wvs, covering the period between 1981 and 2014. in particular, perception of life control is based on the following survey question: “some people feel they have completely free choice and control over their lives, while other people feel that what they do has no real effect on what happens to them. please use this scale [...] to indicate how much freedom of choice and control you feel you have over the way your life turns out." respondents answer on a ten-point scale, ranging from "none at all" (1) to "a great deal" (10). this survey question captures the notion of external versus internal locus of control almost perfectly. economic institutions are measured by the economic freedom of the world (efw) index (gwartney et al., 2014). this index is published annually by the canadian fraser institute and includes 43 specific components, all measured on a zero to ten scale, reflecting the degree to which the economic institutions and policies of a country correspond to free market principles. a '0' represents the least free and a '10' the most free. while the efw index now covers 141 countries, the data for the compound index and the individual areas are available for approximately 100 countries at five-year intervals between 1980 and 2000, and annually since the year 2000. the efw index has been used extensively in social science research in recent years. it is based entirely on data published in secondary sources, which means it can be easily verified and duplicated by others (berggren 2003). this transparency feature adds to its credibility. the indicator has been related to a number of other important economic variables, such as overall income levels and growth (pitlik 2002, de haan et al. 2006, doucouliagos and ulubasoglu 2006, rode and coll 2012), inequality (berggren 1999, bennett and nikolaev 2015), political democracy (rode and gwartney 2012), and subjective wellbeing (rode 2013). the summary efw index is nowadays divided into five major areas: 1) size of government: expenditure, taxes, and enterprises, 2) legal structure and security of property rights, 3) access to sound money, 4) freedom to trade internationally, 5) regulation of credit, labor, and business. the summary score for each country is calculated by simply taking the mean of the ratings in each of the five areas. to test our hypotheses, we perform pooled ordinary least squares (ols)2 regressions of personal life control on the level of economic freedom, individual income rank (and an interaction of both terms), introducing a range of individual-level controls, country-level controls and country fixed effects to account for unobserved heterogeneity. to account for the moulton 2 alternatively, the model can be estimated with ordered probit, which gives us very similar results. since ols estimations are generally easier to interpret though, we only report the results of our ols fixed effects estimates. the ordered probit results are available upon request. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 bias that causes the standard errors of macro-covariates to be far too small and which is inherent in such a survey data setting (moulton 1990), we corrected for clustering on the country level. efw variables are chosen to be from the year before the actual survey was conducted. if data for a particular year was not available, we used linear interpolation to arrive at a hypothetical score. such a procedure is only relevant for the 1980s and 1990s, where efw-data is available only at five-year intervals. formally, in our baseline specification we model life control perceptions of individual i living in country j at time t, as follows: (1) lifecontrolijt = β0 + β1incomerankijt + β2efwjt + β4individualcontrolsijt + β5macrocontrolsjt + cfej + tfet + εi, individual income rank is the self-reported income decile, from the wvs/evs database. we expect it to be positively related to life control, because a higher relative income generally gives people more freedom to follow their own life course, while people with lower relative incomes should feel much more restricted by their economic circumstances. further controls include a full array of individual characteristics, which supposedly impact on personal life control perceptions apart from income. all variables are from the wvs/evs database. we include the following:  social trust: trust in other people is expected to be associated positively with life control perceptions, as the degree of social trust seems to capture the quality of informal institutions and social capital in a society (e.g. bjørnskov 2003). due to the strong influence of societal structures in the formation of social capital, individuals with higher social trust should therefore also report higher perceived life control, reflecting the underlying informal arrangements of a society.  religiosity: a religious person who strongly believes in a 'divine being' may be assumed to have less individual control of her/his own life; however, one may also expect religious people to have a higher confidence in their ability to influence life course if they trust in the backing and help of a higher authority.  health: a good health status is expected to be associated positively with the perception of control over one's own life, as compared to subjectively perceived bad health.  employment: self-employed people may find themselves in a position to have more control over their own life course; being unemployed, on the other hand, may be expected to be associated with a reduced perceived life control. in addition, people with a fulltime job may find themselves better able to control their lives regardless of their income.  age: a person’s age may also play an important role for his/her life control perception. this effect is probably u-shaped, with younger and older people tending to believe that they control life course, while 'middle-aged' people 'in the treadmills of everyday life' may feel less in control. to account for such an effect, we include dummy variables for age 15-30 and over 60, while the age group between 30 and 60 serves as a reference group.  gender: the roles of men and women are known to be very different in different societies across the world, plausibly influencing life control perceptions to a large degree. in our estimations, we control for this fact with a female dummy. in addition to individual controls, we introduce country-wide covariates: the (log of) real gross domestic product (gdppc) per capita (lagged one year, ppp adjusted us-dollar in logs, from economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 the penn world tables 8.1)3 and the freedom house 2014 political democracy index (dempol) which coincides with the respective survey year.4 country fixed effects (cfe) capture unobserved heterogeneity and cultural differences that drive the subjective perception of one's own life control. the respective fixed effects are not explicitly calculated, but absorbed, which is a suitable strategy that is especially designed for datasets with many groups, but not a number that grows with the sample size. in order to further account for unobserved common shocks that jointly affect individual values in all countries, we employ time period dummies tfe for 1980-89, 199099, and 2000-2009 (2010-14 being the reference period). note, however, that tfe may substantially absorb effects of over-time changes in our macro-variables efw, gdppc, and dempol. as a consequence, we decided to report results with, and without, time period effects. in the second specification we add an interaction term of income rank and economic freedom to account for life control effects of economic freedom conditional on relative income position: (2) lifecontrolijt = β0 + β1incomerankijt + β2efwjt + β3(incomerankijt × efwjt) + β4individualcontrolsijt + β5macrocontrolsjt + cfej + tfet + εi, the underlying logic for the interaction term is that economic freedom should have a very diverse life control impact for people with different incomes. especially for people of a relatively low income, we expect economic freedom levels to make a major difference for life control, because greater market opportunities should also give them an enhanced feeling of being in control of their destiny. therefore, a more liberalized economy does not automatically contribute to life control perceptions of the rich. on the contrary, increased choice and opportunities probably strengthens the life control of poor people more than that of richer people. high-income earners are possibly even more constrained in a competitive setting, while people at the lower end of the income distribution may still be constrained by their smaller incomes, but not by restricted opportunities. descriptive statistics of all variables in our sample can be found in table a1 in the appendix. total sample size covers responses from 262,960 individuals in 76 countries. due to the fact that a number of countries were repeatedly surveyed in the wvs, the actual number of country-level observations in our dataset is 183. the sample mean of the life control variable is 6.9, with a standard deviation of 2.3; the sample mean of the efw summary index is 6.75, with a standard deviation of 1.1. to illustrate the positive relationship between average life control and economic freedom scores, figure 1 below shows a simple scatterplot of both variables at the country level, where the efw index is lagged by one year. the resulting graphical association strongly supports our basic idea of a positive relationship between economic freedom and life control. however, the direction of causality is far from clear at the aggregate country level: does economic freedom cause higher life control, or does a higher (average) life control perception lead to increased political support for economic freedom? findings by kouba and pitlik (2014) suggest the latter, since individuals with higher life control also support less government interventionism. but while this problem of reverse causality cannot be ruled out in any macro-level analysis, it is a much less severe issue at the individual level. here, overall economic freedom levels may surely have an effect on the personal perception of life control, but the impact of a single individual's life control perception on country-wide economic freedom policies is marginal, at best (we 3 as pwt data for 2012 are not yet available, we used real gdp per capita growth rates for that year from the world development indicators to calculate the gdp per capita level in 2012. 4 we re-coded the political democracy scale to a 0-10 scale, where higher scores also represent more democratic societies. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 assume that dictators do not take part in the surveys). therefore, we opted for estimating the effects at the individual level, which also gives us the possibility to make a tentative statement on the direction of causality. results are presented in the next section. figure 1. life control and economic freedom at the country level 3. results 3.1 baseline estimates results of our baseline ols fixed effects regressions are displayed in table 1 below, where we also present the full set of individual control variables. columns (1) to (5) show estimates for the entire sample of 76 countries, based on more than 260,000 single observations. we start in equation (1) with a parsimonious specification, including only income rank, lagged economic freedom (efw), and country fixed effects. in line with our expectations, efw has a positive coefficient (+0.26) and is statistically significant at the 1% level. individual income rank is positive (+0.12) and highly significant. the size of the coefficients indicates that a 1-point increase of the efw index has an impact on life control that is comparable to an upward leap of roughly two deciles on the personal income ladder. this is a sizable effect, highlighting the potential outcome for life control perceptions of a comparatively more liberalized economy. equation (2) adds the full set of individual covariates. coefficients for efw and income rank are slightly smaller, but remain highly significant. the individual control variables behave as expected. in particular, a good health status is strongly and positively related to perceived life control. trusting other, unknown, people, religiousness, being self-employed, having a fulltime job and not being unemployed are also associated positively with life control perceptions. we also find the expected u-shape effect of age on life control, while women on average appear to have a slightly lower life control perceptions. 4 5 6 7 8 9 l if e c o n tr o l (c o u n tr y a v e ra g e ) 2 4 6 8 10 economic freedom (efw score) economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 table 1a: impact of economic freedom and income rank on life control perceptions sample 1 full 2 full 3 full 4 full 5 full 6 high income 7 high income 8 high income 9 low income 10 low income 11 low income efw 0.260 0.244 0.171 0.192 0.194 0.188 0.228 0.230 0.224 0.135 0.140 0.000 0.000 0.002 0.003 0.003 0.010 0.002 0.001 0.055 0.298 0.286 income rank (decile) 0.118 0.092 0.092 0.092 0.061 0.063 0.130 0.127 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 1st income quintile -0.668 -0.473 -0.947 0.000 0.000 0.000 2nd income quintile -0.453 -0.270 -0.732 0.000 0.000 0.000 3rd income quintile -0.287 -0.164 -0.515 0.000 0.000 0.000 4th income quintile -0.116 -0.063 -0.263 0.000 0.030 0.000 social trust 0.188 0.188 0.188 0.191 0.312 0.310 0.313 0.005 0.003 0.005 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.903 0.943 0.906 religiosity 0.084 0.095 0.094 0.092 0.085 0.089 0.089 0.092 0.100 0.098 0.022 0.008 0.009 0.010 0.031 0.022 0.024 0.191 0.159 0.167 female -0.056 -0.058 -0.057 -0.058 0.019 0.020 0.020 -0.148 -0.148 -0.149 0.019 0.015 0.015 0.014 0.457 0.447 0.448 0.000 0.000 0.000 age 15-30 0.085 0.092 0.091 0.090 0.202 0.207 0.205 -0.018 -0.015 -0.014 0.005 0.003 0.003 0.003 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.579 0.641 0.660 age over 60 0.118 0.107 0.109 0.106 0.109 0.108 0.106 0.079 0.066 0.062 0.002 0.006 0.005 0.005 0.012 0.013 0.014 0.282 0.357 0.393 good health 0.533 0.525 0.524 0.526 0.610 0.606 0.608 0.435 0.423 0.429 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 self-employed 0.181 0.179 0.180 0.182 0.243 0.240 0.244 0.154 0.156 0.156 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 unemployed -0.171 -0.173 -0.175 -0.177 -0.360 -0.363 -0.364 -0.039 -0.038 -0.044 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.308 0.340 0.269 fulltime job 0.110 0.111 0.112 0.115 0.058 0.057 0.059 0.166 0.173 0.176 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.014 0.010 0.007 0.000 0.000 0.000 gdppc -0.150 -0.147 0.186 -0.118 -0.123 0.051 -0.137 -0.138 0.258 0.265 0.327 0.553 0.532 0.811 0.527 0.523 economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 table 1b: impact of economic freedom and income rank on life control perceptions sample 1 full 2 full 3 full 4 full 5 full 6 high income 7 high income 8 high income 9 low income 10 low income 11 low income dempol 0.018 0.019 -0.045 -0.061 -0.060 0.033 0.028 0.029 0.751 0.732 0.342 0.234 0.249 0.654 0.689 0.678 period fixed effects no no yes yes yes no yes yes no yes yes country fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes n 262960 262960 262960 262960 262960 139569 139569 139569 123391 123391 123391 countries 76 76 76 76 76 39 39 39 37 37 37 adj. r-square 0.095 0.109 0.110 0.110 0.110 0.115 0.116 0.115 0.110 0.111 0.111 f-stat (model) 76.8 100.6 78.3 71.7 71.0 68.1 100.0 127.5 69.2 71.6 67.0 economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 in equation (3) we add the time period dummy variables. the indicators are significant and show that life control has increased over time (not reported). while inclusion of time dummies does not affect the individual controls, the coefficient of efw is reduced to +0.17 but remains significant. in equation (4) we add the logarithm of lagged gdp per capita (gdppc), and contemporary democracy (dempol). political democracy is positive but far from any conventional significance level. gdppc is negatively related to individual life control, but insignificant. efw remains positive and significant. this result may be influenced by collinearity of efw, gdppc, and dempol. surprisingly, dropping efw from the set of explanatory variables does not lead to the expected positive relationship of gdppc to life control perceptions. only when we also drop the time period dummies does gdppc show a positive and significant relation to our dependent variable. our democracy measure dempol always remains insignificant.5 we checked this result by employing different democracy indicators, including polity iv scores, the democracydictatorship dataset, or the world banks’ good governance indicators. in all cases, democracy is positively related to life control perceptions, but is insignificant in most cases, and the different indicators always lose significance when we control for economic freedom. finally, in equation (5) we replaced our individual income deciles by categorical income quintiles, the 5th income quintile serving as reference group. the coefficients indicate a small non-linear effect of income rank: households in the 4th income quintile still report a lower life control perception than the ones from the highest quintile. however, the difference is only 0.1, while for lower-ranked incomes an upward move of one step to the higher quintile increases life control perceptions by roughly 0.2 points. this also helps us to interpret the effects of higher economic freedom: a one-point increase of the efw index, which amounts to roughly one standard deviation, increases life control by +0.2 points. to account for the effects of economic development in our analysis, we further divided our dataset into two subsamples of almost equal size. columns (6) to (8) report the results for a sample of 39 rich oecd and eu countries, including also taiwan and singapore. the rest of the world sample, shown in columns (9) to (11), contains 37 less developed countries from around the globe, including some of the more recent oecd members, such as turkey, mexico, and chile. both subsamples are specified in table a2 of the appendix. in the rich-country sample, the effect of efw is positive (6) and remains significant if we include time period dummies (in equations (7) and (8)); the coefficient of efw even increases when time dummies are added. in the poor-country sample, however, the positive effect of efw on life control is weakened and even becomes statistically insignificant if time period controls are included (equations (9) and (10)). as mentioned earlier in the text, the inclusion of time dummies might actually be a somewhat excessive robustness test, because it filters out some of the underlying reasons for common variations in life control perceptions over time. as gwartney et al. (2014) also highlight, economic freedom has increased on a worldwide scale since the early 1990s, but it is especially the group of countries that we include in our poor-country sample that have made the most significant strides towards more liberalized economies since then. this parallel move is probably what is now being captured by our time dummies in equations (9) to (11), tentatively explaining the loss of statistical significance for explaining varying levels of life control. 5 these results are also robust with regard to the estimation method employed. random-slope multilevel regressions (available upon request) confirm our findings in almost every detail. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 the sample split in table 1 also offers some interesting insights when considering individuallevel covariates. in the full sample, the effect of moving one step up on the income ladder for individual life control is on average +0.1 across all income groups. so having a smaller relative income has a negative impact on life control. we also observe that the impact of an increase in relative income is substantially stronger in the poor-country sample than in the rich-country sample. income rank appears to be more important for individual life control perceptions in less developed countries and this may point to a different valuation of relative incomes in both subsamples. intuitively, one can also imagine that income rank will have a much stronger impact on the feeling of overall life control if the individual lives in a less affluent society. having a low income in a poor country means that there is not a whole lot of opportunity to influence the way your life turns out, as compared to having a low income in a rich country. these findings highlight the massive individual restrictions that are created by poverty in the developing world. alternatively, having a full time job or being self-employed is positively related to individual perceptions of life control in both subsamples. unemployment is a strong predictor of reduced life control, but interestingly this effect is present only in the rich country sample. both younger (below the age of 30) and older (above the age of 60) individuals report having a higher life control than the group of 30-59 years old. however, this association is encountered in the highincome country sample only. a self-reported good, or very good, health status is strongly related to life control (+0.5) in all samples, but the effect is stronger in the rich-country sample. notably, gender does not play a significant role for life control in the rich-country sample, while in the poor-country sample the perceived life control of women is significantly lower (-0.15 points) than that of men. religiousness is only weakly related to life control (+0.1) and this is only the case for individuals living in developed countries. a further interesting finding is made in the case of interpersonal trust: in the overall sample, respondents who state that they generally trust other anonymous people also have a higher perception of life control. but we find that this effect is exclusively driven by responses from the rich-country sample, while the relationship between social trust and perceived life control disappears in the poor-country sample. one tentative explanation for this finding is that average social trust is overall much lower in our poor-country sample. if social trust is generally absent in a society, it doesn’t provide the individual that happens to be trusting with a sensatio n of higher life control anymore. so a sufficient amount of people in a society probably need to trust in others, in order for the trusting individual to gain some type of life control from this personal trait.6 3.2 who gains the most life control from economic freedom? a widespread common belief is that economic freedom primarily benefits people at the top of the income distribution. policies that increase economic freedom in a certain country are often perceived to be a program for big business that pays off only for the already rich and powerful. for example, bergh and nilsson (2010) claim that economic freedom may increase income equality in richer countries. using us state-level data, compton et al. (2014) recently showed that 6 controlling for the country average of social trust shows that social trust is not significant in the rich-country sample but is strongly negatively related to life control in the poor-country sample. we also checked whether perceptions and personal ideological position are related and found that (self-assessed) political right-wingers generally report a higher average life control (not shown). as a consequence, we did not follow this route any further, as this would create a severe causality question for our investigation: do political right-wingers perceive more life control, or are people with higher life control perceptions more likely to become political right-wingers? what is important in this context is the fact that all our results are unaffected by the inclusion of a political ideology variable. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 increases in economic freedom positively contribute to income growth. however, the benefits are not equally distributed across the population. in particular, they find that higher income quintiles tend to enjoy higher rates of income growth as a consequence of more economic freedom, and that this positive effect generally does not extend to the lowest income groups. from a life control perspective this effect is, however, not so obvious. we have already seen that higher income groups experience more overall individual life control, regardless of the degree of economic freedom that is present in a country. therefore, a more liberalized economy, which is characterized by increased freedom of choice and competition for all, does not automatically contribute to life control perceptions of the rich. on the contrary, increased choice and opportunities may comparatively strengthen life control perceptions of relatively poor people more than that of relatively rich people. high-income earners are more constrained in a competitive setting than in an institutional environment with state-granted privileges, while people at the lower end of the income distribution may be constrained by their smaller incomes but not at the same time by restricted opportunities. to test for a possible asymmetrical effect of economic freedom on life control perceptions, conditional on relative income levels, we added to our estimations an interaction term of the income rank with the efw index score. all macro controls and individual controls are included (not shown). results are shown in table 2 below. table 2: effect of economic freedom on life control, conditional on income rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 sample full full high income high income low income low income efw 0.310 0.298 0.275 0.306 0.285 0.199 0.000 0.000 0.001 0.000 0.021 0.128 income rank (decile) 0.278 0.268 0.203 0.199 0.232 0.233 0.000 0.000 0.002 0.001 0.002 0.001 efw * income rank -0.027 -0.026 -0.020 -0.019 -0.016 -0.017 0.000 0.000 0.016 0.010 0.115 0.087 period fixed effects no yes no yes no yes country fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes n 262960 262960 139569 139569 123391 123391 countries 76 76 39 39 37 37 adj. r-square 0.110 0.111 0.115 0.116 0.110 0.111 f-stat (model) 83.3 70.7 65.5 97.3 64.3 65.6 note: ols-fixed effects regressions with standard errors clustered at the country level. p-values shown beneath bold typed coefficients. constant not reported. additional control variables see table 1. columns (1) and (2) report results for the full sample, including the interaction of individual income rank assessment and the average country efw index score. in the first columns time period effects are not included, but they are added in equation (2). results, however, are very similar. we find a negative and significant interaction effect, which is in line with the notion that higher levels of economic freedom benefit lower income groups relatively more, when compared to higher income groups. for the full sample, figure 2 below further illustrates the marginal effects of increases in economic freedom on perceived life control, conditional on income rank. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 figure 2: marginal effect of economic freedom (full sample) in addition to the point estimate line, we also display the 90% confidence interval. it can easily be seen here that a marginal increase of economic freedom at the 1st income decile is associated with a comparatively higher life control perception of almost +0.3 points. the effect becomes weaker the further an individual moves up the income ladder. at the 8th decile the effect is still positive, but it ceases to be significant at conventional levels. we replicated the whole analysis using income decile and income quintile dummies, finding very similar results (not shown): while the effect of increased economic freedom on life control is relatively strong at lower income deciles (quintiles), it disappears at high levels of income. turning to the high income countries in equations (3) and (4) of table 2, the pattern is very similar (see also figure 3 below) to the full sample. the only notable difference is that the marginal positive impact of economic freedom does not cease to be significant for the highest income category, even though it is much smaller than for the lowest. so even if an individual already encounters him or herself in the top part of the income distribution, the relative gain in life control from more economic freedom is still positive, despite the increase in competition that this will bring about. nonetheless, relatively poor individuals seem to benefit much more from positive marginal changes in economic freedom, demonstrating the sizable life control effect of increased opportunities for the relatively poor. for the group of poor countries in equation (5), marginal effects of higher freedom are always positive for all income groups, but disappear when we include the time period dummies. while we expected this to be the case for the higher income deciles, it is somewhat surprising that coefficients are never significant at a 10% confidence level, even for the lowest income groups (see figure 4 below). to some degree, this finding reflects the problem of the time dummies mentioned above. what it further shows, though, is that marginal increases in economic freedom cannot immediately compensate the poor in developing countries, when they are already constrained by the economic and social hardships of absolute poverty. increased economic -. 1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 m a rg in a l e ff e ct o f e co n o m ic f re e d o m 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 income rank (decile) marginal effect of economic freedom 90% confidence interval economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 possibilities are therefore of very little service to the poor, when other restrictions, such as in education, probably keep them from reaping those benefits. figure 3: marginal effect of economic freedom (high income countries) figure 4: marginal effect of economic freedom (low income countries) 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 m a rg in a l e ff e ct o f e co n o m ic f re e d o m 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 income rank (decile) marginal effect of economic freedom 90% confidence interval -. 2 -. 1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 m a rg in a l e ff e ct o f e co n o m ic f re e d o m 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 income rank (decile) marginal effect of economic freedom 90% confidence interval economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 the results from table 2 are quite instructive, as they seem to suggest that members of lowincome groups in developed countries indeed derive relatively more life control from the presence of economic freedom, as compared to members of high-income groups. where regulation and market entry barriers are diminished, as represented by a high degree of economic freedom, life control perceptions of relatively poor people are increased, while relatively rich people are not negatively affected. as a consequence, the overall effect appears to be driven by a positive impact of economic freedom on lower income households. in turn, members of low-income groups in developing countries do not seem to derive relatively more life control from the presence of economic freedom, as compared to members of high-income groups. diminishing regulation and market entry barriers do not benefit them in terms of life control, probably because other well-known socioeconomic restrictions of poverty keep them from reaping the immediate benefits. the potential caveat with this last investigation is that we cannot really exclude an endogenous relationship between relative income and perceived life control of our survey respondents. previous research has indicated that individuals with a high internal locus of control are more enterprising and therefore are also more likely to succeed in the business world (e.g. hansemark, 2003). if this is the case, we are simply relating the socioeconomic status of our individual respondents to the underlying personality aspect that drives their economic success in the first place. surely, it is difficult to speak of a causal effect under these circumstances. potentially, this problem could be remedied by employing an instrumental variable approach for relative income, which would take care of any possible endogeneity concerns. still, the success of this strategy crucially depends on the quality of the respective excluded instruments for income rank, and these are somewhat hard to come by. while we tried to do this and could confirm the ols results with a two-stage-least-squares analysis, we want to be careful not to over-emphasize the iv-exercise, due to the general doubts related to finding good and exogenous instruments.7 generally speaking, an investigation such as this one can never really distinguish between causes and outcomes of individual personality traits, where these are all potential indicators of certain character groups. for example, it is perfectly possible that individuals with a higher life control are on average also those with higher social trust, higher income, etc., and vice versa. in this case, we are always relating different personality aspects to one another. still, this does not affect the beneficial aspect of changes in economic freedom for life control, as all inhabitants of one country consume the same level of economic freedom, disregarding their individual personality. at the least, what we might be finding with our interaction terms is simply that more entrepreneurial characters are also better able to reap the benefits of higher marginal economic freedom, which is by no means a counterintuitive result. 4 conclusions the individual and societal determinants of happiness have been investigated intensively in recent years and relatively new findings indicate that one important correlate is the degree to which people feel they are in control of their own lives. in turn, the economic sources of life control are only insignificantly established in the current literature, despite the fact that bavetta 7 our iv approach employed wvs/evs information on respondents with a full-time job and no children. it can be assumed that both questions are directly related to individual income, but their direct relation to life control is, at least, ambiguous. econometrically, the analysis confirmed the statistical validity and reliability of our excluded instruments, confirming also all of our previous results. these are not shown, but available in a previous working paper version of this paper, available on request. economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 and navarra (2011) find economic freedom and locus of control complement each other in the determination of happiness. verme (2009) also claims that locus of control affects how people evaluate freedom of choice. following buchanan (2005), we try to find out if economic institutions that are built on the principle of free choice are also drivers of individual life control perceptions. employing individual data from the latest version of the world value survey (wvs), covering the period from 1981 to 2014, we find that living in a country with high overall economic freedom is a major determinant of feeling in control of one’s own life. interestingly, the effect is very similar for individuals in highand low-income countries, while the impact of democracy is completely negligible in both cases. interacting relative income with economic freedom, we further find that it is by far the lower income groups that derive the biggest life control from living in a country with comparatively high economic freedom, even though this only holds for countries that are economically developed. we speculate that the strong relationship between economic freedom and life control at low income levels in developed economies is likely to be driven by people with an intrinsically entrepreneurial character. previous research has linked entrepreneurs to a high internal locus of control, and these individuals are likely to see their life control increased when conditions of economic freedom prevail (e.g. mcmullen et al. 2008). in this context, economic freedom probably acts as a kind of compensation mechanism vis-à-vis income: low income earners are comparatively better compensated by the presence of economic freedom, which gives them the possibility to exercise free choice in the market. for high-income earners, this effect is much less important, as their income already gives them the access to more choices. from the standpoint of life control, economic freedom policies are therefore a real redistribution mechanism that relatively benefits low-income earners through enhanced free choice. in the case of developing countries, it seems that there are additional barriers that make it impossible for low-income earners to reap the life control benefits of enhanced opportunities, at least in the short run. the extreme restrictions of absolute poverty leave these people without the ability to use new possibilities, which is a likely outcome of the very deficient education systems and highly restrictive informal institutions that these countries often have. overcoming these restrictions will therefore be a major challenge for improving life control opportunities for some of the least well-off inhabitants of the planet. acknowledgments we thank christian bjørnskov, rosemarie fike, and other participants of the “institutions and well-being” session at the 2015 public choice society meeting in san antonio, tx for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. an anonymous reviewer has provided further valuable feedback. authors hans pitlik austrian institute of economic research (wifo) hans.pitlik@wifo.ac.at martin rode universidad de navarra publishing timeline received 1 january 2015 accepted 31 august 2015 economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 published 14 may 2016 references april, k.a., dharani, b., peters, k., 2012. impact of locus of control expectancy on level of well-being. review of european studies 4, 124-137. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/res.v4n2p124 bavetta, s., navarra, p., 2011. economic freedom and the pursuit of happiness. in: miller, t., holmes, k., (eds.) 2011 index of economic freedom. washington dc: heritage foundation, 61-68. bennett, d.l., & nikolaev, b., 2015. on the ambiguous economic freedom-inequality relationship. social science research network. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2467222 berggren, n., 1999. economic freedom and equality: friends or foes? public choice 100, 203-223. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1018343912743 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00.3024224 00.4593081 000 1000 age60plus 262960 00.1692539 00.3749767 000 1000 goodhealth 262960 00.6728514 00.4691729 000 1000 selfemployed 262960 00.1049475 00.3064864 000 1000 unemployed 262960 00.0754411 00.2641023 000 1000 fulltime 262960 00.3811606 00.4856728 000 1000 marriedtog~r 262591 00.6355930 00.4812644 000 1000 separated 262362 00.1255403 00.3313312 000 1000 macro efw 000183 6.754481 1.061772 3.39 8.590 gdppc 000183 9.309219 1.045999 00005.436913 010.85212 dempol 000183 7.850638 2.906905 000 100000 economic freedom, relative income, and life control perceptions pitlik & rode www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 table a2. country sample high income sample lower income sample australia albania austria argentina belgium bangladesh bulgaria brazil canada chile croatia china cyprus colombia czech republic dominican republic denmark egypt estonia el salvador finland ghana france guatemala germany indonesia greece india hungary iran iceland jordan ireland italy malaysia mali japan mexico korea morocco latvia nigeria lithuania pakistan luxembourg peru malta philippines netherlands russia new zealand rwanda norway south africa poland thailand portugal trinidad and tobago romania turkey singapore tanzania slovak republic uganda slovenia ukraine spain uruguay sweden venezuela switzerland zambia taiwan zimbabwe united kingdom united states of america verger, n. b., & duymedjian, r. (2020). a theoretical framework of romantic creativity: dyadic creativity in romantic relationships and plausible links with wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 2742. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1493 nicolas b. verger glasgow caledonian university nicolas.verger@gcu.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 article a theoretical framework of romantic creativity: dyadic creativity in romantic relationships and plausible links with wellbeing nicolas b. verger · raffi duymedjian abstract: everyday creative behaviours seem to be associated with high levels of wellbeing. yet, the effects of creativity on wellbeing remain largely unknown, notably at a dyadic level, and particularly in the context of romantic relationships. previous research has studied the effects of creativity on romantic relationships but has been limited by the two main epistemological assumptions that we present in this article. consequently, very little is known about the effect of a form of creativity that may occur at a dyadic level in a romantic relationship, and that may have implications in the science of human flourishing. in other words, the research field lacks a theoretical framework for studying the effect of creativity in romantic relationships on wellbeing. the present theoretical framework aims to fill this gap by proposing a dyadic dimension of creativity embedded within wellbeing: romantic creativity. romantic creativity is conceptualised as an observable, quantifiable, yet non-product-hierarchic phenomenon. it is defined as a dyadic process which favours new and meaningful directions in a romantic relationship through dynamics of discovery and self-expansion in one or both members of the dyad. this article describes the epistemological foundations of this theoretical framework and draws on existing research on self-expansion and the neuroscience of wellbeing to hypothesise the processes that might account for the effect of romantic creativity on human flourishing. we also identify two possible ontological perspectives for research on romantic creativity. the present article proposes that romantic creativity might help dyads to flourish through the processes implied in homeodynamics and dyadic self-expansion. keywords: creativity, wellbeing, dyad, romantic relationships, self-expansion introduction everyday creative behaviours connect to high levels of wellbeing (conner et al., 2018; richards, 2010). for many scholars, creativity – defined as the ability to produce novel/original and useful/meaningful ideas and/or products in a social context – constitutes the pinnacle of selfactualisation and individual wellbeing (amabile, 1982; forgeard & elstein, 2014; plucker et al., 2004; richards, 2010; runco & jaeger, 2012). abraham maslow (1958), for instance, conceptualised a healthy mind as a mind of creative ideas, which he called the “healthiest creativeness” (p. 38). along the same lines, research in art therapy has highlighted the effects of art as a tool for clinical rehabilitation (darewych & riedel bowers, 2018; potash et al., 2014). for example, the visual arts have been shown to reduce negative symptoms among patients with schizophrenia (richardson et al., 2007). writing poetry has been suggested as helpful in aiding individuals to reprocess and express painful emotions (carroll, 2005) and writing about emotional experiences seems to foster both physical and mental health (pennebaker, 1997). other about:blank romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 theorists have viewed prolonged engagement in creative endeavours as characterised by perceptions of the dilatation of time (a sense of “flow”), and as encouraging feelings of elation in individuals, thus contributing to their wellbeing (csikszentmihalyi, 1988, 1990). more recent evidence has associated everyday forms of individual creativity with positive emotions and feelings of vitality (conner et al., 2018; conner & silvia, 2015). the effects of creativity on wellbeing, however, remain largely unknown, notably at a dyadic level,1 and particularly in romantic relationships. as we will see, research in this field lacks a theoretical framework with which to study the effect of romantic relationship creativity on wellbeing. ontologically, what does it mean to be “creative” in a romantic relationship? epistemologically, what are the manifestations of “romantic creativity”, and how can they be measured? to what extent might romantic creativity contribute to wellbeing, and how is it similar to – and different from – other manifestations of creativity? these questions underpin the ensuing proposal for a novel theoretical framework of a dyadic form of creativity: romantic creativity. in this article, we put forwards a working definition of romantic creativity as a dyadic process which favours new and meaningful directions in a romantic relationship through dynamics of discovery and self-expansion in one or both members of the dyad. this definition is further developed in the following sections. three main sections in the article articulate this romantic creativity framework. the first section presents the epistemological foundations of romantic creativity, explaining why such a concept is needed, how it can be defined, alongside the epistemological foundations upon which it is based. the second section presents two ontological perspectives for future research. it describes the hypothetical mechanisms of romantic creativity in its relationship with selfexpansion and wellbeing via a review of supportive evidence from psychology and the neuroscience of wellbeing. the third section concludes the paper by summarising some of the ways in which this framework of romantic creativity contributes to the science of creativity and wellbeing, discussing some study limitations, and suggesting future research directions. by utilising the lens of romantic relationships, this framework aims both to invite researchers to consider an ontological and epistemological view of creativity that is complementary to individual creativity, and to address the still-neglected study of dyadic-forms of creativity on wellbeing. romantic creativity section 1. a rationale for a theoretical framework 1.1 romantic relationships and wellbeing wellbeing is a complex and dynamic construct that can be defined as the “balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced” (dodge et al., 2012, p. 230). although defining wellbeing has given rise to several difficulties (diener, 2009; hone et al., 2014; huppert & so, 2013; keyes, 1998; ryan & deci, 2001; seligman, 2011), its various conceptualisations tend to find common ground in including: (a) engagement in daily activities; (b) a sense of purpose and meaning in life; and (c) positive relationships as pedestals of high-level wellbeing (hone et al., 2014). hence, positive romantic relationships are, by definition, embedded in the conceptualisation of wellbeing and its more dynamic, higher-level manifestation: human flourishing (e.g., kemp et al., 2017). 1 hereafter, we define a dyad as a prolonged interaction between two individuals. romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 flourishing constitutes an important process in the long-term promotion of longevity. the genial model proposed by kemp and colleagues (2017) indicates how romantic relationships connect with high levels of wellbeing and highlights the importance of building positive social ties (i.e., high quality interpersonal relationships). it proposes that social relationships are a central aspect of human health from a life course perspective. specifically, this model posits that positive social relationships interact with and influence moment-to-moment experiences, thus promoting healthy vagus nerve functions. in turn, the activation of the vagus nerve promotes positive health behaviours and wellbeing in an upwardly self-sustaining spiral. this line of research further argued that nourishing social relationships could offset the effects of many traditional risk factors, including smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical inactivity (kemp et al., 2017). in this sense, positive social ties, such as romantic relationships, appear to importantly underpin the promotion of positive health outcomes. romantic relationships seem to constitute one of the most influential social bonds (e.g., dush et al., 2008). a romantic (or intimate) relationship is a multifaceted construct that we can define as a mutual “state of intense longing for union with another” (hatfield & sprecher, 1986, p. 383). the successful establishment and maintenance of a romantic relationship can have important effects in certain stages of life and can constitute a solid foundation upon which to build positive mental health and wellbeing (dewall et al., 2011; fincham & beach, 2010). more specifically, the quality of a romantic relationship appears to be one of the strongest predictors of an individual’s wellbeing (dush et al., 2008). individuals with high quality spousal relations alongside the ability to engage in coping together as a unit tend to report high levels of wellbeing (bodenmann et al., 2011). other evidence shows that the higher the quality of their relationship, the more individuals report elevated levels of wellbeing (chapman & guven, 2016). similarly, relational stability longitudinally predicted better quality of life after 30 years of romantic relationships when compared to more erratic marriage trajectories (roberson et al., 2018). 1.2 creativity and romantic relationships creativity might play a role in fostering quality and/or stability in romantic relationships, thereby promoting dyadic wellbeing (campbell & kaufman, 2017; roberson et al., 2018; strong & aron, 2006). however, to date, there has been no clear direct evidence on the extent to which such a claim is truly reliable. an early study by paul torrance found that, in comparison to lonesome creators, individuals who create as a dyad tend to report higher levels of originality, stimulation, and enjoyment (torrance, 1970). although modest, this seminal data suggested an association between dyadic creativity and wellbeing. research developed subsequent experimental creative tasks in the hope that “couples… will be inspired to begin creating more positive, loving, and healthy interactions with one another and to achieve fulfilling goals together” (sarnoff & sarnoff, 2005, p. 84). yet, despite hinting at an interesting line of research, the effects of dyadic creativity on wellbeing have so far not been documented. indeed, torrance’s paper has been cited fewer than 60 times as of july 2020, despite his otherwise highly influential status in the field of creativity research (e.g., kim, 2006; plucker, 1999; zachopoulou et al., 2009). this suggests an initial timidity amongst researchers regarding dyadic creativity and romantic relationships. two main recent studies have advanced knowledge of the connection between creativity and romance. in the first one, campbell and kaufman (2017) explored “what makes a relationship last” (p. 3). their cross-sectional data indicated that everyday creative behaviour, but not artistic behaviours, tends to predict passion, intimacy, and commitment in a couple. furthermore, openness to experience – which, as a personality trait, is moderately and robustly associated with creativity (feist, 1998; george & zhou, 2001; silvia et al., 2009) – tends to correlate with passion romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 and intimacy in men, while emotional stability tends to correlate with intimacy in women. in the second study, carswell and colleagues addressed whether positive illusions about one’s partner’s physical appearance could predict passion, hypothesising that creativity could play a role in this relationship (carswell et al., 2019). their results indicated that individuals with high creativity-related personality traits and behaviours tend to find their partner especially attractive. moreover, creativity appeared to moderate the decline of passion over time, suggesting that creativity connects to societally desirable aspects of human bonding. these two studies are, to the best of our knowledge, the only ones that have at least partially considered the effects of creativity in romantic relationships. however, as we will now discuss, both studies contain assumptions that may limit understanding of the mechanisms of dyadic forms of creativity on wellbeing. 1.3 two assumptions about creativity in romantic relationships the first assumption contained in studies by campbell and kaufman (2017) and carswell and colleagues (2019) relates to how the study of an individual perspective of romantic relationships has been taken as a reliable measure of the dyadic level. prior research seems to have assumed that a measure of individual dimensions can be regarded as reliably corresponding to a measure of the functioning of a dyad. this consideration is apparent in the methodological choices, which fail to address how dyads can create together. whether the research community has addressed creativity inside romantic relationships remains unclear. for instance, one study conceptualised creativity in romantic relationships through the lens of how one partner perceives the other (carswell et al., 2019), while the other study addressed how individual creativity predicts the self-reported perception that a partner has of their relationship with their partner (campbell & kaufman, 2017). in summary, research centred on the relationship between creativity and romantic relationships has, thus far, assumed that such a link can be validly addressed by only focusing on one part of the dyad. to date, no research has considered the functioning of the dyad as a single unit consisting of two closely interacting parts. for instance, a series of studies conducted by carswell and colleagues (2019), including a 9-month longitudinal project with dyads, restricted its scope with respect of creativity in romantic relationships to the study of two individual aspects rather than proper dyadic connections. indeed, the authors chose not to compute interaction effects as (partner a x partner b) scores. yet, such a procedure could be more relevant to theoretically represent dyadic interactive functioning. the second assumption relates to how these studies have sought to use creativity to buffer specifically against a decline in relationship length. the idea that creativity could act as a way to prevent a decline in passion is grounded in the notion that passion is connected to wellbeing (carswell et al., 2019, p. 4). briefly, this view assumes the importance of preventing boredom as a cause of decline of passion, which may threaten marriage as an act of faith and a religious engagement (carswell et al., 2019, p. 5). this assumption is also apparent in campbell and kaufman (2017) who state: “given that relationships tend to dissolve once love fades… partners must continually find ways to sustain it” (p. 22). likewise, carswell and colleagues (2019, p. 6) “hoped to identify a novel predictor of individuals’ ability to maintain romantic passion”. the assumption that creativity research should help in exploring how to foster relationship longevity is indeed critical. yet, this view tends also to imply that relationship length is more important than relationship quality. research, however, has confirmed that long relationships with conflicts are possible, and that relationship quality and relationship satisfaction are the most significant factors in romantic relationships (chapman & guven, 2016; muise et al., 2019). consequently, romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 we need to consider with more nuance how creativity may foster longer relationships and/or promote relationship quality. we are therefore confronted by at least two main assumptions, each of which has consequences. the first concerns the past practice of measuring separate individual levels in a relationship (what we may call two “monads”) which, with no computation of interactions, cannot be claimed to reliably measure creativity at a dyadic level. the second centres on the idea that it is crucial to maintain passion and relationship length. regarding the effects of dyadic creativity in romantic relationship on wellbeing, these two assumptions provide no answer to the following questions: how do partners influence each other to produce something new? what are the effects of dyadic creativity on both partners’ wellbeing? what are the underlying dynamics and processes of this phenomenon? these questions remain open. to some extent, this is unfortunate. as forgeard and kaufman (2016) pointed out, contemporary research knows little about the benefits of creativity on health and wellbeing, let alone the effect of dyadic creativity on wellbeing. thus, to advance on these considerations, the field needs a complementary theoretical framework to address creativity in romantic relationships and its effects on wellbeing. section 2. the epistemological foundations of the romantic creativity framework the studies discussed above have helped to identify research on creativity and romantic relationships in connection with wellbeing and their assumptions. in this second section, we articulate new and complementary assumptions and epistemological foundations of what we call “the romantic creativity framework”. we articulate romantic creativity through the following definition: romantic creativity is a dyadic process which favours new and meaningful directions in a romantic relationship through dynamics of discovery and self-expansion in one or both members of the dyad. thus, the framework proposes that a dyad contributes in one or both partners to the exploration of new geographical territories (e.g., deciding to move to a new country together), to spiritual development (e.g., jointly discovering the appeal of a novel way of approaching life), to intellectual growth (e.g., deciding to pursue a type of scientific inquiry that they had not considered before), or behavioural change (e.g., jointly changing habits). 2.1. examples of romantic creativity and underlying assumptions the romantic creativity framework adopts two main assumptions that complement those already highlighted above. first, it proposes that the dyadic phenomenon is not reducible to the sum of its parts and, importantly, that scientific inquiries about dyads require researchers to approach two romantic partners as a single unit of study. pinto (2017, p. 580) placed a similar emphasis on the romantic couple. she proposed to go beyond the focus on the individual characteristics of partners by studying how the romantic couple operates, how each member influences the other’s life, and how their romantic relationship’s functioning influences – and is influenced by – sociocultural and political contexts. drawing from pinto’s work, we can approach romantic creativity as a fundamentally dynamic, and systemic construct. second, while previous research has assumed that creativity should maintain passion, romantic creativity posits that romantic relationships flourish through movement and expansion, and that a decline in passion represents a specific case of relational dynamics (aron et al., 1998). the maintenance of passion is romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 approached as a corollary, but not as the end goal, of how romantic partners engage in dyadic, self-expanding, meaningful experiences. the romantic creativity framework engages with subsequent assumptions. romantic creativity defines a construct that is both observable and quantifiable. its observable and quantifiable features refer to what can be expected from classical constructs in the psychology of creativity: research can measure romantic creativity through self-reported questionnaires, behavioural responses, and other standard quantitative and qualitative methodologies. for instance, campbell and kaufman (2017) recommended that counsellors “encourage partners adopt more creative practices into their everyday life such as trying a new recipe, starting a hobby together, and finding unique ways to communicate love. such practices may help strengthen the relationship and avoid dissolution” (p. 22). romantic creativity could be particularly (but not exclusively) observable and quantifiable through such activities. furthermore, it is likely to observe and measure romantic creativity when (a) the dyad engages in shared activities (e.g., starting a new hobby together) which (b) foster meaningful new life directions in one or both members of the dyad. in other words, the activities proposed by campbell and kaufman may not inherently reflect a manifestation of romantic creativity. for instance, learning a new language with one’s partner may not be seen as a form of romantic creativity. conversely, an example of romantic creativity could be a scenario where partners decide to learn a specific language together and discover that they would love to visit the targetlanguage speaking country together. in that case, the activity itself is not inherently romantically creative; rather, it is the fact that the two partners together discover new and meaningful directions/insights in their lives that is deemed romantically creative (e.g., beghetto & kaufman, 2007). another example could relate to specific activities, where one partner invites the other to participate together, say, in a triathlon, skydiving, or spending a weekend fishing, dancing, or meditating. this activity could be defined as a romantic creative activity, as long as the activity: (a) engaged the two partners in a process of trying and discovering things (not necessarily new things); (b) was perceived by one or both members of the dyad as meaningful; and (c) focused them on a novel direction in their life together. furthermore, we propose that the romantic creativity framework can be appraised in the light of how partners co-construct the narrative of their love story. indeed, how people envisage and tell their own romances, both as individuals and as a dyad, can be regarded as a creative endeavour. this is, of course, context specific and underpinned by questions relating to how and why people arrange memories and experiences to create the tale of their romantic relationship. we could expect that partners would idealise the narrative they build, both individually and at a dyadic level, in the same way that individuals with high creativity-related personality traits tend to have positive illusions about their partner (carswell et al., 2019). it would be interesting to address the extent to which these illusions are dependent upon both partners.2 the core of the definition of romantic creativity implies the dyadic progression of novel directions in life. this aspect can be measured using self-reported questionnaires. for instance, we would measure how dyads perceive their experiences as promoting a need to pursue something new, create new habits or new desires, or how an experience has changed or is changing their worldview, part of their personalities, or outlook towards a specific task/activity. thus, romantic creativity can be approached as a prolonged meaningful experience, or as an ongoing process that evolves throughout a romantic relationship. this assumption may imply 2 for instance, this idealisation may show adaptive purposes and foster coping in the face of adversity. indeed, it has been shown that among widowed individuals, the individual’s creation of a positive narrative about their relationship with their partner fostered their coping abilities (barusch, 2008, p. 119). romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 moment-to-moment measurement methods. for instance, experience sampling or interpretative phenomenological analysis may be suitable methods for studying the dynamics of romantic creativity (e.g., graham, 2008; smith & osborn, 2003). it is important to emphasise that the activity in question would not have to be novel; rather, it is the perception of how the activity has transformed one or both partners that is likely to matter. indeed, we expect that some meaningful insights could occur through time spent engaging in an activity that is not “novel”. therefore, a focus on what is produced, and on how external social groups evaluate the activity according to social standards and comparisons, are of little relevance to the romantic creativity framework. instead, what is important is that one or both partners perceive that the experience was meaningful, and that it moved them in novel directions in their life together. given that the proposed concept of romantic creativity frames dyadic self-expansion and personal insights, social evaluation could lack relevance in romantic creativity. hence, as a third epistemological assumption, romantic creativity could refer to a “non-product-hierarchic” phenomenon. in that sense, we can consider the romantic creativity framework in relation to the four-c model of creativity (kaufman & beghetto, 2009). the four-c model structures creativity alongside a continuum which classifies and creates a hierarchy of individual achievements ranging from everyday accomplishments to eminent outputs. through this lens, the four-c model does not to truly match the epistemological stance of the romantic creativity framework. indeed, by positioning eminent productions as the higher levels of its framework, this four-c model emphasises the importance of producing original and recognised products specific creative domains. the romantic creativity framework, on the other hand, addresses how a shared activity and/or a shared experience creates a bifurcation in the way one or both partners perceive their worldviews, act in their lives, or discover and expand themselves through new experiences, and interests. romantic creativity refers fundamentally to intra-individual insights and changes. thus, essentially, it would connect to the first stratum of the model: mini-c (beghetto & kaufman, 2007). 2.2 romantic creativity, self-expansion, and ontologies we have proposed that romantic creativity is concerned with how a dyad can move in novel directions, and self-expand3 (aron et al., 1998; strong & aron, 2006). accordingly, the selfexpansion model assumes that individuals have a desire to self-expand both in and outside their romantic relationship, and to search for new stimuli (aron et al., 1998, 2013). individuals seek such growth to improve their efficacy and develop new self-concepts. that is, they search to develop new parts of their identity through challenging, arousing, and novel activity (e.g., reissman et al., 1993). self-expansion theory claims that relationships shape our identity and help us to gain access to new types of resources (e.g., new friends through our partner’s social network; new materials when partners cohabit together; more money) or new types of activities (e.g., one partner helping the other to discover new interests, such as classical music, bricolage skills, or eco-friendly everyday behaviours). 3 the conceptual framework of romantic creativity draws on research and theories of self-expansion (aron et al., 1998, 2013). a logical question to ask here is how the present framework can contribute to understanding of the self-expansion theory. it is worth stressing that the conceptual framework of romantic creativity is not a replica of the self-expansion model. first, romantic creativity proposes that this mechanism may occur through homeodynamics, something which is not proposed by the self-expansion model. romantic creativity may even complement self-expansion research to that extent. a second aspect prevents romantic creativity from being a mere replica of the self-expansion model, as romantic creativity is about how dyadic functioning influences each part of the dyad, and how partners grow together through the discovery of a novel life direction. this conceptualisation is not approached in the self-expansion model. romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 the proposed romantic creativity framework, and its assumed association with self expansion, can be contextualised in relation to drigotas et al’s (1999) michelangelo phenomenon and its ontology which connect to wellbeing (drigotas, 2002; rusbult et al., 2009). the michelangelo phenomenon is a concept that frames how individuals influence, foster, or hinder each partner’s goals of individualisation. in other words, each partner’s self-expansion is encouraged through their interpersonal experiences and is posited to allow them to attain their “ideal self” (rusbult et al., 2009, p. 306). in this model, each partner contributes to help the other to get closer to their “ideal self”, and thus to account for their individual and dyadic wellbeing (drigotas, 2002). conversely, if a partner were to move away from their “ideal self”, this would cause a diminution of both individual and dyadic wellbeing. in our understanding, this model implies a platonist ontology (balaguer, 2016) which assumes an idealist, achievable view worthy of pursual. this view constitutes one possible ontology within which to frame research on romantic creativity. as a second ontological standpoint which merits further research, romantic creativity can be approached through duymedjian and rüling's (2010) discussion of anthropologist lévi-strauss’s (1994) ontology of bricolage. in their conceptual paper, duymedjian and rüling distinguished between bricoleur and ingénieur. briefly, “ingénieur” engages in an idealised ontology – similar to the michelangelo phenomenon – whereas the “bricoleur” does not. the bricoleur’s ontology accounts for wellbeing, not through idealising goals, objectives, and tasks, but via an exploration, an inventory, and a subtle understanding of their environment, which always provides sufficient means for a partly indeterminate end. lévi-strauss (1994) importantly cites reichard in saying that “…the navajo [native american] regard all parts of the universe as essential to wellbeing” (p. 46). the logical argument of this ontology is as follows: if all parts of nature are essential to wellbeing, then idealisation and hierarchies are not relevant to wellbeing. indeed, everything is then assumed to bring something important to the bricoleur’s arrangement and flourishing. thus, as an alternative to the michelangelo phenomenon’s ontology, romantic creativity may also be addressed as the extent to which dyadic romantic activities can help each partner to discover new aspects of themselves. in other words, such an ontology frames how romantic creativity may foster gains in a stable and clear self-concept that has the power to contribute to partners’ wellbeing (for research on self-concept and wellbeing see, for instance, ritchie et al., 2011; usborne & taylor, 2010). although we propose a conceptualisation of dyadic romantic creativity as an avenue for dyadic self-expansion, we temper this claim with the view proposed by cancian's (1987) work that 1950s liberalism and individuals’ emancipation led to an impoverishment of commitment in close relationships. consequently, and specifically in american culture, it appears that the support acquired from one’s intimate partner is often viewed as crucial to attaining the desired individualisation and self-realisation. this claim can also be found in the michelangelo phenomenon, wherein partners become the “sculptors” of their partner’s selves (drigotas, 2002; drigotas et al., 1999). in this way, cancian emphasised how american culture tends to instrumentalise love to pursue individualistic self-expansion goals. therefore, we argue here that the study of how romantic relationships create and self-expand together is subject to the varied, perhaps conflicting, ontological perspectives held in different cultures. hence, further research could want to focus on romantic partners’ ontologies to address the following questions: do dyads self-expand in shared experiences with an idealised view of themselves? conversely, do romantic relationships allow partners to engage in dyadic self-expansion in novel directions without predefined schemes? in which circumstances do dyads gain which benefits and at what cost? in this sense, cross-cultural research may offer relevant research perspectives. romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 2.3 romantic creativity and neuroscientific assumptions homeostasis, and its more dynamic form, “homeodynamics”, may offer neuroscientific support to the romantic creativity framework. in its initial conceptualisation, homeostasis refers to a process that helps organisms maintain and return to a stable internal state (cannon & cannon, 1932/1967). more recent work, discussed below, has proposed to extend the steady-state aspect of homeostasis to a more dynamic one. steady states are often not associated with wellbeing. for instance, a complete state of equilibrium is equivalent to the concept of entropy, which provokes anxious states in humans, and is thus in opposition to a concept of wellbeing (dodge et al., 2012; hirsh et al., 2012). conversely, depressive states, which are also opposed to wellbeing, are often treated with the support of “behavioural activation” procedures. behavioural activation engages the person in tasks that are designed to push them towards accomplishing actions, and which set them in motion to reduce their depressive symptoms as a first step toward recovery and wellbeing (ekers et al., 2014). therefore, the mechanisms of romantic creativity mobilise homeodynamic rather than homeostatic processes, putting the individual into motion. lloyd et al. (2001) used the concept of homeodynamics to describe self-organised structures (e.g., an individual mind, or a romantic relationship) which exhibit both fixed set points, as in classical homeostasis, while also involving more dynamic processes. more specifically, the concept of homeodynamics is defined as a series of “bifurcation points” that compel an organism to lose stability to foster behavioural quantitative or qualitative changes (e.g., lloyd et al., 2001, p. 136). the work of neuroscientist antonio damasio has shown that, within an optimal range, homeodynamics are experienced by individuals as feelings of joy, happiness, and wellbeing where their close relationships (e.g., romantic relationships) contribute efficiently to meeting their homeostatic/homeodynamic needs and fostering their health (e.g., damasio, 2018, p. 117; see also kemp et al., 2017). while it was proposed above that romantic creativity refers to how an activity creates changes and bifurcation in the dyad, it may be expected that this bifurcation reflects the qualitative and quantitative changes required for homeodynamic flourishing. this line of research might partly explain why excitement, fun, or surprise often buffer against the diminution of a partner's perception of the positive quality of their relationship, and foster satisfaction in romantic relationships (aron et al., 1998, 2013; harasymchuk & fehr, 2013; reissman et al., 1993; strong & aron, 2006). it is possible that the sharing of some dyadic activities in the romantic relationship may promote flourishing as these activities can be perceived as surprising and exciting, and may thus be identified as a potential source of expansion by the dyad (damasio, 2018; malouff et al., 2015). indeed, evidence shows that romantic relationships that engage in self-expansion via novel activities heighten the partners’ satisfaction in their relationship over time (muise et al., 2019). section 3. summary, contributions, and future directions 3.1 overview of the romantic creativity framework figure 1 integrates and summarises the theoretical framework of romantic creativity. romantic creativity is rooted in wellbeing and its higher level, flourishing, through at least two aspects: (a) a dyadic process that fosters positive social ties (kemp et al., 2017); and (b) a dynamic phenomenon of self-expansion that might reflect homeodynamic mechanisms, and encourage enjoyment and flourishing in dyads through self-expansion (aron et al., 2013; damasio, 2018; lloyd et al., 2001). it is hoped that this framework will build understanding of the benefits of creativity for wellbeing at a dyadic level, and that it will complement previous research on how creativity is embedded in romantic relationships (campbell & kaufman, 2017; carswell et al., romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 2019). romantic creativity may thus provide an ontological and epistemological foundation for measuring dyadic function through moment-to-moment interactions, and address how these nurture flourishing. the theoretical framework of romantic creativity proposes that the co-construction of novel and meaningful experiences that foster the self-expansion and unfamiliar life directions of the dyad might occur through homeodynamic bifurcation, as conceptualised by lloyd and colleagues (2001). in that sense, we could expect the positive effects of such bifurcation (e.g., how the creation of a novel experience in the dyad fosters a bifurcation of the dyad’s life direction) to be under the influence of the mechanisms that conserve each dyadic member’s alterity. we can define alterity as the quality of otherness that is opposite to, distinct from, or inassimilable by, the self. as such, it is the opposite of identity or sameness (huett & goodman, 2014). we could predict that for a dyadic activity to be able to foster bifurcation in one of the two partners, partner a would need to be sufficiently different from partner b to propose an activity or an experience that may bring about change in partner b. essentially, alterity might be seen as a condition of exploration and exploitation of one’s partner’s resources, in a way which promotes wellbeing, according to its definition (dodge et al., 2012, p. 230). conversely, we could hypothesise that for this alterity to take place, partners would need to share important domains of similarity. indeed, prior research shows that comparable backgrounds, attitudes, and leisure choices predict attraction between partners (byrne et al., 1970; sprecher & regan, 2002). some evidence suggests that when individuals seek long term relationships, similarity is mostly desire in terms of career goals, food preferences, travel desires, and music taste (treger & masciale, 2018). furthermore, perceived affinities, rather than actual and objective close equivalences, tend to predict attraction (montoya et al., 2008; sprecher et al., 2015). sprecher et al. (2015) found that self-expansion mediated the relationship between perceived similarity and attraction. when participants welcomed dissimilarity (i.e., “to have alterity in”), it concerned domains such as playing sports/athletics, political activities and interests, and academic pursuits. this line of research connects with previous work on selfexpansion. this line of research showed that individuals who are primed towards self-expansion tend to be more likely to be attracted by partners who are to a large extend similar to them in main aspects of their self-concept (aron et al., 2006, 2013). thus, future research could explore how quantitative similarities may act as a moderator in romantic relationships, and whether qualitative dissimilarities in a domain where partners share general similarities could moderate the relationship between dyadic creative experiences and self-expansion. romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 figure 1. a theoretical framework of romantic creativity note. dyadic experiences imply new perceptions and insights. although the dyadic activities themselves do not necessarily have to be novel, the bifurcations in partners’ lives are. the present illustration focuses exclusively on flourishing. yet, we do not reject the hypothesis that dyadic creativity experiences may restrain or hinder one partner, thus potentially resulting in negative social ties, depression, and/or associated psychopathology. proposed relationships supported by empirical evidence are highlighted in bold. more hypothetical paths are presented in dotted lines and boxes. these variables require more empirical research to address the falsifiability of this model. 3.2. conclusion while the framework is based on empirical work on self-expansion and neuroscientific approaches, important aspects of the view of romantic creativity remain flexible and open to future criticism and adjustments. the neuroscientific and neurobiological foundations upon which the romantic creativity framework is based offer a reliable basis for the development of romantic creativity (damasio, 2018; kemp et al., 2017; lloyd et al., 2001). further research is needed to address whether and/or how homeodynamic processes are at play, and whether they explain the effect of romantic creativity on flourishing. likewise, we have proposed some methodological perspectives on how to quantify and qualify romantic creativity, which aim to explore the relevance of moment-to-moment approaches to the study of romantic creativity. another avenue for additional research lies in the ontological perspectives of the romantic creativity framework: are individuals engaging in romantic creativity to serve an idealised view of themselves? or, do they have a more open-ended ontology that serves their wellbeing and quality of romantic relationships? thus, we have proposed a non-definitive view of what it might mean to be “creative” in a romantic relationship, and what the manifestations of such a “romantic creativity” might be. how and when could romantic creativity and wellbeing be further nourished in dyads, and from which ontological standpoint? what motivates partners to foster growth in their relationship? how do partners report how their relationship has changed their romantic creativity and wellbeing verger & duymedjian www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 life trajectory, and under what circumstances, at what cost, and for what benefits? these central aspects of romantic creativity are all wide open for investigation. they can serve to address the limitations and areas requiring improvement of the present theoretical framework of romantic creativity. acknowledgements we are grateful to jane guiller, andrew h. kemp, kareena mcaloney-kocaman, dominique steiler, julie thomson, agata urbanowicz, and katia zhuk for their insightful ideas, guidance, and support throughout the process of preparing and writing this article. we also thank colin cumming for his diligent proofreading work and the two anonymous reviewers whose feedback helped to improve the manuscript. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors nicolas b. verger glasgow caledonian university raffi duymedjian grenoble school of management publishing timeline received 2 september 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 references amabile, t. m. 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(2009). evaluation of children’s creativity: psychometric properties of torrance’s ‘thinking creatively in action and movement’ test. early child development and care, 179(3), 317–328. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430601078669 taylor, t. e., (2015). the markers of wellbeing: a basis for a theory-neutral approach. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 75-90. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.5 tim e. taylor university of leeds phltet@leeds.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 article the markers of wellbeing: a basis for a theory-neutral approach tim e. taylor abstract: programmes for measuring national wellbeing are challenged by the fact that there are a number of competing theories of what wellbeing consists in, and there is no prospect that the debate between them will be resolved. although different theories disagree about what constitutes wellbeing, i argue that there is substantial common ground on what i call the 'markers' of wellbeing: things that are either constitutive, productive or indicative of wellbeing. whatever stands in one of these relations to wellbeing is potentially relevant to its measurement. something that is constitutive of wellbeing according to one theory will often be productive or indicative of wellbeing according to another and thus, despite their differences, both theories may acknowledge it as a marker of wellbeing. this paper considers which markers of wellbeing are sufficiently widely shared between different mainstream theories that they could form the basis of a theory-neutral approach to the measurement of wellbeing for the purposes of public policy. the paper defines what would count as a marker of wellbeing in this context; sets out criteria that candidate markers would need to meet; and proposes a list of nine markers that i argue are consistent with a wide range of mainstream theories and with widely-held folk assumptions about wellbeing. keywords: public policy, measurement, theories of wellbeing, consensus, theory-neutral 1. introduction in recent years there has been a trend for governments and international organisations to look beyond economic indicators and seek to measure national wellbeing for the purposes of informing public policy or measuring its success.1 measuring wellbeing requires some idea of what wellbeing is and therefore what is to be measured. programmes for measuring national wellbeing face a challenge in that there are a number of competing theories of what wellbeing consists in. there is a family of what can be described broadly as hedonist or mental-state accounts, which hold that wellbeing is constituted by affective states, or by some particular state, such as happiness or life-satisfaction, which is regarded as reflecting a person’s overall evaluation of or affective response to his or her life. there are desireor preference-satisfaction accounts, which define wellbeing in terms of the satisfaction of actual, filtered or idealised desires and/or preferences. then there are various kinds of ‘objective’ accounts. these include aristotelian accounts, which define wellbeing in terms of the perfection of human excellences and/or the development and exercise of human capacities. objective-list accounts hold that wellbeing depends upon the possession of various prudential goods, such as health and autonomy; there are many variants, whose lists sometimes 1 see bache (2013) and bache and reardon (2013) for a summary of developments in the uk and europe. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 include subjective goods such as happiness as well as objective ones. there is also the capabilities approach, which in its most familiar form resembles an objective-list account, albeit with aristotelian influences and some subjective elements. there are, of course, many different variants within the broad categories of wellbeing theories discussed above.2 these many theories make different and competing claims about what wellbeing consists in. the debate between them is unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future. on what basis, then, are policy makers to choose between the rival theories in order to decide what it is that is to be measured? there are, broadly, two strategies that might be followed. one option is to select, or assume, a preferred theoretical approach and choose measures which are consistent with that. thus, for example, those who rely (solely) on subjective wellbeing (swb) measures such as the satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 1985) assume a theory of wellbeing combining lifesatisfaction with a form of hedonism, whereas the un human development index is based upon the capabilities approach. on the other hand, governments might use a more eclectic mix of different measures not tied to specific theoretical assumptions about the nature of wellbeing. this is, broadly, the approach taken by the uk’s office of national statistics, for example, which uses 41 different measures (randall et al., 2014). each approach has an obvious weakness. on the one hand, selecting a particular theoretical framework invites challenge from those who reject it. thus, for example, advocates of the capabilities approach have criticised reliance on swb measures on the grounds that people living in difficult circumstances may report themselves as happy, taking pleasure in small mercies (sen 1987, 45-6). the more broadly-based approach, on the other hand, is open to the charge of being ad hoc. although measures may be selected for methodological reasons, such as the availability of data, in the absence of a theoretical basis for the approach there seems to be no principled basis for deciding which measures are most relevant to wellbeing.3 the aim of this paper is to provide a principled rationale for a version of the broadly-based strategy. it proposes an approach that is theory-neutral, taking advantage of common ground between different theories on what i call the ‘markers’ of wellbeing. i have argued elsewhere (taylor 2014a) that, contrary to initial appearances, there is likely to be a substantial area of common ground between rival theories of wellbeing. disagreement between the competing theories is primarily focused upon the question of what wellbeing consists in. however, it is not only constituents of wellbeing that are of interest for the purposes of measuring it in the context of public policy. something may be relevant to wellbeing in different ways: it may be constitutive of wellbeing; it may tend to produce or promote wellbeing; or it may do neither of these things but nevertheless act as an indicator of wellbeing. something which stands in one or other of these relationships to wellbeing may be considered a ‘marker’ of wellbeing. markers of wellbeing, notwithstanding the different relationships in which they stand with respect to wellbeing itself, are all potentially relevant to its measurement. data concerning a marker of wellbeing will facilitate the making of judgements about wellbeing itself. when considering whether something is a marker of wellbeing, the ‘bar’ is set lower than when considering whether it is a constituent of wellbeing. the key criterion is not whether the thing in question makes a difference to someone’s wellbeing in its own right, but whether it would be useful to gather data on it in the context of a programme to measure wellbeing for 2 see the next section below for more detailed descriptions of the mainstream theories of wellbeing, with references. 3 see taylor (2014a) for a fuller discussion of the respective merits of the theory-specific and theory-neutral approaches. the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 public policy purposes. it might be relevant in that context in virtue of being productive and/or indicative of wellbeing, even if it is not constitutive of wellbeing. different theories of wellbeing disagree about what constitutes wellbeing. however, for each theory it will be the case that other things beyond what it regards as constitutive of wellbeing will be either productive or indicative of wellbeing. these are likely to include things that a different theory would regard as constitutive of wellbeing. when this is the case, although the two theories will remain in disagreement about whether the item in question is a constituent of wellbeing, they can both agree that it is a marker of wellbeing. thus, for example, health is a constituent of wellbeing according to many objective-list theories. it is not constitutive of wellbeing for hedonistic or desire-satisfaction theories. however, proponents of such theories would be likely to agree that health is productive of wellbeing, in normal circumstances. good health is itself a subject of some of our desires, and it also facilitates (and poor health frustrates) the achievement of other desires. similarly, all else being equal, healthy people are in general likely to be happier for it. so although only certain theories regard health as constitutive of wellbeing in its own right, a much wider range of theories – perhaps all mainstream theories (see below) – could acknowledge it as a marker of wellbeing. this paper will consider how we might identify which markers of wellbeing are sufficiently widely shared between different mainstream theories to form the basis of a theory-neutral approach to the measurement of wellbeing in the context of public policy. it will also make some suggestions as to what these might be. i do not claim that within a single article it is possible to reach complete and definitive conclusions about the markers of wellbeing. my earlier work called for further study of and debate on this issue between both philosophers of wellbeing and empirical researchers (taylor, 2014a). to some extent, this is also a subject upon which lawmakers and policy makers will wish to make their own judgments. they will have at their disposal the literature on competing theories of wellbeing and on research about wellbeing in the social sciences, as well as the advice and data provided by their own national experts. nevertheless, despite these important caveats, it is possible to draw some preliminary conclusions, if not about all the markers of wellbeing, then at least about certain key markers which might form the basis of a theory-neutral approach to wellbeing in the policy context. 2. definition, caveats and clarifications the first step in the process of identifying markers of wellbeing is to define exactly what we are looking for. i propose the following general definition of what counts as a marker of wellbeing for present purposes: x is a marker of wellbeing if, according to all mainstream theories of wellbeing, either: 1. x is constitutive of wellbeing; or 2. x is something that can be regarded as reliably productive of wellbeing at the individual level; or 3. x is something that can be regarded as a reliable indicator of wellbeing, at the individual level. note that there are different ways in which something might be constitutive of wellbeing according to a particular theory. it might be regarded as identical with wellbeing for example, according to a hedonist theory that defined wellbeing in terms of (unadjusted) happiness, a person who is happy would ipso facto have high wellbeing. or it might be seen as one among several constituents of wellbeing – as, for example, close personal relationships feature in many objective-list theories alongside other goods. a third, less common, relationship that holds for the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 some things and for some theories is that they are regarded as necessary but not sufficient conditions for wellbeing. thus, in kraut’s (2007: 126-30) aristotelian theory, pleasure is a necessary but not sufficient condition for something to be considered non-instrumentally good for someone (i.e. to contribute towards their wellbeing). thus x might (according to certain theories) be either constitutive of overall wellbeing (identical with wellbeing) or one among several constituents of wellbeing, or a necessary but not sufficient condition for wellbeing. similarly, x might be productive/indicative of overall wellbeing, or it might be productive/indicative of certain (but not all) constituents of wellbeing. something which is one among other constituents of wellbeing, is a necessary condition for wellbeing, or is productive or indicative of one of these things, is still a marker of overall wellbeing, at least to some extent. all else being equal, someone’s wellbeing will be improved for having those constituents, and one would expect some correlation between these markers and overall wellbeing. but all else will not always be equal – the presence of the relevant constituent is not sufficient to show that the person concerned has high wellbeing. for example, if someone enjoys close personal relationships, that is something which (according to certain theories) makes a positive contribution towards their wellbeing. nevertheless, the person may have low overall wellbeing due to other factors (perhaps they are in constant pain). in what follows it will be useful to make a distinction between, on the one hand, things which are directly constitutive, productive or indicative of overall wellbeing, and on the other, those which are partially constitutive of wellbeing (including things that are necessary but not sufficient for wellbeing), or productive or indicative of such things. both can be considered markers of wellbeing, but i shall call the second group pro tanto markers, in recognition of the ceteris paribus condition. a few observations, caveats and clarifications are appropriate in relation to the above definition. first, the range of actual and potential theories of wellbeing is such that it is unlikely that many, if any markers of wellbeing would be common to all possible, or perhaps even all actual, theories of wellbeing. a criterion that required a candidate marker of wellbeing to be regarded as such by all theories would be impossibly demanding. i have therefore restricted the requirement to ‘mainstream’ theories. i define a mainstream theory as one which is a) wellestablished – i.e. it has been around long enough to be tested through academic debate; and b) widely held (being widely held is not necessarily inconsistent with being widely rejected). there is, of course, room for debate about what it takes for a theory to count as sufficiently wellestablished and widely held. however, i suggest that the following theories (and no others), which feature widely in the literature on wellbeing, would pass this test: 1. hedonism: the view that wellbeing is constituted by the pleasure and pain (both typically defined in a broad sense), or happiness/unhappiness (conceived as mental states, rather than as synonyms for wellbeing/illbeing itself) it contains. recent exponents of hedonism about wellbeing include fred feldman (2010) and roger crisp (2006: 98-125). 2. life-satisfactionism: the view that wellbeing is constituted by a person’s having a positive attitude to their life – sometimes subject to conditions such as authenticity and autonomy, as in wayne sumner’s (1996) well-known exposition. 3. desire/preference-satisfactionism: the view that wellbeing is constituted by the satisfaction/frustration of desires or preferences. there are many variants of this approach, which can be divided into two broad camps: unrestricted theories, which include all of a person’s desires, without any filter; and the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 informed/rational desire theories, which focus on desires filtered by conditions of information or rationality (sometimes aetiology) or idealised desires4 – the desires a person would have under ideal conditions, or that an ideally rational version of him/herself would have for that person. both variants are quite widely held: the former is assumed by classical economics, the latter favoured by some philosophers. 4. objective-list theories. these specify a list of prudential goods, and hold that wellbeing is constituted by the presence of these goods in a person’s life (e.g. finnis, 2011; fletcher, 2013). 5. neo-aristotelian theories. these hold that wellbeing is constituted by the development, perfection and/or exercise of characteristic human capacities (e.g. kraut, 2007). i have not included the capabilities approach as a separate element, as it can be assimilated to other theories on the list.5 in its most familiar form, as expounded by nussbaum (2000), it has an aristotelian basis and resembles an objective-list account, but it could also be developed as a more subjective theory (baber, 2010). the boundaries between these theories are not always clear-cut: for example, james griffin’s version of the desire-satisfaction approach (1986, 67-8) includes a list of prudential goods, so is similar in that respect to objective-list theories. there are numerous variants of the different theories, and what holds true of one variant may not hold true of others. some explanation is needed of the terms ‘reliable’ and ‘reliably’. it is a consequence of my approach that no marker of wellbeing will be regarded as perfectly reliable by all mainstream theories, and most will not be regarded as perfectly reliable by any theory. even constituents of wellbeing are not perfectly reliable insofar as they are regarded as indicating overall wellbeing. constituents of wellbeing might, however, be 100 per cent reliable as pro tanto markers of wellbeing. for example, if health is a constituent of wellbeing (e.g. on an objective-list theory), then insofar as a person is healthy, that person has better wellbeing, ceteris paribus, than if he/she had not been healthy. but being healthy is consistent with low wellbeing overall if a person lacks other constituents. for things which are productive but not constitutive of wellbeing, there is an additional source of uncertainty. something which is productive of wellbeing in many circumstances may not be so in others. as an example, some studies (e.g. diener, tay and myers, 2011) suggest that religion tends to have a positive effect on wellbeing. however, participation in a religion is not invariably productive of wellbeing. it may sometimes have the opposite effect, as demonstrated by the unfortunate experiences of members of certain religious cults. similarly, something which is usually an indicator of wellbeing might not always be so. so things which are productive but not constitutive of wellbeing are not 100 per cent reliable even as pro tanto markers of wellbeing. since no marker of wellbeing is likely to be 100 per cent reliable, a criterion which required 100 per cent reliability would be too demanding. i suggest that a marker of wellbeing can be considered ‘generally reliable’ if it is productive or indicative of wellbeing most of the time, in a variety of different contexts. it need not be so without exception, though if there are contexts relevant to public policy where it is in general not productive or indicative of wellbeing, that 4 see heathwood (2005) for an example of an unrestricted (or ‘actualist’) desire-satisfaction theory. proponents of informed/rational desire theories include griffin (1986), brandt (1979) and railton (1986). 5 insofar as it purports to be a theory of wellbeing. proponents of the capabilities approach do not necessarily claim it as such: for example, nussbaum (2000) sees her list of central human capabilities as reflecting a core of wellbeing, rather than the whole of it. the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 would be a reason for excluding it. i have not attempted to quantify this to set more precise criteria for reliability: as i see it, there is no meaningful way of doing so. it is largely a matter of common sense. the fact that no marker of wellbeing can be regarded as 100 per cent reliable – especially those which are productive or indicative, rather than constitutive of wellbeing – means that a certain caution is required in making use of these markers for policy purposes. it will be important to be alert to the possibility that in a given case they may, exceptionally, fail to be valid markers of wellbeing. it will be helpful to identify, as far as possible, the reasons why a particular factor is likely to be productive or indicative of wellbeing, and pay special attention to cases where those reasons may not present. having said all this, the caveat should not be overstated. i believe that the markers of wellbeing listed below are all, in fact, generally reliable. parts 2 and 3 of the definition talk about things which are reliably productive or indicative of wellbeing ‘at the individual level’. certain things tend to correlate with wellbeing at the level of societies rather than of individuals. thus, for example, it may well be the case that societies with high levels of gdp tend also to be societies with high levels of wellbeing. a country’s economic performance as measured by gdp may have an indirect impact on the wellbeing of individuals within it, by influencing other factors, such as income and access to healthcare, which have a more direct impact on individual wellbeing. but for a particular individual, living in a state with a high gdp is not in itself likely to be something that has a significant direct impact upon, or is directly indicative of, his or her wellbeing. nor is the link between gdp and the other factors which do affect individual wellbeing so close that the links between these factors and individual wellbeing can be regarded as extending to gdp. economic conditions as measured by gdp are just one among many other factors – such as social status, distribution of wealth, etc. – which influence an individual’s income and access to healthcare (etc.). similar considerations may apply to other factors which have an indirect impact upon wellbeing, such as the environment. my list of markers will include only things which can plausibly be regarded as reliably productive or indicative of wellbeing at the individual level. this is not to deny that factors such as gdp, which have an impact on overall levels of wellbeing within societies, are also important and might sensibly be included within a broadly-based approach to the gathering of data on wellbeing for policy purposes. it should also be noted that certain factors, such as age, and genetic predispositions, may have an influence upon wellbeing (at the individual level) but are not realistically subject to influence by government policy. these might, strictly speaking, be markers of wellbeing, but they are not likely to be useful markers of wellbeing in the context of public policy (although there may be other reasons for gathering data on them). such factors are therefore not considered in the remainder of this paper. there is a final caveat to be noted before moving on to identify markers of wellbeing. i have proposed the theory-neutral approach in the context of the measurement of wellbeing. it might also be applicable in other contexts related to public policy. however, if the intention is not merely to measure wellbeing but to target aspects of wellbeing, then caution is required. if something is indicative, but not constitutive or productive of wellbeing, then targeting it directly is not likely to be beneficial. suppose, for example, that it were found through empirical investigation to be the case that people who smile frequently are more likely than those who do not to score highly on various measures of wellbeing; but that smiling itself has no causal impact on other markers of wellbeing. it is thus, let us assume, indicative, but not constitutive or productive of wellbeing. if this were the case, frequency of smiling might in principle be a useful the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 measure of wellbeing. however, it would not be sensible for policy interventions to target smiling directly, for example by providing medications which work on facial nerves to stimulate involuntary smiling! an increase in smiling generated by such means would not be indicative of an increase in wellbeing. 3. populating the list: 3.1 the most secure markers of wellbeing the mainstream theories of wellbeing listed above provide a ready list of candidate markers of wellbeing. in order to identify which markers would fit the theory-neutral approach, it is necessary to assess them against appropriate criteria. i suggest that it is sensible to use an iterative approach, whereby the most secure markers of wellbeing are identified first and others are added in subsequent phases. in later phases, empirical evidence of correlations between candidate markers and those which have already been established will be relevant to the sifting process. to identify which candidates have the most secure claim to be considered markers of wellbeing (including pro tanto markers) in the light of the definition given above, i propose certain criteria, the first of which is: how strong a case the candidate has to be considered either constitutive, productive or indicative of wellbeing under each of the mainstream theories of wellbeing. among candidates which have a plausible claim to meet this criterion, all else being equal a candidate marker’s claim is stronger the more widely it is regarded (among the mainstream theories) as at least partially constitutive of wellbeing, since, as discussed above, things which are constitutive of wellbeing are in general likely to be more reliable than things which are merely productive or indicative, at least as pro tanto markers. if a programme for measuring wellbeing is to be widely accepted, not only by politicians and academics but also by the general population whose wellbeing it is seeking to measure, it needs to be recognisably measuring wellbeing, rather than something else. so it is desirable that at least some of what is measured should chime with widely held common-sense views about wellbeing. thus, in seeking to identify the most secure markers of wellbeing, a further criterion is relevant in assessing the claims of those candidates which meet the first criterion: the extent to which the candidate fits with widely held folk assumptions about wellbeing. i would welcome debate on which markers of wellbeing meet these criteria. in advance of such a debate, my list of proposed markers below should be seen as provisional. however, there are several candidates for which a good claim can be made. in particular, it seems to me that the following two markers have a good case to be considered particularly secure. 3.1.1 happiness the first word on anyone’s lips when they are talking about wellbeing is likely to be ‘happiness’. ‘happiness’ is a somewhat ambiguous term. it is sometimes (for example, in translations of aristotle) treated as a synonym for wellbeing. sometimes it is used to describe a person’s positive evaluation of or satisfaction with their life (e.g. sumner, 1996). a third usage, related to but distinct from the second, is to refer to what is sometimes called ‘positive affect’ – ‘feeling happy’, having a positive emotional state or an overall positive balance of pleasure over pain in one’s life. here i use the term ‘happiness’ in this third sense. life-satisfaction is considered in its own right as a separate marker of wellbeing below. there are different views about what sort of affective state(s) happiness is, or incorporates – some believe that it reflects the balance between pleasures and pains, with some adjustments and the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 qualifications (feldman, 2010). others focus on emotional states considered more central than mere pleasures (haybron, 2008). some distinguish between different types of affective states and/or between positive and negative affect and are wary about aggregating them (headey, holmström and wearing, 1984). for present purposes i am using the term ‘happiness’ as an overarching label to encompass a range of mental states, collections and aggregates of mental states which, notwithstanding differences of detail between them, have in common the fact that they reflect a person’s generally positive affective response to their life. happiness in this sense is constitutive of overall wellbeing for hedonism, although some variants include conditions which happiness must meet in order to be considered constitutive of wellbeing (feldman, 2010). it is widely acknowledged as at least partially constitutive of, or a necessary condition for, wellbeing, even by some proponents of objective theories (e.g. kraut, 2007; fletcher, 2013). happiness also has a strong common-sense claim as a constituent of wellbeing. if we imagine two people whose lives are similar in all other respects, but one of them is happy and the other is not, intuitively we would tend to regard the first person as having higher wellbeing than the second. nevertheless, happiness would not be acknowledged as a constituent of wellbeing by all theories. some objective-list theories do not include it. not all aristotelian theories regard happiness or pleasure as a necessary condition for the development and exercise of human capacities to count towards wellbeing. desire and preference-satisfaction theories would not regard happiness as constitutive of wellbeing either. however, there are good reasons to believe that proponents of these theories would, or should, acknowledge happiness as a marker of wellbeing. some of our desires and preferences are for happiness, and for the positive affective states that contribute towards it. to that extent, therefore, by satisfying those desires, happiness and positive affective states are productive of wellbeing, on a desire-satisfaction theory. psychological hedonism, the theory that all desires are for pleasure and happiness, is no longer widely accepted: some of our desires are for other things. however, a person is surely more likely to be happy if his/her desires/preferences are satisfied than if they are not. there may be exceptions (e.g. a person may believe their desires to be satisfied when they are not) but in general happiness is a good candidate to be an indicator of wellbeing, on a desire/preference satisfaction theory (angner, 2012). it may, in particular, be an indicator of a (positive) change in wellbeing (wren-lewis, 2014). i suggest that it is also likely to be the case that people who do well in terms of the stipulations of aristotelian theories and objective-list theories (those variants that do not already include happiness or related items) – who have developed their physical and mental capacities, or possess the various objective goods listed by the theory – will tend to be happier than people who do not (at least, if the theory itself is reasonably plausible). happiness is thus a likely indicator of wellbeing for objective theories.6 there is a potential challenge to the inclusion of happiness in this list, associated with the phenomenon of adaptation. people’s emotional states adapt in various ways to the circumstances in which they find themselves. for example, situations which seem intolerable when first experienced may become less so as we grow accustomed to them. i have considered this challenge elsewhere (taylor, 2014b). the phenomenon of adaptation is real, and implies a need for caution in measuring happiness – in particular regarding the extent to which it can be regarded as a marker of, or proxy for, overall wellbeing – but doesn’t invalidate it as at least a pro 6 happiness also has a good case to be considered productive of wellbeing. there is evidence, for example, that it has a positive effect on health (diener and chan, 2011) – so if health itself is established as a marker of wellbeing (see below), that reinforces the case for happiness. the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 tanto marker of wellbeing. it may sometimes be that a person’s life is going less well than their level of happiness alone would suggest, but that does not imply that their being happy is not, in itself, something that has a positive effect on their wellbeing. 3.1.2 health here i interpret the term ‘health’ broadly. it includes all aspects of physical health: not only freedom from disease and injury, but also adequate nutrition. it also includes mental health. health is a constituent of wellbeing for many objective-list theories (e.g. finnis, 2011; nussbaum, 2000). it also tends to be seen as an aspect of, or necessary condition for, human flourishing by aristotelian theories (kraut, 2007, p. 133). general health is not regarded as constitutive of wellbeing by subjective theories, although aspects of mental ill-health which involve negative affect, such as depression, will be partially constitutive of (low) wellbeing for hedonism. however, there is a good case to consider it productive of wellbeing on subjective theories. certain consequences of poor physical and mental health, such as physical discomfort and distress, are major sources of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. this is not to deny that people may adapt to poor health or disability and manage to achieve high wellbeing despite it. however, this is not always the case (lucas, 2007). overall, good health correlates positively with happiness – and poor health negatively (argyle, 1999; dolan, peasgood and white, 2008), so if happiness is established as a marker of wellbeing, that reinforces the case for health. good health is an enabler of (and poor health an impediment to) the achievement of central life goals. good health is for these reasons a likely object of informed/rational desire (and much actual desire). like happiness, health fits well with common-sense folk assumptions about wellbeing. we tend to assume that being in good health makes a difference to our quality of life. 3.2 other secure markers it seems to me that both happiness and health are strong candidates to be considered secure markers of wellbeing. though i don’t claim to have established this beyond debate, i shall treat these two markers as secure for the purposes of demonstrating my proposed iterative approach and giving some (provisional) content to the rest of the list. in considering what further markers might be included, we can add a third criterion: evidence from empirical studies of correlations between the candidate marker and already established markers of wellbeing. application of this criterion, together with the other two, results in the addition of a further four markers to the list, which i also consider reasonably secure. 3.2.1 life-satisfaction as in the case of happiness, i use the term ‘life-satisfaction’ as an overarching label for a number of related notions which differ in detail, but share a key feature: in this case, the fact that they reflect a person’s attitude to, or evaluation of, their life. this includes life-satisfaction in the strictest sense as indicated by people’s scores on questionnaires, such as the satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 1985), which invite them to rate how well statements such as ‘i am satisfied with my life’ apply to them. it also includes people’s assessments of their lives using other methodologies, such as the ladder scale developed by hadley cantril (1965), which asks subjects to rate their lives on a scale between the best possible and worst possible lives. as we have seen, life-satisfaction is sometimes identified with happiness, and is constitutive of wellbeing according to certain theories (e.g. sumner, 1996). in other theories, it tends not to the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 feature as a constituent of wellbeing. however, it is a good candidate as an indicator of wellbeing on all of the mainstream theories. a person’s level of satisfaction with their life is, in effect, their own assessment of how well that life is going. it can therefore be regarded as equivalent to a firstperson judgement of wellbeing. we are not infallible judges of our own wellbeing, and thus, for theories which do not regard life-satisfaction itself as constitutive of wellbeing, it is not guaranteed to provide an accurate picture. nevertheless, a person’s own view of their wellbeing surely counts for something. certainly, it has a strong common-sense claim to do so. life-satisfaction is often measured, in tandem with happiness, as the cognitive or judgemental component of subjective wellbeing, along with happiness as the affective component. although the two may sometimes come apart (as in attitudes to income – kahneman and deaton, 2010) in general what increases one tends to increase the other also (peterson, park and seligman, 2005). studies also show correlations between life-satisfaction and health (e.g. strine et al., 2008). like happiness, life-satisfaction is subject to the phenomenon of adaptation, arguably even more so, since it tends to involve the subject choosing a norm of what counts as satisfactory, and such norms are likely to be influenced by experience, circumstances and comparisons with others (taylor, 2014b). as with happiness, therefore, caution is required in the use of life-satisfaction data. nevertheless, i argue that life-satisfaction meets the criteria to be considered a marker of wellbeing. 3.2.2 success in realising central life goals/values this marker concerns the extent to which a person succeeds in securing the things they most care about, whether these be goals to which they aspire or aspects of their lives that matter to them. it is thus a form of desire/preference satisfaction, but one which reflects only those desires or preferences to which a person attributes central importance in their life. this marker is thus at least partially constitutive of wellbeing for desire/preference-satisfactionist theories of wellbeing. there are some theories for which it is wholly or largely constitutive of wellbeing (e.g. raz, 1986, chapter 12). the achievement of a person’s goals is also partially constitutive of wellbeing on some objective-list theories (e.g. fletcher, 2013). it will tend to be productive (and arguably partially constitutive) of wellbeing for life-satisfaction theories: a person’s evaluation of their life is likely to reflect, at least in part, how well it measures up to the goals and values that are important to them. this marker is perhaps not quite so good a fit with hedonism and aristotelian theories. the achievement of goals and realisation of values does not necessarily imply the development of personal capabilities, and is compatible with long periods of struggle, which might involve unhappiness, at least in the short term. nevertheless, it is plausible that this marker is productive of wellbeing for the former and indicative for the latter, at least to some extent. in general, ceteris paribus, the achievement of goals and realisation of values is likely to be something that tends to increase happiness. and the development and exercise of capabilities is likely to facilitate the achievement of goals – and indeed, might be a goal in itself. 3.2.3 supportive personal relationships again, i interpret this term broadly. it includes marriage, relationships with family members, friendships and even relationships with others such as neighbours and work colleagues, insofar as these can be regarded as supportive. by ‘supportive’, i mean that the individual derives benefit from the relationship (in its own right, rather than indirectly, as a business relationship may lead the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 to financial benefit, for example). this might be in various ways: through emotional support in times of difficulty, providing companionship and (for some relationships, not others) intimacy. close personal relationships are partially constitutive of wellbeing for some objective-list theories (e.g. griffin, 1996; nussbaum, 2000). as a manifestation of social aspects of human nature, they may also be regarded as constitutive of wellbeing on some aristotelian theories. for subjective theories, supportive personal relationships have a strong case to be regarded as productive of wellbeing. we would expect them to be a cause of happiness and a buffer mitigating the effects of causes of unhappiness. there is indeed good evidence that supportive relationships of various kinds correlate well with other markers of wellbeing: for example, being married tends to have a positive effect on reported happiness and life-satisfaction, as well as on health (myers, 1999). there are similarly negative correlations for divorce and widowhood. good relationships are also likely to be the subject of actual and informed desires and preferences. they may also, by the help we receive through them, contribute to the achievement of our goals and other desires. 3.2.4 personal development by this i mean the development, improvement and exercise of various mental and physical aspects of our natures as human beings. it includes, therefore, the development of intellectual skills and the acquiring of knowledge. this marker would also include the development of abilities associated with personality and emotion, such as leadership, courage and aesthetic appreciation; and of physical abilities, for example through sport. personal development, defined in various different ways, but broadly on the above lines, is constitutive of wellbeing for aristotelian theories (e.g. kraut, 2007). elements related to personal development, such as knowledge, are also partially constitutive of wellbeing for some objectivelist theories (finnis, 2011; griffin, 1996). for subjective theories (and some objective-list theories), personal development is in general not likely to be considered a constituent of wellbeing – although it may for some people be a focus of some of their central goals. however, it is plausibly productive of wellbeing for these theories. the development of our mental and physical abilities is likely to help us in achieving our desires, and in turn to be a source of satisfaction with our lives and of happiness. 3.3 further markers the six markers of wellbeing listed so far seem to me to be those with the strongest claims in accordance with the criteria. they are all constitutive of wellbeing according to certain theories, and plausibly productive or indicative of wellbeing for other mainstream theories. i suggest that they also chime well with common-sense assumptions about wellbeing – though the first two perhaps do better than the other four in this respect. however these six markers are not the only ones with a reasonable claim for inclusion in the list. i conducted a further stage of the exercise, seeking to build on the most secure markers of wellbeing to find others which might be significant in the context of public policy. whilst the most secure markers seem likely (as discussed above) to be things which fit well with commonsense intuitions about wellbeing, as the list expands new items are more likely to be things which correlate with already established markers. thus the second criterion (the extent to which the candidate fits with widely held folk assumptions about wellbeing) becomes less important, whereas the third criterion (evidence from empirical studies of correlations between the candidate marker and already established markers of wellbeing) becomes more so. this phase of the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 the process yielded a further three markers of wellbeing that seem to have a strong enough claim to be added to the list. 3.3.1 leisure by this i mean the opportunity to spend time relaxing and to pursue interests and activities beyond those required by work, or by the need to secure the essentials for human existence. it is regarded as a constituent of wellbeing by some objective-list theories (finnis, 2011; nussbaum, 2000). it is not generally regarded as constitutive of wellbeing by other theories. however, as an obvious source of pleasure, it has a strong case for being productive of wellbeing for hedonist theories. many of our desires (though not always our most central ones) are focused upon leisure activities, so it seems likely to be productive of wellbeing for desire/preference-satisfactionism also. leisure seems to correlate well with happiness (argyle, 1999) – active leisure activities more so than passive ones such as watching tv – and with swb more widely (newman, tay and diener, 2014). 3.3.2 adequate income/resources by ‘adequate’ here, i mean sufficient resources to enable certain other markers of wellbeing, such as good health (which implies adequate nutrition) and achievement of personal goals, to be secured. those resources, in most societies, will typically be in the form of income or wealth but need not always be so. for example, the members of a religious community might live in conditions where their needs are met without the need for money. the focus on ‘adequate’ income or resources reflects the fact that there is evidence that income in particular (and by implication other resources too) has a much greater impact upon most other markers of wellbeing at low levels than at higher ones. below a certain level of income/resources, people are less likely to be able to secure good health or to pursue personal goals. income correlates well with happiness at low levels, less so at higher levels (though it correlates better with life-satisfaction (kahneman and deaton, 2010)). i offer no cut-off point for what level of income/resources should be regarded as adequate, as this is likely to vary between societies and between individuals. adequate income is not plausibly constitutive of wellbeing under any widely accepted theory (though income has sometimes been treated as a proxy for wellbeing by economists). however, as already discussed, it is an essential enabler for certain other markers of wellbeing on any mainstream theory. 3.3.3 rewarding employment i use the term ‘rewarding employment’ rather than simply ‘employment’ in recognition of the fact that employment is not always rewarding for the employee, and may sometimes – for example, when employees are exploited by employers – have a negative rather than positive impact upon wellbeing. where both job-satisfaction and life-satisfaction are measured, there seems to be a good correlation between the two (warr, 1999). rewarding employment is not constitutive of wellbeing under any plausible mainstream theory. however, it is clearly an enabler of other markers of wellbeing. this is most obviously true of income – for most people, employment is their primary source of income, either directly or indirectly through occupational pensions. employment may also be productive of other markers of wellbeing. it may, for example, be the focus of some people’s central life goals, and an environment in which close personal relationships may be formed. it might be the medium the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 through which people pursue personal development. it might also be a source of happiness and life-satisfaction. these are all contingent relationships, of course, and will not always obtain. there does, however, seem to be a strong relationship between unemployment and relatively low levels of happiness and life-satisfaction (argyle, 1999; dolan et al., 2008). 4. discussion a list of markers of wellbeing will inevitably resemble a list of prudential goods. for this reason, the approach outlined above might, despite its ‘theory-neutral’ label, seem at first to amount to an objective-list approach to wellbeing; thereby attracting the opposition of those who reject this approach, especially proponents of hedonism and preference-satisfactionism. however, it is important to note that the resemblance is superficial. this is not a list of constituents of wellbeing, but of things which i argue can be recognised as either constitutive, productive or indicative of wellbeing by a wide range of theories, including hedonism and preference-satisfaction. i see no reason why proponents of any theory of wellbeing should object to the following question: “over and above what it regards as constitutive of wellbeing, what sorts of things are likely to be generally productive or indicative of wellbeing, on your theory”. nor should they object to the idea that in the context of public policy we might attempt to identify common ground between different theories regarding the markers of wellbeing. they are, of course, entitled to disagree if they wish with my assessment of whether the things on my list would indeed tend to be productive or indicative of wellbeing if their theory is true. another question that arises in relation to a list of markers of wellbeing is how, in practice, governments would go about measuring them for the purposes of informing public policy. this is not an issue that i can hope to resolve in detail here: however, some general comments are appropriate. there is already a wide range of measures relevant to wellbeing gathered both by academic researchers and by governments themselves. these comprise, on the one hand, objective measures of various aspects of human life; and on the other, subjective measures associated with what is now known as the “science of subjective wellbeing”. there are also hybrid measures which reflect subjective attitudes to objective aspects of life. i suggest that a programme to measure wellbeing based upon the proposals above would select primarily from measures which are already available, though some ‘tweaking’ might be necessary. of the subjective markers on the list, happiness and life-satisfaction are extensively measured by swb researchers using questionnaires which invite subjects to rate their happiness and satisfaction with their lives. there are various affect balance measures such as the positive and negative affect schedule (watson, clark and tellegen, 1988). success in realising central life goals/values is also covered to some extent. for example, the satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 1985) invites subjects to rate their agreement/disagreement with various statements, one of which is: “so far i have gotten the important things i want in life”. various measures are also available for the objective markers. taking the uk as an example (randall, corp and self, 2014), in the case of health, these include life-expectancy and reported levels of long-term illness and disability. for leisure, there are figures on participation in cultural and sporting activities. data on leave entitlement for workers would also be relevant. national and international poverty levels provide candidate thresholds for determining adequate income. subjective measures are also relevant to, and available for, the more objective markers. thus, for example, in addition to objective data, responses are gathered on satisfaction with health and with leisure. this hybrid approach is likely to be particularly important in the case of supportive the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 personal relationships and rewarding employment, since objective data (e.g. on marital and employment status) is unlikely to be sufficient on its own: it matters that a person draws the support and fulfilment they need from their work and relationships. in the case of personal development, ‘eudaimonic’ measures have been developed which gather data on the extent to which people are, for example, developing their potential and experiencing a sense of purpose and meaning in life (waterman et al., 2010). educational attainment may also be relevant to certain aspects of this marker. thus, in terms of their practical implications for the measurement of wellbeing, the proposals in this paper do not imply a need for radical innovation. rather, they provide a principled rationale for a broadly-based approach to measurement, and a basis on which to select from or build upon the wide range of measures already available. there would be many issues to consider in choosing/designing a suite of measures based upon the list of markers given above. these include, for objective measures, the question of how closely the available objective data approximates to the marker in question. for subjective measures there is the issue of how far the reliability of self-reports of happiness and satisfaction is affected by factors such as adaptation (taylor, 2014b). these and other issues mean that there will always be some room for argument about the interpretation of data. however, i do not believe that they are an insuperable obstacle to the prospects of measuring wellbeing. 5. conclusions this paper has attempted to identify markers of wellbeing which are consistent with a wide range of mainstream theories of wellbeing and with widely held folk assumptions about wellbeing, and thus would be able to secure broad acceptance as a basis for the measurement of wellbeing in the context of public policy. i do not regard the above list as definitive. it is relatively conservative – it includes only those items which i believe can be regarded as meeting the definition and criteria with a high degree of confidence. there are other items, such as autonomy and self-respect, for which a case could be made that they should be added to the list. i would welcome further debate on which markers of wellbeing meet the criteria set out in this paper. a list of markers of wellbeing along these lines would support a theory-neutral approach to wellbeing in the context of public policy, and would suggest a similarly broadly-based approach to the measurement of wellbeing, involving a range of both subjective and objective measures. a theory-neutral approach would not be without some disadvantages, in comparison with the alternative of basing the measurement of wellbeing for public policy upon a particular theory of wellbeing. as i have acknowledged elsewhere (taylor, 2014a), the latter approach is likely to allow for a finer-grained, more determinate picture of wellbeing, with a clearer picture of the relationship between the different elements. it discriminates between what is constitutive and what is merely productive or indicative of wellbeing, whilst the theory-neutral approach does not. on the other hand, choosing a particular theory of wellbeing as the basis for public policy renders the approach, and the choice of measures that it leads to, more open to challenge from those who reject the preferred theory – and every theory is rejected by adherents of the others. the slight loss of detail implied by a theory-neutral approach based upon markers of wellbeing that can be acknowledged from a wide range of theoretical perspectives seems to be a price worth paying for a better prospect of securing broad acceptance for the approach. the markers of wellbeing taylor www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 acknowledgments i am grateful to estelle derclaye and sam wren-lewis for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. author tim e. taylor university of leeds phltet@leeds.ac.uk publishing timeline received 10 october 2014 accepted 26 april 2015 published 21 june 2015 references angner, erik. 2012. “subjective well-being: when, and why, it matters” (august 31, 2012). http://ssrn.com/abstract=2157140 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2157140 argyle, michael. 1999. “causes and correlates of 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(2021). effectiveness of online, school-based positive psychology interventions to improve mental health and wellbeing: a systematic review. international journal of wellbeing, 11(4), 44-67. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i4.1465 jacqueline francis the university of melbourne jacqui.francis@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 article effectiveness of online, school-based positive psychology interventions to improve mental health and wellbeing: a systematic review jacqueline francis · dianne vella-brodrick · tan chyuan-chin abstract: online positive psychology interventions provide a more equitable method for young people to access wellbeing education at school than more traditional face to face programs. this systematic review aimed to examine the effectiveness of universal, online, school-based, positive psychology interventions using recommendations by the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses protocols (prisma-p). nine articles were identified for the review and were deductively, thematically analyzed using an enhanced re-aim framework which adopts a wider systems perspective including evaluation of socio-ecological readiness system wide buy-in and consideration of micro (individual) to macro (governing bodies) levels of influence, on both reach and adoption. effectiveness assessment identified common factors for success related primarily to implementation (e.g., readiness, reach, outcomes, adoption, implementation, and maintenance). for example, buyin from stakeholders was found to be highest when ppis are age appropriate, engaging and helpful. also brief, more frequent sessions, may be more effective than less frequent longer sessions and multi-level stakeholder buy-in may result in higher completion rates leading to better overall program effectiveness. keywords: positive psychology; positive education; re-aim; online interventions; school students; implementation science 1. introduction adolescence is ordinarily a time of dynamic physiological, cognitive, and situational change (unicef, 2020). transition from primary school to high school can render young people vulnerable (evans et al., 2018). covid-19 has made these changes even more complex (uchicagomedicine, 2020). hence, primary schools are well placed to prepare students to thrive through uncertainty and transition. indeed, the australian curriculum requires students to learn about building social and emotional awareness and management capabilities (australian curriculum, assessment and reporting authority, 2021) and there is growing interest in positive psychology interventions (ppis) activities designed to maintain or improve wellbeing as well as to promote people feeling and functioning at their best (slemp et al., 2017). how teachers effectively put this into action, however, remains a challenge. online interventions present a modality that may be both practical and effective for young people to learn about wellbeing (clarke et al., 2015; manicavasagar et al., 2014). however, there is limited research examining online positive psychology interventions, particularly within the school context. this systematic review aims to address this gap in knowledge by examining the effectiveness of school-based, about:blank online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 online, positive psychology interventions. school-based ppi research provides one pathway to build wellbeing in the school context (proctor et al., 2011; waters et al., 2015). wellbeing is considered a multidimensional construct (forgeard et al., 2011) including the hedonic or feeling good aspects of subjective wellbeing (diener et al., 1999), and the eudemonic or doing good aspects of social and psychological wellbeing (ryff & keyes, 1995; keyes & simoes, 2012; keyes & annas, 2009). interventions for wellbeing typically include singularly focused mindfulness interventions (for review see waters et al., 2015) or gratitude interventions (for review see wood et al., 2010), as well as multidimensional programs, such as character strength interventions (madden et al., 2011; proctor et al., 2011) or multi-component programs for resilience, or social & emotional learning (penn resiliency program: brunwasser et al., 2009; paths curriculum: greenberg et al., 1995). multicomponent, universal, online programs potentially provide flexibility to meet diverse student, teacher, and contextual needs. universal interventions, taught to whole classes, avoid the possible stigma associated with targeted intervention (greenberg & abenavoli, 2017). online programs can overcome existing implementation barriers such as geographical access or cost (bennett & glasgow, 2009; world health organization, 2019) and online ppis have been successfully disseminated among adult cohorts (bailey et al., 2018; kemper et al., 2017; proyer et al., 2015). however, research into youth online wellbeing promotion and health promotion and prevention is still emerging (for a systematic narrative synthesis into effectiveness of online mental health promotion and prevention interventions for youth aged 12-25 see clarke et al., 2015). moreover, very few studies exist evaluating the effectiveness of online, school-based ppis, particularly in primary school aged cohorts. evaluations of wellbeing programs such as ppis often focus on outcome measures and their efficacy, while somewhat neglecting process evaluation, and overall effectiveness (boiler et al., 2013; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). however, implementation effectiveness is understood as critical in successful program delivery (durlak et al., 2011). hence, this review is focused on examining program effectiveness, for online, school-based ppis. given the acceptance of mental health outcome measures within ppi study design (boiler et al., 2013; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009), we refer to ppis in broad terms for this study. ppis include those primarily concerned with enhancing wellbeing, or social emotional learning, as well as with reducing stress, anxiety, or depression. this review will identify commonalities and also gaps, in terms of readiness, reach, outcomes, adoption, implementation and maintenance. effective, successful implementation of multicomponent, universal approaches of programs occurs where there is readiness (transtheoretical model of change: prochaska & velicer, 1997), where the program content is sequenced, active, focused and explicit (safe: durlak et al., 2011), where quality implementation is maintained (grazczyk et al., 2012; meyers et al., 2012), there is support from the encompassing system (wandersman et al., 2008), and barriers to success are overcome. program effectiveness can be evaluated using guiding frameworks such as re-aim (glasgow et al., 2019). while a number of alternative evaluation guidelines exist such as the american psychological association’s jars (apa publications and communications board, 2008), and the standards of evidence (flay, et al 2005), re-aim considers internal validity (sustained intervention effects) and external validity (representativeness) (hone et al., 2015), and has been widely used within the australian educational context (lonsdale et al., 2016; moore et al., 2013). re-aim provides a practical tool to evaluate and report on intervention effectiveness, providing insight into the likely value in upscaling interventions (for tools and resources see http://www.re-aim.org/). readiness is important for evaluating intervention reach and adoption. the transtheoretical model of change, proposes temporal stages of health behaviour change, including prehttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.re-aim.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 contemplative, contemplative, preparative, action and maintenance stages (prochaska & velicer, 1997). an individual’s readiness for change occurs during preparative and action phases. this model emerged from the comparative analysis of more than 300 theories (prochaska & diclemente, 1986), and the empirical analysis of health behaviour change (prochaska & diclemente, 1982; mcconnaughy et al., 1984). hence, it is a useful frame by which to consider intervention reach and adoption, potentially at different system levels. contemplative readiness, in the form of perceiving intervention need, value and fit, provides insight into buy-in and reach. actioned readiness, in the form of sustained buy-in and applied change, provides insight into intervention adoption. intervention effectiveness is understood more deeply when implementation is considered as existing within a complex system. understanding reach at an individual, class, school, and governing body level is valuable within the school context. similarly understanding adoption at multiple system wide levels is instructive. the socio-ecological framework is informed by bronfenbrenner’s (1977) multi-level ecological systems theory. this adds further perspective to intervention readiness, reach and adoption, by considering not only individuals but the system in which they exist, at multiple levels including the microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, macrosystems, and ecosystems (lomas, 2015). for example, when considering reach, an individual teacher may wish to implement an intervention or program they see value in, however school leadership or departmental hierarchy may not agree, thereby blocking buy-in and limiting reach. alternatively, leadership may perceive value in and need for a program, buying into the program and expecting teachers to deliver it, however the teacher may not agree, they may not see the point, or not have the resources to run the program, thereby impacting reach, implementation, and adoption. evaluation of indicators of readiness for change (preparation, action), at multiple system levels, will further inform intervention reach and adoption effectiveness. the interactive systems framework (isf) (wandersman et al., 2008) enhances an understanding of implementation via three succinct components, derived specifically to bring research and practice together (wandersman et al., 2008) including: the synthesis and translation system transforming theory into a practice friendly format; the delivery system and; the support system. this descriptive framework suits a qualitative evaluation of intervention effectiveness – focused primarily on implementation success for this study (e.g., readiness, reach, outcomes, adoption, implementation and maintenance) and has been embedded within the existing reaim framework for this review. 2. methods this systematic qualitative review drew on the preferred items for systematic review and metaanalysis protocols (prisma-p) (shamseer et al., 2015) which guided planning, inquiry and reporting. 2.1 search strategy a systematic search was conducted using the following databases: ebscohost (eric, medline, academic search complete, cinahl complete), web of science, ovid (psycinfo), and scopus. search terms included: ppi, program, intervention, mindfulness, meditation, gratitude, kindness, positive relationships, pro-social, compassion, empathy, emotion regulation, emotional intelligence, strengths, character strength, social emotional learning, cognitive behavior therapy, web, online, computer, child, children, adolescents, youth, teenager, student, school, education, classroom, wellbeing, positive education, positive psychology, mental health, effectiveness, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 evaluation, outcomes. see appendix a for search strings per database. the screening of reference lists from past reviews and meta-analysis were also used to identify additional suitable studies (ciocanel et al., 2017; waters, 2015). the last search run was conducted in may 2020 by the first author. 2.2 selection of studies inclusion criteria were based on the structured picos approach used to determine study selection criteria, including five key components: population, intervention, comparison group, outcome, and study design (liberati at al., 2009). in this instance the inclusion criteria for study selection was: (1) the intervention included school-aged children, (2) interventions were undertaken within the school context, during school hours, were web or computer based, and included the general population (not a clinical or specialized sub-group), the intervention must include a common ppi strategy, such as an activity or series of activities delivered for wellbeing or mental health benefit, for example, mindfulness, strengths or empathy interventions, (3) intervention evaluation included at a minimum pre and post measures and included a comparison or control group, (4) intervention measures should include evaluation of program effectiveness, and/or outcome measures including wellbeing and/or prevention of mental health symptomology, (5) the study must include pre and post measures of effectiveness, and (6) be published in peer reviewed journals in the english language. exclusion criteria included: (1) children from clinical populations, (2) interventions that occurred exclusively out of the school environment, (3) interventions that were not online/web/computer based, (4) studies that did not include pre and post measures, (5) studies published as narrative or theoretical reviews, (6) non-english language articles. 2.3 data extraction the first author was the main data extractor, who followed a standardized procedure to assess the eligibility of the studies. duplicates and triplicate studies were removed. the title and abstract were then screened for inclusion and exclusion criteria. the full text of all remaining studies was read by the first author and second author. discussion and consensus resulted in nine studies meeting the search criteria. 2.4 quality assessment methodological quality assessment was undertaken for each of the selected studies by using the revised tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized trials (rob 2) (sterne et al., 2019). the assessment involved ‘signaling questions’, a judgement about the risk of bias, and text boxes justifying responses to these, across key domains of interest. signaling questions could be answered ‘yes’, ‘probably yes’, ‘probably no’, ‘no’, or ‘no information’. overall risk-of-bias judgements for each domain assessed were rated as ‘low risk of bias’, ‘some concerns’, or ‘high risk of bias’. these overall judgements were based on summarized answers to the signaling questions. the domains assessed for bias included: bias in the randomization process, bias from deviation from the intended intervention, bias due to missing outcome data, bias in measurement of the outcome, bias in result reporting selection, and overall bias (sterne et al., 2019). quality assessment for each paper was undertaken independently by the first and second authors. discussion over discrepancies in risk of bias within domain assessment, resulted in selection of the higher risk assessment. there was 100% agreement on overall bias assessments across all nine studies. see appendix b for quality assessment results. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 2.5 analysis a theoretically based, question driven, deductive thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006) of the literature was undertaken to create a rich understanding of universal, online, school-based ppis and their effectiveness. to identify effective elements of the studies reviewed, re-aim effectiveness reporting standards were employed (hone et al., 2015), enhanced by the inclusion of socio-ecological readiness (considering individual, setting and governing body levels of readiness for change) (prochaska & velicer, 1997; bronfenbrenner, 1977) at the reach and adoption re-aim stages. also, the integration of the isf provided a clearer understanding of implementation effectiveness. studies were analyzed according to these five enhanced re-aim components: readiness and reach, efficacy, readiness and adoption, implementation and maintenance. figure 1 (below) illustrates the re-aim framework, adapted in the reach, adoption and implementation dimensions. the computer program nvivo 12 was used to create thematic nodes of reach, efficacy, adoption, implementation and maintenance (re-aim, glasgow et al., 2019). identified papers were systematically coded, resulting in the development of sub-themes. differing from the existing re-aim framework, and in line with the enhanced re-aim framework articulated in this paper, both reach and adoption were considered at multiple system levels, including individual, class, school and governing bodies. table 1 (below) illustrates thematic nodes established during thematic analysis. table 1. thematic nodes established during thematic analysis of identified studies themes sub-themes reach inclusion/exclusion criteria target population recruitment readiness (perceived) macro-level buy-in motivation for and against buy-in participants representativeness efficacy analysis intention to treat negative result low or no significance, low effect size. low baseline measures adoption adherence motivation for and against readiness and support-micro and macro level implementation duration content delivery design flexibility & fit replication maintenance maintenance other barriers online value http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 figure 1. enhanced re-aim framework including socio-ecological readiness and isf 2.5.1 analysis readiness and reach (micro to macro) selected studies were examined for readiness and reach. reach in this review includes elements of re-aim associated with establishing buy-in before program commencement (including some http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 elements previously allocated to adoption). visible indicators of readiness were considered in terms of the temporal stages of change including contemplation, preparation, or action toward change (prochaska & velicer, 1997). reach was considered in terms of setting level reach (schools), class level reach (teachers) and individual reach (target student participants). studies were analyzed for inclusion and exclusion criteria, recruitment methods, buy-in characteristics, buy-in rates, sample size, and motivation for buy-in. characteristics and motivations of nonparticipators and drop-out rates were also analyzed (hone et al., 2015). 2.5.2 analysis adoption adoption in this review relates to program consumption, and includes factors associated with the use and completion of programs, at individual, class, school and governing body levels. delivery agent selection and description, sustained buy-in, and barriers to sustained buy-in were considered. adoption rates were analyzed in terms of completion of pre and post measures, and adherence to the program (dosage). 2.5.3 analysis implementation studies were analysed for intervention type, intervention content replication capacity, for intended delivery of core program components (hone et al., 2015) including delivery agent authenticity, core message fidelity and program flexibility for fit. studies were also analyzed for sufficient support, including support for individuals (training or coaching), and setting level capacity (resources), and for any barriers evidently impeding implementation (wandersman et al., 2008). 3. results 3.1 study selection a total of 203 articles were obtained from the electronic databases, including 22 from ebscohost, 16 from web of science, 22 from psycinfo, and 143 from scopus. one hundred and ninety two remained after the removal of duplicates. title and abstract screening resulted in two remaining articles. seven additional articles were located in reference lists, resulting in a total of nine articles that met the inclusion criteria. see the prisma guided selection process in figure 2 (below). 3.2 description of studies nine studies were identified. these studies included 5157 school children. of those only one involved primary aged school children. eight of nine studies drew on secondary school students, including those from single sex, co-educational, private, religious, and government secondary schools. see table 2 (below) for an overview of the main characteristics of studies included. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 figure 2. prisma analysis illustrating literature search results ebscohost including eric, medline, academic search complete, cinahl complete n=22 web of sicence n=16 ovid – psycinfo n=22 scopus n=143 articles obtained from search n=203 duplicates removed = 11 remaining articles = 192 sc re e n in g id e n ti fi ca ti o n e lig ib ili ty full text screened for eligibility according to selection criteria n = 2 title and abstract screened for relevance n = 192 in cl u d e d articles included for review n = 9 unable to access full text n=0 excluded based on title and abstract n=190 -not child sample (n=35) -clinical sample (n=16) -non-school context (n=75) -not online intervention (n=34) -purpose not to enhance wellbeing, or decrease depression or anxiety (n=14) -meta analysis or review (n=14) -without comparison or control group (n=2) additional articles located in reference lists n=7 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 table 2. main characteristics of studies included first author (year) location school type sample size and age or school year study design intervention type duration comparison group/s outcome measures attwood (2012) uk coeducational primary school n=13, boys 10-12 years nonrandomised matched control experiment. cbt 6 x 45 minute weekly sessions placebo. computer gaming group scas; sdq; perceptions interview bannink (2012) netherlands coeducational secondary schools n=1702, mean age 15.9 years cluster randomised controlled trial mental health, quality of life, health behaviours, personalised information unclear care as usual. sdq; ysr; hql burckhardt (2015) australia 2 x anglican girls secondary school, 1 x jewish coeducational secondary school, 1 x catholic boys secondary school n=572, student s from grades 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, rct block randomization positive psychology wellbeing intervention ‘bite back’ 6 hours delivery over 4-6 weeks placebo. altern-ative nonpsychology program dass-12; slss; swemwbs calear (2013) australia 16 governmen t secondary schools, 14 private secondary schools n=1477, mean age 14.3 years, grades 9, 10, 11 cluster rct cbt based ‘moodgym’ one module per week during one class (29 exercises) over five weeks waitlist adherence; rcmas; ces-d calear (2009) australia 16 governmen t secondary schools, 14 private secondary schools n=1477, mean age 14.3 years, grades 9, 10, 11 cluster rct cbt based ‘moodgym’ one module per week during one class (29 exercises) over five weeks waitlist rcmas; ces-d; adherence and attendance http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 table 2. main characteristics of studies included (continued) first author (year) location school type sample size and age or school year study design intervention type duration comparison group/s outcome measures fridrici (2009) germany coeducational secondary schools n=904 mean age 14.8 years, grades 8 & 9 four treatment conditions. pre and post design. stress prevention program 8 x 90 minute weekly sessions three groups: onlinetraining at home, schoolbased faceto-face, no intervention group knowledge of stress and coping questions, thought listing (stress); sskj 3-8; training acceptance o’kearney (2006) australia 1 x boys secondary school n=78 15 & 16 years old, from grade 9 nonrandomised control experiment cbt based ‘moodgym’ 5 x 30-60 minute modules, over 5 weeks care as usual. ces-d; casq-r; rses; attdep o’kearney (2009) australia 1 x girls secondary school n=157, 15 & 16 years old, from grade 10 rct block randomisation cbt based ‘moodgym’ 5 x 30-60 minute modules, over 5 weeks care as usual ces-d; casq-r; dlc; attitudes to depression puolakanaho (2019) finland two sub samples from original longitudinal study of 800 9th grade students from two municipalities n=249, grade 9 rct act based ‘youth compass’ one module = 6 exercises (each 510 minutes). 1 x module per week for 5 weeks three groups: program with support, program without support, care as usual salzburg reading fluency test, basic arithmetic test, hbsc, academic buoyancy scale, adherence note. scas: spence children’s anxiety scale child & parent version (spence, 1998), sdq: strengths and difficulties questionnaire parent version (goodman, 1997), ysr: youth self report; hql: health related quality of life; dass-12: the depression, anxiety, and stress scale – short form; slss: student life satisfaction scale; swemwbs: the short warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale, rcmas: revised children’s manifest anxiety scale; ces-d: center for epidemiological studies depression scale; sskj 3-8: questionnaire for the measurement of stress and coping in children and adolescents, casq-r: the revised children’s attributional style questionnaire, rses: rosenberg self-esteem scale; attdep: attitudes to depression, dlc: depression literacy scale; hbsc: health behaviour in school-aged children, cbt: cognitive behavioral therapy; act: acceptance commitment therapy. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 3.2.1 readiness and reach – recruitment rationale recruitment varied widely across studies. one study was based on a convenience sample (attwood et al., 2012). one german study recruited considerable numbers of participants, although reasons for particular school choice were not articulated (fridrici & lohaus, 2008). one dutch study recruited two youth health care organizations from two dutch cities, who invited 14 schools to participate (bannink, et al. 2012). two studies from one project recruited schools from across australia, including schools from the australian capital territory (act), (calear et al., 2009; 2013). two australian studies invited all students from within defined year levels (year nine and year ten respectively) at two selected single sex schools (o’kearney et al., 2006; 2009). one australian study invited schools to participate based on their physical proximity allowing researchers physical access to schools during the study. these schools were also nongovernmental to overcome delays associated with state school department of education permission (burckhardt et al., 2015). one study drew on a subsample of a larger longitudinal finnish study, involving two municipalities in central finland – the subsample inclusion criteria was clearly defined and included ninth grade students with concerning reading and math skill levels (puolakanaho et al., 2019). 3.2.2 readiness and reach – location and school level most studies occurred within the secondary school context, in western countries. studies included: five australian secondary schools studies (burckhardt et al., 2015; calear et al., 2009; 2013; o’kearney et al., 2006; 2009), one uk primary school study (attwood et al., 2012), one netherlands secondary schools study (bannink et al., 2012), one finnish secondary schools study (puolakanaho et al., 2019), one german secondary schools study (fridrici & lohaus, 2009). 3.2.3 readiness and reach – participant characteristics and representativeness studies represented students ranging in age from 10 to 18 years, and from both government and non-government school sectors. sample sizes also varied widely from 24 to 6,227 students. one study involved over 1000 students from government secondary schools: n=1702, representing 12 dutch secondary schools and the average dutch population, with mean age 15.9 years (bannink et al., 2012). one study involved 33 year eight and nine german secondary school classes, n=904 (fridrici & lohaus, 2009). one australian paper reported on non-parametric analysis of two studies using a small opportunistic sample (13 boys 10-12 years, and 12 girls and boys aged 1016 years) (attwood et al., 2012). two australian studies involved students from single-sex secondary schools in the act, including 78 year nine boys (o’kearney, et al., 2001) and 157 year ten girls (o’kearney, et al., 2009). one further australian study involved students from two anglican girls secondary schools, including grade seven and 10 at one school, and grade 10, 11, 12 at another school, one jewish co-educational secondary school including grade seven students, and one catholic boys secondary school, including grade nine students, 572 students overall (burckhardt, et al., 2015). one study involved two sub samples of 125 and 124 students from an original longitudinal study of 800 ninth grade students from two municipalities in finland (puolakanaho et al., 2019). two studies emerged from one australian project involving 14 schools from private, public, coeducational, single-sex, metropolitan, and rural schools from six states, with 1,477 students, mean age 14.34 years (calear et al., 2009; 2013). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 3.2.4 readiness and reach: motivation for buy-in and motivation for non-participation indicators for readiness and reach were evident at multiple system levels. governing bodies reportedly implement initiatives to promote emotional skills (attwood et al., 2012), and the netherlands have established youth health care structures, including preventative health consultations with children (bannink, et al., 2012). lack of readiness and reach were evident at individual and setting levels. individual participant non-involvement resulted from: absence due to illness or school change (bannink et al., 2012; fridrici & lohaus, 2009), unavailability on data collection day (o’kearney et al., 2007), parental refusal (bannink et al., 2012; fridrici & lohaus, 2009), participant refusal or withdrawal (bannink et al., 2012; fridrici & lohaus, 2009), or based on behavioural concerns (fridrici & lohaus, 2009). 3.2.5 efficacy-measured impact measured impact varied across studies. intention to treat (itt) analysis involves using data from every participant who is randomized (gupta, 2011). only three studies reported using itt analysis (burckhardt et al., 2015; calear et al., 2013; o’kearney et al., 2006). in terms of outcomes measured there were instances of no significant effects, such as for one australian study reporting no significant change in anxiety, stress, depression and life satisfaction (burckhardt et al., 2015). importantly, negative outcomes were rare, although these were reported in one dutch study where there were improved overall mental health outcomes, but a negative effect on drug use among boys (bannink et al., 2012). overall, however there were nuanced observations of positive impact, commonly evidenced in relation to mental health. statistically significant post intervention reduction in total child anxiety ratings, with reductions on the social anxiety and generalized anxiety subscale, was evident for one treatment group (attwood et al., 2012). e-health4uth alone showed significant positive results in health-related quality of life, e-health4uth and consultation combined demonstrated significant positive results in mental health status (bannink et al., 2012). the online self-directed mood-gym treatment condition was used in four studies. high adherence, compared to low adherence, was associated with stronger effects on anxiety, at postintervention and at 6-month follow-up (calear et al., 2013). significantly lower levels of anxiety at post intervention and 6-month follow up, and change in depressive symptoms was only significant for males in the calear et al., (2009) study. in the o’kearney et al., (2006) study, compared to a standard personal development condition, no significant between-group differences were observed, although completion of three or more modules was associated with small benefits for depressive symptoms, attributional style, and self-esteem. there was also a reduction in risk of being classified as vulnerable to depression, at immediate follow up only (o’kearney et al., 2006). online and self-directed mood-gym treatment condition, compared to a control condition, demonstrated a significantly faster decline in depressive symptoms. while no significance was detected immediately post intervention, a moderate and significant effect was present 20 weeks after the intervention. (o’kearney et al., 2009). the fridrici and lohaus (2009) study, showed the greatest ratio of positive cognitions occurred for the school-based face-to-face condition, then online-school condition, then onlinehome condition, and that all were greater than the control condition. knowledge gain related to stress and coping was demonstrated post online-program in german secondary schools (fridrici & lohaus, 2009). web and mobile delivered youth compass treatment group, compared to a control group, showed a significant decrease in overall stress and increase in academic buoyancy (puolakanaho et al., 2019). participants more depressed or more stressed at baseline, tended to demonstrate the greatest benefit from exposure to the treatment condition (bannink et al., 2012; http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 calear et al., 2013; o’kearney et al., 2009; puolakanaho et al., 2019). 3.2.6 adoption, delivery agents, sustained buy-in, completion-adherence barriers completion of pre and post-program measures varied. participation flow was not recorded with one small sample (attwood et al., 2012). 52% of pre and post data for the treatment group, and 48% of data for the waitlist group was obtained for the moodgym studies by calear and colleagues (2009; 2013), 71% of data was obtained for post measures, and 80% of data for followup data for o’kearney and colleagues (2006). of 572 randomized students in one study, 59% completed baseline measures, and of those 55% returned post measure questionnaires. this study was teacher supervised and workbook guided and saw two of four schools drop out, one school citing that students found the required activities boring and without clear purpose, while at the other school the teacher in charge of the program left the school (burckhardt et al., 2015). the youth compass study obtained 95% of originally randomized students’ pre and post measures (puolakanaho et al., 2019). program delivery agents, completion and adherence rates also varied. completion and adherence rates of one small opportunistic sample, that was researcher led, was unknown as participation flow was not recorded (attwood et al., 2012). one coach directed program saw 75% of students completing more than half of the program (puolakanaho et al., 2019). teacher delivered programs reported 62% or more students, completed more than half of the program (calear et al., 2009; 2013; fidrici & lohaus, 2009). teacher supervision of student self-directed programs saw 40% of students completing more than half of the program (o’kearney et al., 2006; 2013). teacher supervision of a workbook guided program, saw 56% of participants completing 5-6 out of 6 workbooks for the ‘bite-back’ program (burckhardt, 2015). 3.2.7 implementation-intervention type and replication capacity program content varied. seven programs were based on cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt) approaches (attwood et al., 2012; calaer et al., 2009; calaer et al., 2013; o’kearney et al., 2006; o’kearney et al., 2013). one study focused on promoting adolescent mental health and health behaviours via tailored online messaging (bannink et al., 2012). one program incorporated an acceptance commitment therapy (act) intervention model (puolakanaho et al., 2019). one program focused on cognitive reconstruction, seeking social support, relaxation and time management (fidrici, 2009). one program focussed on nine positive psychology domains including gratitude, optimism, flow, meaning, hope, mindfulness, character strengths, healthy lifestyle, and positive relationships (burckhardt, et al., 2015). 3.2.8 implementation delivery agent and dosage lesson frequency and duration varied. studies (five) involved weekly sessions over five to six weeks (calaer et al., 2009; 2013; o’kearney et al., 2006; 2009; puloakanaho et al., 2019), and one study involved weekly sessions over four to six weeks (burckhardt et al., 2015). lesson length ranged from 20 to 40 minutes (calaer et al., 2009), 45 minutes (attwood et al., 2012), 90 minutes (fidrici & lauhaus, 2009), 60-90 minutes per week accumulated with ‘regular website use’ (burckhardt et al., 2015), and 30-60 minutes (o’kearney, et al., 2006). agent delivery varied. one program was researcher delivered (attwood et al, 2012), one program was partly nurse delivered (bannink et al. 2012), two programs were teacher delivered (calaer et al, 2009; 2013), four programs were teacher supervised (burckhardt et al., 2015; fidrici & lohaus, 2009; o’kearney et al, 2006; 2009), and one study was coach directed (puolakanaho et http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 al, 2019). 3.2.9 quality assessment – risk of bias (rob) quality assessment of selected studies was undertaken using the rob2 tool (sterne et al., 2019), determining risk of bias across five domains. the five domains assessed the risk of bias related to the randomization process, deviation from the intended intervention, missing outcome data, measurement of the outcome, and result reporting selection. across the nine studies domain 4 (risk of bias in measurement of the outcome) was assessed with the highest risk of bias. this highlighted for example, areas of weakness associated with appropriate method choice, participant awareness of intervention group, and possible pre-conceptions of intervention benefit, potentially impacting outcomes. comparatively, domain 5 (risk of bias in reporting selection) was assessed as low risk for most studies, illustrating an area of strength in relation to data analysis following a pre-determined plan. 4. discussion this review involved the identification and analysis of nine studies, reporting on the efficacy and process effectiveness of universal, online, school-based ppis. while ppis are usually considered to be activities designed to primarily promote wellbeing, this review has broadened the scope to include ppis designed to improve mental health. examination of program effectiveness was undertaken using an enhanced re-aim framework which incorporated socio-ecological readiness and integrated the transtheoretical model of change (prochaska & velicer, 1997) and multi-level ecological systems theory (bronfenbrenner, 1977), adding aspects of readiness for change at multiple system levels to the evaluation of intervention reach and adoption. additionally, incorporating the isf (wandersman et al., 2008) into re-aim, adds depth and detail when evaluating intervention implementation, particularly in relation to aspects of delivery. in terms of reach, the nine studies identified represented school aged students attending australian, uk, german, finnish and canadian schools, and involved diverse study designs. one small exploratory study included a sample of 13 (attwood et al., 2012), another study allocated 78 study participants in a school-based controlled trial (o’kearney et al., 2007). all other studies involved samples over 100 (burckhardt, et al., 2015; fidrici & lohaus, 2008; o’kearney, et al., 2009; puolakanaho et al., 2019) and three studies, based on three samples, were drawn from samples of over 1000 (bannink et al., 2012; calear, et al., 2009; 2013). these studies involved three cluster randomised controlled trials (burkhardt, 2015; calear, et al., 2009; 2013), two randomised controlled trials (bannink et al., 2012; puolakanaho et al., 2019), and one controlled trial (o’kearney et al., 2009). only one study focused on primary aged students (attwood et al., 2012). this highlights a need for research with primary school aged cohorts and online ppis. together, these nine studies represent participants drawn from government, catholic and independent school sectors. common inclusion criteria for participants included being school aged students, part of regular classroom activity, within the age or year level required for the study focus and having signed parental consent. why samples were selected for invitation and subsequent recruitment varied and was rarely articulated. considering readiness, motivators for participation in online ppis existed at different levels (government, community, school, teacher, student). motivators were sometimes shared, and sometimes specific to individual context. often there was stated or assumed over-arching support from governing bodies who are becoming increasingly aware of the economic and societal costs of mental illness and are keen to find ways to improve mental health in society, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 particularly targeting youth (attwood et al., 2012; bannink et al., 2012). individual motivation for participation could be considered in terms of intervention need, value and fit, however most studies did not explicitly measure these aspects (calear et al., 2013). noted by researchers was the reluctance of male adolescents to engage with mental health services (o’kearney et al., 2007), but also their positive attitudes and engagement with computers (colley & comber, 2003), supporting the potential of the online delivery mode for some cohorts. little is known about initial participation refusal, however competing school schedule demands affected data collection timing for one study (o’kearney et al., 2006). delivery expertise is an important consideration for implementation fidelity. delivery occurred in a variety of ways: student driven, teacher supervised, teacher delivered, health specialist delivered or coach facilitated. puolakanaho et al. (2019), suggested that delivery of online ppis did not require specialized skills. however, some programs drew on the capacity of experts including health-led programs (bannink et al., 2012), coach led programs (puolakanaho et al. 2019), or researcher supervision (attwood et al., 2012). teacher delivery capacity was supported via teacher training via the provision of delivery manuals (calear et al., 2009; 2013). while delivery capacity impacts on readiness and reach in the early phase of intervention buy-in, delivery capacity (human and environmental) remains relevant when considering adoption and sustained buy-in, and implementation aspects of effectiveness. one school noted the lack of flexibility in a fixed online program, where two of four schools dropped out, and students (ranging from grades 7 to 12) reported finding the program ‘boring’ (burckhardt, et al., 2015). flexibility for fit, particularly age appropriate, engaging and meaningful content may be key to effective delivery. adoption is often determined by completion rates of pre and post measures, or exercise completion rates (calear et al., 2009; 2013). based on numbers reported, overall completion of pre and post measures varied from 52% of the moodgym treatment group (calear et al., 2009; 2013), to 55% of bite back participants who completed pre measures completed post measures (burckhardt, 2015),to 60% of allocated male participants from moodgym treatment and control groups (2006), to 71% of all allocated female participants from moodgym treatment and control groups (o’kearney et al., 2006), 73.5% and 77.6% for the netherlands e-health and e-health combined with counselling respectively (bannink et al., 2012), and 95% for the finnish youth compass study (puolakanaho et al., 2019). it is noteworthy that the studies with the greatest pre and post measure completion rates were studies with larger sample sizes and multi-level buy-in and support for the process, either via embedded existing health delivery structures (bannink et al., 2012), or commitment to broader longitudinal research into wellbeing (puolakanaho et al., 2019). closely related to adoption and the acceptability of programs, are implementation considerations such intervention content and delivery. researcher, coach led, or health led groups demonstrated the highest adoption and completion rates (bannink et al., 2012; puolakanaho et al., 2019). teacher delivered programs (calear et al., 2009; 2013; fidrici & lohaus, 2009) showed higher rates of adoption and completion, compared to student-directed programs supervised by teachers (o’kearney et al., 2006; 2013). one study compared a face-to-face intervention, with an at school, supervised online intervention, and an at home, unsupervised intervention (fidrici & lohaus, 2008). students preferred people to computers. the face-to-face intervention was the preferred approach, followed by the at school supervised online intervention. the intervention that was entirely student driven was rated as the least acceptable training approach, which resulted in 37% non-participation (compared to 100% participation online at school), as well as the least effective training outcomes. the presence of a human http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 delivery agent, and delivery agent expertise, led to better outcomes. intervention types varied, although seven programs were based on cbt approaches and one used an act intervention model – reflecting the two main approaches used in australian psychological clinical settings. program duration varied and ranged from 20 to 60 minute lessons, and typically ran once per week over five or six weeks. the programs with the highest adoption levels included youth compass with six or more 5-10 minute exercises, per week over five weeks (puolakanaho et al., 2019). it is possible that greater frequency of program dosage, and revisiting core messages, is more valuable than less frequent, longer sessions. these nine studies measured a range of constructs to ascertain program efficacy. in some instances, no significant effects were detected (burckhardt et al., 2015). in others, small, significant intervention effects were observed including a decrease in overall stress (puolakanaho et al., 2019). overall, typically small positive, often non-significant effects were observed universally for participants (o’kearney et al., 2006; 2013; bannink et al., 2012). interestingly, in some instances this positive effect was enhanced at follow-up, illustrating a lag effect, for reduced universal anxiety levels and male depressive symptoms (calear et al., 2009), as well as reduced female depressive symptoms among those high in depression at baseline (o’kearney et al., 2009). importantly, certain sub-groups experienced greater benefit from ppis. unsurprisingly, participants who completed more sessions, gained more from the experience (calear et al., 2013), and participants with lower baseline measures tended to benefit the most from ppis (bannink et al., 2012; o’kearney et al., 2009; puolakanaho et al., 2019). fidrici and lohaus (2009) found a significant intervention effect on adolescents’ knowledge of stress and coping. perhaps this measurement of knowledge, provides insight into the stages of learning and skills acquisition, indicating participants need for time to digest new knowledge and practice new skills, before changes should be expected in measures of emotion, cognitions and behaviours. four studies collected measures at multiple times points, including pre, post and follow up data (calear et al., 2009; 2013; o’kearney et al., 2006; 2009). this provided useful insight into the trajectory of intervention impact, however no study reported on long term maintained use of the program. this qualitative systematic review of nine studies has provided insight into the effectiveness of online, school-based, universal ppis. examining the effectiveness of these studies using the enhanced re-aim framework, illustrates both strengths of current studies, as well as gaps and opportunities for future studies. participant characteristics are typically reported – most participants are secondary school aged students, although emerging research with younger participants appears promising and suggests a future research cohort opportunity in primary school aged participants. online ppis appear to overcome barriers related to restricted human and environmental resources, such as personnel and timetabling limitations, although the value of delivery agent capacity and expertise, and of human connection, remains unknown. the rationale for why and how participants are selected and invited is rarely reported, and if done so, could provide further insight into effectiveness. motivation for systemic buy-in is also rarely reported, although indicators of ppi acceptability in the form of perceptions of need, value and fit provide valuable insight into initial and sustained buy-in. implementation is also key to understanding intervention effectiveness, however ideal dosage levels for effectiveness are yet to be determined. measures of impact also vary among studies, although rely on child self-report, and at times also parent or teacher reported evaluations, on feelings and thoughts. opportunities exist to further explore ppi impact on knowledge and skill development, using a wider range of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 measurement tools, to capture a more comprehensive picture of ppi effectiveness. quality assessment undertaken for the identified studies, pointed to risk of bias in measurement of the outcomes as a particular area of concern. this suggests future research could be strengthened by choosing appropriate methods, including valid instruments, and suitable data collection procedures. research design ensuring blinded outcome assessors would also add strength to future research. 4.1 practical implications this systematic qualitative review has resulted in key learnings detailed in table 3. table 3. key learnings from review key recommendations for practitioners. schools, teachers and students are likely to be more motivated to buy-in, where ppis are age appropriate, engaging and helpful – perhaps where there is perceived need, value and fit. to achieve better intervention fit, include stakeholders in the co-creation of interventions or develop interventions incorporating responsive, real time, adaptability based on user input. people who tend to experience the greatest benefit from ppis include those with lower baseline measures, and those who complete more intervention sessions. brief, more frequent sessions, including revisiting core messages, may be more valuable than less frequent, longer sessions. proactively planning to work around barriers to buy-in, up-take and sustained adoption and implementation, such as access to resources including personnel, time, and internet seem integral to intervention success. an online approach may facilitate program integrity by retaining fidelity to core components. delivery agent capacity can be supported via training or upskilling. multi-level buy-in and support, including region wide approaches, result in greater completion rates. system wide buy-in and change support with the intention of sustaining and maintaining change, designed with clear, shared intent and purpose, can result in valuable positive wellbeing and mental health outcomes. how success of ppis is measured may need to be reconceptualized to include measures of early learning and skill acquisition, to acknowledge the realistic processes and time required to digest new knowledge and practice new skills, before embedded changes in emotion, cognitions and behaviors will be visible. 4.2 limitations in considering these recommendations it is important to keep in mind limitations of this review. the review included a relatively small number of studies due to the limited research available. the search was limited to peer reviewed articles, and as such may have been biased towards studies reporting significant results. this review was qualitative in nature, and so while providing a deep and detailed inquiry into effectiveness, it did not quantitatively analyse outcome data, which may add further understanding to online ppi outcome efficacy. overall http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 however, this study provides useful initial insights into universal online ppis in the school context. in the right conditions, universal online school-based ppis provide a useful approach to improving the wellbeing and mental health of school children. online ppis containing the right ingredients for their context, can preserve and build student social, emotional and psychological capacity, equipping young people to survive in the hard times and thrive in the good times. the bottom line is that the context, system and what we elect to measure matter. the challenge now is to create a clear framework for identifying effective conditions, ingredients and contexts that can optimise universal online ppi success. this review has commenced this process and serves to encourage others to extend on this work. conflict of interest the authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. data availability statement data queries should be directed to jf: jacqui.francis@unimelb.edu.au. authors jacqueline francis the university of melbourne jacqui.francis@unimelb.edu.au dianne vella-brodrick the university of melbourne tan chyuan-chin the university of melbourne author contributions research design and planning was undertaken by dvb, tcc and jf. systematic review undertaken by jf with input from dvb. coding and thematic analysis of articles undertaken by jf. paper written by jf. quality assessments of included studies were undertaken by jf and dvb. paper written by jf. critical revision and editing by dvb and tcc. acknowledgments this systematic review was undertaken as part of a phd thesis (jf), kindly supported through an australian government research training program scholarship. publishing timeline received 25 october 2020 revised version received 2 september 2021 accepted 2 september 2021 published 30 september 2021 references apa publications and communications board. 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(2010). gratitude and well-being: a review and theoretical integration. clinical psychology review, 30(7), 890–905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.005 world health organization (2019). who guideline: recommendations on digital interventions for health system strengthening. geneva: license: cc by-nc-sa 3.0 igo. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/311941/9789241550505-eng.pdf?ua=1 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 appendix a strings in the search. ebscohost including eric, medline, academic search complete, cinahl complete ppi or program or intervention or mindfulness or meditation or gratitude or kindness or positive relationships or pro-social or compassion or empathy or emotion regulation or emotional intelligence or strengths or character strength or social emotional learning or cognitive behavior therapy (title) and web* or online or computer* (title) and children or adolescents or youth or child or teenager or student (title) and school or education or classroom (title) and wellbeing or well-being or well being or positive education or positive psychology or mental health (all text) and wellbeing or well-being or well being or positive education or positive psychology or mental health (all text). limits: english language, peer reviewed, all child. web of science ppi or program or intervention or mindfulness or meditation or gratitude or kindness or positive relationships or pro-social or compassion or empathy or emotion regulation or emotional intelligence or strengths or character strength or social emotional learning or cognitive behavior therapy and web* or online or computer* (all text) and children or adolescents or youth or child or teenager or student (title) and school or education or classroom (all text) and wellbeing or well-being or well being or positive education or positive psychology or mental health (all text) and effectiveness or evaluation or outcomes (all text). limits: english language, journal article. ovid including psych info. ppi or program or intervention or mindfulness or meditation or gratitude or kindness or positive relationships or pro-social or compassion or empathy or emotion regulation or emotional intelligence or strengths or character strength or social emotional learning or cognitive behavior therapy (title) and web* or online or computer* (all text) and children or adolescents or youth or child or teenager or student (title) and school or education or classroom (keyword) and wellbeing or well-being or well being or positive education or positive psychology or mental health (keyword) and effectiveness or evaluation or outcomes (keyword) and ppi and online and child and school and wb and effectiveness. limits: english language and journal articles. scopus ppi or program or intervention or mindfulness or meditation or gratitude or kindness or positive relationships or pro-social or compassion or empathy or emotion regulation or emotional intelligence or strengths or character strength or social emotional learning or cognitive behavior therapy and web* or online or computer* (all text) and children or adolescents or youth or child or teenager or student (title) and school or education or classroom (all text) and wellbeing or well-being or well being or positive education or positive psychology or mental health" (all text) and effectiveness or evaluation or outcomes (all text) and ppi and online and school and wb and effectiveness plus additional search (pilot and online* and experiment* and quasi-experiment*. limits: english, psychology, social sciences included. excluded -young adult, middle, aged, parenting, child parent relationship, autism, procedures, aged, parents, review, anxiety disorder, parent, clinical, mental disease, mental disorders, aged 80+, burnout, human tissue, university, mother, pathophysiology, theory http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ online, school-based positive psychology interventions francis, vella-brodrick, & chyuan-chin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 appendix b quality assessment of selected studies across domains. study domain 1 domain 2 domain 3 domain 4 domain 5 overall score attwood et al., 2012 lr sc hr hr sc hr bannink et al., 2012 lr sc sc sc lr sc burckhardt et al., 2015 sc sc sc sc lr sc calear et al., 2013 lr sc sc hr lr sc calear et al., 2009 lr sc sc hr lr sc fridrici & lohaus, 2009 sc sc sc sc lr sc o’kearney et al., 2006 sc lr sc sc lr sc o’kearney et al., 2008 sc sc lr lr lr sc puolakanaho et al., 2019 lr lr sc sc lr sc domain 1 risk of bias in the randomization process, domain 2 risk of bias in deviation from the intended intervention, domain 3 risk of bias due to missing outcome data, domain 4 risk of bias in measurement of the outcome, domain 5 risk of bias in result reporting selection, lr low risk, sc some concerns, hr high risk. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ sorensen, s., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2016). lay perceptions of mental toughness: understanding conceptual similarities and differences between lay and sporting contexts. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 71-95. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.551 aaron jarden auckland university of technology aaron.jarden@aut.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 article lay perceptions of mental toughness: understanding conceptual similarities and differences between lay and sporting contexts sarah sorensen · aaron jarden · grant schofield abstract: the predominant focus on sporting populations has limited our conceptual understanding of mental toughness in lay contexts. on the basis of its wider benefits beyond sports, we sought to understand the central and peripheral attributes of mental toughness from a layperson’s perspective. to this end, we employed a prototype analysis which consisted of two studies. in study 1, a list of attributes of mental toughness was generated. in study 2, these attributes were ranked for their centrality to mental toughness. study 1 was an open-format questionnaire, where 138 laypeople generated a final list of 75 attributes of mental toughness. the most frequently mentioned attributes were self-belief, determination, perseverance, resilience and focus, which largely supported important attributes identified by athletes in existing mental toughness literature. study 2 surveyed 136 laypeople, who identified mental strength, overcomes obstacles, achieves/operates under pressure, determination and resilience/recovery as the most central attributes to mental toughness. although determination and resilience aligned with existing sporting accounts of mental toughness, the remaining attributes reflect differences in perception of mental toughness between sporting and lay contexts. examination of peripherallyrated attributes provides insights into mental toughness as an enduring form of suffering. overall, determination and resilience emerged as frequently mentioned, as well as highly central, and, as such, represent the foundation for a universal (i.e., not context-specific) understanding of mental toughness. keywords: mental toughness, prototype analysis, layperson, concept, definition 1. introduction although sport has been a predominant focus, empirical research suggests that the benefits of mental toughness extend to a variety of non-sporting populations (crust, 2007; gerber et al., 2012; gerber, brand et al., 2013; gerber, kalak et al., 2013; gucciardi & jones, 2012; gucciardi, hanton, gordon, mallett, & temby, 2015; st. clair-thompson, bugler, robinson, clough, mcgeown & perry, 2015). however, work that has been done across non-sporting fields has been done so from theoretical and expert perspectives, without knowledge of how laypeople understand the concept. the present study thus aims to realign knowledge towards lay or nonsporting populations to improve empirical and practical utility of mental toughness in lay contexts. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 table 1a. qualitatively-generated attributes of mental toughness in sporting populations source method attributes jones, hanton, & connaughton (2002) interviews with international performers (n = 10) from mixed disciplines of sport. participants generated attributes of mental toughness and then rankordered their importance. [in order of importance] having an unshakable self-belief in one’s ability to achieve goals; recovering from setbacks and having increased determination to succeed; having an unshakable self-belief that one has qualities and abilities greater than opponents; having an insatiable desire and internal motivation to succeed; being fullyfocused on the task in the face of competition-specific distractions; regaining psychological control following unexpected events and uncontrollable events; overcoming physical and emotional pain while maintaining technique and effort; accepting and coping with competition anxiety; thriving on the pressure of competition; not being adversely affected by others’ good and bad performances; remaining fully focused in the face of personal life distractions; and the ability to switch a sport focus on and off. bull, shambrook, james & brooks (2005) interviews with international cricket players (n = 12). [ordering not specified by authors] parental influence, childhood background, exposure to foreign cricket, opportunities to survive early setbacks, needing to “earn” success (environmental influences); independence, self-reflection, competitiveness with self as well as others, resilient confidence (tough character); exploiting learning opportunities, belief in quality preparation, self-set challenging targets, “never say die” mindset, “go the extra mile” mindset, determination to make most of ability, belief in making the difference, thrive on competition, willing to take risks (tough attitude); robust self-confidence (overcoming self-doubts, feeding-off physical condition, maintaining self-focus) and thinking clearly (good decision-making, keeping perspective, honest self-appraisal) (tough thinking). thelwell, weston, & greenlees (2005) interviews with professional soccer players (n = 6) to generate attributes of mental toughness. attributes were then rank-ordered for their importance to mental toughness by an additional sample of professional soccer players (n = 43). [in order of importance] having total self-belief at all times that you will achieve success; having the ability to react to situations positively; having the ability to hang on and be calm under pressure; having the ability to ignore distractions and remain focused; wanting the ball/wanting to be involved at all times; knowing what it takes to grind yourself out of trouble; controlling emotions throughout performance; having a presence that affects opponents; having everything outside of the game in control; and enjoying the pressure associated with performance. a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 table 1b. qualitatively-generated attributes of mental toughness in sporting populations jones, hanton, & connaughton (2007) interviews with athletes (n = 8), coaches (n = 3) and sports psychologists (n = 4). participants generated attributes of mental toughness and then rankordered their importance. [in order of importance within each theme] attitude/mindset: belief and focus; training: using long-term goals as the source of motivation, controlling the environment, pushing yourself to the limit; competition: belief, staying focused, regulating performance, handling pressure, awareness and control of thoughts and feelings, controlling the environment; post-competition: handling failure, handling success. gucciardi, gordon & dimmock (2008) interviews with australian football coaches (n = 11). participants generated attributes of mental toughness and then rankordered their importance. [in order of importance] self-belief, work ethic (determination, perseverance, goals, meticulous preparation, time management, inspirational), personal values (honesty, pride in performance, accountability), selfmotivated (competitive desire, team success, vision), tough attitude (discipline, commitment, positivity, professionalism, sacrifices), concentration and focus, resilience, handling pressure (overriding negative thoughts), emotional intelligence (self-awareness), sport intelligence (team role responsibility, understanding the game), physical toughness. coulter, mallett, & gucciardi (2010) semi-structured interviews with soccer players (n = 6), coaches (n = 4) and parents (n =5). attribute importance identified by the number of participants that cited a particular theme. [in order of importance] winning mentality and desire, self-belief, physical toughness, work ethic, resilience, personal values, concentration and focus, performance awareness, sport intelligence, tough attitude, coping under pressure, competitive effort, risk-taking, emotional intelligence and control. weinberg, butt & culp (2011) interviews with head coaches (n = 10) from a variety of sports. [ordering not specified by authors] psychological skills (focus, confidence, knowledge and mental planning), motivation to succeed (motivation to work hard, persistence) and resilience (rebound from setbacks, handling and performing under pressure). driska, kamphoff & armentrout (2012) semi-structured interviews with elite swimming coaches (n = 13) to confirm or modify the framework by jones et al. (2007). [ordering not specified by authors] attitude/mindset: belief, focus and coachability*; training: using long-term goals as the source of motivation, controlling the environment, pushing yourself to the limit and retaining psychological control on poor training days*; competition: belief, staying focused, regulating performance, handling pressure, awareness and control of thoughts and feelings**, controlling the environment**; postcompetition: handling failure, handling success. *proposed new sub-component ,**did not receive support as a sub-component of mental toughness a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 table 1c. qualitatively-generated attributes of mental toughness in sporting populations slack, maynard, butt & olusoga (2013) semi-structured interviews with premier english league referees (n = 15). [ordering not specified by authors] coping with pressure, resilience, robust self-belief, tough attitude, achievement striving, strong work-ethic and sport intelligence. a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 because mental toughness has often been cited by researchers, coaches and athletes as an influential psychological factor in sporting success (connaughton, hanton, jones, & wadey, 2008; denison, 2007; gould, hodge, peterson & petlichkoff, 1987; holland, woodcock, cumming, & duda, 2010), sports psychologists and researchers have collected sizeable literatures pertaining to the conceptualisation, measurement and development of mental toughness. from these efforts, a plethora of attributes has been generated by sportspeople to characterise mental toughness (see table 1 above). however, none of these conceptualisations include perspectives of laypeople, which is particularly important considering that “different people explain mental toughness differently depending on their personal experience and interactions within their own social world” (fawcett, 2011, p. 9). because experiences of athletes and academics are likely to differ from those of laypeople, it is important that a comparison between these perspectives be made. in particular, a between-context comparison is useful for a number of reasons. first, researchers need to ensure that “mental toughness” means the same thing when examining mental toughness in non-sporting contexts. specifically, fehr and russell (1991) suggest lay perspectives are important for “freeing researchers from hidden assumptions and confusion” (1991, p. 436). as mental toughness is typically measured through self-report scales that are developed from theoretical or sporting-based conceptualisations, it is important for researchers to understand how these tools correspond to participants’ ideas of the concept. second, as the meaning of mental toughness is likely to be contextually bound (bull et al., 2005; fawcett, 2011; madrigal, hamill, & gill, 2013), lay theories may highlight previously overlooked components of mental toughness (harasymchuk & fehr, 2013). finally, understanding lay perceptions of mental toughness may contribute to promoting further recognition and understanding of the benefits that can be attained by mental toughness beyond sporting and achievement-related contexts. to this end, we chose to employ a prototype analysis (rosch, 1975) based on its usefulness for elucidating lay perceptions of “fuzzy” psychological phenomena elsewhere (e.g., love and commitment, fehr, 1988; respect in close relationships, frei & shaver, 2002; wellbeing, hone, schofield, & jarden, 2016; forgiveness, kearns & fincham, 2004; and infidelity, weiser, lalasz, weigel, & evans, 2014). a prototype perspective suggests that phenomena are comprised of numerous attributes that are organised in a hierarchical, rather than linear, fashion according to their centrality (or importance) to the phenomenon (rosch, 1975). based on their “proximity,” the presence or absence of these attributes renders given cases as more or less typical of the phenomenon. for example, an animal is more likely to be classified as a bird if it contains prototypical features of a bird (e.g., clearly visible feathers, flying), such as a sparrow, than a case that does not contain these central features, such as a penguin (kearns & fincham, 2004). the prototype analysis is employed here in two parts. at the outset, a first group of participants are asked to freely generate typical attributes of mental toughness (study 1). these attributes are then collected into a list so that a second group of participants can rank them for their centrality or importance to mental toughness (study 2). subsequent findings are discussed for their relevance to current and future directions in mental toughness research. 2. study 1: generation of mental toughness attributes the purpose of study 1 was to encourage participants to generate attributes of mental toughness using a free-response format. this approach to collecting mental toughness attributes aligned with previous prototype analyses and was beneficial for attaining a cross-section of opinions from a large sample size. a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 2.1 method 2.1.1 participants one hundred and thirty eight laypeople participated in the current research. due to an accidental omission of demographic questions from the original questionnaire, demographic information was collected retrospectively from participants at the same time that study findings were communicated. fifty-one (37%) participants responded to the demographic questionnaire. these respondents consisted of females (57%) and males (43%), who ranged in age between 18 and 64+ years, with the biggest age groups being 50-64 years old (35%) and 35-49 years old (33%). most participants were european/new zealand european (92%), with remaining ethnicities being māori (2%), indian (2%) and other (4%). participants worked across a range of industries in entry and managerial-level positions. 2.1.2 procedure lay participants from various community, occupational and vocational groups, as well as friends and family, were invited to participate in the first stage of research in july 2015. where possible, the invitation included presentation of the research aims and data collection in person. due to time or location restrictions, some participants requested that study materials to be sent via email and returned at their convenience. once participants had read the information sheet and signed the consent form, the questionnaire invited participants to freely produce all features associated with mental toughness, according to the following instructions (adapted from fehr & russell, 1984, study 6): this is a study on the attributes that people think of when they think of the word mental toughness in everyday situations. for example, if you were asked to list the attributes of a person experiencing fear, you might write possible danger occurs, attention is focused on the threat, heart beats wildly, the person runs as fast as they can. in the current study, we are not interested in attributes of fear but in attributes of mental toughness in everyday situations. imagine that you are explaining the word mental toughness to someone who has no experience of mental toughness. include the obvious. however, try not to just freeassociate. we’re interested in what is common to instances of mental toughness. remember that these attributes can be positive or negative. these instructions were followed by a statement to re-clarify the question and prompt participants: what, in your opinion, are the key attributes of mental toughness? please list as many as you can below. participants were provided with 15 blank lines to enter their responses, and were encouraged to take as much time as needed to generate as many attributes of mental toughness as possible. once participants had completed and submitted the questionnaire, snowball sampling was encouraged by asking participants if they were affiliated with other community or occupational groups who may appreciate the opportunity to participate in this research. this process was repeated until a sufficient sample size was obtained. a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 table 2. frequency and mean centrality ratings of mental toughness features table 2a. attributes sorted by part 1 frequencies* attributes *part 1 part 2 frequency % mcr sd self-belief/confidence/sense of competence 54 31% 5.42 1.19 grit/perseverance 53 30% 5.59 1.33 determination 50 30% 5.95 1.06 focus/concentrate 48 29% 5.57 1.32 resilience/recovery 47 30% 5.90 1.09 social relationships/openness/receiving help 44 22% 4.64 1.69 rational/analytical 42 20% 5.00 1.60 calm and in control 41 22% 5.08 1.38 purpose/goal focused 33 20% 5.50 1.34 good decision maker 33 15% 4.31 1.26 absorb/cope/deal with stress and pressure 30 18% 5.78 1.27 optimism/positive expectations 30 20% 5.08 1.43 emotional stability/strength/intelligence 29 17% 5.31 1.42 accept failure/negative situation as a part of life 28 12% 5.13 1.62 stubborn 25 14% 4.72 1.64 desire/driven/motivated 24 14% 5.61 1.29 self-discipline1 24 14% stand up for oneself/assertiveness 23 12% 5.52 1.23 achieve/operate under pressure 22 13% 6.04 1.11 table 2b. attributes sorted by part 2 mean centrality ratings (mcr)* attributes part 1 *part 2 frequency % mcr sd mental strength 8 4% 6.20 1.01 overcomes obstacles 14 9% 6.05 1.09 achieve/operate under pressure 22 13% 6.04 1.11 determination 50 30% 5.95 1.06 resilience/recovery 47 30% 5.9 1.09 absorb/cope/deal with stress and pressure 30 18% 5.78 1.27 taking responsibility 5 4% 5.78 1.30 able to take criticism 4 3% 5.75 1.29 commitment 4 3% 5.67 1.13 not feel inferior/not being undermined 5 4% 5.66 1.26 independence 13 8% 5.64 1.25 desire/driven/motivated 24 14% 5.61 1.29 reflection and growth/learning 15 9% 5.60 1.38 grit/perseverance 53 30% 5.59 1.33 put things in perspective 15 10% 5.59 1.26 focus/concentrate 48 29% 5.57 1.32 adaptable 10 7% 5.57 1.42 stand up for oneself/assertiveness 23 12% 5.52 1.23 purpose/goal focused 33 20% 5.50 1.34 trust/respect yourself 6 4% 5.45 1.34 strength general 15 8% 5.44 1.32 self-belief/confidence/sense of competence 54 31% 5.42 1.19 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 table 2a. attributes sorted by part 1 frequencies* attributes *part 1 part 2 frequency % mcr sd self-awareness 22 12% 5.08 1.44 compartmentalise/dissociate 18 12% 5.23 1.30 positive emotions (happy) 17 9% 4.22 1.43 problem-solving ability 16 11% 5.39 1.24 one step at a time 16 9% 5.18 1.19 history and experience 16 11% 4.64 1.50 reflection and growth/learning 15 9% 5.6 1.38 put things in perspective 15 10% 5.59 1.26 strength general 15 8% 5.44 1.32 resistant to influence 15 8% 4.97 1.41 overcomes obstacles 14 9% 6.05 1.09 courage 14 8% 5.23 1.21 independence 13 8% 5.64 1.25 clear thinking 12 9% 5.26 1.20 proactive 12 9% 5.21 1.35 open-minded/no prior judgements 12 8% 4.93 1.50 effective interpersonal skills 12 6% 4.78 1.42 empathy/compassion/kindness 12 7% 4.4 1.34 wellbeing 11 7% 4.19 1.49 adaptable 10 7% 5.57 1.42 be prepared 10 7% 5.05 1.40 knowledgeable 10 7% 4.83 1.24 patience and tolerance 10 6% 4.62 1.42 thought control/independence from thought 9 4% 5.21 1.33 honesty/trustworthiness 9 5% 4.73 1.38 table 2b. attributes sorted by part 2 mean centrality ratings (mcr)* attributes part 1 *part 2 frequency % mcr sd positive self-talk 6 4% 5.40 1.36 problem-solving ability 16 11% 5.39 1.24 authenticity 8 6% 5.35 1.25 focus on controllables/positives 7 4% 5.32 1.18 challenge (vs threat) 5 4% 5.32 1.36 emotional stability/strength/intelligence 29 17% 5.31 1.42 sense of agency 5 4% 5.3 1.25 not taking things personally 5 3% 5.29 1.41 clear thinking 12 9% 5.26 1.20 compartmentalise/dissociate 18 12% 5.23 1.30 courage 14 8% 5.23 1.21 proactive 12 9% 5.21 1.35 thought control/independence from thought 9 4% 5.21 1.33 one step at a time 16 9% 5.18 1.19 realistic 5 3% 5.18 1.34 accept failure/negative situation as a part of life 28 12% 5.13 1.62 calm and in control 41 22% 5.08 1.38 optimism/positive expectations 30 20% 5.08 1.43 self-awareness 22 12% 5.08 1.44 be prepared 10 7% 5.05 1.40 prioritise 7 4% 5.05 1.32 consistency 4 3% 5.05 1.46 mindfulness 7 5% 5.03 1.34 strategic thinking 5 4% 5.02 1.36 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 table 2a. attributes sorted by part 1 frequencies* attributes *part 1 part 2 frequency % mcr sd mental strength 8 4% 6.2 1.01 authenticity 8 6% 5.35 1.25 clear moral code 8 4% 5 1.34 planning 8 6% 4.99 1.41 humour 8 5% 4.68 1.45 focus on controllables/positives 7 4% 5.32 1.18 prioritise 7 4% 5.05 1.32 mindfulness 7 5% 5.03 1.34 altruism 7 4% 4.55 1.31 trust/respect yourself 6 4% 5.45 1.34 positive self-talk 6 4% 5.4 1.36 leadership/taking control 6 4% 4.71 1.42 quick thinking 6 3% 4.55 1.33 emotional openness 6 4% 4.14 1.45 mental recovery/escape 6 3% 4.04 1.59 selfishness 6 4% 3.37 1.50 religious faith 6 4% 2.65 1.50 taking responsibility 5 4% 5.78 1.30 not feel inferior/not being undermined 5 4% 5.66 1.26 challenge (vs threat) 5 4% 5.32 1.36 sense of agency 5 4% 5.3 1.25 not taking things personally 5 3% 5.29 1.41 realistic 5 3% 5.18 1.34 strategic thinking 5 4% 5.02 1.36 flexible 5 4% 4.86 1.48 table 2b. attributes sorted by part 2 mean centrality ratings (mcr)* attributes part 1 *part 2 frequency % mcr sd rational/analytical 42 20% 5 1.60 clear moral code 8 4% 5 1.34 planning 8 6% 4.99 1.41 resistant to influence 15 8% 4.97 1.41 open-minded/no prior judgements 12 8% 4.93 1.50 flexible 5 4% 4.86 1.48 knowledgeable 10 7% 4.83 1.24 effective interpersonal skills 12 6% 4.78 1.42 honesty/trustworthiness 9 5% 4.73 1.38 stubborn 25 14% 4.72 1.64 leadership/taking control 6 4% 4.71 1.42 humour 8 5% 4.68 1.45 social relationships/openness/receiving help 44 22% 4.64 1.69 history and experience 16 11% 4.64 1.50 gratitude 5 3% 4.64 1.43 patience and tolerance 10 6% 4.62 1.42 altruism 7 4% 4.55 1.31 quick thinking 6 3% 4.55 1.33 empathy/compassion/kindness 12 7% 4.4 1.34 good decision maker 33 15% 4.31 1.26 humble 5 3% 4.27 1.51 tough because no choice/necessity 4 3% 4.24 1.69 positive emotions (happy) 17 9% 4.22 1.43 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 table 2a. attributes sorted by part 1 frequencies* attributes *part 1 part 2 frequency % mcr sd gratitude 5 3% 4.64 1.43 humble 5 3% 4.27 1.51 able to take criticism 4 3% 5.75 1.29 commitment 4 3% 5.67 1.13 consistency 4 3% 5.05 1.46 tough because no choice/necessity 4 3% 4.24 1.69 table 2b. attributes sorted by part 2 mean centrality ratings (mcr)* attributes part 1 *part 2 frequency % mcr sd wellbeing 11 7% 4.19 1.49 mental recovery/escape 6 3% 4.04 1.59 selfishness 6 4% 3.37 1.50 religious faith 6 4% 2.65 1.50 self-discipline1 24 14% 1 due to an administrative error, the attribute of self-discipline was omitted from importance rankings in study 2. as discipline appears in the list of attributes presented by gucciardi et al. (2008) and may be related to the attribute of work ethic (coulter et al., 2010; gucciardi et al., 2008; slack et al., 2013), it is speculated that self-discipline may have been considered a central attribute of mental toughness. future research may elucidate these inconclusive findings. a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 2.2 results and discussion for the purposes of data manageability, the first and second authors first allocated raw entries into one of five categories: social, motivational, emotional, psychological or other. once data had been organised into these five categories, in line with the procedure used by fehr (1988), the next step involved the extraction of linguistic units. using this procedure, monolexic items (e.g., “determination”) were first identified and extracted. where phrases were used, judgements were made to determine whether the phrase referred to a single linguistic unit (e.g., “ability to stay focused on the job at hand” was coded as “focus”) or split into multiple linguistic units (e.g., “to be brave and determined to achieve goals when situations are hard” was split into “bravery” and “determination”). the 138 participants generated an average of 8.14 linguistic units each, yielding a total of 1,124 units from this analysis. upon extraction, linguistic units were allocated to existing groups if they were similar in meaning or if they formed different grammatical versions of the same word. if linguistic units did not fall into existing attribute categories based on this criteria, new attribute categories were created. any ambiguous words or phrases were left until the end of the analysis and placed in an “unsure” category if their meaning could not be ascertained by the researchers. a total number of 44 units were placed in the “unsure” category (e.g., “inner self”) and subsequently excluded from further analysis. in the process of grouping linguistic units, words or phrases that were similar yet slightly different (e.g., “objective thinking” and “rational”) were first allocated to separate attribute categories to retain conceptual richness. initially, the linguistic units formed 101 feature categories. however, to reduce participant burden in study 2, similar categories were subsequently combined (e.g., “objective thinking” and “rational” were judged as similar enough to be combined into one category group), and categories mentioned by less than 2% of the sample were excluded from the final list of attributes. subsequently, 75 final attribute categories were identified, which are displayed in table 2a above. as shown in table 2a above, the most popular features were self-belief (mentioned by 31% of participants), followed by determination, perseverance, resilience (mentioned by 30% of participants), and focus (mentioned by 29% of participants). based on what we already know about mental toughness in sporting contexts (see table 1 above), the frequent occurrence of these attributes is unsurprising. however, lay participants more frequently identified social attributes of mental toughness than their sporting counterparts. these social attributes included social openness and seeking out help from others (e.g., “the ability to talk through an issue out loud”), as well as resisting unfavourable social pressures (e.g., “not getting influenced by people around you”) and asserting one’s opinions or needs when necessary (e.g., “being able to stand up for something despite your own hardships”). positive virtues oriented towards others, such as empathy, compassion and kindness, were also included, which builds on the attribute of personal values (e.g., honesty and integrity) identified by gucciardi et al. (2008) and coulter et al. (2010). 3. study 2: centrality ratings of mental toughness features the purpose of study 2 was to gain centrality or importance ratings of the attributes generated in the previous study. the methodology in this study aligns with steps taken by previous researchers to organise attributes in order of their importance to mental toughness (e.g., gucciardi et al., 2008; jones et al., 2002; jones et al., 2007; thelwell et al., 2005). with comparison between previous and current centrality ratings, therefore, findings from this study will indicate a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 differences or similarities between sporting and lay perceptions of “typical” characteristics of mental toughness. 3.1 method 3.1.1 participants one hundred and thirty six laypeople participated in the current research. as with study 1 above, due to an accidental omission of demographic questions from the original questionnaire, demographic information was collected retrospectively from participants at the same time that study findings were communicated. thirty-one participants (24%) responded to the demographic questions. these participants consisted of females (82%) and males (18%) who ranged from 18-64 years old, with the largest groups being 25-34 year olds (36%) and 50-64 year olds (33%). the majority were european/new zealand european (88%), with other ethnicities being māori (3%) and other (9%). participants worked across a range of industries in entry and managerial-level positions. overall, participant demographics in study 2 were similar to those in study 1. 3.1.2 procedure similar participant recruitment and data collection procedures to study 1 were followed in study 2 to obtain a new sample. once participants had read the information sheet and signed the consent form, the questionnaire (see appendix) provided participants with the following instructions: in a previous study, we asked people to tell us their views of mental toughness. specifically, we asked them to “list the characteristics or attributes of mental toughness that come to mind.” below are some of the responses we got. we now want to find out how important each attribute is to mental toughness. in other words… typically, a mentally tough person is someone who is… the questionnaire was divided into five sections, following the higher-level categories developed in study 1: social aspects, motivational aspects, emotional aspects, psychological aspects and other. under each heading, participants were provided with further instructions: please read through the entire list and then rate how typical each attribute is by circling a number between 1 (not at all typical) and 7 (extremely typical). the features allocated to each category were then presented to participants in each section, sorted by alphabetical order. features were reworded to suit the questionnaire instructions, and simplified, if necessary, to enhance comprehension (e.g., “altruism” was reworded to “willing to make personal sacrifices for others”). 3.2 results and discussion mean centrality ratings (mcr) for the 75 attributes are presented in table 2b above. the most centrally-rated attributes of mental toughness include mental strength, overcomes obstacles, achieve/operate under pressure, determination, and resilience/recovery. two indices were computed to establish the reliability of these mean centrality ratings. first, the intra-class correlation coefficient (icc; equivalent to the average of all possible split-half correlations of the 136 judges with respect to the 75 attributes) reached significance (icc = .941; p < .01) thus a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 indicating excellent inter-rater agreement. second, based on a flipped data matrix that treats the 75 features as cases and the 136 judges as items, the internal consistency of the dataset was exceptionally high (α = .95). significant agreement (r = .31, p < .01) was found between the frequency percentages (study 1) and centrality ratings (study 2) of attributes. for instance, determination and resilience were both frequently mentioned and assigned high centrality ratings. however, although intercorrelations were significant overall, features such as self-belief, perseverance and focus were mentioned frequently but assigned relatively low centrality ratings. on the other hand, mental strength, overcomes obstacles and achieve/operate under pressure were mentioned relatively infrequently but assigned high centrality ratings. finally, we demarcated central from peripheral attributes of mental toughness by calculating a central median split of mean centrality ratings. on this basis, all attributes with a mean centrality rating above 5.08 were considered central (n = 41) and all attributes below (n = 33) were considered peripheral 2 . in particular, participants considered mental strength, overcomes obstacles, achieve operate under pressure, determination and resilience/recovery as central attributes of mental toughness. in comparison with existing knowledge, the high centrality ratings assigned to determination and resilience converge with findings by bull et al. (2005), coulter et al. (2010), gucciardi et al., 2008, jones et al. (2002), slack et al., (2013) and weinberg et al. (2001), and the remaining central attributes represent unique components of mental toughness. on the other hand, positive emotions (happy), wellbeing, emotional openness, mental recovery/escape, selfishness and religious faith were rated as peripheral or non-important attributes to mental toughness. 4. overall discussion despite empirical investigations in non-sporting contexts (e.g., gerber et al., 2012; gerber, brand et al., 2013; gerber, kalak et al., 2013; gucciardi et al., 2015; st. clair-thompson et al., 2015), lay perceptions of mental toughness remain relatively unexplored. on this basis, the current research used a prototype analysis to understand lay perspectives of central and peripheral attributes of mental toughness. findings from this analysis verify as well as expand existing knowledge in a number of ways and thus progress empirical and practical utility of mental toughness beyond sporting contexts. first, in line with existing literature, mental toughness was construed using a wide variety of attributes (n = 75). as this number of attributes resembles the total number of attributes generated for other common everyday constructs (e.g., love and commitment, n = 68 and 40 features respectively, fehr, 1988; forgiveness, n = 78 features, kearns & fincham, 2004; infidelity, n = 95 features, weiser et al., 2014), findings suggest that mental toughness is a familiar term to laypeople. as participants were also able to meaningfully and reliably distinguish between these attributes according to centrality, the current findings provided preliminary evidence of the prototypical nature or “internal structure” of mental toughness (rosch, 1975). although we did not test the impact of centrality on cognitions with respect to mental toughness (the second criteria for demonstrating prototypical organisation; rosch, 1975), this preliminary evidence lends credence to reviewers who note the conceptual chaos inherent in linear lists of attributes (e.g., andersen, 2011). findings further highlight the necessity for current and future researchers 2 we acknowledge, however, that the dichotomous nature of this approach somewhat conflicts with the continuous nature of feature centrality. a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 to heed the hierarchical organisation of attributes to achieve a valid and organised evolution of understanding, measuring, and developing mental toughness. second, findings in the present study enabled a comparison between lay and sporting perceptions of the “internal structure” of mental toughness. for instance, determination and resilience are familiar attributes within existing conceptualisations, and, as such, future research may include resilience and determination as a viable avenue for understanding the universal (i.e., not context-specific) attributes and mechanisms underlying mental toughness. notwithstanding these similarities, a number of differences between perspectives also exist. for example, although frequently mentioned, attributes central to sporting perspectives such as selfbelief and focus were rated as less important to mental toughness by laypeople. instead, findings suggest that laypeople view mental strength as the most important attribute of mental toughness. although not coherently documented, various researchers have used mental strength to describe qualities of emotional stability (deutscher, frick, & prinz, 2013), an ability to make hard decisions (glozah, 2015), a strong “sense of self” that facilitates a capacity to deal with intimidating or difficult situations (such as domestic violence; rose et al., 2010), focus, intelligence, the ability to learn, deep commitment, a positive outlook and an ability to resist feeling overwhelmed or discouraged (stewart, 2009). as such, mental strength may be a higher-order attribute encompassing a collection of sub-attributes of mental toughness. an in-depth understanding of the nature of mental strength and its sub-components may provide fruitful avenues for “teasing out” various higher-order dimensions and mechanisms underlying mental toughness. particularly noteworthy was the relative prominence of outcomes in laypeople’s perceptions of mental toughness, which included recovery/resilience as well as overcoming obstacles and being able to achieve/operate under pressure. with the exception of resilience, these outcomes are relatively absent from previous rankings of important attributes; however, they do appear in a number of existing definitions of mental toughness, such as overcoming obstacles (e.g., gucciardi et al., 2008) and performance and goal attainment under stress (e.g., coulter et al., 2010; gucciardi et al., 2015; hardy, bell, & beattie, 2013; loehr, 1994; mahoney, gucciardi, mallett, & ntoumantis, 2014). although resilience, overcoming obstacles and being able to achieve/operate under pressure may take on different forms in everyday situations, their centrality may highlight the necessity of positive outcomes for conceptualising mental toughness; that is, if attributes previously associated with mental toughness (see table 1 above) occur in the absence of these central outcomes, are they still indicative of mental toughness? with the exception of the cricket mental toughness inventory (ctmi, gucciardi & gordon, 2009) which includes the subscale of resilience, this finding also highlights a challenge for applying current scales to non-sporting populations that solely rely on internal states or processes as indicators of mental toughness without concurrent attention to outcomes (e.g., australian football mental toughness inventory, gucciardi, gordon & dimmock, 2009a; mental toughness questionnaire 48, clough, earle, & sewell, 2002; mental toughness scale, madrigal et al., 2013; psychological performance inventory, loehr, 1986; sports mental toughness questionnaire, sheard, golby & van wersch, 2009). this observation is further extended to interventions that target development of less central attributes (e.g., coping, optimism and various psychological skills; bell, hardy, & beattie, 2013; gucciardi, gordon, & dimmock, 2009b; parkes & mallett, 2011; sheard & golby, 2006). we also found that although frequently-mentioned attributes were generally rated as more central, this trend was relatively absent from the social dimension of mental toughness. in particular, social relationships/openness/receiving help (i.e., a willingness to ask for help or openness to receiving help from friends and family) was the sixth most frequently mentioned attribute but was subsequently rated as peripheral to mental toughness. from what we know, a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 social support does play a role in mentally tough outcomes (smith, wolfe-clarke, & bryan, 2016) and is widely cited as a source of mental toughness development (e.g., bull et al., 2005; connaughton, wadey, hanton, & jones, 2008). however, although participants may have recognised the role of social support as an attribute, the act of asking or receiving help may not have been interpreted as typical to mental toughness. these findings, along with other peripherally rated attributes (such as emotional openness, positive emotions – or happiness – wellbeing, mental recovery/escape and religiosity), may represent an enduring form of suffering, which, according to morse (2001), is an emotionless state where emotions are suppressed or tolerated in order to enable an individual to function adequately and “come to grips” with a situation. this state is particularly reminiscent of peripherally-rated behaviours (such as little emotion, maintenance of control: that is, does not escape or attribute control over outcomes to external religious figures) that discourages rather than invites social consolation. although speculative, it is plausible that enduring suffering is also characteristic of the highly central attribute of mental strength and facilitates central outcomes (i.e., recovering from setbacks, overcoming obstacles and being able to achieve/operate (i.e., function) under pressure). in all, the present study informed current theories of mental toughness by conceptualising mental toughness as a prototypically organised construct from a layperson’s viewpoint. in doing so, findings supported some already well-established dimensions of mental toughness (i.e., resilience and determination), but also highlighted some conceptual differences. these differences include the overarching theme of mental strength, as well as the emphasis on outcomes as defining attributes of mental toughness. from examination of the social and peripheral attributes of mental toughness, current findings also highlighted the potential for mental toughness to be characteristic of enduring versus emotional suffering in stressful situations. future research would do well to investigate and heed these universal and contextdependent “inner structures” of mental toughness to facilitate a valid and sophisticated conceptual, empirical and practical understanding of mental toughness. 5. limitations first, as demographic information was retrospectively collected, we could only estimate sample demographics based on a proportion of participant demographics. as such, we are unsure how demographics may have influenced the responses gained in the current research, and, although unlikely, we were not able to guarantee that participants were not involved in elite sports as well. second, contrary to previous interview methods that enabled further probing of responses (e.g., coulter et al., 2010; gucciardi et al., 2008; jones et al., 2002; thelwell et al., 2005), the present method used open-response questionnaires to attain attributes of mental toughness. although this approach was useful for obtaining a range of different opinions across a large sample size and aligned with previous prototype analyses, open-ended questionnaires prevented us from elaborating meaning in some responses. finally, we were able to demonstrate preliminary evidence for the prototypical organisation of mental toughness, however, without testing the effect of centrality on cognitions regarding mental toughness, we were unable to conclusively argue its prototypical organisation. thus, testing the cognitive effects of attribute centrality is an important consideration for future research. authors sarah sorensen auckland university of technology a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 aaron jarden auckland university of technology aaron.jarden@aut.ac.nz grant schofield auckland university of technology publishing timeline received 3 august 2016 accepted 9 september 2016 published 14 october 2016 references andersen, m. b. 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(2014). a prototype analysis of infidelity. personal relationships, 21(4), 655-675. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pere.12056 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167204264237 http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/tsp.27.1.62 http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/tsp.2013-0050 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00012272-200109000-00007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/tsp.25.3.269 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.104.3.192 http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/01612840903254834 http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759.25.3.186 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2012.726935 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11896-016-9192-y http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2014.895294 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10413200500313636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1612197x.2011.567106 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pere.12056 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 appendix questionnaire administered to participants in study 2 mental toughness in a previous study, we asked people to tell us their views of mental toughness. specifically, we asked them to “list the characteristics or attributes of mental toughness that come to mind.” below are some of the responses we got. we now want to find out how important each attribute is to mental toughness. in other words… typically, a mentally tough person is someone who is… part 1: social aspects please read through the entire list and then rate how typical each attribute is by circling a number between 1 (not at all typical) and 7 (extremely typical). not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical a good leader 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to accept responsibility or ‘own it’ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to take criticism 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 assertive (stand up for themselves) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 effective communicators 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 good at not taking things personally 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 guided by a clear moral code 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 humble 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical independent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 just themselves (authentic) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 kind and compassionate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not easily intimidated or undermined 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 open to receiving help / support 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 resistant to influence from others 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 selfish 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 trustworthy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 willing to make personal sacrifices for others 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 part 2: goals and motivation typically, a mentally tough person is someone who is… please read through the entire list and then rate how typical each attribute is by circling a number between 1 (not at all typical) and 7 (extremely typical). not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical able to achieve or operate under pressure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to overcome obstacles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 committed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical confident 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 consistent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 determined 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 focused 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 goal or purpose driven 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 gritty (perseveres) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 has a desire to succeed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 in control 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 proactive 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 tough because they don’t have a choice 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 part 3: emotions typically, a mentally tough person is someone who is… please read through the entire list and then rate how typical each attribute is by circling a number between 1 (not at all typical) and 7 (extremely typical). not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical able to deal with stress and pressure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to express emotions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to see the funny side of a situation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical calm and in control 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 courageous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 emotionally stable / strong 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 happy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 patient and tolerant 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 resilient 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 part 4: psychological aspects typically, a mentally tough person is someone who is… please read through the entire list and then rate how typical each attribute is by circling a number between 1 (not at all typical) and 7 (extremely typical). not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical a clear thinker 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a good planner 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a good problemsolver 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a quick thinker 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a rational thinker 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a slow but good decision-maker 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a strategic thinker 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical able to compartmentalise / detach themselves 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to control their thoughts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to learn from mistakes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to put things in perspective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to take it one step at a time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 able to trust / respect themselves 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 accepting of failure / negative situations as part of life 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 adaptable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 flexible 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 good at positive self-talk (e.g., “you can do this”) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 good at prioritising 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 grateful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 knowledgeable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 likely to enjoy pressure or ‘the challenge’ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 likely to focus on controllable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical /positive aspects of a situation likely to take time out / escape from the situation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 mentally strong 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 mindful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 open-minded 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 positive (e.g., optimistic) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 prepared 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 realistic 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 religious 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 self-aware 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 stubborn 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 part 5: other typically, a mentally tough person is someone who is… please read through the entire list and then rate how typical each attribute is by circling a number between 1 (not at all typical) and 7 (extremely typical). not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical a strong character 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 experienced 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a prototype analysis of mental toughness sorensen, jarden, & schofield www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 not at all typical sort of typical extremely typical healthy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 kuroki, m. (2016). life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity. international journal of wellbeing, 6(2), 93-110. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i2.519 masanori kuroki arkansas tech university mkuroki@atu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 article life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity masanori kuroki abstract: many economists share the view that the rise in obesity is largely the result of rational decision-making by individuals who compare risks and benefits. a dominant view among economists is that there is no economic justification for government intervention unless there is a market failure. however, recent developments in behavioral economics suggests that people often fail to make optimal decisions, and that public welfare may be improved by government interventions even when there is no externality. this paper examines the association between one’s body weight and life satisfaction by utilizing data on self-reported life satisfaction, which approximates individual utility, after briefly reviewing the economics of obesity and discussing the rationale and justification of obesity-related policies. using a large data set (n = 1,465,219), it is found that life satisfaction of people who are overweight or obese is lower. the adverse life satisfaction effect of obesity remains statistically significant, even when socioeconomic factors and obesity-related health variables are controlled. the findings suggest that many overweight and obese people may be making sub-optimal decisions when it comes to eating. while the findings are not causal and thus do not necessarily suggest that government intervention will be welfareenhancing even in the absence of negative externalities, effective anti-obesity policies may lead to higher life satisfaction among many overweight people who are struggling with self-control problems. keywords: obesity, overweight, bmi, life satisfaction, happiness 1. introduction it is well known that the prevalence of obesity is rising. in 2013, 70.7% of american adults were overweight, and 37.9% were obese (centers for disease control and prevention, 2015). in the united kingdom, 61.7% of adults were overweight, and 25.6% were obese in 2014 (public health england, 2015). there is little question that obesity is detrimental to personal health, but whether obesity is a public health problem that calls for government intervention is contentious. many economists view obesity as largely the result of rational decision-making by individuals who compare risks and benefits (cutler et al., 2003), and a dominant view among economists is that there is no economic justification for government intervention unless there is a market failure. that is, even though governments may be able to encourage healthy eating by, say, taxing unhealthy foods, it has no more right to tax them than other foods if one’s weight causes no harm to others. however, recent developments in behavioral economics suggest that people often fail to make optimal decisions, and public welfare may be improved by government interventions even when there is no externality. these economists argue that utility gain from eating is often more than offset by the disutility from being overweight. this suggests that whether public actions to reduce obesity are justified depends not only on whether obesity imposes negative externalities, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 but also whether many people make decisions that are not consistent with their long-term preferences. casual observations suggest that many people can rationally make plans but often cannot carry out those plans. this paper examines the association between one’s body weight and life satisfaction by utilizing data on self-reported life satisfaction, which approximates individual utility, after briefly reviewing the economics of obesity and discussing the rationale and justification of obesity-related policies. this paper’s contribution is to use a large data set and document the association between overweight/obesity and wellbeing, which can be useful in determining whether government intervention can enhance wellbeing. if being overweight leads to lower utility, that suggests people’s eating decisions may not be made optimally, due to their timeinconsistent preferences. in this case, government intervention may be justified even in the absence of externalities. if, on the other hand, being overweight does not lead to lower utility, it suggests that individuals are maximizing their inter-temporal utility – that is, people value current consumption of foods more than the future harm (such as increased risk of coronary heart disease and diabetes) and other personal costs (such as adverse labor market consequences and social stigma). in this case, government intervention is not justified unless there are externalities. using the data on approximately 1,465,000 individuals, i find that life satisfaction of people who are overweight or obese is lower. the adverse life satisfaction effect of obesity remains statistically significant even when socioeconomic factors and obesity-related health variables are controlled for. the findings suggest that many overweight and obese people may be making suboptimal decisions when it comes to eating. while the findings are not causal and thus do not necessarily suggest that government intervention will be welfare-enhancing even in the absence of negative externalities, effective anti-obesity policies may lead to higher life satisfaction among many overweight people who are struggling with self-control problems. 2. the economics of obesity 2.1 an overview several factors have been used to explain the growth in obesity. new technologies have lowered prices of calorie-dense foods and drinks relative to fruits and vegetables (finkelstein et al., 2005). technological innovations such as vacuum packaging and improved preservatives, and deep freezing have led to reductions in the time price of food and thus increased food consumption (cutler et al., 2003). among youths, a rise in the price of food at fast-food restaurants leads to improvements in obesity outcomes, while a rise in the price of fruit and vegetables leads to increased obesity (grossman et al., 2014). people now expend fewer calories because manual labor has been replaced by more sedentary work, due to technological change (lakdawalla & philipson, 2009). in short, economists have found that people are getting heavier because incentives to eat more or burn fewer calories have increased. it may seem unreasonable to claim that people are getting heavier when rationally, the risk involves health issues such as heart disease and diabetes. in addition to the negative health consequences, obese people suffer in other dimensions of life. being overweight may adversely affect labor market outcomes if (1) employers discriminate against overweight individuals, life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 perhaps due to bias against overweight and obese people, 1 and (2) being overweight lowers productivity through poor health and/or motivation due to the lower life expectancy of these people.2 non-monetary costs include poor body image and low self-esteem, and there is robust evidence that being obese often leads to depression (roberts et al., 2003). but there is a long tradition in economics that people are rational, and many economists view obesity as people simply trading off the utility from current food intake against the associated monetary expense and disutility of future weight gain and health. eating is obviously a source of pleasure, and people trade off the long-term costs of overeating and eating fat and sugary foods against the immediate pleasure of eating such foods. even if obesity comes with adverse health consequences, one reason that people are getting heavier may be due to, as late gary becker (2005) put it, “the expectation that new drugs will greatly reduce the adverse consequences of being obese… [many people] can rationally believe that in twenty years or so still newer drugs that control diabetes and other diseases will be developed… then for anyone who likes to eat sugary and fat foods, it does not seem so irrational to do so when the consequences will be much less harmful to health than they are at present.” that is, people with excess weight are not necessarily making mistakes in choosing their diet. even if some foods may be addictive, addiction to food can be rational, as a decision-maker may rationally choose to become addicted by weighting present pleasure more than future harm (becker & murphy, 1988; dragone, 2009). a rise in obesity and obesity-related disease does not mean that people are worse off overall. cutler et al. (2003) argue that most people are better off even if their weight has increased. several empirical studies have examined the effect of being overweight or obese on subjective wellbeing, which approximates individual utility, in economics. oswald and powdthavee (2007) document a negative association between bmi and life satisfaction using british and german data. katsaiti (2012) finds that being obese negatively affects life satisfaction using the data from germany, uk, and australia. forste and moore (2012) find a negative association between adolescent body weight and life satisfaction. böckerman et al. (2014) find that being obese does not affect subjective wellbeing once health and functional status are controlled, suggesting that the observed negative relationship between obesity and subjective wellbeing is mainly due to the adverse effects of obesity on health and functioning. graham and felton (2005) find that being overweight (relative to one’s reference norm) increases the risk of depression, using the 1979 national longitudinal survey of youth. as discussed below in detail, this study contributes to the literature by using a larger random sample of individuals (n = 1,465,219) than the previous studies.3 1 cawley (2004) finds that weight lowers wages for white females. morris (2007) finds that obesity has a statistically significant and negative effect on employment in both males and females. caliendo and lee (2013) find that obese women (but not overweight women or overweight/obese men) experience labor market discrimination in germany. brunello and d’hombres (2007) find that bmi decreases the real earnings of both men and women in europe. lindeboom et al. (2010) use an instrumental variable approach and find little effect of obesity on employment. one caveat is that it is possible that fat people may feel that they experience discrimination even if they are not actually discriminated against. roehling et al. (2007) find that obese people are more likely to report employment discrimination. 2 of course, adverse labor market outcomes (low wages or unemployment) may lead to obesity if fat sugary food is an inferior good. 3 wadsworth and pendergast (2014) also use the same data source (2005-2008 brfss) and find a negative association between obesity and life satisfaction, but they do not examine overweight individuals. in addition, in order to control for health, they use self-reported health, which is highly endogenous with life satisfaction. relating a person’s subjective assessment of one aspect of life to her assessment of another should be avoided in general (hamermesh, life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 2.2 anti-obesity policies many government officials attempt to reduce obesity.4 probably the most controversial policy proposed is a “fat tax,” which is often criticized for being unfair and regressive.5 in the united states, many states already impose sale taxes on such categories of food as soft drinks, candy and snacks, such as chips and pretzels.6 in the uk, ice cream and potato chips are taxed (gruber, 2007). the idea of taxing unhealthy foods has been raised from time to time (jacobson & brownell, 2000; brownell et al., 2009). however, powell and chaloupka (2009) review various studies and argue that “small taxes or subsidies were not likely to produce significant changes in bmi or obesity prevalence but that nontrivial pricing intervention might have a measurable effect on americans’ weight outcomes” (p. 249). some local governments simply ban the sale of certain items. new york city has decided to ban large-size sodas and other sugary drinks being sold in restaurants and other eateries, and the city of boston has decided to ban the sale, advertising, and promotion of sugary beverages on government property (city of boston, 2011). as the lack of perfect information can lead to suboptimal food decisions (stigler, 1961), another type of policy increases the availability of nutrition information. the best-known example of such a policy is the nutrition labeling and education act (nlea), which required nutrition information to be printed on packaged foods but not on restaurant menus. recently, lawmakers have sought to require chain restaurants to post caloric information, but evidence suggests that providing more nutrition information is not effective in encouraging lower caloric intake (liu et al., 2013). downs et al. (2009) also point out that providing accurate calorie information may lead to perverse effects, as dieters who have overestimated their calorie intake may decide to consume more food now that they have realized that they can eat more and still keep their goals. there are several other policy ideas that have been motivated by behavioral economics. liu et al. (2013) suggest another interesting policy idea: giving supermarkets incentives, such as tax breaks, if they offer online ordering. the rationale is that online ordering can reduce exposure to unhealthy foods, and this “pre-commitment” device can help people impose constraints on their own future behavior. cohen and babey (2012) suggest a policy that requires supermarkets to move unhealthy food to the backs of grocery stores or remove them from check-out aisles. they are consistent with the notion of “libertarian paternalism,” which seeks to shift people towards behaviors they desire without limiting their freedom of choice. as discussed below, those policies are intended to help people with time-inconsistent preferences. 2.3 obesity externality and time-inconsistent preferences the rationale for government intervention seems to be largely based on the external costs obese people impose on others. one argument for public intervention to reduce obesity is that medical expenses tend to be higher for people with excess weight, meaning that they create fiscal externalities if they rely on public health insurance such as medicare and medicaid. however, as mccormic and stone (2007) point out, it is not clear that lifetime healthcare costs of the obese will 2004). as mentioned below, this study controls for health by including obesity-related health variables (heart attack, stroke, current and past smoking, and diabetes). 4 an interesting case of government intervention can be found in japan, where a national law now requires companies and local governments to measure the waistlines of japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups and imposes financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets (onishi, 2008). 5 one survey reveals that 72% of people said that they oppose a tax on high-fat and high-sugar foods (maris 2012). 6 food for home consumption is often excluded from state sales taxes (gruber, 2007). life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 be higher, since the obese tend to die earlier. also, the fact that obese people die earlier implies that they end up receiving less social security or public pensions than non-obese people. for these reasons, the overall effect of obesity on government spending is ambiguous. the cost savings from early deaths from obesity are usually not discussed in the public health community (philipson & posner, 2008). another potential obesity externality exists in private health insurance markets. the externality arises when health insurance premiums do not adjust to reflect enrollee weight, such as when the obese and the non-obese are lumped into a single risk pool. but this can be solved if insurance companies require obese people to pay higher insurance premiums and does not call for public policies (bhattacharya & sood, 2005; philipson & posner, 2008). indeed, some employers and health insurance companies already offer incentives for employers to engage in healthier behaviors (mello & rosenthal, 2008). the case of obesity externalities and the policy implications are far from being closed. recent developments in behavioral economics have questioned the assumption of rationality and revealed that individuals may not be making optimal decisions, implying that government intervention is justified even in the absence of externalities. the standard economic view assumes that people can both make plans rationally and carry out those optimal plans, but in reality people are often unable to carry out long-term plans that involve self-control.7 examples include smokers who are unable to quit and people who cannot give up current consumption and save enough for retirement. behavioral economists argue that some consumption is not always the outcome of rational but rather of time-inconsistent behavior. laibson (1997) formulated a model of hyperbolic discounting in which people have time-inconsistent preferences, which emphasize the present at the expense of long term. if people make systematic mistakes in consumption due to limited self-control and time-inconsistent preferences, it is possible for governments to improve social welfare, even in the absence of negative externalities.8 it is not surprising that people have difficulty eating healthily. food brings immediate gratification, while health costs of overconsumption occur only in the future. casual observations indicate that many people have time-inconsistent preferences when it comes to eating. it does not seem plausible to reconcile the prevalence of obesity with the size of diet and weight loss industries, and many go through bariatric surgery every year – these patterns in consumption behavior seem to contradict the rationality assumption. 3. data and empirical strategy i use micro-level data from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system survey (brfss). this is a household-level random-digit telephone survey, collected by the us government’s national center for chronic disease prevention and health. our measure of life satisfaction is the response on a 4-point scale ranging from “very satisfied” to “very dissatisfied,” to the question, “in general, how satisfied are you with your life?” the life satisfaction question has been asked 7 as thaler and sunstein argue in nudge, “we do not claim that everyone who is overweight is necessarily failing to act rationally, but we do reject the claim that all or almost all americans are choosing their diet optimally” (p. 7). public welfare can be improved, they argue, if the government can discourage or “nudge” people from consuming unhealthy foods or overeating. 8 in the model in gruber and koszegi (2001), people who have time-inconsistent preferences benefit if a tax is imposed because the tax serves as a commitment device that helps their self-control problem. empirically, gruber and mullainathan (2005) find that people who are predicted to be smokers are happier when a cigarette tax is higher; presumably the higher price of cigarettes discourages them from smoking. another empirical study that utilized subjective wellbeing and found that people suffer from self-control problems is benesch et al. (2010), who find that heavy tv viewers’ life satisfaction decrease when the number of tv channels increases. life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 since 2005, so i use data from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.9 justifiable concerns that people’s moods at the time of the survey can bias their reported life satisfaction still contribute to economists’ reluctance to use subjective wellbeing, but many economists have started using subjective wellbeing data extensively.10 recent studies include stevenson and wolfers (2009), who recorded a declining female happiness over time as regards income and happiness across countries; sachs et al. (2010), who showed a robust relationship between subjective wellbeing and income; and oswald and wu (2010) who demonstrated that there is a close match between us life satisfaction scores and objective wellbeing indicators. i restrict my analyses to people between 18 and 85 years old not residing in unincorporated us territories, and i exclude respondents who refused or were unsure of their response, or whose response is missing for any of the variables included in my analyses. the resulting sample size is 600,662 men and 864,557 women. table 1 below shows the distribution and summary statistics of life satisfaction and obesity and overweightness for a sample of 1,465,219 individuals.11 table 1. life satisfaction and bmi (n = 1,465,219) life satisfaction (average=3.41, std. dev.=0.62): very satisfied 46.7% satisfied 48.2% dissatisfied 4.1% very dissatisfied 0.9% bmi (average=27.4, std. dev.=5.4): overweight (30>bmi>25) 37.7% obese (bmi>30) 26.6% a significant proportion of those interviewed for the brfss are satisfied with their life. 46% of the sample reported “very satisfied.” 95% of the sample reported “very satisfied” or “satisfied.” the lowest level of life satisfaction is reported by only 0.9% of the sample. a standard measure of overweightness and obesity is body mass index (bmi), and a person is considered to be overweight if he has a bmi of 25 or more, and obese if his bmi is 30 or more. because this study examines overweight and obesity, i exclude those whose bmi is less than 18.5, which is underweight.12 64.3% of the sample is overweight, and 26.6% is obese. the average bmi is 27.4, meaning that the average person in the sample is overweight. table 2 below shows how people’s weight categories and bmis vary based on their life satisfaction. average bmis show that people tend to get heavier for each subsequent category of life satisfaction. people who are very satisfied with their life are much less likely to be obese than those who are very dissatisfied with their life (23.2% vs. 38.0%). 9 one limitation of this study is non-random response patterns, as brfss response rates vary by state and year but range from 27% (new jersey in 2007) to 69% (nevada in 2010), and willingness to respond may be related to key variables such as weight, health and life satisfaction. 10 while psychologists tend to make a distinction between happiness and life satisfaction, economists tend to use the terms interchangeably (graham et al., 2004). not surprisingly, answers to happiness and life satisfaction questions are closely correlated (graham, 2009). 11 for both descriptive statistics and the regression analysis presented below, i apply the brfss survey weights to adjust for the probability of selection and non-response. 12 including the underweight does not substantially change the results. life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 table 2: average bmi and obesity/overweight across life satisfaction obese overweight or obese average bmi very satisfied 23.2% 62.0% 27.0 satisfied 28.9% 65.9% 27.8 dissatisfied 35.3% 69.4% 28.7 very dissatisfied 38.0% 69.5% 29.1 finally, table 3 below shows average life satisfaction for different weight groups in the sample. those with a healthy weight reported higher life satisfaction than the overweight (but not obese), and the overweight reported higher life satisfaction than the obese. table 3. average life satisfaction across bmi categories healthy weight (25>bmi≥18.5) 3.45 overweight but not obese (30>bmi≥25) 3.43 obese (bmi>30) 3.33 tables 2 and 3 above provide a visual test and show that heavier people are more likely to be dissatisfied with their life, and unhappy people are more likely to be heavy. one obvious empirical issue is that life satisfaction and one’s eating behavior are endogenous. the literature in psychology suggests that there is a reciprocal link between eating patterns and moods.13 often called “emotional eating,” where people may eat fat and sugary foods when feeling unhappy. gardener et al. (2014) find the link between negative emotion and unhealthy food, and fedorikhin and patrick (2010) find that people are likely to choose healthy foods over unhealthy foods (grapes vs. chocolate) when they are in a positive mood. a high level of stress and a low level of life satisfaction are both predictors of weight gain (korkila et al., 1998). however, other studies find that feeling joy is linked to increased consumption of indulgent foods (e.g., bongers et al., 2013). thus, the results of the effects of mood on eating are mixed, and it is not clear how people’s life satisfaction changes their eating behavior. it would be desirable to have instrumental variables for one’s weight status, but in this paper i do not address possible endogeneity, due to the lack of confidence in being able to find a good instrument. thus, despite the wide range of controls included in the regression below, there still remains the possibility of bias.14 i take reported satisfaction with life as a proxy measure for individual utility and run the following regression equations: uic = βobeseic + γxic + θc + εic (1) uic = βoverweightic + γxic + θc + εic (2) where uic is life satisfaction for the individual i in county c. i use two different weight measures: obese (a dummy variable which takes the value of 1 if bmi>30) and overweight (a dummy variable which takes the value of 1 if bmi>25). xic is socioeconomic and health controls, and θc is county fixed effects. including county fixed effects alleviates concern about poverty 13 interestingly, even though the link is clearly reciprocal, recent evidence suggests that foods come first in the link between foods and moods. hendy (2012) found that consumption of calories, saturated fat, and sodium was significantly associated with increase in negative mood two days later. white et al. (2013) find that eating fruit and vegetables one day is associated with a positive mood the next day. 14 another limitation of this study is measurement error in data because self-reported measures of weight and height rather than actual measures are used in the brfss. life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 rates and lack of access to grocery stores, which are often associated with obesity. table a in the appendix shows summary statistics of the variables used in the regression analysis.15 in addition to socioeconomic characteristics, i include obesity-related health variables (heart attack, stroke, current and past smoking,16 and diabetes) and month and year of interview. controlling for health and socioeconomic variables allows us to see the direct effects of overweightness. there are two possible opposing effects of being overweight once health and socioeconomic characteristics are included. first, people enjoy eating, so being overweight should have some beneficial effect on life satisfaction once the adverse health and economic effects are accounted for. second, there may be a direct negative life satisfaction effect of being overweight, as overweight people may psychologically suffer from poor body image. in the regression analysis below, i analyze men and women separately. there is a good reason that the life satisfaction effects of overweight are different for men and women. lay people seem to believe that looks matter more to women than to men, and, consistent with this view, hamermesh and abrevaya (2011) find that the effect of good looks on happiness is larger for women than for men. thus, the negative life satisfaction effect of overweight may be larger for women than for men, if women psychologically suffer more from their body image. also, if there are gender differences in how thinner people achieve more desirable outcomes in the labor market and marriage market (e.g., higher-income spouses), then that can contribute to the gender difference in the life satisfaction effects of overweight. 4. results i run three specifications: exogenous personal characteristics only, socioeconomic variables added, and health variables added. all regressions in this paper allow the error term to cluster at the county level. i use a linear probability model for ease of interpretation, but similar results are obtained from ordered probit models. in the first and second columns in tables 4 below, the result shows a highly statistically significant negative correlation between life satisfaction and obesity for both men and women. being obese is associated on a 4-point scale with a 0.07 points reduction in life satisfaction for men and 0.14 points for women. when socioeconomic characteristics are added, the association between life satisfaction and obesity remains statistically significant for both men and women, but the magnitude shrinks by 0.05 for women. surprisingly, when health characteristics are added, the magnitudes remain virtually the same, indicating that the negative association is robust beyond one’s health status. this finding contradicts that of böckerman et al. (2014), who find that the effect of obesity disappears when health and functional status are controlled for. table 5 below shows the result when overweightness (bmi>25) is used instead of obesity. interestingly, the negative association between life satisfaction and overweightness is not statistically significant for men when only exogenous variables are controlled for but becomes statistically significant when socioeconomic characteristics are controlled for. 15 unfortunately, household income is reported only in terms of income categories. the brfss reports household income in these ranges: less than $10,000, $10,000–14,999, $15,000–19,999, $20,000–24,999, $25,000–34,999, $35,000– 49,999, $50,000–74,999, and $75,000 or above. for estimation purposes, the respondent’s income is first assumed to be the midpoint of the categories or 150% of the top category converted to 2010 year dollars using the cpi obtained from the bureau of labor statistics. for the category “$75,000 or more,” i assigned an annual income of $112,500 (150% of $75,000). the previous studies that used the brfss adopted the same method (ruhm, 2005; tekin et al., 2013). 16 smoking is included because there is evidence that individuals who quit smoking typically gain weight, and an increase in the price of cigarettes has contributed to a rise in obesity (chou et al., 2004). life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 table 4a. life satisfaction and obesity exogenous only socioeconomic added health added (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) dependent variable: male female male female male female life satisfaction β se β se β se β se β se β se obese -0.067 (0.003) * -0.140 (0.003) * -0.060 (0.004) * -0.087 (0.003) * -0.060 (0.004) * -0.087 (0.003) * age/10 -0.022 (0.001) * -0.005 (0.001) * -0.001 (0.001) -0.005 (0.001) * -0.001 (0.001) -0.004 (0.002) * race (baseline white) black -0.113 (0.007) * -0.149 (0.006) * -0.012 (0.007) -0.008 (0.006) -0.007 (0.007) -0.019 (0.005) * asian -0.054 (0.017) * -0.073 (0.011) * -0.073 (0.015) * -0.078 (0.010) * -0.075 (0.015) * -0.096 (0.010) * hispanic -0.048 (0.008) * -0.096 (0.006) * -0.066 (0.007) * -0.025 (0.007) * -0.058 (0.007) * -0.003 (0.006) other/multiracial -0.106 (0.009) * -0.131 (0.009) * -0.035 (0.009) * -0.038 (0.008) * -0.027 (0.009) * -0.035 (0.008) * log income -0.114 (0.003) * -0.117 (0.003) * -0.108 (0.003) * -0.111 (0.003) * marital status (baseline married) divorced -0.197 (0.006) * -0.165 (0.004) * -0.182 (0.006) * -0.148 (0.005) * separated -0.286 (0.016) * -0.235 (0.012) * -0.270 (0.016) * -0.217 (0.012) * widowed -0.157 (0.008) * -0.088 (0.004) * -0.150 (0.008) * -0.081 (0.004) * never married -0.168 (0.005) * -0.118 (0.006) * -0.165 (0.005) * -0.115 (0.006) * unmarried couple -0.121 (0.010) * -0.111 (0.008) * -0.107 (0.010) * -0.095 (0.008) * number of children in household -0.003 (0.002) -0.003 (0.002) -0.002 (0.002) -0.004 (0.002) * educational achievement (baseline high school dropout) high school graduate -0.017 (0.007) -0.013 (0.007) -0.006 (0.007) -0.004 (0.006) college graduate -0.086 (0.008) * -0.084 (0.008) * -0.057 (0.007) * -0.056 (0.007) * employment status (baseline employed for wages) self-employed -0.007 (0.005) -0.020 (0.005) * -0.008 (0.005) -0.020 (0.005) * unemployed -0.205 (0.009) * -0.196 (0.007) * -0.191 (0.008) * -0.184 (0.007) * homemaker -0.070 (0.026) * -0.048 (0.004) * -0.061 (0.026) -0.044 (0.004) * student -0.115 (0.011) * -0.064 (0.010) * -0.099 (0.011) * -0.049 (0.010) * retired -0.105 (0.005) * -0.079 (0.005) * -0.109 (0.005) * -0.076 (0.005) * unable to work -0.338 (0.010) * -0.334 (0.008) * -0.309 (0.010) * -0.305 (0.008) * life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 table 4b. life satisfaction and obesity exogenous only socioeconomic added health added (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) dependent variable: male female male female male female life satisfaction β se β se β se β se β se β se health: heart attack -0.046 (0.006) * -0.049 (0.008) * stroke -0.057 (0.010) * -0.064 (0.009) * diabetes -0.047 (0.005) * -0.032 (0.004) * current smoker -0.133 (0.005) * -0.161 (0.004) * former smoker -0.030 (0.004) * -0.028 (0.003) * no. of observations 600,662 864,557 600,662 864,557 600,662 864,557 *p < 0.01. standard errors are clustered at the county level. all regressions include interview month and year dummies and county fixed effects. life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 table 5a. life satisfaction and overweight exogenous only socioeconomic added (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) dependent variable: male female male female male life satisfaction β se β se β se β se β se β overweight -0.001 (0.004) -0.105 (0.003) * -0.026 (0.004) * -0.067 (0.003) * -0.029 (0.004) * -0.067 age/10 0.021 (0.001) * 0.007 (0.001) * -0.001 (0.001) 0.007 (0.001) * 0.002 (0.001) 0.006 race (baseline white) black -0.118 (0.007) * -0.151 (0.006) * 0.009 (0.007) -0.008 (0.006) 0.005 (0.007) -0.018 asian -0.045 (0.017) * -0.073 (0.011) * -0.070 (0.015) * -0.078 (0.010) * -0.073 (0.016) * -0.096 hispanic -0.051 (0.008) * -0.094 (0.006) * 0.065 (0.007) * 0.027 (0.007) * 0.058 (0.007) * 0.006 other/multiracial -0.107 (0.009) * -0.132 (0.009) * -0.035 (0.009) * -0.038 (0.008) * -0.028 (0.009) * -0.034 log income 0.114 (0.003) * 0.117 (0.004) * 0.108 (0.003) * 0.111 marital status (baseline married) divorced -0.197 (0.006) * -0.166 (0.005) * -0.181 (0.006) * -0.149 separated -0.284 (0.017) * -0.237 (0.013) * -0.269 (0.016) * -0.219 widowed -0.156 (0.008) * -0.088 (0.004) * -0.149 (0.008) * -0.081 never married -0.167 (0.006) * -0.120 (0.006) * -0.165 (0.006) * -0.117 unmarried couple -0.120 (0.010) * -0.110 (0.008) * -0.107 (0.010) * -0.094 number of children in household 0.003 (0.002) -0.003 (0.002) 0.002 (0.002) -0.004 educational achievement (baseline high school dropout) high school graduate 0.016 (0.007) 0.014 (0.007) 0.005 (0.007) 0.004 college graduate 0.089 (0.008) * 0.084 (0.007) * 0.059 (0.007) * 0.056 employment status (baseline employed for wages) self-employed 0.009 (0.005) 0.020 (0.005) * 0.009 (0.005) 0.020 unemployed -0.206 (0.008) * -0.197 (0.007) * -0.192 (0.008) * -0.184 homemaker -0.070 (0.026) * 0.047 (0.004) * -0.062 (0.026) 0.044 student 0.116 (0.011) * 0.063 (0.010) * 0.100 (0.011) * 0.047 retired 0.106 (0.005) * 0.079 (0.005) * 0.110 (0.005) * 0.076 unable to work -0.343 (0.010) * -0.340 (0.008) * -0.313 (0.010) * -0.310 life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 table 5b. life satisfaction and overweight exogenous only socioeconomic added (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) dependent variable: male female male female male life satisfaction β se β se β se β se β se β health: heart attack -0.047 (0.006) * -0.049 stroke -0.057 (0.010) * -0.064 diabetes -0.058 (0.005) * -0.041 current smoker -0.132 (0.005) * -0.160 former smoker -0.030 (0.004) * -0.029 no. of observations 600,662 864,557 600,662 864,557 600,662 life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 this is evidence that, as traditional economic theory suggests, many overweight men are deriving utility from overeating. that is, the negative effect of overweight (i.e., poor health) is offset by the positive effect (i.e., the pleasure of eating). however, for women, being overweight is negatively associated with life satisfaction, whether or not socioeconomic and health characteristics are controlled for. overall, the results above demonstrate that being obese or overweight is associated with lower life satisfaction beyond its effects through health and socioeconomic status. whatever people get in return for being overweight or obese may not be worth the tradeoff, whether it is health, social, or economic. of course, we should keep in mind that the results above do not establish causality, but a simple comparison of the coefficients reveals that the magnitude of the negative association between life satisfaction and being heavy is not trivial. the estimate of the tradeoffs between income and being overweight/obese that will leave people, on average, equally happy, can be calculated by using the coefficients from the regressions. if we naively assume that the effects of the coefficients are causal and use the coefficients from columns 5 and 6 in table 4 and table 5 above, with the sample median income of $49,347, being obese is equivalent to losing $20,998 (or 42.6% of income) for men and $26,901 (or 54.5% of income) for women, and being overweight is equivalent to losing $11,509 (or 23.3% of income) for men and $22,384 (or 45.4% of income) for women. these figures are shown in table 6 below. table 6. illustrative valuations of obesity and overweight % income equivalence median income $49,347 men women men women obese 42.6% 54.5% $20,998 $26,901 overweight 23.3% 45.4% $11,509 $22,384 note: values are calculated from columns 5 and 6 of table 4 and table 5 above. the income equivalence is calculated as [exp(coefficient on obesity or overweight/coefficient on log income)-1], which is then multiplied by median income $49,347. of course, they are only suggestive, as income and life satisfaction are also endogenous, but, given that many people spend a significant portion of their income on weight-loss related goods and services,17 they are not entirely inconceivable. 5. conclusions there is a question whether governments should intervene to reduce obesity, and the debate on government intervention often focuses on obesity as a public health issue. this paper focuses on obesity as a welfare issue. many economists consider that rational individuals trade off health for pleasure and convenience, and oppose government intervention. philipson and posner (2008) summarize the issue with this line of philosophy: “intervention that considers such tradeoffs unworthy of consideration is paternalistic.” nevertheless, other economists think that overweight people are not necessarily making optimal choices when it comes to eating. people often overeat because enjoyment of a meal is immediate, while the consequent weight gain is delayed, and are unable to control their short-term desires for their own long-term wellbeing. 17 in 2015, the average cost of gastric bypass surgery in the united states was approximately $24,000 (bariatric surgery source, 2015). the size of the us weight loss market was $64 billion in 2014 (kell, 2015). life satisfaction, overweightness and obesity kuroki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 this paper finds a robust negative association between life satisfaction and body weight. the author wishes to emphasize that the results above do not establish causality, but they provide some insights into the question – do people eat food beyond the point that is optimal, or are overweight people contentedly fat? the findings suggest that overweight and obese people may not be always making a freely chosen tradeoff, and utility gain from overeating may be more than offset by the disutility from being overweight. while the rationality assumption and the argument for anti-paternalism should not be dismissed, anti-obesity policy should be evaluated not only in the context of the healthcare costs but also in the context of wellbeing. if many overweight people are struggling with self-control problems, effective anti-obesity policies may lead to higher life satisfaction among them. acknowledgments the author thanks an anonymous referee for useful comments. author masanori kuroki arkansas tech university mkuroki@atu.edu publishing timeline received 10 march 2016 accepted 24 july 2016 published 14 september 2016 references bariatric surgery source. 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(2013). an applied framework for positive education. international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 147-161. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i2.2 meredith o’connor geelong grammar school & the university of melbourne moconnor@ggs.vic.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 147 article an applied framework for positive education jacolyn m. norrish · paige williams · meredith o’connor justin robinson abstract: the increasing momentum of the positive psychology movement has seen burgeoning research in positive mental health and adaptive functioning; a critical question is how this knowledge can now be applied in real-world settings. positive education seeks to combine principles of positive psychology with best-practice teaching and with educational paradigms to promote optimal development and flourishing in the school setting. interest in positive education continues to grow in line with increasing recognition of the important role played by schools in fostering wellbeing, and the link between wellbeing and academic success. to date, however, a framework to guide the implementation of positive education in schools has been lacking. this paper provides an overview of the geelong grammar school (ggs) model for positive education, an applied framework developed over five years of implementing positive education as a whole-school approach in one australian school. explicit and implicit teaching in combination with school-wide practices target six wellbeing domains, including positive emotions, positive engagement, positive accomplishment, positive purpose, positive relationships, and positive health, underpinned by a focus on character strengths. the model provides a structured pathway for implementing positive education in schools, a framework to guide evaluation and research, and a foundation for further theoretical discussion and development. keywords: positive psychology, positive education, wellbeing, flourishing 1. an applied framework for positive education there is increasing recognition that good mental and physical health consists of the presence of wellbeing in addition to the absence of pathology and illness (keyes, 2006), and the emergence of the positive psychology movement has seen a significant redirection of scientific inquiry towards the exploration of optimal human functioning (rusk & waters, 2013). a wealth of new knowledge has been generated as a result, but a remaining question is how this knowledge can be applied in real-world settings to promote wellbeing across the general population. this question is particularly salient in regards to young people, given levels of mental health difficulties observed during adolescence and the transition to adulthood that are cause for concern (sawyer, miller-lewis, & clark, 2007). schools are one of the most important developmental contexts in young peoples’ lives, and can be a key source of the skills and competencies that support their capacity for successful adaptation (hamilton & hamilton, 2009). furthermore, schools provide accessible and relatively stable sites within which to locate interventions to promote wellbeing (bond et al., 2007), and represent a common setting for children and adolescents, thus facilitating universal promotion-based interventions (short & talley, 1997). hence, schools are uniquely placed to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 148 promote the wellbeing of young people and of school communities more broadly (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009). capitalising on this potential, positive education is a recently developed paradigm that, broadly speaking, refers to the application of positive psychology in educational contexts (green, oades, & robinson, 2011). seligman (2011) further defines positive education as traditional education focused on academic skill development, complemented by approaches that nurture wellbeing and promote good mental health. in addition, the significant and transformative contribution that best-practice teaching and educational theories bring to the process of applying principles of positive psychology in educational contexts should also be acknowledged. thus, positive education could more completely be described as bringing together the science of positive psychology with best-practice teaching to encourage and support schools and individuals within their communities to flourish. while this goal is relatively clear-cut, the practical implementation of positive education is complex, and to date there has been no empirically-based operational framework to guide its application. in 2008, during a six-month visit by professor martin seligman and with extensive support from a team of international experts, geelong grammar school (ggs) began a pioneering journey in applying positive psychology as a whole-school approach. the purpose of this paper is to introduce the geelong grammar school applied framework for positive education, which provides an empirically-informed roadmap for how positive psychology can be applied and embedded in schools. more specifically, following the approach of page and vella-brodrick (2009) in explicating employee wellbeing, this paper will explore positive education by discussing what flourishing is, why the promotion of positive mental health in schools is so important, and, finally, the practical how of implementation. together, this will provide a structured pathway for implementing positive education in schools, a framework to guide evaluation and research, and a foundation for further theoretical discussion and development. 2. flourishing: what? the fundamental goal of positive education is to promote flourishing or positive mental health within the school community. to achieve this outcome first requires a clear definition of what flourishing is. exploration of what it means to live a good life is frequently characterised as being consistent with one of two philosophical traditions: the hedonic approach and the eudaimonic approach (deci & ryan, 2008). hedonism is a philosophical school of thought that focuses on feelings and experiences (keyes & annas, 2009), and is often associated with the maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation of pain (ryan & deci, 2001). from this perspective, a good life is one where a person frequently experiences positive emotions, and feelings of happiness and satisfaction. eudaimonia as a philosophical tradition posits that happiness results from the actualisation of individual potential and from fulfilling one’s daimon or true nature (deci & ryan, 2008). where hedonic approaches focus on how people feel, eudaimonic approaches focus on what people do, how they act, and the choices they make (keyes & annas, 2009). from a eudaimonic perspective, being psychologically well involves more than feelings of happiness and entails personal growth, giving to others, and living in accordance with values (ryff & singer, 2008). while research has tended to focus on either hedonic or eudaimonic approaches, recently there has been increased recognition that both feeling good and functioning well are important elements of psychological health (keyes & annas, 2009). therefore, recent definitions of flourishing combine hedonic and eudaimonic elements to create a comprehensive and holistic applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 approach. for example, keyes (2002) defines flourishing as comprising three components: (1) emotional (hedonic) wellbeing or the presence of positive feelings about oneself and life; (2) social wellbeing, which includes feeling connected to others and valued by the community; and (3) psychological (eudaimonic) wellbeing that focuses on functioning well. seligman (2011) proposes five elements of optimal wellbeing: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. similarly, diener et al. (2010) define flourishing as a psychosocial construct that includes having rewarding and positive relationships, feeling competent and confident, and believing that life is meaningful and purposeful. while each of these various definitions takes a slightly different approach, the common element is that recent conceptualisations of flourishing recognise that optimal wellbeing is a multi-dimensional and holistic concept, and includes both hedonic (e.g., positive emotions and emotional stability) and eudaimonic (e.g., self-esteem, growth, meaning) components. hence, within the ggs model for positive education, flourishing is seen to reflect both ‘feeling good’ and ‘doing good’ (huppert & so, 2013). feeling good is consistent with hedonic approaches and includes a wide range of emotions and experiences such as feeling content about the past, happy in the present, hopeful about the future, and able to cope with difficult emotions and experiences in a healthy and adaptive way. doing good is aligned with a eudaimonic approach and focuses on equipping students with the skills and knowledge that help them to thrive when faced with both challenges and opportunities. doing good embodies functioning effectively across a wide spectrum of human experiences. also important is a commitment to pro-social behaviours and choices that benefit others and the wider community. the simplicity of the phrase ‘feeling good and doing good’ serves to ensure that even the youngest members of the school community can begin to understand what it means to flourish. flourishing in schools exists on multiple levels. individual students may be considered to be flourishing when they are happy, thriving in their social relationships, achieving their goals with competence and confidence, and making valued contributions to others. a staff member may be flourishing when he or she experiences positive emotions throughout the day, obtains a deep sense of value from his or her work, and feels like a valued member of the school community. a class may be flourishing when students feel included, where the teacher feels confident and satisfied, and where all members of the class feel engaged and committed to learning. a school community may be flourishing when members of the community feel a deep sense of commitment and belonging to the school and the culture promotes positive emotions, effective learning, and social responsibility. hence, the goal of promoting flourishing relates to multidimensional outcomes across multiple levels within the school system. 3. flourishing: why? alongside their homes, schools are one of the most important developmental contexts in students’ lives (gilman, huebner, & furlong, 2009). evidence suggests that relationships with peers and school staff (chu, saucier, & hafner, 2010; hawker & boulton, 2000), and the overall school climate and culture (way, reddy, & rhodes, 2007), are integrally linked with a range of student wellbeing and mental health outcomes. as schools are central to students’ physical and mental health, a whole-school commitment to creating a nourishing environment and cultivating wellbeing is imperative. a focus on flourishing in schools is particularly important because adolescence is a pivotal stage of development that carries implications for functioning over the life-course. adolescence is often viewed as a critical stage in the emergence and trajectory of mental illness (paus, keshavan, & giedd, 2008), and rates of mental health problems, especially depression and applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 150 anxiety, are consistently reported as problematically high (sawyer et al., 2007). equally important to the prevention of ill-health is building good health and wellbeing. the inclusion of flourishing as a valued outcome explicitly recognises that mental health is more than the absence of mental illness, and that young people who do not have a diagnosable disorder may nevertheless not be functioning at their optimal level (suldo, thalji, & ferron, 2011). for example, in a large sample of american adolescents, keyes (2006) found that over half did not meet criteria for flourishing, and rates of flourishing decreased as adolescence progressed. cultivating flourishing may also carry benefits for academic skill development. a common assumption is that a focus on wellbeing within education takes time and resources away from academic pursuits. however, there is good evidence to suggest that students who thrive and flourish demonstrate stronger academic performance. suldo et al. (2011) found that students with higher wellbeing demonstrated the highest grades and lowest rates of school absences one year later. similarly, howell (2009) found that students who were flourishing reported superior grades, higher self-control and lower procrastination than students who were moderately mentally healthy or languishing. in addition, there is consistent evidence that positive emotions are associated with broad, creative, and open-minded thinking whereas negative emotions restrict focus and narrow attention (fredrickson, 2001; fredrickson & branigan, 2005). hence, flourishing is a complementary rather than competing goal with academic development. 4. flourishing: how? the goal of promoting flourishing within schools is clearly a worthwhile pursuit, but how can this be achieved at a practical level? implementation within the ggs model focuses on six domains central to wellbeing—positive emotions, positive engagement, positive accomplishment, positive purpose, positive relationships, and positive health (these areas are defined and discussed below)—underpinned by a focus on character strengths. the wellbeing domains are integrated into the school on three levels, referred to as: live it, teach it, and embed it (see figure 1 below). 4.1 live it, teach it, embed it live it. comprehensive programmes support staff wellbeing and help staff to ‘live’ the skills taught within positive education and to act as authentic role models for students. across the campuses, the vast majority of staff—both teaching and non-teaching—participate in multiday training programmes to develop their knowledge and application of positive education to their personal lives and in their work at the school. refresher workshops are provided for teaching and non-teaching staff each term to develop individual understanding and practice, and the school strives to create a community of practice through activities such as discussion groups and a journal club. teach it. the teaching of positive education helps students to understand key ideas and concepts, engage meaningfully in exploration and reflection, and apply the skills and mindsets for flourishing in their lives. the teaching of wellbeing is further divided into explicit and implicit learning. the explicit teaching of positive education—where students attend regular, timetabled lessons on positive education in the same way that they attend maths and history classes—now occurs in year 5 through to year 10 of the school. initially based on the penn resiliency program (brunwasser, gillham, & kim, 2009) and the strath haven program (seligman et al., 2009), the explicit teaching programme has evolved and grown to reflect a diverse range of skills, knowledge, and mindsets covering the breadth of the model for positive education. applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 151 figure 1. summary of the ggs applied model for positive education positive education is also implicitly embedded into the academic curriculum across a broad range of subjects, creating links between positive psychology concepts and curricula in ways that remain true to core academic objectives. for example, in history, students explore the topic of genealogy through the lens of character strengths by interviewing family members about their own and relatives’ strengths. in art, students are asked to explore the word ‘flourishing’ and to create a visual representation of their personal understanding; and in geography, students examine how flourishing communities can be enabled through the physical environment of towns and cities. teaching pedagogy is also informed by positive education, for example through teaching staff integrating mindfulness practices into their class routines and fostering a growth mindset in their students. embed it. complementary school-wide processes help embed a culture for wellbeing across the school community. some of the most powerful school-wide practices include devoting assemblies or chapel services to character strengths, having ‘what went well’ boards that create visual displays of gratitude, and regularly running projects devoted to random acts of kindness. consistent with a whole-school approach engaged with all stakeholders of the school community, parents are also invited to take part in multi-day, residential training programmes to support their understanding of positive education and personal growth. character strengths. a focus on character strengths, operationalised through the values in action survey (park & peterson, 2006), underpins all of these efforts. peterson and seligman (2004) define character strengths as a ubiquitously recognised subset of personality traits that are morally valued. from a strengths perspective, everyone has unique abilities and capacities that can help them to flourish and perform at their best (wood, linley, maltby, kashdan, & hurling, 2011). individuals who use their strengths have been found to report increased vitality applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 and subjective and psychological wellbeing (govindji & linley, 2007; linley, nielsen, gillett, & biswas-diener, 2010), increased progress towards their goals (linley et al., 2010), and enhanced resilience after stressful events (peterson & seligman, 2003). research also supports the relevance of strengths to children’s wellbeing and healthy development (park & peterson, 2008; rashid et al., 2013). an example of how character strengths are integrated into the programme is discussed below in relation to positive engagement. 4.2 targeted wellbeing domains six broad and interrelated wellbeing domains are targeted within the model. the positive emotion domain encourages individuals to anticipate, initiate, prolong and build positive emotional experiences and accept and develop healthy responses to negative emotions. the positive engagement domain examines pathways to complete immersion in activities to support understanding and experience of optimal functioning. the positive accomplishment domain focuses on developing confidence and competence through striving for and achieving meaningful outcomes. the positive purpose domain develops an understanding of the benefits of serving a greater cause and engaging in activities to support that. the positive relationships domain develops social and emotional skills to enable the development of nourishing relationships with self and others; and the positive health domain aims to help individuals develop a sound knowledge base from which to establish habits that support positive physical and psychological health across the lifespan. these broad overarching domains of wellbeing are targeted through a range of concrete behavioural skill areas. although an exploration of all of the implicit, explicit, and school-wide practices used to support the six wellbeing domains targeted in the model is beyond the scope of this paper, illustrative examples are explored below in relation to each domain. positive emotion. this domain reflects students’ capacities to anticipate, initiate, experience, prolong, and build positive emotional experiences. helping young people to live lives where they experience positive emotions such as joy, gratitude, hope, and inspiration is a worthwhile goal in itself. in addition, recent research has found that experiencing positive emotion has benefits for mental and physical health, social relationships, and academic outcomes (lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005). for example, lyubomirsky et al. (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of 293 studies (resulting in a sample of over 275,000 participants) and found that positive emotions benefited social (e.g., social interactions and relationships), work (e.g., productivity and absenteeism), physical (e.g., immune functioning and vitality), personal (e.g., creativity and energy), and psychological (e.g., resilience, self-confidence, and self-regulation) outcomes. as an example of the explicit teaching of positive emotions, in the year 10 positive education programme at ggs, students learn about broaden and build theory (fredrickson, 2001) to develop their understanding of the benefits and importance of positive emotion. they explore the concept of ‘positivity’ (fredrickson, 2009) as a broader and richer interpretation of positive emotions and look at the positivity toolkit for specific strategies to increase their frequency of experiencing positive emotions day to day. students develop awareness of their own balance of positive to negative emotions by completing fredrickson’s positivity ratio exercise in a variety of circumstances, across different classes, days, activities, and environments. appreciating the danger of promoting the idea that positive emotions and thoughts must be experienced continuously (held, 2004), students are encouraged to cultivate and enhance positive emotions without avoiding, suppressing, or denying negative reactions applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 or emotions. an overarching objective is to help students understand that all emotions are normal, valid, and important parts of life. positive engagement. being engaged involves living a life high in interest, curiosity, and absorption, and pursuing goals with determination and vitality. there is substantial evidence that engagement is associated with wellbeing, learning, and the accomplishment of important goals (froh et al., 2010; hunter & csikszentmihalyi, 2003). engaged individuals are curious (kashdan, rose, & fincham, 2004), interested (hunter & csikszentmihalyi, 2003), and passionate about worthwhile pursuits (vallerand et al., 2003). closely related to engagement is the concept of flow, defined as a state of intense absorption and optimal experience that results from taking part in intrinsically motivating challenges, a key feature of which is a close match between individual skill level and task complexity and challenge (czikszentmihalyi, 1990). flow is conceptualised as the peak experience of engagement when people are most immersed, focused, and energised (bakker, 2005). promoting engagement within the ggs model for positive education focuses on cultivating flow, nurturing intrinsic motivation, and applying signature strengths. an example of developing this understanding in an implicit classroom setting is the application of signature strengths as a path to enriched engagement. wesson and boniwell (2007) propose that using a strengths approach can lead to flow as improved awareness of strengths and can enhance individuals’ perceptions of their skills, thereby increasing the likelihood of challenge-skill congruence. prior to attending camp in term 2, year 6 students at ggs undertake a multi-disciplinary project around character strengths. in their class groups they discuss the 24 via character strengths (park & peterson, 2005), and explore their individual strengths and ways in which they action them. the students then create a representation of their strengths in visual arts by making ‘shields’ that depict their top strengths. back in their class groups, ideas are further developed through discussion about ways in which they could use their ‘shield of strengths’ to engage fully in the camp activities and to support them in overcoming challenges that they may face. helping students to explore and apply their strengths in this way creates pathways towards activities that are consistent with their values and interests and supports the development of student self-efficacy when faced with challenges. positive accomplishment. positive accomplishment is defined as the development of individual potential through striving for and achieving meaningful outcomes, and involves the capacity to work towards valued goals, the motivation to persist despite challenges and setbacks, and the achievement of competence and success in important life domains. research suggests a bi-directional relationship between flourishing and positive accomplishment. mental health is a requisite of effective learning (hendren, weisen, & orley, 1994), and positive emotions contribute to creative and flexible thinking (fredrickson, 2001); in turn, accomplishing worthwhile goals leads to positive emotions and wellbeing (sheldon et al., 2010). helping students to strive for meaningful outcomes and persist despite obstacles is especially important as young people today face challenges such as an increasingly global and competitive workforce. hence, it is essential to help students to develop skills and resources that will allow them to devote effort to important goals, capitalise on opportunities, and cope adaptively with disappointments and challenges. an example is a school-wide practice relating to implicit theories of intelligence. according to dweck (2006), individuals generally embody one of two mindsets: either a fixed mindset, where intelligence and talents are viewed as naturally determined and unchangeable, or a growth mindset, where talent and intelligence are seen as malleable and can be developed applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 further with effort and persistence. dweck (2006) suggests that praise is especially salient in influencing whether a person develops a fixed or growth mindset; specifically, praise focused on effort and persistence (e.g., ‚you worked so hard‛), as opposed to praise focused on abilities or outcomes (e.g., ‚you are so clever‛), is imperative for helping students to develop a growth mindset. this premise has received strong empirical support (mueller & dweck, 1998). at ggs, teaching and non-teaching staff attend a training workshop specifically designed to develop their understanding of mindsets and the significant impact that they have on a broad range of life domains. they are given opportunities to reflect on their mindset in different areas of their lives and are encouraged to explore the strategies developed by dweck and colleagues to promote a growth mindset. teaching staff also participate in a workshop specifically designed to help them to understand recent research on the most effective forms of feedback under different situations. positive purpose. the intrinsic value of contributing to others and the community provides a strong rationale for a focus on purpose within schools. in addition, there is evidence that doing things for others, and having a sense that life is purposeful and meaningful, contributes to students’ psychological and physical health (post, 2005). the importance of purpose in life is reflected in eudaimonic approaches to wellbeing, where a sense of meaning and direction is viewed as integral to optimal health (ryan & deci, 2001). purpose provides people with a central mission or vision for life and a sense of directedness (ryff & keyes, 1995). having a purpose in life has been found to be associated with good physical health, high life satisfaction, and strong social relationships, and to be protective against depression, risky behaviours, and somatic complaints (cotton bronk, hill, lapsley, talib, & finch, 2009; damon, menon, & bronk, 2003). meaning, altruism, and spirituality are explored as pathways to a purposeful and flourishing life with students in year 10 as part of the explicit positive education programme. the following example focuses on work around the concept ‘meaning’. strategies for living a life high in meaning include acting in accord with one’s values (waterman, schwartz, & conti, 2008) and using signature strengths in the service of others (peterson, park, & seligman, 2005). in the year 10 positive education programme students are asked to reflect on what it means to live a meaningful life, to explore diverse sources of meaning, and to consider the complex relationship between meaning and happiness. stories from inspirational people who exemplify meaning in life, such as dr viktor frankl, dame elisabeth murdoch, and jim stynes, are used to stimulate students’ thinking about their own purpose. students are asked to commit to one short-term and one long-term action that would add meaning and purpose to their lives. this in-depth exploration of meaning and purpose enhances the students’ personal experience of participating in community service activities during their time at the school. positive relationships. central to this domain are strong social and emotional skills that help create and promote strong and nourishing relationships with self and others. child and adolescent development does not occur in isolation and social context has a powerful impact on adaptive and healthy growth (bronfenbrenner, 2004). there is an abundance of evidence suggesting that social support is integral to wellbeing and mental health. for example, social isolation is a risk factor for depression, substance abuse, suicide, and other symptoms of mental ill-health (hassed, 2008). supportive school relationships have been linked with child and adolescent wellbeing and resilience (stewart, sun, patterson, lemerle, & hardie, 2004). social relationships have also been found to be important predictors of subjective wellbeing (myers, 2000), and meaning in life (hicks & king, 2009). there is substantial evidence that, in addition to benefits for mental health and wellbeing, social support is good for physical health (uchino, applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 cacioppo, & kiecolt-glaser, 1996), and for student accomplishment (wentzel & caldwell, 1997). the following example related to positive relationships focuses on a school-wide practice relating to active-constructive responding (acr). acr refers to responding to others’ good news with authentic, active and supportive interest in order to build strong relationships (gable & reis, 2010). at ggs, acr is taught to staff and all senior school students and has become invaluable in nurturing supportive communication and positive social interactions. according to gable, reis, impett, and asher (2004), reactions to good news that are active and constructive enable capitalising, which takes place as people tell their story and re-live and savour the experience, enhancing the positive emotions drawn from it. students and staff roleplay different types of responding and discuss ways to authentically engage in acr with their peers. they are then given time to become fully absorbed in a discussion with a partner where they can practise listening mindfully and respectfully and capitalising on good news. applied learning such as this encourages staff and students to be genuinely and sincerely supportive of the accomplishments of their family, friends, colleagues and peers. positive health. there has been an increased focus on holistic health in recent times, whereby the entire person is considered as an integrated and interconnected entity (hassed, 2008). within the ggs model, health is defined as practising sustainable habits for optimal physical and psychological health. health is important for effective learning and there is evidence that students who thrive physically and psychologically also perform well in their studies (who, 2011). the importance of promoting mental and psychological heath is also underscored by high rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems during adolescence (sawyer et al., 2007). in addition, developing positive health behaviours in adolescence can carry a beneficial impact over the life course in preventing adverse health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. health is a broad and comprehensive concept, ranging from physical health (such as healthy sleeping and eating habits), to psychological health (including resilience), and the model takes account of the strong interconnection between physical and mental wellbeing. the following example related to positive health focuses on resilience in the explicit year 9 positive education programme. resilience refers to the capacity to bounce back from challenges to adaptation or development (masten, 2001). the penn resiliency program (prp; gillham et al., 2007), is a school-based resiliency programme underpinned by the cognitive-behavioural framework. the programme aims to enhance resilience and prevent depression by teaching young people social problem solving skills and cognitive and behavioural skills including cultivating an optimistic explanatory style, disputing automatic negative thoughts, and generating alternative actions when faced with challenges (gillham et al., 2007), and has received consistent empirical support (brunwasser et al., 2009). year 9 students at geelong grammar school complete their academic year at timbertop, a full boarding campus based in the victorian highlands. alongside a full academic curriculum, there is a focus on exploring the natural environment through hiking, running, camping, and skiing. during this year, students spend one lesson per fortnight studying positive education, particularly focusing on learning a set of resilience skills, based on the prp, which can be applied to the real-life challenges that arise during a student’s timbertop journey. 5. issues for further exploration the ggs model for positive education is underpinned by a growing body of research on the nature and promotion of optimal developmental pathways. however, rigorous evaluation is applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 now needed to explore the impact of positive education programmes on students, staff, and the school community (norrish & o'connor, in preparation). to this end, ggs is currently embarking on a three-year longitudinal research programme under the direction of dr dianne vella-brodrick from the university of melbourne and associate professor nikki rickard from monash university. the study will follow year 9 students across three years from 2013 to 2015 to determine the effects of positive education on students’ daily functioning and wellbeing using a mixed methods approach, including surveys, biosamples, focus groups, and experience sampling to understand how students are applying skills ‘in the moment’. recent funding will also allow an exploration of how the programme translates to other school settings. this research will provide invaluable insight into how various activities and strategies influence students’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours as they go about their daily lives. better understanding of the critical elements of the programme will also help in prioritising areas of implementation in other schools. character strengths can be illustrated in concrete behavioural examples and so provide an accessible entry point for exploring wellbeing, particularly with younger children. the aim is to develop a shared language for strengths across the school community, creating a sense of belonging and connectedness. a focus on spotting strengths in the self and in others helps people of all ages to develop self-confidence and enrich social interactions. possible applications of character strengths in schools are virtually endless, and further consideration should be given to exploring creative ways in which character strengths can be used to support students’ wellbeing, ranging from how young children can learn acceptance of others to how senior students can make more informed choices about their further study and careers. as noted previously, the ggs model ultimately aims to promote flourishing across multiple levels of this school system, at both an individual and institutional level. however, most research to date has focused on understanding positive education at the level of individual students, probably because there have been so few schools implementing positive education as a whole-school approach, thus providing limited opportunity to explore systemic elements (seligman et al., 2009). research is now needed to contribute to understanding of the school as a positive institution, including what a flourishing school looks like and how positive organisational functioning can be promoted (kristjánsson, 2012). similarly, while the focus of this applied framework has been at the individual level, further exploration is needed as to how this model could be utilised to understand pathways to organisational thriving. this will have important implications for maximising programme sustainability as positive education becomes ingrained at the institutional level. 6. conclusions as the field of positive psychology progresses and the mechanisms and predictors of flourishing are more fully understood, the question moves to how this knowledge can be used to improve society. in this regard, schools are uniquely placed to teach positive psychology to wide audiences, thereby moving closer towards mentally and physically thriving individuals, communities, and societies. the ggs model provides a flexible framework through which schools can identify areas in which they are already doing well and targets for improvement. capacity in each domain is cultivated through a whole-school approach that involves explicit and implicit learning in the classroom and positive practices integrated throughout school life. the ggs model for positive education facilitates the planning, implementation, and evaluation of knowledge derived from positive psychology within school settings, providing a sustainable and flexible framework for moving towards flourishing school communities. applied framework for positive education norrish, williams, o’connor, & robinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 157 acknowledgements we wish to thank all staff, visitors and academics who have generously contributed their time and expertise to the development of positive education at geelong grammar school. we would also like to warmly acknowledge the contribution of robyn brook, who worked closely with the authors in initially conceptualising this framework. this research was funded by geelong grammar school, australia, which provided personnel support for all named authors. conflict of interest statement all named authors are employees of geelong grammar school, victoria, australia. authors jacolyn m. norrish geelong grammar school paige williams geelong 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(2016). implicit theories of personal and social attributes: fundamental mindsets for a science of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 113-130. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.529 andrew j. howell macewan university howella@macewan.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 article implicit theories of personal and social attributes: fundamental mindsets for a science of wellbeing andrew j. howell abstract: this paper argues for the fuller incorporation by wellbeing researchers of the implicit theories framework developed by social psychologist carol dweck and colleagues. this framework emphasises the role of entity (“fixed”) and incremental (“growth”) mindsets regarding personal and social attributes in the prediction and causation of psychological outcomes, including outcomes directly germane to feeling good and functioning well. correlational, longitudinal, experimental, and meta-analytic findings are used to illustrate links between implicit theories and seligman’s dimensions of wellbeing: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. several research and practice implications of the implicit theories framework for the science of wellbeing are forwarded, such as the study of implicit theories of wellbeing and of interventions aimed at cultivating growth mindsets regarding wellbeing. keywords: implicit theories, incremental mindset, entity mindset, wellbeing, carol dweck 1. introduction a theoretical framework that is closely related to flourishing, thriving, and fulfilment; to learning, growth, and development; and to effort, dedication, and resiliency would reasonably be expected to appear often among perspectives considered fundamental to the field of wellbeing studies. such an expectation would be bolstered by the framework’s strong empirical support and its successful application to real-life contexts such as schools, the workplace, and relationships. it may therefore come as a surprise that just such a framework of understanding — the social psychological implicit theories framework — receives limited attention within the science of wellbeing and closely related fields of study. for example, the theory’s core concepts (e.g., entity and incremental mindsets) make no appearance in rusk and waters’ (2013) comprehensive bibliometric analysis of key terms characterising positive psychology. the current article strives to advance the greater incorporation of implicit theories research, theory, and interventions by the field of wellbeing studies. in nearly three decades of research and theory development, carol dweck and colleagues have spearheaded the discovery of numerous correlates and consequences of the extent to which personal or social attributes, such as ability, personality, relationships, and emotion regulation, are viewed as fixed or malleable (dweck, 1999, 2012; dweck, chiu, & hong, 1995; dweck & leggett, 1988). people who endorse an entity theory (or fixed mindset) perceive such attributes as relatively stable; for example, some people adopt a view of personality as immutable. people who endorse an incremental theory (or growth mindset) perceive such attributes as amenable to ongoing development; for example, some people adopt a view of personality as malleable. importantly, people’s implicit theories — beliefs that are “deeply held, but rarely articulated” http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 (molden & dweck, 2000, p. 140) — have numerous implications for subsequent psychological functioning; broadly speaking, evidence suggests that adoption of an incremental mindset, relative to an entity mindset, is associated with more adaptive cognitive and behavioural consequences, such as greater resilience when confronted with adversity (dweck et al., 1995). the current paper seeks to underscore the relevance of the implicit theories framework to the science of wellbeing by illustrating how implicit theories research is pertinent to each element of seligman’s (2011) multidimensional wellbeing theory: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (i.e., perma). seligman (2011) and jayawickreme, forgeard, and seligman (2012) conceptualise positive emotion as the regulation of both positive and negative emotion in order to maximise positive emotional experience; engagement as the setting of and striving toward goals that allow one to be challenged by, to be interested and absorbed in, and to exert mastery over what one is doing; relationships as the maintenance of positive interactions with others; meaning as contributing to something beyond oneself; and accomplishment (or achievement) as the attainment of success within a particular performance domain. the rationale for employing wellbeing theory (i.e., the perma model) as a framework for considering the importance of implicit theories for wellbeing studies is manifold. first, wellbeing theory includes aspects of both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing; while positive emotional experience is especially relevant to feeling well, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment are characteristics of living well (jayawickreme et al., 2012). second, the perma dimensions overlap significantly with alternative wellbeing theories, such as the dimensions of ryff’s (1989) psychological wellbeing. finally, wellbeing theory is bolstered by recent empirical work (coffey, wray-lake, mashek, & branand, 2016; kern, waters, & adler, 2015; lambert d’raven & pasha-zaidi, 2016), including support for the theorised structure of wellbeing. the following sections address, in turn, how findings from implicit theories research relate to positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. in each case, a sample of research is reviewed to illustrate the pertinence of implicit theories to the particular wellbeing dimension. given that the purpose of the current article is simply to make the case that the implicit theories framework is highly relevant to the study of wellbeing, no attempt is made to review such research exhaustively; however, where available, meta-analyses are reviewed in order to establish the robustness and generalisability of findings. the discussion of implications following each section is also intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive; a fuller consideration of several key implications of the implicit theories framework for the study of wellbeing occurs in a later section. 2. implicit theories research and dimensions of wellbeing 2.1 positive emotion implicit theories are relevant to emotional experience in two key ways: first, people with incremental and entity mindsets differentially experience positive and negative emotion as they function within various domains (e.g., interpersonal interactions, academic pursuits). second, emotional experience is itself an attribute for which people hold implicit theories concerning its malleability or immutability. much research has examined how implicit theories predict emotional experience within various realms of functioning. as a recent example, yeager et al. (2014) presented correlational and experimental evidence showing that among us high school students, implicit theories of personality differentially predict emotional reactions to a computer-based social rejection experience. in a longitudinal study, those with an entity mindset (i.e., those who endorse items implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 such as “bullies and victims are types of people who really can’t be changed”) experienced more anxiety and stress and a less positive view of themselves in response to social rejection compared to those with an incremental mindset. moreover, later in the school year, global stress was higher and both physical health and achievement were lower among students with an entity mindset. in two subsequent experimental studies, american high school students were led to adopt an incremental mindset of attributes related to peer conflicts by reading information suggesting that neither victims nor bullies are “fixed” in their ways, by reading testimonials of more senior students regarding how an incremental mindset can help during peer conflicts, and ultimately by writing a narrative of this perspective that they were led to believe would be presented to younger students. cultivation of an incremental mindset led to less anxiety and stress, and to a more positive self-view, in response to social rejection (and to less global stress, better health, and higher achievement later in the year), thereby demonstrating the causal impact of implicit theories on emotional experience and additional outcomes. two recent meta-analyses support the general association between implicit theories and emotional experience. burnette, o’boyle, vanepps, pollack, and finkel (2013) examined the association between implicit theories and the experience of both negative emotions and positive expectancies during the self-monitoring of progress toward goals. across 13 studies, an entity mindset was significantly and positively associated with negative emotional experience (r = .23). across 43 studies, an incremental mindset was significantly and positively associated with positive emotional expectancies, such as optimism (r = .15). schleider, abel, and weisz (2015) examined the association between implicit theories and numerous indices of youth distress and mental health problems. across 17 studies, the entity mindset was significantly and positively associated with mental distress (r = .25). therefore, there is robust evidence that a fixed mindset is predictive of negative emotional experience, suggesting the possibility that the cultivation of an incremental mindset is a route toward optimal emotional experience. the science of wellbeing also stands to gain insight into adaptive emotional functioning from recent work concerning implicit theories of emotion; that is, the extent to which people view their emotional propensities as fixed or mutable. those with an incremental theory of emotional experience may derive emotional and other benefits from such a mindset relative to those with an entity theory of emotional experience. tamir, john, srivastava, and gross (2007), in a longitudinal study of american students transitioning into university, showed that those with a fixed view of emotions (i.e., endorsing items such as, “no matter how hard they try, people can’t really change the emotions that they have”) engaged in poorer emotional self-regulation during the transition, experienced fewer positive and more negative emotions over a 10-week period, and had lower psychological wellbeing at the end of their first year of studies. in two additional studies with american undergraduate students, an entity theory of emotion predicted less reliance on cognitive reappraisal as an emotion-regulation mechanism along with reduced selfesteem and life satisfaction (de castella et al., 2013) and greater use of emotional avoidance (kappes & schikowski, 2013). to examine the causal impact of implicit theories of emotion, kneeland, nolen-hoeksema, dovidio, and gruber (2016) experimentally manipulated incremental and entity beliefs regarding emotion by having undergraduate students in the us read a series of arguments as to why emotion can be viewed as malleable or as fixed, respectively. in order to induce feelings of social anxiety, participants next gave an audioand video-recorded speech that, they were told, the investigators would watch at a later time. finally, participants rated their use of cognitive reappraisal and suppression as emotion-regulation strategies during their speech. results showed that those led to view their emotional experience as malleable made greater use of implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 cognitive reappraisal during the stressful speech task than those led to view their emotional experience as fixed. no differences arose concerning the use of suppression. 2.1.1 summary and implications there is evidence that less adaptive emotional functioning is associated with viewing attributes such as personality and ability as fixed, and that adopting a fixed view of emotional experience itself is associated with less adaptive emotion regulation and lower wellbeing. wellbeing researchers could play a significant role in extending these lines of research. for example, research is needed on the extent to which implicit theories predict emotions following positive experiences and on the possibility that positive emotion itself fosters incremental mindsets (e.g., perhaps as one aspect of the broadening function of positive affect; fredrickson, 2001). with respect to implicit theories of emotional experience, studies are needed on whether incremental theories of positive emotions such as joy or hope are associated with adaptive outcomes, and whether people can hold contrasting implicit theories for positive versus negative emotions. finally, as discussed later, it may be that there are trait and state variations in people’s implicit theories of wellbeing (i.e., beyond emotional experience), such that an incremental view of wellbeing is associated with, and perhaps promotive of, positive emotional experience and positive functioning. 2.2 engagement there are two important ways in which implicit theories are relevant to engagement. first, implicit theories affect goal adoption, with goal types differing from each other with respect to their adaptive nature. second, implicit theories affect goal striving, with subjective experiences during goal pursuit varying from helplessness to mastery. since goal adoption and goal striving are highly relevant to positive personal functioning, an increased understanding of the role of implicit theories in such goal-related processes may carry important implications for wellbeing studies. dweck and colleagues (dweck, 1999; dweck et al., 1995; dweck & leggett, 1988) posited that an entity mindset promotes the adoption of performance-related goals (i.e., goals concerned with demonstrating one’s fixed level of competence relative to the performance of others), whereas an incremental mindset promotes the adoption of mastery-related goals (i.e., goals concerned with developing one’s alterable level of competence relative to an absolute standard). research supports the predicted associations between implicit theories and goal adoption. for example, cury, elliot, da fonseca, and moller (2006) conducted two studies in which they assessed temporal relationships among implicit theories and achievement goals. in a longitudinal field study, french adolescents completed measures of implicit theories concerning math ability (e.g., “one has a certain level of ability in math, and there is not much one can do to change it”), and, at a later date, achievement goals. results showed that an entity mindset predicted the endorsement of performance goals, whereas an incremental mindset predicted the endorsement of mastery goals. in a second study by cury et al. (2006), french adolescents participated in a laboratory-based experiment in which they were randomly assigned to read either an entity or an incremental account of a specific cognitive ability that was the focus of a task they had just completed. they then completed a measure of their goals for an upcoming performance on the same task. consistent with the results of study 1, those led to have an entity mindset, relative to those led to have an incremental mindset, were more likely to adopt performance goals and less likely to adopt mastery goals. notably, both studies by cury et al. (2006) also showed systematic implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 associations between implicit theories and task performance, such that an incremental mindset was associated with higher performance than an entity mindset (see below re: the wellbeing dimension of accomplishment). these studies indicate that there may be advantages to the promotion of incremental beliefs regarding ability, as such beliefs foster adoption of goals toward the development (and not just demonstration) of one’s competence. people also differ in the manner in which they approach their goals; such differences in goal striving (in addition to goal adoption) are predictive of important outcomes. in an experiment pertaining to the role of implicit theories in goal striving, nussbaum and dweck (2008, study 1) induced incremental and entity mindsets concerning intelligence among american undergraduate students. participants were then told that they performed at the 37th percentile on a speed reading task. finally, participants were invited to choose to examine strategies ostensibly used by other students who performed better or worse than they themselves had performed. results showed that students induced to adopt an entity mindset chose to examine strategies employed by others whose performance was poorer, whereas students induced to adopt an incremental mindset chose to examine strategies employed by others whose performance was better. therefore, incremental mindsets are associated with more adaptive goal striving following adversity. in the meta-analysis of burnette et al. (2013), an incremental mindset was shown to be significantly and positively associated with mastery goals (r = .19 across 36 studies) and significantly and negatively associated with performance goals (r = -.15 across 30 studies). the pertinence of implicit theories to goal striving was also revealed in the meta-analysis of burnette et al. (2013); specifically, an incremental mindset was inversely related to helpless-oriented strategies such as procrastination (r = -.24 across 19 studies) and positively related to masteryoriented strategies such as planning (r = .23 across 35 studies). notably, burnette et al. (2013) also showed that associations between implicit theories and both goal adoption and goal striving were moderated by the presence or absence of a personal setback, or “ego threat.” an incremental mindset was more strongly associated with mastery-related goals and masteryrelated tactics under conditions of ego threat. 2.2.1 summary and implications there is robust evidence of associations between implicit theories and both goal setting and goal striving, with incremental mindsets being reliably more associated with adaptive goal choice and adaptive strategy choice relative to entity mindsets. from the standpoint of wellbeing research, it would be informative to examine whether a well-documented marker of task engagement, the experience of flow (csikszentmihalyi, 1996), is associated with implicit theories regarding that particular performance domain. for example, a sense of personal control is one marker of flow experiences, a feature that characterises an incremental mindset more than an entity mindset. perhaps those prone (or led) to harbor incremental beliefs regarding their task performance would experience moments of flow more frequently than those harboring entity beliefs. wellbeing researchers could also consider the role of implicit beliefs within their own goaloriented theories and goal-oriented interventions. as an example, king’s (2001) best possible selves intervention involves people imagining the future self toward which they most aspire; this practice is associated with boosts in wellbeing. people’s implicit theories regarding attributes emphasised in their future selves (e.g., ability level) may moderate the impact of such an intervention; that is, people may differ in the extent to which they view their future selves as malleable, with incremental beliefs regarding future possible selves associated with higher gains in wellbeing relative to entity beliefs. moreover, the cultivation of an incremental mindset implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 regarding future possible selves may serve to increase the impact of the best possible selves intervention. 2.3 relationships two ways in which implicit theories affect relationships are considered herein. first, people hold implicit theories regarding the extent to which their relationships are fixed or malleable. second, people hold implicit theories regarding the extent to which those with whom they interact are amenable to change. both sets of beliefs are associated with significant implications for the quality of one’s relationships. given the focus upon relatedness and belongingness as key markers of a life well-lived, the role of implicit theories in this life domain holds significant import for a science of wellbeing. knee (1998) initiated the study of implicit theories regarding romantic relationships more than 15 years ago. in their reviews of this literature, knee, patrick, and lonsbary (2003) and knee and petty (2013) characterise growth beliefs as a mindset wherein relationships can be maintained and conflicts overcome through effort and problem-solving, whereas they characterise destiny beliefs as a mindset wherein relationships either are or are not “meant to be” (see also the work-itout and soulmate beliefs identified by franiuk, cohen, & pomerantz, 2002). growth beliefs are assessed with self-report items such as “the ideal relationship develops gradually over time,” whereas destiny beliefs are assessed with such items as “to last, a relationship must seem right from the start” (knee et al., 2003, p. 43). research by knee, patrick, vietor, and neighbors (2004, study 1) illustrates important outcomes predicted by destiny and growth relationship mindsets. american undergraduates involved in romantic relationships completed measures of growth and destiny beliefs, relationship conflict, and relationship commitment. they then completed a diary entry for every disagreement that they experienced with their partners over a 10-day period, rating both the extent to which the problem was resolved and their momentary level of relationship commitment. findings revealed that those higher in growth beliefs, relative to those lower in growth beliefs, remained more committed to relationships, despite unresolved disagreements with their partner. additional findings corroborate that implicit theories of relationships are predictive of important outcomes. chen, dewall, poon, and chen (2012) showed that a destiny mindset is associated with more anger and aggression in response to ostracism. cobb, dewall, lambert, and fincham (2013) showed that a growth mindset in romantic and nonromantic relationships predicted lower relationship violence. overall, there is converging evidence that growth beliefs regarding relationships are associated with adaptive outcomes, particularly within the context of relationship challenges. with regard to implicit theories of others’ behavior, research reveals that an incremental mindset toward others is associated with more benign perceptions of others’ transgressions. yeager, trzesniewski, tirri, nokelainen, and dweck (2011, study 3) randomly assigned finnish adolescents to read either an article aimed at inducing an incremental mindset toward bullies or a control article. in the incremental condition, the article described a protagonist who was bullied and who subsequently learned that bullies could come to change their characteristics. participants then rated their desire for vengeance; they judged characterological as well as more situational and developmental attributions for bullying; and they rated the degree to which they would feel shame, sadness, and hatred toward the transgressor. results showed that the induction of an incremental mindset led to reduced desire for revenge, and that this was mediated by reduced “bad-person” attributions and reduced feelings of shame and hatred. implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 implicit theories are associated also with the tendency to make hostile attributions for another’s ambiguous behavior. in a recent meta-analysis, yeager, miu, powers, and dweck (2013) showed that, among eight independent samples of american students in grades 8 through 10, an entity mindset predicted a hostile attribution bias (r = .18) and desire for vengeance (r = .23) in response to either a hypothetical or a simulated social exclusion. greater civility appears to correspond with viewing another’s behaviour as less trait-like and more malleable. 2.3.1 summary and implications studies demonstrate that an incremental mindset regarding relationships is associated with adaptive relationship outcomes, such as ongoing commitment during times of conflict. the role of implicit theories regarding relationships has been under-investigated within the context of harmonious or pleasant interactions with relationship partners; here, future work could examine whether incremental beliefs regarding relationships are related to beneficial interactions, even in the absence of relationship challenges. future investigations could also examine whether other adaptive relationship processes, such as active-constructive responding in response to a partner’s recent success or forgiveness in response to a partner’s recent transgression, are associated with incremental beliefs regarding relationships. future work is also needed on whether motivation for, or amenability to, relationship-oriented interventions is affected by the extent to which relationships are viewed as fixed or malleable. finally, research is needed on whether the inculcation of growth mindsets regarding relationships strengthens intimate partnerships. the reviewed research also shows that an incremental mindset regarding the behaviour of others is associated with a more pro-social, tolerant response to them. here, the role of implicit beliefs regarding others’ behaviour within the context of positive interactions with others needs investigation. from the standpoint of wellbeing interventions, it would be fruitful to consider whether the impact of interventions aimed at improving interpersonal functioning are moderated by individual differences in implicit beliefs regarding others. for example, parents who are led to adopt views that emphasise their children’s amenability to growth, development, and change may be more responsive to positive parenting interventions relative to parents who hold more fixed views of their children’s characteristics. finally, those interested in studying workplace interactions could follow up findings that incremental beliefs among managers concerning employee functioning are predictive of managers’ subsequent commitment to coaching those employees (heslin, vandewalle, & latham, 2008). 2.4 meaning two ways in which implicit theories are pertinent to the wellbeing dimension of meaning are, first, that implicit beliefs may foster transcendence beyond the self (the aspect of meaning emphasised by seligman, 2011), and, second, that implicit theories generally affect the meaning with which experiences are imbued. according to wong (2011), these two aspects of meaning represent a major source of meaning (self-transcendence) and a major function of meaning (understanding, including self-understanding). wellbeing researchers’ understanding of meaning may benefit from incorporating findings concerning the role of implicit theories in meaning-making. with respect to the self-transcendent aspect of meaning, there is evidence that an incremental mindset can be more conducive to helping others and to viewing others as similar to oneself in comparison to an entity mindset. in two studies, karafantis and levy (2004) recruited 5th and 6th graders in the us to complete measures of implicit theories concerning the malleability of personality, their attitudes towards disadvantaged children, and their volunteer activities. implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 results showed that those with an incremental mindset reported more positive attitudes toward disadvantaged children and a greater propensity for helping others. therefore, an incremental view of others was predictive of transcending self-interest for the sake of others’ welfare. in a series of seven studies, schumann, zaki, and dweck (2014) showed that individual differences in, and manipulations of, implicit theories concerning the malleability of one’s empathic response to another predicted empathic effort in challenging situations. in their sixth study, for example, schumann et al. (2014) manipulated an incremental or entity mindset regarding empathy among american undergraduate students, and then had students estimate the number of hours they would be willing to contribute to a campus-wide cancer campaign, including a high-effort activity (i.e., volunteering at a social support group for those with cancer) and two lower-effort activities (i.e., volunteering at a cancer awareness booth or at a walkathon). results showed that those induced to adopt a malleable view of empathy volunteered a greater number of hours than those induced to adopt a fixed view of empathy, but only for the higheffort activity. therefore, incremental mindsets predict greater expression of empathy toward others when such empathy may otherwise be lacking. concerning the function of meaning in facilitating understanding, implicit theories are viewed as affecting the overall interpretation and significance that people place on their experiences (molden & dweck, 2000, 2006). plaks, levy, and dweck (2009) argue that implicit theories provide people with “cornerstones of meaning” in that entity and incremental mindsets involve additional beliefs which “cohere into structured meaning systems that help individuals to construct a rich understanding of a person’s behavior…” (p. 1070). given that a key aspect of understanding is self-understanding (wong, 2011), findings that illustrate that implicit theories affect self-conceptions following self-relevant experiences are of particular importance. for example, in a series of studies on american 5th graders, mueller and dweck (1998) showed that receiving praise for one’s intelligence following successful task performance, relative to praise for one’s effort, generated a pattern of responses to a subsequent failure experience indicative of a negative self-view, including attributing the setback to lack of ability and concealing the poor performance from others. therefore, encouraging an entity mindset relative to an incremental mindset regarding successful performance created a unique cascade of self-understanding in response to later adversity. a more recent test of the effects of implicit theories on self-related inferences in response to adversity was provided by lilgendahl, mclean, and mansfield (2013). community-residing adults in the us completed a narrative of a trauma incident and of a transgression incident from their past. these incidents were coded as to the extent to which they revealed healthy meaningmaking (i.e., themes of “self-growth”) or unhealthy meaning-making (i.e., themes of either a “damaged self” or a “bad self”). participants also completed a measure of implicit theories of personality. results showed that an incremental mindset regarding personality was associated with more self-growth themes in trauma narratives and fewer bad-self themes in transgression narratives. these findings are consistent with the notion that implicit theories provide a route through which adverse experiences come to be associated with either healthy or maladaptive self-understandings. an additional line of research further underscores the meaning-making function of implicit theories. in a series of experiments, plaks, grant, and dweck (2005) showed that people are motivated to regain their implicit theory (be it an incremental or entity mindset) when that theory is threatened by the provision of theory-contradicting information. this suggests that implicit theories are associated with compensatory responses when threatened, consistent with the implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 meaning maintenance model (e.g., proulx & inzlicht, 2012), and, more generally, with the view that implicit theories provide meaning and coherence to experience. 2.4.1 summary and implications implicit theories are related to meaning: an incremental mindset encourages greater selftranscendence (an important source of meaning-making), and an incremental mindset is associated with a more benign self-view following adverse experiences (an important function of meaning-making). wellbeing research and practice stand to benefit from further exploration of the impact of growth and fixed mindsets on meaning-making. for example, self-transcendence in the form of selflessness or a quietened ego may reflect more malleable views of the self; such selflessness is argued to be a marker of authentic wellbeing (i.e., contentment and inner peace; dambrun & ricard, 2011). as another example, implicit theories regarding positive empathy (i.e., reactions to others’ positive feelings; sallquist, eisenberg, spinrad, eggum, & gaertner, 2009) are ripe for future investigation, building upon extant findings concerning the role of implicit theories in empathic responses toward others’ negative feelings. the findings of lilgendahl et al. (2013) and of mueller and dweck (1998) provide an impetus for considering the role of implicit beliefs in extracting meaning from positive life events, as studies have thus far focused upon the construal of negative life events. future work could also examine meaning-related interventions and the possible role of the cultivation of incremental mindsets in the facilitation of adaptive responses to adversity, and, possibly, heightened selfacceptance. wong’s (2010) meaning therapy, for example, combines approaches from several psychotherapeutic traditions, including existential therapy and positive psychotherapy, to support and inspire the client’s potential for hope and growth in the face of personal limitations or challenges. it may be that adopting a view of the self as malleable is an important process within such a therapeutic approach. 2.5 accomplishment a great deal of research underscores a significant association between implicit theories (e.g., of ability) and various achievement-related outcomes. specifically, as suggested by previously reviewed studies by yeager et al. (2014) and by cury et al. (2006), an incremental mindset is frequently associated with higher achievement than an entity mindset, a pattern of findings with important implications for the work of those who value accomplishment as a component of wellbeing. as a further example, blackwell, trzesnieski, and dweck (2007) conducted two studies in which the longitudinal trajectory of adolescents’ math performance was assessed in relation to their implicit theories of ability. in the first study, first-year junior high school students in the us completed measures of implicit theories, mastery goals, effort beliefs, helpless attributions in response to hypothetical failure, and positive strategy use in response to hypothetical failure. math grades in the fall and spring of grade 7 and 8 served as criterion variables. results showed that an incremental mindset was associated with the endorsement of mastery goals and effort beliefs, and with lower helplessness and greater use of positive strategies after failure. moreover, an incremental mindset predicted attainment of higher math grades during the transition into junior high school relative to an entity mindset. finally, path analysis showed that the association between an incremental mindset and math attainment was mediated by the motivational variables of mastery goals and positive effort beliefs, as well as by lower helpless attributions and higher positive strategy usage following failure. implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 in a second study by blackwell et al. (2007), 7th grade students in the us were randomly assigned to experience either an eight-session intervention aimed at bolstering an incremental mindset about math ability or a control intervention. results showed that the induction of an incremental mindset regarding math ability positively affected students’ subsequent math grades (by stemming the decline in math grades otherwise observed among control participants). these studies suggest a significant role for the inculcation of an incremental mindset in fostering academic achievement. the large-scale meta-analysis by burnette et al. (2013) confirmed a significant association between incremental beliefs regarding ability and achievement (r = .09 based on 55 studies). the small magnitude of this effect is in line with the theoretical expectation that implicit theories especially exert their influence in response to adversity (i.e., adversity moderates the association between implicit theories and achievement; burnette et al., 2013). 2.5.1 summary and implications those who view their ability level as malleable and as amenable to development ultimately perform at a higher level than those who view their ability level as fixed and invariant. research could further examine the role of implicit theories in goal attainment outside of the academic domain, such as the workplace (i.e., positive organisational scholarship; cameron & spreitzer, 2012), community service, and the playing field (dweck, 2007). also, the science of wellbeing could more fully incorporate the concept of an incremental mindset into its attempts to both predict and promote goal attainment. for example, the use of coaching to promote goal attainment could be evaluated to determine the role within such an intervention of incremental mindsets regarding performance. grant, curtayne, and burton (2009) showed that a cognitivebehavioral and solution-focused coaching intervention applied to public health executives generated high goal attainment, resilience, and wellbeing; because these outcomes are associated with incremental mindsets, it is possible that some of the effect of the intervention was mediated by change in implicit beliefs. 3. implicit theories: further implications for wellbeing studies to summarise, implicit theories research reveals that an incremental mindset is related to adaptive emotional experience, and that construing emotional experience itself as malleable is also adaptive. implicit theories research on engagement and accomplishment shows that an incremental mindset is associated with adaptive goal setting and goal striving, and with higher levels of goal attainment. in the domain of relationships, an incremental mindset relative to an entity mindset is associated with more adaptive problem resolution in romantic relationships and with more benign views toward others. with respect to meaning, an incremental mindset, more than an entity mindset, is associated with transcendence of the self, and, more generally, with a pattern of sense-making in which personal setbacks are handled in a manner conducive to a positive self-view. there are several ways in which the implicit theories framework may contribute to the general advancement of the field of wellbeing studies. first, evidence reviewed here suggests the possibility that an incremental mindset is a defining feature of flourishing (i.e., feeling good and functioning well; keyes, 2005). indeed, such a mindset resembles the psychological wellbeing dimension of personal growth, described by ryff (1989) as characterising an individual who is “continually developing and becoming, rather than achieving a fixed state wherein all problems are solved” (p. 1071) and considered by ryff to be the wellbeing dimension most resembling aristotle’s eudaimonia (i.e., the realisation of one’s potential). the incremental mindset was also implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 identified by huta (2016) as an important aspect of eudaimonic functioning. in this vein, future work could examine the nomological web of associations between incremental and entity mindsets, on the one hand, and indices of eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing, on the other. moreover, researchers may be interested in studying the antecedents of an incremental mindset (e.g., in socialisation experiences) and the consequences of such a mindset in terms of additional adaptive processes or outcomes (e.g., greater optimism). a second implication concerns the focus, especially within positive psychology, on the identification and development of character strengths. indeed, according to wellbeing theory, positive feeling, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment all stand to benefit from the identification and application of one’s strengths of character (seligman, 2011). although not directly applied to strengths of character, implicit theories research shows that attributing a person’s successful or unsuccessful performance to a personality trait (i.e., a character strength) rather than to effort encourages a fixed mindset regarding that performance, resulting in low resilience (mueller & dweck, 1998; rattan, good, & dweck, 2012). this suggests that identifying a person’s psychological assets as characterological has potential drawbacks, a prediction borne out in recent research. louis (2011) had undergraduate participants complete either an intervention aimed at talent identification or one aimed at strengths development. the former intervention focused upon identifying students’ innate talents, whereas the latter intervention focused upon the development of talents through effort. students’ generalised implicit theories were assessed both preand post-intervention. results showed that students in the talent identification condition evidenced reduced incremental beliefs from preto post-intervention, whereas no such change occurred in the strengths development condition. these findings are in line with the notion that an emphasis on innate talent fosters a fixed mindset and risks underemphasising the significant and necessary role of effort in converting personal talent to personal strengths. further research could aim to extend these effects, such as by examining whether interventions aimed at strengths development are, in part, mediated by change in implicit theories toward reduced entity or enhanced incremental mindsets. third, the numerous and substantial ties between implicit theories research and wellbeing studies also point to the potential role of interventions aimed at improving individual and interpersonal functioning that are based upon the implicit theories framework. in fact, the intervention of inducing incremental mindsets among students to improve academic persistence and performance is now recognised among a list of so-called wise psychological interventions, defined as brief, precise interventions aimed at allowing people to flourish by addressing specific underlying psychological processes (walton, 2014, p. 73). wellbeing scholars would themselves be wise to incorporate interventions based upon implicit theories, premised upon the significant accumulation of experimental findings in which changes in mindset are followed by changes in positive feeling and positive functioning. for example, one could devise an intervention aimed at the cultivation of an incremental mindset across several domains of functioning (e.g., achievement, relationships, emotional functioning), the impact of which could be evaluated on various aspects of flourishing. fourth, given that wellbeing theorists are increasingly interested in understanding positive functioning under adverse circumstances (e.g., wong, 2011), recent work concerning implicit theories of situations raises important implications for future investigation into people’s views toward life’s adversities. cohen-chen, halperin, crisp, and gross (2014) showed that incremental views of long-entrenched intergroup conflicts (e.g., “under certain circumstances and if all core issues are addressed, the nature of conflicts can be changed,” p. 69) predicted both hope and conciliatory attitudes, and that the induction of an incremental mindset regarding such implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 conflicts caused increased levels of hope and conciliation. these studies suggest a potentially fruitful line of investigation of people’s implicit theories regarding situations that they must confront and bear, and the extent to which such theories are predictive of adaptive expectations, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. for example, an incremental mindset regarding an aging parent’s illness or an ongoing threat of job loss may predict heightened hope and resiliency. moreover, the induction of such a mindset may positively impact a person’s coping capacity. it may also be adaptive to hold an incremental mindset regarding an upcoming positive circumstance, such as a vacation, in that such a mindset involves looking forward to an event while allowing that it may not unfold exactly as planned. fifth, more research is needed on the conditions under which one mindset is or is not more adaptive than the other. mcnulty and fincham (2010) provided cogent examples of seemingly adaptive psychological processes (e.g., forgiveness, optimism) that are maladaptive under certain contexts. with respect to implicit theories, findings reviewed herein are supportive of the view that incremental mindsets are often more adaptive than entity mindsets, consistent with an argument put forth by schneider (2001): “…a bias in favour of anticipating controllability …. may be more adaptive – and arguably more rational – than a neutral position” (p. 260). however, drawbacks of an incremental mindset have been identified: dweck et al. (1995) argued that an incremental mindset is more effortful and complex than an entity mindset; burnette et al. (2013) identified contexts wherein the self-regulatory strategies associated with an incremental mindset (e.g., mastery goals) are less efficient and effective than those associated with an entity mindset; knee and petty (2013) identified that persisting with a growth view of one’s relationship in the face of partner maltreatment may be highly disadvantageous; and knee et al. (2004) argued that destiny (entity-like) beliefs regarding romantic relationships carry potential benefits, such as imbuing the relationship with special meaning. more research examining the conditions under which incremental mindsets are or are not adaptive is required to refine and specify interventions aimed at their cultivation. 4. implicit theories of wellbeing a final implication of the implicit theories framework for the science of wellbeing is considered more extensively: people may hold implicit theories of wellbeing that are predictive of important wellbeing outcomes. just as researchers differ in the extent to which they view wellbeing as amenable to change (lyubomirsky, sheldon, & schkade, 2005), such variability likely characterises laypeople. some people likely hold a fixed mindset regarding wellbeing, believing that wellbeing is invariant and immutable. others may hold an incremental mindset regarding wellbeing, believing that it is alterable and amenable to growth. an incremental theory of wellbeing may be more adaptive than an entity theory of wellbeing, given the general advantage of incremental over fixed mindsets in numerous domains. indeed, a recent series of studies showed that people who viewed wellbeing as malleable had higher wellbeing than those who viewed it as fixed; moreover, those exposed to arguments in favour of the malleability of wellbeing (e.g., the role of attitudinal factors in wellbeing) endorsed activities conducive to wellbeing to a greater degree than those exposed to arguments in favour of the fixity of wellbeing (howell, passmore, & holder, 2015). in further research along these lines, incremental and entity mindsets concerning wellbeing could be measured or manipulated in order to examine whether they are associated with differential engagement in, and responsiveness to, wellbeing interventions. implicit theories may moderate people’s openness to engage in beneficial activities and their likelihood of a positive therapeutic response. it is also possible that the impact of wellbeing interventions is mediated by a change in implicit beliefs toward greater malleability. implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 in addition, it may be informative to devise and test a full-fledged intervention aimed at the longer-term cultivation of an incremental mindset toward wellbeing. following the manner in which incremental mindsets have been induced in previous research (e.g., yeager et al., 2014), an incremental mindset toward wellbeing could be cultivated by exposing participants to information regarding the malleability of wellbeing, having participants read about others who have intentionally and successfully altered their level of wellbeing, and having them write persuasive communications to convince others to adopt a malleable view of wellbeing. such a growth-oriented mindset could then be assessed for its enduring impact on measures of positive feeling and positive functioning. moreover, the influence of such a mindset could be examined under conditions of adversity, such as the experience of stress, to examine whether adversity moderates the impact of wellbeing mindsets on wellbeing outcomes. potential pitfalls of wellbeing mindset inductions also require consideration; for example, it will be important when cultivating an incremental mindset regarding wellbeing to emphasise the malleability of wellbeing rather than the valuing of wellbeing, given evidence that overly valuing happiness can reduce people’s positive affect (mauss, tamir, anderson, & savino, 2011) and induce feelings of loneliness (mauss et al., 2012). an intervention aimed at cultivating an incremental mindset regarding wellbeing may be conceptualised within lyubomirsky and layous’ (2013) positive-activity model. this model concerns the impact of intentional cognitive and behavioral activities on wellbeing. the model specifies mediators of such effects, including positive emotions, positive thoughts, and positive behaviors, and it identifies moderators of such effects, including various features of the activity (e.g., its duration and frequency) and of the individual (e.g., baseline levels of wellbeing). therefore, the testing of an intervention aimed at cultivating incremental beliefs regarding wellbeing could take place within the positive-activity framework in order to best comprehend how, with whom, and under what conditions its effects can be maximised. 5. summary, limitations, and conclusions studies reviewed herein — including correlational, longitudinal, experimental, and metaanalytic approaches with participants across several countries and different age groups — illustrate how implicit theories are associated with the perma wellbeing dimensions of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. it bears emphasising that there are aspects of wellbeing that are not captured by the perma framework; therefore, the relevance of the implicit theories framework to these domains was not examined herein. in addition, there are models of wellbeing that differ significantly from the perma framework, such that the relevance of implicit theories to these alternative conceptualisations remains uncertain. however, some research reviewed above showed that implicit theories are associated with additional concepts and processes of interest to a wide array of wellbeing researchers, including life satisfaction, civility, empathy, and tolerance. in yet other research, the implicit theories framework has been applied to additional attributes associated with wellbeing, including creativity (e.g., ramos & puccio, 2014), self-control (job, dweck, & walton, 2010), positive youth development (vella & gilbert, 2014), and leadership (burnette, pollack, & hoyt, 2010). therefore, numerous characteristics of adaptive functioning are predicted by peoples’ implicit theories. this paper also presented implications for future research arising from the application of implicit theories research to the perma wellbeing dimensions. moreover, it more extensively outlined several lines of research to further explore the role of implicit theories in wellbeing, including further testing of the novel concept of implicit theories of wellbeing, evaluating an implicit theories and wellbeing howell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 intervention aimed at cultivating an incremental view toward wellbeing, and exploring whether implicit theories regarding wellbeing moderate or mediate the impact of existing wellbeing interventions. these and other implications strongly point to the potential value of the implicit theories perspective for wellbeing studies. finally, and of even broader import, the implicit theories framework — with its emphasis on growth, resilience, and flourishing — is consistent with recent calls for those who study “the good life” to more fully address the interplay among positive and negative attributes and experiences, including the process of growth following adversity (wong, 2011), and with recent evidence that resilience, growth, and wellbeing are three of the most investigated concepts within the field of positive psychology (donaldson, dollwet, & rao, 2015). the implicit theories framework appears to warrant greater recognition regarding its relevance to the understanding of human flourishing by the science of wellbeing. acknowledgments i thank nancy digdon, russell powell, holli-anne passmore, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. author andrew j. howell macewan university howella@macewan.ca publishing timeline received 16 may 2016 accepted 2 august 2016 published 14 october 2016 references blackwell, l. s., trzesniewski, k. h., & dweck, c. s. 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(2011). adolescents’ implicit theories predict desire for vengeance after peer conflicts: correlational and experimental evidence. developmental psychology, 47(4), 1090-1107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0023769 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963721413512856 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10879-009-9132-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022511 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2012.722805 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036335 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12062 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0023769 givel, m., (2015). mahayana buddhism and gross national happiness in bhutan. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 14-27. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.2 michael givel university of oklahoma mgivel@ou.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 article mahayana buddhism and gross national happiness in bhutan michael givel abstract: in 1972, the fourth king of bhutan announced that gross national happiness was more important than gross domestic product. in this paper, the basic conceptual features of mahayana buddhism are discussed particularly as they relate to the mahayana buddhist view of happiness. the primary purpose of mahayana buddhism is to spread happiness and compassion to everyone in the world. this includes that by awakening to the ultimate truth, one obtains greater clarity and insight about the true nature of the universe, leading to internal peace and happiness. as this paper shows, the goal of modern gross national happiness is also based on mahayana buddhist principles to increase happiness for everyone. this occurs through governmental policies and programs that promote material needs balanced with becoming enlightened. keywords: bhutan, gross national happiness, public policy, mahayana buddhism introduction mahayana buddhism, which was the state religion of bhutan in the early 1970s and still has a substantial influence today, has been intricately entwined with culture and politics, including gross national happiness (gnh), in bhutan. in this paper, i will provide an overview of the mahayana buddhist view of happiness and how it impacts gnh. a deep understanding of mahayana buddhism provides an important basis to understand why and how gnh operates as a primary policy influence in modern bhutan. when shakyamuni buddha (formerly prince siddhartha) found enlightenment around or after 400 b.c.e. after six years of striving and one night of meditating under the bodhi tree in what is now northeastern india, the new religion of buddhism emerged. 1 buddha’s awakening brought forth a religious movement that was grounded in the principal belief that profound suffering exists in the world. this suffering can be resolved by following buddhist dharma or law that facilitates happiness and bliss (armstrong 2004; assavavirulhakarn 2010; batchelor 2010; keown 2013; leighton 2012; mcgovern 1922; mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003; d. t. suzuki 1968). in buddha’s first sermon, he identified suffering as all-pervasive in life (morgan 2010). he saw the fundamental bases of suffering as the need to survive day-to-day existence, illness, aging, and death. as it was written in the dhammacakkapavattana sutta, which is buddha’s first sermon after finding enlightenment: 1 there is no general scholarly consensus on the exact date that the buddha found enlightenment. a number of scholars, though, regard the date of enlightenment to be near his death, approaching 400 b.c.e. see also: gethin, foundations of buddhism, 1998, 13-14 and gombrich, 1988, 32 for general comments. to get the details see heinz bechert 1982, "the date of the buddha reconsidered" indologia taurinensia 10, pp. 29-36. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 suffering, as a noble truth, is this: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering — in short, suffering is the five categories of clinging objects. buddhists believe that suffering also occurs through the selfish and mindless craving of sensual pleasure and material wealth and power by individual egos, which may cause evil deeds (armstrong 2004; batchelor 2010; keown 2013; leighton 2012; mitchell 2008; smith & novak 2003). buddhists have further identified additional reasons suffering continues, including past conditioning to expect suffering and ignorance of the ultimate reality of existence or the ultimate truth. the ultimate truth, which has also been referred to as nirvana (which means “to extinguish desire”), enlightenment, or the awakening, is a state of transcendent metaphysical reality, and the attainment of this state of happiness is the ultimate goal of buddhism (french 2002). in buddhism, the ultimate truth cannot be described, but may be understood only through direct insights, which may come through meditation approaches. only the ultimate truth is permanent. the ultimate truth is the realm beyond death and is the infinite nature of the ultimate reality of the cosmic universe. there is no ultimate reality in the cosmic universe except cosmic emptiness or shunyta.2 by awakening to the ultimate truth, buddhists believe every sentient being can possess peace, bliss, joy, and happiness (gethin 1998; leighton 2012). the understanding of the ultimate truth is, in a general sense, a move toward significant comprehension of the true nature of the universe (gethin 1998; leighton 2012). for all buddhists, the ultimate truth is beyond syllogistic logic and meaning, and within the ultimate truth, all space-time limitations disappear as they are ordinarily experienced by humans (gethin 1998; leighton 2012). paradoxically, however, the rigorous use and traditions of logic and argumentation in some mahayana buddhism is required to obtain the ultimate truth and happiness. in the universe all matter, energy, and time is interrelated and in constant fluid fluctuation (gethin 1998; keown 2013; leighton 2012). within mahayana buddhism, a metaphor of the ocean is an important illustration of this principle. the ocean is absolute, stable and changeless, but the waves are always changing. in much the same way, reality in the here-and-now appears to be based on a unified and observable universe. however, this seemingly unified nature of the universe can also be compared with modern theories of physics, such as einstein’s special theory of relativity or quantum physics, where there are underlying and complex interactions between space, matter, and time that reflect a complex and ever-changing universe. when a sentient being experiences the ultimate truth of the ever-changing universe even paradoxically through rationalist logic, they have liberated themselves from all causes of suffering, including greed, hatred, and delusion, and they enter into a state of clarity, happiness, and peace. by perceiving ultimate truth and eliminating egotism in the form of greed, hatred, and delusion, happiness and enlightenment ensues (goodman 2008). karma, in buddhism, which means willful actions or the fruits of actions, is the everlasting law of cause and effect that is an essential ingredient in knowing the ultimate truth (williams 2008). karma pertains to happiness in the following ways. ultimate happiness is obtained 2 in mahayana and tibetan buddhism, one major position by mipham and others holds that the nature of emptiness and ultimate reality is not knowable. but elements of reality, such as matter and energy, do exist and can be grasped by humans. in contrast, the gelupka school in mahayana buddhism believed that reality is unknowable and encompasses a negation of all worldly corporeality (phuntsho 2013). mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 through enlightenment. positive karma results in higher rebirth, bringing one closer to nirvana. the vipaka (result) ripening of karma (deeds) leads to greater happiness, joy, and bliss when a person is reborn. in part, buddhism acquired the karma idea from vedic hinduism, but endowed it with further ethical constructs (morgan 2010). adherents of vedic hinduism, particularly the upanishads, as early as the first century b.c.e. believed that good moral actions by humans turned a person into a good being in the next life while bad moral actions turned a person into a bad person in the next life. under karmic law, which functions as a natural law in the changing and interdependent universe, good or bad deeds have consequences for rebirth and nature, including the happiness of sentient beings (mitchell 2008). karma’s impact in buddhism is not rigid, as it responds on a continual basis to a sentient being’s good or bad deeds (morgan 2010). a sentient being’s present character cannot nullify the consequences of an individual’s misdeeds in past lives but creates better karma to offset bad karma. in particular, four acts that counter past bad karma are remorsefulness, the resolve not to commit an action again, actions to restore justice for past bad actions, and acts of holding another in loving-kindness (morgan 2010). mindfulness of one’s actions can have an important positive effect on future rebirth as a sentient being, including greater happiness. as explained in 2007 by dasho karma ura, president of the centre for bhutan studies in thimphu: because of the discursive nature of karma, all are part of an intricate web. karma is simultaneous and is constantly being revised in all of our interactions with one another. such a view of interdependence sufficiently motivates us to forget our own narrow existence, changing us such that we begin to engage meaningfully with others and pursue collective happiness. by recognizing the true nature of interdependence, one can see that all karma is collective, that all enlightenment is collective, and therefore that happiness and the policies required to promote it must be oriented toward collective achievement (ura 2012). according to buddhists, without awakening to the ultimate truth and happiness and bliss, humans remain on the ever-moving wheel of life (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). additionally, the cravings for sensual pleasure and material wealth and power represented by the wheel of life, are not permanent fixtures of human existence and doing good karmic acts will increase happiness and wellbeing (french 2002). the wheel of life pushes us from one moment of our life to the next, and from one lifetime to the next, within the realms of human, animals, asura or jealous gods, hungry ghosts, and ultimately heaven and hell. yama, the deity of death, holds the wheel of life (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). the outer wheel is divided into a 12-fold chain of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada), which represents the causes and effects of karma that does not bring greater happiness (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). at the top of the wheel is a blind man who represents ignorance. moving clockwise, the potter represents action. next is the monkey, which is symbolic of a consciousness unable or unwilling to comprehend the ultimate truth. three men in a boat represent a vehicle that can carry a sentient being across a body of water of growing consciousness of the ultimate truth and through life. houses with doors and windows are symbolic of the ability to sense reality. lovers represent the ability to engage in sensual impressions of reality. a man with an arrow stabbing his eye is representative of blindness to feeling itself or the feelings accompanying sensing the reality of the ultimate truth. alcoholic drinking represents the non-productive thirst for sensual pleasure. similarly, the monkey in the tree is illustrative of a consciousness fixated on ego-oriented desires. a pregnant woman mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 indicates that the birth of a child and eventual old age will bear karma’s burden of good and bad throughout a lifetime. contained in and connected with the outer wheel of life is the second wheel, which represents the six realms of existence. these include heavenly, asura, animal, hell, hungry ghosts and human realms (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). the six realms are metaphorical representations of conditioned existence or samsara. these realms are classified as dukkha or suffering being temporary and not perfect. entry into one of the six realms is based on karmic deeds, good or bad. bad deeds and decreased happiness, upon rebirth, means entry into the asura realm, where there is envy and greed for power. bad deeds also lead to the animal realm in which a sentient being is hunted or slaughtered; the hell realm where suffering is harsh and very long; and hungry ghosts, due to past transgressions, are doomed to suffer insatiable hunger and thirst that cannot be quenched due to past unrelenting material greed. good deeds lead to the heavenly realm where there is continual happiness, pleasure, and no suffering. entry into the human realm is based on both past good and bad deeds, which reflect a sentient being’s current human condition including, for instance, their social prestige and status. all of these realms are inhabited by sentient beings upon rebirth based on their past record of karma. from the buddhist perspective, being caught on the wheel of life means to continue to exist in the everyday realm without realizing or awakening to the ultimate truth (snelling 1998). however, in each of the six realms there is a bodhisattva shown to assist all sentient beings toward obtaining the ultimate truth and happiness. in mahayana buddhism, who remains in this world works to enlighten all and spread happiness and bliss (gethin 1998; keown 2013; leighton 2012). a bodhisattva is not yet a buddha and not yet awakened. bodhisattvas are bodhicitta or the "mind of awakening" with a goal of achieving buddhahood. finally, the third, innermost wheel represents the core reasons for negative karmic designations and decreased happiness. these are known as the three venoms: greed, hatred, and delusion. the poison of those trapped in everyday existence rather than knowing the ultimate truth energizes each of these venoms. this is represented by sentient beings caught within the six realms in the second wheel. ultimately, humans can exit the wheel of life including the third wheel and find bliss and happiness by becoming enlightened. 1.1 the eightfold path the eightfold path is followed in order to lead an ethical life and thus to end ones’ suffering, leading to happiness and the ultimate truth. the eightfold path is the ongoing condition of obtaining increasing bliss and happiness (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). the path is divided into three parts (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). sila encompasses proper physical actions and refraining from improper deeds of body and speech. samadhi focuses on meditation practices, which help to gain the mastery over ones’ own mind necessary to achieve the ultimate truth. prajña offers insight into the true nature of the ultimate truth. contained within sila are right speech, right action, and right livelihood (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). right speech is required because words have an impact on others, and also influence spiritual development. it is important to speak charitable words that are truthful, pleasant and benefit others (morgan 2010). for the buddha, this meant avoiding falsehoods, slander, harsh words, or gossip (morgan 2010). abstaining from false speech is important to happiness because lies are motivated either by greed, by which the suffering of material attachments is increased; hatred, by which it is intended for other people to suffer; or delusion, as in an exaggeration or joke, and by which rationality is abandoned and replaced by ignorance. abstaining from slanderous speech is important because such speech is meant only to foster ill mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 feelings and alienating division. either the motivation to hurt another’s reputation or to win favor for your own ego is perverse and should be quelled. happiness comes through cooperation, not self-interest and denigration. abstaining from harsh language is important because it is born of anger, and aims to cause pain of some kind. a person who has controlled his own mind has no need for such expressions of enmity. gentle words foster understanding, cooperation, and ultimately, happiness. abstaining from idle chatter is important because if people talk of things, which have no depth or importance, they are more likely to find their minds wander into areas which are perverse or undesirable, which the mind will then feed on in unhealthy fantasy. words should be chosen carefully in order to not diminish their meaning. followers of this tenet should also try to avoid useless information in order to keep their minds unclouded in their path to understanding. the overarching goal of speaking right words is to create a foundation to establish peaceful relationships with all sentient beings (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). right action means moral action that avoids causing harm to any sentient being in whatever one does (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). right actions are not only what actions a person should not do, but also what actions a person should do. exhibiting compassion for all embodies this. incorporated in right action is the moral code of the five precepts, which call for people to respect and cherish life and respect others (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). buddhism places a heavy emphasis on the need to end destructive acts and to end dissatisfaction in the world through action. abstaining from the taking of life is important because, aside from the obvious suffering that comes from the act of killing (the harm to the being itself, the emotional weight of the act of killing, and the grief of those who knew the victim), killing, like lying, comes from greed, hatred, or delusion, all of which hinder one’s ability to find personal contentment. the opposite of the inclination to kill is deep compassion and sympathy for other sentient beings, and this type of love leads to widespread happiness. abstaining from taking what is not given (through stealing or deceit) is important because buddhism values contentment with what one has, and giving up ties to the material world. theft in any form comes from greed or hatred, both of which diminish happiness. abstaining from sexual misconduct (having relations with a married or engaged person, a convict, one who is underage, those under a vow of celibacy, or close relations, or any intercourse which occurs by force) is important because according to the guidelines given in buddhism partnerships, which constitute misconduct directly, this hurts someone in the process. in its most extreme form, the celibacy of nuns and monks represents the purity of thought required to reach enlightenment, which should not be clouded with distracting sexual thoughts. right livelihood includes engaging in occupations that do not cause harm, pain, or injustice for others (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). the buddha included engaging in the sale of weapons, harming animals, and producing intoxicants as examples of harmful types of livelihood. also, one should not make more money than one needs, as this could lead to deception and exploitation of others (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). the promotion of economic equality under gnh allows for people who may otherwise, due to their poverty, feel the need to resort to dishonest or directly harmful livelihoods to branch out into other facets of the economy, and to make an honest and productive living, while being able to support themselves and their family. the work one does should ultimately spread compassion to all sentient beings. within samadhi are another three parts of the noble eightfold path: right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. right effort includes making use of meditation practices, which overcome negative or unwholesome states of mind. these meditation efforts should occur mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 on an ongoing basis (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). right effort also includes ridding oneself of the desire to commit unwholesome acts (mitchell 2008). right effort involves the release of energy, which can be used in pursuit of “desire, aggression, violence, and ambition on the one hand, and generosity, self-discipline, kindness, concentration, and understanding on the other” (access to insight). this means that, specifically, when energy is focused on the elimination of suffering, it promotes happiness, and this concentration is right effort. right mindfulness is having a keen sense of awareness about what is happening in the present (gethin 2004; snelling 1998). this includes focusing on feelings, the body, current consciousness, and unwholesome thoughts through meditation practices (morgan 2010). meditation is essential for the mind to stay on the eightfold path because it focuses on feelings and thoughts from the past and idealizes what might happen in the future (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). mindfulness through meditation is the kind of objective awareness that allows one to see into the true nature of the universe as well as to gain understanding of buddhist teaching in the present. this stage of focus is closely tied to experiencing enlightenment, the ultimate happiness. right mindfulness is “the only way,” to indicate that a positive range of experiences are nothing without the insight granted through right mindfulness, and it is thus the key to sustaining one’s earthly happiness. right concentration requires that the focus of the mind is free of distraction so it will be clear and sharp enough to reach full realization of the ultimate truth. this process requires great patience and focus, and requires continual meditation. key approaches to training the mind in right concentration are mastering tranquility and insights into reality (mitchell 2008). this stage unifies the other mental factors in becoming enlightened. it blocks out all distractions and focuses the mind on a single point for the greatest level of comprehension, given that the absence of ignorance and the presence of intense self-knowledge lead ultimately to happiness. right concentration is necessary to sharpen the ability of the other elements to the point at which they are able to penetrate into the true meaning of things. this understanding is where happiness comes from, either from the knowledge that the material world holds no bearing on personal satisfaction, or from the acceptance and application of the four noble truths. through right concentration, mental and emotional peacefulness ensue, which foster realization of the ultimate truth (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). prajña is the wisdom, which purifies the mind and allows awakening to the ultimate truth. within prajña are the final two parts of the eightfold path, right understanding and right thought. right understanding is obtaining clear insight into the impermanence of the world, understanding how ego leads to greed and even evil, and comprehending every aspect of the dharma, or law, of the buddha (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). right understanding includes agreement with the four noble truths and the development of a deep awareness of dissatisfaction in the world (mitchell 2008). acceptance of the four noble truths leads to the understanding and elimination of suffering, which in turn leads to happiness. right thought includes developing freedom from states of mind that include greed and desire to harm others. right thought also focuses on refraining from unwholesome thoughts. conversely, right thought also focuses on concern for the suffering of others (mitchell 2008; morgan 2010; smith & novak 2003). renunciation of the material world fosters happiness in oneself by eliminating personal suffering due to desire and ego. kindness and compassion foster happiness in others. refusing to harm others limits the amount of suffering allowed to thrive in a society. by faithfully practicing the eightfold path, a person moves towards greater happiness, compassion, and joy. mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 1.2 buddhism after the lifetime of the buddha a number of scholars believe about three months before the buddha died at the age of 80 and entered paranirvana, or final liberation, the first buddhist council convened in rajgir, then capital of the kingdom of magadha, to maintain buddha’s teachings (harvey 2013). most of magadha is located in the modern indian state of bihar, which also includes bodh gaya where the buddha found enlightenment and happiness (harvey 2013). after the buddha reached parinirvana or final nirvana, his body was cremated, and his ashes were buried under eight stupas, or chortens, as they are called in tibet and bhutan. stupas or chortens symbolize buddha and his passage into nirvana upon his death (harvey 2013). two other stupas contained the urn and ashes of the buddha. stupas depict a crowned buddha sitting in a meditation position on a lion throne and are an important icon in buddhism. during the first buddhist council, the conveners divided buddha’s teachings into three baskets, known as the tripitaka (mitchell 2008). the sutra pitaka or the basket of discourses provides advice by the buddha on meditation techniques and requirements and contains instruction by the buddha on training the mind. another set of teachings is the basket of discipline, which contains more than 225 rules of conduct for monks and nuns. finally, like many buddhist teachings, the basket of higher knowledge contains buddha’s insights into the nature of reality, including obtaining enlightenment and happiness (morgan 2010). during the second buddhist council, which was held about 100 years after the first buddhist council, simmering divisions in the monastic community reached a boiling point, which initiated a process that resulted in a schism in buddhism (assavavirulhakarn 2010; morgan 2010; b. suzuki 1948; d. t. suzuki 1968).while there is not complete scholarly consensus as to what caused the schism, a number of scholars believe that the dispute between the sthaviras and the mahāsāṃghikas centered on the nature of what was the vinaya. vinaya, which is the path out of suffering by becoming, enlightened and happy, is the regulatory framework for the sangha or buddhist religious community. the third buddhist council is thought to have been convened in pataliputra by king ashka in 250 b.c.e. not all scholars believe the third buddhist council actually happened, as there are no written records of the proceedings (morgan 2010). however, oral buddhist traditions affirm that it did occur. the primary purpose of the third buddhist council was to purge “unworthy monks”(mitchell 2008; morgan 2010). subsequently, theravada buddhism originated in sri lanka in the first century c.e. and became firmly established by the third century c.e. (lopez 2001; snelling 1998). mahayana buddhism developed in china and india in the first century c.e. and was firmly established by the fourth century c.e. (lopez 2001; snelling 1998; b. suzuki 1948).theravada buddhism is primarily practiced in modern day southeast asia and sri lanka. mahayana buddhism is predominantly in central and east asia, including bhutan, tibet, and china as well as korea, japan, and vietnam (morgan 2010). 2. the mahayana worldview the core beliefs of mahayana buddhism deal with the impermanence of reality, non-dualistic reality, egoless reality, karma, transmigration or rebirth, and the ultimate truth. the mahayana view of impermanence includes fluidity of all spirit and matter (gethin 1998; keown 2013; leighton 2012; williams 2008). impermanence is essential, as it represents how matter and energy are formed, endure, and decay in the universe (gethin 1998; keown 2013; leighton 2012; williams 2008). like all forms of buddhism, mahayana also focuses on the process of uncovering insight into the ultimate truth (kakol 2002). mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 from the perspective of mahayana buddhism, the ultimate truth of the universe is based on the non-duality of reality (gethin 1998; keown 2013; leighton 2012; williams, 2008), meaning that all in the universe is interconnected. non-duality also means that all binary opposites will or can be eliminated. any perceived dualities are based on illusions or doubts about the ultimate nature of the universe. dualities must be eliminated in order to obtain enlightenment, or knowledge of the ultimate truth (c. t. dorji 2008). mahayana buddhists also believe that all of reality is egoless. there is no rigidity in personalities, as they are subject to complex changes. nor does mahayana recognize the judeochristian concept of the soul (williams 2008). in mahayana buddhism all reality is impermanent. from this perspective, humans also have no permanent self or soul as they go from rebirth to rebirth (harvey 2013). by contrast, in judeo-christian beliefs, the soul is the spiritual part of a human that is immortal and is often thought to survive beyond death (editors of encyclopedia britannica 2010). additionally, in mahayana, those that possess an ego are subject to suffering in the form of greed, craving for unnecessary things, undue political power, and even evil, all of which prevent them from obtaining enlightenment. thus, one of the goals of mahayana buddhism is to counter and eliminate egoism. transmigration in mahayana reflects the karma that sentient beings have obtained in past lives. under transmigration, there is a causal link between the deeds of the current life and the quality of the next one. the accumulation of good and bad acts in a lifetime provides the condition for a future birth (snelling 1998). if a being’s life is filled with bad karma, they may be reborn in a hellish realm. ultimately, positive karma is an important end goal of mahayana buddhism, and it is embodied in all aspects of the eightfold path. when a sentient being comprehends the ultimate truth, there is a cessation of suffering and a destruction of the seeds of future rebirth based on good or bad karmic deeds (lopez 2001). 2.1 differences between mahayana and theravada worldviews beyond the core values of buddhism, there are a few key fundamental differences between mahayana and theravada buddhism. a major expectation of mahayana buddhism is an existence based on compassion and improving happiness and social wellbeing in the here-andnow for all sentient beings (keown 2013). instead of achieving enlightenment for oneself, bodhisattvas seek to bring compassion, happiness, and wellbeing to everyone else. service to others is central to being a bodhisattva. this contrasts with theravada belief where the primary emphasis is on each individual seeking and obtaining awareness of the ultimate truth (keown 2013). mahayana buddhists also view the buddha in trikaya doctrine as a benevolent supernatural entity, in contrast to the historical buddha (keown 2013; leighton 2012). in trikaya, buddha has three bodies: his nirmanakaya or body in this world; his dharma body, in which he is eternal beyond all dualities in reality; and sambhogaya, in which his body manifests itself for bodhisattvas in a celestial domain (snelling 1998). theravada does not have the trikaya concept, viewing the buddha as a historical figure (leighton 2012). this belief in a supernatural buddha eventually led to a new mahayana worldview, where the buddha contained three bodies. these are dharmakaya, or the buddha being the same as the ultimate truth; sambohogakaya, where the buddha who is transcendent exists in a heavenly paradise; and nirmanakaya, where the buddha has a mortal body on earth (keown 2013). mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 2.2 mahayana buddhism and gross national happiness the mission of bodhisattvas in mahayana buddhism is to spread happiness to the world. by awakening to the ultimate truth, one obtains clarity and insight about the true nature of the universe, as well as internal peace and happiness (gethin 1998). this happiness results in joy in human relations. through obtainment of the ultimate truth, greater and positive potentialities of the enlightened beings are unlocked. all laypeople have the inner buddha nature, and thus can obtain this happiness (leighton 2012). 2.2.1 modern gross national happiness in 1972 his majesty king jigme singye wangchuck announced that: “gross national happiness (gnh) is more important than gross domestic product (gdp) (l. dorji 2008).” this pronouncement by the fourth king of bhutan has become in subsequent years a primary public policy to balance the growing pressures of modern capitalism and modernization with bhutan’s ancient mahayana buddhist traditions and culture (c. t. dorji 1997; l. dorji 2008; mathou 1999, 2001; ramakant & misra 1996; rose 1977; sinha 2001; voice of america news 2005; wangchuk 2004). under gnh, gdp is considered an inadequate measure of wellbeing and happiness (c. t. dorji 1997; l. dorji 2008; t. dorji 2004; mathou 1999, 2001; ramakant & misra 1996; rose 1977; sinha 2001; voice of america news 2005; wangchuk 2004). in one sense, a person can be happy while they are performing atrocious acts, as when a dysfunctional narcissistic person inflicts emotional pain on others for self-gratification, with no remorse. in addition, happiness and wellbeing can be defined as a current happy mood. on the other hand, wellbeing or happiness as described in gnh and mahayana buddhism includes current satisfaction with ones’ entire life or a satisfaction with a fulfilling life. each of these definitions of happiness and satisfaction are based on the meeting of human needs, environmental protection, cultural protection, and democratic or good governance including the protection of political and civil rights. recently, these four pillars have been reclassified into nine domains. the domains include: psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards (centre for bhutan studies, 2011a). each domain represents an essential part of national wellbeing and happiness. happiness is defined as governmental action to create the conditions for a “good life” including meeting material needs, being in ecological harmony with the planet, and providing the basis for bhutanese citizens to become enlightened. for instance psychological wellbeing is defined, in part as a citizen’s spirituality level and employment of good karma (centre for bhutan studies, 2011b). in 2008 bhutan adopted its first written constitution, which contains several provisions that link gnh to mahayana buddhism (royal government of bhutan 2008). article 3, section 1 declared that: “(mahayana) buddhism is the spiritual heritage of bhutan, which promotes the principles and values of peace, non-violence, compassion, and tolerance.” in article 2, section 2 related to the constitutional monarchy: bhutan’s king is required under the chhoe-sid-nyi or dual system of religion and politics to promote mahayana buddhism as the state religion. article 3, section 4 empowers “religious institutions and personalities” to promote the spiritual heritage of the nation “…while also ensuring that religion remains separate from politics in bhutan.” under article 3, section 3, the king also appoints the je khenpo (head monk) with training in the drukpa school of mahayana buddhism. the je khenpo must be a highly skilled spiritual master in mahayana buddhism and be accomplished in ked-dzog or spiritual development. in turn, under article 3, section 5, the je khenpo appoints, with the recommendation of the mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 dratshang lhentshog (commissioner of monastic affairs), five lopons or masters of mahayana buddhism to serve on the central buddhist monk council. article 4, section 1 requires that: the state preserve, protect, and promote the cultural heritage of the country, including monuments, places and objects of artistic or historic interest, dzongs (ancient buddhist religious and civil fortresses), lhakhangs (buddhist temples), goendeys (buddhist monastic communities), ten-sum (buddhist images, scriptures, and stupas), nyes (buddhist pilgrimage sites), language, literature, music, visual arts and religion to enrich society and the cultural life of citizens. in tandem with this mandate to preserve and promote mahayana buddhism as a state religion and policy, article 9, section 2 states, “the state shall strive to promote those conditions that will enable the pursuit of gross national happiness.” as provided by the gnh commission: gnh is a multi-dimensional development approach that seeks to achieve a harmonious balance between material wellbeing and the spiritual, emotional and cultural needs of our society (gross national happiness commission 2015). the gnh commission further explains relative to spiritual happiness and gnh: we have now clearly distinguished the ‘happiness’… in gnh from the fleeting, pleasurable ‘feel good’ moods so often associated with that term. we know that true abiding happiness cannot exist while others suffer, and comes only from serving others, living in harmony with nature, and realizing our innate wisdom and the true and brilliant nature of our own minds (gross national happiness commission 2015). this statement reflects the primary goal of seeking enlightenment under mahayana buddhism. in mahayana, overcoming suffering and becoming enlightened and happy through the fourth noble truth or eightfold path occurs by becoming aware of the nature of reality including good karma by serving others and being in harmony with nature. 2.2.2 implementation of gross national happiness the gnh commission is the key national planning agency in bhutan that operationalizes and evaluates gnh’s incorporation in all government programs (gross national happiness commission 2015). in furtherance of this policy objective, the gnh commission uses the thimphu, bhutan-based centre for bhutan studies’ gnh index, which measures four pillars of gnh: economic growth or materialism, cultural preservation, ecological protection, and good governance (centre for bhutan studies 2011a, 2011c). for the purposes of further analysis of gnh in bhutanese society the four pillars have been expanded into nine domains (centre for bhutan studies 2011a, 2011c; thinley 2009). the nine domains include: standard of living, good governance, time use and balance, community vitality, cultural vitality and diversity, ecosystem vitality and diversity, health of the population, education, and psychological wellbeing (centre for bhutan studies 2011a, 2011c; thinley 2009). the centre for bhutan studies has recently developed 33 measures based on national public opinion surveys to assess progress toward national wellbeing as reflected in the nine domains (centre for bhutan studies 2011a, 2011c; thinley 2009). the psychological wellbeing domain in particular and especially as it relates to government promotion of mahayana buddhism, measures the degree of spiritual happiness of bhutanese citizens in the areas of: spirituality level, prayer recitation, meditation, and consideration of karma (centre for bhutan studies 2015). ultimately, at the center of all development efforts under gnh is a focus on the material and spiritual welfare and wellbeing of each individual in bhutan (centre for bhutan studies 2011a, 2011c). as the gnh commission indicates “the gnh paradigm concludes that ‘economic mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 growth is not an end in itself, but rather a means to achieve more important ends …happiness’” (gross national happiness commission 2015). gnh in bhutan as implemented by governmental agencies is based on the mahayana idea that enlightenment can be obtained by everyone. compassionate mahayana public policies based on gnh can increase the likelihood of citizens becoming enlightened, blissful, and happy. while there is no universally accepted definition of happiness, the specific religious-based mahayana view of enlightenment and happiness implemented through governmental action and public policies contrasts with several prominent modern western and secular views. utilitarianism, for instance, holds that the role of government is maximizing total benefits for many while reducing the suffering or negatives for as many as possible (bentham 2007). the maximization of utility includes enhancing hedonistic pleasure, economic prosperity, and a lack of suffering or pain. this approach to material happiness relies on government, but focuses on promoting secular happiness for as many citizens as possible. utilitarian happiness in significant part contrasts with the mahayana religious view of happiness contained in the second noble truth, which calls for overcoming suffering related to unwarranted ego-cravings including seeking an undue amount of material things. another modern western view of happiness is contained in the enlightenment-based idea of liberty, such as the “liberty, equality, fraternity” of france, “unity, justice and liberty” in germany, “life, liberty, security of the person" in the canadian charter of rights, and “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the us declaration of independence. liberty in each case is considered an inherent and inalienable right for human happiness by which governments are required to protect, in some combination, citizens’ life, their liberty from political abuses by government, and private property. this contrasts, in part, with the gnh and mahayana view of happiness, in which the bhutanese state has a duty to promote conditions for citizens to individually and actively obtain enlightenment and happiness. here, the emphasis is not solely on government protecting rights, but also on citizens having a duty to practice compassion and seek enlightenment and happiness. a third example of a western view of happiness is rawlsian happiness (rawls 2005). from rawl’s perspective, people are made happy when they are successfully executing a rational plan in life, based on favorable conditions, and their expectations are good that the plan will succeed based on justice (rawls 2005). rawlsian justice includes every person simultaneously having the right to civil liberties, equality of opportunity, and distributive state policies that meet basic human needs. again, the focus here is on secular governmental action to meet secular requirements for happiness for citizens. by contrast, the mahayana view of happiness is focused on the religious goal of all citizens seeking and becoming enlightened. however, in mahayana buddhism, as in rawlsian justice, there is a goal of compassion for others by working to alleviate human suffering through such approaches as meeting basic human needs, through individual or government actions as in bhutan, and respecting the sanctity and integrity of all sentient beings, including humans. unlike a number of western and secular approaches to happiness, such as these three examples, in which the state provides basic needs or checks governmental abuses, mahayanaoriented gnh includes governmental action to provide suitable conditions for religious happiness. this is in tandem with individual citizen responsibility to become enlightened. 3. conclusion obtaining happiness is a central focus of mahayana buddhism doctrine, and in seeking the ultimate truth sentient beings look to reach a holistic balancing of material, emotional, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/utility mahayana buddhism givel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 spiritual needs (bhutan broadcasting service 2008; tashi 2004; thinley 2007). gnh means government facilitating the achievement of the collective happiness of society (bhutan broadcasting service 2008; tashi 2004). according to mahayana buddhist beliefs, happiness and compassion arise from awareness of suffering in the self and in others (achieved by removing the distraction of immediate suffering and through education). while the 2008 bhutanese constitution explicitly calls for mahayana buddhism to be the state religion in bhutan, the constitution in article 3, section 2 requires that the king protect all religions in bhutan. article 7, section 4 provides for freedom of religious practice with no person required to belong to another faith by means of “…coercion and inducement.” as written in article 7, section 1, all bhutanese citizens are accorded equal protection of the law and are not discriminated against based on religion. moreover, article 8, section 3 requires that bhutanese citizens promote tolerance regardless of “…religious, linguistic, regional or sectional diversities.” given that mahayana buddhism is the state religion in bhutan and about 22% of the population is hindu, these constitutional provisions in a legal sense provide important requirements on the right to practice a religion other than mahayana buddhism (united states central intelligence agency 2015). however, modern legal requirements since 2008 and reality as it occurs in societal practices in promoting freedom of religion may not always be ‘in sync’. while gnh is a policy that explicitly promotes mahayana buddhism, a key question remains how gnh will bridge religious differences in its promotion of wellbeing. will non-buddhists in bhutan even be marginalized within gnh? the answer is not yet known, but is certain to be tested within the framework of the recent constitutional provisions that afford human rights in the practice of religion while making mahayana buddhism a state religion. the relief of material needs sponsored and promoted by the government, in tandem with the spiritual and emotional needs of individuals, are a primary goal of bhutan in a mahayana buddhist context of compassion for all in this world. moreover, bodhisattvas can facilitate the development of a gnh society by spreading compassion and countering ignorance. oppositely from gdp, gnh focuses on the individuals who make up society and their wellbeing, rather than external economic phenomena. buddhist canons indicate that focusing only on ego-driven cravings and the illusion of material wealth will lead to unhappiness, making gnh an appropriate buddhist response to the worldwide use of economic indexes as indicators of success. authors michael givel university of oklahoma mgivel@ou.edu publishing timeline received 4 may 2015 accepted 4 may 2015 published 21 june 2015 references armstrong, k. 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(2008). mahāyāna buddhism: the doctrinal foundation. london: routledge. http://www.bhutanaudit.gov.bt/about%20us/mandates/constitution%20of%20bhutan%202008.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bt.html http://www.kosei-shuppan.co.jp/english/text/mag/2007/07_101112_10.html http://www.voanews.com/content/a-13-2005-04-20-voa51/397244.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/as.2004.44.6.836 scheyvens, r., movono, a., & auckram, j. (2023). enhanced wellbeing of pacific island peoples during the pandemic? a qualitative analysis using the advanced frangipani framework. international journal of wellbeing, 13(1), 59-78. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i1.2539 regina scheyvens massey university r.a.scheyvens@massey.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 article enhanced wellbeing of pacific island peoples during the pandemic? a qualitative analysis using the advanced frangipani framework regina scheyvens · apisalome movono · jessie auckram abstract: covid-19 isolated island states from international tourism, which is a primary provider of employment and driver of economic development for the pacific region. most governments lacked the finances to provide sustained assistance to tourism businesses and workers, thus one might assume that these people’s wellbeing was very low during the pandemic: in fact, this research found the opposite. utilising the frangipani framework of wellbeing, a survey was utilised to investigate 6 dimensions of wellbeing in tourismdependent communities in samoa, fiji, vanuatu and cook islands during periods of border closures. results found that while people faced financial struggles, their mental, social, physical, spiritual and environmental wellbeing had improved in many cases. respondents indicated that they felt more connected to one another and their spiritual beliefs, were able to utilise communal resources to support their livelihoods, and that the pandemic provided a well-needed break for both themselves and the environment. this research demonstrates that people can successfully adapt and show resilience in the face of significant shocks and financial challenges if they have access to a range of cultural knowledge and systems, strong social connections and natural resources. keywords: wellbeing; resilience; livelihoods; measurement; covid-19; island 1. introduction over 2020 and 2021 people all around the world experienced significant impacts on their daily lives and freedoms due to the covid-19 pandemic. there were reports of heightened anxiety and stress, negative health consequences of the virus, and social implications due to the restrictions on movement that were put in place to contain the pandemic (suppawittaya et al., 2020). it was of no surprise, therefore, to see reports of declines in mental and social wellbeing from the united states through to europe (geirdal et al., 2021) and asia (yong & sia, 2021). however, there were also occasional references to aspects of wellbeing faring well, at least for some groups of people. the world happiness report (helliwell et al., 2022) for example, found that although stress increased, positive emotions remained twice as frequent as negative emotions during the pandemic years. the research reported on in this article has, meanwhile, focused on the wellbeing of people living in tourism-dependent communities in the pacific islands region during the pandemic period. this region is characterised by 14 independent island states and 29 territories spread across the world’s largest ocean (world population review, 2022), all except one – papua new guinea – with populations of less than 1 million people. these islands are home to people about:blank pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 speaking thousands of indigenous languages and representing unique cultures. many pacific islands rely on international tourism as a major means of foreign exchange earnings, and tourism is also a significant source of employment (international monetary fund, 2020). it is common for the income from a single tourism sector employee in these countries to directly support several other family members. when the pandemic led to closure of the borders of these countries and territories for much or all of 2020 and 2021, it thus effectively had a devastating impact on this source of revenue. commentators predicted dire consequences of this with herr (2021) arguing that borders should have opened much sooner to allow markets and the tourism industry a chance to return to pre-covid-19 levels. tourism-dependent communities were thus chosen as the key population of interest in this study because we were aware that most tourism employees and business-owners had faced significant financial losses, and we wanted to see if this corresponded with declines in their overall wellbeing. certainly it would be easy to assume that, given the pacific’s heavy dependence on the international tourism industry, and the sustained absence of this industry over a two year period, people’s wellbeing in these countries would be at an all-time low (kumar & patel, 2022; samy et al., 2021). however, the research findings herein, based on a survey conducted between october 2021 and january 2022, suggest almost the opposite. based on the six dimensions of the advanced frangipani framework of wellbeing (figure 1), the survey revealed that people living in tourism dependent communities in samoa, fiji, vanuatu and cook islands generally experienced improvements in wellbeing during the pandemic period. the exception was financial wellbeing, which understandably saw more mixed results. the aims of this article are twofold: firstly, to explain how and why we developed a six dimensional framework of wellbeing, and secondly, to discuss findings of a wellbeing survey of people living in tourism-dependent communities across selected pacific countries. we start by examining the meaning of wellbeing, then we detail the development of our original framework, and discuss how knowledge of pacific wellbeing models helped us to revise our wellbeing framework. next we explain how this was researched across the four countries during the covid-19 pandemic period, before describing key findings related to each of the six aspects of wellbeing. to finish, we discuss the implications of these novel findings. there are insights regarding how culture and customary systems can provide important structural support for communal wellbeing during challenging times. 2. western notions of ‘wellbeing’ wellbeing is a ubiquitous concept, and as such it has many different interpretations. it has been conceptualised as an equilibrium or balance (dodge et al., 2012), an amount of life satisfaction (kim-prieto et al., 2005), or in terms of a range of dimensions that contribute to a happy life (rath et al., 2010). ryff (1995) was one of the first authors to come up with a definition for wellbeing, suggesting it is the degree to which one has an excess of positive over negative affect. the common thread among these definitions is a broad sense of things that make you feel well, factors which psychologists often describe as hedonic and eudaemonic principles. hedonic principles encompass wellbeing as happiness and pleasure, whereas eudaemonic principles entail that wellbeing is achieved through self-actualisation: both can make a person feel well (cooke et al., 2016). to reach hedonia, affections must be satisfied, and when striving for eudaemonia, values must be satisfied (deci & ryan, 2008). conceptions of wellbeing have shifted considerably over time, with most now building on both hedonic and eudaemonic principles; for example, “wellbeing is more than just happiness. as well as feeling satisfied and happy, wellbeing means developing as a person, feeling fulfilled, and making a contribution to the community” (marks http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 & shah, 2004 p.2). in response, social scientists have created models that conceptualise wellbeing through a set of dimensions. the premise is that wellbeing is dynamic and subjective, so individuals will each be sensitive to different areas of wellbeing. for example, it has been suggested recently that “…well-being [is] a state of harmony or balance between physical, mental, spiritual, cultural, community and ecological dimensions, extended through time" (shakespeare et al. 2021, p. 677). initial models, however, only centred around three dimensions physical, social and psychological (or mental) (keyes, 2021) as these were seen as the pillars of subjective wellbeing. physical wellbeing is the effective management of one’s bodily function and health through exercise and dietary choices (rath et al., 2010). social wellbeing involves having strong relationships and networks with other people (rath et al., 2010). psychological wellbeing emphasises qualities of human wellness including self-acceptance, positive relationships, autonomy and purpose (ryff, 1995). some models also include a fourth dimension, financial wellbeing: for example, in the satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 1985) and the financial well-being scale (prawitz et al., 2006). financial wellbeing is particularly pertinent to consider in the covid-19 era in the pacific when many people have lost their main source of income from international tourism. over time, however, it has been asserted that additional dimensions of wellbeing should be considered to fully understand this complex phenomenon. it is evident that many models used to explain wellbeing have been developed in very weird (western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic) spaces. weird wellbeing frameworks are assumed to be universal, yet they tend to neglect the cultural embeddedness of wellbeing (schulz et al., 2018). an example of this is the focus on the individual in weird models, with less consideration of the person as part of a collective: the latter is especially important to a range of indigenous cultures worldwide (schulz et al., 2018). 3. the original frangipani framework of wellbeing as the pandemic began, the researchers, and the wider tourism sector, were concerned about how pacific peoples were coping with insufficient tourists to drive their economies (south pacific tourism organisation, 2018). thus in may 2020, scheyvens and movono began to research how pacific peoples were responding to the pandemic following a surge in covid-19 cases worldwide and the onset of lockdowns and large scale border closures. a survey targeting tourism-dependent communities – who were now without tourists – was sent out via social media. the survey asked a range of questions about adaptation in the face of the crisis; it also included one likert-scale question about people’s financial, social, physical and mental wellbeing. findings demonstrated that pacific people showed resilience in the face of covid-19 through utilising customary land and traditional practices to meet their basic needs and support one another. customary land is owned communally by clans or other sub-tribal units and comprises more than 80% of total land area for many pacific island countries (boydell & holzknecht, 2003). pacific people are said to have an ‘intense attachment to land’ (curry et al., 2012, p.116). they use terms such as vanua in fiji, fonua in tonga, and enua in cook islands, which embrace land and people and their connections, along with people’s values, beliefs, traditions and history (batibasaga et al., 1999). while the land is thus much more than an economic commodity, its ability to provide sustenance is central to why it is valued and respected. many of those surveyed in 2020 reported returning to customary lands and relearning how to cultivate this land for subsistence, which aided their resilience during covid-19 (movono et al., 2022). as expected, there were also negative consequences of the pandemic for pacific communities. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 many people suffered a major financial blow, and others had deteriorating mental health that accompanied the stress of reduced incomes and less social interaction due to lockdowns. despite this, the resounding message that emerged from the 2020 survey was that people were surviving by reconnecting with their culture, their faith community, the land and the sea, and some even reported thriving in the absence of tourists (scheyvens et al., 2022). the promising results of this survey prompted us to delve into analysis of pacific wellbeing models in order to more fully understand this term and what it meant to pacific peoples. 4. pacific notions of ‘wellbeing’ indigenous cultures conceptualise wellbeing in a way that diverges from normalised western discourses (durie, 1985). given the context for our research, we examined south pacific models of wellbeing; they tend to be holistic and focus on the broader context within which individuals are located (tu’itupou et al., 2020). a key theme in pacific models that is overlooked in many western models is the dimension of spiritual wellbeing, which is entrenched in the pacific way of life (pulotu-endemann, 2001). spirituality is not necessarily confined to religion; indigenous people can also see spirituality as connection to their ancestors or a sense of mana and identity. to this end, spirituality is commonly reflected in wellbeing models developed by indigenous scholars across the pacific region including the new zealand māori model, te whare tapa whā (durie, 1985), tonga’s fonua model (tu’itupou et al., 2020), and the tokelauan model of te vaka atafagā (kupa, 2009). significantly, the fonua model places spirituality in the centre of their models thereby suggesting that spirituality is the basis for all other wellbeings. in addition, environmental wellbeing does not typically appear in western wellbeing models (summers et al., 2012), but environmental factors play a key role in some pacific models of wellbeing. for example, the fonofale model of health is based around a traditional samoan fale (house), with prominent aspects of wellbeing designated through the support poles and base of the house (pulotu-endemann, 2001). the fale is not seen alone, however; it sits with its own environment, time and context that encircle the framework. equally, the tokelauan model of te vaka atafagā positions its wellbeing vaka (boat) within the ocean, which is its environmental context (kupa, 2009). if the sea is rough, or the wind is too strong, these things will affect the wellbeing of those on the boat. pacific cultures have often found their own ways of describing what wellbeing means to them. vanuatu presents an interesting case. dissatisfied with conventional measures of development, vanuatu chose to devise ‘alternative indicators of wellbeing’ (tanguay, 2015). for example, to measure community vitality – which can be seen as a proxy for social wellbeing they use indicators such as the proportion of individuals regularly attending community meetings, the proportion of individuals with favourable evaluation of traditional leaders, the proportion of individuals who perceive there is equality in their community, and the proportion of individuals that have someone to support them in times of need. similarly, tanguay (2015) explains how they devised alternative indicators of traditional knowledge and production skills, and access to land and natural resources, as the latter are an important basis for resilient livelihoods in much of the pacific. aligned with the pacific models of health and wellbeing described above, vanuatu’s measures of wellbeing are far more holistic, communal, and place/environment-based, than most western conceptions of wellbeing. they also provide important insights into how wellbeing and resilience might be understood specifically in island contexts. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 5. evolution of the frangipani framework in 2021, the original frangipani framework was developed (scheyvens et al., 2021). the petals of the frangipani flower overlap, indicating the connections between and among five different wellbeing dimensions we included financial, social, physical, mental, spiritual and the interrelated nature of wellbeing. spirituality had not been considered explicitly in the 2020 survey. there had been a great deal of time pressure to get a survey out in the early stages of the pandemic, thus it was designed without fully consulting the south pacific models of wellbeing discussed above which clearly all concur on the centrality of spiritual wellbeing to pacific peoples. furthermore, spirituality arose frequently in the comments of those responding to openended questions in the 2020 survey, thus we added it as the fifth dimension in the original frangipani framework. the current article presents the advanced frangipani framework of wellbeing, which includes a revision of the original model. this advanced framework adds an environmental wellbeing dimension via the trunk and roots of the frangipani tree (figure 1; see below). environmental wellbeing was added in response to further analysis of interviews conducted in 2020 and 2021 which revealed how many people returned to the vanua (their ancestral lands) during periods when the tourism industry could no longer sustain them due to the pandemic, and how they connected or reconnected with the natural environment during this time (movono et al., 2022). thus when thinking of the overarching metaphor of the frangipani tree, environmental context is the trunk that connects the multiple wellbeings of individuals (the flowers) and communities to nature, time, land, and external forces (such as relatives based overseas, or global recession) – factors reflected in some of the other pacific wellbeing models discussed earlier. the upper part of the frangipani tree represents a complex socio-ecological system that connects individuals to each other through the branches. it is the trunk and roots (or environmental context) which influence the flourishing, or wilting, of each flower (or individual wellbeing context). in summary, the advanced frangipani framework of wellbeing builds upon both western and indigenous pacific models of wellbeing. an analysis of western models of wellbeing demonstrated how social, physical and mental wellbeing are key dimensions that need to be considered, along with financial wellbeing. reflecting on participants’ sentiments expressed in our 2020 and 2021 research, along with south pacific models of wellbeing, spiritual and environmental dimensions of wellbeing were also seen as essential. see table 1 for the evolution of the frangipani framework to date. this revised framework has guided later data collection, discussed below. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 figure 1. advanced frangipani framework of wellbeing note. explanation of wellbeing components. the overlapping petals of the frangipani flower represent the dimensions of wellbeing on a personal level, and how they are inter-related. these are located on branches of a frangipani tree, which has a trunk and roots that represent the overarching environmental context affecting the wellbeing of each frangipani flower. social wellbeing. how connections to one’s culture and to other people, whether that be friends, family, or wider community networks, can contribute to a person’s overall wellbeing. spiritual wellbeing. how spiritual connection, including but not limited to religious faith and the values that go along with this, and indigenous spiritual connection to the land, contributes to a person’s overall wellbeing. mental wellbeing. how one’s mental state, including but not limited to stress, anxiety, happiness, hope, and a sense of connection or belonging, can contribute to a person’s overall wellbeing. physical wellbeing. how the treatment of one’s physical body through movement, nutrition and healthcare can contribute to a person’s overall wellbeing. financial wellbeing. how financial security through regular income, employment, access to assets or capital, running a business or self-provisioning can help to satisfy the basic needs of a household and allow people to meet communal obligations, thus contributing to a person’s overall wellbeing. environmental wellbeing, how the health of the environment and access to land and other natural resources has an impact on people’s wellbeing, and how this is in turn influenced by contextual issues such as time and external forces. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 table 1. the evolution of the frangipani framework stage time period description initial survey and follow up interviews 2020, beginning of covid-19 pandemic administered survey to fiji, samoa, cook isl, vanuatu, solomon isl. included likert scale question about 4 wellbeings (physical, mental, financial, social). interviewed key individuals about their experiences analysed survey results and wellbeing literature 2020/2021 pacific peoples were doing better than expected, and spiritual wellbeing needed to be considered in a pacific context created original frangipani framework 2021 devised a way to measure wellbeing in the pacific, with the original 4 dimensions + spiritual wellbeing went back to pacific wellbeing literature 2021 from pacific wellbeing literature and the qualitative responses from the 2020 survey, realised that environmental wellbeing needed to be considered in this context advanced frangipani framework 2021/22 revised original framework to have 6 wellbeings, including environmental wellbeing, situated as the trunk of the tree on which are flowers with petals representing the other 5 wellbeings phase 1 of wellbeing survey **focus of current article 2021/22 used the advanced frangipani framework to measure wellbeing in 4 pacific countries while borders were closed phase 2 of wellbeing survey 2022/23 used the advanced frangipani framework to measure wellbeing in 4 pacific countries, 6 months after international tourists returned 6. methodology 6.1 survey design the advanced frangipani framework of wellbeing, described above, was used as the basis for a survey conducted between october 2021 and february 2022. the purpose of the survey was to: a) assess wellbeing prior to the return of tourists in fiji, samoa, the cook islands and vanuatu (phase 1), and it will also be used to, b) re-assess wellbeing again in each country six months after tourists have returned (phase 2). with this knowledge we hope to be able to gauge which aspects of wellbeing fare well without tourists present, and which are impacted positively or negatively by the return of tourists. we targeted countries and communities that had, prior to covid-19, relied heavily on tourism for local jobs and revenue (see table 2), enabling us to compare their response to a lack of tourists in terms of wellbeing. this article focuses on phase 1 of the survey, and the qualitative results, with some limited quantitative analysis. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 table 2. comparison of case study countries in the pacific population visitor arrivals direct tourism employment tourism receipts usd tourism revenue (% of gdp) fiji 883,000 870,309 41,338 $931m 38.90% samoa 196,000 167,651 5,158 $248m 30.42% vanuatu 293,000 115,634 15,000 $281m 45.90% cook islands 18,000 168,760 2,386 $253m 86.99% note. all data is sourced from south pacific tourism organisation (2018). in designing the survey we sought advice from specialists in pacific wellbeing and/or measurement of wellbeing, namely: dr sam manuela from pacific studies and psychology at university of auckland, associate professor natasha tassell-matamua from indigenous psychology at massey university, and dr dean stronge and geoff kaine from manaaki whenua. 6.2 measures blocks of questions were asked about each of the six dimensions of wellbeing as represented by the advanced frangipani framework. responses to these blocks of likert scale questions are detailed in a separate article on quantitative aspects of this survey. the brief quantitative analysis in this paper details responses to one question asked in relation to each of the 6 wellbeings, e.g., “during the period of covid-19, my mental wellbeing has improved”, which could be scored from ‘strongly disagree’ through to ‘strongly agree’. the qualitative aspect, which is the key analyses in this paper, included a general open-ended question for each wellbeing dimension. for example, “overall, has the 2020-2021 period of the pandemic had positive and/or negative impacts on your physical wellbeing? please explain.”. 6.3 working with ras (research associates) the unyielding nature of covid-19 sparked the introduction of travel bans that prevented the primary researchers from partaking in field work, forcing them to find alternative ways of conducting research. this study worked around restrictions by employing research associates (ras) in four pacific island countries. in cook islands, a palagi (non-local) volunteer also assisted the ra with data collection. the ras were approached based on their previous research experience in this field, or connections in the tourism sector and pre-existing links to the case study communities. they were asked to do their data collection in two different places where tourism usually made a major contribution to the economy. employing local ras who were competent in the appropriate language and familiar with the study communities broke down cross cultural barriers; it also helped to overcome researcher-participant power relations. the ras were trained via zoom about the aims, research practice and ethics behind the study, the roles they would undertake, and what they could gain from working with us. 6.4 working in the pacific to cater to its target audience, this research abides by the pacific research principles as laid out by the pacific research and policy centre at massey university (massey university pacific http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 research and policy centre, 2017). respect for relationships influenced the choice of ras, who were at the frontline talking to research participants in our target countries and who needed to follow appropriate cultural protocols. the researchers saw participants as capable ‘actors’ who can respond to the economic downturn rather than framing them as ‘victims’ of the pandemic, demonstrating celebration of cultural knowledge. a summary of the findings of the research was made available to those who wanted this. additionally, ras were funded to contribute appropriately to the participants and their communities, whether this was by giving individuals vouchers or providing refreshments for them. to both use the research to do good, and disseminate the research widely, the key researchers established a website onto which the summary report, short articles, videos and media items relating to the research project are regularly being uploaded: thus the community members, business people and governments of the countries concerned can access the findings quickly, rather than having to wait for journal articles to be published (movono & scheyvens, 2023). 6.5 administration of the survey the survey was piloted in fiji, samoa and the cook islands, but not in vanuatu as our ra was not available at that time. during the piloting stage, ras provided the team with feedback on the survey from both their perspective as researchers and from the subjects of the survey. the feedback concerned whether questions were understandable across language barriers, if people believed anything was missing, and any other comments they had on the survey. based on this the researchers changed the wording where appropriate to better suit the target audience. this process strengthened the validity of the survey in its subject population. next, the ras selected participants using their own judgment, based on their current connections to the tourism sector and pacific communities. they were asked to survey 50 people, 25 from each of two tourism-dependent communities in their respective countries, and to reach out to a broad range of people – specifically targeting youth, elders, tourism business owners, former tourism employees, and owners of related enterprises (e.g. taxi drivers). it is important to note that the sampling method for the current survey was purposive rather than statistically representative, in order to target people from the demographic groups across tourism-dependent communities. in most cases, the ras were asked to give the participant an electronic device through which they could independently answer the survey through the qualtrics offline app software (as internet connections were often patchy or non-existent in some areas). we knew some participants were likely to be limited by age or knowledge of technology, so in these cases the ras were trained to administer the survey to the person orally and then record the participant’s responses on their electronic device. in cases where the participant was not comfortable using english, our local ras would translate whole questions, or specific words, for the participants to aid their understanding. participants gave consent to participate in the survey, were informed that they could opt out of the survey at any stage, and were assured that their identity would remain anonymous. in this phase 1 of the study, there were 214 responses, and 5 had to be excluded, so 209 valid responses were recorded (table 3). in phase 2, the ras will target the same tourism-dependent communities to gauge wellbeing from similar demographic groups as in phase 1, but will not necessarily collect data from the same individuals. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 table 3. survey respondents’ gender and country females males other/prefer not to say total fiji 26 22 2 50 samoa 32 25 0 57 vanuatu 22 28 0 50 cook islands 30 22 0 52 total 110 97 2 209 6.6 data analysis data was collected using qualtrics survey software. qualitative data, drawn upon in this article, was analysed on qualtrics and word. quantitative analysis was conducted in spss and excel; this is largely reported on elsewhere (scheyvens et al., 2022). a 6 step thematic content analysis of the open-ended questions followed the structure laid out by braun and clarke (2006). inductive reasoning was used to guide this analysis. this started with familiarisation with the survey data through semi-manual transcription between qualtrics and word. next, the researchers went through the responses to amend any errors, and created a list of ideas about patterns in the data. this process was aided by considering what dimension of wellbeing the data was responding to, alongside the broader literature around wellbeing and pacific and western models. from here, groups of patterns became themes which were identified in relation to each wellbeing dimension. these were reviewed to ensure their validity and uniqueness. in finish, the themes were grouped under one of the 6 overarching wellbeing dimensions. 6.7 researcher positionality and ethical issues of the primary scholars partaking in this research, one is fijian, with 10 years’ experience teaching and researching tourism in the pacific, and the other is palagi (of european origins) with 25 years’ experience in the field of tourism research. their work centres around sustainable development and tourism, particularly in small island states in the pacific. both researchers consider themselves concerned about social and environmental justice, so were concerned about wellbeing of people in the pacific when covid disrupted their lives and took away their main source of income. this research is committed to following the human ethics code of massey university; the key components being subject autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. following a peer review exercise aligned to these principles, a low risk ethics notification was lodged with the university. 7. findings: impacts on wellbeing this section draws on the survey data conducted in phase 1 (october 2021-february 2022). figure 2 summarises results of the 2021/2 survey, based on one likert question asked in relation to improvements each of the 6 wellbeings. figure 2 shows that over 50 percent of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ that their social and spiritual wellbeing had improved, and over 75 percent of respondents ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ these wellbeings had improved. meanwhile, around 70 percent of people ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that their mental and their environmental wellbeing had improved. around half of participants felt their physical wellbeing had http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 ‘improved’ or ‘strongly improved’, but another 38 percent perceived declines in physical wellbeing. finally, the most mixed results came through for financial wellbeing, which was to be expected given the harsh economic impacts of the border closures and cessation of international tourism. figure 2. wellbeing improvements in four pacific island countries during the covid-19 pandemic note. 2021/2 survey: responses of people living in tourism-reliant communities in samoa, fiji, vanuatu and cook islands to questions on whether their wellbeing had improved during the period of covid-19. please note that for the purposes of this article we are focusing on general trends in wellbeing, rather than comparing country-level data. country-level comparisons, and examples of cluster analyses, can be found elsewhere; see scheyvens et al. (2022). 7.1 financial wellbeing as anticipated, people experienced declines in their financial wellbeing during border closures. people expressed that they struggled day to day with finances due to covid-19 and associated travel bans, loss of jobs in the resort sector, and related businesses (e.g. taxis, handicraft stalls) closing down or operating on skeleton staff: “we all lost our jobs in my family, so we were left in shock when the… [resort] closed down. it was a real shock to us because we depended on money for everything up until that time. [female, small business owner, fiji, 2021] of the four countries, only the cook islands government provided wage subsidies, but people in other places were sometimes supported by remittances from family based overseas. the pandemic was particularly difficult financially for people who had pre-pandemic loans 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% mental wellbeing financial wellbeing social wellbeing physical wellbeing spiritual wellbeing environmental wellbeing p e rc e n ta g e o f re sp o n se s strongly agree somewhat agree neither agree nor disagree somewhat disagree strongly disagree http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 to service: we heard about this from those who had borrowed money to buy boats or tourist accommodation in cook islands through to those in fiji with hire purchase agreements for consumer durables which were later repossessed. young people also found it hard to live without a cash income, and a fijian respondent noted instances whereby this led to an increase in theft and related crimes. a practical example of a coping strategy was that some households went from having 3 meals a day to consuming just 2 meals, while others went back to using horses to cart agricultural produce rather than trucks. some people saw the absence of income as a learning opportunity: “now we live within our means, we have to be wise about money and about how we live, this is a valuable lesson from the pandemic” [male, small business owner, fiji, 2021survey] despite this, the responses about financial wellbeing were less negative overall compared to the results of our 2020 survey (scheyvens et al., 2022). on the whole, it seems that many people have found ways of successfully adapting their livelihoods over the past two years, so they feel that financially they are coping. for example, people started growing and harvesting more food from the land and sea, thus reducing their household expenditure and sometimes providing a source of income. this was achievable for many people because they could return to customary land at their home village/town/area. this form of urban-rural migration observed during covid allowed many people without income to survive: “during the pandemic because we live next to a hotel, most of the villagers faced financial breakdown. but we were fortunate that we have our land and sea to survive.” [female, small business owner, fiji, 2021survey] bartering goods and services became common practice, and people also found supplementary ways of earning an income e.g. selling plants, vegetables, or cooked foods at roadside stalls. across the pacific, bartering movements were organised online, such as ‘barter for a better fiji’, a facebook group with 100,000 members who traded goods during border closures. despite all odds, many people expressed an amazing resilience to the great economic loss they were experiencing. this was, in part, thanks to good support systems within families: “when the pandemic struck, and i lost my job at the hotel, my family were supporting me with money. now, i have opened my small canteen, sell food, and put on bbqs every friday. i think it’s good because we know our family are there to help us but also, we can find new means to earn such as small side businesses” [male, ex tourism employee, fiji, 2021 survey] overall, the sentiment of hope and positivity still shone through in pacific communities. they adapted to life without tourism, and though many felt that their financial wellbeing declined, they formulated alternative ways of living: “we have little, but we survive” [female ex tourism employee, samoa, 2021survey]. 7.2 mental wellbeing mental wellbeing was commonly reported in a positive light among those surveyed, which was somewhat surprising considering the multiple challenges and that covid-19 has introduced. even though the financial pressures were a real burden at times, many people expressed that they flourished during the pandemic period due to having more time to relax, care for themselves, and more time for family and friends: “[my mental wellbeing was] positive due to more balance and reflection” [female, small business owner, cook islands, 2022survey] http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 “less work leads to more rest, which means that the mind is healthy and relaxed” [male, samoa, 2021survey] . others benefitted from the chance to reflect on their lives, reassess their priorities, and try new ventures. the financial security that came with running a small business seemed to empower people, and made them feel as if they could withstand the challenges of the pandemic: “covid has been positive for my mental wellbeing as it has given me the chance to start a business to support me and my family” [female, ex tourism employee, vanuatu, 2021 survey] some reflected on the financial toll, and how social isolation (due to border closures or fewer community events, from church services to sports competitions), and health concerns (including the risk of contracting covid-19), overpowered the positive aspects and they were burdened with deteriorating mental health. for example, many people had to work harder/longer hours to make up for their financial losses. people were willing to sacrifice aspects of their own wellbeing to support those around them: “my workload is tripled because i wanted to make sure my family have enough to live, but i’m neglecting my mental wellbeing” [male, unemployed ex-tourism employee, samoa, 2021survey] although border closures took a toll on some of our participants’ mental wellbeing, we were surprised at how many people showed resilience and said they felt hopeful despite the challenges. 7.3 social wellbeing respondents reported high social wellbeing across our dataset. social distancing restrictions meant that people were forced to socialise mostly within their families and communities, which resulted in more intergenerational interactions, family bonding and friendships rekindled. lots of people reported really treasuring this time and seeing it as a positive aspect of the pandemic: “i am now very close with my cousins and family because we spend time together catching food and planting. that is what life is about and the pandemic gave me this time to be close with my community on a deeper level” [male, ex tourism employee, fiji, 2021 survey] being near family also meant that traditional knowledge was shared. people reported that they were happy to be learning or re-learning traditional skills from their family members, including how to cultivate crops, fish beyond the reef, weave traditional mats or print designs onto tapa/masi cloth. equally, those teaching traditional skills valued sharing their cultural knowledge, especially with the younger generation who might not have been interested in learning were it not for the pandemic: “it has been good to spend time and teach my children and grandchildren, and share skills of weaving, cooking outdoors and gathering food. we are lucky covid happened” [female, elder, fiji, 2021 survey] on top of families feeling closer, communities bonded thanks to so much time shared together, and also due to church and cultural group leaders encouraging people to care for those who were more vulnerable. people expressed a new sense of cooperation, love, charity and connectedness that grew within their communities: “[i am now] more connected with my family and community, with people and leaders helping each other” [male, small business owner, vanuatu, 2021 survey] one of the ways communities came together was by starting social initiatives, which brought http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 people together and benefitted the wider community: “there are changes in my life, like not working and instead joining local men’s groups encouraging each other to work on plantations to get food and income for our families” [male, ex tourism employee, samoa, 2021 survey] some people adapted well to new ways of communication, such as making the most of connecting with others online, but conversely, for others this took them away from face-to-face interactions: “due to covid-19 i socialise with many more people on social media than in real life” [female, ex tourism employee/current small business owner, samoa, 2021 survey] on the other hand, people struggled with restrictions on social interaction, particularly strict rules around the size of groups that could gather which in turn disrupted church services and cultural gatherings, including funerals and weddings. elderly cohorts, for example, expressed that they were more negatively impacted by reduced social contact than middle-aged participants, particularly through the limits on church gatherings. social distancing is contrary to cultural norms in the pacific. the lack of physical contact with people outside of their inner circles caused some distress: “i used to be so outgoing and now i struggle to be social and bubbly. at times i can be, but then i still have the feeling of social anxiety” [female, tourism employee, cook islands, 2022 survey] overall, however, the positive impacts on social wellbeing outweighed the negatives for many of the respondents. covid gave them the chance to reconnect with their extended families, their neighbours and their culture, in a way that is not normally possible when life centres around earning an income from visiting tourists. 7.4 physical wellbeing responses about physical wellbeing showed mixed results across this dataset. on the positive side, lockdowns meant that people spent a lot of time at home and in their local areas. many people used this time constructively by working on their local plantations to grow and harvest crops. the time spent out in the sun on their feet all day reportedly aided people’s physical wellbeing: “physical wellbeing has improved because people in my community have made it a habit to spend more time outdoors, being active just like our elders long ago. being dependent on the land means an active lifestyle” [female, small business owner, fiji, 2021 survey]. a run-on effect of working in home gardens or on plantations was an abundance of healthy food accessible to all. people reported having healthier diets, especially in relation to the large amount of processed foods that they ended up eating when working long shifts at a hotel or resort: “the pandemic pushes us to go plenty [work hard] on our gardens which improves our daily exercise, and puts healthier food on the table rather than processed food from shops” [unemployed male, vanuatu, 2021 survey]. despite the happy majority, some people felt more worried about their health due to the threat of covid-19 and inability to access health services offshore. some also felt unmotivated and less inclined to do physical exercise: “with everything going on, it made me discouraged to do any physical activity” [female tourism employee, cook islands, 2022 survey]. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 overall, many of the pacific respondents indicated that their physical wellbeing improved over the pandemic period. this was the result of factors such as spending time outside on plantations or in gardens, doing housework, eating healthier produce and relaxing. 7.5 spiritual wellbeing as noted earlier, spiritual wellbeing was an addition to our 2021/2 survey, which was not specifically considered in 2020. overall, respondents noted that their spiritual wellbeing was very good during covid-19. many people expressed that they now had more time to devote to their spiritual activities: “i was never focused on my spirituality before, this period made me practice my religion more because during this period we’ve had to check in on our neighbours more, and it feels like we’ve been practicing and living out religious values more” [unemployed woman, cook islands, 2021 survey]. many people articulated that their faith was sustained during hard times as god was their provider and protector: “[there is] no greater help than having a close relationship with god right now” [government employee, samoa, 2021 survey]. some people who had in the past not shown great commitment to their religion, found renewed faith in the face of the challenges associated with the pandemic: “in the past a lot of people didn’t want to attend church or pray, but covid has brought them closer to god and helped them improve in their spiritual life” [female, small business owner, vanuatu, 2021 survey] people had to adapt to a new way of worshipping, with social distancing requirements meaning that many services were held over zoom. the new method did not stop people from participating, or organising regular family-based devotions: “there was a time where all the church gatherings on sundays were stopped, so it made us stay home and do our prayers at home with the family. we prayed more often than if we were attending church on sundays” [unemployed woman, samoa, 2021 survey]. a small number expressed, however, that they had not attended church because there was no money to contribute to the church. this appears to be the case particularly for denominations where tithing is expected, which sometimes lead congregation members to make judgements about those who could not afford their usual contributions. overall, however, many pacific peoples felt that their spiritual wellbeing flourished during the pandemic. they relied on god to guide them through tough times and were able to worship together with their families whilst becoming more spiritually connected. 7.6 environmental wellbeing environmental wellbeing was the other new wellbeing considered in the 2021/22 survey. responses indicated good environmental wellbeing on the whole during the period of covid19. one big difference was the absence of tourists, which people noticed gave the environment a chance to revive after so much overuse: “with no tourists around the lagoon, the reef and land has had time to relax and recover so that has been positive to see fish come back” [male, ex tourism employee, fiji, 2021 survey] as the environment flourished, people decided to make use of their customary lands: http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 “people are now becoming self-reliant in terms of food and other small businesses. this is good because it brings people to depend on the land, care for it and be sustained by it. this is important for my people, to be one and within their land.” [female, small business owner, fiji, 2021 survey] some people put time into restoring their villages to benefit the natural environment. overall, there was a sense of guardianship over the environment: “before covid, people didn’t care about our environment, but with this pandemic everyone is trying to keep the environment clean” [male, ex tourism employee, vanuatu, 2022 survey] there were, however, some downsides to some of the environmental practices taking effect in response to covid-19. reportedly there negative environmental impacts due to heavier carrying capacity from the unexpected increase in population of some villages which people returned to when they lost their jobs in town: “the environment has degraded a lot because the population of my community has increased a lot. i don’t have [as] much connection the environment as in the past” [male, unemployed, vanuatu, 2022 survey] it was expressed that while people were utilising their land for farming, the clearing of trees to provide land to cultivate was out of control in some places, causing increased siltation of rivers and resultant damage to the marine environment: “i think now there is greater destruction of the forests as more people are clearing for farms. village landscaping is changing, flowers are gone and now there are vegetables in their place” [female, tourism employee, fiji, 2021 survey] in sum, most respondents felt that their environmental wellbeing improved over the period of covid-19 thanks to an absence of tourists and pollution, utilising customary lands, and a higher level of care for the environment shown by all. however, there were clear indications of pressures on the environment due to increases in people living in specific locations where there was then heavy use of natural resources. 8. discussion and conclusions as noted in the introduction, the aims of this article were twofold. the first was to explain how and why we developed a six-dimensional framework of wellbeing. in building our wellbeing framework, we discussed how analysis of other indigenous and pacific wellbeing models, as well as our earlier data collected in 2020, led us to include a ‘spirituality’ dimension (grieves, 2008; tu’itupou et al., 2020). we then also chose to add an ‘environmental’ dimension because of the need to communicate how the health of the environment and access to land and other natural resources has an impact on people’s wellbeing, and how the wider environmental context impacts on pacific peoples (pulotu-endemann, 2001; shakespeare et al., 2021). the survey data demonstrate the value of these two more novel dimensions of the advanced frangipani framework of wellbeing. these add to our understanding by acknowledging the entrenched and interrelated nature of relationships prevalent within pacific societies, and they show that spiritual beliefs and connections with the environment have been a cornerstone of wellbeing for many people in the region. overall, we have shown that how wellbeing is measured in different cultural contexts matters, and that in our context, the islands of the south pacific, it was vital to include dimensions like spiritual and environmental wellbeing. the framework we have utilised also supports other indigenous models which show it is http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 valuable to connect individual wellbeing to communal social contexts and ecological systems (durie, 1985; kupa, 2009; summers et al., 2012). essentially, individuals are intrinsically embedded in an environment rooted in their unique context, place, and time whilst also influenced by external systems, all of which can impact on people’s wellbeing (tanguay, 2015; tu’itupou et al., 2020). the second aim was to discuss findings of a survey based around those six dimensions of wellbeing, targeting people living in tourism-dependent communities across selected pacific countries. the advanced frangipani framework of wellbeing has underpinned this research, showing the relevance of every one of the six dimensions to people’s self-assessment of their lives during a particularly disruptive period of history: the global coronavirus pandemic of 2020-22. what may surprise many is that instead of wallowing in their misfortune, pacific people pivoted and were able to cope without their main economic lifeline (movono et al., 2022). past chronicles of the lives of pacific people, including their voyaging across the ocean for thousands of years, indicates that they are naturally adaptive. it is compelling to see how these traits and other resources for resilience were drawn upon during the pandemic to reorganise themselves – not just to survive, but to elevate various levels of wellbeing. the qualitative methods we used elucidated how social and cultural elements influenced wellbeing, helping people to cope, but also helping some to thrive. these were reinforced by the quantitative findings presented, showing that high percentages of the respondents felt improvements across a range of wellbeings during the pandemic. essentially, the negative effects of the pandemic were buffered by some core resources which stayed intact during border closures – namely, their families, and the vanua. thus, while border closures led to a drop in financial well-being for most people associated with the tourism sector, through our survey many asserted there had been improvements in their social, mental, environmental and spiritual wellbeing. people expressed that they were content with their physical wellbeing as well. this novel and rather unexpected finding provides insights into how culture and customary systems provide crucial structural support for communal wellbeing during challenging times. enhanced wellbeing was associated with spending more time with family and other kin, reconnecting with cultural activities and the natural environment, and eating homegrown foods. essentially, in the face of no international tourists for most of the 2020-2021 period, pacific peoples sought out a range of social, cultural and natural capitals (berkes & folke, 1992), diversified their activities, and improved food and social systems (leweniqila & vunibola, 2020). these adaptive patterns and coping strategies are the building blocks of resilience (nalau et al., 2018). in essence, this study of pacific wellbeing during the pandemic has shown that when people have access to a range of cultural and natural resources, they can successfully adapt even in the face of significant shocks and financial challenges. the findings are reflective of a fluid conceptualisation of wellbeing, wherein it is multidimensional, holistic and relational. this was shown in a recent study of new zealanders which found that, in relation to covid-19 lockdowns, individuals talked about their personal wellbeing in the context of the broader experiences of wellbeing in their households and communities, as dictated by general societal conditions (officer et al., 2022). thus, it is hard to distinguish one wellbeing from another as all are inter-related across different levels of society. this is, similarly, represented by the overlapping petals of the frangipani flower in our framework, and by the fact that the wellbeing of individuals (the frangipani flowers) is influenced by the broader environment within which the frangipani tree is situated, representing nature, land, time and external forces. for example, when many pacific peoples reflected on the benefits of going back to their ancestral land for their wellbeing (movono et al., 2022), this was mentioned http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ pacific island peoples wellbeing during the pandemic scheyvens, movono & auckram www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 across many of the dimensions of wellbeing, including how it supported social, physical, mental, spiritual and environmental domains. another implication of this is that, rather than governments taking the westernised approach of focusing on improving the wellbeing of individuals, it might be more important to create conditions in which society as a whole can thrive (shakespeare et al., 2021). overall, our results infer that tourism-driven income, although important, is not everything for pacific peoples. beyond financial wellbeing there are other wellbeings which are significant to them, and this will undoubtedly be the case for people servicing the tourism sector in many other parts of the world. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors regina scheyvens massey university r.a.scheyvens@massey.ac.nz apisalome movono massey university jessie auckram massey university acknowledgments fa’fetai lava, tangkyu tumas, meitaki ma’ata and vinaka vaka levu to lagi taua’i, pita neihapi, james uripuati, and apakuki tasere, our wonderful research associates. sincere thanks also to all of the research participants who generously gave up their time to share their views and experiences with our research team. we are most grateful to colleagues from other insitutions who provided advice regarding indigenous wellbeing and survey design: dr sam manuela from pacific studies and psychology at waipapa taumata rau/university of auckland, associate professor natasha tassell-matamua from indigenous psychology at te kunenga ki pūrehuroa/massey university, and dr dean stronge and geoff kaine from manaaki whenua/landcare. royal society te apārangi provided funding via a james cook fellowship and marsden research grant; we are very appreciative of this support. publishing timeline received 6 september 2022 revised version received 29 december 2022 accepted 22 february 2023 published 28 february 2023 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(2016). self-regulation capacity is linked to wellbeing and burnout in physicians and medical students: implications for nurturing self -help skills. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 101-116. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i1.425 marie-claude j. gagnon university of ottawa mcj_gagnon@hotmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 article self-regulation capacity is linked to wellbeing and burnout in physicians and medical students: implications for nurturing self-help skills marie-claude j. gagnon · natalie durand-bush · bradley w. young abstract: self-regulation capacity relates to important self-help skills allowing individuals to effectively manage their thoughts, feelings, and actions to attain goals while mastering a demanding environment. the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between selfregulation capacity, psychological wellbeing, and burnout in 37 canadian medical students and 25 physicians. regression analyses showed that self-regulation capacity positively predicted psychological wellbeing and negatively predicted burnout for both groups. concerning the dimensions of purpose in life and environmental mastery, the benefits of self-regulatory capacity were particularly pronounced for physicians. implications for developing self-regulation competence to maintain optimal mental health are discussed. keywords: wellbeing, burnout, self-regulation, physicians, medical students 1. introduction the fast-pace changes and performance expectations within the medical community are not without consequences (puddester, 2001; wallace, lemaire, & ghali, 2009). it appears that, while attempting to meet the demands of their profession, many physicians have lost sight of their wellbeing (shanafelt, sloan, & habermann, 2003), shaping the reality of today’s “stressed out” (canadian medical association (cma), 2003), “burnt out” and/or dissatisfied physicians (tyssen et al., 2009). in light of the growing research exposing the reality of the “unwell” physician and medical student, and the potential negative consequences for patient care (shanafelt et al., 2003), the canadian medical association has made the development of sustainable and healthy physicians a priority (cma, 2003). as a result, research on the causes and consequences of, and solutions to, physician burnout and distress has surged in the literature. while investigating treatment for physician distress and burnout is crucial, simply focusing on fixing the problem “is certainly settling for less than what can be achieved” (shanafelt et al., 2003, p. 514). the tendency to focus on a disease model of health (weiner, swain, wolfe, & gottlieb, 2001) and constantly reacting to obstacles and repairing what is wrong, does not seem to move us closer to the prevention of health-related problems. based on the science of positive psychology, important insights into distress and burnout prevention have emerged from a perspective centered on proactively building strengths (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). human strengths and positive self-care strategies and skills are believed to act as buffers against the negative effects of stress and allow individuals to thrive and optimize their health and wellbeing. mailto:mcj_gagnon@hotmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 unfortunately, researchers interested in the health and wellbeing of physicians and medical students have focused their efforts almost exclusively on “impairment” over the course of the last 40 years (yamey & wilkes, 2001). as a result, they have given comparatively less attention to investigating the promotion and achievement of physician and medical student wellbeing through positive optimal functioning (dyrbye, thomas, & shanafelt, 2005; shanafelt et al., 2003). beyond measures of pathology (e.g., depression, anxiety), little is known about what it means for physicians and medical students “to be well,” and, as such, their level of wellbeing measured from a positive psychological perspective remains unexplored (shanafelt et al., 2003; yamey & wilkes, 2001); consequently, more research is warranted. against this background, this study provides insight into the wellbeing and burnout levels of physicians and medical students, using a positive psychology perspective. specifically, it examines whether self-regulation capacity can account for variation in these levels. our goal was to examine associations between self-regulation capacity and levels for wellbeing and burnout, to further advance discussion on whether self-help means may moderate important indicators of health in physicians (e.g., simon & durand-bush, 2014). 1.1 burnout practicing medicine entails facing many stressors (e.g., long hours, emotionally charged situations, difficult interactions, excessive cognitive demands, rapid changes in the profession) that can have a serious harmful effect on physicians’ mental health, including burnout (shanafelt et al., 2003; wallace et al., 2009). a survey revealed that nearly two thirds (64%) of canada’s physicians reported having a workload they considered too heavy, and more than half (58%) of them stated that their family and personal life had suffered because they chose medicine as a profession. stress occurs when there is a substantial imbalance between demands and response capability under conditions where failure to meet the demands has important consequences (mcgrath, 1970). chronic manifestations of stress can lead to burnout (maslach & leiter, 2008), which is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a sense of low personal accomplishment. burnout is disconcertingly reported to affect nearly half of the canadian physician community (boudreau, grieco, cahoon, robertson, & wedel, 2006; puddester, 2004). in addition to impacting physicians’ mental health, distress and burnout appear to alter the quality of care they provide to their patients (eckleberry-hunt et al., 2009; shanafelt, 2009; taub, morin, goldrich, ray, & benjamin, 2006). similar results have been found in medical students, who reported high levels of stress throughout their training that can impede their performance, professionalism, and overall health (dyrbye et al., 2005; lee & graham, 2001). in fact, medical students have higher rates of psychological distress, and may also be more vulnerable to health problems than the general public and age-matched peers (dyrbye et al., 2005). failure to effectively cope with stress during medical training can lead to future personal impairment, as well as decreased performance as physicians (estabrook, 2008). 1.2 wellbeing several researchers have advocated that physician wellbeing is more than the absence of impairment and negative states (shanafelt et al., 2003, weiner et al., 2001; yamey & wilkes, 2001). consequently, it is important to investigate wellbeing from a positive perspective to gain insight into optimal functioning states and mental health. according to keyes and waterman (2003), wellbeing encompasses social, emotional, psychological, and physical aspects that help shape overall positive life functioning. ryff and keyes (1995) conducted instrumental research in the self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 area of psychological wellbeing, and postulated that other aspects of positive functioning, beyond the hedonic dimension of feeling happy and satisfied with life (diener, 2000), must be considered to obtain a comprehensive view of wellbeing. they generated a multidimensional model of psychological (eudaimonic) wellbeing that includes six distinct components: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. ryff and keyes’ (1995) model has received wide support in the literature in studies of wellbeing (abbott, ploubidis, huppert, kuh, & croudace, 2010) across several domains including mental health (negrini, corbière, fortin, & lecomte, 2014), health and aging (brim, ryff, & kessler, 2004; clarke, marshall, ryff, & wheaton, 2001), body consciousness (mckinley, 1999), life challenges (mcgregor & little, 1998), midlife work aspirations (carr, 1997), and therapeutic interventions (fava et al., 2005). to our knowledge, it has been used in only one other study to investigate the wellbeing of physicians, and this preliminary work showed promise that it is a valid model for examining wellbeing in this context (simon & durand-bush, 2014). overall, research has shown the positive effect of wellbeing on performance, productivity, mental and physical health, and relationships (keyes & waterman, 2003). individuals with higher levels of wellbeing tend to adopt more positive self-care behaviors and have fewer maladaptive lifestyle and health problems (diener & ryan, 2009; zimmerman, 2000). it would thus be valuable to examine the wellbeing of physicians in relation to positive outcomes, such as self-care capacity (e.g., self-regulation), as this could shed light on self-directed strategies they can use to manage their health. 1.3 self-regulation wellbeing has been linked to self-regulation capacity in several contexts (elliot, thrash, & murayama, 2011; hofer, busch, & kartner, 2011; vohs & baumeister, 2004; wrosch, scheier, miller, schulz, & carver, 2003). self-regulation reflects one’s capacity to plan, control, evaluate, and adapt internal states in order to attain desired goals in changing and demanding environments (zimmerman, 1996). more specifically, this skill entails setting standards for desired thoughts, feelings, and actions, along with outcome expectations, as well as monitoring and evaluating oneself to identify discrepancies and to adapt. self-regulation has been recognized as one of 24 character strengths in the via (values in action) inventory of strengths, a positive psychology measure designed to identify a profile of an individual’s character strengths (peterson & seligman, 2004). zimmerman’s (2000) social-cognitive perspective of self-regulation demonstrates how self regulation capacity can be not only learned and retained, but also nurtured by external social agents. this intuitively lends itself to an understanding of developing and fostering healthy behaviors and achieving wellbeing in complex environments – it emphasizes the interaction between personal (e.g., cognitive, affective, behavioral) and environmental (e.g., social) processes. it suggests that individuals must develop and utilize their personal resources in order to effectively adapt to continuous changes in the environment (zimmerman, 2000). physicians and medical students training to become proficient health experts should therefore be viewed as active agents, managing their thoughts, feelings, and actions in order to adjust to the continually changing and taxing demands of their profession. although self-regulatory processes similar to those postulated by zimmerman (2000) have been highlighted as effective means to enhance physician and medical student wellbeing and performance (e.g., self-reflection, dobie, 2007; self-monitoring, borrell-carrió & epstein, 2004; epstein, siegal, & silberman, 2008; acceptance and regulation of personal limitations and self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 standards, meldrum 2010; regulation of attention and mindfulness, baer, 2003; regulation of affect, simon & durand-bush, 2009), overall self-regulation as a skill or capacity involving a collection of self-management processes remains for the most part unexplored within the medical community. recently, simon and durand-bush (2014) investigated whether or not self-regulation capacity could significantly predict psychological wellbeing in a sample of 132 canadian physicians. they found that self-regulation capacity did, in fact, account for a significant amount of variance in all six dimensions of psychological wellbeing (ryff & keyes, 1995). selfregulation capacity had a strong positive relationship with environmental mastery and purpose in life, which suggested that effective self-management skills may help physicians to fulfill/balance tasks and maintain a sense of direction in their work. this study demonstrated an association between the aforementioned variables; however, it did not consider dual aspects of wellbeing and burnout, nor did it consider whether these associations are similar or different with respect to physicians and medical students. the current study extended the research and further aimed to determine if strengthening self-regulation capacity could contribute to physicians’ health and address a priority of the cma. 2. purpose of study and hypotheses the purpose of this study was to assess: (a) if self-regulation capacity could significantly predict levels of psychological wellbeing and of burnout among physicians and medical students, and (b) if group status (i.e., physician or medical student) moderated the association between selfregulation capacity and the predicted outcome variables. based on evidence showing that effective self-regulation leads to optimal functioning and enhanced coping under stress and adversity (bandura, 2005; baumann, kaschel, & kuhl, 2007; elliot et al., 2011; hofer et al., 2011; vohs & baumeister, 2004, zimmerman, 1996; zimmerman, 2000), we hypothesized that selfregulation capacity would positively predict psychological wellbeing and negatively predict burnout. however, due to a lack of prior research and the exploratory nature of our analyses, no hypotheses were formulated for the moderating effect of group status on wellbeing and burnout outcomes. 3. methods 3.1 participants physicians involved in education and medical training, and medical students enrolled in the first, second, third, or fourth year of their medical program at a canadian university participated in this study. using a combination of availability and quota sampling techniques (garson, 2009), participants were recruited via posters and emails sent by representatives from the targeted university’s faculty of medicine and affiliated community hospitals. ethics approval was obtained from the university, and participants provided their informed consent before completing the surveys. the sample included 37 medical students and 25 practicing physicians occupying educational and/or supervisory roles. 3.2 measures all participants were emailed a link that allowed them to independently access and complete an online survey that included four questionnaires and demographic questions. completion of this survey took approximately 20 minutes. self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 3.2.1 self-regulation capacity self-regulation capacity was evaluated using the short form of the original self-regulation questionnaire (ssrq, brown, miller, & lawendowski, 1999). the ssrq is a single factor, 31-item questionnaire that is scored using a 1 to 5 likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” it yields a total score that represents a low, intermediate, or high level of selfregulatory capacity. cut-off values were adapted based on those from the original version, with a score of 118 or more reflecting high self-regulation capacity, a score between 105 and 117 reflecting a moderate capacity, and a score of less than or equal to 104 representing low selfregulation capacity. items reveal cognitive, affective, behavioral and social/environmental aspects of self-regulation, as well as both proactive (e.g., planning and adjusting of goals) and reactive (e.g., responding to adversity) sub-processes. the ssrq has been shown to have good psychometric properties in a series of studies on self-regulation and drinking behavior in college students (hustad, carey, carey, & maisto, 2009). 3.2.2 wellbeing wellbeing was assessed using ryff and keyes’ (1995) scales of psychological well-being (spwb). this comprehensive and psychometrically sound tool includes six 14-item scales measuring the following dimensions of psychological wellbeing: (a) autonomy (i.e., self-determination), (b) environmental mastery (i.e., capacity to effectively manage one’s life and surrounding environment), (c) personal growth (i.e., continued growth and development as a person), (d) positive relations with others (i.e., quality relations with others), (e) purpose in life (i.e., belief that one’s life is purposeful and meaningful), and (f) self-acceptance (i.e., positive evaluations of oneself and one’s past life). items are answered using a six-point likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” with higher scores reflecting a higher level of wellbeing for each dimension. no specific cut-off scores have been published. 3.2.3 burnout burnout was measured using the maslach burnout inventory (mbi, schaufeli, leiter, maslach, & jackson, 1996). this 22-item standardized instrument includes three subscales evaluating: (a) emotional exhaustion (i.e., feelings of being overextended and depleted of one’s emotional and physical resources), (b) depersonalization (i.e., negative detachment from various aspects of one’s work, including people), and (c) personal accomplishment (i.e., feelings of competence and productivity regarding one’s work) (maslach & leiter, 2008). responses are rated on a 7-point likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (every day), and generate an individual score for each subscale. cut-off scores for the means were taken from a normative sample of 1,104 health professionals in the united states (thorten, tharp, & meguid, 2011). respondents are classified as having high, moderate or low burnout, and convention stipulates that a high degree of professional burnout is reflected by a high score on the depersonalization and the emotional exhaustion subscales, and a low score on personal accomplishment (maslach & leiter, 2008). the mbi questionnaire has been used in a study in which burnout levels of physicians were measured (dyrbye, thomas, & shanafelt, 2006). 3.3 data analysis the questionnaire data were analyzed using the software program spss 11.0. of the 62 participants, 62 completed the ssrq, 60 completed the spwb and 58 answered the mbi. we used a mean imputation to calculate missing data points for each scale, given that these represented self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 less than 5% of the total data points. we computed internal consistency coefficients to examine the reliability of scales or subscales for each measure. we also obtained descriptive statistics to determine physicians and medical students’ levels of self-regulation capacity, psychological wellbeing, and burnout. pearson product-moment correlations allowed us to examine the strength of the relationships between the variables. finally, we performed a series of hierarchical regressions to assess if self-regulation capacity could significantly predict psychological wellbeing and burnout, and if group status (i.e., physicians versus medical students) moderated these relationships. 4. results 4.1 demographics an equal number of men (n=31) and women (n=31) participated in this study. specifically, there were 17 male and 20 female medical students, and 14 male and 11 female physicians. the participants were aged between 21 and 70 years (21-30 yrs = 69.4%; 31-40 yrs =12.9%; 41-50 yrs = 11.3%; 51-70 yrs = 6.5%) although a large proportion were in their 20s. amongst the practicing physicians, there was a broad representation of specialties and domains of practice including anatomical pathology, cardiology, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry, general surgery, anesthesia, radiation oncology, palliative medicine, orthopedic surgery, neurology, and family medicine. 4.2 internal consistency and descriptive statistics cronbach’s alpha coefficients for each scale or subscale are included in table 1 below. table 1. cronbach’s alpha coefficients, means (m) and standard deviations (sd) measures cronbach’s alpha both groups physicians students m sd m sd m sd ssrq 0.92 n = 62 n = 25 n = 37 123.15 13.49 124.00 16.53 122.57 11.2 spwb n = 60 n = 24 n = 36 autonomy 0.76 057.77 09.26 060.58 09.38 055.89 08.81 environmental mastery 0.80 059.18 09.63 060.79 12.55 058.11 07.06 personal growth 0.83 062.73 10.54 067.54 10.41 059.53 09.47 positive relationships 0.88 060.80 12.46 062.38 14.20 059.75 11.23 purpose in life 0.89 060.13 14.28 067.67 14.21 055.11 12.98 self-acceptance 0.89 059.88 13.26 064.75 15.62 056.64 10.43 mbi n = 58 n = 24 n = 34 emotional exhaustion 0.92 018.72 11.66 019.29 13.87 018.32 10.02 depersonalization 0.84 004.71 05.75 05.5 06.47 004.15 05.22 personal accomplishment 0.82 039.24 06.41 039.58 07.74 039.0 05.38 they ranged from 0.76 (good) to 0.92 (excellent) (george & mallery, 2003). the means and standard deviations for all 10 study variables (table 1 above) were found to be normally distributed for all scales. the mean self-regulation capacity score for both groups was 123.15 (sd = 13.49). based on brown et al.’s (1999) suggested cut-off scores for high, moderate, and low selfself-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 regulation capacity, 47 of the 62 participants (76%) had high, eight participants had moderate (13%), and seven had low (11%) self-regulation capacity. mean scores ranging between 14 and 84 were obtained for each of the six dimensions of the spwb. following ryff and singer’s (2006) guidelines, high scorers and low scorers on each dimension were delimited, based on the middle cut-off score of 49. mean scores for autonomy (57.77, sd = 9.26), environmental mastery (59.18, sd = 9.63), personal growth (62.73, sd =10.54), positive relationships (60.80, sd = 12.46), purpose in life (60.13, sd = 14.28) and selfacceptance (59.88, sd = 13.26) were all above 49, which indicates that the physicians and medical students had moderate to moderately high levels of wellbeing. for the mbi questionnaire, emotional exhaustion subscale scores varied between 0 and 64, with subscale cut-off scores of high ≥27, moderate 19-26 and low 0-18, where higher scores indicated higher levels of emotional exhaustion. depersonalization subscale scores ranged from 0 to 30, with subscale cut-off scores of high ≥10, moderate 6-9, low 0-5, where higher scores indicated higher levels of depersonalization. finally, personal accomplishment subscale scores varied between 0 and 48, with subscale cut-off scores of high ≥40, moderate 34-39, low 0-33, where lower scores represented reduced accomplishment. overall mean scores for emotional exhaustion (18.72, sd = 11.66) and depersonalization (4.71, sd = 5.75) were considered to be in the low range, while the mean score for personal accomplishment (39.24, sd = 6.41) was considered to be in the high range, based on established cut-off scores (thorten et al., 2011). 4.3 hierarchical regressions separate hierarchical regression analyses served to explain variance in each psychological wellbeing dependent variable (i.e., six scales) and each burnout dependent variable (i.e., three subscales). we followed the same steps for entering blocks into the model for all hierarchical regressions. for each analysis, we entered variables in additive blocks as follows: (a) entered group status (0 for physicians, designated as “md,” 1 for medical students, designated as “stud”); (b) added a centered variable for the total score on the ssrq; and (c) added a crossproduct term to examine the interaction between group and the centered variable for ssrq (see holmbeck, 2002 for steps). to prepare for hierarchical regression analyses involving an interaction term, and to guard against multicollinearity, we first centered the ssrq score before multiplying it by group to obtain the cross-product (see cohen, cohen, west, & aiken, 2003). table 2 below displays the results of the analyses pertaining to the wellbeing dependent variables, and table 3 below presents those relating to the burnout dependent variables. we interpreted significant interactions between self-regulation capacity and a dependent variable (i.e., the association was unique to one group) when there was a significant regression model in step 3, when the model in step 3 explained significantly more variance than the model in step 2 (i.e., p < .05 for the δf statistic from model 2 to 3), and when the beta weight for the “status x sr” interaction term in model 3 was significant (holmbeck, 2002). to confirm any significant interactions, we graphed figures and performed post-hoc tests of simple slopes (tabachnick & fiddell, 2012). self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 table 2. hierarchical regression analyses explaining variance in psychological wellbeing variables block variables autonomy personal growth adj r 2 p for δf β adj r 2 p for δf β step 1: status .04*** .05* .12*** .003 md vs stud -.37*** step 2: main effects .22*** .000 .36*** .000 md vs stud -.22*** -.35*** ssrq -.43*** -.49*** step 3: interaction .20*** .71* .37*** .17* md vs stud ssrq status x sr block variables positive relationships purpose in life adj r 2 p for δf β adj r 2 p for δf β step 1: status .006* .42* .17*** .001 md vs stud -.43*** step 2: main effects .19*** .000 .43*** .000 md vs stud -.08*** -.40*** ssrq -.46*** -.51*** step 3: interaction .21*** .17* .47*** .03* md vs stud -.40*** ssrq -.68*** status x sr -.26*** block variables environmental mastery self-acceptance adj r 2 p for δf β adj r 2 p for δf β step 1: status .002** .29* .07*** .01* md vs stud -.30* step 2: main effects .35*** .000 .41*** .000 md vs stud -.10*** -.27*** ssrq -.59*** -.58*** step 3: interaction .42*** .008 .46*** .01* md vs stud -.10*** -.27*** ssrq -.82*** -.77*** status x sr -.35*** -.30*** *** p < .001. ** p < .01. * p < .05. note. beta weights are shown only for significant variable blocks that demonstrate greater variance explained (p for δf< .05) than the prior variable block. self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 table 3. hierarchical regression analyses explaining variance in burnout block variables emotional exhaustion depersonalization adj r 2 p for δf β adj r 2 p for δf β step 1: status .01 .75 .04 .38 md vs stud step 2: main effects .17** .000 .07* .01 md vs stud -.07 -.13 ssrq -.45*** -.30* step 3: interaction .19** .16 .07 .33 md vs stud ssrq status x sr block variables personal accomplishment adj r 2 p for δf β step 1: status -.01 .73 md vs stud step 2: main effects .30*** .000 md vs stud -.008 ssrq -.56*** step 3: interaction .29*** .46 md vs stud ssrq status x sr note. *** p < .001. ** p < .01. * p < .05. beta weights are shown only for significant variable blocks that demonstrate significantly greater variance explained (p for δf< .05) than the prior variable block. 4.3.1 main effects for self-regulation capacity for each analysis, we inspected for models that were significant at step 2, and that did not show greater significance explained at step 3 (see tables 2 and 3). results showing greater significance explained at step 3, which suggest possible interaction effects by group status, are explained in the section below. results meeting criteria for a main effect suggested that the association between self-regulation capacity and a particular dependent variable was significant, irrespective of group status (i.e., the main effect was shared by md and stud participants alike). results showed main effects for three psychological wellbeing dependent variables. more specifically, self-regulation capacity significantly and positively predicted levels for personal growth (b = .49), positive relationships with others (b = .46), and autonomy (b = .43). there were three main effects for each of the burnout dependent variables. self-regulation capacity was significantly associated with personal accomplishment (b = -.56), and inversely associated with emotional exhaustion (b = -.45), and depersonalization (b = -.30). these results confirm our hypotheses. 4.3.2 post-hoc probes for interactions by group in table 2 above, results indicate three statistically significant interactions between group status and self-regulation capacity for environmental mastery, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. we conducted post-hoc tests of simple slopes to confirm the interaction effects. for self-acceptance, the test failed to confirm that this effect was contingent upon group status – the simple slope for self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 both the md (t = 6.25, p < .001) and the stud group (t = 2.00, p = .04) was significantly different from zero. consequently, results indicate a main effect for self-regulation capacity on the psychological wellbeing dimension of self-acceptance that is not unique to any one group. in the model for step 2, self-regulation capacity significantly and positively predicted levels for selfacceptance (b = .58), irrespective of group status. post-hoc tests of simple slopes confirmed the interaction for environmental mastery. specifically, self-regulation capacity significantly predicted increased levels of environmental mastery for individuals in the md group, t = 6.42, p < .001; however, this same association was not significant for individuals in the stud group, t = 1.73, p = .08. figure 1a displays this interactive relationship. likewise, self-regulation capacity was significantly associated with increased levels for purpose in life for individuals in the md group, t = 5.57, p < .001, but not for individuals in the stud group, t = 1.81, p = .07 (see figure 1b). figure 1. significant interactions between group status and self-regulation capacity on dimensions of psychological wellbeing for environmental mastery and purpose in life. a. environmental mastery b. purpose in life 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 e n v ir o n m e n ta l m a st e ry self-regulatory capacity stud md 50 54 58 62 66 70 74 78 p u rp o se i n l if e self-regulatory capacity low high low high self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 5. discussion although self-management skills are deemed essential in the medical profession (meldrum, 2010; sotile & sotile, 2002), there is currently little empirical evidence that physicians and medical students can effectively self-regulate in order to pursue their goals, manage their stress and risk of burnout, and sustain adequate levels of wellbeing and mental health throughout the course of their career. the purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the self-regulation capacity of physicians and medical students and establish if it is associated with lower levels of burnout and higher levels of psychological wellbeing. overall, the medical students and physicians had moderately high to high levels of self regulation capacity, low to moderate levels of psychological wellbeing, and low levels of burnout. while these results are similar to those of simon and durand-bush (2014), they are interestingly incongruent with some of the existing literature on physician wellbeing, in which it is argued that physicians are unwell and at high risk of burnout (wallace et al., 2009). a possible explanation may be the participants’ high self-regulation capacity, which has been associated with increased wellbeing and coping in academic domains (boekaerts & corno, 2005; hofer et al., 2011). another possible explanation pertains to sampling and a self-selection bias in those people who volunteered to participate. the faculty from which the participants were recruited was unique in that it offered resources to develop self-care skills and achieve wellbeing goals, and many participants may have already accessed some of these resources and therefore had higher levels of self-regulation capacity and wellbeing. the participants’ elevated levels should, however, not be considered in any normative way for physicians and medical students until significantly more work is done in this population of highly educated adult professionals to gain better profiling information. with regards to associations between variables, results from the hierarchical regressions indicated a direct significant association between self-regulation capacity and all outcome variables. irrespective of whether participants were physicians or medical students, having higher self-regulation capacity was associated with higher psychological wellbeing and less burnout. this supports simon and durand-bush’s (2014) findings regarding the potential power of self-regulation capacity to enhance physicians’ psychological wellbeing. it also corroborates previous research in which effective self-regulation skills were found to be predictive of health, wellbeing, and performance achievement (bandura, 2005; zimmerman, 1996; 2000). zimmerman (2000) suggested that proactively regulating desired feelings, thoughts, and actions can allow individuals to not only protect themselves against recurring stressors but also achieve desired wellbeing goals and standards. the statistically significant main effects of self-regulation capacity on the outcome variables support the hypothesis that developing selfregulation skills may be an effective approach to manage job-related stressors, promote positive mental health, and prevent mental health problems within the medical community. the two identified interactive effects suggest that the benefits of having self-regulation capability may be particularly pronounced for physicians with regards to two dimensions of psychological wellbeing, that is, purpose in life and environmental mastery. this may mean that having greater self-management competencies may be particularly important to help physicians maintain a purposeful and meaningful life, and effectively manage the extensive personal and professional responsibilities they have in their daily life. although the benefits of self-regulatory capacity are evident for medical students, they may not be as strong as those of physicians because they have limited control over their environment, due to mandated curriculum structure and training demands, and, as such, they may have less opportunity to enact their self-regulation competence to impact their environmental mastery. as for purpose in life, first and second-year self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 medical students’ direct patient care is limited, and, as a result, they may have fewer opportunities than physicians have to enact their self-regulation capacity to bolster their sense of purpose. for example, they likely have fewer occasions compared to physicians to develop meaningful interactions with patients or to take on meaningful mentoring roles. environmental mastery and purpose in life could be key focus areas to target when developing self-help skills and strategies. however, more research with a larger number of participants is required to confirm these interactions and establish whether measurable differences exist between physicians and medical students and within the broader medical community. in comparison to other predictors of psychological wellbeing and burnout that may be difficult to control (e.g., personality traits, imposed work conditions), self-regulation capacity is a skill under one’s control that may be developed in order to manage inner states and adapt to one’s environment. self-regulation skills fluctuate over time and across contexts and may be particularly strained during times of duress (zimmerman, 2000). as such, one can surmise that it would be beneficial to evaluate and nurture self-regulation skills as soon as students enter medical school. practical workshops, seminars or retreats in which strategic planning, goal setting, self-control, self-monitoring, and self-reflection strategies are refined could be provided for physicians throughout their career. having a sense of control over one’s practice environment was shown to be an important predictor of physician wellbeing, satisfaction, and commitment (yamey & wilkes, 2001). strengthening and empowering physicians to develop self-regulation skills that will impact how they manage their environment seems like a plausible and promising approach that should be further investigated. 6. concluding remarks this study is the first to measure self-regulation capacity in physicians and medical students and to explore its impact on psychological wellbeing and burnout. irrespective of whether participants were physicians or medical students, higher self-regulation capacity was significantly associated with higher psychological wellbeing and less burnout. the benefits of high self-regulation competence may be particularly pronounced for physicians with regards to two dimensions of psychological wellbeing, that is, purpose in life and environmental mastery. these results hold important implications for understanding where and how to target future mental health and personal growth interventions within this community, if self-regulation is used as a self-care skill to enhance wellbeing. the significant relationship between self-regulation capacity, psychological wellbeing and burnout is a promising finding that should be further explored, given the paucity of data, that may be used to enhance the mental health and wellbeing of canadian physicians and medical students. self-regulation may be a valuable self-help skill that physicians and medical students could learn early on in their training or career to manage the adversity they face and to optimize their performance in their environment. given the mentoring role that physicians play in the education of medical students, it may be an asset for physicians to not only possess effective selfregulation skills but also have an ability to teach them to students during their training. authors marie-claude j. gagnon, m.d. university of ottawa mcj_gagnon@hotmail.com mailto:mcj_gagnon@hotmail.com self-regulation capacity in medicine gagnon, durand-bush, & young www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 natalie durand-bush, ph.d. university of ottawa bradley w. young, ph.d. university of ottawa publishing timeline received 8 april 2015 accepted 23 august 2015 published 14 may 2016 references abbott, r. a., ploubidis, g. b., huppert, f. a., kuh, d., & 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(2021). flow the wu-wei way: a thematic analysis of charity runners’ experience of wu-wei in enhancing wellbeing and flourishing. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 132-154. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2129 wendy roberts university of east london wendyeason88@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 article flow the wu-wei way: a thematic analysis of charity runners’ experience of wu-wei in enhancing wellbeing and flourishing wendy roberts · candan ertubey abstract: there is increasing interest and research into non-western perspectives on wellbeing and ways of flourishing in different cultures. this study builds on this by investigating the taoist concept of wu-wei, translated from chinese as ‘non-action’ or ‘actionless action’, through the experiences of ten runners (age 40 to 63; four identifying as male and six as female) who run for charitable causes and how this contributes towards their wellbeing. semi-structured interviews were conducted then transcribed, and four core themes and eight subthemes identified using thematic analysis. analysis showed that the four core themes for participants to achieve wu-wei were experience of suffering or adversity, being fully focused on the present (with an element of mindfulness), having a shared experience with the running community, and adopting a broader perspective on life (including in meaning or purpose). by accepting their experiences of suffering or adversity and pursuing pro-social activities, such as running for charitable causes, participants used mindfulness through running to develop a broader perspective on life and attain wellbeing. the findings indicate that the taoist concept of wu-wei can be applied in positive psychology when manifested as a key facet of running as a positive psychology intervention suggesting its relevance to the wellbeing literature. this study highlights the importance of embracing cross-cultural approaches to wellbeing by looking at non-western perspectives and their application to the global population. keywords: taoism, wu-wei, cross-cultural psychology, wellbeing, flourishing, running, pro-social, charity 1. introduction the field of positive psychology sits between pure evidence-based science and the philosophy of wellbeing. as we enter its third decade, many circumstances (including the covid-19 pandemic) have dictated we respond to the ever-changing needs of society in producing a model that is fit for purpose. in the current study, there are two compelling reasons for introducing the research. first, comprehensive findings emerged from an empirical review of studies with psychological and behavioural variables that questioned our reliance on studies based disproportionately on people from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (weird) societies (henrich et al., 2010). critics have questioned whether this use of the western gaze can adequately and/or legitimately serve all populations (awaad & reicherter, 2016; henrich et al., 2010), and the current study thus offers an alternative perspective. second, there is increasing awareness that materialistic and individualistic mindsets largely exhibited in western societies are inversely related to achieving wellbeing (dittmar et al., 2014; eckersley, 2006; górnik-durose, 2020; roberts & clement, 2007; swinyard et al., 2001). evidence suggests that: the western culture about:blank wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 is detrimental to health (eckersley, 2006); conflict exists between values highly valued in western societies, such as capitalism, with values related to a broader mindset, such as relationships and caring beyond the self (kasser et al., 2007); and, essential components of wellbeing, such as csikszentmihalyi’s flow (1990), are inhibited by the western preoccupation with materialistic values (isham et al., 2021). this suggests that something crucial may have been overlooked in the evidence-based science and positive psychology has not fully acknowledged the wealth of literature available (lomas, 2015). in response, cross-cultural research is emerging introducing new concepts to the field of positive psychology that enriches and deepens our understanding and experience of wellbeing including finland’s sisu (lahti, 2019) and japan’s ikigai (kono & walker, 2020). 1.1 the philosophy of taoism the current study qualitatively explores an alternative way of attaining wellbeing and flourishing by introducing an ancient philosophical concept from the east with many similarities to flow (csikszentmihalyi, 1990) called ‘wu-wei’ which literally translates from chinese as ‘nonaction’ or ‘actionless action’. wu-wei is a taoist concept that guides practitioners in how to live a natural life in the world (chen, 2007). written about extensively in religious and philosophical journals, taoism offers guidance on “how to live a contented, serene life regardless of circumstances… [with the promise it] has much to offer psychologists in the west regarding the oriental wisdom of coping with stress” (chen, 2007, p. 91) and seemingly offers relief to the current post-pandemic malaise. in essence, taoism and wu-wei focus on aristotelian virtue ethics. the introduction of wu-wei to western societies could counteract the inclination to a purely individualistic mindset as this philosophical perspective of virtue ethics, with focus beyond the self, could help in more deeply characterising a good life and overcoming the shortcomings of individualism (richardson, 2012). the current study is based upon positive psychology 2.0 (pp2.0) (held, 2004; ivtzan et al., 2015), wong’s dualistic ‘existential positive psychology’ of everything existing in polarity, with successful flourishing achieved through a dynamic balance between opposites of suffering and happiness, (wong, 2011; 2013; 2019; 2020). through philosophical enquiry, qualitative exploration, and the gaze of universal relativism (lomas, 2015), this study aims to add to the wellbeing literature, “the path to happiness even when things go bad” (chen, 2007, p. 93): the taoist concept of wu-wei. 1.2 the altruism of charity runners the study draws from a sample of participants who classify themselves as charity runners for three reasons. first, by selecting participants from a pool whose primary motivation is to benefit others, the group’s pro-social and altruistic mindset could be connected to their wellbeing (kahana et. al., 2013; post, 2005). second, the group’s identities as ‘runners’ means they will have a strong sense of agency (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000) in how to apply the accepted medical knowledge that exercise is medicine (thompson et al., 2020). third, the collective effort of the runners who run (a) for charities and (b) as part of a race community, means that there will be a perceived sense of humanistic collectivism and relatedness a vital component to wellbeing (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000; seligman, 2011). villalonga-olives & kawachi’s theory of social capital (2015) suggests that “the resources available to individuals and groups through membership in social networks” (p. 62) will offer runners a means to achieve this through the running network. wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 by offering an alternative non-western perspective on achieving wellbeing through wu-wei, the current study offers a valuable contribution to the growing cross-cultural wellbeing literature. the use of charity runners as participants highlights how running, in combination with an altruistic mindset, can serve as a meaningful positive psychology intervention and contribute towards individual wellbeing. 1.3 cross-cultural conceptions of happiness the contention that much of our understanding of psychology is western-centric has persisted for some time (henrich et al., 2010; lomas, 2015; wong, 2011; 2013; 2019; 2020). held (2004) was the first to claim that the happiness angle in positive psychology literature has had a biased western-centric perspective, with ehrenreich (2009) suggesting, and wong (2011; 2013; 2019; 2020) supporting, that this has resulted in a polarised rhetoric. lomas (2015) has suggested a mediating approach of a new positive cross-cultural psychology, with lopes et al. (2016) offering intercultural research to illustrate how interventions have varying impact on behaviour in different cultural settings. progress has been made and lomas et al. (2020) have suggested the inclusion of new items exploring non-western perspectives on wellbeing in the gallup world poll, with lomas (2021) suggesting the adoption of concepts such as ‘balance’ and ‘harmony’ in the wellbeing narrative. there has been an emergence of studies exploring positive psychology interventions from non-western countries (hendriks et al., 2018) with the introduction of finland’s sisu (2019) and japan’s ikigai (2020), and the current study aims to add to this body of cross-cultural research by introducing chinese taoism’s wu-wei. wong (2011; 2013; 2019; 2020) has consistently argued that individuals can flourish despite (and because of) enduring suffering or adversity, but the literature is limited in support (hall et al., 2010; wong, 2011; 2013; 2019; 2020), to the detriment of the field of positive psychology. this study contends that pp2.0 has the capacity to add “further nuance that serves to deepen the insights and impact made by the first wave” (lomas et al., 2020, p. 7). in the infancy of positive psychology, ryff and singer (2003) highlighted that flourishing encompasses “inevitable dialectics between positive and negative aspects of living” (p. 272) and the current study aims to illustrate this. 1.4 flowing east and west described as the psychology of optimal experience (csikszentmihalyi, 1992), flow theory has long been associated with the happiness literature offering the promise of a route to the good life, “characterized by complete absorption in what one does.” (csikszentmihalyi, 2014, p. 239), while seligman’s perma model (2011) states that flow is a natural outcome of the component relating to engagement. on the other hand, the flow experience has been criticised for its purported individualistic bias (slingerland, 2015) with its emphasis on purely selfish and personal gain. isham et al.’s work on flow illustrates that living well is more easily achieved with having less (2019), and that materialism can inhibit flow (isham et al., 2021). hence some critics have pointed to the failings of the happiness literature to acknowledge the nuances in cultural approaches to happiness (joshanloo, 2014; lu & gilmour, 2004; uchida & kitayama, 2009). joshanloo (2014) echoes wong (2011; 2013; 2019; 2020) by suggesting this can be achieved by turning to taoism, “by not favouring one pole (happiness) over the other (suffering), and by accepting the pattern of change…[because] these principles together with that of non-action are thought to lead to a sense of inner peace and contentment” (p. 480). based upon the writings of lao tzu in the dao te ching dating back to 600bc, wu-wei advocates spontaneity and naturalness in action: “the dao never acts and yet is never inactive.” (lao tzu, chapter 37). wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 translated as ‘non-action’ or ‘actionless action’, wu-wei offers a framework for individuals to act within the true nature of things. wu-wei has varied but limited focus in the psychological literature, appearing as: a discussion on the ego and self (moore, 1983); the interrelation with humanistic psychology (chang & page, 1991); a perspective to broaden personality and counselling theories (lee, 2003); a way of healing from stress and coping (chen, 2007); a discussion on conflict and peace (sun, 2009); and, part of a wider discussion on cross-cultural or existential positive psychology (wong, 2011; 2013; 2019; 2020). transcendental in nature (chen, 2007) with a spiritual characteristic, wu-wei has appeared in spiritual and philosophical journals (see loy, 1985; slingerland, 2000; barrett, 2011; de prycker, 2011) and nursing journals (banner, 2018), with singh acknowledging the evasiveness of its conceptual personality (2014). with its dialectical and paradoxical approach to psychological happiness (as explained by wong, 2011; 2013; 2019; 2020), wu-wei could be of great value to the positive psychology wellbeing literature, as the eastern relative to its more familiar western counterpart, flow (csikszentmihalyi, 1990) by “balancing opposite elements into a whole” (delle fave et al., 2011, p. 199). in line with lomas’s case for focus on a more balanced approach to wellbeing (2021), the current study seeks to redress these cultural biases that have so far influenced positive psychology. 1.5 running and wellbeing running has clear benefits to individual wellbeing beyond just the physical. with a strong sense of agency (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000) runners are well acquainted with how to apply accepted medical knowledge that exercise is medicine (thompson et al., 2020). deci and ryan’s self-determination theory (1985; 2000) suggests that running fulfils the need for competence (mastering the art of running), connection (with a wider running community or identifying as ‘a runner’), and autonomy (through consistency over time), which feeds into psychological wellbeing. on a broader community-wide level, festinger’s theory of social comparison (1954) offers further explanation, with buunk and dijkstra’s work (2017) highlighting how a social comparison model (either an upward or downward contrast) can feed into psychological wellbeing through a runner’s relative feelings of achievement within the running community. participants whose primary motivation is to benefit others (charity runners), would be expected to exhibit an altruistic mindset that could contribute to wellbeing (kahana et. al., 2013; post, 2005) offering a glimpse into a sense of wider community reflecting the collectivist characteristic of wuwei. the aim of the current study was to perform a qualitative analysis of the data to investigate the concept of wu-wei in the context of running to achieve better understanding of how to attain wellbeing through a more balanced contribution of both happiness and suffering (wong, 2011; 2013; 2019; 2020). the study aims to do this and introduce further evidence to the wellbeing literature in pp2.0, by straddling ‘the third wave’ of positive psychology (lomas et al., 2020) through a further focus of enquiry by the application of critical realism (bhaskar, 1975). in bringing a critical realist approach to the qualitative data (willig, 2013) and applying thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006; braun et al., 2016) the current study aims to identify what sits in the gulf between what is essentially a philosophical construct (wu-wei as ‘non-action’ or ‘actionless action’) and psychology, and give it more concrete form by asking, “what is the manifestation of the taoist concept of wu-wei in charity runners?” wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 2. method 2.1 design the study employed a qualitative design to obtain a detailed account of how runners perceive their experiences as runners. data were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews to obtain as rich an account of their experiences as possible. thematic analysis was employed with the data grounded in critical realism (bhaskar, 1975) and the findings interpreted as the interaction between the participant’s individual experience and perspective, and the researcher’s perspective (trochim, 2006). the researcher engaged in ongoing reflections throughout the process to take a reflexive position and understand how the research may be impacted by individual perspective (attia & edge, 2017; dodgson, 2019; willig, 2013). 2.2 participants ten participants aged between 40 and 63 (four identifying as male and six as female) were recruited via social media. details on participant demographics were taken (table 1). all runners were english speakers based in the uk who had raised money for charity through their running. they were experienced athletes having run three times or more a week for at least the past three years. the study coincided with the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic, and any race events referred to had taken place prior to the start of march 2020. table 1. participant demographics.1 name gender age geographical location occupation miles m 47 england running coach & personal trainer darcy f 55 ireland academic professor sean m 42 england civil servant maeve f 50 england editor leia f 45 england running coach & personal trainer noah m 63 england advertising executive stella f 48 england healthcare administrator paul m 54 northern ireland company manager scarlett f 40 england accountant kylie f 43 england business and life coach 2.3 interview schedule a single interview was conducted with each participant and all interviews took place over six weeks. data were collected over 60-90 minute interviews conducted by video on microsoft teams. this included an introductory informal chat with each participant to offer an opportunity to address questions before the interview. the notion of wu-wei as a tangible construct is both difficult to explain and easily grasp, so the researcher introduced the concept during this informal chat by offering definitions of wellbeing, flourishing, and pp2.0. interviews were semistructured in nature posing open questions relating to the runners’ experiences. appropriate prompts supported and encouraged the participants to discuss the topics which referred them 1 pseudonyms are used to maintain the confidentiality of the participants. wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 back to the key definitions to help synthesise the concept of wu-wei. the interview schedule (including the definitions) is attached at appendix b. 2.4 procedure before each interview, the researcher sent information letters (appendix a) and consent forms to participants and offered an opportunity to discuss the study in more detail and to ask any questions in a preliminary phone-call. following receipt of signed consent forms, the researcher conducted interviews with each participant which were recorded on microsoft teams and the automated transcription facility in streams. transcripts were checked for accuracy by comparing them line-by-line against video recordings before being sent to participants for final approval. interviews followed a semi-structured schedule using open-questions and appropriate prompts for the researcher to encourage participants to discuss their experiences and reference them to the definitions of wellbeing, flourishing, and pp2.0. 2.5 ethical approval ethical approval was granted by the university’s research ethics committee. in the participant information letter the researcher emphasised both the participants’ guarantees of confidentiality and right to withdraw at any time. debriefing took place after each interview which included signposts for additional support. 2.6 analysis thematic analysis was selected as the approach, which can be deductive and/or inductive, allows for flexibility when choosing the theoretical framework. analysis was conducted from the epistemological perspective of critical realism (bhaskar, 1975) to enable each participant’s unique individual sociocultural context to be interpreted (braun & clarke, 2006). bhaskar’s critical realism (1975) as a philosophical approach to describe the interaction between the natural and social worlds suits the analytical insights needed to draw out the themes. the three levels of critical realism ontology (empirical, actual, and real) neatly capture the experienced events (empirical), the observed and unobserved events (actual), and causal mechanisms that lead to events occurring empirically (real) (fletcher, 2016). the researcher transcribed the interviews and analysed the data using the six steps outlined in braun and clarke’s thematic analysis (2006): (1) familiarisation with data; (2) generating initial codes; (3) searching for themes; (4) reviewing themes; (5) defining and naming themes; and (6) producing the report. a rich description of the whole data-set was obtained to identify and analyse the patterns present. the analysis was conducted by the researcher familiarising themself with the data by reading and re-reading the transcripts while listening to the audio from the video recordings. to actively engage with the transcripts, the researcher conducted a line-by-line descriptive analysis to generate a list of ideas about what was contained in the data. the list was given codes, semantically and then latently, for the themes to be identified, defined, and named. in determining what counted as a theme, the question of prevalence was addressed in both frequency and weighting (braun & clarke, 2006) which required an ongoing internal reflexive dialogue for the researcher. 3. results four main themes and eight subthemes were identified from participants’ descriptions of their running history, in the context of running for charity or others (table 2). each main theme is set wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 out with accompanying extracts from the transcripts which highlight the subthemes that emerged during analysis.2 table 2. themes and subthemes. themes subthemes 1. experience of suffering or adversity (a) acceptance of the journey (b) develop gratitude and growth from adversity 2. fully focused on the present (having an element of mindfulness) (a) space to address life challenges or to lose yourself in the moment (b) belief in existing in harmony with surroundings 3. a shared experience with others (a) offers a sense of community (b) values contribution to society 4. a broader perspective on life (including in meaning or purpose) (a) shape self-identity (b) offers feedback in assessing relationships 3.1 overview of themes and subthemes four main themes relating to the participants’ wellbeing as runners were identified through data analysis: experience of suffering or adversity, being fully focused on the present (having an element of mindfulness), a shared experience with others, and a broader perspective on life (including in meaning and purpose). the results are noted in relation to the research aim and existing literature, with the implications of findings, limitations, and suggestions for further research also discussed. 3.1.1 experience of suffering or adversity analysis identified two sub-themes: (a) acceptance and (b) gratitude and growth, relating to the theme of experience of suffering or adversity. acceptance. miles, a runner and running coach, described a pivotal moment shortly after the death of his wife when he had the choice to end it or accept the situation and continue with his life: i was going to cross over the road, there was a lot of vehicles coming in my direction and it's basically, if i step out now, that's it, no more pain... in that split second, you go from thinking that to then thinking… that's really selfish… then my parents have got to deal with everything. he described this acceptance as a necessary part of the process, ”you've almost got to hit rock bottom to know how low you can get”, which gave him an understanding of the boundaries of his new widowed existence, “… then you know that… you always have good days and bad days... we all have days where we're lower than others”. leia viewed this polarity of fortunes as a necessary part of the equation, “you gotta have bad times and good times… and you've got to draw something from that bad to make it positive, because in every single negative there has to be a positive because otherwise the world wouldn't turn around”. 2 extracts are presented with ellipses where information has been omitted for clarity. pseudonyms are used for anonymity. wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 as well as acceptance, running offered participants space in which to confront uncomfortable moments when running with self-compassion, “i can raise… deep dark issues without judgment i think as well” (darcy), and to acknowledge any pain, “it's just (.) situations… your personal life, your… work life all gets… in the way, and it’s… how it comes out and that's how you vent it” (sean). gratitude and growth. the data suggested that acceptance of suffering or adversity was an opportunity for growth for some participants. this mindset was evident when participants spoke about dealing with discomfort in running, “it's embracing the discomfort… you have to be comfortable with uncomfortableness” which extended into a mindset for living, “you have to know that some things are going to be uncomfortable in life and that's the only way that you can change” (miles). sean credited running with helping him overcome challenges posed by divorce and mental health challenges, “i went through a marriage separation a couple of years ago and (.) suffered quite badly from depression… and anxiety… if it wasn't for the running, (.) i think i would be in a very different place now than… where i could have ended up”. the two widowed participants were able to develop a sense of gratitude for the opportunity gifted due to the suffering, “it's using the positives and thinking of the good things… i don't think i would have run as many marathons or run at all if it wasn't for my first wife…” (miles), “i'm lucky that i've learned a lot from my wife dying. i don't measure it as… something (.) that was negative. it happened. yes, i didn't enjoy it, but i've learned a lot…” (paul). 3.1.2 fully focused on the present all participants described a sense of mindfulness where they were fully focused on the present, without any task or goal in mind, when running. analysis generated two sub-themes: (a) space to address life challenges or to lose one-self in the moment, and (b) belief in existence in harmony with surroundings. space to address life challenges or to lose one-self. a common theme amongst participants was for running to offer space in which to engage with one-self in the moment when home life is stressful, “it's head space… my own space… the switching off… complete escapism” (stella), and to escape from distractions, “a space away from demands on my attention… that kind of disconnect… from… noise and communication” (darcy). running also was a space in which to address life challenges, “i would find it... if i had a… problem… a difficulty... a dilemma to… talk it out in my head as i ran… that was immensely helpful. i often get ideas while i'm running” (darcy). belief in existence with harmony with surroundings. participants also described a sense of being in harmony with their surroundings through a sense of being fully focused. for noah, who had parkinson’s disease, this seemed poignant: “you… take time out when you're running to take in your surroundings (.)… be at peace with it, and appreciate it for what it is”, which heightened the personal experience when running, “the way you do things automatically, you realise actually that you're missing out quite a lot”. this belief in existing in harmony with surroundings was expressed by paul in terms of moments being gifted, as if a lottery win, “you have to look for those little moments… those pockets of happiness, those fairies that are going to just drop some stuff in front of you. and sometimes they’re not obvious… we have to pay attention”. his description of this sense of harmony reflected the dualist nature of taoism when he talked about “what you receive and what you give back”: i've much better self-awareness... of myself (.)…what i can do and what i can also learn from… different things… it's about… investing the effort… it's just like wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 140 anything… if you don't invest, you don't get anything... to receive, you’ve got to give. 3.1.3 shared experience with others analysis identified a sense of running as a shared experience was a prevalent theme for all participants. two sub-themes emerged: having a sense of community and valuing contributions to society. a sense of community. all participants spoke about the interpersonal relatedness as part of a community, for sean who was divorced, “when you're running… you understand (.) why people run and you've got that bond”, and maeve who had expressed how she had often felt the outsider in life, “that end of the race feeling and you're hugging people that you've never hugged before and they just want to kiss you and it's like, it's fine… it's such a lovely thing and i guess because you're sharing it as well”. for maeve, this camaraderie was especially powerful when racing with her team as part of a relay event, “it wasn't till i did it that i totally understood that sense of feeling part of something massive”. miles regularly ran charity races in fancy dress to raise money for his late wife’s charity and spoke about his connection with the supporters: when you're wearing fancy dress and fairy wings and a tutu, and a wand, it's just a totally different level… [it] just gives you such a buzz... i'm somebody that certainly thrived off of the the cheering. as a running coach, this feeling of wellbeing from charitable running subsequently influenced his coaching style: i know how much running has helped me both on the mental side of things, the charitable side of things with keeping lucy’s name alive as well and trying to impart that sort of knowledge on people… to get them to enjoy what they're doing and learn. the community of runners of which he was a part also played an important role for him, “i’m proud of that little community… it's a really supportive, friendly community and people love each other”. this sense of being part of a wider collective with a distinct identity was articulated by noah when he described the camaraderie of running with others in challenging weather: my main running buddy… her partner’s a high-powered barrister... he just doesn't get it. it's pouring with rain, freezing cold (.) going on a 20-mile run, why on earth would you go running in weather like this? … he just cannot understand and get why we do it. i have tried to explain to him, but (.) h-he still doesn't get it... i think we are a particularly (.) unusual breed of people. running as part of a collective community was vital for kylie, who was caring for her mother with motor neurone disease and otherwise struggled to motivate herself to run: … running was my only escape because i was juggling everything… life was really, really hard… nothing was for me apart from the running. and i had never ever until… that phase (.) felt that high from running that i got because i think the difference from the running i’d done before… i don’t know if it was emotion, or passion, or drive, or whatever, but i was pushing myself. whereas before, i was tootling along. wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 141 the group motivation factor was echoed by sean, “it adds that motivation as well that… you're not just doing it for yourself… you're doing it for other people”. as well as empowering her, kylie found a connection with others through running for charity: i felt like i was so powerless, and yet by running, i was raising money for something that has no cure. i (.) felt like, by so many people feeling like they couldn’t do anything for mum, by sponsoring me, they felt like they were doing something. i mean, those were the conversations i was having. so then i was doing it for them as well. so for me, i was doing it for me, i was doing it for mum, i was doing it for (.) the people that were sponsoring me, and it was huge for me the emotions behind it. the passion behind it. values contribution to society. the importance of contributing to society through running was articulated by several participants. first, as an external source of motivation when raising money for charity as explained by leia, “by hook or by crook, a charity runner will do it because once they signed on that line, they then know it's not about them”, she elaborated, ”you got the masses, who are the most unselfish runners in the world because they're never going to be about them... most people would go for a charity and close to their heart. it becomes very personal”. second, running was seen as imparting a sense of agency when raising money for charity, “i always feel if you [are] doing a big run (.) people do obviously get asked for sponsorship all the time… i just felt (.) what can i do for… this person? you know, the only thing i know how to do… is run… can i help by running? and it was the only thing that i felt that i could.” (scarlett). third, running was seen to offer support to those in need, “just really to support my friend who wants to do it as well… we run together a lot, she's worked relentlessly through all of covid, and she actually ran the vaccination program at [name of nhs hospital trust]. and just to run with her every week, she's always like, ‘this makes my week’” (scarlett). fourth, another participant saw the value of human connection, “i saw an old guy walking towards me... we ended up chatting for 15 minutes… it made me feel good because i almost feel like i gave him some time and i really listened to him… without blowing my own trumpet, he almost went off with a spring in his step afterwards because he felt like someone really listened… it was almost you feel like giving something back to somebody else as well.” (stella) 3.1.4 a broader perspective on life a fourth theme emerged from the data where participants described how running offered them a broader perspective on life. analysis uncovered two sub-themes: running helps to shape selfidentity and offers feedback in assessing relationships. shapes self-identity. participants described how running offers a way to reassess the inclination to strive to achieve goals, “i'm a very goal-oriented person and always have been. i've got better about it. i'm kind of less like that now… i'm better at stepping back and seeing goals in a different way” (darcy), “i'm probably more proud of the fact that i am still running virtually every day and enjoying running and things like that instead of… a time” (miles). noah, who suffers from parkinson’s disease, articulated this in terms of how he had stopped chasing material possessions, “it's not having stuff that matters anymore, it's the quality of life” and placed more worth on intrinsic values: you're mentally feeling chilled and relaxed and at peace… you just feel (.) better, happier… it's little things like that now (.) that are important to me... the days when i would be into things like… the rolex watches, the designer label clothes, wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 142 and fancy cars… all these sorts of things. now they don't really mean anything to me. another participant described how running improved her self-esteem and made her a better version of herself that she hoped would inspire her children, “i'd love to be their inspiration… them watching me get a lot out of it is really important to me” (kylie). she also spoke of how running for charity validated her self-perception as a runner: “i couldn't label myself ‘a runner’ (.) for a long time because i didn't think i was good enough… by (.) running for a cause and running for something that meant something, i put in a lot of hours and therefore (.) that was enough justification then to call myself ‘a runner’”. darcy, who was in a same-sex marriage, also connected with her self-identity as a runner, “it is a really central part of my identity; as central as you know, my work or… my sexual identity… at this point in my life, it's probably more important than that”, she continued, “a place where i'm allowed to be completely myself.” an observation for paul, who was widowed, was that this shaping was an essential part of the dialectical and paradoxical process of wu-wei: every day doesn't have to be an up day... your best day can be a low day. and your next best day can be high. and you've got to realise there's good days, there's bad days, but your bad days are just another version of a good day. it just has to be dealt with in a different way… it’s taken me 50 years to get here, so does it matter how long the journey is? i don't think so (.) if you don't (.) experience the experiences... you’re not going to be the person that you are. offers feedback in assessing relationships. all participants described how running offered a tool in helping them to assess important relationships. darcy explained, “there's moments of revelation because of that kind of… that step back, you kind of suddenly think, ‘gosh…all my life, my mother said’ or did whatever, whatever it is, you know, some kind of structural realisations.” darcy was also able to use running to manage the challenges presented in her relationship with her autistic adolescent daughter: i do use it as a sort of tool for… i wouldn't say self-improvement exactly, but you know self-care… self-improvement… sometimes i do have to give myself a stern talking to about certain things… it's like, you know, why am i… losing my shit with… a 12-year old who… has an autism diagnosis. come on… get over yourself. this ability for running to help put things in perspective in challenging relationships was echoed by scarlett, “all these silly things that we get stressed about, it's just a really good sort of cathartic way of going, actually, it's not important, and letting it go. and i learned a lot--to let go on a run actually”. 4. discussion 4.1 summary of main themes this study explored the manifestation of wu-wei in runners who run for charitable causes and the impact on wellbeing and flourishing. as such it examined the manifestation of wu-wei in charity runners, during or outside of running. participants were experienced runners reflecting on their history of running for charities and what it meant to them in the context of suffering or adversity, being fully focused on the present (including having an element of mindfulness), having a shared experience with others, and developing a broader perspective on life (including wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 143 in meaning and purpose). the results are noted in relation to the research aim and existing literature, with the implications of findings, limitations, and suggestions for further research discussed. 4.2 experience of suffering or adversity acknowledgement and acceptance of the suffering or adversity experienced by participants was a key factor described by all of them. whether it was a life tragedy or difficult moment encountered during a run, acceptance of the situation was essential. perceived as a part of the embodied whole of life experiences, turning into the negative emotions was viewed as essential according to miles and leia. darcy and sean used their runs as a space in which to confront and process those feelings, while miles and paul were able to view the suffering they had experienced with gratitude and an opportunity for growth. the current study supports the seemingly paradoxical theory of pp2.0 that suffering is a key variable in finding wellbeing (wong, 2011; 2013; 2019; 2020) and the dialectical realisation that existential positive psychology is inherently positive. wong’s belief in viktor frankl’s brand of tragic optimism (wong & mcdonald, 2002; wong, 2020) was clearly represented in the data with participants all acknowledging the value of accepting dark moments which enabled them to transcend their circumstances, find gratitude and experience growth. in this aspect, the current study further supported the assertion by ryff and singer that a key element of the formula for flourishing includes acknowledging the dialectics of positive and negative aspects of life (2003; p. 272). 4.3 fully focused on the present accessing mindfulness through running, and developing a focus in the present moment, was an important element of attaining wellbeing for participants. stella and darcy explained how they used the space as an opportunity to escape from and to address life challenges. running was described by darcy as a tool for seeking wellbeing and a bridge to connect with their surroundings. the act of being focused on the present touched on the concept of flow (csikszentmihalyi, 1990) in being fully present in the moment, without any sense of the passing of time, but also was described by noah as being in perfect harmony with the moment highlighting the distinct characteristic of wu-wei as ‘non-action’ or ‘actionless action’ in running. reflecting its paradoxical identity and challenging the engagement limb of seligman’s theory on perma (2011), the sense of flow through wu-wei described by participants contrasted with the contention by seligman that mindful engagement is necessarily based on an enjoyable focus. the various descriptions by participants of the simple joys experienced from running supported isham et al.’s claim that living well can be achieved by having less (2019). but the contention that materialism inhibited flow (isham et al., 2021) was not apparent from analysis which may have been attributable to the format of the questions in interview. of the discomfort experienced, paul spoke of the dialectical nature of his relationship with running which translated into his philosophy of life when he described his belief in receiving what you give. this supports the findings by wong, (2011; 2013; 2019; 2020) of the dual nature of wellbeing, and the relevance of the taoist principles of accepting this inevitable pattern of change and of balancing opposite elements (joshanloo, 2014; delle fave et al., 2011). wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 4.4 a shared experience with others a key theme described by participants was the feeling of sharing an identity or experience with others through running for charitable causes or within communities. the positive emotions elicited through the sense of being part of a larger group were clearly articulated by maeve and sean, supporting the claim that a pro-social mindset correlates to wellbeing (kahana et al., 2013; post; 2005). fredrickson and losada (2005) argued for the importance of positive affect in flourishing and the current study supports the notion that these emotions play a crucial role in wellbeing. the feeling of being part of a wider group supports the finding in deci and ryan’s self-determination theory (1985; 2000) that interpersonal relatedness is a crucial element of wellbeing, with connection being a strong theme of taoist philosophy and eastern collectivism. participants also expressed the importance of contributing to society as runners, as part of a collective effort, which supports the claim of the importance of agency (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000) and relatedness (seligman, 2011) in developing wellbeing. the timing of the study led to a rich data-set on participants’ shared experiences due to the lockdown imposed over the covid-19 pandemic, emphasising the sense of humanistic collectivism (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000) and importance of relationships and caring (kasser et al., 2007) felt by the runners in achieving wellbeing through their activities despite the pandemic. 4.5 a broader perspective on life participants expressed how running offered them insight into different ways to perceive things. for darcy, a self-confessed goal-seeker, it allowed her to access self-compassion in allowing her “to be completely herself” which supports the research by neff (2011) on the importance of practising self-compassion in attaining wellbeing. paul explained how running helped him to accept the dialectical approach of wong’s existential positive psychology (2011) to finding wellbeing through acceptance of suffering as an inevitable and unescapable aspect of normal human existence. noah was explicit in no longer valuing material items, supporting the contention that materialism wasn’t his route to happiness (isham et al., 2021) and demonstrating the advice to “enjoy the plain and simple. find that greatness in the small” (lao tzu, chapter 63). the capacity for all participants to thrive and find wellbeing through self-determination was apparent throughout analysis (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000) as running offered them a route to actively engage with communities and develop valuable human bonds. importantly, the data further illustrated the more nuanced approach offered by pp2.0 to the participants’ interpersonal relatedness and how they contemplated these relationships and their self-identity, supporting wong’s claim of mature happiness (2019) being characterised by a sense of acceptance and contentment. 4.6 how does wu-wei manifest itself in how runners achieve wellbeing and flourishing? the aim of the current study was to explore the experiences of runners who raise money for charity and how this enhances wellbeing and flourishing by applying the taoist concept of wuwei. participants exhibited a clear sense of acceptance of suffering, with expressions of gratitude, in growing from adversity. mindfulness was a key ingredient in allowing them to accept their present situation and running offered valuable space in which to do this. villalonga-olives & kawachi’s theory of social capital (2015) provided a sense of humanistic collectivism via the act of charity fundraising, existing as a member of the running community, or simply identifying as a runner, and together with relatedness (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000; seligman, 2011) wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 145 enabled participants to achieve wellbeing despite living through a pandemic. crucially, wong’s theory of existential positive psychology (2011; 2013; 2019; 2020) offered deeper insight into how, despite the most extraordinary unforeseeable, worldwide health pandemic, all the runners were able to achieve wellbeing and flourishing. 4.7 implications of findings participants expressed a sense of being part of a community with a strong self-identity through their running which was often emphasised through charity fundraising. this tied into their wellbeing and flourishing in impactful and lasting ways. while it may not be practical for all who suffer from adversity to take up running, perhaps due to physical limitations, the data suggest that any activity, simple movement, and, importantly, having a sense of belonging as part of a wider community, has a powerful impact on helping people redefine themselves following suffering, and to flourish. this looping effect, so coined by hacking (1995) due to the dynamic process, in “classifying people works on people, changes them” (p.369) and points to our very fluid nature in accordance with the tao or the flow of nature (lao tzu). it therefore offers a widely accessible and powerful route to wellbeing, providing the infrastructure of a community is there. crucially, the current study suggests that wu-wei in the context of a group activity or pursuit, can offer this access irrespective of circumstances and fortunes and could be implemented globally. of wu-wei, lao tzu said that “few in the world can comprehend the teaching without words or understand the value of non-action” (chapter 43) and while promoting suffering or adversity certainly requires a skilful marketing campaign, the implications for the wider social benefits using existing community frameworks through adopting this in policy-making are immense. 4.8 reflection on research design participants demonstrated a willingness to communicate but due to the open nature of the interview, some deviated more than others. semi-structured interviews were deemed necessary because the notion of wu-wei as a construct is difficult to explain, and conceptualisation of the theory in practice differed from participant to participant. while definitions of the various relevant concepts were offered, the questions may not have probed sufficiently into the construct which may have been reflected in the lengthy responses. it is impossible to fully account for the impact of the intersubjective relationship between researcher, participant, and topic, as the data was gathered over time. as an experienced runner and running coach, the researcher’s gaze was not entirely objective and the ability to express difficult concepts naturally became more fluid with each interview which may have influenced the participant. 4.9 limitations and further research the results are limited by the small sample size drawn from a participant group of mostly middling and advancing age. as participants had been recruited via social media and word of mouth, there were varying degrees of pre-existing familiarity between researcher and participant. the reflexive intersubjectivity between researcher, participant and subject matter may also have been impacted by the sudden loss of a close family member of the researcher, in particular, given the existential nature of the research topic. participants were educated to at least undergraduate level with considerable experience in the workplace which may have had some bearing on the outcome of the results. details relating to ethnicity, family background, socioeconomic status, experiences of living in other geographical locations with different cultural wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 146 practices, health (a mental or physical health diagnosis) were not specifically included but could have had a bearing on the outcome of the results. due to the open-ended nature of the interview, some participants spoke for longer than others and this could have resulted in an imbalanced perspective. the study was cross-sectional in nature and a longitudinal approach may have allowed each participant to reflect more on their experiences of running and the topic of the interviews. future research could explore the experiences of participants from a younger generation with a broader educational range. the findings suggest the value of more research in relation to all other movement-based activities, inside and outside of sport, that require perseverance based within a wider community. focus on more research could be given to specific cultural upbringing as this may have more bearing than current geographical location. replicating this study with a larger sample of a broader age range, that includes details on ethnicity, family background, socio-economic status, experiences of living in other geographical locations with different cultural practices, and a detailed history on health, could offer more insight and deepen our understanding of wellbeing, offering wu-wei as a concept to achieving wellbeing which can be freely accessed by all. 5. conclusion in summary, the current study discovered that the manifestation of wu-wei is key to achieving wellbeing in making sense of human existence in the face of suffering or adversity. wong’s pp2.0, ‘existential positive psychology’ (2011; 2013; 2019; 2020) offers a route to achieve this existential wellbeing and this study identified how it presents in runners who adopt pro-social ways of incorporating running within the community. accounts contributing to the conceptualisation of wu-wei by participants were grounded in dealing with suffering and adversity, providing the essential foundation to find wellbeing and flourishing. by facing into their challenges and accepting the journey with a mindset of gratitude, participants were able to grow and transcend their suffering, supporting the existential philosopher nietzsche’s well-known claim that “what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger”. the activity of running offered a convenient route to attain mindfulness which allowed participants to embrace these challenges and develop a broader perspective on life. the powerful effect of embracing wu-wei during their training indicates that a programme of running that includes a focus on the four key themes (experience of suffering or adversity, being fully focused on the present, having both a shared experience with others and a broader perspective on life) as a core element of the regime, could help develop wellbeing in runners in addition to getting them race ready. promisingly, the data did not indicate it was an exclusive preserve of the running community and the combined focus of bringing the four themes into any movement-based or sports training programme has the potential to make a group or charity-focused effort a powerful positive psychology intervention. the element of interpersonal relatedness in the shared experience provided a key powerful stimulus to enhance wellbeing and flourishing and wu-wei may be attainable as a route to wellbeing and flourishing via many other physical activities. finally, the research highlights a fundamental and unique virtue of adopting wu-wei as a route to wellbeing. in recognition of the fact our mental and physical health is, to a large extent, dependent on the wellness ecosystem that surrounds us, there has been a boom in the global wellness industry. a thriving market offers us a wide range of options to help individuals to achieve wellbeing and happiness. this commoditisation of wellbeing in the west has bestowed on it the aura of the holy grail but the current study illustrates that seeking physical and mental wellbeing does not depend on financial status or access to a wellbeing market, and those living wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 147 in developing nations all around the world are as able to achieve wellbeing by embracing wu-wei 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i am conducting research exploring the relationship between the taoist concept of wu-wei and wellbeing and flourishing in charity runners. taoism is an ancient chinese philosophy that teaches us that all living things should exist in harmony with the universe. a guiding principle is that everything in our universe is connected by balancing forces, such as light and dark and morning and night. you may be familiar with the symbol of yin and yang that illustrates this. a key tenet of taoism is wu-wei, also described as effortless action or action through inaction, which describes when we are in perfect harmony with what is natural at the moment. in contrast with the trend to strive to achieve and focus on positivity, wu-wei teaches us to be fully present accepting both the positives and negatives in life. in this way, it helps us to be more reflective. the study seeks to understand how this reflexive philosophical stance can help us to achieve wellbeing and flourish in our lives irrespective of what circumstances we are facing. i have chosen to focus this research on charity runners to explore the potential link between wu-wei and runners who align their running goals with a charitable purpose. my research has been approved by the school of psychology research ethics committee. this means that the committee’s evaluation of this ethics application has been guided by the standards of research ethics set by the british psychological society. why have you been asked to participate? you have been invited to participate in my research as someone who fits the description of who i am looking for to help me explore my research topic. specifically, i am looking to involve runners who fit the following criteria: • aged between 18-65 • for the current study you have been running consistently for at least a year in the past three years • run at least 3 times a week • race regularly (but not only) in aid of charities • able to run independently (without relying on others to guide or accompany you) • currently injury-free wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 152 i emphasise that i am not looking for ‘experts’ on the topic i am studying. you will not be judged or personally analysed in any way and you will be treated with respect. you are quite free to decide whether or not to participate and should not feel coerced. what will your participation involve? if you agree to participate you will be asked to: • attend an interview via teams lasting 60-90 minutes. • this will be recorded using the teams transcription service streams. • the interview will be in the format of an informal chat, guided by broad questions which are selected to help me to understand your experience of the topics we will cover. • the conversation will be recorded for later transcription and analysis. • during analysis of the conversation, i will provide you with a pseudonym in order for you to maintain complete anonymity and all identifying details will be redacted or omitted from the written materials, including the transcript and write-up. • following transcription of the interview, i will arrange for you to see a copy to approve it as an accurate reflection of what you said. the interview is voluntary and i will not be able to pay you for participating in my research. however, it is anticipated that the experience will be of benefit to the wider community in the research that emerges and, therefore, your participation would be very valuable in helping to develop knowledge and understanding of my research topic. your taking part will be safe and confidential. your privacy and safety will be respected at all times. • the interviews will be recorded and transcribed entirely by me. • participants will not be identified in the data collection, on any written material arising from the data collection, or in any write-up of the research. this means that: o your name will not be noted anywhere, so that only i will know your identity. o i will discuss parts of the study with my supervisor, dr ertubey, but she will not know your name. o dr ertubey will be provided with a summary of my findings once the study comes to an end, but she will not have access to any of the recordings or transcriptions. o in the event the research is published, the data will be available to those with access to academic journals but will be in anonymised form using pseudonyms. • you have the right to not answer any of the questions asked and can stop participation in the study at any time, this includes prior to the start of the interviews, once the interviews have begun, and up to three weeks after the interviews have been completed. you also have the right to request to see your data after the interview. what will happen to the information that you provide? what i will do with the material you provide will involve: • data will be stored on a password protected computer in a password protected document. any hard copies of transcripts and notes will be securely locked in a fireproof cabinet to which only i will have the key. • after the data is collected, i will provide pseudonyms for each participant. none of the participants will be able to be identified in any of the written transcripts or further write wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 153 ups for research purposes, nor in the final write-up of the study itself. the pseudonyms will be used at all times and the original transcripts will not have their names on them. • only i will have access to the data. my supervisor will be given access to select sections for discussion and this will be anonymised. any further data, for example should the study be published, will be completely anonymised. • after completion of the study, participants’ contact details, the recordings, transcripts, notes and write-ups will be securely stored in a password protected environment (in the case of electronic data) or a securely locked fireproof cabinet (in the case of hard copies). in accordance with the rules, data will be stored for the period of time that is required by the journal that i plan to publish my findings in. this can vary depending on the journal and, if you are interested, i can let you know the outcome once or if my study has been accepted for publication. what if you want to withdraw? you are free to withdraw from the research study at any time without explanation, disadvantage or consequence. separately, you may also request to withdraw your data even after you have participated data, provided that this request is made within three weeks of the data being collected (after which point the data analysis will begin, and withdrawal will not be possible). contact details if you would like further information about my research or have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact wendy roberts [contact removed]. if you have any questions or concerns about how the research has been conducted please contact the research supervisor dr candan ertubey [contact removed]. wu-wei and wellbeing as charity runners roberts & ertubey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 154 appendix b. survey questions. in order to outline the research, participants were provided with the following definitions: wellbeing (noun): a state of happiness and contentment, with low levels of distress, overall good physical and mental health and outlook, or good quality of life (apa dictionary of psychology). flourishing: “there are stringent criteria for flourishing. their three core elements (positive emotion, engagement, and meaning) are taken from authentic happiness theory, but with the addition of the other elements – most important, positive relationships – they come close to the elements of well-being theory. i would suggest that accomplishment be added as an element so that being in the upper range of positive emotion, and engagement, and meaning, and positive relationships, and positive accomplishment would be my criteria for flourishing”, i.e. fulfilment in lives, accomplish meaningful/worthwhile tasks, connect with others on a deeper level (seligman, p.238-239). p = positive emotions e = engagement r = good relationships m = meaning / purpose in life a = achievement wong’s pp2.0 (frankl’s tragic optimism): “to live a meaningful life, regardless of circumstances, is to have courage and responsibility to become what you were meant to be, to become your best self as a gift to others” (wong, 2011). description of wu-wei as “action through inaction” or “effortless action” to achieve wellbeing and flourishing. participants were offered an explanation of the dual nature of taoism which recognises for everything there is an opposite – this will be pertinent for runners familiar with the moments of suffering and adversity in training and racing. participants were provided with a definition for “wellbeing” and “flourishing” (see above). the purpose being to set the scene for the participant and frame the following questions. 1. can you give examples of wu-wei during your running? how do you think your charity involvement influences this? 2. can you recall specific instances when running in which you: a. were fully focused on the present b. were without any task or goal in mind? c. felt in perfect harmony d. felt natural at that moment? 3. how did the experience begin? 4. when did it happen? 5. where did it happen? 6. who was involved? 7. what happened to induce such a state of wu-wei? 8. to what extent do you think running helps you develop wu-wei and wu-wei helps you develop your running? a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness timsit, j. (2011). forward on project +. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 195-196. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.2 jean timsit franco american charitable trust jean.timsit@wanadoo.fr copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 195 editorial forward on project + jean timsit this symposium on felicitators contains the first collective output of an interdisciplinary group of wellbeing researchers invited to contribute and combine their efforts to synthesize and expand what can usefully be learned from the rapidly enlarging science of wellbeing. the two main goals of project +, as the collective effort has been named, are: 1) to produce a synthesis of what is known about the ways one can or cannot achieve human fulfillment, personal wellbeing and happiness, and 2) to investigate the consequences of these findings at the collective level of countries or societies, including those at very different stages of material development. project + researchers were invited to consider the following questions, amongst others:  how do recent discoveries and methodologies help answer very old and traditional questions relating to the ‚good life‛?  what are the paths to personal wellbeing, life satisfaction, contentment or happiness?  which paths are counterproductive?  what are the conflicting forces in place, or contradictions, the ‚dark points‛?  what do we need more of? less of?  are current approaches delivering the expected progress for civilization?  can sustainable paths to personal happiness be generalized to the societal level?  how can one balance the outside/in and the inside/out approach?  how might paths to personal happiness affect public policies?  how can we redefine ‚progress‛ and the goals of economic development?  how can we release the energies of altruism and generosity (rather than selfishness and carelessness)?  could a clarified path towards wellbeing and happiness be the ‚missing link,‛ or the motivation, to challenge our contemporary way of life and allow a paradigm shift that might lead to a better world? answers to these questions could provide a new framework for how decisions are made on many different levels – individual, collective, organizational, institutional and governmental. it would enable a person wishing to live a ‘good life’ to have a more precise idea of how to achieve it as well as enable policy makers, in education, health, government, and businesses, to make decisions that facilitate personal and social wellbeing instead of relying exclusively on a narrower range of objectives, often defined in purely material terms. the project reflects the perspectives of several different disciplines, and is based on dialogues among scientists who otherwise may not have the opportunity to work closely together. multiple disciplines’ perspectives on happiness are represented, including forward on project + timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 196 contemplative studies, religious studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, ecology, history, philosophy, and neuroscience. the aim of the project is to use dialogues among experts to facilitate breakthroughs in how we think about happiness and what we have traditionally believed leads to happiness. whereas these topics are often studied by isolated individuals, each working from a single perspective, project + is unique in its emphasis on creating small-group collaborations for the purpose of generating new ideas about happiness. too often the individuals who conduct basic science and/or who publish in philosophical or scientific journals do not share their knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, or with the general public, leaving to others the task of reaching practical conclusions and communicating them to a lay audience. an important aspect of project + is its goal to share accessible, applicable models of happiness that protect the planet’s resources. these are complex and controversial topics, but bringing in the best of contemporary science and multi-disciplinary methodology offers an extraordinary opportunity to address some of the current challenges facing modern societies. author jean timsit franco american charitable trust biswas-diener, r. (2022). wellbeing research needs more cultural approaches. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 20-26. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.1965 robert biswas-diener positive acorn robert@positiveacorn.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 article wellbeing research needs more cultural approaches robert biswas-diener abstract: there is a long-standing tradition in social science research on wellbeing, in which scientists create national rankings of happiness. traditionally, nordic countries such as sweden and denmark tend to top these lists. such rankings are interesting as dinner table conversation and they are perennially reported on by the media. they also reflect a specific mindset about wellbeing research. namely, that cross-cultural comparisons are interesting, that they are possible to make, and that nations can serve as reasonable proxies for culture. although there is an element of truth to all three suppositions, there are also legitimate limitations to them. this article argues that positive psychology and wellbeing researchers should adopt a cultural as well as a cross-cultural perspective. this requires increasing sophistication in a) the understanding of culture itself, b) the methods for investigating it, and c) the complexities of cultural research. examples and recommendations are provided. keywords: culture, cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, wellbeing 1. understanding culture in the modern era, arguably few phenomena are as valued or sought after as happiness. indeed, the everyday understanding of culture tends to focus on its most conspicuous aspects: dress, language, religion, and food. psychologists, by contrast, tend to think about culture in terms of invisible constructs that are socialized. one example is the approach centered around the sense of self in relation to others, such as triandis’ (1995) dimensions of individualism and collectivism, and kitiyama and markus’ (1994) interdependent self. another example can be found in distinguishing between internal and external views of the self, such as cultures of face, honor, and dignity (kim, cohen & au, 2010). these approaches are so well-established that they can be the go-to modes for research comparisons, and this is especially the case with individualismcollectivism. although these approaches have led to large bodies of research and many insights into culture, there is much yet to learn. it may be advantageous for wellbeing researchers to reflect more broadly on what, exactly, culture is. biswas-diener and thin (2021) draw on cultural anthropology to suggest that there are three distinct ways view culture: 1. progressive cultivation—in english, there is a tradition of using the word “cultured” to suggest refinement through education. the distinction between “high art” and “street art” is an example of progressive cultivation. because of its links to formal education, this understanding of culture has become conflated with social class and has, historically, been the basis of prejudice and colonial attitudes toward those who are “uncultured.” 2. ways of life—this understanding of culture refers to distinct patterns of belief and mailto:robert@positiveacorn.com about:blank wellbeing research needs more cultural approaches biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 behavior that are shared among members of a group. there is an assumption in this approach that there are geographical and ethnic distinctions in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. this is the primary approach to culture adopted by wellbeing researchers. 3. shared learning/enculturation--whereas “ways of life” is a noun, enculturation is a verb. this approach to culture emphasizes the dynamic processes of learning local norms. examples include parents modeling appropriate emotional expression, immigrants adopting local styles of dress, and new employees learning the corporate culture. wellbeing researchers will primarily be concerned with culture as a way of life and as an enculturated process of learning. distinguishing between these two approaches can benefit wellbeing science. the ways of life approach is particularly suited to making wellbeing comparisons across cultures while enculturation is well-suited to understanding wellbeing as a process. this distinction in non-trivial in that it can help bridge debates within the research literature. for example, researchers repeatedly find—in the ways of life approach—that individualists report higher happiness than do collectivists (egs., diener, diener, & diener, 1995; hofstede, 2001). many explanations have been offered for this finding, including norms for emotional experience and expression (diener, suh, smith & shao (1995) and autonomy (diener and diener, 1995). despite a large body of evidence pointing to the wellbeing benefits of individualism, critics have argued that many programs of research on the topic do not adequately account for cultural distinctiveness. for example, heine and colleagues suggest that, in japan, the educational system emphasizes an enculturation process, hansei (self-reflection with an eye on improving past performance). wellbeing in this context, then, might not be best measured by general life satisfaction or the experience of positive emotions. instead, processes related to continuous selfimprovement, such as effort and perseverance, might be overlooked in wellbeing metrics. measuring subjective experience such as satisfaction alongside culturally appropriate processes such as duty or self-improvement might, ultimately, paint a more robust and inclusive portrait of wellbeing. 2. cultural and cross-cultural wellbeing studies cross-cultural psychology is principally concerned with making comparisons across cultures in an effort to investigate universals and differences. to do so, researchers employ standard measures—often quantitative surveys—to establish a common unit of measurement. for example, my colleagues and i employed surveys, memory measures, peer reports, and experience sampling to better understand the experience of emotion in japan, india, and the united states (scollon, diener, oishi & biswas-diener, 2004). although we used quantitative measures of universal emotional experience, we were also sensitive to the presence of indigenous emotional experience. therefore, alongside measures of joy, worry, and guilt, we included local emotions such as shitashima (in our japanese sample) and sukhi (in our indian sample). using hierarchical cluster analysis, we found that the indigenous emotions grouped with their expected pleasant or unpleasant universal emotional counterparts. in the end, this methodological approach allowed us to better understand differences in the experience of emotion. we discovered, for instance, that hispanic-americans experienced more frequent and more intense positive emotions than did their asian-american counterparts. what’s more, participants in our japanese sample recalled significantly more negative emotion than did members of the other samples. despite the limitations of the study, such as employing student samples, this study is a http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing research needs more cultural approaches biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 good example of exploratory research upon which future wellbeing researchers can build. by providing initial evidence for cultural differences in the experience and recall of emotion, future researchers can ask more pointed and more sophisticated questions. thus, cross-cultural psychology is valuable in creating a broad foundation for understanding cultural universals and relative differences. cultural psychology, by contrast, seeks to evaluate a phenomenon within a culture—to understand local definitions, manifestations, and variability, without regard for comparisons to other cultures (adamopolous & lonner, 2001). an example of this can be seen in the research by dzokoto (2020), who investigated local theory of mind in ghanaian akan-speakers. dzokoto used qualitative interviews, folkloric analysis of local proverbs, and linguistic analysis to identify common local themes in theory of mind. across these analyses, she found 4 themes related to understanding the nature of the mind. these are: a) planning—the mind is used for planning and problem-solving, b) moral valence—the mind can gravitate toward good or bad intentions, c) porosity—the mind can be porous, merging with other selves or the cosmos, and d) physical manifestations of the mind such as feeling hot or trembling. dzokoto’s research is inclusive in that it allows her local informants to dictate the definition and understanding of the concepts of interest. although it qualitative, it provides insights that can direct future research including cross-cultural comparisons. future wellbeing researchers, for instance, might be interested in investigating the physical sensations associated with wellbeing and how these might differ across cultures. thus, cultural approaches provide additional insights into local culture and can be a springboard for cross-cultural comparisons. thin (2018) summarizes this distinction by saying that cross-cultural approaches are used by wellbeing researchers to answer the question “how happy are people?” while cultural approaches are used to answer the question “how are people happy?” beside the conceptual distinctiveness of cultural and cross-cultural psychology, they also tend to differ in research methodology. cross-cultural comparisons are more readily made through the use of standard quantitative measures and this requires relatively large samples to obtain adequate statistical power. this means that cross-cultural investigations of wellbeing often employ frameworks and measures created in western societies and use the convenience sampling of college students or large international surveys that use relatively few items. for instance, diener and diener (1995), recruited more than 13 thousand college students from more than 30 nations to investigate the relationship between individualism and life satisfaction. the use of college students, in this instance, allows for quasi-experimental control of important variables such as income and education but it also limits the generalizability of these results. cultural psychology, by contrast, is more likely to employ interviews or other qualitative approaches. cultural psychology is also more likely to have a multidisciplinary focus, bridging topics such as anthropology, religious studies, folkloric studies, women’s studies, and sociology. although these two traditions of research have distinctive goals and methods, they can be combined. an example of this can be found in biswas-diener and diener’s (2001) investigation of wellbeing among people living in impoverished conditions in kolkata, india. to prepare to collect data with this difficult-to-access and highly sensitive population, the researchers conducted preliminary investigations to better understand the cultural context. this included a one-month trip to india for this specific purpose. during this trip, the researchers conducted interviews in two cities with people from a wide range of backgrounds (taxi drivers, domestic workers, postal employees, etc.). we asked about definitions and ideals of happiness, and about the relative importance of relationships, income, and other variables that might correlate with wellbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing research needs more cultural approaches biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 these interviews provided the context to help us make better decisions about our measurement strategy. for instance, we initially wanted to inquire about satisfaction with various material resources such as income, food, and housing. after better understanding the cultural context of india, however, we decided to add a question about satisfaction with privacy and another about crowding. the people in our samples were relatively dissatisfied with their privacy, and we replicated this by using cross-cultural comparisons with samples of other groups of homeless and impoverished people (biswas-diener & diener, 2005). in addition, we discovered that among “pavement dwellers” (those living on sidewalks and railway platforms), crowding predicted life satisfaction, but in the opposite of the expected direction. that is, the more people a person shared their plot of sidewalk with others, the higher was their life satisfaction. it is possible that the social benefits of living with friends and family can buffer one against the dire effects of poverty. we would not have thought to include such measures and so would not have derived these results, had we not integrated a cultural component into our quantitative research. 3. the complexities of cultural research in wellbeing for wellbeing researchers proposing to undertake investigations with a more cultural orientation, several issues should be considered. the considerations are, of course, too numerous to discuss here. i will avoid general commentary on qualitative methods and similar discussions that can easily be found elsewhere. instead, i will focus on four issues specific to the cultural study of wellbeing: 1. ideal wellbeing—any investigation of wellbeing should consider the addition of data collection on local definitions and understandings of wellbeing. collecting qualitative data on this topic allows researchers to add items alongside established measures to expand the scope of the study and include more sensitivity to cultural contexts. one common way of soliciting such information is to ask participants about their understanding of “ideal wellbeing.” one example of this is using the “free listing” technique in which participants freely list answers to “what makes you happy?” (reyesgarcia, 2012). in a free listing of happiness among the tsimame’ (brazilian amazon), reyes-garcia found that 69% of her informants mentioned spending time with family. we might expect something similar with almost any cultural sample. reyes-garcia also found that 40% of her informants mentioned drinking shocdye’ (beer) which is an important aspect of their social and religious fabric. this unusual local finding highlights the importance attending to rituals and behavior as an important and often overlooked aspect of wellbeing. another method to get at ideals of wellbeing is to have people envision an ideal citizen in their society (one who has a good quality of life and who is well-respected). then, ask the participant to describe the happiness of that person in terms of “what that ideal person might experience” and “what other people might notice about their happiness.” 2. happiness processes—global judgments of life and reports of emotional experience are, by far, the most common means of measuring wellbeing (egs, jebb, morrison, tay & diener, 2020; kim-pietro, diener, tamir, scollon & diener, 2005). although these measures are well-established, there have been many other aspects of wellbeing that have been largely overlooked by researchers. for example, doing one’s duty, experiencing a sense of belonging, feeling that one is improving, enjoying respect, and feeling “in harmony” are all concepts that might be of interest to wellbeing http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing research needs more cultural approaches biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 researchers. joshanloo (2019) offers an interesting example of this by looking at the fragility of happiness, the potential of suffering to be transformative, and other processes that typically escape the attention of wellbeing researchers. although there are studies that employ alternative concepts, they are relatively rare, and too rarely used in conjunction with life satisfaction or other more common measures. 3. academic imperialism—it is not controversial to suggest that wellbeing researchers in general, and those with a cultural interest specifically, are motivated, in part, by curiosity and also a desire to uncover potentially helpful insights. even so, the vast majority of research is housed in more affluent societies. this results in western, affluent researchers collecting data from (sometimes) disenfranchised populations. the resulting publications provide benefit to the researcher, the university, and the field of psychology more immediately than they have a downstream positive effect on the populations of interest themselves. this, at its worst, can be seen as widening the knowledge and benefit gap between groups. in one example of an effort to combat this trend, biswas-diener and diener (2001) held public lectures on the results of wellbeing research with people living in a slum area in which they were collecting data. the lecture was held after the data was collected so as not to influence it, and there was a facilitated discussion about the potential local uses of this knowledge. in addition, we worked with local non-profits to funnel participant compensation in ways that might benefit the community as a whole. wellbeing researchers need to broadly consider how they compensate their participants across cultures, with individual payment as only a single option for doing so. 4. finding an outlet for publication—in wellbeing studies in general, and in positive psychology specifically, there is a preference for quantitative analyses. even when qualitative methods are used, they are often better respected when they are treated quantitatively. subscribers to top-tier journals in psychology will note that there are relatively few qualitative-only publications. another potential obstacle to publishing cultural wellbeing research is its inherently interdisciplinary nature. reviewers sometimes request a clear theoretical basis for a study and this is not always a good fit for descriptive studies of the type that cultural investigations typically are. culturally inclusive research on wellbeing requires journals, such as the international journal of wellbeing, that take a favorable view of such approaches. 4. concluding notes on cultural research of wellbeing there are increasing calls within wellbeing studies to have more inclusive measures (lambert, et al., 2020). unfortunately, such efforts are hampered by a relative lack of emphasis on cultural approaches to research. ultimately, cultural approaches to studying wellbeing are an act of humility. although we have made clear advances in our understanding of measurement and methods, we may have rushed to closure on frameworks for understanding wellbeing. to fully understand this concept, we need to listen better to lay beliefs about wellbeing. cultural approaches to investigating wellbeing is also an area of terrific promise. it provides opportunities to collaborate with a wider range of colleagues, to establish psychology in regions where it is not well-established, and to greatly expand our understanding of wellbeing. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing research needs more cultural approaches biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 authors robert biswas-diener positive acorn robert@positiveacorn.com acknowledgments the author wishes to acknowledge nadezhda lyubchik for her contributions to this article. publishing timeline received 30 september 2021 revised version received 12 january 2022 accepted 20 february 2022 published 1 november 2022 references adamopolous, j. & lonner, w. (2001). culture and psychology at a crossroad: historical perspective and theoretical analysis. in d. matsumoto (ed), the handbook of culture and psychology. oxford, uk: oxford university press. biswas-diener, r., & diener, e. (2006). the subjective well-being of the homeless, and lessons for happiness. social indicators research, 76(2), 185205. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-005-8671-9 biswas-diener, r., & diener, e. (2001). making the best of a bad situation: satisfaction in the slums of calcutta. social indicators research, 55(3), 329-352. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1010905029386 biswas-diener, r. & thin, n. (2021). culture. in r. biswas-diener & e. diener (eds), noba textbook series: psychology. champaign, il: def publishers. biswas-diener, r., tay, l., & diener, e. (2012). happiness in india. in h. selin and g. davey (eds.), happiness across cultures (pp. 13-25). springer, dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2700-7_2 diener, e., & diener, m. 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(2020). subjective well-being around the world: trends and predictors across the life span. psychological science, 31(3), 293-305. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619898826 joshanloo, m. (2019). lay conceptions of happiness: associations with reported well-being, personality traits, and materialism. frontiers in psychology, 10, 2377. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02377 kim, y., cohen, d. & au, w. (2010). the jury and abjury of my peers: the self in face and dignity cultures. journal of personality and social psychology, 98, 904-916. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017936 kim-prieto, c., diener, e., tamir, m., scollon, c. n., & diener, m. (2005). integrating the diverse definitions of happiness: a time-sequential framework of subjective well-being. journal of happiness studies: an interdisciplinary periodical on subjective well-being, 6(3), 261-300. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-005-7226-8 kitiyama, s. & markus, h. r. 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(2012). happines in the amazon: folk explanations of happiness in a hunterhorticulturalist society in the bolivian amazon. in h. salin (ed) happiness across cultures, pp. 209-22. dordrecht: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2700-7_15 scollon, c. n., diener, e., oishi, s, & biswas-diener, r. (2004). emotions across cultures and methods. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 35(3), 304-326. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022104264124 thin, n. (2018). qualitative approaches to culture and well-being. in e. diener, s. oishi, & l. tay (eds.), handbook of well-being. salt lake city, ut: def publishers. triandis, h. (1995). individualism and collectivism. boulder, co: westview press. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i2.1037 biswas-diener, r., & kashdan, t. b. (2021). three lessons from ed diener. international journal of wellbeing, 11(2), 73-76. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i2.1705 robert biswas-diener positive acorn robert@positiveacorn.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 article invited article three lessons from ed diener robert biswas-diener · todd b. kashdan 1. introduction dr. ed diener, sometimes called “dr. happiness” because of his pioneering research on wellbeing, passed away april 27th, 2021, in salt lake city, utah (usa). diener was well-known as a founder of positive psychology and a pioneer in wellbeing research. his academic career spanned five decades, and he published hundreds of articles and chapters. his work has been cited more than 250,000 times and, combined with his h-index (181), diener was the 172nd most highly cited scientist in the world, across all disciplines. his satisfaction with life scale alone has been cited over 30,000 times. diener was a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences and a senior scientist at the gallup organization. he won the highest awards in psychology, including the award for distinguished scientific contribution from the american psychological association (apa) and the william james fellow award from the association for psychological science (aps). he served as president of the international positive psychology association (ippa), the international society for quality of life studies (isqols), and the society for personality and social psychology (spsp). in the early 1990s, diener was the editor of the top journal in his field, the journal of personality and social psychology. he was also the founding editor of the journal of happiness studies and perspectives on psychological science. given his stature in the field, it is fitting that we reflect on the lessons we can take from diener’s research career. although there are many, we focus on three central lessons: 2. lesson one: an emphasis on descriptive science although diener’s research program built on prior scientific discoveries, he was especially inspired by three scientists: 1) tycho brahe, the father of modern astronomy, 2) karl von frisch, the nobel-prize winning ethologist who discovered “the dance of the bees,” and 3) jane goodall, the primatologist and conservationist who mapped previously unknown chimpanzee behaviors. all three of these researchers share in common an approach to science that emphasized pure observation over theory. they were empiricists in the strictest definition of the word. they did not seek to prove their hunches, nor were they bound by existing theoretical approaches. they were, in essence, curious to observe. ed diener advocated a similar approach to happiness studies. after spending years establishing definitions and valid measures of wellbeing, diener simply wanted to chart happiness as it exists in the world. he was curious to see who had happiness, how much of it they had, when they had it, and how it varied over time and context. it is hard to highlight just how radical a descriptive approach to science is in the modern age. research reviewers often criticize submissions for lack of theoretical foundation. ed, by contrast, believed that it made more sense to collect decades of data before forming theories. this approach is especially about:blank three lessons from ed diener biswas-diener & kashdan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 conspicuous in his publications from the 1990s, in which he investigated levels of happiness as they relate to income (e.g., diener & fujita, 1995; diener, sandvik, seidlitz, & diener, 1993), culture (e.g., oishi, diener, lucas, & suh, 1999; suh, diener, oishi, & triandis, 1998), and other demographic variables (e.g., gohm, oishi, darlington, & diener, 1998;). he was not opposed to theory, of course, but did not lead with it. even when he addressed theoretical explanations for his research findings, diener was careful not to rush to closure on any single theory. a noteworthy example of this can be found in his publication discussing societal differences in wellbeing (diener & lucas, 2000). researchers often observe societal differences in wellbeing, and it is tempting to explain such findings with singular confidence. more typical of his intellectual humility, however, diener and his colleague suggested many distinct possibilities, including the use of relative comparison standards, the fulfillment of basic needs, and local cultural influences on wellbeing. the researchers suggested the possibility that, when making judgments of life satisfaction, people might make their evaluations on a complex and individualized set of relevant information. as always, when they suggested that more research is needed before accepting this idea, they meant it. 3. lesson two: scientific rigor when diener became the editor of the journal of personality and social psychology in 1998, he argued for greater scientific rigor. in particular, he advocated for multi-study and multi-method research (diener, 1998). for example, when investigating cultural variation in emotion, he and his colleagues employed diverse samples and used a variety of measurement strategies, including global wellbeing judgments, experience sampling, and memory measures (scollon, diener, oishi, & biswas-diener, 2004). this research approach was typical of diener, adopting sophisticated methodologies, as required, to adequately answer the question asked. he often employed larger and more representative samples (such as 136,839 respondents from 132 world countries; diener, ng, harter, & arora, 2010), multiple methods simultaneously (such as anticipatory, experience sampling, and retrospective assessments of the same spring break vacation; wirtz, kruger, scollon, & diener, 2003), and employed strong research designs such as multi-study replication and randomized controlled trials (e.g., heintzelman et al., 2020). although well-known for his research on happiness, diener frequently published directly on methodological considerations. these included establishing the discriminant validity of wellbeing measures (lucas, diener & suh, 1996), discussing effect sizes in happiness research (geerling & diener, 2018), and critically reviewing affect induction procedures (chan, heintzelman, tay & diener, 2020). diener believed that research results are only as good as the science that produces them and remained a champion of tailoring measurement, sampling, and design to the phenomena under investigation. long before the “replication crisis” came to popular attention, diener was concerned with the generalizability and precision of results. for example, he and his colleagues found that “most people are happy” (diener 1996). this finding set the foundation for later discoveries about the beneficial consequences of happiness (e.g., lyubomirsky, king & diener, 2005). despite the initial evidence, diener and his colleagues returned to this finding throughout his career as better data emerged. they did so in the hopes of adding more nuance to our understanding of the topic. for example, using data from non-traditional samples of the maasai in kenya, inughuit people in greenland, and amish communities, he and his colleagues noted cultural variation in the “most people are happy” conclusion (biswas-diener, vittersø & diener, 2005). then, in 2018, diener and his colleagues revisited decade-old findings with survey data from 1,551,362 respondents from 166 countries (the gallup world poll; diener, diener, choi & oishi, 2018). this http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ three lessons from ed diener biswas-diener & kashdan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 more representative sample allowed diener and his colleagues to chart the limits of the “most people are happy” finding, especially for those living in dire circumstances. 4. lesson three: great research questions among the greatest skills in all of research is the ability to form excellent questions to drive investigation. diener was fond of saying that research was more about asking questions than finding answers. for him, the thrill was chasing ever-expanding knowledge. evidence for his love of learning can be found in the titles of several publications, where the framing is set around lingering curiosities: does happiness improve health? do happy people care about society’s problems? does positivity enhance work performance? is valuing positive emotion associated with life satisfaction? can and should happiness be a policy goal? the list goes on. these are the questions that interest laypeople and the rest of society, not just academic researchers. it is for this reason that hundreds of media outlets regularly reported on his work (such as “what makes us happy” in the june 2009 issue of the atlantic and “exploring life at the top of the happiness scale” in the january 29, 2002 issue of the new york times). it is noteworthy that diener rarely investigated small questions such as specific moderating or mediating relationships between variables. certainly, he mentioned such relationships in the course of his analyses, but these were rarely the primary focus of his research. instead, he focused on larger questions. he was curious about broad topics and knew that it would take multiple studies to explore the issues of stability, directionality, and causality. for instance, diener spent decades investigating the multi-faceted relationship between income and happiness. he believed the question “does money buy happiness?” could be answered but that it was difficult to do so. across his career, diener explored the happiness of the very wealthy (diener, horowitz & larsen, 1985), of the very poor (biswas-diener & diener, 2001), the effect of progressive taxation (oishi, shimmack & diener, 2012), the effects of rising income (diener, tay & oishi, 2013), and the effects of living among the wealthy (tay, morrison & diener, 2014), to name just a few avenues of answering the money-happiness question. another hallmark of diener’s inquisitiveness was an appreciation of complexity — and a refusal to accept simple explanations for the human population when a wide range of individual differences and cultural variation exists. evidence for this can be seen in a tangential research program attending to the psychology of religion. compared with his publication record on income or culture, he published relatively little on religion. over the decades, however, he returned to the topic time and again. in this example, he was not satisfied with the simple question of the relative levels of happiness of religious people. instead, he asked tougher questions. he investigated the question of why people drop out of religion if it is beneficial (diener, tay & myers, 2011) and the distinctive role of religious belief versus religious behavior (diener & clifton, 2002). diener’s research often belied sound-bite results in favor of nuanced wisdom. 5. conclusion dr. ed diener was a prolific researcher who serves as an exemplar for those interested in trying to capture why humans do the things they do and where and how we can intervene for the betterment of humanity. his devotion to high-quality research serves as a guide for asking questions, sampling, measuring, and designing studies of wellbeing that are appropriate for the topic under consideration. deconstructing his contributions, one walks away with a template for how to do great work that improves our understanding of humanity, has real-world relevance, and lasts the test of time. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ three lessons from ed diener biswas-diener & kashdan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 authors robert biswas-diener positive acorn robert@positiveacorn.com todd b. kashdan george mason university publishing timeline received 2 may 2021 accepted 2 may 2021 published 31 may 2021 references biswas-diener, r., & diener, e. 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(2020). when covid-19 exacerbates inequities: the path forward for generating wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 10(3), 1-6. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1357 meg a. warren western washington university meg.warren@wwu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 special issue when covid-19 exacerbates inequities: the path forward for generating wellbeing meg a. warren · samit d. bordoloi introduction the novel coronavirus (covid-19) that was detected in late 2019 has spread across the globe and was labelled a pandemic by the world health organization on march 11, 2020 (who, 2020). the virus can cause respiratory infection of varying intensities that can lead to severe illness and death. its rapid spread has led to stay-at-home orders, lockdowns, and shutdowns across the world (lancet, 2020; lau et al., 2020; lavezzo et al, 2020; thornton, 2020). this has caused widespread fear and changed everyday life for the masses, in an unprecedented manner. despite its usefulness in curtailing the spread of the virus, shuttering of businesses, schools, public events, and activities have a tremendous impact on psychological health (holmes et al., 2020; pfefferbaum, b & north, 2020) and socio-economic health (nicola et al., 2020). the purpose of this timely special issue is two-fold. our first goal is to narrow focus on the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on psychological wellbeing. going beyond discussions of the physical implications of the disease itself, we consider the psychological implications of the social and institutional measures used to control the pandemic. importantly, departing from extant discussions of how the covid-19 pandemic is leading to psychological distress and dysfunction, which carries the implicit goal of being free of distress and dysfunction, this special issue is interested in moving forward to how we can actively generate psychological and social wellbeing during and post covid-19. past research on wellbeing has leaned heavily toward individual actions and behaviors to generate wellbeing, given the underlying assumption that individuals have the autonomy to choose activities, engage in experiences, and take measures to enhance their own wellbeing (hendriks et al., 2019; lyubomirsky, 2008). in the context of covid-19, however, top-down institutional actions such as mandating social distancing, requiring online learning in schools, colleges and universities, mandating remote work for some occupations, in others, requiring essential workers to risk their health to retain their jobs, restricts individual autonomy to engage in some actions that enhance wellbeing. further, restrictions on autonomy itself may hurt wellbeing (deci & ryan, 2008; yu, levesque-bristol, & maeda, 2018). therefore, current conditions make it important that institutions focus not only on the control of disease, but also prioritize wellbeing. this special issue carries implications for how institutions can generate wellbeing in the face of covid-19 and in a post-covid-19 world. our second goal for the special issue is to focus on inequities. numerous studies across a variety of contexts, age groups, and cultures show that inequity/inequality is linked to lower wellbeing (azzopardi et al., 2019; gjerdingen, mcgovern, bekker, lundberg, & willemsen, 2000; savage, mcconnell, emerson, & llewellyn, 2014; schneider, 2016; slopen, lewis, & williams, 2016). across the world, the covid-19 disease itself has had a disproportionate impact on about:blank covid-19, wellbeing, and inequities warren & bordoloi 2 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org minority and low-income populations (khalatbari-soltani, s, cumming, delpierre, & kellyirving, 2020). for example, within the united states hospitalization and mortality rates have been disproportionately high for black and latino populations (van dorn et. al, 2020). perhaps, more importantly the use of social distancing as the key intervention in its various forms such as quarantine, lockdown and physical distancing has had a devastating impact on those populations who were already subject to social and economic marginalization. individuals from low-income backgrounds who are more likely to work in informal employment (e.g. domestic work, farm labor), and belong to racial and ethnic minority groups, do not have the financial buffer to endure extended social distancing protocols such as lockdowns (hutchins et.al 2009). migrant workers across the world are especially vulnerable due to their marginal socioeconomic status, living in crowded or substandard environments and being restricted in their ability to access health and welfare services (ratha et.al, 2020). the lockdown measures have a large impact on service oriented industries, which tend to have high female employment (osland, røysamb, & nortvedt, 2020), disproportionately affecting women. further, due to gender role stereotypes, women undertake disproportionate amounts of unpaid caregiving responsibilities, the burdens of which are exacerbated due to lack of support systems (e.g., extended family) during the pandemic (collins, landivar, rupoanner, & scarborough, 2020). an unintended consequence of quarantine is an escalation in domestic violence worldwide (mazza, marano, lai, janiri, & sani, 2020; usher, bhullar, durkin, gyamfi, & jackson, 2020). this special issue considers the impact of the pandemic on the wellbeing of marginalized groups and with particular attention to how wellbeing can be intentionally generated for those most affected. contexts that impact wellbeing work and employment is a key arena in which existing inequities have been exacerbated by the pandemic leading to disproportionate impacts on wellbeing. in certain professions, employees such as managers and teachers have been able to work from home through use of remote-work technology. however, marginalized groups (e.g., low income) are disproportionately burdened by unfavorable conditions at home (e.g., cramped living spaces, poor internet access) that impact wellbeing while attempting to work from home. in other jobs (e.g., entertainment, retail) that cannot be performed from home, shuttering of businesses has led to employees being forced to stay out of work and lose income. finally, several groups of workers such as custodial staff, factory workers, farm workers, grocery store employees and gig workers (e.g, rideshare drivers, delivery couriers) have been deemed “essential” (baker, peckham & seixas, 2020; pisano, zanini, & sadun, 2020; leung, 2020) and therefore, required to be physically present at work. such institutional action forces individuals to put their physical health and psychological wellbeing (e.g., fear of contracting covid-19) at risk to ensure economic security and provide necessary services to others (the lancet, 2020). health care professionals find themselves as frontline workers against covid-19, risking not only higher rates of infection but also significant psychological stressors (ehlrich, mckenney & elkbuli, 2020; que, shi, deng et.al, 2020). as institutions have become agents that deepen the vulnerability of workers, they must also go beyond traditional measures to actively promote wellbeing. the pandemic has also resulted in significant disruptions to the education sector. given the large youth population and high degree of social contact, educational institutions are particularly susceptible to rapid spread of infection (van, d et.al 2010). academic institutions have to utilize wellbeing interventions that balance the competing goals of minimizing infection rates while actively promoting educational and socio-emotional growth, particularly among vulnerable students such as first generation students, low-income students, students with disability and covid-19, wellbeing, and inequities warren & bordoloi 3 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org female students who are likely to experience the disproportionate impact of covid-19 (mccarthy, 2020; van lancker & parolin, 2020; zhang et al., 2020; zhou et al., 2020). contributions of this special issue the papers in this special issue use systematic reviews and empirical research to discuss how wellbeing can be generated in the face of covid-19, particularly among vulnerable populations. wang and colleagues provide a systematic overview of international research on how pandemics impact low-wage migrant laborers, who are especially vulnerable due to their marginal sociolegal status in host countries. their findings foreground the importance of long-term interventions that bring the rights of migrants into public consciousness and address their physical, social and psychological wellbeing both during and after the pandemic. matteo and colleagues, in their study on italian healthcare professionals, demonstrate that increased trust and greater gratitude from the overall population and a feeling of accomplishment and meaning among healthcare professionals can boost their job satisfaction during a pandemic and reduce prior disparities in wellbeing. bono and colleagues examine the role of grit and gratitude in enhancing wellbeing among students from diverse backgrounds in the united states. their research offers potential for universities and colleges to create wellbeing interventions that can be adapted for online delivery and reach student populations who are at the highest risk of academic failure. in their paper on promoting workers’ wellbeing, pacheco and colleagues note that current research is lacking discussion of resilience levers that workplace interventions should target during a pandemic. their study emphasizes the importance of fostering job security in combination with resilience promoting interventions, suggesting that individual level wellbeing interventions work best when institutional structures for wellbeing are in place. finally, fortier’s paper considers structural injustices that have disproportionately impacted women during the pandemic and outlines the obligations of the state in creating and prioritizing policies that promote the wellbeing of women, particularly single mothers. path forward this special issue brings together insights from around the world on how wellbeing can be generated, particularly for the most vulnerable populations, in the face of a pandemic. past wellbeing research has documented how the focus on non-weird populations (hendriks et al., 2019) and marginalized groups (rao & donaldson, 2015) have been on the fringes in the field. this special issue serves to center focus on these groups during these tumultuous times. however, there is still much work to be done. research on generating wellbeing among marginalized groups across the world from low caste groups in india, indigenous groups in australia, child soldiers in congo, refugees in sweden, ethnic minorities in the u.s., to construction workers in the united arab emirates continues to remain scant. as we move forward, we urge researchers to sharpen focus on how wellbeing can be generated among vulnerable communities, not only during times of global crisis but also when we “return to a new normal.” authors meg a. warren western washington university meg.warren@wwu.edu samit d. bordoloi covid-19, wellbeing, and inequities warren & bordoloi 4 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org western washington university samit.bordoloi@wwu.edu publishing timeline published 13 august 2020 references azzopardi, p. s., hearps, s. j. c., francis, k. l., kennedy, e. c., mokdad, a. h., kassebaum, n. j., lim, s., irvine, c. m. s., vos, t., brown, a. d., dogra, s., kinner, s. a., kaoma, n. s., naguib, m., reavley, n. j., requejo, j., santelli, j. s., sawyer, s. m., skirbekk, v., … patton, g. c. 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(2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 125–130. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.12 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand interview by aaron jarden robert vallerand is professor of social psychology at the université du québec à montréal, canada, and president of the international positive psychology association (ippa). his research focuses mainly on motivation and passion, and he has written more than 200 articles and book chapters mainly in the area of social motivation, as well as five books. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? first, aaron, let me congratulate you on your attempt to bring together in a book people who are involved in the field of positive psychology. i think it is a highly important service to the positive psychology community. to answer your question, obviously there are several distinctive features and, depending on who you ask, you might get different answers. when you look at positive psychology and some of its defining features, the science is clearly present. you look at textbooks and different websites, and usually people will point to the science. for instance, at ippa we define positive psychology as the scientific study of what enables or makes people and communities thrive and to do their best. i think that chris peterson, in his book primer in positive psychology, mentions the fact that it’s the study of what makes people get up in the morning and to do their best and be at their best. so the science is very important. at the same time we also care about the applications and how to use that science and apply it so people can actually be better. i would say that both elements are very important, as long as it helps people (and organizations) to thrive and do better and be at their best. so the science and the scientifically-informed applications that will help people to be at their best are both very important elements. what’s the biggest challenge that positive psychology faces as it is developing? there are a few; but obviously, because positive psychology is really the interface between the science and the applications, one of the challenges that we have is to make sure that everybody is happy with the interface we have. scientists are saying, ‘well, we need more science’, and people who are more applied are saying, ‘we need more application’. one of the challenges is to make sure we are on the same page, and that we progress together in the hope that positive psychology, as a field, will thrive and be even better. while we need everyone to be on the same page, sometimes you will have those kinds of disagreements; but that’s fine, i think it’s part of the game and more of a challenge. another challenge is at some point to make sure everybody from psychology takes positive psychology seriously. that’s why the science is so http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 important. already people back in the 50s and 60s, with humanistic psychology, attempted to create some kind of revolution and it didn’t work because the science was not a big part of it. i think that with positive psychology, one of the reasons why it’s working is that the science is very important. another challenge is to involve a lot of people from different areas of psychology; in fact i would say all areas of psychology. that means neuroscience, like what richard davidson is doing, in emotion research with barbara fredrickson, culture with people like shinobu kitayama, and motivation with ed deci—all these people have to be on board. at the 2nd world congress on positive psychology organized by ippa [july 2011] we had these people in philadelphia, which was just great. these are some of the challenges we face, but they are manageable. we are progressing towards having positive psychology being a thriving area of research and application. can you tell me about your work in positive psychology? my work is basically on passion. when chris peterson is saying, ‘what makes people get up in the morning?’, i say passion makes people wake up in the morning. if today’s basketball day, or if today’s music day and your looking forward to jamming with your friends, or going to the gym to scrimmage and play basketball or whatever, i think that passion is extremely important in people’s lives. in fact some philosophers like hegel have said that there is nothing great in this world that has been done without passion. so passion makes a big difference in people’s lives. the thing is that, as some people have said, you have to look at the positive as well as the negative, and with passion there are two types of passion. one is ‘harmonious passion’ which gives you a lot of mileage, you will be happy and reach a lot of objectives and goals; but ‘obsessive passion’ can be a down side, and can lead to some negative effects, especially on one’s physical and mental health. we have been doing a lot of research and publishing our work regarding the role of both harmonious and obsessive passion in optimal functioning in society. obviously, harmonious passion is what will get you towards living the good life, and to be happy, and contribute to society, reach a high level of performance, and is what some people should shoot for. but basically, that’s what we do in terms of research; look at the psychology of passion. so passion must be pretty closely related to purpose, meaning, and values as areas of psychology? that’s right! the basic definition of passion is, ‘a strong inclination towards a self-defining activity that one loves, finds important (or cares about), and spends time and energy on’. so, you really care about the activity very deeply, it has a lot of meaning to you, and you value it quite a bit; but you also love the activity, spend a lot of time on the activity—you basically like to talk about it, and you develop friendships around it. it’s a central part of your life. how you go about engaging in the activity, what it means to you, that can sometimes get you into trouble (with obsessive passion). but you’re right in that meaning and values are very much part of it, and if the activity itself is a positive activity, like volunteering, taking care of others, teaching, obviously it can lead to a lot of good consequences for you, and for other people as well. you tend to contribute towards society; and that’s what we find in our work, especially with harmonious passion. you derive from your engagement in the activity what we call ‘optimal functioning in society’, where you’re psychologically happy, physically healthy, and have positive relationships in your life; you achieve high levels of performance and you contribute to society at the same time. so these five elements, we find, are positively predicted by harmonious passion; whereas with obsessive passion you may get a few, but you don’t get positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 the whole package. with obsessive passion, something gets in the way of positive relationships with other people. and even sometimes your health might be in jeopardy. as the newly-elected president of ippa, what’s one thing you’re personally aiming to change about either positive psychology or ippa? past presidents, ed diener and antonella delle fave, have done a great job, because it’s not easy taking on a new association. ippa was created in 2007, so we are just four years old. it’s like having a child and trying to make sure it knows how to walk. they have done a great job. my job is basically to continue on that path, while trying to make some changes that will help us progress along the way. there are a lot of different things we are trying to do. a first goal is to modify the ‘front office’ so that we are more efficient in getting the work done. this entails bringing in additional people to work with us to connect with our membership. a second goal is to facilitate a grass-root movement within the association and make sure that people from different countries and all individual members feel that they are really a part of ippa. so, we are in the process of creating ‘divisions’, just like the apa has, so that people can feel that it resonates with what they do and what they want to get from the association. so instead of having only a group of 2500 ippa members, we are going to have divisions dealing with health, education, organizations, clinical psychology, and coaching. there will be presidents (or chairs) for each of the different divisions and people can feel that they are part of some specialized community within ippa. a third goal has to do with the dissemination of knowledge. this is done through different means such as having our newsletter out 4 times per year, pursuing the ‘positive psychology leaders’ series’ (with david pollay who is doing a great job). we are also looking to the possibility of having perhaps either journals or a series of books on positive psychology that would be under the editorship of ippa. in essence we are looking at different ways of connecting with our membership and to disseminate relevant information. finally, and perhaps the more important thing we are trying to do is to help countries across the globe get their own national associations off the ground, so they can be part of ippa and at the same time remain autonomous entities, eventually leading positive psychology to be truly global. can you list some countries that you have been helping out or who you are starting to help out, just as examples? different countries—obviously the us, the uk, and new zealand have been forerunners—but in fact russia too. there are different countries where spanish is the main language; spain, venezuela. right now, as i speak, there is a conference in brazil on positive psychology (september 2011); and canada is starting its own association of positive psychology and will have its first conference in july 2012. so it’s burgeoning, it’s here, there and everywhere, and that’s what makes it exciting. when you’re trying to set up an association, who do you look up to? ippa! so we are there to help, trying to do all kinds of things. we have helped people before establish associations in their countries and we are more than willing to do it again, so i think it’s our role to be able to assist. positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 do you have a plan of countries that you would like to see positive psychology associations in, or is it more that you wait to be approached from a certain country for assistance? well, obviously, we would like to see all countries involved. what we are trying to do is look at, across the globe, what is happening. james pawelski has been doing a great job as the executive director on that front. for instance, james is currently in brazil with martin seligman, who has been a great ambassador of positive psychology. we are looking at the situation in brazil, and at the same time we are trying to help them in any way we can with their association. the same thing will take place next summer (2012) in south africa. so usually what happens is that people from a given country will contact us and we give them information and then there is discussion back and forth in terms of connecting, and then at some point we go there and try to help them out. that’s what we have been doing so far. a lot of people wonder how positive psychology differs internationally by country. so i wonder, from your perspective, which are strong countries that are leading the way and which are up and coming? there are countries like spain, for instance, with carmelo vázquez over there doing a lot of good work. new zealand has a thriving national association with yourself and others involved. australia is doing very good work with dianne vella-brodrick and tony grant; they are very strong and they do contribute a lot, not only to their country, but also to ippa. so australia is very strong, and in different areas, which kind of makes it interesting—like coaching and the scientific part of it. these countries, i think, at some point will lead the way. i was just talking to someone in australia who wants to create a whole new centre on positive psychology in one university. it’s not finalized yet, but that’s what they want to do, so we are trying to help them out in some ways. that’s why it was so gratifying at the last conference, the 2nd world congress in philadelphia, to see so many people show up with so many ideas; so many people who want to go back to their own countries and bring positive psychology to them and make sure that they can do something that will last beyond the conference itself. that’s what we are seeing and we are very excited about it. ippa has faced some criticisms since it was launched, as well as having accomplished a lot of good stuff. can you outline some of these criticisms that ippa has been dealing with and how they are being addressed? one of the criticisms was that initially people felt that there are a lot of scientific people involved and we need more applied people. when you look at the history, obviously when you have to start something and the science is part of the definition, you want people on the board who will be involved with science. but the application of positive psychology is also important and the current board seems to reflect both dimensions (i.e., the science and application) of positive psychology. another thing is international representation. we want to have people from a number of countries on the board of directors who will reflect this international flavour and who display very high quality. this is not always easy to do, but out of 40-some people on the board, i think there are about 25 or 30 countries represented, perhaps more. so, we have a lot of countries involved and when i look at the meetings we have, the conferences we have had, i can see that people across the globe are very much involved in ippa. i’m very appreciative of that, so international representation has been addressed as well. a last criticism has to do with the fact that people want to be even more involved in ippa. people say, ‘well, ippa’s a big thing, how can i be part of it a bit more?’. now, with the divisions we are creating, positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 people will be part of it and feel much more involved. they will not have to interact with ippa as a whole; they can be part of smaller divisions and feel much more involved. just out of curiosity, how many members does ippa have? i think at last count it was around 2,500. i would assume that those numbers will get higher, because in years when we have a conference, membership increases. i would not be surprised if our number was beyond three thousand after the conference, we will see. who do you look up to in the field as the future leaders of positive psychology? or alternatively, who are the future leaders of ippa? for example, james pawelski stands out for me as someone who has done some great work for both positive psychology and ippa, but who do you think? that’s a tough one, because there are so many good people involved, including james pawelski as you mentioned. there are two ways to look at it. who in the field of scientific positive psychology makes a contribution? the answer is, a lot of people. there are a lot of young people coming up and obviously i don’t have to talk about martin seligman, chris peterson, barbara fredrickson, and richard davidson, who people already know. the other way to look at this issue is to have top people in other fields of psychology being more involved in positive psychology. what we tried to do during the last conference was to bring 21 invited speakers with about half of those, about 10 or 12 coming from positive psychology, from the field itself; but the other half were top people from other areas. what we wanted is for people in positive psychology to know about their work. but also, when these invited speakers leave the congress, they go back home and they have been changed. they know more about positive psychology and they can perhaps create centres on positive psychology or make a statement about positive psychology in their own field. i heard initially people say, ‘well, i did not know these people, but now, wow, it was really exciting’. for instance ed deci presented at the 2nd world congress and obviously some people may not know of him, but he’s a giant in the field of motivation. arie kruglanski is a top social psychologist doing work for the past ten years on terrorism and applications that we can address in a more positive light. what can we do for prevention? people like joan duda on sports and exercise psychology. we can use exercise psychology in a more positive psychology way, so that we can actually address one of the important problems people have in the uk and across the globe, which is young people becoming obese; what can we do regarding that? so many other people, herb marsh in education, jacquie eccles in social developmental psychology, the list goes on and on. these are giants in their own field that people in positive psychology did not know much about, but now they do. hopefully, these people will now spread the gospel about positive psychology. there are also some young people who are doing some very good work. so many people are involved; it would not be fair to mention just a few names. but the whole field is exploding; it’s great in terms of the future, in terms of what lies ahead. the issue is for ippa to become—and that’s one of my aspirations—the hub of international positive psychology so that we’re there to help, we are available, we disseminate knowledge and application, and we are helping people to set up their own associations in their own countries. people need something, they come to us. we hope we will be able to provide those services and at some point everybody will become one big interconnected happy family. that would be the goal. what’s one piece of advice for individuals looking to help contribute to the growing field of positive psychology? positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 get in touch. the best way is to contact us directly. people have our email: james, myself, people on the executive committee, carmelo vázquez the incoming president-elect, antonella delle fave the past president. dianne vella-brodrick the secretary and kim cameron the treasurer. all these people are willing to help and remember we are all volunteers. we are not perfect, but we get involved because we care about the field and want it to progress. so, if you want to help and make a positive contribution, get in touch with us and let us know your views and ideas and we’ll pay attention and try to see how those ideas can be transformed into action. already we are making a lot of changes that hopefully will allow people to connect with us and benefit from ippa. we hope that people will take advantages of these changes, get on board, and contribute positively to positive psychology. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz weijers, d., & jarden, a. (2021). the international journal of wellbeing: ten years on and the next ten years. international journal of wellbeing, 11(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i1.1577 dan weijers the university of waikato dan.weijers@waikato.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 editorial the international journal of wellbeing: ten years on and the next ten years dan weijers · aaron jarden 1. looking back 10 years in the book chapter “the international journal of wellbeing: an open access success story”, we outlined how the international journal of wellbeing (ijw) came into being as a caffeinated conception (fleshing out the seed of a good idea over a cup of coffee) between two of the founders – dan weijers and aaron jarden. the moment went a little bit like this: dw: there are not enough journals that publish interdisciplinary wellbeing research. aj: you’re right. the few that do are choked up with submissions. dw: we could create one, you know. there is free software for it. aj: that’s a great idea. what would we call it? dw: what about the australasian journal of wellbeing? aj: why not the international journal of wellbeing? dw: but, could we really make it thoroughly international? aj: sure, and it would be more fun. we should ask all of the people we really admire to be involved – and they’re everywhere. dw: but, why would they get on board with this? aj: i can see a lot of benefits, and i think they will too. dw: let’s grab a coffee and figure this out… after many months of organization, advocacy and much cajolement for submissions over 2010, our first issue was published on the 30th of january 2011. led by dan, aaron and nattavudh powdthavee as the first co-editors, this issue was a huge success—articles in it were downloaded over 5,500 times in the first two months and citations began immediately. since this time the ijw has gone from strength-to-strength, and is now one of the most widely read journals in the interdisciplinary wellbeing space. the ijw’s publishing statistics for its 10 first years speak for themselves: • 32 issues published (including a special issue on covid-19) • 171 articles published (plus 46 editorials, book reviews, and expert insights) • 7,740 google scholar citations (average ~45 citations per article) • 1.2 million pageviews (average of 656 per day in 2020) • 1 million full-text views (average of 4,695 per published item) • visitors from 218 nations • 5,471 users get notified every time we publish an issue we could not be more proud of the enormous reach and impact the ijw has had. about:blank ijw ten years on weijers & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 2. reflecting on our goals in many ways, the ijw has far outstripped our expectations… but not in all ways. looking back to when we published the first issue, dan, aaron and nattavudh, as very early-career academics, wrote a three-page editorial (weijers, jarden, & powdthavee, 2011) in which we outlined our ambitions for the ijw, including: 1. [the ijw] “…publishes scholarly research on wellbeing (broadly construed). the purpose of the journal is to promote thought and discussion on this vital topic. the launch of the ijw is a direct response to increasing demand both for research on wellbeing and for publishing opportunities for wellbeing researchers”. (p. 1) 2. “…a broad multidisciplinary scope, an interdisciplinary focus, and a commitment to provide all its content for free without delay or any cost to authors”. (p. 1) 3. “the ijw also plans to publish a diverse range of multimedia content, including readers’ comments on ijw articles, video abstracts, and debates”. (p. 2) while some of these ambitions have been realized (with the main one being the promotion of high-quality research on wellbeing to so many people for free), some have not, and some, such as video abstracts, have only materialized in the last year! ten years on we now reflect on these initial ambitions, and our journey and progress over the years, and offer some further insights from our perspective about this journey. 2.1 insight 1: interdisciplinary research we have not yet achieved our goal of a truly interdisciplinary journal. in our original editorial we explained the importance of interdisciplinary research like this (weijers, jarden, & powdthavee, 2011, p. 2): “[i]nterdisciplinary research also has considerable benefits. when researchers from diverse disciplines collaborate on a topic, they must first establish the overlap and disconnects between the established knowledge from each discipline. working through the disciplinary similarities and differences enables the collaborators to create a broader, more nuanced, and more accessible understanding of the topic. furthermore, if this collaborative understanding is reported, other researchers can use the resulting information as a guide to incorporating the findings of the other discipline(s) into their own investigations. researchers who draw on findings from other disciplines in this way can bring new and often fruitful perspectives to their discipline’s old problems and new challenges. performed in this way, interdisciplinary research has the potential to produce disciplinary advances much faster than if researchers never looked outside of their respective disciplines” while it is true that we have published articles from many disciplines, and from top scholars in these disciplines, our original vision was a more representative and balanced catalogue across the disciplines pursuing wellbeing. it strikes us that the majority of our publications are related to psychology, and we expected to have received more submissions from disciplines such as philosophy and economics, where discourse on wellbeing is prevalent in journals central to those fields. in addition, we expected more truly interdisciplinary submissions that tap into knowledge from more than one discipline. nevertheless, some of our articles have been truly interdisciplinary, such as willem van der deijl’s “what happiness science can learn from john stuart mill” (2016), and the presence of articles from different disciplines alongside occasional interdisciplinary articles will hopefully help enable a steady shift toward interdisciplinary research in our pages and elsewhere. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ ijw ten years on weijers & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 2.2 insight 2: publishing speed and reviewer availability we expected to be able to reduce publication times, but the reality of the ijw being a completely volunteer-run journal that also needs to gain minimal funding support (which is time consuming), meant that the pressures of academic life did not always allow us the time to process articles as speedily as we would have liked. while our publication time is still impressive and well in advance of most other journals, we anticipated to have made this much quicker. one of the factors affecting our review turnaround times is the decreasing availability of reviewers. we have noticed that we increasingly have to ask more and more reviewers before securing two or more experts willing to conduct a review. we do not blame academics for their reluctance to review papers in general. the act of reviewing is not properly accounted for in our advancement and promotion mechanisms, while the increasing pressure to publish undermines academics’ ability to prioritise work that is good for the profession but not directly for themselves. what we do hope is that academics are more discerning about which journals they review for, in particular that they favour open access journals. we have also changed our policies in light of these factors. in 2019 we began being much more selective about which submission were sent for review, desk-rejecting an increasing proportion of submissions. we also tend to invite several reviewers at once, rather than two at a time to avoid authors waiting months before the blind review of their submission even begins. insight 3: open access and the invasion of predatory journals being genuinely open access—free for both readers and authors—has been and continues to be an important point of difference for the ijw. as we explain in weijers and jarden (2017), our commitment to open access helped us garner support from some of the most important wellbeing researchers in the world. we expect that our open access policy also appeals to a lot of potential authors. however, the ever-increasing presence of predatory “open access” journals seems to have made some potential authors suspicious of our open access policies. we regularly receive emails enquiring about the “author fee” for publishing with the ijw. of course, we believe that authors shouldn’t have to pay, since they have already done the most difficult part of creating research. similarly, it seems unfair to ask universities and other institutions to pay since they already pay the researchers for their time and pay the academic publishers for subscriptions to the non-open-access journals. we stand by our initial commitment to genuine open access and we encourage others to carefully consider where to publish and what journals to read to ensure we don’t further encourage the predatory journals. 3. some other achievements we are also incredibly proud of some of the ijw’s accomplishments. we feel blessed to have attracted and retained many of the brightest and fastest-rising stars in wellbeing research as editorial staff. we are delighted with the newly branded logo and website that better fit contemporary times (special thanks to meg warren for all her work on this). we have also upgraded the hosting software, so our processes should become more transparent and efficient. we are also very pleased to be able to contribute to pertinent issues with a diverse range of special issues over the years (such as a recent one on covid-19 and wellbeing; volume 10, issue 3). from a more personal perspective, aaron is especially proud to have been able to publish material that is particularly useful to practitioners (in addition to academics), such as the “ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice” (volume 9, issue 3), which is now freely available in 11 languages. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ about:blank about:blank ijw ten years on weijers & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 dan is especially proud of the number of times we have turned down offers from multinational publishing companies to take control of the ijw. foregoing personal profit, we have saved individual researchers and institutions hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least). the exact figure is difficult to calculate, but ball-park estimates can be made. assuming a us$3,000 per item open access fee, it would have cost researchers or institutions us$651,000 to make all of the ijw’s content free for all readers. looking at it another way, assuming a us$40 per item download fee, it would have cost individual readers over us$40 million. we suspect the realistic estimate lies somewhere between these two figures. readers interested in our position on open access research can learn more in weijers and jarden (2017). we are also both proud of the ijws involvement with the wellbeing and public policy conference series, which has brought academics and policymakers from around the world together in new york and wellington (twice). a special thanks to philip s. morrison who has also been involved in organising every conference. the fourth conference in the series is planned for melbourne once covid restrictions relax internationally. watch this space: https://www.wappconference.com/. 4. 10 of the best we have published some very important articles over the years. we would like to take this opportunity to announce 10 awards. mainly based on readership and citations, the editors have selected the best article published in the ijw each year. in some years, it was very close and we have also included honourable mentions for short-listed articles that just missed out. the winners and honourable mentions of the “ijw best article of the year” are as follows: 2011 winner forgeard, m. j. c., jayawickreme, e., kern, m. & seligman, m. e. p. (2011). doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 79-106. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v1i1.15 2011 honourable mention bryant, f. b., chadwick, e. d., & kluwe, k. (2011). understanding the processes that regulate positive emotional experience: unsolved problems and future directions for theory and research on savoring. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 107-126. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v1i1.18 2012 winner dodge, r., daly, a., huyton, j., & sanders, l. (2012). the challenge of defining wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 222-235. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v2i3.4 2012 honourable mention henderson, l.w., & knight, t. (2012). integrating the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives to more comprehensively understand wellbeing and pathways to wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 2(3), 196-221. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v2i3.3 2013 winner norrish, j. m., williams, p., o’connor, m., & robinson, j. (2013). an applied framework for positive education. international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 147-161. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v3i2.2 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.wappconference.com/ ijw ten years on weijers & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 2013 honourable mention mccann, c. m., beddoe, e., mccormick, k., huggard, p., kedge, s., adamson, c., & huggard, j. (2013). resilience in the health professions: a review of recent literature. international journal of wellbeing, 3(1), 60-81. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v3i1.4 2014 winner schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 91-98. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 2014 honourable mention hone, l. c., jarden, a., schofield, g. m., & duncan, s. (2014). measuring flourishing: the impact of operational definitions on the prevalence of high levels of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 62-90. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.4 2015 winner capaldi, c. a., passmore, h.-a., nisbet, e. k., zelenski, j. m., & dopko, r. l. (2015). flourishing in nature: a review of the benefits of connecting with nature and its application as a wellbeing intervention. international journal of wellbeing, 5(4), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v5i4.449 2015 honourable mention eger, r. j., & maridal, j. h., (2015). a statistical meta-analysis of the wellbeing literature. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 45-74. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v5i2.4 2016 winner butler, j., & kern, m. l. (2016). the perma-profiler: a brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 1-48. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526 2016 honourable mention adler, a. & seligman, m. e. p. (2016). using wellbeing for public policy: theory, measurement, and recommendations. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 1-35. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i1.429 2017 winner lomas, t. (2017). the spectrum of positive affect: a cross-cultural lexical analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 7(3), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v7i3.608 2017 honourable mention buchanan, a. & kern, m. l. (2017). the benefit mindset: the psychology of contribution and everyday leadership. international journal of wellbeing, 7(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v7i1.538 2018 joint-winner kim, h., doiron, k., warren, m. a., & donaldson, s. i. (2018). the international landscape of positive psychology research: a systematic review. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 50-70. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v8i1.651 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ ijw ten years on weijers & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 2018 joint-winner hendriks, t., schotanus-dijkstra, m., hassankhan, a, graafsma, t., bohlmeijer, e., & de jong, j. (2018). the efficacy of positive psychology interventions from non-western countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 8(1), 71-98. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v8i1.711 2019 winner lahti, e., (2019). embodied fortitude: an introduction to the finnish construct of sisu. international journal of wellbeing, 9(1), 61-82. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v9i1.672 2019 joint-honourable mention gleason, t. r., & narvaez, d. (2019). beyond resilience to thriving: optimizing child wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 59-78. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v9i4.987 2019 joint-honourable mention pentti, s., fagerlund, a., & nyström, p. (2019). flourishing families: effects of a positive psychology intervention on parental flow, engagement, meaning and hope. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 79-96. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v9i4.1003 2020 winner bono, g., reil, k., & hescox, j. (2020). stress and wellbeing in college students during the covid19 pandemic: can grit and gratitude help? international journal of wellbeing, 10(3), 39-57. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1331 2020 honourable mention leibowitz, k., & vittersø, j. (2020). winter is coming: wintertime mindset and wellbeing in norway. international journal of wellbeing, 10(4), 35-54. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.935 we wish to congratulate the winners and express our sincere gratitude to the hundreds of authors that have submitted their excellent research to us. 5. looking forward 10 years we now end with more lofty ambitions for the next 10 years. it is our hope that: 1. we help more emerging academics into important editing and publishing roles 2. we encourage constructive debate about key issues in wellbeing research 3. we publish tools and resources that are useful for practitioners, policy makers and interested members of the public 4. we make the publishing process stress free, simple, transparent and efficient to better serve our authors 5. we do more to encourage thoroughly interdisciplinary scholarship on wellbeing acknowledgments we sincerely thank our past funders for making our commitment to open access possible: the vic davis memorial trust, the open polytechnic of new zealand, hamilton college, the south australian health and medical research institute, and the centre for positive psychology at the university of melbourne. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ ijw ten years on weijers & jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 also, a big thanks to our editorial team. the co-editors: dan weijers, aaron jarden, meg warren, tim lomas, and mariano rojas. the past co-editors: nattavudh powdthavee, steve wu, lindsay g. oades, and gavin slemp. the advisory board: stephen wu, lindsay g. oades, roger crisp, paul dolan, bruno s. frey, daniel gilbert, irwin goldstein, carol graham, dan haybron, john f. helliwell, simon keller, simon kemp, richard kraut, stephen palmer, richard d. parry, mozaffar qizilbash, toni ronnow rasmussen, ken sheldon, david sobel, michael steger, torbjörn tännsjö, and dianne vella-brodrick. the section editors: anna sutton, nicholas agar, erik angner, ian bache, lisa bortolotti, ben bradley, george burns, carla crespo, ramon das, orin davis, dale dorsey, michalis drouvelis, elizabeth dunn, owen flanagan, suzy green, chris heathwood, paul e. jose, mohsen joshanloo, georgios kavetsos, simon luechinger, michael mcbride, philip s. morrison, evgeny osin, acacia c. parks, nattavudh powdthavee, william ransome, daniel russel, claudia senik, tim sharp, professor angus skinner, alena slezackova, timothy t.c. so, margarita tarragona, neil thin, jingping xu. and so many reviewers, authors, and readers—too many to list here. authors dan weijers the university of waikato dan.weijers@waikato.ac.nz aaron jarden the university of melbourne references van der deijl, w. (2016). what happiness science can learn from john stuart mill. international journal of wellbeing, 6(1), 164-179. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v6i1.464 weijers, d., & jarden, a. (2017). the international journal of wellbeing: an open access success story. in: jhangiani, r. s., and biswas-diener, r. (eds.) open: the philosophy and practices that are revolutionizing education and science. pp. 181–194. london: ubiquity press. https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.n. license: cc-by 4.0 weijers, d., jarden, a., & powdthavee, n. (2011). promoting research on wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v1i1.21 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ about:blank huang, l., kern, m. l., & oades, l. g. (2022). experiences of chinese international students living in australia: wellbeing from "we" to "me". international journal of wellbeing, 12(3), 81-100. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i3.1915 lanxi huang the university of melbourne lanxi.huang1@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 article experiences of chinese international students living in australia: wellbeing from "we" to "me" lanxi huang · margaret l. kern · lindsay g. oades abstract: whilst there is evidence of subjective wellbeing being related to academic success, good performance within and beyond university, degree attainment, and positive subsequent physical, mental, economic, and social outcomes in the university student population, less is known on how different student populations perceive, experience, and cultivate wellbeing. the current study explored the perspectives and experiences of one such population: chinese international students at several universities across australia. semi-structured interviews with 30 students indicated that participants mainly experienced wellbeing through experiences of competence, feeling supported by family and friends, low levels of pressure, and giving to others. almost half of the participants believed that people around them had low wellbeing. students indicated drawing upon intrapersonal activities as the primary pathway to support their own wellbeing, whereas they pointed to interpersonal activities to support other’s wellbeing. the findings show the mismatch between students’ wellbeing experiences and pathways, shed light on understanding students’ wellbeing in the higher education context, and identify some of the contextual and cultural factors that contribute to wellbeing experiences and pathways. implications for interculturally nuanced approaches to understanding and supporting wellbeing are considered. keywords: subjective wellbeing, intercultural experiences, studying abroad, chinese international students, higher education, phenomenographic approach 1. introduction in 1948, the universal declaration of human rights recognized wellbeing as a basic human right (united nation, 1948). yet with the many competing demands and stakeholder interests that countries worldwide navigate, wellbeing has often been neglected over other rights, equated with economic prosperity or the treatment of mental illness, and policies have prioritised the perspectives and priorities of those with power (diener & seligman, 2004). subjective perspectives of wellbeing of all people, regardless of background, have often been ignored, fuelling inequities that disproportionality affect minority groups. indeed, the need for greater focus on wellbeing remains crucial. over 70 years later, amongst 17 goals that united nations proposed to transform the world for sustainable development, goal 3 specifically affirms that nations need to be committed to ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all people across all ages (united nation, 2015). importantly, to ensure healthy life and wellbeing, it is critical to understand what wellbeing means and pathways to reach it for diverse populations. in this study, we specifically focus on chinese international students within australia. such students represent emerging adults from a traditionally eastern culture, living within a western culture, navigating not only pressure from about:blank chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 their studies, but also language and cultural differences, separation from family and friends, and communication and supports that are often misaligned with their values and needs. although many higher education institutions have introduced study support services, peer support, and mentoring programs to assist students in managing academic issues and transition to the higher education environment (horgan, mccarthy, & sweeney, 2013; rodger & tremblay, 2003). however, counselling services and support programs face ongoing difficulties of being accessible and effective for numerous vulnerable students (mckenzie, murray, murray, & richelieu, 2015; robertson, holleran, & samuels, 2015). the significant number of mental health and wellbeing challenges that already existed for international students have further been accentuated through the covid-19 pandemic (dodd et al., 2021), but services remain ineffective. this may arise, in part, from limited understanding about the specific strategies that might support students well, from their own perspectives (huang, kern, & oades, 2020). given the significant number of around 1,061,511 chinese international students studying abroad in 2021, there is both a need and opportunity to explore the complexities and tensions that one’s cultural background brings to wellbeing constructions and experiences (educationfair, 2022). the current study explores students’ wellbeing experiences and strategies they use to strengthen their own and others’ wellbeing. rather than assuming what students want from theoretical models and providing traditional psychological treatment from a western perspective, hearing students’ own voice potentially can provide a culturally-sensitive and contextual-responsive to supporting student wellbeing that better matches students’ needs. 1.1 the experience of wellbeing over the past several decades, scholars have proposed various models, frameworks, and approaches to wellbeing, with the common assumption that wellbeing is more than the lack of mental illness and poor functioning. it is generally represented as “feeling good and functioning well” (huppert & so, 2013, p. 893). still, wellbeing can be experienced differently across different populations—shaped, interpreted, and experienced by one’s culture, upbringing, experiences in life, and perceptions of those experiences (kern et al., 2020; scott, rowe, & pollock, 2018; wexler, 2009; wong, 2011). in this paper, we focus upon intercultural aspects of wellbeing, specifically focusing on a population living between two complementary yet different cultures. 1.2 culture and wellbeing a growing number of studies have examined whether and how cultural factors impact on wellbeing (calma, dudgeon, & bray, 2017; lazarevic, 2017; lomas, 2015). more than 40 years ago, gallup (1976) conducted a global survey to collect wellbeing data of people’s satisfaction and needs, sampling two-third of the world population. the findings showed that health, economic wellbeing, and family life consistently arose as general concerns across cultures and regions. however, short-term concerns and hopes for the future varied across developing and developed areas. subsequent research by gallup continually shows that these areas impact and are relevant to cultural conceptions of wellbeing. veenhoven (1993) comprehensively analysed happiness in 56 nations and proposed a “liveability” concept, which suggested that if a society can provide certain universal human conditions, people will experience a high level of subjective wellbeing. together, these studies suggested that economic/material factors, such as income, economic growth, and social equality, may be more consequential to wellbeing than cultural aspects. however, over the past several decades, other studies have identified a number of culturallyrelevant aspects that do impact upon experiences of wellbeing, including individualism or http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 collectivism and cultural homogeneity (diener, diener, & diener, 2009); self-esteem (campbell, 1981); independent and interdependent goal pursuit (oishi & diener, 2009); self-construal processes (suh, diener, & updegraff, 2008); satisfaction of daily events (oishi, diener, choi, kimprieto, & choi, 2007); emotional experiences (eid & diener, 2009); needs and values (tay & diener, 2011); and identity consistency (suh, 2002). still, statistical comparisons across cultures do not necessarily capture experiences of wellbeing by a specific culture (diener, oishi, & lucas, 2003; kahneman & krueger, 2006), with ongoing issues in untangling confounding factors (spector, liu, & sanchez, 2015) tov and diener (2007) highlighted the importance of understanding wellbeing within the framework of each culture, as “there are also culture-specific patterns that make cultures unique in their experience of wellbeing” (tov & diener, 2007, p. 691). with growing globalization, migration, and mobility patterns, culture does not simply refer to a monoculturalism-dominated way of life that people lead, but also to the individual and collective choices that are made through evolving global cultural exposure (mathews, 2012). culturally sensitive studies that explore subjective experiences for individuals with co-existing cultures are needed to inform strategies and approaches for adequately supporting wellbeing in a given context. the current study begins to explore this need by focusing on one specific population. 1.3 chinese international students in australia as the largest portion of the international education market, chinese international students draw increasing scholarly attention and have been the target population in various studies, such as exploring pull and push factors of their study-abroad decision-making (bodycott, 2009; chen, 2016), acculturation and experience (bertram, poulakis, elsasser, & kumar, 2014; li et al., 2017), academic performance and challenges (liu, 2016; yan & berliner, 2009), and mental health (chen, liu, zhao, & yeung, 2015; han, han, luo, jacobs, & jean-baptiste, 2013). mental health and wellbeing have increasingly emerged as a critical topic that requires greater focus, especially with additional stresses and challenges that have arisen from the global covid-19 pandemic. currently, studies on the wellbeing of chinese international students have demonstrated the important role of perceived language competence and social connection (guo, li, & ito, 2014; luo, wu, fang, & brunsting, 2019; pang, 2018; wang, we, & chen, 2015). age, length of stay in the host country, and english proficiency also are closely associated with the acculturation process and wellbeing (li, wang, & xiao, 2019; li, liu, wei, & lan, 2013). depression has been identified as the most frequently reported mental illness in this population, but struggling students are less likely to seek professional help than domestic students (miller, yang, hui, choi, & lim, 2011; wei et al., 2007). specifically within the australian context, martin (2020) identified limited access to reliable local information, exploitation of rental accommodations, racial discrimination and social exclusion, restricted intercultural mixing opportunity, limited employment opportunities and exploitation at the workplace, difficulties in understanding australian police process, and the challenges in navigating australian health systems, especially in accessing mental health support as significant barriers that prevent students from seeking and receiving professional support. while these studies paint a concerning picture, few studies have focused on positive aspects of mental health, including students’ experiences of wellbeing and aspects that effectively support wellbeing. using a prototype analysis design, huang, kern, and oades (2022) explored chinese international students’ conceptualisations of wellbeing, finding that wellbeing concepts were prototypically structured, with relationships, security, positivity/ optimism, physical health, and self-strength identified as key components to their wellbeing conceptualisations. in a mixed http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 methods study exploring how chinese international students understand wellbeing, huang et al. (2020) identified mental and physical health, security, relationship support, and prosperity as key themes. extending these findings, the current study analyses qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews to understand the wellbeing experience of chinese international students living in australia, to further investigate the strategies students use to support wellbeing for themselves and explore how students perceive and support wellbeing in others. 2. method 2.1 phenomenographic approach the aim of this study is to explore the wellbeing experience and pathways of chinese international students from an intercultural perspective. although many studies have tried to highlight mental health problems and challenges faced by international students, there are limited descriptive studies to hear students’ voices, particularly from a non-pathologising viewpoint. therefore, the current study chooses to understand students’ live d experiences and their world, which is qualitative in nature. phenomenology is an interpretive approach to understanding phenomena, which concerns the meanings that individuals attribute to phenomena and their interactions with them (luttrell, 2010). and the principle of this approach highlights the subjective perceptions of individuals’ realities and their experiences (marton, 1981). we chose this theoretical framework as the phenomenon under investigation here is chinese international students’ subjective wellbeing experiences/ pathways in the intercultural and interlanguage spaces. also, in phenomenographic research, individuals’ direct experiences with and understandings of various aspects of their world are highly valued via observing, interviewing, protocol writing, and examining journals and logs (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007; marton, 1981; van manen, 1997). consequently, phenomenography has been selected to explore the wellbeing experiences and pathways of chinese international students in the australian context, and the most appropriate data collection instrument is the semi-structured interview. 2.2 procedure the current study extends huang et al. (2020) and huang et al. (2022), with a specific focus on qualitative data collected from a sub-set of participants (chinese international students in several universities across australia). interviews conducted by the first author between september 2019 and february 2020, and all procedures were approved by the [blinded for review] ethics review board. after completing an online survey (see huang et al., 2020 for details), students were invited to participate in an in-depth semi-structured interview, with details on the study, a consent form, and a brief questionnaire asking a series of demographic questions (gender, age, education level, current education status, english proficiency levels, and length of stay within australia). upon receiving digital consent and demographic information form, confirmed participants were scheduled to be interviewed online by using wechat. participants could choose english, mandarin, or a mix of english and mandarin during the interview and each interview lasted 40 to 60 mins. semi-structured interviews aimed to explore how chinese international students and the people around them experience wellbeing, and identify what action or strategy they took to support the wellbeing of self and others (i.e., “what experience of wellbeing do you have?”, “how do you think about others’ wellbeing experience?”, “if you want to promote your http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 wellbeing, what will you do?”, “if you want to promote others’ wellbeing, what will you do?”). at the end of the interviews, participants were asked about their reflections of the interview and their willingness of receiving the general results of the study and were provided with additional mental health and wellbeing support information. 2.3 participants to be included in the study, participants had to: (1) be a chinese international student; (2) be studying at a tertiary education institution in melbourne, victoria, australia; (3) be at least 18years old; and (4) had stayed in melbourne between three months and four years (to ensure that participants had sufficient experiences in both chinese and australian cultures). of 123 participants who completed the online survey, 45 indicated interest in being involved in the interview, and 30 gave consent and participated in the semi-structured interviews. table 1 summarizes demographic information. one-third of participants were female, and the majority were between 21 and 29 years of age. more than 60% of students had an undergraduate degree and currently studying for a master’s degree. approximately 70% of students had good or excellent english proficiency levels. about four in five participants had lived in melbourne for more than one year. table 1. participants’ demographic characteristics details. characteristics category n (%) gender male 10 (33.3%) female 20 (66.7%) age 18-20 2 (6.7%) 21-29 26 (86.7%) 30-39 2 (6.7%) education level high school graduate, diploma/the equivalent 4 (13.3%) undergraduate degree 22 (73.3%) graduate degree 4 (13.3%) education status foundation course/university credit 0 (0%) bachelor’s degree 3 (10.0%) graduate certificate or diploma 0 (0%) master’s degree 19 (63.3%) doctorate degree 8 (26.7%) english level comprehensive excellent 8 (26.7%) good 15 (50.0%) competent 5 (16.7%) modest 2 (6.7%) reading excellent 7 (23.3%) good 15 (50.0%) competent 7 (23.3%) modest 1 (3.3%) writing excellent 6 (20.0%) good 9 (30.0%) competent 9 (30.0%) modest 6 (20.0%) length of stay 3 months – 12 months 4 (13.3%) 13 months – 24 months 15 (50.0%) 25 months – 36 months 8 (26.7%) 37 months – 48 months 3 (10.0%) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 2.4 data analyses audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed verbatim, repetitions and ramblings were removed, and identifiable information was removed. as most interviews were conducted in mandarin (n=29), content analyses were conducted in chinese to avoid meaning distortion, and then translated into english for reporting. the translation process was assisted by a professional translator with certification of the national accreditation authority for translators and interpreters (naati), and the cited quotations reported there had been confirmed by the translator. double translation (re-translate the english text into chinese and compare it with the original chinese version) was used in this process to maximize the authenticity of the translation. qualitative content analysis coding was used to explore texts within their context of communication (mayring, 2015). specifically, phenomenographic seven coding steps were followed, which include (1) familiarisation, (2) condensation, (3) comparison, (4) grouping, (5) articulating, (6) labelling, and (7) contrasting (dahlgren & fallsberg, 1991). the first author read through the interviews multiple times to become familiar with the content in detail and select the statements that deliver the message of a certain phenomenon. then, comparing, grouping, and categorising common responses results in a set of broad patterns. similar responses were combined into main themes and sub-themes. corresponding themes and sub-themes were then labelled and summarised with representative quotes that we present here to show the similarities and differences. the second and third authors supervised the coding process, affirming the categorisations and resolving uncertainties, and confirming the alignment of themes, sub-themes, and representative quotes. 3. results 3.1 personal experiences of wellbeing we first examined students’ experiences of wellbeing. 39 sub-themes were identified via analysis (with size and colour indicating frequency that the sub-theme was mentioned), which clustered into 11 main themes (see appendix 1). the themes, sub-themes, provides representative quotes, and indicates the number and percentage of mentioned were further summarized (see appendix 2). experiences of wellbeing were commonly reflected in feelings of competence, including having a sense of achievement, a sense of control, and feeling that they were valued. for instance, one participant experienced wellbeing “when what i like matches what society needs… and achieve self-value”. having intimate relationship support from family and friends, giving love and support to others, and receiving broader social support from society were commonly mentioned. for instance, students mentioned that “not only receive love, you can have wellbeing if you also give love”, “i also participate in some voluntary work and this is also a part of my wellbeing”, and “celebrate lgbt day at the company and show inclusiveness”. students also mentioned mental-oriented experiences, noting that “there is no pressure during the whole process, and there is no schedule, too” and “compared to not good life status i feel satisfied with my life when i in good status”. three participants struggled to describe wellbeing, instead pointing to negative aspects such as academic challenge and depression, mental dysfunction, illness, and sickness. for instance, one student identified that he “had a terrible feeling and hard to express, feel like i can’t do anything and anything good”. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 3.2 activities supporting wellbeing we next examined activities that participants engage in to promote their own wellbeing. two broad categories were apparent, intrapersonal activities and interpersonal activities, which further could be classified into seven major themes and 32 subthemes (see appendix 3 4). across participants, 69.23% of activities were intrapersonal activities done alone, with remaining activities involving connecting with others. intrapersonal activities included growth and development and physical activities, such as achieving goals, having financial independence, planning, and doing exercise. for instance, one student expressed that “after i find a suitable way, i will work harder and quicker to achieve the goals, such as graduate from phd”. over a third of participants pointed to physical activity, noting for instance, “i will go to the gym and exercise to release my emotion”. a quarter of participants mentioned psychological-oriented and self-refresh activities to maintain wellbeing, including changing attitudes and perspective, task management, exceeding expectation, self-discipline, self-talk, taking a sense of control from a cognitive perspective, telling self to cheer up, eating, and having “me” time. interpersonally, participants pointed to the value of social support along with willingness to give help, noting that “i will try my best to help others, my friends and family, in my life”. participants also highlighted social connection by participating in more social activities, such as “make more friends with local people, participate in some social activities”, and “i will connect more with people around me or reach out to make friends”. only one participant mentioned seeking professional help from counselling services, believing it is helpful to “let me systematically understand myself”. notably, seeking intimate relationship support from family connection was only mentioned once, despite support and connection from family noted as one of the top wellbeing experiences. 3.3 reflections on others’ wellbeing beyond exploring participants own experiences of wellbeing, we asked about their perceptions of others. three main themes were identified (negative, positive, and neutral/ personal), which could further be broken into 17 sub-themes (see appendix 5). about half of responses perceived negative experiences such as having mental/physical illness and difficulties, complaining, and having issues around family, finances, and study. notably, more than two-thirds of participants mentioned that the people (both chinese and local) around them experience mental illness and difficulties, expressing that “they are stressed” or “they have anxiety and depression”. around thirty percent of students pointed to positive aspects, including being generally positive and good, having a work-life balance, being carefree, and seemingly satisfied with life. for instance, students mentioned that the people “most of them live in a positive way”. eight students suggested that wellbeing experiences are very personal and varied. for instance, one said that “i do not think i can comment on others’ wellbeing experience, because it’s quite personal”. two students also compared wellbeing experiences between local and chinese international students, suggesting that “compared to the local, i think a lot of chinese international students do not experience high wellbeing”. 3.4 activities to support others’ wellbeing finally, participants reflected upon the activities they engage in to support the wellbeing of people around them. we identified seven major themes and 13 sub-themes (see appendix 6). of activities noted, most (90%) were other-oriented in nature. over half of participants indicated chatting or talking with others, such as “i will chat with them, that’s what i mostly do, ask their difficulties and figure out what i can do”. students pointed to the importance of being a good http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 listener, for instance noting, “i think for family, most importantly are companion and listen, let them feel your love”. multiple activities were action-oriented, such as social activity, accompanying others, and physical exercise with others. eight students pointed to offering opportunities of doing social activities together to show their kindness and care, such as “i will ask her out for dinner or play together”, “i will organize travel together”, and “go shopping, watch a movie”. students also pointed to providing support based on what is needed, noting that “i won’t do something purposefully. but, if necessary, i will support them in a way they need”. in terms of self-oriented activities, the responses focused on improving one’s own wellbeing with the purpose of positively influencing others, only sharing good news and not bad energy, and achieving selffinancial independence as a more indirect forms of support. 4. discussion wellbeing is a human right, identified as a critical goal for sustainable development (united nation, 2015). aligned with the philosophical perspective that wellbeing necessarily involves values-laden aspects (alexandrova, 2017; kern et al., 2020; tiberus, 2018), how wellbeing is understood and cultivated is impacted by one’s culture, background, context, experiences, and perceptions (kern et al., 2020). with growing globalisation, mobility, and migration, further complexities arise for those at the intersection of cultures (mathews, 2012), especially when there are clashes in values and perspectives across those cultures (kern et al., 2020). to understand and support wellbeing for all people, regardless of background, studies that are sensitive not only to macro cultures (e.g., western versus eastern countries), but also microcultures (e.g., people from one culture living within another) are needed (tov & diener, 2007). the current study focused on one such micro-culture – chinese international students living and studying within australia. in-depth semi-structured interviews with 30 students explored their experiences of wellbeing, activities they draw on to support their wellbeing, their perceptions of the wellbeing of those around them, and how they support others. the mixture of the host living english context and students’ original chinese cultural background provides an opportunity to investigate the complexities of wellbeing experienced by a cross-cultural population. 4.1 experiences of wellbeing in considering how they experienced wellbeing, participants pointed to both intrapersonalrelated (i.e., competence, mental-oriented, autonomy, learning and growth, fulfilment & contentment, and physical-oriented) and interpersonal-related experiences (i.e., relationship support, giving, community support, and nature and environment). most mentioned experiences were relatively positive in nature, although a few participants pointed to negative experiences regarding academic challenges, depression, mental dysfunction, and mental illness. this was further evident in the reflection of people’s wellbeing status around this group of students that believed about half of them had negative experiences. notably, participants were more likely to point to positive experiences for themselves, but negative experiences for those around them. the understanding of wellbeing reflecting both positive and negative aspects could be influenced by how chinese international students conceptualise wellbeing as a concept, which could be influenced by conflations of how the words “mental health”, “mental illness”, and “wellbeing” are often conflated in literature and resources provided to students. for instance, at the university of melbourne, the website on “health and wellbeing” first points to resources for mental health challenges, with wellbeing resources pointing primarily to strategies for managing stress (https://students.unimelb.edu.au/student-support/health-and-wellbeing). alternatively, the intersections of the positive and negative could arise from their chinese background, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 especially as most participants chose to complete the interview in chinese, not english. according to huang et al. (2020), chinese international students viewed this concept as fundamental and neutral, noting it “could include both positive side and negative side” (p. 10). chinese taoism encourages the acceptance of both fortune and misfortune in life, and believes the ups and downs come in turn, so that achieving a state of mind with calm and peace, referred to as “no happiness and no worries”, is viewed as true wellbeing, (yang & zhou, 2017). further, buddhism interprets suffering as an essential pathway to set people free from desire and enter nirvana, similar to enter heaven and paradise (hong & si-ping, 2012). thus, negative experiences are appreciated or at least seen as indispensable to human life. hence, it may not be surprising to see chinese wellbeing experiences have a mixture of positive and negative sides. when considering their own experiences of wellbeing, feelings of competence was the most frequently mentioned. students expressed that having a sense of achievement, such as “accomplish a task which i thought was impossible to me before”, “achieve a goal i set”, and “completing a project”, can make students “feel good” and “achieve wellbeing”. other competencies like the sense of control, meet expectations, and be valued were also key indicators in the wellbeing experiences. the emphasis on individual competence to achieve wellbeing aligns with confucianism. in ancient chinese, wellbeing could be expressed by the word “le”, which means the feeling of joy and happiness. confucius believed that there are two levels to achieve “le” in life: (1) to satisfy the basic living needs in life, and (2) to support your family, share your wealth and contribute to your community. in the first level, individuals should be safe and comfortable, to achieve “fu”, including health, material wealth, moral character, no worries, and a peaceful life. the first level expects the chinese to enhance their competencies to take care of themselves and achieve mundane success (the personal value). after passing the first level, people are capable and encouraged to support family and community, at the second level of “rational happiness” (the social value) (yang & zhou, 2017). as it is said in chinese folklore: if you are poor, you should focus on self-cultivation and self-perfection; if you are wealthy, you should care about others and contribute to your community. the self-cultivation and self-perfection mentioned above could be understood as the process to gain self-competence. although chinese culture was viewed as collective, the confucian pathway to achieve wellbeing starts from the individual. participants also frequently mentioned the importance of relationship support, with both receiving and giving support contributing to experiences of wellbeing. the idea of giving back aligns with the core concept of virtue, in the confucianism second level of rational happiness (lu, 2001). it is expected that people with virtue should share the mundane joy (e.g., material wealth, moral character, free from worries) with others and be concerned with the world’s welfare. like a poem in the song dynasty explained, a person is considered to have virtue when they are “the first to worry about the word and be the last to enjoy the pleasure”, and even in the lack of material wealth or external difficulties, wellbeing is achievable as long as people have virtue (huo, chen, & guo, 2013). creating a harmonious environment and practising benevolence in the community is considered the ideal status of wellbeing. the confucians’ wellbeing develops from material to spiritual and individual to collective, influencing how chinese understand and experience wellbeing. 4.2 pathways for wellbeing students identified a variety of activities that they engage in to support their own wellbeing. activities associated with growth and development, physical and psychological oriented, are the most preferred ones. for instance, students highlighted the importance of physical exercise, changing attitude and perspective, achieving goals, and having financial independence, and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 believed planning their future and working hard are crucial regarding achieving wellbeing. the students’ strategies focus on themselves in line with confucians’ concept of self-cultivation and self-perfection (hong & si-ping, 2012). as noted above, the seeking of collective rational happiness starts from individual efforts to pass the first level of wellbeing, such as health, material wealth, and peace. for students, doing physical exercise, achieving study goals, and having financial independence are considered as the key indicators of taking good care of themselves at this life stage. another interesting finding is the mismatch between wellbeing experiences and wellbeing pathways. for example, physical exercise was the top endorsed activity with more than one-third of participants. however, only one student mentioned having exercise as a way to experience wellbeing in the previous question. another contrasting example is relationship support. only one student noted proactively seeking family support and connection to enhance wellbeing, even as experiencing relationship support is one of the top contributors to wellbeing. the gap between the experience and strategies can be interpreted by the theories of the “liking” approach and the “needing” approach based on hedonic and eudemonic accounts. according to jayawickreme, forgeard, and seligman (2012), “liking” approaches relate to what people like and feel, accounting on self-report positive emotion (kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, & stone, 2004) and life satisfaction (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985). the “needing” approach, on the other hand, focuses on what people need to live the best possible life and wellbeing. the findings in the current study align with the “linking” and “needing” approaches that what chinese international students experienced referred to what they like (positive relationship) and the pathways that students chose referred to what they need to achieve wellbeing (growth and development), reflecting confucians’ concept of self-cultivation and self-perfection (hong & siping, 2012). in addition, physiological needs and security needs (maslow’s hierarchy of needs) (maslow, 1971), meaning in life (meaning) (stillman et al., 2009), self-acceptance and autonomy (ryff’s psychological wellbeing approach) (ryff & keyes, 1995), competence and relatedness (deci and ryan’s self-determination theory) (ryan & deci, 2000), and engagement (seligman’s wellbeing theory) (seligman, 2004) are examples of what people believe they need to achieve wellbeing in western literature and also revealed in the current study, which shows that some wellbeing components may be universals despite cultural diversity. 4.3 perceptions of others’ wellbeing for perceptions of others’ wellbeing experiences, multiple participants believed that wellbeing is personal, such that they should not comment on other’s wellbeing. this might reflect cultural beliefs that emotional expression is impolite and inappropriate. chinese children are often told to keep calm and have peace. extreme emotional arousal is often viewed as inappropriate in chinese culture. from taoism’s point of view, extreme pleasure could also mean no pleasure and even lead to extreme suffering, so that intense hedonic emotions are discouraged, and people intend to adopt a restrained expression of emotion, keep calm and have peace, and be humble (lu, 2001). it is also interesting that some participants compared chinese international students’ wellbeing to the locals’ wellbeing, mentioning that local people enjoy better work-life balance and have more quality time with family and friends. from a cultural perspective, the chinese are encouraged to work hard from a young age, with little emphasis on having rest and enjoying hedonic pleasures. the expectation of working overtime in current chinese culture, such as the “996” (work from 9am to 9pm for six days a week) working schedule, makes the work-life balance http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 concept foreign (wang, 2020). also, because they are far away from home and their original social network, having quality time with family and friends is not easily achievable. 4.4 implications this study illustrates the lived experience of wellbeing, how wellbeing is perceived, and how those perceptions and experiences translate into behaviours to support wellbeing. compared to current literature on university students’ wellbeing status, this study focuses on the positive aspects to provide insights on students’ wellbeing from a cultural perspective . the findings contribute to the academic literature on the experiences relating to wellbeing that may be culturally specific, leading to the internal complexities of how cultures influence wellbeing in a multi-layered way. according to hofstede’s six national cultural dimensions (hofstede, 2011), chinese culture has been viewed on the collectivist side in the individualism versus collectivism dimension, in which people are expected to have a strong, cohesive tie with groups from birth onwards. the findings on wellbeing experiences align with chinese mainstream cultures in hofstede’s model that positive relationship support was one of the greatest sources for wellbeing experience. however, the primary pathways that chinese students chose to support their wellbeing indicate that some subcultures are more individualistic. the intrapersonal and interpersonal activities students engage in to support their wellbeing provide insights on how culture diversity may have varying degrees of impact on the needs of wellbeing, and help identify more universal wellbeing components that persist across multiple cultures. also, contrary to western cultures that assume that personal happiness with the absence of negative affect is one of the most values in life (eid & diener, 2009; held, 2002; morris, 2012), cross-cultural studies provide evidence that wellbeing has tended to be overlooked and that this assumption does not apply to non-western cultures, with some cultures are even averse to happiness (joshanloo & weijers, 2014; suh, 2000; uchida, norasakkunkit, & kitayama, 2004). researchers also have called for studies that examine wellbeing across different circumstances and spheres of life, which can show considerable diversity (alexandrova, 2013). in the current study, the findings suggested that the quest for happiness is not a supreme value among students with chinese cultural backgrounds. positive mentally-oriented experiences only ranked third as the key experience themes, and negative experiences with mental dysfunction and mental illness/sickness were also viewed as a part of wellbeing. those perceptions of wellbeing further reflect on the students’ behaviours that improving capability through growth and development is key to strengthen wellbeing. the findings illustrate the importance of human culture and emphasise that life circumstances including culture should be given consideration in future studies on wellbeing. 4.5 limitations and future directions our study is one of the few studies that specifically investigates the positive aspects of chinse international students’ wellbeing experiences, the related perceptions, and pathways for supporting wellbeing from an intercultural perspective. the study also has several limitations. in the interview, no straightforward questions were asked to let participants identify what and how their cultural background/s and living context/s influenced their wellbeing experiences. future studies could be more explicit on exploring cultural/contextual factors in shaping and interpreting wellbeing experience. in addition, the reflection of other’s wellbeing experiences could be more specific to detail the cultural/demographic background of the people that students reflected on, which could provide more information on the similarit ies and differences between chinese international students and the local people. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 this study focuses on chinese international students within australia, the findings might not generalize to other international students with different cultural backgrounds or other countries’ contexts. replication and extension would be beneficial, exploring other populations and contexts to achieve a comprehensive understanding of international students’ wellbeing in various contexts, and further offer guidelines for higher education institutions to support international students’ wellbeing. 4.6 conclusion wellbeing has become a growing concern for both individuals and communities, with its importance further accentuated through the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic. the current study focused on a population of people living at the intersections of two cultures, providing unique perspectives and insights for supporting the many people living at the intersections of cultures. the in-depth interviews reveal the mismatch between chinese international students’ wellbeing experiences (more appreciate ‘we’) and wellbeing pathways (focusing on ‘me’) in the australian context. findings contribute both to enhancing culturally sensitive and contextually responsive insights about wellbeing, as well as revealing potential practical pathways for better supporting students within higher education institutions. in all, this study sheds light on how intercultural complexities shape wellbeing experiences and calls for further culturally specific consideration in wellbeing science. conflict of interest statement the authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. funding this research received no external funding. authors lanxi huang centre for wellbeing science, the university of melbourne lanxi.huang1@unimelb.edu.au margaret l. kern centre for wellbeing science, the university of melbourne lindsay g. oades centre for wellbeing science, the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 6 september 2021 revised version received 3 july 2022 accepted 30 september 2022 published 1 october 2022 references alexandrova, a. 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(2009). chinese international students' academic stressors in the united states. college student journal, 43(4), 939-960. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/csd.2013.0010 yang, d., & zhou, h. (2017). the comparison between chinese and western well-being. open journal of social sciences, 5(11), 181-188. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2017.511013 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 appendices appendix 1. sub-themes indicating participants’ experiences of wellbeing, with size and colour reflecting the percentage that the sub-theme was mentioned (i.e., larger and darker were more frequently mentioned). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 appendix 2. chinese international students’ experiences of wellbeing, with themes, subthemes, representative quotes, and number and percentages that themes and sub-themes occurred. main themes sub-themes representative quotes n % competence 22.50% sense of achievement “after completed a landmark project, i will have a sense of achievement.” 9 11.25% sense of control “have a sense of control to do the things i liked.” 3 3.75% meet expectation “there is no surprise in life, and i feel satisfied… everything goes as expected” 2 2.50% be valued “what i like matches what society needs… and achieve self-valued.” 1 1.25% self-recognition “it gives me a sense of self-recognition.” 1 1.25% self-regulation “i feel like i am good at self-regulation of my emotion.” 1 1.25% solve problems “as a person with high wellbeing, he will first calm down when having problems and solve them.” 1 1.25% relationship support 21.25% family company & support “for example, i feel wellbeing when i chat with my family pleasantly.” 7 8.75% friendship support “when i stay with friends, i feel like i get cohort support.” 7 8.75% pet “my wellbeing increased a lot after i have cat.” 2 2.50% harmony “have harmony in family and life.” 1 1.25% mentaloriented 13.75% no pressure “there is no pressure during the whole process, and there is no schedule, too.” 4 5.00% comparison between good and bad status “compared to not good life status i feel satisfied with my life when i in good status.” 2 2.50% positive attitude “in terms of study, i have a good, positive attitude.” 2 2.50% appreciation “i appreciate small, beautiful things in life that others not noticed” 1 1.25% good mood “sometimes, if i have a good mood, i will have the feeling of wellbeing.” 1 1.25% passion and energetic “i am energetic to work harder, very passionate about working every day.” 1 1.25% giving 10.00% giving love & support “not only receive love, you can have wellbeing if you also give love.” 5 6.25% voluntary work “i also participate in some voluntary work, and this is also a part of my wellbeing.” 2 2.50% giving positive feedback “put a note of positive feedback to my colleagues can foster wellbeing.” 1 1.25% community support 8.75% good social welfare and insurance system “university provides some free course to teach how to study, have some discounts to travel.” 4 5.00% diversity and inclusion “celebrate lgbt day at the company and show inclusiveness.” 2 2.50% campus service support “disability people have been taken good care of by social welfare and insurance system.” 1 1.25% autonomy 6.25% freedom and hobbies “if i want to go out for dinner, i can choose any restaurant i want to eat”, “hope my parents can leave me alone.” 4 5.00% time to relax “i have a lot of time to play, feel very happy.” 1 1.25% learning and growth 5.00% challenge myself “if i can fully understand a paper, i will feel good and wellbeing.” 1 1.25% keep learning “i can feel a strong feeling of wellbeing when i study.” 1 1.25% new start “at the beginning of a task, i feel most energetic and positive.” 1 1.25% self-actualization “a sense of self-actualization and need goals to become a valuable person.” 1 1.25% http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ chinese international students’ wellbeing huang, kern, & oades www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 main themes sub-themes representative quotes n % nature and environment 3.75% campus life “i have the sense of wellbeing when i walked in campus, see different old buildings with the sense of history, the sunlight in the lawn, the blooms threes and confident students chat happily.” 1 1.25% good weather “maybe the weather is good today, and i will have the feeling of wellbeing.” 1 1.25% spacious living area “live in a big house is feeling very good.” 1 1.25% negative experience 3.75% academic challenge and depression “i feel depressed when i feel very hard to achieve goals, or i have a different opinion about my research with supervisors.” 1 1.25% mental dysfunction “had a terrible feeling and hard to express, feel like i can’t do anything and anything good.” 1 1.25% mental illness and sickness “when i see the doctor, i feel wellbeing is very important, and it’s the functional basis for daily life.” 1 1.25% fulfillment and contentment 2.50% contentment “have a sense of contentment and satisfy my life.” 1 1.25% fulfillment ” i feel fulfilment in my life and keep learning little by little.” 1 1.25% physicaloriented 2.50% exercise “for example, exercise.” 1 1.25% physical comfortable “the sofa in baillieu library feels comfortable, and i can have a sense of wellbeing.” 1 1.25% http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ slemp, g. r., & vella-brodrick, d. a., (2013). the job crafting questionnaire: a new scale to measure the extent to which employees engage in job crafting. international journal of wellbeing, 3(2), 126-146. doi:10.5502/ijw.v3i2.1 gavin r. slemp monash university gavin.slemp@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 article the job crafting questionnaire: a new scale to measure the extent to which employees engage in job crafting gavin r. slemp · dianne a. vella-brodrick abstract: empirical research on employee job crafting is scarce, probably because until recently scales with which the construct can be reliably and validly measured were not available. although a general scale has recently been developed, the cognitive component of job crafting was omitted. the aim of the present study was to address this gap by developing and validating the 15-item job crafting questionnaire (jcq). the sample consisted of 334 employees who completed a battery of questionnaires, including the jcq. exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses both supported a three-factor structure that reflected the task, relational, and cognitive forms of job crafting originally presented by wrzesniewski and dutton (2001). convergent analyses showed the jcq correlated positively with indices of proactive behaviour (i.e., organisational citizenship behaviour, strengths use, and self-concordant goal setting), and positive work functioning (i.e., job satisfaction, work contentment, work enthusiasm, and positive affect). these analyses also showed the measure correlated inversely with negative affect. reliability analyses indicated the measure has high internal consistency. together, the analyses supported the reliability and validity of the jcq and it shows good promise as a measure to progress research on job crafting. keywords: job crafting, task crafting, relational crafting, cognitive crafting, scale development, wellbeing 1. introduction practitioners are frequently briefed with the task of enhancing employee satisfaction, wellbeing, and performance. although some interventions have successfully improved contextual or job characteristics (kluger & denisi, 1996; parker, chmiel & wall, 1997; wall, kemp, jackson & clegg, 1986), an alternative avenue is to focus on behaviour-based change (e.g., black, 2001; seligman, steen, park & peterson, 2005). a focus on employee characteristics such as behaviour or cognitions is promising not only because it can yield important individual outcomes related to wellbeing, but also because such characteristics benefit organisations (e.g., harter, schmidt, & keyes, 2003; hodges & clifton, 2004). job crafting is a promising yet relatively unexplored approach that, potentially, employees can use to heighten their job satisfaction and wellbeing (wrzesniewski & dutton, 2001). job crafting is described as the ways in which employees take an active role in initiating changes to the physical, cognitive, or social features of their jobs. it is an informal process that workers use to shape their work practice so that it aligns with their idiosyncratic interests and values. in this way, job crafting is a form of proactive behaviour, driven by employees rather than management (grant & ashford, 2008). in their original conceptualisation of the construct, wrzesniewski and dutton (2001) argued for the existence of three forms of job crafting. task http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 crafting refers to initiating changes in the number or type of activities one completes on the job (e.g., introducing new tasks that better suit one’s skills or interests). relational crafting involves exercising discretion about whom one interacts with at work (e.g., making friends with people with similar skills or interests). cognitive crafting is distinct from task and relational crafting in that it involves altering how one ‘sees’ one’s job, with the view to making it more personally meaningful (e.g., making an effort to recognise the effect one’s work has on the success of the organisation or community). in initiating task, relational, and cognitive changes to one’s job boundaries, the meaning of the job and the identity of the employee also change accordingly. job crafting shows promise as an effective workplace intervention because it requires employees to adopt an active role in shaping their work experience. it recognises that although employees are typically not able to redesign their jobs, there will be opportunities in the context of almost any job where employees can initiate changes to tasks, interactions, or ways they think about their work to make it more personally meaningful or enjoyable. job crafting, then, can be applied across a variety of roles with different levels of seniority and degrees of autonomy (berg, wrzesniewski, & dutton, 2010; wrzesniewski & dutton, 2001), and hence it is plausible that even in the most restricted and routine jobs employees are able to initiate changes to influence their work experience. the literature also attests to the organisational benefits of employee proactive behaviour. studies have shown, for example, that proactive employees display better performance, progress their careers at a faster rate, and are generally paid more (grant, parker, & collins, 2009; seibert, kraimer, & crant, 2001; thompson, 2005; van scotter, motowildo, & cross, 2000). despite job crafting being a promising basis for workplace interventions, it has received surprisingly little research attention. this gap in the literature might stem from the fact that, until recently, few measures of the construct were available. indeed, with few exceptions, the vast majority of the research on job crafting has been qualitative or theoretical in nature (e.g., berg, grant, & johnson, 2010; berg, wrzesniewski, & dutton, 2010; fried, grant, levi, hadani & slowik, 2007; lyons, 2008; wrzesniewski & dutton, 2001) and there remains an important need to assess empirically the relationships between job crafting and other employee outcomes. 1.1 previous efforts to develop a measure of job crafting although there have been some efforts to develop measures of job crafting, their contexts are generally limited. ghitulescu (2006) and leana, appelbaum, and shevchuk (2009), for example, developed measures of job crafting that were highly specific to their populations of interest— manufacturers and teachers, respectively—and hence contain items specifically targeted towards these two occupation groups. although rigorously constructed and useful for their respective populations, these scales are not appropriate for empirical research with more general working populations. this includes those employees from the regular private or public sectors, whose jobs traditionally involve a high degree of autonomy and hence considerable scope for implementing job-crafting behaviours. only recently has a more general scale for job crafting been published. this scale, developed by tims, bakker, and derks (2012), consists of four dimensions representing four different types of job crafting: increasing social job resources, increasing structural job resources, increasing challenging job demands, and decreasing hindering job demands. in this way, similar to their previous work (e.g., tims & bakker, 2010), these authors frame their conceptualisation of job crafting within the job demands-resources (jd-r) model (bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti, bakker, nachreiner, & schaufeli, 2000, 2001), which posits that job characteristics can be categorised into two opposing classes: job demands and job resources. job the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 demands consist of those physical, social, or organisational aspects of jobs that require sustained mental and physical effort, and are thus associated with psychological costs such as burnout and exhaustion. examples of job demands include work-load and time pressures (demerouti et al., 2000). job resources are those physical, social or organisational characteristics of jobs that aid the achievement of work goals or stimulate personal growth or development (demerouti et al., 2001). examples of job resources are performance feedback and task variety (demerouti et al., 2000). job resources are therefore an important buffer to the psychological costs associated with job demands (bakker, demerouti, & euwema, 2005; bakker, hakanen, demerouti & xanthopoulou, 2007). tims et al. (2012) suggest that job crafting reflects the changes that employees make to balance their job demands and job resources with their personal needs and abilities. framed within the jd-r model, then, job crafting is a process by which employees seek to maximise their job resources and minimise their job demands. 1.2 the importance of cognitive crafting tims et al. (2012) made a practical and creative contribution by framing their job crafting scale within the jd-r model and, indeed, many types of job crafting behaviours are attempts to increase job resources and decrease job demands. moreover, this scale has since been used and adapted for further research by petrou, demerouti, peeters, schaufeli, and hetland (2012) and nielsen and abildgaard (2012). however, we argue that a measure of job crafting that directly addresses the cognitive component of job crafting is also needed. this is because crafting cognitions about work is an important way in which individuals can shape their work experience (wrzesniewski & dutton, 2001). it also permits another avenue from which to exert some influence over one’s job and may suit particular types of jobs or employees. moreover, it allows employees to appreciate the broader effects of their work and to recognise the value that their job may hold in their life. cognitive crafting is perhaps the facet of job crafting that aligns most closely to “work identity”, which is essentially how people define or perceive themselves at work (bartel & dutton, 2001; wrzesniewski & dutton, 2001). according to wrzesniewski and dutton (2001), a large part of one’s work identity is cognitive, in that it helps people realise a more global conception of themself at work, where they can make claims about what work is and what it is not. while one’s work identity cannot be changed at will, employees can make claims about who they are as employees and why their work matters. these claims form the identity that each employee creates for himself or herself at work and ultimately changes the personal meaning that is reflected in their work more generally. wrzesniewski and dutton (2001) cite a hypothetical scenario about physicians who alter the way in which they cognitively frame their job. physicians, as providers of health services, can view their work in several ways. for example, they might frame work about healing people into heightened states of positive physical wellbeing. alternatively, they might frame work about acting upon illness, disease, or injury to merely keep people alive and functioning with the technology and equipment available to them. through cognitive crafting, employees can alter the way in which they see their work in order to obtain a more positive work identity, and ultimately derive an enhanced level of meaning and purpose from their work. it is our view that a measure of job crafting needs to include this important component of job crafting. although some items of the tims et al. (2012) scale are focussed on reducing the psychological and emotional costs of hindering job demands (e.g., “i make sure my work is mentally less intense”; “i try to ensure my work is emotionally less intense”), it remains unclear whether these items refer to employee behaviour or employee cognitions. for example, the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 employees could make their work emotionally less intense by changing their workplace behaviours (e.g., working on projects that are less emotionally draining; seeking more help from others), or in contrast, by changing their cognitions (e.g., thinking about how one’s job gives value to one’s life as a whole; thinking about the aspects of one’s job that are emotionally rewarding). it is important for a scale of job crafting to assess the cognitive component of the construct as doing so will enable researchers to investigate the full range of antecedents and consequences for each dimension. it will also allow researchers to examine several more specific questions about job crafting. for example, a new scale will allow researchers to investigate whether the cognitive component of job crafting explains as much variance in important employee outcomes as the other, more behavioural, components of task and relational crafting. it may also shed light on where certain types of job crafting fit in temporal sequence. it is possible, for example, that cognitive crafting precedes the more behavioural attempts to craft work, perhaps because cognitive crafting may be implemented more quickly and with less discretionary effort than the more behavioural activities of relational and task crafting. finally, it is currently unknown whether all three forms of job crafting need to be demonstrated in order to produce lasting changes in employee outcomes. a new scale which includes clear dimensions on all three forms will allow scholars to examine these important research questions. 1.3 aim and hypotheses although job crafting is a conceptually appealing concept on which to design employee-based interventions, until recently there has been little effort to establish a quantitative measure of the construct that can be used in psychological research. only recently have findings begun to emerge that suggest job crafting is an important predictor of important employee outcomes, such as work engagement, cynicism, employability, performance ratings, and job satisfaction (nielsen & abildgaard, 2012; petrou et al., 2012; tims et al., 2012). beyond these studies however, there has been a dearth of research into the empirical relationships between job crafting and employee outcomes. there has been even less research examining the relationship between cognitive crafting and employee outcomes. the aim of this study is therefore to develop the job crafting questionnaire (jcq). the jcq is designed to measure the original types of activities that represented job crafting and is hence consistent with wrzesniewski and dutton’s (2001) original model of job crafting that includes task, relational, and cognitive forms of job crafting. these three types of activities represent three distinct yet meaningful ways in which employees can shape their work experience. thus, it was hypothesised: hypothesis 1: the jcq items load on three dimensions that represent task, relational, and cognitive forms of job crafting, and this model will fit the data better than will a single-factor model. another aim of the present study was to examine the convergent validity of the jcq by correlating the job-crafting dimensions with other theoretically related constructs. as job crafting has been described as a form of discretionary behaviour that is driven by the employee rather than by management (e.g., grant & ashford, 2008), it was anticipated that all dimensions of the jcq would be positively correlated with other self-initiated proactive behaviours that employees can exhibit at work to enhance their enjoyment or performance. thus, it was hypothesised: hypothesis 2: there is a positive relationship between the jcq and employees’ tendency to engage in organisational citizenship behaviour (ocb) – a form of discretionary behaviour that promotes the effective functioning of the organisation (organ, 1988). this prediction was made, the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 as similar to ocb, job crafting is a form of discretionary behaviour that employees initiate at work to change their work experience. hypothesis 3: there is a positive relationship between the jcq and employees’ strengths’ use. this prediction is made as using one’s strengths at work could potentially be considered a special form of task crafting, whereby employees select those tasks in which they are more skilled, experienced, or for which they hold more natural talent. hence, it is likely that employees who use their strengths at work are also likely to see themselves as active job crafters. hypothesis 4: there is a positive relationship between the jcq and setting intrinsically motivated (i.e., self-concordant; sheldon & elliot, 1999) work-related goals. this prediction is made because intrinsically motivated goals are those that are consistent with employees’ inherent interests and values. job-crafting activities are initiated so employees can make subtle changes to their roles in order to enhance these intrinsic work qualities. thus, employees who are motivated by the intrinsic enjoyment and satisfaction that their work brings are likely to engage in job crafting, which is a method by which employees have the potential to enhance these intrinsic features of their job by ultimately making their work more consistent with their personal interests, skills, and desires. given that job crafting is a form of self-initiated behaviour that employees use to make their work more meaningful and enjoyable, it was further hypothesised that the jcq would be related to other work-specific emotions and cognitions. hence, it was hypothesised: hypothesis 5: there is a positive relationship between the jcq and the constructs of employee job satisfaction, work contentment, work enthusiasm, and work-specific positive affect. hypothesis 6: for the same reason it was hypothesised that the jcq is negatively related to work-specific negative affect. 2. method 2.1 participants data from a sample of 334 employees were included in the quantitative analysis, which involved both exploratory factor analysis (efa) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) of the scale items. this sample was recruited through various means, including social networking sites, online discussion forums, and through staff email and newsletters of organisations that had agreed to invite their staff to participate. all participants were at least 18 years of age and were in paid employment. the invitations directed participants to an explanatory statement that contained a link to the questionnaires. participation in this study was voluntary. because the jcq was a part of a larger battery of psychological questionnaires, many participants dropped out after having completed the items related to job crafting, thus limiting the demographics information to 253 participants in total (75.7%). these complete cases were used in the convergent analyses, where the complete data set was needed. t-tests revealed that there were no mean differences with respect to any of the study variables between the complete and missing data sets (all p’s > .05), suggesting that the missing data were missing at random (little & rubin, 2002). of the complete cases, more than half were female (66.8%) and the mean age was 41.94 (sd = 11.38). the majority worked full-time (76.4%), and on average participants worked 38.02 hours per week. most employees worked in education (68.0%), followed by banking and financial services (6.4%), and healthcare (6.0%). the mean income was aud76,371 per annum, and the mean years of education was 17.60 (sd = 3.56). the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 2.2 scale construction the questions were developed to measure the extent to which employees engaged in the types of activities that were consistent with wrzesniewski and dutton’s (2001) original model of jobcrafting that consisted of task, relational, and cognitive forms of crafting. most items were original but four items were adapted from leana et al. (2009), who developed a measure of job crafting specifically for teachers in education settings. their scale consisted of the task and relational forms of crafting (at both the individual and group level), but omitted the cognitive form of crafting. only those items that were adaptable to more general working environments were selected from this scale, and were altered for appropriate use with more general working samples by removing any reference to education or classroom-based environments. these items provided theoretically consistent examples of ways in which employees might engage in task or relational crafting at work and were hence incorporated into the present study. all items that were developed to measure the extent to which employees engage in cognitive crafting in the present study were original. by reviewing the extant literature on what constituted the types of activities that represented job crafting, as well as examining the existing measures of job crafting, a preliminary set of 27 items was developed and administered to a separate sample of 23 working adults for qualitative analysis. these participants were known to the researcher and provided feedback about items they deemed to be clear and thus which should be retained, and also items they deemed to be confusing and which should be either eliminated or reworded. they also provided feedback about whether each item made sense within a general working context. based on this analysis, a final set of 21 items was retained for the efa and cfa components of the study. upon consultation with the participants who provided feedback, four of these 21 items were also reworded to enhance clarity and relevance to suit more general working samples. the final set of 21 items consisted of seven items for each of task, relational, and cognitive forms of job crafting. the job-crafting questionnaire was introduced with the following statement: “employees are frequently presented with opportunities to make their work more engaging and fulfilling. these opportunities might be as simple as making subtle changes to your work tasks to increase your enjoyment, creating opportunities to connect with more people at work, or simply trying to view your job in a new way to make it more purposeful. while some jobs will provide more of these opportunities than others, there will be situations in all jobs where one can make subtle changes to make it more engaging and fulfilling.” participants were then instructed to indicate the extent to which they engaged in each job-crafting behaviour or cognition on a likert-type scale from 1 (hardly ever) to 6 (very often). 2.3 procedure once the preliminary set of 21 items was developed and adjusted based on participant feedback, it was administered to a working sample for quantitative analysis. the majority of the sample was invited to participate through the organisation for which they worked. these organisations consisted of a large australian university, a large australian banking and finance company, and a large australian health insurance company. in each case, an organisational representative sent an email to the employees inviting staff to participate. it was made known to participants that they could choose not to participate and that their managers would never gain access to their responses. the remaining participants were recruited through advertisements on social networking sites and online discussion forums. all participants were offered the choice to enter a lottery to win an 8gb ipod touch as an incentive. the initial email the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 or advertisement contained a link to the study explanatory statement, which then directed participants to the questionnaires. the set of questionnaires was counterbalanced to ensure that the order of presentation of each questionnaire was not the same for the entire sample. 2.4 overview of statistical analyses analyses were conducted in four steps. first, an efa was conducted on the scale items. following this a cfa was undertaken. the internal consistency, as well as the convergent validity of the scale were then examined. the methods used in the four steps are described in detail below. step 1: exploratory factor analysis. in the first stage, an efa was conducted to determine a workable factor structure. of the total 334 participants, a sub-sample of 151 participants was randomly selected using the randomisation function of spss 19. an efa with maximum likelihood extraction was then conducted on this sub-sample to determine the factor structure of the 21 job-crafting items. due to previous literature indicating a threshold loading of .40 (gorsuch, 1983), items that that did not meet this cutoff, as well as items that cross-loaded on multiple factors, were dropped one at a time. this process was repeated until the solution showed a simple structure (thurstone, 1947), and all items met the inclusion criteria. step 2: confirmatory factor analysis. using amos 19 (arbuckle, 2010), a cfa was subsequently conducted on the remaining 183 participants of the total sample to determine whether the factor structure required modification. the cfa was used to confirm the exploratory model, and if possible, to refine the model using a separate sample of participants. cfa is a form of structural equation modelling that is used to determine the goodness of fit between a hypothesised factor structure and the sample data. decisions concerning whether or not to add a path in the model are determined by a combination of logical, theoretical and empirical indications. modification indices are the empirical indicators used by amos to suggest paths that will improve the fit of the model. this often involves allowing the error terms of various items in the model to be correlated. however, it was determined a priori that in the effort to keep the model theory driven rather than empirically driven, a more theoretically justifiable procedure was to exclude problematic items (levine, hullett, turner & lapinski, 2006). problematic items were defined as those with highly correlated error terms and/or those which loaded on the wrong factor. further, not permitting correlations between error terms increases the chances that the factor structure will replicate across samples (byrne, 2010). in the cfa, the factor loading of one indicator variable to each latent variable was fixed to 1.0. this established the metric of each latent variable. correlations were allowed between the pairs of latent variables in the model, as theoretically, different types of job-crafting behaviours should be related to each other. correlations between other variables were fixed to 0.0. to assess model fit, we followed the recommendation of marsh, balla, and hau (1996) by using multiple fit indices. moreover, as per the recommendations of jaccard and wan (1996), a range of fit indices across different classes of fit indices was used. hence, five indices guided our assessment of model fit: chi square/df ratio (χ2/df), the non normed fit index (nnfi; tucker & lewis, 1973), the comparative fit index (cfi; bentler, 1990), the incremental fit index (bentler & bonnet, 1980), and the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea; browne & cudeck, 1993). values of .90 for the nnfi and ifi (byrne, 1994) indicate good fit. although the recommended cfi values range from .90 to .95, generally values close to or approaching .95 are more accepted as indicating good fit (hu & bentler, 1999). the χ2/df ratio provides an estimate of model fit that is less sensitive to sample size than the regular chi square index. the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 although there is no clear guideline for the χ2/df ratio, values from 2 (ullman, 2007) to as high as 5 (wheaton, muthen, alwin & summers, 1977) have been recommended as appropriate cutoffs. a value of 3 is another guideline (bollen, 1989; kline, 2005), and this was the value selected to ensure consistency with previous job-crafting research (e.g., tims et al., 2012). the rmsea takes into account the error of approximation in the population and tests how well the model would fit the population covariance matrix if it were available (byrne, 2010). values less than .08 indicate reasonable fit (browne & cudeck, 1993), and values less than .05 indicate a good fit (stieger, 1990). values greater than 1.0 should lead to model rejection (browne & cudeck, 1993; maccallum, browne, & sugawara, 1996). the chi-square test statistic was not used as an index of model fit because it is likely to reject a good fitting model due to trivial differences between the correlations and the covariances in the observed and predicted matrices (meyers, gamst & guarino, 2006). step 3: reliability analysis. internal consistency was assessed by computing cronbach’s alphas for the job-crafting dimensions, as well as the total scale. these estimates were calculated before and after the factor analysis stage where items were dropped. although alpha estimates provide limited practical information about a measure when used in isolation, when used in combination with efa and cfa they can be useful in supporting the reliability of a scale after its multi-dimensionality has been confirmed (levine et al., 2006). step 4: convergent analyses. to assess convergent validity, the jcq was correlated with other constructs with which it should theoretically be related. the measures that were used in these analyses are detailed in the following section. 2.5 measures job crafting. job crafting was measured with the final jcq developed in this study (see appendix). the complete measure consisted of 15 items and participants indicate the frequency with which they have engaged in each job-crafting activity from 1 (hardly ever) to 6 (very often). strengths use. the extent to which participants used their strengths was assessed with govindji and linley’s (2007) 14-item strengths use scale. an example item is “my work gives me lots of opportunities to use my strengths”. participants indicate the extent to which they agree with each statement from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). these authors reported a cronbach’s alpha of .95. an equivalent reliability (.95) was found with the current study’s data set. govindji and linley (2007) found the items to load on a single 'strengths use' factor. moreover, the scale correlated moderately to strongly with self-efficacy (.63), self-esteem (.56), subjective wellbeing (.51), psychological wellbeing (.56), and subjective vitality (.45), supporting its validity. intrinsic goal striving. participants were asked to list two work-related goals and we then used the same method as emmons (1986), as well as sheldon and colleagues (e.g., sheldon & elliot, 1999; sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2006), to calculate the extent to which these goals were intrinsically motivated. this procedure requests participants to list a work-related goal and subsequently rate whether it is pursued for external motivations (pursued to please others or for rewards), introjected motivations (striving to avoid guilt or self-criticism), identified motivation (pursued due to internal values or beliefs) and intrinsic motivation (pursued due to the intrinsic enjoyment and satisfaction from the task or goal itself). participants rated the extent to which both goals were pursued for each of the four reasons by responding on a sevenpoint scale from 1 (not at all for this reason) to 7 (completely for this reason). as in past research (e.g., sheldon & elliot, 1999; sheldon & houser-marko, 2001; sheldon & lyubomirsky, the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 2006) an intrinsic motivation score was then calculated by averaging the intrinsic and identified ratings, and subtracting the averaged external and introjected ratings for each goal. this scale had satisfactory reliability with a cronbach’s alpha of .74 for the current study’s data set. organisational citizenship behaviour (ocb). ocb was assessed with the 13-item podsakoff, ahearne, and mackenzie (1997) scale, which measures the helping, civic virtue, and sportsmanship components of ocbs. an example item is “i help out others if they fall behind in their work”. participants respond from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). podsakoff et al. (1997) reported alpha coefficients of .95, .96, and .88 for the three components respectively. the full scale alpha coefficient using the current study’s data is lower but still satisfactory (.79). podsakoff et al. (1997) also showed the measure predicted work group performance, thus lending some support for the scale’s validity. job satisfaction. the michigan organizational assessment questionnaire (cammann, fichman, jenkins & klesh, 1979) was used to measure job satisfaction. an example item is “all in all, i am satisfied with my job”, and participants respond from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). cammann et al. (1979) reported a cronbach’s alpha of .77 and in the present study it was .90. moreover, bruck, allen and spector (2002) showed that scores on the job satisfaction scale can be predicted from work-family conflict. affective wellbeing. affective wellbeing was measured with the warr (1990) affective wellbeing scales. six descriptor words were used to describe the anxiety-contentment axis (e.g., “relaxed” for positive affect, “tense” for negative affect) and the depression-enthusiasm axis (“cheerful” for positive affect, “miserable” for negative affect) of affective wellbeing. participants indicated the frequency with which they had experienced each emotion at work on a 6-point scale from 1 (never) to 6 (all of the time). the scale had high internal consistency, with cronbach’s alphas of .90 for the anxiety-contentment axis and .91 for the depressionenthusiasm axis. warr (1990) found that contentment was positively related to job satisfaction and motivation (.21 and .20, respectively) and negatively related to work overload and distress (-.40 and -.46, respectively). similarly, enthusiasm was positively related to job satisfaction and motivation (both .40), and negatively related to task repetition and distress (-.22 and -.39 respectively), supporting the scale’s validity. warr’s (1990) affective wellbeing scales were also used to measure work-specific positive affect (wspa) and negative affect (wsna). wspa and wsna were measured by calculating an average score for the six items that reflected both pa and na in warr’s (1990) affective wellbeing measure. this scale also had high internal consistency, with cronbach’s alphas of .92 and .93 for wspa and wsna, respectively. 3. results 3.1 exploratory factor analysis (n = 150) efa with maximum likelihood extraction and oblique rotation in spss 19 was used to determine if the factor structure of the 21 items was consistent with the original model of job crafting (wrzesniewski & dutton, 2001). one case was missing most of its data for the jobcrafting items. this case was dropped listwise, leaving data from 150 participants for the analysis. the remainder of the missing values for each item was very low (0.0% to 2.0%), and multiple imputation methods (three imputations with spss) were used to estimate these values (little & rubin, 2002). prior to performing the efa, the suitability of data for factor analysis was assessed. inspection of the correlation matrix revealed many coefficients of .3 and above. the kaisermeyer-oklin value was .89, exceeding the recommended value of .6 (kaiser, 1970, 1974). the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 bartlett’s test of sphericity was statistically significant, supporting the factorability of the correlation matrix (bartlett, 1954). maximum likelihood extraction revealed the presence of three factors with eigenvalues exceeding 1. these factors explained 40.45% (eigenvalue = 8.96), 8.58% (eigenvalue = 2.31), and 7.19% (eigenvalue = 1.79) of the variance respectively. figure 1 shows the scree plot and a break after the third factor. figure 1. scree plot showing a break after the third factor an inspection of the screeplot revealed a break after the third factor, and catell’s (1966) scree test indicated a three-factor solution for further investigation. this was further supported by a parallel analysis, which showed three factors with eigenvalues exceeding the corresponding criterion values for a randomly generated data matrix of equivalent size (21 variables × 150 cases). the three-factor solution explained a total of 56.23% of the variance. to aid in the interpretation of these three factors, direct oblimin rotation was performed. the rotated factor solution resembled a simple structure, with all three factors showing several strong loadings. those items that exhibited a cross loading or loaded greater than .35 on the wrong factor were deleted. due to previous literature suggesting a threshold for factor loadings of .40 (gorsuch, 1983), items that did not meet this cutoff were dropped. on this basis, two of the items for cognitive crafting were deleted. another efa was performed and a solution consisting of 19 factor number e ig e n v a lu e the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 items was retained, with a clear simple structure present in the data (thurstone, 1947). these data are presented in table 1. there were moderate to strong correlations between the three factors (from .42 to .57), supporting the use of oblique rotation. table 1: items, means, standard deviations, and factor loadings of the three-factor job crafting questionnaire factor item m sd 1 2 3 task crafting 1 introduce new approaches to improve your work* 3.94 1.48 .75 2 change the scope or types of tasks that you complete at work 3.54 1.47 .92 3 introduce new work tasks that better suit your skills or interests 3.42 1.47 .86 4 choose to take on additional tasks at work 4.12 1.34 .58 5 give preference to work tasks that suit your skills or interests 4.09 1.39 .59 6 change the way you do your job to make it more enjoyable for yourself* 3.73 1.39 .74 7 change minor procedures that you think are not productive* 3.91 1.35 .66 cognitive crafting 8 think about how your job gives your life purpose 3.69 1.46 .87 9 remind yourself about the significance your work has for the success of the organisation 3.48 1.41 .66 10 remind yourself of the importance of your work for the broader community 3.45 1.53 .81 11 think about the ways in which your work positively impacts your life 3.66 1.43 .85 12 reflect on the role your job has for your overall well-being 3.96 1.33 .69 relational crafting 13 engage in networking activities to establish more relationships 3.68 1.48 .45 14 make an effort to get to know people well at work 4.24 1.24 .77 15 organise or attend work related social functions 3.39 1.56 .77 16 organise special events in the workplace (e.g., celebrating a co-worker's birthday)* 3.16 1.61 .82 17 introduce yourself to co-workers, customers, or clients you have not met 3.95 1.37 .65 18 choose to mentor new employees (officially or unofficially) 3.48 1.51 .58 19 make friends with people at work who have similar skills or interests 4.09 1.33 .62 * indicates items that were adapted or taken from leana, appelbaum, and shevchuk (2009). taken together, the results of the efa support a three-factor solution, with seven items loading on each of task and relational crafting, and five items loading on cognitive crafting. 3.2 confirmatory factor analysis (n = 180) in order to examine if the three-factor solution fits the data best in the second sample, cfa was conducted using amos 19 (arbuckle, 2010). as structural equation modelling requires a complete data set for each case (byrne, 2010), it was determined a priori to drop any cases that were missing more than 5% of the items for the questionnaire. this approach led to three cases the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 being excluded from the analysis, leaving data from 180 participants. the remainder of the missing values for each item was very low (0.0% to 2.2%), and multiple imputation methods (three imputations with spss) were used to estimate these values (little & rubin, 2002). cfa was performed initially on the 19-item scale, which indicated a reasonably poor fit to the data (χ2/df = 2.44, cfi = .89, nnfi = .88, ifi = .89, rmsea = .09). moreover, the rmsea confidence interval was above the upper bound limit of .08 (byrne, 2010). the modification indices suggested that two task-crafting items (items 6 and 7 from table 1) correlated with the wrong factor. a relational-crafting item (item 17 from table 1) correlated with the wrong factor, while another relational-crafting item (item 13 from table 1) was both poorly correlated with the relational-crafting latent variable and the error term was correlated with several error terms for items that loaded on the cognitive and task-crafting latent variables. on this basis, these four items were dropped, which left 15 items for the analysis: five for each latent variable. another cfa was conducted which indicated that the fit of the model was substantially improved. the fit indices indicated a model that fit the data well, and are presented in the top row of table 2. table 2: confirmatory factor analysis of the three-factor job crafting questionnaire (n = 180) model χ2 df χ2/df cfi nnfi ifi rmsea three factor model 149.01 87 1.71 .96 .95 .96 .06 one factor model 551.28 90 6.13 .68 .63 .68 .17 note: χ2/df = normed chi square, cfi = comparative fit index; nnfi = non normed fit index; ifi = incremental fit index; rmsea = root mean square error of approximation. the final scale consists of 15 items: 5 for each job-crafting factor. as can be observed in table 2, the hypothesised three-factor model was tested against a singlefactor model due to the possibility that job crafting is a uni-dimensional construct. for example, it is possible that the fact employees initiate changes to their work (uni-dimensional model) is more salient than the types of changes (hypothesised multi-dimensional model) employees initiate at work. table 2 shows that the three-factor model fit the observed data better than the alternative one-factor model, supporting hypothesis 1. the nnfi and ifi were both above .90, the cfi was greater than .95, and the normed chi square was less than 3. the rmsea was also small (.06), with the confidence intervals within the range suggesting acceptable fit (lower bound = .05, upper bound = .08). all fit indices support a three-factor model. moreover, all items loaded significantly and strongly on their respective latent variables, with standardised loadings ranging from .56 to .89 (all p’s < .001). standardised parameter estimates indicated moderate to strong correlations between the latent variables: task crafting-relational crafting (.54), relational crafting-cognitive crafting (.74), and task crafting-cognitive crafting (.80). 3.3 reliability analyses internal consistency statistics are presented in table 3 (below). the cronbach’s alphas of the three sub-scales were all well above the recommended threshold of .70 (nunnally & bernstein, 1994). before items were dropped, the scale reliabilities were .90, .89, .86, and .94 for task, cognitive, relational, and total job crafting, respectively. as can be observed in table 3, after the items were dropped through the cfa process, these reliabilities were lowered slightly, though not substantially. the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 table 3: reliability estimates for task, cognitive, relational, and total job crafting scale number of items cronbach's alpha task crafting 5 .87 cognitive crafting 5 .89 relational crafting 5 .83 total job crafting 15 .91 note: n = 334 3.4 convergent validity to examine the convergent validity of the new scale, the job crafting sub-scales and total scale were correlated with other variables with which they should be theoretically related. these correlations are presented in table 4. composite scores were calculated by adding the scores for each construct and dividing by the total number of items. table 4: correlations between the dimensions of job crafting with job satisfaction, intrinsic goal strivings (work), strengths use, ocb, work contentment, work enthusiasm, workrelated positive affect, and work related negative affect construct 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. task crafting 2. cognitive crafting .52** 3. relational crafting .42** .53** 4. job crafting total .81** .83** .77** 5. strengths use .43** .39** .36** .49** 6. intrinsic goal setting (work) .20** .32** .30** .34** .40** 7. ocb .40** .33** .41** .47** .35** .22** 8. job satisfaction .38** .45** .21** .43** .41** .30** .24** 9. work contentment .29** .26** .13* .28** .24** .25** .14* .62** 10. work enthusiasm .45** .42** .26** .47** .40** .38** .29* .75** .76** 11. wspa .40** .40** .27** .45** .37** .31** .27** .66** .83** .86** 12. wsna -.25** -.23** -.11 -.26** -.25** -.30** -.14* -.67** -.86** -.84** -.64** note: n = 250; ocb = organisational citizenship behaviour; wspa = work-specific positive affect; wsna = work-specific negative affect. * p <.05 ** p <.01 it was predicted that all dimensions of the jcq would exhibit positive correlations with similar behaviourally based indices of strengths use, intrinsic goal strivings at work, and ocb. as the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 expected, all of these correlations were significant and in the expected positive direction. it was also predicted that the dimensions of job crafting would be positively related with job satisfaction, work contentment, work enthusiasm, and wspa. these correlations were also significant and positive. finally, it was predicted that the dimensions of job crafting would be negatively correlated with wsna. although the relationship between relational crafting and wsna did not reach statistical significance, it was in the expected negative direction. all other correlations were significant and negative, though the strength of these relationships was generally weaker than the relationships between job-crafting and proactive behaviours and positive states. 4. discussion the aim of the present study was to develop and validate the jcq, which can be used in psychological research to assess the extent to which individuals engage in job-crafting activities. as hypothesised and consistent with wrzesniewski and dutton’s (2001) model of job crafting, the present study showed the job-crafting items to load on the three dimensions of task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting. the efa and cfa both revealed a three-factor structure that reflects each dimension of job crafting, though the cfa worked best when problematic items were dropped from the measure. hence, all three forms of job crafting indicate different processes through which employees can take active roles in shaping their experience of work. also as hypothesised, the jcq correlated in the hypothesised directions with other scales selected based on their theoretical association with job crafting. thus, the jcq dimensions exhibited positive correlations with other proactive-behaviour-based assessments such as strengths use, intrinsic goal setting at work, and ocb. the scale was also positively correlated with job satisfaction, work contentment, work enthusiasm, and wspa, and negatively correlated with wsna. all correlations support the measure’s convergent validity. it is worth noting, however, that the jcq exhibited weak, though generally significant, relationships with wsna. it is possible, then, that job crafting holds a weaker influence on negative states than it does on positive states, probably because job-crafting activities are directed at enhancing the enjoyment and satisfaction employees attain from their work. hence, it is plausible that jobcrafting activities are used primarily by mentally healthy employees to enhance their work satisfaction and enjoyment rather than by dissatisfied or unhappy employees to lift themselves into states where their dissatisfaction, unhappiness, or other negative experiences are less intense. job crafting, then, might be a useful strategy in enhancing the mental health and happiness of those people thought to be languishing (keyes, 2002, 2003, 2007)—that is, people who neither suffer from mental illness nor experience positive mental health. it is these people who are often overlooked in psychological research (keyes, 2003) and efforts to enhance their wellbeing will be a welcome addition to the literature. further research is needed to confirm these findings using measures of other work-related negative states such as intention to leave, stress, exhaustion, or burnout. the jcq differed from existing measures of job crafting in three important ways. first, items were worded in a way that was relevant and meaningful for the general adult working population, rather than for specific working groups, occupations, or industries of interest. this allows the measure to be used in research involving a range of occupations, organisational contexts, or industries where scope exists for implementing job-crafting activities. second, the jcq showed that cognitive-crafting items loaded on a separate construct to the other more behavioural features of task and relational crafting. this suggests that cognitive crafting—the the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 140 processes through which employees frame their perception of their job in a more positive and meaningful light—forms a significant part of what constitutes job crafting. the jcq hence aligns with the original three-component model of job crafting put forward by wrzesniewski and dutton (2001). this is important because, as argued by wrzesniewski and dutton, employee cognitions are an important component of what composes the experiences of a job. employees can shape these cognitions, and in so doing, shape the way in which they approach and experience their work. moreover, cognitions about work form an important part of our work identity (wrzesniewski & dutton, 2001) and crafting cognitions is a method by which employees can shape the way they define or perceive themselves at work. through cognitive crafting, employees have the capacity to adopt a more positive and meaningful view of their work, which may ultimately have corresponding influences on employee wellbeing, turnover, or engagement. although these relationships were not tested here, the jcq opens these questions to empirical inquiry. third, the jcq is quite brief in terms of its number of items. still, it retains equally notable factorial validity, convergent validity, and reliability statistics as previous measures. researchers constrained for time may find it useful to assess job crafting using a more efficient measure, such as the jcq, than those developed previously. the fact that the measure fits without allowing error terms to correlate also increases the probability that it will hold up across different working populations. there are several implications of this study for the progression of job-crafting research. first, an alternative general scale can now be used to assess the extent to which employees craft their jobs. due to its consistency with the original model of job crafting conceptualised by wrzesniewski and dutton (2001), it will allow researchers to assess the relationships between all three types of job crafting and different employee outcomes. hence, the full range of antecedents and consequences of each dimension of job crafting can now be explored. second, there is to our knowledge no present research that has explored whether the three forms of job crafting affect workplace outcomes, and similarly, there is no theory about the underlying mechanisms that explain how they might affect these outcomes. the jcq will allow researchers to address these gaps by providing them with a statistically validated tool to progress jobcrafting research, and ultimately, establish a sound theory as to how the dimensions of job crafting affect work outcomes. finally, given the positive relationships between job crafting and the employee outcomes presented in table 4, the jcq may provide hr practitioners a useful tool to measure the extent to which their staff engage in job crafting and hence develop programs that enhance their employees’ ability to engage in these activities that potentially impact proactive behaviour or wellbeing. the current findings should be interpreted in light of some limitations. first, the sample was quite homogenous in terms of participants’ education, nationality, and income, probably because most participants worked either in education (68%) or the corporate sector in australia. the average years’ education was 17.60, which is well above the length of time required to obtain a secondary education. moreover, the average income was quite high, indeed higher than the average contemporary working income in most countries. this negates the generalisability of the findings to more diverse groups of workers, including, for example, the blue-collar sector and employees from diverse cultural groups. another limitation is that the sample was not large enough to conduct an invariance test to determine whether the factor structure of the scale is sustainable across the wider adult working population. invariance tests from different employee populations, such as blue-collar workers or employees working in different cultures would further elucidate how these employees craft their jobs to enhance the the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 141 experience of work. an invariance test will also allow researchers to further confirm the factor structure of the measure and cross-validate it in a separate sample beyond corporate australia. in conclusion, the jcq fits a three-factor structure, supported by the results of both efa and cfa. the total scale, as well as its individual dimensions, have demonstrated high internal consistency reliability. in addition, the measure correlates in theoretically expected directions with other similar, previously validated measures, thus supporting its convergent validity. therefore, it is anticipated that the jcq can be used to further progress job-crafting research. at the same time, further assessments should continue with diverse samples to provide cumulative and substantial psychometric evidence for this new measure. ultimately, with the development of a theoretically based, practical, and psychometrically sound measure of job crafting, more information about the efficacy and applied utility of job-crafting interventions can be gained to improve the quality of employees’ work life. acknowledgments the authors would like to thank dr simon albrecht and dr simon moss of monash university, who offered valuable statistical insight and advice that greatly assisted the research. authors gavin r. slemp monash university gavin.slemp@unimelb.edu.au dianne a. vella-brodrick university of melbourne and monash university publishing timeline received 19 march 2013 accepted 1 august 2013 published 7 october 2013 references arbuckle, j. l. 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(note: 'very often' means as often as possible in your workplace) 1. introduce new approaches to improve your work* 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 2. change the scope or types of tasks that you complete at work 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 3. introduce new work tasks that you think better suit your skills or interests 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 4. choose to take on additional tasks at work 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 5. give preference to work tasks that suit your skills or interests 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 6. think about how your job gives your life purpose 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 7. remind yourself about the significance your work has for the success of the organisation 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 8. remind yourself of the importance of your work for the broader community 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) the job crafting questionnaire slemp & vella-brodrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 146 9. think about the ways in which your work positively impacts your life 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 10. reflect on the role your job has for your overall well-being 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 11. make an effort to get to know people well at work 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 12. organise or attend work related social functions 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 13. organise special events in the workplace (e.g., celebrating a co-worker's birthday)* 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 14. choose to mentor new employees (officially or unofficially) 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) 15. make friends with people at work who have similar skills or interests 1 (hardly ever) 2 3 4 5 6 (very often) note: items 1 to 5 reflect task crafting, items 5 to 10 reflect cognitive crafting, and items 11 to 15 reflect relational crafting. *indicates items that were adapted or taken from leana, appelbaum, & shevchuk (2009). jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 105–109. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.8 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec interview by aaron jarden ryan niemiec is education director of the via institute on character, a licensed psychologist, coach/consultant, and co-author of three books including positive psychology at the movies. ryan has a passion for teaching, practicing, and/or writing about character strengths, mindfulness, and the portrayal of positive phenomena in movies. how long have you been involved in the field of positive psychology? well, that depends on your definition of positive psychology really. if you consider the field of positive psychology as starting when martin seligman coined the field in 1999 or so, i became interested at that point and read the original papers in the american psychologist in the year 2000 and pushed on from there. but, if you consider positive psychology as starting long before marty’s articulation then i’d say that in the late 90s, i was infusing the principles of positive psychology into my practice as a psychologist. i always tried to embed ideas of strengths and happiness and wellbeing and take a more holistic look at people in my practice, rather than limiting myself to ‘what’s wrong?’. what prompted you to become interested in the area of positive psychology? back in the mid to late 90s i was interested in what you might say is ‘holistic health’, or the bio psychosocial-spiritual model, where we look at the individual as a whole, rather than just relying on traditional training in psychology that had camps predominately focused on working with just the person’s thinking or just their past experiences. i was always really interested in learning about those dimensions but going beyond that into the social realm, the cultural realm, the spiritual realm, and seeing people as so much more than just a couple of different parts, and more than the sum of their parts. so, integrating this with an inclination towards looking at what was going right with people is what primed me to be interested in this field. it was that push towards a bigger, more holistic view, that made me want to gravitate toward positive psychology and infuse that more into my work. was there any key event that led you to stumble into positive psychology or did it just happen over time? it was a gradual process over time, rather than one catalyst. i’ve had some major events happen that have moved me forward deeper and deeper into the field of positive psychology though. for example, my connection with via. prior to working at the via institute on character, i’d been involved in positive psychology for quite some time and had co-authored the book http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 positive psychology at the movies, which looked at character strengths portrayed in movies; and at that time, which was 2007 or so, i had not known about the existence of the via institute because it was the via survey and via classification that were prominent at that point. i was living in st. louis [usa] with my wife and we had decided to move closer to our families (more east). we decided to move to cincinnati, without knowing much about the city, yet it felt right. so it was an intuitive move. this is particularly striking because we were making this decision at the worst time in the american economy since the great depression, that’s in about 75 years or so, we had to buy a house, sell a house, and look for two jobs, but something told us it was the right thing to do and we were just going to do it. and while i was sitting in st. louis one day i sent a message to a positive psychology listserv about the positive psychology at the movies book and i got this query from neal mayerson, the chairman of via. my wife happened to be looking over my shoulder at the e-mail message and she noticed that the phone number in the signature line was a cincinnati number, exactly where we were headed. this connection eventually led to via hiring me to help educate practitioners on how to bridge the science and practice of character strengths. so, you could call this a stumbling deeper in the thicket of positive psychology, events of synchronicity, luck, or some combination of each. in general terms what do you think are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? i might be a little biased, but i, and many others, see the work on character strengths as being the backbone to positive psychology. i say that because whatever theory or approach or topic people are interested in, you can apply character strengths to it, or that particular topic stems from character strengths. for example, a lot of people are interested in happiness, or they are interested in positive emotions, and we can clearly link character strengths to those two topics. we can say that the practice of character strengths is quite strongly connected with these two areas. for example, marty seligman has shared how he views character strengths as the underpinnings of each area of his theory of authentic happiness, as well as his perma theory of wellbeing. one of the hottest topics in positive psychology is resilience. we can link in character strengths with resilience, and what character strengths an individual can use to become more resilient. or another major area in positive psychology that is emerging for positive psychologists is mindfulness, even though mindfulness has its own following of practitioners and researchers independent of positive psychology. but when we look at the actual definition of mindfulness, researchers in studying it have formed a consensual definition, or as close to one as one can get. what it really boils down to is two character strengths: the self-regulation of our attention, and taking an attitude of curiosity and openness and acceptance. another big area is the area of the positive institutions, which then moves into the wider areas of ‘positive nations’ and ‘positive cultures’, and creating a healthier world really. here, we can explore how character strengths might be ingredients of a positive or virtuous institution and contribute to a healthier society. these are some of the major areas in positive psychology, and some that i am interested in myself, and we can link character strengths as underpinnings to these, as parts of the process, or as outcomes. what would you say is the big goal of positive psychology, as a field? there are probably several goals. but one that stands out most is the need to gain more appreciation by psychology as a whole and by other practitioners, and by the general public. i think that positive psychology has made incredible strides and has moved way beyond so many of the nay-sayers and people that were skeptical, suggesting that positive psychology positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 was just a fad, and that it was going to be done and over in just a few years. they turned out to be completely wrong on that. but still, i think that positive psychology has a long way to go in terms of getting into every household, and directly impacting people of every nation, and getting deeper into government, and schools, and businesses, and every therapist’s office, to be able to take more of the whole picture of the human being. how can we do this? what’s the best way? perhaps it’s just me being impatient, but from what i can tell at ippa [international positive psychology association] and other organizations and from talking to leaders in the field it seems like we’re all doing our part, and we are going in the right direction. as long as organizations like ippa, and via, and other organizations can stay strong to continue to educate and promote the findings to both the general public and to various professions, then i think this will continue to grow. there are positive psychology educators, consultants and practitioners going into governments, into business, and into the school systems around the world. this is the path. we need to build and expand upon this in terms of the positive psychology principles that are taught, the professions that integrate them, and the countries this is done in. so it’s coming, and it’s better than any of us thought it would have been, but there’s still a long way to go. what do you think is the best way that positive psychology can make this world a better place? a very challenging question! if each person can do their part, then that is going to spread. i think of ‘pay it forward’ as a good example. if each practitioner, educator, researcher, can pay this work forward, and gives positive psychology away to x number of people or students, and puts forth the best that they know about positive psychology to those people, maybe it’s to clients, maybe it’s to other colleagues, to family members, to students, and then those people can pay it forward to more individuals. we can create and spread that web of positivity, kindness, and goodness. this would make that goal more realistic, and every one of us could play the part right now and encourage and influence other people to influence others as well. what would you say is your proudest moment in the field of positive psychology over the last 10 years? i’m probably most proud when doing a one-on-one meeting with someone, for example a coaching type session, and applying some principles of strengths-based practice in positive psychology, and that individual completely and totally has a 180 degree shift. for example, i’m thinking of one person in particular who had been suffering tremendously over the years and who felt very weak, who had not acknowledged any of her strengths, and who had started to learn about them but still had a significant amount of blindness about her strengths. through a conversation, just a simple little 30 minute conversation, she began to look at herself in a completely different way and began to say that she had hope now, and how she could go about making some of the tough decisions that she was facing. so that’s one of the most down-toearth things that i’m proud of. i am also proud of that person in that moment for making that shift. i’m also honored to be able to stand up in front of a large group of people, for example a few-hundred people at an ippa conference or the european conference on positive psychology, and to have the opportunity to talk about something that i’m very passionate about. for example, at the beginning of an international presentation recently i showed a closepositive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 up image of my newborn son making eye contact with me and i spoke of how there’s a moment when he rotates his head and suddenly ‘sees’ me. i related this to how the practitioner can shift their own perceptions and ‘see’ their client’s core character strengths. the audience gave me an ovation for this example. i was only 5 minutes into a 2-hour talk and i was getting an ovation—and the fact that it related to my son—that was a thrilling and proud moment. what’s one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers and practitioners? to stay true to the field. that is, to stay true to the science in terms of the research, and stay true to thinking ‘how does this translate into best practice?’. that’s what positive psychology is all about linking the two. who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? i look up to a lot of people. to be honest, i actually look up to every researcher in positive psychology, and that’s the truth. i don’t look up more to the popular figures or those that garner the most attention. i’m a practitioner and an educator so i look up to those that have mastery in an area that i’ve not mastered myself, thus i appreciate researchers. i think of someone like rhett diessner, who works at a small university in the state of idaho. i look up to him. he’s doing research with some of his students on ‘appreciation of beauty’. i also look up to some of the larger scale researchers like chris peterson, who has done so much wonderful work in the field. what do you think fits well along with strengths, so to speak? for example if you were going to work with someone on strengths, what would you additionally work with them on? i would link in mindfulness, as that’s what i’m also passionate about as a practitioner. i am beginning to study this interrelationship more closely. but i would weave this in, helping the individual to become more mindful of those strongest qualities inside them and the resources around them, and using mindfulness and strengths to deal with problems and with different issues; and how we can be mindful of overusing our character strengths or not using enough of them. i would link how to find that balance and how to be mindful of applying strengths in the right context and how to be mindful of how to use strengths in order to flourish. i think that they are natural bedfellows. i recently created and piloted a new eight-week programme focusing on the integration of mindfulness and character strengths, and i will look forward to advancing this and sharing it in the future. is there anything else you’d like to add that i haven’t asked about that you think would be useful for a person looking at moving into the world of positive psychology? i see movies as an incredible medium for helping people to realize their potential, to become better, and to apply positive psychology principles. one of the major reasons for me saying this is that when an individual takes an approach to movies, whether they are paying attention to themselves, or paying attention to the impact of the character on the screen, they will often feel inspired or feel what researcher jonathan haidt has coined as ‘elevation’. movies can be cinematically elevating in that we observe a character doing something inspiring, or we observe a character displaying bravery or wisdom or perseverance in some strong way, and maybe we need to build that strength within ourselves, or maybe it just reflects a part of ourselves. we feel the physiological sensations of tingling and warming in the chest; and then, most importantly, we are motivated to do good, or are motivated to be better people, or are positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 motivated to be more altruistic. this is an exciting area that needs to have more research. it also links in with the question about making the world a better place, because movies are something that can transcend cultures and nations and therefore they have potential to reach each person and can help people to be stronger and to flourish. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz mcmahon, d. (2011). moses, happy man? international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 266-273. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.8 darrin m. mcmahon florida state university dmcmahon@fsu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 266 article moses, happy man? darrin m. mcmahon abstract: this article exams the biblical figure moses in the light of both ancient and modern understandings of happiness, asking whether moses himself was happy, and what that might mean, and whether he may be considered an example of a ‚felicitator,‛ one who works successfully for the happiness of others. keywords: religion, jewish happiness, blessedness, felicitator from the perspective of the twenty-first century, moses may seem an odd choice to serve as a model purveyor of human happiness. true, he is said to have accomplished a series of no mean feats—leading an entire people out of bondage to the brink of the promised land, communicating directly with god, and receiving god’s law, which has provided untold millions with the resources to live lives of sanctity and peace. he even parted the red sea! that said, some will question whether he ever lived. and even those who cede his existence may be excused if they come away from a cursory reading of the pentateuch—the first five books of the jewish bible/christian old testament and our principal source of information about the man— with a less than cheery view of his life and times. after all, moses served as the perpetrator and agent of terrible violence and destruction, divinely conferred on the enemies of israel and those unfortunate enough to have crossed yahweh’s path. an orphan, whose parents were forced to abandon him as an infant, moses was relatively fortunate in adoption, allowed to run the halls of pharaoh. and yet one need not be a psychologist to wonder just how well things turned out. for clearly moses was a man of hot temper, prone to rash outbursts and acts of violence. he committed murder as a young adult, provoked by the sight of injustice (exodus 2:12), later smashing up tablets and giving himself over to acts of rage and destruction when his ‚anger burned hot‛ (exodus 32:19), incensed, as he very often was, by the failings of others.1 awkward in social situations, ‚slow of speech and slow of tongue‛ (exodus 4:10), moses seems to have possessed very little of those qualities of extroversion and volubility that psychologists today tend to associate with positive emotion. when examined as a whole, his life would seem rather bleak—tragic even—filled with privation, annoyance, and ultimate failure, a life spent wandering in a wilderness, bearing the constant complaints and ingratitude of those around him. if his great life’s goal was to set foot in the promised land, and deliver his people to freedom, then his life must be deemed a failure. ‚you shall not enter there,‛ the lord tells moses (deuteronomy, 1:37), judging that he, with his brother aaron, had broken faith ‚by failing to maintain my holiness among the israelites‛ (deuteronomy 32: 51). and though it is the case that god permits him a glance across the river jordan, revealing that moses’ people will enter the land of milk and honey in his place, he cannot take much solace in the thought. 1 all biblical references are drawn from the new revised standard version. moses, happy man? mcmahon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 267 for moses is also told that his descendants will prove unworthy of their deliverance, and shall fall quickly again into bondage and despair. as god reveals: soon you will lie down with your ancestors: then this people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst, the gods of the land into which they are going; they will forsake me; breaking my covenant that i have made with them. my anger will be kindled against them in that day. i will forsake them and hide my face from them; they will become easy prey, and many terrible troubles will come upon them. (deuteronomy 31:16) a life of struggle and sacrifice has apparently ended in vain. surely, to call moses ‘happy’ is a stretch. wouldn’t it be truer, modern readers may well wonder, to say that moses made himself miserable, and many others besides? they would hardly be the first to entertain the thought. from at least the time of the european enlightenment, many have said as much, and more, concurring with voltaire, who was content to write off the entire story of moses as so much fanaticism and superstition. ‚it is very pardonable,‛ he observes in his article ‚moses‛ in the philosophical dictionary, ‚to see in such a history the barbarous stupidity of the first ages of a savage people….‛2 not only were many of voltaire’s contemporaries skeptical of the veracity of the biblical account, but the more radical among them were inclined to associate religion itself with a good deal of gratuitous suffering and unhappiness. a century and a half later an admirer of voltaire, sigmund freud, essentially agreed, suggesting in his final work that not only was the biblical account of moses’ life a pious fiction, but that moses was in fact not a jew.3 an egyptian nobleman (and in freud’s opinion an enlightened one at that), moses was murdered by his israelite followers, who later felt deep regret at their primal act of aggression. the upshot was that moses had bequeathed to the jewish people an indelible sense of guilt for which they continued to seek atonement, and forever in vain. in freud’s opinion—not unlike that of the radical enlightenment and very much like that of today’s so-called ‘new atheists’ (whose arguments have been around for several hundred years)—religious belief was not just false, it made us miserable as well. to be sure, many have disagreed with this assessment over the centuries, not least practising jews, christians, and muslims, all of whom venerate moses to this day as a paragon and prophet. from relatively early on in the jewish tradition, moreover, there was an attempt to present moses not simply as a prophet of the jews—a man specially chosen to lead the tribes of israel to deliverance—but an ideal human being of universal stature. the philosopher philo of alexandria, for example, writing in greek to a cultivated hellenistic audience in the early first century, drew on the midrash as well as classical learning to present moses as ‚the greatest and most perfect man that ever lived.‛ 4 similarly, the historian josephus, philo’s rough contemporary, took pains to represent moses as an archetypal man, who embodied the cardinal classical virtues of courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice, and who combined in his person the attributes of pericles, aeneas, the stoic sage, and plato’s philosopher king. it may be questioned how many pagans accepted this portrait in the late antique world, and yet christians for their part enthusiastically embraced the image of moses as a universal man. 2 voltaire, ‚moses,‛ (philosophical dictionary) in the works of voltaire. a contemporary version. a critique and biography by john morley, notes by tobias smollett, trans. william f. fleming, 21 vols. (new york: e.r. dumont, 1901), 6:41. 3 sigmund freud, der mann moses und die monotheistische religion (1939). 4 cited in louis h. feldman, philo’s portrayal of moses in the context of ancient judaism (south bend, indiana: university of notre dame press, 2007), 3. moses, happy man? mcmahon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 268 indeed, in a sort of judeo-christian version of classical parallel lives, they embraced moses as the predecessor and prefiguration of jesus (joshua) himself. had not moses declared in deuteronomy 18.15 that ‚the lord your god will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people,‛ and that ‚you shall heed such a prophet‛? reading scripture in reverse, christians hailed jesus as that very same man. in doing so, they anointed moses as the ‘first savior’ whose work was to be completed by the ‘new moses,’ the messiah christ. muslims, for their part, would later draw attention to this same passage in deuteronomy to bolster their claim, asserted frequently in the qur’an, that moses was a ‚messenger of allah,‛ and one of the greatest men who had ever lived. with the exception of mohamed, who in the islamic understanding is the chosen one who completes allah’s work, moses is mentioned in the qur’an more than any other prophet. with reason is he revered as a human being ‚specially chosen‛ (qur’an 19: 51–53). for the followers of all three of these traditions, then—jews, christians, and muslims—there can be no doubt that moses was a man apart, a paragon of human excellence and immense moral stature. but can we conclude from this that moses was deemed ‘happy’ in the eyes of his beholders? do believers, in other words, consider moses a happy man? and what might that conviction say to those who refuse to look at him solely through the lens of faith? is there any basis for considering moses ‘happy’ from the standpoint of contemporary science? and finally how might we judge whether he was in truth a ‘felicitator’ enabling others to live happier lives? the answers to all these questions depend, in large part, on what we mean by the term, and here it might be useful to insist on how widely the meaning of the word has varied through the ages.5 it is certainly true, as the psychologist paul ekman has famously shown, that all peoples in all places smile to signify joy and delight, just as they share other universal expressions to indicate fear, disgust, anger, surprise, and sadness.6 but it hardly follows that all cultures and peoples think of happiness in the same way. on the contrary, both across space and across time, men and women have come to very different conclusions about what constitutes happiness and who might be deemed to lead a happy life. the word that classical hebrew employed to signify the state of happiness is asher ָאשֵׁר) ), and though it is always perilous to venture etymologies of such ancient terms, lexicographers point to a connection with the root ’sr, meaning ‚to go,‛ ‚to go straight,‛ or ‚to advance.‛7 that would explain why variants of the term are used synonymously with the noun ‚step,‛ as in psalm 17:5, where we read that ‚my steps have held fast to your path; my feet have not slipped,‛ so rendering the hebrew beatitude found at the beginning of psalm 119 of particular interest. ‚happy (asher) are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the way of the lord.‛ in this case the first step to happiness was the step itself, a connection that would certainly have 5for an insightful rumination on precisely this question in the context of the torah and ancient greek philosophy, see nathan macdonald, ‚what has athens to do with jerusalem? is there happiness in the torah?,‛ in brent a. strawn, ed., the bible and the pursuit of happiness (new york: oxford university press, 2012). i am grateful to professor macdonald for kindly sharing this article with me prior to its publication, and also for generously reading, with the eyes of a professional old testament scholar, a draft of the present piece, written by an (interested) amateur. 6 for a concise, early statement of the position he has developed throughout his long and distinguished career, see paul ekman, ‚universal facial expressions of emotion,‛ california health research digest 8, no. 4 (autumn, 1970), 151–58. 7 the account here draws on the discussion in my happiness: a history (new york: atlantic monthly press, 2006), 77– 81. for ancient jewish understandings of happiness more generally, see the rich account provided in hava tiroshsamuelson’s happiness in premodern judaism: virtue, knowledge, and well-being (cincinatti: hebrew union college press, 2003), as well as gary a. anderson, a time to mourn, a time to dance: the expression of grief and joy in israelite religion (university park, pa: pennsylvnia university press, 1991). moses, happy man? mcmahon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 269 resonated with moses’ followers, who were engaged, after all, in marching from the misery of bondage to the milk and honey of freedom. by putting one foot in front of the other, they undoubtedly hoped, they would make their way to happiness on the horizon, the promised land of milk and honey, a place of peace and rest and abundance, a land of fertile soil. happiness, in this connection, was an earthy affair. it was in other respects as well. for asher is not only derived from the root ’sr, it is the name of one of israel’s twelve tribes. the brother of gad and the second son of zilpah, leah’s maid, who was made pregnant by jacob when his wife was past child-bearing years, asher earned his name from leah’s exclamation upon his birth. ‚‘happy am i! for the women will call me happy,’ so she named him asher‛ (genesis 30.12–13). here happiness is associated, as it is in so many ancient cultures, with good fortune, fecundity, and bounty, a connection that is echoed by moses himself when he blesses asher in deuteronomy 33.24: ‚and of asher he said: most blessed of sons be asher; may he be the favorite of his brother, and may he dip his foot on oil.‛ oil, here, the oil of olives, crushed by foot like grapes, was a symbol of prosperity, and so moses wishes asher’s tribe, israel’s largest, continued fertility and abundance. his blessing, in this respect, partakes of a more comprehensive vision of what earthly happiness might entail. it is, to repeat, an earthy vision, one entirely appropriate to a people close to the land—shepherds and farmers—whose lives and fortunes are precarious. to those threatened continually by war, famine, dearth, and disease, there could be nothing more pleasing than a vision of safety and bounty, teaming families, and ripe old age. we get a similar glimpse of asher’s blessing, and the blessing of what it meant to be asher in psalm 128: happy is everyone who fears the lord, who walks in his ways. you shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you. your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table thus shall the man be blessed who fears the lord. the lord bless you from zion. may you see the prosperity of jerusalem all the days of your life. may you see your children’s children. peace be upon israel! but all of this, it should be stressed—the fruits of one’s labor, peace of mind and person, longevity and health, fecundity of table and bed—is made contingent on keeping god’s laws and god’s favor, walking (stepping) in his ways. the happiness of asher may be earthy, but it is also spiritual, predicated on divine blessing. it is revealing in this connection that moses, when blessing asher in the line from deuteronomy cited above, employs the term baruch (ָברּוך) to describe him as ‚most blessed.‛8 the word, a term of praise when applied to god, indicates, 8 on the word ‘baruch,’ see christopher w. mitchell, the meaning of brk “to bless” in the old testament (atlanta: scholar’s press, 1983). moses, happy man? mcmahon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 270 like asher, a state of happiness when applied to human beings, though with a stronger spiritual connotation. and while any jew, like any reader of the hebrew bible, need only consider the fate of job (to say nothing of jewish history) to know that keeping god’s laws is no guarantee of prosperity and good fortune, it is an indispensable precondition nonetheless, one that comes with an implicit promise, which carries with it hope, the hope that the blessing of happiness will be conferred on those who merit god’s favor. by walking in god’s way, one sets a course for the promised land: the road to happiness is paved by god’s commands. moses, then, opened up an avenue to the good life, one that stressed happiness as a process and pattern of living, an activity and movement, in which the journey itself was as important as the arrival. god’s law, in short, as revealed by moses, was a regime for human flourishing.9 seen from the outside, to be sure, and in the light of the twenty-first century, certain stipulations may seem peculiar, if not downright odd, as they did already to various early christians and pagans like origen and celsus, or to even more perplexed critical enquirers at the time of the european enlightenment, who balked, after two centuries of religiously inspired bloodshed, at the injunction, say, that ‚you shall not permit a female sorcerer to live‛ (exodus 22:18). similarly, we may be inclined to ask now why ‚no one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off [should] be admitted to the assembly of the lord‛ (deuteronomy 23.1). and what harm can it do, we might legitimately wonder, to ‚wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together‛ (deuteronomy 22.11)? biblical scholars and anthropologists possess answers to such questions, though in the end the particulars of the law are for rabbis and priests to interpret, and for the faithful to live as they best see fit. and yet all but the most uncharitable observer should be able to acknowledge that to focus exclusively on provisions of this kind is to blind oneself to much that is not only deeply familiar in the pentateuch—the mosaic law, after all, beginning with the decalogue, is part and parcel of the western ethical and legal tradition—but also, from the perspective of happiness, much of what has been confirmed by centuries of reflection and, more recently, by mountains of research. to those who have taken the trouble to familiarize themselves with the literature on the modern science of happiness, for example, a good deal of what moses has to say will come across as strikingly astute, a fine illustration of what the psychologist jonathan haidt has described as ‚modern truth in ancient wisdom.‛10 take, for example, the issue of gratitude. contemporary psychologists and philosophers of emotion stress that, although the relationship between gratitude and happiness is undoubtedly complicated, there are nevertheless numerous ways in which gratitude ‚enhances or protects happiness and well-being‛ when consciously cultivated as a virtue. 11 to feel and express gratitude is to call to mind the good others have done us, which is almost always a spur to positive emotion. similarly, to forgive is to free ourselves from thoughts and resentments that may cause us pain, urging us to let go of the harm others have done us. the hebrew bible is nothing if not a primer in the expression of gratitude and forgiveness. regarding the latter, it is moses who urges the lord to forgive his people when they forge an idol in the image of a golden calf, and it is moses who continually implores, as he does right before the forging of 9 on this point, see tirosh-samuelson, happiness in premodern judaism, 316 ff, as well as norma roth, ‚attaining happiness (eudaimonia) in medieval jewish philosophy,‛ centerpoint 4 (1981), 21–32 and erwin i. j. rosenthal, ‚the concept of ‘eudaimonia’ in medieval islamic and jewish philosophy‛ in his studia semitica, 2 vols. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1971), 2:127–44. 10 jonathan haidt, the happiness hypothesis: finding modern truth in ancient wisdom (new york: basic books, 2006). though haidt only discusses moses and judaism in passing, he would, i think, accept the comparison. 11 see, for example, robert c. roberts, ‚gratitude: a conceptual analysis,‛ in robert a. emmons and michael e. mccullough, eds., the psychology of gratitude (new york: oxford university press, 2004), 77. moses, happy man? mcmahon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 271 the covenant, that ‚although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin‛ (exodus 34.9). moses himself repeatedly forgives the people he leads, who are forever prone to wander, err, and disappoint. in so far as his own conduct can be taken as a model for others, he instructs by example, just as he inculcates the virtue of gratitude. the central sacrificial rite spelled out to moses in deuteronomy 26, for instance, whereby those ‚who have come in to the land that the lord your god is giving you as an inheritance,‛ shall deliver the ‚first fruits‛ of the fields in calling to mind his mercy, benevolence and kindness in delivering them from egypt is, in effect, a call to the performance of ritual gratitude, a reminder to celebrate one’s blessing and rejoice. the so-called ‚thank-offering‛ or ‚fellowship offering‛ detailed in leviticus 7:11–13 serves a similar function, instructing individuals how to offer a personal ‚expression of thankfulness‛ to god for his beneficence. and finally, the passover seder, celebrated to this day as a feast of joyful remembrance and thanksgiving, bids all those gathered at table to recall with gratitude the narrative so vividly recounted in the pentateuch— god’s liberating power in egypt, and his guidance, then as now, to jerusalem. it bears emphasis that moses’ promptings to gratitude and forgiveness are ultimately intended, like the deliverance from egypt itself, as collective endeavors. we ought, of course, to be grateful and to forgive as individuals in our personal relationship to god, but in the final analysis it is in the context of community that such injunctions make sense. we could say the same about moses’ teaching as a whole, and about the understanding of happiness that emerges from them, for the law and the exodus and arrival in the promised land are projects of an entire people. the happiness of each is contingent in part on the happiness of all, and so to keep god’s laws, to walk in his way, to know prosperity, peace, fecundity, bounty and familial love is to do so in a resolutely social environment. no man is an island, and there are no islands in the desert. that insight is one that modern researchers on happiness would wholeheartedly confirm, attesting, as they frequently do, to the fundamentally social nature of happiness, which is sustained by rich networks of friendship and mutual support. moses is the leader of a people and it is to a people that he reveals god’s law, leading them collectively on the road to jerusalem. the vision of hope that he provides is one of collective deliverance, and, in the end, that is probably moses’ greatest bequest, providing not just the hope of happiness, but the happiness of hope. for it is that very narrative—that human beings, acting in concert, can take steps together toward their own transformation, sustaining themselves in the process by a vision of the happiness on the horizon—that has moved so many millions over the centuries.12 it is a powerful narrative, the movement from bondage to freedom, and a powerful vision, the milk and honey of the promised land, all the more inspiring in that it bids us to action and engagement. the exodus narrative may be a chronicle of god’s intervention in history, but it is also an account of human agency, of human beings taking action and making progress in the pursuit of their own destination and deliverance. it is, in this respect, not just an inspiring tale, but an empowering one, suggesting that human beings can do something about their own happiness. we can take steps towards our destination and deliverance. and though the road may be difficult, full of challenges and setbacks, there is hope on the horizon. lest that sound like a mere rhetorical flourish, consider how many millions of men and women, jew and gentile alike, have been moved by that vision, and are still moved to this day. hope, modern researchers affirm, is a source of resilience, optimism, and happiness itself. it has 12 see michael walzer’s classic exodus and revolution (new york: basic books, 1985). moses, happy man? mcmahon www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 272 put energy into countless steps.13 the example of moses and the narrative of the movement from bondage to slavery gave conviction to radicals who fought against absolute monarchs in seventeenth-century england, and who defied king george in eighteenth-century america. thus the reverend thomas coleman, preaching before parliament on august 30, 1643, likened his countrymen’s struggle against king charles, typically, to the ancient israelites’ ‚long pursuit of happinesse.‛14 and in the new world at the time of the american revolution, the example of moses was so prevalent (and comparisons to king george iii as pharaoh so common) that when the continental congress asked a committee to design a seal for the newly proclaimed united states immediately following the declaration of independence, two of its members, benjamin franklin and thomas jefferson, proposed an image of the biblical leader leading the israelites to freedom.15 more recently, the exodus narrative helped the followers of martin luther king to brave water cannons and snarling dogs in their own march to the promised land. jerusalem may lie, both temporally and spatially, on the horizon: we will arrive there ‘next year.’ but the journey itself is better for the thought of the arrival. was moses, then, a happy man? in our contemporary language—with its connotation of smiling faces and ready good cheer—almost certainly not. but in the terms of his own time the description is more likely. notwithstanding his many privations and discomforts, moses married, had two sons (even if we hear almost nothing about them), and lived to the ripe old age of 120 (deuteronomy 34:7). his life, to be sure, was never one of pastoral peace and bounty, and was often plagued by anger and dissatisfaction. but what rendered moses both asher and baruch in the eyes of his contemporaries was not domestic comfort and the fruits of the earth, but rather his uniquely privileged relationship to god. he was a man ‚whom the lord knew face to face‛ (deuteronomy 34:12), singularly blessed by him. and though that special relationship presented, like life itself, severe challenges and setbacks, it enabled moses to set a great many human beings in motion. and that, from the perspective of the papers collected in this volume, is ultimately moses’ greatest achievement, what renders him worthy of the label we are using here. moses was a felicitator not insofar as he himself was (or was not) a model of a happy man. nor is he one who may be said to have brought smiles regularly to the faces of others. rather, like all great leaders whose anger burns hot at the sight of injustice, he struggled continually to free others from the constraints that bound them. in so doing, he bequeathed a gift that in the end may be even greater than happiness—the freedom to strive for it ourselves, and the prospect that it lies within our power to attain this coveted end. author darrin m. mcmahon florida state university dmcmahon@fsu.edu 13 there is, now, an extensive literature on the relationship between happiness, hope, and optimism. an essential starting place is martin seligman’s seminal learned optimism (new york: knopf, 1991). 14 thomas coleman, the christian’s course and complaint, both in the pursuit of happinesse desired, and for advantages slipped in that pursuit: a sermon preached to the honorable house of commons on the monthly fast day, august 30, 1643 (london: i.l., 1643), 8. 15although the proposed seal was not adopted in the end, the invocation of the exodus narrative in revolutionary america was extensive, with george washington frequently cast as ‚the american moses.‛ see todd gitlin and liel leibovitz, the chosen peoples: america, israel, and the ordeals of divine election (new york: simon and schuster, 2010), esp. 66–7. moses, happy man? 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(1991). learned optimism. new york, ny: knopf. tirosh-samuelson, h. (2003). happiness in premodern judaism. new york: hebrew union college press. voltaire. (1793/1901). moses. (philosophical dictionary) in john morley, the works of voltaire. a contemporary version. 21 vols. new york, ny: e.r. dumont, 6: 41. walzer, m. (1985). exodus and revolution. new york, ny: basic books. jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., & lomas, t., taghva, n., hassaniraad, m. (2019). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: persian). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-30. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.921 2020 ژانویه 30، 1.0راهنمای نسخۀ آرون جاردن دانشگاه ملبورن aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au حق چاپ برای نویسندگان محفوظ است special issue مثبت شناسیروانبرای کاربست اخالقی اصول یهاراهنما ش. تیم لوماس. نغمه تقوی. مرجان حسنی رادآرون جاردن. طیب رشید. آنالیز رُ راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 2 . فهرست مطالب 4 ....................................................................................... های مقدماتییادداشت 4 .................................................................................................... مقدمه 5 ........................................ شناسی مثبتنهادهای حرفهای و راهنماهای اخالقی در کاربست روان 5 .......................................................................................... های راهنماآرمان 5 ............................................................. شوند؟این راهنماها برای چه کسانی طراحی می 6 .................................................................................... ماهیت موقتی راهنماها 6 ......................................................................................... اصطالحات کلیدی 9 ......................................................................... بخش اول: ارزشها، توانمندیها و قواعد 10 ................................................................. شناسی مثبتهای متخصصان روانارزش 11 .............................................................. شناسی مثبتهای متخصصان روانتوانمندی 12 ............................................................ شناسی مثبتاصول اخالقی برای کاربست روان 15 ................................................... انبخش دوم: کاربرد راهنماهای اخالقی در روند عملی درم 15 ........................................................................................... سه مسئلۀ مهم 15 ..................................................................................... گیری اخالقیتصمیم 16 ......................................................................................... مالحظات شغلی 16 ..................................................................................... تغییرات در مراجعان 16 ................................................................................. تغییرات در فضای درمان 17 ................................................................ زیستیوضعیت هیجانی فعلی و میزان نیک 17 ................................................................................................. اجتناب 18 ................................................................................... تفاوت در سطوح قدرت 18 ........................................................................... هااستفادۀ افراطی از توانمندی 18 ............................................................................................ خِرد کاربردی 18 .............................................................. آوری و مقاومت در برابر فرسودگیتقویت تاب 19 ........................................................................ صالحیتاظهار میزان تحصیالت و 19 ........................................................................... های فرهنگیاهمیت تنوع بافت 20 .............................................................. گامبهیک راهنمای گام-های اخالقیحل دوراهی 21 .................................................................................... ارزیابی-راهنمای خود 22 ........................... اجرای مداخالت مثبت بادرنظرگرفتن حساسیت فرهنگی-: فرهنگی1مثال موردی راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 3 23 .............................................. راجعان در شرایط متغیرکوچینگ م-: کوچینگ2مثال موردی 23 ........................................................................ کار با تروما -: بالینی3مثال موردی 24 ........................................ فشار برای ارائه اطالعات نادرست -: شغلی و سازمانی4مثال موردی 25 ............. میل« در یک رابطۀ نامتوازنکنندگان »بی انگیزه دادن به مشارکت -شاگردی-استاد :5مثال موردی های موجود مانع دستیابی به رجایی که در آن روش زیستی دهای نیکاجرای برنامه -آموزش :6مثال موردی 26 .......................................................................................... شودها میوعده 27 .......................................................................................... راهنماهای مرتبط 28 ................................................................................................... قدردانی 29 ......................................... شناسی مثبتامضا کنندگان اولیه راهنماهای اخالقی برای کاربرد روان 30 ...................................................................................................... منابع 31 ...............................................................................................مطالعۀ بیشتر اسلوم میو ت شر زی، آنالدیرش بی، طرون جاردنآ یقل به سرپرستو مست مشترک یکار گروه ۀجیها نتراهنما نی: اهیاعالم ن آنخست نسخۀ اصالحو تدویندر متعددی هایگروه، حال نیبا ا ؛انجمن است ایمستقل از هر سازمان راهنماهااست. بیشتر آن کاربردیوسعت عمق و یک بار است تا دو سال هر هاآن یبه روزرسان راهنماها سندگانیهدف نواند. نقش داشته .میکنیاستقبال مارسال شود aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au برای یی کهها، و ما از بازخوردشود راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 4 های مقدماتییادداشت مقدمه هامثبت هم همانند سایر انسان شناسیروان باشد، چراکه متخصصان انهیگراآرمان دئالیانوعی و نقص، شاید بیع یباصول اخالقی زندگی اینترنتی در حال گسترش، تغییرات نامنظم ازجملههای زندگی معاصر پیچیدگیهستند. ناکامل و ریپذبیآسیزالخطا، اج کند.انسان را تشدید می یریپذبیآسسازی اقتصادی فزاینده، های در حال تحول و دوقطبیهای پناهندگان، هویت، بحرانوهواآب و ی متعارضهااولویتاست، 1زیستیآنهایی که هدف مشخصشان، ترمیم یا تقویت نیک ژهیوهب، یشناختروانخدمات ۀدر عرض های اخالقی، استانداردها یا حتی دستورالعملبتواند کامالًکه وجود ندارد واحدی ۀمطرح هستند. هیچ مجموع اخالقیمعضالت های شخصی و های فراگیر، توانمندیای از ارزش، مجموعهلحانیبااهای انسان دربرگیرد. پیچیدگی ۀبرای گستررا یی هااساسنامه شناسیروان از مداخالت که زمانی صادق است ژهیوبه این موضوع کنند؛ های اخالقی بیشتر هدایت میگیریتصمیم یسوبه ما را اصول، زیستی است.، افزایش نیکهاکنیم که هدف کلی آنمثبت استفاده می الزم به ذکر است که مثبت است. شناسیروانها و ج( اصول جهت کاربست تخصصی ( توانمندیها، بارزششامل الف( راهنمااین متفاوت هستند. برای مثال مانند آنچه حقوقی و قضایی هایحوزهو بافتار ازنظرکه تر دارندگسترده ییهاچارچوب معموالً «راهنماها» قرار گیرند: مراتبسلسله پایین یک است درممکن راهنماهانشان داده شده است، 1در شکل ترفراگیر یهاچهارچوب و راهنماها. 1 شکل یک فرد یا نکهیباوجوداممکن است ، عالوهبههای مرتبط، در نظر بگیریم. را در کنار سایر چهارچوب راهنماهامهم است که نیبنابرا های کرده باشد، در برخی کشورها و حوزه دیتائ، تصویب و «مثبت شناسیروانکاربست تخصصی »را برای راهنماهاسازمان، این ها و الزامات محل از محدودیت لطفاً –غیرقانونی باشد. تواند عملیدرنظرگرفتن می «روانشناس مثبت» خود را، حقوقی و قضایی خود آگاه باشید.فعالیت 1 well-being راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 5 بت مث شناسیروان ی اخالقی در کاربست راهنماهاای و های حرفهنهاد استرالیا و شناسیروانآمریکا، جامعه شناسیروان)مثل انجمن ای مرتبطکه یک متخصص، عضو یکی از نهادهای حرفه حالیدر ی آن انجمن برای کاربست تخصصی در اولویت و اهمیت باالتری قرار راهنماهااستانداردها، کد یا ، است فدراسیون جهانی کوچینگ( تربیت و آموزش، کهشناسان( هستند )مثل کالج روانیا معتبر دار، عضو یک نهاد پروانهمتخصصانقتی انتظار داریم که و گیرد.می و با قوانین، استانداردها، مقررات؛ و همچنین اندهای مرتبط کسب کردهیا زمینه شناسیروان جهت کاربست تخصصی را کافی تجربه آشنا هستند. شانییقضاحقوقی و های موجود در حوزه شناسیروانفرایندهای کاربست تخصصی / حقوقی و قضاییهای زمینهنه برای جایگزینی اند، مثبت که در اینجا معرفی شده شناسیروان ی اخالقی برای کاربست راهنماها برای مبنایی نچنیهم راهنماها، این بیترتنیابه. اند بلکه برای تکمیل آنها طراحی شدههستند موجودایِی حرفهراهنماهاکدها و ای وابسته نیستند.که به نهادی حرفهکند متخصصانی فراهم می راهنما های آرمان اخالقی از طریق کاربست اصول به دنبال افزایش راهنماهااین درواقع، ی اخالقی داشته باشیم؟ راهنماهااز ایمجموعهاصالً باید چرا وفاداری برای حفظ )منطقی( این است که هدف مثبت است. شناسیروان ۀنیدرزماهد علمی و مبتنی بر شو ۀآگاهان تعهد به فعالیت منافع بالقوه در نظر یسازیتجارخود و ی مربوطه را برای ارائه راهنماها، متخصصانو ، تمایل وجود داشته باشدبه علم نیک زیستی مثبت شناسیروان متخصصانمثبت را برای شناسیروانالقی تری از کاربست اخکنند تا درک روشنتالش می راهنماهابگیرند. این زیر یهاجنبهمثبت، تعهد خود را در شناسیروان متخصصانرود که یی، انتظار میراهنماهابه مدد چنین و سایرین، رواج دهند. 2نشان دهند: علمیمبانی مبتنی بر ایفعالیت حرفهها و بنا نهادن پژوهش با دقتمطالعه الف( ای مستمر دانش خود از طریق یادگیری مداوم و پیشرفت حرفه یروزرسانبه (ب ویژه یهابرنامه ۀمثبت و همچنین، مزایا و معایب بالقو شناسیروان دانش مرتبط با مداخالت ۀج( بررسی دقیق و درست محدود مثبت و نیک زیستی شناسیرواندر مداخالت در طول ارائه خدمات. مراجعانبت و منفی در نیک زیستی نیک زیستی و تغییرات مث بر د( نظارت ؟شوند طراحی می برای چه کسانی راهنماهااین که عملکرد سودمند )رفتار طوری بهمثبت است شناسیروان متخصصانوسط اخالقی تاصول کاربست یسازنهیبه، راهنماهاهدف این برای افراد راهنماها، این بیترتنیابهبه دیگران( را به همراه داشته باشد. خوب با دیگران( و غیر مخرب )اجتناب از آسیب احتمالی مثبت سیشناروانها( و سایرین )مثل دانشجویان یا کسانی که وابستگی سازمانی ندارند( است که مداخالت ای )مثل روانشناسحرفه یریکارگبهبرای استفاده و راهنماگیرند. این ود به کار میهای تخصصی خمثبت را در فعالیت شناسیرواندهند یا دانش را ارائه می مثبت نیست. شناسیروان بخصوص در ۀیک مداخل تواند طوالنی باشد.ایم، هرچند باید توجه داشت که این فهرست میاب کردهما در اینجا چهار مثال برای نشان دادن چنین تعهدهایی انتخ 2 راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 6 راهنماهاماهیت موقتی تیم ( موقتی هستند و در فرایندی مشورتی و تکرارشونده توسط 2019جوالی 19، 1ی حاضر )نسخه راهنماهاباید توجه داشت که ، تغییرات راهنماهاچنین نظارتی برای اطمینان از این است که در این گیرد. هر دو سال قرار میم در مداو دنظریتجدمورد تخصصی بومی و جهانی در حال تحول هم در آن منعکس شوند. در این راستا، از بازخوردهای مربوط و موضوعات باشند موردتوجه فرهنگی هم کنیم.استقبال می یهرزماندر راهنماهابه این ، رونیازااند. اثرگذار بوده راهنماهااین ۀوعموما از کشورهای غربی در توسع زبانیسیانگل افراد صرفاًنیز شایان توجه است که نکتهاین محدود به این مرزها است. با توجه به اینکه این سند، سندی رو به رشد و توسعه است که با شماره نسخه مشخص شده راهنماهاین ا و غیر غربی هم در این سند، زبانیسیانگلی تاثیرگرفته از کشورهای غیر راهنماهاهای آینده، کدها و که در نسخه است، امید است گنجانده شوند. اصطالحات کلیدی مراجع خدمات اعم از فرد، زوج، خانواده، ۀکنندافتیدراصطالحی رایج است که به هر نوع «مراجع». کنندیممتخصصان با مراجعان کار .شودیمی اجتماعی مشخص دیگر اطالق گروه، سازمان، اسپانسر یا واحدها راهنماها در مقایسه با هاکد شنهادیرا پ هافعالیت روش بهترین راهنماها کهیدرحالدارد، ی دیگراالجراالزم شرایط حقوقی یا، پیامدهای یک کد طورمعمولبه داللت بر این موضوع دارند ذاتی خود طبق ماهیتبر راهنماهانیستند. «ظارتتحت ن»یا «قانونی»اغلب ها و این روشدهند می -، نوعی خردمندی عملیدرمانگرهارواننیاز است که شاناجرایی کردن برای و اغلب هستند متنوع و پیچیده ها بسیارکه موقعیت .رندیکارگبهرا -ترکیبی از تجربه و عقل سلیم یعنی، مثبت شناسیروان آن را میدانی یهاتیفعال اغلبد، اما نمثبت وجود دار شناسیروان و تعریف سازیمفهوم برای متعددی یهاروشمثبت. سیشناروان .کنندمیتلقی «پیشرفت»و «شکوفایی»، «زیستینیک»، «شادکامی»مانند های اصلی هسازه ارتقاءیک مطالعه علمی و عنوانبه «سالمتارتقاء فعالیت تخصصی برایعلم و » عنوانبهمثبت را شناسیروان( 1347، ص 2015یتزان )لماس، هفرون و ا ،مثالعنوان به شناسیروانکاربرد عنوانبهتواند میسادگی که به وجود دارد «مثبت کاربردی شناسیروان »در این رابطه انگاره . کنندتعریف می شود. قیتل شناسیروان مداخالت جملهمنمثبت در دنیای واقعی مثبت شناسیروان مداخالت یک وجه «مثبت یشناختروان مداخالت»و «مثبت شناسیروان مداخالت »بین پژوهشی مثبت. در ادبیات یشناختروان مداخالت ی ترعیوساینجا مفهوم در .کنیدمراجعه (2015هان، جاردن و شافیلد )به ات کلی و جزئیات بیشتراطالع کسب برای -تمایز وجود دارد شناسیروان های سایر زمینه یعنی ازها )ها در بسیاری از رشتهفعالیت ۀکه همدرنظر داریم را «مثبت یشناختروان مداخالت » از مثبت یشناختروان ۀمداخلاز مشهورریف اتعدربردارد. یکی از یشناختروان زیستی ارتقاء نیک باهدفرا مثبت( شناسیروان ۀعالوبه راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 7 یک زیستینیکاز این طریق و دهدرا ارتقا می، رفتارها و یا افکار مثبت ها، هیجانمثبت یشناختروان ۀ»یک مداخل ز:عبارت است ا (.2014، )شولر، کاشدان و پارکس «.یابدیفرد یا گروه افزایش م مثبت شناسیروان متخصص ی( را به اتمام مربیگر ودرمانی ، مشاوره روان لهجمازالزم برای فعالیت تخصصی ) که آموزش متخصصیمثبت. شناسیروان متخصص تحقیقات فرایند امکان درک جهیدرنت؛ از طریق یک مرجع معتبر آموزشی فراگرفته استمثبت را شناسیروانخاص آموزش ورسانده 3شود.هم میش فرابرای مثبت( شناسیروانمداخالت مثالعنوانبه) مثبت کاربردی شناسیروانآن در کارگیریبه وعلمی هاتوانمندی توسط رهبران طور اختیاری هدهند که بقرار می موردنظررا تی خاصی های شخصیویژگی ،و کدهای اخالقی راهنماها، یطورکلبه ، پترسون و سلیگمنcvs:)استفاده کردیم منشهای فضائل و توانمندی ما از ،راهنمااین اند. درخاص انتخاب شده ۀآن حوز فکری قرار گرفته است دیتائفرهنگی مورد بین صورتبهاست که های شخصیتیتجربی از توانمندی ۀشداعتبارسنجی یک مدلکه ؛(2004 ارزشمند هستند و نفسهفیکه شوندتعریف میشمول جهانهایی های منش صفتتوانمندی، csv مطابق با (.2014، ثگر)مک یک فرد ۀکنندگر و هدایت، تسهیلرفتاریهای صفت عنوانبهها ، این توانمندیدرعوض شوند.میبه پیامدهای ابزاری منتهی ن لزوماً کیستی یک های منش، نمایانگر کلی، توانمندیطوربهکند. والنه و اخالقی رفتار ئهای مسشیوههستند تا برای رفاه خود و دیگران با .آنها( اعمالو اصول)یعنی است.متعهد هافرد به آنت که یک ها بیانگر چیزهایی اسو ارزش (آنها شخصیت یعنی)فرد متخصص کار مثبت را بر عهده دارد، به شناسیروان ارائه خدمات مرتبط با مسئولیت که کسیبه هر اشارهبرای یطورکلبه «متخصص »اصطالح سالمت، متخصص گردرمانمشاور، روان همچون )اما نه محدود به( )هایی(هر فردی است که نقش ۀرندیدربرگ «متخصص»رود. می 4برعهده دارد. را آموزش دهنده، راهنما یا معلممربی، کوچ/روان، مربی اصول کنند. تبعیت می یاز اصول مشخص های یک فردیا کنش اعمالکند. های مهم اخالقی معطوف میمسئولیت یسوبه اصول، توجه را هاارزش شوند )مثل اهداف موردپسند به اشتراک گذاشته می ۀا دربارهد در اختیار دارند و توسط گروهها، باورهایی هستند که افراارزش ، ما را در چگونگی انتخاب بخشندتعالی میهای ویژه را ها، موقعیتارزش(. بایدهای آنجهان و ۀتر دربارهای گستردهبینیجهان ها وقتی ارزش (.2006شوند )شوارتز، بندی میرتبهشان بیاهمیت نس و بر اساس کنندو ارزیابی خود و دیگران هدایت میها کنش مطرح مندکنشبه شکلی تر و ی با تعاریفی دقیقعنوان راهی مهم در بیان تعهدات اخالقتوانند بهشوند، میمنزله یک اصل بیان میبه وجود ازیموردن صالحیت و سطح آموزش یا مقدار مشخصی برای، هیچ معیار حالتابه؟ معرفی کند متخصص روانشناسی مثبتخود را تواندیمچه کسی 3 کارشناسی ارشد دوساله در برنامه یک مدرک یا و ماههششگواهی معتبر دوروزه، ۀیک دور درتواند براساس آموزش فرد مییک آیا مثال طوربهنداشته است. نظیر و مشارکتی( و مشاوره بهنظارت نظیر مثالًهای تحت نظارت )فعالیتبر این، افزون؟ ، خود را متخصص روانشناسی مثبت بنامدروانشناسی مثبت کاربردی نماید )و در واقع، چنین موضوعاتی در ی این حوزه ضروری میاحرفهرابطه با آموزش و نظارت مناسب از سوی نهادهای هدایت بیشتر در . است دئالیاآنالین رسیدگی است(. و موردتوجه، های مرتبطحال حاضر هم توسط گروه زیستی، و در شرایطی که این به یک معنا در مقام یکتوانند به همان نسبت برای پژوهشگران ن اند، میها و اصولی که در این راهنماها گنجانده شدهشیوه 4 فته شوند.شوند، نیز به کار گرکنند که مشابه مراجعان قلمداد میگیرند و با افرادی کار میمتخصص قرار می راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 8 هایی که در این راهنماها به آنها اشاره شده ، ارزشمتعارف فهماین برساسدهند. ها، اصول را شکل می، ارزشگریدانیببه. گردند اند.مثبت شناسایی کرده شناسیروان است، مواردی هستند که نویسندگان رواج گسترده آنها را در جوامع متخصصان راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 9 ها و قواعدها، توانمندیارزشبخش اول: 1که در جدول طورهمانگیرد. زیر را در برمیاصول و هاها، توانمندیمثبت، ارزش شناسیروان راهنماهای اخالقی برای کاربست کنند.اخالقی کمک می تدوین اصولها، به ها و توانمندینشان داده شده است، ارزش 1جدول مثبت شناسیرواندر کاربست اصولها و ها، توانمندیارزش اصول 6هاتوانمندی 5هاارزش پرهیز از آسیب /خیرخواهی. 1 صداقت .1 و دیگران مراجعانحفاظت از امنیت . 1 . حمایت مسئوالنه2 . انصاف 2 شخصیو رنج کاهش آشفتگی. 2 افراد و منزلت. احترام به حقوق 3 . هوش اجتماعی3 مراجع -. اطمینان از درستی روابط درمانگر3 اعتماد یت. قابل4 کار گروهی .4 های فرهنگی و تجارب انسانی درک تفاوت. 4 ذینفع، افراد /که برای فرد «خود»حسی از رورش. پ 5 باشد. داریمعن . عدالت5 . مهربانی5 خودگردانی. 6 . سنجیدگی6 ای و کاربردهای آنکیفیت دانش حرفه بهبود. 6 وسعت دید. 7 مردممیان روابط کیفیت بهبود. 7 . قضاوت8 . افزایش اثربخشی شخصی8 در خدمات افیو ک درست . تالش برای تمهیدات9 درمانی و کوچینگ مشاوره، روان یمیخودتنظ. 9 . پشتکار 10 . شجاعت11 افزون بر این: ها و رفتارهای ، این کد بر توانمندیکهیدرحال؛ اندقید شدهها و صفات شخصیتی از رگه ایگسترهکدها ۀهمدر باًیتقر • تمرکز دارد. مشاهدهقابل های دیگر نیز قرار بگیرند. برای مثال، عدالت یبندطبقهتوانند در ها می، بسیاری از ارزشرونیازااند. های ما بر اساس راهنماهای مشابه دیگر انتخاب شدهارزش 5 یک توانمندی )صداقت(، یک ارزش یا یک اصل، در نظر گرفته شود. عنوانبهتواند مدنظر باشد. قابلیت اعتماد می یک اصلیک ارزش یا عنوانبهتواند می اند. ی شدهبندرتبهنویسندگان راهنما، ۀشدادراکی اهمیت ها هم بر مبناهستند. ارزش بحثقابلها، ، بسیاری از این سازهبیترتنیابه انجمن بریتانیایی ازجملهمجموعه کدهای اخالقی مشابه دیگر ) 10تا چه حد در هاتوانمندیبر این اساس بوده است که این 7تا 1های ی توانمندیبندرتبه 6 اصل 6، بر اساس 11تا 8های نویسندگان در مورد توانمندی .اندبوده دیتأکنی( مورد مالحظه و درمادرمانی اخالقی در مشاوره و روانمشاوره و چهارچوب روان اند.رسند، عمل کردهبه نظر می ترمهم}مندرج در ستون اصول و قواعد{که راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 10 محسوب هایی برای حیطه، تالشی آغازین ند، بلکه درعوض، کامل و جامع نیستاصولها و نمندیها، تواهای ارزشفهرست • راهنماها در طول زمان و طی ازآنجاکهارتباط دارند. تخصصی های ترسد در حال حاضر با فعالیکه به نظر میشوند می در ، هامؤلفه است که این ینیبشیپ قابل ،وندشمثبت با تکرار و سعی و خطا، اصالح می شناسیروان ۀگفتگوهایی در جامع تکامل خواهند یافت.طول زمان تجویزی نیستند.، اصولها و ها، توانمندیهای ارزشفهرستهمچنین • مدلی مبتنی بر علم که بیشترین مستندات را در ادبیات عنوانبهها در عمل( ها )چهارچوب ارزشیک مدل از توانمندی • ب شده است.پژوهشی دارد، انتخا مثبت شناسیروان متخصصانهای ارزش مثبت شامل تعهد به موارد زیر است: شناسیروان متخصصانهای بنیادی ارزش برای بررسی چگونگی پیوسته نوعی آگاهی هوشیارانه ۀاین ارزش، دربرگیرنددیگران. و مراجعان امنیت از حفاظت • باید لحاظ هم اواین، محدودیت موجود در ظرفیت و تخصص برمراجع به خدمات متخصص است. عالوه یدهپاسخ جمعیت ها نیاز دارد یا اگر ای سایر بخشیک مراجع به کمک حرفهتشخیص داده شود ، زمانی که ازجمله وشوند ) در معرض خطر باشند.( عمومی ۀمعنای توسعه ب ارزش های فرد قرار دارد(. اینتخصص ۀدر محدود کهیهنگام) شخصی رنج و آشفتگی کاهش • کاهش آشفتگی افرادی است که به دنبال دریافت خدمات در های متناسب جهت با شیوه مثبت شناسیروانمداخالت های تخصصی مختلف )مثل درمان، کوچینگ و سالمتی( هستند.زمینه ای های حرفهتاحترام به مرزهای شخصی و تعهد به فعالی. این ارزش، مراجع -درمانگر روابط درستی از اطمینان • شود.محرمانه بودن و رازداری را شامل می ازجمله برای یکسان ۀیک نسختجویز »یک متخصص نباید الگوی بدان معنی که . انسانی تجارب و فرهنگی هایتفاوت رکد • فراد و رشد و تحول ا فردمنحصربه مسیرهای گوناگونی آن، باید به یجابهرا در مورد مراجعانش به کار گیرد. «همه بومی و فرهنگی آنها احترام گذاشت و حتی آنها را پاس داشت. یهانه یزمشیپ پروراند فرد اهدافی را می این به آن معنی است کهباشد. داریمعنذینفع، ) یا افراد(پرورش حسی از »خود« که برای فرد • .در پی داردری بزرگتر را یخبلکه ، است و تکامل خودکسب رضایت فراتر از تنهانه کند کهمیو دنبال تحوالت و در جریان که است متخصص برای این ۀتالش بهین به معنی. آن کاربردهای و ایحرفه دانش کیفیت بهبود • .نگه دارد روزبهتخصصی ۀنیدرزمقرار گیرد و دانش خود را هاهای مندرج در پژوهشپیشرفت و حضور دارند های اجتماعی در روابط و شبکه ریناپذاجتنابورتی فهم اینکه مردم به ص. مردم با روابط کیفیت بهبود • تالش برای کمک به فرد در جهت بهبود این پیوندها تا حد ممکن، گویای این ارزش است. زندگی خود، ۀهای ویژدر جهان و در موقعیت . تالش برای کمک به مراجع در جهت اینکهشخصی اثربخشی افزایش • کند، معنای این ارزش است. ل عم مؤثرترارآمدتر و ک راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 11 از اقشار . این ممکن است شامل حمایت مثبت شناسیروان خدماتارائه در کافی و درست تمهیدات برای تالش • که از طریق لحاظ شود یگذارمتیقساختار نوعی حمایت در برای ارائه خدمات باشد یا در صورت امکان، تربهرهکم مند شوند. د کماکان از خدمات بهرهآن افراد با توانایی کمتر بتوانن مثبت شناسیروان متخصصان های توانمندی های الزم بسیاری از توانمندیاهمیت دارند که بر روابط متخصص/مراجع اثرگذار هستند. رون یازاهای شخصی متخصص، توانمندی تجویز متخصصانهمه ها برای ت که این توانمندیشوند. شایسته نیسهای خوب شخصیتی تلقی میویژگی عنوانبهخدمات ۀبرای ارائ جای الزامات از سوی یک مرجع بیرونی حاصل های شخصی در فرد ریشه دوانیده باشند و بهچراکه ضروری است این توانمندیشود؛ مراجع کنید( )به بخش راهنماهای مربوطمطرح راهنماهای ازکه هاو ارزش اصول مفهومی تحلیل تعهدات شخصی خود فرد باشند. را هایریگمیتصمهای تخصصی اخالقی و ، فعالیتاندآورده شدهادامه های منشی که در ، نشان داد که توانمندیاندبرگرفته شده کنند:تسهیل می ات اصیل، تظاهر نکردن و به عهده گرفتن مسئولیت احساس کردارصادقانه و صورتبهصادقانه، ارائه و معرفی خود گفتار : صداقت .و رفتارهای خود بر اساس اصول متعارف انصاف و عدالت، اجازه ندادن به احساسات شخصی خود برای ایجاد برخورد همسان با همه : انصاف .دیگران، دادن فرصت مناسب و منصفانه به همهها در مورد سوگیری در تصمیم های مختلف اجتماعی چه بایدینکه برای انطباق با وضعیتها و احساسات دیگران، دانستن ا: آگاه بودن از انگیزهاجتماعی هوش و آرامش باشند. کرد، دانستن اینکه چه باید کرد تا دیگران در راحتی از وظایف. وی از گروه یا تیم، وفادار بودن به گروه، انجام دادن سهم خودعض عنوانبه عملکرد مطلوب: گروهی کار کمک کردن به آنها، مراقبت از آنهاان، برای دیگر کارهای خوبانجام و مساعدت: مهربانی دادن پرهیز از گفتن و انجام ، یرضروریغ های های خود، خودداری از خطرپذیری: محتاط بودن نسبت به انتخابسنجیدگی چیزهایی که بعدها موجب پشیمانی است. سایر های برای نگریستن به دنیا که برای خود وخردمندانه به دیگران، داشتن راه و روش ۀمشاور ۀ: توانایی ارائوسعت دید و کاربردی باشد. درکقابلمردم، ، یریگمیتصمجهت انضمامی ری، اتکا به شواهد گیپرهیز از نتیجهآنها، ۀجانبهمه: فکر کردن در مورد مسائل و بررسی قضاوت خویشتن. توانایی برای تغییر دادن ذهنیت و نظر خویشتن. هایو هیجانامیال مدیریت ، داشتن دیسیپلین مشخصخود، ات و رفتارهای: تنظیم احساسیمیخودتنظ ای باشد. از اینکه چه پروژه فارغ انجام دادن؛ موقعبه برای به پایان رساندن کاری که شروع کرده است، یکوشسخت: پشتکار .وظایفرضایت داشتن در تکمیل ( در حین کار، یپرتحواسمتمرکز بودن )عدم در مقابل که در تهدید، چالش، دشواری یا درد کم نیاورد، سخن حق راندن حتی یاگونه به: شجاع و باشهامت بودن شجاعت مخالفین، عمل کردن بر اساس باورها و عقاید خود راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 12 مثبت شناسیروان کاربستاصول اخالقی برای های متناسب با آن اصل، آورده شده است. تصمیم شایسته وت هایی از فعالیزیر، مثال ۀشدمطرح برای هر یک از شش اصل اخالقی ، حالنیبااشوند. ، نوعی منطق قوی اخالقی محسوب میهستندبا یکدیگر نامتعارض اخالقی که برگرفته از یک یا چند اصل ست و ممکن است در کنار هم ممکن نیاصول ۀهمکاربست در آنها هایی را تجربه خواهند کرد کهموقعیت احتماالً متخصصان صرفاً ممکن است غیراخالقی نباشد و لزوماً اقدام عملیم باشد از بین این اصول دست به انتخاب بزنند. یک تصمیم یا الز یک متخصص ۀوظیف های مختلفی از آن دارند.گیری، نتیجهمتخصصانموقعیت یکسانی باشد که بوده یا زیبرانگبحثموضوعی های اتخاذ شده، برای تصمیمشرایط و موارد مربوط لحاظ کند و ۀگرفتن هم نطقی را برای درنظرست که نهایت توجه ماین ا باشد. اعتمادقابلپاسخگو و یخوببه آسیب از پرهیز /خیرخواهی رویبه معنای کار کردن خیرخواهی. اصل گیردبرمیمراجع و متخصص را در ، نوعی تعهد برای ارتقای نیک زیستیخیرخواهی خدمات ۀصالحیت فرد و ارائ ۀدر محدود فعالیت جدیای است. بر این مبنا، منافع برای مراجع بر اساس ارزیابی حرفهترین جح ار مند برنظاممراجع مستلزم نظارت ارجح یابی به منافعاست. اطمینان از دست موردتوجه، مبتنی بر آموزش یا تجربه مناسب که فعالیت تخصصی برگرفته از مهم است ستی( به بهترین شکل ممکن است.نیک زی)مثل ی آنتخصصی و پیامدها فعالیت برای گام برداشتن در جهت بهبود کیفیت مسئولیت، اغلب نوعی بافتارباشد. بسته به نقش و مندنظامهای علمی و تفکر پژوهش . نمایدای، ضروری میمداوم حرفه ۀتوسعکردن فعالیت تخصصی از طریق رشد و روزبهو نوعی تعهد برای شدهارائهخدمات ها، ظرفیت خودگردانی ، پریشانی و آشفتگی یا سایر محدودیتو ادراکبه دلیل سن، عدم بلوغ، نداشتن فهم مراجعانزمانی که .شودمیتر مهم مراجع ارحج منافعمسئولیت عمل کردن بر اساس رسیدن به کمتری دارند، ی که این متخصصانشود. نوعی تعهد برای جلوگیری از ضرر یا آسیب دیدن مراجع محسوب می ،از سوی دیگر، پرهیز از آسیب گیرند:اصول را به کار می کنند.اجتناب می یکشبهره یا هر شکل دیگری از جنسی، مالی، عاطفی )هیجانی( یهاسوءاستفادهاز • اینکه چه چیزی برای چه مثالًمثبت، سیشنارواندر کاربست مناسب مداخالت مثالً ) یتیصالحیباز ناکارآمدی و • کنند.اجتناب می و کارآمد است( مؤثرکسی کنند.خودداری میتاثیر مواد از هرنوع از ارائه خدمات تحت یابیماری، شرایط شخصی از جملهدر شرایط نامناسب • یا ناخواسته ریناپذاجتناب آسیبزمانی که دارد حتی مسئولیتی اخالقی برای مراجع جادشدهیامتخصص برای کاهش هر نوع آسیب ای دارند که عدم صالحیت یا درمان/آموزش غلط دیگران را به چالش در صورت لزوم، مسئولیت شخصی و حرفه متخصصان باشد. حیت آنها همچنین وظیفه دارند در اجرای هرگونه موشکافی و/یا حکم از طرف ارگان یا مقامی شناخته شده و دارای صالبکشند. اعتباری حتی ممکن است منجر به بیشان قرار دارد و/یا ای که در محدوده معقول تخصص های الزم را درزمینه خدمات حرفههمکاری دهند. شان شود انجام میحرفه مسئوالنه مراقبت مثبت بر سیشناروان متخصصانکند. برای پیگیری این هدف، مثبت، نیک زیستی را ترویج می شناسیروان فعالیت تخصصی های قدرت اجتماعی و سازمانی را که نقش کنند توجه جدی دارند و پایهاساس این اصل، به رفاه کسانی که با آنها کار می کنند کند. آنها برای حفاظت از رفاه کسانی که با آنها کار میسازد، محکم میمثبت می شناسیروان متخصص عنوانبهآنها را راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 13 پذیر باشند. ها یا جوامع در موقعیتی آسیبها، گروهکه ممکن است افراد، خانواده دانندمیآنها دارند.یک مسئولیت اولیه متخصصان شناسند و در زمان نیاز، به سایر فقدان دانش( را می ازجملهخود ) یتخصصفعالیت ۀآنها همچنین محدود ، عالوهبهکنند. پذیرند و آن را اصالح میرد شده باشد میخدمات آنها وا ۀدهند و مسئولیت هر آسیبی که درنتیجارجاع می های ای پیگیر و پویا به پیشرفتشان عالقهفعالیت تخصصی ۀرود که در عرصانتظار میمثبت شناسیروان متخصصاناز خود را نشدا دهند،ام میمثبتی که انج شناسیروان در مداخالت عملی و نظری داشته باشند و اطمینان حاصل کنند که دارند.نگه می روزبههای مبتنی بر شواهد، از طریق یافته مردم و منزلت شأن و حقوق به احترام به و منزلت افراد و حقوق آنها، مستلزم این است که: شأن، احترام به جهانی حقوق بشر سازمان ملل متحد ۀبا توجه به اعالمی بخشی از انسانیت مشترک ، احترام عنوانبهو احترام باشد، دیتائقوق آنها مورد ی مردم، ارج نهاده شود، ححقوق هر فرد و همه ۀدهند که الزماحترامی را نشان میپذیرند، ی که این اصل را میمتخصصانبه آنها نشان داده شود. شدهرفتهیپذو منزلت شأنو ساس فرهنگ، ملیت، اختن تفاوت میان افراد بر ااین موضوع شامل به رسمیت شنبه تنوع فرهنگی و اجتماعی است. توجهآن، اقتصادی -، گرایش جنسی، توانایی جسمی یا روانی، سن، وضعیت اجتماعیتأهلقومیت، رنگ، نژاد، مذهب، جنسیت، وضعیت شخص هستند و و جدانشدنی های الینفکمولفه ها،ویژگی شخصیتی یا شرایط یا وضعیت دیگر است. این تفاوت و یا هرگونه ترام گذاشت.اید به آنها احب اعتماد یتقابل ای اساسی برای درک و قابلیت اعتماد، پایه .نهادینه شده است متخصصوجود بودن )وفاداری( اعتمادی است که در اعتمادقابل پذیرند:ی که این اصل را میمتخصصانموضوعات اخالقی است. وفصلحل کنند؛شده است، عمل می مطابق با اعتمادی که در وجود آنها نهادینه • شکلی هایی هستند که باید به آنها بهدر تالشند از این نکته اطمینان حاصل کنند که انتظارات مراجعان همان • ته شود. معقول پرداخ های خود احترام قائل هستند.ها و وعدهنامهبرای توافق • دارند. شه گرفته است، درنظراز اعتماد مراجع ری تکلیفی عنوانبهرازداری و محرمانه بودن را • برای پیشبرد اهدافی که در اصل، افشا و آشکارسازی محدود کردن هرگونه افشای اطالعات محرمانه در مورد مراجع • )مثل قانون حقوقی یک مرجع االجرا الزمموارد افشاسازی قانونی و جزبه -ای آن اهداف صورت گرفته استخود بر . (تقضایی که مستلزم افشاسازی اس عدالت خدمات مناسب برای آنها است. اصل عدالت مستلزم این است نیتأمو مراجعانطرفانه با تمام منصفانه و بیعدالت شامل رفتار ، عادل و منصف باشند و به حقوق و منزلت انسانی آنها احترام مراجعان ۀاند، نسبت به همی که این اصل را پذیرفتهمتخصصانکه ها و هوشیاری نسبت به و تعهد هاهرگونه از الزام در مورد یشناسفهیوظهمراه با وجدان گرایی و ۀمالحظ این اصل، بگذارند. توانایی در تعیین مستلزم شود. عدالت در توزیع خدماتتعهدهای قانونی و اخالقی را یادآور می های احتمالی بینتعارض کند که توانایی ارج نهادن به تعهد به انصاف ایجاب می است. مراجعانتمهیدات خدماتی و تخصیص خدمات به ۀطرفانبی بر اساسها ها و دستاوردها متعهد باشیم و از تبعیض علیه مردم یا گروهها را داشته و به برابری فرصتهای میان انسانتفاوت راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 14 های خاص )مثل ویژگیاساس شود که بر ، عدالت منجر به این میگریدعبارتبه؛ بپرهیزیمهای شخصی یا اجتماعی ویژگی دسترس قابل که خدمات منصفانه نیتأم وظیفه دارند که برای تضمین متخصصانجنسیت یا سن( تبعیض غیرمنصفانه رخ ندهد. تالش کنند.باشند، احتمالی مراجعانو مناسب با نیازهای خودگردانی این اصل بر اهمیت افزایش توانایی . ار خود باشدتیاختحت فرمان و است که خودگردانی شامل احترام گذاشتن به حق مراجع مراجعان با تغییر تحمیلی دارد. اصل خودگردانی دیتأکهای زندگی جنبه ۀخدمات و هم نیتأممراجع در جهت هدایت خود در انی خودگرد ی که بهمتخصصان، حتی اگر این دستکاری برای اهداف سودمند اجتماعی باشد. غایرت داردمیل خود آنها م برخالف گذارند:مراجع احترام می ؛کننداطمینان حاصل می از صحت هرگونه تبلیغات یا اطالعاتی که پیش از ارائه خدمات داده شده است • ؛مراجع هستندآزادانه و آگاهانه تیرضادنبال در طول رابطه به • ؛دارند دیتأک شنهادشدهیپ بر ارزش شرکت داوطلبانه در خدمات • هرگونه تعهد توسط مراجع و بازنگری/ مرور عبارات آن قرارداد در طول رابطهشفاف پیش از یادقراردتدوین در • ؛مشارکت دارند ؛کنندرا حفظ می حریم خصوصی • کنند؛را رعایت می رازداری • کنند؛افشا می موردنظررضایت شخص را به شرطاطالعات محرمانه به طور معمول، • پس از ظهور این یا در اولین فرصت ممکن کنند، ی میرساناطالعالی افع احتمتضاد من ۀپیشاپیش به مراجع دربار • دهند.رسانی انجام میاطالع تعارضات راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 15 راهنماهای اخالقی در روند عملی درمانبخش دوم: کاربرد مطالب د.شومی مرتبط یهاتیموقعی اخالقی در بافت و راهنماهاهای متعدد برای کاربرد این این بخش شامل راهکارها و نمونه یابی ارز-سودمند و یک دستورالعمل خود ابزارهای حالنیدرعاند که به تفکر خواننده عمق ببخشند و طراحی شده یاگونه به های اخالقی در عمل را در اختیار خواننده قرار دهند.و یادگیری انتخاب وفصلحلبرای کمک به ۀ مهم مسئل سه این سه اساس چراکهعامل مهم زیر را ارزیابی و برآورد کند، درمانی مثبت، فرد باید سه وان پیش از اجرای هرگونه مداخالت ر (.2004و کوایت، یک درمان عالی هستند )بارلو، آلن ات مرتبط و تواند با مراجعه به ادبیمی مسئلهاست؟ این مدنظردرمانی مثبت، درمانی مناسب برای شرایطِ آیا روان .1 ای برای قدرشناسی درمانی ویژهکه روان رای نمونه، پیش از اینط منابع معتبر، شناسایی شود. بشواهد منتشرشده توس خاص یک درمانی مثبتِ خاص برای این مراجعِدهد این روانای که نشان میاجرا شود، برای یافتن شواهد منتشرشده تکنیک امیدوارکننده است، جستجو کنید. ای فعلی مراجع متناسب است؟درمانی مثبت با نیازهآیا روان .2 ، چه روایی و نتایج خاصی گریدانیببهدرمانی مثبت خاص چگونه مورد ارزیابی قرار خواهد گرفت؟ اثربخشی این روان .3 درمانی مثبت هستند.دهندۀ اثربخشی این روان اند که نشاندرمانی شناسایی شدهبرای این روان گیری اخالقی تصمیم خالقی و ا راهنماهاراهنماهایتواند به کمک این موارد انجام پذیرد: دارابودن دانش کافی از این میاخالقی گیریتصمیم های فردی در و استفاده از توانمندی دیگران مآبلتیفضیک حرفۀ مرتبط، آگاهی از رفتارهای اخالقِی راهنماهاراهنماهای .هاگیری تصمیم و تجربۀ کافی مثبت با تحصیالت، آموزش شناسیروان متخصصانیعنی راهنماهاین : ما انتظار داریم که مخاطبان اصلی اشدان ی اخالقی و هر دستورالعمل اخالقی راهنماهاآشنا بوده یا بتوانند این راهنماهابا این -های مرتبطیا حوزه شناسیرواندر کاربرد دارند که متخصصان دیتأکهای قانونی ند. بیشتر دستگاهشان مرتبط است، درک کناییا جایگاه حرفه شانحرفه دیگر را که با ای مرتبط آشنا باشند.و فرایند حرفه الزم است با قوانین، استانداردها، ضوابط شناختی حاصل شود. رفتار اخالقی الزم فقط از دانشِ تواندینمدرمانی مثبت، روانارائه خدمات در ژهیوبه: رفتار اخالقی، رفتار را که الگوی یخود افرادای توانید در دایرۀ حرفهمیآیا باشد. دهیتندرهم جمعیهای تنگاتنگی با رفتارها و درمان ورطبهاست که ارهایی را از عینی چنین رفت صورتبهکن است همکاران شما به دلیل فروتنی ماخالقی هستند شناسایی کنید؟ اگرچه م درمان المللی( ای خود )سازمان ملی یا بیناز همکاران خود یا جامعۀ حرفه ماًیمستقکنیم که یخود به نمایش نگذارند، از شما دعوت م های ای از انواع نمونه آوری خزانه بپرسید. جمع سؤالتان ای ها به استانداردهای اخالقی در حوزۀ حرفهدر مورد چگونگی پایبندی آن تصویری از یک ها،آوری میزان کافی از نمونه ار مفید است. با جمعپذیری در رفتارهای شخصی بسیانِ خوب«، برای انعطاف»درم تشکیل خواهند داد که دسترسقابلای »متخصص ممتاز« در اختیار شما قرار خواهد گرفت. در حالت مطلوب، متخصصان شبکه سازند. تریغناشت تا این خزانه را در آن دیگر متخصصان این فرصت را خواهند د های مختلف در د به شیوه نتوانها میدینتوانم های اخالقی:گیری در راستای تصمیم های فردینمندی استفاده از توا اخالقی کمک کند. گیریتصمیمتواند به ها میاخالقی کمک کنند. برای نمونه، شناسایی الگوهای توانمندی هایگیری تصمیم راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 16 دوراهیموقعیت یا ست بیابید. در مورد چگونگی واکنش او به یکهای اخالقی اخود را که سرمشقی در انتخاب انهمکار ی ازیک با همکاران و مراجعان به کار اشهای خاصی را در تعامالت روزمرهمندیچه تواندرمورد اینکه تر، کلی صورتبهاخالقی، یا کنید.کند، تأمل گیری شما کمک میقراردادن را دارد و به انتخاب و تصمیم که ارزش الگو ردیگیم مالحظات شغلی ها مالحظات گوناگون در کار با مراجعان وجود دارند که دارای پیامدهای آنی و مستقیم اخالقی هستند و باید نسبت بدان ویژه، الزم است مسائل مرتبط این موارد در نظر گرفته شوند: تغییرات در مراجعان، تغییرات در محیطی که طوربهآگاه بود. ذهن متخصصان مثبت، تمایل زیستی مراجعان و و نیک هیجانی فعلی تیوضعیابند، حضور میجعان در آن ثبت و مرامتخصصان م ها، خِرد کاربردی، اظهار میزان تحصیالت و صالحیت مراجعان به اجتناب، تفاوت در سطوح قدرت، استفادۀ افراطی از توانمندی بینی، یا اجتناب از برخی پیامدهای ناخواسته و یشتواند به تخفیف، پ میهای فرهنگی. مالحظۀ این ابعاد و اهمیت تنوع بافت ناخوشایند کمک کند. تغییرات در مراجعان شناختی مراجعان در طول فرایند درمان یا مداخله زیستی روانشناختی، مهم است که نیکهنگام ارائۀ هرگونه خدمات روان توانند به ها میشود. نشانهدرمانی مثبت، حالشان بدتر میاثبات اثربخشی روان باوجودتحت نظر قرار گیرد. برخی از مراجعان این اطالعات را با درمانگر در میان نگذارد، شاید لزوماً پذیر کنند. مراجع شاید شوند و مراجعان را آسیب ترمیوخچندین دلیل زیستی مراجعش تالش ایش نیک ر خود را که برای افزخواهد درمانگکند یا نمیبه این دلیل که احساس شرمساری یا وحشت می زیستی نیک شیبرافزانیست، بلکه بیشتر هانشانه درمانی مثبت بر تخفیف ، تمرکز اصلی روان اوقاتکند ناامید سازد. بیشتر می درمانی مثبت با ن و به همان اندازه تنظیم روا فرد متمرکز است. تحت نظر داشتن تغییرات در شرایط زندگی مراجعان مهم است ات حائز اهمیت است. برای نمونه، اگر یک مراجع با شکست عاطفی مواجه شود یا شغلش را از دست بدهد، مهم است این تغییر درمانی یک روانها را ارزیابی کند. متخصصان باید آمادگی داشته باشند که آن راتیتأثکه درمانگر این تغییرات را بررسی کرده و رویکردشان را با نیازهای فعلی مراجع هماهنگ سازند، یا در صورت لزوم مراجع را به در جریان است متوقف کرده و مثبت را که دیگر ارجاع دهند. رگذاریتأثیک متخصص تغییرات در فضای درمان موردتوجه د نیز و متخصصان در آن حضور دارن افزون بر اهمیت دادن به تغییرات درونی مراجع، مهم است فضایی که مراجعان یک متخصص بالینی نیز هست. متخصصان بالینی حالنیدرع واقع شود. برای نمونه یک متخصص مثبت را در نظر بگیرد که ی های درمانهایی همچون کمبود برنامهها با چالشو فشارزایی مشغول به کار هستند که در آن معاصر در فضاهای کاری پیچیده های و نیازهای مزمن و پیچیدۀ مراجعانی روبرو هستند که بر حوزه گیهای فرهناهی نسبت به تفاوتمبتنی بر شواهد، کمبود آگ هایی، مراجعانی را تصور کنید که:گذارد. با توجه به چنین چالشها اثر میمختلف زندگی آن لی نادیده گرفته شده باشد ها برای ارتقای شغباشند، یا صالحیت آنشغلشان یا یک قرارداد مهم کاری را از دست داده • اند؛ای مناسب نبودهه شغلی خود مهرهچون برای گرو تشخیص یک وضعیت وخیم پزشکی را دریافت کرده باشند؛ راًیاخ • با خیانت یا دیگر انواع بدرفتاری توسط شریک عشقی خود روبرو شده باشند؛ • اند؛جربه کردهآمیز را ترویدادی تبعیض • راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 17 سوزی، یا مشکالت مربوط با کره زمین همچون قحطی آتش محیطی مخرب همچون سیل،در معرض رویدادهای زیست • اند.قرار گرفته دهد. مراجعانی وسوسمتها را ها ممکن است بر مراجعان اثر بگذارد و درمان آندر نظر داشته باشید که چگونه این چالش ای متفاوت پرداخته شیوه ها بهنظر گرفته شده و به هرکدام از آنکالت گوناگون را دارند که الزم است در ، طیفی از مشدستن یازا کند، انجام پذیرد. ای که فرد در محدودۀ آن فعالیت میها باید با درنظرگرفتن مقررات و استانداردهای حرفه و البته همه این شود دهند، از زندگی مراجعان و محیط زندگییدرمانی مثبت را ارائه مت مداخالت روان، مهم است زمانی که متخصصان مثبرون یازا ها آگاهی داشته باشند.ها و تغییرات اخیر یا فعلی در شرایط آن آن کنند آگاهی داشته باشند. این شاید شامل های محیطی که در آن فعالیت میهمچنین الزم است که درمانگران نسبت به چالش برای نمونه، ممکن است یک رئیس -رات در ماهیت ارائۀ خدمات شودتغییرات در مدیریت شود که ممکن است منجر به تغیی مثال، یبرا)دهد رد کند یا ممکن است رویکرد درمانی دیگری را ترجیح یا دییتأ های مثبت خاصی را درمانیجدید روان است ممکن راتییتغ نیا(. تعهد و رشیپذ بر یمبتن درمان ،یآگاهذهن بر یمبتن یهادرمان ،یشناختزبان-عصب یزیربرنامه .باشد داشته مختلف، یاخالق یکردهایرو شامل مثبت، یهایدرمانروان یاجرا بر میرمستقیغ ای میمستق ریتأث زیستیو میزان نیک هیجانی فعلی تیوضع ان هیجانی فعلی و نیز میز تیوضعدرمانی مثبت، مهم است که تغییرات در وضعیت مراجعان و در حین ارائه خدمات روان اند عمل کنند. برای یی که دیدههاو آموزشابی شود. مهم است که متخصصان مثبت در محدودۀ تخصص زیستی آنان ارزینیک درمانگر مثبت باید فرد را شناختی )همچون افسردگی، اضطراب، تروما( دارند، های روانمراجعانی که مشکالتی مرتبط با آسیب گیری رابطۀ درمانی مشخص نبود، مشکالتی از ابتدای شکله ارجاع دهد. اگر چنین ص صاحب صالحیت و باتجرببه یک متخص مثبت شناسیروان باشد که چنین مسائلی امکان دارد زمانی که مراجع در جریان مداخالت زنگبهگوشمتخصص مثبت باید ارجاع یک متخصص صاحب صالحیت ماده باشد تا فرد را بهقرار گرفته است خود را نشان دهند و الزم است متخصص مثبت آ کند و از همکاران و متخصصان مربوطه مشاوره بگیرد تا وگوگفتدهد. در حالت مطلوب، متخصص بالینی ممکن است با مراجع درمانی مثبت در مورد چنین مراجعی ادامه داشته باشد.مطمئن شود که تا چه زمانی بهتر است که روان اباجتن گیرند. یک زندگی روانی سالم است که افراد برای مقابله با هیجانات منفی به کار میترین سازوکارهایی لاجتناب یکی از متداو مثبت درمانیهاست. برخی از مراجعانی که به دریافت روانشامل آگاه بودن از طیف هیجانات خود و استفادۀ سازگارانه از آن راحتی اجتناب کنند و ممکن است با این امید به سراغ تر به دلیل ایجاد نامقیمواجهه با هیجانت منفی ع آورند، شاید از روی می ها را در گنجه نگاه دارند. توانند منجر به از بین رفتن این هیجانات منفی شوند یا آنهای مثبت بیایند که امیدوارند میدرمان د اعتماد، رنجش از یانت از سوی یک دوست مورک جدایی تلخ، یا طالق، خهای منابع هیجانات منفی شامل خاطرات ینمونه های شود. یکی از راه، میسازمانیا رفتار متعصبانه قرار گرفتن توسط یک فرد یا یعدالتیبو مورد مورد تبعیض واقع شدن رای نمونه، قرار نگیرند )ب موردبحث عینی صورتبهحتی اگر وگوهاستگفتراهیابی هیجانات منفی در ارزیابی اجتناب، توجه به شوند(.مشخص به بحث گذاشته نمی طوربهدهند ولی ناتی که مداوم مراجعان را آزار میهیجا یهایتوانمندمثبت به دستاوردهای جدیدی با کمک افزایش شواهد در این زمینه که هیجانات مثبت و یهایدرمانروان اگرچه (، این زمانی اتفاق 2018)رشید و سلیگمن، اندداکردهیپ ی کنند دست را تسکین داده یا بازسازهای منفی حالت توانندیممنش توسطمعناداری در درمان تلفیق شوند. اگر از پرداختن هیجانات منفی نیرومند صورتبههای روانی منفی که حالت افتدیم گیرد.میقرار ریتأث تحت احتماالًبالینی اجتناب شود، اثربخشی درمان متخصص ایمراجع راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 18 اوت در سطوح قدرت فت قدرت نهفته در رابطه هایشناختی شامل یک متخصص بالینی و یک مراجع، پویاییهای اصلی هر نوع تعامل روانیکی از ویژگی نسبت به معموالًو دیگر متخصصان این حوزه تفاوت در سطوح قدرت است. درمانگران، مشاوران، مددکاران اجتماعی ژهیوبهو و گرم را فراهم سازند که در آن مراجعان کنند فضایی امن، غیرقضاوتی، محرمانه، تالش میرونیازااه هستند. ها آگاین تفاوت ، ماهیت تبادالت میان متخصص بالینی و مراجع حالنیباادمات تشخیصی هستند. کنندگان منفعل خاحساس نکنند فقط دریافت شود. مراجعان تمایل دارند که به درمانگرانیک متخصص دیده می عنوانبهی ریناپذاجتناب طوربه درمانگر کهی است اگونه به ، تفاوت در سطوح قدرت، رونیازامثبت بنگرند. درمانیو تجربه در اجرای روان افرادی مجهز به هنرِ دانستن، آموزش عنوانبه احتماالًع موقعیتی که در آن مراجع یا درمانگر ها آگاه باشد و باید از هر نوهمیشه وجود دارد. درمانگر باید نسبت به تفاوت مجبور باشد تصمیمی بر اساس تفاوت سطوح قدرت بگیرد بپرهیزد. هااستفادۀ افراطی از توانمندی های سازد. برای نمونه، در بافت ترمیوخبرانگیز را های چالشتواند موقعیتمحور می-های توانمندیا تفریط در برخی درمانافراط ی گیری ترشدن در تصمیم تر شدن یا دودلتواند منجر به مضطرب بودن، می ترمحتاط مراجعان برای تلف کوچینگ، پیشنهاد به مخ دهند، برای بخشش انجام می موردنظربعضی از افراد شود. مراجعانی که تمرین عفو و بخشش را بدون تعمق دربارۀ زمان و فرد تواند به دیگران آسیب برساند. که اگر بدان پرداخته و حسابرسی نشود می کنندپوشی ها چشمشکنیممکن است از قانون های مساوی حمایت کنند، ممکن است پایبندی به هنجارهایی که از برابری و فرصتاجعانی که از خالقیت استفادۀ افراطی میمر کنار کار خود پایبند هستند، ممکن است در گیری منصفانه در محلبرانگیز بیابند. مراجعانی که به تصمیمکنند را چالشمی های و مطلع ممکن است تصمیم کردهلیتحصبرای نمونه، قانع شوند که یک فرد )وبرو شوند های متضاد با مشکل ربا واقعیت آمدن غیرعقالنی بگیرد(. خِرد کاربردی . راهنماها استاین کارگیریبه درجهت یکاربردخرد ؛ منظور همان« نامید، نیازمندند7ارسطو »حکمت عملی آنچهدرمانگران به کند و رابطۀ بسیار خوبی را با وی شکل داده است و این فرد با یک مدیر اجرایی باالرتبه کار میبرای نمونه، یک درمانگر را که این مدیر اجرایی در شود که، درمانگر متوجه میحالنیباا. ، در نظر بگیریدنیز رشد بسیار خوبی را در شغلش تجربه کرده است شان را به خطر بیندازد؟ محکم را حفظ کند یا به او مواجهه دهد و رابطهرفتارهای غیراخالقی دست دارد. درمانگر باید این رابطۀ های ها را تفسیر کرده و انگیزهتواند در این مورد کافی باشد. درمانگر نیاز دارد که موقعیتییک مجموعۀ سادۀ دستورالعمل نم توانند به او ه میکو روابط خوب با همکارانی شدهدر چنین مواردی، خرد کاربردی توسط تجارب انباشته موازی را متعادل سازد. شود.مشورت دهند و در استدالل اخالقی به وی کمک کنند، ساخته می آوری و مقاومت در برابر فرسودگی تقویت تاب اری، وانند فرد را در مقابل فرسودگی مقاوم کنند. هیجانات مثبت )برای مثال، امیدوتمثبت می شناسیروانهای برخی از سازه تواند و رفتاری یک درمانگر را وسعت بخشند که می تواند منابع توجه، شناختیزدگی( میو هیجان آرامش، سرخوشی، اشتیاق های شخصی فرسودگی هیجانی( عمل کنند. تمرین فرسودگی )برای نمونه، ها همچون عالئمپذیریسپری در برابر آسیب عنوانبه فردی )برای نمونه، هوش اجتماعی، مهربانی، های بینتواند در این زمینه به فرد کمک کند. توانمندیمیآگاهی نیز همچون ذهن 7 phronesis راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 19 آن افکار هایی همچون مسخ شخصیت )حالتی که درتواند در مقابله با چالشو کار گروهی( می طبعی، هدف و معناعشق، شوخ کننده باشد. به همین کند متعلق به خودش نیستند( کمکاس میرسند یا احسو احساسات فرد به نظرش غیرواقعی به نظر می تواند احساس درونی مسخ شخصیت را از بین ببرد.صورت، دارابودن حس هدف و معنا می اظهار میزان تحصیالت و صالحیت ای نمونه، در کار های خاص )برشناختی یا گروهرا در شرایط خاص روان تشانیصالحت و های تحصیالدرمانگران باید محدودیت های خاص اظهار کنند. برای مثال، یک درمانگر شاید در ارزیابی درمانیو روان ها، درمان گروهی(با کودکان، دیگر فرهنگ تجربه باشد. افزون بر این، های کودکان یا نوجوانان بیها در بزرگساالن تجربه داشته باشد، اما در ارزیابی توانمندیتوانمندی ها فقط تجربه یا صالحت سطحی هایی شود که درمانگر در آنیابد، ممکن است وارد حوزهفرایند خدمات ادامه می همچنان که و باصالحیت باتجربه، و بزرگساالن یک درمانگر ممکن است در ارائۀ خدمات به کودکان، نوجوانان کهیدرحالدارد. برای مثال، که در این صورت باید برای ارائۀ چنین خدماتی در بافت خانوادگی نداشته باشد باشد، احتمال دارد تجربه یا صالحیت کافی را باشد. ازیموردنهای حمایتی دیگر یا ارجاع سازه ار کنند. برای مثال، یک درمانگر یک را اظه تشانیفعالهای علمی و تجارب مرتبط با حوزۀ همچنین، درمانگران باید آموزش گذراند. این گواهی توسط را می آنالین صورتبه دوره هیبقتعامل چهره به چهره و بارکای یشامل هفته ماههششگواهی شود. در وبسایت درمانگر نوشته شده است که او یک درمانگر نمی دییتأ شهرداری، یا مرجع محلی یا استانیِ صدور مجوز درمان صورت بهندارد. آیا این کار اخالقی است؟ مهم است که ای دیگری برای درمان نامۀ حرفهمثبت دارندۀ گواهی است. او گواهی تان ای های حرفههای تحصیالت، تجربه و گواهیانداز و محدودیتتان، از ماهیت، چشمتان را فراتر از عنوان شغلیواضح مراجعان مطلع سازید. های فرهنگیفت اهمیت تنوع با دهندۀ شواهد موجود ها باید انعکاسگیریگیری اخالقی نباید تنها بر اساس آگاهی، دانش یا درک شناختی باشد. تصمیمتصمیم هنجار، آنچهسازی مفهوم چراکهدرمانی مثبت بسیار اساسی است، باشد. بافت فرهنگی در روانمرتبط و شرایط بافت فرهنگی اخالقی در آن اتفاق دوراهییا مسئلهای که های مطلوبِ آن فرهنگ و بافت اجتماعیست، توسط ارزش خوب، یا سازگارانه ا .گیردافتاده است، شکل می ؛ ۀ پذیرش، چگونگی ابراز، یا تشدید هیجانات خاص با یکدیگر تفاوت دارندنیدرزمها ی و فرهنگاجتماع افزون بر این، هنجارهای نجایاای که در مثبت در چنین شواهدی ریشه داشته باشند. راهنماهای اخالقی هایاهای درمانبنابراین، مهم است که راهنم با درنظرگرفتن جزئیات کافی تنظیم حالنیباا، رندیبربگاند، به میزان کافی گسترده هستند که بافت فرهنگی را در مطرح شده عوامل فرهنگی و فردی ممکن است آسان یا ازجملهد ونه تلفیق شواهگهای فردی نیز بپردازند. ایناند که به نیازها و تفاوتشده را در اختیار ما نقصیبکامل و فرایند یا نتیجه به سهولت در دسترس باشد. اگرچه چنین تلفیقی شاید به لحاظ اخالقی مسیر، در برخورد با موارد کندیمها کمک نکنند، خِرد جمعی به آقرار ندهد، زمانی که افراد برای دستیابی به کمال اخالقی تالش می ، تیدرنهاو های جدیدی یافته خواهند شد، مسیرهای جدیدی ساخته خواهند شدها بپردازند. روشمختلف، به کاوش بهترین راه ند. بنابراین، دارابودن ساختار این راهنماها برای ساختاردادن به افکار و اعمال فرد، بسیار مهم هست؛ آیدمی کمال به دست کنند. بودن عملکرد فرد و یا فاصلۀ او با کمال اخالقی کمک میهمچنین، این راهنماها به هدف ارزیابی میزان بهینه راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 20 گامبهگامنمای راهیک -اخالقی هایدوراهیحل ق در های پیش رو که به میزان زیادی از اخالهای اخالقی غیرممکن است، گامدر دوراهی گرفتاریاگرچه مصون ماندن از ( و همچنین منابع دیگر اقتباس شده است، به درمانگر کمک خواهند کرد تا 1998اسپیگل، -)کوچر و کیت شناسیروان های اخالقِی سالم بگیرد.تصمیم ای که توسط ارگان مسئول ی حرفهراهنماهاو و استانداردهای عملکرد، رفتار ها، مقرراتبا همۀ اساسنامه راستامه • مورد صالحیت شما تصویب شده است، عمل کنید. چنین اطالعاتی به درمانگر کمک خواهد کرد تا در صدور مجوز در های اخالقی کاوش کند.مورد دوراهی درک دقیقی از اینکه چگونه یک رویداد مشابه ممکن است در مورد یک فرد با فرد دیگر متفاوت باشد، در خود شکل • فعلی مصداق دوراهی اخالقی با پیامدهای جدی است، ۀمسئلآیا کهنیامورد دهید. یا با فردی معتمد و غیرمتعصب در صرفاً کنید، یک تخلف اخالقی، شما درک می آنچهبینید کنید تا ب وگوگفتمشورت کنید. با همکاران خود بحث و به خود و عموم است. زنندهب یآسای ضعیف، یا موقعیتی رسوم اخالقی حرفه ها را ستانداردهای مرتبط منتشرشدۀ فعلی را مرور و بررسی کنید. اطمینان حاصل کنید که اینو ا ، قوانینراهنماها • چکیده بوده و روشن صورتبهی نوشتاری برخی اوقات راهنماهامشاوره بگیرید. اید در صورت نیاز، دقیق تفسیر کرده گذارند.و فضای زیادی را برای تفاسیر شخصی خالی می نیستند های و آمار مستند و نگرانی های موجود در اطالعاتآوری کنید. شکافتوانید جمععات مرتبطی را که میبهترین اطال • مرتبط را شناسایی کنید. به کهنیاو با فردی که مطلع و روشنفکر باشد از شده در فرایند تعمق خود را تلفیق کنیدآوری تمامی اطالعات جمع • ترسد، مشورت کنید.خطاهای بالقوۀ درمانگر اشاره کند ن قبتمرارسانی، از آسیب پرهیزخیرخواهی/)قابل کاربرد هستند راهنماارزیابی کنید که چگونه شش اصل اخالقی این • ها و (. برای نمونه، حقوق، مسئولیت خودگردانی، قابل اعتمادبودن، عدالت، مردم منزلتمسئوالنه، احترام به حقوق و کنید. یابیارزرسی و ها در هرکدام را برپذیریآسیب توانید بدون سوگیری ها را تا جایی که میاز آن هرکدامتوانید بیندیشید و مختلف که می یهاحلراهبه هر تعداد • ارزیابی کنید. های منش به شما در انتخاب اخالقی کمک خواهند کرد. ممکن است الزم باشد به توجه کنید که کدام توانمندی • شد تا انگیزۀ تان نیاز بامندیتأتان مراجعه کنید؟ شاید به جرانصاف، صداقت، یا مهربانی درونی تری ازهای عمیقالیه های اخالقی نیازمند استفاده از چندین توانمندی »انجام کار درست« در شما ایجاد شود؟ به یاد داشته باشید که انتخاب یا یک توانمندی »که خیلی از آن استفاده شود« یینهاتبهیک توانمندی فقطنهبهینه و تلفیقی است، صورتبهمنش (.2018)نیمک، کردنِ خود را تصویرسازی کنید.ن یا خودداری از عملکردپیامدهای عمل • و همۀ افراد دیگری که در موضوع درگیر هستند چه آن بر شما ریتأثبیندیشید که مسئلهگیری به این پیش از تصمیم • هایی برای که ممکن است چه نوع حمایت بیندیشیدهمچنین تواند باشد.می آنچهمالی خواهد بود و پیامدهای احت بندی به تصمیمتان نیاز داشته باشید.پای دهندۀ روح تصمیم شما باشد. کارهایی را برگزینید که انعکاس واقعاً تصمیمتان را در قالب عملکرد عینی در بیاورید که • و مرتبط هستند بپیامدهای مطلو اهستند، ب یریگاندازهقابلکنند، یان میدقیق و معتبر ب طوربه شماراتصمیم . دارندیپگیرند، در در معرض آن قرار می ماًیمستقان ناراحتی یا آسیب را برای افرادی که کمترین میز راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 21 ارزیابی راهنمای خود برای درمانگران را در بر زیبرانگملتأ هایی ها اشاره خواهد شد، فهرست پرسشعملکردهایی که در بخش پیش رو بدان های اخالقی اجتناب کرده و درمان خود را به بهترین شکل پیش دارد که کمک خواهد کرد از گمراهی در دوراهی ببرند. ۀ مداخلگیری کنید که آیا اس بهترین شواهد موجود، تصمیمتر از همه، بر اسنخست و مهم تناسب مداخلۀ مثبت: های خاص، تمرین بخشش و گذشت( برای قدرشناسی، استفاده از توانمندی دفتر خاطراتمونه، مثبت خاصی )برای ن و انگیزۀ او برای درمان، مناسب است. مراجع، با توجه به مشکالت فعلی، شرایط ( 1مثبت مناسب است: ۀمداخلی بر خواهید داشت تا تصمیم بگیرید چه زمانی هایچه گام بندی مداخلۀ مثبت:زمان گیرد که خدمات ( در چه شرایطی تصمیم می3 ؟( زمانی که مداخلۀ مثبت شروع شده است2شروع خدمات درمانی، در یا جایگزین دیگری نیاز است؟ زمانهمیا مداخلۀ مت روان خود آگاه هستید؟ درمانگربودن به معنای مصونیت شما از تا چه اندازه از سال آگاهی از سالمت روان خود: ها یا اقداماتی اختالل روانی که ممکن است وارد طیف اختالالت نیازمند توجه بالینی باشد، نیست. چه گام تجربۀ عالئم به مراجعانتان رسیدگی بندید تا از سالمت روان خود مراقبت کنید تا بتوانید به نحوی بهینهبه کار می طورمعمولبه را ید، همچون نداشتن زمان و منابع کافی، این احساس یا باور که کنید؟ در مراقبت از خودتان با چه موانعی روبرو هست توانند از سالمت روانی شما و دسترسی به متخصصان مناسب و مرتبط با مسائل روانی شما که می حالتان خوب است محافظت کنند؟ خواهد می حالنیدرع و دهدمراجعی که به مداخالت مثبت خوب پاسخ می هیعلتوانید در راحت میچق گزارش اجباری: کند که دار در زمان حال را بیان میاتفاقی )اخیر یا در گذشته( یا موقعیتی ادامه سهواًاطالعاتش محرمانه بماند اما ، سوءاستفادۀ جنسی، یا تهدید جدی برای امنیت یک سالکهندربردارندۀ برای مثال سوءاستفاده از کودک یا افراد الزام ایآ کنید،ای فعالیت نمیحرفه سازمانی یک راهنماهاتحت نظر مقررات و یا کهیدرصورتفرد است، اقدام کنید؟ را دارید؟ یا مسئله قانونی برای گزارش چنین شماراید و آکنید که نسبت به مداخالت مثبت به نظر مشتاق میفردی را در کنفرانس مالقات می بزرگنمایی و تعمیم: های اندکی که شاس پژوهکنید که بر اسکند. در کارگاه شرکت میست، دعوت میا اشبرگزارکنندهبه کارگاهی که شده ای بزرگنماییپذیری این کاربردها به شیوهو تعمیم آگاهی دارید، ارائه شده است. نتایج، کاربردها کامالًها شما از آن رسد که کنند و به نظر میاستنباط می کننده«کنندگان در کارگاه این ارائه را »دگرگونشود. بیشتر شرکتارائه می مورداستفادههای بخش »حل دوراهی اخالقی« را توانید گامکنید؟ میمی کارچه اند. در این شرایط باور کردهها را یافته در چنین موقعیتی هدایت کنند؟ شماراقرار دهید تا رفتار راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 22 های موردی از تمرین اخالقی بخش سوم: مثال ی راهنماهاها روبرو شوید و دارای یک مؤلفۀ اخالقیِ مرتبط با اصول هایی هستند که ممکن است در درمان با آن موارد زیر مثال 8اخالقی هستند. اجرای مداخالت مثبت بادرنظرگرفتن حساسیت فرهنگی -: فرهنگی1مثال موردی نگی باشند. مورد زیر را در نظر بگیرید.شرایط بافت فره دهندۀ بهترین شواهد موجود درخالقی باید انعکاسا هایانتخاب کند. مراجع خواهان رشد سوزان یک درمانگر استرالیایی است که با یک مراجع زن از فرهنگ آسیای شرقی کار می ها همۀ گام انکند. سوزاش است. سوزان »تمرین بهترین خودِ ممکن« را انتخاب میشخصی و حفظ روابط خانوادگی کند که رشد شخصی معنادار، مراجع گزارش می باوجوداما ؛ دهداجع در طول تمرین انجام میرای راهنمایی مررا ب های مکرر گیری زیستی مراجع در اندازه، افزایش معناداری در نیکرون یازااش تیره شده است. روابط او با خانواده شود.آنالین مشاهده نمی صورتبه . سوزان یک استکه از فرهنگی به فرهنگ دیگر متفاوت است خود گرفتن مفهومیک داللت مهم در این مورد اهمیت درنظر و در پیش گرفتن ابتکارِ کند که شامل ارتقای فردیبا فرهنگ غربی سازگار است، دنبال می معموالًمفهوم رشد شخصی را که دیتأک نسبتاًهای غیرغربی( فرهنگ های شرقی )و بیشتر ادی فردی است. در مقابل، رشد فردی در فرهنگعمل و به میزان زی باوجود شود. و قبیله می های خانواده، گروهو کمک به حفظ سنت گذاری بر روابط، بهبود تعامالت اجتماعیبیشتری بر سرمایه هاشود. یک پیامد مهم این تفاوتی گسترده هنوز هم اغلب دیده میشهرها، تفاوت فرهنگافزایش تنوع فرهنگی در بیشتر کالن اش یا هایش برای نفع خانوادهاین است که مراجع در این مورد ممکن است از آگاهی نسبت به چگونگی استفاده از توانمندی های خود را منشِ »توانمندیهای ها سود ببرد. سوزان ممکن است از مداخالت توانمندیتر با آنارتباط برقرار کردن عمیق آموزد بهترین ها مراجعش میآن ۀلیوسبه( استفاده کند که 2018های منش« )نیمک، دیگرمحور کنید« یا »تحسین توانمندی اعضای خانواده یگذارارزش ای برای شناخت و های ساخت روابط مفید مبدل سازد و شیوهاش را به مکانیسمهای درونیویژگی شده توسط افراد مطرح است که رشد شخصیِ حمایت نیز مسئلهدهد. این ها را در اولویت قرار میهای آنترین ویژگیبه خاطر به گرا، ، در یک فرهنگ جمعحالنیباازیستی فرد به ارمغان بیاورد. تواند عمق و تداوم فزایندۀ بیشتری برای نیکمی مهم زندگی فرد پیچیدۀ بیشتری در دربردارندۀ اعضای خانواده نزدیک است، همچنین نیازمند مدیریت تعامالت ادیزاحتمال به رشد شخصی که عمل یک ابتکارِ یریکارگبههای فردی یا بازۀ زمانی طوالنی است. در مقابل، فعالیت »بهترین نسخۀ من« که بر بهبود توانمندی مثبت بدانند شناسیروان متخصصان، واجب است که رونیازاباشد. کوتاهتری نسبتاً زمانمدتدارد، شاید نیازمند دیتأکجدید ها متناسب است.دهند، به چه نحوی به بهترین شکل با فرهنگ آنهایی که به مراجع میکه تمرین هایی مرتبط با مورد باال هستند:ابعاد اخالقی پیش رو، مثال های شرایط مراجع و ویژگی کهی نحوبهجع باشند مثبت باید مراقب مرا شناسیروان متخصص -مراقبت مسئوالنه • د.گذشتۀ او را در نظر بگیر مثبت وظیفه دارد که آسیبی به مراجع نرساند. شناسیروان متخصص -از آسیب پرهیزخیرخواهی/ • فرهنگی حساس های بینمثبت مسئولیت دارد که به پویایی شناسیروان متخصص -افراد منزلتاحترام به حقوق و • ها و نیازهای خاص مراجع را محترم بشمارد. و دیدگاه باشد ، شآنالیز ر : 2طیب رشید، مورد : 3و 1د رامتشکریم: مو مواردتن این شبرای دراختیارگذا شودیماز افرادی که اسمشان در ادامه آورده 8 : دنیس کوئینلن.6: متیو یاسیلو، و مورد 5: استورات دونالدسون، مورد 4مورد راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 23 کوچینگ مراجعان در شرایط متغیر-چینگ: کو2مثال موردی و نیازمند تطبیق با شرایط خدمات درمانی هستند. مورد زیر را در نظر فتدیبتوانند غیرمنتظره اتفاق های اخالقی میدوراهی بگیرید: یادی گذاری ز، ارزشنیازاشیپ کرد. اش میمعنایی در زندگیهدفی و بیآمد چون احساس بی کوچینگآماندا به جلسۀ و افزون تر به زندگی استعادلکرد که نیازمند رویکردی متبر روی ارتقای شغلی انجام داده بود، اما اکنون احساس می کرد. در اولین می خألکه دستاوردهای بیشتری در زندگی نداشت )خارج از ارتقای شغلی( احساس غم و بر این، از این ها تمرکز شود شناسایی کرد که شامل مدیریت مالی )برای کمک به آن جلسات، چندین حوزه را که عالقه داشت روی اش او اظهار داشت که شغل فعلی شود.گذرانی و زندگی اجتماعی میو افزایش خوش فردی او جهت خرید خانه(، رشد . در دو جلسۀ نبود کوچینگاین موضوع مرکز توجه ،حالنیباابرانگیز است و عالقه دارد در آینده تغییرش دهد، چالش یری که بیان کرده بود برایش مهم سازی شدند، در مسکه در آن اهداف در نظر گرفته شدند و مراحل عملی شفاف اول ، در آغاز جلسۀ چهارم، آماندا بیان کرد حالنیباارفت. پیش می یخوببه کوچینگو هایی صورت گرفتاست، پیشرفت و هنوز شغل جدیدی پیدا نکرده است. درخواست یم شده و استعفا داده استناگهانی وخ یاگونه بهاش که شرایط شغلی در محل کارش شده بود که باید اندازههیجان بیقراری و استعفایش با واکنش خوبی روبرو نشده بود و آماندا دچار بی واکنش مدیرش به او از احساساتی گفت که توسط کرد.فعالیت می آنجاچهار هفتۀ دیگر تا اتمام مسئولیتش در اش بود.های هیجانی مشابه از دوران نوجوانیکه یادآور خاطراتی از مقابله تعفای او جرقه خورده بوددرخواست اس عوامل فشارزا در چراکهدهی خود را حفظ کند و پیشنهاد تکانشی ندهد واجب بود که توانمندی خودنظم کوچدر این مرحله، بر خواهد ت از توانمندی کنجکاوی خود بهره ببرد تا کنترل کند که آماندا میتوانسمی کوچه، طاز آن نق آماندا برانگیخته شده بود. و نسبت به تغییر موضوع اصلی جلسات گشوده باشد. همچنین ممکن بود مهم باشد که پیش برود کچگونه در آیندۀ نزدی علی آماندا فای نیازهای مناسب و ایمن بر سازوکاری کوچینگماهیت واکنش هیجانی آماندا درک شود تا تعیین شود که آیا ای از جلسات قرارداد بسته باشد، تغییر در شرایط مراجع باید مبنای شدهبا آماندا برای تعداد تعیین احتماالً کوچ کهیدرحالاست. مسیر پیش روی درمان قرار گیرد. هایی مرتبط با مورد باال هستند:ابعاد اخالقی پیش رو، مثال دارای مسئولیت اصلی استفاده از مهربانی و انصاف برای خیرخواهی آماندا و درک کوچ -مراقبت مسئوالنه • های تخصص خود است.محدودیت ات مگری در محدودۀ مقررات خدهدایت-توانست بر افزایش توانایی آماندا در جهت خودمی کوچ نجایادر -خودگردانی • زنگری شرایط قراردادشان در طول رابطۀ درمانی، تمرکز کند.باو های زندگیدرمانی و همۀ حوزه کند و بر اساس های آماندا را برآورده میسته ابه بهترین شکل خو آنچهکه در راستای کوچ -از آسیب پرهیزخیرخواهی/ • بر اساس ا و خدمات ر در محدودۀ صالحیت خود عمل کند قاًیدقکند، باید آگاه باشد که ای عمل میارزیابی حرفه ها و تجارب کافی ارائه دهد.آموزش کار با تروما : بالینی3مثال موردی اگر در مداخالت ژهیوبهشکنند، وابسته در هم میفرهنگ ظریفِ کنند، از بسیاری جهاتِبیشتر افرادی که تروما را تجربه می هایی که با فکرکردن، یادآوری، یا رفتارکردن به شیوه ز مثبت شرکت کنند. شاید سازوکارهای افراطی برای اجتناب ا شناسیروان ای مثبت، مهم است که چنین ترومایی )چه تاریخچه شناسیروان ند. در حال ارائۀ مداخالت رشان مرتبط است، در پیش گیآسیب رصورت داشتن درمانگر ه توجهی به آن، الزم است کسازی یا بیارزندهو چه کنونی( مورد ارزیابی و بررسی قرار گیرد. بدون کم که احتمال یمواردندارد، به موقع فرد را ارجاع دهد. درمانگر همچنین باید در چنین تخصصی له کند، یا اگرخمدا تخصص الزم کند و با وگوگفتباشد. درمانگر باید با مراجع زنگبه گوشبروز کند، مثبت با مراجع شناسیرواندارد تروما در طول مداخالت راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 24 مثبت در چنین موردی شناسیروان بر ادامۀ مداخالت دیتأکمناسب برای یبندزمان نش مشورت کند تا مطمئن شود همکارا تواند باشد. مورد زیر را در نظر بگیرید:چه می یدارد. او به خاطر احساس مداوم افسردگ یو جنس ی، عاطفیاستفاده جسمسوء ۀدر تجرب یطوالن ۀساله، سابق 21سلما، اشیزندگ یزابیآس عیدرباره وقا صراحتبهاست. او انتظار دارد که درمانگر درمانی روی آورده خدمات افتدری به در بر گذشته ای یفعل یهاب یدرباره آس یسؤال چیشود که هیپرسشنامه کوتاه داده م کیاو به کهیدرحالسؤال کند. یشهاب یآس اتیکه جزئ ردیگیم میدوست ندارد و تصم که مشاور را شودیمندارد. در جلسات مشاوره، سلما متوجه کی اش،از درمان قبلی شش ماه کمتر از باگذشتو شود تصور می مؤثر اشتباهبهدرمان نی، انیبنابرا؛ را فاش نکند شود.یم زیتجوۀ درمانی برایش تاز ۀدور و ادیز تیکار به حساس نیم است )اگرچه انجام ادرباره تروما مه حیسؤال صرپرسیدن دهد، یکه مورد فوق نشان م طورهمان کنند و به ی سؤاالت مربوطه را مطرح م صراحتاً مراجعاناز ی. بسته به گزارش، برخ(دارد ازین ینیآموزش بالهمچنین احتماالً مداخالت کهیدرحال کهمهم است نیهستند. ا گفرهن حمایتی متناسب با منابع ایمقابله یهبردها، راهاشنهادیپ دنبال مشاوره، پاسخ یبه روش درمانگر، کندهای دور بروز میمربوط به زمان ای ریاخ ترومای کی اتیو جزئ جریان استدر مثبت شناسیروان و دهید، آموزش ماهر یکاف ۀاندازبه شرایطدر برخورد با دیبا درمانگراول و مهمتر از همه، مراجع باشد. ازین پاسخگوی دهد که یبررسبا یادوره طوربهگونه که بدین غ/و احتیاط/تدبیر خود رجوع کنند های فروتنیبه توانمندی دیبا درمانگرانباشد. باتجربه یترکه تخصص خاص یشخص ، او را بهبهتر باشد برای مراجعبرعکس اگر اید نادامه ده خدمات خود را دیهمچنان با ایآ کهنیا ارجاع دهند. دارند ازین مراجعاناز یکه بعض ییراهکارهاها و ، مهارتهاشنهاد یپ در ارائه هایی مرتبط با مورد باال هستند:ابعاد اخالقی پیش رو، مثال مثبت مسئولیت دارد که از سلما به شکلی مراقبت کند که شرایط خاص او شناسیروان متخصص -مراقبت مسئوالنه • اش را در نظر بگیرد.و تاریخچه رسیدن بیشتر به سلما مثبت هم مسئولیت دارد که از آسیب شناسیروان متخصص -آسیب از پرهیزخیرخواهی/ • زیستی او را افزایش دهد.که نیکو هم ای جلوگیری کند ارائه اطالعات نادرست یبرا فشار -: شغلی و سازمانی4مثال موردی طور بهممکن است یاخالق هایدوراهیشوند. یم یبایآنها ارز یاثربخش نییتع یبرا یو سازمان شغلیمثبت مداخالتاز یاریبس را به نادرست یابیارز یهاداده آورند تامی فشار به درمانگرانو پذیرندرا نمی هاافتهی مراجعانظاهر شود که زمانی رمنتظرهیغ های منش شامل و توجه کنید که چگونه شماری از توانمندی دیریرا در نظر بگ ریز گزارش کرده یا حذف کنند. مورد گیرند.قرار می مورداستفاده ترو فروتنی، کم صداقت/اصالت، وسعت دید/خرد، رهبری تا روحیه و را استخدام کرده است مثبت شناسیرواندرمانگر کیکرد کارکنان، و عمل هیبهبود روح یبرا شرکتیک ی برا یآموزش ۀبرنام کی هیبه ته میصمت ، درمانگرشرکت مدیریتمشورت با در. عملکرد کارمندانش را بهبود بخشد دهد ینشان م یابیارز یهاداده .گیردمی( ینیبو خوش یآور، تابکارآمدی، دیکارکنان )ام یشناختروان ۀیسرما شیافزا ، حالنیبااباشد. برایشان ادامه داشتهمثبت یشناختخواهند آموزش روانیکه کارکنان آموزش را دوست دارند و م طوربهکارکنان که نیو عملکرد ب هی، روحینیبخوش ، یآور، تابکارآمدی، دینشان داد که در سطح ام یابیارز یهاداده شرکت آن وجود ندارد. رهبران یداریتفاوت معن گواهو افراد گروه انتخاب شده بودند شرکت در آموزش یبرا یتصادف یابیارز جینتاها آن خواستند یوشحال شدند که نمآموزش لذت بردند خ نیکه کارمندانشان از ااز این قدرآن است و بوده بزرگ تیموفق کیآموزش نیا دهدکه گزارش ند خواست درمانگرآنها از ،. درعوضنندیدلسردکننده را بب کارمندان فراهم خواهد شد. یبرا ندهیراستا در آ نیدر هم یشتریآموزش ب رد باال هستند:هایی مرتبط با موابعاد اخالقی پیش رو، مثال راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 25 استقالل درمانگر برای دست به عمل زدن از او گرفته شده است. نجایادر -خودگردانی • توسط بیفر زانیم نیاست و ا زیستی مراجعنیکمستلزم تعهد به ارتقاء خیرخواهی -از آسیب پرهیزخیرخواهی/ • تجربه ایارائه خدمات بر اساس آموزش زمنداین خیرخواهانه، عمل نیبر ا افزون. ستی شرکت به نفع کارمندان ن رانیمد است. یکاف و بزرگنمایی کردهرا مثبت شناسیروانمداخالت ییکاراشود که یخواسته م درمانگراز نجایدر ا -اعتمادیت قابل • شود.کارمندان به درمانگر محسوب می به اعتماد یاحترامیبکار نیدهد، که ا میتعم نامتوازن ۀرابط ک یدر میل« »بی کنندگان دادن به مشارکت زهیانگ -دیشاگر -استاد :5مثال موردی . از مداخالت ببرندسود را نیشتریهستند که ممکن است ب افرادیهستند، نیترمقاوم تکه در برابر مداخال ی، کساناغلب نفع رایت در مداخله بشرک یبرا مراجع صادقانۀ بیترغ ای زهیانگ جادیا یهنگام تالش برا مثبت شناسیروان متخصصان .دیریرا در نظر بگ ریز موردشوند. یروبرو م یدشوار تی، با وضعشانخود شناسیروانی گروه تمداخال ناتیدارد که از شرکت در تمر مراجعیآژانس جوانان، کیدر هماهنگی بالینی ری، مدیباَ قیتشو ناتیشرکت در تمر یخود را برا جعمراخواسته است که یمداخله از اب ۀکنندلیتسهکند. یم یخوددار مثبت سودمند اریبس مراجع یمداخله برا نیبا همکار خود موافقت کرد که ا ی. ابکندمداخله متقاعد یایو آنها را از مزا ار گذاشته کن دیمف یهااز مداخله مراجعشود یغالبًا باعث م مراجعش یو رفتارها نگرشآگاه است که یخواهد بود. اب -ای استادرابطه به چالش بکشد. ابی خود را نسبت به مشارکت مراجعکند نگرش یتا سع ردیگیم میمو تص شود ۀ کورکوران «فروش» با زیرپا گذاشتن صداقت خود و ستیاست و حاضر نشکل داده مراجع اعتماد با مبتنی بر شاگردی یشواهد رویبا میانهکند. در عوض، او انتیخبه اعتماد او شود، یکه محقق نم ییهاوعدهدادنِ ای مراجعمداخله به در مشارکت یایو مزا سود د برای نشان دادن اهمیتخو مراجعو با کرده فیکند، توصیم تیرا که از مداخله حما که چگونه دربارۀ موافقان و مخالفان شرکت در مداخله و این ییهاسؤال او با کنجکاوی کند. یم یکرفهم مداخله مراجع از ی، سپساب. کندمطرح میقرار گیرد، مورداستفادهتواند در بافت گروهی برجستۀ مراجعش میهای توانمندی دو نو آ کندیم یبانیپشت در مداخله مشارکت یهانهیبه حداقل رساندن هز یها برای استراتژ ییشناسا یخود برا را با هم ش پیش از ورود به بافت گروهیهای مراجعو چگونگی استفاده از توانمندی شدت از مداخلهکم یهانسخه کنند.یم نیتمر دیگر از شرکت در مداخله بارکیخواهد که مراجعش و نمی ابی مطمئن است که مراجعش از شرکت در مداخله سود خواهد برد خود را به چالش مراجعخواهد یم یکند. اب انتیخود خ مراجع خودگردانی ایخواهد به اعتماد یاندازه، او نمبه همان . بازبماند منجر به یاخالقریغ یرگذاریتأثبیم دارد که مبادا قرار دهد، اما دیجد اتیرا در معرض تجرب تا مراجعشبکشد و کمک کند ازحدشیباغراق یجابهبرساند. بیآس به دست آمدهسخت ها کهابطۀ آنر تیفیبه ک تیهاو درن او شود مراجع یبرا یمنف جینتا ی شناخت هایسوگیرینسبت به مداخله را درک کند، مراجعکند تا نگرش یتالش م یمشارکت، اب یایدر مورد مزا یینمابزرگ ای کند. جادیا هماهنگی بالینیجلسه یمنِا فضای در ،آموزش یاینشان دادن مزا یبرا هاییترا به چالش بکشد و فرص او هستند:هایی مرتبط با مورد باال ابعاد اخالقی پیش رو، مثال خاص از یژگیو کی بر اساسحاصل کند که مراجعان نانیدارد اطم مثبت مسئولیت شناسیروان متخصص -انصاف • شوند.ینم کنار گذاشتهمداخالت نگرش یابیارز جهت مراجع بیترغ یبرا مراجعبا اعتمادقابلاز رابطه مثبت شناسیروان متخصص -اعتمادیت قابل • • کند.ینم انتیاعتماد خ نیند، اما به اکیاستفاده مش دیو عقا کند.خودداری میآن یو از دستکار گذاردیاحترام م مراجعبه خواست مثبت شناسیروان متخصص -خودگردانی • راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 26 دستیابی به موجود مانع یهاآن روش در که ییدرجا یستیزنیک یهابرنامه یاجرا -آموزش :6مثال موردی شودی م هاوعده ینگران از یمختلف لیآنها ممکن است به دال ،وجودنیبااند. هست یستیزنیک یهابرنامه کردناتب خواستار دنبال بسیاری از مک کار را انجام نیابنام فعلی، یهاوهیش تیتا تقو در مدرسه قلدریمانند ییهاچالشپرداختن به تا دانش آموزان یستیزنیک یبرا متمایزکننده ایویژگیو یابیفرصت بازار کی عنوانبهتواند یم زیدر مدرسه ن یستیزنیک رنامهب کی، داشتن نیبر ا افزوندهند. .دیریرا در نظر بگ ریز موردشود. یمدارس تلق یبرخ برای رهیمدئتیهتوسط بیتصو یبرا یاو برنامه یستیزنیک یاستراتژ کیمدرسه خواست تا یکی از کارکناناز مدیر مدرسه آموزان آیندۀ احتمالی دانش نیبه والد خواستیم ریرا انجام دهد. مد یدیعناصر کل عیسر یساماندهد و سپس کن هیته . همه معلمان خواهند شد مندبهره یدر برنامه درس یستیزنیک شیوۀ سیاز تدر به شکلی عینی که فرزندانشان دیبگو .ندداشتمی نهیزم نیدر ا یکم اریبس یاحرفه رشد کارکناناگر یرا به عهده داشتند، حت یستیزنیک آموزش تیمسئول الزم یآمادگ شدهافزودهحجم کار و آموزش نیا کردند برایاحساس می و شده بودنداسترس دچار کارکنانبسیاری از از ینان آورده شد. برخککار ی برایستیزنیکدر یاحرفه رشد ۀروز میجلسه ن کی ارائه یمشاور برا کی ندارند.را را ید زنبرسان بیآس آموزانشاندانشبه مبادامضطرب هستند نکهیاکردند از یمشاور ابراز نگران وگو بادر گفتن کارکنا یابی، مشاور شاهد بازارنیبر ا افزون. نبودند حوزه را دارا نیدر ا یانهیزمپیش چیو ه ابزار الزم را در اختیار نداشتند آنها از گرتیحما عنوانبهمدرسه فی، توصمثالعنوان به) بود زیستیایش نیکتالش مدرسه برای افز ۀنیدرزم مدرسه (. مشاور آگاه است که مدرسه زیستی در هر تعاملنیک جادیو ا ان و دانش آموزانکنکار یبرا یجمع زیستینیک و واهد کرد خکند، استفاده یم فیآموزان و کارکنان را تضعدانش نیکه روابط ب یانضباط یهیتنب استیهمچنان از س ه. معلم متوسطردیگیم دهیدنا را زیستینیک استایدر ر و بخشش روابط میترم نیتمر یایمزا در مورد یشواهد علم با مشاور صحبت کرده است. معلم نهیزم نیاست، در ا هاو گذاشته شدبه عهده یستیزنیکبرنامه یاجرا تمسئولی که مشابه یهایمعلم قبالً هنگام مطرح کردن نگران نیا رایمدرسه ندارد ز ۀریمدئتیهبه مطرح کردن مسائل با یلیتما یآنها برا یستگیقرار گرفت و شا دیموردتردآنها به مدرسه یوفادار ،. در آن زمانبودگروه مرعوب شده نیتوسط ا به چالش کشیده شد.معلم عنوانبه به کارادامه ورد باال هستند:هایی مرتبط با مابعاد اخالقی پیش رو، مثال که یامدرسه یهاوهیاز ش یدارد در صورت آگاه مثبت مسئولیت شناسیروان متخصص -از آسیب پرهیزخیرخواهی/ • و بدون سوگیری بپرهیزد. صراحتبه ی«ستیزنیک ۀمدرس» عنوانبهمدرسه دییتأ شود، از یم یستیزنیک فیباعث تضع احساس اجبار کند.خود یهاارزش ای ی/قضاوتبا داور ریمغا یریگموضع ای دگاهیاتخاذ ددر دیمعلم نبا -خودگردانی • راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 27 بطتمر یراهنماها مورداستفادهی، عمل یراهنماها نیا هیته یشده است( برا یدهسازمان هر رشتهالفبا در به ترتیب و رشته بر اساس) ریز یراهنماها اند:قرار گرفته شده :شناسیروان (.2017) اخالق منشور(، aps) ایاسترال شناسیروان انجمن شناسیروان ایاسترال • (.2015)اخالق موقت منشور(، pacfa) ایو مشاوره استرال یدرمانروان ونیفدراس یدرمانروانمشاوره و ایاسترال • (.2017) شناسانروان یاخالق کانادا برا منشور(، cpaکانادا ) شناسیروان انجمن شناسیروان -کانادا • (.4)چاپ شناسانروان یاخالق برا منشور(، nzps) وزلندین شناسیروان انجمن شناسیروان لندیوزین • درمان مطلوب یبرا یچارچوب اخالق(، bacp) سیانگل یدرمانروانانجمن مشاوره و یدرمانروانمشاوره و بریتانیا • (.2010) نیدرمادر مشاوره و روان رفتار منشورشناسان و روان برای اصول اخالق (، apa) کایآمر شناسیروان انجمن شناسیروان کایآمر تحدهماالتیا • (2017.) (.2014) اخالق منشور(، aca) کایآمر ۀانجمن مشاور -مشاوره کایآمر متحدهاالتیا • :یپرستار (.2008) پرستاران یاخالق برا ورمنش: ایاسترال ییو ماما یپرستار ئتیه یپرستار ااسترالی • (.2012) نامه رفتار پرستاراننیآئ(، ncnz) وزلندین یپرستار یشورا یپرستار لندیوزین • (.2015) ماماهانامه پرستاران و نییآ(، nmc) ییو ماما یپرستار یشورا یپرستار بریتانیا • : کوچینگ .(2015) اخالق منشورو اساسی یهات یصالح(: icf) هاکوچ یالمللن یب ونیفدراس کوچینگ – یالمللنیب • راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 28 قدردانی کمک کرده و یامالحظهقابل طوربه راهنماها نیا هیته یبراالفبا آورده شده است، حروفها در زیر به ترتیب افرادی که نام آن :نداو بازخورد ارائه داده اطالعات . ایرالرون جاردن، دانشگاه ملبورن، استآ اریدانش • .ایاندرو الکساندرا، دانشگاه ملبورن، استرال سِر • .لندیوزی، نلتونی، همکاتوی، دانشگاه واجرزین ودکتر دَ • . وزلندی، ن«وزلندین یو تاب آور زیستینیکمؤسسه »، ننلَیکو یزدکتر دن • .لندیوزیاوکلند، ن ی، دانشگاه صنعتشآنالیز ر • .ایاه ملبورن، استرالدانشگ برادریک،-پروفسور دیان وال • گیسل تیمرمن، »عملکرد مثبت«، ایاالت متحدۀ آمریکا. • .، پرتغالسبون ی، دانشگاه لیاسیو س یدانشکده علوم اجتماع اگوئدا، دکتر هلنا • .کایآمر متحدهاالتیا، ایلوانی، دانشگاه پنسیپاولسک مزیپروفسور ج • .ای، ملبورن، استرال«اتاق ذهن»، چلیدکتر جو م • .کایآمر متحدهاالتیال میالم، دانشگاه کالیفرنیای جنوبی، دکتر جوئ • .کایآمر متحدهاالتیا، نبرگیدانشگاه فا ی، دانشکده پزشکتزیموسکوو یدکتر جود • .ای، استرال نزلندیکوئ یکارنا برک، دانشگاه مرکز اریدانش • ، کانادا.«lvsمشاوره »سانسوم، زایل • .کی، مکز« تهنامتویپوز»تاراگونا، تایمارگار • .ای، استرالsahmri، ی«و تاب آور یستیزنیکمرکز »، لویازیا ویمت • .یجنوب ۀ، کرنگیامیلو، دانشگاه کن دکتر محسن جوش • . ایدانشگاه ملبورن، استرالرِب ربل، • شرق لندن. mappسابق دانشگاه ریدکتر رونا هارت، مد • .«via تیشخص تویانست»، کمِین انیدکتر را • .کایآمر متحدهاالتیا «،asgmcلون، »اتحادیۀ اسکات اَسَ • .ای، استرال«آموزش مثبتانجمن مدارس »، یمور مونیس • .کایآمر ۀمتحد االتیا کلرمونت، تحصیالت تکمیلی ون، دانشگاهسپروفسور استوارت دونالد • .ای، استرالی«گروه لنگل»، ینگلسو لَ • . ای، استرالنگری«مثبتمؤسسه »، نیگر یدکتر سوز • ، دانشگاه تورنتو اسکاربرو، کانادا.دیرش بیط دکتر • .تانسدانشگاه شرق لندن، انگلماس، ول میدکتر ت • راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 29 مثبت شناسیروان کاربرد یبرا یاخالق یراهنماها هیامضا کنندگان اول راهنماهاتاریخ امضای برای اولین بار نسخۀ امضاشده لوگو نام و وبسایت انجمن یا مجموعه ت یشخصۀ نیدرزم viaموسسه • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ مثبت، دانشگاه ملبورن شناسیروان مرکز • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp مثبت، دانشگاه شرق لندن شناسیروان مرکز 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-pociationology-andcoaching-psychology نزلندیکوئ یمثبت ، دانشگاه مرکز شناسیروان مرکز • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/pociationology/-social-work-andcommunity-service/postgraduate/master-ofapplied-positive-psychology تحصیالت تکمیلی دانشگاه مرکز ارزیابی کلرمونت، • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 آمریکا ،کلرمونت • https://research.cgu.edu/claremont-evaluationcenter/ ای، استرالدی، آدالیآورو تاب یستزینیک مرکز • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ لنگلی گروه • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •https://langleygroup.com.au/ نیوزلند یآورو تاب یستزینیک مرکز • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •www.nziwr.co.nz مثبت یشناسروان 1، بخش انهیخاورم یشناسروان انجمن • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 انسانیت • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 • www.humanshiplb.org مثبت شناسیروانکنگرۀ ایرانی • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 •http://www.positivepsyconf.ir/fa/ انجمن سالمت روان مثبت ژاپن • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 • http://jphp.jp/ وزلندنیشناسی مثبت انجمن روان • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 • https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 30 های مثبتمرکز آموزش هیجان • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 شناسی مثبت هندانجمن ملی روان • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 • http://nppassociation.org/ شناسی مثبت آلمانانجمن روان • 0.1 2019جوالی 19 • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., & lomas, t., taghva, n., hassaniraad, m. (2019). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: persian). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-30. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.921 30 نویسندگان آرون جاردن دانشگاه ملبورن، استرالیا aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au طیب رشید دانشگاه تورنتو اسکاربرو، کانادا شآنالیز ر دانشگاه صنعتی اوکلند، نیوزلند لوماستیم ، انگلستانشرق لندندانشگاه مترجمان نغمه تقوی دانشگاه علوم پزشکی تهران، ایران مرجان حسنی راد دانشگاه تهران، ایران منابع barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. راهنماهای اخالقی ش، لوماس، تقوی، حسنی رادرشید، ر جاردن، 31 rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. مطالعۀ بیشتر han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. nohilly, m., & tynan, f. (2022). the evolution of wellbeing in educational policy in ireland: towards an interdisciplinary approach. international journal of wellbeing, 12(1), 42-53. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i1.1663 margaret nohilly mary immaculate college, ireland margaret.nohilly@mic.ul.ie copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 article the evolution of wellbeing in educational policy in ireland: towards an interdisciplinary approach margaret nohilly · fionnuala tynan abstract: this paper examines how wellbeing has evolved in educational policy over the last decade in ireland. the influence of the developments in national policy on wellbeing are also considered. while the concept of wellbeing is progressing in educational policy documents and becoming embedded in the language of the school community, a review of literature in the area highlights that it is difficult to define and to understand. although wellbeing is a central theme in early years education and an area of learning in post-primary education for junior cycle in the irish context, presently it can be regarded as implicit in the primary school curriculum rather than a defined theme or area of learning. the draft curriculum framework published by the national council for curriculum and assessment (ncca) in february 2020 includes wellbeing as one of five broad curriculum areas. this paper presents a critical reflection on the inclusion of wellbeing as an area of learning in a redeveloped primary school curriculum. keywords: wellbeing; curriculum redevelopment; primary school; educational policy; ireland 1. introduction in 1999 when the current iteration of the irish primary school curriculum was launched, its overall aims included developing each child’s potential to the full, encouraging a love of learning and helping children develop skills that they would use throughout their lives (government of ireland 1999a). it may well be argued that the wellbeing of each child was a central tenet of this curriculum, reflected in its vision to “nurture the child in all dimensions of his or her life-spiritual, moral, cognitive, emotional, imaginative, aesthetic, social and physical” (government of ireland 1999a, p.6). in the subject area of social, personal and health education (sphe), the wellbeing of the child is referenced, but it is not a term that is explicitly used throughout or indeed across the curriculum. twenty years later as the national council for curriculum and assessment (ncca) presents the draft primary curriculum framework for consultation, the wellbeing of each child is reflected in the key competencies and in the five broad curriculum areas proposed (ncca 2020). this reflects developments in wellbeing, not only in education, but in national policy in the intervening time. it also ensures that wellbeing is a central theme across all stages of education; from early childhood through to post-primary. while educators may be in agreement that the wellbeing of each child must be a paramount consideration, what exactly do we mean when we talk about wellbeing? about:blank wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 1.2 what is wellbeing? dodge et al. (2012) consider that wellbeing is the point of balance between the resources one has and the challenges one faces. this perspective, while worthy of reflection, does not adequately define wellbeing in a comprehensive way. indeed, defining wellbeing is not straightforward. in the first instance it is complicated by variations of its spelling (wellbeing, well-being, well being). this is reflected in irish educational policy documents. in the wellbeing guidelines for postprimary and primary schools published jointly by the department of education and skills (des) and the department of health (doh) in 2013 and 2015 respectively, the spelling is well-being, while the wellbeing policy statement and framework for practice published by des in 2018 refers to ‘wellbeing’ throughout. wellbeing is a very broad concept and encompasses many subsets such as emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, psychological wellbeing and mental health and wellbeing (svane et al. 2019). it is further complicated by the fact that it is a multidisciplinary concept applied across various fields from economics to politics, from counselling to education and across psychology and philosophy. in fact, following a systematic review of wellbeing literature, svane et al. (2019) concur with bache et al. (2015) that defining wellbeing is a ‘wicked’ problem given the multidimensional nature of the term and the many different definitions that exist. according to souttera, o’steena and gilmore (2014, p.497) “despite significant attention to conceptualising and evaluating well-being in academic and policy circles, well-being remains a narrowly defined, if not undefined, term in education, complicating efforts to plan for and monitor it effectively”. gillet-swan and sergeant (2015, p.146) conclude that “wellbeing is a highly popularised and aspirational concept in philosophical, psychological, medical and health literature”. despite this, “there has not been a clearly defined and workable definition of wellbeing that incorporates its multifaceted, multidimensional and progressive elements”. in the irish educational context, the development of wellbeing has been influenced by national policy developments and educational developments in other countries. 1.3 influences on the development of wellbeing in education the development of policy in relation to wellbeing in ireland is not just a matter for education, it is primary concern for the doh also and indeed for all government departments who work with and support children. significantly, the first national children’s strategy was published in ireland in 2000 and in many ways it provided an important blueprint for improving children’s lives, proposing a vision where children are respected as young citizens with a valued contribution to make and a voice of their own; where all children are cherished and supported by family and the wider society; where they enjoy a fulfilling childhood and realise their potential (des and doh, 2000). one of the significant outcomes of this initial strategy was the establishment of a national longitudinal study of children in ireland and as a result, the growing up in ireland study was launched. this government-funded study of children started in 2006 and follows the progress of 8,000 nine-year olds and 10,000 nine-month-olds. while the primary aim of the study is to inform government policy in relation to children and their families, the study objectives seek to examine the progress and wellbeing of children at critical periods from birth to adulthood. key findings from the cohort ’08 (the infant cohort) who were last interviewed at age nine indicate that most nine-year olds are doing well in terms of their socio-emotional and behavioural wellbeing (growingup.ie). this shows that national policy is being realised, despite the lack of definition in relation to wellbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 better outcomes, brighter futures: the national policy framework for children and young people 2014-2020 is the first national policy framework in ireland for children and young people and establishes a shared set of outcomes which all governments departments work towards. the first of five outcomes listed outlines that children will be active and healthy, with positive physical and mental wellbeing (government of ireland 2014). while the inclusion of wellbeing in the five outcomes highlights its priority, again there is a particular focus on mental wellbeing. there is a similar focus identified in the healthy ireland framework developed by the doh in 2013. this framework establishes a vision where ‘‘everyone can enjoy physical and mental health and wellbeing to their full potential, where wellbeing is valued and supported at every level of society and is everyone’s responsibility’’ (doh 2013, p.6). these policies confirm a cross-governmental approach to improve all aspects of health and wellbeing for children and young people. developments in wellbeing are also taking place in the irish educational context. they have been influenced by international educational developments, in particular those in scotland. wellbeing in scotland is described in terms of eight indicators; every child and young person should be safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included (https://www.gov.scot/policies/girfec/wellbeing-indicators-shanarri/). these indicators are adapted for use in the irish context with wellbeing indicators included in the post-primary guidelines (ncca 2017). the post-primary guidelines were updated in 2021 and the wellbeing indicators are included in the guidelines, with relevant descriptors for each indicator (ncca 2021). the status and place of wellbeing across curricula in other countries varies also. health and wellbeing education is part of the mandatory or state curriculum in many countries including australia, finland, denmark and new zealand. in scotland, personal wellbeing occupies a more prominent curriculum role and is, along with literacy and numeracy, one of three key responsibilities of all teachers, and a subject specific responsibility for those teachers who have a specific health and wellbeing remit (thornburn 2015). in other countries, health and wellbeing education finds itself vying for a place in official curriculum structures and is relegated to the status of non-statutory (leahy and simovska 2017). indeed, arguments are well documented about the rise of ‘therapeutic’ education in the context of wellbeing education (young 2013). these arguments contend that therapeutic education is turning children and young people into anxious and self-preoccupied individuals rather than aspiring, optimistic and resilient learners. while beck (2012) argues that there is a dearth of reliable evidence in relation to this claim, there clearly has been a rise in social and emotional learning programmes in schools. barry et al (2017) have shown that the integration and sustainability of such programmes within the context of whole-school systems is far from clearly established. indeed, o toole (2017, p.453) considers that wellbeing is an area that straddles the disciplinary fields of education, psychology and health and as a result there is a “pressing need to scrutinise current approaches in schools and to develop conceptual models that resonate with researchers and practitioners across the disciplinary boundaries”. developing a conceptual model from the interdisciplinary fields would be most useful in considering the place of wellbeing in the next iteration of the primary school curriculum. 2. educational and curriculum policy developments relating to wellbeing this section will pick up on some of the above developments in the irish context and trace, in a chronological manner, the development of education and curriculum policy with regard to wellbeing. it is interesting that wellbeing was first introduced to the early years sector, then to the junior cycle programme and then to primary education. it is not yet addressed at senior cycle. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://www.gov.scot/policies/girfec/wellbeing-indicators-shanarri/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 2.1 early childhood while the place of wellbeing can be described as implicit within the current irish primary school curriculum, the initial inclusion of wellbeing in irish education dates back to 2009 when aistear, the early childhood curriculum framework for children from birth to six years was published. the framework uses four interconnected themes to describe the content of children’s learning and development: wellbeing, identity and belonging, communicating and exploring and thinking (ncca 2009). wellbeing, in this context, is outlined as having two major components: physical and psychological. the aistear framework is experienced by many pupils in the primary school context, particularly in the infant classes (age four to six years). in practice, classrooms are often divided into interest areas such as; a construction area, a pretend play area, a quiet area and a messy play area and children engage in learning through a range of activities often linked to a particular theme. it is intended that these experiences will support the development of the children’s physical and psychological wellbeing. 2.2 post-primary education in terms of wellbeing at post-primary education, the well-being in post-primary schools: guidelines for mental health promotion and suicide prevention were published in 2013. the purpose of these guidelines was to support schools in developing a whole-school approach to mental health promotion and suicide prevention (des and doh 2013). the overarching focus of the guidelines is on a whole-school approach based on the continuum of support proposed by the national educational psychological service, with which schools are familiar. although all schools received a copy of the guidelines, given that there was no specific circular from the des at the time alerting schools to their importance or no continuous professional development opportunities whereby teachers could engage with their content, the guidelines may have had limited impact in schools. in 2015, the framework for junior cycle in post-primary was published. wellbeing is one of the principles that underpins junior cycle education. irish students now undertake learning in a new area entitled ‘wellbeing’ throughout the three years of junior cycle. the associated curriculum guidelines were published in 2017 and revised in 2021. it is interesting to note the change in spelling from the des at this point, from ‘well-being’ to ‘wellbeing’. this highlights the evolving nature of the concept. while the guidelines outline that teachers in all subjects can support student learning in the area of wellbeing, there is “a strong emphasis on the role that civic, social and political education (cspe), physical education (pe) and social, personal and health education (sphe) can play in supporting learning about wellbeing and learning for wellbeing” (ncca 2017, p.46). the place of wellbeing in senior cycle education is at the discretion of the school as no formal guidelines for its implementation are developed. this is a clear gap in provision and fails to seize the opportunity that wellbeing education could provide for students as they engage in a highly pressurised examination system and prepare to embark on a significant transition from school and home life to that of work or further education. 2.3 primary education while wellbeing is not an area of learning, or a ‘theme’ in primary school education, it is certainly a term that has become part of the language of the primary school context in recent years. in terms of curriculum at primary level, the subject area of sphe, introduced in 1999, has always promoted the wellbeing of students. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 “social, personal and health education provides particular opportunities to foster the personal development, health and well-being of the child and to help him/her to create and maintain supportive relationships and become an active and responsible citizen in society” (government of ireland 1999b, p.2). the current sphe curriculum supports many aspects of wellbeing, including helping children to develop both intrapersonal and inter-personal skills and to establish and maintain healthy patterns of behaviour. furthermore, discrete areas are addressed that relate to wellbeing and include; self-identity and self-esteem, relationships and sexuality education, substance use, friendship and bullying, personal safety, decision making and feelings and emotions. sphe has a very limited amount of curriculum time with just thirty minutes per week, the least amount of time given to any curricular area. furthermore, given that it is twenty years since the curriculum was published, teachers do not seem to consider its real relevance in the current wellbeing space and tend to consider that wellbeing is something additional to sphe. as with post-primary, wellbeing in primary schools: guidelines for mental health promotion were published in 2015 (des and doh 2015). although the title has no reference to suicide prevention, the content of the guidelines is based on the post-primary school version. in a study undertaken with irish primary school teachers on wellbeing, it emerged that many of the teachers were not aware that the guidelines were published and available in schools (nohilly and tynan 2019). in 2018 the wellbeing policy statement and framework for practice (2018-2023) was published by the des, and is relevant for all schools and centres of education. in his foreword, the then minister for education, joe mchugh, outlined that he had “set as a target that all schools and centres for education will have embedded a self-evaluation wellbeing promotion process by 2023” (des 2018, p.1). this framework therefore will become an important guideline for primary schools in the more formal development of wellbeing practices in schools. the framework promotes a whole-school approach to wellbeing through the four key areas of culture and environment, curriculum, policy and planning and relationships and partnerships. these four areas are informed by the schools for health process, an initiative of the health service executive (hse). school self-evaluation (sse) is the vehicle by which the process will become embedded in schools. the requirement to use sse to manage change within an educational context is not new. since 1999, the school development planning support initiative has been introduced to schools, promoting processes of reflection, use of evidence and action planning. in 2012, following the launch of the literacy and numeracy for learning and life, 2011-2020 strategy, sse was introduced to schools and schools have since engaged with the process in an effort to improve standards in literacy, numeracy and other areas of teaching and learning. the wellbeing framework requires that schools “commit to a process of self-reflection to identify existing strengths, opportunities and challenges in their practice and incorporate a wellbeing promotion process into their existing planning and self-evaluation processes” (des 2018, p.24). although the des have established a dedicated sse website for primary and post-primary schools and have delivered a number of important updates to schools via circulars and ‘sse update’ newsletters, the requirements for schools in the area of wellbeing have not been clearly outlined, resulting in a lack of awareness from the schools’ perspective in relation to requirements. furthermore, the framework was published in july 2018, when schools were closed for the summer break. although wellbeing will be a key priority for schools following the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, many teachers are unaware of the requirements of the framework. the recently published draft primary curriculum framework for irish primary schools proposes that wellbeing will be included as a curriculum area in the next iteration of curriculum. the framework is due to be finalised and published in 2021, and the development of curriculum http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 area specifications is proposed to be completed by 2024. the draft framework proposes a set of seven key competencies that are closely linked to both the aistear and the junior cycle framework and ‘fostering wellbeing’ is one of the seven key competencies outlined. wellbeing then, is one of five broad curriculum areas proposed for the redeveloped curriculum and incorporates the subject areas of social, personal and values education and physical and health education. of particular note is the increased time that is being considered for the area; two and a half hours per week at the infant level and three hours per week from first to sixth class (ncca 2020). while the proposed inclusion of wellbeing in the redeveloped curriculum is most welcome as is the increased time, the content and changes to the structure of the current sphe and pe curricula will take particular negotiation and consideration. 3. definitions of wellbeing in education policy in the field of education, there are different interpretations of wellbeing and again, wellbeing and mental health are presented as synonymous in some documents (des and doh; 2013; 2015). indeed, the terms are often used interchangeable and unsurprisingly, are also interlinked in research (svane et al. 2019). in recent years, the discourse in relation to mental health has dominated, particularly in the context of school life. my world survey 2, the national study of youth mental health in ireland, presents a second wave of data on youth mental health in ireland and highlights that levels of depression and anxiety have increased in adolescents and young adults (12-19 years) since the first survey was completed in 2012. furthermore, levels of self-esteem, optimism and resilience; key protective factors in supporting mental health have decreased (dooley et al. 2019). despite the concerning growth in rates of anxiety among young people, a focus on mental health alone narrows the concept of wellbeing, particularly in the school context. many definitions of wellbeing are presented in educational policy documents (des and doh 2015; ncca 2017 and 2021; des 2018). furthermore, a ‘wellbeing working group’, consisting of representation from the teaching council and irish primary principals’ network propose a definition of wellbeing for schools (authors). as the literature has highlighted, wellbeing is a ‘wicked’ problem and difficult to define, however a definition in the school context enables a common understanding across the whole school community. the definitions share the importance of the students’ experience at school, including quality teaching and learning and a sense of belonging to the school community. the development of a conceptual framework to contextualise wellbeing would certainly support a broader understanding in the area and situate wellbeing within an educational framework. the multiple interpretations presented in the field of education has the potential to cause further confusion of an already complicated concept, or alternatively, it may offer schools choice in selecting a definition that is suitable to the context of the school. given the requirement for schools to engage with the des wellbeing policy statement and framework for practice (2018), the definition of wellbeing presented therein is likely to be accepted by many schools. specifically, the des definition considers that wellbeing is present when a person realises their potential, is resilient in dealing with the normal stresses of their life, takes care of their physical wellbeing and has a sense of purpose, connection and belonging to a wider community. it is a fluid way of being and needs nurturing throughout life (des 2018, p.10). the concept of wellbeing as fluid takes account of the multiplicity of factors that impact on wellbeing and furthermore of the potential for a state of wellbeing to be influenced by a range of external factors. it is important to consider wellbeing as a continuum with consideration of illbeing as part of the reality of human development. simply put, illbeing represents a lack of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 wellbeing (o’brien and o’shea 2017). when illbeing is considered within a normative context, the concept can be viewed negatively as a state of illbeing such as negative moods, thoughts or feelings can be seen as a contradiction to wellbeing. however, as disruptions and setbacks are an integral part of wellbeing achievement, illbeing is therefore part of wellbing. teachers and students have knowledge and experience of illbeing as part of the reality of human development and there is space for this experience to be included in an exploration of wellbeing. if it is ignored, students may interpret wellbeing as a solely positive state and ignore the circumstances where wellbeing struggles to flourish and be meaningful in practice. illbeing is part of the human experience and can be seen as “crucial for human flourishing” (o’brien and o’shea 2017, p.30). while the place of wellbeing in the curriculum is so important, and particularly welcome in the primary school context, pupil experiences of wellbeing at school extends far beyond the curriculum space. 4. the influence of schools on the wellbeing of pupils it is widely accepted that schools are settings that can have a great impact on the health and wellbeing of young people, given the influence they have on children at such an important stage in their lives (deschesnes et al. 2014). wellbeing has gained a prominent position on the educational landscape due to the wellbeing-learning connection. wellbeing supports young people’s cognitive and emotional engagement with school which influences educational achievement (pietarinen, soini and phyalto 2014). considering that pupils spend the majority of their school day in the classroom, “the day-to-day experience of teaching and learning within the classroom probably provides the greatest opportunity to contribute to student wellbeing” (ncca 2017, p.32). teachers, in their everyday teaching support the wellbeing of pupils through the implementation of the aistear curriculum, the use of varied active methodologies and the implementation of a broad and balanced curriculum (tynan and nohilly 2018). when pupils have rich and engaging experiences of teaching and learning, across the curriculum, this is a key contributing factor to wellbeing in school. indeed, one of the key successes of the 1999 primary school curriculum has been teachers’ increased use of active learning methodologies, while one of the major challenges relates to curriculum overload (ncca 2020). reviewing and redeveloping the curriculum provides an important and timely opportunity to address curriculum overload, whilst ensuring pupils continue to experience rich and engaging learning experiences. the school culture and climate is integral to wellbeing in schools. school culture and climate is difficult to define because much of it is unspoken and taken for granted (tynan and nohilly 2018). school culture is concerned with the norms and expectations that exist within an organisation. these shared views and beliefs may result from underlying individual values and assumptions and exert a powerful influence on psychological wellbeing and much of school culture is not very explicit but exists in the hidden curriculum of the school. climate refers to how a school’s environment affects an individual’s sense of psychological safety, and the degree to which the environment promotes a sense of accomplishment and competence (dessel 2010). the sphe curriculum advocates that a positive school culture and climate fosters the wellbeing of all members of the school and reflects an environment where everyone feels safe and experiences a sense of belonging (government of ireland 1999b). the junior cycle wellbeing guidelines (ncca 2017), informed by the work of o’brien and o’ shea (2017), highlight the central role that schools play in pupils learning about wellbeing and learning for wellbeing. accordingly, learning about wellbeing occurs through specific areas of the curriculum and through wellbeing events that develop awareness, knowledge and skills about wellbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 learning for wellbeing occurs when pupils’ whole experiences of school life, including the dayto-day interactions, both within and beyond the classroom, are respectful and caring. learning for wellbeing takes account of the importance of school culture and climate. the for wellbeing is as important as the about wellbeing, but because the about wellbeing relates to curriculum and wellbeing events, it tends to dominate the wellbeing space. each individual classroom environment within a school has its own unique climate and is the space occupied by primary school pupils for the majority of the school day. the classroom climate impacts significantly on the quality of learning, pupil motivation and pupil engagement in classroom tasks. teachers create the ‘atmosphere’ in the classroom through the attitude displayed to students, the classroom rules created, the interactions with pupils and the language used in the classroom (tynan and nohilly 2018). pupils contribute to the classroom environment in a significant way also and should be encouraged to support the development of classroom rules and given responsibilities. the teacher-pupil relationship is a significant factor in pupil wellbeing. positive relationships with teachers and a feeling of safety are important for pupil wellbeing within schools (jamal et al. 2013). pupils having a positive relationship with their teachers may contribute to school connectedness, which is identified as an environment where pupils believe adults in the school care about their learning and about them as individuals (blum et al. 2004). a large body of international evidence shows an association between the quality of relationships between pupils and teachers and a number of pupil outcomes including; socioemotional wellbeing, engagement in schoolwork, feeling a sense of belonging in school, disciplinary problems and academic achievement (ncca 2017). learning for wellbeing will be significantly influenced by the classroom climate and in turn will support pupils learning about wellbeing. the wellbeing of teachers and all school staff cannot be ignored. high levels of teacher wellbeing have been shown to have significant positive effect across a number of domains including health, life and chosen occupation (turner and theilking 2019). weare (2015) considers that wellbeing in schools starts with staff. if teachers feel uncared for and burnt out themselves, it is hard for them to be genuinely motivated to promote the wellbeing of others. part of the task of putting wellbeing on the school map involves creating opportunities for staff to consider their own wellbeing (ncca 2017). support for the wellbeing of staff is acknowledged in the des wellbeing policy statement and framework for practice. in addition to building staff capacity to cope with challenge and adapt to change, it sustains engagement, enthusiasm and ability to model resilience (des 2018). 5. considerations for wellbeing in a redeveloped primary curriculum undoubtedly, wellbeing has taken its place on the national agenda in ireland. this is evident in terms of national policy development and consequently, in terms of education policy developments. the inclusion of wellbeing as a key competency and as a broad curriculum area in the draft primary curriculum framework is very welcome and will ensure continuity from early childhood experiences through to junior cycle of post-primary education. however, given the ambiguity that surrounds the term, coupled with the fact that wellbeing is so much more than a curriculum experience for pupils, wellbeing in a redeveloped primary school curriculum needs to be understood and organised so that is takes account of the holistic school experience of pupils. even though it is over a decade since the aistear framework was launched, no systematic evaluation of the implementation of the framework in the infant classes in ireland has been undertaken (smyth 2012). consequently, it is difficult to determine how wellbeing is integrated into children’s learning at this stage. continuous professional development of the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 implementation of aistear was not made available by the des to all teachers, and this has impacted on implementation also. wellbeing as an area of learning in junior cycle is also in its infancy. an exploratory study completed as part of a master’s thesis on the impact of the involvement of teachers of sphe, civic, social and political education (cspe) and pe in the new wellbeing programme at junior cycle provides some insight into how wellbeing is taking shape in post-primary education. the findings indicate an overall positive response from teachers involved in delivering the wellbeing programme, however the study highlights that teachers continue to teach their subject areas without consideration of the key skill of wellbeing at junior cycle or the wellbeing indicators, which are a feature of the junior cycle wellbeing guidelines. the study also recommended that time and support to enable collaboration amongst teachers should be provided, given that collaborative practice is key to the successful implementation of wellbeing (ryan 2018). it is important that further research is undertaken on the implementation of wellbeing at junior cycle, and that the findings and recommendations inform future developments in the primary school sector. otherwise, pupils’ wellbeing experience will be rooted in learning about wellbeing and wellbeing may become an umbrella term within which subject areas exist without real content or meaning. there is also the scope to bring wellbeing into the curriculum at senior cycle to ensure students leave their post-primary schooling with age-appropriate refined skills to support their health and wellbeing. fattore, mason and watson (2007) consider that wellbeing in schools is often viewed from a deficit perspective and interventions are implemented in a spurious manner in an attempt to fix a perceived problem. given that wellbeing has weaved its way into the primary school curriculum space in a somewhat ad-hoc manner, it can certainly be argued that a plethora of wellbeing programmes and initiatives, aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of children have made their way into schools. some examples include mindfulness practices, friends for life, zippy’s friends, mindup, and weaving wellbeing. indeed these programmes, while loosely based on curriculum, and in particular the objectives of sphe strand and strand units, become a replacement for curriculum. the subject area of sphe is completely overwhelmed by the number of programmes and resources that are available to schools to support its implementation. this takes teachers further and further away from the objectives of the curriculum and leads to unnecessary feelings of confusion and complication regarding subject implementation. ensuring that the content of the wellbeing area, and the related subject areas is detailed and comprehensive enough so that it does not become replaced by commercial programmes is a key consideration in curriculum reform. creating choice should not come at a price of fragmentation and incoherence! the recently published wellbeing policy statement and framework for practice (des 2018), which will influence wellbeing developments in the primary sector will need to be considered in light of the ongoing work of the ncca on the redevelopment of the primary school curriculum. the current timeline for developments proposes that following a consultation process, the ncca will develop a specification for each curriculum area and this is due for completion by summer 2024. in terms of the wellbeing policy statement, schools have until 2023 to engage in a whole-school self-evaluation process of wellbeing through the four key areas of culture and environment, curriculum, policy and planning and relationships and partnerships. this timeline has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and may need to be extended. in order to avoid further confusion for schools and teachers about an already ‘wicked’ problem, it is important that there is a clear alignment between the des wellbeing policy and the ongoing work of the ncca. the work undertaken by schools in the area of wellbeing in the coming years should provide a strong foundation upon which schools can build and develop meaningful wellbeing practices. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 similar to the multiple definitions of wellbeing, word associations related to wellbeing or wellbeing subsets including emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, psychological wellbeing and mental health and wellbeing complicate the area and add to its multidimensional nature (svane et al. 2019). the my world survey highlights that the number one health issue for young people is their mental health (dooley and fitzgerald 2012). this is the component of wellbeing teachers feel least qualified to address. while it is important that mental health does not overshadow the other components of wellbeing in the school setting, planning for wellbeing must pay particular attention to this area and ensure school personnel feel competent in supporting children on a day-to-day basis in schools and have access to knowledge on pathways and routes of referral for pupils with particular mental health needs. furthermore, the development of an interdisciplinary conceptual framework for wellbeing in education, which takes account of its multidimensional nature, is important and necessary to conceptualise wellbeing within an educational realm and ensure that the multiplicity of factors that influence pupil wellbeing are considered. schools play a central role in promoting the moral, social, spiritual and personal development of pupils. there is no doubt that wellbeing that incorporates learning about and for wellbeing should feature as a core component of future curriculum iterations. but investment in terms of adequate time for the area, adequate research in terms of what the curriculum component should comprise and adequate support and professional development for teachers are required to enable success of our educational wellbeing initiatives. the review and redevelopment of the primary school curriculum that is underway by the ncca is a very exciting time for primary education. the potential to include wellbeing as an area of learning across primary schools reflects what teachers value in schools and is important for the development of our young people and our school communities. making it a meaningful process for all involves making our wellbeing policy meaningful! conflict of interest statement the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding statement this research was not supported by any grants or other funding. authors margaret nohilly mary immaculate college, ireland margaret.nohilly@mic.ul.ie fionnuala tynan mary immaculate college, ireland authors’ contributions both m.n. and f.t. conceptualised and wrote the article and contributed to the final manuscript. publishing timeline received 10 august 2021 revised version received 20 december 2021 accepted 20 december 2021 published 31 january 2022 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mailto:margaret.nohilly@mic.ul.ie wellbeing in educational policy in ireland nohilly & tynan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 references bache, i., l. reardon, and p. anand. 2015. “wellbeing as a wicked problem: negotiating the arguments for the role of government”. journal of happiness studies, 17(3), 893-912. beck, j. 2012. “reinstating knowledge: diagnoses and prescriptions for england’s curriculum ills”. international studies in sociology of education, 22(1), 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http://www.ncca.ie/en/curriculum_and_assessment/early_childhood_and_primary_education/early_childhood_education/framework_for_early_learning/ http://www.ncca.ie/en/curriculum_and_assessment/early_childhood_and_primary_education/early_childhood_education/framework_for_early_learning/ http://www.juniorcycle.ie/ncca_juniorcycle/media/ncca/curriculum/wellbeing/wellbeing-guidelines-for-junior-cycle.pdf http://www.juniorcycle.ie/ncca_juniorcycle/media/ncca/curriculum/wellbeing/wellbeing-guidelines-for-junior-cycle.pdf https://ncca.ie/media/4456/ncca-primary-curriculum-framework-2020.pdf https://ncca.ie/media/4456/ncca-primary-curriculum-framework-2020.pdf https://doi.org/10.22230/ijepl.2019v15n12a886 https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2016/03/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-leaflet/documents/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/govscot%3adocument/00498280.pdf https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2016/03/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-leaflet/documents/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/govscot%3adocument/00498280.pdf https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2016/03/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-leaflet/documents/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/govscot%3adocument/00498280.pdf https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2016/03/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-leaflet/documents/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/govscot%3adocument/00498280.pdf https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2016/03/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-leaflet/documents/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/getting-right-child-understanding-wellbeing-considering-quality-children-young-peoples-lives/govscot%3adocument/00498280.pdf http://www.iier.waier.org.au/iier29/turner2-abs.html schueller, s. m.., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c., (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 91-98. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 stephen schueller first author’s university first author’s email copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 article synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting metaanalyses stephen m. schueller · todd b. kashdan · acacia c. parks abstract: systematic reviews, such as meta-analyses, are highly valued within scientific, professional, and lay communities because they provide an easily digestible aggregate of a large body of work. a recently published meta-analysis of positive psychology interventions concluded that these interventions have small effects and argued for the use of these interventions in diverse populations (bolier et al., 2013). we caution researchers against drawing conclusions from this study because of the unusual definition of what is (and is not) a positive psychological intervention. bolier and colleagues (2013) define their area of inquiry as “pure positive psychology interventions” and limit their sample to studies conducted within the years following the formal founding of the positive psychology movement. this decision – while well intentioned, as it provides specificity to their criteria for inclusion – is, in our view, too narrow, excluding a host of studies that use the same intervention strategies and target the same outcomes but do not explicitly reference “positive psychology”. the inclusion criteria of a systematic review directly impact its findings and conclusions. using the criterion of papers that explicitly reference positive psychology creates an arbitrary boundary that reflects neither the research nor practice of the field; the best practitioners prioritize effectiveness and efficiency over explicit ties to “positive psychology”. arbitrary boundaries hinder science and impair the ability of researchers, clinicians, and the general public to draw accurate conclusions from the findings. it also limits the metaanalyst’s ability to conduct moderation analysis that can help drive the field forward by answering research questions that are difficult to address in a single study. positive psychology and psychology more generally would benefit from definitions of terms that are conceptually-based and thus meta-analyses that are theoretically sound. keywords: meta-analysis, positive psychology, moderator analysis, interventions, definition 1. background the proliferation of interventions aimed at increasing positive emotions, behaviors, and thoughts has led to increasingly nuanced questions about the efficacy of such interventions (lyubomirsky & layous, 2013), the application of such interventions to new, unique populations (froh, kashdan, ozimkowski, & miller, 2009; meyer, johnson, parks, iwanski, & penn, 2012), new settings (huppert & johnson, 2010; reivich, seligman, & mcbride, 2011; seligman, rashid, & parks, 2006), and new modes of delivery (parks & szanto, 2013; schueller & parks, 2012). although these interventions first surfaced in the research literature 35 years ago (fordyce, 1977), their presence has multiplied over the last decade thanks to an increasing interest by researchers within the positive psychology community in their design and application and a growing http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ synthesizing positive psychological interventions schueller, kashdan, & parks www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 appreciation of the importance of positive behaviors, cognitions, and emotions in mental health care. given the number of studies, researchers and practitioners require updated, accurate summaries of the field. a recently published meta-analysis concluded that positive psychology interventions are effective in increasing subjective wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and in reducing depressive symptoms with small effect sizes, on average (bolier et al., 2013). these findings are consistent with a previous meta-analysis (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009) and with other qualitative reviews of the field (lyubomirsky & layous, 2013; schueller & parks, 2014). however, the usefulness of the meta-analysis by bolier and colleagues (2013) is hampered by its narrow conception of which interventions to include. we argue for the consideration of positive psychological interventions rather than positive psychology interventions to emphasize the importance of including interventions that are conceptually aligned with the goals of the positive psychology movement rather than only those that explicitly identify positive psychology within their published studies (parks & biswas-diener, 2013). we want to promote a discussion of what positive psychological interventions, defined more inclusively, would entail and to encourage those interested to read bolier and colleagues (2013), available as an open-access journal article, and to consider our commentary in light of their work. 2. what is a positive psychological intervention? a positive psychological intervention promotes positive emotions, behaviors, and/or thoughts, thereby increasing the wellbeing of an individual or group (parks & biswas-diener, 2013). this definition underscores two essential components of positive psychological intervention: (1) the intervention’s goal and (2) the pathways via which the intervention operates. in order to be considered a positive psychological intervention, an intervention’s goal must target wellbeing, broadly defined. in intervention studies, wellbeing is commonly defined and measured from a subjective wellbeing approach. in this perspective, wellbeing is a sum of positive evaluations of one’s life (cognitive) and frequent experiences of positive emotions and infrequent experiences of negative emotions (affective) (diener, 2000). raising one’s wellbeing thus increases positive facets and decreases negative facets. intervention studies use diverse outcomes to cover these facets including increases in happiness, satisfaction with life, and positive emotions and decreases in depressive symptoms and negative emotions. both existing meta-analyses on interventions within positive psychology summarize these outcomes (bolier et al., 2013; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). other facets of wellbeing, however, are equally important and even measures commonly associated uniquely with either hedonic or eudaimonic approaches to wellbeing, often proposed as distinct concepts, often work and move in tandem (kashdan, biswas-diener, & king, 2008). meeting the goal criterion alone, however, does not suffice to differentiate positive psychological interventions from many other interventions (e.g., cognitive-behavioral therapies), and so the pathway by which the intervention operates must also be evaluated. positive psychological interventions must operate via mechanisms that are known to promote positive emotions, behaviors, and/or thoughts rather than fixing deficits or addressing maladaptive patterns. to incorporate this pathway aspect, bolier and colleagues’ (2013) specify that interventions must “have been explicitly developed with the theoretical tradition of positive psychology (usually reported in the introduction section of the article)” (pg. 3). bolier and colleagues (2013) further operationalize this in their search criteria by including only interventions “covering the period from 1998 (the start of the positive psychology movement) to november 2012” (one article, lichter, haye, and kammann (1980), included in the analysis was published prior to this date). although bolier and colleagues (2013) drew on sin and http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/13/119 synthesizing positive psychological interventions schueller, kashdan, & parks www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 lyubomirsky’s (2009) criteria, this criterion is more selective than sin and lyubomirsky’s (2009), which only required that a study test “an intervention, therapy, or activity primarily aimed at increasing positive feelings, positive behaviors, or positive cognitions” (pg. 469). indeed, of the 51 studies included in sin and lyubomirsky (2009) and 39 included by bolier and colleagues, 16 overlapped. as an alternative to the approach used by bolier and colleagues (2013), we posit that this pathways component be based on accumulated knowledge of the affective, behavioral, cognitive, and motivational processes that support wellbeing. indeed, sufficient evidence exists to detail some of these differences (lyubomirsky, 2001), highlighting strategies such as gratitude, kindness, optimism, savoring, and mindfulness to name a few. other alternatives could include a thorough conceptual mapping of the field of positive psychology (e.g., rusk & waters, 2013). conceptual and empirical considerations would provide a better representation of the practices of the field than an explicit reference to “positive psychology”, which might merely represent biases, preferences, or interests of the publishing author or journal. 3. impact on the field we believe that the definition employed by bolier et al. (2013), restricted to “positive psychology” interventions, is conceptually limited and left uncorrected will stand to weaken subsequent research. the first problem is that how a meta-analysis defines a construct sets a precedent for how that construct should be defined in future studies. it is important, then, to address any problems with bolier and colleagues’ (2013) definition before it becomes widely used. their narrow definition has the potential to significantly silo the field by including only work conducted by those who explicitly acknowledge positive psychology. positive psychology would benefit from being more inclusive and integrated with research that shares clear conceptual overlap. as an example, consider the research on values affirmations (cohen & sherman, 2014). in laboratory intervention studies, researchers ask people to reflect on the self-defined, abstract, life principles that serve to guide personal goals and the dedication of effort to what is most meaningful and important to them (cook, purdie-vaughns, garcia, & cohen, 2012; creswell et al., 2005). after this act, participants enter a threatening environment. across multiple studies, researchers have found that value affirmations lessen psychological and physiological indices of stress and improve performance compared to control conditions (martens, johns, greenberg, & schimel, 2006; schmeichel & vohs, 2009). in none of these studies is “positive psychology” mentioned and there are no citations to papers seminal to the positive psychology movement. bolier and colleagues’ (2013) inclusion criteria also do not allow for including any work in relevant areas that preceded the founding of the field. positive psychology did not create the exploration of increasing wellbeing and a substantial base of empirical work existed prior to its inception (e.g., fordyce, 1977). as another example, a rapidly expanding body of literature is accumulating on the “best possible self” intervention (austenfeld, paolo, & stanton, 2006; austenfeld & stanton, 2008; boehm, lyubormirsky, & sheldon, 2011; hanssen, peters, vlaeyen, meevissen, & vancleef, 2013; king, 2001; king & miner, 2000; layous, nelson, & lyubomirsky, 2013; lyubomirsky, dickerhoof, boehm, & sheldon, 2011; meevissen, peters, & alberts, 2011; oyserman, bybee, & terry, 2006; peters, flink, boersma, & linton, 2010; peters, meevissen, & hanssen, 2013; sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2006), a positive psychological intervention that promotes optimistic thinking by having individuals imagine a future where everything has gone as well as it possibly could. promoting optimism is clearly in line with the goals of positive psychological practices and synthesizing positive psychological interventions schueller, kashdan, & parks www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 theoretical and empirical support exists for its inclusion using the pathways criterion we proposed earlier. indeed, bolier and colleagues (2013) included several studies of this intervention in their meta-analysis (boehm et al., 2011; king, 2001; layous et al., 2013; lyubomirsky et al., 2011; peters et al., 2010; sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2006) but omitted others (e.g., austenfeld et al., 2006; austenfeld & stanton, 2008; hanssen et al., 2013; king & miner, 2000; meevissen et al. 2011; oyserman et al., 2006; peters et al., 2013). as such, one cannot make conclusions whether the “best possible self” is efficacious or understand how this intervention might compare to positive psychological interventions using different pathways (e.g., kindness, gratitude, etc.). bolier and colleagues’ (2013) proposed solution is to conduct meta-analyses that are restricted to specific types of interventions; however, approaching the field in this way limits the ability to make comparisons within a meta-analysis and ignoring specific research areas might bias a meta-analysis of positive psychological interventions (e.g., bolier et al., 2013). the importance of comparisons within a meta-analysis relates to another consequence of using a narrow definition of positive psychology interventions. such an approach limits confidence in the conclusions, especially with regards to moderating factors. bolier and colleagues’ (2013) conclusion was that interventions produced small effects on subjective wellbeing (d = .34), which was considerably smaller than the medium-sized effect (r = .29, which corresponds to d = .61) found by sin and lyubomirsky (2009). this difference was even more pronounced for depressive symptoms (d = .23 for bolier et al., 2013; r = .31 for sin & lyubomirsky, 2009, which corresponds to d = .65). bolier and colleagues (2013) also concluded that longer, individual interventions delivered to people experiencing psychosocial problems and recruited via the healthcare system were the most effective interventions (bolier et al., 2013). it is unclear if these results would hold if other interventions were included (e.g., mindfulness, reminiscence, forgiveness, value affirmation). an open question here is whether interventions labeled explicitly as positive psychology interventions have any bias in their design, reporting, or likelihood of publication that would subsequently bias findings using only these studies as a basis for analysis. this could be explored in a subsequent review if its answer is deemed valuable to the field. 4. advancing positive psychological interventions meta-analyses serve as summaries of the state of the field (i.e., what works, what does not work) and highlight potential avenues for future exploration (e.g., moderator findings suggest design considerations for future studies and possible mechanisms of action). as such, inclusion criteria require conceptual sophistication, as many others will use these criteria to define what does and does not belong within the scope of a field. the meta-analysis by bolier and colleagues (2013) surveyed a narrow selection of positive psychology interventions. specifically, their criteria silo the field by examining only those interventions that explicitly reference positive psychology and that occurred after the formal founding of the field. this approach is inconsistent with how positive psychology operates in both research and in practice. positive psychology draws heavily from previous movements including humanistic psychology, community psychology, and virtue ethics. its practices overlap with techniques developed and practiced elsewhere including mindfulness (from buddhist tradition), goal pursuit (from cognitive therapy), and exploring values (from acceptance and commitment therapy). it draws from traditions of research that long predate the term “positive psychology,” but that are clearly relevant, including humor, positive emotion, forgiveness, savoring and gratitude, among others. researchers and practitioners in positive psychology do not draw the arbitrary boundaries used by bolier and colleagues (2013). enforcing such a boundary, therefore, paints a picture of the state of the field that is inaccurate. synthesizing positive psychological interventions schueller, kashdan, & parks www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 one goal of positive psychology is to provide “a balanced, empirically grounded, and theoretically rich view of human experience” (gable & haidt, 2005, pg. 109). in light of this goal, we should strive to be integrative and comprehensive in our methods rather than narrow and specific. as an alternative to the approach used by bolier and colleagues (2013), we posit that this pathways component be based on accumulated knowledge of what impacts wellbeing. positive psychology is a broad tent and positive psychological interventions encompass a range of techniques. systematic reviews should address how well all of these practices work on average and seek to gain advice about the best ways to design, explore, and implement these practices. conceptualizing what constitutes a positive psychological intervention, however, is just one challenge for the field revealed by these recent meta-analyses. another related issue, revealed by the existing meta-analysis, as well as our definition, is what are the targets of interventions. both bolier and colleagues (2013) and sin and lyubomirsky (2009) required that studies include measures of wellbeing or depressive symptoms. although wellbeing makes conceptual sense from the framework of positive psychology, the use of depressive symptoms is a bizarre attachment of intervention research in the field. after all, a core assumption of positive psychology is that applied psychology (clinical, counseling, etc.) is insufficient for improving the human condition, with its lengthy attachment to moving people from suffering (-5) to a normal range of distress (-1). in addition, there is a need for interventions that move people from average psychological and physical health (0) to a state of flourishing (+3 or higher) (duckworth, steen, & seligman, 2005). based on this clearly articulated framework of positive psychology, reductions in depressive symptoms (capturing nothing more than a reduction in psychological distress) over the course of a positive psychological intervention offers nothing beyond the primary outcomes being used in clinical psychology and psychiatry. increasingly, positive psychological interventions are being aimed at clinical populations, such as people with schizophrenia (meyer et al., 2012), smokers who wish to stop smoking (kahler et al., 2014), and suicidal inpatients (huffman et al., 2013), but with the focus being on building the positive aspects in these individuals as opposed to reducing the negative. a broader definition focusing on positive psychological interventions will undoubtedly capture a broader range of targets and outcomes and future analyses should ensure that outcome measures are aligned with the conceptual framework of the interventions. conflict of interest statement the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors steven m. schueller northwestern university schueller@northwestern.edu todd kashdan george mason university tkashdan@gmu.edu acacia parks hiram college parksac@hiram.edu synthesizing positive psychological interventions schueller, kashdan, & parks www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 publishing timeline received 1 april 2014 accepted 3 april 2014 published 5 june 2014 references austenfeld, j. l., paolo, a. m., & stanton, a. l. 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(2019). flourishing families: effects of a positive psychology intervention on parental flow, engagement, meaning and hope. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), 7996. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i4.1003 selja pentti vaasa central hospital selja.pentti@vshp.fi copyright belongs to the author(s) 79 article flourishing families: effects of a positive psychology intervention on parental flow, engagement, meaning and hope selja pentti · åse fagerlund · pär nyström abstract: few studies have investigated how positive psychology can be applied in a family context to enhance parenting. this study used an 8-week strength-based intervention on engagement, meaning, hope and flow in a wait-list group design (n=63) within an ongoing larger-scale study in finland – “flourishing families”. well-being was measured by questionnaires and daily life experiences using the experience sampling method (esm). data showed a significant increase in flow in daily life when parents spent time with their child/children. contrary to the hypothesis, the questionnaires did not reveal any significant increase in engagement, meaning or hope. we conclude that positive psychology interventions may be advantageous to improve parenting and parent-child interaction in daily life, but this may not be evident in parents’ self-report. keywords: strength-based parenting, flow, esm, engagement, meaning, hope working definition of wellbeing current research on well-being has been derived from two different traditions (ryan & deci, 2001): the hedonic approach focusing on pleasure and positive affects (feeling good) and the eudaimonic approach regarding well-being as a concept including a sense of purpose in life and self-realization (functioning well). seligman (2011) combines the hedonic and eudaimonic perspective of well-being in his theory of subjective well-being – the perma model – forming the basis for the working definition of well-being within the present article. seligman’s (2011) model includes five core elements associated to psychological well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. these elements contribute to wellbeing, are pursued for their own shake and are defined and measured independently (seligman, 2011). the working definition of well-being based on the perma model was completed with the studies of flow experiences (csikszentmihalyi, 1990) and snyder’s (1989) theory of hope. 1. introduction although children’s mental health is improving, many children still face difficulties and suffer from mental illness (child welfare information gateway, 2017). in 2016, almost 450 000 flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 80 children were placed in foster care in usa. the same year in finland, over 14 600 children under the age of 17 were placed in out-of-home care which totals 1.4 % of all children in this age range (thl, 2018). the figures amount to a significant proportion of the population and causes a huge societal cost and suffering not only for the affected children, but also for their families. these numbers also highlight the importance of taking early action to help children and families build resources and find ways to overcome difficulties. to help individuals build characteristics that not only buffer against mental illness but also help them flourish and live more fulfilled lives, positive psychology interventions (ppis) have been used (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). a meta-analysis (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009) revealed that ppis both significantly increased well-being and effectively treated and alleviated depressive symptoms. these findings were replicated in a more recent meta-analysis (bolier et al., 2013) including only randomized controlled studies. enhancements in well-being were also sustained at follow-up measurements from three to six months. however, in 2019, a new meta-analysis (white, uttl & holder, 2019) of the same material, which accounted for small sample sizes, showed that increases on well-being was still significant, but with smaller effect sizes, and that depressive symptoms were typically not significantly alleviated. this highlights the need for larger sample sizes than is typically used within positive psychology, which the current study also addresses. aspects of well-being in the current study, the focus is broadly on two of the perma measures of well-being (seligman, 2011): the enhancement of flow and engagement as well as meaning and the related concept of hope (snyder, 1989). the results form part of a larger study, where other aspects of well-being will be reported elsewhere. flow is a subjective state in which a person is deeply involved in some activity to the point of forgetting everything else, except the activity itself (csikszentmihalyi, abuhamdeh & nakamura, 2014). it is typically experienced in a condition of high challenges and skills (csikszentmihalyi, & lefevre, 1989) and occurs along with positive affects (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). flow involves both cognitive and affective components such as a deep focus, a sense of control, enjoyment and lack of self-consciousness (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). an experience of flow often occurs when we use our highest strengths to meet challenges (seligman, 2011). engagement is defined as an experience of becoming totally absorbed in some activity and losing self-consciousness (seligman, 2011). according to seligman (2011), engagement refers to psychological attachment or connection to activities and involves high involvement and interest. at its highest end, engagement is identical to the experience of flow (shernoff, csikszentmihalyi, shneider & shernoff, 2003). meaning, in turn, has a central role in human functioning. a sense of meaning is a sum of understandings and interpretations of our experiences and gives a direction in life (steger, 2012). yalom (1980) states that a search of meaning in life is a search for coherence and sense. judging the life as meaningful means that an individual experience his life having a function or a goal to be accomplished (yalom, 1980). a sense of meaning may not only make an individual happier but also help him cope better with suffering (frankl, 1984). flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 81 hope refers to positive expectations about desired events and outcomes to occur in the future (peterson & seligman, 2004) giving a meaningful direction in life. hope can be defined as a cognitive, motivational state including a perception that goals can be met (agency) and successful planning to meet these meaningful goals (pathways) (snyder, 1989). higher levels of hope predict goal setting, academic achievement, confidence and happiness (snyder et al., 1991). high-hope people also generally have a positive attitude to interpersonal relationships and form stronger bonds to others (snyder, 1994). while engagement, meaning and hope are typically assessed using self-reflective questionnaires, flow is commonly measured using the experience sampling method (esm, see methods section). the major advantage of the experience sampling method is that it assesses momentary changes in mental states and gathers information about subjective experiences as it occurs (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). thus, esm is less vulnerable to memory biases contrary to retrospective self-reports and allows to examine the person-environment interaction. 1.1. positive parenting few studies have examined how positive psychology can be applied in a parenting context. for example, the number of published articles in the journal of positive psychology over the past decade focusing on parenting was almost unnoticeable: 1.6 % (waters & sun, 2016). since parents are a vital component in a child’s life and well-being, it is hence important to find ways to enhance positive parenting and parental well-being. a longitudinal study by delle fave and massimini (2004) presents evidence that taking care of a little baby most often was associated with flow experiences compared to other daily contexts such as work, leisure or use of media. parents also reported higher self-ratings on engagement, challenges, positive mood and intrinsic motivation during childcare. however, the associations of both enjoyment and challenge linked to childcare seem to weaken when children grow older. mothers’ self-esteem is negatively affected when being with their child (2– 14 years) compared to situations when being with adults or alone, and time spent with the child is related to feeling less competent as a parent (wells, 1988). the presence of the child therefore seems to be an important factor when assessing parents. an obvious question is then which aspects of parental well-being may be improved using ppis. in strength-based interventions, individuals are trained to notice their strengths and find new ways to employ the positive characteristics of their personality (niemiec, 2014). in turn, this could lead to more flow and engagement as well as more meaning and hope in daily life. one example on how use of character strengths and positive psychological functioning can be combined is the mindfulness-based strength practice -programme (mbsp, niemiec, 2014). this eight-week programme applying the principles of mindfulness in the context of positive psychology is about engaging more deeply with life: it helps us to achieve our goals, to cope with problems and to connect deeper with others. one study investigating effects of mbsp on well-being for a general population (ivtzan, niemiec & briscoe, 2016) showed that the experiment group scored higher on well-being and flourishing, and that the programme had a positive impact on well-being. flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 82 strength-based parenting (sbp) is a positively oriented style of parenting in which parents encourage children to use and develop their strengths (waters, 2015; waters & sun, 2016). sbp seems to be related with lower level of stress (waters, 2015), greater academic achievement (waters, loton & jach, 2018) and higher well-being in their children (jach, sun, loton, chin & waters, 2018).1 although strength-based interventions have been used with children and adolescents, to our knowledge, there is just one earlier study (waters & sun, 2016) using a sbp intervention to enhance parental well-being. the authors found that parents reported higher levels of parental efficacy and positive emotions following the three-week intervention relative to parents in a wait-list control group. these results suggest that a strength-based parenting intervention may successfully be used to help parents expand their parenting strategies and identify strengths not only in themselves but also in their children, but more research is clearly needed. 1.2. the present study the current study forms part of the “strength, happiness and compassion -project”, a multicohort intervention programme using positive psychology to improve mental health in children and important adults around them. the focus of the present study is an eight-week intervention called the “flourishing families-programme” (ff) focusing on positive parenting. the present study examines the level of flow before and after the intervention and flow experienced in parent-child interaction, and investigates the effect of the intervention on engagement, meaning and hope in parents. we formulated the following two research questions: 1) do parents experience more engagement and flow in parenting contexts after the intervention; and 2) does a positive psychology intervention for parents enhance well-being in terms of meaning and hope? based on the work by seligman (2011), snyder (1989) and csikszentmihalyi (1990), we hypothesized that parents would experience more flow when being with their children at postmeasures, as measured by esm. further, we hypothesized that there would be an increase on self-ratings on questionnaires of engagement, meaning and hope in the intervention group compared to the control group at termination. 2. method 2.1. participants the study followed a randomised wait-list control design including parents to school children. parents were recruited by an information letter sent to the home & school association and to three swedish-speaking schools located in the helsinki and turku regions. parents (n=73) were randomised to either an intervention group (group 1, n=32) or a control group (group 2, n=41). data were collected from october 2016 to april 2018, as presented in the table 1. 1 although well-being in children, and the potential to be affected by parenting, is certainly related to genetic and epigenetic factors, we have opted not to include these factors in the current study due to limited resources. flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 83 table 1. scheduling of data collection. oct nov dec jan feb mar apr group 1 helsinki 2016–17 timepoint 1 baseline timepoint 3 post-test group 1 turku 2016–17 timepoint 1 baseline timepoint 3 post-test group 1 turku 2017–18 timepoint 1 baseline timepoint 3 post-test group 2 helsinki 2016–17 timepoint 1 baseline timepoint 2 baseline 2 timepoint 3 post-test group 2 turku 2016–17 timepoint 1 baseline timepoint 2 baseline 2 timepoint 3 post-test group 2 turku 2017–18 timepoint 1 baseline timepoint 2 baseline 2 timepoint 3 post-test parents who experienced challenges with parenting were included. challenges varied from having many children, children with behaviour problems, neuropsychiatric difficulties to children suffering from somatic illness. most participants were either mothers or fathers, but a few couples participated in the study (n=4). demographic characteristics are described in table 2. table 2. descriptive statistics of background variables. variable all group 1 group 2 participants n=63 n=31 n=32 age 40.44 (sd 5.01), range 25–52 40.54 (sd 4.92) 40.37 (sd 5.17) gender male (9.5 %), female (90.5 %) male (16.1 %), female (83.9 %) male (3.1 %), female (96.9 %), number of children 2 (61.9 %), range 1–6 2 (61.3 %), range 1–6 2 (62.5 %), range 1–4 education diploma of higher education (47.6 %) diploma of higher education (41.9 %) diploma of higher education (53.1 %) civil status married (71.4 %), cohabiting (17.5 %) married (80.6 %), cohabiting (12.9 %) married (62.5 %), cohabiting (21.9 %) residence helsinki (46 %), turku (54 %) helsinki (45.2 %), turku (54.8 %) helsinki (46.9 %), turku (53.1 %) work full-time (61.9 %), parttime (12.7 %) full-time (58.1 %), part-time (16.1 %) full-time (65.6 %), part-time (9.4 %) meditation training yes (17.5 %), no (82.5 %) yes (19.4 %), no (80.6 %) yes (15.6 %), no (84.4 %) flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 84 figure 1. experiment flow-chart the final sample in the questionnaire data consisted of 63 parents (mean age = 40.44, sd = 5.01; range 25–52; 90.5 % females), of which 31 formed the intervention group and 32 the control group. the final sample in the esm data consisted of 61 parents (mean age = 40.38, sd 5.07). reasons for dropping out was lack of time (n=5), scheduling problems (n=3), stress (n=1), illness (n=1) and technical problems (n=2). the intervention group had 29 parents (mean age = 40.45, sd= 5.04; range 29–52; 82.8 % female) and the wait-list group had 32 parents (mean age = 40.31, sd= 5.18; range 25–51; 96.9% female). participation was voluntary, and the groups were free of charge for the parents. ethical approval for this study was gained from the university of helsinki’s ethical committee of humanities and social and behavioural sciences. participants were informed about the purpose, duration, procedure and voluntary participation of the study and signed a consent form for participation. to protect confidentiality and privacy, the data was anonymized. 2.1.1. data exclusion and missing data there were no missing values in the questionnaire data after the exclusion of those who dropped out during the intervention. in the analysis of esm data, responses reported both at preand post-intervention during the signalling period (see below) of five days were included. if there were days without any esm reports, a maximum pause of four days was accepted. responses reported more than 15 minutes after the beep were excluded from the analysis, because of the risk of non-valid assessed for eligibility (n=73) excluded (n=10) did not complete baseline lack of time (n=5), stress (n=2), scheduling problems (n=1), illness (n=1) and technical allocated to intervention (n=31) allocated to wait-list (n=32) randomized (n= 63) flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 85 responses in cases when the subject had opened the questionnaire when hearing the beep but filled it in several hours later. there was no minimum limit for the number of esm reports during the signalling period, as the sample size of the participants was already relatively small. there were eleven missing values (0.3 %) in the final flow measure. 2.2. measures two questionnaires were used to examine parents’ level of engagement, meaning and hope. the esm application was used to study flow experiences, as described below. all measures were collected before and after the intervention. 2.2.1. engagement, meaning and hope a self-report measure of the perma-profiler (butler & kern, 2016) was used to assess a respondent’s level of engagement and meaning. the perma-profiler has been developed to measure the five pillars of seligman’s (2011) model of well-being. the perma-profiler consists of 23 items, three questions measuring each domain and the remaining eight questions serving as filler items. items are answered on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (“not at all”) to 10 (“completely”). the maximum possible score per each domain is 33. all 15 items demonstrate adequate psychometric properties (butler & kern, 2016). engagement was measured by the engagement subscale of the perma-profiler consisting of three items (e.g. ”how often do you become absorbed in what you are doing?). meaning was measured by the meaning subscale of the perma-profiler measure consisting of the three items (e.g. ”in general, to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life”). hope was measured by the adult trait hope scale (ahs) (snyder et al., 1991) which is a 12-items scale examining the respondent’s level of hope. this scale has been derived from snyder’s (1989) cognitive model of hope. four of the items are mostly associated with agency (e.g. “i energetically pursue my goals”), four with pathways (e.g. “i can think of many ways to get out of a jam”) and the remaining four items are ”fillers”. each item is answered on 8-point likert scale ranging from “definitely false” to “definitely true”. the total hope score can range from 8 to 64. ahs has an acceptable internal reliability, test-retest reliability and construct validity (snyder et al., 1991). internal consistency was acceptable for the items in the perma-profiler measuring engagement and meaning, as well as for the adult trait hope scale (table 3). cronbach’s alpha of the scales exceeded 0.7, reflecting satisfactory to good internal consistency. table 3. internal consistency of the perma-profiler and ahs. variable baseline (α) grupp1post (α) grupp2post (α) engagement 0.726 0.707 0.868 meaning 0.858 0.892 0.897 hope 0.813 0.875 0.864 inspection of residuals revealed no departures from normality in the observed items. flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 86 2.2.2. esm and flow the experience sampling method (esm) allows researchers to examine a respondent’s inner subjective experiences by using a beeper or mobile app that prompts the respondent to answer specific questions at random times over the course of several days or weeks (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). the unique advantage with esm is that it captures moment-by-moment experiences and allows examinations of associations between context and internal experiences. esm has high ecological validity, richness in data and benefits from limited memory bias (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). esm studies have enriched our understanding on when people actually feel happy or experience flow, showing that people tend to report more flow at work than in leisure, contrary to subjects self-reported beliefs and expectations (csikszentmihalyi, & lefevre, 1989). it is thus motivated to complement traditional questionnaire data with the more elaborative esm method. flow has earlier been operationalised by two items assessing challenges and skills of the activity (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). today, to capture the complexity of different dimensions in the flow experience, flow is operationalized as a continuum based on the sum of three variables, of which two are “concentration” and “enjoyment” (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). the third item is typically the cognitive, conative or emotional component of the flow experience. in the current study, the experience sampling was carried out in cooperation with the university of maastricht, using their mobile app psymate to assess flow experiences. the esm questionnaire consisted of scaled and multiple-choice format questions on current emotions, activities, social context, significant events, respond strategies and health behaviour. as recommended (hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007), flow was measured by three items: ”this activity requires effort” (concentration), ”i enjoy this activity” (enjoyment) and “i can do this well” (self-efficacy), with answers on a 7-point likert scale. a flow score was computed by summing the three items measuring different domains of the flow experience, ranging from 3 to 21 (mean= 14.21 with 3.191 sd). the internal consistency coefficient of the flow sum score was 0.470. a total of 3409 beeps were included. in this study, parents carried a smartphone with the esm mobile application for five days and were instructed to respond to items immediately when hearing the “beep”. participants were signalled semi-randomly in 90-minutes intervals 10 times per day during waking hours (7:30–22:30). it took about one minute to fill out the questionnaire with a 15minute-response window for each beep. daily experiences with esm were reported both at preand post-intervention. 2.2.3. the flourishing families programme the strength-based flourishing families programme was implemented, with an aim to enhance the parents’ strength use and positive psychological functioning. the idea for the flourishing families programme originated in the mbsp programme (niemiec, 2014) and was modified for use with parents in a family context. in addition, ppis with proven effectiveness were added. two-hour sessions were held once a week during a period of eight weeks. sessions included mindfulness and strength practices as well as group discussions and short lectures. the main focus of the sessions was on mindfulness and character strengths – accompanied by other flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 87 themes from positive psychology. every session started with a brief meditation practice and was followed by a discussion or a review of the previous session and the practises the group had been working with. during sessions, parents participated in group discussions and character strength practices including strengths-spotting in themselves and in others or use of signature strengths. every session had its own theme including mindful parenting, character strengths, positive emotions, relationships and positive resonance, positive communication, resilience, hope, and values. between sessions, parents engaged in practical homework exercises given every week. in addition, parents were encouraged to keep an ongoing journal about their progress during the intervention. 2.3. procedure parents who were interested in participating in the study were given an introductory lecture to the programme and an opportunity to attend the flourishing families programme. thereafter, parents were randomly assigned to an experiment group, which completed the eight-week flourishing families programme, or to a wait-list group that received the programme later. these eight sessions held once a week were led by educated mbsp leaders following a flourishing families –manual (fagerlund, laakso, westerlund-cook, hongell-ekholm, 2017). 2.4. design and data analysis this experimental study had a between-subject design with four outcome variables of wellbeing: flow, engagement, meaning and hope. flow experienced in the parent-child interaction was compared to flow experienced in other interactions or being alone. descriptive and inferential analyses were performed using spss (version 25.0) and matlab (r2018a). correlation analyses were used to investigate the relationships between the items of interest. general linear model analyses were deployed to examine the interaction between the time and the intervention on the dependent variables: engagement, meaning and hope. flow was investigated by three multi-level models (linear mixed models), using the fitlme-function in the statistical toolbox in matlab, with a restricted maximum likelihood fitting method (reml) and full cholesky parameterization for estimation of covariance matrices. to test for significant effects, we performed f tests (marginal test) for each fixed effect term. fixed factors were time (pre/post), and subject identity was used as random factors. a follow up analysis added another fixed factor specifying whether the parent was with its child at the time of the beep (whowith, categorical variable 0 or 1). to improve statistical power, a pooled analysis of the effect of intervention on flow was also performed. i.e. in this analysis, we waited until the wait-group received their intervention and pooled all participants to a single group. in this analysis, we compared timepoint 1 and 3 for the intervention group and timepoint 2 and 3 for the control group. the inspection of the residuals of our statistical models using q-q plots showed that the flow sum score was slightly positively skewed. this violation of normality was corrected by raising the flow sum score with 2, which made the model residuals normally distributed. however, because this correction did not moderate the interpretation of the results, we have opted to report the non-transformed data for ease of interpretation. flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 88 3. results 3.1. main analysis of flow a multilevel analysis was undertaken to examine differences in flow between the groups over time (pre/post). figure 2 presents the intervention effects for the flow sum score. figure 2. comparisons between the intervention (group 1) and control group (group 2) in the flow scores. circles represent mean scores for the subjects, error bars are standard errors for the whole group. results revealed that there were no significant differences between the groups over time, neither main effects (f(1.2864)=2.70, p=0.100) or interaction effects (f(1.2864)=1.50, p=0.220). there was a trend toward an increasing flow from pre to post measures (f(1.2864)=3.80, p=0.051), but the results indicated that it was rather the control group which scored higher at post-test. mean scores for flow are calculated in table 4. further, our hypothesis suggested that the intervention would enhance flow in interaction with the child. the variable of the companion (whowith) was added in the model to compare experiences when the parent was with different companions. flow in the presence of the child was compared to flow in the presence of others (e.g. a partner, friend, trainer etc.) or being alone (see table 4). flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 89 table 4. descriptive statistics for the variables of interest intervention control flow pre post 14.34 (sd 3.09) 14.54 (sd 3.21) 13.75 (sd 3.33) 14.21 (sd 3.17) flow with child pre post 14.09 (sd 3.08) 14.60 (sd 3.12) 13.34 (sd 3.10) 13.75 (sd 3.05) flow without child pre post 14.51 (sd 3.09) 14.54 (sd 3.21) 14.08 (sd 3.50) 14.68 (sd 3.23) engagement pre post 7.19 (sd 1.84) 7.08 (sd 1.84) 6.19 (sd 1.87) 6.53 (sd 2.22) meaning pre post 7.47 (sd 1.61) 7.62 (sd 1.79) 7.10 (sd 1.86) 6.93 (sd 2.16) hope pre post 50.26 (sd 6.73) 49.19 (sd 8.32) 47.94 (sd 6.43) 48.03 (sd 7.11) results of the linear mixed model indicated that the level of flow in interaction with child did not differ between the groups when comparing preand post-test measures (f(1.2854)=1.17, p=0.279). thus, contrary to our hypothesis, the intervention did not seem to have any significant effect on flow during parent-child interaction when only providing intervention for group 1 (i.e. about half of our total sample). interestingly, when comparing flow in the presence of the child and in the presence of others or being alone at baseline, flow experienced with child seemed to be generally lower (mean flow score=13.70; sd=3.11) compared to flow experienced with others or being alone (m=14.30; sd= 3.30 sd, p=0.001). 3.2. pooled analysis of flow when both groups had received the intervention, it was possible to use the total sample by pooling group 1 and group 2 together. the pooled analysis revealed that there was a significant effect of intervention on flow. in support of our hypothesis, parents reported greater flow at post-intervention (f(1.2627)=4.24, p=0.040). flow increased from pre (mean=14.05; sd=3.22) to post measures (mean=14.45; sd=3.14). next, another pooled analysis added the whowith factor where the parent was or was not with their child (figure 3). this analysis showed a significant interaction effect between companion and time (f(1.2619)=7.19, p=0.007). as expected, parents reported greater flow at post-intervention when the child was present (mean at pre-intervention 13.70 with 3.13 sd and at post-intervention 14.49 with 2.97 sd) compared to the situations where the child was not present (mean at baseline 14.32 with 3.27 sd and mean at post-intervention 14.42 with 3.27 sd). flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 90 figure 3. pooled comparisons on flow with versus without child. as an additional exploratory test, we entered parent’s “gender” as a covariate in the analysis, but gender did not have an influence on interaction effects and therefore did not change the interpretation of the earlier analysis. finally, to exploratory investigate the different subdomains of flow experience, the flow items at baseline were analysed separately. the pooled analysis showed that parents’ level of concentration at baseline was significantly modulated by the presence of the child (mean score for concentration with child=4.24 with 1.87 sd and without child=3.62 with 1.71 sd, p<0.000). parents reported significantly lower levels of concentration indicating that interaction with the child did require more effort compared to the presence of other people or being alone. the other two flow items did not reveal any significant differences in responses whether the child was present or not. 3.3. engagement, meaning and hope to examine the effect of the flourishing families -programme on the dependent variables, parent’s mean scores at baseline and at termination of the intervention programme were flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 91 analysed (table 4). significant tests were deployed to examine the difference between pre and post measures for each group. engagement. contrary to our hypothesis that parents would report greater engagement after the intervention, the engagement scores of the intervention group slightly decreased from pre to post measures (mean at baseline 7.19 with 1.84 sd and at post-test 7.08 with 1.84 sd). control group mean scores for engagement slightly increased from 6.19 (sd 1.87) to 6.53 (sd 2.22). repeated measures anova showed that the result wasn’t statistically significant (p=0.294). meaning. as hypothesized, there was an increase in meaning scores at post-intervention compared to the wait-list group. results showed that meaning scores of the intervention group increased from pre(mean=7.47, sd=1.61) to post-intervention (mean=7.62, sd= 1.79), while mean scores for the wait-list group decreased from baseline (mean=7.10, sd=1.86) to postintervention (mean=6.93, sd=2.16). pairwise comparisons between the intervention and comparison group revealed, however, that the intervention group didn’t differ significantly from the wait-list group after the intervention (p=0.277). hope. contrary to our hypothesis that the intervention would have a positive impact on parents’ level of hope, parents in the intervention group reported lower level of hope at termination (pre-test mean = 50.26, sd=6.73 and post-test mean = 49.19, sd 8.32, p=0.358), while the wait-list group reported slightly higher scores on hope at termination (pre-test mean 47.94 with 6.43 sd and post-test mean 47.03 with 7.11 sd). although the results did not reveal significant changes in the scores of interest, we noted that the intervention group scored systematically better at baseline relative to the wait-list group. this was unexpected because the parents had been randomised in the two groups and the demographic data didn’t show any differences between these two groups. the only differences on the background variables was that the control group had a higher percentage of men in the sample, were more often married and less often had a full-time job. because of this, we added “gender” as a covariate, but this did not change the interpretation of the result for any of the analyses. 4. discussion 4.1. findings of flow the flourishing families intervention facilitated the experience of flow and helped parents achieve an experience of flow more frequently in their daily life, in situations where they spent time with their children. these findings are of great importance, as experience sampling represents a highly reliable and ecologically valid tool (csikszentmihalyi, rathunde & whalen, s., 1993; hektner, csikszentmihalyi & schmidt, 2007). the enhancement in flow was primarily associated with parent-child interactions. the findings suggest that strength-based positive psychology interventions may, in fact, improve the parent-child interaction and help parents flourish in their role as parents. as parents are more in flow when being with their child, this is also likely to have an indirect impact on their child and boost the child’s well-being. in accordance, earlier studies on strength-based parenting (sbp) and its links to children’s well-being have showed that a positively oriented flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 92 style of parenting is associated with higher subjective well-being (jach, sun, loton, chin & waters, 2018) and with lower level of stress in children (waters, 2015). interestingly, parents reported lower levels of flow at baseline in the interaction with the child compared to being with others or alone. when flow items were analysed separately, results indicated that parents reported significantly higher levels of concentration when being in the presence of their child relative to the presence of others or when being alone. this may relate to the focus on mindfulness and being fully present with one´s child during the intervention. there were no significant differences when comparing the other two flow items measuring self-efficacy and enjoyment. 4.2. engagement, meaning and hope unexpectedly, we did not find any intervention effects on the outcome variables of engagement, meaning and hope in the questionnaire data. our findings were in contrast with recent studies on mindfulness and positive psychology interventions (baer, 2009; bolier et al., 2013; coatsworth et al., 2015 & fjorback, arendt, ørnbøl, fink & walach, 2011) and with one previous study on strength-based parenting (waters & sun, 2016) which have shown these forms of interventions to be effective in promoting corresponding aspects of psychological well-being. one explanation may be that the sample size in this study was too small to detect differences between the groups, supported by the fact that we did see a significant impact on flow in the pooled analysis when the sample-size was doubled. thus, future studies should involve bigger samples, which will also improve statistical power of the analysis. another reason to the findings may be that parents who were trained in mindfulness as part of the intervention, viewed their parenting in a more self-reflective manner after the intervention, leading to lower scores at post-intervention. this perspective is discussed in the study of coatsworth et al. (2015) examining effects of mindfulness training on parents, where several mothers experienced a changed view on parenting after being trained in mindfulness. in particular, they became more aware of all missed opportunities of engaging in mindful parental behaviour. therefore, the null finding in the questionnaire data does not necessarily reflect parents’ approaches and behaviours in their daily life, but rather their view of parenting following the intervention. depressed individuals have reported greater enhancements in well-being compared to those not depressed, which may be explained by the fact that depressed individuals have more room to improve (bolier et al., 2013; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). participants in the present study were healthy individuals and not from a clinical population, and perhaps a substantive explanation to our null finding could be that these individuals may already enjoyed relatively high levels of well-being. alternatively, the need to improve the efficacy of sbps could of course be discussed. 4.3. the importance of using complementary methods it is important to stress that the esm results on the pooled analysis of flow showed that the intervention enhanced flow in daily parent-child interactions, even if the parents seemed unaware of the intervention effects in their questionnaire responses assessing well-being in terms of engagement, meaning and hope. the results suggest that self-ratings in the form of flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 93 questionnaires may not fully reflect what is happening in everyday life, highlighting the importance of complementing self-reflective questionnaire data with daily life esm methods. although esm is very labour demanding, and the data analysis requires complex statistical techniques, the advantages of the method are numerous. esm gives unique glimpses into respondent’s inner experiences and increases understanding of the person-environment interplay. 4.4. limitations the drop-out rate (13.7 %) in this study was quite high. some parents experienced the intervention time-consuming and could not complete the programme. although there is a risk that the dropout group somewhat differed from those who completed the whole intervention biasing the results, it’s likely that those parents living a hectic and stressful life would have benefitted most from the intervention based on previous studies (bolier et al., 2013; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). thus, the dropout in this study may have strengthened the findings, which further imply the use of mbsp interventions. another limitation of the study was that there was no minimum limit for the number of esm reports. a low number of reports can affect the response-level variability negatively and may not necessarily reflect the various daily fluctuations in feelings, thoughts and behaviours accurately. regardless of this limitation, the effect was still present, and because we did not identify any outlier residuals, we expect that more data points would strengthen the results rather than the opposite. there was a small percentage of men in the sample as only six fathers participated in the study. adding parent’s gender as a covariate did not moderate our findings, but potential gender differences cannot be ruled out because of the relatively small sample size. coatsworth et al. (2015) provided preliminary evidence that fathers benefited most from a positive psychology intervention. therefore, it would be interesting to investigate further whether these findings can be replicated, and which the potential underlying mechanisms between gender differences in the effects of ppis may be. 4.5. future directions positive psychology is a relatively new science. in general, more studies are needed to investigate the effectiveness of ppis and to increase understanding of how interventions can be applied in different contexts. in particular, we encourage future studies to investigate whether improvements in the parent-child interaction can be sustained over time and whether there are long-term effects of the flourishing families programme. 4.6. conclusions seligman and csikszentmihalyi (2000) state that if psychologists wish to improve the human condition, they should not only be focusing on suffering, but also on building the qualities that enhance flourishing. this study is one of the first providing evidence that positive psychology interventions may enhance parent-child interaction and be successfully applied in a parenting context. our findings suggest that positive psychology with a special focus on a strength-based intervention may help parents thrive in their role. positive psychology applications can be flourishing families pentti, fagerlund & nyström 94 considered a complementary strategy in promoting well-being in families. from a public health perspective, ppis can offer cost-effective tools in enhancing well-being and mental health in families, which form the foundation of a well-functioning society. authors selja pentti vaasa central hospital selja.pentti@vshp.fi åse fagerlund folkhälsan research institute pär nyström uppsala university publishing timeline received 14 may 2019 accepted 23 september 2019 published 26 september 2019 references american psychological association. 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(2011). no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 291-306. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.10 neil thin university of edinburgh n.thin@ed.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 291 article no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship neil thin abstract: everyday cheermongers spread positive emotion through social contagion. this capability is illustrated here through a portrait of elizabeth, a ‘suzuki method’ violin teacher in edinburgh. through this example, we can learn about the important ways in which children and parents alike rely on skilled and dedicated felicitators to help them through the difficult balance between enjoyable and sociable music-making on the one hand, and the pursuit of musical excellence on the other. after presenting the philosophical and practical aspects of shinichi suzuki's ‘everyone-is-talented’ approach to instrumental music instruction, this paper argues for recognition of the key roles of music in facilitating happiness, and explores cultural variety in the promotion of musicality. while also recognizing that music education needs a democratic ‘no child left behind’ approach, the argument is that the full benefits of music are better realised through active musical engagement and social music-making. when not treated simply as an optional leisure activity or as a means to other ends, music can be a pathway to self-transcendent ‘peak experiences’ that can be achieved not only via the extraordinary performances of elite musicians, but also by savouring the very imperfect musical sounds produced by children. keywords: music, happiness, parenting, children, education, perfectionism, self-transcendence 1. introduction this paper argues for stronger recognition of music facilitators and music itself as sources of happiness. focusing particularly on the joys of collective amateur music and on the tricky business of helping children and parents through the tribulations and delayed gratifications of early-stage instrument-learning, i present elizabeth, a violin teacher, as an inspiring example of the ‘everyday cheermonger’, someone who spreads positive emotion through social contagion without consciously specialising in this function or advertising it as a professional service. observation of music teachers who have this ability also offers us important lessons concerning the synergies and trade-offs among the various goods that music-making can provide. elizabeth enables pupils and parents to enjoy progression towards better musical abilities without detracting from the joy of savouring every musical moment along the way. her calm and supportive responses to children’s mood swings teach children and parents how to cope with the inevitable stresses of learning difficult instruments. she spreads musical and social empathy through her facilitation of duets, jazz improvisations, and larger ensembles, and of parental and toddler participation. so unlike mere entertainers, elizabeth’s role goes beyond temporary mood-lifting. those who witness her teaching feel more substantially elevated, persuaded to lead more exemplary and fulfilling lives than they otherwise would. no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 292 elizabeth has played a central role in the development of the 'suzuki' approach to instrumental music instruction in scotland. in portraying this approach, i also aim to link the understanding of music-making to broader themes of love, perfection, and self-transcendence. the arguments here about the importance of music for happiness, and about cultural variety in the promotion of musicality, can be extended in various ways to include other arts, leisure activities and therapies. i discuss several qualifiers to the common association of music and happiness: music education needs a democratic ‘no child left behind’ approach with a sensible balance between the momentary enjoyment of music as a process, and the longer-term pursuit of excellence; full benefits of music are best realised through active musical engagement and social music-making and music must be recognized as not just an optional leisure activity or means to other ends, but as a pathway to ‘peak’ or ‘self-transcendent’ experiences (also commonly called ‘ineffable’ or ‘sublime’ by music psychologists and philosophers). two further happiness-facilitation themes are broached here. concerning upbringing in general, i want to emphasise that joy-spreading and music are fascinating capabilities for which we all have inborn talent. but these potentials are only realised if they are nurtured through good parenting, good schooling and a supportive cultural environment (creech, 2010). finally, the case study touches on a theme which has repeatedly cropped up in happiness scholarship and in lay theories of happiness: the importance of savouring ordinary everyday pleasures (bryant and veroff, 2007). when teachers like elizabeth help children to enjoy music practice and to link it with other enjoyable activities, and when they persuade parents to enjoy the very imperfect musical sounds produced by children, and to enjoy the here and now rather than reducing childhood learning to the status of a pathway towards adult capabilities, they are teaching us how to savour. the western ‘academic’ or ‘elite’ classical music tradition has produced exquisite music but has also done a great deal of damage by scorning the more ordinary pleasures of simpler music and less polished musical performances. 2. grand twinkle eleven children aged from 3 to 5 line the stage, all with home-made toy violins. their teacher elizabeth, a bundle of energy in her mid-70s, watches them in delight from the edge of the stage, and gestures to the pianist, who plays a chord. the children all bow, to rapturous applause, before elizabeth herds them carefully towards the waiting arms of their moistcheeked grinning parents. another line is quickly assembled, this one of slightly bigger children, all with real violins, some of which are improbably small 1/32 size, little bigger than an adult hand. these little cherubs bow, then together with elizabeth they play a rhythmic adaptation of twinkle twinkle, and bow again. and so on, via swedish and scottish folk tunes, blues, and shostakovich sonatas, the informal but masterfully regimented concert continues for a couple of hours with an interval for juice and home-baked goodies. it is in a school hall, but it is not a school event: it is a sunday afternoon event co-organized by a few violin teachers and parents. no-one is forced to sit still for too long, and children’s performances, though ritualised and neatly structured, are nonetheless smiley and informal. the youngsters listen to and enjoy a lot of the music, but are also allowed to get up and run around. parents do not sit passively either: they are up on their feet chaperoning the young ones or preparing snacks. school concerts can be fun and informal too (and in scotland they most definitely are more so now than they were a generation ago), but here the parents are active participants in their offspring’s education. they are heavily involved: they have helped make the event happen, they know all the tunes, some have learned violin together with their children, and they have been co-responsible for their children’s music practice. no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 293 one or two of the children are stunning prodigies, playing difficult concerto and sonata excerpts beautifully at early ages. less excellent musicians of variable abilities perform solo or in groups but with no noticeable reduction in commitment or in applause levels. unlike the school concerts i remember from my youth, there is little sign here of anxiety about performance, or of reluctance among the performers. partly, we can attribute this relaxed ambience to the supportive cultural ethos and social network, but a still more important clue is available by watching elizabeth’s body language. whether sitting or standing as each child performs, and whether in a concert or in a lesson or group practice session, elizabeth cannot help but give an unambiguously clear bodily display of involvement in the music, of empathy with the player, and of hedonistic savouring of every note. if happiness is infectious, so is hunger. there are no limits to elizabeth’s appetite for the music that children play, and parents, too, seem to acquire an appetite for performances that can be deeply moving even when they are squeaky, out-of-tune, and rhythmically suspect. they are not alone in finding children’s music-making uplifting: placido domingo, one of the greatest singers the world has ever heard, wept at a concert by the venezuelan ‘el sistema’ youth orchestra, saying they had evoked the strongest emotions he had ever felt (gould, 2005); the cellist pablo casals wept ‚copiously‛ at a performance by 1,000 young japanese pupils of suzuki’s violin school in 1961 (suzuki, 1983: 101-2). it is often hard to empathise with other people’s sources of enjoyment. to some, music clubs and events like this one no doubt imply a heady mix of pushy parenting, unrealistic self esteem promotion, and enforced merriment. i’m confident, though, that most parents get a strong and comforting sense of social and pedagogical progress from events like this. doubtless many participants came reluctantly to today’s event. in the run-up to the concert, children will have been wailing at being dragged away from their electronic nannies, parents stressed by the requirement to disrupt their sunday routines by baking brownies and mending violins. but few are able to resist the compelling force of elizabeth’s organizational and motivational zeal, and once here they all enter happily into the spirit of the occasion. the iconic moment is when all the children and teachers, including the sonata and concerto players, join with the beginners in a ‘grand twinkle’ at the end. no doubt the beginners notice that this big rich sound that surrounds them and fills their bodies is a bit larger than their usual squeaks. but they also feel part of it, and they get a hopeful sense of where the squeaks might one day be heading. in the grand twinkle, they experience self-transcendence, to which we’ll return later. have you ever allowed a piece of music to remove you gently from a foul mood and into a state of blissful calm or exhilaration? have you felt similarly persuaded by a person whose mere presence, like beautiful music, seems effortlessly to invade those who come within their thrall, who seems to float above the troubles and indignities that cause so much anguish to the rest of us? what if the same person has the gift of spreading both music and joy? elizabeth has no doubt always spread happiness, but since taking up the violin in her late 40s and becoming a teacher in her 50s, she has developed a genius for facilitating people’s social and musical wellbeing. 3. on social entrepreneurs and foot soldiers teaching music is not my main purpose. i want to make good citizens, noble human beings. if a child hears fine music from the day of his birth, and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline, and endurance. he gets a beautiful heart. (shinichi suzuki, 1983: 105) no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 294 readers familiar with the ‘suzuki method’ of learning to play musical instruments will recognize that the above event follows the teachings of the japanese violin teacher and ‘talent education’ promoter shinichi suzuki (suzuki, 1983; haugland, 2009). inspired by a variety of western composers, musicians, philosophers, education theorists and scientists, suzuki revolutionised music education in his native japan and the social movement he inspired is a shining example of the benefits of multidirectional cultural globalization. his philosophy and practical instruction have inspired many thousands of teachers and musicians in north america and western europe and has been a crucial influence on the astonishing success of the venezuelan ‘el sistema’ youth music and social justice programme mentioned above (gould, 2005). he is a classic example of a social entrepreneur who energetically promotes good simple ideas for human betterment through social transformation. not all witnesses of such suzuki events describe them as benign sources of happiness. when first introduced to europe in the 1970s, the suzuki method attracted expressions of concern about the semi-militaristic organization and ‘japanification’ of music education. like montessori and steiner schooling, it remains marginal to mainstream music education (in contrast to its more dominant role in north america). but suzuki certainly qualifies for membership among the happiness promoters’ of fame: his steadfast insistence on the importance of loving nurturance of young children’s musical potential, his tireless promotion of parental involvement in musical education, and his recognition of the crucial lifelong strengths that adults can learn from observing the natural capabilities of children, have all been immensely important sources of wellbeing for thousands of people worldwide since the 1930s. social movements rely on footsoldiers, though, not just on charismatic founders. so here i want to focus on the everyday niceness and loving energy that flows from one implementer of the suzuki approach, elizabeth, who has promoted the approach in scotland since the 1970s. what is distinctive about ‘everyday’ cheermongers like her is that they spread good feelings and good happiness prospects unobtrusively and without fanfare or explicit happiness philosophy. they make no specific professional claim to happiness expertise. whether through innate character, learned capabilities, or sheer willpower, they are exceptionally good at spreading happiness. they enhance the lives of those they interact with, both directly by making them feel good about themselves, but also over the longer term by helping other people find paths to lifelong happiness. it makes sense to acknowledge this, and to learn from their example. there are no doubt many millions of people worldwide who make exceptional contributions to the sum of human happiness in fairly direct and everyday ways not by producing grand plans or culture-defining new capabilities, but by helping people help themselves and others in various ways. suzuki’s core assertions are that everyone has the potential to become ‘talented’, and that every child ought to be given the chance – with parental support, encouraging lessons, and a supportive cultural environment – to develop their innate musical abilities, just as they are given the chance to develop their ability to understand and speak a language. the fact that such assertions are regarded as noteworthy underlines the uncomfortable truth that while the virtue of universal schooling has caught on worldwide, there is a long way to go before the nurturing of musical capability is seen as a universal priority. the idea that everyone could and should learn to read and write developed thousands of years after the invention of literacy. it will take a little longer to get over the false belief that only a few people can be musical. no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 295 4. music and happiness to introduce the concept of happiness into a conversation or into policy analysis is to ask questions about what our activities are for – what their value or importance is, what they mean to us, what joy they bring, whether that joy lasts and is compatible with other sources of wellbeing. music is universally valued and the enjoyment of it is a fundamentally important innate capability, as researchers in the emerging field of evolutionary music psychology have been showing (grinde, 2000; peretz, 2006; levitin, 2007; sacks, 2008; hodges & sebald, 2010). yet its power and beauty are elusive and mysterious. so it is not surprising that discussion of music is linked with discussion of happiness and with the healing of social rifts and of individual minds and bodies. plato argued that ‚music<gives a soul to the universe‛ and shakespeare described it as the ‚food of love‛; both recognized our astonishing ability and willingness to transcend ourselves through music. even the notoriously miserable philosopher schopenhauer admired music as the bath of the soul.1 musicians and avid music listeners need no research evidence to convince them of the importance of music for personal happiness and social quality. advocates of music therapy, music education, and community music have for decades been producing evidence in support of music, but most of this has been partisan, anecdotal, and lacking in scientific rigour (for a critical overview, and an outline of a scientific approach, see skingley et al., 2011). while some recent scholarship treats the happiness benefits of music as akin to those of other ‘leisure’ activities (hill and argyle 1998), or as a kind of ‘therapy’ at personal level (bunt, 1994; darnleysmith & patey, 2003) or group level (jenkyns et al., 2002; pavlicevic, 2003; oldfield, 2006), or as a temporary influence on emotions and moods (kreutz & lotze, 2007), there is also a long tradition of more fundamental respect for music’s role in the development of fulfilling lives and good societies. like happiness, the forms and experiences of music can be exhilarating as well as calming; private or collective; active and deliberate or passive and unconscious; and they involve fleeting moments of exquisite pleasure as well as the lifelong musical narratives through which our engagement with culture and our private and collective identities are developed. the aspects of musical experience that elizabeth promotes most effectively are active and socially engaged musicianship – active musical citizenship, if you like. the difference between passive and active enjoyment of music is a bit like the difference between stimulating the brain’s pleasure centres artificially with drugs, and doing so naturally through exercise or dance. as roland barthes put it, there are ‚two musics that are totally different arts: the music one listens to, and the music one plays‛ (1977: 149). although most music therapy and education focuses on active musicianship, the rewards of listening (which can of course be conscious and in some senses active) are well researched (menon & levitin, 2005). in csikszentmihalyi’s discussion of ‚the body in flow‛ he argues that although flow often arises from listening to music, ‚even greater rewards are open to those who learn to make music‛ (1990/2002: 111). although at a personal level it is debatable whether the rewards of active music-making are necessarily ‘greater’ or just different, it is clear that playing music in groups entails both immediate and lifelong social benefits that are much more complex and significant than collective listening (coffman, 2002). music producers and the inventors of mp3 players can take a lot of credit for massively improving the ability of millions of people to listen to music. but if this detracts from active musicianship, then many of us will have lost something vitally important for our wellbeing and fulfilment. 1 these quotes can be found in plato the republic, shakespeare twelfth night, respectively. no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 296 the suzuki method encourages both passive and active musicianship from the earliest stages of life. families are reminded of the importance of a supportive musical environment in which children learn to enjoy and remember a variety of kinds of music. and the democratic insistence on everyone’s potential to become good active musicians serves as a powerful antidote to those who assume that only an elite minority should play musical instruments. numerous studies have confirmed that in music, as in many other specialised capabilities, it takes ten thousand hours of practice (e.g. 3 hours a week over a decade) to become a worldclass expert (levitin, 2007: 193), but on a small fraction of that you can become really good, and a time investment comparable to tooth-brushing and having a shower is all it takes to get some sense of the joys of active music-making. but in any case, ‘investment’ is misleading: most of the fun is in the process, not the final achievements. 5. music clubs and social capital robert putnam’s image of ‚bowling alone‛ (2000) is now well known as a metaphor representing the decline of informal social engagement in the usa. music is rather more varied and versatile than bowling, and you can actually spend a lifetime deriving intense enjoyment from playing or listening to music alone. when necessary, fellow players and audiences can simply be imagined. but most musicians would agree that participation in musical ensembles, and performing to audiences, provide some of the most rewarding and deeply-felt sources of fulfilment in their lives. the economistic and instrumentalist metaphor of ‘social capital’ is woefully inadequate to describe the value of musical participation, but it is also true that music plays crucial functions in many of the most valued forms of associational life worldwide. unsurprisingly, not long after scholars and policy-makers began taking an interest in social capital during the 1990s, a steady stream of interest in music-making and social capital followed (dowling 2008; langston & barrett, 2008) elizabeth’s weekly fiddle club involves a small cross-section of the children who played in the above concert. here they play a mix of jazz, folk, and classical pieces. sometimes the club makes excursions to a local old people’s home or goes busking on the royal mile during the edinburgh festival. here again, people often have to be prodded into participation, and it is rarely stress-free. but if asked to evaluate the importance and value of the club, parents and children alike will be unequivocal in their gratitude to elizabeth for making it happen. they know they’ve been dragged into a collective self-help system that often intrudes on other parts of their lives, but which they wouldn’t want to do without. elizabeth is impressive in her ability to organize large-scale concerts and workshops with cheerful informality, but it is in her smaller-scale engagement with fiddle club that her exceptional capabilities are most evident. every child and every parent knows that they will get some of her attention at fiddle club, and that elizabeth will notice and feel their absence when they miss a week. just as they sense her involvement in their music when they’re playing, they sense that their participation in the events she organizes matters to her in an intensely personal way. it’s not that she needs them to make up the numbers or that she feels that one class missed is a delay on their path to excellence: it’s simply that she seems to feel the intrinsic value of everyone she encounters more keenly and more democratically than most of us do. in his blockbuster bestseller how to win friends and influence people, dale carnegie reminded readers that whereas most of us try hard to get others to like or admire us, or be influenced by us, a few exceptional individuals achieve much better results simply by showing a genuine loving interest in other people. this describes elizabeth perfectly, and i’m sure carnegie would have been the first to admit that people like her don’t need to read self-help literature. no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 297 6. on talent, effort, love, and self-transcendence the keystone of suzuki’s musical pedagogy is that ‚talent is not inherited‛ but must, like language, be nurtured from birth by loving parents and by a supportive cultural environment (suzuki, 1983: 9). his hunches have since then been supported by a mass of research that has comprehensively demolished the common myth that musical ‘talent’ is some kind of inborn genius, possessed by a few individuals, that simply expresses itself effortlessly. in reality, many thousands of hours of hard practice are the main factor in the production of musical excellence (sloboda, 2005, chs. 15 & 16; levitin 2007, ch. 7), but to persuade children to spend even a fraction of that time practising requires teacher and parent motivators who facilitate what the psychologist carol dweck has called a ‚growth mindset‛ (dweck, 2006, especially ch. 7). all cultures value music highly, but in some cultures – especially literate and stratified ones – active musicianship is marginalised to a small minority of specialists who are labelled as genetically destined to this occupation and/or capability. even in contemporary western societies, where music pervades almost every aspect of our everyday experiences and almost limitless musical choice is available to all, for most people music remains largely a passive listening experience, and many schools offer pitifully inadequate opportunities for children to learn to play music or even sing. if we agree with most musical educators that the capability of active musicianship should be democratized, the question then arises as to whether the objective is to aim for ultimate excellence or to emphasize the enjoyment of the process, including those thousands of hours spent practising. to learn a musical instrument you need to get used to delaying gratification, promising yourself that things will go better for you in the long run. this can be approached masochistically as a form of long-term self-mortification, or more positively you can turn the pains and frustrations of practice into a process of ‘flow’, in which endless repetitions and infinitesimal signs of progress become a source of absorption and fascination. you need a balance between recognizing nasty sounds that you can do something about, and hearing or at least imagining better sounds that might eventually come under your control. you also need a balance between effort and gratification: if you can enjoy the imperfect sounds you make while practising, this is good so long as this enjoyment doesn’t amount to lazy satisfaction that stops you from trying to improve. playing with others can help you through this process, giving you a positive aural illusion of sounding much better than you are, while also showing you a bigger and better sound to aim for. it is amazing how good a sound can come out of ten beginners playing together. according to the music philosopher jeanette bicknell, music moves us primarily because all kinds of musical engagement, even solitary listening, are intrinsically social: music gives us compelling reminders of our need for attachment to others (2009: viii). perhaps this is why, when people describe moments of extreme passion in musical listening, they tend to refer to puzzling combinations of pleasure and anguish or pain, a ‘poignancy’ which as jerrold levinson (2004) has argued reflects the bittersweetness of life itself. you experience momentarily the unbelievable beauty of passionate union with beethoven’s soul, yet at the same time he was some weird grumpy guy who died in germany a long time ago and the people playing his music to you are very uncool people in penguin suits. the feeling of empathy with composers is extremely powerful yet often deeply puzzling (putman, 1994). the combination of psychotropic rhythms and crowds is a heady mixture leading to unforgettable and seemingly magical altered states of consciousness (sylvan 2005; ehrenreich 2006; aldridge & fachner, 2009). more mundanely, if you’re going to play music with other people, you also need to learn that social participation often means expanding your interests demographically no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 298 and spatially as well as temporally. you need to do things that appear to be largely dutiful and altruistic rather than self-interested, and you need to develop musical empathy with fellow players (schögler & trevarthen, 2007; laurence 2008). for many of us, these important ways of stretching or moving the self across time and into larger social wholes don’t come easily. without felicitators like elizabeth we’d be a lot less good at it. other people can be hell. not only can they ruin our musical fun by making the wrong musical noises, but they can be downright antisocial even in the presence of a good facilitator. elizabeth doesn’t ignore a misbehaving child, but neither does she draw attention to misbehaviour. when forced to reprimand children she achieves what few parents can achieve, quickly persuading the child that there are more interesting and fun things to do than cause trouble. educational theorists may advise us to reprimand and punish the behaviour and not the child, yet for elizabeth it comes naturally to brush bad behaviour gently aside with no hint of anger, hatred, or moral outrage. parents attending her lessons and group practices get free instruction in good parenting, and several have agreed with me that they often find themselves, when in the midst of family traumas, asking themselves ‘what would elizabeth do?’ we can only learn so much from parenting manuals, and in these socially fragmented days the opportunity to learn social skills like this first-hand is gold dust. the violin is not the most obvious choice of instrument for three-year-olds to take up. more biddable instruments such as recorders, ukuleles and pianos give young children at least some instant gratification. nowadays computers, electronic keyboards, soundbeam technology, and programs like ‘sing star’ on playstation provide ample opportunities for giving children an immediate sense of musical power. by contrast, the violin stubbornly holds out for months or years before rewarding the beginner with something that sounds like music. elizabeth, now in her mid-seventies and a good amateur violinist herself, knows that her main gift is in helping children and parents through the difficult early years. she passes pupils on to other teachers when they begin to need intense technical instruction. but by that stage most of her pupils have developed a sustainable love of all aspects of music: they enjoy their lessons, their practice time, performing solos, performing in groups, and playing together informally in fiddle club sessions. there is a fascinating consistency between elizabeth’s unconscious instruction in how to deal with troublesome behaviour, and her conscious instruction to children in how to get through the potential nightmare of a difficult practice session. just as parents quickly become infuriated with misbehaviour, children quickly become livid when their fingers and instruments refuse to express the sounds they were hoping to hear. elizabeth, like all good music teachers, has a raft of tricks for helping children get through the tantrums that music practice inevitably provokes. if their fingers misbehave by playing the wrong notes, or their bows misbehave by going squint and scratching, you don’t ignore it but you don’t dwell on it as if it were a moral outrage. it’s to be expected, and when it happens repeatedly it’s time to get those fingers and bows to do something more fun, such as playing with finger puppets or ‘hunt the bow’, before returning to more serious practice afterwards. children learn to treat their fingers and instruments lovingly and with a good mixture of discipline and indulgence. what is produced by elizabeth and through the events and processes she facilitates is not limited to musical capabilities, important though they are. it includes also a wide range of abilities and dispositions that are perhaps best summarized by the concept of love. to progress in music, you must learn to make long-term commitments to your instrument that are quite distinct from the instant gratifications of making any noise by banging a drum or crashing a cymbal. attachment to the instrument develops over a long period and requires recognition no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 299 that your relationship with it will at times be problematic. just as the concept of romantic love is often expressed as a feeling of self-transcendence, of being at one with the lover, so musicians describe their relationship with their instruments and with music in terms of life-long passions that dissolve and extend the self into something more profound or ineffable than could be included within a bounded self. like happiness, love is an important value in all cultures, though widely variable in the way in which it is treated. whether the expected objects of love are actual or potential partners, kin, friends, society in general, activities, or the natural environment, love is often conceived of as a force external to ourselves over which we have little or no control. similar attitudes to happiness have been common throughout history and around the world. but as we learn to anticipate and promote happiness, we can and must also learn to nurture love. our inborn dispositions and abilities to love are, like our felicific dispositions, highly variable; but they can also be cultivated through individual and collective effort. as the ethnomusicologist blacking long ago observed, music tends to play crucial roles in preparing humans for the ‚hard task‛ of loving other people (1973: 103); it does so, i would argue, by opening us up to selftranscendence, making us not only recognize but also enjoy the fact that we are a lot less individual than we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. self-transcendence is commonly recognized by psychologists and therapists, and religious leaders, as being essential for both wellbeing and virtue, an essential complement to self concern and self-enhancement (meulemann, 2009). but if you have browsed through some of the copious literature on self-transcendence that has emerged since viktor frankl’s 1966 essay on it, you can’t help but have noticed that most of it focuses on transcending selves that are exceptionally problematic due to moribundity, illness or emotional dysfunction. you could be forgiven for thinking that unless you are dying, ill, or mad you don’t need to bother with self transcendence. self-transcendence is a crucial capability for all of us, not just a therapy for exceptionally vulnerable or damaged selves. self-transcendence can be about escaping the confines of the everyday self and its associated identities and roles. but it can also, more positively, be about a sense of harmony or union with other people, with our previous or future selves, and with broader nonsocial environments. more radically, we could also question the notion that there is, by default, a coherent and relatively isolated self that can be ‘transcended’ – and this kind of radical questioning is encouraged, if only temporarily, by mystical experiences such as trance states, communion with nature, and passionate involvement in music. as many anthropologists have shown, belief in a discrete, integral self may be dominant in western cultures but much less, or not at all, dominant in nonwestern cultures (christopher, 1999). baumeister (1991) considers music as one among many techniques we must sometimes use for escaping the ‚burden of the self‛ (other such escapes include alcohol, dance, and meditation), yet his metaphor of escapism perhaps wrongly presupposes an entity from which we can escape. a better metaphor might be that of tuning in to a different kind of conversation in our heads, a less egotistical and perhaps less analytical and more holistic and fluid one. self-transcendence is an elusive concept. it is about ‘going beyond’ normal everyday self-concepts and normal coherence, and experiencing feelings and thoughts that free us from narrow self-concern and self-interest. the study of music in action, whether solo or ensemble, practice or performance, reveals uniquely human ways in which our souls or identities are inescapably informed and inscribed by other people – listeners, composers from the past, fellow players. much of the magic that music works, both immediately and over a lifetime, seems to have something to do with our transcendental existence, or ‘self-transcendence’ if you must imagine a core being to be no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 300 transcended. for those who have invested perhaps unrealistically in particular versions of the self, such as the concept of a uniquely admired discrete entity, musical engagement is a vitally important and humbling experience. if listening to profoundly moving music is a bit like gazing at the firmament in a clear night sky, being moved while playing is like being a stargazer, star-mover, and star at the same time. musicianship gives us crucial opportunities to feel an ineffable sense of creative fusion with wider social and nonhuman universes. at a simple, concrete level, elizabeth’s evident propensity to engage with other people and with music-making illustrates clearly the self-transcending value of musical citizenship. whereas an elitist teacher might enjoy their star pupil’s performance largely with a view to boosting their own ego and that of their pupil (and hence their disparagement and discouragement of more ordinary pupils), elizabeth enjoys and reveals the beauty of democratic musicality. pupils may try to emulate her playing and her enjoyment of music, but they aren’t trying to produce in themselves a carbon copy of magisterial excellence. they recognize that through musical participation they become part of a much more important wider whole. but although elizabeth’s example illustrates the ‘social’ nature of music, i think we should pause before accepting at face value bicknell’s assertion that ‚music and the experience of music are fundamentally social, rather than strictly personal or individual‛ (2009: 89, my emphasis). bicknell argues most persuasively that the musical self is a social one, yet seems unable to shake off entirely the metaphor of a socially isolated, pre-social self, a separate person who then engages socially through music. though some of us act out this illusion more than others, and some are more troubled by the vulnerability of the self than others, there is no escaping the fact that our selves are ‘social’ from before we were born. for example, hearing music while in the womb is an important form of prenatal socialization. i agree with bicknell (2009: viii) that music’s significance lies in its ‚elemental social character‛: there is fascinating overlap and synergy between the experiences of absorption in music and absorption in society. but i wonder in what sense she thinks this is different from a ‘personal’ conception of musical enjoyment. as daniel goleman’s synthesis of recent research on ‘social intelligence’ has amply demonstrated, we are ‚wired to connect‛ with other people, and we do so, for example musically, using our mirror neurons (goleman, 2007: 13). now that research on mirror neurons has shown that other people – in the form of our subconscious reflections of their emotional states – are in a rather literal and biological sense inside our heads, the idea of a non-social isolated self is hard to sustain. when you watch someone who expresses musical social engagement as clearly as elizabeth does, you can’t help but recognize the artificiality of our distinction between ‘individual’ and ‘society’. nor can you help but wonder whether failure to recognize this artificiality is perhaps at the root of a great deal of human unhappiness. if music does help us to escape the self, this is perhaps because it enables us to feel our total absorption in society even if we find this very hard to think. strangely, music is also often said to help us escape society, when for example we hide away in a musical bubble using headphones to screen off the outside world (sloboda, 1999). what seems to happen is that we use music to drown out either troublesome inner chatter or external chatter, or both. and if the absorption we achieve through active rather than passive musical engagement is that much more total, so much the better. i’ve asked other parents of elizabeth’s pupils what they understand as the core of the magic that she works with children and parents alike. often, they have referred to the boundless love she seems to feel for everyone who enters her ambit, and her loving commitment not only to pupils but also to the tiniest detail of her every activity. love, like happiness, is both an no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 301 experience and a character trait. perhaps more than any other human experience or virtue, love reminds us of the everyday importance of self-transcendence. both love and music tend to involve bittersweet poignancy, and it seems no accident that love tends to be expressed musically or that music tends to experienced as a peculiarly ineffable and transcendent kind of love (hodges, 1996: 36). happiness and love are related but different, and if there are other goods that can rank alongside happiness as ‘ultimate’ values, love must surely be among them. 7. enjoyment, excellence, and learning to savour normality recently, pushy parenting has again loomed large in public debate with the publication of the yale law professor amy chua’s battle hymn of the tiger mother (2011). in this wilfully controversial autobiography, which makes no attempt to engage with many decades-worth of serious scholarship on the adverse life outcomes of authoritarian parenting and perfectionist instruction, chua tells of her relentless hyperparenting project that drove her two daughters to academic and musical ‘success’ via chua’s interpretation of the ‘suzuki’ method. this entailed getting her daughters to practice several hours a day from the age of three and denying them nearly all the social joys and relaxations of normal childhood. as every kind of educator knows, bringing up children involves seemingly irreconcilable trade-offs between enjoyment and excellence, between the ordinary masses and the ultratalented elite, and between present fun and future capabilities. and if you have a lot of children in your charge, it is never easy to promote simultaneously the ordinary flourishing of the majority and the extraordinary capabilities of the exceptionally quick learners. inevitably, some individuals and some institutions either take the elitist path of favouring and promoting exceptional excellence, while others go for common enjoyment of the masses at the expense of excellence. if educational success is measured by the exceptional achievements of the gifted few, at least some of the aspects of the wellbeing of the masses must be damaged as they become second-rate witnesses to the elite’s pursuit of excellence. the same trade-offs also map onto trade-offs between childhood and adulthood, and between educational processes and educational outcomes: if excellence is the privileged objective, schooling is reduced to a means by which deferred benefits are to be achieved, whereas if the joy of learning is privileged then at least some of the anticipation of future excellence must be foregone in the interest of a happy childhood. elizabeth’s biography is instructive in this regard. she grew up in the profoundly elitist musical tradition that prevailed in posh edinburgh schools until recently. music was mainly focused on a select few ‘musical’ people, usually from ‘musical’ families, playing almost entirely the elite repertoire of a few musical geniuses in the western ‘classical’ (or ‘academic’, or ‘high art’) tradition. the masses were meant to appreciate, but not participate except passively as consumers. after just a year of learning the violin at school, elizabeth, like perhaps a majority of instrumental beginners in those days, was told that there was little point in continuing as she lacked talent and had no prospect of becoming an excellent violinist. 25 years later little seemed to have changed in the edinburgh classical music tradition: her son returned from one of his violin lessons to say that after he’d played through the piece he’d practiced all week, his teacher had slumped onto the piano and wept at his incompetence. by then in her late forties, elizabeth responded by buying herself a violin and teaching herself. within a few years, she had introduced the suzuki method to scotland and was helping several thousands of individuals grow up to enjoy playing and listening to music from a wide variety of musical traditions, and to participate in a vibrant social network. no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 302 i would argue that the suzuki approach to music education provides substantial reconciliation of these trade-offs, but that this effect relies very strongly not only on the inspirational philosophy of the movement’s charismatic founder, but on the character and sheer effort of practitioners like elizabeth. all too often, music teachers succumb to the temptation to focus most of their efforts on the long-term and selective grooming of a few exceptionally gifted musicians. the results are often breathtakingly beautiful musicianship that contributes to the most stunning achievements of humanity. but the human cost in this production process may include untold miseries for the vast bulk of children who learn to despise their own modest musical capabilities, and who end up seeing the whole process of learning and practising as a waste of time if it doesn’t lead to exceptional excellence. when csikszentmihalyi interviewed musicians, he found many whose enjoyment of music had clearly been badly spoiled by the perfectionism of their teachers and parents (1990/2002: 112). many parents quite correctly entertain ethical doubts about making children perform musical solos. musical biography studies in the united kingdom have shown that happy memories of childhood musical performance are rare, and massively outnumbered by painful memories which frequently put children off active musicianship for life (sloboda, 2005: 186). levitin argues that contemporary western society has seen a widening of the ‘performance chasm’ that separates the musical elite minority from the masses who gave up all musical ambition in childhood. western musical culture, he argues, is uniquely discouraging to all but the experts: not only is musical amateurism more disparaged in the west than are other kinds of amateurism (such as cooking or sport), but other cultures don’t suffer the same obsession with extremes of excellence to the detriment of more modest capability registers (2007: 194). i share levitin’s worries about elitism, but i doubt whether trends are quite as bad as he portrays. for example, elizabeth’s approach to musical education is in scotland far less exceptional today than would have been the case in the 1960s. in contrast to the elitist music teachers who discouraged her in the 1950s and her son in the 1970s, she encourages children and parents to enjoy and savour music at all levels of capability, while also teaching children that hard work can lead to deferred rewards too. an ethnographic study of active amateur musicianship in milton keynes in the early 1980s found a wide diversity of highly committed musicianship, much of it based on self-instruction and self-discipline as well a community support (finnegan, 1989). this nonperfectionist approach to music sounds similar to what margaret mead said was normal in bali in the 1930s, where everyone gets to take part and every man is at least at some key ritual moments a kind of musical ‘professional’: when villagers watch young people doing a show ‚the interest < fastens not on the final performance, as it does in america < but on the rehearsals‛ (mead, 1941; cited in merriam, 1964: 160). despite her earlier maltreatment by the musical aristocracy, elizabeth is not driven by any compensatory demophilic dogma or cult of mediocrity. she adores musical excellence and glows with pride when her pupils, as some inevitably do, progress quickly to extraordinary ability at an early age. it’s just that she genuinely enjoys and savours, just as much, the more ordinary capabilities of the rest. she gives all of them strong encouragement to strive for ever better capabilities, but also, perhaps more inconspicuously, encourages them to enjoy whatever they can do at every stage along the way. her pupils can have their cake and eat it (and by the way it isn’t at all uncommon for her pupils to come away from her lessons literally with crumbs on their lips, having mixed the pleasures of music with the enjoyment of snack time). no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 303 8. conclusions: on music, social progress, and life enhancement i opened by arguing that participation in the musical events that elizabeth organizes gives a pleasing sense of social progress. democratizing the business of music-making, and doing so in child-friendly and parent-friendly ways which enhance the social experiences of music-makers, seem to me to be extremely important ways in which societies can progress. plato recognized this at the level of individual pedagogy but his thinking on the social benefits of music never led to a strong tradition in studying and celebrating the role of music in facilitating good lives and good societies. although there have been occasional attempts to discuss links between music and social progress (frith, 2007; allen, 1946), most writing linking music with progress is either about individual progress towards musical excellence, or else takes the form of obscure and irresolvable aesthetic and philosophical debates about the artistic, literary, and sonic qualities of musical compositions and performances. music certainly does have ineffable intrinsic value that can’t be reduced to its psychological or sociological uses, but the extrinsic values of music need to be understood and celebrated too. looking at elizabeth, particularly in her capacity as an exponent of the suzuki approach to music education and parenting, has given us opportunities to recognize a number of important cultural themes in happiness studies that would certainly merit more careful attention. first, the ability to facilitate happiness is an important life skill that combines character traits with hard altruistic work. though highly valued when we bother to pay attention to it, the social function of the cheermonger is not often highly rewarded with money or status. nor is it necessarily focused explicitly on the production of happiness. elizabeth has never, to my knowledge, tried to justify her work in the name of happiness. she simply believes passionately in the various activities that she promotes – active musicianship, cooperative play, early learning with supportive parental involvement, noncompetitive pursuit of excellence, and social engagement. we could call cheermongery ‘emotional labour’, a term coined by the marxist-feminist sociologist arlie hochschild with reference to the mood management of air hostesses (hochschild, 1983). i agree with hochschild that the value of this work needs more recognition, but unlike her i don’t want to look at it primarily in terms of exploitation and pathology: when emotion work (let’s at least give it a more morally neutral label) is done well and willingly it is a beauty to behold, and there is no doubt that exponents like elizabeth take great pride and joy in their emotional contribution to society. second, like many other skills, those we have looked at (musicianship, good parenting, prosocial behaviour, enjoyment of work, deferred gratification, etc) are ‘inborn’ in all of us but nonetheless don’t just ‘come naturally’: they need to be cultivated, and they require cultural support for their expression. we need educational systems (and of course not just schools but communities, social networks, and value systems) that cultivate and celebrate the full variety of capabilities that everyone is born with the potential to develop. third, musical abilities – practising, anticipating improvement while enjoying the moment, making music, performing individually and collectively, listening – are some of the life skills that are most crucial for happiness, and yet these tend in many cultural contexts to be inadequately nurtured. all cultures recognize the value of music, some (e.g. youth cultures) perhaps more than others. but music tends to sit awkwardly with other values and its power is not always seen as an unmixed blessing. those who play music, or create it, teach it, or otherwise facilitate it, are not always the culture heroes we might expect them to be. active music-making and composition are often seen as ultra-specialist activities best left to a tiny gifted and/or marginal and even deviant minority, and often based on elitist and/or authoritarian, creativity-inhibiting instruction (merriam, 1964; chs. 7 & 8). many schools no-one is unmusical: elizabeth, everyday cheermongery, and active musical citizenship thin www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 304 worldwide make little or no attempt to nurture musical abilities, and those that do often fail due to the neglect of the importance of early learning. even in western schools, where there is nearly always some kind of musical instruction albeit mainly focused on listening and discussing rather than playing, it is still often not effectively mainstreamed within the curriculum, nor incentivised with public recognition, nor properly evaluated. instead it is seen as an optional activity like sport or religion. finally, goods whose value is not adequately theorised and measured, or whose absence is not necessarily perceived immediately as catastrophic, tend to be taken for granted. we all know, surely, how much we collectively rely on the goodwill and energy of cheermongers like elizabeth. they keep us sane, they spread good feelings contagiously through social networks, they foster peace and love, they inhibit our tendencies to get angry and upset over petty quarrels and temporary setbacks. but we rarely think about happiness promotion as a critically important social function that could be better incentivised and celebrated. music promotion is similarly undervalued and undernourished not because we don’t value music, but because we can’t see it as a critically important component in social processes and in cultural achievements which vary widely from one culture to another, or from one family or school to another, depending on how well they are nourished. two of the key insights from positive psychology are that we can derive a great deal of happiness through the expression of thanks, and from the regular habit of savouring the good things in life (bryant & veroff, 2007; emmons 2007). to promote my own happiness, i would like to offer thanks to elizabeth, while savouring and promoting recognition of her extraordinary gift for joy-spreading. just as the sublime qualities of music can’t be captured in words, so the ineffable niceness of a person can only be indirectly apprehended by watching their actions and relationships. we can nonetheless learn a lot more about music, and about everyday niceness, by doing our best to work out how everyday cheermongers work their magic. author neil thin university of 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the collapse and revival of american community. new york, london: simon & schuster. sacks, oliver, 2008, musicophilia: tales of music and the brain. london: picador. schögler, ben, and colwyn trevarthen, 2007, 'to sing and dance together: from infants to jazz'. in s.braten [ed], on being moved: from mirror neurons to empathy. amsterdam: john benjamins co, pp. 281-302. skingley, ann, stephen m clift, simon p coulton, and john rodriguez, 2011, ‘the effectiveness and costeffectiveness of a participative community singing programme as a health promotion initiative for older people: protocol for a randomised controlled trial’, bmc public health 11. sloboda, john, 1999, ‘everyday uses of music listening: a preliminary survey’. in suk won yi *ed+ music, mind, and science. seoul: seoul national university press, pp. 354-5. sloboda, john, 2005, exploring the musical mind: cognition, emotion, ability, function. oxford and new york: oxford university press. suzuki, shinichi, 1983, nurtured by love: the classic approach to talent education [trans: waltraud suzuki]. miami: suzuki method international. sylvan, robin, 2005, trance formation: the spiritual and religious dimensions of global rave culture. new york/london: routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.05.053 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcp027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.004 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3333275 mankiewicz, p. d. (2015). toward positive psychosocial practice in psychosis: in pursuit of subjective wellbeing in severe mental ill-health. international journal of wellbeing, 5(4), 120-134. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i4.346 pawel d. mankiewicz national health service, uk pawel.mankiewicz@nhs.net copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 article toward positive psychosocial practice in psychosis: in pursuit of subjective wellbeing in severe mental illhealth pawel d. mankiewicz abstract: this article summarises and reflects on the scarce literature on the subject of positive psychosocial practice in the clinical specialism of complex and enduring mental health needs, such as psychosis. an attempt is made to demonstrate that such practice is not only achievable among individuals with severe psychological difficulties but, indeed, has already begun to develop, although it seems still in its infancy. the literature reviewed in this paper appears to indicate that a person with psychosis is as capable of experiencing subjective wellbeing as any other person in the general population. however, in order to promote wellbeing and sustained recovery among such individuals, a specialist psychosocial input needs to be delivered in a positive – that is integrative, person-based, collaborative, socially inclusive, and flow-inducing – manner. furthermore, the article endeavours to demonstrate that in order to effect a fundamental shift in the perception of severe mental ill-health from a deficit-based and psychopathology-oriented stance toward a person-based and socially inclusive one, the principles of positive practice need to inform a wide range of clinical and social activities, including assessment, intervention, interpersonal reengagement and public policy development. it is nevertheless acknowledged that positive psychosocial approaches to psychosis are still in their infancy and relevant research studies remain considerably underrepresented, and in many aspects virtually non-existent. hence, it is suggested that future research in positive clinical psychology within the specialty of complex, severe and enduring mental ill-health is actively encouraged and pursued by both clinicians and academics. keywords: subjective wellbeing, positive psychosocial practice, positive clinical psychology, psychosis, severe mental ill-health 1. introduction a rather restricted focus on pathology has for a long time dominated clinical applications of the psychological discipline and has resulted in a relatively negativistic model of human experiences. as argued by seligman and csikszentmihalyi (2000), such a model appears deficient of the positive features that make life worth living and distorts fundamental understanding of normal emotional functioning. particularly in clinical psychology, the neglect of subjective wellbeing (swb) might be explained by the field’s long-established focus on the more severe, complex and enduring forms of psychological difficulties, which in practice often means addressing problems and reducing distress rather than promoting happiness (conway & macleod, 2002). although examples of studies describing successfully-implemented interventions and their positive impact on the wellbeing of people with psychosis have been available in the clinical literature, braehler and harper (2008) still reported that the quality of life of those diagnosed with schizophrenia mailto:pawel.mankiewicz@nhs.net http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 remained low. yet, more than two decades ago, romme and escher (1993) proposed that rehabilitation of people with psychosis should focus on enhancing all fundamental qualities of their lives. similarly, chadwick (1997) demonstrated that such individuals have virtues as well as deficits, and psychological interventions needed to focus on their strengths in order to increase the dignity and swb of those with psychosis. using semantic and bibliographic methods, rusk and waters (2013) analysed over 1.7 million documents in 700 journals covering a range of psychosocial disciplines and concluded that approximately 4 percent of the published papers belonged to applied positive psychology. regrettably, to date such studies among individuals with severe mental health needs appear considerably under-represented in comparison with psychopathologically focused clinical research. given the historic endorsement of the disease paradigm of emotional difficulties and neglect of individual virtues in clinical psychology, it appears important for clinicians working within the specialism of severe mental ill-health to recognise how aspects of positive psychology, such as swb models, apply to their clients, and how such models may inform the development of positive clinical practice aimed at supporting and increasing their clients’ life satisfaction. in order to arrive at such inferences, it needs to be shown that despite the generally upheld negativistic portrayals of psychosis, it is possible to reliably measure swb levels within this clinical population. it also needs to be demonstrated that individuals with complex psychological problems are able to experience happiness, and that employment of swb models is attainable with such persons within both therapeutic practice and broader socially inclusive interventions. this article attempts to review and summarise relevant literature on the subject of utilisation of positive psychology principles among one of the most socially disadvantaged and stigmatised clinical populations, that is, those with active experiences of psychosis, and to propose how such principles may shift the functional goal of psychosocial interventions from a temporary reduction of distress to ensuring a prolonged enhancement of one’s swb as the means for a longterm recovery. this article investigates how the innovative movement of positive clinical psychology may contribute to fundamental change in the way clinicians think about severe mental health needs, from a deficit-based and psychopathologically oriented stance towards a person-based and socially inclusive one. based on the reviewed literature, the article argues that individuals with enduring psychoses are as capable of experiencing swb as those from the general population, and illustrates how positive psychosocial interventions may enhance such experiences within the discussed clinical group. furthermore, an attempt is made to argue that positive psychosocial practice in psychosis is principally about a particular (i.e. integrative, person-based, collaborative, inclusive, and flowinducing) way that more traditional and empirically established therapeutic interventions, such as those based on cognitive-behavioural models, are delivered, and about the explicitly defined values governing such interventions. as argued by linley, joseph, harrington and wood (2006), in order to develop and establish a positive therapeutic practice, a full integration of traditional evidence-based and deficit-oriented models of therapy with positive psychology principles needs to be promoted. here, it is proposed that such an integrative approach is not only achievable among clients with psychosis but, indeed, it has already begun to develop. 2. refuting the disease paradigm of schizophrenia it seems of principal importance for mental health professionals to revisit the terminology they use to describe experiences of psychosis. harper (2001) proposed that particular descriptions of psychological problems influence the range of interventions offered to the clients. as argued by maddux (2002), due to the long established reliance on psychiatric concepts, clinical psychology positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 practice may have also become pathologised, and the assumptions of the disease paradigm continue as implicit guides to psychological treatments, which aim to alleviate disordered conditions that reside within the person and are thought of as symptoms of illness. yet, research studies appear to demonstrate that bio-genetic explanations of psychosis increase fear and prejudice towards diagnosed individuals, and lead to their social marginalisation (geekie, 2004). furthermore, campbell (2007) illustrated how those diagnosed with schizophrenia felt trapped within the stigmatising and discriminatory professional framework, which in their opinion encouraged the dismissal of significant aspects of their experience. although the medical construct of schizophrenia has been methodologically refuted for decades (bentall, 1990), psychosis continues to be typically described using a diagnostic approach. consequently, mankiewicz (2013) argued that in order to counterbalance such an unhelpful clinical tradition, the growing importance of psychosocial concepts of psychosis should encourage clinicians to offer a choice of individually tailored explanations and interventions, and support individuals in making sense of their experiences in the context of their lives. such practice focusing on self-defining abilities of a client would potentially have an empowering, healing effect. 2.1. pessimistic comorbidity severe emotional distress has been acknowledged in most aetiological models of psychosis, whilst high levels of depression and anxiety were found to be prevalent amongst people with diagnoses of schizophrenia (marneros & akiskal, 2007). the prevalence of diagnostic comorbidity was found to be as high as 57.3%, of which approximately 62% of people were found to have anxiety disorder (good, 2002). siris (1991) reviewed 29 studies investigating the incidence of secondary depression in psychosis, and concluded that its occurrence ranged to as many as 70% of studied cases. overall, emotional wellbeing in psychosis as portrayed in the majority of clinical and research literature appears to be largely pessimistic. such bias, as noticed by social exclusion unit (2004) and royal college of psychiatrists (2009), might have contributed to a discouraging supposition that the levels of swb among individuals with psychosis were considerably lower than those of the general population, and in consequence, those individuals would be unable to become satisfied with their lives. hence, in order to examine the validity of such supposition, the positive psychological practice in psychosis ought to incorporate a comprehensive assessment of wellbeing levels among individuals with such experiences. 3. toward positive assessment in psychosis huppert and so (2013) emphasised the significance of the measurement of swb as a recovery indicator in mental health. as stated by the authors, high swb equates with positive mental health and functionally may be perceived as lying at the opposite end of a spectrum to common psychological problems. such a perspective might be illustrated by the four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress developed by headey and wearing (1992). the researchers provided evidence that some psychological distress can occur alongside moderately high general levels of happiness, yet both were negatively correlated. thus, it was proposed that a comprehensive assessment of one’s psychological wellbeing needed to incorporate both positive and negative aspects of one’s experience. subsequently, headey and wearing (1992) demonstrated that depression and anxiety, the two widespread forms of psychological distress, were moderately correlated and both had effects on happiness through their inverse influence positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 on life satisfaction (cognitive dimension of swb) and positive emotion (affective component of swb). yet, it appears the assessment of swb serves as an indicator of more than one’s general mental health. forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman (2011) argued that such assessments would indicate the quality of individual experiences within the wider social context. the authors emphasised that “subjective measures appear to be indispensible insofar as the presence of objective conditions of wellbeing may not always be accompanied with subjective feelings of wellbeing” (p. 98). 3.1. assessment of swb in psychosis in order to address the apparent absence of research literature addressing swb assessment among people with psychosis, mankiewicz, gresswell and turner (2013a) conducted a clinical study in which they examined the utilisation of swb measures among individuals with active experiences of hallucinations and paranoia. two standardised instruments, widely used in positive psychology research, were employed. the satisfaction with life scale (diener, emmons, larsen & griffin, 1985) was used to investigate the levels of cognitive dimension of swb, while the positive affect scale, a standardised subtest of the affect balance scale (bradburn, 1969), was utilised to examine the affective component of participants’ happiness. the authors demonstrated that swb measures could be reliably administered to individuals with active psychoses, including those on acute mental health wards (mankiewicz et al., 2013a). interestingly, not only was headey and wearing’s model with its correlational values successfully replicated, but the sample’s mean for positive affect approximated the levels established in the general population, indicating that the participants exhibited average levels of positive affect. thus, contrary to the negative inferences derived from the disease paradigm of schizophrenia, the participants exhibited levels of positive affect typical for the universal average. descriptive data indicated that the measurement scores approximated normal distribution. subsequently, in order to utilise the integrative principle of positive psychological practice postulated by joseph and linley (2006) within the process of assessment of individuals with psychosis, mankiewicz, gresswell and turner (2013b) investigated levels of psychological distress and examined how experiences of psychosis affected the satisfaction with life of such individuals. indeed, the presence of psychosis was accompanied by increased levels of psychological distress, and the sample’s life satisfaction mean was placed within the ‘slightly dissatisfied’ score range. the scores were still normally distributed. furthermore, the study outcomes indicated that the effects that experiences of psychosis, such as paranoid beliefs, had on individual life satisfaction were mediated by the levels of emotional distress experienced by individuals. a mediational analysis of data demonstrated that depression acted as a dominant mediator in the association between the experiences of psychosis and satisfaction with life. 3.2. happiness in psychosis based on the outcomes of their research, mankiewicz et al. (2013b) proposed a number of conclusions to inform positive psychological practice in psychosis. their conclusions are summarised in table 1 below. positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 table 1. null effects of psychosis on swb levels – summary of clinical study conclusions (mankiewicz et al., 2013b). null effect summary of clinical study conclusions psychosis does not equal unhappiness the levels of swb among people diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia were largely similar to the levels typical for the general population. the range of sample scores demonstrated that individuals experiencing psychosis could feel very joyful and be satisfied with their lives. hence, contrary to the deficit-oriented portrayal of psychosis, empirical data suggested that individuals with such experiences are able to report levels of swb similar to those in the general population. psychosis does not exempt individuals from positive mood setpoints there seems to be a positive, rather than neutral, affect baseline in humans, which has significant adaptive, evolutionary, motivational, social, learning and intrinsic functions (diener & diener, 1996). the exact set-point varies among individuals, depending on a person’s socialisation and temperament, yet for most people it remains in the positive range. since the general levels of positive affect in psychosis were demonstrated to be similar to those reported in the general population, the experiences of psychosis did not appear to automatically perturb positive mood set-points among the study participants. psychosis does not indiscriminately reduce life satisfaction the results suggested that experiences of psychosis would indirectly affect individual life satisfaction through their influence on depression levels. if auditory hallucinations and/or delusional beliefs become activated (despite use of medication) and are appraised by an individual as a loss of control over their lives, the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are elicited. in depression, self-defeating cognitions seem unconditional and over-generalised, hence negatively affect individual appraisal of one’s entire life (gilbert, 2009). psychosis does not immobilize adaptive mechanisms of swb the positive affect levels among individuals with psychosis were similar to those reported in the general population, hence appeared intact. due to the stable levels of positive affect, despite clearly elevated experiences of psychological distress, the average satisfaction with life was only slightly lowered in comparison with general population trends. the dynamic equilibrium theory of happiness (headey, 2006) suggests that major life events are typically habituated to and people soon return to their usual, individually-set equilibrium states of swb, despite initially increased levels of psychological distress and reduced levels of positive affect. empirical data produced by mankiewicz et al. (2013b) indicated that individuals diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia were able to habituate to such disconcerting experiences as onset of psychosis, acute episodes of paranoia and hearing voices, or admissions to inpatient mental health wards, and with time returned to their individual swb equilibrium states. positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 4. toward positive psychological interventions in psychosis given the results of the above study, mankiewicz et al. (2013b) suggested that in order to enhance life satisfaction among individuals with psychosis, psychological interventions would need to focus initially on reducing experiences of depression. and traditional clinical psychology emphasising the alleviation of emotional distress offers exactly such interventions. however, applied positive psychology provides an alternative approach that complements the traditional deficit-based stance. in other words, positive therapists may offer a range of strength-based interventions that promote individual swb and buffer against mental ill-health (joseph & linley, 2006). the aforementioned four-dimension model of swb and psychological distress seems to depict accurately how the enhanced swb levels may operate as individual shields against psychological distress. such a functional shift in clinical settings may be achieved only through a full integration of the positive and negative aspects of human experience, so that psychological therapists can empower their clients in finding individually tailored ways to alleviate distress and promote wellbeing and optimal functioning (linley et al., 2006). 4.1. toward positive cognitive-behavioural therapy several analyses of current evidence in the specialism of psychological interventions for psychosis demonstrated the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural therapy for psychosis (cbtp). in their meta-analytical evaluation of controlled research and qualitative reviews, roth and fonagy (2005) presented numerous studies with favourable outcomes. also, cbtp has been supported with affirmative results of case studies (e.g. mankiewicz & turner, 2014) and randomised control trials (e.g. farhall, freeman, shawyer & trauer, 2009; jolley et al., 2003). as argued by mankiewicz (2013), the novel cognitive-behavioural advances in working with psychosis could potentially help mental health professionals to shift their perception of such experiences from a pathological syndrome to a non-pathological difficulty that may cause considerable distress and decrease swb. yet, can a range of cognitive-behavioural interventions be employed within a positive therapeutic framework? and, if so, what criteria would need to be met to insure that the delivered behaviourally-based therapy is indeed positive in its nature? those enquiries were explored by weiss and knoster (2008), who argued that such therapy needed to move away from the traditional mechanistic utilisation of its interventions and become person-based. subsequently, the authors proposed that in order for a therapeutic model to meet criteria of positive psychological intervention it must allow the client opportunity to express opinions and exert a level of control over their life through meaningful choices, help the person to identify their fundamental needs and positively influence the client’s quality of life. furthermore, the authors argued that positive behavioural approaches ought to be overtly based on therapeutic collaboration (versus authoritarian control) and functionally focused on illumination, i.e. understanding the meanings and purposes of the individual’s behaviour from their subjective perspective, rather than exclusively on elimination, i.e. extinguishing unhelpful behaviours. even earlier, keyes and lopez (2002) proposed that positive treatments were those that had an objective to build upon a person’s existing strengths and eliminate barriers to personal growth. once more, the major importance of integration of the positive (promoting wellbeing) and negative (addressing signs of psychological distress) was highlighted. the authors emphasised that such therapies do not differ from traditional models in their content, but rather in their explicit focus. likewise, research studies reviewed by thompson (2002) demonstrated how a range of conventional cognitive-behavioural interventions (such as goal setting, cognitive restructuring, stress reduction and problem-solving skills, positive mental imagery, and selfpositive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 instruction training) were effectively employed to increase the individuals’ subjective quality of life. subsequently, fava and ruini (2003) proposed that wellbeing-oriented psychological interventions should be integrated with traditional approaches and delivered after a range of problematic cognitions and behaviours have been addressed. also, frish (2006) demonstrated that traditional cognitive-behavioural therapy could be successfully combined with positive psychology principles, and utilised across a wide spectrum of mental health needs. both models explicitly address unhelpful cognitions, difficult emotions and dysfunctional behaviours through numerous cognitive and behavioural therapeutic strategies, yet complement the traditional cbt approach with an integrated wellbeing component. an intervention based on such integrative principles was investigated by seligman, rashid and parks (2006), who studied the effectiveness of positive psychotherapeutic input in alleviating depression. the cbt-derived treatment integrated interventions focusing on negative and positive experiences and incorporated both cognitive strategies and behavioural tasks. the authors demonstrated that the treatment led to a considerable symptomatic relief, even among severely depressed clients. the effect sizes were moderate to large. similarly, the effectiveness of cognitive therapy based on the notions of positive psychology was investigated by padash, dehnavi and botlani (2012). the delivered intervention considerably increased individuals’ swb with particular gains in life satisfaction, despite various psychological problems, such as depression. 4.2. toward positive cbtp considering the discussed principles of positive cognitive-behavioural therapies, it appears that cbtp may potentially be delivered within the positive framework. indeed, as argued below, it seems that such adaptations of cbtp have already begun to be developed and utilised. lopez and kerr (2006) emphasised that positive therapy practice needs to be based on core values of shared therapeutic goals, collaborative work, and reciprocally attainable results. likewise, the crucial importance of adopting a person-centred stance in positive therapies was emphasised by joseph and linley (2006). as argued by the authors, in positive psychological practice, despite an initial focus on alleviating distressing symptoms, the clients ought to be supported in finding outlets and expression for their directional tendencies that are congruent with their intrinsic values. such positive shift in the therapeutic focus would provide an empowering alternative to the disease model of mental illness, and thus appears particularly important for those with severe, complex and enduring psychological needs. in 1996, chadwick, birchwood and trower predicted that although cbtp had initially helped clinicians to move away from the medical constructs of schizophrenia and liberated psychological research and practice, it would one day need to step beyond its symptom focus and turn towards an ordinary human psychology, that is psychology of the person. subsequently, chadwick (2006) proposed a fundamental shift in cognitive-behavioural practice for psychosis and endorsed person-based cbtp, in which interventions were based on a collaborative therapeutic relationship and employed as a conceptual rather than manualised process, and thus empowered clients in achieving their personal goals. the empowering therapeutic alliance in person-based cbtp was argued by mankiewicz (2013) to be central in establishing rapport with often socially stigmatised and excluded individuals. yet ultimately, as proposed by king and ollendick (2008), the decisive criterion in measuring the individual suitability of a particular therapeutic model is its acceptability to the clients. such a position undermines the old psychiatric orthodoxy and explicitly challenges the dominance positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 and power of an expert in the process of psychological intervention. indeed, in the study conducted by farhall et al. (2009) the general levels of clients’ acceptability of cbtp and their satisfaction ratings were shown to be high, and the mean client-rated working alliance appeared excellent. 5. toward social re-engagement in psychosis an ongoing debate about the relevance of external factors in swb continues to take place in positive psychology. it seems that, unless the basic life needs are jeopardized, most people tend to report positive levels of their life satisfaction (diener & diener, 1996). that is, most individuals in the general population tend to be ‘rather satisfied’ with their lives, unless exposed to adverse circumstances. such a conclusion appears particularly relevant to those with severe psychological difficulties, since, as demonstrated by mankiewicz et al. (2013 b), subjective emotional distress, with depression as a dominant mediator, accounted for 22.4% of variance in life satisfaction among those with active experiences of psychosis. indeed, more than two decades ago, pilgrim (1990) argued that the most important dimensions of lives of people with psychosis were underscrutinised. the overpowering dominance of the disease paradigm of schizophrenia might have distorted the fact that most of those with enduring psychoses remained poor, unemployed, homeless or lived in deprived circumstances and often experienced exploitation and multiple traumas (read, seymour & mosher, 2004). 5.1. combating social exclusion as argued by lingwood (2006), people with severe mental ill-health have long been located at the edges of community life and were among the most excluded of all social groups, experiencing widespread stigma and discrimination. the royal college of psychiatrists (rcp, 2009) defined social exclusion as ‘‘the extent to which individuals are unable to participate in key areas of economic, social and cultural life’’ (p. 1). non-participation arising from constraints rather than choice was emphasised. interestingly, among the main reasons for widespread social exclusion of those with complex psychological needs, as identified by the social exclusion unit (seu, 2004), were low expectations and negative assumptions held by mental health professionals about the capabilities of individuals with psychiatric diagnoses. indeed, the seu reported that service users frequently raised concerns about how clinicians’ negative attitudes toward their abilities would often delay their recovery. bergsma and veenhoven (2011) investigated the levels of swb and functionality of social participation among individuals with a range of mental health needs. the researchers demonstrated that those with psychiatric diagnoses who experienced higher levels of swb were more socially engaged, less absent from work, and required less multidisciplinary support. the authors concluded that individuals with psychological difficulties felt happier if they presented with social characteristics of those with good mental health. they would still experience symptoms, yet were able to cope and consequently feel more satisfied with their lives. hence, the importance of improving social conditions for people with mental health needs was emphasised. the authors argued that “the better external living conditions in society, the more the remaining difference in happiness depends on inner life ability” (p. 3). therefore it seems imperative that the variance in swb affected by societal circumstances is acknowledged and addressed through a range of supportive psychosocial interventions. the significance of measuring and enhancing swb of people with psychosis in order to counteract exclusion, stigma and discrimination has been voiced by service users for years positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 (campbell, 2007). as a result, chadwick (2006) emphasised that clinicians pursuing personbased cbtp in their practice must attempt to conceptualise individual experiences of psychosis in the context of a person’s whole life. in practice, it seems therefore essential to incorporate the client-related factors that are socially bound and may influence the individual’s therapeutic goals. 5.2. toward social recovery in psychosis as argued by seu (2004), mental health services need to empower individuals with complex psychological needs to regain the things they value in their lives regardless of their diagnoses. this requires a more positive approach from the services in order to recognise and accommodate individual needs. such a positive approach would need to incorporate, firstly, breaking the assumed link between mental ill health and social incompetence, and assisting individuals in making personal choices about their lives, and secondly, encouraging broader social participation, including occupational and leisure activities, to promote life satisfaction. interestingly, tew et al. (2012) argued that clinical recovery within mental health was not essential for an individual to achieve considerable social progress, and emphasised that individuals with psychological difficulties were largely able to recover socially despite the continuous presence of clinical symptoms. based on a comprehensive literature review, the authors concluded that rebuilding a worthwhile life, irrespective of whether or not individuals continued to experience particular psychological difficulties, was most central in reclaiming their valued social roles, positive self-identities and life satisfaction. even earlier, james (2001) suggested that overcoming a sense of powerlessness might be one of the key factors increasing swb among people with psychosis. however, tew et al. (2012) employed a more holistic stance toward recovery and argued that it needed to involve a journey of both personal change and social reengagement. the authors identified a number of processual and contextual social recovery factors that would increase wellbeing among individuals with mental health needs. these included transformation from an illness-dominated identity to an agency and competency-based one, participation in the community, identification of individual strengths and resources within a wider environment, development of social connectedness based on a subjective sense of belonging, and engagement in subjectively rewarding activities. 5.3. toward optimal experiences in psychosis it appears plausible to suggest that most conclusions derived from the literature on the subject of recovery in severe psychological difficulties appear consistent with the key notions of the theory of flow developed by csikszentmihalyi (2002). the theory proposed that swb can be enhanced through engagement with everyday life and involvement in absorbing tasks, such as work or leisure activities, in which individuals exercise their strengths, talents and interests. the intrinsic absorption in activities that people do for their own sake would eventually lead to the unique harmony and order in consciousness, i.e. flow. such optimal experiences help individuals cultivate an optimistic perception of their lives and thus prevent them from experiencing psychological ill-health. these suppositions informed the practical recommendations that carr (2005) gave to mental health professionals aspiring to pursue a positive psychology approach in their clinical practice. for instance, the author suggested that clinicians might help clients identify their abilities and talents, and explore ways to use these frequently to generate optimal experiences. given the crucial role that activities and hobbies play in building psychological health among people with severe mental health problems (bryson, lysaker & bell, 2002), a clinical case example positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 of a successful delivery of flow interventions to a client with enduring psychosis reported two decades ago by csikszentmihalyi (1997) should not come as a surprise. csikszentmihalyi’s experience sampling method was used with a female client after more than a decade of her continuous inpatient hospitalisation to identify a range of flow-inducing activities. subsequently, such activities (e.g. taking care of her fingernails) were supported with further input encouraging the development of personal competencies (e.g. participation in a professional manicurist course) to ensure the frequency of optimal experiences. following a considerable enhancement in swb, despite the preceding unresponsiveness to medical and pharmacological treatments, the person was discharged to community and within a year became self-sufficient. furthermore, utilisation of cbtp interventions may also play an important role in encouraging social reengagement. for instance, french, morrison, walford, knight, and bentall (2003) presented a case example of a successfully implemented cbtp with an individual experiencing delusional beliefs. the intervention not only ameliorated the person’s emotional distress but also enabled the individual’s social functioning through engaging in intrinsically rewarding interpersonal activities. in the uk, numerous clinical guidelines for socially inclusive practice have emerged. for instance, the seu (2004) argued that individuals with mental ill-health have much to offer socially, and if they were supported in fulfilling their potentials, the constraining impact of their psychological difficulties would be considerably reduced. hence, the seu recommended that clinicians promote the social inclusion of their clients through offering support in finding ways to accomplish their aspirations, access opportunities, and participate in a range of leisure activities. additionally, the national social inclusion programme (nsip, 2009) emphasised that people with complex mental ill-health ought to be supported in developing their skills and talents, so that they become able to live fulfilling lives in a way that promotes and sustains their swb. a number of community-based initiatives involving ‘social prescribing’ by clinicians were developed by the seu (2004). prescriptions for learning, exercise and arts were utilised as key interventions. furthermore, positive approaches to the education of mental health practitioners have been employed through provision of training in combating discrimination toward individuals with psychosis and in eliciting their qualities and strengths (houghton, shaw, hayward & west, 2006). 6. toward positive mental health policies as argued by weiss and knoster (2008), positive behaviourally-oriented psychological input needs to be embedded in the wider culture of social inclusion and empowerment. the authors insisted that all mental health practitioners have an important responsibility to the people they serve “that has less to do with getting others to act in predetermined ways and much more to do with supporting people to become increasingly self-determined and fulfilled” (p. 77). the pertinent role of social recovery, that is building one’s life beyond the constraints of a psychological problem without necessarily achieving full clinical recovery, was emphasised in the uk in rcp’s position statement (2009) as a way to promote social inclusion for individuals with mental health needs. regaining a sense of personal control and participating in developmental opportunities were emphasised among the key factors allowing social recovery to occur. social inclusion focused not only on overcoming objective barriers that people with psychosis would come up against, but also on helping individuals to address their subjective desire for a fulfilling role in their social lives. positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 forgeard et al. (2011) recognised the quality of social support in combination with sense of accomplishment and competence as central indicators of individual wellbeing, which, as argued by the authors, ought to be explicitly supported through relevant developments in public policies. since employment rates among people with severe and enduring mental health needs were estimated as 3.4 % (dominy & hayward-butcher, 2012), occupational reengagement in psychosis appears central to one’s recovery. indeed, a study conducted by dominy and hayward-butcher (2012) demonstrated significant gains in subjective quality of life among people with such difficulties following employment. in recent years, a gradual shift toward the development of mental health policies that are informed by the principles of positive clinical practice might have been observed in the uk. utilisation of such policies within the specialism of complex mental ill-health has the apparent potential to generate a radical change in how individuals with psychoses are supported in their communities. for instance, in capabilities for inclusive practice, the department of health (2007) recommended that mental health professionals conduct their assessments in a way that informs a holistic understanding of individuals, including their strengths and capacities. consequently, psychological care was to be provided in the context of the specific aspirations of a person, in order to promote their social reengagement. similarly, the nsip (2009) emphasised that one of the main functions of a socially reengaging practice in complex mental health was to ensure a meaningful and intrinsically motivating participation in community life. as a result of such policies, an increasing number of specialist community mental health services for individuals with psychosis appear to have adopted the socially inclusive recommendations. such services follow the process of deinstitutionalisation, employ assertive outreach support, have a shared goal of facilitating independence, enable functional interpersonal networks, and improve social interactions. for instance, davies, hopkins, campisi and maggs (2012) illustrated a successful development and provision of a high relational supportive service for individuals with severe and enduring psychological difficulties, including psychosis. the authors reported significant gains in the areas of social integration, independence and exercised choice among the service users. additionally, despite the continuous presence of symptoms (such as delusional beliefs), an improvement in individual wellbeing was also recorded. 6.1. accessibility of psychological therapies for psychosis in 2007, new ways of working for applied psychologists, a joint initiative between the british psychological society and the national institute for mental health in england, emphasised the centrality of psychological formulation in planning and delivering mental health services. a formulation approach was openly contrasted with the illness model of emotional distress, which represented the pervasive discourse in services. the recent advances in understanding of psychosis and growing evidence for effectiveness of psychological therapies were argued as imperative in providing an open challenge to the dominant medical constructs of psychological difficulties. the critical role of equal access to psychological therapies across the entire spectrum of severity of mental health needs was emphasised by the seu (2004). consequently, in 2009, the national institute for health and care excellence (nice) in the uk published its clinical guideline for psychosis, in which cbtp and family-focused interventions were recommended as core psychological treatments for all individuals with such needs. the guideline was recently reviewed and the recommendations for psychological treatments were upheld (nice, 2014). positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 nonetheless, despite the promising developments in mental health policies and psychosocial practice affecting individuals with psychoses, a range of organisational barriers to the delivery of effective services was still identified in a clinical study conducted by mankiewicz and turner (2012). the recognised obstacles included, interestingly, clinicians’ pessimism related to the effectiveness of the interventions offered. the authors recommended that such reservations are openly acknowledged and addressed through regular consultation and psychoeducation targeting the therapists’ pessimism and creating a more hopeful, encouraging and, indeed, positive attitude toward the offered services and their recipients. 7. conclusions and future directions in this article an attempt was made to demonstrate that a positive clinical psychology practice is not only achievable among individuals with the most complex and severe mental health needs, such as psychosis, but indeed has already begun to develop, although it seems still to be in its infancy. the scarce literature on the subject of positive psychosocial practice in psychosis reviewed in this paper appears to indicate that in order to effect a fundamental shift in clinicians’ perception of such difficulties from a deficit-based and psychopathology-oriented stance toward a person-based and socially inclusive one, and to promote a sustained recovery among affected individuals, the principles of positive practice in psychosis need to inform a wide range of clinical and social activities, including assessment, intervention, interpersonal reengagement, and public policy development. an attempt was made to demonstrate that people with psychoses are as capable of experiencing affirmative levels of swb as any other person in the general population. yet, in order to promote wellbeing among such individuals, a specialist psychological input needs to be delivered in an integrative, person-based, collaborative, socially inclusive, and flow-inducing manner. it was proposed that evidence-based cognitive-behavioural therapies may in some instances be delivered as positive interventions to those with complex, severe and enduring mental health needs. to achieve this, the positive psychology principles ought to be functionally incorporated, so that they explicitly guide the delivery of such interventions and empower the clients in the pursuit of fulfilling lives. person-based cbtp was used as an innovative example of a therapeutic modality for psychosis-type difficulties that approximates a clinically applied positive psychology framework. however, it needs to be acknowledged that positive psychosocial approaches to psychosis are still in their infancy. clinically relevant research studies remain considerably underrepresented in the discussed specialism and, in many aspects, appear virtually nonexistent. thus, it seems essential that future research in positive clinical psychology within the specialty of complex, severe and enduring mental ill-health is actively encouraged and pursued by both clinicians and academics. such research would need to adopt a holistic approach to individual wellbeing in psychosis, and examine both internal (psychological) and external (objective) indicators of one’s swb. authors pawel d. mankiewicz national health service, uk pawel.mankiewicz@nhs.net publishing timeline received 2 july 2015 mailto:pawel.mankiewicz@nhs.net positive psychosocial practice in psychosis mankiewicz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 accepted 3 november 2015 published 18 december 2015 references bentall, r. p. 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(2015). workplace wellbeing programs: if you build it they may not come…because it’s not what they really need! international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 109-124. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.7 gordon spence university of wollongong gspence@uow.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 article workplace wellbeing programs: if you build it they may not come…because it’s not what they really need! gordon b. spence abstract: public and private sector interest in employee wellbeing has grown steadily in the past 20 years. arguably the most visible manifestation of this interest is workplace health promotion and wellbeing (workwell) programs, which can be found in various guises within many contemporary organisations. despite their recent proliferation, research in this area has focused mainly on how participation in these programs impacts upon a narrow range of factors related to finance (e.g. health care costs) and productivity (e.g. absenteeism). whilst the focus of these programs is invariably positive (insofar as they aim to improve physical, psychological and social functioning), it cannot be assumed that employees will be positively disposed towards them. indeed, empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that employee participation is a widespread challenge when implementing workwell initiatives. this paper introduces the concept of employee receptivity and reviews an array of factors that may influence participation. after reviewing pilot data from an employee wellbeing research project, three primary conclusions are presented. first, that participation may be low because such programs may not provide employees with what they most need. second, that employee receptivity may be an important factor in making decisions about the implementation of workwell programs. finally, there may be times when organisations would be far better served by concentrating on basic human relations issues than making sizable investments in formal, structured employee wellbeing programs. keywords: employee wellbeing, employee receptivity, organizational trust, change readiness, basic need satisfaction 1. introduction workplace health and wellbeing continues to be an issue of global significance. over a decade ago, wainwright and calnan (2002) argued strongly that work stress had reached epidemic proportions within western industrialised societies. recent evidence suggests that little has changed and contemporary workplaces continue to be studied in the search for answers about what causes and what prevents work stress (e.g. nixon, mazzola, bauer, kruger, & spector, 2011). according to the world health organisation (who), the workplace represents a key channel for health promotion, a view that appears to be widely held (goetzel & ozminkowski, 2008). for example, as joslin, lowe and peterson (2006) state: “chronic diseases are often preventable; therefore, health promotion efforts taking place in a setting where individuals are consistently present (such as the worksite) may have http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 public health benefits in numerous countries, with varying health care systems in place” (p. 316). recognising that the economic and material basis of any society is dependent on the productive capacity of its workforce, the who has repeatedly called for the development of national strategies to secure the physical, psychological and social health and wellbeing of workers worldwide (who, 2007). in australia this call appears to have been answered, with the 2008 national partnership agreement on preventive heath and, more recently, the 2011 australian work health and safety act stimulating the creation of health initiatives in all states and territories (e.g. the nsw healthy workers initiative). according to the federal department of health, these initiatives are designed to encourage and support workplaces to offer a range of health promotion initiatives to improve the lifestyles of working adults (commonwealth of australia, 2015). whilst government support for the creation of healthier workplaces is undoubtedly a good thing for workers, it is interesting to note that participation rates in employer-sponsored health and wellbeing programs have historically been quite low both in australia (crowther, thwaites, & zhou, 2004) and abroad (linman et al, 2008). given this, the purpose of this article is to: (i) explore reasons employees might decide against participating in such programs, (ii) introduce the concept of employee receptivity as a focus for future research, and (iii) outline an agenda for such research. 1.1 what is a “workwell” program? according to the 2014 working well: global survey of health promotion, workplace wellness and productivity strategies (buck, 2014), public and private sector interest in employee health and wellbeing has grown steadily over the past decade. arguably the most visible manifestations of this interest are the workplace health promotion programs that can be found in various guises within many australian organisations. before these programs are examined in greater detail, it should be noted that health and wellbeing are conceptualised in this article along the lines of the who’s seminal definition as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (who, 1948). based on this definition, a broad range of employer-sponsored service or product offerings can be considered relevant due to the contribution they might make to a “complete” state of health. these contributions might occur across any or all of the dimensions listed in table 1 below. for ease of reading, the term “workwell” will henceforth be used to refer to any configuration (program) of health and wellbeing products or services that: (i) concerns itself with both health promotion and illness prevention activities, and (ii) possesses some formality and structure, which might include:  an explicitly articulated sequence of activities, including some instruction on how an employee participates and what participation involves.  a requirement that employees formally register to participate in some way.  internal promotions that articulate the benefits for employees and encourage participation.  a cost centre or budget to support the program components.  some form of organizational evaluation (e.g. workshop satisfaction ratings) to assess impact. workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 table 1. dimension of workplace wellbeing represented in workwell programs wellbeing dimension description example of type of service physical ill health prevention any offering that seeks to safeguard an employee’s physical health or lower health risk factors flu vaccinations, ergonomic assessments, bp tests physical health promotion any offering that encourages or supports an improved physical health status gym membership, global corporate challenge, fruit deliveries mental ill health – prevention any offering that helps employees to manage the adverse effects of work stress or recover from a work-related trauma or personal crisis eap offerings such as workplace counseling, outplacement services, critical incident debriefing mental health promotion any offering that supports flourishing psychological health in employees workplace coaching, positive psychology seminars, meditation, yoga classes financial wellbeing any offering (beyond ordinary remuneration practices) that supports employees to improve their personal financial status financial advice, salary packaging, retirement planning career wellbeing any offering (beyond ordinary career management activities) that seeks to optimize the professional growth and development of employees mentoring, flexible work practices social wellbeing any offering that encourages social connections within organisations social club support, volunteering schemes, lunchtime sport environmental wellbeing any offering that seeks to build employee connections to the natural world or design office spaces that support optimal functioning creation of green spaces in office environments, workplace design 1.2 challenges associated with “workwell” programs whilst the presence of these programs in organisations is positive (insofar as they aim to improve physical, psychological and social functioning), recent evidence suggests that workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 australian organisations may still be unsure about the value and positioning of such programs. for example, an ongoing difficulty seems to be the linking of employee health outcomes to business performance, which has typically relegated workwell services to the level of discretionary expenditure (pwc, 2010). this appears to be an ongoing global challenge, with 26% of organisations reporting the absence of a business case to support a wellness strategy, and 20% believing that managing employee health is not the role of an organisation (buck, 2014). in addition, the task of developing comprehensive, coherent programs appears to have been a challenge for many employers and has resulted in an amorphous collection of healthrelated services, delivered by multiple vendors in a relatively uncoordinated way (pwc, 2010). furthermore, evidence exists that these programs are not rigorously evaluated. for example, survey data collected from 319 australian hr professionals indicated that almost half the organisations they represented (46%) make no attempt to measure the impact of workwell initiatives and those that do usually limit their focus to simple usage and satisfaction measures (mccarthy, almeida, & ahrens, 2011). similar findings have previously been reported on programs offered in the united states (goetzel & ozminkowski, 2008) and the united kingdom (mcgillivray, 2002). despite the personal assistance offered by such programs, employee participation rates are typically quite low (goetzel & ozminkowski, 2008; l. linman et al., 2008; mccarthy et al., 2011; mcgillivray, 2002; rongen et al., 2014) and several studies have sought to examine the common barriers to participation (bright et al., 2012; lakerveld et al., 2008; linnan, sorensen, colditz, klar, & emmons, 2001; person, colby, bulova, & eubanks, 2010; robroek, van lenthe, van empelen, & burdorf, 2009). indeed, the participation issue has become so significant in the united states that the use of incentives is now commonplace, with estimates suggesting that incentive increases of $100 can improve participation rates by 10% (goetzel & ozminkowski, 2008). as a result, incentives are considered to be a key to successful program implementation (rula & sacks, 2009) and lack of formal incentives has been confirmed to be a major barrier to participation (person et al., 2010). not surprisingly, the 2014 working well survey reported that 90% of us companies are currently using some form of incentive (buck, 2014). in contrast, only 29% of australian companies reported incentive use. this strategy would seem to be less important in australia however, as the health care costs of employees are met primarily by the state, not by employers (unlike the u.s.). this is confirmed by recent data that showed australian employers ranked “reducing health care costs” as the least important of 10 common program objectives, with “improving workforce morale/engagement” considered to be most important (buck, 2014). 1.3 on building workwell programs for employees there are several reasons (other than reducing health care costs) australian employers ought to place a high level of importance on employee wellbeing. in the first instance, the australian work health and safety act 2011 requires businesses to act in ways that safeguard the physical and psychological health of workers. beyond compliance with federal and state legislation, crowther et al. (2004) suggests that focused attempts to enhance employee wellbeing are worthwhile because they can improve productivity (either by increasing engagement and/or reducing absenteeism/presenteeism), morale and teamwork, staff retention, employer brand and company image (which helps to attract talented potential employees). these programs also provide organisations with a way of demonstrating their ethical standing as caring employers and seem to have become a popular strategy for exercising corporate social responsibility (holmqvist, 2009). workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 workwell programs appear to be a very benign, positive form of organisational intervention. as indicated in table 1 above, they generally provide employees with access to low or no cost products, services and/or events (e.g. flu vaccinations, health insurance subsidies, physical fitness challenges) that are designed to improve not just one’s experience at work but one’s life more broadly. according to several reviews of this literature (baxter, sanderson, venn, blizzard, & palmer, 2014; goetzel & ozminkowski, 2008; pelletier, 2011; rongen, robroek, van lenthe, & burdorf, 2013), such programs have been generally successful at securing such improvements, either by lowering occupational health risks, improving productivity and/or reducing health care costs. lower absenteeism rates and greater job satisfaction have also been reported, albeit with only small to moderate effect sizes (e.g. parks & steelman, 2008). in regard to financial returns, roi research studies have estimated that cost savings of around $3 to $4 are not uncommon for each dollar expended on workwell programs (goetzel & ozminkowski, 2008) with some studies reporting much higher returns, including one that reported a benefit-cost ratio of up to 26:1 (miller, zaloshnja & spicer, 2007). in a recent metaanalysis of this literature, baxter, sanderson, venn, blizzard and palmer (2014) reported somewhat less impressive returns, although an overall weighted roi of $2.38 for every dollar invested was still found. whilst research has generally affirmed the value of employee-focused programs, some caution is required when interpreting results from this literature. not only do effect sizes tend to be small to moderate at best, they are also at their lowest in studies that employ rigorous, high quality research methods (baxter et al., 2014; rongen et al., 2013). nonetheless, given the positive findings that are regularly reported from workwell programs, finding ways to maximize employee participation in such programs would seem to be worthwhile. 2. if you build it, will they come? factors in employee participation surprisingly, the perspectives and experience of employees are not well represented in the literature and relatively few researchers have investigated why participation rates in workwell programs are so low. where employee-focused research has been reported, it has tended to be concerned with changes in the medical or psychological criteria of interest to employers, such as identifying the demographic profile of participants (joslin et al., 2006), assessing the beneficial effects of participation across physical/cognitive, social and emotional dimensions (nohammer, stummer, & schusterschitz, 2011), assessing employee perspectives on changes to workplace culture (mainsbridge, cooley, pedersen, fraser, & cosgrove, 2011), and, more superficially, simple comparisons of participants and non-participants using a variety of health indicators, demographic and lifestyle factors (e.g. breslow, fielding, herrman, & wilbur, 1990). in recent years some attention has been directed towards understanding participation from the employee’s perspective, with studies conducted on employee attitudes (bright et al., 2012), barriers to participation (person et al., 2010), and motives related to participation (lakerveld et al., 2008; robroek et al., 2009). given the widespread use of workwell programs and their generally positive effects, it is useful to consider why employee participation is not higher than it is. a number of possibilities exist. 2.1 individual factors impacting participation several individual-level factors can be proposed to explain low employee participation. these include service-needs misalignment, time and work pressures, access to resources, individual workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 change readiness, personal locus of responsibility and/or perceptions about the balance of responsibility for change. service-needs misalignment. low participation rates in some organisations may simply be related to the provision of services that have little relevance or interest to employee needs (e.g. tertiary education subsidies for factory floor workers). whilst this has been noted as a barrier to participation in some studies (e.g. person et al., 2010), rongen et al. (2014) argue that this only lowers the likelihood of participation, rather than heavily influencing participation decisions per se. time and work pressures. participation rates are also known to be impacted by employee perceptions of workload and time limitations (lakerveld et al., 2008; person et al., 2010). as it will soon be argued, organisations have an important role to play in ensuring that cultural norms do not work against what is being recommended by some program offerings (e.g. company cultures that do not support people taking lunch breaks). access to resources. this relates to the broader context of an employee’s life and the degree to which employees are able to access resources that support their health and wellbeing (e.g. restorative environments like public parks or community gardens, or social structures like clubs or hobby groups). in line with hobfoll’s (2001) conservation of resources theory, for employees who have fewer social or psychological resources, the availability of programs may be attractive because they provide opportunities (like volunteering or social activities) that they would have difficulty creating themselves. change readiness. the next factor is subtler and relates to the degree to which employees are psychologically ready to engage in the personal change that workwell programs usually encourage. as the transtheoretical model of change (prochaska, prochaska, & levesque, 2001) highlights, the change readiness of individuals should never be assumed and if employees are not given opportunities to resolve ambivalence they might hold towards certain changes (e.g. smoking cessation) then they are likely to remain in contemplation and invest little effort in behaviour change. locus of responsibility. an additional possibility is that employees may not want help with the aspects of personal health and wellbeing that they see as their own legitimate responsibility. if so, employees’ personal beliefs about health change will disincline them to utilize employee-sponsored services and most likely lead them to make their own arrangements outside the workplace. balance of responsibility for change. in an early critique of the workplace health promotion movement, sloan (1987) noted that most interventions were focused on modifying behaviour at the level of the individual, rather than at the level of the organisation. he noted: “a paradigm of workplace health promotion programs appears to exist: it calls for activities, both largeand small-scale, which are designed to induce health-related behavior change in individuals rather than examining and changing the system of work in which these behaviors may be embedded” (p. 186) workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 whilst it is debatable whether organisations have become better at changing and developing healthier work environments in the 25 years since sloan’s review, his critique highlights a potentially important point. that is, if employees perceive that the change they are being asked to embrace as individuals (through participation in a workwell program) is greater than the organisation’s preparedness to do likewise, then this may be resented and lead to a resistance and lower employee receptivity to any employer-sponsored offering. 2.2 organisational factors impacting participation. organisational-level factors that might help to explain participation rates include the changing nature of the hr function, perceptions of corporate social control, organisational trust and/or the satisfaction of basic needs. the changing nature of the human resources function. this refers to the observation that contemporary hr managers have moved away from their traditional focus on employee welfare and professional development, and are now primarily concerned with strategic goals and employee performance (brown, metz, cregan, & kulik, 2009; peretz & mcgraw, 2011). according to brown et al. (2009), this shift away from employee welfare has been challenging for many hr professionals, partially because it has eroded confidence amongst employees that they can (and will) continue to adequately represent their interests. as a result, the promotion of workwell services by hr personnel may now be perceived as the execution of a strategic agenda rather than a genuine effort to safeguard the health and wellbeing of employees. corporate social control. another factor that might impact employee participation relates to the idea that workplace health promotion is a veiled form of corporate social control (holmqvist, 2009). according to haunschild’s (2003) foucauldian analysis of employee health programs: “after optimizing the direct use of bodies (taylorism), optimizing work environments (human relations movement), and lowering risks and consequences of body failure (work safety), organizations today seem to have re-(?)discovered [sic] the whole body as a matter of surveillance and control. this included – among other things – medical screenings (check-ups), fitness programmes, stress management, dietary advices and lifestyle counseling” (p. 6) this analysis acknowledges the possibility that workwell programs are, for all their good intentions, essentially an attempt to shape a workforce, such that it becomes more productive, less costly, more harmonious and ultimately more profitable. however, as goss (1997) explains, this is not a rejection of the positive contribution that these programs can make, rather it merely suggests that their benefits may come at a cost. part of that cost is employee resistance, which haunschild (2003) argues is an inevitable part of all power relations and merely something to be managed. organisational trust. a more general trust factor would also appear to play a role in employee attitudes and participation decisions. according to dietz and den hartog (2006) trust accrues based on the degree to which an employee believes their employer has benevolent motives, the ability to meet their obligations, demonstrates acceptable levels of integrity (e.g. fair treatment), and behaves in a fashion that is predictable and reliable. these dimensions are relevant because workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 any interest or inclination that an employee has towards workwell programs will be influenced by, for example, employee perceptions of motive (benevolence). an example of this would be the perception that the program is nothing more than a public relations exercise, designed to project a positive image to the outside world. from this perspective, programs might be seen simply as a tool to enhance employer brand, or the perception that the company is a good place to work (backhaus & tikoo, 2004). in addition, receptivity to programs would also be influenced by how the organisation might use personal data, such as health data (integrity), the degree to which employees ‘hear’ consistent messages (predictability), such as the regular promotion of services and benefits, and the belief the organisation has the requisite skills and knowledge to successfully manage such programs (ability). basic psychological need satisfaction. this factor relates to employees’ experience of having their basic psychological needs supported and satisfied in the work domain. theoretical and empirical work conducted within self-determination theory (deci & ryan, 2000) has consistently shown that satisfaction of basic needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness produce autonomous motivation in work settings (e.g. baard, deci, & ryan, 2004), and reliably predicts successful behaviour change in health contexts (ng et al., 2012). based on this body of evidence, basic psychological need satisfaction provides a useful construct for studying employee receptivity to employer-sponsored opportunities to enhance health and wellbeing. basic psychological need satisfaction and organisational trust are theoretically related, insofar as having basic needs met at work develops an employee’s belief that their employer can and will safeguard their best interests (stone, deci, & ryan, 2009). these factors are included in this review because they direct attention towards an important cultural factor (i.e. trust) and relational factor (need satisfaction). at the cultural level, the content of an employee’s trust beliefs is likely to emerge from direct experience, vicarious observations, and anecdotal reports about how the organisation conducts itself towards employees (gillespie & dietz, 2009). more specifically, trust will form based on an assessment of how the organisation characteristically addresses a range of employee equity issues (e.g. gender, race, pay, career progression), provides safe working conditions (e.g. compliance with oh&s legislation), provides adequate resources to employees (e.g. staff training) and demonstrates social responsibility (e.g. actively contributed to the wider community) (dobrowolski, 2014). as such, organisational trust will indicate something about an employee’s general receptivity towards any organisational initiative as it integrates micro level psychological processes and group dynamics with macro level organisational elements (rousseau, sitkin, burt, & camerer, 1998). this article has been underpinned by an assumption that workwell programs represent a form of support that is both needed and desired by employees. they may not be. when the motives for, and barriers to, participation (e.g. healthier lifestyle; time limitations) are momentarily set aside, it is pertinent to ask: “what form(s) of support do employees most want their employers to give?” as few studies have specifically considered this question, the final section of this article is dedicated to exploring it by using a subset of qualitative data extracted from a recently completed pilot study. 3. employee support preferences: pilot data workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 the following data were collected as part of a pilot study conducted with company a (a manufacturer; 96 employees) and company b (an industrial systems company; 3,000 employees nationwide). part of the study included a 20-minute interview about participants’ workplace experiences. the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed to permit an analysis of the employee stories. across both organisations, a total of 60 employees were interviewed (company a = 26; company b = 34). for the purpose of this article, only the qualitative data derived from the interviews is of interest. whilst the study did not set out specifically to elicit responses about workwell programs per se, it was interested in what employees believed would be the most valuable form of support that could be provided by their employers. the question: “what one thing could this company do to improve your experience on the job? before answering this question, consider all the possibilities – everything from receiving higher pay, to a company gym, to more flexible work hours, or some other opportunity the company could give you. what would be the major thing that would make a difference to the way you feel at work?” this portion of each interview was content analysed and themed to examine which forms of support were most prevalent in the minds of employees. as can be seen from table 2 below, when participants were asked to name the single most important thing for improving their experience at work, the vast majority responded by citing some aspect of improved communication. often this related to the frequency and flow of communication but equally often the emphasis seemed to be placed on the different aspects of communication quality (e.g. genuineness or authentic interest in others). for example, the following employee wanted: …just better communications. and trying to understand, like, every person try to put themselves in the other department’s shoes and try to understand where they’re coming from, than them working against each other. [cb27] other themes that were well represented related to efficiency and adequate resourcing. interestingly the theme of waste came up more strongly for company a (a manufacturer), where many employees lamented the amount of wasted time and materials that occurred through inefficiencies of one sort or another. in many cases, communication also appeared to be at the core of these issues and would sometimes manifest itself as a frustration that both companies were failing to realize their potential, but more usually it would have a negative impact on employees’ feelings of pride in their work and job satisfaction: the reality is we just – we all – from what i see, most guys have a big sense of pride in their work. but they all get down in the dumps when they know there’s just constant systemic failures, and then here it is…here’s all the failures, try and make something of it. we all just want to see that management is actually managing stuff into a workable situation [cb01]. the availability of good quality tools, equipment and other resources was also critical for many, largely because they seemed to have a major bearing on whether people could complete tasks to a level that was satisfying. whilst many of the other themes represented in table 2 below were not unexpected (e.g. the importance of social connections), a couple of these themes are worthy of note. workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 table 2. categorization of qualitative responses to question about employer support theme count textual examples communication flow 26 for me, it’s probably communication. and sometimes when you’re going getting approval for something, you get a no – is perhaps, giving a reason for that no, and giving that no in a timely manner, not just drawing it out. [b20] increased efficiency (decreased waste) 80 they also send that information back to management, to designers, whatever, and it doesn’t get followed up on properly. well, they might talk about it but it doesn’t actually get down on paper, change drawings, modified, updated, and then we just keep on doing the same mistakes again and again. [a12] better resources & equipment 70 just be a bit more responsive to your needs, whether it be for materials or tools, or whatever… we’ve had situations where critical equipment has failed, and then getting replacements for it take a long time, and i end up having to bring in other guys that have got their equipment working down so that i can do that part of my job. [b10] social connectivity 70 i think we’ve got to do a better job of debriefing, and i think we’ve got to do a better job of creating campfires, so to spe ak, and getting around to telling war stories…in a way that doesn’t create defensiveness but that binds. [a27] collaboration between management & staff 40 to have more say…and more authority to actually say what you think needs to be done, with ideas or whatever – but it seems to fall on deaf ears more than it should. [b04] better pay/financial support 40 i would like the pay review to be looked upon because, yeah, my feeling is it won’t even get something like a cpi increase. my pay review looks to be pretty low, especially to the contribution you do to the business and the business is making good. [b25] appreciation and recognition 20 everybody is putting their hand up but nobody is getting recognised. another thing is there are people working under me getting paid much more. and i’m looking after them – i’m running the shots and then you say, “hang on, is that really worth it to me?” [a02] career development support 20 the training is the biggest thing because as i say, my work life is almost finished so i’m not worried. it’s the younger blokes that don’t have the experience because if you can get them trained up, the company would be a hell of a lot better company. [b12] physical health support 00 no responses note: textual examples are coded to reflect the participant’s company and participant number (i.e. a01 represents participant 1 from company a). workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 first, the identification of better pay was only the most salient factor for 7% of the sample. indeed, it was surprising how infrequently it was raised at all, especially given that a mention of pay was included in the interview instruction. on a couple of occasions when it was raised, the attitude seemed to be that pay was simply a given and something that you accepted when you signed up: i don’t look at it as being a financial [matter]. i think when you join an organisation, you know what the paying conditions are, you know what you’re likely to get as paying conditions, you’re likely to know what the lurks and perks are and if you join a company then, obviously, you’ve accepted that. [cb30] for another employee who raised it, pay was not a critical motivator, as they had been attracted to company b, its brand and the opportunities he believed the job would provide: i took a pay cut to come to [company name] [cb09] second, very few references were made to the value or importance of receiving support for employees’ physical health. however, one interviewee who did raise the possibility of a company gym also conveyed considerable ambivalence about the idea because he saw it as a solitary pursuit and he placed a greater weight on social connectivity: have a gym onsite, which won’t happen…the gym membership might be okay, but that would then be individual [ca12] what this exploratory data indicates is that the employees from both organisations seem to care more about the way employers communicate with them than anything else. of course, communication pervades all aspects of life and, as such, a discrete separation of categories will always be problematic. nonetheless, the data suggest that people desire a good relationship with the organisation they work for and are concerned with how much information is shared with them and the manner in which that is done. 4. discussion a striking feature of the data just presented was the relevance that many of the identified themes seem to have to the basic psychological needs of autonomy (the need to feel that one’s actions are self-initiated and volitional), competence (the need to feel effective in the world) and relatedness (the need to experience warm, caring connection with others). a supplementary analysis of company a data (that included all employee suggestions, not just the most salient ones) provided some confirmation of this link to basic psychological needs. for example, numerous interviewees in that organisation expressed feelings of disempowerment due to a perceived disconnection between workers and management. as such, many expressed a desire for better individual and group-level communication (e.g. oneon-ones; staff meetings), which could allow employee ideas and perspectives to be acknowledged, considered and, where appropriate, acted upon. as the starting point for autonomy support is the acknowledgement of others’ perspectives (deci, eghrari, patrick & leone, 1994), managerial interactions that more frequently display genuine interest and receptivity towards employees’ views represent an important gesture towards supporting personal autonomy (independently of whether those views directly influence decision making). in addition, most interviewees seemed to want more support for competence. this included numerous requests for the upgrading of essential equipment, which seemed to be a major factor in production errors and materials wastage. also important were structural changes that many believed would improve the quantity and quality of productive output, such as the workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 creation of problem-solving forums, out-sourcing of some production jobs (that employees were less skilled in), and more timely correction of drawings to assist production. finally, many of the suggestions that focused on communication also displayed links to the need for relatedness. several interviewees noted an increasing “us” and “them” mentality, with a division between mechanical designers and production staff being of greatest concern. one popular suggestion for improving inter-personal connections was to resume social activities, including restarting the social club or more simply taking opportunities to provide feedback (including acknowledging good performance) in more informal ways like bbqs, coffee catchups, and project completion celebrations. 4.1 supporting employee health and wellbeing at work to repeat an earlier point, when employees were asked to identify factors that would make the biggest difference to their experience at work, very few interviewees identified issues that are generally the principal focus of workwell programs (i.e. the promotion of physical health, the prevention of physical ill health and mental ill health). rather, the vast majority of suggestions revolved around improvements in basic communication, job resourcing and social connectivity. given that, it may be that companies making heavy investments in formal, structured employee wellbeing programs are pursuing relatively low-yield options. whilst the north american roi data reviewed earlier would suggest otherwise (i.e. that programs save much more money than they cost), some caution has been advised about these estimates as they are “often funded by employers implementing the programs, and these employers may desire a positive assessment to justify their investment decisions” (goetzel & ozminkowski, 2008, p.309). in addition, there appears to be very little longitudinal data that can attest to the power of these programs for inducing sustained change. to be clear, there is no suggestion here that organisations are misguided in seeking to support health and wellbeing amongst their workforces. rather, the suggestion is that if organisations want to successfully implement workwell programs and maximize the benefits that might be derived from them, then a multiplicity of factors becomes important. the most fundamental of these factors is employee receptivity, or the degree to which employees are positively oriented towards a program, by virtue of what it represents for them and its perceived value for themselves or others. put differently, employee receptivity is a motivational precondition for (at best) participating and taking part in a program, or (at worst) advocating for it and encouraging others. based on the review outlined earlier in this paper, there is reason to believe that some of the following factors may positively influence employee receptivity. however, it should be noted that these factors represent developing hypotheses, rather than evidence-based knowledge, and would need to be examined in future research:  alignment with employee needs. this could be done by collaborating with employees on the development of programs, in order to determine what dimensions of wellbeing are most salient for people and what services are most relevant. indeed, employee consultation and involvement in program development would be a worthwhile variable to study when examining participation rates.  changing norms. organisations may need to work on changing workplace norms, so that employers are not caught in a psychological wedge between what certain programs encourage people to do (e.g. take regular work breaks) and the unspoken rules of an organisation (e.g. work breaks are for the weak). clear and workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 observable modeling of positive behaviours (e.g. by a ceo) would be one way to achieve this, and future researchers may gain some insight into participation rates by examining the degree of sponsorship and advocacy provided by senior leaders.  address change readiness issues. as workwell programs often encourage changes in physical, nutritional, recreational, or social behaviour, it is important that people explore any ambivalence they might feel about such change. supplementing such programs with health coaching represents a way of assisting people to address motivational issues critical to long-term change (spence, cavanagh, & grant, 2008), most obviously by assisting people to explore the pros and cons of adopting more positive health behaviours (miller & rollnick, 2012).  motive transparency. given that some level of cynicism and distrust is prevalent in most organisations, it would be advisable for sponsors of workwell programs to be honest about their motives. that is, if cost reduction and productivity enhancement are primary motivators then that should be stated, rather than attempting to hide these motivations beneath more benign ‘happy-worker’ style justifications.  genuine commitment to systemic change. consistent with the argument advanced by sloan (1987), receptivity is likely to be improved if the organisation makes it clear enhanced employee wellbeing is a goal being pursed via both individually focused programs (that employees need to drive) and programs that address broader systemic issues (that organisations need to drive). for example, announcing an innovation project based on greater collaboration between employees and managers (as a way to develop new projects) could reassure employees that the company was committed to a balanced responsibility for change and not simply executing a nefarious social control strategy (holmqvist, 2009). 4.2 supporting basic psychological needs: a wellbeing program par excellence? whilst employee receptivity may be malleable in the ways described above, it is possible to imagine circumstances where organisational trust or employee discontent might be so great that the introduction of workwell programs might be ill-advised (particularly if motives were not transparent or if the organisation showed no inclination to accompany it with genuine systemic level change). in such a circumstance, organisations might be better advised to refrain from making sizable investments in such programs, as this may result in unintended consequences like increased cynicism, heightened distrust and little or no roi due to lower than usual participation rates. the data presented earlier suggest that organisations re-think their approach to improving employee wellbeing at work by concentrating on more basic human relations issues and, more specifically, focusing on better supporting the autonomy, competence and relatedness needs of employees. indeed, given the large volume of evidence that links basic need satisfaction to well-being across numerous life domains, including work (van den broeck, vansteenkiste, de witte, soenens, & lens, 2010), it could be argued that a solid commitment to, and effective support of, basic psychological needs represents a foundational stone for establishing high levels of sustainable employee wellbeing. workplace wellbeing programs spence www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 5. conclusion this paper set out to examine factors that surround participation in workplace health and wellbeing programs. after presenting a review of relevant literature and analyzing pilot data taken from an employee wellbeing research project, it is concluded that workwell programs do not seem to provide the type of support that employees most value from their employers. to modify a line from the 1989 movie, field of dreams, “if you build it, they may not come”. based on this exploratory investigation this appears to be because such programs do not provide employees with what they most need. it was also suggested that employee receptivity might be an important factor in making decisions about the implementation of such programs. more 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(2020). stress and wellbeing in college students during the covid-19 pandemic: can grit and gratitude help? international journal of wellbeing, 10(3), 39-57. doi:10.5502/ijw.v10i3.1331 giacomo bono california state university dominguez hills gbono@csudh.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 article stress and wellbeing in urban college students in the u.s. during the covid-19 pandemic: can grit and gratitude help? giacomo bono · kresimir reil · jadwiga hescox abstract: college is filled with opportunity, challenge and growth – as students expand their relationships and social capital, make formative life decisions, and overcome stress to achieve life goals. the current short-term longitudinal study started before campus closure due to the covid19 pandemic and ended at the completion of the semester at an urban university. it investigates the stress and subjective wellbeing of freshmen, impacts of the pandemic on their psychological, academic and financial wellbeing and their resilience to the pandemic during this period, and the role of socioeconomic status. it also examines whether grit and gratitude helped in these areas. first, we compared students (n = 86 freshmen) in terms of their parents’ education level; high vs. low groups were created (i.e., completed high school or less vs. started or completed college up to graduate school). the low group reported significantly more perceived stress and subjective wellbeing than the high group prior to the pandemic. next, examination of the two groups in terms of pandemic impacts and pandemic resilience revealed that the low group reported significantly more financial and academic impacts than the high group, but not more resilience or life event stress. finally, we examined grit and gratitude prior to the pandemic and found that grit predicted significantly greater pandemic resilience and marginally lower psychological impact and that gratitude predicted significantly less impact to academic functioning at the end of the semester. however, the low parent education group also increased in grateful emotion, whereas the high parent group decreased, suggesting that gratitude helped the low group more during the pandemic. overall results suggest that grit and gratitude can be promoted to protect college students’ subjective wellbeing and better cope with adversity of the pandemic. the study closes with suggestions for intervention. keywords: subjective wellbeing, stress, grit, gratitude, resilience, covid-19, pandemic about:blank stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 40 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org practice implications the current study occurred prior to and during the onset of a global pandemic that has disproportionately influenced minorities in the u.s. it compares how urban college students of lower versus higher socioeconomic status (ses) faired in terms of the pandemic’s impacts on their lives and whether the two personality factors of grit and gratitude helped predict improved impact outcomes. it also examined whether the subjective wellbeing (swb) of these two groups differed before and during the pandemic and whether it was improved by grit and gratitude. results indicated that students of parents with education limited to high school face more stress, and less swb than peers whose parents were college-educated, and they provide clues to better support students’ mental health and wellbeing during adversities like the covid-19 pandemic. first, low parental education students did not differ from their high parent education counterparts in grit prior to the pandemic and in resilient responding to the pandemic. these findings suggest that these two behavioral strengths are common in equal supply to all incoming urban college students, regardless of ses, making intervention universally amenable. research can explore how the sources and forms of grit and resilience vary among college students, though, to create more targeted intervention. second, that low parent education students were lower in gratitude prior to the pandemic but increased more during the pandemic, compared to high parent education students, has implications for improving gratitude intervention in two ways. research should not only consider how to address the obstacles of greater daily stress and lower swb among low ses students in creating more effective gratitude interventions in general, but it should also consider how to harness the higher tendency of low ses students to rely on social support more during adverse or traumatic events. third, a finding that low parent education students were harmed more than high parent education students by the pandemic in terms of academic, financial, and possibly psychological functioning indicate that resources targeting these areas would reduce the immediate harms that lower ses students are experiencing because of the pandemic. lastly, this study found that grit and gratitude before the pandemic predicted better outcomes in terms of harmful impacts that the ensuing pandemic would cause and swb during the pandemic. grit was found to contribute to greater pandemic resilience, and both grit and gratitude were found to contribute to increases in swb during the pandemic for all students, regardless of parental education level. thus, grit and gratitude intervention would be universally valuable for helping to support and protect the wellbeing of incoming college students during the covid-19 pandemic. importantly, the current study also determined that grit and gratitude interventions for college students diverse in ses background are needed. being more sensitive to the real-life challenges of students would improve intervention. specifically, grit interventions should involve trained teachers in promoting growth mindset, adaptability and reflection on larger academic goals in students directly in their academic courses (alan et al., 2019); and gratitude interventions should personalize practices so that they enhance in-person interactions that students have with peers and teachers (bono et al., 2020; renshaw & hindman, 2017). introduction urban universities in the united states have been described as paramount in guaranteeing access to college for students who have been raised in high-needs urban neighborhoods (martinez-brawley, 2003). sometimes referred to as metropolitan universities, these campuses are located in major urban areas across the united states. the student populations of urban universities are often made up of a large population of commuter students and offer undergraduate, graduate and professional programs. the education provided at these stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 41 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org institutions is created within an urban framework, with research aimed at the local community level (hill, 1981). this study focuses on students at a medium-large size urban university in a large metropolitan area of the united states. the diversity of student populations in urban universities is ideal for researching how existing inequities are exacerbated in times of crisis. the current study focuses on the stress, social and emotional lives, and resilience of freshmen college students during the beginning months of the covid-19 pandemic and examines if certain factors helped – specifically, grit and gratitude. the study analyzes participants (n=86) using a shortterm longitudinal study from prior to campus closure on march 10, 2020 to the end of the semester (may 2020), which was completed remotely. in particular, the study examines whether grit and gratitude at the start of semester predicts how much impact the pandemic had on the psychological, academic and financial functioning as well as resilience of students toward the end of the semester. literature review the university serves a diverse student body and the campus environment benefits from the diversity, but injustice and inequality plague vast segments of america’s diverse society. the stanford center on poverty and inequality (2011) listed 20 different forms of inequality common in america, many of which disproportionally impact urban university students. the current research looked specifically at inequality between low versus high socioeconomic status groups (as determined by parental education level) in terms of the pandemic’s psychological, academic and financial impacts as well as resilience to the pandemic. stanford reports that racial gaps in education are a form of inequality in the united states (2011). the university population sampled in the current study consists of a majority firstgeneration college students (fgcs) (54.1%) and a majority latinx students (60.3%), with 64.2% being pell-eligible. the university is also majority female. students who have parents with low educational backgrounds, as a population segment, face a wide swath of adjustments that their continuing-generation peers do not experience. these differences impact students not just early in their freshman year of college, but throughout their education (phillips et al., 2020). college students also face obstacles to education. a study of poor academic performance in college students (n=8,997) attributed it mostly to stress (frazier et al., 2019). college students who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (aces) face additional educational barriers caused by having to navigate family and health barriers (hinojosa et al., 2019). notably, evidence shows that college students tend to use socio-emotional traits more than educational traits when adapting to college life (gerdes & mallinckrodt, 1994). thus, using qualities like grit and gratitude may prove helpful. a predominantly female campus population is already predisposed to greater stressdampened academic performance (frazier et al., 2019). also, students whose parents have lower education levels are disadvantaged due to experiencing less fit with school (phillips et al., 2020). research found that the most common reasons fgcs in a public california university overcame challenges and persisted to graduation were having emotional support from family and friends from home, developing supportive relationships with university faculty, peers, and staff; and believing that college would enable them to achieve future life and career goals (azmita et al., 2018). these are the very conditions grit and gratitude may help foster. the switch to remote learning during covid-19 may have left fgcs with additional disadvantages denying them access to these resources. immigration and inequality together were listed as a form of inequality in the united states (stanford, 2011). nationally, approximately 25% of the population is either 2nd or 1st generation stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 42 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org immigrant (trevelyan et al., 2016). latinx immigrants who are eligible for deferred action for childhood arrivals (daca) already experience stress that their non-daca peers do not, as the daca process pushes students into a more adult role sooner (siemons et al., 2017). a different study identified four domains of stressors that diminish quality of life for university students from immigrant families: parent-child cultural conflict, family disengagement, ethnic discrimination and family financial stress (bakhtiari et al., 2018). family financial stress ranked second as most impactful. importantly, little is known about how grit and gratitude may help such students. pandemic impact early research on the pandemic’s effects shows that many aspects of mental health have already been impacted (bavel, 2020; stark et al., 2020; van agteren et al., 2020; yang et al., 2020). these impacts have occurred even in homes that do not contain family members who have contracted covid-19. thus, the pandemic is a major stressor, even if everyone in the home has remained healthy. stress can additionally be increased by the forced isolation of quarantine and forced proximity between family members with tenuous relationships (bavel, 2020; stark et al., 2020). additionally, early covid-19 research suggests that traditional protective factors could be undermined by pandemic stressors (stark et al., 2020). some scholars note that renewed ethnocentrism during pandemics can also impact discrimination and prejudice, exacerbating pre-existing feelings of racism against diverse students (bavel et al., 2020), a phenomenon evident in u.s. society lately. however, there is hope. the impact of the pandemic may be partially controlled by positive thinking and resilience. research on college students (n=384) in wuhan, china found that covid-19 negatively impacted mental health, but that the effect seems strongly mediated by resilience and positive thinking (yang et al., 2020). therefore, grit and gratitude, which are shown to support academic achievement, supportive relationships and resilience (duckworth, 2007; king & datu, 2018; zheng et al., 2011) may help protect individuals from adversity like the covid-19 pandemic. due to the rarity of global pandemics, there is a literature gap in applicable research. previous research on the effects of natural disasters and other crises could highlight other possible impacts of covid-19. research on the deepwater horizon oil spill showed that in addition to death and injuries, natural hazards can cause psychosocial concerns too (drescher et al., 2014). additionally, a longitudinal study following hurricane katrina survivors found significant physical and mental health consequences: digestive problems increased seven times, backaches doubled, and migraines or headaches tripled – with women experiencing more of these effects, especially if they had lost a family member (arcaya et al., 2014). grit grit is a personality trait that can be used as a non-cognitive factor in performance and success. grit is also synonymous with resilience, a quality of passion and determination toward long term goals in the face of challenges and failures (duckworth et al., 2007). in a 2016 meta-analysis, grit was found to be distinct from, and as supportive as, cognitive abilities for academic success (credé et al., 2016). a cross cultural study of grit in college students labelled three distinct characteristics of grit: (1) perseverance of effort, (2) adaptability to situations, and (3) consistency of interest. of the three domains, perseverance and adaptability were found to positively predict flourishing (datu et al., 2020). grit may also predict better academic outcomes. the seminal study on grit found stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 43 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org that individuals with higher levels of grit have higher academic aptitude scores, complete rigorous training courses and even win spelling bees more frequently (duckworth, 2007). gratitude mccullough et al., (2001) describe gratitude as a moral emotion that helps us recognize when others intentionally support our wellbeing. in later work, mccullough and colleagues found support for gratitude as an evolutionary adaptation that not only acknowledges the value of when others benefit our welfare, but that it reinforces others’ kindness toward us and spurs mutually cooperative relationships (forster et al., 2017; smith et al., 2017). gratitude is not only an important trait for reinforcing altruistic behavior individually and communally, but it also accounts for reductions in depression, anxiety and substance abuse (kendler et al., 2003). gratitude is also related to feelings of subjective wellbeing (swb) and may help to build resilience. one study of school age students in china found gratitude to be significantly related to swb (tian et al., 2015). gratitude also may promote protective factors in individuals. specifically, gratitude not only seems to buffer youth from stress (reckart et al., 2017), it is associated with building resilience in individuals after major traumas. gratitude was shown to contribute to reduced ptsd symptoms via resilience (zheng et al., 2011) and to developing posttraumatic growth (ptg) after the devastating 2008 earthquake in wenchuan, china (zhou & wu, 2015). subjective wellbeing among emerging adults and college students research on happiness in university students has found that financial security, academic success and self-esteem can explain most of university students' happiness (flynn & macleod, 2015), while self-esteem, daily positive events and physical appearance were predictive of higher life satisfaction in a study of spanish students (zuffiano et al., 2018). there are, however, obstacles to wellbeing. wellbeing among latinx college students is negatively impacted by the experience of microagressions on the college campus (hernandez & villodas, 2020), and asian students who experienced microaggressions related to feelings of invisibility and sexual stereotypes viewed their campus racial landscape more negatively (gallo, 2017). here too, grit and gratitude may help, especially during adversity. lin and kim (2017) found that grit contributed to subjective wellbeing in young adults and that basic needs satisfaction helped account for this. tian et al. (2016) found this same pattern with gratitude. further, evidence supports gratitude’s protective role during traumatic events. israeli adolescents traumatized by nearby missile attacks who were more grateful exhibited fewer ptsd symptoms 2.5 months later because of gratitude’s links to fewer negative emotions and more life-satisfaction (israel-cohen et al., 2015). resilience to pandemic resilience has been shown to possibly be an important trait in mediating the negative mental health impacts of the pandemic on chinese students in wuhan (yang et al., 2020). resilience has also had an important role in coping after natural disasters or other crises. the trait, in addition to social support and search for meaning, accounts for significant amounts of variance in the ptg of survivors of the 2016 louisiana flooding (boullion et al., 2020). ptg and substance abuse were also measured among college students in the wake of the 2009 l’aquila earthquake in italy, which left over 300 dead, approximately 1,500 injured and over 60,000 residents homeless (bianchini et al., 2015). the study found evidence of substance use as a negative coping strategy and a strong negative correlation between direct earthquake exposure stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 44 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org and posttraumatic growth scores. another recent study measured resilience and ptg of medical students at fukushima medical university during the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011, 8 years post-disaster. medical students who volunteered in the wake of the incident showed both greater ptg and resilience (kaye-kauderer et al., 2019). additionally, negative feelings such as sadness, anxiety, anger and confusion were positively correlated with resilience. studies have shown that those who experience hardship may ultimately become more resilient (seery et al., 2010). exposure to adversity also helps to overcome numeracy bias and allows those who have survived hardships to become more compassionate to large groups where there is mass suffering, unlike those who may not have experienced adversity (lim & desteno, 2019). and coping capacities in college populations have been described as the impetus for students to remain in academic society after having experienced personal trauma (bulathwatta et al., 2017). here again, grit and gratitude may help. both were found to promote resilience, as both helped reduce risk of suicidal ideations by enhancing meaning in life (kleiman et al., 2013). methods the current study used a short term longitudinal, correlational design with two time-points. one survey was administered early in the semester and prior to campus closure (january 27 – march 10) and another at the end of the semester (april 30 – may 20). participants participants for this study (n=86) were undergraduate students at an urban university in the united states with 15,000 students. the average age of participants was 19.38 (sd = 2.48). the study participants were mostly female (81.4%), and ethnically, mostly latinx (79.1%), followed by african american (14%), asian (4.7%), white (1.2%) and other (1.2%). socioeconomic status (ses) was assessed via parental education. the breakdown for both parents’ education was as follows: completed elementary school (11.6%), middle school (25.6%), high school (37.2%), some college (16.3%), completed college (8.1%), or completed graduate school (1.2%). in total, 74.4% of participants had parents with a high school education or below. procedure and measures participants were freshmen students in introductory psychology, who were recruited through the university’s human subject pool and participated for course credit. students provided consent and completed surveys online in a quiet location and time of their choosing. the primary investigator emailed students who completed the first survey the link to the second survey and sent reminders. six cases with initial surveys after campus closure were dropped, and 2 timepoints were obtained for all participants. materials/surveys table 1 displays the battery of measures that were used in the surveys at t1 and t2. stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 45 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 1. measures used in surveys at t1 and at t2 construct and citation scale name, description, internal consistency reliability statistics and example/s of questions use t1 use t2 grit (duckworth, 2007) the grit scale was used to measure grit, which indicates ability to persevere, adapt, and be consistent and passionate towards the completion of long-term goals. the 10 items (e.g., “new ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones”) were rated on a 5-pt scale (“1 = not at all like me” to “5 = very much like me)” and had acceptable internal consistency (α = .74). x grateful disposition and emotion (mccullough et al., 2002) the gratitude questionnaire (gq-6) was used to assess grateful disposition, which is the tendency to appreciate more people, places and events/situations strongly and frequently. the 6 items (e.g., “i have so much in life to be thankful for”) were rated on a 7-pt scale (“1 = strongly disagree” to “7 = strongly agree”) and showed good reliability (α = .82). gratitude adjective checklist (gac) was used to assess grateful emotions/mood. the 3 items (frequency of feeling grateful, appreciative and thankful) were rated on a 6-pt scale (“never/almost never” to “always/almost always”) and showed excellent reliability (αs = .93 and .94) respectively. x x x x resilience (cd-risc; connor & davidson, 2003) the connor davidson resilience scale was modified to measure resilient responding to the pandemic. the 10 items (e.g., “i was able to adapt when changes to my expectations occurred during covid-19”) were rated on a 5-pt scale (“1 = disagree” to “5 = agree”) and showed very good reliability (α = .90). x psychological, educational, and financial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic (conway et al., 2020). questions from 3 scales of the coronavirus impacts questionnaire were used to assess the psychological, educational and financial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on a 5-pt scale (“1 = disagree” to “5 = agree”). 1. psychological impacts. three questions assessed this construct: “i have become depressed because of the coronavirus (covid-19)”, “the coronavirus outbreak has impacted my psychological health negatively” and “the coronavirus pandemic has not made me feel any worse than i did before”. reliability was acceptable (α =.73). 2. educational impacts. the following 10 items assessed the pandemic’s impact on academic learning, motivation, performance, and satisfaction: learning behaviors: “the coronavirus has negatively impacted my ability to focus on reading for my classes”; …study for my classes”; “the coronavirus has negatively affected my ability to study or prepare for tests”; “the coronavirus has impaired my ability to concentrate on assignments”. academic performance: “the pandemic has negatively impacted my ability to complete assignments as well, compared to before”; “the coronavirus has not impacted my academic performance at all”; “the pandemic has impaired my ability to attend class”. school satisfaction and motivation: “the pandemic has made college less satisfying, compared to before”; “i am enjoying college less during the pandemic, compared to before”; “the pandemic has negatively impacted my academic motivation, compared to before”. reliability for the overall educational impact measure was high (α = .88). 3. financial impacts. the following 3 questions assessed impact on financial resources: “i have lost job-related income due to the coronavirus”; the coronavirus (covid-19) has impacted me negatively from a financial point of view”; and “i have had a hard time getting needed resources (food, toilet paper) due to the coronavirus. reliability was acceptable (α = .73). x x x stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 46 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org sense of university belonging (goodenow, 1993) the psychological sense of school membership (pssm) scale was adapted for college students at csudh. the 18 items (e.g., “people at csudh notice when i'm good at something “) were rated on a 5-pt scale (“1 = never” to “5 = very often”) and demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .87). x subjective wellbeing – a composite of positive affect and negative affect (watson et al., 1988) and life satisfaction (diener et al., 1985). the positive and negative affect schedule (panas) and the satisfaction with life scale (swls) were used to assess subjective wellbeing. twenty-four panas items (e.g., “happy”, “mad”) were rated on a 5-pt scale (“1 = never/almost never” to “5 = always/almost always”), and the 5 swls items (e.g., “in most ways my life is close to my ideal”) were rated on a 7-pt scale (“1 = strongly disagree” to “7 = strongly agree”). the two scales were combined via mean scale z-scores and showed acceptable internal consistency (αs = .78 and .77) respectively. x x perceived stress (cohen et al., 1983) the perceived stress scale – which measures how much individuals appraise their life as uncontrollable, unpredictable, and overwhelming – was used to provide a subjective measure of students’ stress. participants responded to 10 items (e.g., “how often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them?”) were rated on a 5-pt scale (“1 = never” to “5 = very often”) and demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .86). x college life event stress (zitzow, 1984) the college adjustment rating scale was used to provide an objective measure of students’ stress in academic, social, personal, and family-home contexts in the last 12 months. the 32 items indicate life events that require individuals to make a readjustment or a change in their life and are weighted from most stressful to least (e.g., “death of a close family member”; “minor traffic violations”). items were rated by an affirmative or negative response to derive an overall stress score. x social desirability (reynolds, 1982) the short form of the marlowe-crowne social desirability scale (short form c), which assesses respondents’ concern with social approval, was used to measure social desirability bias. the 13 items (e.g., “i sometimes feel resentful when i don't get my own way”) were rated by either an affirmative or negative response (true/false). x note: larger scores indicate greater amounts of the constructs. data analysis first, a one-way anova was conducted to examine differences between low vs. high parental education students in terms of sense of university belonging, grit, trait gratitude, subjective wellbeing (swb), and perceived stress before the pandemic. another examined whether there were differences between the two in pandemic impacts on educational, financial and psychological functioning, resilient responding to the pandemic and swb amidst the pandemic. table 2 displays descriptive statistics of the main study variables and their correlations at t1 and t2. stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 47 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 2. descriptive statistics and correlations of main study variables. time 1 descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations: variables n mean sd university belonging perceived stress swb grit gratitude university belonging 86 3.42 .58 -.464** .400** .263* .384** perceived stress 86 3.13 .65 -.475** -.505** -.511** swb 86 3.93 .55 .362** .572** grit 86 3.35 0.53 .431** gratitude 86 5.71 1.00 *p<.05; **p<.01 time 2 descriptive statistics: variable n mean sd life event stress score 86 298.62 179.45 pandemic financial impact 86 3.01 1.20 pandemic psychological impact 86 2.99 1.15 pandemic educational impact 86 3.96 .86 pandemic resilience 86 3.51 .85 change in grateful mood 86 .05 .70 parents’ educational level swb (z-score) 86 86 3.35 .00 .53 .90 time 2 bivariate correlations: pandemic fi pandemic pi pandemic ai pandemic resilience grateful ∆ life stress parents edu pandemic pi .284** pandemic ai .331** .307** p. resilience -.276* -.436** -.499** grateful ∆ -.122 -.081 .033 .159 life stress .266* .233* .431** -.212 -.035 parents edu swb -.254* -.258* -.089 -.367** -.185 -.132 .133 .454** -.157 .066 -.054 -.139 .214* *p<.05; **p<.01 note: fi = financial impact, pi = psychological impact, ai = academic impact, grateful ∆ = change in grateful emotions t1-t2, life stress = life events stress score next, we examined whether grit and gratitude early in the semester (pre-pandemic) each predicted the impact that the pandemic had on psychological and educational functioning and on resilient responding to the pandemic at the end of the semester in separate hierarchical multiple linear regressions, controlling for sex, life event stress, and social desirability. we then repeated these analyses with an additional covariate for parent education to see if results held above and beyond the effects of ses. finally, we conducted similar regression analyses to examine if grit and gratitude each predicted increases in swb during the pandemic by additionally including a covariate of t1 swb. stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 48 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org results and discussion the first anova results showed there were significant differences between students of high versus low parental education in terms of perceived stress, f (1,84) = 5.97, p = .017, swb, f (1,84) = 6.14, p = .015, and trait gratitude, f (1,84) = 8.05, p = .006. see top of table 3. the low group reported greater perceived stress than the high group, m = 3.25 (sd = 0.63) vs. m = 2.91 (sd = 0.63), less swb, m = 3.81 (sd = 0.58) vs. m = 4.13 (sd = 0.44), and less trait gratitude, m = 5.49 (sd = 1.07) vs. m = 6.08 (sd = 0.68). differences in university belonging were not significant, which is not surprising given the robust climate of support for the academic success of minority and 1st generation college students at the urban university where this study occurred. the second anova revealed significant differences between students of high versus low parental education in terms of covid-19 financial impact, f(1,84) = 5.13, p = .026 and covid-19 academic impact, f(1,84) = 4.32, p =.041. there was a positive marginal effect on psychological impact too, f(1,84) = 2.97, p =.089. see middle of table 3. the low group reported more financial impact than the high group, m = 3.23 (sd = 1.06) vs. m = 2.64 (sd = 1.34), more academic impact, m = 4.11 (sd = 0.76) vs. m = 3.72 (sd = 0.97), and possibly more psychological impact, m = 3.15 (sd = 1.02) vs. m = 2.72 (sd = 1.31). no significant differences emerged in pandemic resilience and, unexpectedly, life event stress. given the fact that we found significant differences in trait gratitude at t1 between students of high vs. low parental education, we explored if levels of gratitude between the two groups remained different at t2 too or if they fluctuated. thus, we conducted an additional anova on grateful emotions at t1, t2, and on t1-t2 change. this additional analysis showed that while the low group experienced fewer grateful emotions at t1 (m = 4.62, sd = 1.07) than the high group (m = 5.16, sd = 0.87), f(1,84) = 5.72, p = .019, there were no differences at t2. more importantly, group differences emerged in change in grateful emotions from t1 to t2, f(1,84) = 4.83, p = .031 (see bottom of table 3). whereas the low group increased in grateful emotions during the pandemic (m = 0.18, sd = 0.70), the high group decreased (m = -0.16, sd = 0.66). table 3. anova effects of low vs. high parent education students on dependent variables at t1, t2. time 1 anovas: effects on university belonging, perceived stress, subjective wellbeing, and gratitude sum of squares df mean square f sig. university belonging between groups .02 1 .02 .07 .791 within groups 28.38 84 .34 total 28.40 85 perceived stress between groups 2.38 1 2.38 5.97 .017 within groups 33.47 84 .40 total 35.85 85 subjective wellbeing between groups 4.75 1 4.75 6.14 .015 within groups 64.999 84 .77 total 69.747 85 gq6 between groups 7.13 1 7.13 8.05 .006 within groups 74.381 84 .89 total 81.510 85 stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 49 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org time 2 anovas: effects on life event stress, pandemic impacts (financial, psychological, academic), pandemic resilience, and t1-t2 change in grateful emotions. sum of squares df mean square f sig. life event stress between groups 442.370 1 442.37 .01 .908 within groups 2736729.968 84 32580.12 total 2737172.337 85 pandemic financial impact between groups 7.065 1 7.07 5.13 .026 within groups 115.596 84 1.38 total 122.661 85 pandemic psychological impact between groups 3.812 1 3.81 2.97 .089 within groups 107.961 84 1.29 total 111.773 85 pandemic academic impact between groups 3.048 1 3.05 4.32 .041 within groups 59.314 84 .71 total 62.362 85 pandemic resilience between groups .439 1 .44 .60 .441 within groups 61.501 84 .73 total 61.941 85 grateful emotion change t1-t2 between groups 2.258 1 2.26 4.83 .031 within groups 39.266 84 .47 total 41.525 85 note: grateful emotion, unlike the other t2 dependent measures, was calculated as a difference score. multiple linear regression analyses revealed that grit and gratitude at t1 were predictive of positive effects at t2, above and beyond differences in sex, life event stress, and social desirability. grit significantly predicted greater pandemic resilience, t = 2.24, p = .028, ∆r2 = .055, increases in swb, t = 5.07, p = .000, ∆r2 = .328, and marginally lower psychological and academic impacts. see table 4. the standardized regression coefficients relating grit to pandemic resilience, psychological harm, and increases in swb, were medium in size (βs = .246, -.213, .483) and small for academic impact (β = -.172). therefore, students with more grit demonstrated higher levels of pandemic resilience, increases in swb, and perhaps lower psychological and academic harms due to the pandemic. controlling additionally for parental education, however, grit only significantly predicted pandemic resilience, t = 2.07, p = .042, ∆r2 = .050, and increases in swb, t = 4.73, p = .000, ∆r2 = .333. the standardized regression coefficients relating grit to pandemic resilience and increases in swb shrank but remained medium in size in these models (βs = .235, .465). the regression models analysing whether trait gratitude predicted pandemic outcomes showed that t1 trait gratitude predicted less psychological harm during covid-19, t = -2.26, p = .026, increases in swb, t = 6.95, p = .000, ∆r2 = .445, and marginally greater pandemic resilience. the standardized regression coefficients relating gratitude to psychological harm and swb were medium in size (β = -.239, .584) and small for pandemic resilience (β = .188). therefore, students with more trait gratitude experienced less psychological impact, increases in swb during the pandemic and possibly greater resilience. controlling additionally for parental education, however, gratitude only significantly predicted swb, t = 6.57, p = .000, ∆r2 = .446. the stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 50 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org standardized regression coefficient relating gratitude to increases in swb remained medium in size (β = .590). table 4. (regression) multiple linear regressions of grit and gratitude on dependent variables. predictor variable dependent variable β t ∆r2 p grit pandemic edu impact -.172 -1.72 .027 .089 pandemic psy impact -.213 -1.95 .041 .055 pandemic resilience .246 2.24 .055 .028* swb1 .483 5.07 .328 .000** gratitude pandemic edu impact .023 .232 .001 .817 pandemic psy impact -.239 -2.26 .055 .026* pandemic resilience .188 1.74 .034 .085 swb1 .584 6.95 .445 .000** *p<.05; **p<.001; 1 analyses with subjective wellbeing (swb) included an additional covariate for swb at t1 (prior to the pandemic). the path forward the results of this study find that trait gratitude and grit may be especially beneficial for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, specifically fgcs and others from homes with low parental education levels. luckily, overall research shows both grit and gratitude to be modifiable, which indicates that they are therefore useful as part of therapeutic interventions. the impact of urban universities on students with low parental education cannot be overstated. these institutions are designed to help those from high need urban areas, many of whom are first generation college students. the university where this study occurred is such an institution. though sparse, some recent research does point to promising grit and gratitude frameworks and interventions for urban college students. as previously mentioned, grit is comprised of 3 components: adaptability to situations, consistency of interest, and perseverance of effort. cross cultural research found that adaptability and perseverance predicted flourishing among polish, filipino, and japanese undergraduate students (datu et al., 2020). thus, specifically targeted interventions aimed at these components may increase grit. one specific intervention aimed at persistence in postsecondary stem programs by fgcs found that increased persistence was correlated with positive impacts on performance (hecht et al., 2019). using a utility-value intervention, this study required students to journal about the personal value of stem classes specific to their major and measured persistence behaviorally through continued course-taking and remaining in the biomed program after two years. the possible benefit of a program like this is that it can easily be adapted to other majors and programs and can also be employed remotely, which is valuable given the fact that the current pandemic situation remains tumultuous. the most promising grit interventions specifically for lower ses college students may involve promoting growth mindset in some way. though a recent meta-analysis concluded that the overall effects of such interventions are weak and may only benefit low ses students who are low-achieving or academically at risk (sisk et al., 2018), one factor that appears to help is having trained teachers deliver such interventions themselves. for example, one such study examined a randomized intervention with low ses elementary students in turkey that instilled optimistic beliefs about the productivity of effort and encouraged students to persevere through setbacks (alan et al., 2019). the intervention involved a teacher-training program that focused on 3 interrelated ideas underlying grit: growth mindset, perseverance through failures, and goal stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 51 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org setting. these researchers found significant effects on an incentivized real-effort task and performance in standardized math tests 2.5 years later. but such a program has not been tested in college settings. in the face of changing university structure during the covid-19 pandemic, online accessible interventions aimed at helping students address stress, depression, and wellbeing, may also provide a way forward. research has shown that intention to use online interventions increases as students experience higher levels of distress (ryan et al., 2010). online interventions are also accessible globally and the current generation of college students is tech savvy enough to operate online interventions (palma-gómez et al., 2020). a recent quasi-experimental study by bono et al. (2020) found that an intervention combining a research-based curriculum and a thanking/journaling app was effective with predominantly latinx students in lower-ses urban high schools. they found that the intervention increased subjective wellbeing and friendship satisfaction and decreased stress and anxiety and depression symptoms in students. such an intervention, that makes use of an app for students to express thanks to peers and teachers and to genuinely practice gratitude, has not been used with college students, but such techniques could be adapted to help personalize and enhance online learning in college too – especially in courses that involve collaborative learning, where social support and thanks can be exchanged naturally. finally, one study similarly used a technology-based gratitude intervention with college students (renshaw & hindman, 2017). employing a randomized controlled design, these researchers adapted the gratitude letter-writing-and-visit method by using notes instead of letters and instant communication technology instead of personal visits. results indicated that, compared to active control conditions, the intervention had greater positive effects on optimism and school connectedness, but that it also had small effects on depression and gratitude. future research should examine if such gratitude interventions are effective with college students who are diverse in terms of ses. moving forward, research with student populations in urban universities will be key. such research can help better address racial and ses gaps in education as well as the additional obstacles due to immigration and other inequities experienced by urban university students. it can also examine whether grit and gratitude moderate the impacts of such obstacles on students’ academic functioning, mental health and wellbeing. future research recommendations should close the literature gap on grit and gratitude traits in urban university students to pave the way for more tailored interventions. conclusion the current study examined whether socioeconomic status (parental education) was related with perceived stress, swb, grit and gratitude prior to the pandemic, and with covid-19 impacts (psychological, academic and financial wellbeing) and pandemic resilience in a sample of urban university students. researchers were also interested in whether inequities in education due to socioeconomic disadvantages, as experienced by many fgcs or urban college students, might be exacerbated by conditions caused by the pandemic. additionally, it explored if grit and gratitude could serve as coping strategies for alleviating these pandemic impacts and improving pandemic resilience and swb overall. the investigators were fortunate to collect baseline data prior to the onset of covid-19. it was hypothesized that lower parental education would negatively impact stress and swb and exacerbate pandemic outcomes and that grit and gratitude would positively influence swb and pandemic outcomes. hypotheses were largely supported. stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 52 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org parental education level we found that students with lower parent education (i.e., high school or less) reported more perceived stress, less swb, and less gratitude before the pandemic, compared to students with higher parent education (undergraduate college or higher). they also experienced worse academic and financial impacts due to the pandemic, compared to their higher-parent education peers – a pattern consistent with the disproportionate consequences plaguing u.s. minorities during the covid-19 pandemic. grit the findings of this study suggest, surprisingly, that the relationship between grit and academic functioning was not statistically significant. yet, in the current sample, grit was significantly associated with greater pandemic resilience, increases in swb and, possibly, decreased psychological harm. this suggests that interventions increasing grit characteristics – perseverance, adaptability, and consistency – help improve university students’ psychological wellbeing during the covid-19 pandemic and resilience to it. gratitude exploring state and trait gratitude, the data from the current sample suggested that trait gratitude was not a factor influencing the pandemic’s harmful academic impact. however, it was significantly associated with decreased psychological harm, increased swb and, possibly, greater resilience during covid-19. furthermore, grateful mood increased from before to during the pandemic for lower ses students, whereas the opposite was observed for higher ses students. therefore, it may be more challenging to promote gratitude in lower-ses students in general, presumably because of greater daily stress, but they may be prone to using gratitude to cope with the adversity of the pandemic more than their higher-ses peers. urban universities are suitable places for research examining why promoting gratitude in low ses students is more challenging and how to create impactful interventions aimed at those students. practical guidance the literature review from this study highlights that urban university students who are fgcs or come from households with low parental education may already be facing an uphill battle (azmitia et al., 2018; phillips et al., 2020), even in times without social upheaval or international crisis. the data from this study supports the conclusion that college students who are fgcs or come from homes with low parental education are not faring as well as their later generation peers. the impacts to this vulnerable population are both academic and financial, exacerbating already fragile dynamics. the population of students where this study occurred is 54% fgcs. it is reasonable to infer from our results that many, if not majorities, of students from such urban universities are experiencing worse financial and academic outcomes due to the covid-19 pandemic. study respondents mostly came from low education backgrounds, with 74.4% having parents who had completed high school or less (this includes 25.6% having parents with education up through middle school and 11.6% with education up through elementary school). thus, such exacerbations in quality of life due to the pandemic may be occurring in urban college students throughout the united states, putting these important institutions at risk of being unable to adequately support the academic development of many of their students. urban universities are vital resources for the social mobility of students from high-need backgrounds and the local communities that these institutions serve (hill, 1981; martinez-brawley, 2003). therefore, long stress and wellbeing in college students bono, reil & hescox 53 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org term and broader repercussions could be expected due to the disproportionate hardship many urban college students are experiencing during covid-19. results from this study also support possible future frameworks for interventions that may help this population gain coping strategies aimed at pandemic resilience. increased pandemic resilience for fgcs and socioeconomically disadvantaged college students would help to alleviate the variance in educational and financial impacts such students are experiencing during the covid-19 pandemic. the goal of these interventions to increase pandemic resilience would be to raise the grit and gratitude levels of students from backgrounds with low parental education. the lack of grit interventions aimed specifically at fgcs and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds is part of the problem, in addition to the need for more research on how to best promote gratitude in urban university populations. the university where this study took place is like many urban universities and hosts a variety of terminal degree and credential programs aimed at creating a pathway for students from the beginning of their undergraduate degree into a career-path. many of these careers have been deemed as essential workers during the covid-19 pandemic. of the credential and graduate degrees offered at the university: 28.5% of graduate students are getting teaching credentials, 14.5% an ma in education, 13.7% an ms in nursing, 6.7% ms in in occupational therapy, 4.7% an msw program and 4.2% in an mft program. as of the publication of this study (mid-august) the united states has had 5,064,171 cases of covid-19 (with a 7-day average of daily increases of 52,193 cases) and 162,407 total deaths (cdc, 2020). the future professionals in these muchneeded career fields for a post-pandemic world are currently the undergraduate students in this study and in urban universities across the united states. not only would they greatly benefit from targeted interventions promoting grit and gratitude, so would society, now and in a postpandemic world. authors giacomo bono california state university dominguez hills gbono@csudh.edu kresimir reil california state university dominguez hills jadwiga hescox california state university dominguez hills publishing timeline received 7 july 2020 accepted 3 august 2020 published 13 august 2020 references alan, s., boneva, t., & ertac, s. 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(2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 131–135. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.13 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan interview by aaron jarden denise quinlan is a graduate of the university of pennsylvania’s masters in applied positive psychology (mapp) program. she is currently completing a phd in psychology at the university of otago in new zealand on group strengths interventions with children. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? it’s the focus on understanding what enables and supports wellbeing and how we can enhance it. within positive psychology there are many different areas of research examining how that occurs, but we don’t yet have an integrated understanding of wellbeing, for example understanding the relationship between hedonics and eudaimonics, and how happiness unfolds across time and within the person. what would you say are some of the goals of positive psychology? to better understand and support people to experience mental health and wellbeing, at an individual level in therapeutic settings and individual coaching settings, and at the group level, in schools, workplaces, and right up to the societal level, where we can think about flourishing as a societal good. one of the challenges that positive psychology can perhaps address is that of wellbeing being regarded as an individual benefit and not the purview of government. if positive psychology can demonstrate that wellbeing has societal benefits, if it is seen as a public good, then supporting wellbeing at a societal level becomes part of the political agenda. what are some of the big challenges that positive psychology currently faces? the one that jumps to mind is research catching up with the practice. people are keen to implement research, and are sometimes basing that on one or two pieces of research which perhaps aren’t even with their population, and that’s the best they have got to go with. a better understanding of the mechanisms through which interventions work will enable us to design more effective and appropriate interventions for different populations. there is a growing awareness of the importance of context among researchers and that’s good; but i don’t know if consumers of the research are as aware. we expect a lot of people to be very sophisticated consumers of research, and that’s one of the challenges of positive psychology. i have been concerned about the use of strengths interventions as if they are a fool-proof way to enhance wellbeing. strengths are not a wind-up toy, ready to be taken out of the box, and off you go. creating a shared language of strengths, understanding different definitions and how strengths http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 are valued differently by different groups and in different contexts is important when using a strengths approach. another big challenge is really understanding what wellbeing is, how it occurs and unfolds with different individuals and groups. hedonic and eudaimonic theory have both provided valuable insights into human behaviour, but are often studied separately by different people, but both actually occur in a single human being, in a given context. every individual enjoys moments of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. by focusing on them separately we perhaps miss the interplay and balance between them that supports wellbeing. i don’t think it’s always possible to parse wellbeing into constituent elements; are my hoots of laughter with my family at the end of a challenging ski run pure pleasure at the run or meaning and fulfilment at being loved and part of a family, or a sense of being aligned with my purpose of being a good mother? i do know that if i tried to look at it, i would kill the moment, and if i did it out loud, my kids would probably kill me. were there any key events that made you move into the area of positive psychology? i mean, how did you get into the field of positive psychology? i had read learned optimism and authentic happiness by marty seligman and was using some of that work in workshops i was running. i had a business called ‘what to do next’, which delivered three-day seminars for people who were trying to work out where they were going to go next with their lives. the seminar used a lot of different tools, some of which came from positive psychology. i saw an advert for the masters of applied positive psychology (mapp) programme and i thought, ‘that would be interesting, but impossible from nz’. i applied and my very loving husband said we’d manage the fees and travel costs. he has pointed out to me that i could have had a diamond ring, a sports car and some change. luckily, we share an interest in wellbeing so he thought it was worthwhile. so that’s the masters of applied positive psychology programme in philadelphia? can you tell us a bit more about that? the programme is run on an executive study model with three days a month onsite, and study and assignments in between. each on site was three days of lectures from some of the leading people in the field. to sit in a lecture theatre and have someone share their work and learning with you always feels like a privilege to me, so it was a fantastic time. in between on sites, there were lots of assignments and online meetings; that was a lot of work. but honestly, getting to go to philadelphia and to listen to people like barbara fredrickson, chris peterson, martin seligman, sonya lyubomirsky, george vaillant and jonathan haidt was a joy. david cooperrider and isaac prilletensky both focus on wellbeing at the community or group level— where positive psychology has the least research. their work provided a great opportunity to balance the individual focus of much of positive psychology research. they were also both inspiring individuals to listen to. so you go to philadelphia for three days a month, for about 10 trips over a year, and you get access to all these world leaders. what would you say is the overall highlight of the training? it’s really hard to say! probably the first immersion week because i got to hear so many people in that week; george valliant, barbara fredrickson, sonya lyubomirsky, martin seligman, chris peterson. it was amazing to be suddenly immersed in an environment where people really cared about wellbeing and were making it their life’s work. i had worked in stock broking and management consulting for big firms in the uk and in new zealand, so i’d often positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 been in environments where wellbeing was seen as soft and fuzzy, and not something worthwhile—it was all about ‘show me the impact on the bottom line’. so to be in an environment where people were actually all interested in wellbeing, that was really exciting. can you tell me a little bit about your work in positive psychology? i’m currently a phd student at the university of otago studying group strengths interventions with 10-12 year olds. when i had previously worked with adults, participants on my programme often said, ‘why didn’t i learn this at school?’, and ‘why is no one teaching this to my kids?’. after the mapp programme i worked with karen reivich as a trainer helping deliver positive psychology training to teachers which included strengths, resilience training and information on meaning and purpose. i was interested in wellbeing interventions fo r schools and finding out whether or not a ‘pure’ strengths programme without the other components would actually make a difference to wellbeing. once into the phd i became just as interested in questions like, ‘what kinds of outcome measures are most appropriate?’, ‘what are the strategies being used to teach strengths?’, ‘how can we enhance the effectiveness of strengths interventions?’ and ‘why has no one looked at the effect of a strengths intervention on the group?’. i developed a classroom intervention involving teachers and students which focused on recognising strengths in others as well as the self. i delivered the programme to six classrooms over seven weeks. i’m currently analysing the data and hope to finish in the next six months. who do you admire in the strengths area? the people that jump out to me are some of the teacher practitioners who’ve taken the research and applied it in very thoughtful and insightful ways with their students. some of the teachers at geelong grammar [australia] that i’ve seen working are very inspiring. in terms of the research, chris peterson deserves so much credit for creating the via. i’ve been re-reading the introduction to the via handbook; his insights into the via’s potential and its limitations are worth another look. i think he was aware from the start of the potentially different role of strengths in different societies and the role of groups in encouraging strengths or not. karen reivich and jane gillham have done very good work in developing strengths programs for schools with a balance of creative and engaging exercises and awareness of the importance of relationship and group culture in strengths programs. people like jenny fox eades in the uk, have adapted the via for younger students and use it in conjunction with oral story-telling to create a powerful approach. jenny is very aware of what works for students and teachers so she is a good example of a critical user of positive psychology research. what would you do differently if you started learning about positive psychology again? i’d get much more critical information much earlier on. i’d like to know more about the ‘boundary riders’; the people who are not necessarily classified as positive psychologists, but are doing related work. i would have spent more time studying the social psychology side of positive psychology, and emotions research. overall, i would have liked to have had more exposure to some of the good critiques of positive psychology and to have had a clearer picture of where positive psychology sits in relation to the other branches of psychology. positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 what would your advice be to someone starting out who could not afford to do a mapp programme or similar? what kind of training advice would you give to someone in that situation who wants to learn a lot more about positive psychology? harvard and penn both offer cheaper online programs where you can get a programme similar to the mapp syllabus. i would say get your hands on some of the good readings in the area. resources like chris peterson’s primer in positive psychology. just read widely. what’s one book to read for someone coming into this area who has not read anything yet? jonathan haidt’s the happiness hypothesis is one i really enjoyed reading. i don’t know if it’s a good first book, but i really like the ideas in it. chris peterson’s primer in positive psychology is a good broad starting point. kate hefferson’s and ilona boniwell’s new book positive psychology: theory, research and application is also a great starting point. in your training, you have met a lot of the key people in the field. who do you look up to in the field? jonathan haidt was a great lecturer at mapp—i really like his work on hive psychology. i look up to george variant for his appreciation of humanity, to barbara frederickson for her pioneering research, to karen reivich and jane gillham for the work they have done on the penn resilience programme and marty seligman for his breadth of vision. i also respect people like tayyab rashid, who integrates his practice as a therapist with good research, and who is quietly innovating within the strengths area. todd kashdan is helping invigorate and challenge the field, and i think that’s helpful. who do you think is helpful in the field? martin seligman has been very helpful and supportive to me and other mapp graduates. everyone within positive psychology who i’ve e-mailed or spoken to has been helpful. i’ve learned a lot from working with karen reivich who is a great trainer and programme designer. todd kashdan has been helpful in discussing ideas and so have tayyab rashid and carmel proctor from the uk. is there an area of positive psychology you still find difficult to understand? it will be nice when we are able to join the dots up a little more. it sometimes feels like we’re looking at lots of different areas under a microscope at different levels of magnification, so it’s hard to know how things map across to each other. whether we’re looking at emotions and emotional responses, at a very micro level, or at long-term social support and wellbeing, getting from 28,000 feet to ground level and back up again is sometimes quite a challenge—to mesh that together. these theories have been described as metaphors, and i think it’d be great if the metaphors knitted up a little more. i really like an article by ken sheldon which described six different irreducible levels at which wellbeing occurs, from psychological need satisfaction at the bottom level up to cultural factors at the top. it was good to see a big picture map. is there anything you’d like to add or comment on that i have not asked about? if i was talking to someone coming into the field of positive psychology, i would say there are lots of really interesting pockets, but don’t lose sight of the big picture. my concern is that people jump into a pocket and act like that is the one solution, when the reality is that no one factor explains everything. the area within positive psychology that most excites me is positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 relationships because it’s pivotal for wellbeing across the life span but so challenging for most people. i think we still underestimate the importance of relationships in many areas of life, including education. most of the great educators i’ve met have a sense that teaching is all about connection with the student. i tell teachers that if they have a broadband connection with a student, then they can teach them anything. if they’re on dial-up, it’s going to be hard. one of the interesting things about strengths for me is how appreciation of another’s strengths can be used to build a relationship. i often describe the via strengths to teachers as 24 ways to love a difficult child. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 110–115. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.9 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks interview by aaron jarden nic marks is a recognised expert in the field of wellbeing research and positive psychology, and undertakes innovative research in the use of wellbeing indicators in public policy environments. nic founded the new economics foundation’s ‘centre for wellbeing’ and has led the wellbeing programme at the new economics foundation since 2001. this has included creating the very influential ‘five ways to wellbeing’ campaign which now has global reach. what prompted your interest in positive psychology? i came to positive psychology to try to unpick the question around sustainable development, which is how we try to create for people good lives that don’t cost the earth. it became fairly obvious that we need to think more about the quality of life than the quantity of life, trying to unpack the difference between economic growth and quality. so, i came to the field of the science of wellbeing, international quality of life studies, and latterly positive psychology, to work out whether we could measure that experience of life because that seems to me critical in how we re-vision what the future should be. and you’ve been in the field for a while? i’ve been in the field of thinking about alternative indicators of gdp for about 20 years, but wellbeing and subjective wellbeing for some 10 years now, since about 2001. what would you say are some of the most distinctive features of positive psychology and how it applies to what you’re doing? firstly, it’s a great, fun, topic and it’s very appealing to people. we’ve had so much psychology that’s been about fixing the bad things, which obviously is important, but i think there’s been a lack of giving people the opportunity to fulfil themselves—so positive psychology is great for that reason. and then there’s some good science coming out, showing that wellbeing is not exactly the opposite of ill-being, and i think that that is interesting. barbara frederickson’s work is standout work in the positive psychology area. so when you think about the big questions that the field of positive psychology addresses, what would you say those questions are? how do lives go well? what are the causes of lives going well? how can we define that and how can we improve people’s lives? ultimately it’s about making a difference. positive http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 psychology is about making a difference, an improvement to people’s lives and i think that’s positive psychology’s aim. it’s a noble aim. what’s a social justice issue that positive psychology should focus on, in your view? this is a developed world social justice issue. there are developing world social justice issues as well, but we know that people at the bottom of the income spectrum have lower happiness, wellbeing, than people further up it. but what positive psychology shows us, if you actually unpick it a bit, is that money is not the only causal thing that is going to get them out of that. so it’s not about throwing benefits and such things to those at the lower end of the income spectrum, it’s actually about giving them a sense of agency, and actually getting them to critically and wholly participate in society, or helping them to participate—‘getting’ them to participate is too strong. it’s not about being prescriptive, it’s more about facilitating that process, and so they’re not activating the sort of things we know about that bring people wellbeing. that’s because they don’t have that capacity to support, they haven’t had that love and care. so positive psychology reframes the issue of inequalities into an inequality of agency, rather than an inequality of money. what do you think is the best way for them to achieve that? who? policy makers or people individually? both, really. i mean that is the problem and if you had unlimited ways to fix it, how would you go about fixing it? right at the bottom of the income spectrum needs to have funded interventions because you’ll then have future benefits. that would actually save the government a lot of money. those interventions might be in part financial, but they’d be more things such as access to small micro credit loans and things like that. but they also need to be about getting social support and mentoring and helping people learn, not necessarily formal learning, but learning from others in their community. communities can work together and actually release passion and interest; and engagement in them is very, very interesting. most of these people couldn’t even begin to think about how to set up a small business or something like that. yet they have skills and passions and interests and strengths: but how do you release them? so it’s a very facilitative approach, which is unusual for government. government usually tends to be happier if it’s building things or putting in place infrastructure, physical things. so it’s quite a different sort of a process. it seems from what you’re saying it needs to be a bit of top down, but also has to be a bit of bottom up, for those ‘bottom rung’ people? yes, you can’t tell someone what their passions should be. you’ve got to have a conversation about that. so, the ‘top down’ needs to be putting facilitators and coaches into these communities. rather than building community centres, actually pay for these people to live in the community and to get to know the community and find out how they can get to work with people and have a very free remit to do that. and maybe setting up small funds that people can dip into to borrow that first 200 pounds or whatever to set up something small. there are really big returns on investment for those sorts of projects. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 so it’s more about a hand-up than a hand-out? yes, the process has to be bubbling up rather than trickling down. it has to be using people’s energy and releasing that in their communities. what do you think are some of the most valid criticisms of positive psychology? there have been far too many claims made far too quickly about certain interventions. the press have got very excited about it, and people have over-claimed success. quite a lot of the claims made can come across as too theory-led or they haven’t actually done enough to enable people to use it. on other occasions they are too focussed on specific interventions that can be proved in clinical studies, in rigorous trials and blind studies and that sort of thing. that’s all fine, but we have to generalise out from that if we are really going to make it useful. so, you want to have the science and you want to be able to go from that, so you want to be able to use the social marketing techniques. we need to be able to communicate things better. so, counting your blessings is great, but it’s not going to be an intervention that saves the world, and gratitude letters are not going to either. also, claims of universality across all cultures, when they’re quite culturally specific, have been a problem. but, generally, i think that the field of positive psychology is doing a great amount of human good. what’s the one thing that brings your work to the attention of others? one of the things we do well at nef is communicating, and by that i mean taking relatively complex ideas and presenting them in ways that are simple, but not simplistic. that’s the aim. we do some good work, and some of it is less good than other parts; but you know when something is good, that’s when it travels and people start using it. there are a few things that we have done that have really travelled. the ‘happy planet index’ and ‘five ways to wellbeing’ are two examples, but there are others as well—and these are things we have tried to simplify, without making them too simplistic. i liked what you said once about starting with the people and then working backwards, and i don’t think many people think that way at all and that’s where the application of the science breaks down… yeah, you can see that there are lots of people that want to coach in positive psychology, and this is not to say that there are not ways to make money out of positive psychology, but it would be nicer if it was a bit more focussed on human good and less on individual ways to set up consultancies. that is somewhat problematic and is reflected in the fact that we have a very poor ethnic mix of people coming to positive psychology conferences—it’s pretty much all european americans. people are not going to be naturally attracted to positive psychology, and the positive psychology community is going to have to work very hard. there should be a conscious effort to attract a broad range of people to positive psychology. in what ways do people make money out of the field of positive psychology? there is a lot of business consultancy, and there is nothing wrong with business consultancy. people need to be able to make money. but there has been too much focus on how that happens sometimes. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? ed diener. he is a fantastic empiricalist. he has taken risks in his career and i think he is outstanding. john helliwell, because he brings the social into it. he understands how communities work and understands the importance of how that works in that context. barbara frederickson is a great experimental psychologist and has a great ability to communicate really well. her work has a really good grounding in science. they would be my top three. have you made any big mistakes, or do you have any regrets, in your progress as you have moved into the positive psychology field? things that you look back on and think ‚i really should not have done that!‛? not regrets; of course you make mistakes and think about how you could have done things better, but that’s your learning process. when i came to the field in 2001, in the early days, i was learning here. i’m not a psychologist, i’m a statistician and a psychotherapist, but that’s not a technical psychologist, so clearly in the first projects we did we had questionnaires that were too long, because we didn’t understand enough about them, but you learn from that, so i don’t think that there are any regrets with that. there are the established people in positive psychology who are really well known. are there any people who stick out for you, who aren’t well known, who are emerging, at the cutting edge of the science, who you’d like to flag for the future? joar vitterso from norway. i don’t know if you have heard of him, but he’s doing good work on interest and also curiosity as well. looking at how there are different types of positive emotions that may have previously been put into one bracket, suggesting that they all behave the same way, whereas actually they don’t. for example, pleasure does not operate the same way as enthusiasm or engagement; and how do we start to differentiate between some of the positive emotions and their effects on people? so his work is very interesting. an under-thought about a field in positive psychology is genes and environment interplay. we haven’t seen nearly enough work on that, and it’s quite technical work; but it’s really important. we need to know how we intervene with people, and if we’re thinking that the environment and the interventions in the environment are going to work the same for all people—that’s rubbish. so, we need to know much more about genetically informed datasets, and particularly around interventions with children. over the last three or four years, of all the books you’ve read about positive psychology, what’s the one that stood out to you, changed your mind, as being fresh, the most inspirational book in the area of positive psychology? a book is hard because i read barbara fredrickson’s book positivity and i actually think that i preferred some of barbara’s papers, but that’s just me. it’s like sonya lyubomirsky’s book the how of happiness; it’s fine but it didn’t really inspire me. i guess that barry schwartz’s books [the paradox of choice and the loss of wisdom] really stuck out to me. i’d put him up there with someone who i enormously respect, he’s challenged the positive psychology movement and challenged the via strengths and how they are defined, and he’s very smart. so probably his was the book i really went ‘wow’ at, although that’s probably about six years old now. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 what book would you recommend to someone who doesn’t know anything about the field of positive psychology? when they find out about positive psychology, what’s the first book they should read? the one i normally recommend is positive psychology in a nutshell by ilona boniwell, which is just a small book, about 100 pages, which is succinct, but probably needs updating now, although i realise she also has a new textbook on positive psychology just out. in the past i have quite strongly recommended authentic happiness, because it is good for the field. and then there’s flourish< thinking of the current concerns in the field of positive psychology, what two concerns would you list as most needing to be addressed in order to make positive psychology a better discipline going forward? firstly, it needs to address its cultural bias, its ethnic bias. that’s critical. secondly it needs to think climate change and think about the environment. i find it so shocking that there are no tracks on interaction between nature and positive psychology. you can take it very softly, for example there’s nothing looking at human beings and just how it feels to be outside. i know there is an article that’s just come out in the international journal of wellbeing that focuses on nature, context and human wellbeing and uses central park in new york as an example and we need more of that kind of stuff. it’s really important that we understand that there is a huge contextual impact in how the environment impacts on people, and that it’s not all individually based. it’s important to positive psychology to get out of the individual, and into the social. what do you think are the pros and cons about the main governing body, ippa? it’s too american-based: this conference [the 2nd world congress on positive psychology] was supposed to be in europe, but they didn’t take the risk to do that. i also think it’s too narcissistic in a way, too inward turning. for example, to give six fellowships to six of the almost founding fathers of positive psychology. so you found an organisation and then get awarded by it? they should have given barbara [fredrickson], or sonya [lyubomirsky], or todd [kashdan], or tim kasser, people who are doing really good research in different areas, these awards. they should be using the organisation to give people a leg up in the field, not to go ‚jolly well done‛. there are lots of pros to ippa though; i don’t want to say it’s not a good organisation. there is a lot that needs to be debated though. there are a lot of really good people involved here and there is a really interesting scientific base. the international positive psychology association should also be a bit stricter about the empirical robustness of work sometimes—although it’s better than five years ago when people used to give papers on positive psychology. it’s improved a lot. what discipline do you think positive psychology can learn the most from, moving forward as an early science? it needs to learn more from systems theory, complexity. it’s too linear sometimes. it could learn more from social psychology, just generally, get out of the individual. the european tradition in psychology is more social and cultural. also, probably evolutionary psychology. barbara [fredrickson] does this very well, whereas perma does not really have an evolutionary story behind it. ed diener is much clearer that he thinks life satisfaction is the best measure; now, you can agree or disagree with that, but he has a stance on that. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 what do you think about the distinction ‘pushed from the past and pulled into the future’ as a point for positive psychologists to focus on or think more about? i have not really digested what marty [seligman] said about that in a lot of ways yet, but i do think he’s right to think that there’s a distinction between reminiscing about the past and anticipating about the future, and that views about the future are very much influence by the now. we don’t need to be as much weighed down by the past as psychodynamic theory has told us to be. for example, people don’t necessarily need to delve into the past to explain their present quite so much. i like the way that positive psychology is an optimistic science and does include things about the future too. psychotherapy and counselling is often not focussed enough on that, and i’m treating those as disciplines that have tried to improve the human lot, and they have done. but you should only think about the past in as much as it affects the present right now. negativity gets you caught in patterns. do i think that there is a pull from the future? it is very difficult scientifically to say that, but personally, yeah i do. this is a book for people looking to move into the field of positive psychology. is there anything else you’d like to comment on that i have not asked about? coming to positive psychology with an open mind has the potential for lots to be learned from it, as there is a lot to be learnt and discovered. it is an exciting discipline and i would like it to be linked more closely to social dimensions and cultural dimensions—which it is trying to do. ultimately, i’d like it to start to help us tackle what are some of the most pressing issues of our day. the 21st century is going to have to come to terms with the entrenched poverty in the world and how we deal with that, and climate change and how we dematerialise our economies. positive psychology, although not many currently think this way, has a huge contribution to make towards that, because it looks at what makes life go well, and it gives us the freedom to think in a different way. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz lomas, t., ishikawa, y., diego-rosell, p., daly, j., english, c., harter, j., standridge, p., clouet, b., diener, e., & lai, a. y. (2022). balance and harmony in the gallup world poll: the development of the global wellbeing initiative module. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2655 tim lomas harvard university tlomas@hsph.harvard.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 invited article balance and harmony in the gallup world poll: the development of the global wellbeing initiative module tim lomas · yoshiki ishikawa · pablo diego-rosell · joe daly · cynthia english jim harter · priscilla standridge · benedicte clouet · ed diener · alden y. lai abstract: over recent decades, scholarship on wellbeing has flourished. however, this has been critiqued as western-centric, firstly in terms of the location of research participants and scholars, and moreover in terms of the very ideas and values through which wellbeing is understood. in response to such issues, the global wellbeing initiative – a partnership between gallup and the wellbeing for planet earth foundation – was created to look at wellbeing from a more global perspective. the centrepiece of this initiative is a survey module in the gallup world poll. this paper charts the evolution of this module to date, from its initial incarnation in the 2020 poll (featuring items on various aspects of wellbeing) to a finalized 2022 iteration (which focuses specifically on balance and harmony). with the 2022 version now intended to stay consistent longitudinally, this paper establishes a valuable baseline for this important project which will contribute to a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of wellbeing. keywords: wellbeing, global, cross-cultural, survey, gallup, gallup word poll, global wellbeing initiative 1. introduction the western-centric nature of wellbeing research, and psychology more broadly, has been increasingly recognized as a problem. this issue was influentially highlighted by henrich et al. (2010), who pointed out that the vast majority of research in psychology is conducted by and on people in societies described as ‘weird’ (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). crucially, most of the world is not comparably weird, which raises questions around the validity and universality of such work. fortunately, the field is becoming attuned to this problem, and is making efforts to redress it. one example is the global wellbeing initiative (gwi), a partnership between gallup and the japan-based wellbeing for planet earth foundation, launched in 2019. its aim is to explore wellbeing from a global perspective, primarily through a module in the gallup world poll (gwp). this was first included in the 2020 gwp and featured nine items considered to be (a) lacking from common conceptualizations and assessments of wellbeing, and (b) particularly emphasized in non-western cultures. it was intended that the module would evolve through various iterations before arriving at a format which could stay consistent over several years to allow longitudinal analysis. in that respect, by the 2022 poll, the module had evolved to focus specifically on balance and harmony (b/h), with this new 12-item iteration envisaged as the finalized version. this paper charts how this finalized module was developed over five sections. we begin by elucidating the context for this project, as well as about:blank balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 introducing the gwi itself. then follows a consideration of the module’s central topics of b/h. finally, we explore its iteration over the 2020, 2021, and 2022 waves of the gwp. 2. the global wellbeing initiative the context for the formation of the gwi is the twin recognition of, (a) the western-centric nature of wellbeing scholarship, and relatedly, (b) the need for a more globally inclusive approach. this issue is not confined to wellbeing research; as noted above, henrich et al. (2010) influentially argued that most research in psychology is conducted by and on people in societies deemed ‘weird.’ they cite for instance an analysis by arnett (2008) showing that 96% of participants in studies in top psychology journals were from western industrialized countries, even though these are home to only 12% of the world’s population. although one cannot simplistically classify places in a binary way as weird versus non-weird, since each element of the acronym is a spectrum upon which countries may be variously situated (ghai, 2021), it is fair to say that most of the world is not as weird as places like the usa, from where most research in top journals originates. this cultural bias has numerous issues and implications, particularly as psychology tends to aim for universality (i.e., presenting its theories and findings as universally applicable). first, there is the issue of representation in terms of participants. if these are mostly from weird societies, one can question how generalizable the results are. some theorists would argue that these findings are generalizable, on the basis that humans are relatively similar across cultures and share a common human nature. however, a wealth of research shows that people do have meaningful differences across myriad aspects of life related to their cultural and geographical location (as discussed next). as a result, one cannot simplistically draw conclusions about human nature or life based on participants mainly from weird contexts. these points are illustrated and exemplified by the gwp, which since 2005 has annually surveyed people globally – in up to 160 countries – in relation to all aspects of life, showing considerable variation based on people’s cultural location. for instance, its main metric for assessing wellbeing is cantril's (1965) self-anchoring striving scale, a measure of life evaluation which asks respondents to envisage where they stand on a 10-rung ladder whose base and top respectively represent the worst and best possible life imaginable. this item has generated a wealth of influential analyses, most notably the annual world happiness report (helliwell et al., 2022), which ranks nations based on their participants’ responses. citizens in countries in the top ten rate their life as nearly 8 out of 10 on average, whereas those in nations ranked lowest have scores around 3, showing striking global variation. moreover, scholars have also explored the factors that influence wellbeing, and find meaningful differences in that respect too. one prominent and consistent finding, for instance, is that increases in income/wealth can improve wellbeing – both at an individual and a societal level – for people who are relatively poor (sacks et al., 2012). however, as people become richer, the impact of increased money appears to wear off, a phenomenon known as ‘income satiation.’ significantly, there seems to be considerable cultural variation in that regard. analyzing the gwp, jebb et al. (2018) found that while the overall mean was around $95,000 (or the equivalent purchasing power in people’s respective currencies), this ranged from $35,000 (in latin america and the caribbean) to $125,000 (in australia and new zealand). so, any generalizations about wellbeing or its factors based only on people in weird contexts is liable to be inaccurate and misleading. moreover, the issue with the western-centric nature of wellbeing scholarship goes beyond the need to conduct research globally. it extends to how we conceptualize wellbeing itself. since scholars are themselves mostly situated in weird societies, the values and traditions in these places are liable to influence their ideas and theories. western cultures are regarded as relatively http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 individualistic, for instance, compared to eastern cultures which lean more towards collectivism, a trend consistently observed across studies, even if the data is more nuanced than this simple generalization implies (lomas et al., 2022a). crucially, this individualism in the west has been interpreted as shaping the very constructs used in psychology to understand the person, as evinced by the myriad constructs prefixed by ‘self,’ from self-determination to self-esteem, and all related discourses of self, from authenticity to autonomy. more relevantly still, this has impacted how scholars understand and assess wellbeing. one example is that wellbeing tends to be viewed primarily as an individual personal phenomenon, downplaying its social and contextual dimensions (lomas & vanderweele, 2021). this individualist bias even impacts areas like emotions, such as the difference between high and low arousal positive emotions. a wealth of work, especially by tsai (2007), has identified cultural variation in their valorization, with western cultures placing greater emphasis on high arousal (e.g., excitement) and eastern cultures on low arousal (e.g., calmness). these preferences moreover are linked to the respective tendencies towards individualism and collectivism; it is suggested that high arousal states are liable to be interpreted in the east as self-aggrandizing and therefore disruptive of social harmony, while low arousal states are more conducive to such harmony (uchida & kitayama, 2009). however, the western-centricity of wellbeing scholarship means its focus has tended to be on high arousal forms, with a relative inattention to low arousal forms (mcmanus et al., 2019). this tendency even includes the gwp, which shows that despite it excelling in researching wellbeing globally, it has still been subject to the western-centric influences that characterize wellbeing research more broadly. to that point though, the new gwi was designed to redress precisely these issues. its impetus was the establishment of the wellbeing for planet earth foundation in japan in 2018. its overarching aim was and is to support research, practice, and policy advances to reflect a more global view of wellbeing. acknowledging that doing so required a global platform, the foundation approached gallup in 2019 to establish a research partnership. this would centre on – though would not only be restricted to – designing a new wellbeing module for the gwp. this would seek to incorporate ideas around wellbeing associated with non-western cultures which had hitherto been (a) not included within the gwp, and (b) overlooked or under-researched by scholarship more broadly. given the japanese location of the foundation, the initial focus was on eastern cultures in particular. it was envisaged that there would be several years of exploratory testing of topics and items, before ideally arriving at a configuration that could stay in place for several more years at least to allow for longitudinal analysis. this process unfolded as anticipated, and by late 2021 a finalized module – for inclusion in the 2022 gwp – had been agreed upon, centring on b/h, as articulated below. first though, we shall briefly elucidate the nature and significance of b/h, drawing on a chapter in the 2022 world happiness report exploring the 2021 gwi data on these topics (lomas et al., 2022b), as well as a review by lomas (2021) identifying b/h as a ‘golden thread’ across all aspects of wellbeing. 3. balance and harmony like many concepts, the meanings of b/h are contested and debated. moreover, their conceptualizations are usually tied to specific domains of life, rather than defined in the abstract. in physiology, for instance, a review of the literature by ragnarsdóttir (1996) suggested balance has been operationalized in two main ways, as a physical state (e.g., “in which the body is in equilibrium”) and as a function (e.g., “demanding continuous adjustments of muscle activity and joint position to keep the body weight above the base of support”). nevertheless, having reviewed the application and conceptualization of b/h across disciplines, lomas et al. (2022b) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 were able to formulate some generic orienting definitions – applicable across diverse contexts – to guide the analysis and discussion in the world happiness report chapter. beginning with balance, the common thread identified was this: balance means the various elements which constitute a phenomenon, and/or the various forces acting upon it, are in proportionality and/or equilibrium, often with an implication of stability, evenness, and poise. these dynamics frequently – but not only – apply to binary or dyadic phenomena. its etymology reflects this usage, deriving from the latin bilanx, denoting two (bi) scale pans (lanx). substantively, these pairs may either be poles of a spectrum (e.g., hot-cold), or discrete categories that are frequently linked (e.g., work-life). then, temporally, such connections can be synchronic (e.g., neither too hot nor cold) or diachronic (e.g., averaging good work-life balance over a career). in such cases, balance usually does not mean a crude calculation of averages, nor finding a simple mid-point on a spectrum, but skillfully finding the right point or amount, an ideal also known as the goldilocks principle (dunne, 2017). however, balance does not only pertain to dyads, and can also be applied to relationships among multiple phenomena, as per a ‘balanced diet’ for example. although harmony is sometimes used synonymously with balance, there are subtle differences. in the literature, a common distinguishing theme seems to be this: harmony means the various elements which constitute a phenomenon, and/or the various forces acting upon it, cohere and complement one another, leading to an overall configuration which is appraised positively. to appreciate this definition, it helps again to begin with an etymological perspective, with the term deriving from the latin harmonia, meaning joining or concord. this ‘concord’ can then obtain with respect to all manner of phenomena involving multiple elements. in classical chinese and greek philosophy, for instance, harmony was often elucidated with reference to music, where it denotes a pleasing overall configuration, an ordered arrangement of numerous notes which complement each other tonally and aesthetically (li, 2008). in this concord one can appreciate a subtle yet meaningful point of distinction between balance and harmony. while both are invariably interpreted as a desirable good, balance is more neutral and detached, while harmony is often ‘warmer’ and even more positively valenced, with a more definite sense of flourishing. while describing a work team, for instance, as ‘balanced’ could imply a good mix of people and skills, it would not necessarily mean the colleagues got on well or thrived as a unit. but these latter qualities may well be evoked if the team were deemed ‘harmonious.’ significantly, b/h are important principles across myriad aspects of life, and indeed may be ‘golden thread’ across all aspects of wellbeing (lomas, 2021). take any dimension or aspect of life, and one usually cannot say categorically – with the sole but important exception of illness – whether simple its presence or absence is conducive to wellbeing. rather, such dimensions usually must be understood in terms of an optimal amount or level, generally involving attaining b/h between poles of a spectrum (e.g., cold-hot) or related categories (e.g., work-life). with the various aspects of physical health for instance – from exercise to sleep to eating – it is important to strike a balance between too little and too much, and moreover to attain b/h among the components of these aspects (e.g., a ‘balanced diet’) (kremers, 2010). similarly, in terms of lifestyle, the salience of b/h is reflected in the vast literature on work-life balance (kelliher et al., 2019), as well as considerations like vallerand's (2010) work on the need for ‘passions’ (e.g., hobbies) to be harmonious (integrated with other aspects of life) rather than obsessive (all consuming). in the realm of character, aristotle’s principle of the ‘golden mean’ holds that virtue lies in judiciously treading a middle line between opposing vices of excess and deficiency (e.g., courage is avoiding both cowardice and recklessness); his ideas have been embraced by modern researchers, like rashid (2015) and niemiec (2017), who have pioneered an approach to mental http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 illness and health based on underand over-use of character strengths. as seen in lomas (2021), such examples could be multiplied at length, in areas of life ranging from cognition (wallace & shapiro, 2006) and emotion (sansó et al., 2017) to relations with other people (visserman et al., 2016) and with the natural world (kjell, 2011). our understanding of b/h is deepened by considering a nexus of psychological phenomena which are closely related, namely low arousal positive states (laps), such as peace and calmness. although we’ve seen that b/h apply across most life domains, they are nevertheless often regarded or treated as intrinsically connected to – perhaps even coterminous with – such states. surveying lay perceptions of happiness across 12 countries, for example, delle fave et al. (2016) found the most prominent definition was ‘inner harmony,’ which featured themes of inner peace, contentment, and balance. it is not currently self-evident or well-understood why there is this affinity between b/h and laps. one interpretation advanced by lomas et al. (2022b), drawing on work by kjell and diener (2021), is that experiences of b/h could be regarded as a form of low arousal subjective wellbeing. subjective wellbeing, as developed by diener and colleagues (diener et al., 1999), is usually regarded as having two main dimensions: cognitive (i.e., life evaluation/satisfaction), and affective (i.e., positive affect). life evaluation tends to not imply any specific arousal level, while assessments of positive emotions usually focus on high arousal forms (mcmanus et al., 2019), as noted above. by contrast, experiences of b/h may generally constitute low arousal forms of cognitive evaluation (and so augment the process of life evaluation), while states like calmness and tranquility constitute low arousal emotional states (with peace having both cognitive and affective dimensions). however, the connection between b/h and laps is under-researched and not well understood, as indeed are both b/h and laps in themselves, and more work is needed to explore both the individual topics as well as their interrelationships. for now though, we shall treat laps as a constellation of phenomena that are somehow just associated or bound up with b/h. thus, although by the 2022 gwp we came to conceive and present the gwi module as pertaining specifically to b/h, it also includes items pertaining to laps. so, whenever we mention b/h in the text below, this should also be taken as including laps as a constituent element or theme. the inattention to b/h in the literature may sound surprising, given the various scholarship cited above concerning its importance to wellbeing. however, although b/h have received considerable attention across different contexts (e.g., work-life balance), this literature is fragmented and scattered. there have been few attempts to bring these disparate threads together, or to center b/h as foundational and important across all aspects of human life. one explanation is the western-centric nature of academia. we have already suggested this bias has led to laps being overlooked within wellbeing research. similar dynamics apply to b/h. although ideas and practices around b/h have been developed across cultures – including in the west, as per aristotle’s golden mean – it nevertheless appears that eastern cultures have historically been particularly attentive and receptive to b/h. this interest is exemplified by traditions like confucianism and taoism, as reflected in the latter’s yin-yang motif. in that respect, li (2012) described “yin-yang balance” as “a unique frame of thinking in east asia that originated in china but is shared by most asian countries” (p.845). to that point, scholars have suggested that eastern and western cultures have developed a preference for different cognitive styles, with east favoring holistic and dialectical forms, and the west embracing linear and analytical modes, such as aristotle’s formal either/or logic (peng & nisbett, 1999). whatever the dynamics and reasons though, eastern cultures are widely regarded as having an especially strong affinity and preference for ideas and practices relating to both to b/h and laps. as a result, these have been http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 not received the academic attention they merit, hence the decision by the gwi to include these in its gwp module, as we consider next. 4. 2020 wave the first iteration of the gwi module was included in the 2020 gwp, which went into the field in march 2020. development of the module began one year before, in spring 2019, as the gwi was being formed. in consultation with their key scientific advisor, ed diener, the gwi decided the first step in the creation of the module would be convening a summit of wellbeing scholars from across the world who were conducting promising research into new perspectives on wellbeing. following identification and invitation of a suitable group of scholars, a three-day summit was held in kyoto, japan, in august 2019. this featured 12 scholars who attended the whole event – five from japan, the remainder from overseas – together with other stakeholders and interested parties who were present for select parts. the overarching goal was to develop potential gwp items that are: (1) capable of augmenting existing measures to create a comprehensive conceptualization of wellbeing; (2) most pressing to capture, since global data does not yet exist for these; (3) inclusive of a wider, richer, range of worldviews (not currently captured by the poll); (4) useful items from which policy makers and other decision makers could take action; and (5) demonstrative of the complexity of wellbeing, highlighting cultural differences, and allowing for examination of factors that contribute to wellbeing across and within societies. over the first two days, participants presented their own research, with a focus on findings pertaining to the summit’s aims. the third day then centered on proposing new topics and items for the gwp. over three hours, topics were discussed, debated, and voted upon (ranked in order of importance). as a result, nine topics were identified. then followed another three-hour session in which topics were formulated as possible gwp items; different permutations for each topic were similarly discussed, debated, and voted upon (i.e., in terms of preferred phrasing). the topics selected were (ranked in order of priority): (1) laps; (2) b/h; (3) relationship to group; (4) meaning in life; (5) relationship to nature; (6) mastery; (7) relationship with government; (8) leisure; and (9) resilience. given budgetary constraints, it was only possible to include a limited set of 9-10 items in the gwi module (with the potential for other items to be included in subsequent years). of this list, as determined by the ranking procedure, topics 1-4 were deemed most important and for definite inclusion (and moreover with each potentially having multiple items assessing them). topics 5-6 were also put to gallup after the summit for consideration, but did not get included in the 2020 wave. finally, topics 7-9 were not put forward to gallup for this first wave, but were retained for consideration in future waves. these deliberations and outcomes were subsequently published as a white paper (lambert et al., 2020). after the summit, following input from the gwi funders, it was deemed important to also include a focus on wellbeing at work. thus, in addition to the four topics prioritized at the summit, wellbeing at work was also prioritized for inclusion in the 2020 gwp. from november 2019 onwards, the gwi team held weekly online meetings, with discussions of all topics and items under consideration. once the five main topics had been identified, with suitable item phrasings agreed (based on formulations reached at the summit, and refined through subsequent discussion), these items were tested in the field through cognitive interviews. participants were interviewed in seven countries, covering six different languages: columbia (spanish); ethiopia (afan oromo); italy (italian); japan (japanese); kosovo (albanian); lebanon (arabic); and tunisia (arabic). in each country approximately 10 people were interviewed, selected as differing on a range of key demographics, including: geography (five http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 rural, five urban); gender (five female, five male); income (four low-, three middle-, and three upper-); age (three 18-29 years old, four 30-44, and three 45+); and employment status (five employed full time, two self-employed full time, and three out of the workforce). following analysis of the cognitive interviews, some items were reformulated, as outlined below. this reformulation took place in the weekly meetings in which refined item phrasings were discussed and agreed upon. once items had been reformulated, further pre-test interviews took place (in the same countries as the cognitive interviews, using the same demographic spread). then, following analysis of the pre-test interview, final item phrasings were agreed in the weekly meetings, as shown in table 1 below. it is beyond our scope here to discuss the development of all these items. however, we can briefly consider the items relating specifically what would become, by the 2022 gwp, the main focus of the module, namely b/h, and relatedly also laps (which, to reiterate a point above, should be treated as an aspect or theme of b/h). as one can see, there is one item on b/h, and three pertaining to laps. regarding b/h, the item suggested at the summit was from kjell et al.'s (2016) harmony in life scale: “most aspects of my life are in balance.” in post-summit discussions, three versions were considered and explored in cognitive testing. in the first, the wording was amended slightly to: “do you feel the various aspects of your life are in balance, or not?” in cognitive interviews, respondents generally understood it, though interpreted “in balance” differently. about half of interviewees understood it to mean having enough time to spend on all things in life that are most important to them (including work, social relations, family, health, economy, food, and emotional aspects). some respondents in italy specifically said balance means “everything is in its place and having enough time for oneself and for others,” with one person saying balance means “having moments to relax from work.” however, several respondents mentioned that “in balance” referred to a balance of good things and bad things in a person’s life. others spoke of resilience and achieving goals as being “in balance.” somewhat differently, a japanese respondent said, “'i think "in balance" means no bias. there is no bias in thinking or in daily life.” the broad nature of the phrase “various aspects of your life” was also difficult for some respondents. for instance, for some respondents in lebanon, issues such as violence, strikes, civil unrest, and instability in their country were considered to be among the “various aspects” of their lives, and thus their answers were influenced strongly by the present situation there. eventually, the item was kept with a minor change (adding “in general”), together with the understanding that respondents may have a broad interpretation of “various aspects of your life,” and that societal disruptions may impact responses. thus, version selected was: “in general, do you feel the various aspects of your life are in balance, or not?” in addition to this selected framing, two other versions of the item were trialled (and ultimately rejected). in the first of these, harmony was substituted for balance: “do you feel your life is in harmony, or not?” however, the conclusion from cognitive interviews was that balance was generally better understood than harmony. the latter was related to balance for many respondents, but some associated harmony with lack of conflict, having a good family, and more sentimental aspects of life, whereas balance was more likely to be associated with how one spends time and resources. in japan, for instance, the interviewer noted, “it is difficult to answer this question for most of the respondents. this question is unclear about what my life is in harmony with.” thus, this version was cut in favour of the first version above. a third version was also explored: “do you feel things in your life are as they should be?” in cognitive interviews, this was interpreted to be more about expectations respondents have for their life and whether they’ve been met (and is not understood to mean the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 same thing as balance or harmony). thus, again, this version was cut in favour of the first version outlined above. table 1. the 2020 gwi module. topic question response format 1 laps did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday? … calmness? yes no (don’t know) (refused) 2 laps in general, do you feel at peace with your life, or not? yes no (don’t know) (refused) 3 laps would you rather live an exciting life or a calm life? an exciting life a calm life (both) (neither) (don’t know) (refused) 4 b/h in general, do you feel the various aspects of your life are in balance, or not? yes no (don’t know) (refused) 5 meaning in life which of the following is closest to your main purpose in life? (read items) being good at what you do in your daily life caring for family and close friends helping other people who need help (none of these) (i do not know my purpose in life) (don’t know) (refused) 6 relationship to group do you think people should focus more on taking care of themselves or on taking care of others? taking care of themselves taking care of others (both ) (neither) (don’t know) (refused) (if respondent is employed by an employer or is self-employed, continue; otherwise, skip to end) 7 work (enjoyment) do you enjoy the work you do in your job every day, or not? (interviewer: if the respondent says they don't work every day, ask them to think about the days when they work.) yes no (don’t know) (refused) 8 work (relationship to group) do you think the work you do in your job significantly improves the lives of other people outside of your own household, or not? yes no (don’t know) (refused) 9 work (mastery/ resilience) do you, personally, have many choices in regard to the type of work you can do in your life? yes no (don’t’ know) (refused) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 in terms of laps, at the summit the following phrasing was selected: “did you feel calm and at peace yesterday?” through subsequent discussions, three separate items pertaining to this topic were included in the 2020 gwp. the first reflected the fact that the gwp already had a separate block of items asking if people experienced particular feelings “a lot of the day yesterday.” this block did not include laps, so it seemed prudent and cost-effective to add a laps item to this. in that respect, cognitive interviews enquired whether “contentment” or “calmness” would be better. there were a mix of responses across countries (e.g., in lebanon and tunisia were most negative in their responses to both). the biggest observation was the difficulty of translation, particularly “contentment.” gallup received many questions from translators about its meaning, and respondents often had trouble understanding it. several other words were tested in probing, including “satisfaction,” “tranquility,” “at peace,” “serenity,” and “calmness.” many respondents felt the words were either synonymous or noted only small differences between them. ultimately, gallup’s recommendation was to use “calm,” so the first laps item included in the module was whether people felt calm during “a lot of the day yesterday.” in addition to using “calm” in this format, gallup recommended also asking “did you feel at peace most of the day yesterday, or not?” this item was thus included in the module as the second item pertaining to laps. this was suggested because being “at peace” was a concept of interest to begin with, and in cognitive interviews it worked well in many countries. it was noted though that translation notes should be developed to make sure this meaning is captured, while avoiding an affiliation with “war” or “violence”. it is further interesting to reflect on – and moreover to measure – possible differences between being “calm” and “at peace.” the former is often conceptualized as an affective state (yik & russell, 2003), whereas the latter is more suggestive of a cognitive, evaluative state (steinhauser et al., 2006). however, both constructs are relatively under-researched and poorly understood, and will benefit from exploration in the gwp analysis. third, post-summit discussions identified the utility of investigating cross-cultural differences in preference for low versus high arousal positive emotions, as discussed above. the initial attempt at an item on this issue was: “would you rather feel contentment or excitement most days of your life?” however, in cognitive interviews, the question was not well understood and difficult to answer. not only did “contentment” pose issues as noted above, but “excitement” was also challenging (e.g., in some languages this was interpreted as sexual in nature). upon probing, several respondents also noted the words were difficult to compare since they were not opposites. people in most countries tended toward selecting “contentment”; however, there were mixed results in japan and in ethiopia (where all respondents selected “excitement”), while in tunisia nearly half of respondents could not provide an answer. given these difficulties, a new version was proposed by gallup: “would you rather live an exciting life or a calm life?” this was therefore the third item pertaining to laps included in the 2020 module. 5. 2021 wave with the 2020 module successfully in the field, the gwi set about reflecting on and developing it further. as noted above, from the outset it was envisaged that the first few years of the project would involve an iterative process of exploring potential items and module permutations before ideally arriving at a stable configuration that could remain in place longitudinally. thus, in october 2020 the gwi held a second annual, this time focused on scrutinizing the items in the 2020 module with an eye on revising it for the 2021 poll. the summit featured the scholars invited to the 2019 summit, together with 15 new invitees who had, in the interim, been identified as likewise having valuable contributions to make. given the travel restrictions imposed by covidhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 19, the summit was convened online, and featured an intensive two-hour roundtable session in which participants debated the items, as well as considered topics missing from the module. table 2. the 2021 gwi module. topic question response format 1 laps did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday? … calmness? yes no (don’t know) (refused) in general, how often do you feel each of the following …? 2 b/h … the various aspects of your life are in balance? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 3 laps … content? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 4 laps and mindfulness … you are at peace with your thoughts and feelings? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 5 vitality … enthusiastic? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 6 connection to nature … emotionally connected to nature? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 7 religion/ spirituality … connected to a religion or a form of spirituality? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 8 relationship to group … you have a good relationship with your loved ones? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 9 resilience … you are able to deal with life’s challenges? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) (if respondent is employed by an employer or is self-employed, continue; otherwise, skip to end) 10 work (enjoyment) do you enjoy the work you do in your job every day, or not? (interviewer: if the respondent says they don't work every day, ask them to think about the days when they work.) yes no (don’t know) (refused) 11 work (relationship to group) do you think the work you do in your job significantly improves the lives of other people outside of your own household, or not? yes no (don’t know) (refused) 12 work (mastery/ resilience) do you, personally, have many choices in regard to the type of work you can do in your life? yes no (don’t know) (refused) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 regarding current items, one main critique was the variability in item formatting, and the desirability of having a common format in terms of better facilitating comparison among items (e.g., using factor analysis). regarding other potential items, discussion centered on five topics deemed particularly worth including: connection to nature; resilience; religion/spirituality; vitality; and mindfulness. at the conclusion of the roundtable session, that same day the lead author developed – based on the roundtable discussion – alternative item phrasings for the existing four topics, and possible item phrasings for the newly identified topics, with each item having 10 different phrasings. the next day attendees were invited to vote on their preferred phrasings. these votes then informed the revision of items in the post-summit discussion phase. following the summit, further meetings about topics and items were held. it was established that having a common response framework would enable the inclusion of a greater number of items, increasing from 9 to 12 items (now spanning nine topics). this is because the size of the module is determined principally by time – with the module allocated a total of two minutes – and a common framework cuts down the time taken per item. thus, the 2021 module contained the five main topics from the 2020 gwp, plus five other topics identified at the 2020 roundtable (with one of these, mindfulness, combined with the existing topic of laps, as elucidated below), creating nine topics in total (across 12 items). based primarily on the post-roundtable vote, phrasings were agreed upon for the new items. unlike the previous year, these items were not subjected to cognitive or pre-test interviews, partly because many of the topics and items had already been through this process the previous year, and partly because scheduling requirements would not permit this. however, to compensate, the new items were extensively checked with gallup’s regional experts and translators (and other experts in the gwi community). following this feedback, final item phrasings were agreed in the gwi meetings, as detailed in table 2 below, in time for inclusion in the 2021 gwp. as one can see, there are both continuities and discontinuities with the previous 2020 iteration. the main change overall was to have most items conform to a common format in terms of, (a) their opening stem, and (b) response options. this was partly driven by feedback at the summit around the desirability of a common format from an analytic perspective (e.g., in terms of better facilitating comparison among items). moreover, it was also beneficial from a practical perspective, since having a common format allowed the gwi to increase the number of items in the module, as noted above. we shall discuss this format shortly. first, we should just mention the exceptions to this. in particular, the first laps item from 2020 on calmness was kept exactly the same. this is because this had become added to the set of items on daily emotional experiences in the gwp, as noted above, and so its formatting needed to be consistent with this set. for similar reasons, the three workplace items retained the same format as the 2020 wave. however, the remainder of the items were redesigned to be consistent in two main ways. first, they all had the same prompt, namely, “in general, how often do you feel each of the following …? this would only need to be asked once (i.e., across all items), thus making the module more time-efficient and allowing more items. second, they were also designed to have the same response format. in that respect, there was a decision to move from a predominantly binary yes/no response format in 2020 to a four-response likert format (always, often, rarely, never). the discussions around this move were interesting. in psychology it is common for psychometric scales to use a likert framework, as a greater number of options allows for richer data analysis. however, from gallup’s extensive experience in conducting cross-cultural surveys, they have found a binary response format works better in the gwp, since likert scales can suffer from various issues in the field (e.g., they can be harder for some participants to understand and are less easily standardized across cultures). as a result, there was ongoing debate between gallup http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 personnel (accustomed to the binary format) and academics connected to the gwi (accustomed to a likert format) about which is preferable. eventually, in a spirit of openness and experimentation, gallup agreed to explore a likert framework in the gwi module. first, we decided to frame the item in terms of time/frequency (i.e., how often people experience a given state) rather than size/amount (i.e., how much do they experience), as the latter might be somewhat abstract and harder for participants to envision. we then opted for four options (always, often, rarely, never) in response to gallup’s reservations about likert scales in general. that is, out of concern with not making the framework too complicated, we sought to minimize the number of items. however, having only three options was also not desirable, since in gallup’s experience people often choose the middle term. as such, four was settled upon as an ideal number, taking four common responses often found in likert scales as the options. having established a common item format, we then sought to update the topics and items themselves. first, we were keen to retain the item on b/h, and just updated it per the new response format, from “in general, do you feel the various aspects of your life are in balance, or not?” to “[in general, how often do you feel] the various aspects of your life are in balance?” then, with laps, besides the experienced calmness item discussed above, as in 2020 there were two other items pertaining to laps. the 2020 item on preference for calmness or excitement was dropped completely, as it could not be adapted to the new response format. instead, the 2020 item on peace (“in general, do you feel at peace with your life, or not?”) became modified into two new items. on reflection, we had come to feel this original phrasing pertained more to acceptance and even resignation than laps per se. as such, we were keen to ascertain whether people felt peaceful or at peace. however, in discussions, when trying these adjectives with the new format (in general, how often do you feel] peaceful / at peace), “peaceful” seemed to imply non-aggression/violence, while “at peace” still invoked acceptance/resignation. eventually, we opted to ask if people felt “content,” as this seemed closest in spirit to the kind of laps we had in mind. however, we were also able to retain the notion of being “at peace” in a second new item. following discussions at the 2020 summit we were keen to include an item on mindfulness. although mindfulness is a complex, multifaceted construct, it can include being aware and accepting of one’s thoughts and feelings (shapiro et al., 2006) which could be phrased as being “at peace” with them. as such, in considering how to formulate an item pertaining to mindfulness, we realized we could design one that also pertained to laps, namely “[in general, how often do you feel] you are at peace with your thoughts and feelings?” it is beyond our scope here to dwell on the other changes. we can just briefly note that of the remaining two 2020 items, the one on meaning in life was dropped, and the one on relationship to group was modified. the meaning item was dropped because, on reflection, we felt it did not really fit within the gwi remit of focusing on wellbeing perspectives emphasized in non-western cultures – and hence missing from standard western-centric wellbeing research – since meaning in life is a staple of contemporary scholarship and indeed western discourse more generally (steger et al., 2008). with the relationship to group, we felt this did have cross-cultural relevance and value, given the apparent western tendency towards individualism discussed above. intriguingly though, an analysis of this item – in conjunction with the purpose item – indicated that the west may be less individualistic in certain ways than is often assumed (lomas et al., 2022a). in the revised module, to fit the new format, this item was changed from “do you think people should focus more on taking care of themselves or on taking care of others?” to “[in general, how often do you feel] you have a good relationship with your loved ones? then, besides this, four new items were added, namely on vitality, connection to nature, religion/spirituality, and resilience. these were all likewise deemed to have, (a) notable cross-cultural dynamics (e.g., emphasized more in http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 some cultures than others), (b) been relatively overlooked in cross-cultural research, and (c) not featured in the gwp. these points particularly apply to vitality and connection to nature; as per b/h and laps, these phenomena and concepts have arguably been given less attention in western cultures compared to others, so are relatively absent from wellbeing scholarship. one could perhaps argue that (a) and (b) apply less to religion/spirituality and resilience, though (c) is indeed the case, and so the gwi – and its network of scholars – were keen to explore their inclusion. 6. 2022 wave by the time it came to revise the module for the 2022 gwp, the gwi team had decided the module should focus entirely on b/h and the associated phenomena of laps (though the three workplace items would also continue as before, being the prerogative of the gwi funders). b/h and laps had always been a prominent aspect of the module, collectively constituting four of nine items in 2020 and four of 12 in 2021. however, in the intervening year between finalizing the 2021 and 2022 modules (in november 2020 and 2021 respectively), the team became convinced the module ought to center wholly on b/h and laps. before considering why these topics specifically were chosen, there were also good general reasons to make the module more focused per se. recall that the original scope for the module was to include perspectives on wellbeing associated with nonwestern cultures. obviously, this is a huge remit, covering a vast range of potential topics. across 2020 and 2021, besides b/h and laps 11 other topics had been covered. thus, one option for 2022 would be to retain the four items on b/h and laps, and to pick five new topics deemed worth including. however, in raising this possibility, the module began to seem too scattergun and disparate, lacking a common core or identity. there is certainly value in trialing new stand-alone items in the gwp on a yearly basis. however, this comes at the expense of other methodological desiderata, including having, (a) a coherent set of items that might function as a psychometric scale, and (b) a stable set of items in place over several years to allow for longitudinal analyses. motivated by these concerns, the gwi team decided to orient the module around b/h and laps. this choice of focus was easy, for numerous reasons. first, these topics had been ranked number one and two in importance at the initial 2019 summit. second, they were already the most populous topics in the module, collectively comprising four items in both 2020 and 2021. third, the team – and other scholars and stakeholders – had become increasingly appreciative of their importance. indeed, from the outset their value had been recognized, guided for example by delle fave et al.'s (2016) study on lay perceptions of happiness, in which the most prominent definition was “inner harmony,” featuring themes of inner peace, contentment, and balance. this impression was only reinforced as the team analyzed and shared the data from 2020 and 2021. a pivotal point was being invited to write a chapter on these topics – focusing on the 2021 data – in the 2022 world happiness report, published in march 2022. in preparing this chapter, our sense of the importance of these topics was further enhanced through the feedback from the report editors, as well as the fact that the chapter was being included at all. similar impressions were gained in other fora, such as when discussing the gwi at public events. together, these experiences reinforced our initial guiding sense that b/h and laps were indeed, (a) of considerable relevance to wellbeing, and (b) generally overlooked and underappreciated by the field. as such, we felt it would be a real service if we could harness the gwp platform to construct a module completely focused on these topics. to that end, the 2022 module was constructed to entirely feature nine items relating to b/h and laps (while also retaining the three workplace items), as shown in table 3 below. as per 2021, it was not possible to subject these items to cognitive or pre-test interviews. however, they were all developed through extensive internal http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 discussions, informed by thorough checking processes with gallup’s translators and regional experts (and other experts in the gwi community). table 3. the 2022 gwi module. topic question response format 1 laps did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday? … calmness? yes no (don’t know) (refused) in general, how often … 2 b/h … are the various aspects of your life in balance? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 3 b/h … do you feel that the amount of things happening in your life is just right not too much or too little? do you feel that way always, often, rarely, or never? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 4 b/h … are you in harmony with those around you? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 5 b/h … are your thoughts and feelings in harmony? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 6 laps … do you feel stable and secure in your life? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 7 laps … are you content? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 8 laps … is your mind at ease? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) 9 laps … can you find inner peace during difficult times? always often rarely never (don’t know) (refused) (if respondent is employed by an employer or is self-employed, continue; otherwise, skip to end) 10 work (enjoyment) do you enjoy the work you do in your job every day, or not? (interviewer: if the respondent says they don't work every day, ask them to think about the days when they work.) yes no (don’t know) (refused) 11 work (relationship to group) do you think the work you do in your job significantly improves the lives of other people outside of your own household, or not? yes no (don’t know) (refused) 12 work (mastery/ resilience) do you, personally, have many choices in regard to the type of work you can do in your life? yes no (don’t know) (refused) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 once again, there are both continuities and discontinuities with the 2021 iteration. let’s begin by noting that the first item on experiencing calmness has again been retained unchanged, for the reasons explained above. we can then observe that for the remainder of the items, the response format from 2021 has also been retained. however, the stem was subtly amended. in 2021, the common prompt was “in general, how often do you feel …”, but in 2022 this became simply “in general, how often…” essentially, it was recognized that the 2021 version anchored the items unnecessarily around feelings specifically, while also creating some double ambiguity in the item. consider the 2021 b/h item: “[in general, how often do you feel] the various aspects of your life are in balance?” it is potentially unclear whether this is asking if the various aspects actually are in balance, or whether the person feels these aspects are in balance, which is not the same thing (e.g., a person could intellectually acknowledge that they do have balance in their life and yet not emotionally feel that sense of balance). as such, it was realized we could simply ask “[in general, how often] are the various aspects of your life in balance?” this would retain the sense of personal judgment/appraisal in the 2021 item, but get to this more directly. we therefore implemented this more direct format for all the items (though in two cases it was deemed appropriate to still include the phrase “do you feel”). of these other eight items, one (no. 7) is a modified version of the 2021 item on contentment, now rephrased to be more direct, switching from “[in general, how often do you feel] content?” to “[in general, how often] are you content?” the other seven items were new formulations, although they do share overlaps and affinities with previous items relating to b/h and laps. with respect to b/h, having already developed an item on balance in previous waves of the gwp – and retained in modified form in 2022 – it was deemed important to also ask about harmony specifically. after all, although closely related to balance, it has distinct nuances and meanings, as discussed above. as also noted, it can apply to different aspects of life. thus, we decided to have two harmony items: one pertaining to the individual themselves, focusing on mental dynamics (“[in general, how often] are your thoughts and feelings in harmony?”); and one pertaining to their social context, focusing on interpersonal dynamics (“[in general, how often] are you in harmony with those around you?”). then, still on the topic of b/h, we sought to also add a second item pertaining to balance. in that respect, rather than specifically asking about balance per se, we were keen to develop an item relating to the notion, articulated above, that balance often involves finding the optimal point between two extremes or categories, as captured in the idea of something being “just right.” after much deliberation, we landed on the idea of asking how busy or full a person’s life is, articulated as: “[in general, how often] do you feel that the amount of things happening in your life is just right – not too much or too little? do you feel that way always, often, rarely, or never?” the item allows for the fact that people will have their own preferences for how busy/full they would like their life to be. it simply recognizes that, whatever a person’s ideal, it is possible – relative to that standard – for their life to be either too empty and slow or too crowded and fast-paced. thus, the item taps into how often one feels they get the balance between these alternatives “just right.” then, in addition to these four items on b/h, there were five items relating to laps. we have already noted the ones on experiencing calmness and contentment above. besides these, we sought to once again develop an item pertaining to a sense of peacefulness. although we did have items referring to peace in 2020 and 2021, it was now felt that these did not quite hit the mark. in retrospect, we realized that in using the phrase “at peace” it was difficult to escape the connotation of acceptance or resignation. eventually, after much debate, we arrived at: “[in general, how often] can you find inner peace during difficult times?” to begin with, “inner peace” captured the desired notion of a low arousal positive state. the verb construction “can you find” http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 then added an interesting element of intentionality, activity, and skill, in that rather than simply happening to experience such peace the person had some agency in bringing it about. finally, asking whether people found such peace “during difficult times” also meant the item retained something of the spirit of topics the gwi was interested in and previously created items for, such as resilience and mindfulness. a somewhat different type or dimension of laps was then captured by item no. 8: “[in general, how often] is your mind at ease?” finally, we wanted an item to index the idea that laps are not simply “inner” psychological states, but are shaped by people’s context, as reflected in the way that concepts like peace and calm can refer both to states of mind and to people’s environment. in that respect, we eventually arrived at item no. 6: “[in general, how often] do you feel stable and secure in your life?” 7. conclusion initiatives such as the gwp have already provided a great service in generating global assessments of wellbeing. however, given the western-centric nature of the concepts and metrics used in such assessments, scholars are increasingly appreciative of the need for a more comprehensive global understanding of wellbeing. the gwi collaboration outlined above is intended to help make progress towards that goal, centred around the creation of a new gwp module on wellbeing incorporating non-western perspectives (which have hitherto been relatively overlooked by the field). this paper traced the evolution of this module to date, from its initial incarnation in the 2020 poll (featuring items on numerous aspects of wellbeing) to a finalized iteration in the 2022 gwp (which focuses specifically on b/h together with laps). with the 2022 version now intended to stay consistent longitudinally, this paper establishes a valuable baseline for an endeavour which will hopefully contribute to a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of wellbeing, and provide a foundation for further similar initiatives in future. acknowledgements the gwi team would like to thank the following people for their invaluable contributions to the development of the gwi module: lara aknin, noof mohammed al jenibi, tal ben-shahar, gaël brulé, dafne cataluña, dominique chen, cecilia cheng, andrew clark, maria cotofan, richard cowden, carrie exton, antonella delle fave, jan-emmanuel de neve, karen guggenheim, john helliwell, hidehumi hitokoto, felicia huppert, byron johnson, mohsen joshanloo, takafumi kawakami, takuya kitagawa, oscar kjell, kostadin kushlev, louise lambert, matthew lee, richard layard, claude-helene mayer, hiroaki miyata, ryan niemiec, paola ochoa, ekatarina oparina, sharon paculor, holli-anne passmore, persol, tayyab rashid, jeffrey sachs, koichiro shiba, mike steger, louise sundararajan, hiroshi kan suzuki, william tov, yukiko uchida, tyler vanderweele, shun wang, meg warren, margot van de weijer, paul wong¸ kuang hui yeh, asghar zaidi, and john zelenski. authors tim lomas harvard university tlomas@hsph.harvard.edu yoshiki ishikawa wellbeing for planet earth pablo diego-rosell gallup http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mailto:tlomas@hsph.harvard.edu balance and harmony in the gallup world poll lomas et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 joe daly gallup cynthia english gallup jim harter gallup dr priscilla standridge gallup benedicte clouet gallup ed diener university of illinois alden y. lai new york university conflict of interest several authors work for gallup. timeline received 19 october 2022 revised version received 28 october 2022 accepted 28 october 2022 published 1 november 2022 references arnett, j. 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(2015). happiness: an interactionist perspective. international journal of wellbeing, 5(1), 1-18. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i1.1 aaron ahuvia university of michigan aaronahuvia@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article happiness: an interactionist perspective aaron ahuvia · neil thin · dan m. haybron · robert biswas-diener · mathieu ricard · jean timsit abstract: few would deny that happiness arises from a complex interaction of internal and external factors, like optimism on the one hand and money on the other. yet research, as well as practical strategies for promoting happiness, tends to focus narrowly on one side or the other. a typical study, for instance, might examine the correlation between happiness and an internal variable like optimism, or an external variable like income. and practical strategies commonly divide into “change the world” versus “change your mind” approaches: promote health and wealth, for example, or cultivate gratitude for what you already have. this paper explores how our understanding of happiness is enhanced by “interactionist” approaches that emphasize the complex webs of interactions and feedbacks that give rise to happiness and unhappiness. while implicitly interactionist themes have increasingly characterized research on happiness, we anticipate that an explicit recognition of the interactionist perspective will foster greater attention to the complexities of happiness, particularly in the domain of human sociality, which involves especially rich and potent webs of interaction. a further upshot, we believe, is a greater awareness of our co-responsibility for one another’s happiness. keywords: interactionism, internalism, externalism, happiness, policy, cognition, income, intervention 1. introduction when a person is experiencing a normal life difficulty such as a lack of enthusiasm for their job they might ask themselves questions like, “should i change careers?” or “should i try to rekindle my former enthusiasm for this work?” when an individual considers her aspirations or faces hardship it is common to consider whether it is preferable to invest in changing her circumstances or to invest in changing the way she feels about those circumstances. these strategies illustrate the contrast between two commonly advocated paths toward the good life: externalism (i.e. an emphasis on altering one’s social or material circumstances) and internalism (i.e. an emphasis on altering one’s beliefs, values, emotional responses, and similar psychological states).1 in this article we explicitly recognize the value of both internalist and externalist approaches, yet we advocate a more interactionist approach that recognizes the interactions and interdependencies between internal and external variables and seeks the right combination of mind and world. 1 one of the authors has used these terms for a very different distinction regarding philosophical theories of wellbeing (haybron, 2008), but we trust there is little risk of confusion. as well, we note that ‘happiness’ is used here as a psychological term, but we remain neutral among the different accounts of happiness in this sense (life satisfaction, hedonism, emotional state, etc.). mailto:aaronahuvia@gmail.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 understanding the interdependent relationships between external and internal influences on happiness is of clear relevance to theorists. it is also of crucial importance to government policy makers, clinical psychologists, coaches, and anyone else who aims to increase his or her own happiness or the happiness of others. in a companion piece to this paper (authors, in preparation), we explore the practical implications of an interactionist approach to happiness intervention. here, we provide an interdisciplinary overview of the topic that integrates perspectives from anthropology and social planning, consumer research, neuroscience and religious studies, art and humanities, philosophy and psychology. we illustrate how an interactionist approach can serve as a lens that allows us to see how happiness emerges from, and is embedded in, a rich network of interactions, including internal and external factors. interactionism encompasses two related views of what we might call felicitation—the causation and promotion of happiness (helliwell, weijers, powdthavee, & jarden, 2011): explanatory interactionism attempts to explain the causal processes by which happiness arises, while strategic interactionism attempts to identify practical strategies for promoting happiness. we are concerned with both variants of the approach in this paper. in this paper we provide a brief overview of internalist and externalist approaches to happiness. our intention is not to treat these as straw men but to outline advantages and limitations associated with each. it is in regard to their respective limitations that we then offer a more in-depth discussion of interactionism. we do not present interactionism as an entirely novel or unique approach to felicitation; interactionist themes are familiar from other fields, as in the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate, and have long appeared in discussions of happiness (e.g., bishop, 2012; fredrickson & joiner, 2002). our aim, rather, is to encourage readers to avoid taking partisan positions with regard to happiness processes. we believe that interactionism is a more organic and naturalistic concept by which to describe happiness than are either internalism or externalism alone. it is our hope that an interactionist perspective can help to integrate disparate research programs and approaches to felicitation, fostering a greater understanding and appreciation of the complexities of happiness, and that, as a result, it will be useful to investigators, policy makers and interventionists. 2. unpacking internalism: its benefits and limitations internalism is the belief that happiness is produced largely by mental perception. champions of internalism recognize that our experience of the world is constructed subjectively. this view is often acknowledged in psychological research on happiness. for example, brannan and colleagues (2013) conducted a study that drew a distinction between social support and perceived social support. similarly, biswas-diener and diener (2001) make a distinction between objective income and income satisfaction. in light of subjective interpretation, internalists often argue that by intentionally changing our evaluations and perceptions we can effect real psychological change. this is particularly true of happiness. proponents of internalism typically assert that happiness-enhancing mental strategies can be developed through practice. internalism’s appeal can be seen in the idea that “changing one’s mind” requires very few resources. for that reason, it is a happiness strategy that is available to people of all backgrounds. further, internalism is appealing because it appears to be effective. it has been shown that attention (brefczynski-lewis, lutz, schaefer, levinson, & davidson, 2007), compassion and emotional regulation (lutz, mcfarlin, perlman, salomons, & davidson, 2008) can be trained through meditation. fredrickson, cohn, coffey, pek, and finkel (2008) have shown that loving-kindness meditation can enhance positive emotions and build consequential happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 personal resources that contribute to wellbeing. weng and others have shown that three weeks of compassion meditation, 30 minutes daily, promotes pro-social behavior and improves social relationships. the benefits of internalism are not limited to meditation techniques or eastern philosophies. the entire enterprise of clinical psychology is founded, to some extent, on the belief that tolerating and regulating emotional and other internal experiences is possible by engaging in internal processes. cognitive therapies, for instance, work by having people reflect upon their own interpretations of events and reframe them in more functional terms. despite its broad appeal there are legitimate criticisms of internalism. some internalists over-emphasize the autonomy of the individual vis-à-vis social and ecological influences. they claim that individuals can develop the capacity to be less affected by adversities and deficits in their social and ecological environments but, as yet, we know relatively little about the limits of this mental control. many self-help books claim to offer swift and easy ways to gain mastery over one’s mind and to become independent from outer circumstances. most of those claims turn to be short-lived and end up in disenchantment with the recommended methods (bergsma, 2007; 2010). studies have shown that internalist strategies can be effective but require fortitude and patience to master them (lazar et al., 2005). therefore, more information is needed to better understand differences in effectiveness between various internalist approaches as well as individual attributes that might be implicated in internalist success. there is also an ethical question mark over internalism. because of the heavy emphasis on developing more resilient internal capacities, it might be tempting to assume that unhappiness is the fault of the individual. people who are miserable, by this way of thinking, simply have not exerted the effort or made the choice to perceive their life in a more positive way. as well, it remains unclear where, exactly, lies the line between advocating changes in adverse circumstances and simply changing one’s mind. some critics argue that internalist approaches foster complacency. to counter such a charge, proponents of internalism argue that gaining the inner capacity to face both favorable and unfavorable circumstances is in no way tantamount to helpless resignation or to condoning injustice. mastery over one’s mind, according to these advocates, helps people avoid becoming a “slave twice”: a slave of others and a slave of one’s own mind. while people should endeavor tirelessly toward overcoming iniquity, oppression and neglect, and towards achieving outer freedom for oneself and others, it is also vital to gain inner freedom from afflictive mental states. importantly, most schools of internalism, including both buddhism and cognitive therapies, reject the notion that improving outer conditions should be neglected, and encourage one to engage with determination in altruistic activities that can alleviate the suffering of the self and of others. internalists point out, however, that no matter what outer conditions might be—good or bad—there are always ways to work with one’s mind in order to experience them in a more optimal way. they also recognize that since one’s control of outer conditions is often limited, and even one’s own inner conditions require considerable training to master, cultivating mental skills is a major asset in achieving a sustained wellbeing (ekman, davidson, ricard & wallace, 2005). 3. unpacking externalism: its benefits and limitations externalist approaches are based on the proposition that there is a relatively straightforward transmission of external conditions and events to internal happiness. we understand ‘external conditions’ broadly, to include such non-mental factors as other people, life events, and material objects. externalism has hitherto operated in most cultures as the default mode for governments, businesses, and many social organizations that see their main role as that of happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 raising ‘living standards’, i.e. material and social conditions. hence we might call this sort of approach default externalism. a good example can be found in mainstream economics, which identifies wellbeing with the satisfaction of one’s preferences. since individuals are also assumed to be fully informed and rational, and their preferences fully revealed by their choices, the only way to promote wellbeing in this approach is through external conditions (glaeser, 2011; hausman & mcpherson, 2006). hence, proponents of externalism have long favored attention to indicators of external living conditions like gdp and individual income. for perfectly understandable reasons people have often tried to improve their own lives by rearranging living conditions rather than through mental self-discipline. until recently, most humans suffered from unmet basic needs and their poor health and vulnerability to violence and premature death were the main threats to their happiness. where food, safe living conditions, and other basic material conditions are in short supply it obviously makes sense to give them priority. it is reasonable to assume that reductions in illbeing will result from economic growth and from enhanced provision of medical services, infrastructure, schooling, and the rule of law. externalism has therefore made very good sense throughout most of human evolution. in any case many external conditions are valuable to us in their own right. we don't need to justify health, peace, and environmental beauty by checking that they make us happy. still, even among the poor and distressed, pure externalism can be less effective than interactionist strategies that explore interactions between material provisioning, social transformation, and psychological resources. even severely disadvantaged people such as the homeless have a variety of psychological strengths that can greatly enhance their prospects for personal or collective self-improvement (tweed, biswas-diener, & lehman, 2012). provision of enabling environments and resources is only one part of a complex route to the enhancement of less tangible goods such as long-term enjoyment, meaning, and life satisfaction. the flow of benefits from improvements in external living conditions has to work in synergy with people’s psychological resources. community development that enhances collective hope and pride will tend to work more effectively than top-down planning (appadurai, 2002). as with internalism, there are legitimate criticisms of externalist approaches to happiness. first, externalist approaches, by their very nature, can undervalue the very psychological processes that are, themselves, implicated in happiness. for example, externalist strategies often face problems such as hedonic adaptation, social comparison, poor affective forecasting, irrationality, and the costs of choice. hedonic adaptation means that there are often diminishing returns to the removal of discomforts and to the provision of comforts (shane & loewenstein, 1999). social comparison means that if relevant other people improve their access to external goods, our own mental benefits from similar improvements may be diminished (diener, diener, & diener, 1995; hirsch, 1977). failures of affective forecasting mean that we want and strive for things that will either make us unhappy or will contribute less to our happiness than we imagine (dunn & laham, 2006; haybron, 2008; wilson & gilbert, 2005). there are systematic misapprehensions in people’s beliefs about the relations between wanting, liking, and learning (berridge & kringelbach, 2013). cognitive biases induce a variety of predictably irrational and otherwise suboptimal choices that can undermine the pursuit of our goals (haybron 2008; hsee, zhang, yu, & xi, 2003; kahneman, 2011). finally, simply having a large number of options can be costly, for instance leaving us less happy with what we do have (schwartz, 2004). a second criticism of externalist strategies toward happiness relates to the potential environmental downsides of the consumption of resources. many social critics have happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 highlighted ways in which the onward march towards external affluence has often resulted in unintended pathologies (bennett, 2001; freud, 1930/2002; schor, 1998). many kinds of external good are subject not only to diminishing returns, but also to toxic reversals, causing us to become paradoxically unhappy and unhealthy in response to the successful pursuit of external rewards. collectively, certain pathologies of modernity have been loosely labeled ‘affluenza’: the toxicities of excessive materialism, comfort and hygiene (de graaf, wann & naylor, 2001/2005; hamilton & denniss, 2005; james, 2007). another example can be seen in increasingly efficient and diverse food distribution systems that can lead, in turn, to rising rates of obesity and poor nutritional choices. the relentless pursuit of sensory pleasures may end up in addiction. on a larger scale, the present emphasis on pursuing happiness through resourceintensive forms of consumption is plainly unsustainable, risking grave harms to humanity and the rest of life. more efficient means of promoting human wellbeing are clearly needed. internalist strategies alone will not suffice to set the world on a path to sustainable happiness, but they can play a role in helping us to be more efficient in seeking happy lives (ndp steering committee and secretariat, 2013). 4. interactionism: an introduction both internalist and externalist approaches to felicitation have much to offer, and will continue to have an important place in happiness research and promotion. that said, we hope it is noncontroversial to assert that happiness does not arise solely as the product of internal processes just as it cannot be promoted solely through the consumption of external goods. happiness, rather, is a complex, dynamic phenomenon that emerges from the interaction of internal and external factors. we need a more comprehensive and dynamic understanding of the manifold interactions that give rise to happiness. an interactionist approach focuses on the way happiness emerges from the interaction of mind and world. a key element of interactionist strategies is to identify the internal and external factors that are most important for affecting change; with special attention paid to synergies that give rise to self-reinforcing loops, or “felicitation feedbacks.” (see, for instance, the discussion of the similarly named “upward spirals” in fredrickson & joiner, 2002.) while a precise definition of interactionism is open for future debate and exploration, most definitions would likely include the idea that happiness is caused by the interaction of two or more events including internal and external ones. we take the value of an interactionist approach to lie mainly in drawing attention to the fact that interdependencies among variables are complex and dynamic. it might be helpful to list some of the more noteworthy features of interactionist approaches, which may be exhibited to varying degrees, and in some cases not at all. roughly, we might say that an explanatory or practical strategy is interactionist to the extent that it acknowledges, regarding the causation or promotion of happiness: 1) interdependence 2) complexity 3) dynamics 4) feedbacks 5) holism 6) context-sensitivity an interactionist perspective thus discourages simplistic readings of psychological research. for example, researchers tend to focus on averages when describing happiness-related phenomena. such results are undoubtedly valuable but the emphasis on averages can obscure happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 individual variation. for example, some research has resulted in findings regarding levels of happiness following the death of a spouse. even when means and standard deviations are reported they conceal the individual interactions between a person’s unique mental state and the death of her spouse. researchers have attempted to remedy this by analyzing the interaction of variables, controlling study environments, and evaluating potential mediators and moderators. even so, we advocate more case studies and qualitative level analyses as an adjunct to larger quantitative studies. this is especially of concern as the general public increasingly consumes happiness-related science. many lay consumers lack the methodological sophistication to adequately understand research and qualitative information regarding interactionism might be helpful in this regard. another example of risky simplification is the common practice of assigning fixed proportions to the various determinants of happiness. for instance, an oft-cited pie chart attributes 50% of the between-person variation in happiness to genetic factors, 10% to external circumstances, and 40% to intentional effort (lyubomirsky et al., 2005). this sort of schematic may be a useful heuristic for certain purposes but it can also be misleading. for example, observed phenotypes cannot generally be explained via some specific contribution of genes (‘nature’) and environment (‘nurture’), because genes and environment interact, in ways that cannot be easily disentangled. similar concerns apply to estimates of the contribution of other factors, like external circumstances, to happiness. interactionist approaches to felicitation are nothing new. in fact perhaps the most famous secular writer on felicitation, aristotle, was an excellent example of interactionism. aristotle regarded purely externalist approaches, like seeking the good life through wealth and honor, with outright contempt, while he regarded relatively internalist approaches like the stoic view as implausible, saying that a person cannot lead a happy life on the rack. he argued instead that happiness is properly pursued through a lifetime of excellent activity: fully exercising one’s capacities through worthwhile activities. this view has an internal component, virtue, but also recognizes the importance of external goods: you cannot exercise your capacities without some degree of material wealth, health, friends, and so forth. indeed, it is difficult to characterize most activities, like playing a musical instrument, in anything other than interactionist terms. aristotle’s view is inherently dynamic, viewing happiness as inextricably linked with doing. and it is holistic and contextualized: for the most part, you do not follow simple rules, or a prescribed number of formulaic steps. rather, you respond sensitively to the situation as a whole, in all its particularity. the view is holistic, too, in that the primary focus is a whole life: happiness, for aristotle, is a matter of an entire life lived well. 5. examples of interactionism in this section we illustrate interactionist themes through examples spanning several domains generally considered to be important for happiness: values (religion), work (employment), material conditions (money), and relationships (caregiving). the examples are not meant to be particularly striking; they are merely illustrative, indicating that interactionism is not a radical new approach. more intricate examples, less apt for brief illustrations, will doubtless grow more prominent as our understanding of felicitation improves. 5.1 religion in a meta-analysis of research linking religion to happiness, hackney and sanders (2003) found consistent modest positive correlations between religion and life satisfaction. this finding held across both behavioral aspects of religion (e.g. church attendance) and psychological aspects happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 (e.g. personal devotion). interestingly, the psychological benefits of religiosity appear to be affected by an interaction of both internal and external factors. in a series of studies employing nearly half a million respondents conducted by diener, tay and myers (2011) the researchers found that the happiness associated with religiosity is, in part, a function of the match between the individual and the larger culture in which they live. specifically, religious individuals living in highly religious nations appear to enjoy substantially more positive emotions than their non-religious counterparts if they are living in a country with difficult life circumstances. in addition, the researchers found that people appear to be happier if they live in a nation in which aggregate societal religiosity matches their own. this is consistent with other research that suggests that person-culture match is important to happiness (fulmer et al., 2010). in this case the researchers discovered that correlations between personality traits such as extroversion and happiness variables were amplified if a given trait was reflected in aggregate societal personality norms for that trait. where intervention is concerned this indicates it is worth exploring the possibility that individuals can increase their happiness by finding a fit between their internal states and preferences and social interactions that validate these. for example, it may be more important than people realize to live in environments where the prevailing culture matches their own values. the example is interactionist in that it illustrates how the impact of external variables, like prevailing social mores, mediates the happiness impact of internal variables like religious belief. 5.2 employment labor has commonly been understood as an involuntary hardship that is tolerated as a route to the provisioning of external goods. but meaningful employment is increasingly understood as a key source of happiness (thin, 2012). happiness research on unemployment has confirmed the stark facts about this pathology: the effects of unemployment are, in general, devastating and the costs go well beyond the effects of lost income to include anger, loss of self-esteem, damage to social relations, and loss of a meaningful life narrative (mckee-ryan, song, wanberg, & kinicki, 2005). externalist common sense demands that we do everything we can to minimize involuntary unemployment, yet there are few instances of nations succeeding at this over long periods. so we also need strategies for coping more effectively with this adversity. these need to be supported by research that goes beyond mere confirmation of the generally adverse effects, to explore the many interacting mental, social, and environmental factors that influence responses to unemployment as well as those related to employment. hopes for the development of better coping strategies are offered by research showing highly varied responses to unemployment even among people of very similar socio-economic backgrounds, ranging from psychosocial devastation to surprising forms of life enhancement depending on various psychological, social, and ecological factors (havitz, morden, & samdahl, 2004; tay & kuykendall 2013, pp. 169-171). the way unemployed people think about this situation has crucial influence on its effects: survey research has shown that the adverse effects of unemployment among both the unemployed and the employed vary significantly according to the degree of importance individuals attach to the event (dolan & powdthavee 2012; tay & kuykendall, 2013). for many unemployed people it is the psychosocial rather than financial effects that really bite, and it is here that we have considerable leeway for positive psychosocial interventions. unemployed people wishing to optimize their responses to this situation have to seek optimal combinations in their efforts to redress this specific external fact (by finding another job); changing their outlook on the situation (by finding less depressing things to think about, or by happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 revising priorities, say through voluntary simplification and slowdown); changing their activities (e.g. adopting new engaging and rewarding leisure activities or voluntary work); changing their social relationships (finding new social engagements to replace the loss of workplace friends); and changing their material circumstances by changing their behavior (e.g. altering consumption patterns to get by comfortably with less money) (havitz, morden, & samdahl, 2004; knabe, rätzel, schöb, & weimann, 2010). understood through an externalist lens, jobs and unemployment are things that happen to us, causal factors largely beyond our control that influence our wellbeing. an interactionist approach, by contrast, recognizes that jobs and unemployment are not only external life circumstances but are also highly dynamic processes that achieve their influence via identities, roles, activities, relationships, experiences, and reinterpretations of experiences over time. jobs and joblessness involve both mental and environmental processes; action as well as reflection; personal situations and relationships. individuals can passively accept their jobs or their joblessness, or they can modify either situation to something more conducive to happiness. active engagement either with a job or with joblessness modifies it into something very different than it first appeared, and this in turn influences our mental states, our capabilities, and our self-esteem or sense of purpose. 5.3 money because money can provide a wide variety of benefits including pleasurable experiences, social status, education, medical care, and if needed, even highly skilled lawyers, a person’s income can be used as a summary measure for many desirable external conditions. for people living in poverty, the data tell a rather straightforward externalist story in which increased income allows people to meet their basic needs, and thus dependably leads to increased happiness (ahuvia, 2012). studies of non-poor populations, however, tell a much more interactionist story. higher levels of income generally lead to higher levels of satisfaction with one’s income, which in turn leads to higher overall life satisfaction. but while the connection between income satisfaction and overall life satisfaction is fairly strong (correlations around .40–.50; ahuvia & friedman 1998), one’s objective income has a weak connection to one’s subjective level of income satisfaction (correlations around .10-.30, diener & oishi, 2000; fuentes & rojas, 2001). this is because when people place a high value on money and the things it can buy, they also tend to be dissatisfied with their income even if it is quite high (burchardt, 2005; kasser, 2002; richins & rudmin, 1994; ryan & dziurawiec, 2001; sirgy, lee, larsen, & wright, 1998). thus being financially satisfied results from an interaction between one’s external circumstances and one’s psychological disposition towards materialism. this interaction effect also works the other way round (although it is not logically necessary that it should). materialism and other forms of high-income aspirations are associated with unhappiness (kasser 2002; sirgy, 1998; stutzer & frey 2004). but this relationship is moderated by income, such that the less income one has the greater the negative impact of materialism on happiness (barbera & gürhan-canli, 1997; nickerson, schwarz, & diener, 2007). a broader moral is that the effect of money on happiness depends on a wide range of factors: values and priorities (do people have materialistic priorities?), cultural norms (is conspicuous consumption discouraged?), social arrangements (do people need cars to get around?), and so forth. as well, material attainments can themselves affect people’s outlooks, for instance reducing the ability of individuals to savor everyday experiences (quoidbach, dunn, petrides, & mikolajczak, 2010), or impeding prosocial behavior, perhaps to their own happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 (and certainly others’) detriment (piff, stancato, côté, mendoza-denton, & keltner, 2012). in short, the money-happiness connection is extremely complex, calling for an interactionist approach to explanation and practice. 5.4 caregiving caregiving aims at improving the physical and mental situation of others in suffering. it turns out that the caregiver’s attitude and state of mind greatly influence both her own capacities to take care of others, the quality of her care and the satisfaction of the person she is caring for. empathic resonance with someone else’s feelings occurs with various positive mental states, such as joy, or negative ones such as suffering. empathically resonating with the pain of others can lead to very different situations: experiencing empathic distress (batson, 1991; hoffman, 1981), distancing oneself emotionally from those that one is taking care of (kash et al., 2000), or caring for them with loving-kindness without being overwhelmed by distress. dealing repeatedly with the pain of others often leads to emotional exhaustion. one study showed that, in the united states, 60% of caregivers suffer from burnout at one point in their career, and a third is affected to the point of having to pause their activities (felton, 1998). this kind of burnout has also been called “compassion fatigue.” the overall level of nurses’ burnout in hospital units also affects patients’ satisfaction and their perception of the quality of care (leiter, harvie, & frizzell, 1998; vahey, aiken, sloane, clarke, & vargas, 2004). patients who stayed on units where nursing staff felt more exhausted or more frequently expressed the intention to quit because of burnout were less satisfied with the various components of their care. conversely, no significant correlations were found between nurse professional efficacy and any of the patient satisfaction components measured. one does see here two kinds of interactions that can lead to either an upward or to a downward spiral for all concerned: if a caregiver cultivates loving-kindness through meditation, she will be protected against burnout. she will consequently be able to provide better care to her patients and those patients will acknowledge the benefits of such care. caregivers will thus be encouraged to continue caring for others as they observe the two-fold benefit, for others and for themselves, of their activities. in contrast, when caregivers suffer from empathic distress, they cannot take good care of the patients and may end up quitting their job, while their patients experience a significant degradation in the provision of care. caregiving illustrates a particularly central area of concern for interactionism, human relationships, which involve especially dense webs of causal interactions and feedbacks. a marriage can easily get into a rut, for instance, where mutually reinforcing negative interactions—a raised eyebrow begets a contemptuous tone of voice, and so on—can leave the individuals feeling trapped in a vicious equilibrium. the same sort of dynamic can arise between troubled children and school officials, where misconduct and punishment can be mutually reinforcing. a key area of interest for promoting happiness is understanding better how to break relationships out of vicious cycles, particularly by learning how to exploit felicitation feedbacks that, ideally, result in upward spirals to much more rewarding relationships. 5.5 discussion these examples are meant to give some sense of the varieties and promise of interactionist approaches to felicitation, both in research and in practice. given that the mechanisms involved in these cases are perfectly ordinary and widely implicated in human psychology we hope it is clear that many more such examples exist. indeed, our intensely social nature should make it happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 fairly clear that interactionist felicitation (the fostering of happiness in the self or in others) can occur in many settings. now that we have some examples of interactionist felicitation in hand, it will be helpful to note three main types of interaction: psychosomatic, ecological, and psychosocial. 6.types of interactions 6.1 mind-body (‘psychosomatic’) interactions everyday activities ranging from participation in sport to sexual acts point to the importance of the body as an important tool in the happiness process. we hear a lot about psychosomatic illness but there is considerably less research and public awareness concerning the psychosomatic enhancement of psychological wellbeing. there is a growing body of research articulating the relationship between happiness and health (cohen & pressman, 2006; diener & chan 2011). experiments show that we can deliberately engineer synergetic reactions between an inner desire to feel joyful and an outward pretense at smiling which gradually becomes a genuinely joyful smile as it causes mental changes. strack, martin and lepper (1988), for example, conducted an experiment in which participants who held a pen in their teeth (forcing a fake smile) found cartoons funnier than those who held a pen between their lips (forcing a frown). deliberate facial feedback loops modulate ongoing emotions and initiate desired emotions (mcintosh, 1996). we also know that meditators learn to modulate their experience of physical pain. when experienced meditators generate a mental state of “open presence” and are then subjected to intense pain they show almost no anticipatory distress at the approach of pain, increase their tolerance of it, and recover swiftly following the infliction of pain (lutz, et al., 2013; perlman, et al., 2010). 6.2 mind-physical environment (ecological) there is a growing body of research in environmental psychology demonstrating the importance of observing the natural environment. ‘attention restoration theory’ has been developed and repeatedly used in studies exploring the psychological and health benefits of appealing views of nature (bowler, buyung-ali, knight, & pullin, 2010; kaplan, 1995; lambin & fagan, 2012). even apparently insignificant modification of surroundings can have measurable effects: in taiwan experimenters put six plants at the back of a classroom out of the children’s normal line of vision and found significant improvements in various psychological and social factors such as sense of comfort and friendliness compared to the control group, plus significantly fewer hours of sick leave and recorded instances of misbehavior (han, 2009). importantly, these impacts are not simply “outside-in” influences on happiness (you see a tree and it makes you happy). rather, natural environments trigger a wide range of psychological impacts that, among other things, alter our cognitive and affective dispositions— effectively changing our programming, at least temporarily (haybron, 2011; 2014). researchers have noted a wide range of attitudinal changes, such as a decline in materialistic values and increase in concern for others, in people exposed to natural environments. in one study of people living in public housing, those assigned to “gray” apartments with no view of vegetation fared worse on a wide array of outcomes than those living in “green” apartments. for instance, gray apartment dwellers experienced more domestic violence, felt less connectedness with neighbors and had worse coping skills and self-discipline (e.g., kuo & sullivan, 2001). the quality of our physical environment not only affects our happiness; it also happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 affects the way we respond to things, including our ability to gain happiness from other things in our lives. there is more work to be done exploring the complexities of causal interactions between the environments that people engage with, their states of mind and motivations, and the relevance of social interactions to the causal patterns. for example, urban planners can learn a great deal about the often puzzling diversity in psychological responses to the built environment by observing collective interactions affecting perception of some spaces but not others as convivial and safe. planners are increasingly aware that place-making is not a simple matter of providing specific environmental goods and expecting them to deliver psychosocial wellbeing: interpretation of responses requires complex qualitative observation and analysis of interactions between cultural history, social structures, and behaviors over time (shaftoe, 2008). 6.3 mind-culture/society among the most subtle and powerful interactions are those that occur between the individual and society. cultural contexts and scripts influence our emotional experiences and selfevaluations including those representing the well-lived life, and the disapproval of specific kinds of hardwired desires and gratifications. interestingly, personal choice and behavior have a reciprocal influence such that individuals, in turn, also impact the change of societal norms over time. cultural influences are sometimes overlooked as internal-external interactions because they are often experienced as if they were happening only within the mind. people frequently view their own values and choices as completely internal phenomena without adequate appreciation of the powerful influences of external cultural processes. for example, oishi and diener (2003) found that people from different cultures remembered events—especially those related to personal performance—along cultural lines and that these memories, in turn, affected their subsequent choices. specifically, people from asian cultures mis-remembered their actual performance on a problem-solving task as being lower than it actually was while their european-american counterparts inflated performance in their memories. the culturally determined memories, and not actual performance, influenced their desire to engage in a similar activity when given a choice. in recent decades, our resources for understanding both cultural and ecological interactions have been greatly augmented by research on situational influence. through many studies we have learned how extraordinarily sensitive human beings are to subtle influences from the social and physical environment. for example, people’s willingness to help someone may be strongly influenced by whether they just found a dime, whether a lawnmower is running nearby, or whether they are alone or in a crowd (for a review, see ross & nisbett, 1991). more disturbing are experiments finding it remarkably easy to get participants to administer painful and possibly fatal shocks to a stranger (milgram, 1963), or to descend rapidly into sadistic torment having simply been asked to pretend to be prison guards (zimbardo, haney, banks, & jaffe 1973). more recently, much attention has been garnered by research on “nudges,” where small environmental changes induce important changes in behavior—for instance, saving for retirement because the default option on the paperwork was changed (thaler & sunstein, 2008). studies of social contagion suggest that many behaviors and outcomes, including obesity, smoking, happiness, unhappiness, and divorce, ripple through social networks like a virus (christakis & fowler, 2012). other research, on biculturals, migrants, and sojourners, finds profound effects on personality variables as individuals move from one cultural context to another (heine & lehman, 2004; lafromboise, coleman, & gerton, 1993). situational happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 influences of these sorts tend to be unconscious and automatic, leaving us largely unaware of their operation. to a surprising extent, our behavior and states of mind are shaped by the social and physical environment (haybron, 2014). the fact that we are so little aware of such influences may be a major reason interactionist approaches to felicitation have not been more prominent: we may underestimate how thoroughly interdependent our minds and actions are with those around us, and even our physical surrounds. more than we might have realized, our pursuit of happiness depends very much on those around us, and theirs on ours. 7. co-responsibility one of the most important results of adopting an interactionist view of happiness is the ability to better address the question of “whose responsibility is happiness?” this question might seem radical in that many people would default to a seemingly obvious answer that it is the individual who is responsible for her own happiness. indeed, more extreme internalist positions would hold that the individual has final authority over subjective happiness. externalists, by contrast, might be more willing to concede the role of outside actors in providing events and opportunities that influence happiness. even here, however, we believe that externalists would largely believe that the individual is responsible for her own happiness, even if that only means that she is responsible for acquiring and consuming those resources which will likely make her happy. we suggest that it is neither realistic nor ethical to try to persuade individuals that they are solely responsible for their own happiness; nor should any individual, in whatever social or professional capacity, feel that they can absolve themselves of their responsibility for other people’s happiness. co-responsibility—the idea that happiness emerges as a collective and cooperative endeavor that requires both favorable life conditions and individual effort—is an important argument justifying the use of an interactionist lens in policy and practice at all levels from families to business to governments. at first glance, the idea of co-responsibility may seem puzzling, since one core idea of happiness, especially in the west, is the idea of taking a ‘first person’ perspective on motivations and self-evaluations such that individuals are the ultimate experiencers of their own internal states. in fact, the entire field of psychology is primarily concerned with internal states and happiness is no exception (kashdan, biswas-diener & king, 2008). this is why psychologists and self-help professions have been developing visions and strategies for selfimprovement that place a core emphasis on autonomous efforts to transform the mind. it is also, perhaps, for this reason that government policymakers have been slow to warm to the notion that happiness-enhancing programs are appropriate to the workplace or in public programs. on deeper inspection, happiness is often interactively constructed via social and ecological engagements. we all influence other people’s happiness: directly and explicitly by helping one another to develop and sustainably pursue good life goals; through teaching and acting as role models, and less directly through more general emotional contagion, empathic resonance and imitation, and through our influences on shared environments (helliwell et al., 2011). the moral basis for claims about co-responsibility, we note, is not particularly tendentious: probably most moral philosophers recognize some imperative of co-responsibility for happiness. utilitarians, for instance, enjoin us to count a stranger’s happiness as no less important than our own, while kantians maintain that we have duties of beneficence: we must to some extent promote the happiness of others, as befits the recognition of their equal worth as persons. an interactionist lens puts a less familiar spin on such imperatives, emphasizing the happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 interdependence of happiness among persons. as the caregiving example illustrates, caring for others is not an entirely distinct project from self-care. 8. conclusion we have tried in this paper to provide a basic framework for addressing the fundamental process of happiness by focusing on a single foundational question: what factors give rise to happiness? scholarly debate on this issue has centered on two categories of causality: external circumstances and internal psychological processing of experience. we argue here that happiness emerges from the interaction of inner and outer conditions. external conditions provide potentials for happiness and internal processes act as filters for real world experience. these two processes mutually affect each other. as often happens with young sciences, explanation naturally begins with highly simplified models, and over time adds greater complexity; to some extent, an increasing tendency toward interactionist analysis may be a standard feature of scientific inquiry itself. with regards to happiness, specifically, we believe that this process is especially true. because happiness is a topic with enormous public appeal scholars and practitioners alike have devoted attention to it. interventionists, especially, are likely to simplify tools, skills and models of happiness because they are easier to teach, learn and implement. it may be, for this reason, that nuance, dynamic interactions and similar complicating factors are often side-stepped. we argue that the time has arrived for scholars and practitioners to focus more heavily on contextual and interactionist processes relating to happiness. the art of optimizing those interactions is far from simple, and calls for greater attention to the dynamics of happiness. fortunately, we see such attention being given to happiness in a growing range of individual, business, and societal policies and interventions. indeed, increasing numbers of city, state and national governments are looking at happiness as a topic worthy of both measurement and intervention. similarly, organizations are increasingly focusing on meaning, strengths, and a positive culture as an important element of modern work life. among our most dearly held points in this article is the idea of co-responsibility. once a person acknowledges that happiness does not simply arise out of positive personal perceptions and attitudes the door opens to mutual responsibility for individual happiness. it is here, we believe, that the interactionist perspective has the most powerful implications. in the context of co-responsibility happiness is not a “self-help” pursuit but is, rather, a collective enterprise. acknowledgments the authors wish to acknowledge the franco american cultural trust for their generous support of project+ authors aaron ahuvia university of michigan aaronahuvia@gmail.com neil thin university of edinburgh dan m. haybron mailto:aaronahuvia@gmail.com happiness: an interactionist perspective ahuvia, thin, haybron, biswas-diener, ricard, & timsit www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 st. louis university robert biswas-diener portland state university mathieu ricard shechen monastery mind and life institute jean timsit hec paris ( ecole des hautes etudes commerciales), project + publishing timeline received 15 july 2014 accepted 1 december 2014 published 26 january 2015 references ahuvia, a. c. 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(2020). gathering community perspectives to inform the design of autism-friendly music-making workshops for wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 10(5), 117-143. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1497 grace a. thompson the university of melbourne graceat@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 article gathering community perspectives to inform the design of autism-friendly music-making workshops for wellbeing grace a. thompson · melissa raine · susan m. hayward · hannah kilpatrick abstract: many autistic people report experiencing social isolation, a recognized risk factor for poor psychological wellbeing. promoting social inclusion is therefore a vital yet complex task. community-based creative activities such as music groups can improve individuals’ sense of social connection and reduce the experience of social isolation. however, limited literature is available that describes autistic people’s perspectives about how to foster successful engagement in these creative and inclusive group opportunities. this project aims to gather perspectives from autistic individuals aged between 18 to 25 years to inform the design of autism-friendly musicmaking workshops for wellbeing. this co-design project involved a research team comprizing autistic and non-autistic academics, and an advisory group that included autistic young adults and autism advocates. together, we designed an online survey and structured interview questions to gauge autistic people’s preferences for engagement in group-based music activities. there were 30 responses to the online survey questions which collected demographic information, opinions about group music-based activities, and views about ways to best support access and participation in the local community. in addition, five structured interviews were conducted with survey participants who volunteered to provide in-depth follow-up responses. survey data are presented descriptively, and interview data underwent inductive thematic analysis. participants described being motivated to join music-making workshops offered in the community and proposed various ways to improve accessibility. the qualitative themes from the survey free text and interviews suggest that both environmental and social factors work together to create a sense of safety and inclusion. in particular, a welcoming atmosphere and acceptance of diversity were expected from the workshop facilitator and group members. these findings have important implications for the co-production of future music-making workshops for the wellbeing of autistic people. keywords: autism spectrum, young adults, music participation, co-design, creativity, wellbeing introduction social activities in the community that are accessible to a diverse range of people are scarce (shiloh & lagasse, 2014). the number of autistic people in australia is estimated to be somewhere between one in 70 people (autism spectrum australia, 2018) and one in 150 (australian institute of health and welfare, 2017). autism is hallmarked by challenges with social interaction, and often sensory sensitivities (american psychiatric association, 2013). the autistic community in australia is substantial, yet a recent survey by a peak body for autistic people reported that the majority of the general public in australia (84%) perceive that discrimination against autistic people occurs (jones, akram, murphy, myers, & vickers, 2018). perhaps unsurprisingly, 70% of the autistic participants surveyed in the same report felt socially about:blank autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 isolated, while others indicated they had lost friends and jobs as a result of their condition and worried about how others would behave towards them. these relational concerns seem to spill over into their participation in australian cultural life, with 54% of autistic people reporting their main reason for avoiding going out to venues was because they had nobody to go with (jones et al., 2018). a study of 220 australian autistic adults reported that the combination of environmental factors, such as noise levels, and social interaction challenges often create substantial anxiety and exhaustion leading to avoidance and isolation (ee et al., 2019). social isolation and mental health the mental health of people living with disability is increasingly being recognized and reported, particularly within the australian autistic adult population (uljarević et al., 2019). compared with the general population, as many as 60% of autistic people in australia experience anxiety (uljarević et al., 2019), and up to 49% experience depression (uljarević, hedley, & cai, 2020; uljarević et al., 2019). both anxiety and depression increase suicide risk (de la vega, giner, & courtet, 2018; hand, benevides, & carretta, 2019), as highlighted by a large population-based study from sweden reporting risk of death by suicide as seven times greater in autistic people compared with those in the general population (hirvikoski et al., 2016). loneliness is frequently reported amongst autistic adults (ee et al., 2019) and adolescents (lasgaard, nielsen, eriksen, & goossens, 2010). combined with a lack of perceived social support, loneliness also plays a role in suicide risk (hedley, uljarević, wilmot, richdale, & dissanayake, 2018). the majority (63%) of autistic australians aged under 21 years report experiencing difficulty fitting in socially (australian institute of health and welfare, 2017). some autistic people camouflage their autistic traits in social settings in an attempt to “fit in” (hull et al., 2017). camouflaging can lead to feelings of shame and internalized stigma (cage & troxellwhitman, 2019), and the effort and energy required to hide autistic traits can be detrimental to wellbeing (hull et al., 2017). therefore, finding ways to build inclusive social support networks appears to be fundamental to addressing mental wellbeing in an autistic population. first-hand perspectives on social isolation from autistic people the neurodiversity paradigm (singer, 1999, 2016) positions autism within the social model of disability, highlighting that society “tends to be physically, socially and emotionally inhospitable towards autistic people” (den houting, 2019, p. 271). first-hand accounts from non-academic sources such as blogs and artworks provide deeply personal recounts of some of the social barriers experienced. sarah kurchak (2018) vividly describes the attitudinal barriers she faces, explaining “i’ve spent my whole life being told that non-autistic people are so brilliant and intuitive when it comes to social issues. like many autistic people, though, i haven’t always felt like i’ve seen much empathy, compassion, or understanding.” tim chan’s powerful poem i can similarly comments on the impact of negative social attitudes: in a non-comprehending world, in which i am an alien, a social misfit with no friends, i believe “i can't”… i am going to see me as a person, guided by inner purpose, with the resources to fulfil my needs and dreams, and i realize “i can” live the life i dream of. (chan, 2015)1 1 this excerpt of the full poem is reproduced here with permission. autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 within the social model of disability, the wellbeing of all citizens is a collective responsibility (oliver, 1983, 2013). disability theorists highlight this collective responsibility by noting a “double empathy problem” in society when autistic people are expected to understand nonautistic people, but non-autistic people do not seek to understand autistic ways of being (milton, 2012). when autistic ways of being are perceived as abnormal, these negative impressions have been found to lead to social exclusion in western countries (sasson et al., 2017). runswick-cole (2014) reflects that while the neurodiversity movement has fought for the rights and recognition of autistic people, this position may intensify a binary sense of “us” and “them” which could unintentionally entrench beliefs about difference. in contrast, fostering knowledge and understanding of autism decreased stigma in college students from north america who participated in online training courses (gillespie-lynch et al., 2015) and briefing sessions (curtis & mercado, 2004), suggesting that the “double empathy problem” can be improved through education and advocacy. further, psychiatrists who call for greater acceptance of the broad spectrum of “autistic humanity” (mottron, 2017, p. 823) emphasize that services for autistic people should focus on strengths rather than deficits, and foster individuals’ access to social and cultural experiences. music participation, social engagement and wellbeing music forms a core part of the social life and cultural identity of many young adults (mcferran, 2020) including those on the autism spectrum (allen, hill, & heaton, 2009; heaton, 2003). participation in community music activities is associated with perceived positive wellbeing in australian adults, particularly group-based activities where people feel socially connected to others (krause, north, & davidson, 2019). music therapy research also emphasizes the importance of shared moments of pleasure within creative group experiences for young people, along with validation of their identity from peers (mcferran, 2020). as such, music experiences have also been widely recognized as supporting the mental health and wellbeing of adolescents and young adults, both in the general population and people with disability (mcferran, 2020; wilson & macdonald, 2019). further, neuroscientists have documented music’s influence on human emotions, finding that music-making can intensify social bonding and affiliation (molnar-szakacs et al., 2009; peretz, 2019). particularly, singing and active music-making in groups is more effective in promoting social cohesion than listening to music (peretz, 2019). this acknowledgement of the benefits gained from more active forms of music participation points to the important role that creativity plays in group social experiences and the potential flow-on benefits for enhanced wellbeing. creativity in music making draws upon core features of human communication such as rhythmicity and predicable narrative form. these basic music potentials, or proto-musicality, are present in day-to-day acts of self-expression in all human beings from birth (malloch, 2000; malloch & trevarthen, 2018; roginsky & elefant, 2020). as such, success in sharing aesthetically elaborated forms of self-expression is a benchmark for creativity that can be universally accessed since proto-musicality is a born potential that is present across the spectrum of neurodiversity (roginsky & elefant, 2020). opportunities for distributed creativity (burnard & dragovic, 2015), as well as for dynamic engagement with culture (wright & pascoe, 2015) may also promote connections between creativity and wellbeing. group music-making is therefore a potentially powerful way to address the double-empathy issue and foster acceptance of autistic humanity, as it can provide an opportunity for these connections between creativity and wellbeing to be accessible to autistic participants. the majority of music therapy research with autistic people has focused on developmental benefits for autistic children (geretsegger, elefant, mössler & gold, 2014) such as supporting autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 relational outcomes (carpente, 2017; thompson, 2017) and social communication skills (kim, wigram, & gold, 2008; thompson, mcferran, & gold, 2013). only a few studies have focused on evaluating the benefits of group music making for autistic adults. preliminary findings from a canadian pilot study with eight autistic adults found that participants reported less anxiety during a singing group compared to other activities (young, 2020). research exploring a group music skills program in the usa for 22 autistic adolescents and young adults found numerous self-reported social and wellbeing benefits including reduced anxiety, increased self-esteem and more positive attitudes toward peers (hillier, greher, poto, & dougherty, 2012). however, while it is promising that autistic individuals report positive benefits from these music programs, the emphasis appears to be on boosting the capacities of the autistic person rather than addressing broader societal attitudes, which may reflect an ableist view of appropriate social norms (campbell, 2009). an alternative approach to improving access to community music events is the development of “sensory friendly concerts” (shiloh & lagasse, 2014). these community events, often coordinated by music therapists and/or community arts organisations, seek to create an informal atmosphere and adapt the environment of the venue. autistic people attending these events have described feeling more accepted by the community and more confident to express their autistic identity (shiloh & lagasse, 2014). organizers of sensory-friendly events typically consult and partner with autistic people to ensure access requirements are well understood; i.e., they employ a co-design approach. co-design and participatory research approaches the australian national health and medical research council (2016) acknowledges that consumer and community involvement in the design of research projects enhances the value of the project outcomes. systematic reviews (greenhalgh et al., 2019) and discussion papers (locock & boaz, 2019) about co-design research suggest that no single approach or framework holds the key to success2. greenhalgh at al. (2019) produced a taxonomy that consolidates the prolific and diverse approaches to co-design in the interests of clarifying their shared strengths. however, locock and boaz (2019) argue that in order to “avoid constructing people as vulnerable participants rather than partners with agency”, co-design research must “move beyond tokenism and overcome the gap between language and practice” (locock & boaz, 2019, p. 416 & 418). identifying and bridging gaps between thought processes and conceptual differences between researchers and community members is therefore central to successful co-design (greenhalgh et al., 2019; parsons, fisher, & nalau, 2016). research teams are encouraged to deeply consider their intentions and the purpose of engaging in co-design principles to determine which approach will be the best fit for the local context (greenhalgh et al., 2019). co-design research involving autistic people highlights the importance of establishing trust, supporting diverse communication, and addressing power dynamics to ensure meaningful processes and outputs (scott-barrett, cebula, & florian, 2019). parsons et al. (2016) provide perspectives on co-design in indigenous communities that emphasize some important advantages that might also be relevant when engaging autistic young adults in research. they report that indigenous participants drew attention to the colonialist ideals embedded in some of the concepts being utilized by researchers. when applying this notion to participants with lived experience, there may be real benefits to engaging with perspectives that challenge problematic assumptions in the research framework, such as the imposition of “neurotypical” (i.e., non 2 while the incorporation of first-person perspectives into co-design processes is generally considered to be important, how lived experience interacts with co-construction approaches is not currently well understood (osborne et al., 2016). autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 autistic) standards of socializing and communication. in response to these dynamic social justice principles, we embarked upon a co-design project by bringing together a research team comprizing autistic and non-autistic academics, and an advisory group that included autistic young adults and autism advocates. purpose statement burnard and dragovic (2015) observe that the context in which creative collaborations are undertaken has a powerful influence on their value to the participants. this contextual perspective underscores the importance of community consultation to ensure that the potential benefits to wellbeing are appropriate for the participant community. this paper reports on our community consultation phase that aimed to gather the perspectives of autistic young adults living in victoria, australia. we sought to better understand whether music-making workshops would be a feasible way to address the previously reported social and wellbeing needs of the autistic community in the region where these workshops would later be offered. information about how autistic young adults use music in their everyday life, what might motivate them to join a music-making workshop, and what they believe would improve access and engagement were gathered through a collaboratively designed online survey and interview guide. method co-design approach to developing the survey and interview questions our academic team includes autistic, disabled and non-autistic researchers with backgrounds in psychology, music therapy, and arts. we also invited young autistic adults to join an advisory group, since this age group would ultimately be invited to participate in the music workshops. the academic team created a first draft of the online survey questions to meet the research aims and then engaged with our three autistic advisors aged 18 to 24 years who reviewed the content, language, and formatting of survey questions. in addition, we took advice from the information manager of the autism peak body in victoria, australia, and a program coordinator of a community group for autistic young people. the wording and order of several survey questions were modified in an iterative way following this consultation period, with some questions removed and others added. participants (online survey) autistic people aged between 18 and 25 years living in the state of victoria, australia were invited to participate in an online survey advertized through local autism services and community groups via their social media pages, websites and enewsletters. in keeping with our co-design aim, the survey was advertized as a call to “help us design autism-friendly music workshops”. we limited the sample to the age group we intended to target in the subsequent study to increase the likelihood that the data will be relevant to phase 2 of this project. similarly, survey participation was limited to people residing in the state where the music-making workshops would later be conducted. thirty young people (m age in years=19.93; sd=2.02) responded to the 22 survey questions. of these, 12 (40%) identified as men, 12 (40%) as women, and 6 (20%) as other gender identities (transgender, gender-neutral, or gender queer). the majority of participants (26; 87%) resided in a metropolitan area and had completed 12 or more years of education. all participants had an autism spectrum diagnosis, and many reported an additional diagnosis such as depression (19; 63%), anxiety (16; 53%), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (12; 40%). see table 1 for more detail. autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 participants (follow-up interviews) at the end of the online survey, participants were asked to voluntarily participate in a follow-up interview by providing their contact details. ten people (33%) volunteered, and of these five (17%) made appointments when invitations were sent via email. the age of these five interviewed participants ranged from 18 to 23 years (m age in years=20.0; sd=2.0), and included two people who identified as men, two who identified as non-binary, and one who identified as a woman (see table 2 for more detail). interviews were conducted on the phone or via the video conferencing platform zoom. with permission, all interviews were video and audio recorded. materials survey the survey consisted of 22 questions and included multiple choice, likert scale items and free text options. the first 10 questions collected demographic information, questions 11 to 14 inquired about participants’ use of music in their everyday life, and questions 15 to 22 invited participants to contribute their perspective on the design of the music workshops such as their preference for music activities, environmental considerations, access requirements, or any other considerations (see appendix 1). interview five interview questions were constructed to align with the survey questions related to the design of the music workshops. while the interview questions were structured, we intended to seek deeper responses to these questions and gently prompt for more information (see appendix 2). we emphasized to participants that their responses would directly impact the design of the music workshops planned in the second stage of the research. ethics this project was approved by the human research ethics committee at the university of melbourne (id no. 1955735.1). online survey participants provided their consent by clicking to commence the survey after reading the project information on the opening screen. all survey responses were anonymous. interview participants were sent a plain language statement via email and provided signed consent prior to the interview taking place. transcribed interviews were anonymized, and each participant was assigned a code for reference. survey data the online survey was open during march and april 20203. all multiple choice and likert scale questions are reported descriptively in the form of percentages and rankings. 3data collection took place during the covid-19 pandemic, where social restrictions were in place in this community. autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 table 1 online survey participant data characteristics sample group (n=30) age: years, m (sd) 19.93 (2.02) gender male, n (%) 12 (40) female, n (%) 12 (40) transgender, n (%) 1 (3.3) gender neutral, n (%) 2 (6.7) gender queer, n (%) 1 (3.3) other1, n (%) 2 (6.6) geographical location victoria: melbourne metropolitan area, n (%) 26 (86.7) victoria: outside of metropolitan area, n (%) 4 (13.3) highest level of education bachelor degree or higher, n (%) 3 (10.0) diploma / advanced diploma, n (%) 2 (6.7) year 12 / victorian cert. education / tafe cert. iii or iv, n (%) 15 (50.0) year 10 / school cert. / tafe cert. i or ii, n (%) 7 (23.3) <year 9, n (%) 3 (10.0) autism spectrum diagnosis: yes, n (%) 30 (100.0) autism spectrum diagnosis confirmed by psychologist, n (%) 12 (40.0) paediatrician, n (%) 6 (20.0) paediatrician, psychiatrist, n (%) 2 (6.7) psychiatrist, n (%) 2 (6.7) psychologist, paediatrician, n (%) 1 (3.3) psychologist, paediatrician, other health professional, n (%) 1 (3.3) other health professional, n (%) 2 (6.7) i don't remember who diagnosed me, n (%) 4 (13.3) age of autism spectrum diagnosis younger than 5 years old, n (%) 6 (20.0) 6–10 years old, n (%) 9 (30.0) 11–15 years old, n (%) 10 (33.3) 16–20 years old, n (%) 4 (13.3) 21 years and over, n (%) 1 (3.3) other diagnosis in addition to autism spectrum: yes, n (%) 19 (63.3) other diagnosis details2 depression 19 (63.3) anxiety 16 (53.3) attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) 12 (40.0) post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) 9 (30.0) obsessive compulsive disorder (ocd) 2 (6.7) any eating disorder 1 (3.3) other3 3 (10.0) 1other answers provided: queer, non-binary 2multiple answers permitted 3other answers provided: learning disorder, global developmental delay, auditory processing disorder autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 table 2 interview participant data participant id age (years) gender geographical location cm 19 non-binary victoria: melbourne metropolitan area ip 19 male victoria: outside of metropolitan area jb 21 female victoria: melbourne metropolitan area lw 18 male victoria: melbourne metropolitan area vsd 23 non-binary victoria: melbourne metropolitan area note. autism spectrum diagnosis confirmed by each participant. free-text and interview data the free-text survey questions and in-depth interview data underwent thematic analysis based on the approach described by braun & clark (2006). the analysis sought to explicate themes and meanings within the data related to the research aim to deepen understanding about how autistic young adults might use music in their everyday life, what might motivate them to join a musicmaking workshop and what they believe would improve access and engagement. given that the survey participants were responding to structured questions, and the interview was also structured, the data were first sorted into overarching deductive topics. we then took an inductive approach to the analysis within each of these topics areas to best capture the authentic voices of the autistic participants and complement the descriptive data from the online survey. the qualitative analysis was an iterative process that broadly followed the following steps: 1) immersion in the data through the process of transcribing the interviews, reading and re-reading the data, and noting initial impressions of the data in memos; 2) segmenting the transcript statements and free-text survey answers into discrete concepts and compiling these into an excel spreadsheet to sort the data into lines; 3) in-vivo coding of each line of data in order to reflect the expression of the participants as closely as possible; 4) sorting and grouping these in-vivo codes to identify potential descriptive themes; 5) reviewing and regrouping the descriptive themes through a reflexive process to identify possible relationships between themes; 6) a sample of the coding and themes were reviewed by a team member with lived experience of autism to cross-check the accuracy of the coding and labelling; and 7) refinement of the labels for the themes so that they succinctly capture the essence of the data. results we begin by presenting the descriptive survey data, followed by the qualitative analysis of the survey free-text responses, and finally presenting the qualitative analysis of the interviews. music engagement in everyday life on average, these 30 respondents reported engaging in 6.13 hours of music listening per day. most (93%) survey respondents reported having played a musical instrument at some time in their life, while 40% reported they currently play a musical instrument well or at a high standard. the most popular instruments amongst these respondents were keyboard, guitar and drums (see figure 1), but there was a large variety of instruments played by the participants across their life span. the majority of respondents also indicated that they like to sing to some degree (see table 3). preferences and the design of the music-making workshops autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 these respondents’ main reasons for wishing to attend a music workshop in the future focused on their enjoyment of music and their desire to continue to develop their music skills. however, social aspects were also considered important, with many respondents hoping to go out, make friends, meet new people, and try something new (see figure 2). figure 1 reported popularity of musical instruments within the sample (y-axis indicates frequency of response) note. the “other” category consisted of ukelele, trombone, mandolin, oboe, bassoon table 3 music engagement in everyday life music engagement type sample group (n=30) hours of daily music listening, m (sd) 6.13 (3.63) music listening formats audio streaming1, % 44.58 video & audio streaming2, % 24.10 personal music collection3, % 18.07 public broadcast4, % 13.25 has played at least one instrument at some time in their life, n (%) 28 (93.33) plays one instrument, n (%) 6 (20) plays two-three instruments, n (%) 13 (43.33) plays four or more instruments, n (%) 9 (30) plays an instrument fairly well or at a high standard, n (%) 12 (40) singing engagement does not like to sing at all, n (%) 7 (23.33) likes to sing a little, n (%) 10 (33.33) likes to sing a lot, n (%) 13 (43.33) 1includes spotify, apple music, soundcloud 2includes youtube 3includes cds, vinyl, itunes 4includes listening to public radio stations 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 k ey bo ar d g ui ta r d ru m s b as s tr um pe t v io lin o th er fl ut e c el lo d ou bl e b as s c la rin et s ax op ho ne v io la autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 figure 2 reported reason for attending the music workshop, by percentage preferred workshop activities while there was strong interest in all suggestions for music activities offered in the survey, listening to music, playing instruments, and developing recording/production skills were most popular amongst this small sample. of those ranked least preferred were other creative activities, song writing, performance, and singing (see table 4, and figure 3). table 4 co-design of music workshops co-design elements for music workshops sample group (n=30) workshop activities multiple choice options song writing very interested, n (%) 9 (30.0) a little interested, n (%) 13 (43.3) not interested, n (%) 8 (26.7) recording/production skills very interested, n (%) 10 (33.3) a little interested, n (%) 15 (50.0) not interested, n (%) 5 (16.7) listening to music very interested, n (%) 19 (63.3) a little interested, n (%) 7 (23.3) not interested, n (%) 4 (13.3) playing instruments very interested, n (%) 15 (50.0) a little interested, n (%) 10 (33.3) not interested, n (%) 4 (13.3) singing songs very interested, n (%) 10 (33.3) a little interested, n (%) 12 (40.0) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 meet new people hope to make new friends to go out learn new music skills have fun with music a little important very important autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 not interested, n (%) 8 (26.7) performance skills very interested, n (%) 10 (33.3) a little interested, n (%) 11 (36.7) not interested, n (%) 8 (26.7) teamwork skills very interested, n (%) 4 (13.3) a little interested, n (%) 18 (60.0) not interested, n (%) 7 (23.3) other creative activities like story writing and/or drawing very interested, n (%) 10 (33.3) a little interested, n (%) 9 (30.0) not interested, n (%) 10 (33.3) access considerations multiple choice options number of people preferred in each workshop it doesn’t matter to me, n (%) 9 (30.0) less than 5 people, n (%) 5 (16.7) between 6-10 people, n (%) 15 (50.0) between 11-15 people, n (%) 1 (3.3) group members should all be on the autism spectrum it doesn’t matter to me, n (%) 20 (66.7) yes, i will feel more comfortable, n (%) 3 (10) no, i would like the group to be mixed, n (%) 7 (23.3) factors that enable best participation in the workshops keep the noise level down not important, n (%) 10 (33.3) a little important, n (%) 17 (56.7) very important, n (%) 3 (10.0) provide verbal instructions not important, n (%) 3 (10.0) a little important, n (%) 16 (53.3) very important, n (%) 11 (36.7) provide written instructions not important, n (%) 8 (26.7) a little important, n (%) 11 (36.7) very important, n (%) 11 (36.7) provide a quiet/private space to take a break not important, n (%) 3 (10.0) a little important, n (%) 8 (26.7) very important, n (%) 19 (63.3) provide snacks not important, n (%) 9 (30.0) a little important, n (%) 6 (20.0) very important, n (%) 15 (50.0) include free time to get to know other people not important, n (%) 4 (13.3) a little important, n (%) 13 (43.3) very important, n (%) 13 (43.3) autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 access considerations to enable participation generally, these respondents preferred smaller groups for the music workshops, with 6 to 10 people being the most popular group size, followed by groups of fewer than five people. when asked if the group should be exclusively offered to people on the autism spectrum, most respondents in this small sample indicated that it did not matter, while almost a quarter of respondents would prefer to interact with a mixed group of people. it seems that these participants were motivated to come to the music workshops in order to make new friends and meet new people (see figure 3). figure 3 workshop activities participants were most interested in, by percentage in terms of environmental factors, these participants indicated that access to a quiet or private space would allow them to take a break from workshop activities. providing snacks at the workshop was also considered important for participation, as well as free time to get to know other people in the group. in this small sample, that reported being highly engaged with music, keeping noise levels down was only considered “a little important” (see figure 4). 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 other non-music activities performance skills song writing singing songs teamwork skills recording/production skills playing instruments listening to music autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 figure 4 factors that were considered important to enable participation, by percentage qualitative themes from the survey responses eighteen of the 30 respondents (60%) provided answers to some or all the five free-text questions in the online survey. most responses concerning the main reason for attending the workshop focused on developing music skills and music knowledge. however, one respondent replied they would come along to “have a purpose” (participant no. 11). in the free text answers, there were mixed opinions about whether everyone in the group should be autistic. some people wanted the group to be open in order to meet new and different people, while others wanted a supportive space free from the judgement of non-autistic people. participant 22 stated, “as an autistic adult i'm often not understood and regularly judged by neurotypical people.” in contrast, participant 24 explained: i would like to meet more people on the spectrum as i’m newly diagnosed, but i don’t want to limit myself to just making friends with people who are autistic. sometimes it’s good to make friends with people who don’t have the same barriers than me [sic] so they can support me through social issues i have. in terms of support during the workshops, some respondents emphasized the importance of creating an encouraging atmosphere with the right balance between structure and flexibility. participant 10 described wanting …[to] have a structure set in place but be prepared that some people will flow off it and find something they like and not want to move on from (for example if they just realized they can play certain songs by ear on piano they’ll possibly want to explore that as much as possible while they have the chance and enjoy that one thing instead of moving on). two people asked for accommodation of sensory sensitivities, such as availability of headphones to manage auditory sensitivity, and natural light in the room. participant 21 emphasized the importance of respect for participants, stating “do not treat us like we’re mentally handicapped” [emphasis copied from participant’s text response]. five people offered direct 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 keep the noise level down provide verbal instructions provide written instructions include free time to get to know other people provide snacks provide a quiet/private space to take a break a little important very important autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 advice to the future workshop facilitators. three of the five considered it important for the facilitator to have a deep knowledge of autism, and one person considered that their experience should include personal knowledge rather than simply professional experience (see table 5). table 5 qualitative themes from free-text survey questions survey question (no. of participants responding) theme no. of participants what would be your main reason to come to the music workshops? (8) offer structured music learning 2 opportunities for band work 2 learning strategies to use music for therapeutic application 1 expand the activities beyond music 2 to have a purpose 1 should everyone in the group be on the autism spectrum (autistic)? why or why not? (12) open group is beneficial to meet a range of people 7 open group but people should have an understanding of autism 1 closed group to offer support to each other and not be judged 3 quality music-making experiences are more important than diagnosis 1 is there anything else that we should do to support you? (11) create groups with similar levels of music skills 1 cater for dietary needs 1 provide resources to take home 1 workshop structure should be flexible and encouraging 5 create space to socialize 1 accommodate sensory sensitivities 2 provide individual music instruction if needed 1 do you have any more advice for our workshop leaders? (5) create different workshops based on music ability 1 deep knowledge of autism is preferred 3 create a friendly atmosphere 1 note. 18/30 respondents provided answers to some or all of the 5 free-text questions in the online survey. qualitative themes from the interviews the structured interviews with five participants ranged from 20 to 40 minutes in duration. the main themes forming the qualitative analysis are described below, with the codes related to each theme provided in table 6. to distinguish the survey free-text responses from the interview quotes, each interview participant has been given a code based on their initials. these codes also serve to de-identify the participants. music in everyday life three of the five participants described themselves as active musicians, while four described how they regularly use music for recreation and their own wellbeing. using music to shift their mood, autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 manage feelings of frustration and reduce stress (i.e., regulate their emotions) were common experiences amongst these participants. for example, participant vsd notes: i also like improvise songs quite a lot. and so and then that then [sic] leads to song writing as well, um, which is quite a quite a good way to get rid of frustrations [voice rises] or even just like talk about thoughts on my mind and stuff like that. similarly, participant jb explains ... if i do housework or i'm doing some work or study or something. i might listen to it for some background music…and yeah it can change my mood, like...i guess it depends on the style of music i'm listening to or...it can just, if i'm studying for something it can make me feel a bit more calmer [sic] and concentrate better. motivation to attend music-making workshops in the future all five participants described their desire to meet new people with similar interests. within this theme, participants wanted to be accepted and meet friendly people. some participants were also interested to meet other autistic musicians and share experiences of their use of music, with participant ip describing “i'd be really interested in getting to know musicians that, you know, share similar things that have been diagnosed with and...um, get to know what music does for them and all that sort of stuff as well.” improving access to participate participants offered various suggestions for what would make it easier for them to participate in music workshops, ranging from environmental issues related to the venue, to the social atmosphere of the group. the importance of a welcoming atmosphere was emphasized by four participants who expressed their hope that the workshop would be a safe and non-judgemental space. when prompted to explain what would make the group a socially safe space, participant lw explained “um, where you can speak out without like being judged and...things like that.” participant jb explained that he would feel accepted and included by “people being interested in me, asking me questions, and um, us like going out and doing things and making, um, like a true friendship group. yeah.” the physical environment of the venue was also important to two people. they both commented on the need for air and natural lighting, and there was a sense that these environmental factors are also part of creating a feeling of safety and security. participant cm explains that they need …[to be] able to breathe in rooms. i say that because one of the previous things that i did a few years back, ah, it's a sensory room, it had no aircon or vents, and was not near a window. so it looks like it looked like they converted an old broom closet. i couldn't breathe i wanted out. in addition, four of the five interview participants commented on the importance of having a separate space to take a break away from the main group at any time. this separate space was described as important for participants to manage feelings of being overwhelmed, provide a private place to “stim” (self-stimulatory behavior), or engage in other self-regulating and calming activities if needed. participant vsd explained this need in detail as follows: autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 having an additional room for anyone who needs to...a private room for anyone to...and if it was made to be as comfortable as possible…because like i sometimes get, um, like stimming attacks, and you don't want people around for that [laughs] sometimes and so a lot of time your options are run to the bathroom or have everyone witness what's going on. and perhaps having like a dedicated room where you can just go and do that it would be really good. advice for the music workshop facilitator all five participants emphasized the importance of the facilitator being inclusive and considerate of differences. they described the need for the facilitator to be friendly, but also give clear social cues. some participants stated that they were thinking about the needs of other autistic people they know, as well as themselves. the interviewees emphasized the caring and supportive attitude they expect the facilitator to have, with participant ip describing these qualities in detail: just be aware of um...if someone is not feeling 100% about, you know, what's going on then...just, walk up...it's okay to just walk up and let them know, “hey, if you need a break just go and have a break.” when it comes to autistic people, i think a lot of times they're just...don't know what to say about that sort of stuff sometimes...they might not communicate that sort of thing. the importance of the facilitator giving clear social cues that are congruent with their feelings was emphasized by one participant, vsd, who described how this helps them to feel safe and confident: um, ...[the facilitator should] smile. that's probably a weird thing to say…i try to…i tend to read people too much to kind of gauge how they're like feeling and whether they're going to be an approachable person so if they look as friendly as possible, that's probably gonna [sic] start everything off pretty well. table 6 qualitative themes from in-depth structured interviews theme (no. of participants) code question 1: tell us a little about how you use music in your life? currently an active musician (3/5) play guitar in a band committed to improve music skills write songs for a band have participated in song writing workshops love playing drums love music and have been playing from a young age love to sing in different styles have lots of music skills but self-conscious in front of others previously played an instrument (2/5) used to perform in a band used to learn keyboard engages with music for recreation (4/5) extensive music listening listening to music sing in the shower go to gigs and live shows occasionally autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 uses music for wellbeing (4/5) play guitar to calm down background music to intentionally regulate my mood listening to music makes me feel happy playing instruments is an important stimming activity that helps me when i'm frustrated playing instruments is also a way to deal with frustration song writing is a way to express frustrations and emotions listening to music to reduce stress and stay focused question 2: tell us more about music activities you are interested in, and why? build on existing music skills (2/5) continued passion for song writing in a band constructive feedback to improve music skills learn new music skills (3/5) learn music recording skills start learning drums or guitar willing to give singing a go learn music skills listen to music and talk with others (2/5) listening to music and talking about favorite music question 3: what is your main reason to come to the music workshops? why is this most important to you? learn new music skills (3/5) learn more music skills to try something new with music meet new people with similar interests (5/5) meet new people meet other musicians with similar interests meet new people and be accepted be with friendly people share experiences with other autistic musicians (2/5) meet other autistic musicians & share experiences be part of a supportive community of autistic musicians have an opportunity to perform music (2/5) perform music to an audience motivate me to use my music skills more actively with others question 4: what makes it easier for you to participate in group music activities? provide a space to take a break (4/5) provide space to take a break if the group becomes too much. space to address overstimulation space to take a break from the noise space to take a break if i need to stim break out rooms to allow small groups to focus on an area of interest venue needs to have air and natural light (2/5) air and natural light are important to create a safe space give information about the room and the group before the workshops start prefer natural light in the room natural air and comfortable temperature are important to consider group size should not be too big (4/5) too many people can be overstimulating group size between 5-15 people group size between 10-20 people autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 group size of about 10 people larger groups are ok but i might just listen to the conversation allow people to bring a friend or familiar person (2/5) it's ok to bring a carer itss ok to bring a friend foster a welcoming and friendly atmosphere (4/5) creating a safe space welcome anyone from all walks of life make it an inclusive environment to socialize with people people being friendly and being interested in me safe space to speak out safe space to speak out and not be judged organize groups according to music skills or interests (3/5) group members have similar music taste stream people with similar music skills having other girls in the group balance structure with flexibility (2/5) have a structure & include a break structure needs to be flexible mixture of music-making and socializing time provide information about the group before it starts (4/5) meet online before the in-person workshops start communicate expectations clearly let people know the volume could be loud give information about the leader and group before the course starts communicate expectations clearly clear information about each workshop topic will help reduce anxiety provide snacks (1/5) providing snacks is always a good thing question 5: do you have any advice for the group leader? be inclusive and considerate of difference (5/5) consider each person's differences be respectful of each person's values & beliefs group leader should ask people if they need a break be inclusive and bring people out of their comfort zone accept each person adapt the music to the skill level of the person have a balance between structure and flexibility (3/5) have group rules but work around each individual encourage people but don't force them go with the flow and be patient facilitator needs to be friendly and give clear social cues (5/5) be on the same level as group members, but also have rules negotiate without being stern don't be strict if someone makes a mistake make the course as fun as you can be open and honest with everyone help people learn if they make a mistake smile so that i can see you are friendly discussion given the elevated levels of poor psychological health outcomes for some autistic people, as well as their self-reported lack of social support (uljarević et al., 2020), this project aimed to gather perspectives from autistic young adults to inform the design of future autism-friendly autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 community music workshops which intend to improve wellbeing and increase social connection. we sought to better understand how individuals from the intended participant community use music in their everyday life, what might motivate them to join a music-making workshop, and what they believe would improve access and engagement. the invitation to complete a survey to design autism-friendly music workshops seemed to attract the interest of autistic people who are already highly engaged with music. the average of 6.13 hours of music listening per day reported in this small sample is similar to reports of the general population of young people’s music listening habits. a large survey of teenagers in the uk found that they listened to 2.45 hours of music per day on average (north, hargreaves, & o'neill, 2000); however, a study from the usa reported up to 7.5 hours of music listening per day when teenagers were multi-tasking with music playing in the background (rideout, foehr, & roberts, 2010). while we did not ask our respondents to clarify whether music listening was used to accompany other activities per se, the results here suggest that autistic young people listen to music to a similar degree to the general adolescent population. within the survey sample, nearly all respondents reported having played an instrument at some time in their life, with 40% still playing their instrument to a self-reported “high standard”. this high level of engagement with music may have been a reason that the majority considered keeping noise levels down in the groups was only “a little important” rather than “very important”. however, this assumption requires further investigation. even though most respondents in this small sample were motivated to continue to develop their music skills in future workshops, expanding their social network was also widely described as a reason to participate. however, there were contrasting opinions about whether the workshops should be exclusively for autistic people, or inclusive of non-autistic people. the free-text and interview data revealed that some participants were worried about being judged by non-autistic people or being misunderstood. others particularly wanted to meet other autistic musicians to understand more about how they used music in their life and share common experiences with music. those who were comfortable with being part of an inclusive group emphasized that members should have a good understanding of autism, be accepting, friendly, and share common interests in music. these concerns link to the literature highlighting that attitudes of non-autistic people are likely to be barriers to social inclusion (den houting, 2019; office of civilian human resources, 2016). the perspectives of autistic participants in this small sample further support the view of a “double empathy problem” in society more generally (milton, 2012) and the need for autismfriendly community activities. similar sentiments are noted in the advice that the survey and interview participants offered to the future workshop facilitators. there was an emphasis on respect, understanding of difference, acceptance and accessibility. the responses gathered from this sample highlighted the need for structure but also for flexibility so that group members would be encouraged to try new things yet have autonomy in decision-making and level of engagement. the quality of facilitation in group music experiences has been noted in previous research evaluating the social impact of music programs for people with disability. wilson and macdonald’s (2019) qualitative findings suggest that workshop leaders with an empathic and inclusive attitude facilitated feelings of welcoming, involvement, and security in disabled participants. their findings also described how tailoring the music activities to the interests and potential of the participants was key to their sustained engagement in the workshops (wilson & macdonald, 2019). while this survey has a small sample, the responses highlighted various factors consistent with social-communication challenges, as well as common sensory sensitivities associated with autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 autism (american psychiatric association, 2013). regardless of the small importance attributed to noise levels, participants reported that accessibility would be improved with clear written and verbal information as well as provision of a break-out space to help avoid overwhelming situations. compared to the survey data, the interview responses highlight slightly different considerations relating to the environment of the music workshops. two people noted the importance of air and natural light, which could be considered important to promote feelings of security and safety. these perspectives underline the importance of regularly checking accessibility with each participant to ensure that community-based activities will indeed be autism-friendly. when asked in the in-depth interviews to describe how they use music in their everyday life, most of the five participants shared the various ways that their music use is linked to improving wellbeing. these participants played their instruments to regulate their emotions, for example, as a “stimming” activity to self-soothe. participants who composed music and songs further commented on emotional regulation, describing how their creativity was an outlet for expressing emotions and frustrations. it is noted that autistic individuals often have difficulty with emotional regulation, which is linked to mood disorders such as anxiety and depression (morie, jackson, potenza, & dritschel, 2019; weiss, riosa, mazefsky, & beaumont, 2017). both anxiety and depression were elevated in the current sample (see table 1). these respondents seemed less informed about the potential for music-making to create opportunity for social inclusion beyond sharing an interest with others. given that the survey responses and interview data indicate that participants are interested in increasing their social network, there may be a need to raise awareness of the potential of music-making in groups to boost social bonding and affiliation (krause et al., 2019). given that research findings from the general adolescent population suggest that most young people engage daily in several hours of music listening (north et al., 2000; rideout et al., 2010), experience pleasure in music engagement, and a sense of connection to peers (mcferran, 2020), we were surprised the sample almost exclusively included respondents who had previously played a musical instrument. we had expected that there would be more variety in the respondents’ characteristics, including people who simply enjoyed music as well as those who had experience playing instruments. given the benefits of music engagement for wellbeing are not limited to those who have experience playing instruments (krause et al., 2019; peretz, 2019), we consider that participant characteristics are important to consider in the subsequent co-design stage of the project. if music-making workshops are likely to only attract autistic musicians rather than music lovers more generally, this will shift the focus of the workshops towards activities that require music skills and knowledge. in fact, several participants commented that the workshops should be organized according to music skill level. it is well recognized that participants iteratively shape the services they receive, which makes co-production intrinsic to the delivery of responsive and meaningful services—whether this occurs consciously or not (osborne, radnor & strokosch, 2016). rather than utilizing the present survey responses and interviews to determine prescribed qualities for future music workshops, the data are understood to reveal that autistic individuals should be recognized as research collaborators with agency and respected accordingly (locock & boaz, 2019). our own diverse research team considers that the most compelling data relate to the young people’s expectations of the workshop facilitators: that they should be friendly, have a deep understanding of autism, be respectful of each person’s values and beliefs, and accept each group member. the challenge, however, of creating an inclusive culture should not depend on the group facilitator alone. good facilitation therefore may be more about galvanizing each group member’s sense of agency and, autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 through a participatory approach, generating further understandings about social connection that challenge the expectations of non-autistic people. limitations the survey and interview data are limited to the views of autistic young adults in the state of victoria, australia. since this was the first phase of a larger co-design project, we sought perspectives from the community where the music workshops would ultimately take place. however, this approach also means that the representation of the sample itself is limited. the potential pool of respondents could not be determined due to recruitment taking place via social media platforms and enewsletters where snowballing was possible. additionally, the survey tool was open during march and april 2020, a time when there were social restrictions in victoria, australia due to the covid-19 global pandemic. participant recruitment unintentionally attracted autistic people with considerable preexisting musical training. their perspectives may therefore differ from autistic people who are music lovers, rather than musicians. for the qualitative analysis, our autistic team members reviewed the final themes from the perspective of their own lived experience. however, this should not imply that they were able to represent every unique autistic perspective. future codesign projects should consider ways to ethically conduct member checking of qualitative themes in a collaborative way. additionally, while our diverse team developed the survey in collaboration with three autistic young adults, an autism community group, and a representative from an autism advocacy peak body, survey participation can bias the sample toward individuals who prefer to communicate in writing or verbally. therefore, individuals with different communication and expression needs within the autistic community may not be represented. this limitation is acknowledged as a common challenge in co-design projects with neurodivergent people (tisdall, 2012). conclusion previous research has shown that community music-making groups may expand participants’ social networks, yet there may be conditions which limit accessibility for autistic people. while the sample size informing this report is modest, the findings suggest that some autistic people, particularly those who have a pre-existing interest in music, may be motivated to join autismfriendly community music workshops. along with various practical suggestions for improving accessibility, such as providing break-out spaces, selecting venues with natural light and air, and providing instructions in multiple formats, many of these participants also emphasized relational factors that would lead them to feel welcomed and accepted. these relational factors included participants’ expectations that the group facilitator should have a deep understanding of autism and be able to foster friendly and respectful interactions between group members. the perspectives of these participants regarding the importance of providing a safe and nonjudgmental space warrants consideration in the design of future intervention studies. by articulating the need for attention to these personally significant environmental and socioemotional factors, these participants invite researchers to deeply consider the elements that can either support or hinder participation in music-making activities for wellbeing. health promotion programs are likely to benefit from taking a co-design approach to designing activities and evaluating outcomes for the participant community. autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 acknowledgements this project received funding from the creativity and wellbeing hallmark research initiative (cawri) at the university of melbourne. we wish to acknowledge our lived experience advisory group members: mitchell gee, matilda gardner & daniel munter; and our community consultants melinda spencer (program coordinator, “different journeys” autism social support group), michael davern (treasurer, “different journeys” autism social support group), and elena ashley (manager, information & services, amaze, peak body for the autism community in victoria, australia). conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors grace a. thompson the university of melbourne melissa raine the university of melbourne graceat@unimelb.edu.au susan m. hayward deakin university hannah kilpatrick the university of melbourne publishing timeline received 2 september august 2020 accepted 26 november 2020 published 17 december 2020 appendices appendix 1 online survey questions question number data theme survey question 1 demographics my age is… 2 i live in… 3 my sex at birth was… 4 i identify as being… (gender options provided) 5 my highest level of completed education is… (multiple choice) 6 have you been formally diagnosed with either autism, autism spectrum disorder (asd), asperger's disorder (ad), asperger’s syndrome (as), or pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (pdd-nos)… (multiple choice) 7 the professional that diagnosed me was (select all that apply)… (multiple choice) 8 to the best of my knowledge, i was diagnosed at age… (multiple choice) autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 9 apart from autism, asd, ad, as/pdd-nos, have you been diagnosed with another condition? (yes/no) 10 if yes, select all conditions that apply… (multiple choice) 11 music engagement on a usual day, how many hours of music do you listen to? (slider to select). 12 how do you listen to music?... (multiple choice. free text option also available) 13 which instruments do you play?... (multiple choice of instruments, plus 5-point likert scale from “never” to “at a high standard”. free text option also available) 14 do you like to sing?... (multiple choice) 15 co-design of music workshops which of the following music workshop activities would interest you the most?... (multiple choice of activities, plus 3-point likert scale “not interested”, “a little interested”, “really interested”) 16 do you have other suggestions for music activities that are planned for next year? (free text) 17 what would be your main reason to come to the music workshops?... (multiple choice, plus 3-point likert scale “not important”, “a little important”, “really important”. free text option also available) 18 how many people would you be comfortable with in each workshop?... (multiple choice) 19 should everyone in the group be on the autism spectrum (autistic)?... (multiple choice. free text option also available) 20 what would help you to participate in the music activities?... (multiple choice) 21 is there anything else that we should do to support you? (free text) 22 do you have any more advice for our workshop leaders? (free text) appendix 2 follow-up structured interview questions question number question 1 tell us a little about how you use music in your life? 2 we are planning to run music workshops for small groups of young people. in the survey, we asked about what music activities would interest you the most. can you tell us more about music activities you are interested in, and why? 3 in the survey, we asked what your main reason for coming to the music workshops would be. what is your main reason to come to the music workshops? why is this most important to you? 4 we really want to know how to make these workshops autism friendly. what makes it easier for you to participate in group music activities? 5 the workshops will have a group leader who is a musician. do you have any advice for them? autism-friendly music-making workshops thompson, raine, hayward, & kilpatrick www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 140 references allen, r., hill, e., & heaton, p. 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(2015). public policies for wellbeing with justice: a theoretical discussion based on capabilities and opportunities. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 44-62. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.3 jaya krishnakumar university of geneva copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 article public policies for wellbeing with justice: a theoretical discussion based on capabilities and opportunities jaya krishnakumar · ricardo nogales abstract: this article presents a theoretical framework that combines virtues and strengths of the capability approach (ca) and equality of opportunity (eop) approach for analyzing public policies that aim to improve individual wellbeing and social justice. we show that neither approach is sufficient on its own for this goal. it is particularly useful to combine the two approaches because the ca offers a positive way of thinking about what wellbeing is, while the eop approach provides more formal insights on how to configure public policies to achieve social justice and increase individual wellbeing from a normative perspective. we make the case that eop in its original (ex-post) conception is too heavily centered on lifestyle outcomes and oblivious to individual heterogeneity. however, we argue that it contains elements that are compatible with the ca rationale from an ex-ante point of view. individual efforts play a crucial conceptual role in our proposed combination because they influence and are influenced by individual capabilities. our optimal policy for improving wellbeing with eop is one that aims to equalize expected capabilities across different groups, characterized by circumstances, through a maximin algorithm. we provide a technical analysis of our optimal policy taking into account the influence of circumstances and policies on efforts and capabilities. keywords: capability approach, equality of opportunity, individual wellbeing, public policies. 1. introduction "if one is to intervene, then the significant life chances that people have constitute a key variable on which the state should focus” (anand et al., 2005; p4 including emphasis). today, the increase of collective wellbeing combined with justice is perceived as an essential ingredient of any development paradigm and it is not an exaggeration to say that its importance is steadily increasing. perhaps an interesting reflection of the consensus that this paradigm enjoys in the international arena is the un’s set of millennium development goals (mdg; kabeer, 2010), which not only advanced the idea that wellbeing is multidimensional in nature but also included some aspects of equality and fairness among its goals. all current dialogues on the post2015 agenda, such as the 2013 rio+20 summit, the 2014 beyond 2015 meeting of cso’s in south africa and the un’s high level panel on post-2015 development agenda, are converging towards the need for emphasizing even further in future agendas the sustainability and social justice dimensions of development. even in countries that currently articulate public policies around some seemingly alternative conceptions of development, such as bolivia with its vivir bien (ministerio de planificación del desarrollo, 2006), ecuador with its buen vivir (senplades, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 2009) or bhutan with its gross national happiness (ura, alkire, zangmo & wangdi, 2012), the improvement of collective wellbeing and its just distribution remains the common goal. the goal may be a common one, but of course the means prescribed by governments and international organizations are different because needs, priorities, contexts and concerns are also different. tax regime changes, conditional transfers, offers of public health services and goods, better nutrition, improvements in education and social security regulations are among the various recipes utilized to allow people to achieve better states of wellbeing and social justice. the natural heterogeneity of societies has always forced discussions around appropriate ways to foster wellbeing through public policies to be quite controversial (see for example ravallion, 2010, 2012). there are, however, some international theoretical agreements upon such issues of a normative nature. many modern internationally accepted frameworks for the assessment of wellbeing are grounded on the capability approach (sen, 1985, 1999, abbreviated ca), which is deeply influential amongst development scholars and in political spheres. well-known initiatives such as undp’s human development index (anand & sen, 1993; haq, 1999; sen, 1999), ophi’s multidimensional poverty index (alkire & foster, 2011) and the mdgs have been theoretically linked to the ca. the ca has also been the theoretical stepping-stone for research on novel methodologies for its operationalisation in recent years (see e.g. anand, krishnakumar & tran, 2010; anand, santos & smith, 2007; anand et al., 2009 ; kuklys, 2005; krishnakumar, 2007; krishnakumar & ballón, 2008; simon et al., 2013). this approach is rightfully praised for its positive way of thinking about what individual wellbeing is (sen 1985, 1999, 2009); its contribution to policies for improving wellbeing is much more humble. on this matter, robeyns (2003) states, “… the ca is an approach to interpersonal comparisons which argues for functionings and capabilities as the relevant evaluative space, where each application (be it theoretical or empirical) can, and probably has to, be supplemented with other theories. these other theories are normative theories (for example a normative theory of choice or a theory on the normative relevance of class, gender or race), which are in turn based on positive theories of human behavior and agency and societal process.” (pp. 45-46, emphasis own). although powerful, the theoretical approach that is the core foundation of modern wellbeing analyses was not conceived to give insights about ways to improve wellbeing with justice through policymaking. the ca does not explicitly advocate for any specific public intervention or algorithm in the quest for increased social justice and hence it is not a normative theory in that sense. in fact it strongly recommends a context and time-dependent assessment of the relevant wellbeing dimensions and their relative importance (anand, hunter & smith, 2005; arneson, 1989; robeyns, 2006). however, when thinking of public policies, supplementing the ca is an issue that should not be left lingering. inspired by fleurbaey (2007), we make the case that when aiming at fostering wellbeing with justice, policymakers inevitably face two fundamental questions: 1) while pursuing increases in collective wellbeing with justice, what is it that needs to be less unequal? 2) amongst a very broad set of feasible situations, which social states are better/more just and should be promoted by public action? answers to both questions are needed for effective policymaking. however, these answers are never straightforward, because the very concepts of wellbeing and social justice are intrinsically normative and tightly linked to ethical reasoning. it is such a complex matter that, as we have established, one single theory, even as sound as the ca, has proven incapable of giving precise public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 answers to both questions. following the above quotation from robeyns, the ca goes as far as bringing about an answer to the first question that we have raised, in the way of clearly stating that reduction (even elimination) of capability deprivation is required for a less unequal state of affairs. there is, however, another influential theoretical framework for policymaking, namely the equality of opportunity approach (roemer 1998, abbreviated eop), that has rapidly gained recognition over recent years and that has the potential of bringing a sound answer to the second question that we have raised. the eop offers well established formal insights on what should be done in order to achieve social justice from a normative perspective, saying that one needs to eliminate the influence of circumstances beyond one’s control in the process of achieving a desired outcome. this approach, however, has always been rather nuanced around what individual wellbeing is (vellentyne, 2005), so it seems to have the potential of bringing about an answer to the second question only. for an operationalisation of eop in the context of optimal taxation see roemer et al. (2003); for evaluations of public policies for children´s health see jacquet and van de gaer (2011) and van de gaer, vandenbossche & figueroa (2013); for an identification of fair and unfair income inequalities in latin america see bourguignon, ferreira and menéndez (2007) and ferreira and gignoux (2008). thus we see powerful complementarities between the two approaches, as one excels where the other one comes short. there are still few attempts to build a framework combining ca and eop for analyzing policies for wellbeing at the empirical level: two recent attempts are krishnakumar and wendelspeiss (2011) and wendelspeiss (2013). one has to acknowledge that there are notable similarities between the two approaches (vallentyne, 2005; igersheim, 2006), which have often led scholars to perceive that they provide similar elements of analysis regarding wellbeing and social justice and do not advance a theoretical combination. however, as stated by chiappero martinetti1 (2009), there are also substantial conceptual and practical differences between the two approaches, as the mechanisms that lead to personal lifestyle outcomes and wellbeing, and their possible links to public policies, are quite different from one theory to the other. in this paper, we defend the idea that combining these theories sheds new and useful light to understand wellbeing and its relation to public policies because of the way they complement positive and normative reasoning, giving answers to both our questions. throughout this document, we make the case that neither ca nor eop, on its own, presents a combination of wellbeing and justice that can provide formal policy guidelines for improving wellbeing with justice through an appropriate optimality principle. we present arguments in search of clear answers to both our questions and show that an ordered integration of elements from both approaches leads to a plausible solution. the paper is structured as follows: in section 2 we present some basic statements of sen’s and roemer’s theories, briefly recalling their essentials. in sections 3 and 4 we analyze plausible responses to the two questions raised in these introductory paragraphs, respectively, around the ca and the eop approach. in section 5 we propose a theoretical combination as well as a technical derivation of our optimal policy and illustrate its usefulness. section 6 concludes. 1 chiappero martinetti analyzes differences and similarities between the two theories but never attempts a combination. public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 2. brief review of basic statements of sen and roemer in modern development economics literature, sen’s and roemer’s theories are often categorized within the same framework of wellbeing and social justice contributions (vallentyne, 2005). indeed, there are clear similarities between them. they both have origins in criticism of utilitarianism and a monetary approach to wellbeing, i.e. only consideration of personal satisfaction or wealth as measures of personal wellbeing, and coincide in advocating that attention be paid to other aspects that make up an individual’s life, such as the nature of her occupation, living conditions, health status, education, the social and institutional setup, etc. both theories have philosophical origins in rawls’ principles for social justice (rawls 1971; 1999): everyone is entitled to an adequate set of liberties, so long as they are compatible with the same liberties for others; and everyone is entitled to a fair equality of opportunities. they also coincide in acknowledging that one should go beyond outcome indicators and rather look at the underlying choice sets and circumstances. however, the ca’s strength relies in helping to understand better what individual wellbeing is, i.e. it is a positive theory of wellbeing, whereas the eop contributes greatly to the ways for improving individual wellbeing with justice, i.e. it is a normative theory of policymaking. let us briefly recall the fundamentals of each theory to support this idea and bring out the different elements of an answer to our guiding questions. 2.1 essentials of the capability approach sen’s ca has become a very important theory in modern economic studies, defining what we currently understand as human development (see for example, anand et al., 2005). in this approach, human development and wellbeing are related to the sets of doings and beings from which a person has the ability to choose; the notions of liberty and freedom are of paramount importance within sen’s theory. in order to understand the richness and the broad way of thinking offered by the ca, it is key to briefly recall the distinctions among the different key concepts of resources/means, functionings and capabilities. functionings are life states and activities, objective and subjective (vallentyne, 2005; alkire, 2013), that are willingly and freely chosen, given a set of means and resources as well as social, political, family and cultural conditions. capabilities are the set of all potential (feasible) functionings from which a person can freely chose. thus, capabilities determine achieved functionings by a process of free choice by the individual in a particular setting. capabilities are essentially unobservable, since they regroup possible non-materialized functionings with the effectively realized ones. within this approach, an individual’s wellbeing is increased when her capabilities are increased, as the latter have an intrinsic value in terms of the freedom to choose a valued life. capabilities are personal and individually formed by ‘converting’ the means and resources a person has, which include social and cultural characteristics, public/private endowments, commodities, services, norms, etc. (comim, 2001). the conversion process for the internalization of these resources and means is personal and heterogeneous (chiappero martinetti & salardi, 2008). thus, the approach is essentially ethically individualistic (robeyns, 2006) in the sense that it puts the human being’s freedom to choose at the heart of any wellbeing assessment, over and above considerations at a group level or governmental actions. figure 1 below presents a diagram that summarizes the above statements regarding the process of construction of an individual’s wellbeing within the ca. the capability set for a generic individual i is formally expressed as follows (sen, 1985): public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 𝑄𝑖 = {𝑏𝑖 | 𝑏𝑖 = 𝑓𝑖 (𝑐𝑖 (𝑥𝑖 , 𝑧𝑖 )) } (1) with the notations being defined in the diagram below. figure 1: capability approach in a diagram we denote as b*i the vector of achieved functionings, which is a particular vector-element of 𝑄𝑖 chosen by the individual. the approach’s concentration on individual heterogeneity is evident and marks one of its most celebrated contributions to social justice literature. nevertheless, the approach does not fail to recognize the importance of social constructions and relations for the whole process leading to the determination of these freedoms, such as legal rights, family history, culture and religion. public policies are a part of these pertinent surrounding conditions that shape an individual’s wellbeing, yet, as we have shown, the ca is almost silent concerning what kind of public actions are better for increasing individual wellbeing, while fostering social justice at the same time. 2.2 essentials of the equality of opportunity approach roemer’s eop approach has become a recognized pillar of normative public policymaking and assessment. it has introduced a way of thinking about public policy that is coherent with economic development ‘with justice’, promoting the equalization of life chances amongst individuals, arguing that an individual’s lifestyle should be a function of her effort and choices, but not of characteristics she cannot or could not control. indeed, the eop approach builds on the differentiation of aspects that are beyond an individual’s control but influence her lifestyle outcomes or advantages, called circumstances, from aspects that have their origin in autonomous and willingly taken decisions that also exert such an influence, which roemer proposes to call efforts. in the eop approach, people sharing the same circumstances are grouped within a type. the lifestyle outcomes observed in a type constitute the achievable advantages for any member of the type and constitute their – common – opportunities set. within a type, differences in outcomes can be attributed only to differences in efforts and constitute ethically acceptable differences between personal lifestyles. although not originally proposed by roemer (1998), many groundbreaking empirical operationalizations of the eop approach have successfully proven that one needs to take into account the fact that individual effort is significantly influenced by circumstances (bourguignon et al., 2007; ferreira & gignoux, 2008). building on bourguignon et al. (2007), we propose the schematic representation of the eop approach given in figure 2 below for a generic individual i. capability set: qi vector of achieved functionings: b*i means/resources: xi pertinent surrounding conditions: zi personal choice: fi conversion process: ci public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 figure 2: equality of opportunity approach in a diagram the diagram in figure 2 can be translated into the following system of equations: 𝑦𝑖 = 𝑓(𝑥𝑖 , 𝑒𝑖 , 𝑝) (2) 𝑒𝑖 = 𝑔(𝑥𝑖 ) (3) within a given type 𝑡 = 1 … 𝑇 , characterized by some particular circumstance variables say, gender or ethnicity, advantages yi,t are a function of the degree or amount of effort exerted ei,t and public policies pt, which could be thought to be type specific (roemer, 1998) i.e. 𝑦𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑦𝑡 (𝑒𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑝𝑡 ). as effort is hard to observe directly, one can consider a distribution of efforts within each type t and divide it into centiles, identifying the level of effort, or relative effort, exerted by each individual in this type compared to all the other individuals within the same type. since, within a type, differences in outcomes are attributable only to difference in degree of effort exerted, the effort distribution is conceptually merged to that of the outcomes of the type. because of this perfect correspondence, it is possible to represent the outcomes of type t as 𝑦𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝑡 ), where 𝜋 is a centile of the effort distribution. the eop advocates for the recognition of the ethical fact that an individual should not be held responsible for what is beyond her control and/or choice; thus individual responsibility and absence of impact of circumstances beyond control are put upfront in the assessment of a person´s lifestyle (igersheim, 2006). it is around this recommendation that the eop approach has managed to develop a practical and logical formalization for policymaking yielding several empirical studies on optimal public interventions for social justice (cogneau & gignoux, 2008; jacquet & van de gaer, 2011; van de gaer et al. 2013; roemer et al., 2003). however, we have established that, while concentrating on normative aspects, this approach does not present an enriched positive concept of individual wellbeing. 3. while pursuing increased collective wellbeing with justice, what is it that needs to be less unequal? evidently, this question is far from being novel, but different answers are still in debate (cf. e.g. ruggeri-laderchi, saith & stewart, 2003). amongst others, in 1980, sen had famously analyzed it in one of his most influential academic pieces, “equality of what?” and within his remarkable series of academic contributions a path-setting answer was given: capabilities. from the beginning, sen’s concern was linked to his disagreement with a somewhat tacit public consensus around the articulation of public policies seeking to equalize perceptions of outcomes / advantages: yi effort: ei circumstances: xi public policies: p public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 individual satisfaction, as mandates utilitarianism and/or the equalization of basic goods (which include individual liberties and material resources), as suggested by rawlsian prescription. according to sen, the concept of equality of resources fails to take into account differences amongst individuals in terms of needs, desires and abilities, which, as we have stressed before, he considers to be fundamental for understanding individual wellbeing and, ultimately, social justice. indeed, for sen, the concept of individual wellbeing is far too complex and rich to be merged solely with the concepts of wealth or utility (satisfaction) and, above all, to be considered one-dimensional. among development scholars and policymakers, sen’s ideas have greatly overpowered other approaches to wellbeing, such as the monetary approach that sees consumption capacities as a synonym of wellbeing (ruggeri-laderchi et al., 2003) and the neoclassical welfarist point of view that focuses on the concept of utility, synonym of individual perception of satisfaction, thus as wellbeing (blackorby & bossert, 2008; schokkaert, 2007). although consumption capacities are an important part of wellbeing and the concept of utility, being the basic pillar of neoclassical microeconomics, constitutes one of the most useful constructions in welfare economics, it is clear that they have important limitations for wellbeing and social justice analyses (alkire & foster, 2011). neither concept pays attention to the underlying factors from which those rational choices emerge because they are essentially one-dimensional (robeyns, 2006), thus, offering a ‘thin informational basis’ (anand et al., 2009) for wellbeing assessment. sen has contributed greatly to today’s consensus that wellbeing is essentially multidimensional (alkire & foster, 2011; ravallion, 2010, 2012; ura et al., 2012). by virtue of the ca, it is now accepted that personal capability sets should be the measure of individual wellbeing; but the latter is difficult to directly observe given its counterfactual nature. in general, studies on the measurement of capabilities fall under two categories: a) studies that directly measure capability sets through questionnaires on people’s choices and functionings (e.g. anand et al., 2005, 2009; anand & van hees, 2006), and b) studies that consider the observed functionings as partial manifestations of the capability set and resort to latent variable methodology for making inferences on capability sets using the observed indicators as well as other exogenous determinants of capabilities (e.g. anand et al., 2010; di tommaso, 2007; krishnakumar, 2007; krishnakumar & ballón, 2008). the same richness in perspective regarding individual wellbeing is not explicit in roemer’s work, nor is there an explicit recognition of lifestyle heterogeneity. thus the search for equality of opportunity in the original sense of roemer (1998) does not provide suitable elements for answering the question at hand in this section. let us present the following arguments supporting this affirmation. first, even if the eop is as critical as the ca of utilitarianism as a theoretical basis for appraising social justice , it has mainly tended to consider one-dimensional outcomes such as education, health or wealth, except for a very few recent empirical operationalizations with multidimensional observable outcomes. perhaps some of the most prominent amongst the latter are yalonetzky’s (2012) efforts to create a dissimilarity index for inequality assessment, wendelspeiss’ (2013) multidimensional latent variable approach and brunori, ferreira & peragine’s (2013) international comparisons of inequality of opportunity. these exceptions aside, the vast majority of empirical applications of eop follow the traditional romerian flow by proposing one specific outcome for equalization in the quest for social justice and only one at a time (igersheim, 2006). second, we perceive a clear distinction between the concepts of opportunity and capability. on the one hand, as suggested by the eop, an opportunity is a situation that presents itself to an public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 individual making use of which, and depending on her own efforts and skills, she will be able to achieve a certain outcome or lifestyle. thus opportunities are not individual but common to a group of individuals that share the same circumstances (i.e. to each type in roemer’s terminology). on the other hand, the ca stresses that the concept of capability is unequivocally individual and personal. the concepts of opportunity and capability, therefore, operate at different levels of measurement and only the latter tend to take into account individual heterogeneity. third, according to the eop, every member of a certain type can seize opportunities without distinction between each other. in effect, the only difference in terms of outcome between individuals of the same type is their effort and therefore, their own responsibility (roemer, 1998). however, building on the ca, we stress that each individual always seizes opportunities differently from another, and that each individual personally (although, also influenced by factors other than personal) forms her own set of capabilities. let us close this section illustrating the superiority of the ca to answer our first question by virtue of its multidimensional and individually heterogeneous conception of wellbeing. in practice, it is usual to target a specific aspect of wellbeing when designing and implementing a public policy. however, spillovers around the target are undeniable and should never be left aside, for to do so would imply a drastic underestimation of the impact and blur possible ways of improving or correcting the policy. take for instance a public policy aiming to improve nutrition of children aged 0-6, such as a complementary nutrition program. the impacts of such a policy go far beyond the children’s nutrition status as measured, for instance, by ratios combining variables such as height, weight and age; it enhances learning possibilities, recreational capacities and opportunities to develop talents in sports, music and so on, all of which are unobservable aspects of the children’s wellbeing and all of which will always be imperfectly captured, even when resorting to multidimensional observable outcomes assessment. furthermore, the children’s wellbeing is undeniably influenced by the characteristics, values, culture and habits of their households and few would agree these important characteristics can be taken as homogeneous within a certain type, say, female indigenous children living in rural areas. therefore, in view of the fact that we adopt the ca in defining wellbeing as the freedom to achieve, which is in turn represented by the capability set, we would like to posit the idea that capability sets (i.e. potential functionings) and not achieved functionings or outcomes should be the object of equalization in the quest for social justice. we stand by this argument, even if capability sets are heterogeneous and may not be directly observed due to their ‘potential’ nature, thus posing a formidable challenge for practical purposes. policy assessment and design based only on eop leaves important theoretical gaps concerning suitable answers to our first question. 4. which social states are better/more just and should be promoted by public action? once one establishes that the appropriate concept of wellbeing is the capability set, it is clear that an expansion and, ideally, an equalization of individuals’ capability sets should be the ultimate social objective for development. turning to the second question that guides us through this paper, the ca, by itself, falls short; it does not go further to elaborate on actual ways of achieving these goals. sen (2009) himself has stated: “the capability perspective does point to the central relevance of the inequality of capabilities in the assessment of social disparities, but it does not, on its own, propose any specific formula for public decisions” (p. 232). public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 the ca’s major strengths, namely the broadness and the context-based character of the framework that it offers, might just be its weakness in terms of its lack of possible suggestions on what can or should be done to increase social justice. the ca limits itself to advocating for the equalization of capabilities as a normative rule for social justice, implying that a fair distribution of potential functionings amongst members of a society ought to be the public goal (fleurbaey, 2007). the need for further elements other than those depicted in the ca is evident for giving a plausible answer to our second question. we stress that these elements cannot come from traditional normative prescriptions inspired from neoclassical welfare economics. although they are deeply influential for choosing the ‘right’ social states, these prescriptions rely heavily on the extrapolation of the notion of individual utility to that of social utility. general equilibrium modeling fits well as a widely known example of such practice (devarajan & robinson, 2002). this arrovian view on social choice has also been criticized for having a thin informational basis, focusing exclusively on individuals’ satisfaction or happiness for the maximization of some aggregation of the latter, prior to the search for the best allocations of lifestyle outcomes. because of these facts, we argue that traditional normative and theoretical schemes from neoclassical welfare economics are clearly unsuitable supplements to the ca in the sense described in the introductory paragraphs by robeyns (see the quotation in section 1, with own emphasis). according to pignataro (2012), the last 15 years have witnessed a notable revolution in terms of thinking about social justice and what should be perceived as a fair social state and how to promote it. roemer’s eop (roemer, 1998) stands out in this evolution of thinking and in our opinion provides a suitable supplement to the ca. in the remainder of this section, let us present ordered arguments supporting this idea and formally identify the elements of the eop that are compatible with the ca’s rationale. the principal ideal of eop is to achieve a social state in which circumstances do not bear any influence on people’s outcomes, either directly or indirectly through influences over the efforts people make to achieve them. this irrelevance of circumstances is a condition for a romerian leveling of the playing field conception of social justice. this just society may be utopic, but this way of thinking has undeniably shed a clear light on plausible governmental interventions to promote this ideal. for instance, roemer et al. (2003) have assessed the extent to which reigning fiscal regimes in eleven countries contribute to equalizing opportunities for income acquisition based on the eop approach. also based on this approach, but within a different empirical framework and operational model, betts and roemer (2005) have analyzed the contribution of an educational finance reform in the usa to the equalization of opportunities for education. indeed, in the eop there exists a notion of optimal public policy for social justice, and it is one entailing equality of opportunities to achieve a certain outcome. today, the discussion on the selection of such socially optimal public policies is of great importance in academic circles (pignataro, 2012). according to ramos and van de gaer (2012), there are two conflicting practical programs for identifying eop optimal public policies. the first was proposed by roemer himself in 1998 and aims to eliminate inequality of outcomes for individuals exerting the same effort, regardless of their type. this program is called ex-post equality of opportunity. mathematically, the operationalization of ex-post equality of opportunity builds directly on rawls’ prescription of focusing on the least advantaged people. according to the ex-post eop, the optimal public policy is formed by a set of specific public actions 𝑝𝜋 , where 𝜋 is a centile of the effort distributions of all types, so that every 𝑝𝜋 maximizes the outcome of the least public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 advantaged individuals having exerted the same degree of effort 𝜋 in all types. using the notation introduced before, this is formalized by: max 𝑝𝜋 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 ) (4) evidently, as it is impractical to find an optimal public policy for every centile, roemer invokes outcome-based tools to define a single optimal public policy compatible with social justice, p, as the one that helps achieving maximization of the average advantage of the least favored across every degree of effort. formally, this policy solves the following optimization program: max 𝑝 ∑𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝜋 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 ) or max 𝑝 𝐸[min𝑡 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 )] (5) the arguments that we have presented make it clear that this program is too heavily centered on outcomes, leading to clear theoretical incompatibilities with the ca. as the ex-post program is the original program proposed by roemer, this is perhaps one of the reasons economic and human development scholars have neither insistently pushed forward to build a mix of sen’s and roemer’s theories, nor searched for empirical endeavors founded on such a possible mix. in effect, this program compares outcomes across individuals and explicitly seeks to pull the least advantaged individuals upwards, identifying these people based on their outcomes. the ex-post framework follows the compensation principle, suggesting public policies that contribute to the equalization of outcomes for individuals exerting the same level of effort under different circumstances (pignataro, 2012). there is, however, a second program for achieving equality of opportunity, whose advancement is generally attributed in the literature to van de gaer (see e.g. van de gaer (1993); ramos & van de gaer (2012)) and which is concerned with the equalization of prospects of outcomes for every individual, regardless of their type. this program is called ex-ante equality of opportunity and it advocates in favor of a policy allowing the maximization of the prospects of outcomes (potential outcome) of the least advantaged type in a society, as measured by the average of the outcomes over all the members of that type: max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 ∑𝜋 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 ) or max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝐸𝜋 [𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 )] (6) even if the formalization of this program differs only on the inversion of the sum and min operators, the implications for a conceptual compatibility between the eop approach and the ca are of paramount importance. in the ex-ante approach, the degree or level of effort are to be left unobserved, as was proposed in the original romerian eop conception, but remains what ultimately determines the differences of outcomes within a type; it respects individual heterogeneity. the ex-ante program builds on the reward principle of analyzing differences in outcomes for individuals under the same circumstances (pignataro, 2012). implicitly, there should not be any kind of public intervention attempting to equalize outcomes that originate from each individual’s responsibility. therefore the answer to our second question is that public policies should foster equality of opportunity, conceived as a situation where sets of possible outcomes are the same for every type within a society. furthermore, policy priority is given to pulling up the least-advantaged type distribution of outcomes and for that, it is a rawlsian conception of equality of opportunity. 5. combination based on the preceding discussion, we propose to deepen the consideration of individual capability sets as the multidimensional unobserved outcome of an eop-based theoretical framework in the quest for policymaking for wellbeing with justice. we believe that this constitutes another step forward in the operationalization of the ca for policymaking. public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 we propose the conceptual scheme in figure 3 below to represent the theoretical linkages that will be highlighted in this section. figure 3: scheme of a capability approach-based equality of opportunity framework let us start our reasoning and the explanation of the scheme recalling that wellbeing, measured by the capability set, is multidimensional and intrinsically unobservable due to its counterfactual nature and, according to eop, it is determined by individual efforts, which are also unobservable and reflect an individual sense of responsibility. thus efforts are essential for understanding wellbeing, as is emphasized by roemer throughout his work (roemer, 1998; roemer et al., 2003; see also betts & roemer, 2005). nevertheless, in most empirical eop-based work the amount of effort exerted by a person has been treated as a residual error term, with no further consideration for its estimation (see for example bourguignon et al., 2007; cogneau & gignoux, 2008; roemer et al., 2003). therefore the combination that we propose introduces a causal relationship between unobservable or latent variables that remains empirically understudied in public policy and economic development literature and we make the case that it can deliver important results for understanding and assessing the role of public policies for wellbeing. we postulate the existence of a two-way relationship between capabilities and efforts, which together lead to multiple achieved outcomes or functionings, thus capturing the ca’s multidimensional essence. we argue that efforts are shaped by capabilities by virtue of the individual nature of the decision-making process on efforts. we reason that potential feasible lifestyle outcomes of a person configure the practical choices and actions she makes in order to achieve the outcomes that suit her best, according to her needs, tastes and desires. efforts, in turn, can affect capabilities by bringing in more potential outcomes within the capability set, expanding lifestyle possibilities for people to choose from. both efforts and capabilities are in turn influenced by individual characteristics and surrounding features, called circumstances. these include: i) individual characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and age; ii) other multilevel aspects concerning a) family and household, such as the composition, living conditions, religion and culture and b) community, such as the environment, the language spoken, or the level of local economic development. in our combination, public policies are also a part of the environment as the ca mandates, and according to the ex-ante framework of the eop such policies should aim at equalizing opportunities by reducing the role played by circumstances beyond one’s control in the determination of capabilities and efforts. thus public policies may not explicitly shape public policies individual characteristics achieved functionings or outcomes /advantages capabilitiesi effortsi family and community factors (social circumstances) public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 circumstances such as gender, household composition or language spoken in the community, but they do shape the extent to which these circumstances affect an individual’s capabilities and efforts. thus, building on rawlsian maximin rationale, which states that a society would achieve justice and equality when prospects of life for the least fortunate are as great as they can be (rawls, 1971, 1999), an optimal policy for equalization of capability sets across types 𝑡 = 1 … 𝑇 would be given by: max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 ∑ 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝑖∈𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒 𝑡 or max 𝑝 𝐸𝑄𝑚𝑖𝑛 (7) where 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 is the capability set of the i-th individual belonging to type 𝑡 and 𝐸𝑄𝑚𝑖𝑛 is the average capability set of the least advantaged type. here we would like to recall some key equations introduced by sen (1985) for defining capabilities so that we are clear as to what is being maximized. let 𝑥𝑖 be the commodity vector possessed by an individual 𝑖. the individual makes use of the characteristics of the commodities in order to 'convert' the resources into a functioning, i.e a 'being' or a 'doing'. we take the term 'commodity' in a large sense, including personal resources as well as social and institutional infra-structural support or circumstances, i.e all that enters the conversion process. the conversion function is written as: bi = 𝑓𝑖 (𝑐(𝑥𝑖 )) (8) note that given the same 𝑥𝑖 achieved functioning can be different from one individual to another due to the dependence of f on i as personal characteristics such as age, gender, health status, tastes, and the effort put in by the individual, all of which play an important role in the conversion process. the set of all functionings that can be potentially achieved using the commodity vector is called the capability set: 𝑄𝑖 = {𝑏𝑖 |𝑏𝑖 = 𝑓𝑖 (𝑐(𝑥𝑖 )), for some 𝑓𝑖 and for some 𝑥𝑖 } (9) thus we are not maximizing utility in (7), neither are we maximizing resources or outcomes (achieved functionings). it is indeed the set of feasible functionings of an individual, in other words her freedom to achieve valued things in life, which we seek to maximize in our approach. in our setting, each individual i belongs to a type t and hence every individual will have a double index i,t from now on. as expressed in equation (7), our optimal policy for wellbeing with justice is one which maximizes the capability sets (feasible outcomes) for the least favored. in our model, the capability set depends on personal circumstances and efforts, and the efforts themselves can in turn be influenced by circumstances. thus 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) (10) where circumstances are included in 𝑥𝑖,𝑡 and 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 denotes the effort. in roemer's reasoning, the most disadvantaged type identifies the least favored and hence it represents a group rather than a single individual. thus we take the expected feasible outcome (or the expected capability set) of the least favored type as our objective function in order to be consistent with the ex-ante eop approach. then the optimization program can be written as: max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝐸 [𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) |𝑥𝑖,𝑡 ] (11) for simplicity of notation, let us denote the expectation as: 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 ≡ 𝐸 [𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) |𝑥𝑖,𝑡 ] and the minimum as: public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ≡ min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (12) in a very general setting, 𝐸 [𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) |𝑥𝑖,𝑡 ] can be different from one individual to another and hence we keep the index i in the expectation. thus the ‘optimal’ policy will be given by 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 such that 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 is maximum 2, i.e. we should have 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑝 = 0 at 𝑝 = 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 . note that the solution could also vary from one type to another. thus, 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 denotes the optimal policy applied to an individual i belonging to the least favored type3. now, rather than deriving the optimal policy, if we want to see how effective a policy is in promoting eop (or reducing inequality of opportunity) following roemer's idea, we can evaluate to what extent the policy is able to change the impact of a generic circumstance variable 𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 of an individual i belonging to the least favored type on her expected capability set 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛. the effect of circumstance for the least favored type can be computed as: 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (13) where the derivatives are to be calculated using equation (10). let us denote: 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛) ≡ 𝑔𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛(𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) (14) 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛) ≡ ℎ𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) (15) the first function above depicts the direct impact of circumstances on expected capability sets and the second depicts their indirect impact through effort. thus the total effect of circumstances as a function of public policies is given by: 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝑔𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛(𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) ≡ 𝑘𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛(𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) (16) therefore, the condition that a public policy must fulfill in order to be eop-optimal, i.e. to nullify the effect of circumstances on expected capability sets for the least favored type, is given by: 𝑘𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝 ∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) = 0 (17) denoting this optimal policy as 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 . now, if we would like to derive the optimal policy for any type t in general and not necessarily the least favored one, we would just need to replace 'min' by 't' in the above derivation and the optimal policy would then be given by 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑡 such that: 𝑘𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝 ∗ 𝑖,𝑡 ) = 0 (18) with 𝑘𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑖,𝑡 ) ≡ 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑔𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑖,𝑡 ) + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑡 ℎ𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑖,𝑡 ) (19) as an illustration we present a case in which the above relations take a linear form, the policy value is common to all individuals belonging to a given type, and the coefficients are also invariant within a given type. let 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑥′𝑖,𝑡 (𝐴𝑡 + 𝐵𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ) + 𝑒′𝑖,𝑡 (𝐶𝑡 + 𝐷𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ) + 𝑧′𝑖 𝐹𝑡 (20) 2 a policy p has an impact on wellbeing through its influence on the effect of circumstance variables on capabilities or efforts (see later). 3 in practice, the policy variable will probably take the same value for all individuals belonging to the same type. however, here we present a very general theoretical setting in which it can vary from one individual to another. public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑥′𝑖,𝑡 𝐺𝑡 + 𝑧′𝑖 𝐻𝑡 (21) (where 𝑧′𝑖 represents a vector of personal characteristics) then, 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑔𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑡 ) + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑡 ℎ𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑡 ) ≡ 𝑘𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑡 ) = 𝐴𝑡 + 𝐵𝑡 𝑝𝑡 + 𝐺𝑡 (𝐶𝑡 + 𝐷𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ) (22) and the optimal policy is 𝑝𝑡 ∗ such that: 𝐴𝑡 + 𝐵𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ∗ + 𝐺(𝐶𝑡 + 𝐷𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ∗) = 0 (23) let us stress that the observable aspects of a person's lifestyle, call them either outcomes or functionings, are not the essence of the optimization program. the reason is two-fold. first, they are not a person's wellbeing according to the ca but only partial manifestations of her wellbeing. second, a person's actual lifestyle is ultimately a personal choice. in other words, we advocate for a theoretical framework in which public policies do not directly aim at influencing a person's lifestyle but act in an indirect way by promoting the enabling factors of capabilities and efforts (potential lifestyles), leaving the actual choice to the individual, thus respecting her freedom. in order to clarify the difference between the proposed theoretical framework and separate eop and ca-based theoretical frameworks, let us consider the following example. there are important public policies, more precisely social policies, built around conditional cash transfers for students, that aim to diminish rates of school abandonment, increase their academic performance and ultimately, their wellbeing and promote justice within society (bolivia’s bono juancito pinto is an example of such a policy, see yañez, 2012). in this concrete case, the two questions that have guided our discussion could take the following form: 1) what are we making less unequal through this conditional transfer? 2) what is the adequate amount for the cash transfer to promote equality? a plausible answer to the first question from a ‘pure’ eop perspective would state that one needs to identify one observable outcome or advantage enjoyed by the beneficiaries that has a link to the cash transfer, say the schooling gap, defined as the difference between the years of schooling a person should have given her age and her actual years of schooling. this variable would constitute the proxy of opportunities for education and ultimately wellbeing, which is what the cash transfer aims at equalizing. a traditional eop-based theoretical framework adopting an ex-ante program for equality of opportunity would bring about an answer to the second question stressing that the cash transfer has a direct impact on the expected schooling gap. it would go on to advocate for seeking an amount of the transfer so that expected schooling gap is minimized (i.e. opportunities for education are maximized) for the least favored type of people, say indigenous females. within this type, schooling gap differences, i.e. wellbeing differences, would then be the absolute responsibility of the beneficiaries or fruit of their efforts, as they all are supposed to share the same circumstances. a traditional ca-based framework would stress that schooling gap is a rather oversimplified proxy of the beneficiaries’ wellbeing and that the latter should be measured, for instance, as their capability to be educated (not to be confused with individuals’ inherent abilities like intelligence). a single observed outcome for gauging such a broad concept is clearly insufficient and unnecessary; the policy might also influence other aspects of wellbeing that can be observed, such as the ability to read and to understand abstract logic reasoning (by increasing the possibility of buying more books using the extra cash and/or hiring a tutor) or the ability to read foreign languages (by increasing the possibility of entering a language institute). the ca would go on to stress that the actual schooling gap is, to some extent, a choice among other feasible public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 options of the beneficiaries. thus it would suggest only an indirect impact of the cash transfer on the schooling gap, through the expansion of the beneficiaries’ capability to be educated. however, due to the absence of any prescriptions regarding how to go about achieving equality of opportunity in these multidimensional aspects, the ca does not give a plausible answer for the second question apart from the statement: the greater the capability to be educated for all beneficiaries, the better. the combination that we propose would in fact lead to a precise and operational answer to both the questions combining remarkable elements of both approaches. to answer the first question, the combined approach would advocate for the multiplicity of outcomes for gauging wellbeing, inheriting the logic of the ca that we just presented. not only would our approach take into account the multidimensional aspect of wellbeing, but it would also respect the beneficiaries’ freedom to choose, suggesting only an indirect influence of the transfer over all outcomes. to answer the second question, our combination would inherit the rationale of the eop, arguing in favor of the equalization of capability to be educated by searching for an amount of the transfer that maximizes this capability for the ‘least capable’ across different types and ideally annuls the effect of circumstances on the capability of being educated. the combination would not suggest an equalization of any outcome, in respect of individual’s freedom to choose. furthermore, the search of this adequate amount of transfer would not let effort be considered as a residual variable; it is an important determinant of actual outcomes. effort would be, at least, partially gauged by some observable indicators, such as daily hours of study and frequency of visits to the school library. thus effort would not be considered as an absolute personal responsibility; each of the effort indicators that we mention is surely influenced by the beneficiaries’ capability to be educated and the converse is also true. 6. concluding remarks the quest for improved collective wellbeing with justice has always been a priority for most of the economic and political constructs that we know of. in this paper, we have attempted to show that there exist powerful philosophical and theoretical frameworks that contain important elements, which can and should be combined to come up with operational answers to this question. in particular, we rely on two theories that have recently gained an overwhelmingly increasing visibility in academic and policy circles, namely the capability approach and the equality of opportunity approach. one of the main contributions we want to make in this paper is to put on the table some ordered arguments for the fact that neither of these leading theories alone possesses sufficient theoretical elements to guide policymaking for wellbeing with justice. thus we advocate for a theoretical construction that builds on these two approaches to provide insight on how to design and evaluate policies for improvement of wellbeing with social justice. we show how the similarities and differences between the two approaches are complementary to each other and how they can help to set a solid theoretical basis for the assessment and design of public policies that seek to improve social justice. consequently, there are ways to explore the issue without having to build an entirely new approach. the particular manner in which we propose to combine the two theories has, to our knowledge, not been explored in the related literature. we show that the ex-post framework of the equality of opportunity approach, which is its original conception, is too heavily centered on people’s lifestyle outcomes, with too little theoretical consideration for individual heterogeneity and choice. however, the ex-ante framework of the equality of opportunity approach depicts elements that are compatible with public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 the logic of the capability approach, in the sense that both respect individual heterogeneity and freedom, and do not aim at equalization of results as a social justice paradigm. in the combination that is proposed, we argue for the need to explicitly consider the role of efforts while analyzing public policies and their link to wellbeing and justice. indeed, the line of reasoning that we present makes the case that individual efforts influence and are influenced by individual capabilities, but to our knowledge, there are no theoretical attempts in the existing literature to relate these two key variables in the understanding of wellbeing. efforts have often been treated as a residual variable in most empirical applications of the equality of opportunity approach, due to its unobservable nature. we stress that this is not an insurmountable obstacle as, even if potential achievements cannot be observed due to their counterfactual nature, there are empirical endeavors that have successfully taken account of this feature in their operationalization methodology. a similar approach can also be followed for operationalizing ‘effort’. in other words, technical difficulties for gauging bidirectional causal relations between unobservable variables should not hinder theoretical developments that can shed important light for understanding wellbeing and its relation to public policies. therefore, while designing and assessing public policies, one needs to target and equalize capability sets of individuals, rather than their outcomes. this is done through a maximin algorithm that maximizes the capability set of the group that is the least favored in terms of circumstances while taking into account the influence of circumstances and policies on capabilities and efforts, and explicitly incorporating interdependencies between the latter two variables. we define this ‘well-being with justice’ problem in a technical way and discuss the solution from an optimal public policy angle. we are aware that the main challenges for the empirical application of our theoretical framework 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(2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.523 tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 article professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation tim lomas · itai ivtzan abstract: although positive psychology (pp) was initially conceived as more a shift in perspective (towards the “positive”) than a new field per se, in pragmatic terms, it is arguably beginning to function as a distinct discipline, with people self-identifying as “positive psychologists.” thus, we contend it is time for the field to start developing a system of professional (e.g., ethical) guidelines to inform the practice of pp. to this end, we outline one such possible system, drawing on guidelines in counselling and psychotherapy. moreover, we argue for the creation of two tiers of professional identity within pp. firstly, people with a master’s qualification in pp might label themselves “positive psychology practitioners.” secondly, we raise the possibility of creating a professional doctorate in pp which would enable graduates to assume the title of “positive psychologist.” we hope that this paper will contribute towards a dialogue within the field around these issues, helping pp to develop further over the years ahead. keywords: positive psychology, ethical practice, reflective practice, regulation; accreditation 1. introduction it is now almost 20 years since the emergence of positive psychology (pp). in that time, the field has gone from strength to strength. for instance, a wealth of literature has been generated, with over 18,000 papers identified by rusk and waters (2013) as pertaining to pp. most saliently, in the context of the present paper, there is an extensive offering of pp courses across the globe, at all educational levels, including at least 12 postgraduate master’s programmes in applied positive psychology (‘mapp’ courses). applied pp is ‘the application of positive psychology research to the facilitation of optimal human functioning’ (linley & joseph, 2004, p. 4). as such, according to aristotle’s (350 bce) classification of human activities – poiēsis (productive and/or creative disciplines) theōria (the pursuit of knowledge) and praxis (practical disciplines) – applied pp might be regarded as a form of praxis, defined as “practical action informed by theory” (foster, 1986, p. 96). students on such courses learn to apply pp in real-life settings, for example, through pp interventions (ppis), i.e., activities or practices designed to improve wellbeing (parks & biswas-diener, 2014). these developments are, of course, all hugely welcome, and are testament to the enthusiasm and excitement that the field has generated, and, indeed, the personal, professional and academic needs that it has fulfilled. however, the speed and extent of these developments has generated a significant potential problem: the field is, as yet, essentially unregulated as a whole. this means that there are no agreed standards or formal guidelines concerning how pp should be used in real-life settings. this lack of regulation is the issue that this paper seeks to highlight, and to suggest some possible solutions to. it must be emphasised that these are not the only possible http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 solutions, and we are not aiming to be prescriptive or dogmatic in our recommendations. rather, the aim is to float some potential responses to these issues, thereby contributing to a dialogue around ethics and regulation – already set in motion by leading figures in pp, such as handelsman, knapp, and gottlieb (2009) and vella-brodrick (2011, 2014) – thus assisting the ongoing development of the field. these earlier works have made valuable suggestions around the kind of ethical principles that should be at the heart of best practice within pp; for instance, vella-brodrick (2014) highlights the importance of integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. building on such ideas, the current paper offers a number of suggestions for how such principles might be instantiated in practical terms. the paper comprises a number of sections. first, we outline the reasons why we feel pp constitutes a distinct field that needs regulation, and then discuss why it might be helpful, and, indeed, necessary, to “professionalise” the field. next, we introduce the notion of ethics, and explain why pp would benefit from an ethical framework to guide its practitioners. we then introduce the ethical framework of the british association of counselling and psychotherapy, since we feel that this is a set of guidelines that pp could adopt or at least adapt (though we recognise that there are other similar frameworks that could be drawn on). following that, we introduce two practical structures that might be of help in upholding an ethical framework, namely, supervision and reflective practice. finally, we discuss some possible suggestions for professionalising the field. this includes: (a) creating a non-accredited professional identity of a “positive psychology practitioner” for graduates of mapp courses (as well as hybrid mapp courses, such as the msc in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology at the university of east london); and (b) proposing a new accredited doctorate in positive psychology, leading to a status as a “positive psychologist.” 2. is pp a field? before we discuss the need to professionalise pp, we must answer the claim that pp isn’t a distinct “field” at all. after all, the nature of pp has always been a grey area. many original proponents of pp argued that it is not a new speciality within psychology, but rather a “collective identity,” unifying researchers interested in “the brighter sides of human nature” (linley & joseph, 2004, p. 4). from this perspective, pp is simply an ethos, a way of “leaning towards” positive topics that is open to scholars and practitioners in established psychological fields, from clinical psychologists (e.g., wood & tarrier, 2010) to neuroscientists (e.g., urry et al., 2004). this identity served to unify disparate scholars already working on topics that are now regarded as falling within the purview of pp, like positive emotions or psychological development. however, we contend that pp is indeed becoming a distinct field in psychology for the simple pragmatic reason that many people – including some graduates of mapp courses – are beginning to call themselves, rightly or wrongly (from a regulatory perspective), “positive psychologists.” given that “psychologist” is a protected title in most jurisdictions across the world, requiring doctoral level training and accreditation, the use of such a title is problematic. as such, the proper use of “positive psychologist” is one of the issues this paper will address. however, its current usage does substantiate our point here that pp is a distinct field, since many people are beginning to claim and use it as a professional identity. in recognising pp as a distinct field, this does not mean that it cannot also be just an “ethos” for psychologists in other disciplines; clinical psychologists who embrace pp will still be clinical psychologists, for instance (wood & tarrier, 2010). for such people, regulation is not an issue, as they will be guided and regulated by codes of practice, and accredited by professional bodies, in their own fields. however, we must also recognise that, for many people, such as mapp professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 graduates without a background in a professional area, pp is a speciality and a professional identity in its own right. of course, the question of exactly where we delineate the “territorial boundary” for pp – how we demarcate it from such kinship fields as clinical psychology and psychotherapy – is a complex question, and will be an issue for debate over the coming years. likewise, there is a lively debate around the necessary and sufficient criteria for identifying an intervention as a ppi (parks & biswas-diener, 2014). in this respect, one possible point of demarcation could be that whereas fields such as clinical or counselling psychology are concerned with enhancing wellbeing in clinical settings/populations, pp focuses on the promotion of wellbeing in non-clinical settings/populations, such as the workplace or in schools. this would of course not prevent pp being used in clinical settings, as per wood and tarrier’s (2010) notion of “positive clinical psychology.” nevertheless, as a broad generalisation, it does carve out a particular useful and important role for pp. for instance, whereas a person in distress might currently turn to a clinical or counselling psychologist, in future, a manager of a workplace looking to enhance employees’ wellbeing could call upon a positive psychologist. we do not have a definitive answer for demarcating pp: this is a topic of ongoing debate, and practitioners in the field may define this in varied ways. however, even as we can and must continue to debate such issues, the fact remains that, from a pragmatic perspective, people are currently selfidentifying and practising as positive psychologists. as such, the lack of professional regulations or guidance for such people is arguably an issue. 3. professionalising pp of course, most people applying pp in real-life settings (e.g., delivering ppis within the workplace) may well be doing so in ways that are sensitive, responsible, and ethical. however, this does not mean that pp is nowhere being practised without issues. saying that is not to impute malign motives to practitioners in such cases. rather, it is simply to suggest that, for a variety of reasons – such as inexperience or a relative lack of ethical protocols – “best practice” may not always be followed. thus, this paper sets out the case for introducing an element of professionalism into the practice of pp. in so doing, pp is arguably tracing a comparable journey to that undertaken by kinship applied disciplines. for example, in previous decades, counselling and psychotherapy have been (and still are) engaging with the same types of issues that we are raising here, including questions of who has the “right” to practice, and how high standards can be upheld (belloch, 1997). as such, we outline one potential vision for what a more regulated pp might look like, and advocate for some professionalization of pp, and for the creation of a specific professional identity for people who use/practice pp. more specifically, we suggest that two tiers of professionalization could be created: (a) “positive psychology practitioner” (a non-accredited professional identity), and (b) “positive psychologist” (an accredited psychological profession). with the former, this simply gives a label to what is already currently happening, i.e., the application of pp in real-life settings, e.g., by graduates of mapp courses. for these people, we recommend that they use the title of pp “practitioner.” we envisage this being a label someone could use on the basis of having completed master’s level study/training in pp. this could make it similar in standing to a master’s in counselling, for instance, i.e., sufficient to practise counselling, and to be called a “counsellor,” but not sufficient to use the protected title of “psychologist” (which requires a professional doctorate in counselling psychology). with the second tier, this refers to the more ambitious future aim of establishing “positive psychologist” as a distinct psychological profession (comparable to professional identities such as “counselling psychologist” or “educational psychologist”). this would require professional doctorate level training, featuring professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 elements such as professional skills training, work placements (e.g., in organisations), and practical mentoring/supervision, as per professional psychology doctorates, such as clinical psychology. (this would stand in contrast to purely research-based phds related to pp, which, like in any other domain of psychology, do not – and in future still would not – confer any accredited ability to practise pp per se.) one such doctorate training course already exists (at claremont university). however, given the current enthusiasm for people using the term “positive psychologist,” we would argue that a more widespread and systematic creation of doctoral courses is both (a) warranted (i.e., they would be well-subscribed) and (b) necessary (i.e., if people are already adopting the title of “positive psychologist,” there should be training, regulation and accreditation to match). pertaining to the latter point, a crucial aspect of the proposed notion of a “positive psychologist” is that it would involve recognition by a relevant professional body, leading to chartered status as a psychologist. we would anticipate that this recognition would need to be granted by the relevant professional body in each country, such as the british psychological society in the uk, or the american psychological association in the usa. however, we would also envisage a role for either of the main existing pp bodies – or, ideally, both, working in collaboration – namely, the international positive psychology association (ippa) and/or the european network of positive psychology (enpp), who would be able to guide and advise these national bodies, and ensure consistency across jurisdictions. should these developments come to fruition, in future, any person or organisation concerned with increasing wellbeing in a non-clinical context could ideally turn to a chartered positive psychologist (possibly in the first instance), or alternatively to a pp practitioner. that is, in practical terms, while both tiers of people would be able to “practise” pp, one might speculate that differences would inevitably emerge regarding professional opportunities and remuneration prospects. as with any other form of tiered qualification (e.g., an msc versus a phd), those possessing the higher qualification might find their services in greater demand, and would likely be able to command higher fees, or obtain more prestigious or demanding appointments, etc. accordingly. the following sections explore what it could take for a person to be recognised either as a pp practitioner or a positive psychologist. essentially, we are asking what kind of skills and qualities would we want pp professionals – an overarching label for both pp practitioners and positive psychologists – to have, and how best can we ensure that they do? so, how can we answer these questions? one way is to turn to applied psychological disciplines that have already developed a high level of professional maturity, such as clinical or counselling psychology, and to learn from these, which is what we shall do here. in particular, we will draw upon systems of ethics that have been developed in these fields, which not only outline people’s responsibilities as applied practitioners (e.g., duties of care), but which also articulate personal and professional standards that such people should aspire to. before we introduce these ethical frameworks, though, we need to clarify what ethics are. 4. what are ethics? to understand what ethics are, it helps to conceptualise two similar constructs: values and morals. values are “desirable goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in people’s lives” (sagiv & schwartz, 2000, p. 178). values are thus not necessarily about good/bad or right/wrong, but are “conceptions of the desirable” that drive behaviour and motivate life choices (schwartz, 1999, p. 24). in contrast, morals are explicitly about “notions of right and wrong” (hazard jr, 1994, p. 451). however, there is an intimate relationship between values and professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 morals, since values held in common in a society often become the basis for a more explicitly codified moral framework. the word “morals,” which derives from the latin mores, signifies “usage in a community,” or, more specifically “customs or usages of social life sanctioned by the conscience of the community” (muzzey, 1906, p. 29). ethics then is the explicit codification of a system of morals, in which these are communally defined and recognised. the term derives from the greek ethikos, meaning “custom or usage,” and refers to norms that are “shared by a group on the basis of mutual and usually reciprocal recognition” (hazard jr, 1994, p. 453). moreover, of particular relevance here is the idea of domain-specific systems of ethics. this includes the regulation of professional disciplines, such as clinical psychology, where ethics refers to “rules and standards of conduct recognised as binding in a professional body or an association” (mathenge, 2013, p. 9). most established professions have formal ethical codes, articulating how people in that profession should act. such codes involve “ethical statements” that are used as a way of explaining how work in the field is “best undertaken to achieve the greatest good and minimise any potential wrongs” (mitchels & bond, 2010, p. 5). for example, medicine, law and psychotherapy share in common two ethical precepts: client-practitioner confidentiality and record keeping. confidentiality is recognised as a human right of those seeking the service of such professionals, and must be respected to protect such people, and to facilitate a professional relationship based on trust and openness (gallagher & hodge, 2012). record keeping is likewise vital if the practitioner is to provide consistent service, taking into account all the relevant elements of the treatment (jenkins, 2007). record keeping may also be important for other reasons: for instance, in many professions, practitioners may be required to give evidence in a court of law (soisson, van de creek, & knapp, 1987). these ethical protocols are not only recognised as standards for good practice, but are upheld through various mechanisms, including being embedded into the training and accreditation of these professions, and monitored by regulatory bodies. 5. the need for an ethical framework so, where does pp presently stand in terms of a formal, agree-upon ethical framework? unfortunately, it does not currently have one. of course, that is not to say that practitioners using pp are necessarily unregulated or operating unethically. as discussed above, many people using pp will be affiliated to professions that have their own ethical standards, including psychological professions (e.g., clinical psychologists), and other professions, such as teaching or nursing. similarly, on mapp courses, students are usually required to adhere to ethical guidelines and to obtain approval from ethical committees when undertaking research. thus, many practitioners of pp will already be guided by ethics protocols within their own discipline and/or academic setting, which means pp is already being practiced ethically – in a formally regulated and/or accredited way – in many instances. however, as argued above, there will also be people who are not in established professions, or currently undertaking a mapp course, who may be offering services under the (currently contentious) label of a “positive psychologist,” e.g., delivering ppis within an occupational setting. under such circumstances, while most such people may well personally be decent and ethical, there is no guarantee that they will be practising ethically in a formal, systematic way. as such, we feel that it is important that pp collectively instantiates a system of ethical guidelines that such people can and arguably should follow in order to maintain best practice. this ethical code could then be used to guide pp practitioners (in a non-binding, non-mandatory way), and to regulate positive psychologists (in a binding, mandatory way). that is, we suggest that pp “practitioners” – e.g. mapp graduates – can be encouraged to follow this ethical code, but cannot necessarily be compelled to adhere to it, since they are not an accredited professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 profession per se. however, for future positive psychologists – who can be trained and accredited through the creation of doctorate level training programmes – adherence to this code could be mandatory, and a condition of being accredited. in some ways, pp is already moving towards a situation where a centralised body provides guidance and even regulation around ethical issues. the main professional body that currently oversees pp activity is the ippa, which offers its members information and support, including teaching programmes, pp resources, conferences, and various research divisions. it also has an ethics committee that makes decisions relating to the conduct of the association and its members. however, as yet, neither the ippa nor any other pp body has issued an ethical framework to which its members must commit in order to be recognised by or affiliated to that body. as such, we contend that pp can learn from other similar associations, and create an ethical code suited to its aims and purposes. as noted above (and discussed further below), such guidelines could be created by either the ippa or the enpp (or, ideally, both in collaboration). these guidelines could then be passed to local national bodies (e.g., the british psychological society), who could adopt or adapt these guidelines, according to preference, and thus regulate the field in their particular national territory. specifically, we suggest that pp could be guided by the fields of counselling and psychotherapy, which similarly involve working with groups and individuals to enhance their wellbeing. indeed, there is already a close overlap between pp and these fields through the emergence of initiatives like positive psychotherapy (seligman et al., 2006) and wellbeing therapy (fava & ruini, 2013). in the next section, then, we explore the ethical systems that have been developed within counselling and psychotherapy, and then examine how pp might learn from these more established fields. 6. learning from counselling and psychotherapy compared to pp, counselling and psychotherapy are well-established professional fields. in the uk, there are two main associations encompassing these: the british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp) and the united kingdom council for psychotherapy (ukcp). in past decades, counselling and psychotherapy have been (and still are) on comparable journeys to that being embarked upon by pp, asking similarly fundamental questions around the nature of their discipline, including who has the “right” to practise it, and how high standards in practice can be upheld. the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy is an ongoing topic of debate within these fields; indeed, some practitioners disagree with the very idea of regulation (gabriel, 2009). nevertheless, these bodies have established frameworks to protect clients and practitioners. given the strong overlap between pp and these fields, as elucidated below, rather than reinventing the wheel, we feel that pp could simply adopt the ethical frameworks used in these fields. their frameworks constitute comprehensive and rigorous sets of guidelines that have been developed, applied, examined and strengthened in the heat of real-life practice over a number of years. as such, it is our contention that pp does not need to start from scratch, but can import wholesale their guidelines (while perhaps also adding to them, if desirable). this is not simply a matter of expediency, but a question of deep professional kinship between pp and counselling and psychotherapy, sharing common roots in humanistic psychology (resnick, warmoth, & serlin, 2001). moreover, it is also a case of professional respect, with pp learning from and emulating its “older and wiser” psychological cousins. so, what kind of ethical frameworks are there in counselling/psychotherapy? the bacp’s (2010) set of ethical rules – which we shall draw upon here – is entitled the ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy. of course, national bodies in other territories have developed their own ethical frameworks, such as the american psychological professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 association’s (2010) ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. while such frameworks have substantial overlaps with the bacp’s, they may have additional components that might also be helpful to pp. for instance, the apa’s code has guidance around the need to be careful in relation to engagement with the media, which is not specified in the bacp framework. as such, if the ippa/enpp were to develop a set of ethical guidelines for pp – as advocated here – it may be the case that they draw upon more than one framework. on the other hand, if, as anticipated here, the actual regulation of pp is undertaken by national bodies, it may be the case that such bodies will simply seek to apply the ethical codes that have already been developed in their territory; thus, for instance, in the usa, the apa may well prefer to simply instantiate their 2010 framework. nevertheless, for the purposes of this paper – i.e., stimulating a discussion around ethics in pp – it will suffice to present one viable example of an ethical code which may be relevant to the field, which, in this case, will be the bacp framework. it encompasses three dimensions: values, principles, and personal moral qualities. we can consider these in turn. firstly, in terms of values, the framework holds that practitioners should be committed to:  respecting human rights and dignity  protecting the safety of clients  ensuring the integrity of practitioner-client relationships  enhancing the quality of professional knowledge and its application  alleviating personal distress and suffering  fostering a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned  increasing personal effectiveness  enhancing the quality of relationships between people  appreciating the variety of human experience and culture  striving for the fair and adequate provision of counselling and psychotherapy services it is hard to imagine anybody who is currently applying pp in practical contexts objecting to any of these values. indeed, these values relate closely to a number of constructs and outcomes that are at the heart of pp. for example, the idea of fostering a meaningful sense of self is central to theories of wellbeing, such as ryff’s (1989) model of psychological wellbeing. likewise, increasing personal effectiveness is aligned with constructs like self-determination (ryan & deci, 2000). or again, enhancing the quality of relationships between people is central to many ppis, such as family-centred positive psychology (sheridan et al., 2004). thus, already we can see it would not be too much of a leap for pp to incorporate ethical principles such as these. the second dimension of the bacp (2010) framework is “principles.” here, the values listed above are the foundation for various action-oriented principles which outline the main ethical responsibilities of the counselling/psychotherapy practitioner:  trustworthiness: respect for the trust placed in the practitioner (also referred to as “fidelity”). strict client-practitioner confidentiality is an important aspect of this trust. practitioners must also honour any agreement with the client.  autonomy: respect for the client’s right to self-determination. the practitioner must provide accurate information, obtain the client’s informed consent, and emphasise the voluntary nature of their participation. this principle is designed to minimise the manipulation of clients.  beneficence: commitment to promote the client’s wellbeing. this principle prescribes acting in the client’s best interest, based on a professional assessment. one should work strictly within one’s limits of competence, and only provide services based on adequate and relevant professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 training and experience. one’s practice should also be backed up by scientific research and systematic reflection.  non-maleficence: commitment to not harming the client. the practitioner must avoid any sexual, financial, emotional or other abuse and mistreatment of the client, and also not offer services in a state of incapacitating illness or other adverse personal circumstances.  justice: fair and impartial treatment of all clients, and provision of adequate services. this principle underscores the practitioner’s legal obligations, and their commitment to not discriminating against any clients (or other individuals/groups).  self-respect: fostering the practitioner’s self-knowledge and self-care. practitioners should also apply the principles above to themselves, and seek therapy and other paths of personal development. supervision, discussed further below, is part of this principle. as with the values above, it is hard to imagine anyone studying or practising pp objecting to any of these principles. some are already at the heart of pp, especially beneficence, which mirrors lomas, hefferon and ivtzan’s (2014, p. ix) definition of pp as “the science and practice of improving wellbeing.” likewise, other principles relate closely to constructs within pp, such as the principle of autonomy, which is coterminous with the concept of self-determination (ryan & deci, 2000). other principles resonate with pp values, but in this context are somewhat legalistic, and so have hitherto not explicitly been formalised within the field. for example, although most pp practitioners would surely implicitly recognise and uphold the principle of justice, an explicit commitment to this is currently not required of practitioners. in putting pp on a more secure professional footing, this is the kind of principle one would want to see actively recognised. the final quality, self-respect, is also particularly intriguing. while many pp practitioners arguably already take a keen interest in their own wellbeing and development, this principle makes this an explicit part of professional practice, as discussed further below in the section on reflective practice. finally, the third dimension of the bacp’s (2010) ethical framework is “personal moral qualities.” this refers to the professional’s personal character that binds together all the other values and principles. while it may be arguably unrealistic to expect a person to fully embody all the qualities listed below, nevertheless, counsellors/psychotherapists are encouraged to recognise the value of these, and be guided by them. one may be struck by the overlap between these qualities and the strengths outlined in the via taxonomy (peterson & seligman, 2004). this reinforces the point that all these ethical guidelines are already familiar territory for pp. the introduction of an explicit ethical framework in pp would simply formally recognise the value of pp professionals upholding these desirable qualities and processes. the bacp moral qualities are:  empathy: the ability to communicate understanding of another person’s experience from that person’s perspective  sincerity: the commitment to stand behind one’s words  integrity: the commitment to be honest and straightforward in dealing with others  resilience: the capacity to withstand being involved with the concerns of others without being personally affected by these issues  respect: the ability to respect other people and the way they understand themselves  humility: the ability to accept and acknowledge one’s strengths and weaknesses  competence: effective deployment of the skills and knowledge required for the task at hand  fairness: the consistent application of appropriate criteria in taking decisions and actions  wisdom: sound judgment and informed practice professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104  courage: the capacity to overcome fears, risks and uncertainty in counselling and psychotherapy, these ethical guidelines are not simply articulated, but structures are in place to help trainees and practitioners cultivate and uphold these, such as supervision and reflection, as the next two sections outline. 7. supervision principal among the structures in place to help counselling and psychotherapy trainees develop ethically is a process of supervision, where a practitioner’s work is monitored and supported by an experienced colleague. such supervision has a number of goals (inskipp & proctor, 1993). the first is formative: to enrich the practitioner’s education, training and skill, with a view to enhancing the quality of their work. for instance, one method used in this regard involves roleplaying based on client material. the second goal is normative. the supervisor directs the practitioner in following ethical guidelines, maintaining adequate standards, and observing boundaries. the third and final goal is restorative. not only does supervision maintain and empower the implementation of values, principles, and personal qualities, it also provides the practitioner with a support system. thus, in a more pastoral sense, supervision is one answer to the important question of “who will care for the carers?” people working in caring professions are themselves in need of care and support to help them cope with the demands of their work and to attain a healthy and balanced life more generally. without this, workers may struggle to help others effectively, and can even experience burnout (leiter & maslach, 2005). thus, a helpful and caring supervisor can offer invaluable support. the bacp ethical framework suggests that all practitioners should participate in regular supervision. currently, there is no such model of supervision in the field of pp. however, as with the values/principles above, the idea of supervision resonates with the ethos of pp. indeed, not only could pp benefit from incorporating supervision principles and practices, but the practice of supervision itself can, in turn, learn from pp, as demonstrated by the emergence of a new branch of supervision based explicitly on pp, namely strengths-based supervision (edwards, 2012; wade & jones, 2013). this model uses peterson and seligman’s (2004) work on strengths to enhance supervision, reframing the process in a way that capitalises on the supervisee’s strengths. for instance, edwards (2012) outlines various ways to harness strengths in supervision, including: enhancing optimism, empowering supervisees to realise that they are capable of healing others, helping supervisees develop self-efficacy, supporting them in applying their strengths, and encouraging them to invite clients to engage in a similar way. this is a classic pp approach to clinical work, and offers a transformative attitude to supervision. in pp itself, though, currently, the only type of formal supervision occurs in the context of academic research; e.g., students taking msc mapp courses have an academic supervisor to guide them through their research dissertation. however, one can see the value of all pp practitioners being able to access supervision, particularly a deeper supervisory relationship that safeguards and promotes their wellbeing and personal development. 8. reflective practice a second key factor in place to help counselling/psychotherapy practitioners develop as professionals – which pp can also learn from – is the notion of reflective practice. this means reflecting on the quality of one’s work, and also, in a deeper sense, on one’s own wellbeing, and on one’s personal and professional development. in that latter respect, the importance of reflective practice is embodied in ethical principles such as self-respect, as outlined above. one might identify three main “levels” of reflective practice, constituting three sequentially deeper professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 forms of reflection: on one’s particular actions, on one’s career and practice of pp generally, and, finally, on one’s life journey as a whole. we will take these in turn. firstly, in an immediate sense, we can reflect on our current actions and thoughts. an influential model in this respect, especially in the context of professional practice, is schön’s (1983) notion of the “reflective practitioner.” schön identifies two key forms of reflective practice: reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. the former means trying to be aware in the moment of how we are affecting a situation or are being affected by it; this involves “on-the-spot surfacing, criticising, restructuring, and testing of intuitive understandings of experienced phenomenon” (p. 241). the latter means reflecting on one’s actions in retrospect, after the event. these two processes reinforce each other, with both serving to develop one’s professional practice. for example, take the case of a pp practitioner delivering a ppi. reflection-in-action means paying attention to the dynamics of the interaction as it is happening, e.g., the practitioner might reflect on how clearly they are introducing and explaining the ppi. afterwards, the practitioner can reflect on how well it went, and also how they might improve next time. this model of reflective practice has been applied across disciplines, from clinical psychology (cushway & gatherer, 2003) to social work (gardner, 2001) to teaching (korthagen & vasalos, 2005). a useful way to think about reflective practice is that it means combining applied science with artistry (schön, 1983). applied forms of science – of which we include pp – to an extent revolve around skills that could, if practised poorly, be used in a somewhat mechanical way. however, what elevates a practitioner is being able to apply such skills with the creativity, selfawareness, and care that we associate with people engaged in artistic pursuits. in terms of facilitating this kind of reflection, training courses for therapists or clinical psychologists endeavour to teach reflective practice to their trainees (guiffrida, 2005). as with ethics, pp can learn from such fields and apply practices that they have developed, many of which are already at the heart of pp. for example, in counselling/psychotherapy, a key activity for helping practitioners become more reflective is mindfulness (shapiro et al., 2007). indeed, mindfulness is conceptually similar to reflection and aspects of reflexivity; for example, finlay and gough’s (2003, p. ix) definition of reflexivity as an “immediate, dynamic and continuing selfawareness” would serve equally well as a definition of mindfulness. mindfulness is being incorporated into training in many professions, including counselling (shapiro et al., 2007), medicine (irving et al., 2012), nursing (mackenzie, poulin, & seidman-carlson, 2006), teaching (napoli, 2004) and even law (riskin, 2004). it has also been incorporated into some pp practices and interventions (ivtzan & lomas, 2016), making it highly relevant to the development of pp. as such, we would encourage pp courses to incorporate mindfulness into their teaching structures, as elucidated further below. beyond reflecting on particular actions/experiences, professionals can also reflect in a longerterm way on how their practice is developing generally. this is more an overarching assessment of how one is changing and hopefully evolving in one’s career over time. ideally most people would engage in this type of reflection anyway, without specific inducements to do so, whatever occupation they were in. however, as with ethics, professions such as counselling and psychotherapy have also built up structures to encourage this kind of reflection, such as supervision (edwards, 2012). moreover, there are specific models of reflection that practitioners can engage in to promote long-term development. one such model is korthagen and vasalos’s (2005) five-stage alact framework. the first stage is action (e.g., delivering a ppi). next is looking back, i.e., reflection-on-action. the process continues with awareness of essential aspects, where the practitioner analyses the impact of the tools/techniques chosen. in the fourth stage, creating alternative methods of action, the practitioner considers other possible strategies professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 that could enhance future interventions. finally, in the fifth stage, trial, the practitioner applies the adaptations or changes that were identified in the previous stage, and examines the consequences. together, these stages generate an ongoing cycle of reflection that facilitates continual professional development. moreover, the kind of reflection prompted by the alact framework may not only enhance one’s professional performance, but can lead to deeper, more personal reflections on one’s self, thereby empowering self-growth. in korthagen and vasalos’s (2005) model, there are not only stages, but six progressively deep and personal levels of reflection. the most superficial level is reflection on the environment: the practitioner reflects on everything they encounter “outside” themselves, like the client’s actions. at a slightly deeper level, the practitioner considers the ongoing dynamics of the practitioner-client dyad (the nature of their interaction). deeper still, the practitioner can focus on their own competence: the knowledge/experience they possess to handle the situation. going further “in,” the practitioner can contemplate the underlying beliefs which influence his or her actions (with parallels to seligman’s (1990) notion of “icebergs”). underneath this, the practitioner can consider their professional identity, i.e., what kind of person are they becoming in the context of their work. finally, at an even deeper existential level, the practitioner can reflect on their life “mission”. also known as the “level of spirituality” (dilts, 1990), this last level is a reflection on the very nature of one’s being, a more fundamental enquiry into the nature of one’s life and the journey one is on, into what gives meaning and significance to one’s life. thus, at its deepest level, reflection involves “a personal journey of reflective sense-making” (waddock, 2011, p. 177); this can be a process that touches the core of who practitioners are as people, and can engender transformative personal change in the practitioner. in reflecting in a deeper sense on their life journey, practitioners can contemplate the path they have taken so far, and consider where they stand now. however, the future lies over the horizon: the great unknown. as such, practitioners’ potential for transformation may be hidden to themselves; almost by definition, the person they may become in future is essentially unknown to their present selves. thus, change derives from inner potentials of which the person may be only dimly aware. an intriguing way to consider this process of change is the “johari window” (luft, 1969), a 2-by-2 schematic which illustrates aspects of ourselves that are known or unknown to us and to others. aspects that are known to us and to others are our persona, our clear and visible “character.” aspects that are known to us but unknown to others are our “masked features,” dimensions of the self that we conceal from others. aspects that are known to others but unknown to ourselves are our “blind spots.” finally, there are aspects of the self that are unknown to others and to ourselves, dimensions of the self that have not yet been brought to light. this last dimension is particularly important, being regarded as the main “source” of personal growth and development (luft, 1969). although this dimension is elusive, practitioners can help bring it into the light through practices of reflection, such as meditation. these practices can be vehicles for self-discovery, shining a light of self-awareness on practitioners’ hidden potentials and encouraging these to grow and flourish. thus, ultimately, developing a system of ethical guidelines – including reflective practice – is not just a matter of striving to safeguard the wellbeing of clients. it is also a way of encouraging the professional, and, moreover, personal development of pp professionals themselves. 9. conclusion: practical recommendations so, we have suggested that pp might do well to adopt an ethical framework, and, moreover, that pp could adopt/adapt the framework developed by the bacp (2010) for the fields of counselling professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 and psychotherapy. of course, many people studying and practising pp may already be embodying and upholding these kinds of values and principles. however, as we have suggested, pp might benefit from a more systematic and explicit ethical framework to guide all those practising pp, in whatever context. we have also suggested that pp courses could further instantiate or augment structures that help in the inculcation and maintenance of professional practice, such as supervision and reflection. as such, we shall finish this article with some practical recommendations of how we might progress from here, and how we can put pp on a more professional footing. again, we emphasise that the following recommendations are not so much for people using pp theories or practices in existing professions, such as clinical psychology or education, as these people will already have a professional standing. rather, it is for people who are not affiliated to a particular profession – such as some graduates of mapp courses – but who wish to practise pp in real-life settings. we shall firstly consider the case of pp practitioners (as such people essentially exist already), and then positive psychologists (as the creation of this profession is a future goal). firstly, “positive psychology practitioners” is the term we are suggesting for people who have obtained a master’s level qualification in pp. being only a master’s qualification, this means that such students cannot be labelled as professional psychologists, for which doctorate level training and accreditation is required. however, the term “practitioners” does serve to create a professional identity for such graduates, and to give them a badge of recognition. since this would not be an accredited professional identity, such people could not necessarily be compelled to adhere to a formal pp code of ethics, like the bacp code, which is one framework we are suggesting that pp could adopt. however, this code could simply be in place as a guiding model – promulgated by the ippa and/or the enpp – which such students could be encouraged to adhere to. this encouragement could be formalised by the incorporation of ethical/professional training into pp master’s courses. at a minimum, we recommend that such courses devote one twelfth of their teaching content to the teaching of ethical/professional practice. for instance, in the uk, a master’s course typically involves 180 credits worth of modules. this would mean that such courses would ideally include one 15-credit module devoted to ethical/professional practice. such courses could also include the other supporting elements of ethical/professional practice outlined above, such as supervision and reflection. with supervision, on msc courses, students already have a supervisor, in any case, to assist them in undertaking research projects. the role of such supervisors could therefore be expanded to take on the more professional and pastoral role that supervision has in counselling and psychotherapy. with reflective practice, this could likewise be encouraged in the context of the supervision relationship. such courses could also feature sessions on reflective practices, such as mindfulness – not simply in a theoretical pedagogical way, but in the form of experiential sessions in which students are encouraged to learn and practise mindfulness themselves. as to the legal and professional status of such practitioners, some such graduates will already be affiliated with another profession (e.g., being a qualified teacher or nurse), and so will be governed by the regulatory frameworks in these professions. however, some graduates will not be in any such profession (e.g., students who have undertaken a mapp course immediately after an undergraduate degree). the professional status of such graduates is currently vague – which, indeed, is one of the very reasons for this paper – a situation that is clearly not ideal. moreover, even if such people become labelled as pp “practitioners,” as advocated here, their status would remain somewhat vague. however, provided that these graduates do not use the protected term of “psychologist,” there is nothing necessarily preventing them from using their pp expertise in professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 a consulting capacity (e.g., advising a company on how to improve the wellbeing of its workers). as such, in pragmatic terms, one possible avenue for clarifying the status of such practitioners would be for them to be regarded as essentially taking on a consulting role, broadly defined. in so doing, such practitioners would arguably be on similar territory – ethically and professionally – to the millions of other people worldwide who similarly offer their services as “consultants” in some capacity. (thus, of course, such practitioners would likewise need to ensure that they abide by the laws/regulations in the country in which they are working.) moreover, by standardising their identity as a pp “practitioner,” this would provide a rudimentary “kite-mark” regarding their professional skills (e.g., compared to someone without a mapp qualification who is nevertheless presenting themselves as a pp “consultant”). this would allow organisations seeking to avail themselves of the services of such practitioners to at least have some assurance of quality. more ambitiously, we are also advocating the creation of professional doctorate level training in pp, enabling graduates to be officially recognised as “positive psychologists.” in our opinion, it would be desirable for this doctorate to not only be open to students with a psychology undergraduate degree. one of the strengths of many mapp courses is that their admission criteria do not require this type of degree, which means they are able to admit students from a range of backgrounds, from business to public health. as well as widening access to mapp courses, these more open entry requirements ensure a diverse student cohort, which adds to the richness and depth of students’ learning experience. we would ideally like to see this inclusivity extended to pp doctorate training. however, we also recognise that, for students without a background in psychology, some additional pre-entry training courses may be necessary to equip them with certain skills that are acquired on undergraduate psychology courses, such as proficiency in statistics. essentially, this doctorate training would mean providing an extended version of the mapp programme, in line with the training for professional psychological qualifications, such as clinical, counselling, or educational psychology. in the uk, this would generally mean a fouryear training programme, although the length of training may vary in other countries. for instance, in the uk, the quality assurance agency for higher education (2008) states that doctoral level qualifications should comprise a minimum of 540 credits (versus 180 for a master’s level qualification), which is a minimum of three times the length of a mapp course. on such courses, the new ethical/professional elements introduced into mapp, as outlined above, could be expanded and deepened accordingly. for instance, if mapp courses in future include a 15credit module on ethics/professional practice, then the doctoral programme would ideally have a 45-credit module devoted to this. likewise, in terms of supervision, the more intense doctoral supervision provided by a three to four-year course would enable students to develop a concomitantly deeper supervisory relationship. moreover, as with counselling and psychotherapy, one would anticipate graduates maintaining an ongoing supervisory relationship in some form post-graduation. similarly, we would argue that doctoral graduates should ideally be required to engage in some form of continual professional development (cpd) after graduation. for instance, graduate schools offering the doctoral training programme could create additional standalone modules (e.g., in advanced coaching practice) which graduates could be invited to attend. it could further be the case that ongoing accreditation as a positive psychologist could formally require graduates to attend a certain number of such cpd courses every few years. in terms of the specific details of how a pp doctorate training programme might look, this is obviously something that individual graduate schools would develop according to their own professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 professional judgement and local regulatory framework (i.e., the requirements of that particular country). however, as a starting point, we would like to offer the following suggestions for the type of training that such courses could feature. the following is a list of knowledge requirements (kr), core competencies (cc) and practical activities (pa) which we would ideally like to see featured in a doctorate training programme. each could have its own module devoted specifically to it; these might be weighted at, say, 30 or 45 credits, though the weighting would be more for the krs (e.g., 90 credits), and, of course, also the final dissertation. in addition, the krs and ccs would ideally also be interwoven throughout all aspects of the course. where possible, we would also argue that mapp courses could likewise encompass all these elements, albeit obviously in a less extensive way (e.g., ethical/professional practice constituting a 15-credit rather than 45-credit module). the recommended features are:  pp theory (kr)  pp empirical research (kr)  pp in context (e.g., in relation to other areas of psychology) (kr)  critical perspectives on pp (kr) / critical thinking (cc)  ethical/professional practice (cc)  reflective practice (cc)  basic counselling and coaching skills (cc)  quantitative and qualitative methodological and analytic skills (cc)  professional and legal issues (e.g., establishing one’s own business) (cc)  supervision (pa)  placement (a): one-to-one coaching work with an individual (pa)  placement (b): consulting with an organisation (e.g., company, school) (pa)  research project (i.e., doctoral thesis) (cc/pa). finally, the biggest difference between mapp courses and this envisaged doctoral level training is that with the latter, students could be required to adhere to the ethical framework as a condition of graduation and accreditation. this, of course, would require an official body/bodies to award this kind of accreditation. given the different regulatory landscapes in each country, we would anticipate that regulation would be instantiated and maintained by the relevant national bodies in the various countries, such as the british psychological society, the australian psychological society, the american psychological association, and the canadian psychological association, and so on. however, to ensure consistency across jurisdictions, ideally these national bodies could all be guided by either the ippa or the enpp (or ideally by both together). that is, we would hope that the ippa and the enpp could collaborate on a set of guidelines – perhaps along the lines of the recommendations set out in this paper – which the national bodies could then use to create their own specific regulatory framework for these doctorates. these national bodies could then be vested with authority over the way in which pp is taught and practised, as well as the power to “strike off” practitioners if they were deemed to have breached its system of ethics. in this way, pp could join other professional psychological fields in not only having a rigorous approach to ethical training, but also having a trusted regulatory system that ensures and upholds best practice, which clients of pp can trust in. in any case, whether our proposals are taken forward, or the field adopts other sets of recommendations which are, no doubt, also forthcoming, we see it as a vital development that pp does move towards some formal, agreedupon system of ethical training and accreditation. we do not think that the suggestions outlined in this paper are the only way forward in this matter; there are different options and potential professional guidelines for positive psychology lomas & ivtzan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 solutions when it comes to ethical guidelines and practice. rather, our intention is to contribute towards a debate within the field around these important issues, with this paper being another step in the evolution of pp, helping it continue on its important mission of understanding and promoting wellbeing across the world. authors tim lomas university of east london t.lomas@uel.ac.uk itai ivtzan university of east london publishing timeline received 4 june 2016 accepted 1 august 2016 published 14 october 2016 references american psychological association. 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(2011). peace, war, and happiness: bruder klaus as wellbeing facilitator. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 226-234. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.5 bruno s. frey university of zurich and university of warwick bruno.frey@econ.uzh.ch copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 226 article peace, war, and happiness: bruder klaus as wellbeing facilitator bruno s. frey abstract: little is known in the scholarly literature about the effect of war and peace on happiness; but they have a large number of direct and indirect effects on happiness, difficult or impossible to capture due mainly to issues of causality and attribution. the paper concentrates on three fundamental claims regarding the effect of war and peace on happiness: ‘war brings happiness’; ‘people adjust to wars’; and ‘the happiness of the dead is irrelevant’. an attempt is made to discuss different solutions to deal with these claims but it is made clear that each one has grave disadvantages. bruder klaus, whose full name was niklaus von flüeh, is the patron saint of switzerland. this paper describes bruder klaus as a creator of peace and, based on the claims mentioned above, as a felicitator or wellbeing facilitator. keywords: peace, war, happiness, wellbeing, well-being, civil war, terrorism, bruder klaus 1. introduction bruder klaus, whose full name was niklaus von flüe, is the patron saint of switzerland. he was born in 1417 into a well-to-do peasant family in flüeli, canton obwalden, which is in the center of switzerland. he excelled as an officer in the zurich war (1440-44) and was a much esteemed councilor and judge in his commune. in 1467 he changed his life dramatically. with the approval of his wife, he left his family, which included several grown-up sons, and decided to live as a hermit and to lead a spiritual life. while he is also known as a mystic who received profound visions (highly valued by carl gustav jung) this paper focuses on bruder klaus as a creator of peace, thus acting as a facilitator to bring happiness to people. during klaus’ time what later became the swiss federation was still only a loose confederation of four rural and four city cantons. in 1481 a disagreement broke out among them at the tagsatzung (general assembly) at stans on the question whether or not to admit two new cantons into the confederation. the conflict ran so deep that the outbreak of war became imminent. the delegates of each of the cantons could reach consensus on only one procedural issue, namely to ask the hallowed hermit bruder klaus for advice. the emissary came back with two pieces of advice: „machet den zun nit zu wit‚ (do not extend your boundaries too far) and „mischt euch nicht in fremde händel‚ (do not interfere in the affairs of other communities). above all bruder klaus urged the delegates: ‚keep peace!‛ he was well aware that cooperation leads to superior outcomes compared to aggressive and conflicting behavior. to the surprise of all observers, the delegates accepted the advice of the holy man and found a solution within two hours. peace, war, and happiness frey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 227 this event has had a lasting effect on swiss people. while the country unfortunately was not able to evade all conflicts and was engaged in several wars, the basic message was not lost. over time not interfering in the affairs of other nations became a guiding rule in swiss politics. the principle of neutrality helped to save the country from getting involved in world wars i and ii, and laid the foundation for the humanitarian efforts of the country. it made it possible for the red cross to emerge. the guiding principle for the efforts of the swiss government and its diplomats still is to provide facilities, or ‘good services’, to achieve peace, and to guarantee peace treaties. many observers suggest that the stable and deep-seated democracy known in switzerland, as well as economic prosperity and peaceful social conditions, are the major reasons why in surveys the swiss are regularly among the top nations with respect to average happiness. the purpose of this paper is not to provide a historical account of the manifold achievements of bruder klaus. rather, he is looked at as an example of a facilitator of happiness through creating peace. the paper discusses evidence of what is known about the effect of war on happiness. the broader aspect of his teaching, that cooperation is better than conflict and leads to a happier population, is not further pursued here because it would lead too far. the author is, however, well aware that it is of great importance1. the focus of the paper lies on the question of how much, if at all, peace raises the wellbeing of the population2. many readers will be surprised that such a question is raised at all: is it not a matter of course that war leads to terrible human suffering and unhappiness, and that only peace allows people to achieve happiness? i started this research exactly on this premise. i was absolutely convinced that peace brings happiness, and that therefore it is a primordial goal of politics to avoid war and to achieve peace. after writing this paper i am still convinced that this is true, but i had to realize that it is not as obvious as it at first seemed to me. things look somewhat different when one goes beyond the first (wishful) impression. i do not want to dwell on the well-known phoenix effect (see organski and kugler 1980, koubi 2005), which suggests that a population’s size and economic pace often tend to recover relatively quickly after a war, west germany and japan being cases in point. i wish to concentrate on the effects on happiness produced during a war, compared to periods of peace. this paper reflects my effort to understand what is not obvious, namely that to some extent, and in some regard, war may produce happiness. i make a special effort to collect the relevant empirical evidence. section i reviews what is known in happiness research on the effects of war on happiness. section ii deals with the surprising claim that ‘war brings happiness’ by adding meaning to life, energizing the population and creating solidarity. also, there is the phenomenon of ‘combat flow’ raising the happiness of the soldiers involved. section iii grapples with the observation that people tend to adapt to circumstances, in particular to war events: over time they get used to death and destruction, and weigh them less heavily than in times of peace. section iv considers how persons killed in war should be treated with respect to a happiness analysis. should they be left out of account (because they are no longer among the living) or 1 these considerations address issues such as the role of procedural utility (see frey, benz and stutzer 2004, frey 2008, chapter 10) and of trust (see helliwell 2010, helliwell and wang 2011) for individual wellbeing. 2 wellbeing can either be affective (a short run experience) or cognitive (a longer run evaluation of one’s life, called life satisfaction). following current practice in scientific research, i use the term happiness, or interchangeably wellbeing, for both, and differentiate the two only when it is of importance. peace, war, and happiness frey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 228 should their unrealized expected happiness in the future be calculated? the closing section endeavors to reach conclusions. they are by necessity quite tentative and personal. 2. existing research on war and happiness the effect of war on happiness is a most relevant topic. according to credible estimates, not less than 191 million persons lost their lives due to war during the twentieth century (iqbal 2006: 631). in addition, many millions were wounded and became disabled, suffering through the entire remainder of their lives. in addition, war destroys infrastructure as well as cultural heritage (such as a large part of ancient german cities during world war ii). even smaller wars have significant consequences. collier (1999: 181, see also collier and hoeffler 2003, murdoch and sandler 2002) estimates that during civil wars per capita gross domestic product (gdp) falls at an annual rate of 2.2% relative to a country without civil war because production directly falls and capital stock is gradually reduced. as many civil wars drag out over a considerable number of years, the decline in average income is substantial. koubi (2005: 69), looking at a large cross-section of countries over the period 1960-89 (which does not include a major global war), finds that the average growth in gdp in countries that fought a war was slower than in those that did not, and that this effect is larger for civil than for interstate wars. to my great surprise i could find only very few studies studying the effect of war on happiness3. in view of the great consequences of war on the population, economy and society at large this is most surprising. in comparison, there are now hundreds of studies analyzing the effects of income on happiness, generally coming to the conclusion that it is rather small, if it exists at all (see the surveys by clark, frijters and shields 2008, dolan, peasgood and white 2008, frey and stutzer 2002a, 2002b, frey 2008, helliwell and barrington-leigh 2010). there may be several reasons why happiness researchers are reluctant to deal with the effect of war on happiness: 1) there is a data problem. normally, in times of war no surveys are undertaken capturing how happy or satisfied civilians and soldiers are with their lives; 2) it is unclear whether people remember war episodes correctly. the difference between experienced and remembered utility (see kahneman, wakker and sarin 1997) is crucial in this context; 3) the issue is extremely complicated. there are many different types of war, ranging from more or less dormant civil wars to all out national wars. there are also many different and indirect consequences. for example, in wars, democratic rights are curtailed and authoritarian decisions take over. undermining democracy is known to reduce happiness (frey and stutzer 2000, inglehart and klingemann 2000, graham and sukhtankar 2004, dorn et al 2005). during interstate and intrastate conflicts the health achievements of states decrease4, lowering the wellbeing of the population (iqbal 2006). moreover, the question of how to deal with the forgone happiness of persons dying in war is difficult to deal with; 3 in contrast, the reverse causation, i.e. whether happier persons are more inclined to endorse peace, has been empirically analyzed. the important study by diener and tov (2007) finds that individual wellbeing is related to several peace attitudes, among them greater confidence in parliament and civil services, stronger endorsement of democracy, and less intolerance of immigrants and members of different racial and ethnic groups. these attitudes support a peaceful society that is open and free to all people. subjective wellbeing is therefore considered ‚a crucial element in sustaining peace over time‛ (p. 438). 4 remember the influenza which broke out during wwi, killing more people than were killed in combat; and other epidemics or famines, or the effect of lack of clean water, or poor sanitation etc. prevalent during wars. peace, war, and happiness frey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 229 4) the causalities going from war to happiness, and from happiness to war, are difficult to separate and to empirically measure. i could find three areas in which serious empirical studies have been undertaken in order to capture the effect of war on happiness. 1) civil wars: violent conflict has the tangible effects mentioned above and, in addition, intangible effects in terms of psychic costs such as pain, suffering, fear, and agony, as well as empathy with relatives, friends and other persons mourning the victims. in a study comprising 44 countries around the year 2000, and using average happiness by country from representative surveys, welsch (2008: 336) finds that the current number of conflicts significantly reduces the wellbeing of the population. he calculates that, on average, the compensating variation for one fatality is about 108,000 us dollars. this means that income must increase by 108,000 dollars to leave happiness constant when one additional person dies. the direct effects in terms of suffering, fear and agony are larger than the indirect effects due to the smaller income brought about by the premature death. 2) terrorism: terrorism is a special type of war in which, normally, the civil population is targeted and the goal is to create havoc and produce fear (see e.g. frey 2004, sandler and enders 2004). estimating standard happiness functions for two countries affected by terrorism, frey, luechinger and stutzer (2007) show for france and northern ireland that more intensive terrorist activity in terms of the number of attacks and of victims significantly reduces the life satisfaction of the population. for northern ireland, the wellbeing cost from one additional terror victim amounts to about 0.6 per cent of income. this figure is similar to the one calculated by welsch (2008: 335) for israel, burundi and liberia. 3) particular events and countries: the exposure of concentration camp inmates leads to intense distress due to the terrible experience but is sometimes alloyed with positive experience a former inmate may have later in life. in a careful study, shmotkin and lomranz (1998: 152-3) find that ‚< the survivors (are) deficient in satisfaction and joy< (but there is) also a dynamic response to challenge and change< leading to a life story that bears a message of comfort besides agony‛. another study (landau, beit-hallahmi and levy 1998) looks at life satisfaction in israel in the period 1967 to 1979, during which time there were several wars, including the war of attrition with egypt, the october 1973 war, and the israeli invasion of lebanon. there were also many other war-like events, including terrorist attacks. as a result, ‚<wars, as well as attacks on civilians, significantly increase the levels of anxiety and fear in the population‛ (p. 330). overall, the study concludes that national stress negatively affects happiness (pp. 348-350) but notes that this finding cannot necessarily be generalized for other countries and periods. while these research results are revealing, they are incomplete: we have little systematic and empirically compelling evidence on how war affects happiness. the next three sections focus on three claims that play a crucial role for analyzing the relationship between war, peace and happiness. 3. claim: ‘war brings happiness’ at first sight, this claim seems to be outrageous. however, observers (e.g. hedges 2002) have noted that some people who experience war find it energizing and even addictive. this may help to explain why many wars drag on and are still supported by the population though peace, war, and happiness frey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 230 defeat is almost certain5. in order to be able to survive in wars, solidarity, trust and friendship play a large role. such feelings tend to raise wellbeing (for the case of trust see helliwell 2007, layard 2005). war also raises (affective) happiness in a more direct way, by the production of what has been termed ‘combat flow’. ‚such absorption is often reported in combat situations in which it contributes both to the well-being and to the efficiency of soldiers‛ (harari 2008: 253). for the vietnam war ‚addiction to the experience of combat flow‛(p. 255) has been documented, but there is also evidence going back to homeric greece and medieval europe. noted authors such as tolstoy in war and peace (1865-68) for the napoleonic period and jünger in his book in stahlgewittern (1920) for world war i extensively report instances of combat flow. how should we deal with these forms of happiness in war? one solution could be to dismiss such feelings as inappropriate for moral reasons and to disregard them completely. such a solution is in line with what many classical greek philosophers thought. epicurus is an example: ‚though pleasure was a good in epicures’ view, it was always subordinate to the greater goal of achieving peace (ataraxia), a self-sufficient state free of anxiety and unease‛ (mcmahon 2006: 209-10). similar ideas can be attributed to socrates, plato and aristotle with their notion of ‘eudaimonia’. to totally neglect these forms of happiness experienced in war is, however, a drastic solution not taking into account well-documented feelings of happiness because they are illegitimate. harari (2008: 257) proposes to differentiate between sensual pleasures such as combat flow from the summum bonum of real wellbeing. subjective feelings are not always a good indicator of what can be taken to be ‘true’ happiness. moreover, waging war can certainly not be justified by an army of happy soldiers high on combat flow. obviously, the wellbeing of the relatively small number of happy soldiers must be compared to the unhappiness of the large number of negatively affected civilians and unhappy soldiers. 4. claim: ‘people adjust to wars’ one of the major results of empirical happiness research is that people adjust to some extent to good and bad experiences (e.g. frey and stutzer 2002a, 2002b, frey 2008). there is a tendency to return to a ‘set point’ of happiness determined by genetic factors. it must, however, be taken into account that the speed and extent of adjustment varies between areas and persons. for example, men do not adjust to being unemployed while women do (e.g. extensively clark, georgellis and sanfey 2001). the question is whether people really adjust to war experiences. the finding that the change in the number of victims, rather than their absolute number, reduces wellbeing in civil wars suggests that there is some, but no complete, adaptation to the conditions of conflict (welsch 2008: 334). but there does not seem to be any evidence for other forms of war. it is likely that people get used to some extent to the horrors of war. when one experiences that many persons die, then the fact that one’s son, husband, father or other relative has died may be more bearable because the people affected are aware that they are no exception, and that other persons have had to come to terms with similar grief. on the other hand, one can well argue that experiencing the death of many others has a cumulative negative effect on one’s own happiness. the question therefore remains open. 5 it must be emphasized that the military and political leadership are often responsible for extending the duration of wars. a striking example is world war ii where hitler and the nazi establishment prolonged the war by many months though defeat was clear and predicted by some generals such as rommel as well as the rebels of 20 july 1944. peace, war, and happiness frey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 231 how should we deal with this kind of reduction of unhappiness? should we take war to be less brutal and devastating because people partly adjust to its horrors? this is a quite general question relating to all kinds of adjustments. frederick and loewenstein (1999: 320) conclude after an extensive and careful study of adaptation: would (people) stop wearing seatbelts with the assurance that they would get used to being paralyzed? would they exploit an embezzlement opportunity knowing that prison wouldn’t be all that bad in the long run? we suspect not.6 however, the fact is that adaptation to such events is never complete – as even the founders of set-point theory have now agreed (see e.g. diener et al., 2009, 103-8). in the case of war, it seems to me that few people would wish to accept going to war because they know that they will get used to the immense sufferings. however, to ignore the process of adaptation is no convincing solution either, because ignoring it conflicts with empirical observations. 5. claim: ‘the happiness of the dead is irrelevant’ how should we treat those persons who die in war and therefore are no longer a living part of society? this is a philosophical issue i cannot judge. three solutions come to mind: the first is to disregard the wellbeing of the dead. this is done if the happiness of people is measured by representative surveys, i.e. the most frequently used approach (see e.g. the world values survey or the gallup world survey of happiness). disregarding the dead would not matter if the dead had the same average happiness level as the rest of the population. but this is exactly what is unknown; the dead may well be persons with a particularly high or low happiness potential in the future. two aspects seem to me to be relevant. why should we disregard the happiness of those who died but count the wellbeing of those wounded, some of whom are closer to death than to life? moreover, during wars many babies will not be born who, under peaceful conditions, would have come to life. if we regard the wellbeing of the dead we should (probably) also consider the happiness not gained by the unborn babies. to calculate the expected future happiness of unborn babies is difficult. one might take the average happiness of the respective generation of persons living (though this evidence will be available only in the future) and attribute it to the unborn babies. for example, if mostly highly pessimistic persons chose not to have babies during a war, those respective babies must be expected to be less happy during their lifetime because pessimism is a characteristic depressing happiness. as a result, the lifetime happiness of the unborn babies is overestimated. it follows that not to have these babies born raises the average happiness of the population, and to that extent war is less horrific. the second solution is to just assume that the happiness of the dead is zero. this is, of course, a strong assumption but probably is considered reasonable by many people. when the wellbeing of a country is measured by taking the average self-reported subjective happiness score multiplied by average length of life (see e.g. veenhoven 1999) this is indeed assumed. the third solution would be to calculate the happiness the dead would have experienced if they were still alive. the respective techniques may be derived from econometric microstudies. one would first have to empirically estimate the future happiness based on the characteristics of a person such as his or her age, socio-economic background, education, health, expected length of life, etc. in a second step one would have to associate these characteristics to the persons who died in war. this is obviously a difficult procedure and may result in major mistakes. in particular, if the dead, say young soldiers killed on the battlefield, 6 see also fleurbaey 2009: 1060-61 peace, war, and happiness frey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 232 have characteristics not captured by the happiness function estimated, the estimates may be seriously biased. for example, the soldiers killed might have been more than averagely optimistic and idealistic. as these characteristics are positively related to happiness, a standard empirical approach would systematically underestimate the calculated future happiness of the soldiers killed. war then appears to be less damaging to happiness than it is in reality but only under the maintained, and probably false, assumption that soldiers are on average more optimistic and idealistic. these considerations reveal that to calculate the presumed happiness of the dead and unborn babies is most questionable. moreover, it makes happiness considerations even more speculative than they presently are. considering the grief, suffering and mourning of spouses, parents, children, other relatives and friends of the people who died can capture only one part of the unhappiness created by war. it must be emphasized that this does not account for the loss of happiness of the dead persons themselves. it may well be imagined that grief about a departed is immense to other persons, but that the person himself or herself wanted to die because he or she did not expect any happiness in the future. empirical estimates led to the conclusion that ‚the largest emotional losses are from the death of a spouse; the second-worst in severity are the losses from the death of a child; the third-worst is the death of a parent‛ (oswald and powdthavee 2008: 1). based on an ‘economistic’ approach of valuing psychic effects, the loss of happiness by other persons has been found to be very large indeed: ‚< the hedonic compensation annual amount in the first year for the death of a child might be of the order of £100,000/$200,000‛ (oswald and powdthavee 2008: 19). and the grief continues for many years. the authors find that people do adapt to the loss of a loved one. the question is again whether such adjustment is quicker during wars in which many other people die. 6. conclusions this paper leaves a great number of questions open. as mentioned at the beginning, i focus on the question of how much, if at all, peace raises the happiness of the population. broader and certainly also important aspects, such as that cooperation is better than conflict and therefore leads to a happier population, are not further pursued here for reasons of space. war and peace have a large number of direct and indirect effects on happiness, difficult or impossible to capture. i am well aware that i have discussed only a limited part of them. in addition there are many problems due to issues of causality and attribution, making it very difficult to reach any empirical insights into the effects of war on happiness. the paper concentrates on three fundamental claims regarding the effect of war and peace on happiness. these claims are: ‘war brings happiness’; ‘people adjust to wars’; and ‘the happiness of the dead is irrelevant’. these claims are critically discussed and it is argued that they are open to doubt, but that there are some aspects of war contributing to people’s happiness. an attempt is made to discuss different solutions to deal with these claims but it was made clear that each one has grave disadvantages. i am surprised how little is known in the scholarly literature about the effect of war and peace on happiness – at least compared to the great advances made over the last few years with respect to the determinants of happiness under ‘normal’ conditions. while the results of this paper are extremely tentative, one goal of the paper has been reached if it draws attention to a missing and most important aspect of happiness research. peace, war, and happiness frey www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 233 taken overall, and taking account of all the uncertainties mentioned, i conclude that bruder klaus was right in advising politicians and citizens not to extend the boundaries too far, not to interfere in the affairs of other countries, and most importantly, to keep peace. in these fundamental respects, this person living in the alps as a hermit in the fifteenth century was truly wise. after considering what i have read and thought about while preparing this paper my personal conviction is unshaken: war is horrific, and all effort should be made to prevent it – and this not only for moral reasons but also to raise the happiness of mankind. acknowledgements i am grateful for helpful suggestions for improvement to reto cueni, lisa elsasser, john f. helliwell, margit osterloh, stephan kyburz and lasse steiner. author bruno s. frey university of zurich and university of warwick bruno.frey@econ.uzh.ch publishing timeline received 8 february 2011 accepted 5 april 2011 published 20 july 2011 references clark, a. e., p. frijters and m. a. shields (2008) ‘relative income, happiness, and utility: an explanation for the easterlin 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(2017). bullying reduction and subjective wellbeing: the benefits of reduced bullying reach far beyond the victim. international journal of wellbeing, 7(1), 1222. doi:10.5502/ijw.v7i1.516 roberta ann heydenberk lehigh university wrh2@lehigh.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 article bullying reduction and subjective wellbeing: the benefits of reduced bullying reach far beyond the victim roberta ann heydenberk · warren robert heydenberk abstract: numerous studies have revealed the relationship between bullying and an increased risk of depression, and suicidal ideation (nansel, overpeck, saluja & ruan, 2004; card & hodges, 2008; harris, 2009; wang, iannotti, & nansel, 2009: lenci & matuga, 2010). the world health organization’s longitudinal, multi-national study of children’s subjective wellbeing found that school climate and the quality of children’s relationships are the most significant factors in predicting wellbeing (klocke, clair, & bradshaw, 2014). decades of research have revealed the benefits of healthy levels of subjective wellbeing (swb). one of the major factors affecting subjective wellbeing is the quality of an individual’s social interactions (diener, 2016). this threeyear study of 1218 4th and 5th-grade students in 16 classrooms within eight suburban/urban schools assessed changes in students’ subjective wellbeing or happiness before and after implementation of a bullying prevention/intervention program. three subgroups were identified: bullies, victims, and bystanders. as bullying declined in all of the three subgroups, significant positive prosocial pretest to posttest changes were identified on two centers for disease control bullying compendium modified aggression subscales (the bullying subscale and the cooperative caring subscale). statistically significant gains in subjective wellbeing were found within the largest group: the bystander (witness) student group, during each year of the threeyear study. although there were positive changes in measures of swb in bullies and victims during the three-year study, the changes were not statistically significant. keywords: bully, victim, bystander, subjective wellbeing, focus, affect, depression, school climate, bullying reduction 1. literature review 1.1 subjective wellbeing subjective wellbeing research focuses on “the study of what lay people might call happiness” (diener, oishi, & lucas, 2003, p. 404). despite concerns that happiness may diminish motivation, the research shows that happy people are more likely to be productive, active citizens across their lifespan, healthier with stronger immune systems, and less likely to suffer from chronic diseases, among other positive outcomes (diener & tay, 2012; diener, 2016). the study of “subjective wellbeing comprises the scientific analysis of how people evaluate their lives—both at the moment and for longer periods of time” (diener et al., 2003, p. 404). healthy levels of happiness or of subjective wellbeing (swb) are strongly related to physical and mental health (diener & seligman, 2004). positive social support and emotional intelligence are strong predictors of healthy levels of swb (gallagher & vella-brodrick, 2008). in fact, “social relationships have been http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-n bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 found to have a strong association with mortality…[and] show a larger effect on longevity than factors such as physical activity, body mass index and/or drug treatment for hypertension” (diener & chan, 2011, p. 28). daily positive or negative interactions are the most powerful predictors of positive or negative affect scores (mccullough, huebner, & laughlin, 2000). in fact, social support and social resources are “more strongly related to swb than [are] material resources” (diener & fujitia, 1995, p. 28). numerous “demographic factors such as health, income, educational background and marital status account for only a small amount of variance in wellbeing measures” (diener, oishi & lucas, 2003, p. 406). social support, and positive social interaction predict healthy levels of subjective wellbeing and they are essential to physical and mental health. a multinational, longitudinal study conducted by the world health organization collected data on adolescents from 1983. the multilevel analysis confirms variation in effects of individual characteristics on swb at the country level. no such effects were found for the country level variables included, such as gdp/economic factors and youth unemployment. “this is a remarkable result. it indicates that it is not the economy (gdp) or the level of spending on family policies which can foster child wellbeing. rather, it is the country and school climate that influence the way individual characteristics influence child subjective wellbeing” (klocke, clair, & bradshaw, 2014, p. 3). other researchers have confirmed that economic variables and inequality are not the most significant factors impacting children’s subjective wellbeing. instead, “it is the nature of children’s relationships” (lee & yoo, 2014, p. 151) that strongly predicts healthy levels of subjective-wellbeing. 1.2 the prevalence of bullying although bullying rates among youth vary, depending on factors such as age, cultural and social norms, as well as the way researchers define bullying, a study of bullying that included a comprehensive list of bullying behaviors revealed that 67% of all young people had experienced at least one type of bullying aggression defined in the study (peterson & ray, 2006). other studies have found bullying rates as high as 75%, with one quarter of a typical young population experiencing bullying with relative frequency, and approximately one-third of students feeling unsafe at school because of bullying (peterson & ray, 2006). comprehensive national measures of bullying in the united states reveal that more than 35% of adolescents are verbally bullied and approximately 13% are physically bullied with relative frequency (wang, iannotti, & nansel, 2009). while bullying and violence may be associated with low income schools or urban schools, it is a more pervasive and endemic problem. students living in rural environments are at risk of experiencing significant bullying. researchers found that “of 15 measures of violence … none showed a significantly lower prevalence among rural teens. in fact, rural teens were more likely than urban or suburban teens to have carried a weapon … rural teens [were] equally or more likely than suburban or urban teens to be exposed to violent activities” and to use drugs (mink, moore, johnson, probst, & martin, 2005, p. 4). 1.3 the impact of bullying in contrast to the beneficial outcomes of positive social support, which include healthy levels of swb, negative social interactions such as bullying have far-reaching deleterious impacts on mental and physical health, relationships, cognitive functioning, and productivity (harris, 2009). for instance, bullying increases the risks of depression, school failure, and the developmental issues associated with depression in children, and studies of adults who were bullied in their bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 youth reveal lasting negative effects (carlisle & rofes, 2007). lasting negative impacts, including shame, anxiety, and difficulty in relationships, compound the problem for victims (carlisle & rofes, 2007). increased developmental impacts on children include “weakened development of social competencies which may harm future social and work prospects” (jensen-campbell, knack, waldrip, & ramirez, 2009; due et al., 2005, p. 129). bullying researchers warn us that “the problem of bullying among youth has become an international concern. studies on school aged children in the united states, australia, england, germany, and scotland confirm that bullying is associated with adverse outcomes for both the victim and the bully, including poorer social, emotional, and physical health; these psychological challenges may persist into later adolescence and adulthood” (nansel, overpeck, saluja, & ruan, 2004, p. 730). furthermore, victimization is associated with “academic maladjustment, low school enjoyment, school avoidance, absenteeism [and] low academic achievement” (card & hodges, 2008, p. 454). victimized students have negative changes in brain function which impair their ability to focus and learn (card & hodges, 2008, p. 454). adolescents are “especially susceptible to the health effects of negative social interactions” (due et al., 2005, p. 130). not only is bullying prevalent, its effects on victims are long-lasting. research on a group of more than 6,000 adult males revealed that “those exposed to bullying in school were at a significantly increased risk of having been diagnosed with depression between the ages of 31-50 years.” long duration and high intensity of bullying were the variables which predicted depression later in life (lund et al, 2009). furthermore, when former victims have their own children, they are often overprotective and sheltering, which “may inhibit the development of conflict resolution skills and social skills in their children—placing the children at heightened risk of becoming the next generation of victims” (smokowski & kopasz, 2005, p. 105). involvement in bullying, either as a bully or as a victim, increases a young person’s risk “of dying of any of three main causes of mortality among young people—suicide, homicide, or accidents” (srabstein & piazza, 2008, p. 229). both bullying and victimization are associated with later suicide attempts and completed suicides (sourander et al., 2007). bullies are more likely than non-bullying peers to suffer from depression and suicidal ideation (klomeck et al., 2007, p. 43). young bullies are likely to have varied conduct disorders, low school commitment and more significant health problems than non-bullying youth (srabstein & piazza, 2008). bullies are at “higher risk of suffering from self-inflicted, accidental and perpetuated injuries, abusing overthe-counter medications, hurting animals and people on purpose, using a weapon that could hurt someone seriously and being frequently absent from school” (srabstein & piazza, 2008, p. 228). bullies are also at higher risk for drug abuse, setting fires, self-injury, and carrying weapons (srabstein & piazza, 2008). bullying, ostracism, or social exclusion at any age has negative impacts. bullying is a significant factor in predicting the presence of adolescent depression. young people who are involved in bullying, either as a perpetrator or as a victim, are more than twice as likely to be among those who suffer from depression than their uninvolved peers (saluja et al., 2004). bullying and peer victimization are also associated with suicidal ideation, completed suicides, and suicide attempts: “the more types of victimization, the higher the risk of depression and suicidality among both genders” (klomek, marrocco, kleinman, schonfeld, & gould, 2007, p. 43). depression is a “substantial and largely unrecognized problem among children that warrants an increased need and opportunity for identification and intervention” (saluja et al., 2004, p. 762). bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 1.4 bystander/witness effects bullying is too often conceptualized as action between two individuals, the bully and his victim. unfortunately, the deleterious human effects transcend the bully-victim dyad. it appears that no one in a social community is untouched by the presence of bullying. simply witnessing bullying puts bystanders at risk of psychological and social disorders. research reveals that the negative impacts of witnessing bullying include fear, guilt, and depression (janson, carney, hazler, & oh, 2009). a study of bystanders in 14 public schools revealed that witnessing bullying was associated with bystanders’ greater concurrent and subsequent use of alcohol and drugs, as well as bystander trauma and anxiety (rivers, poteat, noret, & ashurst, 2009). bystanders who are subjected to “negative peer influence” and “those who change their opinions to match their friend’s engage in a range of risky behaviors and subsequently experience more instabilities in close friendships, decreased popularity and higher levels of depression” (juvonen & galvan, 2009, p. 306). bystanders who witness bullying may be “intimidated and fearful” (whitted & dupper, 2005, p. 171). although not directly targeted, bystanders are often distracted, which may make concentration on academic tasks difficult. furthermore, bystanders often report feeling guilty years later. when bystanders are asked to “recall witnessing bullying, their levels of psychological distress (as measured by the impact of event scale, self-reports of trauma levels, heart rate changes and skin conductance measurements) were unexpectedly high and were comparable to levels of distress experienced by combat veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder” (janson & hazler, 2004, p. 239). relatively high levels of bullying occur in grades 5-8 (janson, carney, hazler, & oh, 2009), therefore early school-based intervention strategies may provide hope for bullying reduction and raise students’ subjective wellbeing. 2. purpose of study this three-year study explored the relationship between reduced bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing in a suburban/urban school environment. students’ perceptions and their use of bully strategies were also assessed and elucidated. 3. participants and treatment the bully intervention/prevention program included 1,218 students in 16 classrooms (eight 4thgrade classrooms and eight 5th-grade classrooms) in a suburban/urban school district adjacent to a major urban center on the east coast of the united states. three teacher trainers provided 9 hours of bullying awareness/reduction training to all students and teachers in hourly time blocks over a period of 2 months for a total of 9 training hours per classroom. the three trainers held degrees in conflict resolution or related areas and had provided numerous successful trainings prior to this study. all classroom teachers of the student participants engaged in the study were volunteers, and they were encouraged to be active participants in the training sessions. infusion of conflict positive strategies into content area curricula was also encouraged, and examples were presented during the training sessions. classrooms were observed during the investigation period to determine compliance. interactive/participatory class meetings, which provided a vehicle for specific activities, were a central focus of the anti-bullying program. as bullying was defined, discussed, and identified, students participated in meetings to design social contracts (listing and discussing prosocial behaviors to help students respect and support each other in their classrooms). empathy and bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 respect were given attention, and the development of affective vocabulary was achieved through classroom check-in meetings. students responded to an “i message” sentence stem“i feel _____” with an affective vocabulary sheet (feeling words) daily. meetings were used to help students recognize and understand emotions and develop affective vocabulary, assertive communication skills and empathy. metacognitive anger management strategies were introduced, such as star: stop, think, ask (customized questions for each student’s specific patterns of communication), and reflect/resolve for impulsive aggression/bullying, additional age appropriate strategies which had been found to be effective in previous research (heydenberk & heydenberk, 2007a, 2007b) for effective prosocial communication and conflict resolution were taught during ongoing weekly sessions. at the onset of the investigation, researchers asked students to self-identify either as bully, victim, or a bystander (“most of the time i am….”). because of their limited definitions of bullying, along with a tendency to deny bullying, the bullying of siblings was discussed with students. students are often more comfortable discussing bullying behaviors in the sibling context (heydenberk & heydenberk, 2015). consequently, the students candidly answered questions about their own interpersonal bullying behavior patterns. within the sample of 1,218 students, 28% identified as having been the victim of a bully, 7% identified themselves as a bully and 65% identified themselves as a bystander. the study employed a pretest-posttest design for intervention classroom students which included measures of subjective wellbeing (swb) and the centers for disease control (cdc) compendium of bullying/aggression scales. the 7-point swb scale used in this study was a simplified version of the d-t scale (delighted-terrible scale). although single item measures “tend to be less reliable” (diener, 2009, p. 14) than multiple item measures, the d-t scale has an estimated 65% valid variance and stable validity when compared to other measures of swb (diener, 2009). to assure clarity, students (identified as bullies, victims, or bystanders) were also asked to circle a related graphic indicating their sense of wellbeing, using the neutral, smiling, and frowning face graphics adjacent to the affect vocabulary. students were instructed to close their eyes and think about how happy/unhappy they feel “most of the time” in all areas of their lives. the central graphic was neutral, with a straight line for the mouth expression (score = 0). the three graphics to the left of the neutral face graphic indicated increasing levels of happiness (smiles with scores = 1 to 3 points), and the three graphics to the right indicated increasing levels of unhappiness (frown—scores = -1 to -3). the instrument used for assessment of aggression and bullying was the centers for disease control’s modified aggression scale. the scale is composed of four subscales which measure students’ fighting rates, bullying behavior, anger, and cooperative/caring interactions. the internal consistencies of the scales range from .60 to .83. all questions provided a 5-point likert scale for student responses. the caring/cooperation subscale (.60) is comprised of eight items, such as: i helped other students solve a problem. i told other students how i felt when they upset me. the anger subscale (internal consistency .75) contains five items, such as: i got into a physical fight because i was angry (reverse coded). i was mean to someone when i was angry (reverse coded). the bullying subscale (internal consistency .83) contains four items, such as: i teased other students (reverse coded). i threatened to hit or hurt another student (reverse coded). bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 the fighting subscale (internal consistency .73) is comprised of five items, such as: i hit. each response had a possible range of 0 (no opportunity) to 4 points per question. negative behaviors were reverse coded. for example: i hit back when someone hit me first. positive, prosocial behaviors were forward coded. for example: i walked away from a fight. negative behaviors were reverse coded (e.g., i called students names = 4 points for “1-2 times” to 1 point for the “5 or more times” choice). positive behaviors were coded directly (e.g., i helped other students = 0 for “no opportunity” to 4 points for the “5 or more times” choice). therefore, higher scores indicate higher rates of prosocial behaviors and skill use. pretests and posttests were coded with students’ classroom number, and students’ initials were coded, and all data/responses were assessed as either bully, victim, or bystander group means within each school. the cdc scales and the swb responses were analyzed as group means at the classroom level with a 2 tailed t-test / alpha.05. at the onset of the study, bullying was defined, elucidated and discussed, by providing examples of unidirectional, unprovoked physical aggression, and relational aggression. at the end of the study, students were asked to assess changes in bullying rates by estimating the number of bullying incidents they experienced (in the role of witness/bystander, victim, or bully) for one typical week prior to the bullying prevention program and again one week after the program concluded, approximately eight weeks later. a customized scale with questions of high content validity asked students to rate their use of the various intervention and prevention strategies and the group processes employed during the bullying prevention/intervention lessons. these posttest-only subscales asked students to rank intervention and prevention strategies. students were asked to identify: 1) which strategies were the most helpful, or used most frequently, 2) which strategies were used beyond the classroom setting, 3) which strategies changed how students think about bullying, 4) and which strategies helped students understand bullying and understand classmates. finally, students responded to several questions about changes in their sense of school safety, connectedness, and their ability to focus on academic tasks. 4. results and discussion the findings from the sample of 1,218 students from 16 (4th and 5th grade) elementary school classrooms per year for a total of 48 classroom sessions revealed a 48% mean (m) reduction in bullying rates (standard deviation/ sd =7.3), and statistically significant prosocial behavioral gains (one-tailed t-test /alpha.05) on two of the cdc modified aggression subscales, the bullying subscale and the cooperative/caring behavior subscale. positive but nonsignificant gains (alpha .05) were assessed from pretest to posttest on the anger subscale and the fighting subscale. within the sample of 1,218 students, 29% (314 students) were self-identified victims of routine bullying at the time of the pretest, 7% (85 students) were self-identified bullies, and 65% of the sample (792 students) were self-identified as bystanders. the majority of the self-identified victims of bullying reported fewer incidents of bullying at the end of the training program. bully victimization rates were reduced by approximately 48% (mean bullying rate reduction = 48%, standard deviation = 7.3) in the victim group. bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 students rated class meetings as the most important bullying program component (citing enhanced ability to speak to peers, enhanced ability to stand up for themselves/others, and enhanced understanding and friendships among students). metacognitive strategies for impulse control (e.g., the star activity: stop, think, ask, resolve/review) ranked as the second most important intervention strategy. emotional awareness activities and social norming activities (designing a respectful classroom/social contact) were rated as the third and fourth favorite strategies among students. the majority of students reported:  feeling safer in the classroom (65% agreed or strongly agreed)  worrying less about bullying (78% agreed or strongly agreed)  enhanced ability to stand up for themselves or others (87% agreed or strongly agreed)  feeling happier about coming to school (80% agreed or strongly agreed)  transfer of skills/using skills beyond the school setting (79% agreed or strongly agreed). students felt that bullying had been reduced (82% agreed or strongly agreed). over 75% of students indicated that it was easier to focus or pay attention at the time of the posttest, when bullying was reduced. as shown in table 1 below, students were asked to respond to a measure of subjective wellbeing in the form of a 7-point likert scale with numbers and graphics ranging from (-3) very sad/unhappy to (+3) very happy. table 1. pretest and posttest group means and standard deviation scores (m/sd) on measures of subjective wellbeing swb bystander group mean and standard deviation victim group mean and standard deviation bully group mean and standard deviation year 1 pre-test 2.41/0.124 1.46/0.157 2.32/0.200 post-test 2.58*/0.083 1.55/0.138 2.42/0.233 year 2 pre-test 2.42/0.132 1.45/0.220 2.38/0.127 post-test 2.65*/0.981 1.57/0.155 2.45/0.183 year 3 pre-test 2.40/0.201 1.48/0.045 2.41/0.087 post-test 2.63*/0.659 1.49/0.058 2.43/0.177 *significant difference /alpha .05 all students: bullies, victims, and bystanders, had positive gain scores during the investigation, although the mean gains for victims and bullies were not statistically significant. bystanders had the highest mean swb pretest scores. at the time of the posttest, the bystanders’ mean swb score revealed a statistically significant gain (2-tailed t-test/alpha .05). students in the victim category had the lowest mean swb pretest scores and posttest scores. although all three student groups (bullies, victims, bystanders) showed positive gains in subjective wellbeing and their perceptions about their ability to focus, the bystander group gains were the highest and consistently significant during the 3-year investigation. decades of research have revealed the potentially devastating long-term impact of bullying on victims (srabstein & piazza, 2008). when studying factors affecting swb, positive daily events relate most significantly to levels of life satisfaction and happiness (mccullough, huebner, & laughlin, 2000). the world health organization (klocke et al., 2014) found that school climate and positive relationships impact wellbeing more significantly than gdp/economic factors in countries all over the world. in this study, the lowest ses (socioeconomic status) school had the bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 lowest bullying scores and the highest swb scores on pretests and posttests throughout the 3year study. additionally, the school’s exemplary academic achievements reflected the positive swb and sense of school community. the highest ses school had the highest level of bullying and the lowest swb on pretests for 2 years of the study. this study of the relationship between bullying and swb, along with a recent and growing body of bullying research, has identified significant risks to the wellbeing of bystanders as well as to bully/victim dyads (janson, carney, hazler, & oh, 2009). since bullying is a negative daily event in most schools, it is not surprising that this study illustrates the power of bullying to degrade the swb of the entire school community, not just that of victims and bullies. this study also illustrates the potential power of simple social norming strategies, through democratic class meetings, and skill building such as check-ins, i messages, and the star strategy to reduce bullying and improve students’ swb, ability to focus, and feelings about their lives. such strategies can be infused into the academic curriculum without losing instructional time from subject matter learning. although the victims and bullies showed positive swb gains, the victim group and bully group swb gains were less significant than the gains made by the bystander group. the victims and bullies may warrant additional individual interventions and targeted support, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (grills-taquechel, polifroni, & pane, 2010), in addition to whole class treatments. however, changing group norms and transforming school culture, as was accomplished in this study, may have significant positive impact on all three student groups. positive affect or swb isn’t simply a pleasant construct; swb has significant impacts on students’ ability to focus on academic tasks and to learn. fear, guilt and other forms of negative affect may have far-reaching effects on cognition and creative thinking (harris, 2009). positive affect also increases prosocial behavior and enhances the ability to attend and to form connections with others (sekerka & fredrickson, 2008). positive affect creates an upward spiral of psychological and physical health, creativity, and academic productivity for all members of a school community. the interdependence of the cognitive and affective domains has long been recognized. given the devastating effects bullying has on bystanders, bullies, and victims, attention should be directed to reduction of bullying and fostering positive swb in classrooms if optimal emotional and cognitive growth of students is to be attained. authors roberta ann heydenberk lehigh university wrh2@lehigh.edu warren robert heydenberk lehigh university publishing timeline received 3 february 2016 accepted 17 april 2017 published 9 june 2017 references mailto:wrh2@lehigh.edu bearing witness: bullying and students’ subjective wellbeing heydenberk & heydenberk www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 card, n., & hodges, e. 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(2011). needs and subjective well-being around the world. journal of personality and social psychology, 101(2), 354-365. wang, l., iannotti, r., & nansel, t. (2009). school bullying among adolescents in the united states: physical, verbal, relational, and cyber. journal of adolescent health, 45(4), 368-375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.03.021 whitted, k., & dupper, d. (2005). best practices for preventing or reducing bullying in schools. children and schools, 27(3), 167-175. https://doi.org/10.1093/cs/27.3.167 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.03.021 https://doi.org/10.1093/cs/27.3.167 jarden, a. (ed.). (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 70–149. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.0 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org i special issue positive psychologists on positive psychology edited by aaron jarden “contemplation, introspection, curiosity turning inward, and this entire meaning making system is fertile terrain for the future of positive psychology”—todd kashdan “we almost don’t need to have a separate area called positive psychology, because now it’s become part of most people’s thinking. it’s achieved critical mass”—sonja lyubomirsky “the single massive achievement of positive psychology is that it has legitimized the study of what’s right with people”—alex linley “everywhere in the world, people want to be happy, to get along with other people, to have their needs met, to develop and grow, and to have respect. people want to love and to be loved. it is these universals that we want to study as positive psychologists”—ed diener “positive psychology has grown and it’s captured practical, applied and research attention across many disciplines around this now widely accepted notion that we can learn how to be better off. that has been remarkable. i don’t think that anyone saw it coming”—mike steger “any time that i think of a prototypical positive intervention that i want people to stick with, i think of the gratitude visit and the three good things exercise as a place to start”—acacia parks “i think that positive psychology has made incredible strides and has moved way beyond so many of the naysayers and people that were skeptical suggesting that positive psychology was just a fad, and that it was going to be done and over in just a few years. they turned out to be completely wrong on that”—ryan niemiec “counting your blessings is great but it’s not going to be an intervention that saves the world, and gratitude letters are not going to either”—nic marks “one of the biggest achievements of positive psychology to date is just getting on the public radar; of being clearly an area of science worth investing in, worth paying attention to, worth applying”—barbara fredrickson “the future development of positive psychology at the moment lies in its international appeal”—ilona boniwell “the whole field of positive psychology is exploding; it’s great in terms of the future, in terms of what lies ahead”—robert vallerand “i have been concerned about the use of strengths interventions as if they are a fool-proof way to enhance wellbeing. strengths are not a wind-up toy, ready to be taken out of the box, and off you go”—denise quinlan “the real interventions in our life are family, school, jobs, and the political systems in which we live: these interventions don’t last two weeks, they last all our lives”—mihaly csikszentmihalyi http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology jarden (ed.) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org ii contents introduction 70 todd kashdan 72 sonja lyubomirsky 79 alex linley 83 ed diener 88 mike steger 92 acacia parks 98 ryan niemiec 105 nic marks 110 barbara fredrickson 116 ilona boniwell 119 robert vallerand 125 denise quinlan 131 mihaly csikzentmihalyi 136 acknowledgments 140 positive psychology resources 141 about the author 142 review of positive psychologists on positive psychology 143 margarita tarragona review of positive psychologists on positive psychology 146 bridget grenville-cleave http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: introduction, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 70–71. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.1 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 editorial positive psychologists on positive psychology introduction interest in positive psychology is rapidly expanding as the field continues to make swift progress in terms of scientific advancement and understanding. there are more courses, more workshops, more conferences, more students, more associations, more journals and more textbooks than ever before. the news media and public are thirsty for information related to happiness and, specifically, wellbeing, and for all facets of positive psychology generally. psychology departments are increasingly looking to teach courses and offer qualifications that focus specifically on positive psychology, and various organisations are trying to understand how they can best capitalise on and harness the field’s initial scientific findings. what you don’t hear so much about is how positive psychology operates in the real world, how researchers and practitioners became interested in positive psychology, how they work with clients and the various models and theories they use. what do they find most useful? what happens to their thinking and practice as they become experienced and knowledgeable in the positive psychology arena? why did they decide to move into positive psychology? what do they get out of being involved in the positive psychology community? what directions are they and the field heading towards? this book discusses these kinds of questions and issues, and is a book for all those in the wellbeing, helping professional and psychological fields interested in knowing more about the development, theory, research and application of the new field of positive psychology. it is a book that spans an eclectic range of interests from psychology students to psychologists, to coaches, to media and beyond. in the following chapters, thirteen people with various degrees of knowledge and skill in different facets of the positive psychology field share their experiences, concerns, hopes and dreams, thoughts, and opinions in interview format. all interviews were conducted july to october 2011 and thus reflect thinking at that time. before publication, all interviewees approved their transcripts as being accurate. thirteen interviews is obviously too small a number to arrive at any generalisation. this book is not research per se; it is exploratory in nature and should be consumed in that light. placement and order of each interview is random rather than sequential, meaning that they may be read in any order. my sincere thanks and gratitude to the giants of this field, and to the up and coming stars for passing on their wisdom and knowledge. i hope this book may be useful to those wanting to know more about what positive psychology is, how it developed, where it is going, how it is going to get there, and to those looking to move into the positive psychology arena. in short, i hope these interviews are engaging and provide further insight into this new and rapidly developing field, and that it enriches your understanding of positive psychology as it currently stands. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 72–78. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.2 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan interview by aaron jarden todd kashdan, a.k.a. ‘the guns of positive psychology’, is an associate professor of psychology and senior scientist of the center for consciousness and transformation at george mason university. todd trained in clinical psychology and is well known for his research into curiosity, social relationships, personality in daily life, meaning and purpose in life, and their links to all aspects of wellbeing. are you curious about the questions i’m going to ask? of course! i hate to know the questions ahead of time. ok then, well, what prompted you to become interested in positive psychology? i’ve been in positive psychology a little over a decade now. the origin for me was when i was sitting in a doctor’s office, and at the time i was studying anxiety and panic attacks. in the office was an issue of psychology today and the main article was about sexuality and high suicide rates, with a small subtitle referring to an article on happiness and flow (a concept i had never heard of before). immediately i was thinking to myself that, while i’m devoting my career to helping people to deal with their anxiety problems, when it comes down to it, once their anxiety has dissipated, i’d basically shake their hand and say how amazing they’d been over the course of eight weeks and send them on their way; not thinking about or working with them on how they might organize their life now that they have eight extra hours of time and energy to devote to it. when i read [mihaly] csikszentmihalyi’s article on happiness and flow i thought to myself, it’s interesting, the idea that as psychologists, we’re going to help people organize their lives, and that was the moment for me. i don’t want just to reduce people’s anxiety, in fact i don’t know if that’s always a good thing. i want to organize and structure people’s lives in a way that’s congruent with the values that they care most about. that all hit me when i was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for my dermatologist appointment. what did you do before positive psychology? well before i did that i worked on the floor of the ny stock exchange as an assistant to a specialist. in brief, specialist firms create markets for particular stocks such that if there are lots of buyers but no sellers, they will step in and sell stock to particular people and companies. essentially, for 30 stocks, any transaction in the world had to go through my fingertips. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 were there any other key events that changed you and made you move into the field of positive psychology? my father left my twin brother and i when we were about two years old. my parents got divorced and then he just took off and never really spoke to us again. my mother died when i was thirteen. i never really defined myself as being someone who was an orphan or overcoming adversities, but everyone else always was surprised. i remember meeting a really distinguished psychologist at the university of virginia, irving gottesman. he’s well known for research on schizophrenia. after an interview with him he said to me, ‚you beat the odds, you’re supposed to be in jail, you’re supposed to be the drug addict, yet here you are, an orphan at 21 years of age, and you’re just not supposed to be here at this stage of your life‛. it made me realize the power of resilience. you shouldn’t be defining yourself by resilience, but it becomes embedded within the cells of your body. that’s the type of idea that i like to promote in people’s lives. not to make it their aim to make themselves become resilient, but use what we know about the human condition to help them overcome difficult life events so that they get bred into the bone. this resonates with me because i’ve overcome loss and adversity, but never defined myself by that adversity. in general terms, and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? it’s a tough question because there’s the established foundation of positive psychology and then there’s what i think it should be, and i always struggle between these two worlds. the core of positive psychology since its inception has been positive emotions and strengths of character; and then particular elements of relationships that allow them to flourish harmoniously for the long term. i think that all three of these are integral to living a well-lived life. i think that the problem is that positive emotions are the biggest strength and also the biggest problem for positive psychology. there are two ways of looking at positive emotions. one is that they are just a barometer or gauge that your life is going well. the other is that positive emotions are what we are aiming to construct—we want to construct our life so that there is a high frequency of positive emotions and a low frequency of negative emotions. to me, there are fundamental problems when this is the primary target for our interventions and what we want to create in our lives. i view positive emotions as the residual benefit of focusing on meaning and purpose in life, and close relationships. and from striving toward these personal projects, you’re going to fill your pockets with emotional experiences. they’re building blocks/cells and what’s important is, ‘what’s the connective tissue among these moments?’. that is what should be more fundamental to positive psychology. what do you want to be written on your tombstone? what do you want to be in your obituary? i think few people are going to answer ‘here lies a person who had a high frequency of positive emotions and a low frequency of negative emotions’. instead, they are going to want a tombstone that discusses intimate relationships, self-sacrifice, the search for ultimate truths, accomplishment, etc. but i can understand why these deeper topics are not at the forefront of positive psychology. after all, they don’t work as well in a media sound-bite. but we should be interested in the connective tissue among positive experiences and the architectural framework that houses them, as opposed to just increasing the amount of positive experiences. positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 what is one big question that positive psychology answers? how do you maintain a lasting, trusting, and satisfying relationship? two people who want to be committed to each other in a way where each feels accepted, validated, understood, with a sense of vitality and room to continually evolve. i think we’ve nailed that. which professional groups of people are most interested in harnessing positive psychology? that’s a really tough one! i mean positive psychology is being applied in education, in health, in organizations, in therapy, even in the army. is there somewhere else you think positive psychology is going to go next? i hope that it is in the government. i think that right now education is where the action is. everything should focus on the future. one of my big beefs with positive psychology is that there is insufficient generativity and generosity right now. there is an unusual culture of celebrities and hero worship: who’s published the books, who are the distinguished professors, who’s being cited in introductory psychology textbooks, who’s making the money, those kinds of things. who’s the next generation? i don’t know who the hell they are right now, but there are creative ideas floating around that people are afraid to reveal, given the possibility that they might look like idiots. most people who come up with unusual great ideas, get rejected. i want to invest in the future of positive psychology. right now education is where the action is. everyone i talk to speaks about the idea that something is wrong at the government level in that they control resources, they decide how much money goes to improving the welfare of humanity, they decide how much money is going to the business organizations, they decide what products they are going to subsidize. with government at the highest realm of the hierarchy, that’s where positive psychology needs to be playing a role. right now there is almost nothing at the governmental level. as a positive psychology practitioner and expert, are there any situations that you need to avoid, or things that you need to be careful of when you are applying the science in practice? as a practitioner, here is the important question to attend to, ‘what are the things the person, the couple, the organization that you are working with, are striving to obtain?’. let’s not impose outcomes on them. if they’re interested in increasing courage and sharing creative ideas, and we end up being the world’s greatest expert on morale and leadership, we have to start with and focus on the things they are interested in and not what we’re interested in. what i worry about is that there are a lot of practitioners in positive psychology, but i don’t know who is a generalist and who’s a specialist. ten years since the inception of this thing called positive psychology and there are still no specialties. you’re just a positive psychologist. and i think that’s particularly problematic. should you be working with parents if the work you’re most familiar with is richard davison’s and pre-frontal cortex activity? if your primary knowledge base happens to be in positive organizational behavior, what exactly makes you qualified to work with parents and children and the interaction between them? positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 i know you’re clinically trained and also do clinical work. do you think the scientistpractitioner model that a lot of clinicians gravitate to is a good model for positive psychologists to adopt as well? the scientist-practitioner model has been a little problematic because of the requirement for everything to be empirically supported before it can be adopted in the world. the mantra that i have adopted over the past few years is that we should be guided, as opposed to governed, by the research. if that fits with the scientist-practitioner model, then i’m for it. however if the scientist-practitioner model sets the bar even higher before we can use the science, then i’m a bit unsure that this level of quality control can be sustained. i think i’ve heard you previously term this approach as being ‘empirically informed’? yes, scientifically informed. that’s right. if you could start learning about positive psychology again from the beginning, i mean you’re a decade or more in now, what would you do differently? nearly everything that i have studied should be centered on the situational context that it is embedded in. that could be people in cults, it could be adults and their relationships with their friends or parents, it could be people embedded in their larger group cultural context. it doesn’t have to be their country of origin, it could be the sub culture they identify with, such as hip-hop culture, goth culture, the punk-rock culture. if i were to do it over again, i would have done two or three years focusing on understanding culture, understanding systems, understanding links between systems, and bringing that to my work with individuals and organizations. what are your plans for the future with regard to positive psychology? my big thing is friendships and romantic relationships. for me, this is the most important aspect of our lives. cultivating these friendships after the age of 30 is complicated; i have no idea what i’m doing and i know many other people feel the same way. what worked as a child, teenager, and young adult, doesn’t work as well in our 30s. when i was 20 years old, surrounded by other people in dormitories and bars, hanging naked from the rafters of a building somewhere, it was nearly impossible to avoid friendships. as you get older, it takes greater effort to find people and consistent effort to maintain friendships. to understand positive aging, we have to get a handle on life transitions. i’m not even referring to life at 65, 70, and 80; i’m talking about 30 to 35 years old. how do you cultivate new relationships when the characters around you have no understanding of the serpentine road it took you to get to where you are? how do you maintain action in a romantic relationship and honor the fact that you are still going to be attracted, seducing and being seduced by, other people in your life? how can you hold these different worlds simultaneously, with neither clashing? this is the realm that my work is going into, looking at people, looking at moments, all within a larger context. who are the emerging and unknown positive psychology researchers to look out for? good question. i think there are scientists in other fields of psychology that no one in positive psychology is talking about. henk aarts and ap dijksterhuis, in the netherlands, study nonconscious processes, basically the idea that once you figure out your bike path to work, you get this mental module in your brain that you can access so quickly that you’ve got plenty of mental resources left over to focus on something else. for someone else who doesn’t have a positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 clear mindful way of getting to work, this is a resource intensive endeavor. what is powerful is the idea that we can shift mental resources to activities that are completely outside of conscious awareness so that we are better able to regulate the multitude of decisions, choices, and data that are flying towards us on a daily basis. their work has great relevance to positive psychology, yet nobody is talking about this science much less how it can be applied when directly helping people. anybody else? there’s jamie goldenberg at the university of south florida who’s a terror management theory researcher. what’s interesting is that she applies this theory to sex and the notion that once you recognize the finality of existence and related existential issues, this affects how you treat your body in terms of dieting, in terms of sex, in terms of being attracted or repelled by the intimate sounds and smells of other people. it’s the same notion that things outside of conscious awareness are constantly biasing and playing tricks on what we value and how we behave. and positive psychology is simply not paying adequate attention to unconscious processes. completing self-report questionnaires won’t cut it. your answers when completing a self-report questionnaire are not necessarily going to converge with what you will actually do in a given situation where multiple options are available. what area of positive psychology do you still find difficult to understand? i mean, what’s the real minefield for new players? everything with non-linear dynamics is complicated. can you be a bit more specific? think about barbara’s fredrickson’s 3-to-1 ratio *of emotions+. it’s based on the notion that human experiences and behavior are dynamic and non-linear. think of the multitude of moments within a single day working in an organization. there are mathematical equations that can be calculated where, when there’s an attraction, there are two attractors, one that attracts negative moments and one that attracts positive moments. two attractors at the same time. it’s as if a person’s psyche has two vacuums. and there’s the notion that if you have a particular ratio of positivity, you’re more likely to be functioning optimally. i understand everything i just said, but the mathematics leading to that result is beyond my comprehension. how do i apply this knowledge to understand a person’s ratio of mindful to mindless moments? how do these formulas help people use their finite currency of time and energy more wisely over the course of a single day? given the notion that there are certain ratios, frequencies, and durations of experiences that lead to more successful outcomes, how can this be used to understand and improve people’s lives? there appear to be mathematical formulas to tackle non-linear life trajectories, but i don’t know how to calculate them, thus i can’t ask the questions the way that i would like to. if someone wants to be happier, what’s an individual’s best bet for increasing their happiness and wellbeing? the data are clear that it’s about appreciating the benefits you get from each moment as it unfolds. it’s a combination of gratitude and mindfulness, which are two overlapping circles. gratitude is the mindful recognition of benefits received, and mindfulness is a kind of open receptive attitude towards what happens as each moment unfolds. put those two together, that positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 attitude, that mind-set, that beacon of consciousness, and you can catch particular moments and make them linger both in the present as an increase in vitality and you can recall them at a later date as a mood boost. that’s where the action is. in positive psychology you’re renowned for research in the area of curiosity. can you tell us a little bit about curiosity? curiosity is one of the engines that make other elements in positive psychology work. you can’t use your strengths in new ways without this process of clarifying strengths as well as the situations where they can be used most effectively. where should i be changing my behaviors, my mind-set? when you reverse engineer this exploration of how to best use strengths, you’re talking about turning curiosity inward towards the self. this runs counter to how people typically think of curiosity. we normally think of curiosity as a mindset turned outward to novel, uncertain, or challenging external stimuli—from people to situations. and the reason why curiosity, the curiosity field, has such lasting power is that most people don’t think about how curiosity can be wielded like a laser, at any given point in time, and we can direct it outward or inward. we spend so much time trying to increase our positive mood that we forget periods of reflection and contemplation, and the importance of clarifying our values, about what’s meaningful, about what we want, about what we want in 100 or so years on this planet to stand for. this mindset usually leads to a positive experience if we are willing to extract meaning, but the actual search itself, the emotional state, is pretty much inert, it’s neutral. so there’s a whole terrain of research and theory that is yet to be touched in terms of how you balance the external search for meaning and the external search for more positive moments as the building blocks for living a good life, versus using time for yourself to reflect on and synthesize how things are going and whether there is adequate movement in the direction of deeply valued life aims. contemplation, introspection, curiosity turning inward, and this entire meaning making system is fertile terrain for the future of positive psychology. what’s your one big hope for the future of positive psychology? five years from now what would you like to see changed? intellectually, i think we already have great scientists. we’ve got publications, we’ve got outlets, we’re entering more territory than any other area of psychology ever has within a tenyear period. but what we don’t have is those people who have that skeptical mind-set of, ‘i’m not content with how things are and i want to continue building a future of new ideas, new theories, new ways to make things better’, which sometimes means tearing things down and starting from scratch. right now, the field of positive psychology is a bit too harmonious. ironic in that this harmony serves as a strength and weakness. my hope is that in five years there will be an appreciation of rigorous challenges. whatever is the ferment of the moment, whatever are the most exciting ideas, those will be challenged. not by trying to win fame by tearing someone down, because we’re all trying to build the greatest architectural masterpiece possible. right now there is too much fear and mistrust about having ideas challenged by other people, about dealing with the ambiguity of where ideas work. nearly all psychological ideas have their tipping points and boundary conditions, where the benefits no longer apply. we need to find them, and map this terrain. the ideas that are getting the most traction in positive psychology, strengths, positive emotions, gratitude, and mindfulness are being overemphasized. this is a common consequence of a paradigm shift. i think we have to appreciate questions such as ‘when do these things not apply?’, ‘when are they not working?’, ‘when do they need to be scaffolded by another process?’. we need to examine constructs and positive psychologists on positive psychology: todd kashdan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 interventions in tandem as opposed to separate, isolated ingredients. my hope is that innovative, integrative skeptics will represent the future of positive psychology, people thinking in greater complexity and people challenging people and ideas, and enjoying that challenge. what do you think is going to be the hot topic in the field over the next five years? it’s already in psychology: regulatory processes outside of conscious awareness. this is already happening under the umbrella of social neuroscience. i think it’s a nice way of describing the world! i’m not quite sure what you do with it in terms of improving the welfare of humanity. but recognizing that most of the things we do to enhance our lives occur outside of conscious awareness—that recognition alone can improve people’s lives. is there anything else you’d like to comment on that would be useful or interesting for someone looking at moving into the field of positive psychology? to be a good practitioner or scientist in this field you need to start with psychology, and then choose the topics that resonate within this lens of positive psychology. the idea of positive psychologists, of people specializing in positive psychology from the get-go, worries me because we have a hundred years of great ideas that could get lost quickly by attempting to start anew when a body of knowledge already exists. let’s build off the shoulders of predecessors. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 79–82. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.3 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky interview by aaron jarden sonja lyubomirsky is a research psychologist, professor of psychology at the university of california, riverside, and outgoing editor of the journal of positive psychology. she has spent most of her research career studying human happiness and is author of the popular book the how of happiness, which describes strategies backed by scientific research that can be used to increase happiness. in general, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? positive psychology is about what makes life worth living. it’s about the positive side of life. before positive psychology, most researchers were focused on studying topics like depression, divorce, stress, how to fix things, and positive psychologists are more interested not in what makes us unhappy, but in what makes us happy. not why people divorce, but why they stay together. my own research is on ‘happiness’, which i really started investigating long before the field of positive psychology came into being. what are some things that positive psychology has achieved to date? maybe the greatest achievement is that it almost does not need to be its own field anymore, because now so many researchers are studying the positive side of life. if you look at any top journal, like in my field, which is social/personality psychology, a huge fraction, sometimes like half, of the articles have something to do with wellbeing or optimism or some kind of positive topic. so it’s just pervading the field of psychology. i don’t know so much about related fields. we almost don’t need to have a separate area called positive psychology, because now it’s become part of most people’s thinking. it’s achieved critical mass. can you tell me a bit about your work in positive psychology? you’re renowned for your work in the area of positive interventions? i started doing research on happiness in 1989, so that was quite a while ago. just to give you a bit of history, the first day of grad school at stanford, i met my advisor, lee ross, who is famous for studying conflict and negotiation, nothing to do with happiness or positive psychology. the very first day we somehow started talking about ‘what is happiness?’, and ‘why are some people happier than others?’. at that time the only person—literally the only person—who was studying happiness was ed diener, and he didn’t even call it happiness, he called it ‘subjective wellbeing’. he had told me that at one point that he started to call it subjective wellbeing because he was up for tenure at the university of illinois and he thought http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 that ‘happiness’ was too unscientific a term, so he had to find a jargon term that was more acceptable. anyway, lee and i started investigating ‘how are happy people different from unhappy people?’, and so for the first ten years of my career, from ‘89 to ‘99, that’s what i did: trying to understand why some people are happier than others. most of that research was correlational, so reporters would often call me and ask me, ‘well, what can we tell our readers about how they can be happier?’. so, for example, one of my studies suggested that happier people are less likely to compare themselves to others. so reporters would call me and say, ‘shall we tell people that they should not compare themselves to others, they shouldn’t engage in social comparison?’. and i would be like, ‘well i don’t know! i can’t say that because all i know is that happy people do it or don’t do it, and that is just a correlational finding’. i thought that the question of how do you get people to do that, or how do you get people to become happier or look more like a happier person was solely an applied question. i thought that was a less interesting scientific question. it was very applied, and i was this basic scientist who was only interested in basic research. but then i realized that the question, ‘how can people become happier?’ or ‘can people become happier given that a lot of happiness is genetically determined?’, was in itself a really interesting scientific question. in 1999 i was invited to one of the akumal, mexico meetings where i met barbara fredrickson, ken sheldon, laura king, jonathan haidt, and, of course, martin seligman and mike csikszentmihalyi. that’s when we all just started talking, and two of the people there, ken sheldon and david schkade, and i started talking about whether people can even become happier. scientists up till then had been kind of pessimistic about whether people can really change their happiness set point. so we developed a theory about sustainable happiness. that’s more or less how my work in positive interventions started. we had this theory about showing that, yes, people can become happier, and then in the last 10 years of my career, along with ken sheldon and others, we have been conducting many happiness interventions. but, again, my interest isn’t just applied, so it’s not just that i want people to be happier—although i certainly do, it’s a nice fringe benefit—but my interest is really more in ‘how can people become happier?’. i’m interested in what are the moderators and the mediators underlying success at achieving happiness. what is the ‘how’ and the ‘why’? if people can become happier, why can they do that, and how can they do that? so that’s what we are trying to achieve in our research right now, looking at those root psychological mechanisms that enable people to be successful in achieving happiness. somebody comes to you and says they want to become happier. what would your first piece of advice to them be? people come to me a lot asking that question! i wrote the how of happiness, where my goal was to basically condense or summarize everything we knew up until then, in 2008, about how to become happier. so what i usually do is send them the 12 empirically-supported categories of strategies or activities that people can do if they want to be happier. i tell them that there is, of course, detailed information about how to become more grateful, or on nurturing their relationships, or pursuing meaningful goals, and i then talk about the research that supports all of these activities or strategies. so that’s what i do, i point them to these 12 strategies that i describe in my book. positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 are there any new interventions coming on board that you think are exciting that no one knows about as yet? there are certainly some exciting studies that we are doing that i can tell you about. for example, one really exciting project we are working on is with robert plomin and his post-doc claire hayworth in london. you may know he’s a behavioral geneticist, and he has something like 10,000 twins that he’s studying and following from birth, just about every twin born in the uk in 1990. we’re studying 2,000 of these twins. we’ve actually just finished the first study, which is a happiness intervention with the twins. there are identical twins and there are fraternal twins in this sample, and there are boys and girls, and so we can answer a lot of questions. what we are interested in in this study is to understand individual differences in people’s responses to happiness interventions. how much of those differences are genetic? because some people, when they try the strategies in my book, find them very effective and they become happier. but some people don’t become as happy to the same degree as others, or maybe don’t get happier at all. so what portion of those individual differences in people’s responses to happiness interventions is genetically determined? we can test that with this twin sample. what positive psychology activities and strategies do you think work really well together? we don’t really know the answer to that question. my students and i are actually only just now doing some studies where, in a positive activity intervention, we have people do several activities at the same time. usually in experiments you want to have everything very controlled, so you study one activity at a time. we’ve just completed a study where we had people do gratitude and kindness at the same time; but we don’t have the results yet. generally my answer, without the evidence, is that what goes well together is what fits you as a person. one of the themes of my book was the idea of fit. you have to somehow find what works for you and what you feel comfortable doing. for you, it could be one set of interventions, and for me, it could be something else. we are testing this hypothesis right now in a couple of studies. where do you see your research going in the future? we are still doing quite a few interventions to test ‘the how’ and ‘the why’. i mentioned the study with the twins. we’re also doing studies with kids. we just did a big study with a whole bunch of elementary school kids in vancouver. so i think it’s really interesting to apply the research to younger people. my friends keep asking me to write the how of happiness for kids, because people want their children to be happy so they really want to know. i don’t think the advice would be really that different, but we need to find out. there are already some researchers engaged in studying that question. we’re doing a lot of that kind of work— applying the interventions to different contexts. another line of research that i’m really involved in right now is about hedonic adaptation. hedonic adaption is an obstacle to happiness; it’s an obstacle to happiness interventions. if you adapt and get used to the rewards or benefits of whatever intervention you’re engaged in, it’s not going to be that successful. ken sheldon and i have a theory of how adaptation works, and how you can thwart it, forestall it, or prevent it. we’re testing that theory now. actually a paper that i’ve submitted with some colleagues about which we are really excited is about whether parents are less happy than non-parents. there have been a lot of articles, a lot of talk in the media about the idea that parents are unhappy, and most of it comes from just one study; and so we did three really nice studies that all used different methodologies, that go together really positive psychologists on positive psychology: sonja lyubomirsky jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 well. all three studies showed the same thing, which is that parents are happier and have more meaning than non-parents—in general, when they are with their children, and when they go about their days. so we’re excited because this paper is going to really debunk this myth out there that parents are miserable. is there anything that i have not asked about, or general advice, that you would like to add? it’s so great that there is so much science out there: i think it’s really important to emphasize that, because positive psychology is so ‘popular’, as it were. there are a lot of mental health practitioners and coaches, as well as doctors, addiction specialists, prison guards, who are all applying the concepts of positive psychology, which is great. but we really need the science behind it, and so there are lots and lots of people now doing that research. we need to make sure people know about that, and, as i mentioned before, we almost don’t need the field anymore because it has permeated everyone’s thinking, so that’s important. in terms of people—graduate students or college students—who are interested in getting into the field, i would say the most important thing is not to study positive psychology, but to obtain a really rigorous training in statistics and methodology and general psychology, in whatever area you’re interested in, and then you can narrow your interests down to positive psychology. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 83–87. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.4 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley interview by aaron jarden alex linley is the founding director of the centre of applied positive psychology (capp) in the uk. he is recognised internationally as a leading expert on positive psychology, and works as an organisational consultant applying strengths in organisations. alex has written, co-written, or edited more than 150 research papers and book chapters, and seven books around the topic of positive psychology. in general terms, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? one of the features of positive psychology is its inherent focus on the positive. by that i don’t mean that it will ignore the negative, but it will pay attention to more of the positive things than has traditionally been looked at. i think that’s fundamentally important because there used to be a view that if we understood the bad, then, by taking away the bad, we would actually create the good, and i don’t believe that that is always the case at all. it’s far more important if we want to promote the good and the positive, that we can understand the good and the positive. what are some things that positive psychology has achieved to date? far and away positive psychology’s biggest achievement is to have put a positive perspective firmly into psychology. before positive psychology, psychology had been hugely focused on the negative side of things. psychology could have been regarded as quite a depressing discipline. since the advent of positive psychology anyone who is interested in the positive side of things has found a home. i think by virtue of that the single massive achievement of positive psychology is that it has legitimized the study of what’s right with people, and to then create new applications and interventions based on that knowledge that move people into positive territory, rather than just away from negative territory. do you think positive psychology has achieved things outside of psychology? without doubt! the positive turn in psychology has also legitimized a wider interest in things like happiness and wellbeing, as great examples. and we can see evidence for shifts in considering those in both social policy here in britain, and in economics in relation to what some economists recommend that we look at (which is also supported by more of the shift towards behavioural economics). more widely, things like martin seligman’s comprehensive soldier fitness programme in the united states are superb examples of how you can take some http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 of the principles of positive psychology and apply those in a way that makes a real and lasting difference to people’s lives. what are some of the most valid criticisms of positive psychology? first, in the early days there was a very valid criticism that positive psychology had largely ignored some of the ‘positive approaches’ that had gone before. it was quite dismissive of humanistic psychology. that has now changed. second, also in the early days there was a perception, although i don’t think this was a reality, that positive psychology was more focused on the positive, and therefore didn’t want anything to do with the negative, and therefore it would do the same things as traditional psychology had done, by just looking at one end of the spectrum. as that criticism was made, there was any number of people who came out and said that actually our view of positive psychology is that it incorporates the negative as well. but it is probably more oriented towards the positive side. a third observation is that there is, and this is not specific to positive psychology at all, this tension between the speed at which people seek to move towards application, and the speed at which the basic research can move. there has been a view in some parts of positive psychology that applications are moving too quickly. on the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of people working in practice who are out there trying things out and trying to do things that will make a difference, and who simply won’t wait for the research to catch up with what they need to know. and it was ever thus. the two, as much as possible, need to inform each other; but we need to recognise that there are very different trajectories and very different agendas that research and practice can be working towards. what area of positive psychology do you still find most difficult or challenging? there is still loads and loads that we don’t know, and still loads to be discovered about strengths, and the applications of strengths. i find that a hugely interesting and intriguing area, and obviously it’s an area where i work a lot myself. the move into neuroscience, looking at the neuroscience side of things, is an area that is outside of my traditional expertise, so that’s something that i need to work hard to understand; but it’s great to have that angle looking at things as well. can you tell me about your work in positive psychology, particularly around strengths? my work on strengths started way back, around ten years ago or so now. obviously i was involved in positive psychology from pretty early on, and i looked at the way that the field was developing; and in very broad terms, there was the work that had been done in happiness and wellbeing, and the work that had been done, or was starting to be done, in strengths. i thought, actually there are loads of people working in happiness and wellbeing, and a lot fewer people working on strengths; and yet, i see strengths as being one of the key ways in which we can achieve happiness and wellbeing. and it was one of the areas that seemed to have loads of potential for application. so i started off really trying to think about and understand what strengths were, and i wrote some early papers, probably five or six years ago now, with tentative definitions of how we could think about strengths. one of the things that came through from that early work was that the energy requirement of strengths was absolutely integral, and while it was implicit in some of the work that had been done so far, nobody had really put it as a hallmark of their theory, so that was something we set out to do. and then around about the same time we started working in practice, and i started working with the positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 british insurance company norwich union, which is now known as aviva, and found that we got very effective results working with them to recruit people according to the strengths that they had, using a strengths-based interview methodology that we developed. since then our research work and applied work has developed hand in hand. often we will develop ideas that we use to inform our work in practice around things like assessment and development and performance management, but from the ideas that we developed and try out in practice, we then develop the questions that we want to look at more rigorously or more empirically. the sorts of things that we are looking at now are to design studies about how strengths help you to achieve your goals, but we are also looking at some of the fundamental strengths. for example, we are designing a study where we look at the role of authenticity and mindfulness and organismic valuing and those sorts of concepts in relation to strengths. and then, of course, there are all of the continual validation studies and things that we do with realise2 as well. is there any new knowledge or studies around strengths that you would like to highlight that are particularly interesting? we have recently done some work on ‘strengthspotting’, and developed the strengthspotting scale, and from that validated the strengthspotting scale against realise2, to look at whether strengthspotters may have a particular strengths profile. it turns out that there are a range of characteristics that seem to define strengthspotting, and those tend to be things around the motivation to identify strengths, the situations in which you do so, the frequency with which you do it, and then, crucially, what you do with that knowledge. so we started to investigate that to see if we could help people to develop their ability to identify strengths in others in natural contexts. in addition to that, we validated that scale against realise2, and showed that connector, enabler and feedback were the key strengths that predicted strengthspotting capability across all the five strengthspotting domains. what’s one aspiration you have for the field of positive psychology? my biggest aspiration for positive psychology is that it continues to grow, but that it continues to grow in a way that influences applications and policy. the basic research needs to continue at pace, with real opportunity for positive psychologists to move into areas where positive psychology can make a sustainable, significant, and lasting impact on people’s lives for the better. i think where that is most likely to happen, sadly, is not from any individual research study; where it will come from is from a building of the body of data and that knowledge and then critically when that data and knowledge is translated into practice. whether it’s the work we do with big organisations, which has the potential to impact the lives of thousands of people, or the way that we inform the development of social policy, or whether it’s projects like the comprehensive solider fitness programme that martin seligman has developed with the us army, things like that really help positive psychology to step up to the plate and go above and beyond just being a basic academic discipline to something which is realising its potential to catalyse a positive difference in the world. and that would be my big aspiration for positive psychology—that it continues to do that. which discipline do you think positive psychology can learn from most moving forward? my gut instinct is economics. rightly or wrongly, the economists have had the measure of policy for many, many, years, and economic terms have shaped much of what goes on in the policy arena. but there are huge opportunities for the melding of psychology and economics. positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 we are already seeing this in things like behavioural economics, where economists are recognising that people are not the logical rational actors that we were always assumed to be by economic models, and instead we make irrational emotional choices based on a whole variety of different factors. for many years that was ignored by economics, and psychologists mocked them for the models being so wrong. but now positive psychology and economics are coming together a bit more and starting to say, ‘well, what can we take from psychology that can be applied in economic models that can then help us to better predict how people will behave and respond in different situations?’. once we have that model, we will be able to shape policy and shape interventions in a way that are much more going with the grain of what people will naturally do. there is huge opportunity there, and i think it’s appropriate at this point to acknowledge the work of daniel kahneman, who was one of the key people who led the development of the behavioural economics field. what’s the new hot topic for positive psychology in the coming five years? well that’s the million dollar question! i would guess it’s going to be something to do with one of two things. it could be neuroscience-based. there are going to be some key validations or insights that come from understanding brain functioning. that’s important, because as soon as you can start to talk about things at the level of the brain, people start to take you seriously and think this must be true. so it’s a good way of getting through the door and getting people’s attention. but now to the second topic, which has huge potential. i went to see martin seligman speak at the houses of parliament, in july [2011], and one of the things that he said he was working on was to develop algorithms with people like facebook and google to be able to map the prevalence of happiness-related words in our lexicon, in the things that people put in emails, in facebook postings, in linked-in postings, that sort of thing. so harvesting the potential for real-time data collection and data analysis using the new social technologies that are available, and combining that with a solid underpinning of psychological theory could really take us into domains we have not even imagined before now. who do you look up to in the field, either as practitioners or academics? without question number one on that list has to be martin seligman for everything that he has done to develop and promote the field. but more than that, the thing that he has done that i’ve never seen any psychologist do, is the way that he has been able to take positive psychology and use it and apply it and lead it in such a way that it has impact, that it makes a difference. so he’s had a huge impact on the development of social policy in the uk, but also in other countries, as in the comprehensive solider fitness programme that i mentioned before. but a whole raft of things like that really helps him to stand out in my mind as someone i admire enormously. second on that list would be barbara frederickson, for the massive developments that she has made in our understanding of positive emotion. her theory, the broaden-andbuild theory of positive emotions, is one of the stand-out theories in positive psychology. the third person would be chris peterson for his knowledge, but also his character and personality, the way that he brings positive psychology alive for people and makes it real. i look at a lot of his books and blog entries and postings to see where he’s really done that. another person, finally, would be mike csikszentmihalyi, simply for his erudition and scholarship. i don’t think there is anyone in positive psychology who knows more about more different fields of study and the history of thought and philosophy and all those sorts of things than mike, so i think he’s quite an incredible character. positive psychologists on positive psychology: alex linley jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 what’s one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers or practitioners? that would be different for each. for a researcher, my advice would be to find an area that you are fundamentally excited by and interested in, so that it will maintain your interest and enthusiasm as you work on it. you could also be strategic with that and find an area where you think there is not yet a lot that has been done, but you think the area is likely to grow in profile and significance, and you can grow with it. that is certainly something that i was able to do by being involved with positive psychology from the beginning. i think for a practitioner, my advice would be to use your best judgement in the way that you work. it’s easy to get bound up with best practice, which is all about what has been done before. but that really blows out of the water any opportunity for innovation, if we only stick at what has been done before. so i’m a big advocate of using what we call best judgement: understand the literature, know the research and the findings, but be prepared to take all of that and say, moving beyond what is already known, this is my judgement as to what would be the best thing to do in this situation. and that’s how we have driven a lot of the innovation and a lot of the development in our methodologies for assessment, development, and performance management—around strengths. they have come through understanding the field, and then being prepared to make the adaptation and apply that in a practical way—even though there won’t be a specific study that says that this will be the result. we do a lot of research in practice as it might be called, rather than research that will always end up being published in academic journals. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 88–91. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.5 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener interview by aaron jarden ed diener, a.k.a. ‘dr. happiness’, is joseph r. smiley distinguished professor of psychology at the university of illinois and senior scientist at gallup. he has over 300 publications, with about 200 being in the area of the psychology of wellbeing, and is one of the most highly cited psychologists with over 30,000 citations. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the defining features of positive psychology? one defining feature of positive psychology is a desire to study positive aspects of human behavior and functioning; aspects of life that make it happier, more peaceful, and more desirable in general. although there are some cultural differences in what might be considered ‘good’ or desirable behavior, there is certainly some consensus too. everywhere in the world, people want to be happy, to get along with other people, to have their needs met, to develop and grow, and to have respect. people want to love and to be loved. it is these universals that we want to study as positive psychologists. of course people did study these things even before the advent of positive psychology, but the level of interest shown was much less than the interest shown in negative behavior, in problems. the second defining feature of positive psychology is that we are attempting to build it on a scientific base. many people talk about positive behavior, and try to increase it—from politicians to religious leaders to youth clubs. these are usually good things. but we want something new—the study of positive behavior using scientific methods. as the science grows, we will then be in a position to test interventions scientifically as well. can you tell me about your work in positive psychology, particularly around subjective wellbeing and happiness? i began studying subjective wellbeing, ‘happiness’, in 1981. for the first 10 years there were only a few pioneers working quietly in the area, and we received little attention. we were a backwater research area. in the 1990s we started to receive more notice, and more researchers entered the field. in the late 1990s positive psychology was founded by martin seligman and others, and this created more research in our field. in other words, positive psychology research and practice occurred before the positive psychology movement, but the movement gave this research a big boost. all of a sudden more attention and interest flowed to these positive research topics. we initially used the experience sampling technique in the early 80s to study people’s moods across time and situations. at that time there was a lot of focus on http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 89 89 demographic factors such as income and sex, but we paid careful attention to personality, and how it affected people’s happiness. we looked at a broad range of personality traits such as extraversion and self-esteem, but we also examined people’s goals, aspirations, and social comparisons. in the 90s we began to look more systematically across cultures to see if some societies were happier, and whether the same factors predict subjective wellbeing in different cultures. not only did we find that some societies tend to be happier than one might expect, such as the latin american nations, but we also found that certain variables predict happiness more strongly in some cultures than in others. for example, my daughter marissa and i found that self-esteem is a stronger predictor of life satisfaction in individualistic nations than in collectivistic ones. we have continued these lines of research to the present, but we also have begun to look more carefully at the outcomes of subjective wellbeing—are happy people healthier, more productive, and do they experience better social relationships? what we have found has surprised me. not only is happiness a pleasant state, but in most ways it is a particularly helpful one. for instance, happy people are healthier and live longer. they have better social relationships and stay married longer. they volunteer more, and they are better citizens at work. some of our work even finds that they make more money. when i started i was not pollyanna, i was skeptical of some of the claims made for the benefits of happiness. of course these claims have occasionally been exaggerated, but by and large i have become convinced that a general happy state is a very good one in terms of success in life. is there any new knowledge or studies around happiness you would like to highlight that you think are cutting edge? we are finding out more and more about happiness around the globe. two decades ago very little was known. we now know a great deal about which cultures are happiest and unhappiest, and some of the causes. for instance, we know that not having your basic needs met leads to low life satisfaction, and that corruption and other social interactions that lead to distrust lead to low levels of positive feelings. we also know that although a high income is associated with high life satisfaction across nations, other factors such as health and peace also lead to higher life satisfaction. an interesting thing is that some predictors of happiness are universal, such as having basic needs met, and having others one can count on for help. but there are some predictors of happiness that seem to be stronger in some cultures than in others. self-esteem is a much stronger predictor of happiness in individualistic cultures compared to collectivistic cultures, for example. another area of research that i am proud of is the development of new scales for use in positive psychology, and research showing the validity of these scales. we first developed a scale to assess life satisfaction, and showed that this scale has a strong level of reliability and validity. we have also developed a scale to measure feelings and emotions. a very short scale we created is designed to assess human flourishing by quickly tapping people’s feelings that their life is meaningful, that they have supportive family and friends, and so forth. this scale is very short, and therefore can easily be added to studies without taking up much time. all these scales are available on my website. your proudest moment in the field? i recently received the american psychological association's distinguished scientist award, and this was very rewarding. but my proudest moments have come not from awards, but have come in seeing what my family and my students have accomplished. my wife and three of our children are psychologists, and this is a great thing for a father. we never tried to convince our kids to become psychologists, we never even mentioned it. but they saw how much we loved positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 90 90 it, and that apparently drew them to it. in terms of my former students, many of them are turning out to be stars. they are doing such important research and accomplishing so much. beyond research they are becoming journal editors and department chairs. this gives me great joy. which discipline do you think positive psychology can learn most from moving forward? we can learn from every discipline, from neuroscience to anthropology to sociology. but the discipline i am learning a lot from is economics, and this surprises me. economists have sometimes overstressed the importance of money in happiness. however, we do need money in the modern world to meet our needs and to develop and to do interesting things. so money can be beneficial to happiness. but what i have learned from economists is an objective approach to problems and a reliance on data. too often in positive psychology people think they already know the answers to questions, or gain the answers from their intuitions. my fear is that positive psychology should not be the province of well-meaning people with strong opinions, without a scientific base for those opinions. i have found that economists really take a hard look at data, and they are often quite objective about that. i admire this aspect of economics. positive psychology is being applied in health, education, the army, in therapy, or more recently at the governmental level with a focus on assessment. where next? are there fields and areas that positive psychology is beginning to move into and gain traction? one of the really important applied movements is ‘national accounts of wellbeing’. martin seligman and i rekindled interest in this with our 2005 article, beyond money (psychological science in the public interest). we argued that governments need to measure various forms of psychosocial wellbeing to complement the measures of economics that all governments collect. people pay attention to what is measured, and right now the economies of nations get the lion’s share of attention. indeed, i would guess that the economy receives about 90 percent of the attention of politicians and the news media. national accounts of wellbeing are able to give a broader view of quality of life, and how citizens are faring. we are seeing progress across the globe. the prime minister of the united kingdom announced that wellbeing would become a concern of the government, and instituted a set of simple measures that would be collected in his country. other nations are following suit, and the organization of economic cooperation and development (oecd) is devising a set of prototype measures. i see this as the most important advance in applied positive psychology. measuring wellbeing might not seem as exciting as going out and intervening to make people happier or more virtuous. however, the national accounts promise to have a very widespread effect. in their ability to capture the interest of the entire population, they can provide leverage for many different types of changes in society that go far beyond the work of individual positive psychologists. i have my fingers crossed. what’s one aspiration you have for positive psychology? my strongest desire for positive psychology is that it not be a cult or a club. too often positive psychologists just look at the work of other positive psychologists, rather than broadening out and looking at relevant work of those who are not in the positive psychology fold. too often people look at a handful of leaders for what positive psychology is, and what other positive psychologists say about an issue. instead, we need to examine both what positive psychologists positive psychologists on positive psychology: ed diener jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 91 91 say and also what others who have studied that topic have to say. there is a great deal of valuable material about positive psychology coming from people who are not ‘members’ of the positive psychology movement. if we don’t pay attention to this work, positive psychology will never flourish. one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology students, researchers or practitioners? i have two pieces of advice for aspiring positive psychologists. first, although work in this field is fun, it takes a lot of hard work and perseverance. some people pop into the field thinking that they will find magical and quick answers. instead, in a developing field such as this one we are searching for answers, and this requires deep thought and hard work. my second piece of advice is to build your work on science. listen to what other positive psychologists say, but always remain critical and a bit skeptical. learn to think for yourself. i see many young people who want to find out what the leaders of positive psychology think so they will know the truth. we are not at that point yet. you need to listen to the experts, but also look at the evidence and think for yourself. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 92–97. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.6 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger interview by aaron jarden michael steger is an assistant professor in the counseling psychology and applied social psychology programs at colorado state university and has been involved in the field of positive psychology for the last ten years. mike’s research focuses on the foundations and benefits of living a meaningful life, and he is well known for developing the widely used meaning in life questionnaire. what prompted you to become interested in positive psychology? my interest came first from the topic of ‘meaning’. it was sort of an idealistic thing. i considered myself to be a little counter-cultural, a little hopeful that i would be able to find some tool that could help me shake people up or give people motivation to find a different way of living, a little bit more in accordance with collectivist values. so i stumbled on ‘meaning’. it was only after i started reading about meaning that i ran into a buddy of mine who said, ‚hey, here’s a good conference for you, you should check it out‛, and i think it was the second positive psychology summit, which was the first one i went to. how long would you say you’ve been interested in positive psychology? well as soon as i found out about it, that is, since about 2002. so for just about ten years now i’ve been interested in positive psychology. over the course of your career in positive psychology so far, what would you say are some of the key events? the major events for me were early influences by two different people. one was my advisor, at the university of minnesota, where the tradition is measurement. she invited me to evaluate the measurement of meaning and i did, using all the graduate school tools for ripping things to shreds—and it wasn’t good. i didn’t like any of the measures and i pointed out flaws that other people had identified in them as well. so she said, ‚here at minnesota, we fix it, so that’s your next project‛. so i developed the meaning of life questionnaire. the next big thing was that martin seligman put it on the authentic happiness web page and that got it out there. for me as a grad student at the time, it made me feel like i was actually doing legitimate science in this area and made it feel important in that way. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 in general terms what would you say are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? for me the most defining feature is that it’s science driven. it captures an appealing array of aspirations that people have and experiences that people desire, and find important and helpful. but what really sets us apart from other people looking at those same things has to be the science. what do you think is one of the big questions that positive psychology is seeking to answer? how can we have people experience the best that they can experience? and the question that we are neglecting is ‘what does that mean?’—what is the best that people can experience? and that’s not actually probably an empirical question. so you have all these battles of values and perspectives that take place; and so that, to me, is the interesting subtext: that we’re all pushing for the same thing but we view it, oftentimes, in very drastically different ways. what would you say were the field of positive psychology’s greatest accomplishments to date? it’s really been amazing. it has created an interdisciplinary space that, originally, was only interdisciplinary within psychology, with a few economists and one philosopher. it’s grown and it’s captured both practical, applied and research attention across many disciplines around this now widely accepted notion that we can learn how to be better off. that has been remarkable. i don’t think that anyone saw it coming right before and on the heels of sept 11th in this country [the united states]. if you were in charge of positive psychology now, what is one thing you’d change? it seems that a lot of people in positive psychology are heavily linked into revenue streams and that’s ok, i don’t have a problem with that. but in the early days of positive psychology there was a concerted effort to get graduate students to these conferences and allow them to meet these mentors and to fire them up. a lot of the graduate students at those earlier conferences were given $500 scholarships and didn’t have to pay the fee to come. and then you’d be right next to these people you’d been reading and marveling at. there used to be a top to bottom approach to really fuel new and exciting ideas. positive psychology has in some ways gotten to the place where the top stays at the top, the middle stays at the middle, etc., and a lot of people seem to be pulling resources out of positive psychology and into their own areas of interest, rather than returning it back into the field to continue feeding the growth. i don’t know if that’s a fair criticism or not, but it feels a lot more expensive and isolated to be a positive psychology graduate student now than it used to be. what’s one aspiration you have for the field of positive psychology? one of my aspirations for the field has already been answered in some ways. i really hoped when i started getting excited about this and trying to participate in my own way, that we’d catch the eye and the ear of the people who have influence to actually impact on lives. in one way that has happened, with those people who are trying to go from a seven to a nine on the 10 point scale—instead of the people who are trying to go from the negative two to the positive three—the people that are not clinically suffering. but for those people who are socially disadvantaged, economically disadvantaged—outside of the people that can pay a lot of money psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 to be treated or coached—i think that is really where a lot of exciting things will happen in the future. is there anything that you think particularly stands out in that space? based on some recent experiences in south africa, there are a lot of indigenous cultural models of people who are incredibly disadvantaged in comparison to the wealthy nations in the world; yet there’s some sort of positive and inspiring homeostasis that they’ve reached amidst all the deprivation, all the brutality, all the lack of opportunity. what would be really cool would be continuing to grow out from the western, affluent origins of positive psychology to join with the growing indigenous knowledge of psychologists around the world working within their own people, with what really works in their own places. i think we’ll have lots of really neat ideas and inspiring stories to reach out and broaden the impact of positive psychology around the world. in psychology as a whole, we’re getting good at developing western models for positive change, and then showing that they can be readily adapted for elsewhere. so, the stuff we do seems to work, but are we missing things that could be grown from other traditions? what things are created and work elsewhere that we could all benefit from? what are the other ‘mindfullnesses’ out there? which particular professional groups (aside from psychologists) are becoming more interested in positive psychology or perhaps your work on meaning? those interested in the work i do on meaning are career coaches and career psychologists, particularly doing work related to women’s issues in careers. almost all the interviews i do are from women’s magazines and are related to mid-career women, and career-balancing women, and also looking at the emerging workforce and those wanting to go to the next level in their careers. but i think that the world of work has been the biggest outside consumer of positive psychology. it seems like there are dozens of people who are doing industrial consulting and looking at happiness in the workplace leading to more productive, happy, workers. education will be a really cool place—they’re interested, they just need more support. those interested in more general meaning in life issues often appear to be in medical fields, particularly oncology and palliative care. who do you look up to most in the field of positive psychology? that’s a great question. i really like laura king, her work bounces around a lot of different methods, a lot of different perspectives. she’s done some really inspirational work on meaning in life with a graduate student named josh hicks. but i also think that just as a person, she is super approachable, super generative. i think bob emmons, as a person and as a scholar, has been really giving of what he does. the same is definitely true about ed diener. the list of people whose work i admire is very long, going back to the inspirational folks like [victor] frankl, and those that have done really solid, foundational work like carol ryff. these people have some ‘meaning’ angle. i like that because it shows that you can step outside of your research area and attack a question. if you could start learning about positive psychology again, what would you do differently? i probably wouldn’t want to start with measurement. one of the things that happens when you start developing a measure is that it’s great because it gives you a focal point and a tool to begin to do what you want to do; and if the measurement in the area had been better, then i wouldn’t psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 have done it. but it also, in a sense, locks you into that tool, and so a lot of my early research was around ‘how do i validate this thing in this group?’, and ‘how do i validate it in this group?’. and i did a lot of things that were right because they were fun, collaborating with people who had different perspectives. the biggest thing that we can do in this field is collaborate, especially by doing different things. starting again, i’d avoid measurement and i’d really try to challenge myself more to meet folks who are using methods that i’d never heard of. who do you think are some of the emerging or unknown researchers in the field of positive psychology? who do you look at and think ‘their research is cutting edge and cool’? i really like matt vesser’s work. he’s been looking at the role of meaning in terror management theory and that’s been something that is really cool and that there is a place for, but i never did the work myself. he’s published in jpsp [journal of personality and social psychology+, so he’s not really super unknown or anything like that. what is astonishing is that as the access to international researchers has grown, i’ve realized that there is amazing research going on all over the place that we don’t hear about because we just keep reading the same journals. there are some really cool people, including lazslo brassai, who’s doing some really cool work with adolescents in romania; there are people like linda theron doing great work in south africa on aids orphans and there are other just amazing pieces that don’t get circulated, except for in places like the international journal of wellbeing of course. what do you think positive psychology could learn from the field of psychology as a whole? i have two pet peeves about positive psychology that are also true about the field of psychology as a whole. they are closely related. the first is losing your grasp of what it means to be a scientific discipline where your job is not just to defend your position, but it’s also to attack your position. it’s to really pressure what you think is right in a brave fashion. that doesn’t seem to happen a lot of the time. i think a lot of people get excited about what they’re doing and they love their initial research findings and they want to see their baby live and succeed. in positive psychology though, that stuff gets applied and becomes apocryphal immediately. people somewhere are going to turn it into a book or an intervention and say it’s the truth. that’s really dangerous if we’re not out there making sure that we are really putting pressure on our assumptions. the other thing is that forgetting what it means to be a science discipline leads to a lack of consistency in definitions of constructs and the creation of new constructs. everyone is mixing and matching terms and inserting their values into the definitions of constructs, and that really needs to be scrutinized. it confuses the science. one example is that people seem to want to define ‘purpose’ as having an altruistic aim to it. that is being offered as a definition of ‘purpose’, and it is difficult for folks to learn that that is just one type of purpose—and you might like it best, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only kind. people have asshole purposes too. we just need to figure out how to be objective about these things. what area of positive psychology do you think is the most difficult area for people to grasp and learn? the central area of positive psychology is the most difficult to grasp. what are we studying? what is happiness? do we want happiness? what are we trying to learn? what is our ultimate dependent variable? i think that is hard to express to people without being a little inaccurate. psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 what is the first book you would recommend to someone new to positive psychology? my first thought is stumbling on happiness by dan gilbert, although i don’t really agree with all its assumptions. it’s great to start with a little bit of a skeptical eye. a fun book to read that i think is also challenging is todd kashdan’s book curiosity. and in terms of how we can try to be as scientific and rigorous as possible, even in a popular book while still offering practical suggestions that people might be able to use, is sonja’s *lyubomirsky+ the how of happiness, which is very good. she’s pretty honest about what we know and where we’re speculating, which i admire. so there are three good books. what’s the most cutting-edge book you’ve read personally in the last couple of years that stands out? i teach abnormal psychology, and i’m writing an abnormal psychology textbook at the moment, and so i’m reading a lot of the psychopathology literature. that challenges my perspective on positive psychology because i’ve been convinced that there really is a gap in perspectives. i originally thought it was all part of a continuum, which i think is true. but we haven’t addressed the continuum. so if you look at the treatments for psychopathology, a lot of them really do fall short of going beyond simply getting rid of bad things. so that’s helped me to figure out what are the things that are scalable that can bridge the gap between helping people eliminate problems, which we know how to do really well, and giving people the tools to set out some aspirations and to help to achieve them. how does someone go about getting more meaning in life? the easiest way to not have meaning in life is to really try to focus on having more meaning itself. meaning comes from doing, not just thinking. i think that the main thing is to have self understanding and an appreciation of your true strengths and limitations. i wouldn’t say that just learning your strengths is good enough, you need a true and honest appraisal of who you are and an honest encounter with life in the moment. that should be used to help people to develop a purpose, an overall life aim or mission—maybe more than one, and sometimes they compete. but really just engage in that and in life and in those things that match your values. and from time to time check in with the question ‘are you doing the things that matter to you?’. make sure you catch yourself once in a while doing something that matters to you and appreciate that you have that gift and the ability to do that. so it’s a little bit of that reciprocal acting and being aware of what we’re doing. is there anything else that you’d like to comment on that i haven’t asked about that you think would be useful to someone picking up a book on positive psychology who doesn’t know anything about positive psychology? if someone really wants to have a research career in positive psychology, i think that the main thing is to read old stuff. a lot of what we’re talking about is old. this year is the first year that i’ve heard people at a positive psychology conference talk about maslow very much, even though that book was published quite a while ago. so there are great ideas out there, there are great models being used outside of positive psychology. the most important thing for a researcher to do is to read outside of positive psychology, because we are really still just studying people. for practitioners, the most important thing to understand is that some prudence is necessary because the things that we are seeing work in these correlational studies or daily diary studies, or even in internally valid experiments, aren’t the same things that might psychologists on positive psychology: michael steger jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 work with clients. the creativity that coaches, and therapists, and clinicians can have is awesome, but there is a responsibility with using research to do practice that means that you can’t guarantee anything about that: so maybe giving researchers a break for not always knowing what works might be helpful. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 98–104. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.7 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: acacia parks interview by aaron jarden acacia parks is an assistant professor of psychology at hiram college and completed her phd with martin seligman at the university of pennsylvania. acacia’s area of expertise is in positive interventions and applying positive psychology using new technologies. what prompted you to become interested in positive psychology? my interest was a marriage between my original interest and my advisors’ interests. it grew from first talking to marty seligman about research ideas when i was still applying for graduate school, and conversations with a couple of prospective research advisors. whenever you’re starting graduate school there is a compromise between what you’re interested in, and what your advisor is interested in. i came in with an interest in preventing depression using cognitive therapy. i thought that that was a really cool model instead of treating. by the time i had talked to marty about that, the positive psychology thing was just starting to gear up and he was beginning to think about this positive intervention idea. he suggested to me that cognitive therapy stuff for prevention was not really where the future was headed, and what we’re going to do instead is this wellness approach, this improving wellbeing. that’s going to do the same thing, only better; and that really resonated with me, it sounded really promising because one of the problems that they had with cbt was that people struggle with it, especially if you’re not depressed already. why would you do all this difficult stuff for depression? it wasn’t really compelling to people in the way that happiness is. so, we started talking about positive interventions and it all just blossomed from there. we developed this manual, and everything i’ve done has been steps beyond that. so your area in positive psychology, would you describe it as positive interventions? yes, totally. and how long have you been working in this area? since i started graduate school, which was in 2003. in general terms, in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? i think about positive psychology as being split into a basic theory and then applied sections. there are some really fundamental areas, like *barbara+ frederickson’s positive emotion http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 research, where ‘i can think of applications but that’s not the purpose of the research’; the research is ‘we want to understand the function that emotions serve’. areas like that are basic science contributions. *shelly+ gables’ work about relationships has been translated into interventions, but it’s about relationship processes, not interventions. they did not do that research seeking to come up with an application. areas like that, i feel, are a more theoretical piece. on the other hand, there’s this more applied piece where we say, ‘what’s the outcome we want?’ and ‘how can we work backwards to figure out how to best do that?’; and that’s where the positive intervention research comes in. also, things like coaching and workplace situations and trying to change organizations fit in that applied sector. so i see positive psychology as having those two areas. a lot of fields have that kind of split, though, so it’s not really what makes positive psychology distinctive. what’s really unique about positive psychology is the interplay between researchers—both basic and applied—and practitioners. unlike clinical psychology, which is broken in half and has been trying for decades to bridge the ‘gap between science and practice,’ our practitioners want very much to do what is research-based. they are a huge asset to us. i think they could be even more of an asset if we (researchers) spent more time talking to them and learning from them. but yeah, if you look at various subfields of psychology, i’m not sure you’ll find any other area where practitioners are so eager to learn more about the science, and to put science into practice. when you think of the big questions that positive psychology addresses, what are the questions that stand out to you? that’s a really interesting question, because in some ways i see that there is no difference from other areas of psychology that are trying to change behavior. of course, i’m biased because i’m an intervention researcher. i think about positive psychology and then i think about the applied half, because that’s the half that i work in, but to me it’s about ‘how do you get a person to change their behavior?’, which i think is applicable to therapy research, health psychology and to a variety of parts of psychology. it’s not unique to positive psychology. what’s new and different are the outcomes we are interested in, and the specific behaviors we are trying to change. but a lot of it is just, ‘how do you get something to stick?’, ‘how do you get people to change their ideas?’, and that flows through social psychology and other areas as well. but i do think that those are the central questions. what do you think are some of the most valid criticisms that the field of positive psychology faces to date? one thing i worry about is the rate at which things become applied. i remember when we first started talking about positive interventions in the popular media in 2004 and those things started to get published. those things were already getting used out in the world. for example, coaches were using them, people were hearing about them in the news and using them, and we just had this one study. but that’s just how it seems to go, it’s very fast moving, and the second that news gets out that something is helpful in a single study, it’s all over the place. on one hand that’s really cool, because it’s getting out there, but on the other hand, it’s a little worrisome because you wonder ‘what if there’s a mistake in the data analyses?’, or if this was just a funny sample that doesn’t replicate. it’s already out there. it’s too late by then. so i worry about that a little bit, more so than in fields like clinical psychology, which i think may be overly cautious and overly slow to get things out there. things get out here even faster than you can keep hold of them. people who argue about that have a valid point, especially when it positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 comes to research findings that are lost in translation somewhat. one critique that positive psychology gets a lot from people like [barbara] ehrenreich and james coyne is that positive psychologists tell people with cancer that they should just ‘buck up’ and that they should just be optimistic and they’ll do better. i don’t know anyone who actually says that, but what happens is that it gets out there to the popular media and misunderstood and mistranslated. then, all of a sudden, that is what positive psychology is saying to a good number of people. so i think in some ways we’re not as careful as we could be about the sound bites that we release into the ether, or about maintaining the integrity of those sound bites so that they are accurate. what happens is that people like barbara ehrenreich hear something that just isn’t what we’re saying, but by the time it gets to her it is, if that makes sense. so i think that there are definitely some messages from positive psychology that reach the general public that aren’t what we intended; and those messages, even though they are not the intended messages, may be harmful. i think that this is a valid criticism. what is your view on the relationship between a positive intervention and assessing the effectiveness of these interventions over time? i mean there are a lot of people doing interventions but not everyone is assessing whether they are working or not. what are your thoughts about that? in some sense, i’m always surprised when practitioners aren’t assessing whether something is working, even just within their practices. for example, when i did clinical training as a graduate student (i’m not a clinician, but i started off as one), every time we saw a client they took assessment measures. next time we saw them they took more assessment measures, so we were constantly checking to make sure that we were actually doing something. i know that that is a practice that a lot of practitioners use, but then i also know that there are practitioners who don’t. that’s effectiveness on a much smaller scale, but equally important. if you’re taking something that’s manualized and you’re trying to implement it in the real world, you want to make sure it’s working in your setting. you should check, you shouldn’t just assume that because the research says it’s going to work it will. but at the same time, you shouldn’t assume that the research is invalid and not even try using it in your setting, which is another thing that practitioners can do sometimes, in that they figure that this is not relevant to me, this wasn’t tested on my population. researchers and practitioners are both falling down on their responsibilities in terms of getting everything to the practitioners in a digestible way. but then there are also the practitioners being concerned with efficacy and understanding that there is literature out there that shows that judgment and intuition are not perfect, that they are flawed; so if you think that this is working because i think that it is working, that doesn’t always match up. what’s one aspiration you’ve got for the field of positive psychology? in five years from now, how would you like to see the field of positive psychology? i would like to see some way to get the general public to care about the difference between something that is empirically validated and something that is not. because right now i think that people are just as happy to read the secret as they are to read the how of happiness. each of these is not like the other, but to the general public they are all grouped in the same category: books about happiness. part of the onus of this is on us not to do research and then write a book and put it out into the ether and assume that that works, but to actually test the books. test the things that we are putting out there up against quackery and show that they are better, so that eventually the idea can get out to the general public that yes, there are lots of choices. positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 for example there is tony robbins, and he’s going to tell you how to get happier, and there is the secret, which says that if you think about being happy suddenly the world will attract happiness to you: and those ideas are not like what we are doing. we need some way to get the general public to be more discerning about that, so that they can tell the difference about something that’s tested and something that someone just made up one day. that would just be superb. what do you think is going to be the next hot topic for positive psychology over the coming few years? i know what i would like the new hot topic to be! one of the conference talks i’ve just heard was looking at how physiological measures may be an alternative to self-reporting. i’d really like to see an emphasis on measures other than self-report, which has been used in psychology for a long time. but the problem is that nobody has a viable replacement for it and it’s very cumbersome to do anything other than self-report. what i would love to see are methods that aren’t cumbersome, and that are alternatives to self-report. for example, wrist bands that measure your level of stress so you don’t have to ask a person how stressed out they were this last week, because you have aggregate data to show you how stressed out they were; and it’s not done with cortisol, because measuring cortisol levels is expensive. these other physiological measures we were unable to use because they were prohibitive in cost. an alternative can be a thing you can buy upfront, and put on your participants, and it doesn’t have on-going expense. so i would really love to see a move towards methods that assess happiness in a way that doesn’t alienate the economists because it’s not a hard outcome, it doesn’t alienate the medical people because it’s not a hard outcome either, but something that feels more real than self-reported happiness. i feel like this will not only strengthen the field because it will also address the criticism that people get really upset at the idea of self-reported happiness, but it will also help us learn a lot more about what we’re actually doing for people, what it actually means when we change their self-reported happiness. does that mean we’re changing their moment-to-moment happiness or just their retrospective evaluations of their lives? we can learn so much more from that kind of moment-to-moment data collection instead of retrospective self-report, which we know from a lot of researchers is totally flawed. i’d really like to see a movement towards more sophisticated data. we’re better than self-report, we just haven’t figured out how we want to be better than self-report yet. who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? i have got a lot of really excellent advice from shane lopez, who has edited numerous volumes, and as i have tried to move towards that myself, he just always has such sage wisdom. shane has been supportive, even when he barely knew me, when i was just becoming a graduate student. he has continued to be very supporting, knowledgeable and accessible. sonja lyubomirsky is another leader in the field who has been so supportive of me from the very beginning of my career. she has been a great mentor over the years. she got me started as a reviewer at the journal of positive psychology and nudged me towards associate editorship. more recently, sonja has been a great collaborator, too, and has graciously found time to contribute to both of my edited books. it takes a special kind of person to spend so much time and energy on someone who isn’t their own student. i am constantly grateful for her. the other person i really admire is ed diener, who is actually the epitome of positive psychology. he’s happy, he’s energetic, he’s curious, he’s engaged, he’s supportive, and he’s personable. ed positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 diener is to me a paragon, he is a truly happy person and something about interacting with him is a very lively and inspiring experience. who do you think are the other young emerging researchers who are doing great things? i think by now that people generally know todd kashdan. even though he’s not the old guard, he’s a whippersnapper who’s making noise and good trouble. what i love about todd is that he’s got balls of steel; he’s brave and oppositional, in just the way that the field needs. there’s such a strong status quo in any field, everyone is doing things their own way, then there’s todd, who just comes along and goes ‘no, no, not that way, this way, or some other way’. he gets people to think in a way that i really respect. i always try to get todd involved in anything that i do. for example if i’m in a symposium i always think, let’s get todd in here and see what he has to say because i think that this is really great, but i’m sure that there’s something that i haven’t thought of and todd has always thought of something that i haven’t. i’m also a big fan of michelle louis. she recently published a paper suggesting that talking about strengths as a fixed personality trait might make people less willing to work on them, figuring they are stable so what’s the point. very cool stuff. we need more people adding nuance to positive intervention research. not just, ‘do they work?’ but ‘when do they work and for whom?’ and ‘when might they backfire?’. what are your plans for the future? i just started in a new tenure track position, so i’m getting my lab settled and spending my startup and just trying to figure out what i’m going to be doing for the next few years. i’m really interested in this physiological measurement thing, so i’m hoping to drop some money on that and i’m also hoping to be doing ambulatory assessment—that’s the new fancy term for ‘experience sampling’—research. i think that’s the direction we’re headed in as a field. i’m hoping to establish myself there and i also have these teaching projects that i’m working on, for example, an edited book with positive psychology activities that’s going to be completed at the end of this summer. i’m hoping to continue along that line. for example, i am guest editing a special issue for the journal of positive psychology on ‘positive psychology and higher education’—that’s a passion of mine. i’ve been teaching positive psychology since i started in graduate school. that’s eight years now. i’ve taught positive psychology a lot and it’s always my favorite course to teach and i really like helping other people learn to teach it and mentor people in that area. so, i hope to continue that in addition to the research. for someone new to the field of positive psychology, what is one book that you would recommend they read first? although it’s an old standard, i really recommend the handbook of positive psychology. it’s been around since 2003 i think, and they have a new edition so it’s updated, but no book provides, for a researcher, a better basis in a really broad array of topics, and a great orientation to who is doing the lead research. for people interested in positive interventions in particular, i am working on a handbook of positive interventions that should be coming out in late 2012. i’m really excited about it. it’s got a nice line-up of contributors. what about for someone who’s not a researcher? for the general public, the how of happiness would provide the best overview. there are other good books, for example curious, but that is very specific. and authentic happiness is a great positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 book, but it is very theoretical. the how of happiness is a perfect mix of research summary that’s clear and digestible, and also actual techniques and things that people can try. reading them in that way is very helpful because it shows the things that researchers are having people do—this is what we mean by increasing happiness. so that is really nice. i always have my positive psychology students read the how of happiness because it’s such a good introduction to the field. so your area of expertise is positive psychology interventions. if someone comes to you and says they want to be happier, which ones would you suggest? it depends on the context. i’ve been consulting on this grant by chris kahler at brown and he’s adapting positive psychotherapy for smoking cessation. one of the things that they do in smoking cessation is start the intervention two weeks before they actually quit. one of the things they are trying to do in this intervention is frontload with a lot of positive emotion because positive emotion is a predictor of good outcomes. so they are trying to make people experience as much positive emotion as possible so they have this protective factor when they are trying to quit that’s going to predict their success. there are a couple of exercises in that situation where it seems really logical that they should start with that, for example, the gratitude visit has been demonstrated to have a very powerful but temporary effect, so if what you’re looking for is an immediate benefit to get a person moving, then the gratitude visit is a good choice because it’s very intense. but as a long-term technique the gratitude visit is not a good choice because it is not very reusable and its effects are lost very quickly. i recommended that and i also recommended ‘three good things’, which has a low-grade, but more sustained, benefit. so what they did was start with ‘three good things’. it takes a while for that to build up, but once it does, it is a sort of constant source of positive emotion. combine that with the gratitude visit so that you have an immediate increase from the gratitude visit and, by the time that’s faded, ‘three good things’ has picked up and will carry it in the longer term. they have different strengths as activities: one is more on-going and sustained and is effective but takes time, but in the time that it takes you can be doing this other activity that keeps the person interested and engaged. i think that those are examples of two activities that are helpful to most people. the other activities involve a lot more nuance and consideration of which is best for whom. but any time that i think of a prototypical positive intervention that i want people to stick with i think of those two as a place to start. is there anything that you would like to comment on in general that you think would be useful for somebody who doesn’t know about positive psychology and who is reading a book about positive psychology to find out a bit more? there are a lot of misconceptions about positive psychology. as somebody who has taught not just a positive psychology course, but also these freshman writing seminars on the topic of happiness, i’ve had a lot of exposure to the things people think about happiness, and a lot of these are very disturbing to me. one of these includes misconceptions about optimism. people think that it is great to be positive all the time, and that that is what optimism is; but there is so much more nuance to what optimism is as a concept, so much more than just thinking everything is going to work out all the time. what i try to explain to people is that optimism is much more about entertaining the possibility that things could work out. so, if you’re a pessimist you think that things are not going to work out, and then you don’t even bother, so of course it doesn’t work out because you didn’t try. but optimism is just keeping open the idea that it could work and trying, as if it will work, so that you maximize your chances of it positive psychologists on positive psychology: acaia parks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 working. that’s the reason that optimists are more successful. it’s not magic, it’s effort, and your level of effort depends on what you expect. so maybe optimists are wrong some of the time because they might think that something is possible when it’s not; but people worry about there being some danger to that, like ‘oh what if they’re deluded, you know, they think that everything’s going to go right and then they’re lazy and they don’t do anything’. that’s not what happens at all. people who don’t do anything are the pessimists who think that it’s not going to work out in the first place. optimism is a really good example of something that just got lost in translation. everyone in positive psychology understands what it is and outside of positive psychology it became this ‘think positive’ mantra, which is not at all what optimism is. the other thing i think that people really misinterpret, going back to the earlier positive psychology and cancer example, is just because there are research findings that suggest that outlook affects your health, doesn’t mean that you should be telling people that they are responsible for what happens. there is such a difference in saying that something is predictive and telling somebody what they should do. marty seligman and others constantly say that we’re not prescribing, but people want prescriptions and people take prescriptions away. it’s in some ways on us to be careful about what we say because it will be made into a prescription no matter what. i think that the solution to that is not to refuse to make prescriptions, but to control the direction of the prescriptions. for example, if you’re going to report that people who have a more optimistic outlook survive cancer for longer, you should not say, ‘but there’s no prescription here, i’m just describing’. somebody else is going to make up the prescription and then it could be wrong. if you’re going to throw that idea out there, then in a way it’s your responsibility to harness it so the take home message is something that isn’t harmful. for example, in this situation the take home message might be, ‘if the person is coping well, don’t tell them that they are wrong’. bonnano has all this research about how people get a bad rap when somebody dies and they’re not doing poorly, for example when someone loses a spouse and they’re relieved because their spouse is out of pain, or because they were older, or had a disease, and they’re doing alright because they’re coping well, then people say, ‘you’re making a mistake and you must secretly be upset and you’re not expressing it’, and people get all this social flack for that. so it might be, in the cancer case, that you don’t give people flack if they’re doing alright. it’s possible to do alright and it’s acceptable to do alright. there’s no evidence for this idea that you need to do ‘grief work’, or that you have to be upset. there’s no evidence that it will come back to bite you if you don’t express some underlying distress. so, i think that you can turn that into a reasonable take home message that isn’t harmful to people. my recommendation is that people take control of that by doing it themselves. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 105–109. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.8 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec interview by aaron jarden ryan niemiec is education director of the via institute on character, a licensed psychologist, coach/consultant, and co-author of three books including positive psychology at the movies. ryan has a passion for teaching, practicing, and/or writing about character strengths, mindfulness, and the portrayal of positive phenomena in movies. how long have you been involved in the field of positive psychology? well, that depends on your definition of positive psychology really. if you consider the field of positive psychology as starting when martin seligman coined the field in 1999 or so, i became interested at that point and read the original papers in the american psychologist in the year 2000 and pushed on from there. but, if you consider positive psychology as starting long before marty’s articulation then i’d say that in the late 90s, i was infusing the principles of po sitive psychology into my practice as a psychologist. i always tried to embed ideas of strengths and happiness and wellbeing and take a more holistic look at people in my practice, rather than limiting myself to ‘what’s wrong?’. what prompted you to become interested in the area of positive psychology? back in the mid to late 90s i was interested in what you might say is ‘holistic health’, or the bio psychosocial-spiritual model, where we look at the individual as a whole, rather than just relying on traditional training in psychology that had camps predominately focused on working with just the person’s thinking or just their past experiences. i was always really interested in learning about those dimensions but going beyond that into the social realm, the cultural realm, the spiritual realm, and seeing people as so much more than just a couple of different parts, and more than the sum of their parts. so, integrating this with an inclination towards looking at what was going right with people is what primed me to be interested in this field. it was that push towards a bigger, more holistic view, that made me want to gravitate toward positive psychology and infuse that more into my work. was there any key event that led you to stumble into positive psychology or did it just happen over time? it was a gradual process over time, rather than one catalyst. i’ve had some major events happen that have moved me forward deeper and deeper into the field of positive psychology though. for example, my connection with via. prior to working at the via institute on character, i’d been involved in positive psychology for quite some time and had co-authored the book http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 positive psychology at the movies, which looked at character strengths portrayed in movies; and at that time, which was 2007 or so, i had not known about the existence of the via institute because it was the via survey and via classification that were prominent at that point. i was living in st. louis [usa] with my wife and we had decided to move closer to our families (more east). we decided to move to cincinnati, without knowing much about the city, yet it felt right. so it was an intuitive move. this is particularly striking because we were making this decision at the worst time in the american economy since the great depression, that’s in about 75 years or so, we had to buy a house, sell a house, and look for two jobs, but something told us it was the right thing to do and we were just going to do it. and while i was sitting in st. louis one day i sent a message to a positive psychology listserv about the positive psychology at the movies book and i got this query from neal mayerson, the chairman of via. my wife happened to be looking over my shoulder at the e-mail message and she noticed that the phone number in the signature line was a cincinnati number, exactly where we were headed. this connection eventually led to via hiring me to help educate practitioners on how to bridge the science and practice of character strengths. so, you could call this a stumbling deeper in the thicket of positive psychology, events of synchronicity, luck, or some combination of each. in general terms what do you think are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? i might be a little biased, but i, and many others, see the work on character strengths as being the backbone to positive psychology. i say that because whatever theory or approach or topic people are interested in, you can apply character strengths to it, or that particular topic stems from character strengths. for example, a lot of people are interested in happiness, or they are interested in positive emotions, and we can clearly link character strengths to those two topics. we can say that the practice of character strengths is quite strongly connected with these two areas. for example, marty seligman has shared how he views character strengths as the underpinnings of each area of his theory of authentic happiness, as well as his perma theory of wellbeing. one of the hottest topics in positive psychology is resilience. we can link in character strengths with resilience, and what character strengths an individual can use to become more resilient. or another major area in positive psychology that is emerging for positive psychologists is mindfulness, even though mindfulness has its own following of practitioners and researchers independent of positive psychology. but when we look at the actual definition of mindfulness, researchers in studying it have formed a consensual definition, or as close to one as one can get. what it really boils down to is two character strengths: the self-regulation of our attention, and taking an attitude of curiosity and openness and acceptance. another big area is the area of the positive institutions, which then moves into the wider areas of ‘positive nations’ and ‘positive cultures’, and creating a healthier world really. here, we can explore how character strengths might be ingredients of a positive or virtuous institution and contribute to a healthier society. these are some of the major areas in positive psychology, and some that i am interested in myself, and we can link character strengths as underpinnings to these, as parts of the process, or as outcomes. what would you say is the big goal of positive psychology, as a field? there are probably several goals. but one that stands out most is the need to gain more appreciation by psychology as a whole and by other practitioners, and by the general public. i think that positive psychology has made incredible strides and has moved way beyond so many of the nay-sayers and people that were skeptical, suggesting that positive psychology positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 was just a fad, and that it was going to be done and over in just a few years. they turned out to be completely wrong on that. but still, i think that positive psychology has a long way to go in terms of getting into every household, and directly impacting people of every nation, and getting deeper into government, and schools, and businesses, and every therapist’s office, to be able to take more of the whole picture of the human being. how can we do this? what’s the best way? perhaps it’s just me being impatient, but from what i can tell at ippa *international positive psychology association] and other organizations and from talking to leaders in the field it seems like we’re all doing our part, and we are going in the right direction. as long as organizations like ippa, and via, and other organizations can stay strong to continue to educate and promote the findings to both the general public and to various professions, then i think this will continue to grow. there are positive psychology educators, consultants and practitioners going into governments, into business, and into the school systems around the world. this is the path. we need to build and expand upon this in terms of the positive psychology principles that are taught, the professions that integrate them, and the countries this is done in. so it’s coming, and it’s better than any of us thought it would have been, but there’s still a long way to go. what do you think is the best way that positive psychology can make this world a better place? a very challenging question! if each person can do their part, then that is going to spread. i think of ‘pay it forward’ as a good example. if each practitioner, educator, researcher, can pay this work forward, and gives positive psychology away to x number of people or students, and puts forth the best that they know about positive psychology to those people, maybe it’s to clients, maybe it’s to other colleagues, to family members, to students, and then those people can pay it forward to more individuals. we can create and spread that web of positivity, kindness, and goodness. this would make that goal more realistic, and every one of us could play the part right now and encourage and influence other people to influence others as well. what would you say is your proudest moment in the field of positive psychology over the last 10 years? i’m probably most proud when doing a one-on-one meeting with someone, for example a coaching type session, and applying some principles of strengths-based practice in positive psychology, and that individual completely and totally has a 180 degree shift. for example, i’m thinking of one person in particular who had been suffering tremendously over the years and who felt very weak, who had not acknowledged any of her strengths, and who had started to learn about them but still had a significant amount of blindness about her strengths. through a conversation, just a simple little 30 minute conversation, she began to look at herself in a completely different way and began to say that she had hope now, and how she could go about making some of the tough decisions that she was facing. so that’s one of the most down-toearth things that i’m proud of. i am also proud of that person in that moment for making that shift. i’m also honored to be able to stand up in front of a large group of people, for example a few-hundred people at an ippa conference or the european conference on positive psychology, and to have the opportunity to talk about something that i’m very passionate about. for example, at the beginning of an international presentation recently i showed a closepositive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 up image of my newborn son making eye contact with me and i spoke of how there’s a moment when he rotates his head and suddenly ‘sees’ me. i related this to how the practitioner can shift their own perceptions and ‘see’ their client’s core character strengths. the audience gave me an ovation for this example. i was only 5 minutes into a 2-hour talk and i was getting an ovation—and the fact that it related to my son—that was a thrilling and proud moment. what’s one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers and practitioners? to stay true to the field. that is, to stay true to the science in terms of the research, and stay true to thinking ‘how does this translate into best practice?’. that’s what positive psychology is all about linking the two. who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? i look up to a lot of people. to be honest, i actually look up to every researcher in positive psychology, and that’s the truth. i don’t look up more to the popular figures or those that garner the most attention. i’m a practitioner and an educator so i look up to those that have mastery in an area that i’ve not mastered myself, thus i appreciate researchers. i think of someone like rhett diessner, who works at a small university in the state of idaho. i look up to him. he’s doing research with some of his students on ‘appreciation of beauty’. i also look up to some of the larger scale researchers like chris peterson, who has done so much wonderful work in the field. what do you think fits well along with strengths, so to speak? for example if you were going to work with someone on strengths, what would you additionally work with them on? i would link in mindfulness, as that’s what i’m also passionate about as a practitioner. i am beginning to study this interrelationship more closely. but i would weave this in, helping the individual to become more mindful of those strongest qualities inside them and the resources around them, and using mindfulness and strengths to deal with problems and with different issues; and how we can be mindful of overusing our character strengths or not using enough of them. i would link how to find that balance and how to be mindful of applying strengths in the right context and how to be mindful of how to use strengths in order to flourish. i think that they are natural bedfellows. i recently created and piloted a new eight-week programme focusing on the integration of mindfulness and character strengths, and i will look forward to advancing this and sharing it in the future. is there anything else you’d like to add that i haven’t asked about that you think would be useful for a person looking at moving into the world of positive psychology? i see movies as an incredible medium for helping people to realize their potential, to become better, and to apply positive psychology principles. one of the major reasons for me saying this is that when an individual takes an approach to movies, whether they are paying attention to themselves, or paying attention to the impact of the character on the screen, they will often feel inspired or feel what researcher jonathan haidt has coined as ‘elevation’. movies can be cinematically elevating in that we observe a character doing something inspiring, or we observe a character displaying bravery or wisdom or perseverance in some strong way, and maybe we need to build that strength within ourselves, or maybe it just reflects a part of ourselves. we feel the physiological sensations of tingling and warming in the chest; and then, most importantly, we are motivated to do good, or are motivated to be better people, or are positive psychologists on positive psychology: ryan niemiec jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 motivated to be more altruistic. this is an exciting area that needs to have more research. it also links in with the question about making the world a better place, because movies are something that can transcend cultures and nations and therefore they have potential to reach each person and can help people to be stronger and to flourish. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 110–115. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.9 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks interview by aaron jarden nic marks is a recognised expert in the field of wellbeing research and positive psychology, and undertakes innovative research in the use of wellbeing indicators in public policy environments. nic founded the new economics foundation’s ‘centre for wellbeing’ and has led the wellbeing programme at the new economics foundation since 2001. this has included creating the very influential ‘five ways to wellbeing’ campaign which now has global reach. what prompted your interest in positive psychology? i came to positive psychology to try to unpick the question around sustainable development, which is how we try to create for people good lives that don’t cost the earth. it became fairly obvious that we need to think more about the quality of life than the quantity of life, trying to unpack the difference between economic growth and quality. so, i came to the field of the science of wellbeing, international quality of life studies, and latterly positive psychology, to work out whether we could measure that experience of life because that seems to me critical in how we re-vision what the future should be. and you’ve been in the field for a while? i’ve been in the field of thinking about alternative indicators of gdp for about 20 years, but wellbeing and subjective wellbeing for some 10 years now, since about 2001. what would you say are some of the most distinctive features of positive psychology and how it applies to what you’re doing? firstly, it’s a great, fun, topic and it’s very appealing to people. we’ve had so much psychology that’s been about fixing the bad things, which obviously is important, but i think there’s been a lack of giving people the opportunity to fulfil themselves—so positive psychology is great for that reason. and then there’s some good science coming out, showing that wellbeing is not exactly the opposite of ill-being, and i think that that is interesting. barbara frederickson’s work is standout work in the positive psychology area. so when you think about the big questions that the field of positive psychology addresses, what would you say those questions are? how do lives go well? what are the causes of lives going well? how can we define that and how can we improve people’s lives? ultimately it’s about making a difference. positive http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 psychology is about making a difference, an improvement to people’s lives and i think that’s positive psychology’s aim. it’s a noble aim. what’s a social justice issue that positive psychology should focus on, in your view? this is a developed world social justice issue. there are developing world social justice issues as well, but we know that people at the bottom of the income spectrum have lower happiness, wellbeing, than people further up it. but what positive psychology shows us, if you actually unpick it a bit, is that money is not the only causal thing that is going to get them out of that. so it’s not about throwing benefits and such things to those at the lower end of the income spectrum, it’s actually about giving them a sense of agency, and actually getting them to critically and wholly participate in society, or helping them to participate—‘getting’ them to participate is too strong. it’s not about being prescriptive, it’s more about facilitating that process, and so they’re not activating the sort of things we know about that bring people wellbeing. that’s because they don’t have that capacity to support, they haven’t had that love and care. so positive psychology reframes the issue of inequalities into an inequality of agency, rather than an inequality of money. what do you think is the best way for them to achieve that? who? policy makers or people individually? both, really. i mean that is the problem and if you had unlimited ways to fix it, how would you go about fixing it? right at the bottom of the income spectrum needs to have funded interventions because you’ll then have future benefits. that would actually save the government a lot of money. those interventions might be in part financial, but they’d be more things such as access to small micro credit loans and things like that. but they also need to be about getting social support and mentoring and helping people learn, not necessarily formal learning, but learning from others in their community. communities can work together and actually release passion and interest; and engagement in them is very, very interesting. most of these people couldn’t even begin to think about how to set up a small business or something like that. yet they have skills and passions and interests and strengths: but how do you release them? so it’s a very facilitative approach, which is unusual for government. government usually tends to be happier if it’s building things or putting in place infrastructure, physical things. so it’s quite a different sort of a process. it seems from what you’re saying it needs to be a bit of top down, but also has to be a bit of bottom up, for those ‘bottom rung’ people? yes, you can’t tell someone what their passions should be. you’ve got to have a conversation about that. so, the ‘top down’ needs to be putting facilitators and coaches into these communities. rather than building community centres, actually pay for these people to live in the community and to get to know the community and find out how they can get to work with people and have a very free remit to do that. and maybe setting up small funds that people can dip into to borrow that first 200 pounds or whatever to set up something small. there are really big returns on investment for those sorts of projects. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 so it’s more about a hand-up than a hand-out? yes, the process has to be bubbling up rather than trickling down. it has to be using people’s energy and releasing that in their communities. what do you think are some of the most valid criticisms of positive psychology? there have been far too many claims made far too quickly about certain interventions. the press have got very excited about it, and people have over-claimed success. quite a lot of the claims made can come across as too theory-led or they haven’t actually done enough to enable people to use it. on other occasions they are too focussed on specific interventions that can be proved in clinical studies, in rigorous trials and blind studies and that sort of thing. that’s all fine, but we have to generalise out from that if we are really going to make it useful. so, you want to have the science and you want to be able to go from that, so you want to be able to use the social marketing techniques. we need to be able to communicate things better. so, counting your blessings is great, but it’s not going to be an intervention that saves the world, and gratitude letters are not going to either. also, claims of universality across all cultures, when they’re quite culturally specific, have been a problem. but, generally, i think that the field of positive psychology is doing a great amount of human good. what’s the one thing that brings your work to the attention of others? one of the things we do well at nef is communicating, and by that i mean taking relatively complex ideas and presenting them in ways that are simple, but not simplistic. that’s the aim. we do some good work, and some of it is less good than other parts; but you know when something is good, that’s when it travels and people start using it. there are a few things that we have done that have really travelled. the ‘happy planet index’ and ‘five ways to wellbeing’ are two examples, but there are others as well—and these are things we have tried to simplify, without making them too simplistic. i liked what you said once about starting with the people and then working backwards, and i don’t think many people think that way at all and that’s where the application of the science breaks down… yeah, you can see that there are lots of people that want to coach in positive psychology, and this is not to say that there are not ways to make money out of positive psychology, but it would be nicer if it was a bit more focussed on human good and less on individual ways to set up consultancies. that is somewhat problematic and is reflected in the fact that we have a very poor ethnic mix of people coming to positive psychology conferences—it’s pretty much all european americans. people are not going to be naturally attracted to positive psychology, and the positive psychology community is going to have to work very hard. there should be a conscious effort to attract a broad range of people to positive psychology. in what ways do people make money out of the field of positive psychology? there is a lot of business consultancy, and there is nothing wrong with business consultancy. people need to be able to make money. but there has been too much focus on how that happens sometimes. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? ed diener. he is a fantastic empiricalist. he has taken risks in his career and i think he is outstanding. john helliwell, because he brings the social into it. he understands how communities work and understands the importance of how that works in that context. barbara frederickson is a great experimental psychologist and has a great ability to communicate really well. her work has a really good grounding in science. they would be my top three. have you made any big mistakes, or do you have any regrets, in your progress as you have moved into the positive psychology field? things that you look back on and think ‚i really should not have done that!‛? not regrets; of course you make mistakes and think about how you could have done things better, but that’s your learning process. when i came to the field in 2001, in the early days, i was learning here. i’m not a psychologist, i’m a statistician and a psychotherapist, but that’s not a technical psychologist, so clearly in the first projects we did we had questionnaires that were too long, because we didn’t understand enough about them, but you learn from that, so i don’t think that there are any regrets with that. there are the established people in positive psychology who are really well known. are there any people who stick out for you, who aren’t well known, who are emerging, at the cutting edge of the science, who you’d like to flag for the future? joar vitterso from norway. i don’t know if you have heard of him, but he’s doing good work on interest and also curiosity as well. looking at how there are different types of positive emotions that may have previously been put into one bracket, suggesting that they all behave the same way, whereas actually they don’t. for example, pleasure does not operate the same way as enthusiasm or engagement; and how do we start to differentiate between some of the positive emotions and their effects on people? so his work is very interesting. an under-thought about a field in positive psychology is genes and environment interplay. we haven’t seen nearly enough work on that, and it’s quite technical work; but it’s really important. we need to know how we intervene with people, and if we’re thinking that the environment and the interventions in the environment are going to work the same for all people—that’s rubbish. so, we need to know much more about genetically informed datasets, and particularly around interventions with children. over the last three or four years, of all the books you’ve read about positive psychology, what’s the one that stood out to you, changed your mind, as being fresh, the most inspirational book in the area of positive psychology? a book is hard because i read barbara fredrickson’s book positivity and i actually think that i preferred some of barbara’s papers, but that’s just me. it’s like sonya lyubomirsky’s book the how of happiness; it’s fine but it didn’t really inspire me. i guess that barry schwartz’s books [the paradox of choice and the loss of wisdom+ really stuck out to me. i’d put him up there with someone who i enormously respect, he’s challenged the positive psychology movement and challenged the via strengths and how they are defined, and he’s very smart. so probably his was the book i really went ‘wow’ at, although that’s probably about six years old now. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 what book would you recommend to someone who doesn’t know anything about the field of positive psychology? when they find out about positive psychology, what’s the first book they should read? the one i normally recommend is positive psychology in a nutshell by ilona boniwell, which is just a small book, about 100 pages, which is succinct, but probably needs updating now, although i realise she also has a new textbook on positive psychology just out. in the past i have quite strongly recommended authentic happiness, because it is good for the field. and then there’s flourish< thinking of the current concerns in the field of positive psychology, what two concerns would you list as most needing to be addressed in order to make positive psychology a better discipline going forward? firstly, it needs to address its cultural bias, its ethnic bias. that’s critical. secondly it needs to think climate change and think about the environment. i find it so shocking that there are no tracks on interaction between nature and positive psychology. you can take it very softly, for example there’s nothing looking at human beings and just how it feels to be outside. i know there is an article that’s just come out in the international journal of wellbeing that focuses on nature, context and human wellbeing and uses central park in new york as an example and we need more of that kind of stuff. it’s really important that we understand that there is a huge contextual impact in how the environment impacts on people, and that it’s not all individually based. it’s important to positive psychology to get out of the individual, and into the social. what do you think are the pros and cons about the main governing body, ippa? it’s too american-based: this conference [the 2nd world congress on positive psychology] was supposed to be in europe, but they didn’t take the risk to do that. i also think it’s too narcissistic in a way, too inward turning. for example, to give six fellowships to six of the almost founding fathers of positive psychology. so you found an organisation and then get awarded by it? they should have given barbara [fredrickson], or sonya [lyubomirsky], or todd [kashdan], or tim kasser, people who are doing really good research in different areas, these awards. they should be using the organisation to give people a leg up in the field, not to go ‚jolly well done‛. there are lots of pros to ippa though; i don’t want to say it’s not a good organisation. there is a lot that needs to be debated though. there are a lot of really good people involved here and there is a really interesting scientific base. the international positive psychology association should also be a bit stricter about the empirical robustness of work sometimes—although it’s better than five years ago when people used to give papers on positive psychology. it’s improved a lot. what discipline do you think positive psychology can learn the most from, moving forward as an early science? it needs to learn more from systems theory, complexity. it’s too linear sometimes. it could learn more from social psychology, just generally, get out of the individual. the european tradition in psychology is more social and cultural. also, probably evolutionary psychology. barbara [fredrickson] does this very well, whereas perma does not really have an evolutionary story behind it. ed diener is much clearer that he thinks life satisfaction is the best measure; now, you can agree or disagree with that, but he has a stance on that. positive psychologists on positive psychology: nic marks jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 what do you think about the distinction ‘pushed from the past and pulled into the future’ as a point for positive psychologists to focus on or think more about? i have not really digested what marty [seligman] said about that in a lot of ways yet, but i do think he’s right to think that there’s a distinction between reminiscing about the past and anticipating about the future, and that views about the future are very much influence by the now. we don’t need to be as much weighed down by the past as psychodynamic theory has told us to be. for example, people don’t necessarily need to delve into the past to explain their present quite so much. i like the way that positive psychology is an optimistic science and does include things about the future too. psychotherapy and counselling is often not focussed enough on that, and i’m treating those as disciplines that have tried to improve the human lot, and they have done. but you should only think about the past in as much as it affects the present right now. negativity gets you caught in patterns. do i think that there is a pull from the future? it is very difficult scientifically to say that, but personally, yeah i do. this is a book for people looking to move into the field of positive psychology. is there anything else you’d like to comment on that i have not asked about? coming to positive psychology with an open mind has the potential for lots to be learned from it, as there is a lot to be learnt and discovered. it is an exciting discipline and i would like it to be linked more closely to social dimensions and cultural dimensions—which it is trying to do. ultimately, i’d like it to start to help us tackle what are some of the most pressing issues of our day. the 21st century is going to have to come to terms with the entrenched poverty in the world and how we deal with that, and climate change and how we dematerialise our economies. positive psychology, although not many currently think this way, has a huge contribution to make towards that, because it looks at what makes life go well, and it gives us the freedom to think in a different way. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 116–118. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.10 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson interview by aaron jarden barbara fredrickson is the kenan distinguished professor of psychology and director of the positive emotions and psychophysiology lab (pep lab) at the university of north carolina, and is a leading scholar within positive psychology, social psychology, and affective science. barbara’s research centers on positive emotions and human flourishing, and her work is cited widely, including her 2009 book, positivity, which describes the relevance of her 20-year research programme on positive emotions for a general readership, and her broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? the distinctive features of positive psychology are rather nebulous because a lot of things that can be called positive psychology are often not necessarily termed positive psychology. at the overarching general level would be looking at the aspects of human nature that help us become a better version of ourselves over time, that help propel us towards growth, or greater confidence, greater resilience, greater honesty, greater integrity. the study of those aspects and a lot of that work happens under the umbrella of positive psychology, and a lot of it happens outside of it. the boundaries i think are very blurry. what are some things that positive psychology has achieved to date? one of the biggest achievements of positive psychology to date is just getting on the public radar; of being clearly an area of science worth investing in, worth paying attention to, worth applying. the tremendous interest right now in creating resilience training programs, and trying to create a more resilient public, or a more resilient military force, really speaks to the strength of this perspective. if you had a magic wand, what would be one thing that you would change about positive psychology? that there would be a clear source of funding for positive psychology. right now it’s unclear where more funding for the more basic science pieces of it will come from. the demand for the fruits of positive psychology is far larger than the supply of good science, and that in part is because we don’t necessarily have the funds to be training people in the basic science areas of positive psychology. positive psychology spans both basic science and applied science, and right now we have a situation where the applied side is not necessarily being fed by enough of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 the basic science pieces. that’s in part because funding for the basic science pieces is harder to come by and training dollars for training scientists in those areas is tough to come by. so that would be my magic wand: to invest in the basic science side, especially in training the next generation of people to do it. what do you think is the new hot topic for positive psychology over the next few years? health is getting stronger attention in that we need to go beyond looking at wellbeing or happiness as simply judgments and emotions, and really anchor them in how they are affecting the bottom line of people’s life expectancy, their illness histories, the dollars they cost their employers in health care visits, and also more and more in how much positive psychology within organizations affects their bottom line. i think ways of making those metrics concrete are especially vital. and then at the basic science level, looking at how wellbeing and emotions are part of larger dynamic systems is going to be ever more crucial because wellbeing is not a single state, you know—it’s not like you reach some happiness plateau and you’re forever there—instead people get caught up in upward spirals or downward spirals, or some selfsustaining system in one way or another. we need to better understand those temporal dynamics and how they unfold and how they reinforce wellness or illness over time. can you tell me a little bit about your work in the area of positive psychology? i work on emotions, and positive emotions in particular. my students and collaborators and i are interested in everything about positive emotions, which are short-lived, momentary, fleeting experiences that have, in the moment, ways of altering the ways we think, the ways we behave, the way we see other people. over time those momentary effects of positive emotions add up and really change who we become, change how people grow and change over time. so i’m interested in those short-term and long-term accumulated effects of positive emotions. we’re looking at those in a wide variety of ways, especially right now focusing on physical health. as you have been working in the field of positive psychology, what’s one learning experience that’s made a big difference for you? one that’s really a challenge is going from basic research on laboratory studies and finding out the cognitive effects, say, of positive emotions, to making the transition into applied work, and trying to help people achieve more positive emotions so they can have the good outcomes that those emotions may bring. there is a vexing additional piece of people’s wishful thinking: people sometimes so hunger to have wellbeing and have positive emotions that they lose sight of whether they are really having them when they fill out a questionnaire. there’s a lot of, in jargon terms, experimenter demand or demand characteristics, but it’s just, in general terms, kind of wishful thinking. so as a researcher, working in that more applied domain, you really need to be looking to see whether this is a genuine, bona fide, positive emotion that this person is reporting, or do they wish they were feeling a positive emotion? do they earnestly wish that, so they’re in a way presenting a counterfeit positive emotion? because wellbeing and wellness and happiness are all things that people so earnestly strive for, they can sometimes lose sight of ‘what’s the real thing?’ versus just too quickly saying, ‘oh yes, i’m happy’, without really examining the data for that. positive psychologists on positive psychology: barbara fredrickson jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 what’s your proudest moment in the field of positive psychology to date? it’s when people put the ideas into use. i’m trained as a lab researcher and a basic scientist. i think of myself as an emotion theorist. what positive psychology offers really well is an interface between people doing the basic science, and practitioners in all different kinds of domains, industry, education, the military and so on, who want to put that science into action. so some of the proudest moments i’ve had are when people do that, they translate what i’ve been working on into application, and are finding success with that. so again, there is only so much one person can do, and the ideas that emerge from the science that i’ve been doing, i can communicate those in a way that i can pass the baton on to others who can do great things with those ideas. that’s something that makes me really proud. who are the emerging and unknown researchers in positive psychology to look out for? i can give some names of people i know well because they have been junior collaborators of mine. sarah algoe is one who is doing phenomenal work on gratitude in particular, and other ways that certain positive emotional moments can transform social opportunities and relationships. she’s working at the interface of emotions and relationships. one of my current doctoral students, bethany kok, is diving into the physiological substrates of the upward spirals that we think sustain people’s wellbeing, so she’s a name to keep an eye out for in the future. what’s one book, other than your book positivity, that you think all those getting into the field and learning about positive psychology should read? the best initial take is perhaps sonja lyubomirsky’s book the how of happiness, which is excellent in helping people understand the basic exercises that have a track record for improving wellbeing, and in helping people understand the hurdles and the sluggishness they must overcome, for happiness and wellbeing to improve. i think it gives a good realistic account. what’s one piece of advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers and or practitioners? stay actively invested in the positive psychology community and also in the home discipline your training is in, whether it’s social psychology or affective neuroscience or others. both of those affiliations are really vital. identifying in positive psychology can be useful and productive, but it wouldn’t be the only identity that you would want or the only identity hat that you would want to wear. make sure that the work that you are doing is equally turning heads within a related discipline that isn’t necessarily under the umbrella of positive psychology. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 119–124. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.11 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell interview by aaron jarden ilona boniwell is a principal lecturer in positive psychology at the university of east london, founder of the european network of positive psychology, as well as the masters of applied positive psychology at the university of east london. ilona’s main research is on subjective time use, time perspective, eudaimonic wellbeing and applications of positive psychology to one-toone work, business and education. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? positive psychology looks at the optimal side of human functioning, and the distinctive feature is its positive approach and the fact that it relies on solid empirical evidence. this is what distinguishes it from humanistic psychology, which was prominent in previous years. what are some key questions that positive psychologists seek to answer? what makes people happy? what contributes to lasting happiness? what contributes to lasting physical health? what constitutes personality strengths? what contributes to wisdom? what makes us more resilient? what is happiness in itself, and how do we define it and how do we measure it? what are positive emotions, and what can positive emotions contribute to? this in particular is a very important question that barbara frederickson is working on. the interesting questions for me at the moment are around the areas of resilience, post-traumatic growth, and positive aging. the interaction between positive psychology and psychology as usual poses a real challenge at the moment. fascinating also is ‘what is positive parenting?’ and ‘how can we bring up children in a better way and be better parents?’. as a mother of four teenagers and a baby, this is also a very practical question for me. how can positive psychology help people in the real world, how can positive psychology contribute to education, to business, to work-life in general? how can positive psychology help us to understand one-to-one helping professions, like coaching and counselling, and what can it really bring to coaching and counselling? on the one hand, it sounds relatively easy and positive psychology can, in fact, bring a lot to coaching. but when you get down to it and start teaching coaches about positive psychology, surprisingly they are very often lost. that’s one of the difficult questions for me: how can you really make positive psychology very tangible, so when practicing psychologists work with it and work with its tools, they can actually get quite a lot out of it and go in depth with their clients, rather than just stay on the surface? http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 what is one big challenge you think positive psychology faces? the challenge of the future, and what is going to happen with positive psychology in general. whether positive psychology should become more integrated with ‘psychology as usual’ or not? remaining a distinct positive psychology tradition with certain distinct personalities within this tradition is potentially a negative trajectory, because it can become a field that is a little bit stuck with itself and is relatively unopen to the rest of psychology as a discipline. so for me the big challenge is how to integrate positive psychology back into psychology as usual in such a way that it still remains its own distinct field in some way, but is fluid and transparent and accepted by the rest of the discipline, and penetrates the rest of psychology fully enough without becoming a one-camp stop. someone wants to become happier. what’s your first piece of advice for them? that would be the ‘count your blessings’ exercise. this is an exercise that i was quite against when it first appeared and when i first came across it because it seemed to me to be incredibly light hearted. nevertheless, after seeing many, many people try it—i’m talking mainly about my students and seeing students exercising positive psychology tools and trying the exercises and different approaches—i would have to admit that it is the most profound and helpful tool that there is. the implementation of this tool, from theory to real life, is probably a bit tricky because it does sound simple and you have to write it down and so on. nevertheless, just focusing on the positive features of the day appears to have profound effects on becoming happier. what’s the new hot topic for positive psychology in the coming two years? i’m a bit biased by my own research interests, but really it’s the definition of eudaimonic wellbeing. being able to distinguish between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing, which seems to be on the one hand quite an obvious trajectory and something that makes intuitive sense, and on the other hand is something that is extremely difficult to achieve; to draw the line between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing, if there is such a line. or to draw the line between eudaimonic and hedonic personality such as the work of joar vitterso. this is something that really excites me, to see if there is this difference between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing, to see if we can define eudaimonic wellbeing. if you look at the literature, sometimes eudaimonic wellbeing is a cluster of distinct constructs, related in some respects. in some situations it is a distinct construct, but not necessarily falling under the umbrella of eudemonia very easily. so, the objective is to try to understand what eudaimonic wellbeing is, whether it is associated with a specific experience that is different from hedonic wellbeing; whether there are different drivers of eudaimonic wellbeing, and whether we can measure it differently from hedonic wellbeing; and whether there are indeed different personalities dependent on their eudaimonic and hedonic choices. these are the hot questions. who do you look up to in the field of positive psychology? i always get excited by ed diener’s work. every time i see him present he comes up with something new. obviously he is an extremely solid researcher who has done fantastic work in the field, but in addition he is dynamic. every time he speaks, there is something different and something new, and he is definitely progressing in his thinking. i look up to him because he is not only robust, but truly progressive; a true researcher who challenges himself and takes steps further and further. if research findings disagree with his previous conclusions, he’s the first to positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 admit it. the second person is martin seligman, because of his energy, and the energy he brings to the field of positive psychology and the capacity for leadership of the field. the third person is joar vitterso, who is a norwegian professor. he is one of the people who does really solid work and is not limited to the existing constructs of positive psychology. he often proposes new ways of representing information and challenging previous conclusions, so his research on eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing is probably the most progressive. he has come up with amazing findings and experiments, some of the most ground breaking experiments, and so excites me very much because his thinking is non-standard, and he is able to approach the same questions from different directions and look at them from a different perspective as well. so i admire his work very much. can you tell me about your research work in positive psychology? i have two main areas of research. one part of my research is on time, and that further breaks down into research on balanced time perspective and research on time use and perceived time use. most of my research in recent years was around balanced time perspective. so overall the question of time, as you know from your research on the international wellbeing study, which asks about time, is very important for positive psychology, and is something that has not been looked at sufficiently. there is a distinction between perception of time and perception of time in terms of its use. research on time, in terms of time management and the use of time in daily life, is something that has not been hugely developed in psychology overall. a recent review of time management research managed to identify 37 empirical papers on the subject. if you step away from this conversation and think about how many thousands of books exist on time management compared to a total of 37 studies, there is an amazing gap. there is the question of time perspective, not time perception, in research studies that is a bit different. i’m not talking about measuring whether your perception of the duration of 30 seconds was accurate, i’m not talking about that; i’m talking about time as it is used in everyday life. if you consider that time management only managed to produce 37 research studies, then there is a huge gap in our understanding in how we can actually use and manage our time more productively and happily on an everyday basis. so it’s unsurprising that this research topic is extremely important. in recent years, however, my research was mainly focused on time perspective, and again the question of balanced time perspective, not necessarily how to define it. now we are quite clear with definitions and different approaches to balanced time perspective, but now the focus is on how to enhance it. this is something that interests me a lot. with my students, i’m trying to identify the key factors that contribute to us being able to balance time perspective better, for example, factors such as cognitive flexibility and being able to switch between different temporal zones in our perception more successfully. that’s one part of my research. the second part of my research is on educational interventions in the area of positive psychology. i have two big programs currently running. one is a programme with a group of secondary schools to enhance wellbeing in school-aged children. this is a programme which runs a course from year 1 to year 10 of these primary and secondary schools, it’s a big group of schools called the haberdasher’s aske’s federation, that are implementing this educational program. we are exploring what can contribute to the enhancement of wellbeing in school-aged children. the second part is that we have developed with colleagues an educational programme for the enhancement of resilience, i suppose in some ways similar to the penn resilience program, but relying on the wider literature. it’s not just relying on cognitive behavioural approaches in trying to enhance resilience, but also incorporating ideas from post-traumatic growth and positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 positive psychology directly. we have developed a 12-week curriculum called the spark resilience curriculum. we are working to see to what extent this curriculum enhances resilience in children. it does seem to be working and we have good findings that we are writing up, in terms of decreasing depressive symptoms and enhancing resilience, and selfesteem; self-esteem was a by-product. these are my two areas of research at the moment, educational research and time research. the third area is eudaimonic wellbeing. can you tell me a bit about the masters of applied positive psychology (mapp) programme at the university of east london? this is my favourite project within positive psychology in terms of trying to make things happen. the mapp programme has been running for five years now, extremely successfully. it was the second programme in the world on positive psychology. nowadays there are more programs opening up, for example in portugal; there are about five or six around. we have an incredibly positive student intake, so the last four years out of five the programme has had quite substantial competition, which is exciting because it means we are able to attract a very good calibre of graduates from different disciplines to enter this program. i suppose the best feature of this programme is its interdisciplinary nature. the students on this programme are the most interesting people i have come across in my life. they bring with them experience and knowledge from so many different domains of life and all are dedicated to the betterment of humanity. so we have people coming from the social sector, from the voluntary sector, from the business sector, from the education sector; we even had a vet in the program, and we typically have a couple of lawyers on every cohort. all of them bring with them this very different understanding, depending on their professional background experience, and i think this enhances and enriches positive psychology hugely, dramatically. i really see the future of positive psychology not only integrating with psychology, but also going very much multidisciplinary and trying to find the usefulness of positive psychology in different domains through cooperation with people from different professional backgrounds. so the mapp programme is something i am really, really proud of. i think it is working, and i think i t is something that is developing positive psychology because it is these very students that pose many challenges for me when i teach, or to our team when we teach, and i think those challenges are being fed back into the field of positive psychology as a whole. these are very important challenges, because these students are the ones who bridge the gap between the ivory tower and academics and different theoretical approaches, and discover what works in real life and what doesn’t work. who are the emerging and unknown researchers in positive psychology to look out for? here i would like to mention one of my students, a phd student who is doing research on eudaimonic wellbeing. her name is francesca elston, and she is adopting both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, which is quite unusual in the positive psychology field, to look at the construct of eudaimonic wellbeing; and to understand the interaction between eudaimonic wellbeing and values specifically, and how we can define and measure eudaimonic wellbeing overall. she is definitely one of the people to look out for. another person, veronica huta, is also a researcher in the eudaimonic wellbeing field and she is becoming more prominent now, and her research is very interesting. another person is michael pluris. michael is working on the concept of ‘differential susceptibility to environmental influences’, the basic premise of which is that (a) because psychology has been so disproportionately concerned with the adverse effects of negative environmental conditions on pathological outcomes (b) it has failed positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 to appreciate that it may not be, as long presumed by diathesis-stress thinking, that some individuals are more ‘vulnerable’ to adversity than others, that is, disproportionately likely to be negatively affected by negative experiences, but that (c) these very same individuals are actually more generally plastic or malleable than others and thus also disproportionately benefit from supportive or nurturant environmental conditions. to summarise it briefly, the idea of differential susceptibility is that often the people who are perceived as most vulnerable in genetic terms, benefit the most and progress the best from positive environmental characteristics and different environmental conditions. so rather than viewing certain types of people as possessing genetic characteristics that make them more vulnerable to negative environmental influences, it is extremely liberating to understand that these same characteristics that make them vulnerable to negative environmental influences also make them positively vulnerable to positive environmental characteristics. that is something he has been doing for a number of years, and this is research to look out for. he has also carried out some studies on differential susceptibility in samples of school children who undertook the spark resilience program. again, some interesting findings have come out of his research. i really enjoyed reading the textbook positive psychology you wrote with kate hefferon that’s just come out. it’s a great general introduction to the field. other than that, what’s one book that you think all those getting into and learning about positive psychology should read if they don’t know much about positive psychology? for me it’s not so much martin seligman’s’ books, but the books by mihaly csikszentmihalyi that are the best. unless somebody is after a very structured introduction and understanding to positive psychology, i think the first book they should read is flow. furthermore, to put it more broadly, the core book on positive psychology has not been written by a positive psychologist. for me, it is a man’s search for meaning by victor frankl. i think these two books capture the essence of what positive psychology is or could be about. there are many well-structured books summarising a number of different constructs very well. but the starting point for me would be these two books. what’s your most proud moment in the field of positive psychology to date? the graduation ceremony, about three years ago, when the first bunch of mapp students were graduating with their masters degrees; the chancellor awarding the degrees started to read out ‚and now i’m proud to present the award for the very first graduate of a masters of applied positive psychology in europe‛. at this point i cried and felt really, really proud. is there anything you would like to comment on that i have not asked about? just to add a little bit to your question about the mapp program. the future development of positive psychology at the moment lies in its international appeal. we have quite a lot on positive psychology in america, in europe and in australia. i think the next organisational step is really africa, south america and asia, in terms of regional movement of positive psychology. i’m really excited about the mapp programme reaching further. we are going distance learning from next september, and will be able to reach different parts of the world. i’m also excited about different developments in these regions and different research findings that are coming from these regions. i recently had an opportunity to present with one of the chinese professors on positive psychology at one of the international conferences, and what struck me—and what i was not prepared for—was the opposite research conclusions, for positive psychologists on positive psychology: ilona boniwell jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 124 example in the area of time perspective. that really opened my eyes to the importance of cultural understanding and cultural specificity with regard to positive psychology findings, and this is something i find really exciting in terms of future developments in positive psychology—to integrate cross-cultural findings to the extent possible and to learn from the research of each other. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 125–130. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.12 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 expert insight expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand interview by aaron jarden robert vallerand is professor of social psychology at the université du québec à montréal, canada, and president of the international positive psychology association (ippa). his research focuses mainly on motivation and passion, and he has written more than 200 articles and book chapters mainly in the area of social motivation, as well as five books. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? first, aaron, let me congratulate you on your attempt to bring together in a book people who are involved in the field of positive psychology. i think it is a highly important service to the positive psychology community. to answer your question, obviously there are several distinctive features and, depending on who you ask, you might get different answers. when you look at positive psychology and some of its defining features, the science is clearly present. you look at textbooks and different websites, and usually people will point to the science. for instance, at ippa we define positive psychology as the scientific study of what enables or makes people and communities thrive and to do their best. i think that chris peterson, in his book primer in positive psychology, mentions the fact that it’s the study of what makes people get up in the morning and to do their best and be at their best. so the science is very important. at the same time we also care about the applications and how to use that science and apply it so people can actually be better. i would say that both elements are very important, as long as it helps people (and organizations) to thrive and do better and be at their best. so the science and the scientifically-informed applications that will help people to be at their best are both very important elements. what’s the biggest challenge that positive psychology faces as it is developing? there are a few; but obviously, because positive psychology is really the interface between the science and the applications, one of the challenges that we have is to make sure that everybody is happy with the interface we have. scientists are saying, ‘well, we need more science’, and people who are more applied are saying, ‘we need more application’. one of the challenges is to make sure we are on the same page, and that we progress together in the hope that positive psychology, as a field, will thrive and be even better. while we need everyone to be on the same page, sometimes you will have those kinds of disagreements; but that’s fine, i think it’s part of the game and more of a challenge. another challenge is at some point to make sure everybody from psychology takes positive psychology seriously. that’s why the science is so http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 important. already people back in the 50s and 60s, with humanistic psychology, attempted to create some kind of revolution and it didn’t work because the science was not a big part of it. i think that with positive psychology, one of the reasons why it’s working is that the science is very important. another challenge is to involve a lot of people from different areas of psychology; in fact i would say all areas of psychology. that means neuroscience, like what richard davidson is doing, in emotion research with barbara fredrickson, culture with people like shinobu kitayama, and motivation with ed deci—all these people have to be on board. at the 2nd world congress on positive psychology organized by ippa [july 2011] we had these people in philadelphia, which was just great. these are some of the challenges we face, but they are manageable. we are progressing towards having positive psychology being a thriving area of research and application. can you tell me about your work in positive psychology? my work is basically on passion. when chris peterson is saying, ‘what makes people get up in the morning?’, i say passion makes people wake up in the morning. if today’s basketball day, or if today’s music day and your looking forward to jamming with your friends, or going to the gym to scrimmage and play basketball or whatever, i think that passion is extremely important in people’s lives. in fact some philosophers like hegel have said that there is nothing great in this world that has been done without passion. so passion makes a big difference in people’s lives. the thing is that, as some people have said, you have to look at the positive as well as the negative, and with passion there are two types of passion. one is ‘harmonious passion’ which gives you a lot of mileage, you will be happy and reach a lot of objectives and goals; but ‘obsessive passion’ can be a down side, and can lead to some negative effects, especially on one’s physical and mental health. we have been doing a lot of research and publishing our work regarding the role of both harmonious and obsessive passion in optimal functioning in society. obviously, harmonious passion is what will get you towards living the good life, and to be happy, and contribute to society, reach a high level of performance, and is what some people should shoot for. but basically, that’s what we do in terms of research; look at the psychology of passion. so passion must be pretty closely related to purpose, meaning, and values as areas of psychology? that’s right! the basic definition of passion is, ‘a strong inclination towards a self-defining activity that one loves, finds important (or cares about), and spends time and energy on’. so, you really care about the activity very deeply, it has a lot of meaning to you, and you value it quite a bit; but you also love the activity, spend a lot of time on the activity—you basically like to talk about it, and you develop friendships around it. it’s a central part of your life. how you go about engaging in the activity, what it means to you, that can sometimes get you into trouble (with obsessive passion). but you’re right in that meaning and values are very much part of it, and if the activity itself is a positive activity, like volunteering, taking care of others, teaching, obviously it can lead to a lot of good consequences for you, and for other people as well. you tend to contribute towards society; and that’s what we find in our work, especially with harmonious passion. you derive from your engagement in the activity what we call ‘optimal functioning in society’, where you’re psychologically happy, physically healthy, and have positive relationships in your life; you achieve high levels of performance and you contribute to society at the same time. so these five elements, we find, are positively predicted by harmonious passion; whereas with obsessive passion you may get a few, but you don’t get positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 the whole package. with obsessive passion, something gets in the way of positive relationships with other people. and even sometimes your health might be in jeopardy. as the newly-elected president of ippa, what’s one thing you’re personally aiming to change about either positive psychology or ippa? past presidents, ed diener and antonella delle fave, have done a great job, because it’s not easy taking on a new association. ippa was created in 2007, so we are just four years old. it’s like having a child and trying to make sure it knows how to walk. they have done a great job. my job is basically to continue on that path, while trying to make some changes that will help us progress along the way. there are a lot of different things we are trying to do. a first goal is to modify the ‘front office’ so that we are more efficient in getting the work done. this entails bringing in additional people to work with us to connect with our membership. a second goal is to facilitate a grass-root movement within the association and make sure that people from different countries and all individual members feel that they are really a part of ippa. so, we are in the process of creating ‘divisions’, just like the apa has, so that people can feel that it resonates with what they do and what they want to get from the association. so instead of having only a group of 2500 ippa members, we are going to have divisions dealing with health, education, organizations, clinical psychology, and coaching. there will be presidents (or chairs) for each of the different divisions and people can feel that they are part of some specialized community within ippa. a third goal has to do with the dissemination of knowledge. this is done through different means such as having our newsletter out 4 times per year, pursuing the ‘positive psychology leaders’ series’ (with david pollay who is doing a great job). we are also looking to the possibility of having perhaps either journals or a series of books on positive psychology that would be under the editorship of ippa. in essence we are looking at different ways of connecting with our membership and to disseminate relevant information. finally, and perhaps the more important thing we are trying to do is to help countries across the globe get their own national associations off the ground, so they can be part of ippa and at the same time remain autonomous entities, eventually leading positive psychology to be truly global. can you list some countries that you have been helping out or who you are starting to help out, just as examples? different countries—obviously the us, the uk, and new zealand have been forerunners—but in fact russia too. there are different countries where spanish is the main language; spain, venezuela. right now, as i speak, there is a conference in brazil on positive psychology (september 2011); and canada is starting its own association of positive psychology and will have its first conference in july 2012. so it’s burgeoning, it’s here, there and everywhere, and that’s what makes it exciting. when you’re trying to set up an association, who do you look up to? ippa! so we are there to help, trying to do all kinds of things. we have helped people before establish associations in their countries and we are more than willing to do it again, so i think it’s our role to be able to assist. do you have a plan of countries that you would like to see positive psychology associations in, or is it more that you wait to be approached from a certain country for assistance? well, obviously, we would like to see all countries involved. what we are trying to do is look at, across the globe, what is happening. james pawelski has been doing a great job as the positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 executive director on that front. for instance, james is currently in brazil with martin seligman, who has been a great ambassador of positive psychology. we are looking at the situation in brazil, and at the same time we are trying to help them in any way we can with their association. the same thing will take place next summer (2012) in south africa. so usually what happens is that people from a given country will contact us and we give them information and then there is discussion back and forth in terms of connecting, and then at some point we go there and try to help them out. that’s what we have been doing so far. a lot of people wonder how positive psychology differs internationally by country. so i wonder, from your perspective, which are strong countries that are leading the way and which are up and coming? there are countries like spain, for instance, with carmelo vázquez over there doing a lot of good work. new zealand has a thriving national association with yourself and others involved. australia is doing very good work with dianne vella-brodrick and tony grant; they are very strong and they do contribute a lot, not only to their country, but also to ippa. so australia is very strong, and in different areas, which kind of makes it interesting—like coaching and the scientific part of it. these countries, i think, at some point will lead the way. i was just talking to someone in australia who wants to create a whole new centre on positive psychology in one university. it’s not finalized yet, but that’s what they want to do, so we are trying to help them out in some ways. that’s why it was so gratifying at the last conference, the 2nd world congress in philadelphia, to see so many people show up with so many ideas; so many people who want to go back to their own countries and bring positive psychology to them and make sure that they can do something that will last beyond the conference itself. that’s what we are seeing and we are very excited about it. ippa has faced some criticisms since it was launched, as well as having accomplished a lot of good stuff. can you outline some of these criticisms that ippa has been dealing with and how they are being addressed? one of the criticisms was that initially people felt that there are a lot of scientific people involved and we need more applied people. when you look at the history, obviously when you have to start something and the science is part of the definition, you want people on the board who will be involved with science. but the application of positive psychology is also important and the current board seems to reflect both dimensions (i.e., the science and application) of positive psychology. another thing is international representation. we want to have people from a number of countries on the board of directors who will reflect this international flavour and who display very high quality. this is not always easy to do, but out of 40-some people on the board, i think there are about 25 or 30 countries represented, perhaps more. so, we have a lot of countries involved and when i look at the meetings we have, the conferences we have had, i can see that people across the globe are very much involved in ippa. i’m very appreciative of that, so international representation has been addressed as well. a last criticism has to do with the fact that people want to be even more involved in ippa. people say, ‘well, ippa’s a big thing, how can i be part of it a bit more?’. now, with the divisions we are creating, people will be part of it and feel much more involved. they will not have to interact with ippa as a whole; they can be part of smaller divisions and feel much more involved. positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 just out of curiosity, how many members does ippa have? i think at last count it was around 2,500. i would assume that those numbers will get higher, because in years when we have a conference, membership increases. i would not be surprised if our number was beyond three thousand after the conference, we will see. who do you look up to in the field as the future leaders of positive psychology? or alternatively, who are the future leaders of ippa? for example, james pawelski stands out for me as someone who has done some great work for both positive psychology and ippa, but who do you think? that’s a tough one, because there are so many good people involved, including james pawelski as you mentioned. there are two ways to look at it. who in the field of scientific positive psychology makes a contribution? the answer is, a lot of people. there are a lot of young people coming up and obviously i don’t have to talk about martin seligman, chris peterson, barbara fredrickson, and richard davidson, who people already know. the other way to look at this issue is to have top people in other fields of psychology being more involved in positive psychology. what we tried to do during the last conference was to bring 21 invited speakers with about half of those, about 10 or 12 coming from positive psychology, from the field itself; but the other half were top people from other areas. what we wanted is for people in positive psychology to know about their work. but also, when these invited speakers leave the congress, they go back home and they have been changed. they know more about positive psychology and they can perhaps create centres on positive psychology or make a statement about positive psychology in their own field. i heard initially people say, ‘well, i did not know these people, but now, wow, it was really exciting’. for instance ed deci presented at the 2nd world congress and obviously some people may not know of him, but he’s a giant in the field of motivation. arie kruglanski is a top social psychologist doing work for the past ten years on terrorism and applications that we can address in a more positive light. what can we do for prevention? people like joan duda on sports and exercise psychology. we can use exercise psychology in a more positive psychology way, so that we can actually address one of the important problems people have in the uk and across the globe, which is young people becoming obese; what can we do regarding that? so many other people, herb marsh in education, jacquie eccles in social developmental psychology, the list goes on and on. these are giants in their own field that people in positive psychology did not know much about, but now they do. hopefully, these people will now spread the gospel about positive psychology. there are also some young people who are doing some very good work. so many people are involved; it would not be fair to mention just a few names. but the whole field is exploding; it’s great in terms of the future, in terms of what lies ahead. the issue is for ippa to become—and that’s one of my aspirations—the hub of international positive psychology so that we’re there to help, we are available, we disseminate knowledge and application, and we are helping people to set up their own associations in their own countries. people need something, they come to us. we hope we will be able to provide those services and at some point everybody will become one big interconnected happy family. that would be the goal. what’s one piece of advice for individuals looking to help contribute to the growing field of positive psychology? get in touch. the best way is to contact us directly. people have our email: james, myself, people on the executive committee, carmelo vázquez the incoming president-elect, antonella positive psychologists on positive psychology: robert vallerand jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 delle fave the past president. dianne vella-brodrick the secretary and kim cameron the treasurer. all these people are willing to help and remember we are all volunteers. we are not perfect, but we get involved because we care about the field and want it to progress. so, if you want to help and make a positive contribution, get in touch with us and let us know your views and ideas and we’ll pay attention and try to see how those ideas can be transformed into action. already we are making a lot of changes that hopefully will allow people to connect with us and benefit from ippa. we hope that people will take advantages of these changes, get on board, and contribute positively to positive psychology. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 131–135. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.13 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan interview by aaron jarden denise quinlan is a graduate of the university of pennsylvania’s masters in applied positive psychology (mapp) program. she is currently completing a phd in psychology at the university of otago in new zealand on group strengths interventions with children. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? it’s the focus on understanding what enables and supports wellbeing and how we can enhance it. within positive psychology there are many different areas of research examining how that occurs, but we don’t yet have an integrated understanding of wellbeing, for example understanding the relationship between hedonics and eudaimonics, and how happiness unfolds across time and within the person. what would you say are some of the goals of positive psychology? to better understand and support people to experience mental health and wellbeing, at an individual level in therapeutic settings and individual coaching settings, and at the group level, in schools, workplaces, and right up to the societal level, where we can think about flourishing as a societal good. one of the challenges that positive psychology can perhaps address is that of wellbeing being regarded as an individual benefit and not the purview of government. if positive psychology can demonstrate that wellbeing has societal benefits, if it is seen as a public good, then supporting wellbeing at a societal level becomes part of the political agenda. what are some of the big challenges that positive psychology currently faces? the one that jumps to mind is research catching up with the practice. people are keen to implement research, and are sometimes basing that on one or two pieces of research which perhaps aren’t even with their population, and that’s the best they have got to go with. a better understanding of the mechanisms through which interventions work will enable us to design more effective and appropriate interventions for different populations. there is a growing awareness of the importance of context among researchers and that’s good; but i don’t know if consumers of the research are as aware. we expect a lot of people to be very sophisticated consumers of research, and that’s one of the challenges of positive psychology. i have been concerned about the use of strengths interventions as if they are a fool-proof way to enhance wellbeing. strengths are not a wind-up toy, ready to be taken out of the box, and off you go. creating a shared language of strengths, understanding different definitions and how strengths http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 are valued differently by different groups and in different contexts is important when using a strengths approach. another big challenge is really understanding what wellbeing is, how it occurs and unfolds with different individuals and groups. hedonic and eudaimonic theory have both provided valuable insights into human behaviour, but are often studied separately by different people, but both actually occur in a single human being, in a given context. every individual enjoys moments of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. by focusing on them separately we perhaps miss the interplay and balance between them that supports wellbeing. i don’t think it’s always possible to parse wellbeing into constituent elements; are my hoots of laughter with my family at the end of a challenging ski run pure pleasure at the run or meaning and fulfilment at being loved and part of a family, or a sense of being aligned with my purpose of being a good mother? i do know that if i tried to look at it, i would kill the moment, and if i did it out loud, my kids would probably kill me. were there any key events that made you move into the area of positive psychology? i mean, how did you get into the field of positive psychology? i had read learned optimism and authentic happiness by marty seligman and was using some of that work in workshops i was running. i had a business called ‘what to do next’, which delivered three-day seminars for people who were trying to work out where they were going to go next with their lives. the seminar used a lot of different tools, some of which came from positive psychology. i saw an advert for the masters of applied positive psychology (mapp) programme and i thought, ‘that would be interesting, but impossible from nz’. i applied and my very loving husband said we’d manage the fees and travel costs. he has pointed out to me that i could have had a diamond ring, a sports car and some change. luckily, we share an interest in wellbeing so he thought it was worthwhile. so that’s the masters of applied positive psychology programme in philadelphia? can you tell us a bit more about that? the programme is run on an executive study model with three days a month onsite, and study and assignments in between. each on site was three days of lectures from some of the leading people in the field. to sit in a lecture theatre and have someone share their work and learning with you always feels like a privilege to me, so it was a fantastic time. in between on sites, there were lots of assignments and online meetings; that was a lot of work. but honestly, getting to go to philadelphia and to listen to people like barbara fredrickson, chris peterson, martin seligman, sonya lyubomirsky, george vaillant and jonathan haidt was a joy. david cooperrider and isaac prilletensky both focus on wellbeing at the community or group level— where positive psychology has the least research. their work provided a great opportunity to balance the individual focus of much of positive psychology research. they were also both inspiring individuals to listen to. so you go to philadelphia for three days a month, for about 10 trips over a year, and you get access to all these world leaders. what would you say is the overall highlight of the training? it’s really hard to say! probably the first immersion week because i got to hear so many people in that week; george valliant, barbara fredrickson, sonya lyubomirsky, martin seligman, chris peterson. it was amazing to be suddenly immersed in an environment where people really cared about wellbeing and were making it their life’s work. i had worked in stock broking and management consulting for big firms in the uk and in new zealand, so i’d often positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 been in environments where wellbeing was seen as soft and fuzzy, and not something worthwhile—it was all about ‘show me the impact on the bottom line’. so to be in an environment where people were actually all interested in wellbeing, that was really exciting. can you tell me a little bit about your work in positive psychology? i’m currently a phd student at the university of otago studying group strengths interventions with 10-12 year olds. when i had previously worked with adults, participants on my programme often said, ‘why didn’t i learn this at school?’, and ‘why is no one teaching this to my kids?’. after the mapp programme i worked with karen reivich as a trainer helping deliver positive psychology training to teachers which included strengths, resilience training and information on meaning and purpose. i was interested in wellbeing interventions for schools and finding out whether or not a ‘pure’ strengths programme without the other components would actually make a difference to wellbeing. once into the phd i became just as interested in questions like, ‘what kinds of outcome measures are most appropriate?’, ‘what are the strategies being used to teach strengths?’, ‘how can we enhance the effectiveness of strengths interventions?’ and ‘why has no one looked at the effect of a strengths interventio n on the group?’. i developed a classroom intervention involving teachers and students which focused on recognising strengths in others as well as the self. i delivered the programme to six classrooms over seven weeks. i’m currently analysing the data and hope to finish in the next six months. who do you admire in the strengths area? the people that jump out to me are some of the teacher practitioners who’ve taken the research and applied it in very thoughtful and insightful ways with their students. some of the teachers at geelong grammar *australia+ that i’ve seen working are very inspiring. in terms of the research, chris peterson deserves so much credit for creating the via. i’ve been re-reading the introduction to the via handbook; his insights into the via’s potential and its limitations are worth another look. i think he was aware from the start of the potentially different role of strengths in different societies and the role of groups in encouraging strengths or not. karen reivich and jane gillham have done very good work in developing strengths programs for schools with a balance of creative and engaging exercises and awareness of the importance of relationship and group culture in strengths programs. people like jenny fox eades in the uk, have adapted the via for younger students and use it in conjunction with oral story-telling to create a powerful approach. jenny is very aware of what works for students and teachers so she is a good example of a critical user of positive psychology research. what would you do differently if you started learning about positive psychology again? i’d get much more critical information much earlier on. i’d like to know more about the ‘boundary riders’; the people who are not necessarily classified as positive psychologists, but are doing related work. i would have spent more time studying the social psychology side of positive psychology, and emotions research. overall, i would have liked to have had more exposure to some of the good critiques of positive psychology and to have had a clearer picture of where positive psychology sits in relation to the other branches of psychology. positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 what would your advice be to someone starting out who could not afford to do a mapp programme or similar? what kind of training advice would you give to someone in that situation who wants to learn a lot more about positive psychology? harvard and penn both offer cheaper online programs where you can get a programme similar to the mapp syllabus. i would say get your hands on some of the good readings in the area. resources like chris peterson’s primer in positive psychology. just read widely. what’s one book to read for someone coming into this area who has not read anything yet? jonathan haidt’s the happiness hypothesis is one i really enjoyed reading. i don’t know if it’s a good first book, but i really like the ideas in it. chris peterson’s primer in positive psychology is a good broad starting point. kate hefferson’s and ilona boniwell’s new book positive psychology: theory, research and application is also a great starting point. in your training, you have met a lot of the key people in the field. who do you look up to in the field? jonathan haidt was a great lecturer at mapp—i really like his work on hive psychology. i look up to george variant for his appreciation of humanity, to barbara frederickson for her pioneering research, to karen reivich and jane gillham for the work they have done on the penn resilience programme and marty seligman for his breadth of vision. i also respect people like tayyab rashid, who integrates his practice as a therapist with good research, and who is quietly innovating within the strengths area. todd kashdan is helping invigorate and challenge the field, and i think that’s helpful. who do you think is helpful in the field? martin seligman has been very helpful and supportive to me and other mapp graduates. everyone within positive psychology who i’ve e-mailed or spoken to has been helpful. i’ve learned a lot from working with karen reivich who is a great trainer and programme designer. todd kashdan has been helpful in discussing ideas and so have tayyab rashid and carmel proctor from the uk. is there an area of positive psychology you still find difficult to understand? it will be nice when we are able to join the dots up a little more. it sometimes feels like we’re looking at lots of different areas under a microscope at different levels of magnification, so it’s hard to know how things map across to each other. whether we’re looking at emotions and emotional responses, at a very micro level, or at long-term social support and wellbeing, getting from 28,000 feet to ground level and back up again is sometimes quite a challenge—to mesh that together. these theories have been described as metaphors, and i think it’d be great if the metaphors knitted up a little more. i really like an article by ken sheldon which described six different irreducible levels at which wellbeing occurs, from psychological need satisfaction at the bottom level up to cultural factors at the top. it was good to see a big picture map. is there anything you’d like to add or comment on that i have not asked about? if i was talking to someone coming into the field of positive psychology, i would say there are lots of really interesting pockets, but don’t lose sight of the big picture. my concern is that people jump into a pocket and act like that is the one solution, when the reality is that no one factor explains everything. the area within positive psychology that most excites me is positive psychologists on positive psychology: denise quinlan jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 relationships because it’s pivotal for wellbeing across the life span but so challenging for most people. i think we still underestimate the importance of relationships in many areas of life, including education. most of the great educators i’ve met have a sense that teaching is all about connection with the student. i tell teachers that if they have a broadband connection with a student, then they can teach them anything. if they’re on dial-up, it’s going to be hard. one of the interesting things about strengths for me is how appreciation of another’s strengths can be used to build a relationship. i often describe the via strengths to teachers as 24 ways to love a difficult child. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszenmihalyi, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 136–139. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.14 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 expert insight expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszenmihalyi interview by aaron jarden mihaly csikszentmihalyi is professor of psychology at claremont graduate university, and director of the quality of life research center. he is noted for his work in the study of happiness and creativity, and the immensely popular book flow. martin seligman has described mihaly as ‚the world’s leading researcher on positive psychology‛. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? the distinctive feature is that it allows me to interact with people whom otherwise i would have had a hard time finding. i’ve been in this field for 35 or 40 years and i’ve always felt marginalized and now suddenly, there are all kinds of interesting people that we can deal with, interact with and stimulate each other ideas. that’s the field aspect of positive psychology. the question could refer to the content and ideas, or to positive psychology as a social endeavor (i hate the word movement), so i’ll give you the explanation in terms of the joint endeavor. in terms of the content, it is a very varied assortment of different things. it’s hard to find an exact common element of positive psychology, except in terms of the fact that everybody is trying to understand how to leverage and increase positive aspects of human experience and human life. that can vary from physical wellbeing to alternate meanings of life, and the subjective aspects. i’m mostly interested in the subjective quality of experience, as you probably know. are there any key events that changed the course of your career into moving towards positive psychology? i never moved towards it, i always did it since i wrote my dissertation in 1965, which is now about a half century ago. that was essentially about one aspect of positive psychology that i’m stilled involved with, namely creativity, which i think is an important aspect. back then there was no positive psychology to turn towards. we just started it with martin seligman in hawaii in the late 1990s, when we met accidently there and we kind of decided we should have a more visible group studying the aspects of human behavior that had been neglected by psychology for half a century. this involved all of the things that people are now pursuing and calling positive psychology. but to us, as we started the whole thing, we had no idea where it would go. i was just hoping to be able to connect with some colleagues across the us and elsewhere who had the same interest that i had. i envisioned a little special interest group of 50 or 60 people who were interested in this issue; but at the recent world congress on positive psychology in philadelphia there were 1,600 people from all over and that’s almost scary, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszenmihalyi jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 because i think good ideas are probably more often killed by premature promises than they are killed by opposition. suddenly we have a huge response from everyone who was kind of frustrated and stymied by psychology previously. i saw the field growing so quickly and so exponentially into the future, and that’s why i started this positive development phd programme here at clermont university. i thought, ‘hey, we should begin to train people to act as kind of gatekeepers or at least supports to this developing field’ so that it’s not all kind of superficial enthusiasm, but it’s grounded in critical, reflective, even skeptical, research as science should be. what do you think are the best things that positive psychology has achieved to date? it has suddenly broken across the whole globe, and connected people who would not have known each other before. i mean there you are in new zealand and we are talking about these issues and we could turn and talk to south africa, korea, germany, and know that there are people there who are also concerned with the improvement of human life and true psychological understanding. just to create this network has been sensational in such a short period. people are now beginning to really take seriously these things that before were so marginal to people’s interests, like gratitude, or forgiveness, or courage, all things that people thought were kind of really minor or uninteresting areas of studying psychology. students now can really get phds done by writing a good research plan to study these issues at the human level. so there are two things. one is empowering people to feel that what they are doing is not flying in the wilderness, but there is an echo coming back from all over—that’s very important. the other one is that the subject matter of positive human activity is being taken seriously and researched and is entering the vocabulary of psychology. what are the current issues of concern for the field of positive psychology? the ones that i sense are really important are to maintain a healthy balance between the basic research, and application and discrimination, because it’s very easy to get excited by the ideas and then say, ‘ok, i read a book and now i can be a life coach’ or something. if too many people take it at that level, positive psychology will have a very short life because it’s not so easy to change things. if we promise and come across as knowing all the answers and being able to apply them, and then they don’t work, then the public will say, ‘it’s just another fad, forget about it’, and positive psychology will get a bad name. so we need both, we need to take seriously the issues. one of the things that positive psychology is now doing, kind of routinely, is that so many people are using so-called interventions. interventions last for a few weeks of doing something, like writing letters to people who you are grateful for, or another intervention may be to think about what you are grateful about and so forth; and then thinking that these types of interventions can be spread around to everyone to make life better. now, those interventions are really important to understanding the mechanisms of gratitude, but as solutions to the human condition i don’t think that’s where it’s at. the real interventions in our life are family, school, jobs, and the political systems in which we live: these interventions don’t last two weeks, they last all our lives. i mean, if you go to school, it’s thirteen years of sitting at a bench, and that’s an intervention and it’s much more powerful in many ways than what we can come up with. positive psychology needs to inform schools and change their pedagogy so that the intervention of education is going to be more growth-producing for humans. and the same thing for jobs, the same thing for families, and so on. i think eventually we have to realize that if we want to be successful, we have to address the kinds of institutional context in which we live, which are the ones intervening in our lives in a substantive way. the kind of positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszenmihalyi jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 interventions which we can do is to learn what works and how it works, and it may be a good adjunct to therapy in some ways, but we can’t stop there and believe that we will solve the problems of human kind by doing those things. that’s why i’m worried about prematurely institutionalizing positive psychology so that we have a canon—this is what positive psychology is, this is how you apply it. if we do this now, we are going to paint ourselves into a very narrow corner of reality. we have to keep being open and growing conceptually and as practitioners; both our practice and our knowledge have to stay open and grow. which discipline can positive psychology learn from most, moving forward? other disciplines outside of psychology that are the closest in some ways to our field are biology on the one side, and sociology on the other. both of those are quite relevant to add to our knowledge base. but then you could also jump and say, ‘well how about spirituality?’. that’s one of the most attractive fields that our students respond to, meditation and various forms of buddhism practice and so forth, and again, i think those are very valuable and we should by all means understand them better and integrate them in what we do, but i don’t think they have the final answer. because of my original work in creativity and my interest in evolution, i really believe that for these new idea systems to really become influential and paradigm shifting, they have to grow, they have to be open, they have to keep refining their objectives and their purpose as they go, rather than say, ‘ok, this is it’. who do you look up to in the field? or who do you think is going to lead the field forward over the next 10 years? i don’t want to single out any person because there are so many, but i know that when we started positive psychology with martin seligman, we started it with the akumal conference in mexico. when we decided to start, i insisted that what we really needed to influence is the new generation. so we developed this method, which was to write to fifty of the most influential psychologists in the us; and martin knew them because he was just elected president of the apa (american psychological association). we asked each one of these fifty people if they knew of a former student or psychologist under 30 who would be interested in working on these issues that we wrote in a couple of sentences, defining positive psychology. we were after people who were interested in these issues and who, at age 50, were likely to become chairperson of a psychology department. so that was our idea. all of these fifty people answered and sent us names, and then we wrote to these fifty nominees and we asked them to send us their cvs and statements. then we selected 20 out of them, and invited them for a week, all expenses paid, to a fishing village in mexico called akumal. all twenty candidates accepted and we had this week in which we were always, 24 hours a day, in swimming trunks and flip flops and talking, just very informally, about what we saw was missing in psychology and what we could do to make it right. of the twenty people, since then half of them have written books and the other half have written influential articles. for example, barbara fredrickson was there, sonja lyubomirsky, tim kasser, and john haidt—all of those people. so this method kind of worked, because it represented something that i believe in, which is that we have to appeal to the imagination of the minds of young people because whatever we do, it is not going to be carried over by us, meaning martin or myself. we just started it out and we hoped to leave it in good shape, but the real responsibility is in the hands of that generation. positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszenmihalyi jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 are there any positive psychology projects going on that excite you, or that you are involved with that you are excited about? well, it’s not directly positive psychology but it’s because of the kind of work in positive psychology that i’ve been doing, even before positive psychology started; so, for instance, there is a new academy in china which is trying to be a kind of intellectual spark plug for the country. they built a huge campus, a beautiful elegant campus, and they invited masters from other places to go and start studios where people from the government and business can go and sit around and talk about how to apply, for instance, flow and creativity. i didn’t need to go there and start a studio. i want to go and find out what’s going on, but i don’t plan to move and learn chinese from scratch at my age. that’s one interesting thing that is going on. otherwise i continue to do research with my students on the same kinds of things that i did before, namely flow. there are a couple of new articles on flow in chess which i think are very interesting, and potentially kind of paradigm shifting. also work on creativity: i just came back from the european creativity conference in portugal, where people are using some of my ideas to do research and i collaborate with some of those people. a lot of my energy is directed to making this phd programme at claremont work, because it’s not easy to start something from scratch and make it work. so that’s one thing i’m working on. what’s one piece of advice for individuals looking to help and contribute to grow the field of positive psychology? if they want to contribute, the only advice i can give is that they should do good work. they should take it seriously, they should not assume that they know what it is, but they should try to push the envelope and try to understand better what humans need for the next step in evolution and try to make it work. that’s what they should be focusing on. it needs to be something that they decide. the important thing is not to take it lightly and not to take it dogmatically: there are two extremes. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac. jarden, a. (ed.). (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: acknowledgments etc., international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 140–142. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.15 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 140 editorial acknowledgments the following people assisted in providing the enabling conditions for this book to flourish to fruition—i am immensely grateful!  13 interviewees (encouragement / time)  rebecca jarden (proofreading / transcription)  dr alex mackenzie (skepticism / trash-talking)  associate professor paul jose (feedback)  associate professor todd kashdan (ideas)  gaynor parkin (feedback)  denise quinlan (encouragement)  margarita tarragona (feedback)  professor simon kemp (academic mentor)  dr jo mitchell (ideas)  the open polytechnic of new zealand (copyediting support) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 141 positive psychology resources online wellbeing assessment  www.growhq.com (wellbeing)  www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/questionnaires.aspx (strengths and happiness)  http://viacharacter.org/www (strengths)  http://www.cappeu.com (strengths) positive psychology associations  www.ippanetwork.org (international)  www.positivepsychology.org.nz (new zealand)  www.enpp.eu (european network)  http://positivepsychology.org.uk (uk)  www.globalcppa.org/en/index.html (china) online articles, overviews and information  www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu  www.actionforhappiness.org  http://positivepsychologynews.com free positive psychology programs  www.thetuesdayprogram.com (adults)  www.biteback.org.au (teenagers) http://www.growhq.com/ positive psychologists on positive psychology jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 142 about the author dr aaron jarden is a senior lecturer in psychology at the open polytechnic of new zealand, president of the new zealand association of positive psychology, lead investigator of the international wellbeing study, founder of the tuesday program, co-editor of the international journal of wellbeing, organizer of the international conferences on wellbeing and public policy, and director of grow international. dr jarden describes his goal as ‚complete understanding of human wellbeing, why it is as it is and how it can be improved‛. contact aaron@jarden.co.nz www.aaronjarden.com tarragona, m. (2012). review of positive psychologists on positive psychology, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 143–145. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.16 margarita tarragona iberoamericana university margarita@grupocamposeliseos.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 143 book review positive psychologists on positive psychology aaron jarden, ed., amazon digital services, 2012 asin: b007ixu1ry, 136pp, us$2.99 also published as aaron jarden, ed., international journal of wellbeing, 2012 doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2, 79pp review by margarita tarragona abstract: aaron jarden interviews 13 outstanding researchers and practitioners of positive psychology and invites us to listen in as these friendly and stimulating discussions among colleagues take place. we get the opportunity to know these ‚insiders‛ of positive psychology a little better as they share their views on what is exciting in the field, whose work they admire, their favorite books, criticisms about positive psychology, what they have learned in their careers and the advice they would give to young colleagues. keywords: positive psychology, aaron jarden, interviews, wellbeing, well-being a few months ago i had an idea: wouldn´t it be wonderful to have conversations with some of the most prominent positive psychologists and put together a book of interviews with them? i soon realized that this was indeed a good idea because aaron jarden, whom i respect so much, had already come up with it and was about to publish such a book! i am glad he did. positive psychologists on positive psychology is a unique work that is appealing both to newcomers who are interested in learning what positive psychology is and to researchers and practitioners already involved in the field. (can we call it a field, or sub-field, within psychology? probably not, according to most interviewees in this book. a movement? many would not agree with that definition either. i like how mihaly csikszentmihaly talks about positive psychology: as an endeavor, a joint endeavor of people who are ‚trying to understand how to leverage and increase positive aspects of human experience and human life‛). jarden interviews a baker´s dozen of influential researchers and practitioners on both sides of the atlantic: todd kashdan, sonja lyubomirsky, alex linley, ed diener, michael steger, acacia parks, ryan niemiec, nic marks, barbara fredrickson, ilona boniwell, robert j. vallerand, denise quinlan and mihaly csikszentmihalyi. reading the book feels like hearing a conversation between colleagues about their work. i imagined i was eavesdropping in the hallways of a positive psychology conference as jarden’s respondents shared their views about positive psychology: what they are excited about, whom they admire, their favorite books, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology tarragona www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 criticisms of positive psychology, what they have learned and the advice they would give to young psychologists. some talk about their own life and career development, others comment on their concerns and hopes for positive psychology. they are all passionate about their work: that comes across in every interview, almost from the first sentence. their interests range from the study of passion itself, to defining and measuring happiness, understanding the relationship between wellbeing and our natural environment, flow and creativity, testing interventions that can increase people´s happiness, studying meaning and purpose, researching positive emotions and the neural processes associated with them, how to improve life for people who are disadvantaged, how people use their time, exploring if we can teach young people to have happier lives, how the movies depict human strengths< each interviewee has contributed in a special way, and each from a different angle, to our understanding of what makes life good and worthwhile. at the same time, i am struck by how much they agree on some topics regarding positive psychology: many of them turn to the relationship between research and practice and how important it is to keep solid science at the heart of positive psychology. they point out there is a great demand for applications; and that sometimes there is not enough ‚coming in‛, in terms of funds and resources for research, to respond to the demand for knowledge that is applicable to education, coaching, clinical work and organizational consulting. several interviewees warn against the risk of translating research findings to interventions too soon. citing csikszentmihalyi again: ‚if we promise and come across as knowing all the answers and being able to apply them, and then they don’t work, then the public will say, ‘it’s just another fad, forget about it’, and positive psychology will get a bad name‛. most of the positive psychologists in the book call for a healthy dose of skepticism about findings (including their own) and positive psychology applications. this can be hard to achieve when research is translated in the popular media; but it is crucial in order to keep positive psychology credible and to help it grow in a healthy way, participants also agree on the importance of being active in and connected to other areas of psychology and with other fields: social psychology, neuroscience, economics (an area in which ed diener has become especially interested as he studies wellbeing among nations). they recommend that young positive psychologists do not define themselves as positive psychologists too soon, cautioning that it may be a better idea to have at least two professional identities: for example, as both a social psychologist and a positive psychologist. sonja lyubomirsky comments: ‚maybe the greatest achievement is that it almost does not need to be its own field anymore, because now so many researchers are studying the positive side of life‛. and ed diener makes this need for disciplinary and interdisciplinary communication very clear when he says: ‚my strongest desire for positive psychology is that it not be a cult or a club. too often positive psychologists just look at the work of other positive psychologists, rather than broadening out and looking at relevant work of those who are not in the positive psychology fold.‛. several of the interviewees talk about the importance of acknowledging the contributions of the predecessors of positive psychology and, as michael steger puts it, ‚reading old stuff‛. another common theme has to do with studying cultural differences more carefully and striving for a more culturally diverse community of professionals and scholars in positive psychology. in this regard, i felt the book might have been more representative of the international make-up of positive psychology: all of the interviewees are from english speaking countries (except for bob vallerand from canada, half english speaking<). i noticed this especially because i have just came back from the first national positive psychology conference review of positive psychologists on positive psychology tarragona www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 145 in el escorial, spain, organized by dr. carmelo vázquez and his team and i was very impressed by the quality of the research presented there. dr. ma. dolores avia presented the closing plenary on ‚the contributions of positive psychology to psychology‛. from the perspective of over thirty years as a researcher and clinician, dr. avia gave a very balanced account of the well-deserved excitement positive psychology has generated and of possible pitfalls. she canvassed premature or exaggerated enthusiasm over findings and applications, the need for more culturally nuanced concepts and instruments and to acknowledge previous researchers, and cautioned against positive psychology becoming too centered on the individual, stressing a need for more attention to be given to relationships and social issues. my favorite, i must confess, was her assertion: ‚it is not a fad. psychology will never be the same after positive psychology‛. i am struck by the coincidence between her views and much of what the interviewees express in jarden´s book: a balance of passion and enthusiasm with scientific rigor and perspective. maybe this convergence of views shows how positive psychology is maturing internationally and finding its place in the field of psychology as a whole, and in relationship to other disciplines. positive psychologists on positive psychology conveys where positive psychology is today, and where it may head in the future, in just 127 pages. in fact, that is my only complaint about the book: like many good things in life, it seems too short. author margarita tarragona iberoamericana university margarita@grupocamposeliseos.com grenville-cleave, b. (2012). review of positive psychologists on positive psychology, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 146–149. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.17 bridget grenville-cleave workmad ltd bridget@workmad.co.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 146 book review positive psychologists on positive psychology aaron jarden, ed., amazon digital services, 2012 asin: b007ixu1ry, 136pp, us$2.99 also published as aaron jarden, ed., international journal of wellbeing, 2012 doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2, 79pp review by bridget grenville-cleave abstract: this 130-page e-book, positive psychologists on positive psychology by aaron jarden, explores topics that all positive psychologists, experienced or novice, researcher or practitioner, will find interesting. it’s original, engaging and enjoyable, plus it provides plenty of inside information. the concept is very straightforward—transcripts of thirteen personal interviews with a variety of positive psychology experts on their favourite topic. but don’t let that simplicity fool you—at the same time this book will challenge your understanding of what positive psychology is, how to apply it, and how the field is developing. keywords: positive psychology, aaron jarden, interviews, wellbeing, well-being 1. introduction this 130-page e-book, positive psychologists on positive psychology by aaron jarden, explores topics that all positive psychologists, experienced or novice, researcher or practitioner, will find interesting. not only does the book provide answers to basic questions, such as ‚what is positive psychology?‛, it also addresses more challenging ones, such as:  when, where and how did positive psychology develop? (the answer to this one is a great lesson in how to do change management effectively, by the way).  who is doing cutting edge positive psychology research?  where is the field heading in the next five years?  what kinds of positive psychology research are being applied in the real world? 2. the usual suspects? the book consists of the transcripts of interviews which aaron jarden carried out with thirteen positive psychologists between july and october 2011, one chapter per person. if you’re not well versed in positive psychology, you will not have heard of all of them. in my view, that’s not a weakness but a great strength—it gives us diversity and breadth we wouldn’t otherwise http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology grenville-cleave www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 147 have and (if i can paraphrase todd kashdan) it’s important because there’s a great deal more to positive psychology than what you usually hear about in media-friendly sound bites about positive emotions, strengths, and gratitude. in alphabetical order, the positive psychologists featured are: ilona boniwell, mihaly csikszentmihalyi, ed diener, barbara fredrickson, todd kashdan, alex linley, sonja lyubomirsky, nic marks, ryan niemiec, acacia parks, denise quinlan, michael steger, robert vallerand. 3. the author dr aaron jarden is a senior lecturer in psychology at the open polytechnic of new zealand and president of the new zealand association of positive psychology (nzapp).1 he is also lead investigator of the international wellbeing study,2 co-editor of the international journal of wellbeing3 and director of grow international.4 aaron describes his goal as ‚complete understanding of human wellbeing, why it is as it is, and how it can be improved.‛ given this pedigree, i’m sure i’m not the only reader who wishes he’d provided answers to the questions he posed the other positive psychologists in the book. 4. the audience positive psychologists on positive psychology has been written primarily for those who are new to positive psychology or are thinking of entering the field. it is a great resource for that purpose. hearing what positive psychology means to the experts who are right there, working at the coal face every day, is invaluable. but even if you’re a relatively old hand in the positive psychology world, this book has much to offer. you get a lot of personal insights which you wouldn’t otherwise hear. the book is well balanced—the downsides are spelled out too, not just the age-old perception of positive psychology being too pollyanna-ish. it also includes emerging concerns about research being applied too quickly, and even misapplied. acacia parks suggests testing the effectiveness of positive psychology books written for the general public against non-science based ‘quackery’ such as the secret. all this is useful material for those of us who’ve been working in the field on an applied basis. 5. common questions what are the distinctive features of positive psychology? a simple question for experts to answer, you might think! we get three different types of response. some refer to the importance of positive psychology’s scientific grounding, and its focus on the positive and on optimal human functioning. others refer to a clear split between research and application. the third group answers in terms of specific positive psychology content, such as strengths and positive emotions. if you’re an experienced positive psychologist, how would you answer this question? what are some of the most valid criticisms of positive psychology? in the early days of positive psychology our old friend, optimism, took most of the flak. now the loudest criticisms focus on the speed and manner in which positive psychology is making its way into prac tice, 1 http://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/. 2 http://www.wellbeingstudy.com/. 3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/. 4 http://www.growhq.com/. http://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ http://www.wellbeingstudy.com/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/index http://www.growhq.com/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology grenville-cleave www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 148 and the way it’s communicated. nic marks, alex linley, todd kashdan and acacia parks refer to these concerns. according to acacia parks, ‚<in some ways we’re not as careful as we could be about the sound bites we release into the ether, or about maintaining the integrity of those sound bites so that they are accurate‛. nic marks supports this: ‚there have been far too many claims made far too quickly about certain interventions. <we need to be able to communicate things better<‛. a further criticism concerns cultural applicability. nic marks disputes any claim that positive psychology interventions are universally applicable. todd kashdan goes deeper and refers to the overriding importance of the situational context of research and applications. whilst there’s a lot to be learned from positive psychology’s strengths, there is much we can learn from its weaknesses. what are some of positive psychology’s achievements? there’s consistency here in the thrust of responses. they revolve around how positive psychology is communicated and disseminated. for example, mihaly csikszentmihalyi mentions getting the subject of positive human activity to be taken seriously, and creating a vocabulary for it; sonja lyubomirsky talks about gaining traction within the wider field of psychology; michael steger about gaining traction in other disciplines; whilst barbara fredrickson refers to getting positive psychology on the public radar. what is evident from reading this book is that the positive psychology field is so much wider than strengths and positive emotions, although these tend to dominate because they make good sound bites. the book suggests that we need to work harder to raise awareness about the importance to wellbeing of other, less glamorous, topics such as meaning, mindfulness, self-regulation, and time perspectives. 6. why you should read this book the aim of the book is to enrich our understanding of positive psychology as it currently stands. it succeeds very well, but it does much, much more. it provides the inside track on what positive psychology experts really think about positive psychology; where positive psychology is going next; what the hot topics for the next five years are; who the upcoming positive psychology researchers to watch are; and it also gives valuable advice for aspiring positive psychology researchers and practitioners. if that wasn’t enough, you get to hear from the horse’s mouth about new developments, such as the direction of the international positive psychology association (ippa)5 from the new president, robert vallerand, and the university of east london’s mapp program6 from the course director, ilona boniwell. if you want to find out more then you’re going to have to read the book! 7. recommendation this book is original, it’s a quick and easy read, it provides inside information but at the same time challenges your understanding of what positive psychology is, how to apply it and how it’s developing. the concept is very straightforward—transcripts of thirteen personal interviews with an assortment of positive psychology experts on their favourite topic—but don’t let that simplicity fool you. 5 http://www.ippanetwork.org/. 6 http://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/specs/positivepsychology/. http://www.ippanetwork.org/ http://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/specs/positivepsychology/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology grenville-cleave www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 149 the only real downside is that the book (like most others in the field) is biased in favour of a traditional western perspective. all of those interviewed are from, have been educated in, or work primarily in, the usa, canada, the uk, and new zealand. it’s true that the cultural weakness of positive psychology as it stands is raised several times. i wonder whether the presence of more european and eastern researchers and practitioners would have enhanced the book. while you’d expect a lot of agreement amongst the positive psychologists featured in the book, there’s sufficient diversity in the knowledge and opinions to ensure that you can’t just take everything as read. you have to assess it yourself, assimilate it and make up your own mind. that, i think, is the power of a good book. this one gives you a foundation on which to craft your own positive psychology path. i wish it had been available when i did my mapp program in 2007. i highly recommend it. author bridget granville-cleave workmad ltd bridget@workmad.co.uk jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., lomas, t., & giraldez-hayes, a. (2020). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: spanish). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-33. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1161 versión directriz 1.0, 20th february 2020 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au los derechos de autor pertenecen al autor (es) 1 special issue normas éticas para la práctica de la psicología positiva aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas · andrea giraldez-hayes http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 2 .índice notas introductorias……………………………………………………………………………… 4 preámbulo………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 asociaciones profesionales y las normas éticas para la práctica de la psicología positiva……………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 aspiraciones de las normas…………………………………………………………………... 5 naturaleza provisional de las normas………………………………………………………. 6 palabras clave………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 sección primera: valores, fortalezas y principios……………………………………………... 9 valores de los profesionales de la psicología positiva…………………………………….. 10 fortalezas de los profesionales de la psicología positiva………………………………….. 11 principios éticos para la práctica de la psicología positiva………………………………... 12 sección segunda: aplicaciones de las normas éticas en la práctica………………………… 15 tres consideraciones importantes…………………………………………………………… 15 toma de decisiones éticas…………………………………………………………………….. 15 consideraciones de trabajo…………………………………………………………………….16 cambios en los clientes……………………………………………………………………….. 16 cambios en los ambientes……………………………………………………………………. 16 estado emocional actual y niveles de bienestar……………………………………………. 17 negación……………………………………………………………………………………….. 17 diferencias de poder………………………………………………………………………….. 17 sobreutilización de fortalezas………………………………………………………………... 18 sentido común…………………………………………………………………………………. 18 mantener la resiliencia y amortiguar el agotamiento……………………………………… 18 declaración de formación y competencia…………………………………………………… 19 apreciar la importancia del contexto cultural……………………………………………… 19 resolver dilemas éticos –una guía paso a paso………………………………………………. 20 guía de autoevaluación………………………………………………………………………….. 21 sección tercera: ejemplos de casos en la práctica ética………………………………………. 22 ejemplo de caso 1: cultural –aplicar ipp con sensibilidad cultural……………………… 22 ejemplo de caso 2: coaching – procesos de coaching con clientes en circunstancias cambiantes……………………………………………………………………………………… 23 ejemplo de caso 3: clínico – trabajar con el trauma……………………………….. ……….24 ejemplo de caso 4: organizacional –presión para tergiversar datos…………………….. 25 guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 3 ejemplo de caso 5: mentoría –motivar a participantes “reticentes” en una relación desequilibrada…………………………………………………………………………………. 25 ejemplo de caso 6: educación – implementar programas de bienestar en los que las aspiraciones se ven dificultadas por la práctica existente…………………………………. 26 códigos éticos relevantes………………………………………………………………………… 28 reconocimientos………………………………………………………………………………….. 29 firmantes iniciales de las normas éticas para la práctica de la psicología positiva………. 30 autores…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 32 lecturas complementarias……………………………………………………………………….. 33 declaración: estas normas son el resultado del trabajo colaborativo y autónomo de un grupo liderado por aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache y tim lomas. las normas son independientes de cualquier asociación u organización; sin embargo, numerosos colaboradores han estado involucrados en el desarrollo y mejora de esta primera propuesta. es la intención de los autores actualizar las normas en un ciclo bianual para fortalecer su profundidad y el alcance de su funcionalidad. por ello, agradecemos el envío de comentarios por parte de la comunidad a aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 4 notas introductorias preámbulo la perfección ética es, probablemente, una utopía puesto que los seres humanos, incluyendo los profesionales de la psicología positiva, son falibles, vulnerables e imperfectos. las complejidades de la vida contemporánea, entre ellas una vida cibernética en constante desarrollo, el cambio climático errante, la crisis de los refugiados, las identidades cambiantes y la creciente polarización de la economía, exacerban las vulnerabilidades humanas. los servicios psicológicos, especialmente aquellos con un objetivo explícito de restaurar o incrementar el bienestar, no se brindan fácilmente sin prioridades enfrentadas y dilemas éticos. ningún conjunto individual de normas éticas, estándares o incluso estatutos, puede abarcar íntegramente la gama de complejidades humanas. un conjunto amplio de valores, fortalezas del carácter y principios, sin embargo, pueden guiarnos en la toma de decisiones éticas, especialmente cuando utilizamos intervenciones de psicología positiva (ipp) que en su conjunto intentan mejorar el bienestar. este conjunto de normas contiene a) valores, b) fortalezas y c) principios de la psicología positiva en la práctica. es importante advertir que las “normas” generalmente se sitúan entre marcos de referencia más amplios, los cuales varían en su contexto y jurisdicción. por ejemplo, las normas pueden situarse en la base de una jerarquía prescriptiva, tal como la que se muestra en la figura 1. figura 1. normas para marcos de referencia más amplios por tanto, es importante considerar las normas junto a otros marcos de referencia relevantes. además, mientras que un individuo u organización puede adherirse a o respaldar estas normas para la “práctica de la psicología positiva”, en algunos países y jurisdicciones puede que sea ilegal autodenominarse “psicólogo positivo” –por favor, tome en consideración las restricciones y requerimientos de su localidad. asociaciones profesionales y las normas éticas para la práctica de la psicología positiva cuando un profesional es miembro de una asociación profesional relevante (por ejemplo, la american psychology association, la australian psychological society o la international coach federation), los estándares de su asociación o el código ético deben ser considerados elementos prioritarios para informar su práctica. suponemos que cuando los profesionales son miembros de una asociación profesional que ofrece licencias o acreditaciones (por ejemplo, el colegio de guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 5 psicólogos), y cuentan una educación, formación y experiencia adecuada en la práctica de la psicología o campos relacionados, estos profesionales están familiarizados con las reglas, estándares, regulaciones, estatutos y procedimientos para la práctica de la psicología en su jurisdicción. las normas éticas para la práctica de la psicología positiva que presentamos aquí están diseñadas para incrementar, y no para reemplazar, dichos códigos y normas profesionales existentes en cada jurisdicción. como tales, estas normas también proporcionan una referencia para los profesionales que no están asociados o afiliados a una asociación profesional. aspiraciones de las normas ¿por qué tener un conjunto de normas éticas? estas normas tienen como objetivo fortalecer la práctica ética demostrando un compromiso con la práctica científicamente informada y basada en las evidencias científicas en el campo de la psicología positiva (pp). intentan contribuir a la aspiración de mantener una (razonable) fidelidad a la ciencia del bienestar y animar a los profesionales a considerar las normas adecuadas a la hora de presentarse y promocionar los potenciales beneficios de dicha ciencia. las normas intentan promover, entre los profesionales de la psicología positiva y otros profesionales, una comprensión clara de lo que supone una práctica de la psicología positiva éticamente informada. con la ayuda de tales normas, se espera que los profesionales de la psicología positiva demuestren su compromiso con aspectos tales como los siguientes:1 a) el estudio minucioso de investigaciones y la construcción de su práctica sobre una base científica; b) una continua actualización de sus conocimientos a través del aprendizaje continuado y el desarrollo profesional; c) la comunicación cuidadosa y precisa de los límites del conocimiento relacionado con las ipp, así como los potenciales beneficios y las limitaciones de ciertas ipp y programas de bienestar; y d) monitorizar el bienestar, y los cambios positivos y negativos en el bienestar de sus clientes en el período de tiempo en el que ofrecen sus servicios. ¿a quiénes se dirigen estas normas? el propósito de estas normas es posibilitar una práctica ética óptima de los profesionales de la psicología positiva y, al hacerlo, actuar en beneficio (hacer el bien a los otros) y no perjudicar (evitar el daño potencial sobre los otros). como tales, estas normas están destinadas a profesionales (por ejemplo, psicólogos) y otros destinatarios (por ejemplo, estudiantes, o aquellas personas sin una afiliación profesional) que ofrecen ipp o usan el conocimiento del campo de la psicología positiva en su práctica. esta no es una guía sobre cómo utilizar u sugerir el uso de una determinada ipp. 1 hemos elegido cuatro ejemplos para demostrar tales compromisos. sin embargo, el lector ha de advertir que esta lista podría ser más extensa. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 6 naturaleza provisional de las normas advertimos que estas normas (versión 1.0, 19 de julio de 2019) son provisionales y objeto de revisión cada dos años a través de un proceso de consulta repetido con informantes clave. esta regulación permite asegurar que las normas responden a los cambios contextuales y reflejan temas locales y globales en continua evolución. en este sentido, agradecemos la retroalimentación de las normas presentadas en este documento ofrecida en cualquier momento. también es importante observar que solo profesionales angloparlantes, en su mayoría de países occidentales, han influido en el desarrollo de estas normas y, como tales, las mismas presentan estas limitaciones. sin embargo, puesto que este es un documento vivo y en continuo crecimiento identificado por el número de su versión, esperamos que las próximas versiones puedan incorporar la influencia de códigos y normas de países no angloparlantes y nooccidentales. palabras clave cliente los profesionales trabajan con clientes. “cliente” es el término genérico utilizado para referirse al receptor de cualquier servicio. por ejemplo (aunque no limitado a) un individuo, una pareja, una familia, un grupo, una organización, un patrocinador u otra unidad social específica. códigos vs normas un código tiene, generalmente, ramificaciones legales u otras reglas aplicables, mientras que unas normas sugieren buenas prácticas que no están generalmente “reguladas” o “politizadas”. las normas, por su naturaleza, implican que las circunstancias son variadas y complejas, y que atender a ellas a menudo requiere que los profesionales demuestren sensatez en su práctica – una combinación de experiencia y sentido común. pp pp: psicología positiva. existen diversas conceptualizaciones y definiciones de la pp, pero la mayoría de las operacionalizaciones generalmente la posicionan como el estudio científico y la promoción de constructos dominantes tales como “felicidad”, “bienestar”, “florecer” y “prosperar”. por ejemplo, lomas, hefferon e ivtzan (2015, p. 1347) definen la pp como “la ciencia y la práctica para la mejora del bienestar”, lo cual puede simplemente entenderse como la aplicación de la pp en contextos del mundo real, incluyendo el uso de ipp. ipp ipp: intervenciones de psicología positiva. en la literatura existe una demarcación entre una “intervención de psicología positiva” y una “intervención psicológica positiva” –para una descripción y explicación, véase hone, jarden, and schofield (2015). aquí incorporamos la noción más amplia de intervención psicológica positiva, que cubre todas las actividades realizadas por diversas disciplinas (por ejemplo, desde otros sub-campos de la psicología además de la pp) con el objetivo de incrementar el bienestar psicológico. una definición popular de intervención psicológica positiva es “una intervención psicológica positiva promueve emociones positivas, conductas y/o pensamientos que incrementan el bienestar de un individuo o grupo” (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, p. 92). guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 7 ppp ppp: profesional de la psicología positiva. un profesional que ha completado la formación requerida para ejercer su práctica (por ejemplo, psicoterapia, counselling o coaching) y que ha recibido la formación adecuada en pp a través de un proveedor de reconocido prestigio, por lo que cuenta con conocimientos y una comprensión adecuados del proceso de investigación científica y sus aplicaciones en la aplicación de procedimientos propios de la psicología positiva aplicada (por ejemplo, iips).2 fortalezas generalmente, las normas y códigos éticos apoyan determinadas características personales deseables, seleccionadas arbitrariamente por líderes de opinión en campos específicos. para estas normas, hemos utilizado las fortalezas del carácter y virtudes (csv: peterson & seligman, 2004), que son un modelo de fortalezas del carácter empíricamente validado y respaldado a través de diversas culturas (mcgrath, 2014). de acuerdo con el csv, las fortalezas del carácter se definen como rasgos universales que se valoran por su propio derecho y no están necesariamente dirigidos a un resultado instrumental. más bien, como rasgos de conducta, facilitan y guían a una persona para comportarse de manera ética y responsable asegurando su propio bienestar y el de otras personas. las fortalezas del carácter, desde una perspectiva amplia, reflejan quién es la persona (por ejemplo, su carácter), y los valores reflejan a qué está comprometida la persona (por ejemplo, sus principios y acciones). profesional el término “profesional” se usa de manera genérica para referirse a cualquier persona responsable de ofrecer servicios relacionados con la pp. “profesional” incluye a cualquier persona que adopta rol(es) tales como (aunque no limitados a) counseller, psicoterapeuta, profesional de la salud mental, coach, entrenador, mentor o educador.3 principios los principios dirigen la atención a responsabilidades éticas. las acciones de derivan de ciertos principios. valores los valores son creencias acerca de resultados deseables mantenidas por los individuos y compartidas por grupos (por ejemplo, ideologías acerca del mundo y de cómo debería ser). los valores trascienden situaciones específicas, guían la manera en la que seleccionamos nuestras 2 ¿quién puede identificarse como ppp? aún no existe una demarcación clara acerca de la cantidad o nivel de formación o de la cualificación profesional requerida. por ejemplo, ¿puede alguien considerarse a sí mismo como ppp tras haber recibido un curso de dos días, un certificado acreditado de seis meses o haber finalizado un máster de dos años en psicología positiva aplicada? además de la formación, la práctica supervisada (por ejemplo, entre pares o individual) y la consulta online es ideal. es necesario contar con más normativas acerca de la formación y supervisión adecuadas, provenientes de las asociaciones profesionales en este campo (y, sin duda, estos temas están siendo actualmente considerados por los agentes implicados). 3 los valores y principios contenidos en estas normas podrían aplicarse igualmente a investigadores en el ámbito del bienestar, puesto que los que los investigadores podrían considerarse profesionales que, de un modo u otro, trabajan con sujetos que podrían ser considerados como el equivalente a los clientes. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 8 acciones y evaluamos las ajenas y las propias, y están ordenadas según su importancia (schwartz, 2006). los valores representan una manera importante de expresar un compromiso ético general que se define con más precisión y se orienta más a la acción cuando se expresa como un principio. en otras palabras, los valores informan principios. desde ese significado compartido, los valores definidos en estas normas son los que los autores han identificado como más ampliamente consensuados entre quienes integran la comunidad de la pp. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 9 sección primera: valores, fortalezas y principios las normas éticas para la práctica de la psicología positiva incorporan los valores, fortalezas y principios enunciados en la tabla 1. tabla 1 valores, fortalezas y principios para la práctica de la psicología positiva valores4 fortalezas5 principios 1. proteger la seguridad de los clientes y de otras personas. 1. honestidad 1. beneficiar / no perjudicar 2. aliviar la angustia y el sufrimiento personal. 2. justicia 2. cuidado responsable 3. asegurar la integridad en las relaciones entre profesional y cliente. 3. inteligencia social 3. respeto por los derechos y dignidad de las personas 4. apreciar la diversidad de la experiencia humana y la cultura. 4. trabajo en equipo 4. honradez 5. fortalecer el sentido de sí mismo significativo para la(s) personas involucradas. 5. bondad 5. justicia 6. mejorar la calidad del conocimiento profesional y su aplicación. 6. prudencia 6. autonomía 7. mejorar la calidad de las relaciones entre personas. 7. perspectiva 8. incrementar la eficacia personal. 8. juicio 9. esforzarse para proporcionar servicios de counselling, psicoterapia y coaching adecuados y justos. 9. autorregulación 10. perseverancia 11. valentía 4 nuestros valores han sido seleccionados en base a otras normas éticas similares y, como tales, muchos de los valores pueden encajar en distintas categorías. por ejemplo, la justicia podría ser percibida como un valor o un principio. la honradez podría percibirse como una fortaleza, un valor o un principio. de esta manera, muchos de los constructos son discutibles. los valores también han sido ordenador según su importancia percibida, de acuerdo a las normas de los autores. 5 las fortalezas 1 a 7 están jerarquizadas según con qué frecuencia están mencionadas y enfatizadas a lo largo de 10 códigos éticos similares (por ejemplo, el marco ético para la buena práctica del counselling y la psicoterapia de la asociación británica de counselling y psicoterapia). para las fortalezas 8 a 11, los autores han juzgado su importancia de acuerdo a los seis principios. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 10 además: • la lista de valores, fortalezas y principios no son en absoluto exhaustivas sino, más bien, un intento inicial de definir lo que se percibe actualmente como más pertinente para la práctica. según estas normas se vayan adaptando en el tiempo, y existan espacios de debate entre la comunidad de la psicología positiva, se prevé que estos elementos puedan desarrollarse. • las listas de valores, fortalezas y principios tampoco son prescriptivas. • el modelo de fortalezas (el marco de valores en acción) fue elegido por ser el más evidente en la literatura y estar basado en principio científicos reconocidos. valores de los profesionales de la psicología positiva los valores fundamentales de los ppp incluyen un compromiso con: • la protección de la seguridad de los clientes y otras personas involucradas. esto incluye mantener una conciencia siempre vigilante acerca de cómo responde el cliente a nuestros servicios y, aún más, reconocer los límites de la propia capacidad y experiencia (y, como tal, reconocer cuando un cliente puede necesitar ayuda profesional de otros sectores, o si el público está en peligro). • aliviar la angustia y el sufrimiento personal (cuando esté dentro de los límites de nuestra experiencia). esto supone utilizar ipp de maneras contextualmente relevantes para disminuir el sufrimiento de individuos que requieren de servicios en varios contextos profesionales (por ejemplo, terapia, coaching, salud). • asegurar la integridad de la relación entre profesional y cliente. esto incluye respetar los límites personales y mantener un compromiso con prácticas profesionales tales como la privacidad y la confidencialidad. • apreciar la diversidad de la experiencia humana y las culturas. esto significa no aplicar el “una misma talla sirve para todos” a los propios clientes sino, más bien, respetar y de hecho celebrar la variedad y singularidad de las personas en sus procesos de desarrollo y sus antecedentes contextuales y culturales. • promover el sentido de uno mismo que es significativo para la persona implicada. esto significa que el individuo desarrolla y persigue metas que no solo contribuyen a su ser, sino también a un beneficio mayor. • mejorar la calidad del conocimiento profesional y su aplicación. esto significa hacer todo lo posible para estar al tanto de los avances en la literatura y mantener un conocimiento actualizado acerca de los avances en este ámbito. • mejorar la calidad de las relaciones entre las personas. esto supone reconocer que las personas se sitúan inevitablemente en relaciones y redes sociales, y esforzarse para ayudar a la persona a mejorar esos vínculos tanto como sea posible. • incrementar la eficacia personal. esto significa esforzarse para ayudar al cliente a operar de manera más eficaz en el mundo y en la singularidad de situaciones en las que se encuentran. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 11 • esforzarse por proporcionar servicios de pp justos y adecuados. esto puede incluir proporcionar servicios a poblaciones difíciles de alcanzar o, cuando sea posible, hacer posible una escala de honorarios en los que las personas con menos recursos puedan beneficiarse de estos servicios. fortalezas de los profesionales de la psicología positiva las fortalezas de los profesionales de la psicología positiva son importantes porque tienen un impacto en la relación profesional-cliente. muchas fortalezas consideradas como vitales al ofrecer servicios se consideran también buenas cualidades personales. es inapropiado obligar a todos los profesionales a poseer estas fortalezas. sin embargo, es fundamental que estas fortalezas del carácter estén enraizadas profundamente en las personas y desarrolladas a partir de un compromiso personal, en lugar de ser requerimientos de una autoridad externa. un análisis temático de principios y valores expuestos por las principales normativas (véase la sección de normativas relevantes) sugiere que las siguientes fortalezas del carácter son las que pueden facilitar una práctica ética y la toma de decisiones. • honradez: decir la verdad; presentarse a sí mismo de manera genuina y actuar de forma sincera; ser sin pretender; hacerse responsable de los propios sentimientos y acciones. • justicia: ofrecer el mismo trato a todas las personas de acuerdo con nociones de justicia e imparcialidad; no tomar decisiones impulsadas por preferencias o sentimientos acerca de los otros; dar a todos las mismas oportunidades. • inteligencia social: ser consciente de las motivaciones y sentimientos de las otras personas; saber qué hacer para adaptarse a diferentes situaciones sociales; saber qué hacer para facilitar las cosas a otras personas. • trabajo en equipo: trabajar bien como miembro de un grupo o equipo; ser leal al grupo; compartir. • bondad: hacer actos de bien y favores a otras personas; ayudarles; cuidarles. • prudencia: ser cuidadoso con las propias opciones; no tomar riesgos excesivos; no decir o hacer cosas de las que luego podemos arrepentirnos. • perspectiva: ser capaz de proporcionar consejos sabios a otros; mirar al mundo de maneras que tengan sentido para nosotros y para los otros. • juicio: pensar las cosas detenidamente y examinarlas desde distintas perspectivas; no adelantar conclusiones; confiar solo en las evidencias para tomar decisiones; tener la habilidad de cambiar de idea. • autorregulación: regular lo que uno siente y hace; ser disciplinado; controlar los propios apetitos y emociones. • perseverancia: trabajar duro para concluir lo que se ha empezado, no importa de qué proyecto se trate: “entregarlo” puntualmente; no distraerse mientras se trabaja; sentirse satisfecho por el trabajo concluido. • valentía: ser una persona valiente que no se amedrenta ante las amenazas, los desafíos, las dificultades o el dolor; defender lo que es justo incluso si otros se oponen; actuar según las propias convicciones. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 12 principios éticos para la práctica de la psicología positiva cada uno de los seis principios éticos definidos más abajo se acompaña de ejemplos de buenas prácticas que han sido desarrollados en respuesta a los mismos. las decisiones éticas, fuertemente apoyadas en uno o más de estos principios, pueden ser consideradas como aquellas que tienen una sólida base moral. sin embargo, los profesionales pueden encontrarse con circunstancias en las que sea imposible reconciliar todos los principios aplicables, y puede que sea necesario elegir entre algunos de ellos. una decisión o curso de acción no se convierte necesariamente en inmoral solo por ser polémica o porque otros profesionales hayan llegado a conclusiones diferentes en circunstancias similares. la obligación de un profesional es considerar todas las circunstancias relevantes con tanto cuidado como sea razonablemente posible y asumir una responsabilidad adecuada por la decisión tomada. beneficiar / no perjudicar el beneficio incluye un compromiso por promover el bienestar del cliente y el profesional. el principio de beneficio significa actuar por el interés del cliente, basándose en evaluaciones profesionales. nos recuerda que debemos trabajar estrictamente dentro de nuestros límites de competencia y proporcionar servicios basados en una formación y experiencia adecuadas. asegurar que se trabaja para dar respuesta a las necesidades del cliente requiere revisar sistemáticamente la práctica y los resultados (por ejemplo, el bienestar) utilizando los mejores medios disponibles. es importante que la investigación científica y la reflexión sistemática informen la práctica. dependiendo del rol y contexto, existe generalmente la obligación de dar pasos para asegurar la calidad de los servicios ofrecidos, y un compromiso para actualizar la práctica a través de un desarrollo profesional continuo. la obligación de actuar para el beneficio del cliente puede convertirse en algo fundamental cuando trabajamos con clientes cuya capacidad de autonomía está disminuida debido a la edad, inmadurez, falta de comprensión, aflicción u otras limitaciones personales. no perjudicar, por otra parte, supone comprometerse a evitar cualquier daño que pueda causarse al cliente. los profesionales que adoptan este principio: • evitan cualquier forma de explotación al cliente; sexual, financiera o emocional. • evitan la incompetencia (por ejemplo, la aplicación apropiada de las ipp, es decir, saber qué funciona con cada persona) y las malas prácticas. • no proporcionan servicios inadecuados para determinadas personas debido a enfermedades, circunstancias personales o intoxicación. el profesional tiene la responsabilidad ética de mitigar cualquier daño que pueda causarse al cliente, incluso cuando el daño es inevitable o intencional. los profesionales tienen responsabilidades personales y profesionales para desafiar, cuando sea apropiado, las malas prácticas y la incompetencia de otros. también tienen la responsabilidad de contribuir a la investigación y/o a la sentencia por parte de un cuerpo profesional o autoridad competente, cuando las prácticas profesionales están por debajo de los niveles razonables de calidad o corren el riesgo de traer el descrédito a la profesión o a la pp. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 13 cuidado responsable la práctica de la pp promueve el bienestar. en la búsqueda de este logro, los profesionales de la psicología positiva que adhieren a este principio demuestran una constante preocupación por el bienestar de aquellos con quienes trabajan y reconocen el poder social e institucional que estructura sus roles como profesionales. tienen la responsabilidad fundamental de proteger al bienestar de las personas con las que trabajan. reconocen que los individuos, familias, grupos o comunidades pueden estar en posiciones vulnerables. también reconocen los límites en su experiencia (incluyendo la ausencia de conocimiento) y derivan a las personas a otros especialistas cuando es necesario. al mismo tiempo, aceptan su responsabilidad y corrigen cualquier daño que pueda derivar de su prestación de servicios. se espera que los ppp también se interesen de manera continuada por los desarrollos teóricos y empíricos en este campo, asegurando que su conocimiento acerca de los avances científicos en la aplicación de las ipp que utilizan está actualizado. respeto por los derechos y la dignidad de las personas de acuerdo con la declaración de los derechos humanos de las naciones unidas, el respeto por los derechos y la dignidad de las personas supone que todas y cada una de las personas tienen el derecho a ser valoradas positivamente y que sus derechos deben ser reconocidos y respetados. además, tienen el derecho a que se les demuestre respeto y se garantice su dignidad como seres humanos. los profesionales que adoptan estos principios muestran un respeto que requiere sensibilidad hacia la diversidad cultural y social. esto incluye el reconocimiento de las diferencias entre las personas asociado a su cultura, nacionalidad, etnicidad, color, raza, religión, género, estado civil, orientación sexual, habilidades físicas o mentales, edad, estatus socioeconómico y/o cualquier otra condición, característica o estatus. tales diferencias forman parte integral de la persona y deben ser respetadas como tales. honradez ser honesto (fiel) incluye honrar la confianza puesta en el profesional. la honradez es considerada como un ingrediente fundamental para entender y resolver dilemas éticos. los practicantes que adoptan este principio: • actúan de acuerdo con la confianza depositada en ellos; • se esfuerzan para asegurar que las expectativas de los clientes son aquellas que razonablemente tienen la posibilidad de alcanzarse; • honran sus acuerdos y promesas; • consideran la confidencialidad como una obligación que deriva de la confianza del cliente; • restringen cualquier revelación de datos confidenciales sobre sus clientes –con excepción de aquellas situaciones de obligado cumplimiento (por ejemplo, las leyes en la propia jurisdicción requieren de tal revelación de datos). justicia la justicia involucra el tratamiento justo e imparcial de todos los clientes y la provisión de servicios adecuados. el principio de justicia requiere que los profesionales que adoptan estos principios sean justos e imparciales con todos sus clientes y respeten su dignidad y derechos humanos. exige prestar atención a la consideración consciente de cualquier requerimiento y guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 14 obligaciones legales y permanecer alerta ante posibles conflictos entre las obligaciones éticas y legales. la justicia en la distribución de servicios requiere de la habilidad de decidir de manera imparcial la provisión de servicios para los clientes y la adjudicación de servicios entre clientes. un compromiso con la justiciar requiere la habilidad de apreciar las diferencias entre las personas y de comprometerse con la igualdad de oportunidades y resultados, así como evitar la discriminación de personas o grupos en base a sus características personales o sociales (por ejemplo, género o edad). los profesionales tienen la obligación de esforzarse para asegurar la provisión justa de servicios que son accesibles y apropiados a las necesidades de sus potenciales clientes. autonomía la autonomía involucra respetar los derechos de autodeterminación de los clientes. este principio pone énfasis en la habilidad del cliente de auto-dirigirse durante la provisión de servicios y en todos los aspectos de su vida. el principio de autonomía se opone a la manipulación de los clientes en contra de su voluntad, incluso para lograr beneficios sociales. los profesionales que respetan la autonomía de sus clientes: • aseguran la precisión de los datos en cualquier publicidad o información sobre los servicios ofrecidos; • hacen lo necesario para recibir un consentimiento libre e informado durante la relación; • ponen énfasis en el valor de la participación voluntaria en los servicios que ofrecen; • dedican un tiempo a establecer un contrato explícito con sus clientes antes de alcanzar cualquier compromiso y revisitan / revisan los términos de ese contrato a lo largo de la relación; • protegen la privacidad; • protegen la confidencialidad; • salvo excepción, no revelan cualquier información confidencial sin el consentimiento de la persona implicada; • informan al cliente de posibles conflictos de intereses por anticipado, o lo antes posible una vez que estos han tenido lugar. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 15 sección segunda: aplicaciones de las normas éticas en la práctica esta sección contiene diversas guías y ejemplos de la aplicación contextual de estas normas éticas. el contenido ha sido diseñado para profundizar en las ideas y, al mismo tiempo, para proporcionar herramientas útiles y una guía de autoevaluación para resolver y apoyar la toma de decisiones éticas en la práctica. tres consideraciones importantes antes de aplicar cualquier ipp, deberíamos evaluar y apreciar los siguientes tres factores de importancia, que forman los pilares de una buena práctica (barlow, allen & choate, 2004): 1. ¿es la ipp apropiada para la situación? esto puede confirmarse revisando literatura relevante y evidencias publicadas en fuentes confiables. por ejemplo, antes de aplicar una ipp para la gratitud, comprobar si existen publicaciones con evidencia científica que muestra que esa ipp específica es una técnica promisoria para ese cliente en particular. 2. ¿la ipp se adecúa a las necesidades que presenta el cliente? 3. ¿cómo se evaluará la eficacia de la ipp? en otras palabras, ¿qué resultado específico puede identificarse y evaluarse con validez para determinar la eficacia de la ipp? toma de decisiones éticas la toma de decisiones éticas puede facilitarse: teniendo un conocimiento adecuado de las normas éticas y de los códigos éticos de una asociación profesional; siendo consciente de los comportamientos éticos ejemplares de los otros y del uso de fortalezas del carácter en la toma de decisiones. conocimiento: esperamos que las fuentes primarias de estas normas –es decir, los ppp con una educación y formación adecuadas y experiencia en la práctica de la psicología o ámbitos relacionados– están familiarizados y pueden describir estas normas éticas y cualquier otra que pertenezca a su profesión y estándares profesionales. la mayoría de las jurisdicciones pone énfasis en la necesidad de que los profesionales se familiaricen con reglas, estándares, regulaciones, estatutos y procedimientos relevantes. comportamiento: el comportamiento ético, especialmente mientras se aplica una ipp, no puede derivar solo de los conocimientos teóricos. el comportamiento ético ha de estar sólidamente unido a comportamientos y prácticas colectivas. ¿puede identificar en sus círculos profesionales a aquellos individuos que son demuestran prácticas éticas ejemplares? aunque puede que sus colegas no destaquen explícitamente dichas prácticas, debido a su modestia, le animamos a preguntar explícitamente a sus pares o a la comunidad profesional más amplia (organizaciones regionales o internacionales) cómo adhieren a los estándares éticos en tu campo. reunir un banco de buenas prácticas será útil para reflexionar respecto a nuestros propios comportamientos. con una suficiente acumulación de casos, las demostraciones de excelencia seguramente se harán evidentes. idealmente, los profesionales crearán grupos accesibles en los que otros profesionales tengan la oportunidad de enriquecer estos repositorios. usar fortalezas en la toma de decisiones éticas: las fortalezas pueden contribuir de diferentes maneras en la toma de decisiones éticas. encuentre a un colega que ejemplifique un comportamiento ético adecuado. reflexione sobre cómo gestionó un dilema o situación ético o, de forma más general, qué fortalezas específicas encarna dicho profesional en sus interacciones diarias con colegas y clientes que valga la pena modelar y que pueda ayudar en la toma de decisiones. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 16 consideraciones de trabajo en el trabajo con clientes, es necesario tener en cuenta diversas consideraciones puesto que éstas pueden tener implicaciones éticas inmediatas e importantes. en particular, es pertinente considerar: cambios en los clientes; cambios en el ambiente en el que se ubican las ipp y los clientes; el estado emocional actual y el nivel de bienestar de los clientes y los ppp; la tendencia de los clientes a evitar; las diferencias de poder en las relaciones; la sobreutilización de fortalezas; el conocimiento práctico; una declaración de formación y competencias; y la importancia de los contextos culturales cambiantes. considerar estos aspectos puede ayudar a mitigar, anticipar o prevenir algunas consecuencias inadvertidas o indeseadas. cambios en los clientes al ofrecer cualquier servicio psicológico, es importante monitorizar el bienestar psicológico de los clientes a lo largo del tratamiento o intervención. algunos clientes se deterioran, a pesar de la demostrada eficacia de una ipp. los síntomas pueden deteriorarse por diversas razones, haciendo a los clientes vulnerables. puede que el cliente no necesariamente comparta esta información con el profesional, quizá porque se sienta avergonzado, asustado o dudoso ante la posibilidad de desilusionar al profesional que está trabajando para incrementar su bienestar. a menudo, el foco explícito de las ipp no es la mejora de síntomas, sino más bien la promoción del bienestar. monitorizar las circunstancias cambiantes en las vidas de los clientes es importante, y también lo es calibrar las ipp según esos cambios. por ejemplo, si el cliente experimenta una ruptura o pierde su trabajo, es importante que el profesional advierta estos cambios y evalúe su impacto. los profesionales deberían estar preparados para suspender una ipp y ajustar el enfoque de acuerdo con las necesidades que manifiesta el cliente, o derivarle a otro profesional si resulta apropiado. no hacerlo puede tener un impacto negativo en la alianza que puede llegar a ser irreparable. cambios en los ambientes además de tomar en consideración los cambios en los clientes, es importante considerar el ambiente en el que interactúan tanto los clientes como los profesionales. piense en un ppp que es también un clínico. los clínicos contemporáneos trabajan en ambientes altamente complejos, veloces y con presiones marcados por desafíos tales como la escasez de tratamientos basados en la evidencia científica, falta de competencia cultural, y necesidades crónicas o complejas de los clientes que tienen un impacto en múltiples dominios de su vida. dados estos desafíos, piense en clientes que: • pueden haber pedido su trabajo o contratos importantes, o están siendo ignorados ante una merecida promoción solo porque no encajan en el equipo; • pueden haber sido diagnosticados recientemente con una enfermedad seria; • están siendo tratados con deslealtad u otra forma de abuso por parte de su pareja; • están experimentando un incidente o discriminación; • están inmersos en eventos medioambientales destructivos, tales como inundaciones o incendios, o en problemas globales como el hambre. considere cómo estos desafíos pueden afectar a los clientes e influir en su tratamiento. estos casos presentan una variedad de temas que necesitan ser considerados y tomados en cuenta de diferentes maneras, todo ello mientras se consideran las regulaciones y estándares de la profesión guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 17 con los que la persona está relacionada. por tanto, es importante que cuando un ppp ofrezca una ipp, aprenda acerca de sus clientes y también acerca de su entorno y cambios recientes o actuales en sus circunstancias. los profesionales también necesitan conocer los desafíos en su propio entorno de trabajo. esto puede incluir cambios en la administración que pueden suponer cambios en las modalidades de servicio –por ejemplo, un nuevo director puede apoyar u oponerse a ciertas ipp o puede preferir un enfoque diferente en el tratamiento (por ejemplo, programación neurolingüística, terapias basadas en el mindfulness, terapia de aceptación y compromiso). los cambios pueden tener impactos directos o indirectos en la práctica de las ipp, incluyendo los que derivan de una perspectiva ética. estado emocional actual y niveles de bienestar mientras se ofrecen las ipp, es importante evaluar cambios en los clientes y en su estado emocional actual y nivel de bienestar. es importante que los ppp desarrollen su práctica dentro de su ámbito de especialización y formación. el ppp debe derivar a los clientes que presentan problemas relacionados con psicopatologías (por ejemplo, depresión, ansiedad, trauma) al profesional adecuado, debidamente cualificado y experimentado. si esos problemas no se presentan al comienzo de la relación de trabajo, el ppp debe estar atento en caso de que estos se hagan evidentes cuando el cliente esté realizando una ipp y estar preparado para derivarlo a un profesional debidamente cualificado. idealmente, el profesional discutirá con el cliente y consultará con colegas y expertos relevantes para asegurarse de cuál es el momento adecuado para continuar utilizando una ipp en ese caso específico. negación la negación es uno de los mecanismos más comunes usado por las personas para sobrellevar emociones negativas. una vida psicológica saludable supone ser consciente y adaptable para utilizar todo el espectro emocional. algunos clientes que solicitan o buscan una ipp pueden evitar emociones negativas más profundas debido a su incomodidad, y es probable que busquen una ipp con la esperanza de que ésta pueda disipar sus emociones negativas o mantenerlas anuladas. ejemplos de fuentes de emociones negativas incluyen recuerdos amargos de una separación o divorcio, la deslealtad de un amigo en el que se confiaba, el resentimiento por ser víctima de una discriminación, o ser tratados injustamente o de manera injusta por una persona o institución. una manera de evaluar la negación es prestar atención a emociones negativas que pueden expresarse en conversaciones a pesar de no formar parte del tema explícito que se está discutiendo (por ejemplo, emociones que perturban a los clientes persistentemente y que, sin embargo, no se comentan abiertamente). aunque las ipp están abriendo nuevos caminos con una evidencia cada vez mayor de que las emociones positivas y las fortalezas del carácter pueden mejorar y reparar estados negativos (rashid & seligman, 2018), este es solo el caso si los estados negativos se integran de manera significativa en el tratamiento. si las emociones fuertemente negativas son ignoradas o negadas por parte de los clientes o los profesionales, la efectividad del tratamiento puede verse comprometida. diferencias de poder uno de los rasgos característicos de cualquier intervención psicológica entre el profesional y el cliente es el de las dinámicas de poder inherentes a la relación, y especialmente el poder guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 18 diferencial. terapeutas, counsellors, trabajadores sociales y otros profesionales son, generalmente, conscientes de esas diferencias. por tanto, intentan crear un espacio seguro, exento de críticas, confidencial y acogedor en el que los clientes no se sientan como meros receptores pasivos de servicios prescritos. no obstante, la naturaleza de la transacción entre cliente y profesional es tal que el profesional es, inevitablemente, percibido como el experto. los clientes tienden a considerarlos como los poseedores del saber, con formación y experiencia para sugerir la aplicación de distintas ipp. por tanto, las diferencias de poder están siempre ahí. el profesional debe ser consciente de esta diferencia y evitar cualquier situación en la que el cliente o él mismo tenga que tomar una decisión que pueda estar influenciada por esta diferencia de poder. sobreutilización de fortalezas la infra o sobreutilización de algunas prácticas basadas en fortalezas pueden exacerbar desafíos existentes. por ejemplo, en muchos procesos de coaching, sugerir a los clientes que sean más prudentes puede causar que alguien se sienta más ansioso o indeciso. los clientes que practican el perdón sin reflexionar sobre cuándo y a quién perdonar pueden omitir ofensas que, si no son revisadas o tenidas en cuenta, pueden herir a otras personas. los clientes que utilizan la creatividad en exceso pueden encontrar difícil adherirse a las normas o reglas que fortalecen la equidad o la igualdad de oportunidades. los clientes comprometidos con la toma de decisiones justas en su trabajo pueden encontrar difícil reconciliar realidades contrapuestas que existen en la misma esfera (por ejemplo, llegar a acuerdo sobre cómo una persona educada y bien informada puede tomar decisiones imprudentes). sentido común los profesionales necesitan lo que el filósofo aristóteles denomino “phronesis”, esto es, sentido común para aplicar estas normas. por ejemplo, considere a un profesional que trabaja con un ejecutivo de alto nivel con quien ha establecido una excelente relación y que también ha hecho un buen progreso en su trabajo. este profesional, sin embargo, se entera de que el ejecutivo está involucrado en comportamientos inmorales o poco éticos. ¿debería ese profesional preservar la relación sólida o enfrentar a la persona, poniendo en riesgo la relación? un simple conjunto de normas puede no ser suficiente. el profesional tiene que interpretar la situación y equilibrar los motivos enfrentados. en estos casos, el sentido común se construye a partir de la experiencia acumulada y los buenos lazos en la relación con colegas que pueden aconsejar y ayudar en el razonamiento ético. mantener la resiliencia y amortiguar el agotamiento6 un cierto número de constructos pueden amortiguar el agotamiento o desgaste profesional. las emociones positivas (por ejemplo, la esperanza, serenidad, alegría, interés y asombro) pueden ampliar los recursos cognitivos y comportamentales del profesional, así como aquellos en los que centra su atención, actuando como amortiguadores frente a vulnerabilidades tales como el “síndrome del quemado” (por ejemplo, agotamiento emocional). prácticas personales tales como el mindfulness también pueden ayudar en este ámbito. las fortalezas interpersonales (por ejemplo, inteligencia social, bondad, amor, humor, propósito y sentido o trabajo en equipo) pueden ayudar a sobrellevar desafíos tales como la despersonalización (un estado en el que los 6 burnout en el original. el término original se utiliza también en español, o se traduce como agotamiento o desgaste profesional. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 19 pensamientos y sentimientos propios parecen ser irreales o no pertenecer a uno mismo). del mismo modo, tener un propósito y dar significado a la vida y la profesión pueden reparar la sensación de despersonalización. declaración de formación y competencia los profesionales deben declarar los límites de su competencia en relación con determinadas condiciones psicológicas, grupos específicos (por ejemplo, trabajar con niños, otras culturas, equipos) y determinadas ipp. por ejemplo, un profesional puede tener experiencia en la evaluación de fortalezas en adultos, y no así en la evaluación con niños o adolescentes. más aún, según continúa ofreciendo sus servicios, el profesional puede introducirse en áreas en las que su experiencia es más superficial o para las que no está convenientemente cualificado. por ejemplo, mientras un profesional puede tener experiencia y estar cualificado para proporcionar servicios a niños, adolescentes y adultos, puede no tener experiencia o estar cualificado para ofrecer esos servicios a familias, en cuyo caso una derivación o la adición de estructuras de apoyo adicionales pueden ser necesarias. además, los profesionales deben declarar su formación y la experiencia relevante que les habilita para ejercer su práctica. por ejemplo, un profesional ha obtenido un certificado de seis meses que incluye una semana de interacción presencial y el resto del curso completado online. el certificado no está reconocido por una licencia municipal, regional o provincial que garantiza su autoridad. la web del profesional afirma que está “certificado como profesional de la psicología positiva”. no cuenta con otras credenciales profesionales. ¿es esto ético? es importante informar explícitamente a los clientes de la naturaleza, alcance y límites de su educación y formación profesional, su práctica y las credenciales sobre las que se asienta la denominación de su servicio profesional. apreciar la importancia del contexto cultural la toma ética de decisiones no debe basarse solamente en la consciencia, el conocimiento o la comprensión cognitiva. las decisiones también deben reflejar la mejor y más relevante evidencia disponible y las circunstancias del contexto cultural. el contexto cultural es crítico en la aplicación de ipp, puesto que la conceptualización de lo que es normal, bueno o adaptativo deriva de los valores reconocidos como deseables por la cultura y el contexto social en el que se presenta la preocupación o dilema. adicionalmente, las culturas y las normas sociales difieren en cómo se reconocen, expresan o amplifican determinadas emociones. por tanto, es importante que las normas para una práctica ética en la aplicación de ipp estén enraizadas en dicha evidencia. las normas éticas presentadas en este documento son lo suficientemente amplias para adaptarse a distintos contextos culturales y, al mismo tiempo, suficientemente detalladas como para adaptarse a diferencias y necesidades individuales. esta integración, que incluye factores culturales e individuales, puede resultar sencilla y ser aplicada de inmediato. sin embargo, es posible que no posibilite un camino, proceso o resultado perfecto cuando los individuos se esfuercen por alcanzar la excelencia en su ética profesional. en este caso, el conocimiento colectivo les ayudará a navegar por los casos que vayan surgiendo. el camino en el terreno de la ética se ha iniciado y, eventualmente, la excelencia podría alcanzarse. contar con la estructura de estas normas es, por tanto, crucial para apoyar las acciones y pensamientos de una persona. estas normas también pueden servir para evaluar en qué medida nuestras acciones están cerca o lejos de la excelencia en nuestra propia ética. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 20 resolver dilemas éticos –una guía paso a paso aunque es imposible evitar por completo enfrentarse a dilemas éticos, los siguientes pasos, en gran medida adaptados de ethics in psychology (koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998), entre otras fuentes, ayudarán al profesional a tomar sólidas decisiones éticas: • practique de acuerdo con todos los estatutos, regulaciones y estándares, códigos de conducta y normas de la práctica profesional, tal como se estipula en la licencia otorgada en su jurisdicción. tal información le ayudará, como profesional, a navegar por dilemas éticos. • desarrolle una percepción adecuada de cómo el mismo evento puede diferir de una persona a otra. consulte con alguien de confianza e imparcial acerca de cómo el problema presenta dilemas éticos con consecuencias serias. debata con pares para ver si lo que percibe es una infracción ética, o simplemente una aplicación pobre de las normas profesionales o una situación que tiene el potencial de causar daño a la persona o el público. • revise los códigos éticos, reglas y estándares profesionales que han sido publicados. asegúrese de que los interpreta adecuadamente y busque consejo profesional si es necesario. las normas escritas pueden resultar abstractas y poco claras, con un amplio margen para la interpretación subjetiva. • reúna toda la información relevante y de calidad que esté a su alcance. identifique brechas existentes en la información, los hechos documentados y las preocupaciones. • integre toda la información en su proceso de reflexión y consulte con alguien que esté bien informado, de mentalidad abierta y sin el temor de señalar posibles defectos en la práctica profesional. • evalúe cómo aplica los seis principios éxitos de estas normas (por ejemplo, beneficio/perjuicio, cuidado responsable, respeto por los derechos de las personas y dignidad, honradez, justicia y autonomía). por ejemplo, evalúe los derechos, responsabilidades y vulnerabilidades de todas las personas involucradas. • comparta diversas soluciones y tome en consideración cada una de ellas con tanta objetividad como sea posible. • considere qué fortaleza del carácter podría ayudarle a tomar la decisión ética más sólida. ¿puede conectar con su sentido más profundo de justicia, honestidad y bondad? ¿puede que su coraje sea necesario para motivarle a “hacer lo correcto”? recuerde que las decisiones éticas requieren del uso de múltiples fortalezas del carácter utilizadas de manera óptima y en combinación, no solo una fortaleza de manera aislada o una fortaleza “utilizada en demasía” (niemiec, 2018). • visualice el resultado de su acción. • antes de tomar una decisión, reflexione sobre el impacto que tendrá en usted, en todas las otras personas involucradas y en las implicaciones en el sistema. también reflexione sobre qué tipos de apoyo puede necesitar para tomar esa decisión. • traduzca la decisión en acciones concretas que reflejen con precisión el espíritu de la misma. diferentes acciones pueden expresar su decisión. seleccione aquellas que la expresan con más exactitud y validez, son medibles, están conectadas a resultados y causan el mínimo inconveniente o daño a aquellos no directamente involucrados. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 21 guía de autoevaluación esta sección sugiere algunas preguntas para que los profesionales puedan reflexionar acerca de aquello que puede ayudarles a evitar dilemas éticos posibilitando la mejor práctica posible. adecuación de las ipp. en primer lugar, en base a la evidencia científica disponible, decida si una ipp específica (por ejemplo, un diario de gratitud, usar determinadas fortalezas, un ejercicio sobre el perdón) es apropiada para el cliente, considerando sus problemas actuales y la motivación para el tratamiento. momento oportuno para usar una ipp. ¿qué pasos va a dar para decidir cuándo una ipp es apropiada? 1) al inicio de sus servicios; 2) una vez que la ipp ha comenzado. ¿en qué condiciones considerará un servicio o tratamiento alternativo? conciencia de la propia salud mental. ¿en qué medida es consciente de su propia salud mental? ser un profesional de la pp no le hace inmune a presentar síntomas de enfermedad mental que pueden desarrollarse y requerir de atención clínica. ¿qué pasos o acciones realiza de manera rutinaria para cuidar de su propia salud mental de modo que pueda servir a sus clientes de manera óptima? ¿qué barreras enfrenta para cuidar de sí mismo? por ejemplo, falta de tiempo y recursos, sentir o creer que está bien como está o no solicitar la ayuda de un profesional relevante que pueda contribuir a la mejora de su salud mental. informe obligatorio. ¿en qué medida se siente cómodo emprendiendo una acción contra un cliente que puede estar respondiendo bien a una ipp pero desea mantener la confidencialidad cuando inadvertidamente informa de un incidente (reciente o pasado) o una situación en curso que puede implicar, por ejemplo, abuso infantil o a una persona de la tercera edad, abuso sexual o una amenaza inminente a la seguridad de una persona? si no está ejerciendo bajo un código o conjunto de normas elaborado por una asociación o colegio profesional, ¿tiene la obligación legal de informar? exageración y generalización. en una conferencia, conoce a alguien que parece apasionado por el uso de las ipp y le invita a atender uno de sus talleres. asiste al taller, que ha sido diseñado a partir de unos pocos estudios con los que usted está bastante familiarizado. los resultados, aplicaciones y posible generalización de los estudios se presentan de manera exagerada. para la mayoría de los participantes, el taller resulta “transformador” y todos parecen creer en los hallazgos del presentados. ¿qué podría hacer? ¿puede utilizar los pasos de la sección de “resolución de un dilema ético” para guiar su comportamiento en esta situación? guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 22 sección tercera: ejemplos de casos en la práctica ética los siguientes casos son ejemplos que pueden presentarse en la práctica y tienen un componente ético relevante a los principios de estas normas éticas.7 ejemplo de caso 1: cultural –aplicar ipp con sensibilidad cultural las decisiones éticas deberían reflejar las mejores evidencias disponibles en las circunstancias del contexto cultural. considere la siguiente anécdota. suzanne es una profesional australiana que trabaja con clientes femeninas con un origen cultural en países del este asiático. la cliente quiere mejorar a nivel personal y preservar sus relaciones familiares. suzanne elige utilizar el ejercicio de “el mejor yo posible”. suzanne sigue todos los pasos para guiar a la cliente a través del ejercicio. de algún modo, a pesar de mejorar significativamente a nivel personal, la cliente reporta que las relaciones con su familia se están deteriorando. por tanto, no es posible hallar mejoras significativas en el bienestar de la cliente en las escalas online utilizadas de manera repetida. una implicación importante en este caso es la consideración del concepto de “yo”, que varía de una cultura a otra. suzanne utiliza un concepto de autodesarrollo a menudo asociado con la cultura occidental, que se centra en el desarrollo personal a partir de iniciativas nuevas y en gran medida individualistas. por contrato, el autodesarrollo en el este (y en la mayoría de las culturas no occidentales) se considera como el resultado de poner más énfasis y dedicación en las relaciones, mejorando la interacción social y contribuyendo a preservar la familia, el grupo o las tradiciones tribales. a pesar de la diversidad cultural creciente en la mayoría de las metrópolis urbanas, todavía se mantienen diferencias culturales fundamentales. una implicación importante de estas diferencias es que la cliente en este caso puede beneficiarse al comprender cómo ella puede utilizar sus fortalezas del carácter para beneficiar a su familia o conectar con otros con más profundidad. suzanne puede utilizar las intervenciones de fortalezas del carácter conocidas como convierte tus fortalezas en orientadas a los otros o apreciación de las fortalezas del carácter (niemiec, 2018)8 con las que la cliente aprende aprender a transformar sus mejores cualidades personales en mecanismos para construir relaciones que beneficien a los otros y prioricen una manera de reconocer y valorar a los miembros de la familia por sus propias cualidades. también podría darse el caso de que el autodesarrollo apoyado por otras personas importantes del entorno pudiese aportar profundidad y un aumento del bienestar mantenido en el tiempo. sin embargo, en una cultura interdependiente, el autodesarrollo, que seguramente incluye miembros cercanos de la familia, también requiere gestionar interacciones más complejas en un período de tiempo más largo. por el contrario, la actividad de el mejor yo posible, que se centra en la mejora de fortalezas individuales o en tomar nuevas iniciativas, puede requerir de un tiempo relativamente más breve. por tanto, es 7 queremos expresar nuestro agradecimiento a las siguientes personas que proporcionaron estos estudios de casos: casos 1 & 3 tayyab rashid, caso 2 -annalise roache, caso 4 stewart donaldson, caso 5 matthew iasiello, y caso 6 denise quinlan. 8 your strengths other-oriented or character strengths appreciation en el original. para la versión en español, véase niemiec, r. (2018). fortalezas del carácter. guía de intervención. méxico: manual moderno. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 23 imperativo que al utilizar las ipp se considere cómo adaptar estos ejercicios a distintas realidades culturales. los siguientes aspectos éticos son ejemplos relevantes del caso anterior: • cuidado responsable –el ppp necesita cuidar del cliente tomando en consideración su especificidad, sus antecedentes y la situación por la que atraviesa. • beneficiar/no perjudicar. el ppp tiene la obligación de no hacer daño. • respeto por los derechos y la dignidad de la persona –el ppp tiene la responsabilidad de ser sensible a dinámicas transculturales y de respetar las necesidades y perspectiva situada del cliente. ejemplo de caso 2: coaching – procesos de coaching con clientes en circunstancias cambiantes los dilemas éticos pueden aparecer de manera inesperada y requerir un ajuste en la provisión de servicios. considere la siguiente historia. amanda comenzó un proceso de coaching porque sentía una falta de dirección y sentido en la vida. previamente, había dado mucha importancia al progreso en su carrera, pero ahora sentía que tenía que considerar un enfoque más equilibrado y, además, se sentía triste y desmoralizada por no haber conseguido más en su vida (más allá de los logros profesionales). durante la sesión de inicio, identificó varios dominios en los que quería centrarse, los cuales incluían gestión de las finanzas (o soporte para comprar una casa), desarrollo personal y un aumento en el tiempo dedicado a divertirse y a su actividad social. mencionó que su actual trabajo era desafiante y que estaba intentando un cambio en el futuro, aunque este no era el tema central en el proceso de coaching. en las primeras dos sesiones, en las que las metas u objetivos se iban a identificar y las acciones iban a ser clarificadas, hubo cierto progreso en la dirección indicada por amanda como importante, y el proceso de coaching progresaba adecuadamente. sin embargo, el comienzo de la cuarta sesión, amanda dijo que su situación laboral se había deteriorado abruptamente, que había renunciado, y que ya había encontrado un nuevo trabajo. la renuncia no había sido bien recibida y amanda se sentía inquieta y muy emotiva en su lugar de trabajo, en el que aún debía permanecer durante cuatro semanas. indicó sentirse presionada por las reacciones de su jefe a su renuncia, lo que traía a su memoria recuerdos de confrontaciones similares durante su adolescencia. en este momento, era fundamental que el coach mantuviese su fortaleza de autorregulación y no manifestara sugerencias de forma impulsiva dado el aumento de factores estresantes en amanda. desde ahí, el coach podría comenzar a utilizar la fortaleza de la curiosidad para comprobar cómo amanda querría proceder en el futuro inmediato, y estar abierto a cambiar el foco durante la sesión o en las siguientes sesiones. también será importante comprender la naturaleza de la reacción emocional de amanda para determinar si el coaching es un mecanismo seguro y apropiado en sus actuales circunstancias. a pesar de que el coach ha establecido un contrato con amanda para una serie de sesiones, los cambios en la situación de la cliente pueden informar sobre la mejor manera de proceder en el futuro próximo. los siguientes aspectos éticos son relevantes para este ejemplo: • cuidado responsable –el coach tiene la responsabilidad de utilizar la amabilidad y justicia para proteger el bienestar de amanda y reconocer los límites de su experiencia. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 24 • autonomía –aquí el coach podría centrarse en el desarrollo de la habilidad de amanda para decidir por sí misma acerca de los servicios ofrecidos y todos los aspectos de su vida, o revisitar/revisar los términos del contrato en lo que se refiere a la relación. • beneficiar/no perjudicar –el coach, actuando en el mejor interés de amanda y basado en evaluaciones profesionales, debería ser consciente de que ha de trabajar estrictamente dentro de los límites de su competencia, y proporcionar servicios sobre la base de una formación y experiencia adecuados. ejemplo de caso 3: clínico – trabajar con el trauma la mayoría de los individuos que experimentan un trauma se sienten abrumados con distintos matices culturales, especialmente si están trabajando con una ipp. pueden desarrollar diversos mecanismos para evitar pensar, recordar o comportarse de maneras que pueden estar relacionadas con su trauma. al tiempo que se ofrece un ipp, es importante apreciar y evaluar tal trauma (ya sea histórico o actual). sin minimizar o desestimar el trauma, el profesional debe intervenir solo si tiene experiencia; en caso contrario, ha de derivar al cliente y hacerlo en el momento preciso. el profesional también debe estar atento en caso de que el trauma pueda emerger en el tiempo en que el cliente está trabajando con una ipp. el profesional debe conversar con el cliente y consultar con colegas y expertos relevantes para decidir si es el momento apropiado para persistir con la ipp en ese caso específico. considere el siguiente caso. salma, 21 años, tiene una larga historia experimentando abuso físico, emocional y sexual. busca servicios para sus síntomas de depresión persistentes. espera que el terapeuta pueda preguntarle explícitamente acerca de los eventos traumáticos de su vida. en su lugar, se le ofrece un breve cuestionario que no incluye preguntas referidas a su trauma actual o pasado. en las sesiones de counselling, salma descubre que no le gusta el counsellor y elige no revelar detalles de su trauma. por consiguiente, el tratamiento sigue siendo superficialmente eficaz y se le prescribe un nuevo ciclo de sesiones para los próximos seis meses. como demuestra este caso, es importante preguntar explícitamente acerca del trauma (aunque hacerlo requiere de gran sensibilidad, y posiblemente de entrenamiento clínico). dependiendo del rapport, algunos clientes formularán algunas preguntas de manera explícita y pedirán que se les ofrezca consejo, sugerencias, mecanismos de afrontamiento o recursos culturalmente apropiados. es importante que, mientras la ipp esté en proceso, y los detalles de un trauma reciente salga a la superficie, el profesional responda de manera tal que pueda atender a las necesidades del cliente. en primer lugar, el profesional debe estar suficientemente acreditado, entrenado y tener experiencia para gestionar esta situación. los profesionales deberían considerar regularmente sus fortalezas de humildad y prudencia/precaución revisando periódicamente si pueden continuar proporcionando servicios al cliente o, por el contrario, si el cliente estaría en mejores manos con otro profesional con una experiencia más específica para proporcionar los consejos y estrategias que algunos clientes pueden necesitar o pedir. los siguientes aspectos éticos son ejemplos relevantes del caso que nos ocupa: • cuidado responsable –el ppp tiene la responsabilidad de cuidar de salma de manera que pueda considerar la especificidad de su situación y sus antecedentes. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 25 • beneficiar / no perjudicar –el ppp tiene la responsabilidad de no producir nuevos daños en salma y de promover su bienestar. ejemplo de caso 4: organizacional –presión para tergiversar datos muchas intervenciones relacionadas con el trabajo y las organizaciones positivas están siendo evaluadas para determinar su eficacia. los dilemas éticos pueden aparecer de manera inesperada cuando los clientes no aceptan los hallazgos y presionan al profesional para que omita o tergiverse los datos de la evaluación. considere la siguiente historia y observe cómo un numero de fortalezas del carácter están infrautilizadas, incluyendo la honestidad / integridad, perspectiva / sabiduría, liderazgo y humildad. la compañía xyz ha contratado un profesional de la psicología positiva para mejorar la moral y desempeño de sus empleados. en la consulta con los líderes de la compañía, decide proporcionar un programa de formación para incrementar el capital psicológico de los empleados (esperanza, eficacia, resiliencia y optimismo). los datos de la evaluación muestran que los empleados disfrutan de la formación y quieren tener más talleres de pp en el futuro. sin embargo, los datos de la evaluación muestran que no hay diferencias significantes en los niveles de esperanza, eficacia, resiliencia, optimismo, moral o desempeño entre los empleados que fueron seleccionados aleatoriamente para participar en el taller, y aquellos en el grupo de control. los líderes de la compañía xyx estaban tan complacidos de saber que sus empleados disfrutaban de la formación que no quisieron ver los resultados descorazonadores de las evaluaciones. en su lugar, pidieron al profesional que reportara que la formación había sido un éxito, y que más formación en la misma línea sería proporcionada a los empleados en el futuro. los siguientes aspectos éticos son ejemplos relevantes de este caso: • autonomía –la autonomía del profesional para actuar ha sido ignorada. • beneficiar/no perjudicar –el beneficio supone el compromiso de promover el bienestar del cliente, y este nivel de engaño propuesto por los líderes de la compañía no favorece el interés de los empleados. además, actuar en beneficio de alguien requiere proporcionar servicios basados en una formación o experiencia adecuados. • honradez –al profesional se le solicita exagerar o generalizar la eficacia de las ipp, sin honrar a la verdad ofrecida por profesional por parte de los empleados. ejemplo de caso 5: mentoría –motivar a participantes “reticentes” en una relación desequilibrada a menudo, aquellos que más se resisten a una intervención son quienes más se benefician de la misma. los ppp encuentran una situación difícil cuando intentan motivar o persuadir al cliente para que participe en una intervención en su beneficio, sin manipularle. considere el siguiente caso. abbie, manager de una agencia de juventud, tiene un cliente que se niega a participar en los ejercicios de una intervención grupal de pp. el facilitador de la intervención ha pedido a abbie que anime a su cliente a participar en los ejercicios y le convenza de los beneficios de la intervención. abbie acuerda con su colega que la intervención será de gran beneficio para el cliente. abbie es consciente de que las actitudes del cliente y sus guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 26 comportamientos a menudo ocasionan que este sea excluido de intervenciones que pueden ser beneficiosas, y decide desafiar sus actitudes para que participe. abbie ha desarrollado una relación de confianza como mentor de su cliente y no desea comprometer su integridad y traicionar la confianza del cliente “vendiéndole” la intervención al participante o haciendo promesas que no serán cumplidas. en su lugar, modestamente describe la evidencia que apoya la intervención, y trabaja con su cliente para sopesar los costes y beneficios de participar. curiosamente, formula preguntas al cliente sobre los pros y los contras de participar en la intervención y sobre cómo las fortalezas del carácter del cliente podrían ser utilizadas en el grupo. abbie luego ayuda al cliente a identificar estrategias para minimizar el coste de la participación, y pone en práctica versiones de baja intensidad de la intervención y el uso de las fortalezas del cliente antes de la reunión de grupo. abbie está en lo cierto en cuanto a que su cliente se beneficiaría al participar en la intervención, y no quiere que el cliente quede excluido y sin participar una vez más. al mismo tiempo, no quiere quebrar la confianza o autonomía de su cliente. abbie quiere desafiar a su cliente, y ayudarla a exponerse a nuevas experiencias, pero teme que una manipulación poco ética pueda tener resultados negativos para su participante y, consecuentemente, dañar la calidad de su relación ganada con esfuerzo. en lugar de promocionar o exagerar los beneficios de participar, abbie se esfuerza por entender la actitud de su cliente hacia la intervención, desafía los sesgos cognitivos y crea oportunidades para demostrar los beneficios de la formación en la seguridad de la sesión. los siguientes aspectos éticos son ejemplos relevantes para este caso: • justicia –el ppp tiene la responsabilidad de asegurar que los clientes no quedan excluidos de las intervenciones por sus características particulares. • honradez –el ppp usa la relación basada en la confianza con su cliente para animarle a evaluar sus actitudes y creencias, pero no pone en peligro esta confianza. • autonomía –el ppp respeta el deseo del cliente y duda ante la posibilidad de manipularle. ejemplo de caso 6: educación – implementar programas de bienestar en los que las aspiraciones se ven dificultadas por la práctica existente muchas escuelas quieren adoptar programas de bienestar. sin embargo, pueden hacerlo por diversas razones, que van desde la preocupación por el bienestar de sus estudiantes o el reconocimiento de desafíos tales como el acoso en la escuela, hasta la mejora de prácticas asentadas en los centros. además, tener un programa de bienestar en la escuela puede ser considerado como una oportunidad de marketing y poner de manifiesto la diferencia entre distintos centros escolares. considere el siguiente caso. el director de una escuela pide a un miembro de su equipo que desarrolle una estrategia de bienestar y un plan que pueda ser aprobado por la junta directiva, y que luego organice una breve presentación con los elementos clave. el director quería decir a los padres de los futuros alumnos que sus niños y niñas podrían beneficiarse al recibir un programa de bienestar que sería enseñado dentro del currículo. para ello, dio la responsabilidad de enseñar bienestar a todos los docentes, si bien había habido escaso desarrollo profesional para el personal docente en esta área. muchos miembros del equipo estaban estresados y guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 27 se sentían poco preparados para enseñar este programa, además de considerar la carga de trabajo añadida que suponía. se llevó a un consultor a la escuela para que impartiera una sesión de desarrollo profesional en bienestar para el personal de la escuela que duró medio día. algunos miembros del equipo manifestaron su preocupación al consultor explicando que se sentían ansiosos ante la posibilidad de causar daño a sus estudiantes puesto que no estaban suficientemente preparados y no tenían ninguna base en esta área. además, el consultor había visto que el marketing de la escuela promocionaba su trabajo en el ámbito del bienestar (por ejemplo, describiendo cómo la escuela soportaba el bienestar de manera holística para el personal y los estudiantes, y facilitando el bienestar en todos los encuentros). el consultor es consciente de que la escuela sigue teniendo una política de disciplina punitiva que deteriora las relaciones entre estudiantes y docentes, e ignora la evidencia científica de los beneficios del bienestar en las prácticas restaurativas y de perdón. el docente al que se hecho responsable de la implementación del programa de bienestar, ha informado al consultor sobre estos problemas. el docente se resiste a plantear estos problemas a los líderes de la escuela ya que en el pasado ha sido intimidado por este grupo por manifestar preocupaciones similares. al mismo tiempo, su lealtad a la escuela y su idoneidad para continuar como docente fueron cuestionadas. los siguientes aspectos éticos son ejemplos relevantes del caso que nos ocupa: • beneficiar/no perjudicar – el ppp tiene la responsabilidad de no respaldar a una escuela como “una escuela que promueve el bienestar” sin la seguridad de que lo sea o sin aplicar su sentido crítico si es sabedor de prácticas que minan el bienestar. • autonomía –el docente no debe sentirse forzado a adoptar una perspectiva o posición que entra en conflicto con su propio juicio o valores. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 28 códigos éticos relevantes los siguientes códigos éticos (organizados por campos específicos y en orden alfabético) fueron tomados en cuenta y ayudaron a informar el desarrollo de estas normas para la práctica: psicología: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). enfermería: • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). • united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • international – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 29 reconocimientos las siguientes personas, citadas alfabéticamente, hicieron una contribución sustancial y ofrecieron aportaciones y retroalimentación a partir del borrador de estas normas: • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 30 firmantes iniciales de las normas éticas para la práctica de la psicología positiva fecha de la firma de las primeras normas versión firmada nombre y página web de la asociación o colegio profesional logo 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • via institute on character http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-psychology and hi h l 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/psychology,-social-work-and communityservices/postgraduate/masterof-appliedpositive-psychology 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa https://research.cgu.edu/claremont evaluation-center/ 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • the langley group https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience www.nziwr.co.nz 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • humanship www.humanshiplb.org 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 iranian positive psychology congress http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ http://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mschttp://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mschttp://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mschttp://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyhttp://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyhttp://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyhttp://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ http://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ http://www.nziwr.co.nz/ http://www.humanshiplb.org/ guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 31 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society http://jphp.jp/ 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india http://nppassociation.org/ 19 / julio / 2019 1.0 • german society for positive psychology https://www.dach-pp.eu/ http://jphp.jp/ http://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ http://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ http://nppassociation.org/ http://www.dach-pp.eu/ http://www.dach-pp.eu/ guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 32 autores aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas university of east london, united kingdom traducción al español andrea giraldez-hayes university of east london, united kingdom cronología de publicaciones published 20 february 2020 referencias barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 1 11. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. guías éticas jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, & giraldez-hayes 33 lecturas complementarias han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. jarden, a. (2012). positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszentmihalyi, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 136–139. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.14 aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 expert insight positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszenmihalyi interview by aaron jarden mihaly csikszentmihalyi is professor of psychology at claremont graduate university, and director of the quality of life research center. he is noted for his work in the study of happiness and creativity, and the immensely popular book flow. martin seligman has described mihaly as ‚the world’s leading researcher on positive psychology‛. in general terms and in your mind, what are some of the distinctive features of positive psychology? the distinctive feature is that it allows me to interact with people whom otherwise i would have had a hard time finding. i’ve been in this field for 35 or 40 years and i’ve always felt marginalized and now suddenly, there are all kinds of interesting people that we can deal with, interact with and stimulate each other ideas. that’s the field aspect of positive psychology. the question could refer to the content and ideas, or to positive psychology as a social endeavor (i hate the word movement), so i’ll give you the explanation in terms of the joint endeavor. in terms of the content, it is a very varied assortment of different things. it’s hard to find an exact common element of positive psychology, except in terms of the fact that everybody is trying to understand how to leverage and increase positive aspects of human experience and human life. that can vary from physical wellbeing to alternate meanings of life, and the subjective aspects. i’m mostly interested in the subjective quality of experience, as you probably know. are there any key events that changed the course of your career into moving towards positive psychology? i never moved towards it, i always did it since i wrote my dissertation in 1965, which is now about a half century ago. that was essentially about one aspect of positive psychology that i’m stilled involved with, namely creativity, which i think is an important aspect. back then there was no positive psychology to turn towards. we just started it with martin seligman in hawaii in the late 1990s, when we met accidently there and we kind of decided we should have a more visible group studying the aspects of human behavior that had been neglected by psychology for half a century. this involved all of the things that people are now pursuing and calling positive psychology. but to us, as we started the whole thing, we had no idea where it would go. i was just hoping to be able to connect with some colleagues across the us and elsewhere who had the same interest that i had. i envisioned a little special interest group of 50 or 60 people who were interested in this issue; but at the recent world congress on positive psychology in philadelphia there were 1,600 people from all over and that’s almost scary, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszentmihalyi jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 because i think good ideas are probably more often killed by premature promises than they are killed by opposition. suddenly we have a huge response from everyone who was kind of frustrated and stymied by psychology previously. i saw the field growing so quickly and so exponentially into the future, and that’s why i started this positive development phd programme here at clermont university. i thought, ‘hey, we should begin to train people to act as kind of gatekeepers or at least supports to this developing field’ so that it’s not all kind of superficial enthusiasm, but it’s grounded in critical, reflective, even skeptical, research as science should be. what do you think are the best things that positive psychology has achieved to date? it has suddenly broken across the whole globe, and connected people who would not have known each other before. i mean there you are in new zealand and we are talking about these issues and we could turn and talk to south africa, korea, germany, and know that there are people there who are also concerned with the improvement of human life and true psychological understanding. just to create this network has been sensational in such a short period. people are now beginning to really take seriously these things that before were so marginal to people’s interests, like gratitude, or forgiveness, or courage, all things that people thought were kind of really minor or uninteresting areas of studying psychology. students now can really get phds done by writing a good research plan to study these issues at the human level. so there are two things. one is empowering people to feel that what they are doing is not flying in the wilderness, but there is an echo coming back from all over—that’s very important. the other one is that the subject matter of positive human activity is being taken seriously and researched and is entering the vocabulary of psychology. what are the current issues of concern for the field of positive psychology? the ones that i sense are really important are to maintain a healthy balance between the basic research, and application and discrimination, because it’s very easy to get excited by the ideas and then say, ‘ok, i read a book and now i can be a life coach’ or something. if too many people take it at that level, positive psychology will have a very short life because it’s not so easy to change things. if we promise and come across as knowing all the answers and being able to apply them, and then they don’t work, then the public will say, ‘it’s just another fad, forget about it’, and positive psychology will get a bad name. so we need both, we need to take seriously the issues. one of the things that positive psychology is now doing, kind of routinely, is that so many people are using so-called interventions. interventions last for a few weeks of doing something, like writing letters to people who you are grateful for, or another interventio n may be to think about what you are grateful about and so forth; and then thinking that these types of interventions can be spread around to everyone to make life better. now, those interventions are really important to understanding the mechanisms of gratitude, but as solutions to the human condition i don’t think that’s where it’s at. the real interventions in our life are family, school, jobs, and the political systems in which we live: these interventions don’t last two weeks, they last all our lives. i mean, if you go to school, it’s thirteen years of sitting at a bench, and that’s an intervention and it’s much more powerful in many ways than what we can come up with. positive psychology needs to inform schools and change their pedagogy so that the intervention of education is going to be more growth-producing for humans. and the same thing for jobs, the same thing for families, and so on. i think eventually we have to realize that if we want to be successful, we have to address the kinds of institutional context in which we live, which are the ones intervening in our lives in a substantive way. the kind of positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszentmihalyi jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 interventions which we can do is to learn what works and how it works, and it may be a good adjunct to therapy in some ways, but we can’t stop there and believe that we will solve the problems of human kind by doing those things. that’s why i’m worried about prematurely institutionalizing positive psychology so that we have a canon—this is what positive psychology is, this is how you apply it. if we do this now, we are going to paint ourselves into a very narrow corner of reality. we have to keep being open and growing conceptually and as practitioners; both our practice and our knowledge have to stay open and grow. which discipline can positive psychology learn from most, moving forward? other disciplines outside of psychology that are the closest in some ways to our field are biology on the one side, and sociology on the other. both of those are quite relevant to add to our knowledge base. but then you could also jump and say, ‘well how about spirituality?’. that’s one of the most attractive fields that our students respond to, meditation and various forms of buddhism practice and so forth, and again, i think those are very valuable and we should by all means understand them better and integrate them in what we do, but i don’t think they have the final answer. because of my original work in creativity and my interest in evolution, i really believe that for these new idea systems to really become influential and paradigm shifting, they have to grow, they have to be open, they have to keep refining their objectives and their purpose as they go, rather than say, ‘ok, this is it’. who do you look up to in the field? or who do you think is going to lead the field forward over the next 10 years? i don’t want to single out any person because there are so many, but i know that when we started positive psychology with martin seligman, we started it with the akumal conference in mexico. when we decided to start, i insisted that what we really needed to influence is the new generation. so we developed this method, which was to write to fifty of the most influential psychologists in the us; and martin knew them because he was just elected president of the apa (american psychological association). we asked each one of these fifty people if they knew of a former student or psychologist under 30 who would be interested in working on these issues that we wrote in a couple of sentences, defining positive psychology. we were after people who were interested in these issues and who, at age 50, were likely to become chairperson of a psychology department. so that was our idea. all of these fifty people answered and sent us names, and then we wrote to these fifty nominees and we asked them to send us their cvs and statements. then we selected 20 out of them, and invited them for a week, all expenses paid, to a fishing village in mexico called akumal. all twenty candidates accepted and we had this week in which we were always, 24 hours a day, in swimming trunks and flip flops and talking, just very informally, about what we saw was missing in psychology and what we could do to make it right. of the twenty people, since then half of them have written books and the other half have written influential articles. for example, barbara fredrickson was there, sonja lyubomirsky, tim kasser, and john haidt—all of those people. so this method kind of worked, because it represented something that i believe in, which is that we have to appeal to the imagination of the minds of young people because whatever we do, it is not going to be carried over by us, meaning martin or myself. we just started it out and we hoped to leave it in good shape, but the real responsibility is in the hands of that generation. positive psychologists on positive psychology: mihaly csikszentmihalyi jarden www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 are there any positive psychology projects going on that excite you, or that you are involved with that you are excited about? well, it’s not directly positive psychology but it’s because of the kind of work in positive psychology that i’ve been doing, even before positive psychology started; so, for instance, there is a new academy in china which is trying to be a kind of intellectual spark plug for the country. they built a huge campus, a beautiful elegant campus, and they invited masters from other places to go and start studios where people from the government and business can go and sit around and talk about how to apply, for instance, flow and creativity. i didn’t need to go there and start a studio. i want to go and find out what’s going on, but i don’t plan to move and learn chinese from scratch at my age. that’s one interesting thing that is going on. otherwise i continue to do research with my students on the same kinds of things that i did before, namely flow. there are a couple of new articles on flow in chess which i think are very interesting, and potentially kind of paradigm shifting. also work on creativity: i just came back from the european creativity conference in portugal, where people are using some of my ideas to do research and i collaborate with some of those people. a lot of my energy is directed to making this phd programme at claremont work, because it’s not easy to start something from scratch and make it work. so that’s one thing i’m working on. what’s one piece of advice for individuals looking to help and contribute to grow the field of positive psychology? if they want to contribute, the only advice i can give is that they should do good work. they should take it seriously, they should not assume that they know what it is, but they should try to push the envelope and try to understand better what humans need for the next step in evolution and try to make it work. that’s what they should be focusing on. it needs to be something that they decide. the important thing is not to take it lightly and not to take it dogmatically: there are two extremes. author aaron jarden open polytechnic of new zealand aaron.jarden@openpolytechnic.ac.nz waters, l., & white, m. (2015). case study of a school wellbeing initiative: using appreciative inquiry to support positive change. international journal of wellbeing, 5(1), 19-32. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i1.2 lea waters university of melbourne l.waters@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 article case study of a school wellbeing initiative: using appreciative inquiry to support positive change lea waters · mathew white abstract: drawing from the fields of positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship and educational administration, this case study reports on the process used in a large k-12 school to implement the strategic goal of fostering student wellbeing. this case study outlines the three strategic phases used to build wellbeing over a two-and-a-half-year time period: 1) development; 2) implementation; and 3) monitoring. the school aligned its change process to the goal of achieving wellbeing by adopting appreciative inquiry as the overarching change approach. appreciative inquiry is a systematic, holistic, and collaborative methodology that follows a strengths-based model of change. through the use of appreciative inquiry, 15 bottom-up (instigated by students and staff) and top-down (instigated by leadership) initiatives were generated over a two-and-a-half-year period. this paper provides an applied example of how ai can be woven into a strategic change process to support the wellbeing of students. the paper aims to contribute to the rapidly developing field of positive education. keywords: appreciative inquiry, positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship, educational administration, wellbeing 1. introduction seligman and csikszentmihalyi’s (2000) foundational paper on positive psychology called for the promotion of “positive institutions” (p. 5), described as institutions that foster citizenship, virtue, and wellbeing. we argue that it is important for schools to be positive institutions that deliberately seek to foster citizenship, virtue, and wellbeing in today’s students, especially given that these students are the forthcoming generation who will go on to shape our society (clonan, chafouleas, mcdougal & riley-tillman, 2004; huebner, gilman, reschly & hall, 2009, p. 561). successful examples abound of programs that foster citizenship, virtue, and wellbeing, coming from fields such as values education (nielsen, 2005), character education (berkowitz & bier, 2005), social-emotional learning (durlak, weissberg, dymnicki, taylor, & schellinger, 2011), and positive education (seligman, ernst, gillham, reivich, & linkins, 2009; waters, 2011). rather than focus on a program, the current paper outlines a process used for creating positive school change designed to foster citizenship, virtue, and wellbeing in students. specifically, this case study describes how the strategic goal of building wellbeing in students was supported using appreciative inquiry (ai) across three stages of change: (1) development; (2) implementation; and (3) monitoring. reynolds (2004) argued that successful school change is created when it is approached as both a top-down and bottom-up process; where the top-down processes provide strategic direction and goal setting whilst the bottom-up processes involve diagnosis and action. copland (2003) adds to reynolds’ (2004) ideas about what creates successful change in schools and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 suggests “the use of an inquiry process is centrally important to building capacity for school improvement” (p. 375). this is because inquiry sets up norms that allow for continual change by empowering school members to inquire, identify, solve, and continually revisit change. in complement to the ideas above, many prominent writers in the field of school culture suggest that staff agency is a necessary condition for creating school change (elmore, 2000; fullan, 2001; heck & hallinger, 2009). finally, a growing number of researchers are also calling for the application of appreciative-based techniques to create cultural change in schools (calabrese, hester, friesen, & burkhalter, 2010; dickerson & helm-stevens, 2011; doveston & keenaghan, 2006; willoughby & tosey, 2007). hoy and tarter (2011) argue that strengths-based approaches offer important new ways to assist schools to build administrative structures, processes, policies, and practices that enable a positive institution. the current paper presents a case study of a k-12 school that established a new strategic goal to build wellbeing in students. three stages of change used by the school in the current case study were underpinned by the four ideas described above. that is, the school adopted an approach to change that was: (1) collaborative and whole-school (both top-down and bottomup); (2) inquiry-based (asking rather than telling); (3) empowering (giving the organization’s members the authority to create change rather than have change imposed upon them); and (4) appreciative (focused on building strengths as opposed to a focus on fixing weaknesses). these four principles were enacted through the adoption of appreciative inquiry as an overarching method to guide the strategic wellbeing initiative. 2. what is appreciative inquiry and how does it work? ai is a relatively new change approach that meets the four criteria for successful school change enumerated above. ai is a systematic, holistic, and collaborative methodology that follows a strengths-based model of change in order to uncover the positive core of an organization (cooperrider & whitney, 2005; filleul & rowland, 2006). it differs from many other organizational change initiatives in that it creates large-scale change by harnessing the power of collective positive emotions, organizational strengths, and the relationships of the organization’s members. in ai, people from all levels of an organization become part of an inquiry process that seeks to find the strengths in a system and to use those strengths as a platform to create change. staff are empowered and given agency to plan, make decisions, and take action in the change process by inquiring appreciatively into what gives life to their workplace, what works best, and what is possible. according to cooperrider and whitney (2005), this approach is radically different to the more typical organizational development approaches to creating strategic change, which follow a deficit-based approach of diagnosing problems and errors in an organization and seek to create change by fixing these errors. one of the most common appreciative inquiry approaches is the 4-d cycle, which is anchored in a positive topic of inquiry: discovery, dream, design, and destiny (barrett & fry, 2005). the cycle is used to engage all of an organization’s members by systematically inquiring into strengths, successes, positive stories, resources, and capabilities. the discovery stage asks ‘what gives life?’ and is designed to assist the organization’s members to discover the positive elements that already occur in the organization. appreciation of the positive in the organization builds confidence for successful future change. the dream stage asks participants to imagine ‘what might be?’ and create a positive image of the future. the design stage prompts participants to think of ways the dream can be enacted and take shape. the destiny/deliver stage aims to create the urge in organizational members to take personal responsibility for change. the team case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 discusses co-operative ways to distribute the work to achieve the dream (cooperrider & whitney, 2005)1. the 4-d cycle can be used in a summit format, in one-on-one appreciative interviewing and can also be used as an ongoing change process in longer-term organizational change initiatives. for example, following on from the ai summit, the 4-d cycle can be brought into classroom practice as a way to create change with students. it can be used by teachers to design projects and it can be used in staff task forces and committees (cooperrider & whitney, 2005). aside from the formal process of a 4-d cycle, ai also offers a guiding philosophy for leaders to support change initiatives. even when a 4-d cycle is not used, leaders can still seek to support change through inquiry and collaboration to find the strengths that can be built upon to create ongoing change (cooperrider & whitney, 2005). the theory of positive organizational change, presented by cooperrider and sekerka (2003) and refined by cooperrider (cooperrider, 2012), suggests that ai fosters organizational change in three ways: (1) by elevating and extending the topic of inquiry; (2) by creating a broadening and building effect; and (3) by establishing strengths (relationships, resources, and ideas) that ‘eclipse’ the organization’s problems. in elevation of inquiry, the organization’s members are encouraged to widen their focus on and understanding of their work setting to see more of what is possible. the co-inquiry process into what is good about an organization creates amplified positive emotions in the ai participants, which then broadens their thinking and enhances their creativity regarding possible change initiatives. it also creates a sense of collective self-efficacy and builds up mutual regard, leading to increased social capital. the newfound relatedness combined with the clarity of strengths helps to activate collective energy, which creates a positive effect that spreads across the organization. although ai has grown in popularity, it is not free of criticism. one common concern is that the positive focus of ai may serve to invalidate or keep hidden the negative experiences of participants (oliver, 2005) and can lead to one-sided, or half-formed, views of the organization (bushe, 2011). however, others argue that the setting of a positive focus does not exclude the discussion of problems and that the dreams presented are often a reflection of the frustrations that come from unrealized potential and from barriers in the organization and consequently the negative aspects of an organization often arise during ai discussions (bushe, 2011; patton, 2003). 3. the case study the case study site was a k-12 private boys’ school in australia. it is a non-selective school that is aligned to episcopalian values. the school has 1,239 students and 151 staff (49% female and 51% male; 60% teachers and 40% non-teaching roles such as administrative staff, information technology staff, grounds staff, catering staff). the school was founded in 1847 and hosts both day and boarding students. in 2011 the school established a new three-year strategic plan that explicitly stated a goal to build a dynamic and comprehensive wellbeing program for its students. this was the first time in the school’s history that wellbeing was an explicitly stated strategic goal. specifically, the school’s strategic goal for wellbeing was to create “an inspiring social and emotional learning environment where boys thrive” (st peter’s college, 2011, p. 8). the strategic plan states, “wellbeing is central to the development of our boys. we believe it is essential that boys 1for a more detailed explanation of the 4-d cycle, see bushe, g. r. (2011). appreciative inquiry: theory and critique. in d. boje, b. burnes & j. hassard (eds.), the routledge companion to organisational change (pp. 87-103). oxford, uk: routledge. case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 understand their wellbeing, and that of others; in the same way they read books, study mathematics, play in an orchestra or kick a football…we must equip our boys with capabilities that will enable them to develop lifelong resilience and understand how to use their strengths of character” (st peter’s college, 2011, p. 8). the senior leadership team (slt), in consultation with the council of governors, decided to adopt ai as the guiding approach to develop, implement, and monitor the wellbeing strategy. ai was chosen over other potential change approaches for six important reasons: (1) the inclusive nature of ai meant that the leadership team was able to use this approach to gain valuable insights and knowledge from all staff about the factors that contribute to (or detract from) the boys’ wellbeing. given that it is staff who are at the ‘chalk-face’ with the boys, they add important, ground-level, information about the specific contexts and needs of the boys in this school; (2) the fact that a one-day ai summit was a successful way of harnessing ideas from a large body of staff in a systematic and time-efficient manner; (3) a recognition that ai was likely to enhance staff buy-in to the new wellbeing initiatives because under ai staff are empowered to be active members in the change process itself and in the development of wellbeing practices; (4) a recognition that, given the newness of this goal within the school’s more than 160-year history, the school would be better placed to devise a broad wellbeing goal and then allow room for initiatives to emerge over time through ongoing inquiry and collaboration (i.e., ai). this would provide time for staff and students to become more comfortable with the wellbeing culture rather than introducing a fully-devised wellbeing plan, which might be experienced as a ‘culture shock’; (5) a belief by the slt that using ai to encourage staff to participate in building a wellbeing culture for students would also indirectly build the wellbeing of staff through the experience of collaboration and through experiencing a strength-based change process; and finally, (6) leadership’s commitment to setting a positive, future-oriented goal of building wellbeing in the students rather than simply diminishing ill-being. ai was considered to be an appropriate method for achieving that goal because it focuses on creating change by identifying and amplifying the positives in students, staff, and the school rather than by reducing weaknesses, flaws, and limitations. the school set up three key phases to achieve its new wellbeing goal: (1) development; (2) implementation; and (3) monitoring. the school wove an ai approach into each of the three key phases of the strategic initiative as shown in figure 1 below. the arrows in figure 1 indicate that aspects of development were still continuing in the implementation phase (e.g., new ideas to support wellbeing were being developed during the implementation phase of the original ideas from the ai summit) and that aspects of the monitoring phase were being fed back to refine the way in which various wellbeing projects were implemented. it is important to note that although ai provided the underpinning philosophy for the school to enact its new wellbeing goal it was not the only approach used and the slt also engaged in more traditional change approaches such as top-down planning, trouble-shooting, and problem solving. the aim of this paper is not to prove that ai caused the wellbeing initiatives that occurred in the school but, rather, to provide an applied example of how ai can be woven into a strategic change process and in order to support the wellbeing goals of a school. case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 figure 1: three key phases supporting the strategic goal of building student wellbeing 3.1 phase 1: development the new strategic wellbeing goal was launched with a period of planning that was assisted by a one-day ai summit, which was facilitated by the head of senior school. the affirmative topic for the summit was “exceptional wellbeing.” staff worked together for the full day on this affirmative topic. staff were put into teams that were balanced for gender, sub-school, and staff classification to encourage collaboration across the different sub-schools and job roles. teams then went through the 4-d cycle over the course of the day to explore what exceptional wellbeing looked like at the school and how more instances of exceptional wellbeing could be engendered. in the discovery stage, participants were asked to pair up and share a time from the past where they had seen a student experience exceptional wellbeing at school. during the discovery stage they were encouraged to share their experience, first in pairs and then with the group just at their table. they then documented what they had shared and fed it back to the whole staff. participants then moved into the dream stage and were asked to imagine their school at its best in five years’ time. they used the strengths outlined in the discovery stories to consider what the school could look like if they had more of ‘what is already working’. this stage was used to identify common themes that were used in the third stage, design, where the teams were asked to think about ways to actualize a wellbeing culture. once the key design aspects had been identified, the groups moved onto the final stage, ‘deliver’, and were asked to think about concrete actions they could take to foster a culture of wellbeing. eight collective suggestions were made by the staff teams at the end of the ai summit to support the school’s strategic wellbeing goal: (1) the formation of a positive psychology interest group; (2) running parent information evening sessions and parent training courses on wellbeing; (3) discussing a boy’s wellbeing explicitly in parent-teacher meetings in addition to discussing the boy’s academic report card; (4) providing wellbeing activities for staff to boost staff wellbeing; (5) providing wellbeing training for staff so they can teach it to the boys; (6) developing a formal wellbeing curriculum for students; (7) measuring staff and student development phase  1-day al summit: using the 4-d cycle to generate ideas from staff about how to progress the wellbeing goal  8 strategic initiatives suggested by staff to support the wellbeing goal implementation phase  ongoing use of ai approach at the school, e.g., staff meetings using the 4d cycle  8 initiatives generated in the ai summit now implemented  7 new, bottom-up, initiatives generated in the implementation phase monitoring phase  staff and student input welcomed into the design of the wellbeing survey  wellbeing results fed back to staff, students and parents  training provided to staff so they can adopt an evidence-based approach two-and-a-half year time period case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 wellbeing; and (8) training to staff so they can adopt an evidence-based approach in their classes to assess the success of the wellbeing approaches in building the boys’ wellbeing (this evidence sits outside the formal wellbeing survey administered to all boys). after these suggestions were put forward by staff the slt was able to then share with the staff that they had already discussed four of the actions that staff had suggested: running parent evenings, providing wellbeing training for staff, developing a formal wellbeing curriculum for students, and measuring wellbeing. however, through the ai summit the staff had now given the slt four new initiatives in support of the wellbeing goal: (1) the formation of a positive psychology interest group; (2) discussing a boy’s wellbeing explicitly in parent-teacher meetings; (3) providing wellbeing activities for staff to boost staff wellbeing; and (4) training to staff so they could adopt an evidence-based approach in real-time in their classes to assess the success of wellbeing approaches in building the boys’ wellbeing. 3.2 phase 2: implementation during the implementation phase, the school leadership team were trained in the 4-d ai process by an external consultant. they then used this training in an ongoing action-reflection process to monitor the roll out of the school’s wellbeing plan. the leadership team continued to ask appreciative questions when analyzing the school, such as: what are we doing well? what resources can we draw upon? what are our strengths and capabilities? how can we create ongoing motivation and commitment for change in staff? what is our dream for the future? the slt welcomed further suggestions from school staff concerning how to build a wellbeing culture on an ongoing basis and encouraged the staff to continue to inquire and collaborate on the affirmative topic of building wellbeing. following the ai summit, continued attention was placed on ai as a school-wide approach to build wellbeing. for example, teachers were encouraged to use ai in classrooms and ai in staff team meetings. a staff consultation group was also formed to continue to inquire and consult about the topic of wellbeing. two-and-a-half years after the launch of the strategic wellbeing goal, all eight suggestions raised in the summit had been successfully implemented (see table 1 below): (1) a positive psychology group of over 70 staff was formed, with representation from teaching, support staff, and grounds staff; (2) the school had run three parent evenings focusing on some of the skills taught to students in the wellbeing program; (3) at the first parent-teacher interview for the year in the senior years (ages 12-18 years) every student’s mentor focused on a discussion of student wellbeing, character development and academic accomplishment; (4) the physical education department volunteered to start a wellbeing club for staff, running weekly activities such as yoga, mindfulness, and tai chi; (5) the school engaged external training consultants to train all staff during a three-day wellbeing course; (6) all staff and students completed a wellbeing survey; (7) in 2013, the school introduced seven explicit wellbeing programs that have been embedded into the timetable at seven year levels early learning centre (e.g., kindergarden), year 4, year 5, year 6, year 7, year 8, and year 10 (the wellbeing curriculum reaches over 800 students in the school); and (8) the school engaged research experts to assist staff to use evidence-based techniques and collect on-going data in order to have evidence to track the progress of the learning and wellbeing initiatives2. 2 note: this initiative was suggested by staff in the planning stage and went on to form part of both the implementation phase and the monitoring phase. case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 table 1: fifteen wellbeing initiatives implemented at the school over two-and-a-half years wellbeing initiatives suggested by staff as a result of the ai summit summit suggested initiatives enacted over a two-and-a-half-year timeline additional wellbeing initiatives suggested by staff and enacted post the ai summit the formation of a positive psychology interest group. a positive psychology interest group was formed and over 70 staff joined the group with representation from teaching, support staff, and grounds staff. (2012) teachers bringing positive psychology into academic curriculums such as english literature, religion, and drama. (2012) *running parent information evening sessions and parent training courses on wellbeing. the school had run three parent evenings focusing on some of the skills taught to students in the wellbeing program. (2013) sports coaches adopting positive psychology principles with students on the sports field. (2012) discussing boy’s wellbeing explicitly in parent-teacher meetings in addition to boy’s academic report card. teacher’s now discuss a boy’s via character strengths during parentteacher interviews. (2013) staff training the student captains in the ai methodology and the school captains using ai with school prefects. (2013) providing wellbeing activities for staff to boost staff wellbeing. the physical education department volunteered to run a wellbeing club for staff and now runs weekly activities such as yoga, mindfulness, and tai chi. (2012) the student school captains hosting an ai summit for student school leaders from other schools across australia, which has now been run for three years in a row. (2013) *providing wellbeing training for staff so they can teach it to the boys. the school engaged external training consultants to train all staff in a three-day wellbeing course. (2012) ai questions were built into the recruitment, selection, orientation, and promotion policies and practices at the school. (2013) *developing a formal wellbeing curriculum for students. the school introduced seven explicit wellbeing programs that have been embedded into the timetable at early learning – year 4, year 5, year 6, year 7, year 8, and year 10 (the wellbeing curriculum reaches over 800 students in the school). (2013) ai has now been integrated into policy and practice as one of the key methods to manage and create change and renewal through the st peter’s college change and renewal framework developed by the culture and values committee at the school. (2013) *measuring student wellbeing. students (aged 13-18) completed a wellbeing survey (2011-2013). change to a more positively oriented behavior management policy. (2013) training to staff so they can adopt an evidence-based approach in real-time in their classes to assess the success of the wellbeing approaches in building the boys’ wellbeing. a selection of teachers from the junior school, the senior school, education support officers, and all heads of departments and faculty were trained by an external educational consulting company in evidence-based data collection processes. (2014) * initiatives that were put forward by staff at the ai summit that had already been identified as action steps by the senior leadership team. case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 admittedly, four of the initiatives outlined here (completing a wellbeing survey, introducing an explicit wellbeing curriculum, wellbeing training for teachers, and running parent education) were part of the slt’s initial plan to support the wellbeing goal and would have occurred even without taking an ai approach. however, leadership reported that because these four ideas were also generated by staff during the ai summit they were seen as ‘shared ideas,' generated both by staff and leadership and, thus, had a high degree of buy-in. one positive example of this is the idea for parent education, which had originally been conceived by leadership who had planned to bring in an external consultant. however the idea was also suggested by staff in the ai summit and ended up being run by three school staff with a team of ten teachers, who had shown themselves through this change process to have knowledge and passion for wellbeing, as facilitators. the implementation phase also consisted of four new initiatives that came out of the ai summit itself and that had not been pre-planned by the slt: the formation of a positive psychology interest group, providing wellbeing activities for staff, discussing a boy’s wellbeing explicitly in parent-teacher meetings in addition to the boy’s academic report card, and training for staff so they could adopt an evidence-based approach. the first two of these initiatives were led by staff over the next 18 months as bottom-up/staff-organized initiatives. the second two ideas were generated by staff and were then aided by support from the slt (e.g., the slt provided a budget and hired an external company to train staff in evidence-based practice). in addition to implementing the suggestions raised in the ai summit/planning phase, seven new initiatives were suggested by school staff during the implementation phase over the ensuing two and half years: (1) teachers bringing positive psychology into academic curriculums such as english literature, religion, and drama; (2) sports coaches adopting positive psychology principles with students on the sports field; (3) staff training the two school captains in the ai methodology and the school captains using ai with school prefects; (4) the two school captains hosting an ai summit for school leaders in other schools across australia, an initiative which has now been run for three years in a row; (5) ai questions were built into the recruitment, selection, orientation, and promotion policies and practices at the school; (6) ai has now been integrated into the st peter’s college change and renewal framework developed by the culture and values committee at the school; and (7) the school’s behavior management policy was revised from being a punitive, de-merit model to focus more on positive behavioural and relational actions. the school introduced a systematic merit policy using an online database and developed processes where students were praised for good behaviour aligned with the school’s values. this information was sent electronically to the student, mentor, and parents, which has enabled the school to map a student’s behaviour, relations, effort, organisation, cooperation, and tenacity in any area of school life over a year. all seven of these changes were bottom-up initiatives suggested by staff as part of the ongoing collaborative, inquiry-based ai approach, rather than changes that the senior leadership team had pre-determined. all staff were encouraged to continually come up with new ideas to build on strengths in the school to support the wellbeing goal. table 1 shows the wellbeing initiatives implemented at the school through the development and implementation phase over two-and-a-half years. 3.3 phase 3: monitoring copland (2003) suggests that using an inquiry-based process sets up norms that allow for continual change by empowering school members to inquire, identify, solve, and continually revisit the wellbeing goal. the ai tenets of collaboration, inquiry, empowerment, and case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 appreciation were deliberately used in the monitoring phase. in the development phase both the slt and the school staff had identified that in order to support the new strategic goal of boosting wellbeing, the school must start to measure student wellbeing alongside the traditional academic measures used. the motto of the first author of this paper is ‘if you treasure it, you must measure it’. three key areas that have been monitored through evidence are: 1) the use of classroom practice to boost visible student wellbeing; 2) the use of the new behavior management systems and 3) the wellbeing of staff and students. the use of classroom practice to boost signs of student wellbeing was monitored at the classroom level by teachers who had undertaken training in 2014 in evidence-based data collection processes. the training was provided by an external educational consulting company. the training was undertaken by 49 teachers in the junior school, 89 teachers in the senior school, 89 education support officers and all heads of department. the training equipped staff with the research tools to examine, on a regular basis, the effectiveness that their teaching was having on learning and wellbeing in their students. the data were used by these teachers to suggest new wellbeing initiatives to support the strategic wellbeing goal. evidence was also gathered about the use of the new behavior management systems. the school now collects data both for misbehavior (de-merits/red inks) and positive behavior (merits). in 2013, 4346 red inks were recorded and 4752 merits were recorded. in 2014, the red inks dropped slightly to 3724 and the merits rose substantially to 8722 merits. in fact, between 2013 and 2104, the number of merits almost doubled. the results show that teachers are now more likely than in previous years to focus on and record what students are doing right. the final area that has been monitored by the school is the wellbeing of students and staff as assessed through a formal, biennial, on-line survey process. in 2011, the school worked with three university researchers3 to develop a comprehensive student wellbeing survey. the survey was designed to capture elements of perma (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment) (seligman, 2011) and other elements of wellbeing such as life satisfaction and physical vitality. once the pilot survey had been developed it was sent to staff for a consultation process. staff suggestions were incorporated into the wellbeing survey. the survey was then shown to a group of senior student leaders who also added input to the survey. finally, the survey was piloted with a group of students. the survey was administered to 516 students (aged 13–18) at the end of the school year in 20114. in the spirit of collaboration, inquiry, and empowerment, the results were fed back to all staff, senior students, and parents. the results were explored by staff as useful data to: (1) monitor the degree to which existing wellbeing approaches were working across different year levels; and (2) inform areas for future wellbeing directions. at the end of the school year in 2013, the survey was re-administered to 709 students (aged 13-18) 5 . at the start of 2013 the school had introduced seven explicit wellbeing programs embedded into the timetable. in the survey at the end of 2013 participants were asked to think back over the past year and rate whether their knowledge and understanding of wellbeing and virtues had changed. table 2 below shows the percentage of students who rated the survey 3 professor lea waters, university of melbourne; dr margaret kern, university of pennsylvania and university of melbourne; mr alejandro adler, phd candidate at university of pennsylvania. 4 for the wellbeing results of this survey and more detail about the development and implementation of the survey see kern, waters, adler, & white (2014). 5 the 2013 survey was designed and administered by dr peggy kern, university of pennsylvania and the university of melbourne. case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 questions as agree or strongly agree. the items assessing the students’ self-reports of knowledge and understanding about wellbeing and strengths in self and others were high (all items were 80% and above). interestingly, the two items that assessed behavior or more manifest, tangible outcomes such as being a good student and being a good friend, scored at 50% and 48% respectively. these results suggest that following the first year of the wellbeing curriculum, students are reporting that their knowledge about wellbeing is changing but this may not yet be leading to observable changes in other behaviors, such as study skills and social skills. table 2: student responses to survey following wellbeing curriculum survey question % who agreed or strongly agreed i have a better knowledge and understanding of my own wellbeing and resilience. 83% i have a better understanding of the significance of my own strengths. 83% positive education skills have helped me to become a better student. 50% i have a better understanding of my friends’ wellbeing and resilience. 82% i have a better understanding of my friends’ strengths. 80% positive education skills have helped me to have better relationships with my friends. 48% 4. discussion schools have an important responsibility to be ‘positive institutions’ in our society. the current paper presents a case study of a three-phase change process designed to support the strategic goal of creating “an inspiring social and emotional learning environment where boys thrive” (p. 8), in a large k-12 school. to support this strategic goal, the senior leadership team adopted a change process that was: (1) collaborative and whole-school and both top-down and bottom-up; (2) inquiry-based (asking rather than telling); (3) empowering (giving the organization’s members the authority to create change rather than have change imposed upon them); and (4) appreciative (focused on strengths as opposed to a focus on fixing weaknesses). the ai approach was adopted following cooperrider’s (2012) idea that ai “combines enterprise-wide strengths for advancing strategic opportunities” (p. 106). a core tenet of ai is that the change process itself is inquiry-based and collaborative. ai was adopted in this school to foster a collaborative change process so that all the organization’s members from all levels across the school could assist in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of the wellbeing goal. this inclusive approach served to promote new connections and relationships across the school. dickerson and helm-stevens (2011) argue that top-down change efforts in schools are often unsuccessful because they “bump up against a school culture…of privacy and autonomy” (p. 67). in contrast, ai creates shifts in the social groupings that break down the silo mentality. we saw evidence for this in the current case study. for example, the positive psychology interest group brought together 70 people across the school who would not normally have much contact due to role differences and geographical separation. in addition, the training of all staff in wellbeing has broken down a division between teachers and counsellors because they are now working toward a common goal of boosting student wellbeing. these examples show that when members of an organization unite around an appreciative topic, it can serve to break down traditional barriers and create new networks. case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 another key aspect of ai is that it is a change process that identifies strengths within the organization and uses those strengths to support change. an example of this occurring in the current case study is the physical education department launching a weekly staff wellbeing initiative following the ai summit. members of the physical education department identified that their expertise in health and wellness was a strength they could share with staff to support wellbeing across the school. this department now has wide relationships with staff across the school. another example involves members of the english department who capitalized on their pedagogical expertise in teaching about character through novels and films to assist students to analyse their own character, together with fictional characters, using the positive psychology tool of the values in action (via) character strengths framework (peterson & seligman, 2004; white & waters, 2014). 5. practical implications this paper aims to be of practical value in other schools that seek to create positive cultural change. our case study had a number of key learnings that can benefit other schools (or, indeed, other organizations) seeking to use an ai approach. first, the training of the slt in ai was an important factor in enabling the school to adopt a continued ai approach over a two-and-a-halfyear time period because it allowed leadership to continue to communicate the themes of collaboration, inquiry, and strengths. second, the success of the ai summit was contributed to by making it a whole-staff event and by designing the ai teams so that staff mixed with people across different areas of the school (e.g., a team might include staff from grounds and maintenance together with it staff, catering staff, teachers, and middle managers). this approach allowed for full inclusion, the spread of ideas and blending of multiple perspectives. it also helped all staff, regardless of rank and role, to feel united in pursuing a positive goal, which energised them to enact the change initiatives generated for the design phase of the ai and to tap into different networks and groups across the school to build wellbeing (waters, white, & murray, 2012). third, the ai summit was run at a date in the school calendar where staff would be receptive and not overwhelmed with academic pressures. we suggest that organizations think about the timing of the ai summit so that staff are most open and receptive to the 4-d process. for example, accounting firms would be unwise to run an ai summit just prior to the end of the financial year. likewise, retail companies should avoid an ai summit immediately prior to sales seasons. fourth, careful planning went into the design of the use of ai at a ‘macro-level’ so that the ai philosophy could be infused in an ongoing way over the two-and-a-half years following the ai summit in many aspects of the school, such as curriculum design, human resource policies, and co-curricula activities. the leadership team has encouraged staff to use the 4-d cycle in classrooms and across staff team projects and meetings in an ongoing way. the introduction of ai has not come without challenges. first, some staff operated on the belief that decision-making is the role of senior leaders, and thus felt reluctant to contribute ideas about how to build wellbeing in the students. second, other staff felt they lacked sufficient expertise in the topic of wellbeing to generate ideas, although the whole-staff wellbeing training helped to reduce this feeling over time. third, some staff felt that the focus on strengths meant that challenges and barriers to wellbeing were not given sufficient consideration. finally, change takes time to come to fruition: staff have been focusing on the use of appreciative processes to boost wellbeing in students but evidence as to the outcomes of change is still being accumulated. the early evidence is promising but more evidence is needed in the long term. case study of a school wellbeing initiative waters & white www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 ai places emphasis on collaborative methods that allow all members of an organization to contribute to change. the fact that nine of the 15 changes made over the two-and-a-half-year period were suggested and implemented by staff, rather than the slt, is an indication that the collaborative nature of ai was embraced by the school. however, the vital role of the slt cannot be underestimated. ai was combined with the top-down actions of the slt, such as strategic planning, goal setting, making the decision to adopt an ai approach, resourcing the ideas put forward by staff and giving authority to staff to lead these ideas. in conclusion, this case study provides one example that supports the growing number of calls in the field of educational leadership for schools to adopt more appreciative change approaches (calabrese, 2006; calabrese, hummel, & san martin, 2007; calabrese, san martin, glasgow, & friesen 2008). authors professor lea waters university of melbourne l.waters@unimelb.edu.au dr. mathew white st peter’s college, south australia publishing timeline received 6 june 2014 accepted 7 december 2014 published 26 january 2015 references barrett, f., & fry, r. 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(2021). #armmewith: resources for teacher wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 11(2), 20-37. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i2.1365 christina naegeli costa university of michigan naegeli@umich.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 article #armmewith: resources for teacher wellbeing christina naegeli costa · nansook park · mari kira abstract: with teacher burnout on the rise in the us, this study explores the resources that teachers report to need to buffer the demands of their job and to increase their experience of wellbeing instead of stress and burnout. the data consists of tweets that teachers posted as a part of the #armmewith twitter campaign to voice the resource that they need in their job. we used thematic analysis to categorize teacher resource needs from 2,639 tweets. using the job demands-resources theory (jd-r) of employee wellbeing, we sorted codes into themes (physical, psychological, social, organizational), and investigated resource needs across regions of the united states. in this sample, teachers reported needs in all jd-r resource categories, and we identified an additional theme of institutional resource needs to represent the need for political and social change that teachers reported. in our frequency analysis, the need for physical and organizational resources were the most prevalent, and we found no regional differences. this research contributes to the literature on teacher wellbeing by highlighting resources that have the potential to bolster teacher wellbeing. the research also contributes to the jd-r theory by suggesting that institutional factors may contribute to employee wellbeing. keywords: teacher wellbeing; job demands-resources; resource needs; qualitative methodology 1. introduction “#armmewith an administration that supports us, fair pay, and the autonomy to teach what my students need,” a teacher said on twitter in response to a social media movement that commenced after another tragic school shooting in the united states. on february 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire at a high school in parkland, florida. this deadly shooting came at a time of heightened discussion around gun control in the united states. in response, president donald trump made several public statements suggesting how to make schools a safer place. during a white house listening session, president trump stated, “if you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly” (merica & klein, 2018). on social media, teachers responded to such suggestions to arm teachers with guns . a hashtag, #armmewith, was started by two teachers to provide a forum for teachers to voice their frustrations with the suggestions of being armed, and to discuss their immediate resource needs (bacon, 2018). teachers then tweeted to make suggestions for how the money that would be potentially used to arm teachers could alternatively be spent. within one week, there were over 80,000 uses of the hashtag with these suggestions on twitter. teachers are essential members of the education system, and their wellbeing is of utmost importance in considering the education of future generations. yet, teaching is considered a ‘high-stress’ profession (kyriacou, 2001) with stress often leading to decreases in job satisfaction and commitment and increases in burnout and attrition (betoret, 2009; klassen et al., 2013). as about:blank resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 the educational system and conditions change over time, it is vital to continually study and evaluate teacher stressors and the resources teachers need in coping with these stressors to promote the wellbeing of educators (kyriacou, 2001). especially, in the context of the united states, a recent study indicated that 90% of teachers report experiencing work stress (e.g., herman et al., 2018), and it is estimated that almost 40% of teachers leave the profession within the first five years of teaching (milner & woolfolk hoy, 2003; national center for education statistics, 2004; educational commission on teaching and america’s future, 2004; smith & ingersoll, 2004 as cited in chang, 2009). likely adding to teacher stress levels in the united states, they are often asked to train and prepare for a potential active shooter situation, as school shootings are prevalent in the united states (there were 549 reported incidents of gunfire on school grounds from 2013-2019; everytown for gun safety, 2020). the job-demands resources (jd-r) model posits that both work stress and wellbeing result from the interaction between the demands of a job and its resources. while job demands may create stress, job resources may buffer the job demands, to help employee to reach work goals, stimulate their learning and growth, and help employees experience wellbeing (bakker & demerouti, 2007; demerouti & bakker, 2011). therefore, understanding the various job resources that teachers need is vital for the improvement of their wellbeing. the jd-r model has been applied to various professional groups, including teachers (hakanen et al., 2006), but further research is needed to understand the changing and context-specific resource needs of teachers. the current study offers some insights into these teacher resource needs with the help of the twitter hashtag campaign, #armmewith. in this paper, we present the results of a thematic analysis of teachers’ #armmewith tweets to answer four research questions: (1) in the context of this hashtag, what resources do teachers report they need in the workplace?; (2) which resource needs are reported most frequently?; (3) do these resource needs differ across regions of the united states?; and, (4) do the reported resources fit into the original jd-r resource categories? this study, to our knowledge, is one of the first to use twitter data to examine teacher wellbeing. 1.1 job demands, job resources, and teacher wellbeing work stress has negative consequences for teachers’ emotional and professional wellbeing (mccarthly et al., 2009) and may even lead to burnout (maslach et al., 2001). importantly, teachers’ wellbeing affects both student wellbeing and student achievement outcomes (e.g., geving, 2007; leighton et al., 2016; kokkinos, 2007). as teacher burnout and stress increases, teacher attrition increases and and their job satisfaction decreases (howard & johnson, 2004), which negatively impacts on student achievement and student motivation (ronfeldt et al., 2013; shen et al., 2015). it is important to find ways to decrease teacher stress and burnout to combat these negative outcomes for teachers and students. we use the job-demands resources theory (jd-r) to better understand teachers’ wellbeing in contemporary united states schools. the jd-r theory defines wellbeing as a state of work engagement—as a positive work-related psychological state characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption (schaufeli & bakker, 2010). clearly how well teachers are supported by job resources that help them to manage the job demands of their profession will significantly influence their level of wellbeing. job demands are physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of work that require physical or psychological efforts that can be associated with physical or psychological costs— such as heavy workload or conflict at work (demerouti & bakker, 2011). although job demands are not necessarily negative, they become stressors when workers have no resources to recover http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 from the demands of their job (schaufeli & bakker, 2004). when it comes to the teacher profession, job demands such as managing negative student behaviors, large class size, insufficient salary, heavy workload, and lack of social support have been recognized as contributors of teacher stress and burnout (bitsadze & japaridze, 2014; castro et al., 2010; chang, 2009; ju et al., 2015; kyriacou, 2001; macdonald, 1999; nagy & takács, 2017). job resources, on the other hand, refer to the physical, psychological, social, or organizational factors of work that are functional in helping individuals to achieve goals at work, which can alleviate and buffer the physical and psychological costs of job demands, thereby stimulating teacher wellbeing at work (demerouti & bakker, 2011; schaufeli & bakker, 2004). in other words, wellbeing results from workers having resources that help them to cope with and make most out of the high demands of their job. when teachers have been studied within the jd-r framework, job resources that have been identified as supportive of teacher wellbeing include experiencing autonomy at work and opportunities for professional development and teacher training (simbula et al., 2012). social support factors also appear to be important job resources to teachers — including colleague support, supervisor support, and a positive social support climate at school (hakanen et al., 2006; simbula et al., 2012; williams et al., 2016). earlier studies have applied the jd-r model to teachers, and the predicted interactive consequences of job demands and resources on stress and wellbeing have been verified with teacher populations (e.g., dicke et al. 2018; evers et al., 2016; hakanen, et al., bakker, and schaufeli 2006). nevertheless, we propose that further studies are needed to understand the resources that teachers in contemporary american schools need to deal with their demanding jobs. 1.2 current study the current study uses the twitter campaign #armmewith to investigate teacher perceptions of job resource needs, and to group these needs using the jd-r theory resource categories of physical, psychological, social, or organizational resources. our aim is to offer a unique view of the resources that teacher report they need and also to explore potential further categories of resource needs. when education policies and systems change over time, demands and resources may also change; it is important to investigate teacher wellbeing in the present time due to the changing safety issues that teachers in the united states are navigating as they work in schools. the goal of studying teacher-centered conceptions of what teachers need is to highlight solutions that have the potential to increase teachers’ resources, helping them cope better with personal and contextual stressors. by using twitter data, this study seeks to understand resources needs directly from teachers who have chosen to voice their concerns. for researchers, social media platforms such as twitter offer diverse and large sources of data that can be accessed quickly and inexpensively (jürgens, 2012). moreover, in an analysis on twitter data, the themes are discovered in a sample of selfinitiated responses and voluntary disclosure. research shows that teachers use twitter for both professional development (carpenter & krutka, 2014) and to experience a sense of community and combat teacher isolation (wright, 2010). therefore, twitter offers a unique platform to investigate teacher conversations online. 2. method 2.1 procedure data were downloaded from twitter using sysomos software commonly used for gathering http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 social media data at the end of 2018. a search query was conducted to select tweets that included ‘#armmewith’ during the first week at the start of the campaign (february 20th—27th, 2018). as twitter gathers location data based on ip addresses and gps locations, we were able to include tweets originating only from the u.s. the search resulted in 6,607 tweets. the data included time of tweet, author id, author name, author url, gender, language, state, city, sentiment (positive, negative, and neutral), the tweet, biography, and post source. we used brown et al.’s (2018) methods for cleaning social media data to ensure that the tweets in the data set were all relevant to our search criteria. we used several exclusion criteria during the data cleaning process; e.g., tweets that did not use the #armmewith hashtag for the original purpose or tweets from news outlets promoting the hashtag were excluded. most importantly, we read both the tweets and tweeters’ twitter bios to make sure that all tweets were from teachers. users who self-identified in their tweets or in their twitter bios as other than teachers (“as a principal, #armmewith…,”) were excluded. after cleaning the data based on these criteria, there were 2,639 unique tweets remaining in the data set. the author id, author name, author url, city, and biography were removed to anonymize the responses. 2.2 participants participants were teachers working in the u.s.. from the gender and location information that was included, the tweets that came from teachers that were 50.7% female and 26.5% male. the sample of tweets represented all 50 states of the united states with 20.4% of the tweets originating from the midwest, 31.7% from the south, 21.8% from the west, and 20.4% from the northeast region of the united states. 2.3 analysis we followed braun and clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis approach. we first used an inductive approach to code all resource needs appearing in the data and then deductively grouped the codes into themes informed by the resource categories distinguished in the jd-r theory. more precisely, we first read all tweets several times and wrote down initial ideas about resource needs. next, we developed more formal codes, and the first author and a research assistant (in consultation with the second author) wrote a codebook (krippendorff, 2019). the codes reflected resources mentioned by the teachers, for example: ‘class size’ included mentions of smaller class sizes, lower student to teacher ratios, or class size caps; ‘pay’ included mentions of increases in pay, increases in salary, bonuses, benefits, and pay incentives; and ‘training’ included mentions of more opportunities for professional development, more teacher training (e.g., english language learners, social emotional learning, math literacy, etc.). the codebook is available by request from the first author. the first author and research assistant conducted three interrater reliability sessions of 100 tweets. the average interrater reliability was excellent (cohen’s 𝜅 =.91). often, teachers listed more than one resource in their tweet, and we coded for different resources mentioned in each tweet, such that any given tweet could have more than one code. this resulted in a total of 5,751 coded excerpts. then, we conducted a frequency analysis of the resource needs codes. given that a code could be represented more than one time in a single tweet, we analyzed both the percentage of tweets that contained each code and the percentage of the codes in the total coded items. in other words, we examined how often a resource need was mentioned in all the coded excerpts and also how many tweets mentioned a resource need. next, the codes were organized deductively into themes by the first, second, and third author. the jd-r theory categorizes resources needs into physical, psychological, social, and organizational resources (demerouti & bakker, 2011). we grouped the codes into these resources http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 needs themes, but also recognized a new theme of institutional resources to represent what teachers tweeted. for example, the codes described earlier (class size, pay, and training) were all groups in the organizational resource theme. to investigate the frequencies by region, we divided the united states into the common geographical regions: midwest, south, northeast, and west. we used this data to conduct a frequency analysis of the resource need themes by region. this analysis involved examining the percentages of coded excerpts within each resource needs theme by region. we used a chi-square test of homogeneity to test whether the frequencies of the resource needs themes were distinctly different across regions or whether the variation was due to sampling error. 2.4 ethical considerations as social media data collection increases in popularity, the ethical questions involved are frequently discussed. most importantly, the question of participant consent is an area of concern for research using social media. previous research has argued that twitter information is public domain, but that identifiable information should be excluded when possible (shepherd et al., 2015). following this principle and the related internet ethics guidelines set by the association of internet researchers (www.aoir.org), we removed personal information from the dataset, did not include any tweets from users with private accounts, and the data was stored under a password protected folder. in addition, it is crucial for a researcher to be mindful of the context in which the social media data was shared (stewart, 2016) and seek to respect the social media users’ intentions for their statements. a researcher should not take a hashtag created by a specific community out of its context and, thereby, potentially misinterpret its meaning to those participating in the conversation. therefore, we spent a considerable amount of time reading about the armmewith hashtag (e.g., bacon, 2018; merica & klein, 2018) to ensure that our research is amplifying the voices of the u.s. teacher community. 3. results 3.1 resource needs we identified 18 resource needs codes and grouped these codes into the jd-r resource themes (social, organizational, psychological, and physical; see table 1 below). we also identified an additional theme in the analysis—institutional resources—that has not earlier been recognized in the jd-r literature. then, we investigated the frequency of resource needs in two ways; we counted the number of tweets in which each code was mentioned and also how many times a code was mentioned overall (see table 2 and figure 1 below). in this section, we present the results by starting with the resource needs theme that was mentioned the most by teachers and address the subsequent themes in the descending order. due to space limitations, we present the resource needs that teachers mentioned that have not been distinguished in earlier literature on teacher wellbeing and stress, or that are novel to the jd-r literature. table 1 presents all resource needs and provides data examples for each resource need. 3.2 physical resource needs the physical resource needs theme includes teachers’ need for material resources and was most frequently reported by teachers: 39.56% of all the coded excerpts fell within this theme. this theme included the codes of materials, funding, technology, security, and physical space. materials were mentioned by teachers the most frequently, while security and physical space emerged as novel resource needs. we focus on these three resource needs. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 figure 1. percentage of codes by resource need themes table 1. themes, codes, definitions, and example excerpts theme code definition example excerpt “#armmewith…” physical materials school supplies, curriculum, or material goods needed for classroom instruction. “more books” funding increases in funding for specific programs or extracurricular activities. “more money for after-school programs” technology computers, functioning internet, and updated building technology. “internet that always works” security* increases in security measures, including security guards, security training, and police officers. “resource officers” physical space* improvements in the physical school building, including rooms, the exterior building, and furniture. “a school with air conditioning and working heat” organizational time more time in the school year, more time in the school day, or more time to plan and prepare for instruction. “more time to prep” class size decreasing the student-teacher ratio and smaller class sizes. “reasonable class sizes” pay increases in wage, more incentives and bonuses, and more benefits such as health care and parental leave. “a livable salary” http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 theme code definition example excerpt “#armmewith…” training professional development, instructional training, and learning opportunities. “more social-emotional training" testing decreases in standardized testing or increases in alternative ways to test students. “less standardized testing” school culture changes in the ways that schools function at the school level. “a school culture based on character development” social counseling services* improvements in mental health resources, more counselors, psychologists, and social workers. “counselors who have time to counsel” social support support from various stakeholders, including administration, colleagues, the community, and students. “support from my school board” support staff increases in staff positions: special educators, librarians, substitute teachers, etc. “paraprofessionals and special educators so we can work together to give support to the students who need it most” psychological personal strengths* a response that relates to personal or individual strengths. “love and patience” autonomy teachers making their own decisions, and trust and respect to do their job. “a community that trusts its teachers” institutional* political change* legislators and politicians that understand the needs of teachers and legislation that supports teachers and students. “legislators who actually understand what educators need” social change* social change in education in terms of systems of inequity “leaders that actively work against systemic racism” *a new theme/code not mentioned in earlier literature on teacher resources or on the jd-r literature. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 table 2. frequencies per total tweets and coded items theme code in how many tweets was the code mentioned? percentage of all tweets how many times was the code mentioned? percentage of all coded items physical materials 1,120 42.42% 1,626 28.27% funding 303 11.48% 320 5.56% technology 121 4.58% 133 2.31% security 104 7.58% 106 1.84% physical space 71 2.69% 90 1.56% total 1,718 68.75% 2,275 39.56% organizational time 391 14.81% 448 7.79% class size 267 10.11% 268 4.66% pay 175 6.63% 200 3.48% training 122 4.62% 128 2.22% testing 118 4.47% 118 2.05% school culture 88 3.33% 89 1.55% total 1,161 43.97% 1,251 21.75% social counseling services 473 17.92% 642 11.26% social support 291 11.02% 321 5.58% support staff 188 7.12% 207 3.60% total 952 36.06% 1,170 20.34% institutional political change 227 8.60% 365 6.35% social change 199 7.54% 221 3.84% total 426 16.14% 586 10.19% psychological autonomy 200 7.58% 241 4.19% personal strengths 183 6.93% 228 3.96% total 383 14.51% 469 8.15% http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 3.2.1 materials. teachers indicated the need for materials in their classrooms and schools, such as basic school supplies. materials were the most mentioned in both categories of frequency analysis (see table 3). some teachers tweeted one, specific material object that they needed such as “paper” or “pencils.” other teachers tweeted a list of supplies that they need in their classrooms: “#armmewith unlimited supplies. pencils, copy paper, glue, scissors, construction paper, books, printer ink, laminate, binders, folders…” another teacher listed a similar string of supplies and then stated, “it’s sad we supposedly have money for weapons and ammo but not the actual essentials”—indicating that, for them, this list of supplies symbolizes the essential things that were missing. other material goods that were mentioned included sanitization objects such as “enough kleenex and hand sanitizer to make it through flu season” and “soap for the bathroom for my students.” 3.2.2 security. even if not mentioned very often (see tables 2 and 3), security emerged as a novel resource need not discussed earlier in the literature on teacher wellbeing. security captured teachers’ need for increased security measures in their schools, including security-related staff roles and security training and equipment. many teachers expressed the need for staff roles to increase safety measures in their schools: “#armmewith trained security on campus that will place staff & family at ease.” other teachers mentioned safety plans and security equipment. for example, one teacher mentioned security features that could be added to their school: “i have experienced an active shooter situation in my school building. #armmewith metal detectors, wands, and a resource office on campus to help students and staff feel safe.” another teacher mentioned specific security training: “alice training 1…#armmewith a plan to keep as many alive as possible.” lastly, a third teacher mentioned a specific security measure for their classroom: “#armmewith a classroom door that locks.” 3.2.3 physical space. here, the focus is on teachers’ need for improvements in physical school buildings, such as improvements to classrooms, updating furniture for learning, and enhancements to the school building. first, physical space emerged as missing spaces for teachers and students. one teacher stated, “#armmewith…how about a school library?” other teachers suggested “a new basketball court,” “a science lab,” and “a working auditorium so that we can create events for students and families.” teachers also brought up building renovation needs such as “building repairs” and “paint to fix the chipping peeling on my classroom walls.” moreover, some teachers mentioned the need for changes in furniture: “#armmewith desks and chairs that are not broken” or “enough” desks for all of their students. lastly, teachers discussed basic needs and sanitary complaints. one teacher said, “#armmewith a roof that doesn’t leak, a building without rodents, and clean air vents.” another said, “#armmewith…mold free classrooms; water fountains that work.” 3.3 organizational resource needs the organizational resource needs theme includes changes to school structure and job-level resource needs. 21.75% of all the coded excerpts were organizational resource needs. this theme included the codes of time, class size, pay, training, testing, and school culture (for frequencies see table 2). these organizational resource needs are very familiar from earlier literature addressing teacher wellbeing and stress (e.g., castro et al., 2010; simbula et al., 2012) so we address them here only briefly. most importantly, the tweets about needs relating to time, class 1 active shooter training. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 size, and testing spoke about teachers’ need for organizational conditions enabling them to focus on the delivery of high-quality teaching. in relation to time, one teacher tweeted: “#armmewith time and resources to truly address the social and emotional needs of my students; time to build relationships with my students, time to help all students find their purpose.” both time and class size were connected to teachers’ opportunity to provide individualized consideration to each student: “#armmewith class sizes that i can spend more time building relationships with each child.” teachers also tweeted about organizational resources that would satisfy their personal and professional needs, such as “#armmewith time for self-care.” (time), “#armmewith pay that reflects my master’s degree and 28 years of service” (pay), and “#armmewith the strength to be a better teacher by going to a national conference” (training). 3.4 social resource needs the social resource needs theme includes people whose support teachers need to do their job. 20.34% of all the coded excerpts were social resource needs. social resource needs included the codes of counseling services, social support, and support staff (for frequencies see table 2). while social support and support staff are a recognized resource need for teachers in earlier literature (e.g., ju et al., 2015; olsen & anderson, 2017), this tweet campaign highlighted counseling services as a novel resource. more precisely, teachers recognized the need to increase the number of counselors, psychologists, and social workers at schools, and the need for a better access to mental health services. this tweet exemplifies both the need for counseling service personnel and access to these services: “#armmewith resource personnel (school psychologists, family counselors, social workers, guidance counselors) who have reasonable caseloads.” moreover, this teacher described why they want counselors in their school: “#armmewith enough counselors in my school to help my kids tend to their own social and emotional needs so that i can educate the next generation's citizens effectively.” another teacher asked to be armed with these professionals “to help my student learn how to navigate their complex emotions.” 3.5 psychological resource needs teachers mentioned their own psychological resources needs in the tweets. the psychological resources related to personal strengths that teachers need in their work and a psychological sense of autonomy to lead their own work. 10.19% of all the coded excerpts were psychological resource needs (for frequencies see table 2). the need for autonomy is a familiar topic in literature on wellbeing and stress among teachers (e.g., cameron & lovett, 2014; hakanen et al., 2006), so we focus here on the need for personal strengths that seems to be an emerging topic in teacher wellbeing literature. these were often tweeted as single words and word lists that reflected teachers’ perceived needs of the personal strengths that their profession required for them to be a good teacher. for example, teachers wanted to be armed with “compassion,” “creativity,” “strength,” “humility,” “joy,” “courage,” and “love”, or with many of strengths, such as: “#armmewith wisdom, knowledge, insight, empathy, and patience.” 3.6 institutional resource needs the institutional resource needs theme encompasses teachers’ need for political and social change and illustrates how the institutional conditions surrounding teachers’ work influence their wellbeing (e.g., legislation that supports teachers). institutional resources needs is a novel theme http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 to both the jd-r theory and teacher wellbeing and stress literature. 8.15% of all the coded excerpts were institutional resource needs. 3.6.1 political change. here, the focus is on teachers’ need for government-initiated change, such as the need for changes in laws and policies and politicians that support teachers. some teachers specifically talked about laws. as the hashtag is rooted in the issues of gun violence in schools, it is not surprising that teachers mentioned “common sense laws that protect a safe learning environment.” interestingly, other laws were brought up in the tweets. one teacher tweeted, “#armmewith…immigration laws so my students can focus on learning instead of stressing that they or their loved ones will be deported.” additionally, teachers discussed specific people in the political sphere. for example, one teacher said, “#armmewith the assurance that legislators value students' lives over the money of lobbyists.” another teacher spoke more specifically about the connection to education: “#armmewith lawmakers and policymakers that oversee educational policy who've actually worked in or even been in a public school.” 3.6.2 social change. social change captured needs regarding inequity and social justice in schools. social change spoke broadly about inequities that teachers face or notice in their profession. first, teachers using the hashtag talked about students experiencing poverty (e.g., “ample resources for students in poverty”). specifically, one teacher discussed the need for food and clothing for students: “#armmewith granola bars and fruit for those who haven’t had breakfast…warm clothes for students who have immigrated.” teachers also used the hashtag to call for “support for homeless students” and “the tools to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.” although less often, teachers also used the hashtag to call out systemic injustices for teachers. for example, one teacher tweeted, “#armmewith people in power who respect black & brown teachers…this means actually valuing teachers of color and hiring them in the first place as a start.” 3.7 regional frequencies we investigated the frequencies of resource need themes across geographical regions of the united states (the midwest, the south, the northeast, and the west). we examined these frequencies to explore whether there any trends appeared in differences in needs of teachers across regions (see figure 2 below). overall, frequencies across regions were similar. the chisquare test of homogeneity was not significant (p > .05), such that the variance of resource need themes across regions did not differ significantly. 4. discussion our study has explored teacher-reported resource needs in the context of the #armmewith hashtag and investigated their overall and regional frequencies. in this discussion, we highlight our novel findings and contributions to both the teacher wellbeing literature and the jd-r literature. we found that teachers addressed all broad resource themes suggested in the jd-r model, but our code-level findings provide important insights into what these resource themes mean to contemporary u.s. teachers (e.g., our findings point to the importance of security as an aspect of physical resource needs). our findings highlight some resource themes that have been recognized in teacher wellbeing literature, but not addressed in studies on teacher wellbeing building on the jd-r theory (e.g., physical resources) thus expanding the understanding of resource types that need to be paid attention to when studying interactions between teachers’ job demands and job resources. we also discovered a new resource theme not previously mentioned in the jd-r literature—institutional resource needs. institutional resource needs capture the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 changes that teachers reported to need in the political and social systems to secure their wellbeing. our frequency analysis revealed the importance of physical and organizational resources to teachers, as these were reported most often. moreover, we found no differences between frequencies of resource need themes by region. figure 2. percentage of resource need themes by region 4.1 key findings and practical implications our study highlights the variety and frequencies of the physical resource needs that teachers reported. some physical resource needs have been discussed in conversations surrounding teacher wellbeing (e.g., education service advisory committee, 1998), but have not yet been categorized as resources in research using the jd-r framework. materials both for teachers and students was the most frequently mentioned resource need overall and, indeed, materials have been documented in the earlier literature as an important resource for teachers. for instance, the education service advisory committee (1998) pointed out the need for adequate teacher materials and resources. other resource needs in this theme, such as the needs concerning the physical space, do not appear as often in the literature on teacher wellbeing. in our results, physical space needs ranged from mold-free classrooms to a library or theatre space in their school. although these spaces might not be often thought of as factors of teacher wellbeing, this study highlights the unique spaces that teachers need and the quality of these spaces. researchers may consider how the physical spaces in schools can challenge or support teacher’s wellbeing. the need for security was an interesting finding in our study. to our knowledge, the need for security has not yet been identified as a type of physical resource in the jd-r theory, and neither has it yet been mentioned in the literature on teacher wellbeing. security is something that teachers think about on the job today, and they reported the need for improved security measures. it is noteworthy that reference to security needs consistently listed other factors than being armed, such as the need for more secure buildings or security plans. there are various http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 reasons why teachers may have focused on security in their tweets. this response fits the larger problem that the hashtag tackles and, as many teachers have participated in active shooter trainings, it is possible that security emerged in response to having to think about keeping the classroom safe in the event of an emergency. nevertheless, according to maslow (1943), security is an important and fundamental human need. those concerned with teacher wellbeing could pay particular attention, and further investigate, the growing need of teacher’s perceptions of safety in schools. organizational resource needs were the second most frequent category of resource needs. many of these organizational resource needs have been documented in the teacher wellbeing literature. class size, pay, and career opportunities have been identified as factors that impact teacher attrition (macdonald, 1999). we also found these factors as important organizational resource needs in our study. teachers need professional development training, pay that matches their education level, positive changes in school culture, and changes regarding testing in schools. indeed, some researchers suggest that various types of training (e.g., training on student mental health or professional development for teacher and student wellbeing) should be increased in schools (schley et al., 2017; white & kern, 2018), and research on teachers using jd-r theory also recognizes professional development and training as important resources for teacher wellbeing (simbula et al., 2012). there is also evidence to suggest that organizational wellbeing training increases the wellbeing of employees (sutton et al., 2016). in regard to our finding of changes in time, castro et al. (2010) found that a significant risk factor for teacher wellbeing was a heavy workload (paperwork, meetings, grading). this aligns with teachers reporting the importance and demand of time in the current study. reorganizing time within the school day or school year could combat the stressor of workload. exploring how a teacher’s time is spent at school and rearranging schedules based on teacher suggestions could likely increase teacher wellbeing. the third most frequently mentioned resource needs category, social resources, has also been previously highlighted in the teacher wellbeing literature (e.g., ju et al., 2015; olsen & anderson, 2007) and jd-r literature (e.g., anderson & olsen, 2006; hakanen et al., 2006). importantly, social support is negatively associated with teacher burnout and positively associated with teacher retention (ju et al., 2015; olsen & anderson, 2007). moreover, a range of social support sources have been identified in the teacher wellbeing literature and as resources in the jd-r model— including both administrative support and colleague support (hakanen et al., 2006; simbula et al., 2012). in our study, we found that teachers also discussed other staff roles and services that they need. specifically, counseling services were mentioned by several teachers. the national student to counselor ratio in the united states was 482:1 in the 2014-15 school year, while the national recommended ratio is 250:1 (national association for college admission counseling & american school counselor association, 2015). this suggests that mental health care resources are lacking in schools, and that teachers often may feel like they need to take on this role for students. the lack of counseling services in schools may be an important factor to consider in impacting negatively on teacher wellbeing. psychological resource needs have also been highlighted in the literature on teacher wellbeing, and our study confirms the importance of autonomy. autonomy has also been identified as a resource need in the jd-r literature on teachers (hakanen et al., 2006). cameron and lovett (2014) conducted a study to examine teacher satisfaction over time and found that teachers who were satisfied with their job were the ones who regularly experienced a sense of agency or autonomy. our research also uncovered personal strengths that teachers indicated they need to do their job effectively – ranging from wisdom to joy, and courage to humility. the need for these personal strengths highlight the socially demanding situations requiring teachers to invest more of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 themselves than simply their professional skills to achieve high-quality professional performance and to maintain their own wellbeing. few studies have, however, investigated the role of personal strengths for teacher wellbeing (e.g., chan, 2009), and future research can further explore the role of personal strengths as resources for wellbeing. we also investigated regional differences in teachers’ resource needs. we found that the resource need category frequencies were similar across all regions of the united states. this finding suggests that the common areas of teacher needs are shared rather than unique to any particular regions. shortage of resources for teachers is a national issue, not regional one. this finding suggests a call for a national attention and effort to address teacher resource needs that will positively impact teachers’ lives. 4.2 theoretical and methodological implications when it comes to the study’s theoretical implications, we suggest an extension to the jd-r theory’s resource categories: the institutional resource needs. teachers mentioned institutional resource needs in various ways. for example, teachers noted specific issues that affect teachers of color and the need for more teachers of color in education. this highlights the need to investigate the experience of teachers of color and the added stressors that occur among teachers with these marginalized identities. additionally, this category of resource needs suggests that teachers are advocating for social changes within schools. future research may consider social inequities that affect teachers and students. political change was also a novel resource need in the institutional theme. like security, political change may have been amplified due to the nature of the hashtag. however, with increasing teacher strikes, politics may play a significant role in how teachers view their profession. future research should investigate how state and national legislation play a role in teacher wellbeing. johnson and down (2013) suggest that research on teacher wellbeing thus far has downplayed the political impact on teachers. they take a socially critical approach to the hyper-individualization of the study of teacher wellbeing and argue that the situational context is important. our research supports this approach in suggesting that institutional resource needs should be considered when investigating teacher wellbeing. when it comes to methodological implications, we recognize several benefits of using social media data. the first is the possibility to receive many responses in a short amount of time. using social media data instantly gave us access to thousands of teacher responses. next, twitter data allowed us to avoid some aspects of research bias. while survey and interview questions may prime participants to answer in particular ways, social media data allowed us to investigate spontaneous statements that may represent teachers’ genuine thoughts. finally, this data allowed us to study phenomenon in real-time. teachers were responding to this hashtag with emotionally laden reactions to the shooting and social media data give us the potential to study these responses. future research should consider using twitter data in investigating teacher wellbeing. 4.3 limitations our study highlights pressing teacher needs. although there are many benefits of using twitter data, there also are some limitations. first, we should consider the twitter prompt itself. the nature of the hashtag was political. given the political divide over issues of gun control in the us, it is possible that this sample has some political bias. it is important to consider the teachers who were drawn to this hashtag and how they may differ from those who were not. moreover, the nature of the hashtag might have swayed the frequency of specific factors. for example, the counseling services theme may have been mentioned more often due to the public conversation of mental health services in schools to approach the mass shooting incidents in the media at the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 time. this hashtag offered a unique insight of teacher resource needs and future studies on teacher resources needs can measure and assess the new and existing resource needs we found through twitter. next, we should consider twitter users. it is possible that there is something unique about teachers who use twitter in the first place. according to a survey conducted by the pew research center (2018), twitter users are younger, more educated, and wealthier than the general public. in the context of the current study, this might mean that younger teachers were more likely to respond to the hashtag. in continuing the study of teacher wellbeing, social media data can be a useful way to understand what teachers need, but it is also important to consider the temporal, social and political contexts hashtags being used for data collection and to use other methods of data collection that can allow for random sampling. 5. conclusion our study extends the literature of teacher wellbeing by identifying areas of teacher resource needs with social media data. an understanding of these data could improve efforts to address teacher needs and thereby decrease teacher stress and burnout and increase their professional engagement and commitment. this study has important practical, theoretical, and methodological contributions for teacher wellbeing literature. we found a range of teacherreported resource needs—including suggestions that have been well-documented in the literature on teacher wellbeing, but also resource needs that have not been well-documented in the literature. the resource needs that have not previously been well-documented include the need for greater security, more counseling services, social change (e.g., services for marginalized students and teachers), and political change (e.g., laws and lawmakers support teachers). our study also identified the teachers’ need for institutional resources that is often neglected in theories on workplace wellbeing. theories, research, and practices that address teacher wellbeing should consider and incorporate these novel teacher resource needs to understand teacher wellbeing more comprehensively. authors christina naegeli costa university of michigan naegeli@umich.edu nansook park university of michigan mari kira university of michigan publishing timeline received 18 august 2020 revised version received 13 april 2021 accepted 16 april 2021 published 31 may 2021 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ resources for teacher wellbeing naegeli costa, park, & kira www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 references anderson, l. & olsen, b. 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(2022). conceptualising social wellbeing using an international group concept mapping study. international journal of wellbeing, 12(3), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i3.1669 megan elliott the university of south wales megan.elliott@southwales.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article conceptualising social wellbeing using an international group concept mapping study megan elliott · steven r. smith · david pontin · carolyn wallace abstract: physical, mental and social components of wellbeing are known to be important to health. however, in health research and practice much of the focus has been on physical and mental wellbeing with less attention paid to social components, which we assert detrimentally affects the development of health policies and practices. a systematic measure of wellbeing, which captures both mental (internal) and social (external) wellbeing is needed to offer a richer, nuanced, and more complex multi-dimensional account of wellbeing. we report on using group concept mapping (gcm) to define a social conception of wellbeing. the aim was to capture the complex multi-dimensional aspects of the ‘social resources’ that people access, and the ‘social worlds’ they inhabit. we highlight why it is necessary to separate and promote different components of wellbeing simultaneously, and why a multi-dimensional definition of social wellbeing is needed. we discuss the importance of promoting social wellbeing in health and social care settings, with reference to social prescribing. the paper demonstrates how a theoretically coherent and workable conception of social wellbeing may support scale development i.e., the south wales social wellbeing scale (swswbs). it is anticipated that such a tool would measure the quality of respondents’ overall experience of social wellbeing via the external social resources they possess, their perceived ability to engage in and enjoy the social world in which they live, and, as a result, their capacity for human functioning and flourishing. keywords: wellbeing; consensus; social world; group concept mapping; human flourishing 1. introduction the world health organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (who 1948). central to this definition are the three conceptualisations of wellbeing; physical, mental and social. however, there is no consensus regarding the definition and theoretical basis for wellbeing, and how these different components of wellbeing relate (deci & ryan 2008; dodge et al. 2012). a general definition of wellbeing refers to what helps people’s lives go better for them (fletcher 2015; 2016; galvin 2018). from this definition, certain types of wellbeing can be conceptualised by referring to two distinct but related domains. firstly, wellbeing can be conceptualised in relation to internal mental and emotional states, which is a central aspect of what is often referred to as subjective wellbeing (tennant et al. 2007; eid & larsen 2008). in this case, internal wellbeing is concerned with people’s individual feelings, their emotions, and/or their thoughts. secondly, wellbeing can be conceptualised in relation to external social environments and the ability of an individual to access and enjoy social resources (hill-dixon, solley & bynon 2018; smith, 2019; williams et al. 2019). the main theoretical assumption of this paper is that promoting both conceptions of wellbeing i.e. internal and external, across health about:blank conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 and social care settings, is essential to understand how wellbeing may be enhanced across populations and guide professional assessment, intervention and evaluation. for example, in social prescribing services the warwick edinburgh mental wellbeing scale (wemwbs), a 14item tool, is the most common tool used by professionals to measure wellbeing. the development of a social wellbeing tool to complement wemwbs would produce a multidimensional assessment of wellbeing. by enhancing peoples’ internal mental and external social wellbeing, we argue that individuals are in a better position to flourish and function well in their environments and produce good health outcomes so that their lives go better for them. drawing from the work of martha nussbaum (1992; 2000; 2011), we start by defining social wellbeing broadly, as the capability individuals have to socially engage with their environments, conducive to their flourishing, and human functioning. however, it is also important to conceptualise what this social engagement means exactly in order to systematically measure social wellbeing in complex and multi-dimensional ways. it is widely acknowledged that the multi-faceted nature of the concept of wellbeing, lacks specific definition and a theoretical basis, which poses challenges in measuring wellbeing (pollard & lee 2003; dodge et al. 2012). subsequently, many measures to assess subjective wellbeing exist, with their utility varying depending on the discipline (e.g. in clinical psychology and health economics) and the context within which they are applied (linton et al. 2016; eid & larson 2008). a thematic review of 99 self-report measures of wellbeing identified six broad dimensions of wellbeing that may be assessed using these tools; mental, social, physical, spiritual, activities and functioning and personal circumstances (linton et al. 2016). the majority of these tools were multi-dimensional and the most commonly included measures were of mental wellbeing, especially when these tools were used for health research, policies, and practices. measures of social wellbeing tended to be incorporated into existing tools measuring multiple dimensions of wellbeing. the social well-being scale (keyes 1998), a 50-item scale, measuring social wellbeing across five theoretically substantiated dimensions, was the only tool identified as measuring the concept of social wellbeing in isolation. however, despite substantial changes and developments to the social world in the past 20 years, the social well-being scale has not been updated since 1998 (linton et al. 2016). given the global policy and practice influence of the social determinants of health model in addressing health inequality (dahlgren & whitehead 1991; marmot et al. 2020), particularly in the context of the covid-19 global pandemic (bambra et al. 2020), it is necessary to explore the concept of social wellbeing in this new context, to provide a uni-dimensional tool that can support those working with communities to address health issues related to their social world. such a tool could be used in conjunction with existing tools to assess mental wellbeing, i.e. the warwick edinburgh mental wellbeing scale (wemwbs; tenant et al 2007). responding, the present study aims to develop the concept of social wellbeing and subsequently develop a tool which specifically measures social wellbeing to support front-line workers in addressing health inequalities and complement their assessment of mental wellbeing in order to produce a multidimensional assessment of wellbeing. measuring social wellbeing has been well researched, insofar as mechanisms for assessing the level of engagement with social resources within communities have been variously developed and implemented (williams et al, 2019; haslam and haslam, 2019; haslam et al, 2019; d’ambrosio, 2018; hill-dixon et al 2018; white and blakemore 2016; bruni, 2015; white 2015; lee at al 2015; atkinson, 2013). subsequently, social wellbeing has often been related to notions of social connection, focussing on the capabilities individuals and social groups have to access social resources (alkire and deneulin, 2009; nussbaum, 1992; 2000; 2011). however, the contention here is that a further dimension to measuring social well-being also needs developing. that is, concerning how http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 individuals variously interpret their social world as related to what they understand as their own social environment and including the relative importance, access and enjoyment of their ‘social world’ as reflected in these interpretations. it is this latter dimension which the study here is especially focussed on, allowing practitioners to measure social wellbeing reflecting these individual interpretations, anticipating that these measurements can then be tailored to individual service users’ needs and perceptions. this work has been undertaken within the field of social prescribing, but we anticipate that the findings will be relevant to other disciplines in health and social care. 2. background/setting this study builds upon the work of the wales school for social prescribing research (www.wsspr.wales). social prescribing is a means of “connecting citizens to community support to better manage their health and wellbeing” (rees et al. 2019, p. 30). it involves a pathway in which a link worker, also referred to as a community connector, social prescriber or wellbeing advisor, works with an individual to co-produce goals, and connects them with resources, groups and assets in their local community (kimberlee 2015; husk et al. 2016; carnes et al. 2017; husk et al. 2019). the most commonly expressed aim of social prescribing is to help bring about an improved state of wellbeing (rempel et al. 2017), specifically mental, social and physical wellbeing. evaluations of social prescribing commonly use measures of mental wellbeing, most frequently the warwick edinburgh mental wellbeing scale (wemwbs; tennant et al. 2007; rempel et al. 2017), but lack measures of social wellbeing and so undermines the robustness of the evaluation. social prescribing evaluations often report dissonance between qualitative and quantitative outcomes (carnes et al. 2017; bickerdike et al. 2017; pescheny et al. 2019). the lack of appropriate outcome tools for social prescribing, specifically focusing on social wellbeing may explain this. a systematic multi-dimensional measure of wellbeing, which captures both mental (internal) and social (external) wellbeing is required to give a rounded, robust and rigorous evaluation of social prescribing interventions. this would also offer a richer, more complex and nuanced multi-dimensional account of wellbeing. this paper reports on the development of the concept of social wellbeing with a view to promoting and supporting the achievement of good health outcomes. the principal method used to develop the concept is group concept mapping (gcm) (kane & trochim 2007). gcm was used to systematically understand the concept of social wellbeing and its role in promoting good health outcomes for various populations. the main research question that was addressed using gcm is, ‘how may a social conception of wellbeing be coherently defined in order to capture the complex and multi-dimensional aspects of the social resources and the various ‘social worlds’ people inhabit?’ 3. methods 3.1 design the study used an integrated mixed-method design (caracelli & greene 1993) to explore how people conceptualise and interpret their social world. group concept mapping (gcm) is a structured methodology used to generate consensus among a diverse group of stakeholders (kane & trochim 2007). it systematically integrates qualitative components of a study through the processes of idea generation, with quantitative components through the representation of those ideas in visual maps and other reports. these may then be used to generate a conceptual framework for the subject of inquiry, in this case social wellbeing. a conceptual framework http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.wsspr.wales/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 developed from using gcm can then be used to develop measurement tools (e.g. wallace et al. 2018, pontin et al. 2019; dunlop et al. 2020) and frameworks for planning and evaluation (e.g. macdiarmid et al. 2011; schell et al. 2013). there are three distinct stages of data collection when using gcm: brainstorming, sorting and rating. this is followed by structured data analysis and interpretation of the findings by the researchers and a stakeholder group (kane & trochim 2007). using group wisdomtm software, all stages of the study were conducted remotely online. this helped to facilitate the recruitment and participation of a geographically diverse sample, which was of particular concern as the data collection period coincided with the united kingdom covid-19 pandemic restrictions on movement and face-to-face social interaction (carroll et al. 2020). consequently, the study was conducted on-line between june and september 2020. 3.2 ethical approval ethical approval was granted by the authors’ institutional faculty ethics committee (reference: 200607lr). 3.3 participants potential participants were contacted via gatekeeper organisations who were members of the wales social prescribing research network, the welsh council for voluntary action and the wales school for social prescribing research. the gatekeeper organisations shared the study invitation amongst their networks via email and social media. a prospective purposive heterogenetic sampling strategy was used to identify a maximum variation of participants, including academics, social prescribing practitioners, healthcare professionals, and members of the public (kane & trochim 2007, p. 36; patton 2002, p. 267). one-hundred and fifty-eight (n=158) people expressed an interest in participating, and ninety-six (n=96) returned a completed consent form via email. of those, ninety-three (n=93) were enrolled onto the group wisdomtm software and three (n=3) joined a study advisory group to help steer the project to a satisfactory and meaningful fruition. the study advisory group membership comprised of researchers, social prescribing digital software solutions, healthcare professionals, social prescribers, third sector representatives and members of the public. there were representative of the social prescribing community. the advisory group were consulted at each stage of the gcm study to review findings and support interpretation. 3.4 group concept mapping procedure the three stages of the gcm study were facilitator-led and comprised individual 20-30-minute online exercises over an eight-week period. study participants were emailed written instructions and guidance on how to access the online study site, engage with the project, and gain real time/asynchronous access to the facilitator if required. one participant completed all three phases of the study verbally via telephone due to visual impairment and was supported by a member of the research team to do this. participants were asked to complete five demographic questions upon their first entry to the software, enquiring about gender, age, country, disability and type of area the lived in. the five demographic questions were used to organise the analysis of the qualitative data. the study steering group developed a focus prompt for the brainstorming exercise and identified the three rating scales for the latter activities. participants read the focus prompt and completed it in their own words. they could generate as many statements as they wished, and these statements were used as the basis for the next two phases of gcm activity – http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 sorting and rating. the agreed focus prompt for the brainstorming exercise was: “when i think of the things that have made up my social world over the last year, i include...” to help clarify the intended focus of the study, further guidance was given to participants about the broad meaning of the social world: rather than focusing on your feelings and thoughts about yourself, we want you to think about your social world. by social world we mean things that you have or own, and other things that help you do what you want to do in your everyday life, so that you can be the person you want to be. it also covers when you’re inside and outside of your home. the brainstorming stage was open for three weeks (july-august 2020) for participants to generate as many statements as they wanted, in response to the focus prompt. statements generated in brainstorming were cleaned by the study steering group, the process of which is described in the results section. the sorting phase started in august 2020 and was open for two weeks. using the group wisdomtm online sorting screen, participants sorted the list of statements into groups that made sense to them, and they labelled each of their groups of statements using a term that made sense to them. after the sorting phase was completed, the rating phase started in september 2020 and was open for three weeks. participants rated each of the statements (n=125) on three 5-point likert scales, one each for importance, access and enjoyment. 3.5 data analysis the gcm data were reviewed, cleaned and accepted by the study team. the analysis was primarily conducted by the first author and supported by the study team. four data analysis steps were completed using the online software (https://groupwisdom.com/): 1. responses to demographic questions were analysed using descriptive statistics. 2. a similarity matrix was created using data from the sorting stage to identify statements that were commonly sorted together. kane and trochim (2007, p93) describe the matrix as a ‘single sorter binary square’ data matrix that is developed for all sorters (participants) in a cumulative fashion and results in the total similarity matrix. a similarity cut-off can be used where results are difficult to interpret or outliers exist (kane & rosas, 2018). however, the data in this similarity matrix was easily interpreted, and therefore a similarity cut-off was not required. 3. multidimensional-scaling analysis of the similarity matrix produced a statement point map (figure 1). it is described as ‘a general technique that represents any similarity or dissimilarity matrix as distances between the original items in the matrix’ (kane and trochim, 2007, p93). 4. ward’s algorithm was used to create cluster maps with cluster labels, cluster rating maps, pattern match reports and go-zone reports using hierarchical cluster analysis. cluster maps with labels and pattern match reports are described below. a cluster rating map demonstrated the average rating values each for importance, access and enjoyment. multiple go-zone graphs were created, which allowed the researchers to compare statements across two rating scales, importance and access. the average of each statement was plotted in an x-y graph, dividing the cluster contents into 4 quadrants which were above or below the mean value. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://groupwisdom.com/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 4. results 4.1 participant demographics of the n=93 participants recruited n=78 completed the participants questions. the majority of participants described themselves as female (71.8%; n=56). all age groups were represented from 19 years to 90 years (m=49 years). most participants lived in wales (73.1%, n=57), but there was representation from other countries including england (15.4%, n=12), republic of ireland (1.3%; n=1), united states of america (2.6%; n=2), australia (2.6%; n=2), spain (2.6%; n=2), switzerland (1.3%; n=1) and portugal (1.3%; n=1). the majority of participants identified as having no disability (77.3%; n=58). the remaining participants reported social/communication impairment (1.3%; n=1), long-standing illness or health conditions (1.3%; n=1), mental health conditions (10.7%; n=8), learning difficulties (1.3%; n=1), physical impairments/mobility issues (2.6%; n=2), two or more impairments/disabling medical conditions or other conditions not listed (1.3%; n=1). finally, participants were asked to describe the type of area in which they lived. there was an even distribution between the type of location described, between city (24.7%; n=19), town (28.6%; n=22), village (20.8%; n=16), rural (19.5%; n=15) and other (6.5%; n=5, including seaside location, suburbs of a city, outskirts of a city, small town in rural location). 4.2 developing the concept the participants generated an initial list of 363 statements in the brainstorming exercise in response to the prompt “when i think of the things that have made up my social world over the last year, i include...”. the ‘key words in context’ (kwic; kane & rosas 2018) method was used to clean the statement list in order to make the study more manageable. this involved synthesising statements with similar meaning; removing statements that were redundant or irrelevant, and removing duplicates after compound statements were split. this left 207 remaining statements. a code word was assigned to each of the 207 statements, and statements that were tagged with the same code word were reviewed by the study steering group and synthesised into a statement that shared a similar sentiment. at this point, the statements that were identified in the literature review and not generated by participants (n=9) were added to the list. the final statement list of 125 statements was reviewed by the research team and the advisory board. examples of the final statements can be viewed in table 1. table 1. example statements generated from brainstorming. statement no. statement 19 going out with family and friends to restaurants, cafes and bars 37 supporting family members, e.g. taking them shopping every week 81 greeting people i meet when exercising and feeling part of an unofficial club when others say hello 115 thinking about what i really want from my employment, work life balance 121 the ability to use government services, e.g. health, community the gcm software was used to generate a point map that placed all 125 statements on an x -y axis using data from the sorting stage (figure 1). the dataset had a final stress value of 0.2478. stress value is considered to be similar to reliability, with an acceptable range of 0.205-0.365 (kane & trochim, 2007). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 figure 1. computer generated point map of 125 statements. each numbered point corresponds to the relevant statement number. a series of cluster maps were produced from the software generated point map. after reviewing the various cluster permutations, the study steering group agreed on a six-cluster model for social wellbeing (figure 2). statements were placed within clusters depending on the information generated by participants when they sorted the statements into groups. the six clusters identified were; ‘everyday life, activities and pastimes’ [1], ‘family and friends’ [2], ‘connecting with others and supporting needs’ [3], ‘community involvement’ [4], ‘engaging with and reflecting on the wider world’ [5] and ‘self-growth and security’ [6]. the conceptual relationship between the clusters is indicated by the distance that exists between them, so the closer the clusters are to each other, the stronger the relationship they have between them. cluster labels were generated by participants and re viewed by the research team to ensure a good fit between the label and the statements that were included within each cluster. table 2 details the distribution of statements across the six clusters; ‘everyday life, activities and pastimes’ [1] has the most statements (n=29) and ‘self-growth and security’ [6] has the least (n=12). examples of statements placed within each cluster can be seen in table 3. bridging values are used to indicate how closely statements are related to others which have been placed in the same cluster. low bridging values indicate that statements were consistently sorted together and high bridging values indicate that statements may have been sorted within a range of other clusters. statements with low bridging values represent anchor statements within a cluster. bridging values for clusters and two anchor statements can be found in table 3. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 figure 2. cluster map with labels from the participant sorting exercise. the numbers indicate the statement. table 2. number of statements per cluster and average rating for each cluster on scales of importance, access and enjoyment. e v e ry d a y l if e , a ct iv it ie s a n d p a st im e s f a m il y a n d f ri e n d s c o n n e ct in g w it h o th e rs a n d su p p o rt in g n e e d s c o m m u n it y in v o lv e m e n t e n g a g in g w it h a n d re fl e ct in g o n t h e w id e r w o rl d s e lf -g ro w th a n d se cu ri ty number of statements 29 25 22 16 21 12 average importance rating of cluster 3.50 3.44 3.02 2.97 2.87 3.61 average access rating of cluster 3.48 3.08 2.72 2.73 2.97 3.61 average enjoyment rating of cluster 3.78 3.84 3.26 3.30 2.39 3.66 the cluster that was rated the most important (m=3.61) and most accessible (m=3.61) was the ‘self-growth and security’ [6] cluster. ‘family and friends’ [2] was rated as the most enjoyable cluster (m=3.84). conversely, the least important cluster (m=2.87) was ‘engaging with and reflecting on the wider world’ [6], the least accessible cluster (m=2.72) was ‘connecting with others and supporting needs’ [3] and the least enjoyable cluster (m=2.39) was ‘engaging with and reflecting on the wider world’ [5]. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 table 3. example statements from each cluster. no. cluster bridging value 1 – everyday life, activities and pastimes (n=29) 0.21 1 relaxing and creative activities by myself, e.g. sewing, painting, knitting, writing, photography, reading, doing jigsaw puzzles 0.08 75 enjoying the sunshine 0.09 2 – family and friends (n=25) 0.16 32 reconnecting with old friends and letting go of others 0.00 36 sharing with friends, e.g. my writing for discussion or recipes 0.00 3 – connecting with others and supporting needs (n=22) 0.18 9 a large network of friends 0.07 60 getting to know the neighbours and chatting to them outside our houses 0.09 4 – community involvement (n=16) 0.41 61 seeing neighbours and offering them support 0.27 56 using local businesses – cafés, pubs, bookshops, record stores, diy stores 0.29 5 – engaging with and reflecting on the wider world (n=14) 0.68 111 continuing to work after retirement age – inputting my experience and mentoring others during this difficult time 0.43 104 using more technology, e.g. computer, mobile phone 0.47 6 – self growth and security (n=12) 0.36 123 being able to make worthwhile plans for myself and my future 0.22 124 being able to put into practice worthwhile plans for myself and my future 0.22 all cluster average ratings for the three rating scales; importance, access and enjoyment can be found in table 2. these ratings can be further understood using a relative pattern match (figure 3) which compares ratings of different concepts to establish a trend (kamat 2019). this indicated the general consistency between the importance-access ratings (r=0.86) and importanceenjoyment ratings (r=0.84) but showed a weaker relationship between access and enjoyment (r=0.48). discrepancies for access and enjoyment were identified in clusters 2, 3 and 4, which had high ratings of enjoyment and importance, but lower ratings of access. for the top-ten statements rated as highest on importance, access and enjoyment eight were derived from the ‘everyday life, activities and pastimes’ [1] cluster, one from ‘self-growth and security’ [6] and one from ‘engaging with and reflecting on the wider world’ [5]. alternatively, for the top-ten statements rated as highest on importance and enjoyment, but lowest on access seven were derived from ‘family and friends’ [2], and others were drawn from ‘everyday life, activities and pastimes’ [1] (n=2) and ‘connecting with others and supporting needs’ [3] (n=1). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 figure 3. relative pattern match report comparing cluster ratings for importance, enjoyment and access. 5. discussion this paper reports on the development of the concept of social wellbeing with a view to promoting and supporting the achievement of good health outcomes across wales and elsewhere. the principal method was group concept mapping (gcm; kane & trochim 2007). we have used gcm to identify how a range of participants, including health and social care practitioners, service-users and their representatives, conceptualise their social world. gcm is used here to systematically understand the concept of social wellbeing and its role in promoting good health outcomes. by using the gcm method, we have been able to tease out the various components of the concept of social wellbeing and describe their multi-dimensional relationships. the clusters identified within the concept represent a variety of components of social wellbeing, ranging from everyday activities, interactions with others (family and friends), supporting others, being involved with our community, engagement and reflection, and self-growth and security. these components mirror well-established research on what is essential for facilitating social well-being as related to the capacity for social connection (williams et al, 2019; haslam and haslam, 2019; haslam et al, 2019; d’ambrosio, 2018; hill-dixon et al 2018; white and blakemore 2016; bruni, 2015; white 2015; lee at al 2015; atkinson, 2013). however, in addition the analysis provided using the group wisdomtm software allowed us to explore individual interpretations of ‘the social world’ people inhabit, identifying those clusters that were considered by respondents to be most important, accessible and enjoyable, along with their opposites. self-growth and security http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 and interacting with others (family and friends) feature highly in those clusters that are considered to be important, accessible and enjoyable, while engagement and reflection, and connecting with others least so. by giving this added nuance to how individuals variously interpret their ‘social world’ and relate this to their own social environment, the study here builds on and develops other research on social wellbeing (examples referenced above) which has tended to focus on the more general abilities individuals and groups have to access social resources within their communities. we anticipate that the concept developed and reported in this paper will allow us to develop a tool, the south wales social wellbeing scale (swswbs), to measure social wellbeing that addresses the multi-dimensional relationships involved in the concept. using the data generated in the present study, the swswbs will be co-produced with an advisory group. items will be selected based on participant ratings of importance, access and enjoyment, in addition to considering the bridging value to ensure representation of all components of social well-being, as determined by this study. iterative pilot testing of the tool will be necessary during item selection, followed be testing and validation. the swswbs will measure the quality of an individuals’ experience of the external social resources they possess, their perceived ability to engage in and enjoy the social world in which they live, and subsequently their capacity for human functioning and flourishing. these components will constitute their overall experience of social wellbeing and may be used by health and social care practitioners when working with service users and their representatives. it is anticipated that using the swswbs will provide opportunities to access these external social resources through various social institutional practices, such as health, education, employment, income, housing, community assets, the ‘outside’ and natural environment, and engaging in other inclusive and empowering social networks. consistent with the idea of promoting both conceptions of wellbeing i.e. internal and external, we hypothesise that the swswbs could be used to complement the use of warwick-edinburgh mental wellbeing scale (wemwbs; tennant et al. 2007) by health and social care practitioners with service-users. the wemwbs is a widely used and respected tool for measuring and evaluating the impact of policy and practice on the wellbeing of participants (rempel et al. 2017; stewart-brown et al. 2009). when using the wemwbs with service users, practitioners can explore with respondents their experiences over the previous two weeks by focusing on what respondents feel and think about themselves. in this case, the wemwbs focuses on the internal definition of wellbeing. in contrast, rather than focussing on the internal mental states of mind/emotion of respondents as wemwbs does, the aim of swswbs is to focus on respondents’ experiences of the external ‘social world’ with which they are able to engage and enjoy to a greater or lesser extent. using the swswbs in conjunction with the wemwbs could provide a holistic overview of wellbeing to inform practice and support development of the social prescribing evidence base. it is anticipated that a much richer, more complex, and multidimensional account of wellbeing using the swswbs and the wemwbs to measure and evaluate mental and social aspects of wellbeing may be generated than if using each scale alone would permit. 6. limitations there are some limitations to the study, not least that it was conducted during the covid-19 pandemic which may have caused respondents to re-consider and reflect on their everyday life in a new light. we were mindful of this as we reviewed and synthesised the statements prior to the sorting phase, and we took steps to ameliorate any obvious references to the pandemic. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ conceptualising social wellbeing elliott, smith, pontin & wallace www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 although we took steps to recruit a broad international range of participants and were successful in including participants from the uk and abroad, and from the major constituencies involved in social prescribing, it’s fair to say that our sample is over representative of women, living in wales without a disability. in addition, we did not ask participants about their occupation. finally, although 93 participants returned their consent form, not all participants completed the participant questions and all of the gcm stages. despite this, the statement ratings were consistent across all demographic groups. this gives us confidence that the concept of social wellbeing as developed in the present study will provide a basis for developing a tool to measure social wellbeing, which in turn should complement the existing evidence -based tools available to social prescribers to help people maintain their wellbeing. 7. conclusion the study reported here demonstrates how consensus methods have been used to conceptualise social wellbeing and identify clusters within the concept. this conceptualisation of social wellbeing may be used to develop a corresponding measurement tool, for use by health and social care practitioners and evaluators. using the gcm findings to develop an evidence -based tool may enhance knowledge about the impact of interventions on the distinct components of wellbeing. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors megan elliott the university of south wales megan.elliott@southwales.ac.uk steven r. smith the university of south wales david pontin the university of south wales carolyn wallace the university of south wales acknowledgments with thanks to the wales school for social prescribing research (wsspr) for support in undertaking this group concept mapping study and developing the south wales social wellbeing scale. publishing timeline received 1 april 2021 revised 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(2014). measuring flourishing: the impact of operational definitions on the prevalence of high levels of wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 62-90. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.4 lucy c. hone auckland university of technology lucy.hone@aut.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 article measuring flourishing: the impact of operational definitions on the prevalence of high levels of wellbeing lucy c. hone · aaron jarden · grant m. schofield · scott duncan abstract: the epidemiology of flourishing is an important research topic prompting international interest in its psychometric assessment. but the need to measure human feelings and functioning at the population level has resulted in the creation of a multitude of different conceptual frameworks of flourishing: a term now commonly used to describe high levels of subjective wellbeing. not only do different researchers theorise and conceptualise flourishing in different ways, but also the categorical diagnosis of flourishing is dependent upon the various combinations of components, and researcher-determined thresholds, used in each operationalization. the multiplicity of approaches is potentially limiting the usefulness of the resultant epidemiology. this paper comprises two parts: part 1 identifies four operationalizations of flourishing in the psychology literature and reviews their psychometric properties and utility; part 2 investigates the impact of operational definition on the prevalence of flourishing using the sovereign wellbeing index survey, a sample of 10,009 adult new zealanders, and reports substantial variation in prevalence rates according to the four different operationalizations: huppert and so (24%), keyes (39%), diener et al. (41%) and seligman et al. (47%). huppert and so’s model was the only one of the four to require endorsement of one particular variable, making it the most stringent criterion for flourishing, while the other three were more flexible in their categorisation. cross-tabulation analysis indicated strong agreement between our replications of keyes and seligman et al.’s models (81%), and between diener et al. and seligman et al.’s models (80%). agreement between seligman, and huppert and so’s, operationalizations was moderate (74%). taken together, and in line with recent oecd recommendations, our findings reinforce the need for greater international collaboration and conceptualisation consensus when measuring flourishing. in the absence of any published empirical research investigating perceptions of flourishing among laypersons, a prototype analysis investigating alignment between lay and academic conceptualisations of flourishing is recommended. keywords: flourishing, conceptualisation, measuring, definition, positive psychology, well-being, wellbeing, epidemiology. 1. introduction the epidemiology of high levels of wellbeing, referred to here as flourishing, is an important research topic fuelling substantial international interest in its psychometric measurement. based on the assumption that “well-being would prevail when pathology was absent” (huppert & so, 2013, p. 838), epidemiology has traditionally focused on disease. but a growing body of research challenges this assumption, asserting that mental illness and mental health are two separate, albeit related, continua (keyes, 2002, 2005). population-based studies investigating the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 prevalence and characteristics of mental health, in addition to mental illness, are therefore vital for providing evidence to support effective population intervention programmes (lamers, westerhof, bohlmeijer, ten klooster, & keyes, 2011). in other words, “as a society, we need to know how people can flourish” (dunn & dougherty, 2008, p. 314). michaelson and colleagues have identified eight benefits to measuring population wellbeing: to assess change over time; to review and evaluate policy decisions; to enable international comparisons; to assess subgroup differences; to identify future areas of need or opportunity; to evaluate the potential impact of policy proposals; to shape the content and delivery of policy; and to inform targeting of new policies according to population subgroups (michaelson, abdallah, steuer, thompson, & marks, 2009). the growing evidence base of the desirable correlates of high levels of wellbeing (for review see diener et al., 2010), and the risks to individual and societal-level functioning associated with low levels of wellbeing (keyes, 2002, 2005, 2010), is convincing policy makers of the importance of complementing objective indicators (e.g. gross domestic product, literacy, and life expectancy) with assessment of subjective wellbeing (weijers & jarden, 2013). as a result, the last decade has seen several countries devise national, or multi-national, surveys designed to empirically measure wellbeing as a multi-dimensional construct. current national wellbeing surveys come from a variety of sources, both national statistics offices and non-official sources, including for example the european social survey (jowell & the central co-ordinating team, 2003), the sovereign wellbeing index (human potential centre, 2013), the australian unity wellbeing index (cummins, eckersley, pallant, van vugt, & misajon, 2003) and statistics canada’s general social survey (statistics canada, 2011). measures of wellbeing are not only important for governments and decision-makers in organisations, but for the general public too, with polls reflecting a growing appetite among citizens for governments to attend to subjective wellbeing. in one poll, for example, given the choice between pursuing wealth or happiness, 81% of adults aged 15 and over (n = 1,001) believed directing policy towards promoting greater happiness should be the government’s primary purpose (easton, 2006). in another poll, economic measures such as gdp were endorsed as a measure of national wellbeing by just 30% of respondents (n = 6,870), compared to 79% endorsing ‘life satisfaction’ as a measure of national wellbeing (ons uk, 2011). recently published oecd guidelines on measuring subjective wellbeing have also acknowledged the merit of assessing the views of individuals, providing “an overall picture of well-being that is grounded in people’s preferences, rather than in a priori judgements about what should be the most important aspects of well-being” (oecd, 2013, p. 183). however, for wellbeing outcomes to guide policy in an effective and meaningful way, systematic assessment using reliable, valid, and responsive measurement tools, as well as representative population samples, is required (diener, lucas, schimmack, & helliwell, 2009). while substantial progress has been made over the last two decades, with researchers reaching a general consensus that wellbeing is a multi-dimensional construct, and that flourishing refers to high levels of wellbeing (diener et al., 2010; fredrickson & losada, 2005; huppert & so, 2009; keyes, 2002; seligman, 2011), the current measurement of wellbeing is haphazard (diener, 2009; diener & seligman, 2004; forgeard, jayawickreme, kern, & seligman, 2011). the presence of multiple measures of flourishing makes it necessary to compare and contrast these models and measures. this paper has two objectives: part one reviews the current literature on the most popular psychometric assessments of flourishing, drawing together, for the first time, frequently used conceptualisations and operationalizations. while our review does not claim to be exhaustive, it is, to the best of our knowledge, the first of its kind to summarize the main instruments available measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 to measure population flourishing. we begin with a historical review of the psychometric assessments, providing details on each of the researchers’ theoretical and conceptual definitions of flourishing, methodologies for categorical diagnosis, and extant evidence of scale reliability and validity. as the theoretical evidence-base for each component indicator of flourishing has been reviewed elsewhere (for example, see forgeard et al., 2011; michaelson et al., 2009) this is not the purpose of our investigation; our focus is on comparing the way the components are combined, and categorical definitions of flourishing operationalized, as well as reviewing the research supporting them. part two investigates the impact of operational definitions on the prevalence of flourishing in new zealand. using a large nationally representative sample, and survey data containing sufficient variables, it examines differences and similarities of the prevalence of flourishing as a consequence of conceptualisation and operational definition. 2. part one: literature review 2.1 methods search strategy: operationalizations of flourishing were identified by several means. keyword searches in psychological and social science databases were conducted using the following mesh terms and text words: “flourish*” in combination with “measur*” or “assess*” or “evaluat*” or “scale”. the search was restricted to peer-reviewed studies published in the english language. no time criteria were applied. we also checked the references from the studies retrieved. 2.2 results a total of 71 citations were found and reviewed across the cinahl (6), medline (22), psychology and behavioral sciences collection (5) and psycinfo (38) databases. our search revealed four different conceptualisations and operational definitions of flourishing currently used within the psychological literature: keyes’, huppert and so’s, diener et al.’s, and seligman et al.’s. the first contemporary use of the term flourishing among psychologists to describe high levels of wellbeing was by corey keyes. using a representative sample of adult americans (n = 3,032), keyes categorised adults free of mental disorder as either flourishing, moderately mentally healthy, or languishing (keyes, 2002). following on from keyes, huppert and so took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the addition of a new wellbeing module to the 2006/7 european social survey (ess; jowell & the central co-ordinating team, 2003) to conduct the first cross-national epidemiological studies of flourishing (huppert et al., 2009). while huppert and so’s studies cite keyes’ research, they chose not to adopt his operational definition, instead devising, operationalizing and testing their own theoretical and conceptual framework. next came diener and colleagues’ flourishing scale (fs; diener et al., 2010). the scale was created in acknowledgement that using the satisfaction with life scale (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) and an affective measure such as the positive and negative affect schedule (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988) only evaluated emotional wellbeing, and therefore failed to assess areas of positive functioning that evidence indicates to be vital for wellbeing (such as competence, selfacceptance, meaning and relatedness, as well as optimism, giving, and engagement, see brown, nesse, vinokur, & smith, 2003; putnam, 1995; ryan & deci, 2001; ryff, 1989; seligman, 2006). finally, the most recent operationalization of flourishing is the perma-profiler, an acronym representing seligman’s theory that wellbeing requires high levels of positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishments (perma; seligman, 2011). measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 each of these four different theoretical models, conceptual operationalizations, and the body of science supporting them, is reviewed in greater detail below. they are depicted in figure 1. figure 1. four different conceptualisations of flourishing keyes huppert & so diener et al. seligma n et al. positive relationships positive relationships positive relationships positive relationships positive affect (interested) engagement engagement engagement purpose in life meaning purpose and meaning meaning and purpose self-acceptance self-esteem self-acceptance and self-esteem – positive affect (happy) positive emotion – positive emotion – competence competence accomplishment/ competence – optimism optimism – social contribution – social contribution – social integration – – – social growth – – – social acceptance – – – social coherence – – – environmental mastery – – – personal growth – – – autonomy – – – life satisfaction – – – – emotional stability – – – vitality – – – resilience – – note: see appendix a for swi indicator items and thresholds selected to replicate each of these conceptualisations for the purposes of part two of this study. 2.2.1 keyes’ operational definition keyes’ polythetic approach, derived by examining the diagnostic and statistical manual’s internationally agreed diagnostic criteria and identifying each symptom’s opposite (dsm; american psychiatric association, 1987), requires the combined presence of high levels of emotional, psychological and social wellbeing symptoms (keyes, 2002). hence, in the same way that a diagnosis of depression requires indications of anhedonia and malfunctioning, keyes requires the presence of hedonic symptoms and positive functioning for a person to be classified as flourishing. his conceptualisation provides self-report assessment of how individuals see themselves functioning personally, as well as evaluating how they see themselves functioning in society. this model of flourishing is underpinned by three theoretical origins: 1) diener’s studies measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 on emotional wellbeing (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999), 2) ryff’s distinction between hedonic (subjective or emotional) wellbeing and eudaimonic (psychological) wellbeing (ryff, 1989), and 3) his own studies on social wellbeing (keyes, 1998). the 14-item mental health continuum short form (mhc-sf; keyes, 2005) was developed by keyes in answer to demands for a brief self-rating assessment tool combining all three components of wellbeing. three items represent emotional wellbeing, six items represent psychological wellbeing, and five items represent social wellbeing. each item is scored according to respondents’ experiences over the last month on a 6-point likert scale (‘never’, ‘once or twice’, ‘about once a week’, ‘2 or 3 times a week’, ‘almost every day’, or ‘every day’) – see appendix a. this response option was selected to provide a clear standard of mental health assessment and categorisation similar to the dsm methods for assessing major depressive episode. keyes suggests mental health can be categorised using thresholds for each of the items: participants responding ‘almost every day’ or ‘every day’ to one of the three symptoms of emotional wellbeing, and to six of the eleven symptoms of psychological and social wellbeing, are categorised as flourishing. subscales, dimensions, and indicator items of the mhc-sf are presented in table 1. table 1: subscales, dimensions, and indicator items on the mhc-sf component of flourishing mhc-sf indicator item during the past month, how often did you feel… emotional wellbeing positive affect happy positive affect interested in life life satisfaction satisfied social wellbeing social contribution that you had something important to contribute to society social integration that you belonged to a community social actualisation that our society is becoming a better place for people like you social acceptance that people are basically good social coherence that the way our society works makes sense to you psychological wellbeing self-acceptance that you liked most parts of your personality environmental mastery good at managing the responsibilities of your daily life positive relations with others that you had warm and trusting relationships with others personal growth that you had experiences that challenged you to grow and become a better person autonomy confident to think or express your own ideas and opinions purpose in life that your life has a sense of direction or meaning to it studies using the mhc-sf have reported wide variation in prevalence rates of flourishing from 8% among south korean adults (lim, ko, shin, & cho, 2013), to 49% among us college students (keyes et al., 2012), 20% flourishing among adult south africans (keyes et al., 2008), 23% flourishing among egyptian adolescents (salama-younes, 2011), and 44% flourishing among chinese adults (yin, he, & fu, 2013). epidemiological studies using the mhc-sf report flourishing is associated with superior physical, psychological, and psychosocial functioning (keyes, 2005). measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 a considerable body of evidence exists to support the reliability, validity, and utility of the mhc. for example, various formats of the mhc have been used to predict the future risk of mental illness among adults (keyes, dhingra, & simoes, 2010), the risk of all-cause mortality (keyes & simoes, 2012), the risk of suicidality among college students (keyes et al., 2012), and to predict work-related productivity and health care use (keyes & grzywacz, 2005). it has also been used in behavioural genetics research to examine the heritability of flourishing (kendler, myers, maes, & keyes, 2011). the mhc-sf has shown excellent internal consistency and discriminant validity in adolescents and adults across several different countries including the us, the netherlands, egypt and south africa (keyes, 2006; keyes & grzywacz, 2005; keyes et al., 2008; lamers et al., 2011; salama-younes, 2011). lamers and colleagues reported the mhc-sf’s testretest reliability at four time points over nine months using item response theory (lamers et al., 2011). factor analyses have confirmed the mhc-sf’s three-factor structure of emotional, psychological and social wellbeing (gallagher, lopez, & preacher, 2009; joshanloo, wissing, khumalo, & lamers, 2013; keyes et al., 2008; lamers et al., 2011; yin et al., 2013) and metric invariance across cultures (joshanloo et al., 2013). the mhc-sf has been used in a number of national surveys: the us panel study of income dynamic’s child development supplement (keyes, 2009); the south africa fortology study (keyes et al., 2008); and the canadian community health survey (hubka & lakaski, 2013). 2.2.2 huppert and so’s operational definition huppert and so’s theoretical and conceptual definition of flourishing was designed to mirror the internationally agreed upon methodology used in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (american psychiatric association, 2013), as well as the international classification of diseases (world health organization, 1993), requiring the presence of opposite symptoms to major depressive episode (dsm-iv), depressive episode (icd-10), and generalised anxiety disorder (terminology common to both systems). identifying the opposite symptoms of these mental illnesses gave huppert and so a list of ten positive features (competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self-esteem, and vitality). they then used ess data, from a representative sample of 43,000 europeans, to test their conceptual and operational definition of flourishing, analysing responses from the survey’s ten items most closely corresponding to the identified positive features, plus one item assessing life satisfaction (2013). exploratory factor analysis revealed the presence of three factors, which they referred to as ‘positive characteristics’ (comprising emotional stability, vitality, optimism, resilience, and self-esteem), ‘positive functioning’ (comprising engagement, competence, meaning, and positive relationships), and ‘positive appraisal’ (comprising life satisfaction and positive emotion). based on factor analysis, inter-item correlations and data distribution, huppert and so proposed a categorical diagnosis for flourishing that required a strong endorsement of positive emotion, plus a strong endorsement of four out of five ‘positive characteristic’ features and three out of four ‘positive functioning’ features (huppert & so, 2013). like keyes, this method intentionally mirrors the dsm’s methodology by not requiring the simultaneous presence of all symptoms, but a specified number. these researchers’ conceptualisation also covers both the eudaimonic and hedonic aspects of wellbeing, with the first factor representing hedonia, the second two eudaimonia. accordingly flourishing “is the combination of feeling good and functioning effectively” (2013, p. 838). each item is scored according to respondents’ experiences using three different likert scales, with experiences assessed over a range of different time periods, and some items are reverse coded – see appendix a. due to the different response scales used in the ess, huppert measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 and so chose to categorise a feature as present when participants indicated they ‘agree’ on the seven items using a 5-point scale from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. for emotional stability or vitality to be categorised as present, participants were required to respond ‘all or almost all of the time’ or ‘most of the time’ on a 4-point scale. however, the data showed such a strong negative skew on the remaining three items that they required ‘strongly agree’ responses on the two 5-point scales, and 8-10 on the one 0-10 scale. in this sense, huppert and so’s categorisation of flourishing is partly driven by the data’s distribution, although they also report that each threshold corresponded to one category above the mean for each item as support for their methodology. features of flourishing and indicator items from the ess are presented in table 2. table 2: features of flourishing and indicator items from the ess component of flourishing ess indicator item competence most days i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do emotional stability (in the past week) i felt calm and peaceful engagement i love learning new things meaning i generally feel that what i do in my life is valuable and worthwhile optimism i am always optimistic about my future positive emotion taking all things together, how happy would you say you are positive relationships there are people in my life who really care about me resilience when things go wrong in my life it generally takes me a long time to get back to normal (reverse score) self-esteem in general, i feel very positive about myself vitality (in the past week) i had a lot of energy applying their operational definition to the ess round 3 (2006/7) dataset huppert and so reported that 16% of europeans were flourishing. national prevalence rates across participating countries showed wide variation from less than 10% in slovakia, russia and portugal, to 41% in denmark (huppert & so, 2013). other than the original study reporting a spearman correlation between flourishing and life satisfaction of .34 (p < .01), to the best of our knowledge no other studies have assessed the convergence of huppert and so’s model with other wellbeing measures, and the second part of the current study is the first to report prevalence rates of flourishing using their model outside of europe. 2.2.3 diener et al.’s operational definition diener and colleagues created the flourishing scale (2010) as a brief summary measure of psychological functioning, designed to complement other measures of subjective wellbeing. the fs was first introduced as the psychological flourishing scale in a 12-item format (diener & biswas-diener, 2008) but has since been refined to eight items. based upon earlier humanistic psychology theories, the flourishing scale assesses several identified universal human psychological needs, combining these with other theories of wellbeing (diener et al., 2010). specifically, the eight-item scale combines dimensions of wellbeing that ryff (1989), and ryan and deci (2001), suggest are important for positive functioning (such as competence, selfacceptance, meaning and relatedness), with optimism, giving, and engagement, which have also been shown to contribute to wellbeing (brown et al., 2003; csikszentmihalyi, 1990; putnam, 1995; scheier, carver, & bridges, 2001; seligman, 2006) . measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 each item is phrased in a positive direction using a 7-point likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). scores are compiled by adding respondents’ scores from each item on the scale together to form one score of psychological wealth (ranging from 8 to 56). while the 12-item version of the fs suggested thresholds categorising participants as flourishing or not flourishing, no such thresholds have been published for the 8-item version. however, a high score on the scale indicates respondents have a positive self-image in important areas of functioning, and many psychological resources and strengths (diener et al., 2010). using a representative sample of adult new zealanders to assess national flourishing, hone, jarden and schofield (2013) report mean fs scores of 43.82 (sd = 8.36). several studies have so far confirmed the validity, reliability, and the invariant one-factor structure of the 8-item fs across different populations (diener et al., 2010; hone et al., 2013; khodarahimi, 2013; silva & caetano, 2013). dogan et al. used the fs in a study examining the relationship between flourishing, self-esteem, emotional self-efficacy and affect balance on happiness (dogan, totan, & sapmaz, 2013), and the fs was also used alongside other wellbeing measures to test the effectiveness of an on-line occupational health programme in germany (feicht et al., 2013). components of flourishing and indicator items from the flourishing scale are presented in table 3. table 3: components of flourishing and indicator items from the flourishing scale component of flourishing fs indicator item purpose/meaning i lead a purposeful and meaningful life positive relationships my social relationships are supportive and rewarding engagement i am engaged and interested in my daily activities social contribution i actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others competence i am competent and capable in the activities that are important to me self-respect i am a good person and live a good life optimism i am optimistic about my future social relationships people respect me 2.2.4 seligman et al.’s operational definition seligman theorises that wellbeing has five components that can be defined and measured as separate, but correlated, constructs (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning in life, and accomplishments; perma, seligman, 2011), based on the theoretical grounds that these are what individuals chose freely, “for their own sake” (2011, p.97). the centrality of the theoretical and conceptual role of flourishing to seligman’s interpretation of positive psychology is illustrated in his most recent book, flourish, in which he writes: “i now think that the topic of positive psychology is well-being, that the gold-standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing” (seligman, 2011, p. 13). the perma-profiler was created in the absence of a brief, validated instrument that specifically measures all five perma domains (perma-p; butler & kern, in press). hundreds of theoretically relevant items were compiled to create the measure, tested in a series of studies involving 11,905 participants worldwide, and refined to produce the final measure (for greater detail on the theoretical grounding and methods of testing the perma-p see butler & kern, in press). the 16-item perma-p has three items representing each of the five perma components, and one item representing ‘overall wellbeing’. the general wellbeing question serves as a comparison with other population-based surveys. each item is scored on an 11-point likert scale, anchored by 0 (never) to 10 (always), or 0 (not at all) to 10 (completely), while experiences are measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 assessed via a range of different response scales, for example, ‘in general’, ‘how often’, ‘to what extent’, and ‘how much of the time’. although seligman lists his criteria for flourishing as being in the upper range of positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and positive accomplishment, butler and kern (2013) do not provide thresholds for a categorical diagnosis of flourishing. instead this research team advocates a ‘dashboard’ approach to reporting results whereby the three scores of each component are averaged to produce a single component score ranging from 0-10 (higher scores indicate greater wellbeing) and the five component scores are reported as a dashboard of perma scores. this, they argue, highlights particular strengths and weaknesses better, whereas a global score lacks the specificity required for targeted intervention and measuring component change over time (in press). as forgeard et al. mention, “just as we do not have a single indicator telling us how our car is performing (instead, we have an odometer, a speedometer, a gas gauge, etc.), we suggest that we do not want just one indicator of how well people are doing” (forgeard et al., 2011, p. 97). as yet, no empirical evidence of dashboard statistics, scale norms, or psychometric properties of the perma-p have been published. butler and kern suggest their studies demonstrate the scale’s acceptable reliability, test-retest stability, and construct validity however, and that factor-analyses confirm the five factor structure (butler & kern, in press). components of flourishing and indicator items from the perma-p are presented in table 4. table 4: components of flourishing and indicator items from the perma-profiler component of flourishing perma-p indicator item positive emotion in general, how often do you feel joyful? in general, how often do you feel positive? in general, to what extent do you feel contented? how often do you become absorbed in what you are doing? engagement in general, to what extent do you feel excited and interested in things? how often do you lose track of time while doing something you enjoy? positive relationships to what extent do you receive help and support from others when you need it? to what extent have you been feeling loved? how satisfied are you with your personal relationships? meaning in general, to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life? in general, to what extent do you feel that what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile? to what extent do you generally feel that you have a sense of direction in your life? accomplishment how much of the time do you feel you are making progress towards accomplishing your goals? how often do you achieve the important goals you have set for yourself? how often are you able to handle your responsibilities? general wellbeing taking all things together, how happy would you say you are? 2.3 discussion the current review identified four ways different research teams have theorised, conceptualised, and operationalized flourishing, and the published empirical research supporting each model. measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 these four research teams (keyes; huppert & so; diener et al.; and seligman et al.) have operationalized flourishing differently, but are all in agreement on two matters: one, that flourishing refers to high levels of subjective wellbeing; and two, that wellbeing is a multidimensional construct that cannot be adequately measured using single-item assessment. as our review indicates, not only do they theorise and conceptualise flourishing differently, but also the diagnoses of flourishing are dependent upon the various response scales, combinations of components, and researcher-determined thresholds employed. as we are mindful that different research questions demand different types of psychometric assessment, it is not the aim of our literature review to pigeon-hole these models for specific purposes, but to emphasise their similarities and differences, enabling users to select the appropriate tool for their particular needs. we will turn our attention to these now. in terms of similarities, all four adopt the theoretical model combining feeling and functioning originally brought together in a conceptual model of flourishing by keyes (keyes, 2002). this is important, as studies indicate the usefulness and need of making this distinction for epidemiology (keyes & annas, 2009; keyes & simoes, 2012). as a result, and as depicted in figure 1, considerable conceptual overlap exists. engagement appears in all four operationalizations, although in keyes’ model it falls within the emotional wellbeing component as an item assessing ‘interest’. all four require endorsement of positive relationships, reflecting the important evidence-based role that relationships have for flourishing. meaning and purpose also feature in all four operationalizations, although keyes refers more narrowly to ‘purpose in life’, huppert and so to ‘meaning’, while diener et al. and seligman et al. use a broader definition grouping both constructs together. three require endorsement of positive emotion (keyes, huppert and so, and seligman et al.), and diener et al.’s flourishing scale is often used alongside the scale of positive and negative affect to achieve simultaneous assessment of emotional wellbeing (for example see diener et al., 2010; silva & caetano, 2013). accomplishment appears in the huppert and so model, seligman et al.’s definition, and that of diener et al. (in the form of the ‘competence’ item); the closest construct in keyes’ version is ‘environmental mastery’. the closely associated constructs of self-acceptance and self-esteem feature in three operationalizations (keyes’, huppert and so’s, and diener et al.’s), but not in the seligman et al. model. two key advantages common to all four models are their brevity and clarity: they all assess the multi-dimensional nature of subjective wellbeing in fewer than 20 questions; and none of them require expert delivery. additionally, all four measures produce data that can be easily interpreted by a wide range of potential end-users working in clinical, policy, and population health promotion contexts. for tools being used in public health these are important considerations; longer surveys may offer greater psychometric rigor, but are not practical. in terms of differences between the conceptualisations, it is noteworthy that only keyes includes life satisfaction in his operationalization. while single-item life satisfaction measures, traditionally employed by national statistics offices, have empirically been shown to be inadequate measures of population subjective wellbeing, their complete omission among three of these operationalizations is noteworthy. given the empirical evidence indicating that life satisfaction and flourishing are separate, but related, constructs (for example see huppert & so, 2013), we suggest adding an item assessing life satisfaction alongside huppert and so, diener et al. and seligman et al.’s measures to give a more rounded picture of wellbeing. other conceptual differences include that optimism features in only two of the four operationalizations (huppert and so, and diener et al.), while vitality, and resilience, appear in huppert and so’s definition only. huppert and so acknowledge that they intentionally omitted constructs that others deem components of optimal functioning, such as autonomy, on the grounds that its opposite does not measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 feature in the dsm or icd diagnostic criteria for depression or anxiety (the basis of their tencomponent conceptualisation). furthermore, the inclusion of the five social wellbeing items in keyes’ model offers the additional benefit of evaluating individuals’ views of their functioning in public life, taking it beyond a measure of purely personal feeling and functioning. in terms of operationalizational differences, it should be noted that selecting thresholds according to data distribution makes huppert and so’s model the only one in which individual flourishing depends on how well others are doing. the seligman et al. model is also unique in that it offers brevity while incorporating more than one item per construct as recommended by psychometricians (oecd, 2013). the most striking difference between the four, however, lies in the imbalance between the substantial body of cross-cultural empirical evidence supporting the psychometric properties and utility of keyes’ model, and the relative paucity of published research behind the three more recently developed models. while psychometric support for, and cross-cultural use of, the flourishing scale is growing, huppert and so’s model has not been validated by further studies as far as we know. the second part of the current study is the only example of their model being used to determine national flourishing prevalence outside of europe. further testing to determine the perma-p’s discriminate, predictive, and convergent validity is understood to be forthcoming. overall, we concur with butler and kern that “developing a valid measure of psychological constructs is a long process” (in press, p.18) and more evidence supporting the reliability, validity, and utility of the three newer models is required. in particular, future studies testing the predictive validity of the three newer models alongside keyes’ model would be most helpful for policy makers. the four conceptual and operational definitions of flourishing reviewed here were devised on a theoretical basis. our review highlights their commonalities and areas of difference. what it does not tell us, and what we perceive as a gap in the academic literature, is how closely these theoretical conceptualisations of flourishing reflect laypeople’s real world understanding of what it is to be flourishing. the failure to agree upon a definition suggests that researchers are unclear what to include and exclude in their definition of flourishing. with four different models to choose from, and three of them so newly devised, we suggest it would be useful and timely to investigate alignment between real world, and academic, understandings of flourishing. the extent to which lay conceptions of flourishing correspond with these models is an empirical question that can and should be answered. for a construct receiving focused academic interest, such as flourishing, it is essential to be confident that what the investigator is measuring corresponds with the concept of flourishing in the mind of participants. we therefore suggest a useful direction for future research would be a prototype analysis (rosch, 1975) investigating how the layperson perceives the construct of flourishing. prototype analysis is particularly suited to investigating natural language concepts such as flourishing, which have a “fuzzy collection of features” determining category membership (lambert, graham, & fincham, 2009, p. 1195), and has been an effective methodology for studies investigating similar constructs such as gratitude (lambert et al., 2009), forgiveness (kearns & fincham, 2004), and love (fehr, 1988). the two-step process of prototype analysis, whereby participants are requested in the first stage to freely list all features they associate with flourishing, and subsequently asked to rank them in order of centrality to the construct of flourishing, serves two important purposes. first, the free-response stage will inform researchers of any components of flourishing laypeople consider important that are not captured by the four current versions. second, ranking each component’s centrality enables researchers to establish which of the four models of flourishing reviewed here most closely reflects the lay prototype. a greater understanding of this alignment may facilitate the measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 refinement of the construct’s measurement, and further inform end-users’ decision making when selecting appropriate measurement tools. 3. part two: investigating the impact of operational definitions on the prevalence of flourishing 3.1 methods 3.1.1 participants participants were obtained from the sovereign wellbeing index round 1 dataset (n = 10,009), a large, nationally-stratified, representative, random sample of adults over the age of 18 in new zealand (jarden et al., 2013). in this study ages ranged from 18 to 111 years, (m = 44.21, sd = 16.40). females comprised 53% of the sample. the majority (76%) were european/other, 13% were māori/pacific islander, and 11% were asian. sixty-one per cent were married or living with a partner, 25% were single or never married, 11% were permanently separated or divorced, and 3% were widowed. just over a quarter had been educated to the end of secondary school only, 25% had an apprenticeship, diploma, or trade certificate, and 32% had gone to university. the majority (59%) were employed, 34% were not in the labour force and 7% were unemployed. the sample aligned with population parameters from the nz census (statistics new zealand, 2006). for more descriptive statistics see the swi executive report (human potential centre, 2013). 3.1.2 measures keyes’ flourishing: keyes’ mhc-sf was replicated using selected items from the swi. while the swi contains 87 items assessing wellbeing, the fit between swi variables and mhc-sf was not perfect. for the mhc-sf items evaluating ‘social contribution’ and ‘social integration’ we were forced to choose the swi item most closely capturing the original construct. full details of selected items and thresholds on the survey’s various response scales selected to diagnose flourishing are listed in appendix a. in the absence of any suitable swi item representing ‘social coherence’ it had to be excluded from our analysis. the mhc-sf requires individuals to report experiencing at least seven of the 14 symptoms ‘everyday’ or ‘almost everyday’, rated on a 6point likert scale, to be categorised as flourishing. the absence of any questions in the swi relating to ‘social coherence’ meant that instead of requiring individuals to endorse one of the three emotional wellbeing items, and six out of 11 symptoms of ‘positive functioning’ (social wellbeing and psychological wellbeing combined), we required one of three emotional wellbeing items and six out of ten symptoms of ‘positive functioning’ to be diagnosed as flourishing in the swi replication of keyes’ model. additionally, because the swi used a variety of different response scales (not just the 6-point likert scale of the mhc-sf), we selected appropriate categorical thresholds replicating the sense of the mhc-sf as best we could, but also basing our decisions on theoretical justification and face validity. huppert and so’s flourishing: having modelled the swi survey on the ess round 6 we were able to replicate the questionnaire items in huppert and so’s (2013) operationalization of flourishing. while the swi used the same questions as the ess, the response scales were slightly different. while replicating the original authors’ methodology of basing thresholds on descriptive statistics would have allowed for accurate international comparison, we chose to determine each item’s threshold according to theoretical justification and face validity, as described above. this approach was deemed preferable considering a primary purpose of our study was to compare operational definitions, so adopting a threshold methodology that we could apply uniformly both within each operationalization and across the four measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 operationalizations was important. furthermore, we wanted to avoid making (potentially erroneous) assumptions about the prevalence of flourishing that taking a data-driven approach to defining thresholds involves. diener et al.’s flourishing scale: the inclusion of the 8-item flourishing scale in the swi enabled exact replication of diener et al.’s operationalization of flourishing. in its original 12item format, with scores ranging from 12 to 84, diener and biswas-diener (2008) suggested summed scores 60 and above represented flourishing, while summed scores below 60 indicated the absence of flourishing. as the published studies using the 8-item fs only report mean and percentile rank scores, and no cut points or component combinations required for categorical diagnoses (hone et al., 2013; silva & caetano, 2013), we determined that individuals with total scores of 48 and above be categorised as flourishing (remembering that scores range from 7 to 56, and the response scale ranged from 1 ‘strongly disagree’ to 7 ‘strongly agree’ on the 8-item fs). while we acknowledge the somewhat arbitrary nature of this threshold for categorisation, we again justify selection on rational and theoretical grounds rather than offering numerical justification: total scores of 48 and above require individuals to ‘agree’ (6) or ‘strongly agree’ (7) on average across the scale’s eight items. in this sense our approach mirrors keyes’, and huppert and so’s, in not requiring the simultaneous presence of all symptoms. seligman et al.’s flourishing: seligman’s perma-profiler was replicated using selected items from the swi. given the scale’s authors have not devised a categorical diagnosis of flourishing using the perma-p, and have not identified thresholds at this time (personal communication, 22 november, 2013) we devised our own categorical diagnosis mirroring keyes’, and huppert and so’s, empirically supported schema. again, the variety of response scales used in the swi forced us to select thresholds for each component, and as above, these were selected on theoretical grounds and face validity rather than being data-driven. to be categorised as flourishing therefore required individuals to endorse four out of five components of perma, where endorsement meant scoring above our identified threshold on two of any three items belonging to each component. like keyes, and huppert and so’s, conceptualisations, this method mirrors the dsm’s methodology of requiring the simultaneous presence of a majority, but not all, of the symptoms. 3.1.3 statistical analysis calculating the prevalence of flourishing: categorical diagnoses of flourishing according to our interpretation of the four different operational definitions were applied to the swi data to estimate prevalence of flourishing among new zealand adults. this was achieved by following several steps. first, we created new dichotomous variables distinguishing between those participants endorsing each individual component of flourishing and those not, by determining appropriate response thresholds. our methodology and rationale for establishing thresholds is detailed in the measures section above (also see appendix a). we then replicated each of the four different operational definitions’ combinations of components to distinguish between flourishers and non-flourishers. investigating the relationship between different operationalizations of flourishing: first we conducted cross tabulation analysis to investigate percentage agreement and spearman’s correlation between each of the four flourishing measures. next we used pairwise mcnemar tests for related samples to determine if the differences between pairs of measures were significant, and cochrane’s q test to determine significance between all four measures. finally, cronbach’s alpha was calculated to analyse internal consistency between measures. measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 3.2 results 3.2.1 calculating the prevalence of flourishing in this study, 39% of adults met the criteria for flourishing according to our replication of keyes’ model, 24% met the criteria for flourishing according to our replication of huppert and so’s model, 41% met the criteria for flourishing according to our replication of diener et al.’s model, and 47% met the criteria for flourishing according to our replication of seligman’s model. 3.2.2 investigating the relationship between different operationalizations cross tabulation analysis revealed that the swi replications of keyes’ and seligman et al.’s operationalizations of flourishing were the most closely related (81% agreement, r = .62), followed by the swi replications of diener et al. and seligman et al.’s operationalizations (80% agreement, r = .59), keyes’ and huppert and so’s operationalizations (78% agreement, r = .54), diener et al. and keyes’ operationalizations (77% agreement, r = .52), diener et al. and huppert and so’s operationalizations (75% agreement, r = .48), and seligman et al. and huppert and so’s operationalizations (74% agreement, r = .53). see table 5 for percentage of agreement and spearman’s correlations between each of the four operationalizations. table 5: percentage of agreement and spearman’s correlations for different operationalizations of flourishing keyes huppert & so diener et al. seligman et al. % a g re e m e n t c o rr e la ti o n % a g re e m e n t c o rr e la ti o n % a g re e m e n t c o rr e la ti o n % a g re e m e n t c o rr e la ti o n keyes 100% 1 huppert and so 78% .54* 100% 1 diener et al. 77% .52* 75% .48* 100% 1 seligman et al. 81% .62* 74% .53* 80% .59* 100% 1 * significance level is .05 3.2.3 reliability analysis reliability analysis indicated that internal consistency between the four swi replications of different categorical diagnoses of flourishing was relatively good, with a cronbach alpha coefficient of .83. a two-way random effects model, where both people effects and measures effects are random, indicated that the average intraclass correlation between any two measures was .53, ci [.49, .56]. the average intraclass correlation across all four measures was .82, ci [.79, .84]. 3.3 discussion part two of this paper estimated flourishing prevalence rates among 10,009 adult new zealanders, according to replications of each of the four frequently used operationalizations of flourishing identified in part one, using the swi variables and dataset. results indicated there measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 was a substantial difference in prevalence rates of flourishing depending upon the operationalization employed, from 24% (huppert & so), to 39% (keyes), 41% (diener et al.), and 47% (seligman et al.). the low prevalence rate of flourishing from the swi replication of huppert and so’s conceptualisation (24%) most likely reflects their more stringent theoretical and conceptual criteria for flourishing: to be categorised as flourishing participants are required to endorse the one item representing positive emotion (which only 41% of the sample did), plus three out of four components of ‘positive functioning’, and four out of five components of ‘positive characteristics’; thereby allowing participants to score below the thresholds on only two out of ten items. in contrast, participants could score below the thresholds on six out of 13 components in the swi replication of keyes’ operationalization, or seven out 15 items in the swi replication of seligman et al.’s operationalization, and still be categorised as flourishing. in only requiring an average score of 48 and above, our interpretation of diener et al.’s operationalization also allowed greater flexibility across components than our interpretation of huppert and so’s operationalization. (this is the most striking difference between these four operationalizations, and the cause of the variation in prevalence rates.) it is important to note that the use of different response formats in the swi survey meant that some of the variation in prevalence rates between our study and previous studies might be due to the use of different thresholds, making for potentially inaccurate international comparisons. for example, new zealand’s 24% flourishing according to our replication of huppert and so’s model may not be directly comparable to the danes’ 41% flourishing or portugal’s 10% flourishing diagnosed using the same model (huppert & so, 2013). however, by applying consistent methodology for selecting thresholds across all four models in our study, we are confident that the flourishing prevalence rates according to the four different models are comparable with each other in our study. while related samples cochrane’s q tests indicated all four operationalizations were significantly different to one another, cross tabulation analysis revealed a strong agreement between our replications of keyes’ and seligman et al.’s operationalizations (81%) and diener et al. and seligman et al.’s (80%). even the least comparable operationalizations (huppert and so and seligman et al.) indicated moderate agreement (74%). in the absence of an established empirical benchmark stating what degree of agreement is meaningful, or indeed any criterion for interpreting what these levels of agreement mean, it is hard to draw any concrete conclusions from these findings. the strengths and unique contributions of this study include the application of the four operational definitions to a very large, nationally representative, sample of adults, which allows our results to be compared to other population samples; the prospective nature of the swi, with two more longitudinal rounds scheduled over the next four years, allowing us to monitor the prevalence of flourishing among new zealand adults over time using all four operationalizations; and the use of cross-tabulation and pairwise cochrane’s q tests allowing us to calculate, for the first time, the degree of agreement between the swi replications of the different measures commonly employed to assess flourishing. in terms of limitations, we experienced challenges in accurately replicating three of the four operationalizations of flourishing using the available dataset (the fs was replicated exactly). while the swi’s large number of wellbeing variables (n = 87) presented us with a compelling opportunity to compare these operationalizations, we acknowledge that the fit was not perfect. differences in questionnaire items and response formats required us to make subjective decisions regarding the best way to replicate the original models. the challenge was to stay true to the theory and conceptualisation of the original models, while also remaining consistent in our measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 methodology across models. we offer the following four examples of the types of challenges we faced, and our methods for overcoming them. firstly, the absence of any categorical diagnosis of flourishing for the flourishing scale or perma-p required us to devise our own methods. we were guided by keyes, and huppert and so, in our methodology. this meant selecting a threshold for flourishing on the fs that allowed endorsement of most, but not necessarily all, of the scale's eight components (scores ≥ 48, range 7-56, meaning respondents had to score an average of six on the 7-point likert scale). to be categorised as flourishing in the swi replication of the perma-p required participants to score above a threshold on two of three items of each component, and four out of the five components overall. while we acknowledge the limitations in our approach, and acknowledge the permap research team’s preference for dashboard reporting, categorical diagnoses of flourishing provide vital information for decision makers. secondly, the various items selected and response formats used in the swi frequently differed from those in the original scales. for instance, while the response option for the mhcsf measured the frequency with which respondents experienced each component over the past month, several items in the swi asked respondents “how much of the time during the past week” or “how much of the time would you generally say…”. where possible we used the same items as the original scale, but some could not be matched to an swi variable (such as ‘social coherence’), which meant this component had to be excluded from our analysis. others were matched, but not perfectly so, leaving us having to choose the item which came closest to representing the original construct. some of these were far from ideal. for instance, the mhc-sf item for ‘social growth’ (“during the past month, how often did you feel our society is a good place, or is becoming a better place for all people?”) was operationalized using the reverse-scored swi item “for most people in new zealand life is getting worse rather than better”. similarly, keyes’ ‘social contribution’ item assesses respondents’ contribution at a societal level, while the swi item has a greater focus on the individual. the mhc-sf’s ‘social integration’ item concerning belonging to a community could be interpreted to refer to any type of group or community, in contrast to the swi item we were forced to use, which reflects respondents’ perceptions of people in their local area. in this sense we cannot claim to have replicated keyes’ validated scale completely. the swi items selected to match the perma-p were also not a perfect replication, but we were at least able to include three different items for each perma construct, allowing us to represent the original scale well in this regard. despite these obvious limitations, we maintain that having such a large number of wellbeing variables in the swi, a large representative sample, and the fs and ess models represented in their entirety, made comparison of the four models a worthwhile exercise. thirdly, the greatest single challenge involved the decision making around the selection of thresholds differentiating between participants endorsing a component of flourishing and those not endorsing a component. recently published oecd guidelines on measuring wellbeing suggest the use of thresholds as “one way to manage a large number of scale responses” (oecd, 2013, p. 187). thresholds provide a useful way of conveying aspects of the data’s distribution with a single figure, and are compatible with the swi’s ordinal data. however, the oecd guidelines also caution that great care must be taken when selecting thresholds: “there is considerable risk that a threshold positioned in the wrong part of the scale could mask important changes in the distribution of the data” (2013, p. 188). the oecd recommends examining data distribution (particularly watching for the tendency for strong negative skew common to subjective wellbeing responses), using median and mean statistics to help identify tipping points, and selecting scale values above which empirical evidence suggests positive outcomes are measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 associated. the oecd also acknowledges that a key challenge lies in combining a data-driven approach with the identification of thresholds that are meaningful and have real-world utility. with this in mind, and considering the purpose of this study was to examine measurement equivalence across four different operationalizations, we needed to find a methodology we could apply consistently both within each definition, and across all four different operationalizations. concerned that huppert and so’s approach of selecting thresholds based upon the distribution of data made (potentially erroneous) assumptions about the prevalence of flourishing, and influenced the reported prevalence rates substantially, we instead selected thresholds above which empirical evidence suggests positive outcomes are associated. these were based on face validity, and our theoretical knowledge of flourishing and subjective wellbeing. essentially, we asked, ‘what is the lowest score with which a participant could respond to this question and still be deemed to be flourishing?’ for example, on the swi question “please indicate how much of the time during the past week you felt calm and peaceful”, we deemed a score of two or above to be characteristic of flourishing, so that participants responded that they felt calm and peaceful at least ‘some of the time’. one of the key outcomes to come from conducting this review and analysis is the way it highlighted the critical role that decisions regarding the location of thresholds play in determining prevalence rates of population flourishing, and the challenges involved in using a categorical approach to defining and measuring flourishing. but taking a categorical approach is important: it is the appropriate method for calculating prevalence, and mean scores give no indication of the number of people experiencing high wellbeing (huppert & so, 2013). our methodology and rationale for establishing thresholds is detailed in the measures section above (also see appendix a). fourthly, a further limitation is that most components of flourishing were represented by a single item in the swi. while it would have been better to have more than one item representing each symptom of wellbeing, reducing the size of error, population studies such as the swi are designed with considerations of participant overload and time burden in mind. similarly, the lack of objective measures represents a further limitation. as researchers we appreciate the value of employing subjective and objective measures simultaneously, given the ability of each to provide important insights for policy makers. after all, we want citizens to have “both decent objective standards of living and feel subjectively satisfied with their lives” (forgeard et al., 2011, p. 99). however, the requirements of balancing questionnaire breadth and depth prevented the inclusion of any data beyond self-report, and also precluded the measurement of other potentially associated variables such as personality traits. 4. summary this paper reviewed the state of research on the psychometric measurement of flourishing, a term used by psychologists and social scientists to describe high levels of wellbeing. measuring human flourishing is important. objective measures of progress are informative, but provide only limited insight into prosperity at the population level. a considerable body of empirical evidence now indicates that flourishing is a desirable condition that any community, organisation, or government would benefit from protecting and promoting among its citizens. measures of flourishing tend to be more stable over time than does affect, and international research has indicated significantly better individual and public health outcomes associated with flourishing (howell, 2009; huppert, 2004, 2009; keyes, 2002, 2005, 2010; keyes & haidt, 2003). as a result, demand is growing for the collection and publication of measures of subjective wellbeing and epidemiological work on flourishing. a literature search identified four different theoretical, conceptual, and operational definitions of flourishing currently being used by measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 psychological researchers and statisticians. following corey keyes’ (2002) model, three more models have recently been devised and conceptualised (diener et al., 2010; huppert et al., 2009; seligman, 2011). substantially more published research currently supports keyes’ model than the other three. despite sharing theoretical and conceptual similarities, the four models produce substantially different prevalence rates when replicated using swi variables and data, therefore limiting the usefulness of the resultant epidemiology. while we recognise that the psychometrics of flourishing is in its infancy, and that substantial empirical progress has been made in this endeavour, for psychometric measures to be useful they must be collated in a consistent manner, which requires a consensus around theoretical, conceptual and operational definitions. until an identical measurement approach is adopted across countries, we cannot rule out the possibility that observed national differences reflect methodological differences. oecd guidelines on measuring wellbeing emphasise that comparability is of the highest priority: “whether comparisons are to be made over time or between groups of respondents, the guidelines argue in favour of adopting a consistent measurement approach across all survey instruments, study waves and countries wherever possible, to limit the additional variance potentially introduced by differing methodologies” (oecd, 2013, p. 14). we agree. but, we also understand that this consensus takes time and further research. in light of this, and the lack of published empirical research exploring lay perceptions of flourishing, we recommend a prototype analysis be conducted to examine alignment between lay and academic conceptions, and investigation of which of the four models reviewed here fits with lay opinion most closely. our study suggests that clinicians, policy makers and citizens stand to benefit significantly from standardisation of measurement tools. acknowledgements the authors would like to acknowledge sovereign as the funder of this research. authors lucy c. hone auckland university of technology lucy.hone@aut.ac.nz aaron jarden auckland university of technology grant m. schofield auckland university of technology scott duncan auckland university of technology 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(2013). positive mental health: measurement, prevalence, and correlates in a chinese cultural context. in c. l. m. keyes (ed.), mental well-being: international contributions to the study of positive mental health. dordrecht: springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5195-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9938-y http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9938-y http://www.stats.govt.nz/census/about-2006-census/2006-census-reports.aspx http://www.stats.govt.nz/census/about-2006-census/2006-census-reports.aspx http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5195-8 measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 appendix a. features of flourishing, original indicator items according to each operationalization, selected swi indicator items, thresholds and threshold frequencies operationalization & construct original indicator item selected swi indicator item thresholds: participant categorised as endorsing this feature if swi score = % of swi sample above this threshold keyes positive affect during the past month, how often did you feel happy? (1-6; never to every day) please indicate, how much of the time during the past week you were happy? (1-4; none/almost none of the time-all/almost all) ≥ 2 68% positive affect during the past month, how often did you feel interested in life? (1-6; never to every day) how much of the time would you generally say you are interested in what you are doing? (010; none of the time-all of the time) ≥ 8 40% life satisfaction during the past month, how often did you feel satisfied with life? (1-6; never to every day) all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays (0-10; extremely dissatisfiedextremely satisfied) ≥ 8 39% social contribution during the past month, how often did you feel you had something important to contribute to society? (1-6; never to every day) i generally feel that what i do in my life is valuable and worthwhile (1-5; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 4 71% social integration during the past month, how often did you feel you belonged to a community? (1-6; never to every day) i feel close to the people in my local area (1-5; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 4 25% social growth during the past month, how often did you feel our society is a good place, or is becoming a better place for all people? (1-6; never to every day) for most people in nz life is getting worse rather than better rev (1-5; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 3 51% measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 operationalization & construct original indicator item selected swi indicator item thresholds: participant categorised as endorsing this feature if swi score = % of swi sample above this threshold keyes social acceptance during the past month, how often did you feel that people are basically good? (1-6; never to every day) generally speaking, most people can be trusted, or you can’t be too careful (0-10; can’t be too careful/most people can be trusted) ≥ 8 14% social coherence during the past month, how often did you feel the way our society works makes sense to you? (1-6; never to every day) n/a n/a n/a self-acceptance during the past month, how often did you feel that you liked most parts of your personality? (1-6; never to every day) in general, i feel very positive about myself (15; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 4 67% environmental mastery during the past month, how often did you feel good at managing the responsibilities of your daily life? (1-6; never to every day) how difficult or easy do you find it to deal with important problems that come up in your life? (010; extremely difficultextremely easy) ≥ 6 62% positive relationships during the past month, how often did you feel you had warm and trusting relationships with others? (1-6; never to every day) how often do you meet socially with friends, relatives (1-7; neverevery day) ≥ 6 30% personal growth during the past month, how often did you feel you had experiences that challenged you to grow and become a better person? (1-6; never to every day) to what extent do you learn new things in your life? (0-6; not at all-a great deal) ≥ 5 44% measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 operationalization & construct original indicator item selected swi indicator item thresholds: participant categorised as endorsing this feature if swi score = % of swi sample above this threshold keyes autonomy during the past month, how often did you feel confident to think/ express your own ideas and opinions? (1-6; never to every day) i am free to decide for myself how to live my life (1-5; strongly disagree-strongly agree) ≥ 4 70% purpose in life during the past month, how often did you feel your life has a sense of direction? (1-6; never to every day) to what extent do you feel you have a sense of direction (0-10; not at all-completely) ≥ 8 35% huppert & so competence most days i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) most days i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) ≥ 4 58% emotional stability in the past week, i felt calm and peaceful (1-4; none or almost none of the time-all or almost all of the time) please indicate, how much of the time during the past week you felt calm and peaceful? (1-4; none/almost none of the time-all/almost all) ≥ 2 88% engagement i love learning new things (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) to what extent do you learn new things in your life? (0-6; not at all-a great deal) ≥ 5 44% meaning i generally feel that what i do in my life is valuable and worthwhile (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) i generally feel that what i do in my life is valuable and worthwhile (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) ≥ 4 71% optimism i am always optimistic about my future (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) i am always optimistic about my future (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) ≥ 4 62% measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 operationalization & construct original indicator item selected swi indicator item thresholds: participant categorised as endorsing this feature if swi score = % of swi sample above this threshold huppert & so positive emotion taking all things together, how happy would you say you are? (0-10; extremely unhappy-extremely happy) taking all things together, how happy would you say you are? (0-10; extremely unhappy-extremely happy) ≥ 8 41% positive relationships there are people in my life who really care about me (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) to what extent do you receive help and support from people you are close to when you need it? (0-6; not at all completely) ≥ 4 68% resilience when things go wrong in my life it generally takes me a long time to get back to normal (1-5; strongly agree-strongly disagree) when things go wrong in my life it generally takes me a long time to get back to normal (1-5; strongly disagreestrongly agree) rev ≥ 4 45% self-esteem in general, i feel very positive about myself (15; strongly agree to strongly disagree) rev in general, i feel very positive about myself (15; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 4 67% vitality in the past week, i had a lot of energy (1-4;none or almost none of the time-all or almost all of the time) during the past week, how much of the time did you have a lot of energy? (1-4; none or almost none of the timeall or almost all) ≥ 3 39% diener et al. purpose/ meaning i lead a purposeful and meaningful life (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) i lead a purposeful and meaningful life (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree positive relationships my social relationships are supportive and rewarding (1-7; strongly disagree-strongly agree) my social relationships are supportive and rewarding (1-7; strongly disagree-strongly agree) measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 operationalization & construct original indicator item selected swi indicator item thresholds: participant categorised as endorsing this feature if swi score = % of swi sample above this threshold diener et al. engagement i am engaged and interested in my daily activities (1-7; strongly disagree-strongly agree) i am engaged and interested in my daily activities (1-7; strongly disagree-strongly agree) social contribution i actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others i actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others competence i am competent and capable in the activities that are important to me (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) i am competent and capable in the activities that are important to me (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) self-respect i am a good person and live a good life (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) i am a good person and live a good life (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) optimism i am optimistic about my future(1-7; strongly disagree-strongly agree) i am optimistic about my future(1-7; strongly disagree-strongly agree) social relationships people respect me (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) people respect me (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) seligman et al. positive emotion in general, how often do you feel joyful? (0-10; never-always) please indicate, how much of the time during the past week you enjoyed life? (1-4; none/almost none of the time-all/almost all) ≥ 2 67% positive emotion in general, how often do you feel positive? (0-10; never-always) please indicate, how much of the time during the past week you were happy? (1-4; none/almost none of the time-all/almost all) ≥ 2 68% measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 operationalization & construct original indicator item selected swi indicator item thresholds: participant categorised as endorsing this feature if swi score = % of swi sample above this threshold seligman et al. positive emotion in general, to what extent do you feel contented? (0-10; not at all-completely) please indicate, how much of the time during the past week you felt calm and peaceful? (1-4; none/almost none of the time-all/almost all) ≥ 2 88% engagement how often do you become absorbed in what you are doing? (010; never-always) how much of the time would you generally say you are you absorbed in what you are doing? (010; none of the time/all of the time) ≥ 8 34% engagement in general, to what extent do you feel excited and interested in things? (0-10; not at allcompletely) how much of the time would you generally say you are enthusiastic about what you are doing? (0-10; none of the time/all of the time) ≥ 8 34% engagement how often do you lose track of time while doing something you enjoy? (0-10; neveralways) how much of the time would you generally say you are interested in what you are doing? (010; none of the time/all of the time) ≥ 8 40% relationships to what extent do you receive help and support from others when you need it? (0-10; not at allcompletely) to what extent do you receive help and support from others when you need it? (0-6; not at allcompletely) ≥ 4 68% relationships to what extent have you been feeling loved? (010; not at all-completely) to what extent do you provide help and support to people you are close to when they need it (0-6; not at allcompletely)? ≥ 3 96% relationships how satisfied are you with your personal relationships? (0-10; not at all-completely) how many people are there with whom you can discuss intimate and personal matters? (1-7; none-10 or more) ≥ 3 72% measuring flourishing hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 operationalization & construct original indicator item selected swi indicator item thresholds: participant categorised as endorsing this feature if swi score = % of swi sample above this threshold seligman et al. meaning in life in general, to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life? (0-10; not at all-completely) i lead a purposeful and meaningful life (1-7; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 6 54% meaning in life in general, to what extent do you feel that what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile? (0-10; never-always) i generally feel that what i do in my life is valuable and worthwhile. (1-5; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 4 71% meaning in life to what extent do you generally feel you have a sense of direction in your life? (0-10; neveralways) to what extent do you feel that you have a sense of direction in your life? (0-10; not at all-completely) ≥ 8 35% accomplishment how much of the time do you feel you are making progress towards accomplishing your goals? (0-10; neveralways) most days i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do (1-5; strongly disagree-strongly agree) ≥ 4 58% accomplishment how often do you achieve the important goals you have set for yourself? (0-10; neveralways) in my daily life i get very little chance to show how capable i am (1-5; strongly disagreestrongly agree) rev ≥ 4 36% accomplishment how often are you able to handle your responsibilities? (0-10; never-always) there are lots of things i feel i am good at (1-5; strongly disagreestrongly agree) ≥ 4 78% n/a = not applicable; rev = reverse scored variable eger, r. j., & maridal, j. h., (2015). a statistical meta-analysis of the wellbeing literature. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 45-74. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.4 robert j. eger naval postgraduate school rjeger@nps.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 article a statistical meta-analysis of the wellbeing literature robert j. eger · j. haavard maridal abstract: this study employs an empirical meta-analysis to examine the livability factors of wellbeing and assess each precursor’s relative significance. the effect size results of individual studies of existing academic work are pooled by the use of a variety of statistical techniques to determine a meta-effect that yields statistically more significant conclusions and is a more powerful measure in that it has the ability to identify results closer to the true outcomes. the metaanalysis in this paper covers 164 studies and 560 observations published prior to september 2013. after articulating definitions of the central concepts and tenets of the scholarly research on wellbeing, the analysis continues with a literature review identifying recurring factors of wellbeing and the associated correlation. to address the variation in the type of analysis that underlies each study, all studies are converted to an effect size using fischer’s z and then analyzed under the dersimonian-laird random-effects model. the results largely confirm the findings in the literature but also reveal some surprises and suggest avenues for future research. the metaanalysis finds empirical support for the dimensions of living standard, health, freedom, personal and community relationships, peace, and security as significant livability factors of wellbeing. keywords: philosophy, public policy, eudaimonia, life satisfaction 1. introduction the scholarly literature identifies a number of elements as contributors to wellbeing. the purpose of this study, which uses an empirical meta-analysis approach, is to assess the relative significance of the main factors of wellbeing discussed in the literature. the paper begins with a brief introduction to the history of the concept of wellbeing and then articulates definitions of the central concepts and tenets of the scholarly research in the field. a review of the academic literature in this area helps both to explain the dimensions associated with wellbeing and to identify the main components of wellbeing. the paper then describes the meta-analytic techniques employed and identifies methodological limitations before turning its attention to the meta-analysis itself, looking at each livability factor and its associated correlations. the paper ends with a discussion and implications. 1.1 brief history of the concept of wellbeing in the past, happiness denoted a concept comparable to the term ‘objective wellbeing’ used today. in ancient greece, and in both christian and eastern wisdom and religious literature, happiness signified a life worth living and the truly happy person pursued virtue over the course of a lifespan. happiness was a holistic concept in the vein of the greek poet hesiod’s and the historian herodotus’ eudaimonia (a virtuous and flourishing life), the roman philosopher cicero’s summum bonum (the highest good), and the medieval philosopher and theologian thomas aquinas’ sublime beatitudo (the godly life). historically, happiness had also been associated with luck, fortune, or divine favor. in this way, it was seen by some as being beyond http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 a person’s control to a certain extent (mcmahon, 2006). traditional perceptions of happiness began to change on two fronts during the age of enlightenment in the 18th century. first, the emphasis on virtue as a necessary path to flourishing and wellbeing was diminished in favor of a focus on pleasure and the absence of pain, something most strongly evident in jeremy bentham’s (1789) philosophy of utilitarianism. second, the pursuit of this new form of happiness was elevated as the principal purpose of human life. as a consequence of these ideas, happiness came to be defined more narrowly—not as wellbeing in a broad and inclusive sense but rather, as in bentham, as a good feeling. this relatively new conception of happiness has given rise to a growing body of popular and academic literature seeking to discover how happiness, life satisfaction, and wellbeing are achieved. the academic literature focuses primarily on positive psychology, studying how individuals can feel better, and on economics, trying to understand how people and governments can make welfare-enhancing choices. despite these focus areas, happiness research is becoming increasingly important in most of the social sciences. academia and popular literature are not the only clusters of society concerned with wellbeing, however; attempts are increasingly being made by agencies in the governmental sphere to use research on wellbeing to inform policy, with the aim of increasing overall societal wellbeing. an example of this is the united kingdom’s recent efforts in measuring national and personal wellbeing through the office for national statistics (office for national statistics, 2014). 1.2 theoretical background a universal definition of wellbeing has somewhat eluded scholars. in the academic and popular literature, the terms quality of life, happiness, life satisfaction, and prosperity are often used interchangeably with wellbeing. however, as statistical analysis of population surveys and dictionary definitions suggest, these terms differ in their nuances. happiness is increasingly used to describe momentary pleasant emotions, while life satisfaction is used to refer to long-term cognitive evaluation of life as a whole, a sort of deeper happiness. prosperity, on the other hand, tends to be used in discussions of tangible economic conditions. sociologist ruut veenhoven, considered by some to be the father of happiness studies, has argued that wellbeing should be used to denote quality of life overall (frisch, 2013). this study defines wellbeing as a composite of the two underlying concepts of happiness and life satisfaction. although this definition has roots in ancient literature, as exemplified by thomas aquinas’ delineation of sublime beatitudo (mcmahon, 2006), bradburn and noll (1969) may have been the first modern scholarly work to emphasize the idea that wellbeing is composed of both evaluative and joyor pleasure-based effects. campbell, converse, and rodgers (1976) drew a contrast between life satisfaction and happiness, describing the former as “a judgmental or cognitive experience” and the latter as “an experience or feeling of affect” (p. 8). in this vein, lane (2000) argued that happiness represented a marginal emotional change. further support for this distinction can be found in diener, kahneman, tov, and arora (2010); helliwell, barringtonleigh, harris, and huang (2009); kahneman (1999); and lucas, diener, and suh (1996). a quick analysis of self-report surveys supports the distinction between happiness and life satisfaction: the correlation between the two concepts in the world values survey (1981–2005) is only .47, for example, signifying that the two are different, albeit related, concepts. along these lines, as the terms are used in this study life satisfaction describes a cognitive judgment and happiness refers to an emotional state. a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 1.3 evaluative wellbeing and affective wellbeing scholarly research increasingly uses the terms evaluative wellbeing (ewb) and hedonic wellbeing (hwb). in kahneman and deaton (2010) and graham (2010), ewb is defined as a global, contemplative, long-term assessment, a state of wellbeing that is reflective of one’s sense of quality of life—not at a given point in time but rather over the course of one’s life. hwb refers to a person’s present, and potentially more transient, state of wellbeing as measured by the positive or negative affects experienced immediately or daily. in this study, however, preference is given to the term affective wellbeing (awb) in place of hwb to describe a person’s present or experienced state of wellbeing. the concern is that hedonic is not an accurate descriptor for experienced wellbeing because one’s momentary, experienced feelings and emotions are not necessarily concerned solely with pleasure. rather, it is possible for them to stem instead from a deep inner joy as explained by the greek concept of eudaimonia, cicero’s expression of the summum bonum, or thomas aquinas’ sublime beatitudo. according to this understanding, one’s present wellbeing derives not only from bodily pleasures but also from personality traits and temperaments, including prudence (according to aristotle’s ethics, book 9 and 10) (rackham, 1934), personal choice (seligman, 2002a, 2002b), and states of mood that may be hereditary or genetically determined (lykken, 1999). as depicted in figure 1 below, ewb and awb can be imagined as a continuum, with ewb on the pure cognitive, evaluative end and awb on the pure immediacy, affective end. life satisfaction is more closely aligned with the former and immediate or experienced happiness with the latter. ewb and awb both emanate from two primary categories of sources: livability and lifeability. livability denotes environmental, societal factors, in which a person finds himself or herself, and lifeability describes the internal, personal dynamics that enable this person to benefit from his or her environment. scholarly literature distinguishes between subjective and objective wellbeing (arneson, 1999; parfit, 1984; scanlon, 1993; sumner, 2003). subjective wellbeing (swb) refers to a person’s particular experience of his or her own life and can be measured through self-report methods such as population surveys. objective wellbeing (owb) consists of a list of quantifiable social or economic indicators that a scholar theorizes are determinants of quality of life (sen, 1999). in swb surveys, questions can range from the very long-term and evaluative (ewb) to the very immediate and emotional (awb). responses to questions like those in cantril’s selfanchoring ladder (1965) fall on the extreme ewb side of the ewb-awb continuum and are more strongly correlated with life satisfaction.1 awb questionnaires measure respondents’ present affects. these questions may use a positive and negative affect schedule (watson, clark, & 1 a typical question measuring life satisfaction might ask: “all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days? use a scale from 1–10 where 1 means you are ‘completely dissatisfied’ and 10 means you are ‘completely satisfied.’” evaluative wellbeing (ewb) affective wellbeing (awb) pure cognition pure affecthappiness life satisfaction figure 1: wellbeing—life satisfaction and happiness on the ewb—awb continuum a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 tellegen, 1988), which falls on the extreme awb side of the continuum and responses correlate more strongly with happiness.2 table 1 below presents a classification of the concepts introduced thus far. table 1: classification of wellbeing concepts subjective variables of wellbeing (swb) underlying concept life satisfaction (ewb) happiness (awb) level of perception cognitive, evaluative, reflective, long term emotional, mood or affectbased, sensory, short term potential measurements cantril’s self-anchoring ladder, questionnaire (scale from 1–10) day reconstruction method, positive and negative affect schedule (panas) objective variables of wellbeing (owb) concept livability dimensions (environmental, external factors) lifeability dimensions (individual, internal factors) elements friends, family, peace, freedom, health, income, wealth, opportunity, etc. degree of purpose and meaning to life, attitudes, life choices, heredity3 potential measurements numerical indicators of income, health, family, crime, etc. brain-scanning, revealed preferences, questionnaires 2. literature review using the theoretical classification, this study’s focus is on factors of wellbeing that stem from livability. to explore the extant literature on the factors of livability, six groupings are identified through a review of the academic literature on wellbeing. these groupings are living standard; health and environment; freedom; community and relationships; peace and security; and opportunity. 2.1 living standard the factor ‘living standard’ is concerned with the material resources available to people in a society and is often measured through economic and financial indicators. the living standard effect is at the center of jeremy bentham’s (1789) economic utility theory and a substantive component of maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs. economic utility theory suggests that as individuals gain income and wealth, they gain purchasing power, which expands the bundle of goods they can afford, leading to increased consumption and, ultimately, improved wellbeing. considerable disagreements exist in the literature regarding the degree to which income and wealth contribute to wellbeing. currently, the science seems to have settled on an understanding that the cognitive evaluation of one’s life (i.e., one’s life satisfaction) is considerably and positively impacted by increases in living standard, while happiness is impacted only up to medium income levels (approximately $75,000 according to kahneman and deaton (2010)). increased financial 2 it is important to emphasize that the difference between happiness and life-satisfaction is also determined by the way questions are framed in the surveys. a question measuring happiness that would fall closer to the awb side of the continuum is: “presently, would you describe yourself as: (1) very happy, (2) rather happy, (3) not very happy, or (4) not at all happy?” 3 determined by genetic factors and therefore able to be passed on from parents to their offspring or descendants. a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 resources can, however, impact people’s wellbeing through means other than direct consumption. dunn, aknin, and norton (2008) found that spending money on other people created more happiness than did spending money on oneself, a finding supported by zak (2011). income is also highly correlated with health and, to a certain degree, with opportunity. 2.2 health and environment the factor ‘health and environment’, as related to wellbeing, deals with the prevailing physical, mental, and environmental conditions for individuals in a society. although graham (2008) and others have pointed out that people adjust surprisingly well to both negative and positive changes in their health, research has found wellbeing is greater for people who enjoy good physical and mental health. research supporting this hypothesis includes bee and bjorklund (2000); dolan and white (2007); heylighen (1999); katsaiti (2012) and kushner and foster (2000). research, however, has found health and wellbeing is a non-recursive system. blakeslee and grossarth-maticek (1996) showed that wellbeing is highly predictive of future good health. some of the objective indicators of health identified in the literature include life expectancy, undernourishment, suicide rates, positive experiences, mental and physical suffering, and air, water, and sanitation quality. 2.3 freedom freedom concerns the extent to which people are in control of their own lives. sen (1999) was among the first to propose that freedom is a “bundled commodity” consisting of political, economic, civil, and religious categories. the magnitude of freedom can be measured by the degree to which there is respect for political, civil, religious, and economic freedoms in a society as well as by people’s perceptions of these freedoms. triandis and gelfand (1998) say that although absolute freedom in all areas may be counterproductive, dynamic social systems and cultures have a tendency to combine a sense of social responsibility and solidarity with a high degree of freedom for people to follow their personal moral compasses to make key choices for themselves. gundelach and kreiner (2004) and verme (2007) find freedom to be the component possessing the overall strongest correlation to wellbeing. other research supporting the correlation between increased wellbeing and freedom in general includes heylighen (1999), brooks (2008a, 2008b), and (veenhoven, 2008, 2012). more specifically, diener, diener, and diener (1995) found that political freedom and civil liberties enhance wellbeing, while gropper, lawson, and thorne (2011) found that economic freedom augments wellbeing. 2.4 community and relationships the factor ‘community and relationships’ relates to the quality of the community, family life, and friendships in a society. according to social causation theory (joung, 1997; mastekaasa, 1992), community and family relations increase wellbeing by providing emotional and financial support to the individual. this support serves as a buffer against the travails of life, thereby preserving or increasing wellbeing. the empirical literature has found that deep human interactions are directly beneficial to the individual’s emotional state and feeling of wellbeing. there is also an indirect effect through higher social capital and lower transaction costs that leads to economic growth and an increased standard of living. empirical support for the importance of close-knit community interaction for wellbeing can be found in stolle (1998), putnam (2000), guiso, sapienza, and zingales (2006), and zak (2011). religious engagement as a precursor for higher wellbeing has been identified by lim and putnam (2010), winkelmann and winkelmann a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 (1998), ellison and levin (1998), diener and suh (1997), veenhoven (1996), wilson (1967), helliwell (2008), and inglehart (2010). drummond (2000), plagnol and easterlin (2008), helliwell and putnam (2004), diener, gohm, suh, and oishi (2000), kahneman and krueger (2006), and veenhoven (2012) provide support for marriage and family life as important aspects of people’s wellbeing. 2.5 peace and security the factor ‘peace and security’ relates to sources of instability in a society such as the level of violence and crime; and also to trust, transparency, corruption, and bureaucratic quality, or efficiency. in addition to community and freedom, peace is one of those factors humans need in order to thrive. competent governance, in the sense of the minimization of violence, crime, corruption, and cronyism, fosters a peaceful society. research that has found some of the foregoing impact wellbeing includes oishi (2012), oishi and roth (2009), inglehart (1990), frey and stutzer (2000), inglehart and klingemann (2000), and diener, inglehart, and tay (2013). 2.6 opportunity opportunity is concerned with people’s access to things like community basics (i.e. workable infrastructure) education, employment, and entrepreneurship that enables them to live satisfying and happy lives. the link between opportunity and wellbeing on a societal level is a highly mobile economic and social environment. a society with high levels of opportunity is an environment that does not discriminate. it is one that allows equal prospects for all when it comes to pursuing the good life. as such, the factor ‘opportunity’ is closely related to the factors ‘freedom’ and ‘living standard’. the opportunity to work, satisfaction with one’s job, and the prospect of pursuing entrepreneurial undertakings have been found to be strong explanatory factors of wellbeing according to frankl (1963), brooks (2008a, 2008b), and murray (1988), among others. opportunity is especially important to the underprivileged, and poverty sometimes results from a lack of opportunity. research supporting the link between poverty and wellbeing includes biswas-diener and patterson (2011), marshall et al. (2001) and oishi, kesebir, and diener (2011). according to meulemann (2001), education might also be an important driver of opportunity. 3. methodology the theoretical background and scholarly literature support the operationalization of these six categories. the review of the scholarly literature introduced the reader to the most recurring findings based on these groupings. it provides an opportunity to explore and test, through a meta-analysis, the linkage of these livability aspects with wellbeing. by offering the opportunity to combine evidence from retrospectively accumulated or prospectively generated data, meta-analysis is an important research tool that increases statistical power by combining results from studies that have similar or related research hypotheses. the effect size results of individual studies are pooled by use of a variety of statistical techniques to determine a meta-effect, which is a more powerful measure of the outcome. in addition to increased statistical power, other advantages include greater generalizability and increased ability to do multifactor analyses. using meta-analysis shifts the focus from an individual study’s statistical significance towards the true effect size. the meta-analysis in this paper was performed by first asking whether the factors identified in the literature impact wellbeing. a systematic literature search was performed based on the a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 specified factors. several search techniques were used to retrieve studies for inclusion. articles written in a language other than english were considered if they had been translated into english. identification was achieved through electronic library databases including jstor, proquest, web of knowledge, and dissertation abstracts international, the web-based search engine google scholar, and the web-based world database of happiness (veenhoven, 2013). computerized searches involved multiple combinations of terms reflecting wellbeing (life satisfaction, satisfaction with life, happiness, quality of life, emotional wellbeing, subjective wellbeing, and wellbeing). the studies identified as relevant were then reviewed and, when inclusion/exclusion criteria were deemed similar, graded for quality. judgments about the quality of studies was based on design, follow-up, and outcome assessments. the inclusion/exclusion criteria for the selection process were as follows: 1. the study must involve participants of working age who reside within the geographic location investigated; 2. the study must include a nationally representative sample; 3. a measure of wellbeing must be clearly defined; 4. an objective measure of at least one of the proposed factors within the literature on livability must be present; and 5. the study must be publically available with results presented in a correlation or a convertible metric that is conducive to computational conversion into an effect size. meta-analysis is particularly influenced by the external validity of each of the examined studies. here, external validity refers to the generalization of research findings either from a sample to a larger population or to settings and populations other than those studied. to address external validity, assessment is based on (1) the extent to which empirical measures accurately reflect the stated theoretical constructs, (2) whether the research setting conforms to the scope of the theory under test, (3) a subjective assessment regarding confidence that the findings presented may be repeated under identical conditions, and (4) the confirmatory status of the theory under test. in these ways, external validity is principally seen as a theoretical issue and can be addressed only by an examination of the interplay between theory and methods. all potentially relevant studies published or posted through september of 2013 were considered for inclusion. every attempt was made to be inclusive; however, the criteria for inclusion and exclusion does not guarantee that every relevant study is identified using these criteria. selected articles were then abstracted. 3.1 fixed effects (fe) vs. random effects (re) given that meta-analysis is the focus of this study, the distinction between fixed effects (fe) and random effects (re) models is a critically important topic because there is a strange anomaly in the behavioral and social sciences today. the anomaly is the fact that although the fe models are almost never appropriate, the majority of published meta-analyses in social science in general and some related areas have been based on fe models. this is not the case in either the industrial and organizational psychology literature and certain other literatures such as management studies, organizational behavior, and business strategy (hunter & schmidt, 2000). inference under a meta-analysis framework indicates that if there is real variation in population parameters across studies, the fe model not only cannot detect this variation, but also produces confidence intervals (cis) that are erroneously narrow. that is, the fe model greatly underestimates the amount of uncertainty in the estimated mean value. of course, the fe a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 model produces accurate results when there is zero variance across studies in the population values. the problem is that there are few if any study sets that meet this condition (hunter & schmidt, 2000). on the other hand, re models produce accurate results in both cases: when there is and is not variation in study population values. evidence of the anomaly and of the use of fe models is explored in (schmidt, oh, & hayes, 2009). using two different re methods to reanalyze the data from five fe-based meta-analysis publications in psychological bulletin that included a total of 54 separate meta-analyses, they found that the average level of underestimation of the width of the cis by the fe models was 55%. that is, the fe cis are, on average, less than half as wide as the actual cis. this amounts to a very serious overestimation of the degree of certainty of the mean effect sizes. hence, the use of fe models instead of re models does not lead to merely technical anomalies. it leads to major errors. hedges and vevea (1998) and overton (1998) point to a possible reason for the use of fe methods. they suggest that the choice of a fe or re model depends on the type of inference that is the goal of the meta-analysis. if the goal is to draw conclusions that are limited to the set of studies at hand, and there is no desire to generalize beyond the particular set of studies included in the analysis, the fe model can be used when population parameters vary and when they do not. hedges and vevea (1998) refer to this as conditional inference. the usual goal of research, however, is generalizable knowledge (toulmin, 1961), which requires generalization beyond the current set of studies to other similar studies that have been or might be conducted. hedges and vevea (1998) refer to this as unconditional inference. the objective of this meta-analysis is to make unconditional inferences about a wide population of studies; that is, to draw conclusions that can be generalized beyond the specific set of studies included in the presented meta-analysis. the methodological purpose, therefore, is to reach conclusions that are not limited to the specific set of studies in the meta-analysis, because the set of studies at hand is viewed as a sample of a larger number of studies that might exist or could be conducted (hedges & vevea, 1998; hunter & schmidt, 2000; overton, 1998; murray et al., 1994). in this case, generalization of conclusions is an important aspect of the study and the re model is offered in the analysis, i.e., the inference of cumulative knowledge (field, 2005; hedges & vevea, 1998; murray et al., 1994). to address variation in the type of analysis that underlies each study, all studies are converted to an effect size using fischer’s z and then analyzed under the dersimonian-laird random-effects model. this model assumes heterogeneity between the studies; that is, it assumes that the true effect can be different for each study. the model assumes that the true effects of individual studies are distributed with a variance 2  around an overall true effect, but the model makes no assumptions about the form of the distribution of either the within-study or the between-studies effects. 3.2 addressing publication bias once a study included in this meta-analysis has been subjectively assessed for external validity, based on both statistical methods and theory, the results and implications of that study are assessed for publication bias. publication bias is the term for what occurs whenever the research that appears in the published literature is systematically unrepresentative of the population of completed studies. simply put, when the research that is readily available differs in its results from the results of all the research that has been done in an area, readers and reviewers of that research are in danger of drawing the wrong conclusion about what that body of research shows. a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 although publication bias has likely been around for as long as research has been conducted and reported, it has come to prominence in recent years largely with the introduction and widespread adoption of the use of systematic review and meta-analytic methods to summarize research. in part, this is because, as methods of reviewing have become more scientific and quantitative, the process of reviewing (and synthesizing) research has been increasingly seen as paralleling the process of primary research. parallels to the threats to the validity of primary research have been uncovered at every step of the systematic review process (cooper, 1998; shadish, cook, & campbell, 2002). publication bias is a non-trivial issue. evidence that publication bias has had an impact on meta-analyses has been firmly established by several lines of research (rothstein, sutton, & borenstein, 2005). thus, a problem that was viewed hazily through the looking glass of traditional reviews came into sharp focus under the lens of metaanalysis. to address the threat of publication bias, this study uses the egger, smith, schneider, and minder (1997) regression method, which tests for a linear association between the intervention effect and its standard error. alternative methods, such as that of begg and mazumdar (1994), which proposed testing the interdependence of variance and effect size using kendall's method, may also be applicable in testing for publication bias. although begg and mazumdar (1994) make fewer assumptions than do egger et al. (1997), the method of begg and mazumdar (1994) is insensitive to many types of bias to which the test of egger et al. (1997) is sensitive. as suggested by sterne, gavaghan, and egger (2000), in cases where the number of studies in the meta-analysis is small, the begg and mazumdar (1994) method has very low power to detect bias. given the number of studies available for several of the livability factors in this meta-analysis, the egger et al. (1997) test for publication bias was used. 3.3 descriptive results table 2 below reports the descriptive count of the studies meeting the criteria of inclusion in the meta-analysis. the total count of observation is 560 with 164 unique studies identified. this indicates that on average each study contributed about 3.4 observations. in the meta-analysis, each country or geographical area that is uniquely identified is considered an observation. this is not to say that each unique study provides information on a single geographical entity; in fact, many of the uniquely identified studies may offer generalizable information. unique studies may also offer multiple components or factors that are independently assessed. table 2: study count number of observations 560 number of unique studies 164 table 3 below reports the tests for validity based on publication bias using egger et al. (1997). using p-values, the results indicate the presence of potential publication bias for one of the components, gdp per capita, at the conventional p = 0.05 level. this analysis is presented to assist in formulating overall inferences for each of the livability factors presented above. a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 table 3: publication bias test using egger et al. (1997) publication bias (p-value) living standard current living standards gdp per capita (ppp adjusted, real, and logged) p = 0.03 are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your standard of living, all the things you can buy or do? p = 0.10 improvement in living standards 5-year growth rate of gdp per capita p = 0.89 right now, do you feel your economic situation is getting better or getting worse? p = 0.28 freedom political rights p = 0.21 civil liberties p = 0.35 economic freedom p = 0.19 overall perception of freedom: are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what to do with your life? p = 0.99 health and environment physical health life expectancy at birth p = 0.33 infant mortality rate p = 0.07 mental and emotional health suicide rate p = 0.21 environmental health air quality p = 0.67 community and relationships community life religious engagement p = 0.75 family life are you married? p = 0.10 peace, stability and security political and ethnic violence violence and ethnic warfare p = 0.09 human rights violations p = 0.33 trust in national institutions p = 0.89 corruption in business and government control of corruption p = 0.42 world indexes: corruption index p = 0.58 bureaucratic quality p = 0.23 opportunity unemployment p = 0.80 the concern in table 3 above is the component gdp per capita, which is one of the underlying components of the factor of livability, ‘living standard’. gdp per capita has 50 studies associated with it, as offered in figure 2 below. the visual assessment of these 50 studies identifies an asymmetric outcome. the asymmetry indicates strong evidence that studies with a one-sided a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 significance test are suppressed and those with a two-sided significance test are not. this adds further credence to the possibility that the asymmetry observed in the contour plot offered in figure 2 below is caused by publication bias. figure 2: contour funnel plot for gdp per capita 4. meta-analysis results based on this study’s theoretical discussion, there are three effect sizes offered in these metaanalyses. the first effect size, wb, is a measure of the correlation with wellbeing ignoring differences associated with affective wellbeing represented by happiness (awb) and evaluative wellbeing represented by life satisfaction (ewb). the second measure of correlation uses affective wellbeing (awb) alone. as discussed, awb is closely related to an immediate state of wellbeing that is reflected in one’s current emotional state. the data show that 132 of the 560 observations can be considered awb studies. the third effect size offered in the meta-analysis is articulated as evaluative wellbeing (ewb). ewb is advanced as a cognitive, reflective state where individuals evaluate their wellbeing over longer periods of time. in the data, 428 observations are categorized as ewb. in addition to the three effect sizes, the 95% confidence intervals (ci) and the observation counts are reported. appendix a provides a listing of all the studies associated with the metaanalyses. 4.1 living standard the analysis for the first factor of livability, ‘living standard’, is presented in table 4. from a wellbeing perspective, several components underlie ‘living standard’ in the literature. two of these are current living standard and improvement in living standard. within current living 0 5 10 15 20 25 s ta n d a rd e rr o r -100 -50 0 50 100 effect estimate gdp per capita p < 1% 1% < p < 5% 5% < p < 10% p > 10% 0 5 10 15 20 25 s ta n d a rd e rr o r -100 -50 0 50 100 effect estimate gdp per capita p < 1% 1% < p < 5% 5% < p < 10% p > 10% a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 standard, an objective measure and two subjective measures are offered in the literature. the objective measure, gdp per capita, has 50 observations in the prior literature. measures of gdp per capita include adjusted and real; for example, samanni and holmberg (2010) and fahey and smyth (2004), respectively. the effect size for all 50 observations is a correlation of 0.53 with wellbeing and is statistically significant with a ci lower limit of 0.47 and an upper limit of 0.58. when considering awb and ewb, the correlation is stronger with ewb and the ci is narrower, providing some evidence that the effect of income and wealth is stronger when the individual considers his or her life satisfaction (wellbeing over time) than it is for happiness (one’s emotional state), a result supporting kahneman and deaton (2010). for current living standard, the prior literature has measured only the subjective question, “are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your standard of living, all the things you can buy or do?” as a component. examples in the prior literature include andrews and withey (1976) and headey, veenhoven, and wearing (1991). sixty-four observations are found for this subjective component with a mean correlation of 0.34, a weaker correlation than found for the objective measure, gdp per capita. the results indicate that ewb has a stronger correlation than is found with awb, with ewb having a narrower ci. table 4: livability factor—living standard average effect size (correlation) 95% confidence interval number of observations wb awb ewb wb awb ewb wb awb ewb current living standards gdp per capita (ppp adjusted, real, and logged) 0.53 0.39 0.58 0.47, 0.58 0.28, 0.48 0.51, 0.64 50 14 36 are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your standard of living, all the things you can buy or do? 0.34 0.24 0.37 0.31, 0.36 0.17, 0.30 0.33, 0.40 64 16 48 improvement in living standards 5-year growth rate of gdp per capita. 0.03 -0.14 0.09 -0.04, 0.10 -0.26, -0.0 0.02, 0.16 41 10 31 right now, do you feel your economic situation is getting better or getting worse? 0.09 0.17 0.00 0.01, 0.17 0.09, 0.24 -0.09, 0.10 8 4 4 within improvement in living standard, an objective measure and two subjective measures are offered. the objective measure, 5-year growth rate of gdp per capita, which is the chosen proxy for improvement in living standard, contains 41 observations in the prior literature. statistical a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 significance is found for both awb and ewb, although the correlations are in opposite directions. for awb the 5-year growth rate is negatively associated with immediate happiness, which is quite possible given that the 5-year growth rate is measuring a reflective aspect of wellbeing. the finding, however, may support graham’s (2010) thesis of short-run “unhappy growth.” the same observation holds true for the positive correlation between ewb and the 5-year growth rate, which signals that the reflective measure is positively correlated with the reflective measure of wellbeing. the effect size for wellbeing is a statistically insignificant correlation of 0.03. this is most likely due to the reflective nature of the 5-year growth rate in which awb and ewb are pulling the wellbeing outcome in different directions. for improvement in living standard, the prior literature has measured only the subjective question, “right now, do you feel your economic situation is getting better or getting worse?” as a component. eight observations are found for this subjective component with a mean correlation of 0.09, a stronger correlation than found with the 5-year growth rate of gdp per capita. the results indicate that awb has a stronger correlation than is found with ewb, with ewb found to be statistically insignificant. the result is to be expected as the variable addresses people’s personal changes in income. 4.2 freedom the analysis for the livability factor, ‘freedom’, is presented in table 5. four components are identified and used in the prior literature. within ‘freedom’, political rights is offered in the prior literature. the effect size for all 28 observations for political rights is a correlation of 0.16 with wellbeing. this correlation is statistically significant with a ci lower limit of 0.08 and an upper limit of 0.24. when considering awb and ewb, the correlation is weaker with ewb, providing some evidence that political rights is stronger when individual wellbeing is considered as happiness. table 5: livability factor—freedom average effect size (correlation) 95% confidence interval number of observations wb awb ewb wb awb ewb wb awb ewb political rights 0.16 0.22 0.14 0.08, 0.24 0.08, 0.34 0.05, 0.24 28 6 22 civil liberties 0.23 0.28 0.22 0.14, 0.32 0.11, 0.43 0.11,0.31 23 6 17 economic freedom 0.35 0.35 0.35 0.26, 0.42 0.16, 0.52 0.24, 0.43 28 4 24 overall perception of freedom: are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what to do with your life? 0.24 0.19 0.28 0.18, 0.28 0.14, 0.24 0.20, 0.35 21 10 11 the next component of ‘freedom’ is civil liberties. twenty-three observations are found for civil liberties with a mean correlation of 0.23. the results indicate that ewb has a weaker correlation than is found with awb based on magnitude, although ewb has a narrower ci. the component economic freedom has an average correlation with wellbeing of 0.35. the correlation is consistent across both awb and ewb, with ewb and wellbeing reflecting similar cis. the final component a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 of ‘freedom’ that is observed in the prior literature is overall perception of freedom. the average correlation for overall perception of freedom is 0.24 with ewb showing the strongest correlation. in the literature, limitations exist on the correlation between wellbeing and religious freedom due to a lack of longitudinal data on religious freedom. 4.3 health and environment three components are identified as underlying the third livability factor, ‘health and environment’. beginning with physical health, two sub-components are present in the extant literature. life expectancy at birth, in table 6, shows a statistically significant average correlation of 0.11 with wellbeing. the strongest correlation for life expectancy at birth is found with awb, with an average correlation of 0.27. the reported correlation for infant mortality rate is -0.14, indicating that as infant mortality increases wellbeing decreases. all studies found in the extant literature using the criteria offer only ewb when estimating the effect of wellbeing and infant mortality. studies measuring the relationship between overall mental and emotional health in a society and its overall wellbeing are sparse in the existing literature. the empirical findings focus on suicide rate. this component has the fewest studies meeting the inclusion criteria of all the components found in the literature reviewed for this meta-analysis. the negative correlation of 0.14 is bolstered by a single study associated with ewb that shows a correlation of -0.25. if that study is ignored, as shown in the awb column, the resulting correlation of suicide rate with wellbeing is statistically insignificant. the final component underlying the livability factor ‘health and environment’ is environmental health. of the three sub-components of health identified in academic works, only one sub-component, air quality, is measured in the extant literature. although the correlation for this sub-component is -0.03, the outcome is a statistically insignificant correlation. table 6: livability factor—health and environment average effect size (correlation) 95% confidence interval number of observations wb awb ewb wb awb ewb wb awb ewb physical health life expectancy at birth 0.11 0.27 -0.02 -0.07, 0.16 0.012, .041 0.01, 0.04 15 5 10 infant mortality rate -0.14 -0.14 -0.24, -0.02 -0.24, -0.02 06 0 06 mental and emotional health suicide rate -0.14 -0.11 -0.25 -0.04, -0.23 00.00, -0.22 05 4 01 environmental health air quality -0.03 -0.03 -0.15, 0.09 -0.15, 0.09 06 0 06 4.4 community and relationships the analysis for the fourth livability factor, ‘community and relationships’, is presented in table 7. in academic works two major components are identified that relate to ‘community and relationships’, community life and family life. table 7 presents both components, noting that community life contains religious engagement only. unfortunately, longitudinal data does not exist for secular community engagement in the literature used in the meta-analysis. religious engagement is significantly positively correlated with wellbeing for ewb. the effect size of a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 religious engagement is insignificant for the awb studies. given the relatively small number of observations from awb studies, the statistically significant correlation for wellbeing results is dominated by the ewb studies overall. the component family life has one sub-component, are you married?, which meets the criteria for this study. are you married? is positively correlated with all the wellbeing measures, with a correlation of about 0.06 (wb) and a ci lower limit of 0.03 and an upper limit of 0.08. table 7: livability factor—community and relationships average effect size (correlation) 95% confidence interval number of observations wb awb ewb wb awb ewb wb awb ewb community life religious engagement 0.07 -0.02 0.07 0.03, 0.11 -0.08, 0.04 0.03, 0.12 87 6 81 family life are you married? 0.06 0.07 0.05 0.03, 0.08 0.05, 0.10 0.02, 0.08 73 21 52 4.5 peace, stability, and security the analysis for the livability factor ‘peace, stability, and security’ is presented in table 8. the major components observed in the literature that underlie ‘peace, stability, and security’ are identified as political and ethnic violence, human rights violations, law and order, trust in national institutions, corruption in business and government, and bureaucratic quality. the results for political and ethnic violence indicate that wellbeing is negatively correlated with political and ethnic violence for awb, a correlation of -0.28, showing that in the immediacy associated with awb increases in political and ethnic violence reduce wellbeing. the correlation with wellbeing is not statistically significant with either wb or ewb. the human rights violations component shows a positive correlation of -0.20 with wellbeing. when considering awb and ewb, the correlation is stronger with awb, providing some evidence that human rights violations is stronger when the individual considers his or her immediate wellbeing. the next component is trust in national institutions. no statistically significant correlation is found for trust in national institutions and wellbeing. corruption in business and government is composed of two sub-components, both of which have been used in prior studies that meet the inclusion criteria. the sub-component control of corruption is positively correlated with all three measures of wellbeing. a correlation of 0.40 is associated with wellbeing, which is similar to both the awb and ewb correlations. awb has the strongest correlation with control of corruption at an average of 0.47. the corruption index shows a negative correlation with wellbeing as measured in the wb and awb measurements. the corruption index is statistically correlated with the ewb measure of wellbeing. the results for bureaucratic quality, or efficiency, indicate a positive correlation across all measures of wellbeing. a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 table 8: livability factor—peace, stability, and security correlation 95% confidence interval number of observations wb awb ewb wb awb ewb wb awb ewb political and ethnic violence 0.14 -0.28 0.27 -0.16, 0.41 -0.43, -0.13 -0.02, 0.52 08 02 06 human rights violations -0.20 -0.33 -0.13 -0.11, -0.29 -0.19, -0.45 -0.03, -0.24 27 10 17 trust in national institutions 0.10 0.02 0.12 -0.01, 0.20 -0.07, 0.12 -0.01, 0.24 09 02 07 corruption in business and government control of corruption 0.40 0.47 0.39 0.30, 0.50 0.01, 0.76 0.29, 0.48 11 02 09 corruption index -0.27 -0.54 -0.14 -0.47, -0.05 -0.71, -0.30 -0.37, 0.10 10 03 07 bureaucratic quality 0.37 0.40 0.37 0.29, 0.45 0.14, 0.62 0.28, 0.44 19 04 15 4.6 opportunity the analysis for the final livability factor, ‘opportunity’, is presented in table 9. in the literature, there are at least four components that underlie ‘opportunity’. these are entrepreneurship, community basics, education, and employment. although the literature has four major components for ‘opportunity’, the inclusion criteria limit the analysis to employment. table 9 presents the results for employment. the objective measure, unemployment, has 21 observations assessed from the prior literature. the effect size for all 21 observations is a correlation of 0.04 with wellbeing and is statistically insignificant, with a ci lower limit of -0.04 and an upper limit of 0.11. when considering awb and ewb, the correlation is statistically insignificant with ewb, but it is statistically significant for awb with a correlation of 0.19; thereby leading to an assessment that individuals consider their immediate wellbeing when considering employment. this finding may seem surprising, but the outcome is intuitive if we consider that unemployment is a temporary individual effect that can change in a very short period of time. table 9: livability factor—opportunity average effect size (correlation) 95% confidence interval number of observations wb awb ewb wb awb ewb wb awb ewb employment unemployment 0.04 0.19 0.01 -0.04, 0.11 0.01, 0.35 -0.06, 0.09 21 3 18 5. conclusion this study has investigated, through a meta-analysis, the livability factors and associated components identified in the literature as contributors to wellbeing. using the theoretical background associated with wellbeing, two constructs observed in the literature underpin wellbeing: happiness and life satisfaction. using the meta-analysis, the findings support the underlying constructs associated with wellbeing—happiness, which is identified as awb in the a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 analysis; and ewb, the identifier for life satisfaction. the meta-analysis of the prior empirical literature shows that the two constructs differ in regard to the magnitude and statistical significance of their correlations as they relate to wellbeing, supporting the hypothesized continuum derived through the synthesis of the theoretical literature. the main findings of the analyses are that all six livability factors are present within the prior literature, although the frequency with which the components of these factors are used varies. the livability factor identified as ‘living standard’ has strong representation in the empirical literature, with dozens of studies using this factor. the results for ‘living standard’ show that the underlying components are all positively related to wellbeing, with variability in magnitude found with both awb and ewb. the results for ‘living standard’ are indicative of those found with the livability factors ‘freedom’ and ‘community and relationships,’ although ‘freedom’ has correlation coefficients approximately 50% smaller than those found with ‘living standard’. correlations of ‘community and relationships’ are approximately 50% smaller than those found with ‘freedom’. the implication for these three livability factors is that all three are important when investigating the implications of wellbeing, but that the magnitudes of the impacts are different. for the other three livability factors, ‘health and environment,’ ‘peace, stability, and security,’ and ‘opportunity,’ the results show that these three factors are correlated with wellbeing although their representation in the literature is substantially lower than that the other three livability factors. one reason may be the difficulty in measuring these livability factors, in addition to the possibility that these factors have become of interest rather recently within the literature. the importance of these livability factors is quite apparent, with many of the correlations with wellbeing at around a modest magnitude of 0.15. this leads to the conclusion that ignoring these three livability factors might produce erroneous assumptions about wellbeing—in particular, about each underlying construct of wellbeing, happiness, and life satisfaction. this meta-analysis is used to answer questions not posed by the individual studies. the selection of studies based on the criteria laid down for this meta-analysis is focused on providing estimates that may help improve or settle controversies arising from apparently conflicting studies regarding the factors of wellbeing. statistical analysis of findings allows the degree of conflict to be formally assessed and reasons for different results to be explored and quantified as social science assessments of wellbeing advance in the literature. the meta-analysis has also discovered the need for further studies of wellbeing that include multiple dimensions of wellbeing simultaneously in order to capture indirect relationships, spurious effects, and other matters of interest. the empirical value of this meta-analysis is to increase statistical power and improve precision, since significance level and the estimation of effect-size can be improved when they are based on more information. some of the components have a small number of prior studies associated with them, which directly impacts the value of the meta-analysis for those variables. the results for some of the components and sub-components in small studies should encourage researchers to continue to explore the influence of these components and sub-components on wellbeing. this study explores the effects of all the research found to date regarding awb, ewb, and wellbeing. the promise of enhancing our understanding of the role of wellbeing in the world encourages future research, as wellbeing and its underlying constructs continue to provide important information to policy-makers throughout the world. a meta-analysis of wellbeing eger & maridal www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 acknowledgments this research was sponsored by a grant from the charles koch institute. authors robert j. eger naval postgraduate school rjeger@nps.edu j. haavard maridal baylor university publishing timeline received 11 august 2014 accepted 27 march 2015 published 21 june 2015 references andrews, f. m., & withey, s. b. 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(2021). moments, not minutes: the nature-wellbeing relationship. international journal of wellbeing, 11(1), 8-33. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i1.1267 miles richardson university of derby m.richardson@derby.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 article moments, not minutes: the nature-wellbeing relationship miles richardson · holli-anne passmore · ryan lumber rory thomas · alex hunt abstract: a wealth of literature has evidenced the important role that the greater-than-human natural environment plays in our mental health and wellbeing (reviews by bratman et al., 2019; capaldi et al., 2014, 2015; pritchard et al., 2019). spending time in nature, engaging with nature directly and indirectly, and a strong sense of nature connectedness (a psychological/emotional connection with nature) have each been shown to positively impact well-being. few studies, however, have examined the importance that various nature-related factors have on our well-being when examined in concert with each other, and no studies have simultaneously examined the differential influences of nature connectedness and engagement. in the current study, using a national united kingdom sample of 2,096 adults, we provide new insights into this gap in the literature. our primary focus was on examining, when considered simultaneously, the patterns and relative predictive importance to hedonic wellbeing (i.e., happiness), eudaimonic wellbeing (i.e., worthwhile life), illbeing (i.e., depression and anxiety), and general physical health of five nature-related factors: (1) nature connectedness, (2) time in nature, (3) engagement with nature through simple everyday activities, (4) indirect engagement with nature, and (5) knowledge and study of nature. a consistent pattern of results emerged across multiple analytical approaches (i.e., correlations, linear regression, dominance analyses, commonality analysis), wherein time in nature was not the main (or significant) predictive nature-related factor for wellbeing. rather, nature connectedness and engaging with nature through simple activities (e.g., smelling flowers) consistently emerged as being the significant and prominent factors in predicting and explaining variance in mental health and wellbeing. implications for practical application and policy/programme planning are discussed. keywords: nature connectedness; time in nature; well-being; simple activities; happiness; worthwhile life; wellbeing 1. introduction mental health is a global issue of concern. it is estimated that 30% of the population worldwide suffers from a mental disorder (steel et al., 2014), with more than 264 million people affected by depression, and more than 284 million affected by anxiety (global burden of diseases, [gbd] 2017). of course, complete mental health is not merely the absence of illbeing; it is also the presence of wellbeing (jahoda, 1958; keyes, 2005; who, 2018), both hedonic (e.g. happiness) and eudaimonic (e.g., feeling that life is worthwhile/having meaning in life) (lambert et al., 2015; ryan et al., 2008). the important role that the natural environment plays in maintaining and enhancing our about:blank moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 mental health and wellbeing has been well established through a wealth of consistent evidence (see reviews bratman et al., 2019; capaldi et al., 2014; capaldi et al., 2015, howell & passmore, 2013; pritchard et al., 2019). indeed, a close relationship with nature has been put forth as a basic human psychological need that must be satisfied to experience complete wellbeing (baxter & pelletier, 2019; hurly & walker, 2019). empirical studies have evidenced that time in nature, direct and indirect contact with nature, engaging with nature through simple activities (i.e., sitting in a garden, smelling wildflowers; bowler et al., 2010; mcmahan & estes, 2015; passmore & howell, 2014), and increased nature connectedness (i.e., a psychological / emotional connection with nature; mcewan et al., 2019) are beneficial to wellbeing. yet, we are not aware of any studies that have examined these factors in concert with each other, in the same study or with a large national data set. this is important as the benefits of individual factors such as ‘dosage’ of time in nature (white et al., 2019) can drive policy, public perception (and individual practitioners) towards a focus solely on this one factor alone (time and exposure), rather than a more rounded approach (natural england, 2020) whilst largely disregarding other factors such as nature connectedness. thus, to address this gap, in the current study we examined the predictive importance to mental health and wellbeing of five nature-related factors (nature connectedness, time in nature, engagement with nature through simple activities, indirect engagement with nature, and knowledge and study of nature). we also examined the predictive importance to general physical health of these five nature-related factors. systematic meta-analyses have evidenced that people who have a higher level of nature connectedness tend to have higher levels of both hedonic (positive affect, happiness, satisfaction with life) and eudaimonic (positive relations with others, autonomy, meaning in life, competence, personal growth, vitality) wellbeing (respectively capaldi et al., 2014; pritchard et al., 2019). moreover, nature relatedness (akin to nature connectedness) has been evidenced to significantly and distinctly predict wellbeing over and above how generally connected people feel to family and friends (zelesnki & nisbet, 2014). indeed, in light of this cumulative evidence, a call has been made for the gallup world poll to include nature connectedness as an important item by which to measure wellbeing on a global scale (lambert et al., 2020). the research into nature connectedness builds on a broad base of research demonstrating that exposure to nature provides a myriad of wellbeing benefits. some of this work, utilizing epidemiological data, has examined the positive link between general health and the presence of local greenspace and incidental contact with nature (e.g., verheij et al., 2008; van den berg et al., 2010). other work has demonstrated how visits to and time spent in nature impact mental wellbeing (e.g. meredith et al., 2020; white et al., 2019). even indirect contact with nature— technologically-mediated nature via virtual-reality immersive experiences, watching nature documentaries, or even simply viewing slideshows/photos of nature—has been shown to be good for our mental health (beukeboom et al., 2012; keltner et al., 2017; tanja-dijkstra et al., 2017; white et al., 2018; see also reviews noted above); albeit, exposure to live nature has a stronger beneficial effect. interestingly, contrary to keltner and colleagues’ findings regarding boosts to positive emotions subsequent to watching nature documentaries, martin and colleagues (2020) reported a negative association between watching/listening to nature programmes and wellbeing. they surmised this could be a function of nature documentaries increasingly featuring information on environmental degradation, which could cause individuals highly connected to nature to feel less satisfied with life. knowledge of and studying nature can also be considered a form of indirect engagement. there are few studies looking specifically at the relationship between knowledge and study of the natural world and wellbeing. however, the one study we found which did explore this found http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 a positive connection. in a longitudinal study over a fall semester, nisbet and colleagues (2011) found that students taking nature-based courses (biology, environmental studies, earth sciences, geography) reported significantly higher levels of vitality at the end of the semester than did the control group of students taking non-nature-based courses. mediation analyses, though, revealed that this increase in vitality was a function of enhanced nature relatedness, rather than a direct effect of knowledge and study alone. however, despite the clear beneficial role that nature plays in our wellbeing, several signs indicate that as a society, we have become disconnected from nature. culturally, references to nature in fiction, songs, and movie storylines have been steadily declining since the 1950s (kesebir & kesebir, 2017). a 2017 wildlife trusts study of 2,000 british adults found that 70% of respondents reported that they had “lost touch with nature”; that same study found that 37% of parents said their knowledge of nature was too sparse for them to teach their children about common trees or animals such as identifying an oak tree or a barn owl. in a 2020 national trust survey, around 80% of people reported that they rarely or never watched wildlife, smelled wildflowers, or drew/photographed nature; 62% of people rarely or never listed to bird song or took a moment to mark natural cycles such as the vernal equinox (national trust, 2020). the crises of a warming climate and biodiversity loss are further indicators of a disconnect and failing relationship with nature. over time we are accepting increasingly degraded natural environments as “normal”, a phenomenon that peter kahn (1999) has dubbed “environmental generational amnesia”. thus, now, perhaps more than ever, studies are needed which highlight the benefits of a strong relationship with nature, and the role that nature plays in a happy and worthwhile life. recently, research has demonstrated the benefits to mental health and wellbeing of noticing the simple things in everyday nature. mcewan and colleagues (2019) found that when individuals were prompted to notice the good things in urban nature, mental health not only improved significantly in the general population, clinically significant increases in mental health were evidenced in a sample of those with mental health difficulties. further analyses (mcewan et al., 2020) revealed the simplicity of these interactions with everyday urban nature that had boosted mental wellbeing (e.g., appreciation of street trees, flowering plants, green planting amidst built space, awe at colourful/dramatic skies). passmore and holder (2017) found that participants who had been randomly assigned to notice everyday nature and note what emotions were evoked, reported significantly higher levels of positive affect, feelings of elevation, and a general sense of connectedness at the end of two weeks compared to those in control groups. moreover, the wellbeing benefits of noticing everyday nature emerged even though participants who noticed nature had not spent significantly more time in nature than did their counterparts in control conditions. while numerous studies have examined the bivariate relationship between wellbeing and a single nature-factor—such as time in nature, indirect contact with nature, or nature connectedness—few studies have looked at the relationship between wellbeing and several nature-related factors considered in concert with each other. martin and colleagues (2020), though, took a welcome step in this direction in their examination of how nature connectedness and nature contact predicted the outcomes of wellbeing, and pro-environmental behaviours. they noted that previous research evidencing the importance of time in nature have not also considered individual factors such as levels of nature connectedness (e.g., meredith et al., 2020; white et al., 2019). to help address this gap in the literature, in the current study utilizing a large uk-based population sample, we considered how five nature-related factors—nature connectedness, time http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 in nature, engagement with nature through simple activities, indirect engagement with nature, and knowledge/study of nature—individually and simultaneously relate to outcomes of hedonic wellbeing (i.e., happiness), eudaimonic wellbeing (i.e., worthwhile life), illbeing (i.e., depression and anxiety), and general physical health. in addition to nature, two facets that experts agree are core to mental health are autonomy (i.e., a sense that one has control over one’s life) and relatedness (i.e., feeling that one is connected to a larger circle) (manwell et al., 2015). decades of research have evidenced a link between wellbeing and feeling a sense of autonomy or control over one’s life (e.g., inglehart et al., 2008; lachman & weaver, 1998; reis et al., 2000; ryan et al., 2008; verne, 2009). for example, autonomy is negatively related to depression (kim & fusco, 2015; mirowsky & ross, 1990; steptoe et al., 2007) and positively related to positive affect and life satisfaction (helzer & jayawickreme, 2015; welzel & inglehart, 2010), in addition to being positively correlated to meaning in life and feeling that life is worthwhile (costin & vignoles, 2019; martela et al., 2018). similarly, an abundance of research has evidenced the clear impact that satisfaction of our basic relatedness need has on our overall happiness and life satisfaction (e.g., see review ryan & deci, 2016), as well as our meaning in life (martela et al., 2018). in line with this, people with lifepartners consistently report higher levels of happiness and satisfaction with life than do single individuals (diener et al. 1999; dolan & peasgood 2008; gustavson et al., 2015; haring-hidore et al. 1985; naess et al., 2015; veenhoven 1994). in their review of the literature, waite and gallagher (2000) noted that life-partners also provide a sense of meaning or purpose for the other person, that partners make life seem more worthwhile. moreover, longitudinal studies demonstrate that being in a relationship is a strong negative predictor of depressive symptoms (e.g., horwitz et al., 1996; kim & mckenry, 2002). such evidence regarding autonomy and relatedness is widely accepted as being paramount when examining factors of influence to wellbeing. given the fundamental importance that satisfaction of these basic needs plays in contributing to our wellbeing, we also examined how nature-related factors impact wellbeing when considered simultaneously with respondents’ sense of control over their lives and their relationship status. 2. method 2.1 yougov/national trust survey overview yougov is an international public-opinion and research-data group based in london, united kingdom, that conducts objective, demographically-representative surveys. the national trust is a large non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the integrity of the uk’s heritage sites and natural places. in 2019, the national trust commissioned yougov to conduct a stratifiedsample survey across the united kingdom examining adults’ relationship with nature. aimed at capturing a comprehensive picture, the survey included items pertaining to nature experiences and nature-related activities engaged in, attitudes towards and feelings about nature, along with aspects of individuals’ emotional/psychological wellbeing and physical health. 2.2 participants the sample consisted of 2,096 respondents. biological sex was nearly evenly split between males (47.2%) and females (52.8%); ages ranged from 16 to 55+, with 51% of respondents between the ages of 25 and 54 years, and 41% of respondents over the age of 55 years (8% were between 16 and 24 years). over half (61%) of our sample came from a higher (vs. lower) socio-economic http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 grade.1 fieldwork was undertaken between 29th to 30th july 2019. the survey was carried out online. the data have been weighted and representative of all uk adults 16+ years of age. 2.3 measures of dependent variables: wellbeing, illbeing, general physical health the yougov/national trust survey assessed emotional wellbeing, emotional illbeing, and general physical health with several items. we selected the items routinely used to produce national statistics through population surveys, for example by the ons (2012, 2018) in the uk, to monitor population wellbeing. these items also closely align with items commonly found in measures utilized by wellbeing researchers in the field of positive psychology. thus in the current study, hedonic wellbeing was assessed with the item “in general, do you feel happy?”, while eudaimonic wellbeing was assessed with the item “to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”. respondents rated both of these items on a scale ranging from 0 = not at all happy/worthwhile to 10 = very happy/completely worthwhile (respectively). single item measures of mental and physical wellbeing have been found acceptable, especially when used with large samples (e.g., cunny & perri, 1996; hyland & sodergren, 1996). additionally, these items (or very similar) have been used successfully in similar contexts and have been found to correlate highly with respective multi-item scales of happiness and meaning in life (abdel-khalek, 2006; cheung & lucas, 2014; oishi & diener, 2013; richardson et al., 2016; richardson & mcewan, 2018; steger & kashdan 2013). the yougov/national trust survey also presented respondents with a range of mental and physical diagnoses, to which they could choose either “1 = no” or “2 = yes” if they have ever been diagnosed with the ailment. (of course, respondents could also choose to not answer at all or choose a “prefer not to say” option.) of these items, we summed the “yes/no” responses to ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ to assess emotional illbeing in the current study. lastly, to broadly assess general physical health, we used the survey item “in general, would you say your health is _______” with responses on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 = poor to 5 = excellent. similar one-item measures of general physical health have been shown to be reliable, with results being in line with objective measures of physical health (e.g., macias et al., 2015; meng et al., 2014). 2.4 measures of predictor variables as noted in the introduction, we examined seven factors as predictors of wellbeing: nature connectedness, time in nature, engagement with nature through simple activities, indirect engagement with nature, knowledge and study of nature, autonomy, and relationship status. (see table 1 below for summary list of all items with response scales comprising these factors; items are also described below.) 2.4.1 factor 1: nature connectedness the inclusion of nature in self scale (ins; schultz, 2001) was selected from the survey items to measure nature connectedness. the ins is widely-used as an assessment of nature connectedness. the ins comprises a single item which asks the respondent to select one of seven diagrams that best describes their relationship with the natural environment. diagrams depict 1 socio-economic grade was defined using 2 levels: abc1 = high/intermediate managerial, administrative, or professional; supervisory, clerical, and junior managerial, administrative, or professional; c2de = skilled manual worker, semi and unskilled manual workers, state pensioners, casual or lower grade workers, unemployed with state benefits only. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 increasing degrees of overlap between a circle labelled “self” and a circle labelled “nature”, such that higher scores (from 1 to 7) indicate a greater connection with nature. in the current study, m = 4.03, sd = 1.72. table 1. all items used in initial analyses factors and potential items response scale factor 1. nature connectedness (nc) nc1. inclusion of nature in self scale choose which diagram of 7 best depicts relationship with nature factor 2. time in nature (tin) tin1. in an average week, how many days do you spend more than 1 hour in nature. 1 = ‘none’ to 5 = ‘every day, 7 days’ factor 3. engagement with nature through simple activities (sa) sa1. sit or relax in a garden. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ sa2. watch wildlife (e.g., bird watching etc.) 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ sa3. listen to bird song. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ sa4. smelt wildflowers. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ sa5. taken a photo / drawn or painted a picture of a natural views, plant, flower or animal. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ sa6. collected shells or pebbles on the beach. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ sa7. take time to notice butterflies and/or bees. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ factor 4. indirect engagement with nature (ind) ind1. watch or listen to nature programmes on the tv or radio. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ ind2. look at books, photos, or websites about the natural world. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ ind3. talk about nature or wildlife with family or friends (online or face-to-face). 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ factor 5. knowledge and study of nature (ks) ks1. i know a lot about nature and wildlife (such as birds, animals, insects, etc.) 1 = ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 = ‘strongly agree’ ks2. studied nature with a microscope or binoculars. 1 = ‘never’ to 4 = ‘often’ factor 6. autonomy (auto) s-d1. there’s little i can do to change my life. 1 = ‘strongly agree’ to 7 = ‘strongly disagree’ factor 7. relationship status (r-s) rs1. life partner status 1 = ‘yes’, 2 = ‘no’ 2.4.2 factor 2: time spent in nature this factor consisted of one item: “in an average week, how many days do you spend more than 1 hour in nature”. response scale ranged from 1 = none to 5 = every day, 7 days such that higher scores indicate more time spent in nature. in the current study, m = 3.03, sd = 1.25. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 2.4.3 factor 3: engagement with nature through simple activities seven items describing a selection of common, simple nature-related experiences that people might have engaged in over the past year were included in this factor. these items were informed by the biophilic values (kellert, 1993) and the nature connectedness pathways (lumber et al., 2017). some activities were more passive (i.e., ‘sit or relax in a garden’, ‘watch wildlife [e.g. bird watching etc.]’), while others were more active (i.e., ‘collected shells or pebbles on the beach’, ‘taken a photo of or drawn/painted a picture of a natural view, plant, flower, or animal’). activities involving different senses and different aspects of nature were included (i.e., ‘listen to bird song’, ‘smelt wildflowers’, ‘take time to notice butterflies and/or bees’). all items constituted some degree of direct exposure to and engagement with live nature. response scales ranged from 1 = never to 4 = often. descriptives for each activity are as follows: sit or relax in a garden: m = 3.06, sd = 0.90; watch wildlife: m = 2.51, sd = 1.06; listen to bird song: m = 3.00, sd = 1.00; smell wildflowers: m = 2.62, sd = 0.99; draw or take photo of nature: m = 2.33, sd = 1.11; collected shells or pebbles on beach: m = 2.10, sd = 0.96; take time to notice butterflies/bees: m = 3.05, sd = 0.94. 2.4.4 factor 4: indirect engagement with nature three items (inspired by soga et al., 2016) captured current frequency of indirect engagement with nature (i.e., ‘watch or listen to nature programmes on the tv or radio, ‘look at books, photos, or websites about the natural world, ‘talk about nature or wildlife with family or friends [online or face-to-face]’). the response scale was the same as for simple activities; that is from 1 = never to 4 = often. descriptives for these items are as follows: watch/listen nature programmes: m = 2.77, sd = 0.92; look at books/photos of nature: m = 2.53, sd = 0.92; talk about nature with family/friends: m = 2.73, sd = 0.92. 2.4.5 factor 5: knowledge and study of nature two items were included in this factor, one assessing knowledge (i.e., ‘i know a lot about nature and wildlife [such as birds, animals, insects, etc.’; response scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) and one assessing a behavioural aspect of studying nature (‘studied nature with a microscope or binoculars.’; response scale 1 = never to 4 = often). descriptives for these items are as follows: knowledge: m = 3.13, sd = 1.03; study: m = 1.65, sd = 0.90. 2.4.6 factor 6: autonomy one item was included to assess autonomy: ‘there’s little i can do to change my life’, which was rated on a 7-point scale from 1 = strongly agree to 7 = strongly disagree. this item was recoded before analysis such that higher scores indicated greater control over one’s life. descriptives for this item are: m = 4.76, sd = 1.66. 2.4.7 factor 7: relationship status this item asked respondents to indicate their married/civil partnership status. response choices were: ‘married/civil partnership’, ‘living as married’, ‘separated/divorced’, ‘widowed’, or ‘never married’. for simplicity in the current study, to assess if respondents had a life partner, we recoded these responses as follows: 1 = yes; combining ‘married/civil partnership’ with ‘living as married’; and 2 = no; combining ‘separated/divorced’, ‘widowed’, and ‘never married’. in this http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 sample using this metric, 59.8% of respondents fell into the category of having a life partner, while the remaining 40.2% fell into the category of not having a life partner. 3. results sample size provided adequate power for the number of variables entered (sample size estimated for small effect size, α= .05, power = .80; 7 predictors: suggested n = 725). multiple linear regression assumptions for multicollinearity, independent errors, and normality of residuals were met for all regressions (durbin-watson = 1.94 2.11, vif: 1.03 2.03; tolerance: 0.48 0.97, highest rs = .078 .321). however, the homoskedasticity assumption was violated for some of the multiple regressions (i.e., breusch-pagan and koenker ps < .050). when the homoskedasticity assumption is violated, significance tests and confidence intervals can be both biased and inconsistent, although relative beta values remain unaffected. if the heteroskedasticity assumption is violated, hayes and cai, 2007 recommend (as do long and ervin, 2000) that heteroskedasticity-consistent (hc) standard error estimators for ols regression and resulting significance values be employed. in this approach, the regression model is estimated using ols, but standard errors (and thus significance values) are estimated by a method which does not assume homoskedasticity. in line with these recommendations and for consistency, we employed hayes’ (2017) rlm v1.01 and daryanto’s (2018) heteroskedasticity macros for spps and used hc3 methods to estimate the significance of predictor values in all regressions. indeed, hayes and cai recommend using the hc3 estimator method as the default method for all multiple regressions (p. 716). 3.1 correlations between predictor items and wellbeing aspects bivariate correlations were examined between each of the original 16 predictor items and the four wellbeing dependent variables. as shown in table 2 below, significant correlations emerged between each of the 16 predictor items and our wellbeing dependent variables of happiness and life feeling worthwhile. with regard to bivariate correlations with illbeing, only two of the seven “engagement with nature through simple activities” (sa) items emerged as significant correlates, only one of the “indirect direct engagement with nature” (ind) items and one of the “knowledge and study of nature” (ks) items emerged as significant correlates. for bivariate correlations with general physical health, five of the seven sa items, two of the ind items, and one of the ks items emerged as significant correlates. the autonomy item and the relationship-status item were significantly correlated with all four aspects of wellbeing. 3.2 linear regressions to determine significant predictor items for each wellbeing aspect we regressed each wellbeing aspect (i.e., happy, worthwhile life, illbeing, general physical health) separately onto (1) items from engagement with nature through simple activities (sa), (2) items from indirect engagement with nature (ind), and (3) items from knowledge and study of nature (ks). thus, three regressions were run for each wellbeing aspect. (see table 3 below for a summary of significant items; see supplemental tables 1 to 4 for complete statistics.) in both the prediction of happiness and the prediction of feeling that life is worthwhile, two sa items (sa1 – sit or relax in a garden, and sa4 – smelt wildflowers), one ind item (ind1: watch or listen to nature programmes on the tv or radio), and one ks item (ks2 – studied nature with a microscope or binoculars) emerged as significant in the respective regressions. in both the prediction of illbeing and the prediction of general physical health, the sa1 item (sit or relax in a garden) and the ks2 item (study nature) emerged as significant in the respective regressions. the ind1 item (nature programmes) emerged as significant for the prediction of illbeing, while http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 the ind3 item (talking about nature with friends of family) emerged as significant for the prediction of general physical health. we computed a composite measure for the sa factor for happiness and life worthwhile utilizing the sa1 and sa4 items that had emerged as significant for use in subsequent analyses. table 2. correlations: individual predictor variable with dependent variables nc time sa1 sa2 sa3 sa4 sa5 sa6 sa7 ind1 ind2 ind3 ks1 ks2 auton. partner happy .270** .240** .267** .110** .132** .228** .088** .164** .166** .149** .097** .093** .058** 151** .302** -.217** worthwhile .327** .260** .281** .141** .165** 257** .102** .166** .192** .164** .126** .114** .093** .188** .317** -.207** illbeing -.155** -.120** -.122** -.035 -.035 -.058** -.001 -.019 -.021 -.075** -.018 -.012 -.005 -.081** -.090** .154** phys. health .177** .194** .161** .036 .041 .107** .087** .112** .079** .028 .048* .090** .041 .101** .227** -.124** note. * p < 05, ** p < .01; nc = nature connectedness; time = time in nature; sa = simple activity, sa1: sit/relax garden, sa2: watch wildlife, sa3:listen birdsong, sa4: smelt wildflowers, sa5: taken photo/drawn photo of nature, sa6: collect shells/pebbles on beach; sa7: notice butterflies &/or bees; ind = indirect engagement with nature, ind1: watch/listen nature programmes, ind2: look at books/photos/websites of nature, ind3: talk about nature with friends/family; ks = knowledge & study of nature, ks1: know a lot about nature, ks2: study nature w/binoculars or microscope; auton. = autonomy/control over one’s life; partner = 1 = yes, 2 = no having a life partner; phys. health = general physical health 3.3 linear regressions to determine significant predictor factors for each wellbeing aspect next we examined the relative predictive significance of the seven factors (i.e., nature connectedness, time in nature, engagement with nature through simple activities, indirect engagement with nature, knowledge and study of nature, autonomy, and relationship status) on each wellbeing aspect. to do so, we regressed each wellbeing aspect (separately) onto the seven factors using only the (respective) significant individual items and composite item from previous steps reported above. (see table 3 for summary of items comprising the factors for each regression.) as detailed in table 4 below, autonomy and relationship status emerged as significant predictors of all four wellbeing aspects (i.e., happiness, feeling that life is worthwhile, illbeing, and general physical health). nature connectedness and simple activities emerged as significant predictors of happiness, feeling that life is worthwhile, and illbeing (ps < .001 except for simple activities predicting illbeing where p = .047). time in nature, indirect engagement with nature, and knowledge/study of nature did not emerge as significant predictors of happiness, feeling that life is worthwhile, and illbeing (.107< p < .941). in the prediction of general physical health, both nature connectedness and time in nature emerged as significant predictors (respective ps < .004, .001), while simple activities, indirect engagement with nature, and knowledge/study of nature did not emerge as significant (respective ps = .102, .254, .628). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 table 3. significant sa, ind, and ks items which emerged in regressions predicting wellbeing items that emerged as significant in respective linear regressions happiness life worthwhile illbeing general physical health factor 3. simple activities sa1: sit or relax in garden sa4: smelt wildflowers sa1: sit or relax in garden sa4: smelt wildflowers sa1: sit or relax in garden sa1: sit or relax in garden factor 4. indirect engagement ind1: nature programmes ind1: nature programmes ind1: nature programmes ind3: talk about nature factor 5. knowledge & study ks2: study nature w/binocs ks2: study nature w/binocs ks2: study nature w/binocs ks2: study nature w/binocs see supplemental tables 1 to 4 for complete regression statistics with standardized beta value and hc3 p estimates summary of items for factor linear regressions happiness life worthwhile illbeing general physical health factor 1: nature connectedness factor 2: time in nature factor 3: simple activities factor 4: indirect engagement factor 5: knowledge/ study factor 6: autonomy factor 7: relationship status nc1 tin1 composite of sa1 and sa4 ind1 ks2 s-d1 r-s1 nc1 tin1 composite of sa1 and sa4 ind1 ks2 s-d1 r-s1 nc1 tin1 sa1 ind1 ks2 s-d1 r-s1 nc1 tin1 sa1 ind3 ks2 s-d1 r-s1 see table 1 for complete description of each item. 3.4 dominance analyses several authors have discussed the limitations of relying on simple bivariate correlations or standardized linear regression coefficients as measures of predictive or relative importance, and have argued for using a variety of techniques to augment correlational and regression analyses (darlington & hayes, 2017; johnson, 2000; kraha et al., 2011; lebreton et al., 2004; tonidandel & lebreton, 2011). following these best-practice recommendations, we conducted dominance and commonality analyses (reported below) to more comprehensively examine our data with respect to our nature-related predictors (factors 1 through 5), as these were the main foci of our analyses. with the dominance analysis, we wished to examine patterns of importance, thus we followed http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 tonidandel and lebreton’s (2011) recommendation. dominance analysis is one type of relative importance analysis; it “assesses regressor j’s contribution to model fit in competition with another regressor i when that competing regressor is not in the model. ... [that is], dominance analysis uses the increase in fit due to regressor j relative to regressor i in a model that otherwise includes only the other k-2 regressors. furthermore regressors i and j compete against each other in all possible subset models that contain some or all of those k-2 regressors” (darlington & hayes, 2017, p. 234, original emphasis). budescu (1993) referred to a “qualitative” dominance analysis wherein predictors are ranked from 0 to 1 based on the proportion of the subset model in which adding variable j increases r more than does adding variable i. we utilized hayes’ (2017) rlm v1.01 macro for spss which produces a dominance matrix of these rankings. table 4. linear regressions predicting happiness, life worthwhile, illbeing, and general physical health using factors dv nature connectedness time in nature simple activities indirect nature knowledge autonomy relationship status happiness ß = .127, p < .001 ß = .046 p = .108 ß = .143 p < .001 ß = .002 p = .940 ß = -.002 p = .944 ß = .236 p < .001 ß = -.165 p < .001 f(7, 1808) = 57.40, r = .44, r2 = .19, adj.r2 = .19, p < .001 durbin-watson = 2.05; average vif = 1.35; range vif: 1.03-1.75; average tolerance = 0.77; range tolerance: 0.57-0.97; highest-zero-order correlation: r = .29; breusch-pagan = 92.86, p < .001; koenker = 71.83, p < .001 life worthwhile ß = .179 p < .001 ß = .036 p = .184 ß = .137 p < .001 ß = -.008 p = .760 ß = .024 p = .281 ß = .236 p < .001 ß = -.158 p < .001 f(7, 1799) = 63.61, r = .47, r2 = .20, adj.r2 = .21, p < .001 durbin-watson = 2.11; average vif = 1.36; range vif: 1.03-1.76; average tolerance = 0.77; range tolerance: 0.57-0.97; highest-zero-order correlation: r = .32; breusch-pagan = 90.62, p < .001; koenker = 67.26, p < .001 illbeing ß = -.107 p < .001 ß = -.016 p = .571 ß = -.056 p = .047 ß = -.008 p = .777 ß = -.015 p = .540 ß = -.055 p = .022 ß = .136 p < .001 f(7, 1785) = 13.36, r = .24, r2 = .06, adj.r2 = .05, p < .001 durbin-watson = 2.01; average vif = 1.29; range vif: 1.03-1.62; average tolerance = 0.79; range tolerance: 0.62-0.97; highest-zero-order correlation: r = .17; breusch-pagan = 132.12, p < .001; koenker = 77.21, p < .001 general physical health ß = .084 p = .004 ß = .096 p = .001 ß = .044 p = .102 ß = -.031 p = .254 ß = .013 p = .628 ß = .188 p < .001 ß = -.094 p < .001 f(7, 1820) = 24.85, r = .30, r2 = .09, adj.r2 = .09, p < .001 durbin-watson = 1.95; average vif = 1.32; range vif: 1.04-1.63; average tolerance = 0.78; range tolerance: 0.62-0.97; highest-zero-order correlation: r = .22; breusch-pagan = 12.35, p = .090; koenker = 14.66, p = .041 note. β are standardized. ps = hc3 estimates. in each dominance matrix produced by hayes’ rlm macro, complete dominance is denoted by a 1, indicating that in all subset models, the variable in the row completely dominates the variable in the column with respect to model fit. partial dominance is denoted by a number greater than .50 but less than 1.00, indicating that the variable in the row increases model fit more than the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 variable in the column in only some of the subset models (darlington & hayes, 2017).2 complete model dominance (a “1” in all columns) indicates that adding variable j increases predictive variance (r) more than does adding any other variable in the model. (see table 5 for complete dominance matrix statistics for each wellbeing dependent variable). table 5. dominance analyses—composite measures predicting happiness, worthwhile, illbeing, and general physical health happiness worthwhile life nc time sa indirect know nc time sa indirect know nature connectedness 1.00 .00 1.00 1.00 nature connectedness .1.00 1.00 1.00 100 time in nature .00 ..00 1.00 1.00 time in nature .00 .00 1.00 1.00 simple activities 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 simple activities .00 1.00 1.00 1.00 indirect nature contact .00 .00 .00 .75 indirect nature contact .00 .00 .00 .00 knowledge of nature .00 .00 .00 .25 knowledge of nature .00 .00 .00 1.00 rank order: 1. simple activities, 2. nature connectedness, 3. time in nature, 4. indirect nature contact, 5. knowledge and study of nature rank order: 1. nature connectedness, 2. simple activities, 3. time in nature, 4. knowledge and study of nature, 5. indirect nature contact ill-being general physical health nc time sa indirect know nc time sa indirect know nature connectedness 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 nature connectedness .50 1.00 1.00 1.00 time in nature .00 .00 1.00 .75 time in nature .50 1.00 1.00 1.00 simple activities .00 1.00 1.00 1.00 simple activities .00 .00 1.00 1.00 indirect nature contact .00 .00 .00 .25 indirect nature contact .00 .00 .00 .125 knowledge of nature .00 .25 .00 .75 knowledge of nature .00 .00 .00 .875 rank order: 1. nature connectedness, 2. simple activities, 3. time in nature, 4. knowledge and study of nature, 5. indirect nature contact rank order: tied for 1. nature connectedness and time in nature, 2. simple activities, 3. knowledge and study of nature, 4. indirect nature contact note. nc = nature connectedness, time = time in nature, sa = engagement with nature through simple activities, indirect = indirect engagement with nature, know = knowledge and study of nature in the prediction of happiness, engagement in simple activities in nature completely dominated all other regressors. nature connectedness was ranked second, completely dominating the remaining three nature-related variables. time in nature was ranked third, completely dominating indirect engagement and knowledge/study. indirect engagement came next, partially dominating knowledge/study, which was ranked last. in both the prediction of feeling that life is worthwhile and the prediction of illbeing, nature connectedness completely dominated all regressors. in both predictions, simple activities was 2 it is important to note that this rank ordering is not necessarily the rank ordering derived from absolute values of the semipartial correlations of t-values (darlingon & hayes, 2017, p. 238), thus underscoring the importance of conducting a dominance analysis. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 ranked second, completely dominating the remaining three nature-related variables. for a worthwhile life, time in nature was ranked third, completely dominating indirect engagement and knowledge/study. knowledge and study of nature came next, completely dominating indirect nature engagement, which was ranked last. for illbeing, time in nature was also ranked third, completely dominating indirect engagement but only partially dominating knowledge/study. knowledge and study of nature came next in the prediction of illbeing, partially dominating indirect engagement with nature, which was ranked last. in the prediction of general physical health, nature connectedness and time in nature were tied for first ranking, with both variables completely dominating simple activities, indirect engagement, and knowledge/study. simple activities was ranked second, completely dominating indirect engagement and knowledge/study. knowledge and study of nature came next, partially dominating indirect engagement with nature, which was ranked last. 3.5 commonality analysis for nature connectedness, time in nature, simple activities lastly, we sought to better understand the overlap between our factors of nature connectedness, time in nature, and engaging with nature through simple activities. as noted in our introduction, these three factors were of particular interest to us given that previous studies have rarely considered both time in nature and connectedness to nature in the same analysis when assessing wellbeing benefits derived from nature. moreover, these three variables ranked as the top three variables in each dominance analysis. thus, to assess the individual and unique contributions of these three nature factors with regard to explained variance of our four aspects of wellbeing, we conducted a series of commonality analyses (nimon, 2010) utilizing nimon’s spss syntax. commonality analysis provides a more thorough understanding of regression analysis because it partitions the explained variance based on the unique and nonunique contributions of each variable (nimon, 2010; nimon et al., 2008; ray-mukherjee et al., 2014). unique effects refer to the portion of variance that is unique to each particular variable. nonunique effects (i.e., common or shared effects) identify the portion of variance that is common to or shared with every other variable in the regression. thus, commonality analysis provides a more complete picture of the relationship between predictor variables and a dependent variable. as siebold and mcphee (1979) noted, the usefulness of research findings “depend not only on establishing that a relationship exists among predictors and the criterion, but also upon determining the extent to which those independent variables, singly and in all combinations, share variance with the dependent variable” (p. 355) [emphasis added]. as depicted in figures 1, 2, and 3 (below), variance shared amongst nature connectedness, time in nature, and simple activities accounted for the largest proportion of explained variance in happiness, a worthwhile life, and illbeing, 27%-33%. at the same time, nature connectedness uniquely accounted for 17-31%, and simple activities accounted for 15%-20% of explained variance in these aspects of wellbeing. time in nature uniquely accounted for only 1% of explained variance in each of the three wellbeing aspects. variance shared between: nature connectedness and simple activities accounted for 7%-15%; simple activities and time in nature accounted for 7%-9%, and time in nature and nature connectedness 5%-12%. with regard to general physical health (see figure 4 below), variance shared amongst all three variables accounted for 27% of the explained variance. nature connectedness uniquely accounted for 15%, simple activities for 12%, and time in nature for 10% of explained variance. variance shared between: nature connectedness and simple activities accounted for 5%; simple activities and time in nature accounted for 15% and time in nature and nature connectedness http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 16%. figure 1. commonality analysis for explained variance in happiness figure 2. commonality analysis for explained variance in feeling life is worthwhile http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 figure 3. commonality analysis for explained variance in ill-being (anxiety and depression) figure 4: commonality analysis for explained variance in general physical health 4. discussion a plenitude of research has consistently evidenced that engaging with nature is good for our mental health and wellbeing (e.g., see review capaldi et al., 2105; mcmahan & estes, 2015). various aspects of engagement with nature have been studied and empirical evidence produced demonstrating nature’s beneficial effect on wellbeing. this includes studies focusing on time spent in, or direct contact with, nature (e.g. meredith et al., 2020; richardson et al., 2016; white et al. 2019), engaging with nature through simple activities aligned with the pathways to nature connectedness (e.g., lumber et al., 2017), indirect contact with nature (e.g., white et al., 2018), noticing nature (mcewan et al., 2019; passmore & holder, 2017), and having a strong http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 psychological and emotional connection with nature—nature connectedness (e.g. capaldi et al., 2014; pritchard et al., 2019). however little research has examined the wellbeing impact of these nature-related factors when considered in concert with each other. in the current study, our primary focus was to examine the patterns and relative predictive importance of five naturerelated factors (nature connectedness, time in nature, engagement with nature through simple activities, indirect engagement with nature, and knowledge and study of nature) to hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing, illbeing, and general physical health. we conducted correlational, linear regression, dominance, and commonality analyses. a significant relationship emerged between each of the four wellbeing measures (happiness, feeling that life is worthwhile, illbeing, and physical health) and the majority of the 14 naturerelated predictor items. however, when considered alongside each other, a different pattern emerged. when examining the factors that explained variance in wellbeing and illbeing using multiple linear regressions, only nature connectedness and engaging in simple nature activities emerged as significant; the association with time in nature was not significant, nor were indirect contact with nature or knowledge/study of nature. even when we considered two basic components of a good life, satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy (i.e., a sense of control over one’s life) and relatedness (via relationship status), nature connectedness and engaging with nature through simple activities still emerged as being significantly related to happiness, feeling that life is worthwhile, and lower rates of illbeing. although there are many complex factors involved in wellbeing, these results support suggestions that nature connectedness itself—tuning into nature—is a core psychological need and basic component of a good life (baxter & pelletier, 2019; hurly & walker, 2019). it should be noted that relaxing in the garden and smelling wildflowers were the only significant items in the simple activities group. while smelling wildflowers is a simple engagement activity, relaxing in the garden could include non-nature engagement activities. although correlated to wellbeing outcomes, items such as listening to birdsong or watching wildlife did not emerge as significant individual items in the regression. hence results, particularly for illbeing and physical health, could reflect the benefits of having a garden rather than simple engagement with nature (brindley et al., 2018). however, the commonality analysis did reveal a large overlap between nature connectedness, time in nature, and the simple activities items, supporting the validity of this grouping. nature connectedness and simple engagement with nature were also evident in the results of the dominance analyses, wherein nature connectedness completely dominated all the other nature-related factors in predicting a worthwhile life and lowered illbeing, and engaging in simple nature activities was ranked as second. for happiness, engaging with nature through simple activities completely dominated all other nature-related factors, with nature connectedness being ranked second. it is important to note that “complete dominance does not typically occur in real data” (kraha et al., 2012, p. 4). this speaks to the powerful impact that nature connectedness and engagement with nature through simple activities have on our mental health and wellbeing. this prominence of nature connectedness and engaging in simple nature activities in accounting for the variance in mental health and wellbeing was also evident in results of the commonality analyses. nature connectedness and engagement with nature through simple activities each uniquely accounted for far more of the explained variance in happiness (17%, 20%), a worthwhile life (25, 15%), and lower wellbeing (31%, 15%), than did time in nature. indeed, time in nature uniquely accounted for only 1% of the explained variance in each of happiness, a worthwhile life, and lower illbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 thus, results were consistent across these analytical methodologies: connectedness to nature and engaging with nature through simple activities were more closely linked to higher wellbeing and lower illbeing than were any of the other nature-related factors, including time in nature. the findings of time in nature as a lesser-factor may seem odd. after all, solid research has demonstrated that time in nature is important for wellbeing (e.g., meredith et al., 2020; white et al., 2019). however as noted in our introduction, this research has generally overlooked individual factors of nature connection and engagement. findings from the current study suggest that when added to the equation, these person-based factors have stronger relationships with wellbeing than does time in nature, which may have been acting as a proxy measure for connection and engagement. being connected and engaging with nature generally involves spending time in nature, yet time in nature is not necessarily driven by a close connection with nature and may not involve active engagement with nature. time does not tell the full story. what matters is how that time is spent—developing and being in a close relationship with nature. although the first to include nature connectedness and time in nature together in a largerscale survey, our results are in line with previous experimental research which also suggested that the amount of time in nature is not necessarily the essential factor to enhance mental health and wellbeing, but rather the essential factor is if one attends to the nature they are in. for instance, passmore and holder (2017) reported that participants who noticed how everyday nature made them feel reported significantly higher levels of wellbeing (positive affect, elevation, a general transcendent connectedness) than did control participants, despite not having spent significantly more time in nature. nisbet and colleagues (2019) reported that in their study, participants who received mindfulness instruction before a 20-minute walk in nature reported substantially less negative affect at the end of their walk than did participants who had gone for a 20-minute in nature without first receiving mindfulness instructions. moreover, these mindful individuals also reported significantly stronger connectedness with nature compared to those who had walked in nature without being particularly mindful of their surroundings. similarly, mcewan and colleagues (2019, 2020) found that participants who noted three good things in nature while engaged in simple interactions with close-to-home nature reported not only improved mental health and wellbeing, but also enhanced nature connectedness. with regard to general physical health, of the nature-related factors, time in nature and nature connectedness evidenced the largest bivariate correlations. in a linear regression, only time in nature and nature connectedness emerged as significant predictors of general physical health; these remained significant even when considering control over one’s life and relationship status. the dominance analysis revealed a tie for first ranking between nature connectedness and time in nature. lastly, in the commonality analysis, nature connectedness, engaging with nature through simple activities, and time in nature accounted for relatively similar percentages of explained variance in general physical health (respectively: 15%, 12%, 10%). in comparison, martin and colleagues (2020) reported that visits to nature emerged as significant while nature connectedness did not emerge as significant in a linear regression predicting general physical health. further research examining the relative predictive importance of these factors to physical health needs to be conducted to investigate this inconsistency, albeit there is logic that time in nature would be related to factors germane to physical health such as activity levels. 5. limitations and future directions as with all studies, limitations of the current study need to be considered. although our sample was large, our participants were based entirely in the united kingdom; cross-cultural validation of our results utilizing samples from other countries would be helpful. our data were http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 correlational in nature, thus experimental research is needed to empirically determine causal effects, specifically directly comparing more time in nature to enhanced nature connectedness on differential impacts on wellbeing. while causal data exists which evidences that boosting nature connectedness via simple activities informed by the pathways to nature connectedness (‘pathways-informed nature activities’; lumber et al. 2017) also boosts wellbeing (mcewan et al., 2019), additional experimental studies would be informative, particularly if a broader array of wellbeing measures are used along with testing a broader array of simple pathways-informed nature activities. it would also be helpful to directly compare additional time spent in nature to the three good things in nature intervention (mcewan et al., 2019; richardson & sheffield, 2017) and the noticing nature intervention (passmore & holder, 2017) with regard to efficacy in enhancing nature connectedness and several aspects of wellbeing. some variable-blocks of items contained more items than others; thus it is possible that some blocks of items are more accurate than others at capturing respective nature-related dimensions and experiences. while the choice of items in each block is relatively broad, these are not exhaustive lists. it is possible that items not included in the current study would reflect additional dimensions or nuances within a variable block which could emerge as significant. items used in the current study were taken directly from the yougov/national trust survey; utilizing a wider range of psychometrically validated measures of nature connectedness and of wellbeing will be important in future research. for example, additional measures of nature connectedness could be employed, such as the nature connection index (richardson et al., 2019), the nature connectedness scale (mayer & frantz, 2004) or the nature relatedness scale (nisbet et al., 2009). complete measures of wellbeing could be used to more fully assess different aspects of wellbeing and illbeing; for example, standard measures could be employed such as the scale of positive and negative experiences (diener et al., 2010), satisfaction with life scale (diener et al., 1985), meaning in life questionnaire (steger et al., 2006), satisfaction and frustration of basic needs (chen et al., 2015), and depression, anxiety, and stress scale (lovibond & lovibond, 1995). nonetheless, items used in the current study were based on theoretical rationales and previous research (such as martin et al., 2020), lending confidence to the emergent results reported herein. 6. conclusion these limitations notwithstanding, results of the current study reveal important insights as to significant factors associated with wellbeing. overall, while time in nature is important for physical health (martin et al., 2020), our findings highlight that time spent in nature is not necessarily a significant predictor of human wellbeing and mental health. rather, simple activities and engagement which help form a close connected relationship appear to play the more substantial role. the consistent pattern that emerged across correlational, linear regression, dominance, and commonality analyses with respect to nature-related factors and individual wellbeing provides strong support for this notion that time is not the main factor in the nature-wellbeing link. rather, the main operant factor is connecting with nature, either through psychological or emotional connectedness or via simple engagement. by not being tuned into the nature around us, our lives are poorer for it in terms of happiness and meaning. yet, as these findings suggest, tuning into nature—through simple acts like smelling wildflowers—help to explain differential levels of happiness ad meaning in individual’s daily lives. tuning in to nature is not about time, not about minutes. it is about moments. feeling connected to nature and engaging in certain simple activities in nature seem to be more predictive of mental wellbeing than time spent in http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 nature. nonetheless, given the positive role of engagement with simple aspects of nature, it is important that we do not fall prey to environmental generational amnesia (kahn, 1999), equating urban nature (no matter how varied) with the whole of nature; ensuring that people from all socio-demographic categories have the ability and means to access rural and remote nature is important. results of the current study, particularly when combined with the growing body of literature evidencing the importance that nature has for our wellbeing (e.g., see reviews by bratman et al., 2019; capaldi et al., 2014, 2015; mcmahan & estes, 2015; pritchard et al., 2019) are of relevance to mental health practitioners. that nature connectedness predicted greater happiness, greater levels of feeling that life is worthwhile, and lower prevalence of illbeing (i.e., depression and anxiety) beyond feeling one has control over their life and relationship status, indicates that nature connectedness measures may be a valuable tool when assessing clients’ wellbeing. pathways-informed (lumber et al., 2017) simple nature activities could be prescribed to clients as a means of boosting mood, thereby acting as a platform from which to work on other therapeutic goals (burns, 1998). results also have important practical implications for nature-based programmes and governmental policies. perhaps foremost at a programme and policy level, would be a switch from focusing on getting people to visit natural (remote) spaces and spend more time in nature, to focusing on how people can tune in and connect with everyday nature through simple activities as this is would also help to enhance nature connectedness and thereby wellbeing (mcewan et al., 2019; richardson & sheffield, 2017). additionally, results suggest the importance of provision of garden’s for rest and relaxation. city planners could invest beyond islands of urban parks (often in affluent areas) to ensuring that nature is brought to all residents, for example, by ensuring that city streets and neighbourhoods have trees and flowers alongside (or at least visible from) walkways and routes to public transport and shopping areas. long-term planning for urban “greenways” connecting parks, public, transit, schools, and basic-necessity shops, with prompts to notice this nature, would improve the lives of all residents. within this, there is also need to consider how urban noise can block access to sounds of nature, such as birdsong or crickets chirping. the pathways to nature connectedness (lumber et al., 2017) can be applied at a wider scale to inform cultural programmes and urban designs to foster and prompt engagement with nature (richardson et al., 2020). national policies aimed at raising levels of nature connectedness, and tracking this growth, are required as an expansion to current policies which, in general, are geared towards only measuring time in or visits to nature. we join lambert and colleagues (2020) in their call for nature connectedness to be included as a standard metric of wellbeing; we also expand this call to national and civic governmental bodies. nature connectedness and engaging with nature are what knippenberg and colleagues (2018) called “genuine encounter[s] of humans and nature” which represent relational values (p. 39). we are not born tabula rasa; rather, we are born tabula relata—beings involved in relationships. relationships are central to human life; this is why good relations are a fundamental part of eudaimonia or the ‘good life’. included in this is our relationship with the beyond-human natural world. knippenberg and colleagues discuss “nature-inclusive eudaimonia” as a fundamental aspect of a flourishing life; nussbaum (2011) wrote of living in harmonious relation to nature is essential to a worthwhile, meaningful life. the rising mental health crises and rising crises in the health of our planet and its nonhuman inhabitants are indicators that our relationship with nature is broken. we need a new relationship with nature, and that starts by tuning in and noticing nature. understanding http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 that a close connection with nature is a key component of a worthwhile life, a sustainable life— a good life. acknowledgements raw data are from yougov plc. total initial sample size was 2,096 adults, 16+ years of age. informed consent yougov is an international public opinion and research data group based in london, united kingdom that conducts objective demographically-representative surveys. yougov is a member of the british polling council, a corporate member of esomar, and is registered with the information commissioner; as such, yougov abides by all of these agency’s respective rules regarding ethical consent of all survey respondents. as per these rules, all respondents provide informed consent to participate in the survey. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. availability of data and material we intend to archive the data used in this study on the university of derby’s online research archive, udora, at https://derby.openrepository.com/derby/. authors’ contributions survey design was developed by miles richardson, ryan lumber, rory thomas, and alex hunt. initial data cleaning was conducted by holli-anne passmore. review of items for inclusion in the current study was conducted by holli-anne passmore and miles richardson. data analysis was conducted by hollianne passmore. manuscript writing, editing, and review was conducted by miles richardson and hollianne passmore. all authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for submission of this article. authors miles richardson university of derby m.richardson@derby.ac.uk holli-anne passmore university of derby ryan lumber university of derby rory thomas national trust alex hunt national trust publishing timeline received 2 june 2020 revised version received 2 december 2020 accepted 21 january 2021 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://derby.openrepository.com/derby/ moments, not minutes: nature-wellbeing relationship richardson et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 published 31 january 2021 references abdel-khalek, a. m. 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(2023). what are the main factors that are thought to impact upon the implementation of a whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing in schools? a systematic review. international journal of wellbeing, 13(2), 77-94. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i2.2833 edel higgins university college london ehiggin@tcd.ie copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 article what are the main factors that are thought to impact upon the implementation of a whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing in schools? a systematic review edel higgins · roger booker abstract: increased availability of evidence-informed, school-based, prevention and intervention programmes in the area of mental health and wellbeing promotion has contributed to a shift in research priorities from efficacy to implementation and dissemination. a central issue for school psychology research in moving research to practice is to ensure high quality implementation of both the intervention programmes and the support system that sustains it. the purpose of this review is to identify, appraise and synthesise research evidence using an implementation science framework in order to identify key contextual and ecological factors (facilitators and barriers) that impact upon the implementation process of whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing promotion. nine studies that met inclusion criteria were synthesised and critically appraised. a total of eighty-seven facilitators and sixty-seven barriers were extracted across the nine studies. limitations of findings and methodologies relative to the review questions are outlined and discussed. keywords: mental health; mental health and wellbeing promotion; facilitators and barriers to implementation; whole school mental health; whole school mental health and wellbeing promotion; implementation science in schools measurement 1. introduction 1.1 the mental health and wellbeing of young people: the international and national context there has been a notable growth in awareness and discussion about young people’s mental health at an international level over the last decade (collishaw, 2015; patel et al., 2018). the worldwide prevalence of mental health problems in children and young people is now estimated to be 13.4 percent (polanczyk et al., 2016). according to the world health organisation (who, 2014), approximately 50 percent of mental health disorders occur before the age of 14 and many more remain underdiagnosed and undertreated (who, 2014). international research has documented that mental health issues are currently the leading cause of disability among young people, drastically affecting their ability to lead productive lives (gore et al., 2011). in ireland, a number of recent epidemiological studies have examined the mental health of young people in ireland each documenting considerable and declining mental ill-health among this cohort (cannon, coughlan, clarke, harley & kelleher, 2013; dooley & fitzgerald, 2012; dooley, o’connor, fitzgerald & o’reilly, 2019). this trend is in accordance with recent data from the national self-harm registry of ireland which reported that there was an increase in self-harm about:blank whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 among young people following a 22 percent increase in rates from 2007 to 2016 (griffin et al., 2018). 1.2 covid-19 covid-19, a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ (who, 2020) hit when it had already been documented that the mental health and wellbeing of young people was deteriorating (polanczyk et al., 2016). while the impact of covid-19 on young people is not fully understood, recent irish research has highlighted that children and young people have experienced adverse mental health effects during the pandemic. these include reported feelings of social isolation, depression, anxiety, and increases in maladaptive behaviour (o’sullivan et al., 2021). it is therefore essential that the global impact on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing is addressed. 1.3 promoting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing it has been suggested that a comprehensive and co-ordinated response to mental health requires partnerships with multiple public sectors including health, education, employment, social along with private sectors as appropriate (who, 2014). in ireland, the government have pledged to enhance mental health policy and service development strategies in order to reduce the incidence, impact and continuity of mental ill-health among the nations young people. one of the ways they aim to do this is by prioritising mental health promotion in schools. 1.4 mental health promotion in schools schools are well recognised as critical contexts for the promotion of mental health and wellbeing. schools and educational settings offer the potential to reach a large number of children at an early age, at a time when they are developing important attitudes and behaviours that may influence their future health. research in this area has established that well-implemented mental health and wellbeing interventions in schools have positively impacted upon individual children, their families, and the whole school community as a result of positive impacts on social, emotional, behavioural, economic and educational outcomes (adi et al., 2007; barry, clarke, jenkins, & patel, 2013; schulte-koerne, 2016; shucksmith et al., 2007; weare & nind, 2011; weare, 2015; wells, barlow, & stewart‐brown, 2003). as a result of the many review studies, we now can identify programmes that have a strong empirical basis and have demonstrated positive outcomes (cooper & jacobs, 2011; durlak et al., 2011; gresham, 2015; sklad et al., 2012). 1.5 whole school approach the national institute for health and care excellence (nice) recommends schools adopt a comprehensive ‘whole-school’ approach to the promotion of emotional health and wellbeing (nice, 2008, 2009). although less researched than classroom-based approaches to mental health and wellbeing promotion, research indicates that this multi-component, preventative, whole school approach, with interventions at both universal and targeted levels, is the most beneficial approach for schools in terms of improving mental health, social, emotional and educational outcomes (durlak et al, 2011; meyers et al., 2015; st. leger et al., 2010; wells et al., 2003; weare & nind, 2011; weare 2015; weare & grey, 2003; young & currie, 2009). a whole school approach moves beyond a focus on the pedagogical (teaching and learning) level to involve all members of the school community. school community members engage in a collective and committed http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 process of organisational and systemic change to improve specific areas of school life that impact on wellbeing (barry, clarke, & dowling, 2017; weare, 2015). 1.6 evidence-based practices, implementation and implementation science evidence-based policy and practice is a prevailing theme in contemporary education. the ability to adopt, implement and sustain evidence-based policy and practice is becoming increasingly important for education providers (aarons, hurlburt, & horwitz, 2011) nevertheless, the practical realities and challenges involved in using evidence in policy-making, decision making and practice are both dynamic and complex. outcomes are crucially dependent on the context and the active input of the individuals who develop the policy as well as the practitioners who implement the policy (pawson, greenhalgh, harvey, & walshe, 2005). most reviews of evidence-based practice in educational settings tend to concentrate on evaluating and reporting on programme effectiveness. focusing on programme efficacy has resulted in the identification of many evidence-based practices and programmes. significantly less is known about what contextual circumstances and conditions influence uptake, implementation and sustainability (owens et al., 2014; pawson et al., 2005). reviews examining the use of promotion and prevention programmes targeting young people found a lack of research which specifically focuses on the mechanisms for effective implementation and sustainment under typical school conditions (durlak & dupre, 2008; novins, green, legha, & aarons, 2013; rowling & samdal, 2011; owens et al., 2014). it is therefore not surprising that the intervention and prevention research has consistently highlighted that few evidence-based interventions are successfully implemented into practice and sustained over time. this is because the infrastructure and capacity to support a systems-wide implementation of evidence-based practices is often missing (spoth et al., 2013). it is clear therefore, that the need to understand the mechanisms that drive effective implementation and sustainment under typical school conditions is essential. the expanding field of implementation science (is) with its theoretical roots in systems theory, social learning theory and behaviourism focuses on how to create this understanding (khalil, 2016). is has been defined as the scientific study of methods to promote and support the systemic uptake of research findings and evidence-based practices into public policy and professional practice (eccles & mittman, 2006). the american psychological association (apa) division 16 working group on translating science to practice has described the goals of is as understanding the barriers to, and facilitators of implementation, with the purpose of developing new approaches to improving implementation (forman et al., 2013). is research that has specifically looked at prevention and implementation programs in school contexts strongly claims that high quality intervention research cannot be conducted without consideration of the school as a ‘real-world’ practice setting and the multiple and complex ecological factors that affect implementation (durlak & dupre, 2008; forman et al., 2013; owens et al., 2014; pearson et al., 2015). in their paper, the apa division 16 working group they describe some of the critical knowledge gaps in the school psychology implementation research and present four critical issues for is in school psychology: barriers to implementation, improving intervention fidelity and identifying core intervention components, implementation with diverse client populations and implementation in diverse settings. they conclude that a national research agenda on is in school settings is urgently needed to identify the specific implementation strategies and components that are essential for effective implementation and improved student outcomes (forman et al., 2013). similarly, while acknowledging the many accomplishments of wellhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 established evidence-based practices (ebps) in the field of special education and school and child psychology, owens et al. (2014) note that less is known about the actual implementation of ebps under typical school conditions. they conclude that the prioritisation of is research in schools is needed if we are to provide and sustain high quality school-based services to children who struggle with social, emotional and behavioural challenges (owens et al., 2014). 1.7 implementation of health promotion programmes at a whole school level despite the increased availability and promotion of guidelines and interventions to support health and wellbeing promotion at a whole school level alongside implementation frameworks exploring whole school approaches, the majority of effectiveness research has focused primarily on the implementation of classroom-based programmes. these programmes and interventions aim to change student level behaviours through relatively short curriculum-based interventions taught in isolation (durlak & dupre, 2008; forman et al., 2009). the specific implementation practices which are undertaken to ensure the widespread adoption and successful implementation of such an approach at an organisational level have been neglected in much of the research (mcissac et al., 2017; rowling & samdal, 2011). while concepts of a whole school approach suggest promising results in terms of meeting the educational and health needs of school aged children, the research has been limited in terms of demonstrating their effectiveness due to the inherent complexity from a practice view of a systems approach (deschesnes, martin, & hill, 2003; moynihan, jourdan, & mannix mcnamara, 2016). schools are dynamic, complex, multi-level systems with numerous factors that can influence implementation. understanding of the processes of implementation of whole school approaches to health and wellbeing promotion which involve complex dynamics of group behaviours and system changes, collaboration with internal and external stakeholders, in addition to curricula and pedagogy is crucial (gugglberger & inchley, 2014; pearson et al., 2015). developing capacity in schools for the implementation of whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing promotion is fundamental to prompting and sustaining action for positive mental health among young people. 2. literature review 2.1 rationale for the literature review increased availability of evidence-informed, school-based, prevention and intervention programmes in the area of mental health and wellbeing promotion, in addition to growing national policies in the use of evidence based practices in schools has contributed to a shift in research priorities from efficacy to implementation and dissemination. a central issue for school psychology research in moving research to practice is to ensure high quality implementation of both the intervention programmes and the support system that sustains it. the purpose of this review is to identify, appraise and synthesise research evidence using an implementation science framework in order to identify key contextual and ecological factors that impact upon the implementation process of whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing promotion in the school context. 2.2 search strategy/literature search an electronic database search of psychinfo, scopus, medline, cinalh (cumulative index to nursing and allied health literature), and eric was conducted through ebsco host in may 2020. to ensure a holistic search, the search was not limited to a specific time period. keyword http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 searches pertaining to the review question (table 1) followed. a total search yield of 684 titles was generated. titles and abstracts of identified articles were subsequently screened for relevance to topic and this resulted in the identification of 30 full text articles. articles were then checked for eligibility according to the inclusion criteria outlined in table 2. the references sections of identified articles were also screened for relevance and additional papers were identified. overall, nine studies met the inclusion criteria. fig. 1 outlines a flowchart diagram of literature screening process. key information regarding study design, study methods, study aims/objectives, participants, setting, data analysis and main findings (facilitators and barriers) was extracted from all nine articles. table 1. database search items review question databases search terms psychinfo, scopus, medline, cinalh (cumulative index to nursing and allied health literature), and eric ‘school’ and (‘health policy’ or ‘health promot*’) and ‘implement*’ and (‘intervention’ or ‘evidence based practice’ or ‘educational programme’) and (‘whole school programme’ or ‘universal intervention’ or ‘preventative intervention’ or ‘comprehensive school health’) and (‘mental health’ or ‘wellbeing’ or ‘wellness’ or ‘health behaviour’) table 2. list of inclusion criteria criteria inclusion criteria publication type published in a peer‐reviewed journal. participants participants (i.e. school staff and parents/ members) who are directly involved in implementing a whole school mental health and/or wellbeing promotion programme within a school setting. programme an evidence based mental health/emotional wellbeing promotion programme delivered universally at a whole school level in schools. data gathered the study must include primary quantitative and/or qualitative data that specifically explores implementation activity highlighting facilitators and barriers to implementation (key implementers views and experiences i.e. case study, interviews, questionnaires, observations). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 figure 1. flowchart delineating the literature search and screening process 3. systematic review of the literature 3.1 critical analysis framework each of the studies included for review were critically appraised using gough’s (2007) weight of evidence (woe) framework. there are four categories within the framework. a measures the study’s general quality of design and methodology. the letts et al., (2007) critical review form was employed to assess various markers of rigor in qualitative research. this form provides a framework for assessing the quality of the study’s purpose, literature review, study design, sampling, data collection, data analysis, conclusions, and implications. an adapted version of the hyett, kenny, and dickson-swift (2014) quality checklist was used to appraise case study designs. the mixed methods appraisal tool (mmat) version 2018 (hong et al., 2018) was used to appraise mixed methods studies. though study limitations were noted, no studies were omitted for reasons of perceived quality, given the wide variation among qualitative researchers regarding quality criteria and what makes “good” qualitative research (sandelowski et al., 1997). woe b measures whether the design of the study was relevant to addressing the specified review questions. the criteria for woe b weightings were devised in accordance with the quality criteria used for woe a and inclusion and exclusion criteria. woe c measures the extent to which the study and its findings are relevant to answering the review question. the woe c criteria was designed, with reference to stipulated inclusion and exclusion criteria. woe d is a general overall http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 weighting of the study, calculated by averaging the scores for woe a, woe b and woe c (gough, 2007). studies were allocated a ‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low’ rating according to checklists and woe criteria. table 3 provides an overview of the woe ratings for each of the studies reviewed. table 3. weight of evidence awarded to each of the included studies studies woe a woe b woe c woe d anwar‐mchenry et al., (2016) 2 (medium) 2 (medium) 3 (high) 2.3 (medium) bennett, cunningham, & johnston molloy, (2016) 3 (high) 2 (medium) 3 (high) 2.6 (high) cane & oland, (2015) 3 (high) 2 (medium) 3 (high) 2.6 (high) darlington, violon, & jourdan, (2018) 2 (medium) 2 (medium) 2 (medium) 2 (medium) elfrink, goldberg, schreurs, bohlmeijer, & clarke, (2017) 3 (high) 2 (medium) 2 (medium) 2.3 (medium) lendrum, humphrey, & wigelsworth, (2013) 3 (high) 3 (high) 3 (high) 3 (high) mcisaac, mumtaz, veugelers, & kirk, (2015) 3 (high) 2 (medium) 2 (medium) 2.3 (medium) mcisaac, read, veugelers, & kirk, (2017) 3 (high) 3 (high) 3 (high) 3 (high) viig, fosse, samdal, & wold, (2012) 3 (high) 2 (medium) 3 (high) 2.6 (high) 3.2 participants and health promotion programme 3.2.1 participant demographics according to stipulated inclusion and exclusion criteria, participants must be key implementers in the implementation of a whole school mental health and/or wellbeing promoting programme. participants (i.e. key implementers) included: school principals/head teachers, vice principals/deputy head teachers, form tutors/year heads, parents, teaching assistants, members of district management teams, school psychologist, teachers with responsibility for the coordination of inclusion and special educational needs, school nurse, student services staff, pupils welfare manager, inclusion manager, principal care co-ordinator, and other non-specified non-teaching staff. a total number of participants was not possible to compute as darlington et al. (2018) did not report the exact number of participants interviewed. studies were undertaken in schools in ireland (bennett et al., 2016), australia (anwar-mchenry et al., 2016), france (darlington et al., 2018) norway (viig et al., 2012), the netherlands (elfrink et al., 2017) canada (mcissac et al., 2015; mcissac et al., 2017) and the united kingdom (cane & oland, 2015; lendrum et al., 2013). five studies invited all schools implementing the research specific programme in the country (darlington et al., 2018; lendrum et al., 2013; viig et al., 2012) or provincial jurisdiction (mcissac et al., 2015; mcissac et al., 2017) to participate in the research before purposeful sampling took place. sampling in eight of the nine studies detailed setting characteristics highlighting a http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 combination of urban and rural settings. three of the nine studies considered socio-economic indexes when sampling (anwar-mchenry et al., 2016; bennett et al., 2016; darlington et al., 2018). cane & oland (2015) purposively sampled a selection of schools from a wide geographical range across one local authority based on demographic information such as age range and school category. purposeful sampling is a technique widely used in qualitative research for the identification and selection of information-rich cases for the most effective use of limited resources as well as selecting individuals that are especially knowledgeable about or experienced with the phenomenon of interest (creswell & plano clarke, 2011; patton, 2002). in this case it involved identifying individuals or groups of individuals that are especially knowledgeable about and experienced with the implementation of mental health and wellbeing promotion programs in their school. in addition to knowledge and experience of participants which can be found through purposive sampling, bernard (2002) notes the importance of availability and willingness to participate and the ability to communicate experiences and opinions in an expressive and reflective manner. the subjectivity of purposive sampling does however, have implications for the representativeness and generalisability of study findings and can be highly prone to researcher bias. 3.2.2 health promotion programme five of the included studies explored various aspects of the implementation of health promotion programmes developed as part of the process of becoming a health promoting school (hps) (who, 1997) (anwar-mchenry et al., 2016; bennett et al. 2016; viig et al., 2012; mcissac et al., 2015; mcissac et al., 2017). under the who’s hps framework, schools are provided with a holistic, settings-based framework to assist them strengthening capacity to improve and protect the health of the whole school community (who, 1997). cane & oland (2015) explored implementation aspects of targeted mental health in schools (tamhs), a government-supported initiative developed in response to rising health and social care costs in the uk and develop positive mental health in schools (dcsf, 2008). lendrum et al. (2013) explored implementation aspects of social and emotional aspects of learning (seal), a whole-school approach designed to improve learning and attainment, positive behaviour, regular attendance, staff effectiveness and the emotional health and wellbeing of all staff and pupils (des, 2007). one study explored the implementation of positive education programme (pep), a whole school approach to positive education for primary schools in the netherlands which was developed by the university of twente in response to a request from a foundation working with 33 schools in the region to develop a whole school framework aimed at supporting children’s wellbeing and happiness (elfrink et al., 2017). darlington et al. (2018) explored the implementation processes of the education, health and territory (est) programme, a school-based health promotion programme which aims to address health issues in school settings, provide school staff with the means to develop school health policy and promote children’s social, emotional and physical health. 3.3 design and methodologies 3.3.1 aims the aims and objectives of the nine studies varied. seven of the studies were qualitative in nature and two studies used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (darlington et al., 2018; elfrink et al., 2017). the majority of studies evaluated implementation and one study evaluated implementation in addition to programme impact on wellbeing (elfrink et al., 2017). three of the studies were part of bigger research projects that examined impact of health http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 promoting school practices on student outcomes (cane & oland, 2015; lendrum et al., 2013; mcissac et al., 2015). seven studies received a ‘high’ woe a rating and two were allocated a ‘medium’ woe a rating for quality of design. two studies received a ‘high’ woe b rating and seven received a ‘medium’ rating for relevance of the design to answering the review question. a summary of aims, design, measures and analysis applied are outlined in appendix 2. 3.3.2 measures and analysis among qualitative studies, data was collected via focus groups, semi-structured interviews, observations and document review. in mixed methods studies, data was collected via questionnaires and interviews. the methods used to collect data are summarised in appendix 2. three of the nine studies were case studies and used a combination of interview methods, observations and document review to explore the implementation of health promotion programmes in the school (lendrum et al., 2013; mcissac et al., 2015; mcissac et al., 2015). four of the studies used interview methods to explore the views of participants (bennett et al., 2016; cane & oland, 2015; darlington et al., 2018; viig et al., 2012). two were process evaluations that used interviews in conjunction with activity reports (anwar-mchenry et al., 2016), workshops and standardised questionnaires (elfrink et al., 2017). all the qualitative components of the studies were based on the use of data that were collected using in-depth interviews that were audio-taped and fully transcribed prior to data analysis. 3.4 theoretical approach while no article reported operational definitions of barriers or facilitators, seven studies based their analysis on a theoretical approach. the theoretical orientation of the nine studies varied. studies involved the use of grounded theory (mcissac et al., 2015), socio-cultural activity theory (cane & oland, 2015) ecological systems theory (lendrum et al., 2012), constructivism (mcissac et al., 2017) and realist evaluation (darlington et al., 2018) to structure data collection and analysis. elfrink et al. (2017) used nielsen and randall’s (2013) evidence-based model for process evaluations as a framework for data collection and analysis. the theoretical approach used by vigg et al., (2012) was based on theoretical concepts from appropriate literature reviews, in particular hargreaves five factors model (hargreaves et al., 2001). two did not identify the use of any theoretical perspective (anwar-mchenry et al., 2016; bennett et al., 2016). 3.5 synthesis of literature 3.5.1 data extraction barriers and facilitators that are thought to influence the implementation of a whole school approach to student wellbeing and mental health within a school environment as reported by key implementers (principals/head teachers, teaching staff, parents and other relevant implementers) were synthesised using the theoretical domains framework (tdf, cane et al. 2012). the tdf was used across studies in order to identify what needs to change for behaviour/implementation to change. the tdf was initially developed for implementation research to identify influences on health professional behaviour related to implementation of evidence-based recommendations and has been cited in over 800 peer-review publications making it one of the most commonly used frameworks in implementation science (atkins et al., 2017). the tdf includes 14 theoretical domains synthesised from 33 behaviour change theories and 84 theoretical constructs in a single framework, providing a comprehensive coverage of possible individual, social and environmental influences on behaviour (cane et al., 2012). this http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 integrative framework was developed for cross-disciplinary implementation and behaviour change research and has been applied across a wide range of clinical and community settings and in evidence synthesis to identify barriers and facilitators to implementation (philips et al., 2015; weatherson et al, 2017). the review author adapted the tdf (cane et al., 2012) by dividing the original constructs into both facilitators and barriers. this enabled the review author to code the barriers and facilitators identified in the reviewed studies to the relevant tdf domains and constructs according to definitions pre-specified in the adapted coding manual developed by the author. the completed tdf coding manual as developed by the author can be found in table 4. to strengthen reliability the author coded facilitators and barriers to the tdf coding manual in three rounds. main themes from facilitator/barrier coding were identified and illustrative comments for each theme were noted. prior to the application of the critical analysis framework it was decided that any study that received a ‘low’ weight of evidence, would be excluded from the data extraction process. as all the included studies were rated as ‘medium’ or ‘high’ weight of evidence, all studies were in effect given equal value when extracting facilitators and barriers using the tdf. 3.6 identified facilitators and barriers extracted facilitators and barriers were deductively coded using pre-existing domains (content analysis based on tdf). a total of eighty-seven facilitators and sixty-seven barriers were extracted across the nine studies. some of the facilitators and barriers were coded under multiple domains, resulting in a total of one hundred and fifty-four coded facilitators/barriers. the most commonly coded tdf domains were environmental context and resources (ecr) (n=37) social/professional role and identity (n=20), and social influences (n= 20). facilitators and barriers were also coded in knowledge (n=6), skills (n=5), beliefs about capabilities (n=8) beliefs about consequences (n=4), goals (n=7) reinforcement (n=12), intentions (n=11), emotion (n=3), optimism (n=4) and memory, attention and decision processes (n=9) domains and behavioural regulation (n=12). extracted facilitators and barriers from the tdf domains are listed in table 4. 3.6.1 facilitators across the nine studies, all fourteen domains were identified facilitators to the implementation of a whole school approach to student wellbeing and mental health in schools. the most frequently mapped facilitators reported across studies were: environmental context and resources (9 studies) (e.g. human and financial resources, practical guidance/guidelines, ongoing professional support, positive home school links, positive and supportive school climate/culture, extra time dedicated to planning, physical location of school, addressing schools specific needs, building on what’s already happening in school, current implementation process i.e. top-down or bottom-up), social/professional role and identity (9 studies) (e.g. leadership of person leading programme, complementary nature of programme to existing curriculum/values of school, flexibility and adaptability of programme, supportive school principal/head teacher, priority of programme within school, dedicated school team, collaboration and commitment among all staff) and social influences (9 studies) (e.g. co-operation among entire staff, whole staff commitment and support, collaboration among all stakeholders, launch events, working with relevant external agencies, leadership from ‘school champion’, dedicated support team and regular meetings with team and entire staff about the implementation process, networking and development of professional learning communities, ongoing mentorship and support, supportive role from educational psychologist, commitment from local community). eight studies coded facilitators in the intentions (e.g. staff recognition of the importance of the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 programme, teachers interested in the area becoming involved, teachers involved who report high motivation in terms of attitudes, expectations and intentions, teachers believing the underlying goals of the programmes are consistent with existing practices and positive staff attitudes) and memory, attention and decision processes (e.g. simplicity of programme message, whole school decision making, commitment on decision making by principal, initiation of programme by local decision maker, voluntary participation, engagement of multiple partners in decision making process) domains. seven studies coded facilitators in the goals (e.g. priority status given to programme, clear planning and setting of goals from outset, planning organisation and timetabling for programme, integration of programme into policy/planning documents, demonstrating that goals of programme very close to goals of school, early implementation) optimism (e.g. school and staff associating an identity in being part of a health promoting school, staff recognition of the importance of health education) and behavioural regulation (e.g. staff perceiving positive outcomes for students in terms of engagement/involvement in learning and improvement in social, emotional and behavioural outcomes, incorporation of programme into policy and planning and extra planning time to ensure commitment of teachers, demonstrating programme easily adaptable and consistence with school goals, options to partake, training to help motivate staff and change negative attitudes) domains. facilitators from six studies were coded in the knowledge domain (e.g. training, improvement in staff awareness and knowledge of mental health). five studies coded facilitators in the reinforcement domain (e.g. giveaways and prizes, becoming part of a network/professional learning community, invitations to annual seminars, positive impact felt by staff, positive experiences of working with other agencies, staff perceiving positive outcomes for students in terms of engagement/involvement in learning and improvement in social, emotional and behavioural outcomes) and emotion (e.g. staff reporting a positive impact on them personally, school and staff identifying themselves as a health promoting school and something to be proud of, emotional impact of supporting students with mental health difficulties) domains. facilitators from four studies were coded in the beliefs about capabilities (e.g. self-confidence, selfefficacy, teacher motivation when they are told programme consistent with what they are already doing and the mission/values of school). facilitators from three studies were coded in beliefs about consequences (e.g. staff appreciation of programme, observing the positive impacts of programme) and skills (skill development and support from project officers and professionals throughout programme implementation) domains. 3.6.2 barriers across the nine studies, all fourteen domains were identified as barriers to the implementation of a whole school approach to student wellbeing and mental health in schools. the most frequently mapped barriers reported across studies were: environmental context and resources (9 studies) (e.g. lack of policy and guidelines, poor organisational capacity, obstructive/unsupportive school community/cultures, inadequate resources, large class sizes, school location, time pressures and increased workloads, competing academic curricular demands, lack of ongoing professional support, malleability of programme, poor home/school links, top-down implementation process, inadequate training and implementation framework), intentions domains (7 studies) (e.g. diminished priority compared to other curricular areas, focus on raising standardised assessment results, staff not believing in importance of programme, limited staff commitment, teachers not feeling health promotion is their role, staff reservations about their own ability to implement a health promotion programme) and behavioural regulation (7 studies) (e.g. teachers expressing difficulty at working through a whole-school approach as http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 prior to this they were relatively autonomous in their own classrooms, having to find time for an ‘add-on’ programme to an already full curriculum, breaking the habit of concentrating on academic outcomes and shifting focus to also consider student wellbeing, lack of guidance, resources and behavioural supports for class teachers) domains. barriers from five studies were coded in the beliefs about consequences (e.g. poor staff beliefs in programme and beliefs about increased workload), reinforcement (e.g. no guidance, resources or behaviour support given to class teachers, lack of ongoing professional support, difficult measuring impact of programme, no compensation of time or resources) social/professional role and identity (e.g. competing pressure from statutory assessments, unrealistic expectations of school role in mental health, no link between programme and curriculum, difficulty encouraging staff to lead mental health, negative attitudes and resistance from staff, co-ordinator not in leadership position) and social influences (e.g. negative attitudes and resistance from staff, lack of whole school community awareness, poor commitment from stakeholders, and lack of opportunities for networking and partnerships) domains. four studies coded barriers in the beliefs about capabilities (e.g. difficulty encouraging staff to lead mental health, difficulty internalising mental health promotion and making it ‘norm’ and low teacher self-efficacy, staff feeling programme not adaptable to their professional identity) and emotion (e.g. staff reservations about their own ability to implement the programme, emotional impact of supporting students with mental health difficulties) domains. barriers from three studies were coded in the knowledge (e.g. limited competence of staff, inadequate training and poor staff awareness of mental health) and memory, attention and decision processes (e.g. some teacher felt whole school decision making threatened feelings or autonomy and discretion, perception that programme was imposed on teachers by external decision makers) domains. barriers from two studies were coded in the skills (e.g. limited skills and competence of teachers to promote and support mental health promotion) and optimism (e.g. poor staff beliefs in the programme, low teacher self-efficacy in delivering mental health programme) domains. 3.7 summary of the systematic review this systematic review sought to investigate the main factors (facilitators and barriers) that are thought to explain the implementation of whole school approaches to student wellbeing and mental health in schools. nine studies were reviewed and limitations of findings and methodologies relative to the review questions were outlined and discussed. facilitators and barriers identified were mapped onto the tdf which is a comprehensive implementation theoretical framework. the review identified a range of facilitators and barriers to implementation, incorporating all domains of the tdf. table 4 below provides a summary of facilitators and barriers identified. findings are consistent with research that has identified multiple and complex ecological factors that need to be considered when implementing programmes in real world settings (durlak & dupre, 2008; forman et al, 2013; owens et al., 2014; pearson et al, 2015). such findings demonstrate the considerable challenges faced by school systems and their staff in implementing whole school mental health and wellbeing programmes. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 table 4. summary of themes (facilitators and barriers) identified and mapped onto tdf tdf domain theme – facilitators theme barriers knowledge training ample knowledge and awareness inadequate training poor staff awareness and knowledge skills staff skill development limited skills and competence of staff social/professional role and identity leadership from principal organisational commitment organisational capacity programme consistent with goals and values of school complementary nature of programme to curriculum and existing workload flexibility and adaptability of programme priority within school system coordinator not in leadership position inconsistent with professional identity and role resistance and negativity from staff competing work demands beliefs about capabilities staff self‐confidence and self‐efficacy beliefs programme consistent with school goals and current practices low staff self‐efficacy and self‐confidence belief programme not adaptable to their professional identity optimism organizational identification as a health promotion school staff confidence in value of programme low staff confidence in value of programme low teacher self‐efficacy in programme delivery beliefs about consequences positive outcome expectancies poor staff beliefs in value of programme consequential increased workload reinforcement incentives of programme participation no rewards/incentives for participation intentions staff recognition of the importance of programme staff highly motivated in terms of positive attitudes, expectations and intentions staff beliefs that programmes consistent with existing practices low priority of programme limited staff commitment low staff self‐confidence belief programme inconsistent with professional identity and role goals priority of programme clear planning and goal setting integration into policy congruence with school goals competing priorities memory, attention and decision processes whole school decision making and planning group decision making and planning engagement of multiple partners in decision making process commitment from principal to deliver decisions made voluntary participation simplicity of programme message initiation by local decision maker external decision making whole school decision making threatening teacher autonomy environmental context and resources (ecr) sufficient resources positive organisational culture/climate positive home/school communication/links organisational leadership physical environment insufficient resources obstructive school community culture poor organisational capacity multiple competing demands physical environment insufficient support from wider community negative home/school communication/links social influences collaboration and commitment among whole staff collaboration across all stakeholders and multiple partners organisational leadership resistance and negativity from school staff poor networking/partnerships opportunities poor commitment from stakeholders poor awareness from whole school community http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 3.8 limitations of the systematic review a broad review was conducted to generate a general picture of the factors facilitating or hindering the implementation of whole school approaches to student wellbeing and mental health promotion. gough (2007) points out that a research reviewer may want to include all the research on a particular topic whatever the research design, even if the designs differ in their ability to answer the review question and may require different types of issues to be considered in rating their quality and relevance. therefore, a system of weighting allows for a review to employ a broader question and thus broader inclusion criteria in the knowledge that weighted judgements can be applied to the broader range of evidence identified. although published coding protocols and quality criteria checklists were applied for woe a ratings, they were adapted for the purpose of this systematic review and woe b, woe c and woe d criteria were devised by the current researcher, with reference to relevant literature and stipulated inclusion and exclusion criteria. the subjectivity of reviewer-designed quality checklists may be considered a limitation of the systematic review, having implications for overall ratings and weighing of evidence. additionally, as data was collected primarily through interviews and relied on participants’ self-reporting of their practices and beliefs, it may not accurately reflect actual practices. the validity of self-reported data is dependent upon the honesty and openness of the individual participant and this should be considered in the interpretation of findings (mertens, 2015). external biases caused by social desirability or approval in addition to selection bias must also be considered when interpreting these findings as the participants who self-selected to take part may hold stronger views or have responded in a manner that represents them in a more favourable light (mertens, 2015). furthermore, while the case studies reviewed outline intervention implementation processes applied in practice, data triangulation helped to strengthen the trustworthiness of the data, findings are relevant to the specified context, as opposed to a general population sample (yin, 2009). conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors edel higgins university college london ehiggin@tcd.ie tdf domain theme – facilitators theme barriers emotion positive affect on staff negative emotional impact on staff behavioural regulation training that enhanced staff motivation and confidence flexibility and adaptability of programme voluntary participation positive outcome expectancies programme consistent with goals and values of school integration into planning and policy document sufficient resources given to teachers breaking cycle of sole focus on academic outcomes shifting to a whole school approach way of working lack of guidance, resources and support finding time to deliver an ‘add‐on’ programme http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ mailto:ehiggin@tcd.ie whole school approach to student mental health and wellbeing higgins & booker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 roger booker university college london publishing timeline received 23 january 2023 revised version received 31 march 2023 accepted 31 march 2023 published 13 june 2023 references aarons, g.a., hurlburt, m., horwitz, & s.m. 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(2022). a computational neuroscience perspective on subjective wellbeing within the active inference framework. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 102-131. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2659 ryan smith laureate institute for brain research rsmith@laureateinstitute.org copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 article a computational neuroscience perspective on subjective wellbeing within the active inference framework ryan smith · lav r. varshney · susumu nagayama · masahiro kazama takuya kitagawa · shunsuke managi · yoshiki ishikawa abstract: understanding and promoting subjective wellbeing (swb) has been the topic of increasing research, due in part to its potential contributions to health and productivity. to date, the conceptualization of swb has been grounded within social psychology and largely focused on self-report measures. in this paper, we explore the potentially complementary tools and theoretical perspectives offered by computational neuroscience, with a focus on the active inference (ai) framework. this framework is motivated by the fact that the brain does not have direct access to the world; to select actions, it must instead infer the most likely external causes of the sensory input it receives from both the body and the external world. because sensory input is always consistent with multiple interpretations, the brain’s internal model must use background knowledge, in the form of prior expectations, to make a “best guess” about the situation it is in and how it will change by taking one action or another. this best guess arises by minimizing an error signal representing the deviation between predicted and observed sensations given a chosen action—quantified mathematically by a variable called free energy (fe). crucially, recent proposals have illustrated how emotional experience may emerge within ai as a natural consequence of the brain keeping track of the success of its model in selecting actions to minimize fe. in this paper, we draw on the concepts and mathematics in ai to highlight how different computational strategies can be used to minimize fe—some more successfully than others. this affords a characterization of how diverse individuals may adopt unique strategies for achieving high swb. it also highlights novel ways in which swb could be effectively improved. these considerations lead us to propose a novel computational framework for understanding swb. we highlight several parameters in these models that could explain individual and cultural differences in swb, and how they might inspire novel interventions. we conclude by proposing a line of future empirical research based on computational modelling that could complement current approaches to the study of wellbeing and its improvement. keywords: subjective wellbeing, active inference, computational neuroscience, computational psychiatry, predictive coding, emotion 1. introduction understanding and improving subjective wellbeing (swb) is important in promoting resilience, social support, physical health and longevity, work performance, and broader contributions to society (de neve et al., 2013; diener et al., 2017). previous research has shown that individuals reporting higher swb tend to be healthier and live longer, due in part to more frequent about:blank subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 engagement in health behaviors (danner et al., 2001; diener & chan, 2011; lyubomirsky et al., 2005; steptoe & wardle, 2011). they also have more successful marriages (lucas et al., 2003; luhmann et al., 2013), more friendships (moore et al., 2018), and both greater reported job satisfaction and better job performance (borman et al., 2001; tenney et al., 2016). in addition, they return to healthy emotional states more quickly after negative life events (fredrickson et al., 2003). although much of the research in this area is correlational, there are also established mechanisms through which emotional health can promote physical health (slavich & irwin, 2014), and arguments can be made that causal influences between each of the aforementioned measures are synergistic and bidirectional (diener et al., 2018). to date, the primary measures used to study swb—and which have led to the important findings discussed above—are based on self-report (diener et al., 1985; diener et al., 2018; diener et al., 2010; pavot et al., 1991; sandvik et al., 1993; weziak-bialowolska et al., 2021). in a few studies, this approach has been supplemented with other methods, such as third-party reports from friends, family, and co-workers, with results supporting convergent validity (pavot et al., 1991; sandvik et al., 1993; schimmack & oishi, 2005; schneider & schimmack, 2009); for other work supporting combinations of self-report and quantitative measures (e.g., the human development index), see (anand & sen, 1992; sen, 1985). in a small number of studies, reportbased swb measures have also been associated with objective measures such as smiling intensity (seder & oishi, 2012), the emotional valence of word choice (schwartz et al., 2013), and peripheral physiological measures of stress and health (steptoe et al., 2005). there have also been efforts to improve swb through interventions focused on exercise, mindfulness, and/or metacognitive training (reviewed in (varshney & barbey, 2021)). however, conventional descriptive approaches within swb research have been limited in their ability to provide insights beyond associations between variables of interest. as such, the mechanistic and biobehavioral basis of swb remains poorly characterized and our understanding could be greatly advanced by applying complementary approaches in neighboring fields. one promising set of complementary approaches comes from computational neuroscience, and its clinically-focused sister discipline of computational psychiatry. various lines of work in these fields have focused on understanding the mechanistic basis of individual differences in both pathological and sub-clinical levels of emotional symptoms—such as depression/anxiety and the way they interfere with overall life functioning—with clear connections to differences in swb (friston et al., 2014; huys et al., 2016; montague et al., 2012). computational approaches focus on mathematical models of brain processes to explain complex patterns of learning/behavior and may therefore offer a complementary approach for improving understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying previously observed differences in swb based on selfreport. as we will describe further below, these approaches may offer at least two specific advantages to the field of swb research. one is that they facilitate construction of general theories with broad explanatory power. for example, constructivist and descriptive perspectives have highlighted how conceptualizations of emotion and wellbeing can differ based on cultural and historical context (barrett, 2017; lomas et al., 2021). however, once such differences are identified, conventional descriptive approaches in swb research may have difficulty explaining why these differences exist. in contrast, if knowledge of the more general neurocomputational processes subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 underlying cognition and behavior can be incorporated, the origin of such differences may be accounted for within a single model (e.g., based on specific learning mechanisms or inference processes). a second advantage is that mathematical models of cognition offer an additional type of predictive ability. this is because they allow for quantitative simulation of non-trivial counterfactual changes in cognition/behavior under different circumstances. for example, one could simulate (and therefore predict) how someone would act if they were to have one set of experiences vs. another or if they were to have one set of beliefs vs. another. the predictions that emerge from such simulations can then be evaluated empirically. in turn, experimental results can refine available models before further rounds of simulation, prediction, and testing—forming in an iterative process of data-driven improvement of current theories. importantly, this simulation approach can also be applied to hypothetical interventions. namely, mathematical models can be used to simulate the outcomes of a proposed intervention and then studies can test whether the predicted outcomes occur. motivated by these possible advantages, in this paper we will first provide a brief introduction to computational approaches for wellbeing researchers and social psychologists who do not have background in this area. we describe the mathematics at a conceptual level and provide thorough explanation of any equations shown. we then discuss how computational approaches might yield novel lines of research on swb. while we will touch upon multiple computational models, we focus primarily on the active inference framework and the additional resources it may offer, including: 1) novel theoretical conceptualizations of swb, and 2) additional analytic tools that could be used to advance empirical research on the mechanisms and determinants of swb (and behaviors that promote swb). as we describe in more detail below, this approach affords behavioral measures of individual differences in a range of neurocomputational processes, including those underlying flexibility in the future-directedness of planning, motivation to seek out information, beliefs about environmental predictability, the influence of expectation on perception, and the sophistication with which individuals understand emotions, among others. gathering such information will allow assessment of the mechanisms contributing to differences in swb and could inspire novel interventions for improving swb by targeting those mechanisms. 2. computational approaches and conceptual links to wellbeing 2.1 reinforcement learning one widely established branch of computational neuroscience is reinforcement learning (rl). within rl, it is assumed that individuals make decisions to maximize expected reward. one way they can do so is by maintaining an internal model of the world (so-called “model-based” rl), and using that model to plan the sequence of actions that would maximize cumulative reward (this type of internal model can also be used to facilitate learning through internal simulation; (sutton & barto, 1998)). because model-based rl is computationally expensive (and in some cases intractable), many applications have instead focused on “model-free” rl, where individuals learn by trial-and-error without making explicit predictions about the future situations that will subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 arise1. instead, they simply learn an expected reward value for each possible action in a given situation and then choose the action with the highest expected value (often with a certain amount of randomness built in). learning in these models is based on so-called “reward prediction errors” (rpes). briefly, when the expected reward following an action does not match observed reward, this mismatch (prediction error) updates the expected reward value of that action (increasing it if better than expected, decreasing it if worse than expected). we can calculate this prediction error as follows: 𝑅𝑃𝐸 = 𝑂𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑅𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 − 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑅𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 the expected reward of the action that led to the rpe is then updated based on the following rule: 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑅𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 = 𝑂𝑙𝑑 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑅𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 + (𝑅𝑃𝐸 × 𝐿𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑒) here the learning rate is a value that controls how strong the change in expected reward is after each rpe. in tasks expected to have stable reward probabilities, learning rates should be low (since unexpected rewards may just be low-probability events). in contrast, if reward probabilities are expected to change every so often (i.e., the environment is “volatile”), learning rate should be high, since unexpected rewards are more likely to indicate that the underlying reward probabilities have changed. if one can quantify an individual’s learning rate, this may therefore provide information about how stable/predictable they expect the world to be (e.g., a low learning rate would entail the belief that previously learned action-outcome probabilities are unlikely to change). to date, some work within the rl framework has linked emotional states and moods with patterns of recent rewards and rpes (blain & rutledge, 2020; eldar & niv, 2015; eldar et al., 2018; eldar et al., 2016; mason et al., 2017; rutledge et al., 2014, 2015; vanhasbroeck et al., 2021). for example, greater momentary happiness during reward learning tasks has been associated with stronger positive rpes in recent trials (rutledge et al., 2014; vanhasbroeck et al., 2021). this relation to momentary happiness also appears to be related to how surprising a reward is, rather than the magnitude of reward per se; (blain & rutledge, 2020)). that is, individuals report greater momentary increases in happiness if they are more surprised that a reward was received. individuals also report greater momentary happiness in probabilistic learning tasks with more stable/predictable reward probabilities (i.e., those with lower volatility), whereas tasks in which probabilities change unpredictably are instead associated with greater self-reported negative emotion and stress (blain & rutledge, 2020; de berker et al., 2016). this line of work has therefore provided important insights. however, these studies have focused primarily on momentary happiness, as opposed to the computational basis of general life satisfaction or overall life functioning. thus, more research is needed to understand the relationship between these computational reward learning processes and established swb measures. 1 there are also several hybrid or intermediate algorithms that have been proposed, such as two-system architectures (where modelbased and model-free systems cooperate/compete) and successor representation algorithms, among others (e.g., appealing to the role of long-term memory). subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 2.2 active inference another conceptually rich computational framework, which we focus on here, is active inference (ai; see figure 1 below). this framework describes how individuals select sequences of actions (called “policies”, denoted by the variable 𝜋) based on their expected sensory consequences (often called observations or outcomes, denoted by the variable 𝑜 ). these observations can include rewards as well as other sensory inputs capable of reducing uncertainty about the underlying states of the world that must be inferred (denoted by the variable 𝑠) (smith, friston, et al., 2022). for example, hearing a barking sound (observation) may allow one to infer that a dog is most likely nearby (state), although one cannot see the dog directly. unlike model-free rl, this type of decision process requires the brain to maintain an internal model of the world that can simulate predicted patterns of observations under different possible actions. it can then select the actions expected to generate the most preferred/informative outcomes. crucially, behavior will quickly become maladaptive if predictions become inaccurate. therefore, the brain’s internal model must also be continually updated and revised in light of new sensory input. the ai framework suggests that this is accomplished by finding an updated set of beliefs after each observation that minimizes prediction error. unlike rl, however, this is not an rpe. instead, this more general prediction error can reflect a deviation between any predicted and observed sensory input. importantly, however, there are typically multiple sets of new beliefs that could minimize prediction error, which means some further criterion is also needed to select among those possibilities. this criterion corresponds to parsimony; namely, beliefs should minimize prediction error while also changing as little as possible. put another way, the brain should identify the simplest possible (or least “complex”) change in belief that is necessary. to capture this, ai formally models the brain as seeking to minimize a quantity called variational free energy (vfe), which represents a trade-off between minimizing prediction error and minimizing the complexity of change in belief. without introducing the detailed mathematics, we can represent this as: 𝑉𝐹𝐸 = 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑡𝑦 + 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝐸𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟 importantly, previous literature has suggested that negative emotion may be a consequence of a chronic failure to successfully minimize vfe (or simply prediction error; e.g., see (barrett et al., 2016; joffily & coricelli, 2013; stephan et al., 2016)). this suggests that successful minimization of this quantity could also correspond to high swb. however, this has not been empirically tested (although we discuss studies that have tested related hypotheses below). while vfe relates beliefs to current observations, selecting actions requires the prediction of future observations (“what will i observe if i do this or that?”). this means the brain must evaluate expected free energy (efe; denoted by variable 𝐆 in figure 1). conceptually, minimizing efe can be described as selecting actions expected to maximize both reward and information gain. this can be represented as: 𝐸𝐹𝐸 = −𝐸𝑝𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑐 𝑉𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 − 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑅𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 107 figure 1. graphical depiction of active inference models. notes. arrows denote asymmetric dependencies (e.g., the expected observation, 𝑜 , depends on the underlying state of the world, 𝑠 ). the general notation 𝑝(𝑥) indicates the known probability for each possible value of some variable 𝑥, whereas 𝑞(𝑥) denotes an approximation or “best guess” about those probabilities (also referred to as a “posterior” belief, because this guess is updated after one makes a new observation). the notation 𝑝(𝑥|𝑦) denotes the probability of each possible value of some variable 𝑥 after one has learned the value of some other variable 𝑦. see text for further explanation. as illustrated here, the underlying states of the world change over time, and the way they change can depend on one’s chosen sequence of actions (𝜋). actions are chosen based on a combination of habits, the expected free energy, and beliefs about the reliability or “precision” of expected free energy (described further in the text). after each new observation, an individual can use this model to come up with a best guess about how the state of the world has changed (based on minimizing variational free energy or prediction error) and then select actions expected to maximize both reward and information gain (based on minimizing expected free energy). for a detailed walkthrough of the mathematics, see (smith, friston, et al., 2022). minimizing both types of free energy can be conceptualized as maximizing swb, and the success with which one does so will depend on the values of various parameters in the model. this is described further in the main text. here, the “epistemic value” term refers to how much one’s uncertainty would be reduced by an expected observation (i.e., how much it would increase one’s confidence in the underlying state of the world). the consequence of this equation is that individuals who do not know how to reach their goals will first explore their environment to gain more information. once uncertainty is resolved, actions will then become reward-seeking (i.e., seeking the observations with the highest subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 108 values encoded in the preference parameters within 𝐂 in figure 1). active inference models can also include other elements, such as learning rates, habits, and volatility beliefs, among others (for a summary of relationships between ai and rl, see table 1 below). however, their main distinguishing features from traditional rl approaches are: 1) prediction error (vfe) minimization as the basis of perception (traditional rl models do not include perception), and 2) information-seeking during action selection (although some more recent rl models have incorporated additional elements to drive strategic exploration; e.g., see (gershman, 2018)). for a formal graphical depiction of active inference and some additional technical details, see figure 1 and the associated legend. for a detailed walkthrough of the mathematics, see (smith, friston, et al., 2022). aside from the model structure depicted in figure 1, there are also related model architectures based on free energy minimization (i.e., minimization of prediction errors weighted by their estimated reliability), with a primary example being the hierarchical gaussian filter (hgf; (mathys et al., 2014)). one advantage of the hgf is that it explicitly models volatility estimation (which then continuously updates learning rates after each new observation). in contrast, the simplest version of the ai architecture depicted in figure 1 only includes static learning rates. however, there are extensions to standard ai architectures that can perform explicit volatility estimation as well (sales et al., 2019). 3. potential relationships between free energy minimization and subjective wellbeing there are fairly straightforward theoretical connections between efe and swb. if an individual continually fails to attain preferred observations (i.e., if efe estimates continually fail to promote actions that achieve those observations), this would suggest they have a poor model of the world and are unable to improve it—perhaps resulting in feelings of helplessness and lack of control associated with low swb. previous theoretical work has also shown how the brain may keep track of the reliability/precision of its own efe estimates (i.e., the parameter 𝜸 in figure 1). in this case, a belief that efe estimates are unreliable would be expected to promote negative affect (hesp et al., 2021; hesp et al., 2020)—because it entails an unsuccessful model of the world (i.e., a model that is not reliable in its ability to achieve preferred outcomes). conversely, a consistent belief that one’s model is successful at guiding action toward achieving one’s goals could contribute to higher swb. two empirical studies to date have observed the expected correlation between negative affect (self-reported anxiety/uncertainty) and efe reliability/precision estimates (using a model of participant behavior during an approach-avoidance conflict task (smith, kirlic, stewart, touthang, kuplicki, khalsa, et al., 2021; smith, kirlic, stewart, touthang, kuplicki, mcdermott, et al., 2021)), and three other studies using active inference models have linked related measures of precision to depression, anxiety, and/or substance use disorder severity (smith, kuplicki, feinstein, et al., 2020; smith, schwartenbeck, et al., 2020; smith, taylor, stewart, et al., 2022). one study has also identified neural correlates of efe estimates using functional neuroimaging (schwartenbeck et al., 2015). however, possible links to measures of swb have not been examined. subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 109 table 1. computational frameworks that could be used to study subjective wellbeing. reinforcement learning active inference explanatory targets cognitive and neural mechanisms of reward learning and rewardbased decision-making cognitive and neural mechanisms of perception, learning, and decision-making guiding principle reward maximization learning: updating beliefs about reward probabilities decision-making: maximizing cumulative rewards free energy principle inferring beliefs about states of the world that minimize variational free energy (i.e., minimize complexity + prediction error) learning: inferring model parameters (e.g., probabilities of observations under different states) that improve the accuracy of model predictions (also based on variational free energy minimization). decision-making: making choices that minimize expected free energy (i.e., which maximizes information gain + reward) example parameters basic models: state-space structure (granularity), learning rate, reward probabilities, reward sensitivity (level of randomness in choice) extended models: planning horizon, information bonus terms (driving information seeking) precision of: prior beliefs over states, state-observation mappings (sensory precision), preferences, expected free energy, and habits state-space structure (granularity), probabilities of observations given states, learning and forgetting rates; beliefs about environmental volatility; planning horizon hypotheses about the potential basis of subjective wellbeing greater momentary subjective wellbeing corresponds to patterns of repeatedly unexpected reward (i.e., better-than-expected outcomes) successful minimization of variational and expected free energy; high confidence in one’s internal model of the world and its ability to adaptively guide action a match between one’s internal model (i.e., model structure and parameter values) and the true statistics of the environment subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 110 crucially, difficulties minimizing efe can occur with respect to both internal bodily states (interoception) as well as external circumstances. for example, stephan et al. (2016) have proposed that depressive symptoms develop due to a chronic failure to minimize interoceptive prediction error—associated with reduced confidence in the ability to successfully regulate the body and maintain preferred interoceptive observations (reduced “allostatic self-efficacy”). this also relates to interesting recent modelling work aiming to capture the computational basis of stress habituation—a phenomenon in which some individuals show reduced physiological responses to repeated presentation of the same stressor (hartwig et al., 2022). this modelling work proposes that stress habituation can be captured as a reduction in the strength of the expected reward component of efe (technically, a reduced precision of the distribution encoding preferred outcomes). in brief, when no course of action can be found to reduce efe, a last resort option is to reduce the reward-seeking motivation itself. this means that the individual ceases to experience aversive stress responses (i.e., efe is reduced), but at the cost of no longer expecting to achieve outcomes consistent with high swb (e.g., remaining in unhealthy relationships or low socio-economic status environments, etc.). this computational model also introduces a parameter to account for the fact that some individuals show stress habituation and others do not. this highlights how there are trade-offs and individual differences in the way people may go about reducing efe, not all of which are equally likely to promote high swb. while the theoretical relationship between swb and efe is fairly straightforward, possible links to vfe are more complex. intuitively, one might simply equate higher swb with lower levels of vfe (joffily & coricelli, 2013). at a biological level, this idea can be motivated by the fact that vfe minimization provides a generic means of describing successful survival and environmental adaptation (friston, 2019; kirchhoff et al., 2018). the mathematics behind this idea—referred to as the “free energy principle”—are beyond the scope of the present paper, but the key premise is that observations consistent with an organism’s survival must be those expected to have the highest probability in that organism’s model (e.g., if healthy levels of hydration were not observed with high probability, an organism would not survive). it follows that there will be large prediction errors (i.e., greater vfe) when survival-consistent outcomes are not observed. this formulation therefore entails that successful organisms act to minimize vfe, where this success at maintaining survival-consistent outcomes would be expected to promote higher swb. however, this is likely oversimplified when considering the study of human swb. one basic reason for this is that minimizing vfe is also accomplished by arriving at new beliefs that minimize prediction error (in the simplest way possible)—and sometimes the most accurate beliefs can promote low swb (e.g., believing that one is worthless may best minimize prediction error in some circumstances). another reason is that even very simple organisms can be described as acting to minimize vfe as a means of survival, while there is substantially greater subjectivity and complexity associated with self-reported swb in humans. this is because self-reported swb depends on abstract beliefs about oneself, which requires an internal model of the world that can support this type of advanced cognition (hesp et al., 2021; hesp et al., 2020). crucially, this can include abstract expectations about the conceptual requirements of swb that go beyond, or even work against, biological fitness (e.g., some individuals may believe they need to be rich to be happy, while others do not; or some individuals may value self-sacrifice over personal safety, subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 111 while others do not). another complexity is that there are different concepts of wellbeing (e.g., hedonic vs. eudaimonic; (ryan & deci, 2001)). while momentary reductions in vfe might plausibly influence short-term hedonic wellbeing in some circumstances (e.g., when a return to homeostasis leads to positive emotion), eudaimonic wellbeing involves learned normative beliefs about what the requirements are for living (or having lived) a meaningful life that can counteract biological fitness (e.g., preferring states of “suffering in support of a meaningful cause” over states of “meaningless pleasure”). given learned preferences for outcomes consistent with eudaimonic wellbeing, individuals will plausibly minimize efe to realize them, but vfe could be minimized by inferring either high or low levels of eudaimonic wellbeing (i.e., depending on which inference best minimizes prediction error with respect to current observations). the role of inference through vfe minimization—whether those inferences promote eudaimonic wellbeing or not—is also exemplified by related work that has characterized determinants of feeling meaning in life (reviewed in (kim et al., 2022)). this work suggests that several types of beliefs contribute to feelings of meaning, including: 1) that the various aspects of one’s life are consistent and cohesive with one another; 2) that one’s life has a purpose (it is working toward valued goals); and 3) that one’s existence matters in the sense of having value, importance, and significance in the world. meaning in life is also greater in those who show an intrinsic appreciation for various experiences (e.g., music, nature, interactions with family/friends; (kim et al., 2022)). in active inference, the presence or absence of each of these beliefs would in part reflect inferences based on current observations—that is, the inferences that minimize vfe. however, some of these beliefs clearly also depend on expected future states and observations, which means efe would also play a role similar to that described above. levels of eudaimonic wellbeing will therefore reflect a complex mixture of vfe and efe (with respect to beliefs about the present and future, respectively). these considerations illustrate why the potential relationship between vfe minimization and swb is not as straightforward as is the case with efe. while vfe can be understood to track basic biological fitness, this is neither necessary nor sufficient for an individual to report high swb. rather, both hedonic and eudaimonic swb are learned concepts used to evaluate one’s experience, and self-reported swb depends on how these learned concepts are encoded within the structure of an individual’s internal model (e.g., an individual could potentially learn to associate low levels of hedonic swb with high levels of eudaimonic swb). the theoretical complexity here can also be highlighted by noting again how a model with beliefs about swb will require hierarchical structure, which can allow vfe to be high at some levels and low at others. for example, consider an individual who values the idea of “hard work” and comes home feeling exhausted after a long day at their job. this feeling of exhaustion may reflect high vfe at a biological level (i.e., low metabolic resources); yet, that same feeling may lead to an elevated sense of self-worth (i.e., being exhausted provides evidence that one is a hard worker). this suggests that vfe minimization at some levels of processing may be more plausible correlates of swb than others. however, despite these theoretical complexities, we will see below that—in the context of practical applications of active inference to swb research—there may be several promising research directions to pursue. subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 112 4. computational phenotypes: multiple strategies for minimizing free energy based on the theoretical foundations discussed above, this section expands on the active inference framework and provides concrete examples of how swb research could be advanced by applying computational concepts and approaches. while we focus on active inference due to the richer set of constructs it allows us to draw from, we note that—because minimizing efe includes a reward maximization component with some mathematical similarities to rl (da costa et al., 2020)— some points made below may also apply to elements of that framework. one main message of this section is that there are likely multiple computational strategies that can successfully maintain high swb. these strategies correspond to different internal model structures or “computational phenotypes” (schwartenbeck & friston, 2016), which can vary in the degree to which they adaptively capture the structure of the local environment (especially the local sociocultural environment). computational phenotypes are defined in terms of the values of model parameters that best describe an individual’s behavior. below we will describe six different example model parameters, how they have been used in existing studies employing active inference models, and how they may explain differences in swb. 4.1 precision of prior beliefs over states in a given context, an internal model—technically referred to as a “generative model” (because it generates predictions)—will include prior beliefs about what will be perceived (both dependent and independent of one’s actions; encoded in parameters within 𝐃 and 𝐁 in figure 1). if an individual is highly confident in their prior beliefs (if those beliefs are very “precise”), they will lead to a strong interpretive bias favoring expectations. depending on the content domain, such prior beliefs could either promote or fail to promote swb. for example, individuals with a precise prior belief that others tend to be friendly and supportive in social contexts may be more likely to interpret social signals in a positive manner—likely leading to actions that garner additional social support and promote greater swb. pessimistic prior biases, as in emotional disorders, can instead bias perception toward interpretations of threat and social rejection—generating chronic negative affect (smith, alkozei, et al., 2018). however, it is important to consider that, while an optimistic social interpretation bias could be helpful to a certain degree, it is also crucial that these expectations do not deviate too far from the true statistics of the environment. for example, a prior expectation that individuals are friendly could promote poor and unsafe choices in socially hostile environments and thus generate circumstances hindering swb. thus, there is not one optimal prior belief. it depends on the content domain and on a match with the environment. model accuracy can be optimized so long as individuals also believe the sensory signals from the environment are reliable. if sensory signals are believed to be unreliable—referred to as having low “sensory precision” estimates (encoded within 𝐀 in figure 1)—prior beliefs will more strongly dominate perception and potentially promote false beliefs. the combination of socio-behavioral tasks and computational modeling can measure the precision of prior beliefs in perception at the individual level, providing one dimension of each participant’s computational phenotype. for examples of studies measuring individuals’ prior perceptual beliefs and sensory precision estimates in other content domains, see (powers et al., 2017; smith, kuplicki, feinstein, et al., 2020; smith, kuplicki, teed, et al., 2020; smith, mayeli, et al., 2021). to our knowledge, no study has measured prior beliefs or sensory precision estimates subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 113 in relation to measures of swb in social decision tasks (for related theoretical work linking imprecise prior beliefs to racial discrimination, see (varshney & varshney, 2016)). this therefore represents one promising avenue for future research. 4.2 learning rates, forgetting, and volatility estimates a second important dimension of a computational phenotype describing the way individuals try to minimize vfe/efe corresponds to learning rate. learning rates were briefly introduced above in the context of rl models, where greater learning rates imply a belief that previously learned action-outcome probabilities are unstable over time (i.e., the environment is highly volatile). if volatility estimation processes function appropriately, these beliefs will reflect the true statistics of the environment, but individuals can also have inaccurate beliefs about volatility, which can lead to maladaptive learning rates. high learning rates promote forgetting previously learned reward probabilities in favor of patterns in more recent observations. because learning reward probabilities is implemented differently in ai, there is an associated distinction between learning rates and forgetting rates. learning rates in ai control how quickly beliefs “solidify” and become resistant to change, which has the effect of reducing exploratory behavior, while forgetting rates control how quickly new observations “over-write” previous learning (and are therefore more similar to learning rates in rl models). to be adaptive, both learning rates and forgetting rates need to match the true statistics of the environment. otherwise, beliefs may either become rigid/overconfident or beliefs will be unstable/underconfident. learning/forgetting rates also need not be the same for all types of observations. for example, in previous studies on substance use disorders using active inference models, healthy participants were found to selectively show faster learning rates for losses than substance users, which also predicted changes in symptom severity over time (smith, schwartenbeck, et al., 2020; smith, taylor, stewart, et al., 2021). in addition to different learning/forgetting rates for different observations, some related models also assume individuals maintain explicit beliefs about volatility and update those beliefs over time (mathys et al., 2014)—allowing for changes in the rate of learning/forgetting after each observation. when considering plausible mechanisms linked to greater swb, one useful phenotype could correspond to a combination of optimistic prior beliefs and slow forgetting rates (assuming this also matches the statistics of the environment they occupy). this would entail that an individual’s optimistic expectations would be resilient to many negative experiences before having strong negative effects on perception and behavior. another useful phenotype might involve a moderately fast forgetting rate in contexts where one is transitioning from socially hostile to friendly environments—which might prevent pre-existing pessimistic prior beliefs from promoting behavior that could prevent garnering social support. 4.3 information-seeking and sensitivity to uncertainty a third relevant aspect of how individuals seek to minimize efe is through a type of curiosity or exploratory drive—captured by the epistemic value term described in the previous section. one consequence of the equation for efe is that the value of the expected reward term controls how driven an individual is to seek information vs. reward (schwartenbeck et al., 2019; smith, friston, et al., 2022). technically, the expected reward term in efe takes the form of a probability subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 114 distribution over observations, where observations that are more “probable” are those that are more rewarding (encoded by the parameters within 𝐂 in figure 1). if this “preference distribution” is highly precise (corresponding to one observation having a very high reward value), then reward-seeking will dominate—leading to a type of “risky” behavior in which individuals try to maximize reward before exploring the environment to identify the optimal strategy. conversely, a very imprecise preference distribution drives a type of “risk-averse” behavior in which individuals engage in excessive information-seeking (i.e., continually trying to reduce uncertainty beyond what is necessary) and take too long to become confident in the best reward-maximizing strategy. in other words, they act as though they are overly concerned that they will make the wrong decision once they begin seeking reward. empirical studies in ai have only very recently begun to examine differences in preference precision (and hence informationseeking; see (smith, schwartenbeck, et al., 2020; smith, taylor, stewart, et al., 2021)). however, work on exploratory drives within expanded rl models has suggested altered patterns of information-seeking in depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders (aberg et al., 2022; fan et al., 2021; smith, taylor, wilson, et al., 2021; waltz et al., 2020). whether and how information-seeking drives relate to swb has not been empirically assessed (for some interesting recent theoretical discussion, see (miller et al., 2022)). here, one might hypothesize that swb would be facilitated by a moderate information-seeking drive that supports informed goalseeking, while preventing individuals from “jumping to conclusions” too early or remaining uncertain after gathering sufficient information. 4.4 prior beliefs about efe precision as described earlier, ai suggests the brain can learn to be more or less confident in its model’s ability to use efe to optimize action (the parameter 𝜸 in figure 1). in these models, individuals also start with a prior belief about this efe precision (the parameter 𝜷 in figure 1), which can be estimated in individuals based on task behavior. this can be viewed as a type of metacognition, in that it involves inferring beliefs about the reliability of one’s beliefs (hesp et al., 2021). one study has shown how this relates to dopamine-related brain regions during neuroimaging (schwartenbeck et al., 2015), and two other studies have linked this measure to differences in selfreported negative affect and decision uncertainty (smith, kirlic, stewart, touthang, kuplicki, khalsa, et al., 2021; smith, kirlic, stewart, touthang, kuplicki, mcdermott, et al., 2021). therefore, one might predict that a stronger prior belief that efe precision is high should be a mechanism promoting swb. high efe precision also leads behavior to be less random and/or less habitdriven (i.e., it down-weights the influence of the habits encoded in the e vector in figure 1)— making behavior more driven by explicit future predictions, which could help account for bidirectional links between swb and adaptive behavior (diener et al., 2018). as efe precision can be understood as a metacognitive belief and has been related to self-reported decision uncertainty, it also has potential links to other work suggesting the importance of metacognitive abilities in promoting swb (varshney & barbey, 2021). 4.5 planning horizon and decision tree pruning a further possible dimension of a computational phenotype pertains to prospective planning. this form of planning involves imagining different sequences of actions (policies; encoded by 𝜋 subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 115 in figure 1) and their future outcomes (𝑜). one individual difference in this context is planning horizon, which corresponds to how many steps into the future one considers while making decisions (i.e., the length of the action sequence encoded in each possible policy). if this horizon is short, decisions will focus on optimizing short-term outcomes, while a long horizon will optimize long-term outcomes (e.g., even if they require enduring a negative short-term outcome). another important individual difference corresponds to something called “decision tree pruning” (huys et al., 2012; lally et al., 2017), which arises from the fact that it typically takes too much time to imagine the distal future outcomes of all possible plans (i.e., policies). therefore, a mechanism for focusing on only a few possible plans is needed (metaphorically “pruning away” other branches in a tree of possible diverging paths). this mechanism involves ceasing to simulate/imagine the rest of a possible action sequence once short-term negative outcomes are expected (i.e., one does not “think it through” to consider the possibility of a positive long-term outcome). these two differences—planning horizon and pruning—also represent plausible mechanisms for promoting behaviors that would maintain high vs. low swb. both a short planning horizon and too much pruning will lead to myopic planning. for example, this type of planning might prevent an individual from beginning a promising career trajectory because the initial starting position is not enjoyable or respected. or it could prevent an individual from offering a difficult apology to maintain a fulfilling friendship. yet, too little pruning is also maladaptive, as decision-making can become inefficient and overwhelming. it is also ideal for planning horizon to be flexible, as distal future outcomes can in some cases be too unpredictable to consider. in other cases, survival can also require fast decisions focused on the immediate future. thus, one would expect individuals would have higher swb if they are capable of long planning horizons, but where deployment of this ability is flexible and optimized to the relevant context. behavioral planning tasks are available that could be used to examine potential relations between these mechanisms and swb (huys et al., 2012; lally et al., 2017), but this remains untested. 4.6 granular state spaces the final element of a generative model that we will consider as a potential dimension for computational phenotyping pertains to the specificity of categories used to understand the world (i.e., technically, the number of possible states within the state-space of a model; encoded within 𝑠 in figure 1). unlike some other model elements discussed above, this is not a single parameter. instead, it is a more general attribute of the structure of a generative model. one relevant example of this pertains to the specificity of emotion concept learning, and its relation to constructs such as emotion differentiation (kashdan et al., 2015), emotional complexity/diversity (kang & shaver, 2004; quoidbach et al., 2014), emotional awareness (lane & smith, 2021; lane et al., 2015; smith, killgore, & lane, 2018), and alexithymia (bagby et al., 1994; lane et al., 2021; maroti et al., 2018; trevisan et al., 2019), all of which share the notion of granularity. individuals with low emotional granularity tend to use broad, non-specific emotion categories (e.g., “good”, “bad”). this can be understood as a generative model with only two possible states or hypotheses (smith, lane, et al., 2019; smith, parr, et al., 2019), which constrains the amount of information available to guide adaptive choice. in contrast, those with high granularity have many specific emotion concepts (e.g., many types of “bad”, such as sad, angry, afraid, guilty, jealous, etc.). this corresponds to a subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 116 generative model with a large number of possible states that can explain many unique patterns of sensory input and provide precise information to guide effective emotion regulation and adaptive social decision-making (satpute et al., 2020; satpute et al., 2016; smith, killgore, alkozei, et al., 2018; smith, killgore, & lane, 2018; smith & lane, 2016). this computational formulation of emotion concept granularity may therefore offer a novel perspective on the beneficial role of emotion knowledge in cognition. for example, it illustrates how a larger and more fine-grained state space for emotion concepts can offer precise predictions to adaptively guide choice. this could also be extended to consideration of unique emotion concepts present in different languages/cultures (majid, 2012; russell, 1991; satpute et al., 2020), and how such concepts could be uniquely helpful in navigating those specific sociocultural contexts. this also supports previous suggestions that adaptive emotional functioning could be increased by acquiring new emotion concepts from other languages/cultures (barrett, 2017). however, as with other model parameters, more granularity will likely only be useful to the extent that the environment truly has many underlying states. for example, if one grows up in an emotionally impoverished environment where people only express coarse-grained emotional signals, then it may be most adaptive to maintain a model that is not overly complex and assumes there is more variation than is actually present (smith, steklis, et al., 2022; smith, steklis, et al., 2020). while simulations of such differences have been reported using ai (smith, lane, et al., 2019; smith, parr, et al., 2019), no behavioral tasks have yet been developed to study the granularity of individuals’ generative models. this represents an important future direction, which could potentially draw on existing paradigms used to study cross-cultural differences in other perceptual categorization processes (e.g., color categorization (twomey et al., 2021; winawer et al., 2007)). it is also important to note that, while we have used emotion concept specificity as a concrete example, the notion of state-space granularity can be applied to many other relevant domains (e.g., coarsevs. fine-grained beliefs about personality types, differences in social status, etc.), which will be important to consider in future work as well. 5. potential empirical applications as each of the model elements discussed above can differ across individuals, they afford possible explanations for individual differences in perception, learning, and decision-making—each of which could lead to differences in swb. by extension, these model elements also offer possible explanations for cultural differences, which can be viewed as computational phenotypes that are similar in individuals within a culture but differ from individuals in other cultures. for example, perhaps some cultures place more value than others on reflective practices (e.g., heightened attention to one’s own uncertainty, more frequent engagement in prospection/retrospection) that would be expected to increase information-seeking and planning horizon (e.g., see (fan et al., 2021; gershman, 2018; jackson et al., 2020; kaplan & friston, 2018; smith, taylor, wilson, et al., 2022)). or perhaps some cultures tend to share implicit expectations that the social environment is more volatile than others. swb could also have unique computational correlates in different cultures. such hypotheses could be tested using standard methods in computational psychiatry to examine significant differences between cultural groups as well as the correlates of withinculture variability (for a summary of possible empirical approaches, see table 2 below). for example, if groups of individuals from two distinct cultures were each asked to complete widelysubjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 117 used decision tasks designed to test for differences in information-seeking/preference precision (e.g., (smith, schwartenbeck, et al., 2020; wilson et al., 2014), distal planning (e.g., (huys et al., 2012)), or volatility beliefs (e.g., (de berker et al., 2016; diaconescu et al., 2017; iglesias et al., 2013; lawson et al., 2017)), hypotheses could be tested that significant group differences in these traits would be observed. within each cultural group, possible relationships could also be tested between these traits and swb. for example, perhaps volatility beliefs are correlated with swb in some cultures but not in others. table 2. possible empirical approaches for measurement of, and intervention on, different computational model parameters. model parameter example experimental paradigms that could be adapted to estimate parameters in contexts relevant to subjective wellbeing possible intervention approaches target outcomes of interventions precision of prior beliefs over states (d and b) and sensory precision (a) conditioned perception tasks (powers et al., 2017), interoceptive inference tasks (smith, kuplicki, feinstein, et al., 2020; smith, kuplicki, teed, et al., 2020; smith, mayeli, et al., 2021) training based on corrective feedback, mindfulness, and/or selective attention (feinstein et al., 2018; price et al., 2019; sugawara et al., 2020; weng et al., 2021) a more positive outlook on life due to more optimistic prior beliefs learning/forgetting rates & volatility estimates perceptual learning tasks (smith, mayeli, et al., 2021), multi-arm bandit tasks (smith, schwartenbeck, et al., 2020; smith, taylor, stewart, et al., 2021), reversal learning and change-point detecting tasks (browning et al., 2015; de berker et al., 2016; diaconescu et al., 2017; huang et al., 2017; iglesias et al., 2013) corrective feedback or directed attentionbased training (no existing interventions) reduced levels of anxiety due to the belief that the world is more predictable preference precision (c): reward-seeking vs. information-seeking explore-exploit and multi-arm bandit tasks (fan et al., 2021; smith, schwartenbeck, et al., 2020; smith, taylor, stewart, et al., 2021; wilson et al., 2014) increasing awareness of uncertainty (cognitive and behavioral therapeutic interventions; (barlow et al., 2016; segal et al., 2004)), altering incentive structure (ederer & manso, 2013) reduced avoidance behavior, impulsivity, and/or uncertainty due to optimizing the balance between reward-seeking and information-seeking subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 118 model parameter example experimental paradigms that could be adapted to estimate parameters in contexts relevant to subjective wellbeing possible intervention approaches target outcomes of interventions expected free energy precision (𝛾) limited offer (risk-taking) task (schwartenbeck et al., 2015), approachavoidance conflict task (smith, kirlic, stewart, touthang, kuplicki, khalsa, et al., 2021; smith, kirlic, stewart, touthang, kuplicki, mcdermott, et al., 2021) interventions targeting self-efficacy, confidence, selfdetermination, etc. more confident, value-sensitive behaviors with less influence of unhealthy habits planning horizon and decision-tree pruning multi-step planning tasks (huys et al., 2012) increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive reflection and prospective planning (cognitive and behavioral therapeutic interventions; (barlow et al., 2016; segal et al., 2004)), enforcing delay periods before choice (bernstein et al., 2018; shin & grant, 2021) a greater ability to work toward healthy long-term goals, despite needing to go through short-term challenges and discomfort state-space granularity (𝑠) no existing paradigms. would require comparison of models with different numbers of hidden states in the context of an emotion inference task emotional awareness training interventions (burger et al., 2016; farnam et al., 2014; neumann et al., 2017; persich et al., 2021; thakur et al., 2017), promoting identification of alternative interpretations (barlow et al., 2016; hendricks et al., 2018) a more precise understanding of emotions, which is expected to improve emotion regulation and social decisionmaking a further consideration is that, because cultural norms and practices are passed on through learning, computational models of learning in both rl and ai can offer hypotheses about this learning process. however, unlike the generic model parameters discussed above, cultural norms and values are content-specific (e.g., that it is acceptable or unacceptable to strive for personal over collective benefit). as such, the approach to testing such hypotheses would instead require model comparison (rigoux et al., 2014). this entails specifying a number of different mechanistic subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 119 hypotheses—formalized as different generative models—that could explain such differences. for example, one candidate model might specify that people within collectivistic cultures learn a generative model in which self-serving choices are expected to generate non-preferred social feedback, which then deters the selection of those behaviors. in contrast, another candidate generative model might specify that individuals learn preferences for observing prosocial behavior in both themselves and others. in this latter case, behavior would not be driven by expected social feedback, but by the intrinsic desire to observe prosocial behavior. a more complex model might include a competition between the precision of preferences for personal and societal benefit, with a parameter that weights their relative influence. once a space of possible models is constructed, each model can be fit to available data. one can then perform model comparison to identify which model best accounts for the way this cultural difference is acquired (i.e., which model can best reproduce the experimental data in simulations). the approaches described in this section can also be applied to many other related phenomena. for example, people in individualistic cultures tend to prefer high-arousal emotions more than those in collectivistic cultures (lim, 2016). within ai models there are several possible mechanisms through which these distinct value systems could be acquired during development, each representing a unique hypothesis to be tested. for example, this might involve learning distinct preference distributions (i.e., within 𝐂 in figure 1) over high arousal sensations based on what was experienced most frequently during development, or it could involve associative learning processes (within 𝐀 in figure 1) in which an individual has learned to predict that displays of high-arousal emotions will be met with non-preferred outcomes (e.g., negative social feedback). or perhaps individuals in collectivistic cultures learn to expect that high-arousal states threaten the successful minimization of vfe and efe (i.e., that action outcomes are less predictable and that the value of 𝜸 in figure 1 is low). another hypothesis is that emotions are conceptualized in distinct ways in different cultures, and that it is this difference in conceptualization that explains differences in emotional experience. in other words, different cultures have different emotion categories that can be inferred to explain their experience, which would be encoded within 𝑠 in figure 1). this type of emotion concept inference process has been simulated in previous work, but cross-cultural variation has not been addressed (smith, lane, et al., 2019; smith, parr, et al., 2019). emotion concept learning in this context can be modeled as learning the probability of making various internal and external observations under different emotional states, 𝑝(𝑜|𝑠) . for example, observations of threat, high arousal, and avoidance motivation may have high joint probability under the concept of “fear”, while observations of pleasant sensations, high arousal, and approach motivations may have high joint probability under the concept of “excitement”. however, these probabilistic mappings are learned and can differ by culture (barrett, 2017; russell, 1991; smith, killgore, & lane, 2018; widen & russell, 2008), which means the same experiences can be interpreted as different emotions in different cultures. in computational terms, this would mean that different cultures have different numbers/types of possible states (i.e., different levels of granularity) and different emotional state-observation mappings encoded in their internal models. in support of this, different languages often include emotion concept terms that are difficult to translate. for example, the concept of “wabi-sabi” in japanese roughly corresponds to subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 120 “appreciating beauty in imperfection” and the concept of “schadenfreude” in german corresponds to “feeling pleasure in response to another person’s suffering or misfortune”. these concepts do not have 1-to-1 translations to english words. the degree to which this influences emotional experience is an open question, but both active inference and related theories of emotion (e.g., constructivism; (barrett, 2017)) would predict meaningful influences. as in the previous cases we have described, this could also be tested through model comparison. for example, emotion induction procedures could be combined with behavioral tasks that require decisions to be made based on perceived emotional states. then models with different numbers/types of emotion concepts could be compared in their ability to account for differences in self-reported emotions and patterns of choice behavior. if different models best explained behavior in different cultural groups, this would support the idea that they use different models as a means of understanding their emotional experience (i.e., different inferences best minimize variational free energy and make different predictions about the choices that will minimize expected free energy). one additional area of research on swb that could be opened up using computational approaches is modeling multi-person interactions. in this case, two (or more) individuals cooperate or compete when completing a behavioral task—allowing models to be fit to the behavior of each individual as they react to each other’s choices. this can offer the opportunity to evaluate individual differences in parameters of one individual’s model of another person (i.e., corresponding to the neurocomputational processes underlying mentalization or theory of mind (amodio & frith, 2006; friston & frith, 2015; frith & frith, 2006, 2012; lombardo et al., 2010; schurz et al., 2014)). to date, a small number of studies have begun to examine how individuals minimize “social prediction error” in such tasks (diaconescu et al., 2014; diaconescu et al., 2017), illustrating sensitivity to beliefs about volatility in the intentions of others, relationships to selfreported empathy, and the potential role of specific neuromodulatory systems, but this work has not focused on individual differences in swb. complementary work within the rl framework has also shown that happiness ratings are lower in such tasks when interaction partners are inequitably rewarded (rutledge et al., 2016), but has not focused on inference processes within internal models of others or the potential role of free energy minimization. future research could build upon this work by using such tasks in combination with ai models to examine additional hypotheses. for example, perhaps individuals with precise prior beliefs that others tend to be altruistic (and therefore behave in more cooperative, trusting ways) will also be more likely to report higher swb. or perhaps individuals that more fully consider the predicted effect of their current choices on the distal future choices of their interaction partner (i.e., greater planning horizon) will also report greater real-world social success (e.g., attainment of greater social support, more meaningful relationships, etc.). another complementary research direction could be to use multi-agent simulation to identify public policies that better promote swb in societies of a given culture (e.g., by formalizing multiagent interactions in which one agent corresponds to the government and has a particular set of “policy-making” actions to choose from). a branch of game theory called mechanism design, which can be thought of as the “engineering” side of economic theory, is one appropriate mathematical approach for identifying policies in this manner (maskin, 2008). based on the present discussion, future work might consider mechanism design using agents that are themselves engaged in active subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 121 inference (e.g., within a general equilibrium macroeconomic model that is being utilized to understand a country’s swb (hill et al., 2021)). parallel work in the rl literature has developed similar large-scale simulations to develop dynamic taxation and subsidy policies that consider multiple objectives, policy levers, and behavioral responses from strategic actors that optimize for their individual objectives (trott et al., 2021). a taxation policy from such reinforcement learning simulations can even outperform optimal static policies in terms of productivity and equity (zheng et al., 2021). thus, it would be interesting to see whether the active inference framework could offer any additional benefits in this line of research. 6. summary and conclusion: integrated phenotypes for free energy minimization we have outlined several computational model parameters that can be configured in unique ways in different individuals—representing distinct computational strategies one might use in attempt to minimize free energy. we have also considered how each of these parameters could (alone or in combination) either promote or hinder maintenance of high swb depending on the values they take and their match to the statistics of the local environment. figure 2 (below) provides a visual summary of these parameters and their interactions. these parameters may link to swb in at least two ways. first, parameters like efe precision (and perhaps prior beliefs about states) may have close internal connections with feelings of wellbeing. second, many other parameters may contribute to wellbeing indirectly through their influence on behavior. that is, if they match well with the local environment, behavior may be more likely to cultivate the career success and social support that contribute to satisfaction with life. we suggest that the reconceptualization of swb we have described in terms of levels of success in free energy minimization, and the methods offered by computational modeling to empirically test this new framing, each represent important means of advancing our understanding of swb. it may offer a novel behavioral approach and set of tools/measures that— while potentially showing convergent validity with standard swb measures—can also offer novel types of relevant information. it may help to identify specific mechanisms that promote or hinder wellbeing on an individual basis and therefore potentially facilitate the development of personalized interventions aimed at improving wellbeing. we look forward to seeing the potentially important outcomes of this line of future research. subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 122 figure 2. computational framework for subjective wellbeing. notes. left: summary of example parameters and how they could plausibly influence swb. see main text for further description. right: depiction of the circular interactions between perception and action, as well as where the parameters discussed in the text influence learning and decision-making processes contributing to these circular interactions. specific parameters are highlighted in red font. acknowledgements this work is supported in part by the william k. warren foundation, the national institute of mental health (r01mh123691; r01mh127225), the national institute of general medical sciences (p20gm121312), and jsps kakenhi (19h01527). the authors would like to thank nathan ensz for his help with formatting and proofreading the manuscript. conflict of interest statement none of the authors have any conflicts of interest to disclose. authors ryan smith laureate institute for brain research; university of tulsa, oxley college of health sciences rsmith@laureateinstitute.org lav r. varshney university of illinois urbana-champaign subjective wellbeing and active inference smith et al. www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 123 susumu nagayama hitotsubashi university masahiro kazama habitech inc. takuya kitagawa wellbeing for planet earth foundation yoshiki ishikawa wellbeing for planet earth foundation publishing timeline received 2 february 2022 accepted 12 july 2022 published 1 november 2022 references aberg, k. c., toren, i., & paz, r. 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(2022). highlighting strengths in response to discrimination: developing and testing an allyship positive psychology intervention. international journal of wellbeing, 12(1), 21-41. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i1.1751 meg a. warren western washington university meg.warren@wwu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 article highlighting strengths in response to discrimination: developing and testing an allyship positive psychology intervention meg a. warren · tejvir sekhon · rachael j. waldrop abstract: allyship is gaining popularity as a tool to combat discrimination. we developed and tested a novel allyship positive psychology intervention (ppi). importantly, we examined observers’ perceptions of intervention effectiveness given that observers represent the majority in many settings. study 1 (n = 787) tested an intervention that highlighted a female employee’s identity-related strengths following a discrimination episode. compared to communicating an organization’s diversity policy or confronting the transgressor, highlighting the target’s identity-related strengths was rated higher in terms of inclusion and vitality engendered in the target. mediation analyses indicated that highlighting strengths was perceived as boosting the target’s vitality by signaling the ally’s sincerity and prompting inclusion. in study 2 (n = 802), amongst various types of identity-related strengths, highlighting the target’s psychological and intellectual capital was as effective as highlighting all types of identity-related strengths combined, due to perceived sincerity. thus, this research offers a quick, parsimonious, actionable, and non-confrontational allyship ppi. keywords: allyship; strengths; intergroup processes; workplace; microaggressions; positive psychology intervention 1. introduction in the wake of heightened public consciousness (e.g., #blacklivesmatter movement, #metoo) surrounding racism and sexism, an increased sensitivity to the wellbeing of marginalized communities has led to calls for positive psychology to meaningfully address social, ecological, and systemic issues (lambert et al., 2020; warren & bordoloi, 2020; waters et al., 2021). although past calls for research on wellbeing of marginalized groups (e.g., rao & donaldson, 2015) have resulted in increased attention to the strengths of marginalized groups (jeglic et al., 2016; vaughan et al., 2014), unintentional burdens have been placed on already overburdened groups (e.g., racial minorities in the u.s.) and community-based institutions (e.g., non-profits, schools) to build strengths, resilience and wellbeing in the face of prejudice and discrimination, inviting the frustration of critics (yakushko & blodgett, 2021). an alternative, understudied approach is to understand how positive psychology can directly engage individuals with power (e.g., racial majorities in the u.s., corporate leaders) in combating prejudice and discrimination. in response to these calls and critiques, we propose a path forward by considering a positive psychological approach to equity and inclusiveness through allyship. about:blank highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 1.1 allyship for equity and inclusiveness broadly, allyship describes the actions of “a member of the ‘dominant’ or ‘majority’ group who works to end oppression in [their] personal and professional life through support of, and as an advocate for, the oppressed population” (washington & evans, 1991, p. 195). although an act of allyship is intended to support the victim, the potential impact of allyship is much broader. allyship serves a relational function by creating inclusive micro-climates in institutions (warren et al., 2019). particularly, when enacted by a leader, allyship has the potential to both educate the perpetrator (czopp & monteith, 2003) and model appropriate behaviors for observers, serving as a catalyst for change within the circle of the leader’s influence. in this paper, we focus on one particular form of allyship—by men toward women. we frame male allyship as a tool to leverage male identity as a strength to support the wellbeing of women (warren, bordoloi, & warren, 2021). intervening as an ally in the face of discrimination is arguably uncomfortable, but interventions by bystanders yield fewer costs and more benefits as compared to interventions undertaken by the targets themselves (czopp & monteith, 2003; gulker et al., 2013). furthermore, their position of authority grants leaders additional interpersonal power that can be used to facilitate a successful intervention. thus, leader-allies may be in a unique position to intervene on behalf of marginalized group members while also experiencing lower interpersonal costs. importantly, when a leader-ally intervenes, it serves to not only correct the perpetrator but also signal to observers, who often represent the majority in many settings, that microaggressions are not acceptable, thereby impacting institutional culture. as such, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of allyship interventions from the standpoint of observers. 1.2 existing allyship intervention: communicating diversity and inclusion policy the development and testing of allyship interventions can equip dominant group individuals with concrete strategies to be effective in their roles as allies. although there is growing interest in the potential contributions of allies in the workplace (crary, 2017; erskine & bilimoria, 2019), the impact and effectiveness of allyship actions and their underlying mechanisms are unclear. one likely reason is the assumption that the presence and enactment of an organization’s human resources (hr) policies would serve to sufficiently reduce discrimination. in this way, the role of leaders is perceived as enacting, communicating and monitoring the implementation of such policies and practices (den hartog, boon, verburg, & croon, 2013; purcell & hutchinson, 2007). after witnessing or being informed of prejudiced behavior, a leader may enact allyship by reminding the perpetrator about the company’s hr policies on the matter. indeed, within a phenomenological assessment of interviews, deturk (2011) found that allies commonly enacted policy in response to workplace discrimination as a rhetorical strategy to balance both their motivation to enact allyship and their concerns about preserving workplace decorum. despite the good intentions of such rhetorical strategies, leaders who simply instate organizational policy as allyship are embracing a relatively passive role (buengeler et al., 2018). given the intricate interpersonal and emotional context of workplace confrontations, this approach offers a limited repertoire of strategies for what leaders from socially dominant groups can do to actively support marginalized group employees. furthermore, although enforcement of punitive policies may serve to subsequently deter explicit discriminatory behaviors, it is unlikely to inspire change among perpetrators, foster wellbeing for the targets, or cultivate an environment of cohesiveness in the organization—all of which are components of authentic allyship (brooks & edwards, 2009; sue, 2017). in fact, top-down enactment of diversity policies can provoke backlash from confronted perpetrators (kidder et al., 2004), increase discomfort http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 among dominant group employees in relating with co-workers from marginalized groups (baba & hebert, 2004), and worsen attitudes toward marginalized groups (hood et al., 2001). to better understand and develop potentially effective interventions, we next examine social psychological approaches to allyship interventions. in addition, we experimentally study the effectiveness of communicating policy versus other interventions discussed below. 1.3 existing allyship intervention: confronting prejudiced behaviors most social psychological research on micro-interventions by allies is framed as confrontation of prejudice and discrimination. numerous studies show that confrontation of bias and prejudice is effective in reducing prejudice (see mallet & monteith, 2019). for instance, confronted participants are less likely to express stereotypes and prejudiced attitudes (ashburn-nardo et al., 2008; czopp et al., 2006). calm confrontations that directly implicate the perpetrator can reduce backlash against the ally, maximize culpability of the perpetrator, and elicit future confrontation behaviors by observers (martinez et al., 2017). finally, the effects of confrontations last for some time, as seen in one study where confronted participants used fewer stereotypes and inhibited prejudiced behavior one week later (chaney & sanchez, 2018). despite its effectiveness in holding perpetrators accountable, confrontation comes at interpersonal costs – it elicits negative emotions toward and negative evaluations of the confronter (czopp et al., 2006). failing to confront, however, also carries intrapersonal costs. in a series of studies, motivated bystanders who failed to confront prejudice reported more favorable attitudes towards the perpetrator and less support for confronting down the road, fueling selfpreservation rather than allyship (rasinski et al., 2013). without proper preparation for the potential interpersonal and intrapersonal risks that may accompany confrontation, sustained action and advocacy are likely to suffer (sue, 2017). given that confrontation may be a useful but bitter pill, we consider the effectiveness of confrontation as one allyship strategy in comparison to other allyship strategies but are primarily interested in developing and comparing the effectiveness of an additional positive psychology-based intervention that may incur fewer negative consequences for allies. 1.4 new allyship positive psychology intervention: highlighting minority resources positive psychology interventions (ppis) are tools that cultivate positive subjective experiences, support the development of positive traits, or create positive institutions (meyers et al., 2013). to develop an intervention in response to microaggressions that will maximize positive subjective experiences and the construction of positive institutional culture, we consider an allyship microintervention grounded in a positive psychological framework. cha and roberts (2019) propose that individuals from minority or underrepresented groups (in terms of sex, race, social class, etc.) utilize identity-based strengths (e.g., unique cultural knowledge) as resources to achieve desirable organizational outcomes. however, their identity mobilization framework notes that the potential for leveraging minority identities as resources can be disrupted by identity-related tensions. for example, a racial minority journalist can leverage their identity-related insights (i.e., knowledge and perspectives based on their experiences as a minority group member) to provide a different perspective on a presidential election, but may face challenges due to certain tensions such as pigeonholing (fear of being perceived as capable of only succeeding at minority-related work), activism tension (fear of being perceived as disruptive), objectivity tension (fear of being perceived as biased towards one’s minority group) or perpetuation tension (fear of reinforcing existing stereotypes about one’s http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 group; cha & roberts, 2019). thus, reframing minority identities as a resource has potential yet leveraging them effectively can be a complex and tension-inducing process. in the present work, we build on cha and roberts’ (2019) influential work and circumvent tensions placed on minority individuals during identity mobilization by examining the effects of a leader-ally highlighting minority individuals’ identity-based strengths as resources following a discrimination episode. from a social lens, this intervention shifts the burden away from minority individuals and focuses on leaders’ opportunities to highlight resources and strengthen perceptions of minority individuals within an organization. to be sure, under some circumstances, highlighting a minority individual’s identity may be experienced as coercive by the minority individual, who may not have consented to such visibility (creary et al., 2015). however, highlighting these resources as an intervention directly following a microaggression that has already negatively highlighted a target’s minority identity avoids these coercive implications. in fact, because the microaggression has already framed the minority identity as a liability, the leader remedies the situation by negating this and reframing the minority identity as a potential resource. as such it also serves to signal to minority groups that they may bring their minority identity-relevant authentic selves to work, if they so wish (cha et al., 2019). a recent qualitative study explored women’s and men’s perspectives of different strategies used by exceptional allies in the workplace (warren & bordoloi, 2021). promoting the impression of women by highlighting their strengths in front of colleagues emerged as one of the most memorable strategies used by allies, according to both men and women. given the favorability between both potential allies and targets, the current paper extends this work by testing whether this strategy functions as an effective positive allyship intervention, compared to other contemporary interventions like communicating policy or confrontation. 1.5 boosting inclusion and vitality within the existing literature, the end goal of allyship interventions is primarily to reduce negative characteristics of the perpetrator (e.g., prejudiced attitudes) and ultimately reduce negative subjective experiences for marginalized group members (e.g., feelings of exclusion). by applying a positive psychology perspective, we investigate from observers’ perspectives how allyship interventions might improve positive subjective experiences and overall wellbeing for marginalized group members. specifically, we observe how two concepts, inclusion and vitality, function within this intervention paradigm. in the diversity literature, researchers conceptualize inclusion as the degree to which marginalized group members feel a sense of belonging, uniqueness, and comfort when expressing their authentic selves (shore et al., 2011; jansen et al., 2014). feeling included is thus an important aspect of workplace wellbeing, particularly within diverse organizations. microaggressions threaten group cohesiveness by compromising feelings of inclusion; therefore, to be effective, an intervention must serve to restore or increase the subjective experience of felt inclusion. in the present studies, we examine whether observers believe that an ally’s intervention results in feelings of inclusion for the target. vitality is a feeling of liveliness and energy and is an aspect of psychological wellbeing that is associated with key desirable organizational outcomes such as work engagement and creativity (bakker et al., 2020; ryan & frederick, 1997). in contrast, discrimination predicts adverse consequences for marginalized group members such as depression, anxiety, stress, psychological distress, self-esteem, and poorer life satisfaction (see meta-analyses, pascoe & richman, 2009; triana et al., 2015), and over time, predicts disengagement from the workplace (foster, 2009; major & schmader, 1998). beyond reducing the psychological and occupational distress http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 associated with workplace discrimination, we believe that an effective allyship intervention should reinstate a feeling of vitality. therefore, in the current studies, we compare and test the effectiveness of allyship interventions in predicting marginalized group members’ sense of vitality. across two studies, we tested observers’ perceptions of the relative effectiveness of three theoretically-derived allyship interventions in boosting women’s feelings of inclusion and vitality. first, we contrasted our novel intervention of highlighting minority identity resources against the existing recommended interventions. next, we tested the relative effectiveness of highlighting different types of minority identity resources. 2. study 1: impact of resource highlighting in study 1, we compared the impact of resource highlighting, confronting, and communicating corporate policy as a response to discrimination against a pregnant female employee by measuring observers’ feelings of inclusion and vitality. we predicted that an allyship intervention would primarily foster feelings of inclusion, which in turn would lead to feelings of vitality. 2.1 method eight hundred and three working adults from a us-based online panel participated for payment. the project received irb exemption and participants provided informed consent. sensitivity analyses indicate that this sample size is sufficient to detect a small-to-medium effect size at 80% power (g*power; faul et al., 2007). after excluding data from six participants who either chose ‘other’ for gender or did not answer the question, the final sample size for this study was 797 participants (391 female, 406 male; median age = 35). all participants read the following scenario about a meeting: “john, the vp of sales at fitwell shoes, was holding his monday morning briefings. all four regional managers (susan, david, mike, and bob) who report to john were seated at the conference table and took turns sharing highlights of their weekend before starting the meeting. when it was susan’s turn, she exclaimed, “my big news is that we just found out this weekend that i’m pregnant!” participants were randomly assigned to one of six between-subjects conditions (no transgression, no intervention, stating policy, confrontation, resource highlighting, and hybrid [confrontation + resource highlighting]). the only difference between the six conditions was the comment that a male colleague made and the leader’s response. in the “no transgression” condition, there was no sexist comment. in the “no intervention” condition, a male colleague made a sexist comment about the target’s (i.e., susan’s) pregnancy but the leader did not react. in the “stating policy” condition, the leader responded to the sexist comment by stating the company’s official policy that they do not discriminate based on motherhood status. in the “confrontation” condition, the leader pointed out that the male colleague’s comment was sexist. in the “resource highlighting” condition, the leader responded to the sexist comment by highlighting the resources that the target would bring to the organization due to her motherhood experiences. in the “hybrid (confrontation + resource highlighting)” condition, the leader highlighted the target’s resources while calling out the male colleague’s comment as sexist. the stimuli for these six conditions are detailed in the appendices. after reading the respective scenario, participants indicated their inferences (on a 9-point scale) regarding susan’s feelings of vitality and inclusion in her relationship with the leader (john). vitality was measured by adapting four relevant items from the vitality subscale of the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 high-quality relationships at work (hqr) scale (carmeli, 2009). the items: “i feel enthusiastic about working with him”, “when i am working with him, i feel positive energy”, “working with him makes me feel good”, and “i look forward to my interactions with him.” (α = 0.98) were presented along with the question “to what extent do you think that susan would agree with the following statements about john?”1 inclusion was measured by adapting four relevant items of the perceived group inclusion scale (pgis; jansen et al., 2014), which measures relationshipspecific inclusion with male colleagues. the items, “he treats me like an insider”, “he appreciates me”, “he allows me to be authentic”, and “he encourages me to present myself the way i am” (α = 0.97) were presented along with the question “to what extent do you think that susan would agree with the following statements about john?” of note, a wealth of research shows that the quality of employees’ relationship with their leaders/supervisors is an important predictor of employees’ job satisfaction (see review, fisk & friesen, 2012) and wellbeing (e.g., ellis et al., 2019). thus, our contextualized measure that captures vitality and inclusion experienced by susan in her relationship with john offers greater nuance over extant measures of vitality and inclusion.2 finally, participants answered demographic questions. 2.2 results 2.2.1 perceived inclusion a factorial analysis of variance (anova) found a main effect of condition (f (5, 785) = 64.37, p < .01, ηp2 = .29) and a marginal main effect of gender (f (1, 785) = 2.84, p = 0.092, ηp2 = .004). planned contrasts revealed that, among the four interventions, perceived inclusion was higher in the highlighting resources condition (m = 7.42, sd = 1.80) than both the stating policy (m = 6.5, sd = 2.13) and confrontation condition (m = 6.82, sd = 2.06) (both ps < 0.05) but not different than the hybrid (confrontation + highlighting resources) condition (m = 7.24, sd = 2.03). perceived inclusion was lowest in the no intervention condition (m = 3.79, sd = 2.32) compared to all other conditions (all ps < 0.001). perceived inclusion was also lower when there was no transgression (m = 5.32, sd = 1.97) compared to any type of intervention post transgression (all ps < 0.001). overall, women perceived marginally higher inclusion (m = 6.31, sd = 0.10) than men (m = 6.02, sd = 0.10). interestingly, there was a statistically significant interaction between gender and condition (f (5, 785) = 4.45, p < 0.01, ηp2 = .028) on perceived inclusion. see table 1 (below) for descriptive statistics and figure 1 for interaction effects. women (m = 3.30, se = 2.17) perceived less inclusion than men (m = 4.23, se = 2.37) in the no intervention condition (f (1,785) = 7.18, p <0.01), but more inclusion (m = 7.97, se = 1.64) than men (m = 6.65, se = 2.19) in the hybrid condition (f (1,785) = 11.80, p < 0.01). though we did not predict an interaction, it is not surprising that women perceived susan to have lower feelings of inclusion when there was no intervention but perceived 1 we chose to include a specific measure of vitality rather than a more well-established general measure of relationship quality (leader-member exchange; lmx) or satisfaction with one's supervisor because these are conceptually distinct. lmx measures respect, trust, and obligation towards one’s supervisor/leader which may not be particularly energizing and could insinuate that allyship creates obligation. vitality reflects a positive, high arousal emotional state that is experienced as energizing (kark & carmeli, 2009). we anticipate that feelings of vitality (but not lmx) are an important antidote to the fatigue and depletion associated with discrimination. feelings of vitality are also distinct from satisfaction with one’s supervisor. simply, one may feel satisfied with a supervisor’s actions if one may not have high expectations from them, but one may also not feel energized because of those actions. this difference may be particularly meaningful in the distress-producing context of discrimination. 2 the relevance and use of similar adaptations to measure vitality and inclusion as outcomes of an allyship relationship have been demonstrated across multiple studies (e.g., warren, bordoloi, & warren, 2021; warren & schwam, 2021; warren, sekhon et al., 2021). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 her to have higher feelings of inclusion in the hybrid condition, indicating potentially higher levels of empathy based on their own experiences as compared to men. figure 1. perceived inclusion in the relationship with the leader in study 1 table 1. descriptive statistics for study 1 note: means are in bold and standard deviations in italics. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 no intervention no transgression stating policy confrontation highlighting resources confrontation + highlighting resources female 0 1 conditions perceived inclusion perceived vitality male female male female no intervention 4.23 3.30 4.17 3.28 2.37 2.17 2.35 2.18 no transgression 5.36 5.27 5.19 5.09 2.18 1.74 2.27 1.78 stating policy 6.19 6.80 6.18 6.77 1.96 2.27 2.03 2.25 confrontation 6.54 7.15 6.61 7.17 2.09 1.98 2.15 1.97 highlighting resources 7.39 7.44 7.50 7.54 1.80 1.81 1.71 1.81 confrontation + highlighting resources 6.65 7.87 6.65 7.93 2.19 1.64 2.34 1.65 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 2.2.2 perceived vitality an anova found a main effect of condition (f (5, 785) = 68.27; p < 0.01; ηp2 = .30) and a marginal main effect of gender (f (1, 785) = 2.80; p = 0.094; ηp2 = .004) on perceived vitality. planned contrasts revealed that, among the four interventions, perceived vitality was higher in the highlighting resources condition (m = 7.52, sd = 1.76) than in the stating policy (m = 6.48, sd = 2.15) and confrontation conditions (m = 6.87, sd = 2.03) (both ps < 0.05) but not different than the hybrid condition (m = 7.27, sd = 2.12). perceived vitality was lowest in the no intervention condition (m = 3.75, sd = 2.31) compared to all other conditions (all ps < 0.001). again, perceived vitality was lower when there was no transgression (m = 5.15, sd = 2.04) compared to any type of intervention post transgression (all ps < 0.001). overall, women perceived marginally higher vitality (m = 6.30, sd = 0.10) than men (m = 6.05, sd = 0.10). again, there was a statistically significant interaction between gender and condition (f (5, 785) = 4.33; p < 0.01; ηp2 = .027). women (m = 3.28, se = 0.26) perceived less vitality than men (m = 4.18, se = 0.24) in the no intervention condition (f (1, 785) = 6.52, p = .011) but perceived more vitality (m = 7.93, se = 0.26) than men (m = 6.65, se = 0.25) in the hybrid condition (f (1,785) = 12.53, p < 0.001). see table 1 for descriptive statistics and figure 2 for interaction effects. we found that all of the tested interventions were better than no intervention at all but among the interventions tested, highlighting resources led to the highest ratings of inclusion and vitality, especially among women. figure 2. perceived vitality in the relationship with the leader in study 1 2.2.3 mediation via perceived inclusion to test if the relationship between intervention strategy and perceived vitality was mediated by perceived inclusion, we ran a mediation model (model 4) using the process extension (hayes, 2017). we entered the highlighting resources intervention conditions (including hybrid) combined versus all other conditions as the predictor variable, perceived vitality as the outcome variable and perceived inclusion as the mediator. importantly, we found a statistically significant indirect effect of intervention on perceived vitality [b = 1.71, se = 0.16, 95% bootstrap ci [1.40, 2.01]). thus, study 1 results support that perceived vitality resulting from the intervention that highlights resources is mediated by perceived inclusion. see figure 3 for path coefficients. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 no intervention no transgression stating policy confrontation highlighting resources confrontation + highlighting resources female 0 1 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 figure 3. standardized path coefficients for mediation via perceived inclusion in study 1 note. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 3. study 2: differentiating types of resource highlighting in study 1, we found that resource highlighting interventions (i.e., resource highlighting and hybrid) were perceived to create greater feelings of vitality by increasing feelings of inclusion. to extend results from this study, we further investigated the specific types of resources that can be highlighted by allies to maximize positive outcomes. roberts and cha (2015) suggest that an ally can highlight three broad types of cultural identity-based resources of a minority employee that range from observable, surface-level characteristics to non-observable yet significant, culturallyrelevant characteristics. disentangling the type of resources that are highlighted based on their salience can enrich the extent to which a minority individual’s impression is constructed, managed, and perceived by observers (pfeffer et al., 2006). to further offer practical guidelines for creating a parsimonious intervention, our goal for study 2 was to explore the relative (dis)advantages of highlighting the three different types of resources: 1) symbolic capital, which is a resource that can be generated and leveraged through physical representation of diversity, 2) social capital, which is generated from the connections that marginalized group members can build with each other based on shared backgrounds and experiences, and 3) psychological and intellectual capital, which are affective and cognitive resources such as resilience and creativity that are generated through distinctive experiences (roberts & cha, 2015). specifically, we examined observers’ perceptions of the impact of different types of resource highlighting—social capital, symbolic capital, and psychological and intellectual capital—on the wellbeing of marginalized employees in terms of inclusion and vitality. 3.1 method eight hundred and three us-based workers (381 female, 421 male, and 1 other; median age = 35) participated in an online panel for payment. the project received irb exemption and participants provided informed consent. sensitivity analyses indicate this sample size is sufficient to detect a small-to-medium effect size at 80% power (g*power; faul et al., 2007). after excluding data from one participant who chose ‘other’ for gender, the final sample size for this study was 802 participants. all participants read the same baseline scenario about a corporate meeting as in study 1. again, participants were randomly assigned to one of the six between-subjects conditions (no transgression, no intervention, social capital highlighting, psychological and intellectual capital highlighting, symbolic capital highlighting, and all resource highlighting). the “no intervention” and “no transgression” conditions were the same as study 1. see appendix 2 for study 2 stimuli. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 after reading the respective scenario, participants used a nine-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “very much” to indicate their inferences regarding susan’s feeling of vitality (α = 0.98) and inclusion (α = 0.97) in her relationship with the leader (same as study 1), and their perceived sincerity of the leader’s motives (e.g., “john responded the way he did in the meeting because he sincerely believes in confronting diversity and inclusion issues in the workplace”). dasborough and ashkanasy (2002) suggest that leadership behaviors are seen as ‘true’ (and not ‘pseudo’) if their motives behind those behaviors are seen as sincere as opposed to ulterior. therefore, we designed this context-specific measure of perceived sincerity to explore if the interventions differ in terms of perceived sincerity and if these differences translate into differences in inclusion and vitality. finally, participants answered demographic questions. 3.2 results 3.2.1 perceived inclusion we found a main effect of condition (f (5, 790) = 69.85, p < 0.001, ηp2 = .31) on perceived inclusion. see table 2 (below) for descriptive statistics and figure 4 for the effects. planned contrasts revealed that, among the four types of interventions, perceived inclusion was statistically significantly higher in the highlighting all resources condition (m = 7.46, sd = 1.95) than the social capital (m = 6.69, sd = 2.14) and symbolic capital condition (m = 6.74, sd = 2.35, both ps < 0.01) but not the psychological and intellectual capital condition (m = 7.29, sd = 1.71). perceived inclusion was lowest in the no intervention condition (m = 3.59, sd = 2.19) compared to all other conditions (all ps < 0.001). perceived inclusion was lower when there was no transgression (m = 5.15, sd = 2.06) as compared to any type of intervention post transgression (all ps < 0.001). figure 4. perceived inclusion in the relationship with the leader in study 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 no intervention no transgression psychological & intellectual capital social capital symbolic capital all resources female 0 1 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 table 2. descriptive statistics for study 2 conditions perceived inclusion perceived vitality perceived sincerity male female male female male female no intervention 3.66 3.50 3.60 3.50 3.27 2.73 2.06 2.35 1.99 2.50 2.17 2.58 no transgression 5.12 5.18 4.92 5.04 4.29 4.69 2.01 2.13 2.01 2.15 2.28 2.42 psychological & intellectual capital 7.03 7.58 7.01 7.60 7.04 7.49 1.71 1.68 1.81 1.71 1.82 1.92 social capital 6.69 6.69 6.72 6.57 6.39 6.88 2.12 2.18 2.15 2.27 2.40 1.96 symbolic capital 6.56 6.96 6.50 6.90 6.12 6.55 2.26 2.44 2.26 2.37 2.32 2.47 all resources 7.23 7.61 7.22 7.65 7.28 7.55 1.82 2.06 1.88 1.98 2.02 2.00 note: means are in bold and standard deviations in italics 3.2.2 perceived vitality we found a main effect of condition (f (5, 790) = 70.98, p < 0.01; ηp2 = .31) on perceived vitality. see figure 5. planned contrasts revealed that, among the four types of interventions, perceived vitality was statistically significantly higher in the highlighting all resources condition (m = 7.44, sd = 1.94) than in the social capital (m = 6.65, sd = 2.20) and symbolic capital condition (m = 6.69, sd = 2.31, both ps< 0.01) but not the psychological and intellectual capital condition (m = 7.30, sd = 1.78). perceived vitality was lowest in the no intervention condition (m = 3.56, sd = 2.22) compared to all other conditions (all ps < 0.001). perceived vitality was lower when there was no transgression (m = 4.98, sd = 2.07) as compared to any type of intervention post transgression (all ps < 0.001). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 figure 5. perceived vitality in the relationship with the leader in study 2 3.2.3 perceived sincerity of leader’s motives we found a main effect of the condition (f (5, 790) = 83.87, p < .001, ηp2 = .347) on perceived sincerity of the leader’s motives, as shown in figure 6. planned contrasts revealed that, among the four types of interventions, perceived sincerity was statistically significantly higher in the highlighting all resources condition (m = 7.42, sd = 2.01) than in the social capital (m = 6.63, sd = 2.21) and symbolic capital conditions (m = 6.32, sd = 2.40, both ps< 0.01) but not the psychological and intellectual capital condition (m = 7.26, sd = 1.88). perceived sincerity was lowest in the no intervention condition (m = 3.03, sd = 2.37) compared to all other conditions (all ps < 0.001). perceived sincerity was lower when there was no transgression (m = 4.48, sd = 2.35) as compared to any type of intervention post transgression (all ps < 0.001). figure 6. perceived sincerity of the motives of the leader in study 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 no intervention no transgression psychological & intellectual capital social capital symbolic capital all resources female 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 no intervention no transgression psychological & intellectual capital social capital symbolic capital all resources female 0 1 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 3.2.4 serial mediation via perceived sincerity and perceived inclusion to test whether the effect of an allyship intervention on perceived vitality was mediated by inferences related to perceived sincerity and perceived inclusion, we ran a serial mediation model (model 6) using the spss process extension (hayes, 2017). we entered highlighting all resources and highlighting only psychological and intellectual capital conditions combined versus all other conditions (including no intervention condition) as the predictor variable, perceived vitality as the outcome variable, and perceived sincerity and perceived inclusion as the two serial mediators. there was a statistically significant indirect effect of intervention on perceived vitality through perceived sincerity and perceived inclusion (b =1.50, se = 0.12, 95% bootstrap ci [1.26, 1.74]). the direct effect was not statistically significant (b = 0.05, se = 0.04, 95% ci [-0.03, 0.13]), indicating a full mediation by perceived sincerity and perceived inclusion. see figure 7 (below) for path coefficients. thus, results from study 2 show that highlighting psychological and intellectual capital as an intervention can lead to feelings of vitality if it is perceived as sincere because it increases feelings of inclusion. figure 7. standardized path coefficients for serial mediation via perceived sincerity and perceived inclusion in study 2 note. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 3.2.5 additional analyses results from study 2 showed that although highlighting all types of minority identity-related resources can be the best overall strategy for achieving positive outcomes, highlighting psychological and intellectual capital achieved equally positive results through more parsimonious means. to understand the distinction between highlighting psychological and intellectual capital as compared to highlighting social and symbolic capital, we ran a series of mediation analyses. in our first model, we used highlighting psychological and intellectual capital (vs. social capital) as the independent variable, perceived vitality as the dependent variable and perceived sincerity as the mediator. there was only an indirect effect of type of intervention on perceived vitality through perceived sincerity (b = -0.44, se = .18, 95% ci [ -0.81, -0.09]). similarly, we used highlighting psychological and intellectual capital (vs. social capital) as the independent variable, perceived inclusion as the dependent variable and perceived sincerity as the mediator. there was only an indirect effect of type of intervention on perceived inclusion through perceived sincerity (b = -0.42, se = .17, 95% ci [-0.78, -0.09]). in our second series of comparisons, we used highlighting psychological and intellectual capital (vs. symbolic capital) as the independent variable, perceived vitality as the dependent variable and perceived sincerity as the mediator. again, there was only an indirect effect of type of intervention on perceived vitality through perceived sincerity (b = -0.36, se = .11, 95% ci [0.57, -0.15]). similarly, when we used highlighting psychological and intellectual capital (vs. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 symbolic capital) as the independent variable, perceived inclusion as the dependent variable and perceived sincerity as the mediator, there was only an indirect effect of type of intervention on perceived inclusion through perceived sincerity (b = -0.35, se = .11, 95% ci [-0.58, -0.16]). collectively, these findings show that perceived sincerity of the intervention accounts for the difference between highlighting psychological and intellectual resources which are internal to the marginalized individuals (and can be seen as desired ends in themselves) versus highlighting social and symbolic resources which could be seen as means to desirable ends and therefore, more extrinsically motivated, and less sincere. 4. general discussion across two studies, we investigated the extent to which various types of interventions used after a transgression were effective in eliciting feelings of inclusion and vitality, and found that the positive psychology-based strategy of resource highlighting was most effective. first, observers’ responses indicated that all of the tested allyship interventions were perceived as effective in boosting the marginalized individual’s feelings of inclusion and vitality post transgression, even compared to a situation where no transgression transpired. thus, even though transgressive incidents against marginalized individuals can be injurious to the target individual, observers seem to believe that they provide an opportunity for allies to intervene and, when done effectively, allow allies to advocate for and enhance the cultural norms surrounding employees’ identities. in the absence of a highly salient negative event such as a prejudiced transgression, it can be hard for an employee to make such inferences (fiske, 1980), again reinforcing the opportunity that this intervention serves in setting organizational standards and norms. second, even though simply stating an official organizational policy regarding diversity and inclusion or confronting the exact transgression are valuable interventions compared to no intervention at all, highlighting the marginalized individual’s resources was perceived to be the best strategy by observers. highlighting resources can not only establish the sincerity and authenticity of the ally’s motives but also carries the potential to contribute to the marginalized individual’s feelings of inclusion and vitality. beyond simply suggesting a highlighting resources strategy, the results of our second study provide nuance regarding the type of resources that should be highlighted to be most effective. we found that highlighting marginalized individuals’ psychological and intellectual capital was viewed by observers as an intervention that was just as effective in eliciting feelings of inclusion and vitality as highlighting all types of resources together (i.e., social and symbolic capital as well). thus, targeting psychological and intellectual resources may serve as a more parsimonious yet equally effective strategy. further, we demonstrated that highlighting psychological and intellectual capital is perceived to be successful because it enhances perceptions of the ally’s sincerity. although the positive psychology literature has demonstrated that leveraging personal social and symbolic capital in the workplace is important for personal wellbeing (e.g., baker & dutton, 2007), our results suggest that leaders who highlight these resources in others may be seen as extrinsically motivated and not fully sincere in their commitment to confronting diversity and inclusion issues in the workplace. therefore, leaders and allies need to be careful in terms of signaling the sincerity of their motives when enacting a resource highlighting intervention. 4.1 theoretical and practical implications at the interpersonal level, this research contributes to the existing scholarship on positive organizational interventions by showing that leaders can enact allyship by highlighting the resources of marginalized individuals, which signals to both marginalized group members and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 third-party observers how much the organization values the distinctive strengths of diverse individuals. this research provides allies and leaders with a quick, actionable, and nonconfrontational intervention that they can use to intervene following transgressions and to establish or change the organizational culture. we do suggest that leaders receive training in highlighting resources to maximize its effectiveness and impact on wellbeing. in particular, careful development and application for highlighting resources is warranted. one concern is the potential misuse of highlighting a minority individual’s identity in a way that perpetuates positive stereotypes, creating further negative impacts for these group members (e.g., siy & cheryan, 2013, 2016). we caution against using generalities (e.g., mothers as nurturing) when identifying identity-relevant resources to highlight, and instead encourage a focus on employees’ concrete strengths and abilities (e.g., ability to relate to other mothers who juggle responsibilities in the organization) that accrue from specific experiences (e.g., juggling multiple responsibilities). ideally, leaders using this intervention should learn about the specific identity-relevant strengths and achievements (i.e., individuating information such as head of women’s leadership network) of marginalized employees so that this information is readily accessible when there is a need (i.e., to counter a microaggression) to highlight them. 4.2 limitations and future research a limitation of this work is the reliance on scenario-based experiments to evaluate perceptions of vitality and inclusion. future research should attempt to replicate these findings using a field study or realistic experiment with confederates. however, because this research was aimed at developing and testing a novel intervention, we believe that our design was able to minimize potential biases that affect realistic paradigms (e.g., demand characteristics, experimenter effects; bracht & glass, 1968). the focal individual in this experiment was a female, limiting the generalizability to other marginalized groups. the results could be generalized if the studies were repeated with the identity of the focal individual varied (e.g., to a racial minority). finally, a leader’s acknowledgment of strengths via individuating information serves to signal that one is valued and possesses promotable strengths. as such, it would be useful for future research to examine whether resource highlighting produces positive effects in the absence of a transgression. if implementing this strategy serves to promote a positive and inclusive environment more generally, leaders could potentially use this framework as a preventative strategy against prejudiced events. 5. conclusion leaders and individuals from dominant groups are increasingly expressing discomfort with prejudice and discrimination, but in the face of a transgression, are unsure how to intervene in the moment due to concerns about how they would be perceived (warren et al., 2022). intentions are not enough, though, and leaders need concrete interventions that work and preferably, those that are perceived positively by others. the current studies offer such concrete guidance to leaders who desire to be active allies. we compared and tested interventions that leader-allies can employ immediately after they witness prejudiced behavior that will incur positive effects rather than solely negative. we found that although all of the tested interventions were better than no intervention, ppis involving highlighting the distinctive identity-based strengths of minority individuals were viewed as the most effective. our hope is that this work will inspire other scholars to consider developing theoretically grounded ppis and practitioners to use such http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 interventions that have the capacity to generate wellbeing for targets of discrimination and create a positive organizational culture. conflict of interest statement the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding statement this research was supported by two small grants from western washington university. data availability statement data is available upon request via the corresponding author. authors meg a. warren western washington university meg.warren@wwu.edu tejvir sekhon western washington university rachael j. waldrop western 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(2021). negative reflections about positive psychology: on constraining the field to a focus on happiness and personal achievement. journal of humanistic psychology, 61(1), 104131. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12206 https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ajgfm https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/jzxmy https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/crnzp highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 appendix appendix a: study 1 stimuli no transgression condition: after everybody congratulated susan, john (the vp) responded“well, let's move on to the agenda for the day.” then, he moved on to the agenda for the meeting.” no intervention condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded“well, let's move on to the agenda for the day.” then, he moved on to the agenda for the meeting. stating policy condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded“well, at fitwell shoes, we are committed to equal opportunity and do not discriminate based on pregnancy.” then, he moved on to the agenda for the meeting. confrontation condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded, “well, i have four kids, and no one has said any such thing to me. your comment is a little sexist, don't you think?” resource highlighting condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded, "well, i think this is great for susan personally and professionally! her experiences as a parent will make her a better leader and prepare her for juggling multiple responsibilities, being more patient with customers, and building relationships with our diverse customer base. she will also be a great role model for our current and prospective female employees helping us build more diverse and creative teams. hybrid (confrontation + resource highlighting) condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded, "well, i think this is great for susan personally and professionally! her experiences as a parent will make her a better leader and prepare her for juggling multiple responsibilities, being more patient with customers, and building relationships with our diverse customer base. she will also be a great role model for our current and prospective female employees helping us build more diverse and creative teams. moreover, i have four kids, and no one has said any such thing to me. your comment is a little sexist, don't you think?” http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ highlighting resources warren, sekhon, & waldrop www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 appendix b: study 2 stimuli highlighting social capital condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded, "well, i think this is great for susan personally and professionally as well as great for the organization! as an executive who is also a mother of two kids, she will be able to connect with and build relationships with other female employees experiencing motherhood. highlighting psychological and intellectual capital condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded, "well, i think this is great for susan personally and professionally as well as great for the organization! being an executive who is also a mother of two kids will broaden her perspective and juggling multiple responsibilities will make her more resilient. highlighting symbolic capital condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded, "well, i think this is great for susan personally and professionally as well as great for the organization! as an executive who is also a mother of two kids, she will be a great role model for our current and prospective female employees. highlighting all resources condition: as everybody started congratulating susan, david blurted, “again? congrats i guess, but that’s surely going to be the end of your career.” on hearing this, john (the vp) responded, "well, i think this is great for susan personally and professionally as well as great for the organization! being an executive who is also a mother of two kids will broaden her perspective and juggling multiple responsibilities will make her more resilient. she will also be a great role model for our current and prospective female employees and will be able to connect with and build relationships with other female employees experiencing motherhood. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ turner, j., roberts, r. m., proeve, m., & chen, j. (2023). relationship between perma and children’s wellbeing, resilience and mental health: a scoping review. international journal of wellbeing, 13(2), 20-44. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i2.2515 jasmine turner university of adelaide jasmine.c.turner@adelaide.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 article relationship between perma and children’s wellbeing, resilience and mental health: a scoping review jasmine turner · rachel m. roberts · michael proeve · junwen chen abstract: the perma (positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning, achievement) model can be used to describe the factors that contribute to wellbeing. as many children face mental health challenges worldwide, strategies to increase wellbeing and resilience have become increasingly desirable. the aim of this scoping review was to establish what is known from the literature about the relationship between the components of perma, including character strengths, and primary school-aged children’s mental health, resilience and wellbeing. four databases were systematically searched, and 20,128 articles were identified, 190 of which were included in the review. the relationships were typically in the expected directions, with perma aspects associated with greater wellbeing and resilience, and fewer symptoms of mental illness. there are notable gaps in the existing literature, particularly in the engagement and meaning facets of perma. overall, it appears that the components of perma do have a positive impact on children and can be considered as an approach for protecting children against mental ill-health. keywords: wellbeing; mental health; resilience; perma; character strengths; children 1. introduction the reported rates of children’s mental illness are alarming worldwide, with the world health organisation (who) (2022) reporting that 10% of children and adolescents experience a mental disorder. in the us this number was estimated to be closer to 13-20% in 2007 (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2021) and in australia close to 14% of children and adolescents experienced a mental disorder in 2014 (australian institute of health and welfare, 2020). furthermore, these rates (particularly of anxiety and depression) have been rising (cdc, 2021). importantly, mental disorders in childhood, such as depression and anxiety, inhibit functioning in multiple domains and can have lasting impacts on psychiatric and physical health (abela & hankin, 2008; essau & ollendick, 2013). even without the presence of a disorder, children can experience poor mental health (keyes, 2005). mental health is described as a state of wellbeing (keyes, 2005; who, 2018). while the improvement of mental ill-health is of critical importance, this broader perspective allows the consideration of how mental health can be improved for all children. in line with this broader perspective, the positive psychology framework suggests that addressing mental illness should not be about only minimising suffering but working towards a state of ‘flourishing’ (seligman, 2011). it is this state of flourishing that seligman (2011) describes as wellbeing. historical perspectives of wellbeing tend to be categorised as either hedonistic, from greek philosopher arristipus’, which can be described as happiness that comes from about:blank perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 pleasure in place of pain (disabato et al., 2016); or eudaimonic, from aristotle, which focuses more on fulfilment and meaning (ryan & deci, 2001). subsequent theories have typically focused on one of these broad ideas, such as diener’s (1984) subjective wellbeing, which focuses on a hedonistic view or ryff’s (1989) psychological wellbeing, which takes a eudaimonic approach. according specifically to seligman (2011), however, wellbeing is built by five components, which he describes in the perma model. within the perma model, both hedonistic and eudaimonic theories are represented. furthermore, perma is not a ‘type’ of wellbeing but a framework to describe the building blocks of wellbeing. the perma profiler measure has been found to correlate very highly with subjective-wellbeing, suggesting that these are similar constructs (goodman et al., 2018). large correlations have also been observed between ryff’s psychological wellbeing scale and the perma profiler (giangrasso, 2021). seligman (2018) concedes that while subjective wellbeing, for example, may be an appropriate way to measure the construct, it does not offer a framework to guide how to improve wellbeing. this ‘building’ of wellbeing is what perma has to offer to the literature. the perma framework encapsulates five elements of wellbeing, including: positive emotion (p), engagement (e), positive relationships (r), meaning (m) and achievement (a) (seligman, 2011). positive emotion includes aspects such as happiness and life satisfaction. engagement refers to the ‘flow’ state, in which individuals are completely engaged in a task. positive relationships is the prosocial element of wellbeing. meaning suggests that wellbeing involves belonging to and serving ‘something you believe is bigger than the self’ (p. 17). achievement is the final aspect of the perma framework and refers to the experience or pursuit of mastery or accomplishment (seligman, 2011). the perma framework also encompasses a large variety of values or ‘character strengths’ that do not conform to a single aspect of the framework, but that have been positively associated with each element of perma, in varying degrees (wagner et al., 2019). there are 24 strengths in total, including traits such as gratitude, kindness, hope, zest, honesty and creativity (peterson & seligman, 2004). these strengths are an important part of the perma framework, helping to fully encapsulate the diversity of the five aspects. the strengths are often used in the practical application of perma, for example the celebrating strengths project (fox eades & gray, 2017), or gratitude interventions (wood et al., 2010). the concept of resilience has grown in popularity in the discussion of mental health. while definitions of resilience are still somewhat up for discussion, at its core resilience is an ability to ‘bounce back’ or continue in the face of adversity (herrman et al., 2011). while resilience has been a subject of research for many decades and is a distinct construct, it has been notably connected with positive psychology as it focuses on strengths and protective factors (luthar et al., 2014). resources that contribute to the development of resilience include personal assets (e.g., optimism and hope) and interpersonal resources, such as a supportive and caring family (kuldas & foody, 2021), these examples clearly link to perma. resilience is also considered to be a preventative factor against the development of mental illness (davydov et al., 2010). there are strong links between mental health, wellbeing and resilience, and the perma framework. the purpose of the perma framework is to build wellbeing, therefore it is critical to know if the perma components do indeed impact upon outcomes of wellbeing. perma components should also impact resilience through building protective resources. we ultimately want to know if perma can improve children’s mental health and protect against mental illness, and thus the relationship between perma components and these outcomes needs to be clearly mapped. within the literature, there is no clear review or summary of perma as a whole and its http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 relationship with either mental health or resilience. nevertheless, there is evidence pointing to the likelihood that perma is related to these outcomes. for example, positive psychology principles have been applied in school settings, such as gratitude interventions and the penn resiliency program which have seen increases in wellbeing and decreases in anxiety and depression (e.g. seligman et al., 2009; wood et al., 2010). similarly, correlations have been observed between constructs such as optimism with resilience and mental health (e.g., keyfitz et al., 2013). while this suggests a relationship exists between perma and these three outcomes, there has been no systematic examination of these relationships to our knowledge. such a review would allow relevant stakeholders, such as teachers, clinicians, parents, counsellors, and communities, to have a clear understanding of which of the perma elements have an evidencebase when it comes to improving children’s wellbeing, resilience and mental health. furthermore, it would provide researchers with clarity about what evidence exists, and where the gaps are for future research. in order to have a complete picture of what literature currently exists and whether there is evidence of perma’s relationship with children’s wellbeing, resilience and mental health specifically, a scoping review is justified. the objective of this paper is to undertake a scoping review to establish what is known from the literature about the relationship between the components of perma and primary school-aged children’s mental health and ill-health, resilience and wellbeing. a scoping review allows for a summary of knowledge that has been conducted in diverse methodologies, as well as to explore the extent of evidence in a particular area (tricco et al., 2018). both of these qualities of scoping reviews are necessary to address the objective of this paper. 2. methods this scoping review has been executed in line with the prisma-scr guidelines (tricco et al., 2018) and the jbi methodology for scoping reviews (peters et al., 2020). a protocol for the scoping review is registered on the open science framework, accessible at https://osf.io/3eqfm/. 2.1 eligibility criteria only studies involving primary school-aged children (5 to 12 years old) were considered. if the mean age was less than 5 or greater than 12, the study was excluded, unless age specific data could be extracted. this age range was adjusted from the protocol (6 to 12 years) to better encapsulate the full age range of children attending primary school. studies that include one or more of the perma components (including strengths), as well as one or more of the outcomes (e.g., mental health/ill-health, wellbeing or resilience) were considered. this included studies that contain these outcomes with generally accepted terms, for example studies that include reference to mental health, a mental disorder (e.g., anxiety, depression) or symptoms of disorder (e.g., internalising and externalising symptoms). while we broadly term this outcome ‘mental health’, to encompass the accepted terms in the literature, it is primarily reflective of mental illness. for the wellbeing outcome terms such as wellbeing, life satisfaction, flourishing and quality of life (excluding health specific quality of life) were accepted. due to the discrepancies in definitions of resilience, only studies that included specific reference to a resilience measure or outcome were included. 2.2 types of sources this review considered a wide range of studies (including interventions, experimental and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://osf.io/3eqfm/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 correlational studies). qualitative literature, mixed-methods and reviews were also considered if relevant to the topic. only peer-reviewed studies were included for the purpose of quality assurance. only studies written in english were considered, as translation was beyond the resources of the study. 2.3 information sources a search was conducted on psycinfo, medline, scopus and embase. the search strategy, including selection of databases, was planned, and executed in consultation with an expert research librarian. no educational databases were selected as it was thought that these would focus primarily on educational issues (e.g., teaching and learning, curriculum, etc.). the search was performed on 20th july 2021, with alerts for new articles added up to and including august 4, 2022. a full search strategy for psycinfo is included in appendix a. searches were adjusted for each database to reflect appropriate subject headings. no grey literature was searched due to feasibility. 2.4 selection of sources of evidence all sources were uploaded into endnote for screening. two independent reviewers performed a pilot test of title and abstract screening, to ensure clarity of the eligibility criteria, for 50 articles and reached 94% agreement. disagreements were resolved through discussion between the reviewers and were presented to the team of authors for further validation. one reviewer then performed the remaining title and abstract screening. a pilot was repeated for the selected articles at full-text level, with two independent reviewers screening 10 full-texts and reaching 80% agreement. disagreements were, again, resolved through discussion between the reviewers. the independent reviewers screened another 10 articles and came to an acceptable agreement of 90%. one reviewer subsequently screened the remaining full-texts, in consultation with the team. reasons for exclusion at the full-text stage are detailed in the flow-chart (figure 1). in the protocol, the intention was to have two reviewers complete all screening, however the study did not have sufficient resource for two reviewers to examine the large number of studies found. a suitable alternative was discussed by the team, consulting the prisma guidelines and applying the pilot testing method described above. quality appraisal was conducted by one reviewer, using the jbi critical appraisal tools (munn et al., 2023). a percentage was calculated depending on how well papers met criteria and then a quality rating allocated: high (>70%), moderate (50-60%) or low (<50%). a quality appraisal was not planned in the protocol but was added to strengthen the review. 2.5 data charting process data were charted using the data extraction tool designed for this study, as outlined in the protocol. the extraction tool was amended to include a ‘relevant results’ section in order to more fully answer the research questions. the team of authors was consulted when necessary to resolve any uncertainties. 2.6 data items items extracted included: characteristics of the studies (year, country, context, participants and study design), the perma components that were included, the outcomes included, and the results pertaining to the relationship between these. only results relevant to the research question http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 (i.e., explaining the relationship between a perma component and one of the outcomes) were extracted. the relevant results section included both quantitative and qualitative results as appropriate to the study design. full-text articles that could not be found were requested through a library document delivery service, however nine articles were unable to be located. 3. results figure 1. flow chart of inclusions and exclusions figure 1 displays the flow of inclusion and exclusion decisions at each stage of screening for studies found in the search strategy. a full list of included studies is contained in supplemental file 2. the data extracted from the included 190 studies are available in supplemental file 1. most records identified through database searching (n = 26,527) records after duplicates removed (n = 20,128) records screened by title and abstract (n = 20,128) records excluded (n = 19,582) full text articles assessed for eligibility (n = 546) full-text articles excluded and reasons age (n = 179) no outcomes (n = 71) no perma (n = 69) not looking at relationship (n = 22) couldn’t access fulltext (n = 9) not article (n = 4) language (n = 2) studies included (n = 190) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 studies were of high quality (n = 129), while some were moderate (n = 58) or low (n = 3). characteristics of the studies are summarised in table 1, and tallies of which perma components and outcomes, as well as which strengths, were represented can be seen in table 2 and 3, respectively. table 1. characteristics of studies included in review characteristic n year 2018-2022 68 2013-2017 63 2008-2012 29 2003-2007 16 1998-2002 7 1993-1997 4 1988-1992 3 country us 53 canada 20 uk 20 australia 13 china 13 netherlands 9 south africa 7 *other 55 type of study model/framework 13 case studies 2 cross-sectional 61 longitudinal 34 intervention 40 qualitative 14 mixed-methods 4 review 21 meta-analyses 1 notes. *countries not listed (n): argentina (1), belgium (1), brazil (1), chile (2), czech republic (1), denmark (1), ethiopia (1), finland (4), germany (3), greece (1), iceland (1), india (2), indonesia (3), ireland (1), israel (3), japan (1), korea (4), malta (1), mongolia (1), norway (3), palestine (1), portugal (3), singapore (1), spain (2), sweden (4), taiwan (2), thailand (1), turkey (1), vietnam (1), wales (1), zambia (2). 3.1 model/framework these studies were theoretical in nature, proposing models and frameworks within this area. all three outcomes were reported in models or frameworks, including wellbeing (n = 8), resilience (n = 7) and mental health (n = 7). the models and frameworks were most typically prepared for clinical contexts, ranging from summaries of broad concepts to specific strategies to support clinicians, particularly with children who are at risk in some way. a small number of these sources were directed at those working with children within the school context, such as sel http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 programs. it was proposed that positive emotions are associated with greater wellbeing in children with cancer (phipps, 2007), as well as activating the reward centre of the brain, leading to improved outcomes in clinical treatment (schlechter et al., 2019). relationships were a key factor within these studies, and were connected with improvements in all three outcomes across a variety of studies (greenberg, 2017; konu & rimpelä, 2002; newland, 2014; schlechter et al., 2019; sege et al., 2017). table 2. number of studies including both perma element and outcome perma outcome n positive emotions wellbeing 25 resilience 13 mental health 20 engagement wellbeing 7 resilience 2 mental health 3 relationships wellbeing 46 resilience 23 mental health 59 meaning wellbeing 7 resilience 5 mental health 7 achievement wellbeing 11 resilience 12 mental health 18 strengths wellbeing 51 resilience 34 mental health 41 notes. n = number of studies table 3. strengths represented in studies strengths n hope 32 creativity 17 general strengths 14 spirituality 13 gratitude 12 self-regulation 8 kindness 6 humour 3 forgiveness 3 zest 2 leadership 2 love 1 appreciation 1 persistence 1 curiosity 1 notes. n = number of studies. general strengths refer to where strengths were measured as a single construct and no details were given of what specific strengths this included. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 several strengths were represented, with bostic et al. (2019) discussing how music can alter mood and improve positive mental health. schlechter et al. (2019) proposed that strengths should be discussed in clinical interviews to improve patient outcomes. mccrea et al. (2016) suggest that hope provides children with resilience and newland (2014) put forth a wellbeing model that includes self-regulation and suggests that humour is a protective factor for children at risk. finally, zhang (2013) describes how spirituality is a part of both children’s wellbeing and coping strategies. 3.2 case studies only two case studies were included, both in clinical contexts, reporting on wellbeing (n = 1) and mental health (n = 1). case studies provided evidence for a positive relationship between hope and wellbeing in a boy with cystic fibrosis (anbar & murthy, 2010) and support for relationship centred care in improving positive mental health (holder et al., 2015). 3.3 cross-sectional cross-sectional studies were in a range of contexts, including school (n = 38), community (n = 9), family (n = 5), clinical (n = 2), rural communities (n =2), general population (n = 1), post-disaster (n = 1) and international surveys (n =2). wellbeing was reported on in 27 cross-sectional studies. positive emotions were consistently reported to positively correlate with different measures of wellbeing (choi et al., 2019; corominas et al., 2020; shoshani & russo-netzer, 2017; veronese et al., 2012) as were peer, parent and teacher relationships (butler et al., 2022; chai et al., 2019; corominas et al., 2020; elvin et al., 2021; fayed et al., 2015; gadermann et al., 2016; guhn et al., 2013; john-akinola & gabhainn, 2015; liu et al., 2020; mínguez, 2020; palsdottir et al., 2012; terry & huebner, 1995). meaning and achievement were also positively correlated with life satisfaction (choi et al., 2019; elvin et al., 2021; finch et al., 2020; ojala, 2012; shoshani & russo-netzer, 2017). strengths such as hope, creativity, selfregulation, some aspects of spirituality, and forgiveness were positively correlated with measures of wellbeing (chai et al., 2018; earhart et al., 2009; elvin et al., 2021; holder et al., 2016; holder et al., 2010; liu et al., 2020; shoshani & russo-netzer, 2017; van der wal et al., 2016). resilience was reported on in fewer studies (n = 11). positive emotionality and optimism, relationships with parents, teachers, mentors and friends and meaning in life were all correlated with increased resilience (chai et al., 2018; chun & chung, 2011; damm et al., 2022; du et al., 2017; finch et al., 2020; im & kim, 2012; keyfitz et al., 2013; lengua, 2002). one interesting thing to note was that achievement was found to have no relationship with resilience in two separate studies (im & kim, 2012; somchit & sriyaporn, 2004). spirituality and self-regulation were two strengths that were reported to have a positive relationship with resilience (lengua, 2002; nauli & mulyono, 2019). mental health or ill-health were included in 40 studies. mental ill-health was negatively correlated with optimism, parent, peer and teacher relationships, meaning in life and academic achievement (bang et al., 2018; bate et al., 2021; bergeron et al., 1992; bergeron et al., 2007; chun & chung, 2011; drugli, 2013; du et al., 2017; fayed et al., 2015; felix et al., 2013; finch et al., 2020; graham-bermann et al., 1996; guhn et al., 2013; keyfitz et al., 2013; kroesbergen et al., 2016; lin et al., 2011; manfro et al., 2017; samara et al., 2020; shoshani & russo-netzer, 2017; stocker, 1994). of the strengths, hope was consistently found to have a negative relationship with externalising and internalising symptoms (cedeno et al., 2010), anxiety, including social anxiety (sahranc et al., 2018), and depression (chai et al., 2018; elvin et al., 2021; finch et al., 2020). self-regulation was also negatively related to anxiety and depression (elvin et al., 2021). a measure of gratitude, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 optimism and zest was found to correlate negatively and significantly with depression (wang et al., 2018). engagement was not reported in relation to wellbeing, resilience or mental health in any crosssectional studies. a few caveats were found in the relationship between relationships and mental health. closeness of relationships with parents was not significant unless both parents were not close to the child or a single father was not close (lin et al., 2013). family environment was found to have a relationship with mental health problems (saputra et al., 2017), but not family structure (hakvoort et al., 2011). unlike parent and peer relationships, having a close grandparent had no significant relationship with internalising or externalising behaviours (van heerden & wild, 2018). in girls, peer connectedness was associated with greater rather than less anxiety (guhn et al., 2013). achievement also behaved differently in some specific contexts; for example, internalising symptoms were associated with lower achievement in low-income but not affluent children, and externalising symptoms with poorer achievement in low-income girls, but not low-income boys or affluent children (luthar & latendresse, 2005). in taiwan, academic achievement was associated with lower depression in immigrant but not native families (lin et al., 2011). pedersen et al. (2019) found that academic achievement was associated with less internalising problems, they reported that it was not associated with anxiety or depression. notably, highly creative children had higher internalising and externalising problems (kroesbergen et al., 2016) van breda (2022) found academic achievement was positively correlated with resilience when parent reported, but not by self-report. 3.4 longitudinal contexts represented in longitudinal studies were schools (n = 18), cohort or large studies (n = 10), family (n = 2) and an international survey (n = 1). longitudinal studies were varied in length, with some school studies performing follow ups within a year and cohort studies spanning entire childhoods. wellbeing was reported in 13 longitudinal studies. in most cases, relationships were in the expected direction between the perma components and wellbeing. smiling (lengua, 2003), prosocial behaviour, such as teacher connectedness and sharing (in older children) (garcía-moya et al., 2015; sabato & kogut, 2019) and achievement were associated with greater wellbeing (degoy & olmos, 2020; marques et al., 2011; yang et al., 2019). both positive and negative parentchild relationships were found to correlate with child wellbeing outcomes, with a positive relationship associated with greater wellbeing and a negative relationship with less (essler et al., 2021). one standout was that self-regulation was not related to wellbeing (lengua, 2003). other strengths were positively related with wellbeing, however, such as: creative abilities and wellbeing (gubbels, 2017), hope and life satisfaction (marques et al., 2011; marques, 2016; ng, 2014), and gratitude and life satisfaction (froh, 2010). resilience was not commonly reported on in longitudinal studies (n = 3). one study did, however, report correlations between engagement and increased coping (skinner et al., 2016) and another between ego-resiliency and achievement measures (e.g., reading, maths scores) (kwok et al., 2007). mental health was included in a number of longitudinal studies (n = 21). for mental health outcomes, the relationships were mostly in the expected directions. engagement had a significant, positive relationship with mental health (marques, 2016). several relationship aspects predict internalising and externalising problems, including early peer problems, friendships, poor school connectedness and parent-child relationships (flouri et al., 2015; http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 goetschius et al., 2021, mcarthur et al., 2021; toseeb et al., 2020; wang et al., 2018). peer relationships were also found to have a negative relationship with depression (chen et al., 2012). the relationship between achievement and mental health was supported, however, only academic-related achievement was reported, and longitudinal studies tended to consider mental health as the predictor, rather than the outcome. for example, being mentally healthy in 1st grade predicted achievement in 4th grade (guzman et al., 2021). mental health risk had a negative association with academic achievement (murphy et al., 2015), as did depression specifically (li et al., 2021; panayiotou, 2019). finally, high externalising and internalising scores predicted lower academic achievement (mekonnen et al., 2020). several insignificant findings were reported for strengths, self-regulation was not related to externalising or internalising symptoms in one study (lengua, 2003), though it was associated in another study (flouri et al., 2014). family spirituality was not significantly associated with an anxious/depressed outcome (barbarin et al., 2001) and a spiritual program was related to lower levels of internalising symptoms but not externalising symptoms (schottenbauer et al., 2007). hope and positive mental health were, however, positively related (marques et al., 2011). 3.5 interventions interventions were primarily in the school context (n = 29), followed by community (n = 4), clinical (n = 3), and family (n = 1), with a few looking specifically at children in residential homes (n = 1), refugee camps (n = 1) and post-disaster (n = 1). interventions that included wellbeing (n = 17) as an outcome were varied, involving positive psychology interventions, character strengths interventions, kindness, mindfulness, happiness, spirituality, peer support, gratitude, hope, forgiveness and father support interventions. in all interventions the wellbeing outcome increased; however, in two interventions it also increased in the control group and there was no significant difference between the two (froh et al., 2014; layous et al., 2012). a small number of interventions included resilience as an outcome (n = 7). resilience increased in a humour intervention for the experimental group (sim, 2015), in the grow character strength program (seale et al., 2021) and in a spirituality program (pandya, 2018). the resilience scale of reactivity increased in an arts program but the other two scales (mastery and relatedness) did not (coholic et al., 2012). a hope-theory based intervention also saw an increase in resilience over time (kirby et al., 2021). mental health was measured in most studies (n = 29), and typically interventions based on perma components were associated with decreases in mental health symptoms at postintervention. positive emotions was associated with decreases in depression (arora & sharma, 2018; carter et al., 2018; foka et al., 2021; schonert-reichl et al., 2015; shoshani et al., 2016), interventions that involved relationships saw improved mental health (beaumont et al., 2019; feinberg et al., 2013; goodkind et al., 2012; healy & sanders, 2018; kiviruusu et al., 2016; ohl et al., 2013; powell & thompson, 2016), meaning was able to explain variance in mental health scores (armstrong et al., 2019) and achievement was connected with decreased depression in one intervention (schonert-reichl et al., 2015). hope, creativity, leadership, spirituality and forgiveness were all involved in different interventions that had positive impact on anxiety and depression or internalising and externalising symptoms (hui & chau, 2009; moula et al., 2022; pandya, 2018; rich et al., 2022; rousseau et al., 2005; shoshani et al., 2016). there were a few studies where no effect was reported. in four cases there was no significant change in mental health. one study saw no change in positive affect or mental health symptoms (foster et al., 2016). another program saw no impact on hope or ptsd (tol et al., 2010). in the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 context of refugee and immigrant children, a creative arts-based intervention had no significant effect (kevers et al., 2022). no significant effects were found for anxiety in a digital school-based intervention that focused on general strengths (shum et al., 2019). one notable point was that the together at school intervention was effective in the 3rd grade, but not in 1st grade (kiviruusu et al., 2016). there is some variability in the effectiveness of interventions incorporating perma, however as is demonstrated there are a large number of interventions that were successful in increasing wellbeing and resilience, and decreasing mental ill-health. 3.6 qualitative contexts of qualitative studies included school (n = 5), community (n = 4), residential care or children’s homes (n = 4), and clinical (n = 1). within the qualitative literature, wellbeing was included in several studies (n = 7). positive emotions were linked with wellbeing in these studies, specifically happiness (ninomiya et al., 2021). engagement in activities that are enjoyable, as well as achieving (achievement) desired goals were suggested to contribute to life satisfaction (linh et al., 2021). the component of relationships was represented in a large number of these studies, most often positively relating wellbeing to parent-child relationships, but also in terms of supportive relationships, connectedness and meaningful friendships (benninger & savahl, 2016; boström & strand, 2021; linh et al., 2021; pérez-aronsson et al., 2019; sabolova et al., 2020). finally, the strength of hope was also suggested to promote children’s wellbeing (pérez-aronsson et al., 2019). resilience was reported on in seven studies. relationships were, once again, a frequently occurring theme in relation to resilience. relationships were described as increasing resilience through family, community and support networks (braband et al., 2018; pienaar et al., 2011), classroom belonging (cefai, 2007), connections (forrest-bank, et al., 2014), and cohesion with others in the context of art-based activities (coholic et al., 2012). strengths, such as spirituality or faith, humour, recognition, creativity and hope were described as contributing to resilience (braband et al., 2018; cefai, 2007; coholic et al., 2012; forrest-bank, et al., 2014; mohangi et al., 2011; pienaar et al., 2011). engagement in the classroom, positive emotions (e.g., optimism and positive expectations) and achievement motivation were also related to resilience in these studies (cefai, 2007; mohangi et al., 2011; pienaar et al., 2011). qualitative work reporting mental health in this area were sparse (n = 1). one study connected relationships with improved mental health, including being in nurturing and supportive relationships, social engagement and a sense of connectedness (benninger & savahl, 2016). 3.7 mixed-methods mixed-methods studies were primarily conducted in the school context (n = 2), with a clinical context (n = 1) and refugee/migrant context (n = 1) represented as well. two of these studies were interview based, including both qualitative and quantitative data, and two were non-randomised trials. in these studies, all outcomes were reported on, including wellbeing (n = 2), resilience (n = 2) and mental health (n = 2). interventions that utilised a mixed-methods approach are detailed in the interventions section. gervais et al. (2021) found that attribution of meaning (when immigrating) was a protective factor for children. boniwell (2016) reported on personal wellbeing lessons that included positive emotions, engagement, relationships and strengths but found no impact on general life satisfaction. kirby et al. (2021) found a hope programme led to a significant decrease in anxiety, and described hope as a relevant thematic outcome. finally, barfield & driessnack (2018) looked at wellbeing for children with adhd and reported that connections was one of the recurring themes of what makes life ‘really good’ for such children, reinforcing http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 the relationship between relationships and wellbeing. 3.8 reviews and meta-analyses wellbeing was included in eight reviews. experiencing positive emotions and achievement were both positively correlated with life satisfaction (park, 2004; suldo et al., 2006). in barry et al.’s (2013) systematic review of mental health promotion interventions that included relationships and strengths, wellbeing was seen to increase in several of the included studies. strengths were frequently associated with wellbeing, including: forgiveness (van der wal et al., 2017); gratitude, which causes increases in wellbeing (layous & lyubomirsky, 2014); creativity and hope, after participating in creative expression programmes (beauregard, 2014); and general character strengths (park, 2004). an interesting finding reported in van der wal et al. (2017) was that forgiveness was related to wellbeing, but only when forgiving a friend as opposed to someone who was not a friend. resilience was common in reviews (n = 14). positive emotions, such as a positive outlook, were related to resilience (pieloch et al., 2016; zolkoski & bullock, 2012). relationships were considered to be a source of resilience, including: social support, connectedness with family, friendships, positive relationships with teachers, a close bond with a caregiver, and in the context of divorce, a good relationship with at least one parent and with siblings (gorell barnes, 1999; holaday & mcphearson, 1997; marriott et al., 2014; neiman, 1988; pieloch et al., 2016; sleijpen et al., 2016; zolkoski & bullock, 2012). achievement, in terms of academics (marriott et al., 2014), as well as the experience of success or achievement (neiman, 1988) were linked to resilience. meaning, in particular assignment of meaning and finding meaning after parental divorce, were considered to be factors that improve resilience (gorell barnes, 1999; holaday & mcphearson, 1997). strengths that were reported to be sources for resilience included spirituality/attending church, hope, self-regulation, creativity and general character strengths (beauregard, 2014; bullock, 2012; cheng et al., 2015; marriott et al., 2014; moula et al., 2020; mullin, 2019; park, 2004; sleijpen et al., 2016; zolkoski & bullock, 2012). park (2004) described the relationship as the character strengths buffering against adversity. some reports, however, suggested that there were mixed findings for the impact of creative expression programmes on resilience (beauregard, 2014). cheng et al. (2015) present an interesting view of the relationship between creativity and resilience, explaining that in china creativity is viewed more as what can be attained in the face of limited resource and so described creativity as somewhat synonymous with resilience. mental health was included in eight reviews. rohner & veneziano (2001) reported mixed findings on how mother and father relationships with a child impact mental health problems and psychological adjustment. poor achievement, in the school context, were associated with internalising and externalising problems (romano et al., 2015). strengths, creativity in particular, seemed to be connected with mental health through reviews conducted on creative expression programmes and arts therapies. such programmes were shown to be effective in children impacted by mental health difficulties, decreasing emotional and behavioural issues and internalising/externalising behaviours, as well as significantly decreasing ptsd symptoms (beauregard, 2014; sullivan & simonson, 2016). arts therapies reportedly had small impacts on depression and anxiety (moula et al., 2020). gratitude was associated negatively with depression (layous & lyubomirsky, 2014). one meta-analysis met inclusion criteria. robson, allen & howard (2020) found a negative association between the strength of self-regulation and externalising behaviours, with a small to medium effect size (-.34). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 4. discussion the aim of this scoping review was to look at the breadth of existing literature on the relationship between the perma components and children’s mental health, resilience and wellbeing. from the 190 included studies, it is clear that some elements of perma have been widely researched and connected with the outcomes, while some have not. the characteristics of the included studies demonstrated there was an increase in studies after 2011, which aligns with the release of seligman’s first publication of the perma framework. this work has been completed in a wide variety of nations, with 36 different countries represented across the studies, demonstrating the broad influence perma has had. as anticipated, the work in this area with children has largely been in school settings. the majority of studies were of high quality, which gives confidence to the findings presented. the overwhelming majority of studies reported relationships between the perma components and strengths in the expected direction with mental health, resilience and wellbeing. for correlational studies, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, positive and significant relationships were found between the components and wellbeing and resilience, and negative relationship with mental illness and symptoms. these relationships ranged from small to large pearson’s correlations (.1 to .8). qualitative and case studies tended to explain the perma components as either protective factors or factors that contribute to greater positive mental health, resilience and wellbeing. interventions were less consistent, however in nearly all interventions one of the desired outcomes was achieved. the frameworks, models and reviews suggested that wider literature supports these relationships and that the findings are consistent. 4.1 positive emotions positive emotions were found to relate to the outcomes in a variety of ways, such as through optimism, smiling and laughter, and identifying strengths (ey et al., 2005; finch et al., 2020; keyfitz et al., 2013; lengua, 2003; mohangi et al., 2011; park, 2004; pienaar et al., 2011; schlechter, 2019; veronese et al., 2012). this is consistent with previous theory, such as the broaden and build theory (fredrickson, 2001). this theory suggests that when individual’s experience positive emotions, it broadens the range of present moment thought-action responses that they have, and as this is repeated, builds resources that they will continue to use (fredrickson, 2001), leading to improvement in the outcomes identified. 4.2 engagement several elements of perma were underrepresented in the studies, such as engagement. when it was included, engagement was often measured in terms of classroom engagement, thus not fully representing engagement as defined in perma. flow is likely to be experienced by children in activities they choose to do for enjoyment, such as sports or arts (shernoff, 2013). while children may at times experience a flow state in the classroom it is highly likely that only measuring classroom engagement has not captured this element. linh et al. (2021) recognised engagement in fun and interesting activities as a thematic outcome associated with life satisfaction, which was the only study to consider engagement in this way. 4.3 relationships the positive relationships aspect of perma was the most widely researched of the five. it was found in a very large number of studies, and with a wide array of relationship types (parents, step-parents, foster/adoptive parents, peers, teachers, mentors, grandparents, neighbours, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 community, religious organisation, support groups, etc.). relationships with parents were consistently the most impactful in terms of the outcomes, though peers, teachers and others also contributed to improved mental health outcomes. relationships with parents and carers was strikingly common amongst the literature, suggesting this is a particularly important relationship. this is in line with the broader literature on parent-child relationships, such as attachment theory (ainsworth, 1979; bowlby, 1956), which highlights the importance of this relationship from infancy for future outcomes. an important finding was that family environment, but not family structure, was associated with mental health problems (hakvoort et al., 2011). this study looked at single-mother, nonresidential father and step-father families and found no differences on children’s psychosocial outcomes based on family type. this suggests that it is not necessarily the make-up of people in a child’s home (e.g., single, step, foster families) that impact their mental health, but the quality of relationship the child has with their caregivers. one unexpected finding was that in girls but not boys, peer connectedness was positively associated with anxiety (that is, higher connection with peers was related to greater anxiety) (guhn et al., 2013). it has been suggested that girls have a larger focus on friendships, with which comes increased worry about peer status, social approval and abandonment (rose & rudolph, 2006). this could potentially explain why increased connection contributes to anxiety for this group. in intervention studies, such as the together at school, which focused on relationships and social-emotion skills, it was found to be effective only with 3rd grade students and not 1st grade students (kiviruusu et al., 2016). this presents the issue that perma components may have different impacts based on age. some research has been done in this area. for example, it has been suggested that concepts like gratitude do not develop until 10-years-old, while others have found that gratitude relates to happiness from 5-years-old if it is domain specific (nguyen & gordon, 2019). further research is needed in age differences in perma. 4.4 meaning meaning was scarcely found in the literature. this is surprising considering the ties it has to eudaimonic and ryff’s psychological wellbeing. when meaning was found in the review, it was strongly tied to resilience and wellbeing. 4.5 achievement achievement was found to have a non-significant relationship with resilience and mental health in several cases, or even a negative relationship (im & kim, 2012; pedersen et al., 2019; somchit & sriyaporn, 2004). this was not consistent, however, and some studies reported positive relationships between achievement and the outcomes. previous literature on adolescents has found that personal standards significantly predict academic achievement, and that as these standards increase, depression decreases (accordino et al., 2001). when standards were not met, however, this was when levels of depression increased. these findings support the notion that the desire to achieve (e.g., personal standards) is related to improvements, but also hints that the negative relationship observed between mental health and achievement could be somewhat explained by personality differences, such as perfectionism. interestingly, in nearly all of the studies which had a measure of achievement, grades or academic achievement was used. this does not capture the essence of the achievement component of perma; a sense of achievement or experience of accomplishment might be a better way to measure this facet. there is no guarantee that children who receive high grades actually http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 view this as an achievement, or they may be other factors contributing to this (such as external pressure). the very few studies that reported the relationship between achievement and wellbeing did, however, typically suggest that greater achievement was related to greater wellbeing. one qualitative paper suggested that ‘achieving desired goals’ was a theme relating to life satisfaction (linh et al., 2021), pointing to the relationship between these two elements and indicating a connection with hope. 4.6 strengths hope was the most frequently occurring strength throughout the studies and was consistently associated with a plethora of measures of all three outcomes. in the case study of a child with cystic fibrosis, his deteriorating condition improved when he had a goal to look forward to, reestablishing hope (anbar & murthy, 2010). in snyder’s (2000, p. 185) handbook of hope theory, he expresses that “even in the face of unimaginably bad conditions, they [children] frequently can continue to dream of a better future”. this observation draws obvious parallels with resilience, which could explain the very strong relationship hope appeared to have with wellbeing, resilience and mental health in all studies in which it was included in this review. this is supported by mullin’s (2019) review, where they summarise that individuals with higher levels of hope respond better to life stressors. cheng et al. (2015) presented an alternative view of the relationship between creativity and resilience, based on how creativity is understood in china, suggesting that creativity and resilience are understood as similar constructs. this points to the existence of cultural differences between the perma components, suggesting that perma may impact children differently around the world. the cultural impact on perma is an area that has not been well explored. of the 24-character strengths, many were represented minimally or not at all in the literature. overall, however, strengths do seem to have a positive relationship with children’s mental health, resilience and wellbeing. 4.7 limitations one of the limitations of the study was that a large number of constructs were involved, many of which do not have definitions that are entirely agreed upon. this in itself is one of the challenges in this area, and for this study meant that not all possible synonyms were included in the search strategy. while future studies can hone in on specific constructs and clarify definitions, the purpose of this study was to demonstrate what evidence exists in this area rather than address semantic discrepancies. due to feasibility, only english language articles were considered, which limited the studies, given that culture may impact the concepts and the outcomes (e.g., cheng et al., 2015). in order to ensure quality, only peer-reviewed articles were considered. this does, however, mean that no grey literature was searched, which is a limitation. furthermore, educational databases may have provided further studies not found in the databases searched. the reason for their exclusion is discussed in the methods, but this is a potential limitation. due to the large number of studies the search returned, one reviewer instead of two performed the screening, data extraction, and quality appraisal processes. in order to ensure decisions were consistent and could be replicated, a strict piloting process was employed instead (see methods). the pilot screening process was informed by prisma and jbi recommendations and the screening process, including changes, was transparently reported. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 4.8 future directions the outcomes suggest that there are established relationships between the perma components and character strengths, and wellbeing, resilience and mental health. much of this work has been done in the school context and implies there is scope for these to be applied in prevention and intervention programs. applying these principles in school-based intervention programs could allow schools to bolster positive mental health in students. while the types of studies were diverse, there has been very little synthesis of knowledge in this area. the majority of the reviews included were summaries of the literature, and only one meta-analysis was found (which focused only on self-regulation). despite this, a large number of correlational studies exist. one reason for the lack of systematic reviews and meta-analysis may be due to the inconsistency in measures. there is little to no consensus on the best used measures for the concepts included, for perma components and the outcomes alike. in some areas, metaanalysis would be possible and would be beneficial in contributing to the understanding of perma’s impact. as mentioned, however, more consistency is needed in how the constructs are measured before this can occur. as previously suggested, engagement, meaning and some strengths were scarcely represented in the literature but have promising findings. furthermore, due to the inconsistencies in both achievement and engagement and limited sources of measurement (academic/grades only or classroom engagement) these areas would benefit from further focus. cultural and age differences in how perma is experienced are other potential avenues that could be explored. perma is one perspective of wellbeing, but other models exist, as discussed. future work could look at children’s mental health and resilience in the context of other models, such as hedonistic and eudaimonic perspectives. 5. conclusions in view of the objective of this paper, to establish the relationship between perma and primaryschool aged children’s mental health, wellbeing and resilience, it appears that perma has an important relationship with these outcomes. there is considerable evidence that the elements of perma, including strengths, contribute to greater wellbeing and resilience, and are a protective factor against mental illness. there are gaps in this field that require attention, as outlined, but the implications of this work can be applied in clinical, educational, community and family contexts. based on the findings, there is scope to suggest that perma components and some strengths could be of relevance for mental ill-health intervention and prevention in primary school-aged children. the implications of this work can also contribute to future research in the areas of school, developmental, community and counselling psychology. ultimately, these findings are of importance for those invested in the present and future flourishing of children and offers significant opportunity for protecting children against mental illness. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. data availability statement n/a. author contributions statement all authors contributed to the study conception and design. material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by jasmine turner. the first draft of the manuscript was written by jasmine http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 turner and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. all authors read and approved the final manuscript. authors jasmine turner the university of adelaide jasmine.c.turner@adelaide.edu.au rachel m. roberts the university of adelaide michael proeve the university of adelaide junwen chen australian national university acknowledgments with thanks to david rimmington for performing the pilot screening of studies and vikki langton for her contributions as a research librarian. publishing timeline received 18 august 2022 revised version received 20 april 2023 accepted 21 april 2023 published 13 june 2023 references abela, j. r. z., & hankin, b. l. 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(2015, nov). humor intervention program for children with chronic diseases. appl nurs res, 28(4), 404-412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2015.09.001 snyder, c. r. (2000). handbook of hope: theory, measures, and applications. academic press. somchit, s., & sriyaporn, p. (2004, aug). the relationships among resilience factors, perception of adversities, negative behavior, and academic achievement of 4thto 6th-grade children in thadthong, chonburi, thailand. j pediatr nurs, 19(4), 294-303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedn.2004.02.004 stocker, c. m. (1994, nov). children's perceptions of relationships with siblings, friends, and mothers: compensatory processes and links with adjustment. j child psychol psychiatry, 35(8), 1447-1459. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1994.tb01286.x terry, t., & huebner, e. s. (1995, 1995). the relationship between self-concept and life satisfaction in children. social indicators research, 35(1), 39-52. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 tol, w. a., komproe, i. h., jordans, m. j. d., gross, a. l., susanty, d., macy, r. d., & de jong, j. t. v. m. (2010). mediators and moderators of a psychosocial intervention for children affected by political violence [article]. journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 78(6), 818-828. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021348 tricco, a. c., lillie, e., zarin, w., o'brien, k. k., colquhoun, h., levac, d., moher, d., peters, m. d. j., horsley, t., weeks, l., hempel, s., akl, e. a., chang, c., mcgowan, j., stewart, l., hartling, l., aldcroft, a., wilson, m. g., garritty, c., lewin, s., godfrey, c. m., macdonald, m. t., langlois, e. v., soares-weiser, k., moriarty, j., clifford, t., tunçalp, ö., & straus, s. e. (2018). prisma extension for scoping reviews (prisma-scr): checklist and explanation. annals of internal medicine, 169(7), 467473. https://doi.org/10.7326/m18-0850 van breda, a. d. (2022). contribution of psychosocial vulnerability and resilience to academic achievement of primary school children in south africa. child & family social work. https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12916 van der wal, r. c., karremans, j. c., & cillessen, a. h. n. (2016, 2016). interpersonal forgiveness and psychological well-being in late childhood. merrill palmer quarterly, 62(1), 1-21. van heerden, a., & wild, l. g. (2018, 2018). grandparent support and mental and behavioural health in middle childhood. social development, 27(2), 366-380. veronese, g., castiglioni, m., tombolani, m., & said, m. (2012, sep). 'my happiness is the refugee camp, my future palestine': optimism, life satisfaction and perceived happiness in a group of palestinian children. scand j caring sci, 26(3), 467-473. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6712.2011.00951.x wagner, l., gander, f., proyer, r. t., & ruch, w. (2019). character strengths and perma: investigating the relationships of character strengths with a multidimensional framework of well-being. applied research in quality of life, 15(2), 307-328. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9695-z wang, c., williams, k. e., shahaeian, a., & harrison, l. j. (2018, jun). early predictors of escalating internalizing problems across middle childhood. sch psychol q, 33(2), 200-212. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000218 wood, a. m., froh, j. j., & geraghty, a. w. a. (2010). gratitude and well-being: a review and theoretical integration. clinical psychology review, 30(7), 890-905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.005 world health organisation. (2022). improving the mental and brain health of children and adolescents. https://www.who.int/activities/improving-the-mental-and-brain-health-of-children-and-adolescents http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ perma, children’s wellbeing, resilience, mental health turner, roberts, proeve, & chen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 appendix a table a.1. search strategy for psycinfo # searches 1 positive psychology.sh. or positive psychology.ti,ab. or perma.ti,ab. or gratitude.sh. or grateful*.ti,ab. or gratitude.ti,ab. or kind*.ti,ab. or hope*.ti,ab. or appreciation.ti,ab. or brave*.ti,ab. or creative*.ti,ab. or curious*.ti,ab. or fair*.ti,ab. or forgiv*.ti,ab. or honest*.ti,ab. or humility.ti,ab. or humour.ti,ab. or humor.ti,ab. or wisdom.ti,ab. or leadership.ti,ab. or love.ti,ab. or persever*.ti,ab. or perspective.ti,ab. or prudence.ti,ab. or self regulation.ti,ab. or spirituality.ti,ab. or teamwork.ti,ab. or zest.ti,ab. or positive emotions.sh. or optimism.sh. or optimism.ti,ab. or positivism.sh. or psychological engagement.sh. or engagement.ti,ab. or flow.ti,ab. or interpersonal relationships.sh. or relationship quality.sh. or relationships.ti,ab. or prosocial behaviour.sh. or prosocial behaviour.ti,ab. or meaningfulness.sh. or meaning.sh. or meaning*.ti,ab. or achievement.sh. or achieve*.ti,ab. 2 (mental health or well being).sh. or mental health.ti,ab. or mental wellbeing.ti,ab. or mental well being.ti,ab. or well being.ti,ab. or resilience.ti,ab 3 child*.mp 4 1 and 2 and 3 5 limit 4 to (peer reviewed journal and school age) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., lomas, t., trinh, s., & jonsdottir, h. k. (2019). guide éthique de la pratique de la psychologie positive (version 1.0: french). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-33. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1213 guideline version 1.0, 27th april 2020 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 special issue guide éthique de la pratique de la psychologie positive aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas · sok-ho trinh · hrafnhildur krumma jonsdottir http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 2 . sommaire introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 préambule ……………………………………………………………………………………… 4 organismes professionnels et lignes directrices éthiques de la pratique de la psychologie positive.…………………………………………………………………………... 5 aspirations des lignes directrices.............................................................................................. 5 à qui s'adressent les lignes directrices ? ................................................................................. 5 nature provisoire des recommandations................................................................................ 6 termes clés................................................................................................................................... 6 section 1 : valeurs, forces et principes.......................................................................................... 8 valeurs des praticiens de la psychologie positive.................................................................. 9 les forces des praticiens de la psychologie positive.............................................................. 10 principes éthiques pour la pratique de la psychologie positive .......................................... 10 section 2 : applications des lignes directrices éthiques ............................................................. 14 trois considérations importantes.............................................................................................. 14 prise de décision éthique............................................................................................................ 14 considérations de travail .......................................................................................................... 15 changement auprès d’un client................................................................................................ 15 changement au sein d’environnements intégrés................................................................... 15 état émotionnel actuel et niveau de bien-être......................................................................... 16 évitement..................................................................................................................................... 16 différentiels de pouvoirs .......................................................................................................... 16 emploi exagéré des forces……………………………………………………………………. 17 sagesse pratique.......................................................................................................................... 17 maintien de la résilience et protection contre le burnout..................................................... 17 déclaration d'études et de compétence................................................................................... 17 appréciation de l’importance du contexte culturel ............................................................. 18 résolution des dilemmes éthiques guide étape par étape..................................................... 19 guide d'auto-évaluation................................................................................................................. 21 section 3 : cas pratiques de l’éthique........................................................................................... 22 cas 1 : culturel application des ipp à sensibilité culturelle .............................................. 22 cas 2 : coaching coaching de clients avec des changements de circonstances.............. 23 cas 3 : clinique travail avec des clients ayant subi un traumatisme ............................... 24 guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 3 cas 4 : organisationnel pressions pour fausser des données............................................. 25 cas 5 : mentorat motiver les participants " réticents " dans une relation déséquilibrée. 25 cas 6 : éducation mise en œuvre de programmes de bien-être dans le cas d'aspirations entravées par des pratiques existantes..................................................................................... 26 lignes directrices pertinentes ........................................................................................................ 28 remerciements ................................................................................................................................. 29 signataires initiaux des lignes directrices en matière d'éthique pour la pratique de la psychologie positive......................................................................................................................... 30 références.......................................................................................................................................... 32 lectures complémentaires .............................................................................................................. 32 déclaration: ces lignes directrices sont le résultat d’un groupe de travail collaboratif et indépendant mené par aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache et tim lomas. ces lignes directrices sont indépendantes de toute organisation ou association; toutefois, de nombreuses personnes ont été impliquées dans le développement et le perfectionnement de cette première édition. les auteurs ont l’intention de mettre ces lignes directrices à jour de manière biannuelle afin de renforcer et d’élargir leur usage. les auteurs apprécient toutes suggestions et invitent la communauté à les adresser à aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 4 note d’introduction préambule la perfection éthique est peut-être un idéal utopique, puisque l’être humain, incluant les praticiens de la psychologie positive (ppp), sont faillibles, vulnérables et imparfaits. la complexité de la vie moderne, tout comme l'expansion constante de la vie cybernétique, le changement climatique erratique, les crises autour de la question des réfugiés, les identités en mutation, ainsi qu’une polarisation croissante de l’économie, exacerbent la vulnérabilité humaine. les services psychologiques, en particulier ceux ayant la mission spécifique de restaurer ou d’améliorer le bien-être, ne sont pas aisément proposés sans susciter de dilemmes éthiques ou de divergence de priorités. aucun regroupement de lignes directrices, de normes ou même des lois en matière d’éthique peuvent encapsuler dans sa totalité, la complexité humaine. toutefois, un ensemble de valeurs, de forces de caractère et de principes peuvent néanmoins nous guider vers une prise de décision plus éthique, en particulier lors de l’emploi des interventions de la psychologie positive (ipp), qui en général visent à améliorer le bien-être. ce guide comprend a) les valeurs, b) les forces et c) les principes, pour la pratique de la psychologie positive. il est important de noter que le présent « guide » s'inscrit généralement dans des cadres plus larges, qui peuvent varier selon le contexte et la juridiction. par exemple, ce guide pourrait être placé en bas de la hiérarchie normative ci-dessous (illustration 1): illustration 1. lignes directrices et cadres généraux. de ce fait, il est important de considérer aussi bien les lignes directrices que les autres cadres pertinents. de plus, tandis qu’un individu ou une organisation peut souscrire ou soutenir des lignes directrices pour la pratique de la psychologie positive, dans certains pays et juridictions, guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 5 il peut s’avérer illégal de se donner le titre de « psychologue positif ». veillez à tenir compte des obligations légales de votre région. organismes professionnels et lignes directrices éthiques de la pratique de la psychologie positive lorsqu’un praticien est membre d’un organisme professionnel approprié (ex: american psychologyassociation, australian psychological society, international coach federation), alors, c’est en premier lieu, les normes, codes de conduite ou lignes directrices de leur association qui doivent instruire leur pratique. il est attendu de praticiens membres d’un organisme professionnel certifiant ou délivrant une accréditation (ex: college of psychologists), ayant une éducation adéquate, la formation et l’expérience pratiquant la psychologie positive ou des domaines relatifs, qu’ils soient familiarisés avec les règles, les normes, les régulations, les statuts, et les procédures de pratique de la psychologie au sein de leur juridiction. les lignes directrices éthiques présentées dans ce guide, visent à compléter, et non remplacer, les codes et les normes juridiques/professionnels. a ce titre, ces lignes directrices fournissent une base de référence pour les praticiens qui ne sont ni membres, ni affiliés à un organisme professionnel. aspiration des lignes directrices. pourquoi établir un ensemble de lignes directrices éthiques ? ces lignes directrices visent à améliorer la pratique éthique en manifestant un engagement à l'égard d'une pratique scientifiquement éclairée et fondée sur des études scientifiques dans le domaine de la psychologie positive (pp). ces dernières visent à insuffler l’envie de maintenir (de manière raisonnable) une fidélité à la science du bien-être, et aux praticiens de considérer les lignes directrices correspondantes à l’autoreprésentation et la promotion des bénéfices potentiels. les lignes directrices cherchent à promouvoir aux ppp et autres une meilleure compréhension de ce qui est une pratique éthique de la psychologie positive. grâce à ces lignes directrices, l’engagement des ppp est attendu comme suit1: a) étudier de près les recherches et éclairer leur pratique sur une base scientifique b) mettre à jour leur connaissances de manière continuelle, à travers l’apprentissage et le développement professionnel c) communiquer prudemment et de manière exacte sur les limites des connaissances relatives aux ipp ainsi que des bénéfices et risques des ipp en particulier et des programmes de bien-être, et d) veiller sur le bien-être ainsi que sur les changements positifs et négatifs du bien-être de leurs clients pendant la prestation de service. à qui s'adressent ces lignes directrices ? la raison d’être de ces lignes directrices est d’offrir au ppp la pratique optimale de l’éthique, et par la-même, d’agir avec bienveillance (faire du bien aux autres) et de façon non préjudiciable (en évitant de nuire à autrui). ainsi, ces lignes directrices sont destinées aux professionnels (ex. psychologues) et à d’autres (ex. étudiants ou autres professionnels sans affiliations) qui ont recours à des ipp ou qui font appel aux connaissances de la psychologie positive dans leur pratique. il ne s’agit pas d’un guide sur l’application des ipp en particulier. 1 nous avons retenu quatre exemples pour démontrer les engagements attendus, notez cependant que la liste peut être longue. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 6 nature provisoire des recommandations. nous prenons note que le présent guide (version 1.0, 19 juillet 2019) est provisoire et sujet à une révision continuelle tous les deux ans à travers un processus de consultation itératif avec les parties clefs prenantes. une telle régularité est requise pour assurer que les lignes directrices répondent aux changements contextuels et reflètent l’évolution des thématiques locales et globales. a cet effet, nous accueillons à tout moment les commentaires liés à ces lignes directrices présentes. il est également important de noter que seuls les pays anglophones, pour la plupart occidentaux, ont influencé le développement de ces lignes directrices et, de ce fait les lignes directrices sont limitées à ces régions. cependant, puisqu’il s’agit d’un document évolutif et organique, identifié par un numéro d’édition, des éditions futures comprendront l’influence des codes et recommandations de pays non-anglophones et non-occidentaux. termes-clés client les praticiens travaillent avec des clients. “client” est un terme générique employé faisant référence au bénéficiaire d’un service tel que (mais non limité à) un individu, un couple, une famille, un groupe, une organisation, un sponsor, ou toute autre entité sociale. normes versus lignes directrices une norme comprend habituellement des ramifications juridiques ou exécutoires, alors que des lignes directrices suggèrent des meilleures pratiques qui ne sont généralement pas réglementées ni contrôlées. compte tenu de leur nature, les lignes directrices impliquent que les circonstances sont variées et complexes, et que le respect des lignes directrices requiert de la sagesse pratique de la part des praticiens, une combinaison de l’expérience et du bon sens. pp pp: psychologie positive. il y a de nombreuses façons de conceptualiser et de définir la pp, mais la plupart des opérationnalisations la positionnent comme l’étude scientifique et la promotion des concepts généraux tel que « le bonheur, le bien-être, l’épanouissement et la prospérité ». par exemple, lomas, hefferon et ivtzan (2015, p. 1347) définissent la pp comme “la science et la pratique de l’amélioration du bien-être”. dans le même ordre d’idées, il y a la notion de la psychologie positive appliquée qui peut simplement être traduite comme l’application de la pp dans le contexte du monde réel, y compris par le biais des ipp. ppi ipp: intervention de psychologie positive. dans la littérature il y a une démarcation faite entre l’intervention de psychologie positive et une intervention psychologiquement positive. pour un développement et une explication voir hone, jarden, et schofield (2015). ici nous incorporons une notion large d’intervention psychologique positive qui couvre toutes activités à travers de nombreuses disciplines (c.-à-d. d’autres sous domaines de la psychologie en plus de la pp) visant à augmenter le bien-être psychologique. une définition populaire d’une intervention psychologique positive est; « une intervention psychologique positive favorisant les émotions, les comportements, et/ou les pensées positives améliorant ainsi le bien-être d’un individu ou d’un groupe ” (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014,p. 92). ppp guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 7 ppp: praticien de la psychologie positive. un praticien qui a suivi la formation requise pour la pratique (ex: psychothérapie, conseil, coaching), et qui a complété une formation spécifique en pp avec un organisme reconnu permettant la compréhension du processus de la recherche scientifique ainsi que son application dans la pratique de la psychologie positive appliquée (ex: ipp).2 forces en général des lignes directrices éthiques et des normes suivent des caractéristiques personnelles désirées, arbitrairement choisies par des leaders d’opinion dans le domaine en question. dans le cas présent nous utilisons forces de caractère et vertus (csv: peterson & seligman, 2004), un modèle de forces de caractère validé empiriquement et endossé sur le plan interculturel (mcgrath, 2014). selon la csv, les forces de caractère sont définies comme des traits universels qui sont valorisés en tant que tels et qui ne mènent pas nécessairement à des résultats instrumentaux. il s'agit plutôt de traits comportementaux, qui aident et guident une personne à se comporter de manière responsable et éthique pour son propre bien-être et celui des autres. de façon générale, les forces du caractère reflètent ce qu'est une personne (c.-à-d. sa personnalité) et les valeurs reflètent ce à quoi une personne s'engage (c.-à-d. ses principes et ses actions). praticien le terme « praticien » est employé de façon générique pour désigner toute personne ayant la responsabilité d’offrir des services liés à la pp. "praticien " comprend toute personne assumant un ou des rôles tels que (mais sans s'y limiter) conseiller, psychothérapeute, professionnel de la santé mentale, coach, formateur, mentor ou éducateur.3 principes les principes attirent l'attention sur d'importantes responsabilités éthiques. les actions découlent de certains principes. valeurs les valeurs sont des croyances partagées par des individus et par des groupes concernant des fins souhaitables (c.-à-d. des idéologies sur le monde et comment il devrait être). les valeurs dépassent les situations spécifiques, guident nos choix d’actions et comment nous évaluons autrui ainsi que soi-même. elles sont classées par leur importances relatives (schwartz, 2006). les valeurs peuvent représenter une façon importante d'exprimer un engagement éthique qui devient plus visible lorsque appliqué en tant que principe. en d'autres termes, les valeurs inspirent les principes. dans ce sens communautaire, les valeurs décrites dans les présentes lignes directrices sont celles que les auteurs ont identifié comme étant les valeurs générales partagés par la communauté pp. 2 qui peut s'intituler ppp ? a ce jour il n’y a pas de définition claire sur la quantité ni le niveau de qualification nécessaire. par exemple, peut-on s'intituler ppp basé sur un cours sur 2 jours, une certification accréditée de 6 mois ou un mastère en psychologie positive appliquée sur 2 années ? de plus, une pratique supervisée (ex : la supervision par les pairs et la supervision individuelle) et un suivi en ligne est idéal. les organismes professionnels dans ce domaine doivent fournir d'autres orientations concernant la formation et la supervision appropriées (et, de fait, ces questions sont déjà examinées et traitées par les parties concernées). 3 la philosophie et les principes contenus dans ces lignes directrices pourraient également s'appliquer aux chercheurs sur le bien-être, où les chercheurs pourraient être considérés comme des praticiens dans un sens, travaillant avec des sujets qui pourraient être considérés comme des clients. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 8 section 1: valeurs, forces et principes les lignes directrices éthiques pour la pratique de la psychologie positive incorporent les valeurs, forces et principes suivants. aussi bien les valeurs que les forces supportent l'adoption de principes éthiques, comme l'indique le tableau 1. tableau 1 valeurs, forces et principes de la pratique de la psychologie positive valeurs4 forces5 principes 1. préserver la sécurité des clients et d’autrui. 1. l'honnêteté. 1. la bienfaisance/non-malfaisance. 2. atténuer la détresse personnelle et la souffrance. 2. l'équité. 2. la prise en charge responsable. 3. assurer l'intégrité des relations entre le praticien et son client. 3. l’intelligence sociale. 3. le respect des droits et de la dignité des personnes. 4. apprécier la diversité de l'expérience humaine et de la culture. 4. le travail d'équipe. 4. la fiabilité. 5. favoriser un sentiment de soi significatif pour la ou les personne(s) concernée(s). 5. la gentillesse. 5. la justice. 6. améliorer la qualité des connaissances professionnelles et leur application. 6. la prudence. 6. l’autonomie. 7. améliorer la qualité des relations entre individus. 7. la perspective. 8. accroître l'efficacité personnelle. 8. le jugement. 9. s'efforcer d'offrir des services équitables et adéquats de conseil, de psychothérapie et de coaching. 9. l'autorégulation. 10. la persévérance. 11. la bravoure. 4 nos valeurs ont été choisies en fonction d'autres lignes directrices semblables et, à ce titre, bon nombre d'entre elles peuvent correspondre à d’autres catégories. par exemple, la justice pourrait être perçue comme une valeur ou comme un principe. la fiabilité pourrait être perçue comme une force (l’honnêteté), une valeur ou un principe. beaucoup de ces concepts sont discutables de cette façon. les valeurs ont également été classées selon l'importance perçue par les auteurs de ce guide. 5 les points forts de 1 à 7 sont classés selon la fréquence à laquelle ils ont été mentionnés et soulignés dans 10 guides éthiques similaires. (ex : le cadre éthique de la british association for counselling and psychotherapy pour les bonnes pratiques en matière de conseil et de psychothérapie). pour les points forts de 8-11, les auteurs ont jugé important de faire respecter les six principes. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 9 de plus: • presque toutes les normes stipulent une série de caractéristiques et de qualités personnelles, alors que ces lignes directrices mettent l'accent sur des forces et les comportements observables. • les listes de valeurs, de forces et de principes ne sont en aucun cas exhaustifs, mais plutôt, une première tentative pour déterminer ce qui est actuellement perçu comme le plus pertinent pour la pratique. à mesure que les lignes directrices sont adaptées de manière régulière, et qu’un débat a lieu au sein de la communauté pp, on s'attend à ce que ces éléments évoluent. • les listes de valeurs, de forces et de principes ne sont également pas prescriptives. • un modèle de forces (le cadre valeurs en action) a été choisi, car il s'agit du modèle le plus apparent dans la littérature et fondé sur la rigueur scientifique. valeurs des praticiens de la psychologie positive les valeurs fondamentales des ppp incluent un engagement à: • préserver la sécurité des clients et d’autrui. il s'agit notamment de maintenir une vigilance constante sur la façon dont un client réagit à ses services et, de surcroît, de reconnaître les limites de ses capacités et de son expertise (et, à ce titre, reconnaître quand un client peut avoir besoin de l'aide professionnelle d'autres secteurs, ou si le public est en danger). • atténuer la détresse et la souffrance personnelles (dans les limites de ses compétences). cela signifie qu'il faut déployer les ipp de façon pertinente sur le plan contextuel afin de réduire la détresse des personnes qui recherchent des services dans divers contextes professionnels (ex. thérapie, coaching, santé). • assurer l'intégrité des relations entre le praticien et son client. il s'agit notamment de respecter les limites personnelles et le maintien d'un engagement à l'égard de pratiques professionnelles telle la protection de la vie privée et la confidentialité. • apprécier la diversité des expériences et des cultures humaines. cela signifie qu'il ne faut pas appliquer un cadre " uniforme " pour ses clients, mais plutôt respecter et célébrer la diversité des parcours uniques de chaque individu ainsi que leurs contextes et leurs cultures. • favoriser un sentiment de soi qui a un sens pour la ou les personnes concernées. cela signifie que l'individu développe et poursuit des objectifs qui ne sont pas seulement satisfaisants pour lui-même, mais contribuent également au bien commun • améliorer la qualité des connaissances professionnelles et leur application. cela signifie qu'il faut faire de son mieux pour se maintenir informé de l'évolution de la littérature et maintenir une connaissance à jour des progrès dans le domaine. • améliorer la qualité des relations entre individus. cela signifie reconnaître que les individus sont inévitablement impliqués au sein des relations et des réseaux, et s'efforcer d’aider autrui à renforcer autant que possible ces liens. • accroître l'efficacité personnelle. cela signifie qu'il faut s'efforcer d'aider le client à être opérationnel dans le monde et dans les situations uniques qu'ils vivent. • s'atteler à offrir des prestations de service en pp à la fois justes et adéquats. il pourrait s'agir, par exemple, de plaider en faveur de services destinés aux populations difficiles à atteindre ou, dans la mesure du possible, d'une structure de tarification permettant aux personnes moins favorisées de continuer à bénéficier de ces services. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 10 les forces des praticiens de la psychologie positive les forces personnelles du praticien sont importantes parce qu'elles ont une incidence sur la relation praticien/client. bon nombre des forces jugées essentielles à la prestation des services sont considérées comme de bonnes qualités personnelles. il est inapproprié de demander à tous les praticiens de posséder ces forces, puisqu'il est fondamental que ces forces personnelles soient profondément ancrées au sein de la personne concernée et se développent par engagement personnel plutôt que par les exigences d'une autorité extérieure. une analyse thématique des principes et des valeurs prônés par les grandes lignes directrices (voir la section lignes directrices pertinentes) a montré que les forces de caractère suivantes sont censées faciliter la pratique et la prise de décision éthiques: • l'honnêteté: dire la vérité, se présenter d'une manière authentique et agir avec sincérité; sans prétention et assumer la responsabilité de ses sentiments et de ses actes. • l’équité: traiter toutes les personnes de la même manière selon les notions d'équité et de justice; ne pas laisser les sentiments personnels influencer les décisions concernant autrui; donner à chacun une chance équitable. • l’intelligence sociale: connaître les motivations et les sentiments d’autrui; savoir quoi faire pour s'adapter aux différentes situations sociales; savoir quoi faire pour mettre les autres à l'aise. • le travail d'équipe: bien travailler en tant que membre d'un groupe ou d'une équipe; être loyal envers le groupe; faire sa part du travail. • la gentillesse: rendre service et effectuer des bonnes actions pour autrui; les aider; prendre soin d'eux. • la prudence: faire attention à ses choix; ne pas prendre de risques excessifs; ne pas dire ou ne pas faire des choses qui pourraient être regrettées plus tard. • la perspective: être en mesure de donner des conseils judicieux à autrui; avoir des façons de voir les choses qui ont un sens pour soi-même et pour les autres. • le jugement: réfléchir et examiner les choses de toutes perspectives; ne pas parvenir à des conclusions hâtives; se fier uniquement à des preuves solides pour prendre des décisions; avoir la capacité de changer son avis. • l'autorégulation: réguler ce que l'on ressent et ce que l'on fait; être discipliné; contrôler ses appétits et ses émotions. • la persévérance: travailler dur pour finir ce que l'on a commencé, quel que soit le projet: dans le temps imparti; ne pas se laisser distraire lorsqu'on travaille; prendre satisfaction en accomplissant les tâches. • la bravoure: être une personne courageuse qui ne recule devant aucune menace, défi, difficulté ou douleur; défendre ce qui est juste même s'il y a opposition; agir selon ses convictions. principes éthiques pour la pratique de la psychologie positive chacun des six principes éthiques décrits ci-dessous est accompagné d'exemples de bonnes pratiques qui ont été élaborées en réponse à ce principe. les décisions éthiques qui sont fortement appuyées par un ou plusieurs de ces principes, sans aucune contradiction de la part des autres, peuvent être considérées comme ayant une solide justification morale. toutefois, les praticiens rencontreront probablement des circonstances dans lesquelles il est impossible de concilier tous les principes applicables, et il peut être nécessaire de choisir entre ces principes. une décision ou une série d'actions ne devient pas nécessairement contraire à l'éthique guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 11 simplement parce qu’elle est discutable ou que d'autres praticiens seraient parvenus à des conclusions différentes dans des circonstances similaires. le praticien a l'obligation de considérer toutes les circonstances pertinentes avec autant de soin que possible et de rendre compte de façon responsabilisée des décisions prises. bienfaisance/non-malfaisance la bienfaisance implique un engagement à promouvoir le bien-être du client et du praticien. le principe de bienfaisance signifie agir dans le meilleur intérêt du client, sur la base d'une appréciation professionnelle. cela invite à travailler dans les limites de ses compétences et à fournir des prestations sur la base d'une formation ou d'une expérience adéquate. garantir que les meilleurs intérêts du client soient atteints exige une surveillance systématique de la pratique et des résultats (ex: le bien-être) par les meilleurs moyens qui existent. il est considéré important que la recherche scientifique et la réflexion systématique éclairent la pratique. selon le rôle et le contexte, il y a habituellement une obligation de prendre des mesures pour améliorer la qualité des prestations fournies et de s'engager à mettre à jour la pratique par le développement professionnel continu. l'obligation d'agir dans le meilleur intérêt d'un client peut devenir primordiale lorsqu'on travaille avec des clients dont la capacité d'autonomie est réduite en raison de l'âge, de l'immaturité, du manque de compréhension, de la détresse ou d'autres facteurs des difficultés personnelles importantes. la non-malfaisance, en revanche, implique l'engagement d'éviter tout préjudice au client. les praticiens qui adoptent ce princip: • évitent l'exploitation sexuelle, financière, émotionnelle ou toute autre forme d'exploitation du client; • évitent l'incompétence et la faute professionnelle (c.-à-d., l'application appropriée des ipp, ex: savoir ce qui fonctionne pour tout un chacun); • ne fournissent pas de services lorsqu'ils sont inaptes à le faire en raison d'une maladie, d'une situation personnelle ou d'une intoxication. le praticien a la responsabilité éthique de s'efforcer d'atténuer tout préjudice causé à un client, même lorsque ce préjudice est inévitable ou non intentionnel. les praticiens ont la responsabilité personnelle et professionnelle de contester, lorsque jugé nécessaire, l'incompétence ou la faute professionnelle d'autrui. ils ont également la responsabilité de contribuer à toute enquête et/ou décision d'un organisme/autorité dûment reconnu concernant une pratique professionnelle inférieure à celle d'un praticien raisonnablement compétent et/ou risquant de décrédibiliser leur profession ou la pp. prise en charge responsable la pratique du pp favorise le bien-être. pour atteindre cet objectif, les ppp qui adoptent ce principe font preuve d'une préoccupation active pour le bien-être des personnes avec lesquelles ils travaillent, et reconnaissent le pouvoir social et institutionnel qui structure leur rôle en tant que ppp. ils ont la responsabilité première de protéger le bien-être de ceux avec qui ils travaillent. ils reconnaissent que les individus, les familles, les groupes ou les communautés peuvent se trouver dans une position vulnérable. ils reconnaissent également leurs limites d'expertise (y compris l'absence de connaissance) et renvoient à d'autres spécialistes si nécessaire. ils acceptent leur responsabilité et corrigent tout préjudice résultant de leur prestation de services. les ppp doivent également s'intéresser activement et en permanence aux développements empiriques et théoriques de leur domaine, guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 12 en s'assurant qu'ils maintiennent une connaissance à jour des données scientifiques concernant les ipp qu'ils mettent en œuvre. respect des droits et de la dignité des personnes conformément à la déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme des nations unies, le respect de la dignité des personnes et de leurs droits exige que: chaque personne et tous peuples soient positivement valorisés dans leur propre droit, leurs droits soient reconnus et respectés et ils soient traités avec respect et dignité dans le cadre de leur humanité. les praticiens qui adoptent ce principe, font preuve de respect, ce qui exige une sensibilité à la diversité culturelle et sociale. cela comprend la reconnaissance des différences entre individus associées à leur culture, leur nationalité, leur origine ethnique, leur couleur, leur race, leur religion, leur sexe, leur situation maritale, leur orientation sexuelle, leurs capacités physiques ou mentales, leur âge, leur statut socio-économique et/ou toute autre caractéristique, condition ou statut personnel. ces différences font partie intégrante de la personne et doivent être respectées en tant que telles. fiabilité être digne de confiance (fidélité) implique d'honorer la confiance accordée au praticien. la fiabilité est considérée comme fondamentale pour comprendre et résoudre les questions d'éthique. les praticiens qui adoptent ce principe: • agissent dans le respect de la confiance qui leur est placée; • veillent à ce que les attentes des clients aient des chances raisonnables d'être satisfaites; • honorent leurs engagements et leurs promesses; • considèrent la confidentialité comme une obligation de confiance envers le client; • limitent toute divulgation de renseignements confidentiels sur les clients sorti de son objectif initial, à l'exception de la divulgation obligatoire (ex: une loi d'un territoire exige une telle divulgation). justice la justice implique le traitement équitable et impartial de tous les clients et la provision de services adéquats. le principe de justice exige que les praticiens qui adoptent ce principe soient honnêtes et équitables envers tous clients et respectent leurs droits humains et leur dignité. l'attention est attirée sur la nécessité d'examiner consciencieusement toutes les exigences et obligations légales et de rester attentif aux conflits potentiels entre les obligations légales et éthiques. la justice dans la distribution des services exige la capacité de déterminer de façon impartiale la prestation des services rendus aux clients et la répartition des services entre clients. un engagement envers l'équité exige la capacité d'apprécier les différences entre les personnes et de s'engager en faveur de l'égalité des chances et des résultats, et d'éviter la discrimination contre des individus ou des groupes en se basant sur leurs caractéristiques personnelles ou sociales. en d'autres termes, la justice implique qu'il n'y ait pas de discrimination injuste fondée sur certaines caractéristiques (ex: le sexe ou l'âge). les praticiens ont le devoir de tout mettre en œuvre pour assurer une prestation équitable de services accessibles et adaptés aux besoins des clients potentiels. autonomie l'autonomie implique le respect du droit du client à s’autogérer. ce principe souligne l'importance de développer la capacité d'un client à être autonome dans la prestation des guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 13 services et dans tous les aspects de la vie. le principe d'autonomie s'oppose à la manipulation des clients contre leur gré, même à des fins bénéfiques pour la société. des praticiens qui respectent l'autonomie de leurs clients: • s'assurent de l'exactitude de toute promotion ou de toute information donnée à l'avance sur les prestations offertes; • cherchent à obtenir un consentement libre et éclairé tout au long de la relation; • mettent l'accent sur la valeur de la participation volontaire aux prestations offertes; • concluent des contrats explicites avant que le client ne s'y engage, et revoient/révisent les modalités de ce contrat tout au long de leur relation; • protègent la vie privée; • protègent la confidentialité; • exceptionnellement, divulguer des renseignements confidentiels après consentement de la personne concernée; • informent le client à l'avance des potentiels conflits d’intérêt, ou le plus tôt possible après que ces conflits se sont manifestés. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 14 section 2: application pratique des lignes directrices d'éthique cette section contient recommandations et exemples pour l'application contextuelle de ces lignes directrices en matière d'éthique. le contenu est conçu pour approfondir la réflexion tout en fournissant des outils utiles et un guide d'auto-évaluation pour résoudre et soutenir la prise de décision éthique dans la pratique. trois considérations importantes avant d'appliquer des ipp spécifiques, il convient d'évaluer et d'apprécier les trois facteurs importants suivants, qui constituent la pierre angulaire des meilleures pratiques (barlow, allen et choate, 2004): 1. est-ce que l’ipp est adaptée à la situation ? cela peut être vérifié en consultant la littérature spécialisée et les publications de sources fiables. par exemple, avant d'appliquer une ipp spécifique sur le sujet de la gratitude, vérifiez s'il existe des preuves publiées qui montrent que cette ipp en particulier est une technique prometteuse pour le client concerné. 2. est-ce que l’ipp correspond aux besoins du client ? 3. de quelle façon l'efficacité de l’ipp sera-t-elle évaluée ? en d'autres termes, quels résultats spécifiques peuvent être identifiés et légitimement évalués pour déterminer l'efficacité de l’ipp ? prise de décision éthique la prise de décision éthique peut être facilitée par: une connaissance adéquate de ces lignes directrices éthiques ainsi que des lignes directrices d'une profession associée, la conscience du comportement éthique vertueux des autres et l'utilisation des forces personnelles dans la prise de décision. la connaissance: nous nous attendons à ce que les principaux utilisateurs de ces lignes directrices, à savoir les ppp ayant une éducation, une formation et une expérience adéquates dans la pratique de la psychologie ou dans des domaines connexes, connaissent et puissent décrire ces lignes directrices en matière d'éthique et toute ligne directrice en rapport avec leur profession et leur statut professionnel. la plupart des juridictions soulignent que les praticiens doivent être informés des règles, normes, règlements, statuts et procédures en vigueur. comportement: le comportement éthique, en particulier lors de l'emploi des ipp, ne peut pas simplement provenir des connaissances intellectuelles. le comportement éthique devrait être étroitement lié aux comportements et méthodes collectifs. pouvez-vous identifier dans votre milieu professionnel les personnes qui sont des modèles en matière de pratiques éthiques ? bien que vos collègues ne soulignent pas explicitement de telles pratiques, en raison de leur modestie, vous êtes encouragés à demander explicitement à vos pairs ou à la communauté professionnelle au sens large (organisation régionale ou internationale) comment ils respectent les exigences éthiques dans votre domaine. la constitution d'un registre des bonnes pratiques sera utile pour la réflexion par rapport à son propre comportement. si le nombre de cas accumulés est suffisant, des exemples d'excellence apparaîtront probablement. idéalement, les praticiens créeront un réseau accessible auquel d'autres praticiens auront une opportunité de contribuer. utiliser ces forces pour prendre des décisions éthiques: les forces peuvent être bénéfiques de plusieurs manières, dans la prise de décisions éthiques. par exemple, l'identification des forces guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 15 exemplaires peut aider à la prise de décision éthique actuelle. identifiez un collègue qui représente un modèle de comportement éthique exemplaire. réfléchissez à la façon dont ils ont géré un dilemme ou une situation éthique spécifique ou, plus généralement, aux forces spécifiques qu'ils incarnent dans leurs interactions quotidiennes avec leurs collègues et clients, et qui méritent d'être reproduits pour faciliter la prise de décision. considérations de travail il y a une variété de considérations à prendre en compte dans le travail avec les clients qui peuvent avoir des implications éthiques immédiates et importantes. en particulier, il est pertinent de considérer: les changements chez les clients, les changements dans les environnements dans lesquels se trouvent les ppp et les clients, l'état émotionnel actuel et le niveau de bien-être des clients et des ppp, la tendance des clients à l'évitement, les différences de pouvoir relationnel, un emploi exagéré des forces, une sagesse pratique, l'énoncé de la formation et des compétences, ainsi que l'importance des contextes culturels variés. la prise en compte de ces aspects peut aider à atténuer, anticiper ou prévenir certaines conséquences involontaires et désagréables. changements chez les clients. lorsque vous offrez des services psychologiques, il est important de surveiller le bien-être psychologique des clients tout au long du traitement ou de l'intervention. certains clients se détériorent, malgré l'efficacité démontrée d'une ipp. les symptômes peuvent s'aggraver pour un certain nombre de raisons, ce qui rend les clients vulnérables. le client ne partage pas nécessairement cette information avec le praticien, peut-être parce qu'il peut avoir honte, avoir peur ou hésiter à décevoir le praticien qui s'efforce d'améliorer son mieux-être. le plus souvent, l'objectif explicite des ipp n'est pas l'amélioration des symptômes, mais plutôt la stimulation du bien-être. il est important de suivre l'évolution des circonstances dans la vie des clients et de calibrer les ipp en fonction de ces changements. par exemple, si le client vit une rupture ou perd son emploi, il est important que le praticien puisse aborder ces changements et en évaluer l'impact. les praticiens devraient être prêts à suspendre une ipp en cours et à adapter l'approche en fonction des besoins actuels et futurs, ou à référer à un autre professionnel, le cas échéant. le manquement à cette obligation peut avoir un impact négatif sur la relation, qui pourrait ne pas être réparé. changements dans les environnements intégrés en plus de considérer les changements chez les clients, il est important de tenir compte de l'environnement dans lequel les clients et les praticiens se trouvent. prenons l'exemple d'un ppp qui est aussi un clinicien. les cliniciens contemporains travaillent dans des environnements très complexes, rapides et sous pression, marqués par des défis tels que le manque de programmes de traitement fondés sur des données factuelles, le manque de compétences culturelles ainsi que les besoins chroniques et complexes des clients qui touchent des domaines multiples de leur vie. compte tenu de ces défis, considérez des clients qui: • peuvent avoir perdu leur emploi ou des contrats importants, ou encore ne pas avoir de promotion méritoire parce qu'ils ne conviennent pas à l'équipe; • peuvent avoir récemment reçu un diagnostic de maladie grave; • sont confrontés à la trahison ou à d'autres formes de mauvais traitements de la part de leur partenaire; • sont victimes d'un incident de discrimination; guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 16 • sont soumis à des événements environnementaux destructeurs tels que des inondations ou des incendies de forêt, ou à des problèmes mondiaux tels que la famine. songez à la manière dont ces défis pourraient affecter les clients et influencer leurs traitements. ces cas présentent une variété de questions différentes qui doivent être considérées et traitées de différentes façons, tout en tenant compte des règlements et des normes de la profession à laquelle la personne est affiliée. par conséquent, il est important que lorsque les ppp offrent des ipp, ils apprennent à connaître leurs clients ainsi que leurs environnements et les changements récents ou actuels de leur situation. les praticiens doivent également être conscients des défis qui se posent dans leur propre environnement de travail. par exemple, un nouveau directeur peut approuver ou s'opposer à certains ipp ou préférer une autre approche thérapeutique (ex: la programmation neurolinguistique, les thérapies fondées sur la pleine conscience, la thérapie d'engagement d'acceptation). les changements peuvent avoir des répercussions directes ou indirectes sur la pratique des ipp, y compris d'un point de vue éthique. état émotionnel présent et niveau de bien-être tout en offrant des ipp, il est important d'évaluer les changements chez les clients ainsi que leur état émotionnel présent et leur niveau de bien-être. il est important que les ppp pratiquent dans les limites de leurs compétences et de leur formation. pour les clients qui présentent des problèmes liés à la psychopathologie (c.-à-d., dépression, anxiété, traumatisme), le ppp devrait alors faire appel à un professionnel approprié, qualifié et expérimenté. si de tels problématiques ne sont pas présents au début de la relation professionnelle, le ppp doit être attentif quant à leur apparition lorsque le client est impliqué dans une ipp et il doit être prêt à référer ce dernier auprès d’un professionnel suffisamment qualifié. idéalement, le praticien devrait discuter avec le client et demander conseil auprès de collègues et d’experts appropriés afin d’évaluer la durée adéquate pour maintenir l’ipp dans un tel cas. évitement l'évitement est l'un des mécanismes les plus couramment utilisés pour faire face aux émotions négatives. une vie psychologique saine implique d'être conscient et d'utiliser de façon adapté tous les aspects de la sphère émotionnelle. certains clients à la recherche de ipp, peuvent éviter des émotions négatives plus profondes en raison de leur malaise et peuvent rechercher des ipp avec l'espoir de dissiper leurs émotions négatives ou de les tenir à distance. parmi les exemples de sources d'émotions négatives, il y a les souvenirs d'une rupture douloureuse ou d'un divorce, la trahison par un ami de confiance, le ressentiment d'être victime de discrimination et d'être traité de façon injuste ou biaisée par une personne ou une institution. une façon d'évaluer l'évitement est de prêter attention aux émotions négatives qui se retrouvent dans les conversations même si elles ne sont pas discutées explicitement (c.-à-d. les émotions qui dérangent constamment les clients et qui, pourtant, ne sont délibérément pas discutées). bien que les ipp ouvrent de nouveaux territoires apportant d’autant plus de preuves, sur le fait que les émotions positives et les forces de caractère peuvent améliorer et réparer les états négatifs (rashid et seligman, 2018), cela est uniquement vrai si les états négatifs sont intégrés de manière significative au traitement. si les émotions négatives fortes sont évitées par les clients ou les praticiens, l'efficacité du traitement peut être compromise. les différentiels de pouvoir l'une des caractéristiques essentielles de toute interaction psychologique entre un praticien et un client est la dynamique du pouvoir inhérente à la relation, et en particulier le différentiel de guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 17 pouvoir. les thérapeutes, les conseillers, les travailleurs sociaux et autres professionnels de ce genre sont habituellement au courant de cette différence. par conséquent, ils s'efforcent de créer un espace sûr, sans jugement, confidentiel et accueillant dans lequel les clients ne se sentent pas de simples bénéficiaires passifs des services prescrits. néanmoins, la nature de la transaction est telle entre le praticien et le client que le praticien est inévitablement perçu comme un expert. les clients ont tendance à les considérer comme possédant des connaissances, une formation et une expérience de pointe en matière de réalisation des ipp. par conséquent, le différentiel de pouvoir est toujours présent. le praticien doit être conscient de ce différentiel et doit éviter toute situation où le client ou bien le praticien pourrait avoir à prendre une décision qui pourrait être influencée par ce différentiel de pouvoir. l’emploi exagéré des forces le recours insuffisant ou excessif à certaines pratiques fondées sur les forces peut amplifier les difficultés existantes. par exemple, dans divers contextes de coaching, suggérer aux clients d'être plus prudents peut les rendre plus anxieux ou indécis. les clients ayant recours au le pardon sans considérer ni le moment ni à la personne concernée peuvent négliger des offenses qui, si elles ne font l'objet d'aucun contrôle ou ne sont pas expliquées, peuvent nuire à autrui. les clients qui abusent de leur créativité peuvent trouver difficile d'adhérer à des normes ou à des règles qui favorisent l'équité et l'égalité des chances. les clients qui s'engagent à prendre des décisions équitables dans leur milieu de travail peuvent avoir de la difficulté à concilier les réalités opposées qui existent dans la même sphère (ex: faire face aux décisions mal avisées prises par une personne bien informée et bien formée). la sagesse pratique les praticiens ont besoin de ce que le philosophe aristote a appelé "phronesis ", c'est-à-dire la sagesse pratique pour appliquer ces lignes directives. prenons l'exemple d'un praticien qui travaille avec un cadre supérieur avec lequel il a établi une excellente relation et qui a aussi fait de très bons progrès dans son travail. toutefois, le praticien constate que le cadre est impliqué dans un comportement contraire à l'éthique. le praticien doit-il préserver la relation solide ou confronter la personne en mettant à risque la relation ? un seul ensemble de lignes directrices peut être insuffisant. le praticien doit interpréter la situation et équilibrer les motifs contradictoires. dans de tels cas, la sagesse pratique se construit à partir d'une expérience accumulée et de bons liens relationnels avec des collègues qui peuvent conseiller et aider à la réflexion éthique. entretenir la capacité de résilience et prévenir le burnout. un certain nombre de constructions en pp peuvent protéger le praticien contre le burnout. les émotions positives (ex: l'espoir, la sérénité, la joie, l'intérêt et la révérence) peuvent diversifier les ressources attentionnelles, cognitives et comportementales d'un praticien, ce qui peut exercer fonction de boucliers contre des vulnérabilités comme les symptômes du burn out (ex. l'exténuation émotionnelle). les activités personnelles comme la pleine conscience peuvent également aider à cet égard. les forces interpersonnelles (ex. l'intelligence sociale, la gentillesse, l'amour, l'humour, la raison d'être et le sens, ainsi que le travail en équipe) peuvent aider à relever des défis comme la dépersonnalisation (un état dans lequel les pensées et les sentiments semblent irréels ou ne pas faire partie de soi). de même, une raison d'être et un but peuvent restaurer un ressenti personnel de dépersonnalisation. déclaration d'éducation et de compétence. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 18 les praticiens doivent notifier les limites de leurs compétences en ce qui concerne des conditions psychologiques spécifiques, des groupes spécifiques (ex: travailler avec les enfants, d'autres cultures, travailler en groupe) et des ipp spécifiques. par exemple, un praticien peut avoir de l'expérience dans l'évaluation des forces chez les adultes, mais pas dans l'évaluation des forces des enfants ou des adolescents. de plus, au fur et à mesure que la prestation des services se poursuit, elle peut s'étendre à des domaines dans lesquels le praticien est moins expérimenté ou qualifié. par exemple, alors qu'un praticien peut être aguerri et qualifié pour proposer des interventions aux enfants, adolescents et adultes, il peut ne pas être expérimenté ou qualifié pour fournir de tels services dans un contexte familial, ce qui rend nécessaire une référence ou d'autres structures de soutien. en outre, les praticiens devraient déclarer la formation scolaire et l'expérience pertinente sur lesquelles se fonde leur prestation de services. par exemple, un praticien remplit un certificat d'une durée de six mois qui comprend une semaine d'interaction en face à face, le reste du cours étant suivi en ligne. le certificat n'est pas reconnu par une autorité municipale, régionale ou nationale. le site web du praticien indique qu'il est un "praticien certifié en psychologie positive". il n'a pas d'autres titres de compétence professionnels. est-ce éthique ? il est important d'informer explicitement vos clients de la nature, de la portée et des limites de votre formation professionnelle, de votre pratique et de vos diplômes, au-delà de votre titre de travail. prise en compte de l'importance du contexte culturel. la prise de décision éthique ne devrait pas être fondée uniquement sur la prise de conscience, la connaissance ou la compréhension cognitive. les décisions devraient également refléter les meilleures données factuelles disponibles ainsi que les circonstances du contexte culturel. le contexte culturel est essentiel à la prestation des ipp, car la conceptualisation de ce qui est normal, bon ou adapté est façonnée par les valeurs que la culture et le contexte social dans lesquels la préoccupation ou le dilemme présentés, sont jugés souhaitables. de plus, les cultures et les normes sociales diffèrent dans la façon dont des émotions spécifiques sont reconnues, exprimées ou amplifiées. par conséquent, il est important que les lignes directrices pour une pratique éthique des ipp soient enracinées dans de telles constatations. les lignes directrices en matière d'éthique présentées ici sont suffisamment larges pour tenir compte du contexte culturel, tout en étant suffisamment fines pour tenir compte des différences et des besoins individuels. cette intégration des données factuelles, y compris les éléments culturels et individuels, peut être facilement ou rapidement accessible. bien qu'une telle intégration n'aboutisse pas nécessairement à un déroulement, un processus ou un résultat parfait sur le plan éthique, la sagesse collective aide les personnes qui visent l'excellence sur le plan éthique à s'y retrouver dans les situations qui leur sont propres. de nouveaux territoires s’ouvrent, de nouvelles voies sont tracées et l'excellence peut finalement être atteinte. avoir la structure de ces lignes directrices est donc crucial pour ancrer la pensée et les actions d'une personne. ces lignes directrices servent également à évaluer dans quelle mesure les actions d'une personne sont proches ou éloignées de l'excellence éthique. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 19 résoudre les dilemmes éthiques guide étape par étape bien qu'il soit impossible d'être complètement à l'abri des dilemmes éthiques, les étapes suivantes, largement adaptées de "ethics in psychology" (koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998), parmi d’autres sources, aideront un praticien à prendre de bonnes décisions éthiques: • exercez conformément à l'ensemble des lois, des règlements et des normes de pratique professionnelle, de conduite et des lignes directrices, tel que stipulé par l'organisme qui délivre les agréments dans votre juridiction. de tels renseignements aideront le praticien à faire face aux dilemmes éthiques. • développez une perception précise de la façon dont le même événement peut différer d'une personne à une autre. discutez avec une personne de confiance et impartiale pour savoir si la question soulève des dilemmes éthiques ayant de sérieuses conséquences. discutez avec vos pairs pour voir si ce que vous percevez est une infraction à l'éthique, ou simplement une mauvaise conduite professionnelle, ou bien une situation qui pose un danger pour vous-même ou pour le public. • examinez les lignes directrices, les règles et les normes pertinentes déjà publiées. assurez-vous de bien les interpréter et, au besoin, demandez conseil. les lignes directrices écrites sont parfois abstraites et peu claires, et laissent une grande place à l'interprétation subjective. • rassemblez toutes les informations les plus pertinentes et les plus fiables que vous pouvez trouver. identifiez les lacunes existantes en matière d'information et documentez les faits et les préoccupations. • intégrez toute l'information dans votre processus de réflexion et consultez une personne bien informée, ouverte d'esprit et qui n'a pas peur de signaler les lacunes potentielles d'un praticien. • évaluez comment les six principes éthiques de ces lignes directrices s'appliquent (c.-à-d. bienfaisance/non-malfaisance, bienveillance responsable, respect des droits et de la dignité des personnes, fiabilité, justice, autonomie). par exemple, évaluer les droits, les responsabilités et les vulnérabilités de toutes les personnes concernées. • faites un remue-méninge sur plusieurs solutions et évaluez chacune aussi objectivement que possible. • réfléchissez aux forces de caractère qui pourraient vous aider à prendre la décision éthique la plus judicieuse. pourriez-vous vous tourner vers votre sens plus profond de l'équité, de l'honnêteté ou de la gentillesse ? votre bravoure peut-être, est-elle nécessaire pour vous motiver à « faire ce qu'il faut » ? rappelez-vous que les décisions éthiques exigent l'utilisation de plusieurs forces de caractère utilisées de façon optimale et en combinaison, pas seulement une force isolée ou une force « abondamment utilisée » (niemiec, 2018). • visualisez le résultat de votre action ou de votre inaction. • avant de prendre une décision, réfléchissez à l'impact qu'elle aura sur vous, sur toutes les autres personnes concernées et aux conséquences systématiques qu'elle pourrait avoir. réfléchissez également aux types de soutien dont vous pourriez avoir besoin pour respecter votre décision. • traduisez la décision en actions concrètes qui reflètent vraiment le sens de votre décision. un certain nombre d'actions peuvent illustrer votre décision. choisissez des mesures qui traduisent votre décision de façon précise et valide, qui sont mesurables, guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 20 qui sont liées aux résultats souhaités et qui causent le moins d'inconvénients ou de dommages possibles aux personnes qui ne sont pas directement concernées. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 21 guide d'auto-évaluation la section suivante présente des questions de réflexion, à l'intention des praticiens, qui permettent d'éviter les dilemmes éthiques à la lumière des meilleures pratiques. ajustement ipp: avant tout, en se fondant sur les meilleures données scientifiques disponibles, décider si une ipp en particulier (ex: journal de gratitude, utilisation des forces en particulier, exercice de pardon) convient au client, compte tenu de ses problèmes présentés, des circonstances et de la raison pour laquelle l'accompagnement est recommandé. timing de l’ipp: quelles étapes suivrez-vous pour décider quand l’ipp est appropriée ? 1) au début de l'accompagnement, 2) alors que l’ipp a déjà commencé ? dans quelles conditions envisageriez-vous un autre traitement ou un service concurrent ou alternatif ? la prise de conscience de sa propre santé mentale: à quel point êtes-vous conscient de votre propre santé mentale ? le fait d'être un praticien ne vous immunise pas contre les symptômes de maladie mentale qui peuvent évoluer vers une gamme clinique. quelles sont les étapes ou les mesures que vous prenez régulièrement pour prendre soin de votre propre santé mentale afin de pouvoir servir vos clients de façon optimale ? quels sont les obstacles que vous rencontrez pour prendre soin de vous, comme le manque de temps et de ressources, le sentiment ou la conviction que vous allez très bien et l'accès à des professionnels appropriés et pertinents qui peuvent prendre soin de votre santé mentale ? déclaration obligatoire: dans quelle mesure vous sentez-vous à l'aise de prendre des actions contre un client qui pourrait bien répondre aux ipp, mais qui souhaite la confidentialité lorsqu'il signale par inadvertance un incident (récent ou passé) ou une situation continue qui pourrait impliquer, par exemple, de la violence envers un enfant ou une personne âgée, des abus sexuels, une menace imminente pour la sécurité d'une personne ? si vous n'exercez pas votre profession en vertu du code ou des lignes directrices d'un organisme professionnel, êtesvous légalement tenu de le signaler ? exagération et généralisation: vous rencontrez quelqu'un à une conférence qui semble passionné par le thème des ipp et vous invite à assister à un atelier qu’il délivre. vous assistez à l'atelier, qui s'appuie sur quelques études que vous connaissez bien. les résultats, les applications et l’extension des études sont présentés de manière exagérée. la plupart des participants trouvent la présentation « transformationnelle » et semblent croire aux résultats. qu'est-ce que vous feriez ? pouvez-vous suivre les étapes de la section « résoudre les dilemmes éthiques » pour guider votre comportement dans un tel contexte ? guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 22 section trois: cas pratique de l’éthique les cas suivants sont des illustrations pratiques qui peuvent présenter une composante éthique en rapport avec les principes énoncés dans les présentes lignes directrices éthiques.6 cas 1: culturel application des ipp à sensibilité culturelle les décisions éthiques doivent refléter les données les plus fiables disponibles dans les circonstances du contexte culturel. considérez l’lustration suivante. suzanne est une praticienne australienne qui travaille avec une cliente de sexe féminin avec des origines culturelles d'asie de l'est. la cliente veut travailler sur son développement personnel et préserver la relation avec sa famille. suzanne choisit de pratiquer l'exercice "la meilleure version de soi-même". suzanne suit toutes les étapes pour guider le client tout au long de l'exercice. d'une manière ou d'une autre, bien qu'elle se soit beaucoup développée, la cliente signale que ses relations avec sa famille se sont détériorées. par conséquent, aucune amélioration significative du bien-être du client n'est identifiés par des tests répétés en ligne. une implication importante dans cette séquence est la prise en compte de la notion de soimême, qui varie d'une culture à l'autre. suzanne suit un concept de développement personnel souvent associé à l'occident qui englobe la croissance personnelle et la prise d'initiatives nouvelles et largement individuelles. par contrat, le développement personnel dans les cultures orientales (et dans la plupart des cultures non occidentales) est considéré comme accordant une importance relative à l'investissement dans les relations, à l'amélioration des interactions sociales et à la préservation des traditions familiales, de groupe et de la vie de tribus. malgré une diversité culturelle croissante dans la plupart des métropoles urbaines, les différences culturelles essentielles sont toujours présentes. une conséquence importante de ces différences est que la cliente dans cette séquence peut avoir intérêt à découvrir comment elle peut utiliser ses forces de caractère pour apporter des bienfaits à sa famille ou pour établir un lien plus profond avec elle. suzanne peut utiliser les interventions sur les forces de caractère de "diriger ses forces vers autrui" ou de "forces de caractère de l'appréciation" (niemiec, 2018) dans lesquelles sa cliente apprend à transposer ses meilleures qualités personnelles en mécanismes de construction de relations profitant aux autres et privilégiant un moyen de reconnaissance et de valorisation des qualités personnelles des membres de sa famille. il se peut aussi que le développement personnel soutenu par d'autres personnes importantes puisse entraîner des progrès profonds et durables quant au bien-être. cependant, dans une culture d'interdépendance, le développement personnel, qui implique probablement des membres de la famille proche, exige aussi de la gestion d'interactions plus complexes sur une longue période. par opposition, l'activité "meilleure version de soi-même", qui met l'accent sur l'amélioration des forces individuelles ou la prise d'une nouvelle initiative, peut demander un temps relativement plus court. par conséquent, il est impératif que les ppp réfléchissent à la meilleure façon d'adapter culturellement leurs exercices. les considérations éthiques suivantes sont des exemples pertinents pour le cas ci-dessus: 6 nous sommes reconnaissants aux personnes suivantes qui ont fourni ces cas : cas 1 et 3 tayyab rashid, cas 2 annalise roache, cas 4 stewart donaldson, cas 5 matthew iasiello, et cas 6 denise quinlan. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 23 • prise en charge responsable le ppp doit essayer de prendre soin du client d'une manière qui tient compte des particularités de sa situation et de ses antécédents. • bienfaisance/non-malfaisance le ppp a le devoir de ne pas causer de nuisance. • respect des droits et de la dignité des personnes le ppp a la responsabilité d'être sensible aux dynamiques interculturelles et de respecter la perspective et les besoins du client. cas 2: coaching coacher les clients avec des changements de circonstance les dilemmes éthiques peuvent apparaître de façon inattendue et nécessiter un ajustement dans l'accompagnement. considérez l’illustration suivante. amanda a eu recours au coaching parce qu'elle ressentait un manque de direction et de sens dans sa vie. auparavant, elle avait accordé beaucoup d'importance à l'avancement professionnel, désormais, elle estime qu'elle doit rechercher une approche plus équilibrée de la vie, de plus, elle se sent triste et décontenancée du fait de n'avoir fait davantage dans sa vie (sauf pour améliorer sa carrière). au cours de la première séance, elle a identifié plusieurs domaines sur lesquels elle aimerait se concentrer, notamment la gestion financière (pour le financement de l'achat d'une maison), le développement personnel et l'augmentation du temps social et des loisirs. elle a mentionné que son emploi actuel était stimulant et qu'elle envisageait un changement à l'avenir, mais qu'il ne s'agissait pas d'une priorité pour le moment pour le coaching. au cours des deux premières séances, au cours desquelles les objectifs ont été établis et les mesures à prendre clarifiées, des progrès ont été réalisés dans la direction qu'elle avait indiquée comme étant importante, et le coaching a progressé de façon satisfaisante. cependant, au début de la quatrième session, amanda a annoncé que sa situation professionnelle s'était brusquement détériorée et qu'elle avait démissionné, ayant déjà trouvé un nouvel emploi. la démission n'avait pas été bien perçue et amanda se sentait inquiète et très émotionnelle au travail, où elle avait encore quatre semaines de préavis à effectuer. elle dit se sentir interpellée par la réaction de son supérieur à sa démission, qui lui renvoie des affrontements émotionnels identiques à ceux connus dans son adolescence. a ce stade, il était impératif pour le coach de maintenir sa force de maîtrise de soi et de ne pas faire de suggestion hâtive en raison de la remontée des facteurs de stress d'amanda. à partir de là, le coach pourrait se tourner vers la force de la curiosité pour vérifier comment amanda aimerait procéder dans l'immédiat, et être ouvert à un changement d'orientation au cours de la ou des séances. il peut également être important de comprendre la nature de la réaction émotionnelle d'amanda pour déterminer si le coaching est un dispositif sans danger et approprié pour ses besoins actuels. bien que le coach puisse avoir conclu un contrat avec amanda pour un nombre déterminé de sessions, les changements dans la situation du client doivent éclairer la façon appropriée de procéder. les considérations éthiques suivantes sont des exemples pertinents pour le cas ci-dessus: • prise en charge responsable le coach a la responsabilité fondamentale de faire preuve de gentillesse et d'équité pour préserver le bien-être d'amanda et reconnaître les limites de son expertise. • autonomie ici, le coach pourrait se concentrer sur le développement de la capacité d'amanda à faire preuve d'autonomie dans l'accompagnement et dans tous les aspects guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 24 de la vie. de plus, le coach pourrait revoir les termes du contrat et les modifier au cours de l'accompagnement. • bienfaisance/non-malfaisance – le coach, agissant dans le meilleur intérêt d'amanda et sur la base d'une évaluation professionnelle, devrait être conscient de travailler strictement dans les limites de ses compétences et de fournir des services sur la base d'une formation et d'une expérience adéquates. cas 3: clinique travail avec des clients ayant subi un traumatisme la plupart des personnes qui ont vécu un traumatisme se sentent submergées de nombreuses façons multi culturellement nuancées, en particulier si elles travaillent sur une ipp. ils peuvent développer des stratégies élaborées pour éviter de penser, de se rappeler ou de se comporter d'une manière qui pourrait être associée à leur traumatisme. lorsque l'on offre des ipp, il est important d'évaluer ces traumatismes (qu'ils soient anciens et/ou actuels). sans le minimiser ou le rejeter, le praticien doit intervenir s'il a de l'expertise ou, dans le cas contraire, référer le client en temps opportun. le praticien doit également être vigilant au cas où un traumatisme pourrait survenir pendant que le client est en cours de traitement par une ipp. le praticien doit discuter avec le client et consulter ses pairs ainsi que des experts en la matière afin de déterminer quel est le calendrier approprié pour maintenir l’ipp dans un tel cas. considérez l'illustration suivante. salma, 21 ans, a un long historique de violence physique, psychologique et sexuelle. elle cherche des traitements en raison de ses sentiments persistants de dépression. elle s'attend à ce que le thérapeute lui pose explicitement des questions sur les événements traumatisants de sa vie. au lieu de cela, elle se voit remettre un petit questionnaire qui ne comprend aucune question sur les traumatismes actuels ou passés. lors des séances de consultation, salma constate qu'elle n'aime pas le conseiller et choisit de ne pas révéler les détails de son traumatisme. ainsi, le traitement reste superficiellement efficace et une nouvelle série de séances de traitement lui est prescrite dans les six mois. comme le montre le cas ci-dessus, il est important de poser des questions explicites sur le traumatisme (bien que cela exige une grande sensibilité, et peut-être aussi une formation clinique). selon la relation, certains clients poseront explicitement des questions connexes et demanderont des conseils, des suggestions, des stratégies d'adaptation ou des ressources culturellement appropriées. il est important que, pendant que l’ipp est en cours de réalisation et, que des détails traumatiques récents ou éloignés font surface, le praticien intervient d'une façon qui répond aux besoins du client. tout d’abord, le praticien doit être suffisamment qualifié, formé et expérimenté face à ce type de situation. les praticiens doivent régulièrement mettre à profit leurs forces d'humilité et de prudence en vérifiant périodiquement s'ils doivent continuer à dispenser des services ou, inversement, si le client serait mieux traité par une personne possédant une expertise plus spécifique pour fournir les suggestions, les compétences et les stratégies que certains clients demandent ou ont besoin. les considérations éthiques suivantes sont des exemples pertinents pour le cas ci-dessus: • prise en charge responsable le ppp a la responsabilité de prendre soin de salma d'une manière qui tienne compte des spécificités de sa situation et de ses antécédents. • bienfaisance/non-malfaisance le ppp a à la fois la responsabilité de ne pas nuire davantage à salma et de promouvoir son bien-être. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 25 cas 4: organisationnel pressions pour fausser les données un grand nombre d'interventions sur l’organisation et le travail positif sont évaluées pour déterminer leur efficacité. les dilemmes éthiques peuvent apparaître de façon inattendue lorsque les clients n'acceptent pas les résultats et font pression sur les praticiens pour qu'ils omettent ou déforment les données d'évaluation. considérez l'illustration suivante et notez comment un certain nombre de forces de caractère sont sous-utilisées, notamment l'honnêteté et l'intégrité, la perspective et la sagesse, le leadership et l'humilité. l'entreprise xyz a embauché un spécialiste de pp pour améliorer l'ambiance et la performance de ses employés. en consultation avec la direction de l'entreprise, elle a décidé d'offrir un programme de formation pour accroître le capital psychologique des employés (espoir, efficacité, résilience et optimisme). les données d'évaluation ont montré que les employés ont adoré la formation et voulaient plus de formation en psychologie positive dans le futur. cependant, les données de l'évaluation ont montré qu'il n'y avait pas de différences significatives dans les niveaux d'espoir, d'efficacité, de résilience, d'optimisme, de motivation ou de performance entre les employés sélectionnés de manière aléatoire pour participer à la formation et ceux du groupe de comparaison. les dirigeants de l'entreprise xyz étaient si contents que leurs employés aient apprécié la formation qu'ils ne désiraient pas que ces derniers voient les résultats décourageants de l'évaluation. au lieu de cela, ils demandèrent au praticien de déclarer que la formation avait été un grand succès et que plus de formations similaires seraient offertes aux employés dans l'avenir. les considérations éthiques suivantes sont des exemples pertinents pour le cas ci-dessus: • autonomie ici, l'autonomie d'action du praticien lui est retirée. • bienfaisance/non-malfaisance la bienfaisance implique un engagement à promouvoir le bien-être du client, et ce niveau de dissimulation préconisé par les dirigeants de l'entreprise n'est pas dans le meilleur intérêt des collaborateurs. de plus, pour agir de façon bénéfique, il faut fournir des prestations basées sur une formation ou une expérience adéquate. • fiabilité ici, on demande au praticien d'exagérer les résultats et de généraliser l'efficacité de l’ipp, ce qui ne respecte pas la confiance placée dans le praticien par les collaborateurs. cas 5: mentorat motiver les participants " réticents " dans une relation déséquilibrée bien souvent, ceux qui sont les plus résistants à une intervention sont ceux qui en tireraient le plus de bénéfices. les ppps se trouvent dans une situation difficile lorsqu'ils tentent de motiver ou de persuader un client de participer à une intervention à son avantage, sans manipulation. considérez l’illustration suivante. abbie, gestionnaire de cas dans un organisme pour les jeunes, a un client qui refuse de participer aux exercices de groupe dans le cadre d'une intervention de groupe en pp. le facilitateur de l’intervention demanda à abbie de motiver sa cliente à participer aux exercices et de la convaincre des avantages de l'intervention. abbie est d'accord avec son collègue pour dire que l'intervention serait très bénéfique pour son client. abbie est conscient que les attitudes et le comportement de son client l'excluent souvent des interventions susceptibles d'être utiles, et elle décide de remettre en question l’attitude de guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 26 son client à l'égard de la participation. abbie a développé une relation de confiance et de mentorat avec le client, et n'est pas prête à compromettre son intégrité et à trahir la confiance du client en " vendant " aveuglément l'intervention au participant ou en faisant des promesses qui ne seront pas réalisées. a la place, elle décrit modestement les éléments de preuve qui étayent la thèse de l’intervention et travaille avec son client pour évaluer les coûts et les avantages de l'intervention. avec curiosité, elle pose des questions à son client au sujet des avantages et des inconvénients du a la participation à l'intervention et la façon dont les forces du client pourraient être utilisées dans le cadre d'un travail de groupe. abbie aide ensuite son client à identifier des stratégies pour minimiser le coût de participation, puis ils travaillent sur des versions simplifiées de l'intervention elle-même ainsi que sur l'emploi des forces de son client avant la séance de groupe. abbie est certain que son client bénéficiera de sa participation à l'intervention et elle ne veut pas que son client en soit exclu une fois de plus. de même, elle ne veut pas non plus trahir la confiance ou l'autonomie de son client. abbie veut défier son client et l'exposer à de nouvelles expériences, mais craint qu'une manipulation contraire à l'éthique n'entraîne des résultats négatifs pour son client et ne nuise à la qualité de leur relation difficilement gagnée. plutôt que de trop vendre ou d'exagérer les avantages de la participation, abbie s'efforce de comprendre l'attitude du client à l'égard de l'intervention, de remettre en question les préjugés cognitifs et de créer des occasions de démontrer les avantages de la formation dans le cadre rassurant d'une consultation. les considérations éthiques suivantes sont des exemples pertinents pour le cas ci-dessus: • justice le ppp a la responsabilité de veiller à ce que les clients ne soient pas exclus des interventions fondées sur une caractéristique particulière. • confiance le ppp utilise la relation de confiance avec le client pour l'encourager à évaluer ses attitudes et ses croyances, mais il ne trahit pas cette confiance. • autonomie le ppp respecte la volonté de son client et est réticent à le manipuler. cas 6: éducation mise en œuvre de programmes de bien-être avec des aspirations entravées par la pratique existante. de nombreuses écoles souhaitent adopter des programmes de bien-être. cependant, ils peuvent le faire pour diverses raisons, allant du souci du bien-être des élèves à l'amélioration de pratiques déjà bien établies, en passant par la résolution de problèmes comme celui du harcèlement à l'école. en outre, le fait d'avoir un programme de bien-être à l'école peut également être considéré comme une opportunité de marketing et un point de différenciation pour certaines écoles. considérez l’illustration suivante. un membre du personnel de l'école a été prié par la direction de l'école d'élaborer une stratégie et un plan de mieux-être pour adoption par le conseil, puis d'organiser un déploiement rapide des éléments clés. la direction d'école voulait dire aux parents prospectifs que leurs enfants bénéficieraient d'un enseignement explicite sur le bien-être dans le programme scolaire. les enseignants se sont tous vu confier des responsabilités en matière d'enseignement du bien-être, malgré le peu d'activités de développement pour le personnel dans ce domaine. de nombreux membres du personnel étaient stressés et ne se sentaient ni préparés à cet enseignement, ni à la charge de travail supplémentaire que cela représentait. un consultant a été engagé pour animer une séance de perfectionnement guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 27 professionnel d'une demi-journée sur le bien-être du personnel. certains membres du personnel ont dit au consultant qu'ils craignaient de nuire à leurs élèves parce qu'ils étaient mal équipés et qu'ils n'avaient pas les compétences de base dans ce domaine. de plus, le consultant a vu le marketing de l'école faisant la promotion de son travail sur le bien-être (ex. en décrivant l'école comme favorisant le bien-être holistique du personnel et des élèves, et en développant le bien-être à chaque rencontre). le consultant est conscient que l'école continue d'utiliser une politique disciplinaire punitive qui mine les relations entre les élèves et le personnel et ne tient pas compte des preuves scientifiques concernant les bienfaits pour le bien-être des pratiques restauratrices et du pardon. l'enseignant de collège qui a été chargé de la mise en œuvre du programme de bien-être a informé le consultant de ces questions. l'enseignant hésite à soulever les préoccupations auprès de la direction de l'école, car il a déjà été intimidé par ce groupe lorsqu'il a soulevé des questions semblables. à cette époque, sa loyauté envers l'école a été remise en question et son aptitude à continuer à enseigner a été sujette à caution. les considérations éthiques suivantes sont des exemples pertinents pour le cas ci-dessus: • bienfaisance/non-malfaisance le ppp a la responsabilité de ne pas approuver sans équivoque ou sans esprit critique une école comme étant une " école du bien-être " s'il est conscient des pratiques scolaires qui sont préjudiciables à ce bien être. • autonomie l'enseignant ne devrait pas se sentir contraint d'adopter une perspective ou une position qui entre en conflit avec son propre jugement ou ses valeurs. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 28 guides pratiques les guides suivantes (organisés par des domaines spécifiques et rangés dans un ordre alphabétique suivant leur domaine) ont été sollicités et furent utilisés pour l’élaboration de ce guide éthique de la pratique de la psychologie positive: psychologique: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). soins infirmiers • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • international – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 29 remerciements les personnes suivantes, listées dans un ordre alphabétique, ont contribué de manière substantielle, ont apporté des éléments et des retours d’information lors de la rédaction de ce guide éthique. • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 30 signataires initiaux des guides sur l’éthique pour la psychologie positive. date première de validation version validée nom et site internet des associations et entités logo 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • via institute on character • http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-psychology-andcoaching-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/psychology,-social-work-andcommunityservices/postgraduate/master-of-appliedpositive-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa • https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluation-center/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia • https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience • www.nziwr.co.nz 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • humanship • www.humanshiplb.org 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • iranian positive psychology congress 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society • http://jphp.jp/ guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 31 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology • https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india • http://nppassociation.org/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • german society for positive psychology • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 32 auteurs aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas university of east london, united kingdom sok-ho trinh university of east london, united kingdom hrafnhildur krumma jonsdottir university of east london, united kingdom date de publication publié le 27 avril 2020 references barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. 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(2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. lectures complémentaires guide éthique jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, trinh & jonsdottir 33 han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. burns, r., & crisp, d. (2021). examining the complexity of wellbeing profiles in a large crossnational community sample. international journal of wellbeing, 11(4), 24-43. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i4.1593 richard burns australian national university richard.burns@anu.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 article examining the complexity of wellbeing profiles in a large cross-national community sample richard burns · dimity crisp abstract: the existence of multiple wellbeing indicators reflecting psychological, subjective and social wellbeing domains is widely reported. however, there is limited examination of the wellbeing profiles individuals report across multiple indicators. the current paper utilises a latent profile framework to examine the extent individuals report different wellbeing profiles. participants (n = 42, 038) were from the european social survey (ess), a large multinational study who completed the ess wellbeing module. profiles analyses identified no complexity in the experiences of groups of individuals across different wellbeing indicators; individuals who scored high (or low) on one indicator scored high (or low) on the other indicators. similarly, analysis of higher-order wellbeing dimensions were consistent, no complexity was reported. different profile classes simply reflected groups of individuals who generally scored at consistent levels across multiple wellbeing indicators. keywords: latent class analysis; mixture analysis; profile analysis; psychological wellbeing; subjective wellbeing; social wellbeing. 1. introduction wellbeing is a fundamental issue for quality of life research (benyamini et al., 2000; boehm & kubzansky, 2012; veenhoven, 1995). wellbeing is frequently described in terms of multiple wellbeing indicators that are usually ascribed to one of two theoretical frameworks, psychological (pwb) and subjective (swb) wellbeing (deci & ryan, 2000; huppert et al., 2009; keyes et al., 2002). while pwb is reflected by eudaimonic indicators of personal functioning (e.g. purpose in life, mastery), swb emphasises hedonic indicators of personal feeling (e.g. positive and negative mood) and appraisal (e.g. life satisfaction). a multi-dimensional wellbeing structure with two higher-order factors reflecting pwb and swb is frequently described in the literature (burns & machin, 2009; compton et al., 1996; hervás & vázquez, 2013; linley et al., 2009). in addition, extensions to a two factor hierarchical structure have emphasised a third dimension reflecting social and inter-personal wellbeing (sowb) (gallagher et al., 2009; huppert et al., 2009; keyes, 1998). there has been debate however whether a correlated or hierarchical factor structure is the best theoretical model for describing the relationship between multiple wellbeing domains. while many researchers may emphasise better comparative fit of a correlated factor structure, models that utilise a superordinate higher-order factor reflected by lower-order swb, pwb and sowb factors, often report acceptable and comparable fit (gallagher et al., 2009; ryff & keyes, 1995). and there are a number of studies that have identified models which incorporate a superordinate higher-order factor structure as better fitting than models with correlated wellbeing about:blank the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 factors only (burns, 2020; hervás & vázquez, 2013; kim et al., 2016; van horn et al., 2004). increasingly, analyses within a bi-factor modelling framework, tend to support an argument that multiple wellbeing indicators may generally reflect by a general wellbeing factor (chen et al., 2013; de bruin & du plessis, 2015; gatt et al., 2014; hides et al., 2016; jovanović, 2015; longo et al., 2020). it is important to emphasise that the existence of a higher-order or general factor structure does not negate the importance of delineating between multiple indicators that tap different wellbeing dimensions. an argument has been made that distinctions between wellbeing frameworks belies the interconnectedness between hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions (goodman et al., 2017) while disabato et al. (2016) have identified correlations in the magnitude of 0.91 and 0.99 between swb and pwb factors in their large cross-cultural study of over 7600 individuals. relatedly, in their description of the development of the wb-pro scale, marsh et al. (2020) emphasised that 15 lower-level wellbeing domains reflected an overall global wellbeing measure and that many common wellbeing measures fail to capture the breadth of wellbeing domains, emphasising the importance of capturing multiple manifest indicators to reflect an underlying general ‘wellbeing’ factor. 1.1 profiles of wellbeing complexity the ubiquity of measuring multiple wellbeing dimensions is posited by many well-being researchers (burns, 2020; chen et al., 2013; de bruin & du plessis, 2015; gatt et al., 2014; hervás & vázquez, 2013; hides et al., 2016; jovanović, 2015; kim et al., 2016; longo et al., 2020; marsh et al., 2020; van horn et al., 2004), but another theoretical approach to examining the structure of wellbeing remains to be fully explored. that is, instead of analysing the relationship between wellbeing variables within and between higher-level domains, a profile analysis framework would focus on the ways in which different wellbeing components are concurrently experienced by individuals. such an approach suggests a more complex set of inter-relationships between wellbeing components. simply, instead of a variable-focused approach in which analysis focuses on individuals’ scores on multiple variables or derived higher-order factors, the focus is on the inter-relationship between multiple variables. this approach is often described as person-centred as the focus is on individuals’ pattern of responses across multiple indicators and implies a complexity of unique individual-level wellbeing profiles which differs between other individuals who may prioritise different wellbeing indicators. there exists a substantial literature (brose et al., 2015; grühn et al., 2013; kashdan et al., 2015; o’toole et al., 2020) that has focused specifically on emotional or affective complexity, which focuses on the differentiation, covariation and variation of discrete emotions experienced simultaneously (emotional dialecticism) or the variety of emotions experienced (emotional differentiation). it is suggested that increased emotional complexity is adaptive and related to increased emotion-regulation (hay & diehl, 2011) with improved mental and health outcomes (hershfield et al., 2013; ong & bergeman, 2004). but to date there have only been limited attempts to describe wellbeing complexity that focus on the complex distributions or unique individual profiles across levels of multiple swb, pwb and sowb indicators. unfortunately, some of the methods that have been employed were methodologically naïve. for example, by categorising participants into tertile groups based on the distribution of participants on separate wellbeing dimensions, that is, by grouping individuals into levels of low, medium and high on each domain, keyes et al. (2002) was able to compare the extent to which individuals reported comparable or disparate levels of pwb and swb wellbeing. participants who reported comparable levels of pwb and swb were defined as ‘on-diagonal’ types (comparable levels of both pwb and swb; e.g. high on both), while combinations of disparate pwb and swb levels http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 were defined as the ‘off-diagonal’ type (mixed levels of pwb and swb; e.g. high on one, low on the other). keyes et al. (2002) identified that 18.6% of a sample randomly drawn from the general population had optimal well-being, in that they scored high on both pwb and swb, while 12.6% and 19.3% reported moderate and low levels on both modes of well-being, respectively. consequently, just under half of keyes’ sample (45.2%) reported disparate combinations of wellbeing, with around 7% reporting the most extreme cross-diagonal types. that is, 4.2% reported high levels of pwb and low levels of swb, and 3.1% reported high levels swb and low levels of pwb (keyes et al., 2002). other naïve methods have included using median splits to categories individuals into high or low wellbeing and distress (savoie et al., 2010). such approaches examine a more complex set of relationship between the wellbeing factors and allows for more careful consideration of the drivers of wellbeing outcomes. for instance, neuroticism was the strongest predictor in determining the on-diagonal well-being types (e.g. high levels of both swb and pwb) while extraversion and conscientiousness differentiated between individuals who scored consistently high or low on both swb and pwb (keyes et al., 2002). in terms of the more complex off-diagonal types, keyes et al. (2002) identified that it was openness to experience which most differentiated between those who reported high levels of pwb and low levels of swb from those individuals who reported low levels of pwb and high levels of swb. while informative, there are however limitations with approaches espoused by keyes et al. (2002) and savoie et al. (2010). intuitively appealing, deriving groups based on a sample’s distribution, either through the use median splits or based on tertile or quartile distributions, is biased and can lead to erroneous conclusions, depending on the underlying distribution of the variables within sample from which they are drawn (altman, 1991; bennette & vickers, 2012; greenland, 1995; van walraven & hart, 2008). such naïve methods are not to be recommended, particularly when there are more robust and methodologically sound approaches to identifying subsets of individuals who can be classified according to their complex profiles on a set of manifest indicators. more sophisticated profile analysis approaches have included the use of latent profile or mixture modelling methods (lubke & miller, 2015; muthén, 2004) which have been widely used in other fields (lu et al., 2009). in clinical contexts, these approaches have been used to identify distinct methamphetamine psychosis-symptom profiles which are distinct from other psychosis profiles as found in schizophrenia (bousman et al., 2015; mcketin et al., 2016), to identify different treatment-related trajectories of depression severity (uher et al., 2010) and nicotine dependence (hu et al., 2008), and in determining mental health classification structures (lubke & miller, 2015; muthen, 2006). unfortunately, there are very few examples of latent class or mixture profile methods to assess the existence of complex wellbeing profiles (bhullar et al., 2014; goodman et al., 2017; morin et al., 2016). one example (bhullar et al., 2014) applied a latent profile analysis method to derive different wellbeing profiles in a small sample of australian university students on the ryff pwb scales (ryff, 1989). results indicated that there were no complex mixture patterns between the pwb scales. instead, the bhullar et al. (2014) findings identified 5 separate homogenous groups that reflected on-diagonal types only. that is, participants who scored low on one pwb indicator scored lower on the other pwb indicators. consequently, although different profiles were identified, the classes would essentially correspond to different levels of an overall pwb factor score. similarly, analyses of the satisfaction with life and seligman’s (2011) perma model comprising positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment, similarly reported on-diagonal wellbeing profiles (goodman et al., 2017). morin et al. (2016) identified classes based on a bi-factor analysis of measures of serenity, harmony, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 involvement, anxiety and depression; while informative in terms of its methodological contributions whereby profile analyses were undertaken on the bi-factors, differences between the classes were of very small effects (< 0.5sd). these contributions raise a number of questions; is the forcing of continuous random variables into discrete categorical groups such as exemplified by keyes et al. (2002) in order to more easily create on and off-diagonal classifications an appropriate method? or can more quantifiable methods capture the complex wellbeing profile relationships keyes et al. (2002) identified. even if such methods are to be preferred, given bhullar et al. (2014) findings, might the overwhelmingly normative experience for most be that that wellbeing profiles are ondiagonal in nature? that is, there is little within-person variation across wellbeing indicators. simply, individuals who score highest on one indicator will comparatively score highest on another indicator. this may give further support for the increasing ubiquity of a general wellbeing factor described in bi-factor and hierarchical models (burns, 2020; chen et al., 2013; de bruin & du plessis, 2015; gallagher et al., 2009; gatt et al., 2014; hervás & vázquez, 2013; hides et al., 2016; jovanović, 2015; kim et al., 2016; longo et al., 2020; van horn et al., 2004). 1.2 the current study the aim of the current paper therefore is to examine wellbeing complexity in a very large community survey, and discriminate the ways in which participants report differently across different wellbeing components concurrently. as an extension of bhullar et al. (2014) and goodman et al. (2017) who focused on fewer wellbeing indicators, analysis identified the extent to which homogenous groups of individuals report different profiles across multiple pwb, swb and sowb components. that is, to what extent do different individuals prioritise some wellbeing indicators over other indicators, in which case scoring high on those which are of most value to them, and lower on those indicators which are of least important to them? these would reflect the off-diagonal typology reported by keyes et al. (2002). alternatively, consistent with bhullar et al. (2014) findings, it may well be that many participants are consistent in the level of wellbeing they report across all indicators. some participants may simply report high, medium or low across all indicators, reflecting the on-diagonal wellbeing typology. we consider analysis on the individual wellbeing indicators and subsequently on the higher-order swb, pwb and sowb factors. finally, we consider the utility of the derived wellbeing classes, derived from both the individual level indicators and higher-order factors, by identifying differences in the sociodemographic characteristics of those ascribed to different classes, and the differential risk across a broad range of health, employment and economic outcomes. sex and age differences in wellbeing and mental health are well established; typically older adults and males report better mental health (burns et al., 2020; charles et al., 2001; ryff & singer, 2008; shmotkin, 1990; windsor et al., 2013) although age-related differences may be moderated by which wellbeing dimensions are most important (bowling, 2010; burns, 2020; charles et al., 2001). also, higher education is associated with better wellbeing and mental health outcomes (araya et al., 2003; fergusson & woodward, 2002). it will be important to confirm whether differences between profiles are similarly reported. 2. method 2.1 participants participant data from the european social survey (ess) were obtained from the online ess website (www.europeansocialsurvey.org). the ess is a large international survey of european http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 social attitudes and has been funded by the european commission, and the european science and national science foundations. background and detail about the ess have been described previously (jowell, 2007). data for the current paper was from the third wave of data collection (european social survey, 2006). participants in this study (n = 42, 999) were from 23 countries that included austria, belgium, bulgaria, switzerland, cyprus, germany, denmark, estonia, spain, finland, france, great britain, hungary, ireland, netherlands, norway, poland, portugal, russia, sweden, slovenia, slovakia and ukraine. participants were on average 47.7 years of age (sd = 18.6 years; range = 14-101); 54.4% were female and provided self-reported wellbeing data. 2.2 measures 2.2.1 wellbeing outcomes wellbeing was measured with the ess wellbeing module which has previously been fully described elsewhere (burns, 2020; huppert et al., 2009; huppert & so, 2013). the ess module comprises a multi-dimensional wellbeing scale that includes items that capture multiple dimensions of personal feeling and functioning and intra-personal social dimensions. specifically, the feeling or swb component was assessed in terms of positive and negative emotions, vitality, self-esteem, satisfaction, the functional or pwb component in terms of competence, autonomy, engagement, resilience, and purpose and social wellbeing or sowb component in terms of social support, social trust and belongingness. swb was assessed with items that captured positive emotion (e.g. “how much of the time during the past week have you enjoyed life”), negative emotions (e.g. “how much of the time during the past week have you felt sad”), vitality (e.g. “how much of the time during the past week have you had a lot of energy?”), self-esteem (e.g. “in general i feel very positive about myself”), satisfaction (e.g. “all things considered, how satisfied are you with life as a whole nowadays?”) and optimism (e.g. “i am always optimistic about my future”). pwb was captured by items reflecting competence (e.g. “most days i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do”), autonomy (e.g. “i feel i am free to decide how to live my life”; α = .79), engagement (e.g. “how much of the time during the past week have you been absorbed in what you were doing”), purpose (e.g. “i generally feel that what i do in my life is valuable and worthwhile”), and resilience (e.g. “when things go wrong in my life it takes a long time to get back to normal”). the sowb dimensions were defined by items reflecting social support (e.g. “there are people in my life who really care about me”), social trust and belongingness (e.g. “to what extent do you feel that people in your local area help one another?”). wellbeing scores for each wellbeing dimension were computed from factor analysis and z-standardized (m = 0; sd = 1). 2.2.2 socio-demographic and health variables derived classes of wellbeing were compared against a range of socio-demographic characteristics including sex (female vs. male), partner status (partnered vs. not partnered), education (tertiary education vs. no tertiary education), and chronological age (in years). health was assessed with a measure of sleep quality (“how much your sleep was restless the last week”) scored on a scale of “none or almost none of the time”, “some of the time”, “most of the time”, and “all of almost all of the time”. employment outcomes were measured in terms of an individual’s employment status (employed vs. unemployed) and their partner’s employment status (employed vs. unemployed). economic health was assessed with an item of financial distress (no difficulty living on present income vs. difficulty living on present income). the socio-demographic characteristics of the analytical sample are provided in table 1 (below). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 table 1. socio-demographic characteristics of the analysis sample total sample male female n (%) n (%) n (%) male 18,989 (45.7) age, m(sd) 47.42 (18.39) 46.45 (18.16) 48.23 (18.54) sleep quality, m(sd) 1.80 (.85) 1.69 (.80) 1.90 (.88) partnered 22,203 (53.7) 8,162 (43.3) 10,941 (48.9) tertiary education 11,339 (27.4) 5,137 (27.2) 6,179 (27.5) unemployed (self) 2,174 (5.2) 1,017 (5.4) 1,154 (5.1) unemployed (partner) 1,003 (2.4) 546 (2.9) 455 (2.0) difficulty living on household income 10,758 (26.1) 4,171 (22.2) 6,572 (29.5) 2.3 statistical analyses latent profile analysis (lpa) was used to identify homogenous groups of participants who differ from other groups based on the within-class relationships across the different wellbeing indicators. similar to latent class analysis (lca), lpa extends lca approaches by using continuous indicators to estimate conditional means and variances of the continuous indicators. there is an assumption in lpa of conditional independence. that is, the covariance between all observed indicators are constrained to zero as any correlation between the observed indicators should be reflected by the latent profile. also, lpa imparts equality constraints on the variances of the continuous indicators between the derived classes. both the covariance and variance assumptions can be relaxed and there is no clear explanation in the literature regarding the missspecification of these parameters (lubke & miller, 2015; muthen, 2008; nylund-gibson & choi, in press). therefore, the lpa were undertaken under the assumption of conditional independence and with equality constraints on the variances of the continuous indicators. multiple profile analyses increasingly derived additional classes of individuals that reflect homogenous profile classes across the multiple wellbeing indicators. determining the correct number of classes to derive was based on a combination of model fit indices and model parsimony. the best-fitting models were assessed using several gfi including the bic, entropy – reflecting the proportion of cases correctly classified into their respective class, the adjusted lomendell-rubin (lmr) likelihood ratio test and the vuong-lo-mendell-rubin (vlmr) likelihood ratio test (lo et al., 2001; nylund et al., 2008). the profile analyses were undertaken in mplus v7. participants who provided at least 1 response were all included in the analyses; 767 participants (1.7% of the total sample) reported missing on any item but available data was retained with a maximum likelihood estimation method. 3. results 3.1 latent profile analysis of individual wellbeing indicators comparison of the goodness of fit indices between a series of models that incrementally increased the number of classes to be derived revealed improving model fit for up to 11 classes in terms of the aic and bic statistics where smaller values reflect better fit (table 2; below). however, entropy does drop from .89 to .85 from the 2 to 3 model classes, but otherwise stabilises at .80 to .82 from the 4-class model. two likelihood ratio tests supported increasing the number of classes derived up to and including a model with 9 classes. model parsimony raises question of the need for additional classes that include only very small proportions of respondents. in the 9-class model, 4 classes reported proportions of < 5% (class 1 = 4.6%; class 2 = 1.2%; class 3 = 3.0%; class http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 4 = 2.3%). in the 6-, 7and 8-class model, 2 classes reported proportions of < 5% (6 class model: class 1 = 2.8%; class 4 = 3.7%; 7 class model: class 1 = 2.2%; class 2 = 4.2%; 8 class model: class 1 = 2.4%; class 6 = 3.7%). and in the 5-class model, 1 class (class 1) reported proportions of < 2.3%. all classes in the 4-class model reported proportions > 5.0%. these classes with low proportions differentiated participants who scored low across all wellbeing variables; that is, at least 0.5sd below the mean across all wellbeing indicators. for model simplicity, they are captured by the two low wellbeing groups in the 4-class model (see figure 1). in addition, and as a comparison, plots for models with up to 6 classes are displayed in figures 2a thru 2d, to demonstrate that across models, classes reflect stability of scores across wellbeing measures. the only complexity was reported by class 4 participants in the 6-class model, but who only reflect 3.7% of the sample; they still reported below average across wellbeing indicators. this class was consistent in the additional 7-, 8and 9-class models but was not retained owing to the very small proportions captured in the class and based on the consistently low scores reported by the class. table 2. comparison of goodness of fit indices for models with increasing number of classes class aic bic entropy vlmr lrt p lmr-lrt p 2 1459028 1459247 .89 120152.7 .333 119353.6 .333 3 1424274 1424571 .85 34782.0 < .001 34550.6 < .001 4 1410658 1411032 .81 13644.0 < .001 13553.2 < .001 5 1405435 1405885 .80 5251.2 < .001 5216.3 < .001 6 1400209 1400736 .81 5253.7 < .001 5218.8 < .001 7 1396651 1397255 .80 3586.3 < .001 3562.4 < .001 8 1393142 1393823 .80 3536.6 < .001 3513.1 < .001 9 1390204 1390962 .81 2966.2 < .001 2946.5 < .001 10 1387847 1388682 .81 2384.8 .458 2368.9 .460 11 1385812 1386724 .82 2063.8 .179 2050.0 .180 note. aic: akaike information criteria; bic: bayesian information criteria; vlmr lrt: vuong–lo– mendell–rubin likelihood ratio test; lmr lrt: lo–mendell–rubin likelihood ratio test figure 1. a 4-class profile analysis of wellbeing indicators note. negative affect has been reversed scored so a high score reflects better outcomes (e.g. lower negative affect). -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 z s co re class 1 (5.2%) class 2 (22.0%) class 3 (45.2%) class 4 (27.7%) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 figure 2a – 2d. display of 2 thru 6-class profile analysis of wellbeing and mental health note. negative affect has been reversed scored so a high score reflects better outcomes (e.g. lower negative affect). the classification probabilities for most likely latent class membership, based on the posterior probabilities, were high; 94.4% (se = 0.2) for class 1, 90.7% (se = 0.1) for class 2, 87.3% (se = 0.1) for class 3, and 88.1% (se = 0.1) for class 4 (see table 3). where observations were not assigned their correct class based on the posterior probabilities, they were assigned to a class adjacent to their class. that is, 5.6 % of the participants in class 1 (the lowest wellbeing class) were not correctly assigned class 1 membership based on the posterior probabilities, but were assigned into the adjacent class 2 (the second lowest level of wellbeing). none of the observations from class 1 were assigned any probability for being in the 2 highest classes. at the other end of the spectrum, those observations (11.9%) assigned class 4 membership (the highest wellbeing class) but not correctly identified as class 4 members from the posterior probabilities, were assigned membership of class 3 (the second highest wellbeing class). for the middle classes (classes 2 and 3), observations were mostly correctly assigned into their correct class, or the adjacent class (i.e. class 1 or 3 for members of class 2; cass 2 or 4 for members of class 3). hence we can conclude that most were correctly assigned their class based on posterior probabilities, but if members were not correctly assigned their most likely class, they were assigned into an adjacent class. table 3. average class probabilities of posterior class membership based on posterior probabilities class membership 1 2 3 4 m (se) m (se) m (se) m (se) 1 94.4 (0.2) 5.6 (0.2) 0 (0) 0 (0) 2 1.6 (0.1) 90.7 (0.1) 7.7 (0.1) 0 (0) 3 0 (0) 4.5 (0.1) 87.3 (0.1) 8.2 (0.1) 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 11.9 (0.1) 88.1 (0.1) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 comparison of the mean class estimates on the overall wellbeing and individual wellbeing indicators as well as key socio-demographic characteristics are reported in table 4. across all of the individual wellbeing dimensions, the lowest scores were reported by participants in class 1 with consistent increases in wellbeing associated with increased class number; that is, those in class 4 reported the highest wellbeing scores across all wellbeing indicators. importantly, the comparison on an overall higher-order wellbeing factor score again showed that those in class 1 reported the lowest overall wellbeing score, with scores increasing for the other classes. sociodemographic differences between classes are also reported. generally, those who reported average and higher levels of wellbeing, those participants assigned to classes 3 and 4, were of younger age and more likely to be partnered; there appears to be a gradient increase in wellbeing class and partnered status. there appears to be greater proportion of females and those with no tertiary education in the lower wellbeing classes (classes 1 and 2). that no complex relationships were identified between wellbeing indicators is noteworthy. indeed, examination of the correlation between the individual indicators generally show relationships of a moderate to high magnitude (r = 0.42 – r = .0.81) between the multiple individual wellbeing indicators and the overall wellbeing scale, suggesting a substantial degree of rank-order stability between individuals (table 5; below). table 4. socio-demographic and wellbeing characteristics of class membership class test statistic 1 2 3 4 m (se) m (se) m (se) m (se) wellbeing overall wellbeing -1.13 (.03) -.52 (.01) .03 (.00) .57 (.01) f (3) = 4461.89; p < .001 positive emotions -.96 (.03) -.50 (.01) .03 (.01) .52 (.01) f (3) = 2981.02; p < .001 negative emotions -1.05 (.03) -.41 (.01) .10 (.01) .36 (.01) f (3) = 2153.56; p < .001 life satisfaction -.97 (.03) -.47 (.01) .07 (.01) .44 (.01) f (3) = 2161.84; p < .001 vitality -.92 (.03) -.41 (.01) .03 (.01) .45 (.01) f (3) = 2213.06; p < .001 self-esteem -.72 (.03) -.33 (.01) .00 (.01) .39 (.01) f (3) = 1441.96; p < .001 optimism -.72 (.03) -.32 (.01) .01 (.01) .37 (.01) f (3) = 1204.69; p < .001 resilience -.49 (.02) -.30 (.01) -.00 (.01) .33 (.01) f (3) = 905.67; p < .001 competence -.69 (.03) -.34 (.01) -.01 (.01) .41 (.01) f (3) = 1508.18; p < .001 autonomy -.51 (.03) -.27 (.01) -.03 (.01) .37 (.01) f (3) = 997.89; p < .001 engagement -.74 (.03) -.31 (.01) .01 (.01) .38 (.01) f (3) = 1389.11; p < .001 purpose in life -.75 (.03) -.28 (.01) -.01 (.01) .38 (.01) f (3) = 1313.95; p < .001 social support -.90 (.03) -.30 (.01) .03 (.01) .35 (.01) f (3) = 1497.06; p < .001 trust and belonging -.58 (.03) -.28 (.01) -.01 (.01) .35 (.01) f (3) = 1008.98; p < .001 socio-demographic age 51.24 (.40) 49.05 (.19) 46.93 (.13) 47.23 (.17) f (3) = 56.48; p < .001 not partnered, n(%) 1, 203 (55.5) 4, 557 (49.3) 9, 155 (46.5) 4, 970 (42.9) χ2 (3) = 161.82; p < .001 female sex, n(%) 1, 294 (59.5) 5, 353 (57.7) 10, 700 (54.1) 6, 026 (51.7) χ2 (3) = 97.63; p < .001 tertiary educated, n(%) 447 (20.6) 2, 204 (23.8) 5, 317 (26.9) 3, 640 (31.3) χ2 (3) = 203.29; p < .001 note. the f test is from a one-way anova; all pairwise comparisons were statistically significant p < .001 except age differences between class 4 and 3 (p = .495); χ2 is from a chi-square test. 3.2 latent profile analysis of higher-order wellbeing domains we re-estimated our mixture models to identify potential wellbeing complexity on the higherorder factors reflecting swb, pwb and sowb. as with our analysis of the individual indicators, we ran a series of models that incrementally increased the number of mixture classes based on participants’ scores on swb, pwb and sowb. comparison of the model fit between a series of models that incrementally increased the number of classes to be derived revealed improving http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 model fit for up to 12 classes in terms of the aic and bic statistics where smaller is better (table 6). however, entropy does drop from .80 and .77 from the 2 to 3 class models, but otherwise stabilises at .70 to .73 from the 4 class model. two likelihood ratio tests supported increasing the number of classes derived up to and including a model with 7 classes. table 5. correlations between wellbeing indicators wb auto comp engag purp supp belon resil pa na happ lsat vital selfes opti wb 1.00 auto 0.48 1.00 comp 0.63 0.35 1.00 engag 0.62 0.22 0.43 1.00 purp 0.61 0.27 0.43 0.37 1.00 supp 0.64 0.24 0.32 0.35 0.36 1.00 belon 0.52 0.25 0.29 0.25 0.41 0.37 1.00 resil 0.42 0.22 0.29 0.27 0.21 0.26 0.19 1.00 pa 0.81 0.32 0.39 0.42 0.38 0.48 0.33 0.32 1.00 na -0.72 -0.27 -0.33 -0.39 -0.29 -0.42 -0.26 -0.34 -0.53 1.00 happ 0.70 0.27 0.34 0.34 0.35 0.44 0.33 0.27 0.77 -0.44 1.00 lsat 0.76 0.35 0.42 0.39 0.43 0.44 0.39 0.32 0.68 -0.50 0.74 1.00 vital 0.76 0.30 0.39 0.46 0.34 0.39 0.26 0.35 0.55 -0.61 0.42 0.49 1.00 selfes 0.56 0.26 0.33 0.26 0.33 0.32 0.24 0.28 0.40 -0.35 0.32 0.38 0.39 1.00 opti 0.50 0.25 0.32 0.27 0.31 0.27 0.23 0.24 0.40 -0.33 0.35 0.42 0.39 0.47 1.00 note. wb: wellbeing score; auto: autonomy; comp: competence: engag: engagement with life; purp: purpose in life; supp: supportive relationships; belon: sense of trust and belonging; resil: resilience; pa: positive affect; na: negative affect; happ: happiness; lsat: life satisfaction; vital: vitality; selfes: self-esteem; opti: optimism. all correlations p < .001. table 6. comparison of goodness of fit indices for models with increasing number of classes class aic bic entropy vlmr lrt p lmr-lrt p 2 264586 264641 .80 30964.3 < .001 30255.3 < .001 3 254382 254459 .77 10211.6 < .001 9977.8 < .001 4 250610 250708 .71 3780.5 < .001 3694.0 < .001 5 248754 248876 .72 1863.6 < .001 1820.9 < .001 6 247298 247441 .73 1463.8 < .001 1430.3 < .001 7 246390 246555 .72 915.9 < .001 895.0 .001 8 245829 246016 .70 568.7 .035 555.7 .037 9 245321 245530 .73 512.7 .185 504.4 .189 10 244961 245191 .72 368.6 .013 360.2 .014 11 244609 244861 .72 360.2 .056 351.9 .059 12 244296 244570 .73 320.1 .327 312.8 .333 note. aic: akaike information criteria; bic: bayesian information criteria; vlmr lrt: vuong–lo– mendell–rubin likelihood ratio test; lmr lrt: lo–mendell–rubin likelihood ratio test. as with the analysis of the individual indicators, model parsimony raises question of the need for additional classes that include only very small proportions of respondents. in the 7-class http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 model, 2 classes reported proportions of < 5% (class 2 = 2.4%; class 3 = 1.2%) with an additional class (class 5) reporting 5.2%). in the 6-class model, 3 classes reported proportions < 5% (class 2 = 4.7%; class 3 4.2%; class 4 1.5%). in the 4and 5-class model, 1 class reported proportions of < 5% (5-class model: class 1 = 2.81.5%; 4-class model: class 2 = 3.5%); both of these classes reflected individuals who scored very low on all wellbeing domains. consequently, we suggest that the 3class model is the more parsimonious model (see figure 3) although we may understand that some researchers may find utility in deriving the very low wellbeing group in class 4 although they accounted for only 3.5% of the sample. however, the more important point to emphasise here is that for most participants, class profiles of the higher-order wellbeing domains conforms with the analysis of the individual indicators; stable patterns were reported (see figures 4a to 4e below). we would note that in the 6and 7-class models, there was one small group of participants (6-class model: class 3 = 4.2%; 7-class model: class 2 = 2.4%) who reported very low on swb and pwb (second lowest in both models; < -1.5sd), and reported only low on sowb (third lowest in both models; ≈ -0.5sd), but this was the only indication of any form of ‘complexity’ reported. figure 3. a 3-class profile analysis of the wellbeing higher-order factors as with the analyses of the individual indicators, we examined the classification probabilities for most likely latent class membership, based on the posterior probabilities. on average the classification probabilities were high; 90.6% (se = 0.2) for class 1, 86.3% (se = 0.1) for class 2, and 90.9% (se = 0.1) for class 3 (see table 7 below). where observations were not assigned their correct class, they were assigned to a class adjacent to their class. that is, 9.4% of the participants in class 1 (lowest wellbeing class) and 9.1% of the participants in class 3 (highest wellbeing class) were not correctly assigned their respective class membership based on the posterior probabilities and were assigned into the adjacent class 2 (the middle level of wellbeing). none of the observations from class 1 (the lowest class) were assigned any probability for being in class 3 (highest class), and none in class 3 (the highest class) were assigned any probability for being in class 1 (lowest class). in contrast, for those in the middle class, 2.6% were assigned into class 1 (the lowest class) and 11.2% were assigned into class 3 (the highest class). -3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 swb pwb sowb z s co re class 1 (7.1%) class 2 (38.3%) class 3 (54.6%) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 figures 4a to 4e. profile analysis plots of 2 thru 7-class of higher-order wellbeing factors table 7. average class posterior probabilities of the higher-order wellbeing factors class membership based on posterior probabilities class membership 1 2 3 m (se) m (se) m (se) 1 90.2 (.02) 9.4 (.01) 0.0 (.00) 2 2.6 (.01) 86.3 (.01) 11.2 (.01) 3 0.0 (.00) 9.1 (.01) 90.9 (.01) as with the individual level factor scores, mean estimates on the wellbeing factor scores were consistent across all wellbeing factors, and socio-demographic differences were reported (table 8), corresponding with the analyses of the mixture analyses of the classes derived from the table 8. socio-demographic characteristics of class membership classes test statistic 1 (low) 2 (average) 3 (high) m (se) m (se) m (se) wellbeing swb -2.17 (.01) -.54 (.00) .65 (.00) f (2) = 43282.9; p < .001 pwb -1.85 (.02) -.56 (.01) .62 (.00) f (2) = 26626.9; p < .001 sowb -1.72 (.02) -.42 (.01) .52 (.00) f (2) = 15481.6; p < .001 socio-demographic age 50.06 (.35) 47.84 (.15) 47.30 (.12) f (2) = 29.07; p < .001 not partnered, n(%) 1, 577 (55.1) 7, 736 (49.3) 10, 561 (43.8) χ2 (2) = 205.44 ; p < .001 female sex, n(%) 1, 676 (58.4) 8, 925 (56.6) 12, 762 (52.7) χ2 (2) = 78.48 ; p < .001 tert. educated, n(%) 602 (20.9) 3, 804 (24.2) 7, 199 (29.8) χ2 (2) = 210.40 ; p < .001 note. the f test is from a one-way anova; χ2 is from a chi-square test. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 individual indicators. generally, those who reported the higher levels of wellbeing, were of younger age, more likely to be partnered, and were a greater proportion who reported tertiary education. the correlations between variables were of moderate strength (table 9; below). table 9. correlations between higher-order wellbeing factors swb pwb sowb swb 1.00 pwb 0.66 1.00 sowb 0.56 0.53 1.00 3.3 utility of latent class models finally, we examined the utility of the latent classes, derived from both the lower and higherorder orders, to predict a range of health, social, employment and financial outcomes (table 10). overall, there appears to be a dose relationship with those classes reflecting higher wellbeing reporting better outcomes. this is particularly note worth for sleep quality. in addition, there are sizeable reductions in likelihood of reporting unemployment, both for self and partner, and lower likelihood of reporting difficulty in living on the household income. notably, even one’s partner unemployment status was related to personal wellbeing. table 10. predictive utility of latent wellbeing classes on sleep quality, unemployment status and financial stress unemployed status sleep self partner difficulty living on household income β (se) p or (95% ci) p or (95% ci) p or (95% ci) p model 1 class 1 (low) ref ref ref ref 2 .80 (.02) < .001 0.50 (0.43; 0.59) < .001 0.63 (0.48; 0.83) < .001 0.30 (0.27; 0.34) < .001 3 1.37 (.02) < .001 0.24 (0.21; 0.28) < .001 0.39 (0.30; 0.51) < .001 0.09 (0.08; 0.10) < .001 4 (high) 1.70 (.02) < .001 0.12 (0.10; 0.15) < .001 0.25 (0.19; 0.33) < .001 0.03 (0.03; 0.04) < .001 model 2 class 1 (low) ref ref ref ref 2 .84 (.02) < .001 0.42 (0.37; 0.48) < .001 0.55 (0.44; 0.69) < .001 0.25 (0.23; 0.27) < .001 3 (high) 1.37 (.02) < .001 0.17 (0.15; 0.19) < .001 0.32 (0.26; 0.40) < .001 0.07 (0.06; 0.08) < .001 note. analyses adjusted for age, partner status, sex, education; all post-hoc comparisons between classes reported p < .001; beta reflect sd effect sizes 4. discussion using data from a large european study comprising over 44,000 adults, there was no evidence that wellbeing complexity, specifically off-diagonal relationships where individuals score high on some indicators and low on others (keyes et al., 2002), is a phenomena reported in the general population. instead, profile analyses that increasingly extracted multiple profile classes consistently showed that the on-diagonal profile type was consistently reported. that is, between-person differences in the level on one wellbeing indicator was consistent across other wellbeing indicators. the findings are consistent with two smaller studies (bhullar et al., 2014; goodman et al., 2017) which focused on smaller numbers of wellbeing indicators. replicating the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 analysis on the higher-order wellbeing factors (swb, pwb, sowb) confirmed this pattern at the higher level of the wellbeing hierarchy. comparison of wellbeing scores between classes confirmed that those in the higher wellbeing profile class reported higher on the overall wellbeing score, the individual wellbeing indicators, and the higher-order wellbeing actors. this does raise question regarding the importance of measuring multiple indicators of wellbeing since the on-diagonal relationship means that those who were high on one indicators were more likely to report higher (comparatively) on other wellbeing indicators. even the analyses of the posterior probabilities identified that individuals not assigned their correct class, were still assigned into the next adjacent class. so clearly, even though there may be slight changes in the rank order between participants between multiple indicators, the magnitude of these changes does not appear to be substantial. notably, the correlations between the individual indicators and overall wellbeing were strong to very high. these findings are important for a number of reasons. there is clearly an appeal to a multidimensional model which taps into multiple wellbeing dimensions. in order to capture the full gamut of individual feeling and function, and intra-personal connection, there is an imperative to retaining multiple wellbeing indicators in scales of wellbeing. univariate scales which promote summative overall wellbeing indices (diener et al., 2010; tennant et al., 2007) may ignore the subtlety of multiple measures captured by measures specifically designed to reflect multiple indicators of wellbeing (marsh et al., 2020). marsh’s (2020) recent introduction of the wb-pro scale, which was developed in part from the ess wellbeing module used here, clearly showed that even several of the more commonly used uni-dimensional scales fail to capture the breadth of wellbeing domains and therefore provide only limited estimation of the general wellbeing factor. wellbeing researchers need to consider whether their research questions are focused on specific lower-order wellbeing dimensions or higher-order general wellbeing factor. if the interest is in an overarching ‘wellbeing’ factor, then a broad and multiple indicator set of measures are needed, even though the evidence suggests that individuals are generally consistent across individual indicators, in comparison with their peers. the propensity for ondiagonal profile types to be reported in this paper and others (bhullar et al., 2014), suggests that overall, individuals can be discriminated by their consistent likelihood of reporting the highest, average, or lowest overall wellbeing. one could conjecture we might well simply have defined these respondents by their score on an overall wellbeing score. but it is important to emphasise that an overall score in this context would reflect a higher-order factor derived from multiple indicators (marsh et al., 2020), rather than scores derived from smaller unidimensional scales or scales that measure fewer domains (diener et al., 2010; tennant et al., 2007). this is important to emphasise. there were a number of socio-demographic characteristics that discriminated between classes. many of these were consistent with wellbeing findings from other studies. large population studies frequently identify education engagement to be associated with better wellbeing and mental health outcomes (araya et al., 2003) though a reciprocal relationship likely exists where those with better mental health and wellbeing are more likely to engage and complete education (fergusson & woodward, 2002). sex and age differences in wellbeing and mental health are well established (burns et al., 2020; charles et al., 2001; ryff & singer, 2008; shmotkin, 1990; windsor et al., 2013). however, there remains a need to carefully interpret these differences; in terms of age, it has been argued that individuals prioritise different wellbeing dimensions as they age (bowling, 2010; burns, 2020; charles et al., 2001). future research should consider other individual level characteristics, including personality and individual differences, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 as well as other socio-demographic characteristics, which may discriminate between different wellbeing profiles. but if the evidence is that wellbeing provides are consistently on-diagonal types, then we would conjecture that there would be consistent findings between classes of wellbeing profiles for those who simply report high, moderate or low on an overall wellbeing factor score. there are a number of limitations to the findings that warrant discussion. the profile analysis reflects group average estimates across multiple wellbeing indicators. we do not discount the possibility that some individuals who were categorised in the highest wellbeing class, may well have reported low or average on some indicators, and conversely for those who were categorised in the lowest wellbeing class (reported high or average on some indicators). unlike traditional latent class analyses where groups are homogenous, the estimation of class profiles from manifest variables with continuous distributions does mean that class point estimates have some degree of error. but still, the overall classification probabilities were very high and we can be confident that individuals’ classification were based on their overall pattern of responses across multiple measures. this finding was consistent at both the lower and higher level of the factor structure. we recognise that analysis of individual manifest indicators without considering global factors is an important issue to consider. although not using standard measures of wellbeing, morin et al. (2016) analysed patterns of serenity, harmony, involvement, anxiety and depression. using a bi-factor approach, they undertook a profile analysis of individual factors and the ‘g’ factor. such approaches require further examination regarding their utility. for instance, previous reporting of the ess wellbeing module suggests that a higher-order factor and not a bifactor model best reflected the wellbeing structure in the european social survey (burns, 2020). and morin et al. (2016) identified classes that did not vary by more than 0.5sd across the individual wellbeing indicators; in contrast the classes derived from the current analyses differed by a far more substantive magnitude which may have more meaningful utility. in contrast to these limitations, a strength of the study is that analyses focused on the individual or lower order wellbeing indicators, and the higher-order wellbeing domains, in the same study. the analyses of the lower level indicators is similar to bhullar et al. (2014) profile analysis of the individual pwb indicators, and the analysis of the higher-order constructs is similar keyes et al. (2002) which examined wellbeing complexity in terms of the higher-order swb and pwb factors. importantly, the study utilises data from a study that is not specifically a health study and responses are not likely to be adversely effected by self-selection into a wellbeing study. further, the samples for each nation in the ess were obtained using a probability sampling method, and the samples are representative of all persons aged 15 and over. population weights are provided, but as ‘population’ estimates themselves are not an outcome of focus, weighting was not considered for the current paper. finally, by utilising a more sophisticated data driven method to derive class profiles, the findings from this study failed to identify the off-diagonal relationships, whereby individuals reported mixed levels of swb and pwb, previously reported by keyes et al. (2002). instead, the on-diagonal relationships reported conform with bhullar et al. (2014) analyses of the ryff pwb scales (ryff & keyes, 1995) and the goodman et al. (2017) analysis of the individual perma scales and swb. in conclusion, we have provided strong evidence that profiles of wellbeing can be derived using a sophisticated data analysis technique. however, there was no evidence for the experience of complexity in wellbeing experience. instead, on-diagonal relationships were consistently reported and indicate stability in the rank order of between-person differences across multiple http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the complexity of wellbeing profiles burns & crisp www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 wellbeing measures. continued research is needed to further extend the current findings and examine the concordance between multiple wellbeing and mental health indicators. conflict of interest statement the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. data availability statement data is available from: https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/. authors richard burns australian national university, australia richard.burns@anu.edu.au dimity crisp university of canberra, australia authors’ contributions rb conceived the research question, undertook the main analysis and drafted an initial draft of the manuscript. both rb and dc made substantial contributions to the final version of the manuscript for publication. publishing timeline received 11 february 2021 revised version received 15 august 2021 accepted 18 august 2021 published 30 september 2021 references altman, d. g. 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(2015). do sources of meaning differentially predict search for meaning, presence of meaning, and wellbeing? international journal of wellbeing, 5(1), 33-52. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i1.3 paul e. jose victoria university of wellington paul.jose@vuw.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 article do sources of meaning differentially predict search for meaning, presence of meaning, and wellbeing? melissa e. grouden · paul e. jose abstract: meaning in life is vital for human wellbeing. research has examined important sources of meaning: however, it has not yet investigated whether certain sources of meaning might be more predictive of overall meaning and wellbeing. a community sample of 247 individuals (30 – 69 years) rated the degree of meaningfulness they experienced in certain domains and completed 11 wellbeing measures. presence of meaning was positively predicted by family and interpersonal relations, and negatively by leisure activities; search for meaning was positively predicted by personal growth and religiosity/spirituality. meaning from family and health aided in the process of searching for meaning leading to presence of meaning; similarly, meaning from family, interpersonal relationships, health, religiosity/spirituality and life in general buffered against impoverished wellbeing when searching for meaning. presence and wellbeing were both higher if the domains of work, family, interpersonal relations, community/society issues, and life in general were highly endorsed. lastly, highly endorsing a larger number of sources buffered against negative wellbeing outcomes when searching for meaning. overall, we found that meaning from important domains such as family and interpersonal relationships, and strongly endorsing a wide variety of sources, protected against negative wellbeing outcomes when searching for meaning. keywords: sources of meaning, search for meaning, presence of meaning, well-being, wellbeing, breadth of meaning. 1. introduction the impetus to make meaning is quintessential to human nature and the way that we are motivated to understand experiences, making connections between them, is thought to be essential for enhancing personal growth and creating a coherent life course (weinstein, ryan, & deci, 2012). in fact, frankl (1966) famously asserted that the primary human concern, or psychological need, was to find meaning – to search for and attain meaningfulness and purpose in life. meaning in life is unique to the individual, yet it is not created in a vacuum: the nature of meaning is influenced by external factors. kenyon (2000) describes this idea well: “we create our world personally, idiosyncratically and dynamically, yet to a significant extent, we are also influenced and created by a world that is larger than ourselves, individually speaking” (p. 10). despite a resurgence in theoretical and empirical explorations of meaning in life, there is an absence of consensus as to how the construct is defined and operationalised (steger, 2009). a widely cited definition of meaning is that it is “the cognizance of order, coherence, and purpose in one’s existence, the pursuit and attainment of worthwhile goals, and an accompanying sense of fulfillment” (reker, 2000, p. 41). in a related vein, wong (2012) has enunciated a four-factor http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 model of meaning, which is based on a sense of purpose, understanding, responsible action, and evaluation of one’s life. but how is it that people come to possess meaning in their life? and can it be shown that people who strive to achieve meaning in their life actually acquire it? for this reason, the dualistic conceptualisation by steger, frazier, oishi, and kaler (2006), which includes both presence of meaning and the important countervailing process of search for meaning, will serve as the foundation for the present research. notably, presence of meaning and search for meaning have been found to share a negative relationship, and research has failed to demonstrate that searching for meaning leads to the attainment of meaning in life (steger, kashdan, sullivan, & lorentz, 2008). the measurement of both presence and absence of meaning provides for a more nuanced picture of a person’s engagement with the question of meaning in their life. 1.1 sources of meaning in life possessing a sense of meaning in life has been posited to have wide-reaching benefits for psychological wellbeing and physical health (ryff & keyes, 1995). although this finding establishes the construct of meaning as an important one for overall functioning, it does not illuminate the domains in life from which individuals derive this sense of meaningfulness. meaning originates from a number of different spheres in life, for example, leisure activities, spirituality, relationships with others, and making a contribution to the wider community (reker & woo, 2011). various investigations have been made into the overarching categories that encompass specific sources of meaning. some conceptualisations share commonalities, while others are quite divergent. de volger and ebersole (1981) described eight categories from interviews asking individuals what was meaningful in their life: relationships, service, belief, life work, growth, pleasure, obtaining, and health. another approach taken to elucidating the possible sources of meaning was that of wong (1998), who asked participants to list the components of a stereotypical ‘meaningful life’. he found that these descriptions fell into these categories: religion, achievement, relationship, fulfilment, transcendence, intimacy, acceptance, and fairness. sources of meaning have also been probed by asking individuals to quantitatively rate the degree to which they experience meaning in a list of given domains (delle fave, brdar, freire, vella-brodrick, & wissing, 2010; prager, savaya & bar-tur, 2000; reker & wong, 1988). the advantage of this method is that it circumvents the issue of individuals not mentioning certain domains because they are forgotten when asked open-ended questions. despite the varied approaches to categorising sources of meaning, prager (1998) argues that there is agreement regarding several sources of meaning: personal growth, altruism, relationships, belief, expression and creativity, materialism and existential-hedonistic orientations. further, across numerous empirical studies, personal relationships have been found to be the most commonly cited central source of meaning (e.g., baum & stewart, 1990; debats, 1999; o’connor & chamberlain, 2000; de vogler & ebersole, 1981; yalom, 1980). however, the aspects of life that are experienced as meaningful have been found to vary over the lifespan (e.g., baum & stewart, 1990; lambert et al., 2010; prager, 1998; reker, peacock & wong 1987; schnell, 2009) and vary according to demographic factors such as gender and socioeconomic status (e.g., debats, 1999; kotter-grühn, wiest, zurek, & scheibe, 2009; schnell, 2009). sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 1.2 sources of meaning predicting search and presence research has shown that most people have at least some insight into sources of meaning, as they are able to describe an archetypal meaningful life, and describe the meaning in their own lives when asked about it. we also know that relationships with family and friends are most frequently mentioned as being meaningful (e.g., debats, 1999). it would make sense that meaning from especially important sources of meaning would be the most predictive of overall meaning, but this might not be the case. for example, sources might be mentioned because they are very salient but in fact they may have little to nothing to do with contributing to meaning. in other words, some individuals might not have much insight into what contributes most to their meaning in life. this question, what sources best predict overall meaning, warrants further investigation. in the related study of life goals, research has found that goals pertaining to relationships with others, spirituality, contribution to the community, and leaving a legacy were significantly predictive of meaningfulness and purpose (emmons, 2003). further, holding aspirations described as being intrinsic, such as contributing to the community, good relationships, and personal growth, have been found to relate positively to the desire to experience meaning in life, the search for it, and lastly, the actual experience of meaningfulness. on the other hand, more extrinsic goals, such as amassing wealth and fame, have been found to relate to the wish for meaning and the resultant search but not the attainment of meaning (weinstein et al., 2012). so it appears that life goals are differentially predictive of presence of meaning and search for meaning. certain sources of meaning might also predict presence and search in different ways, and research ought to investigate this possibility. 1.3 sources of meaning and wellbeing research has established that having a sense of meaning in life is beneficial for wellbeing as people experience greater happiness (e.g., cohen & cairns, 2012), are more satisfied with their lives (e.g., steger & kashdan, 2006), experience greater positive affect (e.g., king, hicks, krull, & del gaiso, 2006), and experience less anxiety, depression (e.g., debats, van der lubbe, & wezeman, 1993), and rumination (e.g., steger et al., 2008). in contrast, the process of searching is linked to diminished happiness and life satisfaction (e.g., park, park, & peterson, 2010), and greater anxiety, depression, rumination, and negative affect (e.g., steger et al., 2008). furthermore, having significant presence of meaning appears to be protective against negative wellbeing outcomes when searching for meaning (park et al., 2010). however, this research has considered the impact of the totality or sum of meaning in life, not how meaning derived from particular spheres predict wellbeing. it is plausible that certain types of meaning are able to mitigate negative wellbeing outcomes when searching for meaning than are other types of meaning, and they may facilitate the process of searching for meaning actually leading to the attainment of meaning. research has found that meaning derived from goals related to intimacy, spirituality, and generativity have been found to predict greater subjective wellbeing, whereas power strivings tend to be associated with lower subjective wellbeing (emmons, 2003). research has also found that goals which were described as being intrinsic in nature, such as personal growth and contribution to the community, were positively predictive of wellbeing; whereas, goals which were described as extrinsic, such as financial success and fame, were negatively predictive of wellbeing (emmons, 2003; martos & kopp, 2011; sheldon, ryan, deci, & kasser, 2004). sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 1.4 breadth of meaning it is rare for individuals to experience a sense of meaning emanating from only one area in their life; in fact, having a larger network of different sources of meaning has been found to be related to greater overall meaning and wellbeing (reker & woo, 2011). baumeister (1991) asserts that this benefit occurs because if an important source of meaning is compromised, having other sources will permit the individual to continue relatively unaffected. in this fashion, sources of meaning function in a complementary manner, filling in when a particular source is absent or attenuated. a theoretical model, the meaning maintenance model, has been developed out of this idea and it asserts that by having a wide scope of sources of meaning, if any particular source of meaning is threatened, others can ‘fill in’ through a process of fluid compensation, and thus the individual avoids an experience of meaninglessness (proulx & heine, 2008). having breadth of meaning—i.e., meaning in many spheres—is seemingly beneficial. additionally, research has found that intensity of meaningfulness of sources of meaning and the strength of commitment to these sources also makes a difference for overall wellbeing (battista & almond, 1973; pöhlmann, gruss, & joraschky, 2006). research has found that individuals report an average of six very important sources of meaning (de volger-ebersole & ebersole, 1985; prager, 1996). although highly endorsing multiple sources of meaning is a sign of significant presence of meaning, it is not known what impact this pattern might have on search for meaning. investigation into whether strong commitment to a wide variety of sources of meaning would mitigate the negative impact on overall meaning and wellbeing when searching for meaning would also be advantageous, as this question has not yet been thoroughly explored. 1.5 goals of the present study although it makes intuitive sense that the most important sources of meaning would best predict overall meaning, this issue has not yet been adequately explored. further, certain sources may instigate continued search for meaning. previous research has found intrinsic aspirations such as contribution to the community, personal growth, and good relationships are predictive of presence of meaning and search for meaning, whereas extrinsic goals such as financial status is predictive of search for meaning only (weinstein et al., 2012). in line with these findings, we hypothesise that meaning from family, interpersonal relationships, personal growth, and community issues predict presence of meaning and search for meaning, whereas standard of living predicts search for meaning but not presence of meaning (hypothesis 1). some investigations into the realms of life that provide people with meaning have been conducted, but research has not considered how various sources might be differentially related to overall meaning and wellbeing. given that intrinsic goals have been found to be positively associated with wellbeing (emmons, 2003; martos & kopp, 2011; sheldon et al., 2004), we hypothesise that meaning from family, interpersonal relationships, personal growth, and community issues would buffer the negative relationships between search for meaning and presence of meaning, and between search for meaning and wellbeing (hypothesis 2). in other words, meaning derived from these intrinsic sources is more likely to diminish the negative affect generated in the search process than is striving to achieve extrinsic meaning. being intensely and strongly committed to one’s meaning in life has been found to be beneficial for wellbeing (battista & almond, 1973; pöhlmann et al., 2006). extrapolating from this finding, we hypothesise that strongly endorsing sources of meaning results in higher sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 wellbeing and presence of meaning, but results in diminished search for meaning (hypothesis 3). someone who feels passionately about a domain is more likely to derive more benefit from meaning derived from that source. finally, given that deriving meaning from a number of sources of meaning is advantageous (e.g., reker & woo, 2011), we hypothesize that highly endorsing a greater number of sources of meaning would facilitate the successful search for meaning, and also mitigate the negative impact on wellbeing when searching for meaning (hypothesis 4). deriving meaning from multiple sources might lay a better foundation compared to deriving meaning from a single source. using an analogy, a ‘diversified portfolio’ is likely to be more robust against the ebb and flow of life circumstances than a portfolio constituted of a single stock holding. 2. method 2.1 participants the sample comprised 247 individuals (139 females and 108 males) who participated in a crosscultural investigation, the eudaimonic and hedonic happiness inventory (ehhi). participants’ ages ranged from 30 to 69 years (m = 44.28 years; sd = 9.30). all participants in the sample live in new zealand. educational background was operationalised in the design in that 112 individuals reported a non-tertiary education, and 135 reported a tertiary education degree. 2.2 measures eudaimonic and hedonic happiness inventory. the ehhi (delle fave et al., 2010) is a questionnaire that includes open-ended questions about happiness, goals and meaningful things, as well as quantitative measures of meaningfulness and happiness in 11 given domains. the emphasis for the current research was on meaning. participants reported how meaningful the following domains were on a 7-point likert scale from 1 (not meaningful at all) to 7 (extremely meaningful): work, family, standard of living, interpersonal relationships, health, personal growth, leisure, religiosity/spirituality, community issues, society issues, and life in general. meaning in life questionnaire. the mlq (steger et al., 2006) is a 10-item measure of two components of meaning: presence and search. examples of items in the presence subscale are “i have a good sense of what makes my life meaningful” and “i have discovered a satisfying life purpose”. examples from the search subscale are “i am always searching for something that makes my life feel significant” and “i am always looking to find my life’s purpose”. participants specify their responses on a 7-point likert scale from 1 (absolutely untrue) to 7 (absolutely true). high cronbach’s alphas for the subscales indicated very good internal consistency (steger, oishi, & kesebir, 2011). the alphas in this research were excellent: .90 for presence of meaning, and .91 for search for meaning. subjective happiness scale. the subjective happiness scale (shs; lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999) is a 4-item self-report measure of subjective global happiness. participants describe how happy they are in relation to peers and also in relation to archetypal happy and unhappy people. for example, participants respond to this statement: “in general, i consider myself:” on a 7-point likert scale from 1 (not a very happy person) to 7 (a very happy person). another item is “some people are generally not very happy; although they are not depressed, they never seem as happy as they might be. to what extent does this characterization describe you?” and the choice options range from 1 (not at all) and 7 (a great deal). this scale has demonstrated good reliability with alphas between .85 and .95 (lyubomirsky & tucker, 1998). the alpha in the current research was .87. sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 satisfaction with life scale. the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985) is a 5-item measure of a person’s evaluation of their overall satisfaction with their entire life. example items are “if i could live my life over, i would change almost nothing” and “so far i have gotten the important things in life”. participants indicate their agreement with the statements on a 7-point likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). studies have shown this scale to have respectable internal consistency, with alphas ranging from .79 to .89. this was also the case in the present investigation as the alpha was .89. mental health continuum. the short form of the mental health continuum (mhc-sf; keyes, 2009) measures emotional, social and psychological wellbeing with 14 items. participants are asked to report how often they felt a certain way during the past month on a 7point likert scale from 1 (never) to 7 (every day). “satisfied” is an example of an item in the emotional wellbeing subscale, “that our society is becoming a better place for people” is one from the social wellbeing subscale, and “confident to think or express your ideas and opinions” is an example from the psychological wellbeing subscale. the scale has been found to manifest good reliability with alphas above .80 (keyes, 2009). this was also evident in the current study with alphas of .84 for emotional wellbeing, .78 for social wellbeing and .82 for psychological wellbeing. basic psychological needs scale. the basic psychological needs scale (bpns) is a measure developed from self-determination theory and it centres on three needs of central importance: autonomy, competence, and relatedness (deci & ryan, 2000). the measure has been adapted, and a 9-item version is used here. an example item from the autonomy subscale is “i feel like i can pretty much be myself in my daily situations”, one from the competence subscale is “most days i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do”, and one from the relatedness subscale is “i really like the people i interact with”. participants provide their responses on a 7-point likert scale from 1 (not at all true) to 7 (very true). this scale has adequate internal consistency as subscale alphas have ranged from .69 to .86 (gagné, 2003). the subscales proved to be reliable in the present investigation, with alphas of .70 for autonomy, .69 for competence, and .76 for relatedness. depression anxiety stress scales. the depression anxiety stress scales (dass; lovibond & lovibond, 1995) measure self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress. the current research used a short version of the depression subscale with seven items. participants indicate to what degree they felt that statements such as “i found it difficult to work up the initiative to do things” and “i felt down-hearted and blue” were applicable over the previous week. participants indicate their answers on a 7-point likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much, or most of the time). the dass has been found to be reliable with an alpha of .91 (lovibond & lovibond, 1995). it was internally consistent in the current research with an alpha of .88. the positive and negative affect schedule. the positive and negative affect schedule (panas; watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988) is a 28-item measure of affective wellbeing. individuals are asked how much they experience different emotions on a 5-point likert scale from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely). examples from the positive affect scale include “enthusiastic” and “strong” and items from the negative affect scale are “nervous” and “hostile”. the panas has been shown to have excellent reliability: an alpha of .89 for positive affect and an alpha of .85 for negative affect (crawford & henry, 2004). this was also the case in the present research as alphas of .90 for both positive and negative affect were obtained. sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 2.3 procedure participants were recruited through a range of strategies including posters, newspaper advertisements and mail-drops. individuals took part in the research on a voluntary basis and were able to withdraw at any time if they so wished. the victoria university of wellington ethics committee granted ethical approval to commence the research. participants completed the questionnaire online (using the surveymonkey website), with completion time approximately 30-40 minutes on average. participants were sent a $10 voucher of their choice to thank them for their efforts. 3. results conducting analyses of all the 11 wellbeing variables would have been likely to result in redundant findings. to produce a more succinct collection of results, a data reduction technique was employed. since the 11 wellbeing variables were significantly and positively correlated, scale scores were transformed into z-scores and then linearly combined to create a single measure of overall positive wellbeing. 3.1 descriptive statistics descriptive statistics for presence of meaning, search for meaning, sources of meaning, and the composite wellbeing measure are shown in table 1 below. table 1: descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients among presence of meaning, search for meaning, positive wellbeing, and sources of meaning m sd 1 2 3 1. mlq-presence 25.95 6.44 2. mlq-search 20.57 8.20 -.36** 3. positive wellbeing .00 .76 -.68** -.32** 4. work 5.13 1.42 -.15** -.00** .22** 5. family 6.43 1.12 -.22** -.09** .23** 6. standard of living 5.15 1.25 -.08** -.02** .16** 7. interpersonal relations 6.10 1.05 -.26** -.07** .31** 8. health 6.30 0.88 -.05** -.06** .11** 9. personal growth 5.93 1.08 -.14** *.25** .13** 10. leisure 5.67 1.11 -.08** -.09** .05** 11. religiosity/spirituality 4.34 2.18 -.22** _.17** .13** 12. community issues 4.82 1.33 -.22** -.00** .35** 13. society issues 4.64 1.43 -.19** -.06** .25** 14. life in general 6.13 1.02 -.47** -.09** .47** **p < .01, *p < .05 note. mlq-presence = meaning in life questionnaire-presence; mlq-search = meaning in life questionnaire-search. positive wellbeing = a composite z-score of eleven wellbeing measures. this table also reports the correlations among the variables: moderate negative correlations were found between search for meaning and presence of meaning, and between search for meaning and positive wellbeing. as expected, a strong positive correlation was obtained between presence of meaning and positive wellbeing. presence of meaning was found to manifest weak to moderate positive correlations with the meaning domains of: work, family, interpersonal relations, personal growth, religiosity/spirituality, community activities, society activities, and life in general. as other researchers have found, search for meaning yielded sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 weak positive correlations with personal growth and religiosity/spirituality, and was also negatively related to positive wellbeing. in addition, and as expected, positive wellbeing was found to yield weak to moderate positive correlations with work, family, standard of living, interpersonal relations, personal growth, community activities, society activities and life in general. 3.2 did sources of meaning predict presence, search, and wellbeing? hypothesis 1 (h1) predicted that meaning derived from family, interpersonal relationships, personal growth, and community issues would predict presence of meaning and search for meaning, whereas standard of living would predict search for meaning but not presence of meaning. the first regression (r² = .16, f(10, 236) = 4.49, p < .001) indicated that presence of meaning was positively predicted by meaning from family (β = .15, p < .05), interpersonal relationships (β = .14, p < .05), and negatively predicted by leisure activities (β = -.18, p < .05). the next regression (r² = .12, f(10, 236) = 3.11, p < .001) revealed that search for meaning was positively predicted by meaning from personal growth (β = .26, p < .001) and religiosity/spirituality (β = .18, p < .01). these results provide partial support for h1. however, there was some deviation from the hypothesis that was not expected. 3.3 did sources of meaning influence the relationships between search, presence, and wellbeing? moderation analyses were conducted in order to investigate whether meaning from different domains exerted an influence on the relationships between search for meaning and attainment of meaning, and between search for meaning and wellbeing. h2 stipulated that meaning from family, interpersonal relationships, personal growth, and community issues would buffer the negative relationships between search for meaning and presence of meaning, and between search for meaning and wellbeing. 3.3.1 search to presence meaning from family was found to moderate the relationship from search for meaning to presence of meaning (β = .05, p < .01). simple slopes analyses revealed significant negative slopes for high (slope = .14, t = 2.07, p < .05), medium (slope = .28, t = 6.17, p < .001), and low (slope = .43, t = 5.90, p < .001) levels of the moderator: however, the least positive relationship between search for meaning and presence of meaning occurred under conditions of high meaning from family (see figure 1 below). this pattern suggests that meaning derived from family assists in the process of searching for meaning leading to attainment of meaning, i.e., meaning from family buffered the strength of this typically negative relationship. the result provides support for h2. meaning from health was also found to be a moderator of the relationship from search for meaning to presence of meaning (β = .11, p < .05). simple slopes were computed and yielded significant negative slopes for high (slope = .20, t = 3.17, p < .01), medium (slope = .30, t = 6.37, p < .001), and low (slope = .40, t = 5.67, p < .001) levels of meaning from health: however, the relationship between search for meaning and presence of meaning was least strong for individuals who reported high levels of meaning from health (see figure 2 below). this pattern indicates that meaning from health was useful in the attainment of meaning when searching. h2 did not stipulate that the health domain would function as a moderator, but the pattern was consistent with the result for the family domain. sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 low medium high p r e se n c e o f m e a n in g search for meaning high meaning from health medium meaning from health low meaning from health figure 1: moderation by meaning from family on search for meaning to presence of meaning. figure 2. moderation by meaning from health on search for meaning to presence of meaning. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 low medium high p r e se n c e o f m e a n in g search for meaning high meaning from family medium meaning from family low meaning from family high meaning from family medium meaning from family low meaning from family low medium high search for meaning p r e se n c e o f m e a n in g 29 28 23 24 25 27 26 22 21 medium meaning from family medium meaning from family low meaning from family low meaning from family 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 p re se n ce o f m e a n in g search for meaning low medium high high meaning from health medium meaning from health low meaning from health sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 3.3.2 search to wellbeing meaning from family was found to significantly moderate the relationship from search for meaning to positive wellbeing (β = .02, p < .001). simple slopes analyses revealed a significant positive relationship for moderate (slope = .02, t = 2.88, p < .001) and high (slope = .13, t = 16.25, p < .001) meaning from family, and a negative relationship for low (slope = -.09, t = -11.31, p < .001) meaning from family. this pattern indicated that, consistent with h2, experiencing high levels of meaning from family acted as a buffer against diminished wellbeing when searching for meaning (see figure 3 below). figure 3. moderation by meaning from family on search for meaning to positive wellbeing. meaning derived from interpersonal relations was also determined to be a significant moderator of the relationship between search for meaning and positive wellbeing (β = .01, p < .05). significant simple slopes were obtained for low (slope = -.04, t = -5.33, p < .001), moderate (slope = -.03, t = -5.30, p < .001), and high (slope = -.02, t = -2.17, p < .05) meaning from interpersonal relations. the result indicated that, also consistent with h2, under conditions of high meaning from interpersonal relations, search for meaning manifested a weaker negative relationship with positive wellbeing (see figure 4 below). next, health significantly moderated the relationship from search for meaning to positive wellbeing (β = .01, p < .05). simple slopes analyses indicated that negative relationships were evident between search for meaning and positive wellbeing for high (slope = -.02, t = -2.53, p < .01), medium (slope = -.03, t = -5.66, p < .001), and low (slope = -.04, t = -5.32, p < .001) meaning from health. however, as above, the relationship was least strong under conditions of high meaning from health, suggesting that meaning from health acted as a buffer (see figure 5 below). this finding was not stipulated by h2, but it is consistent with other moderational findings. -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 low medium high p o si ti v e w e ll -b e in g search for meaning high meaning from family medium meaning from family low meaning from family p o si ti v e w e ll b e in g 1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 low medium high high meaning from family medium meaning from family low meaning from family search for meaning sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 figure 4: moderation by meaning from interpersonal relations on search for meaning to positive wellbeing. figure 5. moderation by meaning from health on search for meaning to positive wellbeing. meaning from religiosity/spirituality was also found to act as a moderator between search for meaning and positive wellbeing, (β = .01, p < .01). again, simple slopes analyses revealed significant negative relationships for high (slope = -.01, t = -2.34, p < .05), medium (slope = -.03, t -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 low medium high p o si ti v e w e ll -b e in g search for meaning high meaning from interpersonal relations medium meaning from interpersonal relations low meaning from interpersonal relations -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 low medium high p o si ti v e w e ll -b e in g search for meaning high meaning from health medium meaning from health low meaning from health search for meaning 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 -0.6 p o si ti v e w e ll b e in g low medium high high meaning from interpersonal relations medium meaning from interpersonal relations low meaning from interpersonal relations high meaning from health medium meaning from health low meaning from health p o si ti v e w e ll b e in g search for meaning 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 -0.6 low medium high sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 = -6.13, p < .001), and low (slope = -.05, t = -6.11, p < .001) meaning from religiosity/spirituality, with the least strong relationship occurring under conditions of high meaning from religiosity/spirituality (see figure 6 below). this pattern, as with health, was not hypothesised in h2 but it is consistent with this set of moderational findings. figure 6. moderation by meaning from religiosity/spirituality on search for meaning to positive wellbeing. the last source of meaning to moderate the relationship from search for meaning to positive wellbeing was life in general (β = .02, p < .01). simple slopes analyses yielded significant negative relationships for medium (slope = -.03, t = -5.41, p < .001), and low (slope = -.04, t = 5.86, p < .001) meaning from life in general: however, the relationship between search for meaning and positive wellbeing under conditions of high meaning from life in general was non-significant (see figure 7 below). although not predicted by h2, this pattern shows that meaning derived broadly from life in a general sense mitigated against the frequently observed detrimental impact on wellbeing when searching for meaning. taken together, these moderational findings provide significant support for h2. -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 low medium high p o si ti v e w e ll -b e in g search for meaning high meaning from spirituality medium meaning from spirituality low meaning from spirituality 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 -0.6 p o si ti v e w e ll b e in g low medium search for meaning high high meaning from spirituality medium meaning from spirituality low meaning from spirituality sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 figure 7. moderation by meaning from life in general on search for meaning to positive wellbeing. 3.4 did degree of endorsement of sources of meaning influence levels of presence, search for meaning, and wellbeing? h3 stipulated that highly endorsing sources of meaning would result in greater wellbeing and presence of meaning, but diminish search for meaning. in order to examine whether high endorsement of the various sources was advantageous, eleven (for each of the sources of meaning: work, family, standard of living, interpersonal relations, health, personal growth, leisure/free time, religiosity/spirituality, community issues, society issues, life in general) manovas were computed with intensity of endorsement (low vs high endorsement of sources) as the independent variable on the three outcomes (i.e., presence of meaning; search for meaning; positive wellbeing). significant main effects were obtained for meaning from work (f(3, 241) = 2.19, p < .05), family (f(3, 241) = 3.27, p < .05), interpersonal relations (f(3, 241) = 5.99, p < .001), community issues (f(3, 241) = 6.96, p < .001), and society issues (f(3, 241) = 7.48, p < .001). post-hoc tukey tests indicated that presence of meaning and positive wellbeing were both significantly greater when these sources of meaning were highly endorsed. a significant main effect was found for meaning from personal growth (f(3, 241) = 7.36, p < .001), with a post-hoc tukey test indicating that presence of meaning and search for meaning were both higher if this domain was highly endorsed. a significant main effect was also found for meaning from religiosity/spirituality (f(3, 241) = 9.24, p < .001), and a post-hoc tukey test indicated that presence of meaning was higher if this source was highly endorsed. finally, a significant main effect for life in general was obtained (f(3, 241) = 23.07, p < .001), and a posthoc tukey test revealed that presence of meaning and positive wellbeing were both higher, while search for meaning was lower, for individuals who highly endorsed meaning from life in general. given the general pattern of results, we argue that we obtained significant support for h3. -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 low medium high p o si ti v e w e ll -b e in g search for meaning high meaning from life in general medium meaning from life in general low meaning from life in general low medium high p o si ti v e w e ll b e in g search for meaning high meaning from life in general medium meaning from life in general low meaning from life in general 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 3.5 did highly endorsing a number of sources influence the relationships from search to presence and wellbeing? h4 predicted that highly endorsing a greater number of sources of meaning would facilitate the successful search for meaning, and also mitigate against the negative impact on wellbeing when searching for meaning. 3.5.1 search to presence inconsistent with h4, high endorsement of a large number of sources of meaning was not found to significantly influence the relationship from search for meaning to presence of meaning. 3.5.2 search to wellbeing however, consistent with h4, the total number of highly endorsed sources of meaning moderated the relationship between search for meaning and positive wellbeing (β = .01, p < .05). significant simple slopes were obtained for high (slope = -.02, t = -3.03, p < .01), medium (slope = -.03, t = -6.42, p < .001), and low (slope = -.05, t = -5.82, p < .001) number of highly endorsed sources of meaning (see figure 8 below). importantly, the slope for the high number of sources of meaning showed the least strong relationship, suggesting that highly endorsing many sources of meaning protected wellbeing from the adverse effects involved in the process of searching for meaning. this result provided partial support for h4. figure 8. moderation by total number of meaning domains highly endorsed on search for meaning to positive wellbeing. 4. discussion the present research was designed to examine which sources of meaning best predicted overall meaning in life. further, the study investigated whether certain sources facilitated successful -0.7 -0.5 -0.3 -0.1 0.1 0.3 0.5 low medium high p o si ti v e w e ll -b e in g search for meaning most domains highly endorsed moderate domains highly endorsed fewest domains highly endorsed p o si ti v e w e ll b e in g search for meaning low medium high 0.5 0.3 0.1 -0.1 -0.3 -0.5 -0.7 most domains highly endorsed moderate domains highly endorsed fewest domains highly endorsed sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 searching for meaning, and whether particular sources buffered against the negative outcomes frequently experienced during the search for meaning. previous research (weinstein et al., 2012) has found that aspirations deemed to be of an intrinsic nature such as community activities, personal development and relationships with others predict presence of meaning and search for meaning, whereas more extrinsic aspirations, such as achieving financial security, predict search for meaning but not attainment of meaning. the current results partially supported this set of previous findings: meaning from family and interpersonal relationships positively predicted meaning, whereas leisure was a negative predictor. however, search for meaning was also positively predicted by religiosity/spirituality and personal growth, two relationships that were not hypothesised to exist. these results suggest that the attainment of meaning is closely related to significant relationships with others, whereas searching for meaning is linked to inward growth and self-transcendence. in sum, the idea that the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction might apply to the domain of meaning was not supported in the current study. further, the current research revealed that meaning derived from family and health both facilitated the process of successfully searching for meaning. these two sources were highly endorsed by our sample, so it seems that certain salient domains of meaning are sensibly and predictably related to the achievement of greater meaning in life. further, meaning originating from family, interpersonal relationships, health, religiosity/spirituality, and life in general alleviated the negative outcomes for wellbeing often incurred when searching for meaning. although religiosity/spirituality was not a particularly highly endorsed source of meaning, research has shown that spiritual goals are particularly important for wellbeing (steger & frazier, 2005), which may be why meaning from religiosity/spirituality mitigated the negative outcomes for wellbeing when searching for meaning. research has found that a strong commitment to (i.e., intense endorsement of) one’s sources of meaning in life is advantageous for wellbeing (battista & almond, 1973; pöhlmann et al., 2006). consistent with this hypothesis, the present research found that those adults who highly endorsed meaning from work, family, interpersonal relationships, community/society issues, and life in general experienced greater overall meaning in life and greater wellbeing, and that highly endorsing meaning from religiosity/spirituality meant greater presence. highly endorsing meaning from life in general resulted in higher presence and wellbeing, and resulted in lower search. the finding that highly endorsing meaning from life in general results in a decrease in search for meaning was the only finding in which a source of meaning had a significant impact on the degree of searching, suggesting that a more general or global view of a meaningful life in its entirety is required before the motivation to search for meaning is reduced. in the same vein, high endorsement of meaning from personal growth resulted in greater presence and search. the fact that highly endorsing meaning from personal growth resulted in increased search for meaning was unexpected. however, it is consistent with research that found meaning from personal growth positively predicted searching for meaning (grouden & jose, 2013). ultimately, the strength of an individual’s intensity of meaning appears to be crucial for his/her overall attainment of meaning and wellbeing: in other words, it pays to wholeheartedly experience meaning in different spheres of life. it has been ascertained that deriving meaning from a number of sources of meaning, i.e., obtaining greater breadth of meaning, is beneficial (e.g., reker & woo, 2011), especially in situations when meaning from one sphere might be compromised. in this situation, meaning from other domains can then be strengthened and the individual needs not experience a significant loss of overall meaning (proulx & heine, 2008). in support of this view, the present sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 research found that highly endorsing a wide variety of sources is protective against negative outcomes of wellbeing as a result of searching for meaning. this result, in conjunction with the previous one, highlights that it is not only useful to experience a wide variety of sources of meaning, but it is also essential to strongly endorse these facets of meaning. 4.1 limitations although the present research has made a contribution to the field with regard to its examination of how sources of meaning are differentially predictive of wellbeing, it is not without its limitations. first, the data were cross-sectional, not longitudinal, so it is not possible to definitely ascertain causality pertaining to whether and how certain sources lead to wellbeing outcomes over time. future research might aim to remedy this shortcoming through the use of a longitudinal design, and aim to replicate the current findings over different time periods. additionally, further qualitative work would be useful in achieving a more nuanced understanding of how individuals derive meaning from particular domains. we do not know whether individuals derive the same kind of meaning from the domain of families, for example, and accordingly future work should delve more deeply into this process. the association between search and presence of meaning requires a more fine-grained examination. as wong (2014) has noted, a measurement of search and presence at any one point in time may have captured the individual’s motivational state before, during, or after a successful or unsuccessful search. he has argued that this random assessment of variables within the time course of the searching process may account for the typically low and negative association between search and presence. future work should strive to investigate the temporal unfolding of affect over the course of a person’s attempt to achieve meaning in a particular domain. 4.2 practical implications the current research has identified that certain domains of meaning are especially predictive of overall meaning, search for meaning, and wellbeing. further, it has identified that particular sources of meaning facilitate the process of successfully searching for meaning, and mitigate negative outcomes. because searching for meaning is an inherently human endeavour, these findings are of relevance and importance for most people, and highlight the realisation that searching for meaning need not be a negative process if we also derive meaning from sources such as interpersonal relationships (especially family), health, life in general, and religiosity/spirituality. additionally, holding a stronger conviction regarding multiple sources of meaning is also valuable. searching for meaning is a natural process in which human beings commonly engage: however, it appears to be a journey rife with difficulty as meaning is not always attained after a period of time searching, and searching, unfortunately, has been found to negatively impinge on overall wellbeing. we believe that the present research illuminates new understandings of how those negative outcomes might be averted or lessened through deriving meaning from particular sources and strongly endorsing a wide variety of meaning domains. ultimately it is important to diversify the sources of meaning, and it is also vital to feel impassioned about those sources of meaning, in order to achieve a strong and healthy overall sense of meaningfulness in one’s life. sources of meaning and wellbeing grouden & jose www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 acknowledgments appreciation is expressed to antonella della fave and the rest of the ehhi group for organising and launching the ehhi multi-national study into meaning in life. data reported here come only from the new zealand dataset. thanks to alina kriebel, who assisted in data collection, and thanks also to the participants in 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(2019). the importance of child wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 9(4), i-iv. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i4.1011 susannah stevens university of canterbury susannah.stevens@canterbury.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) i special issue the importance of child wellbeing susannah stevens · aaron jarden introduction this special edition on child wellbeing, a joint venture between the international journal of wellbeing and the university of canterbury child well-being research institute, is timely. the current global political climate is saturated with many socio-economic and environmental challenges that are concomitant with wellbeing; many directly concerning our future generations. topics such as environmental sustainability, systemic injustices and various inequality are being scrutinized by all ages and professions, to ensure that policy and practice are aligned when it comes to wellbeing. on september 2018, the third international conference on wellbeing and public policy was held in wellington, new zealand; sending a clear message that wellbeing and policy were not considered dichotomous when it came to societal progression in new zealand. the wellbeing budget 2019 (new zealand treasury, 2019) was released shortly after in may 2019. new zealand is not alone, as many countries are broadening their definitions to what constitutes societal growth and success (scotland and iceland also prime examples); and this has allowed more room for wellbeing dialogue. the notion of the necessity of wellbeing to live a fulfilling and flourishing life is not at all novel. those familiar with philosophy, eastern or western, could easily recount many ancient authors and texts where wellbeing was at the heart of utopian participation in life throughout millennia. even epicurus, the misunderstood hedonist, prescribed that all additional pleasures if life relied on wellbeing first (rosenbaum, 1990). what is novel however, is the growing empathy and urgency across many sectors and disciplines to better understand wellbeing, and identify the supporting role they can play in supporting and achieving wellbeing. there is a global shift towards valuing wellbeing in its own right, a desire for all human beings to live a good life, and to optimally thrive. moreover, there is an increasing understanding by the state that wellbeing is isolated from access to education, human rights and social determinants of health. these trends can be seen in policy development and inclusion (e.g., jarden, jarden, & oades, 2017); an edict that wellbeing is here to stay. the global analysis of well-being report (graham, comin & anand, 2018) and the global happiness and wellbeing policy report (global happiness council, 2019) are two of the many examples of this advancement of global wellbeing policy documentation. this push for wellbeing policy coupled with the accountability for governments to measure wellbeing has seen a drive for a better understanding of wellbeing, and specifically what this might mean for all people, including our future generations, including children which have largely been left out of the dialogue to date. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ the importance of child wellbeing stevens & jarden ii in 1989, the united nations (un) convention on the rights of the child was ratified as a significant legislative act that prioritised the voices and worldly contributions of all children and youth (united nations, 1989). the articles themselves within the document mandate human rights, needs and expression, nevertheless the common innate thread throughout the document is the importance of child wellbeing. more recently, in january 2016, goal 3 of the global 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) affirmed the need for healthy lives and promotion of wellbeing at all ages (united nations, 2015); increasing the urgency and need of a global mandated agenda that targets inter-generational societal change. however, despite this much needed shift in global acceptance and policy prioritisation, the un recognises that it is ultimately the acceptance or resistance to what happens at the national, local and family levels that dictates success (united nations, 2015). therefore, wellbeing interventions or policy on wellbeing needs to be contextually appropriate and culturally responsive to understand and provide relevant support. regardless of which dominant theoretical perspective of child and adolescent development is focused on, wellbeing is a fundamental measure when it comes to learning and growing as a human being. cognitive development or processing is not void of the social and cultural context in which it occurs, and therefore to be ‘well’ or what constitutes ‘wellbeing’ as a young person will inevitably vary depending on life experience. a child in poverty or an affluent child of trauma will have different interpretations of what constitutes wellbeing compared to a child who is privileged to never experience such significant trauma or poverty. children from different backgrounds and cultures will differ regarding how they perceive and experience wellbeing, as what constitutes success, happiness, respect, joy or independence will vary greatly. moreover, much of these facets of wellbeing are relational, meaning the family unit and caregiving structure impacts significantly on the child’s wellbeing. indeed, the convention on the rights of the child recognises the importance of the family as of fundamental importance for the growth and wellbeing of a child. despite these differences, core similarities remain, such as the need for developmental experiences and encounters to learn. both piagetian and vygotskian learning theories on social interaction mandate that a combination of adult-child interaction and peer interactions are necessary to learn and grow (mcdevitt & ormrod, 2002). children and youth can not only learn by passively consuming the surrounding environment and the knowledge of prior generations, but rather, they must also have the opportunities and empowerment to experiment and influence phenomena themselves. this is no different to a child learning about, understanding, and processing their own wellbeing. therefore, to be effective, wellbeing intervention or policy should cover the individual child or youth needs and voice, alongside voice of a relational nature within the socio-economic context. if only one of these elements is considered, then the complexity of supporting or measuring a child’s wellbeing cannot be fully comprehended, realised, or sustained. questions such as ‘what weight is given to child or youth voice in this decision-making process?’ or ‘which socio-cultural paradigm has shaped this wellbeing framework’ could be asked across different sectors looking to better understand or measure wellbeing, especially when it comes to children and youth. there is strength in approaches that consider multi-paradigmatic methodologies or inter-professional responses. the authors within this special edition focusing on child wellbeing do an admirable job of explicating the difficulties that exist as different sectors come to understand wellbeing from the importance of child wellbeing stevens & jarden iii differing paradigms and traditions. the specific papers within this special edition explore diverse topics such as school-based interventions for wellbeing (jessica morse, maeve o’donnell, arissa walberg, bryan dik); positive psychology family interventions (selja pentti, åse fagerlund, pär nyström); early experiences that promote wellbeing in our young children (tracy gleason, darcia narvaez); adolescent conceptualisations of wellbeing (gazal bharara, scott duncan, aaron jarden, erica hinckson); well-being through the eyes of samoan children (emma dunlopbennett, jenny bryant-tokalau, anthony dowell); and the idea of a cross-disciplinary framework for promoting youth wellbeing (amanda ng, dianne vella-brodrick ). the collective impact of these contributions is their desire to improve policy and practice around understanding and measuring child wellbeing. each piece within this special edition contributes a varied discourse to the wellbeing debate; evidencing the continual need for transparency, discussion and praxis where ever ‘child wellbeing’ is concerned. authors susannah stevens university of canterbury susannah.stevens@canterbury.ac.nz aaron jarden university of melbourne publishing timeline received 14 august 2019 accepted 23 september 2019 published 30 september 2019 references global happiness council (ghc) (2019). global happiness and wellbeing policy report. retrieved from: http://www.happinesscouncil.org/report/2019/ graham, c., comin, f., & anand, p. (eds.) (2018). the global analysis of wellbeing report. oxford, oxford foundation for knowledge exchange. retrieved from: http://globalwellbeingreport.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/02/wellbeingglobalreport.pdf jarden, r., jarden, a, & oades, l. (2017). wellbeing policy in australia and new zealand. in m. slade, l. oades, and a. jarden (eds.), wellbeing, recovery and mental health, pp. 207-214. cambridge university press. mcdevitt, t. m., & ormrod, j. e. (2002). child development and education. new jersey: pearson education inc new zealand treasury. (2019). the wellbeing budget 2019. retrieved from: http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/wellbeing-budget/wellbeing-budget-2019 isbn 978-198-858042-5 rosenbaum, s. e. (1990). epicurus on pleasure and the complete life. the monist; hellenistic ethics, 73(1) 22-41. the department of the prime minister and cabinet. (2019). child and youth wellbeing strategy. retrieved from: https://childyouthwellbeing.govt.nz/resources/child-and-youth-wellbeing-strategy the importance of child wellbeing stevens & jarden iv united nations. (1989). convention on the rights of the child. retrieved from: https://www.ohchr.org/documents/professionalinterest/crc.pdf. united nations. (2015). transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development a/res/70/1. retrieved from https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=a/res/70/1 henke, m., & chur-hansen, a., (2014). the effectiveness of mindfulness-based programs on physical symptoms and psychological distress in patients with fibromyalgia: a systematic review. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 28-45. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.2 miriam henke university of adelaide, school of psychology miriam@miriamhenke.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 article the effectiveness of mindfulness-based programs on physical symptoms and psychological distress in patients with fibromyalgia: a systematic review miriam henke · anna chur-hansen abstract: objective: research into and the clinical use of mindfulness as a therapeutic intervention have increased in recent years and the results have been promising in a range of illness populations. one area in which mindfulness has been trialled is fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition currently with poor treatment outcomes. the aim of this systematic review was to examine the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on physical symptoms and psychological distress in patients with fibromyalgia. methods: systematic review: pubmed, psycinfo, embase and scopus were searched for randomised controlled trials and prospective and retrospective studies. a quality assessment and synthesis of the quantitative data (based on guidelines from the joanna briggs institute) was completed on studies using a mindfulness-based intervention with patients with fibromyalgia on outcomes related to physical symptoms and psychological distress and wellbeing. results: ten studies met the inclusion criteria. all included studies used a mindfulness-based group program design. although outcome measures and data presentation varied, making statistical pooling impossible, the narrative synthesis resulted in overall positive evidence for the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions for patients with fibromyalgia on a range of physical symptom and psychological distress outcome measures. conclusion: mindfulness is a favourable treatment option for patients with fibromyalgia. whilst demonstrated efficacy was generally positive, the number of studies addressing this topic is small and there was wide variation in outcome measures and data presentation. more research is needed, particularly large-scale randomised controlled trials with consistent methodology, outcome measures and sufficient follow-up time periods. keywords: mindfulness meditation, fibromyalgia, mindfulness-based stress reduction, systematic review, mind-body therapies 1. introduction fibromyalgia is a chronic pain condition that is not fully understood and often misdiagnosed [1]. symptoms include chronic pain, fatigue, sleep disturbances, somatic symptoms, psychological distress and morning stiffness [2,3]. diagnosis is based on a combination of patient history, physical examination, laboratory evaluations, and exclusion of other conditions [4,5]. the majority of patients with fibromyalgia are women in midlife, and the prevalence increases with age [6]. symptoms are exacerbated by stress [7]. the organic aetiology of fibromyalgia remains unclear, and thus it is a challenging disorder to diagnose and treat [4]. patients find fibromyalgia emotionally and psychologically distressing, mailto:miriam@miriamhenke.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 and often report encountering a lack of support within health care systems [8]. additionally, many patients do not expect conventional medical treatments to be effective [6]. currently, conventional medical management does not lead to a cure [9]. most pharmacological treatments aim to manage discrete symptoms, rather than the condition and its effects as a whole [10]. goals of treatment are generally to control pain, increase functioning, facilitate adjustment and improve the wellbeing of patients [4]. multi-disciplinary approaches, using both pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions are recommended as best practice in the treatment of fibromyalgia [4]. mind-body therapies (mbt) are an example of psychological treatments that have been found to be clinically effective in various health-related settings, and they are often equally as effective as pharmacological interventions [11]. studies have indicated moderate to strong efficacy for mbt for a range of illnesses, including fibromyalgia. it has been suggested that mbt-orientated treatment could generate stable and permanent changes that enable patients to experience a significant improvement in their fibromyalgia symptoms [12]. mbt interventions refer to therapies that underscore the fundamental links between cognitions, emotion and physical health. such interventions that have demonstrated effectiveness with a range of fibromyalgia symptoms include guided imagery [13], cognitive behaviour therapy (stand alone and also combined with hypnosis) [14], affective self-awareness (asa) [15], meditation [16], and mindfulness [17]. mindfulness meditation has been theoretically and empirically associated with psychological wellbeing, and recently has gained momentum as an accepted form of ‘third wave’ psychotherapy [18]. higher degrees of mindfulness in patients with chronic pain are related to lower self-reported pain, reduced emotional distress, decreased disability, and less use of pain medication [19]. an intervention developed for people with chronic pain, based on mindfulness, is the mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr) model [20]. given chronic pain is the central, and often most pervasive, symptom of fibromyalgia, a number of studies have investigated the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions such as mbsr. the mbsr program, developed by kabat-zinn and colleagues at the university of massachusetts stress reduction clinic, was designed to teach patients how to cope effectively with chronic medical conditions, reduce suffering by developing equanimity in the mind and body, and reduce stress and psychological distress [20]. it has been demonstrated that mindfulness interventions produce positive results, in particular for symptoms associated with fibromyalgia [21]. sleep, for example, has been shown to be important in the management of fibromyalgia symptoms [22]. mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to improve sleep and decrease sleep-interfering cognitive processes (e.g. rumination, worry), as concluded in a systematic review [23]. some researchers, however, remain unconvinced of the efficacy of mindfulness interventions for fibromyalgia [17,24] because of the weak methodologies characterising some research, including small sample sizes, uncontrolled variables and a lack of standardized interventions. 1.1 systematic review the aim of this systematic review was to explore the existing international literature [25] in order to assess the evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on the subjective experience of physical symptoms and psychological distress outcomes in patient populations with fibromyalgia. reporting of this systematic review follows prisma [26] and joanna briggs institute (jbi) guidelines [27]. systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 2. method 2.1 data sources and search strategy any experimental study design including randomised controlled trials, non-randomised controlled trials, quasi-experimental or prospective or retrospective cohort studies, published in english, was included for review. inclusion criteria were: a confirmed diagnosis of fibromyalgia, with no restriction on how the diagnosis was confirmed; outcome measures related to physical symptoms and/or psychological distress; separating reporting for patients with fibromyalgia where studies included heterogeneous samples; and sufficient information on the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based intervention, expressed as effect sizes, or mean differences. the search strategy aimed to locate both published and unpublished studies. a three-step search was utilised. an initial limited search of pubmed and psycinfo was undertaken to identify potential keywords, followed by analysis of the text words contained in the title and abstract, and of the index terms used to describe the article. a second search using all identified keywords and index terms was then undertaken across all included databases. thirdly, the reference lists of all identified reports and articles were searched for additional studies. search terms are listed in table 1. table 1. search strategy terms by database pubmed psycinfo embase scopus meditation [mh:noexp] or mindfulness [tiab] or mindfulness meditation [tiab] or mindfulnessbased [tiab] or mindfulness-based therap* [tiab] or mbct [tiab] not yoga [tiab] and fibromyalgia* [mh:noexp] or syndrome, fibromyalgiafibromyositis [tiab] or rheumatism, muscular [tiab] or muscular rheumatism [tiab] or muscular disorders [mh] or fibrositis [tiab] or fibrositides [tiab] or myofascial pain syndrome, diffuse [tiab] or diffuse myofascial pain syndrome [tiab] or fibromyositisfibromyalgia syndrome [tiab] or fibromyositis-fibromyalgia* [tiab] or syndrome, fibromyositisfibromyalgia [tiab] or syndromes, fibromyositisfibromyalgia [tiab] or secondary fibromyalgia* [tiab] or pain [mh] not chronic [tiab] de mindfulness or de acceptance and commitment therapy or de meditation or de psychotherapeutic techniques or ti “mindfulness” or ab “mindfulness” or ti “mindful” or ab “mindful” or ti “acceptance and commitment*” or ab “acceptance and commitment*” or ti “meditation” or ab “meditation” or ti “mindfulness-based” or ab “mindfulnessbased” or ti mbct or ab mbct not “awareness” not “act” not “pz editorial” and de fibromyalgia or ti “fibromyalgia” or ab “fibromyalgia mindfulness and fibromyalgia (mapping option not selected) mindfulness and fibromyalgia not yoga systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 the search was performed in pubmed, psycinfo, embase and scopus and focused on randomised controlled trials and prospective and retrospective studies. each database was searched from its onset until may 2013. there were no publication date restrictions. only articles written in english were included. multiple keywords and medical subject headings (mesh terms) for mindfulness and fibromyalgia were combined. 2.2 study selection, critical appraisal, and risk of bias assessment the first author retrieved all relevant titles and abstracts (n = 132). full-text publications of studies that were potentially eligible for inclusion (n = 21) were read and checked against the criteria for eligibility for inclusion in the review. ten papers met the eligibility criteria and were included in the review. the included studies were assessed according to a list of predefined criteria (mastari critical appraisal tool) as outlined in the jbi guidelines [27]. the list of criteria appears in the first column of tables 2 and 3 below. randomised controlled trials and cohort studies were separately evaluated with the appropriate criteria sets and a quality score produced (%) for each individual study. a quality score was assigned to studies according to the degree to which they met the relevant criteria set: ‘high quality’ (low risk of bias, high confidence in estimate of effect) was indicated by a score of 70% or more; ‘average quality’ (moderate risk of bias, moderate confidence in estimate of effect) was indicated by a score of 50-69%; and ‘low quality’ (high risk of bias, low confidence in estimate of effect) was indicated by a score of less than 50%. 2.3 data extraction and analysis data were extracted from included papers on study population, design, intervention, duration of follow-up, and measurement and outcomes of physical symptoms and/or psychological distress. a brief summary of the reported results from each study is included in the final column of table 4 below. studies were grouped into the categories based on their design (randomised controlled trial or cohort study). quality of evidence, outcomes measured, reported results, study strengths and limitations are all discussed. 3. results the results of the search are shown in figure 1 below. five studies were randomised controlled trials [28,29,30,31,32], two were controlled cohort studies [33,34] and three were non-controlled cohort studies [35,36,37]. characteristics of each study are outlined in tables 2 and 3 below. 3.1 study characteristics data of the quality assessment (based on jbi guidelines) of the included studies are provided in table 2 (randomised controlled trials) and table 3 (cohort studies) below. the mean quality score was 70% (high quality), ranging from 33% to 100%. six studies had a high quality score (>70%) [28-30,33,34,35], three studies had a moderate quality score (50 – 69%) [32,36,37], and one study had a low quality score (<50%) [34]. the specific outcomes measured across studies were highly variable; both in type and the way they were measured. outcomes of all studies assessed subjective experiences of the symptomology of fibromyalgia (e.g. pain, functioning) or psychological distress (e.g. depression, anxiety). all except one of the included studies used outcomes that relied on self-reporting by participants; the exception used a body scanner to record skin conductance levels. intervention design was described in all studies. selection bias was present in four studies [33,34,36,37]. systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 figure i. flowchart of study selection systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 table 2. results of quality assessment for rcts (based on jbi mastari checklist criteria) all included studies used a mindfulness-based group program design. the outcome measures and data presentation varied too much to make statistical pooling possible. therefore a narrative analysis (evidence synthesis) was completed to summarise the value of the prognostic indicators on common key outcome measures. three studies had interventions based on the mbsr program, with some variation from the protocol set by kabat-zinn et al. [20]. one study’s intervention was delivered over 10 weeks rather than the usual 8 weeks [35]. one study incorporated qigong, a chinese movement therapy, into its intervention design [28]. one study used a mindfulness-based meditation training (mmt) intervention design (based on mbsr and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy), which the authors explained was designed to accommodate the physical limitations of the fibromyalgia population [34]. 3.3 effectiveness on physical symptoms seven studies reported on the effect of mindfulness on physical symptoms. definition and measurement of physical symptoms across studies varied, and included pain, condition-specific symptoms, functionality, and sleep quality. two studies reported an overall positive improvement in measures of physical symptoms in mbsr participants [33,35]. two studies reported significant improvement in measures of physical symptoms for mbsr participants but study sephton et al. [31] weissbecker et al. [32] criteria astin et al. [28] parradelgado et al. [29] schmidt et al. [30] 1. assignment to treatment group truly random + + + + + 2. participants blinded to treatment allocation ? ? + + 3. allocation to treatment groups concealed from allocator ? ? + ? ? 4. outcomes of people who withdrew described & included in analysis + + + + + 5. researchers assessing outcomes blind to treatment allocation + ? + + ? 6. control and treatment group comparable at entry + + + + + 7. groups treated identically other than for named interventions + + + 8. outcomes measured in the same way for all groups + + + + + 9. outcomes measured in a reliable way + + + + + 10. appropriate statistical analysis used + + + + + total score per study (%) 80% 70% 100% 80% 60% systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 demonstrated no significant between-group differences with the active controls [28,30]. two studies reported no significant change in measures of physical symptoms in mbsr participants [32,37]. table 3. results of quality assessment for cohort studies (based on jbi mastari checklist criteria) study lush et al. [36] rozenzweig et al. [37] criteria grossman et al. [33] vago et al. [34] kaplan et al. [35] 1. sample is representative of patients in population as a whole + ? 2. patients are at a similar point in the course of their condition/illness + ? ? ? ? 3. bias minimised in relation to selection of cases and controls + + ? + 4. confounding factors identified and strategies to deal with them stated + ? + ? 5. outcomes assessed using objective criteria + + + + + 6. follow up carried out of a sufficient time period + ? + + + 7. outcomes of people who withdrew described and included in analysis ? + + 8. outcomes measured in a reliable way + + + + + 9. appropriate statistical analysis used + + + + + total score per study (%) 78% 33% 78% 56% 67% six studies reported on the effect of mindfulness-based programs on pain-related measures. of these six, four studies reported significant preto post-intervention improvement in pain-related scores. however, only one of these studies (with control group) reported significant betweengroup differences in favour of the mbsr intervention group [28]. for the other three studies reporting positive changes, there were no significant between-group differences. two studies [29,36] reported no significant change in pain-related measures for the mindfulness-based intervention participants. two studies measured and reported on pain-related coping (patient’s perception of ability to control and decrease pain), both finding the mbsr intervention produced a positive or significant improvement in the treatment group [28,36]. three studies [28,30,35] measured and reported on sleep. one study reported positive clinically significant changes as higher for the mbsr group (17%) as compared with the wait-list group (10%) and the active control group (7%) [30]. however, these results did not produce statistical significance in their comparison between-groups by analysis of covariance. one study reported that 60% of the patients with fibromyalgia who received the mbsr treatment systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 experienced a positive (improvement) mean change of 2.6% [35]. one study reported the mbsr treatment group demonstrated significantly improved sleep at both the post-intervention and 3year follow up time points [33]. five studies used the fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (fiq). the fiq is a 10-item validated disease-specific scale that assesses physical functioning, pain, depression, anxiety, fatigue, morning tiredness, stiffness, job difficulty, and overall wellbeing. while two studies [29,35] reported a positive mean percentage change, a high-quality rct reported the mbsr intervention and active control groups both had a significant improvement on the fiq [28]. two rcts reported no significant results with regard to fiq scores when compared to sense of coherence (soc) as a variable [32] or between-group differences [30]. 3.4 effectiveness on psychological distress all ten studies assessed and reported on various measures of psychological distress. four studies reported significant improvement in the mindfulness groups on all measures of psychological distress [28,29,33,35], which included depression, anxiety, psychological distress (specific), and perceived helplessness. one study reported that the mbsr program produced a significant decrease in avoidance, and increase in engagement and efficient disengagement from painrelated threat [34]. three studies reported mixed findings related to psychological distress in mbsr intervention participants. one study reported that soc significantly increased in the mbsr group compared to the wait-list control group, and that higher soc was significantly correlated with lower levels of perceived stress and depression [32]. however, soc did not buffer the effects of fibromyalgia symptoms on psychological distress in the treatment group. one study found that while the mbsr group had a range of significant preto post-treatment changes, there were no significant differences between groups for anxiety or depression [30]. one study reported significant effects of mbsr intervention for somatic symptoms but not cognitive symptoms [31]. two studies reported non-significant results for the mbsr interventions on psychological distress [36,37]. three studies reported on measured and reported quality of life (qol) outcome measures. one study reported significantly greater benefits on qol in the mbsr group compared with the active control group, including sustained benefits at the 3-year follow up [33]. one study reported modest significant preto post-treatment improvement for the mbsr group, with no significant differences between groups, with the whole cohort improving significantly on the health-related quality of life (hrqol) measure [30]. one study reported that the small fibromyalgia sample in their mbsr cohort who completed the program experienced statistically significant improvement on three of eight hrqol measures (mean d=.49), including general health perception, vitality, and mental health [37]. 3.5 results summary of the ten studies included in this systematic review, all claimed significant positive benefit, to some degree, of a mindfulness-based intervention for patients with fibromyalgia. while there was consistency in the design of the mindfulness-based interventions, the outcomes measured, sample sizes, and data presented varied extensively. therefore, direct comparison of the studies is limited and reliable conclusions cannot be drawn. systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 table 4a. characteristics of studies and main results study/ country study quality type of study n method of recruitment type of intervention comparison group outcome measures data measured description of main results astin et al. [28] united states 80% experimental randomised control trial 128 radio/ newspaper advertising networking with local physicians group-based mindfulness-based meditation training and qigong (n = 64) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks no homework requirements noted active control (n = 64) education/ support 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks tender point count total myalgic score pain and functioning (fm impact questionnaire) pain (sf-36) 6 minute walk time depression (bdi) medical care history coping strategies questionnaire baseline, 8. 16 and 24 weeks both treatment and active control groups had significant improvements on fiq, total myalgic score, pain and depression no difference in magnitude of changes between groups changes in both groups maintained a 6 month follow up parradelgado et al. [29] spain 70% experimental randomised control trial 33 members of the fibromyalgia association of almansa, spain group-based mbct program (n = 17) 8x 2.5 h sessions over 3 months homework treatmentas-usual control group (n = 16) mini international neuropsychiatric interview (mini) fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (fiq) beck depression inventory (bdi) visual analogue scale (vas) baseline, posttreatment, and 3 months postintervention mbct significantly improved both the impact of fibromyalgia and depressive symptoms at post-treatment (fiq t = 6.79, p < .001; bdi t = 5.50, p < .001) and 3 month (fiq t = 6.14, p < .001; bdi t = 6.19, p < .001) a slight, non-significant decrease in intensity of pain observed systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 table 4b. characteristics of studies and main results study/ country study quality type of study n method of recruitment type of intervention comparison group outcome measures data measured description of main results schmidt et al. [30] germany 100% experimental randomised control trial (3arm) 177 patient selfhelp groups news media referrals from general practitioners, rheumatologists, and university of freiburg medical center interdisciplinary pain unit group-based mbsr program (n = 53) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks additional 7 h allday session on a weekend day homework of 45-60 mins daily 2 control groups (1) active control (n = 56). control for nonspecific aspects of mbsr curriculum; 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks (education/s upport) (2) wait-list control (no active treatment) (n = 59) hrqol (plc) pain and functioning (fiq) depression (ces-d) anxiety (stai) quality of sleep (psqi) pain perception (pps) self-attribution of mindfulness (fmi) physical symptoms (gcq) preand postintervention interviews (personal goals) baseline, 8 weeks and short-term follow-up no significant difference between groups on hrqol, patients overall improved at short-term follow-up (p = .004) post hoc and multivariate analyses showed mbsr group had a modest significant pre-to-post intervention improvement in hrqol (p = .02) mbsr yielded significant pre-to-post-intervention improvements in 6 of 8 secondary outcome variables, the active control in 3, and the wait list in 2 systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 table 4c. characteristics of studies and main results study/ country study quality type of study n method of recruitment type of intervention comparison group outcome measures data measured description of main results sephton et al. [31] united states 80% experimental randomised control trial 91 media (television broadcast and newspaper) advertisements group-based mbsr program (n = 51) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks home practice of 3045 mins, 6 days per week wait-list control (n = 40) first mbsr session attended by 33 of 40 control participants functional impairment (fiq) pain (vas) sleep quality (ssq) depressive symptoms (bdi) baseline, 8 weeks, and 2 months postintervention depressive symptoms improved significantly in treatment versus control participants participants who still meditated at end of study had greatest reduction of depressive symptoms (f[1,30] = 4.64, p = 0.05) significant effects of meditation practice were found for somatic (f[1,30] = 5.17, p = 0.05) but not cognitive symptoms of depression. weissbec ker et al. [32] united states 60% experimental randomised control trial 91 local television morning news broadcast 2 newspaper advertisements group-based mbsr program (n = 51) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks home practice daily (6 days/week) wait-list control (n = 40) sense of coherence (olq) pain and functioning (fiq) perceived psychological stress – (pss) depressive symptoms (bdi) baseline, 8 weeks sense of coherence (soc) was not a significant moderator of symptom effects on psychological distress mbsr group had significant increase in soc (d = 139.54, sd = 21.34) posttreatment, controls had maintained stable soc (d = 130.08, sd = 23.42). systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 table 4d. characteristics of studies and main results study/ country study quality type of study n method of recruitment type of intervention comparison group outcome measures data measured description of main results grossman et al. [33] germany 78% quasiexperimental prospective cohort (with control) 46 referral from local physicians fibromyalgia self-help groups in two cities group-based mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr) program (n = 39) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks plus all-day retreat on weekend day after 5th week homework for 45 minutes per day active control (n = 13) for nonspecific elements of the mbsr curriculum 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks quality of life (qol) hospital anxiety & depression scale (hads, german version) pain perception (pps) coping with chronic pain (ipr) physical symptoms (ssi) baseline, 8 weeks, and 3-year mbsr intervention provided significantly greater benefits than control intervention on vas, qol subscales, coping with pain, anxiety, depression and somatic complaints (cohen’s d effect size, 0.40-1.10) 3-year follow up of mbsr participants indicated sustained benefits on same measures (effect size, 0-500.65) vago et al. [34] united states 33% quasiexperimental retrospective cohort (with control) 24 recent graduates of 8week mmt program with fm symptoms were recruited control participants recruited independently through advertised flyer investigating cognitive and emotional processing in fm group-based mindfulness-based meditation training (mmt) (n = 13) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks home practice of 3045 min/day non-active control (n = 11) pain-related threat dot-probe task using eevoke software stimulation package. measures reaction times (rts). pain words taken from mcgill pain questionnaire. postintervention, and 6 months preliminary results suggest that mmt reduces avoidance of pain-related threat at early levels of processing, and facilitates disengagement from threat at later stages of processing. systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 table 4e. characteristics of studies and main results study/ country study quality type of study n method of recruitment type of intervention comparison group outcome measures data measured description of main results kaplan et al. [35] united states 78% experimental prospective cohort (no control) 77 diagnosed patients of a rheumatologist were mailed a letter outlining program, asked to respond by phone or mail group-based mbsr program (n = 77) 2 h per week for 10 weeks homework and 2x day medications included no control group visual analog scales (vas) medical symptom checklist (mscl) general severity index (scl-90) coping strategies questionnaire (csq) pain and functioning (fiq) fibromyalgia attitude index (fai) overall assessment of outcome questionnaire (oa) baseline, and 10 weeks mean scores of all patients completing mbsr program showed improvement 51% showed moderate to marked improvement (“responders”) 90% of participants considered the mbsr program provided them with valuable information and was of some or significant help in coping with fibromyalgia lush et al. [36] united states 56% experimental prospective cohort (no control) 24 television news appearance by investigators one-year prior to current study radio & newspaper ads group-based mbsr program (n = 24) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks home practice of 45 min, 6 days per week no control group brief symptom inventory (bsi) anxiety & depressive symptoms (bai, bdi) psychophysiological recordings (scl, hr, and pt) using a j&j i330 system baseline, and 8 weeks mbsr treatment significantly reduced basal electrodermal activity (t = 3.298, p = .005) and scl activity during meditation (t = 4.389, p = .001), consistent with reduced basal sympathetic (sns) activation. rozenzw eig et al. [37] united states 67% experimental prospective cohort (no control) 11 part of larger prospective study (n = 450) on mbsr from 1997 to 2003 heterogeneous sample of chronic pain patients group-based mbsr program (n = 11) 2.5 h per week for 8 weeks homework of 20-25 min formal meditation daily, 6 days per week no control group hrqol (sf-36) psychological distress (scl-90-r) baseline, and 8 weeks patients with fibromyalgia had a small to medium reduction in psychological distress (mean d = .39) and experienced improvement on three of eight hrqol measures (mean d = .49), including general health perception, vitality and mental health. systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 4. discussion 4.1 main results despite research that has been conducted in the area of mindfulness on chronic pain populations, this is the first systematic review of the literature that focuses on the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions on patients with fibromyalgia, regarding physical symptoms and psychological distress outcomes. consistent with the previous literature, most of the results indicate improvement in fibromyalgia-related symptoms in patients who participated in a mindfulness-based intervention as compared with a control group. generally, the included studies were of moderate to high quality, with one exception. however, the heterogeneity between studies regarding numbers enrolled in the cohort, duration of follow-up, loss to follow-up, and outcome measures used is considerable. this limits direct comparability of the studies and makes it difficult to draw reliable conclusions about the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions for fibromyalgia. 4.2 presence and impact of limitations of included studies there are a number of limitations applicable to the available studies as a whole, and others specific to individual studies. all included studies used a similar mbsror mbct-based intervention, which is a strength in terms of intervention consistency. however, the commitment and energy requirements of these intervention programs are significant [30,36], and patients with fibromyalgia are often functionally impaired, with fatigue a common symptom. this leads to the conclusion that any significant results reported are generalisable only to patients without severe functional impairment, who have the interest, time and ability to participate in such meditation-based group interventions. nine of ten included studies included only women participants (and the other study had only one male participant in its mbsr group). while fibromyalgia is most common in women, the male to female incidence ratio is about 9:1 [38]; therefore the samples of each study are not truly generalisable to the population. across the board there was little attempt to separately evaluate the individual components of the mindfulness-based programs on the outcomes in any of the studies. this was of particular concern in the one study’s intervention, which included a large qigong component in the program design [28]. small samples, high attrition rates, inconsistent follow-up periods, high loss to follow-up, and high use of subjective self-report measures were common limitations found in most of the studies. finally, three of the included studies did not have control groups for direct comparison. these limitations are important to note, and pose a high risk of bias affecting the conclusions reached. fortunately, consistent acknowledgement of study limitations by the authors avoided intervention effects being over estimated. the randomised controlled trials using active control groups receiving comparable programs (controlling for the nonspecific effects of the mindfulness programs) [28,30] both found the control intervention provided some therapeutic benefit. both studies found nonsignificant differences when comparing the mindfulness-based and active control groups. thus the researchers were unable to conclude that mindfulness-based intervention was superior to the active control (education/support-based). systematic review of mindfulness for fibromyalgia henke & chur-hansen www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 4.3 directions for future research ideally, to reach a definitive conclusion on the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions for patients with fibromyalgia, consistent intervention designs, standardised measures and consistent follow-up measures are required. given the variability found in the small number of available studies, a need for further research is evident. such research requires carefully conceived and executed randomised controlled trials that take into account the necessity for both methodological stringency and specific condition-related needs. for example, one mbsr intervention should be tested using rct methods across a range of participants with verified fibromyalgia, with ns that allow for statistical power. research of this nature requires longitudinal data collection. 4.4 conclusions and implications for clinical practice mindfulness-based programs, as a mind-body therapy, may be a promising adjunctive treatment for a range of physical symptoms and psychological distress in patients with fibromyalgia. however, the findings of this systematic review are varied and inconclusive regarding the efficacy of mindfulness for fibromyalgia patients. the claimed positive results from the studies included in this review, however, are consistent with the stronger evidence on mindfulness in chronic pain and other illness population studies [39,40]. whilst it is clear that mindfulness training can have positive psychological and physiologic effects, reliable conclusions cannot be reached at this time and further investigation is warranted. authors miriam henke school of psychology, university of adelaide miriam@miriamhenke.com anna chur-hansen school of psychology, university of adelaide publishing timeline received 22 october 2013 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(2015). everyday happiness: gifting and eating as everyday activities that influence general positive affect and discrete positive emotions. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 28-44. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.3 robert hurling unilever bob.hurling@unilever.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 article everyday happiness: gifting and eating as everyday activities that influence general positive affect and discrete positive emotions robert hurling · alex linley · helen dovey · john maltby · joy wilkinson abstract: positive psychology interventions have tended to be intentional cognitive and / or behavioural activities, specifically designed by researchers to increase happiness and wellbeing. in everyday life, however, people naturally undertake activities to increase their happiness and wellbeing. in this study, we examine and compare gifting and eating as two types of everyday activity that influence positive affect and so also happiness and wellbeing. two hundred participants were allocated to four groups to examine the impact of gifting and eating, both individually and combined, relative to a control group, on happiness and wellbeing. results show that giving a desirable food (ice cream) to another person as a gift increases positive affect but not discrete positive emotions, whereas both eating and giving an ice cream as a gift increase both positive affect and discrete positive emotions. the discussion focuses on the role of everyday activities in enhancing positive affect with the accumulative potential to increase everyday happiness. keywords: gifting, eating, positive affect, positive emotion 1. introduction people want to be happy, and a major focus of positive psychology research in the last decade has been on developing interventions that are designed to help people become happier. as a result, the happiness debate has moved on from the view that happiness is fleeting and ephemeral, and in any event, subject to the hedonic treadmill (brickman & campbell, 1971, but see also diener, lucas, & scollon, 2006). now, the evidence is starting to build that happiness can be increased sustainably (e.g., sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2006), and at the same time we are understanding more about what kinds of positive psychology interventions work for different people and in different circumstances (layous & lyubomirsky, in press). the positive psychology literature continues to show the focus of researchers on developing simple activities designed to increase individual happiness and wellbeing. there is now a substantial research base empirically demonstrating the wellbeing benefits to be derived from completing intentional cognitive and behavioural activities that include, amongst others, counting one’s blessings (emmons & mccullough, 2003), undertaking a loving-kindness meditation (cohn & fredrickson, 2010), and performing acts of kindness (layous, nelson, oberle, schonert-reichl, & lyubomirsky, 2012). in a meta-analysis of positive psychology interventions, sin and lyubomirsky (2009) found a significant correlation with wellbeing (mean r = .29) and also an alleviation of depression (mean r = .31). as such, there is correlational evidence that positive psychology interventions work. mailto:bob.hurling@unilever.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 it is interesting to note that across each of these studies the activities investigated have typically been developed by researchers as potential mechanisms for increasing happiness and wellbeing, and then tested as such. this is a laudable goal that is very much in keeping with the espoused aims of positive psychology, one of which is to increase human happiness (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, 2000). stepping back, however, to take a broader perspective, one can also see that human beings have been focused on doing things to increase their happiness for a long time, and have their own naturalistic understanding of what it takes to do so (mcmahan & estes, 2011), notwithstanding that there is also evidence of the problems that humans have with affective forecasting and predicting what is likely to make them happy (e.g., wilson & gilbert, 2005). in one of the few studies to date to take a naturalistic approach to enhancing happiness, parks, della porta, pierce, zilca, and lyubomirsky (2012) found that, on average, people performed their happiness activities several times a week for at least an hour each time. clearly, then, happiness is a concept which people are minded to pursue, whether intentionally, following the positive psychology interventions developed by researchers with the specific intention of increasing happiness, or more naturalistically, through everyday activities that people believe, either generally or idiosyncratically, will increase their happiness. as such, the focus of our current research was to explore the impact of what might be termed everyday activities on happiness. by everyday activities, we mean activities that are typical, naturalistic and usual for everyday life – and we use the term ‘everyday’ in a general, rather than specific, sense. that is, we use everyday to refer to something that is a normal, natural and typical exemplar, rather than something that happens with the frequency of occurring on every single day of every week. furthermore, we focus on the contribution of positive emotions to wellbeing, inspired by fredrickson and levenson’s (1998) seminal broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions as well as the lyubomirsky and layous (2013) positive-activity model. the broaden-and-build theory suggests that positive emotions broaden awareness and encourage novel, varied, and exploratory thoughts and actions. over time, this broadened behavioural repertoire builds skills and resources. the positive-activity model further proposes that features of positive activities (e.g. dose and variety), of the person (e.g. motivation and effort) and the person-activity fit influence the effect of positive activities on wellbeing. the role of positive emotions is now being recognized in a range of areas, e.g. resilience (fredrickson, tugade, waugh, & larkin, 2003), reducing own-face bias in cross-race facial recognition (johnson & fredrickson, 2005) and helping to build sustainable positive resources in relationships (e.g., fredrickson, cohn, coffey, pek, & finkel, 2008; waugh & fredrickson, 2006). boosting the frequency of experienced positive emotion in everyday life therefore appears a worthwhile enterprise to improve wellbeing (henderson & knight, 2012). whilst there are many interrelated constructs in the happiness literature, here we refer to positive affect as a momentary feeling of positivity (measured by summing a range of positive emotions captured by panas); discrete positive emotions as single measures of a specific but still temporary emotional experience; emotional intensity as a measure of the experience strength, mood as an enduring feeling and subjective wellbeing as a combination of affect (positive and negative) combined with an evaluation of satisfaction with life (linley, maltby, wood, osbourne, & hurling, 2009). in our study we focus on the short-term and momentary development of positive affect, as well as discrete positive emotions, on the basis that, in line with endowment and broaden and build theories (cheng, 2004; fredrickson et al., 2003), these accumulate over time with a protective effect on a person’s wellbeing. gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 we chose to focus on the impact of eating a desirable food and/or gifting a desirable food to another person, as two prototypical activities that may be legitimately considered to increase positive affect (linley et al., 2013). we do not consider that these activities will necessarily be significantly more effective at increasing positive affect than other categories of activity, but nonetheless, they may be considered as prototypical exemplars of everyday behaviour more than typical positive psychology interventions, as we explore next the specific rationales for our selection and inclusion of each of these activities. 1.1 gifting as a naturalistic source of positive affect a series of studies has demonstrated that people experience greater positive affect from spending money on others than from spending money on themselves (dunn, aknin, & norton, 2008). in a demonstration of what they consider may be evidence for a psychological universal, aknin et al. (2013) showed that people around the world derive psychological benefits, including increased positive affect, from using their resources to help others. furthermore, research has shown that ‘giving’ in the non-material sense, such as giving one’s time, help, and social support to others, leads to significant personal gains in happiness and wellbeing (steger, kashdan, & oishi, 2008) and indeed health (post, 2005). kogan et al. (2010) showed that making a sacrifice for one’s romantic partner was associated with higher levels of positive emotion. layous et al. (2012) showed that performing acts of kindness towards others led to increased wellbeing and also increased quality of peer relationships, while weinstein and ryan (2010) showed that when people volitionally help others, they experience enhanced wellbeing. alden and trew (2013) showed that these effects held even for socially anxious people, such that positive affect was increased in people with social anxiety when they undertook kind acts towards other people. discussing the mechanisms through which acts of kindness, which would include giving a gift to others, may increase positive affect, lyubomirsky, sheldon and schkade (2005) identified a number of potential mechanisms. first, they suggested that acts of giving might foster a more charitable perception of others and one’s community, a greater sense of connectedness and cooperation, and thus an enhanced appreciation of what is positive in one’s life. second, they suggested that people who engage in acts of kindness may start to consider themselves as being more altruistic, as well as feeling more confident, in control, and optimistic about their ability and capacity to help others. third, giving things to others can also lead to greater liking by others, together with their appreciation and gratitude, and the potential that the kindness will be reciprocated. finally, lyubomirsky et al. noted that most fundamentally, kind behaviours might satisfy a fundamental human need for relatedness and feeling connected to others. for all these reasons, we hypothesized that the act of giving the gift of an ice cream would lead to increased positive affect. 1.2 eating desirable foods as a naturalistic source of positive affect eating provides an everyday source of happiness for most people (macht, meininger & roth, 2005; wrzesniewski, rozin, & bennett, 2003). indeed, in free report, people will readily identify eating as an activity that gives them pleasure (berenbaum, 2002), and studies of wellbeing using the day reconstruction method have shown that eating is often cited as one of the more pleasurable activities people undertake (kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz & stone, 2004). the literature on taste as one of the sensory sources of pleasure (rozin, 1999; veldhuizen, rudenga & small, 2010) also suggests happiness may be derived from the taste of specific foods. in early experimental studies of emotion induction, food was used as a method for increasing gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 positive affect, most notably by isen and levin (1972), who gave individuals cookies as a means of inducing positive affect (although it is also possible that receiving the cookie enhanced positive affect, as we explore further in the discussion). people naturally employ everyday strategies to improve their emotions such as the consumption of specific ‘mood foods’ that are usually highly desirable. ice cream is frequently used by popular media as an example of a mood food, but only a few studies have investigated scientifically the effects of ice cream on mood. for example, linley et al. (2013) demonstrated that eating ice cream while thinking of things for which one was grateful led to increases in positive affect (study 1), and subsequently that thinking of things for which one was grateful and eating ice cream, whether doing both together or separately, led to increases in positive affect (study 2). walla, richter, farber, leodolter and bauer (2010) compared the effects of eating ice cream with those of eating yoghurt and of eating chocolate. modulation of the startle response (a sudden involuntary movement in response to an intense and unexpected stimulus) was used as a measure of appetitive motivational state, which is defined as a behaviour that is directed toward goals that are usually associated with positive hedonic processes. particularly in males, the amplitude of the startle response was lower after consumption of ice cream as compared to after consumption of yoghurt or chocolate, indicating that ice cream consumption enhanced the appetitive motivational state. another line of evidence stems from an fmri study by burger and stice (2012). ice cream consumption activated the oral somatosensory brain areas reflecting perception of taste, temperature, and texture more when compared to consumption of a tasteless solution. eating ice cream also activated brain areas related to reward and motivation, and the magnitude of this activation was positively associated with lower habitual ice cream consumption. this indicates that ice cream is a pleasurable experience when consumed in moderation, although this may vary according to cultural perspectives on food as a source of pleasure. for example, rozin, fischler, imada, sarubin, and wrzesniewski (1999) found that americans tend to associate food most with health and least with pleasure, whereas the french in contrast tend to associate food least with health and most with pleasure. however, although perhaps obvious from a consumer point of view, there is no research on whether people actually consciously experience how ice cream makes them happy. therefore we set out to investigate the effect of eating on wellbeing, and selected ice cream as an example of a desirable food, given its prevalence in popular culture as a ‘mood food’. 1.3 combining eating a desirable food with gifting a desirable food taken together, the studies outlined above, drawn together from different areas of the research literature, show that first, eating (particularly treats) is a fundamental and natural source of positive emotion for people, and, second, giving support to others, whether through acts of kindness, making sacrifices, or prosocial spending, leads to increased wellbeing of the giver. developing this focus into the realm of everyday life, we were interested in how these two routes to positive affect may relate and interact. we chose to focus specifically on the potential interaction between eating and gifting an ice cream because ice cream is specifically recognized as a desirable ‘mood food’ in many cultures (both individualistic and collectivist) and because it is a common experience to buy an ice cream for another person and share that ice cream experience with them (more so than most other types of food). by examining the role of eating and gifting ice cream as two potential routes to everyday positive affect, we sought to explore how everyday activities would fare in their facilitation and gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 promotion of wellbeing, relative to the existing literature on more experimentally-developed, non-naturalistic positive psychology interventions. 1.4 happiness, positive affect or discrete positive emotions? positive psychology interventions have been generically focused on increasing “happiness”, however defined. “happiness” as a construct may have been assessed directly using measures such as the subjective happiness scale (lyubomirsky & lepper, 1999), or indeed used as a general catch-all term for the positive outcome variables of interest. within the sin and lyubomirsky (2009) meta-analysis, positive affect was the most consistently assessed variable, suggesting that many researchers have chosen to focus on this as their outcome measure of choice, quite possibly because it has a much longer and wider heritage as a predictor, in turn, of other valued outcomes (e.g., lyubomirsky, king & diener, 2005; pressman & cohen, 2005). the focus on positive affect may also be because it is considered an exemplar element of a broader construct of subjective wellbeing that is often calculated by standardising positive affect, negative affect and life satisfaction, and then subtracting negative affect from the sum of positive affect and life satisfaction to create a composite subjective wellbeing variable (e.g., sheldon & elliot, 1999). where positive affect has been the target variable of choice for researchers examining positive psychology interventions, it has typically been the positive and negative affect scales (panas, watson, clark & tellegen, 1988) which have been used. the panas measures 10 positive emotions and 10 negative emotions, which are summed to provide scores for positive and negative affect respectively. however, in kuppens, tuerlinckx, russell, and barrett’s (2012) review they concluded there is no consistent evidence for a straightforward relationship between the valence (degree of positivity or negativity) and arousal (degree of experience intensity) of an emotion; it varies between individuals and contexts. kuppens et al.’s central argument might simply be summarised as “not all emotions are created equal”, which in turn led us to question whether simply summing 10 positive emotions, as is standard practice for the panas, would necessarily be the most insightful measurement approach. there is also emerging interest in the question of whether all positive emotions are the same, or indeed, whether positive emotions may vary in their antecedents, correlates, sensitivities and effects. for example, tackling the question of divergent properties of discrete positive emotions directly, and showing that their differential effects resulted from differing social properties, rather than shared general positive affectivity, strohminger, lewis and meyer (2011) demonstrated that mirth (feeling of gladness and merriment, especially when expressed by laughter) and elevation (feeling of warmth and expansion when observing another person behaving well), as two distinct positive emotions, led to distinct and differentiated moral judgments. examining the impact of the characteristics of leaders on organisational climate, michie (2009) showed how the pride of leaders led to greater prosocial behaviour by those leaders through greater social justice and altruism, with this effect mediated by gratitude on social justice only, thereby differentiating pride and gratitude in this context. further, williams and de steno (2008) differentiated pride from self-efficacy and general positive affect, proposing that pride served as a motivational incentive to persevere with a task despite the initial costs incurred. as this small, but important, research stream is beginning to show, not all positive emotions are created equal. unfortunately, this focus on more omnibus measures of wellbeing has limited the conclusions that can be drawn about the impacts of emotion and the emotional impacts of gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 different interventions. for example, in a systematic review of 687 studies of the elicitation of discrete emotions, lench, flores and bench (2011) had to limit their meta-analysis to the major emotion categories of happiness, sadness, anger and anxiety. they noted, “a review of potential discrete positive emotions was not possible because few studies included more than one of these emotions” (p. 838). hence, while we know a lot about broad emotion categories, much less is known about the role of specific and discrete emotions and how they may be impacted by positive psychology interventions or our everyday happiness activities. even so, the evidence is starting to build that different positive emotions may function in different ways. as such, a further focus of our study was to investigate the role of specific and discrete positive emotions more fully, while also allowing for comparison with previous literature by including a more traditional measure of positive affect, in the form of the panas scales. we included additional measures of 15 discrete positive emotions which had been developed from consideration of a wider set of positive emotional terms that are not included in the panas, but which are nonetheless relevant to the literature on positive emotions (e.g., fredrickson et al., 2008). our intent in including these additional positive emotions was to explore any potential impact on positive emotions that extend beyond those typically measured by the panas, as well as to explore these positive emotions at both the discrete and the combined level as appropriate. we did not opt to explore the panas items at the individual level, given that the panas is a well-established and widely used measure of positive affect, and to conduct analyses at the individual item level would be to disregard the extensive reliability and validity evidence that has been established for the panas as a whole, and which is fundamental to its use by researchers. to provide further comparison with our state measures of emotion, we also included measures of state vitality and life satisfaction. while life satisfaction is more of a trait than a state variable, there is also evidence to suggest that it can be improved in the short term (pavot & diener, 1993), and we were interested to explore whether this was the case with the very short interventions we were testing here. hence, in summary, this study was designed to explore the independent and combined effects of eating and/or gifting a desirable food (ice cream), as everyday activities, on general positive affect as well as more specific and discrete positive emotions. we did not make specific predictions for the differential influence of these activities on general positive affect or discrete positive emotions, given the early stage of research in this area. our focus here was exploratory, and on this basis we considered the measures of discrete positive emotions both at the item level and also as a composite score, when analysis indicated that it was appropriate to do so. in relation to gifting and eating, we developed the following hypotheses: hypothesis 1: based on existing research, it was hypothesized that giving an ice cream as a gift to another person would increase general positive affect and the discrete positive emotions of the gift giver; hypothesis 2: based on existing research, it was hypothesized that eating an ice cream would increase general positive affect and the discrete positive emotions of the ice cream eater; hypothesis 3: it was also hypothesized that eating ice cream and giving an ice cream as a gift to another person together would increase general positive affect and the discrete positive emotions of the gift giver. we were interested to establish if there was any additive or cumulative effect of these two activities combined. gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 our focus in this study was the emotional change in the main study participant, either eating and/or gifting an ice cream, not in the non-study person who received an ice cream as a gift. 2. methodology 2.1 participants the participants were 200 undergraduate students, 116 female and 84 male, recruited via a major uk university. the mean age of participants was 19.84 years (sd = 3.18 years, range = 16 47). participants were typically from a white ethnic background (69.5%). participants were randomly allocated to one of four experimental conditions, which are described in detail in the procedure. 2.2 measures positive and negative affect were assessed using the panas (watson, clark & tellegen, 1988), a 20-item measure scored in relation to the experience of 10 positive and 10 negative emotions at the present moment, using a 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely) scale. internal consistency reliability for positive affect was α = 0.85-0.93 at time 1 and α = 0.78-0.89 at time 2, and for negative affect was α = 0.88-0.91 at time 1 and α = 0.86-0.92 at time 2 (range across the four experimental groups). positive emotional intensity of discrete emotions was assessed using 15 items relating to discrete positive emotion, which required participants to rate the intensity of those specific positive emotions as experienced at the present moment, using a 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely) scale. these positive emotions were: joyful, optimistic, satisfied, curious, happy, resilient, grateful, interested, content, loving, amused, awed, compassionate, hopeful, and proud. internal consistency reliability for these 15 discrete positive emotions when combined as an omnibus measure was α = 0.85-0.90 at time 1 and α = 0.84-0.88 at time 2 (range across the four experimental groups), demonstrating that combining the items together as an omnibus measure of positive emotion was statistically coherent for the purposes of the study. however, as noted above, our interest and focus was also at the level of each discrete individual positive emotion. satisfaction with life was assessed using the satisfaction with life scale (swls, diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985), a five-item measure, scored using a 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) scale. internal consistency reliability was α = 0.86-0.89 at time 1 and α = 0.870.91 at time 2 (range across four experimental groups). vitality was assessed using the state-level version of the subjective vitality scale (ryan & frederick, 1997), a seven-item measure requiring participants to indicate how they feel right now in relation to given statements, scored using a 1 (not at all true) to 7 (very true) scale. internal consistency reliability was α = 0.92-0.93 at time 1 and α = 0.89-0.92 at time 2 (range across four experimental groups). whilst ideally these measures would have been balanced for order of presentation this was not pragmatically possible in this study and so our results may have been influenced by order effects. 2.3 design the study design was a randomized, between-subjects 2 (eating / not eating ice cream) x 2 (gifting / no gifting) design. this led to four intervention groups; gifting only (participants gifted an ice cream to another person who was not participating in the study, but did not consume an ice cream themselves), eating only (participants consumed an ice cream only, and did not gift an ice cream to another person), eating and gifting (participants consumed an ice cream as well as gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 gifting an ice cream to another person (typically a friend) who was not participating in the study) and control (a neutral writing activity, where participants did not either eat or gift an ice cream). all groups completed the study measures (time 1) before completing their given intervention within two hours on the same day. immediately after the intervention, all groups completed the same study measures for a second time on the same day (time 2). 2.4 procedure first, all participants completed the positive emotional intensity items, subjective vitality scale, panas, and the swls (time 1). the measures were presented in this specific order, so as to assess first the emotion measures, which were state-specific. second, all participants completed the intervention as relevant for their group as indicated below: gifting only: participants gave an ice cream as a gift to another person, who was not participating in the study, and stayed with the other person while that person ate the ice cream. the participant did not themselves eat an ice cream. eating only: participants ate an ice cream by themselves. they did not have any specified interaction with other people while eating this ice cream. eating and gifting: participants gave an ice cream as a gift, and ate an ice cream themselves. they stayed with the other person while both of them ate their ice creams, i.e. they ate the ice creams together. control: participants wrote 100 words describing the layout of their bedroom as a neutral writing activity (adapted from watkins, woodward, stone, & kolts, 2003). watkins et al. asked participants to write about their living room, but for the current study, this was adapted to bedroom, as not all participants (students potentially living in student campus accommodation) would have had their own living room. third and finally, all participants completed the positive emotional intensity items, subjective vitality scale, panas, and the swls (time 2). again, the measures were presented in this specific order, so as to assess first the emotion measures, which were state-specific. the intervention was completed in one sitting and participants were paid £20 in return for their participation. 3. data analyses descriptive statistics, including cronbach’s alphas of all the study measures for the two time points were calculated. inter-correlations between all study measures for the two time points are shown in table 1 below. in order to ascertain whether the random assignment of participants to intervention groups was successful, such that all groups start out equal on the study measures, the baseline data were analyzed using multivariate analyses of variance (manova). in order to examine the impact of gifting and eating on happiness and wellbeing (hypotheses 1-3), the data were analyzed using two-way analyses of covariance (ancova). the use of ancova models allowed comparisons across time points following the intervention, while controlling for pre-intervention levels of the variable. gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 table 1: inter-correlations between study measures (n = 200) note: *correlation is significant at the p < .05 level. ** correlation is significant at the p < .01 level. t1 = time 1. t2 = time 2. 4. results 4.1 differences in time 1 study measures the time 1 positive emotional intensity, positive affect, negative affect, satisfaction with life and vitality data were analyzed using a manova with intervention group as a fixed factor and the time 1 study measures as dependent variables. using the wilks lambda statistic, there were no significant differences between the intervention groups (f (15, 530) = 0.92; p = .54, partial η² = .023) across the time 1 study measures. 4.2 impact of eating and gifting on positive emotional intensity the time 2 positive emotional intensity data were analyzed using a two-way ancova with eating (eating / no eating) and gifting (gift / no gift) as between subjects factors and the time 1 positive emotional intensity data as a covariate. a significant main effect of eating was observed (f (1, 195) = 7.28, p < .01, η² = .036). the estimated marginal means for eating are displayed in table 2 below. the means indicate that positive emotional intensity is higher for eating conditions compared to non-eating conditions. pairwise comparisons, using the bonferroni correction, confirmed this difference was significant (p < .01). the main effect of gifting was not significant (f (1, 195) = 0.22, p = .64, η² = .001) indicating that giving an ice cream did not impact positive emotional intensity. the interaction between eating and gifting was also non-significant (f (1, 195) = 0.002, p = .96, η² = .000). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. positive emotional intensity t1 1 2. positive emotional intensity t2 -.861** 1 3. vitality t1 -.612** -.573** 1 4. vitality t2 -.607** -.638** -.864** 1 5. positive affect t1 -.696** -.655** -.628** -.621** 1 6. positive affect t2 -.624** -.692** -.560** -.629** -.798** 1 7. negative affect t1 -.464** -.395** -.277** -.266** -.145** -.186** 1 8. negative affect t2 -.480** -.437** -.296** -.299** -.179** -.217** -.889** 1 9. swls t1 -.641** -.587** -.421** -.411** -.493** -.447** -.365** -.365** 1 10. swls t2 -.568** -.567** -.379** -.385** -.419** -.445** -.350** -.359** .884** gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 table 2: estimated marginal means for significant main effects study measure condition estimated marginal mean positive emotional intensity eating 53.44 no eating 51.85 resilient intensity eating 03.16 no eating 02.91 grateful intensity eating 04.09 no eating 03.67 gifting 04.00 no gifting 03.76 content intensity eating 04.04 no eating 03.80 positive affect eating 32.69 no eating 31.01 gifting 32.47 no gifting 31.23 in order to explore these results further, we were interested in whether the increase in overall positive emotional intensity in the eating conditions was driven by any specific positive emotions in particular. to explore this, the 15 time 2 positive emotional intensity items were analyzed using a 2way mancova, in order to control for multiple tests, with eating (eating / no eating) and gifting (gift / no gift) as between subjects factors and the 15 time 1 positive emotional intensity items as covariates. using the wilks lambda statistic, there was a significant effect of eating on the positive emotional intensity items (f (15, 167) = 2.44; p < .01, partial η² = .180). follow up one-way anovas indicated significant effects for the positive emotional intensity of feeling grateful (f (1, 181) = 16.89; p < .001, partial η² = .085), resilient (f (1, 181) = 5.48; p < .05, partial η² = .029) and content (f (1, 181) = 7.54; p < .01, partial η² = .040). the estimated marginal means for eating across the emotions of grateful, resilient and content are displayed in table 2 above. the means indicate that the positive emotional intensity of feeling grateful, resilient and content is higher for eating conditions compared to non-eating conditions. pairwise comparisons, using the bonferroni correction, confirmed this difference was significant for grateful (p < .001), content (p < .01) and resilient (p < .05). using the wilks lambda statistic, there was no significant effect of gifting on the positive emotional intensity items (f (15, 167) = 1.36; p = .172, partial η² = .109). using the wilks lambda statistic, there was no significant interaction between eating and gifting for the positive emotional intensity items (f (15, 167) = 1.44; p = .134, partial η² = .115). 4.3 impact of eating and gifting on positive affect the time 2 positive affect data were analyzed using a two-way ancova with eating (eating / no eating) and gifting (gift / no gift) as between subjects factors and the time 1 positive affect data as a covariate. gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 a significant main effect of eating was observed (f (1, 195) = 8.51, p < .01, partial η² = .042). the estimated marginal means for eating are displayed in table 2 above. the means indicate that positive affect is higher for eating conditions compared to non-eating conditions. pairwise comparisons, using the bonferroni correction, confirmed this difference was significant (p < .01). a significant main effect of gifting was observed (f (1, 195) = 4.57, p < .05, partial η² = .023). the estimated marginal means for gifting are displayed in table 2 above. the means indicate that positive affect is higher for gifting conditions compared to non-gifting conditions. pairwise comparisons, using the bonferroni correction, confirmed this difference was significant (p < .05). the interaction between gifting and eating was also significant (f (1, 195) = 9.84, p < .01, partial η² = .048). the estimated marginal means for the interaction are displayed in table 3 below, where it is shown that eating and gifting, both alone and together, have a positive impact on levels of positive affect. table 3: estimated marginal means for significant interaction effects study measure eating gifting estimated marginal mean positive affect eating gifting 32.40 no gifting 32.99 no eating gifting 32.53 no gifting 29.48 this interaction effect is shown graphically in figure 1 below. this interaction effect suggests that if you give an ice cream, positive affect is stable regardless of whether you eat ice cream or not. however, if you don’t give an ice cream, it is only eating ice cream that achieves a higher level of positive affect, relative to the control group. figure 1: interaction effect for eating and gifting on positive affect 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 gifting no gifting p o si ti v e a ff e ct eating no eating gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 4.4 impact of eating and gifting on negative affect, satisfaction with life and vitality all main effects and interactions were non-significant for each of negative affect, satisfaction with life and vitality. 5. discussion this study aimed to explore the effect of eating or gifting an ice cream on general positive affect, discrete positive emotions and wellbeing. the study used a number of measures to do this, which reveal interesting results. first, gifting an ice cream to another person was found to increase positive affect only. this finding lends partial support for hypothesis 1; that giving an ice cream as a gift is effective in increasing general positive affect and discrete positive emotions and also converges with previous research in the gifting behaviour literature (e.g. steger, kashdan, & oishi, 2008). it is interesting to note that the time 1 positive emotional intensity levels for the gifting group was equivalent to the time 2 positive emotional intensity level achieved by the other two experimental conditions. given the random allocation to groups, this is a statistical anomaly, but may provide one reason why we did not see a significant effect of giving an ice cream on positive emotional intensity: because participants in this group were already experiencing the same level of positive emotional intensity that other experimental participants reached following their intervention. second, eating an ice cream was found to increase positive emotional intensity and positive affect. these findings lend support for hypothesis 2 that eating ice cream alone is effective in increasing general positive affect and discrete positive emotions and are in line with previous research findings (e.g., isen & levin, 1972; linley et al., 2013). it is notable that there was a difference in positive affect scores of 3.5 points (equivalent to a positive affect score greater by 11.9%) between people who consumed an ice cream and people who neither consumed an ice cream nor gifted an ice cream to someone else. given that this was a simple everyday event, which occurred within a short timeframe (e.g., 10-15 minutes), this difference in levels of positive affect could be considered clinically significant. in practical terms, this may suggest that there was a real-life impact on participants from their eating of the ice cream, and the reported increases in positive affect that followed. of course, we do not know whether this was simply a positive affect spike, or whether this increase will have been in any way maintained, a topic to which we return below. third, eating ice cream and giving an ice cream together were also found to increase positive emotional intensity and positive affect. this offers partial support for hypothesis 3 that the simultaneous act of eating and gifting would lead to a “double benefit” in increasing general positive affect and discrete positive emotions. however, we did not find evidence for any additive or cumulative effect: that this double activity would lead to double benefit and so higher wellbeing scores than either giving an ice cream or eating ice cream alone. taken together, these results suggest that the activities of eating ice cream and giving an ice cream, both independently and together, are effective everyday behavioural strategies for at least temporarily increasing the level of positive emotion people experience. this adds to the literature on developing and testing specific interventions for increasing happiness by including alternative strategies less explored by previous research, namely eating and gifting. notably, these activities are much more everyday activities than have typically been reported in the positive psychology literature to date, suggesting that there may be different everyday activities that provide routes to happiness that have yet to be sufficiently explored. given the emerging focus on discrete positive emotions (e.g., lench et al., 2011), rather than broader omnibus measures of positive emotion, we also examined the question of whether gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 specific, discrete positive emotions were driving the overall significance of the positive emotion effects of eating. analyses of the discrete positive emotions revealed that the positive emotional intensity of feeling grateful, content and resilient were all significantly higher in the eating conditions. from this evidence, it is possible that interventions that continually raise people’s awareness of the positive emotions associated with everyday activities might lead to longer-term increases in wellbeing. note that we are not suggesting people should focus on one particular type of naturalistic activity, such as eating ice cream, but instead that this evidence encourages us to consider the multiple sources of positive affect already generated in our everyday life from a wide range of behaviours. further research examining the duration of the positive changes to momentary positive emotional intensity and positive affect would provide greater clarity on this possibility. it is also understood that longer-term happiness is built up over time from repeated frequency of positive affective experiences (diener, sandvik, & pavot, 1991), of which gifting and eating ice cream are examples. as such, while these activities lead only to momentary impact, they may also, when repeated over time, lead to longer-term increases in sustainable happiness. indeed, there are many other sources of everyday positive emotions to accumulate positive experiences over time, including, for example, admiring the beauty of nature, appreciating small acts of kindness, and enjoying the warm glow of friendship. all of these everyday activities lend themselves as candidates for future research into more everyday general positive affect and discrete positive emotions and their accumulative impact on happiness. there are also other potential interpretations of these findings which cannot be ruled out from the current evidence, and so lend themselves to future research directions. first, it is possible that the active mechanism that led to positive emotion increases from eating an ice cream was not the actual act of eating the ice cream, but rather the experience of receiving the gift of an ice cream (the same alternative interpretation that we noted above could be applied to isen and levin’s (1972) study). second, the gifting conditions could also be confounded with social contact, in that the experience of being with another person as they ate their ice cream could have impacted on the positive emotions of the participant, rather than purely the act of giving the gift of the ice cream itself. this seems plausible given the mechanisms for how acts of kindness can increase positive emotions that were discussed by lyubomirsky et al. (2005). third, each of the eating and gifting conditions involved having access to resources (i.e., an ice cream) that the participants did not have to acquire themselves. as such, the act of ‘spending someone else’s money’ could have been the active mechanism. fourth, whilst we found an increase in resilience, monitored as a short-term emotional experience, this may have been a projection of the participants’ boost in positive feeling, rather than the basis for longer term resilient self-reflection as proposed by the broaden and build model. further research is needed over several weeks, using cognitive measures of resilience, to confirm this as a beneficial effect. fifth, clearly our results are based on responses from the uk participants recruited for this study and may not be representative of other populations. sixth, desirable foods contain nutrients that are likely to have a direct physiological and perhaps also indirect psychological impact (drewnowski, 1997; leigh gibson, & green, 2002; van oudenhove et al., 2011). whilst this nutrient-based physiological mechanism was clearly not contributing to the impact of gifting it may have played a role during the eating condition. all of these considerations lend themselves to interesting directions for future research. nonetheless, these findings suggest an extension to existing knowledge by highlighting the role gifting and eating hurling, linley, dovey, maltby, & wilkinson www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 of more everyday activities and the role these activities may play in promoting happiness. typical positive psychology studies to date have not focused on natural, everyday behaviours, but instead are established by researchers as changes in people’s daily behaviour (e.g., random acts of kindness, writing a gratitude letter, recording a gratitude diary, visualising your best possible self). in contrast, the focus of the current study was on everyday activities, in this case, eating a desirable food (e.g. ice cream) and giving a desirable food to another person. this study indicated that these everyday activities had demonstrable effects on positive emotions and positive affect, perhaps indicating more natural, everyday mechanisms through which we may engage with promoting and building everyday happiness. as a result, the study opens up new avenues of exploration into the role that everyday activities and behaviours may have on momentary positive emotion and how these everyday activities can be re-framed as activities for the promotion of happiness over the longer term. for example, in addition to the eating and gifting of desirable foods, other everyday activities to explore include taking a break from work, the comfort and security provided by a building in bad weather, the creative act of preparing food, the sense of belonging from being part of a work group and the physical activity involved in a daily commute. this indicates an interesting and worthwhile new line of inquiry for positive psychology interventions research that focuses on the naturalistic activities that people may already be undertaking, on an everyday basis, to manage their own moods and increase their positive emotions. authors robert hurling unilever bob.hurling@unilever.com alex linley centre for applied positive psychology helen dovey centre for applied positive psychology john maltby university of leicester joy wilkinson unilever publishing timeline received 14 july 2014 accepted 8 december 2014 published 21 june 2015 references aknin, l. b., barrington-leigh, c. p., dunn, e. w., helliwell, j. f., burns, j., biswas-diener, r., … & norton, m. i. 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(2023). assessing the structures and domains of wellness models: a systematic review. international journal of wellbeing, 13(2), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i2.2619 krista kauppi the university of helsinki krista.kauppi@helsinki.fi copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article assessing the structures and domains of wellness models: a systematic review krista kauppi · antero vanhala · eira roos · paulus torkki abstract: objective: this study systematically identifies different wellness domains, explores whether we are reaching any consensus, and presents an archetype of a wellness model. methods: studies were selected for review if they proposed a model for assessing individuals’ wellness, the model was generic (i.e., non-context or disease-specific), designed for adults and included at least physical, psychological and social domains. furthermore, the study needed to be peer-reviewed with a full-text available in english. based on this, 44 models were identified and their domains were extracted and grouped using thematic analysis, and placed under themes that were created using quantitative methods. publication year and formed groupings were used to examine the evolution of models. median, mode, and percentages were used to form the archetype. results: the investigated models included 379 unique domains that could be clustered into 70 groups and under 14 themes. while the numbers of published wellness models increased, no consensus on the domains was reached. the majority of the models were presented at one level with five domains. conclusions: incorporating wellness into everyday practice requires comparable measures to evaluate and benchmark outcomes. hence, we need to reach a mutual understanding on the structure and domains of wellness. keywords: wellness; wellbeing; model; domain; systematic review; measurement 1. introduction although wellness benefits are widely recognized, we still use most of our healthcare spending to treat people when symptoms appear. studies have shown that higher levels of overall wellness increase labor productivity (isham et al., 2021; shi et al., 2013), reduce unscheduled absences, presenteeism, and employee turnover (sears et al., 2013), decrease the risk of mortality (martínmaría et al., 2017), reduce hospital utilization (harrison et al., 2012), and lead to lower healthcare costs (harrison et al., 2012; sears et al., 2013). however, on average, the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) countries spend less than 3% of their overall health expenditure on health promotion and prevention actions (gmeinder, 2017). concurrently, the medical research field has been criticized for focusing mainly on diseases instead of health promotion activities and understanding wellness (naci & ioannidis, 2015). it is vital that we continue to investigate wellness and how it affects our everyday lives to push society to shift our focus from the absence of disease to the presence of wellness. understanding the structure and content of wellness is imperative in designing effective health promotion activities and tracking their success on community and individual levels. however, the term wellness lacks a widely accepted definition. currently, the most cited about:blank systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 definition in the literature is that of health, which is defined as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (linton et al., 2016; roscoe, 2009; who, 1948). since defining the concept has been arduous, many authors have attempted to explain wellness by defining its characteristics. wellness is considered to be a) something more than solely the absence of illness (els, 2006; roscoe, 2009), b) a positive construct with a subjective nature (bart et al., 2018; corbin & pangrazi, 2001; dunn, 1961), c) a continuum, not an end state (dunn, 1961; greenberg, 1985; kirsten, 2009; lafferty, 1979; myers et al., 2000), d) multidimensional and dynamic, where the different factors are interrelated and search for balance (abbott & baun, 2015; corbin & pangrazi, 2001; crose, 1992; dunn, 1961; lafferty, 1979; myers et al., 2000; roscoe, 2009; seppälä et al., 2012). likely due to these characteristics, the who’s definition of health has ended up to be also the definition of wellness. however, the terminology surrounding the concept has been left nebulous. the terms wellness and well-being are often used interchangeably, (kirsten, 2009; ryff & keyes, 1995) and many systematic reviews on wellness instruments have included quality of life, subjective well-being, happiness, and life satisfaction instruments (charlemagne-badal et al., 2015; cooke et al., 2016; dronavalli & thompson, 2015). since all these terms are also separate concepts, it remains unclear how they relate to and overlap one another. however, fundamental to designing and tracking the impact of health promotion interventions is the ability to measure changes, which requires defining the phenomenon’s ontology. a key challenge in defining wellness is the vast number of conceptualizations, which tend to vary from author to author. it is common to describe wellness by enumerating the domains that it includes. while some authors have created conceptualizations that include domains such as physical and social (adams et al., 1997; allen et al., 2007; o'donnell, 2008; seppälä et al., 2012), others have focused solely on psychological factors (ryan & deci, 2001; ryff & keyes, 1995). some previous studies have attempted to visualize the relationships between the domains by describing them using, for example, a picture of yin and yang (saylor, 2004), a circle (greenberg, 1985; roy et al., 2018; witmer & sweeney, 1992), or a cone (adams et al., 1997). some have turned the concept into a measurement instrument for individual wellness (adams et al., 1997; lui & fernando, 2018; mcelligott et al., 2018; myers et al., 2000; naidoo, 2019; prilleltensky et al., 2015; renger et al., 2000). unfortunately, this has resulted in extensive lists of different kinds of wellness instruments, which multiple existing systematic reviews attempt to gather and evaluate (bart et al., 2018; charlemagne-badal et al., 2015; cooke et al., 2016; dronavalli & thompson, 2015; linton et al., 2016). these different conceptualizations and operationalizations make finding a general measure of wellness and incorporating it into our current practices difficult. despite much research, there is a gap in knowledge regarding the basic structure of wellness conceptualizations, including the social, psychological, and physical aspects described in the who’s definition. previous systematic reviews have often described models by exploring operationalization (bart et al., 2018; charlemagne-badal et al., 2015) and included models that might only focus on, for example, psychological factors. however, they did not investigate the general structure of wellness or whether there was any mutual understanding on the structure and domains of wellness. reaching even some degree of mutual understanding is vital as it enables a starting point to investigate how wellness perceptions vary between different countries, cultures, age groups and genders, and allows examining the validity of a more generalized wellness instrument. these issues justify this review’s aim of informing researchers on the basic structure of wellness conceptualizations that consider at least the physical, social, and psychological domains. in this review, we aim to 1) offer a structured list of the domains of wellness models that http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 conform to the who tripartite definition; 2) review whether we are approaching any degree of mutual understanding about the domains of wellness, and 3) present the archetype of a wellness model, focusing mainly on the basic structure. currently, the terminology around wellness is elusive and no agreement seems to exist on the use of the different terms. as in this study we wanted to focus on models that examine individuals from a broader perspective and consider social, psychological and physical aspects, we decided to use “wellness” instead of “wellbeing” as a main term of the paper, as wellness is more often seen to encompass more factors. hence, to maintain clarity and to limit the scope of the study, this review focuses strictly on wellness conceptualizations that include at least physical, social, and psychological aspects, excluding quality of life and subjective well-being (swb) models, latter usually referring to diener’s literature (diener, 1984). this review will aid health promotion researchers in getting closer to a mutual understanding on what wellness is and how to structure it to take steps towards a more generalized measure of wellness. 2. methods 2.1 search strategy the search started with an exploratory literature review to identify relevant articles and key terms used in the field, and to set appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria. based on this keywords were formed (supplement 1) and a systematic literature review was performed using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (prisma) (page et al., 2021). databases used for the search were web of science, scopus, applied social sciences index and abstracts, and sociological abstracts, and the time range was from 1945 to 1st of september 2020. the databases were chosen with a help of a university library search professional. the review was complemented with a manual search of wellness conceptualization from the articles identified in the exploratory literature search and systematic review. 2.2 inclusion and exclusion criteria our aim was to find models that were suitable for most of the population and to get a wide view on models that include wellness domains. hence, studies were included when they 1) presented domains of either a wellness or well-being model for assessing an individual’s wellness, 2) had a model with domains that included at least social, physical, and psychological aspects as presented in who’s definition, 3) were the first peer-reviewed publication of the model domains, 4) were developed for the adult population, and 5) were written in english with the availability of a full text article. studies were excluded when they 1) focused on a specific purpose (e.g., disease, symptom, treatment, intervention) or setting (e.g., urban development), 2) assessed wellness or well-being focusing only on a specific population (e.g., ethnic group, occupation, or nationality), 3) could not be evaluated due to a missing abstract and full text, and 4) assessed a model that was clearly stated to be a quality of life or subjective well-being model. 2.3 screening of studies and data extraction the studies were screened by two authors who independently reviewed the studies using the prisma guidelines and study selection criteria. the authors first made a separate preliminary decision about inclusion or exclusion and then met to discuss the studies and to agree on which models should be included in the review. if no agreement was reached, a third author acted as an arbiter. the same two authors first extracted data independently to a spreadsheet, and then reviewed the data together. the data included the author’s name, year of publication, name of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 the model, if available, target group, methodology of creation, number of taxonomic levels, number of domains, and eventually domains divided to taxonomic levels using the tree structure model. for data analysis purposes, the definitions of domains were also collected if they were available. 2.4 data analysis and synthesis first, the authors decided on the taxonomic level to be used for the analysis. approximately, one third of the models (n = 15) had domains placed to two taxonomic levels, where the first level (root node) was usually a grouping of second-level domains (leaf nodes). hence, the authors decided to primarily use the second-level domains (leaf nodes of the tree hierarchy) and moved the first-level domains or domain groupings (root nodes) to the second level if a domain or level was missing. second, the obtained domains were collected to a visual board (miro, realtimeboard inc.), where similar domains were grouped using thematic analysis (nowell et al., 2017) aided by domains’ definitions when available. the two authors coded each group based on the content with a code, such as “sense of coherence.” third, higher-level themes were created by analyzing the first-level domains or domain groupings (root nodes) of the previously mentioned two-level models (n = 15). this was done by coding each domain, for example, with the code “environmental,” calculating the frequency and considering all repeated themes. the groups formed in step two of the analysis process were placed under the most appropriate theme. figure 1 clarifies the meaning of the terms first-and second-level domains, theme, grouping, and domain. figure 1. clarification of the terms first-and second-level, theme, group, and domains. left hand side describes the data extraction process and the analysis structure, while right hand side shows http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 an example of data extraction. fourth, to examine the evolution of models and to estimate whether the research community had moved closer to a mutual understanding, the two authors listed the identified articles based on the publication year and examined whether the formed groupings would start to occur more frequently. furthermore, the frequency of published models per decade was calculated. finally, to explore the archetype of a wellness model, the median and mode were calculated for the number of domains and the percentages for the number of taxonomic levels. to calculate the number of domains, the authors again primarily used the second-level domains (leaf nodes), and moved the first-level domains or domain groupings (root nodes) to the second level if a domain or level was missing. 3. results 3.1 description of the search results we identified 5805 articles in the databases and 49 in other sources. after removing duplicates, 3925 articles remained for the title and abstract screening. we reviewed 104 full-text articles using the study selection criteria, of which 44 were included in the review (table 1). the table presents for each model its reference, year of publication, what method was used to create the model, how many levels the model has and how many domains the model includes. the detailed screening and exclusion process is summarized in the prisma diagram (figure 2). main risk of bias is related to the screening and selection of the results. the quality of abstracts was occasionally poor but due to snowballing we consider the risk of missing important studies to be low. as we had a clear predefined criteria for study selection and two independent authors evaluated each study and a third author acted as an arbiter to reach consensus, we consider the risk of leaving out important studies to be low. table 1. characteristics of the studies included in the review references year of model name of the model methodology of creation taxonomic levels number of domains (adams et al., 1997) 1997 perceived wellness survey (pws) combination: literature review and population survey data (quantitative) 1 6 (agarwal et al., 2016) (a) 2006 na not specified 1 7 (ali et al., 2018) 2018 wellness concepts model (wcm) combination: literature review and expert group 2 29 (ardell, 2011) (b) 1986 high-level wellness not specified 1 5 (ardell, 2011) na high-level wellness not specified 1 14 (arora et al., 2016) (c) 2009 gallup-healthways wellbeing index population survey data (quantitative) 1 6 (bell et al., 2004) 2004 arizona integrative outcomes scale (aios) not specified 1 5 (brown & applegate, 2012) (d) 1981 wellness inventory not specified 1 12 (brown & applegate, 2012) (e) 1983 lifestyle assessment questionnaire (laq) not specified 1 11 (brown et al., 2015) (f) 1992 testwell not specified 1 10 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 references year of model name of the model methodology of creation taxonomic levels number of domains (charlemagnebadal et al., 2015) 2015 na combination: literature review and expert group 1 15 (crose, 1992) 1992 na not specified 2 25 (depken, 1994) 1994 wellness model not specified 1 6 (de vries et al., 2016) 2016 health-related subjective wellbeing (hr-swb) population survey data (quantitative) 1 5 (greenberg, 1985) 1985 na not specified 1 5 (hadley, 1974) 1974 na literature review 2 22 (hattie et al., 2004) 2004 indivisible self-wellness model population survey data (quantitative) 2 17 (henriques et al., 2014) 2014 nested model (nm) of well-being literature review 2 6 (jovanović et al., 2019) (g) 2013 personal well-being index (pwi) not specified 1 8 (kirsten, 2009) 2009 na not specified 2 23 (lafferty, 1979) 1979 na not specified 1 5 (linton et al., 2016) 2016 na literature review 1 6 (lui & fernando, 2018) 2018 the wellbeing scale (wbs) combination: literature review and population survey data (quantitative) 1 5 (mcelligott et al., 2018) (h) 2015 integrative health and wellness assessment (ihwa) combination: expert group and population survey data (quantitative) 2 10 (myers et al., 2004) 2004 4f-wel population survey data (quantitative) 1 4 (myers et al., 2000) 2000 wheel of wellness population survey data (quantitative) 2 18 (naidoo, 2019) 2019 multidimensional individual well-being (miw) combination: literature review and population survey data (quantitative) 1 6 (prilleltensky et al., 2015) 2015 interpersonal, community, occupational, physical, psychological, and economic well-being (i coppe) combination: literature review and population survey data (quantitative) 1 7 (renger et al., 2000) 2000 optimal living profile (olp) combination: expert group and population survey data (quantitative) 2 24 (roscoe, 2009) 2009 na literature review 1 7 (saylor, 2004) 2004 the circle of health not specified 2 9 (seppälä et al., 2012) 2012 personal wellness information model combination: literature review and expert group 1 7 (sinclair et al., 2005) 2005 general population clinical outcomes in routine evaluationoutcome measure (gpcore) combination: expert group and population survey data (quantitative) 1 4 (skevington & böhnke, 2018) 2018 life quality and wellbeing” (lqw) model population survey data (quantitative) 2 14 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 references year of model name of the model methodology of creation taxonomic levels number of domains (supranowicz & paź, 2014) 2014 physical, mental and social well-being scale (pmsw-21) combination: expert group and population survey data (quantitative) 2 21 (tulloch & healy, 1982) 1982 na not specified 1 6 (voukelatou et al., 2020) 2020 na literature review 1 11 (wheeler, 1991) 1991 the general well-being questionnaire (gwbq) combination: literature review and population survey data (quantitative) 2 30 (white, 2010) 2010 na not specified 2 25 (wilcock, 1998) (i) 1990 na population survey data (qualitative analysis) 1 8 (wilcock, 1998) 1998 na population survey data (qualitative analysis) 1 9 (witmer & sweeney, 1992) 1992 wheel of wholeness not specified 2 11 (zhou et al., 2017) 2017 na combination: literature review and expert group 1 5 (žižek et al., 2015) 2015 requisite personal holism (rph) dimensions not specified 1 5 note. *original authors (a) (anspaugh et al., 2006), (b) (ardell, 1986), (c) (gallup-healthways, 2009), (d) (travis, 1981), (e) (national wellness institute, 1983), (f) (national wellness institute, 1992), (g) (international wellbeing group, 2013), (h) (dossey, 2015), (i) (blaxter, 1990) 3.2 what domains are found from wellness models that conform to the who tripartite definition? the investigated wellness models included 494 domains, of which 379 were unique. due to the significant variation in the naming of domains, 322/379 (85%) of them were unique in their exact written format. however, the domains were clustered based on similarities to 70 groups. these groups were further grouped under 13 main themes, namely “economical,” “emotional,” “environmental,” “health behavior,” “healthcare,” “intellectual,” “life satisfaction,” “occupational,” “physical,” “psychological,” “social,” “spiritual,” and “values and ideology”. an additional theme named “miscellaneous” was used for domains described as “overall wellbeing,” that did not clearly belong to any other grouping, or for which the authors could not reliably determine the domain’s meaning based on its name. table 2 presents each theme’s description and figure 3 presents each theme, the domain groups it includes and how many separate domains each group includes. for instance, group “coping” includes four separate domains from different models, namely “coping style/patterns”, “coping patterns”, “having reserve to combat problems”, and “balance, adaptation, resiliency”. based on the analysis, the highest number of domains was related to the “physical” theme, with 83/494 (17%) of domains. other themes with a high number of domains were “psychological” (67/494, 14%), “social” (63/494, 13%), “emotional” (57/494, 12%), “spiritual” (43/494, 9%), and “environmental” (40/494, 8%). notably, studies must include physical, social, and psychological components to be considered for this review. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 figure 2. prisma flow chart http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 table 2. emergent themes and their brief descriptions emergent theme brief description economical the economical theme includes domains linked to economic and material aspects of wellness, such as economic stability, the standard of living, income, and socioeconomic development. emotional the emotional theme includes various aspects of emotional health, such as positive and negative emotions, coping, emotional awareness and intelligence, and emotional management. environmental the environmental theme includes domains related to both general environmental health and ecological context. for example, community, political environment, safety, and natural environment. health behavior the health behavior theme includes domains linked to behavior, health responsibility, preventative actions, and self-care. other examples include health attitudes and lifestyle habits. healthcare the healthcare domain includes aspects such as dependence on medication and availability of healthcare services. intellectual the intellectual domain includes intellectual health and wellness, such as education and learning, creativity, cognitive wellness, and problem solving. life satisfaction the life satisfaction domain focuses on life satisfaction and life balance miscellaneous the miscellaneous theme includes domains that could not be categorized under any other theme. this might be because they simply did not fit there, or the authors could not reliably determine what was meant with the domain. occupational the occupational theme includes domains linked to work, occupation, leisure, and work-life balance. it is noteworthy that work does not only mean a job. it also considers the students, retired, and unemployed people. physical the physical theme includes biological context and physical or physiological aspects of health. for example, functioning, energy, exercise, nutrition, recovery, and body image. psychological the psychological theme includes different mental aspects and psychological contexts. for example, self-worth, sense and temperaments, identity, autonomy, optimism, and sense of competence. social the social theme includes friendships, love, relationships and other aspects of social health such as social capabilities and support. spiritual the spiritual theme includes spiritual context and different aspects of spirituality. for example, meaningfulness and inner peace. values and ideology values and ideology themes include values, beliefs and ideology alongside metaphysical context. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 figure 3. emergent themes, their groups and the number of domains in each group 3.3 are we getting closer to any degree of mutual understanding on the domains of wellness? although a steep increase in the number of published wellness models in recent decades exists (figure 4), having examined models from the 1970s to the present, we did not see any evidence that the occurrence of any specific theme has been increasing or establishing its status (supplement 2). instead, many of the different themes kept occurring inconsistently. as can be seen, some new domains have appeared over the years. the “economic” theme was rare and occurred in only two publications out of 26 before 2010 after being mentioned in 11 out of 18 publications. a similar effect can be seen with the theme “environmental,” which appeared in seven publications before 2010 and, after that, appeared in 13 publications. the somewhat opposite effect can be observed with the theme “intellectual,” which appeared 15 times before 2010, and after that, appeared only three times. figure 4 shows the historical development of models showcasing the number of domains each model includes and how many of the emergent 13 themes of this study could be found from each model. when examining the number of different themes and domains, we could not see any clear trend over time. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 figure 4. number of published models per decade and examination of the number of themes and dimensions over time * the last column includes one model from 2020, which has been marked with a different color. 3.4 what would be the archetype of a wellness model based on previous studies? among the 44 models identified, the number of domains varied between four and 30, resulting in a median of eight domains. however, the majority of the models (n = 8) had five domains. based on figure 3 the five most common domains were “social relationships”, “positive and negative feelings”, “functioning”, “generic spiritual health and wellness”, and “environment”. the taxonomy level analysis revealed that 29 (66%) of the models were presented at one level, while the others (n = 15, 34%) were divided into two taxonomic levels. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 4. discussion we aimed to review the different wellness domains extensively, examine whether we had come closer to a mutual understanding on the different domains, and investigate the structure of current wellness models. we identified almost 400 different wellness domains and clustered them into 70 different groups. this indicates that many of the previously published wellness domains did not differ. however, while the interest in wellness model development has clearly increased, the views on the wellness domains and how many there are still vary. based on our findings, wellness models are generally presented at one level, and they comprise five domains but there is still little agreement on the structure and domains of wellness. many of the identified wellness domains of this systematic review have also been described in previous literature. these include, for example, cognitive, physical (charlemagne-badal et al., 2015; linton et al., 2016), economic, intellectual, social, and emotional wellness (charlemagnebadal et al., 2015; cooke et al., 2016; linton et al., 2016). other previously identified domains were environmental and occupational aspects, spirituality, energy (charlemagne-badal et al., 2015; cooke et al., 2016; linton et al., 2016), health behavior, leisure, life satisfaction, sleep (charlemagne-badal et al., 2015; linton et al., 2016), healthcare (charlemagne-badal et al., 2015), nutrition, functioning, achievement, autonomy, self-esteem, meaningfulness (cooke et al., 2016; linton et al., 2016), coping, sense of humor (cooke et al., 2016), and creativity (linton et al., 2016). interesting finding was that economic and environmental domains have appeared more often in the recent years. this might be due to the shift from models emphasizing psychological domains to more multidisciplinary approach of wellness as well as the vast technological, economic, social, cultural, and political changes in our society and rising environmental awareness (hadley, 1974; oecd, 2013; reese & myers, 2012; voukelatou et al., 2020). we found number of domains ranging from four to 30, which differs from previous research, where the number of domains ranged from one to 15 (charlemagne-badal et al., 2015; linton et al., 2016). the lower limit difference is naturally due to our requirement that wellness domains include at least the physical, mental, and social domains to be considered for this review. the upper limit difference might be because we aimed for the most comprehensive picture, and thus, the extraction of domains was done primarily using the leaf nodes and secondarily using the root nodes. however, most of the models had five domains and a median of eight domains, both of which fit the range identified in previous literature but signifies that on average models investigate individual’s wellness from a rather narrow perspective. despite almost 50 years of research, a mutual understanding of the different wellness domains is absent. considering the complex issue and the fact that wellness research brings together multiple branches of science, ranging from philosophy to medicine, it is not surprising that this has not been met. however, the need for harmonizing the concept of wellness increases, as policy-makers and nations attempt to find comparable ways to measure social progress and see how policies and global changes affect wellness of individuals (european union, 2017; oecd, 2022; randall et al., 2019). one possible issue in harmonization based on our analysis is that approximately one-third of the studies (14/44) based their models on some degree of a literature review. hence, it seems that most of the studies did not start forming their models using existing results. this might be one of the reasons we found significant variations in the naming, defining, and grouping of domains. combining this with the lack of agreement on the different terms of wellness and cultural, age, and gender variation, which have been identified in other studies (bart et al., 2018; charlemagne-badal et al., 2015; cooke et al., 2016; crose, 1992; linton et al., 2016; myers et al., 2000), wellness researchers face significant challenges in conducting comparable systematic reviews and reaching a consensus on different wellness domains. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 we suggest benchmarking, for example, effectiveness research and attempting to form together some guidelines for research, such as in comet initiative (comet initiative). furthermore, the first step toward reaching some degree of consensus on the domains could be using the findings of systematic reviews, such as this one, and applying, for instance, the delphi method involving a multidisciplinary expert panel. this could be followed by performing larger scale studies to observe if there are differences between, for instance, age groups or genders on how they value the different domains of wellness. our study highlights the need for a more unifying discussion and argues that wellness research could benefit from the development of agreed-upon standardized sets of terms. 4.1 strengths and limitations of the review we identified some limitations that might have affected the results of this review. as this study was limited to wellness models meant for the general adult population, account for who’s tripartite definition of health and has been strictly limited to certain terms on the titles, it is possible that not all relevant models were identified. however, this has most likely been mitigated considerably using several different databases and an initial exploratory search that aims to comprehensively identify the key terms of the field. we also acknowledge that there can be a significant amount of subjectivity involved in deciding, in some instances, whether a study proposed a model, how the model was structured into a hierarchical form for analysis purposes, and how different domains were grouped together. for future purposes, it would be worthwhile to have data analysts from a wider set of backgrounds as it is likely to influence how different models are interpreted, domains are grouped, and themes are named. however, we consider that we have offered an analytical data-based approach into thematic grouping and clustering of wellness domains that can give actionable insights to other researchers. notably, this review did not choose models based on their validity, sensitivity, or reliability measures. however, this can be justified for the purposes of this review, which is to offer an extensive picture of wellness domains and not to focus on the operationalization of models. we do not see that any of the identified limitations would drastically jeopardize the results of this review. 4.2 implications for health promotion practice and research we have presented an extensive review of the literature to offer other health promotion researchers a solid ground from which to continue the development of wellness models, hoping to someday approach some degree of consensus. however, we do see that further studies on wellness are still needed. specifically, to investigate the differences between countries, cultures, age groups and genders, and to develop and validate comparable measures of wellness that could be implemented into practice, it is vital that we get closer to the agreement on even some key domains of wellness. considering the positive impact of higher level of wellness on labor productivity, unscheduled absences, presenteeism, employee turnover, risk of mortality, hospital utilization, and healthcare costs, it is important to design effective wellness promotion interventions and to comparably track their actual impact. furthermore, a better understanding of what is meant by different terms in the field and how they are interrelated would help other researchers in future inquiries. currently, there is no clear consensus on how quality of life, subjective well-being, health, wellness, and well-being are positioned in the field. we hope that this review encourages other health promotion researchers to continue examining the complex nature of wellness in theory and practice to take steps closer to bringing wellness measurement to our everyday lives. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ systematic review of wellness models kauppi, vanhala, roos, & torkki www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 5. conclusion this systematic review offered a detailed overview of the different domains of wellness, their evolution, and model structure, with an attempt to aid in developing a more generalized measure of wellness and this way enabling comparing and validating the perceptions of wellness across different countries, cultures, age groups and genders. based on this review most commonly occuring domains of wellness are related to “physical”, “psychological”, “social”, “emotional”, “spiritual”, and “environmental” themes. however, it is important to note that this review does not suggest any new model but instead offers a basis for model development. the number of wellness domains is currently remarkably high, and no mutual understanding has been reached on the structure of wellness. hence, we stress the importance of continuing research and encourage unifying discussion to form agreed standardized sets of terms and domains for the wellness field. it is clear that we still have much to do to harness the benefits of enhanced wellness and to bring comparable wellness measurements to our everyday lives. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data can be accessed by contacting the corresponding author by email. authors krista kauppi the university of helsinki krista.kauppi@helsinki.fi antero vanhala the university of helsinki eira roos the university of helsinki paulus torkki the university of helsinki publishing timeline received 13 october 2022 revised version received 13 march 2023 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(2014). from attunement to a meaning-centred good life: book review of daniel haybron’s happiness: a very short introduction. international journal of wellbeing, 4(2), 100-105. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i2.5 paul t. p. wong trent university ptpwong@rogers.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 article from attunement to a meaning-centered good life: book review of daniel haybron’s happiness: a very short introduction paul t. p. wong 1. introduction this small book is a real gem, sparkling with brilliant insights. i have always enjoyed philosophers’ clear, analytic, and penetrating thinking about complex, subjective matters. haybron’s book is a shining example of a brilliant philosophical mind. but unlike most philosophical writings, which tend to be written in dense prose, with all sorts of qualifiers, happiness is a delightful book, written in a concise, lucid and highly readable style, with the occasional surprising turn of phrase. although the book is written, according to the author, for ordinary people, it does have something significant to offer to learned professionals, especially to positive psychology researchers and practitioners. in this review, i will highlight some important insights from the book that deserve special attention from positive psychology researchers. 2. the importance of context haybron begins with a warning of the danger of the wrong-headed pursuit of meaning from an individualistic perspective without consideration of the social context. he emphasizes, “happiness is not simply pursued at the individual level. how happy we are depends very strongly on the people around us and the kind of society we inhabit” (p. 13). thus, one’s happiness score does not have much meaning without considering its immediate context and historical-cultural background. a person in the midst of adversity with a score of 6 on a 7-point scale of life satisfaction probably is talking about a different kind of happiness than is another person who has the same score but has everything going well for her in life. in the former case, meaning making and benefit making justify the high level of life satisfaction. the context can also refer to the larger story of the society or nation in which one lives. suppose one lives in a totalitarian and coercive society with very few opportunities for meaningful engagement or the pursuit of one’s dreams: it is unlikely that one can successfully promote the kind of wellbeing identified in seligman’s (2012) perma. the recent massive protest in hong kong clearly indicates that the young people there are very unhappy about the lack of democracy and universal suffrage. 3. the attunement dimension of happiness haybron points out that it is instructive to recognize the three dimensions of happiness: endorsement (the pleasant-unpleasant dimension), engagement (vitality), and attunement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ from attunement to a meaning-centered good life wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 (tranquility or equanimity). he describes attunement as “peace of mind, confidence, expansiveness… i would suggest that tranquility, or something like it, is the cornerstone of happiness” (p. 22). as a chinese person well acquainted with the teachings of taoism and buddhism on happiness (wong, in press), i agree totally with haybron that feeling comfortable in one’s skin or feeling perfectly at home in one’s element is perhaps the most important dimension of happiness. unfortunately, most of the existing measurements of happiness do not capture this dimension. attunement also represents haybron’s emotional state theory of wellbeing, which is broader than happiness. attunement is a mental state characterised by the kind of emotional evaluation of one’s life of being at peace with one’s self, as described by matthieu ricard, a leading buddhist thinker on happiness: “by ‘happiness’ i mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. this is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being” (quoted in haybron, p. 29). haybron’s concept of attunement is similar to siegel’s (2007) mindfulness-based attunement and wong’s (2012) resting mental state characterized by mindful awareness. recently, wong (2014a, b) has elaborated the concept of attunement to characterize a highly developed and integrated person, who is at peace with herself, with others, and with the world, because she has fulfilled the true self that involves all three worlds of being – personal, social, and spiritual. figure 1 below represents my meaning-centered approach to a good life, which clearly reflects haybron’s influence. figure 1: an integrative and meaning-centred approach to a good life from attunement to a meaning-centered good life wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 the main difference between haybron and me is that i include the supernatural component as an essential part of my conception of meaning. it is worth noting that haybron started his analysis with a focus on happiness and i started my search for a good life focusing on meaning, but both of us came to the same conclusion: we both accept aristotle’s teleological view of eudaimonia and emphasize the cultivation of virtue and meaning as the foundation of happiness and wellbeing. such a view recognizes both nature-fulfillment of human excellences and selffulfillment of individual potentials. an attuned person fits perfectly the self-portrait of matthieu ricard, and can also be applied to describe lao tse, the dalai lama and desmond tutu. in other words, the concept of attunement is potentially very important in capturing the characteristics of a fully functioning person, who has integrated and harmonized his body, mind, and soul and who has also fulfilled his or her true self in all three realms of being. regarding the three dimensions of happiness, haybron is probably correct in suggesting that, “if we had to limit ourselves to a single question, it might take the form of asking people to rate their emotional conditions on a scale from say, ‘depressed and stressed’ to ‘joyful and relaxed’” (p. 44). when a person’s resting state is calm and tranquil rather than anxious, this person is more likely to enjoy mental and physical wellbeing. as indicated in figure 1, attunement, along with eudaimonia and authenticity, can be regarded as one of the three cornerstones of a good life. another significant insight from haybron is that, “a large portion of psychological well-being is unconscious” (p. 26). the unconscious state of wellbeing, maybe called “mood propensity” (p. 27), is a mental state or psychological condition that either predisposes people to happiness or to distress. it suggests that attunement cannot be achieved without resolving the traumatic or attachment issues from childhood that reside in the unconscious region. thus, the concept of attunement greatly expands our understanding of the nature and conditions of happiness. 4. a meaning-centered approach to how to live a good life to me, the greatest contribution of the book may be haybron’s meaning hypothesis of a good life. he proposes that a good life consists of three components: wellbeing, virtue, and meaning. meaning is the key because it also influences wellbeing and virtue, as schematized in figure 1, and described in the following paragraph: “i cannot confidently enumerate all the values that factor into a good life. but i have suggested that happiness is part, but not the whole, of human well-being. beyond well-being, it is still more important to act well: virtue is our first priority in life. leading a meaningful life contributes both to well-being and to virtue.” (p. 106) 4.1 wellbeing wellbeing is broader than happiness as most people understand it, because it is concerned with what ultimately benefits a person rather than how positive one feels at any moment. “wellbeing… is ultimately a matter of value: what is good for us?” (pp. 77-78). seligman’s (2012) perma theory would be considered a “list theory” of wellbeing, because it consists of a list of five conditions necessary for wellbeing; the problem with the list approach is that what is included in the list could be arbitrary. i could justifiably add resilience to the list. haybron favours aristotle’s eudaimonic theory of wellbeing. what ultimately benefits a person is “displaying the excellences characteristic of human beings… rooted in universals of human nature” (p. 82). haybron’s neo-aristotelian position proposes that eudaimonia results from attunement to a meaning-centered good life wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 not only from nature-fulfillment (aristotle) but also from self-fulfillment (john stuart mill). the latter refers to fully developing one’s unique potential or true self. “in his justly famed essay on the value of individuality in on liberty, british philosopher john stuart mill portrayed a more modern, individualized ideal, which we might call self-fulfilment: living in accordance with who you are—the self. on the ideal of self-fulfillment, well-being is a matter of your individual personality, however eccentric that might be.” (p. 87) this neo-aristotlean position of embracing both nature-fulfillment and self-fulfillment is very similar to my existentially oriented meaning-centered approach to a good life, as shown in figure 1. 4.2 virtue virtue is another component of a good life. a good life is not only good for the person (wellbeing), but also intrinsically good. it is a life that will pass the “death bed test” of having no regrets about one’s life. it will also pass the “eulogy test” because others can rightly praise the deceased as a good and decent human being, who has treated others in a kind and admirable way. aristotle’s eudaimonic theory of wellbeing is a virtue-based theory; to lead a virtuous life is to excel in uniquely human capabilities. thus, a life devoted to the pursuit of virtue represents the deepest, fullest happiness because it fulfills its uniquely human nature. haybron is absolutely correct in stating that virtue trumps all other values. virtue, including its moral aspect, is an indispensable dimension of the good life because virtue is not only good in its own right but also benefits others and society. acting well involves doing what is moral, decent, and responsible. acting badly would not make one’s life worthy of admiration, even when one is hugely successful as a drug dealer or gangster. aristotle’s theory of virtue ethics stands in sharp contrast to the value-neutral stance of positive psychology (seligman, 2002). haybron states very well that, “one should not be an asshole in the pursuit of happiness” (p. 97). it is worth noting that viktor frankl (1985) also recognizes the need for objective values as the basis for the subjective experience of felt sense of meaning in life. while what constitutes subjective wellbeing is up to each individual to decide, virtue requires a relational and objective criterion, as proposed by aristotle. whether a certain behavior or certain individual is deemed virtuous is always based on some kind of social norm regarding one’s impact on other people and society. that is why virtue exists primarily in the social realm. 4.3 meaning if virtue has to do with fulfilling what is excellent in human nature, then meaning has to do with the process of fulfilling what is excellent in one’s unique nature as an individual. one is truly happy when one does what one is best at and what one loves doing. the accent is on the process rather than on the destination. the defining characteristic of meaning, according to haybron, is appreciative engagement with the things and people that really matter. a good life is not just living well by acting well, but also by connecting with what really matters, as emphasized by haybron: “another crucial part of living well has to do with meaning: very roughly, connecting with people and things that matter. we want not just to be happy, or good. we also want to pass our lives in meaningful, worthwhile pursuits.” (p. 97) from attunement to a meaning-centered good life wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 meaning impacts wellbeing not only through the route of virtue but also through the activities of engagement. “the most meaningful activities involve appreciative engagement, or connection with people and things that matter. and emotional fulfilment might arise only through this sort of activity” (p. 71). more importantly, happiness also arises from authenticity as a person: “to be authentically happy, your happiness must be grounded in your life, and reflect who you truly are” (p. 87). haybron is correct in pointing out that authenticity will receive more research attention in coming decades because it counteracts the prevailing componential approach of focusing on actions or emotions, which cannot fully represent a person’s true self. this sounds like music to me, because i have been advocating exactly the same in my meaning-centered approach (wong, 2007, 2014a,b). to value something is to assume personal responsibility for deciding on one’s core values and appreciating what really matters, what is really worth pursuing. thus, to be engaged in what matters is predicated on what one appreciates or values. following frankl (1985), and pattakos and dundon (2015), an appreciative attitude can be elevated to affirming the intrinsic meaning and value of life and embracing life in totality. such a defiant attitude, an attitude of appreciation and affirmation of life regardless of circumstances, provides the grounding for appreciating what really matters. 5. conclusion at the end of the book haybron asks a rhetorical question about happiness and answers it with an emphasis on virtue and meaning: “suppose, then, that you live as wisely as can reasonably be expected. will you be happy? maybe, but that’s only partly in your control. but the chances are excellent that you’ll have a life well lived, and well worth living. a good life.” (p. 127) the good thing about the meaning hypothesis is that the essentials of a good life are accessible and available to most people. “life is hard, yes. but it is also, for most, good” (p. 9). according to haybron’s relevant and widely applicable model, “the essentials of a good life are available even to people who don’t own much—and even…to those who never manage to be happy” (p. 9). his essentials are in many ways similar to metz’s (2013) fundamentals of meaning in life. he provides a very valuable road map to all those seeking a good life, not just the elite good. haybron comes to about the same conclusion as heintzelman and king (2014), that life, for most people, is pretty meaningful: but haybron advances much more compelling reasons. in another departure from positive psychology’s emphasis on positive interventions focusing on behaviors and emotions, haybron takes a person-centered approach and supports aristotle’s emphasis on self-cultivation as a way to appreciate and connect with what really matters: “the world’s value does not simply depend on our whims, but is something we discover. we remind ourselves to keep our eye on the ball, not letting our desires become detached from the things that really matter. and we educate and cultivate ourselves, in part so that we may better appreciate the worth of things…to be an appreciator, as we might call it.” (p. 103) in addition to his penetrating analysis and illuminating insights, haybron also offers a sound methodological critique on happiness measures. he is right on the money in questioning “the hypothesis of near-universal happiness” (p. 49), as well as the implausibly high ratings of selfreported happiness, which scream “overwhelmingly happy society” (p. 50). he marshals a great deal of evidence to support his critique. the take home message for researchers is that if we want from attunement to a meaning-centered good life wong www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 105 to advance the scientific knowledge of happiness or meaning, we need to go beyond the overreliance on quick and dirty self-ratings, which yield a greatly inflated state of happiness; we need to devote more effort to do the hard work of achieving a deeper understanding of the construct of happiness, as he has done in this book. only then can we develop more holistic and realistic ways to measure happiness. in sum, haybron begins with a thorough analysis of happiness as a positive emotion, but ends with a much broadened and multifaceted conceptual framework of happiness—a meaningcentered approach to a good life, in which meaning is of the utmost importance. i highly recommend this little treasure for all positive psychology researchers and practitioners, because this treasure box overflows with valuable ideas. authors paul t. p. wong trent university ptpwong@rogers.com publishing timeline received 14 december 2014 accepted 15 december 2014 published 31 december 2014 references frankl, v. e. (1985). man’s search for meaning (revised and updated). new york, ny: washington square press. heintzelman, s. j., & king, l. a. (2014). life is pretty meaningful. american psychologist, 69, 561-574. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599318.001.0001 metz, t. (2013). meaning in life. oxford, uk: oxford university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599318.001.0001 pattakos, a., & dundon, e. (2015). the opa! way: finding joy & meaning in everyday life & work. dallas, tx: benbella books, inc. seligman, m. e. p. (2002). authentic happiness: using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. new york: free press. seligman, m. e. p. (2011). flourish: a visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. new york, ny: free press. siegel, d. j. (2007). the mindful brain: reflection and attunement in the cultivation of well-being. new york, ny: w. w. norton & company, inc. wong, p. t. p. (2007). introduction: a quiet positive revolution. in p. t. p. wong, l. c. j. wong, m. j. mcdonald, & d. w. klaassen (eds.), the positive psychology of meaning and spirituality: selected papers from meaning conferences (pp. 1-8). abbotsford, bc, canada: inpm press. wong, p. t. p. (2012). toward a dual-systems model of what makes life worth living. in p. t. p. wong (ed.), the human quest for meaning: theories, research, and applications (2nd ed., pp. 3-22). new york, ny: routledge. wong, p. t. p. (2014a). a journey of personal development: self-discovery, healing, and growth. a course for the toronto meaningful living meetup group, toronto, canada. http://www.drpaulwong.com/ajourney-of-personal-development-self-discovery-healing-and-growth/ wong, p. t. p. (2014b). a seeker’s guide to meaningful living. a keynote address at the first congress on the construction of personal meaning in vancouver, bc, canada. wong, p. t. p. (in press). chinese positive psychology. in s. lopez (ed.), encyclopedia of positive psychology (2nd ed.). oxford, uk: wiley blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599318.001.0001 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599318.001.0001 http://www.drpaulwong.com/a-journey-of-personal-development-self-discovery-healing-and-growth/ http://www.drpaulwong.com/a-journey-of-personal-development-self-discovery-healing-and-growth/ chuluun, t., graham, c., & myanganbuu, s. (2016). who is happy in the land of eternal blue sky? some insights from a first study of wellbeing in mongolia. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 49-70. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.506 carol graham the brookings institution cgraham@brookings.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 article who is happy in the land of eternal blue sky? some insights from a first study of wellbeing in mongolia tuugi chuluun · carol graham · sarandavaa myanganbuu abstract: we conducted the first extensive study of wellbeing in mongolia, a country that has experienced a dramatic transition in both its economy and polity in recent decades. we found that most of the standard determinants of wellbeing were no different in mongolia than they are for most countries in the world, despite the unique context and the extreme changes there, with individual income, health, marital status, and exercise all positively associated with life satisfaction. the same variables had positive but weaker correlations with our measure of hedonic wellbeing. when we split our sample into those above and below median income, however, there were some important differences in the findings. as in many other contexts, stress is negatively correlated with wellbeing in mongolia, and the primary triggers were concerns about income, family, and the living environment. finally, we found that freedom of expression has an important positive association with wellbeing in mongolia, perhaps reflecting the extent to which it is an island of political freedom compared to its neighbors. keywords: subjective wellbeing, mongolia, community income, stress, freedom of expression 1. introduction there is a burgeoning literature on wellbeing around the world, much of which finds consistent patterns in its determinants in countries and cultures around the world. many of these patterns are predictable: income matters to individual wellbeing, but after a certain point other things such as the incomes of others also start to matter. health is essential to wellbeing, and stable partnerships, stable marriages, and social relationships also play a role. women are typically happier than men, except in contexts where their rights are severely compromised (graham & chattopadhyay, 2013). and because these patterns are so consistent across diverse countries and cultures, scholars in the field can control for these factors and explore the wellbeing effects of phenomena that vary more, such as inflation and unemployment rates, crime and corruption, smoking, drinking, and exercising, and the nature of public goods, among others (frey & stutzer, 2002; blanchflower & oswald, 2004; graham, 2009; graham, 2008; helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2013). there is also a nascent literature on the causal properties of wellbeing, which finds that happier people are, for the most part, healthier and more productive (graham, eggers, & sukhtankar, 2004; deneve & oswald, 2012). within this broader framework, we undertook the first extensive survey of wellbeing in mongolia, a unique context for a number of reasons. mongolia, landlocked between china and russia, is home to one of the world’s last surviving nomadic cultures, and the country is not only very remote, but also the least densely populated one in the world after greenland. citizens in mongolia recently experienced an unusually dramatic transition in the nature of their economy and political system. after 70 years under a socialist rule, the country made a transition to a mailto:cgraham@brookings.edu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 market economy in the early 1990s, and recently experienced economic growth rates which were among the highest in the world (17.2% in 2011), fueled by a mining boom. mongolia also ranks number one in the world in terms of having the smallest gender gaps in economic participation and opportunity, and in health and survival.1 for all of these reasons, one could expect that wellbeing trends in mongolia might diverge from the usual patterns that we find elsewhere, and a primary question for us was whether the basic patterns in the determinants of wellbeing trends would hold in mongolia. on the one hand, the basic determinants of wellbeing are fairly consistent in countries around the world (graham, 2009). on the other, there are some departures for the transition economies in general compared to the eu and to latin america, such as a higher correlation between income and wellbeing but a smaller one for unemployment (this may be due to generous unemployment benefits in some transitions economies and/or to the increasing importance of the informal economy in others). the transition economies also display a stronger correlation between freedom to choose and wellbeing than do those in latin america (but not compared to europe) (graham & nikolova, 2015). because of the detailed and disaggregated nature of the data that we collected through our survey, we were able to explore additional questions that larger scale, less fine-grained data sets do not allow for.2 in particular, we focused on the standard determinants of wellbeing and how they varied, depending on where in the income distribution respondents were, as well as some additional determinants that are unique to the mongolian context and available through the survey. as is increasingly common in the literature, we analyzed two distinct dimensions of wellbeing – hedonic and evaluative – separately, comparing our findings across these dimensions in mongolia to those that we have based on worldwide data (graham & nikolova, 2015). these two distinct and measurable dimensions of wellbeing capture different aspects of human lives.3 the first is hedonic wellbeing, which captures the manner in which individuals experience their daily lives, the quality of those lives, and their moods (both positive and negative) during those experiences. the second is evaluative wellbeing, which captures how people think about and assess their lives as a whole. the latter dimension implicitly includes eudaimonic wellbeing – how much purpose or meaning people have in their lives – although there are also aspects of daily experiences which can be purposeful but not pleasurable (such as reading the same story over and over again to a child) and others which are pleasurable but not purposeful (such as watching television). hedonic wellbeing is typically measured with questions that gauge positive affect on the one hand (smiling yesterday or happy yesterday, for example) and negative affect (anger or stress yesterday) on the other. psychologists emphasize that there is not a simple continuum running from positive to negative dimensions, as people can experience both at the same time, such as happiness and stress (e.g., stone & mackie, 2013). evaluative wellbeing, meanwhile, is typically measured with questions which ask respondents about their satisfaction with their lives as a whole, or to compare their lives to the best possible life they can imagine. 1 this is according to the global gender gap index 2012 from the world economic forum, which measures genderbased gaps in access to resources and opportunities around the world rather than the actual levels of the available resources and opportunities. 2 while the gallup world poll has included mongolia for several years, and the basic questions in our survey are similar, our survey has, in addition, a number of questions which are tailored to the unique mongolian context. 3 for a detailed discussion among many scholars in the field and their report for the national academy of sciences on wellbeing metrics and their distinct dimensions, see stone and mackie (2013). wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 evaluative wellbeing typically correlates more closely with individual income than hedonic wellbeing, not least as life course evaluations extend well beyond momentary experiences and encompass the opportunities and choices that people have in their lives. a nascent body of research suggests that the dimension of wellbeing individuals value most may be mediated by their agency and capacity to control their lives (kahneman & deaton, 2010; graham & nikolova, 2015). kahneman and deaton (2010) find that income correlates much more closely with evaluative than hedonic wellbeing in the united states. the positive correlation between hedonic wellbeing and income tapers off at roughly usd75k, or, median income, but the association between income and evaluative wellbeing continues in a log-linear fashion. this suggests that beyond a certain point, additional income cannot make people enjoy their daily lives more (although insufficient income is clearly linked to suffering and negative moods), but higher levels of income offer people many more choices about how to live and what to do with their lives. graham and nikolova (2015) find that individuals emphasize one wellbeing dimension over the other, depending on their agency and capabilities. respondents with more means and agency (e.g., the capacity to make choices over the course that their life takes) tend to emphasize evaluative wellbeing more, while those with limited means and opportunities tend to emphasize daily experience more. they also find that income and agency are less important to the wellbeing of respondents who are at the highest levels of the wellbeing distribution. as noted above, income and freedom to choose have a relatively high importance for the wellbeing of transition economy respondents compared to other regions, while unemployment status seems to matter less. this may be because both differential monetary rewards for effort and skills, and freedom to choose were sorely lacking in many countries under central planning, and are thus more appreciated in the post-transition context. there is a wide literature and extensive debate on the relationship between relative income and wellbeing. this is, in part, because the effects of inequality on individual welfare – which seem to partially hinge on comparisons with peers, neighbors, or other relevant cohorts – are rarely captured by large-scale aggregate measures. in part, it is because inequality signals different things to different people, depending on the context. some studies in the transition economies find that inequality has positive signaling effects rather than negative comparison effects (senik, 2004; cojocaru, 2012); we explore this in the mongolian context below. 2. mongolia in transition: the context mongolia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, with a population of around 2.8 million in 2012 and land area of 1.56 million square kilometers (see table 1 below). it is also home to one of the world’s last surviving nomadic cultures, with approximately 40% of the country’s workforce still maintaining a nomadic lifestyle and herding livestock. with a gdp per capita of around $3,600 and a gdp of $10.32 billion in 2012, mongolia falls into the lower middle income category, according to the world bank classifications. after 70 years under socialist rule, the country experienced a relatively peaceful transition from a centrally planned socialist economy to a market economy, following the fall of the soviet union, and democratic government quickly emerged. currently, the country is governed by a mixed presidential-parliamentary system, and despite political crises from time to time, mongolia is considered free and relatively stable with little violence. many, in fact, highlight how on the freedom house global map, mongolia appears as an island with its “free” status surrounded by other nations rated as “not free.” wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 table 1. key statistics for mongolia, 2012 average mongolia lower middle income global gdp (current $ billion) 0010.32 population (million) 0002.79 human development index rank 103/187 poverty at national poverty line (% of population) 0027.40 gini coefficient, 2003-2012 0036.52 population density (people per sq.km of land area) 0001.80 0121.40 000054.29 gdp per capita (current $) 3,691.05 1,998.64 10,437.76 gdp growth (%) 0012.40 0004.55 000002.26 life expectancy at birth (years) 0067.34 0066.21 000070.78 unemployment (% of total labor force) 0005.20 0005.29 000005.95 adult literacy rate (% of people ages 15+), 2010 0098.26 0070.58 000084.29 female labor force participation rate (% of female population ages 15+) 0056.10 0036.28 000050.20 ratio of female to male labor force participation rate (%) 0081.54 0048.11 000068.25 source: world development indicators, undp the transition period, however, also brought deep recession, hyperinflation, and food shortages – common in many other post-soviet countries. overall, the transition economies experienced substantial drops in both income and wellbeing during the change from centrally planned to market economies, with wellbeing demonstrating a u-shaped curve over time: falling dramatically in the initial transition years and then recovering as economies stabilized and grew. the extent to which wellbeing recovered to its pre-transition levels, though, depends on particular countries and the state of their economies. when split into specific domains, meanwhile, wellbeing recovered more in pecuniary areas – such as financial satisfaction – than it did in others, such as health satisfaction and satisfaction with family life. given the dramatic changes that occurred in most post-soviet countries’ social welfare systems, this is not a surprise (e.g., easterlin, 2009). in recent years, however, the mongolian economy has been growing rapidly, fueled by a mining boom. the economy grew by 17.2% in 2011 and 12.4% in 2012, among the highest in the world and expected to grow at a double-digit rate over the period from 2013 to 2017, according to the world bank. although the rapid economic growth raised the gdp per capita from $514 in 2005 to $3,691 in 2012, mongolia ranked 103rd out of 186 countries in 2012 in terms of human development, according to the united nations human development index. in addition, about one-third of the population lives in poverty, according to mongolian national statistics. the gini coefficient for the 2003-2012 period was a relatively low 36.52, as shown in table 1 above. hence, it faces many challenges that are common to transition economies, as well as many that are unique to the country and its people. some of the notable features of the country and its people include a high adult literacy rate of 98.26% and high female labor force participation. as noted briefly above, gender gaps are relatively small in mongolia, and labor force participation as a percentage of the female population and the ratio of female to male labor force participation are higher than the global wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 and lower middle income country averages (see table 1 above), and mongolia ranks number one in the world in terms of small gender gaps in the two categories of economic participation and opportunity, and health and survival, according to the global gender gap index 2012. moreover, approximately half of the population follows tibetan buddhism, and about 40% of the people do not practice any religion, according to various national statistics, in part due to the ban that was placed on religious practice under the communist government. shamanism/tengrism, which was the dominant religion historically, is also experiencing a modern revival, and mongolians commonly refer to their homeland as “the land of eternal blue sky”. as for wellbeing data, unfortunately, we do not have good time trend data for mongolia, as the gallup world poll only began polling there in 2005. trends from 2005 on have been fairly stable, although with a significant downward dip in 2012. it is also important to note that wellbeing levels in mongolia are quite low compared to the rest of the world and even in comparison to the rest of the transition economies, with mongolia scoring higher than some countries such as bulgaria, georgia, and ukraine, but lower than many others, including china, kyrgyzstan, and serbia (see table 2 below). table 2. best possible life for mongolia, all available years year obs. mean std. dev. world rank transition countries rank 2007 0943 4.611 1.690 81/104 21/26 2008 0979 4.392 1.606 98/114 15/16 2010 0995 4.590 1.729 98/125 20/27 2011 0995 5.057 1.672 73/126 16/28 2012 0993 4.785 1.566 98/140 24/30 all years 4,905 4.689 1.668 source: gallup world poll data, 2008-2009, 2011-2013 note: “best possible life” (bpl) measures the respondent’s assessment of her current life relative to her best possible life on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is the worst possible life, and 10 is the best possible life. the table shows the country means and standard deviations for each year. world rank means that mongolia was ranked 81 out of 104 countries in 2007, for example, where denmark was ranked as being 1 (i.e., having the highest possible bpl score). transition countries rank gives the respective rank among transition countries. transition countries are defined as in guriev and zhuravskaya (2009), and are as follows: albania, armenia, azerbaijan, belarus, bosnia and herzegovina, bulgaria, croatia, czech republic, estonia, georgia, hungary, kazakhstan, kyrgyz republic, latvia, lithuania, fyrom, moldova, poland, romania, russia, serbia and montenegro, slovak republic, slovenia, tajikistan, ukraine, and uzbekistan. given recent world developments, kosovo and montenegro are added to this list. not all countries are surveyed for all years. meanwhile, mongolia ranks in the top third of countries (41 out of 125) making positive changes in wellbeing rankings from 2005 to 2015. and compared to other factors such as gdp per capita, health status, and freedom to make life choices, social support plays an important relative role in overall determinants of mongolia’s life satisfaction rankings compared to other countries (helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2015). the most recently released gallup data, for 2013 and 2014, show consistency in mongolia’s mean levels of wellbeing – rising slightly to 4.90 in 2013 and then down a little to 4.77 for 2014, but still in the same range. mongolia’s average world ranking for 2010-2012 was 102, and then 100 for 2013-2014. that may reflect a slight improvement in ranking, but also the fact that several additional countries were added to the poll in the last two years (gallup world polls data, 20132014). wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 3. data and methods our survey was modeled on a wide range of other wellbeing surveys around the world and included the usual socio-demographic information, as well as an evaluative wellbeing question (life satisfaction on a 5-point scale) and a hedonic wellbeing question (how happy an individual felt last week, also on a 5-point scale). typically, evaluative questions are more susceptible to question framing effects, and thus the life satisfaction question was asked before the hedonic (happy last week) question.4 the correlation between the responses to the two questions is .27, which confirms that while they are indeed related, they are capturing different facets of wellbeing. for the distribution of responses across these two main wellbeing variables, see figure 1 below. figure 1. frequency distribution of life satisfaction and “happy last week” 4 for details about question framing and other measurement issues, please see the recent national academy of sciences report on wellbeing measurement, to which one of the authors contributed; stone and mackie (2013). 0 150 300 450 600 750 900 v e ry d is a p p o in te d (= 1 ) d is a p p o in te d n e it h e r d is a p p o in te d n o r sa ti sf ie d s a ti sf ie d v e ry s a ti sf ie d ( = 5 ) c a n 't s a y n u m b e r o f re sp o n d e n ts "how satisfied are you with your life?" 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 n e v e r (= 1 ) m a y b e o n ce o cc a si o n a ll y m o st d a y s e v e ry d a y ( = 5 ) c a n 't s a yn u m b e r o f re sp o n d e n ts "how happy did you feel last week?" wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 while the two questions are related, we used both separately in different regressions (as discussed below). in the last set of regressions, we also used an additional question about enjoying life as a control for innate affect/personality traits. in the absence of panel data and the ability to control for person fixed effects, including a question which gauges positive affect/optimism in cross section data is a next best approach, which is increasingly common in the literature.5 for details on the variables in the questionnaire, see the appendix. mongolia has a capital city of ulaanbaatar and 21 provinces (aimags), which are subdivided into 329 counties (soums). soums, in turn, are further divided into bags, which are less formal administrative units. our survey was carried out by the chamber of commerce and industry of orkhon-bulgan provinces in orkhon province during the period of october-december 2012, and it is the first-ever conducted survey of its kind in mongolia. it covered 1,225 randomly selected respondents between the ages of 15 and 65 from 1,225 households across 20 bags, which represents 5.1% of all households in the province. compared to other provinces, orkhon is geographically smaller, and is centered around erdenet, the second largest city in mongolia. hence, orkhon province is essentially the outer regions of the second largest city in mongolia (which is still a relatively small city – 80,000 in population, given mongolia’s largely rural nature). therefore, urban-rural differences, which can be a big issue in some contexts, are less of an issue in this case, as there are no major differences in urban/rural settings across the province. summary statistics of the survey are provided in table 3 below. our baseline regression in table 4 below is an ordered logistic model, as this specification is usual for categorical variables which are ordinal but not cardinal in nature. we also re-ran the same baseline regression with an ordinary least squares (ols) specification and got essentially identical results.6 therefore, we have utilized ols regressions and both raw and standardized coefficients throughout the rest of the analyses. the linear specification makes it easier to compare the coefficients across the equations, as, for example, when we split our sample (table 5 below). standardized coefficients, meanwhile, provide a measure of relative influence of the various explanatory variables. while ols results usually demonstrate the effect of a one-unit change in the independent variable on the dependent variable, one cannot interpret the results the same way when the various independent variables have different scales (as is common with wellbeing data) and thus it is necessary to standardize the coefficients, following fields (2004). 5 for a summary of the approach, see graham and lora (2009), chapter 2. 6 it is increasingly common to treat wellbeing data as “cardinal,” at least in practice, if not in theory, and to use ols specifications when they are more adequate for the question at hand. see van praag and ferrer-icarbonell (2008). wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 table 3: descriptive statistics variable mean median min max st. dev n measures of well-being life satisfaction -3.92 4 -1 5 00.69 1,223 happy last week -3.62 4 -1 5 00.82 1,174 explanatory variables income -2.91 3 -0 5 01.45 1,226 relative income -0.02 0 -4 3 01.42 1,226 unemployed -0.12 0 -0 1 00.32 1,226 married -0.65 1 -0 1 00.48 1,226 lives with extended family -0.19 0 -0 1 00.39 1,226 age 35.81 34 15 65 12.88 1,226 enjoys life -3.09 3 -1 4 00.53 1,225 freedom satisfaction -3.62 4 -1 5 00.86 1,209 dream fulfillment -3.12 3 -1 5 00.95 1,225 health -3.54 4 -1 5 00.71 1,226 exercise -1.58 1 -1 5 01.05 1,225 alcohol use -0.28 0 -0 1 00.45 1,226 female -0.51 1 -0 1 00.50 1,226 education -4.54 4 -1 6 01.15 1,226 home ownership -0.88 1 -0 1 00.32 1,226 lives in ger dwelling -0.58 1 -0 1 00.49 1,226 religion -0.69 1 -0 1 00.46 1,226 income-related stress -0.47 0 -0 1 00.50 1,226 health-related stress -0.16 0 -0 1 00.36 1,226 living environment-related stress -0.20 0 -0 1 00.40 1,226 family-related stress -0.08 0 -0 1 00.27 1,226 job-related stress -0.13 0 -0 1 00.36 1,226 number of stress triggering areas -1.14 1 -0 6 1.06 1,226 wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 table 4: determinants of wellbeing in mongolia, baseline regressions (ordered logistic and linear) ordered logistic ols (1) life satisfaction (2) happy last week (3) life satisfaction (4) happy last week raw coeff. p-value raw coeff. p-value raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value income -0.225*** 0.00 -0.127*** 0.00 -0.069*** -0.146*** 0.00 -0.043*** -0.076*** 0.02 unemployed -0.604*** 0.00 -0.504*** 0.00 -0.198*** -0.093*** 0.00 -0.231*** -0.091*** 0.00 married -0.541*** 0.00 -0.014*** 0.91 -0.186*** -0.130*** 0.00 -0.011*** -0.006*** 0.85 lives with extended family -0.323*** 0.04 -0.229*** 0.11 -0.095*** -0.054*** 0.04 -0.092*** -0.044*** 0.13 age -0.055*** 0.08 -0.073** 0.01 -0.019*** -0.358*** 0.05 -0.031*** -0.491*** 0.01 age2 -0.001*** 0.09 -0.001** 0.03 -0.000*** -0.339*** 0.06 -0.000*** -0.427*** 0.03 health -0.532*** 0.00 -0.289*** 0.00 -0.166*** -0.171*** 0.00 -0.118*** -0.102*** 0.00 exercise -0.166*** 0.00 -0.053*** 0.33 -0.050*** -0.077*** 0.01 -0.011*** -0.014**v 0.63 alcohol use -0.306*** 0.03 -0.088*** 0.50 -0.084*** -0.055*** 0.05 -0.039*** -0.021*** 0.48 female -0.140*** 0.27 -0.040*** 0.74 -0.039*** -0.028*** 0.32 -0.019*** -0.012*** 0.70 education -0.027*** 0.64 -0.056*** 0.31 -0.010**v -0.017*** 0.57 -0.028*** -0.039*** 0.23 lives in ger dwelling -0.184*** 0.16 -0.133*** 0.27 -0.056*** -0.041*** 0.16 -0.052*** -0.032*** 0.30 home ownership -0.398*** 0.03 -0.177*** 0.31 -0.129*** -0.060*** 0.03 -0.067*v* -0.026*** 0.37 religion -0.153*** 0.25 -0.001*** 1.00 -0.061*** -0.041*** 0.13 -0.019*** -0.011*** 0.71 constant -3.189*** 0.00 -3.529*** 0.00 observations 1,222 1,174 1,222 1,174 r-squared 0.134 0.056 log likelihood -1124.29 -1348.45 nagelkerke r-square 0.150 0.069 cox-snell r-square 0.129 0.063 * p<0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p<0.01 wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 table 5: determinants of wellbeing in income subsamples, linear regression life satisfaction happy last week (1) < median income (2) > median income (3) < median income (4) > median income raw coeff. std. coeff. pvalue raw coeff. std. coeff. pvalue raw coeff. std. coeff. pvalue raw coeff. std. coeff. pvalue income -0.082*** -0.072*** 0.13 -0.047*** -0.038*** 0.43 -0.133*** -0.104*** 0.04 -0.035*** -0.021*** 0.68 unemployed -0.106*** -0.058*** 0.22 -0.296*** -0.114*** 0.02 -0.094*** -0.046*** 0.34 -0.339*** -0.094*** 0.06 married -0.212*** -0.142*** 0.00 -0.152*** -0.116*** 0.05 -0.005*** 0.003*** 0.95 -0.077*** -0.042*** 0.48 lives with extended family -0.090*** -0.047*** 0.28 -0.090*** -0.059*** 0.22 -0.100*** -0.048*** 0.29 -0.097*** -0.046*** 0.36 age -0.033*** -0.622*** 0.03 -0.009*** -0.175*** 0.61 -0.056*** -0.935*** 0.00 -0.017*** -0.244*** 0.49 age2 -0.000*** -0.597*** 0.04 -0.000*** -0.172*** 0.60 -0.001*** -0.859*** 0.00 -0.000*** -0.252*** 0.46 health -0.147*** -0.146*** 0.00 -0.172*** -0.188*** 0.00 -0.117*** -0.104*** 0.03 -0.133*** -0.104**** 0.04 exercise -0.069*** -0.094*** 0.04 -0.023*** -0.042*** 0.39 -0.003*** -0.004*** 0.93 -0.034*v* -0.044*** 0.38 alcohol use -0.116*** -0.068*** 0.13 -0.150*** --0.109*** 0.03 -0.021*** -0.011*** 0.81 -0.133*** -0.070*** 0.17 female -0.038*** -0.026*** 0.58 -0.042*** -0.035*** 0.48 -0.032*** -0.019*** 0.69 -0.010*** -0.006*** 0.91 education -0.019*** -0.028*** 0.54 -0.016*v* -0.030*** 0.57 -0.037*** -0.047*** 0.32 -0.006*** -0.008*** 0.89 lives in ger dwelling -0.071*** -0.044*** 0.33 -0.041*** -0.034*** 0.50 -0.031*** -0.017**v 0.71 -0.143*** -0.083*** 0.11 home ownership -0.147*** -0.073*** 0.10 -0.211*** -0.090*** 0.06 -0.045*** -0.020*v* 0.65 -0.365*** -0.108*** 0.03 religion -0.046*** -0.029*v* 0.50 -0.080*** -0.058*** 0.23 -0.001*** -0.001*** 0.99 -0.005*** -0.003*** 0.96 constant -3.556*** 0.00 --3.024*** 0.00 -3.919*** 0.00 -2.522*** 0.00 observations 511 430 490 415 r-squared 0.091 0.094 0.075 0.054 * p<0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p<0.01 wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 4. results 4.1 baseline regression with standard determinants of wellbeing in mongolia our results from the baseline regression in table 4 above with the standard determinants demonstrate that the basic determinants of wellbeing are no different in mongolia than they are anywhere else, despite the unique context and the dramatic economic and political transition the country has experienced. we used both ordered logistic and linear regressions and obtained identical results. with evaluative wellbeing as the dependent variable (which is the most common specification), income, employment, health (self-reported), and marriage are all important to wellbeing there, as in other places (table 4 above). when we look across wellbeing dimensions, we found, not surprisingly, that the income variable was more significant for evaluative wellbeing than for hedonic wellbeing. as is noted above, hedonic wellbeing typically correlates less closely with income (and other agency related variables), as it is more closely related to day-to-day experience and to innate affect levels than is evaluative wellbeing. along these same lines, the coefficient on marriage is positive, and is significant on life satisfaction, but not significant on “happy last week.” living with an extended family is not an uncommon arrangement, and 19% of respondents did indicate that they live in such families. those living with an extended family reported lower evaluative wellbeing, but not hedonic wellbeing, in the baseline regression. the classic u-shaped age curve, meanwhile, also holds for mongolia, with the lowest point in happiness being at 41 years of age. this is on the young end of the curve for most countries (it is 50 in russia, for example, 48 years on average for latin america, and approximately 44 years of age in the uk and the us), but may in part be explained by fairly low levels of life expectancy in mongolia. life expectancy was 67.34 years in 2012, compared to 69 years in russia, 73 in china, and 82 in japan.7 in addition, given the rapid pace of economic and social changes in recent decades, strong generational differences exist in personal outlook and values. indeed, the standardized coefficients on age are the largest among all the estimated coefficients for both wellbeing dimensions. furthermore, the coefficient on health is positive for both wellbeing dimensions but smaller in size on “happy last week.” the standardized coefficients show that health is the second most important determinant of both evaluative and hedonic wellbeing after age. exercise is positively correlated with life satisfaction but not with “happy last week,” while alcohol use is negatively correlated with life satisfaction, but not with “happy last week.” we also included other variables in the baseline regressions, such as gender, education, home ownership, dwelling type, and religion. as table 4 above shows, there was no significant gender difference in wellbeing. this is a departure from the average for the world as a whole, where women typically have higher wellbeing levels than men, except in contexts where gender rights are compromised (graham & chattopadhyay, 2013). mongolia stands out due to its relatively low degree of gender inequality in certain areas on the one hand, and lack of differences in wellbeing levels across genders on the other. due to the nomadic heritage and communist legacy, mongolian women actively participate in all arenas of business and society, with the number of female college graduates, as well as the number of doctors and lawyers exceeding that of men, as reported by the national statistical office of mongolia. we also looked at whether living in a ger: the round, portable, felt-covered traditional dwelling structure (also called a “yurt”) was correlated with wellbeing measures. most people 7 for the age curve around the world, see graham (2009). detailed results on how the age curve was calculated are available from the authors. wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 living in rural areas still reside in this traditional dwelling with little infrastructure, and many families that have migrated to urban areas have also settled into ger districts on the outskirts of urban areas. in the baseline regression, there was no significant difference based on living in gers. in line with evaluative (hedonic) wellbeing typically correlating more (less) closely with agency related variables, owning one’s home, regardless of whether it is an apartment or a ger is associated with higher evaluative wellbeing. whether an individual reported being associated with a certain religion was not significant, which is also a departure from the average for the world, in which individuals who associate with a religion are typically happier than those who do not (except in the context of extreme religions) (graham & crown, 2013). despite buddhism being one of the most important influences on mongolian culture, with approximately half of the population following tibetan buddhism, and shamanism/tengrism experiencing a revival, the ban that was placed on religious practice under the communist government significantly weakened the role of religion, and about 40% of the people do not practice any religion, according to various national statistics. as such, not associating with a religion is as much a norm in mongolia as associating with one. level of education was also not significant (table 4 above). despite mongolia boasting one of the highest literacy rates in the world at 98%, the education system is still mismatched to the needs of the economy, as highlighted by both a low-quality and outdated curriculum. this is common in transition economy contexts, where educational choices made prior to the transition may not translate into the expected job opportunities post-transition, and hence, education plays a smaller role in wellbeing than in developed economies. the finding is also in keeping with the comparative findings across regions, with the coefficient on education displaying less relative importance in its correlation with wellbeing than in either the eu countries or latin america (graham & nikolova, 2015). 4.2 additional determinants of wellbeing in mongolia in order to gain more insight into these subjective wellbeing measures, we split our sample into those respondents above and below median income, since the transition economy context is clearly different and comparisons can have positive signaling effects, at least for some cohorts, as senik (2009) found in russia (table 5 above).8 communist regimes strived to achieve income equality, and such equality was much emphasized. it may also be that nowadays those above median income see higher levels of average income as a sign of progress and gains made in the transition, while poorer respondents may both perceive to be and/or actually be left behind in the transition process. there were some notable findings and differences with our split sample specification. we found that once the sample was split, individual income was mostly not significant, except for the hedonic wellbeing of those below median income (table 5 above). it is important to note that there is little variability in income in the subsamples once we split the sample into above and below median level of income and exclude the respondents at the median income. not being gainfully employed, in contrast, lowered both dimensions of wellbeing only for those above median income. marriage remained positive for the life satisfaction of respondents above and below median income. this contrasts with earlier work we have done on marriage and wellbeing based on worldwide data, in which we find that the positive coefficient on marriage only holds 8 since we split the sample into above and below median level of income and exclude the respondents at the median income, the number of observation varies slightly across subsamples. wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 for respondents in wealthier countries and regions and not in poorer ones (graham & chattopadhyay, 2013). age (and its square), the variable that explained the most variability in our baseline regression, was significant for both evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, but only for those below median income, a finding that is of interest. health, on the other hand, was significant and positive for both dimensions of wellbeing for those above and below median income. this is in keeping with the relative importance of health to wellbeing in virtually all contexts and across wellbeing dimensions. exercise was only significant and positive for the life satisfaction of those below median income, whereas alcohol use was significant and negative for the life satisfaction of those above median income. while we cannot fully explain these findings, they are suggestive of different lifestyles, depending on the means that respondents have. some recent studies have emphasized the importance of relative income, and utilized the income rank of a person within his or her community when studying the effect of income on subjective wellbeing. given the emphasis on income equality under the communist regime and the extant wide literature and extensive debate on the relationship between relative income and wellbeing, we estimate the baseline regression with relative income in table 6 below as a robustness test. table 6: determinants of wellbeing with relative income, linear regression (1) life satisfaction (2) happy last week raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value relative income -0.056*** -0.116*** 0.00 -0.035*** -0.062*** 0.05 unemployed -0.213*** -0.101*** 0.00 -0.240*** -0.095*** 0.00 married -0.187*** -0.131*** 0.00 -0.010*** -0.006*** 0.85 lives with extended family -0.092*** -0.053*** 0.05 -0.089*** -0.043*** 0.14 age -0.019*** -0.356*** 0.05 -0.031*** -0.490*** 0.01 age2 -0.000*** -0.334*** 0.07 -0.000*** -0.425*** 0.03 health -0.171*** -0.176*** 0.00 -0.120*** -0.104*** 0.00 exercise -0.051*** -0.079*** 0.00 -0.011*** -0.015*** 0.62 alcohol use -0.089*** -0.058*** 0.04 -0.042*** -0.023*** 0.44 female -0.044*** -0.032*** 0.27 -0.021*** -0.013*** 0.67 education -0.017*** -0.029*** 0.33 -0.032*** -0.045*** 0.16 lives in ger dwelling -0.106*** -0.076*** 0.01 -0.022*** -0.013*** 0.66 home ownership -0.144*** -0.067*** 0.01 -0.077*** -0.030*** 0.30 religion -0.069*** -0.046*** 0.09 -0.014*** -0.008*** 0.79 constant -3.354*** 0.00 -3.632*** 0.00 clustered standard errors by bag yes yes observations 1,222 1,174 r-squared 0.130 0.055 * p<0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p<0.01 wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 the effects of inequality on individual welfare – which seem to partially hinge on comparisons with peers, neighbors, or other relevant cohorts – are rarely captured by large-scale aggregate measures. in part, this is because inequality signals different things to different people, depending on the context. there are conflicting results at the country level, with some studies finding a negative correlation between inequality and life satisfaction, others finding weak results, and some even finding a positive correlation.9 at more disaggregated regional levels, income inequality seems to be negatively correlated with life satisfaction in the us, the eu, and latin america.10 in contrast, senik (2004) finds a positive effect of average regional level incomes in russia, highlighting the potential role of positive signaling effects in contexts of uncertainty and transition (which could apply to mongolia). in another exploration in the transition economy context, cojocaru (2012) finds that the wellbeing effects of respondents’ relative rank within neighborhoods are mediated by their beliefs about whether hard work or connections get one ahead in life. those who have faith that hard work leads to upward mobility are not negatively affected by relative income differences, again likely because of positive signaling effects. more surprisingly, clark (2003) also finds a positive correlation between region-level inequality and life satisfaction in the uk. finally, at the neighborhood level, which is what we examine in this paper, there are, again, different results. luttmer (2005) finds a negative correlation between average neighborhood level incomes and life satisfaction in the united states, highlighting the role of negative comparison effects. graham and felton (2006) find that inequality is negatively correlated with life satisfaction in medium and large cities in latin america, also suggesting comparison effects, but positively correlated in the smallest cities, where signaling effects seem to dominate. the work of arrow (2009), meanwhile, suggests a related status-seeking channel, whereby people are willing to forego leisure to “pay” to be above median levels of income. we compute relative income by subtracting the median community income from a respondent’s income. thus the higher the value, the greater the relative difference between the respondent’s income and the average, and those respondents below median income will have negative scores. community here refers to the bag the household belongs to. bag is the smallest administrative unit outside of the capital city, and typically there are, at most, a few thousand individuals in a bag. in our sample, 1,225 respondents come from 20 bags. we replace respondents’ income with relative income in our baseline model and estimate the regression with standard errors clustered by bag. it should be noted that income is an ordinal variable on the scale of 0-5, and thus, there is a limited variability in the relative income variable, with many respondents’ income being no different from the community median. the results in table 6 above display a positive and significant coefficient on relative income for both dimensions of wellbeing. in other words, having higher levels of income compared to one’s peers is positively associated with wellbeing, and having incomes below the median is negatively associated. these findings echo our split sample results and suggest that both signaling and comparison may be at play, depending on whether respondents are above or below median levels of income. not surprisingly, the coefficient was weaker for hedonic wellbeing, which is typically influenced less by income (and income differentials) than evaluative wellbeing (kahneman & deaton, 2010). 9 see, among others, alesina et al. (2004); graham and felton (2006); oishi et al. (2011); schwarze and harpfer (2007); and van praag and ferrer-i-carbonell (2009). 10 see blanchflower and oswald (2003); and graham and felton (2006), among others. wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 next, we focus on the reported sources of stress in mongolia. stress in general is strongly and negatively correlated with wellbeing, with stress related to circumstances beyond individuals’ control having the worst effects (haushofer & fehr, 2014; stone & mackie, 2013). respondents in our survey were asked whether they had income, health, living environment, family and jobrelated stress, and we further collapsed these variables into a reported total number of stress triggers variable, which we included in our equations. we find, not surprisingly, that the number of stress triggers or reported stress sources was negatively correlated with both life satisfaction and “happy last week” in models 1 and 3 (table 7 below). when we look at the specific stress triggers in models 2 and 4, we find that income, living environment, and family-related stresses were significant and negative for life satisfaction. living environment related stresses include stresses due to the conditions of living environment and infrastructure, such as inadequate or unsatisfactory electricity and public transportation, which is common in many developing nations. especially, in the case of transition countries, infrastructure was maintained and owned by the state and largely remains so today; quality may have suffered or failed to improve as part and parcel of the transition. for hedonic wellbeing (happy last week), only income-related stress was significant and negative. the direction of causality on the latter is not clear, as some recent work finds that income matters more to the wellbeing of respondents who are lower on the wellbeing distribution (binder & coad, 2011; graham & nikolova, 2015). finally, in addition to the usual socio-economic and demographic controls, we also included a number of variables in our regressions which were intended to capture innate personality traits, such as optimism and cheerfulness (table 8 below). these variables were “enjoys life,” “freedom satisfaction,” and “dream fulfillment.” in the absence of panel data and the ability to include individual-fixed effects, including an additional question gauged to measure optimism or pessimism in cross-section data can help control for individual character traits, albeit far from perfectly. while this is increasingly common in the literature, there is still disagreement among scholars about whether or not it is appropriate to include perceptions variables in regressions where the dependent variable is also a subjective variable. we believe that the benefits of controlling (to the extent we can) for these unobservable traits outweigh the potential risks, and thus did so in an alternative specification from our baseline regressions. “enjoys life” is not a perfect proxy for more commonly used positive affect questions, such as “smiling or happy yesterday,” but it at least approximates it and is the best fit question available in the survey.11 “dream fulfillment” asked whether respondents were able to achieve their dreams, while “freedom satisfaction” asked whether they were satisfied with their freedom of expression. these latter two variables capture dimensions of wellbeing – including optimism and perceptions of agency – which are close to but distinct from life satisfaction. not surprisingly, those who enjoy life had higher levels of both evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, as this variable likely reflects innate personality traits (table 8 below). dream achievement was also positively correlated with both evaluative and hedonic wellbeing. positive perceptions tend to correlate together, and dream achievement is a very subjective variable, reflecting optimism, among other things; causality likely runs in both directions. freedom of expression was positively correlated with life satisfaction, but not with “happy last week.” freedom of expression captures individuals’ ability to achieve what they want to achieve more than the quality of their daily lives and/or enjoyment on a day-to-day basis. 11 for a discussion of different interpretations of “enjoys life”, for example, see steptoe et al. (2012). wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 table 7: determinants of wellbeing with reported stress triggers, linear regression life satisfaction happy last week (1) w/ number of stress-causing areas (2) w/ specific causes of stress (3) w/ number of stress-causing areas (4) w/ specific causes of stress raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value income -0.066*** -0.138*** 0.00 -0.065*** -0.137*** 0.00 -0.040*** -0.071*** 0.03 -0.035**v -0.062*** 0.07 unemployed -0.182*** -0.086*** 0.00 -0.214*** -0.101*** 0.00 -0.222*** -0.087*** 0.00 -0.233*** -0.092*** 0.00 married -0.191*** -0.133*** 0.00 -0.199*** -0.138*** 0.00 -0.013*** -0.007*** 0.82 -0.030*** -0.018*** 0.59 lives with extended family -0.076*** -0.044*** 0.10 -0.077*** -0.044*** 0.10 -0.076*** -0.037*** 0.20 -0.064*** -0.031*** 0.29 age -0.013*** -0.253*** 0.17 -0.014*** -0.263*** 0.15 -0.027*** -0.431*** 0.03 -0.026*** -0.414*** 0.04 age2 -0.000*** -0.225*** 0.21 -0.000*** -0.237*** 0.19 -0.000*** -0.362*** 0.06 -0.000*** -0.355*** 0.07 health -0.140*** -0.144*** 0.00 -0.145*** -0.149*** 0.00 -0.098*** -0.085*** 0.01 -0.096*** -0.083*** 0.01 exercise -0.048*** -0.074*** 0.01 -0.049*** -0.075*** 0.01 -0.010*** -0.012*** 0.67 -0.006*** -0.008*** 0.79 alcohol use -0.077*** -0.050*** 0.07 -0.078*** -0.051*** 0.07 -0.032*** -0.018*** 0.55 -0.045*** -0.025*** 0.41 female -0.034*** -0.025*** 0.38 -0.033*** -0.024*** 0.40 -0.012*** -0.008*** 0.80 -0.021*** -0.013*** 0.68 education -0.014*** -0.024*** 0.42 -0.014**v -0.023*** 0.44 -0.031*** -0.044*** 0.17 -0.029*** -0.042*** 0.20 lives in ger dwelling -0.051*** -0.037*** 0.20 -0.054*** -0.039*** 0.18 -0.057*** -0.035*** 0.26 -0.062*** -0.037*** 0.22 home ownership -0.117*** -0.055*** 0.04 -0.118*** -0.055*** 0.04 -0.061*** -0.024*** 0.41 -0.062*** -0.024*** 0.40 religion -0.075*** -0.050*** 0.06 -0.081*** -0.054*** 0.05 -0.008*** -0.005*** 0.87 -0.010*** -0.006*** 0.84 no. of stress triggers -0.099*** -0.152*** 0.00 -0.070*** -0.090*** 0.00 income-related stress -0.140*** -0.102*** 0.00 -0.197*** -0.120*** 0.00 health-related stress -0.066*** -0.035*** 0.21 -0.085*** -0.037*** 0.21 living env.-rel. stress -0.114*** -0.066*** 0.02 -0.072*** -0.035*** 0.24 family-related stress -0.139*** -0.054*** 0.05 -0.034*** -0.011*** 0.70 job-related stress -0.055*** -0.027*** 0.33 -0.040*** -0.016*** 0.58 constant -3.289*** 0.00 3.279*** 0.00 3.597*** 0.00 -3.618*** 0.00 observations 1,222 1,222 1,174 1,174 r-squared 0.155 0.158 0.063 0.070 * p<0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p<0.01 wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 table 8: additional determinants of wellbeing in mongolia, linear regression (1) life satisfaction (2) happy last week raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value raw coeff. std. coeff. p-value income -0.036*** -0.076*** 0.01 -0.017*** -0.031*** 0.35 unemployed -0.140*** -0.066*** 0.01 -0.207*** -0.081*** 0.01 married -0.172*** -0.121*** 0.00 -0.006*** -0.003*** 0.92 lives with extended family -0.073*** -0.042*** 0.11 -0.057*** -0.028*** 0.34 age -0.012*** -0.227*** 0.20 -0.026*** -0.409*** 0.04 age2 -0.000*** -0.180*** 0.30 -0.000*** -0.316*** 0.10 health -0.112*** -0.116*** 0.00 -0.079*** -0.069*** 0.03 exercise -0.039*** -0.060*** 0.02 -0.002*** -0.002*** 0.94 alcohol use -0.067*** -0.045*** 0.10 -0.046*** -0.026*** 0.40 female -0.048*** -0.036*** 0.19 -0.028*** -0.017*** 0.57 education -0.001*** -0.001*** 0.97 -0.020*** -0.029*** 0.37 lives in ger dwelling -0.061*** -0.045*** 0.11 -0.051*** -0.031*** 0.31 home ownership -0.059*** -0.028*** 0.29 -0.023*** -0.009*** 0.76 religion -0.026*** -0.017*** 0.51 -0.044*** -0.025*** 0.39 enjoys life -0.225*** -0.173*** 0.00 -0.163*** -0.106*** 0.00 freedom satisfaction -0.163*** -0.207*** 0.00 -0.035*** -0.037*** 0.21 dream fulfillment -0.094*** -0.130*** 0.00 -0.112*** -0.130*** 0.00 constant -1.963*** 0.00 -2.823*** 0.00 observations 1,203 1,157 r-squared 0.224 0.080 * p<0.10, ** p < 0.05, *** p<0.01 wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 it should be noted that democratic government quickly emerged in mongolia following the fall of communism, and, as discussed above, mongolia stands out amongst its neighbors for its high levels of freedom. currently, the country is governed by a mixed presidential-parliamentary system, and despite political crises from time to time, mongolia is considered free and relatively stable with little violence. the standardized coefficients of these additional variables are relatively large, as shown in table 8 above, and fit in with the findings discussed above on the relative importance of freedom in the transition context in general. our results are essentially unchanged when we re-ran the regressions without “dream fulfillment” and “freedom satisfaction,” but with “enjoys life” included in an unreported regression. 5. conclusions we built from the burgeoning literature on wellbeing around the world and conducted the first extensive study of wellbeing in mongolia, a remote and sparsely populated country that has experienced an unusually dramatic transition in both its economy and polity in recent decades. despite the unique context, we found that the standard determinants of wellbeing were no different in mongolia than they are for most countries in the world, with individual income, health, marital status, and exercise all positively associated with life satisfaction. the same variables had weaker correlations with “happy last week,” our measure of hedonic wellbeing. this also accords with previous findings in the literature. the classic u-shaped relationship between age and happiness also held, with the low point in mongolia being 41 years, which is slightly younger than usual, but makes sense, given the lower average level of life expectancy in mongolia, and also very significant generational differences due to the rapid economic and social change in recent decades. finally, since women typically have higher levels of wellbeing than men on average (around the world), our finding that they do not have higher levels than men in mongolia seems a paradox, given the country’s relatively high levels of gender parity. we also tested additional contextual variables. when we split our sample into respondents above and below median levels of incomes, we found some notable differences in our results from those in other places. we found that relative income differences (each respondent’s difference from the community median) were positive for those above median income and negative for those below. the standard interpretation of comparison effects is that they matter more after people have sufficient income and the “luxury” of worrying about the incomes of others. yet the transition economy context is different and comparisons may have positive signaling effects, at least for those who are doing better than the average, and negative ones for those who are left behind. stress is negative for wellbeing in most contexts, and mongolia is no exception. concerns about income and family stood out as particular triggers of stress, as did concerns about the living environment. satisfaction with freedom of expression also surfaced as an important and positive component of evaluative wellbeing, and may reflect the extent to which mongolia stands out for having established democratic governance from the inception of its transition. in sum, while there are no major surprises in our study, the consistencies that we find in wellbeing determinants in such a remote and unique setting – which has undergone dramatic economic and political changes – provide yet another example of how remarkably similar the correlates of subjective wellbeing are across peoples, cultures, and contexts around the world. wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu 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(very disappointed = 1; disappointed = 2; neither disappointed nor satisfied = 3; satisfied = 4; very satisfied = 5; can’t say = missing) happy last week did you feel happy last week? (never = 1; maybe once =2; occasionally = 3; most days = 4; every day = 5; can’t say = missing) income monthly household income (no income = 0 < 200,000 mnt (≈ < $150) = 1 200,000 – 400,000 mnt (≈ $150-$300) = 2 400,000 – 600,000 mnt (≈ $300-$450) = 3 600,000 – 800,000 mnt (≈ $450-$600) = 4 >800,000 mnt (> $600) = 5) average exchange rate of 1,330mnt = 1 usd from 2012 was used to convert mnt amounts to usd. relative income respondent’s income minus the median income of the bag the respondent belongs to. bag is the smallest administrative unit in mongolian provinces. unemployed are you unemployed? (no = 0; yes = 1) married this includes common-law marriages and those living with partners. (no = 0; yes = 1) lives with extended family whether the respondent lives in an extended family. this includes three generations living together or living with one’s relatives or inlaws. (no = 0; yes = 1) age respondent’s age, which ranges between 15 and 65. enjoys life how much do you enjoy life? (not at all = 1; a little bit = 2; adequate = 3; to the fullest = 4) freedom satisfaction how satisfied are you with your ability for free expression? (very disappointed = 1; disappointed = 2; neither disappointed nor satisfied = 3; satisfied = 4; very satisfied = 5; can’t say = missing) dream fulfillment have you achieved your dreams? (haven’t achieved anything = 1; achieved 25% = 2; achieved 50% = 3; achieved 75% = 4; achieved 100% = 5) health how is your health compared to others? (very poor = 1; poor = 2; okay = 3; good = 4; very good = 5) exercise on average, how many times do you exercise for more than 30 minutes per week? (none =1; 1-2 times = 2; 3-4 times = 3; 5-6 times = 4; 7+ times = 5) alcohol use did you use alcohol last month? (no = 0; yes = 1) wellbeing in mongolia chuluun, graham, & myanganbuu www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 variable definition female respondent’s gender (no = 0; yes = 1) education respondent’s educational level (no education = 1; primary (1-5 grade) = 2; middle (5-9 grade) = 3; secondary (10-11 grade) = 4; technical and vocational = 5; higher education = 6) home ownership do you own your home? (no = 0; yes = 1) lives in ger dwelling does your family live in ger? ger (or “yurt”) is a traditional round, portable, felt-covered dwelling. (no = 0; yes = 1) religion do you practice a religion? (no = 0; yes = 1) income-related stress does not enough income or price increase or cost of children’s kindergarten and school cause stress in your life? (no = 0; yes = 1) health-related stress does family members getting sick and ill or your own poor health cause stress in your life? (no = 0; yes = 1) living environmentrelated stress does home/residence, water, electricity, public transportation, land, and living environment issues cause stress in your life? (no = 0; yes = 1) family-related stress do family arguments and conflicts cause stress in your life? (no = 0; yes = 1) job-related stress does too much work or conflict and unpleasant relationships at work cause stress in your life? (no = 0; yes = 1) number of stress triggering areas the number of areas that caused stress in the respondent’s life, ranging between 0 and 6. these refer to income, unemployment, job, health, living environment (e.g., public transportation, electricity) and family-related stress. jarden, a., rashid, t., roache, a., lomas, t., beicker, j., & stricker, j. (2019). ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0: danish). international journal of wellbeing, 9(3), 1-32. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i3.1189 guideline version 1.0, 31st march 2020 aaron jarden university of melbourne aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) 1 special issue etiske guidelines for positiv psykologisk-praksis aaron jarden · tayyab rashid · annalise roache · tim lomas · julie beicker · jannie stricker http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 2 . indhold indledende noter………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 introduktion……………………………………………………………………………………. 4 professionelle organisationer og de etiske guidelines for positiv psykologisk-praksis... 4 formålet med disse guidelines………………………………………………………………. 5 hvem er disse guidelines for? ……………………………………………………………….. 5 guidelines midlertidige karakter……………………………………………………………. 5 grundlæggende definitioner………………………………………………………………… 6 første sektion: værdier, styrker og principper………………………………………………… 8 værdier for positiv psykologi praktiserende……………………………………………….. 9 styrker for positiv psykologi praktiserende………………………………………………... 9 etiske principper for positiv psykologi praktiserende……………………………………. 10 anden sektion: anvendelse af de etiske guidelines i praksis……………………………….. 14 tre vigtige overvejelser………………………………………………………………………. 14 etisk beslutningstagning……………………………………………………………………... 14 arbejdshensyn………………………………………………………………………………… 15 ændringer hos klienterne……………………………………………………………………. 15 ændringer i nærmiljøet………………………………………………………………………. 15 aktuel følelsesmæssig tilstand og trivsels niveau………………………………………… 16 undgåelse……………………………………………………………………………………… 16 magtforskelle………………………………………………………………………………….. 16 overforbrug af styrker……………………………………………………………………….. 17 praktisk visdom………………………………………………………………………………. 17 vedligeholdelse af resiliens og buffer mod udbrændthed……………………………….. 17 erklæring af uddannelse og kompetencer…………………………………………………. 17 værdsættelse af betydningen af den kulturelle kontekst………………………………… 18 løsning af etiske dilemmaer – en trinvis vejledning………………………………………… 19 guide til selv evaluering………………………………………………………………………… 20 afsnit tre: case eksempler på etisk praksis…………………………………………………… 21 case eksempel 1: kulturel anvendelse af ppi´er med kulturel sensitivitet…………… 21 case eksempel 2: coaching – coaching af klienter der er under forandrende omstændigheder…………………………………………………………………………........ 22 case eksempel 3: klinisk – arbejde med traumer…………………………………………. 23 ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 3 case eksempel 4: organisatorisk – pres på forkert gengivelse af data…………………. 23 case eksempel 5: mentoring – motivere ”uvillige” deltagere i et ubalanceret forhold.. 24 case eksempel 6: uddannelse – implementering af trivsels programmer hvor forhåbningerne er forhindret på grund af eksisterende praksis…………………. ……... 25 relevant guidelines……………………………………………………………………………… 27 tak………………………………………………………………………………………………… 28 indledende underskrivere til de etiske guidelines for positiv psykologi-praksis……….. 29 referencer………………………………………………………………………………………… 31 videre læsning…………………………………………………………………………………… 31 erklæring: disse guidelines er resultatet af en uafhængig samarbejdsgruppe ledet af aaron jarden, tayyab rashid, annalise roache og tim lomas. guidelines er uafhængige af organisationer eller netværk, dog er adskillige parter blevet involveret i udviklingen og raffineringen af denne første udgave. det er forfatternes intention at opdatere disse guidelines halvårligt for at styrke deres anvendelighed. vi tager gerne imod feedback på: aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 4 indledende noter introduktion etisk perfektion er (måske) et utopisk ideal, da mennesker, inklusive den positiv psykologi praktiserende (ppp’eren), er fejlbarlige, sårbare og ufuldkommne. kompleksiteterne i det moderne liv, med en stadig voksende cyperverden, uberegnelige klimaændringer, flygtningekriser, nye identiteter og øget økonomisk polarisering skærper menneskets sårbarhed. psykologiske tilbud, især dem med et eksplicit mål om at gendanne eller forbedre velvære og trivsel, tilbydes ikke uden konkurrerende prioriteringer og etiske dilemmaer. intet enkelt sæt af etiske guidelines, standarder eller endda vedtægter kan fuldt ud indkapsle de menneskelige kompleksiteter. men et sæt bredt baserede værdier, personlige styrker og principper kan ikke desto mindre lede os til mere etisk beslutningstagning, især når vi anvender positive psykologi interventioner (ppi'er), der generisk sigter mod at forbedre velbefindende. disse guidelines indeholder a) værdier, b) styrker og c) principper for positiv psykologipraksis. det er vigtigt at bemærke, at ‘guidelines’ normalt er en del af et bredere rammesæt, som vil variere efter kontekst og jurisdiktion. for eksempel kan guidelines være nederste element af et normgivende hierarki som det, der er afbildet i figur 1 nedenfor: figur 1. guidelines og de bredere rammer. det er derfor vigtigt at overveje guidelines i forhold til andre relevante rammer. selvom en enkelt person eller organisation kan vælge at tilslutte sig og godtage disse guidelines for "positiv psykologi-praksis", er det i nogle lande f.eks. (som i danmark) ikke lovligt at kalde sig for "positiv psykolog" – og det er derfor vigtigt at være opmærksom på lokale begrænsninger og lovkrav. professionelle organisationer og de etiske guidelines for positiv psykologisk-praksis når en praktiserende er medlem af en relevant faglig organisation (som f.eks. american psychology association, australian psychological society, international coach federation), er det denne organisations standarder, kodeks eller guidelines, der først og fremmest er gældende for deres praksis. vi forventer, at når en praktiserende er medlem af en licensereteller ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 5 akkrediteret organisation (f.eks. college of psychologists), med tilstrækkelig træning, uddannelse og erfaring i at praktisere psykologi eller beslægtede områder, er sådanne praktiserende personer dermed bekendt med reglerne, såvel som standarder, forskrifter, vedtægter og procedurer for praktiseringen af psykologi inden for deres jurisdiktion. de etiske guidelines for positiv psykologisk-praksis, som er introduceret her, er designet til at bidrage til, og ikke erstatte, sådanne eksisterende jurisdiktioner/professionelle koder og retningslinjer. som sådan giver disse guidelines også et grundlag for praktiserende, der ikke er tilknyttet en professionel organisation. formålet med disse guidelines hvorfor have et sæt etiske guidelines? disse guidelines har til formål at styrke den etiske praksis for positiv psykologi (pp) ved at udvise en forpligtelse til videnskabelig og evidensbaseret praksis indenfor området. de sigter mod at tilskynde til en opretholdelse af (rimelig) troværdighed til videnskaben om trivsel og velvære og for at tilskynde de praktiserende til at overveje samme guidelines for fremstilling og markedsføring af de potentielle fordele. disse guidelines forsøger at fremme en klarere forståelse af, hvad der er etisk informeret praksis med positiv psykologi, både overfor ppp'ere og for andre. ved hjælp af sådanne guidelines forventes ppp’ere at udvise en forpligtelse til aspekter som1: a) at studere forskningen nøje og opbygge praksis ud fra en videnskabelig tilgang; b) løbende opdatering af deres viden gennem læring og faglig udvikling; c) præcis og omhyggelig kommunikation af videnskabens begrænsninger relateret til ppi'er samt potentielle fordele og faldgruber ved specifikke ppi'er og trivselsprogrammer; og d) monitorere deres klienters velbefindende samt forandringer i trivsel positive som negative – i processen hvem er disse guidelines for? formålet med disse guidelines er at forbedre optimal etisk praksis for ppp'ere og dermed handle gavnligt (at gøre godt for andre) og ikke-skadeligt (undgå at gøre skade på andre). som sådan er disse guidelines for fagfolk (f.eks. psykologer) og andre (f.eks. studerende eller dem uden nogen tilknytning), der leverer ppi'er eller anvender viden fra området positiv psykologi i deres praksis. dette er ikke retningslinjer for, hvordan man bruger eller leverer bestemte ppi'er. guidelines midlertidige karakter vi bemærker, at de nuværende guidelines (version 1.0, 19. juli 2019) er midlertidige og underlagt løbende revision hvert andet år gennem en iterativ høringsproces med de vigtigste interessenter. en sådan regelmæssighed er med til at sikre, at disse guidelines er agtsomme over for kontekstuelle ændringer og afspejler udviklingen lokalt såvel som globalt, og med det in mente modtager vi altid meget gerne feedback. det er også værd at bemærke, at det kun er engelsktalende, og for det meste vestlige lande, som har influeret udviklingen af disse guidelines, og i den henseende har disse guidelines sine begrænsninger. da dette dokument imidlertid er i fortsat udvikling, identificeret ved 1 vi har udvalgt fire eksempler for at demonstrere sådanne forpligtelser. bemærk dog, at denne liste kunne have været længere. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 6 versionsnummer, håbes det, at fremtidige versioner vil inkorporere retningslinjer og guidelines fra ikke-engelsktalende og ikke-vestlige lande. grundlæggende definitioner klient: den praktiserende arbejder med klienter. “klient” er en generisk betegnelse, der henviser til modtageren af ydelserne, som f.eks. (dog ikke begrænset til) et individ, et par, en familie, en gruppe, en organisation, en sponsor eller en anden specificeret social enhed. koder vs. guidelines: en kode har normalt lovmæssige eller håndhævelsesmæssige konsekvenser, mens guidelines antyder best practice, som normalt ikke er "reguleret" eller "kontrolleret". guidelines indebærer i sagens natur at omstændighederne er varierende og komplekse, og at dét at efterleve guidelines ofte kræver, at den praktiserende anvender praktisk visdom en kombination af erfaring og sund fornuft. pp: pp: positiv psykologi. der er mange måder at konceptualisere og definere pp, men oftest operationaliseres det som den videnskabelige undersøgelse og fremme af overordnede konstruktioner som “lykke”, “velvære” og ”trivsel”. f.eks. definerer lomas, hefferon og ivtzan pp som "videnskaben og praksissen med at forbedre trivsel" (2015, s. 1347). ligeledes kan begrebet "anvendt positiv psykologi" betegnes som anvendelsen af pp i virkelige omgivelser, såvel som gennem ppi'er. ppi: ppi: positiv psykologisk intervention. inden for litteraturen skelnes der mellem "positiv psykologi intervention" og en "positiv psykologisk intervention" for en oversigt og forklaring se hone, jarden og schofield (2015). i dette tilfælde arbejder vi med den brede forståelse af positive psykologi interventioner, der afdækker processer på tværs af discipliner (dvs. andre områder inden for psykologien ud over pp), der sigter mod at øge psykologisk velvære. en populær definition af en positiv psykologisk intervention er at: ”en positiv psykologisk intervention fremmer positive følelser, adfærd og/eller tanker og det øger trivslen for et individ eller gruppe” (schueller, kashdan, & parks, 2014, s. 92). ppp ppp: positiv psykologi praktiserende. en praktiserende, der har gennemført den nødvendige uddannelse for at kunne praktisere (f.eks. psykoterapi, rådgivning, coaching) og gennemført pp-specifik træning hos en velrenommeret træningsudbyder, hvorved man sikrer en forståelse af den videnskabelige tilgang og levering i anvendt positiv psykologi (som f.eks. ppi'er)2. styrker: 2 hvem kan kalde sig en ppp? der er endnu ikke nogen klar afgrænsning med hensyn til mængden og niveauet for uddannelse eller kvalifikation, der kræves. kan man for eksempel betragte sig selv som en ppp baseret på et 2-dages kursus, 6-måneders akkrediteret certifikat eller et 2-årigt kandidatprogram i anvendt positiv psykologi? derudover er supervision (f.eks. peerog en-til-en-tilsyn) og online konsultationer ideel. yderligere vejledning om passende træning og tilsyn er nødvendig fra de professionelle organer på dette område (og sådanne spørgsmål overvejes og behandles faktisk allerede af relevante parter) ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 7 generelt tilskynder etiske guidelines og koder ofte specifikke ønskværdige personlige egenskaber, som er vilkårligt valgt af tankeledere på det specifikke felt. i disse guidelines anvendte vi character strengths and virtues (csv: peterson & seligman, 2004), som er en model af empirisk validerede og tværkulturelt anerkendte karakterstyrker (mcgrath, 2014). i følge csv defineres karakterstyrker som universelle træk, der værdsættes i deres egen ret og ikke nødvendigvis fører til instrumentelle resultater. som adfærdsegenskaber faciliterer og guider de derimod en person til at opføre sig ansvarligt og etisk både for deres egen og for andres ve og vel. karakterstyrker afspejler i store træk, hvem en person er (dvs. deres karakter), og deres værdier afspejler, hvad en person står for (dvs. deres principper og handlinger). praktiserende udtrykket "den praktiserende" bruges i denne henseende til at henvise til enhver, der er ansvarlig for levering af pp-relaterede ydelser. ”praktiserende” inkluderer enhver som påtager sig roller som f.eks. (men ikke begrænset til) rådgiver, psykoterapeut, mental sundhedsprofessionel, coach, træner, mentor eller underviser3. principper ved vigtige etiske opgaver dikteres opmærksomheden af principper. ens handlinger udspringer af visse principper. værdier værdier er overbevisninger, som man har som enkeltperson og de deles ofte også af grupper med samme ønsker (dvs. bredere ideologier om verden og hvordan den skal være). værdier overskrider specifikke situationer, styrer hvordan vi vælger handlinger og evaluerer andre og os selv, og ordnes relativt efter deres betydning (schwartz, 2006). værdier kan repræsentere en vigtig måde at udtrykke et generelt etisk engagement på, som bliver mere præcist defineret og handlingsorienteret, når det udtrykkes som et princip. med andre ord informerer værdier principper. i den forstand er værdierne i disse guidelines dem, som forfatterne har identificeret som bredt delte indenfor pp-feltet. 3 disse guidelines’s ethos og principper kunne ligeledes gælde for trivselsforskere, da forskere på en måde også kan betragtes som praktiserende, idet de ofte også arbejder med individer, der også kan betragtes som klienter. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 8 første sektion: værdier, styrker og principper disse etiske guidelines for positiv psykologi-praksis inkorporerer følgende værdier, styrker og principper. både værdier og styrker understøtter vedtagelsen af etiske principper, som vist i tabel 1. table 1 værdier, styrker og principper for positiv psykologi-praksis værdier 4 styrker 5 principper 1. beskyttelse af klienter og andres sikkerhed. 1. ærlighed. 1. nytte/ ikke skadelig. 2. lindring af personlig nød og lidelse. 2. retfærdighed. 2. ansvarsfuld omsorg. 3. integritets-sikring af forholdet mellem praktiserende-klient. 3. social intelligens. 3. respekt for menneskers rettigheder og værdighed 4. værdsættelse af mangfoldigheden i menneskehedens erfaring og kultur. 4. samarbejde 4. troværdighed. 5. fremme en følelse af selvtillid, der er meningsfuld for den/de berørte personer. 5. venlighed. 5. retfærdighed. 6. forbedring af kvaliteten af professionel viden og anvendelse. 6. forsigtighed. 6. autonomi. 7. forbedring af kvaliteten af forholdet mellem mennesker. 7. perspektiv. 8. øge personlig effektivitet. 8. vurdering. 9. stræben efter det retfærdige og bedst passende rådgivning psykoterapi og coaching tjenester. 9. selvregulering. 10. vedholdenhed 11. mod. i tillæg: • næsten alle koder angiver en række personlige egenskaber og kvaliteter, mens denne kode fokuserer på styrker og observerbar adfærd. 4 vores værdier er valgt ud fra andre lignende guidelines, og som sådan kan mange af værdierne passe ind i forskellige kategorier. f.eks. kan retfærdighed opfattes som en værdi eller som et princip. pålidelighed kan opfattes som en styrke (ærlighed), en værdi eller som et princip. mange af disse konstruktioner kan diskuteres på denne måde. værdier er også blevet rangordnet efter den opfattede betydning i forfatternes øjne. 5 styrke 1-7 rangeres efter, hvor ofte de blev nævnt og fremhævet på tværs af 10 lignende etiske koder (f.eks. british association for counselling and psychotherces etiske rammer for god praksis inden for rådgivning og psykoterapi). styrke 8-11 har forfatterne anset for at være vigtige for at opretholde de seks principper. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 9 • de listede værdier, styrker og principper er ikke på nogen måde udtømmende, men snarere et første forsøg på, hvad der i øjeblikket opleves mest relevant for praksis. da disse guidelines tilpasser sig iterativt over tid, og der føres debat i pp-samfundet, forventes det, at disse elementer vil udvikle sig. • de listede værdier, styrker og principper er heller ikke foreskrivende. • en model for styrker (values in action) blev valgt, idet den var den mest tydelig i litteraturen og baseret på solid videnskab. værdier for positiv psykologi praktiserende de fundamentale værdier for ppp’ere inkluderer en forpligtigelse til: • beskyttelse af klienter og andres sikkerhed. dette inkluderer at bevare en stadigt årvågen bevidsthed om, hvordan en klient reagerer på ens ydelser, og desuden anerkende egne grænser for kapacitet og ekspertise (og som sådan anerkende, hvornår en klient kan have brug for professionel hjælp fra andre sektorer eller hvis offentligheden er i fare). • lindring af personlig nød og lidelse (inden for ens grænser for ekspertise). dette betyder at anvende ppi'er på kontekstuelle og relevante måder for at mindske smerten hos personer, der søger ydelser i forskellige professionelle sammenhænge (f.eks. terapi, coaching, sundhed). • sikring af integritetsforholdet mellem den praktiserende og klienten. dette inkluderer respekt for personlige grænser samt forpligtelse og opretholdelse af en professionel praksis såsom privatliv og fortrolighed. • værdsættelse af mangfoldigheden og individuelle oplevelser og kulturer. dette betyder at man ikke anvender en “one-size-fits-all”-ramme på ens klienter, men snarere respekterer og fejrer forskellige menneskers unikke udviklingsstier og kontekstuelle og kulturelle baggrunde. • fremme en selvfølelse, der er meningsfuld for den eller de pågældende personer. dette betyder, at individet udvikler og forfølger mål, der ikke kun opfylder selvet, men også bidrager til the greater good. • forbedring af kvaliteten af den faglige viden og dens anvendelse. dette betyder, at man gør sit bedste for at holde sig ajour med udviklingen i litteraturen og opretholde en ajourført viden om fremskridt på området. • forbedring af kvaliteten af forholdet mellem mennesker. dette betyder, at man anerkender, at mennesker uundgåeligt er placeret i sociale relationer og netværk, og at man stræber efter at hjælpe personerne med at forbedre disse bånd så vidt muligt. • øget personlig effektivitet. dette betyder at stræbe efter at hjælpe klienten med at arbejde mere effektivt i verden og i de unikke situationer, de befinder sig i. • stræben efter en fair og passende fordeling af pp-ydelser. dette kan omfatte at advokere for tjenester i særligt udsatte områder, hvor befolkningen f.eks. bor på vanskelig fremkommelige steder eller hvor det er muligt, at advokere for en prisstruktur, hvor folk med færre midler stadig er i stand til at drage fordel af ydelserne. styrker for positiv psykologi praktiserende den praktiserendes personlige styrker er vigtige fordi de har indflydelse på praktiserendeklient-forholdet. mange af de styrker, der betragtes som vigtige for en god pp-ydelse, betragtes også som gode personlige egenskaber. det er uhensigtsmæssigt at kræve, at alle praktikere ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 10 besidder disse styrker, da disse personlige styrker fundamentalt set er dybt forankret hos den pågældende og udvikler sig ud fra personligt engagement snarere end fra kravene fra en ekstern myndighed. en tematisk analyse af principper og værdier understøttet af vigtige guidelines (se afsnittet om relevante guidelines) har vist, at følgende karakterstyrker antages for at støtte etisk praksis og beslutningstagning: • ærlighed: at tale sandheden; at præsentere sig på ærlig vis og handle på en oprigtig måde; at være uden foregivelse; tage ansvar for ens følelser og handlinger. • retfærdighed: at behandle alle mennesker lige i henhold til hvad der er fair og retfærdigt; ikke at lade personlige følelser overskygge beslutninger om andre; at give alle en fair chance. • social intelligens: at være opmærksom på andre menneskers motiver og følelser; at vide, hvad man skal gøre for at passe ind i forskellige sociale situationer; vide, hvad man skal gøre for at berolige andre. • teamwork: arbejde godt som medlem af en gruppe eller team; være loyal over for gruppen; gør ens part. • venlighed: gøre tjenester og gode gerninger for andre; hjælpe dem; tage sig af dem. • forsigtighed: være forsigtig med ens valg; ikke at tage unødige risici; ikke at sige eller gøre ting, der senere vil fortrydes. • perspektiv: at være i stand til at råde andre; at have måder at anskue på verden på, der giver mening for en selv og andre mennesker. • dømmekraft: at tænke over tingene og undersøge dem fra alle sider; ikke hoppe til konklusioner; kun stole på solide beviser for at træffe beslutninger; have evnen til at ændre mening. • selvregulering: regulering af hvad man føler og gør; blive disciplineret; kontrollere ens appetit og følelser. • udholdenhed: arbejde hårdt for at afslutte det, man starter, uanset projektet: ”få det ud af vagten” på rettidig måde; ikke blive distraheret imens man arbejder; være tilfreds med at afslutte opgaver. • tapperhed: at være en tapper person, der ikke lader sig gå på af en trussel, udfordring, besvær eller smerte; at stå ved det, der er rigtigt, selvom der er modstand; handle efter ens overbevisning. etiske principper for positiv psykologi praktiserende hver af de seks etiske principper beskrevet nedenfor ledsages af eksempler på god praksis, der baseres på det enkelte princip. etiske beslutninger, der er stærkt understøttet af et eller flere af disse principper uden nogen modsigelse fra andre, kan betragtes som at have et stærk moralsk rationale. imidlertid vil de praktiserende sandsynligvis støde på omstændigheder, hvor det er umuligt at forene alle de gældende principper og det vil dermed være nødvendigt at vælge imellem dem. en beslutning eller et handlingsforløb bliver ikke nødvendigvis uetisk, blot fordi det kan diskuteres eller fordi andre praktiserende måske ville have nået en anden konklusion under lignende omstændigheder. den praktiserendes forpligtigelse er at overveje alle relevante omstændigheder med så meget omhu, som det med rimelighed er muligt, og at tage ansvar for de beslutninger, der er truffet. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 11 nytte /ikke-skadelig nytte involverer en forpligtelse til at fremme klientens og den praktiserendes velbefindende. princippet om nytte medfører at handle ud fra klientens bedste baseret på professionel vurdering. det understreger vigtigheden af at arbejde inden for egne kompetencegrænser og kun levere ydelser baseret på fyldestgørende træning eller erfaring. at sikre at klientens bedste interesser opnås, kræver systematisk overvågning af praksis og resultater (f.eks. trivsel) med de bedst tilgængelige midler. det er vigtigt at praksis er baseret på videnskabelig forskning og systematisk refleksion. afhængig af rolle og kontekst anses det som en normal forpligtelse at sikre kontinuerlig forbedring af kvaliteten af ens ydelser og praksis ved at fortsætte den faglige udvikling. forpligtelsen til at handle i klientens bedste interesse bliver især vigtig, når der arbejdes med klienter, hvis evne til selvstændighed er nedsat på grund af alder, umodenhed, manglende forståelse, nød eller andre betydelige personlige begrænsninger. ikke-skadelig indebærer på den anden side en forpligtelse til at undgå at gøre skade på klienten. praktiserende, der vedtager dette princip vil: • undgå seksuel, økonomisk, følelsesmæssig eller anden form for klientudnyttelse; • undgå inkompetence (dvs. sikre passende anvendelse af ppi'er, ved f.eks. at vide, hvad der fungerer for hvem) og mal-praksis; • ikke udbyde tjenester, når de er uegnede til det på grund af sygdom, personlige forhold eller rus. den praktiserende har et etisk ansvar for at bestræbe sig på at mindske enhver skade, der forårsages på en klient, selv når skaden er uundgåelig eller utilsigtet. den praktiserende har en personlig og faglig opgave i at udfordre andres inkompetence eller mal-praksis hvor det er relevant. de har også et ansvar for at bidrage til enhver undersøgelse og/eller idømmelse fra anerkendte organisationer eller myndigheder vedrørende uprofessionel praksis, som risikerer at bringe anerkendelsen af erhvervet eller pp i fare. ansvarlig omsorg anvendelsen af pp fremmer trivsel. for at opnå dette mål, bør ppp'ere der vedtager dette princip, demonstrere en aktiv omsorg for at dem de arbejder med trives, og anerkender samtidigt de sociale og institutionelle konstruktioner, der former deres rolle som ppp’ere. de har et ansvar for at beskytte trivslen hos dem de arbejder med. de anerkender, at enkeltpersoner, familier, grupper eller lokalsamfund kan være i en sårbar position. de anerkender også deres ekspertises grænser (inklusive uvidenhed) og henviser til andre specialister, når det er nødvendigt, såvel som de påtager sig ansvaret og korrigerer enhver skade, der måtte opstå som et resultat af deres virke. ppp'ere forventes også at have en aktiv og løbende interesse i empirisk og teoretisk udvikling inden for deres felt, hvilket sikrer, at de opretholder ajourført viden om evidensgrundlaget for de ppi'er, de implementerer. respekt for folks rettigheder og værdighed i overensstemmelse med fn’s menneskerettigheder, medfører respekt for menneskers værdighed og deres rettigheder at: alle mennesker er værdsat i deres egen ret, deres rettigheder anerkendes og respekteres og de ydes værdighed som en del af en fælles medmenneskelighed. de praktiserende, der vedtager dette princip, udviser en respekt, der kræver følsomhed over for kulturel og social mangfoldighed. dette inkluderer anerkendelse af forskelle mellem personer, der relaterer sig til kultur, nationalitet, etnicitet, farve, race, religion, køn, ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 12 ægteskabelig status, seksuel orientering, fysiske eller mentale evner, alder, socioøkonomisk status og/eller andre personlige egenskaber, tilstande eller status. sådanne forskelle er en integreret del af personen og bør respekteres som sådan. troværdighed at være troværdig indebærer at ære den tillid, der udvises den praktiserende. troværdighed betragtes som grundlæggende for såvel forståelse som løsning af etiske spørgsmål. praktiserende, der vedtager dette princip: • handler i overensstemmelse med den tillid, der bliver udvist dem; • stræber efter at sikre, at deres kunders forventninger har rimelige udsigter til at blive opfyldt; • overholder deres aftaler og løfter; • betragter fortrolighed som en forpligtelse, der stammer fra klientens tillid; • sikrer mod enhver videregivelse af fortrolige oplysninger om klienter til ethvert formål, andet end det som de oprindeligt blev videregivet til med undtagelse af obligatorisk videregivelse (f.eks. hvis en lov i ens jurisdiktion kræver sådan videregivelse). retfærdighed retfærdighed involverer en fair og upartisk behandling af alle klienter. princippet om retfærdighed kræver, at praktiserende, der vedtager dette princip, er retfærdige over for alle klienter og respekterer deres menneskerettigheder og værdighed. det henleder opmærksomheden på samvittighedsfuldt at overveje eventuelle juridiske krav og forpligtelser og forblive opmærksom på potentielle konflikter mellem juridiske og etiske forpligtelser. retfærdighed i distributionen af ydelser kræver evnen til at bestemme upartisk levering af service ydelser til klienterne og fordelingen af disse imellem klienter. en forpligtelse til retfærdighed indbefatter også evnen til at værdsætte menneskers forskellighed og at være forpligtet til ligestilling af muligheder og udfald og til at undgå forskelsbehandling af mennesker eller grupper baseret på deres personlige eller sociale egenskaber. med andre ord indbefatter retfærdighed, at illoyal diskrimination, der er baseret på bestemte egenskaber (f.eks. køn eller alder), ikke sker. den praktiserende har en pligt til at stræbe efter en retfærdig levering af tjenester, der er tilgængelig og tilpasset potentielle kunders behov. autonomi autonomi indebærer respekt for klientens ret til selvbestemmelse. dette princip understreger vigtigheden af at bidrage til en klients udvikling af evnen til selvbestemmelse i alle aspekter af livet. princippet om autonomi modstrider manipulation af klienter mod deres vilje, selv for gavnlige sociale formål. praktiserende, der respekterer deres klienters autonomi: • sikrer nøjagtighed i enhver markedsføring eller information forud for leverede ydelser; • søger uforbeholden og tilstrækkeligt informeret samtykke under hele bekendtskabet; • understreger værdien af frivillig deltagelse i de tilbudte ydelser; • engagerer sig i eksplicit aftale eller kontrakt forud for enhver forpligtelse fra klientens side og reviderer/gennemgår betingelserne i denne kontrakt under hele bekendtskabet; • værner om privatlivets fred; ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 13 • værner om fortrolighed; • sikrer at videregivelse af fortrolige oplysninger er betinget af samtykke fra den pågældende; • informerer klienten på forhånd om forventede interessekonflikter eller så hurtigt som muligt efter at sådanne konflikter opstår. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 14 anden sektion: anvendelse af de etiske guidelines i praksis dette afsnit indeholder adskillige guidelines og eksempler på, hvordan disse kan anvendes i kontekst. indholdet er designet til at øge eftertænksomheden, samtidig med at der gives værktøjer og selvevalueringsvejledninger til at understøtte og løse etisk beslutning i praksis. tre vigtige overvejelser før en specifik ppi anvendes bør man vurdere de følgende tre vigtige faktorer, som er selve grundlaget for best practice (barlow, allen & choate, 2004) 1. er den valgte ppi et passende match til situationen? dette kan undersøges ved at gennemgå relevant litteratur eller publicerede undersøgelser fra pålidelige kilder. f.eks., før der anvendes en ppi for taknemlighed, bør det kontrolleres om der forefindes en eksisterende publiceret undersøgelse, der sandsynliggør, at denne specifikke ppi er en brugbar metode for klienten. 2. stemmer den valgte ppi overens med klientens nuværende behov? 3. hvordan vurderes effektiviteten af en ppi? med andre ord, hvilket resultat skal der foreligge for at vurdere effektiviteten af ppi’en. etisk beslutningstagning det er nemmere at tage en etisk beslutning, hvis man: har tilstrækkelig viden om disse etiske guidelines samt guidelines for det tilknyttede erhverv, er bevidst om andres syn på korrekt etisk opførsel og anvender ens personlige styrker i beslutningsprocessen. viden: vi forventer, at de primære brugere af disse guidelines – nemlig ppp’ere med tilstrækkelig uddannelse, træning, og erfaring inden for praktiserende psykologi eller beslægtede områder – er bekendt med og kan beskrive disse og andre etiske guidelines, som vedrører deres erhverv og deres profession og professionelle virke. de fleste jurisdiktioner understreger at den praktiserende skal være bekendt med de relevante regler, standarder, forskrifter, vedtægter og procedurer. adfærd: etisk adfærd, især når man leverer ppi’er, kan ikke blot komme fra kognitiv viden. etisk adfærd bør være tæt forbundet med den kollektive adfærd og praksis. kan du identificere de personer, der er rollemodeller, når det kommer til etisk praksis, indenfor dit faglige netværk? selvom dine kolleger måske ikke eksplicit fremhæver korrekt praksis, muligvis på grund af deres beskedenhed, opfordres du til at forespørge hos kolleger eller netværk (regionalt såvel som international organisation), hvordan de overholder de etiske standarder på området. at føre en logbog over god praksis, hvor der indsamles eksempler på gode cases er nyttigt for at reflektere over egen formåen. tilstrækkelig indsamling af denne slags viden, vil føre til udmærkelse? det ville være ideelt, hvis den praktiserende indgik i et netværk, hvor denne og andre praktiserende havde mulighed for at dele erfaringer. anvendelse af styrker i etisk beslutningstagning: når der skal tages en etisk beslutning, kan brugen af personlige styrker være nyttige på flere forskellige måder. f.eks., kan det være behjælpeligt i forhold til etisk beslutningstagning at identificere styrkebaserede rollemodeller. find en kollega, der repræsenterer et godt eksempel på en rollemodel for etisk adfærd. reflekter over hvordan denne kollega håndterede et specifikt etisk dilemma, en situation eller mere generelt, ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 15 hvilke specifikke styrker denne kollega anvender i den daglige interaktion med andre kolleger og klienter, som er værd at efterligne og som vil hjælpe i beslutningsprocessen. arbejdshensyn der er forskellige overvejelser, der både kan have øjeblikkelige og vigtige etiske konsekvenser, som man skal være opmærksom på i samarbejde med klienter. især er det relevant at overveje: ændringer hos klienten, ændringer i det miljø hvor ppp’ere og klienter befinder sig, den nuværende følelsesmæssige tilstand og niveau for trivsel hos klienterne og ppp’eren, klientens tendens til at være undgående, magtforskelle i forholdet, styrker brugt for meget, praktisk visdom, en erklæring om uddannelse og kompetence og vigtigheden af forskellige kulturelle sammenhænge. overvejelser af disse aspekter kan hjælpe med at begrænse, forudse eller forhindre nogle utilsigtede og ubehagelige konsekvenser. ændringer hos klienterne når der leveres psykologisk services, er det vigtigt at iagttage den psykologiske trivsel hos klienterne, gennem hele behandlingen eller interventionen. nogle klienters tilstand forværres på trods af en effektiv ppi. symptomerne kan forværres af forskellige årsager, hvilket gør klienterne sårbare. det er muligt at klienterne ikke deler disse informationer med den praktiserende, muligvis fordi de føler skam, er bange, eller bekymret for at skuffe den praktiserende, som arbejder på at øge deres trivsel. det eksplicitte fokus i en ppi er ofte ikke en forbedring af symptomer, men snarere en promovering af trivsel. observering af klientens skiftende livssituation er vigtigt, da ppi’en bør justeres derefter. for eksempel, hvis klienten oplever et sammenbrud eller mister sit job er det vigtigt at den praktiserende kan håndtere disse ændringer og evaluere den indvirkning det har på klienten. den praktiserende skal være parat til at suspendere en igangværende ppi og justere fremgangsmåden til det behov klienten har her og nu eller henvise til en anden professionel, hvis det er nødvendigt. hvis dette undlades, risikeres det at have negativ indflydelse på forholdet mellem klient og den praktiserende, som ikke kan genoprettes. ændringer i nærmiljøet udover at vurdere om klienterne oplever forandringer, er det vigtigt at vurdere om der er forandringer i det nærmiljø hvori både klienterne og den praktiserende befinder sig. f.eks. en ppp der også har en klinisk uddannelse som baggrund. nutidens moderne kliniske praktiserende arbejder i meget komplekse, effektive og pressede miljøer, der er præget af udfordringer såsom mangel på evidensbaserede behandlingsprogrammer, mangel på kulturel kompetence og klientens kroniske og komplekse behov som påvirker flere af lives domæner. i betragtning af disse udfordringer bør man overveje klienter der: • muligvis har mistet deres job eller vigtige kontrakter, eller som er blevet overset i forbindelse med en fortjent forfremmelse med eneste begrundelse at de ikke passede ind i teamet; • muligvis kan være diagnosticeret med en alvorlig sygdom; • har været udsat for forræderi eller anden form for uretfærdig behandling fra deres partners side; • har oplevet en hændelse af forskelsbehandling; • har været udsat for en miljøkatastrofe såsom oversvømmelse eller brand, eller et globalt problem såsom hungersnød. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 16 det er væsentligt at overveje hvordan disse udfordringer kan påvirke klienten og hvilken indflydelse det har på behandlingen. overstående cases, repræsenterer en række forskellige spørgsmål, der skal overvejes og behandles på forskellig vis, alt sammen imens regler og standarder for det erhverv som personen er i, overholdes. derfor er det vigtigt at den praktiserende kender klienten og kender dennes miljø og dennes nylige eller aktuelle ændringer i dennes omstændigheder, når der tilbydes en ppi. den praktiserende bør også være opmærksom på udfordringerne i deres eget arbejdsmiljø. dette kan omfatte ændringer i administrationen, som muligvis medfører ændringer i den metode hvorpå klienterne serviceres, for eksempel kan en ny direktør godkende eller modsætte sig specifikke ppi´er eller muligvis foretrække en anden behandlingsmetode (f.eks. neuro-linguistic programming, mindfulness baserede metoder/terapier, acceptance commitment therapy). ændringerne kan have direkte eller indirekte indflydelse på udøvelsen af ppi’ en, inkluderet herunder også set fra et etisk perspektiv. aktuel følelsesmæssig tilstand og trivsels niveau når ppi’en tilbydes, er det vigtigt at vurdere om der er ændringer i klienternes og deres nuværende følelsesmæssige tilstand og trivsels niveau. det er vigtigt at ppp praktiserer indenfor deres ekspertise og uddannelse. for klienter, der har problemer relateret til psykopatologi (dvs. depression, angst, traumer) bør ppp’eren henvise til en passende kvalificeret og erfaren professionel. hvis sådanne problemer ikke er tilstede i begyndelsen af relationen bør ppp’eren være opmærksom på, at sådanne problemer kan komme frem, mens klienten er engageret i en ppi og være klar til at henvise til en tilstrækkelig kvalificeret professionel. det ville være ideelt, hvis den praktiserende har snakket med klienten og konsulteret med kolleger og relevante eksperter for at finde ud af, hvilket tidsmæssigt aspekt kan være passende for at fortsætte med ppi i et sådant tilfælde. undgåelse et af de mest almindelige adfærdsmønstre som mennesker bruger til at tackle negative følelser er undgåelse. et sundt mentalt/psykologisk liv indebærer at være opmærksom og at tilpasse sig det fulde følelsesmæssige spektrum. nogle klienter efterspørger ppi for muligvis at undgå dybere negative følelser på grund af ubehag, og de søger ppi’er med håbet om at de negative følelser forsvinder eller bliver holdt i skak. eksempler på kilder til negative følelser omfatter minder omkring et forlist parforhold eller bitter skilsmisse, forræderi fra en betroet ven, krænkelsen over at være offer for forskelsbehandling og at blive uretfærdigt behandlet af en person eller institution på en fordomsfuld måde. en måde at vurdere, om der er tale om undgåelse er at være opmærksom på negative følelser, der kan opstå i en samtale, på trods af at det ikke er disse følelser der snakkes om (dvs. følelser, som vedvarende forstyrrer klienten og alligevel ikke diskuteres bevidst). ifølge ny forskning er der et stigende bevis for, at positive følelser og karakter styrker kan forbedre og udbedre negative tilstande (rashid & seligman, 2018), dette er kun tilfældet, hvis de negative tilstande er integreret i behandlinger på en meningsfyldt måde. hvis stærke negative følelser er undgået af klienten eller den praktiserende kan effektiviteten af behandlinger bliver kompromitteret. magtforskelle et af de kendetegn, der er ved en interaktion mellem en praktiserende og en klient, er den magtdynamik der er forbundet med forholdet og især magtforskellen. terapeuter, rådgivere, ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 17 socialrådgivere og andre indenfor dette fagområde er normalt opmærksomme på denne forskel. derfor, arbejder de efter at skabe et sikkert, ikke fordømmende, fortroligt og tillidsfuldt miljø, hvor klienterne ikke føler sig som passive deltagere af en ordineret behandling. ikke desto mindre, er det naturligt forekommende at den praktiserende uundgåeligt opfattes som en ekspert. klienten har tendens til at se op til dem, der er udstyret med avanceret viden, træning og erfaring med levering af ppi’er. derfor vil der altid være en magtforskel tilstede. den praktiserede skal være opmærksom på denne forskel og skal undgå situationer, hvor klienten eller den praktiserende skal træffe en beslutning, der muligvis bliver påvirket af denne magtforskel. overforbrug af styrker brugen af styrker for meget eller for lidt kan forværre eksisterende udfordringer. f.eks. i forskellige coaching sammenhænge, hvis det antydes at klienten har forsigtighed som karakterstyrke, kan det medføre at nogle bliver endnu mere ængstelige eller ubeslutsomme. klienter der praktiserer styrken tilgivelse uden at overveje, hvornår og hvem de tilgiver, kan komme til at overse lovovertrædelser, som kan skade andre, hvis det forbliver uudforsket. klienter der har et overforbrug af styrken kreativitet kan finde det udfordrende at overholde normer og regler, der fremmer retfærdighed og lige muligheder. klienter der værdsætter at træffe retfærdige beslutninger på deres arbejdsplads, kan have svært ved at forene modsatte realiteter, der eksisterer indenfor samme område (f.eks. forstå hvordan en veluddannet og velinformeret person kan tage ufornuftige beslutninger). praktisk visdom den praktiserende har brug for, hvad filosoffen aristoteles kaldte ”phronesis” det vil sige praktisk visdom ved anvendelse af disse guidelines. overvej f.eks. en praktiserende der arbejder med en højtstående leder, hvor der er etableret et fremragende forhold og hvor der har vært god fremdrift i deres arbejde. det kommer den praktiserende for øre at den højtstående leder er involveret i uetisk opførsel. bør den praktiserende bevare det gode forhold eller konfrontere personen og risikere forholdet? et enkelt sæt guidelines er muligvis ikke tilstrækkeligt. den praktiserende bør fortolke situationen og se på de modstridende motiver. i sådanne tilfælde, kan praktisk visdom baseres på oparbejdede erfaringer og gode relationer med kolleger, der kan rådgive og hjælpe med etiske ræsonnementer. vedligeholdelse af resiliens og buffer mod udbrændthed et antal pp-konstruktioner kan virke som buffer mod udbrændthed for den praktiserende. positive følelser (f.eks. håb, sindsro, glæde, interesse og ærefrygt) kan udvide en praktiserendes opmærksomhed, kognitive og adfærdsmæssige ressourcer, som kan fungere som en buffer mod sårbarhed, såsom symptomer på udbrændthed (f.eks. følelsesmæssig udmattelse). personlig praksis såsom mindfulness kan også hjælpe i den forbindelse. interpersonelle styrker (f.eks. social intelligens, venlighed, kærlighed, humor, fornemmelse af formål og mening, samt teamwork) kan hjælpe med at tackle udfordringer som depersonalisering (en tilstand, hvor ens tanker og følelser synes at være uvirkelige og ikke tilhøre en selv). ligeledes kan en følelse af formål og mening restituere en personlig følelse af depersonalisering. erklæring af uddannelse og kompetencer den praktiserende bør angive grænserne for deres kompetencer med hensyn til specifikke psykologiske tilstande og grupper (f.eks. arbejde med børn, andre kulturer, gruppe arbejde) og specifikke ppi’er. f.eks. en praktiserende har erfaring med at vurdere styrker hos voksne, men ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 18 ikke med at vurdere børn og unges styrker. derudover, som sessionerne fortsætter, kan samtalerne falde på områder, hvor den praktiserende er ikke er særlig erfaren eller kvalificeret. for eksempel, en praktiserende der har erfaring og er kvalificeret til at arbejde med børn og unge samt voksne, er muligvis ikke kvalificeret til at arbejde med en familiesituation, hvor det i en sådan situation er nødvendigt med yderligere støtte eller en henvisning til en anden kollega med de rette kvalifikationer. derudover, bør den praktiserende angive deres uddannelses og relevante erfaringer, hvorpå deres praksis er baseret. f.eks., en praktiserende afslutter et seks måneders certifikat, som inkluderer en uges ansigt-til-ansigt interaktion, hvor resten af kurset er afsluttet online. certifikatet er ikke anerkendt af den kommunale, regionale eller statslige licensudstedende myndighed. på den praktiserendes hjemmeside er det oplyst at han/hun er certificeret positiv psykologi praktiserende. den praktiserende har ingen andre professionelle kvalifikationer. er det etisk? det er vigtigt at informere dine klienter eksplicit omkring dine kvalifikationer, omfang og professionelle grænser for din faglige uddannelse, praksis og legitimation udover din arbejdstitel. værdsættelse af betydningen af den kulturelle kontekst etiske beslutninger bør ikke kun være baseret på bevidsthed, viden eller kognitiv forståelse. beslutninger skal også afspejle den bedst tilgængelige og relevante evidens og omstændighederne i konteksten. kulturel kontekst er kritisk ved levering af ppi’er fordi konceptualisering af, hvad der er normalt, godt eller adaptivt, er formet af de værdier, der antages som værende ønskværdige i den kulturelle og sociale kontekst, hvori bekymringen eller dilemmaet er præsenteret. derudover er kulturelle og sociale normer forskellige i hvordan specifikke følelser anerkendes, udtrykkes eller forstærkes. derfor er det vigtigt at guidelines for etisk praksis med ppi er forankret i evidens. de etiske guidelines beskrevet her er brede nok til at omfavne den kulturelle kontekst, men er alligevel tilstrækkelig tilpasset til at imødekomme individuelle forskelle og behov. integration af evidens, som inkluderer kulturelle og individuelle faktorer, er måske både let og tilgængelig. skønt en sådan integration muligvis ikke giver et etisk perfekt resultat, proces eller udfald, når den individuelle stræber mod etisk perfektion, hjælper den kollektive visdom dem med at navigere i de sager de måtte møde. nye ideer opstår, nye veje bliver lagt og med tiden opnås ekspertise. strukturen i disse guidelines er afgørende for forankringen af en persons tænkemåde og handling. formålet med disse guidelines er derfor også at evaluere i hvilket omfang ens handlinger er nært eller fjerntliggende fra etisk ekspertise. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 19 løsning af etiske dilemmaer – en trinvis vejledning selvom det er umuligt at være helt immun overfor potentielle etiske dilemmaer, vil de følgende trin, bredt tilpasset fra ”etik i psykologi” (koocher & keith-spiegel, 1998) samt andre kilder, kunne hjælpe den praktiserende med at træffe fornuftige etiske beslutninger. • udfør dit arbejde i overensstemmelse med alle de vedtægter, forordninger og standarder for erhvervsmæssig praksis, handlemåde og guidelines, som er fastlagt af det respektive licensudstedende agentur for din jurisdiktion. disse informationer vil hjælpe den praktiserende med at navigere i etiske dilemmaer. • udvikl en nøjagtig opfattelse af, hvordan den samme begivenhed kan differentiere fra person til person. konsultér med en betroet og uvildig person om hvorvidt sagen kan give etiske dilemmaer og alvorlige konsekvenser. diskutér med kolleger for at se om det, du opfatter som en etisk overtrædelse, kun er dårlig professionel etikette eller en situation der er skadelig for individet eller offentligheden. • gennemgå allerede offentliggjorte og relevante guidelines, regler og standarder. sørg for, at du fortolker disse nøjagtigt og søg råd om nødvendigt. skriftlige guidelines er undertiden abstrakte, ikke præcise og med rigelig plads til subjektiv fortolkning. • saml alle de relevante og bedste oplysninger du kan. identificér eksisterende mangler i information og dokumentér fakta og bekymringer. • integrér alle oplysninger i din refleksionsproces og konsultér med en person, der er velinformeret, fordomsfri og ikke bange for at påpege den praktiserendes potentielle mangler • evaluér, hvordan de seks etiske principper i denne guideline kan anvendes (dvs. nytte/ikke-skadelig, ansvarlig omsorg, respekt for folks rettigheder og værdighed, pålidelighed, retfærdighed, autonomi). for eksempel evaluér de rettigheder, ansvar og sårbarhed der er, for alle involverede. • brainstorm flere løsninger og vurdér hver enkelt så objektivt som muligt. • overvej hvilke karakterstyrker der kan hjælpe dig med at træffe den rigtige etiske beslutning. kræver det at du anvender din dybere følelse af retfærdighed, ærlighed eller venlighed? måske skal dit mod anvendes for at motivere dig til at ”gøre det rigtige”? husk, at etiske beslutninger kræver anvendelse af flere karakterstyrker, der bruges optimalt og i kombination, ikke kun en isoleret styrke eller en styrke der er ”brugt meget” (niemiec, 2018). • visualisér resultatet af din handling eller din passivitet. • før beslutningen tages, overvej da, hvilken indflydelse det vil have på dig og alle andre involverede parter og hvad de systematiske konsekvenser er. overvej også hvilken form for support du muligvis skal have for at gennemføre din beslutning. • omsæt din beslutning til konkrete handlinger, som afspejler med hvilken ånd din beslutning er truffet. en række handlinger giver udtryk for din beslutning. vælg de handlinger, der udtrykker din beslutning nøjagtigt og bestemt, som er målbare, forbundet med det ønskede udfald og som forårsager mindst muligt besvær eller skade også for dem som ikke er direkte involveret. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 20 guide til selv evaluering det følgende afsnit skitserer spørgsmål, som den praktiserende kan bruge til refleksion over etiske dilemmaer for at understøtte den bedste praksis. ppi fit: først og fremmest, bør beslutningen om brugen af en specifik ppi (f.eks. taknemmeligheds dagbog, brug af specifikke styrker, øvelser for tilgivelse) være baseret på det bedste evidensgrundlag som foreligger. er det en passende metode for klienten, baseret på dennes problematikker, omstændigheder og motivation for behandling? ppi timing: hvilke overvejelser bør du gøre dig, før du beslutter om en ppi er passende: 1) ved starten af forløbet? 2) imens ppi allerede er påbegyndt? under hvilke betingelser vil du overveje en sideløbende eller alternativ service eller behandling? bevidsthed om ens egen mentale sundhed: hvor bevidst er du om din egen mentale sundhed? at være den praktiserende part gør dig ikke immun overfor at opleve symptomer på mental sygdom, der potentielt bevæger sig hen imod det kliniske område. hvilke trin eller handlinger udfører du rutinemæssigt for at tage dig af din egen mentale sundhed, så du kan betjene dine klienter optimalt? hvilke barrierer, såsom manglende tid og ressourcer, at føle eller tro du har det helt fint, står du overfor når du skal tage dig af dig selv? har du adgang til passende og relevante fagfolk, der kan tage sig af din mentale sundhed? obligatorisk rapportering: hvordan har du det med at skulle gribe ind overfor en klient, der muligvis reagerer godt på ppi’en, men som ønsker fortrolighed og utilsigtet rapporterer om en hændelse (nyere eller tidligere) eller en vedvarende situation, som f.eks. involverer mishandling eller seksuelt misbrug af børn eller ældre eller en forestående trussel mod en persons sikkerhed? hvis du ikke praktiserer under et bestemt kodeks eller guidelines ved en professionel sammenslutning, har du da et lovmæssigt krav om at indrapportere? overdrivelse og generalisering: du møder nogen på en konference, der foregiver at være passioneret omkring ppi’ er og inviterer dig til at deltage i en workshop, de tilbyder. du deltager i workshoppen, der er bygget på et par undersøgelser, du kender ganske godt. resultaterne, anvendelsen og generaliseringen af disse undersøgelser bliver dog præsenteret men på en overdreven måde. de fleste deltagere finder præsentationen ”transformativ” og giver udtryk for at tro på disse fund. hvad vil du gøre? kan du bruge trinene fra afsnittet ”løsning af etiske dilemmaer” til at vejlede dig selv til en ageren i en sådan situation? ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 21 afsnit tre: case eksempler på etisk praksis de følgende cases er eksempler, der potentielt kan opstå i praksis og som har en etisk komponent, der er relevant for principperne i disse etiske guidelines6. case eksempel 1: kulturel anvendelse af ppi´er med kulturel sensitivitet etiske beslutninger skal afspejle de bedst tilgængelige beviser under omstændighederne i den kulturelle kontekst. overvej følgende situation. suzanne er en australsk praktiserende, der arbejder med en kvindelig klient med østasiatisk kulturel baggrund. klienten ønsker at forbedre sig selv og at bevare relationen til sin familie. suzanne vælger at bruge øvelsen ”best possible self”. suzanne følger alle trin for at guide klienten gennem øvelsen. på trods af, at klienten på en eller anden måde har gjort betydelige fremskridt af sig selv, fortæller klienten at relationen til familien er blevet forværret. derfor er der ingen signifikante forbedringer af klientens trivsel ved gentagne målinger. en vigtig implikation i denne situation er at overveje begrebet selv, der kan variere fra kultur til kultur. suzanne følger et begreb om selvudvikling, der ofte er forbundet med vesten, som omfatter personlig udvikling og som tager nye og stort set individuelle initiativer. modsat, har selvudvikling i østlige (og i de fleste ikke-vestlige) kulturer relativt mere vægt på at investere i forhold, forbedre social interaktion og bidrage til at bevare familiens, gruppens og stammens traditioner. på trods af stigende kulturel mangfoldighed i de fleste metropoler, er der stadig mange kulturelle forskelle. en vigtig implikation af disse forskelle er, at klienten i denne situation kunne drage fordel af at forstå hvordan hun kan bruge sine karakterstyrker til gavn for hendes familie eller til at få en dybere forbindelse til dem. suzanne kunne bruge karakterstyrke interventionerne fra ”turn your strengths other-oriented” eller ”character strengths appreciation” (niemiec, 2018), hvor formålet for hendes klient er, at lære, at værdsætte familiemedlemmer for deres bedste kvaliteter. dette opnås ved at bruge hendes egne foretrukne styrker, til at opbygge relationer, der gavner den anden og prioriterer en måde at genkende og værdsætte hinanden på. det kan også være tilfældet, at selvudvikling, der er støttet af dem som har betydning, kan medføre en dybere og vedvarende forøgelse af trivsel. i en kultur hvor man er afhængig af hinanden, vil selvudvikling imidlertid involvere nære familiemedlemmer og dermed kræver det også en mere kompleks interaktion over en længere periode. i modsætning hertil, kan øvelsen best possible self, der fokuserer på at forbedre individuelle styrker eller tage nye initiativer, kræve en relativt kortere tidsperiode. derfor er det bydende nødvendigt, at ppp’eren overvejer, hvordan deres øvelser bedst kan tilpasses kulturelt. følgende etiske aspekter er eksempler, der er relevante for ovenstående case: • ansvarlig pleje – ppp’eren er nødt til at forsøge at yde omsorg for klienten på en måde der tager højde for klientens specifikke situation og baggrund. • nytte/ ikke-skadelig – ppp’eren er forpligtet til ikke at gøre nogen skade. 6 vi er taknemlige for materiale til eksemplerne som er leveret af case 1&3 – tyyab rashid, case 2: annalise roache, case 4 – stewart donaldson, case 5 – matthew iasiello pg case 6 * denise quinlan ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 22 • respekt for folks rettigheder og værdighed. ppp’eren har et ansvar for at være sensitiv overfor tværkulturelle dynamikker og respektere klintens nuværende perspektiv og behov. case eksempel 2: coaching – coaching af klienter der er under forandrende omstændigheder etiske dilemmaer kan forekomme uventet og kræve en justering i den service, der ydes. overvej følgende situation. amanda kom til coaching, fordi hun følte en mangel på retning og mening i livet. tidligere havde hun lagt meget vægt på fremskridt i sin karriere, men følte nu, at hun var nødt til at lede efter en mere afbalanceret tilgang til livet. derudover følte hun sig trist og nedtrygt, fordi hun ikke havde opnået mere i livet (udover at gøre karriere). under den indledende samtale identificerede amanda flere domæner, hun gerne ville fokusere på, det omfattede økonomistyring (til støtte af boligkøb), personlig udvikling og øget tid til sjov og socialt liv. hun nævnte, at hendes nuværende job var udfordrende, og at hun ville forsøge at foretage en ændring i fremtiden, men at dette ikke skulle være det aktuelle fokus for coachingforløbet. coachingen forløb fint og i de første to sessioner, hvor målene blev udformet og handlingsplanen blev afklaret, blev der gjort fremskridt i den retning, som hun havde angivet som værende vigtig. i begyndelsen af den fjerde session erklærede amanda imidlertid, at hendes arbejdssituation pludselig var forværret, hun havde fratrådt sin stilling og allerede fundet et nyt job. fratrædelsen var ikke blevet modtaget positivt, amanda følte sig ikke godt tilpas og var meget følelsesladet på sin arbejdsplads, hvor hun stadig havde fire uger tilbage at arbejde i. hun indikerede at hun følte sig påvirket af sin chefs reaktion på hendes fratrædelse, hvilket bragte minder op om lignede følelsesmæssige konfrontationer fra hendes ungdom. på grund af forøgelsen af amandas stressfaktorer, er det på dette tidspunkt bydende nødvendigt for coachen, at bevare sin styrke for selvregulering og ikke komme med et impulsive råd. derfra kan coachen bruge styrken nysgerrighed for at tjekke, hvordan amanda gerne vil agere i den nærmeste fremtid, og være åben for at skifte fokus i sessionen. det ville også være vigtigt at forstå baggrunden for amandas følelsesmæssige reaktion, for at afgøre om coaching er en sikker og passende proces til hendes aktuelle behov. selvom coachen muligvis har indgået en kontrakt med amanda for et bestemt antal sessioner, skal ændringer i klientens situation være bestemmende for den rette vej frem. følgende etiske aspekter er eksempler, der er relevante for ovenstående sag: • ansvarlig pleje – coachen har et primært ansvar for at bruge venlighed og retfærdighed for at værne om amandas trivsel samt anerkende grænserne for egen ekspertise. • autonomi – inden for aftalerammen kan coachen fokusere på at udvikle amandas evne til at være selvstyrende i alle aspekter af livet og derudover igennem hele forløbet gennemgå og revidere betingelserne i deres indgåede kontrakt. • nytte/ikke-skadelig – coachen, der handler i amandas bedste interesse og baseret på professionel vurdering, skal være opmærksom på udelukkende at arbejde inden for deres kompetencegrænser og levere ydelser på grundlag af tilstrækkelig træning og erfaring. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 23 case eksempel 3: klinisk – arbejde med traumer for de fleste individer, der oplever traumer, kan arbejdet med en ppi blive overvældende på mange måder set fra et kulturelt og nuanceret perspektiv. de kan udvikle mekanismer til at undgå at tænke, huske eller opføre sig på måder, der kan være relateret til deres traumer. når ppi’er tilbydes, er det vigtigt at vurdere sådanne traumer (uanset om de er historiske og/eller aktuelle). uden at minimere eller afvise det, bør den praktiserende gribe ind, hvis de har ekspertise til det og hvis ikke så foretage en henvisning til den rette. den praktiserende skal tale med klienten og diskutere med kolleger og relevante eksperter for at undersøge, hvad den passende timing kan være for at fortsætte med ppi’en i et sådant tilfælde. overvej følgende situation. salma, 21, har en lang historie bag sig med oplevelser af fysiske, følelsesmæssige og seksuelle overgreb. hun søger hjælp for sine vedvarende følelser af depression. hun forventer, at terapeuten eksplicit ville spørge om de traumatiske begivenheder i sit liv. i stedet får hun et kort spørgeskema, som ikke inkluderer spørgsmål om aktuelle eller tidligere traumer. under selve rådgivningssessionerne finder salma, at hun ikke kan lide rådgiveren og vælger ikke at afsløre detaljerne i sit traume. behandlingen forbliver således overfladisk effektiv, og hun ordineres en ny behandlingsrunde inden for seks måneder. som ovenstående case viser, er det vigtigt eksplicit at spørge til traumer (skønt det kræver stor følsomhed og muligvis også klinisk træning). afhængigt af rapporten, vil nogle klienter eksplicit stille spørgsmål, søge råd, forslag og strategier til at kunne magte situationen eller accepterede ressourcer indenfor klientens kultur. det er vigtigt at den praktiserende, imens ppi’en gennemføres og detaljer om nye eller gamle traumer potentielt dukker op, reagerer på en måde, der imødekommer klientens behov. først og fremmest skal den praktiserende være tilstrækkelig kvalificeret, trænet og erfaren til at håndtere situationen. den praktiserende bør regelmæssigt bruge styrkerne ydmyghed og fornuft/forsigtighed ved regelmæssigt at kontrollere, om de skal fortsætte med at levere deres service, eller omvendt, hvis klienten ville have det bedre med en anden, der har mere specifik ekspertise i at levere de råd, færdigheder og strategier, som nogle klienter har brug for eller efterspørger. følgende etiske aspekter er eksempler, der er relevante for ovenstående case: • ansvarlig pleje – ppp’eren har et ansvar for at værne om salma på en måde, der tager hensyn til de særlige forhold i hendes situation og baggrund. • nytte/ ikke-skadelig – ppp’eren har både et ansvar for ikke at påføre yderligere skade på salma samt et ansvar for at fremme hendes trivsel. case eksempel 4: organisatorisk – pres på forkert gengivelse af data mange positive arbejdsog organisations-interventioner evalueres for at bestemme deres effektivitet. etiske dilemmaer kan forekomme uventet, når klienter ikke accepterer resultatet og kan presse den praktiserende til at udelade eller gengive forkert evaluerings data. overvej følgende situation og bemærk, hvordan en række karakterstyrker er underudnyttet, herunder ærlighed/ integritet, perspektiv/visdom, lederskab og ydmyghed. virksomheden xyz ansatte en pp-praktiserende til at forbedre medarbejdernes moral og præstation. i samråd med virksomhedens ledelse, besluttede hun at tilbyde et ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 24 træningsprogram for at øge medarbejdernes psykologiske overskud (håb, effektivitet, modstandsdygtighed og optimisme). evalueringsdata viste, at medarbejderne elskede uddannelsen og ønskede mere positive psykologi træning i fremtiden. dog viste evalueringsdata også, at der imidlertid ikke var signifikante forskelle på de målte niveauer af håb, effektivitet, modstandsdygtighed, optimisme, moral eller præstation mellem medarbejderne blandt de tilfældigt udvalgte til at deltage i uddannelsen og dem i kontrolgruppen. ledelsen i virksomheden xyz var imidlertid så glade for at deres medarbejdere havde nydt uddannelsen, at de ikke ville dele de mindre gode evaluerings resultater med dem. i stedet bad de den praktiserende om at rapportere at uddannelsen var en stor succes og at mere uddannelse i samme retning ville blive stillet til rådighed i fremtiden. følgende etiske aspekter er eksempler, der er relevante for ovenstående case: • autonomi – den praktiserendes autonomi for at handle bliver her fjernet. • nytte/ikke-skadelig ydelsen indebærer en forpligtigelse til at fremme klientens trivsel og ønsket om at bedrage, som virksomhedens ledelse foreslår, er ikke i medarbejdernes interesse. derudover kræver det, at handle nyttefuldt, at de tjenester der leveres er baseret på tilstrækkelig træning eller erfaring. • troværdighed – den praktiserende bliver bedt om at overdrive og generalisere effektiviteten of ppi, som ikke ærer den tillid, som de ansatte har vist den praktiserende. case eksempel 5: mentoring – motivere ”uvillige” deltagere i et ubalanceret forhold ofte er dem, der er de største modstandere over for en intervention, også dem, der kan have størst fordel. ppp’eren støder på en vanskelig situation, når de prøver at motivere eller overtale en klient til, at deltage i en intervention, uden at bruge manipulation. overvej følgende situation. abbie, en sagsbehandler i et ungdomsbureau, har en klient, der nægter at deltage i ppøvelserne i en gruppe. lederen af interventionen har bedt abbie om at motivere sin klient til at deltage i øvelserne og overbevise hende om fordelene ved interventionen. abbie er enig med sin kollega i, at interventionen ville være til stor fordel for hendes klient. abbie er bevidst om at hendes klients holdninger og adfærd ofte medfører at klienten udelukkes fra interventioner, der sandsynligvis vil være nyttige og beslutter at udfordre sin klients holdninger til deltagelse. abbie har udviklet et tillidsfuldt mentorforhold til klienten og er uvillig til at gå på kompromis med sin egen integritet og forråde klientens tillid ved blindt ”at sælge” interventionen til deltageren eller give løfter, der ikke bliver realiseret. snarere beskriver hun løst beviserne, der understøtter interventionen, og arbejder med sin klient omkring fordele og ulemper ved at deltage. hun stiller nysgerrige spørgsmål til sin klient om fordele og ulemper ved deltagelse i interventionen og hvordan hendes klients signaturstyrker kan bruges i gruppen. abbie støtter derefter sin klient til at identificere strategier for at minimere omkostningerne ved deltagelse. de praktiserer lav intensitets versioner af interventionen og identificerer hendes klients brug af styrker forud for gruppedeltagelsen. abbie er sikker på, at hendes klient vil drage fordel af at deltage i interventionen og ønsker ikke, at hendes klient skal udelukkes fra deltagelse igen. ligeledes ønsker hun ikke at forråde ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 25 sin klients tillid eller autonomi. abbie vil udfordre sin klient og hjælpe med at eksponere hende for nye oplevelser, men frygter, at uetisk manipulation kan resultere i negative resultater for hendes deltager og i sidste ende skade kvaliteten af deres hårdt-vundne forhold. i stedet for at over-sælge eller overdrive fordelene ved deltagelse, arbejder abbie på at forstå klientens holdning til interventionen, udfordre kognitive fordomme og skabe muligheder for at demonstrere fordelene ved træningen, gennem sessionen. følgende etiske aspekter er eksempler, der er relevante for ovenstående sag: • retfærdighed – ppp’eren har et ansvar for at sikre, at klienter ikke udelukket fra interventioner baseret på et bestemt særpræg. • troværdighed – ppp’eren bruger tillidsforholdet til klienten for at tilskynde hende til at evaluere hendes holdning og tro, men forråder ikke dennes tillid. • autonomi: ppp’eren respekterer deres klients vilje og tøver med at manipulere den. case eksempel 6: uddannelse – implementering af trivsels programmer hvor forhåbningerne er forhindret på grund af eksisterende praksis mange skoler ønsker at implementere trivselsprogrammer. dette gør de af række af årsager – alt fra omsorg for de studerendes trivsel, tackling af udfordringer som mobning i skolen til styrkelse af allerede stærke tiltag. derudover kan skolen have et trivselsprogram, der også ses som en markedsføringsmulighed og et punkt for at differentiere sig fra andre skoler. overvej følgende situation. en skolemedarbejder blev anmodet af rektor om at udvikle en trivselsstrategi og -plan til vedtagelse af bestyrelsen, for derefter at organisere en hurtig opfølgning af nøgleelementerne. rektor ønskede at fortælle potentielle forældre, at deres børn ville drage forel af eksplicit undervisning i trivsel indenfor pensum. lærerne blev alle tildelt et ansvar for at undervise i trivsel, selvom der var meget lidt faglig udvikling af personalet på dette område. mange medarbejdere blev stressede og følte sig uforberedte på denne undervisning såvel som den ekstra arbejdsmængde, det indebar. en konsulent blev bragt ind for at levere en halv dags faglig udviklingssession i trivsel for personalet. nogle medarbejdere udtrykte bekymring over for konsulenten, at de var ængstelige for, at de kunne skade deres studerende, fordi de var dårligt uddannet på området. derudover havde konsulenten set skolens markedsføring, som promoverede skolens arbejde med trivsel (bland andet beskrivelse af skolens måde at støtte holistisk trivsel for personale og studerende samt opbygning af trivsel ved enhver lejlighed). konsulenten blev opmærksom på, at skolen fortsatte med at anvende en disciplinpolitik, der undergravede forholdet mellem de studerende og personalet, samt ignorerede videnskabelige evidens for de fordele ved trivsel, der er ved restorativ praksis og tilgivelse. den mellemlederansvarlige lærer, som stod for implementering af trivselsprogrammet, har orienteret konsulenten om disse problemer. læreren er dog tilbageholdende med at rejse problemerne med skoleledelsen, da denne tidligere er blevet intimideret af ledelsen, under fremlæggelse af lignende bekymringer. på det pågældende tidspunkt blev der sat spørgsmålstegn ved lærerens loyalitet overfor skolen og dennes egnethed til at fortsætte som lærer blev udfordret. følgende etiske aspekter er eksempler, der er relevante for ovennævnte tilfælde: ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 26 • nytte/ikke-skadelig – ppp’eren har et ansvar for ikke at utvetydigt eller ukritisk tilslutte sig en skole som er en ”trivsels” skole, hvis de er opmærksomme på skolepraksis, der underminerer trivsel. • autonomi – læreren skal ikke føle sig tvunget til at indtage et perspektiv eller holdning, der er i konflikt med egen dømmekraft eller værdier. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 27 relevante retningslinjer følgende guidelines (organiseret efter det specifikke arbejdsområde og i alfabetisk orden inden for området) er brugt og har hjulpet i forbindelse med udviklingen af denne praktiske guideline psykologisk: • australia – psychology – australian psychological society (aps), code of ethics (2017). • australia – counselling and psychotherapy – psychotherapy & counselling federation of australia (pacfa), interim code of ethics (2015). • canada – psychology – canadian psychology association (cpa), canadian code of ethics for psychologists (2017). • new zealand – psychology – new zealand psychological society (nzps), code of ethics for psychologists (2012, 4th ed). • united kingdom – counselling and psychotherapy – british association for counselling and psychotherapy (bacp), ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy (2010). • united states of america – psychology – american psychological association (apa), ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct (2017). • united states of america – counselling – american counselling association (aca), code of ethics (2014). sygepleje: • australia – nursing – nursing and midwifery board of australia: code of ethics for nurses (2008). • new zealand – nursing – nursing council of new zealand (ncnz), code of conduct for nursing (2012). united kingdom – nursing – nursing and midwifery council (nmc), the code for nurses and midwives (2015). coaching: • international – coaching – the international coach federation (icf): core competencies and code of ethics (2015). ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 28 tak følgende personer, alfabetisk opført, bidrog væsentligt og leverede input af feedback til udarbejdelsen af disse guidelines: • associate professor aaron jarden, university of melbourne, australia. • mr andrew alexandra, university of melbourne, australia. • annalise roache, auckland university of technology, new zealand. • dr dan weijers, university of waikato, hamilton, new zealand. • dr denise quinlan, new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience, new zealand. • professor dianne vella-brodrick, university of melbourne, australia. • giselle timmerman, positive work, united states of america. • hein zegers, european network of positive psychology. • dr helena agueda marujo instituto superior de ciências sociais e politicas (school of social and political sciences), university of lisbon, portugal. • professor james pawelski, university of pennsylvania, united states of america. • dr jo mitchell, the mind room, melbourne, australia. • dr joel milam, university of southern california, usa. • dr judy moskowitz, northwestern university feinberg school of medicine, united states of america. • associate professor karena burke, central queensland university, australia. • lisa sansom, lvs consulting, canada. • margarita tarragona, positivamente, mexico. • matthew iasiello, wellbeing and resilience center, sahmri, australia. • dr mohsen joshanloo, keimyung university, south korea. • reb rebele, university of melbourne, australia. • dr rona hart, former director mapp university of east london, england. • dr ryan niemiec, via institute on character. • scott asalone, asgmc inc, usa. • simon murray, positive education schools association, australia. • professor stewart donaldson, claremount graduate university, united states of america. • sue langley, the langley group, australia. • dr suzy green, the positivity institute, australia. • dr tayyab rashid, university of toronto scarborough, canada. • dr tim lomas, university of east london, england. ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 29 indledende underskrivere til de etiske guidelines for positiv psykologi-praksis dato for første underskrift af guidelines underskrevet version navn og website af sammenslutningen eller organisation logo 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • via institute on character • http://www.viacharacter.org/www/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of melbourne • https://education.unimelb.edu.au/cpp 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, university of east london • https://www.uel.ac.uk/postgraduate/mscapplied-positive-psychology-andcoaching-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centre for positive psychology, central queensland university • https://www.cqu.edu.au/courses/studyareas/psychology,-social-work-andcommunityservices/postgraduate/master-of-appliedpositive-psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • claremont evaluation center, claremont graduate university usa • https://research.cgu.edu/claremontevaluation-center/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the wellbeing and resilience centre, adelaide, australia • https://www.wellbeingandresilience.com/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • the langley group • https://langleygroup.com.au/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand institute of wellbeing and resilience • www.nziwr.co.nz 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • middle east psychological association, division 1 positive psychology 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • humanship • www.humanshiplb.org 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • iranian positive psychology congress 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • japanese positive health psychology society • http://jphp.jp/ ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 30 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • new zealand association of positive psychology • https://www.positivepsychology.org.nz/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • centro de educacion emocional positiva 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • national positive psychology association (nppa) of india • http://nppassociation.org/ 19 / july / 2019 1.0 • german society for positive psychology • https://www.dach-pp.eu/ ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 31 forfattere aaron jarden university of melbourne, australia aaron.jarden@unimelb.edu.au tayyab rashid university of toronto scarborough, canada annalise roache auckland university of technology, new zealand tim lomas university of east london, united kingdom julie beicker university of east london, united kingdom jannie stricker university of east london, united kingdom publishing timeline published 31 march 2020 referencer barlow, d. h., allen, l. b., & choate, m. l. (2004). toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. behavior therapy, 35(2), 205-230. hone, l., jarden, a., & schofield, g. (2015). an evaluation of positive psychology intervention effectiveness trials using the re-aim framework: a practice-friendly review. journal of positive psychology, 10(4), 303322. koocher, g. p. & keith-spiegel, p. (1998). ethics in psychology: professional standards and cases. new york, ny: oxford university press. lomas, t., hefferon, k., & ivtzan, i. (2015). the life model: a meta-theoretical conceptual map for applied positive psychology. journal of happiness studies, 16(5), 1347-1364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0149563-y mcgrath, r. e. (2014). character strengths in 75 nations: an update. journal of positive psychology, 10(1), 111. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2014.888580 niemiec, r. m. (2018). character strengths interventions: a field-guide for practitioners. boston: hogrefe. peterson, c., & seligman, m. e. p. (2004). character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. new york, ny: oxford university press. rashid, t. & seligman, m. e. p. (2018). positive psychotherapy: clinician manual. oxford, england: oxford university press. schueller, s. m., kashdan, t. b., & parks, a. c. (2014). synthesizing positive psychological interventions: suggestions for conducting and interpreting meta-analyses. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 9198. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v4i1.5 schwartz, s. h. (2006). basic human values: theory, measurement, and applications. jerusalem, israel: the hebrew university of jerusalem. videre læsning ethical guidelines jarden, rashid, roache, lomas, beicker & stricker 32 han, h. (2014). virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. science and engineering ethics, 21(2), 441-460. lomas, t., & ivtzan, i. (2016). professionalising positive psychology: developing guidelines for training and regulation. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 96-112. koocher, g. p., & keith-spiegel, p. (2008). ethics in psychology and the mental health professions: standards and cases (3rd e d.). new york: oxford university press. sinclair, c. (2017). ethics in psychology: recalling the past, acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. canadian psychology, 58(1), 20-29. vella-brodrick, d. (2014). dovetailing ethical practice and positive psychology to promote integrity, industriousness, innovation, and impact. in a. c. parks & s. m. schueller (eds.), the wiley blackwell handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 416-432). chichester, england: wiley blackwell. helliwell, j. f. (2011). institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 255-265. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.7 john f. helliwell university of british columbia john.helliwell@ubc.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 255 article institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study john f. helliwell abstract: wellbeing research has long found a correlation between the subjective wellbeing of individuals and the quality of their private and public institutions. but which way do the causal arrows point, and what can be done to improve institutions? only real-life experiments can answer these two questions convincingly. prisons are frequently considered schools for criminals rather than creators of wellbeing. thus they provide a tough test for institutional changes intended to improve wellbeing. since 1998 the singapore prison service has converted its prisons into schools for life, thereby improving the lives of inmates, prison staff and the community at large. in so doing, the prison service exemplified five key lessons from subjective wellbeing research: the importance of social context, benevolence, trust, building positive outcomes, and top-to-bottom engagement in a shared purpose. by any measure, the results have been impressive, ranging from a one-third drop in recidivism to improved staff morale and better social connections between prisons and the rest of society. keywords: prisons, subjective wellbeing, subjective well-being, social capital, institutional reforms, quality of life, recidivism, community engagement, quality of government, felicitators 1. introduction those who take subjective wellbeing seriously usually start asking, at some point, what can be done by individuals, families, neighbourhoods, organisations and nations to make lives better for themselves and others. this discussion usually centres at the level of the individual – what can individuals do, and how should they act, to produce better lives? the self-help literature tends to focus even more narrowly on what individuals can do to increase their own happiness. but the papers in this symposium instead describe felicitators – those whose ideas and actions increase the happiness of others. my own research has emphasized the social context of wellbeing, so i wished from the outset to find examples that demonstrate in real life some ways in which the social context can be altered to increase happiness. this paper illustrates how private and public institutions can change their structures or operations in ways that improve the social contexts in which people meet, move, work, play and live. this paper illustrates five fundamental but often ignored results from wellbeing research, each of which refers to some aspect of the social context of wellbeing: 1) process matters. how something is done matters even more to wellbeing than does what is actually done. 2) benevolence is its own reward, but working together to do good things for others is a super-charged form of benevolence. institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 256 3) people routinely under-estimate the extent to which others can be trusted, leading to declines in social engagement and weakening of social norms. 4) individuals and institutions could improve wellbeing by building positive outcomes rather than merely repairing damage and avoiding risks. 5) shared engagement trumps top-down. there are many inspiring examples of building or reforming institutions to create better lives. for example, greg mortenson’s celebrated efforts1 to turn stones into schools (mortenson 2009) illustrated the importance of bottom-up efforts, and the necessity and value of building trust one cup of tea at a time (mortenson and relin 2006). especially in its emphasis on the time and listening it takes to build trust, and on the power of trust-driven local efforts to succeed in making fundamental changes, the story is inspirational and cautionary. brac2 , a bangladeshbased development agency, has shown how to raise material and subjective wellbeing together through mutual and effective engagement for a good purpose. the singapore prison service (sps) reforms (leong 2010) provide perhaps the most useful example, since they are not so widely known as the other examples. facing all of the problems faced by prison systems throughout the world, singapore’s prison authorities took an amazingly broad approach focussed quite explicitly on the wellbeing of prisoners, staff, and community. they emphasized the building of connections and trust so as to combine prisoners, staff and the public in collaborative commitments to improve the lives of all. in the words of a case study presented to an intergovernmental meeting on new approaches to governance (leong 2010, 11), ‚the case illustrates a government agency stepping beyond its traditional role of a guardian to that of a facilitator and enabler of change, first by clarifying the shared vision and purpose, and then creating channels, empowering and equipping its staff, other members of society, and even its beneficiaries to contribute‛. how different this is from the common view of prisons as social cesspits functioning primarily to punish criminals by incarceration while more often functioning as crime schools. reformed prisons that successfully exemplify key results from wellbeing research deserve to be described as felicitators. if it is possible to show how the least tractable parts of public administration can be turned around dramatically, then the general case follows directly. if prison reforms can be shown to achieve not just conventionally measured success ratios but also to improve the lives of all whose interests usually clash in the management of criminal justice, then anything should be possible. hence this paper spotlights the reforms of the singapore prison service, making reference to other examples to help make the case that the singapore successes can indeed be achieved in other institutions in other countries. the paper proceeds by first describing five threads of wellbeing research that have special relevance to the paper. there follows a description of the main features of the singapore reforms, showing how the reforms illustrate the main lines of wellbeing research to be outlined. there is also a short section surveying the limited amount of previous research linking 1 http://www.ikat.org/ the central asia institute is the ngo established to provide an administrative framework for what was in the first instance ‘one man’s mission to promote peace one school at a time’ – from the cover of three cups of tea (mortenson and relin 2006). what is most striking about the book is the nature of the lessons learned, and later applied, by greg mortenson, a grateful mountain climber who had promised to return to help the villagers of korphe. 2 http://www.brac.net/ brac, formerly the bangladesh rural advancement committee, has for almost four decades developed and applied a range of strategies to engage and enable the bangladeshi poor and illiterate. it now operates in many countries. http://www.ikat.org/ http://www.brac.net/ institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 257 subjective wellbeing research to the criminal justice system. the conclusion will attempt to assess the extent to which the singapore experience offers ready lessons for others to follow. 2. five strands of wellbeing research when unravelling the social context of wellbeing, there are many ways of proceeding. this section lists a sample of relevant results under five different headings. even together, these five points do not capture all the ways in which the social context matters for wellbeing. they were chosen instead with the aim of showing which elements of the social context were addressed by the reforms. the subsequent description of the reforms then shows how these principles were put into actions. 2.1 process matters institutions often, and increasingly, focus on the attainment of specific outcomes, and are judged on what services they provide for those they serve. by contrast, research in subjective wellbeing suggests that much more depends on improving the social context than on the delivery of specific services. the best illustration of this, and one that dovetails nicely with the singapore prison reforms, is provided by the elder-care experiments of knight, haslam and haslam (2010). when residents of an elder-care facility were being moved to a new building, the control group (the residents of the previously happier floor in the old facility) were given the best of professional designs for their new shared spaces, while the experimental group were invited to get together to make their own design decisions.3 by both their own assessments and those of the staff, the members of the experimental group were significantly more satisfied with their lives, were healthier, and more socially engaged after the move to the social spaces that they had designed together. these improvements were large and statistically significant, compared either to their own previous lives or the lives of the control group4. the experimental group also used and enjoyed their new collaboratively designed shared spaces more than the control group used their professionally designed shared areas. this experiment did not come out of the blue; rather, it was a full-scale example of an accumulating set of results showing that shared autonomy matters in elder-care facilities (e.g. kasser and ryan 1999), and that maintaining social ties and identities helps individuals and groups to adapt successfully to change (e.g. haslam et al. 2005, 2008). but what is striking is that two groups, both receiving the same high level of empathetic care, should have such different wellbeing outcomes by means of a small, but nonetheless important, change in the way in which the care was delivered. no extra resources were required, just the forethought to recognize that the process can matter even more than the service itself5. 3 ‚in addition to the provision of standard care, residents in the experimental (empowered) condition were…given the opportunity to make decisions about how to decorate their home’s shared social spaces (i.e. the dining room, lounge and corridors). this involved selecting pictures and plants from a range of options. for this purpose, the residents took part in two formal meetings with the care-home managers, representatives of an interior landscaping company, and the researchers. following these meetings, the residents were asked to make group decisions about the decor of the communal spaces in the new care home. at this point, the residents arranged their own formal and informal meetings to decide on the best designs. there was no interference in this process from the managers, care staff or researchers in relation to either aesthetic choices or spatial arrangement.‛ (knight et al. 2010, 1399). 4 for example, the average reported life satisfaction of the experimental group rose from 4.6 before the move to 6.2 after the move. before the move they were significantly less satisfied with their lives than were the control group, while after the move they were significantly more satisfied than the control group (knight et al. 2010, 1404). 5 see also frey, benz and stutzer (2004). institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 258 2.2 benevolence matters, and even more when it is shared a number of studies have shown that people are happier when they do things for others, to an extent even greater than they predict. for example, dunn, aknin and norton (2008) found that experimental subjects assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than did those assigned to spend the same money on themselves. subsequent research in a crosscultural setting has confirmed with both survey and experimental evidence that this subjective wellbeing (swb) payoff to benevolence is found everywhere, and thus has claims to be a psychological universal (aknin et al. 2010). meier and stutzer (2008) find that the swb rewards of volunteering are pervasive, but are even greater for those with less materialistic motivations. other studies have shown that time spent with others is generally associated with higher subjective wellbeing. for example, helliwell and putnam (2004) show that frequent interactions with friends and neighbours are tightly associated with higher subjective wellbeing. at a more basic experimental level, synchronized physical actions done (on a rowing machine) with others are more productive of endorphins that promote feelings of wellbeing and protect against pain than are precisely the same activities done on one’s own (cohen et al. 2010). the subjective wellbeing benefits of social engagement are by now well-documented. what is less well known is how much of the gains flow to those who are the givers. schwartz and sendor (1999) found that when peer-support relations were established between pairs of multiple sclerosis patients, there were swb gains for the recipients of this peer support. only later did researchers consider whether there may have been gains also for the providers of the counselling. the gains to the providers turned out to be several times larger, and more sustained, than for those who were given support. this leads us to suspect that the benefits of the singapore reforms, which are based on peer counselling among prisoners, may have produced the largest benefits among those providing the support. 2.3 trust matters to subjective wellbeing, and trustworthiness tends to be under-estimated initial results linking trust and subjective wellbeing (e.g. helliwell 2003) made use of the widely available yes-or-no responses to a standard social trust question: ‘in general, most people can be trusted, or, alternatively, you cannot be too careful when dealing with people’. across countries, answers to this question were correlated with differences in happiness, life satisfaction, traffic fatalities, suicide, and the frequency of return of experimentally dropped wallets, among other things (helliwell and wang 2011). subsequent surveys have probed many different modes of trust: for example, of management, neighbours, co-workers and police; and found strong independent effects from each (helliwell and putnam 2004, helliwell and barrington-leigh 2010, 2011). if there is a first among these equals, it is perhaps trust in management. for example, working where trust in management is just 1 point higher on a 10 point scale has the same impact on life satisfaction as an income one-third higher (helliwell and huang 2010). a related finding is that where it is possible to distinguish perceptions of how much one should trust from the reality, it is perceptions rather than reality that determine subjective wellbeing. to give one example, it is possible to obtain comparable survey measures across countries of the past and expected future frequency of burglaries and attempted burglaries. in all countries, people think that the chances of being burgled in the next year are far higher than the average incidence of the previous year. since this degree of over-estimation differs among countries, it is possible to see whether international differences in life satisfaction are related to either or both of the actual and expected likelihoods of burglary. the results show that it is only the expected future incidence of burglaries that is correlated with international differences in institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 259 subjective wellbeing. thus the systematic over-prediction of the risks of future burglaries is likely to be responsible for life satisfaction being unnecessarily low. people like to live in a world where other people can be trusted, but they frequently believe that people are less trustworthy than they actually are. one more example may help to make this point. several major surveys have asked respondents to report on a four-point scale how likely it would be for their lost wallets (assumed to contain $200) to be returned if they were found, firstly, by a police officer; secondly, by a neighbour; and thirdly, by a stranger. in the canadian sample the expected likelihood of wallets being returned by police officers was even higher than for neighbours; in some countries this ranking was reversed. in all countries, the expected likelihood of wallet return was judged lowest for wallets presumed to be found by strangers. by good fortune, a newspaper in toronto decided to repeat the wallet experiment (originally done in a number of countries by the reader’s digest) by dropping 20 wallets in metropolitan toronto. in all cases the wallets were found (or not) by strangers, since the presumed owner was fictitious. since there was already a large amount of survey evidence about the presumed likelihood of a wallet being returned if found by a stranger in toronto, it was possible to compare the actual frequency of wallet return with what people living in the same city expected. the good news is that the actual frequency of wallet return was very high, about 80%. the bad news is that it was expected to be less than 25%. despite the relatively small number of wallets dropped, the difference between the actual and expected wallet returns was so great that there is no chance that the two distributions are the same (helliwell and wang 2011). it is well-established that trust and social connections are linked in both directions: where there is a climate of trust, people are more willing to reach out and make connections with others (putnam 2000). in the reverse direction, people are more likely to trust those with whom they have regular social interactions. hence the unjustified presence of mistrust hurts wellbeing in two ways. it lowers willingness to engage with others, and such engagements are themselves productive of wellbeing. and the lower trust perceptions also lead directly to lower levels of subjective wellbeing. 2.4 existence of positives trumps absence of negatives in determining wellbeing. it is a feature of the social sciences and related professions to wait until things go wrong and then try to make repairs. think of medicine and the criminal law, or psychology. positive psychology was started by those who saw something wrong with this approach. an electronic review of psychological abstracts since 1887 found that references to negative emotions outnumbered mention of positive emotions by 14 to 1, even greater than the 7 to 1 ratio by which treatment outscored prevention (myers 2000, 56). since that time, psychologists have been comparing the effects of positive and negative emotions more systematically, and found the positives to be more important. for example, experiments have shown a systematic positive dose/response relation between a subject’s initial positive affect and the extent to which he or she was able to ward off an experimentally administered cold virus, or to have milder symptoms if infected. having negative affect did make colds more likely, but the effect was smaller than for the absence of positive emotions, and not significant (cohen and pressman 2006). in a different vein, the use of positive expressions in written work has been shown to be a strong predictor of future longevity in groups as different as a long-studied order of nuns (danner, snowdon and friesen 2001) and a selection of eminent psychologists (pressman and cohen 2007). institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 260 the common policy concentration on the repair of negative outcomes (the medical model), the punishment of those held responsible for bad outcomes (the criminal justice model), and the creation of laws and regulations designed to avoid bad outcomes (e.g. closing public spaces to reduce the chances of lawsuits) can at best restore the system to stasis by repairing damage and reducing the risk of future crimes and injuries. but at what cost? the very laws and regulations that are intended to deal with actual and potential crime and disease usually have the effect of raising the perceived threats of bad events, reducing trust, and eliminating places and spaces available for people to mingle and meet, to engage in helping each other, and in other ways to build better lives. 2.5 shared engagement trumps top-down only after this paper was substantially complete did i realise the extent to which the success of the singapore prison service reforms rested on a seldom-studied bedrock of subjective wellbeing. it is broadly known that wellbeing in any organisation depends on shared values, shared identities, and a sense of engagement in a common purpose. it is less often noticed that it will all go better if everyone is having fun. even less is said about the extent to which it is much easier to establish these critical elements of success if the whole process is driven as much or more from the bottom than the top, even if it needs to be empowered from the top. when reading about the singapore prison case, consider if it would have been possible at all if the enabling vision, and all of its innovative elements, had not flowed from horizontal collaboration among all parties. success also required that senior management was willing to accept the risks of a process of change that was facilitated, rather than directed, from the top. 3. the singapore prison service reforms in 1998, the singapore prison service (sps) was facing pressures common to such systems around the world, particularly overcrowded prisons and shortages of staff due to difficulties in recruitment and retention. although rehabilitation was always a goal, it was handled piecemeal by specialists. such efforts were limited to work, education and religious counselling, and were not systematically monitored for effectiveness. the roles of prison officers remained mainly custodial. new leadership came in 1998, and research was directed to assessing what sorts of promising reforms were taking place in other countries. in 1999, more than 800 staff members from all ranks of the prison system were brought together, in a series of retreats, dialogues and forums, to develop a shared vision for the prison system. what became clear during the course of a year of continuing discussions was that ‚most prison officers wanted to do more to help inmates under their charge become contributing members of society‛ (leong 2010, 2). that in turn gave rise to a new shared vision that gave shape and direction to many of the strategies to follow. the vision clearly went beyond safety and security and into the rehabilitation and reintegration of the prisoners into society: we aspire to be captains in the lives of offenders committed to our custody. we will be instrumental in steering them towards being responsible citizens, with the help of their families and the community. we will thus build a secure and exemplary prison system. (leong 2010, 2) one of the first substantive reforms was the design and introduction of a housing unit management system to engage inmates and officers together to work toward the common goal of rehabilitation. management recognized that this abrupt challenge to the traditional ‘lock and institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 261 bolt’ mindset might pose problems for prison officers being asked to combine the roles of disciplinarian and rehabilitation officer. to ease this adaptation, and to learn more about how the two roles could best be made to co-exist, there was a year-long pilot project to test the new system within units that volunteered to do so. this combination of sequential evolution and bottom-up engagement was as central to the sps reforms as it has been shown to be for wellbeing more generally. next, new rehabilitation programs were established to involve inmates more directly in prison operations, including peer support. this helped the workload of prison officers, improved inmate-staff relationships, increased mutual trust, and became a central part of the rehabilitation process. there were also a number of procedural reforms, including more use of home detentions, tele-visits and virtual court sessions for remand inmates. these reforms conserved resources, rewarded the higher levels of mutual trust, and gave prison staff ‚the confidence to explore new solutions beyond the prison walls‛ (leong 2010, 4). the most innovative parts of the sps reforms involved ‘breaking down’ the prison walls, and attempting to unlock the ‘second prison’ when ex-prisoners return to a society not ready to accept them. the sps leaders and staff realized, as the reforms evolved, that integrated in-care and co-ordinated after-care were not separate stages, and that reintegration had to begin on the first day of the first incarceration. for this to happen, links between the sps and the community needed to change in fundamental ways. the sps opened the doors of its prisons to the public, gave press tours and emphasized the success stories of reformed ex-prisoners. media coverage and sps ads began to change public attitudes towards prisons, and towards prison work, leading to increased recruiting success for both employees and volunteers. co-ordinated aftercare networks were established, and brought into play by case workers for individual inmates as their sentences were ending. the major reintegration branding instrument has been the yellow ribbon project (yrp), introduced in 2004 as a framework for many activities designed to build and demonstrate the community’s willingness to accept and enable successful new lives for ex-inmates. the range and content of these activities are impressive. there are annual song-writing contests for inmates, ex-offenders and after-care agencies, with inmates and headline artists from singapore and abroad performing together in concerts to raise money for the yellow ribbon fund. there are now regular runs that pass through prison grounds (the runners in the first such event included the deputy prime minister). the singapore lions club approached the yrp in 2009 to co-host a lunch for the elderly, with the meal cooked by inmates and served by ex-offenders. in that same year, inmates volunteered to fill the fun packs for the national day parade, and an ex-offender, a prison officer, and a social services officer took part in an ironman race to raise s$10,000 for the yrp. since 2005, yrp conferences have brought together ex-offenders and groups involved with rehabilitation and reintegration to share experiences and build collective wisdom with an eye to further improvements. the outcomes of the sps reforms have been impressive on all fronts. the two-year recidivism rate, a classic measure of the overall success of a prison system, dropped from 44% for the pre-reform cohort released in 1998 to an all-time low of 23.7% for the cohort released in 2004. it has risen gradually since then, to 27.3% for the 2008 release cohort (ng 2009, 20, updated). on the staff side, the sps was voted one of the ten best employers in singapore in 2007, and prison officer satisfaction with management grew steadily from 70% in 2001 to 84% in 2005 (singapore prison system 2006, figure 7.3.4). respect among prison inmates for prison officers rose from 58% in 2002 to 92% in 2006 (singapore prison system 2006, figure 7.1.1). in the community, a 2007 survey found that 94% knew about the yellow ribbon project, and 70% institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 262 were willing to accept ex-offenders as friends or colleagues. in addition, the number of community volunteers, including a growing representation of ex-inmates, continues to grow (singapore prison system 2006, figure 7.2.3.) since the sps reforms were designed to solve perceived problems, rather than to facilitate subsequent research, they have not given rise to preand poststatistics sufficient to assess the overall success of the reforms, or to distribute the credit among the interlocking parts of the reform package. horizontally-managed reforms that happen simultaneously and incrementally on many fronts have been shown to deliver higher subjective wellbeing in experimental contexts. but they are especially hard to monitor when they are taking place within a real prison system. however, the results quoted above, taken together, make a convincing case for the initial and continuing success of the sps reforms. each of the main elements of the reforms illustrated one or more of the research strands listed; and all parties are thus far very satisfied with what has been accomplished. singapore still has relatively high incarceration rates. singapore’s 2007 incarceration rates, at 250 per 100,000, were four times those of japan, twice those of canada and australia, but still only onethird those of the united states (ng 2009, 18). in international terms, the system appears very efficient in terms of its low recidivism rates, absence of prison violence and continued maintenance of very low costs (singapore prison system 2006, figure 7.2.1). 4. prisons and wellbeing there have been studies that have used experimental prison environments to study social psychology, and other studies have tried to apply subjective wellbeing research results to aspects of the criminal justice system. in the former instance, the best-known example is the stanford prison experiment (haney, banks and zimbardo 1973), in which students were recruited into roles of prison guards and prisoners. those assigned to be guards subsequently fell into authoritarian attitudes, while the prisoners ultimately ceased resisting the guards’ brutality and were even prepared to victimize other prisoners. the brutality of the guards and the suffering of the prisoners were so great that the experiment was terminated less than halfway through its intended two-week duration. the more recent bbc prison experiments (reicher and haslam 20066) took a rather different tack, emphasizing the importance of the social structure within and between the groups of prisoners and guards, studying tyranny and resistance in tandem. in the stanford experiments, tyranny trumped resistance, and the prisoners suffered. in the bbc prison study, the prisoners worked together in resistance, and the guards became a fragmented and ineffective force. in both cases, one group had a collective oppositional identity that it used to oppress the other. this conforms, in both cases, to the general model of a prison as a conflictual society, with guards and prisoners in opposition. the magic of the singapore prison reforms was to break down that historic model of oppositional identities. the agents of reform sought and found a broad set of objectives that could be shared by prisoners and officers, and enabled shared identities as builders of better lives for all parties. there are earlier hints of these possibilities in the bbc prison study, where at two different stages, both at the beginning and the end, the guards and the prisoners made common cause, at first establishing a communal form, and at the end, in a less promising way, in accepting a harsher form of collective. earlier australian experiments (lovibond, mithiran and adams 1979) provided a more direct blueprint for the possibilities achieved by the 6 see also the website for the bbc prison study: http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org/bbc-prison-study.php?p=19. http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org/bbc-prison-study.php?p=19 institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 263 singapore prison reforms. these experiments showed that regimes involving greater mutual engagement and individuality for prisoners and officers led to significantly better results for both prisoners and officers. the singapore prison reforms go much further than such lab experiments, not only by being undertaken within prison realities but also extending the participation beyond the prison walls and into the community at large. previous applications of subjective wellbeing research to criminal justice topics have included proposing the use of estimated trade-offs from wellbeing equations to obtain better matching between the seriousness of an offense and the severity of the punishment (bagaric and mcconvill 2005). bronsteen et al (2008) argue instead that evidence of adaptation creates an obstacle for all utilitarian approaches to the choice of appropriate punishments. neither study is in the spirit of the sps reforms, which are intended to avoid recidivism not by raising the perceived penalties but by improving the possibilities for prisoners to build preferable noncriminal lives. one sps report includes a picture of a prison’s tower and surrounding barbed wire with the caption ‚most of our guests who checked out have no desire to return‛ (sps 2006, 32). the singapore prison service reforms embodied all five lessons from the wellbeing research described earlier. first, the sps leadership recognized immediately the importance of process. this involved spending time to develop a shared vision, and experimenting with different ways of implementing the vision. second, the value of benevolence was demonstrated by the resonance and popularity of the many activities that unite inmates, ex-offenders, prison staff and the community in efforts designed to help others. third, the need for and value of trust were central to the design of sequential reforms based on collaborative design and shared consultations. fourth, the importance of having fun, and not just avoiding harm, is evidenced by many of the yrp activities, ranging from song-writing and runs to hosting meals for the elderly. finally, the value of bottom-up initiative and engagement is apparent at each stage of the reforms, from a ‘we-centred’ leadership to a framework that encourages new initiatives and shares their lessons. the singapore prison service reforms did not draw directly from research on subjective wellbeing, but they certainly provide fine examples of how institutions in general, and prisons in particular, can be changed to make lives better for inmates, ex-offenders, families, staff and the community at large. 5. conclusion the most appropriate summary of the key lessons from the singapore prison service reforms is drawn from their own report (leong 2010, 11): the case illustrates … the possibilities that open up when a government agency begins not only to frame desired outcomes at the societal level, but also to help other members of the society to do likewise, leveraging its unique position and expertise to harness the collective efforts of society towards a common purpose. finally, the case illustrates the impact that could result when a government agency beyond acting alone starts involving other stakeholders and members of society; tapping on their aspirations to co-create the change agenda, collective wisdom and strengths to design interventions and implement them, so that the sum of the whole is more than its parts. as sps work attracted new believers, first internally and then externally, more resources were made available to deepen their mission. positive results in turn attracted more believers and resources – a reinforcing loop. quality of institutions as enablers of wellbeing: the singapore prison case study helliwell www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 264 relationships both within the organisation and with external partners enabled collective thinking, improved planning and actions, which led to higher quality outcomes that in turn grew relationships and deepened trust-improving outcomes – another reinforcing loop. ‘think big, start small’ was where it seemed to have begun – a shared desire to improve the lives of those whom they served. the 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reply to the comments of schueller et al. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 99-105. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.6 linda bolier trimbos institute & university of twente copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 article looking at the bowl of fruit or focussing on the apples? reply to the comments of schueller et al. linda bolier · merel haverman · gerben j. westerhof · heleen riper · filip smit · ernst bohlmeijer abstract: the article of schueller, kashdan and parks (2014) provides us with the opportunity to further clarify some aspects of the design and the choices we made in our meta-analysis "positive psychology interventions: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies" (bolier et al., 2013). we appreciate their commentary and endorse the useful discussion of defining positive psychological interventions for future meta-analyses. their main concern is that we were too narrow in our inclusion strategy and should have been more inclusive by integrating effectiveness studies of related areas in positive psychology. in this reply, we argue that our strategy is equally legitimate: science is often a piecemeal effort in which the researcher limits the scope and the research question. defining the criteria of a positive psychological intervention (ppi) can be done in a broad or a more narrow way. we acknowledge that our meta-analysis has limitations. limitations are inherent in all meta-analyses, especially when they are published as a journal paper, which limits the scope of any work. that said, the focus of our meta-analysis was based on a conscious choice and we presented a clear description of our search strategy in order to be transparent and produce a replicable review of the literature. 1. scope and inclusion criteria the aim of our study was to make a meta-analytical overview of positive psychological interventions, that is, those interventions that were primarily aimed at increasing positive feelings, positive cognitions and positive behaviour as opposed to interventions aiming to reduce symptoms, problems or disorders. we took this definition from an earlier meta-analysis of ppis (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). in defining inclusion criteria, we opted to include only those studies that examine interventions that have been explicitly developed in line with the theoretical focus of positive psychology. this is usually reported in the introduction section of an article. we were not so strict that the exact phrase ‘positive psychology’ should be used. according to our criteria, a focus on wellbeing enhancement or positive aspects of human functioning should be made explicit in the article, as opposed to a focus on problems and disease. for example, in the article of fava, rafanelli, cazzaro, conti and grandi (1998) on the effectiveness of wellbeing therapy, 'positive psychology' is not mentioned, but they remark in the introduction: “the route of recovery lies not exclusively in alleviating the negative, but in engendering the positive” (p. 475). therefore, this study was included (as it also met our other inclusion criteria). we agree with schueller and colleagues (2014) that to differentiate between ppis and other interventions, an intervention should meet both a goal criterion and a pathway criterion. by focussing on the above-mentioned criterion, both goal and pathway criteria were guaranteed in the selection of studies in our meta-analysis. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ looking at the bowl of fruit or focussing on the apples? bolier, haverman, westerhof, riper, smit, & bohlmeijer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 however, not all 'pathways' were included, which was a conscious choice and was explained in the 'selection of studies' section of our meta-analysis. we tried to learn from the meta-analysis of sin and lyubomirsky (2009). the sin and lyubomirsky meta-analysis has value in its own right: it gives a first, broad, but obviously not complete, overview of the effectiveness of ppis. they decided to include a number of studies (not all) on mindfulness and reminiscence and life review, while at the same time not including other interventions like acceptance and commitment therapy or the values affirmations interventions, which schueller et al. (2014) suggest as an intervention of choice. we decided not to include interventions that were developed from a different theoretical background, even though their commonalities with and differences from positive psychology have been spelled out in recent years (e.g. kashdan & ciarrochi, 2013). reminiscence and life review stem from psychogerontology (see westerhof & bohlmeijer, 2014 for a recent review). mindfulness stems from buddhist traditions whereas acceptance and commitment therapy is positioned as a third wave of cognitive behavioural therapy. in this way, the included interventions are much more homogeneous as they are derived from the same theoretical stream within psychology. another reason why we did not include interventions that use all kinds of positive psychological pathways – actually supporting the reasoning that they were developed from other traditions – is that they have been meta-analytically reviewed in their own right, as stated in our study. for example, pinquart and forstmeier (2012) conducted a meta-analysis of 128 studies on reminiscence and life review and showed that these interventions were not only successful in alleviating depressive symptoms, but also in enhancing positive psychological themes like wellbeing, meaning in life, and ego-integrity. it would not be conducive to furthering the field if we were to merely summarise the evidence already (superbly) summarised in pinquart and forstmeier’s study. similar arguments can be made for other domains that have similarities with positive psychology, such as forgiveness therapy. we thus decided to make a further delineation by excluding those areas that have already been extensively reviewed. this is not a wrong choice, as there is a conscious and grounded strategy being applied: it is just a different approach to that proposed by schueller and colleagues (2014). a separate issue that schueller et al. (2014) raise is the inclusion in our meta-analysis of an old study: lichter, haye and kammann (1980), while they assume that we included only studies from 1998 and further. this assumption is wrong: we searched for studies from 1998 in different databases, but being published in or after 1998 was not an inclusion criterion. the references in the meta-analysis of sin and lyubomirsky that were considered positive psychology interventions were also a starting point. from that meta-analysis, in which several studies from before 1998 were included, we selected only study 2 of lichter et al. (1980) because study 1 uses an intervention that challenges irrational beliefs based on cognitive therapy, an intervention that did not fit our definition criterion. 2. lower pooled effect sizes a finding in our meta-analysis was that the overall effect size was lower than in the meta-analysis of sin and lyubomirsky (2009). schueller et al. (2014) rightly stated that this may be due to our specific selection of studies. for example, the effect sizes for studies examining gratitude interventions that were included in our meta-analysis were much lower than the effect sizes for studies investigating forgiveness therapy that were included by sin and lyubomirsky. this could have resulted in a lower overall effect size. schueller et al. did not mention a second important factor that might have influenced the effect size in our study. we included only studies that were randomized at the individual level. individual randomization is one important looking at the bowl of fruit or focussing on the apples? bolier, haverman, westerhof, riper, smit, & bohlmeijer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 criterion for the quality of a study design. this is common practice in conducting meta-analyses, but may have lowered the pooled effect size in our meta-analysis. the effects of psychotherapy for adult depression, for instance, might have been overestimated in earlier studies, because the higher quality of later studies coincided with lower effect sizes (cuijpers, van straten, bohlmeijer, hollon, & andersson, 2010). this finding might also apply for positive psychology and was indeed corroborated in our analysis of the moderating effects of study quality for the outcome depression. for example, the famous first happiness intervention studies (fordyce, 1977; 1983) were excluded from our meta-analysis for this reason, as were the studies of macleod (2008). these studies have rather high effect sizes, but score low on methodological rigour. this methodological criterion, the inclusion of only randomized controlled trials, also partly explained why 'only' 19 studies in 17 articles (not 16 studies as schueller et al., 2014 have stated) overlapped in the sin and lybomirsky meta-analysis and our meta-analysis. schueller and colleagues (2014) question the finding that less intensive self-help interventions were less effective than more intensive face-to-face interventions. however, it is in line with the finding of sin and lyubomirsky that self-administered interventions are less effective. this is, moreover, supported by reviews of online self-help interventions that are grounded in positive psychology (bolier & martin abello, 2014; mitchell, vella-brodrick, & klein, 2010). it is questionable if this result would have been different if a more comprehensive inclusion strategy had been applied. 3. best possible self schueller and colleagues' (2014) comments also concern the supposed incomplete status of interventions that were included in our meta-analysis. they set an example with the 'best possible self' (bps) intervention. we indeed included studies that examined the bps intervention (boehm, lyubomirsky & sheldon, 2011; king, 2001; layous, nelson, & lyubomirsky, 2013; lyubomirsky, dickerhoof, boehm, & sheldon, 2011; peters, flink, boersma, & linton, 2010; sheldon & lyubomirsky, 2006). other studies were excluded or did not emerge in our search strategy (austenfeld et al., 2006; austenfeld & stanton, 2008; hanssen, peters, vlaeyen, meevissen, & vancleef, 2013; king & miner, 2000; meevissen, peters, & alberts, 2011; oyserman, bybee, & terry, 2006; peters, meevissen, & hanssen, 2013). we now look at these studies in more detail: 1) both the austenfeld et al. (2006) and austenfeld and stanton (2008) studies use only negative outcomes, such as hostility, medical visits and depression and were not aiming at enhancing wellbeing. oyserman et al. (2006) was not focused on wellbeing, but on academic achievement. it thus comes as no surprise that these studies did not turn up in our search of databases. besides that, sin and lyubomirsky (2009) have not included these three studies in their meta-analysis either, therefore they were not found when checking these references. 2) king and miner (2000) examined a writing intervention about perceived benefits of trauma. besides the fact that we would not consider this to be a bps intervention, the study was excluded because of the specific goal of the intervention (post-traumatic growth). 3) hanssen et al. (2013) and peters et al. (2013) did not come up in our search as they were published at about the same time as our meta-analysis, but would otherwise be considered good candidates for inclusion. 4) meevissen et al. (2011) was not found in our search strategy, even though we would have included it. if this study had been included (effect size is 0.94, which is high), the pooled looking at the bowl of fruit or focussing on the apples? bolier, haverman, westerhof, riper, smit, & bohlmeijer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 effect size for subjective wellbeing would not have been radically different (it rises from 0.34 to 0.35. it is conceivable that a meta-analysis including bps interventions is a worthwhile undertaking, either for positive goals such as wellbeing, or for negative goals such as hostility and coping with trauma. however, this would require a different focus and correspondingly a different search strategy in comparison to our study, including the use of wider inclusion criteria. 4. the use of depression outcomes in positive psychological interventions schueller and colleagues (2014, p. 95) expressed their concern with depression as an outcome measure in intervention studies of positive psychological interventions: “the use of depressive symptoms is a bizarre attachment of intervention research in the field”. they illustrate this concern with the conceptualisation by duckworth, steen and seligman (2005) of the main goal of positive psychological interventions: to provide interventions that move people from average health (0) to a state of flourishing (+3 or higher), as opposed to problem-based interventions that aim to move people from a state of suffering (-5) to a normal distressed state (-1). in our eyes, this is a useful conceptualisation to understand the goal of positive psychology, but it is also a very linear notion, if taken literally. there is a growing body of evidence for a two-continua model: wellbeing and mental illness are correlated but also rather independent dimensions, and not just two opposite poles of the same continuum (keyes, 2005; lamers, westerhof, bohlmeijer, ten klooster, & keyes, 2011; weich et al., 2011). for example, people with mental complaints can experience growth in meaning in their lives. positive psychological interventions can help people to recover (slade, 2010). maybe the symptoms will not fully disappear, but life perspective and meaning in life can be restored. in addition, the available evidence suggests that wellbeing increases resilience and reduces the risk of developing mental symptoms later on (keyes, dhingra, & simoes, 2010; wood & joseph, 2010). as a consequence, positive psychological interventions can be used across the whole continuum of mental illness as well as that of mental health: it can be useful in diminishing psychological complaints as well as in promoting wellbeing among individuals with psychological disorders and among people in good mental health. these notions are also supported by duckworth et al. (2005, p. 630) who mention that “positive interventions may also usefully supplement direct attempts to prevent and treat psychopathology.” as seen from this perspective, it is highly relevant to measure depressive symptoms in addition to measures of wellbeing and quality of life. it is a great accomplishment that with positive psychological interventions not only is wellbeing enhanced, but depressive symptoms can be prevented and treated. 5. conclusion in sum, our meta-analysis applied a strict search and inclusion strategy, which limits the scope of the results to interventions that are explicitly grounded in positive psychology theory. this scope is in line with many other articles on positive psychology (e.g. duckworth et al., 2005). within the chosen approach, there is a clear message to the positive psychological research field: improve the methodological quality of effect evaluations, and work in more diverse clinical populations. we recommend that meta-analyses be conducted in the future that shed light on specific types of interventions, for example gratitude interventions and strengths-based interventions. in our view, it would also be worthwhile to review only studies using study populations in the real world as opposed to convenience samples of students in a lab setting looking at the bowl of fruit or focussing on the apples? bolier, haverman, westerhof, riper, smit, & bohlmeijer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 103 (many of the studies in our meta-analysis were done in a university setting, sometimes with the incentive of course credits). the main point is that any conclusion remains conditioned on the type of interventions that were included in the meta-analysis, but choosing the focus of a metaanalysis is primarily driven by the precise research question. schueller and colleagues (2014) suggest an approach that is more inclusive and integrated, acknowledging a larger variety of pathways and interventions. metaphorically speaking, they would prefer a meta-analysis of the whole bowl of fruit with apples, pears and pineapples, whereas we made a conscious decision to focus on different types of apples. we would welcome a meta-analysis based on all types of fruit, because we can see that definitions of ppis remain in essence somewhat arbitrary and open to discussion. a more inclusive approach would perhaps allow researchers to take a meta-regression approach to identifying certain populations, modifying factors and intervention types that are particularly successful. however, we would consider this to be a very courageous proposal. we anticipate that it will be very challenging in the context of meagre research funding and in the space typically offered for papers in scientific journals. furthermore, it raises the question where the boundary between positive psychological interventions and other type of interventions is to be set. it might be a good idea to mobilize the positive psychology research community for that reason, perhaps by opening a wiki in which definitions and selection criteria are discussed and everyone can contribute to a certain area of research. we are very willing to cooperate in such an endeavour. authors linda bolier trimbos institute university of twente merel haverman trimbos institute gerben j westerhof university of twente heleen riper vu university leuphana university filip smit trimbos institute vu university ernst bohlmeijer university of twente publishing timeline received 23 april year accepted 23 april year published 5 june year references looking at the bowl of fruit or focussing on the apples? bolier, haverman, westerhof, riper, smit, & bohlmeijer www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 104 austenfeld, j. l., paolo, a. m., & stanton, a. l. 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(2010). the absence of positive psychological (eudemonic) well-being as a risk factor for depression: a ten year cohort study. journal of affective disorders, 122, 217. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2009.06.032 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022575 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-007-9057-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2011.02.012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.1.188 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439761003790963 http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/s0718-48082013000100009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760500510676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20593 http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.111.091496 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2014.02.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2009.06.032 gherghel, c., & hashimoto, t. (2020). the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan: a mixedmethods study. international journal of wellbeing, 10(4), 55-73. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.1179 claudia gherghel nagoya university clemghe@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 article the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan: a mixed-methods study claudia gherghel · takeshi hashimoto abstract: kindness and gratitude expression have significant wellbeing enhancing effects. however, the effect of engaging in these activities may be influenced by cultural factors. the purpose of this research was to explore how japanese young adults construe kindness and gratitude, as well as to investigate the effect of kindness and gratitude expression on their wellbeing. fifty-eight japanese students were randomly allocated to three groups: acts of kindness, gratitude expression, and memorable events (as control), and engaged in the activities for three weeks. exploratory content analysis revealed that participants in the kindness and gratitude groups referred to similar types of social support when describing the activities they had engaged in, including instrumental support (offering objects), emotional support (encouragement), and informational support (teaching). as for the effect of kindness and gratitude on wellbeing, analyses revealed a significant decrease in depression and negative affect from pretest to posttest in all groups. future research should clarify whether practicing the character strengths of kindness and gratitude is effective for participants with an asian-cultural background. keywords: kindness; gratitude; wellbeing; depression; culture 1. introduction moral philosophers distinguish between core virtues such as humanity, which can be achieved through the character strength of kindness, and transcendence, achieved through character strengths such as gratitude (peterson & seligman, 2004). kindness and gratitude are significantly related to subjective wellbeing (park, peterson, & seligman, 2004), and intentionally practicing these strengths of character has a happiness-increasing effect (e.g. boehm, lyubomirsky, & sheldon, 2011; emmons & mccullough, 2003). the results of previous studies have encouraged the development of “positive psychology interventions”, which promote the effectiveness of kindness and gratitude expression in increasing subjective wellbeing. however, there are few studies clarifying under what conditions practicing kindness and gratitude is most effective, by taking into consideration participants’ personality, as well as their social and cultural background. furthermore, it is important to know how people of different ages and from different cultures construe kindness and gratitude, as their perceptions may shape the effectiveness of the intervention. not many previous studies have looked into how participants construe kindness and gratitude. while some positive-psychology interventions give examples of acts of kindness (nelson et al., 2015) or expressions of gratitude reported by participants (emmons & mccullough, 2003), fewer have actually analyzed people’s definitions of kindness and gratitude about:blank the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 in-depth. focusing on children’s and adolescents’ definitions of kindness, binfet and his colleagues reveal that kindness is mostly understood as helping, showing respect, giving, and encouraging (binfet, 2020; binfet & passmore, 2019; binfet & whitehead, 2019). another thematic analysis of adolescents’ conceptualizations of kindness found themes such as helping, emotional support, generosity, forgiveness, honesty, and inclusion (cotney & banerjee, 2019). these analyses reveal that the core of kindness may be helping, giving, and emotional support, although many other behaviors in the domain of agreeableness, such as honesty, forgiveness, and respect, may also be conceptualized as kindness. researchers have also investigated the prototype of gratitude as defined by laypersons, and found some features that refer to eliciting situations, such as receiving a gift or being helped (lambert, graham, & fincham, 2009). in a study on adolescents, gratitude was found to be associated with support from others, family, and friendship (gottlieb & froh, 2019), while children reported feeling grateful for engaging in interesting activities, companionship, support from friends and family, or receiving objects (owens & patterson, 2013). although some qualitative attempts to analyze kindness and gratitude definitions exist, comparisons between examples of kindness and gratitude-eliciting situations have not yet been made. furthermore, the meaning of kindness and gratitude may differ by culture, so investigating how people from different cultures construe kindness and gratitude is the first step in creating culturallyresponsive interventions. culture may influence not only people’s definitions of kindness and gratitude, but also the effectiveness of practicing these character strenghts. kindness and gratitude are two facets of the process of giving and receiving social support, and are heavily saturated with moral meaning. therefore, kindness and gratitude expression might be strongly influenced by cultural and social values. in cultures where individuals may feel uneasy requesting social support because of relationship concerns (kim, sherman, ko, & taylor, 2006), expressing gratitude could foster a sense of indebtedness. concerning indebtedness, previous studies show that gender may moderate the effect of gratitude on wellbeing, men benefitting less from gratitude expression than women, because men are more prone to experience burden and obligation when being the recepient of others’ support (kashdan, mishra, breen, & froh, 2009). similarly, people from asian cultures where sensitivity to social obligations and indebtedness is high, may benefit less from gratitude interventions than people in western cultures. furthermore, as asians are less prone to offering direct support (chen, kim, sherman, & hashimoto, 2015), the meaning of kindness (and the concrete behaviors labeled as kind) might be different compared to western cultures. without a profound understanding of the social and cultural factors affecting the way individuals interpret morally-relevant acts such as kindness and gratitude, it is difficult to assess whether or when practicing these character strenghts is beneficial. previous research hints to the fact that cultural factors influence whether intentionally practicing kindness or gratitude promotes wellbeing. for example, boehm and her colleagues showed that anglo americans gain more benefits from expressing gratitude compared to asian americans (boehm et al., 2011). in another study, koreans did not show improvements in wellbeing after participating in a gratitude intervention, while americans did (layous, lee, choi, & lyubomirsky, 2013). also, gratitude expression caused increases in both positive and negative affect for participants with an asian cultural background, whereby anglo americans did not experience an increase in negative affect (titova, wagstaff, & parks, 2017). in japan, the positive effect of performing acts of kindness has been replicated in one study (otake, shimai, tanakamatsumi, otsui, & fredrickson, 2006), but gratitude-expression did not boost participants’ happiness in another (aikawa, yada, & yoshino, 2013). taken together, these results suggest that http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 in asian contexts, gratitude-expression may not be a culturally-responsive intervention. before designing a culturally-informed kindnessor gratitude-based intervention, it is necessary to clarify how the constructs of kindness and gratitude are defined and experienced in those cultures. accordingly, the main purpose of our study is to to explore how japanese conceptualize kindness and gratitude. it is important to point out that the majority of studies supporting the effectiveness of kindness and gratitude in increasing wellbeing has employed mainly western participants. although culture may influence how people construe not only kindness and gratitude, but also happiness (oishi, graham, kesebir, & galinha, 2013), the number of studies investigating the effects of positive psychology interventions beyond the western world remains low. a recent meta-analysis on randomized controlled trials aimed at increasing participants’ wellbeing (hendriks et al., 2019) shows that although the number of studies conducted in non-western cultures has been increasing in recent years, western samples still account for 78.2% of all studies. among the studies included in this meta-analysis, only three (1.6%) employed a japanese sample, compared to 74 (39.4%) which sampled american participants. considering these facts, more research in non-western cultures is needed. accordingly, the second aim of our study is to investigate the effect of kindness and gratitude interventions on the wellbeing of japanese young adults. 1.1 the current study we designed a three-week longitudinal study aiming to enhance wellbeing by practicing kindness and gratitude. two experimental conditions were created: acts of kindness (performing small acts of kindness) and gratitude expression (expressing gratitude to other people). a third condition, memorable events (writing the most memorable events of the week), was created as a control, having no clear wellbeing boosting effect. first, by qualitatively analyzing the concrete examples of kindness and gratitude given by participants, our aim is to gain insight into what “kindness” and “gratitude” mean for japanese young adults, what the most common or easy to enact acts of kindness and expressions of gratitude are, and whether kindness and gratitude refer to the same types of support provision (same behaviors seen from the giver and the receiver’s perspectives). second, we also explore whether practicing kindness and gratitude increases japanese participants’ wellbeing. as a general hypothesis, we expect kindness and gratitude to increase wellbeing relative to the memorable events condition (hypothesis 1). however, in line with previous cross-cultural research (layous et al., 2013), we expect to find smaller benefits for japanese participants in the gratitude condition, compared to those in the kindness condition (hypothesis 2). 2. method 2.1 participants ninety-six undergraduates responded to the pretest questionnaires. there were 32 participants in the kindness group (nine males), 38 participants in the gratitude group (16 males) and 26 participants in the memorable events group (nine males). we eliminated participants who did not provide posttest responses (37) and one international student. the final sample consisted of 58 participants (21 males, 37 females, mage = 19.29, sd = 2.00), 18 participants in the kindness group (five males), 18 participants in the gratitude group (seven males) and 22 participants in the memorable events group (nine males). a post-hoc power-analysis using gpower (version 3.1.9.4) revealed that the final sample size provided 92% power to detect a medium withinhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 between factors interaction effect of η2p = 0.06, with an alpha level of 0.05 in a repeated-measures design with two repeated measurements (pre-post). 2.2 procedure we launched the invitation to participate in the study during psychology-related classes at a public university in japan. after explaining orally the purpose of the study and the schedule of the intervention, we offered participants an envelope that contained the description of the study, its schedule, the qr code to the pretest online questionnaire, an identification number (randomly generated using a free online random number generator), and a pen as incentive. there were three different qr code sheets prepared, one for each experimental condition (kindness, gratitude, memorable events), and the sheets were randomly distributed to participants. the participants were not informed of the number of experimental conditions or the content of the activities, and were asked to keep their activity secret during the whole intervention period. however, all participants were informed that their activities have potential wellbeing increasing effects. participants were instructed to access the link to the pretest questionnaire until the end of the next day (see materials, pretest measures). one week later, we sent participants the link to week 1 questionnaire, and two weeks later, the link to the week 2 questionnaire was sent (see materials, weekly measures). three weeks after the beginning of the intervention, we sent the link to the posttest questionnaire (see materials, posttest measures). in total, there were four assessments (pretest, week 1, week 2, posttest) over the course of three weeks. 2.3 materials 2.3.1 pretest measures. before completing the questionnaire, participants provided demographic information: age, gender, nationality (japanese or not) and university year. we used the k6 (kessler et al., 2002; for the japanese version see furukawa et al., 2008; α = .82) to measure depression. we employed the questionnaire’s original instructions, which asked participants to evaluate their symptoms for the last 30 days, on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 = none of the time, 5 = all of the time). the satisfaction with life scale (swls; diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985; for the japanese version see oishi, 2009; α = .87) was used to measure subjective wellbeing, on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). in addition, we measured loneliness with the ucla loneliness scale version 3 (russell, 1996; for the japanese version see masuda, tadaka, & dai, 2012; α = .93). the questionnaire has 20 items (for example, “how often do you feel alone?”), measured on a likert scale from 1 (never) to 4 (often). because the instructions for the swls and the ucla do not mention a specific time period, participants were asked to respond how they feel in general. we also measured positive and negative affect, with the 20-item panas (watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988; for the japanese version see kawahito, otsuka, kaida, & nakata, 2011; positive affect α = .76, negative affect α = .78). items were measured on a likert scale from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely). considering that affect may fluctuate significantly over time, we chose a relatively short time span (one week) and asked participants to evaluated how strongly they had experienced each affect during the last week. 2.3.2 activity description after completing pretest measures, participants read the description of the activity they had been assigned to. participants in the kindness group were informed they had been assigned to the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 “acts of kindness activity” and that they had to perform acts of kindness three times per week for the next three weeks. participants in the gratitude group learned that they had been assigned to the “gratitude expression activity”, and that they had to express gratitude (directly or indirectly) three times every week. participants in the memorable events group found out that they had been assigned to the “event review activity”, which implied recalling the most important three events they had experienced during the week. 2.3.3 weekly measures at the end of each week, participants received the link to the weekly questionnaires. the questionnaires asked them to describe shortly how they had carried out their assigned activities during the week. participants in the kindness group described three acts of kindness they had done over the week, participants in the gratitude group described three situations when they had expressed gratitude during the week, and participants in the memorable events condition described three of the most important events they had experienced during the week. after the open-ended questions, participants responded to panas (week 1 positive affect α = .79, negative affect α = .88; week 2 positive affect α = .85, negative affect α = .87), evaluating how strongly they had felt each affect during the last week. 2.3.4 posttest measures at the end of week three, participants received the posttest questionnaire. as in week 1 and 2, participants first described what they had done during the week (three gratitude acts, three acts of kindness, or three experienced events, depending on the experimental condition) and responded to panas (positive affect α = .79, negative affect α = .85). then, they responded to all other wellbeing measures: they evaluated their depressive symptoms on k6 (α = .81) and how lonely they had felt on the ucla version 3 (α = .91), and responded again to the swls (α = .80). because the k6 and ucla measure how frequently participants experience depressive symptoms and loneliness, we tried to capture recent changes in frequency of experiencing loneliness and depression. therefore, we asked participants to refer to the last two-three days when evaluating how depressed or lonely they had felt. however, instructions for the swls were not changed, because the questionnaire measures agreement with statements about general satisfaction with life, and setting a time span to evaluate changes in agreement with general statements was unnatural. finally, they responded to a series of check-items: if they had kept their assigned activity a secret (yes, no), how many times they had expressed gratitude to someone and how many times they had performed acts of kindness during the last three weeks, on a 7-point scale, from “not at all” to “more than nine times (more than three times per week)”, and if they had any comments about the study. participants who responded to all questionnaires received a book-store card worth of 500 yen (about 5$) as compensation for participation. informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study. 2.4 content analysis participants were asked to briefly describe the activities they had done over the week. we conducted content analysis (weber, 1990) on all qualitative data obtained (including data from participants who did not provide posttest responses) in order to gain deeper understanding of the types of activities performed by participants. first, the “text unit” (the body of material subjected to analysis) was defined as each participant’s happiness-increasing activity, in the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 following manner: for the kindness group, the text unit was an example of kindness, for the gratitude group, the text unit was an example of gratitude expression, while for the memorable events group, it was an example of memorable event. the “recording unit” was defined as writing in one text box (there were three text boxes for three different activities each week). in cases where there was more than one activity described in one text box, responses were split into different units, and each recording unit was coded into one category. empirical content analysis categories were used to analyze the data. in the first phase of the content analysis, one researcher screened all the data in order to construct meaningful categories to be used in the coding process. starting bottom-up, examples of similar activities were categorized under a single category (e.g. “i lent a movie to a friend” and “i lent a friend money to buy lunch” were categorized under the same category, which was labeled “lending things”). after all data had been categorized, the categories were reviewed several times, expanding or collapsing them to increase clarity. for example, initial categories with high frequency of occurrence, such as “giving things”, in which both lending and donating behaviors were included, were split into two different categories (“offering things” and “lending things”), in order to differentiate between the two. in the second phase of the analysis process, an independent research assistant coded each recording unit into one of the existing categories, and inter-rater reliability was assessed. disagreements were solved through discussions. finally, similar categories were grouped under an overarching general category (e.g. categories referring to offering concrete solutions to someone’s problems were grouped under the overarching category of “instrumental support”). 3. results 3.1 word frequency analysis before content-analyzing the data, to get an overview of participants’ responses, a word cloud for the most frequent words used was created with the help of a free online word-cloud generator. the most frequently mentioned 20 words were represented in the word cloud (see figures 1, 2, 3 below). in the kindness condition, because there were more words with the same frequency as the 20th most frequent word, 24 words were included in the final word cloud (figure 1). in the kindness condition, the most frequent word used by participants was “friend” (114 times), followed by “give” (44 times). in the gratitude condition, the most frequent word was “give” (101 times), followed by “gratitude” (81 times). in the memorable events condition, the most frequently used word was “test” (19 times), followed by “friend” (18 times). 3.2 content analysis 3.2.1 kindness content analysis in the kindness group, 167 examples of acts of kindness were content-analyzed. twenty categories (which could be grouped into three overarching categories: instrumental support, emotional support, and informational support) were identified, and the interrater reliability was investigated by computing cohen’s kappa index. the interrater reliability index was fair (kappa = .65, z = 27.2, p < .001). after resolving disagreements through discussions, all recording units were reliably coded into one subcategory (see table 1). in the instrumental support category, we included the following subcategories: doing something in someone else’s place (12.6%), help with work or school (11.4%), offering things (10.2%), lending things (9.0%), accompanying (5.4%), holding someone’s things (4.2%), taking class handouts (3.6%), protecting someone’s safety (3.6%), giving a seat (3.0%), support for someone ill (3.0%), searching for someone’s lost http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 things (1.8%), housing (0.6%), and making change (0.6%). in the emotional support category, we included: counseling and encouragement (18.0%), holding a party for someone (1.2%), expressing gratitude (1.2%), responding politely (0.6%), and compromise (0.6%). in the informational support category we included: teaching (6.0%) and giving directions (3.6%). figure 1. word cloud representing the most frequently used words in the kindness condition note. higher font size represents higher frequency of occurrence. figure 2. word cloud representing the most frequently used words in the gratitude condition note. higher font size represents higher frequency of occurrence. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 figure 3. word cloud representing the most frequently used words in the memorable events condition note. higher font size represents higher frequency of occurrence. table 1. content analysis of kindness examples note. no = number of recording units categorized in each category. 3.2.2 gratitude content analysis in the gratitude group, we conducted content analysis on 143 examples of gratitude expression provided by participants. three general categories (the same as in the kindness group), and 15 subcategories were identified. interrater agreement was fair (kappa = .65, z = 21.3, p < .001). after resolving disagreements through discussions, all recording units were reliably coded into one general category subcategory no (%) example do something in someone else's place 21 12.6 "at the cafeteria, i cleared the dishes used by a friend from the table" help someone with work or school activities 19 11.4 "at work, i helped a colleague who was busy" offer things to someone 17 10.2 "i gave some bread to my younger sister" lend or share things 15 9.0 "i lent an umbrella to a friend" accompany someone 9 5.4 "i accompanied my friend to buy a present for their acquaintance" hold things for someone 7 4.2 "my friend had a lot of heavy luggage so i helped" take class handouts for someone 6 3.6 "i took class handouts for a friend who was absent" protect someone's safety 6 3.6 "i got off my bike to allow a pedestrian to pass" give a seat to someone 5 3.0 "i gave my seat in the train to a tired friend" support for someone ill 5 3.0 "i took care of a friend who had caught a cold" search for lost things together 3 1.8 "i helped my friend search for their lost key" offer housing 1 0.6 "i housed a friend who lives with his parents and didn't have where to spend the night after finishing club activity" make change (money) 1 0.6 "i made change for a friend who didn’t have exact change to pay the bus fare" counseling and encouragement 30 18.0 "i encouraged a friend who was upset because they didn’t do well on the test" hold a party for someone 2 1.2 "i organized a birthday party for a friend" express gratitude to someone 2 1.2 "i said 'thank you' to my girlfriend for having lunch with me" give polite response 1 0.6 "i responded politely to an unimportant message" make compromise 1 0.6 "i respected my friend's opinion when we disagreed" teach something to someone 10 6.0 "i explained to my friend something that they hadn't understood" give directions to someone 6 3.6 "my brother had something to do at school, so i showed him around" total 167 100 instrumental support emotional support informational support http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 subcategory (see table 2). in the instrumental support category, we included the following subcategories: receiving things (14.0%), receiving help with work or school (10.5%), being given a lift (2.1%), receiving help with holding or picking up things (2.1%), being offered accommodation (1.4%), being offered a seat (1.4%), receiving support when ill (1.4%), being returned change (0.7%), and gratitude for public service (0.7%). in the emotional support category, we included: gratitude for spending time together (17.5%), being counseled or encouraged (16.1%), being organized a party (2.8%), and gratitude for someone’s existence (2.1%). in the informational support category we included examples referring to receiving information or being taught something (9.1%). in addition, examples in which the reason why gratitude was expressed was not specified (e.g. “i thanked a friend”), comprised 18.2% of the responses. table 2. content analysis of gratitude examples note. no = number of recording units categorized in each category. 3.2.3 memorable events content analysis although the main purpose was to gain insight into how japanese construe kindness and gratitude, qualitative analysis on the answers provided by the participants in the memorable events group was also performed in order to clarify what a “memorable event” means to participants. for this analysis, 195 examples were coded and four main categories (activities, personal issues, interpersonal events, and environment changes), with 16 subcategories were identified (see table 3). interrater agreement was good (kappa = .71, z = 27.2, p < .001). after resolving disagreements through discussion, all recording units were reliably coded into one subcategory. in the activities category, we included the following subcategories: leisure activities (26.7%), school activities (23.1%), university club activities (5.1%) and work activities (4.1%). in the personal issue category, we included: personal successes (5.6%), health and appearance issues (4.1%), and personal failures (4.1%). in the interpersonal events category, we included: general category subcategory no (%) example receive things 20 14.0 "i thanked a senior member of the club for offering me sweets" receive help with work or school activities 15 10.5 "i smiled and said 'thank you' to my boyfriend for washing the dishes" be given a lift 3 2.1 "i expressed gratitude to my mother for giving me a lift to school every morning" receive help with holding or picking up things 3 2.1 "i thanked them for holding my backpack" be offered accommodation 2 1.4 "i thanked a friend who housed me" be offered a seat 2 1.4 "i thanked an old lady several times for giving me her seat" receive support when ill 2 1.4 "i thanked a friend who brought me provisions when i was lying in bed with a cold" being returned change 1 0.7 "i thanked a friend who made change for a 1000 yen bill" receive public service 1 0.7 "i thanked the cashier at the supermarket" spending time together 25 17.5 "i thanked my sister for coming with me to a concert" being counseled or encouraged 23 16.1 "i sent a letter to express gratitude to a friend who always listens to my worries" being organized a party 4 2.8 "my friend baked a birthday cake for me, and i was so happy that i sent them a gratitude message" gratitude for someone's existence 3 2.1 "i thanked my boyfriend for being born" informational support being taught or offered information 13 9.1 "i thanked a friend who explained the course content that i hadn't understood" unspecified 26 18.2 "i thanked a friend" total 143 100 instrumental support emotional support http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 having fun with friends (5.6%), emotional support (2.6%), celebration (2.6%), meeting people (2.1%), receiving things (2.1%), negative interactions (1.0%), and making new friends (1.0%). in the environment changes category, we included: changes in environment (5.6%), and other people’s events (4.6%). table 3. content analysis of memorable events note. no = number of recording units categorized in each category. 3.3 engagement in activities of the 58 participants whose data was analyzed, 38 (65.51%) completed all their assigned activities (practicing kindness/gratitude three times per week or writing three memorable events per week). in the kindness group, 12 of the 18 participants completed all activities, in the gratitude group, seven of the 18 participants completed all activities, and in the memorable events group, 19 of the 22 participants completed all assigned activities. furthermore, of the 58 participants included in the final analysis, 47 (81%) reported they had kept their assigned activity a secret. 3.4 manipulation check and differences between experimental conditions at pretest we investigated whether there were any significant differences between participants who provided posttest responses and those who dropped out from the study. in all subsequent analyses, missing data was handled by listwise deletion. there were no differences in age (t(91) = 1.41, p = .159; d = .26, 95% ci[-.68, .15]), gender (χ2(1) = 0.04, p = .841), depression (t(94) = 0.20, p = .835; d = .04, 95% ci[-.34, .45]), life satisfaction (t(94) = 1.24, p = .227; d = .25, 95% ci[-.66, .16]), loneliness (t(93) = 1.62, p = .106; d = .31, 95% ci[-.09, .73]) and negative affect (t(94) = 0.67, p = .499; d = .14, 95% ci[-.55, .27]) between participants whose data was used in the analysis and those whose data was not. a significant difference appeared in pretest positive affect scores (t(94) = 2.10, p = .037; d = .43, 95% ci[-.85, -.02]), participants whose data was analyzed having higher scores (m = 3.04, sd = 0.64) than those who were eliminated (m = 2.75, sd = 0.70). there was also general category subcategory no (%) example leisure 52 26.7 "i had a drinking party" school 45 23.1 "i wrote the paper" university club 10 5.1 "the gathering of the club members" work 8 4.1 "the interaction at my part-time job" personal success 11 5.6 "i got my driver’s license" health and appearance 8 4.1 "flu vaccine" failures 8 4.1 "i failed when trying to make a dish” fun with friends 11 5.6 "i had ramen with a friend" emotional support 5 2.6 "i was told not to give up" celebration 5 2.6 "my friend's birthday" meet people 4 2.1 "my parents came to visit" receive things 4 2.1 "i received a lot of bread from my parents" negative interactions 2 1.0 "argument with a friend" make new friends 2 1.0 "i made a friend at the job" change in environment 11 5.6 “it started to rain all of a sudden” other people's events 9 4.6 "my friend got a boyfriend" total 195 100 activities personal issues interpersonal issues environment http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 a significant difference between conditions in the number of participants who dropped out from the study (χ2(2) = 9.30, p = .009), more participants dropping-out from the gratitude (n = 14) and kindness conditions (n = 20), compared to the memorable events condition (n = 4), probably because the former two required more effort to complete. next, we investigated whether the experimental groups differed in their evaluation of the frequency they had expressed gratitude or performed acts of kindness during the intervention, as a manipulation check. although differences did not achieve statistical significance (kindness frequency: f(2, 55) = 2.98, p = .058, η2p = .09; gratitude frequency: f(2, 55) = 0.50, p = .605, η2p = .01), the persons in the gratitude group declared expressing most gratitude during the three weeks of study (kindness group: m = 4.61, sd = 1.75; gratitude group: m = 5.00, sd = 1.08; events group: m = 4.55, sd = 1.57), and participants in the kindness group declared performing most acts of kindness (kindness group: m = 4.50, sd = 1.58; gratitude group: m = 3.44, sd = 1.25; events group: m = 3.50, sd = 1.57). we also checked whether there were any differences in wellbeing at pretest between the three experimental conditions. results showed no significant differences in any of the pretest wellbeing measures (depression: f(2, 55) = 0.18, p = .832, η2p = .01; life satisfaction: f(2, 55) = 1.06, p = .353, η2p = .03; loneliness: f(2, 55) = 0.75, p = .473, η2p = .02; positive affect: f(2, 55) = 1.79, p = .175, η2p = .06; negative affect: f(2, 55)= 1.32, p = .273, η2p = .04). finally, because gender ratio was unbalanced, gender differences in pretest measures were investigated. as no significant differences were found (depression: t(56) = 1.69, p = .095; d = .46, 95% ci[-1.01, .09]; life satisfaction: t(56) = 0.61, p = .540; d = .16, 95% ci[-.37, .71]; loneliness: t(56) = 0.63, p = .525; d = .17, 95% ci[-.72, .37]; positive affect: t(56) = 0.64, p = .522; d = .17, 95% ci[-.37, .72]; negative affect: t(56)= 1.21, p = .227; d = .33, 95% ci[-.88, .21]), we did not include gender in subsequent analyses.1 3.5 intervention effects to explore the effect of interventions on wellbeing measures, a mixed-design analysis of variance was conducted. the within-subjects factor was time (prevs postfor general wellbeing, and pre vs week 1 vs week 2 vs postfor affect), and the between-subjects factor was experimental condition (kindness vs gratitude vs memorable events). time had a significant main effect on depression (f(1, 55) = 11.23, p = .001, η2p = .16), but the interaction between experimental condition and time was nonsignificant (f(2, 55) = 0.52, p = .597, η2p = .01). the results suggest a significant decline in depression from preto posttest for all participants, regardless of condition (kindness pretest m = 2.47, sd = 0.82, kindness posttest m = 2.29, sd = 0.71; gratitude pretest m = 2.63, sd = 0.74, gratitude posttest m = 2.33, sd = 0.94; events pretest m = 2.58, sd = 0.81, events posttest m = 2.17, sd = 0.76; see figure 4 below). in the case of life satisfaction and loneliness, time did not have a significant main effect (life satisfaction f(1, 55) = 0.42, p = .517, η2p = .01; loneliness f(1, 55) = 0.42, p = .518, η2p = .01). furthermore, time did not 1as previous research suggests (kashdan et al., 2009), the impact of the interventions may be different on males vs females. to explore possible gender differences in intervention effects, mixed model analyses of variance with two between-subjects factors (gender and experimental condition) and one within-subjects factor (time) were conducted. however, none of the three-way interactions between experimental condition, time, and gender were significant (depression: f(2, 52) = 0.49, p = .611, η2p = .01; life satisfaction: f(2, 52) = 0.95, p = .391, η2p = .03; loneliness: f(2, 52) = 0.32, p = .724, η2p = .01; positive affect: f(6, 153) = 0.76, p = .602, η2p = .02; negative affect: f(6, 153) = 1.04, p = .402, η2p = .03). therefore, the effectiveness of the interventions did not differ depending on participants’ gender. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 interact significantly with experimental condition on neither life satisfaction (f(2, 55) = 0.68, p = .509, η2p = .02), nor loneliness (f(2, 55) = 0.21, p = .808, η2p = .01). figure 4. changes in depression from preto posttest figure 5. changes in negative affect from preto posttest in the case of positive affect, time did not have a significant main effect (f(3, 162) = 0.04, p = .988, η2p = .01), and did not interact significantly with experimental condition (f(6, 162) = 1.12, p = .348, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 η2p = .04). however, in the case of negative affect, the main effect of time (f(3, 162) = 10.86, p < .001, η2p = .16) was significant, but the interaction with experimental condition was not (f(6, 162) = 1.12, p = .349, η2p = .04). all participants tended to show decreases in negative affect from pre to posttest (kindness pretest: m = 3.16, sd = 0.47; week 1: m = 2.81, sd = 0.82; week 2: m = 2.86, sd = 0.81; posttest: m = 2.91, sd = 0.81; gratitude pretest: m = 3.39, sd = 0.78; week 1: m = 2.97, sd = 1.04; week 2: m = 2.84, sd = 0.88; posttest: m = 2.70, sd = 0.80; events pretest: m = 3.04, sd = 0.77; week 1: m = 2.57, sd = 0.88; week 2: m = 2.77, sd = 0.97; posttest: m = 2.69, sd = 0.83; see figure 5 above). 3.6 reasons for the wellbeing change in the memorable events group as we did not expect to find significant changes in wellbeing in the memorable events group, we suspected that the reason why this group experienced wellbeing improvement was the fact that they had recalled many positive events. to explore this possibility, we conducted additional qualitative analyses and categorized the events mentioned by participants into positive (e.g. getting one’s drivers’ license), negative (e.g. catching a cold) or neutral (e.g. the election of the tokyo governor). then, we calculated a positive events score representing the number of positive events reported by each participant. interrater agreement was good (positive events kappa = .73. z = 10.3, p < .011; negative events kappa = .87, z = 12.3, p < .001) and disagreements were resolved through discussions. the number of positive events reported by participants in the memorable events group varied between none and five (m = 2.32, sd = 1.39, median = 2). to explore the influence of recalling positive events, we plotted the change in depression and negative affect for participants who had reported less than two positive events (few positive events group, n = 8) and for those who reported more than two positive events (many positive events group, n = 14; see figures 6 and 7). figure 6. changes in depression from preto posttest for participants in the control group who had reported few (<2) versus many (>2) positive events during the intervention http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 figure 7. changes in negative affect from preto posttest for participants in the control group who had reported few (<2) versus many (>2) positive events during the intervention a trend was observed for participants who reported more positive events to show a steeper reduction in depression and negative affect. however, considering the sample size, these results should be interpreted with caution. 4. discussion the purpose of our study was to explore japanese undergraduates’ definitions of kindness and gratitude, aiming to identify the most common or typical examples of kindness and gratitude, and investigate whether kindness and gratitude involve similar support-giving behaviors. second, we aimed to explore the wellbeing enhancing effect of intentionally practicing kindness and gratitude on a japanese youth sample. first, looking at the results of the exploratory content analysis, one can observe the diversity of acts of kindness and expressions of gratitude reported by participants. in both groups, participants described various forms of social support, including instrumental support (offering objects or expressing gratitude for receiving some), emotional support (counseling or expressing gratitude for being listened to), and informational support (teaching or expressing gratitude for being given information). overall, we found examples of kindness and gratitude that are similar to those given by western participants in previous research (e.g. binfet, 2020). examples of giving and receiving instrumental support were most frequent, and the concrete descriptions of support were very similar in the two experimental groups (kindness and gratitude). tangible support, such as offering things or helping someone with a task, is not only the most common type of support given or received in our sample, but might also be the easiest to enact for japanese. past research (chen, kim, mojaverian, & morling, 2012) shows that japanese tend to offer more problem-focused support than emotional support (while the opposite pattern is true for americans). therefore, although offering emotional support is also conceptualized as kindness by japanese, kindness in the form of instrumental support could be more natural. instrumental http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 support, in the form of physical or academic help, was also the most frequent example of kindness provided by canadian youth in previous research (binfet & passmore, 2019; binfet & whitehead, 2019). however, some other examples of kindness identified in previous research employing western samples, such as honesty, forgiveness, and inclusion (binfet & passmore, 2019; cotney & banerjee, 2019), were not found among japanese participants’ answers. the reason for this may be age differences, as previous research has focused on children and adolescents’ definitions, and children may more readily equate kindness with honesty and inclusion compared to university students (our sample). older participants may be less preoccupied with social inclusion and may also differentiate between honesty and kindness, understanding that being honest is not always the same as being kind. in addition to analyzing participants’ examples of kindness and gratitude separately, a comparison between the two was also attempted. as a thought-provoking difference, while in the gratitude group many participants mentioned feeling thankful for spending quality time with another person, nobody in the kindness group mentioned spending time or having fun with someone as examples of kindness, probably because what is in the interest of both social actors is difficult to frame as kindness. therefore, companionship might not be conceptualized as kind behavior by japanese, although it is worthy of gratitude expression. although the main purpose of the qualitative analysis was to clarify how japanese define kindness and gratitude, we also examined the responses of participants in the memorable events group. the analysis showed that the most memorable experiences of japanese students are related to leisure and university life, and that many of them are positive, which offers a possible explanation for the fact that participants in the memorable events group also showed an improvement in depression and negative affect at the end of the intervention. moving on to the effects of the interventions, in line with previous research supporting the positive effect of kindness and gratitude expression (emmons & mccullough, 2003; nelson et al., 2015), we expected that practicing these character strengths would enhance wellbeing, relative to the memorable events condition. we identified a significant decrease from pretest to posttest in depression symptoms and negative affect for all participants, regardless of the experimental condition. there were no significant changes in life satisfaction, loneliness, or positive affect. as we had not expected significant changes in wellbeing to occur in the memorable events (control) group, hypothesis 1, which presumed that kindness and gratitude would improve wellbeing relative to the memorable events condition, was not supported. furthermore, because there were no significant differences in wellbeing changes between groups, hypothesis 2, which presumed that kindness would have a stronger positive effect on wellbeing compared to gratitude, was also not supported. one possible reason for the significant improvement in depression and negative affect in the memorable events condition is the fact that all participants were informed of the purpose of the experiment (which was promoting psychological health). the change observed may be a placebo effect, as participants in the memorable events condition might have expected to feel better after engaging in the activity, and their expectations influenced how they actually felt. another possibility is related to the content of the activity. while other positive interventions used listing what participants have recently done as control activity (e.g. boehm et al. 2011; lyubomirsky et al. 2011), we asked participants to recall the most memorable events of the week. for some participants, the most memorable events could have been very special and positive events, and recalling them might have contributed to wellbeing enhancement. for them, the activity might have had the same positive effect as the “three good things” intervention (e.g. seligman, steen, park, & peterson, 2005). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the meaning of kindness and gratitude in japan gherghel & hashimoto www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 however, all the above findings must be interpreted with caution, as our sample size was small. power-analysis revealed that given our sample size, we had sufficient power to detect a medium-size interaction effect, but it was not enough to detect smaller effects. here, we would like to highlight the difficulty of conducting a happiness-increasing intervention with repeated measures, as only about half of the participants who accepted to complete the pretest measures provided data at all time points. although the response rate at posttest is comparable to the average attrition rate (42%) of longitudinal studies (roberts & delvecchio, 2000), it reflects the amount of effort required from participants, giving a hint on the difficulty of motivating participants to complete the study. gathering enough data to detect significant changes may require considerable resources (access to a large pool of participants, motivating rewards). keeping in mind the small size of the sample, there are other possible reasons why our hypotheses were not supported. it is possible that sample characteristics, or features of the present intervention might explain the non-significant findings. past research has shown that positive interventions have bigger effects on wellbeing in western cultures, compared to eastasian ones (aikawa et al., 2013; boehm et al., 2011; layous et al., 2013). a dialectic view of emotions (suh, 2000) and conceptions of happiness as undesirable (joshanloo et al., 2014) might explain why east-asians do not gain much benefit from engaging in happiness-increasing activities. also, considering the self-improvement orientation of japanese (heine et al., 2001), failure in offering kindness or expressing gratitude might have a bigger effect on their wellbeing than success in doing so. therefore, while expressing kindness and gratitude might not boost their wellbeing, failure to do so could have an important negative impact. moving from cultural, to individual aspects, it is possible that the participants who volunteered for the study were not strongly motivated, an explanation suggested by the high drop-out rate, too. past research shows that only individuals who are motivated to increase their own happiness level, actively pursuing activities which have this effect, show wellbeing enhancement after participating in a happiness-increasing intervention (lyubomirsky et al., 2011). finally, features of the intervention could have been the reason for the non-significant effects observed, such as the short period of time (three weeks), the retrospective method used to measure affect (not immediately after completing the activity, but at the end of the week), or the inconsistencies in the instructions used for the posttest wellbeing measures (we asked participants to evaluate experienced positive and negative affect during the last week, loneliness and depression during the last 2-3 days). future research should aim to develop longer interventions and measure wellbeing not only at the end of the week/intervention, but also immediately after participants engage in the activity. in the end, considering all the events of a week that could affect a university student’s mood, it is obvious how small a change practicing gratitude or kindness can make. surely, gratitude and kindness may impact momentary affect, or influence cognitive patterns, which in time, might improve psychological health. the small sample size in our study is the first problem that should be addressed in future research. better control over the target of gratitude or kindness expression is also desirable, as it could shed light on the role played by the relationship between participant and target. future research should clarify when and if kindness and gratitude can be used as positive-interventions for participants from asian cultures. ethical approval all procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ 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(1990). basic content analysis (2nd edition). newbury park, california: sage publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412983488 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.1.3 https://doi.org/10.1037/e413782005-479 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412983488 manning-jones, s., de terte, i., & stephens, c. (2015). vicarious posttraumatic growth: a systematic literature review. international journal of wellbeing, 5(2), 125-139. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i2.8 shekinah manning-jones massey university shekinahmanningjones@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 125 article vicarious posttraumatic growth: a systematic literature review shekinah manning-jones · ian de terte · christine stephens abstract: twenty-eight articles are included in this review, which provides the first comprehensive review of the vicarious posttraumatic growth (vptg) literature. five domains are presented. first, assessment methods of vptg are reviewed; seventeen studies assessed vptg using a measure designed for use with direct trauma survivors, three used a non-validated measure, and the remaining eight used an open-ended question. second, the level of similarity between reports of direct and vicarious posttraumatic growth is examined. vptg was found to be highly similar to direct posttraumatic growth; however, subtle differences between the two were also identified along with manifestations of growth unique to vptg. third, a range of psychological, cognitive, behavioural, interpersonal, and external factors that have been implicated to facilitate vptg are presented. fourth, research exploring the relationship between vptg and secondary traumatic stress is examined. three possible explanations are presented: a positive linear association, no association, and a more complex curvilinear relationship. finally, limitations to the current body of knowledge and areas for future research are explored. keywords: vicarious posttraumatic growth, vicarious traumatic exposure, review 1. overview posttraumatic growth can be characterised as positive cognitive, emotional, interpersonal and spiritual consequences that one may experience following a traumatic event (tedeschi & calhoun, 2004). posttraumatic growth occurs across three domains: self-perception, interpersonal relationships, and life philosophy (tedeschi & calhoun, 1996). specifically, tedeschi and calhoun (1996) argue that growth can occur in five distinct ways: an improvement in relating to others, greater personal strength, positive spiritual change, a greater appreciation of life, and discovering new possibilities. vicarious posttraumatic growth (vptg) refers to the development of these positive changes as a result of vicarious traumatic exposure (arnold, calhoun, tedeschi, & cann, 2005). the term vicarious traumatic exposure has been used in the literature to refer to indirect traumatic exposure, for example exposure to direct trauma survivors and/or the aversive details of a traumatic event, rather than exposure to a traumatic event itself (e.g., brockhouse, msetfi, cohen & joseph, 2011). a growing body of literature documents vptg among health professionals (e.g., shiri, wexler, alkalay, meiner, & kreitler, 2008a), interpreters (e.g., splevins, cohen, joseph, murray & bowley, 2010) and members of the public (e.g., linley, joseph, cooper, harris, & meyer, 2003); however, to date a comprehensive evaluation and review of the literature has not been conducted. posttraumatic growth has been positively associated with greater life satisfaction (mols, vingerhoets, coebergh, & van de poll-franse, 2009), happiness (lelorian, bonnaud-antiqnac, & http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ vicarious posttraumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 126 florin, 2010), and general psychological, physical, and emotional wellbeing (wild & paivio, 2004). it is reasonable to assume that vptg also results in such benefits, and therefore it is an area worthy of future research. in order to produce meaningful research, researchers must be aware of all previously published studies. while reviewing the literature, it was evident that this was often not the case. for example a study published in 2014 claimed only three previous vptg articles could be identified (hyatt-burkhart, 2014). a systematic literature review can be used as a tool to identify current gaps in the literature, limitations, and areas in need of future research. to date, no such review for the vptg literature has been published. cohen and collens (2013) attempted to provide a metasynthesis of the vptg literature; however, their decision to include only qualitative literature and to simultaneously review vicarious traumatisation limits the applicability of their results. this review aims to organise and evaluate current literature in a way that will guide and encourage future research. it will provide health professionals with a comprehensive synthesis of literature relating to vptg, and may have practical implications as to how they can further facilitate vptg in their workplace. five domains of literature will be reviewed here, chosen for their likelihood to spur future research. these domains are: 1) the measurement of vptg. 2) the level of similarity between vicarious and direct posttraumatic growth. 3) facilitating factors of vptg. 4) the relationship between vptg and secondary traumatic stress. 5) current limitations and directions for future research. 1.1 literature search strategies combinations of the following search terms were entered into the literature databases scopus, psycinfo, and psychology and behavioural sciences collection: secondary, vicarious, indirect, along with posttraumatic, posttrauma*, trauma*, adversarial, stress-related, positive transformation, psychological and growth. searches were repeated in science direct, but were limited to psychological articles published in 2014 in an attempt to identify articles not yet available on other databases. searches took place over january and february 2014. databases returned a combined total of 3144 unique articles. abstracts that suggested a specific focus on vptg or a synonymous concept (e.g., positive self-transformation, positive psychological change) were further reviewed. 1.2 inclusion criteria articles were included for review if they: a) were printed in a peer-reviewed journal, b) were printed in english, c) reported original data, d) outlined a specific focus on vptg (or a synonymous term), and e) were specifically concerned with vicarious traumatic exposure. articles were excluded if they: a) referred to a shared reality between participants and direct trauma survivors, b) conducted research with emergency workers or with family members of direct trauma survivors (these individuals were deemed to have experienced direct rather than vicarious traumatic exposure), and c) were review or metasynthesis articles. this resulted in the identification of 24 relevant articles. reference lists were evaluated using the same criteria, and four additional articles were selected. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious posttraumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 table 1a. summary of the 28 articles included in the current review study participants methodology assessment method n arnold, calhoun, tedeschi, & cann (2005) psychotherapists qualitative: naturalistic interviews “how have you been affected by your work with clients who have experienced traumatic events?” 021 barrington & shakespeare-finch (2013) clinical and administrative/ managerial staff working with refugees qualitative: semistructured interviews open-ended question 017 ben-porat & itzhaky (2009) social workers quantitative: survey ptgi 214 bentar (2000) therapists qualitative: open ended in-depth interviews open-ended question 012 brockhouse, msetfi, cohen, & joseph (2011) therapists quantitative: survey ptgi 118 davis & macdonald (2004) general canadian population quantitative: structured interview using a 4-point scale, participants rated the extent to which they felt the event changed: (i) their relationship with family; (ii) their relationship with friends; and (iii) their values. 080 gibbons, murphy, & joseph (2011) social workers quantitative: survey ptgi cioq 062 guhan & liebling-kalifani (2011) support workers mixed methods: qualitative semistructured interviews and quantitative self-report questionnaire open-ended question 012 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious posttraumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 table 1b. summary of the 28 articles included in the current review study participants methodology assessment method n hyatt-burkhart (2014) mental health workers qualitative: semistructured interviews and focus groups “how have you been affected by your work with children who have experienced traumatic events?” 012 kjellenberg, nilsson, daukantaité, & cardeña (2014) professionals working with war and torture survivors quantitative: survey ptgi 069 lambert & lawson (2013) counsellors quantitative: survey ptgi 125 linley & joseph (2005) funeral directors quantitative: survey cioq 078 linley & joseph (2007) therapists quantitative: survey ptgi-sf cioq 156 linley, joseph, cooper, harris, & meyer (2003) general british population quantitative: survey ptgi cioq 108 linley, joseph, & loumidis (2005) therapists quantitative: survey ptgi cioq 085 o’sullivan & whelan (2011) telephone counsellors quantitative: survey ptgi 064 samios, rodzik, & abel (2012) therapists quantitative: survey ptgi 061 satkunanayagam, tunariu, & tribe (2010) mental health professionals qualitative: semistructured interviews open-ended question 012 shamai & ron (2009) social workers qualitative: semistructured interviews open-ended question 029 shiri, wexler, & kreitler (2010) nurses and rehabilitation teams mixed methods: qualitative interview and quantitative survey ptgi 068* http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious posttraumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 table 1c. summary of the 28 articles included in the current review study participants methodology assessment method n shiri, wexler, alkalay, meiner, & kreitler (2008a) doctors, therapists and nurses quantitative: survey ptgi 138 shiri, wexler, alkalay, meiner, & kreitler (2008b) hospital rehabilitation workers quantitative: survey ptgi 031* splevins, cohen, joseph, murray, & bowley (2010) interpreters qualitative: semistructured interview open-ended question e.g., “i’m wondering what it’s like for you to listen to your client’s stories.” 008 swickert, hittner, deroma, & saylor (2006) general american population quantitative: survey pbs 136 taku (2014) physicians quantitative: survey ptgishort form 289 taubman-ben-ari & weintroub (2008) physicians and nurses quantitative: survey ptgi 124 tehrani (2007) care workers quantitative: survey trauma belief inventory 430 tehrani (2010) occupational health advisors, human resource advisors, counsellors, family liaison officers quantitative: survey carer belief inventory 276 * sample size reflects the number of participants who fit the criteria to be included in this review. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 1.3 selected articles of the 28 articles identified for review, 19 were quantitative, seven qualitative, and two utilised mixed methods. twenty-five articles conducted research with professionals who experienced vicarious traumatic exposure through their work, for example health professionals, funeral directors, and interpreters. together, these professionals had been vicariously exposed to a wide range of traumatic events such as war, domestic violence, sexual assault, and the holocaust. the remaining three articles focused on the general population who had vicariously been exposed to the september 11 terrorist attacks. table 1 above provides an overview of the included articles. 2. measurement of vicarious posttraumatic growth currently, there is no measure designed specifically to assess vptg; therefore, all quantitative studies used a measure originally designed for direct trauma survivors. seventeen articles assessed vptg using a validated measure of posttraumatic growth. eleven articles used a version of the posttraumatic growth inventory (ptgi; tedeschi & calhoun, 1996), one used the positive changes subscale of the changes in outlook questionnaire (cioq; joseph, williams, & yule, 1993), four used the ptgi and cioq in combination, and one used the perceived benefit scale (pbs; mcmillen & fisher, 1998). these self-report questionnaires required participants to rate their level of agreement with statements describing various psychological and behavioural changes that can follow traumatic exposure. three studies measured vptg with non-validated instruments. davis and macdonald (2004) measured vptg using a structured interview; they asked participants to rate the extent to which they had experienced positive change in their relationships and personal values on a 4-point scale. if participants had experienced positive change, follow-up questions on the nature of this change were administered. tehrani (2007, 2010) measured vptg using four items (see table 1 above) originally targeted at assessing positive beliefs. while tehrani (2007) argued that these items were consistent with the personal strength and appreciation of life subscales of the ptgi, a lack of evidence of convergent validity means results should be interpreted with caution. the remaining eight studies assessed vptg using qualitative methods. non-specific openended questions were used to enquire about the impact of vicarious traumatic exposure generally, for example “how have you been affected by your work with clients who have experienced a traumatic event?” (arnold et al., 2005, p. 245). specific follow-up questions were administered if descriptions of vptg were not spontaneously given. if provided, qualitative questions are presented in table 1 above. 3. vicarious and direct posttraumatic growth from the reviewed articles it was evident that aspects of vptg are consistent with conceptualisations of posttraumatic growth among direct trauma survivors. professionals working with refugees experienced changes in their values and priorities, spiritual growth, greater personal strength, and enhanced interpersonal relationships (barrington & shakespearefinch, 2013), all consistent with tedeschi and calhoun’s (1996) conceptualisation of direct posttraumatic growth. similar changes were noted among psychotherapists (arnold et al., 2005), social workers (shamai & ron, 2009), interpreters (splevins et al., 2010), and support workers (guhan & liebling-kalifani, 2011). however, subtle differences were also apparent between these two forms of psychological growth. for example, participants reporting vptg reflected upon the resiliency of mankind in general (arnold et al., 2005; splevins et al., 2010), which is more abstract than the sense of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 increased personal strength generally reported by direct trauma survivors (e.g., hefferon, grealy, & mutrie, 2009). in addition, while direct trauma survivors often report personal spiritual growth, therapists reported a type of spiritual broadening, referring to the acceptance of spiritual beliefs as a helpful healing tool following trauma, without experiencing any personal belief changes (arnold et al., 2005). therefore, vptg appears to differ slightly from direct posttraumatic growth; perhaps it is less integrated with a person’s self-concept. in addition, there were aspects of growth unique to vptg, largely concerning professional identity. participants spoke of the realisation that their work was valuable, that they had the ability to make a difference in the lives of direct trauma survivors, and that their experience had enhanced their professional capabilities (barrington & shakespeare-finch, 2013; guhan & liebling-kalifani, 2011; bentar, 2000; satkunanayagam, tunariu, & tribe, 2010; shamai & ron, 2009; splevins et al., 2010). overall, vptg made participants feel more competent in their workplace. this likely reflects the context of participants’ vicarious traumatic exposure. overall, it appears that direct and vicarious posttraumatic growth are highly similar. however, there are also subtle differences between the two and even manifestations of growth that are unique to vptg, distinguishing the two constructs and representing their differing origins. vptg could be considered to fall under the larger “umbrella” of posttraumatic growth, but should also be seen as a distinct concept that differs from direct posttraumatic growth in ways that will have important implications for the way it is reported and assessed. 4. factors that facilitate the development of vptg a range of factors that facilitate the development of vptg were identified from the 28 reviewed articles. these are discussed below within the following categories: cognitive and psychological, behavioural, interpersonal, and external variables. 4.1 cognitive and psychological variables empathetic engagement was identified as an important factor in the development of vptg. several articles reported a positive association between these two variables (brockhouse et al., 2011; linley & joseph, 2007), and qualitative studies described how experiencing empathy for direct survivors spurred participants’ own psychological growth (shamai & ron, 2009; splevins et al., 2010). it appears that empathetic engagement enables helping professionals to metaphorically apply the traumatic event to their own lives, facilitating vptg (linley & joseph, 2007; shamai & ron, 2009; splevins et al., 2010). however, no relationship was found between empathy and vptg among telephone counsellors (o’sullivan & whelan, 2011) or those vicariously exposed to the september 11 terrorist attacks (davis & macdonald, 2004). one possible explanation is that empathy is positively associated with vptg only when it exceeds a certain level; studies that reported a positive relationship between empathy and vptg also reported higher levels of empathy than those that reported no significant relationship (brockhouse et al., 2011; linley & joseph, 2007; o’sullivan & whelan, 2011). alternatively, perhaps telephone counsellors and those exposed to the september 11 terrorist attacks via the media felt limited in their capacity to help the direct trauma survivors. this may have acted as a moderating variable on the relationship between empathy and vptg, reducing the positive association. further research is needed to ascertain the nature of the relationship between empathy and vptg. optimism and positive affect were also identified as factors conducive to vptg. having positive and optimistic beliefs about the future and about the benefits of suffering was positively associated with aspects of vptg among nurses and rehabilitation workers (shiri, wexler, & http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 kreitler, 2010). linley and joseph (2005) reported that those funeral directors with the highest levels of positive affect also reported the greatest levels of vptg. it may be that positive affect and optimism facilitate the identification of positive outcomes following vicarious traumatic exposure. in contrast, negative affect was also found to be a salutary factor. among their sample of funeral workers, linley and joseph (2005) found negative affect to positively correlate with vptg. this likely reflects the fact that it is necessary to experience devastation and distress following vicarious traumatic exposure before one is able to develop vptg (davis & macdonald, 2004). the reality that one must experience the negative psychological effects of vicarious traumatic exposure before vptg is possible (davis & macdonald, 2004) is consistent with the finding that vptg is related to both negative and positive affect. having a sense of satisfaction, competence, and value in one’s work was found to enhance vptg. among nurses and physicians, professional self-esteem, defined as the extent to which professionals perceived themselves to be professionally competent and valuable (carmel, 1997), was positively associated with vptg (taubman-ben-ari & weintroub, 2008). in addition, compassion satisfaction, defined as a sense of pleasure or satisfaction gained from one’s job (stamm, 2005), and self-perceived value of one’s work were positively associated with vptg among social workers (gibbons, murphy, & joseph, 2011). however, this was not the case among professionals working with war and torture survivors, despite similar levels of compassion satisfaction being recorded (kjellenberg, nilsson, daukantaité, & cardeña, 2014). the reason for these divergent results is unclear. perhaps working with war and torture survivors was so far removed from the reality of the participants’ personal lives that their work, and the satisfaction they got from this, did not transcend into positive personal changes. in contrast, the social workers included in gibbon et al.’s (2011) sample may have experienced a greater level of identification with their clients, and therefore the satisfaction they got from their work related to positive personal growth. further research is needed to investigate this hypothesis. mixed results have been reported regarding the relationship between having a strong sense of coherence, defined as “the extent to which the world is seen as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful” (brockhouse et al., 2011, p. 736) and posttraumatic growth. linley, joseph, and loumidis (2005) reported this construct to be positively associated with vtpg; however, this was the case only when using the cioq: research has not found a positive relationship between sense of coherence and vptg when utilising the ptgi (linley & joseph, 2007; linley et al., 2005; samios, rodzik, & abel, 2012). in fact, one study found having a strong sense of coherence to negatively predict vptg, perhaps because it enhances resiliency which in turn reduces opportunity for growth (brockhouse et al., 2011). overall, the majority of reviewed studies did not support a positive association between sense of coherence and vptg; however, more research is needed in this area to provide an accurate picture of the relationship between these two constructs. among therapists, theoretical orientation was identified as an important factor relating to vptg. in regards to both therapeutic training and practice orientation, linley and joseph (2007) reported that humanistic and transpersonal orientations were positively associated with vptg, while cognitive-behavioural training was negatively associated. linley and joseph suggest that this likely reflects the philosophy of humanistic and transpersonal therapies, which acknowledge that suffering can provide opportunities for growth and development. they also suggest that therapists who practise cognitive-behavioural therapy are more likely to work with severe client populations, which may reduce opportunities for vptg. further research is needed to explore http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 whether such findings can be replicated and also to elucidate the different relationships between therapeutic intervention and vptg outcomes. finally, there were contradictory findings regarding the relationship between resilience and vptg. resilience was positively associated with vptg among physicians (taku, 2014); however, beliefs about resilience (e.g., how much participants believed that difficulties can be perceived as challenges to be overcome) negatively predicted the identification of new possibilities, a domain of vptg, among nurses and rehabilitation workers (shiri et al., 2010). perhaps individuals who hold such beliefs about resilience have a positive attitude that enables them to cope in the face of adversity, but that also reduces their opportunity for vptg by minimising the initial impact of the vicarious traumatic exposure. the investigation of resilience itself is a complex area (windle, 2011); its role in vptg would be a fruitful area for further investigation. 4.2 behavioural variables many of the studies reviewed supported a positive association between engaging in self-care activities and vptg (arnold et al., 2005; barrington & shakespeare-finch, 2013; satkunanayagam et al., 2010; splevins et al., 2010; tehrani, 2010). only one study reported that it did not find a significant positive relationship between self-care and vptg (lambert & lawson, 2013), and this study reported little information on how self-care was defined or assessed. common self-care activities cited in the studies reviewed include exercise, healthy eating, engaging in hobbies, prayer, and spiritual and religious activities (arnold et al., 2005; barrington & shakespearefinch, 2013; satkunanayagam et al., 2010; splevins et al., 2010; tehrani, 2010). splevins et al. (2010) argued that self-care activities were active and conscious coping strategies utilised by participants to reduce psychological distress and protect their wellbeing. this process appears to facilitate the development of vptg. personal therapy was also found to enhance the likelihood of experiencing vptg. therapists who engaged in personal therapy reported greater levels of vptg than was reported by those who did not (brockhouse et al., 2011; linley & joseph, 2007). linley and joseph (2007) argued that this demonstrates the ability of personal therapy not only to decrease distress, but also to facilitate positive changes and personal growth. it is possible that therapy provides the opportunity to process and find meaning in vicarious traumatic exposure. future research should investigate whether these findings are replicated in other samples. 4.3 interpersonal variables social support, in particular supervision and peer support, has been linked with the development of vptg (brockhouse et al., 2011; linley & joseph, 2005, 2007; satkunanayagam et al., 2010; tehrani, 2010). such findings are consistent with influential models of posttraumatic growth (schaefer & moos, 1998; tedeschi & calhoun, 2004) which suggest that social support positively influences coping and adaption following trauma, improves social resources, and decreases isolation and loneliness, all facilitating posttraumatic growth. other forms of social support, such as organisational support (brockhouse et al., 2011) and talking to family or friends (tehrani, 2010), were not found to facilitate growth. it appears that on-going supervision and peer support are the most beneficial forms of social support following vicarious traumatic exposure. witnessing posttraumatic growth in direct trauma survivors was identified as a facilitative factor of vptg. professionals working with refugees (barrington & shakespeare-finch, 2013), psychotherapists (arnold et al., 2005), interpreters (splevins et al., 2010), and support workers (guhan & liebling-kalifani, 2011) all described how witnessing growth in their clients helped them to develop their own personal growth. witnessing growth among survivors caused http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 participants to become shocked and amazed at the strength of human resiliency and triggered positive emotions such as hope, joy, and happiness (splevins et al., 2010), which facilitated the process of vptg. 4.4 external variables time was identified as one external factor that may facilitate the development of vptg. helping professionals working with refugees (barrington & shakespeare-finch, 2013), interpreters (splevins et al., 2010), and social workers (shamai & ron, 2009) reported that over time their levels of distress decreased and were replaced by personal growth. this may suggest a temporal sequence to the psychological outcome of vicarious traumatic exposure: perhaps it is natural for professionals to react initially with distress, but over time they are able to process and find meaning in the event, resulting in vptg. finally, there are mixed results regarding whether having a personal trauma history facilitates vptg following subsequent vicarious traumatic exposure. three studies reported a positive association between vptg and personal trauma history (kjelleberg et al., 2014; linley & joseph, 2007; swickert, et al., 2006); however, one study reported no difference in vptg levels between those participants with a personal trauma history and those without. perhaps the way previous traumatic events were processed influences whether or not they facilitate vptg following subsequent vicarious traumatic exposure (schaefer & moos, 1998). however, results should be interpreted with caution because it is unclear whether personal trauma history had been controlled for when measuring vptg; therefore the posttraumatic growth recorded may have resulted from the participant’s own personal trauma, rather than their vicarious traumatic exposure. 5. vicarious posttraumatic growth and secondary traumatic stress secondary traumatic stress refers to the presence of symptoms typically displayed by individuals suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, but which result from vicarious rather than direct traumatic exposure (canfield, 2005). symptoms such as intrusive thoughts or flashbacks to the vicarious trauma, avoidance of related stimuli, hyperarousal, and negative changes to cognition and mood have been reported (e.g., steed & downing, 1998). based on this description, it could be assumed that secondary traumatic stress and vptg represent opposite ends of the same continuum; on one end are the positive effects of vicarious traumatic exposure and on the other end the negative effects. in contrast, several studies included in this review reported a positive association between vptg and secondary traumatic stress (e.g., davis & macdonald, 2004; kjellenberg et al., 2014). one explanation of these results may be that, prior to experiencing vptg, individuals experience initial shock, devastation, and the shattering of their assumptions about themselves and the world (o’sullivan & whelan, 2011; shamai & ron, 2009; splevins et al., 2010). this experience may provide the foundation for vptg and secondary traumatic stress to develop simultaneously, contributing to the positive association reported between the two phenomena. however, not all research in this area is consistent. several studies also reported finding no association between vptg and secondary traumatic stress (gibbons et al., 2011; taubman-benari & weintroub, 2008), while a third suggested a more complex alternative (shiri et al., 2008a). shiri et al. (2008a) reported that the relationship between vptg and secondary traumatic stress was best explained as curvilinear. initially, vptg increased linearly with increases in secondary traumatic stress; however, at a point vptg reached a plateau and no longer continued to increase despite further increases in secondary traumatic stress (shiri et al., 2008a). this curvilinear model http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 explained the relationship between secondary traumatic stress and vptg over and above a linear relationship. a curvilinear relationship has also been reported between posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress disorder among direct trauma survivors (e.g., butler et al., 2005). however, a later study failed to replicate these results (shiri, et al., 2008b). further research is needed to ascertain the nature of the relationship between secondary traumatic stress and vptg, as such research will enable us to better understand the complex and varying ways that health professionals react to vicarious traumatic exposure, and in turn, how to best support them during this time. 6. limitations in the literature several limitations were apparent in the literature reviewed. currently, there is no validated quantitative measure to assess vptg, and the ptgi is the most commonly used instrument. however, as this review has identified unique elements in the nature of vptg, the ptgi, and all other measures originally designed to assess posttraumatic growth following direct traumatic exposure, are likely to be limited in their capacity to assess all aspects of vptg. the assessment of vptg is further restricted by evidence which suggests that posttraumatic growth scales may be measuring slightly different constructs (linley et al., 2005). there are also limitations in the design of the studies reviewed. first, sample sizes were generally small; fewer than half the studies had a sample size exceeding 100 participants. therefore it is possible that small to moderate effects may have been missed (linley & joesph, 2005; linley et al., 2005; samios et al., 2012); this might explain some of the discrepant results reported in this field. second, there are few longitudinal studies of vptg, a significant weakness considering that it has been argued posttraumatic growth develops gradually over time (calhoun & tedeschi, 2006; tedeschi & calhoun, 2004). third, the majority of reviewed studies did not account for participants’ own personal trauma . therefore, the extent to which the posttraumatic growth reported in these studies is representative of vptg is unknown, as it may have arisen from participants’ own personal trauma. finally, there has been very little research comparing vptg between several populations. comparative research may enable us to assess whether some types of professionals are more likely to develop vptg, identify why this is the case, and in turn use this information to facilitate vptg among groups that previously did not demonstrate high levels of growth. the validity of vptg as a construct was not discussed in any of the articles reviewed. several issues regarding the validity of the wider posttraumatic growth construct have been raised in the literature, all of which are applicable to vptg. for example, there has been controversy over whether perceived posttraumatic growth equates to actual change (e.g., joseph, 2011), or whether posttraumatic growth is “illusory” (taylor, 1983; taylor & armor, 1996). future research should aim to explore these validity issues within the context of vptg. finally, while reviewing the selected articles, it was evident that there is a high degree of inconsistency among results in this field. this makes it is difficult to draw conclusions and to outline meaningful implications for health professionals working with trauma survivors. in particular, results were very mixed regarding whether certain psychological, behavioural, and external factors facilitated vptg, and how vptg is related to secondary traumatic stress. 7. directions for future research with so much literature focusing on the negative impact of working with trauma survivors, it is important that adequate attention is also paid to the positive consequences of such work. future research investigating factors that enhance the development of vptg could inform professionals http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 on how to best prepare themselves for trauma work, and could have implications regarding how health care organisations can best support their employees and facilitate vptg in the workplace. future research should work to overcome limitations in the field by producing a validated instrument that specifically aims to measure vptg. this instrument should be informed by theoretical and empirical literature and should consider elements general to the posttraumatic growth construct and specific to vptg. finally, research that aims to provide a greater understanding of the complex relationship between vptg and secondary traumatic stress would be useful. 8. limitations of the current review first, only journal articles printed in english were eligible for inclusion in this review. it is possible that valuable contributions to this field have been printed in another language or exist in other forms of text, such as books, dissertations, or theses. in addition, valuable articles may have fallen outside the databases utilised in the current study. while care was taken to perform searches on a variety of databases that were deemed most likely to yield relevant results, it is possible that articles have been missed. therefore, while this review provides the most comprehensive review of the vptg literature to date, it cannot be said to be all-inclusive. second, the inclusion criteria for this review required studies to have a specific aim of studying vptg. studies that captured the benefits of trauma work without a specific focus on vptg (e.g., steed & downing, 1998) were not eligible for inclusion. the specified criterion was established to capture a homogenous body of research from which meaningful conclusions could be drawn. however, this once again limits the research reviewed and means that studies may have been missed that would have contributed significantly to the results provided here. third, studies that reported participants to have a “shared trauma reality” with direct trauma survivors (e.g., tosone, 2011) were not included in this review, as the review was specific to vicarious traumatic exposure. that is not to say that the studies failed to investigate a form of posttraumatic growth worth attention. it may be that the individuals included in these studies exhibit a form of growth that matches vptg, or they may demonstrate their own unique manifestation. inclusion of these studies may have altered the results presented in this review. future research could compare such studies with those focusing exclusively on vptg to ascertain similarities and differences between these two populations. 9. summary this review aimed to provide a comprehensive review of the vptg literature with five focal areas: assessment, the level of similarity between vptg and direct posttraumatic growth, facilitating factors, the relationship between vptg and secondary traumatic stress, and limitations. a review of the assessment procedures found quantitative literature to be limited in its capacity to measure vptg, due to the absence of a scale designed specifically for vicarious traumatic exposure. vptg was found to be partially distinct from direct posttraumatic growth; subtle differences included a more abstract form of growth and professional enhancement was found to be a unique manifestation of change. participants’ vptg was facilitated by a range of cognitive, psychological, behavioural, interpersonal and external factors; however, it should be noted that there was a great deal of inconsistency in the results. regarding the relationship between vptg and secondary traumatic stress, three possible explanations have been proposed: a positive linear relationship, no relationship, and a curvilinear relationship. future research is needed to ascertain which of these three possibilities best explains the association between vptg and secondary traumatic stress. current limitations of the literature include a lack of appropriate http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ vicarious post-traumatic growth: a review manning-jones, de terte, & stevens www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 measures, longitudinal research, and consideration of validity; 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(2015). personality traits and health behaviors as predictors of subjective wellbeing among a multiethnic sample of university-attending emerging young adults. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 21-43. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.2 chia-hsin emily cheng california state university, fullerton echeng@fullerton.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 article personality traits and health behaviors as predictors of subjective wellbeing among a multiethnic sample of university-attending emerging young adults chia-hsin emily cheng · jie w weiss · judith m siegel abstract: this study examines the relative contributions of individual characteristics of personality and health behaviors to subjective wellbeing among university-attending emerging young adults. three dimensions of wellbeing were assessed: affective (positive affect), physical/mental (overall health), and cognitive (quality of life). the sample (n=599) consisted of students of various racial/ethnic backgrounds, including white/non-hispanic, hispanic/latino, asian/pacific islander, and black/african american from a large public university in southern california (28% male, 72% female; mean age = 20.85, sd = 1.84). respondents completed the student health survey, which consisted of items on basic demographics, substance use, health behaviors, affect balance scale, extraversion and neuroticism subscales of the big five taxonomy of personality, quality of life scale, and an online food-intake survey for seven days. descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations were calculated as preliminary analysis and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine how each set of predictors contributes to the overall predictive ability and relative importance on subjective wellbeing. extraverted individuals reported more positive affect and higher quality of life. neuroticism was associated with less positive affect, poorer health, and lower quality of life. physical activity was consistently associated with subjective wellbeing, accounting for 33%, 13%, and 32% of the total variance in positive affect, overall health, and quality of life, respectively. findings indicate that health behaviors are important correlates of three dimensions of wellbeing over and above the effects of personality traits. implications for designing health and wellness programs to improve the wellbeing and quality of life among young adults are discussed. keywords: college students, health behaviors, personality, wellbeing, emerging adulthood, physical activity. 1. introduction there has been increased national interest in health research on wellbeing, which is defined as positive aspects of individual functioning and global life satisfaction. the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) health-related quality of life program focuses on how wellbeing can be integrated into health promotion and measured in public health surveillance (cdc, 2009). one of the new topic areas of healthy people 2020 is health-related quality of life and wellbeing (usdhhs, 2010), and an overarching goal of healthy campus 2020 is to promote quality of life, healthy development, and positive health behaviors on college campuses (american college health association, 2012). because individual wellbeing is entwined with physical and mental health, there is a need to better understand health determinants and outcomes beyond simple measures of morbidity and mortality. although over 19 million people in the u.s. are collegemailto:echeng@fullerton.edu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 attending young adults who generally are in better health than non-college students (us census, 2011), more research is needed to understand the factors that contribute to their wellbeing. indicators of wellbeing include happiness, affect, life satisfaction, and quality of life (diener, 2000; pressman & cohen, 2005), and wellbeing is associated with both physical and mental health (diener & seligman, 2004; diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; dunn, 1973; pressman & cohen, 2005). in addition, lifestyle health behaviors affect an individual’s perception of wellbeing, overall health (galán, meseguer, herruzo, & rodríguez-artalejo, 2010; nakata, takahashi, swanson, ikeda, & hojou, 2009; powers & young, 2008) and quality of life (boyle, jones, & walters, 2010; ferrer, huedo-medina, johnson, ryan, & pescatello, 2011; fortier-brochu, beaulieu-bonneau, ivers, & morin, 2010; ravens-sieberer, nickel, erhart, & wille, 2006). past studies on behavioral influences have also examined coping approaches, and investigators have shifted their focus to how personality contributes to subjective wellbeing (diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; steel, schmidt, & shultz, 2008). in this study we aim to delineate the relative contributions of individual traits of personality and health behaviors on university students’ wellbeing during the emerging adulthood period. 1.1. health behaviors during emerging adulthood early young adulthood represents a time when individuals are increasingly responsible for making decisions about their future lifestyles. this developmentally unique stage is known as emerging adulthood, and is a period of transition from adolescence to adulthood that typically takes place from the late teens to mid-twenties (arnette, 2007; arnette, 2010). decisions made during this period often involve health-related choices, such as food, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and physical activity (larson et al., 2008; laska, larson, neumark-sztainer, & story, 2010; nelson, story, larson, neumark-sztainer, & lytle, 2008). many of these health behaviors affect both an individual’s perceptions of wellbeing and her or his overall health. in a study of first-year swedish university students, tobacco use correlated negatively with physical activity, self-rated physical health, and self-rated psychological health (vaez & laflamme, 2003). in general, female students had healthier lifestyles and rated their quality of life higher than their male peers. both psychological and physical self-rated health correlated strongly with self-perceived quality of life. similarly, young adults who had experienced positive wellbeing during adolescence were more likely to report better perceived health and fewer risky health behaviors during young adulthood (hoyt, chase-lansdale, mcdade, & adam, 2012). 1.2 personality, health behaviors, and wellbeing the “big five” personality traits are one of the primary predictors of subjective wellbeing (mccrae & costa, 2008; steel, schmidt, & shultz, 2008). these five traits are: extraversion (e.g., sociability and assertiveness), neuroticism (e.g., emotional instability and impulse control), agreeableness (e.g., helpfulness and cooperativeness), conscientiousness (e.g., organization and achievement-orientation), and openness to experience (e.g., creativity and curiosity). many of these personality traits remain fairly constant throughout an individual’s life, from toddler years to young adulthood and beyond (caspi et al., 2003; roberts, walton, & viechtbauer, 2006). a meta-analysis study found that level of neuroticism has been shown to be the best predictor of life satisfaction and happiness (deneve & cooper, 1998). personality is also associated with various health behaviors as they contribute in some way to decisions about lifestyle behaviors. for example, highly extraverted individuals were more likely to smoke cigarettes, consume alcohol, binge drink, and have multiple sexual partners (raynor & levine, 2009). highly conscientious individuals were more likely to wear seat belts, subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 utilize alcohol-related harm reduction, exercise, get enough sleep, and consume fruits and vegetables. they were also less likely to smoke cigarettes, consume alcohol, and binge drink. another study showed that highly conscientious individuals were less likely to engage in risky behaviors and were more likely to engage in healthy behaviors (bogg & roberts, 2004). although the existing literature demonstrates linkages among health behaviors, personality traits, and subjective wellbeing, there is little research that simultaneously examines multiple health indicators in the context of personality and subjective wellbeing. psychological research that focuses on personality and other individual characteristics often ignores the impact of health behaviors on wellbeing. similarly, much of the health literature that links health behaviors with wellbeing does not consider the importance of personality traits. for example, researchers have identified correlations between dietary choices and subjective wellbeing (smith, 2005); exercise has been linked with subjective health and wellbeing, particularly among older adults (ransford & palisis, 1996); and substance abuse was found to be associated with decreased life satisfaction (zullig, valois, huebner, oeltmann, & drane, 2001). yet this provides an incomplete picture of the factors that affect the wellbeing and health of emerging young adults (bauldry, shanahan, boardman, miech, & macmillan, 2012), and it remains unclear whether the effects of health behavior alter the personality-wellbeing relationship. 1.3 the present study we address this gap in the literature by investigating the relative contributions of personality and health behaviors as predictors of subjective wellbeing among a multiethnic group of universityattending emerging young adults. specifically, we examined the associations among two personality traits (extraversion and neuroticism), three health behaviors (substance use, physical activity, and healthy diet), and three dimensions of subjective wellbeing (positive affect, health status, and quality of life) among an ethnically diverse sample of university students. our three overarching research questions are: (1) are personality traits or individual health behaviors more strongly associated with subjective wellbeing? (2) does the relationship between health behaviors and subjective wellbeing remain, after holding personality traits constant? (3) what is the relative importance and unique contribution of each individual dimension of personality traits and health behaviors on subjective wellbeing? because health behaviors are proximal variables with more direct influence on health status, we hypothesize that health behaviors will be more strongly associated with the health dimension of subjective wellbeing than the distal variable of personality. 2. method 2.1 participants participants were drawn from a larger cdc-funded project that was approved by the first author’s institutional review board. students’ participation was voluntary, and informed consent was obtained prior to data collection. a total of 599 participants (169 males, 430 females) at a large public university in southern california met the inclusion criteria for the study (i.e., they were between the ages of 18 and 25 and were characteristic of college-attending individuals during the emerging-adulthood period) (arnette, 2010). 2.2 procedure trained research assistants visited various general education classes on campus during the period between spring 2009 and spring 2010 to administer the survey materials. data collection subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 comprised two phases: (1) in-class paper-and-pencil survey; and (2) at-home online food survey. the first phase of the study required participants to complete the student health survey (described in detail below), which consisted of basic demographics and questions on attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors related to the psychological, physical, and overall wellbeing of college students. participants who successfully completed the in-class survey received a nutritious snack. the second phase of the study required participants to complete a daily online 24-hour recall food questionnaire for a period of seven days. e-mails and text messages were sent each day to remind participants to complete the online questionnaire. a paper-and-pencil copy of the food questionnaire could be submitted when online access was not available to the participant. participants who successfully completed the seven-day online food questionnaire received a $10 gift card. attrition rate between phase one (in-class paper-and-pencil survey) and phase two (athome daily online food recall) of the study was 26%. 2.3 measures 2.3.1 subjective wellbeing we measured three dimensions of subjective wellbeing (galinha & pais-ribeiro, 2012; leontopoulou & triliva, 2012): (1) affective – positive affect; (2) physical/mental – overall health; and (3) cognitive – quality of life. positive affect was assessed using the affect balance scale (abs), which is a widely used self-reported measure of psychological wellbeing (bradburn, 1969). it consists of 10 items that participants rate on their positive and negative feelings. sample questions include “in the last month, did you feel particularly excited or interested in something?” and “in the last month, did you feel depressed or very unhappy?” reponses ranged from 0 = “never” to 4 = “very often.” negative-affect items were reverse scored, and then scores from all 10 items were summed to derive a total affect score, with higher values indicating more positive affect (cronbach’s α = 0.74). perceived overall health condition was based on respondents’ self-reports to the question: “over the past year, how would you describe your overall health compared to others your age?” responses ranged from 1= “poor” to 5 = “excellent.” self-rated health is a robust measure that is predictive of both morbidity and mortality (bopp, braun, gutzwiller, & faeh, 2012; eriksson, unden, & elofsson, 2001). quality of life scale is a 15-item self-report questionnaire developed to assess a wide range of life domains, including physical/material wellbeing (e.g., “being physically fit and vigorous”), personal relationships (e.g., “close relationships with spouse or significant other”, social/community involvement (e.g., “participating in organizations and public affairs”), personal development (e.g., “attending school, improving understanding, getting additional knowledge”) and recreation (e.g., “reading, listening to music, or observing entertainment”) (flanagan, 1978; flanagan, 1982). respondents were asked how satisfied they were during the past month, and responses were coded on a seven-point scale (1 = terrible, 2 = unhappy, 3 = mostly dissatisfied, 4 = mixed, 5 = mostly satisfied, 6 = pleased, and 7 = delighted). the total score was derived by summing the 15 items, with higher scores indicating better quality of life (cronbach’s α = 0.85). subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 2.3.2 personality the student health survey measured two personality traits: extraversion and neuroticism (costa & mccrae, 1980). the scales contained a total of 16 items adopted from the big five taxonomy of personality traits. questions for the extraversion and neuroticism scales included such items as: “i see myself as someone who is talkative” and “i see myself as someone who worries a lot,” respectively. responses to these items ranged from 1 = “disagree strongly” to 5 = “agree strongly.” total scores were derived by summing the items for each scale, with higher scores indicating stronger traits of extraversion (cronbach’s α = 0.85) and neuroticism (cronbach’s α = 0.78). 2.3.3 health behaviors three domains of health behaviors served as predictors of subjective wellbeing: substance use (alcohol and cigarette use) (leigh & stacy, 1993; samhsa, 2006), physical activity (vigorous/moderate exercise and strengthening/toning activities) (haskell et al., 2007), and dietary intake (fruits and vegetables) (usda, 2009). the student health survey contained items to assess substance abuse and physical activity, while dietary intake was evaluated using daily online food recall. frequency of alcohol and tobacco use during the past 30 days was assessed with the question “within the last 30 days, on how many days did you use alcohol (beer, wine, liquor)/cigarettes?” responses ranged from 0 = “never used” to 7 = “all 30 days.” quantity of alcohol use the past 30 days was assessed with the question “the last time you ‘partied’/socialized, how many alcoholic drinks did you have?” respondent filled in a box to report the number of drinks consumed. questions on physical activity required participants to report vigorous/moderate aerobic activities (e.g., running, swimming, brisk walking) and strengthening/toning activities (e.g., push-ups, sit-ups, weight lifting) during the past six months. responses ranged from 1 = “never” to 5 = “5-7 times per week.” fruit and vegetable intakes based on 24-hour food recall for seven days were used as indicators of healthy eating behavior. respondents were asked “how often did you eat fruit/vegetable today?” responses were coded on a five-point scale ranging from 0 = “none” to 5 = “5+ times per day.” total frequency of consumption was computed for the seven days. 2.3.4 demographic covariates demographic variables collected in the student health survey included age, gender, and race, all of which have been previously associated with subjective wellbeing (brown, wallace, & williams, 2001; diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; gutierrez, jiminez, hernandez, & puente, 2005). 2.4 data analysis preliminary analyses consisted of examining sample characteristics with descriptive statistics, cross tabulations, independent samples t-tests, chi-squares, and bivariate correlations among the predictor and criterion variables. hierarchical multivariate regression analyses were conducted to examine how each model contributed to the overall predictive ability and relative importance of the variables, with subjective wellbeing as the dependent variable. demographic variables were entered as the first block, followed by personality in the second model, with the full model comprising the health behaviors. respondents with more than three days of missing food data were excluded from the analysis. all analyses were performed using spss 19.0. subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 3. results 3.1 demographic characteristics of sample a total of 599 students met the inclusion criteria of age 18-25 (28% male and 72% female). the mean age was 20.85 (sd = 1.84). the racial composition of the sample was 33% white/nonhispanic, 27% asian/pacific islander, 25% hispanic/latino, 12% multi-race/other, and 4% black/african american. the proportion of students reporting their health to be good, very good, or excellent was approximately 86%. gender stratified analysis showed that females scored higher on neuroticism, and males reported more frequency and quantity of alcohol intake and greater frequency of physical activity. male students also reported better overall health than did female students (see table 1 below). table 1. sample characteristics and study variables by gender variables male female mean sd mean sd demographics age 21.11 01.92 20.75 01.80 gender (%) 28.21 71.79 race (%)*** asian/pacific islander 34.50 24.30 hispanic/latino 21.40 25.70 white, non-hispanic 35.10 31.50 black/african american 03.00 04.70 multi-race/other 6.0 13.80 personality extraversion 26.80 06.17 26.94 05.96 neuroticism*** 20.58 05.29 24.23 05.71 health behaviors alcohol-frequency** 02.53 01.72 02.12 01.69 alcohol-quantity*** 04.82 04.07 02.95 03.18 cigarette – never used (%) 68.60 74.40 cigarette – have used (%) 31.40 25.60 physical activity vigorous/moderate pa** 03.74 00.93 03.46 01.04 physical activity strength/tone pa** 03.46 01.14 03.08 01.15 fruit 05.42 04.27 05.21 03.95 vegetable 07.72 04.36 07.53 03.76 subjective wellbeing positive affect 24.86 04.84 24.59 05.21 overall health** 03.85 00.90 03.52 01.02 quality of life 78.41 10.79 78.02 11.29 *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. note: group differences tested with t-test for continuous and chi-square for categorical variables. male n = 169, and female n = 430. subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 table 2. product-moment correlations among individual characteristics and subjective wellbeing variables variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1. age  2. extraversion -.03  3. neuroticism -.05 -.26**  4. alcohol (freq) .25** .18** -.08  5. alcohol (qty) .09* .17** -.12** .52**  6. cigarette use .11** .12** .02 .40** .23**  7. vigorous pa .00 .09* -.11** .03 .02 -.04  8. strength pa .00 .12** -.12** .04 .08 -.05 .62**  9. vegetable .11** .04 -.11** .05 .01 .02 .10* .06  10. fruit .00 .09* -.11** -.05 -.02 -.09* .17** .18** .42**  11. positive affect .01 .44** -.44** .06 .09* .01 .18** .22** .09* .14**  12. overall health .00 .09* -.22** -.02 -.02 -.12** .24** .24** .09* .18** .19**  13. quality of life .00 .39** -.43** -.05 -.03 -.02 .24** .23** .15** .13** .62** .26**  *p < .05. **p < .01. note: gender as a dichotomous variable and race as a categorical variable were excluded. pa = physical activity. subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 3.2 associations between individual characteristics and subjective wellbeing 3.2.1 bivariate analyses pearson product-moment correlation coefficients for personality, health behaviors, and subjective wellbeing are presented in table 2 above. extraversion was positively associated with all substance use, health behaviors, and subjective wellbeing variables except vegetable intake. conversely, neuroticism was negatively associated with all substance use, health behaviors, and subjective wellbeing variables except cigarette use. more alcohol use was associated with higher scores on positive affect and cigarette use was associated with lower ratings of overall health. all health behaviors of physical activity and healthy food intake were positively correlated with subjective wellbeing. among the three dimensions of subjective wellbeing, the strongest association was between positive affect and quality of life. 3.2.2 multivariate analyses hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to evaluate the overall strength of association and model fit when predicting subjective wellbeing using demographics (age, gender, race), personality (extraversion, neuroticism), and health behaviors (alcohol/cigarettes, vigorous/strengthening physical activity, fruit/vegetable). the overall test of model fit showed that personality and health behaviors were significantly associated with all three dimensions of subjective wellbeing after controlling for age, gender, and race (see tables 3-5 below). moreover, health behaviors remained predictive after holding personality constant. table 3. summary of hierarchical regression analysis for predicting positive affect (n = 571) model 1 model 2 model 3 b se b β b se b β b se b β demographics age -0.03 0.12 -0.01 -0.03 0.10* -0.01*** -0.04 00.10** -0.01** gender -0.32 0.48 -0.03 -0.97 0.42* -0.09*** -1.23 00.43** -0.11** race -0.13 0.15 -0.04 -0.04 0.13* -0.01*** -0.09 00.13** -0.02** personality extraversion -0.29 0.03* -0.35*** -0.28 00.03** -0.33*** neuroticism -0.33 0.03* -0.38*** -0.32 00.03** -0.37*** health behaviors alcohol-frequency -0.05 00.13** -0.02** alcohol-quantity -0.03 00.06** -0.02** cigarettes -0.02 00.12** -0.01** pa-vig/mod -0.18 00.22** -0.04** pa-streng/tone -0.57 00.19** -0.13** vegetables -0.00 00.05** -0.00** fruits -0.06 00.05** -0.04** constant 24.35 2.71 22.32 2.54* 19.15 02.64** r2δ 0.00 0.32* 00.03** adjusted r2 0.00 0.32* 00.33** f for δr2 0.39 128.75*** 03.30** *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. note: pa = physical activity. subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 table 4. summary of hierarchical regression analysis for predicting self-rated health (n = 571) model 1 model 2 model 3 b se b β b se b β b se b β demographics age -0.01 0.02** -0.02** -0.01 10.02*** -0.02*** -0.01 0.02*** -0.01*** gender -0.34 0.09** -0.15** -0.22 10.10*** -0.10*** -0.21 0.09*** -0.09*** race -0.00 0.03** -0.00** -0.01 10.03*** -0.02*** -0.02 0.03*** -0.04*** personality extraversion -0.01 10.01*** -0.05*** -0.01 0.01*** -0.04*** neuroticism -0.03 10.01*** -0.18*** -0.03 0.01*** -0.16*** health behaviors alcohol frequency -0.02 0.03*** -0.03*** alcohol-quantity -0.03 0.01*** -0.09*** cigarettes -0.05 0.03*** -0.08*** pa-vig/mod -0.11 0.05*** -0.12*** pa-streng/tone -0.10 0.04*** -0.12*** vegetables -0.00 0.01*** -0.00*** fruits -0.03 0.01*** -0.12*** constant 4.42 0.52** -4.80 10.58*** -3.80 0.58*** r2δ 0.02** 10.04*** 0.08*** adjusted r2 0.02** 10.05*** 0.13*** f for δr2 4.58** 10.61*** 7.65*** *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. note: pa = physical activity. positive affect. age, gender, and race in the initial model were not significantly related to affect (table 3 above; r = 0.05, f (3, 567) = 0.39, p = 0.762). personality variables improved model fit significantly by accounting for 32% of the variance in the model (r = 0.56, f (2, 565 = 128.75, p < 0.001). the addition of health behaviors in the final model increased variance accounted for to 33% (r = 0.59, f (7, 558) = 3.3, p < 0.01). females and those who reported more strengthening/toning physical activity were associated with higher levels of positive affect (see table 3 above). personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism were more strongly related to positive affect than were either demographic or health-behavior variables. self-rated health. the initial model containing only demographic variables accounted for 2% of the variance in self-rated health (table 4 above; r = 0.15, f (3, 567) = 4.58, p < 0.01). in model 2, personality accounted for 5% of the variance (r = 0.24, f (2, 565) = 10.61, p < 0.001). when health behaviors were added, the percentage of variance accounted for increased to 13% (r = 0.38, f (7, 558) = 7.65, p < 0.001). gender differences were found in all three models, with males reporting better health (see table 4 above). no significant difference was found for extraversion, but neuroticism was negatively associated with self-rated health. among the health behaviors, vigorous/moderate and strengthening/toning physical activities and fruit intake were significantly related to self-rated health. quality of life (qol). age, gender, and race in the initial model were not significantly associated with quality of life (table 5 below; r = 0.06, f (3, 526) = 0.58, p = 0.632). in model 2, subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 personality accounted for 28% of the variance in quality of life (r = 0.53, f (2, 524) = 100.93, p < 0.001). the full model including health behaviors improved model fit to 32% of the total variance (r = 0.58, f (7, 517) = 6.31, p < 0.001). gender was significantly associated with qol, with females reporting more satisfaction than males (see table 5 below). extraversion was positively related to qol, and neuroticism was negatively related to qol. in the final model controlling for age, gender, race, and personality, vigorous/moderate and strengthening/toning physical activity were significantly associated with qol. frequency and quantity of alcohol consumption and vegetable intake had marginally significant relationships to qol. table 5: summary of hierarchical regression analysis for predicting quality of life (n = 530) model 1 model 2 model 3 b se b β b se b*** β b se b β***** demographics age -0.02 0.26 -0.00 -0.05 0.22*** -0.01*** -0.07 0.23*** 0.01*** gender -0.25 1.07 -0.01 -2.68 0.96*** -0.11*** -2.57 0.97*** 0.11*** race -0.44 0.34 -0.06 -0.14 0.29*** -0.02*** -0.17 0.29*** 0.02*** personality extraversion -0.54 0.07*** --0.29*** -0.56 0.07*** 0.30*** neuroticism -0.73 0.08*** -0.39*** -0.69 0.07*** -0.37*** health behaviors alcohol-frequency -0.58 0.30*** -0.09†** alcohol-quantity -0.23 0.14*** -0.07†** cigarettes -0.01 0.28*** 0.00*** pa-vig/mod -1.15 0.50*** 0.11*** pa-streng/tone -0.89 0.44*** 0.09*** vegetables -0.20 0.11*** 0.07†** fruits -0.01 0.11*** 0.01*** constant 77.69 6.04 76.76 5.85*** 66.20 5.99*** r2δ 0.00 0.28*** 0.06*** adjusted r2 0.00 0.28*** 0.32*** f for δr2 0.58 100.93*** 6.31*** † p < .10 *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. note. pa = physical activity. 4. discussion wellbeing is a multifaceted and multi-dimensional construct and enhancing our understanding of it during the emerging adulthood period plays an important role in the health of young people. moreover, university-attending young adults in the united states not only think about life satisfaction and happiness frequently, they also rate them as very important, even more important than money (diener & oishi, 2000). our findings support existing literature, that personality traits are primary predictors of subjective wellbeing. in addition, we extended previous research showing that health behaviors are important contributors of subjective wellbeing beyond the effects of personality. one particular domain of health behavior, physical activity, was found to be more strongly related with subjective wellbeing than either substance subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 use or dietary intake. this pattern of results was consistent across positive affect, self-rated health, and quality of life. consistent with previous findings, extraversion was associated with higher scores on positive affect, and neuroticism was negatively associated with positive affect. interestingly, regular physical activity of strengthening and toning exercises was most strongly related to positive affect. affect and personality traits demonstrated substantial variability, with positive affect more strongly associated with psychological factors than with behavioral determinants. indeed, the literature suggests that long-term subjective wellbeing is determined by personality traits, and personality has biological components that, in turn, affect wellbeing through shared common physical underpinnings (depue & collins, 1999; schnika, busch, & robichaux-keene, 2004). for overall health, higher scores on neuroticism were associated with lower self-rated overall health status. vigorous and moderate physical activity, strengthening and toning physical activity, and frequency of seven-day fruit consumption were all associated with better self-rated health. this pattern of finding is generally consistent with prior research on health behaviors and self-rated health (harrington et al., 2010; lengyel, tate, & obirek blatz, 2009). however, our findings on the relationships between self-rated health and alcohol use and vegetable consumption did not support previous studies. much of the previous research related to these health behaviors was conducted on middle-aged adults; different cultural influences might affect young adults’ perceptions on the health effects of alcohol use and vegetable consumption. for college students who are either non-drinkers or social drinkers, alcohol might not have the same degree of impact on perceived health as for heavier drinkers. our findings are also counter to national data showing as many as one-third of college students binge drink (american college health association, 2010). despite the nonsignificant contribution of substance use and vegetable consumption, model prediction for self-rated health increased more than two-fold with the inclusion of health behaviors, further reinforcing the importance of the direct impact that health behaviors, such as physical activity, have on health outcomes. as expected, quality of life was positively associated with extraversion and negatively associated with neuroticism. literature has shown that personality, or individual dispositions, affect characteristic patterns of behaviors that can impact how individuals approach life and their response to circumstances (wrosch & scheier, 2003). for example, extraverted individuals are more likely to approach life with optimism and goal adjustment, and dispositional optimism facilitates subjective wellbeing and overall health (scheier, carver, & bridges, 2001). in addition to the distal factor of personality, proximal factors of health behaviors were also important determinants of quality of life. those who reported doing more vigorous/moderate and strengthening/toning physical activity reported greater satisfaction with quality of life. physical fitness benefits both physical and psychological functioning that, in turn, influence quality of life (berger & tobar, 2007). lastly, in contrast to the findings reported by vaez and laflamme (2003), we did not find any association between tobacco use and quality of life. it is important to note that our study employed a multivariate approach while the swedish study found significance only among females from bivariate correlations. our product-moment correlations showed a weak, nonsignificant negative correlation between cigarette use and quality of life (see table 2 above). subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 overall, across the seven health behavioral measures, physical activity contributed the most power to predict subjective wellbeing. vigorous/moderate exercise appeared to be an important predictor among the three domains of health behaviors, when controlling for age, gender, race, and personality. this supports existing literature linking physical activity with greater life satisfaction, positive affect, and happiness (hyde, maher, & elavsky, 2013). consistent with prior literature, our analyses indicated that personality traits were highly associated with subjective wellbeing. both extraversion and neuroticism were moderately correlated with positive affect and quality of life, suggesting these two dimensions of subjective wellbeing are impacted more by individual perceptions, traits, and cognitive dispositions. in comparison, the weaker relationship between personality traits and overall health supports our hypothesis that behavioral variables are also important predictors of health-related subjective wellbeing. when health behaviors were added to the model, they increased the total variance accounted for in overall health more than two-fold. 4.1 limitations there are several limitations with this study that may impact the interpretation of our findings. first, our sample consisted of only college students between the ages of 18 and 25 and thus may not generalize to older students or non-college students. we purposely limited our sample to this age group because emerging adulthood is a developmentally unique and important stage that is qualitatively different from adolescence and young adulthood (nelson et al., 2008). thus, this limitation is also a strength of our study because many studies combine all college students in one group regardless of age or consider only certain class standings (e.g., freshmen). second, causal inferences cannot be made, as the results are based on cross-sectional data. while our multivariate approach using hierarchical regression analyses afforded us the ability to make predictions while controlling for the effects of various covariates, it is possible that high subjective wellbeing influences substance use and health behaviors. it is also possible that personality and health behaviors both acted in a synergistic manner on subjective wellbeing. we tested for possible effects of personality x health behavior interactions, and the results were not significant. third, self-reports are susceptible to reporting bias, possibly affected by social desirability or misreporting of alcohol and tobacco use. in addition, using online surveys to collect daily food intake recall may also pose potential reporting issues, including response bias and authenticity of the person answering the questions. we attempted to reduce bias by ensuring confidentiality during data collection and in food recall with a 30-minute orientation and training with participants on how to estimate portion size using the images provided in the survey; we also sent text reminders and provided a hardcopy survey as backup. lastly, while an investigation of all aspects of personality would be ideal, our study evaluated only two of the big five personality traits within the limitations of the available measures, thus limiting our ability to interpret how other facets of personality traits correlate with health behaviors and subjective wellbeing. however, the significant results we found relating to extraversion and neuroticism along with behavioral determinants to wellbeing can build a foundation for the investigation of the other personality traits. subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 4.2 conclusions notwithstanding its limitations, this study extends prior research and highlights the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle during the emerging adulthood period. this period of transition marks the beginning of many newly adapted health behaviors that can lead to increased health risks. our study is novel in several aspects. to our knowledge, this is the first study to examine personality and health behavior variables simultaneously as predictors of subjective wellbeing among a group of racially/ethnically diverse university-attending young adults. we demonstrated that certain health behaviors are associated with wellbeing beyond the effects of personality traits. including substance use, physical activity, and dietary intake as predictors provided a multidimensional pattern of lifestyle behaviors that contribute to college students’ wellbeing and have lifelong health implications. rather than using a single, global measure, we assessed subjective wellbeing from three major dimensions (affective, physical/psychological, and cognitive appraisal), providing a more comprehensive understanding of the contributions of personality and health behaviors on each unique, but related, area of wellbeing. lastly, our study contributes to the growing body of literature on health promotion and positive psychology that is in line with the emphases of healthy people 2020 and healthy campus 2020 – studying healthrelated quality of life and wellbeing. future research could examine other personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness, sensation-seeking) and health behaviors (e.g., sleep quality, sexual behaviors) and their potential interactions with wellbeing. conscientious individuals, for example, have been shown to exhibit more health-related and fewer risk-related health behaviors. by better understanding the factors that influence the wellbeing of emerging young adults, we will be able to tailor health and wellness programs to improve quality of life in this age group, potentially impacting lifestyle choices and overall health. for example, health programs can adopt a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach by incorporating positive psychology and public health intervention strategies to identify individual characteristics and assess lifestyle health behaviors, particularly physical activity, to promote wellbeing among young adults. health-related decisions made in college during young adulthood can affect lifelong health; college health programs that are designed to address both physical and personality-based factors could help lead to healthier – and happier – adults. acknowledgments this research was supported by the center for the promotion of healthy lifestyles and obesity prevention at california state university, fullerton and funded by cdc, national center for chronic disease prevention and health promotion, the division of nutrition, physical activity, and obesity (grant #5h75dp001814-02), an award to the first and second authors. authors chia-hsin emily cheng california state university, fullerton echeng@fullerton.edu jie w weiss california state university, fullerton mailto:echeng@fullerton.edu subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 judith m siegel university of california, los angeles publishing timeline received 22 july 2014 accepted 22 may 2015 published 30 july 2015 references american college health association. 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(2001). optimism, pessimism, and psychological wellbeing. in: e. c. chang (ed.), optimism and pessimism (pp. 189-216). washington: american psychological association. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2008.03.019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1368980009990760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.5.2.216 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639360902950182 http://dx.doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v2.i3.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781849200462.n13 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2009.09.006 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/oby.2008.365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2007.02101.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2007.02101.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.131.6.925 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536%2895%2900252-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1024/2006.04.03 http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/jach.58.1.73-82 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.1.1 subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 schnika, j. a., busch, r. m., & robichaux-keene, n. (2004). a meta-analysis of the association between serotonin transporter gene polymorphism (5-httlpr) and trait anxiety. molecular psychiatry, 9, 197202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001405 smith, a. p. (2005). the concept of wellbeing: relevance to nutrition research. british journal of nutrition, 95, s1-s5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1079/bjn20041351 steel, p., schmidt, j., & shultz, j. (2008) refining the relationship between personality and subjective wellbeing. psychological bulletin, 134, 138-161. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.1.138 substance abuse and mental health services administration [samhsa]. (2006). results from the 2005 national survey on drug use and health: national findings. nsduh series h-30, dhhs pub no. sma 06-4194. rockville, md: samhsa, office of applied studies. u.s. census (2011, june). facts for features. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11ff15.html u.s. department of agriculture [usda] (2009). dietary guidelines for americans 2005. http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/ u.s. department of health and human services [usdhhs]. (2010). healthy people 2020. washington, d.c.: government publications. vaez, m., & laflamme, l. (2003) health behaviors, self-rated health, and quality of life: a study among first-year swedish university students. journal of american college health, 51(4), 156-162. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07448480309596344 wrosch, c., & scheier, m. f. (2003). personality and quality of life: the importance of optimism and goal adjustment. quality of life research, 12, 59-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1023529606137 zullig, k. j., valois, r. f., huebner, e. s., oeltmann, j. e., & drane, j. w. (2001). relationship between perceived life satisfaction and adolescents’ substance abuse. journal of adolescent health, 29, 279-288. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1054-139x(01)00269-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001405 http://dx.doi.org/10.1079/bjn20041351 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.1.138 http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-ff15.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-ff15.html http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07448480309596344 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1023529606137 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s1054-139x%2801%2900269-5 subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 appendix: affect balance scale below is a list of the ways you might have felt or behaved. please indicate how often you felt this way during the past month (check one). overall health f2. over the past year, how would you describe your overall health compared to others your age? 5 excellent 4 very good 3 good 2 fair 1 poor in the last month did you feel… never 0 almost never 1 sometimes 2 fairly often 3 very often 4 i1 particularly excited or interested in something? 0 1 2 3 4 i2 proud because someone complimented you on something you had done? 0 1 2 3 4 i3 pleased about having accomplished something? 0 1 2 3 4 i4 on top of the world? 0 1 2 3 4 i5 that things were going your way? 0 1 2 3 4 i6 so restless that you couldn’t sit long in a chair? 0 1 2 3 4 i7 very lonely or remote from other people? 0 1 2 3 4 i8 bored? 0 1 2 3 4 i9 depressed or very unhappy? 0 1 2 3 4 i10 upset because someone criticized you? 0 1 2 3 4 subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 quality of life please read each item and check the box that best describes how satisfied you are at this time. please answer each item even if you do not currently participate in an activity or have a relationship. you can be satisfied or dissatisfied with not doing the activity or having the relationship. please indicate how often you felt this way during the past month (check one). delighted 7 pleased 6 mostly satisfied 5 mixed 4 mostly dissatisfied 3 unhappy 2 terrible 1 j1 material comforts – home, food, conveniences, financial security 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j2 health – being physically fit and vigorous 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j3 relationships with parents, siblings, & other relatives (communicating, visiting, helping) 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j4 having and rearing children 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j5 close relationships with spouse or significant other 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j6 close friends 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j7 helping and encouraging others, volunteering, giving advice 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j8 participating in organizations and public affairs 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j9 learning – attending school, improving understanding, getting additional knowledge 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j10 understanding yourself – knowing your assets and limitations – knowing what life is about 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j11 work – job or in home 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j12 expressing yourself creatively 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j13 socializing – meeting other people, doing things, parties, etc. 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j14 reading, listening to music, or observing entertainment 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 j15 participating in active recreation 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 subjective wellbeing of young adults cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 personality here are a number of characteristics that may or may not apply to you. please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each of the following statements (check one). i see myself as someone who… disagree strongly 1 disagree a little 2 neither agree nor disagree 3 agree a little 4 agree strongly 5 n1 is talkative. 1 2 3 4 5 n2 is depressed, blue. 1 2 3 4 5 n3 is reserved. 1 2 3 4 5 n4 is relaxed, handles stress well. 1 2 3 4 5 n5 is full of energy. 1 2 3 4 5 n6 can be tense. 1 2 3 4 5 n7 generates a lot of enthusiasm. 1 2 3 4 5 n8 worries a lot. 1 2 3 4 5 n9 tends to be quiet. 1 2 3 4 5 n10 is emotionally stable, not easily upset. 1 2 3 4 5 n11 has an assertive personality. 1 2 3 4 5 n12 can be moody. 1 2 3 4 5 n13 is sometimes shy, inhibited. 1 2 3 4 5 n14 remains calm in tense situations. 1 2 3 4 5 n15 is outgoing, sociable. 1 2 3 4 5 n16 gets nervous easily. 1 2 3 4 5 personality traits and health behaviours cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 alcohol and tobacco within the last 30 days, on how many days did you use: (mark one for each row) never used have used but not in last 30 days 1-2 days 3-5 days 6-9 days 10-19 days 20-29 days all 30 days c1 cigarettes 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 c3 alcohol (beer, wine, liquor) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 c8. the last time you “partied”/socialized, how many alcoholic drinks did you have? one drink is equal to one 12 oz. beer, one 4-5 oz. glass of wine, or one shot of distilled liquor. state your best estimate. number of drinks physical activity f12. considering your participation in vigorous/moderate exercise, such as running and swimming, or moderate exercise such as brisk walking, how often have you engaged in these activities over the past six months? 1 never 2 rarely: a few times per month 3 sometimes: about once per week 4 often: usually 2 – 4 times per week 5 very often: 5 – 7 times per week f14. considering your participation in exercise to strengthen or tone your muscles, such as pushups, sit-ups, or weight lifting, how often have you engaged in these activities over the past six months? 1 never 2 rarely: a few times per month 3 sometimes: about once per week 4 often: usually 2 – 4 times per week 5 very often: 5 – 7 times per week personality traits and health behaviours cheng, weiss, & siegel www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 vegetables and fruit intake demographics a1. what is your age? __________ years a2. your gender 1 male 2 female a3. what is your race/ethnicity (check one)? 1 native or alaskan american 5 white, non-hispanic 2 asian/pacific islander 6 multi-race/ethnicity (please specify______________) 3 hispanic/latino 7 other (please specify_________________) 4 black/african american mcallister, s., derrett, s., davie, g., & mcgee, r. (2014). injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury. international journal of wellbeing, 4(2), 19-31. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i2.2 sarah derrett university of otago and massey university s.l.derrett@massey.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 article injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury susan mcallister · sarah derrett · gabrielle davie · rob mcgee abstract: objective: a longitudinal study examined the relationships of injury severity, whether the injury was accidental or was caused by an assault, and self-reported eq-5d soon after injury, with long-term personal wellbeing among participants with a range of injury types and severity. methods: interviews with participants recruited in the prospective outcomes of injury study (pois) were conducted up to four time points in the 24 months after injury. key explanatory variables were new injury severity score (niss), whether the injury was accidental or resulted from assault, and self-reported health status (five eq-5d questions and a similar question about cognition) reported at three months. the main outcome measure at 24 months was the personal wellbeing index (pwi) (pwi <70=‘low’ wellbeing). univariate and multivariable analyses examined relationships between explanatory variables and low pwi. results: even in a group of people with injuries traditionally regarded as being of mild or moderate anatomical severity, wellbeing continues to be affected for an appreciable time post-injury, with a quarter (27%) of study participants having a low level of personal wellbeing 24 months after their injury. neither anatomical injury severity nor hospitalisation were predictive of low personal wellbeing. an increased risk of low personal wellbeing was observed in participants whose injury was caused by an intentional assault (rather than accident), and in those who reported problems three months post-injury with eq-5d self-care, anxiety/depression or cognitive functioning. conclusions: identification of such individuals early after an injury is of particular importance and ensuring adequate support services are put in place that encourage re-integration back into work and social networks could help prevent on-going poor wellbeing. keywords: injury, personal wellbeing, severity, eq-5d 1. introduction management of injury, particularly in the acute phase, focuses mainly on the physical recovery of the individual with an emphasis on functional outcomes. there may, however, be emotional or psychosocial problems that affect an individual’s wellbeing and these in turn can influence recovery and complicate a return to normal functioning and independence. understanding and identifying ways to predict who might experience long-term low wellbeing is an important component of rehabilitation. fuhrer (2000) has suggested that evaluations of outcomes of medical rehabilitation are incomplete if they ignore the subjective wellbeing of the individual served. moreover, it has been stated that patient wellbeing is the primary aim of the transaction between a health care professional and a patient (whoqol group, 1995). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the severity and type of injury have largely been the focus for investigating outcomes after injury. most studies include people who have experienced relatively severe anatomical injuries, such as those of participants recruited through hospital or trauma centres. more specifically, many studies have concentrated on people with spinal cord or traumatic brain injury. interestingly, results from many of these studies have reported better life satisfaction and quality of life than was expected (albrecht & devlieger, 1999; dijkers, 2004; jones et al., 2011; post & noreau, 2005). some explanations for this propose a “response shift” (dijkers, 2004) or adaptation process (menzel, dolan, richardson, & olsen, 2002), whereby people adapt to challenges presented to them by changing their internal standard of expectations. there may also be a sense of surviving a major life event from which one can learn (albrecht & devlieger, 1999). furthermore, services and supports surrounding a severely injured individual can provide much-needed practical, psychological and social support that can impact on wellbeing (jones et al., 2011). if such support is not available, it is likely that anatomical severity will not be the main influence on wellbeing, and that the inability to self-care, participate in usual activities, or maintain social networks and social functioning may be more important (dijkers, 2004; fuhrer, 2000; post & noreau, 2005). it has also been noted that the often-used injury severity score was initially developed to predict mortality (stevenson, segui-gomez, lescohier, di scala, & mcdonald-smith, 2001) rather than disability or wellbeing and that once a patient has survived, physical limitation or psychological factors could be more important for quality of life than the severity of injury or injured body region (van delft-schreurs et al., 2014). the eq-5d (brooks, 1996) is a generic instrument to describe health status in individuals over a wide range of different illnesses and conditions and has been recommended for use in injury outcome studies (van beeck et al., 2007). it is a measure that is able to capture physical, mental and social functioning and is simple to use. anatomical severity or type of injury alone may not be adequate predictors of wellbeing outcome. a self-reported health status measure such as the eq-5d might be a more accurate instrument to predict wellbeing outcomes because it seeks to identify the patient’s own perception of her or his general health status following injury. the few studies that have used the eq-5d reported anxiety/depression (dolan & metcalfe, 2012) and pain (graham, higuera & lora, 2011) as having a much greater impact on subjective wellbeing or life satisfaction than other problems such as poor mobility. the ability, early after an injury, to identify individuals who have greater susceptibility to poor wellbeing in the long term would allow health care providers and others working closely with injured individuals to target support services and care. in the present longitudinal study, we examine the relationships of injury severity, whether the injury was accidental or was caused by an assault, and self-reported eq-5d status soon after injury, with long-term personal wellbeing among participants with a range of injury types and with varying severity of injury. 2. methods 2.1 study sample and recruitment the prospective outcomes of injury study (pois) is a prospective longitudinal study of 2856 injured people interviewed (postal questionnaires were conducted for a minority) up to four time points in the 24 months since injury (derrett et al., 2011). participants were aged 18-64 years, from one of five regions of new zealand (nz) and injured between june 2007 and may 2009. they were recruited from 4881 contactable potential participants (59% participation rate) identified from the accident compensation corporation’s (acc’s) entitlement claimant register. acc is a 20 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org crown entity and nz’s national no-fault compensation injury insurer. entitlement claimants have injuries serious enough to potentially require support, such as income compensation (if in paid employment), medical treatment and/or social and rehabilitation services. people with injuries caused by self-harm or sexual assault were excluded from the study. the protocol for this study has been described fully elsewhere (derrett et al., 2009, 2011). 2.2 outcome measure the personal wellbeing index (pwi) was used to assess wellbeing 24 months after injury (international wellbeing group, 2013). the pwi asks participants how satisfied they are with eight domains of life – standard of living, health, achieving in life, personal relationships, personal safety, feeling part of their community, future security, and spirituality or religion. the rating for each domain is on a scale from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied). following the international wellbeing group guideline (2013), responses were converted to a 0100 scale, with higher scores indicating greater wellbeing. the eight domain scores were averaged to give a single measure of personal wellbeing between 0 and 100 – the pwi. the normative range for the pwi in western populations is 70-80 (international wellbeing group, 2013). following previous recommendations (cummins, 2003) the threshold in this paper for defining ‘low’ wellbeing was a pwi below 70. a respondent with one, two, or three missing values had a pwi calculated from seven, six, or five domains respectively. if someone had four or more missing values, no pwi was calculated (international wellbeing group, 2013). forty-five individuals (2%) showed consistently maximum scores in each domain and no individuals had consistently minimum scores. it was decided to include these individuals with consistently maximum scores in the analysis in line with previous research undertaken in the netherlands (van beuningen & de jonge, 2011). 2.3 explanatory variables 2.3.1 injury characteristics at the first interview three months after injury, participants were asked if their injury was due to an accident or to intentional assault; and whether, at the time of injury, they felt the injury was a ‘threat to their life’ or a ‘threat of severe longer term disability’. a new injury severity score (niss; anatomical injury severity) (stevenson et al., 2001) was derived for each participant based on clinical diagnosis information provided by acc. niss provides an overall measure of anatomical damage due to injury. it is the sum of the squares of an individual’s three highest abbreviated injury scale (ais) scores (or all if fewer than three). participants were grouped for analysis into three niss severity categories: 1-3 (least severe; ais=1 injuries only), 4-6 (middle severity; one ais=2 injury plus none, one or two ais=1 injuries) and >6 (most severe; at least two ais=2 injuries or one ais≥3 injury) (wilson et al., 2013). participants were categorised as ‘hospitalised’ if linkage with the nz national minimum dataset (nmds) of hospital discharges indicated they had received emergency department treatment for three hours or more, or were admitted to hospital. 2.3.2 self-reported health status at the three-month interview, questions about health status were asked according to the eq-5d, which comprises five dimensions – mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, anxiety/depression (brooks, 1996; the euroqol group, 1990). response options were ‘no’; ‘some’; or ‘extreme’ problems; the last two were grouped as ‘any problems’. an additional 21 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org question on cognitive functioning was asked in the same format as the eq-5d questions (krabbe, stouthard, essink-bot, & bonsel, 1999). “the next statements relate to intellectual activities such as remembering, concentrating, thinking and solving day to day problems” participants were also asked at this interview to recall their pre-injury eq-5d status on the same six dimensions (wilson, derrett, hansen, & langley, 2012). 2.3.3 other characteristics questions related to age, sex and marital status were taken from the nz census (statistics new zealand, 2006). people doing paid work were classified as being in paid employment; the remainder were identified as not being in paid employment. financial status was assessed using a question from the nz household economic survey (statistics new zealand, 2009) that asked people to rate the adequacy of their household income to meet everyday needs such as accommodation, food, clothing and other daily necessities. responses were given on a four-point scale and grouped as ‘more than enough/enough’ and ‘just enough/not enough’. a question concerning pre-injury life satisfaction was measured on a five-point scale, ‘completely satisfied’ or ‘mostly satisfied’, ‘neither satisfied or dissatisfied’, ‘mostly dissatisfied, or ‘completely dissatisfied’ (the latter three grouped as ‘not satisfied’). a question on participants’ social relationships (such as contact with relatives and friends) was asked. responses from a five-point scale were recorded and grouped as ‘satisfied’ (‘completely satisfied’ or ‘mostly satisfied’) or ‘not satisfied’ (‘neither satisfied nor dissatisfied’, ‘mostly dissatisfied’, or ‘completely dissatisfied’). 2.4 statistical analysis in order to investigate longer term personal wellbeing, data presented in this paper are from participants who completed both the 3-month and 24-month post-injury interviews. univariate associations between injury characteristics, 3-month eq-5d and pwi (whether categorised as low or not) were undertaken using chi-squared tests. to investigate possible pre-injury confounding variables, a similar univariate analysis of socio-demographic characteristics, life satisfaction, and pre-injury eq-5d was also undertaken. adjusted relative risks were estimated from multivariable poisson regression models, with robust standard errors (zou, 2004). model 1 examines the relationships between a low pwi and both injury characteristics (niss, hospitalised, injury cause, threat to life, and threat of longer term disability) and health status (3-month eq-5d domains and cognitive functioning); model 2 then adjusted for pre-injury characteristics. p-values and 95% confidence intervals (ci) were obtained from these models. analysis was undertaken using stata 12 (statacorp, 2011). 3. results of the 2856 participants interviewed at three months, 2256 (79%) completed the 24-month interview, of whom 2239 (99%) provided complete data on all eight domains of the pwi or had fewer than four missing domain values. the overall pwi mean was 76.2, with the lowest mean score in the domain of ‘feeling part of the community’ (72.8) and the highest in ‘safety’ (84.3). of the 2239, 602 (27%) had a pwi mean less than 70; and the mean for this ‘low’ group was 56.8 compared to 83.4 for the remainder of participants. in the univariate analyses, the variables associated with low pwi at 24 months included age, marital status, pre-injury household income, life satisfaction, social relationships and all pre22 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org injury eq-5d domains and cognitive functioning (table 1 below), injury cause, threat of longer term disability (table 2 below), and all of the 3-month eq-5d domains and cognitive functioning (table 3 below). table 1: proportion of participants who have ‘low’ personal wellbeing (pwi) at 24 months according to their pre-injury characteristics pre-injury characteristics total n*=2239 ‘low’ pwi n=602 (%) 95% confidence interval p-value gender men 1317 362 (27.5) 25.1-29.9 women 922 240 (26.0) 23.2-28.9 0.44 age 18-34 699 181 (25.9) 22.6-29.1 35-54 1102 334 (30.3) 27.6-33.0 55-64 438 87 (19.9) 16.1-23.6 <0.001 marital status single 463 148 (32.0) 27.7-36.2 married/living with partner 1507 345 (22.9) 20.7-25.0 divorced/separated/widowed 256 105 (41.0) 34.9-47.1 <0.001 employment status paid employment 2067 549 (26.6) 24.6-28.4 not in paid employment 171 53 (31.0) 24.0-38.0 0.21 household income enough 1458 304 (20.8) 18.8-22.9 not enough 759 290 (38.2) 34.7-41.7 <0.001 social relationships satisfied 2097 524 (25.0) (23.1-26.8) not satisfied 128 71 (55.5) (46.7-64.2) <0.001 pre-injury life satisfaction completely satisfied 814 117 (14.4) 11.9-16.8 mostly satisfied 1256 399 (31.8) 29.2-34.3 not satisfied 160 82 (51.2) 43.4-59.1 <0.001 eq-5d mobility no problems 2096 550 (26.2) 24.3-28.1 any problems 139 52 (37.4) 29.2-45.6 0.004 eq-5d self-care no problems 2180 580 (26.6) 24.7-28.5 any problems 56 22 (39.3) 26.1-52.5 0.03 eq-5d usual activities no problems 2099 545 (25.9) 24.1-27.8 any problems 134 56 (41.8) 33.3-50.2 <0.001 eq-5d pain or discomfort no problems 1984 510 (25.7) 23.8-27.6 any problems 249 91 (36.5) 30.5-42.6 <0.001 eq-5d anxiety or depression no problems 2101 530 (25.2) 23.4-27.1 any problems 131 68 (51.9) 43.2-60.6 <0.001 cognitive functioning no problems 2126 543 (25.5) 23.7-27.4 any problems 106 57 (53.8) 44.1-63.4 <0.001 * missing values are not shown in the table 23 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org table 2: proportion of participants who have ‘low’ personal wellbeing (pwi) at 24 months according to their injury characteristics injury characteristics total n*=2239 ‘low’ pwi n=602 (%) 95% confidence interval p-value injury severity (niss) 1-3 882 257 (29.1) 26.1-32.1 4-6 971 241 (24.8) 22.1-27.5 >6 313 87 (27.8) 22.8-32.8 0.11 hospitalised no 1686 460 (27.3) 25.1-29.4 yes 553 142 (25.7) 22.0-29.3 0.46 injury cause accidental 2162 567 (26.2) 24.4-28.1 intentional 73 34 (46.6) 34.8-58.3 <0.001 threat to life no 1952 510 (26.1) 24.2-28.1 yes/maybe 253 78 (30.8) 25.1-36.6 0.11 threat to longer-term disability no 1303 323 (24.8) 22.4-27.1 yes/maybe 892 258 (28.9) 25.9-31.9 0.03 * missing values are not shown in the table table 3: proportion of participants who have ‘low’ personal wellbeing (pwi) at 24 months according to their eq-5d and cognitive functioning reported 3 months postinjury eq-5d and cognitive functioning 3 months post-injury total n*=2239 ‘low’ pwi n=602 (%) 95% confidence interval p-value eq-5d mobility no problems 1302 312 (23.9) 21.6-26.3 any problems 933 290 (31.1) 28.1-34.0 <0.001 eq-5d self-care no problems 1715 415 (24.1) 22.0-26.1 any problems 521 189 (36.3) 32.1-40.4 <0.001 eq-5d usual activities no problems 1031 212 (20.6) 18.1-23.0 any problems 1202 389 (32.4) 29.7-35.0 <0.001 eq-5d pain or discomfort no problems 672 137 (20.4) 17.3-23.4 any problems 1561 464 (29.7) 27.4-32.0 <0.001 eq-5d anxiety or depression no problems 1744 374 (21.4) 19.5-23.4 any problems 488 224 (45.9) 41.5-50.3 <0.001 cognitive functioning no problems 1906 446 (23.4) 21.5-25.3 any problems 326 154 (47.2) 41.8-52.7 <0.001 * missing values are not shown in the table 24 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 table 4: multivariable analysis of injury characteristics, eq-5d and cognitive functioning measured 3 months post-injury and low personal wellbeing at 24 months injury characteristics, eq-5d and cognitive functioning measured 3 months post-injury model 1 model 2 relative risk 95% confidence interval p-value adjusted relative risk 95% confidence interval p-value injury severity (niss) 1-3 reference reference 4-6 0.85 0.73-0.99 0.89 0.77-1.04 >6 0.87 0.70-1.07 0.09 0.94 0.76-1.15 0.36 hospitalised no reference reference yes 0.83 0.69-0.98 0.03 0.84 0.70-1.00 0.05 injury cause accidental reference reference intentional 1.42 1.07-1.87 0.01 1.46 1.07-1.90 0.02 threat to life no reference reference yes/maybe 0.89 0.72-1.11 0.33 0.89 0.72-1.12 0.34 threat of disability no reference reference yes/maybe 1.03 0.89-1.19 0.67 0.97 0.84-1.12 0.71 eq-5d* mobility any problems 1.00 0.86-1.17 0.98 1.05 0.90-1.22 0.51 self-care any problems 1.11 0.95-1.31 0.19 1.18 1.00-1.39 0.03 usual activities any problems 1.11 0.92-1.34 0.25 1.06 0.89-1.28 0.58 pain/discomfort any problems 1.13 0.93-1.39 0.22 1.15 0.94-1.40 0.17 anxiety/depression any problems 1.74 1.48-2.05 <0.001 1.56 1.33-1.83 <0.001 cognitive functioning any problems 1.42 1.20-1.68 <0.001 1.30 1.10-1.54 0.002 * ‘no problems’ is the reference category for each of the eq-5d variables and cognitive functioning note: model 1 adjusted for time from injury to the 3-month interview. model 2 adjusted for time from injury to the 3-month interview and the following preinjury variables: age, sex, marital status, employment status, household income, social relationships, life satisfaction, eq-5d and cognitive functioning http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 in the first multivariable model of injury characteristics and eq-5d (table 4 above), participants whose injury followed an intentional assault were 42% more likely to have a low pwi after 24 months than those whose injury was accidental. those who were hospitalised had a significantly lower risk of having a low pwi, as did those who had a niss score of 4 to 6 (compared to a niss score of 1 to 3). for eq-5d, participants who reported problems with anxiety/depression at 3 months were 74% more likely to have a low pwi after 24 months; those with cognitive functioning problems at 3 months were 42% more likely to have a low pwi. after adjustment for pre-injury characteristics (model 2), injury cause and hospitalisation, 3month eq-5d anxiety/depression and cognitive functioning remained statistically significant with little change to the relative risks and confidence intervals. the relationship between pwi and niss was attenuated whereas that between pwi and 3-month eq-5d self-care was strengthened. 4. discussion two years after an injury, about a quarter of study participants experienced a low level of personal wellbeing that was well below the normal range for western populations and also below a 2009 estimate for the european nz population (sibley, harre, hoverd, & houkamau, 2011). there was no evidence to suggest anatomical injury severity (niss) was predictive of this low level; indeed, higher niss anatomical injury severity showed a reduced risk of low wellbeing at 24 months. similarly, participants who were hospitalised, which is associated with severity, also had reduced risk of low wellbeing. an increased risk of low personal wellbeing was observed in participants whose injury was caused by an intentional assault, and in those who reported problems three months post-injury with eq-5d self-care, anxiety/depression or cognitive functioning. injury severity and its influence on wellbeing or life satisfaction has been the subject of much discussion over the years, with studies often showing results contrary to expectations (albrecht & devlieger, 1999; jones et al., 2011; post & noreau, 2005). many of these studies have focussed on more serious trauma, such as spinal cord injury. therefore it was interesting to see in our study of participants encompassing a range of injury types and severity that more severe anatomical injury was not predictive of wellbeing, and that those not hospitalised were more likely to report longer term poor wellbeing. there may be several reasons for this lack of association between injury severity and wellbeing. for example, the severity of anatomical injury (a measure of threat to life) may simply be insufficient as a predictor of wellbeing among those who survive an injury event (van delft-schreurs et al., 2014). elsewhere, we have reported the severity of anatomical injury does not necessarily predict disability burden among survivors of injury events (derrett et al., 2013; wilson et al., 2012). a further reason suggested by jones and colleagues (2011) is that more severely injured individuals receive higher levels of services and support that limit the negative effects of injury severity. in nz, people who have an injury receive treatment and rehabilitation support through the acc. for the seriously injured rehabilitation support can comprise a range of support services that continue as long as they are required. for individuals with less serious injuries support continues for a limited time, after which they will be expected to return to work. it is possible, therefore, that support is discontinued before the individual is fully recovered and she or he may be left to cope with ongoing disability that may be considered minor but that has a negative impact on her or his life and wellbeing. among the more seriously injured there may also be a sense of relief and appreciation of life and of one’s survival after a major life event, a greater sense of learning and growing through a difficult situation and a greater sense of purpose http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 (albrecht & devlieger, 1999; frank, 1997). individuals with a less serious injury, on the other hand, may have a greater expectation of returning to their ‘normal’ pre-injured state, and if this does not occur, they may experience significant frustration and hence report poorer wellbeing. the only injury-specific variable that was statistically significant in both the adjusted and unadjusted multivariable models was whether the injury had been the result of an intentional assault rather than an accident. adjustment for pre-injury variables should have accounted for any pre-injury social disadvantage contributing to low wellbeing, so the low wellbeing observed at 24 months could be due to the added negative impact of dealing with the legal system, a greater sense of being a ‘victim’, and an increased chance of post-traumatic stress disorder (feehan, nada-raja, martin, & langley, 2001). not surprisingly, those who reported problems with anxiety or depression soon after being injured had a much greater risk of low wellbeing, even after adjusting for pre-injury anxiety/depression and other characteristics. this is consistent with other studies that have reported acute depression to be negatively associated with quality of life, functional outcomes and wellbeing (graham, higuera & lora, 2011; holbrook, anderson, sieber, browner, & hoyt, 1999; o’donnell, creamer, elliot, atkin, & kossmann, 2005; zatzick et al., 2008). people who have difficulties with cognition subsequent to a brain injury have been reported to have poorer quality of life and life satisfaction compared to their peers (dijkers, 2004). moreover, corrigan, bogner, mysiw, clinchot and fugate (2001) reported that depressed mood, current social integration, employment, and prior history of substance abuse had a greater association with poor life satisfaction two years after a traumatic brain injury than did the cause of injury or functional measures at the time of discharge from rehabilitation. the absence of a pre-injury measure of personal wellbeing is a limitation of the study. wellbeing has been described as a state of being fairly stable, held constant by an individual’s personality (headey & wearing, 1989; diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999). in that case, an individual’s level of post-injury wellbeing would most likely be similar to that individual’s preinjury level and would most likely be minimally affected by the injury itself. longitudinal studies, however, have shown that life events such as injury do matter, and even though people often adapt, such adaptation is not always rapid or complete (clark, diener & lucas, 2008; lucas, 2007). although we did not have a pre-injury measure of personal wellbeing, we were able to adjust for pre-injury life satisfaction. while this was only a single question, results did show moderately strong correlation with the pwi (0.63). adjusting for pre-injury life satisfaction did not change the results. while it is possible that consistently reporting minimum or maximum scores in all eight domains of the pwi could indicate the use of response sets, it is also possible that certain individuals could respond at a time when they were very strongly satisfied with life or very strongly dissatisfied. as our dataset included only a small number of people with consistent maximum scores it was decided to keep them in the analysis. categorising the eq-5d ‘some’ and ‘extreme’ problems responses as ‘any problems’ for the analysis may have caused a loss of detail but the number of participants who responded ‘extreme’ was small, so estimates for this group alone would have been imprecise. a further limitation could be a bias in participants’ over-rating their pre-injury health status. however, such bias in our cohort was analysed by wilson et al. (2012), who reported that although there was over-rating of pre-injury status, this appears to be minimal. finally, the majority of participants were in paid employment at the time of their injury, therefore findings cannot be generalised to retired populations or to those not in paid employment. a strength of our study was having pre-injury measures for many of the factors that could potentially confound the relationship between injury severity, eq-5d and longer term wellbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 adjustment for these factors did not substantially alter many of the relationships between the key explanatory variables and pwi. further strengths included having a large cohort of injury participants encompassing a range of injury types and severity; a good follow-up rate, and the inclusion of both hospitalised and non-hospitalised participants. finally, relatively few participants had missing values on the pwi; and analysis that excluded these people did not result in any meaningful change to the relative risk estimates. subjective wellbeing is a complex concept (dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders, 2012) influenced by a wide range of factors, both internal, such as an individual’s sense of self-esteem, optimism and resilience, and external, such as marital, employment, and financial status (cummins, 1996; headey & wearing, 1992). the two key messages emerging from this study are, firstly, that even in a somewhat under-researched group of people with injuries, including injuries traditionally regarded as being of mild or moderate anatomical severity, wellbeing continues to be affected for an appreciable time post-injury. extending support services beyond the time frame normally allocated appears to be warranted to enable this group to return to their work and everyday lives. secondly, the severity of anatomical injury alone did not predict subsequent low wellbeing and, for the most part, neither did the eq-5d health status measure. rather, early identification after an injury of individuals who have problems with anxiety or depression, cognitive functioning, or whose injury was caused by assault is of particular importance. providing the necessary support, or directing the individual to where such support might be available, and re-integrating them into work and social networks could prevent ongoing poor wellbeing in these people. acknowledgments we are grateful to all participants in this study. the study was funded by the health research council of new zealand (2007-2013) and co-funded by the accident compensation corporation, new zealand (20072010). the views and conclusions expressed herein are the authors’ and may not reflect those of the funders. ethical approval for the study came from the new zealand health and disability multi-region ethics committee (mec/07/07/093). authors susan mcallister university of otago sarah derrett university of otago & massey university s.l.derrett@massey.ac.nz gabrielle davie university of otago rob mcgee university of otago publishing timeline received 2 june 2014 accepted 25 july 2014 published 31 december 2014 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ injury characteristics and eq-5d as predictors of personal wellbeing after injury mcallister, derrett, davie, & mcgee (2014) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 references albrecht, g.l. & devlieger, p.j. 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(2021). social wellbeing in scotland – the ‘career network’ of a policy concept. international journal of wellbeing, 11(1), 89-105. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i1.1235 elke heins university of edinburgh elke.heins@ed.ac.uk copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 article social wellbeing in scotland – the ‘career network’ of a policy concept elke heins · hartwig pautz abstract: scotland presents a case where ‘social wellbeing’ as a policy concept and a societal aspiration has had considerable traction over the past decade. wellbeing is now, according to scotland’s outcomes-based national performance framework, at the centre of local and national policy-making. this article, by employing the analytical lens of governance networks, discusses how wellbeing has become such a prominent policy concept in scotland by focusing on the actors that were promoting it. the article first maps the development of the concept through an analysis of the connections among the actors which make up the ‘wellbeing coalition’ and then discusses the role that these different actors played. interviews and published documents form the basis for the analysis and also feed into software-supported social network analysis. the analysis shows that the scottish government is taking a central position in a fairly extensive wellbeing network composed almost exclusively of public and third sector organisations, with a very limited number of organisations being particularly prominent over the past decade. contrary to expectations, the scottish media took relatively little interest in the ‘wellbeing debate’, and academics played only a minor role. it also highlights how concurrent domestic and international political developments contributed to putting wellbeing on the agenda in scotland, in particular the global financial crisis. keywords: social wellbeing; scotland; public policy; governance networks; social network analysis 1. introduction: going ‘beyond gdp’ although never intended to measure anything else than economic output, gross domestic product (gdp) has become a proxy indicator for social progress and national wellbeing. however, there have long been doubts about the suitability of equating economic growth with ‘social wellbeing’ (see kennedy, 1968; kuznets, 1934 for early criticisms). following white (2010), we define social wellbeing (from here simply ‘wellbeing’) as a social process with material, relational, and subjective dimensions and shaped by the relationships between the individual and the collective, including the government. this is not to be confused with other understandings of wellbeing such as purely individual and psychological ones, although there clearly is a link to what is sometimes discussed as ‘happiness’ or subjective wellbeing (arcidiacono and di martino, 2016; clark et al., 2018; forgeard et al., 2011). most prominently among the criticisms of gdp features the fact that the economic growth it measures is based on the depletion of natural resources and environmental pollution and therefore undermines the very foundations of wellbeing. furthermore, as a measure of aggregate wealth, gdp does not about:blank social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 say anything about the distribution of this wealth and any resulting inequalities (bache and reardon, 2016; giovannini and rondinella, 2018; stiglitz et al., 2009). the debate about what really indicates wellbeing has gained considerable global attention since the global financial crisis and the following great recession. already in 2007, the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd), the european commission and other international institutions urged statistical offices to ‘produce high-quality, facts-based information that can be used by all of society to form a shared view of societal well-being and its evolution over time’ (european commission, 2007; also oecd, 2018). most importantly, concerns about the suitability of measures of economic growth as indicators of social progress have led to the set-up, by the french government, of the ‘commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress’ in 2008. led by a nobel prize laureate in economics, joseph stiglitz, the commission made a number of recommendations, including ‘to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being’ (stiglitz et al., 2009, p12) and to establish ‘national roundtables’ to elaborate ‘a shared view of how social progress is happening and how it can be sustained over time’ (stiglitz et al., 2009, p18). this call amplified existing interest in ‘thinking beyond gdp’ across the world (wallace and schmuecker, 2012), but not everywhere has measuring wellbeing become an ‘official’ highprofile governmental task, and wellbeing indexes differ (elliott et al., 2017). among the pioneers were countries as different as australia (australian bureau of statistics, 2001), canada (canadian index of wellbeing, 2011), or taiwan (national statistics republic of china (taiwan), n.d). new zealand, another frontrunner in the international wellbeing debate (dalziel and saunders, 2014), was the first country to announce a ‘wellbeing budget’ in 2019. among the countries where the wellbeing debate has taken off is also the united kingdom (uk) (see bache and reardon, 2016). the uk office for national statistics (ons) measures wellbeing along ten domains. ‘personal wellbeing’ is the first of these domains on the ons website – expressing the uk government’s commitment since 2012 ‘to measuring people’s “individual” and “psychological” wellbeing, using indicators such as “satisfaction”, “anxiety” and “happiness”’ (la placa et al., 2013, p117). the wellbeing debate in the uk’s devolved nations has taken notably different forms. in wales, the focus is on sustainable development; in northern ireland on creating a vision for a post-conflict society; while in scotland the wellbeing concept is linked to a new way of managing government performance (wallace, 2019). out of the four nations and more so than the uk as a whole, scotland is seen by some as among the ‘wellbeing worldbeaters’ (fischer, 2019). together with iceland and new zealand, it was also a founding member of the wellbeing economy governments (wego) initiative. indeed, as this article will outline, heeding stiglitz’ call, a first wellbeing roundtable was set up by a third sector organisation in 2010 and then, later, a further one by the devolved scottish government itself. in 2018, ‘wellbeing’ was literally placed at the centre of scotland’s national performance framework (npf), an outcomes-based approach setting out policy direction and ambition for scotland and employing a range of indicators (currently 81, organised along eleven domains called ‘national outcomes’) for measuring progress. at the centre of the visualisation of the npf are a value and a purpose statement. scotland’s purpose includes the explicit aim ‘to flourish through increased wellbeing, and sustainable and inclusive economic growth’ (see figure 1 below). it would be fair, therefore, to claim that over the past decade the concept of wellbeing has experienced something of a ‘career’ in scotland. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 figure 1. scotland’s national performance framework source: scottish government (2018) that scotland’s policy community – including civil servants, members of the scottish parliament (msps), government ministers, critical journalists, and anti-poverty campaigners – should be interested in wellbeing is perhaps no big surprise given scotland’s record of persistent social problems around poverty and inequalities (e.g. scottish government, 2019). as this article shows, for many in the scottish policy community gdp has ceased to be an appropriate way of capturing the country’s social progress. twenty years into devolution and the re-establishment of the scottish parliament, many deem gdp unsuitable as a framework for discussing ‘scottish solutions for scottish problems’ (stewart, 2004). beyond the social statistics, scotland could be considered a most likely case for significant interest in the discussion of wellbeing because of the widespread sentiment, empirically true or not, of scotland having a ‘more social democratic’ and ‘more egalitarian’ national character in comparison to the uk as a whole (for the debate see http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 curtice and ormston, 2011; rosie and bond, 2007; wigmore, 2015). if these two factors are combined with the notion of a ‘scottish policy style’ (keating, 2005; also cairney et al., 2016) – a more consultative and cooperative partnership approach to policy-making and implementation between scottish governments, irrespective of political ‘colour’, and civil society actors compared to policy-making in westminster – opportunities may exist for the wellbeing debate to instigate a third-order paradigm change (hall, 1993) in scottish economic and social policy. the wellbeing debate thus deserves a thorough analysis on a number of accounts, and it is surprising that so far only few authors have looked at the scottish case in detail (most notably wallace, 2019). this article asks how the wellbeing concept developed in the specific scottish context, how it ‘arrived’ on scotland’s public agenda, and who the actors responsible for its ‘career’ were. based on a theoretical framework of governance networks, a perspective that to our knowledge has not yet been applied to the wellbeing debate, we are in particular interested in the role of the scottish government in this ‘career network’. to understand this network better, we have used social network analysis (sna). we do not scrutinise whether the incorporation of wellbeing in the npf has resulted in changes in policy outputs and outcomes in scotland – this is an important discussion to be had in detail elsewhere. the article’s interest in the actor constellation responsible for developing a wellbeing agenda in scotland is inspired by observations that a strong and strategically focussed actor coalition is required to support its transformation into a governmental policy agenda (wallace, 2013). similarly, wallace and schmuecker (2012), looking at six international case studies to identify the conditions which ensure that wellbeing measures influence policy-making practice, found that a combination of strong leadership by politicians or civil society organisations, a broad coalition of support based on civil society and citizen engagement, and effective presentation and communication that gets media buy-in were important for establishing a policy-making approach that takes wellbeing seriously. for scotland, a systematic analysis which takes these factors into account has not been conducted so far. the article proceeds as follows. after presenting the analytical framework and methodology, scotland’s wellbeing coalition is analysed with the aim of identifying starting points, critical moments, and shifts and changes in the composition of the network that pushed the career of the concept in scotland. the article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical framework of governance networks and highlights in how far scotland’s specific actor coalition was effective (or not) in promoting the concept of wellbeing onto the public agenda to the degree that we can expect an actual change in policy outputs and outcomes. by doing so, the article makes a theoretical, methodological and substantive contribution. 2. governance networks as a theoretical framework the analysis theoretically builds on the framework of governance networks to understand the ‘career’ of the wellbeing concept in scotland. governance networks have been defined as ‘networks of independent actors that contribute to the production of public governance’ and include key actors from state, economy and civil society (torfing, 2012, p100). the interaction in these networks is characterised by negotiations that might take the form of interest-based, conflictual bargaining or more compromise-seeking deliberation aimed at arriving at a shared understanding of challenges and possible solutions (torfing, 2012). the concept of governance networks implies a shift from ‘government to governance’ (rhodes, 1997), meaning that government becomes just one of many actors responsible for public policy. what this concept tries to emphasise is that horizontal relationships between governmental and other organisations are more important for how policy is made in contrast to http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 policy-making in more hierarchical traditional public administrations (klijn and koppenjan, 2016). however, contrary to early claims of a ‘hollowed out state’ (e.g. rhodes, 2007) as a consequence of this shift, later literature has argued that governments continue to hold central policy-making positions as they influence and manage these networks (torfing, 2012). arguably such a central position has allowed governments to mobilise expertise from all quarters to influence bargaining and deliberation (jessop, 1998). noteworthy is the importance of scientific expertise in this context. authors in the field of international relations, for example, have suggested that well-informed and consensus-seeking discussions within advocacy coalitions, expert committees, transnational networks and ‘epistemic communities’ (haas, 1992) lead to more efficient, effective and higher quality political regulation of international decision-making and global governance (nanz and steffek, 2004). as most governance networks are dominated by experts, public agencies and political elites, some have warned that network governance raises serious issues regarding equity, accountability, and democratic legitimacy (bogason and musso, 2006). conversely, others propose that they could play an important role in facilitating and enhancing civic engagement and wider democratic participation (torfing, 2012). the importance of expertise in policy-making has also been increased by a turn towards ‘evidence-based’ or ‘evidence-informed’ policy-making that emphasises policy solutions ‘which work’ over supposedly ideological policies, an approach promoted in the uk since the mid-1990s (davies et al., 2000). in scotland, the scottish national party (snp) has likewise been a keen proponent of ‘evidence-based policy-making’ since it first came to power in 2007 (sanderson, 2011; for a history of the term and a critique see boaz et al., 2019; cairney, 2017). considering the article’s objectives, the lens of governance networks appears as particularly suitable for three reasons. first, governance networks can be seen as a mode of governance that relies on multilateral action involving a plethora of government and non-government actors and is often used to address socially and politically complex and uncertain ‘wicked problems’ demanding expert knowledge (torfing, 2012). establishing a new way to measure societal progress beyond gdp is arguably such a wicked problem (bache and reardon, 2016), and one that has gained salience since the global financial crisis and great recession. second, wellbeing is a broad concept with a variety of interpretations and can therefore be expected to attract a diverse and broad coalition of supporters from across the political spectrum and from a wide range of societal interests. third, the concept of governance networks seems suitable to analyse the ‘career’ of wellbeing also because of what was already referred to as a specific ‘scottish policy style’ (keating 2005), characterised by a more consultative and cooperative partnership approach to policy-making and implementation between government and civil society actors. given all this, sna was chosen as a method to empirically test assumptions based on governance networks, in particular regarding the role of the government. 3. methods and data sna was chosen as a method to generate a better – in particular ‘broader picture’ – understanding of the ‘patterns of relations among social or political actors’ which constitute the wellbeing coalition. these patterns are a type of structure which show ‘important aspects of social organization that are not captured by the study of individual attributes or characteristics’ (ward et al., 2011, p246). the network patterns, sna assumes, have explanatory power relating to actions and non-actions and to the development of ideas and ideology. methodologically, sna is based on two critical decisions: which actors to include or exclude and how to measure or categorize the ties between them (perliger and pedahzur, 2011, p47). regarding the first decision, for this article an inclusive approach was adopted because the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 nature of the actor constellation in question is such that organisational members who seemed peripheral at one point could have been important at another point. the second decision is about the characterisation of the nature of the ties between the organisations in the focus of this article. many researchers employing sna develop this characterisation using detail gleaned from questionnaires, interviews, observations, archival records, or experiments (ward et al., 2011). for the analysis of the scottish wellbeing coalition, different sources in the form of reports, policy documents, government websites as well as secondary research literature and news articles have been used to create a database of all organisations involved in the wellbeing debate in scotland and across the uk. among the identified organisations are think tanks, government agencies, the scottish government itself, civil society organisations, and academic institutes. as a second step to map organisations of relevance to the scottish wellbeing debate and to compile the database, semi-structured interviews with ten individuals with expertise in the wellbeing debate in scotland were conducted – civil servants, representatives of civil society organisations, academics, and politicians. the interviews, conducted between july 2018 and april 2019, explored interviewees’ perceptions of how the ‘career’ of wellbeing unfolded and which actors were driving the debate. interviewees were also asked to rank organisations and specific individuals – identified during the mapping exercise undertaken for the creation of the database – in order of importance to verify the relevance of specific actors and also make sure that no actor was missed out. this made it possible to arrive at a reliably complete set of actors and a good understanding of their significance and roles over time. this data was fed into social network analysis software (gephi version 0.92) to create a network graph (see figure 2 below) which presents a retrospective view of the main actors in the scottish wellbeing network over a period from about 2010 to 2018 based on the analysis of documents and the interviews conducted for this article. 4. analysis – the wellbeing network in scotland the social network graph (figure 2) shows a wide range of different actors in positions of relative centrality or peripherality to each other. the scottish government appears as a central actor in this network with connections to a large number of organisations. it also shows that, out of many civil society organisations identified as stakeholders in the debate, in particular two – carnegie uk trust and oxfam scotland – have a large number of connections to the scottish government and to other organisations in the wellbeing network. furthermore, the scottish parliament’s own think tank, the scottish futures forum (sff) as well as the scottish universities insight institute (suii) – a joint effort of several scottish universities to foster knowledge exchange – are welllinked to the scottish government and other organisations, including oxfam scotland and the carnegie uk trust. the graph shows the oecd as the only non-uk actor in the scottish wellbeing debate, while organisations of much relevance for the wider uk debate, such as the office for national statistics (ons) and the new economics foundation think tank (nef) (see bache and reardon, 2016; forgeard et al. 2011), are rather peripheral. in the following, the network graph will be discussed in conjunction with insights from interview and document analysis with the aim of exploring the significance of the various actors in the wellbeing network. this approach allows the fact that the wellbeing governance network went through change over time to be taken into account. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 figure 2. wellbeing network scotland (fruchterman reingold algorithm) 4.1 unintended consequences – how a new mode of governance set the foundations for the wellbeing concept while, as stated earlier, the ‘beyond gdp’ debate is by no means a recent development, prior to global financial crisis and great recession it had not captured the interest of the scottish policy community generally. in combination with the crises, the 2007 elections to the scottish parliament, which allowed the centre-left snp to establish a minority government supported by the green party, were an important moment in the career of wellbeing in scotland. the snp was perceived as coming to power prepared with policy ideas, willing to challenge the inertia which had, according to a former government advisor, developed under the previous coalition governments of labour party and liberal democrats (interview 1). as several interviewees pointed out, most crucial for the development of wellbeing as a policy aim were plans to transform how the civil service operated (see also wallace, 2019). at the heart of this transformation was to be a shift away from the focus on inputs and outputs to an ‘outcomesbased’ approach to encourage collaboration across departments and between local and national level on the foundations of a single and shared purpose (birrell and gray, 2018; cook, 2017). central to this approach was the introduction of the national performance framework (npf), a set of initially 15 national outcomes and 45 indicators. it sought to present a 10-year vision for scotland under one main purpose: ‘to focus government and public services on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth’ (scottish government, 2007). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 shortly after the npf’s launch, in november 2007 the scottish government added a measuring and reporting tool on the progress reached against the npf indicators. known as ‘scotland performs’, it was based on the ‘virginia performs’ model from the united states (scottish government, 2017; wallace, 2019). to some in the scottish policy community, the npf was a ‘genuine attempt to look at overall performance of society in scotland in a more rounded way’, as an academic observer and early participant of the wellbeing debate said (interview 2). while ‘sustainable economic growth’, a concept that had by then become mainstream throughout europe, sat at its core, the npf would, much later, prove crucial for the wellbeing agenda. for the time being, the process of developing the npf established a close rapport and effective working relationships between the new government and the civil service. in particular, john elvidge, permanent secretary to the scottish government between 2003 and 2010, and john swinney, cabinet secretary for finance and sustainable growth (2007-2016) and a senior figure in the snp, were key actors in driving forward this new approach. as a former senior civil servant said: ‘the partnership of john swinney and john elvidge was absolutely crucial in terms of the npf, and the trust that they had and taking a leap of faith in doing government in a different way’ (interview 3). with a permanent secretary and a government open to novel approaches, the civil service at the time was given the space to start an exploration of ideas ‘beyond gdp’. government and civil servants were ‘quite enthusiastic’ in terms of engaging in discussions with stakeholders, as an academic participant of the wellbeing debate said: ‘i felt that the government or the civil servants were reaching out’ (interview 2). and while ‘civil servants understandably can be quite guarded, careful that they don’t overexcite the expectations’, as somebody involved in discussions at the time stated (interview 2), in this case timing and constellation were conducive to instigate change: ‘you need to marry both [the civil service and political] perspectives to work. that timing worked really well’, as a civil servant found (interview 10). in sum, for the development of the npf the close relationship between elected politicians and civil service was crucial, as was the interest of the new government to do things differently and also to learn from elsewhere. while the npf was a significant innovation and was implemented quickly after the snp had come to power, the concept of wellbeing took much longer to have impact on governmental thinking. this was so even though the term ‘wellbeing’ had been used by earlier scottish governments already, but mostly in relation to health or children’s services rather than in relation to societal progress. only the financial and economic crises changed that: ‘ironically, wellbeing got impetus when economists picked up on this’, as a senior civil servant said (interview 4). however, even under dramatically different economic circumstances and with a changing view even within mainstream economics on what kind of growth may constitute societal progress, it took many years for wellbeing to become an explicit and central concept in scottish politics. in the npf ‘refresh’ from 2011, economic growth measured by gdp was still central and wellbeing was not explicitly mentioned. 4.2 gaining momentum – civil society as a catalyst it was scottish civil society which took up the wellbeing concept first and gave it a ‘career boost’. the carnegie uk trust followed the stiglitz commission’s recommendation to set up ‘national roundtables’ and, in 2010, established the ‘roundtable on measuring economic performance and social progress in scotland’. here, it gathered academics, scottish and local government officials, representatives from third sector and business, a journalist, and also sir john elvidge, who by http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 then had retired as permanent secretary to the scottish government and would later become a carnegie fellow and in 2017 the chair of the trust. their task was to review the findings of the stiglitz commission and discuss how they might apply to scotland (carnegie uk trust, 2011). amongst the roundtable members, the carnegie trust’s leading role in setting up and running the roundtable was uncontroversial due to ‘the space that carnegie occupies as an organisation, independent from government, people trust it’, as one roundtable member described the trust’s position as a broker (interview 5). while the carnegie trust set up the roundtable under the impressions of financial and economic crises and the beginning ‘age of austerity’, it also had identified scotland as fertile ground for this experiment because many in the policy community understood the npf as a ‘wellbeing framework in all but in name’ (interview 5). some of the roundtable participants perceived the roundtable to be influential ‘in shifting the language around wellbeing’ in scotland’s policy community (interview 3), and the final report more than gdp: measuring what matters’ left no doubt that the trust sought to push wellbeing as a central concept in the discussions. this report, while stating that the npf was a useful framework that had been ‘ahead of the curve’ when first introduced, recommended that the npf should be adapted to regard wellbeing as more than gdp in order to meet the stiglitz commission’s recommendations (carnegie uk trust, 2011, p24f). however, the roundtable had little direct influence on the scottish government; it also stimulated little public debate: ‘the report was a really slow burner and went flat after a bit of flurry after its launch’ (interview 5). this may explain why the 2011 npf refresh made no mention of wellbeing; only some of the newly included npf indicators ‘provide an overall picture of individual and societal wellbeing in scotland […] beyond gdp’, as a briefing to the scottish parliament noted (spice, 2012, p14). at around the same time as the carnegie roundtable was convened, a number of third sector organisations came together independently of the trust’s efforts to discuss their shared criticism of the npf’s focus on economic growth. in september 2011, oxfam scotland, the world wildlife fund (wwf) and friends of the earth scotland (foes), supported by some further civil society organisations, prepared a briefing for the scottish parliament to challenge this focus and to also highlight that, in their view, there was a paucity of data on wellbeing, equality and environmental impact of economic activity (friends of the earth et al., 2011). this cooperation was important as it introduced, with oxfam scotland, a new actor into the emergent wellbeing governance network which at this point was developing mainly around the carnegie trust. oxfam scotland made a place for itself in the wellbeing governance network primarily through its work on the ‘humankind index’ (hki). the hki was developed in collaboration with the new economics foundation (nef) and other smaller think tanks to show what ‘communities across scotland say is important to them in making a good life’ (oxfam, 2013, p4). it was supported also by the carnegie uk trust. the most influential aspect of this project – resulting in a first report in 2012 and an update in 2013 – was probably its method. for the hki, oxfam undertook a large-scale ‘participatory consultation’ which involved around 3000 people from across scotland. while wellbeing was an important, but not central term in the two hki reports, the hki made clear that gdp growth was not what ‘the people of scotland’ wanted to lead better lives. the report was unexpectedly successful, not least due to the consultation method used: ‘it had more of a high moral ground to go to policy-makers and say “how can you ignore something that is the product of a consultation with 3000 people?”’ (interview 6). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 crucial to this success were oxfam scotland’s efforts to make the hki a subject of parliamentary debate and to involve joseph stiglitz as a supporter of the findings and recommendations of the hki project. in 2011, he had become part of the scottish government’s council of economic advisers – a largely symbolic role, but still his calling into the council demonstrated that the scottish government was open to ‘thinking beyond gdp’. before stiglitz gave evidence to a scottish parliament committee in a session on alternatives to gdp, oxfam scotland briefed him so that he duly praised the hki, but also the npf (stiglitz, 2013). lobbying efforts such as these around the ‘gap between npf and hki’ (interview 9) paid off – as one member of the scottish parliament (msp) said: ‘professor stiglitz had an impression on me, and also the experience of other countries […] this was all coming together’ (interview 8). a civil servant confirmed the relevance of international debates and academic work on wellbeing, inequality and growth: ‘the evidence was quite important that was coming out of the imf and the oecd and some of the academic work, stiglitz on gdp, the inequality debate’ (interview 10). the position of the oecd in the network graph, but also the proximity and well-connected nature of the scottish universities insight institute, underpin this statement. in its efforts to promote thinking beyond gdp, representatives of the oecd and affiliates such as its former chief statistician enrico giovannini frequently spoke at knowledge exchange and other public events following the momentum created by the carnegie roundtable. some of these events were facilitated by the scottish futures forum, the scottish parliament’s think tank, and suii. the oecd’s involvement would prove to be a lasting one, as it continues to shape the wellbeing debate by supporting the wellbeing economy governments (wego) alliance between scotland, iceland and new zealand, launched formally in 2019 at the oecd’s wellbeing forum (trebeck, 2019). in addition to these international influences, it was in particular the parliamentary debate on the hki which demonstrated to john swinney, one of the key architects of the npf, that the framework was not perceived to measure what people in scotland thought important for a ‘good society’ (scottish parliament, 2012). as a consequence, swinney set up the cross-party ‘scotland performs roundtable’ in 2013. as well as including representatives from all parties in the scottish parliament, members of the civil service’s performance unit and the convention of scottish local authorities – cosla, the local government umbrella group – a range of third sector organisations were invited to join, among them carnegie uk trust and oxfam scotland. at this roundtable, carnegie was perceived to be closely aligned to the scottish government and seen as the most powerful actor, besides the government. oxfam, with its positions more critical of scotland’s gdp focus and more keen on ensuring that wellbeing would be clearly defined as ‘social wellbeing’, was also an important actor: ‘i think the civil servants realised that carnegie were the most active and the most supportive of their agenda. so, they kept them quite close, they kept oxfam quite close as well’, as a roundtable participant remarked (interview 9). no doubt, however, the roundtable was determined by swinney and his civil servants: ‘it was a bit like, we’d have input, and they’d usually make a decision, the minister. and carnegie would always support the minister’s decision’ (interview 9). nonetheless, even though carnegie was keen on highlighting scotland’s pioneering role in outcomes-based approaches – ‘saying that scotland was great, straight into an snp line that scotland is great’ – their advocacy efforts were key to anchoring wellbeing in legislation with the incorporation of the npf in the community empowerment act (scottish parliament, 2015), thus putting the npf on statutory footing (interview 9; see also wallace, 2019). other roundtable participants, from outside government, were less active than carnegie and oxfam scotland. for example, the msps contributed only few ideas and concentrated on http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 challenging and scrutinising what was brought to the table by others. the trade unions, via the scottish trades union congress (stuc), only became seriously interested in the npf when they understood that their own ‘decent work’ agenda could be reflected in the next npf (interview 6). neither the cross-party nature of the roundtable nor the control exerted by government over its agenda and modus operandi were seen as problematic as all roundtable members were signed up to the catch-all goal of ‘wellbeing’. furthermore, no-one minded that the wellbeing approach with its interest in inequality and structural issues and its disregard of individual problems and solutions (dominating the subjective wellbeing and happiness debate held in england at the same time) could play into the narrative of ‘substantial difference’ between scotland and england (interview 5). in sum, the wellbeing concept proved one which neither elicited much conflict nor dissent beyond ‘some discussions around the details of indicators, e.g. what makes a good measure’, as one participant remembers (interview 4). was the government roundtable the moment of ‘breakthrough’ of wellbeing as a key concept in scotland? it certainly was set up after criticism of the npf and of how the scottish government, according to ‘the people’ as represented in the hki, was not ‘doing the right thing’. but the roundtable was not an ‘activist’ forum, it was largely government-controlled and therefore unlikely to produce highly radical departures from existing approaches. nonetheless, over the duration of the roundtable the government increasingly took on board the wider wellbeing debate, and its performance unit actively participated in a number of knowledge exchange events on wellbeing (suii, 2014). this shift in outlook was complemented by a paradigm change which introduced a related concept pushed by the oced, that of ‘inclusive growth’, into the scottish government’s vocabulary (interview 10). 4.3 wellbeing at the centre – civil society or government in control of the agenda? the 2018 revamp of the npf finally put wellbeing firmly – also visually – at the centre of the scottish government’s purpose statement (see figure 1 above). despite the central position of wellbeing, economic growth – now labelled ‘inclusive’ – continues to feature highly in the npf, making clear that the scottish government does not wish to replace gdp, but rather supplement it with other indicators. this change in emphasis of the npf was preceded by a large-scale consultation in 2016/17 (scottish parliament, 2018). the desire to very publicly involve ‘the people of scotland’ in this latest revision of the npf stemmed from the impact of the hki’s participatory method and the legitimacy oxfam scotland’s recommendations derived from it (interview 2). by adopting this method, the government tried to address a longstanding criticism of the npf, namely that the npf was never based on a wider consultation on what it should include (carnegie, 2011). the scottish government asked the carnegie uk trust to lead this consultative effort to reduce the risk that the central question – ‘what kind of scotland would you like?’ – could be seen as part of the snp’s continuing campaign for scottish independence, after the setback of the failed referendum on scottish independence from 2014. carnegie, in turn, approached oxfam scotland due to their prior experience with the hki. when the new npf was launched in 2018, the consultation itself and that it was undertaken by a third party was important for the government as it made it easier to present the npf as something beyond partisan lines: ‘the new framework […] is not something we see as being solely a scottish government document. it has been driven by responses, ideas and proposals from individuals and organisations across the country’, as the first minister said upon the npf launch, also praising the sign-up by all parliamentary parties to the npf (scottish government, 2018). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 100 the analysis has so far shown that the governance network that emerged around the concept of wellbeing between 2010 and 2018 evolved in ways which made the scottish government a central actor, taking up the challenge, albeit reluctantly, from a range of scottish civil society organisations to change the way that scotland measures social progress. the analysis has also demonstrated that among the many scottish civil society organisations interested in the ‘beyond gdp’ debate only the carnegie uk trust and oxfam scotland had central positions within the network for much of the period analysed. what the graph does not show, but what the interviews highlighted, is that the ties between the organisations suggest a rather loose, informal and nonhierarchical network: ‘at various points organisations came together, mainly for the roundtable, but it was no organised campaign that put wellbeing at the centre of the npf. everyone had their different campaign priorities and wanted to push the government for that’, as a member of the roundtable said (interview 7). the governance network proved to be an open one. some interviewees, however, described it as comprising only ‘the usual suspects’: ‘everybody sort of knew everybody. when you went to these events you mainly met “the converted”. there was a feeling that there were “harder edged” folk who don’t buy it’ (interview 3) and thus did not take part in these discussions, as a former civil servant said. one omission from the government’s roundtable were academic experts: ‘they never brought in some of the academics which were looking at wellbeing frameworks or policy frameworks more generally’ (interview 6). academics were involved, however, in several events organised by scotland’s futures forum and suii (suii, n.d.). this relative lack of academics, specifically economists, is in stark contrast to the wellbeing and happiness debate in westminster. a second notable omission was that of business. while initially some in the business community were sceptical about the wellbeing agenda, ‘now nobody bats an eyelid’ and the relationships between growth, productivity, wellbeing, and inequality are accepted even though ‘the scottish chamber, the cbi, took a bit longer to get the broader connections. but they weren’t excluded or antagonistic’ (interview 10). finally, a surprising dearth of media interest characterises the scottish wellbeing debate. only the hki gained some national media coverage when published (see carrell, 2012). overall, the success of the wellbeing concept – if measured by its ‘arrival’ at the heart of the npf in 2018 – seems to have been pushed by a number of quite different actors and seems to have been largely uncontroversial. what explains this broad buy-in? one explanation for its attractiveness is that wellbeing is a fairly vague concept, and including it in the npf was unlikely to prove costly. while no political party or actor wanted to be seen taking positions ‘against wellbeing’ – not even those opposed to replacing gdp – it was clear to roundtable participants that the scottish government was unlikely to introduce radical measures and that the roundtable was mostly a mechanism to create consensus in the ‘scottish policy style’. for the snp itself the wellbeing agenda has been advantageous as ‘it allows people to tell a story of scotland being a wellbeing country. that story serves the current establishment’, as a roundtable member said (interview 9), similar to how the npf provides the snp with a tool to set out a future image of an independent scotland: ‘establishing broad goals (and outcomes) around which the government can attempt to build consensus has been part of the snp strategy to build the idea of the ‘nation’ and translate it to the concerns of day-to-day policy. however, the party must also develop a vision of what an independent scotland would be like’ (arnott and ozga, 2010, p95-96). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 101 5. discussion and conclusion based on a methodology of document analysis, interviews and social network analysis, this article developed a broad picture understanding of the wellbeing network in scotland. this analysis has shown that the concept of wellbeing made it to the centre of the scottish government’s policy-making and that the scottish government, over time, moved into the centre of the scottish wellbeing network. this happened in the context of the international ‘beyond gdp’ debate following the global financial crisis. initially, it was a small number of civil society organisations which critically questioned what social progress should look like and how it ought to be measured. this coincided with the scottish government’s new approach to public performance management in the form of the npf. while the term was initially not part of the npf’s vocabulary – rather, (sustainable) economic growth measured by gdp was at the centre of the first npf – the wellbeing concept was not at odds with the new outcomes-based approach. as described, lobbying efforts by a range of civil society organisations eventually contributed to wellbeing appearing centrally in the npf in 2018. the sna, as employed here, has limitations in that no data was produced that could be used to measure the strength of relationships between organisations and the impact of organisations at specific points in time in a longitudinal way. however, interviews were able to add extra depth beyond the network graph. the findings support claims made by wallace and schmuecker (2012) that strong leadership by civil society organisations – in this case the carnegie trust uk and oxfam scotland – and a broad coalition of supporters as shown in the network graph are important for policy concepts to make a breakthrough. no doubt, the timing of financial and economic crises and npf was important for the successful career of the concept. however, what also contributed to this career is that wellbeing is a vague, yet ‘common-sense’ concept and is open enough to bring together a wide range of stakeholders. the article shows that one factor discussed by wallace and schmuecker as important to for policy concepts to succeed hardly existed in scotland – the media showed little interest in the wellbeing debate. academics were less involved than the proposition, as discussed earlier, that expertise is used by governments to create consensus in governance networks would have led to expect. the variety of actors participating in the ‘beyond gdp’ debate has had an impact on how scotland adopted its specific approach to wellbeing. unlike in other countries, developing the wellbeing framework was not a technocratic exercise handed over to the statistical office. rather, it was a wider social debate with many stakeholders, well-managed by the scottish government. the findings do not show a ‘hollowed-out state’ as a result of network governance in scotland. also, the governance network that was established was clearly based on compromiseseeking deliberation rather than conflict. in that sense, the case of wellbeing is in line with claims of a ‘scottish style’ as the roundtable proved an effective mechanism for integrating all actors into a framework which reduced political value conflicts and did so under government ‘stakeholder management’. however, the quest to establish a broad consensus on what wellbeing means and how it should be measured may have diluted the potential effectiveness of the term itself. while wellbeing has become a frequently used term in public and political discourse, it is debatable whether it so far has led to substantially different policies even where they were explicitly designed to increase wellbeing rather than just gdp. for this reason, future research should examine whether an explicit outcome-based approach, such as that of the npf with wellbeing at its heart, actually leads to improved outcomes. while the examination of policy outcomes was not the aim of this article, it seems clear http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ social wellbeing in scotland heins & pautz www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 102 that little progress has been made on most of the indicators (see performance of national indicators as of 13th may 2020, scottish government, n.d.). while the outcomes appear to be disappointing so far, the institutionalisation of an outcomefocused approach which holds government to account via the npf and involves a broad governance network of public, third sector and private organisations and actors has put the wellbeing perspective on a firm basis in scottish policy-making for years to come. the commitment to wellbeing will be seriously tested in the context of the developing policy response in the aftermath of the most recent economic crisis caused by the 2020 covid-19 virus pandemic and the costly ‘lockdown’ of public and economic life. this crisis is likely 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(2015). social democratic scotland: a country that doesn’t exist. new statesman, 28 march. online https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/03/social-democratic-scotland-country-doesntexist. [accessed 17th march 2020] http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781847424716.003.0006 about:blank about:blank about:blank https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560530.013.0007 about:blank about:blank https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02230-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02230-3 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.12.040907.115949 https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520903564199 jongbloed, j., & andres, l. (2015). elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing: a mixedmethods approach. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 1-20. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.1 janine jongbloed iredu/université de bourgogne janine_jongbloed@etu.u-bourgogne.fr copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing: a mixed-methods approach janine jongbloed · lesley andres abstract: in this study we examine the constructs “happiness” and “wellbeing” in a sample of canadian women and men in mid-adulthood. through a sequential mixed-methods approach, we utilize sen and nussbaum’s conceptualizations of capabilities to inform the themes generated from semi-structured interviews. we find that participants understand happiness and wellbeing as two distinct constructs that are illuminated in the metaphors happiness as balance and the gears of wellbeing. second, we corroborate these constructs through a principal component analysis of questionnaire data. we conclude that happiness and wellbeing are not static entities, but rather iterative processes that are constantly in flux and determined by the fulfillment of the often contradictory needs for (1) goal-achievement and an acceptance of reality, and (2) freedom along with meaning-making, which often involves creating restraints in one’s life. these findings have important implications for those using happiness and wellbeing as policy outcome measures. keywords: happiness, wellbeing, interviews, survey research, mixed methods, canada. 1. background the study of happiness, as well as the closely related terms life satisfaction, wellbeing, and subjective wellbeing (swb), has grown in popularity over the past decades (gilbert, 2006; helliwell, layard, & sachs, 2012; mcmahon, 2006). numerous literature reviews on this topic have been written in recent years within the discipline of psychology (e.g., diener, suh, lucas, & smith, 1999; dolan, peasgood, & white, 2008; kahneman & krueger, 2006) and economics (e.g., blanchflower & oswald, 2004; helliwell & putnam, 2004). human wellbeing has been described as “the ultimate ‘dependent variable’,” that is, the outcome from which all other outcomes derive importance (helliwell & putnam, 2004, p. 1435). other outcomes, such as income and occupational status attainments, are typically valued because they are perceived as contributing to wellbeing. the most exciting aspect of wellbeing research is that it unites different kinds of social scientists from around the world (blanchflower & oswald, 2004). however, this leads to multiple and often contradictory theories and conceptions of wellbeing. there are many different interpretations of wellbeing in the literature. these approaches can be separated into three main groups: approaches that emphasize desire-fulfillment, which dominate the economic literature; approaches that focus on hedonic pleasure or “feeling good,” which are prominent in the psychological literature; and approaches that propose lists or models of what people need, such as nussbaum’s (2011) objective list of capabilities and the eudaimonic approaches to wellbeing found in psychology (jayawickreme, forgeard, & seligman, 2012; nussbaum, 2011). these can be summed up succinctly as “wanting,” “liking,” and “needing” theories (dolan & white, 2007), and have been classified into similar categories by other http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 researchers (parfit, 1984). most approaches fall into one of these groups, although others attempt to unite the three into a holistic approach, such as the theory of “flourishing” proposed in different forms by diener et al. (2010), keyes (2002), and seligman (2011). these models and their accompanying survey instruments have received considerable empirical support; however, largely missing in the literature are the voices of laypeople and their real-world understandings of these constructs (hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan, 2014). an exploratory refinement of the concepts, presented here, allows us to bring the voices of people to the forefront, while considering all three theoretical strains and focusing on those that emerge most strongly in the data. this study investigates several issues that remain unresolved. first, researchers are still unable to agree upon concrete definitions of happiness and wellbeing (gilbert, 2006; kahneman, 2011). often, these terms are used synonymously. second, despite growing interest in lay conceptions of happiness and wellbeing (mcmahan & estes, 2010), such perspectives and opinions, especially by those who are not undergraduate psychology students, are largely missing in the literature (delle fave, brdar, freire, vella-brodrick, & wissing, 2011). the lack of real-world understandings is a vital gap in the academic literature on happiness, wellbeing, and flourishing (hone et al., 2014). a third unresolved issue centres on the fact that finding happiness may not be tantamount to finding meaning in life, both of which are often incorporated as important aspects of wellbeing (grouden & jose, 2015; jayawickreme et al., 2012; marar, 2003). for example, meaning-making activities, such as work and family, may not always improve one’s happiness, although they may add meaning, and happiness activities may not always add meaning to one’s life. the tension between happiness and meaning requires further analysis, as a focus on one without the other results in an incomplete conceptualization of wellbeing (nussbaum, 2008). finally, as blanchflower and oswald (2004) point out, there are “limitations to wellbeing statistics” and it is “unlikely that human happiness can be understood without, in part, listening to what human beings say” (p. 1360). in this paper, we strive to refine the conceptualizations “happiness” and “wellbeing” using interview and questionnaire data to better understand how wellbeing can be operationalized to reflect the real world perspectives of individuals. 2. theoretical framework the guiding framework of this study is amartya sen’s capability approach. sen (1985, 1987, 1999) and martha nussbaum (nussbaum & sen, 1993; nussbaum, 2003, 2011) make a distinction between capabilities and functionings when looking at quality-of-life issues. capabilities are all the actions and states that a person is able to do and to be, while functionings are the actions and states actively realized (nussbaum, 2011). the distinction between the two concepts allows for a unique examination of wellbeing. sen’s (1999) famous example is that of a fasting versus a starving person: these two people do not differ in functioning, but obviously differ very much in capability. one person is faced with an environment constraint, which is detrimental to his health, while the other has made a spiritual decision to forgo the food available to her. thus, capabilities are not simply a person’s abilities, but her freedoms or opportunities to achieve various functionings. this freedom resides in the person but the “political, social, and economic environment” (nussbaum, 2011, p. 20) shapes these freedoms, in a bounded type of agency. sen’s and nussbaum’s approaches are based in aristotelian philosophy in that capabilities reflect “the various things a person may value doing or being” (sen, 1999, p. 75). the valued functionings for an individual person “may vary from elementary ones, such as being adequately nourished and being free from avoidable disease, to very complex activities or personal states, elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 such as being able to take part in the life of the community and having self-respect” (sen, 1999, p. 75) . nussbaum (2011) outlines a list of objective capabilities necessary for all people, while sen prefers to rely on societies and groups to decide democratically which capabilities are important for them. both define wellbeing as the real freedoms individuals possess to attain a life that they have reason to value. sen’s account runs counter to a sole focus on subjective measures of happiness such as those found in utilitarian accounts; for example, measuring wellbeing as the number or type of goods that a person possesses, which neglects the person’s own opinion of the value of the items concerned (sen, 1987). these accounts often ignore the distribution of wellbeing in a society and other valuable outcomes other than positive emotion and are easily influenced by adaptation and mental conditioning. he asserts that “as a mental state concept, the perspective of happiness may give a very limited view of other mental activities” (sen, 1985, p. 188) and argues that happiness and wellbeing are two separate constructs. he states that although “happiness is of obvious and direct relevance to wellbeing, it is inadequate as a representation of wellbeing” (p. 189). wellbeing, as sen (1999) defines it, is a much larger concept that includes multiple facets of a person’s functionings and capabilities, only one of which is happiness. one’s capability set determines one’s wellbeing by providing one with the ability to live out a meaningful life that one has reason to value. thus, sen aligns wellbeing more closely with meaning-making opportunities and activities than with positive emotion. 3. method the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether participants understand and experience happiness and wellbeing as unitary or differentiated constructs, as described in sen’s (1985) argument above. our analyses were rooted in a mixed methods approach, employing a sequential exploratory design (creswell & plano clark, 2011; creswell, plano clark, & garrett, 2008).the two components (1) allow for an in-depth understanding of the differentiated constructs of happiness and wellbeing and (2) increase the construct validity of these two constructs through triangulation (andres, 2012; greene, 2007). 3.1 procedure we began by analyzing qualitative interview data (described below) with the intent to define and conceptualize “happiness” and “wellbeing” based on participants’ own descriptions of these concepts. using thematic coding in atlas.ti, we developed two metaphors to better illustrate and conceptualize participants’ definitions of “happiness” and “wellbeing.” the coding took place in three stages: the first author first transcribed all the relevant parts of the interviews, reread all the interviews multiple times, and then created thematic coding based on the participants’ own wording and explanations. the second author, who also conducted the interviews, examined all the codes in conjunction with the interviews and suggested modifications. the modified codes were reduced to a more manageable number by the first author and then entered into atlas.ti and coded onto the transcripts in order to quantify the responses pertaining to each thematic coding. in the second part of our analyses, we tested the constructs generated in the qualitative analysis by conducting a principal component analysis in stata, employing the questionnaire data from the same population of individuals to corroborate these constructs. in both stages we interpret the data within the framework of sen and nussbaum’s capabilities approach, using their conceptualizations of functionings and capabilities in relation to people’s wellbeing. we conclude by exploring the implications of our findings for future research. elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 3.2 participants the data employed in this paper are from the most recent wave of the paths on life’s way (paths) longitudinal project and comprise two components: a mail-out questionnaire and face-to-face semi-structured interviews. the questionnaire component includes 574 respondents who are part of a stratified random sample of high school graduates of 1988 in british columbia first surveyed in 1989 and then again in 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2010 (andres, 2015). the interview component includes 24 participants who were interviewed six times between 1989 and 2012 by the principal investigator (pi) of this project. our current analysis employs only the data collected in the 22-year follow-up. questionnaires were mailed to respondents in 2010 (n=574) and interviews were conducted in 2011-12 (n=24). 3.3 apparatus/materials first, we employ interview data to determine how participants define and assess their own happiness and wellbeing. qualitative data from the face-to-face interviews included responses to questions about participants’ lives, work, education, and life choices, as well as questions about “happiness” and “wellbeing.” in interviews conducted over a one-and-a-halfto two-hour period participants were also asked to answer questions regarding their happiness, stress, and health and were invited to discuss their responses (see appendix a). respondents to the mailout questionnaire answered five likert-type questions related to happiness, stress, and health (the same questions that the interview participants answered), as well as more than 50 other questions related to their wellbeing. overall, respondents to the mail-out questionnaire in this project reported themselves as happy and healthy, although the responses related to health showed greater variation (see appendix b). 4. analyses and findings 4.1 definitions of happiness and wellbeing: voices of the interview participants several themes emerged from the qualitative data. when asked to rate themselves on the likertscale happiness question, interview participants talked about many different domains of life, including family, work, leisure, and travel, and some themes cut across these domains and participants (see table 1 below). the first theme that emerged was the idea that happiness is relative to what one can imagine. these were often upward comparisons: a comparison to what the participant could imagine her or his life looking like under ideal circumstances. half the participants mentioned that they “could imagine better” when asked to rate their current happiness. as one participant stated, “i’m not a 10 because i can imagine myself eating ice cream on a beach somewhere.” a smaller portion of participants, four of the 24, made downward comparisons. one woman stated, “i really can’t justify being unhappy,” because of all the things she has in her life. this same participant further explained, “i don’t have regrets, i don’t have concerns, i don’t have to worry about meeting basic needs, and i think that all goes hand-in-hand with being happy.” in total, two-thirds of the participants measured their happiness by comparing their lives to an imagined, possible life and judging it relative to what it could be (see table 1). this was both negative, if they could imagine things being better and were therefore less happy, and positive, if they could not imagine anything that would increase their present happiness. the examples above illustrate that sometimes not striving towards something more and simply accepting what one has may be instrumental to achieving happiness. elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 table 1a. participants’ responses to interview questions coded inductively by theme theme code percentage example happiness and wellbeing… are separate 85% they’re probably different… when i think about wellbeing, i think about physical wellbeing, i think about mental wellbeing. it seems like there are some people that are really physically not in a good place, but are happy. are the same 15% i would put it the same. i don’t think you can have wellbeing without being happy. rating happiness: comparisons to past 30% whereas my life growing up was filled with divorced parents, no money, divorced this, that, crazy mom. i know that tomorrow things will be better, and things never get me down... to others 20% i spend a lot of time being frustrated because i’m not where i should be and i see it as a failing of myself. a lot of it is just my own perception. not comparing what i have to what the neighbours have. not comparing what i have to other people in my grad class. to imaginary: better 50% um, right now, probably about a four. again, just because if i had a job that i actually didn't mind doing… to imaginary: worse 20% i don’t have regrets, i don’t have concerns, i don’t have to worry about meeting basic needs, and i think that all goes hand-in-hand with being happy. happiness as balance feel lack of freedom 20% i feel like i spend too much of my day just doing mundane things that you have to do as part of your life, but i don’t feel like i have enough free time to do the things that i really like. desire more freedom 20% and you know, i just want freedom, i guess is what i want. i want freedom to do the things i want to do. have freedom 25% i'm super grateful. i think i have a great life. i could literally drop dead tomorrow and feel like there's no problem with that because i've done everything i've ever wanted to do up until today. achieving goals 30% i feel that all the goals i’ve set for myself, i’ve worked towards them, there’s always new goals. acceptance/contentment 25% through different reading, and books, and through some professional guidance, i’ve discovered what my skill sets are: i’m comfortable with who i am, i don’t have to... i’m not dwelling on what i’m not anymore. balance: achieve and accept 20% i think the gauge for me is how fulfilled i am. so that's how i know that i need to get to the next level, because i am fulfilled with what i do, but i definitely want to make it bigger and to have more. so that's kind of how i measure my success and happiness. and for the most part it's there, but i think i just aspire to have more, and to have even more meaning behind what i do. elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 table 1b. participants’ responses to interview questions coded inductively by theme theme code percentage example gears of wellbeing life-work balance 30% how i perceive or think about my mental health is always working towards that life-work balance. exercise 40% because i’ve been going to the gym, i feel quite a bit more healthy physically, because i can see the increases i’ve made. every time i go to the gym and i can lift an extra five pounds, or i go on the treadmill for twenty minutes and jog, instead of just walk fast like i used to, i can see the improvement there. family 40% having a nice work-life balance, being there for the kids. for us, i think that's something that we're really trying to focus on as a family. feeling too busy 30% umm, trying to make it in [city name] and childcare and being frazzled all the time and working really hard at work but not really feeling like i’m being successful necessarily, and then at home always just not getting quality time with my kids, so i’m very grateful, but life feels quite tough. adjusting time/energy 40% i like to keep my life simple. i have a very minimal amount of material things. i think i just realized what makes me happy all this time, which is if i'm learning stuff and challenging myself, i'm the happiest. so i basically directed my life in doing more of those things. and the things that entangle me… i just don't bother with them. health problems 25% yeah, i turned 40 a couple weeks ago and leading up to that i just had so many aches and pains and i just felt so unbelievably old and, you know, i had trouble getting out of bed elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 the idea that participants could “look back” and judge their happiness in comparison to other points in time arose in almost a third of the interviews. “i’ve come full circle… if you had asked me that two years ago or three years ago, i’d be like a 2.” the idea that happiness is relative to other times in one’s own life was also raised in relation to one’s future. one participant expressed that the stress her oldest son caused her was “the only reason why i’m not a 10,” but that she was looking to the future and “realize[d] that it will come.” in contrast, three participants emphasized the importance of living in the present moment. one woman commented that “people focus too much on the past and then let the past identify who they are and let the past hold them back from doing things that wouldn’t ordinarily do.” hence, although many people made comparisons across time, a smaller group also seemed to be resisting the tendency to do this. the second theme consisted of the idea that happiness is an outlook or mental approach to life, and emerged in one third of the interviews. one man discussed at several points in his interview the fact that “i look at every situation and i don’t look at it as being bad, i just look at it as a challenge…and looking forward through it.” a female participant also mentioned the importance of one’s perspective: she mused that we are often “unrealistic” in what we think we need to be happy. one man even argued that happiness was entirely outlook, entirely “a state of mind” and “what you make of your own world.” the importance of one’s outlook on life was clearly illustrated in the fact that one participant who was suffering from a serious and rare health condition rated his happiness and mental health on par with the average of the other participants. this participant also rated his health (“between a four and five”) as equal to that of several other participants who were concerned about their weight, illustrating the subjective and mental nature of these concepts. although an outside observer looking into these two people’s lives might guess that their happiness and health would be very different, they rated themselves at a similar point on these scales. the differing criteria for being healthy may be due to adaptive preferences (nussbaum 2011; sen 1999), which are preferences shaped by circumstance rather than true personal valuation and desire. conversely, this may also simply shed light on what is important for happiness: as the participant mentioned above stated, a happy life may only require “having family and stuff like that; people, family, friends.” this outlook shaped a happiness level quite contrary to what most might guess from the outside looking in, considering his objectively-measured physical health. the last theme is the idea that happiness is freedom to do and be what one wants to do and be. the freedom theme cut across all the interviews and emphasizes the importance of sen’s (1985) concept of capabilities, as opposed to functionings. participants’ references to this concept were direct in half the interviews: for example, “i just want freedom… i want freedom to do the things i want to do.” this focus on freedom was also expressed more indirectly. one way a participant did this was by describing happiness as “making decisions that are best to make you feel good inside.” for all the interviewees, being able to “more or less live the way you want to live” was raised as an important precursor to happiness. 4.1.1 happiness is not wellbeing almost all participants (more than three-quarters) differentiated between “happiness” and “wellbeing,” although they all agreed that the two concepts were closely related to one another (see table 1 above). the most common perspective was that “happiness is a part of wellbeing.” as one woman stated, “i think wellbeing is more all-encompassing in terms of physical health as well as mental health, and happiness i consider to be more mental.” she visualized it as “one feeds into the other” and that “happiness [is] one dimension of wellbeing.” similarly, another elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 woman argued that happiness “is more a state of mood,” while wellbeing is “more of how i am in the physical realm, the mental realm, the spiritual realm.” contrasting this, three female participants felt that happiness was not a required part of wellbeing. as one stated, “i think you can have a general sense of wellbeing without being incredibly happy.” another stated that she thought that “your wellbeing can be good, … but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re happy.” in a similar vein, the third differentiated between wellbeing as doing the things you should do and happiness being doing the things you want to do. she stated that for wellbeing “you might pass up the cupcake,” but for happiness “you eat it.” conversely, three of the participants felt that happiness and wellbeing were so related that one could not occur without the other; for them, happiness was an integral part of wellbeing. one man asserted that he did not think one could “have wellbeing without being happy.” another argued, “in order to have a good wellbeing, you have to be a happy person.” these participants believed that “it would be incomplete wellbeing if you weren’t happy.” other participants thought that wellbeing was a necessary ingredient for happiness. “if you don’t have a sense of wellbeing, then i don’t think you can be happy,” one woman asserted, and added, “you can be happy if you’re not physically well, if you choose to overcome that mentally, but… wellbeing is the whole package, physically, emotionally.” although a variety of views of happiness, wellbeing, and their relationship, were identified, there are a number of common threads that interconnect these views. all participants view happiness as a wholly mental concept, while wellbeing incorporates many other aspects, including a physical aspect. surprisingly, almost all participants defined happiness as a balanced, calm, and everyday type of notion. none defined happiness in terms of ecstasy or being out of balance. also, they recognized unanimously that happiness was not a constant state of mind, but rather something that would change over time. more than half mentioned freedom as important to their happiness in life, with a lack of freedom leading to lower scores for 40% and the presence of freedom leading to increased happiness for 25% (see table 1). their responses mesh well with sen’s (1985) assertion that although “happiness is of obvious and direct relevance to wellbeing, it is inadequate as a representation of wellbeing” (p. 189). also, they clearly corroborated sen’s (1985) argument that “happiness is basically a mental state, and it ignores other aspects of a person’s wellbeing” (p. 188). from these findings, two metaphors emerged to guide us toward understanding these concepts. 4.1.2 happiness as balance one noticeable tension in participants’ ways of measuring their happiness is between two main ideas that surfaced in almost all of the interviews. the first is setting goals and achieving them as a way to happiness, and the other is being content and not always striving for more. a quarter of the participants mentioned each of these themes directly, and more mentioned these indirectly. often the same participant would raise both of these aspects. on the one hand, participants approached happiness as something “rational,” something to strive for and that could be accomplished; on the other hand, they emphasized the need to accept those things that were out of their control and find acceptance with many aspects of life which did not go according to plan (see figure 1). thus, it seemed that happiness, as one part of an overall sense of wellbeing, emerged from the balance between being able to and actually achieving desired goals, as well as maintaining an attitude of acceptance or contentment to what actually occurs in one’s life. as expressed by one man, this balance can arise from the ability to “live within your means and not always be elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 striving for something else, but really be able to appreciate what [you’ve] got, but to have meaningful challenges to work towards”. one third of participants pointed out that when they were “more balanced” they felt happier, and that being “out of balance” was a hindrance to happiness. figure 1. happiness as balance the idea that happiness is related to accomplishing goals or attaining desired outcomes in one’s life was stated directly in a quarter of the interviews. however, these goals were not usually in relation to money or “things.” one such valued goal was creating a family; in fact, the idea of the “happy family” came up in almost every interview, and 40% mentioned this as very important to their happiness. happiness in life was often equated with “children” or other familial and interpersonal concepts, particularly by female interviewees. however, spending time with their spouses and children emerged as important for all participants who had spouses and children. as such, goals took different forms and were as much – or more – related to participants’ personal lives than work lives. the value of having achievable goals in relation to happiness has been discussed by many other researchers (e.g., diener et al., 1999) and these goals need not be material or career-related. spending time with loved ones reflects the experiences described by many of the interview participants. other authors have theorized happiness in ways similar to paths interview participants in terms of balance. for example, marar (2003) contrasts freedom and justification (or meaningmaking) in his conceptualization of happiness. meaning-making entails creating a sense of order and purpose in life through the pursuit of goals (grouden & jose, 2015). this way of viewing happiness as a balancing act between being able to do what one wants, but also being tied to meaningful people and activities, fits well with the notions that participants mention in their interviews. there is a constant tension between what people “should” do, have, and be in order to be happy and the related loss of freedom this may cost them. this loss of freedom seems to be a cost in quality of life in itself, and also appears to take a toll on the happiness of the interviewees. conversely, a lack of possessions, relationships, and career or work responsibilities can also be acceptance achievement elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 detrimental to wellbeing. marar (2003) deals extensively with the tension between creating meaning in life and having freedom, claiming that it is at the root of the unattainable and elusive qualities of happiness. participants also alluded to this in their descriptions of how happy they were and how they defined happiness. one can infer from their statements that there is never a permanent state of balance: throughout their ever-changing lives, participants are continuously shifting the balance, resulting in different levels of happiness. 4.1.3 the “gears” of wellbeing from the themes generated at the beginning of this section, and the ways in which participants rated and elaborated on their own happiness, several key ideas become apparent. happiness is not constant, but rather varies over time, and comparisons across time impact happiness levels; happiness is influenced by a variety of valued domains of life, and the importance of each domain changes over time, but the most important ingredient in life is optimal balance between these domains. and, finally, happiness is only a part of a person’s overall wellbeing, which is more all-encompassing, and the importance of happiness itself may vary over time and situation. from these ideas emerges a metaphor for wellbeing: wellbeing can be visualized as a set of interlocking gears (see figure 2). this metaphor is similar but distinct from the “engine of wellbeing” metaphor used by jayawickreme et al. (2012). although these researchers focus on inputs, process, and outcome variables, working on the basis of earlier systems-theory approaches, our metaphor focuses on how this would unfold within individuals’ lives. this modification focuses on the ability of individuals to adjust their approach to life based on exterior events and resources. the metaphor of bicycle gears, as opposed to an engine, lends a more useful frame of reference for this purpose. figure 2. gears of wellbeing this simple machine, a transmission consisting of many gears working in tandem, which is visualized with three gears but more accurately would include many more, produces mechanical advantage if properly aligned and if all the gears are moving smoothly. metaphorically, “mechanical advantage” represents optimal levels of wellbeing at a certain point in a person’s life, which produces happiness, and these optimal levels change over time and situation. social relationships health work elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 metaphorical mechanical advantage could also be gained through different gear ratios, which would mean adjusting the “gears” of social relationships, health, work, and others in order to maintain optimal efficiency as well as functioning. this is equivalent to the process component of jayawickreme et al.’s (2012) engine model, which includes personal choices based on the input variables. in the metaphor of the bicycle gear, these ratios would change over time to produce similar overall mechanical advantage. for example, a difficult period of time in a person’s life, such as dealing with the death of a loved one, could be thought of as riding up a hill – it is necessary to change gears to get to the top, but once there one can switch back to a different combination in order to again gain mechanical advantage. optimal wellbeing requires different gear ratios when one is in university at the age of 22 than when at the age of 40 one has children and a mortgage. surrounding this metaphor is the first metaphor of balance based on sen’s idea of capabilities and functionings. one changes gears, or focus and energy, between aspects of wellbeing, while also balancing the need for both achievement and acceptance for happiness. one needs the freedom and ability to switch between these gears, and if one gets “stuck,” the entire machine will stall. similarly, if one leans too much towards either acceptance or achievement, balance will be lost. both of these situations would result in a person having less optimal wellness. although this idea seems quite logical and mechanistic for something as ethereal as wellbeing, all participants exhibited this type of mindset to greater or lesser degrees. for the most part, they believed that they could more or less plan their lives, and happiness was often mentioned as an explicit goal of this planning. as one woman emphasized, it is “rational to try to be happy” and to act to promote one’s happiness. many of the participants set goals in relation to happiness and felt that they could control their happiness to a certain degree. importantly, those who mentioned experiencing a sense of control over their happiness often scored themselves as happier than those who did not. some participants were wary of setting “unrealistic” expectations for happiness and some were willing to put happiness “on hold” while accomplishing other things. the inability to consistently make happiness a priority may be partly due to the “acceleration of time” (rosa, 2003) as “life becomes layered with multiple tasks, responsibilities, and options” (andres & wyn, 2010, p. 191). in line with sen (1999) and kahneman (2011), people might have goals that transcend their current wellbeing and happiness, but which might deliver future happiness. the interlocking gears of wellbeing include many domains of life. the three central domains that arose in all interviews were, in order of importance: social relationships, physical and mental health, and work (as shown in figure 2). interview participants talked about struggling to keep their family lives and their work lives moving in harmony; however, most spent a much greater portion of the interview discussing family than work. work was described almost entirely in terms of stress and this was described as detracting from happiness by almost half the participants. in regard to time, none mentioned wanting more time for work, but many wanted “more time with family” and “more time with friends.” andres and wyn (2010) also found that even though the importance participants placed on “succeeding at work or a career and having enough money to live well” declined over the 15-year period they examined, almost no one rated these as unimportant, and approximately half rated these as very important; however, “relationships with partners, children, parents, and friends continued to be rated as very important” over time (p. 86). when adjusting the “gears of wellbeing,” individuals must make complicated decisions based on their capabilities, knowledge, prior experiences, and best guesses about the future. as elster (2009) explains in his outline of rational action, individuals must choose “among the elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 options of which [they are] aware according to the possible consequences [they] attribute to them,” (p. 23) which are shaped by their desires, beliefs, and the information they receive – all mutually influencing one another. rubenson and desjardins (2009) also discuss the complexity of this type of decision-making. they emphasize sen’s (1999) assertion that capabilities and functionings depend not only on external and internal resources, but also on “individuals knowing about the range of possibilities of how these resources can be used to realize things that matter to them and knowing how to do so” (rubenson & desjardins, 2009, p. 196). these decisions are further complicated by the fact that participants must forecast their emotional reactions to future events when making choices, and research suggests that people may not always do so accurately (dunn, brackett, ashton-james, schneiderman, & salovey, 2007; kahneman & krueger, 2006; kahneman, 2011). wellbeing, then, relies upon prior experience and a view to the future within multiple life domains, as well as the operation of these different aspects in synchrony with one another and within a person’s life. in this complicated process, wellbeing may also depend “less on the objective events one encounters than on how those events are construed, dealt with, and shared with others” (dunn et al., 2007, p. 7). in particular, due to the unpredictable nature of the future, participants were constantly making decisions within the context of uncertainty. the ongoing process of valuing, aligning, and balancing various parts of life is a process in which participants more or less “consciously manage their wellbeing” (andres & wyn, 2010, p. 191), which may represent a new form of consumption that relies on both material and immaterial goods. people might participate in certain activities or purchase particular goods with the explicit goal of increasing their wellbeing. this is also an individualistic endeavour, as one woman’s comments illustrate: it’s my personal belief that i’m responsible for me, nobody else is responsible for me, and if i’m unhappy, that’s my own fault… so, i’m responsible for my own wellbeing, and i’m also responsible for my happiness, but i think of the two as totally separate, so i can have a sense of wellbeing but not be happy. now we turn to the questionnaire data to determine whether these concepts can be corroborated with a larger sample. 5. corroborating the constructs happiness and wellbeing approximately 100 questions (including the sub-questions) about health, wellbeing, and happiness were included in the “health and wellbeing” section of the mail-out paths on life’s way questionnaire. in this section, 53 of the questions that were relevant and overlapped with the questions asked and topics raised in the interviews were used in the ensuing analysis (interview questions 2 to 6 in appendix a were identical to the likert-type items on the survey). we used principal factor analyses (pfa) with both varimax and oblimin rotation in stata to determine whether similar themes from the interview data emerged in the survey respondents’ responses to the happiness and wellbeing-related questions on the 2010 paths on life’s way survey. the results of these analyses are reported in tables 2 and 3 below. we excluded (1) factors with eigenvalues of less than 1.0 and items that did not load onto any of the factors with a factor loading of at least 0.30 and (2) survey items that were indicated as “not applicable” by more than 50 participants (e.g., spending time with children; caring for elderly relatives.) the best-fitting model statistically and theoretically was a four-factor model from the pfa with varimax rotation that explained 62% of the variance (n=525, see tables 3 and 4). the pfa with oblimin rotation, elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 which has the advantage of assuming that the survey items are correlated, created the same groupings, with the exception of mental health, which loaded more strongly with overall satisfaction in this model, and satisfaction with work, which again loaded onto the first factor. table 2. factor loadings of survey items using pfa with varimax rotation items factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 factor 4 overall happiness 0.39 exciting life 0.32 satisfied with personal life 0.46 satisfied with family life 0.45 satisfied with life these days 0.31 satisfied with life to date 0.41 physical health 0.57 mental health 0.30 satisfied with health 0.50 satisfied with fitness level 0.48 satisfied with time for activities 0.42 satisfied with leisure time 0.50 satisfied with personal time 0.55 satisfied with time for friends 0.40 satisfied with work/career 0.49 satisfied with education 0.57 satisfied with money 0.51 satisfied with time for work 0.34 the first factor, which we have labeled evaluative happiness, comprises the largest group of survey items and includes respondents’ ratings of the following: general life happiness, how exciting their lives were, satisfaction with their lives these days, and satisfaction with the way their lives had unfolded to date. this maps onto participants’ general assessments and evaluations of their lives as a whole, which we could also term “judgmental happiness,” an evaluative stance on one’s happiness in life overall (gilbert, 2006; kahneman, 2011). the second factor, health, was also an important theme emerging from the interviews. physical health, mental health, satisfaction with fitness level, and satisfaction with health generally loaded strongly onto this factor. these clearly map onto a theoretical construct, and neatly fit into the “health gear” introduced in the gears of wellbeing metaphor. the third factor, time for activities, friends, and self, includes respondents’ satisfaction with the amount of time they have to spend on activities they enjoy, satisfaction with time for leisure and friends, and personal time. time was highly valued and sought after, as mentioned in almost all of the interviews; a third of the participants mentioned that they felt too busy in their lives and would like to slow down. this is slightly different from the “social relationships gear” mentioned above; however, because it incorporates the notion of personal relationships as well, this could be an extension of that concept. the final factor – satisfaction with career, education, and finances – comprises survey items related to work, career, and education. this includes satisfaction expressed by respondents with their educational attainments, satisfaction with work and career, and satisfaction with the time they spent at work. satisfaction with the amount of money they earned also loaded onto this elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 factor, suggesting that one discrete and important part of wellbeing related to both work and the material conditions of their lives. however, time for work and satisfaction with money was no longer significant when using an oblimin rotation. this can be seen as corroborating the interview data, where interview participants attached much less importance to work in regard to their wellbeing and judgments of their happiness with life than they attached to family, health, and personal goals. this final factor is also the final gear in the gears of wellbeing metaphor. table 3. factor loadings of survey items using pfa with oblimin rotation items factor 1 factor 2 factor 3 factor 4 overall happiness 0.82 exciting life 0.61 satisfied with personal life 0.84 satisfied with family life 0.73 satisfied with life these days 0.78 satisfied with life to date 0.85 physical health 0.39 0.72 mental health 0.57 0.42 satisfied with health 0.46 0.62 satisfied with fitness level 0.54 satisfied with time for activities 0.40 0.62 satisfied with leisure time 0.56 satisfied with personal time 0.72 satisfied with time for friends 0.51 satisfied with work/career 0.55 0.43 satisfied with education 0.37 0.38 satisfied with money satisfied with time for work the results of the pfa analyses mirror those of the interviews in that happiness and wellbeing emerge as separate factors, and wellbeing itself is broken into separate factors that mirror the metaphor of gears working in synchrony. thus, the metaphors from the qualitative analysis are again useful when looking at these four factors and how they might relate to each other. the quantitative analyses reemphasize the importance of close personal relationships, and the extent to which evaluative happiness varies with these variables. interestingly, satisfaction with one’s personal life and family life also load strongly onto the first factor in all models. thus, as also identified in the interviews, family is inseparably intertwined with judgments about one’s happiness and satisfaction with life in general. other variables impact both happiness and wellbeing, but none follow so closely the variations in happiness as one’s close social connections. this reflects the interview participants’ notions of happiness: happiness is an inherently subjective and mental view of oneself and one’s life, closely related to wellbeing, but conceptually distinct from it. 6. limitations first, generalizing results from the survey sample is limited in that the sample is by definition restricted to high school graduates in british columbia, canada, 22 years after graduation, at 40 years old; hence, these results may not be transferable beyond groups similar in age and regional elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 context. second, these data are not analyzed by cultural groups, as to do so would be impractical with our sample size in a strongly multicultural place like british columbia. third, there is a slight bias in the survey sample towards those who have completed some form of higher education. however, as asserted by andres and adamuti-trache (2008), although “the sample has been affected by attrition with a slight bias toward women and those continuing postsecondary education… overall it has remained remarkably representative of the original participant group” (p. 118). they maintain, “the degree of sample bias suggests that the findings… are generalizable to similar populations” (andres & adamuti-trache, 2008, p. 141). 7. discussion and conclusions the purpose of this paper was to investigate in a mixed-methods approach whether participants understand and experience happiness and wellbeing as unitary or differentiated constructs. using qualitative interview data we found that participants view these two concepts as separate; and we were able to create two metaphors to illustrate the participants’ understandings of happiness and wellbeing. we corroborated these results using quantitative survey data and our pfa analyses illustrate that there are distinct portions of wellbeing that include family, health, personal time, work, and education. through pfa we were not able to investigate the notion of balance, which was central to the happiness metaphor; however, survey respondents, like the interview participants, indicated in open-ended questionnaire comments that they engaged in an ongoing act of balancing acceptance and achievement in order to achieve an overall sense of happiness (andres & wyn, 2010). the qualitative data suggest that this balance spans many areas of life and operates alongside another more objective and palpable function: ensuring that various domains of life turn in synchrony, much like a simple machine with interlocking gears. these findings align with the distinction that raibley (2011) makes between happiness and wellbeing as discrete concepts. his argument is consistent with that of sen (1993) in that it proposes that happiness contributes to wellbeing only when it is valued and is therefore a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for high levels of wellbeing. he criticizes the approach taken by many researchers who approach happiness from a utilitarian standpoint and who use the terms happiness, wellbeing, satisfaction, and others, as interchangeable (for example, van praag & ferrer-i-carbonell, 2008). raibley (2011) defines episodic happiness as “the property of feeling happy at a time” (p. 1108) and suggests that although we often use the word happiness in daily speech in this sense, what we usually want to measure in social science research is a deeper and more stable sense of happiness that is more akin to wellbeing. the responses of most of the interviewees reflect this definition. to them, wellbeing was always seen as a conglomerate of many aspects of life and one’s physical and mental being, while happiness was more mental and more fleeting. we created two metaphors to summarize and define participants’ understandings of happiness and wellbeing. this study suggests that people engage in an ongoing act of balancing acceptance and achievement in order to be happy. this balancing act requires that people be capable of achieving various valued states and goals, and also that they actually achieve some of these, aligning the participants’ perspectives with that of the capability approach. this balance spans many areas of life, and exists as part of an overall sense of wellbeing that consists of various domains of life turning in synchrony, much like the metaphor of interlocking gears. also, our findings indicate that tensions may arise between different aspects of wellbeing, and that these may need to be shifted in order to allow for all aspects of life to exist in a harmonious relationship that does not stifle any at the expense of the others. elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 this balancing act is unique to each individual and changes with time; however, every participant mentioned the importance of social relationships in their interviews. delle fave et al. (2011) also found that happiness was “primarily defined as a condition of psychological balance and harmony” and that “family and social relations” were most prominent among the life domains associated with happiness (p. 185). kahneman (2011) agrees with this assertion, positing that “[i]t is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you” (p. 395). this underscores the importance of nussbaum’s (2011) inclusion of “affiliation” on her list of central capabilities. these findings also lend support to the “flourishing” models of wellbeing. a recent article compared the four extant scales of keyes (2002), diener and others (2010), seligman (2011), and huppert and so (2013) for measuring flourishing both conceptually and empirically. they found that all four tap into both feeling and functioning, and include positive relationships, engagement or interest, and meaning and purpose (hone et al., 2014). each model differs in the other components; however, this study lends “real world” support to the notion that wellbeing does include each of these attributes and cannot be simplified to a hedonistic conception of happiness. distinct groupings of wellbeing variables were found in both the interview and mailout survey data. more work is needed to clarify in detail which model of flourishing comes closest to reflecting laypeople’s understandings. finally, participants were guided towards an evaluative notion of happiness in the wording of interview and survey questions, which might overlook the temporal nature of happiness (kimprieto, diener, tamir, scollon, & diener, 2005). happiness researchers have been divided into different “camps,” some of whom examine happiness in the moment, “emotional happiness” or “experienced wellbeing,” and others who look at more general evaluations including larger time frames, “judgmental happiness” or “life satisfaction” (gilbert, 2006; kahneman, 2011). the questions used for the current study were framed from an evaluative rather than emotional standpoint; however, we believe that it is difficult to completely disentangle the two. others argue that we act more for the benefit of our “remembering” than our “experiencing” selves (kahneman, 2011). this argument is supported by the remark of one female interviewee: “i think that’s the biggest thing: creating really powerful, profound, lasting memories.” as such, in the present study and for the purposes of this analysis, the focus is on happiness as a judgment of one’s life, with the recognition that short-term, moment-to-moment emotion will also play an important role in these judgments. internationally, happiness is used increasingly to measure progress, as in the example of the government of bhutan, which uses gross national happiness (gnh) as its measurement of national progress. researchers such as helliwell and barrington-leigh (2010) recommend that direct measures of subjective well-being (swb) be used in making public policy decisions. in this study, we suggest that rather than simply measuring happiness or life satisfaction, it is more meaningful to attempt to uncover a more holistic measure of wellbeing, which the participants differentiated from happiness. this confirms the conclusions of other researchers (e.g., hone et al., 2014; jayawickreme et al., 2012). the findings of the current study can help inform future research on how to measure these constructs in operationalizations that are meaningful for people’s daily lives, and to help promote balance and a focus on all parts of life – social, familial, physical, as well as work-related and educational – as a way to promote happiness and wellbeing. acknowledgments this research was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 authors janine jongbloed iredu/université de bourgogne janine_jongbloed@etu.u-bourgogne.fr lesley andres the university of british columbia publishing timeline received 30 september 2014 accepted 11 may 2015 published 30 july 2015 references andres, l. 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(2008). happiness quantified: a satisfaction calculus approach. oxford, uk: oxford university press. appendix a: interview questions: 1) twenty-two years ago, i asked you to describe ‘the good life’. you said, ___________. how would you describe ‘the good life’ today? has your idea of ‘the good life’ changed and, if so, why? 2) on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “very unhappy” and 10 being “very happy,” in general how happy would you say you are with your life? 3) on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you describe your life, with 1 being “very dull” and 10 being “very exciting,” in general to what extent would you describe your life as dull or exciting? 4) on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you describe the extent to which your life is stressful, with 1 being “not at all stressful” and 10 being “very stressful,” in general to what extent would you describe your life as stressful? 5) in the past few months, how healthy have you felt physically, with 1 being “very unhealthy” and 10 being “very healthy,” in general to what extent would you describe yourself as physically healthy? 6) in the past few months, how healthy have you felt mentally, with 1 being “very unhealthy” and 10 being “very healthy,” in general to what extent would you describe yourself as mentally healthy? for each of these questions interview participants were asked to explain why they rated themselves the way they did and to discuss the factors that affected the rating. the final question in this series was as follows: 7) what is or how do you define happiness? what is or how do you define wellbeing? are these the same or different in your opinion? explain. elucidating the constructs happiness and wellbeing jongbloed & andres www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 appendix b table 4: participants' responses to likert-scale questions (1-10) participants' responses to likertscale questions (1-10) happiness excitement in life stress in life physical health mental health interview participants mean 7.73 6.33 5.35 6.73 7.29 n=24 standard deviation (sd) 1.53 1.87 2.15 2.34 1.89 median 8.00 6.00 5.00 8.00 8.00 survey respondents mean 7.82 6.83 6.45 7.16 7.09 n=574 standard deviation (sd) 1.52 1.61 1.92 1.83 1.84 median 8.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 haybron, d. m. (2011). central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 235-254. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.6 daniel m. haybron saint louis university haybrond@slu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 235 article central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing daniel m. haybron abstract: this paper considers evidence that social and physical contexts, particularly natural environments, are surprisingly important for human wellbeing. in particular, the pursuit of happiness seems to be less a matter of individual choice than is commonly supposed. these ideas are explored through an examination of new york’s central park. keywords: philosophy, wellbeing, well-being, happiness, biophilia, nature, context    it is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character< is favorable to the health and vigor of men. – central park architect frederick law olmsted1 i’ve tried to transport this sort of joie de vivre when returning to new york, and upon my arrival at j.f.k. i realize, it’s not just about me: i am only the shrimp in the gumbo. i need my bell peppers, celery, file, sausage, my neighbors, my mama, my french quarter denizens. i need other people for this magic. – margeaux b.2 1. introduction in happiness, as in so many other things, location is key. or so i will suggest. in what follows i want to consider the importance of context for the successful pursuit of happiness, and more broadly wellbeing. i will say something of social context, which has gotten the most attention in this regard. but mostly i want to focus on the less-noted significance of physical context, specifically the benefits of proximity to the natural world. these appear to be considerable, and add to the case for thinking about the pursuit of happiness less individualistically, and more as a matter of context, than has been our habit. central park will serve as the chief vehicle for these reflections. this paper is small, and my target large. i make no pretense of establishing these claims conclusively—or even, really, establishing them at all. my aim in what follows is, more modestly, to bring together several provocative lines of evidence and sketch the broad 1 olmsted 1993, p. 17, cited in hartig, berg et al. 2010. 2 ‚they know what it means,‛ the new york times, june 12, 2009. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 236 perspective on human wellbeing they apparently point to. it will be enough if the sketch is sufficiently plausible to merit further investigation. the reader will notice that i make more use of anecdote than is typical for an academic journal, partly because this issue is aimed to reach a broader audience. but anecdotes can have substantive value, calling the reader’s attention to important points that otherwise might get overlooked, or bringing unanticipated possibilities to the fore. that seems to me the case here, where the empirical challenges to quantifying the benefits of nature are, to put it mildly, steep. yes, the anecdotes can be unrepresentative, and the teller less than truthful. if the anecdote is honest, and enough readers find it illuminating, then it has earned its keep. 2. the park if you have ever visited new york city, or moved there from elsewhere, perhaps you recall that feeling when you first set foot on its busy, boiling streets: an electric sense of possibility, energizing you and putting an extra bounce in your step. that’s how it was for me, anyway, and still is. i have visited many cities, and none of them has quite that effect. new orleans likewise has a profound impact on the psyche, but it inserts not so much a bounce as a lazy swing in your gait. it matters where you are, for where you are shapes not just what you do but how you feel and think; indeed it molds your very personality. i’m a different person in new york and new orleans. new york in particular has a very odd feature: right there, smack in the middle of some of the most valuable real estate on the planet, they put a park. an enormous park. a park that, among other things, makes it very difficult to get from one part of town to another. (come to think of it, you could probably fit a couple more subway lines there.) if you consider for a moment what new york conventionally stands for, this is a pretty strange thing to do. in the middle of the most industrious city of the most industrious nation of the most industrious age in the history of the planet, they set aside a huge chunk of land for a bunch of trees and grass. it doesn’t make a lot of money, nor does it help many people to realize their ambitions, all of which is to say it doesn’t make a lot of sense in new york terms. what’s it doing there? consider: we could level central park, pave it, and carpet it with skyscrapers, effectively trading green manhattan for gray manhattan. and we could fill that annoying gap between the subway lines. this would bring in loads of cash, create countless jobs, and house legions of people at more affordable rates. i trust that most readers would find such a proposal repellent. but why should there be anything wrong with it? an obvious thought here is that green is, to some degree, better for us than gray: our lives would be impoverished by eliminating most vestiges of the natural world from them. but a deeper point, which i will also suggest, is that good places to live are not simply venues for us to seek out whatever we happen to want; they shape what we want, feel and do, nudging us in countless ways toward sensible ways of living, and away from senseless ways of living. and they give us things that we need, even when we don’t entirely recognize the need. central park illustrates the limits of individual decision in the pursuit of happiness. and yet we find it at the epicenter of the most individualistic age in human history. 3. the benefits of contact with nature the enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 237 over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system. —frederick law olmsted3 3.1 the biophilia hypothesis at least one investigation suggests that central park is a superb place to work (n = 1). the study: one summer i procured a small apartment just a block from the 72nd st. entrance to central park. i, being a philosophy graduate student, could spend many hours doing my work in the park, most often under a tree in strawberry fields. this tree, significantly, grew just a brief stroll from any number of cafes, restaurants, drinking holes, and—my favorite—a storefront advertising soft-serve ice cream containing something like 12 calories. (probably a fraud, but my kind of fraud.) offices don’t get much better than that. i trust no one would be surprised that i should choose to do my reading in the park and not, say, my apartment living room. there are good reasons for this. a large body of evidence indicates that human beings tend to respond positively to natural environments: roughly speaking, contact with nature is good for us. indeed, according to the ‘biophilia’ hypothesis first advanced by biologist e.o. wilson, the love of nature is innate, a product of our evolutionary heritage. interestingly, some of the evidence originally cited in favor of this theory concerns human landscape preferences, namely that people seem generally to prefer environments resembling the african savanna in which much of our evolutionary history transpired: a good view of wide grassy expanses punctuated by trees and perhaps some water. central park, perhaps not coincidentally, resembles an idealized savanna habitat.4 now before laying out further evidence for biophilia, i should immediately head off a nest of worries that such claims tend to provoke. the term ‘biophilia’ may be less than ideal: it strictly concerns an attraction to living things, though much of the appeal of nature relates to nonliving things (the sea, the sky, stars, mountains, streams<).5 it can also seem romantic, obscuring the ways in which nature frightens (biophobia) and disgusts us. but it is no part of biophilia theory that people are primed to love everything in nature: what you most love can also be the source of your greatest pains. strictly speaking, it is not nature per se that benefits us, but certain aspects of the natural world. the evolutionary claim associated with biophilia generates further controversies that needn’t detain us here: what matters for practical purposes is that people benefit from contact with nature.6 the evolutionary story is relevant only insofar as it lends this idea some plausibility. note that the idea that biophilia is innate is sometimes taken by critics to imply a kind of biological determinism. it does not: wilson himself refers to it as a kind of ‚biased‛ or ‚prepared‛ learning, whereby humans are biased to acquire an affinity for nature. whether any given individual actually does so, and what precise shape it takes, may depend on the person’s environment.7 (that said, it is a good question whether anyone, ever, has exhibited a preference for environments thoroughly stripped of all signs of nature: no greenery, no animals, no sun, no stars, no sky, no fresh breeze<). 3 olmsted 1993. 4 wilson 1984. this feature of central park is explicitly noted by ulrich 1995, which also includes a good overview of biophilia theory in relation to viewing natural landscapes. 5 it is somewhat misleading, then, to speak of natural environments as ‚green,‛ as i often do here. ‚green spaces,‛ in the relevant sense, need not be green. my personal favorites tend rather to be wet. 6 strictly speaking, certain kinds of contact with nature. sharks, tornados, etc. excepted. 7 wilson 1984, pp. 106-9. see also ulrich 1995, pp. 75-77 for a useful discussion of ‚prepared learning‛. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 238 some readers will wonder what ‘nature’ means anyway. is the human realm supernatural? if beaver dams count as part of nature, then why don’t human constructions? the notion of nature at work here is indeed vague, and should be regarded as a crude placeholder for some more precisely articulated notion to be revealed through further research. we clearly respond differently to what are intuitively natural versus human environments: there is some distinction to be made here. perhaps, in the end, we can produce the psychological benefits of nature via carefully crafted artificial environments, so that it is not ‘nature’ per se that we respond to, but a certain range of perceptual cues. this seems to me unlikely, however.8 3.2 the evidence: a sampler so what is the evidence that contact with nature benefits us? the literature here is surprisingly large, so i will only gesture at some of the more representative studies; this is not meant to be a comprehensive literature review. to simplify, i will focus on psychological benefits such as increased happiness or otherwise improved psychological functioning, setting aside other ways in which nature experiences can benefit us: for instance, offering deeply meaningful forms of engagement with matters of independent worth,9 the added perspective it can bring toward human life, the cultivation of virtues like modesty, humility or wonder, or the aesthetic goods of contemplating beauty.10 i will not commit to any particular conception of happiness here, but use the term broadly to refer to matters of subjective wellbeing, particularly emotional wellbeing.11 much of the literature directly addressing questions of benefit concerns the impact of nature exposures on health. while not directly relevant to questions of happiness, the observed health benefits are plausibly mediated by, or at least associated with, greater emotional wellbeing (stress reduction, etc.). perhaps the best-known study of this sort, published in science in 1984, found that gallbladder surgery patients randomly assigned to rooms with a window view of a natural setting (i.e., some trees) had significantly shorter hospital stays (7.96 versus 8.7 days post-op), fewer negative comments about their condition recorded by nurses, fewer minor complications, and had a lower need for painkillers than patients whose windows faced a brown brick wall.12 similarly, a study of michigan prisoners randomly assigned to cells 8 there is reason to doubt that recognizably artificial environments can reproduce the full benefits of nature exposure (see, e.g., kahn, severson et al. 2009, kjellgren and buhrkall 2010; thanks to an anonymous referee for these references). but it may be that lively urban environments like manhattan are gratifying precisely because they share certain perceptual features with natural environments. if nothing else, they are much more stimulating and visually interesting than simplified, predictable suburban communities. 9 this seems to me a very important benefit of nature, one that cannot easily, if at all, be reproduced by artificial means. a helpful illustration of the way this might be valuable is darwall’s ‚aristotelian thesis,‛ in which a central part of the good life involves appreciative engagement with matters of independent value (darwall 2002). 10 i also set aside an interesting body of research on the benefits of ‚connectedness with nature‛ or ‚naturerelatedness‛ (e.g., mayer and frantz 2004, nisbet, zelenski et al. 2010). this literature mainly assesses the wellbeing impacts of people’s attitudes to, and general sense of connection with, the environment. but the benefits of, say, valuing nature are quite distinct from the benefits of experiencing nature. you might feel a kinship with nature, or value its preservation, without actually having much experience of it (cynics might quip that the latter actually promotes the former). similarly, the finding that valuing material success may reduce happiness has little or no bearing on whether material success itself reduces happiness (kasser 2002). 11 i defend an emotional state theory of happiness in haybron 2005 and haybron 2008. 12 ulrich 1984. some of the studies i discuss, including this one, could fairly be criticized on one or another count. this study, e.g., only had 46 patients. but most of the effects discussed here have been confirmed by multiple studies, so not much hangs on any particular study. for a good but slightly dated review of research on the health and psychological benefits of nature exposure, see frumkin 2001. an excellent popular discussion of this literature appears in louv 2008. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 239 facing either the prison courtyard or rolling farmland found a 24% higher rate of sick calls among those whose cells faced inward, toward the prison yard.13 other studies directly assess anxiety and stress responses, as well as behavioral impacts of nature. dental patients, for instance, reported less anxiety and had lower blood pressure when a mural of a nature scene was hung in the waiting room than on days when it was removed.14 immersive nature experiences have been found to increase participants’ valuing of ‘intrinsic’ versus ‘extrinsic’ aspirations—meaning, roughly, that people seem to become less materialistic and more caring and concerned with inherently rewarding activities when engaged with the natural world.15 cognitive functioning also appears to improve through nature experiences. performance on tasks like proofreading seems to improve from viewing nature scenes, as does attention, alertness, and focus.16 similarly, children with attention deficit disorder (add) focus better, and otherwise show diminished symptoms, following nature-related activities such as camping.17 camping and other immersive activities seem, unsurprisingly, to do more good than does merely having a view of a natural setting. ‘horticultural therapy’, for instance—gardening— appears to be useful in helping various populations, including prisoners and psychiatric and cardiac patients.18 (one observer reports that gardening in a prison has a ‚strangely soothing effect‛ on the prisoners, making ‚pacifists of potential battlers.‛ 19 ) similarly, wilderness experiences have been used to treat a variety of problems, medical and otherwise. inner-city children, for instance, reported greater wellbeing and self-esteem after attending a rural camp.20 healthy adults who took part in 2 to 4 week wilderness experience programs reported ‚an increased sense of aliveness, well-being, and energy.‛21 in fact a heightened sense of vitality, energy, or ‘feeling alive’ appears to be quite common among those who engage with nature, as well as improved recovery from fatigue.22 note that even a weeks-long wilderness program is unlikely to reproduce the psychic impact of living close to the land full-time, as humans did for most of their history. truly to become fully engaged with a natural environment arguably takes months or years. even those well-acquainted with the local landscape and wildlife may take weeks to fully adjust after being away for very long. reproducing that experience in a representative sample of the population would not be a trivial task. i will present further evidence of the benefits of nature below, in section 4.6. 4. the architecture of happiness23 suppose nature does make us happier. what follows? the obvious take-home is that we, as individuals, should bear that fact in mind when deciding what to do. we could consider 13 moore 1981. 14 heerwagen 1990. 15 weinstein, przybylski et al. 2009. 16 hartig, mang et al. 1991, cimprich and ronis 2003, berman, jonides et al. 2008, kaplan and berman 2010. 17 faber taylor, kuo et al. 2001, kuo and faber taylor 2004, faber taylor and kuo 2009. 18 for references, see frumkin 2001. 19 neese 1959, cited in frumkin 2001, p. 236. 20 readdick and schaller 2005. 21 greenway 1995, cited in frumkin and louv 2009, p. 3. see also ryan, weinstein et al. 2010. 22 ryan, weinstein et al. 2010 23 with a tip of the hat to de botton 2008, though i use ‘architecture’ more broadly, to refer to the social and physical structure of our environment. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 240 spending more time in parks and other green spaces, or even moving someplace where we’ll find more contact with the natural world. i want to suggest something a bit more radical than that: not that we should go back to living in the trees. rather, i suggest that the overwhelming focus in our culture on what individuals can do to make themselves happier is a mistake. there are several reasons for this. 4.1 the collective pursuit of happiness for starters, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that individuals can’t make parks, though this rather unremarkable fact gets remarkably little attention in the literature on happiness. parks are a paradigm case of public goods, along with clean air, national defense, and many other good things that typically require collective action to secure. some of these things are very important to happiness. relationships, and social capital more generally, are widely thought to be the most important source of happiness, but there is only so much one person can to do secure them.24 it takes a village, as they say, to make a village. you can go sit on your porch, but it won’t do you much good if no one stops to chat. if your friends are too busy to play, or you’re just tired of making calls to track one down, you get to stay home and watch tv. some things, perhaps most things worth having, people need to work out together. central park was one of them: had forward-thinking citizens and planners not made a point of setting aside a huge swath of real estate for a public green space—in the process limiting individuals’ freedom to use that land as they saw fit—there would be no park in which to seek one’s happiness. and it would be a lot harder for many people to follow the advice to give themselves a bit of nature. so while i have emphasized the importance of place for happiness in this paper, places like central park need people to make them happen, and even good-old-fashioned nature often requires human effort to preserve. the happiness generated by central park is a product not simply of geography but of human choice, notably the inspired choices of landscape architects frederick law olmstead and calvert vaux, not to mention the many people whose efforts have sustained the park over the years. happiness is indeed being pursued here, but the endeavor is not so much about ‘me’ as we tend to suppose, and more about ‘we,’ and ‘thou.’ to a considerable degree, we pursue happiness together, and for each other.25 4.2 underconsuming nature context matters for another reason: people don’t always choose well. how wisely we choose may depend substantially on whether we live in the right sort of environment. there is good reason to think people systematically underconsume nature, for example: we avail ourselves of it too little given the magnitude of its benefits to us. the biophilia literature suggests one reason for this: we benefit more from exposure to the natural environment than we realize. everyone knows that it’s pleasant, but few realize just how extensive its psychic impact is, much of it potent but subtle and easily overlooked. and even when we know it will be good for us, we often forgo opportunities to partake. during my summer living by central park, i spent far too little time there, inexplicably choosing more often than not to work in my dark little walk-down instead of strawberry field. i suppose the few minutes’ walk was just too much aggravation; easier just to remain on the couch. there is no question the days would have been more pleasant, and myself happier, had i taken every opportunity to work in the park. and yet i did not. 24 see helliwell and putnam 2004, helliwell, barrington-leigh et al. 2010. 25 see also thin forthcoming–2012. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 241 there is a new development in one of the outer suburbs of st. louis. in fact, there are many new developments in the outer suburbs and flood plains of st. louis. should you venture out to one of them, you will know you’ve arrived when you find (a) a proliferation of streets named for trees, and (b) few if any actual trees. you see, most housing built in the united states in the last couple of decades sits on land largely bereft of arboreal matter. a smattering of runty little shrubs, perhaps, but, for the most part, curiously uncontaminated by trees. i suppose it saves developers a little money, not having to work around trees, but really i don’t know why this is: for whatever reason, builders seem to mow down every tree in sight before laying down a new homestead. evidently wise to the strangeness of this arrangement, they frequently compensate by putting trees in the street names. ‘pine crest’: no pines, you can be sure (and probably a gully). ‘oak lane’: nary an acorn in sight. down one of these treeless-streets-named-for-trees, at some remove from any other sign of civilization—or nature—you will find a barren cul-de-sac circled by some very large, very nice houses. not entirely barren, actually: one of those homes boasts, in its back yard, three very tall, perfectly formed coconut trees. in st. louis? turns out they’re made of metal. these are not inexpensive homes, mind you, and they are chock full of widescreen plasma tvs. the owners have plenty of money. yet smart people with lots of options regularly choose, quite freely, to buy them, treeless yards and all. if people were willing to spend even a small sum for trees— say, the cost of another plasma tv—then builders would, i suspect, refrain from chopping them all down. but apparently homebuyers don’t figure trees into the equation. just a matter of taste? not likely. people who already have trees on their property typically quite like them, and will spend considerable sums to keep them healthy. a good shade tree over your deck is worth at least a plasma tv. and those streets have woodsy names for a reason. in all likelihood, it just doesn’t occur to most homebuyers that trees make a house more desirable. it took many years before even i, who gets paid to notice such things, realized that my vague sense of disgust at new housing developments owed mainly to the lack of trees, and that good trees add a lot to a home. the failure to figure trees into the home-buying equation is quite understandable, but a mistake nonetheless.26 not wise to what they might be missing, homebuyers don’t look for it. and so they settle down to consume their plasma entertainments in the cavernous abodes of tin palms. 4.3 why needs can outstrip motivation i’ve been suggesting that people might systematically fail to choose what’s good for them—in particular, that people might fail to choose nature in proportion to its benefits. you might think this implausible: if human beings really benefit so much from contact with nature, wouldn’t we have desires to match? and if we’re going to trade in evolutionary arguments, here’s one: if we evolved an affinity for nature, wouldn’t that include commensurate motivation to seek out nature? in general, you might think, it isn’t adaptive for human wellbeing to depend on things that we don’t really want. if we didn’t want to eat, we’d do very badly indeed. call this idea the needs-motives congruency thesis (nmct): people’s motives will tend to reflect what’s good for them, or at least what they need.27 even if people don’t actually need contact with nature—which i doubt—one might expect nmct to apply to an allegedly innate tendency like biophilia. in fact it need not, and there’s no reason to think nmct holds as a 26 i am not suggesting that any particular home purchase is a mistake. the mistake is when people give too little weight to the value that trees add to a home when making the decision. but giving trees due weight is, of course, consistent with buying a treeless home. 27 i previously discussed this issue in haybron 2008. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 242 general principle. the reason is simple: there’s no selection pressure to desire some benefit if there’s nothing the organism can do to make its possession more likely. early humans who strongly craved connection with the natural world would likely have fared no better than those who did not, for the simple reason that there was nowhere else to go. similarly, there’s good reason to think human immune systems need copious exposure, from an early age, to germs; the exposure helps train them up, and those lacking it are more vulnerable to allergies, asthma, and other diseases.28 humans need dirt, basically, but don’t particularly desire it. why? our ancestors, presumably, had plenty enough of it; they were filthy. your choices were pigpen, and pigpen. by contrast, those among them who craved fats and sweets were clearly better off: such things were scarce but lavish sources of energy, and the more you could get, the better. so we crave fats and sweets. and that’s probably why i ended up making more trips to that ice cream shop than to central park, even though i am, and was, pretty sure the latter would have done me a lot more good. 4.4 context shapes us no one who has closely observed the conduct of the people who visit the park, can doubt that it exercises a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city—an influence favorable to courtesy, self-control, and temperance. —frederick law olmsted29 every human being responds to a connection with nature< people of all kinds love something beautiful and will talk to each other when they see it. they change the way they behave. it changes the way they feel about themselves and each other. —lynden miller30 context matters for a third reason: it shapes our mental lives, and with them our behavior. to a surprising extent, the choices you make depend on the environment in which you make them. not simply because you include information about the context in your deliberations, though. it’s also because the context helps make the deliberator. olmsted and miller observe this about central park, and doubtless many readers have noticed this too. new yorkers take on a different demeanor in the park: quicker to laugh, easier to smile, more open, friendly, and loose. they slow down, soften. they even listen. (something i wish they would do in expensive concert halls.) watch or listen to paul simon’s concert in the park, or the simon and garfunkel version, and you sense new yorkers at their best. no doubt someone in the crowd got testy, but it’s not easy to picture. you get the sense of a hundred thousand souls connecting with each other, and it is not just the music: the setting is key. a times square performance would not have been the same. this is one of the great compensations of an afternoon in the park: you don’t just get a rewarding taste of nature; you, yourself, undergo a transformation of consciousness and personality. you soften, and open up both to the natural surrounds and to the now less-strange strangers around you. it is easier to 28 this is the ‚hygiene hypothesis.‛ for a review, see sheikh and strachan 2004. 29 olmsted and sutton 1997, p. 96. 30 ‚garden designer lynden miller says a healthy city needs beautiful parks,‛ by sarah goodyear, grist, november 12, 2010. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 243 connect, or at least feel a connection, with fellow new yorkers in the park, and as a result you get a welcome respite from the relative loneliness and alienation that often attends city life. we have always known that human beings are sensitive to their environment. but recent work in psychology suggests that we are far more sensitive than most people realize. the traditional story of human nature in the modern west—call it individualism—paints us as rational, autonomous, agents who properly direct our lives through conscious decision. and thus do we respond to our surrounds: we observe what goes on around us and take that information into account. but the conscious, reasoning self calls the shots. at least ideally, individuals are strongly self-determining. not all cultures have seen us this way, however, and growing numbers of researchers are beginning to doubt this picture too. let’s call the contrasting view of human agency and wellbeing contextualism.31 roughly speaking, contextualists maintain that people’s lives tend to go best when they are, to a significant extent, shaped by their social and environmental context. in short, people live better given some mix of constraints and assists. individualists, by contrast, think human lives go best when individuals, as much as possible, determine the shape of their lives. individualism and contextualism are typically motivated by very different views of human psychological functioning. in particular, individualists normally see autonomous, conscious decision-making as the healthy norm for human action. whereas contextualists tend to regard much of what we do as quite fittingly shaped by our circumstances, in ways that often bypass conscious choice. for the contextualist, then, the good life will depend substantially on living in the right sort of environment—one that conduces to good choices and otherwise nourishes us. individualists take the good life to be fundamentally an individual matter, dependent on whether people choose wisely, and perhaps also on whether people have the options to live as they wish. environments are important, of course—it is better to live in italy than north korea—but only because a poor environment can get in the way of the individual’s living as she freely chooses. to an individualist, then, central park is a good thing because it gives people something they want. in economists’ terms, it is a commodity that individuals can choose, or not, to consume. and when in the park, what people do will depend on their preferences, their deliberations, their personalities. i am suggesting that individualism—the usual way of looking at things—badly understates the impact of our environment on our psyches. a place like central park, for instance, doesn’t just satisfy our preferences; it shapes them. it is not simply a venue for making choices; it influences the choice-making process itself, substantially below the radar of consciousness. and it is good, in part, because it makes us better choosers. indeed, it has a multitude of salutary effects on our functioning more broadly, making us more perceptive, sensitive, and so forth. as well, it benefits us independently of our choices: it makes us happier, even if we don’t realize that it does. it gives us something we may not know is good for us. at least, many contexts are like this; while the evidence on central park itself is largely anecdotal, the power of situations to influence our functioning in these ways is well-established. it would be surprising, and certainly contrary to my own experience, if central park lacked this power. 4.5 the evidence for contextualism these are, clearly, large issues. here i can only hope to gesture very broadly at the research favoring contextualism. there are roughly two bodies of literature here, the most important of 31 for further discussion of the individualism/contextualism distinction, see haybron 2008. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 244 which is situationist research in social psychology.32 you may already know something of this literature if, say, you’ve heard of the infamous milgram obedience experiments, where ordinary citizens were easily gotten to shock innocent test-takers, as far as they could tell, to death. (the shocks, and their effects, were fake.) in this case, a bad situation caused people to violate their most cherished values for trivial reasons. a similar study put college students in a simulated prison, whereupon they promptly adopted the manner of beasts—so rapidly and disturbingly that the experiment had to be terminated early. (the atrocities at abu ghraib were entirely predictable to anyone having a passing acquaintance with this research.) other studies have found that whether people help someone in need is strongly influenced by such weighty matters as: whether they found a dime in a pay phone; whether other people are in the vicinity; whether they just unscrambled words related to helpfulness; whether a lawnmower was running nearby; and so on.33 merely exposed to words related to the elderly, people’s memory gets worse and they walk more slowly. disturbingly, subliminal exposure to pictures of african-american men causes white people to get angrier when their computer subsequently crashes.34 whether people save for retirement often depends on what the default option was on their employment paperwork: if they have to check a box to save, they won’t; but if they don’t, they will.35 and recent work on social networks suggests that many behaviors and feelings ripple through the population like viruses: if you become obese, get divorced, or grow happier, chances are significantly greater that your friends will, too—and their friends, and so on.36 the litany of results goes on, but the idea should be plain enough: human beings are extraordinarily sensitive to their environment, so that even tiny situational cues can have large effects on what they do and how they feel. and if even trivial manipulations can strongly impact our behavior, one can imagine the influence that the myriad facets of our physical and social environments have on us. the juiciest studies concern bad influences, so many people wrongly take the moral to be that situations are threats to good choice: we must learn to resist them. but situations can help just as easily as they hurt. good situations inspire firefighters and soldiers to feats of heroism; entire villages to risk their lives to help the innocent, as happened in france when le chambon rescued thousands of jewish refugees from the holocaust; and ordinary folks to save more, eat better, exercise more, and lead happier lives. central park is a good situation. the other line of research helps explain why situations are so important.37 specifically, the mistakes noted earlier: a vast body of work shows that human beings are systematically prone to make poor choices in many situations. let’s call these tendencies ‘biases,’ though i’m not sure all of them can strictly be considered biases (as when our memories are just lousy, but in no particular direction). we put too much weight on losses versus gains; we irrationally favor the status quo; we ignore base rates when estimating probabilities; we are overconfident and 32 actually, there are three, the third being research on automaticity or ‚dual process‛ psychology, which indicates that we have less control over our behavior than we tend to think (haybron 2008). but this work is mainly relevant insofar as it relates to situationism and mistakes, and for brevity and simplicity i omit it here. 33 for reviews of the situationist literature discussed to this point, see doris 2002 and ross and nisbett 1991. while situationism is often associated with a controversial skepticism about personality or character traits, my arguments here do not require that strong view, and are compatible with a robust role for personality variables. 34 for reviews of these and other automaticity findings, see doris 2009, bargh and chartrand 1999, and hassin, uleman et al. 2005. 35 thaler and sunstein 2008. 36 fowler and christakis 2008. christakis and fowler 2007, mcdermott, christakis et al. 2009, christakis, fowler et al. 2009. 37 the automaticity literature is also crucial here. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 245 overly optimistic about our futures, and generally think too highly of ourselves; we overestimate the impact of many events on our happiness; our choices irrationally favor ‘hard’ or quantifiable values over intangibles, even when we consider the ‘soft’ values more important; we discount our own futures at an insanely steep rate; again, the list could go on for some time.38 i don’t suppose anyone needs convincing of this in the wake of our recent financial mass suicide attempt, but people make lots of mistakes. we make lots of choices that, by our own lights, are lousy. these mistakes have consequences: think divorce rates, poorly chosen careers, foreclosures, bankruptcies, overeating, under-exercising, meagre savings, credit card debt, underinsurance, and countless hours in front of the television (i have met very few people who actually want to be couch potatoes; they just, as it were, fall into it). some of this is just bad luck, but a lot of it is error—predictable error. many economists have been skeptical about such worries, arguing that people are still mostly rational and prudent. well, yes, that has to be true: imagine what would happen if we were complete buffoons, paying more for the rotten apple than the fresh one, searching for the most expensive gas station we can find, and buying all our clothes the wrong size. we’d starve. but the whole point of greek tragedy is precisely how few mistakes it takes to ruin your life. just one will do. the perfectly rational homo economicus could well be a close approximation to a stupendously imprudent creature. one reason situations are important, then, is that they can either ameliorate, or exacerbate, our tendencies to make mistakes. (as in the default option bias noted above.) this point, mostly lost on contemporary western culture, has been obvious to almost every society in human history, where considerable effort has gone into developing social institutions that foster good behavior, and discourage bad. sometimes this works through coercion or rational persuasion, but more often it takes the form of myriad ‘nudges’ that simply make certain choices, and certain ways of living, come naturally to people. think french vs. american eating habits: the french eat fattier foods yet are thinner and live longer. to live in france is to be embedded in an encompassing food culture where eating well is easy, indeed a tremendous source of pleasure. to live in the united states, where the culture follows the tenets of laissez-faire individualism, is to be embedded in an anything-goes food culture where staying healthy requires a constant battle between willpower and appetite. instructively, willpower regularly loses: one third of america’s youth may well become, not just overweight, but diabetic.39 (where i live, doctors sometimes refer to obesity as ‘missouri medium’.) taken together, the research on situationism and biases seems to me highly damaging for individualistic views of human agency and wellbeing. individualists, including many economists, will argue that these effects are mere ‘anomalies’ afflicting a species for whom conscious, rational deliberation, and a strong form of self-determination, are the healthy norms. they could be right. but i would suggest that a broad shift in our picture of human nature is under way: situation-sensitivity and biases aren’t regrettable limitations or anomalies, and they aren’t ‘bugs.’ they are core features of human psychology, and central aspects of healthy human functioning.40 situation-sensitivity does give us milgram, yes, but it also gives us le chambon. indeed it may be what makes human society possible: for a social species, you want individuals to be highly sensitive to context, rapidly and automatically adjusting themselves in response to the myriad social cues that surround them. you want people to fit in and get along, 38 accessible reviews of this literature appear in gilbert 2006, thaler and sunstein 2008, ubel 2009, trout 2009 and schwartz 2004. a more academic, but fairly comprehensive, review appears in haybron 2008. 39 boyle, thompson et al. 2010. 40 see haybron 2008, chapters. 11-12. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 246 and a race of individuals who do so only when they calculate that it serves their purposes is not likely to do a very good job of it. and for a hunter species whose survival originally depended on adeptly navigating the natural world, conscious deliberation would likely be a very crude, clumsy tool for many purposes. you want individuals who automatically attune themselves to their environment, responding to the blizzard of information with sensitivity, discernment, and speed. considering how different the demands of this environment are from those of social life, it would make good sense for the transition between the social and natural worlds to automatically trigger a cascade of psychological changes. here is michael pollan’s description of his first attempt at hunting: nothing in my experience has prepared me for the quality of this attention. i notice how the day’s first breezes comb the needles in the pines, producing a sotto voce whistle and an undulation in the pattern of light and shadow tattooing the tree trunks and the ground. i notice the specific density of the air. but this is not a passive or aesthetic attention; it is a hungry attention, reaching out into its surroundings like fingers, or nerves. my eyes venture deep into thickets my body could never penetrate, picking their way among the tangled branches, sliding over rocks and around stumps to bring back the slenderest hint of movement. in the places too deeply shadowed to admit my eyes, my ears roam at will, returning with the report of a branch cracking at the bottom of a ravine, or the snuffling of a<wait: what was that? just a bird. everything is amplified. even my skin is alert, so that when the shadow launched by the sudden ascent of a turkey vulture passes overhead i swear i can feel the temperature momentarily fall. i am the alert man.41 pollan later notes that ‚it was as if i’d dialled up the gain on all my senses,‛ a sharp contrast he likened to ‚putting on glasses with a strong new prescription for the first time.‛42 his hunting mentor confirms that this observation about ‚hunter’s eye‛ was quite typical. he continues, ‚so much sensory information was coming into my head that it seemed to push out the normal buzz of consciousness. the state felt very much like meditation.‛43 such is the power of context. while toting a .30-06 through central park is probably not a good idea, it is not implausible that any time spent in natural environments would trigger wide-ranging psychological changes. the contextualist moral to all this is that, in thinking about human wellbeing, we need to move beyond the typical focus on what individuals can do to make themselves happier. we need to attend closely to the social and environmental context in which people spend their lives, and how that influences their psychologies and behavior. we need to take seriously the architecture of happiness. 4.6 greening the architecture of happiness what does central park tell us about the architecture of happiness? at least, that accessible green spaces are a good thing, not just for the nature experiences they offer but for the social leavening they provide. the question arises, however, whether mere parks are enough: the psychic impact of time in the park appears to last for some time after you leave; and it would not be surprising if that benefit proved to be somewhat contagious, passing even to those who 41 pollan 2007, pp. 334-5. 42 pollan 2007, p. 341. 43 pollan 2007, p. 341. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 247 never went. but parks rarely occupy a very sizeable fraction of people’s time, and our minimal exposure to parks can only do so much to make us happier.44 the question, then, is whether social planning can do more to ‘spread the wealth’ of contact with nature: can we design green urban environments that offer more continual exposure to nature, even if only in small doses? can the natural world be part of the fabric of our everyday lives, including the majority of our workdays? obviously we can’t all live in the wilderness. but perhaps smaller steps can be made that would do us all good, spreading a little bit of central park throughout our daily environs, and thus, we can hope, promoting happiness and social connection.45 new buildings might incorporate substantial greenery, for instance. and housing construction might transition from low-density treeless suburbs, which isolate residents both from nature and each other, to higher-density communities with abundant shared green space—friendlier to wildlife, healthy child play, and connecting with our neighbors.46 someday, today’s synthetic gray office cubicles may be regarded with puzzlement and disgust, the relics of a benighted era. there is some fairly direct evidence that such measures would yield tangible benefits.47 a simple expedient like introducing plants to the office, for instance, may reduce blood pressure while increasing efficiency and perceived attentiveness among workers.48 we already noted, similarly, the effects of a window view on hospital patients and prison inmates. on a larger scale, two large epidemiological studies in the netherlands found proximity to green space to be a significant predictor of health, even controlling for obvious factors like age and socioeconomic status.49 other studies have found that stress declines among residents the closer they live to green spaces, again controlling for obvious factors.50 the effects are strongest for people who spend the most time near their residences, like the elderly, housewives, and poorer residents. as well, they seem to be substantially due to psychological benefits from nature exposure, rather than just mediated by physical exercise. interestingly, frequency of use of green spaces does not fully account for the impact. perhaps people benefit just from seeing or even knowing about them, or maybe they gain indirectly, through their neighbors. let me cite just one more study, or rather series of studies, concerning the robert taylor homes, a low-income housing project in chicago.51 here, twenty-eight buildings arrayed over three miles housed thousands of residents randomly assigned to apartments. some of them 44 new yorkers are not known for their sunny dispositions, central park notwithstanding (e.g., oswald and wu 2010). 45 there is in fact a minor industry of architecture and urban planning devoted to just such questions. see, e.g., kellert 2005, kellert, heerwagen et al. 2008. 46 no doubt one reason for the popularity of sprawling suburbs is the relatively plentiful greenery, so the problem is less acute there than in cities. yet neatly manicured lawns, particularly those without decent trees, may be so transparently artificial that they fail to yield many of the benefits of less tightly managed spaces. (it would be interesting to see a study of wellbeing among suburbanites whose yards are barely distinguishable from astroturf versus those with much ‚wilder‛ properties.) as well, private yards don’t bring people together in natural environs the way parks do. 47 for reviews, see matsuoka and sullivan 2011 and sullivan and chang in press. 48 lohr, pearson-mims et al. 1996. there is some question, however, about how robust these effects are; see bringslimark, hartig et al. 2009. 49 de vries, verheij et al. 2003, maas, verheij et al. 2006, maas, verheij et al. 2009. 50 grahn and stigsdotter 2003, nielsen and hansen 2007. 51 see kuo 2001, faber taylor, kuo and sullivan 2002, kuo and sullivan 2001a, kuo and sullivan 2001b. for an accessible discussion, see frumkin and louv 2007. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 248 faced trees, grass, and other vegetation, like that pictured here:52 © william sullivan other apartments faced, well, something like this charming vista: © william sullivan 52 photographs by william sullivan; used with kind permission. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 249 in essence, we have a big experiment in green versus gray manhattan, except that the differences are smaller: nobody enjoyed a central park in the vicinity, while everyone had access to some greenery. what did they find? ‘green’ apartment dwellers were significantly more likely to know their neighbors, socialize or even know people within their building, acknowledge or help each other, and significantly less likely to engage in a wide range of aggressive behaviors against their partners. for instance, nearly half of the ‘grays’ employed ‚severe violence‛ against their partners within the past year, while only (!) thirty-one percent of greens did.53 as well, greens procrastinated less, saw their problems as less severe, had better coping skills and self-discipline, and—obviously—had better relationships and committed fewer crimes. these are not effete nature-lovers, note, but hard people leading hard lives. it would not be surprising if most of them had no idea the greenery made any difference to their wellbeing—a nice frill, perhaps, but nothing important. and it would be very surprising if many of the residents fully recognized how much they could benefit from even the barest whiff of nature. in fact, only seven percent of participants mentioned anything remotely related to vegetation when asked what they looked for in a place to live, and only one participant said that a ‘natural setting’ was important. like the citizens of tin palms, they probably underestimate the value of contact with the natural world.54 look at that second picture. kind of makes you want to hit someone, doesn’t it? in an interview, investigator frances kuo reported, ‚without vegetation, people are very different beings.‛55 i suspect many people would agree that nature is good for us, but regard it as merely a question of optimizing: if not a luxury, then pretty far down the list of social desirables. i would conjecture that it is more a matter of maintaining our sanity.56 5. conclusion while the immediate lesson of central park is that people could benefit from greater connection with nature, there is a broader moral to the story: the pursuit of happiness is not simply an individual affair. this is not to deny the power of individual prudence: we can exert tremendous control over our own happiness, perhaps the best example of this being buddhist training. 57 but even buddhist practice arguably embodies contextualist insights: beginning meditators are advised to practice in formal group settings—at least partly, it seems, because such settings make it easier to take up the discipline; it takes less willpower. moreover, buddhist monasteries tend not to be located in dark, filthy basements, though the real estate might be cheaper. settings and rituals create a suggestive context that conduces to the right mindset. progress is made, not simply through individual agency, but through agency as shaped by context. consider the likelihood of americans taking up meditation en masse. even if every citizen were given a manual, and liked what they saw, the odds seem to me vanishingly small that more than a small proportion would, in the short run, commit to the practice. if widespread 53 kuo and sullivan 2001a, p. 556. the sample size was 145. ‚severe violence‛ meant at least one of: kicked, bit, or hit with a fist; hit or tried to hit with something; beat up the other one; threatened with a knife or gun; used a knife or gun. 54 true, they are poor: their responses are eminently understandable. but the results suggest they may, for all that, undervalue nature. 55 in a documentary film, the forest where we live, by louisiana public broadcasting. cited in tina prow, ‚the power of trees,‛ the illinois steward, 7:4, winter 1999. 56 for a further example of how these are not merely the concerns of rich westerners, consider the brazilian city of curitiba, which is well-known for making green space and environmental concerns a top priority. 57 ricard 2006. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 250 meditation is to become a reality, it will need to become part of the culture, including institutions that create a setting in which meditating seems natural, and not unusual or weird. this could happen from the bottom-up, as forward-thinking individuals influence acquaintances to take up meditation and the practice spreads like a virus. or it could happen from the top-down, for instance if the military were to incorporate meditation into training, sending many thousands of respected, mainstream meditators back into the culture.58 even for buddhists, the pursuit of happiness is not typically something we undertake alone. i will close by returning to the most obvious contextualist good: sociality. human beings are intensely social animals. some commentators, aristotle included, have even likened us to bees and herd animals. be that as it may, researchers generally agree that human relationships, both personal and communal, are the most important source of happiness. social isolation is immensely destructive, as the fate of prisoners in solitary confinement—many of them go crazy—makes plain.59 ‘all you need is love,’ though exaggerated, is close enough to the truth that it is trite even to mention it. let me venture a somewhat radical suggestion: short of securing vital physical needs like survival and freedom from severe pain, no gains in other goods could compensate for large decreases in our connections with other people. a society that creates mass social isolation in exchange for other goods that aren’t vital needs is almost certainly making a grave mistake, and the happiness of its residents will be greatly compromised. some contemporary societies, arguably, are doing just this. the basic worry is familiar enough, so i will offer just one data point: a large-scale epidemiological study in the united states finds that the average american can claim just two confidants—relatives or friends with whom they can discuss important matters. and a quarter of americans have none.60 these figures reflect a significant decline in social connection compared to results from twenty years prior. if you ran those numbers by the inhabitants of most societies through human history, i imagine a lot of jaws would drop. i submit that no quantity of plasma tvs, suvs, ipods, luxury cruises, or inflatable shoes could make this a reasonable, or even sane, development. surely this isn’t the necessary price of antibiotics and a steady supply of food. if those numbers are correct, then we are very likely talking about a profoundly sick society.61 this is not a problem individuals can solve on their own, and giving people still more choices is not going to make it go away. indeed, part of the problem may be that we have so many options, many of which don’t require other people. perhaps the problem is insoluble, one of the unavoidable discontents of civilization. but i don’t think so: even today, in some corners of the modern world, there remain places where friendship and neighborly affection are abundant, where evenings are passed in the company of friends and not a glowing screen, where music is something people make together and don’t merely consume through headphones, and where being ‘grounded’ might constitute a meaningful punishment for a 58 my buddhist friends might well shudder at such an idea, which probably isn’t particularly faithful to buddhism. but it could well do a lot of good, reducing both atrocities and psychological trauma among soldiers. in any event, meditative practice need not be embedded in buddhist doctrine. 59 smith 2006. see also cacioppo, hawkley et al. 2003, cacioppo and hawkley 2009, miller 2011. 60 mcpherson, lovin-smith et al. 2006. 61 it may be objected that most people are in fact happy, so there can’t be much of a problem here. i’ve argued at length elsewhere that people are probably a good deal less happy than much of the research seems to suggest (haybron 2007, 2008). it is possible that a majority of people are happy, but we aren’t currently in a position to say. suffice it to say that rates of happiness are almost certainly lower than is often claimed, and rates of psychological distress are in some cases rather alarming. in any event, everyone agrees that the vast majority of people are less happy than they could be, and most researchers think it would be desirable for people to be happier. central park: nature, context, and human wellbeing haybron www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 251 child. they have tvs and all the rest, but they don’t let the stuff get between the people. these places exist, not because they are pockets of specially wise individuals, but because the local landscape and culture make them possible. front porches and walkable neighborhoods help,62 as do trees and common green spaces. so do unspoken customs of time allocation: a simple expectation that you’ll hang out when the day’s work is done, or when a neighbor stops to say hello. more familiar markers of culture also play a role: a shared pool of songs everyone can sing, or norms against dining alone. if you happen to live in such a place, and are blessed as well with green surrounds, you’ll likely be a lot happier than if you reside in an anonymous, gray cityscape whose residents beat a daily retreat to their well-appointed isolation chambers. but you probably won’t be able to claim credit for it. author daniel m. haybron saint louis university haybrond@slu.edu publishing timeline received 31 january 2011 accepted 11 april 2011 published 20 july 2011 references bargh, j. a. and t. l. chartrand (1999). ‚the unbearable automaticity of being.‛ american 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(2011). happy-people-pills for all. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 127-148. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.16 mark walker new mexico state university mwalker@nmsu.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 127 article happy-people-pills for all mark walker abstract: it is argued that we have a moral duty to create, and make available, advanced pharmacological agents to boost the happiness of those in the normal, i.e., the non-depressed, range of happiness. happiness, conceived as a propensity to positive moods, is a quantitative trait with a sizeable genetic component. one means to boost the happiness of those in the normal range is to test the efficacy of antidepressants for enhancement. a second possibility is to model new pharmacologicals based on the genetics of the happiest amongst us, that is, the hyperthymic. the suggestion, in other words, is to ‚reverse engineer‛ the hyperthymic: to investigate what makes the hyperthymic genetically and physiologically different and then put what they have into pill form. to the ‘brave new world’ objection, that there is more to wellbeing than happiness and that taking happy-people-pills will require the sacrifice of these other aspects of wellbeing, it is countered that contemporary social science research supports the view that happiness promotes achievement in the ‘higher’ endeavors of humanity, including work, love and virtue. in other words, happiness promotes acquisition of traits valued by perfectionists. those born with genes for hyperthymia, on average, tend to be doubly blessed: they are happier and achieve more than the rest of the population. happy-people-pills are a means to allow everyone else to share in this good fortune. the paper seeks to rebut two further criticisms: that happy-people-pills will lead to emotional inappropriateness and inauthentic happiness. finally, it is argued that depending on the view about the role of government in individual welfare, either government has a positive duty to develop happy-people-pills, or government has a duty not to interfere with private companies that seek to develop such pharmacological agents. keywords: wellbeing, well-being, public policy, perfectionism, happiness, happinessism 1. biohappiness like the ancient greeks, contemporary wellbeing researchers are asking theoretical questions such as ‚what is wellbeing and how can it be measured?‛ alongside the practical question as to how wellbeing might be promoted. thus, investigators have looked at how wellbeing research might inform public policy,1, 2 and how individuals might be coached to be happier.3, 4, 5, 6 that 1 d. bok, the politics of happiness: what government can learn from the new research on well -being (new jersey: princeton univ pr, 2010). 2 e. diener, r. lucas, and u. schimmack, well-being for public policy (new york: oxford university press, 2009). 3 m. e. p seligman, authentic happiness: using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment (free pr, 2002). 4 sonja lyubomirsky, the how of happiness: a scientific approach to getting the life you want (new york: penguin books, 2008). 5 robert biswas-diener and ben dean, positive psychology coaching: putting the science of happiness to work for your clients (hoboken, n.j.: john wiley & sons, 2007). happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 128 research is important and is to be applauded. however, there is a curious omission in current efforts: little practical advice has been directed to the largest determinant of happiness, namely, genes.7 in other words, since one ambition of wellbeing research is the practical aim of making people happier, surely it should strike us as curious why the greatest contributor to happiness has gone virtually ignored. while it is not often explicitly discussed, sonia lyubomirsky in the following passage nicely summarizes a crucial assumption: ‚thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but our daily intentional activities.‛8 the tragedy for the practical task of boosting happiness is obvious: some individuals have won the genetic lottery for happiness—they have a genetic propensity for high levels of happiness—others have not fared so well; and if lyubomirsky is correct, there is nothing we can do about the genetic component of happiness. in one sense she is absolutely correct: we cannot change our genes (at least with current technology). but notice that the interest in genes, in this connection, is to influence the inherited biological basis of happiness, that is, the brain structures and the neurochemical basis of happiness. and notice too that it does not follow that just because we can’t manipulate genes we cannot do anything about the inherited biological basis of happiness. i will use ‘biohappiness’ to refer to the general goal of using pharmacology to make people happier, and ‘happy-people-pills’ (hpp) to refer to the specific goal of a program to put into pill form the chemicals that promote above-average happiness, chemicals that some are born with the propensity to manufacture naturally, thanks to the genetic lottery. biohappiness is familiar and (relatively) uncontroversial in therapeutic applications, that is, in treating depression. even some of the best known critics of biohappiness, for example leon kass and francis fukuyama, allow that it is appropriate at least in some cases to use pharmacological agents to treat some forms of depression.9, 10 the present proposal is for something much more encompassing: ‚normally happy‛ persons should be able to use hpp to be ‚better than well‛, to invoke peter kramer’s famous phrase.11 indeed, i shall maintain that governments have an obligation to develop (or at least not stand in the way of the development of) hpp. we will proceed as follows: the genetics and pharmacology of happiness are examined in the subsequent two sections with the view to understanding what is involved in the development of hpp. in section four the relationship between happiness and wellbeing is examined. section five looks at social science data that indicate that happiness causes achievement. from there we turn to some of the more prominent objections to biohappiness, followed by two sections that canvass moral arguments for the development of biohappiness. 6 n. l. sin and s. lyubomirsky, ‚enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: a practice-friendly meta-analysis,‛ journal of clinical psychology 65, no. 5 (2009): 467–487. 7 d. t. lykken, ‚a more accurate estimate of heritability,‛ twin research and human genetics 10, no. 1 (february 2007): 168–73. see below for further discussion. 8 lyubomirsky, the how of happiness. at p. 22. 9 francis fukuyama, our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution (macmillan, 2003). 10 president's council on bioethics, beyond therapy: biotechnology and the pursuit of happiness (president's council on bioethics, 2003). 11 peter kramer, listening to prozac (new york: penguin books, 1993). happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 129 2. the genetics of happiness we will use ‘happy’ in the psychologist’s sense of ‘positive affect’, meaning the experience of positive moods and emotions such as joy, interest, and contentment.12 this understanding of ‘happiness’ is clearly narrower than how the term is used in common parlance.13 the justification for this restriction is simply that the stipulated construction is important for our argument, for it is one that is often used in the scientific data we will review. anyone who is bothered by this stipulation may simply read ‘positive affect’ for ‘happiness’. of all the results discovered about happiness in the last century perhaps none is more surprising than the discovery that genes account for a large amount of the happiness or unhappiness that individuals experience. some heritability estimates14 for happiness are as high as 80%,15, 16 while others are in the 50% range.17, 18 to get some idea of what this means, consider research on identical twins adopted by different families at birth. since separated twins will have fewer environmental influences in common than siblings raised in the same family, if genetics has no effect on happiness, then we should predict that the level of happiness experienced by the twins ought not to be closely correlated. a correlation of 0.5 to 0.8 is considered high by the standards of the human sciences and it tells us that a very good predictor of an identical twin’s level of happiness is the happiness level experienced by his or her twin raised in a different family. what this means is that in the typical case, a large measure of one’s happiness over the course of a lifetime depends on how one fares in the ‚genetic lottery‛. the point is put quite dramatically by david lykken and auke tellegen: ‚the reported well-being of one's identical twin, either now or 10 years earlier, is a far better predictor of one's self-rated happiness than is one's own educational achievement, income, or status.‛19 like stature, there is a considerable range of happiness amongst the ‚normally‛ happy that falls more or less on a normal curve.20 at the extreme ends: there are ‚happiness dwarves‛ and ‚happiness giants‛. happiness dwarves are those who are not clinically depressed, but have fewer positive moods and emotions than the average person. the happiness giants we will 12 sonja lyubomirsky, laura king, and ed diener, ‚the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?,‛ psychological bulletin 131 (2005): 803– 855. 13 see sumner (l. w. sumner, welfare, happiness, and ethics (oxford university press, 1996).) and haybron (daniel haybron, the pursuit of unhappiness (new york: oxford university press, 2008).). 14 heritability estimates are always relativized to some population. 15 david lykken and auke tellegen, ‚happiness is a stochastic phenomena,‛ psychological science 7, no. 3 (5, 1996): 186–189. 16 david lykken, happiness: what studies on twins show us about nature, nurture, and the happiness set-point (new york: golden books, 1999). 17 julia m. braungart et al., ‚genetic influence on tester-rated infant temperament as assessed by bayley's infant behavior record: nonadoptive and adoptive siblings and twins.,‛ developmental psychology 28, no. 1 (1992): 40–47. 18 most heritability measures in the literature cluster around the 50% level, but as david lykken has argued, they almost certainly underestimate heritability, for there is an ‚almost universal but erroneous assumption that a single measure of a trait constitutes the lasting sum or product of genetic and environmental influences and that, apart from an inevitable but (usually) small amount of measurement error, that single measure reflects the trait’s stable value or intensity.‛ (lykken, ‚a more accurate estimate of heritability.‛ at 168). the point is simple but devastating for most heritability estimates: a single measure of a disposition or ‚set-point‛ for happiness will (barring statistical flukes) always underestimate heritability. however, for our purposes it does not matter whether the lower estimate of 50% is correct, or whether lykken is correct that it is higher, for in both cases genes are the largest single determinant of our happiness. 19 lykken and tellegen, ‚happiness is a stochastic phenomenon.‛ 20 s. oishi, e. diener, and r. e lucas, ‚the optimum level of well-being: can people be too happy?,‛ perspectives on psychological science 2, no. 4 (2007): 346. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 130 refer to as the ‘hyperthymic’. the hyperthymic are in the enviable position of experiencing more frequent positive moods and emotions than most. this group has not been extensively studied, but some insight into their lives is suggested by clinical evidence from psychiatrist richard friedman.21 friedman relates the case of a woman who came to him seeking advice. within the last year the woman had lost her husband to cancer and had lost her job. despite the terrible circumstances, the woman had not sought out friedman as a patient but for advice about her son who was having a difficult time coping with the loss of his father. friedman says that he was intrigued by the woman’s ability to cope with her circumstances. he offers a little clinical evidence that provides a glimpse into the lives of the hyperthymic: despite crushing loss and stress, she was not at all depressed – sad, yes, but still upbeat. i found myself stunned by her resilience. what accounted for her ability to weather such sorrow with buoyant optimism? so i asked her directly. "all my life," she recalled recently, "i've been happy for no good reason. it's just my nature, i guess." but it was more than that. she was a happy extrovert, full of energy and enthusiasm who was indefatigably sociable. and she could get by with five or six hours of sleep each night.22 3. pharmacology and happiness i have a short-term and a long-term proposal for putting into pill form what the hyperthymic have naturally. the short-term plan is to investigate the efficacy of our current stable of antidepressants. the obvious thought is that if antidepressants boost the moods of the clinically depressed, then they may have the same boosting effect on the normally happy. let me say right off that i do not know if antidepressants will work. this is a research proposal, subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation. it is hardly an objection to a research proposal that we do not currently know whether the research will yield the desired goal. it is an objection if we have good reason to believe the research will not achieve the desired goal, but surprisingly little research has been done into the efficacy of antidepressants on healthy volunteers. the paucity of studies of the possibility of using antidepressants for mood enhancement in healthy individuals is revealed by a recent meta-study by repantis et al.23 one unexpected finding was the number of studies, 135, involving research on healthy volunteers. however, very few of those studies included specific measurements of enhancement. typically, the studies were designed to look for side effects. the fact that these studies were not designed to assess the enhancement of happiness is significant in two respects. one relates to the length of the studies. it is well documented that the therapeutic efficacy of antidepressants often takes several weeks to show measurable results. the meta-review found only 17 of the 135 studies lasted for more than two weeks, and only one study lasted for six weeks, which is the usual length of studies looking at efficacy in treating depression. in other words, if we were looking for the efficacy of antidepressants to treat depression, only one study would be of an 21 see also e. diener and m. e. p seligman, ‚very happy people,‛ psychological science 13, no. 1 (2002): 81– 84. and, oishi, diener, and lucas, ‚the optimum level of well-being.‛ the latter study suggests that not all gains in happiness are correlated with positive outcomes. i cannot comment on this interesting research here, but at worst it would show that we ought not to boost happiness to the highest level, but to the penultimate level. this still implies that most people would do well to have their happiness boosted. 22 richard friedman, ‚born to be happy, through a twist of human hard wire,‛ the new york times, december 31, 2002, sec. f. 23 d. repantis et al., ‚antidepressants for neuroenhancement in healthy individuals: a systematic review,‛ poiesis & praxis: international journal of technology assessment and ethics of science 6, no. 3 (2009): 139–174. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 131 appropriate length. compounding this problem are the tools used for measuring the efficacy of treatment. because the studies were not designed specifically to track enhancement, they may have missed crucial data. for example, using the hamilton depression scale to measure the efficacy of an experimental drug to treat depression may make sense, but the same scale may not be sensitive for detecting mood enhancement in healthy volunteers. although there is a real paucity of systematic evidence supporting or disproving the conjecture that antidepressants will enhance the mood of the healthy, the authors of the metastudy cautiously noted that ‚most interesting was the positive effect on mood that continuously increased over time.‛24 furthermore, although there appears to be some placebo effect, the difference with control groups is statistically significant. the authors suggest, ‚consequently, it is important to note that antidepressants even in healthy non-depressed individuals seem to be able to heighten mood.‛25 the meta-study also confirmed the fact that antidepressants seem to have negative side effects, but these side effects were often very mild. of the 135 studies, 84 reported side effects and 20 reported no adverse effects. among the adverse effects reported were: nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth, epigastric pain, sleep disturbance, restlessness, tremor, headache, dizziness, fatigue and drowsiness.26 an important point to note here is that not everyone experienced these side effects equally. some subjects showed no ill effects, while others suffered terribly, to the point they dropped out of the study.27 it is clear that people react quite differently to antidepressants with respect to both positive and negative results. and although there is tantalizing evidence that antidepressants may be an effective hpp, the bottom line is that we simply do not know at this point—more research is needed. the longer-term proposal is to reverse engineer the hyperthymic and put in pill form what hyperthymics have due to their genetic endowment. let me describe in very broad strokes how the research might proceed. the first step is to identify the hyperthymic. standard psychological inventories for positive moods and emotions should differentiate the hyperthymic from the non-hyperthymic. we noted previously that happiness is a trait that falls on a normal curve, so there is no reason to suppose that there is some discreet boundary between the hyperthymic and the rest of the population. scientists will have to operationally define ‘hyperthymic’ along the lines of: ‚for the purposes of this study, ‘hyperthymia’ is understood as the top 5, 7 or 10%, etc.) on our positive mood inventory.‛ the second step would be to deploy a variety of genetic and physiological tests. the genomes of the hyperthymic would be sequenced, as would those of the non-hyperthymic, to serve as a comparison class.28 physiological measures including levels of various neurotransmitters would 24 ibid. at 158. 25 ibid. at 158. 26 more worrisome was the suggestion in david healy’s informal study that suggested that antidepressants could cause suicidal ideation in healthy volunteers (d. healy, let them eat prozac: the unhealthy relationship between the pharmaceutical companies and depression (new york: new york university press, 2004).). to the best of my knowledge the results have not been confirmed, but they do suggest caution in testing. healy’s study was not included in the aforementioned meta-study, but it too found an enhancement effect. 27 there is almost a universal double-standard involved in antidepressant research: positive effects of taking antidepressants are not counted as ‚real‛ unless they can be shown to be greater than a placebo effect. all negative symptoms are treated as ‚real‛ even if the level of symptoms does not rise above that of the nocebo effect. (patients taking placebos will often report negative side-effects from their ‚sugar pill‛). 28 a nice recent survey on what we know at present about the genetics of happiness can be found in k. blum et al., ‚genes and happiness,‛ gene therapy and molecular biology 13 (2009): 91–129. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 132 be tested in the hyperthymic and the non-hyperthymic. the third step is to mine for commonalities and differences at both the genetic and neurophysiological levels. finally, there is the task of actually creating a pharmacological agent based on this information. there is, of course, no guarantee that we can discover the genes, their function, or mimic their effects pharmacologically. however, there are grounds for optimism. the methodology described here is borrowed entirely from current research strategies for developing pharmacological interventions for genetically linked diseases such as alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. since researchers are optimistic that this research strategy will pay dividends in the case of disease research, and exactly the same hurdles stand in the way of understanding the contribution of genes to happiness, we should hold out similar optimism for this approach for hpp.29 4. happiness and wellbeing we turn now to examine philosophical treatments of the relationship between happiness and wellbeing.30 the point of the discussion is to see what, if anything, hpp might do for wellbeing. a theory of wellbeing is a theory of prudential value.31 to grasp the conceptual terrain it will be helpful to concentrate, initially, on monistic conceptions of prudential value, that is, theories that postulate a unifying value to explain the good life.32 in the history of philosophy, there are only two serious contenders for a monistic conception of prudential good, namely, happiness and perfection.33, 34, 35 a simple example will serve as preliminary elucidation of each.36 abigail is a very promising mathematician just completing her doctoral work in pure mathematics. she is trying to decide whether to take up an offer from a prestigious university or assume ownership of her uncle’s tavern. on the one hand, she knows that she has ample talent for mathematics, and indeed she has a reasonable expectation that she may make some great mathematical discoveries. yet, after nearly ten years in university, she finds the academic life does not make her happy. on the other hand, she knows that she has been extremely happy working in her uncle’s tavern during breaks from school. however, abigail does not think that she will be any more than adequate at running a tavern—it is not as if she thinks she possesses a special aptitude for business in the way that she does for mathematics. but this in itself does not dissuade her, because the attraction is happiness—it puts her in a buoyant mood and at peace with the world and herself—rather than some tavern-running acumen. what should abigail do? be a mathematician or a pub owner? be happy or develop her mathematical excellence? 29 see barondes (s. h. barondes, better than prozac: creating the next generation of psychiatric drugs (oxford university press, usa, 2003).) for a popular presentation of the obstacles and reasons for optimism that they can be overcome in the pursuit of therapeutics for alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, etc. 30 one of the consequences of increased interest in wellbeing is a proliferation of theories of happiness and wellbeing, which makes it difficult to summarize without riding roughshod over many important distinctions. so ends my disclaimer. 31 james griffin, well-being: its meaning, measurement, and moral importance (oxford: clarendon press, 1986). 32 ‘good life’ is used here as a synonym for the ‘prudentially good life’. for this use, and contrast uses, see feldman. fred feldman, pleasure and the good life: concerning the nature, varieties, and plausibility of hedonism (oxford: clarendon press, 2004). 33 h. sidgwick, ‚the methods of ethics (1907),‛ indianapolis: hackett (1981). at 9. 34 wayne sumner, ‚two theories of the good‛,‛ in the good life and the human good, edited by ellen frankel paul, fred d. miller, jr., and jeffrey paul, (new york: cambridge university press, 1992), 1–15. at 3. sumner uses ‘welfare’ rather than ‘happiness’. see note 40 for the placement of desire satisfactionism in this division. 35 sumner, welfare, happiness, and ethics. at 193–194. 36 adapted from sumner (sumner, ‚two theories of the good‛. ) at 4–5. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 133 perfectionism says that judgments of the goodness of actions and lives are to be made according to ideals of mental and physical perfection.37 it recommends that we promote these ideals in our lives. so, perfectionists like plato, aristotle, aquinas, and kant, who put a high premium on intellectual excellence, would enjoin abigail to pursue her special talent in mathematics and take up the university post.38 abigail’s development of her excellence promotes her good. in contrast, happinessists—those who see happiness as the sole and ultimate prudential good— must recommend the tavern life.39 although both perfectionists and happinessists propose monistic conceptions of the good life, this is not to deny that other values will figure in their accounts. to see why, we need to distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental values. something is intrinsically valuable if it is valued for its own sake, while something is instrumentally valuable if it is valued for the sake of something else. so, for example, i might believe that getting a job is instrumentally valuable as a means to making money, and money is instrumentally valuable because it allows me to buy champagne and caviar (okay—beer and chips) which contributes to my happiness, which is intrinsically valuable. thus, instrumental values are always parasitic: they are always connected immediately, or through other instrumental values, to at least one intrinsic value. intrinsic values, on the other hand, do not require instrumental values. also, we should note the possibility that something may have both instrumental and intrinsic value, e.g., happinessists may allow that happiness has instrumental as well as intrinsic value. suppose happiness leads to having more friends, and friendship leads to more happiness. happiness then has instrumental value in that it contributes to the instrumental value of friendship, and friendship itself has instrumental value because it leads to happiness. pluralism takes issue with both happinessism and perfectionism. against the former it is maintained that wellbeing is not exhausted by happiness. there is more to the good life than happiness; in particular, plausible candidates include many of the elements that perfectionists tend to endorse such as knowledge, friendship, family, intellectual excellence, and so on. notice here that the claim is stronger than simply that knowledge, friendship, intellectual excellence have value. for, as noted, even the happinessist can endorse this claim, for the happinessist can allow they have instrumental value. the pluralist maintains that they have value above and beyond any instrumental contribution they make to happiness, that is, pluralists maintain that there is a multiplicity of intrinsic prudential values. conversely, pluralists maintain that there is more to wellbeing than perfection, that is, that happiness has intrinsic value above and beyond 37 thomas hurka, perfectionism (new york: oxford university press, 1993). hurka rejects the idea that perfectionism is a theory of prudential value, but others have interpreted it in this manner (griffin, well-being: its meaning, measurement, and moral importance.; sumner, welfare, happiness, and ethics.; richard arneson, ‚human flourishing versus desire satisfaction,‛ social philosophy and policy 16, no. 1 (1999): 113–142.) 38 see hurka (hurka, perfectionism.) for discussion of perfectionism in the history of philosophy. 39 ‘happinessist’ and ‘happinessism’ are (barbaric) terms of art to signify a genus: various accounts of happiness. one species of happinessism is the hedonist view of happiness associated with mill (john stuart mill, utilitarianism (chicago, il: university of chicago press, 1906).) mill claims that ‘happiness’ is identical with pleasure. taken as a purely experiential theory, hedonism has few converts. however, fred feldman has argued (feldman, pleasure and the good life) that hedonism might be understood in an attitudinal form: ‚i enjoy that _____‛. understood in these terms mill’s view becomes much more plausible. competitors within happinessism include sumner’s whole life satisfaction view of happinessism (sumner, welfare, happiness, and ethics.), affective theories of the sort endorsed by haybron (haybron, the pursuit of unhappiness.) and desire satisfactionism (richard brandt, a theory of the good and the right (oxford: clarendon press, 1979).) see sumner (sumner, welfare, happiness, and ethics. chapter one) for the idea that desire satisfaction is a historical outgrowth of the project of economists to define ‘utility’ or ‘happiness’. i take it that all these theories would recommend that abigail take the life of a tavern owner, although they would disagree on what happiness is, and so how her happiness would be served. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 134 any instrumental value happiness has in promoting achievement of the sort valued by perfectionists.40 this discussion of wellbeing puts us in a position to fully appreciate what is the most serious, or at least most common objection to biohappiness: there is more to wellbeing than ‘happiness’ as it is narrowly defined here. biohappiness may increase our positive moods, but it will diminish other aspects of our lives, and so our overall wellbeing. aldous huxley’s brave new world is often read through the lens of this objection. the citizens of huxley’s dystopia experience more positive moods and emotions than do the citizens of our world, thanks at least in part to the use of ‘soma’: their version of biohappiness. indeed, compared on this single value of positive affect, the brave new world41 wins hands down. 42 but if we compare the two worlds on other values that we might think are relevant to wellbeing, such as friendship, marriage, work success and prosocial behavior, the brave new world is seriously lacking. for instance, relations between individuals in the brave new world are, by and large, shallow and transitory because the brave new world is socially engineered to exclude both marriage and deep lasting friendships. the workplace is carefully managed to keep people occupied rather than to foster any serious achievement, and the population for the most part seems oblivious to any of the prosocial virtues like caring for others. thus, huxley’s work is often read as offering us a dilemma: either we choose our world where there is the possibility of serious artistic and scientific achievement and other perfectionist goods, but considerable unhappiness; or, we use technology to make ourselves happy with soma, but forego serious pursuit of excellence. given this choice, most readers come away thinking that our world is prudentially better: what the brave new worlders gain in positive moods and emotions is not compensated for by the loss of other aspects of wellbeing. it is easy to see how two of the three theories of wellbeing canvassed should respond to the brave new world dilemma. happinessists should choose the brave new world over our own. they might argue, for example, that part of our negative reaction to the brave new world is its unfamiliarity.43 perhaps if we were to live in the brave new world for a few years, our own world would seem unbearable. obviously, the perfectionist should choose our world, since friendship, science, art, and other areas of perfectionist excellence are possible. the choice is not so clear with respect to pluralism. pluralism answers the inventory question about prudential value thus: happiness and perfection are intrinsic prudential values. however, pluralism is 40 i am taking a short-cut here in assuming that pluralism agrees that perfectionism and happinessism are to be included in the pluralist’s list of values. clearly there is conceptual room for other possibilities and distinctions. thus, many philosophical discussions of wellbeing follow derek parfit (derek parfit, reasons and persons (oxford: oxford university press, 1987).) in making a tripartite distinction: hedonism, desire satisfactionism and objective list theory. as noted above, i’ve grouped hedonism and desire satisfactionism under ‘happinessism’, and no doubt i am open to taking some philosophical lumps for this move. parfit presents objective list theories as forms of pluralism, but as richard arneson points out (arneson, ‚human flourishing versus desire satisfaction.‛) an objective list might have a single item, and so be a form of monism. indeed, perfectionism is often considered a version of the objective list theory (brad hooker, ‚does moral virtue constitute a benefit to the agent?,‛ in how should one live?, edited by roger crisp (oxford: oxford university press, 1996), 141–157.). 41 i will use the non-italicized ‘brave new world’ to refer to the imaginary place described in huxley’s novel. 42 and indeed citizens there also have their desires and enjoyments carefully engineered to make sure that they desire and enjoy what they get, and they don’t desire or enjoy what they don’t get. the objection then is that huxley has described a happinessist’s paradise, but the novel describes a nightmare. 43 jonathan glover (j. glover, ‚how should we decide what sort of world is best?,‛ ethics and problems of the 21st century (1979): 79–92.) explores this line of thought. some who i have lumped under ‘happinessism’ may deny this. fred feldman’s hedonism allows ‘adjustments’ to pleasure that may make our world come out prudentially better, and sumner thinks that judgments of life satisfaction must be autonomous, and the argument might be made that the brave new worlders are not autonomous. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 135 compatible with a variety of answers to the indexing question of wellbeing: how are the various intrinsic prudential values to be weighted? a pluralist with happinessist leanings might rank any gain in happiness as more valuable than any loss of perfection, while a pluralist with perfectionist leanings could give the opposite weightings. so, the pluralist might side with the happinessist in preferring the brave new world to our world, or with the perfectionists’ endorsement of the greater prudential worth of our world, depending on how the indexing question is resolved. given the dilemma, it seems that the proponent of biohappiness must show that happiness is the sole intrinsic value, i.e., argue for happinessism; or, argue that happiness is more valuable than perfectionist goods, that is, a form of pluralism that ranks happiness higher than perfectionist goods.44 there is actually another possibility here for the proponent of biohappiness. the route we will follow does not require us to adjudicate the 2,500-year-old debate about prudential value, rather, we shall reject huxley’s dilemma that asks us to choose between happiness and perfection. 5. happiness causes perfectionist achievement there is a small and a big step to rejecting huxley’s dilemma. the small step is to distinguish hpp from huxley’s soma. the effects of soma are dose-sensitive. taken in small amounts, soma boosts moods; in larger doses it causes a tranquilizing effect, and in very large doses it causes hallucinations. as huxley himself acknowledges, there is no single pharmaceutical in existence that has all three effects.45 hpp have only the first effect and so they are quite different from soma. hpp and soma are two completely different species within the biohappiness genus. this can’t be emphasized too much: the sedating and hallucinatory properties of soma that contribute to a loss of achievement are irrelevant to hpp. the second step is to show that increased positive moods and emotions will not decrease achievement; rather, positive moods and emotions are productive of greater achievement. in other words, we can reject huxley’s dilemma because we have good reason to think that hpp will promote both happiness and perfection. we need not choose. the claim that we need not choose contradicts the widespread assumption about the arrow of causality between happiness and achievement (and one that huxley seems to assume). specifically, it is a common assumption, both in ‚folk psychology‛ and among professional researchers on happiness, that achievement causes happiness.46 the thought here is that winning an award at work, getting married, or developing friendships may cause us to be happy. conversely, being unhappy or dissatisfied with our lives is sometimes the spur in our sides: if we were happy then we would have no reason to achieve at work, get married or develop friendships. it is certainly true that recent success can cause us to be happier, at least in the short term. winning an award at work, getting married or meeting new friends can cause at least a temporary spike in our happiness. but our question is this: is there a causal arrow in the opposite direction? a massive recent meta-study by sonja lyubomirsky, laura king and ed diener indicates that the preponderance of evidence is that chronic positive affect can cause 44 it is interesting that the philosophical dialogue near the end of brave new world has the controller espousing pluralism: he admits that perfectionist goods have value. he says that their value must be sacrificed for happiness, which is more valuable. so, the controller is no happinessist. 45 a point huxley concedes in his later reflections on his novel (a. huxley, brave new world: and, brave new world revisited (harpercollins, 2004).) 46 lyubomirsky, king, and diener, ‚the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?‛ happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 136 increased achievement.47 that is, the arrow of causation is bi-directional. if this is the case then we have good reason to reject huxley’s dilemma. if we develop an appropriate technological means to increase average positive affect, then we should boost average achievement. so, there is no reason to suppose that biohappiness would force us to choose between happiness and achievement. huxley offers us a false dichotomy. let me briefly summarize some of the research by lyubomirsky, king and diener that supports this claim. part of the case they make is based on correlational studies between happiness and achievement. the authors are well aware that correlation is not sufficient to establish a causal relation, but it is a necessary condition.48 a second area of research surveyed involved longitudinal studies. the basic methodology involves measuring subjects for positive affect and achievement at time t1 and a later time t2. if happiness causes achievement, then we should predict that those who are happier at t1 will achieve more than their unhappy peers by t2, whereas if unhappiness causes achievement, we should predict the opposite. a third area involves laboratory research. here the basic methodology is to boost positive affect in subjects and then see if this boosts achievement. obviously in the laboratory setting it is not possible to investigate the long-term boosting of positive affect, but the thought is that these short-term laboratory studies provide some evidence of what might happen in the long-term case. the authors construct a powerful case that happiness causes achievement. the robustness of this result is underscored by the fact that the authors looked at 225 papers by hundreds of different researchers to make their argument.49 the results of the meta-survey of hundreds of previous studies converge on the view that happiness can cause achievement in the three broad areas: work life, social relations, and health. in terms of work, positive affect leads to securing better success at securing job interviews and securing better jobs, being evaluated in a positive manner by supervisors, succeeding at managerial jobs, assisting co-workers, developing abilities within an organization, being more creative and earning a higher income. in terms of social life, greater happiness leads to a greater number and quality of friendships, greater cooperation and prosocial and charitable behavior.50 happiness also leads to greater mental and physical health. 51 several points about these results are worth mentioning. first, to say that happiness causes achievement or success does not preclude causal influence in the opposite direction. as the authors note, there is evidence that success can also cause happiness. the influence of success on happiness is not surprising: as noted above, this is the common assumption of folk psychology and (previously) the most prevalent view among professional researchers on happiness. what is surprising is how strong the influence of happiness is on achievement. second, this research ought to put to rest once and for all the view that happy people are complacent, and that unhappiness is the sole spur to action and success. the evidence reviewed shows this is false for personal accomplishment, and happy persons are not necessarily satisfied with the social and political environment.52 finally even perfectionists who do not think that happiness has intrinsic value ought to take notice of this research because happiness 47 ibid. 48 we will assume that there are no confounding third variables here. 49 lyubomirsky, king, and diener, ‚the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?‛ at 806. 50 for more on the relationship between happiness and prosocial behaviour see mark walker, ‚happy-people-pills and prosocial behavior,‛ philosophica 71, no. 1 (2007): 93–111. 51 all data in lyubomirsky, king, and diener, ‚the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?‛ 52 f. m. andrews and s. b. withey, social indicators of well-being: americans' perceptions of life quality (new york: plenum publishing corporation, 1976). happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 137 leads to something that perfectionists value, namely: achievement. that is, happiness leads to the physical, social and intellectual achievements that perfectionists value, and so perfectionists should value increased happiness for what happiness can cause.53 so, perfectionists ought to recognize the instrumental value of hpp. therefore, all three families of wellbeing ought to be interested in, if not downright enthusiastic about, hpp: happinessists, because it promises to make us happier; perfectionists, because it promises to provide resources to pursue and obtain excellence; pluralists, because it promises both happiness and perfection. 6. more objections: true happiness and emotional appropriateness the brave new world objection is only one of many. in this section we will consider two more. the first is the idea that in taking a pill one would achieve only a ‚false happiness‛, not the ‚genuine happiness‛ that most seek. imagine, for example, someone who is not clinically depressed but feels that she would like to experience greater levels of positive moods and emotions. after taking the pill she says, ‚i feel happy, extremely happy in fact. but i feel this way because of the pills i take. if i did not take the pills i would not be so happy, and so the happiness i experience is not genuine. i would like to experience authentic happiness: happiness that is not due to a pill but a happiness that originates with me.‛ the president’s council on bioethics makes the same point in connection with therapeutic uses of antidepressants. they say that patients receiving pharmacological therapy… worry about using artificial means to change their psyches, a concern that springs ultimately from their desire that feelings and personalities not be artificial and false but genuine and true. their worry, also widely shared, about having one’s experiences of the world mediated by a drug is, at least in part, a worry about having one’s real experience distorted. even the expressed concern over ‚taking the easy way out‛ may involve not so much an opposition to ease, but a concern about distortion and self-deception.54 why do patients feel that their experiences are ‚distorted‛, not ‚genuine or true‛? the president’s council on bioethics suggests: ‚while such drugs often make things better—they often help individuals achieve some measure of the happiness they desire—taking such drugs may also leave many of the same individuals wondering whether their newfound happiness is fully their own—and in this sense, fully real.‛55 but why should we accept the president’s council’s judgment? after all, universalized, such a judgment seems fairly harsh. it would say that anyone who takes antidepressants or other drugs is not genuinely happy: their happiness is distorted and not fully their own. here the president’s council on bioethics seems ambivalent. they want to say that those who do suffer from debilitating depression can experience genuine happiness with antidepressants, but they do not explain why someone of a normal level of subjective wellbeing, who uses pills to enhance his or her happiness, is not similarly genuinely happy. not only does the president’s council on bioethics not have an answer, but also i think the council’s line of criticism hides a crucial ambiguity. to see this, consider a parallel with sexchange procedures. imagine chris undergoes plastic surgery and hormone replacement 53 there is certainly more to say here. other potential benefits for perfectionists are numerous, but most notably include promoting autonomy. 54 kass, beyond therapy: biotechnology and the pursuit of happiness (executive office of the president, 2003). 55 ibid. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 138 therapy in order to change from male to female phenotype. after these procedures (let us concede) there is a clear and undeniable sense in which her looks are ‚not genuine and true‛: her morphology is to some extent artificial in the sense of not being entirely the product of the usual genetic and environmental influences that contribute to human sexual dimorphism. but i believe that many of us would accept that there is a sense in which chris’ post-sex-change appearance is truer or more genuine. the reason that we might say this is that her new appearance is an expression of the looks she believes are more appropriate. in other words, plastic surgery can (in some cases) be seen as an expression of the person you feel you have always been on the inside, and therefore more authentic, than the looks provided by environment and genetics. what this indicates is that there are two distinctions at work here: artificial versus natural, and authentic versus inauthentic. the first might be understood along the lines of bodily integrity: ‚the natural‛ happens in and to the human body (including the brain) on its own, whereas ‚the artificial‛ is when intervention breaks the bodily boundary, as in surgery or pills.56 ‘authentic’ in this context means reflecting the individual’s priorities, values and decisions, while ‘inauthentic’ means not doing so. applying this to chris, we should say that her looks are artificial (and so not ‘genuine’ or ‘true’ in this sense) but authentic (and so genuine and true in the other sense), since they reflect her values and her self-understanding. so, there is no contradiction in saying that chris' looks are artificial (created by plastic surgery) and authentic (chosen by her to represent her understanding of herself).57 applying this distinction to taking hpp we might say that someone who chooses to do so will experience artificial happiness, but the happiness might also be authentic. although the pill is modeled on natural analogues, specifically, people who are naturally hyperthymic, the pill would artificially create hyperthymia in those with lower levels of happiness. again, there is a parallel with plastic surgery: someone may have their appearance artificially changed by surgery; others might have the good fortune of obtaining their attractive features through winning the genetic lottery. we could also say that those taking hpp are authentically happy because their happiness would be more in line with their own self-understanding of the person they want to be. someone whose genetics are relevantly different from the naturally hyperthymic might say that they feel more like themselves when they are in a positive mood, and so the hyperthymic pill allows them to be the sort of person they feel they really are. the point of course is not that hpp necessarily leads to a more authentic realization of one's self, any more than plastic surgery necessarily leads to a more authentic realization of one's self. many people are satisfied with their looks, including those who do not fit societal norms of beauty. for such individuals, there is not a great divide between what they are naturally and their authentic looks. to force those who are satisfied with the looks they have received through genetic inheritance into plastic surgery, designed to make them ‚more beautiful‛ with respect to some norm, would be to create looks that were both artificial and inauthentic. again, we say ‘artificial’ because plastic surgery is (by assumption) artificial, and ‘inauthentic’ because such a change does not reflect the priorities and self-understanding of the individual. similarly, 56 there are obvious problems (glover, ‚how should we decide what sort of world is best?‛) with drawing the distinction in this way, e.g., laser eye surgery then counts as an unnatural change. however, the point developed below is that even if we grant such a distinction to opponents of biohappiness, it is not sufficient to support their position. 57 carl elliot investigates the question of whether the desire for positive moods is itself inauthentic; mere capitulation to the zeitgeist (c. elliott, ‚the tyranny of happiness: ethics and cosmetic psychopharmacology,‛ enhancing human traits: ethical and social implications (1998): 177–188). happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 139 surreptitiously adding a hyperthymic pill to a normally happy person’s diet would be to create artificial happiness that is inauthentic. a final example vividly demonstrates the authentic versus artificial distinction. let us imagine suzie was born with hyperthymic genes, and was raised in an environment that allowed this genetic predisposition to be realized. suzie, then, is hyperthymic but finds herself wishing that she experienced more negative moods: she believes she would be a better artist if she could experience greater negative affect. her reasoning is that her artistic hero, edward munch, experienced powerful negative emotions and this contributed to his great art.58 in this case we might say that suzie's very high chronic positive affect is natural but not authentic: she does not identify with the positive moods that she experiences. indeed, if we could make a pill for chronic negative affect then she might take the pill to artificially introduce into herself the negative emotions she ascribes to her hero. if she did so, then her chronic negative affect would be authentic and artificial. the upshot here is that proponents of biohappiness would do well to concede to the critics that artificially creating happiness would not lead to authentic happiness for all. for if we understand ‘authentic’ as meaning ‘in accordance with the values, goals and beliefs of the person’, then it is clear that for some, authentic happiness means living within whatever constraints one’s genome dictates. but if the ‚not real happiness‛ objection is to apply to every single individual that might seek to improve positive affect through technological means, it must be the case that every use of technology to compensate for how one fares in the genetic lottery results in an inauthentic happiness. it is this judgment that cannot be supported.59 the second objection is that hpp will distort emotionally appropriate responses. when our loved ones are coping with injury or imminent death, it seems entirely appropriate to be worried and to grieve. when we hear about children and innocent civilians dying from an errant bomb, we do, and should, feel sad. a world of biohappiness, so the objection goes, precludes such emotionally appropriate responses. a world where we are happy in the face of tragedy seems to be a world where we have lost something of great importance. as the president’s council on bioethics notes, there is something wrong with attempting to achieve total psychic tranquility. feelings of shame, remorse, horror and disgust are appropriate in certain circumstances: ‚an untroubled soul in a troubling world is a shrunken human being‛.60 there are three things that might be said to this. first, there is an assumption here that pharmacological agents will necessarily produce a one-dimensional emotional response. perhaps what critics have in mind here is the soma taken by denizens of the brave new world, which, as we noted above, has a sedating effect taken in sufficient dosage. however, there is no 58 there is evidence that positive affect leads to creativity (lyubomirsky, king, and diener, ‚the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?‛) still, suzie might think that certain types of art require negative moods, even if positive moods generally promote creativity. 59 an emerging explanation for the etiology of antidepressants is that they promote the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus, the emotional center of the brain (l. santarelli et al., ‚requirement of hippocampal neurogenesis for the behavioral effects of antidepressants,‛ science's stke 301, no. 5634 (2003): 805.; m. kodama, t. fujioka, and r. s. duman, ‚chronic olanzapine or fluoxetine treatment increases cell proliferation in rat hippocampus and frontal cortex,‛ biological psychiatry 56, no. 8 (2004): 570–580.; j. l. warner-schmidt and r. s. duman, ‚vegf is an essential mediator of the neurogenic and behavioral actions of antidepressants,‛ science's stke 104, no. 11 (2007): 4647. this is quite an exciting discovery and offers a tidy explanation for why antidepressants often take weeks to work: it takes time for new neurons to grow. i am not sure it should matter, but some people i have spoken to about this seem to think this helps make the case that taking a pharmacological agent does not lead to inauthentic happiness. 60 kass, beyond therapy. a similar complaint can be found in fukuyama (fukuyama, our posthuman future.). happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 140 reason to suppose that all neuropharmacological agents have this effect. indeed, there is some evidence that some of the current generation of antidepressants belie this claim.61 second, it should be recalled that our model is hyperthymic people, and there is no indication that the hyperthymic are emotionally one-dimensional. the hyperthymic woman described above was saddened by the death of her husband, but not overwhelmed by this emotion. recall too that she was empathetic: she understood that her son was having a difficult time coping with the loss of his father, and, indeed, her son’s troubles were the reason for her visit to friedman’s office. also, there is good statistical evidence that the hyperthymic experience negative emotions. for example, as lyubomirsky, king and diener note, the top 14% of those completing the world value survey (1994) reported experiencing negative emotions or moods within the last few weeks.62 similar results were found by diener and seligman among college students: the happiest students, that is, those who experienced positive moods the most, also had the full range of positive and negative moods.63 third, there is the general question of how much negative emotion or mood is appropriate for the good life, or, to put the point in the terms of the president’s council on bioethics, how do we know when we have become ‚shrunken human beings‛? in particular, we might ask about the hyperthymic: are they shrunken human beings? most of us, i think, would say that the hyperthymic are not. it is good for both the woman and her son that she was not devastated by negative emotions after losing both her husband and her job. being able to cope emotionally with such a situation seems like an enviable attribute. of course we are not saying that the woman is happy about losing her husband or her job, rather, she seems admirable in the way that she is coping with the loss: she is able to stay positive despite these negative events. if part of the explanation for why she is able to cope so well lies in genetic correlates for happiness, then this gives us some reason to think that if we could compensate others with a pill to mimic these effects, then this too would be a good thing. so there is nothing to suggest that the hyperthymic have a smaller range of emotions than others, nor that their experience of emotions is inappropriate. for most people seeking biohappiness the model of the hyperthymic should seem ideal: the possibility of experiencing both positive and negative emotions—not laughing hysterically at funerals—but with a greater preponderance of positive affect. 7. promoting wellbeing and hpp. this section proposes an argument that governments have a duty to develop hpp. the argument depends critically on a premise that cannot be argued for here, namely, that governments have a duty to promote the wellbeing of their citizenry. although the premise will not be defended, it is worth explaining the assumption, and why it is relatively uncontroversial. a typical example of this premise in action is policy that requires redistribution of wealth: it is often justified in terms of a governmental responsibility to promote the wellbeing of the poor. government support for universal health care is justified in terms of promoting the health and wellbeing of the nation. government support for education, libraries, scientific research and so on, may invoke the same justification.64 those who disagree with this premise, for example, those who believe that governments should play a less active 61 healy, let them eat prozac. at 268. 62 lyubomirsky, king, and diener, ‚the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?‛ 63 diener and seligman, ‚very happy people.‛ 64 r. e. goodin, utilitarianism as a public philosophy (cambridge university press, 1995). happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 141 role in the lives of the citizenry, should feel free to skip to the next section, or read on to see where this wrongheaded premise leads.65 any government outlay of resources will involve opportunity costs: how might the resources have been deployed otherwise, and would alternate investments yield greater returns in terms of wellbeing? to make the argument we need to show that putting resources into the development of hpp is a highly effective means of using limited resources to promote wellbeing. so, to secure the case for hpp we must consider its costs and benefits relative to alternatives. in terms of cost, the upper bounds for both the shortand long-term plans for hpp are a hundred million and ten billion dollars respectively. the former figure is comparatively low because it involves using existing pharmacological agents, and so a couple of years and a few tens of millions of dollars would settle the issue of their efficacy or lack thereof even in the most expensive trials of this sort.66 as for the latter estimate, zaven khachaturian, former director of the national institute of health’s office of alzheimer’s disease research, has called for an ‚apollo push‛ to cure alzheimer’s disease. he estimates a billion dollars a year for ten years could conquer the disease.67 this estimate is relevant because, as we have said, the research program to develop hpp requires that similar epistemic and technological hurdles be overcome. so, ten years and ten billion we will take as our upper bound on the cost of reverse engineering the hyperthymic to develop hpp. for ease of exposition we will concentrate on the larger amount. it is a princely sum for individuals, but on the scale of many national budgets this is, well, peanuts. consider setting aside a billion a year for ten years to finance the development of hpp. with a budget the size of the u.s.’s, that sort of money can probably be found between the sofa cushions of congressional leaders. to put it in some perspective, a billion a year represents 6% of nasa’s budget, about 0.3% of the u.s. government’s allotment for higher education, 0.16% of military expenditures and 0.05% of health care expenditures.68 obviously a billion a year is a more considerable sum for smaller economies, but of course there is no reason that any country should have to finance the development of hpp alone. after all, there is no reason to think the benefits of developing hpp will be confined by national boundaries, so there is no reason to think that the cost ought to be borne by a single country. on a global scale, ten billion represents a dollar a year from the wealthiest one billion (the top 15% of the world’s population of seven billion) for ten years.69 65 this way of putting the duty has a consequentialist ring to it. in terms of popular support, this may not be such a bad thing, since, as rawls argues, (j. rawls, a theory of justice (harvard university press, 1971).) utilitarianism forms a tacit background assumption in which all competitor theories have to defend themselves. it is possible that the argument of this section might be recast in rawlsian terms: hpp should be conceived of as a primary good along the lines that buchanan et al. (a. buchanan et al., from chance to choice: genetics and justice (cambridge university press, 2001).) argue for certain genetic enhancements as primary goods. so, the premise might be recast in less sectarian terms. 66 that is, a phase iv trial. for a look at the cost structure of drug development see c. p adams and v. v brantner, ‚estimating the cost of new drug development: is it really $802 million?,‛ health affairs 25, no. 2 (2006): 420–428. 67 z. s. khachaturian and a. s. khachaturian, ‚prevent alzheimer's disease by 2020: a national strategic goal.,‛ alzheimer's & dementia 5, no. 2 (2009): 81– 84. 68 a. lawler, ‚obama backs new launcher and bigger nasa budget,‛ science 327, no. 5961 (2010): 18.; stockholm international peace research institute, sipri yearbook 2009: armaments, disarmament and international security (oxford university press, 2009). at 184.; m. e. chernew, r. a. hirth, and d. m. cutler, ‚increased spending on health care: long-term implications for the nation,‛ health affairs 28, no. 5 (2009): 1253. 69 systems support division us census bureau and s. s. d. carollynn hammersmith, ‚us census bureau population clocks,‛ n.d., http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 142 once developed, there is every reason to suppose that the cost to consumers might be pennies a day. the lion’s share of expensive prescriptions today goes to paying the monopoly granted to patent holders. once a drug goes off patent it typically drops to a fraction of its original cost. the former media darling, prozac, went from three dollars (or more) a pill to about twenty cents in its generic formulation.70 this price-point would put it in reach of most (but unfortunately not all) of the world’s population. in terms of its effect on happiness, we might think again about the analogy with height: if everyone were to take hpp its effect would be comparable to providing a pill to raise the average height of a population to the tallest 5 to 10%: approximately over 185 cm.71 for most this would be a dramatic increase in height. in terms of perfectionist goods, the effect is not nearly so dramatic. the study by lyubomirsky, king and diener found effect sizes in the medium range (using cohen’s terminology).72 lyubomirsky, king and diener summarize the correlation evidence thus: ‚happy people appear to be more successful than their less happy peers in the three primary life domains: work (mean r =.27), relationships (mean r = .27), and health (mean r =.32).‛73, 74 still, i submit that even perfectionists ought to embrace biohappiness as an effective means to realize the value of perfection. to illustrate, imagine a perfectionist particularly interested in promoting health.75 imagine further that the health perfectionist has $10 billion to promote the average level of health in the us population. how should it be spent? using the money to provide additional health care services is not likely to make any significant impact. u.s. health care spending is over $2 trillion,76 so $10 billion equals 0.5% of the yearly budget. probably not much good would be done by investing it in additional health care workers for a single year. spreading it out over (say) ten years would only dilute its effect, because now it represents a mere 0.05% of the budget. a better thought might be to promote physical activity, since some studies suggest that regular exercise has a medium effect size on health.77 here the effect size of regular exercise and happiness may be of similar magnitude, but the trouble is to figure out how to use $10 billion to get people to exercise more. one policy would be to offer thirty dollars per us citizen as a tax break for regular exercise, but this is not likely to provide much motivation, and would last only one year if everyone were to take advantage of it. spread over ten years the effect is sure to be near negligible. national campaigns have shown some efficacy in raising awareness about the relationship between exercise and health, but far less impact on actually motivating people to exercise regularly.78 consider that slightly less than half the american population exercises 70 h. a. huskamp et al., ‚generic entry, reformulations, and promotion of ssris,‛ pharmacoeconomics 26, no. 7 (2008): 603–616. 71 i say approximately since there are a surprising number of problems estimating height distribution: m. f. schilling, a. e. watkins, and w. watkins, ‚is human height bimodal?,‛ the american statistician 56, no. 3 (2002): 223–229. 72 j. cohen, statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (lawrence erlbaum, 1988). 73 lyubomirsky, king, and diener, ‚the benefits of frequent positive affect: does happiness lead to success?.‛ at 825. 74 effect size tells us the strength or degree of difference. jacob cohen (somewhat reluctantly) defined effect size as small=.2, medium=.5 and large=.8. cohen used the following illustration of effect size: the effect of age on height between 15 and 16 year old girls in the u.s. represent a small effect size, the difference in height between 14 and 18 year old girls represents a medium effect size, and the difference between the heights of 13 and 18 year old girls is a large effect size. 75 hurka, perfectionism. at 37–39. 76 chernew, hirth, and cutler, ‚increased spending on health care.‛ 77 r. bize, j. a. johnson, and r. c. plotnikoff, ‚physical activity level and health-related quality of life in the general adult population: a systematic review,‛ preventive medicine 45, no. 6 (2007): 401–415. 78 c. l. craig, a. bauman, and b. reger-nash, ‚testing the hierarchy of effects model: participaction's serial mass communication campaigns on physical activity in canada,‛ health promotion international 25, no. 1 (2009): 14–23. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 143 regularly.79 a natural experiment was run in canada. for more than 30 years the canadian government advertised the advantages of fitness. it seems fair to conclude that the advertising did not have a dramatic positive impact, since canadians have similar figures for regular exercise as their american counterparts.80 this is not to say that $1 billion a year on advertising the good effects of exercise for ten years would have no effect, but the canadian experience should temper any thought that an expenditure of ten billion over ten years on advertising would increase regular exercise participation more than a few percentage points. compare that with spending the $10 billion to develop hpp. the ramifications for general health depends on how many people would use hpp were they available. there is no hard data on this, but it seems plausible to assume hpp would be greeted with initial skepticism, but that this skepticism would yield to widespread use as it became apparent that early adopters of hpp became more buoyant in their moods, worked better with their colleagues and bosses, had more and better personal relationships and better health.81 so, even perfectionists should be enthusiastic about hpp as a promising cost-effective means to improving health. the point may be underscored by noting again that it is a one-time investment: once developed we will have hpp for all of eternity. investing in additional health care workers, or advertising the benefits of exercise are recurring costs. it is perhaps worth emphasizing that claiming hpp is a more cost-effective means to promote health than investing more in health care workers, or advertising the health advantages of fitness, is not to say that the latter two should not be employed in addition to hpp. it may be that the best means to promote health is to invest in all three. there is, of course, no guarantee that the hpp program will be successful (although grounds for optimism were adduced above). if the program is successful, it offers huge returns in terms of wellbeing for a relatively small investment. hpp will dramatically increase positive moods and emotions, and have a medium positive effect on work, relationships and health. and the benefits may flow to all of humanity. 8. justice and hpp the previous argument assumed that the correct political theory requires governments to have a reasonably active role in promoting wellbeing. the justice argument of this section assumes that the correct political theory dictates a much less active role. the argument comprises a major premise that governments ought not to commit injustices, and the minor premise that prohibiting the development and use of hpp is an injustice. it concludes that it would be an injustice for governments to interfere in the development and use of hpp. there is little to oppose in the major premise, at least under ordinary circumstances. perhaps in extraordinary circumstances we might consider violations: for example, it is an injustice to knowingly convict an innocent person, but if doing so would prevent the loss of an entire city’s population we might consider such an abnegation of justice legitimate. however, such extraordinary circumstances do not apply in the present case, so the major premise may be accepted. 79 w. l. haskell et al., ‚physical activity and public health: updated recommendation for adults from the american college of sports medicine and the american heart association,‛ circulation 116, no. 9 (2007): 1081–93. 80 v. h. heyward, advanced fitness assessment and exercise prescription (human kinetics publishers, 2010). 81 i’m not sure how one would get hard data on this. surveys about consumer preferences for new technologies are notoriously unreliable. if they were reliable predictors, then fewer than 5% of us should be using email or microwave ovens. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 the minor premise, that it would be an injustice for governments to stop the private pursuit of hpp, carries the load in the argument. in support, consider an analogous case. imagine a government cogitates a ban on the use of positive psychology to coach individuals. as noted, positive psychology aims to boost the happiness of those in the normal (non-depressed) range of happiness, and, as we have seen, these interventions should lead to greater perfectionist achievement. so, it too promises greater wellbeing, whether we are happinessists, perfectionists or pluralists. how might such a prohibition be supported? it is almost inconceivable that a just government could ban positive psychology. it would take some extraordinary and unanticipated consequence to justify this, e.g., if it were discovered that positive psychology turned otherwise good citizens into criminals. here public interest in safety and order would give the government good reason for a ban. a government might also justifiably ban it if it did not lead to harm to others, but led to harm for clients of positive psychologists. if, for example, clients became unproductive, emotionally stunted, mentally incapacitated or addicted to positive psychologists’ services. however, there is no evidence that such outcomes are at all likely. so too with hpp: there is no reason to suppose that consumers would turn into junkies, crazed criminals or unproductive zombies. after all, by definition hpp would mimic the biology of extant models: the hyperthymic. it will help to clarify the contours of the justice argument by comparing it with the liberty argument for drug legalization and the argument of the previous section. proponents of legalization of illicit drugs, such as marijuana and cocaine, often invoke the liberty argument.82 the liberty argument, based on the harm principle, is rooted in anti-paternalism: the state cannot legitimately intervene to stop harm to oneself; the state can intervene only to stop harm to others.83 here, then, is the crucial difference: the liberty argument concedes that the activities it seeks to protect may be harmful to the individual, whereas the justice argument makes no such concession to the activities it seeks to protect. but notice that the justice argument does not require that the state acknowledge that hpp improves wellbeing, only that the state does not claim that hpp is harmful to consumers. again, our analogy may help. in permitting positive psychology, the state need not take a position on whether it actually improves wellbeing, only that it does not harm its clients. so, the crucial difference is that the justice argument is compatible with paternalism in a way that the liberty argument is not. there is a very practical reason for distinguishing the justice argument from the liberty argument. as noted, proponents of legalizing illicit drugs often invoke the liberty argument, but this line of argument has mostly fallen on deaf ears at the legislative level. it would be terrible for hpp if its fortunes rested on the liberty argument. of course, if the liberty argument did get traction at the legislative level, then hpp could be included under the umbrella of this argument as well, since hpp has no untoward consequences for others. a major difference with the previous consequentialist argument is that the justice argument requires only a duty of non-interference with private pursuit of hpp—there is no positive duty to support their development.84 since the justice argument does not require action on the part of 82 d. n. husak and p. de marneffe, the legalization of drugs (cambridge univ pr, 2005). 83 the locus classicus for this argument is j. s. mill (j. s. mill, on liberty (hackett, 1978).). 84 a fuller defense of the justice argument would require examining in more detail the claim that there are not bad social consequences of using hpp. francis fukuyama (fukuyama, our posthuman future.) argues that human nature is defined by the range of human traits. to push everyone to one end of the range with technology would change human nature. changing human nature could have dire consequences, so we ought not to change human nature. he is certainly right that changing human nature could have dire consequences. it is also possible that we could all sprout wings tomorrow. i have no empirical evidence that the latter is probable or even remotely likely, but neither does fukuyama. readers will note an almost complete dearth of empirical studies on wellbeing in his work. happy-people-pills for all walker www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 145 governments, the hope for the development of hpp would lie with the possibility that private financing might fill the gap. an obvious possibility is that big pharmaceutical companies might step in. admittedly, this hope has to be tempered with the fact that, although pharmaceutical companies have the financial resources to develop hpp, historically they have shown little aptitude or inclination for basic research.85 perhaps the fact that the potential market for enhancement is much greater than with therapeutic applications might be sufficient motivation for them to break with their past. 9. conclusion i have tried to give at least a prima facie defense of the claim that we can and ought to pursue the development of hpp. the reason to think we can is that the research necessary to develop hpp appears to face similar barriers to other scientific efforts to understand and control our biology for therapeutic ends, e.g., it is similar in complexity to research programs to treat alzheimer’s disease. the reason to think that we ought to pursue the development of hpp is the promise of enhanced wellbeing, whether we adopt happinessism, perfectionism or pluralism as our understanding of ‘wellbeing’. clearly, to argue for the development of hpp is not to argue against other means of promoting wellbeing. i am fully supportive of cogitating institutional redesign and efforts of positive psychologists for furthering the happiness of those in the normal range. after all, when the wise sage asks 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(2022). what predicts wellbeing amidst crisis? a study of promotive and protective psychological factors among malaysians during the covid-19 pandemic. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 65-85. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2657 eugene y. j. tee help university, malaysia teeyj@help.edu.my copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 article what predicts wellbeing amidst crisis? a study of promotive and protective psychological factors among malaysians during the covid-19 pandemic eugene y. j. tee · raja i. a. b. raja reza shah · karuna s. thomas evone y. m. phoo · siew l. ng abstract: resilience promotes psychological growth and buffers against the effects of negative events, but the factors that promote optimal wellbeing beyond resilience remain poorly understood. the current study addresses this gap through a positive psychology perspective by examining how (i) promotive factors – optimism and hope, and (ii) protective factors – nostalgia and spirituality promote wellbeing. we hypothesized that both factors will be positively related to wellbeing above and beyond that predicted by resilience. a representative sample of six hundred and twenty-six (n = 626; m age = 32.66, sd = 10.11, 43.45% female) malaysians responded to an online survey at the end of the country’s second wave of the covid-19 pandemic (juneseptember 2020). we conducted a series of regression analyses, controlling for resilience, socioeconomic status, age, and perceptions towards government crisis management efforts. results indicate that optimism and hope positively predicted wellbeing above and beyond that predicted by resilience. results also showed that the only significant protective factor contributing to wellbeing is spirituality. nostalgia did not significantly predict wellbeing beyond resilience. the findings are of theoretical relevance for wellbeing and resilience research, and practically beneficial in informing mental health interventions. keywords: resilience, wellbeing, hope, optimism, nostalgia, spirituality, covid-19 1. introduction 1.1 resilience and its effects on wellbeing in times of crises research has emphasized the importance of resilience in enhancing wellbeing in the face of adversity. masten, cutuli, herbers and reed (2009, p. 118) define resilience as, “a class of phenomena characterized by patterns of positive adaptation in the context of significant adversity or risk.” fletcher and sarkar (2013) highlight that resilience revolves around two central concepts – adversity and positive adaptation. resilience is also differentiated from coping in that the latter is a “temporary period of psychopathology followed by gradual restoration to healthy levels of functioning (p. 16).” resilience, by comparison, is an individual’s ability to maintain healthy levels of functioning despite adversity. the term wellbeing itself has also been conceptualized in different ways. dodge and colleagues (2012, p. 230) proposed wellbeing as “the balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced.” in this regard, and relevant to the context of resilience research, optimal wellbeing is associated with having the necessary psychological, social, and physical resources in light of the challenges faced. similarly, adler and seligman (2016) summarized that wellbeing is a combination of both hedonic (feeling good) and eudaimonia about:blank promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 (functioning well) wellbeing. as such, wellbeing extends beyond affective components (c.f. subjective well-being), and also encompasses the cognitive aspect of one’s functioning across different life domains. these definitions inform the conceptualization and measurement of wellbeing in the present study. rutter (1987) proposes that resilience contributes to individuals’ wellbeing through four key mechanisms – by (i) buffering against the risk’s effect, (ii) reducing the negative chain reactions from the event, (iii) establishing and maintaining self-esteem and self-efficacy, and (iv) opening up opportunities for the individual. developments in resilience research highlight these mechanisms, distinguishing between promotive and protective factors. yates, tyrell and masten (2015) classify promotive factors as those that support positive development in individuals, while protective factors are those that mitigate risks brought about by adversity. ungar (2013) stresses the importance of understanding resilience within context. the importance of acknowledging contextual factors shaping resilience is reflected in the development of resilience measures. the connor-davidson resilience scale (cd-risc; connor & davidson, 2003; campbell-sills & stein, 2007) for instance, has been validated in asian samples (yu & zhang, 2007; baek, lee, joo, lee & choi, 2010), suggesting the stability and measurability of resilience across cultures, converging with ungar’s (2013) claims of shared similarity in characteristics of resilient individuals across cultures. in short, resilience is thus crucial in both promoting positive adaptation, and in protecting against the adverse effects of adversity. we assess these relationships, examining how individuals’ resilience promotes and protects individual wellbeing. our study is contextualized within the ongoing covid-19 health crisis, employing a representative, multi-ethnic sample of malaysians during the pandemic. data collection also occurred during a unique period in the country when the rate of infection was declining—but, crucially, before the rollout of the country’s national vaccination program and during a state of political instability in the country. given these points, we propose that our study contributes to the literature in two ways. first, the representative and multi-ethnic sample allows us to examine for potential cultural differences in conceptions of resilience and promotive and protective psychological factors contributing to wellbeing within a diverse malaysian sample. this is important given evidence from previous studies showing that while resilience measures may be constant and reproducible in terms of their psychometric structure, conceptions and antecedents of resilience may vary across cultural and ethnic lines (maltby et al. 2016; gunnestad, 2006). second, we shed light on how factors beyond resilience affected malaysians’ wellbeing during a particular time in which the country was experiencing a drop in new infections, but before the introduction of the country’s vaccination program in february 2021. further compounding the sense of uncertainty during this time was the political instability caused by changes in politicians’ party support. this led to the loss of a parliamentary majority, the collapse of the ruling government, and the appointment (as opposed to a democratic election) of a new prime minister by the king in early 2020. the context here allowed us to examine, amidst the ongoing political uncertainty and before the availability of the covid-19 vaccine, how promotive and protective psychological factors from the positive psychology literature may predict malaysian’s wellbeing and recovery, above and beyond their general resilience. we build on recent studies that have assessed the links between resilience with wellbeing, with a particular focus on positive psychology-related factors such as grit and gratitude (bono, reil & hescox, 2020), positivity resonance (prinzing et al., 2020) and positive emotions (israelashvili, 2021). we first establish that resilience affects respondents’ levels of emotional, social, and psychological wellbeing during the covid-19 pandemic. assessing the benefits of promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 resilience in a non-western sample is essential, given the psychological impact of the ongoing global pandemic. it should, however, be evident that resilience can help improve wellbeing during this time. we hypothesize: hypothesis 1: there is a positive relationship between resilience and wellbeing. 1.2 promotive and protective wellbeing factors the psychological study of resilience is not without its limits. luthar, sawyer, and brown (2006) highlight key issues in existing resilience research that are pertinent to the current study. of specific note is the observation that few studies have clarified or distinguished between the protective or promotive and vulnerability factors contributing to resilience. indeed, the theme of ‘bouncing back’ as central to most definitions of resilience appears to emphasize the ‘protective’ aspect of resilience instead of a more holistic definition that also captures promotive factors. we address this limitation of resilience research by adopting a positive psychology perspective. we build on the growing interest in the role of positive psychology in helping understand resilience factors that contribute to wellbeing, recovery and growth following traumatic events. our study dovetails with recent publications examining novel factors shown to predict wellbeing alongside, or beyond resilience. these include spiritual fortitude (van tongeren et al. 2019), life purpose (sharma & yukhymenko-lescroart, 2022) and vulnerability (alschuler, kratz, & ehde, 2016). our goal for this study, however, is more modest. we aim to establish the extent to which well-established constructs from the positive psychology literature predict wellbeing, and whether these constructs of interest do so beyond resilience does. as kim and colleagues (2018) note in their review of the international impact of positive psychology, this area is one that can inform the development of important wellbeing interventions. our research also answers calls for research to examine how positive psychologyrelated variables can serve to buffer against mental illness, bolster mental health, and equip individuals with processes that strengthen their capacities for positive adaptation in the pandemic era (waters et al., 2021). seligman (1998) argues that the positive psychology perspective frames psychological interventions to include both the nurturance of skills, strengths, and virtues in addition to the acknowledgement of weaknesses and problems. importantly, positive psychology does not discount the importance of protective factors to resilience – we argue that both promotive and protective factors as central to wellbeing. the overarching aim of this study is to thus examine, in light of the covid-19 pandemic, how promotive and protective factors – above and beyond that of resilience – contribute to wellbeing. we focus on four psychological factors identified in the positive psychology literature and classify them into two categories: (i) promotive factors – those that drive future orientation and growth, and (ii) protective factors – those that allow individuals to draw from experience and understandings in contributing to their wellbeing. 1.3 promotive factors: factors that drive future orientation and growth promotive factors are differentiated from protective factors in that they are oriented toward the future, as opposed to present goals. the future-focused nature of promotive factors should thus serve as key drivers of approach-oriented behaviours, active goal setting, and ultimately, growth. the two promotive factors of interest that have considerable empirical support are optimism and hope. both hope and optimism have been shown in the literature to be distinctive from each other (fowler et al. 2017; alacorn, bowling, & khazon, 2013) and predictive of future orientation and resilience (di maggio, ginerva, nota, & soresi, 2016) as well as adaptability (ginerva et al. promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 68 2016). we expound on optimism and hope’s positive effects on wellbeing as promotive factors below. 1.3.1 optimism scheier and carver (1985, p. 219) define optimism as “the stable tendency to believe that good rather than bad things will happen.” this definition implies that optimism is a generalized outcome expectancy that involves perceptions about being able to move toward desirable goals and away from undesirable ones. these characteristics essentially give optimism an intrinsically future-oriented quality (carver & scheier, 2018). research evidence suggests that individuals high on trait optimism are more likely to take on a more problem-solving approach and are more planful than their pessimistic counterparts (fontaine, manstead & wagner, 1993). carver and scheier (1998) and carver, scheier and segerstrom (2010) further propose that under uncontrollable circumstances, optimists are more likely to ‘control their plights.’ compared with optimists, pessimists are likely to be more avoidant and employ denial tactics in the face of challenges, leading to an aggravation of their problems. past studies also indicate that trait optimism is more likely to predict coping in general (nes & segerstrom, 2006), endurance of traumatic events (thomas, britt, odle-dusseau & bliese, 2011), coping with terminal illnesses and chronic pain (colby & shifren, 2013) and dealing with health issues in later life (ruthig, hanson, pedersen, weber & chipperfield, 2011). the implications of assessing trait optimism are also important since this factor can be conceptualized as a cultivatable strength. work on learned optimism, specifically, suggests changing one’s perceptions of goal-attainment ability is associated with more effective coping with life stresses (nolen-hoeksema, 2000) and superior physical health (peterson, 2000). trait optimism should thus be positively associated with wellbeing. hypothesis 2a: controlling for resilience, optimism predicts wellbeing. 1.3.2 hope snyder (2002) conceptualizes hope as ‘goal-directed thinking’ in which an individual utilizes pathways thinking (the perceived capacity to find routes to desired goals) and agency thinking (requisite motivations to use those routes). pathways thinking is one of the core aspects of hope and relates to the production of alternative routes when original ones are blocked (snyder et al., 1991). individuals high on trait hope are also those high in agency thinking – they endorse and focus their thoughts on statements that motivate action (snyder et al. 1998). hope theory proposes that the successful pursuit of desired goals results in positive emotions and continued goal pursuit efforts (snyder, rand & sigmon, 2002). recent work also considers hope as an emotion that arises under appraisal of situations being demanding or stressful (bruininks & malle, 2005). findings from past research indicate that hope predicts lowered stress and negative emotions, which over time builds resilience (ong, edwards & bergeman, 2006) and guards against dysphoria (chang & desimone, 2001). hope’s positive effects on resilience are found to be consistent across studies employing clinical and non-clinical samples (ong, standiford & deshpande, 2018). the promotion-oriented nature of hope has also seen this psychological strength to be associated with greater use of problem-solving abilities (snyder et al. 2002; chang, 1998). a meta-analysis by alacorn and associates (2013) indicates that hope is significantly associated with positive affectivity and generalized self-efficacy, further evidencing its growth and promotion-oriented effects. finally, a recent study by munoz, hanks, and hellman (2020) suggest that hope contributes to flourishing among childhood trauma survivors beyond that of promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 69 resilience. the evidence here suggests that hope should translate to enhanced wellbeing under adversity. hypothesis 2b: controlling for resilience, hope predicts wellbeing. 1.4 protective factors: factors that draw from past experience and understandings in contrast with promotive factors, we refer to protective factors as those that encourage individuals to tap into, harness, and reflect on existing strengths that cultivate resilience and generate resources for wellbeing. these protective factors are distinguished from tendencies to engage in maladaptive fixations on past events or experiences (i.e. they are distinguished from ruminative tendencies or trait worry). protective factors serve to remind individuals of existing psychological resources that can help limit the detrimental effects of adversity, ultimately contributing to enhanced wellbeing. two constructs that have been shown through considerable research to have protective effects against adverse wellbeing outcomes are nostalgia and spirituality. in the case of nostalgia, research consistently points to its protective influence on physical and mental health (routledge, wildschut, sedikides, & juhl, 2013a), and its interaction with resilience (zhou, sedikides, wildschut, & gao, 2008). similar claims are made on how spirituality protects against psychopathology (barton & miller, 2015) and contributes to resilience (howell et al. 2018). we detail the mechanisms for how these two variables contribute to wellbeing as protective factors below. 1.4.1 nostalgia nostalgia is broadly defined as the sentimental longing for the past (pearsall, 1998). while initial conceptualizations of this emotion are associated with homesickness, recent research has identified that both positive and negative affect are apparent in nostalgic recollections (routledge et al. 2013a). wildschut, sedikides, arndt, and routledge (2006) propose that while both positive and negative elements are experienced in nostalgic recollections, nostalgia is ultimately a positive emotion. zhou and colleagues (2012) propose that nostalgia is ‘triggered by coldness but results in warmth.’ these authors argue that both positive and negative elements are juxtaposed to create a central theme of redemption – in that the negative patterns and memories progresses from undesirable feeling states (suffering, pain, exclusion) to a positive and desirable one (acceptance, euphoria, triumph). the findings align with work on the appraisal theme of nostalgia, in which the emotion is found to be elicited by events that are appraised as pleasant, irretrievably lost, temporally distant, and unique (van tilburg et al. 2019). these findings justify its inclusion as a protective factor in this study. recent psychological research indicates that nostalgia enhances positive self-regard by affirming one’s connections with others – the emotion is always experienced in relation to social connectedness (wildschut et al. 2006). zhou and colleagues (2008) find that in contrast with loneliness, nostalgia increases perceived social support. notably, in the context of crises, nostalgia serves an important influence by assisting in meaning-making. when people are pressed to find meaning, they reflect nostalgically on treasured past experiences such as family functions and personal accomplishments (routledge, sedikides, wildschut & juhl, 2013b). routledge, arndt, sedikides and wildschut (2008) showed that trait nostalgia also buffered against the effects of mortality salience – individuals high on trait nostalgia perceived life as being more meaningful, even under conditions when their existence and survival is threatened. these findings suggest that nostalgia is an important resource for individuals under situations of existential threat (sedikides & wildschut, 2018). as such, trait nostalgia is hypothesized to be associated with greater wellbeing during adversity. promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 70 hypothesis 2c: controlling for resilience, nostalgia predicts wellbeing. 1.4.2 spirituality pargament (1999, p. 6) refers to spirituality as the “loftier side of life… a search for meaning, unity, for connectedness, transcendence, for the higher of human potential.” zinnbauer and colleagues (1997) contrast spirituality and religiosity, differentiating the concepts based on the focus for each. spirituality focuses on personal qualities of connection and relationship with a higher power, while religiosity focuses on organizational or institutional beliefs and practices. research on the influences of spirituality on wellbeing shows that the construct is negatively related to depression among adolescents and older adults (laird et al. 2019; barton & miller, 2015). ciarrocchi, dy-liacco, and deneke (2008) find that levels of spiritual commitment and meaning-making predict incremental variance in hope and optimism. spirituality may even have beneficial impacts on physical health. tartaro, luecken, and gunn (2005) find that self-reported spirituality is associated with lowered levels of cortisol response and serves as a protective effect against the neuroendocrine consequences of stress. the concept of spirituality is also of practical significance. goldstein’s (2007) study of three-week spirituality interventions (through the cultivating of sacred moments) showed that relative to the control group, those who ‘sanctified’ cherished moments or objects reported greater levels of psychological and subjective wellbeing and stress reduction. the sanctification process here pertains to a “process through which aspects of life are perceived as having divine character or significance” (pargament & mahoney, 2005, p. 180). these findings overall suggest that spirituality may serve as a protective factor, shifting individuals’ focus on material possessions and wants toward meaning and greater significance in one’s life. this should then lead to reductions, or at least, buffer the experience of adversity in individuals and consequently, lead to greater wellbeing. hypothesis 2d: controlling for resilience, spirituality predicts wellbeing. 2. method 2.1 design and context we employed an online survey for data collection. respondents provided self-reports of resilience, wellbeing, promotive and protective factors, as well as demographic information. data collection took place over four months, from june to september 2020. data were collected from a period in which the country was easing restrictions associated with the covid-19 pandemic and reverting to a recovery period. as of 25th september 2021, and at the time of writing, malaysia has since loosened some government-imposed restrictions. 2.2 sample a total of 952 malaysians from across peninsula and east malaysia responded to the survey. a total of 626 complete responses was obtained, yielding a 65.75% completion rate. for the analysis, only respondents who completed up to and including the ‘ratings of government efforts’ were included. respondents’ age ranged from 19 to 65, averaging 32.66 years (sd = 10.11) and comprised 340 men (54.31%) and 272 (43.45%) women. twelve (12) respondents indicated ‘prefer not to say,’ while 2 did not respond to the question about their gender. most respondents were malay (n = 319, 50.96%). there were 182 chinese (29.12%) and 49 indian respondents (7.83%). mixed-race respondents comprised 4.79% (n = 30) while 5 respondents identified as members of an indigenous community (.80%). thirty-nine respondents (6.23%) responded with ‘others.’ the sample overall reflects the demographic composition of malaysia. promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 71 2.3 procedure responses were collected through the assistance of a market research company. we employed this approach given the need to collect the data on time. individuals interested in and willing to volunteer for the study first provided their informed consent before proceeding with answering the questionnaires. to incentivize participation, we offered respondents the chance to win an rm50 (approx. $12) food voucher. completion of the survey took approximately 20 minutes. 2.4 measures 2.4.1 optimism optimism was measured using the revised life orientation test (lot-r; scheier, carver & bridges, 1994). this 6-item measure consists of items such as, “in uncertain times, i usually expect the best” and “overall, i expect more good things to happen to me than bad.” this measure adopts a 5-point likert scale ranging from 0 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree and is reported to be reliable at .78. 2.4.2 hope snyder and colleagues’ (1991) 12-item adult hope scale was used to assess trait hope. this measure consists of items assessing the pathways and agency components and is consistent with snyder’s hope theory (2002). an example item for pathways is, “there are lots of ways around any problem” while an example item for agency is, “i meet the goals i set for myself.” the measure is scaled from 1 = definitely false to 4 = definitely true. snyder and colleagues (1991) report the reliability of their measure to range from .74 to .84. 2.4.3 nostalgia trait nostalgia was assessed using a 10-item measure by barrett and colleagues (2010). the measure assesses the value to which respondents place value on nostalgic experiences, along with how frequently they experience this emotion. respondents provide their level of agreement to questions such as, “how prone are you to feeling nostalgic” on 7-point likert scales ranging from 1 = not at all to 7 = very frequently. this scale is reported as reliable at .93. 2.4.4 spirituality spirituality was measured using the 12-item spiritual wellbeing scale (facit-sp) by peterman, fitchett, brady, hernandez and cella (2002). sample items from this measure include, “i am able to reach deep down into myself for comfort” and “i find strength in my faith or spiritual beliefs.” the measure is assessed on a 5-point likert scale, where 0 = not at all and 4 = very much. the facit-sp is reliable at .81. 2.4.5 wellbeing wellbeing was assessed using the mental health continuum-short form (mhc-sf; lamers, westerhof, bohlmeijer, ten klooster & keyes, 2011). this measure comprises 14 items and assesses the frequency in which respondents report feeling emotional wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and social wellbeing in the last month, capturing respondents’ well-being within the context of the covid-19 pandemic. the measure adopts a 6-point likert scale, ranging from 1 = never to 6 = every day. lamers and colleagues (2011) consider the mhc-sf to capture positive mental health, as opposed to mental illness. we operationalize wellbeing via the mhc-sf given that the measure is developed from measures of satisfaction with life (diener et al. 1985), promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 psychological wellbeing (ryff, 1995; ryff & keyes, 1995) and social wellbeing (keyes, 1998). wellbeing is thus reflected in ratings of how happy respondents feel (emotional wellbeing), how good they are at managing the responsibilities of their daily life (psychological wellbeing) and the degree to which they feel they belonged to a community (social wellbeing). a holistic definition and measure of wellbeing thus, necessarily comprises the three factors on the mhcsf (keyes, 2005). lamers and colleagues report the mhc-sf to be reliable at .89. 2.5 control variables 2.5.1 resilience resilience was assessed using the 10-item connor-davidson resilience scale (cd-risc; campbell-sills & stein, 2007). this measure of resilience is reported to be reliable at α = .85 and is scaled from 0 = not true at all to 4 = true nearly all the time. the cd-risc comprises items such as, “i am someone who can stay focused under pressure.” 2.5.2 age we assessed for possible age differences in light of evidence from socioemotional selectivity theory, which suggests that individuals in the later years of their lives tend to focus less on negative emotions and engage more deeply with the positive aspects of their lives (carstensen, 1998). reed and carstensen (2012) also show that older individuals have a positivity bias in recalling positive material more quickly than negative material. 2.5.3 gender we assessed gender differences in the present study. evidence indicates, for instance, that men score higher on optimism than women (helweg-larsen, harding & klein, 2011). maselko and kubzansky (2006) find that women generally report higher levels of spirituality than men. 2.5.4 socioeconomic status (ses) heinonen and colleagues (2006) find socio-economic status to influence dispositional optimism and pessimism. the extent to which individuals may be able to draw on the necessary psychological strengths to build resilience, and their overall subjective assessments of their wellbeing, may therefore be dependent on their ses. ses was assessed using kilpatrick and cantril’s (1960) self-anchoring scale, which is the number selected by respondents on a visual representation of a ladder. the number selected corresponds to the individual’s self-reported socioeconomic status and implies that the respondent is of a higher ses and standing when a higher number is selected. the assessment of ses is crucial, given evidence that economically disadvantaged individuals are more susceptible to covid-19 risk factors as a result of poor housing conditions, limited opportunities to work from home, unstable employment and income, and having limited access to healthcare services (patel et al., 2020). 2.5.5 ratings of government efforts in managing the outbreak given the political instability and change in ruling government in early 2020, respondents’ perceptions of government efforts were also considered. a 4-item researcher-generated measure was used to assess respondents’ ratings on their national government’s efforts toward managing the covid-19 outbreak. respondents were asked, “please rate the malaysian government’s efforts toward managing the pandemic situation in terms of (i) containment and infection control (e.g. movement control order, lockdowns, testing), (ii) communicating updates (e.g., health promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 directives and responses), (iii) maintaining public safety (e.g. patrols, inspections, tracing apps, business sops) and (iv) providing mental health support (e.g., providing counselling or psychological support). we scaled this measure on a 5-point likert scale, ranging from 1 = highly dissatisfied and 5 = highly satisfied. 3. results 3.1 descriptive statistics, scale reliability and pairwise comparisons descriptive statistics, scale reliabilities and pairwise comparisons for all variables in the study are presented in table 1. all measures were reliable at α = .74 and higher. given significant correlations between age, ses, and perceptions of government efforts with the mhc-sf, we controlled for these variables in the hypothesis tests. results showed that there were significant differences between the malay and chinese ethnic sub-groups on nostalgia (mmalay = 4.78, sdmalay = 1.31; mchinese = 4.29, sdchinese = 1.27, f = 3.97, p < .01, η² = .03) and spirituality (mmalay = 3.57, sdmalay = .76; mchinese = 3.12, sdchinese = .65, f = 7.35, p < .01, η² = .06). there were also between-group differences between these two ethnic groups on scores on the mhc-sf (mmalay = 4.06, sdmalay = 1.13; mchinese = 3.67, sdchinese = 1.06, f = 3.23, p < .01, η² = .03). given the small-moderate effect sizes of these differences, we opted not to control for ethnicity in the analyses1. our rationale is also informed by the overarching goal of assessing for similarities across ethnic groups, focusing on how focal variables, instead of these minor systematic differences, shape resilience and wellbeing outcomes. independent samples t-tests show that there were no significant gender differences across any of the focal variables in the study. table 1. descriptive statistics, reliabilities and pairwise correlations. mean sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1. age 32.66 10.11 — 2. gender 1.58 0.53 -.17*** — 3. ethnicity 1.94 1.36 -.04 .15*** — 4. socioeconomic status 5.74 2.11 .13** -.09* -.08* — 5. perception of govt. efforts 3.69 0.95 .05 .06 .00 .13** (.88) 6. resilience 3.37 0.74 .08 -.02 .09* .17*** .29*** (.92) 7. optimism 2.67 0.45 .12** .05 -.01 .17*** .14*** .28*** (.74) 8. hope 2.89 0.53 .11** .01 .05 .29*** .34*** .55*** .39*** (.87) 9. nostalgia 4.63 1.35 -.09* .02 .00 .06 .24*** .23*** .01 .24*** (.91) 10. spirituality 3.44 0.76 .15*** -.01 -.03 .29*** .37*** .45*** .33*** .55*** .30*** (.89) 11. wellbeing 3.91 1.19 .18*** -.02 -.06 .43*** .36*** .46*** .40*** .57*** .15*** .68*** (.96) 12. emotional wellbeing 4.14 1.24 .15*** .03 -.05 .37*** .37*** .46*** .38*** .54*** .16*** .63*** .87*** (.92) 13. social wellbeing 3.58 1.32 .18*** -.06 -.07 .42*** .33*** .39*** .32*** .48*** .14*** .61*** .93*** .75*** (.91) 14. psychological wellbeing 4.06 1.27 .16*** -.01 -.04 .39*** .33*** .43*** .42*** .57*** .13*** .66*** .95*** .77*** .80*** (.94) note. n = 626; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 1 we assessed the influence of ethnicity in the regression analyses and found that this variable does not predict any of the focal our outcome variables once all other control variables were included in the regression model. promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74 3.2 hypothesis tests 3.2.1 hypothesis 1: there is a positive relationship between resilience and wellbeing controlling for respondent age, socioeconomic status, and perceptions towards government efforts in managing the pandemic, resilience significantly and positively predicts the overall wellbeing, β = .33, p < .01; 95% ci [.42, .63]. the overall regression model fit is r2 = .38, f (4, 617) = 97.20, p < .01. this supports hypothesis 1. the inclusion of resilience explains an additional 9.5% of the variance on top of age, ses, and perceptions of government efforts. table 2. results of hierarchical regression analysis for hypotheses 1 dv = wellbeing step 1: control variables β [95% ci] se age .11*** [.01, .02] .00 ses .37*** [.12, .25] .02 gov efforts .31*** [.30, .47] .04 adjusted r2 .29** f 84.96*** step 2: resilience β [95% ci] se age .10** [.00, .02] .00 ses .33*** [.15, .22] .02 gov efforts .22*** [.20, .36] .04 resilience .33*** [.42, .63] .05 adjusted r2 .38*** δr2 .095 f 97.20** δf 95.12*** note. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p <.001 3.2.2 hypothesis 2a and 2b tests: controlling for resilience, there is a positive relationship between promotive factors (optimism and hope) and wellbeing we conducted hierarchical regressions for each of the two promotive factors in this study. in step 1, we entered age, ses, perceptions of government efforts and resilience in the regression model. in step 2, we entered the promotive factor variable, optimism and hope. we ran separate tests for each variable. optimism. results indicate that optimism significantly predicts wellbeing, β = .24, p < .01; 95% ci [.46, .79], beyond that of resilience. the overall regression model fit is r2 = .43, f (5, 616) = 95.76, p <.01. the model explains 43.3% of the total variance, of which 5.1% is attributed to the inclusion of the optimism variable. hope. results indicate that hope significantly predicts wellbeing, β = .33, p < .01; 95% ci [.59, .92] beyond that of resilience. the overall regression model fit is r2 = .45, f (5, 616) = 103.67, p <.01. the model explains 45.3% of the total variance, of which 7.0% is attributed to the inclusion of the hope variable. promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 results from the regression analyses indicate that after controlling for age, ses, and perceptions of government efforts, optimism, and hope, contributes to wellbeing beyond that explained by resilience. resilience, nonetheless, remains a significant influence in the model even with the inclusion of these promotive factors. the results support hypothesis 2a and 2b and are presented in table 3. table 3. results of hierarchical regression analyses 2a and 2b (optimism and hope). step 1: control variables and resilience β [95% ci] se age .10 .00 ses .32 .02 gov efforts .22 .04 resilience .33 .05 adjusted r2 .38*** f 97.20*** step 2: promotive factor variable β [95% ci] se β [95% ci] se age .08** [.00, .02] .00 .08** [.00. .02] .00 ses .30*** [.14, .20] .02 .27*** [.11, .19] .02 gov efforts .21*** [.18, .34] .04 .16*** [.12, .28] .04 resilience .27*** [.32, .53] .05 .17*** [.16, .40] .06 optimism .24*** [.46, .79] .09 hope .33*** [.59, .92] .08 adjusted r2 .43*** .45*** δr2 .051 .070 f 95.76*** 103.67*** δf 55.59*** 79.86*** note. dv = wellbeing (mhc-sf); * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p <.001 3.2.3 hypothesis 2c and 2d tests: controlling for resilience, there is a positive relationship between protective factors (nostalgia and spirituality) and wellbeing we conducted a similar set of analyses to test for hypotheses 2c and 2d. in step 1, we entered age, ses, perceptions of government efforts, and resilience in the regression model. in step 2, we entered the protective factor variable – nostalgia and spirituality. nostalgia. nostalgia was not positively associated with wellbeing, β = .01, (n.s.); 95% ci [-.05, .07]. the overall regression model fit is r2 = .38, f (5, 616) = 77.67, p <.01. the model explains 38.2% of the total variance, but a non-significant, trivial amount is attributed to the inclusion of the nostalgia variable. spirituality. spirituality is positively associated with wellbeing, β = .50, p < .01; 95% ci [.69, .89]. the overall regression model fit is r2 = .56, f (5, 616) = 157.82, p <.01. the model explains 55.8% of the total variance, of which 17.5% is attributed to the inclusion of the spirituality variable. results from the regression analyses indicate that controlling for age, ses, and resilience, only spirituality led to increased wellbeing. nostalgia was not significantly associated with wellbeing. the results are perhaps surprising given that nostalgia has been shown in previous research to promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 increase wellbeing. resilience still predicts wellbeing when nostalgia and spirituality are included in the regression model. results are presented in table 4. the results do not support hypothesis 2c but support hypothesis 2d. table 4. results of hierarchical regression analyses 2c and 2d (nostalgia and spirituality). step 1: control variables and resilience β [95% ci] se age .01* [.00, .02] .00 ses .33*** [.15, .22] .02 govt efforts .22*** [.19, .36] .28 resilience .33*** [.42, .63] .05 adjusted r2 .38*** f 97.203 step 2: protective factor variable β [95% ci] se β [95% ci] se age .01* [.00, .02] .00 .05 [.00, .00] .00 ses .33*** [.15, .22] .02 .23*** [.01, .16] .02 govt efforts .22*** [.19, .36] .04 .10*** [.05, .20] .04 resilience .32*** [.41, .63] .06 .16*** [.16, .35] .06 nostalgia .01 [-.05, .07] .03 spirituality .50*** [.69, .89] .05 adjusted r2 .38*** .56*** δr2 .00 .175 f 77.67*** 157.82*** δf .09 245.94*** note. dv = wellbeing (mhc-sf); * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p <.001 4. discussion 4.1 summary of results and key findings in this study, we examined promotive and protective psychological factors – beyond resilience, that contribute to enhanced wellbeing during the covid-19 pandemic. our study was based on a representative sample of malaysians, who responded to an online survey assessing resilience, optimism and hope as promotive factors and nostalgia and spirituality as protective factors. we assessed these variables’ effects on wellbeing. results from the regression analyses indicate that controlling for age, ses, and perceptions of governmental efforts, resilience predicts wellbeing, supporting hypothesis 1. results also indicate that ses and resilience are both comparable in their magnitude of effect on wellbeing, consistent with previous research on the importance of resilience as a predictor of wellbeing. results from the regression analyses and test for hypothesis 2a and 2b indicate that optimism and hope were significant in predicting higher wellbeing. both optimism and hope, therefore, predict higher levels of emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. results also indicate that controlling for resilience and socio-demographic variables, hope more strongly predicted wellbeing than optimism. we ran a similar set of tests for hypothesis 2c and 2d and found spirituality, but not nostalgia, to be a significant protective factor contributing to elevated wellbeing. the results may be attributable to the religiosity of respondents; with the majority of malaysians (96.6%) professing to have a religious faith (cia world factbook, 2021). we acknowledge that religiosity and spirituality are not synonymous (zinnbauer et al. 1997) but promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 given the correlations between these constructs from previous studies, it seems plausible that responses reflected participants relying on religious and spiritual practices to help them cope with adversity during this time, which protected their wellbeing. results revealed that nostalgia was not significantly predictive of wellbeing, contrary to established understandings that nostalgia serves to generate an existential resource that contributes to wellbeing. recently, newman and sach (2020) found that nostalgia exacerbated feelings of loneliness, and this led to decrements in emotional wellbeing. studies have found high levels of loneliness related to the covid-19 pandemic (fiorillo et al., 2020; grossman, hoffman, palgi & shrira, 2021), which could be due to the prolonged physical isolation during quarantine. lykes and kemmelmeier (2014) suggest that feelings of loneliness are likely higher in collectivistic societies, where sensitivity to social exclusion is stronger than in individualistic ones. newman and colleagues (2020) showed that the daily experience of nostalgia was rated as being less pleasant than nostalgic recollections generated on request during experimental conditions. this explanation makes sense in light of the context. given the regulations imposed by the government that have effectively restricted social events among respondents, those who were more nostalgic might have recalled – and subsequently, reminded of the limited opportunities for social interactions during this time. these daily, unprompted nostalgic recollections of past social events may have instead increased feelings of loneliness, detachment, or isolation, leading to no observable positive effect on respondents’ wellbeing. 4.2 limitations and suggestions for future research our findings should also be interpreted in light of limitations imposed on by our method and design. first, the cross-sectional design of our study restricts us from drawing inferences of causality. as such, it is equally possible that the promotive and protective factors examined in this study are themselves consequences instead of predictors of resilience or wellbeing. results from the bivariate correlations indicate that resilience and all promotive and protective factors were significantly associated with resilience and in the expected direction of influence. to this end, the results do show that factors drawn from the positive psychology literature do contribute to elevated wellbeing alongside that of resilience. further research can nonetheless examine how other positive psychology constructs such as mindfulness and self-compassion can assist in building resilience toward promoting wellbeing during crises (wong & yeung, 2017; neff & mcgehee, 2010). future studies should also consider factors that contribute to meaningful and healthy relationships (reis & gable, 2003). it is firmly established by the resilience literature, for instance, that social support is an important factor in buffering against stress and adversity (lee et al., 2013). perhaps this is more so within a collectivist society. future studies might examine the relative contributions of individual factors and social support towards resilience and wellbeing. second, while we employed a representative sample, controlling for socio-demographic factors, and ruled out extraneous variables that may have influenced the results, it is crucial to note that the data is still representative of only one specific time during the pandemic in malaysia. the data collected reflects responses amidst the initial loosening of restrictions, and the results should be interpreted given these circumstances. it is important to stress that since october 2020, cases of the novel coronavirus spiked again, leading to the third wave of the pandemic in the country. we are not aware of other studies assessing comparable psychological variables at the onset of the third wave of the pandemic in the country. it is, however, reasonable to expect that resilience, levels of wellbeing, and the role of promotive and protective factors would vary during this time. studies adopting longitudinal designs, for instance, have shown promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 levels of mental health to fluctuate during the pandemic (planchuelo-gómez et al. 2020; robinson & daly, 2020). further studies can thus adopt approaches that allow for the assessment of how promotive and protective factors change alongside resilience and wellbeing across time. 4.3 theoretical implications these limitations notwithstanding, our study contributes to research on resilience and wellbeing from a positive psychology perspective. we examine constructs from the positive psychology literature – hope, optimism, nostalgia, and spirituality and assess their roles in shaping resilience. the findings here answer calls for resilience and wellbeing research to acknowledge, account for, and assess for the influence of context and culture, and how this dynamic system of adaptability is helped or hindered by the environment (yates et al., 2015). while not the main foci of the study, we showed how resilience among malaysians is strongly influenced by their ses, and how promotive and protective factors are influenced by perceptions of the governments’ efforts in mitigating the effects of the pandemic. we also add to the literature by providing initial evidence for how positive psychology constructs can be conceptualized and understood as promotive or protective factors against adversity (luthar, lyman & crossman, 2014). notably from our findings, we showed that not all promotive or protective factors have universally positive effects on wellbeing. for instance, the finding that spirituality, but not nostalgia as contributors to wellbeing, highlight the need to understand protective factors in context. for instance, spirituality may be a more important protective factor among more religiously oriented cultures. in a recent case study of vietnam, small and blanc (2020) highlighted how the concept of “tam giao” – a coexistence of religious and philosophical taoism, buddhism, and confucianism – can help build resilience through promoting transparency, communication, and mitigating stigmatization (p. 1). the principle here also alludes to the importance of collectivism and interdependence, suggesting that factors contributing to resilience in asian contexts vary from those identified and employing western samples. our findings contribute to culturally-nuanced understandings of resilience theory and the development of culturally-sensitive models of wellbeing. 4.4 practical implications findings from this study can contribute to the design of positive psychology interventions that encourage the cultivation of promotive and protective resources that increase wellbeing. results suggest that mental health interventions that revolve around the cultivation of optimism, hope, and spirituality may be particularly effective in building, or at the very least, complementing interventions designed to increase resilience and improve wellbeing among malaysians during the pandemic or future crises. these may take the form of personalized therapeutic interventions or mental health initiatives directed towards the community at large. meta-analytic evidence shows positive psychology interventions are effective in enhancing wellbeing (bolier et al. 2013; sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). a recent meta-analysis by carr and colleagues (2020) sampling across 41 countries showed that positive psychology interventions had small to medium effects on wellbeing and buffered against the adverse mental health outcomes. the authors also highlight that the interventions were especially effective for clinical participants in non-western countries. considering evidence from these meta-analyses, findings from the current study suggest that mental health interventions aimed at cultivating hope, optimism, and spirituality can be effective complements to government-led health initiatives and policies to help malaysians weather the adversity brought upon by the pandemic. promotive and protective wellbeing factors tee, raja reza shah, thomas, phoo, & ng www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 5. conclusion in this study, we examined how promotive and protective psychological factors predict wellbeing during the covid-19 pandemic. we tested our hypotheses employing a representative sample of malaysians during the country’s initial (and short-lived) recovery phase, before the third wave of infections. our study showed that beyond resilience, and controlling for socio-demographic factors, that hope, optimism, and spirituality contribute to wellbeing. findings from our study contribute to the refinement of resilience theory from a positive psychology perspective and in the development of contextand culturally-sensitive models of wellbeing. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. acknowledgements this work was supported by an internal institutional research grant. authors eugene y.j. tee help university teeyj@help.edu.my raja intan arifah binti raja reza shah utrecht university i.rajaintanarifahbintirajarezashah@students.uu.nl karuna s. thomas help university karuna.s@help.edu.my evone y.m. phoo help university evone.phoo@help.edu.my siew li ng help university ng.sl@help.edu.my publishing timeline received 30 september 2021 revised 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(2020). artists, audiences and wellbeing: an economic analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 10(4), 20-34. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.1205 marie briguglio university of malta marie.briguglio@um.edu.mt copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 article artists, audiences and wellbeing: an economic analysis marie briguglio · gilmour camilleri · melchior vella abstract: we set out to examine the relationship between cultural engagement and wellbeing in a european union state, malta. we specify a conceptual model of wellbeing, captured by self-assessed life satisfaction as the predicted variable. armed with a rich dataset (n = 1,125), drawn from a nationally representative sample, we construct variables that capture the diverse forms of cultural participation including a variable that identifies artists. we test three hypotheses, namely that passive cultural participation (audience) is positively associated with life satisfaction, that active (productive) cultural participation is positively associated with life satisfaction, and that artists have a higher level of life satisfaction, all else being equal. we find that both active and passive participation activities are associated with higher levels of life satisfaction; that active participation (including production, donation and travel) manifests a stronger relationship with life satisfaction than passive participation; and that life satisfaction is higher among those who identify as artists even after the effects of all other control variables are parsed out. this being the first nationally representative study on life satisfaction in malta, the study makes a useful contribution in this regard, finding that factors like employment, health, engagement in sport, politics, religion, environment, as well as region of residence and migration are all significant correlates of life satisfaction. keywords: cultural engagement, artist, life satisfaction, malta 1. introduction the relationship between wellbeing and engagement in cultural activities has received increasing attention in recent years. but the quantitative analysis of the relationship is challenging for several reasons. firstly, it requires measurement of two key variables, neither of which are easy to define, still less measure. what constitutes cultural engagement (whether as audience or artist) remains a contested issue (laitio, 2012), and one that can take different interpretations depending on context (walker et al., 2002; briguglio and sultana, 2017). what constitutes wellbeing is also a question that has received scholarly attention for centuries, and remains a subject of controversy (diener et al., 1999; briguglio 2019). even when quantitative data on both variables is available, the scientific analysis of the relationship between the two requires the researcher to avail of data on a range of other control factors that could come into play. in what follows, we set out to examine the determinants of life satisfaction and the role of cultural engagement in a european union country, malta. here a cultural participation survey conducted by the national statistics office (nso, 2017) provides the data necessary not only to estimate the country’s first wellbeing model based on nationally representative data, but also to focus on the effects of cultural engagement using a remarkably rich set of variables. these variables include those that identify about:blank artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 active (productive) cultural participation, passive participation (as audience) as well as those that distinguish artists from non-artists on the islands. 1.1 defining artists and audience engagement defining what constitutes an artist can be complex for it brings up the ontological issue of what inherently constitutes art and whether the artist has some special quality, capacity or gift to produce this (mitchell and karttunen, 1992; lena and lindemann, 2014). bird (1979) argues that the social scientist should not evaluate or rank art in aesthetic terms, but should rely on objective facts. bourdieu (1983) views the status of the artist as a functional one, advocating against defining boundaries of the art world. on the other hand, becker (1984) relies on the existence of conventions to draw the line between an artist and everyone else. mitchell and karttunen (1992) operationalise the definition in various ways. firstly, an artist can be a person who produces artistic work or carries out artistic activities, including artistic work, audience engagement, exhibits or disseminations, and commercial outcomes. secondly, what distinguishes artists from others is their rights and obligations, special privileges or sanctions. thirdly, one can rely on recognised bodies or legitimate colleagues, particularly given that the rise of copyright legislation has stimulated increased association and creation of artistic lobbies. the extent of diversity among artistic practitioners can, however, render such definitions problematic (towse, 1996). a different way to define an artist is to rely on self-assessment. the unesco recommendation concerning the status of the artist (1980) indeed considers an artist to be self-proclaimed: one may qualify as an artist if artistic creation is an essential part of one’s life. this approach is extensively used in cultural studies when wide sampling frames are used, and helps to spot emerging artists (karttunen, 1998). while frey and pommerehne (1989) point out that one can hardly be considered as artist unless one’s work is exhibited or published, towse (1996) argues that self-definition avoids elitism. the extent to which artists (or non-artists) are able to define themselves can also be influenced by the sense of achievement that comes with the title (craig, 2007). in terms of cultural engagement more broadly, the unesco framework for cultural statistics considers flows in the domain of culture to encompass production, dissemination, transmission, consumption, creation, exhibition and participation (unesco, 2009). such flows, in turn, can occur in the domains of visual arts and crafts, performance and celebration, cultural and natural heritage, books and press, audio-visual and interactive media, design and creative services and intangible cultural heritage (unesco, 2009). it is also possible to distinguish the extent and manner in which one engages in such activities. one key distinction is between those who create or produce a cultural product, and those who consume it (audiences). typically, the latter far outnumber the former (european commission, 2012). engagement can also include more detached forms, such as through financial contributions or volunteering in the production of an activity (walker et al. 2002). the measurement of cultural engagement has made possible an understanding of the diversity in extent to which it is undertaken and promoted by governments across different countries, and indeed within them (belfiore and bennett, 2007). 1.2 the relationship between cultural engagement and wellbeing there is a growing body of evidence that cultural engagement can positively affect wellbeing, diversely defined (e.g. blessi et al., 2014; ceci et al., 2015). insights as to the mechanisms at play include the prospect that cultural engagement can improve skills, cultural capacity and creativity (hetland, 2000). active engagement can lead to the development of new skills and contribute to http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 positive public recognition, thereby enhancing self-concept and the sense of life control (fiske, 1999; fancort et al., 2019). cultural engagement can also foster social bonds (grossi et. al., 2011). such engagement appears to also be associated with better physical health (baklien, 2000). the positive use of art has also been noted in clinical outcomes, reducing hospital stays and offsetting the need for medication to induce sleep (stuckey and nobel, 2010). work among children has found that those who have an arts-integrated curriculum, and that engage in an arts class, tend to do better at school (fiske, 1999; hetland and winner, 2001). among youths, the evidence also suggests positive association between engagement in traditional cultural activities and life satisfaction (briguglio and sultana, 2017). among seniors, collective creative engagement has resulted in improvement in perceived overall health, experience of pain, and sense of community (phinney et al., 2014). one line of investigation in this literature is on the distinction between active versus passive (audience) engagement. some studies (e.g. briguglio and sultana, 2017) find stronger effects from active participation. similarly, some note that when people manage their cultural initiatives, they tend to report more enjoyable experiences (baklien, 2000). day and devlin (1998) also find that volunteer work in arts and culture increases the individuals’ earnings as a result of new skills and business contacts, and of the favourable signal sent to employers. others trace wellbeing effects from simply attending cultural events (blanchflower, 2009), with some authors arguing that simple exposure to art may result in enhanced knowledge and cultural capital (hetland, 2000). another distinction is that between activities that are social and those that require solitude. the latter have been found to be negatively correlated with wellbeing (long and averill, 2003). michalos (2005) notes that, while art-related activities tend to contribute positively to wellbeing overall, their effects are smaller than those of other determinants like self-esteem and social interaction. similar observations are made by golloway, whose 2007 meta-analysis also notes that findings are not generalisable across cultural forms, project types and individuals (golloway, 2007). there is also a small literature that focuses on the wellbeing of artists themselves. given the association between engaging in artistic activities and wellbeing, it is not surprising that some studies indicate that artists are happier than others (bille et al., 2013). social support and shared passions can also be underlying reasons for higher wellbeing among artists (willis et al., 2019). csikszentmihalyi (2000) observed that artists are likely to be driven more by the intrinsic rewards rather than the external rewards like money, praise, and promotion. higher job satisfaction among artists could also be attributed to higher self-employment rate, increased variety of work as well as on-the-job training (steiner and schnieder, 2013). nonetheless, there are also factors associated with being an artist that can have negative effects on wellbeing. being an artist can be linked with certain negative organisational, social and emotional demands, such as sustained physical and mental stress, lack of job security and transient organisational affiliations (robb et al., 2018). as a job, that of an artist can come with significant commitment, high effort and low reward (burgoyne et al., 1999). at times there is exorbitant competition (perkins et al., 2017). there are also documented associations between being an artist and being unemployed (alper and wassall, 2006), having a tenuous financial situation (schulz et al., 1997), or having supplement one’s income with undesirable work (stack, 2010). poor mental and physical health can also characterise the demographic of artists (waddell, 1998; kenny et al., 2016). such conditions can act as moderating factors which suppress wellbeing among artists. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 1.3 context our study takes place in malta, a small island state which forms part of the european union. malta (and its sister island gozo) offers an ideal context for the study given the recent surge in attention to cultural participation, encompassing institutional development, budgetary provision and data collection. a national cultural policy was launched in 2011 (pstec, 2011), which aimed to improve cultural governance structures and international cultural cooperation, professionalise artists and develop cultural and creative industries, among other goals. a revamped legal structure saw the reorganisation of the arts council malta (act 15 of 2015) and a new strategy aimed at bringing the arts closer to people (acm, 2015). malta’s cultural policy is also guided by the european commission (2012) work plan for culture. the years around the data collection period saw an increase in government expenditure in malta, such that arts expenditure a percentage of gdp was higher than that of the eu-28 average in 2015. various funding programmes were initiated by the arts council (mfin, 2017) and in 2018, valletta was named the european capital of culture. notwithstanding this effort, the maltese continue to exhibit low levels of participation in several domains of art and culture, both as audiences and artists, except in traditional (folkloristic) events like village festivals (briguglio and sultana, 2015, 2017). when community patterns of cultural participation were first systematically assessed in a nationally representative survey (nso, 2012), the findings revealed that attending art exhibitions, dance and theatre were highly unpopular activities (nso, 2012). productive, or active participation was mainly prominent in traditional village festivals celebrating a patron saint, or carnival. these findings were echoed by the european commission’s 2013 evaluation of participation among member states (european commission 2013). in other activities, lack of interest followed by lack of time seem to be the main cause of low attendance for much of the population, except for young people, for whom cost and lack of choice were also barriers (european commission, 2013). in 2016, eurostat again reported that only some 13% of respondents from malta confirmed that they actively engaged in some form of artistic activity such as singing, acting, photography, filmproduction, dancing, playing a musical instrument (eurostat, 2016). that same year, malta’s national statistics office embarked on a large and detailed data collection process intended to understand the variation in cultural uptake across the islands (nso, 2017). this data forms the basis for our analysis. 2. method 2.1 model and hypothesis we follow others in measuring wellbeing through individuals’ subjective assessment of happiness or life satisfaction on an ordinal scale (e.g. blanchflower, 2009; briguglio, 2019). we specify a conceptual model whereby this is expressed as a function of cultural engagement (our phenomenon of interest) and other known factors. there is vast literature on such determinants of life satisfaction which encompass a wide range of such factors like health, employment, engagement in sport, religion, social interaction, the environment, political considerations as well as demographic considerations like marital status, education, gender and age (briguglio 2019). we therefore specify model a as follows: model a: 𝑦𝑖 = 𝐱𝑖 ′𝛽 + 𝒛𝑖𝛼 + 𝑢𝑖 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 where yi denotes the subjective wellbeing of an individual i. xi is a vector of covariates, capturing the individual characteristics and control variables that are known to be relevant in the literature on wellbeing, zi is cultural engagement and ui is a stochastic error term, indexed i for the individual. our intent is to test the following hypotheses: hypothesis 1: active engagement in the arts is positively associated with life satisfaction. hypothesis 2: audience engagement in the arts is positively associated with life satisfaction. hypothesis 3: artists exhibit higher levels of life satisfaction, all other things held constant. table 1. definition and description of variables variable name description mean sd min max artist mean other mean (p value) satisfy self-assessed life satisfaction 7.8 1.8 1.0 10.0 8.2 7.7 0.00 artist artist (self-assessed) 0.2 0.4 0.0 1.0 artist_a artist and in active employment 0.1 0.3 0.0 1.0 artist_i artist and inactive 0.1 0.3 0.0 1.0 audience_nt audience index (excl. traditional) 4.5 5.2 0.0 35.0 6.9 3.8 0.00 audience_t audience index (traditional only) 2.0 1.5 0.0 5.0 2.1 2.0 0.38 audience audience index (all) 6.5 5.7 0.0 40.0 9.0 5.8 0.00 audience travel audience travel overseas index 1.1 1.9 0.0 9.0 1.6 1.0 0.00 audience festival festival attendance index 0.4 0.9 0.0 7.0 0.6 0.4 0.00 participation_nt participation index (excl. traditional) 1.3 2.4 0.0 20.0 3.0 0.9 0.00 participation_t participation index (traditional only) 0.5 1.3 0.0 10.0 0.8 0.4 0.00 participation participation index (all) 1.8 3.0 0.0 24.0 3.9 1.2 0.00 donation donation index 5.2 2.4 2.0 10.0 6.4 4.9 0.00 illness respondent has health limitations 0.2 0.5 0.0 2.0 0.2 0.3 0.37 environment hobby/interest environment 2.1 1.1 0.2 4.0 2.5 2.0 0.00 sport frequency sport 1.7 1.7 0.0 4.0 2.0 1.6 0.00 religion frequency religious activity 2.0 1.5 0.0 4.0 2.2 2.0 0.03 social index of socialising friends/family 5.6 1.8 0.0 8.0 5.7 5.6 0.36 political hobby politics (yes 1, no 0) 0.3 0.4 0.0 1.0 0.3 0.3 0.12 unemployment unemployed 1, all other 0 0.0 0.1 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.04 education education (bands) 3.3 1.0 1.0 5.0 3.5 3.2 0.00 marriage civil status (married 1, all other 0) 0.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 0.5 0.5 0.33 gender gender (female 1, male 0) 0.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 0.5 0.5 0.04 age age brackets 3.8 1.7 1.0 6.0 3.5 3.9 0.00 region district (gozo 1, malta 0) 0.1 0.3 0.0 1.0 0.1 0.1 0.41 abroad respondent lived abroad (yes 1) 0.9 0.3 0.0 1.0 0.9 0.9 0.59 note. n=1,125 for all, n=241 for artists and n=884 for non-artists. data source: (nso, 2017). 2.2 data to test our hypotheses, we fit the model to data, employing the micro-data (n=1,125) drawn from the cultural participation survey conducted by malta’s national statistics office (nso, 2017) which was gathered through face-to-face interviews between october and november 2016. 1 table 1 presents the data set we utilise in our analysis. the y-variable is measured by a standard life satisfaction question, “on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means very dissatisfied and 10 means very satisfied, can you please tell us how satisfied are you with your life these days?” to capture the 1 using sex, age and district of residence, the sample was tested in terms of representativeness of the maltese population. the survey’s margin of error at 95% confidence interval was 2.9%. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 25 phenomenon of being an artist, we utilise responses to the question “do you consider yourself to be an artist?”. we note that a total of 21.4% of respondents considered themselves to be artists. this rate tallies with the figure published by the national office of statistics of malta (nso, 2017, p. 185), which collected the data according to the european code of practice. however, it is considerably higher than figures based on employment status (e.g. eurostat, 2016). the difference is unlikely to be due to sampling error given the high confidence intervals reported by the nso (nso, 2017). rather, it probably relates to the use of self-assessment as the method of identification. as discussed earlier, the term “artist” can be defined in various ways. selfidentification arguably allows for the broadest of definitions, capturing respondents who practice or practiced any art form, whether as a hobby or as employment. indeed, unesco (2019, p. 69) notes that, based on the analysis of submissions to the 2018 global survey concerning the status of artists, the actual population of artists is much higher than the population of employed artists. the former includes not only the latter, but also those in informal employment, amateurs and ordinary people who are involved in any form of artistic creation (gruber, 2019). given the sheer breadth of questions pertaining to cultural and artistic participation in the survey, we set about constructing a number of composite indices that collapse engagement into diverse components. for passive participation in cultural events, we construct an index which sums up the unweighted frequency of attendance to cultural activities by respondents in various activities namely: theatre, live music, dance, artistic performances, art exhibitions, library, museums and historical sites over the preceding 12 months. we call this “audience_nt” and find that it assumes a range from 0 to 35. attendance was low on average with a mean of 4.5 and a median of 3.5. the share of those who said that they did not attend any of the named activities stood at 31.2%. given the prevalence of participation in traditional (folkloristic) cultural events, namely carnival festivities, processions, national holiday events, local council activities and parish church festivals and activities, the cultural participation survey measures participation in these activities separately. this allowed us to create a second audience index “audience_t”. here we note much higher participation: respondents attended just over 2 traditional events over the 12 months out of a maximum of 5 events. the distribution of this index is positively skewed with the lowest standard deviation amongst all the cultural indices. a composite audience index “audience” was also constructed, being the summation of “audience_t” and “audience_nt”. turning to productive engagement in the arts, we construct a similar index which sums up the extent to which respondents actively participate in a total of 18 activities presented to them by the survey, namely: ballet/dance, computer for artwork, crafts, play/drama, national feasts, films/videos as art, good friday, local council festivals, playing musical instrument, painting/drawing, activity in the local parish, photography as art, singing, active in carnival, storytelling, stories/plays and writing music. a score of 2 is assigned if the survey respondent actively participated in the last year, a score of 1 is assigned if he did so 1 to 3 years ago, and score of 0 otherwise. the index “participation” reveals a skewed distribution and a mean score of 1.8. over half of the participants did not participate in any activity at all. as we did with attendance to traditional evens, we also capture active involvement in traditional activities, using “participation_t”. we note that the majority (71.2%) of the survey respondents did not participate in any traditional activity. we were also able to construct a number of supplementary indexes. the variable “travel”, captures the extent of overseas travel related to art exhibitions, cinema/other artistic events, dance, historical sites, libraries, literature, concerts, museums, other and theatre. nearly twothirds of the respondents returned a score of zero on this index. given the burgeoning activities and national (non-parish) festivals in malta, we examined participation in festivals specifically, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 26 creating the variable “festivals”.2 respondents were mostly likely to have never been to a festival in the last year (70.6%), while 21.3% of the respondents had attended one festival. the variable “donation” measures the respondents’ willingness to donate money or volunteer time to support an arts or cultural organisation, on a 5-point scale. high levels of disagreement were recorded in both willingness to volunteer time to support an arts or cultural organisation, and willingness to donate money to support an arts or cultural organisation. two test variables were also created, accounting for artists who are not in active employment (e.g. retired, students, housewife or unemployed) and those who are active in employment (including self-employment). the latter amount to just over half of the artists. the various co-determinants of life satisfaction are also summarised in table 1. the variable “illness” measures responses to the question “have you been limited because of a health problem in activities people usually do?”. a composite index “environment” gauges engagement with the natural environment derived from four questions in the survey (covering interest in green/environmental issues, wildlife/natural history, gardening and going into the countryside). the variable “sport” reports frequency of sport or physical exercise in the past year, while the variable “religion” captures the frequency with which respondents attend mass. the variable “social” aggregates responses on the frequency of meeting with immediate family, and friends. the only data pertinent to political preferences in the survey was that on personal interest in politics, captured by the variable “political”. in the sample, 13.1% of the respondents had lived abroad and 8.4% resided in the sister island of gozo. these distinctions were captured by the variables “abroad” and “region” respectively. other demographics are captured by the variables “unemployed”, “education”, “age”, “marriage” and “gender”. 3. results 3.1 profiling artists prior to proceeding with a formal estimation of our models and analysis testing, we first examine the profile of malta’s self-assessed artists by comparing their means with those of respondents who did not self-assess as artists. as reported in table 1, and as would be expected, artists are more likely to be engaged more actively and passively in cultural activities and tend to donate more time/money to an arts organisation. the analysis of means however, also reveals that the life satisfaction of artists is higher than that of non-artists. relative to non-artists, artists tend to be younger, more educated, more engaged with the natural environment, exercise. these results are interesting in themselves as they refute some commonly held notions that link artists as unemployed persons, more susceptible to unemployment (alper and wassall, 2006; bille et al., 2013) and with poor mental health (stack, 2010; waddell, 1998). 3.2 basic correlations we then proceed to examine basic correlations in our dataset. as expected, these reveal that the prevalence of illness is significantly higher (at the 95% confidence level) among older respondents and lower among those with higher education. being in employment and being engaged in sport return higher self-assessed health levels. older people tend to have lower education and lower engagement in sport. men tend to present in greater numbers among the employed, but in smaller numbers in church pews. moreover, at the 95% confidence level, life satisfaction correlates negatively with illness and unemployment and positively with education, 2 these include the għanafest, malta international arts festival, malta jazz festival, notte bianca, three palaces festival, valletta green festivals, valletta international baroque festival and valletta viva festival. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 environmental, sport and cultural engagement. in turn, people who are engaged in culture tend to have better overall health and education, to be older and to be employed. they are also more likely to be environmental and undertake physical activity. participation in traditional activities correlates with living in gozo and with frequency of religious activity. 3.3 estimation of a model of life satisfaction for the maltese islands we next proceed to estimate a basic model with life satisfaction as the outcome variable. in such a model the fitted parameters reveal the relationship of each variable on self-reported life satisfaction after taking into consideration the effects of other control variables. given the nature of our dependent variable, we employ an ordered logit model. here a significant positive (negative) coefficient implies that a one-unit increase in the independent variable increases the log-odds of being in a higher (lower) level of life satisfaction. robust standard errors are reported in parentheses to address the possibility of heteroscedasticity, this being frequently observed in cross-sectional datasets.3 we start by estimating model 1, which explores the correlates of life satisfaction in the maltese islands without any arts variables included. the results here (see table 2 below) broadly confirm that life satisfaction in malta responds to phenomena as those observed in the wider literature. as in other contexts, we note that life satisfaction in malta is negatively related to being unemployed, to illness and to having lived abroad (e.g. grossi et. al., 2012; frey and stutzer, 2000), but positively related to sports (e.g. netz et al., 2005), to environmental engagement (e.g. brereton et al., 2008) and religious participation (e.g. stark and maier, 2008). we also note a negative coefficient on political engagement in contrast with mainstream findings (e.g. helliwell and huang, 2008), possibly due to the way political preferences are measured in this survey. we find that people living on the island of gozo report higher levels of life satisfaction. age, gender, and social marital status add little further explanatory power. though the pseudo r-squared is low (typical of studies utilising data at the level of individual respondents), the variables in the specification explain the variance sufficiently to comfortably reject the null hypothesis that there is no effect by the independent variables taken together. 3.4 testing hypotheses on artists and the culturally engaged we now factor in variables for cultural engagement. to test our hypothesis that active involvement is positively associated with wellbeing, we extend the model by using the variable “participation” (model 2). we note that the active participation variable returns a strong and positive coefficient. the likelihood ratio test also confirms that the inclusion of active participation results in a statistically significant improvement in the general fit of the model when compared to model 1. this is in line with literature which contends that active engagement can be a positive determinant of wellbeing (e.g. barklien, 2000). on the basis of these findings we therefore find some support for our hypothesis 1, namely that active participation is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction. we contrast this with the variable that indexes passive participation (model 3). while a unit increase in “participation” is significantly associated with a higher probability of observing higher states of life satisfaction, the marginal effect of “audience” for 3 all the produced tables present the results of the coefficients in terms of odds ratio. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 the same category does not do so within acceptable levels of confidence.4 these findings suggest no support for hypothesis 2 namely that passive participation is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction. contrary to some studies which find that simply attending cultural events can improve wellbeing (blanchflower, 2009), we find no such relationships in this analysis. table 2. determinants of wellbeing model 1 2 3 unemployed -1.36** -1.29** -1.34** social 0.03 0.02 0.02 political -0.23* -0.27** -0.24* environmental 0.17*** 0.16 *** 0.16*** region 1.19*** 1.17*** 1.17*** lived abroad -0.39** -0.40** -0.39** married 0.20 0.21 0.20 gender -0.11 -0.12 -0.12 illness limits -0.52*** -0.53*** -0.53*** limits+ -0.85*** -0.86*** -0.84** sport annual 0.44 0.37 0.41 monthly -0.27 -0.30* -0.29* weekly 0.32** 0.28 * 0.27* daily 0.34 ** 0.32 ** 0.30** religion annual 0.02 0.03 0.03 monthly 0.40* 0.40 * 0.39* weekly 0.08 0.07 0.07 daily 0.47** 0.43* 0.44* education primary 0.52 0.51 0.53 second 0.48 0.45 0.46 post-sec 0.64 0.61 0.60 tertiary 0.73 0.66 0.65 age 25-34 0.11 0.17 0.15 35-44 0.12 0.18 0.15 45-54 0.00 0.09 0.04 55-64 0.03 0.13 0.10 65+ -0.07 0.03 0.01 participation 0.05** audience 0.02 log likelihood -2005.96 -2003.04 -2004.58 pseudo r2 0.03 0.03 0.03 note. the table reports coefficient scales in log odds; ∗∗∗, ∗∗, ∗ denotes significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% level respectively; in all models n=1125 and prob>ch2 0.00; for the variables illness, sport, religion and education, the base category is none; for the variable age the base category is 16-24; data source: (nso, 2017). we delve deeper into this finding by parsing out the effect of participation in traditional events, these being the more popular kinds of activities in malta. table 3 (below) reports the results on 4 comparing the coefficients of active and passive participation is not straightforward as they have different means and standard deviations. we standardize both independent variables and then compare the coefficients. the estimated coefficient on part_all and audi_all are 0.075 and 0.055, respectively. the significance levels do not change. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 a series of test variables.5 we again note that active participation in traditional events, (model 4) returns a positive and significant coefficient. these findings echo briguglio and sultana (2015) who find higher levels of wellbeing among young people who participate in village feasts, as well as other studies from malta which revealed positive effects on social-connectedness from such activities (cremona, 2014). when we parse out the role of participation in such traditional activities, we note they also appear to be responsible for driving the positive outcome on the aggregate participation variable. active involvement in other (non-traditional) activities produces no significant returns (model 5), once all other determinants are controlled for. moreover, once we parse out attendance to traditional events (model 6) from others (model 7), we also find a significant and positive coefficient on the variable capturing mere attendance to traditional events, arguably explained by the fact that attendance is spread across a wider, and possibly, more fervent range of participants than other activities. this now provides some support to hypothesis 2. being an audience in traditional activities (like carnival festivities, processions, national holiday events, local council activities and parish church festivals and activities) is also positively and significantly associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, even once all other relevant factors are controlled for. table 3. determinants of wellbeing – further tests model 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 participation_t 0.16*** participation_nt 0.03 audience_t 0.11*** audience_nt 0.01 audience travel 0.07** donation 0.07*** audience festival 0.02 log likelihood -1999.68 -2005.43 -2001.99 -2005.52 -2003.28 -2001.23 -2005.94 pseudo r2 0.04 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 note. the models in this table were estimated with all the control variables presented in table 2, namely marital status, gender, employment status, social, political and environmental engagement, sport, religious participation, illness, age and educational levels; the table reports coefficient scales in log odds; ∗∗∗, ∗∗, ∗ denotes significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% level respectively; in all models n=1125 and prob>ch2 0.00; data source: (nso, 2017). we turn to the other variables which capture other forms of culture participation and estimate our basic model with the inclusion of these variables instead. in table 3 (model 8), we find that the overseas travel to consume culture is also positively associated with higher life satisfaction. whether this is association is due to cultural consumption or overseas travel is not possible to parse out from the data. persons who are either willing to donate money or volunteer time to support an arts or cultural organisation are also likely to have higher level of life satisfaction, as captured by the coefficient on “donation”. the estimated goodness-of-fit in model 9 is among the highest of all the reported models, implying that it is a relevant correlate to life satisfaction, holding everything else constant. once again, whether the effect is driven by the cultural component or the volunteering aspect poses an interesting question worth investigating further. taken together, model 8 and 9 yield further support to both hypothesis 1 and 2, namely that 5 the models in tables 3 and 4 here were estimated with all the control variables presented in table 2. we present only the results of test variables but the coefficients on the remaining variables remain stable. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 whether as audience, or in more active roles, participation in culture is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction. as a final test, the index capturing participation in national festivals is utilised in model 10, finding no statistically significant results. in our final set of regressions, we examine the relationship between life satisfaction and being an artist, as measured by self-assessment. the headline results are reported in table 4 (below). in model 11 we find that, even when accounting for all the other factors that could be driving the higher levels of wellbeing, considering oneself to be an artist is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction. it can be reasonably argued that this is driven by the artists’ higher involvement in active participation in the arts. to account for this possibility, we control for the effects by including the relevant indicators in model 12 and 13. the estimated parameter on “artist” remains statistically significant. we do however note that the variable “participation” loses its statistical significance when adding the variable “artist”, an outcome that suggests that the association between cultural engagement and life satisfaction may be driven by the subdemographic: artists. we also test whether being an artist and being employed manifests a different relationship with life satisfaction (model 14 and 15). the results suggest that it is only among artists who are in active employment (including self-employment) that such a positive association with life satisfaction exists. artists who are retired, students, housewives or unemployed do not manifest a higher probability of higher life satisfaction. we conclude that there is some evidence in support of hypothesis 3, namely that being an artist is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, at least among artists who are employed. these findings chime with those of others, as outlined earlier (e.g. bille et al., 2013) including the possibility that artists reap personal gains from their work (day and devlin, 1998). table 4. determinants of wellbeing – on being an “artist” model 11 12 13 14 15 artist 0.38*** 0.31** 0.37*** participation 0.034 audience 0.01 artist_a 0.34** artist_i 0.32 log likelihood -2002.05 -2000.71 -2001.92 -2005.51 -2006.16 pseudo r2 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 note. the models in this table were estimated with all the control variables presented in table 2, namely marital status, gender, employment status, social, political and environmental engagement, sport, religious participation, illness, age and educational levels; the table reports coefficient scales in log odds; ∗∗∗, ∗∗, ∗ denotes significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% level respectively; in all models n=1125 and prob>ch2 0.00; data source: (nso, 2017). 4. discussion and conclusion while our findings provide useful insights, a number of caveats need to be acknowledged. firstly, our reliance on cross-sectional data limits our efforts to fully identify casual effect of artistic participation on wellbeing. employing longitudinal data would allow for a better understanding of changes in wellbeing following external stimuli, including those that promote artistic engagement. as it is, we cannot fully exclude that causality may run in reverse direction: people with higher levels of life satisfaction may be more likely to become artists or to engage in cultural activities. secondly, the estimated coefficients may also suffer from unobserved variable bias. for instance, there may be systematic differences in personality between artists and nonhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ artists, audiences and wellbeing briguglio, camilleri, & vella www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 artists which may be driving the findings. this phenomenon could not be explored with the existing data. thirdly, it must be noted that all data was collected from survey interviews and based on self-assessment. while this certainly creates some noise (and makes for a larger error) in the estimates, it is not likely to have created a systematic bias in our results. despite the shortcomings presented by cross-sectional survey-based data, we were able to test a very rich and unprecedented variety of variables capturing diverse forms of engagement in a single nationally representative sample. this being the first such dataset on wellbeing in malta, our findings also make some contribution in this regard: we note that people in malta report lower levels of life satisfaction if they are unemployed, limited by ill health, if they previously lived abroad or if they are interested in politics. higher levels of wellbeing are reported among the more educated, physically active, religiously or environmentally engaged individuals and among those who live on the sister island of gozo. in relation to our main research question, our findings reveal that both active and passive participation are associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, at least in so far as we are dealing with the traditional (folkloristic) kinds of cultural participation. we further note that active participation (including production, donation and travel) manifests a stronger relationship with life satisfaction than does passive participation. finally, we find that among the community of people that identify as artists, life satisfaction is also higher, particularly among those that who are in active employment. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors marie briguglio university of malta marie.briguglio@um.edu.mt gilmour camilleri university of malta melchior vella university of malta publishing timeline received 21 april 2020 accepted 13 may 2020 published 1 october 2020 references alper, n. o., & wassall, g. h. 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(2014). the relationship between dietary intake and the six dimensions of wellness in older adults. international journal of wellbeing, 4(2), 45-99. doi:10.5502/ijw.4i2.4 john v. logomarsino central michigan university jack.logomarsino@cmich.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 article the relationship between dietary intake and the six dimensions of wellness in older adults angela g. dalton · john v. logomarsino abstract: the purpose of this review was to provide older adults with a clear idea of how dietary patterns can improve wellness, and how wellness can improve dietary patterns. a large portion of the us population is advancing in age and there is potential for an associated plateau or decline in wellness with age. therefore, strategies to improve personal wellness and dietary patterns should be considered. this review examined the associations between dietary intake and each of the six dimensions of wellness, as defined by the national wellness institute, in adults 50 years old or older. a cause-and-effect relationship of specific dietary patterns on intellectual, occupational, emotional, and physical wellness was explored. in addition, studies regarding the cause-and-effect relationship of spiritual and social wellness on dietary choice were evaluated. essentially, dietary intake and wellness were closely related. the research suggests that intellectual, occupational, emotional, and physical wellness may improve with dietary changes. nutrition status may improve with enrichment in social and spiritual wellness. overall, older adults can enhance wellness by following a few simple guidelines: increase the intake of plantbased foods, avoid processed foods, engage in a spiritual community that encourages healthy lifestyles, and seek dining companions in order to increase caloric intake. keywords: diet, nutrition, wellness, older adult, aged 1. introduction a person’s dietary pattern influences physical health, disease state, and mortality (ruel et al., 2013; knoops et al., 2006; lagiou et al., 2006). this paper will investigate how dietary patterns influence wellness. personal wellness is “an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence” (the national wellness institute, n.d.). a six-dimension approach to wellness, comprising emotional, occupational, physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual wellness, is used by the national wellness institute (see figure 1 below). this provides a holistic approach, based on the interconnectedness of all six dimensions. wellbeing, on the other hand, has been described as what makes a life go well for someone (international journal of wellbeing, n.d.), or the state of being happy, healthy, or successful (merriam-webster, n.d.). wellness can be thought of as the active and intentional process that leads to a state of wellbeing. therefore, although the words “wellbeing” and “wellness” are often used interchangeably, this review will speak more toward improving wellness rather than wellbeing, with the assumption that improving each of the six dimensions of wellness will result in a state of wellbeing. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 figure 1. the six dimensions of wellness (the national institute of wellness, n.d.) it has been suggested that wellbeing increases with age, but may peak in the 7th decade of life (carstensen et al., 2011). in 2010, nearly 99 million americans were 50 years old or older (u.s. department of commerce, 2010); 40 million of these were 65 years old or older (federal interagency forum on aging-related statistics, 2012). this review examines the cause-and-effect relationship of specific nutrients on intellectual, occupational, emotional, and physical wellness. furthermore, this review examines the cause-and-effect relationship of spiritual and social wellness as each pertains to dietary intake. search methods included a pubmed database search for each wellness dimension, including wellness and dietary terms for each. studies with adults over the age of 50 and published in the last 20 years were the primary focus. 2. review of the literature 2.1 intellectual wellness intellectual wellness recognizes mental activity and creativity, with a focus on problem solving, creativity, and learning (hettler, 1976). age-related memory loss is common (federal interagency forum on aging-related statistics, 2006), and alzheimer’s disease was among the top five leading causes of death for older adults in 2009 (federal interagency forum on aging-related statistics, 2012). eating to protect against memory loss will be addressed here (see appendix, table a for detailed descriptions of research). memory problems have been reported more frequently in older subjects compared to younger (small et al., 2013). fruit, vegetable, and antioxidant consumption might protect against these problems. in one study of over 18,000 adults, healthy eating and fruit and vegetable consumption were associated with improved memory in all ages. there was a 26% higher diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 likelihood of memory problems in those who did not report healthy eating when compared to those who did (small et al., 2013). furthermore, biomarkers of oxidative stress were negatively associated with global cognitive function, including memory (measured by mini-mental state examination, mmse (folstein, folstein, & mchugh, 1975)). antioxidants lycopene and alphatocopherol were positively associated with cognition (polidori et al., 2009). those consuming five or more servings of produce per day demonstrated higher antioxidant micronutrients, lower indicators of oxidative stress, and better cognitive functioning compared to those consuming only one serving of produce per day (polidori et al., 2009). antioxidants were further examined in adults with high cardiovascular disease (cvd) risk. memory function and global cognition were improved with higher intakes of total and virginonly olive oils, coffee, walnuts, and wine (valls-pedret et al., 2012). another observational study of nearly 7,000 older adults found similar results with antioxidant-rich olive oil. intensive olive oil use was associated with a reduction in both verbal fluency decline and visual memory decline (berr et al., 2009). similarly, in adults with more severe mental decline there was a 50% reduced risk for those with a higher concentration of total tocopherols, tocotrienols, or total vitamin e when compared to those with lower plasma levels (mangialasche et al., 2010). the relationship between antioxidant status and cognition has been examined via randomized controlled trials (rcts). both grape (krikorian, nash, shidler, shukitt-hale, & joseph, 2010) and pomegranate (bookheimer et al., 2013) juice were studied among small samplings (28 and 12 subjects, respectively) of older adults with mild memory complaints. grape juice consumption improved verbal learning and retention from baseline to 12-week follow up compared to controls (krikorian et al., 2010). consuming pomegranate juice for 28 days while consuming an otherwise low-polyphenol diet resulted in improved total recall, long-term retrieval scores, and increased brain activity compared to controls (bookheimer et al., 2013). therefore, both observational studies and controlled interventions demonstrate that antioxidants may protect against memory loss, thus improving intellectual wellness. observational studies have examined dietary constituents other than antioxidants and their association with cognition. one study found that adjusted means for both fatty fish and marine omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (pufa) (docosahexaenoic acid (dha) and eicosapentaenoic acid (epa)) were higher in subjects with normal cognition compared to those with impaired cognition (kalmijn et al., 2004). higher dietary cholesterol intake was positively and significantly associated with risk for impaired memory and flexibility. however, cognitive function and the overall intake of total pufa, linoleic acid, alpha-linoleic acid, and monounsaturated fatty acids (mufa) demonstrated no relationship (kalmijn et al., 2004). in a study of 65-90 year olds, intake of overall food, fish and alcohol (moderate) were higher and "various" foods, which included chocolates and sweets, were lower in those with satisfactory mmse scores (requejo et al., 2003). another study comparing a whole foods dietary pattern with a processed foods dietary pattern found that the processed foods were associated with poorer memory. the whole-food pattern was not associated with cognition (torres et al., 2012). micronutrients associated with improved cognition included thiamin, folate, and vitamin c (requejo et al., 2003). higher cereal and meat intakes (valls-pedret et al., 2012) and saturated fat, mufa and cholesterol (requejo et al., 2003) were all associated with poorer cognition. similarly, confusion levels were higher in omnivores than vegetarians among 39 healthy subjects (beezhold & johnston, 2012). finally, following the dietary guidelines for americans may also protect intellectual wellness. for example, a dietary pattern following the dietary guidelines for americans (which emphasize nuts, fatty fish, low-fat dairy products, whole grains and fruits and vegetables) was diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 associated with lower levels of cognitive decline in older adults (wengreen, neilson, munger, & corcoran, 2009). based on the evidence, intellectual wellness by way of memory and cognition may be improved via consumption of antioxidants (specifically lycopene and alpha-tocopherols), pufa and fish/fish oils. most of this information was based on observational studies, and therefore cannot prove causation. further research should include rcts examining mufa and intellectual wellness since some results here were conflicting (berr et al., 2009; kalmijin et al., 2004). while rcts are the gold standard for quality research, there were only two rcts provided here, and both consisted of small sample sizes. overall, a dietary pattern of whole foods such as coffee, alcohol (moderate), walnuts, fruits, vegetables, and fatty fish may improve intellectual wellness. conversely, consuming processed foods such as sweets, processed animal products, and cereals may impair cognition and memory, resulting in poorer intellectual wellness. 2.2 occupational wellness occupational wellness is related to a person’s attitude about work. choice of profession, job satisfaction, career goals, and personal work performance comprise occupational wellness (hettler, 1976). in 2011 the labor force included 75% of men and 65% of women aged 55-61, and 53% of men and 45% of women aged 62-64 (federal interagency forum on aging-related statistics, 2012). excessive daytime sleepiness may contribute to reduced productivity and poorer mental health in the workplace (liviya ng, freak-poli, & peeters, 2014), therefore diminishing personal work performance and occupational wellness. given the sedentary nature of many jobs, addressing alertness and wakefulness as components of job performance may be appropriate for many older adults who are still in the work force (see appendix, table b for a detailed description of research). macronutrient content of meals and the relation to work performance has been examined in rcts. in one study examining the correlation of high-fat, low carbohydrate versus low-fat, high carbohydrate meals with daytime sleepiness, feelings of fatigue increased while vigor and energy decreased throughout the day. regardless of meal content, subjects felt less vigorous 45 minutes after ingestion than they did prior to eating. subjects demonstrated poorer performance 45 minutes after a low-fat first test meal compared to a high-fat first test meal, indicating that fat content of meals may affect performance (wells, read, idzikowski, & jones, 1998). meals consumed between 11am and 3pm, regardless of macronutrient content, resulted in the highest rate of postprandial sleepiness (wells et al., 1998). therefore, sleepiness might be more likely after any meal, especially if eaten between the hours of 11am and 3pm, regardless of macronutrient content (wells et al., 1998). in another study of 11 male truck drivers there was no difference demonstrated between macronutrient content of meals (high fat vs. low fat) and wakefulness (landstrom, knutsson, & lennernas, 2000). it is often assumed that a “heavy” meal equates to lower levels of alertness. effects of energy and volume on satiation and alertness were examined in 10 healthy adults aged 18-64 years (landstrom, knutsson, lennernas, & stenudd, 2001). sleepand food-deprived subjects reported equally reduced subjective drowsiness immediately after consuming all meals, regardless of energy or water volume content. sleepiness ratings followed a bell-shaped curve – more drowsiness before a meal, less drowsiness while eating, and more drowsiness again after the meal. while drowsiness was reportedly lower during consumption, this may be due to the physical action of eating rather than the nutrients themselves (landstrom et al., 2001). in a large observational study of post-menopausal women total fat, calories, saturated fat, mufa, and trans fat were all associated with subjective napping, a potential indicator of daytime diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 sleepiness (grandner, kripke, naidoo, & langer, 2010). a number of these nutrients may be linked to animal fats (fatty meats, dairy products). conversely, objective sleep duration was negatively associated with many of these same nutrients. hence, while consumption of most fats might cause subjective sleepiness, fat intake might actually result in less overall sleep time (grandner et al., 2001). while these rcts and observational studies examined meal content, they did not examine the absence of a meal and the subsequent effect on sleepiness. missing a meal may occur from time to time during a busy workday. one controlled study of younger adults demonstrated the effects of alertness during eight hours of sedentary work when missing a meal (neely, landstrom, & bystrom, 2004). subjective scores for both lack of energy and lack of motivation were lower at 4pm on days when a meal was missed, indicating that subjects felt more energetic and motivated on days they consumed both breakfast and lunch (neely et al., 2004). results from this study indicate that missing at least one meal during a sedentary workday might result in increased feelings of sleepiness, and decreased motivation. it must be noted that this last study (neely et al., 2004) included a significantly younger population than the target population of this paper. there was a surprising lack of research for alertness/job performance and diet among older adults. given the number of older adults in the workforce, this gap in research is alarming and should be addressed. results from the few studies presented here indicate that any meal may reduce alertness and increase sleepiness after ingestion. foods higher in saturated and trans fats and mufa resulted in subjects feeling sleepier during the day. during the workday, older adults might improve occupational wellness by avoiding high-fat meals. as many of the nutrients associated with increased subjective daytime sleepiness are found in high-fat animal products and also processed foods, these foods should be avoided during the workday. however, since low-fat meals were associated with poorer performance (wells et al., 1998), it might be beneficial to consume pufa as a dietary fat source during the workday. older adults might also improve occupational wellness by consuming meals prior to 11am and after 3pm. guidelines for intellectual wellness can also apply to occupational wellness, since memory and cognition will play a role in most jobs. 2.3 emotional wellness emotional wellness relates to one’s feelings and includes the degree to which a person feels positively and enthusiastically about life (hettler, 1976). when stress levels exceed what most would consider normal, personal wellness can be negatively affected. anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure (american psychological association, 2014). while stress can affect the way people eat, especially in emotional eaters (oliver, wardle, & gibson, 2000), it is unclear what dietary habits could affect stress levels. dietary intake and associations with stress and anxiety will be addressed here (see appendix, table c for a detailed description of research). the mediterranean dietary pattern (primarily comprising non-starchy fresh produce, fish, nuts, olive oil, legumes and certain dairy products) and associations with mood, stress, and anxiety have been examined in multiple studies (ford, jaceldo-siegl, lee, youngberg, & tonstad, 2013; hodge, almeida, english, giles, & flicker, 2013). when mediterranean foods were compared with typical western foods (red and processed meats, sweets/desserts, soda and fast food) in over 9,000 older adults, subjects demonstrated a positive association with positive affect (i.e. improved mood, lower stress, better subjective wellness) and mediterranean foods. this was seen specifically with the intake of fresh produce, olive oil, nuts, and legumes (ford et al., 2013). additionally, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits and nuts were inversely associated with negative diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 affect. western foods, including fast food, sweets/desserts and soda were correlated with poor mood state. red meat intake and frequent consumption of fast food were associated with negative affect only in women (ford et al., 2013). similar results were observed in a study of over 8,500 older adults (hodge et al., 2013). higher stress levels were more likely when subjects followed an australian eating pattern (some fresh produce, cheddar cheese, whole-meal bread, margarine, pudding, lamb, cereal), while lower stress scores were associated with a mediterranean dietary pattern in this observational study. higher total energy intake was positively associated with stress. adherence to a typical australian diet, which is not considered a particularly healthful way of eating, was also associated with lower stress in some subjects at follow-up. the authors speculated that this reduced stress might be due to a connection with community through a traditional dietary pattern (hodge et al., 2013). the mediterranean dietary pattern is just one of many dietary patterns that has been assessed in relation to emotions and stress. among iranian adults, consumption of unsaturated oils, fresh produce, grains, meat and dairy were all higher in subjects with lower stress levels (roohafza et al., 2013). high-stress individuals consumed more saturated oils than did individuals in the lowstress group. overall global dietary index scores were lower (indicating a better diet), and the overall dietary pattern was better in the low-stress group. a positive correlation was found between stress levels and saturated oil intake while consumption of fresh produce and unsaturated oils showed an inverse association with stress (roohafza et al., 2013). an analysis of the geelong osteoporosis study assessed anxiety and depression diagnosis, adverse psychological symptoms (general health questionnaire, ghq-12), and diet (jacka et al., 2010). overall diet quality score (based on adherence to australian guidelines for healthy eating) was inversely related to ghq-12 scores, with a more healthful dietary pattern resulting in fewer symptoms. interestingly, red meat (beef and lamb) was a component of a dietary pattern that was associated with fewer psychological symptoms (the traditional diet of produce, beef, lamb, fish and whole grains) as well as the dietary pattern associated with more psychological symptoms (the western diet of meat, pies, processed meats, pizza, chips, burgers, white breads, flavored drinks, beer and sugars) (jacka et al., 2010). further examination of the geelong osteoporosis study found that there was no association between magnesium, zinc, or folate and anxiety (jacka, maes, pasco, williams, & berk, 2012a). when examining fish intake, subjects with the highest dha intake had nearly 50% less likelihood of suffering from anxiety than those with the lowest intake (jacka et al., 2013). smokers demonstrated a stronger association between fish consumption and reduced psychological symptoms compared to non-smokers. the authors suggested this might be due to fish consumption providing more protection in the case of increased oxidative stress (jacka et al., 2013). higher red meat intake was not associated with anxiety. overall, red meat intake below the recommended guidelines for australians was associated with more psychological symptoms and higher likelihood of an anxiety diagnosis (jacka et al., 2012b). another study examined three different dietary patterns, including healthy (produce, salads, pasta, rice, cereals, fish, wine and unprocessed meats), western (meat, liver, processed meats, salty snacks, pizza, sugars and sweets, soft drinks, margarine, mayonnaise/dressings, fries, beer, and coffee), and traditional norwegian (fish/shellfish, potatoes, produce, butter and margarine, milk and yogurt, pasta, rice, bread, meat/meat spreads, legumes and eggs) patterns (jacka, mykletun, berk, bjelland, & tell, 2011). while women demonstrated a reduced risk of anxiety with an increase in diet quality score, this was not seen in men. men had an increased risk for anxiety linked with both the western and healthy patterns. the most interesting relationship here was that the healthy eating pattern was positively associated with anxiety in men and diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 negatively in women; although the authors offer possible explanations of type i error or reverse causality to explain these results (jacka et al., 2011). it could also be that men find comfort in the foods that are considered unhealthy, and the psychological effect of consuming these foods improves emotional wellness. the effect of animal foods on mood has been investigated. a rct examined effects of meat and fish intake on mood in 39 healthy omnivorous humans. subjects were split into three dietary intervention groups: omn (continue eating meat/fish/poultry at least 1x/day), fish (consume fish 3-4x/week but avoid meat and poultry), and veg (avoid all animal-based foods except dairy) (beezhold & johnston, 2012). veg participants had much greater improvement in stress and confusion scores, and moderately better tension/anxiety and profile of mood state total scores compared to the other two groups. increasing fish consumption and avoiding meat did not improve mood or reduce stress (beezhold & johnston, 2012). some common patterns between diet and stress and anxiety were demonstrated. dietary patterns including fresh produce (ford et al., 2013; jacka et al., 2010; jacka et al., 2011; roohafza et al., 2013), whole grains (jacka, et al., 2010; roohafza et al., 2013), and fish (ford et al., 2013; jacka et al., 2010; jacka et al., 2011) were associated with lower psychological distress and anxiety. in contrast, sweets and processed meats (ford et al., 2013; jacka et al., 2010; jacka et al., 2011), pizza, beer and salty snacks/chips (jacka et al., 2010; jacka et al., 2011) were included in dietary patterns associated with higher stress and anxiety. meat intake and association with emotional wellness was unclear. for examples, red meat was included in dietary patterns that were associated with lower (jacka et al., 2010; roohafza et al., 2013) and with higher emotional distress (jacka et al., 2010), and removing meat and fish entirely resulted in reduced stress and improved mood (beezhold & johnston, 2012). findings for emotional wellness were not consistent between men and women. women had a higher association between foods considered unhealthy (red meat, fast food, western dietary patterns) and negative affect than men did (ford et al., 2013; hodge et al., 2013). moreover, adherence to a healthy dietary pattern was associated with decreased anxiety in women and increased anxiety in men. reverse causation and residual confounding of other lifestyle factors cannot be ruled out in observational studies, even though the majority of the studies did control for such factors. further research focusing on the difference between men and women, and focusing on red meat consumption, in relation to diet and stress and anxiety is needed. overall, the western style of eating was associated with poorer emotional wellness based on anxiety and stress, while mediterranean dietary patterns were associated with improved emotional wellness (ford et al., 2013; hodge et al., 2013). older adults may reduce stress and improve emotional wellness by consuming more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and fish while avoiding highly processed foods such as sweets, salty snacks, and processed meats. the majority of the research provided here was based on cross-sectional or observational information, and therefore cannot prove causation. future research regarding emotional wellness and dietary intake should include rcts with a focus on the impact of both western and mediterranean-style eating and the effect on anxiety and stress. 2.4 physical wellness physical wellness addresses the need for regular physical activity and encourages healthy eating and exercise. physical wellness follows the general guideline that it is better to eat foods that enhance good health and avoid those that impair it (hettler, 1976). foods that enhance good health could mean a variety of things. since the three previously discussed dimensions of wellness may be improved with the intake of whole foods, the focus for physical wellness will diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 be to examine all-cause mortality as it relates to whole foods versus processed foods (see appendix, table d for a detailed description of research). public health officials have designed dietary guidelines specifically to improve physical wellness. the world health organization dietary guidelines to protect against chronic disease can be measured using the healthy diet indicator (hdi). the hdi has been inversely associated with death (knoops et al., 2006), with a 13% reduced risk of all-cause death for those scoring highest (healthiest) compared to those scoring lowest (least healthy) (huijbregts et al., 1997). this inverse relationship between hdi and mortality was even stronger for cardiovascular disease and cancer-related deaths, specifically (huijbregts et al., 1997). adherence to u. s. dietary guidelines may also improve survival. survival rates were 20% higher for women and 28% higher for men in the highest quartile of adherence to the recommended healthy eating behaviors compared to those in the lowest quartile (kant, graubard, & schatzkin, 2004). adherence to the mediterranean dietary pattern has been associated with improved survival rates (knoops et al., 2006; osler & schroll, 1997). this association may be age-sensitive, however. one study of older and younger women found that a mediterranean diet score was not associated with all-cause or cancer deaths in women aged 30-39. however, the mediterranean diet score was associated with reduced total and cancer deaths in women 40 years old or older (lagiou et al., 2006). aside from the mediterranean dietary pattern, other patterns have been examined. one study compared a healthy foods pattern (high in whole foods, low in meat and processed foods) with both a high-fat dairy products and with a sweets and desserts pattern (anderson et al., 2011). the healthy foods group was associated with more years of healthy life and had the lowest mortality rates. similarly, when assessing the benefits of plant-based dietary patterns in older europeans, the plant-based dietary pattern was associated with reduced mortality rates (bamia et al., 2007). similarly, a prudent dietary pattern (frequent intake of whole-meal bread, pasta, rice, oatmeal, fruits, vegetables and fish) was inversely associated with mortality and cvd. in the same study, a western dietary pattern that was typical of a danish dietary pattern (frequent intake of sausages, meat, potatoes, butter and white bread) was not associated with mortality (osler, heitmann, gerdes, jorgensen, & schroll, 2001). a similar western dietary pattern (high in refined grains, red and processed meats, high-fat dairy, desserts and french fries) was compared with a prudent dietary pattern (high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, poultry and fish) in over 69,000 women. the prudent pattern was significantly and inversely related to coronary heart disease (chd) risk and the western pattern was associated with a higher risk of myocardial infarction. women eating more whole foods demonstrated lower risk of chd than those eating more processed foods (fung, willett, stampfer, manson, & hu, 2001). low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets have also been examined. traditionally healthy diets (>55% carbohydrates, <30% fat, and approximately 15% protein) have recently been questioned in favor of diets that have lower carbohydrate (<40%) combined with higher fat (>40%) and higher protein (>20%) intake. in one study, low carbohydrate therapy was more effective than the traditional diet in treating diabetes. diabetics who adopted a low carbohydrate diet (<130 grams per day) reduced their blood glucose levels, reduced body weight, and reduced the need for diabetic medications (feinman et al., 2014). matarese and pories (2014) evaluated a variety of weight loss diets and found evidence that a lower carbohydrate-higher protein diet produced increased metabolic activity, which contributed to increased weight loss compared to traditional diets. a panel of experts reviewed 17 trials on the effectiveness of various low carbohydrate and high fat or protein diets (jensen et al., 2014). low fat, moderate carbohydrate diets were also evaluated. in summary, lower carbohydrate diets might produce faster weight loss and reduction of diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 diabetes, but the selection of the appropriate diet depends on several factors, such as sensitivity to insulin, body weight, and exercise patterns (jensen et al., 2014). whole grain consumption has been associated with increased survival (jacobs, meyer, kushi, & folsom, 1999; steffen et al., 2003) and lower disease rates (ruel et al., 2013) in large, observational studies. one serving per day of whole grains could significantly reduce risk of mortality (jacobs et al., 1999; steffen et al., 2003) and also reduce risk of hypertension (wang et al., 2007). men may be more sensitive to this potential protective effect. one study demonstrated reduced mortality in men, but not women, from following a healthful dietary pattern including high whole-grain intake (kant et al., 2004). older women consume more refined grains than whole grains (jacobs et al., 1999), which may result in detrimental effects. in one study, refined grains were not associated with all-cause mortality in fully adjusted models, but they were linked to increased coronary artery disease (cad) risk in african american subjects (steffen et al., 2003). refined grains demonstrated a small positive relationship with mortality in another study. however, when women consumed large amounts of both refined and whole grains, the risk associated with refined grains lost significance (jacobs et al., 1999). cereal intake has been assessed with regard to grain consumption and mortality (knoops et al., 2006; osler & schroll, 1997), with conflicting results. one study of older adults found that every 20g increase in cereal intake was associated with a 10% increased risk of death. when categorized into wheat, rice, or other grains, the other grains cereal category was the only one positively associated with death (osler & schroll, 1997). in contrast, cereal and fiber intake were associated with survival in a much larger study (knoops et al., 2006). additionally, japanese adults consuming fewer whole grains (not including wheat or rice) had higher disease rates (ruel et al., 2013). on the whole, consumption of whole grains has been associated with increased survival and lower disease rates. whole grains, however, are not the only food group that could provide protection against mortality. fruit and vegetable intake was inversely associated with mortality in a number of studies (agudo et al., 2007; kant et al., 2004; knoops et al., 2006; ruel et al., 2013). in one study, subjects in the highest quintile of fruit and vegetable intake had a 22% reduced total mortality risk compared to those in the lowest quintile (steffen et al., 2003). similarly, among over 126,000 older adults examined, there was a 20% lower risk of chd for those in the highest quintile of fruit and vegetable intake than those in the lowest (joshipura et al., 2001). the 5-a-day public health campaign promoting fruit and vegetable intake has also been examined (genkinger, platz, hoffman, comstock, & helzlsouer, 2004). subjects who adhered to the guidelines had lower rates of all-cause and cancer deaths. this positive association between fruits and vegetables and survival could be due to antioxidant status. one study found that subjects in the highest quartile for plant-based foods had nearly four times the antioxidant and total-antioxidant-capacity levels of those in the lowest quartile (agudo et al., 2007). increased lycopene intake resulted in a clear, linear relationship with reduced mortality rates (agudo et al., 2007). other antioxidants such as vitamin c, pro-vitamin a carotenoids (agudo et al., 2007), and beta-carotene (genkinger et al., 2004) were associated with greater survival rates, but to a lesser extent. associations with vitamin c consumption and mortality were conflicting, however (agudo et al., 2007; genkinger et al., 2004). finally, while associations with fruits, vegetables and antioxidants may be fairly consistent, results for fat and mortality are inconclusive. dietary fat has been associated with higher risk of developing multi-morbidity in healthy subjects (ruel et al., 2013), although subtypes of fat (i.e.: saturated, trans) were not differentiated. saturated fat intake has been both positively associated diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 with mortality (knoops et al., 2006) and negatively associated with comorbidity (ruel et al., 2013). thus, further research regarding fats and all-cause mortality is needed. however, it should be noted that foods high in saturated fats (i.e.: high-fat dairy products, meat) were included in dietary patterns linked to increased mortality (anderson et al., 2011) and myocardial infarction (fung et al., 2001). these items were typically not included in dietary patterns that were associated with increased survival (anderson et al., 2011; bamia et al., 2007; huijbregts et al., 1997; kant et al., 2004). there are a number of factors to consider when examining the research regarding whole foods and mortality. paradoxically, in one study, elevated serum cholesterol was associated with a significant reduction in risk of death (osler & schroll, 1997). this is contrary to other studies of this nature and might be due to the age of the subjects. those with high serum cholesterol may be more likely to die at middle age, therefore leading to a weaker correlation between serum cholesterol and mortality in older adults (staessen et al., 1990). associations between refined grains and mortality were also inconclusive. adjustment for whole grains attenuated the risk of mortality from refined grains. this suggests that consuming whole grains might “cancel out” the consumption of refined grains to some extent. given that the association between refined grain consumption and mortality was small, this could simply mean that the protective effect of whole grains is stronger than the detrimental effect of refined grains. in addition, refined grains were associated with cad but not ischemic stroke (steffen et al., 2003). this could suggest that refined grains are not associated with clots in general, but rather to clots in specific anatomical areas such as the heart but not the brain. these results could also simply be due to residual confounding, meaning other non-dietary factors are involved. additional research is needed in these areas. in regard to conflicting evidence for grain intake, it may benefit future researchers to differentiate between whole-grain cereals and refined-grain cereals. breaking down grains into whole or refined, in addition to the grain type (i.e.: oats, rice, wheat), could provide clarification. interestingly, one study demonstrated that men with the lowest adherence to healthy eating had the lowest mortality risk (osler et al., 2001). this could be the result of residual confounding, or the results could have been erroneous, as they were not in line with the other research. finally, due to the fact that it would be unethical to complete an intervention to assess dietary pattern and death rates, all research for mortality is based on observation. this research cannot rule out residual confounding and/or reverse causation. future research should continue to focus on serum cholesterol levels, whole grain consumption, and western dietary patterns, and the associations of each with health and longevity. while the research provided here is not definitive due to research design and lack of controlled clinical trials, some patterns associating physical wellness and diet were observed. adherence to dietary public health guidelines could protect against premature death. following a mediterranean style dietary pattern might reduce risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality, while a western dietary pattern might increase risk of myocardial infarction and death. the components of a western dietary pattern are typically more processed (i.e.: processed meats, sweets, refined grains) than those in the mediterranean dietary pattern. whole foods including fruits, vegetables, fish, and whole grains are standard mediterranean fare and were inversely associated with mortality. simply put, older adults may increase their survival rates, therefore improving physical wellness, by consuming more whole foods such as produce and whole grains while avoiding processed foods. diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 2.5 spiritual wellness spiritual wellness is related to a person’s search for the meaning and purpose of human existence. one achieves spiritual wellness when actions become consistent with beliefs and values (hettler, 1976). considering spiritual wellness as it relates to nutrition, many faith-based dietary interventions have attempted to instill healthier eating habits. examined here are the effects of spiritual wellness, focusing on faith-based healthy lifestyle interventions on dietary intake (see appendix, table e for a detailed description of research). relationships between spirituality and dietary pattern have been observed. among national health and nutrition examination survey (nhanes) iii subjects, african american women and older mexican american men who frequently attended church services had higher fish intake (obisesan, livingston, trulear, & gillum, 2006). however, there was no significant relationship between attendance at religious services and dietary macronutrient intake (obisesan et al., 2006). while this observation does not clearly draw conclusions or determine causation between spiritual wellness and nutrition, some correlations between the two may be evident. in one 15month faith-based rct, physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption were higher in the intervention group compared to control subjects (wilcox et al., 2013). dietary behavior changes included decreased fat-related behaviors (43%), improved fiber-related behaviors (42%), and increased fruit and vegetable intake (33%) (baruth & wilcox, 2013). written information (i.e. handouts) was positively associated with improved dietary pattern while spoken support (i.e. messages from the pulpit) resulted in higher produce intake (baruth, wilcox & condrasky, 2011). another faith-based intervention study examined a church-wide approach to dietary changes, including optional individual counseling (resnicow et al., 2004). overall, this body and soul intervention was successful at increasing intake of fruits and vegetables and improving post-test fat intake, among other variables (resnicow et al., 2004). increased produce consumption and decreased fat intake were associated with receiving the educational materials and attending the kick-off event, while attendance at other events (i.e. classes) was also related to higher fruit and vegetable intake (campbell, resnicow, carr, wang, & williams, 2007). receiving motivational interview (mi) had a positive effect on diet and motivation only if the interviewer had strong listening skills and/or made calls frequently (campbell et al., 2007). a 6-month quasi-experimental follow-up focused on healthier eating and increased activity (thomson, zoellner, & tussing-humphreys, 2014). the intervention included health-related scripture messages delivered from the pulpit, monthly newsletters, and a church-wide effort to include healthy foods and drinks at functions. control subjects received health information via bi-monthly newsletters. attendance was directly associated with success. high-attendance intervention subjects demonstrated improved dietary quality on all six components of the healthy eating index (hei-2005) while low-attendance subjects demonstrated no significant change. interestingly, control subjects showed increases in fruit and in total scores. overall, social support seemed to be a good predictor of a dietary pattern change (thomson et al., 2014). in contrast, dietary habits were not positively impacted in an 8-week faith-based intervention, although intervention subjects did reduce body weight (bopp et al., 2009). another 8-week intervention resulted in reduced body fat and weight, but it was not apparent whether these changes were a result of dietary changes or physical activity, as both were included in the intervention (woods et al., 2013). similarly, an 8-week intervention focusing on diet and activity to reduce metabolic risk factors resulted in an average 6% reduction of body weight and a lower average number of metabolic risk factors (ivester et al., 2010). however, it was unclear whether these results were from physical activity, dietary changes, or both. diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 while the studies presented here included actual interventions and not simply observation, they often included multiple intervention strategies (i.e. physical activity as well as dietary pattern). as a result, positive effects of interventions may be due to multiple strategies. samplings may not be representative of the entire population. in addition, the spiritual component of each program varied, with some including multiple spiritual components such as health-related scripture readings (bopp et al., 2009; thomson et al., 2014), healthy messages from church leadership (resnicow et al., 2004; thomson et al., 2014), congregation-wide changes (resnicow et al., 2004; thomson et al., 2014; wilcox et al., 2013) and prayer (ivester et al., 2010), while others strictly used the church as a meeting area (woods et al., 2013). spirituality also cannot be assumed based on church attendance alone. however, as the nhanes iii analysis previously mentioned, spirituality is often assessed based on church attendance due to lack of other measures (obisesan et al., 2006). based on the evidence from multiple rcts, faith-based interventions can improve dietary patterns and overall health. interventions focused on structural and organizational changes (campbell et al., 2007; wilcox et al., 2013) can help participants to change one or more dietary behaviors. success rates may be higher for programs of longer duration, and for those including a specific dietary focus (bopp et al., 2009; resnicow et al., 2004; wilcox et al., 2013; woods et al., 2013). older adults should seek a spiritual organization that is in line with their own beliefs and values and that supports healthy dietary behaviors. this includes organizations that provide healthy living classes (resnicow et al., 2004), handouts regarding healthy lifestyles (baruth et al., 2011; resnicow et al., 2004), and/or organization leaders/pastors who lead by example (baruth et al., 2011) in regard to healthy living. overall, spiritual wellness by way of faith-based dietary interventions can positively impact nutrition if the individual is actively engaged and integrated into the community and the program. 2.6 social wellness social wellness focuses on one’s community and environment, seeking to improve one’s world by promoting healthy lifestyles and also communication in one’s life. social wellness includes enhancing personal relationships and building a stronger community (hettler, 1976). examined here are the effects of social interactions and communication with others, both at and outside of meals, on dietary intake in older adults (see appendix, table f for a detailed description of research). in 2010, 19% of men aged 65 years or older and nearly twice as many women of the same age lived alone (federal interagency forum on aging-related statistics 2012, 2014). in the nhanes iii observational study of subjects aged 65+ years examining eating and social life, living arrangements did not seem to be associated with dietary intake (sahyoun & zhang, 2005). however, in an observational study of over 9,500 adults, lone-living men and women had lower fruit and vegetable intake, with men’s scores lower than women’s, compared to cohabitating people (conklin et al., 2013). in 2010, fewer than half of those aged 65-74 years old were married, and that proportion declined among the older population (federal interagency forum on agingrelated statistics 2012, 2014). observational study results demonstrated lower vegetable scores for both widowed men and women, compared to partnered people. widowed men’s vegetable scores were almost half those of widowed women’s, and men’s’ dietary patterns overall were more negatively affected than those of women in regard to living alone, being un-partnered and having limited contact with friends (conklin et al., 2013). place of residence may also be associated with marital status and dining companions. in one study of 58 older adults, subjects diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 living in senior communities were more likely to be single and to dine with friends. conversely, those living in private housing were more likely to be married and, therefore, to dine with a spouse (cohen-mansfield & jensen, 2009). in one study, over half of older adults reported feeling lonely (payette, gray-donald, cyr, & boutier, 1995). a greater degree of contact with friends in un-partnered/unmarried people was associated with higher fruit and vegetable scores compared to un-partnered/unmarried people with infrequent contact with friends (conklin et al., 2013). similarly, those reporting having friends had higher energy intake than those who did not have friends (payette et al., 1995). in an analysis of nhanes iii results, limited social contact was significantly associated with lower hei scores, lower intake of vitamin c, and fewer calories consumed. authors suggest that limited social contact may be an independent risk factor for poorer dietary pattern quality (sahyoun & zhang, 2005). in contrast, weekly family contact (instead of daily) was more positively associated with vegetable variety in women from the european prospective investigation of cancer (epic) study (conklin et al., 2013). perhaps this is a result of older women feeling that they are monitored by family members when they are checked on daily, versus feeling a more social nature in onceper-week interactions. in addition to living arrangements and overall social contact, dining companions may also impact dietary choices. adults 65+ years old report less communal dining than do younger adults (de castro, 2002). even so, total intake of food was greater when dining with a companion for all ages than when dining alone (de castro, 2002), indicating that social facilitation of caloric intake is not attenuated with age. in an observational study of 515 slightly younger adults (average age of 41.9 years), meals eaten with a spouse, family, or friends were significantly larger than meals eaten with other companions (de castro, 1994). when dining with a spouse or with family, meals were large and eaten more quickly, while dining with friends resulted in large meals eaten more slowly. meals eaten alone were always small and of short duration. there was also a significant positive correlation between the total number of companions present at a meal and the amount of calories consumed (i.e. the more people present at the meal, the more calories consumed). similar results were seen in 50 older adults, mean age 77 years, where average intake of calories at meals eaten with a companion was 114 calories higher than at meals eaten alone (locher, robinson, roth, ritchie, & burgio, 2005). it must be noted that two of the studies mentioned (de castro, 1994; de castro, 2002) included subjects with a mean age lower than the target population of this paper. also, many studies included (conklin et al., 2013; de castro, 1994; sahyoun & zhang, 2005) were observational and, therefore, cannot define causation. in addition, samplings of convenience were used (cohenmansfield & jensen, 2009). on the whole, increased social contact can improve dietary intake. therefore, individuals living alone might benefit from actively and intentionally seeking out social contacts. while reported participation in clubs and senior centers has been low (payette et al., 1995), participation in such activities might be a good way to engage with others. even phone contact on its own demonstrated a positive impact on fruit and vegetable intake (sahyoun & zhang, 2005), so if mobility is an issue, calling friends or family regularly may improve the dietary pattern. in addition to increasing social contact, communal dining may increase caloric intake and so older adults are encouraged to seek dining companions when possible. 3. discussion overall, it is clear that one’s dietary pattern can impact wellness, and vice versa. there is an abundance of overlap between the six dimensions, as demonstrated in table 1 below. for diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 example, intellectual wellness (memory retention) can be applied to occupational wellness. antioxidants (specifically lycopene) were associated with improved intellectual and physical wellness. while pufa intake may be low in older adults (jacka et al., 2013; payette et al., 1995), omega-3 pufas were associated with both improved intellectual and emotional wellness. spiritual wellness positively impacted not only nutrition, but also emotional wellness by reducing stress (ivester et al., 2010). additionally, improved social wellness is associated with improvements in diet. table 1. the interrelationships between dietary intake patterns and the six dimensions of wellness wellness dimension positive relationship negative relationship inconclusive evidence intellectual pufa fruits & vegetables antioxidants mediterranean diet fish oils occupational wellness saturated fats sweets occupational pufa saturated fats missed meals emotional mediterranean diet whole grains fish oils sweets western diet saturated fats physical fruits & vegetables antioxidants mediterranean diet whole grains fish oils western diet spiritual fruit and vegetable intake emotional wellness social wellness social total energy intake fruit and vegetable intake to maximize wellness through nutrition, older adults should consider increasing their intake of whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish. these foods were associated with improved intellectual, emotional, and physical wellness. occupational wellness may be improved based more on the timing of meals rather than their content, consuming balanced meals containing pufa, and avoiding missing meals at work. while following a primarily whole-foods dietary pattern can improve wellness, quality of life must also be considered. therefore, treats and/or culturally traditional foods that may not be considered healthful should diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 be consumed in moderation. table 2 below summarizes the results of each wellness dimension as it relates to diet. table 2. wellness and dietary intake summary wellness dimension steps to improve wellness and/or diet intellectual increase consumption of antioxidant-rich, whole foods such as coffee, alcohol (moderate intake), walnuts, fruits, vegetables, and fatty fish decrease consumption of processed foods such as sweets, processed animal products, dietary cholesterol, and cereals increase consumption of thiamin, folate, and vitamin c adopt a mediterranean dietary pattern occupational avoid high-fat meals and large portions between 11:00am-3:00pm consume meals with moderate amounts of fat, primarily pufa, during work hours avoid missing meals during work hours emotional increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and fish decrease consumption of saturated oils and processed foods such as sweets, salty snacks, and processed meats avoid a western dietary pattern adopt a mediterranean dietary pattern physical increase consumption of whole grains, fish, fruits and vegetables decrease consumption of processed meats, sugars and refined carbohydrates avoid a western dietary pattern adopt a mediterranean dietary pattern spiritual seek an organization that is in line with a person’s own beliefs and values engage in faith-based healthful dietary interventions, including healthy living classes and handouts, and leadership who live healthfully social dine with companions when possible seek social contacts through community and/or over the phone meat intake was positively associated with a number of outcomes, including impaired intellectual and physical wellness when consumed as part of a traditional western dietary pattern (fung et al., 2001). however, when meat intake was below recommended amounts, increased psychological symptoms were present (jacka et al., 2012). this may indicate a u-shaped relationship, where intakes of meat above or below recommendations could result in impaired wellness. thus, older adults should adhere to the recommended intakes of red meat, focusing on lean cuts and removing fat when able in order to keep saturated fat intakes low. adherence to the 5-a-day fruit and vegetable guidelines might also improve intellectual and physical wellness. diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 in regard to the impact of spiritual and social wellness on nutrition, older adults would benefit from being actively engaged in a spiritual organization that practices a multi-faceted approach to healthy living. this should include healthy messages from the leadership, information through written materials, and support and information through group activities. social wellness, including more social contacts either in person or over the phone, can improve dietary intake in older adults. dining with companions might also improve dietary intake. older adults with lower than desired energy intake should consider eating with others when possible in order to increase caloric intake. future research should be directed toward wellness in its entirety, rather than each component separately. randomized controlled trials with dietary interventions including increased antioxidants and whole foods and limited processed foods should focus on subjective feelings of wellness and objective measures for all six dimensions. research should be done across all ages to assess how dietary patterns throughout life may impact wellness. in addition, further analysis of data from national cohort studies such as nhanes could focus on each of the six dimensions as they pertain to nutrition, to identify common trends. limitations of this review include the use of food frequency questionnaires (ffq) as a primary assessment for dietary intake in many of the studies. establishing dietary intake through ffq may be subject to misreporting. also, a large number of studies referenced were observational in nature and, therefore, cannot prove causation. among the rcts included, many were focused on specific populations (i.e.: ethnicity, disease risk, etc.) and results, therefore, may not be generalized to the entire older-adult population. additionally, wellness includes many other factors than are detailed here. for example, physical wellness could focus on mobility rather than mortality. because of the vast amount of information available and the subjective interpretation of wellness, results here were narrowed to focus on only one component for each of the six dimensions. in addition, the tools used to interpret wellness in this paper were not designed specifically with wellness in mind. for example, the ghq-12 assessment was designed to assess various psychological symptoms and not emotional wellness in its entirety. however, given the available research, the ghq-12 assessment was used in this paper to interpret stress and anxiety, and those findings were then applied to overall emotional wellness. it should also be noted that intake of healthy foods is often associated with other healthy behaviors (jacobs et al., 1999; kant et al., 2004; lagiou et al., 2006; steffen et al., 2003), and therefore reverse causation or residual confounding cannot be ruled out. intellectual, occupational, emotional, physical, spiritual and social wellness are all integrated. personal wellness is achieved by living intentionally through all aspects of life; and by achieving personal wellness a person will feel more complete and happy. to put the matter simply, older adults can improve wellness by increasing the intake of plant-based foods and avoiding highly processed foods. older adults can also improve dietary intake by enriching wellness, seeking out and engaging in a spiritual community that encourages healthy lifestyles and seeking dining companions and social interaction. authors angela g. dalton central michigan university john v. logomarsino central michigan university jack.logomarsino@cmich.edu diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 publishing timeline received 27 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(2013). the living well by faith health and wellness program for african americans: an exemplar of community-based participatory research. ethnicity and disease, 23(2), 223-229. http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=dec_10_dp_dpdp1 http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=dec_10_dp_dpdp1 http://dx.doi.org/10.3945/jn.109.106427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2012.09.062 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org appendix the relationship between dietary intake and the six dimensions of wellbeing in older adults table a – intellectual wellness: the effects of dietary intake on memory in older adults author & year objective design results statistics confounders adjusted for requejo et al., 2003 a prospective analysis of noninstitutionalized elderly adults in spain examined dietary intake and cognitive function. *168 adults, age 65-90yo, without significant cognitive impairment * 7d food records, and also 5d precise weighing of midday meal at day centers where lunch was consumed *diets were compared to recommended intakes for the spanish population (ri) to assess adequacy of diet *mmse measured cognitive function (>28 is satisfactory, <28 is unsatisfactory) *subjects grouped based on age; <75yo or >75yo *mmse scores were worse in older age *overall food intake, fish intake and alcohol intake were higher in subjects with satisfactory mmse scores *"various" foods (i.e.: chocolates and sweets) were lower in those with satisfactory mmse scores *saturated fat, mufa and cholesterol intakes were lower in subjects with satisfactory mmse scores *thiamin, folate and vitamin c intakes were higher in subjects with satisfactory mmse *alcohol intake positively related to mmse scores total food (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse >28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 1622(379) and 1611(376). total food (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse <28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 1442(311) and 1522(309). fish intake (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse >28 for younger and older subjects, respectively:103.4(72.9) and 105.0(56.0). fish intake (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse <28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 101.4(76.4) and 54.5(44.8). alcohol intake (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse >28 for younger and older subjects, respectively:48.4(104.9) and 52.8(105.4). alcohol intake (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse <28 for younger and older subjects, respectively:15.9(46.6) and 12.3(44.2). various food intake (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse >28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 20.8(34.6) and 16.5(21.1). various food intake (g/d) (mean(sd)) in mmse <28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 29.4(35.2) and 38.1(46.0). mean (sd) intake of lipids (density, g/4184kj) in mmse>28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 41.3(8.4) and 39.2(8.7). mean (sd) intake lipids (density, g/4184kj) in mmse<28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 43.0(7.6) and 44.5(8.7). mean (sd) intake of saturated fat (density, g/4184kj) in mmse>28 for none provided 66 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org younger and older subjects, respectively: 12.5(3.8) and 12.4(4.2). mean (sd) intake of saturated fat (density, g/4184kj) in mmse<28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 13.5(2.9) and 14.8(3.5). mean (sd) intake of mufa (density, g/4184kj) in mmse>28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 19.0(4.4) and 18.3(4.0). mean (sd) intake of mufa (density, g/4184kj) in mmse<28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 20.2(5.2) and 20.2(3.9). mean (sd) intake of cholesterol (density, g/4184kj) in mmse>28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 185.1(75.4) and 182.5(53.3). mean (sd) intake of cholesterol (density, g/4184kj) in mmse<28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 200.9(67.9) and 224.7(108.6). mean (sd) intake of thiamin (mg/d) in mmse>28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 1.12(.34) and 1.12(.44). mean (sd) intake of thiamin (mg/d) in mmse<28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 1.05(.29) and .96(.23). mean (sd) intake of folate (microgram/d) in mmse>28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 202.0(73.7) and 222.9(113.8). mean (sd) intake of folate (microgram/d) in mmse<28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 182.9(60.5) and 180.5(64.3). mean (sd) intake of vitamin c (mg/d) in mmse>28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 134.5(78.4) and 137.6(78.3). mean (sd) intake of vitamin c (mg/d) in mmse<28 for younger and older subjects, respectively: 103.6(60.6) and 105.4(45.9) kalmijn et al., 2004 a cross-sectional analysis of adults *1,613 adults, mean age 56.3yo * ffq assessed dietary intake *adjusted mean intakes for fatty fish, dha and epa were higher in adjusted mean epa and dha combined (mg), and fatty fish intake (g) for normal age, sex, education, total 67 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org from the doetinchem cohort study examined dietary intake and cognition. *questionnaires assessed sociodemographics, education level, health history, and alcohol use *non-fasting blood samples assessed hdl cholesterol *global cognition, memory, speed of cognitive process, and cognitive flexibility assessed with the (visual) verbal learning test, an abbreviated stroop color word test, the concept shifting task, the letter digit substitution test, and a category fluency test subjects with normal cognition compared to those with impaired cognition *higher dietary cholesterol intake was positively and significantly associated with risk for impaired memory and flexibility *cognitive function and the overall intake of total pufa, linoleic acid, alpha-linoleic acid, and mufa demonstrated no relationship cognition (95% ci)=167 (160-175) and 3.06 (2.85-3.28), respectively. adjusted mean epa and dha (mg), and fatty fish intake (g) for impaired cognition (95% ci)=145 (124-166) and 2.30 (1.68-2.93). dietary cholesterol and impaired memory risk (95%ci): or=1.27(1.02-1.57), p<.05; dietary cholesterol and impaired flexibility risk: or=1.26(1.011.57), p<.05. dha and epa intake and risk of impaired overall cognition and speed (95%ci, p<.05): or=.81(.66-1.00) and or=.72(.57-.90), respectively. energy intake, smoking, and risk of cvd polidori et al., 2009 an observational study examined the relationship between antioxidant status and cognition in older adults. *193 adults (m=93, f=100), mean age 70.8yo *ffq assessed dietary intake *ht, wt, ecg, bp, lab values (lipid, albumin) measured *bmi calculated *mmse, clock drawing test assessed cognition *demtect scale assessed dementia *education and lifestyle questions answered *subjects divided into high f&v intake (hi=4+servings/d) and low intake (li=1 or fewer servings/d) *better antioxidant micronutrient status and lower levels of lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation (measures of oxidative stress) in hi subjects *better cognitive performance in hi compared to li subjects regardless of age (higher scores in clock drawing indicate more errors, or poorer results) *lycopene strongly correlated with all cognitive performance tests *alpha-tocopherol associated with mmse and clock drawing test scores *mmse negatively associated with biomarkers of oxidative stress *subjects consuming 5+ servings of f&v per day demonstrated higher antioxidant micronutrients and lower indicators of oxidative stress, and demonstrated better hi subjects mean mmse, demtect and clock drawing =29.4, 16.8, and 1.02, respectively. li subjects mean mmse, demtect and clock drawing=28.5, 16.2, and 1.38, respectively. lycopene was associated with mmse (r=0.22, p=.005), demtect (r=0.19, p=.02), and clock drawing (r=0.35, p<.0001). mmse and clock drawing were associated with alpha-tocopherol (r=0.22, p=.003; and r=-0.26, p<.0001). 8,12-ipf2alpha-vi and igg of protein carbonyls both negatively correlated with mmse (r=-0.23, p=.007; and r=-0.17, p=0.04, respectively). age, gender, bmi, education, total cholesterol, ldl and hdl cholesterol, triglycerides and albumin 68 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org cognitive functioning compared to those consuming only one serving per day berr et al., 2009 an observational epidemiological cohort examined olive oil intake and cognitive function in older adults. *6,947 free-living adults, 65+yo *ffq assessed dietary intake *4y follow-up *mmse assessed global cognitive function *isaacs set test measured verbal fluidity and speed of verbal production *benton visual retention test measured visual memory *olive oil consumption was higher in subjects with higher education level *subjects with moderate to high olive oil consumption demonstrated lower risk of cognitive decline in visual memory and verbal fluency *olive oil consumption not associated with mmse *intensive olive oil use associated with a 15% reduction in verbal fluency decline and 17% reduction in visual memory decline *inverse relationship between pufa and mmse cognitive decline (%) for global cognitive function associated with olive oil use (pvalue=.37): non-users=14.9%, intensive users=13.3%; cognitive decline for verbal fluency (%) (p-value=.3): non-users=16.6%, intensive users=14.8%; cognitive decline for cognitive function for visual memory (pvalue=.01): non-users=21.4%, intensive users=17.8%. fully adjusted or (95%ci) for olive oil use and global cognitive decline (no use=reference for all categories): moderate use: .94(.78-1.13), intensive use: .95(.78-1.15). fully adjusted or (95%ci) for olive oil use and verbal fluency decline: moderate use: .96(.80-1.16), intensive use: .85(.70-1.03). fully adjusted or (95%ci) for olive oil use and visual memory decline: moderate use: .91(.77-1.09), intensive use: .83(.69-.99) gender, age, study center, income, education, baseline cognitive score, health behavior, health status, dietary habits, and smoking status wengreen et al., 2009 a prospective study examined the association between recommended food score (rfs) and non-rfs, and cognitive function. * 3,634 adults, mean age 74yo *11y follow-up *ffq assessed dietary intake *3ms assessed cognitive function, including memory *rfs was computed based on dietary guidelines for americans (f&v, whole grains, nuts, fatty fish, low-fat dairy) *questionnaires included lifestyle and socio-demographic info *mean 3ms increased across increasing rfs quartiles *cognitive function declined less in those with higher rfs than those with lower rfs scores *following the dietary guidelines for americans was associated with lower levels of cognitive decline mean cumulative decline in 3ms (se) from baseline to follow up based on quartiles of rfs: baseline (n=3,634): q1 0y=0 (reference), q2=.94(.26), q3=1.48(.28), q4=1.80(.28); 3y follow-up (n=2,743): q1=-1.14(.39), q2=.64(.60), q3=-.81(.38), q4=-.41(.36). 7y followup (n=1,907): q1=-2.96(.64), q2=-2.02(.66), q3= -2.51(.66), q4=-1.56(.65). 11y follow-up: q1=-5.15 (.69); q2=-3.98(1.08); q3=-4.91(1.08); q4=-3.41 (.79) age, gender, education, bmi, apoe e4 allele, smoking status, drinking status, activity level, medical history, ability to perform adls, vitamin/mineral supplement use, caloric intake, time x time and interactions between time 69 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org and increasing quintile of rfs mangialasc he et al., 2010 a nested observational study of subjects from the larger kungsholmen project, examined the relationship between baseline plasma concentrations of natural vitamin e forms and incidence of alzheimer's disease. *232 adults, age 80+yo, all in non-demented state at baseline * questions on age, gender, alcohol consumption, education, vitamin and supplement use, and smoking habits answered *mmse assessed cognitive function *katz index of adls assessed basal functional status *ht and wt measured and bmi calculated *blood samples assessed dna, apoe, and presence of the eight natural forms of vitamin e being measured (alpha, beta, delta and gamma tocopherols, and alpha, beta, delta and gamma tocotrienols) *cognitive function assessed at baseline and follow ups, up to 6y past baseline clinical and neuropsychological evaluations were conducted at baseline and follow-ups *dementia and/or ad diagnosed by two different physicians *plasma vitamin e measures levels assessed objective vitamin e exposure *development of ad was more common in older subjects *all forms of vitamin e were lower in subjects who developed ad, but this difference lacked statistical significance *subjects in the highest tertile of total tocopherols, tocotrienols, or vitamin e levels had reduced risk of developing ad (reduced by 45%, 54%, and 45%, respectively) when compared to subjects in the lowest tertile *beta-tocopherol associated with ad risk when comparing highest tertile with the lowest. incident cases and hr (95%ci) of ad by vitamin e plasma levels at baseline: total tocopherols lowest tertile: 18 cases, hr=1 (reference); total tocopherol highest tertile: 11 cases, hr=.55(.32-.94); total tocotrienols lowest tertile: 15 cases, hr=1 (reference); total tocotrienols highest tertile: 9 cases, hr=.46(.23-.92); total vitamin e lowest tertile: 18 cases, hr=1 (reference); total vitamin e highest tertile: 11 cases, hr=.55(.32-.94) age, gender, bmi, baseline mmse scores, education, apoe status, alcohol use and smoking status 70 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org krikorian et al., 2010 a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial examined concord grape consumption and association with memory in older adults. *12 adults (m=8, f=4), mean age of 78.2yo *subjects had memory lapses and forgetfulness, but no diagnosis of dementia at baseline *12-week duration *control (n=5) consumed concord grape juice and placebo (n=7) consumed drink with equivalent energy and carbohydrate content. amount of beverage provided was 69ml/kg body wt per day, divided into three equal servings *clinical dementia ratings assessed memory impairment *cvlt assessed verbal learning and retention *spa learning test assessed non-verbal memory *the geriatric depression scale assessed mood *wt, waist circumference, and fasting serum glucose and insulin levels measured *grape juice consumption was associated with improved memory *cvlt scores improved from baseline to week 12 for the grape juice group (35.2 points to 38.6) *no improvement in cvlt scores in placebo subjects *non-significant trend toward improved performance in spatial memory and delayed verbal recall in grape juice group *insulin levels increased significantly in the grape juice group (from 9.6 micro-u/ml to 12.6) *no change in insulin levels in placebo group cvlt item acquisition performance: f(1,8)=5.55, p=.04, f=.28; cvlt delayed recall : f (1,8)=3.37, p=.1, f=.35; spa (non-verbal memory): f(1,8)=3.23, p=.12, f=.67 individual differences valls-pedret et al., 2012 a cross-sectional study of participants from the predimed cohort examined dietary intake, with a focus on polyphenols, as it pertains to cognitive *447 adults (m=215, f=232), 5580yo, *subjects at high cardiovascular disease risk, but without chronic illness, drug/alcohol abuse, depression, or bmi >40 *ffq assessed dietary intake *ht and wt measured *urine samples assessed total polyphenols *based on ffq, most subjects adhered to a traditional mediterranean diet *higher wine intake associated with better mmse scores *olive oil consumption associated with improved immediate verbal memory independent association of cognitive scores with food intake (b=standardized regression coefficient; 95%ci): wine and mmse: .252 (.006-.496), b=.096, p=.044; olive oil and ravlt immediate recall: .755(.151-1.358), b=.109, p=.014; cereal and ravlt immediate: -.431(-.823 to -.038), b=-.098, p=.032; cereal and ravlt delayed: -.235(.379 to -.091), b=-.149, p=.001; coffee and ravlt delayed: .294(.055-.534), b=.106, variables allowed for associations with cognitive test scores with food intake: age, education, gender, bmi, apoe, smoking, energy expended 71 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org functioning in older subjects. *ravlt assessed verbal memory *wms assessed memory performance *wais assessed immediate memory and working memory *color trail test assessed executive functioning (attention, visual-motor speed and cognitive flexibility *mmse assessed global cognitive function *cereal intake negatively associated with immediate and delayed recall of verbal learning *coffee intake associated with better delayed recall *meat associated with worse delayed recall *walnuts associated with better working memory *total urine polyphenol excretion associated with immediate verbal recall p=.016; meat and ravlt delayed: -.845 (1.556 to -.135), b=-.109, p=.020; walnuts and reverse digit span: 1.191 (.061-2.322), b=.149, p=.039. independent associations of cognitive scores with urinary polyphenol excretion (b=standardized regression coefficient; 95%ci): polyphenol excretion and ravlt immediate: 1.208(.236-2.180), b=.112, p=.015; polyphenol excretion and ravlt delayed: .357 (-.004-.719), b=.092, p=.053 in physical activity, diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia. association of cognitive test scores with urinary excretion controlled also included energy intake. torres et al., 2012 a cross-sectional analysis of older adults with mild cognitive impairment examined the association between dietary patterns, physical activity, and cognition. *249 subjects (m=155, f=94), mean age 73.4yo *subjects had mild cognitive impairment but no clinical diagnosis of dementia *ffq assessed dietary intake *camcog assessed global cognitive function *dietary patterns categorized as whole foods (f&v, legumes, whole grain, fish, egg, low-fat dairy, nuts and salad dressings) and processed foods (saturated fats, desserts/sweets/fried foods, chocolates and sweets, processed meat and fish, highfat dairy, potatoes, refined grain, sugary drinks, and red meat) *whole foods pattern not associated with camcog scores *processed food pattern negatively associated with camcog scores *executive function scores negatively associated with processed food pattern *subjects consuming more processed foods had reduced memory and impaired executive function total camcog score by tertile of processed food pattern, fully adjusted (or(95%ci)): t1 (reference)=1; t2=1.51 (.69-3.33), pvalue=.303; t3=1.70 (.76-3.79), p-value comparing t3 with t1=.199, p for trend=.211. camcog executive scales, fully adjusted (or(95%ci)): t1=1 (reference); t2=1.57 (.663.71), p-value=.095; t3=2.55 (1.08-6.03), p value comparing t1 with t3=.033, p for trend=.030. age, gender, smoking, education, activity, antidepressant use small et al., 2013 an observational analysis examined the relationship between healthy behaviors and *18,552 subjects * subjects were divided by age: younger adults (18-39yo, n=4,423), middle-aged (40-59yo, n=6,356) and older adult (6099yo, n=7,773) *mean hbi was 69.8 for older adults, 60.7 for middle-aged (60.7), and 57.9 for younger adults *older adults more likely "eating five or more daily servings of fruits and vegetables during the effect size (d) for hbi scores and age: older vs. middle-aged: d=.38 (small); older vs. younger: d=.42 (small); middle-aged vs. younger: d=.09 (small). effect size for hbi scores and memory: younger: d=.26; middleaged: d=.30; older: d=.25. odds ratio for % of education and income 72 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org self-reported memory abilities in adults. *hbi assessed 4 components and a score of 0 (not complying) or 1 (complying with the healthy behavior) was assigned for each *hbi behaviors included: 1) do you smoke?; 2) did you eat healthy all day yesterday?; 3) in the last 7 days, on how many days did you have 5 or more servings of f&v?; 4) in the last 7 days, on how many days did you exercise for 30 or more minutes? *data was weighted to match age, sex, region, education, ethnicity and race according to information from the us census bureau previous week" (64%) and of "eating healthy yesterday" (84%) than middle aged (53.9% and 65.8%, respectively) and younger adults (49.1% and 56.2%, respectively) *memory problems reported more frequently as age increased *memory problems negatively associated with hbi scores (mean hbi 60.9 in those reporting memory problems, and 66.2 in those who did not) *hbi healthy behavior adherence inversely related to odds of reporting memory problems *healthy eating associated with improved memory in all age groups healthy behavior adherence(1=25%, 2=50%, 3=75% or 4=100%) and reporting memory problems (95%ci): 0%: or=2.11(1.85-2.41); 25%: or=1.75(1.59-1.93); 50%: or=1.45(1.361.55); 75%=1.21(1.17-1.25) bookheimer et al., 2013 a placebocontrolled, randomized clinical trial examined the relationship between pomegranate juice consumption and memory performance and fmri activity in adults. *28 adults, age 55+yo, *subjects non-demented but had mild, age-related memory complaints *28d intervention *all subjects placed on lowpolyphenol diet and instructed to maintain a sedentary lifestyle aside from light walking during the trial *intervention subjects (n=15) provided with 8oz of pomegranate juice per day *control subjects (n=13) provided with 8oz of a placebo drink per day *antioxidant assays assessed metabolites of the juice *plasma biomarkers for antioxidants were higher in the pomegranate group than the control at the end of the study *total recall and long-term retrieval scores improved significantly in the pomegranate group, compared to controls *no significant improvement or change within or between groups for both visual and verbal memory *the pomegranate group recruited more brain regions and had more fmri activation in all regions than the placebo group teac in juice vs. placebo from baseline to 28d measures (unpaired t-test): t=2.8, df=25, p<.05. memory performance improvement from baseline to 28d (2-tailed t-test) in placebo subjects: t=1.1, p>.3; in juice subjects: t=2.8, p=.017. fmri activation of all regions for pomegranate juice > placebo (all regions): z-stat range from 2.6-4.23 (z>2.0, corrected p=.05) none provided 73 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org *bushke-fuld selective reminding task and consistent long term retrieval score assessed memory *verbal and visual memory tasks completed *fmri assessed brain activity during memory exercises note: mmse=mini-mental state examination, sd=standard deviation, hdl=high-density lipoprotein, dha= docosahexaenoic acid, epa= eicosapentaenoic acid, pufa=polyunsaturated fatty acids, mufa=mono-unsaturated fatty acid, ci=confidence interval, ht=height, wt=weight, bp=blood pressure, ecg=electrocardiogram, bmi=body mass index, 3ms=modified mini-mental state examination, rfs=recommended food score, f&v=fruits and vegetables, apoe=apolipoprotein e, adl=activities of daily living, ad=alzheimer’s disease, hr=hazard ratio, cvlt= california verbal learning test, spa=spatial paired associate, ravlt=rey auditory verbal learning test, wms=wechsler memory scale, wais=wechsler adult intelligence scale, camcog= cambridge cognitive examination, or=odds ratio, hbi=healthy behavior index, fmri=functional magnetic resonance imaging, teac=trolox-equivalent antioxidant capacity table b – occupational wellness: the effects of dietary intake on daytime sleepiness in older adults author & year objective design results statistics confounders adjusted for wells et al., 1998 the effects of high-fat, low carbohydrate and low-fat, high carbohydrate meals on objective daytime sleepiness were examined. *16 adults (m=8, f=8), age unspecified *participants were randomized to group 1 (meals eaten at 9am and 1pm) or group 2 (meals eaten at 11am and 3pm) *measurements taken on two separate days, with meals presented in opposite order each day *sleep patterns regulated by encouraging subjects to go to bed and get up in the morning at the same times for a week prior to the study *eeg measured brain activity for objective sleepiness *less time to achieve sleepiness after a meal as opposed to before *sleep latency didn't differ based on meal composition or time of day *sleep latency significantly shorter 1.5h after eating than it was just before meals *subjects more sleepy in the later part of the day based on eeg measures, with little difference between pre and post meal measures *eeg activity over 3 hours after meal ingestion indicated more sleepiness as compared to 80 minutes after ingestion or to premeal measures mean sleep latency 1.5h after meals: 12.6 (sd=3.8) and pre-meal: 14.3 (sd=4.1), f=11.37, df=1,15, p=.004. power of eeg alpha band later in day: f=12.52, df=1,15, p=.003; and earlier in the day: f=11, df=1,15, p=.005) none provided 74 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org *stanford sleepiness scale, a vas, mood adjective checklist, and poms assessed subjective sleepiness and mood *performance assessed using a high-paced task demanding continuous attention *performance and overall feelings of fatigue increased and vigor and energy decreased throughout the day, with subjects feeling less vigorous 45-minutes after ingestion than they did prior to eating *meals consumed between 11am and 3pm resulted in the highest rate of postprandial sleepiness *objective and subjective measures did not demonstrate significant difference between effect of meal types (lfhc vs. hflc) and sleepiness landstrom et al., 2000 a controlled crossover trial of truck drivers examined whether the proportion of fat and carbohydrates in meals with equal energy content would affect wakefulness during driving. *11 male truck drivers, age unspecified, 6 night drivers and 5 day drivers *high fat meal (46% of energy from fat and 43% from carbohydrates) vs. low fat meal (18% of energy from fat and 70% from carbohydrates) examined * subjects answered questions regarding wakefulness while driving *drivers consumed meals and completed questionnaires during work shifts, from 5pm3am (dinner and snack) for night drivers and 6am-4pm (breakfast and lunch) for day drivers *five tests total were completed on each group *prior to intervention, day drivers slept on average 1h more than night drivers each night *day drivers reported lower levels of wakefulness while driving than night drivers *napping patterns throughout the shifts were not associated with meal content *no statistical difference between macronutrient content of meals (high fat vs. low fat) and wakefulness in either group no statistically significant results provided. see results section for study outcomes. none provided. 75 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org landstrom et al., 2001 effects of energy content and volume on satiation and alertness were examined. *10 subjects (m=5, f=5), 18-64yo *varying energy content tested (100, 500, and 1000kcal) *varying volume tested (100kcal and 0ml water vs. 100kcal and 925ml water) * subjects were sleep deprived (4 hours or less the previous night) and were in a fasted state *meals contained bread, butter (80% fat) and cheese (28% fat) in varying quantities but equal % of energy from each for 4 different meals *questionnaire completed for overall health and for eating and sleeping patterns *5-minute blinking reference test and 30min eeg assessed objective sleepiness *subjective alertness assessed with verbal rating and vas every 5min *subjective hunger satiation rating on 1-4 categorical scale every 10min *equally reduced subjective drowsiness after consumption of all meals *drowsiness increased after consumption to return to preconsumption levels for all meals *90-min post-consumption development of subjective and objective drowsiness similar for all meals . reduced subjective drowsiness on vas after consumption: f=52.7, p<.001. subjective drowsiness for all 4 food conditions immediate post-consumption: f=.94, p=.47. effect of subjective drowsiness development in 90-min post ingestion: horizontal scale effect of food: f=2.27, p=.11; horizontal scale effect of time: f=12.0, p<.001; food x time=.93, p=.62 none provided grandner et al., 2010 the relationship between various nutrients and sleep patterns was examined in post-menopausal women. *423 women, mean age 68yo *ffq assessed dietary intake *subjective sleep based on 1wk sleep diary *objective sleep based on wrist acti-graph worn for 1wk *water and caffeine negatively associated with subjective napping *top 5 most strongly associated nutrients with subjective napping: total fat, calories, saturated fat, mufa and trans fat *objective sleep duration negatively associated with total, mufa, saturated, pufa and trans fats, calories, gamma-tocopherol, partial correlation of nutrients and subjective napping (p for significance <.004): total fat: r=.241, p=.000003; calories: r=.238, p=.000004; saturated fat: r=.237, p=.000004; mufa: r=.231, p=.00001; trans fat: r=.230, p=.00001. partial correlation of nutrients and objective sleep duration (p for significance <.004): total fat: r=-.185, p=.0004; mufa: r=.180, p=.0005; trans fat: r=-.174, p=.0008; saturated fat: r=-.171, p=.0010; pufa: r=-.168, p=.0012; calories: r=-.162, p=.0019; gammaage, education, income, bmi, physical activity, daily food consumption (g) 76 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org cholesterol and alpha-tocopherolequivalents *vitamin d positively associated with later peak sleep time tocopherol: r=-.157, p=.0025; alphatocopherol-eq: r=-.153, p=.0032; cholesterol: r=-.157, p=.0025. partial correlation of vitamin d and objective sleep phase (p for significance <.004): r=.161, p=.0020 note: eeg= electroencephalogram, poms=profile of mood states, vas=visual analog scale, lfhc=low fat and high carbohydrate, hclf=high carbohydrate and low fat, sd=standard deviation, df=degrees of freedom, mufa=mono-unsaturated fatty acids, pufa=poly-unsaturated fatty acids, bmi=body mass index, eeg=electroencephalograph, vas=visual analog scale table c – emotional wellness: the effects of dietary intake on stress and anxiety in older adults. author & year objective design results statistics confounders adjusted for jacka et al., 2010 an epidemiological study from the geelong osteoporosis study examined the relationship between dietary intake and development of various mental disorders, including anxiety. *1,046 women, mean age 48-52 years old * ffq assessed dietary intake of food *clinical interviews to assess depression, dysthymia, and anxiety *ghq-12 assessed psychological symptoms *questionnaires assessed lifestyle and socio-demographic info *diets were classified into 1 of 3 patterns: traditional, western, or modern *diet quality score calculated *western diet was associated with more psychological symptoms *traditional diet was inversely related to anxiety disorders in unadjusted and fully adjusted models *35% reduction in odds for anxiety disorders for 1sd increase in traditional diet scores *modern diet was not associated with anxiety *a more healthful diet resulted in fewer psychological symptoms or for association diet pattern and anxiety disorders -unadjusted (95%ci): western: 1.09(.88-1.36); traditional: .81(.64-1.04); modern: .97(.77-1.23). or for association diet pattern and anxiety disorders fully adjusted (95%ci, p<.05): western: .76(.491.18); traditional: .68(.47-.99); modern: .93(.69-1.24) age, socioeconomic status, education, activity, smoking, alcohol use, energy intake jacka et al., 2011 a nested crosssectional study of older adults from the hordland health study examined diet and common mental disorders, *5,731 adults, 46+years old *ffq assessed dietary intake *healthy food scores were assigned to intake *subjects classified into 1 of 3 eating patterns: healthy, western, and traditional norwegian *hads-a assessed anxiety *reduced anxiety risk of 23% for every 1sd increase in diet quality score fully adjusted models *no association between or of case-level anxiety and diet score in men. *19% increased risk of anxiety with each 1sd increase in healthy eating pattern for men or for association of diet quality score in men (95%ci): unadjusted: 1.04(.91-1.18), p=.57; fully adjusted: 1.00(.85-1.17), p=.98. or for association of diet quality score in women (95%ci): unadjusted: .86(.79-.94), p=.001; fully adjusted: .77(.68-.87), p<.001. or for association of diet pattern and anxiety disorders in men unadjusted (95%ci): healthy: 1.14(1.01-1.29), p=.04; age group, gender, total energy intake, smoking, alcohol, education, activity, whr, bp, self-reported diabetes and 77 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org including anxiety. *16% reduced risk of anxiety with each 1sd increase in healthy eating pattern for women *23% reduced risk of anxiety for each 1sd increase in traditional eating pattern for women *no association between norwegian diet and anxiety for men western: 1.27(1.14-1.42), p<.001; traditional: .92(.81-1.05), p=.29. or for association of diet pattern and anxiety disorders in men fully adjusted (95%ci): healthy: 1.19(1.03-1.38), p=.02; western: 1.09(.87-1.36), p=.52; traditional: .86(.70-1.05), p=.18. or for association of diet patterns and anxiety disorders in women unadjusted (95%ci): healthy: .84(.77-.93), p=.001; western: 1.29(1.17-1.43), p<.001; traditional: .88(.79.97), p=.007. or for association of diet pattern and anxiety disorders in women fully adjusted (95%ci): health: .87(.77-.98), p=.01; western: 1.18(.96-1.45), p=.36; traditional: .77(.64-.92), p=.001 myocardial infarction beezhold & johnston, 2012 a two-week randomized controlled trial examined effects of meat and fish intake on mood. *ffq assessed fatty acid intake. *questionnaires assessed depression (dass-d), anxiety (dass-a), stress (dass-s), tension-anxiety (poms-t), depression-dejection (poms-d), anger-hostility (poms-a), fatigueinertia (poms-f), confusionbewilderment (poms-c), vigoractivity (poms-v) and mood *subjects were divided into three groups: omn, fish, and veg * 95% dietary adherence *baseline median poms-c scores differed significantly between the omn (9) and the veg (3) groups *veg subjects: epa, dha and aa reduced significantly and n6-to-n3 ratio increased 60% *fish subjects: epa and dha rose 95-100% *omn subjects: fatty acid intakes were unchanged *veg participants had much greater improvement in dass-s, poms-c scores, and moderately better poms-t and poms-total scores compared to the other two groups *increasing fish consumption and avoiding meat did not improve mood dass-s scores (median (iqr)) for baseline and 2wk, respectively: omn=20(28) and 14(16); fish=18(18) and 8(13); veg=21.5(25) and 8.5(14), p=.045. poms-c scores (median (iqr)) for baseline and 2wk, respectively: omn=3(5) and 4(5); fish=5(5) and 4(5); veg=9(8) and 3(6), p=.003. poms-t scores (median (iqr)) for baseline and 2wk, respectively: omn=6(4) and 5(5); fish=7(5) and 7(4); veg=8(8) and 4(4), p=.061. pomstotal scores (median (iqr)) for baseline and 2wk, respectively: omn=8(26) and 3(22); fish=18(18) and 8(13); veg=21.5(25) and 5(23), p=.087 none provided jacka et al., 2012a further examination of *see jacka et al. 2010 for details *only 70%, 26% and 8% of women meeting the rdi for zinc, standardized z-score (95%ci) for nutrient and ghq-12 relationship: zinc= -.16(-.29 to ghq-12 adjusted for age, 78 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org the geelong osteoporosis study analyzed magnesium, folate, and zinc intake as each pertained to ghq-12 scores, depression and anxiety disorders. magnesium and folate, respectively *zinc and magnesium intake were significantly inversely associated with ghq-12 scores *all 3 micronutrients were negatively associated with depression *no association between any of the 3 nutrients and anxiety .04), p=.01; magnesium= -.14 (-.26 to -.03), p=.02; folate= -.09(-.18-.01), p=.06. or (95%ci) for nutrient and depression: zinc=.52(.31-.88), p=.01; magnesium=.60(.37.96), p=.03; folate=.66(.45-.97), p=.03. or (95%ci) for nutrient and anxiety: zinc=.76(.48-1.19), p=.23; magnesium=.81(.541.23), p=.32; folate=.81(.58-1.13), p=.21 socioeconomic status, activity, education, alcohol, smoking, and energy intake. depression and anxiety diagnosis adjusted for energy intake only jacka et al., 2012b further examination of the geelong osteoporosis study analyzed red meat intake and the association between ghq-12 scores, depression and anxiety disorders. *see jacka et al., 2010 for details *based on australian recommendations (3-4 servings/wk), red meat intake was categorized as low (<28g), recommended (28-57g), and high (>57g) *the traditional dietary pattern was used as an indicator of an overall healthful diet *median intake of meat was 39.3g/d (recommended) *women consuming lower than the recommended intake had increased risk of anxiety compared to those in the recommended range (n=18) *higher red meat intake was not associated with anxiety *those consuming lower than recommended amounts of red meat had higher ghq-12 scores *high red meat intake was not associated with ghq-12 scores *no differences between vegetarians in relation to mental health or (95%ci) for anxiety based on red meat intake, adjusted for age: low intake: 1.91(1.07-3.41), p<.05; high intake: 1.71(.933.16). or (95%ci) for anxiety based on red meat intake, adjusted for traditional diet pattern score: low intake: 1.82(1.01-3.27), p<.05; high intake: 1.85(.99-3.48) age and traditional diet pattern jacka et al., 2013 further examination of the geelong osteoporosis study analyzed fish and pufa intake and the association with *935 women, mean age 50 years old *see jacka et al., 2010 for details *ffq assessed pufa and fish intake *n-6 and n-3 pufa intake met adequate intakes. n-3 intakes also met adequate intakes, but *n-6 and n-3 did not meet suggested intake for optimal health for australian women 51% of subjects ate fish at least once per week or(95%ci) of dha and major depressive disorder/dysthymia by tertile: 1st=1(reference), 2nd=.31(.12-.79), 3rd=1.44(.73-2.83). or(95%ci) of dha and anxiety disorders by tertile: 1st=1 (reference), 2nd=.78(.43-1.42), 3rd=.49(.24-.98). beta-coefficients (95%ci) of fish intake and ghq-12 scores, fully adjusted: fish(g/d) in smokers= -.14(-.37-.03), p=.19; fish (g/d) in or adjusted for energy intake and diet quality score. betacoefficients adjusted for age, bmi, socioeconomic status, activity 79 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org depression and anxiety. *7.1% of women were diagnosed with anxiety *5.5% of women were diagnosed with depression *women with anxiety tended to be younger than those without *a linear relationship between dha and reduced anxiety existed *a non-linear relationship between dha and reduced depression existed *stronger relationship between fish and reduced psychological symptoms in smokers compared to non-smokers non-smokers= -.03(-.12-.06), p=.53; fish >1x/wk in smokers= -.49(-.91 to -.07), p=.02; fish >1x/wk in nonsmokers= -.10 (-.25-.05), p=.17 level, alcohol, energy intake, and diet quality score ford et al., 2013 an observational study of seventh day adventists from the adventist health study-2 cohort examined typical mediterranean versus western foods and their association with negative and positive affect. *9,255 adults, 35+years old (mean age 62.9) * ffq assessed dietary intake of food *food items were categorized into mediterranean (non-starchy fresh produce, certain dairy products, fish, nuts, olive oil, and legumes except soy) or western (red and processed meats, sweets/desserts, soda, fast food) *panas assessed affect *mediterranean food consumption associated with increased positive affect *western food consumption associated with increased negative affect *red meat and fast food frequency were associated with negative affect in women only *the overall association between negative affect and food intakes was stronger in women than in men *men consumed more red and processed meats, nuts, sweets, soda and fast food *women consumed more vegetables *increased intake of nuts was positively associated with higher positive and lower negative affect regression of positive and negative affect, respectively, on energy-adjusted food intake in women (beta (95%ci)): fresh vegetables=.139(.110-.167,p<.001 and -.091(.121 to -.061), p<.001; fresh fruit=.072(.048.096), p<.001 and -.040(-.065 to -.015), p=.002; dairy= -.022(-.039 to -.005), p=.013 and .016(.002-.034), p=.085; olive oil=.082(.032-.132), p=.001 and -.070(-.122 to -.018), p=.008; nuts=.045(.009-.081), p=.016 and -.101(-.138 to -.065), p<.001; fish=.013(-.024-.051), p=.487 and .029(-.011-.068), p=.152; legumes=.059(.030-.088), p<.001 and -.033 (.062 to -.004), p=.026; red meats= -.072(-.117 to -.026), p=.002 and .085(.038-.133), p<.001; processed meats= -.176(-.316 to -.036), p=.014 and .197 (.049-.345), p=.009; sweets and desserts= -.073(-.099 to -.047), p<.001 and .073(.046-.100), p<.001; soda= -.027(-.042 to .012), p<.001 and .026(.010-.041), p=.001; fast food frequency= -.055(-.075 to -.035), p<.001 and .079(.058-.100), p<.001. regression of education, activity level, sleep patterns, age, gender, ethnicity, bmi, alcohol, total energy intake, and time between the two questionnaires (ffq and panas) 80 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org positive and negative affect, respectively, on energy-adjusted food intake in men (beta (95%ci)): fresh vegetables=.093(.053-.133), p<.001 and -.046(-.082 to -.010), p=.013; fresh fruit=.053(.021-.085), p=.001 and -.021(-.051.009), p=.167; dairy=.008(-.015-.032), p=.489 and -.011(-.032-.010), p=.323; olive oil=.046(.025-.117), p=.207 and .017(-.047-.082), p=.594; nuts=.083(.036-.130), p=.001 and -.060(-.102 to -.017), p=.006; fish=.067(.017-.117), p=.008 and -.019(-.065-.027), p=.413; legumes=.054(.015-.093), p=.007 and -.015(.051-.020), p=.391; red meat= -.027(-.083-.030), p=.359 and -.026(-.078-.026), p=.325; processed meats= -.083(-.240-.074), p=.298 and .032(-.111-.174), p=.665; sweets and desserts= -.054(-.087 to -.020), p=.002 and .032(.002-.062), p=.035; soda= -.046(-.007 to .010), p=.008 and .001(-.017-.019), p=.920; fast food frequency= -.034(-.060 to -.008), p=.011 and .007(-.016-.031), p=.556 hodge et al., 2013 cross-sectional study of participants from the melbourne collaborative cohort study, primarily examining the effects of the mediterranean diet (traditional or modified) and a more traditional australian diet *8,660 adults, 50-69 years old *ffq assessed dietary intake, with mds score calculated accordingly *questionnaires assessed lifestyle, health history and sociodemographic info *subjects with clinical diagnosis of psychological distress excluded *k10 exam assessed distress (low score indicates low stress and high score indicates highly stressed *the australian pattern and higher total energy intake were associated with higher k10 scores *the mediterranean pattern was associated with lower k10 scores *mds was inversely associated with stress highest quintile of mediterranean-style: k10 score <20=10.6%, >20=11.1%, p=.736; australian style diet: k10 score <20=29.3%, >20=33.1%, p=.007. mds and psychological distress based on k10 scores (or(95%ci)): energy intake: 1.05 (1.02-1.07),mds score 03: 1.00 (reference); mds score 4-6: .94 (.771.13); mds score 7-9: .72 (.54-.95) physical activity level, education, smoking status, history of arthritis, asthma, kidney stones or gallstones, socioeconomic indexes for areas, and dietary energy 81 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org on psychological distress. roohafza et al., 2013 a cross-sectional study of participants from the isfahan healthy heart program examined stress levels and food consumption. *9,549 adults, 18+ years old *ffq assessed dietary intake *gdi score assigned based on ffq (lower gdi indicates better diet) *lifestyle, health history and socio-demographic information collected *body weight, height, bmi, and blood pressure were measured *ghq-12 assessed stress (4+ points indicates high stress) *low stress subjects consumed more unsaturated oils, fresh produce, grains, meat and dairy *high stress subjects consumed more saturated oils *overall lower gdi scores in in low stress group *positive association between stress levels and gdi and saturated oil *inverse association between stress and both f&v and unsaturated oils or for association with stress level, fully adjusted (95% ci): high gdi: 1.24(1.14-1.35); saturated oils: 1.17(1.08-1.28) unsaturated oils: or=.84 (.77-.91); grains: 1.03(.95-1.12); f&v:.83 (.76-.90), meat: .88 (.82-.97); dairy: .88 (.81-.96); carbohydrate-rich foods: 1.00(.991.00). *note: all “low” categories at or=1, reference level note: *ffq=food frequency questionnaire, hads-a=hospital anxiety and depression scale, anxiety, whr=waist hip ratio, bp=blood pressure, or=odds ratio, ci=confidence interval, ghq= general health questionnaire, sd=standard deviation, dass-d=depression anxiety stress scale depression, dass-a=depression anxiety stress scale anxiety, dass-s=depression anxiety stress scale stress, poms=profile of mood states, poms-t=profile of mood states tension-anxiety, poms-d=profile of mood states depression, poms-a=profile of mood states anger-hostility, poms-f=profile of mood states fatigue-inertia, poms-c=profile of mood states confusion-bewilderment, poms-v=profile of mood states vigor-activity, dha=docosahexaenoic acid, epa=eicosapentaenoic acid, aa=amino acids, pufa=polyunsaturated fatty acids, panas= positive and negative affect schedule, mds=mediterranean diet score, k10=kessler psychological distress scale, gdi=global dietary intake table d – physical wellness: the effects of dietary intake on mortality in older adults. author & year objective design results statistics confounders adjusted for osler et al., 1997 a prospective analysis of 202 elderly europeans from the euronut seneca study examined mediterranean diet score and the association with survival. *202 adults, mean age 72-73yo *6y follow-up *ffq assessed dietary intake * fasting blood samples assessed total cholesterol, hdl, carotene and vit e were taken *lifestyle questions answered *diet score was based on 7 components, each assigned 1 point, (high score=good diet): high monoto saturated fat ratio, *cereal intake was positively associated with mortality *no significant association between all other dietary components and mortality *the 7-point diet score was inversely associated with mortality *higher plasma carotene levels in subjects with higher diet scores (>3 points) mean(sd) intake of dietary components for deceased and surviving, respectively and rate ratio per 20g change (95%ci): vegetables=291(148) and 290(117), rr=.99(.95-1.04); fruits=143(122) and 136(104), rr=1.02(.97-1.08); dairy=312(242) and 291(221), rr=1.00(.99-1.01); cereals=213(121) and 191(74), rr=1.10(1.031.17); meat=116(49) and 116(44), rr=.99(.861.13); ethanol=8(10) and 11(17), rr=.81(.631.05); mono:saturated fat ratio=.9(.2) and baseline age, gender, smoking, and individual dietary variables 82 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org moderate ethanol consumption, high consumption of each cereal, fruit, and vegetable and legumes, low consumption of meat and of milk/dairy products. *negative association with serum cholesterol and plasma carotene and mortality 1.0(.3), rr=.24(.07-1.13); total energy=8.6(.3) and 9.1(.4), rr=na. rate ratio (95%ci) of diet score (1 unit) as predictor of survival time= .79(.64-.98). mean (sd) serum levels and rate ratio (95%ci) with each variable as a predictor of survival time: total serum cholesterol: low diet score=6.4(1.3), high diet score=6.7(1.2), p=.06, deceased=6.1(1.2), survivors=6.7(1.2), rr=.96(.94-.99); carotene: low diet score=.5(.4), high diet score=.7(.5), p=.00, deceased=.5(.7), surviving=.7(.5), rr=.48(.34.70) huijbregt s et al., 1997 a prospective analysis of men from finland, italy and the netherlands examined dietary recommendation s from the who and the association with all-cause mortality. *3,045 men, mean baseline age 5860yo *20y follow-up *diet history and food records assessed dietary intake *diets scored based on adherence to the who guidelines for prevention of chronic disease, each component being assigned 1 point (high score=high adherence and good diet), including: saturated fat, pufa, protein, complex carbohydrates, fiber, f&v, pulses/nuts/seeds, monoand disaccharides, and cholesterol *subjects divided into low, medium and high adherence *death certificates and/or medical and hospital records confirmed death *the healthy diet indicator was inversely associated with mortality *positive relationship between the healthy diet indicator and alcohol intake (r=.42, p=.0001). *stronger association between healthy diet indicator and cardiovascular disease and cancer related deaths specifically *absolute diet was lowest in italy and highest in finland *men with the healthiest diets in finland had higher death rates than italian men with less healthful diets *mortality was lowest in those following the who diet most closely rr (95%ci) of all-cause mortality associated with who diet adherence in the pooled population, fully adjusted model: low=1(reference), medium=.99(.87-1.11), high=.87(.77-.98), p for trend=.03. rr (95%ci) of all-cause mortality associated with who diet adherence in finland, fully adjusted model: low=1, medium=.97(.831.12), high=.90(.73-1.10), p for trend=.31. rr (95%ci) of all-cause mortality associated with who diet adherence in the netherlands, fully adjusted model: low=1, medium=.91(.72-1.16), high=.75(.53-1.05), p for trend=.09. rr (95%ci) of all-cause mortality associated with who diet adherence in italy, fully adjusted model: low=1, medium=1.04(.86-1.26), high=.89(.721.09), p for trend=.23 age, smoking, alcohol jacobs et al., 1999 a prospective study examined whole vs. refined grain intake and *34,333 women, mean baseline age 61.5yo *9y follow-up *ffq assessed dietary intake *average weekly intake of 11 servings of whole grains and 15 servings of refined grains hrr (95%ci) of whole grains and cause of death by quintile, fully adjusted (q1 is reference): total mortality: q2=.95(.85-1.06), q3=.87(.78-.98), q4=.81(.72-.91), q5=.86(.76age, energy intake, education, marital status, high blood 83 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org association with all-cause and cause-specific mortality. *questionnaires assessed lifestyle and socio-demographic info *grain intakes were divided into quintiles ranging from 0 to 3-4 servings per day *dark breads and breakfast cereals contributed the most to whole grains *sweets and white bread contributed the most to refined grain intake *daily consumption of whole grains was associated with higher socioeconomic status, thinness, lower presence of cancer, chd, htn and dm at baseline, and more positive health behaviors *higher level of whole grain consumption was associated with fewer refined grains, red meats, and total and saturated fat intakes *whole grain intake negatively associated with overall risk of death *refined grain intake positively associated with death *consumption of at least 1 serving/d of whole grains significantly reduced risk of death .97), p for trend=.005; all cancer: q2=.85(.721.0), q3=.84(.71-.99), q4=.83(.70-.99), q5=.89(.75-1.05), p for trend=.34; all cardiovascular disease: q2=1.01(.84-1.21), q3=.85(.70-1.04), q4=.78(.63-.97), q5=.82(.661.01): all non-cancer/non-cvd: q2=1.07(.851.34), q3=.96(.75-1.23), q4=.81(.62-1.05), q5=.86(.67-1.12), p for trend=.09. hrr (95%ci) of refined grains and cause of death by quintile, fully adjusted (q1 is reference): total mortality: q2=1.07(.95-1.21), q3=1.04(.92-1.18), q4=1.09(.97-1.24), q5=1.16(1.01-1.33), p for trend=.04: nonmalignant respiratory disease: q2=.72(.44-1.17), q3=.86(.53-1.39), q4=1.21(.78-1.88), q5=1.28(.80-2.03), p for trend=.05 pressure, dm, heart disease, cancer, bmi, whr, age at first childbirth, activity, smoking, alcohol, supplement use, ert, total fat, saturated fat, f&v intake, red meat intake, and fish/seafood intake osler et al., 2001 a prospective analysis of danish adults from the monica surveys examined predefined healthy food index and a posteriori diets, and association with mortality. *5,871 adults (m=2,994, f=2,877), age 30-70yo *15y median follow-up *ffq assessed dietary intake *ht and wt measured and bmi calculated *questionnaires assessed socioeconomic and lifestyle factors * characteristics of healthy food index were assigned 1 point each for the following: not consuming lard, butter or margarine daily; consuming raw or boiled *4-point healthy food index scoring was not associated with mortality in fully adjusted models *men scoring only 1 point (least healthful) appeared to have the lowest risk of mortality *prudent dietary pattern was inversely associated with both mortality and cardiovascular disease in women *women in the highest quartile had 54% lower mortality hrre (95%ci) for healthy food index: men fully adjusted=.95(.86-1.05); women fully adjusted=.96(.85-1.09). hrre (95%ci) for prudent diet: men fully adjusted=.84(.75-.93); women fully adjusted=.74(.64-.85). hrre for western diet (95%ci): men fully adjusted=1.01(.90-1.12); women fully adjusted=.91(.80-1.03). hrre based on categories (95%ci) healthy food index 3+4 point: men fully adjusted=.82(.58-1.14); women fully adjusted=.82(.54-1.25). hrre based on categories (95%ci) prudent diet smoking, activity, alcohol, education, bmi and bmi^2 84 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org vegetables at least 1x/d; consuming coarse white or coarse rye bread at least 1x/d; consuming fruit at least 1x/d *dietary intake separated into 2 different patterns: prudent (frequent intake of whole-meal bread, pasta, rice, oatmeal, f&v, and fish) and western (frequent intake of sausages, meat, potatoes, butter and white bread) compared to the lowest (reference) quartile. *men in the highest quartile for prudent diet had a 30% reduced mortality risk compared to the lowest quartile *typical danish diet (characterized by the western pattern) was not associated with mortality 4th quartile: men fully adjusted=.70(.49-1.0); women fully adjusted=.46(.30-.72) steffen et al., 2003 a prospective analysis from the aric study examined whole and refined grain and f&v consumption and the associations with all-cause mortality and cad risk. *11,940 adults, age 45-64 yo *11y follow up *ffq assessed dietary intake * ischemic stroke, cad and allcause mortality assessed via medical records, hospital records, and relatives of subjects *refined and whole grain and f&v intakes were divided into quintiles *median intakes of whole and refined grains were 1serving/d and 2 servings/d, respectively *those in the highest quintile for whole-grain consumption had 23% lower risk of all-cause mortality than those in the lowest quintile *fruit and vegetable consumption was inversely related to total mortality in fully adjusted models *intake of whole-grains and f&v were inversely associated with total mortality *whole-grains were inversely associated with cad *incidence of ischemic stroke was not affected by intake of either grain type or f&v hrr for whole grains and death, model 1 (95%ci, p for trend=.001), q1=reference: q2=.84(.69-1.01), q3=.66(.54-.81), q4=.63(.51.78), q5=.52(.41-.65). hrr for whole grains and death, fully adjusted (95%ci, p for trend=.02): q2=.96(.79-1.17), q3=.80(.65-.99), q4=.87(.70-1.08), q5=.77(.61-.97). hrr for whole grains and incident cad, model 1 (95%ci, p for trend=.001): q2=.71(.55-.91), q3=.80(.63-1.02), q4=.56(.43-.73), q5=.52(.39.69). hrr for whole grains and incident cad, fully adjusted (95%ci, p for trend=.05): q2=.76(.58-.99), q3=.93(.72-1.21), q4=.73(.55-.98), q5=.72(.53-.97). hrr for refined grains and death, model 1 (95%ci, p for trend=.02): q2=.96(.76-1.22), q3=1.08(.851.35), q4=1.07(.85-1.36), q5=1.34(1.04-1.72). hrr for refined grains and death, fully adjusted (95%ci, p for trend=.62): q2=.96(.75-1.23), q3=1.03(.81-1.31), q4=.97(.76-1.23), q5=1.08(.83-1.40). hrr for refined grain and incident cad, model 1 (95%ci, p for trend=.001): q2=.92(.67-1.27), q3=1.25(.92-1.69), q4=1.53(1.13-2.06), q5=1.54(1.1-2.15). hrr for refined grains and incident cad, fully adjusted (95%ci, p model 1: age at baseline, race, gender, and energy intake. fully adjusted: model 1 covariates plus education, smoking, packyears of smoking, activity level, alcohol, hormone replacement therapy in women, bmi, whr, sbp and use of anti-htn meds (further adjusted for hdl and ldl in incident cad only) 85 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org for trend=.11): q2=.91(.65-1.27), q3=1.14(.831.56), q4=1.28(.93-1.75), q5=1.17(.82-1.66). hrr for f&v intake and death, model 1 (95%ci, p for trend=.001): q2=.97(.80-1.19), q3=.76(.62-.94), q4=.64(.51-.80), q5=.53(.42.68). hrr for f&v intake and death, fully adjusted (95%ci, p for trend=.02): q2=1.08(.88-1.33), q3=.94(.75-1.17), q4=.87(.68-1.10), q5=.78(.61-1.01) genkinge r et al., 2004 a prospective analysis from the odyssey cohort examined fruit, vegetable and antioxidant intake and the association with all-cause, cardiovascular disease, and cancer-related deaths. *6,151 adults (m=2276, f=3875), mean age range 52.2-59.0 *ffq assessed dietary intake * baseline questionnaires included demographics and medical history *ht, wt, and plasma cholesterol measured at baseline *vital status ascertained based on maryland state death certificates *subjects divided into quintiles based on intake *dietary constituents were further assessed by comparing the top 4 quartiles with the bottom quartile *further analysis was completed to determine if adherence to the 5a-day f&v guidelines was protective against all-cause, cancer and cvd deaths *median f&v intake was 2.3 servings/d *subjects in the top fifth for each of f&v, cruciferous vegetables, and energy-adjusted beta-carotene had lower risk of all-cause mortality than those in the respective lowest quartiles *risk of death from cancer decreased as total f&v intake increased *risk of death from cvd decreased slightly for those in the top quartile of both total f&v and cruciferous vegetable intakes, compared with the lowest quartiles *when comparing q1 with q2-q5, a protective effect existed in allcause mortality from intake of cruciferous vegetables, for cancer from intake total f&v and cruciferous vegetables *9% of subjects reported adherence to the 5-a-day guidelines hr (95%ci) for quartile 5 intake and allcause mortality (q1=reference): total f&v=.63(.51-.78), p for trend=.0004; cruciferous vegetables=.78(.64-.96), p for trend=.13); .beta-carotene=.81(.66-1.00), p for trend=.19. hr (95%ci) for quartile 5 intake and cancer mortality: total f&v=.65(.45-.93), p for trend=.08. hr (95%ci) for quartile 5 intake and cvd mortality: total f&v=.76(.541.06), p for trend=.15; cruciferous vegetables=.89(.64-1.25), p for trend=.51. hr (95%ci) of dietary constituents and death when comparing q1 with q2-5: cruciferous vegetables and all-cause mortality=.32(.13.80); f&v and cancer=.85(.73-.99); cruciferous vegetables and cancer=.25(.05-1.14). hr(95%ci) of adherence to 5-a-day guidelines and death: all-cause mortality=.80(.64-1.0); cancer=.77(.51-1.15) f&v and cruciferous vegetables adjusted for age, smoking, bmi, cholesterol, and energy. antioxidants further adjusted for energy intake 86 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org *risk was lower for all-cause and cancer deaths with adherence to the 5-a-day guidelines *cvd death was not associated with adherence to the 5-a-day guideline *beta-carotene was associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality kant et al., 2004 a prospective analysis of us adults examined various dietary patterns with allcause mortality. *10,084 adults (m=4146, f=5938), mean age 60yo *5.9y median follow-up *ffq assessed dietary intake and dietary behaviors *national death index was used to assess mortality and/or disease state at follow up *dietary patterns assessed included the recommended foods and behaviors score (rfbs, included following guidelines for recommended intake such as f&v, whole grains, low/non fat dairy, etc.…), factor-analyzed patterns (1st factor was fruit-veg-whole grain (fvg), 2nd factor was ethnic pattern including foods such as beans/tortillas, 3rd factor was lowfat including skim milk and lowfat behaviors) and clusteranalyzed patterns (including 1. less likely to eat whole grain, low/non fat dairy, or remove fat from meat and poultry, 2. less likely to mention most fruits and vegetables, 3. less likely to mention high-fiber cereal and *high rfbs and fvg scores were related to higher energy, micronutrient and fiber intakes and lower saturated and total fat *mean total and saturated fats were lower and micronutrients higher in the 4th cluster *men displayed an inverse trend for risk of all-cause mortality associated with rfbs and fvg scores in fully-adjusted models *lower mortality risk in the 4th cluster compared to the 1st (reference) in fully adjusted models rr of all-cause mortality associated with dietary patterns in men, fully adjusted, (95%ci), level 1 for all categories = reference: rfbs q2=.88(.72-1.08), q3=.84(.68-1.03), q4=.72(.56-.92), p for trend=.001; fvg q2=.92(.74-1.13), fvg q3=.84(.68-1.06), fvg q4=.74(.57-.95), p for trend=.002; cluster 2=.94(.76-1.16), cluster 3=.87(.71-1.07), cluster 4=.82(.66-1.01). rr of all-cause mortality associated with dietary patterns in women, fully adjusted, (95%ci): rfbs q2=.95(.76-1.18), q3=.80(.64-1.02), q4=.80(.61-1.04), p for trend=.04; fvg q2=.89(.72-1.08), fvg q3=.81(.64-1.02), fvg q4=.87(.67-1.11), p for trend=.09; cluster 2=.93(.75-1.16), cluster 3=.93(.74-1.17), cluster 4=.88(.72-1. 09) year of survey (1987 or 1992), race/ethnicity, education, bmi, smoking, supplement use, alcohol use, total energy intake 87 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org most fruits, and 4. highest proportion reporting weekly use of most items related to rfbs) *rfbs and fvg factor diets were analyzed based on quartiles (rfbs q1=0-8pts, q2=9-11pts, q3=1214pts, q4>15pts) knoops et al., 2006 a prospective analysis from the hale project examined association between three different dietary scores and allcause mortality. *3,093 adults (m=2044, f=1049), age 70-90yo *10y follow-up *food records and oral interview assessed dietary intake *wt and ht measured *bmi calculated *questionnaires assessed lifestyle *subjects divided into northern and southern european countries * a modified mds ranging from 0 (poor quality diet) to 9 (high quality) assessed monoto saturated-fat ratio, legumes/nuts/seeds, cereals, fruit, vegetables and potatoes, alcohol, meat and poultry, dairy, and fish. * the modified mdi measured mediterranean style diet (bread, cereal, legumes, potatoes, fruit and vegetables, fish, monounsaturated fats, and red wine) and non-mediterranean (milk, cheese, eggs, saturated fats, sweets, meat and sugar) *the hdi measured adherence to guidelines for prevention of chronic disease as defined by the who, with score ranges from 0-9 *all three diet scores were significantly related to death *when separated for region, mds was the only diet score significantly associated with mortality in both regions *mai both with and without alcohol was significantly inversely associated with mortality in northern europe *saturated fat intake was positively associated with mortality *intake of fish, fruit, fiber, cereals, alcohol and the mediterranean components of the mai were significantly associated with survival *fiber and f&v intakes in hdi were inversely associated with mortality hr of diet scores for all subjects, northern european subjects, and southern european subjects, respectively (hr(95%ci)): mds=.82(.75-.91), .83(.74-.93), .88(.78-.98); mds without alcohol=.78(.71-.87), .89(.771.02), .92(.84-1.02); mai=.83(.75-.92), .79(.74.85), .96(.86-1.08); mdi without alcohol=.87(.79-.97), .83(.74-.92), .97(.86-1.10); hdi=.89(.81-.98), .93(.85-1.02), .93(.84-1.02). hr(95%ci) for various components of each diet score in all subjects, northern subjects, and southern subjects, respectively: mds fruit=.86(.78-.94), .98(.89-1.08), .87(.77-.99); mds fish=.89(.82-.97), .89(.75-1.04), .88(.78.99). mds grains (aka: cereal)=.84(.77-.92), .90(.84-.97), 1.07(.92-1.25); mds alcohol=.84(.77-.92), .82(.67-.99), .77(.64-.94); mai mediterranean components=.86(.79.93), .95(.85-1.07), .83(.73-.94); hdi saturated fat=1.25(1.1-1.41), .98(.61-1.56), 1.19(.95-1.48); hdi fiber=.90(.81-.99), .86(.75-.99), .93(.831.05); hdi f&v/potatoes=.88(.78-.99), .89(.761.03), .84(.68-1.05) gender, baseline age, smoking, activity, bmi, education, prevalence of mi, stroke, diabetes and cancer 88 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org *median score for each assessment was calculated, with median or higher indicating a healthy diet. lagiou et al., 2006 a prospective analysis of women from sweden examined a mediterranean diet pattern with all-cause and cancer mortality. *42,237 women, age 30-49yo *12y follow-up *ffq assessed dietary intake * mediterranean diet score assigned based on food groups, and ranging from 0 (low adherence) to 9 points (high adherence) *questionnaires included lifestyle and anthropometrics (ht, wt, bmi) *register of total population records used to account for deaths *analysis completed for all women combined, and also for those <40yo and for those 40+yo at baseline *total and cancer mortality were negatively associated with mds, but the results lacked significance in the fully adjusted model *in women aged 30-39, diet score was not associated with either cancer or total mortality *in women 40+yo at baseline, an increased mds was associated with reduction in total and cancer mortality mortality ratio (95%ci) for total mortality and cancer mortality, respectively (trend per 2pt increase in score), fully adjusted: .93(.831.03), p for trend=.180, and .89 (.77-1.04), p for trend=.200. total mortality based on score (total deaths/participants, mortality ratio (95%ci)) in fully adjusted model: 0-3 points= 217/14328, 1 (reference); 4-5 points= 245/18456, .93(.78-1.13); 6-9 points=110/9453, .89(.77-1.04). cancer mortality based on score (total deaths/participants, mortality ratio(95%ci)): 0-3 points=106/14328, 1 (reference); 4-5 points=120/18456, .91(.691.18); 6-9 points=54/9453, .80(.57-1.13) age, ht, bmi, smoking status, activity level, education, energy intake, potato intake, egg intake, pufa intake, sweets intake, and nonalcoholic beverage intake agudo et al., 2007 a prospective analysis of adults from the epicspain cohort examined fruit, vegetable, and dietary antioxidant intake and total mortality. *41,358 adults (m=15592, f=25766), mean age 49.3yo *6.5y follow-up *dietary history assessed intake *interviews included lifestyle information, ht and wt measurements, and bmi calculations *vital stats were based on national database at the end of the follow up *plant foods were divided into 4 groups: legumes, potatoes and other tubers, fruit and vegetables. total vegetables were further classified into 5 subgroups: fruiting vegetables, leafy *average intake of vegetables was approximately 250g and fruit was more than 300g/d *intake of fruiting and root vegetables and fresh fruit were inversely related to mortality *total vegetable consumption as a continuous variable was associated with significant reduction in mortality *neither potatoes nor legumes were associated with mortality *vitamin e, zeaxanthin, and lutein were not associated with mortality *vitamin c , pro-vitamin a carotenoids ( alphaand betacarotene and beta-cryptoxanthin), hr (95%ci) for total vegetables and mortality by quartile (q1=reference for all categories) and continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2=.75(.59-.96), q3=.81(.64-1.03), q4=.84(.661.06), p for trend=.23, hr-c=.91(.83-.99). hr (95%ci) for fruiting vegetables and mortality by quartile and continuous (hr-c, 95%i): q2=.93(.74-1.17), q3=.78(.61-.99), q4=.77(.60-.98), p for trend=.015, hrc=.93(.87-.98). hr (95%ci) for root vegetables and mortality by quartile and continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2=.82(.65-1.1), q3=.80(.63-1.0), q4=.72(.56-.91), p for trend=.006, hr-c=.94(.89-1.0). hr (95%ci) for total fruit and mortality by quartile and continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2=.83(.66-1.05), q3=.74(.58-.94), q4=.82(.64-1.04), p for age, sex, education, activity, smoking, bmi, alcohol, and total energy intake 89 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org vegetables, root vegetables, cabbage family, and onion and garlic *the total fruit group included seeds, nuts and olives *antioxidant content for foods was obtained from a database, including vitamins c & e, beta and alpha-carotene, lycopene, lutein, beta-cryptoxanthin, zeaxanthin, and total antioxidant capacity (tac) *all variables were classified by quartile of intake lycopene and total carotenoids were inversely related to risk of death *all four measures of tac from plant foods were associated with increased survival rates *lycopene had a linear relationship with mortality, *mortality was reduced as fresh fruit and vegetable intake was increased trend=.061, hr-c=.96(.92-1.0). hr (95%ci) for fresh fruit and mortality by quartile and continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2=.87(.69-1.09), q3=.77(.60-.97), q4=.79(.62-1.0), p for trend=.029, hr-c=.96(.93-1.0). hr (95%ci) for vitamin c and mortality by quartile and for continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2=.72(.57.91), q3=.65(.51-.83), q4=.74(.58-.94), p for trend=.009, hr-c=.87(.78-.96). hr (95%ci) for beta-carotene and mortality by quartile and for continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2=.76(.60-.96), q3=.72(.56-.92), q4=.74(.58.95), p for trend=.022, hr-c=.89(.80-.98). hr (95%ci) for alpha-carotene and mortality by quartile and for continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2= .86(.68-1.08), q3=.84(.67-1.06), q4=.75(.59-.96), p for trend=.023, hrc=.95(.91-1.0). hr (95%ci) for betacryptoxanthin and mortality by quartile and for continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2= .73(.57.92), q3=.77(.61-.98), q4=.75(.59-.95), p for trend=.034, hr-c=.94(.90-.99). hr (95%ci) for lycopene and mortality by quartile and for continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2= .79(.63.99), q3=.76(.60-.96), q4=.65(.51-.84), p for trend=.001, hr-c=.93(.89-.97). hr (95%ci) for total carotenoids and mortality by quartile and for continuous (hr-c, 95%ci): q2=.74(.59-.93), q3=.70(.55-.89), q4=.69(.55.88), p for trend=.003, hr-c=.85(.76-.94). hr(95%ci) for lycopene and association with mortality by quartile and for continuous models, reduced model analysis: q2=.82(.65-1.03), q3=.81(.64-1.02), q4=.70(.54-.91), p for trend=.005, hrc=.95(.90-.99) 90 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org bamia et al., 2007 a prospective analysis of european adults from the epicelderly study examined an a posteriori dietary pattern that was primarily plantbased, and its association to allcause mortality *74,607 adults, 60+yo *ffq assessed dietary intake *ht, wt, and waist and hip circumference were measured * follow-up with subjects and with the population mortality registries confirmed vital status *plant-based diet included positive scoring of vegetables and vegetable oils, pasta/rice/other grains, fruit, and legumes while non-alcoholic beverages, potatoes, and margarine resulted in negative scores *subjects were divided into tertiles according to plant-based diet scores, with tertile 1 being the least plant-based and tertile 3 being the most plant-based *relationships between diet and mortality were assessed for all countries and also within country *deaths decreased as tertile scores increased * the plant-based diet was associated with reduced overall mortality *subjects in the third tertile had an 11% reduced rate and those in the second had a 10% reduced rate of mortality, compared to those in the lowest tertile *most countries had similar results, but this association between plant-based diet and mortality was not present in the uk or in germany, where a high proportion of subjects fell into the second tertile mortality ratio (95%ci) over all countries: fixed effects 2nd tertile=.93(.86-1.0); fixed effects 3rd tertile=.92(.79-1.06); fixed effect per 1sd increment=.90(.85-.96). random effects 2nd tertile=.90(.84-.98); random effects 3rd tertile=.89(.79-.99); random effects per 1sd increment=.86(.77-.95); p-value for heterogeneity 2nd tertile=.502; p-value 3rd tertile=.124; p-value 1sd=.06 age, gender, selfreported diabetes status, education, activity level, smoking, whr, bmi and total energy intake anderson et al., 2011 a prospective analysis of subjects from the health, aging and body composition study examined dietary patterns and all-cause mortality. *2,582 adults, 70-79yo *10y follow-up *ffq assessed dietary intake *interviews included behavior, health status, socio-demographics, body composition, weight-related health conditions and physical function at baseline and at followups *lab assessments throughout the 10y period included fasting glucose and insulin, serum folate, homocysteine, vitamin b-12, and holotranscobalamin (a marker of b-12), and antioxidant status (vit *the hf group had higher hei and more years of healthy life than the other 5 groups *hf had the lowest mortality rate (21%), with significant differences between both the hfdp (34%) and sd (32%) after all adjustments *risk of mortality between hf and mffa was significant when adjusted only for gender, age and race fully adjusted mortality risk (95%ci): hf=1.0; hfdp=1.4 (1.04-1.88); mffa=1.21(.92-1.60); bc=1.16(.86-1.56); rg=1.08(.80-1.45); sd=1.37 (1.02-1.86). partially adjusted mortality risk (95%ci): hf=1; hfdp=1.59(1.19-2.14); mffa=1.39 (1.06-.182); bc=1.25(.93-1.69); rg=1.32(.991.76); sd=1.52(1.13-2.04) fully adjusted: gender, age, race, clinical site, education level, physical activity level, smoking, and total energy intake. partially adjusted model: gender, age and race only 91 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org c, beta-carotene, and alphatocopherol) *general health was reported every 6 months via interview and healthy years of life were calculated from baseline through year 9 *subjects were divided into 1 of 6 dietary patterns(healthy foods (hf), high-fat dairy products (hfdp), meat, fried foods and alcohol (mffa), breakfast cereal (bc), refined grains (rg), and sweets and desserts (sd) *survival rates, qol and nutrition status were assessed based on dietary patterns *hei was assigned to each subject note: who=world health organization, hdl=high density lipoprotein, pufa=poly-unsaturated fatty acid, f&v=fruits and vegetables, sd=standard deviation, rr=relative risk, monica=monitoring of trends and determinants in cardiovascular disease, seneca=survey in europe on nutrition and the elderly; a concerted action, ht=height, wt=weight, bmi=body mass index, hrr=hazard rate ratio, hrre=hazard rate ratio estimates, ci=confidence interval, nhs=nurses health study, chd=coronary heart disease, cvd=cardiovascular disease, mi=myocardial infarction, htn=hypertension, aric= atherosclerosis risk in communities, whr=waist-hip-ratio, sbp=systolic blood pressure, hdl=high-density lipoprotein, ldl=low-density lipoprotein, cad=coronary artery disease, hr=hazard ratio, hdi=healthy diet indicator, mdi= mediterranean adequacy index, mds=mediterranean diet score, hale=health aging, a longitudinal study in europe, epic=european prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition, hei=healthy eating index, qol=quality of life table e – spiritual wellness: the effect of faith-based healthy lifestyle interventions on dietary intake in older adults. author & year objective design results statistics confounders adjusted for resnicow et al., 2004 body & soul a randomized controlled trial examining f&v intake change from baseline to 6mo follow-up in *854 adults, mean age 51yo *15 congregations (8 intervention, 7 control) *6mo church-wide intervention plus optional individual counseling available *similar retention rates between intervention (85%) and control (83%) churches. *significant increased intake of f&v in intervention vs. control group subjects effect size of significant post-test difference between intervention and control subjects: 2item f&v measure=.39; 17-item f&v intake=.18; 1-item fruit intake=.46; 1-item vegetable intake=.18; % energy from fat=.26; autonomous motivation=.21; controlled baseline value, age, gender, education, income and marital status 92 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org a faith-based dietary intervention. *ffq and other questionnaires assessed diet, motivation, and program satisfaction *improved post-test fat intake, autonomous motivation for f&v intake, controlled response for f&v intake, self-efficacy of f&v intake, and social support to eat more f&v response=.33; self-efficacy=.22; social support=.39 campbell et al., 2007 further analysis of body & soul results to determine effectiveness of each program component. *526 adults, mean age 50.6, from the body & soul intervention *questionnaires for attendance, exposure to various program components, and interaction with volunteers *increased produce consumption and decreased fat intake were associated with the educational materials and attending the kickoff event *attendance at other events was related to higher f&v intake *mi calls alone had no positive impact on diet, but higher f&v intake for those who received mi and spoke as much or more than the advisor *better scores on low-fat food preparation in those who did not receive mi *improvements in both f&v intake and in social support were related to overall perceived quality of mi advisor's efforts difference in produce intake in relation to education materials and kick-off attendance =0.92, p-value = .008 and =0.82, p-value=.002, respectively; difference in fat intake in relation to education materials and kick-off attendance = -2.20, p-value=.002 and = -0.65, p-value=.13, respectively. difference in produce intake as related to attending project events aside from kick-off = .58, pvalue-.004 and 1.02, p-value-.045 for the 2item and 17-item measures, respectively. self-efficacy difference associated with educational materials and attending project events/classes = 0.24, p-value=.012 and =0.13, p-value=0.27, respectively. low-fat food preparations differences related to not receiving mi calls = -0.07, p-value=.04 age and gender bopp et al., 2009 a nested quasiexperimental design (8 steps to fitness), examining physical activity, psychological and health outcomes, and diet in a faithbased intervention. *146 adults (intervention=72, controls=74) , mean age 52 years *8 week non-randomized intervention (weekly meetings) *health and demographics assessment, height, weight, bmi, waist, hip, whr, fasting blood glucose, and resting bp *questionnaires to assess social support, self-efficacy, enjoyment, depression, activity level, dietary fat and cholesterol *attrition rate: control group: 58% (controls) and 36% (intervention) *6-month follow up: greater improvements in the intervention group than the control group for depression, enjoyment of physical activity, hip circumference and sbp *dietary habits were not positively impacted effect size for social support from church members at 6mos =0.59, for hip circumference and systolic blood pressure from baseline to 6mos = -0.27 and -0.40, respectively, and for physical activity from baseline to 6mos = 0.58 for health: age and education; psychosocial outcomes: age, bmi, education; physical activity: age, bmi, education level; and diet: age, bmi, education 93 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org baruth et al., 2011 a cross-sectional analysis of data from the faith, activity, and nutrition (fan) intervention, examining church support and the effects on healthy eating behaviors. *see wilcox, 2013 for intervention details *analysis: questionnaires assessed 3 components of perceived church support: written informational support, spoken support, and instrumental support *total church support (all 3 components) significantly associated with improved diet, including more fruits, vegetables and fiber and less fat intake *improved dietary behaviors positively associated with written information *perceived spoken support associated with more fruit, vegetable and fiber but no impact on dietary fat *instrumental support not associated with change in f&v intake total church support and dietary practices = 0.05 (p-value=.002), written information and dietary practices = .05 (p=.001), spoken support and dietary practices = .003 (p=.004), and instrumental support and dietary practices =.01 (p=.95). statistical significance was accepted at p<0.05 gender, education level, health status, age and bmi. wilcox et al., 2013 a randomized controlled trial using a communitybased participatory approach for physical activity and diet. *1,257 adults, mean age 54yo *15-month rct (organizational and environmental changes) *control: same intervention, 15months later *baseline and 15-month follow-up measurements: height, weight, bp, bmi, and self-reported information on physical activity, f&v intake, fat and fiber related behaviors, and training evaluations *62% of all subjects completed the program *f&v consumption was higher in intervention compared to control subjects *no differences in any other variables fruit and vegetable intake for control (mean=3.25 (se=0.20) vs. intervention (mean=3.89 (se=0.17), d=0.17, f=5.17, pvalue=0.03 pre-intervention values of outcomes of interest, church clustering or church congregation, church wave and size, and participant age, education level and gender baruth et al., 2013 statistical analysis of fan pre/post test results evaluated how many subjects improved physical activity *360 participants from fan intervention (see wilcox, 2013) * participants successfully changing each individual behavior, total number of behaviors changed, each combination of behavior changes, and potential relationship between behavior changes *behavior changes in order from most common to least common: decreased fat-related behaviors (43%), improved fiber-related behaviors (42%), increased physical activity (36%) and increased f&v intake (33%). *81% of participants changed at least one of the four behaviors. see outcomes and percentages in results section. church clustering, age, gender, education level, church wave, and church size 94 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org and diet behaviors. *related behaviors included fat and fiber behaviors, increased activity and increased produce consumption, and improved fatrelated behaviors and improve fiber-related behaviors. thomson et al., 2014 analysis of results from the delta body & soul faith-based healthy lifestyle intervention examined psychosocial constructs and associations with change in diet and activity after the intervention *403 adults, mean age 50 years *6-month quasi-experimental design (intervention: monthly sessions plus church-wide changes. control: bi-monthly newsletters) *subjects divided into control (n=174), lai, (n=89), and hai (n=77). * questionnaires for sociodemographics, lifestyle, activity level, and motivation *ffq to assess diet, and hei-2005 score calculated accordingly *height, weight, bmi *improved diet quality on all six components of hei-2005 *improved self-efficacy for diet in hai subjects *no significant change in diet overall *increased social support for sugary drinks and whole grains in lai subjects *increased fruit intake and social support for sugary drinks in control subjects *social support and decisional balance (pro) were positive predictors of diet quality change for sofaas and total vegetable intake change in diet (mean(sd)), hei-2005 total fruit: control=.3(1.8); lai=.4(1.7); hai=.7(1.6), p=ns. change in diet, hei-2005 sofaas: control=3.4(9.8); lai=-.7(5.1); hai=2.1(4.1), p=.026. change in diet, hei2005 total score: control=3.4(9.6); lai=.2(9.7); hai=6.1(8.8), p=.003. psychosocial changes, ss for sugarsweetened drinks: control=-.3(3.4); lai=.12(3.4); hai=.7(3.6), p=.003. dietary changes predicted by psychosocial constructs (b(sem)), hei-2005: ss total vegetables=.03(.016); db sofaas=.42(.12); ss total score=.29(.121). dietary change in ffq (servings) predicted by psychosocial constructs (b(sem)): ss total vegetables=.03(.010); db (pro) whole grains=.03(.014); se sugary drinks=-.05(.016); se total energy=-85.2(25.64) age, gender, employment status, smoking status, vehicle ownership, and corresponding baseline psychosocial, diet or activity outcome value and bmi note: bp=blood pressure, whr=waist-hip-ratio, bmi=body mass index, sbp=systolic blood pressure, dbp=diastolic blood pressure, hei-2005=healthy eating index 2005, ffq=food frequency questionnaire, nci=national cancer institute, tsrq=treatment self regulation questionnaire, f&v=fruit and vegetable, ancova= analysis of covariance, or=odds ratio, dash=dietary approaches to stop hypertension, sofaas=solid fats and added sugars, mi=motivational interview, rct=randomized controlled trial, fan=faith, activity and nutrition, db=decisional balance, ss=social support, , lai=low-attendance intervention, hai=high-attendance intervention, hei=healthy eating index, sem=standard error of the mean, se=self efficacy, sd=standard deviation, se=standard error table f – social wellness: the effects of social interactions on dietary intake in older adults author & year objective design results statistics confounders adjusted for de castro, 1994 a cross-sectional analysis *515 adults (m=276, f=239), mean age 41.9yo (range 29-55yo) *meals eaten alone were smallest and shortest duration mean meal size (kcal) related to companion type: spouse f(2, 590)=145.60, family f(2, none provided 95 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org examined the relationship between dietary intake and presence of different dining companions. *7d food diary assessed intake, dining companions, meal duration, time of day, and hunger ratings *ht and wt measured and bmi calculated, and seven-day food diary was acquired *data was broken down into 5 companion types: family, friend, spouse, coworker, and other *meals eaten with spouse, family or friends were significantly larger than with other companions *meals eaten with coworkers were smaller than with other dining companions *meal size did not change for male subjects dining with other men *meal size increased for female subjects dining with men *significant positive correlation between total number of companions present at a meal and the amount of calories consumed *meals with family and spouse were larger and eaten more quickly while *meals with friends were large and eaten more slowly 726)=99.05, friend f(2, 646)=114.47, coworker f(2, 538)=101.88, others f(2, 156)=19.96. meal size of meals eaten with any other companion type vs. eaten alone, respectively: spouse t(295)=19.96 vs. 8.81, family t(363)=12.26 vs. 12.83, friend t(323)=13.33 vs. 13.54, coworker t(269)=6.18 vs. 18.13, and others t(78)=3.71 vs. 8.95. females eating with males compared to females eating with other females: t(162)=2.92 payette et al., 1995 an observational study of canadian adults examined predictors of dietary intakes in a population dependent on others for adls and often diagnosed with at least one chronic disease. *145 adults, (m=42, f=103), mean age 78.8yo *three separate 24h dietary recalls assessed dietary intake *structured interview for diet habits, social network, recent stressful events, sociodemographics, health history, current health and medications, lifestyle, and self-reported weight conducted *ht and wt measured and bmi calculated *over half of subjects reported feeling lonely most of the time *very few subjects participated in clubs or senior centers *overall saturated fat intake was high (up to 13% of total energy) *pufa intake was low *only 5 subjects total reported participating in communal meals *stressful events were associated with decreased protein intake in men *having friends was associated with increased total energy intake in all subjects frequency of social contacts in men and women, respectively (%): >1x/wk=83 and 80; 1x/wk=10 and 11; <1x/month=7 and 10. subjects reporting having friends, men and women respectively (%): 74 and 82. company at mealtime and in men and women, respectively (%):<5x/wk =69 and 51; >5x/wk=31 and 49. stress level as predictor of protein intake (estimated regression coefficient (se): -3.29(1.61), p<.05. gender, food prep/purchase/co nsumption patterns de castro, 2002 an observational study examined the effects of *762 adults (m=348, f=414), 2072yo *mean number of people present at meals was lowest for elderly and highest for middle-aged none provided – see illustrations in original source for visual interpretation of study results. age 96 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org various nonphysiological factors on dietary intake based on age. *subjects divided based on age into young adults (20-34yo, n=325), middle-aged (35-49yo, n=292), older adults (50-64yo, n=99), and elderly (65+ yo, n=46) *7d food diary assessed intake *self-reported ratings of depression, anxiety, attractiveness, hunger and thirst were recorded *socio-demographic, health, and lifestyle information were collected *three-factor eating questionnaire measured dietary restraint, hunger and disinhibition *all age groups demonstrated a significant positive correlation between meal size and number of people present *all subjects ate more food when dining at restaurants compared to at home sahyoun & zhang, 2005 a cross-sectional study of nhanes iii participants, aged 65yo or older, examined living arrangements and social contact as they relate to hei scores. *3,194 adults (m=1579, f=1615), mean age 73yo *24h recall assessed dietary intake *hei assessed caloric intake, total nutrient intake, and vitamins e, c, a, folate and carotenes *social contact (independent variable) assessed based on 5 categories: phone contact with family/friends, getting together with friends and relatives, visits with neighbors (later combined into the same category as getting together with friends/family), attendance at church/religious services, and membership/attendance at club meetings *total scores of 1 (zero to one social contact) to four (maximum number of social contacts) assigned for each category * women with fewer social contacts consumed fewer calories and had lower intakes of vitamins a and c and folate (when controlling for total caloric intake, only vitamin c maintained statistical significance) *people reporting less socializing were more likely to have lower hei scores *strong relationship between social contact and hei score even after adjusting for ethnicity and age (relationship was weaker when adjusting for smoking, poverty index, functional status, education, living arrangement, self-reported health, dental health, and caloric intake) *fruits intake and diet variety somewhat significantly associated relationship between social contact and total caloric intake in women (lsm(se)): 0-1 contacts: 1366 (86), p-value=.017; 2 contacts: 1435(38), p=.027; 3 contacts: 1437(33), p=.016; 4 contacts: 1575 (se=39), p-value=na (reference category). relationship between social contact and total caloric intake in men (lsm(se)): 0-1 contacts: 1967(81), pvalue=873; 2 contacts: 1990(46), p=.905; 3 contacts: 2004(38), p=.769; 4 contacts: 1982(62), p-value=na (reference category). relationship between social contacts and hei score in women (lsm(se)): 0-1 contact: 67.1(1.7), p-value=.037; 2 contacts: 69.7(1.0), p=.362; 3 contacts: 70.6(.7), p=.745; 4 contacts: 71.0(.7), p=na (reference category). relationship between social contacts and hei score in men (lsm(se)): 0-1 contact: 64.9(1.6), p=.154; 2 contacts: 65.1(.6), p=.032; 3 contacts: 67.1(.9), p=.438; 4 contacts: 67.8(1.1), p=na (reference category). age, race, ethnicity, smoking status, poverty income ratio, education, physical functioning, living arrangement, self-reported health condition, and dental health. total caloric intake was also considered a confounder, in addition to being an outcome variable. 97 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org with social contact when all confounders were factored in *mean energy intake increased as social contact increased in women only *living arrangement not associated with dietary intake *limited social contact significantly associated with lower hei scores and fewer calories consumed locher et al., 2005 an observational study examined the effects of cohabitation and presence of dining companions on caloric intake. *50 adults (m=18, f=32) mean age 77yo *three separate 24h dietary recalls assessed dietary intake *structured interview assessed eating behavior and social factors *more women than men lived alone (39% vs. 13.2%, respectively) *average caloric intake was 1,305 kcal/d *caloric intake was higher when meals were eaten with others (average 114kcal/meal increase) caloric intake per meal while dining alone (mean (sd)): breakfast=384.3 (195.2), lunch=342.5(243.4), dinner=363.1(185.6), snack=152.0(126.3). caloric intake per meal with others present (mean(sd)): breakfast=424.1 (180.9), lunch=440.5(220.6), dinner=454.0(241.2), snack=169.8(104.8) none cohenmansfield & jensen, 2009 an observational study examined social, temporal, environmental and situational conditions and dietary intake. *58 adults, mean age 78 to 84 years *subjects divided into 2 groups: private housing subjects (ph, n=40) and retirement community subjects (rh, n=18) *shape questionnaire administered by trained staff evaluated diet and behaviors *rh subjects had the option to dine communally for dinner *ph subjects were responsible for all their own meals *rh subjects were older and more likely to be single than ph subjects *rh subjects more likely to watch tv during breakfast and lunch, and less likely at dinner than ph subjects *ph residents socialize more at breakfast and lunch than rh *rh subjects socialize more at dinner than ph *ph subjects dined with spouses more frequently than rh *rh subjects dined with friends more than ph subjects watching tv during meals for ph and rh, respectively (%): breakfast=24 and 50, lunch=16 and 39, dinner=55 and 0. subjects socializing during meals for ph and rh, respectively (%): breakfast=10 and 0, lunch=13 and 11, dinner=29 and 72. subjects eating alone for ph and rh, respectively (%): breakfast=32 and 72, lunch=26 and 67, dinner=5 and 6. subjects eating with a spouse for ph and rh, respectively (%): breakfast=60 and 22, lunch=55 and 28, dinner=92 and 22. subjects eating with a friend(s) for ph and rh, respectively (%): breakfast=3 and 0, lunch=5 and 0, dinner=10 and 67. importance of dining companion at meal for ph and rh, respectively (mean): breakfast=2.13 and 1.86, lunch=2.36 and 1.93, dinner=2.87 and 2.57. none provided 98 diet and wellness in older adults dalton, & logomarsino www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org *dinner was rated the most important meal for all subjects conklin et al., 2014 a study of subjects from the epic uk cohort examined the association between social relationships and healthful dietary behaviors. *9,580 adults(m=4311, f=5269), mean age 62yo *ffq assessed dietary intake *health and life experiences questionnaire assessed diet and lifestyle *a higher score in variety of fruits and in variety of vegetables is associated with better health outcomes *marital status, living arrangement (shared vs. alone), friend contact and family contact were assessed in regards to fruit and vegetable consumption *men’s diets more negatively affected than women in regards to lone-living, un-partnered status and limited friend contact *widowed men and women had lower vegetable scores compared to partnered people *lone-living men had lower vegetable intake than lone-living women *un-partnered older adults with frequent friend contact had higher f&v scores than those with infrequent friend contacts *lone-living people had lower fruit and lower vegetable scores than shared living people *weekly family contact associated with the most positive association in vegetable variety in women vegetable variety in partnered men compared to married men: -2.17 unit difference, p<.001. vegetable variety in widowed women compared to partnered women: -.79 unit difference, p=.005. mean vegetable variety score in all subjects by frequency of friend contact (mean score(sd)): daily=16.7(4.1), weekly=16.5(3.9), monthly=16.2(3.9), rare/never=15.2(4.3). mean vegetable variety score in all subjects by frequency of family contact (mean score(sd)): daily=16.1(4.0), weekly=16.5(4.0), monthly=16.0(4.1), rare/never=15.6(4.1). mean fruit variety score by living arrangements (mean score(sd)): shared=7.3(2.4), alone=7.2(2.5). mean vegetable variety score by living arrangement (mean score(sd)): shared=16.4(3.9), alone=15.4(4.3). mean fruit variety score by marital status (mean score (sd)): partnered=7.3(2.4), single=6.9(2.6), widowed=7.4(2.4), divorced/separated=7.4(2.6). mean vegetable variety score by marital status (mean score (sd)): partnered=16.4(3.9), single=14.3(4.6), widowed=15.1(4.3), divorced/separated=16.4(4.1) age, education, gender (as needed), and total energy intake. sensitivity analysis also accounted for quantity of fruit or of vegetables for respective variety in diet. poor health was a confounder for women regarding daily family contact, and was adjusted based on selfreported health, or cancer, high blood pressure, or stroke. note: ht=ht, wt=wt, bmi=body mass index, pufa=poly-unsaturated fatty acids, adl=activities of daily living, se=standard error, hei= healthy eating index, nhanes=national health and nutrition examination survey, lsm=least square means, sd=standard deviation, shape= self-maintenance habits and preferences in elderly, epic uk=european prospective investigation of cancer united kingdom, ffq=food frequency questionnaire, f&v=fruits and vegetables 99 biswas-diener, r. (2011). manipulating happiness: maria montessori. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 214-225. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.4 robert biswas-diener portland state university biswasdr@pdx.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 214 article manipulating happiness: maria montessori robert biswas-diener abstract: maria montessori is best known for her legacy as an educator. she is the founder of a system of schools that has achieved worldwide success. instrumental to her teaching method is the idea of fostering engagement by offering children individual choice and harnessing intrinsic motivation. for this reason, she is nominated as a noteworthy felicitator or happiness-enabler. in this article, i discuss montessori’s life with a special emphasis on her teaching philosophy and methods. i briefly discuss psychological research as it relates to choice-related topics such as perceived personal control and autonomy. i also discuss some limitations of choice as an avenue toward happiness. keywords: montessori, education, happiness, subjective wellbeing, subjective well-being, selfdetermination theory 1. introduction imagine yourself in a different job from the one you currently have. instead of going into computers, or social sciences, or marketing, or whatever your current profession is you instead chose to go into a field that flies in the face of all convention. bullfighting, perhaps. picture what it would be like as a newly minted college graduate to tell your parents that you were going to become a bullfighter. imagine the humored and horrified reactions of your friends, the difficulties in finding a good bullfight school, and the hardship in acquiring funding to learn your new art. entering a non-traditional profession is nothing short of courageous, and certainly also calls upon strengths such as perseverance, tolerance and patience. think of the type of person who has the sense of adventure, spirit of single-minded purpose and willingness to undertake hardship that would enter such a non-traditional profession as bullfighting. maria montessori, founder of the well-known montessori system of schools, is exactly such a person. she may not have been a matador, but she chose an unusual profession in which she could reasonably expect a great deal of criticism: medicine. montessori was a professional pioneer: the first woman in italy to receive training and a degree in medicine. it was her experiences in school—including the hostile hallways of her medical academy—that gave montessori the initial insights into pedagogy, learning styles and cognitive development that would later form the seeds of her famous curriculum embodied in montessori schools. due to the worldwide proliferation of this school system, the unique methods at the heart of the so-called ‘montessori method’, and the documented success of graduates of these schools, i nominate maria montessori as an important felicitator or happiness-enabler. i will present a brief overview of montessori, the woman, as well as discuss her educational legacy. more crucially, however, i will focus on the intellectual heart of her pedagogy—free will and the intrinsic desire to grow—and link these to interdisciplinary happiness research and the topic of happiness in general. manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 215 the legacy of maria montessori is far more than it might have been given the historical time in which she lived (1870-1952). as the first woman doctor in italy she could have been confined easily to the annals of history as a landmark feminist. she could be noteworthy as a kind of medical amelia earhart; daring to tread where women had not gone earlier. if that had been the extent of montessori’s impact, that alone would have been interesting and important. but what makes the maria montessori story so special is that she turned her ambition toward others. because of her personal experiences with educational hardship, montessori dedicated herself to a lifetime of creating institutions that would help young people enjoy learning and, ultimately, become happier, more fulfilled, adults. in this sense montessori was a sort of factory owner—although she would likely have been appalled at the metaphor—and her great machines rolled out civic-minded, creative and happy young people. 2. research on montessori schools if you are anything like me you are probably reluctant to believe stories about one school system or another being the magic solution to everyone’s educational needs. indeed, it is in their desire and ability to look critically at educational policy and outcomes that professional education researchers differ from proud parents of schoolchildren. montessori schools, like many educational systems, particularly those built around a charismatic leader, are often touted by the initiated as fresh, effective and beneficial in the long term. but these kinds of claims are commonly opinions and must be evaluated both systematically and scientifically. there is little question that montessori was a pioneer, but can we really claim that her schools are better than those created by other charismatic educators, or even better than traditional public schools? to get a better sense of the actual differences between montessori schools and their counterparts we have to look beyond the teachers, who might be biased, and the parents, who are similarly invested. we have to turn to science. fortunately, there is research on the effectiveness of montessori programs. in one study of a montessori school in milwaukee, wisconsin (usa), for example, lillard and else-quest (2006) were interested in both the academic and social outcomes of montessori education. to investigate these outcomes they examined children who had participated in a school lottery; approximately half of whom were randomly selected into the montessori system and the other half ended up in other types of schools. by using the lottery as a means of selection the researchers were able to rule out the pesky problem that educational benefits might have more to do with the types of families who enroll in montessori schools rather than with the school itself. the researchers found that the young children in the study—5 year olds—showed equal performance as their control group peers on some tests of cognitive ability, and superior performance on others, such as recognizing letters and words. the montessori kids also outperformed their counterparts on social and behavioral measures, and were better able to solve hypothetical social problems through the use of fairly sophisticated reasoning, such as discussing principles of justice and fairness. these results were not confined to the youngest pupils. stories written by the montessori 12 year olds who participated in the study were similar to those created by children in the control group in terms of spelling and grammar; however, they were judged as significantly more creative compared to the control 12 year olds. the real gains at the older age did not appear to be in academic prowess but in social ability. the montessori 12 year olds were more likely to exhibit appropriate assertiveness and report feeling a stronger sense of community than kids in the control group. lillard and else-quest conclude their study by pointing out that—at least in this single instance—the performance of montessori children is comparable to that of children in other schools or, in many cases, superior. manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 216 this conclusion dovetails with the least scientific study ever conducted of montessori: i interviewed a single 4-year-old montessori student, ella. when i asked her ‚what makes you happy at school?‛ she answered, ‚everything!‛ when i pressed her for specifics she was able to articulate a list of three happiness-producing aspects of her montessori curriculum: playing, hot lunch, and work. that’s right, work. ‚work‛ is the name that the montessori students and teachers give to a wide range of educational activities, from feeding and playing with classroom animals to washing dishes to manipulating shape and color blocks. one montessori teacher i interviewed told me that using the term ‘work’ to describe the children’s activities lends a sense of dignity and importance to what they do, and set up kids for a lifetime of believing that work can be fun, rewarding, and educational. ‚adults,‛ the teacher told me, ‚tend to work to manipulate their environment while children tend to work to manipulate themselves. it is a developmental process.‛ when i asked ella what, specifically, she enjoyed about ‚work‛ her answer was immediate, ‚i like that it is challenging.‛ either ella is being fed some excellent propaganda or she is participating in a school system which fosters enjoyment alongside learning. which begs the tough question: was maria montessori a happiness-enabler? despite her many personal achievements we cannot simply take for granted that she has substantively increased the happiness in the world. she’s made a contribution in the form of helping kids learn, but has she actually made anybody happy? we have strong evidence that montessori created positive reforms within education, and established an educational infrastructure that fosters an on-going and active learning community (lillard, 2005). for this alone, i think we can reasonably say that she provided enabling conditions that set the stage for happiness. certainly, montessori teachers and parents will attest to the fact that they have often seen their students and children happy as a direct result of the school’s teaching methods. still, detractors might argue that one can find happy children in virtually every school. ultimately, the question of montessori’s happiness legacy is an empirical issue, subject to scientific testing. there is, in fact, an entire book on the psychological science undergirding montessori’s methods (lillard, 2005). it is an excellent guide to the motivation, cognition and developmental research literature relevant to montessori’s teaching methods. lamentably, there is no mention of joy, satisfaction or happiness in the index. the studies presented within the book use typical measures of academic performance such as reading ability and this overview covers little about the children’s actual experience of their learning. one notable exception to this is a study by rathunde and csikszentmihalyi (2005), the latter being the ‘positive psychologist’ best known for his pioneering work on ‘flow’ (csikszentmihalyi, 2008), the state colloquially known as ‘being in the zone.’ in the 2005 study the researchers found that montessori students’ reports of their day-to-day experience were significantly more positive than ratings offered by students in traditional educational settings. although this is a single study and cannot, therefore, be generalized to all montessori students throughout the world, it is a first step; indeed it is a suggestive piece of tangible evidence that montessori was not just concerned with reading and arithmetic, but also with processes and happiness. ultimately, personal fulfillment will be the charge of each student as he or she leaves the halls of montessori school and heads out into the world. their job will likely be—at the very least—a little bit easier owing to the fact that montessori removed obstacles to both wellbeing and learning and also created structures that support growth, mastery, independence and other psychological needs that are strongly associated with happiness. it is important, at this point, to bring up a criticism not only of the montessori approach but of the idea of educating for happiness in general. while the notion of wellbeing-producing manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 217 institutions fits well with the modern positivity movement, there are those who rightly suggest caution in this regard (e.g. ehrenreich, 2009). it is wise to reflect on the fundamental purpose of education. historically, philosophers have understood education to be, in part, about influencing character, virtue and morality (e.g. aristotle, 4th century bce/1987); and many are inclined to agree with the idea that the state has both opportunity and obligation to intervene in public moral discourse (e.g. smith, 1776/1987). there are those who disagree, however, on the basis that government intrusion into mental states is overstepping authoritative bounds and could be a form of violence against individual liberty. critic kathryn ecclestone (2004), for example, argues that the heavy emphasis on self-esteem as a desirable goal of education is more aligned with therapeutic modalities than educational policy. similarly, ecclestone and field (2003) make the case that emphasizing social capital variables as foci of educational policy contains potential drawbacks; among these is the possibility that normative social policy could undermine the performance of, or punish, non-conformists. certainly, this point would be interesting to consider in the context of the montessori classroom: how are non-conformists dealt with? what happens to those children who do not exhibit the capacity for ‘work’ or who would prefer not to choose for themselves? unfortunately, no research on this topic exists (to the best of my knowledge). this absence highlights the fact that the research literature on montessori schools is small, which is surprising given the fact that there are more than 7,000 montessori schools. 3. the life that led to the legacy the theme of ‘challenge’ that 4-year-old ella described was a concept familiar to the founder of the montessori schools. maria montessori was born in italy in 1870, the same year that country was first officially united in modern times. from the perspective of a biographer, her childhood was largely unremarkable. perhaps the most interesting and ironic footnote from her formative years is that, when considering a future profession, montessori indicated an interest in becoming ‚anything but a teacher‛ (kramer, 1976/1988: 23). her experiences in school were discouraging, to say the least. she was actively dissuaded from cultivating her natural gifts for mathematics and, defying her parents, entered first a boy’s technical school and later medical school. there were no female doctors in italy at the time and her conspicuous appearance in the hallways and lecture theaters of the medical school was discomfiting to many. she was often ostracized by her all-male peers, many of whom would jeer at her in the concourses as she passed by. montessori was also not allowed to dissect bodies with her classmates as it was deemed unseemly by contemporary standards for a woman to do so in the presence of men. although the years of her higher education were undoubtedly socially difficult for montessori, her efforts paid off and she eventually became the first female medical doctor in italy (standing, 1957/1998). after completing her medical training montessori assumed the position of assistant director of the psychiatric clinic attached to the university of rome. it was in this capacity that she had her first opportunities to visit with and observe institutionalized children. as you might imagine, the psychiatric care in the facilities at the turn of the century were not up to modern standards. ever prescient, montessori was quick to notice that the conditions in which the children were housed—the lack of toys, objects or other forms of stimulation—were substandard to the degree that she believed it would interfere with any potential cognitive development. she quickly became an advocate for better education for these institutionalized children, arguing—in a speech on ‘moral education’ delivered in 1899 (standing, 1957/1998)— that they should be entitled to ‘normal’ instruction. in this way and from this time montessori manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 218 gravitated from being a practicing physician and lecturer to becoming an education reformer. her leaning toward social reform was consistent with the times: at the turn of the twentieth century italy was in the midst of social and economic crisis following a widespread crop failure, repressive government policies and heated public discourse over the contentious political issue of colonization in africa (kramer, 1976/1988). then-prime minister giolitti came to power in 1906 promising sweeping reforms for the poor, and these paved the way for montessori’s ideas on education to become reality. it is interesting that montessori had strong opinions on how to improve education but no actual school in which to implement them. it was this lack of formal institutional affiliation that eventually led her to a slum school in rome—the now famous casa dei bambini (children’s house)—where she found a testing ground for her theories and where she refined her methods. because casa dei bambini was a slum school catering to rome’s disenfranchised children, montessori had an opportunity to implement teaching reform with a disadvantaged population that, in essence, made her educational methods a form of social activism (kramer, 1976/1988). the school also gave montessori a laboratory for observing the natural behaviors of ‘normal’ children and experimenting with methods for engaging them in the learning process. the success of her school was evident early on and her model was quickly expanded to other schools, and montessori continued to craft her program and implement it in schools throughout the world until her death in 1952. montessori’s legacy is much larger than the humble origins of her first school though. currently, there are about 7,000 montessori schools around the world and innumerable independent montessori-inspired institutions. these schools ensure that montessori’s mission to cultivate self-motivated, socially aware and responsible citizens is both widespread and enduring. her name and methods also influence books, conferences, and teacher training institutions. she was nominated for the nobel peace prize on three separate occasions, but it was never awarded to her. although she is principally known as an educator, montessori was, at heart, a social reformer and activist and often addressed spiritual, feminist and other socially active groups. in fact, she thought of herself as a ‚social crusader‛ (montessori, 2008; p. 57). perhaps her greatest achievement, and the primary reason i nominate her as one of history’s great felicitators, is the effect she has had on the world through her students, numbering in the hundreds of thousands at least. montessori wanted to teach children more than facts; she wanted to encourage good character. although the law of averages tells us that we can find famous alumni in any school system, i would be remiss if i did not point out a few notable montessori graduates: amazon.com founder jeff bezos was educated at montessori, as were anne frank, julia child, and nobel laureate gabriel garcia marquez. it could be that these people would have grown up to be famous whatever their educational background, of course, but it is more amusing to think that the montessori system had something to do with the rise of its graduate sean ‘puff daddy’ combs. montessori (2009) believed that children had a psychological hunger for exploring and learning about the world, and only by satisfying this need from within could good character be developed. she was passionate about helping each individual child to live a life that was engaged, meaningful and enjoyable. these are, by their very nature, vital components of happiness. 3.1 time out: a peek into a montessori classroom if you were to enter a montessori classroom, especially an early childhood education classroom, you might notice several differences between it and the typical public school classroom. for instance, if you saw the early childhood education classroom at the montessori manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 219 school of ladera ranch, california, you might notice the animals. maria montessori believed that animals were helpful to teach children responsibility and connection. the early childhood education room at ladera ranch boasts a rabbit, a leopard gecko, two beta fish, hermit crabs, a tiger salamander and a turtle named ‘sophie’, as well as outdoor feeders for hummingbirds and finches. you might also notice that all of the fixtures in the room are small, built at the children’s eye level<a nod to the legitimacy and importance of being young. you would also likely notice the many materials stacked and shelved against the walls. these materials, sometimes called ‘manipulatives’ are, in some ways, the core elements of the montessori approach to learning. they include, among other things, alphabet blocks for reading, beads for counting and sorting, a pig—that’s right, a pig—for washing. washing a toy pig is seen as an element of life skills training as it points student attention to hygiene and caretaking. when i interviewed teacher indi avila she told me that these manipulatives were the most surprising aspect of montessori: i attended montessori from the age of four to when i was six and the materials in my classroom now are the same as those from when i was a kid! i can remember doing the same things my students are, like pouring rice from jar to jar. (personal communication) these tactile materials hearken back to the time of maria montessori herself and her observations that institutionalized children hungered for stimulating materials. maria montessori wrote about a time when she found such a child playing with food crumbs, just to have something to play with at all. back at ladera ranch, teacher karen skirvin also emphasized that the materials are chosen with care to teach the children how to interact with the world and to cultivate an appreciation for beauty. she told me that her twoand three-yearold students do not drink from plastic cups but, rather, from glass and ceramic containers. when i asked what would happen in the all-too-likely event that such a vessel were dropped she smiled and said, ‚then the children would learn about what happens to glass when it hits the floor.‛ the montessori school day begins outdoors on the playground, as students are dropped off. the teachers are aware that this period—often thought of as the minutes before school begins—is actually a time of interaction and learning. from the playground the students file into the classroom where they have, at least in the case of the younger children, ‘circle time’. circle time is a transition period of sorts, to help the kids shift from physical play mode to indoor mode. the children acknowledge one another, greet their instructors, say good morning to the class pets and then move into ‘work’. it is here that the children have the opportunity to express personal preferences and follow their own whims and intuition. rather than following a structured, teacher-centered curriculum, the montessori students are allowed to gravitate toward whichever projects they happen to fancy on a particular day. this ensures the students are self-motivated in their learning. when i expressed concern that a student could, potentially, choose to engage in counting and sorting activities day after day while ignoring reading readiness activities, teacher indi avila reassured me: ‚that is what the teachers are for—to gently guide the children.‛ this is also when indi pointed out something i, or any casual visitor, might not notice. all the materials are arranged in order of difficulty and complexity from left to right and top to bottom on the shelves, thus preparing the unwitting children for the structure of reading when they arrive to that stage of education. manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 220 4. freedom: the heart of montessori education maria montessori came to believe that people—everyone, and especially children—have an innate desire to learn. in part, this conclusion was the result of her observation of institutionalized youth, who hungered for stimulation and, later, from her observations of children in her own schools. montessori thought of curiosity as a human birthright that people employ on a daily basis to motivate action and engage with the world. to this end, she advocated a system of learning that was ‘student focused,’ with children’s interest pouring forth from within, rather than the traditional passive learning methods in which children are expected to sit, listen and be good receptors of content. this is aligned with research findings that suggest that extrinsic reinforcement undermines enjoyment, especially in the case where tasks would have been inherently interesting without reinforcement (lepper, greene & nisbett, 1973). montessori’s approach to learning was built on a foundation of personal choice. according to edwards (2006), montessori: [s]trongly believed that all young children naturally prefer to learn in an organized but supportive environment that permits a high degree of choice, control, and self-direction, and where children are not distracted by extrinsic rewards and punishments that distort their preferences (for instance, by grades, stars, awards, demerits, honor rolls, smiley faces, and the like) (p. 184). just as adults are free to gravitate toward skiing or gambling or woodworking as suits their fancy, montessori believed that children should have some say in what type of educational activities they spend time on. although montessori did not have the sophisticated science of modern times at her disposal, it turns out that a huge range of recent research supports her instincts about children. in fact, if montessori schools can be thought of as small-scale societies, then it would be interesting to know to what extent freedom is associated with happiness at the societal level. fortunately, there are data on exactly this topic. in a study of factors predicting the wellbeing of nations, for example, researchers found that social equality, human rights and individualism were significant predictors of wellbeing (diener, diener & diener, 1995). even when controlling for other factors, such as income, individualism reliably predicted societal happiness. diener, diener and diener (1995) also evaluated the outcomes associated with democracy (and increasing democratization of a country), and found a strong relationship between democracy and happiness. however, the authors of this work also point out that democracy is neither necessary nor sufficient for societal-level happiness. in a more direct assessment of economic, political and personal freedom, veenhoven (2000) found that greater freedoms were significantly related to higher levels of happiness across societies. in a study using data from the gallup world poll, a survey that assessed the happiness of more than 140,000 respondents in 125 countries, helliwell and his colleagues (2010) found that ‘freedom to choose’ was a significant predictor of happiness. these studies all point to the same conclusion: societies higher in democratic rights and personal freedoms appear to be happier places. certainly, we must ask about the direction of the causal arrow; it could be, for example, that happier people are more likely to create societies which offer more freedoms. in addition, the question of freedoms must be disentangled from the wealth of nations. it could be, for instance, that democratic nations happen to have economic systems that produce more wealth, and therefore the happiness of the citizenry might better be accounted for by public infrastructure and other material concerns rather than individual freedoms. fortunately, we can employ statistical controls to parse out the relative effects of income. although studies that adopt this tack differ manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 221 slightly from one another, the consensus view is that—at the societal level— freedoms matter to happiness more than do the contributions of national wealth (helliwell et al., 2010; veenhoven, 2005). in the end, groups—whether they are nation-states or montessori classrooms—seem to produce happier members when they are structured around individual freedom and choice. not only have researchers discovered in large-scale surveys that freedom is associated with happiness but it is also related to happiness at the individual level. research on choice behaviors, such as how people decide to spend their money, suggests that some choices pay higher ‘happiness dividends’ than others. van boven (2005), for example, found that people who spend money on experiential rather than material purchases tend to be happier. similarly, aknin and colleagues (2010) found that people who spend money on others are happier than those who spent a comparable amount on themselves. this finding has been replicated in societies across the world (aknin et al., submitted). this body of research suggests that people are free to spend on the goods and services that are most attractive to them personally (a form of economic freedom) but that, where personal happiness is concerned, some choices will be better than others. interestingly, it may be that we are biologically predetermined both to help others and to adapt to new circumstances. if this is the case then expenditures on others and on experiences (to which we are less able to adapt than we are to expenditures on material items)—those purchases that are the most emotionally rewarding—are actually in line with our basic phenotypic motives. the message is that we may be free to make any choices we want, but we will be rewarded—both emotionally and socially—for only some of them. another line of research connecting freedom to choose and the happiness of individuals is that which examines personal control. thompson (2002) argued that humans are unique in the extent to which they can manipulate their environment and judge the degree to which they have the means to do so. this is certainly a sentiment with which maria montessori would have agreed—she believed that manipulating the environment was a primary adult longing (montessori, 1966). thompson suggests that a sense of control may activate problem solving behaviors and increase perseverance. grob (2000) has found that people who believe they have more control of their environment are, in fact, happier. there is also a substantial research literature on the relation between income and subjective wellbeing suggesting that there is a modest positive correlation between the two, perhaps explained—in part—by the suggestion that more affluent individuals have a greater ability to fund the pursuit of personal goals (diener & biswas-diener, 2002). although there are many studies that hint at the possibility that having personal control and free choice are important to individual and group happiness, these do not really tell us—psychologically—why freedom and control might be associated with happiness. for that, we have to dig a little deeper. 5. the psychology of autonomy the strong links between freedom, personal control and happiness suggest that people generally fare well when they are autonomous. cultural critics, on the other hand, remind us that—at best—we are interdependent creatures living in family groups and complex societies. the emphasis on the importance of social connectedness and cooperation extends especially to the classroom environment (aronson, 1978). we are, after all, primates and have a natural tendency to cluster together in groups and rely on one another to get by. we live in an age where, worldwide, urban dwellers outnumber people living in rural locations. in fact, instances of reclusive people living in the geographic hinterlands are relatively rare. it appears, if anything, that folks like to work, live and play together. which begs the question: what are the differential contributions of autonomy and relatedness to happiness? which aspect of the manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 222 montessori school curriculum is the magic potion that leads to so much wellbeing? is it that montessori schools are viewed as a community, and tend to promote the strong bonding of children and teachers? or is it that there is an emphasis on individual mastery? or, perhaps, is there some optimal balance between the two? self-determination theory, advanced by deci and ryan (2000), contains the idea that there are three distinct and fundamental human needs. by needs i—and presumably deci and ryan—mean motives that drive just about everyone because they are so fundamental to our functioning, and so enjoyable when they are met. these three needs include autonomy, relatedness, and mastery. according to self-determination theorists people will be happy to the extent that they are gaining new skills, have the opportunity to express their unique selves, and have a chance to connect with others. indeed, research supports this conclusion. students in law school, for example, are happier and perform better when they are given more autonomy and steered away from a competitive attitude that might interfere with their ability to connect with their peers (sheldon & krieger, 2007). other studies have shown that having friends is a reliable predictor of happiness (diener & seligman, 2002). this type of wellbeing research that focuses on psychological drive states rather than emotional pleasantry is often termed ‘eudaimonic’, from aristotle’s discussion of eudaimonia—a state of wellbeing in which a person has achieved their highest potential (aristotle 4th century bce/1987). another eudaimonic course of research on ‘psychological wellbeing’ dovetails nicely with studies on self-determination theory. ryff and singer (1998) proposed that there are six fundamental human needs, and that progress toward and the fulfillment of these needs will equate with wellbeing. the needs associated with psychological wellbeing are self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. these contain some overlap with those offered by self-determination theorists but include others, such as self-acceptance, as well. like self-determination theory studies, studies on the fulfillment of needs associated with psychological wellbeing are generally associated with greater levels of happiness. where maria montessori and her methods are concerned, there is reason to believe that each of these needs is actively cultivated in the children who attend her schools. it may be that the unique techniques employed at montessori schools are well-suited to promoting a sense of self-acceptance in children, or connectedness, or mastery. 6. the limits of freedom the empirical evidence for the benefits of personal choice and freedom-related variables on wellbeing and healthy functioning are clear. they are, however, not the whole picture. there are several instances in which greater choice does not necessarily translate to higher wellbeing. all such instances are—to a greater or lesser degree—anchored in culture. in the first instance, an emphasis on extreme individualism can result in an expectation that people should have nearly unlimited choice. western markets, especially those in the united states, follow this assumption. schwartz (1994; 2000) argues that there can be a ‘tyranny in freedom’ such that too much choice can undermine enjoyment. a classic real-world example of this is being stuck in traffic: if there is only a single lane of traffic you are mildly irritated by the lack of progress. if there are two or three lanes of traffic, however, you are more likely to be really angry—perhaps even at yourself—for choosing the ‘wrong lane’. thus, choice can be helpful, but when something goes wrong there is a natural tendency to blame one’s self. another cultural instance of the downsides of choice is that of collectivist cultures, where the individual is encouraged to subjugate their personal desires if those desires are perceived to come into conflict with the manipulating happiness: maria montessori biswas-diener www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 223 overall welfare of their in-group (triandis, 1998). a final aspect of culture relates to basic cultural worldviews about the extent to which one has control over one’s fate. westerners tend to have a ‘disjoint agency’ view in which they have agency and therefore tend to take credit for successes and blame themselves for failures (markus, uchida, omoregie, townsend, & kitayama, 2006). thus, there appears to be an optimal level of perceived personal control and freedom of choice, especially where happiness is concerned. research is needed to examine the extent to which classroom choice is important both to learning and to enjoyment. 7. montessori today maria montessori died may 6, 1952 at the age of 81. her legacy lives on in the thousands of montessori and montessori-inspired schools that exist on all six inhabited continents. her name is a household word, and her life’s mission offers the scenery for many interesting historical footnotes. jean piaget, for instance, conducted his famous observations of children in montessori schools. alexander graham bell helped to establish the first montessori school in the united states. montessori’s influence is so great, in part, because of the inherent effectiveness and popular appeal of her views on educating children. although her methods have been applied primarily to the education of younger children it is possible that her experiential approach and her emphasis on student choice are appropriate in higher education as well (biswas-diener & patterson, in press). but more than that, montessori was a pioneer who faced challenges and charted new intellectual territory. although her scientific methods are antiquated by today’s standards, her far-sightedness is unquestionable. ultimately, montessori provides a personal example of happiness: fostering relationships by realizing one’s responsibility to others; enjoying mastery by working within areas of strength; and having the courage to live a life that is independent enough to 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(2012). review of positive psychologists on positive psychology, international journal of wellbeing, 2(2), 143–145. doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2.16 margarita tarragona iberoamericana university margarita@grupocamposeliseos.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 143 book review positive psychologists on positive psychology aaron jarden, ed., amazon digital services, 2012 asin: b007ixu1ry, 136pp, us$2.99 also published as aaron jarden, ed., international journal of wellbeing, 2012 doi:10.5502/ijw.v2i2, 79pp review by margarita tarragona abstract: aaron jarden interviews 13 outstanding researchers and practitioners of positive psychology and invites us to listen in as these friendly and stimulating discussions among colleagues take place. we get the opportunity to know these ‚insiders‛ of positive psychology a little better as they share their views on what is exciting in the field, whose work they admire, their favorite books, criticisms about positive psychology, what they have learned in their careers and the advice they would give to young colleagues. keywords: positive psychology, aaron jarden, interviews, wellbeing, well-being a few months ago i had an idea: wouldn´t it be wonderful to have conversations with some of the most prominent positive psychologists and put together a book of interviews with them? i soon realized that this was indeed a good idea because aaron jarden, whom i respect so much, had already come up with it and was about to publish such a book! i am glad he did. positive psychologists on positive psychology is a unique work that is appealing both to newcomers who are interested in learning what positive psychology is and to researchers and practitioners already involved in the field. (can we call it a field, or sub-field, within psychology? probably not, according to most interviewees in this book. a movement? many would not agree with that definition either. i like how mihaly csikszentmihaly talks about positive psychology: as an endeavor, a joint endeavor of people who are ‚trying to understand how to leverage and increase positive aspects of human experience and human life‛). jarden interviews a baker´s dozen of influential researchers and practitioners on both sides of the atlantic: todd kashdan, sonja lyubomirsky, alex linley, ed diener, michael steger, acacia parks, ryan niemiec, nic marks, barbara fredrickson, ilona boniwell, robert j. vallerand, denise quinlan and mihaly csikszentmihalyi. reading the book feels like hearing a conversation between colleagues about their work. i imagined i was eavesdropping in the hallways of a positive psychology conference as jarden’s respondents shared their views about positive psychology: what they are excited about, whom they admire, their favorite books, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ review of positive psychologists on positive psychology tarragona www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 144 criticisms of positive psychology, what they have learned and the advice they would give to young psychologists. some talk about their own life and career development, others comment on their concerns and hopes for positive psychology. they are all passionate about their work: that comes across in every interview, almost from the first sentence. their interests range from the study of passion itself, to defining and measuring happiness, understanding the relationship between wellbeing and our natural environment, flow and creativity, testing interventions that can increase people´s happiness, studying meaning and purpose, researching positive emotions and the neural processes associated with them, how to improve life for people who are disadvantaged, how people use their time, exploring if we can teach young people to have happier lives, how the movies depict human strengths… each interviewee has contributed in a special way, and each from a different angle, to our understanding of what makes life good and worthwhile. at the same time, i am struck by how much they agree on some topics regarding positive psychology: many of them turn to the relationship between research and practice and how important it is to keep solid science at the heart of positive psychology. they point out there is a great demand for applications; and that sometimes there is not enough ‚coming in‛, in terms of funds and resources for research, to respond to the demand for knowledge that is applicable to education, coaching, clinical work and organizational consulting. several interviewees warn against the risk of translating research findings to interventions too soon. citing csikszentmihalyi again: ‚if we promise and come across as knowing all the answers and being able to apply them, and then they don’t work, then the public will say, ‘it’s just another fad, forget about it’, and positive psychology will get a bad name‛. most of the positive psychologists in the book call for a healthy dose of skepticism about findings (including their own) and positive psychology applications. this can be hard to achieve when research is translated in the popular media; but it is crucial in order to keep positive psychology credible and to help it grow in a healthy way, participants also agree on the importance of being active in and connected to other areas of psychology and with other fields: social psychology, neuroscience, economics (an area in which ed diener has become especially interested as he studies wellbeing among nations). they recommend that young positive psychologists do not define themselves as positive psychologists too soon, cautioning that it may be a better idea to have at least two professional identities: for example, as both a social psychologist and a positive psychologist. sonja lyubomirsky comments: ‚maybe the greatest achievement is that it almost does not need to be its own field anymore, because now so many researchers are studying the positive side of life‛. and ed diener makes this need for disciplinary and interdisciplinary communication very clear when he says: ‚my strongest desire for positive psychology is that it not be a cult or a club. too often positive psychologists just look at the work of other positive psychologists, rather than broadening out and looking at relevant work of those who are not in the positive psychology fold.‛. several of the interviewees talk about the importance of acknowledging the contributions of the predecessors of positive psychology and, as michael steger puts it, ‚reading old stuff‛. another common theme has to do with studying cultural differences more carefully and striving for a more culturally diverse community of professionals and scholars in positive psychology. in this regard, i felt the book might have been more representative of the international make-up of positive psychology: all of the interviewees are from english speaking countries (except for bob vallerand from canada, half english speaking…). i noticed this especially because i have just came back from the first national positive psychology conference review of positive psychologists on positive psychology tarragona www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 145 in el escorial, spain, organized by dr. carmelo vázquez and his team and i was very impressed by the quality of the research presented there. dr. ma. dolores avia presented the closing plenary on ‚the contributions of positive psychology to psychology‛. from the perspective of over thirty years as a researcher and clinician, dr. avia gave a very balanced account of the well-deserved excitement positive psychology has generated and of possible pitfalls. she canvassed premature or exaggerated enthusiasm over findings and applications, the need for more culturally nuanced concepts and instruments and to acknowledge previous researchers, and cautioned against positive psychology becoming too centered on the individual, stressing a need for more attention to be given to relationships and social issues. my favorite, i must confess, was her assertion: ‚it is not a fad. psychology will never be the same after positive psychology‛. i am struck by the coincidence between her views and much of what the interviewees express in jarden´s book: a balance of passion and enthusiasm with scientific rigor and perspective. maybe this convergence of views shows how positive psychology is maturing internationally and finding its place in the field of psychology as a whole, and in relationship to other disciplines. positive psychologists on positive psychology conveys where positive psychology is today, and where it may head in the future, in just 127 pages. in fact, that is my only complaint about the book: like many good things in life, it seems too short. author margarita tarragona iberoamericana university margarita@grupocamposeliseos.com graham, c., & crown, s., (2014). religion and wellbeing around the world: social purpose, social time, or social insurance? international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 1-27. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.1 carol graham the brookings institution & university of maryland cgraham@brookings.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article religion and wellbeing around the world: social purpose, social time, or social insurance? carol graham · sarah crown abstract: a number of studies find that religious people are happier than non-religious ones. yet a number of fundamental questions about that relationship remain unanswered. a critical one is the direction of causality: does religion make people happier or are happier people more likely to have faith in something that is beyond their control? we posit that the relationship between religion and wellbeing is mediated by factors ranging from intrinsic purpose, to its social aspects, to its role as an insurance mechanism for people who face great adversity. we explore a number of related questions, using world-wide data from the gallup world poll. as these data are crosssection data, we cannot establish causality; we do, however, explore: how or if the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies across the two distinct wellbeing dimensions (hedonic and evaluative); how social externalities mediate the relationship; how the relationship changes as countries and people within them become more prosperous and acquire greater means and agency; and how the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies depending on where respondents are in the wellbeing distribution. we find that the positive relation between religion and evaluative wellbeing is more important for respondents with lower levels of agency, while the positive relation with hedonic wellbeing holds across the board. the social dimension of religion is most important for the least social respondents, while the religiosity component of religion is most important for the happiest respondents, regardless of religious affiliation or service attendance. as such, it seems that the happiest are most likely to seek social purpose in religion, the poorest are most likely to seek social insurance in religion, and the least social are the most likely to seek social time in religion. keywords: religion, evaluative wellbeing, hedonic wellbeing, agency, social insurance 1. introduction an important dimension of human experience is religion. a number of studies (including this paper) find that religious people are happier than non-religious ones. in many places, religion has spillover effects for the non-religious. religion could, for example, enhance wellbeing through the positive effects of participation in religious activities and associated social externalities. or it could be that the intrinsic beliefs and purpose associated with religion drive the relationship. religion also plays an important role in providing psychological insurance for individuals coping with health shocks, aging, and adverse and difficult circumstances (such as extreme poverty), among others. that insurance role may help explain a seeming puzzle, meanwhile. at the same time that religious people are happier, religiosity is higher in places that are less happy and less prosperous on average.1 1 see, among others, clark and lelkes (2005); clark and lelkes (2009); deaton (2009); deaton and stone (2013); and diener, tay, and myers (2011). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 a number of fundamental questions about the relationship between religion and wellbeing remain unanswered. a critical one is the direction of causality: does religion make people happier or are happier people more likely to have faith in something that is beyond their control? and are religious people happier in the aristotelian/eudaimonic sense of having purpose and meaning in life, or are they simply happier because having religion makes their day-to-day living more pleasant? similarly, does having faith bring higher levels of wellbeing, or is it the social externalities associated with religious activities that matter most? does religion play a role as both psychological and social insurance for those who lack other means and capabilities to deal with adverse conditions? does the importance of religion change as countries and people within them become more prosperous? while we cannot establish causality due to the cross-section nature of our data, our analysis does yield insights into these questions. there is a burgeoning literature on wellbeing, much of which finds consistent patterns in its determinants in countries and cultures around the world. many of these patterns are predictable: income matters to individual wellbeing, but after a certain point other things such as the incomes of others also start to matter. health is essential to wellbeing, and stable partnerships, stable marriages, and social relationships also play a role. women are typically happier than men, except in contexts where their rights are severely compromised. and because these patterns are so consistent across diverse countries and cultures, scholars in the field can control for these factors and explore the wellbeing effects of phenomena that vary greatly, such as inflation and unemployment rates; crime and corruption; smoking, drinking, and exercising; and the nature of public goods, among others. not surprisingly, the approach is well-suited for exploring the relationship between wellbeing and religion.2 wellbeing has two distinct and measurable dimensions, each of which captures different aspects of human lives.3 the first is hedonic wellbeing, which captures the manner in which individuals experience their daily lives, the quality of those lives, and their moods (both positive and negative) during those experiences. the second is evaluative wellbeing, which captures how people think about and assess their lives as a whole. the latter dimension implicitly includes eudaimonic wellbeing – how much purpose or meaning people have in their lives – although there are also aspects of daily experiences which can be purposeful but not pleasurable (such as reading the same story over and over again to a child); and others which are pleasurable but not purposeful (such as watching television). hedonic wellbeing is typically measured with questions that gauge positive affect on the one hand (smiling yesterday or happy yesterday, for example), and negative affect (anger or stress yesterday) on the other. psychologists emphasize that there is not a simple continuum running from the positive to negative dimensions, as people can experience both at the same time (such as happiness and stress).4 evaluative wellbeing, meanwhile, is typically measured with questions that ask respondents about their satisfaction with their lives as a whole, or to compare their lives to the best possible life they can imagine. evaluative wellbeing typically correlates more closely with individual income than does hedonic wellbeing, not least as life course evaluations extend well beyond momentary experiences and encompass the opportunities and choices that people have in their lives. graham and nikolova, for example, find that individuals emphasize one wellbeing dimension over the other, depending on their agency and capabilities. respondents with more means and greater agency (e.g. the capacity to make choices over the courses that their lives take) tend to emphasize 2 see, among others, frey and stutzer (2002); blanchflower and oswald (2004); graham (2009); and graham (2008). 3 the state of the science on these two dimensions is summed up in: diener (2012); and graham (2012). 4 diener (2012), among others. religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 evaluative wellbeing more, while those with limited means and opportunities tend to emphasize daily experience more. they also find that income and agency are less important to the wellbeing of respondents who are at the highest levels of the wellbeing distribution.5 in this paper, we posit that the relationship between religion and wellbeing could be similarly mediated by the rationale underlying individual religiosity, which could range from intrinsic purpose, to its social aspects, to its role as an insurance mechanism for people who face great adversity and lack agency. we explore a number of related questions, using world-wide data from the gallup world poll. the first is how or if the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies across the two distinct wellbeing dimensions (hedonic and evaluative), and, related to that, how it varies across religions around the world. the second is how socializing/social externalities mediate the relationship. the third is how or if the relationship changes as countries and people within them become more prosperous and acquire more means and greater agency. the fourth is how or if the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies depending on where respondents are in the wellbeing distribution (in other words depending on their happiness levels regardless of religion). 2. building on what we know from other studies a number of studies by both psychologists and economists find a positive relationship between religion and subjective wellbeing. there is much less clarity on the channels driving this relationship and on the direction of causality. some studies find an important role for hedonic wellbeing, highlighting the experience of attending religious services and the associated social externalities. clark and lelkes, for example, in a study of catholics, protestants, and atheists across europe, find that both own religious behavior and average religiosity in the region have a positive impact on life satisfaction, even for the non-religious in religious regions. they attribute their findings to the social externalities associated with religiosity, and their results hold even when controlling for social capital, crime, and trust in the respective regions. steiner, leinhart, and frey, meanwhile, find a positive and sizable association between happiness and church-going in switzerland. witter et al., basing their conclusions on a meta-analysis of religion and subjective wellbeing in adulthood, find that the positive relation between religion and subjective wellbeing is stronger for religious activity than for religiosity measures, and that it is also stronger for older than younger adults. they also find that the relation in general has decreased over time.6 lim and putnam, using panel data for a representative sample of u.s. adults in 2006-2009 from the faith matters study, find a strong role for social and participatory mechanisms – regular attendance at services and social networks within congregations – in shaping religion’s impact on life satisfaction. their results are contingent on the presence of a strong religious identity. they find little evidence of a eudaimonic channel in the religion-life satisfaction relationship.7 lim and putnam’s findings on religious identity are supported by research by mookerjee and beron that finds an overall positive relationship between religion and wellbeing across countries, but that the relationship is eroded in contexts where religious fractionalization is higher. along the same lines graham and chattopadhyay (2009) find that the positive cross-country relationship between religious affiliation and wellbeing does not hold in contexts where religious identities are strong and divided, as in the case of afghanistan and central asia.8 5 graham and nikolova (2013). 6 clark and lelkes (2005); steiner, leinart, and frey (2010); witter, stock, okun, and haring (1985). 7 lim and putnam (2010). 8 mookerjee and beron (2005); and graham and chattopadhyay (2009). religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 other studies find that the eudaimonic or intrinsic component of religion matters more than the hedonic one in the relation with wellbeing. delle fave et al. find large cross-country differences in happiness and meaningfulness ratings in the spiritual/religious domain, and they emphasize the role of high levels of spiritual/religious meaning overall contributing to wellbeing.9 monika ardelt, basing her conclusions on a study of community-dwelling older adults in north central florida, finds that purpose in life rather than extrinsic or intrinsic religious orientation was positively associated with elders’ subjective wellbeing and negatively associated with fear of death or death avoidance. in contrast, she finds that both frequency of religious activity and religious affiliation were unrelated to subjective wellbeing but positively associated with death avoidance and fear of death. kennedy et al. develop a model where transcendent experiences affect religious commitment, which in turn influences meaning in life, and, in turn, wellbeing. they test the model based on a convenience sample of 182 people in the united states and find that the mediating influences they have identified hold, although they cannot ascertain causality.10 both dimensions seem to matter, and that may vary according to context. several studies find that the relationship between religion and wellbeing is weaker in countries that are more prosperous or in regions or states within such countries that are particularly prosperous. 11 other studies find an important role for religion as a coping mechanism in the face of hardship, and some highlight that religion’s importance increases with age. clark and lelkes find that in europe respondents who have a religious affiliation suffer lower wellbeing costs due to becoming unemployed than do those without religious affiliation, for example. in contrast, though, they find that protestants suffer less and catholics suffer more than the average from marital separation. their results do not seem to be endogenous to religion, as they correspond to both attitudes and behavior. the religious are both anti-divorce and anti-job creation for the unemployed, for example, and the religious unemployed are less likely to be actively looking for work. deaton, in conclusions based on the gallup world poll, finds that the elderly and women are more likely to be religious. in addition, in most countries religious people report better health, say they have greater energy, and that they experience less pain than do those without a religious affiliation. they are more likely to be married, to have supportive friends, to report being treated with respect, to have greater confidence in the healthcare system, and they are less likely to smoke.12 given that the gwp is cross-section data, we of course do not know the direction of causality and it may be that happier people are more likely to have better attitudes, to be religious, and to refrain from harmful behaviors. deaton and stone (2013) find a religion and wellbeing “puzzle” in the united states, in which religious people report higher levels of hedonic and evaluative wellbeing, but this finding does not carry through to a comparison of more or less religious places. in the united states, religious states have lower average scores on the best possible life (bpl) question but many objective indicators, ranging from income levels to crime and murder rates, are higher in more religious states (zip codes) in the united states. because of this clear income effect, once income is 9 delle fave, brdar, and vella-brodrick (2013). 10 the sample consisted of people who were interested in paranormal phenomena, including people who had attended talks on parapsychology, contacted a parapsychology research center, or had ordered books or materials related to paranormal phenomena. the mean age of respondents was 38 and ranged from 16 to 89. about 35% were under age 25 and 15% were over age 60. women were 70% of the sample. kennedy and kanthamani (1995) and ardelt (2003). 11 deaton and stone (2013); diener et al (2011); ellison (1991); mookerjee and beron (2005); clark and lelkes (2009); lelkes (2002); and lim and putnam (2010). 12 deaton (2009). religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 controlled for in the regression, the positive effect of religiosity on wellbeing returns. deaton and stone (2013) find similar trends based on less fine-grained data from around the world in the gwp. their research suggests that religion may be a coping mechanism in places where life is more adverse and beyond the control of individuals’ own effort. for daily happiness, however (the same as our experienced wellbeing measure), both religious individuals and religious countries have higher levels on average. religious americans are also happier and more religious states in america are happier than others.13 diener et al., in work also based on the gwp, find that nations and states around the world with difficult life circumstances (hunger and low life expectancy) are much more likely to be highly religious. in these countries religiosity was associated with higher levels of all three kinds of swb. in contrast, in societies with more favorable circumstances, religiosity is less prevalent and the difference in wellbeing between the religious and non-religious is much smaller.14 other studies find that religious involvement is associated with fewer depressive symptoms and less anxiety and better quality of life indicators (huang et al); with higher morale (koenig et al); and with higher levels of late-life wellbeing (mcfadden et al).15 there is also, of course, the problem of endogeneity, in which happier people may be more likely to be religious and/or to become religious at times of adversity. olga popova (2010), for example, finds that religious people in the former centrally planned economies experienced lower drops in happiness during the transition to market economies, but she also finds major bias in the coefficients, due to endogeneity. as a means to correct this bias, she uses historical religious density as an instrument, and the results on religion as an insurance mechanism still hold.16 while the literature identifies a consistently positive relationship between religion and wellbeing, that relationship varies in its importance across countries and across the different dimensions of wellbeing. we attempt to probe a bit further along these lines of inquiry. we separate religious attendance and the intrinsic qualities of religion in order to explore the importance of dimensions of hedonic and evaluative wellbeing in countries around the world. we also explicitly test the role of socializing associated with religion. we also look across different religious affiliations within countries. we examine how or if the relationship varies across people with more means and capabilities (and presumably facing less adversity), looking across countries at different levels of development. finally, in the absence of panel data, it is difficult to know if happier people are more likely to be religious, or if religion makes people happier. the standard approach to address endogeneity issues such as this one is to use an instrumental variable, as popova (2010) does. yet it is difficult to find a credible instrument when both beliefs and attitudes/character traits are the integral components of the question at hand. consequently we take a fairly novel approach and use quantile regressions to examine how the relationship varies at different points of the wellbeing distribution. binder and coad (2011) find that the importance to wellbeing of factors such as education and income diminishes at higher levels of the wellbeing distribution. while education, for example, is positive for wellbeing in general, it is negatively correlated with wellbeing at the top of the distribution. graham and nikolova (2013), in research based on the gallup world poll, find that the importance of a number of measures of agency decreases from the 25th percent quantile (i.e., the unhappiest quantile) to the 90th percent quantile (i.e., the 13 deaton and stone (2013). 14 diener et al. (2011). 15 huang, hsu, and chen (2012); koenig, kvale, and ferrel (1998); and mcfadden (1995). 16 popova (2010). religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 happiest quantile). these include: the absence of a health problem, hard work, income, education, being employed part-time and not wanting full-time employment; and being unemployed. all these variables are least important to the wellbeing of the happiest respondents (perhaps because they are happy regardless of objective conditions). on the other hand the researchers find that learning, in contrast to the other agency variables, is very important for the happiest people, with causality likely running in both directions. in this paper we will explore the extent to which the positive relationship between religion and wellbeing is driven by the upper tail of the wellbeing distribution, based on quantile regressions. in doing so, we examine the relationship between happiness and religion from a conditional distribution vantage point and ask, for example, whether the happiest people are happy regardless of religion (and/or other variables such as income). while we cannot fully resolve the standard endogeneity-causality issue, our results should provide some insight into it. 3. data and models we rely on the gallup world poll (gwp), for the years 2005-2011, for base-line data for our empirical analysis. the gwp is an annual survey run by the gallup organization that has covered roughly 160 countries worldwide since 2005. it has nationally representative coverage in most countries, ranging from more than 4,000 household interviews in china every year to 500 households in puerto rico, and up to 6,000 households in india in select years. interviews are face to face in countries where telephone coverage is limited and by telephone where it is universal (primarily the oecd countries). we do not apply weights to the data, as the gwp has a unified sampling approach, and because weighting subjective wellbeing responses assumes that they are identical across similar people in similar places, as income or other objective data might be. we do not feel that is a realistic assumption. our income variable is logged household data, with controls for household size in our regressions. the gwp records respondents’ annual household income in local currencies and converts them into comparable international dollar values (using the 2005 household ppp ratio from the world bank). however, some respondents indicate their income using pre-determined brackets rather than providing specific amounts. for these observations, household income is imputed by using the midpoint of each bracket and dividing it by the ppp ratio. the respondents (both those who give an exact income amount and those who choose a bracket) are then placed into the appropriate income quintile or decile category for their country. while the approach is not free of error, most income data for poor countries is based on survey responses, introducing a similar margin of error. the gallup poll data, including its income components, has been widely used by economists in the past few years.17 in addition to covering the usual socio-demographic indicators, the gallup poll has more than a thousand questions, on topics ranging from reported wellbeing to attitudes to corruption, confidence in institutions, civic engagement, religiosity, and perceptions of economic performance – both at an individual level and at a national level. (for summary statistics on the key variables there-in, see appendix.) we also rely on the world bank’s world development indicators for macroeconomic data and country income classifications in one of our models.18 17 the approach has been vetted among a range of academic advisors to the poll, who include angus deaton and daniel kahneman. as of 2013, the poll has begun to make its income data more detailed and comparable to that taken from household surveys, but that is still a work in progress. 18 http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/variableselection/selectvariables.aspx?source=world-developmentindicators http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/variableselection/selectvariables.aspx?source=world-development-indicators http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/variableselection/selectvariables.aspx?source=world-development-indicators religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 our measures of wellbeing are happy yesterday and the cantril ladder of life question. happy yesterday is one among a few possible hedonic questions that are intended to capture positive affect and experience. other questions, such as those related to stress and anger, capture negative hedonic experience. psychologists stress that positive and negative affect are not one continuum and must be measured separately. in this instance we are more interested in the positive dimension, although we have also worked with the negative dimension in related work.19 the yesterday questions, while much simpler than more detailed metrics of hedonic wellbeing, such as daily reconstruction methods, track remarkably well with the more detailed questions and are reliable substitutes in large-scale surveys.20 the cantril ladder of life question, which asks respondents to rank their lives compared to the best possible life they can imagine on a ten-step ladder, is widely used as a measure of life evaluation. it is important to note, however, that by referencing the best possible life, it is more framed than are open-ended life satisfaction questions, and correlates more closely with income within and across countries than do the latter. 21 because the scale for the explained variables is ordinal and not cardinal in nature, we use (as is the standard practice) an ordered logit or logit specification in our regressions. the coefficients on ordered logits can, most strictly, be interpreted as odds ratios or the difference in the probability that respondents are in one versus the next highest or lowest response category (therefore there is no intercept). in practice, the dependent variables in wellbeing regressions – whether life satisfaction or ladder of life – are more than just an ordinal ranking of preferences, as the reference points at each end of the spectrum offer respondents choices that run from very bad to very good or worst to best. as a result, the variables “mimic” a cardinal metric, and it is increasingly common practice to use standard ols equations on the same data and equations, because the coefficients and statistical significance are essentially identical, thus allowing for comparison across the coefficients. 3.1 model 1 we began with a base-line model in which we had hedonic or evaluative wellbeing as the dependent variable, with happy yesterday and the cantril ladder question, respectively. we then include, on the right side, two variables designed to capture the different elements of religion: how important religion is to respondents’ lives (religion important) and how often people attend religious services (religious service). we include the usual socio-economic and demographic controls – income, age, age2, gender, employment status, health status, among others – as well as country dummies for the roughly 160 countries polled in the years for which gallup has data. 19 our results using stress and anger are remarkably similar to those based on happy yesterday, showing the opposite signs, for the most part, as one would expect, although at times anger tracks differently from stress. results are available from the authors on request; the relationship between religion and anger and stress were also the focus of crown’s master’s thesis for the university of nevada at las vegas, which she defended in november 2013. 20 one of the authors was a member of a national academy of sciences panel tasked with recommending which hedonic wellbeing metrics were reliable enough to be included in u.s. national statistics, and, as such, was exposed to detailed discussions on the topic with some of the psychologists who developed the metrics. detail is in the report. arthur stone and chris mackie, eds. (2013), subjective well-being: measuring happiness, suffering, and other dimensions of experience (washington, d.c.: the national academies press). 21 see carol graham, soumya chattopadyay, and mario picon, “the easterlin and other paradoxes: why both sides of the debate may be correct” in ed diener, john helliwell, and daniel kahneman, eds. (2010), international differences in well-being (oxford: oxford university press). religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 because religious affiliation is not something that is likely to vary in very short time periods, we do not include time dummies and instead treat our 5-year sample as a pooled cross section. (as a robustness check, we ran our base model with year dummies included and our results are essentially unchanged.) we also added the primary religions for which we have respondents with sufficient observations in the survey: christian, catholic, protestant, islam, shiite, sunni, druze, hindu, buddhist, indigenous, judaism, and non-religious (the left-out category in all of the regressions). the distribution of religious density across countries is in table 1, which lists religious frequency in responses per country in the gallup poll. table 1. respondent's religious affiliation religion yes no percent christian not specified 56,261 820,313 6% catholic christian 208,319 668,255 24% protestant christian 117,467 759,107 13% orthodox christian 70,717 805,857 8% muslim – not specified 185,140 691,434 21% muslim – shiite 16,462 860,112 2% muslim – sunni 67,685 808,889 8% druze 918 875,656 0% hindu 34,797 841,777 4% buddhist 45,273 831,301 5% indigenous 2,859 873,715 0% jew 6,294 870,280 1% non-religious 52,659 823,915 6% other religion 11,723 864,851 1% total 876,574 11,395,462 100% source: gallup world poll (2005-2011) note: individuals may report not belonging to a specific religion more than once thus resulting in a larger sample of no responses than other specifications, and thus the sample size may change with different specifications. self-reported wellbeing = α' * individual level means and capabilities + βʹ * individual level variables + γʹ * household level variables + φʹ * person specific religion variables + ρʹ * religion is important + δʹ * religious service attendance + country dummies + error term where:  self-reported wellbeing is an individual response to either (1) “did you experience happiness yesterday or (2) cantril ladder of life question, “how does your life compare to the best possible life on a scale of 1 to 10?”  αʹ, βʹ, γʹ, φʹ, δʹ, ρʹ are coefficient vectors; the error term is an individual-level residual  means and capabilities refer to individual-level descriptors including income and education  individual-level variables include gender, age, age-squared, and marital status religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9  household-level variables are person specific and include household size as well as population density (urban or rural)  religion variables are individual specific dummies referring to self-proclaimed religious identity  religion important is a response to whether religion is important or not  religious service is a response to whether an individual attended a religious service in the last week outside a wedding or other ceremony country dummies for all 160 countries covered by the gallup poll are included. most countries are surveyed every year; a few were added in later years. 3.2 model 2 we next added our socializing variable to the equations, to see first, if our results varied once we controlled for how much people socialized, and second, if the effects of socializing were mediated by being religious or not. we created dummy variables based on how much people socialized. the question in the gallup poll is, “how many hours do you spend with friends and family each day,” with possible responses being between zero and four hours, between five and nine hours, between ten and fourteen hours and over 15 hours. social 1 was the least amount of hours, social 3 was between ten and fourteen hours, and social 4 was over 15 hours. social 1 is the left out category in most of the regressions, as social 4 seems to be an outlier category that is not a reliable comparator.22 we then created an inter-action variable with the frequency of religious service attendance and frequency of socializing. self-reported wellbeing = α' * individual level means and capabilities + βʹ * individual level variables + γʹ * household level variables + φʹ * person specific religion variables + ρʹ * religion is important + δʹ * religious service attendance + country dummies + social dummies and interactions + error term where:  social dummies represent an individual-level response to how much time one spends with friends and family in a 24-hour period  interaction terms between religious service attendance and frequency of socialization are also included 3.3 model 3 we then expanded the model to see if our results varied depending on whether respondents were in a country which was predominantly christian or not, splitting the sample into those countries where the majority of the respondents (more than 50% of respondents in our data by country) were or were not christian, and, as before, include country but not year dummies. this is, therefore, the same as our base-line model (above) but with the sample split into two. (the leftout category is again non-religious). self-reported wellbeing = α' * individual level means and capabilities + βʹ * individual level variables + γʹ * household level variables + φʹ * person specific religion variables + ρʹ * religion is important + δʹ * religious service attendance + country dummies + social dummies and interactions + error term; where christian majority==0 or ==1 22 socializing for more than 15 hours seems an unrealistic amount. some of those respondents who choose this category may be involved in domestic labor, for example. we thank an anonymous reader for making this point. religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 where:  if an individual resides in a country where the majority of the population (more than fifty percent) identifies as a form of christian, christian majority is one (1), otherwise it is zero (0) 3.4 model 4 to test whether the relationship between religion and our two wellbeing dimensions changes as countries (and people within them) grow more prosperous, we split our sample into regions of different levels of development, based on the world bank’s world development indicators (wdi) and explored whether the results across the two wellbeing dimensions differ in countries that are very poor versus those that are very prosperous. we include country dummies in addition to the broader wdi income categories. self-reported wellbeing = α' * individual level means and capabilities + βʹ * individual level variables + γʹ * household level variables + φʹ * person specific religion variables + ρʹ * religion is important + δʹ * religious service attendance + country dummies + social dummies and interactions + error term; where cincwdi ==1, ==2, or ==3 where:  cincwdi refers to country-level income. one (1) refers to low-income countries, while two (2) refers to middle-income countries and three (3) refers to high-income countries 3.5 model 5 finally, we explored how or if the relationship between religion and wellbeing varied depending where respondents were in the wellbeing distribution. following an approach we utilized in graham and nikolova (2013), also with gallup world poll data, and that was utilized in earlier work by binder and coad (2011) and koener and bassett (1978), we analyzed our sample at each quantile of the wellbeing distribution. while standard regressions describe the conditional mean, quantile regressions allow us to explore the entire conditional distribution by analyzing the effects of the covariates at different points of the wellbeing distribution. rather than splitting the sample into segments based on values of the dependent variable, quantile regressions weigh data points depending on whether they are above or below the best fit line. quantile regressions have several advantages. understanding what is happening at the extremes of the distribution demonstrates that some variables are not equally relevant for the happiest and unhappiest individuals. as such, some policy interventions that have a positive effect on the majority can also cause larger gains or losses for a minority. and methodologically, estimating means across heterogeneous populations may fail to identify effects on some cohorts. quantile regressions assume that the error terms are not identically distributed at all points of the conditional distribution, but rather that the slope parameters differ along the quantiles, as such allowing for individual heterogeneity (binder and coad, 2011).23 our quantile regression model follows that of koenker and bassett (1978) and binder and coad (2011): yit = x it + e it with quant = (yit | xit) = x it 23 binder, m., & coad, a. (2011). from average joe's happiness to miserable jane and cheerful john: using quantile regressions to analyze the full subjective well-being distribution. journal of economic behavior & organization, 79(3), 275-290. religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 where:  yit is subjective wellbeing (bpl)  x is a vector of covariates  is the vector of parameters to be estimated  and e is the stochastic error term  quant = (yit | xit) is the th conditional quantile (where 0 of wellbeing (y) given the covariates and solves the following minimization problem: where is: the equations are operationalized by the statistical programming method in stata’s sqreg command. we also used bootstrapped standard errors (20 iterations).24 as in the case of most of the above models, we include country dummies in our specification and the left out religious category is christian. 4. results we cannot make exact comparisons across the coefficients in these separate equations, of course, as the dependent variables are on different scales (0-1 and 0-10), and the logit and ordered logit specifications are categorical and not continuous. this makes estimating standardized coefficients complex at best. thus we are not making direct comparisons of the values of the coefficients across the equations in our analysis, and simply focus primarily on the signs on the coefficients and the orders of magnitude of the differences. these are very much in keeping with our hypotheses, as well as earlier work exploring differences in wellbeing dimensions. 4.1 indicators of individual means and capabilities the coefficients on objective indicators, such as income, education, and living in an urban area, are an order of magnitude larger for the bpl variable, our evaluative wellbeing measure, than they are for the happiness yesterday variable, our hedonic measure. marriage has a much stronger coefficient in the happiness regressions than it does in the bpl regressions. our earlier research, as well as that of others, finds a stronger relationship between income and other proxies for a higher standard of living and evaluative wellbeing than hedonic wellbeing. while extreme deprivation is bad for both dimensions of wellbeing, after a certain point more income is not likely to improve affective states (such as smiling more or being angry less), but it surely gives individuals more opportunities and choices to lead the kinds of lives they want to lead. of all the evaluative questions, people’s means, capabilities, and opportunities seem to be best reflected in the best possible life question (as opposed to general happiness or life satisfaction, for example).25 24 for further discussion of the quantile regression method, see buchinsky, m. (1998), “recent advances in quantile regression models: a practical guideline for empirical research”, the journal of human resources, 33(1), 88-126. cade, b. s., & noon, b. r. (2003), “a gentle introduction to quantile regression for ecologists”, frontiers in ecology and the environment, 1(8), 412-420; and koenker, r., & hallock, k. f. (2001), “quantile regression”, the journal of economic perspectives, 15(4), 143-156. 25 carol graham, soumya chattopadhyay, and mario picon (2010), “the easterlin and other paradoxes: why both sides of the debate might be correct” in ed diener, john helliwell, and daniel kahneman, eds., international differences in well-being (oxford: oxford university press); daniel kahneman and angus deaton (2010), “high income improves religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 4.2 indicators of religion both of our religion variables – reporting that religion is an important part of one’s daily life and attending religious services – are positively and significantly correlated with happy yesterday. attending religious services also correlates positively with bpl, but religion is important is insignificant. while the variable “attending religious services” holds its positive association across the wellbeing dimensions, the spiritual or purposeful aspect of religiosity does not hold for evaluative wellbeing. hedonic wellbeing captures shorter daily experiences, in which religion seems to play a consistent role. evaluative wellbeing captures life as a whole, both in terms of the life cycle and of purpose or meaning in life, and the determinants of the latter may vary a great deal depending on people’s means and capabilities, among other things, and thus the role of religion may vary more (see table 2). table 2. regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing happy bpl (1) (2) religion important 0.147*** 0.007 (0.014) (0.01) religious service 0.168*** 0.101*** (0.011) (0.008) urban 0.036*** 0.151*** (0.01) (0.007) household size 0.004 -0.001 (0.003) (0.002) ln(household income) 0.171*** 0.356*** (0.004) (0.004) gender 0.007 0.058*** (0.009) (0.007) age (in years) -0.043*** -0.034*** (0.001) (0.001) age-squared 0.0003*** 0.00026*** (0.00002) (0.00001) marital status 0.267*** 0.126*** (0.01) (0.008) table 2 (cont.). regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing happy bpl (1) (2) education 0.181*** 0.404*** (0.015) (0.01) christian 0.125*** 0.12*** (0.038) (0.028) catholic christian 0.152*** 0.019 (0.028) (0.02) protestant christian 0.203*** 0.049** evaluation of life but not emotional well-being”, proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 107, 16489—16493; and graham and nikolova (2013). religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 (0.03) (0.021) orthodox christian 0.143*** -0.111*** (0.035) (0.026) muslim 0.169*** 0.007 (0.033) (0.024) shiite muslim 0.168*** -0.11*** (0.047) (0.036) sunni muslim 0.123*** -0.058** (0.037) (0.027) druze 0.179 0.196* (0.135) (0.112) hindu 0.194*** 0.048 (0.051) (0.035) buddhist 0.093** -0.014 (0.043) (0.029) indigenous 0.044 -0.066 (0.099) (0.077) jew 0.408*** 0.315*** (0.101) (0.069) constant 1.165*** (0.105) number of observations 261,324 294,620 pseudo r-squared 0.0843 0.0763 country dummies yes yes source: gallup world poll (2005-2011) notes: all regressions use robust standard errors and country dummies. we treat the sample as a pooled cross section and therefore do not include year dummies. bpl measures the respondent's assessment of her current life relative to her best possible life. happy is a binary variable coded 1 if the respondent experienced happiness the day before and 0 otherwise. household income is log-transformed and is in international dollars (id), which allows comparisons across countries and time. model (1) is estimated using logit while model (2) is estimated using ordered logit. ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10 the distribution of respondents of different religions across our sample is in table 1 (above). when we look at the coefficients on the different religions (with non-religious being the omitted category), we find that, compared to the non-religious, most affiliations have higher happy yesterday scores, with the exception of druze and indigenous respondents. the patterns on bpl are less consistent. protestants, christians, and jews have higher bpl scores than the nonreligious, while orthodox christians, shiites, sunnis, and buddhists have lower ones26 (see table 2). 4.3 indicators of sociability when we include our social variables, and our interaction terms for levels of sociability and attending religious services, we find that first, both happiness and bpl levels (compared to the least social category) increase for social 2 (5-9 hours) and social 3 (10-14 hours), and then drop 26 90.55% of jewish respondents are in israel and the next highest percentage (2%) is in the u.s. see table 1 (above) on the distribution of religions across the sample. religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 slightly for the most social category (over 15 hours!) (see table 3). it is likely that this very high level of socialization enhances daily experience but is not as conducive to focusing on other life goals and achievements. table 3. regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing including social indicators happy bpl happy bpl happy bpl happy bpl (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) religion 0.098*** -0.004 0.098*** -0.004 0.1*** -0.003 0.1*** -0.003 important (0.025) (0.018) (0.025) (0.018) (0.025) (0.018) (0.025) (0.018) religious 0.192*** 0.129*** 0.192*** 0.129*** -0.028 0.137*** 0.307*** 0.172*** service (0.019) (0.014) (0.019) (0.014) (0.066) (0.047) (0.024) (0.017) urban -0.005 0.141*** -0.005 0.141*** -0.006 0.141*** -0.006 0.141*** (0.019) (0.013) (0.019) (0.013) (0.019) (0.013) (0.019) (0.013) household -0.004 -0.008** -0.004 -0.008** -0.004 -0.008** -0.004 -0.008** size (0.005) (0.003) (0.005) (0.003) (0.005) (0.003) (0.005) (0.003) ln(house 0.172*** 0.379*** 0.172*** 0.379*** 0.172*** 0.379*** 0.172*** 0.379*** hold income) (0.007) (0.006) (0.007) (0.006) (0.007) (0.006) (0.007) (0.006) gender -0.017 0.058*** -0.017 0.058*** -0.015 0.059*** -0.015 0.059*** (0.017) (0.012) (0.017) (0.012) (0.017) (0.012) (0.017) (0.012) age (in -0.046*** -0.031*** -0.046*** -0.031*** -0.046*** -0.031*** -0.046*** -0.031*** years) (0.003) (0.002) (0.003) (0.002) (0.003) (0.002) (0.003) (0.002) age-squared 0.00033*** 0.00025*** 0.00033*** 0.00025*** 0.00033*** 0.00025*** 0.00033*** 0.00025*** (0.00003) (0.00002) (0.00003) (0.00002) (0.00003) (0.00002) (0.00003) (0.00002) marital 0.256*** 0.126*** 0.256*** 0.126*** 0.253*** 0.125*** 0.253*** 0.125*** status (0.019) (0.014) (0.019) (0.014) (0.019) (0.014) (0.019) (0.014) education 0.183*** 0.443*** 0.183*** 0.443*** 0.184*** 0.443*** 0.184*** 0.443*** (0.027) (0.018) (0.027) (0.018) (0.027) (0.018) (0.027) (0.018) religion categories (ref. group: non-religious) other 0.102 -0.08 0.102 -0.08 0.103 -0.079 0.103 -0.079 religion (0.104) (0.065) (0.104) (0.065) (0.105) (0.065) (0.105) (0.065) christian 0.225*** 0.077 0.225*** 0.077 0.228*** 0.079 0.228*** 0.079 (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) catholic 0.219*** 0.028 0.219*** 0.028 0.225*** 0.03 0.225*** 0.03 christian (0.049) (0.034) (0.049) (0.034) (0.049) (0.034) (0.049) (0.034) protestant 0.27*** 0.098*** 0.27*** 0.098*** 0.277*** 0.1*** 0.277*** 0.1*** christian (0.052) (0.036) (0.052) (0.036) (0.052) (0.036) (0.052) (0.036) orthodox 0.175** -0.051 0.175** -0.051 0.18*** -0.049 0.18*** -0.049 christian (0.068) (0.051) (0.068) (0.051) (0.068) (0.051) (0.068) (0.051) muslim 0.214*** 0.002 0.214*** 0.002 0.224*** 0.006 0.224*** 0.006 (0.06) (0.042) (0.06) (0.042) (0.06) (0.042) (0.06) (0.042) shiite 0.29*** -0.143** 0.29*** -0.143** 0.307*** -0.137** 0.307*** -0.137** muslim (0.082) (0.062) (0.082) (0.062) (0.083) (0.062) (0.083) (0.062) table 3 (cont.). regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing including social indicators happy bpl happy bpl happy bpl happy bpl (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) sunni 0.228*** -0.04 0.228*** -0.04 0.235*** -0.037 0.235*** -0.037 muslim (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) druze 0.214 -0.154 0.214 -0.154 0.241 -0.146 0.241 -0.146 (0.232) (0.195) (0.232) (0.195) (0.232) (0.195) (0.232) (0.195) hindu 0.195** -0.014 0.195** -0.014 0.201** -0.01 0.201** -0.01 religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 (0.087) (0.058) (0.087) (0.058) (0.087) (0.058) (0.087) (0.058) buddhist 0.052 -0.006 0.052 -0.006 0.059 -0.003 0.059 -0.003 (0.077) (0.048) (0.077) (0.048) (0.077) (0.048) (0.077) (0.048) indigenous 0.206 0.154 0.206 0.154 0.2 0.149 0.2 0.149 (0.181) (0.139) (0.181) (0.139) (0.181) (0.139) (0.181) (0.139) jew 0.359* 0.312** 0.359* 0.312** 0.385* 0.319** 0.385* 0.319** social1 (0.199) -0.345*** (0.135) -0.106*** (0.199) (0.135) (0.199) -0.502*** (0.135) -0.125*** (0.199) (0.135) (0.036) (0.025) (0.048) (0.034) social2 0.017 0.012 0.362*** 0.119*** -0.043 0.046 0.46*** 0.171*** (0.037) (0.026) (0.02) (0.014) (0.05) (0.035) (0.028) (0.02) social3 0.108*** 0.021 0.453*** 0.127*** 0.124** 0.058 0.626*** 0.183*** (0.04) (0.028) (0.027) (0.019) (0.056) (0.039) (0.037) (0.026) social4 0.345*** 0.106*** 0.502*** 0.125*** (0.036) (0.025) (0.048) (0.034) social1 * 0.334*** 0.036 relig. serv. (0.069) (0.049) social2 * 0.138* -0.067 -0.196*** -0.103*** relig. serv. (0.073) (0.051) (0.039) (0.027) social3 * -0.022 -0.077 -0.357*** -0.113*** relig. serv. (0.08) (0.056) (0.052) (0.036) social4 * -0.334*** -0.036 relig. serv. (0.069) (0.049) constant 1.361*** 1.016*** 1.452*** 0.95*** (0.163) (0.16) (0.166) (0.161) number of observations 82,025 94,777 82,025 94,777 82,025 94,777 82,025 94,777 pseudo rsquared 0.0985 0.0887 0.0985 0.0887 0.0992 0.0887 0.0992 0.0887 country dummies yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes source: gallup world poll (2005-2011). notes: all regressions use robust standard errors and country dummies. we treat the sample as a pooled cross section and therefore do not include year dummies. bpl measures the respondent's assessment of her current life relative to her best possible life. happy is a binary variable coded 1 if the respondent experienced happiness the day before and 0 otherwise. household income is log-transformed and is in international dollars (id), which allows comparisons across countries and time. models (1, 3, 5, 7) are estimated using logit while models (2, 4, 6, 8) are estimated using ordered logit. social1 refers to the least social individuals. ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10 rather surprisingly, our interaction term (sociability * religious services attendance) is negative and significant for all of the social groups compared to the least social one. the combined effect of the interaction term and the social variables in each instance mitigates the positive effects of socializing but does not eliminate them. when we alter the specification and leave out the most social group and include the least happy, least social group in our regressions, we get a positive coefficient on that group; in this instance the interaction term mitigates the negative effect of being in that least social group on daily experience. the findings suggest that for the least social group religious services provide a positive form of socialization, which the already more social cohorts either do not need or do not notice. interestingly, in the specification in which we include our social variables, the one religion that has a significant difference in results is judaism. with the inclusion of the social variables, the positive correlation between judaism and happy yesterday disappears, and drops significantly for bpl. to the extent that our results on judaism are driven by the shared identity religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 and purpose that jews in israel have (and 90% of jewish respondents in the gwp are in israel), and that the social aspects of religion are recognized to be part of jewish identity there, then the social factors are likely the positive drivers behind the initial correlations in table 2 (above). in contrast, jewish respondents in the u.s. general social survey are significantly less happy than the average u.s. respondent.27 as in the case of the study (cited above) by mookerjee and beron (1995), the extent of religious fractionalization in the u.s. compared to the prevalence of judaism in israel may play a role. jeff levin, for example, in results based on a 900 plus sample of jewish adults in 2009-2010, finds that a wide number of religious measures (ranging from attending synagogue to certainty of belief in god to subjective religiosity) were significantly associated with happiness. in contrast, they find that prayer is negatively associated with mental health indicators, perhaps because prayer is more likely to be a coping strategy at times of adversity than is attending services.28 he cites a growing body of population-based studies supporting a salutatory impact of jewish religious observance on subjective wellbeing in israel and the diaspora. presumably this plays out differently in the united states. 4.4 differences between christian dominated and non-christian dominated countries when we split our sample into countries with a christian majority and those without a christian majority, our priors were that people of different religious affiliation might have different experiences depending on whether the religion with which they were affiliated was in the majority or not. an additional factor is that the mean income in the sample with a majority of christians is twice as high as that for the sample with a non-christian majority. in each case, our left-out category was the non-religious group and we include country dummies. the results for our two religions variables are roughly the same in this split sample specification as they were for the full sample. there are, however, some significant changes across religious affiliations (see table 4 below). in the non-christian majority sample, the coefficient on muslim, shiites, and sunnis, which had mixed results in the other specifications, become positive and significant for happy yesterday, as does that for hindus. there is not a consistent relationship with bpl for the same religions. jews retain positive scores on both dimensions. the coefficients on protestant and catholic, meanwhile, become insignificant when these religions are in the minority. these results are suggestive, again, of the role of religious homogeneity versus fractionalization in the relationship with wellbeing. table 4. regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, christian majority/nonmajority split sample christian majority non-christian majority happy bpl happy bpl (1) (2) (3) (4) religion important 0.182*** 0.007 0.113*** 0.013 (0.018) (0.013) (0.021) (0.016) religious service 0.149*** 0.11*** 0.197*** 0.095*** 27 results based on our analysis of the u.s. general social survey data. available from the authors upon request. 28 jeff levin (2013), “religion and mental health among israeli jews: findings from the share-israel study”, social indicators research, vol. 113, 769-784. religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 (0.016) (0.011) (0.015) (0.011) urban 0.017 0.133*** 0.053*** 0.167*** (0.014) (0.01) (0.015) (0.011) household size 0.011** 0.003 -0.003 -0.006** (0.005) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) ln(household income) 0.138*** 0.295*** 0.213*** 0.438*** (0.006) (0.005) (0.007) (0.006) gender -0.045*** 0.033*** 0.066*** 0.089*** (0.013) (0.009) (0.013) (0.01) age (in years) -0.047*** -0.046*** -0.042*** -0.023*** (0.002) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002) age-squared 0.00032*** 0.00036*** 0.00032*** 0.00018*** (0.00002) (0.00002) (0.00003) (0.00002) marital status 0.292*** 0.13*** 0.225*** 0.1*** (0.014) (0.01) (0.016) (0.012) education 0.165*** 0.414*** 0.211*** 0.4*** (0.02) (0.013) (0.022) (0.016) religion categories (ref. group: non-religious) other religion 0.127*** 0.102*** 0.13* 0.187*** (0.044) (0.032) (0.074) (0.055) christian 0.149* -0.053 0.122 -0.011 (0.078) (0.049) (0.084) (0.058) catholic christian 0.157*** 0.032 0.124** -0.065 (0.032) (0.023) (0.063) (0.045) protestant christian 0.216*** 0.054** 0.091 -0.002 (0.034) (0.024) (0.07) (0.05) orthodox christian 0.138*** -0.08*** 0.124* -0.228*** (0.041) (0.03) (0.072) (0.053) muslim 0.1** -0.079** 0.227*** 0.056 (0.045) (0.032) (0.059) (0.041) shiite muslim 0.112 0.025 0.228*** -0.097* (0.12) (0.09) (0.068) (0.051) sunni muslim -0.062 -0.099* 0.191*** -0.022 (0.077) (0.056) (0.061) (0.044) druze 0.216 0.229 0.233 0.237* (0.557) (0.382) (0.146) (0.124) table 4 (cont.). regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, christian majority/non-majority split sample christian majority non-christian majority happy bpl happy bpl (1) (2) (3) (4) hindu -0.337 -0.558*** 0.245*** 0.117** (0.225) (0.119) (0.068) (0.048) buddhist -0.038 -0.298** 0.093* -0.022 religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 (0.202) (0.139) (0.052) (0.036) indigenous -0.04 -0.017 0.279 -0.189 (0.114) (0.089) (0.195) (0.154) jew 0.074 0.049 0.469*** 0.431*** (0.233) (0.13) (0.115) (0.086) constant 1.683*** -0.728*** (0.118) (0.1) number of observations 136,275 153,228 125,049 141,392 pseudo r-squared 0.1075 0.0815 0.0607 0.0588 country dummies yes yes yes yes source: gallup world poll (2005-2011) notes: all regressions use robust standard errors and country dummies. we treat the sample as a pooled cross section and therefore do not include year dummies. bpl measures the respondent's assessment of her current life relative to her best possible life. happy is a binary variable coded 1 if the respondent experienced happiness the day before and 0 otherwise. household income is log-transformed and is in international dollars (id), which allows comparisons across countries and time. models (1 & 3) are estimated using logit while models (2 & 4) are estimated using ordered logit. ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10 for the majority christian sample, the coefficients for catholic and protestant become positive and significant for happy yesterday but are insignificant on bpl for catholics. hedonic wellbeing is thus higher for catholic and protestant respondents in christian majority countries than for catholics and protestants in non-christian majority countries. the coefficient for muslim remains positive for happy but turns strongly negative for bpl. judaism once again becomes insignificant on both coefficients (again likely driven by the concentration of jewish respondents in israel). 4.5 differences among countries of varying income and levels of development we next tested whether the relationship between religion and wellbeing (in its two dimensions) varied across countries of different levels of development, with our priors being that respondents in wealthier countries have, on average, greater means and capabilities, and thus different aspects of religion might matter more or less to their wellbeing (and across its dimensions). we split our sample into three income categories (low, middle, and high), based on the world bank’s world development indicators (wdi), combining the lower-middle income and upper-middle income categories into one. again, this splitting of the sample, while producing interesting results, calls for caution in making exact comparisons of coefficient sizes across the sample. we again focus on the direction and significance of the signs rather than the exact coefficient values when we discuss the results in a comparative context. in previous research (graham and chattopadhyay, 2013), it was found that the relationship between marriage and wellbeing varies across countries of different levels of development, with the positive relationship holding only in the wealthiest wdi category.29 we find similar patterns with our split samples here, with the coefficients on marriage and gender being insignificant in the sample of poorer countries. 29in that instance, our interpretation was that marriage was more likely to be positively associated with wellbeing in instances where it was more of a voluntary choice than a result of strong social norms. see carol graham and soumya chattopadhyay, “gender and well-being around the world”, international journal of happiness and development, vol.1, no.2, 212-232. religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 our underlying intuition here was that religion was more likely to be important to wellbeing in poorer countries, where people have lower levels of agency and fewer capabilities, and therefore less control over the course of their lives. our results support our hypothesis. we find that for the first income category (the poorest countries) the coefficients on both religion important and religious services are positively and significantly correlated with happy. the coefficient on religious services is positively correlated with the best possible life, but believing that religion is important is insignificant. we get a similar pattern and roughly similar coefficients and t-values for the middle-income countries. for the richest countries, however, while the same pattern holds for hedonic wellbeing, the positive coefficient values are much weaker. for bpl, the coefficient on religious services remains positive but religion is important turns negative (and insignificant) (see table 5). all these results provide modest support for religion mattering more in poor countries, and religion’s relationship with the evaluative dimension of wellbeing (and therefore implicitly agency and capability) is weakest in the richest countries, where people have greater means and more control over the course of their lives. table 5. regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, split sample by income wdi 1 wdi 2 wdi 3 happy bpl happy bpl happy bpl (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) religion important 0.225*** 0.051 0.154*** 0.014 0.123*** -0.021 (0.041) (0.033) (0.018) (0.013) (0.026) (0.018) religious service 0.228*** 0.13*** 0.149*** 0.072*** 0.144*** 0.168*** (0.022) (0.017) (0.014) (0.01) (0.026) (0.018) urban 0.057** 0.236*** 0.04*** 0.173*** -0.02 0.019 (0.025) (0.019) (0.013) (0.009) (0.023) (0.015) household size -0.001 0.01*** 0.005 -0.008*** -0.005 -0.009 (0.005) (0.004) (0.004) (0.003) (0.008) (0.006) ln(househ. income) 0.164*** 0.358*** 0.183*** 0.356*** 0.129*** 0.334*** (0.009) (0.007) (0.006) (0.005) (0.01) (0.009) gender -0.011 -0.02 0.008 0.061*** 0.05** 0.143*** (0.019) (0.014) (0.012) (0.009) (0.021) (0.014) age (in years) -0.021*** -0.005* -0.044*** -0.037*** -0.066*** -0.06*** (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.004) (0.002) age-squared 0.00009*** -0.00001 0.0003*** 0.00027*** 0.00053*** 0.00051*** (0.00004) (0.00003) (0.00002) (0.00002) (0.00004) (0.00002) marital status 0.095*** 0.003 0.267*** 0.094*** 0.473*** 0.343*** (0.022) (0.017) (0.014) (0.01) (0.023) (0.017) table 5 (cont.). regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, split sample by income wdi 1 wdi 2 wdi 3 happy bpl happy bpl happy bpl (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) education 0.293*** 0.404*** 0.219*** 0.434*** 0.095*** 0.362*** (0.05) (0.036) (0.019) (0.014) (0.026) (0.017) other religion -0.019 0.076 0.224** 0.074 0.121 -0.161*** (0.201) (0.163) (0.087) (0.06) (0.086) (0.054) christian 0.089 0.269** 0.121** 0.195*** 0.185*** 0.054 religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 (0.161) (0.132) (0.06) (0.045) (0.061) (0.042) catholic christian 0.251* 0.248** 0.115** -0.001 0.15*** -0.019 (0.15) (0.123) (0.049) (0.036) (0.039) 0 protestant christian 0.322** 0.239* 0.122** -0.009 0.247*** 0.083*** (0.15) (0.123) (0.053) (0.038) (0.043) (0.029) orthodox christian 0.147 -0.058 0.149*** -0.04 0.09 -0.113** (0.166) (0.137) (0.052) (0.038) (0.078) (0.057) muslim 0.242 0.121 0.178*** 0.128*** 0.05 -0.5*** (0.15) (0.124) (0.052) (0.038) (0.089) (0.063) shiite muslim 0.532*** 0.075 0.083 -0.021 -0.447 -0.783** (0.166) (0.135) (0.064) (0.049) (0.426) (0.315) sunni muslim 0.323** 0.135 0.086 0.037 -0.463** -0.508*** (0.155) (0.127) (0.056) (0.041) (0.189) (0.143) druze -0.642 0.016 0.189 0.301** 0.389 0.066 (0.502) (0.399) (0.152) (0.127) (0.451) (0.334) hindu 0.085 0.081 0.279*** 0.213*** 0.129 -0.455*** (0.182) (0.144) (0.071) (0.049) (0.141) (0.095) buddhist 0.468** 0.111 -0.139** 0.135*** 0.166*** -0.168*** (0.218) (0.157) (0.07) (0.048) (0.058) (0.039) indigenous 0.367* 0.188 -0.258* -0.202* 0.76 -0.02 (0.194) (0.159) (0.154) (0.123) (0.622) (0.328) jew 0.427 -0.031 -0.127 0.367*** 0.183** (1.462) (0.41) (0.327) (0.115) (0.079) constant -0.828*** -0.318*** 2.069*** (0.178) (0.092) (0.162) number of observations 57,996 62,982 146,284 167,040 57,043 64,598 pseudo r-squared 0.0546 0.0358 0.0912 0.0438 0.0923 0.0639 country dummies yes yes yes yes yes yes source: gallup world poll (2005-2011) notes: all regressions use robust standard errors and country dummies. we treat the sample as a pooled cross section and therefore do not include year dummies. bpl measures the respondent's assessment of her current life relative to her best possible life. happy is a binary variable coded 1 if the respondent experienced happiness the day before and 0 otherwise. household income is log-transformed and is in international dollars (id), which allows comparisons across countries and time. models (1, 3, 5) are estimated using logit while models (2, 4, 6) are estimated using ordered logit. wdi 1 refers to the poorest countries. *** p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10 while we do not get a systematic pattern across religious affiliations, there is one notable trend. the coefficients on non-christian religions, which are more positive in the poorer countries, get markedly more negative in the sample of the wealthiest countries, particularly on the bpl variable. presumably being affiliated with a minority religion can be a factor working against getting ahead in society, and particularly in contexts of great wealth, where those religions are even more in the minority (and/or there is more fractionalization), and where getting to the top is that much harder. in contrast, the insignificant coefficient on bpl for protestants becomes positive and significant in the sample of richest countries. 4.6 results from quantile regressions finally, we relied on quantile regressions to explore how or if the relationship between religion and wellbeing varied depending where respondents were in the wellbeing distribution. while this exercise cannot fully answer the direction of causality question – whether happier people are religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 more likely to be religious or whether religion makes people happier – at least it can tell us if the relationship between religion and wellbeing is more important for the happiest part of our sample than for others (and if there is variance across the wellbeing dimensions depending on where respondents are in the wellbeing distribution). our results support our priors. attending religious services is significantly and positively associated with bpl across all of the quantiles. religion is important, although it is insignificant for the two least happy quantiles (q25 and q50) and positive and significant for the two happiest quantiles (q75 and q90). it seems that the positive association between religiosity (rather than religious practice) is driven by the happier half of the distribution. at the same time the importance of religion increases, as people get happier, the magnitude of the coefficient on income decreases as we move up the happiness quantiles (see table 6). table 6: regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, best possible life quantile regressions–religion categories (ref. group: non-religious) q25 q50 q75 q90 quantile quantile quantile quantile (1) (2) (3) (4) religion important -0.012 0.002 0.048*** 0.102*** (0.013) (0.011) (0.014) (0.017) religious service 0.098*** 0.083*** 0.101*** 0.098*** (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.009) urban 0.101*** 0.12*** 0.183*** 0.188*** (0.01) (0.007) (0.012) (0.016) household size -0.01*** -0.004 0.002 0.005 (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.004) ln(household income) 0.503*** 0.365*** 0.277*** 0.202*** (0.008) (0.005) (0.005) (0.006) gender 0.057*** 0.053*** 0.061*** 0.09*** (0.009) (0.008) (0.009) (0.008) age (in years) -0.03*** -0.029*** -0.036*** -0.046*** (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002) age-squared 0.00019*** 0.00021*** 0.00031*** 0.00045*** (0.00001) (0.00001) (0.00002) (0.00003) marital status 0.142*** 0.111*** 0.096*** 0.112*** (0.011) (0.007) (0.012) (0.013) table 6: regression analysis of evaluative and hedonic wellbeing, best possible life quantile regressions–religion categories (ref. group: non-religious) q25 q50 q75 q90 quantile quantile quantile quantile (1) (2) (3) (4) education 0.426*** 0.373*** 0.37*** 0.234*** (0.013) (0.015) (0.016) (0.02) other religion -0.103* -0.027 -0.012 0.02 (0.057) (0.032) (0.044) (0.064) christian 0.102*** 0.094*** 0.099** 0.123*** religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 (0.036) (0.031) (0.041) (0.038) catholic christian 0.026 0.026 -0.021 0.016 (0.021) (0.024) (0.021) (0.022) protestant christian 0.024 0.053** 0.044 0.089*** (0.019) (0.024) (0.027) (0.026) orthodox christian -0.121*** -0.089*** -0.166*** -0.111*** (0.027) (0.027) (0.031) (0.034) muslim 0.016 -0.002 -0.018 0.066* (0.029) (0.024) (0.03) (0.035) shiite muslim -0.173*** -0.084** -0.09 -0.068 (0.048) (0.036) (0.061) (0.045) sunni muslim -0.07* -0.074*** -0.076** -0.022 (0.036) (0.02) (0.03) (0.034) druze 0.239* 0.102 0.001 -0.112 (0.139) (0.142) (0.147) (0.191) hindu 0.094* 0.029 -0.028 0.006 (0.053) (0.026) (0.043) (0.076) buddhist -0.014 -0.058* -0.032 0.062 (0.028) (0.029) (0.045) (0.049) indigenous -0.008 -0.043 0.004 -0.212 (0.124) (0.094) (0.067) (0.162) jew 0.583*** 0.286*** 0.196** 0.186** (0.097) (0.078) (0.099) (0.085) constant 1.502*** 4.125*** 6.107*** 7.994*** (0.091) (0.072) (0.082) (0.127) number of observations 294,620 294,620 294,620 294,620 pseudo r-squared 0.1462 0.1496 0.1746 0.1316 country dummies yes yes yes yes source: gallup world poll (2005-2011) notes: all regressions use bootstrapped standard errors and country dummies. we treat the sample as a pooled cross section and therefore do not include year dummies. bpl measures the respondent's assessment of her current life relative to her best possible life. happy is a binary variable coded 1 if the respondent experienced happiness the day before and 0 otherwise. household income is log-transformed and is in international dollars (id), which allows comparisons across countries and time. q1 is the lowest quantile (25th) and q4 is the highest (90th). *** p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.10 5. conclusions a number of previous studies of religion and wellbeing suggest that the relationship is moderated by the particular dimension of wellbeing that is at question (daily experience versus evaluative). to our knowledge, this the first extensive exploration of this question based on a world-wide sample, with a particular focus on the different dimensions of wellbeing and how their importance might vary across countries of different levels of development. our underlying hypothesis was that religion was more likely to be important to the daily experience dimension of wellbeing in general, and that its importance to evaluative wellbeing would be higher among poorer respondents with less control over the course of their lives. our baseline results support this hypothesis. both religious variables (religion is important and attending religious services) are positively and significantly correlated with our experienced religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 23 wellbeing variable. attending religious services is also positively correlated with the best possible life question (our evaluative measure), but reporting that religion is important is insignificant. this is in keeping with our priors, as those respondents with higher bpl scores, who typically also have more means and capabilities, are less likely to rely on religion to determine the course of their lives or as they assess their lives. our analysis across poor and rich countries is also suggestive along these lines. both religious variables were positively and significantly correlated with experienced wellbeing for poor and middle-income countries, while the results on evaluative wellbeing were positive but not always significant. for the rich country sample, the positive coefficients were smaller in magnitude, and the sign on religion is important was negative (but insignificant) with best possible life. presumably, as people have more means and agency to determine the course of their lives, religion plays a smaller role when they evaluate their lives as a whole, even though it may still be an important part of their daily experiences. respondents with fewer means and less agency and who face more adversity through the course of their lives seem more likely to turn to religion as a source of hope and/or social insurance. we posited that one channel through which religion could enhance wellbeing was the social externalities that it provides, as has been suggested by other studies. we find, as expected, that respondents who socialize more frequently have higher scores in both dimensions of wellbeing. yet the additional positive effect of attending religious services was additionally important only for the least social respondents, perhaps because religion gives them a necessary impetus to socialize. in contrast, attending religious services had a modest negative mitigating effect on the wellbeing of our highly social respondents. we explored whether the relationship between religion and wellbeing was different depending on whether respondents belonged to the majority affiliation or not. when we split our sample into christian and non-christian majority countries, we found significant differences across religions. compared to the non-religious, muslim respondents, for example, scored much higher on happy yesterday in the non-christian majority sample, but scored much lower than the average on best possible life in the christian majority sample. jews, meanwhile, scored significantly higher on both wellbeing variables in the non-christian majority sample (in which most jewish respondents live in israel), but not so in the christian majority sample (where jewish respondents are primarily in the united states). protestants and catholics, meanwhile, scored higher on happy yesterday in the christian majority sample. as such, the positive relationship between religion and wellbeing seems to be stronger when one’s affiliation is closer to the majority affiliation. as a means to shed light on the difficult question of whether religious people are happier or happier people are more likely to be religious, we analyzed our sample at different quantiles of the wellbeing distribution. we find that the positive association between attending religious services and best possible life holds across all the quantiles. in contrast, the positive association between bpl and religion is important only holds for the happiest quantiles. with the quantile specification, meanwhile, the coefficients on religious affiliation, for the most part, became negative or insignificant. this suggests that happier people are more likely to be religious in the spiritual and emotional sense, their particular religious affiliation aside. while it does not solve the causality problem, it suggests that happier people are more likely to be religious regardless of the religion that they practice – perhaps in the same way that more social people are happier, regardless of whether or not they attend religious services. our previous work on agency and wellbeing suggests that the happiest people are happy regardless of many of the variables that proxy for capabilities, such as employment and health. religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 24 indeed, the same findings show that the happiest people are not necessarily happy in full-time employment, although they are when learning or being creative. the religiosity findings run in the same direction, in that the happiest people are religious regardless of religious affiliation, suggesting that at least some of the causality runs from happiness to religiosity. in sum, like many others we find a positive relation between religion and wellbeing. we find that the positive relation between evaluative wellbeing is more important for those respondents with lower levels of agency, while the positive relation with hedonic wellbeing holds across the board. the social dimension of religion, meanwhile, was most important for the least social respondents, while the religiosity component of religion was most important for the happiest respondents, regardless of religious affiliation or service attendance. it seems that the happiest are most likely to seek social purpose in religion, the poorest are most likely to seek social insurance in religion, and the least social are the most likely to seek social time in religion. acknowledgments the authors thank soumya chattopadhyay and milena nikolova for helpful comments and insights on the data, and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful suggestions. authors carol graham the brookings institution & university of maryland cgraham@brookings.edu sarah crown university of nevada at las vegas publishing timeline received 8 october 2014 accepted 3 february 2014 published 5 june 2014 references ardelt, m. 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(2013), subjective well-being: measuring happiness, suffering, and other dimensions of experience (washington, d.c.: the national academies press). witter, r. a., w. stock, m. okun, & m. haring (1985), religion and subjective well-being in adulthood: a quantitative synthesis. review of religious research, 26(4), 332–342. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3511048 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2005.07.012 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3511048 religion and wellbeing around the world graham & crown www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 appendix: summary statistics and variable descriptions variable description observations mean std. dev. bpl life today on a 0-10 best possible life scale: 10=best 0=worst 1,049,206 5.468 2.200 happy did you experience happiness yesterday? 1=yes, 0=no 790,469 0.699 0.459 religion important is religion an important part of your daily life? 1=yes, 0=no 921,359 0.737 0.440 religious service did you attend a religious service in the past seven days outside a wedding or other ceremony? 1=yes, 0=no 616,271 0.488 0.500 urban respondent's household location: 1=urban (large city or suburb) 0=other 940,548 0.456 0.498 household size household adult size (number of persons aged 15 or above) 930,493 3.257 1.913 log income ln(household income) 815,554 8.844 1.457 gender gender: 1=female 0=male 1,072,127 0.535 0.499 age age (in years) 1,064,773 40.143 17.174 married marital status: 1=married or in a domestic partnership 0=other 1,041,261 0.584 0.493 education respondent's education: 1=hs and above 0=less than hs 979,003 0.147 0.354 christian religion christian, denomination not specified: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.064 0.245 other religion includes chinese traditional religion/confucianism, sikhism, juche, spiritism, bahai, jainism, shinto, cao dai, zoroastrianism, tenrikyo, neo-paganism, unitarianuniversalism, rastafarian, scientology, taoism, daoism 876,574 0.013 0.115 catholic religion roman catholic, catholic christian: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.238 0.426 protestant religion protestant, anglican, methodist christian: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.134 0.341 orthodox religion eastern orthodox, orthodox christian: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.081 0.272 muslim religion muslim: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.211 0.408 shiite religion shiite muslim: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.019 0.136 sunni religion sunni muslim: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.077 0.267 druze religion druze: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.001 0.032 hindu religion hindu: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.040 0.195 buddhist religion buddhist: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.052 0.221 indigenous religion indigenous/african traditional: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.003 0.057 judaism religion jew: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.007 0.084 nonreligious religion secular, nonreligious, agnostic, atheist: 1=yes, 0=no 876,574 0.060 0.238 cincwdi wdi country income level: 1= low, 2=middle, 3=high 1,071,705 2.101 0.677 social1 hours spent with friends and family each day, 0-4 hours: 1=yes, 0=no 252,545 0.560 0.496 social2 hours spent with friends and family each day, 5-9 hours: 1=yes, 0=no 252,545 0.271 0.444 social3 hours spent with friends and family each day, 10-14 hours: 1=yes, 0=no 252,545 0.116 0.321 social4 hours spent with friends and family each day, more than 15 hours: 1=yes, 0=no 252,545 0.053 0.223 social1religious interaction between social1 and religious service attendance 234,553 0.288 0.453 social2religious interaction between social2 and religious service attendance 234,553 0.137 0.344 social3religious interaction between social3 and religious service attendance social4religious interaction between social4 and religious service attendance 234,553 0.023 0.150 note: the world development index (wdi) income levels breakdowns are: low income (18.36%); middle income (53.20%); and high income (28.44%). kövi, z., kim, h., kamble, s., mészáros, v., lachance, d. & nisbet, e. (2023). cross-cultural validity of the nature relatedness scale (nr-6) and links with wellbeing. international journal of wellbeing, 13(2), 4576. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v13i2.2841 elizabeth nisbet trent university elizabethnisbet@trentu.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 article cross-cultural validity of the nature relatedness scale (nr-6) and links with wellbeing zsuzsanna kövi · hyejeong kim · shanmukh kamble veronika mészáros · danielle lachance · elizabeth nisbet abstract: nature relatedness refers to individual differences in subjective connectedness with the natural environment. we aimed to cross-culturally validate the nature relatedness scale and examine links between nature relatedness and wellbeing. we also tested whether spirituality or self-transcendent emotions such as gratitude mediate the relationship between nature relatedness and wellbeing. university student participants (n = 798) from four countries (hungary, india, south korea, and canada) completed the short-form nature relatedness scale (nr-6; nisbet & zelenski, 2013), the inclusion of nature in self scale (schultz, 2002a), and measures of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. cross-cultural differences were found in a number of nature relatedness principal components, as well as differences in links between nature relatedness, spirituality, and wellbeing. in all four countries, gratitude formed a significant indirect path from nature relatedness to mental health and quality of life. the findings suggest that spiritual aspects of human-nature relationships may contribute to wellbeing across cultures. keywords: nature relatedness, wellbeing, cross-cultural, spirituality, measurement 1. introduction connecting with the natural environment is not only beneficial to human wellbeing (capaldi et al., 2015; hinds & sparks, 2011) but has also been regarded as a basic psychological need (baxter & pelletier, 2019). a growing decline in human-nature interactions may pose substantial threats to human and environmental health, however (soga & gaston, 2016). despite some limited work with non-western samples, there are few, if any, intercultural comparisons of the links between wellbeing and nature relatedness. developing a broader understanding of how people from different cultures connect with and benefit from nature may be important for improving humannature relationships and creating healthy environments. 1.1 nature relatedness numerous terms have been applied to describe human relationships with the natural environment (beery, 2012; beery & wolf-watz, 2014), including but not limited to: connectedness, affinity, commitment, biophilia, ecological self, environmental identity, inclusion, relatedness, sensitivity, and sense of place or place attachment. despite this diverse terminology, most of the research instruments used in this field appear to capture the same underlying construct (tam, 2013). we use the term nature relatedness to refer to and measure individual differences in connectedness with the natural world (mayer & frantz, 2004; nisbet et al., 2009; schultz, 2002a), about:blank cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 as this construct incorporates affective, cognitive, and experiential elements (tam, 2013, zylstra et al., 2014). nature relatedness includes an emotional affiliation with the natural world (kals et al., 1999; perkins, 2010), a shared identity or self-concept with nature (clayton, 2003; clayton et al., 2021; schultz, 2002a), and a familiarity with or attraction to the natural environment (nisbet et al., 2009). one’s beliefs, values, and attitudes toward nature can also be indicative of a sense of relatedness (e.g., brügger et al., 2011; dutcher et al., 2007). nature relatedness extends beyond enjoyment of the aesthetically-pleasing aspects of nature to include an awareness and appreciation of all elements in the natural world (bruni et al., 2012; nisbet et al., 2009). the concept of nature relatedness encompasses one’s sense of interconnectedness with all other living things on the earth. it is distinct from environmentalism, however, in that it also includes aspects of identity and one's experience with nature. although nature relatedness is considered a stable (trait-like) construct, it can fluctuate at the state level (aspy & proeve, 2017; nisbet & zelenski, 2011; richardson & sheffield, 2017; wheaton et al., 2015). brief exposures to natural environments can enhance one’s nature relatedness (e.g., mayer & frantz, 2009; nisbet et al., 2019), but repeated experiences are likely needed for the development of a trait-level sense of connectedness (lumber et al., 2017; rosa et al., 2018). the inclusion of nature in self scale (ins; schultz, 2002a), the connectedness to nature scale (cns; mayer & frantz, 2004), and the nature relatedness (nr) scale (nisbet et al., 2009) are some of the most commonly used measures of nature relatedness (capaldi et al., 2014). while the ins and cns measure cognitive aspects of nature relatedness1, the nature relatedness scale aims to capture affective, cognitive, and experiential aspects of nature relatedness. a short-form version of the nr scale (nr-6; nisbet & zelenski, 2013) has been used where space and time are limited, and this version correlates with wellbeing and environmental behavior outcomes similarly to the full scale (e.g., the average absolute value difference between the short form nr-6 and the full scale is .073 and the two versions are highly correlated, .91-.93).2 1.2 nature relatedness and wellbeing nature relatedness has been associated with both subjective and psychological wellbeing (see capaldi et al., 2015, for a review). subjective or hedonic wellbeing is described as the emotional or “feeling good” component of wellbeing, whereas psychological or eudaimonic wellbeing is the “functioning well” component (keyes & annas, 2009). those higher in nature relatedness experience greater hedonic wellbeing in the form of more positive emotions and life satisfaction (capaldi et al., 2014; desrochers et al., 2022; howell et al., 2011; howell et al., 2013; nisbet et al., 2011), and fewer negative emotions, including less anxiety (lawton et al., 2017; martyn & brymer, 2016; nisbet & zelenski, 2011; zelenski & nisbet, 2014). eudaimonic aspects of wellbeing such as vitality, autonomy, personal growth, purpose and meaning in life are also higher in people who are more nature related (cervinka et al., 2012; howell et al., 2013; mayer & frantz, 2004; nisbet et al., 2011; pritchard et al., 2020; zelenski & nisbet, 2014). links between nature relatedness and other aspects of eudaimonic wellbeing such as a sense of coherence and self-transcendence are understudied. a sense of coherence reflects an ability to cope with life’s inevitable stressors and is recognized in the degree to which people find their lives comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful (antonovsky,1979, 1987). self-transcendence, on the other hand, refers to a shift in focus beyond the self to incorporate one’s connection with 1 the cns was initially proposed to be an affective and cognitive measure of nature relatedness (mayer & franz, 2004), but is more recently recognized as a cognitive measure (perrin & benassi, 2009). 2 studies and normative data for the nr and nr-6 scales are summarized in supplementary materials, appendix 1. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 others and the universe (frankl, 1959/2006; levenson et al., 2005; peterson & seligman, 2004). there is some evidence that nature relatedness is positively associated with a sense of coherence (lipowski et al., 2019) and self-transcendence (tam, 2013), however, research is lacking. gratitude, a self-transcendent emotion (stellar et al., 2017), has been linked to nature relatedness, however (petersen et al., 2019). gratitude has been conceptualized as feeling a sense of abundance (versus feeling deprived), appreciating life’s simple pleasures and the contributing role of others to one’s own wellbeing (watkins et al., 2003). a number of nature-related items can be found in gratitude measures (e.g., “every fall i really enjoy watching the leaves change colors”, “i think that it’s important to ‘stop and smell the roses”; simple pleasures subscale of the gratitude resentment and appreciation test, watkins et al., 2003). moreover, tam (2022) has proposed that gratitude to nature is associated with experiences in nature, nature relatedness, anthropomorphism of nature, and pro-environmental behavior. there is some mixed evidence that awe, another self-transcendent emotion (keltner & haidt, 2003; stellar et al., 2017), is associated with nature relatedness (bethelmy & corraliza, 2019; nisbet & zelenski, 2013). awe refers to “an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that overwhelm current mental structures, yet facilitate attempts at accommodation” (shiota et al., 2007, p. 944). natural settings are among the most common elicitors of awe, and engagement with nature's beauty can promote awe, empathy, and trust in others (piff et al., 2015). fisher (2000) has proposed a model in which a sense of awe and wonder in nature, along with relatedness to the environment, constitute the environmental domain of spiritual health. according to fisher (2000), spiritual health has three other domains (personal, communal, and transcendental) and the four domains are all interrelated. spirituality — an aspect of eudaimonic wellbeing (van dierendonck & mohan, 2007) — has been widely understood as the search for the sacred (hill et al., 2000), which can incorporate religious perspectives, but is not synonymous with religiosity. there is some limited evidence that nature relatedness is positively associated with spirituality (dömötör et al., 2017; köteles, 2017). structural equation modelling suggests nature relatedness is a good predictor of nonreligious spirituality in adult samples in france and mexico, for example (navarro et al., 2020). connection to something beyond oneself may be an important aspect of both nature relatedness and spirituality. nature relatedness is a distinct predictor of wellbeing when controlling for other types of connectedness (zelenski & nisbet, 2014) but research on nature and the spiritual aspects of wellbeing is lacking. self-transcendence and spirituality may mediate the relationship between nature relatedness and multiple dimensions of eudaimonic wellbeing (autonomy, personal growth, purpose in life, self-acceptance, and positive relations with others; trigwell et al., 2014). a relationship with nature, gratitude, and spirituality are all considered characteristics of the virtue of transcendence (diessner et al., 2013), yet little is known about how self-transcendence, or self-transcendent emotions such as gratitude, mediate the wellbeing effects of nature relatedness. the positive virtues of spirituality, gratitude, forgiveness, and altruism mediate the relationship between religiosity and wellbeing (sharma and singh, 2019). relatively little research exists on potential mediators of the nature relatedness-wellbeing relationship, particularly in non-western countries. 1.3 cross-cultural nature relatedness to date, most of the studies involving human-nature relationships have been conducted within predominately western, industrialized countries (ives et al., 2017). over 60% of the research on nature relatedness has originated from north america, australia, the united kingdom, and the netherlands (ives et al., 2018; restall & conrad, 2015), rendering an understanding of humanhttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 nature relationships incomplete. it is unclear whether wellbeing indicators associated with nature relatedness are experienced cross-culturally. people’s engagement with and attitudes towards nature can be influenced by a culture’s beliefs, values, social structures, and affluence (milfont, 2012; milfont & schultz, 2016), and there is evidence that multiple factors can affect people’s relationships with nature (e.g., wilhelm-rechmann et al., 2014). nature relatedness may not only be influenced by spiritual, political, economic, and educational contexts, but also by geographical (climate zones) and ecological (flora and fauna) differences. there is some indication of cross-cultural variation in nature relatedness. korean students reported higher overall levels of nature relatedness compared to czech and swiss students, for example (barthelmess et al., 2013). turkish preservice preschool teachers’ average nature relatedness scores were lower than those in western samples (yilmaz et al., 2016), and comparatively lower than a sample of preservice early childhood educators in the usa (ernst & tornabene, 2012; see appendix 1 for normative data). there is also evidence that people from western countries — particularly english-speaking countries with links to british colonialism — are less connected with nature compared to people in other parts of the world, such as those in eastern and southern europe and nordic countries (richardson et al., 2022; white et al., 2021). despite these differences, there is some evidence that correlates of nature relatedness and subjective wellbeing may occur cross-culturally. a sense of inclusion with nature was positively associated with wellbeing in 18 countries (white et al., 2021). similarly, nature relatedness was associated with more positive and fewer negative emotions in urban park visitors in colombia (scopelliti et al., 2016), with greater happiness in taiwanese citizens (wang et al., 2020), greater happiness and life satisfaction in chinese students (tam, 2013) and adults in india’s tri-city (kumar et al., 2014), and with better mental wellbeing in urban residents in the philippines (aruta, 2021). nature relatedness also positively correlated with emotional, social, and psychological wellbeing in a sample of japanese students (capaldi et al., 2017). similar to research from western countries (e.g., lumber et al., 2017), findings in japan also indicate that experiences with natural beauty and awe influence nature relatedness (capaldi et al., 2017; yang et al., 2018). cross-cultural work on nature relatedness and eudaimonic wellbeing is more limited. both the presence and search for meaning in life mediated the relationship between nature relatedness and wellbeing among residents in the philippines (aruta, 2021). nature relatedness has been associated with self-transcendence in turkish samples (sarıçam & şahin, 2015), suggesting a similar pattern with eudaimonic wellbeing. to our knowledge, with the exception of tam (2022), few (if any) studies have examined the links between nature relatedness and gratitude on wellbeing, let alone cross-culturally. 2. methods 2.1 aim of the study cross-cultural measurement invariance calculations can highlight cultural differences in interpretation of items, suitability within a cultural context, or translation issues (zhou et al., 2019). to our knowledge, research is scarce on measurement invariance for nature relatedness in eastern europe, south korea, or in newly-industrialized countries such as india (cross-age measurement invariance for nature relatedness has been confirmed with filipino adolescents and adults; aruta, 2021). the purpose of this study was to address the gap in the literature on nature relatedness and wellbeing in non-western populations, particularly with understudied indicators of eudaimonic wellbeing such as sense of coherence and self-transcendence (awe, gratitude, self-transcendent spiritual health). further, we used mediational analyses to explore how transcendent variables play a role in the impacts of nature relatedness on wellbeing, similar http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 to sharma and singh’s (2019) model (transcendental variables of spirituality, gratitude, forgiveness and altruism as mediators of the relationship between religiosity and wellbeing). previous studies have linked nature relatedness to self-transcendent variables [(e.g. awe, selftranscendental spirituality (fisher, 2010), and gratitude (peterson et al., 2019)] which promote mental health and wellbeing (awe: rudd et al. 2012; gratitude: wood et al., 2010, selftranscendent spiritual health: fisher, 2010). thus, we hypothesized that awe, gratitude and selftranscendent spiritual health would mediate the relationship between nature relatedness and wellbeing. 2.2 participants and procedure student participants (n = 798) from four countries (hungary, india, south korea, and canada) were recruited for a study about spirituality (see table 1 for participant demographics and compensation details, by country). participants in hungary and canada completed all materials in online surveys for course bonus credits. south korean participants also completed measures online and were entered into a draw for a chance to win gift cards. indian participants completed paper questionnaires during class time. all measures were completed in the language of students’ study (hungarian, korean, and english for both canadian and indian3 students). the materials section provides scale-specific translation details. ethics approval was obtained from each of the appropriate institutional universities, except for south korea, where the national ethical committee approved the study. most participants were living in cities and were at the early stages of their university education (except for india). there was a range of reported religious preference, with the majority of students identifying as christian in south korea and hungary, hindu in india, and atheist/agnostic in canada (see table 2 for demographics and distribution of religious preference by country). all data was collected during 2019 (hungary: february-may; canada: july-october; india: february-august; south korea: august-november). table 1. demographic characteristics and recruitment information by country country n age gender recruitment incentive m sd range male female other hungary 255 25.26 7.72 18 50 46 208 0 course bonus credit india 180 21.14 2.41 17 31 28 152 0 none south korea 208 22.06 2.03 18 28 61 147 0 gift cards through random draws canada 154 21.16 5.60 17 45 15 138 1 course bonus credit 2.3 description of participating countries’ environmental policies 2.3.1 india india is a highly developing country that aims to double the size of its economy by 2025, which requires an enormous demand for raw materials and energy, extracting natural resources and generating high amounts of waste and pollution (sawhney, 2021). sawhney notes that economic performance is often accompanied by high environmental costs and poor environmental performance. this is reflected in the fact that india held the lowest ranking (out of 180 countries) 3 indian students were studying in english and the readability of the study measures (69.5) was consistent with flesch reading ease recommendations on plain language (flesch, 1948, thomas et al., 1975). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 on the 2022 environmental performance index (wolf et al., 2022) — a result of excessive use of chemicals, high electronic waste, degradation of air, water and soil. this also comes with a human cost in terms of morbidity and mortality. balakrishnan et al. (2019) estimated that air pollution resulted in 1.24 million deaths in 2017 in india. on the other hand, atteridge et al. (2012) noted that india has become an increasingly influential actor in global climate negotiations, being part of the g77, china group, and basic group. table 2. year in university, childhood and current location, and religiousness distributions by county hungary india south korea canada column n % column n % column n % column n % year in university 1 74.5% 21.6% 10.6% 53.5% 2 19.5% 13.8% 26.0% 29.0% 3 3.6% .0% 25.5% 12.9% 4 2.0% 29.3% 27.4% 2.6% 5 .4% 31.9% 10.6% 1.9% 6 .0% 3.4% .0% .0% childhood location city downtown 12.2% 22.0% 52.9% 29.7% city suburbs 33.7% 12.7% 34.6% 31.0% small town 34.5% 38.7% 10.6% 33.5% rural or farm 19.2% 24.3% .0% 5.8% other .4% 2.3% 1.9% .0% current location city downtown 37.6% 27.6% 38.0% 36.1% city suburbs 38.8% 21.8% 45.2% 32.9% small town 15.7% 34.5% 16.8% 27.1% rural or farm 7.8% 13.8% .0% 3.9% other .0% 2.3% .0% .0% religion atheist, agnostic 21.0% .6% 6.7% 37.4% christian 65.5% 32.4% 92.8% 26.5% hindu .4% 57.5% .5% .6% muslim .8% 7.8% .0% 3.9% other 12.3% 1.7% .0% 31.6% 2.3.2 canada canada is an excellent case study for a wide variety of environmental issues and policy actions (casey, 2011). the world's second largest country by area, canada has vast uninhabited territory and wilderness along with abundant natural resources, however, urbanisation and agriculture have been impacting nature. according to oecd (2017a) reports, since 2000, canada has made progress in decreasing air pollution, energy consumption and ghg emissions, but it remains one of the most energyand emissions-intensive economies. the issue of climate change is a key issue in canadian environmental policy because of the increases in global temperature already experienced at the poles of the planet (casey, 2011). however, further progress is needed to transition canada to a green, low-carbon economy (oecd, 2017a). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 2.3.3 hungary according to the 2018 oecd report, hungary has made significant progress in environmental policy due to implementing requirements of eu directives. however, local air quality has not improved significantly, and water quality remains at risk. the oecd report (2018) noted that institutional challenges hinder effective implementation of environmental laws and policies. hungary aims to accelerate the transition towards a low-carbon and greener economy, greater emphasis on low carbon emissions from all sectors including heat production methods, the electrical sector and transportation (fogarassy & kovacs, 2016). by 2030 a “nuclear-carbongreen” scenario seems likely to be implemented, which implies nuclear energy development. it should be noted, however, that in a comparison of eco-efficiency (the efficiency with which ecological resources are used to meet human needs; oecd, 2018) in oecd countries — with the analyses of three air pollutants representing the impact on the environment of economic activities — hungary and canada were among the worst performers. 2.3.4 south korea threats such as the exhaustion of natural resources, climate change due to overpopulation, and the accelerating economic growth have been recognized in south korea (guo et al., 2020). according to the oecd (2017b) environmental performance review, there has been progress towards sustainable development and green growth in korea. south korea was among the first countries to announce their intention to implement green growth goals into national strategies (guo et al., 2020). the korean green growth initiative (kggi) was designed by lee myung-bak (korea's president 2008-2013, the korean government, 2008). however, the principles of energy equity and job creation were neglected in kggi planning (ha & byrne, 2008). guo et al. (2020) found that south korea, compared to other asian countries (india, indonesia, pakistan), has a higher level in the 2019 sustainable development goals index but around five times higher co2 emission as well. 2.4 materials reliabilities (cronbach’s alphas) were generally acceptable (> .70) for all total scales across the four country samples (see table 3 for descriptive statistics and all scale reliabilities) and also for most subscales (> .60). alphas below .60 were found among mental health test (mht) subscales (savouring, executive functioning and resilience) in three countries and who social domain in india. mht and who total scores provided adequate reliability, however. 2.4.1 short-form version of the nature relatedness scale trait nature relatedness was assessed using the short-form nature relatedness scale (nr-6; nisbet & zelenski, 2013). participants responded to six items such as “my connection to nature and the environment is a part of my spirituality” and “i feel very connected to all living things and the earth” on a 5-point likert scale, ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly). average scores were calculated and higher scores indicated a stronger subjective connection with nature. in hungary and south korea, original versions of the scale were translated into the native language by a two-member team — a professional english translator and a psychology professor. further, korean and hungarian versions were backtranslated into english by another professional english translator and the back-translations were reviewed by the original scale's author to ensure meaning was consistent with the english version. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 2.4.2 inclusion of nature in self (ins) scale the ins (schultz, 2002a) measures the degree to which nature is a part of someone’s identity or self-concept. the single-item scale consists of seven venn diagrams; pairs of circles with the words “self” and “nature”, with varying degrees of overlap, represent various levels of interconnectedness. participants choose the visual diagram that best corresponds to their own relationship with nature. 2.4.3 mental health test the 17-item mental health test (mht; vargha et al., 2020; zábó et al., 2022) measured mental health with five (5-point likert) subscales. global and subjective wellbeing (3 items): the kind of wellbeing experienced globally (e.g., “joy is present more than sorrow in my everyday.”). savoring: the capacity to appreciate and enhance positive experiences (3 items, e.g., “i like to store memories of fun times that i go through so that i can recall them later.”). creative, executing efficiency (4 items): the ability to reach a goal even in a difficult adaptation situation (e.g., “i can successfully achieve targets which i set for myself.”). resilience (4 items): successful adaptation to stress, psychological resistance (e.g., “it does not take me long to recover from a stressful event.”). self-regulation (3 items): attentional and emotional states, behavior control, and the ability to self-regulate (e.g., “i easily become impatient” – reverse-scored item). with its scales based on these five pillars, the construct of mht has proved to be a good model for adults as confirmed by item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa; oláh et al., 2018; vargha et al., 2020). the mental health test was created in hungarian, but an english version has recently been adapted by the original scale's developers (e.g., preprint publication by zábó et al., 2022). a korean version was also created for this study, backtranslated into english by a bilingual translator and then checked by creators of the original scale. 2.4.4 gratitude resentment and appreciation test the gratitude resentment and appreciation test (grat) was originally developed by watkins et al. (2003) and is a 44-item measure of dispositional gratitude. we used the shorter (16-item) revised version developed by thomas and watkins (2003) in english as well as existing hungarian (ferenczi et al., 2021) and korean (jung & han, 2017; kim & yi, 2009) translations of the grat. the items form 3 subscales. factor 1 “sense of abundance” relates to feelings of abundance in life. factor 2 “simple appreciation” refers to appreciating simple pleasures of life. factor 3 “appreciation of others” means valuing the contribution of others to one's wellbeing. participants indicated their agreement to scale items using a 9-point likert response format. the existing hungarian (ferenczi et al., 2021) and korean (jung & han, 2017; kim & yi, 2009) translations of the grat were used. 2.4.5 sense of coherence scale the short form sense of coherence scale (antonovsky, 1987) consists of 13 items with a 7-point semantic differential scale that captures meaningfulness, manageability, and comprehensibility. based on antonovsky's (1987) recommendations, the sum of all 13 items was used as an indicator of overall coherence. previously developed hungarian (balajti et al., 2007) and korean versions (lim et al., 2021) of the sense of coherence scale were used. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 2.4.6 spiritual health and life orientation scale (shalom) the spiritual health and life orientation measure was developed by fisher (2010). respondents rate 20 statements on two criteria: how important the various domains are for ideal spiritual wellbeing (the spiritual health measure) and how much this reflects one’s lived experience (the life-orientation measure). the scale items encompass four life domains. the personal domain includes a sense of identity, self-awareness, joy in life, inner peace, and meaning in life. the communal domain includes love, forgiveness, trust, respect, and kindness towards others. the environmental domain includes connection with nature, awe at a breathtaking view, oneness with nature, harmony with the environment, and a sense of ‘magic’ in the environment. the transcendental domain includes one’s personal relationship with the divine/god, worship of the creator, oneness with god, peace with god, and prayer life. scales use a 5-point likert response format. the hungarian version of the spiritual health and life orientation measure was developed by tornóczky et al. (2022). the english version was translated into korean for this study and back translated by a bilingual translator. a psychology professor checked the back translation for consistency. 2.4.7 positive and negative affect schedule (panas) a modified positive and negative affect schedule (panas; watson et al., 1988) assessed positive and negative affect. we used previously published versions of the hungarian (gyollai et al., 2011) and korean (lim et al., 2010) panas. respondents rated how much they generally experience 10 positive and 12 negative emotion-related adjectives using a 5-point likert scale. the positive affect scale captures high arousal associated positive feelings (inspired, enthusiastic, alert). thus, we added five low arousal positive emotion words to encompass relaxation and restoration (calm, relaxed, balanced, peaceful, harmonic) based on nature's relaxing effects (hartig & evans, 1993). these items constituted a principal component with explained variance of 58.65% with component scores in a range from .64 (relaxed) to .86 (peaceful). we named this ‘peacefulnessrelated affects’. we also added three items (fascinated, curious, in awe) to reflect that nature is often regarded as a fascination-rich environment (odeh & guy, 2017), which constituted a principal component with explained variance of 62.75% (with all component scores being at least .78). these items all reflect a state of being intensely interested. we named this component ‘awerelated affects’, as the item ‘in awe’ had the highest loading (.82). 2.4.8 who-qol bref the who-qol-bref (who-qol group, 1998) is a short 26-item version of the whoqol-100. it measures four domains related to quality of life: physical health, psychological, social relationships, and the environment. we included 24 items derived from 24 facets of the original whoqol-100 (one item represents one facet) and 2 additional items measuring overall qol and general health. in our analyses we applied the four domain scale scores for physical, psychological, social, and environment domains respectively. we also used the existing hungarian (paulik et al., 2007) and korean versions (min et al., 2002) of the who-qol-bref. 2.5 statistical analyses statistical analyses were conducted using spss version 20.0 (ibm corp., released, 2011) and amos 17.0 (arbuckle, 2008). descriptive statistics with skewness and kurtosis values were applied to analyze scale distributions. generally, skewness and kurtosis values within a range of -1 and 1 are regarded as signs of normal distribution. however, kim (2013) suggests that even http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 values outside this range can be accepted as normal (i.e., in sample sizes above 300, an absolute skew value larger than 2 or an absolute kurtosis larger than 7 indicate non-normality). cronbach’s alphas indicate scale reliabilities. optimal cronbach’s alpha is above .70, however some researchers (e.g., spiliotopoulou, 2009; yaffe, 2018) are more permissive regarding these values, especially for scales with fewer items, accepting alphas at around .6. in fact, cronbach (1951) and more recent researchers (voss et al., 2000; swailes & mcintyre-bhatty, 2002) have noted that the cronbach’s alpha estimation of reliability increases with scale length. cronbach (1951) also provided a formula to estimate the mean inter-item correlation independently of scale length. the formula for this calculation is as follows: 𝜌 = 𝛼 𝑛 − (𝑛 − 1) ∗ 𝛼 where: 𝜌 = an estimator of reliability independent of scale length, 𝛼 = coefficient alpha, and n = the number of items in the scale. thus, three items with a cronbach alpha of .60 (as is the case for some of our scales) and a mean inter-item correlation of .33 can be regarded as acceptable (clark & watson, 1995). therefore, in the case of scales with fewer items, we considered alpha values around .60 to be acceptable. a more detailed investigation of the structure of the nature relatedness scale was conducted using a principal component analysis and a network analysis (run separately for the different cultures). we then examined the correlations between the nature relatedness scale and the other measures in our study. finally, we built a mediation model with nature relatedness as an independent variable, quality of life and mental health scores as dependent variables, and gratitude as a mediator. based on the method proposed by preacher and hayes (2008), bootstrapped mediation analyses were performed to test the mediating role of gratitude in the links between nature relatedness and mental health and quality of life. using at least 5,000 bootstrap samples, 95% bias corrected and accelerated bootstrap confidence intervals for the indirect links were calculated. confidence intervals excluding zero indicate significant bootstrapped mediation links. full mediation occurs when a significant total relation is a result of a significant indirect and non-significant direct links. partial mediation occurs if total, indirect, and direct links are all significant. inconsistent mediation occurs if there is not a significant relationship between the independent and dependent variables (mcfatter, 1979). thus, a significant indirect association accompanied by non-significant direct and total links can be regarded as inconsistent mediation (mcfatter, 1979; mackinnon et al., 2000). 3. results descriptive statistics (see table 3) showed all scales to have skewness and kurtosis values within normal distribution range. most of the kurtosis and skewness values were between -1 and 1; only some subscales (gratitude and spiritual health) had somewhat higher values. reliability scores were appropriate in almost all scales and in all countries. cronbach’s alphas below .60 were observed for some mental health subscales, therefore in subsequent analyses we used only total scale scores which reached satisfactory reliability in all cultures. reliability of the nature relatedness scale was above .70 in all countries, except for south korea where the item-total correlation for "my ideal vacation spot would be a remote wilderness area..." was under .20. excluding this first item resulted in a chronbach's alpha of .72 in south korea. a structural analysis of the nature relatedness scale (nr-6) items was conducted within the framework of principal component analyses (pca; results are presented in table 4). this yielded a one-component solution explaining more than 50% of the variance in the canadian, hungarian, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 table 3. descriptive statistics of study measures n it e m s hungary india south korea canada s k e w n e ss k u rt o si s α m sd α m sd α m sd α m sd nature relatedness (nr-6) 787 6 .81 -0.08 0.98 .80 0.25 1.18 .67 -0.21 0.79 .83 0.14 0.99 -0.10 -0.28 mht global wellbeing 794 3 .81 -0.01 1.00 .63 0.04 0.96 .80 0.07 1.00 .87 -0.12 1.04 -0.61 0.05 mht savouring 793 3 .59 0.01 0.99 .55 0.02 0.94 .67 0.09 1.09 .61 -0.16 0.94 -0.60 0.58 mht executive functioning 793 5 .68 0.28 0.93 .59 -0.08 0.94 .74 -0.21 1.15 .55 -0.09 0.86 -0.28 0.09 mht self-regulation 794 3 .84 0.01 1.09 .72 -0.08 0.98 .68 0.10 0.94 .73 -0.06 0.94 0.06 -0.61 mht resilience 793 3 .84 -0.28 1.04 .31 0.12 0.72 .84 0.28 1.08 .81 -0.05 0.98 -0.17 -0.55 mental health total 794 17 .81 0.01 0.99 .74 0.00 0.83 .87 0.09 1.17 .81 -0.14 .095 -0.14 0.18 gratitude abundance 791 6 .74 0.36 0.90 .64 -0.68 0.87 .81 0.15 0.91 .83 -0.03 1.03 -0.24 -0.56 gratitude simple pleasures 790 6 .75 0.11 0.99 .78 -0.34 1.13 .84 0.13 0.97 .69 0.01 0.80 -1.06 1.92 gratitude appreciation of others 791 4 .70 -0.05 0.98 .70 -0.37 1.15 .76 0.29 0.82 .72 0.10 0.93 -1.01 1.58 gratitude total 791 16 .83 0.23 0.96 .71 -0.64 0.91 .87 0.23 0.95 .83 0.02 0.93 -0.40 0.07 sense of coherence 795 13 .80 0.25 0.98 .69 -0.25 1.00 .77 0.11 0.88 .83 -0.27 1.06 -0.16 0.18 shalom personal 784 4 .82 -0.33 0.97 .78 0.46 0.85 .85 -0.09 0.97 .85 0.15 1.02 -0.45 -0.09 shalom communal 784 4 .74 -0.27 0.99 .60 0.37 0.86 .78 -0.14 0.98 .81 0.20 1.03 -0.53 0.56 shalom environmental 777 4 .83 -0.38 1.00 .66 0.66 0.77 .79 0.05 0.85 .85 -0.12 1.05 -0.38 -0.24 shalom transcendental 782 4 .95 -0.49 1.00 .82 0.78 0.61 .91 0.29 0.75 .94 -0.46 0.96 -0.29 -1.16 shalom personal importance 776 4 .65 0.14 0.84 .70 0.14 0.89 .85 -0.29 1.11 .84 0.01 1.12 -1.25 1.85 shalom communal importance 774 4 .77 -0.20 0.99 .72 0.30 0.93 .75 -0.19 0.92 .85 0.26 1.06 -1.14 2.12 shalom environmental importance 767 4 .77 -0.13 0.98 .69 0.55 0.82 .76 -0.07 0.86 .86 -0.25 1.18 -0.66 0.15 shalom transcendental importance 773 4 .95 -.060 1.06 .78 0.67 0.46 .93 0.32 0.74 .97 -0.17 1.01 -0.70 -0.78 panas positive affects 786 10 .84 0.03 0.88 .78 0.41 0.96 .84 -0.27 1.02 .89 -0.13 1.05 -0.35 0.10 panas negative affects 786 11 .90 -0.45 0.90 .79 0.20 0.84 .89 0.43 1.03 .89 -0.06 0.97 0.28 -0.68 peacefulness-related affects 775 5 .64 -0.23 0.79 .73 0.68 0.82 .89 -0.05 1.07 .89 -0.27 1.06 -0.23 -0.28 awe-related affects 771 3 .74 -0.12 0.98 .65 0.38 0.95 .68 -0.19 0.97 .81 0.06 1.02 -0.27 -0.24 who domain 1: physical 795 7 .75 0.41 0.82 .63 -0.10 0.80 .81 -0.36 1.14 .79 -0.08 1.05 -0.70 0.46 who domain 2: psychological 795 6 .81 0.00 0.90 .75 0.27 0.89 .84 0.07 1.01 .87 -0.41 1.12 -0.62 0.41 who domain 3: social 794 3 .64 0.05 0.97 .58 0.03 1.10 .60 0.01 0.87 .65 -0.14 1.08 -0.53 0.27 who domain 4: environment 795 8 .68 0.10 0.86 .77 -0.05 1.06 .76 -0.16 1.03 .81 0.12 1.08 -0.44 0.42 who total 795 24 .87 0.19 0.87 .86 0.04 0.95 .91 -0.16 1.09 .90 -0.14 1.08 -0.62 0.75 mean of cronbach alphas .78 .69 .80 .81 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 and indian data. in south korea, the first principal component explained only 40.88% of the variance and a low component fit (.22) was observed for the first scale item. the remaining five items constituted a principal component with scores above .5 for all items in all countries and explained the total variance with a range of .48 (in south korea) to .62 (in canada). in all countries, only the first principal component had an eigenvalue greater than 1. table 4. principal component analyses of nature relatedness (nr-6) items hungary india south korea canada average my ideal vacation spot would be a remote, wilderness area .67 .47 .22 .58 .48 i always think about how my actions affect the environment .57 .69 .53 .72 .63 my connection to nature and the environment is a part of my spirituality .79 .75 .77 .80 .78 i take notice of wildlife wherever i am .70 .71 .55 .64 .65 my relationship to nature is an important part of who i am .80 .83 .79 .86 .82 i feel very connected to all living things and the earth .77 .82 .77 .82 .80 explained variance of first principal component 51.94 51.99 40.88 55.58 50.10 i always think about how my actions affect the environment .59 .69 .52 .75 .64 my connection to nature and the environment is a part of my spirituality .81 .75 .79 .80 .79 i take notice of wildlife wherever i am .70 .71 .54 .64 .65 my relationship to nature is an important part of who i am .80 .85 .79 .87 .83 i feel very connected to all living things and the earth .79 .83 .78 .84 .81 explained variance of first principal component 55.18 59.21 48.49 61.46 56.09 network centrality results are presented in table 5. the strength of item 1 was below -1 and its expected influence was below -.90 in all countries. the lowest weights (weakest links) were related to item 1, which is illustrated in figure 1. weights indicate the strongest associations were between items 3, 5, and 6. in all four countries, the following three items had the highest pca loadings and strongest network links: "my connection to nature and the environment is a part of my spirituality", "my relationship to nature is an important part of who i am", and "i feel very connected to all living things and the earth". item 1 generated the lowest weights and had the lowest component score in the pca, particularly for south korea, thus we excluded it from further analyses with the scale. cronbach alphas for the five-item version of the nr scale were .84 (canada), .79 (hungary), .82 (india), .72 (south korea). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 according to the anova results of cross-cultural mean comparisons (see table 6) for nr-6 items, the highest cross-cultural variance was observed in the item “i take notice of wildlife wherever i am”, with the highest scores in canadian participants. there was no significant crosscultural difference in the mean score of the item “i always think about how my actions affect the environment”. however, the figure of means (see figure 2) and 95% confidence intervals show that the highest scores were observed in canada and the lowest in south korea (which is a significant difference if comparing only two countries; a bonferroni correction increased the p value above .05 however). for the remaining four items, the explained variance was around 23%, with indian participants having the highest mean scores. table 5. centrality measures of network models of nature-relatedness (nr-6) items hungary india south-korea canada b e tw e e n n e ss c lo se n e ss s tr e n g th e x p e ct e d i n fl u e n ce b e tw e e n n e ss c lo se n e ss s tr e n g th e x p e ct e d i n fl u e n ce b e tw e e n n e ss c lo se n e ss s tr e n g th e x p e ct e d i n fl u e n ce b e tw e e n n e ss c lo se n e ss s tr e n g th e x p e ct e d i n fl u e n ce item 1: my ideal vacation spot would be a remote, wilderness area. -.60 -1.00 -1.05 -.93 -1.11 -1.23 -1.25 -1.25 -.50 -1.67 -1.43 -1.43 -1.02 -1.13 -1.21 -1.21 item 2: i always think about how my actions affect the environment. -.60 -1.04 -1.17 -1.37 -1.11 -1.20 -.72 -.72 -.50 -.12 -.67 -.67 .20 -.03 -.31 -.31 item 3: my connection to nature and the environment is a part of my spirituality. -.60 .16 1.01 1.11 .22 .03 -.10 -.10 .00 .58 .72 .72 -1.02 -.10 .26 .26 item 4: i take notice of wildlife wherever i am. .60 .62 -.12 -.01 .22 .81 -.29 -.29 -.50 -.53 -.47 -.47 -.41 -1.04 -.78 -.78 item 5: my relationship to nature is an important part of who i am. 1.79 1.56 1.22 .99 1.55 .57 1.35 1.35 2.00 1.03 1.12 1.12 1.43 1.15 1.61 1.61 item 6: i feel very connected to all living things and the earth. -.60 -.30 .10 .21 .22 1.03 1.01 1.01 -.50 .72 .73 .73 .82 1.15 .43 .43 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 figure 1. network analysis graphs of nature-relatedness (nr-6) items http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 table 6. cross-cultural mean comparison of nature relatedness (nr-6) items hungary india canada south korea anova mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd df(1) df(2) f sig. eta squared my ideal vacation spot would be a remote, wilderness area 2.83a 1.15 3.25b 1.49 2.95a,b 1.26 2.61a 1.16 3 783 8.46 .000 3.14% i always think about how my actions affect the environment 3.41a .96 3.54a 1.32 3.65a 1.02 3.38a .96 3 780 2.48 .060 .94% my connection to nature and the environment is a part of my spirituality 2.84a 1.40 3.34b 1.44 2.99a,b 1.32 3.12a,b 1.12 3 783 5.17 .002 1.94% i take notice of wildlife wherever i am 3.80a .92 3.47b 1.39 4.17c .88 3.02d 1.09 3 781 38.52 .000 12.89% my relationship to nature is an important part of who i am 3.47a 1.17 3.84b 1.31 3.39a 1.12 3.37a 1.03 3 783 6.39 .000 2.39% i feel very connected to all living things and the earth 3.18a 1.13 3.75b 1.31 3.48a,b 1.02 3.41a 1.01 3 783 8.65 .000 3.21% nr-6 scale mean 3.25a,c .81 3.53b .97 3.44a,b .82 3.15c .65 3 783 8.41 .000 3.12% note. values in the same row and sub-table not sharing the same subscript are significantly different at p < .05 in the two-sided test of equality for column means. cells with no subscript are not included in the test. tests assume equal variances. tests are adjusted for all pairwise comparisons within a row of each innermost sub-table using bonferroni correction. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 60 figure 2. means and 95% confidence intervals for nature-relatedness (nr-6) items by country a number of significant relations were observed through correlational analyses (see table 7) however, the patterns were not consistent across all countries. only gratitude (total score and the “appreciation of simple pleasures” subscale), the environmental domain of spiritual health (sense of awe and wonder and the unity with the natural environment), and awe correlated significantly with nature relatedness in all countries and only this set of results included correlations above .30. personal, transcendental, and communal domains of spiritual health correlated positively but weakly with nature relatedness in south korean and hungarian participants. quality of life total scores were associated with nature relatedness in hungary and canada as well. in hungary, canada, and south korea, highly nature-related participants reported more positive emotions and better mental health, whereas in india, nature relatedness was associated with fewer negative emotions. finally, we examined the indirect paths of self-transcendent variables (awe-related affects, gratitude, and transcendental spiritual health) on the links between nature relatedness and mental health and quality of life outcomes (see table 8). a number of significant indirect links were present between nature relatedness and mental health. an indirect path through gratitude was significant in all countries; the path through awe was significant in hungary, south korea, and canada, and the path through transcendental spiritual health was significant in hungary and south korea. further, indirect paths between nature relatedness and quality of life, through gratitude and awe, were observed in all countries and through transcendental spiritual health in south korea and hungary. this resulted in eight full, five partial, and six inconsistent mediation processes (see table 8). http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 61 table 7. correlations between nature relatedness (nr-5) and mental health, gratitude, sense of coherence, spiritual health, affect, and quality of life hungary india south korea canada inclusion of nature in self .60** .22** .39** .64** mental health .27** .09 .16* .30** gratitude abundance .04 .20** -.03 .22** gratitude simple pleasures .46** .25** .34** .44** gratitude appreciation of others .22** .12 .07 .10 gratitude total .30** .29** .16* .33** soc sense of coherence .15* .15 .08 .13 shalom personal .32** .02 .22** .16* shalom communal .23** .14 .16* .13 shalom environmental .66** .27** .58** .66** shalom transcendental .21** .04 .23** .04 shalom personal importance .22** .20* .12 .15 shalom communal importance .19** .23** .15* .09 shalom environmental importance .72** .24** .57** .46** shalom transcendental importance .20** .19* .16* -.03 panas positive affects .29** .11 .20** .25** panas negative affects -.03 -.29** .06 -.04 peacefulness-related affects .27** .15* .17* .25** awe-related affects .38** .20* .14* .34** who physical .17** .05 -.02 .18* who psychological .24** .15 .11 .16* who social .10 -.04 .15* .05 who environment .04 .05 .05 .19* who total .18** .08 .07 .20* notes. bold font indicates pearson correlations > .30. * = p < .05; ** = p < .01; *** = p < .001. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 62 4. discussion the purpose of this study was to explore cross-cultural differences in nature relatedness and expand the literature on nature relatedness and wellbeing — particularly indicators of eudaimonic wellbeing, including sense of coherence and self-transcendence — in non-western populations. reliability for the short-form nature relatedness scale (nr-6; nisbet & zelenski, 2013) was acceptable across the four cultures, but further analyses revealed the relatively low fit of item one ("my ideal vacation spot would be a remote wilderness area"), particularly in south korea.4 principal component analyses yielded one principal component with scores above .5 in all cultures when five of the six scale items (2 through 6) were included. the stereotype of wilderness adventure may be rooted in colonial systems that are not inclusive or representative of all people. 4 although we are not advocating for a further-reduced short-form scale, there may be contexts in which this is necessary. for example, massingham et al. (2018) successfully assessed nature relatedness with three of the nr-6 items (α = 0.72); this measure was associated with multiple environmental outcomes consistent with what would be expected with the complete scale. table 8. summary of mediation results (5,000 bootstrapped samples) country iv mv dv link between iv on mv (a) link between mv on dv (b) direct link (c) indirect link a x b (95% ci) total relation a x b + c mediation type hungary nr-5 grat mh .30*** .50*** .13* .15 (.09 .23) .28 *** partial india nr-5 grat mh .22*** .28*** -.00 .06 (.02 .13) .07 inconsistent canada nr-5 grat mh .32*** .46*** .14 .15 (.06 .26) .29*** full south korea nr-5 grat mh .19* .63*** .12 .12 (.01 .25) .23* full hungary nr-5 grat qol .30*** .44*** .03 .13 (.08 -.20) .16** full india nr-5 grat qol .22*** .31*** -.01 .07 (.03 -.14) .08 inconsistent canada nr-5 grat qol .32*** .64*** .02 .20 (.09 .34) .22* full south korea nr-5 grat qol .19* .64*** -.03 .12 (.01 .24) .09 inconsistent hungary nr-5 awe mh .38*** .37*** .14* .14 (.08-.21) .28*** partial india nr-5 awe mh .15* .09 .04 .01 (-.01-.05) .06 neither canada nr-5 awe mh .36*** .38*** .15* .14 (.07-.23) .29*** partial south korea nr-5 awe mh .17* .43*** .13 .07 (-.00-.17) .16+ inconsistent hungary nr-5 awe qol .38*** .25** .06 .10 (.05-.16) .16** full india nr-5 awe qol .15* .23** .02 .04 (.01-.09) .05 inconsistent canada nr-5 awe qol .36*** .39*** .11 .14 (.06-.26) .25** full south korea nr-5 awe qol .17* .37*** .03 .06 (.00-.15) .09 inconsistent hungary nr-5 transc mh .22** .15* .24*** .03 (.01-.08) .27*** partial india nr-5 transc mh -.01 .26* .06 -.00 (-.01-.03) .06 neither canada nr-5 transc mh -.04 .12 .26** .00 (-.01-.04) .26** neither south korea nr-5 transc mh .21** .43*** .14 .09 (.03-.19) .23* full hungary nr-5 transc qol .22** .18*** .12* .04 (.01-.09) .16** partial india nr-5 transc qol .01 .57*** .06 .01 (-.03-.06) .06 neither canada nr-5 transc qol .04 -.01 .20* -.00 (-.02-.01) .20* neither south korea nr-5 transc qol .21** .36*** .02 .08 (.02-.19) .09 inconsistent notes. bold font indicates significant links. * = p < .05; ** = p < .01; *** = p < .001; + = p < .10. nr-6: short nature-relatedness scale, grat: gratitude and resentment scale, mh: mental health, qol: quality of life, transc: transcendental domain in spiritual health, awe: awe-related links http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 63 the notion of remote nature as a place to recreate or 'get away' may not apply to those who live or work in rural settings, or where the natural environment is unsafe or unhealthy. when nature is inaccessible (e.g., in dense cities) it may be unfamiliar. in south korea, unfamiliarity is linked with nature aversion although interest in nature and forest therapy is increasing (lee & lee, 2018). it may be that assessing preference for wilderness requires more nuanced or culturespecific language. there are also personality differences in how wilderness is perceived. wilderness-related adventure travel is associated with the personality dimension of sensation seeking (eachus, 2004). thus, highly nature-related people who are not sensation seekers, may not perceive of wilderness as desirable place to spend leisure time. fostering a connection with nature may not require wilderness or remote locations. for example, sensory contact with gardens in urban areas can enhance nature connectedness (hamlin & richardson, 2022). work is needed to determine how best to assess the aspect of nature relatedness that involves close contact with natural or 'wild' elements of nature (e.g., beyond overly human-influenced or controlled nature). in all four samples, items related to spirituality (“my connection to nature and the environment is a part of my spirituality”), identity (“my relationship to nature is an important part of who i am”), and connectedness (“i feel very connected to all living things and the earth”) had the highest factor loadings, suggesting these aspects of human-nature relations are relevant to a variety of people from differing cultures. attitudes towards the environment, noticing wildlife, and seeking wilderness as a holiday destination appear to be less consistently relevant to one’s connection with nature across cultures. these findings may reflect cultural differences in people’s attitudes towards nature (milfont, 2012; milfont & schultz, 2016) and preferences for different types of natural environments (e.g., buijs et al., 2009; herzog et al., 2000; kaplan & herbert, 1987). there was a significant cross-cultural difference in the mean scores for five of the nature relatedness items, with indian participants scoring highest in four of them (spirituality, identity, vacation spot, and connectedness items), and canadians scoring highest on one item (noticing wildlife). historically, preservation and protection of the environment is deeply rooted in indian culture, where hindus viewed humans and nature as interdependent (cower, 2003). interestingly, 57.5% of indian students in our research identified themselves as hindu. considering india’s rich and diverse ecology (khandekar & srivastava, 2014) and the fact that hindus account for 79.8% of india’s population (census organization of india, 2011), it is understandable that indian participants in our study scored highly on nature relatedness items about identity, connectedness, and spirituality. on the other hand, it is somewhat surprising that nature relatedness was not significantly linked to either wellbeing (mental health, quality of life, sense of coherence) or spiritual health among indian participants. the pattern of findings for indian participants may be due, in part, to methodological challenges such as how indian participants may have interpreted the english version of the nature relatedness scale5. although indian participants were studying in english, this was not their native language and this data had generally lower reliability than that from the other cultures (mean cronbach’s alpha was .69, whereas mean alphas in other cultures were well above .70). it should also be noted that india is currently the most populated country in the world (world population review, 2023) and one of the fastest growing economies (world bank, 2023). its rapid 5 nature relatedness was correlated relatively weakly (< .30) with the inclusion of nature in self scale (a more visual measure, which is less reliant on language), cf. tam, 2013. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 64 development has led to a number of health and environmental concerns including overpopulation and natural resource depletion (cuff & goudie, 2009, p. 358), and it ranked the lowest on the 2022 environmental performance index (wolf et al., 2022). in addition, nature contact in more developed countries is often associated with restoration and recreation, but in developing countries, like india, contact with nature is often a necessity as part of carrying out the demands of everyday life (marczak & sorokowski, 2018). these factors may explain the inconsistent links between nature relatedness, wellbeing, and spiritual health in indian culture and highlights the importance of cultural context when assessing human-nature relationships. another potential factor that may influence the relationship between nature and wellbeing is individualism-collectivism. in fact, nature relatedness was associated with better physical and mental health and quality of life somewhat more in individualistic cultures (canada and hungary), versus the more collectivistic asian countries. a vast body of research has established both subjective and psychological wellbeing benefits associated with nature relatedness (see capaldi et al., 2015, for a review), and there is some evidence of an association with physical health (e.g., dean et al., 2018; puhakka et al., 2018) or health-promoting behaviors (flowers, freeman, & gladwell, 2016; milliron et al., 2022), but mostly in western countries. some researchers in collectivist cultures (tam, 2013: hong kong; adiwena & diuwita, 2019: indonesia) have found links between nature relatedness and wellbeing that are consistent with canadian results (nisbet et al., 2011). schultz (2002b) has noted, however, that environmental concerns are more related to personal health and quality of life in individualistic versus collectivistic cultures. our results revealed relatively weak relationships, even among individualistic countries. there may be a number of mediator or moderator variables operating to link nature relatedness with wellbeing, such as spirituality, for example (kamitsis & francis, 2013; trigwell et al., 2014). in fact, cultural differences were evident with regards to links with spirituality in our data. nature relatedness was more consistently associated with the various domains of spiritual health in hungarian and south korean participants (countries with high rates of christianity) compared to canadian and indian participants (with lower rates of christianity). it is possible that the connections people have to nature and to god (creator of nature in some religions) are more intertwined in christian cultures (cf. neaman et al., 2021). fredrickson and anderson (1999) note that ‘transcendent’ experiences are often evoked by natural and wilderness outdoors settings, but spirituality — along with the capacity to give a deeper meaning to the experiences — may also have an impact on appreciation of nature-related experiences. additional studies with nonchristian participants are needed to determine whether there are indeed cross-cultural differences in how the various virtues of transcendence (diessner et al., 2013) — such as the connection with nature, gratitude, and spirituality — are related. on the other hand, in all countries, there were self-transcendent variables that formed an indirect path between nature relatedness and mental health or quality of life. links between nature relatedness and mental health were fully mediated by awe and gratitude in canada, partially mediated by awe, gratitude and spiritual health in hungary, inconsistently mediated by gratitude in india, and also inconsistently mediated by gratitude, awe and spiritual health in south korea. links between nature relatedness and quality of life were fully mediated by awe and gratitude in canada and in hungary, partially mediated by spiritual health in hungary, inconsistently mediated by gratitude and awe in india, and also inconsistently mediated by gratitude, awe, and spiritual health in south korea. thus, the most cross-culturally stable indirect path from nature relatedness to wellbeing was via gratitude. although the significance of direct http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 65 and total relationships did differ cross-culturally, in each culture there was a significant indirect path through gratitude. appreciation of nature is included in the simple pleasures subscale of the measure of gratitude (watkins et al., 2003). our finding that gratitude forms an indirect path from nature relatedness to mental health and quality of life in all four cultures is in line with previous work (portocarrero et al., 2020; wood et al., 2010) showing a moderate to strong positive association between dispositional gratitude and several indicators of wellbeing. although gratitude is typically regarded as an interpersonal emotion (algoe, 2012; mccullough et al., 2002), appreciating and wanting to give thanks to nature (with the tendency to anthropomorphize it) is a form of gratitude that is strongly associated with nature relatedness (tam, 2022). our mediation results indicate that nature related people may experience psychological wellbeing because their relationship with nature enhances feelings of gratitude. we note that both gratitude and awe can be regarded as self-transcendent emotions (stellar et al., 2017), and both provided indirect paths from nature relatedness to at least one of the wellbeing outcome variables in all countries. this is consistent with prior work on selftranscendence as a mediator of the relationship between nature relatedness and multiple dimensions of eudaimonic wellbeing (trigwell et al., 2014). interestingly, self-transcendent emotions provided a cross-culturally stable indirect path, but transcendental spiritual health was only a mediator in our data from participants attending christian universities (south korea and hungary). in fact, both gratitude and awe can be experienced regardless of religion, whereas transcendental spiritual health, as defined and measured by fisher (2010), incorporates belief in a higher power or god. in sum, our mediation results show that self-transcendent emotions — regardless of religion — can play a significant role in the way nature relatedness promotes wellbeing. all this underlines the importance of mental health professionals’ work with self-transcendent emotions in nature-based treatment and intervention programs. 4.1 limitations and future directions although we report data from international samples, in varying cultures, the design of our study limits generalizability and any causal conclusions about the wellbeing benefits of nature relatedness. our sample of university students from four different countries may provide some insight, however, into how this cohort feels about their relationship with the natural environment. today's youth are facing unprecedented global environmental challenges and, unfortunately, the ensuing anxiety effects (clayton & karazsia, 2020). thus, there is value in studying how human-nature relationships affect students' wellbeing, in particular, as many will eventually become community leaders, researchers, and environmental professionals. we also note that demographic differences (e.g., age) or variation in data collection parameters (such as differences in incentives or data collection periods) between the samples reduces homogeneity. moreover, future research should include a diversity of community participants, and people from cultures underrepresented in the environmental psychology literature (e.g., africa, latin america; tam & milfont, 2020), but ideally with multiple matched samples. given some of the inconsistent findings on the nature relatedness item assessing 'wilderness' as a vacation preference, further work is needed to replicate the relationships we found between variables. using the longer version of the nr scale as well as qualitative methods may provide a more nuanced understanding of how nature connectedness varies across cultures. importantly, longitudinal and experimental designs will be essential to identify causal links between nature relatedness, spirituality, and wellbeing. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 66 future researchers will hopefully continue to explore these constructs in more countries and cultures, to establish the validity of nature-based measures in multiple languages. work is needed to determine if nature relatedness has the same links with environmental concern and sustainable behavior in countries facing more immediate threats from global climate change, or where economic pressures conflict with conservation. there is also very little research across diverse countries and cultures on what is 'nature' (e.g., perceptions of wildlife) and how this may affect the measurement of nature relatedness. for people who care deeply for nature, the climate crisis may have particularly detrimental effects on mental health (e.g., anxiety; curll et al., 2022). given that anxiety about climate change is being experienced by people around the globe (e.g., heeren et al., 2022; clayton et al., 2017), addressing these challenges will require a deeper understanding of individual differences in nature relatedness and more research to develop culturally-appropriate mental health interventions. we assessed spirituality from the perspective of its importance to wellbeing, however future researchers could test whether certain aspects of spirituality are more or less associated with nature relatedness. passmore and howell (2014) have suggested that connecting with nature may be a way to confront and cope with existential anxieties like isolation and death. the potential for nature as a (spiritual) coping resource, in times of existential anxiety or grief, for example, are promising areas for exploration, since people tend to seek comfort in their faith or spiritual communities. 5. conclusion cross-cultural consistencies as well as some anomalies were identified in the links between nature relatedness and psychological wellbeing. nature relatedness was associated with mental health in canada, spiritual health in south korea (with respondents from a christian university), both mental and spiritual health in hungary (also respondents from a christian university) but with neither mental or spiritual health in india. however, the self-transcendent emotions of gratitude and awe formed an indirect path from nature relatedness to wellbeing (either mental or spiritual health) in all countries. aspects of spirituality that are particularly related to the environment and self-transcendent emotions such as gratitude may be overlooked in terms of how they contribute to nature's effects on wellbeing. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. availability of data and material (data transparency) data is available in figshare: https://figshare.com/s/bf1ab55e5483dba4b284 acknowledgements the authors wish to thank the participants involved in this study and the universities that supported this research. we are also grateful for the comments and suggestions provided by anonymous reviewers. this work was partially supported by research grant obtained from the faculty of humanities, károli gáspár university of the reformed church (personand family-oriented health science research group, grant no. 20643b800). author contributions zsuzsanna kövi contributed the research idea, collected data, conducted analyses, and contributed sections to the manuscript. hyejeong kim and shanmukh kamble collected data and contributed writing to the http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ https://figshare.com/s/bf1ab55e5483dba4b284 cross-cultural nature relatedness kövi, kim, kamble, mészáros, lachance & nisbet www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 67 manuscript. veronika mészáros conducted analyses and contributed writing to the manuscript. danielle lachance contributed writing to the manuscript. elizabeth nisbet contributed to the research idea, collected data, and contributed writing to the manuscript. authors zsuzsanna kövi károli gáspár university of the reformed church https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6970-3060 hyejeong kim handong global university shanmukh kamble karnatak university https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2185-8052 veronika mészáros károli gáspár university of the reformed church https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4257-745x danielle lachance trent university elizabeth nisbet trent university https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7071-9956 elizabethnisbet@trentu.ca publishing timeline received 25 january 2023 revised version received 18 may 2023 accepted 18 may 2023 published 13 june 2023 references adiwena, b. y., & djuwita, r. 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(2014). connectedness as a core conservation concern: an interdisciplinary review of theory and a call for practice. springer science reviews, 2(1), 119-143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40362-014-0021-3 http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ a new and improved whole life satisfaction account of happiness forgeard, m. j. c., jayawickreme, e., kern, m. & seligman, m. e. p. (2011). doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy. international journal of wellbeing, 1(1), 79-106. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i1.15 martin e. p. seligman university of pennsylvania seligman@psych.upenn.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 article doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy marie j. c. forgeard · eranda jayawickreme · margaret l. kern · martin e. p. seligman abstract: many experts now recognize that income is not a measure that alone captures the wellbeing of individuals, and governments around the world are starting to rethink the ways in which they measure the welfare of their citizens. wellbeing is best understood as a multifaceted phenomenon that can be assessed by measuring a wide array of subjective and objective constructs. this review summarizes the state of research on the various domains of wellbeing measured by psychologists and social scientists, and provides an overview of the main theoretical perspectives that integrate these domains. among these theoretical perspectives, we highlight well-being theory, which decomposes the wellbeing construct into five domains: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (perma). we conclude by formulating recommendations for future research on the measurement of wellbeing. these recommendations include the need to combine both objective and subjective indicators, and the use of a dashboard approach to measurement. this approach conveys the multifaceted nature of wellbeing and will help policy-makers and citizens understand which domains of wellbeing should constitute priorities for public policy. keywords: well-being, wellbeing, public policy, measurement, wellbeing theory 1. introduction ‚what you measure affects what you do. if you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.‛ the words of nobel prize-winning economist joseph stiglitz (as cited by goodman, 2009, para. 3) capture the growing discontentment of citizens, academics, and policy-makers toward the way most governments define and measure progress – namely, by emphasizing economic indicators such as gross domestic product (gdp) (e.g., abramovitz, scitovsky, & inkeles, 1973; layard, 2005; zencey, 2009). among others, layard (2010) recently challenged policy-makers to think about what ‘progress’ really is and how it can best be measured. from its beginnings in the 1930s, the history of national accounts in the united states shows that the wellbeing of citizens, not the wellbeing of their bank accounts, was considered to be the end goal of government (perlman & marietta, 2005). the economist simon kuznets (1933), the first promoter of national accounts in the united states, argued that the goal of collecting economic information (e.g., income distribution, growth, productivity) was to examine how those indicators influence the welfare of the nation. kuznets however also acknowledged that economic indicators were but one piece of the puzzle of citizens’ wellbeing, and that ‚the welfare of a nation can *<+ scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income‛ (kuznets, 1934, p. 7). after the second world war, kuznets (1948) denounced the doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 resulting increase in focus of national accounts on economic production, to the detriment of other measures of welfare. in spite of his critique, the use of economic indicators as proxies for wellbeing became conventional practice for the rest of the twentieth century. as pointed out by the economist partha dasgupta (2001), ‚gnp per capita continues to be regarded as the quintessential indicator of a country’s living standard‛ (p. 53). recent years have seen renewed interest in the idea that money and economic growth are both insufficient and inadequate indicators of progress, especially in developed countries. nations have become increasingly prosperous over the past five decades, yet wealth has become an increasingly inadequate indicator of how a society is doing. as a result, there are now ‚distressingly large, measurable slippages between economic indicators and well-being‛ (diener & seligman, 2004, p. 1). for illustration, even though gdp has tripled over the past 50 years in the united states, life satisfaction has remained unchanged (diener & seligman, 2004). in contrast, rates of depression and anxiety have increased dramatically (klerman et al., 1985; robins et al., 1984; twenge, 2000). the overabundance of goods and services available in developed nations therefore does not reflect the subjective wellbeing of their citizens, a situation that has been described as ‚the progress paradox‛ (easterbrook, 2003). even the manner in which gdp is calculated makes it an inappropriate measure of wellbeing. indeed, gdp is inflated by ‚regrettables‛ (diener & seligman, 2004), i.e., economic transactions that create wealth but decrease wellbeing. to illustrate, the gdp of a nation increases with each sale of antidepressant medication, with each divorce pronounced, and with each prison built. u.s. presidential candidate robert kennedy (1968, para. 22) perhaps best summed up the inadequacy of economic growth as a surrogate for wellbeing: the gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. it counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them *<+ it counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl *<+ yet the gnp does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. it does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials *<+ it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. spearheading the movement to reform the way in which governments measure progress, the uk-based new economics foundation recently proposed the national accounts of wellbeing initiative (michaelson, abdallah, steuer, thompson, & marks, 2009). referring to kuznets’ unfinished endeavor (kuznets, 1933; perlman & marietta, 2005) and highlighting the fact that the end goal of national accounts should be citizens’ wellbeing (not the size of their wallets), the creators of the national accounts of well-being explained that their initiative represents ‚a return to the original intent for modern national accounting systems‛ (michaelson et al., 2009, p. 11). a poll conducted in the united kingdom revealed that 81% of respondents believed the government’s primary goal should be the ‚greatest happiness‛ rather than the ‚greatest wealth‛ (easton, 2006). in france, the report of the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress (cmepsp) initiated by french president nicolas sarkozy stated that ‚the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift in emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being. *<+ emphasizing well-being is important because there appears to be an increasing gap between doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 the information contained in aggregate gdp data and what counts for common people’s wellbeing‛ (stiglitz, sen, & fitoussi, 2009, p. 12). thus, there is a growing consensus around the need to measure wellbeing at a national level and to have this construct serve as an end goal of national public policy (sketekee, 2011; wardell, 2010). while there is a growing agreement that measures of wellbeing should be included, the issue of how wellbeing should be defined and measured remains unresolved (smith, fleeson, geiselmann, settersten, & kunzmann, 2001). as a result, a large diversity of definitions exist (gasper, 2010). most researchers now agree that wellbeing is a multifaceted construct (e.g., diener, 2009; michaelson, et al., 2009; stiglitz, et al., 2009), including emotional, social, and functional components, yet disagreements persist as to which components should be included in a valid theory and measure of wellbeing (diener, scollon, & lucas, 2003). diener and seligman (2004) pointed out that a more systematic approach is needed, as the ‚current measurement of well-being is haphazard, with different studies assessing different concepts in different ways‛ (p. 2). the multiplicity of approaches in the study of wellbeing has given rise to blurred and overly broad definitions of wellbeing, with researchers using the construct of ‘wellbeing’ synonymously with ‘happiness,’ ‘quality of life,’ or ‘life satisfaction.’ furthermore, some researchers have preferred to ignore the multifaceted nature of wellbeing and equate it with one construct (often life satisfaction), leading to the unfortunate omission of other important aspects of wellbeing. as a result, gasper (2004) argued that new measures need to respect the diversity of wellbeing. the present review summarizes the state of research on the measurement of wellbeing and highlights potential opportunities and pitfalls in the development of new instruments and theoretical approaches. in section 2, we provide an overview of tools that have been used to measure subjective facets of wellbeing (e.g. positive emotion, engagement, meaning, life satisfaction, relationships/social support, and accomplishment/competence). in section 3, we discuss objective theories and social indicators of wellbeing, as well as the debate surrounding the need to integrate subjective and objective measures of wellbeing. section 4 examines how current measures fit with existing psychological theories, including well-being theory (seligman, 2011), and ends with a proposal for a new approach to the measurement of wellbeing: the dashboard approach. 2. subjective measures of wellbeing we begin with a brief overview of the main instruments used by researchers to measure subjective facets of wellbeing, to lay a foundation for the theories detailed in section 4. this non-exhaustive summary highlights the constructs that have received the most attention in the literature and therefore does not include all possible aspects of wellbeing that researchers have considered (see gasper, 2010; and jayawickreme & seligman, 2010 for more comprehensive reviews). in addition, we note that we are not recommending a particular measure; some of the most common measures have received strong criticism, and researchers should carefully consider relevant literature in choosing to use one or more measure. 2.1 happiness a rather straightforward and therefore intuitively appealing measurement of wellbeing consists of simply asking people whether they are ‚happy.‛ fordyce’s happiness measures (fordyce, 1988) for instance asks respondents to answer the question ‚in general, how happy or unhappy do you usually feel?‛ using an 11-point likert scale. the measure also asks participants to indicate the percentage of time they usually feel happy, unhappy, and neutral doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 (neither happy nor unhappy). similarly, lyubomirsky and lepper’s subjective happiness scale (shs; 1999) asks respondents to indicate on a 7-point likert scale if they generally consider themselves to be ‚not a very happy person / a very happy person.‛ the shs also asks respondents to compare themselves to others in terms of happiness (e.g., ‚compared to most of my peers, i consider myself: less happy / more happy‛). while directly asking individuals about their happiness certainly has face validity, it remains unclear what information respondents use to determine whether or not they are happy. happiness is therefore an unwieldy construct for scientific research (seligman, 2011), and researchers have devoted their efforts to decomposing this vague notion of ‚happiness‛ into more basic and quantifiable, building blocks. 2.2 positive emotion positive emotion is one of the most studied facets of wellbeing, perhaps because it possesses high face validity, offers a conceptual complement to the large literature on negative emotion, and has high intuitive appeal. the intuitive correspondence most people establish between positive emotion and wellbeing is partially derived from the philosophy of hedonism, which suggested that pleasure is the only thing that is good for us, whereas pain is the only thing that is bad (bentham, 1789/1996) – a view which has been referred to as ‚narrow hedonism‛ (parfit, 1984). empirically, researchers interested in the measurement of positive emotion have included a broader and more nuanced range of positive and negative emotional states besides pleasure and pain. for instance, the positive and negative affect schedule (panas; watson, clark, & tellegen, 1988), one of the most widely-used measures of positive and negative emotions, asks respondents to rate how much they are feeling 10 positive emotions (e.g., ‚excited,‛ or ‚alert‛) and 10 negative emotions (e.g., ‚upset,‛ or ‚ashamed‛) in a timeframe specified by experimenters (e.g., ‚in general,‛ ‚during the past two weeks‛). similarly, bradburn’s affect balance scale (1969) assesses individuals’ level of positive and negative emotions. this 10-item self-report scale asks respondents to answer 10 questions about ways they may have felt over the past week (e.g, ‚during the past week, did you ever feel pleased about having accomplished something?‛ and ‚during the past week, did you ever feel upset because someone criticized you?‛). recently, diener and colleagues developed the scale of positive and negative experience (spane; diener et al., 2010), designed to address some of the flaws in previous measures of positive and negative emotions. the spane is a 12-item self-report measure that asks respondents to indicate how much they have experienced 12 general feelings (e.g., ‚pleasant,‛ ‚joyful‛) as opposed to the more narrow feelings described by the panas or bradburn’s affect balance scale. specific feelings used in other scales may bias results if they do not correspond to the particular states experienced by respondents, if respondents have difficulty labeling specific feelings, or if some of the feelings valued by other cultures are omitted in the scale. the panas has been criticized for only including high arousal emotions; the spane therefore includes both low and high arousal emotions. finally, the spane asks respondents to indicate how much of the time they experienced particular feelings (as opposed to how intensely they experienced them), a question which is more highly correlated with other facets of wellbeing such as life satisfaction (diener, sandvik, & pavot, 1991). one problem with retrospective self-report instruments used to assess positive emotions is that individuals may use the way they feel at the moment they are answering to determine how they have felt over a longer period of time (especially if the questionnaire calls for a longer timeframe). respondents may also be subject to memory biases, such as the tendency to recall doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 the most salient and last experience best (kahneman, 1999). researchers interested in measuring positive emotion as accurately as possible have therefore developed methods other than the standard self-report questionnaires. one example is the day reconstruction method (drm), used to measure the frequency and intensity of a variety of positive and negative emotions over time (kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, & stone, 2004). with the drm, individuals are asked to list all of the activities they engaged in during a period of 24 hours, and then rate those activities according to the positive and negative emotions they afforded. while the drm remains a retrospective method, it allows for more fine-grained data regarding individuals’ sum-total of positive and negative emotions. researchers can calculate individuals’ levels of positive emotion by adding up the total of those momentary positive emotions and subtracting the total momentary negative emotions (kahneman, 1999). in addition to the drm, researchers have also used the experience sampling method (esm; csikszentmihalyi, larson, & prescott, 1977; for reviews, see hektner, schmidt, & csikszentmihalyi, 2007; scollon, kim-prieto, & diener, 2007) to improve accuracy in reports of positive and negative emotions. in esm, respondents are signaled (‘beeped’) via electronic devices (e.g., pager, mobile phone) at random intervals during the day and are asked to answer questions regarding how they are feeling right at that moment. a typical esm study lasts one to two weeks, with individuals responding to around two to twelve signals per week (fleeson, 2007; reis & gable, 2000). esm has a number of advantages (furr, 2009; scollon, et al., 2007). first, esm has high ecological validity because it allows individuals to answer questions while involved in real-life situations. second, it prevents the memory biases associated with retrospective methods by asking respondents to describe their emotions on the spot. third, it allows for better examination of within-person fluctuations in emotions. finally, even though esm started as a costly and time-consuming method, the advent of new technologies has made it increasingly easy to use and increasingly cost-effective. for example, esm can now be implemented using applications for cellular phones. esm however also has a number of drawbacks (scollon et al., 2007). first, the time commitment required from participants may encourage self-selection and attrition issues. typical esm participants may therefore be more motivated, conscientious, and agreeable than average. second, the technology involved may prevent certain groups with low familiarity or resources to participate. third, participants may decide not to respond during particular activities, thus impinging on the randomness of sampling. fourth, participants may react to the measure, changing the phenomenon studied (wheeler & reis, 1991). the issue of reactivity is inherent to esm, as this technique interrupts participants’ experiences (‚i was feeling good until they beeped me‛), and may make them more aware of how they tend to respond (‚i guess i must be a sad person‛). finally, esm generates massive amounts of data that researchers must be prepared to aggregate and analyze in meaningful ways, as the basic data management and statistical techniques that are typically used in psychological studies may be insufficient. this issue is more of a challenge than a real drawback for researchers, given the richness of the data provided by esm. the drm and esm are techniques that allow for richer data than can be provided by ordinary self-report questionnaires administered at one or two points in time. both methods have been used to assess positive emotions, but they need not be limited to this construct. esm, for instance, was originally developed to measure engagement, the next facet of wellbeing that we discuss. research on the measurement of positive emotion has therefore yielded several useful instruments and methods. however, the question of the role that positive emotion should play doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 84 in a valid measure of wellbeing remains debated. some theories (reviewed in section 4) view positive emotion as central to wellbeing, whereas other approaches (such as eudaimonic accounts of wellbeing) dismiss it. one important consideration is that individuals are not equally endowed with the ability to experience positive emotion. introverts, for instance, are much less likely than extraverts to experience positive emotion (hills & argyle, 2001). as a result, interventions that are designed to boost positive emotion will do so more easily in extraverts, and measurements of positive emotion will favor extraverts over introverts. policymakers may therefore end up unintentionally over-counting what works for extraverts and discounting what works for introverts. the fairness of using positive emotion as a main metric for wellbeing is therefore disputable, and it might be more fruitful to focus on the measurement and cultivation of other facets of wellbeing (seligman, 2011). 2.3 engagement engagement refers to a psychological state in which individuals report being absorbed by and focused on what they are doing. at its high end, engagement has been referred to as ‚flow‛ (csikszentmihalyi, 1996), or the overall feeling referred to as ‚being in the zone.‛ according to csikszentmihalyi (1996, 1975), high levels of engagement are characterized by the following characteristics: the individual has clear goals and is intrinsically interested in the task at hand; the task presents challenges that meet the skill level of the individual; the task provides direct and immediate feedback to the individual; the individual retains a sense of personal control over the activity; and action and awareness become merged, such that the individual becomes completely immersed in what he or she is doing. few measures of engagement exist, and this construct is not usually represented in largescale surveys of wellbeing. as previously mentioned, the experience sampling method (esm) was used by csikszentmihalyi and colleagues to examine instances of flow as closely as possible to the time they occurred (csikszentmihalyi, rathunde, & whalen, 1997; larson & csikszentmihalyi, 1983). when signaled, participants were typically asked to fill out a questionnaire describing (among other things) what they were doing, and why they were doing it (e.g., ‚i had to,‛ ‚i wanted to‛). participants were also asked to rate their activity on various dimensions of flow (e.g., concentration, self-awareness, sense of control, challenges and skills, intrinsic interest). this methodology allowed the researchers to look at the experience of engagement and flow in relation to the development of talent in adolescent populations. aside from esm, the flow scale (csikszenmihalyi & csikszenmihalyi, 1988; mayers, 1978) has also been used to assess the level of engagement experienced during various activities. this scale is an 11-item self-report measure in which respondents rate statements in relationship to a specific situation (e.g., ‚i feel i can handle the demands of the situation,‛ ‚i clearly know what i am supposed to do‛). the administration of this questionnaire is often preceded by having participants read three statements describing the kinds of experience people report when they are in flow, so that they can familiarize themselves with this concept (e.g., ‚i am so involved in what i am doing, i don’t see myself as separate from what i am doing.‛) (csikszentmihalyi, 1975). apart from flow experiences, alternative measures of engagement are lacking. 2.4 meaning and purpose meaning has been defined in various ways: as ‚the ontological significance of life from the point of view of the experiencing individual‛ (crumbauch & maholick, 1964, p. 201), as the ‚feeling of belonging and serving something larger than the self‛ (seligman, 2011), or simply as the response to the question ‚what does my life mean?‛ (e.g., baumeister, 1992). doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 85 the study of meaning was prevalent in early humanistic tradition (frankl, 1959; maslow, 1968; yalom, 1980) but was largely ignored in psychology over the past fifty years due to lack of empirical evidence. psychologists have however returned to the topic in recent years (baumeister, 1992; king, hicks, krull, & gaiso, 2006; park, 2010; ryff, 1989; seligman, 2002), partially through the advent of positive psychology. in particular, meaning is now viewed as an essential contributor to overall wellbeing that is separate from, but positively correlated with, other facets of wellbeing (chamberlain & zika, 1992; king, et al., 2006; locke & latham, 2002; seligman, 2002). for example, social activists high in moral excellence report high levels of meaning stemming from their work (colby & damon, 1992). in keeping with this conceptualization, mcgregor and little (1989), in a factor analysis of wellbeing measures, found that meaning and happiness are distinct constructs. for example, having children may decrease happiness among parents, but contributes very significantly to their levels of meaning (baumeister, 1992). nussbaum (2007) also presented the case of the misanthropic northern irish politician david trimble (who shared the 1998 nobel peace prize) as an example illustrating the possibility of having a meaning-rich life that is not necessarily filled with positive emotion. in spite of the recent resurgence of interest in the construct of meaning, there are few instruments to measure it. steger, frazier, oishi, and kaler’s (2006) meaning in life questionnaire measures both the subjective presence of meaning and the subjective search for meaning. respondents are asked to rate ten statements on a 7-point likert scale (e.g., ‚my life has a clear sense of purpose;‛ ‚i am searching for meaning in my life‛). in addition, measures of spirituality and/or religious faith (e.g., seidlitz et al., 2002; worthington et al., 2003) may tap into the construct of meaning in life as they connect individuals with higher purposes. 2.5 life satisfaction perhaps the most widely used type of measures to assess wellbeing are measures of life satisfaction, in which participants are asked to answer the question ‚how satisfied are you with your life?‛ this type of question is different from asking individuals how they are ‚feeling‛ because it tries to appeal to more reflective and evaluative aspects in considering one’s life. shin and johnson (1978) defined life satisfaction as ‚a global assessment of a person’s quality of life according to his chosen criteria‛ (p. 478). life satisfaction judgments therefore depend on the standards individuals have set for themselves. individuals with similar objective circumstances may judge their lives to be more or less satisfying, a problem that has led many to advocate for the use of more objective measures of wellbeing. life satisfaction questions have been included in many large-scale international surveys, but often use only one question in order to assess citizens’ wellbeing. this is for example the case of the household income and labor dynamics in australia survey (hilda; watson, 2005), the british household panel study (bhps; university of essex, 2008), and the german socio-economic panel study (gsoep; german institute for economic research, 2008), among other surveys. one-item measures are problematic, as any response to a question contains some amount of error. by using multiple items, the size of this error can be reduced and the measurement made more reliable. in order to address this problem, the national accounts of well-being (michaelson, et al., 2009) include four items pertaining to life satisfaction. in addition, diener, emmons, larsen and griffin developed the satisfaction with life scale (swls; 1985), a self-report questionnaire that asks respondents to rate five statements concerning their present satisfaction with life (e.g., ‚so far, i have gotten the important things i want in life‛) on a 7-point scale. another version of the swls, the temporal satisfaction with doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 86 life scale (pavot, diener, & suh, 1998), assesses respondents’ past, present, and future life satisfaction by asking them to rate 15 statements. the use of life satisfaction measures as a surrogate for wellbeing has been criticized on various grounds (for a review, see kahneman & krueger, 2006). paralleling critiques of positive emotion, some researchers have criticized measures of life satisfaction because respondents may often use how good they feel at the moment they are asked as the basis for the judgment they are making. measures of life satisfaction may therefore be contaminated by mood (schwarz & strack, 1999). in addition, the order and context in which questions are presented may have important effects on results. for example, in a study by strack and colleagues (strack, martin, & schwarz, 1988), the relation between the number of dates a student had in the past month and his or her life satisfaction was significant only when the dating question was asked before the life satisfaction question, indicating a priming effect. these and other similar results (e.g., schwarz & clore, 1983) suggest that answers to life satisfaction questions may be constructed by respondents based on different pieces of information, including immediate context (schwarz & strack, 1999), as well as conventional indicators of one’s achievements, such as income (kahneman, krueger, schkade, schwarz, & stone, 2006). in response to these findings, some researchers have sought to determine under which conditions life satisfaction may be affected by mood and other contextual effects. pavot and diener (1993) for instance found that the contamination of life satisfaction judgments by mood occurs mostly for single-item measures, but not for multiple-item instruments such as the satisfaction with life scale (swls). another criticism of life satisfaction measures is that they may be biased by respondents’ social desirability (carstensen & cone, 1983). social desirability however probably constitutes a personality characteristic that enhances wellbeing. research by diener and colleagues has shown that important information is lost when social desirability is removed from life satisfaction measures (diener, sandvik, pavot, & gallagher, 1991). there is therefore danger in changing the construct of interest by controlling for personality-type characteristics. perhaps the biggest problem with life satisfaction measures is that this construct has too often been equated to overall wellbeing, leading researchers to ignore other facets. as noted by michaelson and colleagues, ‚it is all very well knowing that someone is satisfied with their life, but the interesting question is why‛ (2009, p. 56). the only way to answer this question is to look at other facets of wellbeing as well. other researchers have also advocated for the use of both life satisfaction and emotion information to assess overall subjective wellbeing. these researchers argued that a more complete assessment of an individual’s life incorporates both life satisfaction along with momentary feelings (dolan, peasgood, & white, 2006). such evaluative accounts incorporate both our hedonic experiences (momentary emotions) alongside our cognitive assessments of how well life is going more generally. since both of these elements are subjective, this kind of account is termed subjective wellbeing (swb), an umbrella term combining how we think plus how we feel about our lives (diener et al., 1999). 2.6 relationships and social support social support—the belief that one is cared for, loved, esteemed and valued—has been recognized as one of the most (if not the most) influential determinants of wellbeing for people of all ages and cultures (reis & gable, 2003). numerous measures of social support and positive relationships have been developed as a result, and most large-scale surveys examining wellbeing integrate questions on this topic. for instance, the world health organization 100 doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 87 survey (whoqol-100; bonomi, patrick, bushnell, & martin, 2000) asks an array of questions such as ‚how satisfied are you with the support you get from your friends?‛ and ‚do you feel happy about your relationships with your family members?‛ the oxford poverty and human development initiative’s missing dimensions of poverty relatedness module (samman, 2007) similarly asks participants to rate three statements pertaining to social support (e.g., ‚people in my life care about me‛). the new economics foundation’s national accounts of well-being (michaelson, et al., 2009) also has two sections related to social support: supportive relationships (e.g., ‚do you have anyone with whom you can discuss intimate and personal matters‛) and trust and belonging (e.g., ‚to what extent do you feel like people in your area help one another?‛). an exhaustive review of all existing psychological measures of relationships and social support is beyond the scope of this article (for reviews, see cohen, underwood, & gottlieb, 2000; gottlieb & bergen, 2010; orth-gomér & undén, 1987), although a few instruments are worth mentioning to illustrate various approaches to measuring social support. three measures in particular have been used in a large number of studies and have been recommended by other authors for their robust psychometric properties (gottlieb & bergen, 2010). first, the enrichd social support inventory (essi; mitchell et al., 2003) is a 7-item measure assessing the availability of a network member to provide emotional, informational, as well as practical support. the essi was originally designed for use with a medical population (i.e., patients recovering from myocardial infarction). second, the social provisions scale (sps; cutrona & russell, 1987) is a 24-item measure of perceived support divided into three assistance-related (i.e., reassurance of worth, guidance, reliable alliance) and three non-assistance related (i.e., opportunity for nurturance, attachment, and social integration) functions. finally, the inventory of socially supportive behaviors (issb; barrera, sandler, & ramsay, 1981) is a 40item measure of support that asks respondents to indicate how often they were at the receiving end of socially supportive behaviors during the preceding month, using a 5-point likert scale (e.g., ‚did some activity together to help you get your mind off things,‛ ‚let you know that you did something well‛). by asking about actual events (as opposed to perceived support), the issb intends to be more objective, although some authors have argued that objective received support may improve wellbeing only insofar as it contributes to perceived support (for a review of the relationship between received and perceived support, see haber, cohen, lucas, & baltes, 2007). the issb nevertheless illustrates the question of whether subjective measures should be complemented with objective measures when possible, which we address in section 3. 2.7 accomplishment and competence accomplishment can be defined in terms of achievement, success, or mastery at the highest level possible within a particular domain (ericsson, 2002). in some domains such as sports, business, or education, accomplishment is measured through agreed-upon standards, such as competitions (e.g., gold medals at the olympics), honors and awards (e.g., winning the nobel peace prize), scholastic achievement tests (e.g., performance on the sat), or reaching a particular level (e.g., president or ceo of an organization). at the individual level, accomplishment can be defined in terms of reaching a desired state and progress toward prestated goals (heckhausen, wrosch, & schultz, 2010; negru, 2008). competence, a closely related construct, has been defined as the sense of efficacy individuals have regarding their internal and external environments (ryan, huta, & deci, 2008), and is one of the three basic doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 88 psychological needs posited by deci and ryan’s (2000) self-determination theory (detailed in section 4). as a result of the growing recognition of the human need for accomplishment (seligman, 2011), some large-scale surveys of wellbeing have incorporated items tapping accomplishment and competence. the oxford poverty and human development initiative’s missing dimensions of poverty competence module (samman, 2007) asks participants to rate three statements related to competence (e.g., ‚most of the time i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do‛ and ‚i generally feel very capable‛). the new economics foundation’s national accounts of well-being (michaelson, et al., 2009) also has two questions (‚most days i feel a sense of accomplishment from what i do‛ and ‚in my daily life i get very little chance to show how capable i am‛). finally, the purpose in life subscale of ryff’s psychological well-being scales (ryff, 1989) includes items relevant to accomplishment and competence (e.g., ‚i enjoy making plans for the future and working to make them a reality‛). 3. objective measures of wellbeing as a result of the large body of research that has accumulated on how to measure wellbeing and in conjunction with the growing discontentment that surrounds the use of economic growth as our main metric for progress, many researchers and policy-makers have called for the development of national indicators of wellbeing that will achieve the conceptual and methodological sophistication of national economic indicators. several conceptual issues described here underlie the enterprise of creating such indices. to assist researchers in developing national indicators of wellbeing, diener (2006) proposed guidelines for their creation. he recommended that (1) the various facets of wellbeing be measured separately; (2) instruments sensitive to fluctuation in wellbeing resulting from changes in circumstances be utilized; (3) short-term and long-term changes in wellbeing be assessed separately; and (4) instruments measuring wellbeing be psychometrically valid (that is, that they consistently measure what they are supposed to be measuring). diener also pointed out that current instruments, although comparatively imperfect, can still provide information to policy-makers that standard economic indicators cannot offer. 3.1 objective theories of wellbeing several ‚objective-lists‛ or ‚needing‛ accounts have been advocated over the last sixty years (ranis, stewart, & samman, 2006). these accounts propose that wellbeing should be measured using lists of objective indicators, and the crucial issue is how to choose which indicators should be included. in a review of the literature, alkire (2002) noted 39 different attempts at defining what makes a ‘good’ or ‘flourishing’ life between 1938 and 2000. while a detailed review of this literature will not be attempted here, ranis and colleagues (2006) summarized several accounts worth mentioning, each of which adopts a different conceptual approach and justification. first, amartya sen’s (1999) capabilities approach, perhaps the best-known needs-based account of wellbeing in the social sciences, posited a framework that focuses on the extent to which individuals can function successfully with the goods that they have at hand. in setting up this framework, sen distinguished between ‘functionings’ and ‘capability’ (sen, 1999). ‘functionings’ (the core notion in his account) refer to the various activities that an individual may value doing, while that individual’s ‘capability’ consists of ‚the alternative combinations of functionings that are feasible for her to achieve‛ (p. 75). one’s capability is therefore a form of freedom, as it affords the opportunity to achieve multiple combinations of functionings. doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 89 related to sen’s theory, nussbaum (2000) spelled out a substantive list of ten capabilities (life, bodily health and integrity, senses/imagination/thought, emotions, practical reason, affiliation, living in relation with other species, play, and control over one’s environment) which, while non-exhaustive, are non-negotiable in their equal worth, as they are together constitutive of what it means to achieve ‚truly human functioning‛ (nussbaum, 2006, p. 71). second, rawls (1971/1999) identified a set of primary goods that ‚are in general necessary for the framing and execution of a rational plan of life‛ (p. 359): rights, liberties, opportunities, income and wealth, as well as the social bases of self-respect. rawls identified these goods through a process of deliberative rationality, defined as ‚a careful consideration of the relevant facts and after a careful consideration of the consequences‛ (p. 380). finnis and colleagues (finnis, 1980; finnis, boyle, & grisez, 1987) used an approach similar to rawls’ to define a list of goods (i.e., life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability and friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion). unlike rawls’ approach, which sees primary goods as necessary requirements for the good life, finnis described his goods as constitutive elements of a flourishing existence, such that wellbeing is defined in terms of these goods. third, doyal and gough’s (1991) basic needs approach is founded on the negative principle of ‚do no harm,‛ where harm is defined as factors that prevent individuals from realizing activities central to their life plan. doyal and gough suggested that health and autonomy constitute the most basic needs for individuals of all cultures, and proposed the following second-order needs in order to achieve health and autonomy: nutritional food and clean water, adequate housing, a safe work environment, health care, security in childhood, close relationships, physical security, economic security, education, as well as safe birth control and childbearing. among other approaches worth mentioning is narayan-parker’s (2000) voices of the poor analysis, which lists needs identified by the poor. these needs have been collected through focus groups with individuals in the developing world. finally, camfield’s (2005) economic and social research council research group of well-being in developing countries attempts to collect information on how individuals perceive wellbeing in four separate nations. the need-based theories described here catalogue the objective list of goods required for ‘wellbeing,’ or a ‘happy’ life. dolan and colleagues (2006) argued that objective list accounts do not provide a formal theory of wellbeing; rather, they offer a list of attributes and characteristics which are taken to constitute wellbeing. the contents of the lists vary but tend to include items such as economic resources, political freedom, good health, and the ability to read. needing accounts may therefore not provide complete theories of wellbeing, but they suggest what the essential means for increasing wellbeing might be. dolan and colleagues (2006) also argued that the presence or absence of certain objective attributes may lead to more subjective satisfaction for individuals, but the value of these objective attributes should be independent of these consequent effects. therefore, the judgment about the contribution of various needs (e.g., education, health, etc.) towards wellbeing does not come from the individual, but draws on theoretical and intuitive accounts of what societies value. thus, this approach holds that ‚certain things are good or bad for beings, independently in at least some cases of whether they are desired or whether they give rise to pleasurable experiences‛ (chappell & crisp, 1998, p. 553). while some of these objective standards may be confirmed using a subjective perspective (i.e., do individuals report that an objective condition has increased or decreased their wellbeing?), their validity for wellbeing should be determined externally. this approach was grand-fathered by aristotle’s flourishing account of wellbeing. aristotle proposed a doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 90 perfectionist version of wellbeing, in which the wellbeing of an individual is judged by considering how close they are to reaching the potential of humankind. aristotle’s term for this, ‚eudaimonia,‛ has been translated into various terms, including ‚flourishing,‛ ‚happiness,‛ or ‚wellbeing.‛ to help human beings flourish (i.e., realize their potential) is the aristotelian justification for the items on the objective list. 3.2 objective social indicators many scientists in fields other than psychology have conceptualized wellbeing as a set of objective conditions. starting in the 1960s, social scientists began to think about the objective standards by which people’s quality of life, other than economic growth, can be evaluated, as such standards ‚assess where we stand and are going with respect to our values and goals‛ (bauer, 1966, p.1, as cited by land, 1996). social indicators therefore attempt to track and evaluate objective aspects of citizens’ wellbeing in target societies (diener, lucas, schimmack, & helliwell, 2009; gasper, 2010) and provide guidance on how to improve. these social indicators are often also referred to as quality-of-life indicators or key national indicators (diener et al., 2009). the working assumption behind social indicators is that a comprehensive set of indicators can be identified that captures an objective conception of wellbeing (dolan & white, 2007). one example of an indicator set is the list of key national indicators proposed by the united states general accounting office (gao, 2003), which comprises ten indicators in each of eight different domains. examples of domains assessed include social indicators related to the community (e.g., rates of volunteering or homelessness), education (e.g., percentage of adults having completed postsecondary education), health (e.g., life expectancy, physical activity), and social support (e.g., percentage of elderly individuals living alone and in poverty). another well-known set of social indicators used to measure wellbeing is the human development index (hdi), developed by the united nations development program (undp, 2010). the hdi is based on amartya sen’s (1999) theoretical work on important capabilities required for an individual to achieve optimal functioning. in its most recent version (undp, 2010), the hdi operationalizes wellbeing using three main dimensions: longevity and health (i.e., life expectancy at birth), access to knowledge (i.e., mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling) and a decent standard of living (i.e., gross national income per capita, adjusted for purchasing power). a national version of the hdi has also been created for the united states (lewis & burd-sharps, 2010). 3.3 concerns about objective wellbeing measures wellbeing researchers have identified a number of concerns about using objective indicators as sole measures of wellbeing (diener, lucas, schimmack, & helliwell, 2009). first, it is not intuitively obvious which items should be included in a finite set of domains that contribute to, or constitute, wellbeing. it is not clear whether domains included on existing lists are necessarily important for overall wellbeing. diener et al. (2009) noted the example of number of hobbies, included in the living conditions index of the netherlands (boelhouwer & stoop, 1999), speculating that many people engage in a variety of meaningful activities that they do not call hobbies. conversely, important items that should reasonably be included on any exhaustive list may end up being omitted. for example, child mortality may be included on a list whereas care for the elderly may not. doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 91 second, it is questionable how to best operationalize objective domains of flourishing. we may be interested in measuring engagement with culture, but does that entail giving equal status to attendance at the opera and at professional wrestling matches? who should decide which activities are included? such subjective decision-making may compromise the ostensibly objective nature of the indicators. moreover, gasper (2004, 2010) noted that objective measures of wellbeing such as social indicators are necessarily rooted in values, highlighting the fact that any list of indicators reflects to some degree the values of the list’s compilers, as well as the values of the communities under assessment. as phillips (2006, as cited by gasper, 2010) suggested, we might be better off calling these supposedly objective measures ‚collectively subjective measures‛ (p. 33). as a result, diener (1995) proposed a values-based approach for identifying social indicators that are prized within particular societies, so that progress in valued domains can be accurately tracked (diener et al., 2009). according to diener, using values as the basis for inclusion of particular indicators may help solve the problem that indicators have tended to be selected in a rather unsystematic manner. in keeping with this approach, diener developed new measures of quality of life (the basic and advanced quality of life indices) based on the universal values previously described by schwartz (1992). third, the accuracy of objective measures needs to be considered. one argument that is frequently deployed in favor of objective measures of wellbeing is that they can be clearly observed and empirically verified (diener et al., 2009). while this should be true in principle, the objective data that is frequently cited may not always be accurate. for example, variations in cultural norms about the appropriateness of suicide may lead to the underreporting of suicide-related deaths (diener et al., 2009; rockett & thomas, 1999). additionally, the specific meaning of objective indicators may vary across nations and cultures. for example, ten years of schooling in one country may not mean the same or be comparable as ten years in another country. more broadly, the needs of a particular target individual may not always match the standards and criteria of an observer (smith et al., 2001). such differences limit the value of cross-national comparisons. diener and colleagues (2009) also noted that similar scores on a specific indicator could reflect different levels of wellbeing. for example, a strong police force in an area may reflect either high drug use, or a well-functioning government, or an overbearing commitment to law and order. a fourth issue involves identifying the optimal levels of specific indicators (for example, should additional resources be allocated to increase life expectancy, even if it means prolonging the lives of people in extremely poor health?) and the sensitivity of such indicators across the range of measurement units, given that useful indicators should reveal movement when societal progress has been made (diener et al., 2009). one problem with measures such as the human development index (which measures longevity, education and income) is that all the industrialized nations cluster relatively closely together with little real difference between them. even if these countries do not differ on longevity, education and income, they may however still differ significantly on other important indicators. a final issue involves the integration of these indicators and the appropriate weights to be used. which of the indicators should be weighted more heavily? who decides which ones are more important? how does one weigh education against health care? such issues are unavoidable, and have not to date been resolved satisfactorily (diener et al., 2009). 3.4 combining objective and subjective wellbeing measures while objective approaches share a common general goal with subjective approaches – a richer understanding of what it means to live well – comim (2005), writing specifically of the links doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 92 between the subjective and objective approaches (in particular, the capabilities approach), noted that the ‚seemingly obvious overlap in their object of research does not seem to be accompanied by any considerable acknowledgement of the vast work that has been produced in the two fields‛ (p. 162). with regards to similarities between objective and subjective measurement of wellbeing, comin (2005) identified a number of prominent similarities between the objective capabilities approach and subjective accounts. first, both accounts have a similar core objective – an investigation of wellbeing and how people evaluate their lives. diener (2000), sen (1999) and nussbaum (2006, 2000) made similar claims, and the two approaches can be seen as constituting distinctive informational spaces within the study of wellbeing. second, both approaches rely (directly or indirectly) on individuals’ own evaluation of their own wellbeing. while this is fundamentally constitutive of the subjective approach, sen (1999, 2004) emphasized the importance of public deliberation in discussing the relevant capabilities or objective needs, while nussbaum’s later work (2000, 2006) emphasized the value of pluralism and consensus in how her capabilities are understood. third, both approaches distinguish between means and ends, and give priority to a direct assessment of ends. while this is a hallmark of the capabilities approach, diener and seligman (2004) also made the aristotelian claim that ‚money *<+ is a means to an end, and that end is well-being.‛ as a result, they concluded ‚after all, if economic and other policies are important because they will in the end increase well-being, why not assess well-being directly?‛ (p. 2). fourth, both the objective and subjective approaches attack and offer themselves as alternatives to simple resource-based and preference-based accounts of wellbeing. fifth, both the objective and subjective approaches value democratic participation. sen (1999) saw this as a valuable end in itself, while subjective wellbeing researchers place more emphasis on its instrumental effect on wellbeing. sixth, both approaches emphasize the importance of autonomy and self-determination. nussbaum (2006) noted that the capabilities approach ‚stresses the animal and material underpinnings of human freedom, and it also recognizes a wider range of types of beings who can be free‛ (p. 88). for sen (1999), having positive freedoms is constitutive of development. subjective wellbeing researchers (and positive psychologists in general) have stressed the importance of autonomy and control. as ryan and deci (2006) noted: ‚autonomy is a salient issue across development, life concerns, and cultures, and is of central importance for personality functioning and wellness‛ (p. 1580). seventh, both approaches consider the role of emotions in assessing wellbeing. positive and negative emotions are constitutive of the subjective approach (diener, 2006; diener, oishi, & lucas, 2003), while nussbaum (2000, 2001) has argued that emotions play an important role in shaping individuals’ choices. eighth, both advocate for methodological pluralism. diener (2006) for instance has argued for measuring multiple aspects of subjective wellbeing. similarly, a hallmark of a number of objective approaches is their focus on multiple informational spaces. ninth, both approaches recognize the dangers of adaptive preferences, which could potentially bias individuals’ evaluation of their own wellbeing. nussbaum (1997) characterizes adaptation as ‚a phenomenon in which an individual shapes her preferences to accord with the (frequently narrow) set of opportunities she actually has‛ (p. 218). capability advocates have used this argument as evidence against the subjective wellbeing approach, and diener (2000; 2003) has acknowledged that self-report measures of wellbeing can be tainted by this problem. as a result, diener and colleagues (2003) advocated for the development of other, more accurate measures to measure mood states. one obvious issue in attempting to reconcile these approaches is that subjective approaches focus on mental states, while objective indicators of wellbeing do not. in fact, many positive doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 93 psychologists have acknowledged that subjective reports of wellbeing are susceptible to adaptive preferences, and that ‚we probably need to take into account more objective bases for judging the attainment of the good life *such as nussbaum and sen’s work+‛ (peterson, 2006, p. 312).1 individuals’ subjective preferences may, however, not necessarily contradict objective conceptions of wellbeing. sen (1993) argued that this would be the case as long as positional parameters (that is, individual characteristics of a person and his position in the world that impacts his observations) that affect individuals’ cognitions are accounted for, so that particular types of ‚special mental tendencies‛ (p. 137) can be excluded. similarly, nussbaum (2000) advocated for what she calls an ‚intelligently normative proceduralism‛ (p. 159), in which preferences are evaluated with a view towards discarding those that are mistaken or illegitimate. she later noted: ‚convergence between the best informed desire approach and the capabilities approach should give us confidence that we are on the right track‛ (nussbaum, 2006, p. 81). rawls (1971/1999; 2001) similarly explained that happiness has two aspects: the successful execution of a rational life plan, and that individual’s state of mind. happiness can therefore be defined either objectively or subjectively. objectively, happiness involves ‚a certain achievement in action and a rational assurance about the outcome,‛ whereas subjectively it involves the belief that the plan is being successfully executed (p. 481). for rawls, a complete life plan includes multiple ends, as well as due considerations of rights and justice (p. 482), and ‚happiness is an inclusive end, meaning that the plan itself, the realization of which makes one happy, includes and orders a plurality of aims, whatever they are‛ (p. 484-485). whereas rawls’ account of the good life is strongly normative, his claim that happiness entails a plurality of aims appeals to both subjective and objective accounts (comim, 2005). 4. psychological theories of wellbeing some researchers (e.g., layard, 2005; veenhoven, 2004) have argued that the improvement of single constructs such as happiness or life satisfaction can be a valuable end for governments to pursue, and that it can in some instances be justified as the ultimate end of public policy. we note however that while subjective measures can provide important information that can inform policy decisions, they are not meant to override other sources of information, such as objective measures of wellbeing and standard economic indicators. we therefore recognize the value of multiple informational spaces in assessing wellbeing, an insight that is shared by a number of theoretical approaches in psychology outlined below. as an exhaustive description of existing theories of wellbeing is beyond the scope of this review, we focus on a subset of approaches that aptly explain how particular combinations of wellbeing facets can guide our understanding and measurement of wellbeing as a whole, and ultimately, interventions to increase it. 4.1 the psychological wellbeing tradition the psychological wellbeing tradition (pwb; ryff, 1989, 1995; ryff & keyes, 1995; ryff & singer, 1998, 2002) arose as a complementary approach to the subjective wellbeing (swb) perspective. while the swb perspective does not specify a single conception of wellbeing— preferring instead to leave such matters to the individual—the pwb perspective adopts a more 1 however, individuals do not completely adapt their preferences in response to certain life events, such as disabilities (lucas, clark, georgellis, & diener, 2004). doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 94 theory-guided approach to wellbeing, arguing that focusing solely on affect and life satisfaction neglects important aspects of positive psychological functioning (ryff, 1989). ryff’s (1989) definition of psychological wellbeing combines insight from three domains of psychological theory: personal growth models, life-span development perspectives, and positive mental health. first, personal growth models include jung’s (1933) notion of individuation, allport’s (1961) conception of maturity, rogers’ (1962) theory of the fullyfunctioning individual, as well as maslow’s (1968) notion of self-actualization. second, life-span development perspectives include bühler’s (1935) basic life tendencies towards life-fulfillment, erikson’s (1959) psychosocial stage model, and neugarten’s (1968, 1973) perspectives on personality change in adulthood and old age. finally, jahoda’s (1958) positive mental health model provided a detailed description of what constitutes psychological health, which is characterized by efficient self-perception, realistic self-esteem and acceptance, control over behavior, accurate perception of the world, sustained relationships, and self-direction. ryff’s resulting pwb perspective was intended to provide a parsimonious and empirically robust conception of wellbeing derived from the theoretical perspectives noted above. this conception contains six dimensions: (1) self-acceptance, manifested by holding positive attitudes towards oneself and one’s past life; (2) positive relations with others that are warm and trusting; (3) autonomy, which is reflected by qualities such as self-determination, independence, selfregulation of behavior, and an internal locus of evaluation; (4) environmental mastery, defined as the ability to choose and/or create environments suitable to one’s psychic condition; (5) purpose in life, or having beliefs that give the individual the feeling that there is purpose in and meaning to life; and (6) personal growth, manifested as developing one’s potential, as well as growing and expanding as a person. these six dimensions can be assessed using the psychological wellbeing scales (ryff & keyes, 1995). the pwb account differs from the swb account primarily in its focus on eudaimonic facets of wellbeing and its omission of hedonic components such as positive emotion. according to the pwb perspective, human flourishing is characterized by ‚doing and living well‛ rather than ‚feeling good.‛ a large body of research has examined the psychosocial, socio-demographic and biological correlates of pwb. for example, helson and srivastava (2001) utilized the domains of personal growth (pg) and environmental mastery (em) to identify three configurations of positive human development: achievers (high on pg and em), conservers (high on em, low on pg), and seekers (high on pg, low on em). other research programs have focused on the relation between pwb and psychological constructs such as personality traits (lopes, salovey, & straus, 2003), coping strategies (kling, seltzer, & ryff, 1997), personal goals (riediger & freund, 2004) and self-enhancing cognitions (taylor, lerner, sherman, sage, & mcdowell, 2003). ryff and singer (1996) also found significant age differences in profiles of positive functioning in crosssectional studies. specifically, environmental mastery and autonomy showed incremental patterns from young adulthood to midlife, whereas personal growth and purpose in life presented a decremental pattern from midlife to old age. positive relations and self-acceptance, on the other hand, did not show significant changes across the lifespan. in addition, ryff and singer (1998) have used the pwb account as the basis of a research program assessing the physiological substrates of the dimensions of wellbeing. according to ryff and singer, this approach constitutes the greatest hope for understanding the biology of what they term positive human health, as well as the processes that sustain resilience in the face of illness and disease. keyes, shmotkin, and ryff (2002) argued that while pwb and swb dimensions are related to each other, they remain empirically distinct. specifically, they found that in a sample drawn for the national midlife in the u.s. (midus) survey, the best fitting model was one that posited doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 95 swb and pwb as two correlated latent constructs. this view ties in with lay conceptions of happiness (which is part of swb) and meaning (which is part of pwb) as separate components of the good life (king & napa, 1998). keyes and colleagues (2002) also found that the probability of achieving high levels of both swb and pwb increased as age, education, extraversion, and conscientiousness increased and as neuroticism decreased. when compared with adults who had higher levels of swb than pwb, adults with higher levels of pwb were younger, had more education, and showed more openness to experience. 4.2 need satisfaction and self-determination theory while the ideals described above define wellbeing from a pwb perspective, ryan and deci’s (2000) self determination theory (sdt) defines three psychological needs that are principal predictors of wellbeing: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. the need for autonomy refers to a feeling of choice and volition in the regulation of behavior. the need for relatedness refers to the importance of feeling cared for and closely connected to others. the need for competence refers to the sense of efficacy individuals hold with regards to internal and external environments (ryan, huta, & deci, 2008). these needs have been shown to be cross-culturally valued (sheldon, elliot, kim & kasser, 2001) and relate to measures of subjective wellbeing (reis, sheldon, gable, roscoe, & ryan, 2000; sheldon, ryan, & reis, 1996). sdt has its origins in deci and ryan’s (1980) work on intrinsic motivation – the pursuit of an activity for its own sake, interest, and rewards. intrinsic motivation is contrasted with extrinsic motivation, which refers to the pursuit of activities for instrumental ends. deci and ryan (1985) described the process through which extrinsic goals come to be assimilated and accommodated, or internalized. by examining the determinants and consequences of pursuing various goals, they established directions between aspirations based on their content. kasser and ryan (1996) for instance found that life goals could be differentiated into those relating to intrinsic aspirations (including growth, affiliation, community contributions, and health) and those relating to extrinsic aspirations (wealth, fame, image, etc.). their study built on earlier research showing that individuals who had strong aspirations for financial success had lower levels of wellbeing, compared to individuals who had strong aspirations for relationship growth and community (kasser & ryan, 1993). these findings led ryan, sheldon, kasser and deci (1996) to posit that the key difference between intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations is their ability to fulfill basic psychological needs. one distinctive claim made by self-determination theorists is that these three basic psychological needs are related to intrinsic values that are an essential part of human nature. (they are careful however to point out that this short list is not exhaustive). these three needs are nonetheless essential for the development of intrinsic aspirations and psychological wellbeing (kasser & ryan, 1996). moreover, sdt hypothesizes that attaining intrinsic goals will lead to the satisfaction of these psychological needs. cultivating, pursuing, and reaching such goals therefore constitutes a privileged path to increase wellbeing. according to sdt, the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competence therefore mediates the relation between intrinsic goal attainment and wellbeing (ryan, huta, & deci, 2008). in addition to examining the content and nature of individuals’ goals, self-determination theorists have stressed the importance of understanding the reasons why individuals pursue important goals (ryan & deci, 2000). a sub-theory of sdt, organismic integration theory (oit; deci & ryan, 1985) distinguished between intrinsic motivation (the most autonomous form of regulation, as described above), amotivation (the state of lacking the intention to act) and doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 96 different forms of extrinsic motivation, which differ in the extent to which regulation is autonomous. on this account, the most heteronomous form of regulation is external regulation. an example of such regulation would be an individual acting to avoid pain or gain a reward. a second form of external motivation is introjected regulation. this involves accepting a motivation but not completely seeing it as one’s own. in other words, one may retain an externally perceived locus of causality, although the motivation may be internally driven. in this form of regulation, behavior is performed for the purpose of avoiding guilt or anxiety, or to attain feelings of pride or self-esteem. a third and significantly more self-determined form of extrinsic motivation is identified motivation, which involves the conscious and explicit valuing of a behavioral goal or regulation, leading to that goal being seen as personally important. the fourth and most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation is integrated motivation, where identified regulations are fully assimilated and brought to congruence with an individual’s other values. the relative autonomy of goals (including extrinsic goals) appears to have effects that are independent of the content of the goal on wellbeing (sheldon, ryan, deci, & kasser, 2004). for example, ryan and connell (1989) found that, in a sample of schoolchildren, identified regulation was related to higher levels of interest and enjoyment, greater levels of effort, and more positive coping styles, than less autonomous forms of regulation. subsequent studies have linked autonomous forms of motivation to a range of good outcomes including increased levels of physical activity, political activity, behavioural effectiveness, volitional persistence, and subjective well-being, and greater assimilation within a social group (chatzisarantis, biddle, & meek, 1997; koestner, losier, vallerand, & carducci, 1996; ryan, kuhl, & deci, 1997; williams, rodin, ryan, grolnick, & deci, 1998). the oit sub-theory also proposes that the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are important for the nurturing of internalization and integration. for example, with regards to the role of relatedness, ryan, stiller, and lynch (1994) found that children who were securely connected to and cared for by their teachers and parents had more fully internalized the regulation for positive school-related behaviors. thus, these needs are believed to play an important role in the successful regulation and integration of behavior, and thwarting these needs may be psychologically harmful. 4.3 well-being theory and the dashboard approach to measurement according to seligman (2011), the notion of ‘happiness’ is an unwieldy construct that hides the true multifaceted nature of human flourishing. happiness may constitute the overarching goal of positive psychology, but it does not play any part in a valid and useful theory of human wellbeing. in the first version of his theory, seligman (2002) claimed that ‘happiness’ was composed of three subjective facets: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. happiness was therefore achievable by pursuing one or more of these facets. as a result, individuals low in one aspect could still be ‘happy’ if they nurtured other components. individuals low in positive emotions could, for instance, flourish by being highly engaged in their lives, or by cultivating a rich sense of meaning. seligman (2011) recently revised his original theory by adding two facets to his original account: positive relationships and accomplishment. in addition, seligman redefined the endpoint of his theory as ‚well-being‛ rather than ‚happiness‛ in order to stress the multifaceted nature of human flourishing, and to prevent the usual confusion that is often made between ‘happiness’ and ‘cheerfulness.’ seligman’s new theory therefore posits that wellbeing consists of the nurturing of one or more of the five following elements: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (abbreviated as the doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 97 acronym perma). these five elements are the best approximation of what humans pursue for their own sake, which is why they have a place in well-being theory. although individuals may sometimes pursue these elements for other ends (e.g., they may for instance think that accomplishment will bring positive emotion), many choose to do so because these elements are intrinsically motivating by themselves. seligman’s theory also reconciles differing perspectives on the theory and measurement of wellbeing by including both hedonic and eudaimonic aspects of wellbeing, and by allowing for (and encouraging) the measurement of each element using both objective and subjective approaches. such measures are currently being developed. in addition, measurements of perma need to examine how the various facets of wellbeing need to be weighted if researchers or policy-makers want to be able to come up with a single summary measure. the issue of how to integrate various measures of wellbeing facets into an overall composite index of wellbeing is an engaging one for researchers. an examination of this question however leads us to propose that such an index may not be as useful as it seems, in spite of its intuitive appeal. why do we want one number to summarize the wellbeing of an individual, a family, or community, or a nation? perhaps it is because a single number satisfies our craving for simple findings and conclusions, in spite of the complexity of the phenomena being studied. being able to say that one country has the highest level of wellbeing in the world does make for an appealing headline, but it also provides a poor description of the nature of this country’s flourishing. just as we do not have a single indicator telling us how our car is performing (instead, we have an odometer, a speedometer, a gas gauge, etc.), we suggest that we do not want just one indicator of how well people are doing. we want to be able to look at a ‘dashboard’ of measures and indicators that can help us understand our strengths, as well as the particular areas in which we may not be fulfilling our potential for flourishing. thus, we recommend that future measures of wellbeing present their results in a way that takes advantage of the variety of constructs that are measured. this approach can further be enhanced through visualization tools, making such a measure intuitively understandable. rather than making decisions based on averages on a single measure, functioning across multiple domains can be charted. research studies can empirically examine what types of profiles lead to different outcomes. decision makers can visually examine different profiles and determine what areas are doing well and what areas should be targeted, based on cultural values, thus allowing for cultural variation informed by universal measures. such efforts are already underway, as seen in the new economics foundation national accounts of well-being (michaelson et al., 2009), which used data from the european social survey’s personal and social well-being module (huppert et al., 2006). the module was administered to around 43,000 adults (above 16 years old) in twenty-three countries of the european union. wellbeing was decomposed into nine components (positive feelings, absence of negative feelings, life satisfaction, vitality, resilience and self-esteem, positive functioning, supportive relationships, as well as trust and belonging), and the researchers then visually represented the performance of various european countries on these facets of wellbeing using multi-axis plots (spiderweb plots), thus presenting the data in all of its richness. the module included both how people feel and how they function, thus drawing upon both the hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives on wellbeing. following collection of the data, huppert and so (2009) derived an empirical definition of flourishing by looking at the percentage of respondents of the united kingdom who endorsed the three core facets of wellbeing (positive emotion, engagement, meaning) as well as any three additional facets (any combination of self-esteem, resilience, positive relationships, and optimism). there were widely varying rates of flourishing throughout doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 98 europe, with the highest rate found in denmark (33%) and northern europe in general, and the lowest rates found in russia (6%), and eastern europe in general. aside from between-nations differences, higher flourishing was associated with higher education levels, higher income, general health, and being married. flourishing was found to decline with age, although not linearly so. indeed, people over sixty-five years of age in certain countries (for instance, ireland) show the highest rates of flourishing, whereas middle-aged people showed the lowest rates. in addition, flourishing correlated with life satisfaction only modestly (r = .32), providing support to the notion that measures of life satisfaction (a unitary construct) are not adequate to assess wellbeing (a multifaceted construct). 5. conclusions and future directions the present review summarized the state of research on the measurement of wellbeing, as well as the theories that underlie differing approaches to measurement. section 2 reviewed the ways in which scientists have operationalized wellbeing, namely in terms of happiness, positive emotion, engagement, meaning/purpose, life satisfaction, relationships/social support, and accomplishment/competence. section 3 discussed theories and indices attempting to objectively assess wellbeing, highlighting the question of accuracy and both the advantages and challenges presented by the possibility of combining both subjective and objective measures of wellbeing. section 4 presented the main theories of wellbeing, which propose different ways to combine facets of wellbeing in order to best capture human flourishing. the first conclusion that can be drawn from this review is that numerous advances have already been made in the measurement of wellbeing, and scientists are well on their way to constructing useful measures that are solidly grounded in theory. among these advances is the work of huppert and colleagues (huppert et al., 2008; huppert and so, 2009; michaelson et al., 2009), who proposed a promising approach to measure various facets of wellbeing, as well as to present data in a way that allows for a nuanced understanding of the complex nature of wellbeing. according to this group of researchers, wellbeing can be defined as a ‚dynamic process that gives people a sense of how their lives are going through the interaction between their circumstances, activities, and psychological resources‛ (michaelson et al., 2009, p. 3). the work of lyubomirsky and colleagues (luybomirsky, 2008; lyubomirsky, sheldon, & schkade, 2005) suggests that intentional activities (i.e., active efforts by individuals) account for 40% of the variance in wellbeing in developed countries, approximately four times as much as external circumstances do. these findings support conceptualizing wellbeing as an active process. another promising avenue of research for scientists who are interested in the measurement of wellbeing involves the harnessing of new technologies. information found on the internet, including websites fostering communication and personal expression (e.g., facebook, twitter, etc.) constitute goldmines of information on citizens’ subjective feelings, and the years ahead will probably see a surge of scientific research on how to best exploit these data. a second conclusion that can be drawn from this review is that future research on the measurement of wellbeing should strive to capture the multifaceted and dynamic nature of wellbeing. we suggest that future assessments should combine both objective and subjective measures of wellbeing, in order to provide the full picture of human flourishing. subjective measures appear to be indispensable insofar as the presence of objective conditions of wellbeing may not always be accompanied with subjective feelings of wellbeing (as pointed out by the high rates of major depressive disorders in developed countries). yet subjective measures are insufficient; objective measures provide essential additional information by conveying the circumstances in which individuals live and develop. furthermore, the question doing the right thing: measuring wellbeing for public policy forgeard, jayawickreme, kern & seligman www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 99 of whether wellbeing should be conceptualized and measured as a subjective or objective phenomenon should be solved by thinking about the following question outlined by layard (2010): what is progress; how do we want our societies to improve; and what life do we envision for our citizens? the answer is clear: we want citizens to have both decent objective standards of living and feel subjectively satisfied with their lives. researchers should therefore concentrate their efforts on the methods needed to collect and combine both objective and subjective data, rather than striving to establish the superiority of one type of data over the other. we propose that a useful way to convey information on a wide array of subjective and objective indicators is to adopt a ‘dashboard approach’ to measurement. this approach does not attempt to reduce wellbeing to one number, but instead encourages researchers to find ways to present information on a variety of objective and subjective facets of wellbeing in an appealing and useful manner. using such an approach will help educate both the public and policy-makers about what wellbeing really is, and about the multiple ways in which it can be cultivated. it is an exciting time to be conducting research on the measurement of wellbeing. advances made in the field over the past decades have brought about both a better understanding of what wellbeing is, and how it can be nurtured. as robert kennedy pointed out, we must continue to strive to measure ‚that which makes life worthwhile‛ (kennedy, 1968, para. 22), and thus provide crucial information for policy-makers interested in fostering the welfare of citizens. following stiglitz’s advice, scientists can help governments ‚do the right thing‛ by assisting them in measuring the right thing. 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(2022). the varieties of vitality: a crosscultural lexical analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 12(4), 155-180. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v12i4.2627 tim lomas harvard university tlomas@hsph.harvard.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 155 article the varieties of vitality: a cross-cultural lexical analysis tim lomas · matthew t. lee · jim ritchie-dunham · tyler j. vanderweele abstract: vitality has been underappreciated and underexplored by academia at large. this oversight is potentially explained by the western-centric nature of most fields, with vitality having been comparatively neglected in the west relative to elsewhere. one explanation for this lacuna is that vitality is not easily pigeonholed within the ontological categories dominant in the west, such as mind and body. this paper therefore aims to learn from cultures that have cultivated a greater understanding of vitality, doing so by engaging with relevant ‘untranslatable’ words (i.e., those without exact equivalent in english), thus enriching our conceptual map of this topic. over 200 relevant terms were located and analyzed using an adapted form of grounded theory. three themes were identified, each with four subthemes: spirit (life force, channels, soul, and transcendence); energy (fortitude, channeling, willpower, and recharging); and heart (desire, passion, affection, and satisfaction). the paper thus refines our understanding of this important topic and provides a foundation for future research. keywords: vitality, physical, health, flourishing, wellbeing 1. introduction across human cultures the phenomenon of ‘vitality’—and comparable notions in other languages—has been of perennial importance. although a contested and multifaceted concept, with numerous meanings historically and currently, one way into the topic is through the distinction between ontological objectivity (e.g., physiological processes) and subjectivity (i.e., subjective qualia). beginning with the former, many cultures have developed notions of an animating ‘life force.’ western languages often express this in terms derived from the latin vita (‘life’) and its modifications, including vitalis (‘of or belonging to life’) and vitalitatem (‘vital force’ or ‘life force’) (see www.etymonline.com/). thus, vitalis entered english in the 14th century (as ‘vital’), followed by vitalitatem (‘vitality’) in the 1590s. these took on new dimensions from the 17th century onwards following the development of the natural sciences ushered in by the enlightenment. debates stirred within biology about the origins and nature of life itself, with many arguing it cannot be reductively attributed to principles in physics and chemistry, and required an immaterial ‘life force’ (greco, 2005). similarly, in his influential creative evolution, bergson (1907) proposed a theory of orthogenesis, in which evolution is driven towards greater complexity by a creative force of élan vital. however, this concept, and the broader notion of a ‘life force,’ came under sustained critique from scholars who maintained that life could indeed be reductively explained through conventional biochemical processes, while evolution was accounted for by natural selection. by the 1930s, darwin’s theory had become “victorious”—as mayr (1996, p.1) recounts it—and ideas such as élan vital faded from prominence (with speculative exceptions like sheldrake, 1981). that said, vitality has also since been understood more conventionally (i.e., in line with commonly accepted natural science principles), including about:blank the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 156 in terms of an organism’s energy (deng et al., 2015), its basic drive towards self-organization and self-maintenance (lynch & ennis, 1983), or simply the quality of “being alive” (stern, 2010, p.3). given the general reluctance within academia to broach notions such as élan vital, recent approaches to vitality have more commonly focused on its ontologically subjective manifestations. stern (2010, p.3) for instance positions vitality “as a product of the mind’s integration of many internal and external events, as a subjective experience, and as a phenomenal reality.” he also distances it from the ostensible “mysticism” of notions like élan vital, emphasizing it as grounded in “physical actions and traceable operations” and “not independent from them as the doctrine of vitalism [i.e., élan vital] would have it” (p.4). in that respect, he argues that the experience of vitality is generated by five different events/processes: movement; time; force; space; and intention/directionality. relatedly, ryan and frederick (1997) emphasize it as “a positive feeling of aliveness and energy” (p.529). they further highlight associations between vitality and various indices of mental wellbeing—such as its correlation with life satisfaction and positive affect—as well as somatic factors like physical symptoms and perceived body functioning, and adaptive personality traits and affective dispositions. specifically, their subjective vitality scale features seven items: (1) i feel alive and vital; (2) i don’t feel very energetic; (3) sometimes i am so alive i just want to burst; (4) i have energy and spirit; (5) i look forward to each new day; (6) i nearly always feel awake and alert; and (7) i feel energized. similarly, ryan and deci (2008) depict vitality—which they define as “the energy available to the self”—as the polar opposite of ego depletion, and connect it to self-determination (in that vitality is enhanced by activities that satisfy the three basic psychological needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy). however, such scholarship notwithstanding, vitality has been relatively overlooked by academia. one explanation may lie in, (a) the western-centric nature of psychology and related fields, and (b) the idea that vitality is challenging to western views of the person. let’s deal with these issues in turn. first, the western-centric nature of psychology has been increasingly acknowledged (pickren, 2009), and moreover recognized as a problem. this issue was influentially highlighted in particular by henrich et al. (2010), who pointed out that the vast majority of research—up to 90%—is conducted by and on people in contexts that are ‘weird’ (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). fortunately, the field is becoming attuned to this problem, and is making efforts to redress it. for example, hendricks et al. (2019) conducted a bibliometric analysis of rcts of positive psychology interventions: of 188 studies, although 78.2% were in western countries, they noted “a strong and steady increase in publications from non-western countries since 2012,” indicating an encouraging “trend towards globalization” (p.489). however, although such developments are promising, the research base has nevertheless been built up through decades of work on populations that are relatively weird. crucially, most of the world is not comparably weird, which raises questions of the validity and universality of such work. consider for example that english has become the default language for the field. this bias is an issue, as recognized by decades of research on the linguistic relativity hypothesis (lrh), popularly known as the sapir-whorf hypothesis, following the work of sapir (1929) and whorf (1940). the lrh generally holds that language shapes how people experience and understand the world. in that respect, if the field’s ideas are structured in english, its knowledge is therefore to an extent also provincial and culturally-specific (lomas, 2018a). these dynamics have implications for topics like vitality. numerous theorists—from taylor (1992) to damasio (2006)—have suggested that, over the past few centuries, western cultures have developed a view of the self that is founded on a framework of fairly rigid ontological distinctions. these are often attributed to descartes in particular, but their roots go far deeper and wider, with antecedents dating back to classical greece. the first is the distinction, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 157 mentioned above, between subjectivity and objectivity. the second is a related differentiation between mental and physical functioning. confusingly, both binaries are sometimes referred to as the ‘mind-body’ problem; however, they are conceptually distinct and indeed orthogonal to one another, given that both mental and physical functioning can be seen as having subjective aspects (i.e., various qualia) and objective aspects (i.e., associated physiological processes). a third fundamental distinction is between self and other (bakan, 1966). a fourth, developed influentially by durkheim (1912), is that between sacred (i.e., phenomena deemed spiritual or ‘numinous’ in some way) versus profane (i.e., everyday non-spiritual phenomena). these binaries have given rise to various taxonomies positing different dimensions of existence. the who’s (1948) definition of health for instance—“a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity”—identifies three main dimensions: physical, mental, social. in addition, some scholars argue for recognizing a spiritual dimension to health and wellbeing (larson, 1996; vanderweele, 2020). however, while such conceptualizations and taxonomies can be useful, it does mean that phenomena tend to be categorized as belonging to one category or another. so, for example, asthma is a physical issue, psychosis a mental issue, the ‘dark night of the soul’ a spiritual issue, and mob violence a social issue. moreover, distinct fields have arisen to focus on these respective phenomena—from respiratory medicine to psychiatry to theology to sociology—doing so furthermore in ways that are usually siloed and disconnected from one another. one consequence of these dynamics is that academia struggles to deal with phenomena that are not easily pigeonholed, that would appear to cut across these binaries and categories. crucially, vitality is one such phenomenon. it certainly can be viewed as having physical elements, reflected in its characterization as involving physical energy and vigor. however, it is not only physical in nature, as evinced by some of the conceptualizations aired above. so, for example, it also includes aspects one might more conventionally appraise as mental, such as positive attitudes of enthusiasm or willpower (van cappellen et al., 2017). it then further incorporates dynamics that might best be characterized as spiritual, not least in the way it can sometimes be talked about in terms of one’s ‘spirit,’ and in related notions like ‘spiritedness’ (lee et al., 2013). finally, vitality also sometimes has social dimensions or manifestations as a shared or collective emergent phenomenon arising from the dynamics of social interaction (mellor, 1998). as such, it is unclear which field vitality ‘belongs’ to and who should study it; as a result, it has somewhat fallen through the cracks of academic attention, overlooked by the respective disciplines in favour of phenomena that are more readily identified as relevant to them. however, by contrast, some other cultures have developed less rigid distinctions between the various domains of existence (arnold, 2008). consequently, some have formed much richer and more detailed understandings of vitality. consider the emerging superpowers of china and india. the former has developed complex philosophies and practices relating to qì, which can roughly be understood as a supra-personal energy that flows within and around people, and which people can learn to harness (kim, 2015). somewhat similarly, the latter has generated traditions that pay close attention to positive embodied experiences, with yoga the most well-known (raina & singh, 2018). to that end, academic fields like psychology can develop a more comprehensive understanding of vitality by engaging with non-western cultures, as our article seeks to. one particularly effective method for expanding the range of cultures that contribute to the knowledge base in a content area involves studying ‘untranslatable’ words (i.e., those without exact equivalents in a given other language). one such endeavour is lomas's (2016) evolving lexicography of untranslatable words relating to wellbeing, on which the present paper is based. such words signify phenomena that one’s own lingua-culture may have overlooked, but which http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 158 another lingua-culture has identified and conceptualized. they are therefore not only informative vis-à-vis the culture that created them, but can enrich other lexica too. indeed, ‘borrowing’ words is central to language development: of the more than 600,000 lexemes in the oed, for instance, the percentage of borrowed words (also known as loanwords) may be as high as 41% (tadmor, 2009). often these are borrowed as they fill ‘semantic gaps,’ i.e., “the lack of a convenient word to express what [one] wants to speak about” (lehrer, 1974, p.105). thus, a central premise of lomas's lexicography is that such words can enrich the nomological network in psychology (and english generally). such augmentation is desirable for many reasons, including redressing the field’s western-centricity and its consequent liability to overlook ideas, insights and perspectives from other cultures. the project’s goal therefore intersects with the present paper, namely developing an enriched conceptual understanding of vitality. to that point, vitality is one of the main categories of the lexicography, as elucidated next. 2. methods in the paper establishing the lexicography, lomas (2016) identified 216 untranslatable words relating to wellbeing through a ‘quasi-systematic’ review of academic and grey literature. once words had been identified, robust definitions were sought through on-line dictionaries, peerreviewed academic sources, and bilingual colleagues. the words and their definitions were then analysed using grounded theory (gt), which allows theory to emerge inductively from data via three main coding stages (open, axial, and selective). in a process of open coding, lomas (first author in the present paper) examined the data for emergent themes. via axial coding, which involved grouping themes into categories based on conceptual similarity, six categories were produced, paired into three meta-categories: feelings (positive and ambivalent); relationships (love and pro-sociality); and development (character and spirituality). finally, selective coding saw lomas identify a ‘core’ category of wellbeing. following this initial paper, the lexicography has since expanded to over 1,800 words, partly through crowd-sourced contributions to a website created to host the project (www.drtimlomas.com/lexicography), and partly through ongoing searches by lomas. in adding a word, the same checking procedures were followed as in the initial paper. moreover, once words and their definitions had been added, they were accessible on the website for public inspection and feedback, providing a further credibility check. indeed, some definitions were refined as a result of feedback; although most existing definitions were generally accurate, there was still often scope for making them yet more accurate (e.g., adding additional nuances, clauses, or uses which were not present in the original definition). this subsequent phase of data collection was not systematic (not even in the ‘quasi’ sense of the original paper). indeed, some 7,000 languages exist worldwide, and it is unlikely that one research project could study them all and retrieve their relevant words. however, despite the lexicography being a work-in-progress, one may still usefully analyze its existing words and emergent themes, even if such analyses are incomplete and subject to revision. indeed, with the new words, the thematic structure in the original paper has been updated. the six categories initially identified are still present, and moreover have been enriched by the additional words, with analyses published on each: positive feelings (lomas, 2017a), ambivalent feelings (lomas, 2017b), love (lomas, 2018b), prosociality (lomas, 2021a), character (lomas, 2019c), and spirituality (lomas, 2019a), plus a theoretical paper on the project itself (lomas, 2018a). however, six new categories have also been identified, as summarized in a more recent overview (lomas, 2021b). the meta-category of feelings (renamed with the more expansive label of ‘qualia’) now also includes vitality and cognition, development now also includes understanding and skills, and relationships now also includes aesthetics (lomas, 2022b) and ecohttp://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 159 connection (lomas, 2019b). vitality is of course the focus of the present paper, and comprises 223 words at present. that is, across all words in the lexicography, there are currently 223 which lomas grouped into themes that can be understood through the overarching concept of vitality (i.e., all these themes pertain to this topic in some way). thus, this paper is the result of an expanded analysis using the gt variation developed in lomas’ (2016) original paper. taking the expanded lexicography as a whole (i.e., over 1,800 words), these were collectively explored by lomas using open then axial coding, with words and their definitions grouped into emergent themes and eventually categories. one such category is vitality, the structure of which is articulated next. having identified the category and elucidated its thematic structure, the other present authors helped refine its analysis and interpretation; this did not involve altering the thematic structure per se, but rather drawing out nuances and details in the analysis and presentation. 3. results and discussion overall, three main themes emerged: spirit; energy; and heart. these were the aggregated product of grouping together 12 subthemes found in the data, as shown in figure 1 (below) and listed in the appendix (at the end of the article). (alternatively, one could view/label this arrangement as 12 themes aggregated into three meta-themes.) in the appendix we have just listed words under the most relevant theme, rather than a specific subtheme, as the latter would imply that a given word can be neatly encapsulated by a specific subtheme. indeed, many concepts are complex and hard-to-categorize, and so cannot be encompassed even within one broader theme. as such, even though we introduce the various concepts within the context of specific themes and subthemes, they should not be regarded as only belonging or pertaining to that particular subtheme or even theme. 3.1 spirit our first theme covers arguably the oldest and most enduring conception of vitality: a ‘spirit’ animating living beings. right away this theme emphasizes the point that vitality cannot be neatly pigeonholed within conventional ontological categories, since in this theme notions of physicality and spirituality are thoroughly intertwined. indeed, describing a phenomenon like vitality as ‘physical’ begs the question of what terms like physical—and related concepts like matter and substance—actually mean ontologically, which is not at all clear. some religious traditions have perspectives where matter itself is inherently spiritual (albanese, 1999). somewhat similarly, certain idealistically oriented schools of thought in contemporary scholarship—including fields such as physics—suggest that matter is somehow bound up with consciousness, as reflected in notions such as panpsychism (chalmers, 2015; lomas, 2022a). thus, this first theme brings us into complex territory historically explored by religious and philosophical traditions. many of the very earliest traditions embraced forms of animism, a term derived from the latin anima (soul, breath, or life) to reflect the belief that all natural phenomena possess a unique spirit or soul (peoples et al., 2016). gradually such belief systems gave way in many cultures to polytheism and then monotheism—though they continue in places, and this narrative of a general movement away from animism may possibly be an account that is particularly prominent in weird cultures (haber, 2009). from the viewpoint of a world that is increasingly ‘disenchanted’ (weber, 1958)—denuded of supernatural agency and significance— notions of spirit or soul are sometimes given less prominence. nevertheless, despite these changes, most cultures have retained the notion that humans at least have some kind of http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 160 animating spirit. indeed, even modern scientific notions of consciousness can be viewed in this light (gare, 2019). a wealth of terms flesh out these ideas, falling into four linked subthemes: life force; channels; soul; and transcendence. figure 1. themes and subthemes of vitality. the first subtheme, life force, could equally be labelled ‘breath,’ since these notions are intertwined in many cultures, with numerous words having this double meaning. ‘spirit’ itself derives from the latin spiritus (‘breath’), while similarly psykhe—the greek root of psychology— connotes breath, life, and spirit. indeed, even with modern western scientific understanding of the mechanics of respiration—which focuses on the mechanical flow of air, the atmosphere, and then its chemical processing into other processes—the idea of a ‘life force’ seems more than mere metaphor (since of all physiological processes, breathing is arguably most associated with life itself). this link is evoked poetically in the bible, for instance, in genesis 2:7: “the lord god formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” these ideas echo across languages in terms sometimes rendered in english as a ‘life force’ (allamani et al., 2013). two of the most influential are qì (chinese) and prāṇā (sanskrit), which are central to complex and moreover enduring systems of thought and practice. in chinese medicine and philosophy, qì is a suprapersonal animating force or energy that flows through people (kong et al., 2007). it is not limited to people though (unlike the breath), as reflected in compound terms like qì chang, which describes a field operating between or around people. moreover, techniques have been devised to harness qì. for instance, qì gōng (‘qì work’) focuses on the body’s dān tián (‘energy centres’), believed to be significant routing points in currents of qì (liu et al., 1990). similarly, martial arts like aikido—the ‘way of qì,’ with ki the japanese cognate of qì—are based http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 161 on mastery of qì (ohnishi & ohnishi, 2009). in a more therapeutic vein, methods like acupuncture and reiki aim to ‘direct’ the flow of qì in ways beneficial to health (vandervaart et al., 2009). similar (though not identical) dynamics and practices have been developed in relation to prāṇā, as elucidated next. the second subtheme then offers granular consideration of the ‘channels’ through which such forces flow. hinduism and buddhism, for instance, have extensive teachings around the idea of multiple cakrá (borrowed as ‘chakra’). literally meaning wheel or circle, these are energy points or centres in the body that channel prāṇa. their number and locations vary among traditions, but typically there are envisaged between four and seven, arranged along the spinal column from the seat to the crown of the head (johari, 2000). the notion is situated within a wider framework of belief about existence. this includes, for example, the idea that human life exists simultaneously in at least three dimensions, with people having three bodies that interact in complex ways: a physical body (sthūlaśārira) made of matter; a non-physical ‘subtle’ body (sūkṣmaśarīra) made of energy, connected via the chakras; and ultimately a ‘causal’ body (kāraṇaśārira), the highest or innermost body, envisioned as if a ‘seed’ of energy that gives rise to the other two. (the latter has potential echoes with other notions such as meister eckhart’s “power in the soul” which “is not any particular state of self-consciousness, such as analytical thought, or emotional feeling, or sense awareness. it is rather what enables us to have such forms of self-consciousness” (tastard, 1989, p.41).) indeed, some eastern traditions describe up to 10 dimensions of human existence. intriguingly, a 10-dimensional description is also found in the bible, characterized on a first reading as the hierarchies of the holy spirit (seraphim, cherubim, thrones, kyriotetes, dynamis, exusiai, archai, archangeloi, angeloi). on this view, humans can be envisioned as the 10th dimensional expression of the ‘iam love’ (leitch, 2007), with iam (“i am”) being the english rendering of the koine greek ego eimi (which is a copulative verb used by jesus on several occasions in the gospels, often interpreted as a self-declaration of his divinity) (eldesouky, 2007). in any case, however many dimensions are identified, techniques have been developed, particularly in esoteric traditions such as tantra, whereby people engage with the chakras via exercises like advanced meditation (frawley, 2009). comparable ideas are found in other eastern cultures, like the nexus of practices—from martial arts to acupuncture—centred around qì. this is thought to flow through precisely mapped jingmai (‘meridian channels’)— which are not isomorphic with the chakra system—to influence health in complex ways, with activities like acupuncture then purporting to influence the flow of qì to improve such health (kong et al., 2007). closely related to notions of life force are ideas around what in english is called soul. although soul and spirit are sometimes used interchangeably, there are subtle differences that may actually be substantial. consider genesis 2:7, where once ‘man’ received the spirit (or “breath of life”) from god, he “became a living soul.” this phrasing might be interpreted by some to suggest that spirit and soul are distinct phenomena, perhaps also allowing for the possibility for instance that the latter can exist outside the living body. such resonances are reflected in the term’s roots, deriving from the proto-germanic saiwala, meaning ‘of the sea,’ reflecting a belief in some european mythologies that an essence of personhood dwelt in the sea prior to birth and after death (ottosson, 2013). of course, we are moving into metaphysical terrain here that is beyond the boundaries of conventional science, even if such topics can yet be the focus of genuine empirical enquiry (radin, 2009). in any case, most cultures have developed beliefs around the soul which are meaningful in analyzing experiences and understanding of vitality (whatever their ultimate ontological standing), with some developing particularly rich lexica. the ancient egyptians had a complex theory of the soul, for instance, comprising three main elements: ka, ba, http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 162 and akh (finnestad, 1986). ka was akin to the spirit, the animating principle vivifying a living body (which, echoing genesis, was thought to be breathed into beings by the goddess meskhenet), while ba represented that being’s unique personality or character, and akh was the enduring soul (to be reanimated in the afterlife when ka and ba reunited). this tripartite soul was further augmented by various aspects of personhood, including ib (the ‘emotional centre’), ren (the unique name, believed to have magical properties needed for life, and which could continue after death if invoked by living people), and sheut (their ‘shadow,’ a companion of the soul). the final subtheme is self-transcendence, a complex construct given the many disparate theories of what the ‘self’ is, and hence what it means to transcend it (levenson et al., 2005). nevertheless, terms here generally allude to going beyond narrow, conventional experiences of the self, and attaining a more expansive state of selfhood, one often interpreted through a spiritual lens. a notable example is two greek words which became loanwords in english—and since underwent significant shifts in meaning—namely ecstasy and euphoria, borrowed around the 14th and 18th centuries respectively. in its original context, ecstasy connoted a person standing outside herself in some way, from being astonished or entranced to being insane or spiritually possessed (michaelsen, 1989). it entered english mainly in reference to an exalted rapture or mystical union that could arise from contemplation of the divine (mcginn, 1987). later it came to denote intense pleasure uncoupled from spiritual concerns, with pejorative connotations in some contexts as potentially too intense, artificial, and/or inappropriate (wilmot, 1985). euphoria has shifted meanings too; combining eû (‘good’) and phérein (‘to bear or carry’), it initially usually referred to physical health, though could also be deployed in a moral or developmental sense (e.g., aristotle sometimes presented it as the outcome of a virtuous life) (raftari, 2015). entering english it was mainly used in a medical context, denoting a condition of feeling well and comfortable (bühler, 2005). now however it occupies similar experiential territory to ecstasy, with both depicting forms of self-transcendence that are highly positively charged (in terms of affect) and usually valorised. 3.2 energy the second theme is energy, with this a primary constituent of vitality, as discussed above. importantly though, energy is not monolithic, despite sometimes being presented as such in the literature; the words here reveal meaningful granularity, illustrating the value of this crosscultural lexical approach. there are four interlinked subthemes: fortitude; channeling; willpower; and recharging. in many ways, these can be understood through the concept of power, with energy respectively: (a) powering up a person (like a charged battery); (b) endowing a person with power (being able to wield it); (c) being something a person can manage (or fail) to have power over; and (d) needing re-charging. the first theme, fortitude, pertains to people tapping into an energy source. here we find terms encompassing qualities like enthusiasm, spiritedness, courage, strength, and resilience. nordic languages are especially rich in these, particularly in what flint (1980) calls sufficiency verbs—having enough of a given quality—which are rarer in other languages. flint lists 45 for finnish, for instance, including most relevantly here jaksaa, meaning ‘to have enough strength/energy.’ the swedish equivalent, orka, not only reflects sufficiency of energy, but also of will (so therefore intersects with the second theme below), and moreover also embeds a sense of ability, in that skill is also involved (johansson and nordrum, 2018). there are also important nouns like sisu, which lahti (2019, p.61) analyses as a quality of “embodied fortitude … enigmatic power … latent energy … [and] a visceral and somatic dimension of human endurance” evoked in particular by extreme adversity and challenge. in that respect, over the 19th and 20th centuries http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 163 it has become central to finnish culture and identity, valorised as a vital quality that has enabled the country to survive and prosper through historical adversity. that said, lahti also presents it as a universal potential, and encourages psychology to enrich its conceptual schemas by incorporating the concept (which indeed is the aim of lomas’ lexicography). the second subtheme, channeling, is more about people ‘wielding’ energy/power. the label reflects the way many concepts depict the power as existing or originating outside the person; and in that respect, they often have a spiritual dimension. these have been interpreted in numerous ways—as has spirituality itself—so we can only briefly note their complexities here. a good example is mana, described by blust (2007) as “the single most salient and often-discussed feature of the traditional religious systems of pacific peoples” (p.404). it was brought to anthropological attention by codrington (1891), who suggested “the melanesian mind is entirely possessed by the belief in a supernatural power or influence . . . [which] though itself impersonal, is always connected with some person who directs it” (p.118). over subsequent years, its interpretation has been much debated. blust for example notes it is etymologically cognate with ‘wind’ and ‘thunder,’ so may not refer to a “detachable spiritual or supernatural power” that humans could possess, but rather to forces of nature that were interpreted as “expressions of an unseen supernatural agency.” however, over time the notion became “detached” from these natural forces and “assumed a life of its own” as a power that people could indeed wield. for example, “discourse about mana has flourished” in fields like politics, such as explaining or justifying political power (tomlinson & kāwika tengan, 2016). similar dynamics and complexities—though also specific cultural differences—are found across cultures, such as the sanskrit concept of śakti in hinduism and other traditions (larson, 1974), the chinese principle of t’ài jí (tai chi) (galante, 1981), the mongolian idea of hiimor (charlier, 2012), baraka in islam (pinto, 2008), and the creole notion of mojo (roberts, 2015). the third subtheme encompasses interrelated qualities pertaining to willpower, including: (a) agency/freedom; (b) individuality/self-assertion; and (c) persistence/durability. these qualities were not necessarily absent from terms above, but were more implicit. first, some terms emphasize agentic freedom, such as eigenwillig (german), meaning ‘own willed.’ this has parallels with the english ‘willful,’ implying not only acting upon one’s own will, but being particularly determined to do so, to the point of obstinance (cross & markus, 1990). conversely, some terms imply absence of willfulness, though their valence and merit vary. held in more disparaging terms are notions like akrásia (greek), describing weakness of will or lack of selfcontrol, which thinkers like aristotle held responsible for deficits in character and virtue (destrée, 2007). by contrast, notions like the greek ataraxia (mcrae, 2018), or the german nichtwollen and gelassenheit (dalle pezze, 2006), are valorized as forms of ‘non-willing’ or ‘self-surrender’ associated with valued outcomes like tranquility. then, overlapping with willful agency are terms emphasizing individuality, ‘going one’s own way,’ even to the point of disregarding social conventions and niceties. a well-known example is the yiddish loanword chutzpah, conveying nerve, effrontery, and guts, but also insolence, cheek, and audacity (wex, 2007). similarly, the german keck—cognate to ‘quick’ in english—implies being spirited, bold, sassy, and cocky. finally, this theme has elements of persistence and endurance. three distinct greek terms are used in the old testament, for instance, to convey nuances in the forbearance of job: hypomonē (constancy and endurance); kartería (stubbornness and toughness); and makrothumeó (gentle patience) (zodhiates, 1992). the fourth subtheme is a functional counterweight to the first three, describing processes of recharging energy. words here are not simply about lacking energy (e.g., exhaustion or apathy), which falls outside the realm of vitality. rather, they focus on it being replenished. there are two http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 164 main dynamics here, which can be viewed through a vertical metaphor: (a) on the ‘way down’ are feelings of relaxation or pleasant tiredness from energy having been expended; then (b) on the ‘way up’ are sensations of it having been replenished. with (a), terms do not merely imply tiredness—which is generally negative, or at best neutral—but include positive connotations. consider, for instance, the feeling of well-earned rest after a productive day, settling into a comfortable chair with all energy expended and no thoughts of tasks undone (a state which has been described as illustrating the ideal of mindfulness). an example is fjaka (croatian), which refers to sleepiness or drowsiness (and sometimes, more pejoratively, laziness), but also a positively valenced relaxation of body and mind (oroz, 2020). many terms then allude to this peaceful, restful state itself (i.e., without also implying tiredness), like the greek eiréné (highum & sorensen, 2016). then, on the ‘way up,’ terms speak to energy having been successfully recharged, such as swedish daggfrisk (‘dew fresh’) and danish morgenfrisk (‘morning fresh’), denoting the kind of pure, clean, rejuvenated feeling one experiences after a good night’s sleep. 3.3 heart finally, the third theme, heart, introduces an emotional tone to the picture, bringing to the fore vitality’s affective dynamics. the label is somewhat misleading though, since in english it is often juxtaposed with ‘mind,’ as if distinct from—even in opposition to—cognitive processes. however, scholars increasingly acknowledge that heart (e.g., emotion) and mind (e.g., intellect) are intimately intertwined, working together to regulate human functioning (damasio, 2006). in that respect, other languages make less rigid distinctions between heart and mind, with terms that encompass both, such as citta (sanskrit) and xīn (chinese). along such lines, words here not only pertain to emotion per se, but other embodied psychological processes and qualities that intertwine with affect, from interest to passion. there are four interrelated subthemes: desire; passion; affection; and satisfaction. all involve people seeking or being united in some way with someone or something other than themselves. however, these dynamics take different forms, both vis-à-vis the ‘other’ (e.g., people, objects, experiences, etc.), and the nature of the union (e.g., romantic/sexual, caring, aesthetic, satiation, etc.). the first subtheme, desire, reflects the state of not being united, and thus the drive or motivation to be so. many words in this arena speak to romantic/sexual desire in particular. classical greece, for instance, features the term epithymía. this differs from érōs, which in being borrowed in english tends to assume romantic/sexual connotations. however, some philosophers, like plato, evoked érōs in the context of aesthetic appreciation or spiritual connection rather than romantic or sensual love, thus theologians like tillich (1963) interpret it as a ‘higher’ form of love, imbued with truth, beauty and goodness. by contrast, epithymía. signifies more primal urgings: it derives from thymós—often rendered as ‘spiritedness’—which in turn came from the indoeuropean root dhu, a term that evokes “the swirling of air in a vortex,” and so implies the tumult of “uncontrollable desire” (ravasi, 2016, p.165). other words further trace the contours of such desire. in yagán, for instance, the lexically ‘dense’ mamihlapinatapai means “looking at each other hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do” (taylor, 2012, p.1629). not all desire is sexual of course. a wealth of terms pertain to longing, an inherently ambivalent feeling—“a blend of the primary emotions of happiness and sadness” (holm et al., 2002, p.608), and “an emotional state suffused with a melancholic sweetness” (feldman, 2001, p.51)—which applies to anything. with respect to places, say, we find terms which not only express generic yearning for one’s homeland, but are connected to specific locales, including hiraeth in welsh (williams, 2013), and saudade in portuguese (feldman, 2001). there are also words for more generalized longing, such as sehnsucht (german), which scheibe et al. (2007) http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 165 roughly translate as “life-longings” and describe as “a constructive sense of the highs and lows, the gains and losses of life” (p.779). further nuance is provided by spanish, which has two subtly different words pertaining to yearning: añorar (from the greek gnosis, i.e., ‘to know,’ and means ‘to not know’) and anhelar (from the latin for ‘not breathing’). the second subtheme, passion, takes us into the complex experiential territory where desire is potentially becoming satisfied, but is not yet fully or finally so. consider sexual passion. its ambiguous dynamics have been explored by the likes of lacan (2006), who analysed jouissance— which can refer to generic pleasure or delight, but specifically also orgasm or sexual ecstasy— from a psychodynamic perspective. in the act of coitus—a latin term which literally means meeting or uniting together, but also attraction, magnetic force, and sexual union—sexual desire is both satisfied (in that one is engaged with the focus of one’s desire), yet also unsatisfied (until the point of sexual climax). thus, passion appears inherently ambivalent, with this nuanced complexity also reflected in terms like frisson, for a sudden feeling of thrill, combining fear and excitement, featuring embodied phenomena associated with awe, such as goosebumps and shivers down the spine (huron & margulis, 2010). indeed, consider the etymology of passion itself, which derives from the latin pati, meaning to suffer or endure. in that respect, we find terms encapsulating the intertwining of joy and suffering, light and dark, that passion can involve. duende for instance broadly denotes a heightened state of passion, particularly in response to art, epitomised by flamenco (miller, 2012). it derives from a mythical, elf-like creature in spanish folklore, alluding to the capricious, other-worldly experiential state it symbolises. used in an artistic context, duende can reflect openness to the highs and lows of life. nick cave (1999), for instance, argues that all genuine love songs “must contain duende”: “the writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love.” such passion may further be communicated to others. hwyl (welsh), for example, connotes a stirring heartfelt state which may be moreover conveyed interpersonally, such as in a passionate rhetorical performance by a preacher (williams, 2013). the third subtheme, affection, is in somewhat similar experiential territory to passion, but is milder and gentler. it shares conceptual kinship in also constituting an experience of desire in the process of being satisfied. but the desire in question is more about showing care and kindness, rather than sexual or sensual yearnings. it also differs in tending to be further along the dissatisfaction-satisfaction continuum than passion. the latter is more ambivalent, as outlined above, in being more about seeking and building towards a climax (e.g., orgasm), so has an inherent lack or incompleteness. by contrast, in giving or receiving affection, the act itself is more the goal; that said, there may still be elements of non-satiation in people failing to express this as fully or as extensively as they wish. affection can be expressed in many ways: physically, verbally, even symbolically. most relevant to vitality though—given its physical emphasis—are its embodied manifestations, i.e., behaviours that allow people’s bodies to become united in various ways. in that respect, granularity is offered by words analysed here. cafuné (portuguese), for instance, describes the gesture of tenderly running fingers through a loved one’s hair. subtly different is vískat, which pertains more to playing with their hair. or consider the vivid sense of embodied affection, and nuanced distinctions, provided by uňuhňat (czech) and gemas (indonesian), which respectively describe wanting to affectionately smother/crush someone by cuddling, and pinching/squeezing them because they are so cute and/or loved. on a more spiritual note, spanish borrows apapacho from the náhuatl for caressing or hugging ‘with the soul.’ the final subtheme, satisfaction, pertains to desires being successfully met or satiated, and is the culmination or realization of the other subthemes. satisfaction is of course complex and http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 166 multifaceted in itself, and permits various kinds of granular differentiation. one could focus, for instance, on temporal moments in its psychodynamic arc, and also relatedly on degrees of arousal. in that respect, although there are exceptions, as a general pattern the initial attainment of a goal constitutes a rush or peak of positive affect. from there, the peak may subside, leaving a pleasant ‘afterglow’ residue that fades gradually. mapping out this arc, at the peak are constructs like jouissance, or onda (spanish), which literally means wave and denotes experiences of being swept up by joy or excitement. these peaks may be euphoric, but perhaps for that very reason are unsustainable for long. as such, they give way to states that are less highly charged but more durable, with a sense of ‘resting’ in a state of satisfied contentment, as captured by guò yǐn (chinese) or tripti (sanskrit). in turn, these states too may dissipate, leaving in their wake yet more subdued, relaxed, calm forms of satiation. a vivid embodied example is provided by uitbuiken (dutch), which literally means ‘outbellying,’ and describes the state of resting satiated after a full meal. or more poetically, tarruru (ngarluma) means ‘evening glow’ and depicts a tranquil peace of mind. 4. conclusion this paper has sought to enhance our granular understanding of vitality. since it is not easily pigeonholed within the main ontological categories dominant in western cultures (such as mind versus body), given the western-centric nature of fields such as psychology, vitality has not received the academic attention it merits. vitality has also not generally been understood as having multiple dimensions – including spirit, energy, and heart in our analysis here – with most scholarship tending to focus on or emphasize its physical aspects, such as energy. a broader conceptualization of this construct would thus permit more nuanced and theoretically rich investigations in this area. we therefore explored the concept by learning from cultures that have cultivated more robust understandings of it, specifically by engaging with their untranslatable words, allowing us to develop a more nuanced and comprehensive reading of this concept, including an incorporation of perceived supra-personal experiences. as part of an ongoing lexicographic project to identify untranslatable words relating to wellbeing, 223 relevant terms were located and grouped into three main themes, each with four subthemes: spirit (life force, channels, soul, and transcendence); energy (fortitude, channeling, willpower, and recharging); and heart (desire, passion, affection, and satisfaction). this emergent framework will hopefully be a useful contribution to better understanding vitality. vitality, as we understand it, is partly reflected in existing social science definitions (“a positive feeling of aliveness and energy”). but we offer a broader definition of vitality, integrating the three themes identified through our crosscultural research, and incorporating the way they promote the specific subthemes (which have sometimes been reconfigured/renamed as more appropriate nouns). thus, vitality is: perceptions and experiences of spirit, energy, and/or heart that infuse and uplift a person’s being in ways that promote desired qualities or states such as spiritedness, embodied connectedness, soulfulness, transcendence, fortitude, powerfulness, willpower, recuperation, desire, passion, affection, and satisfaction. note though that such perceptions need not always be positively valenced in terms of conventional emotions; as we have discussed, some experiences of desire involve sadness, others an integration of lifelongings that include gains and losses. that said, our exploratory work has not produced a fully-fledged theory, which is beyond the remit of the analysis here. for a start, the lexical search undertaken remains partial and a work-in progress, given the lexicography currently only features around 150 languages, out of some 7,000 worldwide. there are thus many relevant terms likely missing from the analysis and the lexicography as it stands. as such, the analysis is just an imperfect snapshot of the current http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 167 lexicography with respect to vitality, one that is partial and subject to revision. further research is needed, both to develop the lexicography generally, and to refine this analysis of vitality specifically. the presentation has other limitations too besides some cultures and languages not yet being included in the analysis. the elucidation of terms for instance has been restricted by attempting an overarching comparative analysis within the constraints of a brief article. translation is always a problematic exercise, so one cannot arrive at definitions that would satisfy all speakers of the donor language, given that there are generally numerous ways of interpreting a given word. however, even with its limitations, the analysis is still useful in providing a vocabulary to better understand and articulate this important dimension of human experience. conflict of interest statement the authors report no conflicts of interest. authors tim lomas harvard university tlomas@hsph.harvard.edu matthew t. lee baylor university, harvard university james l. ritchie-dunham, institute for strategic clarity tyler j. vanderweele harvard university publishing timeline received 7 june 2022 revised version received 5 october 2022 accepted 14 october 2022 published 1 november 2022 references allamani, a., einstein, s.-s., & godlaski, t. m. 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(1992). the complete word study dictionary of the new testament. word bible. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 171 appendices appendix a. words relating to vitality in lexicography. spirit (n = 66) ah-un (阿吽). japanese / n. / ɑː. ən / ah-un. a transliteration of auṃ (ॐ), the sacred sanskrit syllable; the beginning and ending of something; unspoken communication between close friends. aloha. hawaiian / int. / æˈləʊ.hæ / ah-loh-ha. lit. the ‘breath of presence’; hello and goodbye, with love and compassion; cognate with the māori term aroha. anātman/ anattā (अनात्मन्). sanskrit/pāli / n. / ˈɑnˈɑːtmən / an-at-mn. insubstantiality, lack of permanent self/soul. anima. latin / n. / ˈa.ni.ma / ah-nih-mah. soul; spirit; breath; mind. āsana (आसन). sanskrit/pāli / n. / ʌːsə.nə / uh-suh-nuh. lit. seat / sitting position; postures adopted/undertaken in yoga. ataraxia (ἀταραξία). greek / n. / ætəˈɹæk.siə / atta-rak-sia. robust and lucid tranquillity; peace of mind; calmness. ātman/attā (आत्मन्). sanskrit/pāli / n. / ˈɑːtmcn / at-mn. soul, breath, spirit. ayawaska. quechua / n. / ˌaɪ(j)əˈwæ.skə / ay-uh-wask-uh. ‘soul vine’; an entheogenic brew made out of banisteriopsis caapi vine and other ingredients ; used as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of the amazon basin (known by a number of different names, and hispanicized as ayahuasca). baraka (بركة). arabic / n. / ˈbʌ.rʌ.kʌ / buh-ruh-kuh. spiritual energy; ‘sanctifying power’. cakrá/cakka (चक्र). sanskrit/pāli / n. / ʧʌk.ɽʌ / chuk-ruh / aka chakra (english). lit. wheel, circle, disc; energy points in the body, identified and harnessed by various spiritual traditions. daímōn (δαίμονας). greek / n. / ˈðɛ.mɔ.nas / dthe-moh-nas. a divine power that drives/guides human actions; a manifestation or channelling of divine power. daggfrisk. swedish / n., adj. / dæːg.frɪsk / daag-frisk. lit. ‘dew fresh’; the kind of pure, clean feeling one might have from waking refreshed in the early morning at sunrise. damīr (َضمير). arabic / n. / dæ.mɪə / dah-meer. conscience; inner self; heart; soul. dān tián (丹田). chinese / n. / dæn.tiːɛn / dan tee-en. lit. energy centre; places in the body that are believed to be significant in the flow of qi; focal points for meditative exercises. duša (душа). russian / n. / dʊˈʂa / doo-shah. soul, spirit, heart. ego eimi (ἐγώ εἰμι). greek / v./ eɡɔ̌ː eːmí: / eh-go-ee-mih. i am; i exist; used with particular significance in the gospels, often interpreted as a self-declaration by jesus of his divinity élan. french / n. / eɪˈlɒ̃ / ay-loh. lit. spring, bound, dart; spirit, enthusiasm; style, grace; flash, panache. fā qì (发氣). chinese / v. / fæ tɕʰiː / fah chee. projecting qi to the exterior/outside of the body; can also mean expressing anger. fēng shuǐ (風水). chinese / n. / fɤ́ŋ ʂwèi / fung shoo-ay. lit. ‘wind-water’; a philosophy of space and spatial arrangements (e.g., in relation to the flow of qì). genki (元気). japanese / adj., n. / ˈgɛŋ.kiː / geng-kee. lit. the origin (gen) of ki (energy or ‘life force’); being healthy, energetic, and full of life. hiimor (хийморь). mongolian / n. / hiːmɔː / hee-moor. wind-horse (or air-horse); a magical creature that carries prayers from earth to heaven (with the speed of the wind and the strength of the horse); a person’s spiritual or psychological energy or power. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 172 ib. egyptian / n. / ɪb / ib. heart (physical and metaphysical); the seat of emotion, thought, will and intention; one of five parts of the soul in egyptian thought. iwi. raramuri ra'icha / n. / ɪ.wiː / ih-we. the soul or essence of all life. iwigara. raramuri ra'icha / n. / ɪ.wiːgɑːrə / ih-we-har-ruh. ‘shared breath’; total interconnectedness and integration of all life, physical and spiritual. ka (kꜣ). egyptian / n. / kæ / kah. vital essence; that which separates a living being from a dead one; one of five parts of the soul in egyptian thought. kapālabhāti (कपालभाति). sanskrit / n. / kæ.pa:læ.ba:t: / ka-par-la-bar-tee. ‘skull illuminating’; a yogic purification practice (e.g., for clearing the sinuses), involving short and strong forceful exhalations. kāraṇaśārira (कारणशाररर). sanskrit / n. / ka:ran.ja.sa.ri:rɘ / kar-an-ya-sah-ree-ru. the ‘causal’ body, representing one of the three types of the body (śārira) in hinduism, alongside sthūlaśārira (the physical body) and sūkṣmaśarīra (the subtle body). the causal body can be interpreted as the highest or innermost body that veils the atman (‘true self’) and contains the root or seed potential for sensory experience. kuṇḍalinī (कुण्डलिनी). sanskrit / n. / kən.dʌ.liːniː / kun-duh-lee-nee. lit. the ‘coiled one’; a source of form of subtle or primal energy, thought to be located at the base of the spine, that can be ‘awakened’ through meditative practices. manna (ָמן). hebrew / n. / mæ.næ / mah-nah. edible food that sustained israelites in the wilderness; spiritual food. megalopsychia (μεγαλοψυχία). greek / n. / ˌmɛɡ.ə.ləʊˈsʌɪ.kɪə / meh-gah-lo-sye-kia. greatness of soul; magnanimity. misogi (禊). japanese / n. / mɪ.səʊ.jiː / mih-soh-yee. a practice of ritual purification found in shinto, involving washing the whole body, often in cold natural water. nāḍī (नाडी). sanskrit / n. / næ.diː / na-dee. ‘tube’, ‘pipe’; the channels through which energy currents flow (in traditional indian medicine and spiritual teachings). numen. latin / n. / ˈnuːmen / noo-men. divine power, force, presence, will. pneúma (πνεῦμα). greek / n. / pné ͜u.ma / pnyoo-mah. wind; breath; spirit. pneumatikós (πνευματικῶς). greek / adj. / pnɛβ.mɑ.tiˈkos / pnev-mah-tee-kose. spiritual; pertaining to the spirit; being with/of the spirit of god. prāṇa (प्राण). sanskrit/pāli / n. / prɑːnɑː / prah-nah. air, breath; spirit; ‘life force/energy’. prāṇayāma (प्राणायाम). sanskrit / n. / prɑːnɑːjːnʌ / prah-nah-yah-muh. control, regulation of the breath (or energy or ‘life force’). psykhe (ψυχή). greek / n. / psiːkʰɛ̌ / psee-keh. mind; breath; life; spirit; soul. qarīn (قرين). arabic / n. / kɑːrɪn / kar-in. ‘constant companion’; a spiritual double of human, either part of the human himself or a complementary creature in a parallel dimension. qì (氣). chinese / n. / tɕʰiː / chee. lit. air, breath; ‘life force/energy’. qì chang (氣場). chinese / n. / tɕʰiː ʧæŋ / chee chang. energy field (e.g., between or surrounding multiple people). qì gōng (氣功). chinese / n. / tɕʰiː gɒŋ / chee-gong. lit. ‘qì/breath work’; a practice of developing mastery over body and mind; cultivating qi as a way to improve health, and as a way of self-defence. reiki (霊気). japanese / n. / ɺ̠e ̞ːkiː / ray-kee. lit. soul, spirit, miraculous, divine (rei) life-force (ki, aka qì); a system of alternative medicine usually credited to mikao usui (circa 1922) involving the ‘laying’ of hands on the body (to direct the flow of ki). ren (rn). egyptian / n. / rən / rn. name (given at birth); person believed to live as long as that name was spoken; one of five parts of the soul in egyptian thought. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 173 rlung (རླུང). tibetan / n. / rə.lʌŋ / r-lung. wind, breath; has a variety of meanings in the vajrayana traditions of tibetan buddhism, including as a subtle flow of energy (out of the five elements, most closely connected with air). śakti/satti (शक्ति). sanskrit/pāli / n. / ʃək.tiː / shuk-tee / aka shakti, sakthi. lit. power or empowerment (to be able to, have the power to); primordial cosmic energy, identified and harnessed by various spiritual traditions. sattva (सत्त्व). sanskrit / n. / ˈsʌt.vʌ / sut-vuh. goodness, purity, balance, wholeness; one of three qualities of nature in vedanta; can also refer (e.g., in buddhism) to a sentient being. sawol. english (old) / n. / ˈsɑːwol / sah-wol. soul; immortal principle; possibly from the proto-germanic saiwala (potentially meaning ‘of the sea’). seelisch. german / adj. / ziːlʊʃ / zee-loosh. pertaining to the soul; spiritual; mental, psychological. shaucha (शौच. sanskrit / n. / sʰaʊ.ʧʌ / shao-chuh. purity, cleanliness and clearness; purity of mind, speech and body; one of the five niyamas in hinduism. sheut (šwt). egyptian / n. / ʃwɛt / shwet. shadow, silhouette; the ever-present shadow of death; one of five parts of the soul in egyptian thought. shuâng (爽). chinese / adj. / ʃuːʌŋ / shoo-ung. to feel well; bright; pleasurable; crisp; frank; invigorating; straight-forward. skandha(s)/ khanda(s) (स्कन्ध). sanskrit/pāli / n. / 'skʌn.dʌs / skun-duss. aggregate(s) / heap(s) / grouping(s); used to describe the groupings of five ‘elements’ that constitute the human being. smeddum. scottish / n. / smɛ.dʌm / smeh-dum. a fine powder; the strength or essence of a substance; spirit; energy. sthūlaśārira (स्थूल शरीर). sanskrit / n. / sθu:la.sa.ri:rɘ / sthoo-la-sah-ree-ru. the ‘physical’ body, representing one of the three types of the body (śārira) in hinduism, alongside sūkṣmaśarīra (the subtle body) and kāraṇaśārira (the causal body). sūkṣmaśarīra (सूक्ष्मशरीर). sanskrit / n. / suːkʃ,ma:sa.ri:rɘ / sook-shma-sah-ree-ru. the ‘subtle’ body, representing one of the three types of the body (śārira) in hinduism, alongside sthūlaśārira (the physical body) and kāraṇaśārira (the causal body). the subtle body can be interpreted as pertaining to the mind and mental existence. ta'ala (تعالى). arabic / v. / tɘˈɑːlə / tuh-ahlla. to transcend; to have divine superiority; to rise above; to tower above; to disdain; to be far above; also, to ask someone to come over. tài jí [tai chi] (太極). chinese / n. / taɪ tɕʰiː / ty-chee. lit. supreme/ultimate force/energy; a form of martial art involving slow, deliberative movements. tao (道). chinese / n. / tʰaʊ / t/d-ao. all-powerful and pervasive power, path or way; the unfolding dynamic process of reality itself. thumos/thymos (θυμός). greek / n. / θyˈmos / thoo-moss. spiritedness; carries connotations of flesh and blood; also refers to the human desire for recognition. trul khor (རྩ་རླུང་འཁྲུལ་འཁོར་). tibetan / n. / truːl kɔː / trool kor. ‘magic instrument’, ‘magic circle’; a vajrayana discipline which includes breath control and body postures. üfürük. turkish / n. / ə.fɜːrɜːk / uh-fur-ruk. exhaled breath. vozdukh (воздух). russian / n. / ˈvɔz.dux / voorz-dukh. lit. ‘the stack of spirits’; air, breath; to take the spirit inside (when breathing in), to take the spirit outside (when breathing out). xíng qì (行氣). chinese / v. / ɕɪŋ tɕʰiː / sing chee. volitionally (e.g., mentally) circulating or directing qi. yoga (योग). sanskrit / v., n. / jəʊ.gʌ / yoh-guh. lit. to yoke / add / join / unite / attach (from root yuj); a psychophysical system of spiritual training and development. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 174 energy (n = 88) adumu. maasai / n. / a.duːmuː / ah-doo-moo. ‘jumping dance’; a maasai dance in which people form a circle, and two at a time enter the centre and jump competitively (with respect to height), without letting heels touch the ground. arabesque. french / n. / a.ʁa.bɛsk / ah-rah-besk. ‘in arabic fashion’; in dance (particularly ballet), a body position in which a dancer stands on one leg, with the other extended, straight, behind the body. að nenna. icelandic / v. / aːð ˈnɛnːa / arth nen-nah. the capacity or state of being bothered to do something; the ability or willingness to persevere through tasks (especially that are hard or boring). aylyak (айляк). bulgarian / n. / aɪ.ljæk / ey-lyak. a carefree, relaxed lifestyle; the art of not rushing or worrying; living without hurry and concern. azart (азарт). russian / n. / æˈzɑːrt / a-zarrt. heat, excitement, ardour, fervour; to do something with gusto; may also be associated with recklessness and risk-taking. balikwas. tagalog / n. / bæ.lɪk.wæs / bah-lik-wass. suddenly rising or jumping to one’s feet (e.g., due to surprise or fright); to turn suddenly to the other side. bodryi (бодрый). russian / adj. / ˈbo.drɨj / boor-dree. cheerful; brisk; hale and hearty; awake; in good spirits, energetic. brabbag. gaelic (manx) / n. / bræ.væg / brah-vag. the act (and enjoyment) of warming the back of one’s legs in front of the fire. buchaechum (부채춤). korean / n. / bʊ.ʧeɪ.ʧʌm / buh-chay-chum. a traditional form of korean dance involving the use of fans. budō (武道). japanese / n. / buːdəʊ / boo-doh. lit. the art or way of war; martial arts. chutzpah. yiddish / n. / ˈxʊts.pə / khutz-puh. from the hebrew ḥutspâ (ֻחְצפָּה), meaning insolence, cheek, audacity. nerve, effrontery, guts; sometimes used pejoratively. curglaff. scottish / n. / kɜːglæf / kur-glaff. the bracing, shocking and/or invigorating feeling of suddenly entering (e.g., diving into) cold water. dogeza (土下座). japanese / n. / dəʊ.giːzə / doh-gee-zuh. a kneeling bow; the deepest, most respectful and formal form of bowing in japanese culture (among a range of forms). dōjō (道場). japanese / n. / dəʊ.ʤəʊ / doh.joh. lit. place of the way/path; a room/hall in which martial arts are practised. dòu zhì (斗志). chinese / n. / dəʊ t͡ʂɘɻ / doh jrr. fighting spirit; the will and motivation to fight; a battle of wits. eigenwijs. dutch / adj. adv. / ɛi̯ɣə(n)ˈʋɛi̯s / ey-gn-viyz. ‘own-wise’; self-willed; stubborn, headstrong; refusing to conform to expectation or protocol; can imply a foolish but possibly admirable risk. eigenwillig. german / adj. / ˈaiɡn.vɪlɪç / i-gn-vill-isch. to have a will of one’s own; behaving and doing things in a manner that reflects one’s own personality and idiosyncrasies. eiréné (εἰρήνη). greek / n. / ɪˈreɪ.neɪ / ih-ray-nay. peace; wholeness, oneness; quiet, rest. en pointe. french / n. / ɑ̃ pwɛ ̃t / ah pwah. supporting one's body weight on the tips of the toes. enérgeia (ἐνέργεια). greek / n. / eˈner.ɣi.a / eh-ner-ghee-yah. activity, operation; workmanship; cosmic force, action; actuality (in aristotelian philosophy). eshaku (会釈). japanese / n. / ɛʃ.æk.uː / esh-ah-koo. one form of bowing in japanese culture (among a range of forms), involving bending of the upper body at around 15 degrees; fairly formal, used with people ones knows but are not familiar with. fjaka. croatian / n. / fjâ.ka / fyah-kah. relaxation of body and mind; sleepiness, drowsiness; the ‘sweetness of doing nothing’. furitama (降り魂). japanese / n. / fu.rɪ.tɑːmɑː / foo-ree-tah-mah. a shinto practice of ‘spirit shaking’ in which people place their hands in front of their stomach and shake them vigorously up and down. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 175 gelassenheit. german / n. / ɡəˈlasn̩haɪ̯t / geh-lah-sen-hiyt. self-surrender/abandonment; yielding to god’s will; serenity, calmness. gōng hé (工合). chinese / v. / gɒŋ.χɜː / gong-hur. lit. work together; the basis for the anglicised term gung-ho. haka. māori / n. / ˈhɑːkə / ha-kuh. a ceremonial dance or challenge in māori culture. hanyauku. rukwangali / v. / hæ.æn.jɒ.kə / ha-ahn-yoh-kuu. to walk on toes across hot sand. hatha (हठ). sanskrit / n., adj. / hʌ.θə / huh-thuh. lit. force, effort, exertion; a branch of yoga focusing on the practice of asanas (postures) and vinyasa (dynamic transitions). hypomonē (ὑπομονή). greek / n. / i.po.moˈni / ee-poe-moe-nee. constancy, endurance, ‘standing firm’. hyppytyynytyydytys. finnish / n. / huːp.ə.tɜːniːtɜːdə.tɪs / hoop-uh-tuer-nee-tuerd-uh-tiss. bouncy cushion satisfaction; the relaxing feeling of sitting down in a comfortable chair. indlamu. zulu / n. / ind ͡ɮaːmu / in-jla-mu. a traditional dance, characterised by the dancer lifting one foot over his/her head and bringing it down sharply, landing squarely on the downbeat. jaksaa. finnish / v. / ˈjɑkˌsɑː / yak-sah. to have energy, enthusiasm, and spirit (e.g., for a task). jūdō (柔道). japanese / n. / ʤuːdəʊ / joo-doh. lit. gentle way; a form of martial art, centred around grappling with one’s opponent with the aim of pinning them to the floor. kæk. danish / adj. / kɛk / kek. spirited, bold, cheeky, cocky. kartería (καρτερία). greek / n. / kɑ.tɛˈrɪːə / ka-teh-ree-uh. stubbornness; toughness. kia kaha. māori / inj. / kiːə ˈkɑːhɑ / kee-uh kar-ha. be strong; stay strong; forever strong. keirei (敬礼). japanese / n. / keɪ.reɪ / kay-ray. a very formal form of bowing in japanese culture (among a range of forms), involving bending of the upper body at around 30 degrees. kizomba. kimbundu / n. / kɪ.zɒm.bə / kih-zom-buh. ‘party’; a dance and musical style originating in angola, characterised by a slow, romantic, sensuous rhythms. kwassa kwassa. english (new) / n. / kwæs.sæ kwæs.sæ / kwass-ah kwass-ah. a dance style from the drc (where the hips move back and forth while the hands move to follow the hips); possibly derived from the french quoi ça? (“what is it?”). kur. german / n. / kuːɐ̯ / coo-ur. ‘cure’; a prolonged period of recuperation at a health resort or spa. kwadi. hunsrik / n. / kwa.di / kwah-dee. the laziness one feels after warming oneself in the sun on cold days. makrothumeó (μακροθυμέω). greek / n. / mæk.rəʊ.θuːˈmeɪ.əʊ / mak-roth-oo-mey-oh. patience, forebearance; being long-suffering; slow to anger and avenge. mana. polynesian languages / n. / ˈmɑnə / ma-nuh. spiritual energy / power, a sacred, impersonal force. mbuki-mvuki. swahili / v. / mbuːkiː mvuːkiː / mm-boo-kee mm-voo-kee. lit. to take of in flight (mbuki), to dance wildly (mvuki); to shed clothes in order to dance; possible origins of the phrase ‘boogie woogie’. meriggiare. italian / v. / mɛ.rɪˈdʒeɑː.rɪ / me-rri-jah-rri. to rest at noon (in the shade). mohobelo. sotho / n. / məʊ.həʊ.bɛ.ləʊ / mo-ho-bel-o. ‘striding dance’; a dance associated with the sotho cultures, featuring striding, leaping, and sliding along the ground. mojo. creole (gullah) / n. / məʊ.ʤəʊ / mow-joe. lit. witchcraft; a magic charm or spell; sex drive/appeal; personal magnetism or charm. mysa. swedish / v. / ˈmyːˌsa / mee-sah. to be engaged in a pleasant or comfortable activity; to be content or comfortable; to get cosy; to snuggle up. nichtwollen. german / n. / nɪçtˈvɔlə / neekht-voh-ley. non-willing, non-wishing, non-wanting. niksen. dutch / v. / ˈnɪk.sən / nik-sn. ‘nothinging’ (verbification of ‘nothing’); to do nothing; being or doing without purpose; idling, loafing. orka. swedish / v. / ˈɔrˌka / orr-kah. to have the energy for something; being resilient, spirited, and/or enthused. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 176 overskud. danish / n. / ˈɒwɐsgud / oh-wuhs-good. extra/excess energy; do have sufficient resources to do something; profit (in an economic context). pantofolaio. italian / n. / pä n.tō.fō’la:jō / pan-toh-foh-lah-yo. ‘slippers’; someone who prefers a quiet or lazy life, avoiding activity that disrupts their peace and relaxation. pigg. swedish / adj. / pɪg / pig. alert, awake; refreshed, rested; spirited, energised.pimashu. innu / v. / pə.mɑːhuː / p-mah-oo. to move with the wind. pirouette. french / n. / pi.ʁ.wɛt / pih-ru-wet. ‘whirl’; a non-traveling turn on one leg, of one or more rotations. plié. french / n. / pli.je / plee-ay. ‘bent’; a smooth and continuous bending of the knees outward with the upper body held upright. querencia. spanish / n. / kɛˈɹɛnsɪə / keh-ren-sia. a place where one feels secure, from which one draws strength. rasmia. spanish / n. / ræz.miːə / razz-mee-uh. eagerness, strength, activeness, courage, tenacity and gracefulness. rè nào (熱鬧). chinese / adj. / ɻɘɻ.naʊ / rerr-now. lively; boisterous; bustling with noise and excitement. revoltade. french / n. / ʁə.vɔl.tad / ru-vol-taad. a bravura jump in which one lands on the leg from which one pushes off after that leg travels around the other leg lifted to 90 degrees. riposo. italian / n. / riˈpɔso/ rre-poor-soh. rest, repose; a nap; cf. siesta. sabsung. thai / n. / sɑːb.suːŋ / saab-soong. a feeling of revitalisation through something that livens up or gives meaning to one’s life; something that brightens one’s day. saikeirei (最敬礼). japanese / n. / saɪ.keɪ.reɪ / sy.kay-ray. a particularly deep, respectful, formal form of bowing in japanese culture (among a range of forms), involving bending of the upper body at around 45 degrees. se déhancher. french / v. / sə deɑ̃ʃe / suh de-hon-shay. to sway or wiggle one's hips (e.g., while dancing). semba. kimbundu / n. / sɛm.bə / sem-buh. a dance and musical style originating in angola; the name derives from the notion of touching bellies. shabbat (בָּת hebrew / n. / ʃəˈbɑːt / shuh-bart / aka šabbāṯ, sabbath. from the verb shavat, meaning to rest or .(שַׁ cease; a day each week kept aside for rest, abstinence, and/or worship in various religious traditions. shaka. hawaiian / n. / ʃæ.kæ / sha-ka. a hawaiian hand gesture, also more broadly associated with surfing; ‘hang loose,’ ‘chill out’; ‘be well’, ‘take care’; ‘well done.’ shemomechama (შემომეჭამა). georgian / v. / ʃɛ.mɒ.mɛʤɑːmə / sheh-moh-meh-djah-muh. to eat past the point of satiety (e.g., due to enjoyment of the food). shì (勢). chinese / n. / ʃiː / shee. power, force; tendency; situation; developing a favourable situation with respect to one’s agenda; taking and maintaining the initiative; creating an overwhelming force. siesta. spanish / n. / sɪˈɛstə / see-est-a. a short nap, usually taken in the early afternoon. siga siga (σιγά σιγά). greek / adv. / siˈɣa siˈɣa / see-yah see-yah. slowly, slowly (i.e., being unhurried). sissonne. french / n. / si.sɔn / sih-son. a jump done from two feet to one foot (named after the originator of the step). sisu. finnish / n. / ˈsi.su / si-su. extraordinary determination/courage, especially in the face of adversity. startijenn. breton / n. / stɑːt.ɪˈʒɛn / start-ih-zjen. a kickstart/boost of energy; also denotes perseverance. sterkte. dutch, afrikaans / n., injuction / stɛrk.tə / steyrk-tuh. strength (i.e., ‘have strength); good luck; an expression wishing someone well in an endeavour. taki onqoy. quechua / n. / tæ.ki ɒn.kɔɪ / tah-kee on-koy. dancing sickness; delirium caused by dancing or singing. tapas (िपस्). sanskrit / n. / ˈtʌ.pʌs / tuh-puhs. lit. heat, blaze, pain, suffering (from root ‘tap’); intensive meditation, perseverance, austerity/asceticism; one of five niyamas in hinduism. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 177 uitbuiken. dutch / v. / ˈəʊt.bɜː.ɣən / oat-ber-ghen. lit. 'outbellying'; to relax satiated between courses or after a meal. uitwaaien. dutch / v. / ˈəʊt.vaɪ.ɛn / oat-vye-en. lit out-windy; to walk in the wind; to go out into nature (perhaps to clear one's head). uitzieken. dutch / v. / əʊt.ziːɣən / oat-zee-ghen. ‘sick it out’; to wait out an illness and fully recover. umay. tagalog / n. / ə.meɪ / uh-may. to become weary or tired with something through overuse or satiety. umteyo. xhosa / ʌm.tiːjəʊ / um-tee-yo. ‘shaking dance; a dance associated with xhose culture, involving the rapid undulation or shaking of the thorax so that the spine appears to be rippling. upekṣā/upekkhā (उपेक्षा). sanskrit/pāli / n. / u.pɛkʰˈsɑː / oo-pek-sah. equanimity, detachment; calmness, balance. utsura-ustura (うつらうつら). japanese (gitaigo) / v. / uːt.sjʊə.ɾ̠ə uːt.sjʊə.ɾ̠ə / oot-soor-ah oot-soor-ah. to drift between sleep and wakefulness. veget. czech / n. / ˈvɛ.gɛt / veh-get. a state of idleness; plain living; undisturbed rest; free time. vīrya/viriya (वीयय). sanskrit/pāli / n. / wiːr.jʌ / vweer-yuh. energy, diligence, enthusiasm, effort. vivax. latin / adj. / ˈviːvaːks / vee-vax. tenacious; durable; long-lived; vivacious; lively. wài jiā (外家). chinese / n. / waɪ.ʤi.a / wy-jee-ah. ‘external family’; externally-directed forms of martial arts, characterized by fast and explosive movements and a focus on physical strength and agility. woggabaliri. ngunnawal / n. / wɒ.gə.bæ.lɪə.riː / woh-gah-bah-leer-ee. a traditional indigenous australian co-operative kicking volley game (similar to ‘keepie uppie’). womba. bakweri / n. / wɒm.bə / wom-buh. the smile of a sleeping child. heart (n = 69) abhayamudrâ (अभय मुद्रा). sanskrit / n. / ʌb.haɪ.ə.mʊ.dɹɑː / uhb-hy-uh-moo-drah. the gesture (e.g., in hindu and buddhist iconography) of fearlessness, protection, and/or peace; involves the palms facing outwards, and the fingers extending upwards. alharaca. spanish / n. / alaˈɾa.kə / al-ah-rahk-ah. an extreme or excessive behavioural demonstration of an emotion; making a fuss; becoming agitated; clamour, vociferation. aradupopini. tulu (india) / v. / æ.ræ.duːpɒ.piːniː / ah-rah-du-pop-ee-nee. to walk arm-in-arm or handin-hand. bazodee. creole (trinidad and tobago) / n. / bæ.zəʊ.diː / bah-zoe-dee. euphoric confusion; dizzy/dazed happiness. benedicaria. italian / n. / bɛ.nɪ.dɪk.tə.kɑːrɪə / beh-ne-dik-ta-kar-ee-uh. ‘way of blessing’; a term for various family-based folk healing and spiritual traditions found throughout italy (referred to by some as ‘folk magic’). berlenggang. indonesian / v. / bɜːlɛŋ.gæŋ / ber-leng-gang. to walk gracefully by swinging your hands or hips. brahma-charya (ब्रह्मचयय). sanskrit/pāli / v. + n. / ˈbrɑːˌmə ʧɑː.jʌ / brah-muh char-yuh. lit. ‘going after brahman’ or beahviours that lead to brahman; the ‘right’ use of energy; chastity when unmarried, and fidelity when married; one of the five yama in hinduism. brio. italian / n. / ˈbriːəʊ / bree-oh. mettle, fire; life; vivacity, energy, vitality; confidence.blüttle. german (swiss) / v. / bluːtl / blootl. to walk around naked; to enjoy being naked. cafuné. portuguese / n. / ˌka.fu.ˈnɛ / cah-foo-neh. the act/gesture of tenderly running one’s fingers through a loved one’s hair. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 178 cathexis (κάθεξις). greek / v., n. / kəˈθɛk.sɪs / kuh-thek-sis. holding, retention; chosen by by james strachey to render the german term besetzung (interest, occupation) in his translation of freud, referring to the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea. coitus. latin / n. / ˈkɔɪ.təs / koy-tss. lit. coming, meeting, uniting together; attraction; magnetic force; sexual union. colo. portuguese / n. / ˈkɔ.lu / koh-loo. area of body formed by chest and arms (used to refer to embracing or cradling). coup de cœur. french / n. / ku də ˈ kœʁ / coo de coo-er. lit. a bolt of the heart; a crush, infatuation; to fall in love; to fall for something; to make a deep connection (not necessarily romantic). coup de foudre. french / n. / ku də ˈfudrə / coo-de-foo-druh. lit, a ‘lightning bolt,’ sudden and powerful love at first sight. desbundar. portuguese / v. / dʒizbũˈdar / dez-bun-dar. exceeding one’s limits; shedding one’s inhibitions (e.g., in having fun). dor. romanian / n. / dɔː / dor. ‘i want you’; intense, bittersweet longing for a person, place or time. duende. spanish / n. / ˈdwe ̞n.d ̪e ̞ / de-wen-deh. a heightened state of emotion, spirit and passion (often associated with art/dance). ekstasis (ἔκστασις). greek / n. / ékˈstaːsis / ek-stah-sis. the state of being or standing outside oneself; trance, displacement; ecstasy, rapture. empalagar. spanish / v. / ɛm.pæ.læ.gɑː / em-pah-lah-gar. to be too sweet or rich (in taste). epithymía (ἐπιθυμίᾳ). greek / n. / e.pi.θyˈmi.a / epi-thy-mia. desire; sexual passion. érōs (ἔρως). greek / n. / ˈe.rɔːs / eh-ross. desire; passionate love; in greek mythology, the god of desire (or love); known as cupid in roman mythology. estrenar. spanish / v. / ɛs.trɛn.ɑːreɪ / ess-tren-ah-reh. to use or wear something for the first time (and perhaps imbuing the wearer with a sense of confidence). euphoría (εὐφορία). greek / n. / e͜u.pʰo.rí.a / yoo-for-ria. lit. being of ‘good bearing’; more recently used to imply intense excitement or joy. famn. swedish / n. / fæm / fam. the area or space within two arms, e.g., ‘in my arms.’ as a verb, att famna—‘to embrace’. freudentaumel. german / n. / ˈfrɔ͜ydn̩.ta ͜uml̩ / froyd-un-tau-mel. lit. joy swash; being giddy or delirious with happiness. frisson. french / n. / fʀisɔ ̃ / frree-soh. a sudden feeling of thrill, combining fear and excitement. gaudere. latin / v. / gaʊˈdɪə.riː / gau-deer-ee. to rejoice; to take joy in. gemas. indonesian / n. / ɡəˈmæs / guh-mass. a feeling of love or affection; the urge to squeeze someone because they are so cute. gozar. spanish / v. / gəʊˈsɑː / go-sar. to greatly enjoy, take pleasure in; to take (e.g., in a romantic sense); to delight in; to come (sexually). guò yǐn (過癮). chinese / n./ ku̯ɔ.jɪəɪn̥ / kwor-yi-in. satisfaction of a craving; a highly pleasurable and enjoyable experience. gula. spanish / n. / ˈguːlæ / goo-lah. gluttony, greed; indulgence; eating simply for the taste (i.e., not from hunger). harikoa. māori / n. / hæɾiˈkɔa / hah-ree-koa. joyful, euphoric, delighted, exuberant, elated, thrilled, ecstatic, jubilant. herzklopfen. german / n. / hɛrts.klɔp.fən / hairts-klop-uhn. lit. ‘heart-knock’; the thumping of the heart in anticipation of something good (or bad) happening. hrepenenje. slovenian / n. / hɜ.rɛ.pə.nɛn.ʤeɪ / heh-rep-uh-nen-jay. nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened yet. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 179 hwyl. welsh / n. / huːɨ̯l / hoo-iil. a stirring feeling of emotional motivation and energy; a melodic, fervour; ecstatic inspiration; a chanting style of preaching; mood; fun. hygge. danish/norwegian / n. / ˈhʊː.ɡə / hhoo-guh. a deep sense of place, warmth, friendship, and contentment. as an adjective (hyggelig): enjoyable, warm, friendly, pleasant. jī qíng (激情). chinese / n. / ʤiː ʧɪŋ / jee ching. passion, heat, ardour (often in a specifically romantic or sexual sense). joie de vivre. french / n. / ˌʒwɑː də ˈviːvrə / jwa-de-vee-vruh. joy of living / for life; exuberance, ebullience; zest for life, the knack of knowing how to live. jouissance. french / n. / ʒˈwi.sɑ̃s / szh-wee-sonse. physical or intellectual pleasure, delight, or ecstasy; an orgasm. kaif (кайф). russian / n. / kaɪf / kayf. euphoric pleasure, and heightened satisfaction, but also often with a sense of calmness. kama muta (काममूि). sanskrit / v. / kæ.mæ muːtæ / kah-mah moo-tah. moved by love; warm transitory affection for a given person, object, or experience. kanyininpa. pintupi / v. / ˈkæn.jɪnˈɪn.pə / can-yin-in-puh. lit. ‘to hold,’ connoting an intimate and active relationship between carer and caree. kapsoura (καψούρα). greek / n. / kæp.sɔːə ‘ kap-soor-uh. crush, infatuation; intense passion; the heady romantic feelings at the start of a relationship. kefi (κέφι). greek / n. / ˈkeə.fi / keh-fee. joy, passion, enthusiasm, high spirits, frenzy. kilig. tagalog / n. / kɪˈliːɡ / kih-leeg. lit. shaking/trembling; feeling of butterflies arising from interacting with someone one loves or finds attractive; exhilaration/elation (not necessarily related to romance). lus. afrikaans / n. / lʊs / looss. desire, craving; greed; fancy, cupidity; inclination, tendency. mamihlapinatapai. yagán / n. / ˈmæ.mi.læ.pɪ.næ.tæˈpai / mah-me-lah-pee-nah-tah-pie. a look between people that expresses unspoken but mutual desire. mampemurruwurlmurruwurl. murrinhpatha / v. / mɐmpeˈmuɾuwuɭmuɾuwuɭ / mahm-peh-muhru-wilmuhru-wohl. to make someones’s hair beautiful. meraki (μεράκι). greek / n. / mɛˈræk.iː / meh-rrack-ee. ardour (in relation to one’s own actions and creations). morriña. galician / n. / moˈriɲa / moh-rreen-yah. longing; homesickness; nostalgia. nadryv (надрыв). russian / n. / nɐˈdrɨf / nuh-dreef. lit. a tear, rend, or break; an outburst of emotion or passion, often uncontrollable and possibly also irrational, when deeply hidden feelings are released. nam jai (น ้ำใจ). thai / n. / næm.ʤaɪ / nam-jiy. lit. water from the heart; selfless generosity and kindness. onda. spanish / n. / ɒn.dæ / on-dah. lit. wave; the flow or current of something; an exclamation of joy or excitement. orgasmós (οργασμός). greek / n. / ɔɾ.ɣa.ˈzmɔs / or-yaz-mos. orgasm; climax; swelling, burgeoning; excitement. pretoogjes. dutch / n. / prɛtˈoːx.jiːs / pret-oh-yeess. lit. ‘fun eyes;’ the twinkling eyes of someone engaging in benign mischief or fun. putuwa. gadigal / n. / pə.tuːə / puh-too-uh. warming one’s hands by the fire while gently squeezing someone else’s hands. raaskia. finnish / v. / ˈrɑːskiɑ / rah-skee-ah. to have the heart, courage to do something. retrouvailles. french / n. / ʀə.tʀu.vɑj / ruh-trroo-vy. lit. ‘rediscovery;’ a reunion (e.g., with loved ones after a long time apart). salām (سالم). arabic / n. / saˈlaːm / sah-lahm. peace, harmony, wholeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquillity; used also as a greeting/parting salutation. saudade. portuguese / n. / sɐwˈðaðɨ / sow-dhadh. melancholic longing, nostalgia, dreaming wistfulness. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ the varieties of vitality lomas, lee, ritchie-dunham & vanderweele www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 180 schwärmerei. german / n. / ʃvɛr.məˈrai / shver-mer-ay. excessive or extreme enthusiasm or sentimentality. sehnsucht: german / n. / ˈzeɪnˌzuːxt / zeen-zukht. life longings, intense desire for alternative paths and states; lit. an ‘addiction’ (sucht) to longing/pining (sehn). sèvdāh. serbo-croatian / n. / sěʋ.daːx / sev-dakh. the emotional intensity of passionate love; the joys and pains of intense love (especially love that may be difficult or unrealisable in some way). tesão. portuguese / n. / teˈzãw / ter-zarw. heightened sexual or sensual desire; turn-on; intense arousal. tikotara. takuu / v. / ti.ko.ta.ɹa / tee-koh-tah-rah. to carry a lover to several locations inside a house (to demonstrate physical strength) before having sex. tizita (ትዝታ). amharic / n. / tɪ.ziːtə / tih-zee-tuh. a bittersweet remembrance and longing for a time, person, thing gone by. tripti (िृक्ति). sanskrit / n. / trɪp.tɪ / trip-tih. complete satisfaction (e.g., of sensual pleasures). tonalli. nahuatl / n. / təʊ.næ.li: / toh-na-lee. a day sign; a symbol of the sun's warmth; a source of energy for growth and development; believed to be located in the hair and the fontanel area of the head. toska (тоска). russian / n. / tʌˈskaː / tuh-skah. longing (often, though not limited to, one’s homeland; can also include other times, people, and places), with nostalgia and wistfulness. uňuhňat. czech / phrase /ˈuɲu.ɦɲat / uniyuh-hniyat. to (want to) smother or crush by cuddling or fondling; to shower somebody with boundless love. vískat. czech / v. /ˈviːs.kat/ vees-kat. to play with somebody’s hair; originally, to look for lice. xīn (心). chinese / ɕɪn / shin. heart and mind (and even spirit) combined. http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ umphrey, l. r., & sherblom, j. c., (2014). the relationship of hope to self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. international journal of wellbeing, 4(2), 1-18. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i2.1 laura r. umphrey northern arizona university laura.umphrey@nau.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article the relationship of hope to self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction laura r. umphrey · john c. sherblom abstract: hope is a habitual way of thinking about goals, the potential pathways of achieving them and the motivated agency for their accomplishment. past research shows the beneficial behavioral outcomes of having hope, but little research investigates the relationship of hope to indicators of psychological, relational, communicative, or subjective wellbeing. the present study takes an interdisciplinary approach to test a model of the relationship between hope and wellbeing, as expressed through self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. results show a pattern of relationships that suggest intervention programs designed to change thinking habits can encourage not only more hopeful thought but also enhanced self-compassion, greater skill in personal relationships, less communication apprehension, and heightened life satisfaction. keywords: hope, communication apprehension, self-compassion, social skills, life satisfaction, wellbeing 1. introduction hope has been treated as a vague, ambiguous concept. snyder (2000) notes that multiple metaphorical descriptions of hope abound, as in the opinion of sophocles that it is a human foible; of plato that it is a foolish counselor; of euripides that it is a curse; of francis bacon that it is a bad supper; of benjamin franklin that it is an illusion upon which one could die fasting; and in common parlance that it is a false promise. recent psychological conceptions portray hope as a character strength, cognitive-motivational influence, expectation, future-oriented positive emotion, relational process, and trait (hellman, pittman, & munoz, 2013; hoy, suldo, & mendez, 2013; moraitou & efklides, 2012; valle, huebner, & suldo, 2006; yohani, 2008). countering this conceptual ambiguity, snyder (1994, 2000, 2002) provides a well-considered and widely accepted definition of hope as a phenomenon that is integral to wellbeing. snyder's definition identifies three necessary components of hope: a goal and two reciprocally influential processes called pathways thinking and agency thinking (snyder, 2000, 2005; snyder et al., 1991). these two thought processes work together to accomplish the goal. through his definition and research snyder links hope to psychological wellbeing (snyder, 1994, 2000, 2002). 2. snyder’s theory of hope historically, hope has been articulated as a vague, passive concept. for example, the statements "let's hope for the best" and "i hope it rains" assume that the desired goal can be attained without http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 any active engagement. this passive conception contrasts with snyder's active definition of hope in which goals must be actively pursued (stajkovic, 2006). snyder's active approach, articulated in statements such as "i hope to finish the race" and "i hope to get an a on my paper," includes a path toward a goal that is pursued with agency (snyder, 2000, 2002). these path and agency components of hope make snyder's definition distinct from mere wishing, desiring, or positive thinking. hope is an "enduring pattern of thinking about oneself in relation to life goals" (snyder, 1994, p. 68). it is embodied in the "perceived capabilities to produce routes to desired goals, along with the perceived motivation to use those routes" (snyder, 2000, p. 8). pathways thinking consists of the strategies needed to achieve a goal and agency thinking considers self-efficacy and personal motivation necessary components of hope (kemer & atik, 2012). these habits of pathways and agency thinking develop over time as learned dispositions in a person's way of thinking and become mutually influential cognitive processes (marques, lopez, & pais-ribeiro, 2011). 2.1 goals goals vary in specificity, temporality, importance, likelihood, challenge, consequence, and verbal articulation. some goals are specific; others are more general in nature. they may be short term, such as accomplishing something today, or long term, such as generating a retirement fund over time. some goals are more important than others and some have a higher or lower likelihood of achievement (snyder et al., 2000). some represent a positive new challenge, continued progress toward an outcome, or sustained achievement. others seek to avoid a negative consequence, such as divorce, unemployment, or poor health. some goals are articulated verbally. others are represented as visual perceptions. within all of this variability "human actions are goal directed," and these goals are "target[s] of action sequences" that involve pathways and agency thinking (snyder, 2002, p. 250). 2.2 pathways and agency thinking hope represents not just a person's ability to produce a goal, but the creativity to develop strategies and the sustained motivation to achieve that goal (alidina & tettero, 2010). pathways thinking identifies the strategies that lead to the accomplishment of a goal. people who have hope are able to generate multiple, alternative pathways to achieve their goals. they are, therefore, more likely to attain them even when obstacles block one or more of those pathways (grewal & porter, 2007). agency thinking represents a pro-active confidence and motivation. it provides "the belief that one can begin and sustain movement along the envisioned pathways toward a given goal" (snyder et al., 2000, p. 749). agency reveals the self-efficacy and stamina needed to pursue those multiple alternative pathways, overcome the numerous potential obstacles, and ultimately obtain the goal (snyder, 2000). multiple pathways and adequate agency to change plans as needed and to sustain one's momentum when obstacles are encountered epitomizes the true nature of hope as an ongoing life process (lopez, snyder, & teramoto-pedrotti, 2003; marques, lopez, & pais-ribeiro, 2011). beginning in infancy, children observe events, absorb information, and learn to hope. they see patterns of behavior, make predictions about the world around them, learn to anticipate events, and make purposeful plans (snyder, 1994). this planning involves goal setting. a child develops a sense of agency for instigating events and pathways to overcome barriers at a young age (snyder, 1994). a young child placed in a room alone with a toy beyond reach may cry. when a caregiver is present in the room the child can motion to the caregiver for assistance. the caregiver becomes a facilitator who can help the child achieve the goal of hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 obtaining the toy. by either assisting or ignoring the child the caregiver fosters or diminishes the child's hopeful thinking (snyder, 1994). patterns of pathways and agency thinking develop through these early mundane childhood events. these patterns of thought for articulating goals, identifying pathways for achieving them and experiencing agency continue to develop throughout life. 2.3 the benefits of hopeful thinking people who engage in patterns of hopeful thinking as adolescents and adults are more adaptive in their problem-solving, better able to engage in coping strategies, and less prone to depression (chang & banks, 2007). hope adds a resiliency for dealing with negative life events, reduces the likelihood of suicide, and increases the potential for success in psychotherapy (davidson, wingate, rasmussen, & slish, 2009; grewal & porter, 2007). higher initial levels of hope in adolescence predict greater life satisfaction a year later, even when controlling for initial levels of life satisfaction (valle, huebner, & suldo, 2006). during times of palliative care and terminal illness hope enables people to adapt to the situation, envision moments of happiness, and remain connected with family and friends (alidina & tettero, 2010). through narratives of hope, acquired brain injury survivors help motivate new patients to redefine themselves, their situations, and their goals for the future. hopeful narratives inspire and empower new patients and their families, help build positive attitudes toward recovery from acquired brain injury, facilitate success in rehabilitation, and improve their general, overall quality of life (fraas & calvert, 2009). in support groups hope produces the expression of more positive feelings, thoughts, and affection; the use of inclusive words such as "we" and "our;" more communally focused group interaction; and positive change over time (peterson, 2009). the research literature shows the personal and behavioral outcomes of hope. hopeful thinking is reported to produce greater academic achievement, more athletic success, and better job performance (hoy, suldo, mendez, 2013; kemer & atik, 2012; marques, lopez, & mitchell, 2013; peterson & byron, 2008; savage & smith, 2007). hopeful thinkers report feeling more selfworth, creativity, mental and physical health, positive emotions, and confident outlook on life (chang, 1998; onwuegbuzie & daley, 1999). surprisingly little research, however, investigates the relationship of hope to psychological, relational, communicative, or subjective wellbeing. the present study takes an interdisciplinary approach to explore that relationship of pathways and agency thinking to wellbeing as expressed in self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. 3. self-compassion self-compassion occurs as an internal dialogue. it articulates an attitude toward one's self that is associated with happiness, optimism, positive feelings, curiosity, exploration, agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness (manusov, 2011). self-compassion means "treating oneself with kindness, care and concern in the face of negative life events" (terry & leary, 2011, p. 352). people often engage in negative self-talk that involves critical self-judgments, self-blame, unfavorable comparisons of oneself to others, and unrealistic demands on oneself (rosenberg, 2003). self-compassionate people see difficult life experiences as part of the human condition and, through inner dialogue, encourage themselves to reflect on their cognitions and emotions, emphasizing the positive rather than the negative (terry & leary, 2011). self-compassion includes three components: (a) self-kindness, (b) feeling connected in our common humanity, and (c) being mindful (neff & beretvas, 2013). self-kindness means confronting and accepting hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 our personal inadequacies without engaging in relentless self-criticism or being overly harsh in judgments of ourselves (neff, 2011). feeling connected means seeing our imperfections as part of the human condition. people make mistakes and through our imperfections we are connected with others in a common humanity (neff, 2003b). being mindful involves taking a broader view of life and reflecting on the present moment with awareness and perspective. this means acknowledging our shortcomings rather than suppressing, obsessing, exaggerating, fixating, ruminating over, or becoming identified with one's situation (neff, 2011). self-kindness rather than self-judgment, common humanity rather than self-deprecation, and mindfulness rather than identification, form the dimensions of this self-compassion (neff, 2003a). snyder's theory of hope presents pathways and agency as positive ways of thinking about one's self. although little research investigates the direct connection of hope to self-compassion, people who are more hopeful about their goals appear likely to be more positive in their inner self-talk and less critical of themselves when faced with a challenge, obstacle, or initial failure (neff, rude, & kirkpatrick, 2007). hope, as expressed in pathways and agency thinking, should stimulate more compassionate self-talk. 4. relational social skill relational social skill is the ability to effectively communicate with others (segrin, hanzal, donnerstein, taylor, & domschke, 2007). it includes interpersonal competence (burke, woszidlo, & segrin, 2012), communication competence (spitzberg & cupach, 1984), social competence (arroyo & segrin, 2013), social skill (riggio & canary, 2003), and social ability (platsidou, 2013). these skills recognize the ability to understand a communication context, participate in it appropriately, and communicate effectively in relationships with others (spitzberg & cupach, 1984). relational social skill and hope are learned together in early childhood. parents and other caretakers who are affectionate, receptive, and democratic with their children foster the early development of both hope and relational social skill (gülay, 2011). hope and social skills continue to develop and become habitual practices in the everyday relational communication experiences of adulthood. later experiences modify, contradict, or build upon the early relational patterns of childhood and an individual's ability to conceive of multiple pathways and personal agency, and the relationship of self to others develops throughout life (snyder & lopez, 2007). hope has been shown to be related to relational closeness and to perceived social acceptance. a study of college students found a significant association between hope and acceptance in close, personal relationships (onwuegbuzie & daley, 1999). self-compassion has been shown to be related to close, personal relationships as well (neff & beretvas, 2013). self-compassionate individuals demonstrate greater social skill in managing their relational behaviors. they tend to be more compassionate toward others, provide more social support, encourage interpersonal trust, resolve conflicts with compromise, and balance the needs of self and others more effectively (neff & beretvas, 2013). this compassion expressed toward others helps build more positive interpersonal relationships (mongrain, chin, & shapira, 2011). 5. communication apprehension communication apprehension is one of the most fully explored concepts in the communication research literature (wrench, brogan, mccroskey, & jowi, 2008). it expresses a social uneasiness, shyness, reticence, phobia, and withdrawal from conversation that is associated with a perceived lack of communication competence (honeycutt, choi, & deberry, 2009; jung, 2011; mccroskey, 1983; pearson, child, degreeff, semlak, & burnett, 2011). it represents a relatively enduring sense hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 of discomfort, anxiety, and fear that some individuals experience when anticipating and while communicating that "can hinder one's ability to communicate interpersonally" (rubin & rubin, 1989, p. 13). this anxiety and fear reduces self-disclosure, affects relational maintenance behaviors, and diminishes the potential for relationship growth (bevan, 2009; loveless, powers, & jordan, 2008). people who are apprehensive show an unwillingness toward, avoidance of, withdrawal from, and difficulty in communicating (jung, 2011). they talk less, maintain more social distance, choose to be physically remote, develop fewer personal relationships, express less satisfaction in their relationships, and interact less with strangers. however, they do not differ in an expressed need and desire for close relationships (mccroskey & sheahan, 1978). past communication experiences, mistakes, positive and negative feedback from others, encouragement, reinforcement, and social modeling have been shown to be antecedents of communication apprehension (ayres, 1988). interpersonal uncertainty, anxiety over one's social skill, and perceived ability to clarify one's thoughts and feelings are also related (honeycutt, choi, & deberry, 2009). yet, little research has examined the relationship of communication apprehension to either hope or self-compassion. however, communication apprehension is related to self-construal (merz, 2009). self-construal refers to the degree to which a person defines oneself as independent or interdependent with others. individuals who have an independent self-construal, who recognize more personal agency in achieving goals, and who view internal thoughts, feelings, and abilities as the primary sources of success are known to express less communication apprehension. a person with an interdependent self-construal, who sees external chance, powerful others, and context as more influential in their pursuits expresses greater communication apprehension (merz, 2009). this research indicates the potential relationships of hope, self-compassion, and relational social skill to communication apprehension. to date, however, researchers have not examined these relationships. the present study investigates them and predicts that communication apprehension is related to hope, self-compassion, and relational social skill. people who engage in more pathways and agency thinking, who express more self-compassion, and who exhibit more relational social skill are less likely to experience communication apprehension. 6. subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction subjective wellbeing is a multi-dimensional construct. it has physical, psychological, spiritual, and social dimensions that are experienced within the domains of family, community, and societal life (laplaca, mcnaught, & knight, 2013). individuals actively cultivate a sense of subjective wellbeing within these social contexts (uchida & ogihara, 2012). these interrelated dimensions of wellbeing include a cognitive sense of life satisfaction and the emotional experience of happiness expressed in the presence of positive and a lack of negative feelings toward oneself (angner, 2011; dodge, daly, huyton, & sanders, 2012). life satisfaction builds on a set of cognitive judgments that a person makes about his or her life. this self-assessment evaluates the quality of one’s life using subjective standards (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985). it applies a set of personal judgments about how an individual’s life matches up to a pre-conceived ideal life-plan. these judgments include evaluations of the past, present, and anticipated future and compares a person’s life to the lives of salient others (ivtzan, gardner, & smailova, 2011; suikkanen, 2011). happiness, on the other hand, is a subjective experience. it identifies the ratio of positive to negative feelings one has toward oneself (shmotkin, 2005). this experience of happiness is related to hope, self-respect, self-esteem, optimism, gratitude, humility, personal forgiveness, acceptance of tragedy, working through grief, and the relinquishing of regrets (martin, 2008). hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 shmotkin (2005) describes the association between life satisfaction and happiness as an overall conception of subjective wellbeing that people make about their lives. this conception of subjective wellbeing includes life satisfaction and happiness and is represented in a lack of personal anxiety and apprehension (la placa, mcnaught, & knight, 2013). researchers often use the satisfaction with life scale to measure happiness and have shown correlations in participant responses to this scale and to the subjective happiness scale (demir, 2008; demir, ozdemir, & weitekamp, 2007). life satisfaction is a key indicator of subjective wellbeing in ways that are related to the present study of hope, compassion, and relational social skill (bailey & snyder, 2007; bronk, hill, lapsley, talib, & finch, 2009; helliwell & wang, 2011; o’sullivan, 2011). hope predicts high levels of life satisfaction (hoy, suldo, mendez, 2013; kemer & atik, 2012; moraitou & efklides, 2012). agency and pathways thinking predict life satisfaction better than reduced stress or high self-efficacy do (bailey, eng, frisch, & snyder, 2007; o’sullivan, 2011). self-compassion also affects life satisfaction, happiness, and subjective wellbeing. people with higher levels of selfcompassion report lower levels of anxiety, depression, and neurotic perfectionism (neff & beretvas, 2013). engaging in compassionate action toward oneself and toward others increases happiness (mongrain, chin, & shapira, 2011). greater relational social skill, as expressed in the willingness to confide in one’s partner and the ability to handle relational conflict, increases life satisfaction as well (gere & schimmack, 2013; platsidou, 2013). 7. the present study past research studies indicate that hope is related to self-compassion, with more positive and less critical self-talk anticipated when an individual is faced with a challenge or initial failure in achieving a goal (neff, rude, & kirkpatrick, 2007). both hope and self-compassion are associated with relational social skill and interpersonal closeness (mongrain, chin, & shapira, 2011; neff & beretvas, 2013; onwuegbuzie & daley, 1999). communication apprehension may be related to hope, self-compassion, and relational social skill. past experiences, encouragement, mistakes, reinforcement, negative feedback, social modeling, interpersonal anxiety, and self-construal all form antecedents to communication apprehension (ayres, 1988; honeycutt, choi, & deberry, 2009; merz, 2009). hope, self-compassion, and relational social skill each individually predict life satisfaction (gere & schimmack, 2013; hoy, suldo, mendez, 2013; kemer & atik, 2012; mongrain, chin, & shapira, 2011; moraitou & efklides, 2012; neff & beretvas, 2013; platsidou, 2013). these individual relationships are noted in the literature. however, no research has investigated the multiple, simultaneous relationships among hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction in the same study. the present study brings an interdisciplinary approach to examine a model of these multiple relationships. that model simultaneously tests the relationships of pathways and agency thinking to self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction, looking for patterns of interaction across psychological, relational, communication and subjective aspects of wellbeing. we anticipate that hope is related to communication apprehension and life satisfaction, but not in isolation. based upon the research literature the model predicts a pattern of mutually interacting and reinforcing relationships that include pathways and agency thinking in combination with self-compassion and relational social skill in people’s experiences of communication apprehension and life satisfaction. the model predicts that self-compassion is influenced by pathways and agency thinking. relational social skill is affected by all three, with its relationship to pathways and agency thinking being partially mediated by self-compassion. likewise, both communication hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 apprehension and life satisfaction are related directly and through mediated connections to pathways and agency thinking, self-compassion, and relational social skill. recent research shows that training in hope can enhance the pathways and agency thinking of certain populations (feldman & dreher, 2012; marques, lopez, and pais-ribeiro, 2011; valle, huebner, & suldo, 2006; yohani, 2008). demonstrating the relationships tested in the present model can promote positive outcomes not just for the habits of pathways and agency thinking but for self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction as well. showing the connections of pathways and agency thinking to self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction can suggest training programs to facilitate each. 8. hypotheses hypothesis 1: hope, as expressed through pathways and agency thinking, predicts more selfcompassion; hypothesis 2: hope, as expressed through pathways and agency thinking, predicts more relational social skill; hypothesis 3: hope, as expressed through pathways and agency thinking, predicts reduced communication apprehension; hypothesis 4: hope, as expressed through pathways and agency thinking, predicts greater life satisfaction; hypothesis 5: self-compassion mediates the relationship of pathways and agency thinking to relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction; hypothesis 6: relational social skill mediates the relationship of pathways and agency thinking to communication apprehension and life satisfaction. 9. method a sample of 308 participants responded to questions measuring perceptions of hope, selfcompassion, social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. the survey took 15 to 20 minutes to complete. demographic information was collected at the end of the survey. 9.1 procedure approval for the research study was granted by the institutional review board at the first author’s institution. following approval the first author contacted instructors of online courses at a medium-sized university in the southwestern united states and asked permission to recruit students for participation in the study. when permission was granted volunteer participants were recruited through an email that informed them of the nature of the study and their rights as human subjects. the online survey process maintained the anonymity of participants and extra credit was offered for participation. when students completed the survey a “secret phrase” was provided to them that they could relay to their instructor to receive the extra credit. table 1 below shows the sample demographic information. to be included in the study participants had to first identify a specific personal goal. then they were asked to complete the survey measures. the self-report survey measures of pathways and agency thinking, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction were responded to on five-point likert-type scales, with response choices ranging from 1-strongly disagree to 5-strongly agree. several scales for each measure were reverse coded hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 to reduce the likelihood of response bias. self-report measures have been shown to perform well, and sometimes better than other measures, in the assessment of happiness, satisfaction, and subjective wellbeing (angner, 2011; platsidou, 2013). table 1. sample demographic frequencies gender female male 215 93 (70%) (30%) race-ethnicity caucasian african american asian/pacific islanders hispanic native american other 209 13 5 62 8 11 (67%) (4%) (2%) (20%) (3%) (4%) age 18-21 22-25 26-29 31-39 40-49 50 or older 62 89 44 60 36 17 (20%) (29%) (14%) (19%) (12%) (6%) marital status single, never married married separated divorced 172 111 3 22 (56%) (36%) (1%) (7%) note: n = 308 9.2 measures hope. the present study used snyder’s (1994) measure of hope to examine pathways and agency thinking. four items on this scale measure pathways thinking through responses to statements such as, “i can think of many ways to get out of a jam.” four items measure agency thinking through responses to items such as, “even when others get discouraged, i know i can find a way to solve the problem.” this scale, and modifications of it for use with particular samples such as children, adults, and other sub-groups of the population, has been reported in the literature as a valid and reliable measure of hope (chang & banks, 2007; hoy, suldo, & mendez, 2013; kemer & atik, 2012; marques, lopez, & mitchell, 2013; moraitou & efklides, 2012). responses in the present study achieved a cronbach’s alpha coefficient of α = .79, showing good internal reliability for the measure. self-compassion. neff’s (2003b) 26-item self-compassion scale is commonly used to measure self-compassion (akin & eroglu, 2013; baker & mcnulty, 2011; neff & beretvas, 2013). in 2011 raes and colleagues developed and tested a 12-item short version of this scale (raes, pommier, neff, & van gucht, 2011). raes et al. (2011) demonstrate that the 12-item short form of the selfcompassion scale is a valid and reliable index that taps the same self-compassion construct as the 26-item scale. their results show that responses to the 12-item scale reproduce the underlying self-compassion factor structure and the higher-order single factor identifying self-compassion that is indexed by the 26-item scale. to reduce the potential of respondent fatigue the present study used the 12-item measure of self-compassion (raes et al., 2011). the cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this scale of α = .75 shows good reliability in the present study. hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 relational social skill. riggio (1986) conceptualizes social skill as an adeptness at sending, receiving, and managing communication with other people. this adeptness includes skill at regulating both the social-verbal and emotional-nonverbal aspects of communication. riggio originally measured these social-communication skills using a 90-item, self-report social skills inventory. more recently some researchers have used a shorter 30-item form of this inventory to assess the emotional expressivity, emotional sensitivity, emotional control, social expressivity, social sensitivity, and social control dimensions of social skill (riggio & canary, 2003; segrin et al., 2007). both studies show the 30-item form of the measure to have good reliability and validity in indexing the six emotional and social dimensions comprising the relational social skill construct. to reduce participant response burden the shorter 30-item version of the social skills inventory was used in the present study. the cronbach’s alpha coefficient of α = .81 achieved in the present study shows a good reliability for this scale. communication apprehension. the personal report of communication apprehension (prca) was used to measure communication apprehension (mccroskey & beatty, 1984). this scale includes items such as, “i have no fear of speaking up in conversations” and “i’m afraid to speak up in conversations." this scale has been shown to be a valid and reliable measure of communication apprehension (mccroskey & beatty, 1984; mccroskey, beatty, kearney, & plax, 1985). it is the predominant measure of communication apprehension found in the literature and continues to be used in numerous studies (baiocchi-wagner, 2011; honeycutt, choi, & deberry, 2009; jung, 2011; merz, 2009; wrench, brogan, mccroskey, & jowi, 2008). the cronbach's alpha coefficient, α = .96, shows an excellent internal reliability for this scale in the present study. life satisfaction. the satisfaction with life scale was used to assess life satisfaction in the present study (diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985). this scale measures a global cognitive evaluation of one's life (demir, ozdemir, & weitekamp, 2007). it has been used by a number of researchers to index life satisfaction and has shown good construct validity, reliability, and independence from momentary participant mood swings (demir, 2008; reich, kessel, & bernieri, 2013). the scale consists of 5 items, including, "in most ways my life is close to my ideal." the cronbach's alpha coefficient, α = .88, shows good internal reliability. the means and standard deviations for each scale are reported in table 2 below. table 2. means and standard deviations scale mean sd hope: pathways thinking 4.13 .52 hope: agency thinking 4.10 .52 self-compassion 4.75 .53 relational social skill 3.41 .39 communication apprehension 3.46 .71 life satisfaction 3.49 .84 note: n = 308 10. analysis correlation and path analysis were performed to show the relationships among participant scores on these scales. the correlations were calculated using the ibm spss 21 statistics software package. the structural equation path analysis model was produced with ibm spss amos 21. path analysis provides a tool to simultaneously test the multiple relationships of pathways and agency thinking to self-compassion (h1), relational social skill (h2), communication hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 apprehension (h3), and life satisfaction (h4), the relationships of self-compassion to relational social skill (h5), and of self-compassion (h5) and social skill (h6) to communication apprehension and life satisfaction. an initial full model of these relationships showed that the links between pathways thinking and life satisfaction (β = .04) and between agency thinking and communication apprehension (β < .01) were relatively weak. following standard structural equation modeling procedures the agency thinking to communication apprehension link, which was the weakest, was removed first and then the pathways thinking to life satisfaction link was dropped from the model (tabachnick & fidell, 2013). the removal of these two links improved the overall model fit to the data. the final model is presented without these two weak links. the goodness of model fit to the data was tested using the χ2 test, χ2 to degrees of freedom ratio, comparative fit index (cfi), normed fit index (nfi), relative fit index (rfi), and root mean square error of approximation (rmsea). tabachnick and fidell (2013) provide rationales, descriptions, and criteria for these indices. the present goodness of fit test results of: χ2 = 5.19, df = 3, p = .158, χ2 / df ratio = 1.73, cfi =.99, nfi =.99, rfi =.95, and rmsea =.05 demonstrate a good model fit. 11. results 11.1 correlations table 3 below shows the correlations among the measures. table 3. correlations hope: pathways thinking hope: agency thinking self compassion relational social skill communication apprehension life satisfaction hope: pathways thinking 1 .45 ** .22** .37** .28** .19** hope: agency thinking .45 ** 1 .33** .38** .30** .55** self compassion .22 ** .33** 1 .41** .39** .32** relational social skill .37 ** .38** .41** 1 .60** .32** communication apprehension .28 ** .30** .39** .60** 1 .23** life satisfaction .19 ** .55** .32** .32** .23** 1 note: n=308; ** p < .01 pathways and agency thinking are moderately correlated, r =.45. both components of hope are correlated with self-compassion (pathways r =.22, agency r =.33), relational social skill (pathways r =.37, agency r =.38), communication apprehension (pathways r =.28, agency r =.30), and life satisfaction (pathways r =.19, agency r =.55). self-compassion is correlated with relational social skill (r =.41), communication apprehension (r =.39), and life satisfaction (r =.32). relational social skill is correlated with communication apprehension (r =.60) and with life satisfaction (r =.32). finally, communication apprehension is correlated with life satisfaction (r =.23). hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 11.2 path analysis figure 1 below shows the path analysis results. figure 1: path analysis model showing the relationships of hope to self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. the model shows the moderate correlation between pathways and agency thinking (r =.45). more importantly, pathways (β =.09) and agency (β =.29) thinking both relate to self-compassion, accounting for 11% of the variance (r2 =.11). pathways (β =.22), agency (β =.18), and selfcompassion (β =.30) relate to relational social skill, and together account for 27% of the variance (r2 =.27). pathways thinking (β =.06), self-compassion (β =.17), and relational social skill (β =.51) account for 39% of the variance in communication apprehension (r2 =.39). agency thinking (β =.47), self-compassion (β =.13), and relational social skill (β =.09) account for 33% of the variance in life satisfaction (r2 =.33). 12. discussion the present results demonstrate the relationship of hope to psychological wellbeing (as represented in self-compassion), relational wellbeing (as indicated by relational social skill), communicative wellbeing (as suggested by reduced communication apprehension), and subjective wellbeing (as shown in life satisfaction). the path analysis model shows that hope, measured in pathways and agency thinking, has an influence on self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. the measures of pathways (r = .28) and agency (r =.30) thinking produce moderate correlations with communication apprehension. these correlations, as shown in the model, are mediated by the influence of selfcompassion and relational social skill. the pathways thinking link to communication apprehension appears comparatively weak (β =.06) in the model, and the agency thinking relationship (β < .01) proves too weak to remain in the path analysis. self-compassion shows a moderate correlation with communication apprehension (r = .39) and is an influential link in the model (β =.17). relational social skill, with a relatively strong correlation to communication apprehension (r = .60) also retains that relationship (β =.51) in the model. these results suggest .06 .51 .17 e2 .11 e1 .47 .33 .39 .27 .09 .13 .18 .29 .45 .30 .09 .22 e3 e4 hope: pathways thinking hope: agency thinking life satisfaction communication apprehension selfcompassion relational social skill hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 that the correlational relationship of pathways and agency thinking to communication apprehension is mediated by self-compassion and relational social skill. pathways thinking shows a weak correlation with life satisfaction (r = .19) and too weak a relationship (β < .01) for that link to remain in the path analysis model. agency thinking shows a moderate correlation (r = .55) and relationship to life satisfaction (β = .47) in the model. agency thinking maintains both a direct and a mediated relationship with life satisfaction. pathways thinking produces neither. self-compassion (r = .32; β = .13) and relational social skill (r = .32; β < .09) both show only moderate correlations and comparatively weak model relationships to life satisfaction. the path analysis model shows other interesting sets of relationships. pathways thinking is correlated to self-compassion (r = .22), but produces only a weak relationship in the model (β =.09). agency thinking shows a moderate correlation to self-compassion (r = .33) and maintains that relationship in the model (β =.29). pathways (r = .37; β =.22) and agency thinking (r = .38; β =.18) both demonstrate relationships to relational social skill. overall, the path analysis model reveals a pattern of inter-acting influential relationships of pathways and agency thinking to selfcompassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. this pattern of relationships shown in the model generally supports the hypotheses. 11.3 support for hypotheses hypothesis one, that hope predicts self-compassion, is supported in terms of agency thinking. agency thinking predicts less self-blaming, less self-criticism, and fewer unrealistic demands on oneself. a hopeful person who engages in agency thinking is more likely to be accepting of personal inadequacies and take a more mindful view of life. the more motivated a person is in pursuing hope, the more self-compassionate that person is as well. hypothesis two, that hope predicts more relational social skill, is supported by both pathways and agency findings. the model indicates that people who are less creative in their pathways thinking may also be lacking in the ability to relate to others socially. those who are lacking in the motivation and self-efficacy of agency may find it more difficult to achieve relational success. hypothesis three, that hope predicts reduced communication apprehension, finds little direct support in the model, although the correlation table indicates moderate relationships. this suggests that pathways and agency thinking may affect communication apprehension. this effect, however, is mediated by self-compassion and relational social skill. hypothesis four, that hope predicts greater life satisfaction, finds both correlational and path analysis support for agency thinking. having the agency to pursue one's goals translates into greater life satisfaction. this effect is stronger than the direct influence of either self-compassion or relational social skill. hypothesis five, that self-compassion mediates the relationship of pathways and agency thinking to relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction finds support in the model. self-compassion influences relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. people who are less compassionate toward themselves appear less relationally skilled, more apprehensive about communicating with others, and less satisfied with their lives. hypothesis six, that relational social skill mediates the relationship of pathways and agency thinking to communication apprehension and life satisfaction finds support in relation to communication apprehension and, to a lesser extent, life satisfaction. goal-attainment is often achieved through relational-social interaction. having relational social skill can facilitate the hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 achievement of those goals with less communication apprehension. along with agency thinking and self-compassion, relational social skill adds to life satisfaction. 11.4 conclusion one of the main goals of subjective wellbeing research is to identify the multiple influences and dynamic interplay of people's cognitive and affective states, socio-demographic contexts, experiences, expectations, and social comparisons (galinha & pais-ribeiro, 2011). the present path analysis model provides a look at the multiple simultaneous and interacting influences of habitual patterns in pathways and agency thinking that affect the experiences of self-compassion and relational social skill. these ways of thinking form inter-related influences on people's communication apprehension (r2=.39) and life satisfaction (r2=.33), accounting for a third of the variance in each. developing a fuller understanding of these habitual ways of thinking and their consequences is important because recent research studies show that intervention and instruction can increase both pathways and agency thinking (feldman & dreher, 2012; valle, huebner, & suldo, 2006). yohani (2008) obtained positive outcomes with an arts-based intervention program that helps refugee children engender more hopeful thinking about their life situations. marques, lopez, and pais-ribeiro (2011) report benefits in the use of an intervention program designed to foster hope in school-age children. their results show an increase in life satisfaction as a result of goaldirected hopeful thinking. feldman and dreher (2012) demonstrate positive results with a hope intervention group gaining a better sense of life purpose and making more progress toward achieving life goals than either a control or relaxation group. past research shows the positive effects of hope on stress management, self-esteem, academic achievement, athletic performance, professional career enhancement, personal hygiene, and health practices (valle, huebner, & suldo, 2006). the present study reveals a pattern of influence that indicates that successful training in pathways and agency thinking may affect the experience of self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension and life satisfaction. if the habits of hopeful thinking can be learned through intervention programs then changing these habits of thought may go beyond helping participants learn more hopeful ways of thinking to facilitating greater self-compassion, more skillful engagement in personal relationships, less communication apprehension, and an enhanced overall sense of life satisfaction. hopeful thinking may not be the cause of these aspects of psychological, relational, social, and subjective wellbeing, but having hope can facilitate positive developments in each. 12. limitations and directions for future research as with all studies, there are limitations to this one. the present results are based on a single sample. analysis of additional samples would increase the generalizability of the present findings. however, the present results do indicate that pathways and agency thinking are related to participants’ perceptions of self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. recognizing this pattern of influence is important, particularly in light of studies that show these habits of hopeful thinking can be learned. past research has looked at some of the psychological and behavioral consequences of hope. the present study increases our understanding of the relationship of hope to communication apprehension, compassion, social skill, and life satisfaction. future research might compare the relational communication of hopeful thinkers to that of non-hopeful thinkers, examine their actual communication behaviors, analyze relational outcomes, or further connect the hope, self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction umphrey, & sherblom www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 interpersonal communication and relational effects of hope to other psychological and behavioral outcomes. the present results suggest that developing strategies of hopeful thinking can have practical consequences for people's psychological, relational, social, and subjective wellbeing. hope, as represented in pathways and agency thinking, affects self-compassion, relational social skill, communication apprehension, and life satisfaction. these influential relationships should be explored further. authors laura r. umphrey northern arizona university laura.umphrey@nau.edu john c. sherblom university of maine publishing timeline received 14 july 2014 accepted 26 september 2014 published 31 december 2014 references akin, a., & eroglu, y. 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(2016). the perma-profiler: a brief multidimensional measure of flourishing. international journal of wellbeing, 6(3), 1-48. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526 margaret l. kern university of melbourne & university of pennsylvania margaret.kern@unimelb.edu.au copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 1 article the perma-profiler: a brief multidimensional measure of flourishing julie butler · margaret l. kern abstract: in the book flourish (2011), seligman defined wellbeing in terms of five pillars: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment, or perma. we developed the perma-profiler as a brief measure of perma. we first compiled hundreds of theoretically relevant items. three studies (n = 7,188) reduced, tested, and refined items, resulting in a final set of 15 questions (three items per perma domain). eight additional filler items were added, which assess overall wellbeing, negative emotion, loneliness, and physical health, resulting in a final 23item measure. a series of eight additional studies (n = 31,966) were conducted to test the psychometrics of the measure. the perma-profiler demonstrates acceptable model fit, internal and cross-time consistency, and evidence for content, convergent, and divergent validity. scores are reported visually as a profile across domains, reflecting the multidimensional nature of flourishing. the perma-profiler adds to the toolbox of wellbeing measures, allowing individuals to monitor their wellbeing across multiple psychosocial domains. keywords: wellbeing, flourishing, assessment, measure development, positive psychology 1. introduction a growing number of individuals, organizations, and policy makers worldwide are focusing on wellbeing, and with good reason. evidence indicates that subjective wellbeing, life satisfaction, optimism, happiness, and other positive constructs are associated with numerous desirable outcomes, including lower rates of divorce, greater educational and occupational success, stronger friendships, and better physical health (e.g., diener & chan, 2011; huppert, 2009; lyubomirsky, king, & diener, 2005). understanding and supporting wellbeing is increasingly envisioned as an interdisciplinary issue that should be addressed at multiple levels within a system, including individuals, organizations, communities, and nations (huppert & so, 2013). a key element in the promotion of wellbeing is the need to measure and document levels and changes in wellbeing at individual, community, and national levels. we present the development, psychometrics, and potential applications of one such measure: the perma-profiler. 2. defining wellbeing definitions and theories of wellbeing abound (see forgeard et al., 2011 and hone, jarden, schofield, & duncan, 2014 for reviews). wellbeing can be defined and measured objectively (e.g., http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 2 sufficient resources to meet basic needs, opportunities for education, lack of environmental pollutants) or subjectively; we focus here on the subjective side. in the literature, terms such as “happiness”, “subjective wellbeing”, “thriving”, and “flourishing” are often used interchangeably, and we use these terms interchangeably here. some theories focus on emotion (hedonic wellbeing), some emphasize eudaimonic elements (i.e., the good life), and others blend hedonic and eudaimonic domains (ryan & deci, 2001). for example, over 30 years ago, diener (1984) noted that subjective wellbeing includes affective and cognitive elements. ryff and keyes (1995) define psychological wellbeing across six domains (self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, personal growth). keyes (2002) suggests flourishing requires “symptoms” of high emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. seligman’s (2011) perma model advocates that flourishing arises from five wellbeing pillars (positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment). huppert and so (2013) define 10 components of flourishing that are the opposite of the main symptoms of depression and anxiety (competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self-esteem, vitality). wong (2011) proposes that hedonic, prudential (being fully engaged in life), eudaimonic, and chaironic (feeling blessed) types of happiness all contribute to an overall sense of subjective wellbeing, but come together in different ways depending on the person, circumstances, and context. through a quantitative analysis of studies with topics relevant to positive psychology, rusk and waters (2015) empirically derived a five-domain model of positive functioning (comprehension and coping, attention and awareness, emotions, goal and habits, virtues and relationships). most consistently, from the positive psychology perspective, wellbeing is not simply the absence of negative function, but rather is something more. that is, a lack of negative affect, depression, loneliness, insecurity, and illness is not the same as the presence of positive affect, happiness, social connection, trust, and wellness. further, while different theories include different domains, theorists have increasingly recognized that multidimensional models are needed to adequately capture the complexity of optimal psychological functioning (e.g., baltes & baltes, 1990; forgeard et al., 2011; huppert & so, 2013; friedman & kern, 2014; ryff & keyes, 1995). we define “flourishing” as a dynamic optimal state of psychosocial functioning that arises from functioning well across multiple psychosocial domains. we suggest that there is no single best model of wellbeing, but different conceptualizations can be helpful for taking the abstract construct of wellbeing and providing concrete domains that can be measured, developed, and sustained. specifically, we focus here on the five domains defined by seligman’s (2011) perma theory: positive emotion (p), engagement (e), relationships (r), meaning (m), and accomplishment (a). 2.1 positive emotion emotions can be classified as a circumplex consisting of valence (negative to positive) and activation (low to high) dimensions (cacioppo, berntson, norris, & gollan, 2011; huelsmann, nemanick, & munz, 1998). people can experience both negative and positive emotions simultaneously (watson & tellegen, 1985). numerous reviews support the value of positive measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 3 emotion across a range of life outcomes (howell, kern, & lyubomirsky, 2007; huppert, 2009; lyubomirsky et al., 2005). valid and reliable measures, at the individual and national level, have existed for several decades (oecd, 2013). 2.2 engagement research on engagement has occurred across several relatively disparate domains. in positive psychology, measures have focused on flow, or an extreme level of psychological engagement that involves intense concentration, absorption, and focus (csikszentmihalyi, 1990). in the organizational domain, work engagement has been defined in terms of vigor, dedication, and absorption (schaufeli, bakker, & salanova, 2006). student engagement includes psychological, behavioral, cognitive, and academic domains (appleton, christenson, & furlong 2008). engagement is also an important component of successful aging (rowe & kahn, 1987), but little work has attempted to measure engagement in older age beyond activity involvement. across these fields, engagement seemingly involves emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions, but it is not clear how to succinctly capture these dimensions in a brief measure. 2.3 relationships social relationships are fundamental to life (berscheid & reis, 1998). a review found over 18,000 articles published on social relationships and health in the past decade alone (tay, tan, diener, & gonzalez, 2012). social support has been linked to less depression and psychopathology, better physical health, lower mortality risk, healthier behaviors, and other positive outcomes (tay et al., 2012; taylor, 2011). sub-domains include social ties (number of persons in social sphere), social networks (number of ties and quality of those ties), received support (objective perspective of resources), perceived support (subjective perspective of resources), satisfaction with support, and giving support to others (taga, 2006). the relationship dimension has a well-established place in most of the major existing wellbeing surveys used internationally. 2.4 meaning a sense of meaning has been defined in terms of having direction in life, connecting to something larger than oneself, feeling that one’s life is valuable and worthwhile, and that there is a purpose to what one does (steger, 2012). meaning provides a sense that one’s life matters. it has been linked to better physical health, reduced mortality risk, and higher life satisfaction (boyle, barnes, buchman, & bennett, 2009; ryff, singer, & love, 2004; steger, 2012). several of the national surveys, including the experimental opinions survey developed by the uk office for national statistics (2011), have included single items assessing a sense of value or purpose. 2.5 accomplishment superior performance is often recognized and acknowledged in western societies. for example, each year forbes magazine selects the 500 best companies in the us, and every two years olympic events bring together the best athletes from around the world. however, objective success is also impacted by circumstances, opportunities, and personal ambitions. a mother who raises a connected, compassionate family might be considered a success, despite never receiving awards measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 4 for her efforts. subjectively, accomplishment involves a sense of working toward and reaching goals, mastery, and efficacy to complete tasks. indeed, self-determination theory suggests that competence is a core basic human need (ryan & deci, 2000). several of the existing wellbeing measures include items related to competence, mastery, or efficacy, whereas national surveys tend to focus on objective indicators of achievement. 3. wellbeing measurement although some critics have raised theoretical and practical concerns as to whether maximizing happiness is the best object to pursue (e.g., ford & mauss, 2014; lazarus, 2003; miller, 2008), for those who do want to pursue happiness and wellbeing, adequate measures are needed. welldeveloped measurement tools help us refine our theories and understanding of wellbeing. they can complement more objective measures by providing subjective perspectives, help to identify problematic policies that unintentionally cause harm, and inform cost and benefit analyses. further, adequate measures are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of a growing number of interventions to improve wellbeing. of the various wellbeing theories, some have corresponding validated measures, whereas others do not (huppert, 2014). as a whole, there are now valid measures of affect and life evaluations, but there is less evidence on the reliability and validity of eudaimonic and multidimensional measures (oecd, 2013). keye’s mental health continuum short form, diener’s flourishing scale, and huppert and so’s (2013) indicators of flourishing have been tested across multiple samples (hone et al., 2014). considerable research has occurred with satisfaction measures (diener, inglehart, & tay, 2012). ryff’s (2014) psychological well-being scales have been tested and used across diverse samples and applications, although questions have been raised about the measure’s psychometric properties (e.g., abbott et al., 2006; 2009). as a relatively new theory, to date there are no brief validated instruments that specifically measure the five perma domains. some measures include one or two components, with the greatest emphasis on emotion and relationships. others, such as the flourishing scale (diener et al., 2010), the flourishing items (huppert & so, 2013), and the brief inventory of thriving (su, tay, & diener, 2014) include all five constructs, but with only one or two items per domain. huppert and so (2013) include emotional stability, optimism, resilience, self-esteem, and vitality in the flourishing items in addition to the five perma domains, with single items representing each domain. the 54-item comprehensive inventory of thriving (su et al., 2014) includes the perma components as well as a series of other domains (e.g., learning, self-worth, lack of autonomy, optimism). we present the development and validation of the perma-profiler, which involved three parts. first, we created a bank of items theoretically relevant to the five perma domains. using a sample of over 3,500 participants, we reduced the items to 15 core items. second, we confirmed the factor structure across two samples, and examined correlations with other constructs. we chose to add eight filler items, creating a final 23-item measure. third, we tested the final measure in eight additional samples, providing psychometric and norm information. the new measure adds a tool specifically designed to assess perma for the toolbox of wellbeing measures. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 5 4. part 1: measure development our goal in developing the measure was to create a brief valid measure of perma. in creating such a measure, there is a tension between robustly capturing each domain and keeping the number of items as low as possible. shorter measures can more easily be incorporated into other surveys or be answered repeatedly over time, but they also generally have poorer psychometric properties and lower reliability than the reliability of longer form versions (widaman, little, preacher, & sawalini, 2011). validity of the questionnaire matters more than reliability (john & soto, 2007), but reliability provides an upper bound on validity. in estimating a structural model, at least three items are needed to identify a factor and calculate reliability. to make the scale as short as possible while maintaining evidence of validity and acceptable reliability, we purposely compromised extremely high reliability to more comprehensively capture each construct (i.e., multiple sub-domains, rather than repetitive questions; little, linderberger, & nesselroade, 1999). thus, our final measure aimed to include three items per domain that were adequately reliable, content valid, and demonstrated preliminary support for construct validity. 4.1 the perma item bank we began by generating a large bank of items. using seligman’s (2011) definitions of each domain, we defined specific sub-domains for each perma component. 1 we then reviewed measures of these constructs, searching existing sources for relevant items, and generated additional questions that theoretically tapped each domain or sub-domain. items were combined into an initial item bank with over 700 items (see butler, 2011 for additional details). repeated items were removed, and then three experts in positive psychology rated each of the compiled items, based on face valid relevance to the domains and sub-domains. if raters disagreed about an item, it was excluded from further consideration. after discussion, some revisions were made to wording, and the structure of some of the remaining items was adjusted to create consistency across items. the final item bank included 109 questions theoretically relevant to one of the perma components (33 emotion, 23 engagement, 21 relationships, 15 meaning, 17 accomplishment). items and sub-domain labels are noted in appendix 1; this constitutes the perma item bank and formed the foundation for the rest of our development process. questions were placed on a graduated 0 to 10 scale, with 0 indicating extremely low levels and 10 indicating extremely high levels, and labels appearing only on the endpoints as anchors, as suggested by oecd (2013) guidelines. this 11-point likert scaling allows a person to indicate, for example, that they are 7/10 (70%) on a question about excitement and interest for life. pilot testing indicated that people understood the response scale. 1 sub-domains: positive emotion: valence and arousal for positive emotion; engagement: absorption, interest, and involvement; relationships: connection with others, satisfaction, and giving/receiving support; meaning: sense of direction, transcendence (connecting to something bigger than oneself), and sense of value/worth; accomplishment: self-efficacy, sense of accomplishment, and achieving personal goals. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 6 4.2 additional measures along with the main perma items, the initial questionnaire included several additional scales. these included the eight-item version of the center of epidemiological studies-depression scale (cesd, eaton, muntaner, smith, tien, & ybarra, 2004), the satisfaction with life scale (swls, diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985), the flourishing scale (diener et al., 2010), the short warwick-edinburgh mental wellbeing scale (wemwbs, stewart-brown et al., 2009), and the pac-10 (personal action constructs) rating scales (little, salmela-aro, & phillips, 2007). four health-related questions (e.g., “in general, how is your health?”) and several general demographic questions (gender, age, country, education, employment, marital status) were also included. three free-response questions, asking how the person would describe his or her personality, and additional comments, allowed participants to express themselves and aided evaluations of the quality of participant responses. the resulting questionnaire included 199 items, which took an average of 27 minutes to complete. 4.3 participants a set of participants (sample 1, development sample) was recruited online through the authentic happiness website (www.authentichappiness.com). a link to the survey was posted on the site as a research study. participants voluntarily completed the full 199-item questionnaire. data were collected from 8 january 2012 through 16 august 2012. sufficient responses (i.e., participants who completed the perma items) were received from 3,751 participants.2 demographic information is summarized in table 1 below. 2 the included responses are a self-selected sample of individuals who chose to complete the survey to help out with research, and completed the survey through the perma questions. 6,789 entries were begun. many of the missing responses were due to people who started the survey, had computer troubles, and restarted the survey; we only included their full response. the survey was lengthy, so other participants dropped out before completing all of the perma items and thus were excluded. demographic information was at the end, such that we could not examine characteristics of those who dropped out. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 7 table 1a. participant demographics by sample sample 1 sample 2 sample 3 sample 4 sample 5 sample 6 sample 7 sample 8 sample 9 sample 10 sample 11 n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % total n 3751 3029 408 4717 23692 285 294 166 184 1846 782 gender male 1050 27.99 0804 26.54 234 57.35 1434 30.40 15390 64.96 085 29.82 150 51.02 061 36.75 027 14.67 0317 17.17 289 36.96 female 2459 65.56 2014 66.49 167 40.93 3029 64.21 8184 34.54 195 68.42 144 48.98 099 59.64 150 81.52 1359 73.62 493 63.04 other 0242 06.45 0211 06.97 007 01.70 0254 05.38 118 00.50 005 01.80 000 00.00 006 03.61 007 03.80 0170 09.21 000 00.00 age group under 18 0000 00.00 0000 00.00 000 00.00 0000 00.00 1495 06.31 000 00.00 000 00.00 001 00.60 003 01.63 001 00.05 000 00.00 18 to 24 0509 13.57 0562 18.55 112 27.45 0736 15.60 6921 29.21 030 10.53 046 15.65 027 16.27 041 22.28 293 15.87 782 100 25 to 34 0731 19.49 0607 20.04 184 45.10 1006 21.33 4714 19.90 107 37.54 200 68.03 051 30.72 052 28.26 400 21.67 000 00.00 35 to 44 0723 19.27 0555 18.32 065 15.93 0951 20.16 3992 16.85 037 12.98 024 08.16 035 21.08 033 17.93 352 19.07 000 00.00 45 to 54 0778 20.74 0577 19.05 024 05.88 0924 19.59 3320 14.01 041 14.39 022 07.48 030 18.07 026 14.13 361 19.56 000 00.00 55 to 64 0547 14.58 0401 13.24 013 03.19 0612 12.97 1802 07.61 034 11.93 000 00.00 012 07.23 015 08.15 224 12.13 000 00.00 65+ 0220 05.87 0124 04.09 003 00.74 0216 04.58 559 02.36 036 12.63 000 00.00 004 02.41 005 02.72 050 02.71 000 00.00 unknown 0243 06.48 0203 06.70 007 01.72 0272 05.77 889 03.75 000 00.00 002 00.68 006 03.61 009 04.89 165 08.94 000 00.00 world region united states 1617 43.11 1384 45.69 062 15.20 2393 50.73 12001 50.70 285 0100 290 79.00 010 06.02 184 100 --182 100 united kingdom 0294 07.84 0225 07.43 005 01.23 0308 06.53 1465 06.20 000 00.00 006 01.60 014 08.43 000 00.00 --000 00.00 canada 0192 05.12 0148 04.89 007 01.72 0246 05.22 1531 06.50 000 00.00 003 00.80 005 03.01 000 00.00 --000 00.00 central/ s. america 0113 03.01 0078 02.58 006 01.47 0160 03.39 641 02.70 000 00.00 000 00.00 004 02.41 000 00.00 --000 00.00 west europe 0132 03.52 0122 04.03 006 01.47 0222 04.71 913 03.90 000 00.00 021 05.70 006 03.61 000 00.00 --000 00.00 n. europe 0073 01.95 0048 01.58 001 00.25 0117 02.48 358 01.50 000 00.00 000 00.00 001 00.60 000 00.00 --000 00.00 s/e. europe 0077 02.05 0061 02.01 011 02.70 0130 02.76 368 01.60 000 00.00 000 00.00 002 01.20 000 00.00 --000 00.00 middle east 0015 00.40 0006 00.20 009 02.21 0026 00.55 178 00.80 000 00.00 000 00.00 001 00.60 000 00.00 --000 00.00 africa 0025 00.67 0015 00.50 000 00.00 0060 01.27 269 01.10 000 00.00 000 00.00 000 00.00 000 00.00 --000 00.00 india/se asia 0069 01.84 0054 01.78 282 69.12 0091 01.93 914 03.90 000 00.00 000 00.00 004 02.41 000 00.00 --000 00.00 asia 0092 02.45 0070 02.31 002 00.49 0126 02.67 380 01.60 000 00.00 000 00.00 002 01.20 000 00.00 --000 00.00 australia/new zealand 0620 16.53 0311 10.27 004 00.98 0559 11.85 2686 11.40 000 00.00 005 01.30 020 12.00 000 00.00 --000 00.00 other 0432 11.52 0507 16.74 013 03.19 0279 05.90 1988 08.40 000 00.00 042 11.40 097 58.43 000 00.00 --000 00.00 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 8 table 1b. participant demographics by sample sample 1 sample 2 sample 3 sample 4 sample 5 sample 6 sample 7 sample 8 sample 9 sample 10 sample 11 n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % n % education 0 0 no high school 0071 01.90 0062 02.00 012 02.94 0099 02.10 1628 06.87 --000 00.00 001 00.60 002 01.09 014 00.80 -- high school or equivalent 0254 06.77 0194 06.40 031 07.60 0297 06.30 1597 06.74 --003 01.02 007 04.22 005 02.72 073 03.95 -- some college 0563 15.01 0537 17.73 035 08.58 0715 15.16 8827 37.26 --016 05.44 013 07.83 041 22.28 252 13.65 -- associates 0246 06.56 0196 06.47 012 02.94 0282 05.98 2246 09.48 --004 01.36 004 02.41 017 09.24 116 06.28 -- bachelors 0819 21.83 0616 20.34 172 42.16 1024 21.71 6305 26.61 --170 57.82 056 33.73 042 22.83 414 22.43 -- some graduate 0359 09.57 0244 08.06 015 03.68 0417 08.84 2994 a 12.64 --016 05.44 020 12.05 025 13.59 133 07.20 -- masters 0803 21.41 0661 21.82 099 24.26 1127 23.89 ----074 25.17 046 27.71 035 19.02 483 26.16 -- doctorate/ professional 0399 10.60 0317 10.40 024 05.90 0511 10.80 ----009 03.06 017 10.20 010 05.50 188 10.90 -- other 0237 06.32 0202 06.67 008 01.96 0245 05.20 0095 00.40 --002 00.70 002 01.20 007 03.80 173 09.40 -- employment status 0 full-time employment 1845 49.19 1398 46.15 153 37.50 2191 46.45 ----294 100 086 51.81 061 33.15 701 37.97 -- part-time employment 0456 12.16 0386 12.74 086 21.08 0533 11.30 ----000 00.00 014 08.43 022 11.96 223 12.08 -- unemployed 0176 04.69 0127 04.19 034 08.33 0198 04.20 ----000 00.00 005 03.01 007 03.80 124 06.72 -- homemaker 0113 03.01 0080 02.64 036 08.82 0117 02.48 ----000 00.00 003 01.81 005 02.72 081 04.39 -- student 0553 14.74 0543 17.93 071 17.40 0700 14.84 ----000 00.00 017 10.24 051 27.72 298 16.14 -- retired 0182 04.85 0136 04.49 008 01.96 0187 03.96 ----000 00.00 005 03.01 010 05.43 064 03.47 -- other 0191 05.09 0163 05.38 014 03.43 0546 11.60 ----000 00.00 034 20.60 021 11.40 195 10.60 -- unknown 0235 06.26 0196 06.47 0v6 01.47 0245 05.19 ----000 00.00 002 01.20 007 03.80 160 08.67 -- note. other includes unknown/ not reported. for location, n = north, s = south, e = east, w = west. for main norming sample, gradua te work refers to any post graduate training and degree, including certificates, masters, doctorate, and professional degrees. 1 = development sample, 2 = validation sample, 3 = mturk sample, 4 = brief measure test set, 5 = main norming sample, 6 = compassion study, 7 = online company employees, 8 = values study, 9 = harvard university students, 10 = positive intervention study, 11 = william & mary university students. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 9 4.4 analyses and results in generating the initial items, we included both general and specific time scales (i.e., “in general” versus “in the past week”). for analysis, we chose to focus on more stable aspects of wellbeing rather than transient mood. there is no agreement over the best response period for wellbeing questions (oecd, 2013). specific periods (e.g., yesterday, currently) capture momentary states and are more susceptible to change, whereas a general response captures more stable reflections of one’s wellbeing. arguably, emotion is more transient in nature compared to the other perma domains. still, seligman (2011) discusses the five domains, including emotion, as outcomes that people seek, suggesting a more stable reflection on one’s emotional balance. we follow this framing here with the general response format, such that items with the stem “in the past week” were excluded from the analysis, whereas items with the stem “in general” were included. we also chose to only include positively worded items. it is often argued that inverse items are needed to deal with response set biases, but this assumes that positive and negative items measure the same construct, which both theoretically and empirically is not necessarily true. numerous theorists in positive psychology have noted that it is misleading to interpret happiness as merely the opposite of unhappiness; one is not simply the lack of the other (e.g., pawelski, 2013). further, reversed-scored items often cluster on a separate factor, thus creating method-induced biases (e.g., carlson et al., 2011; dunbar, ford, hunt, & der, 2000; marsh, 1986). marsh (1996) noted that additional analyses are needed to disentangle response versus method bias. alternatively, additional negatively worded items can be included but not scored as part of the positive constructs, thus disrupting response biases but not introducing the method bias. we chose to follow this latter approach. as much of the psychological literature has focused on the negative end of psychological function, and the perma measure is intended to complement existing measures, we focus primarily on positively worded items, but add several negative emotion questions to the final measure. these exclusions resulted in 70 positively worded items that specifically measured perma. to further reduce the number of questions, participants were randomly split into two halves (set 1: n = 1,877 (65.1% female); set 2: n = 1,874 (66.0% female)). in each set, we conducted an exploratory principal components analysis (jolliffe, 2002), specifying a five-factor structure and direct oblimin rotation (δ = 0). we retained items that overlapped across the two sets. we examined response frequencies and item distributions. to ensure that items aligned with the perma theory, we returned to our original definitions. for the final set of items, we selected those that consistently appeared in the factor in both sub-samples in the principal components analyses, represented multiple sub-domains (e.g., absorption, effort, and interest for engagement), and had responses to the item that were normally distributed across the sample. through these analyses, we narrowed the items down to the targeted three items for each domain (15 items total). we then calculated four estimates of internal consistency (cronbach’s , guttman’s 6, minimum and maximum split half reliability ( and 4)), using the psych package (revelle, 2015) in r (version 3.0.3), based on 10,000 random draws across the data. as summarized in table 2 below, the factors demonstrated acceptable reliability in the two subsets. in sum, through a combination of theory and empirical analyses, we first created a large pool of items containing questions theoretically relevant to each of the five perma domains, and then reduced these items to a brief measure that loaded on the expected factor and demonstrated adequate reliability. this set the stage for part 2, in which we confirmed the factor structure in two additional samples and tested correlations with other constructs. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 10 table 2a. internal and test-retest reliability for the perma factors by sample p e r m a overall ne h internal reliability sample 1a (development sample, subset 1, n = 1,877) cronbach's  .82 .80 .82 .92 .84 .94 .74 .91 guttman's 6 .75 .73 .77 .89 .81 .95 .66 .89 minimum split half () .74 .64 .66 .82 .79 .89 .66 .74 maximum split half (4) .74 .73 .75 .84 .80 .97 .69 .85 sample 1b (development sample, subset 2, n = 1,874) cronbach's  .81 .79 .83 .92 .86 .95 .73 .90 guttman's 6 .74 .73 .78 .89 .82 .95 .64 .88 minimum split half () .73 .65 .67 .82 .80 .88 .64 .73 maximum split half (4) .74 .72 .75 .84 .80 .96 .67 .84 sample 2 (validation sample, n = 3,029) cronbach's  .81 .81 .83 .92 .85 .95 .73 .90 guttman's 6 .75 .75 .78 .88 .81 .95 .64 .88 minimum split half () .74 .65 .68 .81 .79 .88 .63 .73 maximum split half (4) .75 .74 .76 .84 .80 .97 .68 .85 sample 3 (mturk sample, n = 408) cronbach's  .71 .69 .79 .86 .82 .94 .76 .85 guttman's 6 .63 .62 .72 .81 .77 .95 .68 .81 minimum split half () .61 .62 .66 .76 .75 .89 .66 .70 maximum split half (4) .71 .72 .70 .81 .75 .96 .66 .79 sample 4 (brief measure test set, n = 4,717) cronbach's  .89 .72 .84 .91 .78 .94 .75 .92 guttman's 6 .84 .64 .79 .87 .73 .95 .67 .89 minimum split half () .79 .62 .68 .81 .72 .89 .65 .81 maximum split half (4) .81 .68 .79 .82 .76 .97 .70 .83 sample 5 (main norming set, n = 23,692 cronbach's  .88 .71 .81 .90 .79 .94 .73 .92 guttman's 6 .83 .63 .76 .86 .73 .95 .64 .88 minimum split half () .80 .63 .65 .80 .72 .88 .62 .80 maximum split half (4) .80 .69 .77 .80 .76 .96 .62 .82 sample 6 (compassion study, n = 285) cronbach's  .88 .80 .82 .89 .80 .93 -- guttman's 6 .83 .74 .80 .85 .76 .95 -- minimum split half () .76 .63 .58 .80 .74 .82 -- maximum split half (4) .81 .76 .81 .82 .80 .97 -- sample 7 (online company employees, n = 294) cronbach's  .84 .69 .77 .89 .70 .92 -- guttman's 6 .79 .62 .71 .85 .68 .94 -- minimum split half () .68 .63 .61 .79 .72 .82 -- maximum split half (4) .79 .70 .73 .83 .73 .96 -- measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 11 table 2b. internal and test-retest reliability for the perma factors by sample p e r m a overall ne h sample 8 (values study, n = 166) cronbach's  .85 .67 .84 .90 .77 .93 .71 .92 guttman's 6 .79 .59 .78 .87 .71 .95 .63 .88 minimum split half () .74 .61 .69 .81 .69 .82 .59 .81 maximum split half (4) .79 .64 .76 .83 .76 .97 .61 .82 sample 9 (harvard university students, n = 184) cronbach's  .85 .73 .83 .85 .79 .92 .77 .94 guttman's 6 .81 .65 .80 .81 .72 .95 .71 .91 minimum split half () .79 .61 .64 .75 .69 .84 .63 .83 maximum split half (4) .80 .70 .77 .82 .77 .97 .64 .83 sample 10 (positive intervention study, n = 1,846) cronbach's  .88 .72 .85 .91 .78 .94 .73 .92 guttman's 6 .84 .63 .81 .87 .73 .96 .65 .89 minimum split half () .80 .63 .68 .81 .72 .88 .61 .81 maximum split half (4) .80 .66 .78 .83 .77 .97 .64 .83 sample 11 (william & mary university students, n = 782) cronbach's  .84 .60 .75 .90 .84 .93 .70 - guttman's 6 .78 .53 .70 .85 .79 .95 .61 - minimum split half () .75 .54 .56 .80 .70 .87 .63 - maximum split half (4) .76 .66 .73 .81 .80 .96 .65 - combined samples (samples 4-11, n = 31,966) cronbach's  .88 .72 .82 .90 .79 .94 .71 .92 guttman's 6 .83 .64 .76 .86 .74 .95 .63 .88 minimum split half () .80 .63 .65 .80 .73 .88 .59 .80 maximum split half (4) .80 .69 .77 .81 .77 .96 .62 .82 test-retest reliability (pearson r) sample 4 time 2 (n = 1,073) .84 .78 .83 .86 .80 .88 .77 .86 sample 5 time 2 (n = 1372) .68 .61 .68 .67 .67 .80 .66 .78 sample 5 time 3 (n = 574) .65 .53 .66 .61 .62 .69 .67 .75 sample 8 time 2 (n = 45) .88 .81 .90 .83 .78 .87 .77 .81 sample 9 time 2 (n = 107) .72 .71 .75 .73 .67 .75 .66 .80 sample 9 time 3 (n = 86) .70 .51 .70 .69 .68 .69 .62 .79 note. see method for sample details. samples 1-3 completed the full 199-item bank; samples 4-11 completed the brief final measure (at least the 15 items and in most cases the 23-item measure, as well as other items (see appendix 2 for details). p = positive emotion, e = engagement, r = relationships, m = meaning, a = accomplishment, overall = overall wellbeing, ne = negative emotion, h = physical health. minimum and maximum split halves are based on 10,000 random draws across the data, estimated with the psych package (revelle, 2015) in r. 5. part 2: model testing and measure refinement 5.1 participants while we were conducting our initial analyses of the data from sample 1, the survey remained open on the authentic happiness website. responses received between 17 august 2012 and 15 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 12 may 2013 were considered the validation sample (sample 2). of 5,724 responses that were started, 3,029 participants completed the perma questions. participant demographics are summarized in table 1 above. another set of participants (sample 3, mturk sample) were recruited through amazon’s mechanical turk (mturk), a crowd sourcing online system in which “workers” complete tasks online for minimal payment. several studies have found that mturk samples are often more representative than many typical psychology studies (berinsky, huber, & lenz, 2011; buhrmester, kwang, & gosling, 2011), although the quality and participant characteristics must be carefully examined (shapiro, chandler, & mueller, 2013). we required that participants be proficient in english and have an approval rating of 95% or above3. participants were paid $0.20 for completing the survey, which was a typical payment amount for such a survey at the time. survey responses were excluded if they were missing responses to the perma questions, completed the survey in less than five minutes (average response time for this sample was 18 minutes), or had free response questions that appeared problematic (e.g., random letters). out of 579 individuals who started the survey, 408 participants (43.1% female) had sufficient data to be included in our analyses. table 1 above summarizes demographic information. 5.2 data analyses and results using data from samples 2 and 3, we tested the 15-items in a confirmatory factor model (see figure 1 below) using the lavaan package (version .5.16, rosseel, 2012) in r (version 3.0.3). model fit was evaluated using the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), and the standardized root mean residual (srmr), which are population-based measures not affected by sample size. a rmsea of .06 or lower combined with an srmr of .09 or lower are considered acceptable (hu & bentler, 1999). we also examined the tucker lewis index (tli) and comparative fit index (cfi) as alternative incremental fit metrics; values closer to 1 are considered good fit. factor reliabilities are summarized in table 2 above, and factor loadings and fit statistics are summarized in table 3 below. in both samples, the model adequately fit the data (sample 2: n = 3,029, rmsea = .055 [90% confidence interval = .051, .058], srmr = .037, cfi = .976, tli = .968; sample 3: n = 408, rmsea = .077 [.067, .087]; srmr = .034, cfi = .946, tli = .929), and factors were generally reliable, although engagement was the weakest factor in both samples. to consider initial evidence for convergent and divergent validity, we then examined correlations of each factor with the additional measures included in the full 199-item questionnaire. average correlations across samples 1a, 1b, 2, and 3 are summarized in table 4 below, and correlations for each sample are summarized in appendix 2. the strength of correlations varied for the different perma factors, but all showed a similar pattern. the perma factors were strongly correlated with flourishing and life satisfaction, with the factor of meaning being the strongest correlate and engagement the weakest. the perma factors were moderately correlated with physical health, and inversely correlated with negative emotion and loneliness. the factors were also strongly correlated with the pac-10, which asks how meaningful, exciting, enjoyable, and manageable personal projects and goals are, as well as how much these projects and goals benefit and are supported by others. in sum, the factors all correlated in the expected directions with all other measured variables. 3 to help control quality, mturk includes an approval system. if a worker provides poor data (e.g., cheating, clearly not attending to the task), an experimenter can report the worker, dropping that worker’s approval rating. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 13 figure 1. five-factor model based on the 15 perma measure. see table 3 below for estimated latent factor loadings and fit indices measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 14 table 3a. latent factor loadings and fit indices in confirmatory factor analysis for the main 15 perma items factor/question 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 combo positive emotion how often do you feel joyful? p1 .78 .72 .84 .87 .89 .70 .81 .87 .85 .80 .86 how often do you feel positive? p2 .85 .76 .88 .87 .80 .86 .85 .88 .86 .85 .87 to what extent do you feel contented? p3 .68 .51 .83 .79 .83 .84 .78 .71 .84 .73 .80 engagement how often do you become absorbed in what you are doing? e1 .79 .79 .57 .65 .85 .61 .62 .57 .59 .63 .64 to what extent do you feel excited and interested in things? e2 .70 .81 .88 .86 .65 .54 .82 .90 .88 .83 .86 how often do you lose track of time while doing something you enjoy? e3 .82 .88 .48 .44 .80 .72 .46 .48 .49 .21 .46 relationship to what extent do you receive help and support from others when you need it? r1 .69 .77 .68 .65 .55 .63 .71 .62 .67 .55 .66 to what extent have you been feeling loved? r2 .82 .85 .87 .84 .92 .76 .81 .87 .89 .82 .85 how satisfied are you with your personal relationships? r3 .87 .79 .85 .84 .91 .83 .88 .90 .87 .80 .84 meaning to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life? m1 .93 .79 .87 .86 .91 .88 .90 .83 .91 .89 .87 to what extent do you feel that what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile? m2 .87 .68 .88 .87 .85 .91 .90 .87 .88 .87 .88 to what extent do you generally feel you have a sense of direction in your life? m3 .85 .85 .87 .86 .81 .77 .84 .75 .84 .82 .86 accomplishment how much of the time do you feel you are making progress towards accomplishing your goals? a1 .89 .86 .86 .87 .92 .90 .94 .80 .86 .76 .87 how often do you achieve the important goals you have set for yourself? a2 .89 .91 .80 .78 .84 .81 .71 .79 .82 .89 .80 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 15 table 3b. latent factor loadings and fit indices in confirmatory factor analysis for the main 15 perma items factor/question 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 combo how often are you able to handle your responsibilities? a3 .66 .91 .56 .57 .50 .36 .46 .65 .54 .78 .58 latent factor covariances positive emotion ~ engagement p,e .73 .77 .91 .88 .59 .82 .84 .81 .91 .86 .88 positive emotion ~ relationship p,r .72 .87 .78 .78 .71 .77 .79 .53 .78 .79 .78 positive emotion ~ meaning p,m .80 .83 .87 .84 .68 .73 .76 .79 .86 .86 .85 positive emotion ~ accomplishment p,a .70 .82 .84 .79 .66 .63 .70 .72 .80 .73 .80 engagement ~ relationship e,r .58 .84 .68 .64 .30 .67 .55 .36 .63 .72 .65 engagement ~ meaning e,m .77 .95 .81 .81 .54 .70 .74 .72 .86 .87 .82 engagement ~ accomplishment e,a .78 .92 .79 .79 .59 .83 .72 .62 .78 .77 .80 relationship ~ meaning r,m .71 .93 .69 .69 .65 .74 .54 .49 .68 .73 .69 relationship ~ accomplishment r,a .62 .89 .64 .64 .46 .53 .49 .46 .58 .65 .64 meaning ~ accomplishment m,a .81 .96 .92 .93 .66 .57 .89 .83 .86 .79 .91 model fit n 3029 408 4717 23692 285 294 166 184 1846 782 31966 rmsea .055 .077 .064 .066 .081 .098 .098 .107 .082 .081 .064 rmsea 90% confidence interval .051, .058 .067, .087 .062, .067 .065, .067 .069, .094 .087, .110 .081, .114 .092, .122 .078, .086 .074, .088 .063, .065 srmr .037 .034 .031 .032 .067 .068 .063 .074 .04 .043 .031 2 (df = 80) 790 274 1639 8347 231 308 207 249 1070 489 10606 cfi .976 .946 .967 .964 .944 .905 .919 .896 .949 .941 .967 tli .968 .929 .957 .953 .927 .875 .894 .864 .932 .923 .956 note. confirmatory factor analysis estimated using the lavaan package (version 0.5.16) in r (version 3.0.3). see figure 1 above for the estimated model. rmsea = root mean square error of approximation, srmr = standardized root mean residual, cfi = comparative fit index, tli = tucker lewis index. 2 = validation sample, 3 = mturk sample, 4 = brief measure test set, 5 = main norming sample, 6 = compassion study, 7 = online company employees, 8 = values study, 9 = harvard university students, 10 = positive intervention study, 11 = william & mary university students. combo combines samples 4-11 (participants who completed the final brief measure). measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 16 table 4. evidence for convergent and divergent validity: average correlations with other constructs n k p e r m a overall ne h initial 199 survey (samples 1a, 1b, 2, and 3) positive emotion 6995 4 engagement 7000 4 .59 relationship 7016 4 .61 .52 meaning 7004 4 .69 .68 .65 accomplishment 6999 4 .61 .65 .56 .74 overall wellbeing 7066 4 .83 .80 .81 .90 .84 negative emotion 6979 4 -.49 -.34 -.42 -.45 -.43 -.52 physical health 6791 4 .36 .31 .34 .37 .41 .43 -.28 loneliness 6942 4 -.40 -.29 -.55 -.42 -.36 -.49 .41 -.23 depression 6733 4 -.65 -.53 -.64 -.66 -.59 -.74 .61 -.42 flourishing 6739 4 .67 .64 .68 .81 .70 .84 -.48 .40 life satisfaction 6830 4 .65 .53 .68 .73 .65 .79 -.48 .43 pac-10 6640 4 .64 .62 .64 .75 .66 .80 -.50 .41 wemwbs 6696 4 .66 .61 .67 .73 .67 .80 -.55 .43 note. values are based on the average correlation across samples that measured the construct (k), weighted by the number within that sample (n). see appendix 2 for correlations by sample and for details on how the constructs were measured. wemwbs = warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale, pac-10 = personal action constructs rating scales, p = positive emotion, e = engagement, r = relationships, m = meaning, a = accomplishment, overall = overall wellbeing, ne = negative emotion, h = physical health. 5.3 measure refinement overall, the 15 items demonstrated adequate psychometric properties. over the two-year data collection period, we received various qualitative comments and emails. some participants had voluntarily noted confusing words, errors, and order effects. based on this feedback, we refined item wording. in addition, we chose to add eight additional items: one item assessing overall wellbeing; three negative emotion items assessing sadness, anger, and anxiety; one item assessing loneliness; and three items assessing self-perceived physical health. the final 23-item measure is provided in table 5 below. domain scores are created by taking the average of the three items (for each perma domain, negative emotion, and health; range = 0 to 10). overall wellbeing is the average of the main 15 perma items and the overall happiness item. loneliness is a single item. we had two reasons for including the additional items, beyond the 15 main perma items. first, these items act as filler items. by including the negative emotion and loneliness items, these disrupt response tendencies, addressing the issue of not including inversely scored items as part of the perma constructs (marsh, 1986). second, these items provide additional information that may be useful for many users. the positive focus of perma does not negate the importance of negative emotion; by including negative emotions, the measure acknowledges the importance of considering both positive and negative elements of the mental health spectrum. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 17 table 5. the final 23-item perma-profiler measure label question response anchors a1 how much of the time do you feel you are making progress towards accomplishing your goals? 0 = never, 10 = always e1 how often do you become absorbed in what you are doing? p1 in general, how often do you feel joyful? n1 in general, how often do you feel anxious? a2 how often do you achieve the important goals you have set for yourself? h1 in general, how would you say your health is? 0 = terrible, 10 = excellent m1 in general, to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life? 0 = not at all, 10 = completely r1 to what extent do you receive help and support from others when you need it? m2 in general, to what extent do you feel that what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile? e2 in general, to what extent do you feel excited and interested in things? lon how lonely do you feel in your daily life? h2 how satisfied are you with your current physical health? 0 = not at all, 10 = completely p2 in general, how often do you feel positive? 0 = never 10 = always n2 in general, how often do you feel angry? a3 how often are you able to handle your responsibilities? n3 in general, how often do you feel sad? e3 how often do you lose track of time while doing something you enjoy? h3 compared to others of your same age and sex, how is your health? 0 = terrible, 10 = excellent r2 to what extent do you feel loved? 0 = not at all, 10 = completely m3 to what extent do you generally feel you have a sense of direction in your life? r3 how satisfied are you with your personal relationships? p3 in general, to what extent do you feel contented? hap taking all things together, how happy would you say you are? 0 = not at all, 10 = completely the single item on loneliness is a strong predictor of many negative life outcomes (caccioppo, hawkley, & berntson, 2003). although perma focuses on psychosocial function, physical health is a correlated outcome that arguably could be considered a core part of flourishing (friedman & kern, 2014; norrish, 2015). indeed, physical health was moderately to strongly correlated with measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 18 each of the perma factors. the overall happiness item is similar to other overall assessments included in many surveys. it not only provides a link to other surveys, but also allows participants to provide an overall assessment of their own wellbeing, after reflecting on specific facets from the other questions. thus, for both methodological and theoretical reasons, we believe there is value in including the eight additional items. 6. part 3: testing the final measure 6.1 participants in 2013, we made the final questionnaire available to other researchers and made an online version available for potential participants to complete. we conducted a series of studies that included the measure, and several other researchers included the measure within their battery of assessments, sharing de-identified data with us to contribute to norm and validity information. each study included at least the 15 perma items and some demographic information. most also included other measures, providing additional tests of convergent and divergent validity. demographic information for each sample is summarized in table 1 above, and the specific measures included in each sample are provided in appendix 2. all procedures were approved by the university of pennsylvania institutional review board. one study was designed specifically to test the reliability of the final measure in its reduced form (sample 4, brief measure test set). during the collection of sample 4, we posted the survey at www.permaquestionnaire.org and advertised the survey on the authentichappiness.com website. between 19 february and 10 october 2013, 4,717 participants (64.2% female) completed the perma survey and were included in our analyses. at the end of the survey, participants were asked if they would be willing to complete the survey two weeks later to help establish cross-time stability. willing participants provided contact information. approximately two weeks later, participants were sent an invitation to complete the measure again. between 6 march and 10 october 2013, 1,073 individuals (71.6% female) completed the measure again and could be successfully matched to their time 1 responses. the authentic happiness website offers registered users the opportunity to complete various measures. the 23-item perma-profiler was added to the website in may 2014. between 21 may 2014 and 15 march 2016, 23,692 participants (34.5% female) from around the world completed the survey (sample 5, main norming set). basic demographic information (gender, age category, country, education, occupation) was also available. in addition, some participants returned at a later date, allowing us to consider stability over time. of these, 1,372 participants (34.3% female) completed the measure twice, with length of time between the two assessments ranging from one day to up to two years later (m = 68.9 days, sd = 89.94, median = 49.00). of these, 535 participants (41.4% female) completed the measure three or more times, with the length of time between the first and third assessment ranging from 1 to 633 days (m = 92.7 days, sd = 77.9, median = 101). in a cross-sectional study focused on activism and self-compassion (sample 6, compassion study), participants completed an online survey that included the main 15 perma items and the overall happiness item from the perma-profiler, as well as measures of self-compassion, hope, life satisfaction, perceived success, self-determination motivation, and compassion for others. a total of 285 participants (68.4% female) completed the survey and were included in the current analysis. in collaboration with a creative online organization, 294 employees (49.0% female; sample 7, online organization employees) completed a survey that included the 15 main perma items and the overall happiness item from the perma-profiler, as well as measures of social capital, work measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 19 performance, and an evaluation of the organization’s practices. about 85% of employees participated, including 24 teams from five global offices. in a study focused on personal values and wellbeing (sample 8, values study), 166 individuals (59.6% female) completed an online survey that included the perma-profiler and questions asking the extent to which 13 different values (e.g., work, balance, material wellbeing, health, helping others) mattered to the person. values were based on schwartz’s (2012) theory of basic values. a composite summed values score was calculated. after completing the survey, participants were invited to track their values and happiness each day for two weeks, and then were invited to complete the survey again. follow-up responses were received from 45 participants (75.6% female). sample 9 (harvard university students) came from data collected from students from harvard university enrolled in a positive psychology course. as a class learning activity, students completed a survey around weeks one, nine, and 12 that included the perma-profiler, along with measures of hope, self-efficacy, gratitude, perceived stress, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and life satisfaction. after the second assessment, some students completed an online positive intervention. data was collected across two semesters, with 184 students (81.5% female) completing the baseline measure, 107 students (76.6% female) completing the second assessment, and 86 students (75.6% female) completing the final assessment. as part of an online intervention study, the same survey used with sample 9 was completed by an additional 1,846 individuals (73.6% female; sample 9, positive intervention study). data from the baseline survey was included in the current analysis. in addition, 782 students (63% female) from william and mary university completed a 20item version of the perma-profiler (main 15 perma items, overall happiness, negative emotion, loneliness). the de-identified scores were shared with the authors to contribute to norm information (sample 11, william and mary university students). 6.2 results table 6 below summarizes descriptive information for the full combined sample (all participants who completed the reduced measure, samples 4-11; see appendix 3 for descriptive information split by gender, age group, and country region). table 6. descriptive information for full combined sample (samples 4-11) n mean median sd min 25th 50th 75th max full sample positive emotion 31965 6.69 7.00 1.97 0.00 5.67 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 31962 7.25 7.67 1.71 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 relationships 31940 6.90 7.33 2.15 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 31931 7.06 7.67 2.17 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 31963 7.21 7.67 1.78 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 31966 7.02 7.38 1.66 0.00 6.13 7.38 8.25 10.00 negative emotion 31386 4.46 4.33 2.06 0.00 3.00 4.33 6.00 10.00 physical health 30601 6.94 7.33 2.18 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 reliability and model fit for each sample is summarized in tables 2 and 3 above. without intervention, the factors were generally stable over time. correlations ranged from r = .51 for the engagement factor from baseline to time 3 in sample 9 (12 week period) to r = .90 for the measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 20 relationship factor between baseline and time 2 in sample 8 (two week period). associations were strongest when there were two weeks or less between measurement occasions, but correlations remained high even with longer periods of time. intervention effects were not directly tested, but may contribute to the observed variance. to examine convergent and divergent validity, effect sizes for the constructs assessed in each sample were meta-analytically combined (table 7 below; see appendix 2 for measure information and correlations within each sample). table 7. evidence for convergent and divergent validity: average correlations with other constructs (samples 4-11) n k p e r m a overall ne h positive emotion 31965 8 engagement 31962 8 .64 relationship 31940 8 .68 .46 meaning 31931 8 .75 .60 .60 accomplishment 31963 8 .68 .57 .54 .78 overall wellbeing 31966 8 .90 .76 .80 .89 .84 negative emotion 31386 6 -.53 -.28 -.40 -.42 -.38 -.49 physical health 30601 5 .48 .32 .40 .43 .46 .50 -.31 loneliness 31331 6 -.45 -.25 -.50 -.38 -.32 -.46 .54 -.23 depression 1974 2 -.61 -.38 -.49 -.55 -.49 -.61 .59 -.32 anxiety 1984 2 -.53 -.34 -.35 -.43 -.44 -.50 .68 -.29 fatigue 1919 2 -.42 -.30 -.27 -.32 -.37 -.40 .47 -.47 perceived stress 1880 2 -.58 -.34 -.44 -.46 -.48 -.55 .67 -.36 gratitude 1919 2 .58 .42 .55 .52 .45 .60 -.44 .29 hope 2225 3 .66 .56 .45 .68 .69 .73 -.45 .36 life satisfaction 2098 3 .76 .51 .65 .68 .64 .78 -.53 .44 self-efficacy 1905 2 .59 .51 .40 .60 .65 .65 -.44 .36 values 163 1 .20 .18 .13 .30 .20 .26 -.15 .23 burnout 195 1 -.42 -.43 -.34 -.46 -.57 -.56 compassion 264 1 .13 .25 .02 .19 .15 .17 identifies as an activist 285 1 .01 .18 -.04 .20 .01 .07 political orientation 245 1 -.09 -.15 -.12 -.16 .07 -.12 self-compassion 277 1 .49 .29 .45 .45 .35 .52 self-determination 250 1 -.53 -.35 -.47 -.54 -.46 -.60 organization practices 294 1 .33 .38 .34 .24 .38 .41 social capital 293 1 .37 .26 .35 .22 .26 .37 work performance 293 1 .14 .25 .20 .21 .19 .24 note. values are based on the average correlation across samples that measured the construct (k), weighted by the number within that sample (n). see appendix 2 for correlations by sample and for details on how the constructs were measured. p = positive emotion, e = engagement, r = relationships, m = meaning, a = accomplishment, overall = overall wellbeing, ne = negative emotion, h = physical health. the perma domains generally followed similar patterns of results, but the correlation strengths varied by factor. capturing the hedonic side of wellbeing, positive emotion was the strongest measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 21 inverse correlate of negative emotion, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and perceived stress. positive emotion was very strongly correlated with life satisfaction (r = .76), and was only weakly correlated with compassion, a strong sense of values, political orientation, and self-rated workplace performance. of the perma factors, engagement was the weakest correlate of most other variables. however, it was the strongest correlate of compassion, identifying as an activist, and workplace performance. relationship was the strongest correlate (inverse) of loneliness; otherwise it was moderately correlated with most factors and was weaker than other factors. meaning was the strongest correlate of having a strong sense of values and identifying as an activist – both of which represent what could be considered meaningful activities or orientations. hope was equally correlated with meaning and accomplishment. accomplishment was the strongest correlate of self-efficacy and less burnout. 7. general discussion through an extensive theoretical and empirical process, we developed a 23-item measure that assesses wellbeing across five domains (positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment). seligman (2011) suggests that these five domains can be defined and measured as separate but correlated constructs. maximizing brevity while still maintaining psychometric integrity, the scale includes acceptable internal reliability for each of the five domains and good overall model fit across over 30,000 participants worldwide. a particular benefit of the measure is that it assesses wellbeing across multiple domains. we suggest that in presenting individual or group results, the multidimensional structure of the measure should be retained, rather than condensing responses to a single flourishing score (see figure 2 below for an example). figure 2. example way of presenting a respondent’s scores, which explicitly identifies multiple domains of wellbeing. p = positive emotion, e = engagement, r = positive relationships, m = meaning/purpose in life, a = accomplishment, n = negative emotion, h = physical health. measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 22 a single score assumes that the underlying measure is unidimensional, but the perma-profiler was specifically designed to be multidimensional in nature. further, while a single overall flourishing score might provide a global indication of wellbeing, it obscures potentially meaningful variation amongst the domains. for instance, if a person scores particularly low in relationships, interventions might target strategies for building social connections (see kern, waters, adler, & white, 2015; kern, waters, white, & adler 2014 for further discussion of theoretical and practical benefits of a multidimensional approach). at this point we cannot recommend an ideal profile. indeed, the measure is intended to be descriptive – not prescriptive – in nature. different profiles may be more or less adaptive for different people at different times, depending on their personality, history, and social context. future research should test downstream associations between different profiles and outcomes such as objective physical health, income, and education, as well as the moderating role of other factors such as age, culture, and life events. the perma-profiler demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties across a large, diverse, international sample. subsequent work should examine discriminate, predictive, and additional convergent validity, and item order might be further examined. in addition, sensitivity to change with intervention should be tested. further, stability over even longer periods of time and variations across different cultures should be examined, taking into account response styles, cultural differences, proper translation of concepts, and judgment biases (oishi & schimmack, 2010). developing a valid measure of psychological constructs is a long process – if not a lifetime pursuit – requiring multiple samples and refinements in both items and theory (john & benet-martinez, 2000). although the perma-profiler is not the only measure that captures the five perma domains, it is the only measure to date that focuses primarily on the perma domains while also addressing the desirability of including several items per feature, instead of just one or two (huppert and so, 2013). future research might examine whether the perma-profiler or an alternative measure will prove to be the most appropriate within different contexts and applications. in conclusion, through an intensive process, we created a measure that at both content and analytical levels captures the five perma domains. the measure demonstrates acceptable reliability, cross-time stability, and evidence for convergent and divergent validity. the permaprofiler provides another tool for the wellbeing measurement toolbox. ultimately, we hope that this tool can help people better understand themselves, note their strengths and weaknesses, and find ways to more fully flourish in life. acknowledgments we thank dr. felicia huppert, founder of the university of cambridge well-being institute and one of the world’s leading experts in wellbeing measurement, for her guidance and comments throughout the development process. we thank rosie hancock, mapp, for her assistance and support in data collection and response management. we are also grateful to all the anonymous people who completed versions of the survey, provided feedback, and helped us develop, refine, and establish support for the measure. author note support for this publication was provided by the university of melbourne’s centre for positive psychology, the 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(2011). positive psychology 2.0: towards a balanced interactive model of the good life. canadian psychology, 52(2), 69-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022511 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.68 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141 http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000353263 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.4.719 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1521 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013164405282471 http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2167702612469015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-7-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12000 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195342819.013.0009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.98.2.219 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/12350-003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022511 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 27 appendix 1. the perma item bank domain sub-domain question used response scale source positive emotion general positive taking all things together, how happy would you say you are? 0=extremely unhappy, 10=extremely happy ess positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: positive 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: negative 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: good 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: bad 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: pleasant 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: unpleasant 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: happy 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: sad 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: afraid 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: joyful 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: angry 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: contented 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: anxious 0=never, 10=always ess positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: cheerful 0=never, 10=always wemwbs measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 28 domain sub-domain question used response scale source positive emotion recent positive during the past week, how often have you felt: relaxed 0=never, 10=always wemwbs positive emotion recent negative during the past week, how often have you felt: nervous 0=never, 10=always panas positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: positive 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: negative 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: good 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: bad 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: pleasant 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: unpleasant 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: happy 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: sad 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: afraid 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: joyful 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: angry 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: contented 0=never, 10=always spane positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: anxious 0=never, 10=always ess positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: cheerful 0=never, 10=always wemwbs measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 29 domain sub-domain question used response scale source positive emotion general positive in general, how often do you feel: relaxed 0=never, 10=always wemwbs positive emotion general negative in general, how often do you feel: nervous 0=never, 10=always panas engagement absorption how much of the time during the past week were you absorbed in what you were doing? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time ess engagement absorption how much of the time do you become absorbed in what you are doing? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time ess engagement absorption how much of the time do you lose track of time while doing something you enjoy? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time ess engagement absorption how much of the time during the past week were you absorbed in something you enjoyed doing? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time ess engagement absorption how much of the time do you do things that you find interesting or challenging? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time ess engagement absorption in general, how often do you find that you become completely engrossed in something? 0=never, 10=always flow engagement absorption to what extent do you become unaware of what is going on around you when engaged in activities that are important to you? 0=not at all, 10=completely lab engagement effort how much effort do you generally devote to the things that are important to you? 0=none at all, 10=complete engagement engagement effort how much attention do you generally focus on the things that are important to you? 0=none at all, 10=complete engagement engagement effort how much energy do you generally give to the things that are important to you? 0=none at all, 10=complete engagement engagement effort how challenging for you are the activities you are involved in? 0=not at all, 10=extremely lab engagement effort in general, how often do you exert your full effort on the activities you engage in? 0=never, 10=always lab engagement interest how much of the time are you really interested in what you are doing? 0=none of the time, 10= all of the time ahi engagement interest how much of the time during the past week have you felt bored? 0=none of the time, 10= all of the time ess engagement interest how engaged and interested are you in your daily activities? 0=not at all, 10=extremely fs measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 30 domain sub-domain question used response scale source engagement interest during the past week, to what extent did you feel particularly excited or interested in something? 0=not at all, 10=extremely abs engagement interest in general, to what extent do you feel particularly excited or interested in things? 0=not at all, 10=extremely abs engagement interest to what extent do you love learning new things? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ess engagement involvement during the past week, to what extent have you been managing to keep yourself busy and occupied? 0=not at all, 10=extremely ghq-30 engagement involvement to what extent would you describe yourself as committed and involved? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ohi engagement involvement how involved are you in activities that are important to you? 0=not at all,10=extremely lab engagement involvement in general, how often do you participate in activities that are important to you? 0=never, 10=always lab engagement involvement how much of the time do you spend doing things you enjoy? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time lab relationships giving in general, to what extent are you a giving person? 0=not at all, 10=extremely spwb relationships giving to what extent are you willing to give of your time to others in need? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal spwb relationships giving how satisfied are you with your ability to provide support for others? 0=extremely dissatisfied, 10=extremely satisfied who-qol 100 relationships giving to what extent do you actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal fs relationships giving to what extent do you provide help and support to others when they need it? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ess relationships embedded how well do you generally get on with people around you? 0=not at all, 10=extremely ons relationships embedded how satisfied are you with your personal relationships? 0=extremely dissatisfied, 10=extremely satisfied who-qol 100 relationships embedded in general, how often do you meet or talk with family and friends? 0=never, 10=always isel relationships embedded in general, to what extent has maintaining close relationships been difficult for you? 0=not at all, 10=extremely spwb relationships embedded how much of the time during the past week have you been feeling close to other people? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time wemwbs measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 31 domain sub-domain question used response scale source relationships embedded how many close friends do you have? please also include members of your family you consider to be close friends. text box, type in the number ess relationships perceived to what extent have you been feeling loved? 0=not at all, 10=completely wemwbs relationships perceived to what extent do you feel that there are people in your life who really care about you? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ess relationships perceived to what extent do you feel appreciated by the people you know? 0=not at all, 10=completely ons relationships perceived to what extent do you feel that people treat you with respect? 0=not at all, 10=completely ons relationships perceived how lonely do you feel in your daily life? 0=not at all, 10=extremely ons relationships perceived to what extent do you feel that there is no one with whom you can share your most private worries and fears? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal isel relationships perceived to what extent do you feel you have someone with whom you can discuss intimate and personal matters? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ess relationships perceived how supportive and rewarding are your social relationships? 0=not at all, 10=extremely fs relationships perceived to what extent do you receive help and support from others when you need it? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ess relationships perceived how satisfied are you with the support that you get from others? 0=extremely dissatisfied, 10=extremely satisfied who-qol 100 meaning worth in general, to what extent do your daily activities seem trivial and unimportant? 0=not at all, 10=extremely spwb meaning worth in general, to what extent do you feel what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile? 0=not at all, 10=extremely ess meaning worth in general, to what extent do you feel that what you do in your daily activities is valuable and worthwhile? 0=not at all, 10=extremely ess meaning worth how useful a role do you feel you play in the world around you? 0=not at all, 10=extremely ons meaning worth how much of the time during the past week have you been feeling useful? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time wemwbs meaning transcendent has your life had a very clear goal or purpose? 0=no clear goal or purpose, 10=a very clear goal or purpose soc meaning transcendent during the past week, to what extent have you been feeling inspired? 0=not at all, 10=extremely panas meaning transcendent to what extent do you have a sense of purpose in what you do? 0=not at all, 10=completely gat measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 32 domain sub-domain question used response scale source meaning transcendent to what extent do you live your life with purpose? 0=not at all, 10=completely lab meaning transcendent in general, to what extent do you lead a purposeful and meaningful life? 0=not at all, 10=extremely fs meaning direction to what extent do you live in accordance with your values and beliefs? 0=not at all, 10=completely lab meaning direction to what extent do you generally feel you have a sense of direction in your life? 0=none at all, 10=complete ons meaning direction to what extent do you plan and prepare for the future? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ess meaning direction to what extent do you like planning and preparing for the future? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal ess meaning direction to what extent do you have personal projects or goals that you feel it is important for you to pursue? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal lab accomplishment goals how easy is it for you to stick to your aims? 0=not at all, 10=extremely gse accomplishment goals how much of the time do you feel you are making progress towards accomplishing your goals? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time gse accomplishment goals to what extent do you accomplish the things you set out to do in your daily activities? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal spwb accomplishment goals how much of the time do you achieve the important goals you have set for yourself? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time lab accomplishment goals how much of the time are you successful in achieving the goals you set for yourself? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time lab accomplishment efficacy to what extent can you usually handle whatever comes your way? 0=handle extremely poorly, 10=handle extremely well gse accomplishment efficacy how much of the time are you able to handle your responsibilities? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time spwb accomplishment efficacy in general, to what extent do you feel able to deal with important problems in your life? 0=not at all, 10=extremely ons accomplishment efficacy in your daily life, how much opportunity do you feel you have to show how capable you are? 0=no opportunity at all, 10=a great deal of opportunity ons accomplishment efficacy to what extent do you feel you can do just about anything you really set your mind to? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal sms measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 33 domain sub-domain question used response scale source accomplishment efficacy in general, to what extent are you competent and capable in the activities that are important to you? 0=not at all, 10=extremely fs accomplishment subjective during the past week, to what extent did you feel pleased about having accomplished something? 0=not at all, 10=extremely abs accomplishment subjective how much of the time do you feel a sense of accomplishment from what you do? 0=none of the time, 10=all of the time ess accomplishment subjective to what extent do you feel a sense of accomplishment from the things you do in your daily life? 0=none at all, 10=complete ons accomplishment subjective to what extent do you feel a sense of accomplishment from the things you have achieved in your life up until now? 0=none at all, 10=complete lab accomplishment subjective in general, to what extent do you feel proud of what you have achieved? 0=not at all, 10=extremely panas accomplishment subjective to what extent do you feel disappointed about your achievements in life? 0=not at all, 10=a great deal spwb note. abs = affect balance scale (bradburn, 1969); ahi = authentic happiness inventory (seligman, 2002); engagement = engagement (rich, lepine, & crawford, 2010); ess = european social survey (huppert, et al., 2009); flow = flow questionnaire (csikszentmihalyi & csikszentmihalyi, 1988); fs = flourishing scale (diener, et. al., 2010); gat = global assessment tool (peterson, park & castro, 2011); ghq-30 = general health questionnaire (goldberg, 1972); gse = generalized self-efficacy scale (schwarzer & jerusalem, 1995); isel = interpersonal support evaluation list (cohen & hoberman, 1983); lab = lab generated questions; ohi = oxford happiness inventory (hills & argyle, 2001); ons = uk office for national statistics experimental opinion survey questions (office for national statistics, 2011); panas = positive and negative affect schedule (watson, clark & tellegen, 1988): sms = self-mastery scale (pearlin & schooler, 1978); soc = sense of coherence (antonovsky, 1987); spane = scale of positive and negative experience (diener, et. al., 2010); spwb = scales of psychological well-being (ryff & keyes, 1995); wemwbs = warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale (stewart-brown, et al., 2009); and whoqol 100 = world health organization quality of life (power, et al., 1998). measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 34 appendix 1 references antonovsky, a. (1987). unraveling the mystery of health: how people manage stress and stay well. san francisco, ca: joseey-bass. bradburn, n. m. (1969). the structure of psychological well-being. chicago, il: aldine. cohen, s., & hoberman, h. m. (1983). positive events and social supports as buffers of life change stress. journal of applied social psychology, 13(2), 99-125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1983.tb02325.x csikszentmihalyi, m., & csikszentmihalyi, i. (1988). optimal experience: psychological studies of flow in consciousness. cambridge, england. cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511621956 diener, e., wirtz, d., tov, w., kim-prieto, c., choi, d., oishi, s., & biswas-diener, r. (2010). new wellbeing measures: short scales to assess flourishing and positive and negative feelings. social indicators research, 97(2), 143-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9493-y goldberg, d. p. (1972). the detection of psychiatric illness by questionnaire. london, england: oxford university press. hills, p., & argyle, m. (2001). emotional stability as a major dimension of happiness. personality and individual differences, 31(8), 1357-1364. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869(00)00229-4 huppert, f. a., marks, n., clark, a., siegrist, j., stutzer, a., vitterso, j., & wahrendorf, m. (2009). measuring well-being across europe: description of the ess well-being module and preliminary findings. social indicators research, 91(3), 301-315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9346-0 office for national statistics (2011, december). initial investigation into subjective well-being from the opinions survey. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_2 44488.pdf pearlin, l. i., & schooler, c. (1978). structure of coping. journal of health and social behavior, 19(1), 2-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2136319 peterson, c., park, n., & castro, c. a. (2011). assessment for the u.s. army comprehensive soldier fitness program: the global assessment tool. american psychologist, 66(1), 10-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021658 power, m., kuyken, w., orley, j., herrman, h., schofield, h., murphy, b., . . . sartorius, n. (1998). the world health organization quality of life assessment (whoqol): development and general psychometric properties. social science & medicine, 46, 1569-1585. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0277-9536(98)00009-4 rich, b. l., lepine, j. a., & crawford, e. r. (2010). job engagement: antecedents and effects on job performance. academy of management journal, 53(3), 617-635. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.51468988 ryff, c. d., & keyes, c. l. m. (1995). the structure of psychological well-being revisited. journal of personality and social psychology, 69(4), 719-727. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.4.719 schwarzer, r., & jerusalem, m. (1995). generalized self-efficacy scale. in j. weinman, s. wright, & m. johnston (eds.), measures in health psychology: a user’s portfolio, causal and control beliefs (pp. 35-37). windsor, england: nfer-nelson. seligman, m. e. p. (2002). authentic happiness. new york, ny: free press. stewart-brown, s., tennant, a., tennant, r., platt, s., parkinson, j., & weich, s. (2009). internal construct validity of the warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale (wemwbs): a rasch analysis using data from the scottish health education population survey. health and quality of life outcomes, 7(15), 1-8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-7-15 watson, d., clark, l., & tellegen, a. (1988). development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the panas. journal of personality and social psychology, 54(6), 1063-1070. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1983.tb02325.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511621956 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9493-y http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869%2800%2900229-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9346-0 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http:/www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_244488.pdf http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http:/www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_244488.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2136319 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0021658 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0277-9536%2898%2900009-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.51468988 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.4.719 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-7-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 35 appendix 2. perma correlations with other variables by sample n mean sd 0min 0max p e r m a overall ne h sample 1a (development sample subset 1) positive emotion 1824 06.56 01.95 00.00 010.00 engagement 1820 07.44 01.86 00.00 010.00 .59** relationships 1824 06.74 02.31 00.00 010.00 .61** .49** meaning 1820 06.94 02.45 00.00 010.00 .71** .68** .65** accomplishment 1820 07.15 01.90 00.00 010.00 .62** .64** .55** .72** overall wellbeing 1837 06.94 01.78 00.00 010.00 .84** .79** .81** .91** .83** negative emotion 1818 03.97 02.11 00.00 010.00 -.51** -.33** -.43** -.47** -.44** -.53** physical health a 1757 03.50 00.99 01.00 005.00 .37** .30** .34** .35** .42** .43** -.31** loneliness b 1804 04.37 03.31 00.00 010.00 -.39** -.29** -.58** -.43** -.37** -.51** .42** -.24** depression c 1768 15.41 05.75 08.00 032.00 -.65** -.51** -.65** -.66** -.57** -.74** .62** -.42** life satisfaction d 1787 22.74 07.86 05.00 035.00 .65** .51** .68** .72** .63** .78** -.50** .42** flourishing e 1755 43.25 09.35 11.00 056.00 .65** .59** .67** .78** .67** .81** -.48** .38** wemwbs f 1740 25.12 05.16 07.00 035.00 .67** .59** .67** .73** .65** .80** -.57** .43** pac-10 g 1720 75.77 18.88 10.00 110.00 .67** .60** .65** .77** .66** .81** -.51** .40** sample 1b (development sample subset 2) positive emotion 1828 06.56 01.95 0.00 010.00 engagement 1826 07.45 01.82 0.00 010.00 .59** relationships 1830 06.80 02.32 0.00 010.00 .61** .52** meaning 1828 06.97 02.45 0.00 010.00 .69** .68** .64** accomplishment 1824 07.11 01.98 0.00 010.00 .60** .64** .57** .74** overall wellbeing 1845 06.95 01.79 0.00 010.00 .83** .80** .81** .90** .84** negative emotion 1824 03.89 02.05 0.00 010.00 -.53** -.34** -.42** -.48** -.45** -.54** physical health a 1776 03.48 00.99 1.00 005.00 .35** .30** .33** .38** .42** .43** -.31** loneliness b 1814 04.28 03.29 0.00 010.00 -.43** -.32** -.56** -.45** -.38** -.52** .42** -.25** depression c 1760 15.22 05.66 8.00 032.00 -.65** -.52** -.63** -.67** -.60** -.75** .61** -.41** life satisfaction d 1780 22.94 07.76 5.00 035.00 .66** .54** .69** .74** .65** .80** -.49** .42** flourishing e 1764 43.55 09.56 8.00 056.00 .66** .63** .65** .79** .68** .82** -.46** .39** wemwbs f 1757 25.17 05.26 7.00 035.00 .67** .62** .68** .74** .67** .81** -.56** .42** pac-10 g 1738 75.87 18.95 10.00 110.00 .64** .64** .64** .75** .67** .80** -.49** .40** measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 36 n mean sd 0min 0max p e r m a overall ne h sample 2 (validation sample) positive emotion 2938 06.51 02.00 0.00 010.00 engagement 2946 07.36 01.92 0.00 010.00 .60** relationships 2954 06.66 02.39 0.00 010.00 .61** .51** meaning 2948 06.83 02.50 0.00 010.00 .68** .69** .63** accomplishment 2947 07.06 02.01 0.00 010.00 .60** .66** .55** .73** overall wellbeing 2976 06.85 01.84 0.25 010.00 .84** .81** .80** .90** .84** negative emotion 2932 03.99 02.07 0.00 010.00 -.51** -.37** -.42** -.47** -.43** -.53** physical health a 2855 03.45 01.01 1.00 005.00 .36** .33** .34** .38** .41** .44** -.27** loneliness b 2919 04.47 03.33 0.00 010.00 -.43** -.32** -.57** -.44** -.36** -.52** .41** -.24** depression c 2824 15.70 05.82 8.00 032.00 -.66** -.56** -.65** -.67** -.60** -.76** 605** -.42** life satisfaction d 2864 22.57 07.82 5.00 035.00 .66** .55** .67** .73** .66** .79** -.50** .43** flourishing e 2833 43.16 09.32 8.00 056.00 .69** .68** .69** .83** .73** .87** -.51** .42** wemwbs f 2820 24.79 05.21 7.00 035.00 .66** .62** .66** .73** .68** .81** -.57** .43** pac-10 g 2787 74.80 19.49 10.00 110.00 .63** .64** .63** .74** .65** .80** -.52** .41** sample 3 (mturk sample) positive emotion 405 06.78 01.80 01.00 010.00 engagement 408 06.92 01.80 00.67 010.00 .52** relationships 408 07.08 02.09 00.00 010.00 .64** .63** meaning 408 07.00 02.06 00.00 010.00 .65** .71** .75** accomplishment 408 06.85 01.93 00.00 010.00 .62** .70** .72** .82** overall wellbeing 408 06.91 01.67 01.25 010.00 .79** .81** .88** .92** .90** negative emotion 405 04.39 02.17 00.00 009.67 -.20** -.14** -.27** -.20** -.29** -.26** physical health a 403 03.40 00.86 01.00 005.00 .39** .30** .41** .37** .40** .44** -.17** loneliness b 405 05.29 03.02 00.00 010.00 -.12* -0.03 -.19** -.10* -.16** -.15** .39** -.09 depression c 381 16.82 05.26 08.00 032.00 -.49** -.36** -.56** -.51** -.58** -.59** .50** -.40** life satisfaction d 399 23.76 06.74 05.00 035.00 .61** .46** .72** .69** .68** .75** -.26** .50** flourishing e 387 42.33 08.31 17.00 056.00 .66** .69** .79** .81** .77** .87** -.32** .46** wemwbs f 379 25.70 04.85 10.00 035.00 .62** .54** .66** .68** .68** .75** -.30** .45** pac-10 g 395 75.15 17.72 26.00 110.00 .58** .50** .69** .71** .67** .75** -.34** .49** measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 37 n mean sd 0min 0max p e r m a overall ne h sample 4 (brief measure test set) positive emotion 4717 06.43 01.97 00.00 010.00 engagement 4717 06.92 01.76 00.00 010.00 .66** relationships 4717 06.63 02.20 00.00 010.00 .69** .48** meaning 4717 06.77 02.20 00.00 010.00 .78** .60** .61** accomplishment 4717 06.78 01.80 00.00 010.00 .70** .56** .54** .78** overall wellbeing 4717 06.70 01.67 00.00 010.00 .91** .76** .80** .90** .84** negative emotion 4717 04.19 02.00 00.00 010.00 -.58** -.33** -.46** -.46** -.44** -.55** physical health h 4715 07.02 02.09 00.00 010.00 .49** .34** .40** .44** .46** .51** -.32** loneliness 4702 04.00 02.86 00.00 010.00 -.45** -.29** -.50** -.39** -.32** -.47** .50** -.22** sample 5 (main norming set) positive emotion 23692 06.81 01.95 00.00 010.00 engagement 23692 07.38 01.67 00.00 010.00 .64** relationships 23692 06.98 02.14 00.00 010.00 .68** .46** meaning 23692 07.16 02.16 00.00 010.00 .75** .60** .60** accomplishment 23692 07.39 01.74 00.00 010.00 .68** .57** .54** .79** overall wellbeing 23692 07.14 01.64 00.00 010.00 .90** .76** .80** .89** .84** negative emotion 23692 04.51 02.08 00.00 010.00 -.51** -.27** -.39** -.41** -.36** -.47** physical health h 23692 06.96 02.20 00.00 010.00 .48** .32** .40** .43** .46** .50** -.31** loneliness b 23692 04.13 03.04 00.00 010.00 -.44** -.24** -.50** -.38** -.32** -.46** .55** -.24** sample 6 (compassion study) positive emotion 285 07.12 01.48 01.33 010.00 engagement 282 07.64 01.45 02.33 010.00 .53** relationships 285 07.53 01.77 01.33 010.00 .65** .33** meaning 279 07.93 01.76 01.00 010.00 .60** .50** .56** accomplishment 282 07.35 01.47 01.67 010.00 .56** .48** .43** .57** overall wellbeing 285 07.50 01.27 01.81 009.81 .85** .70** .79** .84** .75** political orientation i 245 02.31 01.49 01.00 007.00 -.09 -.15* -.12 -.16* .07 -.12 identifies as an activist j 285 36.96 13.39 08.00 056.00 .009 .18** -.04 .20** .01 .07 life satisfaction d 285 24.21 06.54 05.00 035.00 .63** .36** .60** .50** .50** .67** self-compassion k 277 03.13 00.62 01.42 004.58 .49** .29** .45** .45** .35** .52** measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 38 n mean sd 0min 0max p e r m a overall ne h hope l 265 51.41 07.84 11.00 064.00 .58** .55** .41** .64** .65** .72** compassion m 264 05.67 01.00 02.60 007.00 .13* .25** .02 .19** .15* .17** activist orientation n 256 02.13 00.86 01.00 004.50 -.16* .004 -.12 -.07 -.20** -.14* burnout o 195 02.15 00.42 01.00 003.56 -.42** -.43** -.34** -.46** -.57** -.56** self-determination p 250 02.20 00.66 01.00 004.40 -.53** -.35** -.47** -.54** -.46** -.60** sample 7 (online organization employees) positive emotion 294 07.26 01.52 01.67 010.00 engagement 294 07.84 01.26 03.33 010.00 .57** relationships 289 07.75 01.61 01.00 010.00 .66** .46** meaning 288 07.63 01.64 00.00 010.00 .63** .49** .60** accomplishment 294 07.41 01.36 03.00 010.00 .57** .65** .48** .51** overall wellbeing 294 07.59 01.18 03.31 010.00 .86** .76** .80** .82** .77** work performance q 293 08.09 01.13 03.00 010.00 .14* .25** .20** .21** .19** .24** organization practices r 294 07.99 01.34 02.25 010.00 .33** .38** .34** .24** .38** .41** social capital s 293 07.63 01.50 03.25 010.00 .37** .26** .35** .22** .26** .37** sample 8 (values study) positive emotion 166 006.27 01.80 01.00 009.67 engagement 166 006.95 01.69 01.67 010.00 .61** relationships 166 006.85 02.02 00.67 010.00 .69** .40** meaning 166 006.51 02.24 00.33 010.00 .67** .58** .48** accomplishment 166 06.82 01.65 01.33 009.67 .63** .48** .52** .71** overall wellbeing 166 06.67 01.54 01.50 009.44 .89** .73** .77** .85** .81** negative emotion 166 04.41 01.84 00.33 008.67 -.54** -.22** -.44** -.33** -.35** -.47** physical health h 166 06.57 02.07 00.00 010.00 .44** .22** .39** .37** .52** .48** -.41** loneliness b 166 04.05 02.85 00.00 010.00 -.55** -.31** -.63** -.44** -.43** -.59** .54** -.30** values t 163 77.14 15.26 02.00 111.00 .20** .18* .13 .30** .20** .26** -.15 .23** sample 9 (harvard university students) positive emotion 184 06.67 01.73 02.00 010.00 engagement 184 07.25 01.60 01.33 010.00 .54** relationships 184 07.11 02.06 01.00 010.00 .55** .22** meaning 184 07.12 01.70 01.67 010.00 .70** .49** .48** measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 39 n mean sd 0min 0max p e r m a overall ne h accomplishment 184 07.01 01.52 02.00 010.00 .62** .39** .45** .71** overall wellbeing 184 07.03 01.34 03.07 009.73 .87** .66** .72** .86** .79** negative emotion 184 04.33 01.86 00.33 009.00 -.48** -.17* -.20** -.35** -.33** -.39** physical health h 184 07.09 02.06 00.33 010.00 .54** .38** .26** .47** .45** .53** -.26** loneliness b 184 04.77 02.84 00.00 010.00 -.44** -.21** -.45** -.36** -.25** -.45** .45** -.18** hope u 182 05.46 00.96 02.60 007.00 .64** .48** .44** .67** .69** .74** -.46** .41** self-efficacy v 181 05.76 00.88 02.50 007.00 .53** .37** .33** .53** .60** .59** -.43** .39** gratitude w 181 06.16 00.84 03.00 007.00 .39** .09 .55** .22** .24** .40** -.30** .16* perceived stress x 179 03.23 01.23 01.17 007.00 -.45** -.20** -.35** -.39** -.43** -.47** .58** -.30** depression y 184 02.68 01.96 01.00 009.50 -.35** -.12 -.38** -.37** -.31** -.40** .57** -.18* anxiety y 184 02.84 01.34 01.00 006.50 -.44** -.21** -.30** -.38** -.39** -.44** .66** -.25** fatigue y 181 03.35 01.40 01.00 007.00 -.45** -.26** -.27** -.40** -.38** -.45** .53** -.58** life satisfaction z 176 06.65 01.84 01.00 010.00 .68** .45** .55** .65** .70** .77** -.43** .39** sample 10 (positive intervention study) positive emotion 1846 05.83 02.08 00.00 010.00 engagement 1846 06.63 01.87 00.00 010.00 .67** relationships 1825 06.39 02.23 00.00 010.00 .69** .46** meaning 1825 06.34 02.28 00.00 010.00 .77** .64** .61** accomplishment 1846 06.24 01.90 00.33 010.00 .68** .59** .50** .73** overall wellbeing 1846 06.28 01.75 00.20 010.00 .91** .79** .79** .90** .83** negative emotion 1845 04.84 01.96 00.67 010.00 -.56** -.31** -.40** -.43** -.38** -.50** physical health h 1844 06.55 02.16 00.00 010.00 .45** .29** .34** .40** .43** .45** -.31** loneliness b 1825 04.94 02.92 00.00 010.00 -.46** -.28** -.46** -.37** -.31** -.45** .50** -.19** hope u 1778 04.83 01.27 01.00 007.00 .67** .57** .46** .69** .70** .73** -.45** .36** self-efficacy v 1724 05.29 01.14 01.00 007.00 .60** .52** .41** .61** .65** .66** -.44** .36** gratitude w 1738 05.70 01.08 01.00 007.00 .60** .45** .55** .55** .47** .62** -.46** .30** perceived stress x 1701 03.64 01.38 01.00 007.00 -.59** -.36** -.45** -.47** -.49** -.56** .68** -.37** depression y 1790 03.40 02.21 01.00 010.00 -.64** -.41** -.50** -.57** -.51** -.63** .59** -.33** anxiety y 1800 03.17 01.37 01.00 007.00 -.54** -.35** -.36** -.43** -.45** -.51** .68** -.29** fatigue y 1738 03.64 01.45 01.00 007.00 -.42** -.30** -.27** -.31** -.37** -.40** .46** -.46** life satisfaction z 1637 05.78 02.25 00.00 010.00 .79** .54** .67** .71** .66** .80** -.54** .44** measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 40 n mean sd 0min 0max p e r m a overall ne h sample 11 (william & mary university sample) positive emotion 781 06.30 01.63 00.00 010.00 engagement 781 06.55 01.43 01.67 010.00 .56** relationships 782 06.74 01.85 00.33 010.00 .65** .48** meaning 780 06.77 02.00 00.00 010.00 .73** .58** .61** accomplishment 782 06.80 01.56 00.00 010.00 .63** .49** .56** .71** overall wellbeing 782 06.64 01.41 01.06 009.63 .87** .72** .81** .89** .82** negative emotion 782 04.02 01.68 00.00 009.00 -.63** -.34** -.42** -.53** -.48** -.59** loneliness b 762 04.18 02.42 00.00 010.00 -.52** -.34** -.58** -.46** -.37** -.57** .54** note. p = positive emotion, e = engagement, r = relationship, m = meaning, a = accomplishment, overall = overall wellbeing, ne = negative emotion, h = physical health. a four physical health items adapted from the short-form 36 (ware & sherbourne) physical function subscale; b single item (“how lonely do you feel in your daily life?”); c center of epidemiological studies-depression scale (ces-d, radloff, 1977); d satisfaction with life scale (swls, diener, emmons, larsen, & griffin, 1985); e flourishing scale (diener et al., 2010); f short warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale (wemwbs, stewart-brown et al., 2009); g the pac-10 (personal action constructs) rating scales (little, salmelaaro, & phillips, 2007); h final three health items included in the 23-item perma-profiler measure; i single item on political orientation (1 = liberal, 7 = conservative); j activist identity scale (klar & klassar, 2009); k self-compassion scale (neff, 2003); l 12-item adult hope scale (snyder, irving, & anderson, 1991); m santa clara brief compassion scale (hwang, plante, & lackey, 2008); n activist orientation scale (corning & myers, 2002); o maslach burnout inventory (maslach, jackson, & leiter, 1997); p self-determination scale (sheldon & deci, 1996); q single item self-rating on overall work performance (0 = low, 10 = high); r organizational practices subscale from the organizational virtuousness scale (cameron, bright, & caza, 2004); s four self-rated items (0 = strongly disagree, 10 = strongly agree: i feel a sense of belonging at work; i socialize with my co-workers outside of work; i can trust and depend on my co-workers; i have positive feelings towards my co-workers); t average self-ratings across 13 values (work, time balance, education, achievement, material wealth, health, good time, helping others, security, nature, family, spirituality, other) adapted from schwartz (2012); u 8-item hope scale (snyder, 1995); v general self-efficacy scale (chen, gully, & eden, 2001); w gratitude questionnaire (mccullough, emmons, & tsang, 2002); x perceived stress scale (cohen, kamarck, & mermelstein, 1983); y promis short-form scales (pilkonis et al., 2011); z average of two self-ratings on overall life satisfaction (cantril’s ladder and “overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?”). measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 41 appendix 2 references cameron, k., bright., d., & caza, a. (2004). exploring the relationships between organizational virtuousness and performance. american behavioral scientist, 47(6), 766-790. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002764203260209 cantril, h. (1965). the pattern of human concerns. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. chen, g., gully, s. m., & eden, d. (2001).validation of a new general self-efficacy scale. organizational research methods, 4(1), 62-83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/109442810141004 cohen, s., kamarck, t., mermelstein, r. (1983). a global measure of perceived stress. journal of health and social behavior, 24(4), 385-396. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2136404 corning, a., & myers, d. (2002). individual orientation towards engagement in social action. political psychology, 23(4), 702-739. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0162-895x.00304 diener, e., emmons, r. a., larsen, r. j., & griffin, s. (1985). the satisfaction with life scale. journal of personality assessment, 49(1), 71-75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13 diener, e., wirtz, d., tov, w., kim-prieto, c., choi, d., oishi, s., & biswas-diener, r. (2010). new wellbeing measures: short scales to assess flourishing and positive and negative feelings. social indicators research, 97(2), 143-156. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9493-y hwang, j. y., plante, t., & lackey, k. (2008). the development of the santa clara brief compassion scale: an abbreviation of sprecher and fehr's compassionate love scale. pastoral psychology, 56(4), 421428. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11089-008-0117-2 klar, m., & kasser, t. (2009). some benefits of being an activist: measuring activism and its role in psychological well-being. political psychology, 30(5), 755-777. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.14679221.2009.00724.x little, b., salmela-aro, k., & phillips, s. (2007). personal project pursuit: goals, action and human flourishing. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. maslach, c., jackson, s. e., & leiter, m. p. (1997). maslach burnout inventory. (3rd ed.). in c. p. zalaquett & r. j. wood (eds.), evaluating stress: a book of resources (pp. 191-218). lanham, md: scarecrow education. mccullough, m. e., emmons, r. a., & tsang, j. (2002). the grateful disposition: a conceptual and empirical topography. journal of personality and social psychology, 82, 112-127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.112 neff, k. (2003). the development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. self and identity, 2(3), 223-250. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15298860309027 pilkonis, p. a., choi, s. w., reise, s. p., stover, a. m., riley, w. t., & cella, d. (2011). item banks for measuring emotional distress from the patient-reported outcomes measurement information system (promis™): depression, anxiety, and anger. assessment, 18(3), 263-283. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1073191111411667 radloff, l. s. (1977). the ces-d scale: a self-report depression scale for research in the general population. applied psychological measurement, 1(3), 385-401. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014662167700100306 schwartz, s. h. (2012). an overview of the schwartz theory of basic values. online readings in psychology and culture, 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116 sheldon, k., & deci, e. (1996). the self-determination scale. (unpublished manuscript). university of rochester, rochester, ny. snyder, c. r. (1995) conceptualizing, measuring, and nurturing hope. journal of counseling and development, 73(3), 355-360. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1995.tb01764.x snyder, c. r., irving, l. m., & anderson, j. r. (1991). in c. r. snyder & d. r. forsyth (eds.), hope and health. elmsford, ny: pergamon press. stewart-brown, s., tennant, a., tennant, r., platt, s., parkinson, j., & weich, s. (2009). internal construct validity of the warwick-edinburgh mental well-being scale (wemwbs): a rasch analysis using data from the scottish health education population survey. health and quality of life outcomes, 7(15), 1-8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-7-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002764203260209 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/109442810141004 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2136404 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0162-895x.00304 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-009-9493-y http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11089-008-0117-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2009.00724.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2009.00724.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.112 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15298860309027 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1073191111411667 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014662167700100306 http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1995.tb01764.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-7-15 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 42 ware, j. e., & sherbourne, c. d. (1992). the mos 36-item short-form health survey (sf-36): i. conceptual framework and item selection. medical care, 30(6), 473-483. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00005650199206000-00002 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00005650-199206000-00002 http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00005650-199206000-00002 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 43 appendix 3. perma-profiler norms n mean median sd min 25th 50th 75th max full sample positive emotion 31965 6.69 7.00 1.97 0.00 5.67 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 31962 7.25 7.67 1.71 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 relationships 31940 6.90 7.33 2.15 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 31931 7.06 7.67 2.17 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 31963 7.21 7.67 1.78 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 31966 7.02 7.38 1.66 0.00 6.13 7.38 8.25 10.00 negative emotion 31386 4.46 4.33 2.06 0.00 3.00 4.33 6.00 10.00 physical health 30601 6.94 7.33 2.18 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 gender: male positive emotion 17752 6.79 7.33 1.92 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 engagement 17752 7.32 7.67 1.67 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 17751 7.00 7.33 2.12 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 17746 7.13 7.67 2.12 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 17752 7.35 7.67 1.72 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 17753 7.11 7.50 1.61 0.00 6.25 7.50 8.31 10.00 negative emotion 17517 4.55 4.67 2.05 0.00 3.00 4.67 6.00 10.00 physical health 17229 6.89 7.33 2.21 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 gender: female positive emotion 13653 6.57 7.00 2.01 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 13650 7.17 7.33 1.73 0.00 6.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 relationships 13650 6.78 7.33 2.17 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 13646 6.98 7.67 2.23 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 13651 7.08 7.33 1.82 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 13653 6.91 7.27 1.69 0.00 5.94 7.27 8.13 10.00 negative emotion 13314 4.34 4.33 2.05 0.00 2.67 4.33 6.00 10.00 physical health 12821 7.03 7.67 2.14 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 gender: unknown positive emotion 557 6.21 6.33 2.02 0.00 5.00 6.33 8.00 10.00 engagement 557 6.76 7.00 1.86 1.50 5.50 7.00 8.00 10.00 relationships 536 6.48 7.00 2.24 0.00 5.00 7.00 8.25 10.00 meaning 536 6.48 7.00 2.18 0.00 5.00 7.00 8.00 10.00 accomplishment 557 6.35 6.50 1.94 0.00 5.00 6.50 8.00 10.00 overall wellbeing 557 6.45 6.60 1.74 1.25 5.25 6.60 7.81 10.00 negative emotion 555 4.90 5.00 2.13 0.00 3.33 5.00 6.50 10.00 physical health 551 6.72 7.00 2.15 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.33 10.00 age: under 18 positive emotion 1500 6.85 7.33 1.83 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 engagement 1500 7.54 7.67 1.49 0.00 6.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 1500 6.84 7.33 2.02 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 1500 6.79 7.33 2.07 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 accomplishment 1500 7.02 7.33 1.77 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 1500 7.01 7.31 1.53 0.00 6.08 7.31 8.13 10.00 negative emotion 1500 4.98 5.00 2.08 0.00 3.33 5.00 6.67 10.00 physical health 1500 6.95 7.33 2.21 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 age: 18-24 positive emotion 8875 6.85 7.00 1.77 0.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 8875 7.33 7.67 1.52 0.00 6.67 7.67 8.33 10.00 relationships 8876 7.05 7.33 2.00 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.67 10.00 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 n mean median sd min 25th 50th 75th max meaning 8874 7.11 7.67 1.98 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 8876 7.26 7.67 1.67 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 8876 7.12 7.38 1.48 0.00 6.31 7.38 8.19 10.00 negative emotion 8799 4.66 4.67 1.97 0.00 3.33 4.67 6.00 10.00 physical health 8018 6.88 7.33 2.09 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 age 25-34 positive emotion 6530 6.58 7.00 1.95 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 6528 7.11 7.33 1.75 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 relationships 6526 6.97 7.33 2.09 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 6521 6.95 7.33 2.21 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 6528 7.13 7.67 1.82 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 6530 6.94 7.31 1.66 0.13 6.00 7.31 8.13 10.00 negative emotion 6223 4.60 4.67 2.03 0.00 3.00 4.67 6.00 10.00 physical health 6223 6.80 7.33 2.19 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 age 35-44 positive emotion 5424 6.54 7.00 2.06 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 5424 7.14 7.67 1.79 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 relationships 5424 6.75 7.33 2.26 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 5423 6.96 7.67 2.27 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 5424 7.15 7.67 1.83 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 5424 6.90 7.27 1.74 0.00 5.88 7.27 8.19 10.00 negative emotion 5363 4.43 4.33 2.06 0.00 2.67 4.33 6.00 10.00 physical health 5363 6.88 7.33 2.22 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 age 45-54 positive emotion 4724 6.63 7.33 2.14 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 engagement 4724 7.22 7.67 1.84 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 4723 6.78 7.33 2.28 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 4723 7.10 7.67 2.28 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 4724 7.27 7.67 1.82 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 4724 6.99 7.44 1.79 0.00 5.94 7.44 8.31 10.00 negative emotion 4661 4.16 4.00 2.07 0.00 2.33 4.00 5.67 10.00 physical health 4661 7.05 7.67 2.24 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 age 55-64 positive emotion 2699 6.72 7.33 2.13 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 engagement 2698 7.39 7.67 1.77 0.00 6.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 2699 6.84 7.33 2.28 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 2698 7.33 8.00 2.25 0.00 6.33 8.00 9.00 10.00 accomplishment 2698 7.42 8.00 1.77 0.00 6.67 8.00 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 2699 7.13 7.63 1.76 0.00 6.19 7.63 8.44 10.00 negative emotion 2665 3.92 3.67 2.08 0.00 2.00 3.67 5.33 10.00 physical health 2665 7.24 8.00 2.18 0.00 6.00 8.00 9.00 10.00 age 65+ positive emotion 870 6.91 7.33 2.08 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 engagement 870 7.58 8.00 1.78 0.00 6.67 8.00 9.00 10.00 relationships 870 7.03 7.67 2.25 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 meaning 870 7.48 8.17 2.28 0.00 6.67 8.17 9.00 10.00 accomplishment 870 7.56 8.00 1.72 0.00 6.67 8.00 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 870 7.30 7.81 1.77 0.00 6.44 7.81 8.63 9.94 negative emotion 834 3.60 3.33 2.04 0.00 1.67 3.33 5.00 10.00 physical health 834 7.51 8.00 2.15 0.33 6.33 8.00 9.00 10.00 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 n mean median sd min 25th 50th 75th max age: unknown positive emotion 1343 6.63 7.00 1.92 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 1343 7.12 7.33 1.75 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 relationships 1322 6.76 7.00 2.17 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.33 10.00 meaning 1322 6.93 7.33 2.12 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.50 10.00 accomplishment 1343 6.94 7.33 1.86 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 1343 6.87 7.22 1.66 0.00 5.83 7.22 8.11 10.00 negative emotion 1341 4.76 4.67 2.10 0.00 3.33 4.67 6.33 10.00 physical health 1337 6.91 7.33 2.14 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 united states positive emotion 12296 6.83 7.33 1.98 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 engagement 12293 7.45 7.67 1.68 0.00 6.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 12296 7.02 7.67 2.17 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 meaning 12290 7.28 8.00 2.19 0.00 6.33 8.00 9.00 10.00 accomplishment 12293 7.50 8.00 1.74 0.00 6.67 8.00 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 12296 7.21 7.63 1.66 0.00 6.38 7.63 8.42 10.00 negative emotion 12011 4.48 4.33 2.11 0.00 3.00 4.33 6.00 10.00 physical health 12011 6.95 7.67 2.23 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 united kingdom positive emotion 1479 6.57 7.00 1.99 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 1479 7.23 7.67 1.73 0.67 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 relationships 1479 6.82 7.33 2.16 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 1479 6.90 7.33 2.22 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 1479 7.13 7.67 1.75 0.33 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 1479 6.92 7.25 1.67 0.69 6.06 7.25 8.13 10.00 negative emotion 1479 4.49 4.67 2.01 0.00 3.00 4.67 6.00 10.00 physical health 1479 6.81 7.33 2.25 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.67 10.00 canada positive emotion 1536 6.69 7.00 1.97 0.00 5.67 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 1536 7.39 7.67 1.69 0.00 6.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 1536 6.90 7.33 2.13 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 meaning 1536 6.95 7.33 2.19 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 1536 7.27 7.67 1.76 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 1536 7.03 7.44 1.65 0.00 6.13 7.44 8.25 10.00 negative emotion 1536 4.57 4.67 1.99 0.00 3.00 4.67 6.00 10.00 physical health 1536 6.84 7.33 2.23 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.67 10.00 australia/new zealand positive emotion 2593 6.68 7.00 1.94 0.00 5.67 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 2593 7.29 7.67 1.68 0.67 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 relationships 2593 6.90 7.33 2.12 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 2593 7.05 7.67 2.12 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 2593 7.26 7.67 1.74 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 2593 7.03 7.44 1.62 0.69 6.19 7.44 8.19 10.00 negative emotion 2593 4.33 4.33 1.99 0.00 2.67 4.33 5.67 10.00 physical health 2593 6.79 7.33 2.23 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 western europe positive emotion 919 6.82 7.33 1.79 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.00 10.00 engagement 919 7.16 7.33 1.67 0.00 6.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 relationships 919 6.95 7.33 2.04 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 919 6.88 7.33 2.06 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 accomplishment 919 7.23 7.67 1.57 0.33 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 n mean median sd min 25th 50th 75th max overall wellbeing 919 7.01 7.31 1.50 0.88 6.19 7.31 8.06 10.00 negative emotion 919 4.27 4.00 2.09 0.00 2.67 4.00 5.67 10.00 physical health 919 7.21 7.67 1.99 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 northern europe positive emotion 359 6.70 7.00 1.89 0.00 5.67 7.00 8.00 9.33 engagement 359 7.23 7.67 1.65 0.33 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 359 7.12 7.67 2.10 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 meaning 359 7.13 7.67 2.15 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 359 7.25 7.67 1.74 0.67 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 359 7.07 7.44 1.56 0.19 6.31 7.44 8.19 9.56 negative emotion 359 3.95 3.67 1.95 0.00 2.33 3.67 5.33 9.67 physical health 359 7.22 7.67 2.12 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 eastern europe/russia positive emotion 279 6.65 7.00 2.03 1.00 5.33 7.00 8.00 10.00 engagement 279 7.16 7.33 1.70 1.67 6.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 relationships 279 6.86 7.33 2.16 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 279 6.61 7.00 2.47 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 279 7.03 7.33 1.86 1.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 279 6.86 7.25 1.71 2.25 5.69 7.25 8.06 10.00 negative emotion 279 4.46 4.33 2.15 0.33 2.67 4.33 6.00 9.33 physical health 279 7.20 7.67 2.05 1.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 middle east positive emotion 179 6.75 7.00 1.85 0.00 5.67 7.00 8.33 10.00 engagement 179 7.16 7.33 1.87 0.00 6.33 7.33 8.67 10.00 relationships 179 6.69 7.33 2.18 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 179 6.99 7.33 2.00 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 accomplishment 179 7.04 7.67 1.85 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 179 6.92 7.25 1.60 0.00 5.94 7.25 8.13 9.94 negative emotion 179 4.81 4.67 2.17 0.00 3.33 4.67 6.33 10.00 physical health 179 7.06 7.67 2.24 0.00 5.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 mexico/ central america positive emotion 310 7.85 8.33 1.61 0.67 7.00 8.33 9.00 10.00 engagement 310 8.13 8.33 1.26 2.00 7.33 8.33 9.00 10.00 relationships 310 7.83 8.33 1.76 1.00 7.25 8.33 9.00 10.00 meaning 310 7.94 8.33 1.77 0.67 7.33 8.33 9.08 10.00 accomplishment 310 7.91 8.33 1.47 1.33 7.33 8.33 9.00 10.00 overall wellbeing 310 7.93 8.25 1.29 2.31 7.38 8.25 8.81 10.00 negative emotion 310 4.67 4.67 2.21 0.33 3.00 4.67 6.33 9.33 physical health 310 7.80 8.33 1.81 0.67 7.00 8.33 9.00 10.00 south america positive emotion 275 7.03 7.33 1.78 1.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 engagement 275 7.44 7.67 1.56 1.33 6.67 7.67 8.33 10.00 relationships 275 7.08 7.33 1.95 1.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 275 7.28 7.67 2.04 0.33 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 accomplishment 275 7.30 7.67 1.75 0.67 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 275 7.22 7.56 1.49 1.06 6.56 7.56 8.38 10.00 negative emotion 275 4.93 5.00 1.99 0.00 3.67 5.00 6.33 10.00 physical health 275 7.47 8.00 2.06 0.67 6.33 8.00 9.00 10.00 pacific islands positive emotion 113 7.70 7.67 1.53 0.33 7.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 engagement 113 7.77 8.00 1.30 3.33 7.00 8.00 8.67 10.00 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 n mean median sd min 25th 50th 75th max relationships 113 7.51 7.67 1.69 0.33 6.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 meaning 113 7.74 8.00 1.81 0.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00 accomplishment 113 7.63 8.00 1.62 0.67 7.00 8.00 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 113 7.68 7.88 1.34 1.06 7.13 7.88 8.56 10.00 negative emotion 113 4.96 4.67 2.22 0.00 3.33 4.67 6.67 10.00 physical health 113 7.31 7.67 1.85 1.00 6.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 caribbean positive emotion 60 7.45 7.67 1.61 2.33 6.42 7.67 8.67 10.00 engagement 60 7.73 7.67 1.30 4.67 7.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 60 7.26 7.67 1.96 2.33 6.33 7.67 8.67 10.00 meaning 60 7.67 8.00 1.77 2.33 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00 accomplishment 60 7.66 8.00 1.33 3.67 7.08 8.00 8.59 9.67 overall wellbeing 60 7.56 7.72 1.37 3.63 6.95 7.72 8.55 9.88 negative emotion 60 4.89 5.17 2.13 1.00 3.00 5.17 6.59 8.67 physical health 60 7.36 7.84 1.96 1.00 6.33 7.84 8.67 10.00 mediterranean positive emotion 91 6.65 7.00 1.83 1.00 5.67 7.00 8.00 9.67 engagement 91 7.04 7.33 1.75 1.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 relationships 91 6.66 7.00 2.18 0.33 5.67 7.00 8.33 10.00 meaning 91 6.81 7.33 2.12 0.33 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 accomplishment 91 7.19 7.67 1.76 1.00 6.00 7.67 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 91 6.87 7.13 1.54 2.00 6.13 7.13 8.00 9.81 negative emotion 91 5.18 5.00 2.14 1.00 3.67 5.00 6.67 10.00 physical health 91 7.47 8.00 1.86 0.67 6.67 8.00 9.00 10.00 africa positive emotion 269 7.03 7.67 1.85 0.00 6.33 7.67 8.33 10.00 engagement 269 7.42 7.67 1.56 0.00 6.67 7.67 8.67 10.00 relationships 269 7.14 7.67 2.10 0.00 6.17 7.67 8.67 10.00 meaning 269 7.39 8.00 2.06 0.00 6.50 8.00 9.00 10.00 accomplishment 269 7.41 8.00 1.81 0.00 6.67 8.00 8.67 10.00 overall wellbeing 269 7.27 7.75 1.67 0.00 6.56 7.75 8.44 10.00 negative emotion 269 4.39 4.67 1.93 0.00 3.00 4.67 5.67 8.67 physical health 269 7.09 7.67 2.21 0.00 6.00 7.67 8.67 10.00 india/southeastern asia positive emotion 918 7.02 7.33 1.60 0.33 6.33 7.33 8.00 10.00 engagement 918 7.15 7.33 1.49 0.33 6.33 7.33 8.00 10.00 relationships 918 7.09 7.33 1.81 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 meaning 918 7.07 7.33 1.74 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 accomplishment 918 7.09 7.33 1.52 0.33 6.33 7.33 8.00 10.00 overall wellbeing 918 7.10 7.25 1.34 1.31 6.38 7.25 8.00 10.00 negative emotion 918 5.05 5.00 1.97 0.00 3.67 5.00 6.67 10.00 physical health 918 6.88 7.33 1.98 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 asia positive emotion 382 6.90 7.33 1.83 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.00 10.00 engagement 382 6.98 7.33 1.57 1.00 6.00 7.33 8.00 10.00 relationships 382 6.77 7.00 1.93 0.00 5.67 7.00 8.00 10.00 meaning 382 6.97 7.33 2.06 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 accomplishment 382 7.06 7.33 1.77 0.67 6.25 7.33 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 382 6.95 7.31 1.54 0.75 6.13 7.31 8.00 10.00 negative emotion 382 4.45 4.33 1.98 0.00 3.00 4.33 5.67 10.00 physical health 382 6.82 7.33 2.08 0.00 5.33 7.33 8.33 10.00 measuring perma butler & kern www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 n mean median sd min 25th 50th 75th max country: unknown positive emotion 9907 6.42 6.67 1.98 0.00 5.33 6.67 8.00 10.00 engagement 9907 6.96 7.33 1.75 0.00 6.00 7.33 8.33 10.00 relationships 9882 6.70 7.00 2.17 0.00 5.33 7.00 8.33 10.00 meaning 9879 6.80 7.33 2.19 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 accomplishment 9908 6.83 7.33 1.81 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.33 10.00 overall wellbeing 9908 6.74 7.06 1.67 0.00 5.69 7.06 8.00 10.00 negative emotion 9613 4.40 4.33 2.01 0.00 3.00 4.33 6.00 10.00 physical health 8828 6.92 7.33 2.13 0.00 5.67 7.33 8.67 10.00 note. sd = standard deviation, min = minimum, 25th, 50th, 75th = percentile scores, max = maximum weijers, d. (2014). an interview with alex c. michalos. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 106-110. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.7 dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 106 expert insight an interview with alex c. michalos professor emeritus, political science, university of northern british columbia interview by dan weijers 15 april 2014 1. what got you interested in wellbeing research? i began my academic career in philosophy of science, with a dissertation on the popper/carnap controversy on measuring the acceptability of scientific theories. so i did a lot of work on probability theory. then i moved on to decision and voting theory. somewhere along the way i read the pragmatists william james, ralph barton perry, john dewey and clarence irving lewis, and i got intrigued with the idea of a rigorous pragmatic naturalistic theory of value along the lines of perry (1926) and lewis (1946) in particular. i was a visiting professor at the university of pittsburgh in 1969 and my friend there, nicholas rescher, was preparing a manuscript for his book on welfare. i was struck by the way he integrated statistical data and philosophical analysis. at the same time i was reading about practical decision making from herbert simon (1945, 1957) and the new social indicators movement. i became a charter member of the public choice society, met mancur olson and was convinced that if i worked with people in that movement, i could mix my philosophical and statistical interests perfectly. what i have been doing since the late 60s, as a pragmatist and consequentialist from a philosophical point of view, is trying to define and measure the dependent variable in searches for a good life or a good quality of life, what some people call general wellbeing now. 2. what do you take "wellbeing" to mean? i identify wellbeing with a life of good quality, all things considered. there is no rule book about what should be included in the “all things considered”. so it takes a lot of conceptualizing and measuring to get a generic package that will be acceptable to most individuals and societies. when i started back in the 60s, i thought it might take 25 years or so before the world would reach some agreement on what elements to include in the dependent variable. then in the 80s the sustainable development movement came along and it became clear to me that 25 years would not be enough. maybe it’s a totally open-ended human quest, altering a bit with time and across cultures. certainly the root issues driving what we have been doing for the past 50 years can be traced back to ancient scholars in the fifth and fourth centuries bce, i.e., the search for a clear view of a good life and a good way to live. i am convinced that a good quality of life or wellbeing is precisely the dependent variable needed to measure sustainable development. it is precisely what we want or should want to sustain. we are a long way from agreement on the dependent variable and most people do not even seem to see the connection between quality of life research and sustainable development. although in the crucial parts of the bruntland commission report, where it talks about satisfying http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ interview with alex c. michalos weijers 107 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org current needs without reducing options for the next generation, a few sentences down on the same page it also talks about improving quality of life as the important thing; not just satisfying needs, but meeting aspirations for a good life. something like that. 3. why is wellbeing research important? for a pragmatist and consequentialist, it is impossible to assess the value of our lives, decisions we make about good and evil, about a good life and a good society unless we have a good understanding of the dependent variable. we need a clear vision of where we want to go, how we think things should be and the best way to get there in a sustainable way. 4. what is the most important wellbeing-related finding from your research? i think there are two. first, i assume that robust theories are important for driving scientific research and i still think multiple discrepancies theory points the way toward a more comprehensive, coherent, integrated, conceptually sound and empirically well-supported theory of subjective wellbeing. when i invented it, i thought i was giving a new foundation to classical utility theory, an empirical foundation in the tradition of perry and lewis for defining naturalistic value and through it satisfaction and happiness. i later realized that there was circularity built into the theory. so it could not deliver a purely naturalistic theory. besides, i no longer believe in a naturalistic theory. i think we always smuggle in some a priori stuff when we define value, wellbeing, or quality of life. people working in the logical positivist tradition have been quite happy to conduct research with a relatively slim understanding of ‘theory’ and little emphasis on it, and i do believe that a lot of good research can be done with such understanding. generally speaking, positivists adopt a rigid distinction between facts and values, and between observation terms and theoretical terms, the need for value-free science and scientific research, scientific explanation based on the model of sound arguments, clearly distinguishable scientific laws and theories, and the possibility of theory-free measurement. i confess to being a teenage positivist and some of the boy remains in the man, but i am convinced that robust theories are still important and should be high on our research agendas. such theories provide context and allow us to see not only essential elements but the need to find relationships, making some elements more influential than others and some lines of investigation particularly helpful for breaking new ground. second, there is a so-called gold standard self-report measure of overall health status in the health-related quality of life research tradition called short form 36 (sf-36), which is also used by many people as a measure of quality of life. i demonstrated in a few publications with survey data that there is a huge difference between good health and a good life. the explanatory predictors of both things are clearly distinct. so people should stop using sf-36 to measure quality of life. i don’t think it will change anyone’s behaviour, but i do think what i demonstrated is very important. life is like that sometimes. 5. what are you working on right now? well, the 12 volume encyclopedia of quality of life and well-being research (spinger) came out in march and i am working a bit to get the word out through various outlets, newspapers, newsletters, listserves. along with a couple dozen others, i am working on parts of a history of wellbeing. i think i will use some of what i am writing about ancient views of wellbeing for a short monograph and i will use some of what i am writing on north american research for an article on canadian milestones. i have a province-wide survey of 15-year-olds’ knowledge, interview with alex c. michalos weijers 108 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org attitudes and behaviours around sustainable development. i am still editor in chief of the journal of business ethics, the most frequently cited journal in the world devoted to business ethics. i started it over 30 years ago to pick up research being done on quality of work life and on corporate social accounting. i have never given business ethics more than about 10 or 15% of my research time, but that journal is much larger than social indicators research. 6. what do you think the next big thing in wellbeing research will be? i don’t know what it will be but i think what it should be is continuing to get agreement on the nature of the dependent variable and on its connection to sustainable development. once we get clear about what it is we want to sustain, we can measure what it takes to keep the thing going given the rates of change of required inputs to desired outputs. judging from the report by stiglitz, sen and fitoussi, i think we are still held back by economists and policy makers who can’t see much beyond what economists say. with some exaggeration i think that in part one of their report they told us what we already knew (limits of gdp), in part two they told us quite a bit less than we know (about quality of life) and in part three they told us to ask someone else (about sustainable development). a pretty disappointing result from some first-rate economists. 7. what are the main benefits of interdisciplinary research on wellbeing? there is no other or more promising way. regarding the quantity of life we are notoriously limited to one per person, but the quality of life is as varied as there are perspectives from which it can be assessed. no one discipline can capture all the elements and their relationships. 8. what would the ideal census question on wellbeing be and why? if we are limited to only one, i think we will be in dangerous territory. in several publications i have shown that measures of health, standard of living, quality of life, life satisfaction and happiness do not capture exactly the same things. if we use only one measure for our dependent variable, we are bound to get distorted views about what is most important and how all the important things are related. i suppose most money is behind a single life satisfaction or happiness question, but these are very limited in what they capture. we really do need subjective and objective indicators in order to distinguish real paradise and hell from a fool’s paradise and hell. either one sort of indicator alone cannot do the work of adequately measuring quality of life or wellbeing. the world happiness report, edited by john helliwell, richard layard and jeffrey sachs, had five measures of their dependent variable presumed to capture overall wellbeing of some sort, namely, cantril’s ladder, life satisfaction, happiness, positive affect and negative affect. examining their list of explanatory variables, one finds very few if any measures of human agency, e.g., measures of people’s perceived wants and needs, of their expectations, hopes and fears, efforts, equity, past experiences, constraints and resources. a lot of resources were invested in measuring relatively objective features of people’s lives to explain their perceived wellbeing, but what people tried to make or made of those features was largely neglected. 9. what parts of your research have brought you the most enjoyment and/or satisfaction? what i like most about research is learning new things. i especially like discovering things that, so far as i know, nobody else has found. i suspect this view would be similar to most scholars as far back as anaxagoras. i also enjoy expressing my views in sentences that i think are particularly interview with alex c. michalos weijers 109 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org graceful, if that’s the right word. t. s. eliot talked about the music of prose and i think there is something to that. sometimes the ideas turn into sentences that are quite pleasant to read. if you look at bertrand russell’s manuscripts, you find that he usually hit the expressions he wanted on the first shot. if you looked at mine, before computers, you would find writes and re-writes. i usually have a hard time getting the right expression first time around, although i must say that the older i get, the easier it gets to hit the right mark first off. hopefully, this is not a sign that i am losing my taste or standards, though that would not surprise me given all the other things i have lost to age. the other thing i like most about my research is the opportunity it has given me to know and work with people all over the world with similar interests. there is something special, i think, about working with a team or another person. maybe it is related to the essential sociality of our species, although i know of several good scholars who work on their own and prefer that. in fact, for some, it is best for all of us if they keep to themselves. 10. what parts of your research have brought you the most dissatisfaction and/or displeasure? writing proposals for research funding against very bad odds of success. then not getting funded. having my work evaluated by people who clearly know less than i do about the subject. having papers submitted to journals and having them neglected by editors who were not managing the store well. the worst case i experienced was with a paper i wrote called ‘efficiency and morality’. thirteen months after submitting the paper, i wrote to find its status. the editor said he mislaid it and asked me to re-submit. i wrote back that i did not think he understood either efficiency or morality, and published the paper somewhere else. i have always found longer works more satisfying than shorter ones. however, with long works i always have had a troublesome feeling that i would drop dead before finishing the piece. then, when it is finished, i am troubled by the thought that no one will read it or that those who do read it will find it stinks. i am pretty sure some of my work has met both fates. when i was working on my 5-volume north american social report (1980-82), i started looking for a publisher after i finished the first 2 volumes. after 57 rejections, i really worried a lot about the time i was investing and the likelihood that nothing would come of it. then reidel accepted it and i worried about finishing it, etc. it took me 12 years to write that treatise. it did win the secretary of state’s award for interdisciplinary reseach, but i doubt that anyone has read the whole thing. still, it was a great learning experience. after i published my citation classics from social indicators research (2005), i had a look at the 168 or so citations to my paper on multiple discrepancies theory (1985). i found that about 70% of the citations were perfunctory. some authors clearly had never read my paper. some reported that i said exactly the opposite of what i did say. i still think citation analysis has some validity and proper uses. my wife had the impression that i did a lot of self-citing and i had been convinced that i did too. then i found i self-cited about 5% of the time compared to something like 22% for average authors. that kind of thing is nice to know. 11. is there anything else you would like to comment on? for years i preferred the spelling ‘wellbeing’ to the longer ‘well-being’. after we gathered up most of the 2200 or so articles for the encyclopedia, my friend at springer did some citation research and discovered that there was something like 6 times more citations to well-being than to quality of life, and more citations to well-being than to wellbeing. so we added ‘and wellbeing’ to the name of the encyclopedia. although i think of well-being and quality of life as pretty interview with alex c. michalos weijers 110 www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org much synonyms, a lot of people apparently don’t. so we went for the bigger pool. the oxford english dictionary uses well-being, but other dictionaries use wellbeing. we also noticed that some people use ‘quality of life’ and others ‘quality-of-life’ more or less inconsistently. so we just stayed with quality of life. about alex c. michalos (provided by alex c. michalos, april 2014) alex is emeritus professor in political science from the university of northern british columbia, where he taught from 1994-2001. he was professor of philosophy at the university of guelph (ontario) from 1966 to 1994, and has held positions at several other universities. his awards include a gold medal for achievement in research (2004) from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (the council’s highest honour), and he is a member of the order of canada, c.m. (2010). author dan weijers victoria university of wellington dan.weijers@vuw.ac.nz references lewis, c. l. (1946). analysis of knowledge and valuation. lasalle: open court pub. co. perry, r. b. (1926). general theory of value. cambridge: harvard university press. simon, h. a. (1945). administrative behavior. new york: macmillan co. simon, h. a. (1957). models of man. new york: john wiley and sons, inc. gavin, j., keough, m., abravanel, m., moudrakovski, t., & mcbrearty, m. (2014). motivations for participation in physical activity across the lifespan. international journal of wellbeing, 4(1), 46-61. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.3 james gavin concordia university james.gavin@concordia.ca copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 article motivations for participation in physical activity across the lifespan james gavin · matthew keough · michael abravanel · tatiana moudrakovski madeleine mcbrearty abstract: this investigation explored motivations for engaging in physical activity and how they varied across the lifespan. a total of 1,885 individuals completed a comprehensive questionnaire concerning personal style, activity interests, motives for exercising, and biosocial information as part of an initiative to improve physical activity advisement and programming. the first part of the research called for an exploratory factor analysis (efa) of a 20-item measure of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations related to participation in exercise, while the second was based in an analysis of differences on the efa factor scores across five age groups: teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s+. efa results suggested a four-factor (oblique rotation) solution that appeared to provide an adequate and generalizable map of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for exercise. the factors were labeled as follows: mental toughness, toned and fit, fun and friends, and stress reduction. not surprisingly, mean scores on toned and fit were the highest of the four factor means across all age groups. univariate anovas of age group differences were statistically significant for each of the four factors; moreover, all four factors showed statistically significant linear trends. two factors, toned and fit and stress reduction, revealed higher motivation scores with increasing age, while the remaining two, mental toughness and fun and friends, exhibited declining scores with increasing age. these findings taken in the context of previous research on age-related motivational differences offered insights into current challenges for enhancing exercise participation, particularly for older individuals. keywords: lifespan, age differences, physical activity, exercise motivation, exploratory factor analysis 1. motivations for participation in physical activity across the lifespan it is widely acknowledged that participating in regular physical activity (pa) is highly beneficial for both physical health and psychological wellbeing (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2011a; ford et al., 2012; u.s. department of health and human services, 2008). yet, sedentary lifestyles are increasingly the norm among north americans (brownson, boehmer, & luke, 2005). only 20.6% of the adult american population meets basic pa guidelines for aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2011b), while canada shows a similarly low rate of pa participation of only 15% who satisfied the recommended pa guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week (colley et al., 2011). low levels of pa have been associated with a number of life-threatening health problems, including coronary heart disease, adult onset diabetes, hypertension, and depression (cdc, 2011a; rangul, bauman, lingaas holmen, & midthjell, 2012). research further indicates that pa participation levels decrease with age (baker, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 fraser-thomas, dionigi, & horton, 2010; human resources and skills development canada, 2013); this trend portends poorly for a world where lengthening lifespans are likely to be associated with dramatic increases in health care costs and related social issues (breyer, costafont, & felder, 2010; janssen, 2012). given the personal and societal costs of inactivity, the need to integrate regular pa participation into modern lifestyles seems paramount (breyer et al., 2010; trujillo, brougham, & walsh, 2004). understanding motivations to pursue active lifestyles can be key to decreasing the proportion of sedentary individuals in society (hagger, 2012; trujillo et al., 2004). indeed research on exercise motivation is extensive, with much of it grounded in deci and ryan’s selfdetermination theory (sdt; see deci & ryan, 1985; hagger & chatzisarantis, 2007; teixeira, carraça, markland, silva, & ryan, 2012; vallerand, donahue, & lafrenière, 2012). deci and ryan’s (1985) theory proposes that motivation to exercise varies along a continuum from intrinsic to extrinsic. being intrinsically motivated means carrying out an activity for the inherent satisfaction and enjoyment that it provides (deci, 1975), while extrinsic motivation refers to engaging in an activity for its instrumental purpose or to gain something outside of the activity itself (deci & ryan, 1985). as vallerand (2008) observes, a fundamental distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is a lack of liking for the activity itself. extrinsic motivators, such as wanting to increase physical attractiveness, seem most effective in initiating exercise initiatives (dishman, 1987; lim, ting, loh, loo, & shaikh, 2013; mcauley, wraith, & duncan, 1991; morgan, shephard, & finucane, 1984), while it is thought that long-term maintenance of exercise behaviors depends more on intrinsic motivation (gallagher & updegraff, 2011; mcauley et al., 1991; wankel, 1985, 1988, 1993). nonetheless, a common perspective is that intrinsic motivation alone cannot sustain a physically active lifestyle (edmunds, ntoumanis, & duda, 2006; mullan & markland, 1997). ryan, williams, patrick, and deci (2009) assert, “most people maintain their exercise activities not because the activities are inherently interesting or enjoyable to them but because they have something to gain in it” (p.111). these authors go on to argue that extrinsic motivations are essential in the realm of physical activity, especially when individuals do not experience adequate challenge and autonomy in their programs (deci & ryan, 1985; ryan, koestner & deci, 1991). our research was concerned with how intrinsic and extrinsic motivations related to pa might vary across the lifespan (brunet & sabiston, 2011; trujillo et al., 2004). we anticipated that findings of this nature would be invaluable for guiding activity-promoting interventions (conn, hafdahl & mehr, 2011; frederick-recascino, 2002; hobbs et al., 2013; schieffer & thomas, 2012). 1.1 investigations involving multiple age groups in a broad perspective, motivation to engage in physical activity seems to decrease with age (biddle, 2007; brunet & sabiston, 2011; koslow, 1988; prochaska, leventhal, leventhal, & keller, 1985; ransford & pailisi, 1996; seippel, 2006; trujillo et al., 2004). however, not all motives show declines. in ashford, biddle and goudas’s (1993) study of 15 key motives for sports participation, older adults (45+) were found to be more motivated than young (16-24) and mature (25-44) adults by factors such as mental health and socio-psychological wellbeing. similarly, seippel (2006) notes in his study of 1,400 norwegian participants aged 13 and older that the only dimension where a higher score was found for older compared to younger study participants was one reflecting involvement in pa as a mental recreation; otherwise, younger individuals consistently reported more reasons for exercising. another study (trujillo et al., 2004) involving 461 adult participants aged 18 to 86 described an inverse linear trend between age and the importance of physical appearance consequences of activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 pa. moreover, koslow’s (1988) study of 300 individuals grouped into three categories (18-30, 3140, and 41-50) indicated that the 31-40 and 41-50 groups placed greater emphasis on health benefits of exercise than did the 18-30 group. 1.2 studies of single age groups studies of exercise motivation within particular age cohorts also have bearing on our research though it was difficult to assess whether the central motives identified in these investigations were more or less salient than at other periods of life. for instance, a prevalent motivator for participation among adolescents (age 11-19) was described as enjoyment of what they were doing (biddle, wang, chatzisarantis & spray, 2003); other studies identified health benefits as relevant sources of motivation for this age cohort (gavin, mcbrearty & harvey, 2013). in a study of middle-aged adults (mean age 40), health, fitness, and physical appearance were found to be high pa motivators (ingledew & markland, 2008). among older adults (62-91) perceived functional independence, competition, self-care, and social involvement were identified as contributors to exercise motivation (miller & iris, 2002). 1.3 framework for investigation our investigation represents one of a limited number of studies focusing on age-related motivational differences across the lifespan (brunet & sabiston, 2011; martín-albo, núñez, domínguez, león, & tomás, 2012; netz & raviv, 2004; seippel, 2006). uniquely, our study compared five age groupings ranging from teens to 50 and over. as an initial step in our research, we examined the factor structure of a 20-item exercise motivation measure both to understand how various intrinsic and extrinsic motives were aligned and also to facilitate a concise understanding of age group differences. we envisioned that information from our research would contribute to theoretical understanding, while also having pragmatic value through informing initiatives promoting active lifestyles for different age groups (edmunds et al., 2006; mullan & markland, 1997). 2. methods 2.1 measurements a comprehensive questionnaire regarding personal style, activity interests, motives for exercising, and biosocial information was created for a series of investigations related to individuals’ engagement in sports and physical activity (gavin, 2004; gavin, mcbrearty & harvey, 2010). pertinent to this study, 20 potential sources of motivation were listed in one section of the questionnaire. these included such motivators as becoming fit, reducing stress, having fun, and making friends. many of these motives have been represented in other studies of physical activity motivation (ashford et al., 1993; gallagher & updegraff, 2011; lim et al., 2013). the questionnaire required individuals to indicate on a 3-point scale whether each item was a reason why they exercised; the response choices were “yes”, “?”, and “no.” analysis of the 20-item questionnaire was integral to this investigation, and is described in the results section. respondents’ age was requested in a section of the questionnaire pertaining to biosocial information. given the large number of participants in this investigation, age groupings were created from participants’ reported actual ages; more information about this is presented in the description of participants below. activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 2.2 data collection data were collected in eight branches of the montreal, quebec ymca, which was piloting a project to better advise members regarding activity choices and their requirements (gavin, 2006). in approving this project, the montreal ymca reviewed all processes of the questionnaire and related activities for ethical compliance. the comprehensive questionnaire referred to above was presented through single usage touchscreen computers located in the lobbies and training areas of the branches; these computers were dedicated to the project and served no other purpose than that of presenting the questionnaire for members to complete. participants were invited through signage and other promotional information to access the questionnaires on the touchscreen computers; questionnaire completion took approximately 25 minutes. once an individual advanced beyond the opening screen of the program, a consent page was presented wherein individuals learned that the questionnaire was completely anonymous and that a record of their responses would be kept on the computer for future analysis of aggregated data. no names or membership information were required to log in to the computer; moreover, participants could skip the biosocial questions reflecting some identifying information such as age if they wished. participants had the option of discontinuing the questionnaire at any point in the process of its completion, and thereby having all their responses deleted from the hard drive. after finishing, participants were offered a summary report based on their responses. they were further invited to have this report reviewed in a confidential session with a ymca fitness specialist who would help them better appreciate how to initiate or maintain rewarding patterns of physical exercise. periodically, designated ymca staff members copied the data files from the computers’ hard drives and sent them to the researchers. data on the hard drives were then erased. 2.3 participants the number of questionnaire responses obtained from the touchscreen computers was 2,041. whenever individuals chose to terminate questionnaire completion prior to the last question, all their responses were deleted. thus, it was impossible for us to determine how many individuals may have commenced but not completed the questionnaire. however, it was possible for individuals to skip questions in some sections of the questionnaire. for this reason, the number of usable questionnaires for this research was reduced from 2,041to 1,885; 156 participants had incomplete data sets pertaining to either age or the motivation questions. participants’ self-assessed activity levels ranged from inactive to highly active, though the sample as a whole appeared to be proportionately more active than the general population: 27.8% reported exercising at most 1-2 times per month, another 24.3% described exercising 1-2 times per week, and the remaining 47.9% indicated exercising 3 or more times weekly. this variation from expected population percentages (centers for disease control and prevention, 2011b; colley et al., 2011) could be anticipated given the setting for the research. findings, therefore, need to be understood to be descriptive of a more active segment of the population. for the purpose of the analyses reported in the results section, participants were grouped into five decade-defined categories; these categories and the related numbers of participants were as follows: teens (n=180), 20-29 (n=846), 30-39 (n=431), 40-49 (n=256), 50 and over (n=172). the decision to group participants by age decades was based, in part, on age and stage theories that describe life progression according to periods of life (cf. erikson, 1980, 1982; kegan, 1982, 1994; levinson, 1978, 1996). we thought this would be more meaningful than using the unique age distribution of this sample to determine subgroups. there were marginally significant age group differences in positive attitudes toward physical activity (f4, 1880 = 2.38, p = .05, η2 = .005) and in self-reported participation rates (f4, 1880 = 2.38, p = .05, η2 = .005); however, the linear trend activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 across groups was non-statistically significant (f1, 1880 = .14, p = .71) for attitude toward physical activity and marginally significant for participation (f1, 1880 = 3.75, p = .05) with the older groups reporting modestly more weekly activity rates. 2.4 data screening and analytic plan analyses for the current study proceeded in two stages: first, an exploratory factor analysis (efa) was conducted in mplus version 2.12 (muthen & muthen, 2002). the efa was conducted on the 20-item motivations scale. according to kline (2013), a minimum of 10 cases per observed variable in a factor analysis is needed to have adequate power. the total sample size in the present study was n = 1885, thereby providing us with ample power to conduct the efa. given that the factors were derived from item level data that used a three-point response scale, a weighted least squares (wls) estimation method was used. items that use response scales that have fewer than five options should be treated as categorical data (kline, 1998). an efa with such items is considered problematic because the estimated correlations between categorical observed variables are typically lower than the correlations for underlying continuous latent variables (o’connor, colder, & hawk, 2004). the wls estimation method adjusts the covariance matrix as if the variables were continuous. second, composite subscale means were created for the factors based on the pattern of primary factor loadings. these subscales were used in a series of univariate anovas to investigate age differences in motivations for exercise. before conducting the analyses, the data were screened according to the recommendations of wilkinson (1999) and kline (2009). there was no systematic loss of data based on this screening. all continuous variables were normally distributed and scores greater than 3 sds were replaced with the highest acceptable value within the specified range (kline, 2009). the data did not violate the homogeneity of variance assumption in anova, as the ratio between the largest and smallest group variances was less than 3.0 (kline, 2009). 3. results 3.1 exploratory factor analysis the efa was conducted using the full 20-item measure. the extraction method was principle axis factoring with an oblique rotation method. an oblique rotation was preferred in this case because this method allows the factors to correlate (meyers, gamst, & guarino, 2013). given that this is one of a limited number of studies (e.g., ashford et al., 1993; kasser & ryan, 1996) to investigate the factor structure of exercise-related motivations, we decided against specifying the number of factors a priori. we determined the number of retained factors based on kaiser’s (1960) eigenvalue-greater-than-one rule. in addition, items with primary factor loadings of less than .32 (tabachnick & fidell, 2013) were trimmed, and the efa was re-run. the eigenvalue-greater-than-one suggested a four-factor solution. when the factor loadings were inspected, we found that 2-items had small correlations with their respective underlying factor (i.e., r <.32); therefore, these items were trimmed from the analysis. the final retained efa is presented in table 1 (below). activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 table 1. final efa solution for the motivations scale item f1 f2 f3 f4 1. develop mental toughness .68 .10 .43 .26 2. become more assertive .60 .11 .36 .25 3. build self-esteem .61 .16 .21 .35 4. reduce negative habits .48 .21 .07 .30 5. create opportunities for personal achievement .63 .15 .34 .26 6. develop greater focus & concentration .64 .18 .31 .39 7. learn new skills for life .66 .11 .43 .31 8. prevent future health problems .11 .40 -.01 .31 9. shape my body & increase physical attractiveness .09 .55 .08 .25 10. improve endurance .17 .52 .20 .34 11. be physically fit .17 .66 .06 .28 12. be with friends or make new friends .30 .04 .47 .17 13. have fun .20 .32 .46 .30 14. enjoy the challenge and excitement of competition .26 .04 .57 .02 15. live more adventurously .49 .04 .56 .18 16. reduce stress & release tension .26 .41 .15 .68 17. deal with moods and anxiety .37 .18 .18 .56 18. increase feelings of relaxation .36 .27 .16 .54 eigenvalues 4.5 2.0 1.3 1.1 note: f1 = mental toughness; f2 = toned and fit; f3 = fun and friends; f4 = stress reduction. the primary factor loadings are in bold font. factor 1 contained items that reflected mental toughness motives and factor 2 represented motives centered on staying toned and fit. factor 3 captured motives of having fun and being with friends, while factor 4 reflected motivations to exercise for stress reduction. the internal consistencies for the factors were as follows: factor 1: mental toughness (α = .81), factor 2: toned and fit (α = .70), factor 3: fun and friends (α = .70), factor 4: stress reduction (α = .71). given the adequate to good internal consistencies of these factors, composite subscale means were created based on the primary factor loadings of the items. the bivariate correlations and descriptive statistics for these subscales are presented in table 2. table 2. correlations and descriptive statistics for motivations subscales 1 2 3 4 1. mental toughness .21** .45** .44** 2. toned and fit .10** .33** 3. fun and friends .24** 4. stress reduction m 2.36 2.88 2.17 2.60 sd .62 .27 .61 .58 ** p <.001 3.2 univariate anovas having found few studies of exercise-related motivations across age groups (ashford et al., 1993; koslow, 1988; seippel, 2006; trujillo et al., 2004), we believed there to be insufficient evidence to activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 articulate a priori hypotheses about expected group differences. thus, we conducted a series of univariate anovas, followed by polynomial trend analyses (i.e., linear, quadratic, cubic) to examine the nature of age group differences on motivations. the main purpose of these trend analyses was exploratory. based on the five age groups of interest (teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s+), we explored group differences on the four motivations subscales indicated by the efa results. the results of the anovas and linear trend analyses are summarized in table 3. table 3. summary of anova analyses for group differences in motivations source ss df ms f p factor 1: mental toughness age group 16.15 4 4.04 10.73 <.001 linear 14.33 1 14.33 38.11 <.001 quadratic 1.36 1 1.36 3.61 .06 cubic .23 1 .23 .61 .43 error 707.32 1880 .38 total 723.47 1884 factor 2: toned and fit age group 2.41 4 .60 8.70 <.001 linear 1.64 1 1.64 23.79 <.001 quadratic .70 1 .70 10.04 <.01 cubic .07 1 .07 .98 .32 error 130.29 1880 .07 total 132.70 1884 factor 3: fun and friends age group 9.74 4 2.43 6.67 <.001 linear 8.86 1 8.86 24.31 <.001 quadratic .05 1 .05 .15 .69 cubic .51 1 .50 1.41 .23 error 685.27 1880 .37 total 695.00 1884 factor 4: stress reduction age group 8.60 4 2.15 6.56 <.001 linear 1.76 1 1.76 5.37 <.001 quadratic 3.82 1 3.82 11.68 <.001 cubic 2.95 1 2.95 9.02 <.001 error 6.84 1880 .33 total 615.70 1884 first, there was a statistically significant group difference on mental toughness (f4, 1880 = 10.73, p < .001, η2 = .02), and these differences followed a linear trend (f1, 1880 = 38.11, p < .001, η2 = .02). as seen in figure 1 (below), mental toughness motives decreased steadily with age. second, there was a significant group difference in motives included in the toned and fit factor (f4, 1880 = 8.70, p < .001, activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 η2 = .02). trend analyses revealed significant linear (f1, 1880 = 23.79, p < .001, η2 = .01) and quadratic (f1, 1880 = 10.04, p < .01, η2 = .005) trends; however the linear trend accounted for the greatest proportion of variance in the group effect. as depicted in figure 1, there is a steady increase with age with respect to motives encompassed in toned and fit. third, there was a statistically significant group difference on the factor of fun and friends (f4, 1880 = 6.67, p < .001, η2 = .01), and these motives decreased linearly with age (f1, 1880 = 24.31, p < .001, η2 = .01). lastly, stress reduction motives differed by group (f4, 1880 = 6.56, p < .001, η2 = .01) and all trends were statistically significant (see table 3). the quadratic trend accounted for the largest proportion of variance in stress reduction motives; however, this corresponded to a relatively small effect size (.06% of the variance). figure 1. group means on motivations subscales 4. discussion the efa revealed four motivational factors: mental toughness, toned and fit, fun and friends, and stress reduction. these factors seemed to have reasonable internal consistency, and suggested a simplified framework for appreciating motivations for exercise. especially when attempting to design promotional campaigns or activity programming, having a more concise portrayal of age group differences – such as the one permitted by this four-factor solution – may facilitate understanding and planning. a closer examination of our efa raised an important theoretical issue deriving from the seeming mix of intrinsic and extrinsic elements in certain factors. if we consider, for example, the toned and fit (f2) factor, there were items referring to future health, being fit, improving endurance, body shaping, and increasing physical attractiveness. as ryan et al. (2009) commented, intrinsic pa motives pertain to goals of becoming healthy and fit, while extrinsic 2 2.5 3 teens 20s 30s 40s 50+ mental toughness toned and fit fun and friends stress reduction activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 motives are derived more from a desire for physical attractiveness. this argument was thought to be supported by factor analytic results reported by kasser and ryan (1996) wherein items pertaining to health loaded on factors with intrinsic motivational items, while items concerning physical attractiveness loaded on factors containing items related to monetary goals or fame (extrinsic rewards). in our study, the motive of increasing physical attractiveness loaded on the same factor as items pertaining to fitness and health. one way of reconciling this apparent difference in factorial structures relies on arguments taken from organismic integration theory (oit; see deci & ryan, 1985; ryan & deci, 2000), a sub-theory of sdt. oit suggests a continuum of autonomy underpinning extrinsic motivation. motives that are more autonomous are likely to be integrated into and internalized in the self. as such, they would approximate intrinsic motives in their capacity to support sustained involvement (ryan et al., 2009). in this perspective, our finding that intrinsic motives related to health and fitness loaded on the same factor as a seemingly extrinsic motive of physical attractiveness makes sense, especially if the latter was considered to be internalized and integrated into the self. a similar argument could be made for motives comprising the stress reduction (f4) factor, where items varied from ones concerning anxiety and mood management to those pertaining to increasing relaxation and reducing tension. in relation to the principal focus of our investigation, namely, the comparison of exerciserelated motivations across the lifespan, the efa results can be seen as providing a simple framework of four factors for comparison. variance in the four motivational factors across the lifespan is captured graphically in figure 1, and detailed in the univariate anova results and related polynomial trend analyses displayed in table 3. assuming that the efa-identified factors adequately map dominant categories of exercise motivation, figure 1 largely describes two patterns: one suggests an increase in the salience of certain motives over the lifespan, while the second depicts a declining basis for exercise motivation as individuals age. the first pattern was evident for the factors of stress reduction and toned and fit, while the second seemed to characterize the motivational factors of mental toughness and fun and friends. though quadratic trends were evident for the factors of stress reduction and toned and fit, linear trends were significant for all four of the factors; it is these linear trends that we would like to emphasize in our discussion. apparently, as individuals age, they express progressively less motivation to exercise based on a desire to enhance aspects of mental toughness. connaughton, hanton, and jones (2010) argued in their study of elite athletes that mental toughness was indeed an important outcome that could be nurtured through sport and activity participation. however, it appears from our research that this becomes less relevant with increasing age. bear in mind that our mental toughness factor was comprised of items that extended beyond narrower definitions of this construct (madrigal, hamill, & gill, 2013; nicholls, polman, levy, & backhouse 2009). exercise motives that loaded significantly on this factor reflected interest in developing assertiveness, creating opportunities for achievement, building self-esteem, generating new life skills, and becoming mentally tougher. the trend line for this composite of motivations for exercising drops off right after the teen years and continues its decline into and beyond the 50s. while research supports the notion that elements of the mental toughness factor, for instance, self-esteem and experiencing mastery, can be favorably impacted through exercise participation (hawker, 2012; spence, mcgannon, & poon, 2005; springer, lamborn, & pollard, 2013), the fact that older individuals appear to be less motivated to exercise for such reasons might suggest that either these concerns are less relevant to their lives (e.g., self-esteem is reasonably well-established; see wagner, gerstorf, hoppmann, & luszcz, 2013) or that exercising has stronger connections to other personal goals. activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 similarly, according to our findings being with friends, having fun, living adventurously, and enjoying competitive challenges become less potent motivators for exercise as one ages. the high importance of fun in pa has been noted in a single cohort study of 14-18 year olds (pano & markola, 2012), but this result provides only partial insight into the meaning of fun and friends across the lifespan. fortunately, seippel’s (2006) study of over 1,400 norwegian recreational athletes provides greater contrast for our research. to begin, this study identified joy/fun as the most meaningful reason for exercising, while in our investigation the fun and friends factor had the lowest mean scores in all age groups. of course, our factor consisted of items beyond just having fun. in regard to age comparisons, the norwegian study corroborated our trends in its documentation of the declining importance of joy/fun, social relations, and competitive achievements with age. another variable included in the norwegian study was the importance of personal expression through sports, which similarly showed a decline with age; this variable may bear some relationship to our item of living more adventurously, which loaded on the fun and friends factor. while the relative importance of joy/fun as a motive for exercise cannot be accurately compared due to the different methodologies of the two studies, the similarities between the two studies in age declines in fun, social relations, achievements, and self-expression or living adventurously raises concern about a diminished potency of pa to excite interest among individuals as they age. trends in our investigation where higher interest levels corresponded with increasing age seemed to represent a more pragmatic emphasis in exercising. while motivations related to being toned and fit evidenced the highest mean scores across all age groups, the significant linear trend for this factor documents how it becomes more central as a motivator with increasing age. perhaps we can identify in this trend a growing awareness of one’s mortality and the need to counter the effects of aging. the toned and fit factor included items pertaining to the prevention of future health problems as well as a current emphasis on body shaping and overall fitness levels. health may be more taken for granted at a younger age, whereas aging tends to bring home the fragility of our lives (andrews, 1999; blum-lehmann, 2008). baltes’s (1987, 1993, 1997) lifespan model of selective optimization with compensation gives great emphasis to age-related losses in human capacities and our need to address these losses through the selection of other goals and compensatory behaviors, which could include more instrumental ways of engaging in physical activity. stress reduction was another motive that seemed to increase in relevance with age. the items captured by this factor referred to reducing stress, releasing tension, increasing relaxation, and addressing mood fluctuations. evidence pertaining to these kinds of benefits of exercise has been widely documented (edenfield & blumenthal, 2011; gerber & pühse, 2009). perhaps individuals learn over time the importance of ‘time out’ from stressful daily events and recognize how regular physical activity can provide a reliable means of stress reduction. a parallel finding might be seen in seippel’s (2006) study, where mental recreation was found to gain increasing importance with age. in an overall perspective, our investigation offers insights into the reasons for individual involvement in pa across the lifespan, as well as affording a fresh outlook regarding the structure of exercise motivations. we noted in our discussion of the efa results that our factors seemed to be complexly constructed with items that could be seen as a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic exercise-related motivations. for instance, it seemed noteworthy that an item reflecting the goal of increasing physical attractiveness loaded on the same factor as items concerning health and physical fitness, which have been assumed to reflect intrinsic motivation (kasser & ryan, 1996; ryan et al., 2009). certainly, the importance of organismic integration theory (deci & ryan, 1985; activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 ryan & deci, 2000) in describing a continuum of motivations ranging from those that are highly controlled to ones that are autonomously pursued allows us to appreciate how extrinsic motives may be closely linked to intrinsic ones. we also argued that our efa results provided a reasonable map of exercise motives that could facilitate comprehension of differences across various types of groupings, including our own contrasts based on age. when considering motives across the lifespan, two summary perspectives can be offered: the first can be seen in the relative scores of the factors across age groups (figure 1), wherein we find that the more instrumental purposes of exercise to be toned and fit rank highest for all age groups while the seemingly more personal and intrinsic purposes of fun and friends rank lowest for all age groups. the second perspective, also depicted in figure 1, pertains to the types of motives that decline with age vs. those that grow. in this regard, pragmatic or instrumental concerns seem to trump ones that might be more personally uplifting. in reflecting on these global impressions, we saw linkages to the pioneering work of vallerand (2008, 2012) and his colleagues (vallerand, donahue, & lafrenière, 2012) regarding the construct of passion. vallerand (2012) identifies passion as “a special relationship with an activity that one loves” (p.47). particularly in regard to what is described as harmonious passion, there seems to be a strong element of choice and openness to participation that facilitates positive experiences. moreover, harmonious passion also incorporates a sense of deep meaning and personal identification with what one is doing. such passionate engagements have been related to positive states of wellbeing, life satisfaction, vitality, and the relative absence of states of illbeing. in brief, vallerand (2012) asserts that passion is highly connected to the experience of a meaningful life. sport and exercise participation remains at low levels in north america, and it may be too much of a stretch to aspire for passionate engagement in pa within the population at large. yet, as vallerand (2012) remarks, motivation matters in regard to living a meaningful life and, moreover, people engage with their worlds in order to grow. when we think of aging as a phenomenon where one becomes more instrumental about what one does and where challenge, joy, excitement, and the desire for achievement diminish in their motivational relevance with passing years, we feel deep concern. we could easily translate our results into prescriptive recommendations for marketing fitness or for program planning, but we prefer to ask a question which unfortunately our current research cannot answer: what will it take to increase passionate relationships with physical pursuits at all ages of the lifespan? or, perhaps as a more modest goal, what needs to happen for individuals to maintain their view of the world of sports and exercise as a place where they can be nourished in mind, body and spirit? authors james gavin concordia university james.gavin@concordia.ca matthew keough concordia university michael abravanel concordia university tatiana moudrakovski concordia university activity motivations across the lifespan gavin, keough, abravanel, moudrakovski, & mcbrearty www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 madeleine mcbrearty concordia university publishing timeline received 11 november 2013 accepted 26 january 2014 published 5 june 2014 references andrews, m. 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(2011). dr. seuss, felicitator. international journal of wellbeing, 1 (2), 197-213. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.3 aaron ahuvia university of michigan ahuvia@umich.edu copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 197 article dr. seuss, felicitator aaron ahuvia abstract: this article uses the life and work of theodor geisel (aka dr. seuss) to discuss certain aspects of what it means to be a ‘felicitator’, i.e. a person who brings happiness to others. the focus is particularly on his promotion of creativity and social inclusion, and his critique of materialism. keywords: happiness, subjective well-being, subjective wellbeing, materialism, social status, fashion, creativity    if people become the books they read and if ‘the child is father to the man,’ then dr. seuss (theodor seuss geisel) is the most influential author, poet, and artist of modern times. john granger (2004), from his review of dr. seuss: american icon 1. introduction the obvious hyperbole of granger’s quote (above) notwithstanding, his underlying point that children’s book authors potentially influence many lives is certainly sound.1 theodor (ted) seuss geisel (1904-1991), better known as dr. seuss, had a long and varied career. but it is as the author and illustrator of some of the most beloved children’s books of the twentieth century that he will be long remembered, and, i will argue, through which he became a felicitator par excellence. a felicitator2 is a person or thing which brings happiness to others. as with most good authors, dr. seuss was a felicitator in part through the enjoyment people derived directly from his work. but he was a felicitator in a more profound sense as well, because he has helped teach a particular set of values and outlook on life to hundreds of millions of children. geisel disliked the heavy-handed moralism which was endemic to the children’s literature of his day, but many of his works nonetheless taught a moral point of view. like that of many children’s authors, his work emphasized honesty and our responsibility to protect those weaker than ourselves. but somewhat less typically, especially for an author of his generation, his work championed personal creativity while rebuking snobbery, materialism, conformity and 1 this paper focuses in particular on materialism and happiness. in this regard it is worth noting that the ideas children are exposed to through the media have been shown to have a significant influence on their levels of materialism (bottomley, nairn, kasser, ferguson & ormrod 2010). 2 i coined the term ‚felicitator‛ in 2010 as part of the work of project+. dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 198 prejudice. it is the values that underlie seuss’s stories, and not just the memorable rhymes and funny illustrations, which gave his work the classic status it has today. and it is these values which form the foundation of my argument that he was a felicitator. specifically, i argue that his books had a modest but nonetheless real influence on millions of children, encouraging their imaginative creativity and discouraging snobbery, social exclusion and materialism. i also review research showing the positive connection between creativity and happiness and the negative connections between snobbery, social exclusion, materialism on the one hand and happiness on the other. so to the extent that ‚people become the books they read‛ (granger 2004), children raised on dr. seuss had improved odds of growing up to be happy adults.3 2. theodor seuss geisel as an undergraduate at dartmouth college (class of 1925), geisel was editor of the school humor magazine, the jack-o’-lantern. he held the editorship until he was forced to resign by the university administration as a penalty for a party in his room that was raided by the police, who, despite prohibition, found alcohol there. to get around his official banishment from the magazine, geisel continued to write for the jack-o’-lantern using a variety of aliases including seuss, his middle name and his mother’s maiden name. some years later he appended ‚dr.‛ to his pseudonym ‚as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the doctorate in literature he blew off when he dropped out of (a phd program at) oxford‛ (schulman 2004, p. 6). ‚dr. seuss‛ became his primary pseudonym from that time on, although he also published over a dozen books under the name theo lesieg (lesieg is geisel spelled backwards). ted geisel was 53 years old before his career as a children’s author really took off. years before that, he had achieved minor celebrity status for his work as a humorous advertising copywriter. geisel never had an ambition to be an ad man, but after he included the brand name flit in one of his early cartoons, he was asked by flit insecticide to create an ad campaign. the resulting ads were a huge hit – fred allen and jack benny referenced the ads in their comedy routines, and there was even a song based on them. geisel produced the flit and other advertisements for 17 years, during which he used advertising as an economic base from which to explore other opportunities. he found some success as a humor cartoonist and as a liberal political cartoonist where he advocated us involvement in wwii, prior to pearl harbor (see figure 1 below). writing and illustrating children’s books started out as just another sideline in geisel’s attempt to cobble together a career. he published his first children’s book, and to think that i saw it all on mulberry street in 1937, in part because writing children’s literature was one of the permitted side activities in his advertising contract.4 after the united states entered world war ii geisel enlisted and served a seven-year stint in the us military, where he scripted training and propaganda films under his commanding officers frank capra (the legendary film director) and jack jones (the animator who created bugs bunny and daffy duck). after the army, he tried his hand at hollywood script writing. over the course of his work in the military and in hollywood, he wrote three academy awardwinning documentaries. but he found working in hollywood as part of the studio system very 3 this quotation comes from john granger’s (2004) online review of dr seuss: american icon. http://www.amazon.com/dr-seuss-american-phillip-nel/dp/0826414346/ref=cm_cr_pr_orig_subj 4 this is sometimes presented as a coincidence, as if the contract had just happened by chance to permit authoring children’s books, which led him to this work. but how did that clause find its way into his contract to begin with? it is quite plausible that he had an interest in this occupation and requested that his advertising contract allow him to work in children’s literature. if so, this would fit a pattern throughout his life of recasting his past as a series of happenstance serendipitous events, when in fact he played an active role in bringing those events about. http://www.amazon.com/dr-seuss-american-phillip-nel/dp/0826414346/ref=cm_cr_pr_orig_subj dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 199 unpleasant. when it came to his creative work geisel was perfectionistic, uncompromising, and did not, as the expression goes, ‘play well with others’. being a self-employed author suited him much better. so, having determined that he and his wife could live on $100 per week, in 1953 he asked his agent, ‚if i drop everything else (to focus exclusively on writing children’s books), do you think i could count on royalties of $5000 a year?‛ (morgan & morgan 1995, p. 140). although he had previously published seven children’s books, some of which had been fairly popular, his royalty payments were modest. so his decision to give up his advertising and scriptwriting work was no small economic risk. figure 1: political cartoon for pm magazine satirizes mussolini there is a saying among product designers, that ‘it takes 20 years before a product becomes an overnight success’– so too with dr. seuss. in 1957, 20 years after his first children’s book, he published the cat in the hat and how the grinch stole christmas, both of which were wildly popular and transformed dr. seuss into a children’s literature superstar. in total, geisel authored 44 books, which have collectively sold over one half billion copies.5 3. imagination and creativity dr. seuss’s first book, and to think that i saw it all on mulberry street (1937) was rejected by as many as 436 publishers before a chance meeting on the street between geisel and an old college friend, who had just entered the publishing business, led to its production. while utterly unremarkable today, what made and to think that i saw it all on mulberry street a tough sell to publishers in the 1930s was the fact that it took the perspective of a creative child who was frustrated by his father’s preference for the dry truth over the child’s imaginative stories. many 5 some of my personal favorites not mentioned so far include mcelligot’s pool, horton hears a who!, green eggs and ham, yertle the turtle and other stories, the sneetches and other stories, the lorax, and finally oh, the places you’ll go!; which, interestingly, has since become a common gift from parents upon their children’s graduation from college. 6 the number of publishers, like so many other things in geisel’s life, got larger with each retelling and isn’t conclusively known. the source of the number 43 used here is lurie (1990). dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 200 publishers saw this empathy for the child’s perspective as anti-authority (lurie 1990). and in a way it was, since our creative imagination allows us to see beyond the existing social structure and towards the possibility of a different and better way of life. indeed, it has oft been noted that dr. seuss’s characters ‚express a kind of freedom from conventional ways of thinking‛ (renthal 1962) and in ‚many of his books there is a strong liberal, even anti-establishment moral‛ (lurie 1990, p. 51). from his first book on, dr. seuss was always allied ‚with the child’s free spirit‛ (lanes 1971, as cited in nel 2004, p. 251) as he celebrated ‚the wildest flights of fantasy‛ (lurie 1990, p. 51). seuss goes so far as to suggest that a child’s creativity needs protection from small-minded authority figures, a view formed in part by his experience in his high school art class. as geisel recounts the story: our model that day was a milk bottle containing few scraggly late autumn daisies. i was having a real bad time trying to capture the beauty of this setup and immortalize it with a hunk of charcoal in a sheet of paper. to add to my frustration, my teacher kept fluttering about them giving me hell for turning my drawing board around and working on my picture upside down. ‚no, theodor,‛ she said. ‚not upside down! there are rules that every artist must abide by. you will never succeed if you break them.‛7 at the end of the hour geisel transferred out of the class, and so ended his first and only encounter with formal art education (morgan & morgan 1995). traces of this experience can be heard in geisel’s warning that if ‚you don’t get imagination as a child, and probably never will [ . . .] because it gets knocked out of you by the time you grow up‛ (‚logical insanity of dr. seuss‛ p. 58, as quoted in nel 2004, p. 123). seuss’s child characters often modeled a strategy for retaining their imaginative free spirit by keeping it hidden from adults (lurie 1990). for example, in and to think that i saw it all on mulberry street, marco, the child protagonist, uses his imagination to turn a simple horse and buggy into a magnificent parade. but marco then conceals this fantasy from his father, who had previously admonished him to ‚stop telling such outlandish tales.‛ imaginative and frequently zany characters often play the role of felicitator in seuss’s work, bringing happiness to those around them. as nel (2004, p. 123) writes: the cat in the hat, sam-i-am, and the narrator of on beyond zebra! are all characters who use the imagination to create possibility< so, instead of remaining secure behind social or linguistic norms, these characters encouraged us to explore what happens when we break the rules. in so doing, harold hill brings joy into river city, the cat brings excitement into a dull suburban home, and sam-i-am invites us to taste the unexpected. seuss also noted the way imaginative creativity is an intrinsically rewarding activity. for example, while marco never told his father about his imaginative reverie, the creative process left marco energized and full of joy: i swung ‘round the corner and dashed through the gate, i ran up the steps and i felt simply great! 7 morgan and moran (1995), p. 21. dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 201 no one would deny that creative expression can often feel good, but so can any number of activities that are nonetheless in the long run deleterious to one’s happiness. even if one accepts the premise that at least some of those one half billion dr. seuss books influenced children to value and participate in imaginative creativity, does this increase in creative behavior make dr. seuss a felicitator? what does the scientific research have to say on the subject of imagination, creativity and happiness? there is a significant body of literature showing that – contrary to the stereotype of the brooding artist – being happy increases creativity (argyle 2001, davis 2009, gasper 2004). happiness boosts creativity primarily because positive moods increase mental arousal (filipowitz 2006), and also because happy people are ‚more relaxed and more open to new experiences; therefore, they can make more diverse associations, generate more ideas as the thoughts flow freely without the restraint‛ (pannells & claxton 2008, p. 71). nonetheless, two caveats are in order. first, positive moods help people generate new ideas, but negative moods can actually be more helpful in evaluating the merit of those ideas (davis 2009). furthermore, there can be too much of a good thing, and as people reach the very highest possible levels of happiness creativity diminishes (davis 2009). cohen-meitar, carmeli and waldman (2009) provide findings which suggest a virtuous circle may exist for creativity and happiness in the workplace (see figure 2 below). this study revealed that employees who found their work to be meaningful (i.e. personally important to them in some larger intrinsic sense) identified more strongly with the organizations which employed them, and also felt happier at work. furthermore, employee happiness was associated with increased productive creativity at work, as assessed by the employees’ supervisor. since supervisors usually convey their evaluation of employees to those employees, it’s reasonable to assume that employees whose supervisors believe them to be highly creative and productive should on average come to see themselves as relatively more successful at work. other research has shown that feeling successful at work is strongly linked to happiness (warr 1999). combined, these findings suggest a positive feedback loop whereby employees who experience work as a meaningful and happy activity become more creative in productive ways, which is in turn noted by their supervisors, and thus increases the employees’ assessment of their own professional success, which finally produces yet more happiness for those employees. figure 2: employee creativity and happiness employee happiness employee creativity positive evaluations by supervisors employee perception of success dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 202 in contrast to the robust literature on the effect of happiness on creativity, there are relatively few studies which look at the impact of personal creativity on one’s own, or others’, happiness. nonetheless, what data do exist support the claim that encouraging creativity and selfexpression also encourages personal happiness and has positive spillover effects for society at large. csikszentmihalyi (1990) documents in detail the role creativity plays in flow and optimal experience. at the other end of the emotional spectrum, grieves (2009) conducted a controlled experiment with patients suffering from clinical depression, and found that increased creative activity was therapeutic and led to decreased depression. a recent study by georgellis, tsitsainis, and yin (2009) shows that, across europe, valuing creativity is positively correlated with happiness. this study analyzed data from the european social survey (2002 & 2004). respondents were asked how important it was for them to (a) think of new ideas and be creative; (b) be rich and own expensive things; (c) show abilities and be admired; (d) seek respect from others; (e) help people; and (f) follow traditions and customs. the answer most consistently and positively associated with happiness was the importance of thinking of new ideas and being creative. creativity is also linked to happiness at the community level. di giacinto, ferrante, and vistocco found that ‚access to creative environments appears to have a positive impact on happiness‛ (2007, p. 1). specifically, their study used florida’s creativity index (florida & tinaglia 2005) to assess the creative output, embrace of diversity, and tolerance for individual eccentricity, for various geographic regions in italy. after controlling for income and other demographic factors, they found a positive correlation between a community’s creativity index, and the happiness of the people who live there. shifting our focus from geographic communities to organizations, similar results were obtained by rasulzada and dackert (2009), who found that fostering a creative organizational climate leads to higher levels of perceived creativity and innovation by employees, which in turn leads to greater happiness, enthusiasm and optimism amongst those employees. 4. conspicuous consumption, materialism and social exclusion as a child growing up in springfield massachusetts during world war i, ted geisel was pelted with coal by other schoolchildren because of his german heritage. he recalled in an interview how, prior to wwi, his german-american relatives ‚did get into some clubs like the elks, and they took us kids to elks clam bakes where we ate lobsters and quahog clams and corn-on-thecob and our fathers drank beer until our mothers made them stop and we all came home on the trolley car singing and wildly happy‛ (morgan & morgan 1995, p. 18). but the good relations between geisel’s childhood german-american ethnic community and the majority population of his home town ended when america entered wwi. later, as a freshman at dartmouth he would have a similar experience of social exclusion as he was not invited to join any of the fraternities, this time not because of his german heritage but because of a false rumor that he was jewish. thus, in a plot twist worthy of one of his own books, geisel, a third-generation american and christian from birth, managed to suffer both from anti-german bigotry and antisemitism. in interviews geisel would cite these experiences when explaining the origins of his story the sneetches, a parable about the hoity-toity star-belly sneetches and their hoi polloi brethren the plain-belly sneetches. and it’s easy to hear geisel’s experience of being excluded from the clam bakes as a child and later from dartmouth fraternities in verses from the sneetches (1961) like: but, because they had stars, all the star-belly sneetches dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 203 would brag, ‚we’re the best kind of sneetch on the beaches.‛ with their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort ‚we’ll have nothing to do with the plain-belly sort!‛ and whenever they met some, when they were out walking, they’d hike on past them without even talking... when the star-belly sneetches had frankfurter roasts or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts, they never invited the plain-belly sneetches. they left them out cold, in the dark of the beaches. they kept them away. never let them come near. and that’s how they treated them year after year. the sneetches began as a short illustrated poem published in redbook magazine in 1953, which satirized racial, religious or ethnic prejudice and animosity. but when dr. seuss expanded the 1953 poem to create the illustrated story the sneetches (1961), the topic also shifted toward classbased prejudice and the role of luxury goods as status markers. the 1953 and 1961 versions start out much the same, but the 1961 version departs from the earlier poem when a pitchman named sylvester mcmonkey mcbean arrives on the scene. mcbean unpacks an enormous contraption – a star-on machine – which prints stars on the plain-belly’s bellies to make them indistinguishable from star-belly sneetches (see figure 3 below). mcbean sells trips through the star-on machine to the plain-belly sneetches. the idea that one could buy an upgrade in one’s social status doesn’t fit well with a satire of bigotry based on race or religion; but it fits quite well as a metaphor for class-based bigotry and the role of conspicuous consumption in facilitating class snobbery. figure 3: mcbean and his star-on machine dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 204 the sneetches presents a succinct illustration of the ‘trickle-down’ (simmel 1904, veblen 1899), a.k.a. ‘chase and flight’ (mccracken 1985) theory of fashion, according to which fashion items such as designer brands are used by elites to mark their superior status and differentiate them from the rest of us. these same fashion brands then become attractive to wannabe elites who seek to emulate the fashion leaders and perhaps even join the elite group. since the whole value of the status brand to the elites was that it distinguished them from the non-elites, once the brand becomes too popular with non-elites it loses its value to the original elite group. as dr. seuss would put it, ‚from then on, as you’ve probably guessed. things really got into a horrible mess‛ (1961, p. 19). the elites drop the now passé status symbol, and opt for a new brand or style. eventually, the non-elites catch on to the fact that the elites have abandoned their former status marker, and the fashion cycle keeps relentlessly chugging along. lest the role of fashion in this whole process of elitism and exclusion be missed by the reader, dr. seuss spells it out quite explicitly. once the plain-belly sneetches acquire stars, the star-belly sneetches become furious that the riffraff now have their status markers. mcbean, it turns out, also has a solution to the star-belly’s status problem. ‚belly stars are no longer in style‛ says mcbean ‚what you need is a trip through my star-off machine‛! as the book continues, mcbean whips both groups into a fashion-fueled status symbol-buying frenzy: all the rest of that day, on those wild screaming beaches, the fix-it-up chappie kept fixing up sneetches. off again! on again! in again! out again! through the machines they raced round and about again, changing their stars every minute or two. they kept paying money. they kept running through. in the story, this continues until ‚every last cent of their money’s been spent.‛ for many, this fate is hardly fictitious, as conspicuous status consumption has been linked to problematic consumer debt (lea, webley, & walker 1995), and the compulsive consumption which can lead to that debt (d’astous, maltais & roberge 1990). since the sneetches was published several developments have dramatically expanded the percentage of the population ‚running round and round-bout again‛ in this status game (patrick & hagtvedt 2009). first, the development of designer labels made it easier for nonelites to play the game. previously, in order to play one needed to devote enough time and energy to developing a connoisseur’s eye for fashion and luxury goods, that one could distinguish what was hot from what was not, based on the aesthetic properties of the object in question. visible designer labels have made the process of identifying status goods much simpler and hence made the status game accessible to a much larger audience. this change corresponded to the development of what people in the luxury goods business call ‘accessible luxuries.’ these are products like a $150 gucci keychain, which while much more expensive than comparable non-designer products, are still priced low enough to be affordable to a highly motivated middle-class consumer. the combination of visible labels and accessibly priced products has led to the spread of this status game to the mass public. the image of the sneetches getting stars popped onto and off of their bodies is readily translatable into designer logos on clothing. but this competitive consumption status system extends far beyond designer clothes. the car one drives, beverages one drinks (from wine and liquor, the beverage status game has spread to beer, coffee, tea and even bottled water), the home one lives in, golf clubs (both the kind one plays with and the kind one plays at), etc., are all common consumption domains where this status competition takes place. nor are tangible dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 205 products inherently more status oriented than services or experiences. for example, the ad for vacation travel is based on the premise that the resort others haven’t been to yet (and are hence dreaming about) allows you to score more status points than does going to a resort which is more common (note the double meaning of ‘common’ as frequent but therefore inherently not elite). seeing this status competition as a ‘game’ is a useful metaphor. in the sneetches story, the game was primarily a team sport (the plain-belly vs the star-belly), but in real life the game has qualities both of a team and of an individual competition. it is perhaps unsurprising that if given their druthers, the elites wouldn’t want to even play in the same league as the masses – and so they don’t. the fashion-based status symbol game has developed what i call three ‘leagues’ – which i will dub the ‘c’ league, ‘b’ league, and ‘a’ league – hierarchically organized of course! the c league is the most widely accessible and therefore least elite. it is a hallmark of low sophistication consumers who play in the c league that, by and large, they do not even know that the other two leagues exist. c league players compete by purchasing major designer label products with visible designer logos (han, nunes & drèze 2010). the bigger the product and the bigger the logo, the more it costs and hence the more ‘points’ a consumer scores for displaying it. therefore, winning in the c league is largely just a function of how much money one spends. or at least, this used to be the case before ‘cheating’ (buying counterfeits) became an easily accessible option. the fbi calls counterfeiting ‚the crime of the 21st century‛ (chow 2003, p. 9) because counterfeiting designer luxury goods is a business of staggering proportions (gistri, romani, pace & ahuvia 2010). counterfeiting is less of an issue in the b league, and hardly occurs in the a league at all. this is because counterfeiters rarely find it profitable to create imitation versions of the products favored in these higher leagues. the b league competes mainly through the use of the same designer brands purchased by participants in the c league, but b leaguers prefer products within those brands which have less conspicuous or even non-visible designer logos (han, nunes & drèze 2010). thus success in this league requires more knowledge of the designer product lines and of fashion trends, than does success in the c league. participants in the b league generally have higher incomes and are more broadly immersed in the world of fashion than are c league competitors. the a league is a small group of generally quite wealthy people who live in culturally elite cities such as new york, london, milan or paris; and fancy themselves as not only the economic elite but the cultural avant-garde. they typically reject the well-known designer labels altogether, and prefer lesser known small-production designers. if brands move between leagues, the typical pattern is for them to start in the a league and then gradually move down market, where the possibility of much greater sales volume allows for higher profits. in some cases though, such as coach handbags, brands may start out as mass market brands and then move up into the b league. 5. happiness, money and status games one might reasonably ask, what’s wrong with playing this particular game? all competitive games have winners and losers; that’s part of what makes them fun. couldn’t one argue that ‘this is a fun game and fun games make us happy’? certainly many postmodernist ‘liberationist’ thinkers would argue along those lines (campbell 1991, p. 62-63). furthermore, people need to form a coherent sense of identity to be happy (ahuvia 2005, burroughs & rindfleisch 2002). the products we choose are an important part of this identity creation dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 206 process (ahuvia 2005, ahuvia et al. 2009, belk 1988). so, as twitchell (1999) argues, shouldn’t we just get over it and let people enjoy their status games? it would be foolish to deny the importance of creating a coherent sense of personal identity, or to deny that shopping for, buying and using all sorts of stuff can be fun. but research shows that there are different ways of relating to money and consumption, different ways of creating a sense of identity, and different ways of having fun, some of which produce longer lasting happiness than others. and unfortunately for avid players of the remarkably popular status game satirized in the sneetches, the data on happiness recommend other hobbies. nonetheless, before exploring the research in greater detail, i should caution against two common prejudices that can lead people to draw incorrect inferences. the first of these prejudices stems from gender stereotypes. the word ‘fashion’ refers specifically to clothing and accessories, but it also refers to a much wider phenomenon where all kinds of things go in and out of style; e.g. cars, furniture, music, food, architecture, the arts, political beliefs, academic theories, investment strategies. because designer clothing and accessories provide such handy illustrative examples of status-driven fashions, many people incorrectly equate conspicuous consumption with the purchase of these particular goods. and since designer brands are more popular with women than with men (although interest by men is increasing), this misleads some people to think of conspicuous consumption as a particularly female problem. but there are plenty of publicly visible consumer goods, such as cars, through which even the least metrosexual male can conspicuously display his status. the second prejudice is intellectual and/or counter-cultural snobbery. although intellectuals love to poke fun at the status games where money is used to score points, wealth is just one ‘field’ on which this game is played (bourdieu 1984). academics score points in the ‘i’m smarter than you’ competition through their publications. cultural elites score points in the ‘who’s more sophisticated’ contest through having ‘better’ taste in food, wine, art, music, etc.8 tattoos are perhaps the most direct analogy to the belly stars, and tattoos were widely used to score points in the ‘i’m cooler and more counter-culture than you are’ competition between about 1990 – 2005, when they finally became so mainstream that they went out of style. most of this article will focus on luxury goods as conventional status symbols in part because they fit with the sneetches story, and in part because they are by far the most widely researched. but i would stress that many of the psychological problems associated with materialistic status consumption may well apply to these other status games as well. 5.1 sneetchie behavior is an aspect of materialism as discussed above, it was easy for dr. seuss to transform his story, originally about racism and anti-semitism, into a story about the folly of fashion, conspicuous consumption and materialism. this is because these phenomena are more closely linked than one might first think. when a privileged status is assigned (or denied) based on groups one is born into, we call this racism, etc.; but when a similar status claim is made through the things money can buy, we call it materialism. in fact, roets, hiel and cornelis (2006) have found that materialism is one of the primary psychological predictors of racist attitudes, thus suggesting that there is an underlying psychological connection between these two mechanisms for assigning ingroups and outgroups. in the sneetches, dr. seuss focuses on how materialism, through the purchase of status symbols, is used to shape relationships between people (or sneetches, as the case may be). in 8 see the literature on ‘cultural capital’ for much more on this topic. dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 207 particular, the materialistic use of status symbols is embedded in competitive and antagonistic social relationships. research confirms this connection, finding that materialistic people tend to view their social relationships in competitive and hierarchical ways (christopher et al. 2005). for example, materialistic people are more likely to compare their incomes to their co-workers’ (clark & senik 2010), value power over others more than a benevolent concern for others (richins 2004), and value purchases that allow them to gain social status rather than those purchases that facilitate warm relationships with others (richins 1994, 2004). as kasser (2008, p. 176) put it, an orientation towards ‚materialistic goals is associated with being less agreeable and empathic, and with being more machiavellian, socially dominant, and competitive (vs. cooperative) in social dilemma games.‛ claxton, murray and janda (1995) found that these patterns applied in one’s home life as well, as materialists were disproportionately likely to have ‘cool’ rather than ‘warm’ marital relationships (see also kasser & ryan 2001). similarly, burroughs and rindfleisch (2002, p. 365) conclude that materialists seek ‚mastery and control over others. thus, materialistic individuals appear to be not only hedonistic pleasure seekers but also power-hungry control seekers.‛ in sum, materialism is often less about a person’s excessive focus on material objects, than it is about using money and the things it can buy to gain power over, or win status competitions against, other people. since having warm and positive social relationships has been shown to be such an important predictor of happiness (myers 1999), this competitive interpersonal orientation may be one reason why materialism is so frequently associated with unhappiness. 5.2 materialism is linked to unhappiness in the sneetches, dr. seuss’s primary criticism of the elite star bellies is that their snobbery and exclusionary social practices caused harm to the plain bellies. in this respect, his book understates quite significantly the problems associated with the behavior dr. seuss satirizes. it is not just that the plain belly sneetches are harmed because they can’t go to the star belly’s frankfurter roasts. rather, the socially competitive frame of mind that underlies why the sneetches ‚kept paying their money‛ and ‚kept running through‛ mcbean’s star on and star off machines, is itself the source of unhappiness and other psychological problems. these problems would afflict the star bellies and the plain bellies alike. one of the first scientific scales to measure materialism came from belk (1985), who saw materialism as consisting of three parts: envy, non-generosity, and possessiveness. using these measures, highly materialistic people were shown to be less happy in life, and less prone to helping others, when compared with less materialistic people (belk 1985). later, richins and dawson (1992) developed a materialism scale which defined materialists as people who (a) believe their success and the success of others can be judged based on a person’s possessions, (b) that possessions are needed for happiness, and (c) for whom possessions play a central role in their life. although richins and dawson's scale conceptualizes materialism somewhat differently from belk (1985), materialists have fared no better in research using this scale. roberts and clement (2007) found that when materialism was measured in this way, it was associated with lower overall life satisfaction as well as lower satisfaction with family, friends, self, place of residence, health, fun and enjoyment, one’s financial situation, and one’s job. similar findings are quite common (e.g. nickerson et al. 2003, ryan & dziurawiec 2001, swinyard et al. 2001, wright & larsen 1993). the third major theory of materialism comes from kasser (kasser 2002; kasser et al. 2002, c.f. emmons 1996, stutzer 2004), and is an extension of self-determination theory. kasser sees materialism as a particular instance of a larger personal value system which prioritizes dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 208 ‘extrinsic’ over ‘intrinsic’ life goals. extrinsic goals include financial success, attractive appearance, and social popularity. these goals are called ‘extrinsic’ because they ‚focus on external rewards, praise, and the evaluations of others‛ (sheldon & kasser 2008, p. 37). on the other hand, intrinsic goals include the desires for self-acceptance and personal growth, affiliation with others, and making a contribution to the larger community. these pursuits ‚are typically inherently rewarding and...tend to satisfy innate psychological needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness‛ (sheldon & kasser 2008, p. 37). this theory of materialism links the desire for wealth and conspicuous consumption to the psychologicallyrelated goals of physical attractiveness and social prestige. the interconnections between these extrinsic goals can also be seen in geisel’s creation of the sneetches, in which social prestige is linked both to the materialistic purchase of status goods, and, through his earlier cosmetics advertisement, to the fashion and beauty industries. self-determination theory sees lasting happiness as dependent on prioritizing intrinsic over extrinsic life goals. this theory may be most easily understood through an analogy to what i call ‘psychological nutrition.’ in this view, the mind has certain ‘psychological nutrition’ needs, and intrinsic goals are those goals which, when met, fulfil these psychological nutrition requirements. lasting happiness, in this view, is not the result of any particular pleasant experience but rather an outcome of psychological health. extrinsic goals such as gaining social prestige through conspicuous consumption are the equivalent of mental desserts – attractive and momentarily pleasing, but lacking in psychological nutrition. obtaining these mental desserts does not promote psychological health and hence does not create long-term happiness. in fairness to desserts, whether chocolate or metaphoric in nature, they can be fun and are dependably pleasurable. desserts aren’t inherently bad, but if they play too large a role in one’s life, that can cause real problems. in the case of meeting one’s psychological needs, an excessive emphasis on extrinsic goals (psychological desserts) has been empirically associated with ‚a host of maladies including anxiety, depression, neurotic physical symptoms, unpleasant emotions, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, behavioral disorders, lower levels of self-actualization, less vitality, less life satisfaction and fewer pleasant emotions‛ (ahuvia & izberk-bilgin forthcoming). finally, as if things weren’t already looking bad enough for highly materialistic people, it turns out they don’t even enjoy their desserts as much as less materialistic people do. that is to say, as compared to people who are low in materialism, high materialists are less satisfied with the products they own in potentially status-signaling product categories, and experience more guilt from splurge purchases (wang & wallendorf 2006). self-determination theory is quite different from the typical models of consumer decisionmaking which assume people maximize their self-interest over the long run. these models hold that what makes a goal attractive is the fact that achieving that goal maximizes a person's longterm wellbeing. in contrast, self-determination theory holds that a goal can be highly attractive and motivating, and yet achieving that goal would not provide long-term psychological wellbeing, just as attractive foods don’t always provide long-term physical wellbeing. furthermore, in self-determination theory people rarely learn from this mistake and repeatedly chase after shiny extrinsic goals even though past achievements in these areas have not produced lasting happiness. puzzling as this failure to learn from experience may sound, it is now a well documented aspect of human decision-making that we consistently mis-estimate how much lasting happiness or unhappiness future events in our lives will bring us (wilson & gilbert 2003). and perhaps even more bizarrely, we seem to have a limitless appetite for repeating these mistakes (ahuvia 2008). dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 209 5.3 is materialism always linked to unhappiness, and why? there is quite compelling evidence from a very large number of studies conducted with different populations around the world that materialism in general, and status consumption in particular, are usually linked with unhappiness and a range of other problems. however, there is still legitimate debate based on conflicting evidence as to whether there are important exceptions to this general rule. and these possible exceptions are based on reasons materialism would, or would not, be linked to unhappiness. although high income aspirations (i.e. wanting more money) are certainly an aspect of materialism, and have been strongly linked to unhappiness (johnson & krueger 2006, stutzer 2004), these statements are generalizations which have been shown not to hold true in every case. desiring more money so as to pursue extrinsic socially competitive goals (e.g. one’s next trip through the star on machine) is quite deleterious to happiness. but wanting money to pursue more prosocial intrinsic goals (e.g. supporting a social cause) or even to fulfill much more neutral personal responsibilities (e.g. saving for retirement) have been found to be unrelated to happiness (carver & baird 1998, srivastava, locke & bartol 2001). one of the reasons materialism may be associated with unhappiness is that it leads people to compare their financial status to that of others. the more prone people are to make these financial comparisons, the less happy they tend to be, in part because people tend disproportionately to compare themselves to others who have more than they do (clark & senik 2010). interestingly, even upwards economic comparisons need not always lead to unhappiness. in some cases, people can be inspired by the successes of others, so seeing others who have been highly successful can lead to a sense of hope and optimism about one’s own future. but these positive responses to others’ good fortune are, unfortunately, generally outweighed by negative, more competitive responses (clark & senik 2010). in any case, materialism has been shown to exacerbate the negative consequences of upward social comparison (carver & baird 1998). lyubomirsky (2001, p. 242-243) finds the type of socially competitive orientation typical of materialists to be at the heart of what makes for an unhappy existence: our research paints a portrait of unhappy individuals who are deflated rather than delighted about their peers’ accomplishments and triumphs and are relieved rather than disappointed or sympathetic in the face of their colleagues’ and acquaintances’ failures and undoings... one striking finding was that unhappy students reported feeling happier and more self-confident when they had received a poor evaluation (but heard their peer receive an even worse one) than when they had received an excellent evaluation (but heard their peer receive an even better one). happy students, by contrast, did not show this pattern of sensitive responding to comparisons with peers. nonetheless, it still follows that the richer you are the more likely you are to feel good about the economic comparisons you make. and indeed, some studies have found that materialism is not associated with unhappiness among very high income individuals (la barbera & gerhan 1997, nickerson et al. 2003). however, other studies have found positive correlations between materialism and unhappiness even among affluent individuals (stutzer 2004). these conflicting findings have yet to be reconciled. materialism has also been shown to create unhappiness because materialistic aspirations can conflict with other more community-focused aspirations based on religious and/or family values, thus causing psychological stress. however, among people devoid of family values or dr. seuss, felicitator ahuvia www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 210 concern for their community, materialistic values don’t cause internal psychological tension and are hence not associated with unhappiness (burroughs & rindfleisch 2002). while this may be good news for those materialists freed from a troubled conscience by having no conscience, it hardly represents a recommendable strategy for achieving happiness on a societal scale. 6. conclusion this paper has made the argument for dr. seuss as a felicitator. beyond the obvious pleasure his books brought to children and parents alike, his work championed the importance of imagination, creativity, and not just tolerance, but inclusion and the enthusiastic appreciation of difference. while this paper has explored some of his criticisms of consumer society, it should be noted that in his life and work he was a ‘flaming moderate’ on these issues. in the grinch who stole christmas, he attacked the way consumption in a commercialized christmas can supplant the more nourishing and nurturing pleasures he remembered from his youth. but in the end of the story, once the grinch sees the deeper values and experiences underlying the holiday, christmas goes ahead with both singing and gifts. in the lorax dr. seuss sounded an alarm about the ecologically destructive effects some forms of commercial production can have. but seuss loved creativity, and he knew that creativity often involved creating things. so his books also contained fabulous cars, colorful costumes and splendid palaces. yes, he pointed out the folly of the sneetches, but it was the fact that the plain-bellies weren’t invited to the frankfurter roasts, not the fact that people like frankfurters, that he inveighed against. ever the optimist, after ‚every last cent of their money’s been spent‛ on status symbols, dr. seuss has the now-destitute sneetches finally see the folly of their ways. that the sneetches got really quite smart on that day, the day they decided that sneetches are sneetches and no kind of sneetch is the best on the beaches. that day, all the sneetches forgot about stars and whether they had one, or not, upon thars. surely, this is felicitous advice for us all. author aaron 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(2015). understanding the experiences of positive life changes during postgraduate study on a masters in applied positive psychology programme: an interpretative phenomenological analysis. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 72-84. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.5 dr christian j. van nieuwerburgh university of east london c.vannieuwerburgh@gmail.com copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 72 article understanding the experiences of positive life changes during postgraduate study on a masters in applied positive psychology programme: an interpretative phenomenological analysis christian j. van nieuwerburgh · agnieszka lech abstract: there is a global increase in the teaching of positive psychology at postgraduate level. anecdotally, it has been suggested that university-based positive psychology programmes can be “life changing”. this exploratory qualitative study aimed to enhance our understanding of the positive life experiences of students registered on a masters in applied positive psychology (mapp) programme. the researcher interviewed five postgraduate students undertaking a mapp at the university of east london. interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify emerging themes before these were analysed and clustered into a number of overarching themes. participants reported experiencing a number of positive life changes as a result of the mapp programme. key themes that emerged were the sense that there were “myriad different thoughts and potential opportunities”; that studying positive psychology was “like coming home”; that participants enjoyed having time for reflection; and the sense that “it’s all about the people”. this study raised the question of whether the mapp programme could, in itself, be considered a positive psychological intervention. keywords: mapp, positive life changes, postgraduate, interpretative phenomenological analysis 1. introduction positive psychology has recently shown phenomenal growth (hefferon & boniwell, 2011). this increased interest was initiated by a presidential speech by professor martin seligman at the 1998 american psychological association convention. seligman’s key contribution to the field is his commitment to a “scientific grounding” for the discipline. today, positive psychology is defined as “a science that focuses on the development and facilitation of flourishing environments and individuals” (hefferon & boniwell, 2011, p. 2). as positive psychology continues to build its evidence base and grow in reputation and popularity, it is helpful to gain a better understanding of the experiences of students on postgraduate applied positive psychology programmes in order to comprehend the anecdotally mentioned “life-changing” effect and to inform the development of new programmes. the commitment to a “scientific grounding” led to the foundation of two masters in applied positive psychology (mapp) programmes, the first at the university of pennsylvania in 2005 and the second at the university of east london in 2007 (hefferon & boniwell, 2011). more recently, mapp programmes have been established at new bucks university and anglia ruskin university in the uk and the university of melbourne in australia. it is estimated that there are http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 73 scores of undergraduate positive psychology classes in american, european and british universities (boniwell, 2008; fineburg, 2004). at the same time, there is increasing interest in the impact of further and higher education on the wellbeing of students. however, only a small number of studies has considered the impact on students. us researchers have been interested in the broad impact of post-secondary education on students (e.g. pascarella & terenzini, 2005; pascarella, wolniak, seifert, cruce & blaich, 2005). although most research focuses primarily on employability and the impact of postsecondary education on career prospects, pascarella and terenzini note the broader positive effects of post-secondary education on “cognitive development”, “values” and “attitudes” (2005, p. 6). more recently, cohen (2006) has argued for the re-prioritisation of social and emotional education as distinct from purely academic instruction in schools and universities, suggesting that this will improve the wellbeing of students. some research studies support a positive relationship between education and subjective wellbeing (blanchflower & oswald, 2004). however, it is not clear whether the relationship is affected by levels of education or rather by a set of unobservable traits related to interest in learning, such as motivation or intelligence (dolan, peasgood, & white, 2008). it also possible that even if education does not directly influence wellbeing, it might provide people with new skills or better coping mechanisms to deal with daily situations (ovaska & takashima, 2006) which, in turn, could lead to enhanced wellbeing. this context is further complicated by the fact that some studies claim that there are no significant effects of education on one’s wellbeing (dolan et al., 2008; helliwell, 2002). notwithstanding the contradictory findings of researchers, it can be convincingly argued that positive psychology can have an impact beyond the direct teaching of the topic at university level. schreiner, hulme, hetzel and lopez (2009) point out that “the field of positive psychology offers the opportunity to turn the academic focus to helping students explore what makes life worth living” (p. 569). they identify the challenge of positive psychology as being to raise consciousness and awareness about its principles among a broad university audience (p. 569). while this is an exciting proposition, the teaching of positive psychology at postgraduate level may provide a more immediate and direct impact on students and staff through learning about positive psychology interventions and applying these in their personal and professional lives. the intention of mapp programmes is to: “offer students an opportunity to develop a depth of knowledge and critical understanding of the theory and research within positive psychology, as well as to study and use a range of positive psychology interventions and assessment methods, applying findings of this science to the areas that need it most” (hefferon & boniwell, 2011, p. 214). the development of the postgraduate teaching of positive psychology has placed the wellbeing agenda at the centre of the curriculum. based on their professional experiences of founding and leading postgraduate programmes in positive psychology, dr ilona boniwell and prof. martin seligman have noted a “similarity in the student experience, described by some as a ‘life-changing experience’” (hefferon & boniwell, 2011, p. 214). boniwell and seligman suggest that there may be six elements that make the experience positive for students:  “being ‘called’ towards this profession”  “openness to personal transformation”  “experience of fun or positive emotions”  “intense intellectual stimulation and rigour” positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 74  “connectedness with others”  “being a part of something larger (or larger meaning)” (as cited in hefferon & boniwell, 2011, p. 215) in his latest book, flourish seligman (2011) identifies three “magical components” in mapp programmes. he proposes that the content of the programme is “challenging, informative, and uplifting”; in addition, the teaching of positive psychology can be a “personally and professionally transformative” experience; finally, seligman affirms that positive psychology is a “calling” (p. 64). here, it is interesting to note the obvious overlap between the three components proposed by seligman (2011) and the six elements considered by boniwell and seligman. this research aims to build on the above studies by undertaking an in-depth exploration of the experiences of students on a mapp programme. 2. methods interpretative phenomenological analysis (ipa) is an experiential and phenomenological approach developed by professor jonathan smith at birkbeck university of london (smith, 1996; smith, flowers & larkin, 2009). the approach has been widely embraced within psychology and is now considered to be in the “mainstream” of research methods in the field due to its focus on human experience and agency (willig & rogers, 2008, p. 8). ipa is a suitable research method for this investigation because it seeks to understand the lived experiences of individuals (through tentative, subjectively-derived views) who share experience of a phenomenon (a masters programme in applied positive psychology). considering that ipa is inductive in nature—not starting with a hypothesis (smith et al., 2009)—it is anticipated that it will provide rich data about the experiences of the participants in this study. importantly, this approach allows both researcher and participants to engage in interpretative activities (shinebourne, 2011). 2.1 design an open, semi-structured interview was employed in order to enable participants to consider any aspects of their experience that they considered to be important. 2.2 participants the participants, four females and one male, were studying for a masters in applied positive psychology at the university of east london during the 2011-2012 academic year. 2.3 procedure the study required a small, homogeneous sample of participants registered on a mapp programme who had experienced positive life changes. students were invited by email to volunteer for the study. eight individual responses were received; five participants were able to meet with the researcher during the pre-arranged interview period. 2.4 analysis at present, there is some flexibility about the use of ipa. many of the methods applied in this research are those which have been recommended by leading experts in the field: smith et al. (2009), smith and osborn (2008) and willig (2008). to develop a deep understanding of participants’ experiences, transcripts were read and re-read, with the use of initial in-depth, marginal notes, coding and mind maps. positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 75 initially, 23 “emergent themes” were identified through a process of identifying frequency and prevalence of reference to certain experiences. however, the choice of themes was not limited to prevalence but rather was based on the richness of the description and the relationship of certain accounts of experiences to other themes (smith et al., 2009). these themes were then presented in a mind map to identify patterns and overlap (see figure 1 below). following further analysis, additional re-readings of the transcripts and discussion between researchers, the 23 themes were rearranged into ten subthemes. these ten subthemes were then clustered around four overarching themes: “a myriad of different thoughts and potential opportunities”; “it’s like i’ve come home”, time for reflection and “it’s about the people”. figure 1: mind map of themes and subthemes 3. overview of findings four key themes relating to the life-changing experiences of postgraduate students completing a masters in applied positive psychology were identified. each of the key themes was common to all five participants, although not all subthemes were evident in all interviews. 3.1 theme 1: “a myriad of different thoughts and potential opportunities” a key theme of the experiences of the five participants of this study relates to a multiplicity of new ideas and potential opportunities that emerged during their period of study. one participant calls it a “myriad of different thoughts and potential opportunities” and this captures the sense of possibility that is generated for all the participants. either as a result of enrolling on the programme or through their attendance on it, participants start to question past and future career choices and decisions. hand-in-hand with the questioning of career choices is an openness to a broad range of future opportunities and possibilities. positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 76 3.1.1 subtheme 1: questioning career choices all five participants reported the programme invited reflection about their career choices. for some, it led to significant decisions to change career altogether, while it simply raised questions about future directions for others. the experience of being thoughtful about career choices is apparent across all five participants in this study. this is consistent with the findings of carr (2011), who refers to longitudinal studies that suggest that people in their forties tend to re-evaluate their family and professional roles (p. 305). based on a number of case studies, seligman (2011) proposes that “learning positive psychology is professionally transforming” (p. 73), suggesting that the changes may be due to the content of the programme. it became apparent that the mapp programme facilitated the participants’ re-evaluation of their professional roles and career choices. this is evidenced by the fact that all the participants reflected on their career choices when talking to the researcher about their experiences and associated the mapp programme with that reflective process. 3.1.2 subtheme 2: feeling optimistic about a future in positive psychology four of the five participants consistently expressed optimism about their future in the field of positive psychology. participant 1, for example, reflected on her current level of knowledge and experience: “now i have, i’ve got a body of knowledge, a foundation and i think that i can offer something now….”. she expressed certainty that something “will be revealed” and said that she was “confident” of this happening. carver, scheier, miller & fulford (2009) offer a helpful definition of optimism as the expectation of “good things to occur in one’s life” (p. 303). they maintain that optimism is associated with a sense of wellbeing. certainly, all interviewees who expressed optimism about their future in positive psychology were also very upbeat when discussing their futures more generally. participant 5 expressed a stronger conviction about a positive future: “i know that this will without doubt be the path to what i do next”. she highlighted the strength of her belief: “the confidence i have in knowing that this is the right path for me is phenomenal—i can’t…it is really hard for me to verbalise how strongly i feel that ‘that’s it—this is my next phase for my life’”. this level of optimism and confidence about their futures is notable but not surprising considering the subject matter of the masters in applied positive psychology. according to boniwell (2008), optimists “have a generalised sense of confidence about the future, characterised by their broad expectancy that the outcomes are likely to be positive” (p. 16). it may well be that the participants in this study have “dispositional optimism” or an “optimistic explanatory style” (hefferon & boniwell, 2011), or else they may have learned to be optimistic (reivich & shatte, 2002), which would explain the consistently high levels of confidence about their professional futures. carver et al. (2009) refer to research and literature that suggests that people with positive expectations deal better with challenges and difficulties than those with negative expectations (p. 309). based on this assertion and the high levels of confidence expressed during the interviews, it is expected that the participants’ likelihood of success will be enhanced. carr (2011) supports this view when he concludes that optimism can lead to better personal and professional achievement (p. 108). positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 77 3.1.3 subtheme 3: being open to future possibilities taking into account the subject of their postgraduate study, it is perhaps unsurprising that these participants expressed a sense of being open to future possibilities. participant 5 most eloquently described how she felt about the opportunities that seemed to present themselves: “so what mapp has already done is given me a myriad of different thoughts and potential opportunities already…” 3.2 theme 2: “it’s like i’ve come home” participants reported a strong sense that the mapp was the “right” programme for them, with one person saying that it felt like she had “come home”. this “fit” between the student and the programme led participants to share experiences and stories which suggested feelings of enjoyment and excitement but also a recognition that this programme provided them with a “home” (comfortable and secure environment) and a place of belonging. 3.2.1 subtheme 1: experiencing enjoyment and excitement: “it makes my heart beat faster” participant 5 captured this sentiment most powerfully when she declared: “it sounds really dramatic but it makes my heart beat faster”. the mapp programme seems to have the effect of creating real excitement for students. the very fact of being with others, studying a topic which is enjoyable and engaging with new ideas makes the programme “amazing”. the excitement about the programme and the enjoyment of it seem to be closely linked, as participant 2 described: ”i mean it’s amazing to actually be studying something that i really enjoy so much…”. frederickson’s broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (frederickson, 1998; 2009) suggests such enjoyment will lead to higher levels of attention and thinking, which allow people to access a broader range of ideas and concepts (frederickson & kurtz, 2011, p. 35). in this way, the enjoyment of participants on the programme enhances their learning experiences and their thinking processes. in a study aimed at identifying how happiness can be increased and then sustained, lyubomirsky, sheldon & schkade (2005) propose that a “person’s chronic happiness level is governed by 3 major factors: a genetically determined set point for happiness, happiness-relevant circumstantial factors, and happiness-relevant activities and practices” (p. 111). they attribute 50% of population variation to genetics, 10% to circumstantial factors (this is low due to the effect of hedonistic adaptation) and 40% to activities and practices that they term “intentional activity”. the choice of participants to undertake postgraduate study in positive psychology accords with the definition of intentional activity as “discrete actions or practices in which people can choose to engage” (p. 118). the authors contend that one crucial element in boosting happiness is “changing one’s intentional activities” rather than trying to change one’s environment (p. 116). this suggests that the choice of studying for a masters in applied positive psychology could be a positive psychology intervention (ppi) in its own right, based on sin and lyubomirsky’s (2009) definition: an intentional activity that “aims to cultivate positive feelings, behaviours, or cognitions” (p. 468). 3.2.2 subtheme 2: studying positive psychology feels “really right” participants not only reported that studying positive psychology is enjoyable, but they also talked about the “fit” of the programme. one of the leading figures in positive psychology , dr ilona boniwell, recounts a similar experience: “when, in 1999, i first heard about positive psychology, i realised immediately that, for me, this was it” (boniwell, 2008, p. 116). participant positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 78 2 echoed this sentiment when she acknowledged that the programme “feels really right”. participant 4 described her realisation that the programme would be right for her, reporting that she thought “oh my god, this is what i’ve been looking for”, while participant 1 enthused about how it was “just amazing how it’s worked out” so that she could study what she’d always been passionate about. in all cases, the strength of feeling about mapp being “right” is notable. 3.3 theme 3: time for reflection for the purposes of this analysis, ‘time for reflection’ refers to the participants’ expression of a need for individual thinking time away from the busy-ness of everyday life. 3.3.1 subtheme 1: “this is about a journey of discovery for myself” all participants engaged more strongly with this subtheme than any other. one of the most powerful and consistent experiences of the participants was the sense of being on a journey of self-discovery. they noted the relevance of the course content as well as opportunities for personal development and moments of increased self-awareness. the curriculum and course content were referred to as being significant and life changing. for example, “mindset theory” was mentioned by two of the participants. participant 1 reported that: “encounters with certain theories like ‘mindset theory’ has changed my life”. she recognised that “even though i’m a fixed mindset person, i found it stultifying and so boring that i kind of always come out of my cocoon and try to become a butterfly [laughs] out of the chrysalis...”. this realisation is very significant for the participant, allowing her to learn about herself (in her view, being a fixed mindset person) and also seeking to develop a new way of thinking that would allow her to come out of her “cocoon” to see things differently. according to her, this realisation on its own had already changed her life. learning about “fixed” and “growth” mindsets also had a profound impact on participant 2. it is interesting to note, however, that participant 2 had already decided that her year of study on the mapp programme would be a year of learning and discovery: “this year, before i left…i moved to london, i thought ‘this year is about learning’. it’s about learning as much as i possibly can, and trying as much as i possibly can. so, when an opportunity comes up, then i’m going to take it, because that is what this year is about.” it is perhaps because of this that participant 2 talked the most about the “time to reflect” that had been made available to her. throughout the interview, participant 2 highlighted how she felt about having time to “stop and think”. she confessed that she appreciated “having the time to reflect”, noting that in everyday life “you don’t just stop and think”. she considered “time” to be a “big gift” to herself. she mused on the outcome of this additional time to “stop and think”: “i don’t know if it’s serenity, but more…[long pause] maybe acceptance and groundedness with how things are…”. 3.3.2 subtheme 2: wanting to make a difference another significant theme to emerge from the interviews with participants is a sense that the mapp programme helped them to find ways of “making a difference” and making life meaningful. for one participant, a charitable project that developed out of research undertaken for her mapp dissertation has had a long-term positive impact by providing her with a purpose. she said that the project “gives total meaning to my life. this is what i’m here for”. she was positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 79 particularly drawn to this charitable venture because it made her realise that she could “actually really make a difference in these people’s lives to help them help themselves”. this has shown her and her partner how positive psychology has the “potential to really change things in society”. what seemed to motivate this participant more than anything was the realisation that she was able to make a positive intervention into that particular social context and the opportunity to do so. it could be argued that this desire to “make a difference”, expressed by all five participants, may fall under the category of “being part of something larger (or larger meaning)” which has been proposed by boniwell and seligman as one of the six factors behind the “magic of mapp” (as cited in hefferon & boniwell, 2011, p. 215). batson, ahmad and lishner (2009) refer to multiple experiments which suggest that feelings of compassion and empathy can invoke altruistic impulses (p. 424). as a result, it is possible to consider the desire to “make a difference” as a “pro-social motivation” (batson et al., 2009) or a search for meaning. our study suggests, however, that for its participants the primary and overriding focus is the desire to “make a difference” in the worlds they inhabit. 3.3.3 subtheme 3: negotiating self-doubt generally speaking, there was an overwhelmingly positive tone to the conversations with participants. each seemed confident and excited about positive psychology and the potential applications of it within their fields. there was relatively very little mention of self-doubt and when it was discussed it related to feelings when applying for the programme. for example, participant 3 was pleased to be accepted onto the mapp programme, as she felt that she didn’t have “any kind of social science background and i was a little bit worried about being behind intellectually on that…”. 3.4 theme 4: “it’s about the people” another theme that is consistently mentioned in the context of positive life changes relates to the impact that the mapp programme has had on personal relationships. all the participants in this study commented positively on the opportunity to meet and learn with other students on the programme (often referred to as “mappsters”). in addition, some participants recounted how the mapp programme had a positive impact on relationships with life partners or work colleagues. 3.4.1 subtheme 1: building bonds with other mappsters describing the group of students as a “wonderful brotherhood”, participant 1 explained that “they’re very interesting people…really good people. it kind of restores your faith in humanity. they want to do something good for the world”. this participant highlighted the collegiality within the group, due to the rigour of the course but also because of a shared desire to “do something good for the world”, specifically, a common interest in “making a difference”. participant 2 had a similar experience, which was expressed in her statement that“the connections that come from [the mapp programme]…is life changing…”. according to this participant, “within a month, three weeks of starting the course i meet eighty-five people in mapp who are impressive in some way or another even just from their desire to do this and to make a difference”. she was very positive about the relationships she had developed with other mappsters. participant 5 expressed a similar sentiment: “it’s the people that you meet here who…which is…i think just the most amazing thing”. based on the experiences of the participants in this study, there positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 80 can be little doubt that mappsters have a profound and positive effect on each other. in this case, there is also recognition that the networks extend well beyond the students in the classroom. 3.4.2 subtheme 2: transforming relationships at home and at work in addition to the recognition that newly-found relationships with other students will have a positive life-changing effect, some participants reported that their attendance on the mapp programme had an effect on existing relationships with work colleagues and family members. for example, one participant described how the mapp programme had a profound impact on a work relationship. as she explained, the relationship between her and the colleague had always been civil but strained. as a result of talking to him about what she was learning on the course, the relationship was completely transformed, as the participant explained: “he came with a card saying… ‘i’m so proud of you’. i know!! and we’ve never had a fantastic relationship….it made me feel a bit tearful actually….” “connectedness with others” also features as one of the six factors highlighted by boniwell and seligman (as cited in hefferon & boniwell, 2011, p. 215). another of the field’s founders, professor christopher peterson, was well known for saying the phrase “other people matter” at every positive psychology lecture or workshop that he delivered. in a magazine article, peterson reiterated that “good relationships with other people may be a necessary condition for our own happiness” (peterson, 2008). 4. conclusion 4.1 wellbeing the latest thinking by seligman (2011) proposes that wellbeing is a construct. wellbeing, according to seligman, has five elements: positive emotion; engagement; relationships; meaning; and accomplishment (perma) (seligman, 2011). the findings of this research study will be explored in light of the above. firstly, “positive emotion” relates to both “happiness” and life satisfaction (frederickson, 1998; frederickson & kurtz, 2011; diener et al., 2009). participants reported that they were “happier” as a result of studying for a masters in applied positive psychology. on the whole, participants used emotive language and emphasised the positive feeling engendered by the programme. the second element is “engagement”, which is related to doing something of interest. according to seligman (2011), high levels of engagement can lead to the “flow” state (p. 17). flow is described as a state of complete absorption with an activity and is directly linked to a person’s intrinsic motivation (csikszentmihalyi, 1997). every participant indicated that they were very engaged on the programme, reporting that it felt “really right”, putting the learning into practice and taking every opportunity to learn from the materials, the lecturers and one another. the third element, positive relationships, is a key feature of the experiences of the participants in this study. seligman (2011) reconfirms the need for human interaction and collective experiences and correlates these with a sense of wellbeing (pp. 21-23). as discussed above, participants reported that they valued the relationships that they had built with other students on the programme. in addition, some participants reported an improvement on relationships beyond the classroom. “meaning” is the fourth element of seligman’s perma model. this refers to the experience of “belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self” (seligman, 2011, positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 81 p. 17). this is indirectly addressed by the strong desire amongst participants to “make a difference”. for some, meaning emerged from their attempts to help others. the final element is “accomplishment”. according to seligman, this refers to the pleasures of accomplishment or achievement for its own sake. of all the elements, this is the one least mentioned by participants. however, this may well be due to the fact that all the participants were, through selection, in the process of accomplishing something (i.e. an masters in applied positive psychology). it is interesting to note that participants in this study reported positive emotion, engagement with the programme, increased positive relationships and a desire to be involved in more meaningful activities. in other words, studying for a masters in applied positive psychology may have increased these participants’ sense of overall wellbeing. 4.2 hope, optimism, self-concordant goals from the interviews, it seemed that each of the participants was both hopeful and optimistic. each interview felt positive and uplifting. hopefulness and optimism were most evident when participants spoke about their own futures within the field of positive psychology. it has been shown that hopefulness (snyder et al., 1991) and optimism (scheier & carver, 1993) seem to have a positive effect on subjective wellbeing. diener, oishi and lucas (2009) conclude, “it is not just who we are that matters to happiness, but how we think about our lives” (p. 190). therefore, the optimism and hopefulness of the participants may also increase their sense of wellbeing. furthermore, based on longitudinal studies (e.g. sheldon & elliott, 1998, 1999; sheldon & kasser, 1995, 1998), lyubomirsky et al. (2005) contend that increases in wellbeing “are most likely when a person chooses and attains self-concordant goals, that is, goals that ‘fit’ the person” (p. 119). they therefore recommend that people who pursue happiness should look for activities that are “in alignment with their values” (lyubomirsky et al., 2005, p. 126). based on the theme “it’s like i’ve come home”, participants in this study were pursuing a very self-concordant goal when they applied for a place on the masters in applied positive psychology programme. schreiner et al. (2009) also point to a number of researchers who have posited that student learning can be enhanced if students are driven by intrinsic, self-initiated motives (baxter magolda, 1999; connell & wellborn, 1991; ryan & deci, 2000). taking into account that participants in this study reported increases in four of the five elements of perma, and the research that shows that the optimism and hopefulness expressed by participants may have an impact on their wellbeing, it is fruitful to explore whether the mapp programme is, in itself, a positive psychology intervention. 4.3 magic of mapp as noted earlier, hefferon and boniwell (2011) have identified “an unexpected similarity in the student experience” between the mapp programme at the university of pennsylvania and the mapp programme at the university of east london (p. 214). boniwell and seligman have suggested “six major factors” which constitute what is termed the “magic of mapp”. these are summarised as “being ‘called’ towards this profession, openness to personal transformation, experience of fun or positive emotions, intense intellectual stimulation and rigour, connectedness with others and being part of something larger (or larger meaning)” (hefferon & boniwell, 2011, p. 215). the results of this study broadly endorse the six factors, as demonstrated by the detailed analysis of the individual participants’ comments. positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 82 4.4 limitations although participants were made aware that the main researcher was a member of staff at the university of east london, this fact may have influenced participants to provide more positive accounts of their experiences. in addition, in order to recruit sufficient participants, students in their first and second years were invited to participate in the study. this resulted in students at different points in their educational experiences being interviewed. it should be acknowledged that students at different points in their study might have different impressions of the programme. however, smith and osborn (2008) advise pragmatism when recruiting for such studies, pointing out that willingness to be involved is a key determinant of selection (p. 56). following the idea of “purposive sampling” (smith & osborn, 2008, p. 56), only students who had experienced positive life-changing experiences were recruited. 4.5 implications our initial findings suggest that studying for a masters in applied positive psychology might have had a positive impact on the wellbeing of the selected participants. this is based on three findings; firstly, that the themes of this study suggest that participants might have experienced at least four of the five elements of perma. secondly, that participants expressed hopefulness and optimism about their futures. as discussed above, this hopefulness and optimism might lead to higher levels of wellbeing. thirdly, all participants commented positively on their relationship with other mapp students. it has been suggested that building relationships and connections with others can increase one’s own happiness (diener & seligman, 2002; christakis & fowler, 2009). this raises an interesting question that needs further research: does undertaking a masters in applied positive psychology increase wellbeing? in other words, is the mapp a ppi in itself? if so, it has been shown, based on the combined results of 49 studies, that ppis do enhance wellbeing (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009). further qualitative and quantitative research in this area is needed. it might be interesting to explore whether similar experiences are reported by postgraduate students studying other, related, topics such as coaching psychology. based on the tentative findings of our research, it might be useful for potential applicants to the mapp programme to consider whether to complete the programme full-time (over one year) or part-time (over two years). if the mapp programme is considered to be a ppi, then research suggests that its duration can moderate the benefits, with interventions over a longer time more likely to produce greater gains in wellbeing (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009, p. 483). furthermore, current students may find it useful to note that continuing to practise the ppi at the end of the intervention also leads to enhanced wellbeing (sin & lyubomirsky, 2009 ). authors dr christian j. van nieuwerburgh university of east london c.vannieuwerburgh@gmail.com dr agnieszka lech queen mary university of london publishing timeline received 30 april 2014 accepted 4 march 2015 published 30 july 2015 positive life changes during postgraduate study van nieuwerburgh & lech www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 83 references batson, c.d., ahmad, n. & lishner, d.a. 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